Goodbye, Old Friend.

*spoilers ahead, if you have not seen the finale of LOST please stop reading immediately!*

Since 2007 I have not been able to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" without becoming flooded by a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. I feel angry, happy, sad, nostalgically reminiscent, cynical, curious and disappointed. It all meshes together pretty well, and not too long after hearing the song I start to get the itch to hunker down and watch "The Sopranos" again for the second, third or millionth time. In my head I see Tony sitting in the booth at the diner waiting for his ungrateful -if not entirely righteous in their indignation- family make their way towards him amidst various shady characters that may or may not be about to shoot them all. Then, the abrupt cut to black, lack of audio, a brief moment of "what the hell just happened" and roll credits. Did I mention this happens every time? Well, it does, because "The Sopranos" was for me something akin to a religious experience. It wasn't that I loved watching mobsters shoot each other or anything like that; I didn't play the "who gets whacked this week" game with my friends. I loved the story, the characters, the moral ambiguity and the style it was all produced in. To this day, I have not seen a better television show before or since -yet "Mad Men" is starting to encroach on sacred ground, if you ask me- Tony and his glorified crew of New Jersey goombahs showed up on HBO 11 years ago. I miss "The Sopranos" almost every day. Where some people rant and rave about "The Wire" (and rightly so, from what I've heard and seen) there is just something about "The Sopranos" and the way it ended that has continued to make it an interesting show long past it's expiration date rolled on by.

For all the criticism the end of "The Sopranos" received from critics and fans alike, I've got a feeling the ending of "Lost" is going to be the one that might actually get people to throw hands in the street over differing opinions. It's just something about the fans of "Lost" that makes me think there is going to be a zeitgeist fueled backlash that may or may not cause meta-riots in the para-streets between all the different factions of fanboys and girls out there.

Where the ending of "The Sopranos" was challenging and required one to be of an open mind; the ending of "Lost" was like a watermelon, de-seeded and pre-sliced served up on a platter. They myriad enigmatic plot twists, story arcs and characters that the show had become known for and very rightly praised over were thrown away in favor of making the finale accessible and understandable even to the most casual fan. That, to me, is a vicious cop out that was completely and totally unnecessary for a show that had been such a game changer over the course of the past 6 years. Still, I can't say I hated it though, and in looking back over the history of the show I would be remiss if I didn't say there were some terribly klunky episodes that left me feeling like I'd wasted 45 minutes of my life looking at an emotionless, overly complicated mess (read: any "Kate-centric" episode... you all know they were terrible).

Sacrificing some quality for the sake of advancing the shows plot lines had been something I'd grown too complacent about over the years. I'd sigh at the end of a particularly ridiculous, out of context episode and remind myself that "Lost" is different and it's all leading towards something bigger -or more confusing- than anything else network TV has ever tried to accomplish, and for the most part that's exactly what the show did. It overreached and, at times, underachieved, but it was all ok because it was so freaking interesting and engrossing and the cheese actually tasted pretty good once you really got into the show. I didn't care how many times Kate got her own episode because I knew a Ben and Locke episode was around the corner to make up for it, and, hey, Kate was a pretty important part of the show (for a while), it's just that her character was less interesting to me than a tuft of grass on a lonely desert plain. I'm sure others out there would disagree with me vehemently, and that's their right and that's another aspect of "Lost" that made the show so unique and so groundbreaking.

The discussions, arguments and theories that swirled around "Lost" from the second the world first heard the smoke monster and saw the trees tremble in his wake during the pilot are like nothing television has ever seen before. Add in the allegory, allusion and metaphor that the show was jam packed with and there was so much interpretation left to the audience that it was almost impossible not to get sucked in and go beyond the weekly offerings. People, meaning rabid fans, would scour the internet and actually research the symbols and meanings and names of fictional things happening on a fictional show that took place on an island that, we now know, was some sort of mystical stop-gap that prevented evil from seeping out into the world and eventually destroying it. The writers played into this extremely well, leaving clues and hints and little Easter eggs tucked into scenes that the keen eyed fans would notice and obsess over. It was, honestly, the perfect show for the internet age and, shockingly, despite the instant gratification nature of the net generation, remained an utterly unsolvable mystery to the majority of the people who watched it week in and week out. Really, that's just amazing stuff when you put your thinking cap on and give it a good once over in your mind grapes.

