That’s a short film entitled Ollie Klublershturf vs. the Nazis, written by Lost‘s Damon Lindelof and directed by Skot Bright. It features a few famous faces such Chris Hemsworth (who’s now Thor in Thor, and was Kirk’s dad in the Star Trek reboot), George Segal, Rachel Nichols, Norman Reedus, and Samm Levine. IO9 posted it the other day and I was excited because I hadn’t actually realized it had been produced. It’s about a little boy genius who invented a time machine and is trying to stop the Nazi scum who’ve infiltrated his family dinner in an attempt to steal his device. It’s silly but good fun.

Anyway, I had heard of it before because I remembered reading an interview with Lindelof about the origin of his being paired with J.J. Abrams to write the Lost pilot, which ABC gave them after it let go of Jeffrey Lieber (but kept his initial concept about a group of strangers crash landing on a mysterious island, hence his name appearing as one of the creator’s of the show). The gist of the story is essentially that Abrams was intrigued by the idea, and already had a deal in place with the network, but didn’t really want to do it on his own, so he needed to find another writer to work with and whom he could work with. Along came Lindelof, with the script for this short film being his audition piece, and history was made.

That is so wild, right? The end of the science fiction year that wasn’t too science fiction-y, sadly. Or maybe it was and I just wasn’t paying nearly enough attention. Or maybe I’ve just gotten so accustomed to the very pedestrian and incredibly mundane and boringly sexy science fiction-y aspects of my normal life?

from here.

I’m sure it’s something like that. Absolutely. Definitely. Whatever.

Also, this:

from here.

In this year, in this world of internetting and bloggery and social media, I had five very simple goals that I laid out at the start of 2010 and wanted to complete by year’s end. In order of my own personal interest and their importance, they were:

1. Not going to tell you (you’re not ready for this one yet, folks)(and neither am I).

2. Not going to tell you (forthcoming).

3. Not going to tell you (total abysmal failure).

4. Not going to tell you (worked, but was embarrassing and not worth mentioning again).

5. Getting 2,010 tweets in 2010!

The fifth one is the one that I’m going to definitely accomplish. Unless I lose both hands sometime in the next three days. Or lose my phone or computer or both. Or unless an EMP just wipes out all technology in the country/world.

But, well, I just don’t twitter much. And getting 2,010 tweets in 2010 was a silly, frivolous goal that I jokingly threw out on my twitter sometime back in… I don’t know what month, but sometimes those things you only jokingly declare are the ones that stick with you. It was somewhere around the start of the year, I believe, and I think I had less than a thousand tweets then and was probably tweeting an average of four to five tweets a month, roughly.

And eventually I just thought, yeah, I can do this shit, why not? Because it’s stupid? Stupidity has not stopped me from doing anything ever in my life.

Also, this is the 825th post on your friend neighborhood Counterforce. That’s wild. We didn’t make it to 1000 posts this year, but that’s perhaps for the best.  Personally, I’m just shocked that I managed to ramble on for nearly 2,010 tweets. I mean, what a silly declaration. Thinking back upon it, at first I was like this:

And then I was like this:

You understand.

Oh man, how creepy is this photo below?

Right?

Also, New Year’s Eve is almost upon us. Time to celebrate!

Also, this is fog porn:

from here.

And this is the first x-ray picture of a lightning strike:

from here.

Speaking of “science fiction,” the recent Doctor Who Christmas special was fucking wonderful.

So fun and smart and a nice little twist on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol cause, hey, why can’t the ghosts of Christmas’ past, present, and future be time travelers and holograms?

Michael Gambon was brilliant, but ruthlessly mean and joyously funny in places. And while the show did play around with some of it’s own rules towards time travel (and that’s why we have rules about time travel, folks: so they can be broken!), I found the idea of one watching their own past and memories change before their very eyes to be fascinating. Plus, the interesting but slight references to “the silence.” And I had to love the nice little nods to the recent JJ Abrams Star Trek movie with the copious lens flares on display of the crashing starship’s bridge.

Honestly, it was just nice to have Doctor Who back. The trailer for the upcoming season at the end of the special was a nice little tease as far as potential goes. Can it be April already?

Also, I’m worried that this (below) is what women must think of me whenever they see me…

from here.

Sigh. And I’m just trying to be normal and cool and down to earth and approachable. We can’t all be perfect, can we?

from here.

Oh well. Remember this always:

from here.

This is a picture from Tron Legacy…

…which I hear was pretty terrible, but that Olivia Wilde was the best part of. Is it me, or is Olivia Wilde totally the new Angelina Jolie?

I mean that based on a lot of things, like her acting ability, her potential, the type of roles she’s taken in the past, but also based on her seemingly having that same ability that Angelina Jolie has to turn straight girls a little curious.

You know?

This is an abandoned theater in Detroit:

from here.

This is a monolith:

This is some good solid crazy fun rough housing:

And this is some old school adorable chillaxing right here:

The last six months or so on this blog and in my life have been… weird, to say the least. I’d go into more details here, but quite frankly, I don’t want to. I’ll just say that due to illness in my family, my life got a bit… derailed and I’m astonished that I’m seeing the end of this year without having gone totally insane. Or maybe I have already gone totally, stupendously insane and it’s just helping me see the end of this year more clearly? Like 3D glasses? That’s a comforting thought, right?

Anyway, at some point this will all be over and I’ll get back to some kind of semblance of “normal,” whatever that is. Are we still doing that? “Normal?”

Hopefully, if we’re lucky, we’ll be right back to asking “Who’s your daddy?” in no time flat.

This is what religion looks like:

from here.

And this is my basic worldview in a nutshell:

This is an example of the happy medium between sanity and fear:

This is an example of how Batman is both a master of surprise and also quite probably a huge pervert:

And sadly, no matter what we say or do, Lost is still over and done with:

Oh well. Three days to go. And then…

Fingers crossed about something exciting happening in those next three days (after all, a good deal of people on this planet thought that their magic wizard man came back from the dead in that same amount of time) but not holding my breath. Exciting, but not too exciting. Wow me, thrill me, blow my mind, fuck me over and fuck me up (but in a good way, please), but remember that when the sun comes up, I’ve still got bills to pay and TV shows to catch up with. Three days to go, promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep, and a long journey sprawling ahead of us through mountains upon mountains. This is both the place we made together and the journey we started together and I’m gonna be there with you. And wherever we end up, whatever new definition of home or normal we excavate, when we do we’ll turn to each other and say, “This must be the place!”

1. This man:

Sawyer from Lost. Remember him?

2. This is a picture of Sawyer reading a book:

That’s in “Eggtown.” How odd was it that Sawyer was the most prolific reader on the show? And Ben came in second place. We saw lots of glimpses of Ben’s and Jack’s bookshelves but Sawyer was the one we always saw actually reading (and Ben just occasionally). I wonder if Sawyer and Juliet (re)started a book club somewhere in their three years in the 1970s DHARMA Initiative… Hmm.

2 1/2. I’m all about Sawyer and Juliet reading Erica Jong‘s Fear Of Flying, I gotta say.

Go ahead, say it with me now: “Zipless fuck.” That felt good, didn’t it?

2 3/4. Like I said…

Ben actually read sometimes. In his mind, it goes like this: James Joyce > Stephen King. And I’d have to agree with him.

Sorry, Juliet.

3. Anyway, that book that Sawyer happens to be reading there is this:

The Invention Of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, written in 1940. It’s about a fugitive who ends up on a mysterious island where strange things are happening…

4. That particular cover above is based on the fact that the lead female role of the book, a character called Faustine, is based on silent film star Louise Brooks, whom is on the cover. This is another picture of her:

It’s also been said that the book was written, in part, as a reaction to the decline of her career at the time.

5. The plot, rather roughly, is: a man hiding from the authorities ends up on a mysterious island. Eventually a group of people come and the fugitive falls in love with one of the women with them. He keeps a diary, in which he talks about observing these people and their actions all the while trying to not be discovered by them, and how they seem to repeat some of the same conversations over and over, and then disappear. The fugitive tries to confront the woman, Faustine, and tell her how he feels about her but, as Wikipedia puts it, “an anomalous phenomenon keeps them apart.”

6. This is the original first edition cover of the book:

And another:

…which were designed by Norah Borges, the sister of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the author’s closest friends and a serious advocate of this novel. Borges even wrote a prologue for the book in which he said: “To classify it [the novel] as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole.”

7. Supposedly the novel was inspired in part by earlier novels, such as 1934′s XYZ, by Clemente Palma, which I don’t know much about, but also the much more popular novel, The Island Of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells.

8. This is an image from the 1996 film version of the movie:

9. And below is a joke that was inspired by that little detail:

Yeah, that’s right.

10. I only saw that 1996 version of The Island Of Dr. Moreau once, which was directed by John Frakenheimer, and it was incredibly long ago, probably not long after it came out, but I love hearing accounts of the considerably rocky production, which suffered all kinds of shake ups, script rewrites almost daily, the original director being fired just three days into shooting on location in the tropical wilderness of North Queesland, Australia and, of course, the perfect storm that is Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando.

Anyway, so just a day or two after they got to their tropical location shoot, Kilmer decided that he wanted his role (as the lead character who happens upon the unethical villainy of the mad Dr. Moreau) cut by 40%. Some of this was because, yes, Val Kilmer is insane, but it was also right around the time he was going through a painful divorce. And after quite a bit of examination, it was discovered that there was no way to cut down the role Kilmer had been hired for, so he’d have to trade roles with David Thewlis, who had been cast as one of Moreau’s creepy flunkies.

11. Only slightly related: “I’m Val Kilmer. Take me to the strip club!”

12. Val Kilmer, even at your greatest heights, you’re still no Charlie Sheen. That’s a fact to both be ashamed of and to take pride in.

13. Speaking of weird actor bullshit on the set of a movie, if you ever get a chance, and are bored enough, you should go read up on the crazy demands that Marlon Brando came up with on the set of 2001′s The Score starring Rober De Niro, Edward Norton, and Angela Bassett. It’s some great stuff like not wanting to wear pants (so therefore a majority of his scenes are shot from the waist up) or refusing to take direction from director Frank Oz, whom he would only refer to as “Miss Piggy,” which lead to Oz having to sit in a van outside the set with a monitor and relaying direction via walkie talkie to De Niro to give to Brando.

