Deconstructing Lost

Hello Lost fans,
SPOILER ALERT for the ENTIRE series of LOST:

Perhaps my favorite show of all time, ended last night and it's time to figure out what the heck happened. So below is my attempt at explaining the six seasons in some semblance of a coherent fashion. This endeavor is designed, in large part, to help convince myself of what I watched. So, please feel free to disagree, but try to back up your disagreements with legitimate arguments. Previously, I have talked a lot about how Lost can mean different things to different people and specific theories I have about overarching themes, but now let's start with my theory about the actual events that occurred. Keep in mind, that in my interpretation, their entire existence ON the Island actually occurred and was not some representation of purgatory AND keep in mind, that these facts within the context of a science fiction show allow for some people to have special gifts without requiring a great deal of explanation (e.g. Walt.)

The best way to tell a coherent tale is chronologically, but unfortunately, because time travel is involved in the show and there are so many different important characters, a chronological explanation would vary depending on whose experience we are recounting. So, let's start from the earliest point in time, one of the last episodes (which was not one of my favorites, but essential for the purposes of a coherent explanation.)

Thousands of years ago, an unnamed woman, whom we shall call Eve, (played by Allison Janney,) was given the duty of protecting an Island endowed with a unique spiritual essence. That essence was represented by a bright light emanating from the earth. Beneath the Island, there were malevolent forces, partially explained scientifically by powerful electro-magnetism, that if freed, would cause the destruction of the Island and may have been powerful enough to spread throughout the earth and destroy the earth, as if the Island were a "hellmouth" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer term about the location of the opening to hell) or perhaps more appropriately, "Armageddon" (based on the Hebrew translation Mount Megidon, the location of the beginning of mankind's potential apocalypse.) Anyway, Eve was given various divine gifts, (including immortality until she found a suitable replacement,) to empower her to protect the Island. Eve decided it was time to pass the mantle to the next generation, so using her divine gift for manipulating events (symbolized by the loom,) she brought a pregnant woman to the Island, helped her deliver twins, Jacob and an unnamed second child, whom we shall call Adam.

She preferred Adam because he was naturally creative, with an innate ability to deceive just like Eve. Unfortunately, Adam was special with more than just his creativity; he was also special in his curiosity AND more importantly his ability to commune with the dead (which led to his revelation that Eve was not his biological mother.) Adam wanted off the Island and joined a group of stranded Romans in their efforts to escape. However, Eve would not let anyone leave. So, she killed the Romans and destroyed much of the great progress they had made at harnessing the power of the Island. She also recognized that Jacob was her rightful successor as demi-god, not Adam, and thus bestowed the powers onto Jacob. After she did that, Adam killed her. After a long, lonely life, she was relieved by her own death and thanked Adam for his violence. Jacob, infuriated, broke one of the few constant rules on the Island... not to send people to the heart of the Island, which was a fate worse than death. Adam's body died that day and was buried alongside Eve, but his tortured spirit lived on- intent on escaping the Island.

Jacob, as demigod of the Island, had supernatural gifts including immortality, the ability to dictate almost all of the rules of the Island, the ability to bestow supernatural abilities onto others and the ability to manipulate events (hence the looming.) Meanwhile, Adam's restless spirit was reanimated as an invincible cloud of black smoke that was able to embody corpses on the Island as human vessels for his malevolent residue. Adam continued to yearn for escape from the Island, but because of Jacob's mistake, Adam's being had merged with the Island's powerful core, which presented a terrible danger to the rest of the world.

