Wow!  Just … wow!  A few days later and my mind, she is still blown.  That was everything a season finale should be: great acting, terrific twists, the wrapping up of plot threads that were developing throughout the season, and the introduction of ideas that will surely carry through the rest of next season, if not the rest of the series.

If you’ve remained a loyal Lost fan, and, really, if you’re reading this, chances are that you have, think on your friends who have given up on the show and pity them.  You are the smart one.  And you, like the show, are awesome.  Here’s five examples of awesomeness from an episode many people are calling Lost’s best ever (and I’d have a hard time disagreeing):

BEN GETS BEATEN: A lot.  Like a lot, a lot.  Now, we’ve seen Ben get hurt before, but that was back before we knew who he really was.  He was just poor pathetic Henry Gayle then.  Since we’ve seen a season’s worse of his machinations, when Jack just started wailing on him, I yelled an obscenity at my TV followed by the word, “Yeah!”  (This was a nice parallel to last season’s finale when Ben showed up on the dock while Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer were being held hostage and I yelled that same obscenity followed by the word, “No!”) 

Michael Emerson has put on an acting clinic this whole season, going from confident in his power but frightened about his injury to this scared, desperate animal trying to do everything he can to hold onto the little power he has left.  He’s one of the best villains on television, and to see him take a beating (by Jack and Rousseau) was so, so satisfying. 

Too bad it looks like, for once, he may have been telling the truth.  But more on that later.  Ben getting beaten up was awesome.

THE SURVIVORS WIN: Well, at least temporarily.  There’s a good ten minute stretch where everything seems to go write for the survivors of Flight 815:  the people we thought were dead are still alive; the marauding gang of others are taken out; Locke’s still alive; Jack and the other survivors reach the radio tower; Desmond and Charlie are able to take over the Looking Glass station. 

And as it was all happening it occurred to me that this was such a rarity.  We’ve been watching the show for three years, and, yes, they have little victories over the rotten situation in which they’ve found themselves, but there’s never really been a moment of pure unadulterated joy on the island, and here were a bunch of those moments happening one after the other.

I think I even quietly said to myself, “They’re winning.”  (I’m odd, I know.)  It didn’t last, of course but while it did, it was awesome.

HURLEY SAVES THE DAY: Yes, this was a part of the survivors winning, but it deserves its own line.  Hurley’s been looking for redemption this entire season, and it’s been a very subtle plot thread, one I didn’t even really notice until this episode.

Hurley is the only one of the group of survivors that the Others let go, and he is powerless to stop them.  Once he returns to the camp, he soon learns that Desmond can see the future and that Charlie is going to die.  Again, there is nothing he can do to stop this, and later he can’t even go with Charlie to be with him before his suicide mission.  He makes a mistake in his interpretation of what Nikki said, and he unwittingly cannot save Nikki and Paolo from being buried alive.

The last straw came when Sawyer wouldn’t let him go back to help Jin, Sayid and Bernard on the beach.  Rebuffed again, Hurley is able to find a way to do something by taking the van, a symbol of his faith and optimism, and saving the day on the beach.

Okay, that was a bunch of literary analysis, I know, but when Hurley and that van came crashing onto the beach to save the day, that was pretty awesome.

CHARLIE DIES BEAUTIFULLY: It’s a storyline that’s been brewing from the beginning of the season, and it was resolved perfectly.  Charlie goes to the Looking Glass, does what he needs to do to save Claire and Aaron, and then he passes away.

I mean, it wasn’t all that simple.  There was a harpoon gun, a grenade, the startling revelation that Penny did not send Naomi, Desmond in the hatch, a stirring rendition of “You All Everybody,” and, finally, “Good Vibrations” for computer keypad.

Fans of Lost, stop griping about water pressure and about how Charlie could’ve gotten out of the room before it filled up with water (if he’d have done that, Desmond’s vision wouldn’t have come true, and Claire and Aaron wouldn’t be saved), and remember how great it was to see Charlie sacrifice himself for others and even warn Desmond with his last few breaths, a very nice callback to all the times Charlie would write on the bandages on his fingers in the first season.  Finally ending with the sign of the cross, lapsed Catholic Charlie got his redemption.  Beautiful and awesome.

ROUSSEAU AND ALEX MEET: Now, admittedly, “will you help me tie him up?” isn’t the greatest beginning to a relationship, but this is Rousseau we’re talking about.  To get this meeting between mother and daughter, finally, is another great payoff to those of us who have been faithfully watching the show.

In episode 9 of the first season, episode 9!, Rousseau is introduced to us by yelling “Where is Alex?!?” at Sayid.  About 60 episodes later, she finds her.  How awesome is that?

THE GAME CHANGES: And, yes, the moment that changed everything: the person Jack’s been calling all episode shows up and it’s … Kate.  What?  I’ll admit that for a second I was angry, thinking, “They knew each other before they got on the island?  That’s nonsense.  This is bull—“ and then I realized what we all realized.  This wasn’t a flashback but a flash forward.  Kate and Jack get off the island, Kate’s with some “he” now, and Jack is utterly miserable.  Oh, and there was a funeral for somebody (Locke? Michael? Ben??) and only Jack attended.

We’ve learned how to watch the show, to switch back from the past off the island to the present on the island, from the beginning, and we’re so good at it that most of us never saw this coming (oh, and if you knew it was a flash forward because of the brand of phone Jack was using … you’re really kind of missing the drama amidst all your nit-picking).  It was a genius move.

Will the writers be using this model from now on?  I’d think so, at least some of the time.  I know there are still flashback stories to be told (Rousseau’s comes to mind), but this will be a great way of telling the entire tale of Lost for the rest of the series.  Changing the game, and doing it in a clever way, well, that’ll always be awesome.

Okay, that’s it for me until, gulp, 2008.  It’ll be a long hiatus, I know, but I can’t think of a single Lost fan who won’t be sitting in front of his/her TV when the premiere of Season 4 comes around.  Until then …

Oh, wait.  I forgot to mention, Ben tells Richard to take the remaining Others to “the Temple.”  There’s a temple??