by Phillip Johnston
This past Sunday, Lost ended. If that means something to you, you may be happy to be reading about the show on a website dedicated to the very best of film and (sometimes) television; if it doesn’t mean something to you, you may be tempted to skip over this post.
I would ask you not to, for in evaluating this massive piece of storytelling that has unfolded on American TV screens in the last six years, there is a job to be done – a job I can only but begin in a short, accessible post and will try to do with a minimal amount of spoilers. It is the magnanimous task of separating myth from character, a job accomplished to near perfection by the creative team behind Lost, but perhaps not so well by a few viewers and devotees.
When Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a mysterious island back in 2004, viewers and castaways alike were confronted with an inexplicable place that held more than a few impenetrable mysteries. There were polar bears on the island, a strange underground hatch, an ancient Egyptian statue with only four toes, and, most terrifying of all, a monster made of black smoke. (more…)