Lost S5E12: Dead is Dead

Even if every other scene in last night's episode consisted of Kate, Sawyer and Jack staring at each other and sighing, it still would have been an awesome episode because PENNY IS ALIVE, Y'ALL! Not only that, but Desmond is the MAN. Was that not the most satisfying beatdown you've ever seen in your life? Of course it forces the question as to how Desmond could deliver said beatdown after being shot in the chest, but Mrs. Hawkings told him that the island wasn't finished with him yet and we all know that if the island has plans for you, ain't nothing out there that can kill you.

In typical Lost fashion, this was an episode that appeared to answer a lot of questions, when in reality, it raised more new questions than answered old ones. Still, it was a deeply satisfying episode because we saw a scared, penitent Ben dealing with a confident, bemused Locke and that role reversal was a delicious thing to see.

Let's run down what we now know and what we now DON'T know.

We now know: that Ben, for all his faults, has a weak spot for mothers. We kinda knew this already, since it's been shown that the death of his own mother affected him deeply and his need to protect the pregnant women on the island bordered on mania (what with the "kidnapping and forcibly injecting them with drugs" bit and all) but last night's episode deepened that trait and gave us a more sympathetic Ben than we've ever seen before. He couldn't kill Penny once he saw that she had a child and he couldn't kill Rousseau for the exact same reason.

We don't know: Why Rousseau didn't seem to recognize Ben when she captured him and turned him over to Sayid in Season 2. Bitch was pretty crazy at that point but there's no way she didn't recognize the man who stole her child.

We now know: That the whispers are definitely The Others, since Ben told Danielle to run away whenever she heard them, the strong implication being that it meant his people were close by.

We don't know: How is it that Ben was hanging out in the Others' camp and even going on missions for them (with Ethan tagging along) while living in the DHARMA compound at the same time?

We now know: The whys and hows of Charles Widmore's banishment from the island. He fathered a child with a non-Other, which means Penny's mother isn't Eloise Hawkings, as many people had theorized.

We don't know: Why and how (not to mention when) Eloise herself left the island. She was mentioned in last week's episode as being one of the leaders of the Others (by Richard). That was 1977. Alex was born in 1988 and she looked to be about 5 at the time of Charles' banishment, putting that at around 1993 (which makes some sense because the purge took place in 1992). So, some time between 1977 and 1993, Eloise left the island, either forcibly or by choice.

We now know: That smokey lives in the basement of the temple and predates the DHARMA Initiative by a couple millennia, since the hieroglyphs we briefly saw depicted Anubis conversing with it, which means that, yes, the statue that we saw several episodes back was almost certainly Anubis. And speaking of that statue...

We don't know: WHO THE HELL IS ILANA AND WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING? "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Ooh! Ooh! Pick us! We know! The well that leads down to the donkey wheel! Clearly, there's a lot more to her than we know, since she apparently brought a stockpile of guns on to the plane and she has some cohorts among the passengers. We originally thought she worked for Widmore, but consider this: Ben called Widmore from the docks mere hours before boarding the plane and told him he was heading back to the island. Widmore waved him off, saying it was impossible to get back to the island. If Widmore believed that, then he couldn't have been the person who arranged for Ilana and her backup dancers to be on the plane, right? Maybe they're working for Eloise?

We now know: That the island definitely considers Locke to be the man in charge, since it took the form of Alex just to tell Ben to back the fuck off Locke and do whatever it is he says. Yes, that was the island/Smokey speaking and not Alex's ghost. Remember when Smokey killed Eko and took the form of his brother just before it killed him? Same thing here.

We don't know: Just what the hell it is Locke is supposed to do to reunite with the rest of the Losties. We assume he's probably going to head back the Orchid and the donkey wheel, since that's the only time-jumping apparatus on the island. Since it looks like Ilana and her crew are heading in that direction as well, expect to see a showdown at the Orchid soon. Hey! Does that mean it was Ilana shooting at Sawyer and Juliet and the rest of them during that canoe chase back when the island was skipping through time?

We now know: That the show doesn't spend nearly as much money on makeup and special effects as it should, since Ben's flashback wig looked ridiculous as did the confrontation with Smokey under the Temple.

We don't know: Why they couldn't just cast a younger actor to play flashback Ben, especially since the guy who played 40-year-old Widmore (in the scene where he met L'il Ben for the first time) looked almost exactly like the older Widmore.

Okay, we're sure we've missed plenty of things, so feel free to point them out.


[Photos: Lostpedia]


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Lost: S5E11: Whatever Happened, Happened

You would think, since we've been bitching about Kate all season and since we've been bitching about the '70s storyline for the last month, that we'd be UBER bitching about last night's episode.

Shows how much you know. We loved it.

We'll go even further: we think it was one of the best shows of the season and probably the best Kate-centric show they've ever had. There are a lot of reasons for this and you're gonna sit there and listen to them. Ready? Here we go.

It was one of the best of the season because for the first time in a long time, we were given a show that seamlessly blended current and former timelines, gave us insight into the actions of a main character (one we had assumed we'd had all figured out), while over everything, there was heavy tension because the stakes were high. In short, it was a classic Lost episode.

