I think it was a perfect bookend, but it had no emotional weight and had the unfortunate circumstance of running parallel to the ridiculous "afterlife" scene. Why should I care that Jack sacrificed himself, when I don't know what it was for and further riddles the mythos with inconsistencies (shouldn't he have turned into the smoke monster?).
Because, y'know, maybe if the writers had created a sense of urgency and stressed the importance of Jack's sacrifice, instead of vague and ambiguous bullshit, it would pull at my heart strings. Bush league stuff, but oh well. I wonder if the bullpen stopped caring by this point.
Pretty much. If you didn't truly care for the characters, there was no emotional weight to that episode. People in the GAF thread are laughing at me, saying the Fake Locke plot was "resolved." Uh, we still don't know why he wanted to leave, what would happen if he left, what was stopping him, etc. Bububu "Jacob's rules!" Yea, ok
The most emotional scenes for me were when Locke X had his flashback, and Hurley not wanting Jack to sacrifice himself. With the Locke scene, it hit me just how bad I missed the "real" Locke. And with Hurley it was just a great moment, and he actually pulled off some good acting imo (compared to me wanting to laugh at him trying to cry after Jin and Sun died).
I happen to like the characters, and even while bracing for a religion-tinged disappointment, seeing the cast together in the church was great.
