LOST opportunity

Who cares what I think...right? That said, I have to share my opinion on the series finale of LOST. (If you haven't seen the finale and you're planning on watching it, stop reading!)

I was a fan of the show from the beginning. I remember having my mom mail me a VHS copy of one of the first season finale while I was in Glacier. A small group of us was part of the "opening crew" at the hotel and we settled in to the hotel pub (the only TV with a VCR we could find) to watch.

I ended up catching season two online after it had aired and then I stayed caught up with the series from that point on. Like most people, I was always a little confused by the island goings-on. But I liked the fact that the show had a definite end date. I felt confident that if I invested in the show there would be some payoff. Now I feel tricked.

Let me explain though. I actually really liked the finale. What they did with the "sideways" world was brilliant. I thought it was beautiful and moving and a perfect ending to the entire series. But I feel like the finale was a two act play and they forgot to show us the first act. I found the following in a post-finale write up online. It explains perfectly how I feel.

"The finale's premise isn't that hard to grasp, but it confused us because it executes a switcheroo: It substitutes a "big" mystery of relatively slight interest (What is the status of the flash-sideways reality?) for all the littler enigmas that we actually do care about, such as why Aaron and Walt were so important, the reason for the fertility preoccupation in the first couple of seasons and the meaning of the numbers. You don't have to count yourself among that flock of literal-minded viewers who bleated incessantly for "answers" to everything (The glass eye! The Hurley bird! The Dharma food drops!) to find the answers we did get unsatisfying. A series like "Lost" doesn't need to solve all of its riddles, but it does need to address the right ones."

I understand that movies and television shows are best when they're character driven. We definitely got that with LOST. The show's creators did not disappoint in that regard. But they also chose to bring us the story of a mysterious island where strange things happen. "Keep tuning in," was the obvious plea. "You'll find out what's going on eventually." Except...we didn't. I thought it was building up to that point. In the episodes leading up to the finale we definitely got a lot of the island's backstory. All of that was great and I was thirsty for more. As it turns out, I'm still thirsty. What the producers chose to do...they did well. The two act play ended perfectly. I wouldn't change a thing. But I would like to see that first act. Somehow, that got looked over.