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* Feels like the homestretch! If this is what all the episodes are like from here on out, we’re in great shape. I think this was my favorite episode of the season so far.
* First of all, it was jam-packed, picking up directly from last episode and then just hitting us over and over again. And I don’t just mean on the revelation front, as I’ll explain. But first those revelations!
* We got a nice explicit ANSWER about the Smoke Monster impersonating Jack and Claire’s dad, and that people need to be dead for him to impersonate them. From that you could infer that he also posed as Yemi, for example, while the Walt who appeared to Locke when he’d been shot and left in that burial pit by Ben must not have been the MIB at all. And I’m gonna go ahead and assume that the whole disappearing-bodies thing was just the MIB trying to throw people off the trail of what was really going on, to better persuade them that these really WERE their dead loved ones come back to life. Once the Ajira flight arrived, his endgame went into play, and he didn’t need to maintain that deception anymore.
* This wasn’t quite a “HEY LOOK AUDIENCE WE’RE GIVING YOU AN ANSWER WE REALLY COULDN’T BE ANY CLEARER” thing like what we’ve gotten about the Whispers and Christian, but Kate and Claire’s conversation on the dock made it pretty clear that all the dire warnings about Claire needing to raise Aaron were really for Claire’s benefit rather than Aaron’s. A nice script-flip there. (Also, it gives me hope that similarly important-in-the-early-seasons questions regarding the other prominent child, Walt, will indeed be addressed. Hope springs eternal!)
* And we even got an explanation as to why the heck Sawyer let Kate escape from that elevator. Which was pretty much the theory I advanced back when we first learned Sawyer was a cop. Of course, there’s a happy medium between “blowing your cover story by arresting a woman at the airport when you’re supposed to be someplace else” and “helping a woman in handcuffs escape airport security,” but okay, fine, whatevs.
* We also got the various flashsideways threads intertwining in dramatic fashion. It was kind of funny seeing how fast all the dominos fell toward one another all at once. Maybe a little too fast at times: Sawyer and Miles got to Sayid’s house like half a minute after Sayid did! But the boom-boom-boom of Claire meeting Desmond meeting Ilana meeting Jack into Jack seeing Locke again was deliciously done. This oughta go a long way toward placating the “they’re a waste of time!” crowd.
* But beyond the mythology signposts and Answers and serious forward movement, I thought this episode was chock full of strong moments between various pairs of characters. To wit:
* I thought the conversation in the well between Sayid and Desmond was beautifully done, emotionally desperate and draining.
* I loved Sawyer’s confrontation with Jack on the boat–Sawyer’s disbelief that this guy could be this stupid, and Jack’s stubborn insistence that it’s not stupid at all, plus an apology for Juliet’s death that echoed Ben’s various apologies for his transgressions over the years.
* Kate’s confrontation with Claire was equally good, particularly the part where Kate basically shouted down Claire’s protestations regarding Fake Locke, like “I’ve wanted to reunite you and your child for three years and you’re gonna trust a smoke monster over me? FUCK that!”
* That opening powwow between Jack and Fake Locke recalled the heat of Jack’s arguments with the real deal back in Seasons One and Two. And that Jin/Sun reunion put an “awww!” in my throat despite myself–plus, it was funny how they kept cutting to that long shot of them running toward one another with the sonic pylon right where they’d end up embracing.
* My favorite of all, though, was one in which the second person was absent–Sawyer crying while watching Jin and Sun’s reunion because Juliet is dead.
* Even in the flashsideways, that was some fun business between Kate and Sawyer, I liked how Nadia had about ten seconds to process her devastation before Sayid had to run out the door, Claire’s revelation to Jack worked…
* All these little micro-capsule payoffs of various character relationships. More like this, please!
* Bonus points for taking advantage of how unnerving Desmond running Locke over was to make his relentlessness toward Claire kind of disturbing. Creepy Desmond is creepy.
* Wow, put her in a suit and neaten up her hairstyle and suddenly I’m an Ilana fan after all! More evidence for my own personal Grand Unified Theory of Lost, which is that the women get hotter as they get cleaner but the men get hotter as they get dirtier?
* If that’s the resolution to the “Sun can only speak Korean because she hit her head” storyline, well, that was a pretty superfluous storyline.
* “It’s him!” I guess her near-death experience triggered a Revelation. Did she remember it when she came to in the hospital bed later on, I wonder?
