And I want Hurley to be happy

Wherein three TV critics sitting around talking about TV



For the first section, most of the conversation is about Lost. I'm agreeing with Sepinwall in hoping that Desmond, Penny, and baby Charlie make it to the end. And Hurley. He's the only original castaway I care about.

Ryan: What do you guys personally want out of the last season?

Poniewozik: Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything that I particularly want. I want to be entertained and impressed. And I want to have some sense of why the island is important and why it was necessary that they all be there, if it was necessary that they all be there.

I don’t necessarily need all the parts of that to add up. It’s not like there’s an outcome that I’m rooting for. I’d love to be surprised.

Sepinwall: There’s one outcome I am rooting for, and that is Desmond, Penny and baby Charlie have to be OK. If they [expletive] with them, I’m not going to be happy and that’s the only area. But beyond that…

Ryan: Yeah, I think I'm with you there. I think they probably know they cannot break our hearts with that. If they do, they will be dead.

Sepinwall: And I would like to know what Smokey is. They’ve teased that out so much that if they don’t answer that -- that I think would be disappointing.

Poniewozik: It’s funny that the thing that you guys come to is Desmond and Penny and little Charlie. And not Kate and Jack and Sawyer, for instance. [But] some people have this idea that, for a show like this to be any good, should know exactly what it’s going to do from the beginning. You know -- have a map and follow the map militarily to the end.

And the fact is, it’s like a novel, it’s like writing and developing anything else, it's like making a movie -- if it doesn’t happen organically, if it doesn't come out of the characters, who are human beings and will surprise you and take you places that you didn’t expect to when it started out, it’s going to be [crap]. And therefore, [the show] has to allow for the possibility that things that the creators thought were going to happen in Season 1 just end up not happening at all. And some character who is down a hole at the beginning of the second season ends up having the relationship that is cared about most at the end.