Honestly, it’s enough to make you want to get really huge (mostly in a fame and talent sort of way, but possibly also in physical size) and just go really splendidly crazy, you know?

14. Getting somewhat back to our original topic… The Invention Of Morel. Interestingly enough, it was adapted into film in 1974 and starred the lovely Anna Karina, famous from so many Jean-Luc Godard films, and who was also in the film adaptation of The Magus. But that shouldn’t be held against her, should it?

15. But more interesting than that is the theory that the novel was a serious influence on the classic and notorious Alain Resnais film Last Year At Marienbad.

Many a person hate the film, which has inspired so much satire and so very many attempts at deciphering it, at finding meaning in it’s voluptuous qualities, but that’s an almost impossible task to do definitively.

16. If you’ve never seen it, shame on you. But if that’s true, I’ll try to sum the film up succinctly as best I can:

At a European château, a man approaches a woman. He claims to know her, but she doesn’t seem to know him. He tells her that they had met last year at Marienbad and that she had told him that she’d be waiting here for him now. He’s positive of this but again, she doesn’t remember. Her husband shows up. There’s a question of dominance at play, a power struggle, and the continuing effort to try and convince the woman of what the first man says is the truth. The characters have no names, but in the screenplay, the first man is X, the woman is A, and her husband’s name is M. Conversations happen again and again throughout the château, and reality seems to be a changing whim and there are many a haunting, cryptic voiceover hanging over lush, ambiguous tracking shots.

This is a very necessary film if you have any plans of calling yourself a pretentious film buff or a lover of the French New Wave.

17. The film is a thrill for guessing at, for surrendering yourself over to it’s masterful pace and tone, and then for pondering over with enlightened friends after a viewing.

18. Trust me, the film becomes a lot more fun and the guess work far more potent if you take on the assumption that it’s a science fiction story. Or a ghost story. Wander through that same mesmerizing landscape as the characters in the story and you’ll have a fun time.

19. Of course this all kind of ties into Lost, with certain echos of similar scenarios throughout the show and it’s mysterious island setting.

One example of that would be: Horace appearing to John and talking about Jacob’s cabin while chopping wood in a continuous loop. Of course, this was in a dream, but it’s an interesting visual representation of stone tape theory.

Remember back in the early, glory days of Lost theories, there was always stuff like “The Monster is nanotechnology,” which took a long time to fade after repeated denials from the producers, but that I always liked was holograms. Like “Jack’s dad is a hologram” or “Eko’s brother is a hologram,” meaning that they weren’t ghosts in the classic supernatural sense.

20. Last Year At Marienbad inspired the video for “To The End,” a 1994 single by Blur from their album Parklife…

Jesus, remember Blur? Fuck, I miss Britpop. Damon Albarn has held on pretty strongly musical, both with Gorillaz and more recently complaining somewhat unnecessarily about Glee. Anyway, in the lovely video, that’s Albarn as “X” and Graham Coxon as “M.”

21. Albarn vs. Coxon? That’s fitting.

22. A year after “To The End” Blur would use another film as fuel for pastiche in a music video with “The Universal” from The Great Escape. Viddy well:

The film this time being Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, interesting enough. And the single’s cover was reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

23. It should be pointed out that these both songs that I like quite a bit, as well as their videos. It was a smart move on Blur’s part, I think in doing these pastiches, not only because it makes them appear more stylistically interesting and intellectual (or as intellectually far as an homage can take one these days), but it really reinforced the strong roots that the 1960s held within the foundations of Britpop.

24. Going back to Last Year At Marienbad, another video:

This short film, called “The Arranged Time,” by a filmmaker named Scott Johnston, clearly owes a debt to the mysterious dream logic of Resnais’ classic, but is also it’s own intriguing thing. It’s well worth the viewing, but if you don’t want to favor the tip of the hat to Last Year At Marienbad, I can always offer you the hipster version of a reference: It’s remarkably David Lynch-ian.

25. I should probably loop this thing back around somewhat, back to where we started…

…but to a slightly different starting point…

…with that guy.

from here.

26. Here’s a nice fun fact for you: Matthew Fox has never seen a single episode of Lost.

Apparently he’s just really uncomfortable with watching himself “act.”

I can just imagine him watching the show and thinking, “Oh man, this Jack guy is just too fucking intense.”

27. This is a great picture I found today…

28. I like Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, but I also really liked Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne.

28A. It’s kind of like how I’d rather watch a Tony Stark movie than an Iron Man movie.

29. Staying mostly on target here… Don’t forget: They originally wanted Michael Keaton to be Jack on Lost. Granted, had that happened, they would’ve killed him off in the pilot (to shock you!) and Kate would’ve become the lead of the show, but had they kept him, I feel confident that he would’ve mustered up a decent quota of Jackface on a regular basis.

The problem with casting a seasoned film actor like Michael Keaton in the role of Jack would’ve been that he just wouldn’t have taken the chances that a seasoned and angry television actor like Matthew Fox (who always seemed to have something of a chip on his shoulder, a kind of unresolved anger residing within him after Party Of Five) would have and did end up taking. It’s shocking to think and say this in a way, but I just don’t think that Michael Keaton would’ve matched Matthew Fox’s intensity.

30. I made mention the other day, somewhat jokingly, that I kind of assumed that The Venture Bros. would end with the titular characters’ father, Rusty, putting himself out of his own misery (which is a much larger conversation, of course), but in thinking about that in the days since I typed those words, I couldn’t think of a moment in Lost where we saw Jack actually reading a book. Which makes sense for a lost of reasons, one being that Jack always had shit to do, was always on the move. He wasn’t a lounger like Sawyer or Ben or Locke. But, speaking of Locke, that was the only instance I could think of where Jack had a seat and read something rather significant…

…that item being Locke’s suicide note. That’s heavy, right?

31. This picture is funny:

32. It’s a nice thought, thinking back to the humble, mysterious beginnings of Lost…

I’d love to someday see a book from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse talking about all the various things they had wanted to do on the show that didn’t work out. On one hand, obviously, it wouldn’t matter. The show is the final product and that’s all that really matters, but even still, from the perspective of creating and writing and running a big show, one as ambitious as the one they produced, I’d be dying to know tricks they had up their sleeves that didn’t work out (Nikki and Paulo), how things would’ve gone if certain tricks hadn’t worked out so well (the character that became Benjamin Linus was only supposed to be around for three episodes and wasn’t intended to be the leader of the Others but Michael Emerson was just too good), and how they got to where they did.

Just imagine all those creative ghosts that are alive and wandering around the Island of Ideas.

33. All of that said, right now I’d figure this would be the last time that we really talk about Lost on this blog, but I can’t commit to that notion, not fully. To me personally, the show was such a broad, interesting thing that I feel like something can always come along that has relevance with the show. Especially, if you’ve noticed so far, since I have a particular interest in the way things align and connect with each other.

Who knows, maybe we’ll never talk about Lost again here. Or maybe we’ll be talking about it again tomorrow. Memories and locations intertwine differently for all of us and we can only bring our own unique meaning to them. The past has an amazing power over us, a constant hold, but it’s different for everyone. I would love to have a new show come along that inspires and interests us and ignites our imagination just like Lost did, but right now I’m not holding my breath. Maybe we’ll never leave the place we made together.

Those shows being…

The Office. The last episode with Timothy Olyphant was not bad, but not particularly great. The previous episode, the much talked about one featuring the return of all of Michael’s exes… not so great. And the few before that, about the same. As even Benjamin Light has mentioned to me the past few times we’ve talked about it, you can really feel the show going through the motions this year. Also, during the summer there was a lot chatter and speculation online about who would replace Steve Carrell when he leaves the show at the end of this season but, honestly, sadly, horribly, heinously, overly dramatically, doesn’t it seem like they’re trying to set up Andy as the new boss-type character?

I can’t think of anything I’d dislike more than that. Andy really feels like a character who should’ve been around a season or two and then maybe have gone bye bye. Also, let’s get serious here: Andy and Ellie Kemper and the dude from Sabre have to make the least attractive love triangle on television.

I hate to say it, but I’ve really checked on out on this show after Pam and Jim’s wedding. Maybe that would’ve been the fine conclusion this show will potentially have to work hard for (and would mirror the end of the original British version interestingly). Also, for a “documentary” about the life of people in an office, when does this “documentary” actually air?

30 Rock. This show is still going strong. Not every episode is a home run, but it is consecutively strong. As long as you have Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon, Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, and Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan, nothing can harm you. What this show does with it’s guest stars is frequently brilliant (Jon Hamm, Matt Damon, even Kelsey Grammar in the most recent episode) and there’s a joy to the dialogue and it’s one liners and non sequiturs that is intoxicating. I thought that the live episode was a good deal smarter than it was funny, but I applaud this show for taking it there. And I found it fascinating that the last episode dealt with Liz Lemon’s long simmering “fear” or general uncomfortableness with sex.

Community. I wasn’t so much a fan of the last episode of this show, and I kind of feel like it maybe tackled people’s biggest two gripes with the show itself: Abed (all things “meta”) and Chevy Chase. And the episode prior to that certainly paled in comparison to what many would consider the show’s strongest outing: the paintball episode from season 1.

All that said, I honestly feel that this show and Modern Family were the best new comedies of last season and I don’t see anything that feels like long term signs of that changing anytime soon.

Things I would change about this show though: 1) Get rid of Chevy Chase, who’s character is not funny and is lazily portrayed. You just get the sense that Chase is bored or perhaps unhappy, and maybe that unhappiness has something to do with watching Joel McHale doing a variation of the Chevy Chase persona from the 80s, just better? I’d watch a Joel McHale iteration of Fletch, sure.

2) Keep characters like Ken Jeong’s Senor Chang to a minimum, and the same with some of Abed’s “We all live in a TV show” stuff. I think some of the references catch with the smart folks in the audience, and some literally watch fire with the simple minded, but as Shirley said recently, I think far too much of it doesn’t play in Poughkeepsie, and bores the rest of us. The only thing worse than being not funny is trying too hard. Keep Abed’s character simple and utilize more gags like the Abed in the background/pregnancy bit in the background a few weeks ago:

from here.

