Just as before
the era of Peak TV began the metric of a series finale was different from
today, the metric of a final season for television shows before Peak TV started
was much different – in fact, it was basically irrelevant.
This was, of
course, because in the world of network TV by the time any series, drama or
comedy ended up being cancelled it had become so low-rated because it was
obviously past its creative peak. Even before the era began the term ‘Jump The
Shark’ had already entered the lexicon of television as a sign by fans as to
when, exactly, the series that they had once loved had completely gone off the
rails creatively. (In what had to have been a deliberate reference one of the
last episodes of The X-Files was called ‘Jump The Shark’ and was used to
kill of The Lone Gunmen. It was a bitter joke because the series had lost
whatever creative momentum it had years before this low point of what was
already a dreadful season happened.)
What’s
interesting about the Golden Age of Television is that even as the overall
quality of TV dramas improved by and large the majority of the great series
that aired during the era of Lost didn’t really move this metric that
much. No one called the last seasons of any of the great series of this era
horrible the same way the final seasons of such shows as say The X-Files but
no one pretended they were works of art the way so many other series were. So
before we look at the series finale of Lost, let’s look at how final
seasons of other peak dramas that were contemporaries of Lost’s run (for
the purpose of that essay this is the fall of 2004 to the spring of 2010) and
an honest assessment of the final season creatively, absent the series finale.
The Sopranos final season
had many masterclass episodes but there were also several storylines that
devoted fans tired of, most notably Christopher’s heroin addiction and Vito’s
trip to New Hampshire. The final season of The Wire is generally
considered the weakest of the five seasons of the show, largely due to the
unrealistic nature of so much of the newspaper stories and McNulty’s plot to
stage scenes in Baltimore as if a serial killer were stalking the homeless.
Much of the third season of Deadwood involves a troupe of theater actors
and to quote one critic, the kindest thing fans say about them is that they
were the set up for a fourth season we never got. Only Six Feet Under mostly
manages to escape with the reputation of its final season intact: there are
storylines that viewers find weak (I never liked Claire’s taking a nine-to-five
job) but because it pays off with Nate’s shocking death in the final half of
the season, it’s hard to argue with it.
Looking at
network dramas of the period.24 is problematic given the nature of the
series style but long before the eighth day came to an end I was truly thinking
Jack Bauer and the show had nothing new to say or do. House was becoming
erratic well before the final season and Lisa Edelstein’s exit before it began
merely clinched the deal for me. The West Wing’s final season was a
creative comeback for the series after more than a year and a half of creative
stasis but that doesn’t change the fact that whatever creative energy it had
was for snuffed out after Aaron Sorkin left at the end of Season 4.
When Lost reentered
the Best Drama ranks at the Emmys for its final three seasons many if not most
of the series that it shared the spotlight had mixed conclusions. Breaking
Bad actually got better with each new season and the final season was why
it is one of the greatest shows in history. Mad Men’s seventh season was
divided in half and the split may have shaved its momentum. How much you like
the final season will depend on your opinion of the series finale. And everyone
agrees that Dexter lost whatever creative momentum it had by the time it
reached the end of Season 4.
Some of the
shows that were nominated for Best Drama during this period aren’t considered
classics (True Blood and Heroes are the most obvious examples)
but some actually deserve to be considered so. I thought the final season of Big
Love was a perfect conclusion to that rarest of things, an underrated HBO
masterpiece, and when I finally saw the final season of Damages (nearly
a year after it aired) I truly thought it brought the saga of Ellen Parsons and
Patty Hewes to a fitting conclusion.
The universal
feeling is that The Shield ended great and I hold this. And I am among
the few people who actually believe that the series finale of Battlestar
Galactica was perfect and brought an end to a superb final season.
Full
Disclosure: Before the final season of Lost aired I wrote a long column about
my hopes and doubts for the end of the show and argued that the only mythology
series that in my opinion had ever come to a satisfying conclusion was Battlestar
Galactica. Like many of the controversies surrounding Lost during its run I was
completely unaware how polarizing the series finale of Galactica had been.
However having rewatched the series multiple times even after learned this, I’m
still inclined to stick with my original opinion. We can argue about that in
another book.
Now let’s look
at a different metric. While few will argue that the Emmys are the definitive
measure of TV quality, the fact remains that for its final season Lost received
12 Emmy nominations, the most since its first season. And seven of those nominations were for the
series finale, including Jack Bender for directing it and Darlton for writing
it. Nor were those the only nominations the series finale received. Jack Bender
would be nominated by the Directors Guild for directing it and the WGA
nominated Darlton for writing it. We may still be divided about the series
finale fourteen years later but at the time, creatively at least, certain
people thought it was among the best things in 2010. That has to count for
something.
