In September of 2004, several well-done promos starring Dominic Monaghan and a few other actors I didn’t know convinced me to turn on ABC for the premier of Lost. Six years later, the first show that I ever watched the whole way through, from start to bitter end, has said farewell with a highly anticipated finale. With two hours of time in which to wrap up an epic television series, Lost set out to be emotionally and narratively satisfying in its last episode. It would be safe to say the sheer emotional impact of seeing unforgettable characters like Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Locke for the very last time had a strong impact on me in itself. After so many hours of the show, and so many storylines and amazing acting performances, the nostalgia was powerful and it was saddening to see them go, especially since it seems likely that not all of them will stay in the limelight. As such, the finale already had a natural pull that was hard to shake. Beyond this, the creators attempted to end a show that many felt would be all but impossible to end right.

The results were mixed. On the one hand, the feeling was there. Certainly, we had all been waiting for Kate and Jack to finally profess their love for each other, and after years of separation, it was good to see that they got to be together in the alternate, post-first-life plane. That they and everyone else were finally united was a touching ending.

But Lost is a science fiction/mystery thriller. And while the ending was thrilling, the sci-fi and mystery of the early seasons were scrubbed for an ending that allowed the creators to dodge criticism of their substance because of its shift in focus. By saying “it isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about the characters,” the creators attempted to redirect a lot of the focus–but for those of us who have been there from the very beginning, I don’t think this was enough. We deserved more. We deserved more narrative closure and we deserved less of what was, regardless of its emotional power and warm fuzziness, something of a “cop-out” ending, a bait-and-switch of afterlife theories. If all of the characters got to go to this wonderful new existence anyway, what was the point of saving them? Why not just all die in the island reality to end up in paradise LA? In other words, the finale might have provided some emotional satisfaction, but it was lacking the narrative satisfaction that we were promised.

Still, the exchange of tearful “I love yous” on the cliff was the grand culmination of a six season love story, and I guess they got to be happy in the end, which many of us were rooting for. And the creators did bring back several of the characters that they had wantonly slain in the earlier seasons. The sadness of the island reality was ultimately overwritten by the happiness in the last scenes of the “next step” in their lives.

One of the best parts about the finale was its self-awareness. Hurley’s crack-up line about everyone dying and Kate’s disbelief at the indiscretion of Christian Shephard were emblematic of a show with an almost post-modern wryness about itself. That was commendable.

While the people in the Church may be very content to move on, they have each other to spend time with for a while. I don’t, and as such, I am rather upset at being given no choice but to move on without the characters I love so much. Lost may not have given us a fully developed send-off, but it certainly deserves all of the nostalgia and emotional loss that come with a final episode. The Pilot was one of the finest I have seen, and the first season was the best first season of any show I’ve ever watched. What came after had its ups and downs, but the character development side of things continued to strengthen alongside the action as the seasons went on, which was a welcome surprise in a world of droll, over-dramatized medical and detective shows.

Lost left me with a feeling of unshakable sadness–it was a wonderful show that I really wish I could have spent more time with. I also wish that it provided me with a more complete ending, and a better attempt at closure. But I’ll say this. After six years of waiting for Jack and Kate’s final, sappy love scene, I was pleased to see Lost end with all of my favorite characters together in a happy place, to leave us with a lasting memory of the happiness it brought to us. Yes, it brought hours of consternation and frustration too, but the final sendoff provided enough to leave me with memories fonder than otherwise. There will never be another show like Lost, and it will really be missed.

The 00s, whose more formal name of “The Aughts” is known to only a precious few stuffy intellectuals like the NewsHuman, feel to many like an extension of the 90s. Ask most people and they will tell you that they feel like the 90s were just yesterday, when in fact we are as removed from 1999 as, to put it into musical terms, Hotel California was from the founding of Nirvana. The NewsHuman believes that this vestigial identification with a long-over decade stems from the fact that nobody really knows what to call the years following the ball-dropping of December 31, 1999.

But that may not be the only reason that the NewsHuman feels so hollowed out by this decade. Here’s another: at least in this country, ever mindful of categorizing eras with respective earth-shattering pathos, it is tough to put a finger on what the Aughts will be remembered for. Here’s a quick demonstration of the previous ten decades:

1910s: World War I (the war to end all wars…)

1920s: The Roarin’  Twenties (swing, jazz, Yankees, money!)

1930s: Depression

1940s: World War II (attempts at world domination, and the nuclear threats that silenced them)

1950s: Rise of the Cold War and Anti-Communism that would typify the rest of the decade

1960s: Sex, Drugs, Rock, Roll

1970s: Crumbling of social and political norms as we knew them, largely thanks to Cold War (Nixon, Vietnam, Oil Crisis)

1980s: Cold War tensions give way to crumbling of the U.S.S.R., 1/2 of the world’s superpowers.

1990s: Interwebs!

2000s: ? ? ?

I’m sure that, along with the major events and themes from each decade, you can probably dress someone, name a famous figure, etc. The 00s have… what? Mostly leftovers from the 1990s, or so it feels. The most momentous American event occurred only a year into the decade, 9/11/01, and it was an event that shaped much of the rest of the decade: but it led to a war against a shadow opposition, it helped precipitate an American slide into mediocrity. Unlike December 7th, 1941 (which was a day that will live in infamy) it didn’t give Americans any massive, imposing enemy against whom to take arms, but rather a group of loosely organized, mountain-dwelling fanatics that have taken the rest of the decade to find.

Perhaps the decade seems so faceless because its great challenges and enemies have been as well. The romantic notions of good vs. evil that have pervaded much of our historical understanding (Us vs. Nazis, Us vs. Communist totalitarianism, Us vs. economic depression) have been largely neutralized by the fact that the nemeses of the 00s have been rather faceless as well.

So there lies the question of what will remain in the memories of NewsHumans (and MovieHumans and SportsHumans and LiteraryHumans) everywhere from this decade? For one thing, the Information Age really kicked it into high gear, which means that all of us would-be heroes without any Great War to fight can at least sit around reading Wikipedia all day. But does anyone really want to tell their grand-children that the decade of their prime was all about mediocrity, stagnation, rumored tensions without the cathartic release afforded by momentous events? Probably not. Unfortunately, that may be what we are stuck with from this decade. I put it to the namers, who were unable to make “Twenty-Oh-Five”, etc. stick, because that meant that everyone was still stuck calling our last 10 years by that droll and drawn-out nominative “Two-thousand-and…” which kept every year of the Aughts feeling like the opening of the Millennium.

What, then, is there to look forward to? Well, if we consider the 1950s the most boring decade of the 20th century for the American citizen, at least the 1960s followed. Maybe the new 10s will hold some sort of social revolution! Maybe a clear, named foe to vilify! Who knows. In all seriousness though, here’s hoping that either the NewsHuman has missed something from this past decade, or that the 2010s will at least give us some defining, momentous event to share with the grandkids.

Image:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/st3f4n/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Hello, dear readers…

Your friendly site admin here. If you have been to theHumanReview, you probably notice that the site looks a wee-bit different. We recently changed both format and back-end platform.

Over the next few days, we will finishing the move to our new site and posting some new content we have been sitting on.

Thanks