Lost

By now this is old news. . . I mean the finale of Lost happened a whole 5 days ago. However, I'm actually glad I took a few days to think it over before writing my feelings about one of the greatest shows ever put on television.

One of the main reasons I'm happy to be writing it a few days later is I know I am writing something totally different than I would've written Sunday night, Monday, or any other day. You never know what your point of view will be in the future. That is one of my main takes on the series; I feel like it is portrayed that they had a master story line to cover the entire scope of the series from the first episode, but I don't think that's true. I feel the main idea for the story was "let's have a plane crash on a mysterious island and tell the back stories of the survivors". Throw in a few weird items on the island (polar bears, monster noises) and you have a solid plot line to build on. What makes it even more impressive to me is how the writers were able to come around (for the most part, obviously there are plenty of questions left out there unanswered) and tie up the series in a nice fashion.

I am a strict believer in the "let's take it from here and build" approach rather than the approach that they had the whole story ready from the beginning for multiple reasons: 1) who knows if tv shows are going to make it; most story ideas are just that, an idea with potential, 2) the whole back half of the plane in season 2 ended up being worthless with the exceptions of Bernard and Libby, 2 minor characters, 3) there was also an episode in season 2 where two new characters were introduced and then buried alive in the same episode-I remember reading how the writers were reacting to the fan's criticisms of too many new characters being introduced, so they killed a couple off in a quick episode which was entirely meaningless to the overall story, 4) i read an interview once with JJ Abrams (the producer/creator) and he noted how he's a big fan of boxes with mysteries inside-in this case it was the hatch in season 1, but even they hadn't decided yet what they were going to do with the mysterious hatch at the beginning of the show.

All in all it's not really important if they kept building on ideas or they had the entire series scripted out from the beginning; I feel like it was a great show that had a solid ending. Even more so I'm happy that they set it up to have an ending rather than drag the series out indefinitely until the ratings have dropped such that it gets canceled.

My one beef with this finale season was the fact they killed Sun and Gin. Especially given the ending that they could've got off the island on the plane and they could've raised their daughter, etc. kind of bugged. It seemed stupid how they died. But that's tv I guess, characters have to die :).

I'm aware that you have to watch the entire series to get anything in this show, but if you haven't seen it, I would recommend buying all 6 seasons and tearing through them. I personally rank Lost as the best drama I've ever followed on tv. I'm hoping I can find a decent replacement show in the fall. Probably the saddest part about knowing it was over was a couple days later when I happened to be on my DVR Series Recording manager screen. There was Lost at priority #1, with zero future episodes set to record. I felt like I had a little closure myself as I erased it from the series settings.