I never really liked Lost all that much. Every now and then, I would become immersed in it the way anyone can become immersed in a good story, but mostly I enjoyed it as a popular experimental narrative. It is the type of show that makes one reflect on one's own journey, so I struggled to recall when I started watching the show, while I was in Austin, off of bootlegged DVDs my roommate scored in Hong Kong. Since then, I've changed. Maybe I've become less tolerant of sentiment, or at least I look for it in different places (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the music I love give me all the deeply emotional experiences of memory that this show only began to give me). I've become more cerebral, less ashamed to engage in long debates about the possibility of time travel and social science experiments, and there again, I've found other places to scratch that itch (the internet, more school).
If we left behind the goal of loyalty or fidelity to an initial spirit of a show, the flexibility of written-as-they-go narratives could be a strength: they can grow with or grow apart from the audience and the creators. Most shows seem to become victims of their own success, losing the original thread and exploiting the trust of the audience. What Lost added to this was the transparency of the audience reaction to the show as it went along. Everyone could see the reactions to each show. The debate about how good or bad the show was in some way affected by viewers' immediate knowledge of others' opinions. I would think this would hinder a show from growing or changing.
What seems more significant is the ways in which my TV watching and media use habits have changed since I started watching the show, along with everyone else's. When I started watching, the show, like pretty much every other show, wasn't easy to watch online. For the last season, I watched most of the shows online, delaying watching as long as possible, reading synopses when I didn't feel like watching. For the series finale, I watched as a friend skyped with her sister hundreds of miles away, the laptop open, half of our attention focused on the show. In other words, I half-watched the show, something that wasn't possible in the way that its now possible. I did this not because I can't give TV shows my full attention anymore (I gave my full attention to Mad Men and continue to do so next season). I only half-liked Lost, only cared about the philosophy and the scientific experiments and mentally or physically tuned out when things got sappy. The show seems as ripe as any for a re-edit.
Then there are all the strange things happening outside of the show on ABC, the things that reminded me that I was watching television and not sitting in a darkened theater. The emotional ending gave way to a teaser for the local Detroit news: real people, really dead. Then, Jack Shepard walks out on the stage of Jimmy Kimmel's show for some incongruously semi-serious analysis of the show. Kimmel seemed unclear on whether to play things straight or crack wise, as I was while the last show was airing (should I make a snarky comment? Should I cry?).
I suppose what I liked most about the ending was that it ended with a death. That's the only real ending, right? The end of an individual consciousness. And the more I think about it, it really reminded me of Donny Darko: airline related disaster that does/does not kill the protagonist, protagonist engages in what may or may not be a prolonged hallucination about time travel after which he finally comes to terms with his own death and, in a way that is uncharacteristic of most Western narratives about death, dies peacefully, fondly recalling the lives he touched. Both stories tap into some cultural preoccupations: post-9/11 anxiety about flying (DD was made before 9/11 and was oddly prescient; its popularity might have something to do with the cultural resonance of plane crashes after its release), considering the implications of recent developments in philosophy and physics, trying to make sense of death and memory (these are more universal, long-standing preoccupations).
