After watching this week’s episode of “Lost” (called “Jughead”), I think I’ve finally figured out the secret of the island: it loves killing unnamed people. If I were a Flight 815 survivor at this point, I’d be going around to everyone who would listen, introducing myself and giving a little bit of my backstory. And then, most likely, stepping on a land mine.
I was really impressed; I thought this was just a great, solid episode. It wasn’t full-to-bursting with shocking revelations, but it broke two cardinal rules of “Lost:”
- Stuff happens.
- That stuff is worked into the story.
Usually, reveals in “Lost” consist of 30 minutes or so of people running purposelessly around the jungle and then everything stops and the music crescendos and then there’s The Big Reveal suddenly followed by a bunch of violins then a cut to black with that sound effect like a bookcase falling over at the end of a long concert hall.
But this one found a way to tell an episode-long story, and mention big stuff throughout, almost casually. Big stuff like (spoilers):
- Desmond and Penny had a baby, three years ago! I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I wasn’t expecting it to be a flashback, so I thought the whole scene was well done. And I liked that they named the kid Charlie after that guy that Desmond knew for like three days. Or maybe he was named after Penny’s dad
- Charles Widmore, who as it turns out was one of The Others in the 50s! And has pretty much always been a dick. I wasn’t expecting that one either, because I could tell he was being set up as Jerk Guy for a reason, but I thought that reason was going to be blowing up or getting a flaming arrow to the chest.
- The reason Charles Alpert was looking in on Locke’s birth was because Locke told him to. Man, I love time travel stories.
- Farraday’s connected with Widmore and, I’m assuming, his mother is the woman who met Desmond during his time tripping and who we last saw telling Ben that they only had 70 hours to wrap this stuff up.
- We’ve seen Unlikeable Red-haired Freighter Woman get time travel-induced nosebleeds, and now we’ve seen how that all ends up: in a coma on a bed somewhere in London.
- There’s a leaky hydrogen bomb buried somewhere on the island.
So maybe there’s not a ton of stuff going on, but it was all handled really well.
Next episode looks like it’s Kate-oriented, which kind of disappoints me because I don’t really like any of the characters who got off the island anymore. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any characters I particularly like other than Sayid, Juliet, and Locke. At this point, I’m just in it for the smoke monster and the time skips.