My LOST Review

FREAK'N AWESOME!!!!

Very few TV shows/movies ever live up to the hype but with all the expectations on the writers of LOST to deliver after last season's mind blowing flash-forward revelation, they not only met but far exceeded everything I could have imagined. The show was well written, nerve-racking, mysterious, and touching. For a TV show that borders on being perfect, they may have nailed it with "The beginning of the end".

Another very cool experience was our first "LOST" party. Brent and Kaylyn have recently become addicted to LOST (if you call watching all 3 seasons of LOST in 2-weeks addicting...or nuts) and they came over to join in on the viewing fun. Our own little group of "Losties" tried our best to dissect the show during commercials as we crammed our faces with chips and junk food. Good times.

Vozzek69 who runs the web site Dark UFO wrote an excellent summary of his thoughts from last nights show:

Pretty Sneaky Sis
Hurley’s Dukes of Hazzard run through a stack of papayas didn’t island-fool us as much as last season’s opener did, but I was surprised LOST started right up with another fast forward. Fleeing from what we soon find out is the ghost of Charlie, Hugo’s happy to check himself into the mental ward to once again work on his Connect Four game. This time around there’s no internal conflict – he’s more than happy to pop his meds, sketch some sharks, and place himself back into the safe familiarity of a routine much more sane than the one he’d been rescued from. Why’s he drawing igloos? I guess that’s the furthest from tropical islands you can get.
Shouting aloud that he was one of the “Oceanic Six” seemed strange at first, especially since he wasn’t doing it for celebrity treatment. I think Hurley might’ve been on the verge of revealing something – maybe even that one thing Jack showed up at the end of the episode to see if he was going “to tell’. This is likely the same secret Jack referred to in last season’s finale when he said he was ‘sick of lying’. Denying knowledge of Ana Lucia was Hurley’s way of trying to forget… but his eyes betrayed his sorrow when her name was mentioned.

She’s Not Your Daughter
Rousseau’s back fist strike to Ben’s face was a nice way to open her season. It was also a stark reminder of how Ben’s not calling the shots anymore. Sure, he’ll still have some good, sarcastic one-liners (‘You’d better call them back and tell them she’s bringing a LOT of firewood’…) but now that the end game has been changed, he’s no longer in charge. Which is kind of good, because I think last season’s only real weakness was too much of an emphasis on the Others.

LOST Island Doesn’t Come out in the Wash
The cannonball dialogue between Hurley and Bernard was Hugo’s way of trying to wash away all the horrible memories of the past few months. Getting ready for rescue, he was shedding the island, the curse, even his money – his cannonball was supposed to cleanse him of all that poison crap. Instead, that baptism was cut short. Seeing Desmond come back without Charlie, the only thing Hurley washed away was the last bit of his blissful ignorance.

One Radio, Two Frequencies?
Listen closely to the satellite radio transmissions again, because something really didn’t jive for me. First, you have ‘George’ – he sounds like a Friday morning DJ on his 7th cup of coffee. The guy is just wayyyy too chipper. He asks for Naomi and Jack lies to him.
The second transmission is answered by Kate. No morning DJ voice… this one is way more sinister and downright evil. “Who’s this?” and “Where’s Jack?” – it doesn’t sound anything like George and there’s no mention of Naomi. By the third call, chipper George is back and looking for Naomi again. He also mentions he needs a frequency change in order to find their position. Which leaves a couple of questions:

First, who was the evil voice in that second call? It came through more garbled than the other two, and in a much more ominous, rainy, whispery-type of otherworldly talk. Second, what happened to the radio that the frequency was changed? Jack didn’t change it, and I’m pretty sure Kate didn’t… although why she lifted the radio from Jack in the first place still seems 100% mystery to me. It wasn’t like she needed it for anything. I think this is a BIG question.

Even weirder, Naomi lies right before she expires in order to protect Kate and company. Perhaps Kate really did convince her that Locke acted alone. And who is her sister? In the end, I got the feeling Naomi’s intentions were good. If the rescuers really do turn out to be as bad as they’re currently being built up, I think maybe Naomi was kept out of the loop when it came to their true agenda. Or maybe Naomi’s people (1st and 3rd transmission?) aren’t exactly the same people who show up in helicopters next episode (2nd transmission?) Just a thought.

