“This don’t look like LAX.” – Sawyer
Whoa (and if you haven’t read my quick and dirty LOST primer, that’s a Keanu Reeves in The Matrix “Whoa”, not a Joey Lawrence on Blossom “Whoa”).
LOST has always been about what you can take at face value and what you can’t. In Tuesday night’s episode when Boone implies he couldn’t bring his sister with him, and Locke talks about going on his walkabout, should we suppose they’re lying because of what happened in Season 1?
Well, we’re not about to find out.
The timeline, it appears, has been split. There’s a timeline on the plane (that kicks off just before the plane was going to crash) and there’s everyone on the island pushed forward in time by the explosion of the Hydrogen Bomb, but still on the island.
So from the credits, it looks like Sayid, Richard, Desmond, Claire, Ben, Frank, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Miles, Kate, Locke (or whoever wears his face) and Ilana are the main cast this season. As for the guest stars, Bernard, Rose, Charlie, Boone, Frogurt and Dr. Arzt’s appearances pretty much amounted to a game of hey-look-those-characters-we-recognize-are-here! Jacob’s appearance pushed the main characters (and hopefully the story) forward, and Juliet was given an appropriately dramatic death. I was sorry to see Juliet go, but Elizabeth Mitchell’s status as a guest star in last night’s episode, her commitment to V, and the fact that the last time we saw her she was blowing up a Hydrogen Bomb didn’t make me very bullish about her continued presence on the show. I’ll miss her chemistry with Sawyer, and I dread the inevitable return of the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle.
The episode was essentially split into three parts – at the Swan/Temple, on the Bizarro Oceanic flight 815, and on the beach by the statue foot, so that’s how I’ll break down the review.
The Swan/The Temple
Jumping forward from 1977 to 2007 hurls Jack, Sawyer, and the rest into crisis control mode, which is a pretty familiar place for them to be. The attempt to save Juliet provided plenty of drama, including her genuinely touching death and the rekindling of the animosity between Jack and Sawyer. The big reveal from Juliet (through Miles) that, “It worked,” is open for debate, but that’s par for the course here.
The second hour of the show found those characters in high adventure mode, following the instructions of the ghostly Jacob to the mysterious Temple where Sayid would be healed. A mini-mystery was resolved (what’s in the guitar case?), new Others were introduced, and the Temple is finally revealed. The Temple seemed pretty standard – lots of exposed stone and rough passageways – which is fine; not everything on LOST needs to be mind-blowingly strange.
The pool that they put Sayid into seems to be ground zero for the healing powers of the island (see also, Locke, paralyzed, Rose, cancer, and Ben, shot). Naveen Andrews’ presence in the regular cast made me confident he wouldn’t die, but I liked how they drew it out just a bit – especially the scene of Jack trying to resuscitate Sayid while Kate told him it was too late, an almost beat-for-beat reprise of the scene with Charlie after he was hanged in Season 1. Fortunately, this didn’t play out over the courses of like, 8 episodes, which can be the case on this show.
Bizarro Oceanic 815
Like a lot of the things that happen on LOST, the scenes on Bizarro Oceanic 815 should make more sense once we see the big picture. Last night, it was fun playing the hey-look-what-happened-differently game even if we don’t know what it all signifies.
Basically we know that Jack’s still a doctor (but a nervous flier), Locke’s still in a wheelchair (but a little more chipper), and Kate’s still a fugitive (with an overmatched escort). Having Charlie back was nice, even if it was just fan service, and although she was introduced with a rush at the end, it’s nice to have Claire back, too.
Beach/Statue Foot
So this was where all the juicy mythology came out. We do learn that the smoke monster and the mysterious man in black are one and the same, but it’s not clear what that means. Either way, he’s still walking around looking like John Locke. I don’t know if there’s a practical reason for this disguise other than giving them a way to keep Terry O’Quinn on the show, which is probably reason enough.
After getting Ben to kill Jacob, faux Locke asks to see Richard. After a confrontation with Jacob’s bodyguards, he knocks Richard out and carries him off, so clearly he wants something more than Richard’s death.
There’s been a lot of chatter that this season would feature an epic throw down between good and evil, and they’re not wasting any time on the island. The Others and the castaways are seen fortifying the temple at the end of the episode, and the man in black/smoke monster/faux Locke has stated that his agenda is to “go home”, which seems to mean “leave the island”, which I’m guessing is a bad thing. We’ll find out.
Welcome back to the island.
Miscellany:
- Desmond’s on the plane! And nobody sees him but Jack. MYSTERY!