* So who is it that was shooting at the castaways in the outrigger during last season? Obviously we were being teased by putting this season’s model castaways on a boat, but my new operating theory is that it was Widmore’s goons during some pending spacetime freakout.
* Why can’t the MIB kill Desmond? Wait, I think I just answered my own question, didn’t I–it’s because the MIB can’t kill Desmond, isn’t it?
* I am not gonna feel the least bit bad anymore when Dark Tina Fey bites it.
* Admit it: You expected to see Juliet in that hospital, right?
The Sun/Jin reunion shots were very weird indeed. The way they kept pulling back and featuring the disruptors looked to me like they were teasing a tragedy. And shouldn’t there have been?
Folks can’t walk through them when they’re on without dying, right? And it’s not like Widmore’s people knew that it was Sawyer et al. who’d be coming, rather than Smocke, so wouldn’t they have left them on?
After last week’s dispatching of Ilana, that kind of shocker seemed almost plausible (but probably not on mainstream tv, especially on a show so concerned with big love stories).
Sam, I deleted that triple post for you. It’s not your browser, it’s my shitty comment interface. Thanks to everyone for your patience in actually posting around here!
Just a really good episode. Maybe I’ll have more to say dissection-wise later, but for now I’m just soaking in how nice it was to have a well-paced, action-packed hour with everybody back together and sharing the screentime love.
Not onboard the Ilana train in terms of her sideways hotness though, as that is of course the most important topic we discuss. I mean, she’s a good-looking girl, but nowhere near the level of a cleaned up Charlotte or some of the other ladies.
It’s interesting to me that the show seems like it could be heading into areas of vast moral dubiousness, in the same neighborhood as an early criticism of the show that the lives of the people that died in the initial crash don’t matter that much. I’m fascinated to see how it turns out.
As the phrase “Ilana train” nearly just made me pass out, I think that means I’m on board the Ilana train. The actress looked very pretty.
Sayid’s even a bad fugitive.
I dug this episode, but I thought the Jin/Sun reunion was weirdly perfunctory, though I can’t say what would have been a satisfying pay-off. I cracked up/groaned when Lapidus delivered his “Looks like somebody got her voice back” line, which just underscored the awkwardness and forced nature of the whole scene. Writers: Please don’t do that to Jeff Fahey. Although it sort of works if, like Saywer, we read Lapidus as a refugee from a Burt Reynolds movie.
Creating phrases to make Tom Spurgeon faint is what I do.
And I thought “Chesty” for Lapidus was one of Sawyer’s best nicknames in ages. I also felt a weird satisfaction at Hurley being let on Sawyer’s boat because it was somewhat akin to the fat nerdy guy being allowed to sit at the popular pretty kids’ lunch table for some reason. I’m sure that’s what they were going for.
Although I appreciated such heretofore unknown LOST revelations as Jack asking a direct question, and this had action and revelations galore, I also didn’t think it was too well directed — esp. the Sun/Jin scenes for reasons outlined. Also now that people are runing around and Doing Things, there is that certain inevitable let down feeling.
I liked the episode a lot overall, but agree with Heidi there was some clumsy direction; writing, too. The Jin/Sun scene was satisfying once they got together, but even if they were teasing a pylon tragedy it didn’t quite work.
Sawyer’s “get off my damn boat” scene with Jack was also egregious, as was Kate’s surprise to see Jack bobbing past her. She’s navigating the not-very-big boat, the two guys she most digs in the world are talking heatedly in front of her, she’s not going to notice Jack jump off?!
Also happy Sayid seems to have a chance for redemption now, since clearly he chose not to kill Desmond.
One of the better things about the flashsideways stuff is getting different characters to interact where they weren’t doing it much before. Claire-stalking Desmond is creepy in a humorous way, but Claire was pretty unsettling with “he’s gonna be mad!” What is the product they use for her island hair–de-detangler?
Glad that Sun’s baby is okay and she only lost, what, a liver?
Since at this point clearly killing him wouldn’t mean he was dead, I really hope they’re double-faking us out and the next time we see Desmond in the well he’s totally shot thru the head.
“Maybe a little too fast at times: Sawyer and Miles got to Sayid’s house like half a minute after Sayid did! ”
Obviously you have never driven in L.A. If Sayid took the 405, and Miles & Sawyer took surface streets, they wouldn’t even need to use their siren!
I’m gonna dissent on the idea that the episode was poorly directed. I mean, I’m no film major, so really “direction” is a nebulous term for me, but I did take note of a couple camera shots I really like, mostly involving Sayid, oddly, including his well conversation with Desmond and the way they cut on half his face following his last conversation with Locke.
