Today it all comes to "The End"

With "The End" of Lost quickly approaching I thought it would be a good time to post some final thoughts on the show.  It seems like only yesterday when I got my first glimpse into LOST.  I remember catching a rerun of the pilot episode the summer after it began but wasn't immediately hooked and never really looked back to the show until season 3, that's when a friend of mine who watched LOST made me sit down and watch an episode, but I was so confused because I had not been watching.  This led me to go out and watch the first 3 Seasons on DVD.  After that, I was hooked.

I remember as I watched the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2 being sucked in to the mysteries of the island.  I was so enthralled that I would watch episode after episode after episode just so I could find out what was going to happen next!  I was like WOW this show is so complex and mysterious and just plain something to think about that I couldn't stop.  Watching on DVD was thrilling because unlike everyone who had watched it on TV I didn't have to wait a week for the next awe inspiring episode to leave me wanting more, I just popped in the next DVD and watched as much as I wanted...there was no worry of waiting an entire week to find out what was in the Hatch or whether Henry Gale was who he said he was.  The biggest disappointment for me was that I had to stop and wait for season 4 to start after probably the show's best season finale "Through the Looking Glass".  Oh yea and of course Season 4 was the first time we had to wait until January for the season to begin!

So many people say that season 3 was so terrible.  Sure it some pretty horrible episodes like "Stranger in a Strange Land" where we learn about Jack's tattoos, "Expose" the story of Nikki and Paulo who are unnecessary characters that we hear a back story too (although I do give the show credit for taking scenes from previous episodes in which they were clearly not in and somehow weaving them back into it)...but just think about where we would be today without season 3?  If you go back and watch Season 3 again now you will see that it really started Locke in motion to become the smoke monster.  Maybe you didn't think you wanted to see as many stories about The Others but I think they made this already complex story even more complex I mean didn't you want to know how this group formed and when the got there?  - as a matter of fact I don't think we REALLY know the answer to that to this day.  I mean some of the people we know as Others are former Dharma members, some are former 815ers and the rest we assume Jacob brought to the island at one point as a candidate but how long ago was that?  I digress because this post isn't about our lingering questions it's about our love for this great television show and how life will change when it's over.

Last night, while at work, I was watching the enhanced version of the Pilot that ABC so kindly played for us when a co-worker asked me "What are you gonna do when it's over?"  and it got me thinking?  I don't know...I have always been a television buff...I watch more television than the average person should and I have been that way my whole life.  Whether it be old shows in reruns or new series to watch every week, I have been a fan of television pretty much my whole life.  I mean my first words as a child were "TV Guide"...tell me that's not a passion...I even grew up to work at a TV station (albeit in news but I would probably give my left arm to work in serialized television if I could).

Someone else asked me at work the other day if LOST was my favorite show on TV and I replied yes, and then he asked me what my second favorite show was...and I didn't have an answer because to be honest there's LOST and then there's everything else.  Sure I may watch a lot of other shows and watch them every week the same as I do with LOST but it's the intensity with which I watch LOST that makes it superior to the others.  No other show on television had or will match the great story telling and mysteries that LOST created for us.  It has been a world of mysteries and connections and science and time travel and many other crazy notions that on any other show would seem outrageous, but on LOST it works.

I'm sure LOST will live on through the fan support for a long time to come but next fall when the new seasons start all I will be thinking about is that come January LOST will not be back.  I'm sure I will find some new shows to watch in place of LOST and several of the other shows I watched that were canceled (like the great FlashForward, which I personally thought was going to be a great replacement for LOST till ABC pulled the plug on it!) but nothing will ever give that sense of excitement, that moment in the last 3 minutes of the show that makes us think WTF, that time we will waste researching theories and reading articles based on books that were mentioned in the show.  So basically we will all have many more hours back in our lives to do other things but none will be as enjoyable as LOST!

So, in our farewell night to LOST, here's hoping all your expectations will be lived up to and that the ending of the greatest show that ever was will be satisfying and full of answers.  I want to let you all know that as soon as the finale is over I will begin the great PROJECT LOST RE-WATCH where I plan to go back and re-watch the entire series again.  I will then blog about each episode (either on this blog or maybe I'll create a new one just for this project) giving a retrospective about what was so great about the episode and talk about things that stand out now knowing all that we have seen throughout the show.  I'm going to guess there were so many little hints to things that we now know that we totally missed the first time around because we didn't know they were something we should look for.

What have been your favorite moments on LOST?  I'll list a few for you right now
*"NOT PENNY'S BOAT" - definitely number 1 for me
*Learning the mysteries of the characters - remember when we didn't know that Locke was in a wheelchair before getting to the island.
*Remembering what it was like when we kept noticing the numbers everywhere, that feeling of why are those numbers everywhere!
*Getting into the Hatch
*Meeting the Tailies
*Blowing up the Hatch
*Finding all the Dharma stations
*"WE HAVE TO GO BACK" flashforward scene -think about how you felt when you saw that scene and when you didn't know it was a flashforward...the introduction of this new storytelling tactic was brilliant.
*The time travel as a way to show past island events - it introduced us to Widmore as an Other and so many other great things like Rosseau's story.
*Discovering Locke was dead yet still alive on the island
*Sawyer and Juliette
*and of course season 6 trying to give us the answers we so desperately want

feel free to post some of your favorite moments in the comments section, I'm going to leave you with some videos that I think you'll enjoy