Its hard to believe that there will be no more Lost in my life. I did read one article on CNN that said the DVD for season 6 will have 20 extended minutes of the season finale but I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere else. I actually did not have great expectations going into the finale based on how this season has progressed. I was pleasantly surprised by this finale and not for the reasons I thought I would like the finale. There were no real mysteries about the show solved like time travel, special people, why the island has magical power but they did answer what the flash sideways are which blew my mind (after I realized what happened).

I was really amazed by the first two hours. I had constant chills throughout the first hours because I never expected to see a lot of the old characters and then also see them reunite in their special way. The writers handled this beautifully and helped cement it as the best show ever. I was confused with the last minutes as I couldn’t figure out why they were all going to the Church (and how they knew to go there). I then realized that was the same Church as the Lookout where Mrs Hawking was. I thought they were going to do some weird time travel again to the island. Alas, I was totally wrong. It wasn’t till the show was over and I had a friend explain it to me to understand what went down. In the end the island was not purgatory (like people had speculated since season 1) but instead the flash sideways were. What through me through a loop was the flash sideways timeline but it was arbitrary since people in that timeline died and lived different lives outside the island but then all came back to the flash sideways in the end.

Alot of what happened even was a little expected like:

1. Hurley being the next #1 after Jack. I thought this all along (or at least the last several episodes) since his character did not make much sense for how much they focused on him. I at least thought he would be the new Richard.
2. That Juliet was Jack’s ex-wife in the flash sideways. There was a reason why they waited till the last episode to show her identity.
3. That Juliet was going to be the doctor that helped Sun after she was shot. I was expecting this because I was expecting something worse since she was shot in the stomach. Who better to help than the baby expert.
4. That the final scene would have Jack laying in the same patch of bamboo as the opening scene of the series. It just seemed sensible knowing that the bright light was so close.

What I did not forsee:

1. The meaning of the flash sideways — everyone dies but they don’t have to die together.
2. That everything that happened actually happened (i.e. time travel and alternate timelines, the incident (which I assume the nuclear bomb blowing up was the incident), and so on.
3. Ben being the new #2. I was expecting Ben to be the new MIB especially when he was helping to lower down Jack. There was a lot of similarities to the scene with Jack and MIB lowering down Desmond.
4. That all the characters like Rose, Bernard, Vincent, Shannon, Boone, and others would be in this episode.
5. I knew Jack was going to be laying in the bamboo patch at the end but I did not know how or why. I was just hoping that the episode was not going to end the same way as it started ….ie a time loop where it is all played out again.
6. The high Christian context. Jack was basically Jesus. Someone even made the point that he was stabbed in the same place Jesus was as he was carrying the cross.

What really confused me:

1. The last scene of the plane crash on the ocean. I believe this was to show us that they still always crashed but what threw me through a loop was that we never saw the plane parts in any of the island scenes the rest of the previous episodes after the pilot. It made me think that the Ajira flight crashed too.
2. Jack’s son—Both his mom and dad did not belong in this timeline so how did he even exist? Or more importantly why did he need to exist? Did it make Jack a better person and have more meaning so it didn’t make him the druggie alcoholic he was in the flash forwards?
3. The Aaron and Walt storyline in the early seasons. The only thing I can think of is that it somewhat relates to how Jacob and MIB were chosen as candidates at a young age so maybe Jacob thought he also needed a young kid as a replacement. With that said, I do not think this is the case and it really came down to a storyline where the writers went in a different direction and just hoped we forgot about it.

In the end, Lost was about two things: redemption and emotional connection. The writers used all kinds of crazy story lines and mythologies to get to the end point which confused people (including me) but it made a fantastic story and emotionally ended the show on a hight point for me.

It was a pretty jammed pack weekend for me that was a lot of fun. Friday was the first Cards game I went to with the “boys.” I say that in quotation marks since only one guy was there. It amazing how much changed in two years thinking how we had 5 seats in the Bank of America club which was a blast. Needless to say the game was very fun and the Cards won so it was a plus. I met some other friends at Paddyo’s and did a little dancing. It was a good night.

