6.17 The End Part II

Random thoughts. I was stunned at how much more angry I am with the ending on second viewing. I pray that I get a brain aneurysm before I am forced to ever see it again. I’d rather drink a gallon of stomach acid than have to watch it again. It didn’t make any sense if you want to follow the rules the writers created, bent, and eventually discarded. I am livid over the church scene at the end. My LOST DVDs are currently smoldering outside in my backyard as I doused them in gasoline and danced around a blazing fire, naked in the moonlight. Maybe it was the middle of the day, and my neighbors were having a block party to which I wasn’t invited. But I was definitely naked. LOST gave me and many others years of entertainment, and it’s just a shame for such a fizzling finale. It’s having a hot naked broad in your bed, and having to say “Gee, that’s never happened to me before.” Then she pats you on the head and says “It’s OK, don’t worry about it, these things happen all the time.” Then she goes into the bathroom closes the door, and you can hear the giggling. On the bright side, Jack spent an hour dying, so at least he suffered. From a wound that moved around his body at least three times. The magical, traveling wound. That’s right. Ben isn’t the only one to have that talent. Throughout the whole episode, I kept thinking how Kate was a fairly attractive female during Season 1, and as of this episode, looked a lot like a frizzy rat. Her face was incredibly weasel-like, sort of like a ferret a former friend of mine had. I have to use former a lot since I have no current friends. They’re all dead. I killed them. At least I think they’re dead. They weren’t when I buried them. I just want to pat Kate on the top of her head and feed her pellets of food. So, let’s go forth and finish looking back on this epic failure of an finale, the tragic death of MIB, the blunders of who was and wasn’t in Jack’s shitty church, and the “what, that’s it?” final scenes.

We start with Jack and MIB running at each other on top of some cliffs. Are these the same cliffs that were right over the cave with names that Sawyer traveled to? Possibly. It’s raining really hard, the last rain we will see on the show. Jack and MIB fling themselves at each other and collapse. MIB takes the time to take off his backpack, which he managed to carry around for Seasons 5 and 6 for no reason. So, this must mean that he cannot change into smoke anymore, since if he could, Jack would have been pulverized. So, we’ve established that MIB can’t fight, after seeing young Jacob kick his ass several times. Now, he has to fight as an old man. Why would MIB leaving the island mean the end of the world? He just wants to take a trip. Is that so wrong? Why does Jack have stick his nose into family business. It’s not his fight, but Jacob and Mother vs MIB. Jack has murder on his mind and heart. Premeditated murder. MIB saved Jack’s life during the Widmore attack, and this is the thanks he gets. The fight itself is awkward, since it looks like Jack is fighting his grandfather. Part of the cliffs start to crumble away and fall into the ocean. The island is a giant pothole. MIB reaches for a knife, and manages to stab Jack in the armpit. I rewatched it 17 times. Armpit. Yet, a couple of seconds later, the knife is pulled out from Jack’s midsection, about 6 inches above the belly button. The wound moved about 2 feet. MIB puts the knife to Jack’s throat and sneers “You died for nothing”. I’m sitting at home and sneering “and his head is full of cotton candy too.” I was feeling pure joy at the thought of Jack being shish kabobbed, when the Bride of Frankenstein cowardly puts a bullet in the back of our hero. Kate: I saved you a bullet. Boooo. Kate ruins everything. The writers were so desperate to give Kate something meaningful to do after 6 seasons of committing crime after crime, they had her kill yet another person. Kate is a morally bankrupt person who missed out on a fantastic career running Enron. Jack kicks the mortally wounded MIB off the cliff, onto some rocks down below. Hippocratic oath, my ass. The camera lingers on the lifeless body, no evidence of any smoke, but plenty of evidence of a crime against humanity. MIB’s demise is at the hands of completely repugnant characters. The surgery for Locke is over in the hospital. Jack is bleeding from his neck, mimicking his spilled blood on the island. Somehow, this particular cut has been bleeding about a week in the LAX timeline, so Jack is no doubt a hemophiliac. Which means he’s gay. Locke wakes up before Jack can go for a run on the steps of a stadium because nowadays there is no security at such places in light of terrorist attacks and such. Locke: I can feel my legs. Locke continues to wiggle his toes, stabs Jack in the foot, wheels himself to the parking lot and finds the Pvssy Wagon, spends most of the day playing with his toes, makes up a list of people that he needs to kill, takes a flight to Japan, and takes on the entire country’s population in a fight with a Samurai sword. It’s called Kill Ben Volume I. Locke flashes to island memories, but he doesn’t seem to see the image of dying at the hands of Ben. Funny how that didn’t make it. Jack needs to skedaddle and see his son, which Locke correctly points out that Jack doesn’t have a son. So, David is a figment of Jack’s imagination. Nothing in this timeline matters, so how do you interpret David? The flash sideways is simply stupid in every possible way.

Jack examines his wound, and it’s moved again, this time to about where his pelvis it. And it’s on his side now too. So, the original stab wound has magically moved about 3 feet now. Also, not only did the rain stop instantly, it’s bright and sunny and there is no evidence that any rain has fallen at all, no puddles, nothing. Ben, Sawyer, and Hurley arrive to hear Kate say “it’s over”. Well, I’m more concerned about how they got the enormous tree off Ben, who couldn’t move a few minutes ago. Ben doesn’t even seem to be injured in any way at all. Stupid assh0le writers. Holes in the plot so big, you could drive a battle ship through it. Yes, I know battle ships don’t have wheels. Let’s just assume the tree disintegrated from the acid rain from the Factory Hatch. Sawyer visits Jin and Sun in the hosptital. Sun: it’s OK, I am safe, we will see you there. Well, the scene was short, and Sun and Jin barely talked. That’s fine with me. Frank is testing the plane and sends Miles to fix the hydrolics with duct tape. Has anybody tried using duct tape in plugging the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, because apparently it’s the 2nd most miraculous invention in history, behind the Shamwow. If duct tape is so incredible, how come hostage don’t lose their lips when you peel duct tape off their mouths? Still not sure why Hydra island is breaking up, as the cork and hole is on the main island way across the ocean. Jack figures out that he needs to reverse whatever Desmond did. Kate wants Jack to forget the silly stuff of saving the world, and instead come with them and let the magic island sink. Considering the Others that are still in the jungle, along with Rose, Bernard, Vincent, Desmond, Claire on the other island, it’s nice that she is willing to let the islands sink just so she can canoodle with Jack again in the outer world. Kate is a real people person. Somehow, rat-faced Kate can’t convince Jack and walks away in a huff. Miss Fussy Britches didn’t get her way and is off to pout. Sawyer is getting ready to go use the sailboat. Ben wants to go down with the island. Hurley says he is too fat for the ladder and wants to embrace certain death by following Jack, which is pretty standard for following Jack the last 6 seasons. Follow Jack = death. Kate cries and kisses Jack, which means that she is going to have sex with Sawyer as soon as she is out of Jack’s sight. Kate and Jack exchange I Love You’s and hopefully AIDS in their spit swapping. Why is a skilled surgeon like Jack bleeding to death? He doesn’t even attempt to seal the wound. Dumbest doctor ever. The kissing was pretty foul. It was like watching two deaf people try to sing karaoke. Cringe worthy. Like kissing an inflatable girl friend. So I’ve heard.

Sawyer and Kate go cliff diving, which is really dangerous considering how many rocks have crumbled off the cliffs in the last few minutes. Oh, how I wanted Kate to land head first on a rock shaped like a triangle. Frank barked to Sawyer to hurry up and get over there. ‘Ole Shag Carpet Chest is getting ants in the pants. In the hospital, Sawyer asks Jack where he could find some grub. Considering that Sawyer has no reason to be at the hospital at the moment, he could simply walk out and grab a bite to eat, but instead settles for the appetizing wares of a delectable vending machine. Sawyer pays for our old friend, the Apollo candy bar, and it won’t dispense. Juliet interrupts to explain that unplugging and then plugging in the machine will get the desired result, and introduces a not so subtle metaphor for what is happening on the island. Desmond popped out the cork of the island so that Jack could find a way to arbitrarily murder MIB and then you need to pop the cork back in so that the island doesn’t sink and everything goes back to normal, other than all the cracks and fissures on the island, and all the parts that fell into the sea. The island is basically ruined. During the first few hours on the job, Jack shatters the island and gets killed. Well, it was his first day, so I guess he’ll get better over the next few weeks. Oh, wait, he’s dead. Sawyer gets his candy bar. “It worked.” Ah, this was what Juliet wanted to tell Sawyer just before she died and then Miles had to read her dead mind. So, Juliet was speaking from the afterlife and actually said nothing meaningful. Meaning that Jack setting off the Jughead bomb did not work even a little bit. There was no reset, no landing in Los Angeles. Dead is dead. Whatever happened, happened. Daniel was wrong, Jack was wrong, Dharma was wrong. Jacob was wrong. Mrs Klugh was wrong. Vincent was wrong. Everybody that said anything during the course of the show was wrong. Juliet: “we should get coffee sometime” utters another quote from when she died in Sawyer’s arms During the season 6 opening episode. Their hands touched and they both flashed to the island memories, including the brutal Juliet falling down the shaft scene. Their reunion scene and kiss was fairly well done and these two really seemed to click on screen. I liked both characters overall, and it’s a shame that this was really the last meaningful scenes they had on the show. I’m not a total monster, and the scene almost made me feel an emotion of some sort, but I can’t tell what it almost was because the anger and bile came back fairly quickly. Hmm, what could it be that would cause me to have such disgust?