3) More characters. For the background or whatever. Along with 30 Rock, I feel like this is the show that has the best chance of inheriting what there is of the Arrested Development mantle, and yet, the vision of Community almost feels too limited in some regards. Maybe give someone like Star Burns a little break, okay? Also, the character of the dean? We get it. It was funnier when it was called Tobias Fünke.

Running Wilde. Sorry, Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett, somehow even you shall not be inheriting the throne that once was Arrested Development, I fear. Kudos to you fine chaps though for bringing Felicity along for the ride.

The Event. I watched four episodes of this show and came to the same realization I had before the show even started and was just a much hyped but vaguely explained situation coming soon on NBC: I could not give two halves of a shit about whatever the fuck “the event” ends up being.

We complain about the meta-ness of Community and it amazes how we don’t talk about how not an event the actual release of The Event is. “Lost meets 24,” huh? Go fuck yourself, NBC. This show could do with a little more Lost and a hell of a lot less 24. Talk about a textbook example of not getting what made both of those shows goddamn brilliant at their heights. This is the briefest I shall ever be on this blog: Character.

from here.

Also… casting. Jason Ritter? Give me a fucking break. Jason Ritter is the guy who should be getting coffee for the stand in for your lead actor.

Lost. This goes without saying: You are missed.

Also: this. Interesting.

Hawaii 5-0. Go fuck yourself if you like this show. I watched two episodes that would’ve had the exact same effect on me if I had seen them either in or out of a coma. Also, Hollywood: Stop trying to make Alex O’Loughlin happen.

Modern Family. As I said before, this is a strong comedy here. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it does. I don’t think that, once you get what’s going on with it, that it’ll ever blow you away, but it stays consistently funny and watchable and every single character is endearing. And it will hopefully stay that.

Smallville. This show is still on. Did you know that? People are still watching this! It scares me, that thought. (Almost as much as the notion that people were ever watching it.)(I mean, obviously I’m a comic book nerd here, but this show? Come on. Shit is shit, right?) Who are you people? Who are you? It terrifies me that there’s an audience for this show still and they’re providing market research to people in suits who can’t buy a clue from the general public. (Though I still like Erica Durance.)

True Blood. This past season had a lot of ups and a lot of downs, as usual, but the finale was incredibly boring. I guess it was a bit of a serious dramatic let down and also not compelling at all. But, though it may be an uneven supernatural soap opera, it’s amazing how much more it appeals to me than some fucking police procedural on CBS.

Party Down. I miss you. Come back? Please? Was it something I said? Was it the fact that I don’t subscribe to Starz and watched you solely via megavideo and just that once via itunes? Is it Starz? If it is, you don’t have to say anything. Just nod your head and blink. Do that and I will stab a stake through Starz like the life sucking vampire monster that it is.

Parks & Recreation. Is this show still on? Coming back at midseason? That’s a shame, but not shocking, I guess. This show is not bad, not bad at all, but it lacks… something. Sadly, you still have to kind of compare it to The Office in some way. This is a show where you like all the characters/actors involved, but I don’t feel anything for them. They seem like they’re swimming twice as hard for maybe half the results. Except for Ron Swanson. Brilliant televisionary character and I’m so thankful that they keep him to the minimum. I guess I’m glad that this is where Adam Scott landed after Party Down, with a paying gig, but I’d stick this show’s head in a full bath tub until it stopped kicking and squirming if that’d bring back Party Down. No joke.

The Walking Dead. This show hasn’t even aired yet, but I don’t care. I’ve read the comic book so that gives me the right to voice an internet opinion! Ugh.

That said, within the comic is all the things that would make for a good, solid cable TV drama, especially on par with a level of quality and intrigue that AMC seems to be trying to covet (the snoozefest that is Rubicon aside), but I hope that the producers of the show don’t stick too strictly to the comic. It’s not… great. There, I said it. It’s not that great. It’s good, but it’s true to it’s story and incredibly bleak. It picks up where your average zombie movie ends, with characters having to survive in this world that’s swarming with the undead and it’s something for fans of suffering, for sure. The TV show hasn’t wowed me with the actors they’ve cast, and that sizzle reel didn’t get me hard, and it doesn’t help that Frank Darabont hasn’t brought his A game to anything in a long, long while (though he’s thankfully finally gotten out from behind Stephen King’s skirt). But, despite all of that, I’d like to be pleasantly surprised.

Glee. I saw the pilot not this last summer but the summer before when they showed it months and months before the show’s actual premiere and I thought, “Eh.” Never saw a single episode throughout the rest of the first season because it was just not the show for me and somehow it become this popular media juggernaut. Then I saw two episodes just a few weeks ago from this current season. Not bad. Not all that interesting, but intriguing from a distance. But I do believe there’s credence to the “Three Glee” theory.

But, I have to say that this GQ controversy is ludicrous. Who are you people who are upset about this nonsense? Apparently you’ve never see this show or it’s content or just ignored the Rolling Stone cover from a few months ago altogether. Way to go, Dianna Agron, you are mystifying both onscreen and off. Some people should find bigger things to get super excited and bothered about. Like Taylor Momsen. Speaking of which…

Gossip Girl. Is this still on TV?

House. House is a show that, like Glee, is quality but that I wouldn’t normally watch because, well, I’m just not going to watch a weekly medical procedural show. Or, that’s why it was that I used to not watch House. But then I started watching it semi-weekly (Thank God Hulu is still free), because it’s well written and I saw a bunch of episodes last season by accident and because House and Cuddy are dating now and, well, just because. Also, I like Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Speaking of which…

Steven Moffat’s (and Mark Gatiss’) Sherlock. The show debuted in England in the past year and is fucking brilliant. This is what I would like all TV to aspire to as far as intellectual quality. Eventually this will come to BBC America and you’re a goddamn fool to miss it. The man with the unfortunate name of Benedict Cumberbatch is shocking and mesmerizing as a modern day take on the classic detective and Martin Freeman (“Tim,” the original Jim in the original British version of The Office) is in fine form as his sidekick, John Watson. The little nods to the classic stories are enjoyable and where the show deviates is even better. My only real quibble with the 21st century updates is that rather than just chronicling their exploits in a conventional manner, Watson now blogs about the cases he and Sherlock engage in. Sigh.

The first season was three episodes long and the pilot is amazing (written by Moffat), the second episode is fine, but the third episode (written by Gattis) is immaculate. And what a fucking a cliffhanger.

Freeman was recently cast as The Hobbit after months of everyone knowing he pretty much had the role locked down, but you may have noticed the internet screaming out that the two movies better not stop production on a second series of Sherlock and quite right so.

Speaking of British originals translating stateside: MTV’s Skins, which you can see a trailer for now. And if you click here, you can read my thoughts on that.

Doctor Who. This Christmas special and new season (next Easter, sadly) can’t come quickly enough. I don’t know how I feel about this “split” season. I guess it’s fine, though I’m not crazy about them calling it two different seasons, rather than just one split with a hiatus. It sounds like a fancy way of getting out of contracts quicker, frankly. They recently cast Mark Shephard in a big role, sigh, presumably the two part season opener set in America and featuring Richard Nixon? Cool. I guess. Except for the Mark Shephard bit. That gravely voiced motherfucker hasn’t been in enough big name sci fi shows? Sigh. But, like last season, paparazzi photos have informed us that River Song will be in that episode(s). Great.

Now the theorizing can really begin as to who or what River Song actually is. A future version of the Doctor? Lame. The Doctor’s mother? Lamer. Amy Pond in the future in some form? Lame and tired as far as guesswork goes. Just the Doctor’s amazing wife/partner from a future point as we’ve already been lead to believe? Perfect. But let’s get crazy here: A future version of the Master or the Rani? Hmmm?

Mad Men. Nothing to add here.

Still an amazing show and I’m kind of dying to know where they’ll go next season.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. For what it is, this show is perfect. Especially once Danny Devito joined the cast a few years ago. I’m so glad that we have a mindset like this available to us. And, if you think about it, since we mentioned the inheritance of legacies earlier in this post, this is today’s version of Seinfeld.

Fringe. Man… Whatever. Benjamin Light and I add a long conversation about this show about a week ago because we’re fucking dorks, I guess. Maybe, if you’re nice to him, he’ll do a write up about his thoughts on that show and we’ll have a nice discussion on what we dislike about that show and what we would change (almost everything). And, if anything comes to us, maybe we’ll talk about what we like about the show?

The Venture Bros. As always, a strong, smart, funny show, but I’m trying not to use the words “treading water” here. I keep wanting this show to move forward into telling a larger story, and just when I think it’s going to reveal itself to be doing that… it pulls back altogether. At first it was like, “Ha ha, we are playing with your expectations,” but now it’s just like they’re treading water. Damn. I said it. It’s funny that the last episode was all about Doctor Venture’s brain being hacked and the Monarch trying to force him to commit suicide since I feel like that’s the only logical conclusion to the show.

South Park. I haven’t seen an actual episode of this show in fucking forever. I miss it. Conrad Noir tells me that I really need to see not this past week’s, but the one before, the one pertaining to Jersey Shore. “The Jersey problem,” is how he referred to it. I haven’t seen this last one, the Inception one, either. But now I see that Matt and Trey are in some shit for plagarizing a College Humor video. Jesus. I’m sorry, no, it’s “borrowing.” I get the gist of Matt and Trey’s “take” on Inception, which is a good example of how I can like this show and still pretty much never agree with their take on anything. I don’t think anyone is claiming that Inception is cool because it’s complex, are they? Also, how complex was Inception? Was it really that hard for anyone to follow? I mean… Really?

Louis. I like Louis C.K. I like him a lot. I haven’t loved this show, not like I’ve wanted to, though the Ricky Gervais cameo was a lot of fun. But I’m just glad that Louis C.K. has a show on TV that I don’t think has been canceled  yet. I can’t wait to watch it progress. And I think that is the underlining factor that too many showrunners on television don’t take into account: Shows should progress. There’s a long game at work. Consider your package as a whole.

