Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The End Part 2

The first time watching Sawyer talk to Jin and Sun at the hospital wasn’t as touching as it was every other time I have watched it (some of these scenes get better every time I watch the episode). So in this scene Sawyer doesn’t “know” yet but Sun and Jin do. Watch Sun look at Sawyer as he walks into the room. She is genuinely happy to see him. Jin has a great look on his face as he says “Hello………. Detective.”. He knows that this is the story that Sawyer created for himself.

Sounds like they are making progress.” is one last classic Ben line and one of the funniest lines of the night. Good to see he still had his sense of humor.


Jack says his goodbyes to Sawyer and Kate as he sends them on to the Ajira plane. Ben and Hurley stay with Jack. Kate professes her love for Jack and then has to leave him behind. We always knew it was going to be Jack though, didn’t we?


I don’t believe in a lot of things but I believe in duct tape.” was Miles last great funny line. I am glad he made it to the end. Was this the first time I heard Sawyer call Frank “Chesty”? I forget, but it still made me laugh, and if it was a new one it was the last new nickname we heard from Sawyer.


We always knew that Sawyer wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not even Kate, Charlotte, Miles, Sayid, Jin, or Sun could jolt his memory. Seeing Jack and saying “Thanks Doc.”, rattled something loose. Sawyer tries to get an Apollo bar (notice it was item 23 and it is right next to an Avalon bar which was a legendary island in Arthurian legend) but it gets stuck in the machine like it did for Jack. There is no Jacob here this time. Then here comes Juliette to the rescue. So she wasn’t talking about the bomb going off when she said “It worked” back in LAX but rather pulling the plug and getting the stuck candy bar loose. They finally have their moment and yes, it made me cry the hardest I had cried this episode yet. In fact if I was to watch it right now I would probably be blubbering through this scene again.



Not to be outdone by Sawyer is Jack who is also just as thick. He also seems to fight having his memories return. Seeing Kate is still not enough for Jack to fully remember. He gets it in a slow trickle compared to how everyone else gets washed over by the wave of memories. He asks Kate what is happening to him maybe he should have asked what happened to him.


Hurley tearing up when he realizes Jack is going to have to sacrifice himself to save the island makes me tear up and nobody wants to see a fat man cry! Jack passes the torch to Hurley and it seems the purity of the water gets a little more questionable every time someone gets initiated into being the islands protector. Whoever gets the job next, Hurley will just have to spit on them. Jack tells Hurley that he believes in him like Hurley told Jack. Jack tells Hurley that it was always supposed to be Hurley to protect the island not him. Jack was only a temporary fix.


Jack tied Desmond to the rope because the script told him he was supposed to. Could Desmond have put the plug back in? Probably, but that could have killed Desmond. Jack tells Desmond that he will see him in another life as Desmond said to Jack when they first met. Jack puts the “cork back in the bottle” and the water starts flowing and the bright light returns. As the water washes over Jack I still wondered if he would make it; that maybe the water would heal him. Jack cries in victory as well as pain as the light takes it’s toll on him.


The Ajira plane begins to take off from the island as the ground crumbles away. This is a definite nod to “The Langoliers”. If you haven’t seen it or read it I highly recommend both but the movie is where you would see a similar scene. Was Richard ever on a plane before? I know he left the island but I would imagine it was mostly on the Dharma sub. If not I am sure the nearly two centuries old Spaniard was crapping his pants.


Matthew Abbadon should have been driving the taxi that brought Locke to the church. Outside the church we get one last Ben and Locke moment. The two actors worked so well together I hope to see them work together again in the future. Locke goes into the church but Ben says that he has some things to take care first. Even though he knows the truth he decides to stay behind and maybe he will get to be a father to Alex.


Outside of the cave Ben gives Hurley a pep talk and tells him that he can run things differently than Jacob did. He says he thinks Hurley can run things in a better way. Hurley asks Ben to help him. Ben says he would be honored. That’s a part of the story I want to see and I know we will as it was announced there is nearly 20 minutes of footage added to the DVD serving as an epilogue to Ben and Hurley on the island. I wonder if that is where Walt will turn up as he also shot scenes for the finale but he never showed up.