The Smoke Monster
The smoke monster made a big appearance this episode, and I’m going to tell you where to look for it. Ready? Good: It floats out the door of the mental ward. Think you missed it? No way… because the smoke monster this episode was Matthew Abbadon.

That whole scene was a total creepfest. From start to finish, you knew the guy was totally OFF. Think back to the episode where Mr. Eko died - think back to his last visions of Yemi. Remember that moment? The moment where Eko realized he wasn’t really looking at his brother? Abbadon had that same look. That same startling, bug-eyed, blood-chilling ‘Yemi-stare’. “Are they still alive?” – he says it with the same toneless inflection as Yemi asking Eko to beg forgiveness. His look is just nuts.

If you don’t believe me, watch as he leaves through the door. You never see him exit, you only see a shadow. A shadow that dissipates from left to right, disappearing through the doorway in much the same way the smoke monster moves.

Good Lookin’ Out Sawyer
I think it said a lot for Sawyer’s character the way he looked out for Hurley on that dark jungle path. Offering support for his grieving friend reflected the huge amount of character development he underwent last season. And when Hurley politely turned him away, Sawyer understood. Hugo needed to hold off on releasing that grief – he needed to keep it inside him until he could let it out with the one person he needed to: Claire. He owed that to her, Charlie, and himself.

Uncle Jacob’s Cabin
I was probably not the only one excited to see Crazy Jacob’s haunted cabin pop up again this episode. This time Hurley stumbles across it, although of course he doesn’t stumble across it at all. “Jacob is not a man you go to see – you are summoned by him”. For some reason this episode, Jacob wants an audience with Hurley.

Now like everyone else I went back and freeze-framed the dude in the chair, and there’s no doubt that this time (at least for a second or two) it’s Jack’s dad. I say ‘this time’ because I tend to think the person stuck in that chair is many people all at once, or perhaps might only exist in the eye of the beholder. This makes absolutely no sense because as far as I know, Hurley has never seen Christian Shepard. His mind would have no reason to ‘see’ him that way. But then again this is LOST, and who the hell knows what’s going on.
The eye in the window… I’m pretty sure it’s the same eye we saw from last season, which was a closeup of Jacob himself. It also looks (to me) like it could be Mikhail’s eye. The eye has pretty large tear ducts, which I think the actor who played Ben’s dad Roger Workman has. Those are my three guesses – feel free to agree or disagree with me - but I do not think it was Locke.

One last thing about the cabin itself: the lantern is definitely whole again, reinforcing the time-rewind theory from last season’s cabin visit.
As Hurley runs from Jacob’s cabin, it appears (Identity-ishly) ahead of him again – only this time, the door swings open invitingly. This is reminiscent of Desmond’s description of how he tried to leave the island in his boat, only to be returned to shore again and again no matter which direction he sailed. What’s interesting here is how Hurley can break the island’s cycle of events by willing something his way. After repeating “There’s nothing here” a few times, the cabin is gone. Later on in the episode Hurley counts to five and gets rid of Charlie’s ghost exactly the same way. Perhaps his faith is growing, even if he doesn’t realize it just yet.

More importantly, why does Jacob seek an audience with Hurley? It could be because of the faith thing I just mentioned, but it could also be because Hurley is one of the few constants the island can’t touch. At least twice, Hurley has stated “I’m not supposed to be here”. In Locke’s sweat-tent dream vision Hurley is the only 815’er not making his way on board the plane. In season one he arrives at the gate and the stewardess says “I don’t think you’re supposed to make this flight, hon”. Without going into this too deeply, I’ll repeat my assertion that Hurley has always been untouchable – both on and off the island – because he was never part of the original equation. Maybe the island would rather just have him gone. Maybe this is why Hurley is later allowed to leave as one of the ‘Oceanic Six’. (Incidentally, I saw Cloverfield two weeks ago, and one of the characters says the same thing: “I’m not supposed to be here”).

When Hurley refuses Jacob’s invite, he does the next best thing: he sends Locke. Doing the island’s bidding, Locke takes a page out of Ben’s book, rationally explaining his position to Hurley and then planting a seed that would sprout later on in the episode. He tells him that if they can’t convince Jack that Naomi’s people are bad news, “Charlie will have died for nothing”. Devious, but effective.