I went to the Mt Pleasant and Sugar Creek wineries on Saturday. I will have a more detailed post about this later in the week but Mt Pleasant was a big disappointment while Sugar Creek was awesome. The wine was great, the weather was perfect, and we had a lot of fun. Plus, I did not get sun burnt or even red.

I put on my domesticated hat on Sunday and did some grass cutting and yard work in the blazing sun and heat (supposedly it tied the record for St Louis heatwise). I got some errands done and then settled down to watch the best TV shows ever….Lost! I am amazed about the show the more and more I think about it (which is a lot). I will have a separate post about it later in the week too. I missed the Lakers game and they lost (is that the theme of this paragraph?).

Here are my thoughts on Lost and my experience as we hit the stretch run for the final episode.

I first started watching Lost right before the second season started. My friend Matt kept telling me that I needed to watch this show. Especially since I was depressed that HBO’s Carnivale was not picked up for a 2^nd season. Carnivale was the first show I really got extremely into and read a lot online about theories and what not. So I downloaded (I know but this was before they were online) the first season of Lost and watched all the episodes straight in 3 days while I was on a business trip. I was addicted and could not wait till the second season.

The first two seasons of Lost were the best for me. It took two seasons to get a full understanding of the main characters back stories and see how everything was related. All the other seasons are just filler now that I see how the series is ending. The reason I say this is because it seems like the writers kept throwing out more and more questions which seem like they will never be answered. I know I hate to think this but the show would have been perfect in 3 seasons. Going into this last season, I was expecting it to be jammed pack with action and finally understanding what was going on with this island. Instead, the writer chose to continue with a lot of fluff and give half answers. I may seem upset and I am but I have come to the reality like many other Lost followers that it is not the intention of the writers to provide answers. Instead they want to focus on the theme of redemption. It a great storyline but it makes it seem like a lot of the episodes and what we thought we major occurrences and plotlines were worthless. This is why I think the show would have been better in 3 years. The Lost blogs keep referencing the idea that the 1^st season was written so the show could have ended hitting the writer’s storyline if it wasn’t picked up for a second season. I agree that it is possible after looking at some of the facts.

Even though I am complaining about the ending, I am going to be so disappointed to never have Lost again in my life. I know that sounds creepy and weird but I have never been into a show this much. It is the one show that I have to see as soon as it is on. It is also a show I spent countless hours reading about online and discussing with my friends. This is why it is the best show ever! The downfall of the show is that you basically can’t start in the middle thus why viewer ratings went down every year (even though I did convince two coworkers to watch all the episodes in a couple months before the start of this season…and they loved it). It is also another reason why the show should have only been 3 seasons.

And one theory that I can’t wait to find the answer to about the show is why the island was sunk in the beginning of this season. Everyone has speculated because the people found a way to kill Flock, MIB, or whatever you want to call him. The last episode gave a new possibility that the MIB can use Desmond to destroy the island. Is it possible that Lost could end with a sad ending?…I hope not but Carnivale did which made we crave it even more.

I can’t wait till Sunday and dreading it all at the same time!

Wow! My head is spinning from that amazing episode. Now that is a Lost episode we know and love. We had not seen that in the first 3 hours of this season but they did need to build the stage. This episode did not answer a lot of question but at the same time led us down the path to them.

