Ok, I dunno if this is really gonna be a regular thing or not, but I have this urge to write about Lost some more, so I’m thinking I’ll do follow-ups on each episode for this final season. So let’s get started and see how this goes! I tried to split things up by subject to make it easier to read, but still I apologize for the length. 

The 2-hour premiere wasn’t terribly exciting, and really didn’t have as many surprises as I’d hoped. The finale last season set things up to go in a certain direction, and this just continued from there. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to talk about.

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

1)    Dual Realities: This is probably my favorite turn of events. Some people had thought the bomb would do nothing, others thought it would erase everything. I had expected the bomb to have worked, sending everyone back to normal 2004 (or whenever), but have them remember the events of the island, or something like that. But rather than go one way or the other with the result of the bomb, the writers decided ‘you know what? Fuck your theories. We’re gonna do BOTH.’ Which is awesome. How this is gonna turn out, I dunno, but I do have a theory which I’ll get into later (bottom of the page). Definitely interested more in the non-island, Los Angeles based events now, though. 

2)    More Factions: Having mysterious groups of people had been done effectively earlier in the show, but in my opinion there are a few too many factions at this point. Jacob’s people always seemed pointless additions last season, and havinganother group of Others seems a bit much. Naturally, watching Smoker Man ‘waste those motherfuckers’ was immensely satisfying. And while I’m not sure what to think of Others that actually wear old timey clothes, and not just as costumes, I am a big fan of their leader. Rather than be an infuriatingly mysterious evil dude, this guy (whom I have named Mr. Shogun) has a wonderful ‘fuck you guys’ attitude that is very refreshing.

      ‘Hey boss we found these dudes’ ‘ Don’t care. shoot em’.

       ‘Jacob said to save our friend!’ ‘Are you fucking... fine. Whatever.’

       ‘Hey, you know English!’ ‘fuck english’.

           Also, Mr. Shogun’s translator dude reminds me of Dennis Hopper from Apocalypse Now, which is kind of awesome. And that made me realize how much the whole temple has a similar vibe as the one at the end of Apocalypse Now.  Anyway, I have named him Dennis Hopper.

      Still, how the 2 groups of Others are connected doesn’t make much sense. If they’re separate, why is the stewardess with them? Are these just the people who decided to follow badass Mr Shogun rather than creepy Ben? I’m only saying this because I feel like the explanation there isn’t gonna be a good one. The Ajira flight folks are still chilling around on Alcatraz, but Smoker Man already said he was gonna kill them, so it doesn’t bother me that they’re being ignored for now.

3)    Smoker Man: Ok, so I guess the ‘big reveal’ was that Fake Locke was the Smoke Monster. But I’d already figured that out, so I wasn’t too surprised. How did I gain this knowledge, you ask? Simple! I went back and watched older episodes. After the first season, the monster didn’t show up too often. But knowing what we know at the end of season 5, the scenes it’s in take on a whole new meaning. Remember Mr. Eko? He saw his brother in the jungle, ended up disappointing him somehow, and promptly got Smoked. To put it simply: Every time someone  who’s dead shows up walking and talking in the jungle, that’s not the dead person. That’s Smoker Man trying to influence them. All of Hurley’s visions of dead folk are really Smokes manipulating him (remember Miles telling him that his visions aren’t how ghost whispering really works?). When dead Alex tells Ben to do whatever Locke says, that's really Smoker Man making sure Ben will kill Jacob. When the Smoke first appears before Eko, it flashes some light and disappears. If you slow down that scene, those flashes of light are scenes from Eko’s past (I discovered that by accident. I had to go pee and paused at that part). So we know Smoke can read minds. Smoke must have wanted something from Eko, but couldn’t get it. Now we know he wanted the loophole he talked to Jacob about, and eventually found it in Locke. So he dressed up as Jack’s dad and told Locke to get ‘em all back. Which was actually irrelevant (I think), Smoker Man just wanted to get to use Locke’s body so he have Jacob killed.

4)    Smoker Man Part II :Anti Smoke. Ok, this REALLY pissed me off. One of Jacob’s men puts down a circle of powder around him that Smoke can’t get through. Interesting idea on it’s own, if it wasn’t ripped directly from another TV show.Supernatural is a show about two brothers who fight monsters. These monsters include demons. In the show, demons usually possess people, but when they aren’t in a body, they are visible as a cloud of black smoke. Now, I don’t know who came up with the smoke monsters idea first, Lost or Supernatural, but Supernatural definitely had the idea of ‘anti-smoke’ first. Demons can’t move through salt, so if it is placed at entrances, or in a circle around a person, they are blocked from entering the building or circle. Thankfully, Jacob’s men died anyway (pointless douches. Fuck those guys), but still this is a glaring a rip-off, and really kind of a dumb idea anyway. 

5)    Jacob: He looks exactly like the Shepard I made in Mass Effect 1. Makes watching him really weird. Anyways, apparently he has the same show-up-as-a-dead-dude power Smoker Man has, only this is more legit cuz he’s dead. So does that mean some of the dead people who’ve appeared weren’t all Smoke? Were some of them Jacob? Probably not, but we’ll see. I mean, considering how he talked to Ben, he obviously planned on being killed, so maybe he’s not actually dead dead. Or only mostly dead. Honestly, I'm not finding his part in all this very interesting. I was kinda glad when he 'died', because I thought that meant we were done with mysterious puppetmasters.