Eastbound & Down. I’ve only seen the first episode of this current season so far, so I can’t say much, but this show defies your average reviewing format. You’re either in or out. Anything else and maybe you should just fuck off. Me: thumbs up.

Bored To Death. Talk about your meta end to a blog post… I’ve only seen about five episodes from the first season of this show. They were meh, honestly. I see the promise of the show picking up and getting interesting, but I’ll get there at some point. But, during some of those first few episodes, I just felt like maybe I wanted to go read an old detective novel and drink some wine instead.

In conclusion: Am I missing any worthwhile shows or any shows that are the exact opposite? If so then by all means, please, please, please let me know.

And: Before we go, if you click here you can read an interesting post about David Foster Wallace and the connection between fiction and television.

Two amazing things happened to me today. The first: I got to watch a couple break up. How often does that happen in public anymore? But today it did and I got to witness it. It was like watching a car crash happen in extremely slow motion and it was fascinating and it makes you feel weird to witness it. I’ll give you this one and only tidbit from it: As I walked past this couple (to throw something away, I swear, and not purposely listen in), the girl was saying to the guy, “See? And now you’re crying. And now you’re crying. At least… At least the fact that you’re crying tells me that this meant something to you and you’ll never forget it.”

And I thought, “Wow.” I’ve always loved people watching or, quite frankly, eavesdropping. Perhaps it comes with the package of calling one self a “writer.” You’re constantly studying the world, like a scientist, looking for fault lines and vulnerabilities and things that are strong and terribly interesting, like a thief. Whenever I’m with someone, a friend, a loved one, an acquaintance, I try to give them all my attention, even when they don’t realize it, even when I don’t want them to know they have it. But whenever I’m out there in the world by myself, all alone, I’m just lost. Usually in my own head or in my surroundings. It’s like the noise dies down and I can watch the interesting things that are all over the world as they just happen. Or not happen.

Perhaps that’s answer to the eternal question: Which super power would you rather have, flying or invisibility? Typically I, as one always should, will say: “Both!” But maybe today was a day in which I may lean towards invisibility. Anyway…

The second thing I witnessed: A man tutoring a boy, probably aged somewhere in the vicinity of going to junior high-ish, about math, of all things. A dreadful, disgusting subject if ever there was one. At some point, they finished some unit in the boy’s math book and the boy said very excitedly, “That’s it, right? We’re finished!” The guy tutoring him chuckled and replied, “Finished? No, ha ha, that’s not the end. That’s not even the beginning of the end, I’m afraid. We are maybe – maybe – at the end of the beginning though.”

The boy just kind of sighed. And I smiled, knowing that the guy was paraphrasing Churchill.

It was silly, yeah, but I also found it funny.

That said, I’m going to take a little break. Just until next month, I think. There may be more Counterforce transmissions between now and then…

…or I may be back tomorrow,  or perhaps neither, I don’t know, but right now I’m planning on chilling out through the rest of May. And next time I see you, we’ll speak only of beginnings…

That’s the one thing you really need to take away from last night’s finale of Lost, super appropriately entitled “The End.” Your favorite TV show is going to end some day (and it was probably yesterday), but not just that, your friendships may end some day. Your relationships. Your circumstances will change. You will have amazing journeys in your life, but even that, some day, will come to an end.

And then…

To me, what the finale did was, in a lot of ways, a truly amazing feat. It gave everyone resolution, not just all the characters, but the audience as well. Everyone got what they wanted, whether they realized they wanted it or not. And they definitely got what they needed. And creators/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were certainly honest about something heading into this last episode about what you should be expecting from it, and that was an answer to just one question: “What is the Sideways world?”

More on that in a second.

Cause this seems to be an episode that, if initial internet reaction is to be believed, has been just about 90% hated. I’m okay with that, but also… not. It only confirms for me further that Lost is our Seinfeld this decade, so of course the ending was despised (and, in that regard, were the 90s about “nothing” and the 00s about “everything?”). But I think it’s a shame that people didn’t like and/or didn’t get the ending. One person on twitter said something to the effect last night of “the finale made me feel like the previous six years were nothing but rape now.” I think that’s a bit strong, but there’s also a meta-answer to that in there somewhere. More on that in a second too.

First things first: This was a wacky, crazy, amazing, beautiful, tragic, mystifying sci fi show about polar bears on a magical island, time travel, synchronicity, esoteric theorizing, faith and hope and both the depths and heights of the human condition. But it was first a show about the characters. I’m sure the producers would have loved to have tackled time travel and paradox theories in the first season, but they couldn’t. No one would’ve watched it, so they got smart and they put the characters first. The show didn’t always succeed, there were some pacing issues here and there, and of course some answers we’d still love to possess (like who was shooting at our heroes on those outriggers in season 5?), but has any show ever came and succeeded as hard as this one?

From episode to episode, you weren’t just watching the show to see answers to questions, you were watching the show to see where the characters went next, and what would happen to them. You cared about that. Sure, the crazy shit going on the island was wonderful, and really, it was a mystery show. But a mystery show with characters at it’s heart. And the mystery aspects only strengthened the human element to all of this.

But for the people who say, “but this is just a TV show!” perhaps don’t understand why we tell ourselves stories. Or why we do TV, or how rare it is for it to actually work out this well. And a mystery is nothing but a story, and that’s what Lost was: a TV show about stories. And it’s a show that asks you to do a little bit of thinking.

On Island last night: Jack is the new Jacob. He’s got to find Desmond, who’s the key to everything, either sinking the Island or it’s salvation. The Locke-ness Monster is also after Desmond, firmly believing that he’ll be the key to putting this Island on the bottom of the ocean. Desmond’s been rescued by Rose and Bernard, and he’s all too happy to go with Locke (to save Rose and Bernard).

On their way to the Source, Locke, Ben, and Desmond encounter Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate. Jack and Locke have a truly sassy showdown and, classically, have a difference of opinion. They both want to go to the Source, and both want to lower Desmond into it to do what he has to. They just think the other’s wrong.

I think there’s an interesting message here potentially: Regardless of right and wrong, good and evil are the same. They’re just words.

I’m not going to go recap every single moment here, but eventually Locke and Jack work together to lower Desmond down into the cavernous room below the waterfall which is the Source of the Light. The Man In Black seems so eager, in some ways, to be Locke, to fit into a dichotomy with Jack like Locke, and Jack puts him in his place. And at the bottom of the waterfall, Desmond finds what is essentially a cork and when he pulls it out, the Light goes away. The “goodness” seeps away and is replaced by something darker, more red…

And the Island begins to self destruct.

And I’ve said this before, but one of the things I’ve always loved about Lost is that there are answers for everything. You may never get them, but it’s there somewhere. When you look at the room where the Source was, it’s so clearly designed by someone. And all of those skeletons! Memento mori, yes, but… There’s a story there. Probably quite a few, in fact. You’ll never know what it is. That’s up to you. You decide what it is. And if you don’t want to think up some heavy, almost scientific and fantastical reasoning, then the show never really stops you from saying…

From there we get some truly great moments: The Man In Black is corporeal again, a real human. Jack was wrong, and the Man In Black makes a move for the cliffs by where Jacob’s cave was and where the Man In Black has a boat waiting. And that’ll be the scene of Jack and Locke’s final battle there, in the rain, with Jack orchestrating a truly impressive flying punch, and getting his ass handed to him. It wouldn’t be any kind of finale to this show if Jack wasn’t having the stuffing beat out of both his body and his spirit. The Man In Black’s knife finds Jack’s gut and later nicks his neck and we see those same scars and cuts that have been plaguing Jack in the Sideways universe…

Meanwhile, Richard Alpert and Miles are making their way to Hyrda Island, still thinking they need to blow up the Ajira plane and along the way, they find something we’ve all wanted to see again: FRANK LAPIDUS.

And eventually the Man In Black finds what all humans eventually find: death. At the hands of Kate, no less. And now Sawyer and Kate have to get moving, to get to the Hydra island to meet Lapidus and Miles and Richard Alpert (who may start aging and live out the rest of his life?) and take off while there’s still ground to take off from. But first… Kate has to say goodbye to Jack.

And then, back at what used to be the Source, Jack has to transfer his powers and duties and responsibilities. And as much as Hurley believed in Jack, so does Jack believe in Hurley. And as much as Jack being the protector of the Island made sense, it makes even more sense for Hurleybro to have this job. And for Jack to do something else for the Island: to become it’s fixer, because after what Desmond has done, what the Island needs now is a Doctor.

Just look at that one more time:

from here.

And Jack goes down into that cave and he pulls up Desmond – I kept wanting him to say “You’ve got to lift it up,” but he didn’t, and it was okay – and tells him to go home and be with his wife and kid and live his life. And Jack put the cork back into the Island (was that Hell leaking out, as Jacob originally said?). And it took everything out of him. And watching it took everything out of me.

It was amazing seeing Jack be wrong again, then finally being right in a way that really mattered. And now the Island has  new God/messianic figure, one with a proclivity for saying “Dude,” and who makes copious references to Star Wars.

But let’s go back to the Sideways world… It was brilliant in a lot of ways, which I find myself so surprised saying because it was one of the things I looked forward to the least this past season. It kept seeming like the “Wouldn’t it be nice?” world and it was. Everyone went to the concert and then everyone found their true love or their true purpose and in doing so, they remembered who they were.

All except Jack, who resisted because… well, there’s a lot of interpretations there. For a man who spent most of this past season trying to kill himself in some way, shape, or form, perhaps he’s the man who most clung to life?

All of those beautiful moments: Locke’s rebirth after his legs worked again. Sawyer and Juliet at the vending machine and their lovely call back to “LA X” with “Want to get coffee some time?” Hell, just the fact that Juliet was back at all was amazing to me, as she literally lit up my TV screen, easily glowing as bright as the light at the heart of the Island. And Kate finding Jack, remembering who she was because of him. “That’s not how you know me.” I like that Jack was probably Kate’s true love, but she wasn’t his (something we’ve been saying here for a while now). No, Jack probably couldn’t have allowed himself to really feel that, not when he was so tightly wound, so strong lost in his own past…

And then there’s the very end and Jack finds his father. He’s not in the coffin. He’s there, standing before, with love in his eye, and he explains. And Jack understands. He’s dead. Everyone in the Sideways world is dead. It’s a kind of purgatory, or rather, a sort of limbo, a holding place, if you will, that they’ve all created together in their collective unconscious, united by the amazing things they did on the Island, and a place for them to maybe work on their karma and to find a balance missing in their lives before they move into the afterlife.

