Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A | 5820 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT I Once Was Lost, But Now Am Found
By Cindy McLennan | Season 6 | Episode 17 | Aired on 2010.05.23
I mean, I basically have to decide that he's not real (or at least not the original Aaron, but some soul-clone), or if I choose to think of him as Original Aaron, I have to wave my hands until my arms fall off. And yet? I'm not sure how you tell Claire's story without giving her back her baby, that is, I don't know how you do it without turning Lost into a tragedy. It would have been possible, had the episode included a post-Island earthly epilogue for the Ajira 6 in which she was reunited with her boy and learned how to be his mum again, but that would have necessitated a different epiphany for not only Claire, but Kate and Charlie, too. Since the finale is 2.5 hours as it stands, I understand why the show sacrificed sense for sentiment. Still, it muddies the waters for those of us who like to imagine their afterlife once they exit the sanctuary. I mean, is Aaron a newborn forever? If not, do the other characters age -- even though they started their afterlife at the age they were when they left the Island -- regardless of when they died? Ick. I'm purposefully putting this out of my mind, because thinking about it too much ruins three terrifically powerful epiphanies.
Lost Love Stories: Sometime over the past week or two, I saw a clip of Darlton saying that at its heart, Lost is a love story. Now, I love the love story elements of the finale, but the series as a whole often fumbled love story execution. The actors brought it. The chemistry was there. The endgame couples (with the possible exception of Shannon rather than Nadia) were all my preferred pairings: Jack/Kate; Sawyer/Juliet; Rose/Bernard; Penny/Desmond; Hurley/Libby. I had no trouble trusting their tales, but outside the finale, there wasn't a whole lotta there there for the big love-quadrangle as it played out.
Quadrangle: Let's start with Sawyer and Juliet: how pathetic were their epiphany flashbacks? Not the quality -- the quantity. They were all from the same few scenes. And Jack and Kate? Yes, they always should have been endgame and I'm glad they were endgame, but I think the show spent 3 or 4 seasons showing us why Sawyer and Kate were in love. It spent all six seasons showing Jack was in love with Kate. It seems to me though, that it spent mere episodes showing Kate in love with Jack. And I refuse to fault Evangeline Lilly for that. If this finale did nothing else, it proved to me that when and where the Kate-character and the Jack/Kate romance fell down, the blame belongs at the feet of the writers. When they wrote good Kate stuff, Lilly delivered. There should have been more from Kate towards Jack, early on, before Sawyer and Kate had the cage sex, revenge sex, fleeing the freighter sex, and all the yo-yoing. Okay, and maybe less of the yo-yoing, altogether. I see a lot of people complaining about the use of love triangle devices on various boards. I like a love triangle when it's well executed (think Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, Jezebel). The trouble with triangles, for me, is that they're so often mishandled.