Lost, Season Five
Episodes: “Because You Left” and “The Lie”
Aaron’s Take:
Well, it took less than a minute for me to devise my first prediction for this fifth season. And I’m 93.4 percent sure it’s true: Dr. Pierre Chang, the spooky man from the Dharma Initiative training videos (who we see at beginning of “Because You Left”), is Miles Straume‘s father. Yes, I’m sorta playing into ethnic proximities here (they’re both Asian), but so does the show. After the man wakes up (at 8:15, mind you), we see him holding and feeding his baby. This is all in the past. Miles, in present time, has said that he’s been trying to get “back” to the island, though we have yet to see any indication that he was there before now. So yeah, buy me a cookie if I’m right, will ya?
Although we weren’t really given any bombshell revelations in these two episodes, we are introduced to Season Five’s method of storytelling. Off the island, the Oceanic Six are stumbling toward an eventual return to the island along with Benjamin Linus, John Locke‘s dead body and a few new sporting players. The only problem is that Jack and Ben seem to be the only people who actually want to return and are tasked with convincing everyone else to come along for the Weekend at Bernie’s-style escapades (Locke’s body is in a coffin that they stole and is now being house in a butcher shop).
On the island, the remaining survivors–Sawyer, Bernard, Rose, Vincent–along with Juliet and the trio from the freighter are jumping through time thanks to Ben turning the underground ice crank at the Orchid. Yep, they’re even more lost than ever before. The storytelling takes place in the past, present and future with the time jumps (manifested as flashes) occurring very often and the characters unsure where in time they’re located.
Time travel is always difficult to tackle successfully. But Lost writes its own rules and uses physicist Daniel Faraday to explain that the Butterfly Effect–step on a butterfly in the past and it changes the future–is moot and that time travels on a single lane. If something didn’t happened in the past, it cannot happen no matter how hard you try to make it happen. People who never met in the past cannot meet when the characters jump to the past. For example, encountering the blown-up hatch before it was blown up, Sawyer cannot get Desmond (who lives inside) to come to the door. But Fariday can because Desmond traveled back in time previously and met Fariday when he was a professor. Get it? Strangely enough, it actually makes sense. And I’m stuck wondering if maybe this is why Michael couldn’t kill himself when he gets of the island. Because he’s supposed to die later on the freighter. Of course this tosses a new wrench in the whole free will vs. destiny conflict on the show. And opens the door for many dead characters to return. Mr. Eko?
The last big reveal is that Ben is working with Ms. Hawking, the old lady who Desmond met previously in the jewelry shop. Apparently she’s a wiccan who’s using a complex series of pendulums and algorithms to determine the location of the island within the next 70 hours. Ben freaks out on her. And she’s all like, “Do what I say!”
I’m also thinking that Sun–now living the richy-rich life and totally still holding a grudge for the death of her husband–might be transforming into a Charles Widmore-type character herself. And might even turn a bit villainous before this season’s over. Watch that girl!
So, to summarize: Hurley gets arrested. Sawyer was shirtless. And everyone’s fucked.
Ethan’s Take:
See people, this is why Aaron’s going to go first in pretty much every Lost conversation we have this season, because he actually thinks about the show’s mysteries in depth whereas my thoughts tend towards stuff like “Wow, this show looks great in HD” and “Jeremy Davies is freaking me out.” What can I say? I save most of my brainpower for Battlestar Galactica and Mad Men.
But that’s one of the things I enjoy about Lost–it rewards both kinds of viewers, those that are constantly trying to guess where the various plots are going and those that prefer to just sit back and watch the story unfold. And after some shaky storytelling in the second and third seasons–where the writers introduced more mysteries than they knew how to handle–the Lost writers got back on track last year and that momentum carried over into this season’s premiere. Even though the second half had some dead spots, the two hours flew by pretty damn quickly.
Like you, I love the show’s take on time travel, which, as I’ve been reminded, owes more to Cat’s Cradle than Back to the Future. Faraday’s description of time being a stream you can travel forward and backward on–but not create a new branch–perfectly fits in with Lost‘s use of flashbacks and flash-forwards up to this point. Of course, there is a hint that creating a new time stream may be Ben’s endgame. At one point in the premiere he tells Jack to pack whatever belongings he values from his current life because “you’re never coming back.” Either Ben has previously traveled to the future and knows Jack meets his end on the island or, by taking everyone back, he hopes to change the outcome of all of their fates. Even Faraday might know more about maninpulating time than he’s letting on; the very first scene of the episode showed him pretending to be part of the Dharma Intitiative’s wrecking crew so that he could get close to the wheel that caused the island to become unstuck in time in the first place.
It’s safe to say that the island scenes were the best part of the show. Sawyer’s tense relationship with Faraday brought back fond memories of snarky, season one-era Sawyer, before he got all mushy over Kate. I also can’t wait to see how exactly Locke is going to off himself in order to get shipped back to the U.S. of A. Compared to all the crazy shit happening on the island, the mainland scenes couldn’t help but feel kinda bland. Did we really need to see Cheech Marin again as Hurley’s dad? Or Sayid continuing to impersonate James Bond? I’m totally down with your prediction that Sun turns evil, though. Despite forgiving Kate for Jin’s death, there was definitely a flicker of something in her eyes when she asked after Jack.
Even though I’m enjoying where the writers seem to be taking the show these days, every time a new season of Lost premieres, I can’t help but remember all the plot lines they’ve abandoned over the five years the series has been on the air. Remember that four-toed statue? Yeah, I don’t think they do either. How about the Others’ fascination with special children like Walt? That plotline seemed to die with Ben’s daughter. Hey, speaking of Walt…how about Walt? Was that glimpse of him in the window as Michael waited outside the last we’ll ever see of the poor kid? And was Anna Lucia’s reference to Libby just a fun in-joke for fans or are the writers actually going to follow through on their previously stated promise that Libby’s story would be covered in more depth at some point down the road? That’s kind of the reason I gave up on thinking too much about Lost in the first place–inevitably the writers wouldn’t answer the questions I wanted to see answered.