 6)    Sayid: (Speaking of dead). Ok, so Sayid isn’t dead. The magic healing water (which explains why Richard is immortal) no longer works now that Jacob’s dead (or weakened. Whatever.), so I can think of only one explanation for him to be alive. I mean, maybe no one can die so long as their alternate in Los Angeles is alive, but that doesn’t help the story much. I think Sayid has switched bodies with his alternate. That at least would help them learn about the alternate worlds, and make for some awesome freak out scenes.

Speaking of alternate worlds, I already said I find the LA-verse more interesting. It’s less obvious what’s happening there. It seems like only minor things are different, and nothing like you’d expect. Shannon stayed down under, Hurley’s blessed instead of cursed, Jack’s hair is longer (technically that’s just a real world problem for the actor, but still), and Charlie is choking down shrooms instead of snorting heroin. My only complaint is that Sawyer should still be brooding over killing the Shrimp guy, not cracking wise. Unless that didn’t happen now. Also, seeing Kate on the run again is much more fun than I would have thought. Can't wait to see how that goes terribly wrong, like you know it will.

   Anyway, that’s all I can think of. This probably won’t be as long next time (if there is a next time), but since it was a double episode there was more to talk about… Who am I kidding. No one’s gonna read all this. But just in case you have, thanks. We'll see if I can keep this up.  

 Note: Reviewing what I say here, this all sounds insane, but when I watched it happen it all seemed so normal. Ahh, the magic of Lost.

WALL OF TEXT WOOHOO!!!

With the final season fast approaching, I feel now is an appropriate time to examine the glorious insanity that is Lost. Some of you may have seen my comments on the forums proclaiming my love for this show. I know it is considered by many to be overblown and unapproachably convoluted. I’ll get to that. Also, having a deep-seated hatred of spoilers, I promise to avoid them ENTIRELY. If you have any interest in the show, feel free to read. If you hate the show, please allow me to prove why you are wrong.

If you don’t want to read all this, let me just say this: watch the first 4 episodes, preferably in one sitting. If that doesn’t get you hooked, may God have mercy on your soul.

The initial setup for Lost was simple, obvious, and brilliant. Take a diverse group of people, place them in a strange and isolated place, and watch as everything goes to hell. Each episode was devoted to developing a specific character. Anyone with a noticeable amount of screen time was given a brilliantly crafted background, usually totally different than what we’d expected. In a time when 4/5 tv shows are cop or medical dramas with by-the-numbers characters, this was refreshing in all sorts of ways. The plot, such as it was, was almost secondary to learning who these people were. Actually, that’s not true. Plot and character development were often enough one and the same.

That is not to say there wasn’t much in the way of a main plot. Almost immediately, we know this is one crazy place, but what we don’t know is what kind of crazy. Mysterious was the watchword, and I imagine seeing the first few seasons one episode a week would have been maddening ( I got into the show a while after it started). I should point out that the only way to see this series without going insane is to either rent the dvds or watch episodes online, and spend a day watching a whole chunk of episodes.

Around seasons 2-3 is when most people stopped watching. At that point, there were dozens of sub-plots and no clear direction for what the fuck was going on. You can only be mysterious for so long, and here lies the biggest problem for the show: People are always going to like mysteries more than the answers. The crazier shit gets, the harder it is to make a satisfying reason for the shit to be happening.

This was when Lost had to decide what it wanted to be. There were two paths the show could follow: Maintain the dark, subtly insane mood of the first season, and wrap things up after 2 or 3 seasons. Or, it could keep going.

To keep going, the series could not keep doing what it had done. You can’t develop characters for 6 seasons (although some of them have definitely become different people at this point), and people are only going to watch a show where something is going on. So, by the end of season 3, a noticeable change in the attitude of show had occurred. The story of the island, and not the people, came to the forefront.   But it didn’t just do that. It did what invariably happens to extended franchises: It got BATSHIT INSANE.  And yes, it gets hella complicated. But if you’ve actually been watching the show, it’s not that hard to follow. And I think that’s what threw a lot of people off. This was something you had to stay with; you couldn’t just see an episode every once in a while and get what was going on. To which I respond: You don’t only play a few missions in Dragon Age: Origins, you play the whole damn thing. If you’ve seen one episode of House or Law and Order, you’ve seen ‘em all, but with Lost you’re sure to see something new every time. Besides, in this day and age, how hard is it to catch up on the episodes you’ve missed?

Lost took the route of movie sequels and constantly tried to up the ante. This is standard procedure for franchises (See: Pirates of the Caribbean, Die Hard, Modern Warfare, Star Wars) but the difference here is that it was still technically the same story. No matter how insane things got, the driving force behind each episode was the same. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there is some DUMB shit in this show, and that the writers made bad calls on a lot of stuff. But even then, I still had to think about what was going on, and that’s how I like my stories. Lost may have switched from being a psychological thriller to a comic book, but it was one hell of a comic book (not surprising, since Brian K. Vaughan joined on as a writer). The first season is still the best, but the 5 season comes in second way ahead of any of the others.

So now we’re coming on the end of the show. I don’t know how this is gonna go down. I won’t be too surprised if the show falls on its face. Battlestar Galactica started strong and ended so badly I don’t even like talking about it. But even if what airs this Tuesday is the worst two hours of television I’ve ever seen, I’ll still look back fondly on this show. So much of it seemed tailored precisely to my tastes: Complicated stories, original characters, a great sense of humor (the jokes come when you least expect it, and the ‘comic relief’ characters aren’t just that: they’re also usually the ones most relevant to the central plot). With Lost, you’re never quite sure what’s around the corner, and in my opinion that defines great storytelling.