So Jack goes to the concert and runs into Kate. Aaaarrghghghghgh. I want to stick a fork in my ear and twirl it. Everybody is gone. No doubt the crowd heard about 2 songs from Daniel Drive Shaft, and left as if the building was on fire. On fire with crap music. I don’t believe Daniel drives and Claire just gave birth. Who drove them home? Details, it’s all in the details. Kate: looking for someone? Well, I’d like to think someone needs Kate’s help in loading a couch into the back of a van and then Kate wakes up at the bottom of a well without skin while a naughty gentleman with a nickname of “Buffalo” is doing a tuck dance to Goodbye Horses in a Kate skin suit. Jack: where do I know you from? I’d go with America’s Most Wanted, Cops, Reno 911 or a supporting character on My Name is Earl. Kate reminds the thinking challenged Jack that she stole his pen on the Oceanic 815 flight. Psst, Jack, this is the 34th person you’ve met from the flight in Los Angeles. Do you still think it’s a coincidence, Sherlock? Kate says how much she has missed Jack and puts her hands to his head. Jack has a bit of a flash, but I expect that I’d have the same feeling if Kate put her hands to my temples. Yes, electric shock therapy and probably some projectile vomiting. Kate: come with me, you will understand. She wrinkles her nose like a rat. Back to the cave, and Jack is to go on alone. Well, you can finally see his neck wound, the one that has been showing up in worthless flash sh!tways timeline. Hurley is crying and being angry over Jack about to die, like a 13 year old girl that just got opened up a present at her birthday party and didn’t get what she demanded from her parents. Jack decides that petulant Hurley should be his replacement to protect the island, mostly because he needs to be replaced by someone who cries really well, and Hurley is putting on a good show. Ben is standing right there. The guy has wanted to be in charge of the island his whole life. And instead, Jack forces the island into the hands of Hurley, who has said in previous episodes he didn’t want the job, and even now is fighting this. Jack is forcing Hurley to be a prisoner of the island for the rest of his life. Jack is an assh0le. Jack fills up a rather worn down and unclean water bottle from a mud puddle, and hands it to Hurley to drink. No chant is forthcoming, so now the ceremony is not following the rules established. Hurley chokes down the filthy, diseased water, and is now the equal of Jack. Except, Jacob and Hurley never had a choice in becoming a guardian. Jack volunteered. So, Hurley is not “just like me”. Franks starts up the plane, which sounds worse than a 30 year old lawnmower. I bet Frank had to pull the string of the plane about 7 times to get it revving. Hugo and Ben lower Jack down into the bottom of the cave, but can’t hold on for long, and Jack plummets the rocks below like Locke in Season 5 fell down the well before turning the frozen donkey wheel. Speaking of which, why exactly was it wrong for Ben to turn it instead of Locke, causing the time travel. That’s what MIB told Locke in that well/Orchid station. In the end, that wasn’t explained either. Jack finds Desmond on the ground. This is no time for a nap. Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey. Desmond explains that he put out the light, but it didn’t work, they are still there, he thought they would disappear, you were right Jack. Jack: there is a first time for everything. While it’s nice to see Jack admit that he never right about anything, he thought Desmond was a weapon to use against MIB. It didn’t really work out that way. Desmond unplugged the island, so that Jack could beat up MIB, but that was an accidental result that Jack had no expectations of occurring. Desmond was wrong, thinking the plug would work like Jughead was supposed to, but strike two, everybody on the show was wrong about everything. Jack ties the rope around Desmond. The islands continue to crumble. Somebody needs to order a sh!tload of duct tape to repair the mess. Sawyer and Kate find Claire sitting on the beach. Oh, dear God, they left Skull Baby behind. No wonder Claire is depressed. Frank throws the plane into reverse, looks out his rear view mirror, and slowly backs out into traffic like a soccer mom leaving her driveway in an SUV. I had trouble with that bag of crap. It’s like the plane had the maneuverability of a motorcycle. It’s a huge commercial airliner for crying out loud. Claire: this island made me crazy, I don’t know how to be a mother anymore. I’ll say. You left Skull Baby on the other island, you clumsy oaf. That skull is all alone. I bet that by now Vincent has made it a chew toy and pissed on it. Kate: I’ll help you. Oh, no you won’t. There is no focking way Mrs. Littleton is allowing Kidnapping Kate anywhere near her grandchild. Plus, Kate broke her probation for leaving the state of California. Guess who is going to jail for the next 10 years? Hahaha. For a second there, I thought Kate and Claire were going to kiss. I think I’ve been watching too much adult entertainment lately. Frank is making skid marks on the runway, popping some wheelies, doing a Triple Lindy while ignoring Sawyer’s pleas to wait a second, they are right around the corner. Hell, these people might die, but a schedule is a schedule. Frank is suffering withdrawls, and needs to get off the island as fast as possible to find some whacky tobacky. The plane’s seats are purple. It’s gotten to the point where I refuse to allow anything purple inside my house. Sawyer, Kate, and Claire run out of the jungle and in front of the plane. Frank: what the Hell? Oh, for fock’s sake Burt Reynolds from Boogie Nights. They are called “people”, Frank. You know how that walkie thing sitting on the ground about 3 feet away from you has been squawking for half an hour “wait, oh God, please wait we are almost there, for the love of God don’t leave us to die on this God forsaken crumbling rock”, well some folks are trying to get your attention. And you should be able to recognize people, numbskull, you transport them everyday in a big metallic thingy in the air. When Bram called Frank a possible “candidate” for something, he meant lobotomy. And he meant that Frank already had one. Jack is really milking this death scene, as it does take him about an hour of screen time to finally gurgle off into the afterlife. I think the wound is working it’s way up his chest, but I just don’t care anymore. Jack picks up the cork and puts it back in it’s hole. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a round peg and a square peg there, or Jack would have bled to death trying to figure out which one belonged in a round hole. Claire, Sawyer, Kate climb aboard the plane. These scenes are not happening in the same time frame. The plane is about to leave and fly off, while Jack still has another hour to die. Frank is zig zagging all around the runway, which is cracking like Joan Rivers face will the next time she sneezes. Again, why is Hydra island breaking up, when the bloody hole is on the other island? Cheesy. As this Ajira Six (Frank, Richard, Miles, Sawyer, Kate, Claire) is getting ready to leave, what about all the passengers that got purged. They never confirmed who or what killed them. So they need to make up a cover story, like Oceanic Six did. But Frank has to explain how he landed a plane on a runway on an island that you can’t find, all the passengers except for Kate and himself are gone, they found 4 new people to board the plane, one of the passengers was born about 190 years ago, and a hundred passengers are dead. Oh, and the guy in the coffin is missing too. The plane wobbles down the runway and takes off. I so want it to hit a ridge and explode into a huge ball of flames. Good luck in finding the right coordinates to leave, since this isn’t a helicopter. Oh, that’s right. Any established rules are out the window. It’s time for Six Flags to put up an amusement park on the island. Maybe some strip malls. And 74 Subways. On the plane, Kate and Claire are holding hands. I wonder how Aaron will feel about his lesbian mothers? The camera cuts away before they kiss, but they were moving towards each other. I swear. Hey, if Kate can’t have Jack, she can still get his sister. Jack is laying in the pit, no doubt thinking about how he wasted his life. The shaking of the island stops, the stupid light comes back on again, moths start to fly directly into it, and all is right in the world again. Boooo. Ben and Hugo pull up a sack of potatoes with the rope, and it’s Desmond. Jack is still laying in the pool/pit. Hurley is so overjoyed to see his friend Desmond alive, he accidently yells out things like “Nooooooo!!!!” and “Jack!!!!!” instead of “I’m very happy to see you alive, Desmond.” He almost kicks Desmond back down into the cave. Hurley is an anal wart. I can assure you, not everybody loves Hugo. He is now firmly in the spotlight, and his character is regressing in maturity and morality. Be proud in your ultimate successor, Jacob. It’s Pee Wee Hurley. Meanwhile, why did we need Desmond to uncork the island, if Jack can do it in reverse. And neither turned into a smoke monster. What are the focking rules? This is bullsh!t. No logic whatsoever. Jack is now an electro magnetic freak of nature too? Mother says don’t let anyone in the cave, and it’s a damn conga line to the inside. Start building an E-Z Pass lane.

The church where the coffin was delivered. Locke arrives in a taxi, gets in a wheelchair, and starts to push himself towards the stairs. Ben is sitting outside in what looks like a courtyard, on a bench. Locke: is everybody here already? Ben: mostly. So, the Flashies are gathering together after their awakenings. Ana Lucia was not ready yet, but these folks have been manipulated into memories. I guess nobody likes Ana Lucia enough to wake her up. But I’ll get back to that topic in a bit. Ben apologizes to Locke for his selfishness, his jealousy of what Locke had. Locke: what did I have? Well, two useless limbs, only one kidney, a fear of falling out of 8 story windows, and a dead fiancé. Ben: you were special. I strongly believe Ben is trying to set up Locke to murder him again. Can you kill someone twice? If anyone can figure it out, it’s Benjamin Linus. Locke forgives Ben. I’m disappointed. This is terrible closure. I want Ben to grab that wheelchair and push it down a steep hill towards a busy highway. It’s creepy seeing Locke without the eye scar. Ben isn’t going inside because he still has some things to work out. Well, after killing thousands of people, I think Ben is going to get jabbed in the ass with a pitchfork in the afterlife. I’m surprised not to see him on fire right now. What, he isn’t done trying to sexually assault Alex? Ben: I don’t think you need to be in that chair anymore. Locke: DON’T TELL ME WHAT I CAN’T DO!!!!....er…wut? Locke stands up, walks inside. Desmond is semi conscious on the island. Ben gives him a rock for a pillow because a back pack would have been a worse choice. Hurley is blubbering. Get it? H: It’s my job now. Hurley is a real Panicky Pete. Ben: do what you do best, help people. That was a completely terrible bit of writing. Help people? Hurley? The only meaningful things Hurley has done for 6 seasons is take a census, steal food, and listen to dead people tell him that he is an idiot. Hurley stinks and I don’t like him. He needs for someone to smack him in the face and yell “Act like a man, what’s the matter with you!!!” Instead, Sally SobsALot is lamenting that he has to roll up his sleeves and do some work for once in his life. Or give the job to Ben, the deserving person for the island. He’s a sneaky little sh!t. He’s perfect for the job. Ben suggest that maybe they can try to get Desmond home. Hurley: people can’t leave the island. Ben: that’s how Jacob ran things. What? The guardian makes up the rules as they go along. Which Ben had no problem breaking when he allowed Michael and Walt leave. Well, it’s a good rule nonetheless. But I can’t imagine that the Romans that shipwrecked and brought Jacob and MIB to the island couldn’t have built a raft and left. No, it’s hard to leave. But, let’s get rid of all the rules. They mean nothing. That’s just the way Jacob ran things. Is that so? Jacob ran nothing. He kidnapped people from the outside world, brought them to the island, and watched them get slaughtered. Hurley asks for Ben’s help. Ben embarrassingly agrees. The stone cold killing machine, the man with a plan, is now Hurley’s coffee boy. How depressing. We don’t know how Laurel and Hardy end up running the island, but I would be so unhappy if Ben didn’t at least try to kill Hugo 3 times. Hurley walks out of the church for apparently no reason and sees Ben. Ben: I don’t think I’m coming in. Ben is on the outside of the cool kids. He knows it. Oh, and there are the thousands of people he killed. That might be a problem. You were a good #2. You were a great #1. Yuck. I need to go take a #2 now after hearing that sickening display of affection from these butt buddies. Jack arrives at the church with Kate. Is this afterlife in the vision of Jack only? I mean, of all the meeting places, it had to be his father’s funeral? Is this whole dam show about Jack and his journey on the island and his utter failure in getting his fellow passengers rescued and now he is rewarded with hanging out with his friends that he helped kill in the afterlife. I bet a bunch of them have better places to go and more important people to hand out with, but are now trapped to suffer in eternity with stupid Jack and his completely inane stories and lack of wit and lack of charm. Kate is going inside, and suggests Jack take the back entrance so that she doesn’t have to be seen with him in public because Kate is afraid the paparazzi with take unflattering pictures of them. Insane Kate must be seeing a red carpet where there clearly is none. Jack wakes up outside the cave, his body is transported much like MIB’s was, but he isn’t dead, which is bullsh!t. He is not a smoke monster, so that’s double bullsh!t. He stubbles into jungle, bleeding, and dying. Good. Maybe a polar bear catches his scent. Jack enters the “church”. More bullsh!t. Look, don’t call it a church if you insist on displaying religious symbols and pictures from a dozen different faiths. Jewish people have Temples, Muslims have Mosques, etc. Churches are more Christians based. People are so paranoid of offending somebody that logic is suspended. Either make it a church, or have the meeting place in a waffle house. Politically correct people are like colostomy bags with holes. Completely useless. Jack approaches the coffin. This would have been a cool time to break out some horror film music, like the piano music from Halloween. He puts his hand on the coffin, and he becomes a Flashie. He swings open the lid. The coffin is empty, but Christian Shepherd is right behind him. Look out, he’s got a chainsaw. Jack: I don’t understand. Oh, boy, here begins the 10 minute speech that could have taken 30 seconds because Jack needs to reason things out. Jack: you died….(4 minutes elapse)…so….I died too. Christian hugs Jack like he did when Jack got his first D on a math test. That was a proud moment. Jack cries. Well, Jack has to cry every episode. It’s in the contract. I kept waiting for Jack to ask “So, how’s Mom?” but it never happened. Jack is an assh0le. Is this really Christian Shepherd, or God, or something else entirely? Like when Jodie Foster in that wretched Contact movie finally got a chance to talk to aliens, and they appeared as her dead father to her to make it easier to understand. Is this a Matrix world? Oh, the possibilities are endless, but somehow the writers make this scenario suck really badly. Christian: everything that has ever happened to you is real, everybody dies sometime, some died long after you, there is no “now” here. OK. Everybody dead, time is of no consequence. Got it. All these dead people were just living a fake life in this “timeline” as it all meant nothing. David doesn’t exist, Jack. Oh, Keamy dies in the afterlife, so I have no idea what happens when you die more than once. Christian: this is a place you made so that you could find one another, the most important part of your life was spent with these people, you needed all of them, they needed you, to remember and let go. Jack: moving on? Where? Christian: Let’s find out. Bullsh!t. Fine, I’ll go with the flow and say they created an afterlife for themselves somehow. But you are telling me that in the afterlife, you don’t retain your memories? Fine, whatever. But I certainly would challenge the “most important part of your life” part. For who? Boone, who spent a couple of days on the island, before getting killed? But these people were on the island. Wait, stop. Penny never stepped foot on the island. She’s inside the church. Well, certainly Richard spend a century and a half on the island. Not there either. Hmmmmm. Jack is still stumbling, bleeding in the jungle. So the hugs start in the church. I guess they’ve either been hugging for a long time waiting for Jack, or just started when Jack enters the room. Either image is disturbing. I’d rather hug a cactus in a swimming pool full of AIDS than hug any of these repugnant sociopaths. The church is a lobby, a waiting place, where a select few random people are permitted to wait until the Guest of Honor appears and then they can leave. Jack is back to where he began in the pilot episode, the bamboo field, the sneaker in the tree he woke up near, So let’s see who is here. Shannon and Sayid. Sayid pined for Nadia for 6 seasons of Lost, married her, saw her die…then there was Elsa, whom he dated for weeks, who he killed and she died in his arms, and Shannon, who he dated for about 3 days, and he is spending eternity with her. I’m sure Boone is thrilled, watching his sister, whom he slept with, in the arms of someone else. Boone is doomed to be alone and jealous for eternity. Libby, kissed Hugo once, and is stuck with him for eternity. No, you do not lose weight when you die. Aaron, a few days old, stuck as a baby for eternity. You don’t age in eternity, right? So Aaron must have died as a baby. Except he is 4 years old in the real world. How the fock do these rules work? Aaron went backwards in time, died, and will be in diapers forever? Where are Michael, Walt, Mr Eko, Miles, Charlotte, Daniel, Eloise, Widmore, Ji Yeon, Dr Arzt, Nikki, Paulo, Richard, Frank, Danielle, Alex, Nadia, Desmond’s kid Charlie, Clementine, Hugo’s mother, Jack’s mother, Ilana, Sawyer’s parents, and on and on? So these people weren’t important on the island, or nobody cared about them? Or what? Why aren’t these people here? Jack only invited a few people to his party? He invited crib death Aaron? And you have to bring a date, as nearly everybody is paired up with somebody. Wait, I didn’t see Helen. Poor Locke, he doesn’t get to bring his love of his life along. And, kids, dogs DO NOT go to heaven. I have seen the proof. They sit down on the pews, Christian strolls to the back of the church behind them, opens the doors, and all you see is bright light. Boooooo. Vincent approaches the dying Jack. Jack watches the Ajira plane fly overhead, minutes before the duct tape unravels and the plane plummets towards the water and kills everybody on board. Vincent lays down by Jack, thinking about how chewy his skull will taste. Especially after peeing on Jack’s stupid corpse head. Jack the attention wh0re closes his eye. Rot in peace. I guess the island didn’t want to heal him. Hahaha.