I’m Dead but I’m Here
Of huge importance this episode was Charlie’s visit to Hurley at the mental ward. Another season, another time… any one of us might chalk this up to Hurley’s imagination. After all, he is in a mental hospital. But this far into LOST’s plotline? Nah. Not anymore. Suddenly this type of thing isn’t so shocking anymore, and it’s far more believable. Just look at the nonchalant way Hurley’s ward-buddy can see Charlie as well.
Hurley seeing Charlie was nothing like Hurley seeing Dave two seasons ago. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a different feel to it now. Charlie came forward very logically, placidly, hands raised as if to say “I know, I know, it’s kinda freaky but just hear me out”. Hurley was as rational as someone who just saw a ghost could be. The conversation they had seemed genuine and real.

Watching the scene, I was immediately reminded of the whispers. I could hear Boone’s voice saying “Dying sucks” all those seasons ago. Going along with my own beliefs on alternate timelines and all that other stuff people love to take a crap upon, it seems as if characters who are dead or gone still somehow have a vested interest in how the story of LOST turns out. They stick around. They whisper. They drop hints and rearrange things. And now, they hold informal meetings during mental hospital recess. They’re getting bolder.

So in short, it sure seems like the surviving ‘Oceanic Six’ are seeing their dead (or abandoned) comrades in all their flash forwards. They’re seeing them for a reason, because apparently they can still do something to rectify whatever it was that happened. “They need you” seems to refer to the people still on the island, because for some reason I don’t think everyone on the island ‘died’ the way Ben foretold they would.

Jack’s Totally Through With Diplomacy
I thought he was done with it last season, but watching him flat out kill Locke by pulling the trigger of the gun this episode – WOW. And while Jack did just see Locke murder a seemingly innocent woman by knife-throw… shooting Locke in the face is a far, far cry from where Jack used to be.
Ben’s extremely wise-ass comment rocks this scene, too. When Jack points out that Locke killed Naomi, Ben corrects him with “Well, technically he didn’t kill her YET…” - his use of the word ‘yet’ is almost as if he knows she’s going to die. Oh, to hell with ‘almost’! He KNOWS. Just as Ben knows everything that’s happened because he’s already lived through it (Ben to Richard last season: ‘Do you think this is the first time we’ve done this?’) Just more dropped hints here.

And then suddenly, we have the two main camps that should set the stage for the latter part of LOST: Jack’s and Locke’s. True to character, Locke is still only revealing 1/10th of everything he knows… yet people will invariably follow him anyway. The great migration of most of the 815er’s over from Jack’s to Locke’s camp is facilitated this time by Hurley. His fear of Charlie having died in vain (the seed Locke planted earlier) somehow overrides normal logic. I’m sorry, but if I were there I’d need more to go on than ‘NOT PENNY’S BOAT’. If I were on that island being shot at, chased by monsters, imprisoned, hunted, and God knows what else… I couldn’t care less WHO showed up to rescue me. I might get on the Titanic 2 if it pulled in.

Full Circle
I really loved the fact that the set designers resurrected the nose section of the fuselage for this scene. After everyone wandered off, and we were left with just Jack and Kate staring into it… the whole thing was familiar yet different at the same time. The seats hanging in the darkness, the oxygen masks, the rain – it was such a spooky backdrop yet they were reminiscing against it. For the first time I felt like we could almost see the end of the story coming up. It DOES seem so long ago that the plane crashed, and we were meant to be given the same type of nostalgic feeling they were having. Really cool.

HO! HO! HO!
Last but not least, I’ll leave you all with something I noticed but have no idea what it means. The word ‘HO’ shows up three times this episode, in three different forms. First, glance behind Hurley as he’s freaking out over Abbadon trying to take him away – there’s a small plastic(?) sculpture of the letters ‘HO’ on a shelf back there. Later on, he makes reference to Charlie’s ghost showing up in the convenience store right next to the “Ho Ho’s”. And finally, playing HORSE with Hurley, Jack misses two shots. Hurley’s response: “That’s HO”.
I’m drawing a blank on this one.