Jacob recognized his horrible mistake of transforming "Adam" into "Smokey" and accepted the blame for his error in addition to additional responsibilities to mitigate damages for his crime. While Eve's sole responsibility was to protect the Island from outsiders, Jacob now had the additional responsibility of maintaining a prison for a supernatural entity that schemed to break free. In the meanwhile, Jacob also sought to rehabilitate Smokey by persuading him of the virtues of the human race, perhaps in the hopes that Smokey would not want to inflict upon humanity the devastating destruction his escape would cause. So, Jacob would bring people to the Island, in part to search for potential successors to his throne and in part to convince Smokey that the human race is worth saving. Probably, about 2000 years after Jacob's reign began, Jacob chose Richard Alpert to begin a non-denominational church on the Island to teach people the benefits of morality and the basic construct of Jacob’s rules of the Island (in which Richard would serve as counsel to whoever was chosen leader.) Other than bringing troubled, lonely souls in need of redemption to the Island, Jacob rarely intervened in human affairs, opting for a system that valued human's free will. Smokey, who recognized he needed to kill Jacob in order to escape also realized that the only way to kill Jacob was within the context of the rules Jacob established, i.e. a loophole that would allow the immortal Jacob to die.

Smokey found the loophole because, as part of the rules of Jacob's church, he conferred powers onto the chosen leader of the church of Jacob (which makes sense in the context of a modern belief that man can kill God by virtue of failing to believe in God.) So, Smokey went to work manipulate events to implant an unworthy Island leader whom he could control with greed and ambition.

Other noteworthy events include that the Island was about to be used as a nuclear testing facility, but the Church managed to fight off the military and confiscate the leaky bomb called Jughead. Then, came the Dharma Initiative, which was a relatively idealistic scientific group that studied supernatural phenomenon, including specific locations around the world with high degrees of electro-magnetism, the most powerful of which was the Island. They tapped into the same resources Romans had thousands of years earlier, but with greater degree of control because of scientific advancement. But still Dharma did not understand fully what they were studying and there was an Incident, in which electro-magnetism was leaked. Dharma built one of their many stations in response to this leak to slowly relieve the electro-magnetic tension in small bursts every 108 minutes, rather than letting the damn burst. They also installed a fail safe of turning a key to "blow the dam" in case they could not meet the 108 minute deadline.

However, the Incident probably convinced Jacob and his followers ("the hostiles") who were led by Charles Widmore (or Eloise Hawking) that Dharma had to be eliminated. With the help of an unsatisfied and ambitious Dharma worker mole, Ben Linus, the Jacobite church eliminated almost the entire Dharma Initiative Island presence, which crippled the Dharma Initiative. Still, two-men remained in the electro-magnetism station pressing a sequence of buttons to periodically release the dangerous energy (with pre-scheduled food drops.)

Ben Linus, had a rocky relationship with Island leader Charles Widmore (because Widmore ordered Linus to kill a baby, who Linus instead adopted.) So Linus, a master manipulator, took advantage of a situation when he found Widmore was cheating on the Island because Widmore fell in love with a woman off the Island (and was raising his second child Penelope off-Island.) Jacob liked Linus and his manipulative management style even less than Widmore’s sinful ways. Jacob punished the inhabitants of the Island (and followers of Linus) by killing all late-term pregnant women, which was a punishment befitting Linus who suffered doubly from this same fate (his mother died during his premature birth and his father spent his whole life blaming him for his mother's death.) (This is also a possible reason that the Others kidnapped children, as a method of recruiting and getting to children early, while another possible reason includes that they were trying to protect the children, whereas they did not care as much about protecting adults.) So, where Jacob was absent with Island leadership, Smokey stepped in and manipulated Linus's regime.

Despite Jacob's disapproval of Linus, Jacob's rule was deist in nature, so he did not interfere with the Island leadership process of his church. Still, Jacob occasionally made off-Island appearances to entice troubled souls to come to the Island and serve in the protection of the Island and for the eventuality of his own demise. He made a trip to recruit Island priest, Dogen to entice him to sacrifice his life in exchange for his sons. He also visited Jacobian guard Ilana, probably more than once. And he eventually met with Widmore too. But, back to the story at hand...

Finally, we get to the Survivors of Oceanic 815, of which there are only a few characters critical to understanding the underlying overarching story, all of whom were touched by Jacob and given the ability to survive their troubles and reach the Island.