I thought about doing another article, a series wrapup, but I’m still bitterly disappointed with the ending of the show, so I guess this is it. I wanted to explore the answered questions and what we learned from the show. Unfortunately, there are thousands of unanswered questions and in the end, we learned nothing. This show gave me a lot of enjoyment over the years, but like a dying grandmother, the ending was wheezy, uncomfortable to watch, and reeked of unchanged diapers. Sure, I complain and cuss, but in the end, I still can’t be classy. The End sucked. Thank you for reading these bits of drivel

6.16 What They Died For

Random thoughts. This is a joke, right? “What they died for?”. Oh, I can think of a better title. How about “Why Does Every Remaining Candidate Suck?” or maybe “Why I’m Glad They’re Dead” or “Is Tricia Tanaka Still Dead?” or “Fee Fi Foe Fum, Why Is Jack So Dumb?”. Another murky, meandering, episode with a couple moments of brilliance. Another excuse to jam 30 minutes of commercials into every episode. And to charge a million dollars an ad for the finale. And to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Or some other cliché. The journey is near the end. But I have a deepseated fear that the finale will clearly show how pointless Season 6 really was. But this episode had a pulse hear and there, and wasn’t as breathtakingly awful as some of the Season 6 episodes have been. It was yet another set up episode, but by last count we’ve had 37 of them this season, all to set up what I assumed to have been a wildly epic finale, back when my obsession with this show was borderline unhealthy. Now, it’s merely an addiction, like alcohol is for me, being an unfunny, sanctimonious, zero insight assh0le is for John Stewart, and losing is for Cleveland sports teams. I’d like to apologize to myself, as that was uncalled for. So is Betty White’s stupid career resurgence. Hey, lady, crawl into a casket and leave me alone already. I’m tired of your dusty vagina on my screen every day. And another thing, stop with the Sarah McLaughlin animal shelter commercials. You know what I feel when I see a dog or a cat that is dying? That somebody didn’t punch it in the face enough times. I’d like to put out my cigarette in it’s good eye. Oh, I do feel some modicum of joy now and then. Sun is gone. Jacob is gone. Two of the 4 Horseman of the Horrible Characters Apocalypse. Sadly, when I see Jack talking, I just see Ike from South Park, with his skull kind of bobbing up and down on top of this jaw, completely ridiculous. Jack is tragic, in a Roger Ebert face sort of way. And, then there is sassy Kate, challenging Jacob, demanding answers. Kate is a festering mouth sore. She ruins everything. I lost my train of thought. We need to use Betty White’s head as a mop to clean up the Gulf of Mexico.

The Previously On LOST opening featured the death of Jin and Sun, and I have to admit, it’s every bit as funny as the first time it aired. I guess they got PWNED, or in this case, KWNED. There, a joke for you youngsters out there. Remember kids, littering makes you look cool, losing your virginity is an exercise of unsatisfying disappointment, and never, never, never vote. Jack wakes up in what looks like the apartment he lived in back in Season 5, the one where Kate showed up to have pity sex with Jack as she was in tears after giving Aaron back to his rightful owner. Jack has multiple cuts on his neck, like we saw in the first episode of this season as Jack looked into the plane’s bathroom mirror. We get it, it’s another mirror. But more significantly, I hope to all things holy that MIB has slashed Jack’s neck in the other timeline and Jack is bleeding to death. Let see you fix yourself, doc. Or maybe Jack hasn’t figured out how to shave. Or maybe David is trying to kill his father in his sleep. Speaking of Jack’s son, the smug sissy David made breakfast like any 4 year old would for his parents on their birthday. Cereal. I can’t think of a worse thing to eat for breakfast other than crushed glass, a handful of gunk from the bottom of your garbage disposal, or Tang. The best breakfast, of course, comes from a liquor bottle. Don’t mind if I do. Ahhhhhhhhh, burns. I’m disappointed that David couldn’t even attempt to make some burnt toast or maybe scramble up some eggs that have laid around to long and the contents have beaks and feet. That’s not Tabasco on top of over easy. The big night on the town for the dapper DumbDumbs is going to some concert, one that will be attended by the mysteriously missing Jack’s ex-wife. Sigh. It’s going to Juliet, isn’t it? For the love of God, stop smiling at each other. It’s morning. And you, David, are a teenager. Show some respect and act your age. Scowl at Jack, throw a fit, and storm out of the house, turn around, ask for lunch money, then go back to storming out of the house. Claire is indeed living there, and comes out to have some cereal and very awkward conversation. Claire looks like she is about to give birth to a grand piano. A phone call to Jack informs him that his father’s coffin has been found, the cargo located. Which is Jim Fine Dandy, other than it’s Desmond making the call, brazenly not trying to hide his accent. I need to wonder, how does Desmond know that Jack is missing cargo, if Jack only told Locke about it, back at the airport? Back on LOST island, and yes, after the sub sank, they managed to swim to LOST island, Jack is stitching up Kate, a reversal of the Pilot episode, when Kate stitched up Jack. The bullet went all the way through, but we must be careful for the wound to not get infected. Personally, I’m rooting for maggots to start squirming in the hole next episode. I hope that when you just read that last sentence, you had a big mouthful of cereal. Stupid cereal. Yeah, I get the reference. The magical glowing cave, most likely a hideout for a Leprechauns’ pot of gold. And this week, they are chomping away on Lucky Charms. Ooooo, there’s some clever writing. Kate reminisces about Sun and Jin and how they left a baby behind. Way to go, lunkhead. Sayid died. Frank died. But all you care about is making plans to get off the island and steal another baby. Hey, don’t you even think about stealing Skull Baby while poor Claire is abandoned yet again, this time completely by herself on Hydra island. And does anybody really care that Jin never saw Ji Yeon. Sawyer never saw Clementine. Where do you draw the line? Kate has the focus and long term memory of a finch. Kate: Locke did this, we have to kill him. Jack: I know. Everybody else on the planet: How are you fockheads going to do that? How do you kill a homicidal puff of smoke? With positive thoughts? Putting yourselves on a pedestal, believing that somehow you are better than him? MIB is the hero of this show. If I ever kidnap any children, I hope they grow up just like MIB. I wouldn’t trust Jack and Kate to figure out how to make a cheese sandwich if I handed them a loaf of sliced bread and cheese.

Random debris, including life vests, is washing up on shore. Something that Frank and Jin probably could have used, who are debris right about now as well. As Sawyer is watching the tide, Kate wanders up along side and puts her head on his shoulder. Well, that made me sick to my stomach. Sure, earlier that same Tuesday morning I started severely vomiting as I brushed my teeth, partly because I was using the rather obscure Colgate Minty Fresh Dumpster Juice flavor, which was followed by getting the shakes and sweats and going to work to sit through 10 hours worth of hallucinations in meetings. I’m not saying I was seeing things, but the Energized Bunny was thumping on my head with a mallet and I stabbed a director in his ear with a pencil. Which is ridiculous. Who uses pencils nowadays? Jack declares that Sayid told them that Desmond was at the bottom of a well and that they will need him. Not that they want to rescue their buddy and look out for his well being. That they need him. Yeah, this show is about characters and not objectifying them as game pieces. Riiiiiiiiiight. Desmond is sitting, idling in a school parking lot, and I nearly shat my pants in joy that he was going to run over Locke again. How hilarious that would have been. Well, maybe I exaggerated a bit. I didn’t nearly sh!t my pants. I actually did sh!t my pants. And it was lovely. Locke is wearing a purple checkered shirt. There is that color again. Look, I’m not crazy, but how many people do you see in your life that wear purple that aren’t mongoloid dinosaurs or hosts of day time talk shows. I haven’t worn a single thing purple in at least 20 years. I’m a simple man. All my T-shirts are black, my pants are black, my sneakers are black, and my socks are dark gray. See? I’m not so predictable. Ben interrupts Desmond’s zen like trance of concentration with a haughty “Oh, no you don’t” tone that would make Rupaul blush. Alas, Desmond is not here to hurt Locke, which dawned on Ben after a number of knuckle sandwiches to the face. Ben flashes back to when Desmond was punching him in the face on the dock in Season 5 when Ben shot Desmond and tried to kill Penny. Desmond drives off without anybody noticing or caring that Ben was attacked in the wide open. Ben, Miles and Richard are tromping through the jungle. Ben tries to give a lecture about the Barracks to Miles, who lived at the Barracks 30 years ago. Miles get weird, um, gets weirder for a moment, going wonky as he communicates with a dead person. Richard: it’s Alex, I buried her after you left. I bet Richard cupped her breasts too, the creep. This was an obvious plot device to remind the viewer of Ben’s affection for the young child he stole from her mother many years ago. Alex took a bullet to the head by Keamy when Ben didn’t want to come outside and play. Ben shows off his secret room in his old house, one that about 50 people know about. Ben tries out a brand new philosophy. This is where I went to summon the monster, before I realized it was summoning me. Yeah, monster, drugs, cigarettes, Girl Scout cookies. It’s all the same. Personally, I like the onld “Do unto others before they do it to you” and “Never assume, because you only make an ass out of yourself” or “Rock, paper, scissors”. A group decision is made to grab all the C4 so that they can blow the plane to Hell, a location otherwise known as Whole Foods. Hey, there’s Zoe poking around on the kitchen floor, like a rat looking for a scrap of cheese. Charles appears and asks Ben if he can come in. Which is a tad more courteous then Ben showing up in your bedroom in the middle of the night.

