Well I doubt they'd screw the UK by airing it at 5am, unless you're thinking of simultaneous broadcast.  They don't do that in the U.S. (4 timezones in the mainland alone).

Recapping on "This Place Is Death" and "La Fluer" in Season 5.

Short of the writers making it up as they go and leaving the fans to retcon it, but does the Man in Black posthumous (Smokey) exist outside of the island's time skipping or does time not sync with the time skipping in the Orchid Station frozen wheel chamber?  Reason being that Christian (Smokey in disguise) is in that chamber after the flash that took the LOSTies to pre-1867 before the Black Rock collided into the Statue of Taweret.

Simplest answer would be that Smokey is time skipping with everyone, but then he took the form of Locke in the present while Sawyer and gang were stuck in the 70s so that can't be it.

And it can't be that pre-1867 Smokey knew to go to the chamber and informed Locke about everything (like the yet to exist Eloise Hawking or the city of Los Angeles).

So there's probably something about the chamber that allows present (2004) Smokey to talk to Locke in pre-1867 in Christian Sheppard-form...

Then there's the fact that Christian was in the Barracks with Sun and Frank while Ben and un-Locke were on Hydra island...My head hurts.  Chuck it up to Smokey lying about his limitations and leave it at that, I suppose.

I'm recording the simulcast tomorrow morning, can't wait.

Well that was pretty swell.

I was satisfied by the ending.

There are a lot of archive footage slow-mo montages in this episode but with Giacchino's score and such I thought it all worked quite well.

I'm gonna miss this show, but artistically it made sense not to drag it out longer, I think.

Now for tomorrow night's 24 series finale.  I expect that one will leave me a bit less to think about.

Totally disappointed.

I'm still rather confused.

What about Jack's son? Did he never exist?

I believe his son was simply one of the many things in the world of the alternate timeline that existed as part of the characters' wish fulfillment.  Jack said early in the series that he wouldn't be a good father.  He was kind of ashamed and pained by that, I think, but it was presumably because he feels himself to have a lot of the same flaws as his own father, and while he would like to be a good father he feels like he couldn't.  In the alternate timeline he overcomes this and becomes a good father where his own had failed him in life.

From what I've seen online it looks to me like a lot of people have missed the point of the show entirely, lots of "so everybody was dead!?" (...which they weren't) type stuff as though the ending, or the precise facts and details behind everything is what it was about and the afterlife thing at the end somehow negates the whole show.  I guess I feel like it's more about mysteries and questions and exploration than some kind of convoluted jigsaw puzzle where every piece must fit together and be explained like clockwork.

Well, after watching the season finale just now on Hulu, I was not disappointed, even after having my expectations knocked down a peg by a fan I talked to earlier who wasn't so impressed. There's going to be some interesting conversations ahead.

Now I assume the fandom will start randomly devouring the unresolved threads.

Long post incoming:

I'm extremely satisfied with the finale. I never really stuck around the show to find answers. I was always more fascinated by the questions, the mysteries, and most of all, the characters, which were truly the best part. I think a lot of people were disappointed in the finale because it failed to solve so many mysteries, but LOST has always been about the journey, not the destination...to me, anyway.

I was somewhat disappointed that we never really learned more about the island's past, but I've looked past that now and realize that, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.

I had trouble falling asleep last night because I kept thinking about the ending. I almost felt like the events on the island didn't matter because everyone ended up dying anyways (at some point or another), but in a sick way, that kind of represents life itself. I think in general, people try to make a name for themselves and do something good with their life so they don't die without making some kind of difference. The survivors tried to do this also, and in doing so, they prevented "evil" from flooding the world. So the events did end up mattering, because they saved the world...as cheesy as that sounds.

As for the MiB, I think along with Locke and some others, he can be seen as an extremely tragic character. From my understanding, he never really wanted to destroy humanity, as much as he disliked people. He just wanted to leave the island so badly that he chose to do whatever it takes to leave. Which, as it turns out, is destroying humanity. So I don't think he's "evil incarnate," but someone driven insane by his desire to escape. Maybe believing that destroying humanity is okay makes him evil, but I don't think he believed that destroying the island would kill everyone. He was never a "man of faith" from my interpretation. He did say a few times that there was nothing to protect the island from.

One last theory: Perhaps the "evil" was the electromagnetic activity on the island? The hatch was destroyed because of just a small amount of energy went unchecked, so if the heart of the island, the center of this electromagnetic activity, also allowed this energy to go unchecked, the entire island would collapse, and maybe bring the world with it.

But yeah...extremely happy with the ending, and the show in general I'm probably going to rewatch the series over the summer to see what I can pick up that I didn't see the first time (as there are only a few episodes I've ever seen twice), although I don't think it'll be a very pleasurable experience. It seems like knowing how it ends will take away from the experience somehow...though I guess that remains to be seen.

Thanks for the great six years, LOST.