An open letter to the makers of Lost

Okay, guys, I’m just gonna get right down to it without any formalities. We’re about 17 hours away from the beginning of the final episode of Lost. I’m going to be “on the board” for this show, probably the biggest TV draw of May sweeps if not the entire frakkin’ year, so please allow me to implore you to do the following:

Don’t f@$% it up. Seriously. If it turns out to be a St. Elsewhere ending that makes people pick up pitchforks and torches and storm their local ABC stations, it’s my ass they’re after, right? So, seriously, don’t get me killed. Please. It’ll look really bad on the paperwork afterward.

Purely as a fan, let me add the following request:

Don’t f@$% it up. You might just be able to top the audience figure for the finale of M*A*S*H here. Personally, I kinda doubt that’ll happen, but hell, stranger stuff has happened recently – look at what we now consider the #1 movie of all time to be. (I still think that ranking is the result of “cooked books” by way of inflated 3-D ticket prices, but what do I know?)

But more to the point, you have an opportunity to make this a finale that people are talking about years – or decades – later. J.J. Abrams himself once said that one of his chief inspirations for what he turned Lost into after he took over the show from its rather simplistic “Castaway on TV” pilot pitch was The Prisoner – as in the original show from the 1960s, not the miserable mash-up from earlier this year. People are still talking about The Prisoner’s final episode, 42 years later. Some folks claim to know what the message is. Other folks claim we’re still peeling back the layers (of an hour of TV shown – let me say it again – 42 years ago) and still aren’t close to the message. Others simply assume that there is no message, and that those involved must surely have been high on a stash of LSD covering roughly the same acreage as The Village itself.

Can the finale of Lost get us talking – for years afterward – like The Prisoner did? Or will it turn into something where people are merely grumbling about it for years afterward (see also: Roseanne)? I guess we’re about 17 hours away from finding out.

Don’t f@$% it up, guys.