Jack Shephard was a relentless fixer to the point of addiction. Jack brought his severe "daddy issues" to the Island literally because his constantly disapproving father’s corpse was cargo on the plane. Jack was a reluctant leader to the survivors because his good intentions, willingness to devote himself to others and height/medical knowledge deemed him worthy of respect, which made him an ideal candidate for the job opening as successor to Jacob.

John Locke was a traveler who had picked up countless useful skills, while trying to find his place in the world. After having been rendered paraplegic by his con-man father, dumped by his great love, reduced to a cubicle job where he spent every day amidst ridicule and finally being denied a life-long desired spiritual reawakening walk-about, he landed on the Island. His immediate connection with the Island, his faith in its supernatural wonder and Jacob's church's high opinion of him made him an ideal candidate for the job as successor to Jacob.

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes was a decent, charming individual with a soothing temperament. Hurley went crazy after his excessive weight caused a fatal accident and that was before he used a sequence of cursed numbers to win the lottery. He felt that his newfound fortune led to a series of catastrophes. His sunny disposition along with his supernatural ability to commune with the dead made him an ideal candidate for the job as successor to Jacob.

I could talk about Sawyer, who was a rich textured character that slowly evolved into a rugged hero in the manner of Han Solo. I could talk about Kate, who had to make the romantic choice of the good provider, Jack or the reformed bad-boy Sawyer; and that decision was a prime-mover of the series (she went Jack.) I could talk about Sayid, a magnificent character because his plentiful skills are exceeded only by his ability to be manipulated by authority figures including Smokey, Linus, the US government, and the Iraqi government. I could talk about Jin and Sun who formed a powerful tandem, but whose rocky relationship was based in large part on their failure to keep outside influences from repeatedly changing their attitudes towards each other. I could talk about Michael and Walt and how the one person on the Island who was attempting to be a good parent to his child ended up making him the most surprising villain and trapped him on the Island amid the whispers of regret (or for Walt, I could talk about how the show depicted some people as having innate supernatural gifts.) Or I could talk about Charlie, who was a drug-addict that asked all the meaningful questions upon arriving on the Island and then heroically gave his life to try to precipitate his friends' rescue. The most amazing thing about LOST is how every one of these characters and several others were chosen by Jacob (and in reality, created by the writers) were wonderfully flawed and ALL of them went through individual hero trials.

The LOST story ark begins with crash of Oceanic flight 815 on September 22, 2004. Season 1’s overarching story entailed the difficulties of a group of plane crash survivors stranded on an Island and hoping for rescue (they were not rescued because they were off course.) They also wondered why they could not use their communications equipment (first, because of another more powerful signal that would not let them transmit at all, Rousseau’s distress call, and then later because of an underwater signal blocker.) They struggle to deal with common island survival issues, such as a group of strangers forced to live together and discover and share limited resources like water, food and shelter. There were also additional Island-specific issues including finding a crazy woman who had been on the Island for 16 years who espoused the notion that the Island had a contagious disease, an Other group of Island inhabitants intent on infiltrating and disrupting activity, (the Jacobites,) a polar bear, (Dharma research animal that broke free after Dharma was destroyed,) and the terrifying smoke monster that kills at will (unless you surround yourself with sonic fences or ash blessed by a Jacobite priest that is powered by self-sacrifice) as they tried to figure out ways they can expedite rescue. Of course, there is the other reason they were not rescued because the Island is a space-time anomaly that can only be seen, reached or exited by following a precise directional bearing, but we don't learn that until the latter seasons. The final plotline of the season is the group bonding over the building of raft, except for John who delves further into the Island to try to open a mysterious hatch.

