The LOST six years of my life...

If you didn't watch "Lost"...don't. If you did--of if you just wanna know what all the hubbub wuz--here's my take on the finale and my summary of the overall plot of the show.

The Verdict: The finale was completely lame and overly sentimental. It seemed designed specifically to be a big screw you to anyone who cared about the many questions raised by the show (much of the stuff I cover in the recap happened before the finale). It's was like the producers were saying, "Forget all that. Here's some pretty people hugging and kissing." In other words, they just turned it into a tricked out soap opera. For me, it was a learning experience. But I did learn. I quit watching "FlashForward" after two or three episodes this season cuz it seemed like they were headed down the same road as "Lost." And now FF is cancelled. Oh well, here's the summary...

The Recap: Apparently the island was special for its pockets of electromagnetism, which created a lot of the weirdo things seen by people, and this prompted the Dharma Initiative to live there and study it for decades. Once the DI failed, a new group lead by Ben Linus saw it as their job to protect the island (these were called "The Others" by Jack Shephard and co.). Also, at the heart of the island was some kind of much stronger light/energy/electromagnetism--and if this light were ever put out permanently, everyone in the world would die. Why? Who knows? Apparently the light helped to keep a lot of evil out of the world. At some point, The Others went to work for Jacob, a dude made immortal on the island by his witch (as in magic-using) of a stepmother ages ago. Seems he was the original protector of the light. But his evil, unnamed brother (who was exposed to the light by Jacob in anger and died and came back as a creature who could manifest itself as black smoke or as dead people) wanted to kill Jacob, put out the light, and leave the island.

So Jacob summoned people on that fated Oceanic Flight 815 to the island...one of which, he hoped, would take over his job as guardian of the light if Old Smokey ever succeeded in killing him. Well, that happened...and Jack agreed to be the new guardian. But then he figured he would also try and do what Jacob apparently could not do: kill Smokey. So that happened. But the effort to kill the big bad monster involved both Desmond Hume--former guardian of a smaller electro-mag pocket on the island--and Jack going down into the waterfall cave to that great light at the heart of the island (what they did there makes no sense and is too silly to explain). Somehow Desmond survived this mission (he apparently has an inexplicable high tolerance for electro-mag energy exposure), and Jack might have, too...except that Smokey, in the form of recently deceased lostaway John Locke, had stabbed Jack earlier. The series ends with Jack coming out the cave and lying down in the field where he first woke up on the island. Vincent, the only canine plane crash survivor ever, comes by to comfort him. The last shot is a close-up of one of Jack's eyes, and it closes.

Oh, and there were flashes to something referred to as the "Sideways World" by the producers throughout this past season. In this world the Oceanic crash never happened and no one died but somehow they all eventually remembered their time on the island and most of them came together in a church for the aforementioned hugging and kissing...where Christian Shephard, Jack's dead daddy, revealed to the alt-universe Jack that the sideways world was just a kind of way station which the castaways themselves created so they could come remember each other and their time on the island before moving on to the next life. The end. Lame.