I can remember walking into the Deep-in one Friday night, a small bar in South Korea frequented by foreigners, carrying my new Dell laptop to show people there this awesome new show I had discovered.  I said you have to hear the sounds of the show and see how they use split screens and letter boxing.  I wanted to share with others how awesome the first season of 24 was.  Now on a different continent I will once again tell how awesome 24 was, for the last time.

I feel like two best friends have gone away.  First it was LOST last night, and now 24.  It is a hard blow for me and a breaking off point in my life ending my formal period of fandom.  Now there is truly nothing left to my fandom.  Nothing to look forward to.  Nothing to escape with.

24 has been a constant for me nearly my entire decade abroad.  In Japan I would watch the show on Tuesday nights.  Tuesday days were at one time particular long and hard.  What got me through them was knowing I would be capping off the day with Jack Bauer, and that I earned that respite.

Over the years Jack became the character I cared for most on TV, cared for more than 95% of the people I ever called friends or family in my life.  He used violence, but he was at his core a man of honor, and I respected that greatly.  That is why I was greatly disturbed by the darkness overcoming him in this final 8th season, and was greatly relived that he came down from the ledge before the clocked ticked to 24:00 for the final time.  The show, and Jack, ended with their honor intact.

24 was the acting out of how I imagine many viewers wished things operated, how they wished they could operate themselves.  How I wished I could operate.  Jack through his combination of extreme physical skills, extraordinary experience and knowledge, and his honor, was able to act directly and definitively in a world that others all around him plodded hesitatingly through in a gray cloud.  He was a man of action, for better or worse, but characteristically mostly for better.

Now I have lost him as a friend.  I feel real pain from it.  I will miss Chloe too, the very epitome of loyalty.  She was also a voice of reason when it was needed, who did not shrink from the harsh ways Jack sometimes had to treat even his friends with.  There was no greater loyalty ever shown on TV.

Now two old friends have passed on, 24 and LOST.  Perhaps the real pain will come Monday night when there is no 24, and on Tuesday, when there is no LOST.

My great thanks to both shows for helping me survive the past decade.  I will miss them.

We know The End.  Though at this current moment I cannot say I fully understand it.  The series finale of LOST was more a way for us to just say good-bye to all our favorite characters, one last time.

***SPOILERS***

So that is it.  It was a competent series finale, which is actually praise, since many other shows’ finales were not good at all.  We got one last dose of secret island mystery, that great set with the water and the stone plug.  I just paused for like three minutes not knowing what else to write.  Seems like I should have just turned off my TV and walked out a door into bright white light myself.  I spend so much of my time revisiting my own, more important past memories.

WHAT I LIKED:

• Vincent coming to Jack’s side as he died, the emotional high point for me
• Jack seeing the plane fly away through the trees
• The unplugging of the light giving a plausible way of killing MIB
• Hurley being the real heart of the island as strong as ever, his love for Jack was palpable
• Ben finding his final, positive role in both realities
• Six major religions represented in the stained glass window behind the coffin
• “Bigfoot”
• Jack jumping up in the air to attack vulnerable MIB
• Richard getting his first gray hair
• Ben being a good #2 and Hurley being a great #1

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE:

• Lepidis’ impatience to leave
• How did Ben get out from under a log they said they could not lift?
• The storm came and went with blue sky between cuts
• Michael not making it to the church
• Desmond not really being that much of an ultimate weapon, just a dude that could pull a plug
• Jack just lying there in the plug pool when he could have dragged himself out easily before getting blasted with the light
• Kate’s one liner after shooting MIB/Flocke

I guess the gray haired lady (forget her name) who told Desmond to wait wanted everyone to have more time in their flash-sideways lives before he made them remember all the island stuff again?  Interesting her son’s name was not Faraday, but Widmore in the flash-sideways world.

Again I am at a loss.  So I guess when everyone died, they really died.  The flash-sideways world was the purgatory type place?  Hurley and Ben eventually died as well at some point too then.  Christian walked into the afterlife through the church doors into the white light?

The pacing of this episode was way, way off.  I wonder how watching the download with no commercials would help or hurt that?  For us watching it on TV, even with me tape delaying it on the DVR so I could fast forward through commercials, it often seemed like there was only 5 minutes of LOST at a time sandwiched by commercials and extra scenes of Jack and Lock looking over the waterfall ledge, etc.

Was the candy machine an allusion to the island?  Pull the candy machine plug out, the candy falls (MIB falls to his death), plug it back in, all is well?

Where did Frank and the others fly to?  What did they do?  Just have some life back in the real world?

I can see how this finale could be pretty divisive.  My own emotional state prior to watching LOST, despite my great efforts, was compromised, a huge, huge disappointment to me.  Up until this final season, I have always had the purist of LOST viewing environments.  It was extremely ritualistic to me.  I have not been able to maintain those same rituals, and I believe it definitely effected how I viewed the finale.

Then again, the finale was a bit Return of the King-ish, with lots and lots of reunions and good-byes.  I am ok with that, better than the show ending with malice.

I thought the end would be Jack on the island looking at a plane in some situation.

I am sure I will followup with some updates, but for now, this is all I have.  I will give the finale only 4-stars, and perhaps if there was a 3.5 star option I would choose that.

Farewell LOST.