I mentioned before how similar Lost was to The Invisibles, and this is exactly how The Invisibles ends: At the end of the world, no one dies, but instead enters the Supercontext, a place created by their collective unconscious in which they can find a balance and be happy. It also puts forth the notion that the ultimate ending, the one that is more possibly than we usually realize, is one in which everyone gets exactly what they want. We love Buddhist ideas here in the West. We also love An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge and The Third Policeman and Jacob’s Ladder, yes.

It’s kind of funny to watch the internet reaction in that regard. “It’s a rip off of Jacob’s Ladder!” some cry out. Or, “They totally stole that from An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge!” I love seeing the way people skew there. Those who know of Jacob’s Ladder don’t know of The Third Policeman or haven’t ever heard the name Ambrose Bierce. Or Alan Moore’s Superman tale, “For The Man Who Has Everything.” But… It all fits. It all works. It’s all beautiful, and just another piece in the puzzle.

And I said that the ending to this episode was perfect for everyone, right? Cause it is. On one hand, for those of you who wouldn’t want to see your characters get an amazing resolution in the Sideways universe, you have real Island endings: Jack dies. Hurley and Ben will now run the Island. They won’t do things the same, they won’t continue the patterns they’ve inherited. Kate and Sawyer and Claire and Miles and Richard Alpert and Frank Lapidus will fly away to safety. Jack will go to his resting place, to the spot between the bamboo trees where he first awoke on the Island and he’ll watch his friends’ plane fly away overhead and Vincent will come and keep him company in his last resting place…

And the Sideways world negates none of that. Not a single thing, nor does it betray the interest you’ve developed in this show over the years, and it shouldn’t harm the connection you’ve made with it. It just shouldn’t.

from here.

As Christian (loved Kate’s line: “Christian Shephard? Really?”) said, “Everyone dies.” Some of the people in that church died before Jack and some died after. And it makes clear that everything was real. Whatever happened, happened. But they came back together at the end, and remember how we were talking about how time didn’t seem to make sense in the Sideways world? Well, that’s because, there is no time there. There is no now. And when they’re ready and they’ve accepted who they are and who they were, they’ll move on. And those who aren’t ready yet, like Ben or Faraday or Ana Lucia, they won’t go yet. They’ll stay behind and work out what they need to and then, as Lord Of The Rings put it, then they can “sail west.” They can go to the Gray Havens.

In fact, they really should’ve filmed that Jimmy Kimmel special in a church just to echo those last moments with everyone together. I don’t really like Jimmy Kimmel, but the special was interesting, especially watching it pretty near after the beautiful, almost immaculate ending of the episode, when you’re still in shock, still coping.

Right after the end of the episode I went back to watch the beginning of “LA X” and… it works nicely, in my opinion. Jack looks out the window of Oceanic 815 and then looks around the interior of the plane almost as if he’s startled to be back there, struggling to recognize something. The plane hits turbulence and he clings to the arm rest for dear life and it’s broken by Rose’s gentle voice, telling him it’s okay, and that “you can let go now.” It’s so pointed and beautiful when you watch it with new eyes.

And of course the Island is sunk in the Sideways world because in that existence, it’s out of everyone’s mind. They’ve sunk together.

And we can argue about when the happy Sideways reality begins, of course. It’s Jack’s story, of course, so it probably ends the moment Jack closes his eye and that Ajira 316 plane flying overhead could also be metaphorically his Oceanic 815 of his dreams, and Jack’s closing his eyes, going to his final sleep, perchance to dream, a dream of flying. But it all depends on your read: Maybe the Sideways world really did start when Juliet beat the hell out of Jughead at the bottom of that shaft. Or maybe that explosion just used the electromagnetic time travel energy of the Island to send them back to the present. Maybe in your view, Oceanic 815 crashed and everyone died and… Maybe the Sideways world only existed in Jack’s head alone, his final dream of a better life… Whatever way you look at it, you choose your own level of meaning and understanding.

“We should get coffee sometime.” Michael Giacchino. Jack Bender. The actors, every single one of them, not just in the finale but always. “I may not believe in a lot of things, but I believe in duct tape.” The fact that we got as little Boone as possible. How Kate looked in that dress. The idea of Hurley and Ben running the Island together. The fact that the Source is fed from two different streams. That flying punch! The weird shots of the castaways’ beach on the Island, featuring the wreckage of Oceanic 815, (an insert by the good folks at the American Broadcast Network) but devoid of people, reminiscent of the ending of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a pilot.” All those amazing awakenings and FLASHBACKgasms. The fact that you even have to relook at the episode titles of this past season with new meaning (“LA X” no longer refers to just another universe, but a crossroads of sorts). All of the episodes really, referenced tonight (“The Long Con”) or not (Just think about “Enter 77″ now). The idea of Aaron with two moms (that’s a spin off that is literally dying to happen). Hurley saying to Sayid, “You can’t let other people tell you who you are,” because, well, we all play parts and roles. “I’ll see you in another life, brotha!” There’s so many things that we could be talking about, so many great things…

Watching the finale last night, I kept my eye half on twitter during the commercials and it was interesting seeing people saying a lot about how the finale was a love letter to itself and spent a lot of time self referencing. And I agree. And I think it worked beautifully. For a sci fi show about characters and people, I think the end is about us. We’ve all got to come together on this one, and accept it and appreciate it, and then it’s time to move on…

And in that vein, because I don’t want to philosophize on Lost alone (nor would I want to push that button alone), so I asked some of my fellow Counterforcers to weigh in and I want to share with you what they had to say, and then, despite everything happened in “The End,” the very last thing I want to say about this show is exactly the same, not changed at all, and I’ll share that with you, but first…

Benjamin Light: In a nutshell, I can sum up my thoughts on LOST with a text I sent to Marco as the episode ended. I wrote: “This episode feels like falling in love, over and over and over again.”

I could have watched a dozen more “awakening” moments in the sideways world, they were just perfect TV.

It dawned on me at about the 2 hour mark that, rather than wait for a big explosive end to explain everything, the writers instead were just going to willfully ignore some of the big mysteries. And I wasn’t annoyed at all. One of my favorite things about the show is speculating on the mysteries. Having those long, quasi-scientific conversations with friends about even random strangers about what something might mean on the show was half the fun. Lindelof and Cuse decided not to take that away from the fans. Sure, they could have just told us the island is a spaceship from the future and the smoke monster is evil nanotechnology, but why bother? If that’s your theory, it still holds water. This was a show that was famous for its fans’ speculation and debate; the way they left certain mysteries open to interpretation feels very much in keeping with its history.

Conrad Noir: I still don’t know what to think. I’m content with what happened but I don’t know what to feel at all. Maybe nothing, maybe so many things. What I do know was that was the most dragged out event in TV history. Did it really have to go to 11:30?

Oh yes. I believe I read somewhere that the finale was exactly 103 minutes. I would’ve killed for just an extra five more, if you know what I mean, but apparently there’s going to be an extended cut on the DVDs with 20 more minutes.

Benjamin: After the episode ended, I got up to take a leak. After that, I walked down the hall and suddenly started crying. I wasn’t happy or sad. It was like someone had reached inside me and turned all my emotional knobs up to 11. I was like Daniel Faraday, crying at the news of Flight 815 being found and not knowing why.

That’s how good the finale was.

Take a bow, Lost cast and crew, you did it.

Lola: Sometime ago I wrote a post asking whether or not I really wanted answers from LOST. I guess that Lindelof or Cuse are regular readers of Lovely Entropy because the finale contained next to no “answers.”

I watched the finale with my dad and when it ended, I turned to him and said: “What just happened?”

“What is the Dharma Initiative?” he asked me.

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Where was Walt? WAAAALT!!!”

I think we all felt like that little necked kid in the Tootsie Roll Pop ad:

“What was up with the Hurley Bird? The world may never know.”

I was annoyed at first so I did what I always do when I’m annoyed by LOST: called my brother to complain while searching the internet for answers. As I was searching and complaining something dawned on me: everyone was confused and everybody wanted to talk about it. People were posting theories, they were cracking jokes or they were just outright complaining to people in the room with them, friends over the phone or outright strangers on the internet. Sure, there are people who are going to be annoyed no matter what happens, but the more I think about it the more I kind of liked the finale. It’s open-endedness gives it’s nerdy fanbase enough food for thought to last us until Terry O’Quinn & Michael Emerson’s pilot gets picked up. And not only that, but it saves us all from having to sit through anymore of the writer’s awful, half-assed answers (the whispers were dead people? Seriously LOST?). The finale, in my opinion, was genius in its laziness. The writers are happy because they don’t have to try to find answers that would appeal to everyone. The nerds are happy because they can keep talking about the show they love and ABC is happy because they made a boatload of money last night.

So, anyone have any idea what that church was about?

It’s about everything. And everyone. It’s a story about stories and all stories end.

They can be reread time and again though, revisited, and relived. Just like your favorite song. Just like a game, if you want. It’s adaptive. You can make up your own versions for where the story ends, if you want, your own back stories, your own ideas for what happens to your favorite and least favorite characters after it fades to black.

But you know what else you can do when the story and the song and the game ends? You can start it over, you can return and begin again. You’ll see all the connections you missed, and the little moments will resonate even stronger with you…

So, with that in mind, mektoub, let me just say…

KATE!

WE HAVE TO GO BACK!

Take a deep breath. There’s this heavy fin de siècle vibe hanging over the air. A circle closing, all it so deep and meaningful and exciting and… Lost ends tonight. With a two hour clip show, then a two and a half hour finale, and then after the news, some kind of retrospective/after party with the cast and crew on Jimmy Kimmel.

Last night I was having a deep text message conversation with my friend, Lia, who thinks she never gets mentioned here, and we were talking about how meaningful it is for this show to end because, unlike real life, the ending of your favorite show gives you an experience, a journey, and then closure and resolution at the end of it.