See, we were whiny about last week's episode because it spent a lot of time on Sayid without really telling us anything we didn't already know about him. This episode offered up a Kate we haven't seen in a long time: a heroic Kate. For too long, she's been the ruler in a dick-measuring contest between Jack and Sawyer or she's been stuck being the mommy for reasons that made little sense to us. We once again see a Kate that has her own motivations and owns her actions. It was actually a little thrilling and made us pine for the days when she trekked off into the jungle against the orders of the men around her and did whatever the hell she thought was right at the time. That's a Kate we can love and we finally saw her again last night.

On top of all that, it filled in the blanks on the periods missing from Kate's story and gave us some of what we already figured out while pulling the rug out from under us as to WHY she made the choices she did. We (like so many other Lost fans) figured that Sawyer's whispered favor to her on the helicopter was a request to find Cassidy, his old flame, and their daughter, Clementine. Unsurprisingly, we were right, and the scene of their meeting offered us so much more than we had imagined.

We love the relationship between Kate and Cassidy. They seem to really get each other in a way that no one else in their respective lives do. It's rare to see female friendships on television that revolve around true bonds and deep understanding rather than the backstabbing of Desperate Housewives or the treacly "thank you for being a friend" of say, Golden Girls or Sex and the City. These are 2 unconventional women who have been there for each other and don't judge each other for the things they've done. We LOVED the way Cassidy delivered the line, "Oh my God...that baby isn't yours, is it?" She got it in a second and rather than judge Kate for the lie, she judged her for thinking she could lie to HER, of all people. Further, Cassidy uttered the truest line yet about Jack without ever having met him: "Yeah, well. Your Jack sounds like a real piece of work."

We do think Cassidy had it a little wrong about Sawyer. It made sense that she wouldn't have nice things to say about the guy, but ultimately, we don't believe that Sawyer hopped out of that helicopter just to run away from Kate. Yeah, he pretty much admitted to it later, but we don't trust his opinion of himself or of his actions. Jumping out of that helicopter was what set Sawyer on the road to heroism because it was his first truly heroic act. Yeah, he was scared of his feelings for Kate and yeah, he didn't think he deserved her, but he jumped because he was a hero, not because he was a coward. Cassidy was wrong and Sawyer was wrong when he agreed with her.

And speaking of Sawyer, how WONDERFUL when writers let adult characters act like real adults. We don't know if this will remain true in the long run, but right now, Sawyer's with Juliet and he's not tossing that aside because Kate showed up. He made that clear and we love him for it. Of course, that means that if the writers want to maintain some romantic tension, someone in that love quadrangle is going to have to die, and by default, that person would have to be Juliet, so THAT makes us more than a little nervous. Still, for now, we're happy. Sawyer and Kate DIDN'T act like self-involved twits and they DID state firmly their reasons why. Sawyer loves Juliet and he ain't leavin' her; Kate came back to the island to find Claire.

Wait, what? Kate came back to find Claire? And those dirty writers let us think she only came back to find Sawyer! Clever, clever writers. All this time, we thought Kate came back for purely selfish reasons and instead, she came back for the best reason of all. To find the mother of the child she's been raising. And the genius of it is, it all remains perfectly true to the character as we've known her. Kate is nothing else if not a user. It's her main character flaw. She uses people (men, mostly) to get her from point A to point B and then she runs away from those people. She realized last night that she'd been using Aaron to get over Sawyer (and it didn't hurt that the little tyke helped to keep her out of jail), but once she realized what she'd done, she gave him up. This wasn't running away. She did absolutely the right thing by giving Aaron to Claire's mother (something we never saw coming) and then offering her pledge to her that she was heading back to the island to find Claire.

Frankly, we're just happy that SOMEONE remembered that Claire even existed.

To add to all the sisterhood/motherhood themes running around, we had some fantastic scenes between Juliet and Kate. Again, we had characters acting like real adults (instead of backstabbing soap opera bitches) and we had two women taking control of a situation because they strongly felt it was the right thing to do.

In other news, Jack is still a douchebag, but at least we get more scenes of characters TELLING him he's a douchebag. LOVED that scene with Juliet storming into the bathroom, furious with him for his selfishness. We will say, though, he did get a great line in with Kate, when she said "I liked the old Jack," and he responded with a genuinely wounded "You didn't like the old Jack." Still, one good line doesn't change the fact that he was acting like a douche. We all know what a horrible person Ben Linus turned out to be, but only a douchebag would refuse to operate on a dying child.

And besides, in the douchebaggiest twist of all, Jack's refusal to save Ben is what ultimately turned him into an Other. Along with the oh-so covenient memory loss that will make him forget that Sayid ever shot him, we're wondering if that trip into the Temple will also possess him with the "sickness" that took Rousseau's team. Are all the Others - the true Others, not the hired help like Juliet - "possessed" by the smoke monster? That would explain why some of the Tailies, like Cindy the flight attendant, acted so weird after they went off with them.

And finally, the episode ended the best way it possibly could, in the present, with John Locke smiling creepily over the shocked Ben. We can't WAIT to see what happens next.





[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost: S5E10: He's Our You

Expect this to be a fairly short post because, except for the last 90 seconds, almost nothing happened in last night's episode. To be blunt, we thought it was the weakest episode of the season so far.

