Media Maven Musings

Now this, Tim Kring, is how you do a finale. Where Heroes could not deliver, Damon Cuse and Damon Lindelof, writers/creators/exec producers of Lost, have made television history with one of the best season finales for a serialized show, well, in history. As much as I love to focus on how great I find NBC programming, I really must tip my cap to ABC on this one, for, as I’ll explain in a bit, Lost has consistently proved itself to be the most innovative serialized narrative on television, with this finale cementing that statement firmly.

Before I get into the most important aspect of the finale, the “rattlesnake in the mailbox,” as Cuse and Lindelof have been referring to it as, I want to do a more typical Media Maven analysis of the show.

Aside from the big twist, what made this episode fantastic was not that it answered a lot of big questions (in fact, it didn’t really answer any), but that it had such fantastic narrative momentum. We were swept up in the episode’s proceedings in a highly visceral way, perched at the edge of our couches, hearts racing, eyes wide, for the full two hours, though it seemed to fly by in only a matter of minutes. We still don’t know a thing about Jacob, Ben’s agenda, the monster, Walt, Locke’s strange healing powers, and countless other mysteries, and frankly, I don’t know that all these questions will ever be answered. But with everything else this episode accomplished, and more importantly, with the implications it has for next season, I don’t think anyone (myself included) minds leaving a few unanswered queries by the wayside.

Plot-wise, there are few major issues to touch on:
1. Charlie’s Death– I have mixed feelings about this death. Let me begin by saying that more than anything, I appreciate the willingness of Cuse and Lindelof to pull the trigger on killing off a main character like this, and I think the execution was nearly perfect. Charlie (Dominic Mongahan) had nowhere else to go in terms of character development. We’ve seen him as an addict, we’ve seen him drop the addiction, we’ve seen him find meaning in his life with Claire and Aaron, and though he brings a distinct flavor and energy to the scenes he’s in, there just isn’t really anything left for him to do. I applaud Cuse and Lindelof for recognizing the needs of the story and choosing to honor those over the conventions of television, something that is nearly unheard of in the world of tv.
In a way, I was very happy for Charlie that he could die like this, with bravery and poignancy. As if it weren’t enough to swim down to the Looking Glass, unjam the signal by using his musicianship, and ensuring the rescue of everyone on the island, I loved that with his last breaths, Charlie wrote “Not Penny’s Boat” on his hand, delivering a final message to Desmond that I’m sure will play hugely in next season’s premiere. For a character I didn’t like all that much, these final moments redeemed Charlie in my mind.
The one thing I didn’t like about the death? How pointless it seemed! Why did Charlie lock himself in that room? It makes no sense! The water began to pour in, but Charlie surely had the extra .5 seconds it would’ve taken for him to jump outside the room and slam the safety door shut behind him. I know that Charlie needed to die, and that Desmond’s visions needed to be true, but I thought the physical execution of this moment was a failure. I keep replaying it in my head: why did Charlie lock himself in there? Surely the Looking Glass couldn’t have flooded in two seconds. And moreover, why didn’t Charlie try to swim out of the busted porthole? As the room filled, the pressure of the water pouring in would have decreased, Charlie could’ve taken one final breath and then made a break through the hole to the surface. However, I refuse to allow these shortcomings to diminish the effectiveness and importance of Charlie’s death.

2. Locke & Walt — WTF??? I was excited for this Walt sighting from the second I saw that Malcolm David Kelley guest star credit in the opening scene. I was a tad disappointed to find that by growing a few inches and having his voice drop a few octaves, Walt wasn’t nearly as creepy or engrossing as he has been in the past (best Walt moment– when Shannon sees him dripping wet and whispering in the middle of the jungle. Speaking of which, what happened to all those barefoot people chillin in the jungle? They got bored after season one and peaced out?) Walt and Locke must have some kind of strange connection, both to each other and the island, and I will be very interested to see how this plays out in the future.

3. Jack — Welcome back, Matthew Fox. This episode was by far the best performance Matthew Fox has ever had, and the first one in which he’s been the central character in a long time. To borrow the cliche, Fox’s performance is a veritable roller coaster of troubled emotions, the most powerful of which are on display as Jack makes the decision to let Ben kill Sayid, Bernard and Jin in order to secure the rescue of everyone else. The conflicted pain on Jack’s face is gut-wrenching, as is pretty much every moment he’s in this episode. The scenes with Jack off the island are just heartbreaking, for once he’s home, it seems as if Jack is more “lost” than he ever was on the island. Take away everything else in this episode and it would still be my favorite because Matthew Fox was just so damn good.