Charles decides to pour himself a glass of water. Considering that I don’t think anyone has used the sink for years, I would have recommended running the water a bit instead of settling for a mouthful of cloudy sludge. Charles turns to Ben and says “this swallow of water is my crowning achievement and one swallow is worth more than you would make in a month”. Some other stuff about never being allowed to marry his daughter. Zoe is sent to grab the equipment and sink the canoe. I bet Charles wants to assemble a treadmill. Widmore lectures anybody that will listen that he is their last chance of survival. He claims to have wired the plane, which was not exactly something we needed answered because we had figured that one out a few episodes ago. I’d rather he have mentioned the purge on Hydra island. Widmore boasts that he is always 3 steps ahead of Ben, except for when Ben had him banished from the island and Ben had Sayid kill all of his people and Ben beat him back to the island and Ben found Penny first. Other than that, Charles rules. Ben is curious how Charles came back. CW: Jacob visited me after your people destroyed my freighter, showed me the error of my ways, told me everything for this exact purpose…and before we hear something really super important, we are interrupted by Zoe. MIB is coming. Charles sh!!ts his pants, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Well, all that bravado disappeared. All the information, all the planning, all the careful detail has boiled down to this shining moment for a Charles Widmore. The pressure is on, you’ve worked your whole life for this one moment of glory. CW: we need to hide. Oooooh. Wrong answer. Ben is being looked after in the nurse’s office at his school. It’s Dr Linus, actually, he corrects the nurse. What an insufferable pr!ck. Nice to have Ben back even for a brief moment. Ben looks into a mirror. Yeah, yeah, another mirror. I hate mirrors now. How has LOST changed my life? No, it’s about an appreciation for serial television programming. I now hate mirrors, tomatoes, and surgeons with the last name of Shepherd. I listed those items in order of intelligence. Locke swings by. Ben explains that he approached the man that ran down Locke, instead of calling the police or getting help, because it’s a good idea for a history teacher with the physique of a mollusk to attempt to apprehend on foot a dangerous criminal with a car. Ben saw something, he didn’t want to hurt you, but you needed to let go, and Ben believed him. More significantly, Ben is walking around with bruises and cuts on his face again, which to him is as comfortable as sitting on a pillow when you have ‘roids. Miles the cop is reminding Sawyer of a benefit as his father’s museum. See, combine that with the concert that David was talking about and the concert Desmond mentions later, it’s hard not to see where this is going next episode. Most of the flashsideways characters are going to meet at the concert at the museum. Don’t forget that Daniel is a musician, so he will bring along his group too. It’s all going to intersect, other than the people in the hospital like Sun and Jin. Desmond turns himself in to the cops, specifically Miles and Sawyer. Sawyer and Desmond are wearing purple shirts. Desmond is placed in the same cell as Sayid, next to Kate’s cell. Well, we can see Desmond’s strategy, but it is odd that he was privy to this information of where to find them right this moment. As Jack and his sad sack group goes to look for Desmond’s well, Sawyer is wrestling with the logic of the bomb detonating on the submarine. Jack tries to bullsh!t Sawyer: I’ve been wrong before. OK, I could spent some time pointing out that Jack is nearly always wrong, but I’d rather just note that he is not just like Jacob, because Jack does know how to lie. S: I killed them. Jack: No, he killed them. Well, Jack is wrong about 5 seconds after saying he can be wrong. Yes, Sawyer killed those people, and that is why Sawyer is the new Hapless Jack. He now has to deal with the guilt of people dying because he was a man of action and not of faith, and did something stupid. Hurley sees young Jacob, who promptly demands the ashes that Hurley picked up in a small sack right after Ilana exploded. The young punk runs off, with Hurley lumbering behind. Hurley runs up to a burning fire, and the grown up Jacob is back. Young Jacob tossed the ashes in the fire, once the ashes burn out, we will never see any Jacob again. Sigh. Finally, some good news. Hurley needs to go find his friends and bring them here, because we are very close to the end and there might be S’mores afterwards.

MIB arrives on LOST island, with Claire nowhere on board the canoe. Well, at least Claire will be able to sustain herself with fish biscuits in the polar bear cages, if she can figure out how they work. MIB notes with amusement the equipment in the canoe that Charles brought over and left behind. Ben doesn’t want to hide like Charles and Zoe plan to. Miles’ plan is to run through the jungle haphazardly, but does take a walkie with him. Will Miles’ simply be a loose end not tied up, or will he be summoned into a trap next week. Will we ever see another Other before the finale. Richard decides that he and MIB are old pals, and they should talk it out. After all, MIB just wants to leave the island with Richard. It’s wonderful how in this moment of panic, 4 separate plans were hatched and executed. Richard goes for a stroll through the Barracks, we hear the smoke noise, Richard is grabbed by the neck, and thrown through the air. It’s unfortunate that we cannot with certainty confirm his death, but based on Ben’s slumped shoulders, I wouldn’t bet against it. I guess MIB was really pissed when Richard changed his mind of joining him after Isabella talked to him. MIB in human form joins Ben on a porch, turning down an offer of a lemonade. What kind of monster is this, turning down a cool beverage after building up a thirst from killing people? I suppose MIB might be diabetic. MIB wants Ben to kill some people for him. Considering how few people remain alive on the island, Ben probably has a good idea of whom he has to kill. But the good news is that Ben is really, really good at killing. In exchange, Ben can have the island all to himself. This is the second time MIB has offered this deal to Ben, the first being when Ben was digging his own grave at gunpoint a few episodes ago. Back then, Ben was confused and looking for a place he belonged, which was with Ilana and Jacob’s team, a really sad situation because it made Ben a whimpering sissy. Now, Ben is given a real chance at redemption, a chance to kill for control of the island, and like a man he accepts. Good for Ben. He is one of the good guys again. I can’t wait until he kills Zac and Emma. Ben: Charles Widmore is hiding in my closet. Nice. Ben is back. It’s like seeing a few minutes of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy episode. Although, who expected Charles would be coming out of a closet. He has kids, afterall. Alex, wearing a purple checkered shirt, sees the injured Ben, calls him the nicest guy ever, and invites him home for dinner. She better hope Keamy won’t be hiding outside her house in the bushes, because then we will see just how Ben is the nicest guy ever. Danielle is Alex’s mother, as was established in the Ben episode many months ago when Alex’s last name was revealed to be Rousseau. Danielle insists Ben come over even if they have to “kidnap” him. What a knee slapper. Danielle looked pretty good; then again, after 16 years in the jungle without a shower, I suppose she would have some bounce in her hair in this timeline. As they are doing the dishes, Ben decides to inappropriately ask about Alex’s father. Danielle explains that he died with Alex was two and she had to shoot him when his gun jammed after escaping the monster. Or something like that. Danielle believes Ben is a father figure to Alex. Ben tears up and nearly leans over to kiss Danielle. This is threatening to become a happy ending for these characters, and that just makes me furious. Back on the island, Ben is hell bent on revenge. The closet door swings open. Ben: Sorry, Charles. Well, what did Charles Widmore expect? His sworn enemy just gave up his hiding spot in about 5 seconds. For such a powerful man, Charles sure is a dummy. So, how did that “war is going to the island” thing work out for you Charles? Hmmm? No fences, no pretenses. I’m Zoe…and her throat gets slashed. Well, that was a quick introduction. MIB: Well, you told her not to talk to me, so that made her pointless. No, her character made Zoe pointless. Zoe had less personality than Skull Baby. So, that takes care of all the new characters introduced in Season 6, and they all sucked ass. MIB wants answers, and if he doesn’t get them, his first act off the island will be to kill Penny. Well, I was rooting for Ben to shoot Penny back in Season 5. so I’m perfectly fine with this plan. MIB promises not to kill her if Charles talks. I suppose this is one of the rules. MIB has to keep his promises. I certainly think he would do it regardless, as he is a man of integrity. Unlike Jacob. Charles brought Desmond to the island as a means of last resort. Charles doesn’t want to finish blabbing until Ben leaves. Another plot device to keep suspense until the finale, as we are to assume that Charles will not tell the whole truth to MIB and he doesn’t want Ben to hear what he is saying because he might ruin the plan. So Charles starts to whisper to MIB. Ben shoots Charles. Ben: he doesn’t get to save his daughter. One of the best lines in LOST history. Ben with a simple yet powerful act and punctuates it with a great tagline. MIB is not only not pissed, but he is impressed with Ben’s unpredictability and ability to amaze him. MIB thinks Charles told him all that he needed to know and no harm done. Fatal flaw right there. Sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads. Ben is feeling the blood lust and asks about killing more people. Ben is the new Sayid, killing people for MIB. Interesting how so many characters can flip flop roles. Hurley brings Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to Jacob, and is no longer needed to translate, which certainly diminishes his value. Kate immediately challenges the self proclaimed King of the Island. K: you wrote the names on the wall, is this why they died, died for nothing? Kate accidently stumbles onto the truth. Jacob: sit down, I’ll tell you what they died for and everything you need to know about protecting this island, one of you will have to start doing it. I remember very well how the Oceanic 6 scoffed and sneered at Locke when he was trying to get them to go back. How much they hated the island. Now, they have to protect it. Also, when Jacob says he will explain all they need to know, you know he isn’t going to say much. It’s the nature of the show. I’ll tell you everything, but nothing at all.

Locke visits Jack’s office. They do some perfunctory uncomfortable small talk until Locke gets to the point of his visit. Locke: we were on the same plane, I was hit by a car and of all the doctors in Los Angeles, you treated me, you want to fix me, the man that ran me down had a message to help me to let go which is what you said, what if all of this is happening for a reason. This is very similar to what Locke has told Jack on the island over the first few seasons. Locke is the old Locke, a man of faith. Jack counters with “you are mistaking coincidence for fate”. Jack is the man of science. Again. Round and round we go. However, Jack has absolutely noticed all these people that he has met since the flight that were on the plane, yet denies his own conclusions. Jack is a stubborn old tomato. Locke now wants the operation from our favorite brain damaged surgeon. Around the campfire, Jacob: I don’t know where to start. Just focking kill me already. We’ve been waiting for important revelations all season, for 6 seasons, and we get “I don’t know where to start.” Start ANYWHERE for fock’s sake. Tick, tock, tick, tock. It’s the end of the show. I bit my arm and I’m bleeding. Jacob: I brought you here because I made a mistake, and because of that there is a very good chance that every one of you and everybody you’ve ever cared about is going to die. Perfect. That is the whole theme to LOST. I’m not kidding. The perfect explanation. I made a mistake and you are all going to pay for it. Perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Jacob Sucks Moment of All Tiime. Sure, he told the truth. But he is responsible for a death toll approaching Joseph Stalin numbers. Bodies are piled up all around the island. Oops, my fault, I’m just a silly goose. Jacob: you call him the monster, I’m responsible, I made him that way, he’s been trying to kill me, then someone would have to replace me, that’s why I brought you here. Sawyer: why do I have to be punished for your mistake? Perfect question. I’ve been asking it for months now. And I’m curious as to Jacob’s response. Oh, that’s right. We don’t get one. He simply deflects and shifts blame. Sawyer: I was doing just fine. Jacob: I didn’t pluck you out of a happy existence, you were all flawed, you were like me, all alone, you needed this place as much as I needed you. BULLSH!T!!!! You cannot say all the candidates were struggling. Of course I’ve pointed out how reprehensible the main characters are on the show. #58 Burke. Sister is pregnant. She is breaking ground on fertility experiments. She gets yanked out of her happy life to be held prisoner on an island and die after a couple of years. You simply can’t throw a blanket over all the candidates. What did the members of Rousseau’s team do wrong that they were brought here and killed so quickly? Nice job in answering Sawyer’s question, d!ck. Well, you people are just as bad as me. Where is the free will, the choice that this confused show has been pushing all season? These people had no choice in coming to the island. MIB was right about Jacob manipulating and destroying lives. And even when Jacob has a chance to completely come clean, he still insists on being defensive. It’s my fault, but you people are bad too. What kind of crap is that? Kate: why did you cross out my name? Jacob: you became a mother. WHAT? Wrong. She stole a child. She did not become a mother. Stop trying to build sympathy for the worst character on this show. Be honest. Kate ruins everything. Jacob: it’s just a line of chalk in a cave, the job is yours if you want it. How absolutely enraging. You build up the names and the cave from 12 episodes ago, and then it doesn’t mean anything. 4,8,15,16,23,42, apparently means nothing. The candidates mean nothing. This is a volunteer army. Then why bring Ilana to the island to protect the 6 candidates not crossed off? Why? Ben is a name on the wall. #117. Ilana was ready to kill him. Ben was digging his grave. Why would Ilana kill somebody that might become protector of the island? In fact, Ben, Claire, Miles, Kate are all crossed off names. They are suddenly all candidates again? Jacob is breaking his own rules. You can’t write a TV show and decide the parameters you set up do not matter anymore. You have to follow your own rules, or come up with a damn good reason why they don’t apply anymore. It’s just chalk doesn’t cut the mustard. Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. Jack: what is the job? It’s called “Workman” where you get to put on coveralls and keep out of the way of the smart people. Jacob: there is a light in the center of the island, don’t let it go out. See, custodian. You have to keep an eye out for a lightbulb. Even though the light went out when you killed your brother. But I guess somebody flipped a light switch, and the light came back on again. Jacob: protect the light from MIB, I couldn’t do it. Jack: and kill MIB if possible? Jacob: I hope so, he will try to kill you. Great. We are witnessing a loser passing the loser baton to a Loser McLoseAlot. Hurley: how do we pick? Jacob: I want you to have choice, what I didn’t have, or this will end badly. Hurley speaks up and chooses a #6 value meal with an orange drink. Jack: I’ll do it, this is why I’m here, what I’m supposed to do. And the last time Jack said this, they were ready to blow up the island.