I don't do recap write-ups, so I'll spare my sparse audience the tedium of a play-by-play in favor of touching upon some of the moving and more important moments of the finale that will have me thinking for the rest of my life.

First off, congratulations to Hurley for being named the island's protector, it was an entirely deserved moment and one that made me extremely happy despite the fact that I and the rest of the world did not get to see one single, solitary second of Hurley in charge other than him asking Ben to be his number 2. It was really astounding to see "the voice of the audience" get to take the reigns and become the new Jacob. As much as I said to myself over the course of the final season, "I wish it would be Hurley," I had little to no hope that it would really happen, but I was wrong and the world of "Lost" is a much better place for it. The actors (Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson) were brilliant as usual, and the final scene when Hurley asks Ben to come inside the church before telling him he was a "good number 2" was really touching and, had it been between say, Sawyer and Sayid would have been much less ingratiating. This aspect of the finale I was super, super happy with (if you can't already tell).

Speaking of Sawyer...

... I have, since the first time James Ford said "sonofabitch" in an exasperated way, been an unabashed fan of the character and hugely impressed by the actor (Josh Holloway), and when he and Juliette finally re-met in the sideways-verse I lost control and started gulp-crying like a little gilr who just watched her pony get run over by an 18-wheeler. For a character that was so reserved and somewhat guarded throughout the entire run of the show, seeing him let go like that was more moving than I was prepared for. Even though, on the whole, I'm not the biggest fan of Juliette I wanted Sawyer to find happiness somewhere since the agony was as plain as the nose on his face when she died. It was nice to see him get what he wanted, even though he had to die to find it.

Right, by the way, the sideways-verse? Yeah, turns out that was some kind of holding pen for the characters until they made their way into the bright, shiny light or something. Ugh, I wanted to kick a small child when Christian Shepherd came in at the end and gave the heavy-handed, all to easy to stomach wrap up that explained what the hell was going on. It was just a stupid, gimmicky season long thing that was used to make the audience think something was happening when it really wasn't. To be blunt, it pissed me off in such a unique way that I'm still trying to come up with the correct phrasing; which I am, currently, failing at. I suppose for a show that has been so confusing a little levity and straightforwardness was needed, but I was hoping that wouldn't have been the case. I didn't need all the questions to be answered (and they weren't), but it would have been nice to see the ending be a little more ambiguous and, -sigh-, action packed instead of the bland, emotionless meeting in the church that bordered on shiny-town. I'll get over it, but it bugged me.

Honestly, everything else that happened in the finale was something... well, it was something. I can't put my finger on any other moments that had me jumping out of my seat or feeling really, truly compelled to care for what was happening onscreen, because it all felt sort of dead (no pun intended) about 45 minutes in. I have no clue why UnLocke was killed so early on when it seemed like the entire season was gearing up towards some sort of full out war between he and Jack's diminutive group of followers, but that didn't happen, it was an anti-climax punctuated by a pretty sweet jump-punch from Jack to UnLocke; which I mistook as the beginning of an awesome fight scene on a quivering, about to fall into the ocean cliff. I didn't really care about Lapidus or Miles or Richard getting to the plane and getting off the island, because I never really cared about Lapidus or Miles or Richard to begin with; it was another ancillary plot shoe-horned in -in my opinion- to pad out the season. Meh that's really all I have, a resounding meh and a lot of undeserved resentment for a show that has entertained me consistently and piqued my interest and imagination continuously since it's inception.

I really shouldn't complain, because "Lost" was such a great, great show over the course of it's time on the air that to sit here and nitpick over the finale would be unfair to the people who wrote it, produced it, acted in it and directed it; those people really deserve all the praise and adoration in the world for putting together such a fantastic show. My own, snarky opinions of the finale aside, "Lost" was special and not too long from now I'm going to look back and really, really miss it. I'll be out at a bar one night when someone will put The Mamma's and The Poppa's "Make Your Own Kind of Music" on and I'll need to scuttle home to pop in the DVD and start the journey all over again, because, after all, that's what it's about isn't it?