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mygif

I can buy that, but then I don’t get why Ben doesn’t enter the church at the end. Is it, he didn’t feel guilty about all the crap he pulled on the Island, and so set himself up in alterna-LA with a PhD and cushy-ish job? And then, seeing Alex didn’t bring back his memories, but somehow Danielle did? And only at that point does he feel guilty about what he did on the Island, and so takes longer to “let go” (even though Christian more or less tells Jack that time no longer has any meaning)?

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mygif

Ben first started getting his memories back when Desmond beat the shit out of him outside the school. And I don’t think he was punishing himself. His daughter, Rousseau, and his father (assuming none of these people were constructs he made up himself like Jack’s son or Locke’s fiance)were all there. He was taking the chance to do right by some of the people he’d wronged horribly.

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mimic91 said on May 25th, 2010 at 7:19 pm

You just put to bed one of my biggest complaints about the finale, and simply and effectively explained to me why I was wrong. Thanks MGK.

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Jeff WIlson said on May 25th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

I’m pretty sure the “afterlife” ending is supposed to be Jack’s dying dream, ala “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge” or _Mullholand Drive_ – it ends when he does, after all. Is there any detail in the alternate world that would have been a deep dark secret that the person would never have mentioned to Jack or anyone else? And why was Aaron still a baby in the church?

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Mad Scientist said on May 25th, 2010 at 8:18 pm

The more I hear about it, the more I’m not regretting in the least not having watched any of Lost. 🙂

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mygif

Congratulations to the proud winner of the Smug Tit Award: Mad Scientist.

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mygif

I just figured they each had to remember something that had happened to them _on the island_ in order to realize the “flash sideways” wasn’t real.

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mygif

NemaVeze, I think Ben wasn’t inside because he was directly responsible for the deaths of Charlie, Boone and Libby and so it would have kinda killed the mood for them. They weren’t around for his redemptive moments.

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mygif

Is there any detail in the alternate world that would have been a deep dark secret that the person would never have mentioned to Jack or anyone else?

Hurley and Ben thanking one another for being such a good partnership pretty much kills the “it’s Jack’s dying dream” theory, as Jack left before Hurley offered Ben the job and it’s a real stretch to claim he imagined what happened anyway.

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mygif

I am still proud I never gave a crap about Lost

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Marionette said on May 26th, 2010 at 7:42 am

I am still proud I never gave a crap about Lost

I’m happy that’s working out for you but don’t quite see why you are following discussions about something you are so thrilled you have no interest in.

Are you very bored?

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mygif

Thanks for mentioning it on the internet, Zenrage!

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babybiceps said on May 26th, 2010 at 8:50 am

Thanks MGK, i thought (rationalized) the same thing: Sayid’s relationship with Nadya is littered with grief and pain, which had to be shed before entering the church. Or something.

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mygif

Hah hah, I never watched it either.

Actually, I did, and I liked the show a lot. I just wanted to see what the appeal was in being a jerk about these things. It felt kind of empty.

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mygif

I still have issues with the show having no overall narrative as such. The details emerged in order to bring the story to a conclusion, but there was no real meaning to any of it.

Focusing on the characters and heaving to emotional beats that (courtesy of plinky plinky piano music) leave fans an emotional wreck is certainly a winning formula. It works best for soap operas. And that’s what Lost is, a soap opera with a very literate index for you to follow up on (“I’m going to go on Amazon and buy A Treatise of Human Reason/The Third Policeman/Carrie”).

The creators call Lost a mystery show, but I don’t think that’s correct. There is no mystery, just six years of increasingly bizarre occurences. It sets up a dialogue between faith and reason (Locke vs. Jack), but the godsquad wins hands down, much like in BSG….which was set in space!

Faraday was an interesting scientist character on the show, but then his mother performed an abortion on him during the 138th trimester. Bad show for science I guess.

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fsherman said on May 26th, 2010 at 12:11 pm

That actually makes sense.

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Barry Convex said on May 26th, 2010 at 12:49 pm

This is a well-reasoned argument, but there’s a simple reason why I don’t find it convincing: there was literally no setup. How many times was Sayid’s relationship with Shannon mentioned in seasons 3-6, compared to his relationship with Nadia?

If they had gotten Maggie Grace to appear earlier in the season, I might be able to accept this explanation. But considering what was actually shown and told to us on the show, my opinion about Sayid/Shannon remains the same: it was an emotionally manipulative piece of fanservice that didn’t actually fit Sayid’s character arc.

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mygif

Nicely argued. But I think the writers did us a disservice by having Sayid and Shannon fall into a passionate embrace. Their moment should have been more like Hurley and Libby on the beach. Or possibly a moment of recognition followed by Sayid saying, “Hurley’s waiting for us. Let’s go.”

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JohnDoe said on May 30th, 2010 at 1:02 am

Can we all just agree to forget this horribly convoluted clusterfuck of a series ever happened?

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[…] I can see why a lot of people would hate it.  But then, again, there are certainly arguments for what they did end up doing. […]

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