I was going to start off here with a gag about that Chekov line where if you have a loaded gun in the first act you have to have it go off in the third, and I was going to say something about how Lost has a small arsenal of unused weapons. I was also going to talk about how much I love Kill Bill (the two volumes as one movie), and how I wanted one ending (BIG FIGHT SCENE), and got something totally different (The Bride and Bill did not even get out of their chairs) — and was totally satisfied. I want to see plots reach their natural conclusion, but I can also be convinced to care about something else. I feel like Walt, and Aaron, and Dharma, and time travel, should mean something — I don’t want to feel like Jin time travelled and Sun did not for no reason other than the writers thought it would be more dramatic to keep them apart. (Don’t tell me Jacob did not time travel her because she is a mother: so was Kate and he offered her the job.)

I have no idea what I think about the end of Lost. It is going to take me a while to think it through. I at least three-quarters liked the episode. The whole series is going to take me longer to figure out. But I gotta write so here I go.

The summary. Jack and Locke get Desmond and send him down into the light, where they bet on what the result will be. They end up being both right: Jack is right that when he guesses disturbing the source it will allow him to kill the Man in Black, but the Man in Black is right that it will destroy the island — except it turns out it can be reversed. Jack and the Man in Black fight and both mortally wound each other. Hurley becomes the man in charge of the island with Ben as his second in command — and their first order of business is to get Desmond back. Kate and Sawyer make it to the plane in time to join Richard, Miles, and Lapidus as they leave. In the alt universe everyone remembers and in the big twist of the night the “Alt U” turns out to be a kind of pre-heaven. In the end they are all ready to let go and move onto whatever the afterlife has to offer.

Obviously we are not supposed to care about a lot of the mysteries. I can live with it a bit. That we are not supposed to care what happens to Jin and Sun’s kid is more troubling. That feels like it is going to continue to bug me for a long time to come. My friend Brady points out that the baby is not a character and thus I should be fine with not returning to her, but I am not convinced. Nothing to do with mystery being better as mystery: you can’t introduce a abandoned baby three episodes from the end and just leave it there. Or maybe you can. I don’t know.

Random thing: The writers got to do one of the worst cliches and get away with it — the clip show. As everyone remembers the history on the island, the writers get to show scenes from earlier episodes. Pretty clever.

Random awesome: The go-to-comerical where Jack was doing this jumping punch at John Locke on the cliff. Totally comic book-y in the best way.

Also, there was a kind of funny joke where Juliet tells Sawyer that he has to unplug the candy machine and plug it in again to get it to work. This is basically what Desmond and Jack do — to get rid of the Man in Black they power cycle the island, unplugging the source and plugging it back in. At least the writers were aware of the ridiculousness of what they were doing. I was not so sure they were in on the joke when Kate was “woken up” by basically looking into Claire’s vagina. (Sorry, Mom.) (My mom reads these.) But I can live with it.

Just as Jack has to let go of all kinds of things in order to move on to the afterlife we have to let go of mysteries etc as we say goodbye to the show. And so the Alt U turned out to be this kind of pre-heaven, sort of like a world of Sixth Sense Bruce Willises realizing that they are all ghosts. I don’t know what I think about this. One the one hand I totally see how it made a strong point about how characters matter more than anything else. In the Alt U there were no mysteries — it was just about the way people were connected. And this was the lesson we were to take away from Lost as a whole. Forget the mysteries; character is the only thing that matters. My friend Brady wants to full credit for feeling that the Alt U is especially awesome because it could take place thousands of years in the future after Hurley and Ben were in charge of the island for a LONG time. And I agree that is a pretty good point.

And it was cute how a long running theory of the show — that they all died in the plane crash and that the island was hell or purgatory — was sort of incorporated in a weird way — they DID turn out to be all dead: in the Alt U.

And I enjoyed the BIG irony of season 6. Usually on these kind of stories it turns out that all the weirdness (the island, the light, the smoke monster) was a metaphor — a weird way of talking about something like moving on to the afterlife, which cannot be put into words. But here it turned out that all the weirdness actually happened — it was normal life that was the metaphor. Because, again, it is character that matters, not the mysteries. The island and Jacob and the Man in Black were basically the biggest MacGuffins in history (I think it was my friend Lucas who called the island a MacGuffin a while back).