Jacob leads Jack to the cave. Sawyer: I thought that he had a God Complex before….leaving unfinished yet another truth bomb. Kate plays the role of female radio host perfectly, Oh, James. Now cut that out. Stop having fun and making jokes. This is something serious. Think of the children. Kate ruins EVERYTHING. Hurley is just relieved that he wasn’t the guy chosen. Reality is that Jack jumped on the opportunity without talking it over with his friends. Jack was simply the fastest to ring in the buzzer on Jeopardy, not that he could ever answer a single question in Jeopardy, in such categories as “name your favorite color, there is no wrong answer”, “foods that taste like salt, hint, hint”, and “what is my name, look at your name tag, dummy”. So, after a couple of thousand years, your replacement said “Bingo” first. Jacob tells Jack that the cave is near where he woke up on the island after the Oceanic 815 crash. Jack is carrying a cup around with him, which is odd since all I’ve ever seen the Losties use for water is water bottles. But he conveniently has a cup. Jacob says a prayer, much like Mother did last episode, even though Jacob was nowhere near close enough to hear what she was saying. Jacob blesses the water that he fills the cup with. Jack: how long do I do the job? Jacob: as long as you can. The ritual continues as we saw last week, Jack drinks, blah blah blah, Sawyer Kate Hurley are watching. In jail, they are preparing to ship Kate, Sayid, and Desmond to county lock up, because it is common for men and women to be housed in the same prison location. Kate is trying to talk Sawyer into letting her go. Sawyer: nice knowing you. FACE. In the police van, Desmond decides it’s time to leave. Even though Kate and Sayid think he is crazy, Desmond manages to get them to agree to do him favor in exchange for their freedom. Ana-Lucia is driving by herself which is very odd considering she is transporting a couple of murderers and an attempted murderer. She releases the prisoners in exchange for Hurley’s envelope full stinking cash totaling125 grand. I don’t know if you can stuff that many hundreds into a regular manila envelope, but I guess they are trying to establish Ana-Lucia as a crooked cop. Hurley has a purple shirt. Sayid is still wearing purple. Desmond tells Hurley that Ana-Lucia is not ready yet, a recall to Eloise telling Desmond that he was not ready for the memory restoration a couple of episodes ago. Desmond informs everybody that they are going to a concert, and gives Kate a dress. Let me guess, Geronimo Jackson will be the opening band, Drive Shaft the headliner. MIB is in the jungle with Ben. Ben: why bother walking? MIB: I like to feel my feet on the ground, it reminds me that I was human. And makes traveling 17 times slower. I don’t particularly care for an obvious revelation in awkward dialogue, but it is technically an answer of some type for us on why MIB isn’t smoke all the time. Desmond is missing from the well, as he has used a rope to climb out. Jack? Miles? Others? Rapunzel and her golden hair? MIB: Desmond was a failsafe, Jacob’s last resort to keep me from leaving, I will find Desmond, he will help me do one thing I could not do, destroy the island. Ben: um, remember how you promised me the island a couple of hours ago…

It’s fair to say that I’ve been a tad sour on this season as my exasperation level continues to climb for various reasons. Contradictions, bad acting, terrible dialogue, very few important reveals, lack of focus, a season full of setup episodes for one final shot at glory. The finale is tonight. I sincerely hope that it’s razor sharp so that I won’t think of Season 6 as a complete waste of time and a complete besmirching of the legacy of this show.

6.17 The End Part I

Random thoughts. This was a poorly written season and finale. LOST was the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. Viewers invested 6 years of devoted interest, and the show never paid off for their trust. I just want to throw my past season DVDs away. What point is there to ever re-watch this show? A show that was so terrific for 5 seasons lived up to my worst fears and never even tried to properly wrap up anything. The complex story lines painted the writers into a corner and they were too afraid or too incompetent to resolve anything. They simply chucked the first 5 to 6 seasons of story into a dumpster and pointed in a new direction, trying to distract you with a box full of new born puppies. The finale was a disgrace to any logical human being. Those who say they loved the ending should send Bernie Madoff a love letter because you are in love with the concept of being a sucker. Nearly every single major plot line was left not only unresolved, but not even mentioned. I’m not talking about the finer details and hundreds and hundreds of unresolved questions, I’m talking about major story lines. But at least the assh0le characters are all dead, so we have that to be thankful for. In fact, this place they created for themselves as flawed unredeemed characters, I’d like to think they are all in great pain and ended up in a bad place. A High School Reunion in Hell, where only the cool kids are apparently allowed to show up. The finale became a cliché. A happy Hollywood ending suckfest. Hey man, like the people man really like Hurley and stuff man and we can’t kill him dude and everybody loves Kate bud so we can’t show her being killed man so let’s make them all immortal somehow dude. May locusts kill the first born child of every LOST writer. Fock it. Not first born. Every dam child. Oh, so you say this show is about characters? You know what else has character? A 5 dollar giant box of wine. And I don’t see too many Hollywood elite drinking that swill. Well, let me explain something to you. Follow the seasons. One, the Losties. Two, the Tailies and Desmond. Three, the Others especially Ben and Juliet. Four, the Freighties and Widmore. Five, Dharma. Six, Jacob MIB and the Temple. Every focking season new characters were introduced to keep things moving and interesting in between what used to be the theme of the show, the whacky island. But this last season, they went back to the beginning, and recycled the same tired characters of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sun, Jin, Sayid, Claire. I didn’t care about any of them after their backstories were told. Their stories were done by the middle of Season Two. But to focus the final episodes of your show on those boring slugs was unforgivable. Those characters stunk. No redemption for Locke in the end? None? Seriously? And then MIB, the most endearing character on the show. You let that pig Kate shoot him in the back? I started to rewatch the finale about 2 weeks ago, and it took me this long to get halfway through it. It was just so boring and made me angry. Since I’m halfway there, let’s try to put some of my emotions into typed words, since I’m sure I’m being vague about how I felt about the final installment of show that should have ended at the end of Season 5. You want to talk about emotional? That scene of Juliet falling, and then banging on the bomb….that was fantastic television. Season 6, we get a purgotary LAX timeline that was a complete waste of time. Even Jack’s sissy son is a figment of his imagination. COMPLETE. WASTE. OF. FOCKING. TIME. Everybody hated the flashsideways crap, and it had no payoff. NONE.

We start at the airport in Los Angeles, with a slow motion montage of a coffin being unloaded. It’s Christian Shepherd. Whoop de friggin do. The montage continues with shots of Jack doing paperwork in his doctor’s office, Ben making tea, Locke being taken to surgery, Sawyer looking into a mirror, some gratuitous shots of the same characters on the island, some grass growing, some paint drying, and real time orbit of Pluto going around the sun. Exactly one minute in, I’m bored. I stop the online stream, and come back 4 days later. Fantastic job of not grabbing out attention right off the bat. That’s going to keep people tuned in, especially during the 19 commercial breaks? The coffin is delivered to a church, and Desmond signs for it. Hell, he’s already run over a guy in a wheelchair, so what’s a little mail fraud between friends? Desmond gets into a car with Kate. Of course, if I were behind the wheel at that moment, I’d step on the gas pedal and drive straight into an abutment. Kate has a haughty laugh at the name “Christian”. Yeah, God’s going to let her into heaven or purgatory or whatever. Sure. Kate demands answers since she is enveloped in her self importance. Desmond is acting coy and mysterious. I’m slowly going insane. A vein on the surface of my forehead starts to throb. On the island, the only story line that matters, Sawyer asks Jack what is next. Find the heart of the island, the light, Smokie wants to put it out, the Smoke needs Desmond. Sawyer: Jacob didn’t say anything about anything. Fock, that’s the theme for this whole focking finale. Sawyer volunteers to go get Desmond, but doesn’t leave until he does some flirting with Kate. I just threw up a little in my mouth. No, correction. I just threw up a lot. Heart of the island, huh? So, let’s personify the island, but let’s not explain how and why. Ever.

Hurley brings Sayid to what appears to be the motel where Sayid killed a guy with a dishwasher back in Season 4. Not only did Sayid completely abandon his Iraqi accent for his nasally British one, he just doesn’t seem to care anymore. The zombie stuff hid his disinterest for a while, but he has mentally checked out. Hurley encourages Sayid to stick around, something about trust I guess, I’m barely paying attention right now. A fly currently buzzing through my house is infinitely more compelling. Hurley knocks on a door and starts to grin in a most annoying way when he lays his eyes on his good friend Charlie. He immediately rams his meaty fist into Charlie’s whiskey soaked mouth, and runs around the parking lot yelling “Charlie bit my finger.” Charlie is to perform at a benefit concert with Driveshaft and Daniel Faraday, but is less than excited about it, as would anybody with the gift of hearing. Hurley shoots Charlie in the back with a tranquilizer, a running theme in the show this week I guess, shooting people in the back. Hurley tosses him in the trunk like a sack of wet cats. Jack is trying to explain his motives to the rest of his buddies. J: I took the job because I was supposed to, this island is the only thing in my life that I haven’t ruined. Kate: you haven’t ruined anything. Irony, since I believe I used the phrase “Kate ruins everything” quite a few times in my last writeup. And don’t correct him, Kate. Jack is right. He has ruined everything in his life. Sawyer is caught by Ben at the well. S: I came for Desmond, you want him to destroy the island, we’re not candidates anymore. Sawyer then punches Ben, because Ben’s contract specifically states that he needs to get clobbered at least once every week, and runs off. MIB is a bit befuddled that Sawyer knows his plans, that there is a new protector of the glow stick cave, and that there are dog tracks around the well. Ben complains that MIB wants to sink the island, since Ben was promised to take over once MIB left. Change in plans, as Ben is to leave the island with MIB now. The plan is constantly changing with MIB. Tough break for Ben, since he was eager to kill again for MIB, but now has no carrot at the end of the stick. Rose, Bernard, and Vincent rescued Desmond. Of course this breaks their rule of not getting involved. Rose and Bernard look really old and awful. The island living just doesn’t agree with these folks. They need a vacation. MIB and Ben quickly find the camp, and MIB threatens to kill Rose and Bernard unless Desmond leaves with him. Unfortunately, Rose and Bernard live, along with Vincent, a dog that looks like it’s wheezing and on it’s last legs. Well, a dog on an island probably isn’t getting proper nutrition. Vincent probably gets the Mango squirts every day. MIB makes some kind of promise that doesn’t matter, and away they go. Rose and Bernard story wrapped up when they found each other back in Season Two. At least the writers had the decency to kill Sun and Jin the next episode after their reunion. They’ve kept these bumpkins around for another 4 seasons. Of all the stuff they could have answered, they had to go to Rose and Bernards island existence. Again. I hope when the island got shaky, they fell into a fissure, never to be seen again.

