The Last Act

LOST ends tonight. The groundbreaking show that has taken it’s audience into a mystified journey tethered on the turfs of fate and coincidence, good versus evil, love and scorn, life and death will finally come full circle in it’s long awaited two and a half hours series finale, aptly titled The End. Come tonight, the ending will redefine the essence of television in the 21st century: in which a heavily serialized show abound with complex fabrication manages to entertain, educate and spark enthusiasms in the modern age of blogospheres and the evergrowing like-minded Internet community.

I was brought in for the ride six years ago, not knowing the impact it would have on me. A classical tale about a group of survivors stranded on a mysterious island seems too elaborate and bears little entertainment value. After the pilot aired and when Charlie (the rock-star character who died trying to safe his friends from an impending doom in the third season of the show) asked with a puzzling look on his face: “Guys, where are we?” – the hook was set almost immediately.

LOST is inventive in its own indefinite genre, hallmarked by its shrewd devices in storytelling. It is artful without looking down on its audience and doesn't, in return, demands anything from them. Instead it did the direct opposite by having the writers to playfully sprinkle the implications of science, religion, philosophy, psychology, literature and history throughout the show, indirectly confounding the audience and consequently brought about an off-the-wall change in regards to the way a TV show is being dissected. Critics have been religiously analyzing, hard-core fans created their own theories, casual fans speculated, tweeted and blogged about their personal views. LOST has gradually amassed a modern and vocal audience unlike any other.

It must be said that to be a LOST viewer, one has to regard oneself as a freak. To miss an episode is like sinking into obscured territories. Mysteries after mysteries started to evolve and answers tend to pratfall and delved into hiding as the series propels. But once it progresses to a definite end date, the answers finally began to reveal itself, often poignantly and at times off the mark, disproving the loyal fan’s speculations. Indeed, no show would be able to please every single viewer, hence the ending will eventually bring about two conflicting camps: the ones who were fully satisfied and the others who felt somewhat robbed. I for once believe that the journey is much sweeter than the final destination.

LOST can be seen as a convoluted piece of art, a poetry that disguises itself as an enigma and a tapestry of a magnified question-mark. It fills itself with perceptive contraptions and perplexing materials that break away from the one-sided school of narrative exercises. Game-changers and cliffhangers aplenty, it tends to throw audience into all sorts of direction but not dispossessing them. LOST provides a platform for similar genre to flourish, but alas they meet their demises (Heroes and FlashForward for examples). It is one of the earliest shows to truly put forth an international casting, a show not afraid to break all the safe episodic TV rules and even more unafraid to bring in politically-incorrect characters (Republican Guard torturer, anyone?) into the intricate scheme.

When seen from a broader perspective, it is a show that talks about life in nature, about you and me, about the castaways burdened with various issues: parental, personal as well as emotional. Flashbacks on their private lives create windows of opportunity for the viewers to slip into their past and see how these people react to the ongoing island events. The past tends to build the foundation of who these characters are and their decisions on the present often parallels the story of their past. The beauty (or ugliness) of LOST lies in the anecdotes and development of these troubled characters, and they were done by not resorting to the usually trite soap-opera motives. Even when nonessential episodes like Exposé tend to hinder the show’s momentum, they are good storytelling on its own.

The mythological and scientific parts of LOST are one of the aspects that took TV to a whole new level. Not wanting to back down or conform to the exposition in a common heroes-versus-villains syllabus, the writers gave the setting (in this case the mythical island) it’s own historical storyline, at the same time peppering pseudo-methodical topics that goes way beyond our heads, such as time-travel, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, pregnancy among others. Mixed these into the characters’ interconnectivity beats and you have a contemporary saga flashes before your eyes.

Too much have been said about LOST and many more are bound to surface as the series greets it’s final curtain call. Missing the show is an oversimplification, but yes, there will be no shows (not right away, I guess) that are able to fill the vacuum in this self-named geek who loves mystery-laden parables invigorated with character back-stories and thematic allusions. Like reading a good fiction, the end is bittersweet.

Poster and clip belongs to ABC / Walt Disney Company. No copyright infringement intended. 2010.

Absence of Sound

Recurring words, anomalistic in content, belly-flopped from the inaccessible cul-de-sac of discontentment; they were like songs parodied from a rhapsody of psalms, nidificated with strings of hope and not a tittynope dropped onto the ground. In the outerloop carriage of the disorient express, a group of nebulous bywords slackening lightly; some magnanimous idioms pulled a magical stunt, escaping the lexicologist’s needs for ideophonic passwords. Slogans, vainglorious and presumptuously overbearing, confabulated in an ego trip like skinflints who were pretending to care, like scofflaws in the revolutionary age of multiloquent academics. Certain expressions are saxicolous, certain vows are accoutrements for the livings. They seethed and fumed within the axioms of self-torment. Yet keynotes were also keystones. Prose tends to repose, not pussyfooting through their footnotes. Phrases broke their propositions and pledged to make plights in the polymath of their paroles. Their telltale signs were telling significantly. Thus we knew that requiems were not required to sooth the savage soul of a sonnetist dying from his hermetical innuendos. The foundation of this sweet versification, as much as its a pronouncement or a stretch of lies lying in the runes of ruins, chimed in its electroplated alliteration all the vociferous vowels and congruous consonants; defending any defeats. The poet is orphic, but often, an orphan.

Noiselessness is pure bliss. In the absence of sound, I found the right expression for the write occasion.

Muse Prints

Ideas residing in the archival bureau of my racked brain bloomed once more to win hearts of the few who agrees and appreciates. Print is not dead, ya know. (I mean, not yet).

Next stop, Siesta Interchange. Passengers going towards Zonktown, Snoozeland Or Trance Airport, please cross the platform and transfer to another train. Siesta Interchange.