Okay, first of all: I, Hater, cannot do anything but adore an episode in which Sayid and Shannon — just as I’d hoped! — literally make out in public, practically stripping off their clothes and doing it in an alley, causing everyone else at my Lost-watching party to scream in disgusted agony as I cheered and waved my hands around.
I really didn’t expect that much wish fulfillment.
I’m also bizarrely looking forward to recapping. I haven’t looked at reactions online yet, but I expect it to be a free-for-all of agitation.
And as for the larger issue, which we can simply term the “WTF†issue …
The people at this party are huge Lost fans, who’ve been watching together for years. A Sawliet ‘shipper. A man who goes on and on about how great the structural experimentation has been. People who grade on a curve! Not snarky haters. Also, they’re mostly drunk on something called “Elmotinis.â€
They sound to varying degrees confused, annoyed, and angry. Not about the rest of the episode so much, but about the final church conversation and the Jack’s open eye/beach sequence.
There are discussions about the concept of “Bardo.â€
One person believes it was all Jack’s dream.
There’s a lot of freaked-out discussion about Christian Shephard’s afterlife goodness, questions about purgatory, and a general enraged sense that none of this made any sense at all.
“They were just juggling, juggling, juggling, and the balls had to fall,†said one friend sadly.
There’s some talk about Scientology. A mention of Falun Gong.
MUCH talk of Narnia — with both my husband and my host comparing this to The Last Battle.
But weirdly, I’m feeling sanguine, because while they never resolved many absolutely key plot elements (why did the Others act the way they did when the Losties arrived? What in hell was up with the pregnant women dying?), and while they bracketed the whole thing with this Jacob/Smokey crap, while the shove-the-cork-in-the-hole sequence was so Freudian even Freud would have giggled, it was daring — I’ll give it that. It was actively unpredictable. There were nice performances, plus the value-added nostalgia of everyone’s breakthrough flashbacks. And after a season of corny and frustrating missteps, from Tina Fey to the entire Temple arc, punctuated by one fun Desmond episode, I didn’t expect it to make sense, I just wanted it to be interesting enough to talk about with people.
Maybe after I sleep, it will make sense.
What’s your theory?