Desmond is limping along with a bamboo stick for support, something that no other character mentions, something never explained, and something that never plays a part in the story line. Lovely. I’m an idiot for paying attention for all these years to the little stuff….anyway, that’s why I’m breezing through the summary now. Desmond explains to MIB that he is taking him to a place with a very bright light. MIB is a bit baffled at how all these characters all know his mysterious plans and the secret of the island, which will never be explained to the viewers. Desmond knows how much, exactly? For a long time, I thought characters knew stuff because the characters were living in loops, repeating in time, but it turned out just to be shoddy writing and witless dialogue. Silly me. Miles is trying to radio for Ben with that walkie talkie he just happened to grab last week. Gee, that’s a stroke of good luck. He has found Richard, and Richard is alive. What a bunch of crap. You can toss Mr Eko around like a ragdoll and he dies. But Richard doesn’t die after being thrown like a spiral across two football fields. And another thing, what happened to the part where Richard told Sun last season, upon seeing a picture of Jack, Hurley and Kate in Dharma in 1977. “I watched them all die”. Well, explain that. Oh, that’s right. It’s some secret we are supposed to figure out, despite it making NO SENSE in the context of this God forsaken show. Anyway, after all that’s happened, Richard has come up with a brand new plan to save the day. “Let’s blow up the plane.” Well, spank my britches and call me Shirley. Miles the cop spots Sayid riding shotgun with Hurley. He calls Sawyer to get him to go to the hospital and protect the only living witness to the murders that Sayid committed, Sun Paik. Which is all well and good, but when you realize you have escaped prisoners, three of them, and they are murderers and attempted murderers, shouldn’t there be a police hunt under way. And maybe Miles should skip the concert? Meh, whatever. This is a poorly written season and poorly written finale. Sun’s baby doctor is Juliet. Well, there’s a non shocker. Since we found out Jack had a kid in this meaningless waste of timeline, we assumed Juliet was the mother of the kid, and now we see her working in the same stupid hospital as Doctor Idiot. Juliet’s last name is Carson, not Burke like the real timeline, and not Shepherd like Jack’s awful last name. Jin is wearing a purple tie. Purple, purple, purple, and never an explanation for all the purple clothing. “The sky turned purple” and that was from season two. That’s it. So, as Juliet uses an ultra sound machine, I have to wonder, doesn’t that machine look kind of old, considering we can now carry around the internet in a tube of lipstick and stop disastrous oil spills in less than 50 days with our best interest at heart government. Oh, that’s right, we can’t. Sun flashes back to the medical hatch, Jin flashes back to the island, they know the kids name, and can speak English. Yet, no acknowledgment that the baby is an orphan or how they died horrifically by suffocating under water. Sawyer runs through the jungle until catching up with Jack, the Invisible Woman, and The Thing. Jack is not worried. They are all going to the same place, and then it ends. Hopefully the world. I don’t want to live in a world where Jack has power. Well, Jacob had a bad first day on the job, and I guess Jacob and Jack are now the same. Given that your one most important responsibility is to protect some mystical cave, nobody seems to be able to get the hang of this duty right away. Jack and Locke joke around in the hallway before surgery, guffawing about missing coffins, Locke dying, and finding closure. Miles and Richard are at the dock preparing to paddle over to the Hydra when Miles in a very metrosexual yet even more uncomfortable way plucks a gray hair from Richard’s head. Men do not groom each other. They ridicule, they punch each other in the face, then have a beer afterwards. Then don’t talk about window treatments and eyelashes. Richard has now realized that he wants to live. Well, stupid, Jacob is dead, so I guess you aren’t immortal anymore. So, Jacob tricked you when he gave you the ability to not die. It was simply not die while Jacob was alive. You fool. And NOW you want to live. As Dorian Gray and Miles paddle across, and we never saw who shot at Locke and Sawyer and Juliet during the time travel boat trip, they start to hit corpses from the sub. Some of them rotting, some of them looking like they fell out of Cheech and Chong movie. Frank is alive. So, the unconscious pilot sank to the bottom of the ocean, woke up at some point, didn’t have an oxygen tank, fought off the water pressure, surfaced, and held onto life jackets for about 24 hours without the sharks with Dharma symbols nibbling on his toes. Terrible writing. Frank says why blow up the plane when they can fly off the island? Richard immediately agrees, after 4 days of being obsessed with blowing up a plane, he changes his mind after a 3 second conversation with Frank. Swell. Frank reminds everybody that he’s a pilot, never mind that he’s been wearing a pilot’s shirt for the whole season. There is nobody in the audience that forgot you are a pilot Frank. That is the only thing you bring to the show. To remind us you are a pilot, every focking week, you stupid fock. Jack and MIB’s respective groups bump into each other in the jungle. Kate grabs a rifle and starts to shoot at MIB, while Desmond and even Ben are merely a couple of feet away, in danger of getting hit in the cross fire. Jack really needs to slap Kate across the face and tell her to shut up and sit down. MIB scoffs. He examines Jack. So, it’s you. Jack: I volunteered, you think you will destroy this island, I’m going to kill you and it will be a surprise. Alrighty, Maximus. Jack is talking a big game, and has a brain like a frozen pea to back it up. How can anyone take him seriously? Reality is that MIB destroyed some of the island, Jack didn’t kill MIB, MIB actually killed Jack, and it was a surprise to Jack to die. Other than that, spot on.

Well, they reveal that Juliet is Jack’s ex-wife. And I’m annoyed that Juliet would have married a pumpkinhead, but at least had the good sense to divorce him. Still, I don’t know how realistic it is for ex-spouses to pretend to be such good friends. It rarely happens. Juliet is supposed to go with Jack and David to the ridiculous museum benefit concert, but Jack has to wash his hair, so he’s out. Was that really an excuse back in ancient times, the 1960’s, when girls said they didn’t want to go out on a date because they needed to stay in on a Saturday night and wash their hair. With what, molasses? How long does it take to get water on hair and let it dry? Half and hour? And is this something only happening once a week? So, for 6 days, you watch a girl walking around with oily, gnarled hair, and one day it’s nice and clean and shiny, she doesn’t leave the house? Was everybody dating girls that looked like Claire? Jack can’t go, so Claire is the candidate to replace him. Get it? Candidate. Sawyer shows up at the hospital. On the island Sawyer asks Jack about his plan. Jack: Desmond is a weapon, and I’m going to use him to hit MIB in the head. Sawyer: that’s a hell of a long con by Jacob. I’m going insane at a slightly faster pace. I want to glue forks to my kitchen floor, sticking up, and repeatedly fall on them. Jack, MIB, and Desmond head to the cave, leaving the other folks behind. Why? I don’t focking know. Storm clouds are gathering. I used to think rain meant something on this show, but it’s focking random. Locke and Boone found the hatch when it was raining, a good thing. Mr Eko died when it was sunny. The Black Rock arrived on the island when it was both rainy and sunny, depending on which episode you watched. At the cave where a yellow sign blinks “Vacancies”, they tie a rope around a tree and the other around Desmond, as they mean to lower the tree into the cave, then change their mind, and want to lower Desmond into the cave. Desmond makes a last ditch attempt to talk to Jack: This doesn’t matter, the destroying each other and the island, I’m going to go someplace else, to be with the ones that we love, you are there too Jack, the plane never crashed. Poor, sad Desmond. What he doesn’t realize is that you have to be dead to be in that other place. So, instead of living life to the fullest and then trying to enjoy the afterlife, Desmond is unwittingly trying to talk Jack into suicide. How morbid. OK, that’s a bit whimsical and amusing. Jack: there are no shortcuts, whatever happened, happened, all of this matter. What the fock is he talking about? I rewound that several times, listened to Jack say that over and over, and now my head hurts. All of this matters? You will die and end up in Candyland. The End. What matters is when the last season of Dexter comes out on DVD, because I need to wash the stench of this season of LOST off, and watch something good. They enter the cave.

Hurley explains to Sayid that they have to follow the rules. What, there are rules in an imaginary existence? So, what are they? Oh, that’s right. Rules are never explained to us in this show. Ben and Widmore had rules. MIB had rules. Jacob had rules. Mother had rules. Richard showed a Book of Laws to young Locke. Juliet was branded at a trial in Dharmaville. No truck parking between 6 PM and 6AM. You can only wash your hair on Saturdays. Rules, rules, rules. We were simply never told what the rules were. Hurley: you are a great guy Sayid. Other than the people you tortured. And assassinated on Ben’s list. And shot a teenage Ben. And killed Keamy and his friends. And twisted the head off a chicken. And shot and killed one of the true loves of his life, Elsa. And killed Dogen and Lennon in the Temple. And stuck bamboo shoots under Sawyer’s fingernails. But he is a swell guy because Hugo the purple dinosaur says so. A fight breaks out at the side of a bar, a girl tries to stick her nose into the middle of it, and rightfully gets tossed into a pile of leaky garbage bags. Sayid is a man of action, and not wanting to see garbage bags treated so rudely, jumps out of the vehicle and runs to interfere. Sayid assists the girl up and sees that it is Shannon. Instead of remembering all the happy times he spent with Nadia, the woman he practically traded his soul for with the MIB, Sayid recalls the happy 3 days he and Shannon had on the LOST island, by far the shortest and most meaningless tryst Sayid has ever had in his life. So, Hurley’s big plan was for Boone to get beat up, Sayid to rescue Shannon, and live happily ever after while Nadia is in some plane of existence, screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, watching Sayid and Shannon kissing, standing in garbage, brushing stale beer, cigarette butts, and rotting fruit out of each other’s hair. They stink and I don’t like them. Did everybody forget how Shannon slept with her brother. Sick twisted focks. Miles radioes Ben. They are on the Hydra island. However, the person never invited to any parties, Claire shows up with a gun. Richard tries to talk her into leaving with them, basically the same manipulation MIB and Kate and Jin and others have laid on her recently. Claire simply turns them down and walks away. I’m not sure if I’d go anywhere with that collection of creeps, the guy that doesn’t age, the guy that talks to corpses, and the guy that never buttons his shirt. Desmond is lowered into the cave as MIB reminisces with Jack about Desmond and the hatch and the pushing of the button. After many years of Jack treating Locke like a joke, he now takes reverently about him, which is too bad because Locke is dead and can’t hear any of it. Jack: you are not John Locke, he was right about almost everything. MIB: he wasn’t right about anything. Here’s a tip. How about you tell us what he was right/not right about, and let us judge? How about not keeping us in the dark about what you are arguing about? Was it that John liked tea? John liked to whittle? John enjoying moon lit strolls on a sandy beach? That John had to die? That John felt banana leaves were good to wipe with after a hearty morning jungle dump?

David, Claire, and Juliet arrive at the concert at the museum. Juliet gets called away to wash her hair. Charlie is woken up on a couch backstage by Charlotte. Daniel, wearing the world’s most awful hat, introduces himself to Charlotte. No matter how many planes of existence Daniel enters, the skeletal Charlotte still won’t give him the time of day. Over at Table 23, Desmond and Kate are greeted by Claire and David. Kate looks more perplexed than usual. Dr Pierre Chang, looking younger than his son Miles, introduces Daniel Faraday and Drive Shaft. Somebody needs to fire the booking agent of Drive Shaft. What an awful gig to get roped into. A classical concert pianist with a rock band. Hell, it didn’t work for Metallica and some symphony orchestra, so it’s never going to work for anybody. I’d rather listen to 3 hours of a jackhammer pounding a street. I’d rather watch somebody chewing aluminum foil with their mouth open for 3 hours. I’d rather listen to Ben Folds Five. Claire sees the heroin junkie bassist giving her the evil eye stare, or maybe that’s just Charlie’s eye liner, feels sick, and skedaddles. Kate follows. She needs to start planning on how to steal the baby, and can’t let Claire out of her sight. Desmond reaches the bottom of the cave. There are a number of skeletons all around. How did Charlotte get down here? You would think they would actually care enough to tell us about the skeletons. Probably more people shoved into the cave by Jacob over the years, willy nilly. Like a Slip and Slide. A light is emanating form a pool of water, giving off a faint hum, reminiscent of the electro magnetism in the Swan hatch. I like to think of it as the place where the island farts. Desmond steps into the water, screams because he must have stepped on a jelly fish, can’t find anybody around to pee on his leg, walks up to a stone cork, and takes the drain out of the pool. Gurgle. The water fall stops. The light goes out. Steam starts to rise from the hole in the pool, like the start of a volcanic eruption, or what your toaster oven looks like when you are trying to make a really crunchy bagel. Now, we also saw the light go out when the Smoke monster emerged after Jacob threw his brother in, but we were not told when the light went back on, or why it went out then. How did his brother get all the way to the water, as Desmond had to travel a short distance to get there? Of course, we don’t know why the Smoke monster was created, why and how it scans people, why it judges, why it allows some to live and some to die, and how it can take the shapes of the living and dead, and why it wants to leave the island and can’t now when in past seasons it’s been off the island. Anyway, the hero MIB turns to the villain Jack, and tells him you were wrong. Jack cowardly tackles MIB from behind outside the cave punches it in the face. MIB is bleeding. J: you were wrong too. Well, the island being destroyed vs a cut lip. Um, not the same kind of wrong. But clearly, Desmond turned off a switch on the island, and MIB is mortal, as is Jack. The island isn’t working anymore. I guess at this moment, Rose’s cancer came back. Much like Mother would have, MIB picks up a rock and whacks Jack in the head. Unlike Mother, MIB does not have the common sense to kill Jack, finish him off. MIB’s flaw is his heroic nature and compassion.

