The beginning of the end of Lost

So, yeah, Lost Season Six — the final season — starts tonight. And, uh, while I will be watching Lost, I won’t be watching tonight’s season premiere.

See, Amy got me Seasons 1-5 on a ridiculous sale for christmas, and shortly after that, we joked that maybe we could get through all 103 or so episodes before season six started on 2/2, and then it turned out not to be a joke, though we’ve fallen a bit short while giving it a damn good try. We finished season 3 on Sunday, so now we’re starting season 4 tonight while taping Season 6. We figure that by the time we get through 4 and 5, we’ll have a decent backlog of four or so episodes of season 6 to dig into while we play catchup.

Of course, this means I basically have to stay off the internet as of about 8pm tonight and for the next two weeks in order to avoid major and massive spoilers, which, let’s be honest, isn’t going to happen. But I’m going to try really, really hard to not peek at too much stuff before we catch up.

Speaking of which, this is my favorite piece of Lost writing ever. I’m a big Jack fan — which Amy will say is just because he drives my favorite car – and this details a lot of the ways I relate to his character as well as the overriding possible theme of the show, starting with:

It’s a story that began with people who entered a wilderness and found themselves tested by mysterious, menacing forces. It is now ending with our heroes battling at least one evil spirit, and maybe more, depending on what we ultimately learn about Jacob, the Man In Black, Smokey, and Ghost Christian. And in the middle of this amazing saga about a very strange form of timeless grace, Lost has been about souls struggling toward redemption — about ”prisoners” trapped by their past, about ”blind” souls learning to see themselves for who they really are, about ”oppressed” people liberating themselves from powerful, exploitative forces that would rather keep them stuck in their ruinous rut. It is a story about wandering prodigals seeing the light and running back home. The story will end badly for some and ambiguously for others. But for those who find the triumph of redemption, my hunch is that they will do so together, as a community.

My fingers are crossed they don’t completely mess it up… and really, that they can get anywhere close to the mind-blow that was the end of season 3, which is still just killer.