One thing we did kind of like about the episode is that it marked a return to the season 1 through 3 narrative technique (and one for which the show is known) of focusing on one character and using flashbacks to both comment on the current actions of that character and to fill in some background on them. We suspect, since there are so many dangling plot elements regarding how and why the O6 got on Ajira 316, we're going to be seeing more of these as the season winds down. That's fine by us. We're dying to know what Kate did with Aaron or whether or not Sun met with Widmore before boarding the plane or what the hell happened to Desmond and Penny. The problem is, Sayid's flashbacks revealed almost nothing we didn't already know or strongly suspect.

The first flashback, to his childhood in Iraq, strongly echoed (no pun intended) Mr. Eko's backstory. Sayid killed so his brother (?) wouldn't have to. Nicely done and it set up the theme of the episode: that Sayid is, at his heart, a killer. Of course, we knew this already because the only character who racked up a higher body count during the course of the show is Ben himself. We've lost count of the number of people Sayid has killed both on and off the island so a scene spelling out that he's a killer seemed a little superfluous to us. It's like having a flashback for Jack showing he's a doctor or for Kate showing she's an annoying, self-centered, cock-teasing pain in the ass (oh come on, we had to work that in somewhere).

It seemed as if this episode was going to explain how and why Ben and Sayid had their falling out. We always suspected that Sayid must have discovered that Ben had his wife killed or at the very least that he had been lying to Sayid all along about the people he was ordering him to kill. Well, there were no answers here at all. Ben and Sayid parted ways because...well, they just did, is all. Why that resulted in Sayid telling Hurley to always do the opposite of whatever Ben tells him, we don't know. And we kinda wonder if we're ever going to know because it seemed as if the writers thought they were filling in all the blanks, as if they've written the final chapter on the Ben/Sayid alliance.

Not that the episode was completely without merit. We'll get to the "shocking" ending in a bit, but what stood out to us was how certain scenes echoed older, somewhat iconic scenes from earlier in the series. To go along with the Eko echo, we had a scene in a bar with Sayid and Ilana that was eerily similar to the scene where Jack and Ana Lucia first met in the airport (doubly so because the actress looks so much like Michelle Rodriguez that it's a little distracting) and we had Sayid tied to a tree, ostensibly being tortured (even if they just dosed him with some acid on a sugarcube, how very '70s) while Sawyer looked on, which of course strongly echoes the scene in season 1 when it was Sawyer tied to the tree while Sayid tortured him. All very clever callbacks which make us wonder if it's just about the writers being clever or if there's something else going on that actually causes these echoes to happen.

Which reminds us, part of the reason we're getting a little antsy with the whole "back to the '70s" subplot is because ever since the time shifting stopped there's been almost no magic or mystery. It's all very plodding and we only have so much interest in seeing Horace or Radzinsky in the flesh and we've REALLY lost interest in the whole love quadrangle going on between Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet. Just love the one you're with, bitches, and save yourselves a shit ton of trouble. More of Locke staring off into the distance and saying something cryptic and less meaningful glances and long pauses between pretty people with extravagant problems, please.

Hey, remember when we said this was going to be a short post? Ha. Fooled ya.

We felt bad for Sawyer as everything he built up for himself over the last three years started to unravel in front of his eyes and despite his chest-puffery of last episode, he doesn't seem to have the skills to fix the situation. On the other hand, the growing annoyance of Sawyer (and to a lesser extent, Juliet) with the arrival of the other 815ers struck us as a little misguided. They DID come back to save your asses, y'know. It's not their fault that you all decided to play house in DHARMAville.

As for that ending...was it really a shock? It seemed to us that the whole episode was leading to that point anyway. Sure, it's a shock to see a 12 year old get shot point blank by an adult on network television but does anyone really believe that Sayid managed to kill l'il Ben? Before we say something we'll regret later (because you never can tell what the hell these writers are going to do next), we admit we can toy with the idea that somehow Sayid managed to change the past or create an alternate timeline, but we seriously doubt it. L'il Ben will get miraculously healed by the island and/or the two secret doctors hanging out in DHARMAville will be forced to come out of the closet and save his life.

Of course, it didn't escape our notice that l'il Ben slipped Sayid a copy of Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality when he was in that cell and you just KNOW the writers gleefully wrote that little Easter egg in just to fuck with the fans' heads.

No, more important than a possible time paradox is the fate of Sayid now. His actions were alarming not because he shot a kid, but because he seemed resigned to his fate as a killer in such a way as to make us think that HE thinks he's at the end of the road. We can guarantee that before this is all over, at least one major character will be dead, but we're really hoping not to see any major deaths for a while. Save that for the series finale, writers. Please?

[Photos: ABC.com]

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Lost S5E9: Namaste

Last night’s episode was a great one for character reasons, but kind of a lousy one for plot reasons. Ever since the show landed in the ‘70s, the plot has slowed down to a crawl. It’s great to see the Losties placed in this situation and it’s interesting to see how they were moved around the chessboard to get to this point, but we’re getting a little antsy and we’d like to see things move forward a bit. Since the first part of the season was such a rollercoaster ride, we’re hoping that this is just an “eye of the storm” moment for the season.

