I Will Always Be LOST

The series LOST ends Sunday evening. In preparation, I plan on serving myself the sort of food most of the survivors ate during much of their stay on the Island: wild boar, polar bear, Dharma crackers, electromagnetic current, sea water, sand, and grass, all nicely plated alongside fatal knife wounds, flaming arrows to the chest, gunshots, explosions and drownings. More major characters died on this show than in a dozen Sergio Leone westerns. I loved them all and cried over each one of them. Then I turned on Fox News and cried for a different reason.

Of course the real mystery at this moment is how the show will end. Two and half hours to go before the Monday morning post-LOST shakes commence and I start reading Wikipedia entries all over again. So LOST, go out with a blast and not a Seinfeld whimper. It will make all of those insufferable late night readings through the philosophy of John Locke worth it.

Okay enough bellyaching. Now about the ending: If I had any talent in writing, how would I close out the final chapter of a series so full of signs and cosines, tangents and time travel, cul-de-sacs and sacks of C4, overwrought metaphysics and broken metacarpals?

I've been giving this problem some thought while waiting for the phone to ring with the call from the escort service. Hopefully my credit card will go through this time. I hate watching series finales by myself.

So many people. So little time. If I were the network suit in charge, I'd say bring everyone back to the Island for one last gang shootout. Not because I get a cut of SAG benefits, which by doing so would secure medical benefits for most of the actors for another season, but because it is the only logical thing to do. The adversary that floats in and around the palm trees of this unincorporated paradise must be destroyed. This bag of cumulus psychotic wind is awesome and pernicious, and it will take a big body count to blow this bad boy away.

The dead, the people that should be dead, the Dharma initiatives and those never initiated, Jughead the hydrogen bomb, the parallel universe inhabitants, the incidentals who we never really met but ended up as floating bodies or convenient sides of beef for errant bullets must be avenged. So everyone come on down, the water's fine.

All lives lost, all broken existences, all the time travel, the sweat, tumult and murder of six years on the island is due to the singular motivation of one brother wanting off Gilligan's Island paradise and the other brother saying, "Like hell you are!" If Mister Black Lung ever leaves the Island, all of us are doomed. Doomed I tell you! I'm tired of putting night lights around my apartment after each screening of an episode. It's so unmanly and really freaks out any female visitors I pay to come over.

But how to destroy Mr. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes? Let me tell you right now we need muscle vs muscle and not some whiney wet blanket or exhaust fan discussion involving sacred daggers or snipers from trees. We fight fire with fire or, in this instance, smoke with smoke. Apparently created when good brother Jacob tossed bad unnamed brother, who had just murdered the woman both had believed was their mother, into the Island's energy source, this plume of evil cigar smoke just couldn't wait to escape and wreck havoc. Talk about the underground coughing up a Super Fund size hair ball. Sooner or later it's going to come out that both British Petroleum and Halliburton had something to do with this little disaster.

Incidentally, to understand many of the Jacob allusions in LOST, begin thumbing through that book called the Bible beginning with Genesis Chapter 25. Some of the favorites themes alluded to are such ITunes hits as Jacob stealing the birthright of his brother Esau, tricking his old man Isaac, colluding with his mother, hightailing it out of Dodge, working 14 years to marry the right woman, and wrestling with an angel of God. I've noticed that more Bible references waltz in and out of this series than can be found misquoted on any Sunday morning Heap O Money My Way Tele-evangelist Hour.

The black smoke monster is like your drunken ex: a roaring mess that crashes your parties, throws up on your guests, burns down the house and then disappears before the cops show up. For such bad JuJu and ill manners, the islanders would need its counterpart: racial insensitivity aside, a white smoke monster created in an identical fashion. Someone needs to be tossed into the cave of light that needs to find redemption and resolution to life. I see the ending as a steel cage match simmering towards an EPA smack-down between two forms of salsa gyrating circulating air. Which one of our last four has not only the cajoles but the blood lust to make the jump into the light? I nominate Sawyer.

Sawyer is the blustery con man, a fast talking carnival barker without a freak show. When a con goes south, hustlers like him get in their Porsche and drive north. They take the first boat to China, climb the highest mountains, dissolve into crowds, create new identities for themselves. They leave in a hurry to go smell out the next gullible mark. What they don't do is stand and fight (unless, of course, one has found among LOST luggage a US Marshall's hand gun and a Dharma Initiative polar bear is charging straight towards you).

Since crashing on the island, Sawyer has had his brains screwed with and his masculinity dampened more than any of the other final four Oceanic 815 contestants. I guess that's the reason why he tends to go shirtless. Disregarding his peacock strutting bravado bullshit, his one real heroic act of jumping into the sea from a crippled over loaded helicopter to save others fleeing the Island ended up, eventually, to be simply the sound of a man hitting water. There is one other thing about Sawyer that feels important. He's the only remaining "candidate" (Kate name is not on Jason's wall of graffiti) of the three who never escaped the Island at all. His life has encapsulated more of the Island's history than either Jack or Hurley. Pretty wonky stuff, eh?

Not a killing machine like Sayid, but a smooth talking lady's man like this blogger, Sawyer was conned into killing the wrong guy in Australia and tricked into snuffing Locke's old man, Anthony Cooper on the Island. He did mean old Tom Friendly because I hated mean old Tom Friendly. I simply starred at my DVR box for weeks thinking vile thoughts about Friendly until Sawyer cracked. Who says all those years of reading X-Men comic books didn't serve a purpose.

Sawyer failed to keep alive what viewers have come to believe was the only woman he didn't think of as a patsy in Juliet Burke; and he finally developed a heart rendering conscience several weeks ago, blaming himself for the deaths of Jin, Sun and Sayid. Ingloriously at the same time, he was saved from drowning by the other alpha male of the group, Doctor Jack Shepard (always leading his flock), a guy who never really wanted to swing his dick in a chest thumping response to any crisis at hand yet was always forced to.

So if this scenario of smoke vs smoke holds true, who else but Sawyer would take the leap into the light as a last heroic act to vindicate his rather tawdry existence. Or if he doesn't want to take the plunge on his own, Miles or Hugo could give him a stiff push. Or maybe not.

You know what. I don't care how LOST ends. I've had six seasons of enjoyment. I own all the DVD s to date. I can't wait for the LOST compendiums to come out and will look forward to the eventual LOST autograph conventions that one day will follow. Always a beautifully produced and well written show, filled with smart intellectual clues and gorgeous scenery, my one regret remains it was never a series on HBO. That way there would have been the de rigueur bare breasted shots of all those tee shirt wearing hot babes prancing, running swimming and sweating through this wonderfully picturesque jungle island of LOST.


PS. The Island will end up at the bottom of the ocean, maybe.

PPS. The Smoke Monster will escape and come to Los Angeles where it will blend right in with his cousins the Smog Monster and the Cookie Monster.

PPPS. Hugo will survive but run like hell to do it.

PPPS. Frank Lapidus is alive.

PPPPS. Ben Linus will die, and if he lives, I will hunt him down and kill him myself.

PPPPPS. Kate will remain bouncy and flouncy until the end.

PPPPPPS. The Dharma Initiative will open up an office in Santa Monica and begin recruiting all over again.

PPPPPPPS. Has anyone commented that Matthew Fox is once more in a party of five: Kate, Sawyer, Hugo, Locke and himself?

PPPPPPPPS. Miles ends up writing a book about his adventures and ends up being institutionalized at Hurley's old asylum.

Have to go. Someone on the other end of the phone named Svetlana tells me my credit card will once again make me a happy camper. Now where is my pup tent?