• Who was that young boy? I didn’t have a clue the first time but he did look like he had blood on his hand. The second time I saw him and he started talking about rules and I immediately thought it was a younger Jacob. What really blew my mind is thinking that is Aaron or maybe Jacob and Aaron are the same people.
• Aaron and Jacob being the same person hit even closer to home when the new Locke said to Sawyer that “Of Mice and Men” was before his time. It came out in 1937. Isn’t that after his time if he was on the island at the time of the Black Rock? This made me think of weird time loops.
• The Numbers and the list was party explained which I did not expect. What I missed was that each character they named from Oceanic crash had one of the numbers: 4-8-15-16-23-42. That is quite interesting. Interesting omission was Kate.
• I loved Locke being a substitute teacher in the “present” day. It really rounded out his story. He went from being a guy feeling sorry for himself for not being able to fix his situation to actually genuinely helping others by teacher the youth of America.
• Looks like Alpert has been a pawn all along which was sorta verified earlier. He is more of an executive assistant for the leader.
• Looks like Ilana knows a lot more than everyone else. Could the fake Locke been the cause of her hospital flashback with Jacob? He knew she would be a problem so he tried to change things? If Jacob can leave the island, why cant fake Locke?
• I have no clue who is good and bad but it almost seems like it doesn’t matter. I don’t think there will be a straight answer and it will be up to the viewer to make their own decision based on the outcome.
• I do not think that Sawyer does want to leave the island (or at least not in this way). I think he is doing what he does best …. playing a con on Flocke (fake Locke). There is no way they could make Sawyer a bad guy again after his character progression in the last 10 or so episodes.
• I loved seeing through the “eyes” of Smokey
• I wonder why Flocke is stuck in Locke’s body according to Ilana. Is it because he broke a rule or does the “island” need to reset for him to change back or take another form?

Have anything other theories that I may have missed or comments on my thoughts? As always, I would love to hear them.

Update 1: I totally forgot to mention another huge point. Why Locke is in a wheelchair in the flash-sideways if his fiance mentioned his dad in a “favorable” tone  when talking about eloping to Vegas. How did Locke become paralyzed? Obviously, he was not pushed out of a building by his dad this time.

I was pretty disappointed with this episode. It seemed like a lot of filler to me. Something I definitely do not want to see with less than 15 hours of Lost left. The reason I call this filler is because we have no idea why the Lost writers are spending so much time focusing on the “present.” Hopefully there will be a major twist and the “present” that we think is really the past. Otherwise, what is the point of focusing so much time on it….All we care about is the island. With that said, they need to reveal that pretty quick otherwise a lot of Lost fans are going to be disappointed.

There were only two revelations this episode and neither were very big. The first being that Sayid has the sickness and the Others somewhat explained the sickness. I already had a pretty good grasp on the sickness so this did not seem like a revelation at all to me. The question I have about this is if Ben has the sickness since he also used the fountain to hell him? Is that why he couldn’t ever see Jacob? I don’t think Ben was dead though but I don’t think Roseau’s crew was either do the sequence of events do not add up.

The other revelation is that CFL (otherwise known as Roseau) probably had the sickness and so does Claire. The only question is how did Claire get it. She didn’t seem to be entirely crazy because she only killed the Others; not Jin. Maybe she escaped from them like Sawyer did. What if we find the MIB is actually the good guy while Jacob is the bad guy. There are clues to see if from both angles.

First off, I did not get to see this episode until Friday so I kept seeing everyone comments about the episode. To me, the episode had extremely high hopes. I did not see one comment from anyone that said it delivered the answered we were searching. Everyone said it was good (which is not very good in my eyes) to it proposed more questions than it answered (typical Lost). With that said, I do not know what they were watching because I thought the episode was amazing. The writers could have seriously ended the series in this episode (Carnivale style) and I would have been okay with it.

