Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for LOST through the current episode, “316” originally broadcast February 18th, 2009.

They did it again.  It doesn’t seem to matter how many times they do it, and it doesn’t seem to matter that they’re doing it more and more often in the past couple of seasons.  No matter how many times it happens, it never ceases to amaze me.  And whether I believe it or not, I write this review of another LOST episode completely and utterly impressed.

I thought I was so smart.  I really did.  I thought I had the whole season figured out before it even aired, and it all seemed to be so easy.  With the Oceanic Six so fractured, I just knew that it would take an entire season to get them back together.  It didn’t matter that Ms. Hawking warned me in the premiere that they had less than three days to get them all together.

It took an entire season to get the Oceanic Six off the Island, and it would take an entire season to get them back.  But LOST found a way to prove me wrong, and they managed to do it in only six episodes.

There are plenty of questions that have to be answered.  Plenty.  And I’ll get to a lot of them at the end of the review.  But, first, let’s examine what actually happened first.

I really loved the way the story began.  Jack in the jungle again, laying on his back.  You start wondering if they’re showing us a different part of the original crash, or if they’re just giving us some kind of dream.  But then it’s revealed…it is not a dream…they’re back.

And that’s what I love about LOST.  A lot of people complain that some things on the show are predictable…whether you guessed the flash-forward before it was revealed…or that Jack and Claire were related…or that Sawyer was Locke’s father.  And I think, at the root of things, LOST wants you to know what’s coming.  Because to connect the dots, you have to love the show as much as they do.

And LOST didn’t want to surprise you with the return of the Oceanic Six.  They wanted you to know the ending so that you can enjoy the journey without worry.  I just love that they did that.

The Lamppost – a pretty cool idea.  People have openly wondered how the Dharma Initiative found the Island, and we finally know how that happened.  Of course, there’s still the questions of how they found out about the Island in the first place (perhaps answered by a newspaper clipping about the Army…probably the 50s troops from the “Jughead” era) or how/why the Island is moving through space and time.  But those are questions for another day.

You have to feel sorry for Desmond sometimes.  The guy came to the Island because he thought he had to.  He felt compelled to go to England and face his enemy to try and find Faraday’s mother.  This journey eventually led him to Los Angeles against his wife’s wishes.

It seems like, for the most part, he does things for the greater good…whether he really wants to or not.  And I’m glad he finally stepped up to Ms. Hawking and the Island and Fate.  I’m sure he’ll be back (more on that later) but it was nice nonetheless.

Speaking of Hawking, I think it’s about time for her to tell Jack about his dad.  It’s odd that Locke knows so much about Christian Shephard’s role in everything, but Jack doesn’t know anything.  We’ve seen him so many times that we forget that Jack only saw his father on the Island once…way back in season one.

Jack, like the audience, assumed that the image of his father was leading him to the Caves and fresh water.  Once the Caves were found, Jack didn’t see Christian again until he got off the Island.  He has no idea that his father has played such a significant role, and I think it’s about time he learns what’s going on.

And we finally have the reason why Locke had to die….he’s playing the “proxy” to Christian Shephard.  The Oceanic Six have to try to re-create Oceanic 815 as much as they can with Ajira 316, and that means they need a “special” corpse.  Which means, more than likely, that John Locke will appear again in a “Christian-like” way.

What’s up with Ben and jealousy?  He was so mad at Jacob favoring Locke that he shot John and left him for dead, and then Ben complains more than a couple times that Hawking pulled Jack to the side for some alone time.  I think Ben got used to feeling “special,” and he can’t stand it that he isn’t the center of attention anymore.

The next couple of scenes were a bit surreal…the scene with Jack’s grandfather felt a little odd, and I feel like I need to rewatch it to get the correct feel of the scene.  From the outside, it simply looked like a way to give Christian’s shoes to Jack, but I feel like a lot more was going on.  Christian, of course, plays a huge role on the Island.  Is there a chance his father also knows more than he’s led on?

And then the scene where Kate simply shows up at Jack’s apartment.  This, like Hurley and Sayid’s arrival at the airport, was supposed to leave us asking questions, and I’ll ask them a bit later.  But I thought that scene felt a little surreal too.

It is going to make things interesting when Kate is reunited with Sawyer.  Depending on how much time has passed on the Island, Sawyer might still have recent feelings for Kate, and she’s not going to have seen him for three years.  She’s obviously made a commitment to Jack, and I don’t think that can be overlooked.

We did, finally, get an explanation of Christian’s white shoes.  We’ve seen them a couple of times (including a prominent scene in an in-canon Verizon webisode) and they’ve been their own little mystery.  It adds to the disconnect between Jack and Christian, and it shows, again, that Jack just needed his father out of his life.