Another annoying thing: the show sometimes treats certain things as shocking revelations when they’re clearly nothing of the sort. It wasn’t shocking to see l’il Ben show up at the end since we all knew he was there anyway. Why go to the trouble of hiding his face and waiting for the big reveal? Who didn’t know as soon as a kid showed up that it was Ben?

Lest you think this minor bitching indicates that we hated the episode, let us tell you what we loved:

THE RUNWAY! We do so love when we get something right. As you may recall, the runway that Ajira 316 landed on was the same one Kate and Sawyer were being forced to construct way back in S3 when they were held captive by the Others, which forces the question: How the hell much does Ben know, anyway? The answer is looking more and more like: EVERYTHING. And that makes him even more dangerous than we thought. He knew a flight was going to crash on Hydra island; he met Sayid 30 years before Sayid met him; and apparently there’s been a picture of Jack, Kate, and Hurley hanging in the DHARMA barracks (where he’s lived almost his whole life) for 30 years.

Kinda makes you wonder why, way back in S2, he put Kate, Hurley, Jack, and Sawyer on that list he gave to Michael. He knew who all of those people were and he’s known it for 30 years.

As for Sayid, we have absolutely no idea where that plot strand is going. Either he winds up being welcomed into the DHARMA community, gets set loose back out in the jungle, or killed. It seems pretty unlikely that Sawyer can convince the DHARMAns (new word) to welcome him with open arms, so things are looking mighty grim for our favorite Iraqi assassin.

As for Sawyer…the writers have done a bangup job taking him from asshole, to charming asshole, to full-on hero and leader. We were practically doing fist pumps when he quietly tore douchebag Jack a new asshole. It’s about time someone pointed out that the so-called “leader” of the Losties has a pretty lousy track record.

Leadership is something of a recurring theme with this show. Who is the leader of the others, Ben, Locke or Richard? Who is the leader of the Losties, Jack, Sawyer, or (again) Locke? The roles seem to shift constantly depending on circumstances. We can’t help but note that in all the jockeying for leadership, the women automatically take the back seat as if there’s no question that they’re not meant to lead.

And speaking of the women…

SUN WHACKING BEN WITH AN OAR = AWESOME. “I lied.” Any character that gets a chance to knock Ben unconscious is okay by us. It’s driving us crazy that we’re not getting an explanation as to why she’s in the present when the rest of the O6 wound up in the past. Half-baked theories: It has something to do with the wedding ring (since they keep making a point of showing it) or it has something to with the fact that she was the only member of the O6 who wasn’t personally “invited” to return to the island by the messianic John Locke.

Our love for Juliet grows with each episode and we are SO looking forward to her telling Kate to back off from her man. Elizabeth Mitchell plays her in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to read what’s going on in her head, which can make some of her scenes a little chilling. She’s a lot like Ben in that respect. “Hi Kate, I’m Juliet. Welcome to the Island.” A perfectly innocuous comment but it’s still dripping with subtext.

Kate’s in a holding pattern, plot- and character-wise right now. She doesn’t seem to have much in the way of motivation and she only seems to exist to further the love triangle subplot. We do wonder when the moon-eyed Sawyer is going to get around to asking her if she took care of that favor for him.

In fact, there’s, once again, a lot not being said among these characters. We realize that they have to maintain a certain distance from each other to keep up appearances, but come on. There’s some MAJOR catching up to do. Jack and Sawyer had a chance, but as always with those two, it wound up being another dick-measuring contest between them.

Let’s see…what else…

Oh! Baby Ethan! Sorry, but that pulled us right out of the story. We’re supposed to believe that Ethan was only 27 when he died? Come on. The constant problem of actors on this show portraying characters much older or much younger than themselves is getting to be something of a joke. Although we did love the look on Juliet’s face when she realized just who she was holding in her arms.

Here’s the big confusing thing about the episode. We need you to discuss it because we can’t figure it out. When 316 was crashing and the island came into view, you could briefly hear the recording of the numbers being recited. Now why is that? They went to the radio tower in S4 to remove Rousseau’s distress call. There shouldn’t be anything coming out of that radio tower, so why are the numbers transmitting again?

Okay, we’ve rambled enough. Your turn.

[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost, Season 5, Episode 8: LaFleur

What a fantastic episode last night, one of our favorites of the season, despite (or maybe because of) the lack of shocking revelations. Not that there weren't some juicy tidbits to be had. For instance:

♦ Sawyer and Juliet! Wooo! Ever since the shirtless Sawyer washed up on the beach and fell at Juliet's feet, we suspected this was where they were heading with the characters. For the longest time, it was a development that we had a hard time believing. Well, no more. The writers did a fantastic job getting these two together in such a way that it not only seemed natural and believable, it seemed inescapable. The scene at the dock when Sawyer talks her out of leaving on the sub by asking her "Who's going to have my back now?" may just have been one of the most romantic scenes in the history of a show that isn't lacking in romantic scenes. We were yelling "Kiss her! KISS HER!"

♦ Juliet has great hair when she has access to plumbing and electricity doesn't she?

