I try, but I can't help myself. Sorry.

Josh writes:

So, the season finale of Lost. I am mindful of the fact that it hasn't screened here yet, but I want to get this down while I think of it, so I'll keep the rest of it off the front page. Spoilers follow, but nothing major -- certainly nothing about the bit where Sawyer turns out to be Jesus and the monster is revealed to be made entirely of cheese. Anyway.

So, by and large who gives a fuck, eh? I could make predictions about where it's going from here...

...that "Jacob" will turn out to be Santa Claus, held captive on the island by the Others (he has lists of who's naughty and nice; he can give you whatever you want; he's there with Polar Bears from the North Pole -- it all makes perfect sense)...

...that the story will be complemented by the arrival of private investigators David Addison and Maddie Hayes, whose sexual tension will be dragged out into a seasons-long plot point, collapsing the show entirely when it finally pays off...

...that the majority of Season 4 will just be home video footage of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof fucking you in the ass and high-fiving...

...but that holds little interest for me. Or for you, I imagine. What does interest me is the reactions of the fanbase. Here we have a typically wanky Salon.com review, where they try to tell us that if we don't like Lost and want answers we're just being impatient and childish and we just don't get it, man. Make sure to read the replies, many of which point out that it's not just the constant teasing/padding in the storylines; it's the fact that the characters are forced by the writing to be such uncurious motherf*ckers in order to enable the teasing/padding.

And over at Lostpedia.com, the events of the finale appear to have finally driven them over the edge into full-on fanboy obsession. How else to explain the ever more desperate and grasping attempts to find references or homages in everything that happens? That bit where Charlie hits Desmond in the head with an oar? That's a homage to the bit in The Talented Mr. Ripley when Matt Damon hits Jude Law in the head with an oar and a homage to the bit in Pirates of the Caribbean where someone hits someone in the head with an oar. The bit where Charlie talks into a microphone? Clearly a sly reference to the bit in Star Wars where Han Solo talks into a microphone. The best (and yet worst) by far, though, is:

• Rose makes Bernard repeat he is a dentist, not Rambo. This is a homage to how Dr McCoy repeated [sic] claimed he was a doctor, not something else.
• It's also a reference to Rambo.

I dare say it is.

From the Armchair Of

Josh writes:

Television -- that's a good topic. Everyone watches television. Yes. Yes, you fucking do. If you're one of those "Oh, I never watch TV -- all the shows are crap and the news is too sensationalistic and OH I'M JUST SUCH A FUCKING FREE-THINKING INDIVIDUAL!!!" types, then I put it to you that A) You are a liar, and B) Death is coming for you. And by "death", I mean "me". And by "for", I mean "while thinking of". No, that's not right.

Anyway, of all the ratarse shows I watch on TV, Lost is not among them -- I haven't seen a single full episode. According to the Rules of the Internet, I am therefore much better qualified to talk about it than all the "so-called experts" who actually sit through it every week.

You know that game where you go to give someone something, then pull it back as they reach for it and go "ah -- gotcha!" again and again and again? That's Lost, that is. "You've got lots of questions, I know -- here's... lots more questions! Moo hoo ha har!" What kind of finale was that in Season One -- the shocking revelation is that there's a hole in the ground?!*

Now, I don't watch it, but various people I know do, so I keep myself informed on each episode's happenings, not because it's important that I know what my friends are talking about when Lost comes up, but because it's important that I know more than my friends when Lost comes up. To this end, I tend to read through episode summaries online, which means I only need to give up a couple of minute a week to know what's going on, and because the summaries are posted as the episodes screen in the US, I'm several months ahead of people who watch it here. It also means that I don't have nearly as much invested if it all turns to shit, a la The X-Files.

I'm pretty sure it was around the time of the X-Files movie that it became undeniably plain that the writers were just making shit up as they went, spinning out an increasingly twisted plot as long as possible, as opposed to working to a pre-determined ending. And then came Millennium, which seemed to be like that right from the start. Lost claims to have a grand plan all thought out -- maybe they can pull it off and not build things up to the point that no ultimate revelation could possibly explain all the crap they throw at you, maybe not. The important thing is that I'll be watching Season 15 of America's Next Top Model at the time and laughing.


* For what it's worth, my predicition for the Season Two finale is that they don't press the Jolly Candy-like Button and let the timer reach zero, at which point there's a loud noise, everything shakes, and it fades to white -- TO BE CONTINUED, YOU CREDULOUS FUCKS... Possibly there'll be a confusing jumble of images that the geeks can go through frame by frame while they wait for Season Three.