So did Hurley give Ben the eternal life gift like Jacob gave Richard? In the ATL Hurley tells Ben he was a good #2. Ben says Hurley was a great #1. It felt like these two might have been together for a while. I would have to guess that Hurley will eventually tire of being the protector and he will find a replacement. Upon his death the gift will be gone and that would allow Ben to age and then die.


Outside of Eloise’s church Kate is very gentle with Jack. She tells him to go around to the back and that she will be waiting for him to join them when he is ready to go.


Are the rocks that Jack ended up on the same as the rocks that the MIB was on when Jacob found his body?


So there’s Jack in the interdenominational church. The moment when Jack touched his father’s coffin is the moment he needed to fully triggered his memory. The final minutes of the series will be hard to forget. Very powerful. Beautifully filmed and beautifully acted. Kudos to Foxy and John Terry. Yes, this was the highly secretive scene that only the two actors in the scene got script pages for. For a few minutes these two were perfect and the scene was magical.


In the end it was Christian Shephard that helped Jack as well as all of us to cross over. Jack crossed over to whatever is next and we crossed over to a life without LOST. I also call where they are Limbo because the word purgatory doesn’t seem right. Not that limbo is much better just less wrong I guess. It all made sense to me. Of course we only see how they all crossed over through Jack’s point of view. For each one it could have been a little different. But nobody has to do it alone. “Where are we going?” asked Jack. “Let’s go find out.” his father suggests. So what was the final line of dialogue for the show and who said it? John Locke: “We’ve been waiting for you.”. I didn’t even hear that line until I watched the episode for the third time.


Why did Kate change from a black evening dress that we saw her in to the top and pants she had on in the final scene? I didn’t get that.


Yes, the ending made me sad and of course I cried. Jack dying made me cry; there I said it. I cried for Jack Shephard. You all happy? Vincent showed up to make sure that Jack didn’t “die alone” and at that point I lost it completely. It ripped my heart out but it was so damn touching as well. Made me hug my doggies a little tighter that night. Why was Aaron in the church with Claire but Je-Yeon wasn’t with Jin and Sun? I guess it shows that Je-Yeon wouldn’t classify Jin and Sun as important people in her life. Yes they were her parents but what was she three when Sun left and she never even met her father. Aaron, on the other hand, I would imagine would become to know his mother very well as well as Kate.


As I watched Jack fall to the jungle floor and laugh as he watched the Ajira plane fly overhead I paused for a moment to appreciate Jack for everything he had done. Like many others before him, Jack died beautifully and he was finally able to let go. The last image was a reverse, or mirror image of how the show began. Jack lying in the bamboo forest dies as he closes his eye.


And you would think that is all I wanted to talk about, right? Well, there is one thing that has me a little puzzled. If the ATL is something they created as a group consciousness type of thing why in LAX was the island at the bottom of the ocean? They all pretty much knew that Jack saved the island and it didn’t sink so that doesn’t explain it. Could the MIB not have really been dead? Could Jack have become the next MIB? Could the evil have somehow gotten off of the island later on causing it to sink into the ocean?


OK, instead of going back and answering and/or commenting on your comments from the earlier posts about the finale I thought I would include them here. So with that, here is my "why pregnant women die on the island" theory. As we know, time on the island passes differently. We know this because Daniel pointed it out by doing his little experiment. Remember back to when Richard Alpert was talking to Juliette and he showed her the MRI films from a woman in her thirties. She said the results looked like it was a woman in her 70’s. So the island moves through time and space at a different rate than we know so their bodies don’t age the correct way or at least they don’t on the inside. It’s possible that Sun would have been able to give birth on the island because she wasn’t on it long enough but to let her try would have been risky at beast. This is similar to how the nosebleeds affected people who had been on the island for longer periods of time. It would have eventually killed all of them but seeing as how it was Charlotte who was on the island the longest among the group, she was the first to go. I’m guessing the next would have either been Juliette or Miles. Of course the bomb going off could have had something to do with it as well but we didn’t get enough of the story after the detonation of the bomb to know what the results were.


And to Fink, I too want to know who the hell Juliette shot when they were time jumping in the outrigger canoes. There will probably be a lot of deleted scenes for us to enjoy when the season and series DVD’s come out. That will be some good stuff indeed. You are right Fink that at the end of season 1 Darlton said they had no idea what was in the hatch and they had to figure it out after the Alphabet network ordered many more episodes of the show. The show would have been very different if it had only been the 12 episode miniseries they originally thought it was going to be.



