"This Is the End"...now at H&H

My newest piece for the Heroes and Heartbreakers blog went online late this afternoon. I've been on sort of a writing frenzy the last several days, turning in two more spec pieces to the blog. This one, though, on why I won't be buying Dead Reckoning, Charlaine Harris' new Southern Vampire Mysteries release that goes on sale tomorrow, started forming in my head probably a month ago. Anyway, it goes from Sookie Stackhouse and Liz Phoenix to Eve Dallas, LOST, The Sopranos, and Mad Men, all in the space of about a dozen paragraphs.

I hope you'll swing by, read it, then post a comment. As for me, I'm still trying to take in the death of Osama Bin Laden...and yes, episode three of Game of Thrones.

"This Is the End"...now at H&H

[Almost] Totally Lost...and Loving It

Perhaps the best bit of dialog in last night's finale of Lost:

"Who died?" Kate asks.

"A man named Christian Shephard."

Kate laughs. "Christian Shephard? Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Until that moment, I'd never realized the meaning behind the name of Dr. Jack Shepherd's father, but in the context of the moment, with Kate seeing the coffin and Desmond acting all beatifically, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Oh...now I get it...Jack's dad has been there all along, in a religious, metaphorical sense, to shepherd his son - Christ-like himself at the end of his Hero's Journey - out of life as we know it.

But even as I write that, I'm still in a state of wonderment and awe about the two-and-one-half hours of television that held me spellbound after I got home from work around ten last night. Generally when I work both Saturday and Sunday nights, I sleep in on Monday mornings, but this morning, even though I stayed up until two or so to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live after watching the finale, I woke up early, and immediately my mind went back to Lost. It's too early to say for certain, but it feels as though my reaction to this finale is going to be as strong as it was to watching Brokeback Mountain, which is to say...profound and long-lived.

I believe this to be the case even though I'm not quite sure what the hell happened last night. And after this morning watching the two-hour pre-finale show, I'm even more confused. Questions I haven't had in years resurfaced, like why did Desmond give himself a shot every day when he woke up in the hatch? And, after having been introduced more intimately to Jacob this season: If Desmond's not pressing the button caused the electromagnetic field to surge wildly and brought the plane down, was he unknowingly re-enacting a script written by Jacob to bring the Oceanic Six to the island?

More than anything, now that I think about it, it seems that the major events on Lost have both a real and a mythological explanation. Which expands the religious component exponentially, particularly if you've ever seen The Naked Archaeologist, in which Simcha Jacobovici often attempts to provide scientific explanations for biblical events. When I view Lost through that lens, it makes more and more sense.

I'm far less interested in explanations for some of the things that seem to bother others, like how the Egyptian statue of Taweret came to be on the island. Ever since Ben turned the donkey wheel, the island disappeared, and he landed in Tunisia, the answer was obvious: At some point in time the island was located off the Mediterranean coast of Africa. This year we learned it also popped up somewhere in the Roman Empire and between the Canary Islands and the U.S.

Answers to the island's mysteries have always been less important to me than the mystery of its characters, and both take a back seat, frankly, to what I believe was the show's biggest draw: its moral ambiguity, the dark and light, and the oh-so thorough investigation of unintended consequences. That said, this season's Sideways world is the mystery that continues to confound me, even after last night (because of timeline issues). Especially after last night. Even after I:

• Watch the online-only JKL Q&A did after his TV special
• Read Doc Jensen's wrap-up column sometime later today and his subsequent columns throughout the week
• As well as ten or twenty other online articles
• And also re-visit the pre-show, finale, and JKL, all of which I plan to watch again this week...and possibly again once more before erasing it from TiVo and retaining just certain memories in my mind

I'm sure many questions will remain unanswerable for me. And that's alright.

It's not that I'm such a Lost fangirl that I think the show's producers could do no wrong. Two weeks ago, for example, Jacob was revealed as a whiny mama's boy. And last night I found some of those Sideways "ah-ha!" moments a little too sappy, including those moments in the church at the very end, even as I lay crying in my bed. But during season one of Lost, I decided to sit back, enjoy the ride, and let the show's creators take me where they wanted to go. I have none of the animosity exhibited by many fans after the Across the Sea episode, just as I wasn't at all upset that David Chase chose to end The Sopranos as he did. It's interesting because I'm a professional critic and certainly don't have that attitude toward the books I review for Publishers Weekly, but it's how I approached Lost - likely because watching television is a more passive experience than reading a book - and I'm glad I did. Because now that the show has faded to black, I am sad that it's over, but glad for its many powerful memories, and indeed, for its many mysteries, answered or not.

[Almost] Totally Lost...and Loving It

Preparing To Be Lost Without LOST

Ever since ABC aired the feature-film-worthy pilot episode of LOST in September, 2004, I've been hooked. I have never missed a first-run episode, and while I'm a tremendous LOST fangirl, I wish I weren't the only member of my household to watch the show as it's one that cries out for discussion, argument, and rehashing. And at midnight last night, after I'd come home from work and turned on TiVo to see the producers kill off three of the series' lead characters, oh, how I wanted to talk about it with somebody, to cry with somebody over the loss of Jin and Sun and Sayid. Instead I read Doc Jensen's special immediately-post-show column to get me through today when his weekly re-cap column appeared. And now it has. I started to read "Sunk," then decided to take a break - to have more time for savoring - and write a quick blog about my feelings on LOST's ending in three more weeks.

Essentially I'm in pre-mourning, and have been ever since February when the first of season six's eighteen episodes aired. As a result I started reading Doc Jensen's online columns about the show so as to broaden and deepen my LOST experience before it all comes to an end. Although I'm a devoted watcher and have occasionally watched the sub-titled episodes that air when ABC has nothing better to show before new episodes, I've rarely gotten involved in the plethora of official/semi-official/unofficial LOST content available online.

Don't get me wrong...I think all the web tie-ins are pretty brilliant, but that level of involvement requires a keener eye than I have when I follow a TV show. I don't notice half of what other people do when they watch LOST, but when I do, I'm pretty damn proud of myself. Which is why I cannot fathom the bottomless fount of knowledge that exists in Jeff Jensen's head about the various philosophies, religions, writings, and other references that are a part of LOST, either as parts of major story or character arcs or in the multitude of little easter eggs created for viewers.

This isn't the first TV show I've loved. There are too many sit-coms - from Barney Miller to Seinfeld to Flight of the Conchords - to list - but outside of Star Trek: TNG, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Highlander: The Series (which I came to, admittedly, late), The Sopranos, and Mad Men, I've never been so devoted to a drama as I have been to LOST. I gave up on E.R. when Dr. Mark Greene died, and stopped watching NYPD Blue after they killed off Detective Bobby Simone, but never have I been tempted to stop watching LOST, not even when they killed the Hobbit Charlie. I've been willing to turn myself over to the imaginations of the show's producers because LOST is the finest show ever to air on television. Even though stuff flies over my head on a regular basis, the storylines, character arcs, production values, and, in particular, the moral ambiguity that floats around...all of it contributes to a show I doubt we'll ever see the likes of again.

Even so, I'll obviously continue to muddle through my days after the two-and-a-half-hour finale scheduled for Sunday, May 23rd. I'm sure Jeff Jensen will as well, but what's he going to do with all that extra time on his hands besides making up for countless hours of lost sleep? And, if you're a LOST fan, how are you feeling after last night's episode, and the upcoming end of an era?

Preparing To Be Lost Without LOST