Character matters is a great point, but it feels like a screenwriter’s point, which is slightly less than it should be. Like the writer’s room lecturing — “lecturing” is far too strong a word — the audience or even other screenwriters about what maters. The Alt U felt less than entirely natural. It was a version of the afterlife that seemed designed to make a point. It was a device to tell us that that other devices the writers used — such as time travel — were not the point. Something does not quite work there. It is not terrible, and I enjoyed the hell out of a lot of the episode, but it feels like in the final analysis less than it should be. I mean I was really moved by a lot of the emotional beats in the Alt U, but they turned out to be kind of … a device. The Alt U was not at all a necessary or natural outgrowth of the main story. But then nothing in Lost turned out to be really connected naturally to anything else. It was a fun ride, but it was a fun ride of unconnected material made up as they went along. That is maybe not the very best kind of fun, but it was pretty fun.

Brady is still trying to tell me leaving an abandoned baby plot is fine because the writers are making a point about how character matters — and the baby was not really a character. But if this is even the right way to look at it, it still feels like a device to make an intellectual point about character, which again, is less than it should be. ‘Cause there is an emotional thing that is being ignored there.

(There is another long post coming about Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and how they handle religious stuff, and character-driven stuff — ’cause the final episode of BSG also tried to simultaneously turn the focus on character and end with big religious stuff. I feel like BSG was way worse in part because it was a lot more serious than Lost but I also feel like this is a totally personal reaction and I would probably not have any way to argue with someone who wanted to say it was just as bad.)

And of course I have to end by saying that I am one good night’s sleep and a few conversations away from a totally different feeling about it.

Thanks to Smartpop for having me. It’s been fun. Follow me from now on at geoffklock.blogspot.com.

The summary. On the way to get Desmond out of the well Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and Kate bump into Jacob who explains he brought them all to the island because they were lonely lost people, good candidates for being the new Jacob. He brought people to the island because he knew the Man in Black would figure out how to kill him eventually. Jack gets to be the new Jacob. Ben Richard and Miles pick up explosives from Dharma village, but run into Widmore and Tina Fey. The Man in Black shows up, kills Richard, Kills Tina Fey and Widmore with help from Ben, turncoat again then goes to find Desmond — but the well is empty. Which is just what he wanted, because somehow Desmond can help him destroy the island. In the Alt U Jack, Claire and Jack’s kid eat breakfast and plan to attend a concert. Ben Linus meets Alex’s mother and has dinner — and realizes he is like a father to her. Desmond is back at the school where he assaults and “wakes up” Ben Linus, who delivers a message to Locke, who decides to get that surgery after all, because he feels fate tugging him. Desmond confesses to Sawyer for his crimes (Miles is getting ready to attend a concert at the museum) and gets put in jail — with Kate and Sayid. With the help of Hurley and Anna Lucia he breaks them out and they split up to go on separate missions — Desmond and Kate are going to a concert.

I am just going to go into random observation mode, ok?

Now obviously a lot of folks who look dead are not dead but I do adore the high body count, one of the best ways serial television has of making something feel like the end (cause normally you can’t do it because of contracts with the actors): last week we lost Sayid, Lapidus, Jin and Sun; this week Richard, Widmore and Tina Fey. The writers are obviously going to need a much smaller cast for the finale to work with, and I like the idea of focusing on who is left for the most part. If you were wondering how they were going to get it all done in 2 and a half hours it was going to be by eliminating stuff.

The echoes of time past has been one of the best part of season 6 (in addition to one universe echoing the other): obviously last week was ALL echoes. Here we get Hurley, Kate, Jack and Sawyer together on the beach — this was the group Linus kidnapped at the end of season 2. And when Desmond basically kidnaps Kate and then ironically offers her a dress when she might have thought something bad was going to happen, I was reminded of Ben giving her a dress back at the start of season 3 after he kidnapped her and she expected something bad.

Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson are just such fantastic actors. They are both at the top of their games: Emerson crying a bit at Alex’s house, and O’Quinn explaining to Jack that no, he does not think Jack sent Desmond to assault him, he thinks it is fate. It is wonderful how his face conveys that he never even considered that Jack sent Desmond to assault him, and the realization that if Jack thought that Jack is not a believer as he is — another echo.

Random Theory — Jacob crossed out Kate’s name because she became a mom. This could refer to Aaron of course, but I stand by the prediction I made last year early in season 5 when her and Jack had sex before they got on the Ajira flight — she is pregnant with his kid, maybe the kid he has in the alternate universe. She can stay on the island with him when it is all over and they can live there protecting the island and raising a happy family — the opposite of what happened to Jacob that caused all this mess in the first place. That was one thing about this episode that made it feel less like the second to last episode than the first part of a finale — they announced the mother of Jack’s kid would be at the concert, but we did not see her in this episode. (That made the episode a little random, and why my commentary is random). Could still be Kate. Two happy families in both universes. Or something. I don’t know.

The other thing that made it feel less like the second to last episode and more like the first part of the last episode was Jack’s eye opening at the start, a call back to the first image of the show.

Desmond is wearing black in this episode. Makes me think of The Man in Black. He is a little sinister, manipulating everyone and running over dudes in wheelchairs. Probably nothing, but Lost is all about wildcards. The breaking them out of the truck at the end and Hurley showing up and them going on some weird mission — that is exactly what I watch Lost for. Desmond is a smart guy — the first person you wake up should be the guy with the piles of cash.

Miles has always been a weird character. Because he seems very important with his ability to speak to the dead on an island where so many have died and still linger, and yet — his powers are kind of redundant of Hurley’s. They tried to explain the difference once, and they occasionally give him stuff to do (like have Juliet’s final words be AFTER she dies, or tell Ben what Jacob thought as he died). But it has never felt important enough to justify his presence, especially since making snarky comments, the other thing he does, is also kind of covered by both Hurley and Sawyer. Dude needs something unique to do, is all I am saying. I hope they give it to him. That will be a requirement of the finale.

Significant that Across the Sea says the light we knew as electromagnetic energy is magic. Some folks thought the science-magic thing was still open — that back then it would be seen as magic but we see it now as science. Two things argue against it — if a guy goes in the light and comes out evil black smoke, the moral dimension there is going to make it magic. And they killed off Tina Fey (or it looked like they did) — so science is unnecessary. I still don’t really know what I thought about last week’s episode — basically I landed on good not great — but we will see where it goes.

Ben continues to flip flop teams — I am reminded of someone on the AV Club quipping in season 7 of 24 about “Tony and the Amazing Technicolor Turncoat.” But it made sense here — this is the man that killed Ben’s daughter, as we were reminded just before they got to the cabin. Such a weird scene with Widmore and Tina Fey in the closet. One of the most powerful and important characters literally hid in a closet from a monster. And then died, along with his assistant, after this huge buildup. Lost is such a bizarre show. But I am totally on board for the finale in a way I never thought I could be after the kind of weak ending to season 5. And it is DAYS away. Whodathunk, with my first review of the opener of season 6 this year I would be this into Lost again?

A woman pregnant with twins washes up on the island from a shipwreck at some point in the distant past. She meets Allison Janney, whose character is unnamed. Janney helps deliver the babies. One is named Jacob but the other does not have a name because the mother did not expect twins. Janney kills the mother and raises the children. The Kid in Black finds a game in the sand and plays with Jacob, tells him to not tell Janney. Jacob tells Janney. Janney says she left it there for the Kid in Black, because he is special. For example, he knows how to lie, and intuitively knows the rules of the game (or makes them up persuasively). Janney says the island is all there is. Then, when other people are discovered she admits that was a lie; that people are just bad and she wanted to keep the boys away from them. She takes them to a cave with a light. She has to guard the light, which is the Source, the light of the universe, life and death and rebirth. Don’t go into the light, or something worse than death will happen. The Kid in Black wants to know about the world across the sea and goes to live with the other people, who, in his opinion, are corrupt but curious and capable of getting him away. We see the well, and The Man in Black building a wheel into the light on the other side of the wall that will operate a “system” and do something. She attacks him and kills all the people (off screen). He comes back and kills her. Jacob, who can’t kill him because of something Janney did, and who is now in charge of guarding the light, tosses him IN the light. Black smoke comes out. The Man in Black’s body is found. The Man in Black and Janney are the Adam and Eve skeletons in season 1.