4. Ridiculous Action– Hurley runs a dude over with a VW bus, seven Others get blown up by dynamite, Desmond shoots Mikael in the sternum with a spear gun, Locke nails Naomi in the back with a throwing knife, Sawyer shoots some bro point blank in the chest, and Sayid snaps a guy’s neck with his legs. And these weren’t even the most exciting parts of the episode! Holy crap was this episode ridiculous or what?! You paying attention yet, Kring?

5. Some other random stuff– Alex and Danielle reunite by typing Ben? Awesome. Jack tells Kate he loves her? Great. Sayid, Jin and Bernard don’t die? Wonderful. Sayid has a sniper rifle with a scope? Where the hell did that come from? Ben gets the snot beat out of him? About time. Penelope makes contact with the island? Sweet. Locke has strange healing powers? Neato. I love this freaking show.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Let’s talk about that rattlesnake in the mailbox. When I describe Lost to non-watchers, I often touch on the fact that one of the show’s defining characteristics is that each season has an entirely different focus that is determined by the previous season’s finale. Season One was about discovering the castaways and The Island, Season Two was about The Hatch, and Season Three was about The Others. And now we’ve got an entirely new and fascinating focus for Season Four– The Future.

Though I guessed the twist about ten minutes into the program (once I saw Jack with a beard looking depressed, I knew it didn’t fit in anywhere with his past timeline), it doesn’t change the fact that it revolutionizes an already revolutionary show. As TV scholar Jason Mittel discusses on his blog, the finale’s cliffhanger is less about “what happens next” (the narrative), and more about “how will they tell us what happens next” (the narrative discourse, the way the story is told). Just when it had begun to feel like we’ve seen just about as many flashbacks as we can handle (we know EVERYBODY’S deep dark secrets and past by now), Cuse and Lindelof have done another 180, and now it looks like we’ll be getting flash-forwards from this point on. This is genius. This is television at its best. This is a wonderful example of the operational aesthetic, a concept Mittel discusses at length. According to this notion, the pleasure we derive from watching serialized television shows (basically, shows that have continuing story arcs across a season/series), comes not only from engaging with the story itself, but also through our engagement with the machinery of the storytelling. Think about how much the narrative discourse of shows like 24, Battlestar Galactica and of course, Lost, contribute to our enjoyment of these shows. The way these stories are told is as much a part of the show as the stories themselves. Lost has always been the first to break storytelling and television boundaries, and it should come as no surprise that they’ve done it again.

The finale leaves us at a point where we know the past, we know the present, and we know the future. The only time left unexplored is the time between the present and the future, which, according to the news clipping in Jack’s hand, is about two years later (the clipping is from April 5, 2007). I think the questions left unanswered by this finale are far more interesting than any we’ve been left with before. There are the more incidental ones (Whose funeral was Jack at? Who is Kate’s husband?), but also a handful of mind-blowing, crucial ones: Why does Jack want to go back to the island? Why was it bad for them to be rescued? Where are the other survivors? What happens between the present and the future that brings us to this point?

This is the sort of television to which all other serialized television should aspire. It’s highly engrossing on every level: we’re invested in the characters, in the narrative, and in the narrative discourse. The show creates new rules, twists them, bends them, and when the time is right, breaks them in favor of new ones. Even when it comes at the price of a few dud episodes per year (which the new 16-episode length and May 2010 end date will hopefully prevent), the show continues to raise the bar higher and higher and is not afraid to take risks on any level. I promise you, this show will go down in history as one of the best ever. You’ve got 9 months until Season Four. If you don’t already watch, you’ve got plenty of time to catch up, so that as this show continues forward, you can say “I was there when”, and be a part of one of television’s most important and groundbreaking shows ever.

Episode: A+
Season: B+
Favorite Scene: The standoff between Ben and Jack, when Jack has to bear his choice to let three of his friends be murdered so that the rest of them can be saved. Television acting at its very highest. He better get an Emmy nod for this one.

Favorite Line (tie): “We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!” –Jack
“That’s for taking the kid off the raft.” –Sawyer, after shooting Tommy (the Other)