♦ Loved the scene where Sawyer (in a callback to his alias "LaFleur") came home with a single flower for his lady love, although it illustrated something we find a bit annoying, if not disturbing about how female characters are written on the show. Too often, we get introduced to these kickass woman capable of just about anything being reduced to housekeeping tasks. Kate went from running from the law on 2 continents, to swinging through the jungle with a gun, to spoonfeeding a baby that wasn't even her own. Penny went from an adventurer who spent years scouring the globe looking for her man, to a mom folding laundry. And now we have Juliet, a world class fertility specialist, a crack shot with a rifle and now she's in a kitchen draining spaghetti for dinner. The only one who went from submissive to kickass is Sun and the general consensus on that character is that she's heading in the wrong direction. Don't get us wrong, it doesn't really piss us off and we doubt it's deliberate on the writers' part, but there's a subtext there we don't much like.

♦ Another Wooo! moment: we finally got to see the entire 4-toed statue, albeit from behind and only for a second. This screencap leads us to believe that it's definitely a statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld. After all, didn't Charlotte once say "This place is DEATH?" Isn't Cerberus (the name for the smoke monster) also a Greek god of the underworld? Doesn't it look like that statue is holding an ankh (the egyptian symbol for eternal life) in its hand? And didn't an ankh play something of a part in the unfolding story of how the Losties wound up in the DHARMA camp? Hmmmm.

♦ It's possible that the writers are actively TRYING to make us hate Jack and Kate because we did NOT want to see the Sawyer/Kate reunion after he finally found some peace with Juliet and we were kinda pissed at him that he lied to Juliet about where he was going.

♦ Speaking of which, what's the purpose of having the O6 return to the island? By the time they got there, the rest of the Losties were for the most part, safe. Clearly, the story's not over yet, but there's a reason why they had to return and we haven't been told what it is yet.

♦ WHERE THE HELL ARE ROSE AND BERNARD?! They better not be dead, y'all. We had assumed they were going to turn up in the DHARMA camp at some point, but no such luck. Are they with the Hostiles now?

♦ Speaking of the DHARMA camp, Faraday's heartbreak at seeing the young Charlotte in 1974 was a tear-jerker, no? Here's the problem: Charlotte arrived on the freighter in 2004 and died (if you can believe it) only a couple weeks later. Flash back to 30 years earlier and there's a young Charlotte of about 4 years old. There's no way the adult Charlotte was 34 years old when she died. Then again, they do tend to fudge the ages of these characters as they relate to the actors playing them. Locke and Ben are playing characters significantly younger than the actors and Christian and his father are playing characters significantly older than the actors. We guess it's just one of those things you have to accept in the show.

♦ Speaking of Ben, shouldn't the young Ben be around somewhere in the DHARMA camp? And where's Miles? He admitted he'd been on the island before. If they saw young Charlotte, shouldn't there be a young Miles wandering around somewhere?

♦ So how come a woman in 1977 can give birth on the island but women a couple decades later die from it? Could it have something to do with the poison gas used in the purge to kill all the DHARMA people? And who was the baby she gave birth to? Come on, it has to be SOMEBODY we already met.

♦ Loved the scene with Sawyer and Richard. So, there's a truce between the Hostiles and the DHARMA camp? We'd like to know more, please.

♦ And finally (although we could probably go on for another 500 words), attention must be paid to Josh Holloway, who knocked this episode out of the park. We still got glimpses of con man Sawyer in the ways he can lie so smoothly at the drop of a hat, but we also saw the culmination of this character's growth. From the man who let everyone believe he stole Shannon's inhaler to the guy who grins from ear to ear (showing off those killer dimples) at the news of a successful birth on the island and who, without any unease can openly tell a woman he loves her as he tenderly gives her a flower, it's been a great ride for the character. Although let's face it, no one, not even Sawyer himself, believes that he's really over Kate. Forget her, James! Move on! Leave her and Jack to their breathy sighs and staring contests! You've got the ass-kickingest woman in the world and she's got great hair! And she can fix your car even!


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost, Season 5, Episode 7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

After last night's show, we had a bit of a painful realization about two things:

One: we're going to have to stop triumphantly posting our theories about where things are headed because last night's show proved us wrong on too many to count, and

Two: we're going to have to stop smirking at the people who always say that they're confused and they can't figure out what the hell is going on, because again, after last night's show we're - you guessed it - confused and we can't figure out what the hell is going on.

Tackling Item One first...

♦ We had come to the point where we no longer thought Locke was going to pull out a magical resurrection. By the opening of last night's show, we were resigned to the idea that he was really, for good, no fooling, dead and going to stay that way. Of course,after the first 5 minutes, that idea went out the window. LOCKE'S ALIVE, Y'ALL! How could we ever have doubted?

♦ And on that note, with Locke's resurrection, the show has moved completely away from the character-based drama it started out as and planted its flag firmly in "fantasy-based fiction" territory. Which is fine by us, although we suspect they may have lost some fans in the transition.

♦ Another "wrong" theory: the fate of Ajira Flight 316. Honestly, it never really occurred to us that the WHOLE PLANE was going to wind up on the island, passengers and all. We really thought that only the 06 (and maybe Frank and Ben) magically got whisked off the plane. It still looks like Jack, Kate and Hurley got magically whisked off, but the rest of them appear to have landed the old fashioned way.

♦ Wrong yet again: we really thought Caesar and that woman whose name escapes us (the one escorting Sayid) were plants of some sort, but if they are, they sure as hell don't seem to know what's going on. They don't even appear to know each other (although you never can tell with this show).