The episode works by taking the elements of Lost and transporting them back to a smaller story with fewer characters in the distant past, suggesting they all radiate out from that source. The rivals, bad parents, stolen kids raised by someone not their parents, being special, not being special, outsiders landing on the island by accident, ghosts, magic power sources underground, guarding the island, wanting to leave the island, wanting not to leave the island, mysterious “Others,” people “researching” the island’s mysteries by digging into it, passing the torch to a new guardian of the island. Like Battlestar Galactica the idea is that all this has happened before and will happen again. There is a gag at the beginning where Janney tells Claudia, the mother of the boys, that each question leads to more questions and to just stop. So we are not to wonder how Janney got the job of guarding the island. We just go back this one (pretty big but still) step. Battlestar Galactica wanted to say stuff literally happens over and over. This is just a suggestion here, a kind of non answer. It sort of unifies a lot of the stuff — it all happened to a handful of people a long time ago. But it does not explain why it happens again.

Most of the revels are this kind of “this came from that — where did that come from don’t ask” type stuff. But the Source, the Light, is the big reveal, I think. Janney says there is a bit of the light in each person, but people want more. It is the source of life and if it goes out here it goes out everywhere. This is clear Gnostic spark stuff (they called it pneuma) — I made a lot of guesses about the religious stuff on my blog but the only thing that was close to right was this: the energy at the center of the island is the light of creation, or something like that. The Smoke is the opposite number, split off when the light was disturbed by someone corrupted by men — this is pure Gnostic mythology. Somehow the smoke is or has the light now and if it leaves the island everything goes out everywhere. If you have been reading DC Comics Green Lantern Story Blackest Night you will recognize this straight away as the White Light from the end of that series. We don’t know how Janney killed all the people with The Man in Black. Did she have smoke powers? She seems to have magic powers of some kind (she has some kind of spell that prevents the boys from killing each other) — perhaps she had both good and bad powers. Now the boys have split the powers in two and the powers are at war. Again — pure Gnostic mythology about the creation of the universe.

So my opinion. So first of all, and I know this is a minor thing, how CRAZY is it for a mainstream show with millions of viewers to spend even 30 minutes with NO ACTOR WE HAVE EVER HEARD DELIVER A LINE BEFORE. Liked committing to the concept in that way. This is the ONLY Lost episode that does not have a frame or pair of some kind — no flashback, flash-forward, or alternate universe. Just a straight story. It brings me right back to Nikki and Paolo — you never know what kind of story you are going to get on LOST, and that is a good chunk of the fun.

Also — how did I not realize that Titus Welliver’s body could just be dead somewhere? John Locke has a dead body and the smoke walks around like him. Of course the smoke could just LOOK LIKE Titus Welliver.

Having just saw the thing I don’t really know what I think about it. Basically I really liked it I think, even if it did not blow me a way or change the game as I had hoped. It DOES feel like all of Lost in miniature (including everything from Lost’s simplicity anchoring the chaos and twists and turns to its failures in logic and motivation). But I am not sure what that really means, or what it has to do with anything. Because I think there is a good chance, at the end of the day, that you could see every episode of LOST except this one, and you would get the show exactly as much as you would with it. Because it repeats the whole show in miniature it FEELS right — and maybe I should stop right there. That is probably the point. We have a sense that this comes from somewhere, an origin of sorts. (It almost feels like the last episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender before the final group that made up the finale — the one that sort of recapped the show. The one where the kids see a play of the adventures they have had so far. It is a chance to see the big view in a way, to see the whole thing on a small stage. It also felt a bit like that “No Exit” episode of Battlestar Galactica where a few episodes from the end they kind of infodumped the mythology in a rush to get back to the main characters). Given the corners the writers have painted themselves into I have to say I am pretty satisfied. It would not be Lost without the messy. If you have not come to enjoy the messiness, I am surprised you still watch the show. The Source is the big thing, and I can be fine with that. The island has the spark of creation and that explains a good chunk of the weirdness, like why dead people can come back to life, and healing, and Dharma, and their failure. I can totally live with that.