• The major revelation of the episode and the entire show was that there are two “Jacob” style man on the island. Plus, people keep coming to the island and fighting each other throughout time. The real kicker to the other Jacob that most are referring to Man #2 is that he found a loop hole in the system in which he could kill Jacob. He did that by appearing as apparitions to the survivors to get them to do what he wanted. I believe this included Kate’s unicorn, Jack’s dad, Locke on the island the second time, and many more. The only two apparitions I am questioning is if Hurley was seeing dead people and if Man #2 is also Smokey. I think Man #2 was the dead people Hurley was talking to thus why he told him in the cab that he was not crazy.
• Man #2 looked to bring Locke back alive when his father threw him out of the building thus explaining how he lived so a huge fall.
• I liked the back stories with Jacob meeting all the survivors thought their lives. The stupid thing on my part is that I did not realize that was Jacob. I must have been too tired.
• I am going to miss hot Juliet. I do think she is dead. She had been wearing a red shirt alot which supposedly is a sign that she is going to die plus she did not meet Jacob in her flashback. Her flashback seemed to actually portray that she needs to learn to “take one for the team” thus another reason why she would be dead.
• The good vs evil question in my mind was finally answered. Jacob seems to be the good along with basically everyone on the island except Man #2.
• Vincent, Rose, and her husband were back like promised. I expect this to be the end of them. It was a nice quick way to get their storyline finished so everyone would quit asking about where they were. Plus, I am pretty sure that Rose is one of the detectives Mom’s in Southland. The only thing peculiar about the exchange was the comment about the tea between Rose’s husband and Juliet. Not sure what was going on there. Are they really dead?
• We finally knows what lies in the shadow of the statue … it is Jacob. I am surprised to see that no one theorized that early.
• It turns out that Man #2 was the person in the cabin all along and not Jacob. What does this mean about Claire? Also, was Hurley the one that let his escape by disrupting the gun powder ring where he ran away from this place? Hurley really is cursed and brings only bad things with him.

Overall, I was deeply disappointed in this episode. The reason being that it was thought that it was going to be a “Richard-centric” episode which it was not. I along with others had all these ideas running through our head about how we were going to finally find out at least some of the mysteries behind Richard. Unfortunately, all we got was a remark about him being very old and that he was like a spiritually guide in finding the leader. Two things that most real Lost fans had already figured out. The episode had no real big wows unless you consider Locke telling Ben that he was going to kill Jacob. I did not because I am not sure that Jacob is even a real person even though we supposedly seen him in past episodes. You would think that Jack’s dad is Jacob now or even the possibility that Locke has become the new “Jacob” in which he is going to “kill” him by disproving the fact that he exists.

Here are some of my other thoughts:

• Don’t watch the previews to the episodes which are hard since ABC shows them all the time in commercials. Why do I say that? In this past episode, you could already tell the bomb was in the tombs. Everyone thought it was in the temple but it turned out to be under the barracks. Same difference to me. I guess that came to a surprise to some but not me. The second being that the episode preview for next week showed Sawyer talking to Jack. Obviously something happens for them to get off the sub (which by the way had super cheesy CGI in its departure scene).
• Of course Kate does not want everything to reset back to normal if Jack is successful. If that happens, she would go to jail thus the tiff with Jack.
• I did think that Kate was actually shot in which I was excited for the mere shock value. But she did not which actually took more of the luster out of the episode.
• What is in the guitar case that Hurley is carrying around? Is it a submachine gun…lol. Doubt he could get that past the security checkpoint at LAX.
• I at least like that Sawyer toyed with the idea of he had a master plan on the sub when he said “we are not going back to Ann Arbor.” Instead he just said we could go anywhere in the world; besides the island.
• There now seems to a divided group in the Dharma clan which I assume is why the incident still occurs.
• Why did Daniel’s mom not take her son to the Temple to save him like Richard did for Ben? Is it because her baby’s daddy did not let her thus why they do not talk to each other anymore?
• I did like the scene with present day Locke telling Richard what to tell flashing Locke. It potentially might be the biggest scene of the episode. I think this because it might actually be leading us down the path that no one really has “super power” but instead keeps getting information passed down to them from “flashing” people who are on the island. We have already seen this a lot with Ellie thus why she did not know what was going to happen anymore in 2008.

I hope this 2 hour finale next week is amazing. I am hoping that it does not end on the incident. I would like to see some results of the incident. I can not wait another year to find more info.

Everyone seems to think this was a mind blowing episode. To me, an avid Lost fan, this seemed like a pretty predictable episode except for a few parts. I guess the show does have to start wrapping things up at some point. The one thing that I have no clue what is going on is the deal with the Statue people. Who is this potential third group and when are we going to find out more about them? I sure hope we don’t have to wait till next season.

