The Lost Season 5 Finale, and Why It Sucked.

After watching it last night, I was upset. Not annoyed, but upset. Compared to the season finales of the last four years, this was just pathetic. It completely lacked the character drama that I love this show for; in fact it has been missing all season. The dynamics, the chemistry between the characters just is not working anymore. Benjamin Linus has become a walking sulking puppy, I miss his intelligence greatly. Locke’s new found confidence was slightly far fetched and aimless at times but it makes a little more sense now. I will not knock on that though, because this was just half of the finale. The whole Jacob/Esau battle that has suddenly appeared is a mystery and plot point for season six and could have interesting implications. What I do wish to knock upon ever so vicariously and viciously and violently and vehemently and… f*** this s***… What the hell is blowing up a nuclear bomb in such an amateur manner suppose to achieve?

What the hell is going on? What the f*** do they think is going to happen? Why the hell are they suddenly so bloody motivated to reset the time/space continuum? Let us ignore the fact how that makes no sense on about fifty different levels. No, actually let us not ignore that. It makes no sense on fifty different levels. I loved the time traveling setup of Lost; it worked really well and was started brilliantly in season four by the excellent Desmond/Daniel Faraday episode called The Constant. But this season’s The Variable just completely tarnished the acceptable physics the show delivered. We and the characters were made to believe the ‘Whatever happened, happened’ motto for the entire season and then suddenly in one episode it was all turned on its head with a completely infinitesimal and absurd explanation. It needed to be developed in a more fleshed out manner, but we never got that chance because Lost decided to deliver a really pointless character death.

Killing Daniel Faraday was a huge mistake, his conviction and explanation for detonating the nuclear explosive was necessary in developing this plot point. Such a critical issue and source of motivation for a lot of the other characters felt completely rushed and not even remotely believable. We as the viewers understand that Faraday knows the physics and conditions on the island far greater than anyone else, and we needed his presence in the finale for this nuclear situation to gauge any emotional value. His knowledge is far above that of our new found warrior-spirited Jack Sheppard. Faraday says one little thing to Jack about supposedly “fixing/resetting” everything and he believes it? Not even just believes it but Jack makes it the mission of his life out of nowhere to blow up a nuclear bomb; Faraday never explained himself or his fervor to carry out these actions. Yet Jack became a blind pilgrim in this belief of something a man, who he has not seen in three years by the way, said to him… about bending space and time by blowing up a nuclear bomb. Ridiculous, that is not Jack. It is as if the writers just threw away four years of character development. The motivation behind the actions of Jack and his crew makes absolutely no sense. Let us not forget for a moment Sayid’s random acceptance of the situation at hand as well, utterly absurd. Suddenly the resident torturer of the island is now very capable with plutonium cores and nuclear warheads as well. I must also raise issue with how homosexual Sayid looked for most of the episode, especially after his elaborate wet scene coming out of the waterfall and the flamboyant hair-tie-back action that followed. Oh and I loved the timeout Jack and Sawyer decided to take, all the while Sayid was lying in the back of a van bleeding to death. Clearly Dr. Jack Sheppard forgot that he was a doctor.

The action was incredibly silly as well, since when did Jack become a sharp shooter? Someone has been watching too much ‘24’ on their three years off the island. I swear the most believable thing in that episode could have been Jack Bauer appearing out of the energy pocket hole, revealing himself to be the smoke monster, Jacob and the island’s energy all in one. It got even worse when the whole gang decided to throw a hissy fit at the Swan station at the end, trained DHARMA guards with accurate rifles were shooting air while a blonde fertility doctor with a pistol was nailing head shots through a speeding van. Her accuracy seemed to infect the rest of the gang also as Miss Wonder Bucktooth was rolling around barrels to barrels picking of baddies in jumpsuits as if her name was… Miss Wonder Bucktooth. Absolutely preposterous this episode was I tell you, unacceptable.

One last quibble about this Jacob of ours, and a point about the structure of this episode in general as well. All the flashbacks of Jacob appearing in the lives of the people currently on the island were too convenient and misplaced. It was stupid seeing random useless tidbits of Jacob affecting the lives of these people. This should have been done in the flashbacks over the course of the season, we should have seen these events scattered out across a proper time line so that in this finale we actually find out that such and such events were in fact triggered by Jacob. This is how Lost has always developed its puzzles, putting pieces together… with Jacob it felt like a complete rush job and utter matter of invention just to show that Jacob went around and met all these people at some point in their lives. The flashback scenes carried absolutely no weight or consequence because of this. The time line of these flashbacks were confusing, entangled in between jumping from past to present with our current gang of characters.

In general, these episodes and season five in general felt rushed and sorely lacked emotional gravitas. Quite disappointing to be honest, I feel as if all the character connections have been completely lost, no pun intended. Lost was a show built upon the relationships and character conflicts, not these silly mysteries that seem to be derivates of some hallucinogenic run through of the Bible.

I do wish to commend the ever excellent Richard Alpert. He is the last saving grace of this show in my eyes, and a narrative through his eyes is well over due. A finale in his vein would have been much more sensible, much more emotional and would have definitely eased the introduction of Jacob. To be honest he’s one of the last characters with any kind of logical rationale left in him. Frank Lupidus, the poor guy is totally lost but I am quite interested to see what Ajira passengers/Jacob’s allies consider him a “candidate” for. Jacob allowing himself to be killed so easily signifies that the body he occupied is possibly just a vessel for his spirit, similar to what Esau has done with Locke, Jacob will do with Lupidus. Whatever the hell happened to Christian Sheppard and Claire? We were made to believe Locke was resurrected on the island just like Christian, but now we are presented with the fact that death is certainly the end of these characters. What makes Christian an exception, why was he nowhere to be seen? What the f*** is that prostitute of a b**** whore Sun doing asking the stupidest questions like a prostituting puppy b****? I thought Christian told Sun and Lupidus how they could meet their friends again, but from the way Sun was acting it was as if she had completely forgotten about her encounter with Christian. This goes back to my point about the episode being awfully structured and very much rushed. Christian should have been around in the finale, too many gaping plot and motivational holes occurred that made no sense on any bloody level. Before I end my discussion, special mention to Hurley, Miles and Desmond who are the last few people making any kind of cynical sense on this show yet nobody seems to listen to them.

As for the rest of the gang, Ben has become a delusional vagina, Jack thinks his first name is The Boss last name Bauer, Juliet is tapping a nuclear core with a rock trying to make it explode, Sawyer is in love, Sun is a whore, Kate is doing absolutely nothing with her life, Faraday is dead, Locke is dead, Jacob looks he belongs in Amsterdam, Esau is an awful character from Prison Break, Lupidus is Lost, Sun is a whore, Jin has become like crewman #5 since he started speaking English constantly stating the obvious and last but not least Bernard and Rose are about to start the Robinson Crusoe family on the island.

What the hell happened to Lost? Man, I miss Charlie.