And now I am ready to get back to the thing that matters, the only thing I think the writers really care about, and probably the only thing they (and we) should care about — not the mythology, but the stories of the castaways and their conflicts. Mythology-wise it was the Source, but the REALLY important thing was probably understanding better why the Man in Black wants off. He has never been off, and wants to know what it is like. At the end of the day it has to be about characters, not mythology. This did a good job convincing me to accept that (as Battlestar Galactica did NOT).

But with the running time left on Lost (sans commercial breaks) somewhere around the running time of Inglourious Basterds Lost is still going strong. More action in this episode than in most of the previous SEASONS. Remember when getting to a location like the plane, or the sub, would take 4 episodes of hiking and diversions? They got to both in this one hour. I was absolutely shocked when Jack got Sawyer and Kate out of those cages so quickly. I thought the only reason they went in the cages was to give the episode a purpose — get them out by the end of the ep. They got out by the end of the commercial break.

So, plot. Jack and The Man in Black rescue the castaways captured by Widmore and head for the plane, which is booby trapped. Locke takes the bomb off the plane and they all head to the sub. At the sub the gang escapes without The Man in Black only to find he has put a ticking bomb on board with them. Disarming the bomb causes it to go into overdrive. Sayid gets it far away giving the others a chance, presumably dying in the process. Jin and Sun don’t make it. The Man in Black is gunning for the survivors.
In the Alt U Jack struggles to convince Locke he can fix his back, and uncovers the story behind the wheelchair — Locke was a pilot who crashed a small plane and sent his dad into a vegetable state. He considers his wheelchair punishment.

A first a lot of the action makes little sense — why are the castaways risking their hides, even as a cover, to help the Man in Black get to a sub when the Man in Black is obviously immortal? On the sub we get the interesting answer from Jack — the mysterious “rules” prevent The Man in Black killing candidates, as it prevented him from killing Jacob directly. (The same “rules” that prevented Michael from killing himself, and the same “rules” Linus discovered “broken” when Keamy killed Alex). He has to get them to kill each other. So he puts a bomb on the sub with them in it. Jack realizes if the clock runs out they wont die — the Man in Black CAN”T kill them — but if they attempt to disarm it it WILL go off, which means they basically killed themselves. Jacob’s death allowed the Man in Black to finally escape the island; the Candidate is a threat to him because with them alive someone can take Jacob’s job, which was to keep him from getting away. The moves in the episode make a lot more sense now — why he needs them, and why he acts as he does.

(I am not sure how to answer the internet complaint that Jacob is obviously very reckless bringing people to the island — people that can work for The Man in Black, kill Jacob, and provide the Man in Black with transportation off the island. Even if the chance is slim, it seems like The Man in Black getting away means universe-wide annihilation so why even risk it? I do hope this one gets answered.)

We also discover why the Jin-Sun reunion was so lame. Because you can’t have two episodes in a row with HUGE emotional beats for those two characters. And they got a huge one here as they go down with the sub. It was a really beautiful scene, in spite of the fact that it was a little silly that Sun got trapped like that (watching it with friends someone asked “what is she trapped by” and the answer was “a device … a plot device”). My first reaction was that there was something really off about watching two parents die together when one could have been saved — should’t there be some kind of “our child’s future is more important than your not leaving me”? But upon consideration I think it adds to the moment. It becomes really hard-core. He promised they would never be apart again. And so they won’t. I found that really powerful BECAUSE he knew what he was leaving behind. One of the most emotional scenes in Lost I feel like. Except for that plot device pinning Sun.

But it was always heading this direction. The folks who are no longer candidates are mostly dead — that seems like a big part of not being a candidate anymore, sort of how you get tested? So in searching for that Candidate people are going to have to get killed along to way to reveal him. That is how it has worked up to now. I look forward to the second to last episode titled “What They Died For.”