The second season tells us that Desmond Hume is inside the hatch, which is the Dharma bunker charged with relieving the Island's electro-magnetism every 108 minutes by pressing Hurley's cursed buttons into an old computer. We also find out that on the day of the Oceanic crash, Desmond was late to press the button, causing the crash. Outside the hatch, the Jacobites intercept the raft and kidnap Walt. The rafters land on the other side of the Island to find other Oceanic "tailie" survivors. Michael promptly kills off two of the prominent tailies as part of a plan to appease the Jacobites, which is Linus's long-con to get Jack to perform surgery on him. Step 1 of that plan was Linus got captured and stirred strife in group leadership as he was imprisoned and tortured. Step 2 was having Michael free him (when Michael killed the two people.) Step 3 is have Michael convince a specific listed group, to seek calculated revenge on the Jacobites ("the Others.") Step 4 (from Season 3) would be to imprison Kate and Sawyer in adjacent cells to precipitate a budding attraction. Step 5 would be to show Jack that he was alone on the Island and use Jack's seemingly unrequited feelings for Kate to get him to hastily accept a deal to perform Linus's necessary surgery. It worked with the minor caveat that Jack double-crossed Linus while he was on the operating table, to enable his friends' escape. The end of Season 2 was marked by the completion of Linus's Step 3 along with John Locke's crisis of faith that led to him and Desmond purposefully not pushing the button (against the resistance of a fascinating and short-lived spiritual character, Eko.) As time passed and no one pressed the button to release the pressure, the electro-magnetic force increased dangerously until Desmond turned the failsafe key, which exploded a bomb and burned up the electromagnetic energy, resulting in a purple sky.

Desmond Hume is the other key character in the overarching story because by turning the failsafe key, he got inoculated to the Island's powerful electro-magnetic energy (and overly exposed to the unique properties of the Island (that I foolishly refer to as the Island’s time midichlorians.) Desmond’s love story with Penelope Widmore, (Widmore's daughter,) loosely based off of The Odyssey is one of my favorite romances in television history, but aside from that, he becomes a critical character on the Island. He himself becomes an anomaly within the anomaly that is the Island, which in a weird way, makes him a constant (that explanation does not work exactly, but I'm getting tired.) More interestingly, his conscious mind travels through time where he is told by Eloise Hawking, (a former Jacobite leader with profound insight based on spiritual awareness as well as advanced scientific acumen,) that even though he is practically tim-traveling, he cannot change the timeline because the universe course corrects to follow a set path (this includes seeing the future to Charlie's death.)

The predominant plotline of the end of Season 3 is about the arrival of Widmore's ship, which provides the promise of rescue.

After Jack arrived on the Island, his immediate heroics put him in position to make decisions, but his decisions were often made hastily and adamantly, even when they were wrong. He was also reckless with his own health and safety. In Season 3, Jack forged a plan to use his newfound relationship with Juliet, a reluctant Jacobian church-member to disable the transmission jammer to enable communication and lead the group to a satellite tower to send outgoing transmissions (with some people staying behind as a diversionary and stall tactic.) Jack's plan worked because of Charlie's sacrifice, despite Linus and John's attempts to sabotage the plan. The season ends with the offshore communication with a freighter off the coast of the Island.

The other unique thing about the end of Season 3 was a major change in the standard story-telling device of LOST. Until that point, the Island story would be told and whenever a character had a major decision to make in an episode, we would be treated to "flashbacks" or small glimpses at pivotal moments in a character's history that guided how the character analyzed the current Island decision (though the best part of the flashbacks were often unexpected connections between the characters.) At the end of Season 3, the show surprised its viewers by having "flash-forwards" that showed us what life was like after the character left the Island and how, in this case Jack, was affected and haunted by his experiences on the Island.

Season 4 was marked by a few interweaving stories. The survivors divided into two groups, Jack's group, which was heading off the Island and John's group, who were intent on staying either because they believed as John did that the Island was special or because they did not trust the freighter who were working for Widmore. In turn, Widmore's motivation was to kill Linus, but Widmore’s people ended up killing his adopted daughter instead. Widmore was prepared to burn down the Island to kill Linus. (There were also a few notable freighter characters including Daniel Faraday, son of Widmore AND Hawking who is a brilliant scientist who is in love with another scientist Charlotte Lewis. Miles Straume is a snarky communer with the dead. Frank Lapidus is a sarcastic pilot and Martin Keamy is a monstrous mercenary.)

