HOW LOST FINALE WAS LIKE A BEATLES REUNION (WITH A TWIST)

The following is my reaction to The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher, whose blog post "Just One Question For Lost Fans" asked, "So what did you hate about it?"

I have always preferred non-fiction to fiction. I feel cheated when I am asked to care about non-existent people in a perturbing situation and how they willl end up and how the situation will be resolved only to find that the creator of the scenario decided to leave things up to the reader's own interpretation in the end.


EXCUSE ME?


You've been stringing me along, twisting my emotions around your little finger, making me anticipate the answers to the questions your tale raises, and then you want ME to help you write YOUR ending for you? THAT'S YOUR JOB! IMHO, that's just a hedge against upsetting some readers who want things to be resolved in a definite manner one way or another. It's not creative, it's lazy and cowardly.


As I tweeted earlier, I had expected the Lost finale to be something mildly mysterious like Orson Welles' timeless 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane (spoiler video here; no embed available) and got instead an ending more akin to Donnie Darko, the vastly overrated 2001 teen angst-fueled time-travel crazy quilt that writer-director Richard Kelly (The Box) is still trying to successfully follow up:






But since then, I've come up with a better way to describe my feeling.


Imagine, for a moment, that John Lennon was never assassinated and that George Harrison hadn't passed away, and the Beatles had resolved their differences long enough to have ONE more concert. You are in the front row as they are playing "A Day In The Life" for the first and last time live. They play and sing flawlessly heading up to the iconic final "endless" E chord.






Lennon drops his guitar, and heads for a grand piano on the stage. McCartney sets down his bass, and another grand is rolled up for him. Ringo tears from behind his drum set to get behind his own, and finally, Harrison follows suit. The crowd goes wild, waiting for the Fab Four to re-enact one of pop music's most amazing moments.


Lennon gives the signal to the others, they look down at the ivories, lift their hands over their shoulders, drop them down with ferocity, and play...


..."Shave and a haircut, two bits."


How would you process this? You must count yourself lucky to be one of the few to witness the Beatles in person, but at the same time, you also have to figure, why supply such a stupid, insipid ending to a legendary song?

For the record:  Treacher actually enjoyed the finale, despite its flaws.

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