• I sure hope no one thought it was a surprise to find that Widmore was Faraday’s father. I pretty much thought this was a given once we found out that the connections with Eloise and that she was on the island.
• I along with other writers had theorized that Faraday was going to die soon because his story was coming to an end. I did not expect it to be this episode but was not surprised. What I am surprised is how it happened. Why did he go in all gun slinging and making threats? He was one person surrounded by everyone with guns? What were we to expect? I sure didn’t think that he was going to kill Richard.
• The interesting thing about Faraday and his mom is that it almost seems like she knows her past and that she killed her own son. It is a weird time loop that has been discussed a lot this year. Does not make a lot of sense yet.
• I have no clue what is going to happen to Sawyer and group. From the previews it looks like they are being sent back to the sub. Why are they just not executed? I do not think they will get on the sub so it makes me believe that it is possibly that we will skip back to 2008 the next time we see them.
• Why is Faraday losing his mind? Is it because he exposed himself to high radiation?
• The whole H-bomb concept is very interesting. Obviously Faraday did not know how Jack and the 05 got back so he is not part of the Statue cult. But it was theorized that he would be the island’s demise. I do not see it happening.
• We also found out that Widmore did stage the crash which I also hope everyone already knew.
• Why did Miles just not agree that he was his son? Does it have bad consequences if he knows that?
• There is a lot of talk about the Comicon video with Mile’s now revealed Dad. Was it Miles or Faraday shooting the video? It was after the incident so how could it be Faraday?
• I am not happy with the possibly cheesy way of them blowing the island up and everything resetting. As I said this would not happen but this would be such a cop out. They could do that next episode and the show could be over basically. Thus why it is not going to happen.

Weekend

I went to our first Cardinals game of the season with the group. Our seats are in the back row in the lower bowl by the right field foul pole. They are pretty good seats. They would be especially good if it happened to rain since we are under the overhang. I did drink way too much that night. We went to Paddy O’s afterwards for a little bit then went to Rue 13 for 80’s night. It was an extremely late night. I stayed in Saturday night because of that. I watched Doubt. I was not impressed. My streak of seeing bad movies continues.

Blues

The first Blues playoff game was a disappointment. I was not that familiar with Vancouver before last night’s game. I was really upset and insulted when I saw that every ESPN analyst picked Vancouver to win (most in 5 games). I did not know that Vancouver was on a similar hot streak as the Blues plus they have a super hot goalie. The Blues did not have a lot of pressure on Luongo but he did make excellence saves (as Mason did also) that provided Vancouver with the win. Overall it was a very entertaining game due to its feistiness. Jackman was really getting in the middle of everything. I believe the Blues downfall that game was not scoring on the 2 man advantage and only scoring on 1 of the many powerplays. I am also very scared of the Sedin twins. That line was skating circle around us with the help of Demitra. I thought all along that we only needed to win 1 of the first two games due to our great home crowd.

Lost

Last nights episode of Lost was pretty entertaining. Like other people have indicated, these past 3 episodes all seem to be setup episodes for something greater to come. Unfortunately, we will not find out for another two weeks since there is a “clip show” next week. Below are my thoughts on the episode:

• Widmore did not hire “the Shadow of the Statue” people. I am going with the idea that they are the original people from the island. My only problem that contradicts this is that I think Richard is part of this group. I read an interesting theory that Richard is not on any side and is basically an intermediary that tries to help the “sides.”
• Miles is the son of Dr Chang. The weird possibility about this finding is that it is possible that Miles tells Dr Chang that the Purge is coming which basically saves his life and his mothers.
• Hurley is starting to be one of my favorite characters. He really is funny plus he says what everything is thinking and writing about in the various Lost blogs.
• Faraday did not go crazy. He must have gone back on the sub when Sawyer and Juliet had the chance 3 years ago. What I found weird about his moment was how cocky he appeared when he said hi to Miles.
• Pretty awesome that one of the workers died by basically having is whole filling pulled out of his head via his brain courtesy of the giant unknown magnet.