Widmore's group of scientists were withholding information and the non-scientists proved more untrustworthy, as they went on a killing spree of John's Oceanic followers. In the commotion, both Jack's group and John's group splintered and Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Jin and Aaron ended up on Widmore's helicopter that crash landed and was rescued. The other major twist at the end of Season 4 was that Locke communicated with Smokey who told him to move the Island, which actually meant moving it in space-time. Linus helped Locke perform the task of moving the Roman-built donkey wheel (which was created by the Romans to harness the energy of the Island, which was reminiscent of the Tower of Babel.)

Season 5 started to get very complicated with the introduction of the traditional concept of time-travel. Ben turned the donkey wheel and ended up leaving the Island, but the survivors got transported through time at periodic, unpredictable intervals, at first to various important moments in the Island's history, but the transportation caused the time travelers to develop nose bleeds and die (somewhat akin to a disease that affects consciousness time-travelers (like Minkowski) when they do not have a constant (someone to ground them to a specific chronology of events like Penelope and Desmond.)) The group traveled to 1954 where John convinces Richard Alpert that he will be the leader and thus, like John Connor, by virtue of traveling back in time effectively making himself retroactively special. It worked too, because by the time he arrived, his existence was foretold and the Jacobites empowered him by believing in him.

After many spontaneous time-shifts, Locke goes and fixed the donkey wheel by adjusting it and he leapt forward in time off the Island. The survivors end up stuck in 1974 and have to live among the Dharma Initiative for three years, as they searched the Island for traces of their friends. The six people that got onto a helicopter were referred to as the Oceanic Six and earned immediate fame and fortune for the harrowing ordeal they survived (mostly a rather tame lie to protect their friends from Widmore, who would to attack if he thought they were still alive.) Jack and Kate got engaged with Kate raising Claire's baby (Claire is Jack's half sister, unbeknownst to him until Season 5. But, the Oceanic 6 are unhappy and unfulfilled, and drawn to return to the Island by mysterious forces such as guilt and probably Jacob. John tried to get them all to come back, but could not get a single recruit. Instead, Linus saved John from suicide to extract information from him and then killed John to retain power and use John's death a tool to galvanize interest in an Island return.

Eloise Hawking used Dharma science to predict where the Island would be at a specific time and used her spiritual awareness to inform the survivors that they needed the Ajira flight to have the same conditions as the Oceanic flight, including a substitute dead body in place of Christian Shephard. Linus and Eloise's plan worked, but only Linus and a few other Ajira survivors landed normally, while Jack, Sayid, Hurley and Kate were transported to 1977 among the Dharma folk and the other Oceanic survivors who had lived with the Dharma Initiative for three years. Jack was noticeably subdued as he tried to accept fate, while Sawyer lead the group from one situation to another. Faraday returned from the mainland, after having spent 3 years working on a solution to their time travel dilemma. He came to the conclusion that detonating the conveniently located nuclear bomb, Jughead at the precise time of the incident by the area of the leak could change things so substantially that their lives would be different and the Oceanic flight would never have crashed. Adult Faraday gets killed by his young, Island leader mother, Eloise Hawking before he is born (in a tragic cycle that Eloise Hawking and Widmore are aware of, but bound to repeat.) So, Jack decides that he should take up Faraday's mantle with a new faith in the cause of preventing the Oceanic crash. With the help of young Eloise Hawking, he detonated the bomb.

Meanwhile, 30 years later, Smokey mimics the body of John Locke, which prevented him from ever inhabiting a corpse again. He used Locke's status as leader of the Jacobites to gain access to see Jacob. He made the executive decision to bring Linus to see Jacob, who is jealous of the attention Jacob was willing to pay to Locke. Then Smokey, who is now Fake Locke or Flocke, successfully completes his decade-long con to urge Linus to stab Jacob. We find out that while Jacob was prepared for the eventuality that Linus would stab him, he hoped Linus would not follow through with it.

