Never in my life have I been e-shouted at by as many friends threatening to end my life if I let any details of a television episode slip as I was yesterday.

As anyone with even the remotest interest in television would be aware, yesterday afternoon (our time), LOST's final - ever - episode screened. And, as soon as an hour or two had past, I jumped online to watch it.

So, if you're one of the few people who hasn't watched it, didn't get around to it, or are perplexingly waiting for Seven to show it tomorrow night (more on that later),

STOP READING NOW

In fact, just get off the goddamned internet.

So.

It's true that in the past couple of years I have fallen out of regular viewing patterns, but perhaps it's a testament to how strong the first few seasons of the show were that I still felt desperate to know how it all ended.



For the last fifteen minutes or so of the final episode, I sobbed like a baby.

Would my reaction have been the same had I watched the show regularly throughout its entirety? It's hard to say. But there was a lovely synergy between the finale and the first ever episode of the show (so much so that you could almost stretch it to say that you could simply watch both bookends and walk away satisfied).

So what happened? What were the answers?

Gun-jumpers have been surmising that the island itself was "purgatory" since the first episodes of the show; the show's creators always hurriedly denied it.

Here's J.J. Abrams discussing the purgatory theory, years ago at the Paley Festival:




And so were they right? Well, sort of not really. There was a purgatory of sorts, but it wasn't the island. Instead, it was the "alternate reality", which Jack's (dead) father explained was something all the survivors had created so they (or their spirits) could find each other before moving on (to heaven? To another dimension?) together.

After establishing that he, too, was dead, Jack asked his dad, "Why are they all here now?" to which his father explained that "there's no 'now' here" - some of them had died before Jack, and some many years after, but eventually all their souls managed to meet together.

There was no use of the words "heaven", "purgatory", "afterlife", "alternate universe", or anything, really; it was dealt with in a fairly secular way (though I also thought it was a lovely touch that the leadlight windows in the 'church' they'd all gathered in featured symbols of nearly all the major religions).

Likewise, the light that streamed in as Christian Shepherd (yes, really) opened the doors and windows was never defined. Was it the light of god? The same light from the island? The Spielbergian light of wonder and enlightenment??

Who cares. It was brilliant.

Which brings us to Channel Seven's decision to screen the finale at 8.30pm on Wednesday. That's two whole days after everyone else in the world has watched the episode.

Their reasoning was that "a Monday afternoon simulcast was considered, but it was felt fans would find the show more easily in its current timeslot".

That simulcast would have aligned Australian television with that in the US, Canada, Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Israel and Turkey, where the finale was shown simultaneously.

The simulcast served a dual purpose: one, it meant that the networks could squeeze as many viewers as possible out of the airing, but more compellingly, it also meant that LOST fans could share the experience as one.

In other words, though the primary motivation was driven by ratings (and, thus, money), the networks also appreciated the feelings of fans who have lived with these characters for six years.

Seven, on the other hand, thinks its viewers are idiots.

As Sue Sylvester would say, I'mma drop some knowledge on you, Seven: fans will find the show any way they can.

Even Nine, those bastions of televisual idiocy, showed the Oscars live this year. People will make the time to watch something that is important to them. (Someone needs to tell Seven about how crime rates stalled in America when The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show.)

The brains at Seven HQ, on the other hand, felt that the fans wouldn't be able to work out that the finale was simulcast in the afternoon and would end up confused as to why it wasn't on Wednesday.

Instead, the fans have found the show very easily indeed - via the internet!

I have no doubt that plenty of people will end up watching The End tomorrow night, but largely because it's the sort of excellent television that bears repeated viewing.

Those of us who care about the show, however, will have made sure to watch it the way LOST fans - both casual and obsessed - wanted: alongside each other, holding (virtual) hands, hearts relieved even if our minds were still piecing together the puzzle.

We found ourselves on the internet. Deep down, I'm sure Seven knows they lost us long ago - this is just the final insult.