Random Thoughts

• Why do I have this cold (or whatever it is)? It is the worst timing.
• I am not sure about my fantasy team. The hitters stepped it up big time this week but my pitching still seems to be my weakness even though it should be my strong point. I only have the two Cy Young award winners from last year and a bunch of other great pitchers and closers.
• Only 4 sessions (2 weeks) left in grad school forever!
• I am not pleased with my phone. I have extreme memory leakage. I am confused about several things. I am reading forums about other peoples Bolds and they are talking about 128MB of memory where I only have 28 after a restart and goes down to 0 by the end of the day. I am only running WeatheEye, Twitterberry, Facebook, and Google Maps as of right now. I seem to be a lot worse than everybody else. I am going to probably exchange it for a new one if the backup feature in Blackberry Desktop allows me to easily transfer all my stuff from one to another.

TV Shows

We have been treated to a lot of new shows in the past two or three weeks. Below is what I am watching.

Tudors – I am watching this show just because there is not much else on Sundays lately. I gave up on it last year. It is okay but I am not sure how a show like this could get renewed when Rome, Deadwood, and Carnivale can not.

Unusuals and Southland – The thing that upsets me about these two cop shows is that both main characters have a rich past. We haven’t got the full details in Southland but it sounds like his daddy is rich too. So basically the only difference is that one is based in LA and the other New York … imagine that. Unusuals has more of an interesting storyline and I prefer ABC shows so this is my favorite so far. I also have branded the OC guy in Southland with his image from OC so I have a hard time taking him seriously.

Better of Ted – I did not like the first episode but I have grown to love this show. It really is funny. I like their fake commercials. With that said, I do not expect this show to make it.

Surviving Suburbia – I watch this show only because of Bob Saget. It has its funny moments but this show will not make it past the first season.

Kings – By far the best new show on TV. It has everything I like. I also like “Al Swearengen” in this role.

• I will post my blog entry on my trip to Negril this weekend. The entry is done but I do not get my pictures from the water camera developed until tomorrow so I wanted to wait.
• I am surprised I do not have warrant for my arrest. I just got notified by a law firm that I have an outstanding red light camera ticket from 2 years ago. I got it right next to my work which has cameras at each stop light. They said they sent the ticket to my Brentwood address since that’s where the car was registered to at the time. Luckily it is only a $100 fine and a non moving violation.
• Lost was decent last night. I feel like it has more of a season 1 flow now. I totally missed the image of girl in the background with Sun and Jack’s dad at the end of the show. I like how Sawyer is now the man instead of Jack.
• It is March Madness time. I am somewhat excited and basically only because MU is in it. I had a hard time filling out my brackets. All the good teams have really not been tested or they have hurt players so I think there will be all kinds of upsets even though I did not pick any. I expect the Big 12 to do well in the tournament. I will be taking a half day on Friday to watch the MU game. I feel sorta bad since I have taken so much time off in the past two weeks.
• My brother is selling a car alarm and two graphic cards on Craigslist if anyone is interested.
• I am so looking forward to sleeping this weekend even though I am going to F15teen on Saturday for a Wash U grad party/going away party for 3 of the girls from PMBA 22.
• My fast food binge is about to come to an end. I think I got it all out of my system. I also made some really good beef stew last night. I will go back to eating healthy in preparation for swim suit season after it is all gone.
• I am not sure I am going to get through all my DVR shows before I get my new one on Saturday. I have knocked out about half of the 19 hours I had on there. Luckily, I have been saving all the Showtime and HBO shows for last since I knew I could get them OnDemand even though it would not be in HD. I am super excited about my Moxi 2 coming this weekend. I feel like I am special for getting it.
• I got 4 tickets (thanks to Luke H.) to the Blues game vs the Blue Jackets on the 28th if anyone is interested in going with me. They are really good seats.