My theory on the LOST season finale

Television critics and quantum physicists alike have been debating the television show Lost for the better part of four years now. Some of the more common questions: What is the island? Who owns and operates the DHARMA Initiative? How did the slave ship Black Rock crash inland, completely away from the beach, and what was it doing with all that dynamite? Will Jack, Sawyer, and Kate ever have the three-way that everyone is dreaming of? When the Skipper gets angry enough to finally kill Gilligan, will the Professor somehow devise a way to imprison the Skipper in a force field constructed from two coconuts and a palm leaf, or will he just fucking repair the hole in the S.S. Minnow like he should have done all along?

The experts have all had their say during the two weeks since the season 4 finale, floating ridiculous theories involving Purgatory and time looping and other similarly bizarre ideas. They're all wrong, obviously. You Are the Only Person Not Reading This Blog got the inside scoop, not from talking to notoriously loose-lipped producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but from plain old woman's intution.

Here's the deal:

It's a television show.

The characters obviously don't know this. They think they were actually on a plane that crashed on a mysterious island, and that the island has some outrageous scientific/magical properties that allow the dead to come to life and crippled people to walk. None of that is true. What's really going on is that a group of writers got together, set down a bunch of weirdo, sci-fi, nerdy plot lines, picked six numbers out of a hat, and VIOLA. Instant television classic.

Sorry kids, but there is no Jack and Sawyer and Kate, and there will therefore be no threesome.

I hate to be the one to break it to everybody. But after four long seasons, it finally dawned on me that, in real life, there are no smoke monsters, and islands don't suddenly disappear, leaving nothing behind but tiny ripples in the ocean. Sorry.



As for what caused the writers of Lost to perpetrate such a nasty prank on the viewing public, I have a theory about that too. Think about the timeline of the events of the show: the plane crashed on September 22, 2004. The Oceanic Six were rescued 108 days later, on January 8, 2005. Between their crash and rescue, the Red Sox won the World Series, and George Bush got re-elected. I imagine the subsequent conversation went something like this:

WRITER/PRODUCER 1 (LINDELOF): What a terrible year! What could be worse than a year when the Red Sox won the World Series and George Bush got re-elected?

WRITER/PRODUCER 2 (CUSE): I'll tell you what could be worse than that.

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: So tell me already!

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: I will!

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: Quit stalling!

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: It's not me, man, I'm not the one writing this dialogue!

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: Well, whoever IS writing it, let's make sure we never hire him!

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: Amen to that. Anyway, here's what would be worse.

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: I'm all ears.

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: What does that even mean, "I'm all ears?"

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: It means that you should tell me what would be worse than a year when the Red Sox won and George Bush got re-elected.

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: Oh, okay. Here goes. What about crash-landing on a desert island with a hostile indigenous population, a fifty-foot pillar of black smoke, and a bunch of people named after philosophers? And then when you try to leave the island, it makes you go crazy and eat pills until you have to come back?

WRITER/PRODUCER 1: Hmm... Throw in a polar bear, and I think you've got something.

WRITER/PRODUCER 2: Oh my god, let's call J.J. Abrams!

You're welcome, America.