Again, I apologize for taking so long in getting this up. There will be more to follow, I’m sure, as I will be keeping this blog going for a little while longer. At least until I too move on to whatever is next.

2 comments:

Cerpts said...

You're again correct in saying that scenes get better the more you watch them. The episode was simply THAT good. Case in point: Sawyer in the hospital with Sun and Jin. I too got a lot more out of it emotionally on repeated viewings whereas the first time it was merely cute. There was quite a bit of resonance there -- especially when Jin says to Sawyer he'll see him there.

You know, you could almost start to cry JUST TALKING ABOUT the Sawyer and Juliet moment. Good get on the "Avalon" bar; i didn't notice it the 5 times I watched it. I also didn't put two and two together that Juliet saying "It worked" was actually the first part of her "we'll go dutch" speech. I didn't think about it but you're absolutely right. She wasn't talking about the bomb at all. Incredibly important point that I totally missed.

I also must make mention of Jorge who really pulled out the acting during season 6. Never much of an Olivier, he did the best acting he ever did during the series in this season. When Jack told Hurley that it was always supposed to be Hurley looking after the island and that Jack was just a quick fix, I promptly called my copyright lawyers because Jack stole everything I've been saying all season long in these comments!

Desmond's imperviousness to magnetic forces presumably allowed him to remove the island's clitoris . . .oh i'm sorry was i not supposed to say that. . .and be able to survive. However, there is some question whether he could've done it twice since he got knocked the flocke out! Jack knowingly prevented Desmond from doing it a second time and did it himself because he felt he had to. It was his ultimate purpose and, possibly, when he became Jacobfied he saw this most clearly.

Cerpts said...

Oh God, whatever you do DON'T watch THE LANGOLIERS movie it was gawdawful!!! Read the story - which I liked.

Your statement that Abbadon shouldve been driving Locke's cab immediately got a big YES from me. However, I take it back. I think at that late date in the show it would've been too much of a distraction and would've taken away from the real emotion that was going on. They really should've put Abbadon driving the cab much earlier in Season 6 though.

Yes, the reason Ben didn't go inside the church was precisely because he now had a chance to "make amends" to both Alex AND Rousseau. After all, he stole the chick's baby. This time hopefully he'll become a foster father the right way.

20 minutes of epilogue on the dvd!!! That's the best news I've heard all day. I can't wait to see that. As I've said for years now, I never thought Ben was truly "bad" or "evil". He could've made some better choices with how to do things or treat people but he was acting for Jacob (who I've never had that high an opinion of) and thought he was doing what needed to be done. The truly beautiful scene between Hurley and Ben when Hurley asks for Ben's help was the culmination of this thinking in my mind. As he himself said to Jacob, not once during all those decades did Jacob even deign to meet with Ben. Hugo's simple act of asking Ben for help meant the world to Ben and will inspire much more loyalty than anything Jacob ever did. Way to be, Hurley! That's how to treat employees the right way! Ben's dismissive statement that "oh that's the way Jacob ran things" shows Ben has really grown a lot and learned a thing or two during all this. And Ben's statement that Hugo should do what he does best -- take care of people -- shows a possibly unconscious yearning on Ben's part that that's the way he always hoped Jacob would be but was ultimately disappointed. A beautiful moment between both actors.....in an episode crammed with beautiful moments.

I think the rocks Jack ended up on were the exact same place MIB washed up...only MIB was deaded and Jack was only nearly deaded.

I agree that the word "limbo" is less wrong that "purgatory" which is totally wrong.

I don't get Kate's wardrobe change either. Perhaps the afterlife is strictly casual?

I too thought of why they showed the island at the bottom of the ocean in the season premiere. I just chalk it up to TPTB placing a jaw-dropper in the season premiere that was kinda a cheat. As for the questions about why preggers die on the island and who Juliet shot on the outrigger -- perhaps they'll be answered in the Lost Encyclopedia??? But yes ultimately the best scenario would be to see a cut scene revealing all this on the dvd. it would also be a nice idea if Cuselof sat down on camera and simply answered some of these "bigger" questions point blank.