♦ Not so much wrong, as clueless: we're embarassed to admit that it never occured to us that Ben killed Locke. We know. We're stupid.

Tackling Item Two, otherwise known as What the Fuck is Happening?!?

♦ If you didn't notice, it appears that 316 landed on the other island. Caesar was sitting in the Hydra station, where Jack, Kate and Sawyer were once held by the Others. The question is, WHEN are they? They're not in the past because the station appears to be completely abandoned. That leaves the future. Is it the same point in the future when the 06 found the canoe at their old beach camp and stole it? Did Juliet kill a member of the 316 flight?

♦ Oh, and remember when Juliet mentioned that they were building a runway on the other island but she didn't know why? Well, that plane looked pretty intact, like it...dundunDUN...landed on a runway! Did the Others know that Ajira Flight 316 was coming some day?

♦ WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHERS, ANYWAY?

♦ And why did the very name of Eloise Hawking trigger this homicidal act on Ben's part? We suspected that he didn't like or trust her, but it obviously goes deeper than that. On the other hand, we can't help noticing that Ben keeps shitting all over Jacob's plans. Jacob tells Locke to move the island and Ben winds up doing it; Jacob tells Locke to get together the 06 and Ben winds up doing that too.

♦ Where the hell are Sun and Sayid? And Frank, for that matter? There was some mention of the pilot taking off in one of those canoes with "some woman." That leads us to think that Frank and Sun took off, but we're not going to make any assumptions. Why would Sun wind up on the other island in the future but Kate, Jack, and Hurley wound up on the main island in the past?

♦ Widmore. Honestly, we don't know WHAT to believe at this point.

You know what? We're just going to try and sit back and enjoy it without hurting our heads too much. The mysteries are a big part of the whole fun and while some fans roll their eyes in frustration at them, we welcome them. We can't wait to see what Locke is going to do next, now that he KNOWS he's special. After all, you can count on one hand the number of people in the history of the world who managed to pull off a resurrection.

Which reminds us, major kudos must be paid to Terry O'Quinn, who did fantastic work last night as Locke. The pain on his face as he slipped that cord over his head with the realization that his entire life had been a failure - and worse, a failure in service to the agendas of other people - was heartbreaking to watch.

♦ Oh! And another thing: who really thinks Helen is dead?

♦ And another, other thing: Is that it for Walt? All that buildup over the years, only to wave him off with "He's been through enough?"


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost, Season 5, Episode 6: 316

Okay, Lost writers. We'll give you that one.

After multiple episodes in a row where questions got answered and characters got reunited, last night's episode felt like the writers saying "Enough with this. Let's throw some more mysteries at them." Fine by us. It wouldn't be Lost if you didn't feel a little...lost.

♦ Opening the show in an almost shot-by-shot re-enactment of the first minutes of episode one, season one was freaking brilliant. How long did it take you to go from "What the...?" to "He's BACK!"?

♦ Even though about midway through the episode we realized with some annoyance that it was going to focus solely on Jack - who, we might have mentioned before, is a douchebag - by the end, we really didn't mind so much. Jack's entire character arc from the first season is one of the man of reason slowly becoming the man of faith and last night's episode felt like, in some ways, the culmination of that arc. Ben makes that clear by recounting to him (in a church, no less) the story of Thomas the apostle, the quintessential faith-over-reason tale. Locke's damning - and heartbreaking - suicide note to him ("I wish you had believed.") was the final nail in the coffin of the old Jack.

♦ Jack's grandfather? Really? We're suspicious and wary of such late-in-the-game character introductions. It could just be that he's a one-off character, introduced to give Jack someone to say goodbye to and to get his father's shoes from. Still, he got a fairly lengthy introduction. Maybe we were just distracted by the fact that the actor was decades too young to play Jack's grandfather.

♦ There are certain contrivances with a show like this that you just have to roll with and Kate's melodramatic "Don't ever ask me about Aaron again!" was one of them. In the real world, people don't say these things and if they do, the response they get isn't normally a shrug and an "Okay." Like we said, you just have to roll with it. Besides, now we get to play "What the HELL did Kate do?" again! And we haven't played that one in a while!

♦ Our theory: After being threatened and/or blackmailed (probably by Widmore, to get her on that plane), she hid Aaron with Cassidy, her old partner in crime and Sawyer's baby mama. If she felt she had to hide Aaron from bad people, then Cassidy's a perfect choice. Besides, what do you think Sawyer whispered to her on that helicopter before he leaped out? Kate and Cassidy have definitely been in contact since she returned from the island.

♦ Why do we think Widmore threatened Kate? Maybe it was Ben who threatened her but our thinking is Sun left the meeting at the church and went straight to Widmore and told him everything that was going down. Widmore wants to find the island again and he hears that the best shot to do so is to get the entire 06 on that plane. He threatens Kate with something, hands her a passport (because how can she have one if she's on probation?) and forces her on that plane. Then, he arranges for Sayid's apparent arrest, to force him on that plane. The guy at the ticket counter that said "my condolences" to Jack and the woman with the badge escorting Sayid are Widmore plants. And we'll just bet they're both either former DHARMA babies or Hostiles babies, like Daniel, Charlotte and Miles. He picked them to get on the island and since it was a time flash that took the o6 off the plane (apparently), then those two would have to have previous exposure to the island to get sucked along with them, right?