Fictional characters are so much kinder to us in that regard. They give us what we need because, if nothing else, they simply reflect back whatever level of meaning we bring to the experience.

Earlier in the evening yesterday, another friend called me, apparently having just seen their calendar, and then deciding to wake me up (what was I sleeping at this point, who can say). “OMG!” she squealed so loud that my ears are still vibrating, “I just realized what the date is! Tonight’s the last episode, right?” Yes, it is, I told her and I walked outside as we started talking. Looking up, I noticed that it was dark, probably because of the weather here yesterday, but I couldn’t see the stars. I mentioned that and we started talking about how the stars you see out there in the sky are all dead, and their long burnt out light is still transmitting towards us. As we pondered whether or not that was a romantic notion, I started thinking about tonight’s finale, which the writers have surely been thinking about for many, many years now, and the episode was written probably months ago, probably finished filming a month and some change ago, and has been edited and done for a few weeks. And it’s only now transmitting to us. Just like the stars sending us their light, and we’re philosophizing about what it all means long after it was sent.

Mektoub. It is written. That’s basically what I said to her then.

I have just about an hour before the clip show starts. I need to go and get ready and do whatever I need to do before that. It could be an emotional rollercoaster, this night. But that’s okay. It’s okay to get hung up over a TV show sometimes. Especially when you know that you’ll probably never get something like this again. And if it’s an experience you’ll never have again, find your own level of enjoyment in it. Get ready for your own drinking game that goes with it, if you want. The important thing is to have fun and to enjoy yourself. This kind of thing only ends once, and all of this progress has lead us to the here and now.

from here.

Anyway, here at Counterforce, we only really got into writing about individual episodes somewhere last season. It was something I really grew to enjoy and something that always surprised me with how much it informed on other things that I’d like to be talking about or, at least, writing about. I’ll let you discover last season’s write ups on your own, if you want, plus all those links yesterday, but today I’ll leave you with links to this past season, the sixth and final one of Lost…

01. “LA X.”

02. “What Kate Does.”

03. “The Substitute.”

04. “The Lighthouse.”

05. “Sundown.”

06. “Dr. Linus.”

07. “Recon.”

08. “Ab Aeterno.”

09. “The Package.”

10. “Happily Ever After.”

11. “Everybody Loves Hugo.”

12. “The Last Recruit“

13. “The Candidate.”

14. “Across The Sea.”

15. “What They Died For.”

And tomorrow we’ll be writing about the very last episode, “The End.” Who knows what we’ll have to say, but I feel like it’ll be the very last time we really write about Lost here on Counterforce. At least, the real last time for me, I think. Maybe I’ll blag (blag = my typo combination of “blog” and “blab”) on about the 23 enigma or the law of fives, but it’s like the show itself, you choose your own level of involvement, and you get back what you give to it (and more).

It’s kind of funny to think that, regardless of where we go tonight and wherever we end up on the other side of this show, I already know what the last sentence of my last write up about the show will be. Mektoub. “It is written.” See you then.

Had that been the case, the producers’ plan was for another castaway to step up and become the de facto leader of the castaways from Oceanic 815, to lead them through their trials and tribulations on this mysterious Island. That particular passenger? One Kate Austen, of course.

But then again, that would’ve been a different Kate Austen then the one (no, two) that we’ve gotten to know over the past six years. One who presumably had a husband who perished on the flight. So, think more of… a little bit of Rose, minus Bernard, and cross that between your typical boring action/mystery show heroine, whoever that would be.

Instead we got the Kate we all know and love (depending on your definition of the word “love” on the internet, that is). The Kate of the Pilot episode is a tremendous character, interesting and enticing and incredibly human. She is, of course, beautiful (I remember an initial sneak preview review of the show calling her “the obvious female lead because she’s the woman who looks the nicest in her underwear”), but she also reveals herself to be incredibly, smart, resourceful, and compassionate. They say that there’s two kinds of people in a crisis and Kate’s the kind that wants to chip in and help, to always be on the move, to be contributing, and that’s certainly who she is in the pilot. And she is incredibly, tragically, beautifully human as well, which I think you can see a little of in what is still one of my absolute favorite scenes from that first episode all those years ago:

John Locke has always been an amazing character, charming and insightful, funny and disarming, a man who can reach for the greatest heights because he’s known the greatest of depths, but even at his finest, he’s also always been incredibly creepy. He is a man who can only be in his element when others are out of theirs. You watch that clip above and you imagine the bevy of emotions Kate is going through, having to literally rob the dead of something so simple as shoes just so she can survive. This is a grim time and there’s Locke, who only wants to bring some cheer to her life, to distract her with something silly, but it’s not the right time. Of course it only makes her feel worse.

And like everyone, Kate’s got a dark side and some secrets, things she’s ashamed of and would do anything to get away from…

Season 1 progressed and I feel like we all liked Kate just fine, though battle lines were drawing in the contest of her love triangle with Jack and Sawyer. Sawyer was the obvious bad boy, but who also had something of a noble side that he kept hidden well. And Jack was the good guy, the smart and successful doctor – a surgeon, even – but he wasn’t without his own insecurities and deep, dark side. And Kate was definitely a bad girl, and was drawn to those like her, even if she could be better than that. And these two guys brought  out both the best and the worst from her.

Somewhere in the second half of season 2 I think I began to grow displeased with Kate, though I’m not sure how much I knew it then. I wasn’t loving her choices, and I certainly wasn’t understanding that given how far she had fallen, and the options presented to her, there was no way she was going to make good decisions. But by mid-season 3 I have to tell you, Kate was not my girl. At that point I was firmly in CAMP JULIET, but I think I was alone there. Jack Shephard had one foot in Camp Juliet, but just barely, and he was constantly keeping his eye out for a chance to sneak back into Camp Kate. Hell, I’m not sure that even Juliet was in Camp Juliet as much as me.

It seems like it took until season 4 before the rest of the world saw my point of view. And definitely by season 5 we were all kind of saying the same thing: Man, Kate fucking sucks. Especially the Kate-centric episodes. It felt like a rehash of all the same things, not just the same bad patterns, but the constant return of the Marshall and the wannabe con woman that Sawyer knocked up. Kate was always on the run and always dragging the same lame baggage with her. And that baggage is heavy, weighing her down, keeping her really moving forward, getting someplace new and safe and healthy.

For a while she was off the Island and motherhood looked good on Kate. And I’m not just talking about the fact that she wore actual dresses then (supplied by Sun in at at least one case). She gave love a chance with Jack, but his insecurities were only fueled by his alcoholism and eventually she had to throw him out. She kept Aaron (who was actually related to Jack) and I think the thing we don’t really talk about is how much better Kate was without Jack then, and without Sawyer. For all her fucked up-ness, there was a real person inside Kate, someone who had something to offer, including love, and she found that outlet in Claire’s possibly orphaned baby.

And that’s probably where Kate should’ve stayed, that should have been her happily ever after. I don’t think Kate wanted to go off and become a writer or a doctor and start a career or something. I think she wanted to just have a family and settle down and find an excuse to be happy. But fate was seemingly not done fucking with Kate and neither were the people in her life.

from here.

I remember reading an interview with Evangline Lilly – who should be highly praised for her performance on this show as a young actor who little prior experience and who has carried this character and her part of this story on her back so admirably and professionally these past years – right before the airing of season 5. She talked about how Kate was maturing in season 5 (with the Aaron stuff) and what interesting it was for her, having embodied this character for those five years, and how she could feel herself maturing along with the character. I wonder how it must’ve felt to have made that connection and then to have dealt with it all being snatched away from the character by the end of the season.

And Evangeline Lilly’s story is an interesting one as well, having gotten so much out of this show. It brought her to America first of all, and it made her famous. She began a relationship with one of the actors and luckily for her, when their relationship ended, so did his tenure on the show (not that anyone is complaining).

I mean, you think a TV show is just a TV show, but this has been 1/5th of her life and that’s not nothing. Where will she go next? Like the rest of us, in our own ways, what will she do next?

It’s kind of funny how Kate was marked as a target by the men of the Island from almost the day of the crash. Jack always treated her with respect (at first), but of course he was into her. Sawyer’s intentions were blatantly obvious, but there was no respect there, which was something Kate responded to. Charlie hit on her pretty quickly. The Marshal’s attitude towards her wasn’t just one of a guy doing his job, but of domination and conquest. There’s certainly the inference that her stepfather/biological father, Wayne, didn’t exactly have a healthy relationship with her. Benjamin Light and I are in agreement that Sayid was definitely after Kate at first, before moving onto Shannon. Locke seems to be a little into her, as does Ben. Really, this is an Island full of men seizing opportunities and going after vulnerabilities. Imagine Kate’s genuine shock when Tom Friendly tells her that she’s not his type.

And we talk about how Kristen Stewart in the Twilight movies is kind of a cipher, a kind of blank that’s there for the typically young emotionally inexperienced viewer to insert themselves into, and live vicariously through. Perhaps, like the Team Jacobs and Team Edwards out there, a choice between Team Jack or Team Sawyer is really a decision about how you want to suffer.

Lately I’ve started to wonder if the reason Kate always does the opposite of what everyone tells her to do (or expects her to do) is because she’s told to do it (or expected to). She’s a fascinating character, one of the first sympathetic female leads to a TV show who is not only a known fugitive, but also a cold blooded murderer. But she’s someone who someone else is always trying to control. Sometimes it’s the men who think they love her. Sometimes it’s the men who watch her with another man. I think everyone wants to run away with Kate, but none of them really know where they’d take her. And rightfully so, she wants to be impressed. I can seriously imagine that she’s attracted to winners (the swaying plotlines and power struggles between Jack and Sawyer over the years would seem to confirm this), and the last thing she wants is to be controlled. Or have expectations placed upon her. Or be bored. She wants to be, and that’s it. And when something comes closer to harming that, she’s on the move.

And though she’s played by an Canadian actress, Kate feels so incredibly American of a young woman. Or, she’s the kind of woman you want to sit around with and listen to American soft rock songs. Or write soft rock or cock rock about. Or maybe youtube compilation videos of her set to Ben Folds Five’s “Kate.”