Speaking from
my perspective as both a TV Critic and a scholar of the Emmys I should mention
that both at the time and even more so with the benefit of hindsight the
nominated series and actors in the 2010 Emmys when it comes to drama (and
though it is on point, comedy) are among the best in my lifetime. In its final
season Lost was nominated alongside Breaking Bad and Mad Men, both
of which were at their creative peaks, the first season of The Good Wife and
the fourth season of Dexter, considered by many one of the greatest
seasons in TV history. With the exception of True Blood (I would have
nominated either Damages or Big Love in its place) this is among
the most formidable lineups in history.
Matthew Fox received
his only Emmy nomination for Best Actor for the final season of Lost. He
lost to Bryan Cranston, who was winning his third consecutive Emmy for Breaking
Bad but that’s hardly ignoble. And look at the competition he had: Michael
C. Hall for Dexter, Hugh Laurie for House, Jon Hamm for Mad
Men and Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights. Fox was nominated
against five of TV greatest actors playing five of the most iconic characters
in TV history. It was an honor just to be nominated.
Terry O’Quinn
and Michael Emerson were also nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor; O’Quinn
for the third time, Emerson for the fourth. Aaron Paul won the first of what
would be (at the time) a record setting three Emmys in this category for his
work as Jesse. And Paul must have been stunned considering the caliber of the
competition. In addition to O’Quinn and Emerson, he was facing John Slattery
for Mad Men, Andre Braugher for Men of A Certain Age and Martin Short
for an incredible turn in the third season of Damages. Paul was
competing against five of the greatest actors in television history; he was as
shocked as anyone when he won.
I was overjoyed,
I should add to see Elizabeth Mitchell nominated for Best Guest Actress in a
Drama for her work in the final season. Mitchell was competing against some
formidable actress in that category: Sissy Spacek and Mary Kay Place for Big
Love (Spacek’s work as a political aide was particularly riveting) Lily
Tomlin for an incredible dramatic stint in Damages, Shirley Jones for
the A & E drama The Cleaner and Ann-Margaret for Law and Order: SVU.
Obviously many
of the other performers in Lost were worthy of nominations, particularly
the actresses in the cast. But the late 2000s had always had a formidable group
of actress every year and this was no exception. Kyra Sedgwick won for The
Closer against Glenn Close, who’d won the previous two years for Damages,
Mariska Hargitay, who’d won previously, Juliana Margulies who would deservedly
win two Emmys in the next four years for her work in The Good Wife and
Connie Britton, nominated for playing ‘Mrs. Coach’ in Friday Night Lights. Supporting
Actress was not much easier: Archie Panjabi and Christine Baranski were both
nominated for The Good Wife; Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss were
up for Mad Men and Rose Byrne was up for the second straight year for Damages.
I could have seen Emilie De Ravin or Yunjun Kim in place of Sharon Gless
for Burn Notice but I could just have easily seen Anna Gunn for Breaking
Bad or Jennifer Carpenter for Dexter there as well. The competition
for Emmys during this period was only slightly easier than surviving the final
season of Lost.
And just as in
years past the Saturn awards were generous to Lost nominating the series
for five awards, including best Network TV series with acting nominations for
Fox, Emerson, O’Quinn and John Terry for a Guest Performance which would seem
to mean they liked the series finale as well. And the series was also nominated
by the Producers Guild and even the teen choice awards. (Terry O’Quinn was
nominated for Best Villain an award Michael Emerson had been nominated for
three years earlier. Ben must have been so mad!) Furthermore the series earned
nominations for the since discontinued Scream Awards for sci-fi, receiving ten
nominations. Matthew Fox took Best television performance, Evangeline Lilly was
up for Best Sci-Fi actress, Holloway and Fox for Sci-Fi Actor, Yunjun Kim for
Best Supporting Actress, Terry O’Quinn Best Villain. And the show even won the
International Online Cinema Award for Best Episode of Drama series for The End.
All of which would seem to indicate, regardless of how polarize we fans might
find it, at the time critics and artists really liked both the final season and
the final episode of Lost.
