I liked it. They weren't dead all along, that's a cardinal sin of story-telling. In this season, in the flash-sideways things they were dead; but not all along. If they were dead from the plane crash, then the finale wouldn't make since, because they were "meeting with the people that had the biggest impact on their lives." They had never met each other before the crash. Their actual lives followed the island storyline, but once they died, their memory followed the flash-sideways storyline and they had to trigger the memory of their actual past in order to move on. Gives "see you in another life, brotha" a much deeper meaning.

...at least this is my analysis...I'm gonna go see what they say on 4815162342.com, if possible (probably overrun with traffic).