LOST

Kenny, Cynthia and Steve all came over to watch the finale with us. Marc and I dressed up in our Dharma jumpsuits (and yeah, there are pictures...somewhere). Cynthia and Steve came dressed up as Losties, but I personally thought they looked more like Others. ;)

I'd printed out a bunch of Dharma food labels:

And my Dharma cake and LOST-themed cupcakes (polar bears, palm trees and Vincent, oh my!):

We also played LOST bingo - each of us had bingo cards filled with different things that might happen during the finale, and we used wagon-wheel pasta (closest thing I could find to the dharma logo, even if the geometry was a bit wrong) for markers. That turned out to be pretty fun.

We had dinner, then sat down to watch the two-hour retrospective before the finale.

Okay, so on to the finale itself. Major spoilers below, so check out now if you haven't seen it yet.

So, I really liked it. Loved it, I think. It was definitely bittersweet. I mean, it's been described as bittersweet for forever, but I don't think I truly grasped what that meant until I saw those last minutes. Once that happened, the feeling was palpable. I was happy and glowing, but also feeling oh-so-sad.

I feel like we hardly got any answers, but I didn't even care. I think I can wait until whatever extras come on the DVDs to find out stuff like who built the Tawaret statue or whatever. The show has always been about the characters to me, and about their respective journeys. As long as justice was done to that, the secrets of the island didn't matter so much to me. I think that's why "Across the Sea" fell kind of flat with me. Too close to the end, focused on two characters I didn't care that much about, and showing us mysteries of the island, that when isolated on their own, just seemed sort of silly.

I had thought that the Alt universe might be an epilogue of sorts to the Island story, but I never thought that it would turn out to be some sort of purgatory. In hindsight, I should've seen it coming, because a happily-ever-after in the Alt would probably have been too pat an ending. I would have personally loved it, but I think it probably would have failed the story in some way.

I loved all the "awakening" moments. Jin and Sun, Charlie and Claire, Sayid and Shannon...all very sweet. The one I was waiting for the most (and the one that I had gotten spoiled for, because I just had to know) was Sawyer and Juliet, and damn if that not only didn't disappoint, but it exceeded my wildest expectations.

I loved so many things about this scene. I loved how flirty Juliet was with Sawyer (and Alt Juliet was different from either of her previous incarnations, both pre-island and on-island - she wasn't mousy like she was before she went to the island, but she wasn't angry and damaged like she was on the island. She was just the caring, confident and awesome woman she always was but without the baggage).

I thought it was a lovely twist that her "it worked" message to Sawyer in "LA X" wasn't about the bomb working, but was rather a bleed-through of her saying the vending machine trick worked. And I loved how once they started to remember, they both rushed through the coffee/dutch lines like they both knew the other was remembering and it was less a question or conversation and more a confirmation that they both knew.

And Elizabeth Mitchell (who looked amazing) and Josh Holloway were so fabulous during this scene. The look of pain on Juliet's face as she remembered falling and dying, their desperate hug, like they'd waited forever to be reunited, and "I've got you, baby" echoing his words from before when he wasn't able to save her, and the look on her face right before she smiled, like she couldn't believe she was actually seeing his face. Guh.

Anyways, I could go on and on.

I totally called Juliet being David's mom (mostly it was a process of elimination and doing the math - although the kid looked pretty much exactly what you would expect Jack and Juliet's offspring to look like). I thought David was a cool kid, so I was sad to learn that he didn't actually exist. I know that he was there to help Jack work through his daddy issues, but I'm not sure yet why Juliet ended up being his mom. Since they all created this reality, what did it do for Juliet (or Jack?) for him to be her son?

I loved the conversation between Locke and Ben at the end (and I loved that Hurley and Ben became the next protectors of the island - who else could it have been other than Hurley, really?). I can see why Ben didn't go in - he still had unresolved business, and it probably would have been strange for him given his former relationship with all those people. I would've liked a little more for him, in the end, but I guess it was mostly right.

Okay, more thoughts tomorrow, I need to go to bed!