A lot of the criticism about her character is about, if not the constantly letting someone down by doing the opposite of what they want, the constant crying. Right?

And it’s unfair to get mad at Kate for crying when we tend to praise Jack for constantly crying. In fact, with Kate, I don’t blame her. I expect it, actually, just because everyone around her has taken up all the other points on the emotional spectrum and set up camp there. It’s like Kate’s not allowed to get angry, or not allowed to be happy, or any of the myriad of points between those two ends. Kate’s allowed to cry and to run, and seemingly that’s it. Well, that and copious amounts of climbing trees (something that Evangeline Lilly apparently loves in real life).

In fact, while others are busy either crying or shouting at one another, Kate’s on the move. Maybe she’s not stopping to think everything out first, but that’s because she’s an impetuous creature. She follows her blood, lets it lead her. She may not be great at dealing with her lot in life, but at least she’s not immobilized by it. And a bit part of this show is it’s sense of duality, and I feel it’s mostly strongly felt in the real human beings (not including Locke or Sayid, one who is a supernatural entity and the other who has come back from the dead infected by… something) like Kate and Jack. We haven’t really had a chance to know Jack since probably the start of season 4. He’s just been an off the rails mystery to us, and we can understand him, but I feel like he’s kept the audience at the distance the same as he’s kept those who truly love and care for him. But I feel like Kate diverged from us somewhere in season 2, closing off to us as a defense mechanism. Her actions were a mystery to us, and probably to her as well. And a lot of that has to do the with the general mystique of the character but also with how tough it is for mole male writers to really capture a complicated female character. And love her or hate her, you have to admit that Kate is certainly complicated.

We’ve seen “What Kate Did” and we know “What Kate Does” but we’ve only kind of gently probed why for either of those. And now it’s too late for that. Sure, there’s been mistakes along the way, but now isn’t the time to obsess over that.

But the show is coming to an end soon and so are my ramblings. This is by no means a definitive take on Kate, nor an authoritative attempt to crack her shell and really analyze her. This is me coming full circle, or trying to, from liking her to disliking her, to really, really disliking her, and now liking her again. Appreciating her. Realizing that I’m going to miss her. Kate’s run is going to come to an end soon and I want wherever she ends up to be somewhere fitting. And nice. I want it to be a happy ending. I want to feel her character resolved, and maybe for the ending to be similar to Buffy‘s or the ending to Magnolia. I want to see Kate smile. I want to see her laugh and be happy.

You’ve had to heard Benjamin Light and I say by now that we’ve always thought that had the castaways put Sayid in charge since the beginning, they probably would’ve been off the Island in about a week, and maybe that’s true, maybe not. But I think that maybe the same could be said for Kate.

Imagine if Jack had died in the Pilot. Without him to expect something from her, perhaps Sawyer’s cheap charm would’ve never had an effect on her, at least not the one it did. This is a woman who, for some reason, is an expert tracker and who also made the drapes in her apartment. Perhaps it’s a bit strong of me to suggest that Kate’s been denied human agency in this world because of the maze of the male gaze that she crash landed into, but I keep thinking of this whole other Sideways world she wasn’t carrying those theoretical chains with her. Maybe in that world she just started running and never looked back. Or maybe in that world of possibility what Kate did and what Kate does are exactly the same: Anything.

Mad Linkage:

What on Earth is Neal Stephenson’s “The Mongoliad?”

Hang in there, Frank Lapidus!

The alternate universe comic book covers from the recent season finale of Fringe.

The 5 laws of making a complicated story that isn’t an ungodly mess.

Commander Riker and Counselor Troi together again.

A hilarious outtake from an interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse with the Associated Press and the fire alarm goes off…

Literary mashups going to the next level.

The 5 “Proverbs For Paranoids” from Gravity’s Rainbow.

Preparing for life after Lost.

Famous book titles that are less majestic/poetic.

23 awesome food ideas for your Lost finale party.

The future of the Euro.

More Lost answers.

Quantum teleportation!

“Same as it ever was!”

from here.

Click here for a pretty awesome graphic on all things Lost to get you good and caught up before tomorrow’s finale.

Speaking of getting caught up, ABC is airing the very first episode of Lost tonight in an enhanced version. It’ll be nice to see how it all started once more before we see how it all ended.

And, perhaps it’s not exactly being caught between a rock and a hard place, but imagine being caught between the intensity of Jack and FUCK YEAH SAYID.

Or what Kate does/did to the internet during the run of this show.

I’d love to link to every single post on Counterforce that ever had anything to do with Lost but that’s so much. And if there’s anything that I’ve personally tried to bring to this site it’s the sense that it all ties together, it all blends in and bleeds and mixes. There’s sympathetic vibrations to all of it and sometimes it’s beautiful and scary and sometimes it’s hilarious and stupid but you were there and so were we.

But I will link to more of our Lost posts tomorrow, Lost friends, but for now, some of the important stuff from before this past year…

Our Top 5 episodes of Lost, circa early 2009: Parts five, four, three, two, and one. And, of course, there’s the runner ups.

But that was last year.

One of the most nerdy but most exciting things that I can say we did here was Benjie and I compiling not just episodes we liked from the show, but moments, and from that…

Our 100 Greatest Moments of Lost, pre-Season 6: Parts one, two, three, four, and five.

from here.

And if for some reason you’re not actually a Lost fan but you read Counterforce then… well, this has all got to suck for you, doesn’t it? Ha ha. I imagine Tuesday will be the day you’re looking forward to most then, not just here but all over the internet as the mania and the fever only grows and intensifies and gets hotter. I’d say Monday will be the last real day that one can verbally obsess over Lost, and then this aeon will pass and we’ll move into the post-Lost world, whatever that looks like.

But hey, that’ll be then and this is still now. More (of the same) tomorrow.

And that was only a small part of last night’s penultimate word of Lost, the appropriately and devastatingly titled “What They Died For.” And much in the same vein as last week, but vastly more important, let’s tackle 23 stray observations about last night’s episode…

1. Eye See You!

We open the episode on Jack’s eye again (in the Sideways universe) which is a familiar image on this show, certainly, and that’s a good thing. The show has always been good creating a certain visual language for itself (the motif of opening episodes on eyes, especially since we deal with so much perspective), one that tells you how understand and translate this episode into yourself. And one that tells you how to feel and teases those same feelings (example: the pan reveal to Locke in the casket in “There’s No Place Like Home,” which is the same pan reveal of Locke in Bram and Ilana’s box at the end of “The Incident”). I mention this only because it worries me, or, well, it intrigues me. Part of me just assumed that the finale would open with an image of Jack’s eye, or, possibly, close on that same image. But I do like the fact that now is the time for safe assumptions about coming full circle, which will keep you warm and happy, and can only be wrong.

2. Similarly, mirrors! Jack sees himself there in the mirror in the Sideways world, just as Ben will see himself as well. This has, of course, been a recurring thing in the Sideways world, a slow hint towards these characters seeing themselves and really seeing themselves for the first time, and looking past that image and through the looking glass…

3. It goes without saying, but things are coming together, merging both excitedly and under a dark cloud of fearful symmetry. Jack and Claire are living together. Ben is starting to see himself for realsies and having dinner with Alex and Rousseau, playing all nice and domestic. Locke is possibly accepting fate, exploring the swarming veins that connect coincidence and fate and synchronicity and realizing that he has a choice about what kind of man he is going to be. Oh, and of course…

4. Motherfucking Desmond “See you another life, brotha!” Hume.

Our favorite Scottish bastard started off as a mad man who had been beaten down and had the shit kicked out of him by destiny and by mysterious connections that held the world together. He struggled towards his saving grace, Penelope, and finally found happiness. But the universe wasn’t done with him yet, not ours and not the Sideways one either. Desmond has become a smooth, suave motherfucker (well, perhaps the motherfucking is to be more of a Ben thing in the Sideways world now?), hasn’t he?

It’s like he’s the wet nurse to something new, something that only his mojo can bring into existence. He’s got a master plan and he’s working to it, slowly at first, but now more steadily, with a higher velocity, and he’s lighting up more circuits and connections on the way.

And, yes, both Benjie and Lola and I actually sat there last night, staring dumbfounded at our TVs, thinking to ourselves, “Holy shit, is Desmond really going to hit Locke with his car again? In the same fucking parking lot where he did before?” Of course Ben ruined that, but you know what’s interesting? I really think that Desmond probably would have. But because he’s Desmond, his master plan can be interrupted and still work to his advantage, can’t it?

5. I love that Jack is now the one stitching up Kate, a lovely reference to their first real scene together in the pilot, and also a nice turn around of that moment. The basic black thread is there, of course, the only thing missing, actually was Jack’s “Count to five” story. But Kate had plenty to say about what had just happened to all of them, and more on that in a moment.

6. But, going back to Desmond for a moment here before I forget, when last we saw him, he was down in that well, and now… he’s not. The Man In Black/The Locke-ness Monster doesn’t know where he is, only that someone came to his rescue, and I have a theory about who that was. In fact, to me, it feels rather elementary:

Rose and Bernard, of course.

6. Fathers and daughters.

Island Ben has been on a redemptive white horse for most of this season now and of course the only thing that can throw him off of it is the mention and literal grave of his daughter, Alex. And then he’s back to the old him, but something worse, something more ruined and destroyed and lost. Throw in Widmore and Zoe, and the fact that nothing in Ben’s life will probably matter anymore because his death at the Locke-ness Monster’s hands is probably a foregone conclusion, and he’s more than dangerous. Of course he’ll shoot Widmore, not just to possibly stop him from whispering the secrets into Locke’s ear, but because, “He doesn’t get to save his daughter.”

But don’t forget that that’s what Kate used to try and get Jack primed up there on the beach as he was stitching her up, the reminder that Jin and Sun had a daughter, a daughter that Jin had never even gotten to meet. And for that, Kate said to Jack, we need to kill him. For the moment, Crazy Jackface is gone, all those tears cried out, all those drops in the ocean taken away on the tide. Jack just nodded his head and said simply, “I know.”