There was not a second during the Jin/Sun reunion I wasn’t terrified somebody was going to shoot one of them. Maybe because of that I didn’t even pay much mind to the sonic fence aspect.
And yeah, Sean, Dark Tina Fey’s death is gonna be one to savor (we’re so vicious). Of course she’ll probably survive now.
I loved that scene between Sayid and Desmond in the well. I think a lot of the things I like about Des come down to Henry Ian Cusick
Regarding the Jin/Sun thing, after checking out the wildly divergent reactions to it and the overall level of “what the–?!” people are feeling toward it, I’m tempted to say it was done that way on purpose. I mean, they did get held at gunpoint about five seconds later. It wasn’t intended to be a Penny/Desmond-style happy ending (however temporary that one turned out to be). However I had totally forgotten that sonic fences can melt your brain or whatever, so that never occurred to me at the time–I just thought it was an odd shot composition. Anyway I think they can lower the frequency so people don’t get nuked but it’s still on…?
Hear hear on the Desmond/Sayid/well scene love.
Tom:
I’m guessing the moral dubiousness will be resolved by the relevant characters saying “Screw this noise, I’m not playing your stupid game” and opting out of all the collateral-damage-creating shenanigans of Jacob and the MIB.
Chris:
Wow, I really liked the Sawyer/Jack boat bit. Diff’rent strokes!
I really like the Swayer/Jack boat bit too, although every time someone jumps into the water (and there were three scenes of people in water this week) I start wondering if there is another shark with a Dharma stamp on it in there. In fact, whatever happened to the first one? Did it get blown up or something?
Not to be that guy, but I just watched the episode, (and that’s why I’ve carefully avoided this blog until now) and Widmore’s bitch clearly calls HQ to shut down the sonic pylons when she recognizes James. That said, I too, thought they’d meet in the middle and get fried like the Russian dude. How f’ed up would that have been? SO glad that didn’t happen. Would have been more of a bummer than the original ending of Clerks.
I must say, WTF is Frank Lapidus doing in this season? His pithy one liners aren’t even good. It’s a shame because I love Frank.
BTW: Totally called MIB being Jack’s dad all these years. But I thought the flash sideways demonstrated that the coffin was empty when it landed on the island, which Jack and Hurley revisited a few eps ago.
and… is Widmore #108? or is 108 yet to arrive? Is it Aaron? is that why Aaron was IMPORTANT back in the day?
Babble much? Sorry.
It’s funny the “Sayid is a spaz” undertones. I suppose he’s like Chewbacca; a badass who’s sort of a doof and a pussy. Though he was pretty badass killing Dogen. (was Dogen completely incompetent as a leader or is it just me? If he wanted Sayid dead, he should have killed him. I know that wouldn’t drive the plot and all, but huh?)
I love an episode or two ago when Sayid catches Desmond by killing two of Widmore’s people and tells Dark Tina Fey to scram. He kills them with his bare hands, then calmly tells Des “These people are very dangerous.” I’m a sucker for juxtaposition like that.
My problem with the Sayid/Desmond conversation was that at this point Sayid has already killed, is already so damaged, that I can’t quite buy him hesitating here. Or, rather, it’s obvious he’s only hesitating because he’s about to kill one of the stars of the show. (It’s a problem I had with The Shield, too: the cops are so bad at the beginning that when they have moral qualms later on in the series it feels a bit fake.) Like, there are some lines you can’t cross back over without doing a lot of work – work which was not done by the writing and/or acting (IMO).
Sawyer/Jack on the boat was my favorite scene. I love Jack when he’s decisive about something crazy!
Bob: The first Dharma shark was shot by Sawyer iirc.
Bil:
* THANKS for the clarification re: shutting down the sonics.
* I like Frank’s one-liners fine, but he doesn’t seem to have a point as a character beyond “audience-identification one-liner guy.”
* I’m pretty sure that in the flashsideways, they lost not just his body but the coffin too, which means that his body was in the coffin in the regular universe.
* According to the eagle eyes at Lostpedia, #108 is “WALLACE.” We’ve never met anyone with that name. I’m pulling for Walt.
Bill with two Ls: That bit with Sayid murdering two people then warning Desmond how dangerous they were was indeed hilarious.
Jon: Sayid has killed plenty of people, yeah, and recently unarmed men (Dogen/Lennon) in cold blood–but Desmond is a friend and a “good guy.” So I buy his hesitation.