LOST Finale: Rest In Peace

If anyone is going to ask me what are my favourite TV shows in my adult life, I'll answer there are only 2. One is the X-Files, which I abandoned when everyone (Scully and Mulder) left the show in its final season and left me in a lurch. And another which I hadn't had the chance to abandon because the people behind it decided they're going to end it when the story ends, which is LOST.

People might think that I'm beyond saving and decadent when they read about the freemasonry and biblical references of the series but that is not why I  watch that series. I watch it for the STORY which is what people of any race and religion and nationality would identify with. I don't care about the fight between Jacob and Man In Black, good versus evil and all the religious references, but I care about Jack (first and foremost), Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Locke, Jin, Sun, Claire and the rest of the gang. That's what makes LOST special because the attachment made between the viewer and the characters. And that's what's important when you're writing for teenagers. Your main characters must be able to make a connection with the reader, because young people need that attachment. Make your characters believable, with a face, with dreams and nightmares, with a past and a future. Make them strong, make them weak.

I haven't watched the entirety of LOST's final season since the DVD isn't out yet, so I just watched snippets of the end on the Internet and wow, was I blown away. How could they set up first episode of Season One and were able to see what it will make in the final episode of the final season? The attention to details - the bamboo grove, the dog Vincent, the lone white shoe, the cut on Jack's side, the plane taking off instead of plummeting and the eyes closing. Brilliant writing, tremendous amount of detail, amazing foresight.

LOST has been my inspiration when I was writing Kasih Nan Agung and it worked wonderfully well in a whole different and alien context. But the jungle adventure still remains.

 "I'm leaving, I'm leaving, but the fighter still remains" - Jack Shepard chanelling Lee Dewyze's rendition of The Boxer.


Rest in peace LOST. Now I have to find something else that will match that kind of writing brilliance.