Season 6 started out seeming the most complicated because instead of a flash-forward device (or the standard flashback device,) Lost employed a new device referred to as a flash sideways, which appeared to be the successful explosion of the nuclear bomb, which would have caused all subsequent events after 1977, some minor changes like character changes and some major change to people who were more impacted by the Island. Additionally, the Oceanic crash, never would have had occasion to occur, but because of fate's tendency for course correction, the lives of the castaways seemed to intertwine, despite the lack of a crash. However, this device turned out to be a giant ruse.

In actuality, the detonation of the nuclear bomb was partially successful in that it sent everyone back to their proper place in the timeline (sent the Dharma-trapped Oceanic survivors from 1977 to 2007) and it did not directly kill anyone (though Juliet was mortally wounded from beams falling on her.) For Jack and the other castaways, it was a failure in the sense that history was not altered and they could not prevent the Oceanic crash. Whatever happened, happened.

Now, that Jacob was dead and Smokey was corporeal again in Flocke, Flocke went on a rampage. The survivors tried to save themselves by fleeing to the temple, which was the Jacobites safe zone, but it no longer afforded protection, so Smokey slaughtered the Jacobites that wouldn't convert (not to Smokeyism, but rather convert to the notion of leaving the Island with Smokey.) Meanwhile, Smokey couldn't kill the candidates to replace Jacob because of the Island’s established rules. Jacob assigned all the candidates numbers, including 6 numbers that represented the finalists for the position, which gave the numbers a supernatural significance to these characters and to the Island. Those were the numbers that haunted Hurley.

Smokey concocted a long con to convince Sawyer to lead the others to escape by submarine by saving them from explosives on the Ajira airplane. Smokey, who could not directly kill them, made it look like they were trapped on a submarine with a bomb about to explode, to get someone, notably Sawyer to meddle. Jack, in a moment of pure faith, which would have paid off, trusted that the bomb planted by Flocke was powerless unless they acted. Sawyer’s attempt to save them from the (momentarily impotent) bomb despite Jack's pleas, caused the bomb to activate (and tick faster) meddle, which caused the bomb to explode killing Sayid, (who died heroically after having been poisoned by the an evil tainted pool that resurrected him with greater malevolence and apathy,) Sun and Jin (who chose to die romantically despite having a 2 year old child back home.)

Of course, before Jacob died, he appeared to Widmore and told him that he could atone for his sins if he brought Desmond back to the Island, which he did. Jacob planned that Desmond was the Island failsafe because of his resistance to electro-magnetism (if they could not find another way to kill Smokey, which they couldn't.) Finally, using an ash burning ritual, Jacob made one final appearance to choose his successor and pass along his abilities to that candidate. Jacob asked for a volunteer, and Jack accepted the burden of attempting to kill Smokey. Jack did not have a plan, but trusted that Jacob had a plan with Desmond.

So, Flocke and Jack agree to test their respective theories by taking Desmond to the heart of the Island and having him remove the cork blocking the hellmouth. Flocke believed Desmond would destroy the Island by walking through electro-magnetism to remove the cork, while Jack believed that the proceedings would kill Smokey. It had both affects as the Island started to fall apart by earthquake, but, Flocke also became mortal. Jack fought John, and with help from Kate, Jack emerged victorious, but only after he was dealt a fatal blow. After saying tearful goodbyes to his friends and the love of his life, Kate, Jack went back to the hellmouth to recork the hellmouth and restore the Island, as he left Hurley in charge (after a no-frills ceremony that notably passed on less spiritual knowledge… which is in stark contrast to the increasing scientific knowledge that is passed down through generations.) Jack restored the Island as he slowly died. But, before he died, he watched a plane carrying Lapidus, Kate, Sawyer, Miles, Richard Alpert and his stir-crazy half-sister Claire fly off the Island safely. Hurley remained in charge of the Island for an indeterminate period of time, opting for a lighter touch than Jacob, presumably allowing Desmond to leave without consequence and having Linus, the redeemed and reformed former mass murderer help rule the Island by his side.

