I said in other LOST threads that I decided fairly soon I was just gonna go along for the ride and wasn't gonna expend a lot of effort to analyze it by visiting a lot of the obsessive fan sites and going down a lot of the rabbit holes. Or was it rabbit trails? Anyway, real life was more important... there was some difficult stuff going on in my life during parts of the run of the show, and I couldn't justify the time required. I got out of it exactly what I put into it. Basically some pretty cool entertainment.
Last night, I was thinking that if the finale didn't satisfy me, I wonder if I would be sorry I spent all that time watching it. At this point, I'm still sort of undecided on that, but I know I won't be getting or borrowing the DVD set and rewatching it and trying to figure it out. It's just not worth it to me... never was. I enjoyed the subtle humor and inside jokes and personalities more than anything else about the show.
And I don't think the writers have it all nicely wrapped in consistency, and no one can hold their feet to the fire on that... they did a lot right, and they let the mystery reign on things that some see as loose ends. They claim that everything that happened on the island really happened.
I was kind of thinking last season that most of the entertwined story was some sort of mismash of 1) the waning consciousness of all the people dying as a result of the crash along with 2) their "life flashing before them as they plummeted to their death." I kinda felt like the scene of Jack dying and the crashed plane during the closing credits validated that, but I was pretty sure it was at least
meant to be more than that.
One of the reasons I thought it was the mishmash mentioned above is
because of the way they used the sound of jet engine as a transition between so many scenes.
But after the finale left me the way it did re: whether I wish I had all that time back, I decided to look for an unofficial fan site and see what the comments were. This is the one I stumbled across... I read the last several pages of this thread (last night, it was pp. 60-65... I haven't checked back and don't know how many pages it has now) and enjoyed hearing what was inside these peeps' heads regarding the finale and the show overall:
S6 EPISODE 17/18 THREAD 23-MAY-10 : "The End" (Series Finale) - MyMedia-Forum.com
Those are people that were deeply invested in the show and they varied on their level of frustration re: loose ends, Walt, Aaron, etc., but overall, most of them indicated they were satisfied with the show.
And here's a reflective piece about the show that someone on that MB referred to that's worth reading, IMO:
'Lost' finale: Redemption as 'The End' justifies the journey - USATODAY.com
Just my two cents.
Hugh, are you allowed to weigh in?
++++P.S. Don't bother reading any of that thread on the fan site until page 57... everything before that is people commenting on the show as they watched it. Page 57:
http://www.losttv-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68841&page=57