And the thing
is no matter how many times you watch the final season of Lost, from every
single creative measure, it hasn’t a lost a step. One can’t pretend it wasn’t
flawed – the Temple storyline, much of what involves Widmore, Zoe – but emotionally
it can be just as powerful as anything we’ve seen. It certainly works for all
the actors in the cast – with the possible exceptions of Yunjun Kim and Daniel
Dae Kim, whose storyline is flubbed in Season 6, everybody is doing incredible
work in ways we haven’t seen. The flash-sideways gives every cast member a
chance to show their ranges in ways we didn’t think possible and while some of
the character arcs don’t quite pay off the cast is more than up to it. All of
the cast has high points that resonate in a way that somehow even after five
seasons of watching them hit heights we still haven’t seen before.
Two of the
problems that so many people with the final season of lost would seem to
contradict each other: that not all our questions are answered and that the
answers we do get aren’t satisfying. I acknowledge that the former is an issue,
though going into the final season many people said they’d be fine if many of
their questions weren’t answered. And as to the latter, it is just another part
of how the fanbase is somehow as broken as many of the characters we’ve spent
six seasons with. Sadly it’s become something that those of us who watch mythology
series face: the reality never lives up to the fun we had speculating.
That part never
bothered me as much because emotionally the series brought resolution in a way
that I hadn’t hoped for and that many of the series I watched during this
period are incapable of doing. No one cares what happened to Tony Soprano
before the cut to black because it we care about him the same way we do about
Sayid Jarrah or Ben Linus. Both men are monsters but they are human in a way
that Tony is not. That’s true about The Sopranos not just in the final
season but as a whole: we’re sorry it’s ending but not because it’s been a lot
of fun spending time with these people. (And if it is, you really need to question
your definition of ‘fun’.)
To be fair,
many of the other series do have an emotional resonance in the final season
that make them rewarding. It’s the reason the series finale of Six Feet Under
has such power; it’s why were glad to see that Bubbles has beaten his
addiction and why we’re heartbroken Omar got killed in such an unflattering
way; it’s why when we see the results of Shane’s ‘Family Meeting’, we’re
heartbroken in a way we wouldn’t think this flawed man deserved. It’s harder to
see the emotional resonance in some of the other shows of this era; I’m not
sure whether I truly thought Don Draper was capable of growth when he went on
his final walkabout and by the time Walter White confides to Skyler “I did it
for me,” it’s an epiphany that makes us realize he’s the villain of the piece
and has never been the hero. It doesn’t make the finale of Breaking Bad any
less magnificent but when Walter meets his fate, we’re not really sorry about
what happened to him the way we are when Jack says goodbye to Kate, knowing he’ll
never see her again.
No one can
watch the final season of Lost and argue it’s not as rewarding as
everything else we’ve seen. As we go through the final act on the island I
never cared so much about the answers to the questions but about who would live
and who would die. I wanted to see if it was possible for the characters to
finally realize the truth about themselves more than why they were there. And
you can pretend the final season didn’t deliver on that score in so many ways:
watching Sayid, after having spent much of the season not even a shell of his
former self, rediscover his humanity before he sacrifices his life. Finally seeing
the long awaited reunion of Sun and Jin after more than two seasons, only to
see them both die in a submarine that’s sinking. Seeing Ben realize that he has
given his entire life for nothing and struggling to find a path forward when
all has been taking from him. Watching Richard seem horribly broken after Jacob’s
death and learning in Ab Aeterno what brought him to the island and what he
lost when he decided to live forever in the service of Jacob. Seeing Hurley
finally become the person that was so much more than the fun guy and realizing
the purpose of who he was. Watching Jack realize that his biggest problem was
trying to tell people what to do, and realizing he had to follow rather than
lead. Seeing that Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle which started out as so much of the
heart of the series now just ashes as the characters realized how much it had
cost them. And perhaps the most heartbreaking part of it, seeing Claire the
woman who seemed the symbol of innocence and birth at the start of the series, practically
mad and not even sure she could be a mother to the child she gave birth to on
the island. I might have had doubts about how the series ended over the years
but the emotional power of all of these moments and countless more resonate in
a way that break my heart and move me to tears every time I rewatch the series.
As has been
said numerous times, Lost is not a show about a mysterious island but
about the people. We care about the characters and we give a damn about their
happiness in a way we honestly don’t about some of the even most well-drawn characters in all of
these other incredible. I watched The Sopranos and The Shield and
Breaking Bad because I wanted to see the leads get what they deserved
and that’s why I watched Lost too but the difference on Lost is
that we wanted them to be happy. There have been few series in the era of Peak TV
before or since where we watched the final season with a different metric. In
so many of the other series we watched to see who would survive until the end.
In the case of Lost, we wanted all of them too. That, along with
everything else I mentioned, makes the final season of the show incredible.
No comments:
Post a Comment