It has really started now.  LOST is really ending.  We are well on our way and by this time Sunday night it will be done.  The tone of this penultimate episode had a totally different feel to it.  Either the music or the camera work or both produced a whole new feel to this episode.  The end of LOST will be distinct.  I will think of nothing else until Sunday.

***SPOILERS***

There is no time left, and things are finally happening on the island that reflects that.  Characters are being unceremoniously killed off.  MIB/Flocke is actually stating what he wants and is going to do.  Jack is Jacob’s replacement.  Ben has given in to complete evil.  There is not even time for a glass of lemonade anymore.

WHAT I LIKED:

• The look of fear in Richard’s eyes when the call of the smoke monster rang out
• The look of anguish on Sawyer’s face when he accepted he caused Sun, Jin and Sayid’s deaths
• The compassion Jack showed by insisting it was MIB/Flocke’s fault their friends were dead
• Alex’s gravesite scene
• The explanation for why MIB/Flocke is not just smoking around all the time
• Perhaps a final LOST campfire scene, always loved the look of them
• Jack manning up
• Hurley’s honesty that he was glad it was not him
• Jacob’s reasoning for Kate being or not being a candidate still, funny
• Hurley has a badass classic Camero
• Desmond’s whimsical and methodical plan unfolding in the flash-sideways
• The very purposeful direction of every reveal in the episode

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE:

• Widmore so unceremoniously killed
• Richard to unceremoniously killed
• Ben going over to MIB/Flocke’s side so quickly and completely

I guess Miles must have let Desmond out of the well because I saw no one else having any time to do it.  Unless Sayid did it right after he was supposed to kill him.

Dirty Tina Fey just got dropped, I can imagine there were some cheers somewhere at that occurrence.

What snapped in Ben so that he just blindly is willing to do whatever MIB/Flocke wants him to do?  First he said Ben could have the island once he leaves.  However, by the end of the ep MIB/Flocke said he was going to destroy the island.  Why would Ben then continue to help MIB/Flocke?

What weapons can Jack, now the same as Jacob, wield to protect the heart of the island against MIB/Flocke?

The writers did a very good job of not merely making this penultimate episode a setup episode for the series finale.  Enough concrete answers were given, enough happened on island and in the flash-sideways to make this a very satisfying episode on its own.

And now after six years we have but the final act left.  Truly, it will be the last great genre event for me in the foreseeable future if not forever.  They ended one-by-one in the past decade, Star Wars, then Harry Potter, and now the last remnants of my fandom will flame out when I presume the LOST title booms onto the screen at 11:30pm Sunday.  I am ready.

UPDATE:  I really liked seeing Rousseau again.  Great scene with her and Alex.  I even liked seeing Anna Lucia again.  Bring them all back!

I am disappointed.  If this ep had aired in the 4th season, it would have had some impact.  Now, I actually found myself getting a bit bored with the app halfway through it.

***SPOILERS***

This episode was nothing to me.  A waste of time.  This should have been like episode 6×14.5.  Something they aired in between real eps of LOST’s sixth season.  This is like the magical creatures companion book in the Harry Potter series, a nice bit of background, but not doing anything for the ongoing storyline.  I guess I do not like to be spoon fed answers, if there were really any answers there at all.  And, this episode was totally predictable.  Damon and Carlton have really lost their writing touch.  Their episodes are no longer landmarks in the series, and have not been for awhile.

WHAT I LIKED:

• the special effects for the light cave and creek area, made me think of Degoba
• seeing nice Hawaiian beach on HDTV
• what made the MIB into the smoke monster
• umm, that’s about it

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE:

• utterly predictable, ah shock, she kills the mother, ah shock the other baby is wrapped in a black blanket, ah shock MIB kills their fake mother, etc., etc.
• Answers given were not really answers, just like the fake mother said, questions answered just lead to more questions (i.e. how did she make it so they cannot kill each other?)
• introducing another episode long character out of the blue that just gets killed at the end, it has no impact because we have no connection to her, hence waste of episode
• how did fake mother torch a whole village?  what was Jacob doing while she did that??
• gimmick writing by mirroring lines other characters have already said (It was always you, etc)
• no rousing score at all this ep

Big whoop, we learn MIB has wanted to go “home” for a really long time.  Why?  Because he is not from the island originally.  We learn who “Adam & Eve” are.  That was extremely low on my list of answers I wanted, and definitely not worthy of being a big reveal for the end of an ep.

What is the fake mother using to set up all these rules?  Is it magic?  She was muttering something over the drink she gave Jacob to make him like her.  What was that ability?  Tell us that!

The light in the cave is the heart of the island, a part of that light is in every man but men want more.  Why is something so important guarded by just one woman?  Why is there not an army?

Basically the only remotely interesting thing was we learned MIB got turned from somewhat corporeal human into smoke monster because he was tossed down some magical creek that is the heart of the island.  Alright, thanks for telling us that.  I would rather of known how MIB found a loophole to take on physical form again, etc.

The donkey wheel, a reveal?  Not really, we just saw it lying there, who knows who actually installed it.

I don’t know, maybe I am just being too hard on this episode.  I will be, as always, curious to hear what you guys think.  All along I have been thinking to rate this ep only two stars, but….three?  By definition have to give it a three, though emotionally I feel it was a two.  During the middle part of the ep my mind was drifting, I was that disengaged from the story being told.  I just did not care.