As Claire is attracting a crowd backstage, Eloise creeps up and sits down next to Desmond. Eloise, a woman that knew a great many things in the real timeline, and we will never know how and why. Eloise: I asked you to stop. Desmond: I chose to ignore you. Desmond informs that once “they” know, they are leaving, but he will not be taking Daniel away from his mother. Eloise is acting very selfishly, trying to manipulate the afterlife of Daniel just so she can spend some time with her son. I’m troubled by Desmond saying they are leaving, but they are leaving people behind. AnaLucia wasn’t “ready yet”, so does that mean she can never “leave”. Desmond is a colostomy bag full of smaller colostomy bags full of colostomy stuff. Claire is having the fastest contradictions in the history of ever. Within 2 minutes, she goes from enjoying some shitty music to ready to spit out her deformed kid. I suppose I could make a Sara Palin joke here, but that just wouldn’t be classy. So I’ll just continue to wish AIDS on the children, pets, and furniture of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. Charlie stops by, then runs off to find a towel. As Douglas Adams has taught us all, Don’t panic and always bring a towel. They try to recreate the birth scene in the jungle from Season One, where Claire and Kate give birth to Aaron. Well, not so much Kate, but Claire is the one that passed that big headed kid out of her baby maker, probably cursing her with a hernia forever. Kate, Claire, and Charlie have a flash threesome, then look around for cigarettes. I’d like to know when Claire is supposed to get on that helicopter with Aaron; after all, that is why Charlie died, to get them rescued on that helicopter, the one which Claire never boarded. It never happened. Sure, I throw in an occasional unanswered questions, but the writers started it first. Kate to Desmond: now what? The island is shaking like a glass of scotch in a drunken Michael J Fox’s hands. A tree falls in the woods, and it apparently makes a sound as Ben pushed Hugo out of the way. Instead, Ben is clobbered and pinned by the tree. Jack wakes up, it’s raining pretty hard. The big plan right now is to run into the cave and yell for Desmond. Crickets. Plan 2, pull on the rope. Nothing at the end of it. Crickets. Jack tries to think. Crickets. The rest of the gang can’t lift the trunk of the tree off Ben, no doubt pinned forever, so they will have to leave him to die. Or not. But he is pinned and they make sure to point out that they can’t move the tree even a little bit, even with leverage. Sawyer: Locke was right. Miles radios in that they are taking the plane and will be leaving in an hour. Kate responds with “when was the last time any plane took off on time” or something. The whole island is still shaking like a baby that just won’t shut up and is in the grip of a frustrated babysitter, as is Hydra island. Why would the shakes affect the other island? Frank and Richard are using scotch tape, glue, spit, Legos, and grey hairs to piece a wrecked plane together, something that has no business flying. Ben explains to Sawyer, Kate, Hurley gang that MIB has a boat. Of course he does. This is the 17th boat we’ve seen this season on the island. Everybody is hiding a boat. Vincent has a different yacht for every day of the week. Jack catches up with MIB and yells at him. Both get running starts and head towards each other with clenched fists. I guess this is as good of a spot as any to stop Part One, 55 minutes done of 105, Soon, I will finish off the tale of MIB’s wrongful death, the terrible choices in the church, and the sheer idiocy of Hurley ruling the world. Hurley couldn’t manage a chicken shack, or did we all forget Tricia Tanaka already?

6.15 Across The Sea

Random thoughts. “This” is what they were planning for six seasons? THIS? Doomed. Motherfocking doomed. It’s over. I want to apologize to the X-Files. For years, I swore up and down that it was the greatest TV show ever. Then LOST came along, and was terrific until Juliet bludgeoned a hydrogen bomb with a rock. Since that moment, LOST has been a tremendous disappointment to me and a growing number of restless and increasingly frustrated fans that I communicate with. So, once again, X-Files is the greatest show of all time, while LOST is probably good enough for Top 3. I suppose this is an example of the universe course correcting. Executive producers Lindelof and Cuse have been doing tons of press over the last few days. They must have been anticipating doing a victory lap for the show and upcoming finale. Instead, they are being put on the defensive by largely poor reviews of Across The Sea. They’ve gone so far as to criticize fans for being negative. Apparently, they just want to answer the questions relevant to the main characters of the show, the Losties, and all other mysteries will be ignored. A show largely built upon mysteries will not deal with answering many of those mysteries. Unbelievable. You can try to sell the show as being about the characters at this late hour, but honestly, does anybody give a sh!t about these characters that are left? For the most part, all of the characters were and remain morally reprehensible people and I can’t think of any that have changed for the better, if they are even still alive. This island is Lord of the Flies. The best characters on the show for me were Smoke Monster, Locke, Ben, Mr Eko, Juliet, Desmond, Keamy. Smoke doesn’t seem as cool anymore, even though Terry O’Quinn is doing some great acting. Ben’s character has been dreadful since he stabbed Jacob. Juliet is dead. Mr Eko is dead. Desmond has barely been a part of the show the last 2 seasons. Keamy dead. Jack? Kate? Hurley? Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care. Jacob? Jacob can cram it up his cram hole. Fock Jacob. I swear on all things holy, Jacob looks about as bright as a veal waiting for an axe to take of its corn fed head. There is deep undercurrent of stupidity between Jacob’s ears. Not only have I been a charter member of Team MIB from the beginning, I’ve been bashing Jacob almost every week. And I feel very vindicated. The only morally pure character on this show is probably MIB, who has been built up to be the villain. And don’t give me Hurley. Hurley is responsible for many deaths. The deck that collapsed. Tricia Tanaka hit by a meteor. And her cameraman. What a bizarre corner the writers have painted themselves into. MIB is actually the hero, a week after they claimed that MIB was pure evil for hiding a bomb in Jack’s backpack. Unfortunately, I am a man of attention to detail. I spend time analyzing and picking apart a show I care quite a bit about. This show has either gotten lazy and sloppy in writing, filming, presenting details, or indeed this show is a cut and paste of different scenes from various time loops, and I don’t think the writers are that smart. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. My expectations for the show this season were probably unrealistic. I wanted explanations to some of the great all encompassing mysteries of the show. That’s not asking for a lot, is it? Instead, we get episodes based on Hurley getting a kiss and MIB sitting on a log while whittling. So much wasted time. They can’t find time to answer who shot at Sawyer and the gang while time traveling in the boat because the scripts are just jam packed with scenes of Jack staring out at the ocean and giving speeches about the destiny of tomatoes. Paddle from one island to the other island and back. Repeat. Much to my surprise, I recently googled the title of the blog where these write-ups call home “Lost…his mind” and noted that some of the writeups pop up in the top 20 of 172 million entries for that sequence of words. I suppose that some folks must be reading this crap that I type week after grueling week. Maybe as many as a dozen. I wish I could say something classy, tasteful, and inspirational, but that just wouldn’t be my style. I’m narcissistic, delusional, angry, and have borderline sociopathic tendencies. At least that’s what my kindergarten teacher said. While these are great adjectives to describe myself in a craigslist ad, I must defend myself and add that I would never kill anybody until at least the third time I met them because I’m a gentleman. With the exception of Oprah, who needs to beaten to death with a sock full of scorpions as soon as I can find a sock without a hole. So let’s buckle up and try to review this stupid, illogical, steaming pile of crap. Not the writeup, I mean the episode. Well, maybe I mean both. Want to fight about it?

As best as we can tell, about 2000 years ago, a person is seen floating in the water off the shore of LOST island. It’s not Jin, not Rousseau, not Frank, and it’s not screaming for Walt. Rather, it’s some woman dressed in Roman style clothing, having just attended a frat party at Animal House was just left outside the front door of town mayor’s house. I wish they would have explained how the boat she was on was destroyed, but I bet it was for singing some folk song about cherries on a staircase and Brother Bluto was not amused. She washes up on the beach and wakes up with a mouth full of sand, which in the southern United States they call grits. She is pregnant, much like Claire was when she arrived on the island, but is not so lucky to have a heroin addict to cater to her every whim. The woman finds a creek and takes time to wash the icky out of her mouth. Someone suddenly appears over her reflection in the creek, much like Smokie was sneaking up on Mr Eko in Season 3 in the episode where Eko gets a sound thrashing. A woman speaking Latin offers assistance. Good thing she wasn’t speaking Latino or else she would be the focus of a partisan political tug of war. The shipwrecked woman’s name is Claudia. But her friends call her Claudia. Claudia asks the woman, from now on I’ll call her Mother, questions such as how did you get here. “I got here by accident” It is strange how people seem to be brought to the island…oh, who cares. We didn’t learn much of anything from this opening scene. It was just boring crap. Mother was guarded with her responses with crappity crap like “Every question I answer will lead to another question” which is pretty much a snarky comment to fans of the show to stop expecting to learn much in the final episodes. Because I need another 43 minutes wasted on Jack trying to convince Locke to have a surgery. Mother says that if there are other people on the island, she will find them, again exhibiting a property associated with Smoke Monster, as he seems to be pretty quick in finding new people on the island. Black Rock, the French team, the Losties. Mother seems to have Smokie properties all throughout the episode, purging, judging, manipulating. Claudia goes into labor and pops out two kids as if she was in a watermelon spitting contest. The first is named Jacob. The second one is a surprise, so Claudia doesn’t have another name ready. This may or may not be the reason Mother goes a little nuts, but she picks up a rock and caves in the skull of Claudia. There were many, many blows to the head as Mother gurgled with primal rage. Or what I call a great first date. Mother was polite enough to say “I’m sorry” before the whacking, so you have to be impressed with her sparking manners if not her charming howls of rage.

So, about 13 years later, MIB finds an Egyptian game called Senet buried in the sand of a beach. I’d like to see the entire Senate buried up to the their necks in the sand just as the tide starts to roll in. A young Jacob, the same kid that MIB has been seeing on the island in present time, agrees to play the game with MIB. MIB claims he just knows the rules somehow. Either that or he is making them up as he goes along. I don’t think Jacob wins at this game all that often. MIB is the carnie, Jacob is the rube. Jacob is instructed to not tell Mother about the game. Back at their cave home, Jacob arrives to see Mother weaving on her loom. Not satisfied with Jacob’s response to what have you been doing, Mother pulls out the “do you love me?” card, and Jacob confesses everything. There is no doubt that a Norman Bates personality is bubbling under the skin of Jacob. A momma’s boy, a sad sack, unable to face his mother, crumbling at the first sign of disapproval, an unhealthy emotional relationship, and a constant need for attention. Jacob is somebody in a horror movie that you root for to lose his head somewhere along the way. Mother goes to confront MIB at the beach. During the course of the conversation, Mother notes that Jacob does not know how to lie. I can’t fathom the inability to lie short of having a mental defect. Well, it is Jacob after all. Mother thinks MIB is special. Compared to Jacob, a soiled baby diaper. As this episode progresses, you can now see why Jack is the guy to take over for Jacob. You have to be an idiot to be the guardian. Mother starts to instill a curiosity in MIB. Mother: there is nothing across the sea, the island is all there is. Well I can see why she didn’t get the job with the travel agency. She can’t explain where her mother is, because she is dead. MIB: what’s dead? Evangeline Lilly’s career in about 3 episodes. Mother: something you will never have to worry about. I wonder how much of the future Mother can see and if she knows MIB will be transformed into Smokie in about 30 years. Young MIB and Jacob chase a boar through the jungle. They are just in time to see other people kill the same boar. They run to tell Mother. Mother: they do not belong here, we are here for a reason. Well, somebody lives in a gated community. Sniff. A conflicted Mother blindfolds Jacob and MIB and leads them into the jungle. In the past, with the absence of piñatas on the island, Mother has strung up a boar for the boys to hit with sticks while blindfolded. The winner knocks the guts out of the rotting carcass. Mother was never actually all that much fun. Mother: all men are dangerous, they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, it always ends the same. Sure, in divorce court. Also, these are words that MIB said to Jacob during the Season 5 finale. Mother: I’ve made it so you can never hurt each other. Actually, the statement ended up being completely wrong on every level. Sure, you could argue that MIB can’t kill Jacob directly, and needed Ben to stab Jacob. But this rule certainly did not apply to this episode as we progress. They arrive at a cave of bright yellow light, as if someone was hiding a gleaming pot of gold inside. The Leprechaun Cave. Whatever was inside the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. A place where Hurley can microwave Hot Pockets. Mother: don’t go in there, but inside is the warmest, brightest light you’ve ever seen or felt. Well, if you don’t want anybody going inside, why give them incentive? Hey, son, you see this wall socket? Well, take this fork and do not, I really mean it, do not stick it in there. You come back in 5 minutes and your child’s hair is on fire. Great. Now let’s go tell your sister. And how would you know how the light feels if you didn’t go inside and feel it? It’s like saying sex is like warm apple pie, but you may not be so inclined to take somebody’s word for it. Which only leads to problems in the supermarket’s dessert aisle. Mother: a little bit of light is inside everybody. What the fock? First of all, this is the negatively charged exotic matter that Dr Chang talked about in the Orientation film that Locke watched in the Orchid hatch as Ben was preparing to move the island. That matter is what bends time and space, the mystery property on the island. Something that is theorized to be part of wormhole construction. It does not exist on this planet. It could be radioactive. But it’s the light that is inside everybody. Bullfockingshit. Inside all of us? I’ve taken lots of dumps in my lifetime, and believe me, none of it ever glowed and only some of them felt warm. Man is always wanting a little more of the light. I can think of 700 things off the top of my head that I would want more than a magical night light, and that includes a nicely cooked piece of fish. Well, I suppose this is the Widmore explanation. He has seen the light, craves more, and has a map of some of the electro magnetic locations around the island. So, I guess that completes the Widmore story arc and he is probably going to be killed soon. Of course, we won’t get more information on Widmore and solve any of his mysteries. He’ll just suddenly die. I wonder if Desmond is back in the will? If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere. When did LOST become an Aesop fable? When will we see the Gingerbread House hatch and Gumdrop Falls? Mother: I’ve protected this place, but I can’t do it forever. So, even though you can be practically immortal on the island, at some point you get so friggin’ bored with your life that you have to find some unwilling dupe and make them take over for you. Again, Jack is a perfect patsy. I’m coming around on this whole Village Idiot Protector of the Island. Mother: it will have to be one of you. Well, I don’t see a whole lot of other options here.

