LOST is over in so far as there will be no new episodes airing on ABC. That doesn’t mean LOST is over in so far as Dog’s Notebook goes. I have gotten into the habit, not so much of recapping episodes, but of looking into the episodes with the understanding that you and I both watched the same thing and that maybe there is something hidden in the mythology, popular culture references and characters themselves that would shed some light on the overall story. Well, folks, we are that the end. While there is still plenty of analysis left in me, there isn’t much story development left.
The task of full analyzing the final episode of LOST is one that I don’t think I would ever get around to doing in one post. My plan is to break LOST apart. Analyze it piece by piece until I am satisfied that I have dissected the show as completely as I possibly can. In order to do this, I am going to pick it apart; to work on one aspect or character of the show at a time. In a very real sense, I am going to treat LOST like this ball of rubber bands, peeling off one band at a time until no ball remains.
It is going to be a difficult task for no reason other than the fact that the rubber bands of the ball that is LOST are sometimes so interwoven, one can’t remove one without taking a few more with it. I am going to do my best to unravel it one by one. I don’t know how long this will take, how often I will put up posts or if anyone besides me will be reading. But that is my mission.
For my first rubber band, I am going to choose the LA X sideways world.
The Tootsie Pop.
Do you recall the popular commercial from many years ago in which a cartoon child proposed the question, “How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” Watch it here.
In many respects the viewers of LOST were like children with a brand new Tootsie Pop. We had to attack the lollipop one lick at time until we reached the tootsie roll center. But did we ever get there?
When LOST began, there was something unusual about the show, the characters, the island. Charlie asks at the end of the pilot, “Guys. Where are we?” Speculation abounded. As characters began to reveal themselves and their pasts we theorized, perhaps they are dead. Perhaps this other-worldly island is a purgatory like way station. Perhaps they will gather together, get their personal houses in order and then move on to some higher plane.
Oh no. Not purgatory. Nothing like that, we were told.
LA X was constructed poorly. The writers tried to be cute and deceive the viewers for a while and then reveal the sideways as an after-life world. Too much liberty was taken by the writers which made it way too loose to be wrapped up as tightly as they want it in the end.
When taken as a whole it doesn’t work. Keamy. Omar. Mikhail. If everyone in LA X is dead and it’s an existence the LOSTIES designed for themselves, why are those three even there? Forget about them dying again after they’ve already died. I’m not even going to get into Widmore being there or why others probably should have been but weren’t. I’ll save that stuff for another day.
So here we are, six season come and gone, and we are left with LA X as an after-life way station; a gathering place they all set up so they can meet each other and then move on. Entirely irrelevant but certainly interesting to contemplate is to question whether the sideways world of LA X was simply added as an extra layer because the island was indeed initially a purgatory? Because in the end, the characters ended up exactly where we thought they were when this whole thing began; gathering together, getting their lives in order and moving on.
None of which means that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the journey or find satisfaction in the story. It’s just that there is no tootsie roll center of this tootsie pop. The last lick is as crunchy and hard as the first. I like hard candy anyway.
