Spoiler Alert! I Finished Watching Lost

Only seven months after the finale ran on ABC (and about six months after I accidentally erased several shows from my DVR), Lost is in the books.

The first season, way back in 2004, was easily one of the top 5 single seasons for a TV drama in history. And there was plenty of fun in subsequent seasons. But I can't help but feel let down by the way it ended tonight.

Jack's dad, named Christian Shepard (no subtlety there), brings the original plane-crash survivors together in a church, serving as the proverbial heaven, to facilitate their look back at the time they spent on the lost island, a time that was clearly the "best time of their lives."

Although the theme of science versus faith is certainly interesting, it's also the oldest story in the book and feels a little lazy and uncreative. These wandering lost souls, or disciples, end up dead but in a great place. Meanwhile, the Dharma Initiative and the scientific experiments that were being performed on the island have been rendered obsolete.

That's a frightening parable for our time, when so many people have their heads in the sands of faith rather than, in addition to faith (which isn't such a bad thing), trusting human scientific ability to predict the ways our crazy world works.

All that said, the mythology the writers were able to build up over six seasons, even if it didn't end up leading to much of anywhere other than smoke monsters and tropical polar bears, was an impressive feat. Although much of Lost meant absolutely nothing, the brilliance in such a ploy is that it makes us all think, at least for a short while, that it actually does mean something. The frustrating thing is that we'll never know what that "something" is.

The ending: **1/2 out of ***** stars
The entire six seasons: ****1/2 out of ***** stars