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.
Comments
Wait, there’s a leaky hydrogen bomb on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere?
Is this shaping-up to be the last season? I watched a little of the first one, then gave-up after I heard the show turned sucky two season on.
(PS: Also your second paragraph is, without a dount, the longest sentence I have ever read.) 🙂
Nope, this is the next-to-last season. Each of the final seasons will have around 16 episodes, if I remember correctly.
Awesome recap — as far as speculation is concerned, this opened up many streams of thought.
First of all, I think the “girl with gun” (named, I think, Ellie in the episode is a young Eloise Hawking), also the name of Faraday’s rat and his Mom. I figure Faraday knows much, much more about the Island and its mythos than anyone else in his “crew” of misfits, as it were.
If this closed the loop in as far as Richard finding Locke, well, does that mean that Locke doesn’t remember the encounter with Alpert as a kid? I guess not. Wouldn’t make much sense if that were true.
Also, this explains why Ben hates or rather fears Locke, if he knows that Locke is destined to be the leader of the Others. Any theories as to how he dies?
By far the stuff going on back home (three years in the future, or present) is b-o-r-i-n-g compared to the storyline unfolding on the island.
Still, I wonder… who really is Jacob? Man, I can’t stop thinking about stuff now.