MIB and Jacob are playing their Egyptian game. It stands to reason that Egyptians were on the island, built the Temple and statue and other stuff, but we are not going to get any information on that era I suppose. MIB: you have to follow the rules, one day you can make up your own game and everybody will have to follow yours. Pretty telling summation of what is happening on the island right now. Jacob made up a set of rules, like MIB can’t harm the candidates, MIB and Jacob cannot kill each other, MIB can’t leave the island, etc. and MIB needs to follow the rules while trying to win. The endgame was to find a way off the island, which includes killing Jacob and all of the candidates. MIB sees Claudia, but Jacob cannot. MIB follows. Claudia: I’m dead. MIB surprisingly didn’t say “I don’t know what that means.” I want to show you where you came from. Instead of lifting up her skirt, she leads him to a village on the island, built by the survivors of Claudia’s shipwreck. Claudia: there are many things across the sea. War, famine, the plague, stadiums full of spectators watching Russell Crowe fight lions, and did I mention the plague? Sounds dreamy. It seems like a number of things are playing up the idea of leaving the island to MIB. Is this really the spirit of MIB’s mother, or a manifestation of Smokie, buried in the microwave cave, trying to manipulate in order to find a means of escape. Smokie could be using the image of somebody that has died. Claudia: she is not your mother. It’s a man, baby. MIB returns home, packs, and looks to sneak out in the middle of the night. He brings Jacob along. MIB explains that they are going to the people, Mother lied, and that Jacob is probably too stupid to understand. Jacob loses his temper, attacks MIB, and beats him silly. I guess MIB is the brains, Jacob is the muscle. Mother pulls Jacob off the bloodied MIB. MIB: I’m going home, you killed my mother, we don’t belong here. All valid points. Jacob is crying. Insert yet another comparison to Jack here. Given a choice this time, Jacob decides to stay with the crazy woman that killed his mother. Mother: you will never be able to leave this island. MIB: I’m going to prove you wrong. MIB leaves. So the main motivation for MIB all these years later is to simply prove his mother wrong. So, for Jacob, it’s to beat his brother in a game caused by Mother, and for MIB, it’s to prove his mother wrong. Well, that’s been worth all the blood shed over the years. At the beach, Mother confesses to Jacob that she did indeed murder his mother and she wants to talk to a lawyer. Jacob demands that she return all those Mother’s Day gifts he’s given her. Mother: these people are bad, I needed you to stay good. Veal. Jacob is a calf being fed just before slaughter. Jacob: why do you love him more than me? Jacob has accepted that he is not the superstar that MIB is. But you need to notice the statement “I needed you to stay good.” Not for Jacob, not for the island, but because she needed a pure soul to take over for her as guardian of the light. Mother needed a Scooby Doo, and Jacob is just the right fit. It’s for selfish reasons. Mother: I love you in different ways. Well, that must sting a bit. She didn’t say I love you just as much. No, she decided to say “in different ways”. If Mother starred in Sophie’s Choice, they wouldn’t even finish the question before Jacob’s suitcase is packed. Mother is frustrated that she is stuck with Jacob, and Jacob decides he will stay with her. Two undigested peanuts in the same lump of sh!t.

Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with the child actors anymore, as they simply sucked. Geez, the acting this whole episode was just really bad. Grownup Jacob takes a break from weaving to go find MIB and play their game outside the village. It’s kind of sad to see Jacob standing in the wide open, observing the digging of the well, as this is the saddest attempt in the history of ever at being inconspicuous. He is standing behind a tree that can’t be more than 2 inches thick. Is he even trying to hide a bit. Jacob is about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. He has a vacant far away look to him, as if he is constantly thinking about what pudding tastes like. MIB confirms that Mother was right about these men. Jacob is only looking from above and he really doesn’t see them for who they are. They are greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy, selfish. I draw a parallel to Jacob’s candidates. I bet he thinks they seem OK at first glance through a telescope. Then he brings them to the island to test them. That’s when we get a good look at their true nature. Shannon was a candidate. I rest my case. But it’s a means to an end for MIB, as he just wants to leave the island. MIB throws a knife that changes direction in midair and gets pulled against the well wall. The knife was not made in Australia. The village is full of smart men, people who are interested in how things work, who have discovered places all over the island where metal behaves strangely, they dug. This is the speech MIB gave to Desmond before tossing him into the well. It is also a cyclical event, as Dharma was essentially doing the same thing on the island. Jacob still doesn’t want to leave with MIB. When Jacob returns to his home, Mother is shaving her legs. I’m not kidding. Look at that scene again. Considering Jacob is very likely a virgin, this is probably the most skin he has seen of a woman. Other than when Mother asks him to pop her back zits. Jacob yet again can’t keep his mouth shut, and blabs to Mother that MIB is going to leave the island. Mother goes to the well and climbs down. MIB is alone, stoking a fire, getting ready to put some ribs down on the grill. MIB hears a sound, pulls out the Roman knife that Dogen gave Sayid, and is ready to stab somebody. Sure, this is paranoid as fock. You are in a well. The only people who have ever been down here are members of your village. Why are you ready to kill one of them for sneaking up behind you? Isn’t that extremely odd? So, how are you? I see that your legs are looking fabulous. MIB spent the last 30 years walking every inch of the island without ever finding the planetarium laser light show cave featuring the music of Pink Floyd. I hate Pink Floyd. So, much like the Lighthouse, certain objects appear on the island only when they want or need to be found. MIB decided to look for the back door instead. The men of the village have some interesting ideas what to do with the light. This is of great concern to Mother, the guardian of the light. MIB pries a small rock away from the well wall to reveal the bright light. I have to wonder, how exactly did the cave end up icy and frozen when Ben entered to turn the frozen donkey wheel, but right now it’s dank and hot. MIB shows the wheel they mean to attach to a system they built that will channel the water and allow them to leave the island. Mother: how do you know it will work? MIB: I’m special. FACE. Mother gives MIB a goodbye hug, has the good manners to apologize, then bash his head into a rock wall as she screams. All MIB wanted was a hug from his faux mother, and she tries to kill him.

Mother wakes up Jacob. She explains that she had to say goodbye to his brother. She leads Jacob back to the Muse stage show cave. Jacob is now to protect the light. Mother: it is life, death, rebirth, it’s the heart of the island. Two things. Rebirth? So, when people die, they aren’t dead, but move along to another timeline? The word really bothers me. Still, there is a cyclical nature to this show, so it would be nice to see an explanation. And remember when Locke described his first encounter with the monster back in Season 1? “I looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw... was beautiful.” Did Locke see this light? Mother: just never go down there, it would be worse than dying. Here is a fork. She brings out a wine bottle, says some kind of prayer or chant or the lyrics to a Justin Bieber song, and offers Jacob a drink. Jacob is to accept the responsibility of protecting this place as long as he can, then find his replacement. Jacob doesn’t want to do it. Mother: somebody has to, my time is over. So, no one is apparently immortal after all. I wonder how long you have to serve your term when elected, 2000 years or so? Jacob sulks and points out the Mother wanted it to be MIB and that she is stuck with Jacob. Mother is getting desperate now. Mother: it was always supposed to be you, I see that now. Jacob is right, she really has no other option. Jacob is the only single girl left in the bar, and it’s closing time; if you squint enough, you can hardly notice the huge goiter on her neck and unibrow. Mother: you don’t have a choice. Strong, strong statement here. We’ve been lead to believe that there is an element of free will to this show. Look at that again. You don’t have a choice. Jacob is forced into a role he doesn’t want. Seemingly, he is like MIB in trying to prove mother wrong, but his quest is free will while MIB is leaving. Fine, but Jacob is not going to drink any focking Merlot. Jacob reluctantly drinks. Mother: now we are the same. Yeah, kool aid drinkers at Jonestown. MIB wakes up outside the well, which is completely filled in with dirt. The world’s largest flower pot. He follows the black smoke in the sky, reminiscent of the smoke from Season 1 by Rousseau, and finds the village completely purged, people smashed and dead. Did Mother turn into a Smoke monster? How else do you get about 50 people to stand still while to beat each one to death and then pick up a shovel and fill up a well? Even worse, MIB’s precious Senet game is found charred in the ruins. Hey, you can go ahead and kill all my friends, but don’t mess with Egyptian Monopoly. MIB is in anguish and quickly fills up with rage and hate. MIB has been screwed over.

Jacob is sent to gather firewood. Mother returns to her home, which has been ransacked. She picks up the charred Senet game from the ground, opens it, palms a white and a black game piece. It’s not so much white is good and black is bad, but the white and black simply signify a game. Much like chess, there are two sides, two players, neither is good and neither is evil. It’s a game of Who Did Mother Love More? MIB stabs her from behind. Well, LOST clearly doesn’t have enough crying, so MIB tears up. Why wouldn’t you let me leave? Mother: because I love you. Now if you just hand me that rock, it’s just out of my reach, I want to show you exactly how much I love you. Mother thanks MIB with her dying breath. I suppose he put her out of her misery. MIB told Kate that his mother was crazy. He failed to mention that he was not referring to his birth mother. Jacob walks in, sizes up the situation, and like some big dumb animal attacks MIB. After a beating and ignoring anything MIB has to say about the purge, Jacob leads/drags him to the magical mystery cave. Jacob states that he has to protect it now. Well, genius, if you are to protect it, why did you bring somebody here the first day on the job? Jacob knocks MIB unconscious and allows him to drift into the cave and the reverse waterfall which sucks him down into it’s depths. The light goes out and a roaring Smoke Monster emerges and steams off into the jungle. So, Jacob has just screwed up everything he was to protect, but hey it’s his first day, so what can you do? Jacob goes to wash his hands and finds the corpse of his brother along the riverside. Jacob cries yet again and hugs the body. So, MIB managed to live his whole life without a name as far as we know. Well, that’s just not good enough. This is a man, and he has a name: Robert Paulson. He's dead now because of the island. Do you understand that? His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson. Remember when Mother said: I’ve made it so you can never hurt each other. Well, Jacob managed to beat up his brother several times and just murdered him. So how did that rule work out? Jacob lays the corpses of Mother and MIB inside the caves from Season 1. They replayed the scene of Jack and Kate and Locke finding the skeletal remains and finding the white and black rocks and calling them Adam and Eve. Unfortunately, they left out the part where Jack called the bodies 40 or 50 years old. So, Jack was off by about 2000 years. Jacob: goodbye, brother. Swell, but you didn’t say goodbye to Mother.

What did we learn? Free will is an illusion. We don’t know why Smokie has the powers that he does. MIB was right about the candidates being puppets of Jacob, being brought to the island by a lifetime of manipulation. The rules are whatever Jacob wants them to be; he decided to create the Others in mid game. Watching this episode made me grind my teeth down to the gums. Jacob was breast feeding until 43. Actually, what did that woman feed those kids the first few years on the island with no formula nor baby food around? Who finished building the donkey wheel? When MIB went off the island to appear to Jack in the hospital in Season 4, did this break the rules? When MIB went off the island to appear to Michael on the freighter, did this break the rules? But I thought he could not leave the island? When MIB appeared to Locke as Walt, did this break the rules? The Richard episode had a big build up and delivered. This episode had a big build up and fizzled. Going into the final hours of the show, we have zero momentum.

I need to do a really quick turnaround with the next edition, between Tuesday and Sunday. Well, until then, may the worst of your todays be the best of your tomorrows