♦ Which reminds us...FRANK LAPIDUS! We really thought his tale was done but we were pleasantly surprised to see him appear suddenly. Since he too has exposure to the island, we're thinking he might have gotten sucked off that plane too. We hope so. Frank gets some great lines. "We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Oh, that also reminds us: Ajira airlines...the Ajira airlines waterbottle the remaining castaways found in that canoe a couple episodes back...is it possible that the people chasing them in the canoe were the O6? Does that mean Juliet shot one of them?

How and why did Hurley get on the plane? Charlie told him to, of course. The guitar case.

And finally, Ben. If anyone might have forgotten just how nasty Ben really is, last night was a reminder. He'd gotten a little fluffy and non-threatening during the last couple of episodes and his blithe "Who cares?" when Jack asked him what was going to happen to the rest of the people on the plane was a sharp and funny reminder. Although not as sharp as his bloodied face when he called Jack from the docks after taking care of that "promise to an old friend." Oh shit, Penny. It's not looking good for you. Mrs. Hawking told Desmond the island wasn't finished with him and now he's got a reason to get back to it: vengeance against Ben.

♦ Oh, and that ending? Shut UP!


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost: Season 5 Episode 5: This Place is Death

Well. We needed a cigarette after that one. There was so much shit going on in last night's episode that our tongues dried out from 60 straight minutes of our jaws hanging open in shock. It's not that it was chockful of revelations so much as it was the pace of the plot speeding up and the chess pieces all shifting into radically new positions on the board. Our thoughts are pretty scattered on this one, but we'll try and sum it all up. Make yourself a sandwich and settle in.

♦ First, a moment for poor Charlotte, our canary in a coal mine, whose on-camera deterioration heightened the drama as each character watched with increasing unease what was going to happen to them all eventually. It was a sad little death scene but of course the sadness was overshadowed by her deathbed confession and sudden memory of meeting Daniel as a child. In typical Lost fashion, it answered a bunch of questions while opening up a bunch more.

♦ For one, who's her father? As far as we can tell, Ben is just barely old enough, so it's possible. And if Ben's her father, could that make Ben's childhood DHARMA friend Annie her mother? Again, it's possible. It might explain why Ben stole Danielle's daughter and raised her as his own. One thing's for sure, with this show's history, the question of just who her parents were is not an inconsequential one.

♦ Poor Daniel. So, when we saw him at the Orchid station back in the DHARMA days in the first episode of this season, we figure that would be about the same time that Charlotte was a little girl and he gave her his warning, right? And speaking of people to feel sorry for...

♦ Well, now we can see why Danielle was such a crazy, paranoid bitch when Sayid first met her. Kudos to the writers who clearly had the script from that Season 1 episode in front of them because they managed to work in all the references Danielle made back then: Montand losing his arm in the Dark Territory, her team's "sickness," (which looked like possession to us) which forced her to kill all of them, and the rifle with the firing pin removed, which Sayid tried to use on her back when she held him captive. They even worked in the broken music box that Sayid fixed for her. We still need an answer as to why she never seemed to react to Jin in previous seasons. Surely she recognized him.

♦ One thing about Jin, though: Since when does he know how to get to the radio tower? He'd never been there, right? Still, his reunion with Sawyer might just be one of our all-time favorite moments on the show. Perfectly played.

♦ Man, those time shifts are getting brutal, aren't they? To go along with our just-named new entry into favorite moments, we have to add to our list of top spine-tingling moments the crazy-eyed Charlotte imploring Jin in Korean to never let "her" come back (we're assuming she means Sun) and then ending with "This place is DEATH!"

Yow.

Let's see...what else? Oh!

♦ So possessed-Robert told Danielle that the smoke monster is there to protect the temple. Hmmm. Interesting. So that means it must be pretty ancient. By the way, did you all catch the hieroglyphics on the temple? The ones that matched the countdown clock in the Swan hatch? Hmmm.

♦ Ben is one master manipulator. Not that we didn't already know that, but he could have just handed Sun Jin's ring on the dock but he instead had her drive to the church, hand her the ring, and tell her to follow him inside to save him. Well played, Ben Linus. Well played. By the way, was he just bullshitting when he had his little hissyfit in the van with Jack and Sun? Did he really go to great lengths to protect the O6 for the last 3 years? What does that even mean?

♦ But Sun! Are you just going to leave adorable little Ji Yeon back in Korea? That tearful phone call certainly did have a "goodbye feel" to it.

♦ Jack's a douchebag. Without batting an eye, he lied to Kate and told her that he didn't know anything about Ben's plan to bring them all back to the island. He's becoming more like Ben the longer he's around him.

♦ Did anyone else think Ben looked surprised when Desmond (yay!) referred to Eloise as Daniel's mother? Did he not know that or was he just surprised that Desmond knew that?

♦ And finally, poor John Locke. He desperately wanted to believe that he was destined for great things and instead of leading its people, the island wants him to sacrifice himself. Terry O'Quinn did a fine bit of acting as he came to terms with his fate. But when does Locke arrive in the outside world? How long was he there before he died? How did he die? What did he say to the O6? And the oldest question of all: Just who the hell is Jack's dad, anyway?