And that was not all for emotional beats. Alt U John Locke was amazing talking about how he felt responsible for his dad’s condition, and Hurley’s tears — was that the first time he cried? He and Jack did a good job showing “torn up.” Lost can be brilliant with the acting, but also sometimes not — it was nice to see everybody at full throttle. Cause that scene is not going to work without it. And it has been fun watching The Man in Black be so reasonable all the time (“I’d ask Widmore, but I don’t think he is going to give me a straight answer”; “I hope you change your mind Jack”), but it is also pretty fun to see the killer come out at our main guys.

Another acting touch that was perfect here was Jack’s reaction to Claire saying she was on Oceanic 815. He does a great job conveying the chaos in his head — the ambivalence of “it can’t mean anything, but it has to mean something that I am seeing so many people from that flight.” He has no idea what is going on but he can feel something coming together — it works because we know Lost is almost over, and feel it coming together too.

Sawyer, for the FOURTH time, is on his way off the island when he has to turn around and go back (the raft in season 1, the helicopter in season 4, the sub in season 5, and the sub again here). Don’t really know what to say about that.

Interesting that Alt U Locke was a pilot. Does that mean that the Man in Black can now fly a plane, if worlds collide? Also Sawyer has been hit on the head — joining Jack and Sun on this point. All you need is a good whack on the head for worlds to collide. Or to be in love.

A random theory about Richard: his episode bothered me because it did not really seem to have anything to do with anything, but one justification occurred to me. If the Man in Black turns out to be Satan, or Easu or Cain; or Jacob turns out to be the biblical Jacob (with his connections to Egypt explaining the Egyptian stuff we have seen on the island); then you are going to need SOME CHARACTER established as a bible reading Christian. Because SOMEONE is going to have to explain to the castaways, and by extension the audience, the significance of whatever gets revealed. You can’t have Hurley suddenly bust out with “oh, yeah, we learned about all this in Sunday school!” If Mr. Eko had not wanted to leave Hawaii, and thus not been killed off, I imagine this would have been his role.

I am so Goddamn Happy this show is still strong this close to the end. If the acting and the emotional beats stay this good I could maybe even be happy with some mythology not getting revealed (which is surely going to happen, because I really cannot imagine a satisfying explanation for how a donkey wheel got built into a wall on the other side of which is negatively charged matter or whatever, and the wheel does huge magic / sci-fi stuff when turned). Seriously. Right now they have me loving the story over the mythology, which was surely their point. (But I felt that way though a lot of Battlestar Galactica, and look how that turned out. But I remain forever hopeful).

On island, The Man in Black admits to Jack he appeared as Jack’s father. Widmore shoots missiles at The Man in Black’s camp because he wants Desmond back; The Man in Black sends Sayid to kill Desmond, which he later reports doing (but it did not happen on screen so only if you have never seen a “tele-box” before would you think that was the end of Desmond). Locke marches everyone to get to a boat to get to the plane to get off the island and sends Sawyer ahead. But Sawyer and the other main characters steal the boat to go join Widmore. Jack changes his mind, claiming he is not supposed to leave the island at all, and swims back to shore. He meets the Man in Black again, and the bombs from Widmore, not honoring an agreement with Sawyer, blast Jack. In the Alt U, Sun and Locke are rushed to the hospital where she recognizes him; Saywer flirts with Kate who he has in custody then goes off to capture Sayid; and Jack finds his long lost sister with the help of Desmond and Illana before being rushed off to perform surgery — on John Locke.

When the Alt U started it was very much a throwback to the beginning of season 1 — the human moments, the slow burn. But by season 6 I was impatient to get moving, and was aggravated for a little while. Ever since Desmond “woke up” two weeks ago, the Alt U has legs — I pay attention as much there as in the island U, the first time in the show’s history, with very few exceptions, I have been equally interested in the island the the thing it was being juxtaposed with (the past, the future, the Alt U). This Alt U has had the most legs yet, moving things fast — Sun and Locke, Jack and Claire, Jack and Locke. Desmond running around like a Rock Star Angel is awesome, and it is great to see so many people in the Alt U feeling all the “coincidence” around them. They feel something building too.

