Lynn Phegley Watches "Lost" - "Ab Aeterno"

My mom's name is Lynn Phegley. She teaches music to elementary school kids in Grand Blanc, Michigan. She likes classic Hollywood musicals, trashy romance novels and "Sex In The City."

And for some reason she's seen damn near every episode of "Lost."

Each week of the series last season, I'm opening up the blog to mom to share her thoughts on what happened. I guarantee that those of you who like to read blogs digging in to the metaphorical underpinnings of the show looking for clues and analysis will almost certainly get nothing out of this. And thanks to this site for the screencaps.

Let's begin.

HERE WE ARE IN PIRATE TIMES

"That was boring, actually. They were chained up in the pirate ship for way too long. They spend WAY too much time on that. Three minutes would have been enough. Then the benevolent Smoke Monster didn't kill him. Why didn't he kill him? I don't think the Smoke Monster had the authority to kill him because he wasn't really evil.

"If the end of it is 'Good and Evil,' that's just as bad as it being purgatory. You might as well have cowboys and Indians. But Good is supposed to win out, and there's not many redeeming qualities in this story.

"Most stories are like this: the people are what they are. The people may appear to be different to the other characters, but as a reader you always know who's good and who's evil. Then, when you get to the end it all wraps up neatly. This story does not do anything neatly. This is the kind of story where I would skip to the end to read.

"They're trying to show the ambiguity of the dystopia or whatever that article you sent me was about. Anyway. I don't believe in that. I believe in utopia. There's heroes and heroines. I like that better. I don't care for this kind of genre."


THE AGE OLD CONFLICT

"I don't remember the Man In Black being in this show before? Where was he?"

[I explain that MIB was most likely Jack's father in the earlier seasons.]

"How do we know that? I don't "infer." That's the problem with me and this story. There's too much inferment that has to go on. I go that he was the wife in that one scene, but it could be your imagination. I mean, there are a lot of things in this show that you have to double check with. I think half of the stuff is in those little pop up things, and you'd never have known it if you wouldn't have seen the pop ups.

"I said to a girl at work, 'Are you still watching Lost?' and she said, 'Yup. The only reason I'm still watching it is because I've invested all this time, and I want to see how it turns out.' Then I said, 'If it wasn't coming to an end, I'd have quite watching it.' It's true! And now they advertise, 'Watch this new show from the producers of Lost.' There's no way in hell I'd watch another show from them. I'd go, 'Oh, the producers of Lost? No thank you.'

"Is Jacob God? Because God gives free will. If this is supposed to be heaven or hell, then they're off track because these people have no free will."

[Me: Before Ben killed Jacob, Jacob told him he always has a choice.]

"Well, Ben said he didn't have a choice."

[Me: That's the whole question of the show then. Can anyone break the cycle? Some people have been broken by it like Claire or Sayid, but the main players still have a chance to change who they are if they want.]

"I don't know about that. They're not doing that good of choices in the sideways universe. Lordy. If this is all about good and evil, I can't wait until the religious people get to it. Maybe they're like that lady who wrote the vampire book. Maybe the person who writes 'Lost' is really a Utah Mormon. That'd be a thing to find out. If it's a religion story, I'm going to think it's dumb."