SPOILER ALERT. SPOILER ALERT. SPOILER ALERT.
* Initial, mostly silly thoughts here.
* I’m told that Maggie Grace initially had a film commitment, but that the show was ultimately able to work something out with all the actors they wanted to return for the final season. That’s really terrific news. Longtime readers know how much I hate the kind of situation where they have to create Frankie Pentangelli because Richard S. Castellano wanted too much money to return as Pete Clemenza.
* Thus it’s safer than ever to assume that Mr. Eko will be back. And I’m guessing my theory that he’ll link up with Jin and the Paik organization in some way will pan out too.
* Regarding Juliet’s double-dip death, I assume the thinking was that they couldn’t just bring her back as a dead body, that would be weird. They needed to give Elizabeth Mitchell something to do rather than just use a dummy or whatever.
* But mainly, this sets up Sawyer as the season’s most intriguing character. I’m hoping he becomes a really scary guy, that we get some full on Sawyer berserker attacks. They actually did one off-screen last night, after all.
* It’s never made sense to me that the time-travelers’ clothes transport with them. If it’s something about how anything in contact with you goes too, fine, but a) what about their shoes, those would only be touching their socks, most likely, and b) where do you draw the line? How much of the atmosphere comes with them, or the ground, or whatever? Oh well, I think we can give the show a pass for not being sticklers for pseudoscientific accuracy that would necessitate constant nudity. You can leave that to my fanfic, the title of which Nick Hornby stole for his latest book
* Just yesterday I was telling someone I was looking forward to the inevitable Biggest Smoke Monster Attack Ever this season. I didn’t expect it to come in the very first hour! Pleasantly surprised. Also, I guess Fake Locke = Monster = Man in Black is settled law now, though I imagine people will still be searching for zebras after seeing this particular set of hoofprints.
* It was entertaining to see Hurley given some agency, above and beyond “Hi, I’m the audience identification character that the creators identify as such at every opportunity.” It didn’t feel fanservicey, either–it wasn’t the creators saying “Hey fans, now YOU get to be the hero!” I also enjoyed the way he just rolled with Jacob telling him he’d died an hour ago. You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to find a way to weird Hurley out at this point.
* I was surprised how entertained I was by the alternate timeline material. Here’s a case where the only thing weird about these sequences is the fact of their existence–there really aren’t any other genre staples to speak of, at least not yet. In that sense it’s very much a return to the tone of the Season One flashbacks, back before the science fiction, fantasy, and series-mythology elements seeped into pretty much everything. The way they sustained interest, besides the basic “hey look, it’s that guy!” stuff, was through attention to detail: the marshal getting up to retrieve the briefcase that had knocked him out from the overhead bin; playing with whether or not Locke would be in a wheelchair; some nice Rose/Bernard business; Locke still being a weirdo; Locke and Boone connecting; and so on. Little nods in the direction of things that were important way back when, bringing things full circle.
* They threw in some head-scratchers, too, of course. With Desmond on the plane and Shannon and Jack’s dad’s body not on it, we’re left to wonder how divergent the timelines really are. We don’t know if there’s added significance to Jack’s recognizing Desmond beyond their earlier meeting in that stadium, or to Charlie’s statement that he was “supposed to die” beyond junkie melodrama. We don’t know if Desmond really disappeared, or just went back to his original seat. And in a show that pays this much attention to detail, I even wonder why Sawyer and Charlie’s haircuts were so different.
* When Sayid came to and started talking, I tried to determine whether or not he sounded different–mostly meaning if he started speaking in Michael Emerson’s cadence. After all, Richard had said way back when they used the Temple to save young Ben after he was shot by Sayid that if they did this, Ben would never be the same. Sayid’s got the same wound, was treated in the same way–what’s different about him now? Is he now a vessel for Locke or Jacob?
* I’m not 100% convinced we’ll never see Actual Locke or Actual Sayid again. It seems to me like the show would want to make it clear whether these characters died a “good death” or not. I don’t see it as the kind of show that lets a good guy die believing he’s going to Hell.
* I sure am hoping we’re moving toward a “save the world from the Smoke Monster Man in Black” plotline. I fully support the Man in Black getting off the Island having the narrative significance of Sauron getting the Ring back.
(Thanks to Matthew Perpetua, Ben Morse, Kiel Phegley, and TJ Dietsch for the conversation.)
An interesting wrinkle on that last point is that our heroes have really never faced anything on the power level of Evil Locke, or when they have (i.e. when he was the Smoke Monster), they simply ran away.
For the last five seasons, they’ve combated the Others, Widmore’s crew, etc. with decent cumulative scrapping skills and used their wits skill-sets to problem-solve, but at the end of the day these are just normal folks against a force of nature who can’t be shot, stabbed, etc. to the best of our knowledge.
It not only makes things more interesting, but really underscores once more the radical shift from season one when the very solvable biggest problem was finding drinking water. They’re really gonna need some heavy duty potentially super-powered back-up here, and I can’t wait to see where it comes from.
Also, I think I’m buying in to the “Sayid-as-Jacob” theory. Intriguing in the sense that Sayid is certainly not even on the shortlist of folks I’d expect to see as the opposite side of the coin to Locke in a good vs evil tussle.
Of course this will all be proven or disproven right quick next week (I hope)
–I can’t believe that I’ve been watching this show from the beginning, and even just did a marathon first-five-seasons rewatch, and I never once made the connection between Locke’s injury and Jack’s profession. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we’re in for parallel “Jack tries to save Locke” stories in the two timelines–Jack may have the tools to save Locke both in a literal and metaphysical sense. (Alternately, Jack may be too big of a tool to save anybody.)
–Re: haircuts – Jack’s hair was way different from the original 815 trip too. I got the feeling that when he was looking at himself in the mirror, even before he noticed the cut on his neck, that he was realizing something was wrong–that he looked different from how he expected himself to look. That whole opening scene had a bad-cover-version feel about it that I really liked. For the first few minutes, the script was the same as the flashbacks in the pilot, but the look and feel and rhythms of it were off just enough. (Of course, Lost has had hair issues even when it’s not playing games with alternate timelines. Check out the way Faraday’s hair changes between him crying while watching the news footage of the 815 wreckage in Season 4, and the Season 5 scene that takes place moments later where Widmore comes to talk to him.)