I thought the scene with Jack and Locke was really well done.  There have been so many great scenes between the two of these characters, and this was no exception.  I’m sure, wherever he is, Locke is laughing at Jack’s “leap of faith.”  I couldn’t help but smile a bit to see Jack believe in Locke…a sentiment that turns out to be John’s wish (in his suicide note).

But as the whole gang arrived at the airport, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of the Oceanic Six really knew what they were doing.  Jack admitted to Kate (in the season three finale) that, when he was trying to crash back on the Island, he didn’t really care what happened to the other passengers.

But let’s be honest…for Jack and company to get to the Island in the first place, about 300 people had to die.  I realize the Oceanic Six want to get back to the Island (for various reasons), but they also seem very okay risking more lives to get back.

Which is why I really liked the scene where Hurley bought the rest of the open seats.  Because, of all the people in the group, Hurley didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.  Like I said in my review of the premiere, Hurley is the moral compass of the group, and he’s the only one who looked out for those other people.

I’m not going to lie, though, when I heard Lapidus’ voice…I got a bit giddy.  Something about Fate (the Island?) getting all these people back together was pretty cool to me, and it was nice to see a cleaned-up version of Frank.  However, he seemed strangely okay with the idea of going back to the Island…I wonder what he’s been up to the last three years.

And I thought the entire “plane” scene was done well, and I think it’s really highlighted by Kate’s comment about the group.  They’re all on the plane, but they’re not together.  I somehow had this image of the group getting together and making a unified decision to return to the Island, and that certainly wasn’t the case.

I also liked the connection between Kate and Sayid…in the original flight, Kate was a female criminal being escorted by a male officer.  Sayid, a male criminal, is escorted onto the second flight by a female officer.  Just the kind of juxtaposition we expect from LOST.

So there you have it…a lot of great stuff.  I think the episode did a lot to move us quickly from point A to point B, and I think it was paced pretty well considering how much ground they covered.  This also might be the first episode of LOST to be confined to one time period (no flashback or flashfowards to speak of).  If that’s the case, it’s another milestone for the show.

But we’re also left with a whole lot of holes, and I wanted to take a bit to look into a few of them.

The big questions are what happened to the other members of the flight.  What happened to Kate to make her abandon Aaron to return to the Island?  Remember that Claire warned Kate to not bring him back…did Claire give a similar warning again?  And after years of refusing to go back to the Island, why would Kate be okay with returning now?

Then there’s Hurley.  The last we saw Hurley, he was in prison.  Ben’s lawyer promised that Hurley would be released, but who told him about the plane?  One of his dead friends?  Maybe Charlie or Eko or Boone or even Locke himself?  I’m leaning towards Charlie…just because Hurley was carrying the guitar case (another similarity to the original flight).

What happened to Ben?  He was supposed to be visiting an friend, but he was obviously hurt pretty bad.  I even thought, for a second, that he’d been mortally wounded and wouldn’t be returning with the rest of the group.

And then there’s Sayid.  Of all the people on the plane, Sayidwas the one who wasn’t on the plane, at least from what we saw, by choice.  He doesn’t say a word the entire flight…neither to agree or disagree with the rest of the group.  I’m guessing that Ben had Sayid arrested, but that’s a question we’ll definitely need answered.

But how will these questions be answered?  Will we get “flashbacks” to figure out how the rest of the group was convinced to get on the plane, or will we find out in some other way?  With 11 episodes left in the season, you can be sure that there will be plenty of time to get them answered.

Then there’s the question of those left behind.  With Lapidus in toe, the only people from the helicopter that didn’t get on Ajira 316 were Aaron and Desmond.  Hawking warned that if everyone wasn’t on board, it would make things “unpredictable” if everyone didn’t return – would that explain why the Oceanic Six were seemingly returned to the “Dharma Initiative” era?

And is that what happened?  The moment right before the plane crashed looked a lot like what happened during one of the “time flashes” – would that explain why we didn’t see any wreckage and why no one remembers crashing?

And one final question: what happened to Ben’s promise to kill Penny?  I would’ve bet good money that one of the plotlinesfor season five was going to be his quest to find and kill Penny…with Desmond doing whatever it took to prevent that from happening.  Now that Ben is back on the Island, presumably, that might not happen.

That scene in “The Shape of Things to Come” seemed really important at the time.  I wonder if, in the long run, it will be as important as it seemed.

Whew, that was a long review…but there’s just so much to talk about.  I guess the main point is that the Oceanic Six are back on the Island (well, at least three of them are).  Why did they return and what will happen next?

Like you, I can’t wait to find out.