7. The title of this episode, “What They Died For,” is one I heard a while back from the SUPER SPOILERY NEW DEPARTMENTS of the Internet and it blew me away. I mean, it absolutely floored me. Initially, it was incorrectly reported as the title of the last episode and that was heavy, man. That was like gravity dropping an Acme piano on me. Then I found out that it was actually just the title of the second to last – or “penultimate,” if you will – episode and it still felt heavy, possibly in comparison to the last episodes very fitting title. (You notice how we only ever use the word “penultimate” when talking about TV shows these days?) And for something so big, something dealing literally with the mourning after of such chaos and death, this episode wasn’t a downer, nor super sad. All those tears were cried out, like I said. This episode was coping and fast and intriguing and surprisingly funny in places.

It’s interesting though how a word or a phrase can mean something so clearly when you hear it out of context, then mean something else when you hear it again, immersed in it’s proper place. It’s kind of like what you think of when you first hear the word “Might.” Is it a threat or a possibility to you when you first hear it? And “what they died for,” while sounding scary and ominous and morbid from far away, now feels hopeful and exciting to me. The “what” in “what they died for” carries over well into a question we’re all turning over in our brains now: “What’s next?”

8. Speech is for confessions. One of the things we’ve been hearing since she made her first appearance on the show is how important the Zoe character would be. She had secrets to spill, we were told. But if she won’t spill them, then what good is she?

There’s a fine line between all the girls and boys on Lost, but especially those that have passed on to the other side. Some perished with their mouths shut, their secrets taken to their graves with them, and there’s those who died with their tongues loosed, their sins laid bare and confessed and the Island was then done with them.

9. Music is a transcendent form, a primal force for magic. It can bring people together and it can change them, and I think we’re going to learn that in the Sideways world as seemingly everyone collides there. Seemingly David’s (Jack’s son) concert is the same as the one that Daniel Faraday was putting on, right? The same one that I’m willing to bet also features Driveshaft (not that anyone is asking for that). And it’ll be at the museum where Pierre Chang and Charlotte work, right? And Hurley and Sawyer Kate and Sayid and Desmond will all be in attendance too, I imagine? It would certainly seem that way.

Provided, of course, that you don’t pay too much attention to the actual chronology of the Sideways universe. Time seems a bit wonky there, going fast in some places, and moving glacially in others. Benjie and I were talking about this earlier, trying to work it out and I believe at one point I actually said this, “So Sawyer went back in time to arrest Sayid, who then sat in a jail cell for a few weeks, right?”

How great of a spinoff would this be?

10. I’m going to amend my statement from last week slightly: I do think there are certain things we deserve in the last episode of the show…

And I did say last week that there were certain answers that I just don’t think we were going to get and that we really shouldn’t be getting. You’ll notice that that’s me being all enlightened and shit. I’ve “let go” of things like that and moved into a place of acceptances. Much like characters in the Sideways universe. From now on, in the last 2 1/2 hours of the show, I think the answers that do come should all be important and organic (like the revelation of why Kate’s name was crossed out in the cave: She became a mother).

But while I do think that we’re not only owed, but need to know what exactly the deal with the Sideways world is, I think there’s another question we desperately need: What is “The Source?” Or, if you will, “The Light?” Those home fires that Jack in GOD MODE now has to protect? WTF is that?

11. Real quick, this is something that Benjamin LIGHT and I are desperately hoping for next week: Actually seeing (not intuiting or be told, but seeing) the form of John Locke convert into the Smoke Monster. Or vice versa. That’s an image I want to take away from this show. Perhaps because I’m a nut.

12. Also real quick: Benjie and I are in agreement that Richard Alpert is probably not actually dead yet. It seems like Locke wanted him out of the equation for a while and gave him a good thumping, possibly sending him flying through the air, who knows. But that would be a terrible ending for a character that has meant so much, and in such subtle ways, to both this show and it’s mythology and the history of the Island.

13. Let’s get to it here: JACK is the new JACOB.

14. This:

from here.

15. Is that it for Jacob on this show? That’s both good and bad. We see him in his youthful form and then we see him as he looked when he actually died. He summons are remaining living heroes from Oceanic 815 and finally really addresses them. He promises them answers but no, they don’t really get any. Gods and supernatural beings are hard to get straight talk out of. I didn’t find his argument for why they need to do this thing all that persuasive, really, but I don’t think it needed to be. They were there and then and probably knew what he was saying was true since it’s been building up within them for a while now. Yes, the motivation for so many actions on this Island, the reason behind them had to do with a man making a mistake and feeling lost because of it. So he sought out others like him, those who had found themselves astray and needed to be found and to find themselves. They needed something bigger. And so he brought them to his crazy, magic Island to slay a dragon for him.

Why hadn’t he ever said any of this to them before now? Well, first you should be asking why none of these characters have ever really shared some of these mega important details that had popped up over the years with each other when it was super important to do so. Maybe because you don’t always know what’s important at the time. And maybe because you’re a human being (or once were a proper human being). And because, as Jacob told Richard Alpert many, many years ago over a jug of wine at the foot of a destroyed statue of a fertility goddess: It’s not doing the right thing if I have to tell you to do the right thing. Sometimes you need to feel like you have a choice, even if it was never really yours.

But then again, fate and free will and destiny and the psychology of fucked up people is a tricky thing, yo. Remember Mrs. Hawking telling us that when the Universe/Time goes off track, it’ll always course correct to fix the error? The important thing there isn’t necessarily that the house (of fate) always wins, but that things can go off track. If you try hard enough you break free of your chains and disturb the Universe just enough that it has to get off it’s ass to course correct because of your actions. You can obliterate the solipsistic barriers. And if you can do that, if you fingerbang the very threads of existence and reality then, well, I imagine you can do anything.

16. And then, ladies and gentlemen, there’s Jack. The new Jacob. Two guys pretty much cut from the same cloth, hardened and forged by their haunting pasts. But Jack has just leveled up, as they say. The new guardian/protector of not just the Island, and the Source, but everything the Island represents. Jacob picked up some of the waters of the river, did an incantation, then had Jack drink it after accepting the job. He took the communion wine as his friends looked walk, musing about how this was fitting for a man with an already sizable God complex. And who may now very well be about to start passing judgment over the living and the dead. And that leaves us not just with the chess pieces all taking up the proper places for the endgame, but also…

17. … a few questions! Is Jack now immortal? Does Jack now have magic powers? Can he travel on and off the Island just as Jacob did? Can he touch people, and imbue them things, or nudge them into a different path? Does he now possess all of Jacob’s knowledge/memories? Or, really, just the knowledge? Will people listen to him? And, perhaps most importantly, perhaps echoing his father’s words to him all those years ago, does Jack Shepard have what it takes?

18. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

19. This:

from here.

20. Numbers. They’re everywhere! Not just the ones in the cave that correspond to the candidates, nor “the Valenzetti equation,” which we never actually heard talked about on the show, but the magic of numbers in general. Just like words, they are their own language, and one that haunts and delights and confounds us in ways. Just a reminder that the finale airs on May 23, this Sunday, a mere five days after “What They Died For.”

21. Just a theory: Remember the start of the Sideways world this season? Someone brought this up to me and now I can’t stop thinking about it, but remember how we saw the Island there at the bottom of the ocean? What if that’s not just (part of) the beginning of the Sideways universe, but what if that’s also (part of) the end of the Island we’ve come to know and love and be obsessed with over the past six years?

Also, Kate slumping into Sawyer there, was that her making a choice? And if so, will that choice be (dramatically) negated when Sawyer (most likely) has to make some epic sacrifice somewhere in the finale? Cause that’s all he really has to offer us now, right? Or was that moment just because it was what Sawyer needed it? And she was the strong one who could provide it at that point? And, take a moment, nerds, to appreciate how important this love triangle has been. Better than the TEAM ANGEL/TEAM SPIKE debates on Buffy? Kind of, but only because that was such a one sided contest, cause… Team Angel? Fuck off! And don’t even mention TEAM EDWARD/TEAM JACOB because, frankly, that’s lame. I mean, come on, a love triangle is a hard thing to maintain when one of the members in the trio suddenly has powers over time and space. And besides, I imagine that this love triangle was already hard to maintain since Kate was the focal point of it.

Yeah, I said it.

22. I could not believe how excited I actually was to see Ana Lucia/Michelle Rodridguez.

I kind of half suspected it would be her when Desmond mentioned the driver of their van, but then… well, I was excited and happy, let’s just say that. And I never in a million, billion years, not even in a Sideways universe, ever thought I’d be thinking that, let alone expressing it to you weird fuckers in Internet land.

from here.

23. Things squirm and wiggle and change as they get closer. As they slouch towards birth and Bethlehem. “The End” is really going to be the end of so many things. Not just of the show, but of us. Sure, we’ll always have this, sure, but it’ll be different. You can always pop in your DVDs and watch these episodes again but it’ll be all nostalgia and fond memories of this time, this right now, this haecceity, and it’s all fading away. Time is speeding up and will soon be disappearing. Newbies will discover this show in the future and be amazed by it and they’ll still be lacking this. This thisness. Right here and now, you, me, and everyone else, we’re all in this together. As I’m sure August Bravo would tell you, we’re all sword fighting and bumping our Lost Boners together. But it won’t last, so it has to be appreciated now. The wait over the next few days will be excruciating, but it’s worth it. You’ll never have this again. I can’t say that again. And not just with Lost, but can you honestly ever imagine a story striving for this level of EPIC in your lifetime again? For all the morons (especially on the internet) who hate this show, there’s something they’ll never be able to deny: How many shows actually strive and make the attempts for the layers and the storytelling that Lost has tried? Regardless of it’s failures and successes, only Lost has done this. We’ll all be sad when this show is over, and that’s appropriate, of course, but it’s okay to be excited. In fact, you better be.

I feel like we’re five days away from a party. And everyone’s invited. You all everybody! You just have to want to be there. All of us in one place (spread out over time zones, of course)(and internet viewing the next day, sure, but whatever!), and we want to feel all those sweaty ups and downs, the tugging of our heartstrings, the reaching for the kleenex, the cheering, all of it. We’re going to do it together and it’s going to be a massive celebration. Sometimes the party you want is a bonfire to dance around and sometimes that bonfire is a viking funeral. And we’re all going to sing and dance and hold onto this thing until the last little bit of that light goes out…