Whew! Did we miss anything?

(As a side note, we're getting to RuPaul's Drag Race soon, kittens. There were some tech problems with the online clips and that held us back from getting screencaps. Soon! Promise!)


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost: Season 5 Episode 4: The Little Prince

We realize that our viewing experience of this show differs from the long-time fans' in that what took them 4 years and a ton of patience to get through, we zipped through in less than a month. Because of that, we don't always have the same take on previous seasons they do. We understand that a lot of fans hated Season 3 and considered Season 4 a step in the right direction, but not nearly as good as the first two seasons. We don't feel that way but as we said, we didn't have to sit through 4 years, waiting week in and week out for some answers.

Having said that, is this season not kicking ass and taking names left and right? The plot is amped way up and it's actually a little dizzying when the writers decide to tackle two plot strands in one night. We honestly thought we weren't going to see much of the doings on the island last night, assuming that the writers would spend the episode focusing solely on the O6. We were happily proven wrong. Parallel storylines are the new thing this season. We no longer flash forward and backward along a character's storyline because now, half the characters are literally flashing forward and backward along other characters' storylines.

♦ Danielle! Who didn't figure out that Danielle and her team were going to make an appearance the minute Charlotte uttered "It's wreckage?" We are very keen to get some of the details on Rousseau's backstory. There are certain things that make no sense to us. She claimed when Sayid first met her that she had never seen another person on the island in 16 years. That always struck as us odd because the 815 survivors were on the island a matter of hours before they encountered their first Other and a matter of months before they were living in the Others' compound. Not only that, but 16 years ago would have been a time when the DHARMA Initiative was in full swing on the island, vans and all. So, we're eager to get an explanation for that and we're eager to see the circumstances surrounding the deaths of everyone on Rousseau's team as well as just what it was they were studying.

Our only complaint is that the actress didn't really look much like Rousseau and the reveal was treated as some sort of big shock when come on, as soon as they spoke French, it was pretty obvious who we were dealing with.

♦ That was one long bullet point, yes?

♦ JIN! We knew he had to be alive, but kudos to the writers, because we were just distracted enough by the introduction of Rousseau's team that we honestly had no idea who they were pulling out of the water. So Jin's alive and he was rescued by Danielle's team 16 years in the past. Didn't see that one coming at all. And what does this mean for ...

♦ SUN! New, crazy, hard-edged Sun with a box of candy and a gun! Oh, honey. We can sympathize with your desire to kill Ben (although we don't know why you're not equally as keen to kill Widmore) but we can't help thinking you do not want to go down this road. We're aching for a Sun/Jim reunion ASAP but we think those SOB writers are going to make us wait a while. Which brings us to...

♦ We're really hoping that this "We have to go BACK!!!" plot is resolved or at the least, moving toward resolution fairly soon. We don't think they're going to spend the entire season attempting to get back to the island but at the very least, can we move the players out of L.A. now? That end of the story is getting a little stale. At least point them in the direction of the island. If that means two months of scenes with all of them on a boat or something, fine. But we're ready to see the O6 get a little sweaty and dirty again. Watching these characters drive around L.A. freshly showered and in full makeup is getting boring. Speaking of scenes on a boat...

♦ The only flashback sequence they've shown all season is the O6 on Penny's boat just before they went public. We're going to come right out and say that we are completely over Jack and Kate, both separately and as a couple, but we have to admit, that scene with the two of them ending with the maudlin (but completely on point) "I have always been with you," was well-written and necessary. Why? Follow us to the next bullet point, why don't you?

♦ Kate and Jack: just not as interesting as the writers seem to think. That's our take, anyway. Every character on this show has their asshole moments. Every single one. None of them are morally pure and that's what makes the show fun and interesting. On the other hand, these two have SO MANY asshole moments, both alone and separately, that we just don't care about their big bags of bullshit anymore.

Don't get us wrong, we care about what they're going to do, because they're part of that inner core of characters on the show (Sawyer and Locke being two of the others) that really drives the plot. We just don't give a shit why they do it or what drove them to do it anymore. "Somebody wants Aaron!!" Yeah, whatever, Kate. You're basically repeating Claire's only line throughout all of Season 2. Jack's going through withdrawal? Who cares? Again, Charlie did it in Season 1.

♦ Come to think of it, it is kind of weird how Kate & Jack became the new Claire & Charlie and Juliet & Sawyer became the new Kate & Jack.

♦ ANYWAY, our point, several bullet points ago, is that the scene on the boat with Kate and Jack was necessary even to haters like us because it reminds you of a time when they were less polished, leaner and more desperate, and because of that, more in love with each other. You saw the old, tribal versions of their characters; a time when Jack needed Kate to stand by him in order to lead the group.

♦ This is why we're so eager to see them back on the island. All of these characters (with the possible exception of Sun) are just not as interesting off the island as they are on it.

♦ Final bullet point: Okay, so length of time on the island is determining the order in which people get nosebleeds and Juliet's been on the island almost 4 years at this point, right? So how the hell long were Miles and Charlotte on the island for the two of them to get their nosebleeds first? Clearly, they must have been there as babies, which naturally leads to the question: Whose babies?


[Photos: ABC.com]


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