Even Jack’s son — who looked weirdly like his mini-me here, in a suit like his dad’s — has my attention. The kid is just too intense looking, with that rich dark hair, for such a young actor. At times he reminds me of Malachi in The Children of the Corn almost. It makes me think he is going to do something crazy, like be the Man in Black. It now looks like the thing that is going to bring everyone together at the hospital will be the birth of Claire’s baby (maybe Sawyer and Miles, with Kate tagging along, will let Sayid see his brother one last time). That would be pretty satisfying — especially if there turns out to be a connection between the dark haired and light haired cousins Aaron and David, Jacob (light hair) and the Man in Black (dark hair as Titus Welliver), and the light haired kid and the dark haired kid we have seen on the island. That could be a really great moment. Plus ending a show with the birth of a kid is just classic television. It can’t be a minor thing that that kid is left to wander the hospital while his dad is in surgery: the hospital is where everyone is. And we still don’t know who his mom is. Pregnancy and generations has been a big thing on this show — this is how to end it surely.

On Island we had some great stuff too. I especially liked how Jack jumping off the boat leaving the island to swim back mirrored Sawyer jumping out of the helicopter to swim back to the island. It is nice to see him accepting fate and learning from the past — he knows he is supposed to stay this time. And we get the mythology reveal of the Man in Black being Jack’s dad back in season 1. Women had something to do for once, and it did not even involve a man — Kate had here scene with Claire, which was nice, going against the group to include her — refusing to abandon her again. Illana returns in the Alt U so in a way that was not the end of her, and her life in the Alt U does not revolve around a man either — she has a serious job, apparently. We even introduced the idea that Claire, and Sayid, could be saved. Sayid still has some good in him and Kate won’t give up.

I still don’t love the “get conked on the head, or fall in love: bleed between universes” thing. That was apparently the only reason Sun cannot speak English for a few hours (bleed through from the Alt U), and now Jack has been concussed. It is strange that the last episode ended with Alt U Locke getting hit hard, and this one ends with Island Jack getting hit hard — and yet neither episode has told us what this means. In the Alt U Jack is busy healing Locke, as the Island has Locke-The-Man-In-Black against Jack. Something good is going to happen there, surely.

It was also seriously lame to see Desmond’s well in the daytime. When The Man in Black tossed his torch down there it seemed endless. Turns out it is like 15 feet deep or something. Not even a broken bone. And why not just kill him then? Why wait till Widmore asks for him back and then kill him? There was also a very distracting moment when Jin and Sun ran toward each other — and across the pylons. Thought for sure one or both of them would get their brain melted, or they would witch bodies or some kind of weird science / random death thing. Not that they should have, it just seemed like there was something silly going to happen because of the blocking.

I don’t for the life of me remember where that boat came from — has Desmond’s boat just been there the whole time?

Also — why did all those Others just let the main characters break away without so much as a reaction? It is so strange that Lost finally ditched all the nameless non-main-character castaways no one wanted to write about only to have another group of faceless people to have to shuffle around the island again.

Also not real clear why Alt U Sawyer felt he needed that garden hose tripwire in addition to the gun to catch Sayid. If getting conked in the head change personalities is from the Flintstones, then garden hose tripwire is from Scooby Doo.

But it wouldn’t be Lost without something to bitch about, and overall I am totally on board for the final episodes. And apparently no Lost next week, if Wikipedia is to be believed (the ABC promo was not at all clear — it just seems to be an ad for the series finale more than anything else).

In this episode Team Jacob decides to blow up the plane with dynamite from the Black Rock, but Illana blows herself up because it is unstable. When they go to get more Hurley blows up the Black Rock, because the ghost of Michael told him it will get people killed. The group then splits over who to follow — Richard, who wants to get explosives from Dharma, or Hurley, who claims to hear Jacob telling them to go talk to The Man in Black. Ben goes with Richard and everyone else goes with Hurley. The Man in Black throws Desmond down a well, and then meets Hurley’s group — and Jack confronts “Locke” for the first time in a long time. In the Alt U, Hurley is rich and powerful but afraid to talk to girls. He bumps into Libby who is on a retreat from a mental institution and claims they know each other. With a little push from Desmond he goes to meet her and take her out and with a kiss he remembers everything. In an epilogue Desmond, who saw them kiss, drives off — and over substitute teacher John Locke, on purpose.

