Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Thoughts on the Lost finale

Shut Up. Just Shut Up. I know this is months after the fact. But I started writing this in a Google document and I wanted it to be somewhere else, so here it is.

I really enjoyed the Lost finale, up to the last few minutes. The fact that it was set in a stoopid church and Christian (fucking) Shepard went off into a stoopid white light really torked me off. But as I read other people's reactions I wonder if my knee-jerk reaction to any hint of religious crap makes me lose sight of what was, really, not necessarily a religious crap thing.

As was pointed out by many, the church wasn't necessarily a Christian church. There was iconography from other religions in the chapel. And the more I read, the more I think that maybe I missed out on something wonderful because I was so annoyed at what I saw as religious crap.

I mean, even if it is religious crap, who cares? Does that invalidate anything that I feel and think about religion? I dunno. I mean, there was always that element there. Like the BSG finale that had people so up in arms. I mean, religious crap was always present on that show. You could interpret it however you wanted and it wasn't necessarily Christian, even the one true god crap. But even though that last hour of BSG was pretty stoopid, I didn't feel betrayed by the ending, I just felt it should have been about 45 minutes shorter. And the last five minutes I prefer to forget entirely.

But. Back to Lost. And to religious crap. I do have a tendency to see things in religious black and white. "Ooh, white light! Must be God and Heaven and all that Crap!! I must now hate the show and all it stands for!!!" Which is highly Stoopid of me. I can enjoy the Chronicles of Narnia without hating C.S. Lewis.

So, all of that is to say that even if it was a religious ending, who cares. It doesn't invalidate the fun I had watching it for 6 seasons (not all of which was fun, but anyway). And in retrospect, I don't think I missed out on a wonderful thing. I did enjoy the finale. It just leaves me with some questions, which are coincidentally the same kinds of questions I have about Heaven.

I mean...ALL of these people wanted to be together for this last thing? None of them were thinking "meh, I can never see these people again and die happily?" I mean, if my version of heaven is to be with my family forever...yuk! I don't even like most of my family. And that's usually what people say, you'll be with your loved ones forever. Loved ones, fine. But...sometimes the people you love are not the people who love you. So will you get stuck with someone you didn't really care for, but they really liked you? Will there be different versions of everyone in different people's Heavens?

Yikes. It just all sounds so ludicrous (maybe cuz it IS). And I know, the whole church thing at the end of Lost wasn't Heaven, it was like a holding place or something. But dammit! It's just still kinda stoopid.

Quick thoughts

I watched the movie Hot Rod this weekend. I actually liked it quite a bit. Yes, it was extremely silly and yes, I kept thinking the writers must have been 12-year old boys, but I dunno, I still laughed a lot. The scene where Andy Samberg is "punch-dancing" in the forest just killed me. If you like silly humor, I recommend this one. One thing I really quite liked about it is that the level of gross-out humor was actually pretty nil. Also: the music of Europe dominated the soundtrack. Ya know. The '80's group that sang "The Final Countdown" (a.k.a., that song that Gob Bluth played at his magic events). It was actually perfect for the kind of movie that this movie was spoofing.

Gak, and how can I forget? Al Fucking Swearengen played Samberg's stepdad. He was funny and weird and dammit! Ian McShane needs to be on my TV screen more often, somehow, anyhow.

Another movie I watched, because a friend lent it to me and I'd had it forever, was The Big Tease, a 1999 movie with Craig Ferguson. It's a faux documentary about Scottish hairstylist Crawford Mackenzie (played by Ferguson), who comes to America to compete in the Silver Scissors hairstyling competition. It was pretty stoopid. It really was. But it was still watchable and I did want to know what was going to happen next. And it did have one fairly large admirable thing about it. Crawford is gay. He's a gay hairstylist. Let that sink in and imagine all the awful mannerisms and lisps that he's going to have, the awful jokes about him being gay, etc. And now ignore that cuz that wasn't in the movie. There were references to it, but it wasn't played for laughs the way it could have been. He just happened to be gay. So, even though I wouldn't seek it out or anything, it did have that awesome thing going for it. Plus, Craig Ferguson. Hello!!