The Sideways story that is revealed throughout Season 6 is more open to multiple interpretations, but my understanding is a mixture of Defending Your Life and The Matrix. After all of those characters died, they were sent to an in-between world similar to limbo, but without the consequences of traditional purgatory. Instead, it’s a place where the deceased and the people that are most connected to the deceased wait for eachother in a timless vacuum to remember the entirety of their lives and the significance of their connections. (Like in the Matrix, they are a artificial projection of their mental selves and they play out their lives mostly as they lived it, but they were able to change or correct somethings that were important to them.) The Oceanic survivors, by virtue of shared experiences including a supernatural adventure, meeting lifelong loves and the various traumatic deaths formed a bond with each other that superceded the human lifespan. So, even though they all died at different times, (because the afterlife does not measure time the same way life does,) they waited for each other to plug into the afterlife (or more appropriately unplug into the afterlife) before they moved onto whatever's next, which is demonstrated by a door to the most brilliant light anyone has ever seen, the light that Jack saved by saving the Island. So, Jack and Jacob and the others might not have saved the world... he might have saved the after-world where you reconnect with the people you know and love. In essence, the show did harken to Paradise Lost, but in a stranger way than I expected, but still greatly appreciate. The castaways were fighting in the real albeit supernatural world to preserve heaven from the forces of malevolence.

The waiting area itself is a created construct (place) with only the limits and parameters established by the interconnected souls in order that they would reconnect and self-actualize together. So, the setting is the pivotal fake landing of Flight 815, as the characters struggle to remember their pasts to become enlightened. The lack of limitations makes it unsurprising that Jack imagined that he had a kid and connected with the child the way he wanted his father to connect with him (or that Sawyer became a cop to seek justice or that Kate did not actually kill anyone.) It's not an entirely positive world, but rather it's a world based largely on reality that is designed to collapse as the deceased understands life and accepts death and whatever follows. Charlie, with a near death experience, was the first to have an epiphany. But, Desmond was the first to figure out what the epiphany meant, which is that these people were dead and needed to connect with each other in order to move forward. One of the mottos of the show was: "if we don't live together, we're gonna die alone." After redemption and atonement for every one of these characters, they lived together and even though they died in different places around the world and at different times, (like Boone before Jack… or Hurley, probably long long after Jack,) they died together too.

So, what's it all about? Lost is a show about rich, textured characters in supernatural circumstances that afforded each character a chance at redemption for their previously downtrodden hollow lives. Lost is about how there is plenty of room in our modern technology-oriented, scientific-minded world for a life-guiding faith, though that faith is often misappropriated. Lost is about the existence of destiny within our free will choices. Lost is about how we are the collection of our individual and collective memories. And Lost is about the existence of good and evil in a complicated world of limited resources (from limited space to limited control to limited time) and how important it is that despite these limitations, we make the right choice and connect with each other because those choices and connections define us.

There were individual episodes I didn't like (the tattoo episode) or individual characters (Nikki and Paolo) and individual moments that disappointed me, but for the most part, I can only bestow boundless compliments on the show. Through six stellar seasons, I thoroughly relished every aspect of this show: the macro and micro-stories and plotlines, the themes, the dialogue, the acting, the sound track, the score, the cinematography, the direction, the sub-textual religious, philosophical, scientific, literary and pop-culture references, the inside jokes for people who followed what was going on with the production, the genre bending, the action, the comedy and the romance, but... before I sign off Lost, I just want to reiterate, I can't imagine a TV show depicting character this vividly ever again.

So, most of you will tell me to let it go because it’s just a silly show. Don't tell me what I can't do. Lost washed over me like a rain, and I can’t help but feel gratitude for every single moment of Lost’s stupid little life. (And yes, while I had mixed feelings about the ruse of the sideways story, the whole post-death perspective reminded me of American Beauty, my favorite movie of all time.)

See you when you get a life brothah,
ME (The Papa Bear)