Watched the Lost season finale last night. Compared with the ending of Alias we’re talking about the difference between six weeks’ all-expense paid vacation in a tropical paradise with a supermodel of your choice versus getting kicked in the crotch and shot in the kneecap. Or, put another way, there is no comparison.
Caution: Spoilers may follow.
The return of Desmond was no great surprise, but the faith/doubt rollercoaster that Locke had been on all season was neatly tied by bringing back the catalyst (so to speak) and having them work it out. I agree with some of the rumblings on the webs that Desmond might have mentioned to Locke that he had almost let the Bad Thing happen by not pressing the button a couple of months earlier and could pretty much verify that it was not a hoax and you didn’t want that to happen. I could see him being upset after having perhaps seen the Pearl orientation video, but just hearing about it doesn’t seem like it would have made him just kind of go along with whatever Locke wanted.
The open-ended fate of Locke and Eko was mildly alarming, although I’m willing to bet that the writers/producers felt they had met their Shocking Character DeathTM quota for the season and Locke and Eko seem too integral/symbolic to the direction of the show to be cast aside without much fanfare. As much as I liked the Desmond character and was glad to see him back, I’m hoping they don’t try to say he survived the explosion/magnetic discharge/key turning and bring him back. I sort of liked the concept of the hatch and the button, but I’m certainly not sorry they didn’t drag it on forever… a glimmer of hope there that they know better than to draw from the same well too often.
My biggest eyebrow-raising moment was when the rest of the Others seemed to kind of defer to Henry Gale as a leader of sorts, this has made for rampant speculation that Gale actually is the “Him” he whimpered about during his incarceration in the hatch. I’m not a fan of this theory as it seems to suggest that he would have orchestrated his own capture (that or he is especially careless, which does not bode well for someone we have been thus far lead to believe is rather feaed). If he is “Him,” that seems like a very risky move to make, considering how hostile and frightened of his group the Losties were at that point. Heck, even Rousseau—who ostensibly did the original capturing—would have had a pretty compelling reason to just flat out kill him (They did, after all, kidnap her daughter). That he managed to make it out alive can only be attributed to fortune (no one could have successfully orchestrated that series of near-deaths) which means that either Gale isn’t “Him,” or that he is in which case I would say that’s pretty disappointing since “He” is sort of a lucky dweeb and not some legendary Kaiser Soze-style uber-villain.
Some people grumbled that Claire’s kissing Charlie was out of character for her, but I think they set the stage for that already with the hand grab during the funeral in a previous episode. Still, I’d agree that her wishy-washy attitude toward him wasn’t handled quite as well as it maybe should have been (for all she knew he really did try to drown Aaron less than two weeks ago), unless they plan to set the stage for a plotline where Claire is a very poor judge of character/doesn’t learn from past mistakes very well. I hope with most of the key characters otherwise occupied in various high drama situations that we actually get some real storylines with Claire and/or Charlie next season.
I’m essentially opinionless about the cliffhanger ending since it involved plot elements that are nearly 100% new at this point in the show. Nice touch, though.
A Brief Meta Comment
If you stopped by the site sometime after about 11:00 pm PDT until around 9:00 am PDT you may have seen the site lookin’ all busted. I think I’ve fixed the Netflix feeds so they won’t break the site when they don’t work now but if you see the site acting goofy like that I wouldn’t mind a quick email letting me know. I suppose that goes for general site weirdness evident since the server switch.
Giggiddy Game Weekend
Tomorrow we head out for Kublacon. I had grand intentions of getting a bunch of my painting projects done but instead I fell into a spiral of video game resurgence, Netflix queue burning, lazy TV watching and irregular work hours. As such, my wonderful armies will not see the honor of battle this con. It’s really not a huge deal since there will be a slew of other stuff to do and more than enough games to play. I am still going to run a short Shadowrun 4th Edition adventure tomorrow night so at least I don’t feel like I did nothing to prepare for this anticipated event, but I had grand schemes of Warmaster battles that will have to wait for some arbitrary weekend in the future.
The only bad thing about the con is that in order to get a decent room and have a chance to get settled in and play a few pick up games before the festivities kick into full gear I need to get off work earlier than usual which naturally means getting to work earlier than usual. I’m still not exactly sure how that’s even going to work but considering that Friday nights at a con are historically rather sleep deprived, that strongly suggests that tomorrow may be in the running for Longest Day Ever.
Enjoy your lengthy weekend, Internet.