- In the future where the plane doesn’t crash, THE ISLAND IS UNDERWATER!
- Hurley is apparently super lucky in the alternate timeline.
- Sawyer’s all, “I’m gonna kill Jack if Juliet dies,” then Kate’s all, “Don’t,” then Sawyer’s all, “No, letting him suffer is better.” YAWN
- Nice of Miles to relay Juliet’s final, cryptic thoughts.
- Charlie almost chokes to death swallowing his stash and then tells Jack, “I was supposed to die.” Cuz remember like all of Season 3 when his death was foretold?
- “Jim, kiss me.” “You’re kinda bloody.”
- Even in an alternate reality, Marshal Edward Mars gets beat up by a girl.
- So when they hauled the Ankh out of the guitar case, the first thing everyone thought was Ace of Base, right?
Great article Doug. Glad to have you actively writing. I thought the line Sawyer said to Juliet was, “You got it, blondie.”
You may be right – I may have been filtering the line through my own sensibilities.
Yes Rob, you are exactly correct. He said “You got it blondie.”
Doug, I’m a little concerned that you thought “you’re kinda bloody” was a “sensible” response. Do me a favor; if you’re ever holding the women you love while she is dying in your arms, please don’t take that moment to comment on how she looks. It’s in poor taste.
As far as Juliet being dead, she’s not. She will be in the alternate reality with everyone else. In fact, when she was talking about “getting a cup of coffee, sometime. We could go dutch,” she was talking to Sawyer in the parallel universe. Why? Because it’s LOST and anything is possible.
And to answer your question, “No,” no one thought of Ace of Base because that’s absurd and relevant to people stuck in 1994. After catching a glimpse of the inside of the foot of the statue and seeing all the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on last season’s finally, we true geeks with nothing better to do brushed up on our Egyptian symbols and found that the ankh is a sign of life after death. Also leading to theories behind our new friends on the beach; the man in black and the man in white. The man in white we came to learn as “Jacob” and the other, we now know as “Monster Locke” or “Evil Locke.” I like to call him “Set” or “Seth” from the Egyptian myth of Osiris. When Seth killed his brother he was banished into the desert…or in this case, an island where he must stay. Unless he can kill Jacob, and as he so professed was his desire, “go home.” I also think he is why no children could be conceived and born on the island. Seth’s wife had an affair with Osiris and bore him a son, but never had any of Seth’s children. Bitter much?
And I’m surprised you didn’t mention the black ash that the monster cannot cross. Any ideas there?
Hey Emalee, thanks for the comment! I wasn’t sure how much discussion to expect on the post.
To clear up the first point, what I meant about filtering that through my sensibilities was that I thought Sawyer was indulging in a bit of gallows humor, not that my instinct would be to say that in the same situation.
As for Juliet, sure she’ll be back, but she won’t be a regular cast member anymore, that’s what I’ll miss.
The Ace of Base comment was tongue in cheek – actually, a lot of what I write is tongue in cheek, and name-checking Ace of Base seemed so ludicrous, I just couldn’t resist.
I’d read someone refer to the Man in Black as “Esau” (Jacob’s biblical brother), but right now I’m still a little overwhelmed by all the Egyptology (I didn’t finish Season 5 ’til last Saturday, so I haven’t had time to brush up on the background stuff). Thanks for sharing the Osiris/Set myth – it’s certainly food for thought.
I dropped the ball on the ash – that definitely should’ve at least shown up in the miscellany section. I don’t have any theories on it, but it’s a head scratcher, all right.
Excellent! Now I know that there is sarcasm to your posts, I will read future comments as such. I’ve followed LOST since day 1 so I’ve had more time to let stuff sink in. So I commend you on your ability to notice so much so quickly.
I was also wondering what you thought about the answer to the question “what lies in the shadow of the statue” to which the reply is “the one who will save us all” (thank you high school latin)
creepy…
I hope you stay active on this board, because you’re catching a lot of stuff I missed 🙂
1. The coffee line – when I heard it, I dismissed it as near-death delirium. This was obviously a huge mistake because at this point, the writers are going to make every line of dialogue count.
2. I completely neglected to look up the meaning of Richard’s response. Could be another “What did one snowman say to the other snowman?” but again, at this point they’re going to make everything count. Could be Locke (I imagine at the right time of day his body would be in the statue’s shadow, were the whole thing intact), but I imagine that Jacob’s the only one who knows what it means, as it’s just a password to the characters who’ve used it so far.