Utopia, ghosts and time travel...oh my!

Did you watch the "Lost" finale? What did you think?

I came into "Lost" a season or two late and was immediately captivated by it like I've never been by a show before. It had my perfect elements. One of the most intriguing ideas to me is that of creating a utopian society. "Animal Farm" is in my top three books of all time. I love the movie "The Beach" (even thought nobody else did) and have watched it a zillion times. Love "Lord of the Flies". I am fascinated by the idea of a group of people trying to create a place in which to live in perfect harmony, without leaders, (hippies, too) and how it's destined to divide, fall apart. Absolutely intrigued. Perhaps because there is a part of me that wants it and desperately wants to believe it could work.

I remember reading this in a book in elementary, "Believe in everything until it's proven to be untrue". I was a little girl with a giant imagination and wholeheartedly believed the impossible. For a long time. As I've grown up and began to realize I'm of a much more post modern mind (which saddens me), I still love to feel inspired by a true believer that something magic can happen.

Enter John Locke.

Couldn't walk until he landed on The Island? Knew it was his calling to be there? To lead (out the window goes utopia)? Oh. Oh my.

I had my favorite character, the one I wished I was. I spent a childhood waiting for something like that to happen to me. Wasn't I destined to be whisked away to rule a magical land? Here we have a grown man who waited his whole life for it to happen. And it did.

This is what made "Lost" so great for me.

Then came end of the season where we learn we've been seeing flash forwards. They've left the island. The scene where Jack & Kate meet and he's a mess and tells her he's spending his time flying over the ocean, hoping to crash to get back on the island, how they were never supposed to leave? One of the best moments I've ever seen on tv. Again...the hope of a magical place that does exist, where you're meant to be.

After that it got messy to me. Time Travel. Aside from "Donnie Darko", I have a hard time with time travel. It's frustrating and confusing. Here I desperately want to believe in the impossible, but time travel is truly scientific, mathematical, and I need concrete proof. Explanation.

Locke wasn't Locke anymore. I felt like he'd died in vain. It began to get into a story about good vs. evil. Jacob vs. the man in black (and wait a minute...didn't we already have Locke vs Ben?). It got a bit too mystical for me. Left too much unanswered. It became a story about too many things, characters, elements, etc. There was no way for it all to tie together or wrap up. But I never gave up on it. I was nervous for the finale, I thought it might end up being a show about, well, nothing.

What was this? What was this about? Would I ever know?

The end came. I watched all four and half hours. The true finale was the last two and a half hours and when it began I realized how much I wasn't ready to say goodbye. I don't even know how to put into words how I felt while I watched it. I have never ever been like this (felt like that) about a tv show. Actually, I've only felt like that one other time in my life, after reading "Life of Pi". I was so impacted by that when I read it over a year ago, I still think about it daily. I still discuss it with my sweetheart.

I think I cried through the whole thing. I felt like as messy as it had gotten, it ended with perfection. The characters coming together again, to be together in another place, the meant to be.

And then they were dead. Dead!

Here's where I need to tell you how much I love that element. "Sixth Sense", yes. "The Others", even better. And "Lost"? Wow. I never see it coming and it gets me every time! Why is it so...well...sad? We know learn that the sideways flashes were a kind of purgatory. A possibility that was suspected all along, turns out it was true, yet was a total surprise.

Now we have new realms opened up. Religion, yes. But even better, reincarnation. Could the purgatory/sideways flashes have, in fact been another life where they corrected their wrongs?

I won't be good at wrapping this up...I just needed to write my thoughts. I needed to tell the world how profound it was to me and how rare. I know why, a little bit. But I also don't know why. I don't know why I'm getting teary even writing this. I don't know why it bled over to the next day and physically affected me. I had a "Lost" hangover and red, swollen eyes.

I guess it's because I was a child who desperately wanted to believe in it all. Who knew better than to ever 'grow up' and lose that childhood magic. The belief that all things are possible. It begins to go in spite of our decision not to let it. It's inevitable. And "Lost" was so lovely it let me truly escape back to remembering what it was to innocently and simply believe in magic again...the meant to be.

I don't think there will ever be another show like that in my lifetime...