On one level this is Lost at its most classical — dramatic without making a lot of sense, but you forgive it because it is all fun. If you have to carry unstable dynamite, why jump around so much, and also why not give it to the immortal guy to carry — they guy who in an earlier episode proved he could not be blown up by dynamite? And how, you know, on Earth, could Hurley have gotten so far ahead of the group — enough to get into the Black Rock, and set a fuse, then get far enough away to not die and also before anyone else was close enough not to die — without anyone noticing? Don’t chuck your enemy’s wildcard down a well: I know it looks like you are getting rid of him, and I also enjoy the irony of Desmond once again being alone down in an underground place on the island accessible by a deep shaft, but surely you have just chucked him down to somewhere interesting where he is going to bite you in the ass — especially if this is anything like the other well. By the way: The well, we are told, is so old it was built by people who had no tools — because they wanted to know why their compasses were going crazy. They had compasses but not shovels?

Less fun is that Lost Season 6 has gone beyond not giving women anything to do: now it is aggressively silencing them — Sun can’t talk, Kate just smiles in this episode without (I think) saying a word, and I don’t even know what to say about the latest one — the only strong female, the only tough chick without a man to worry about was unceremoniously blown up. On its own — funny. I was just thinking it was silly that she does not blow up as Artz did in season one and then BAM she did. In the context of the other female characters, less so. Libby is a woman, but like the other women in Season 6 she exists just to move a man along in his story. Maybe the finale will be a bunch of dudes just glowering at each other for two hours, Eliot Stabler style.

And once again, everyone is off to the hospital because that is how just about every Alt U story must end. Fine. Even Libby kind of has a hospital connection.

And Sayid is supposed to be emptied out in a creepy way, but it reads a lot of the time like the actor is bored out of his skull.

But I did like this one, in spite of all that. I liked that Hurley had such a simple story — asking a girl out. That is the kind of thing that Lost does really well, anchoring the insanity in simple things. He closes his character arc in the Alt U as one arc of his also closes from the main U — he finally gets that picnic with Libby. I liked that Desmond was this kind of rockin looking Guardian Angel — who also runs people over with his car. It was pretty obvious he was going down that well (especially as Locke dropped the torch down the hole, just as he (or was it Jack) did when they got the hatch open) — but the running over Locke thing was the kind of crazy turn Lost does really well. I enjoyed Jack’s learning to put away the leader role and just follow someone else — it is nice to see him changed by his experiences, rather than just being more and more JACK as things get bad. Jack Bauer, for example, just gets more and more JACK BAUER.

Then there was bit where the show sort of lightening fast dealt with a major mystery, two actually — the whispers are the dead trapped on the island because of something they did. This also, of course, explains the dead figures we have seen on the island — because surely the show was not going to make much sense if ALL the dead people were the smoke monster. Richard’s flashback was like an episode length version of this scene and I have to say I prefer it truncated like this.

And we got to see a kid with dark hair — Desmond saw him with the Man in Black just as Sawyer saw a blond kid when he was with The Man in Black. This is surely Jacob and the Man in Black as children (Jacob and Esau? Able and Cain? Whoever, it has got my attention. I look forward to a flashback with those kids).

But the thing I liked the best was the end. Lost often cliffhangs with some moment of promised violence like a gun being drawn or someone being shot. This was wonderful because it was so understated, so reasonable and so tense at the same time. Hurley brings the Candidates to Locke, and would just like to talk to him without any violence. That is kind of wonderful. Finally people are going to talk (maybe)! I just love the simplicity of “Let’s just go talk to him.” It was really invigorating.

And Jack and Locke — the conflict this show has been about since Season 1 — finally meet as their new selves: Jack in submission to Jacob’s leadership, Locke now The Man in Black. This is the original conflict with the stakes raised tremendously, and it is awesome — and just to make the whole thing more exciting, it coincides with Alt U Desmond running over Locke. Does Alt U Locke now know about the Island U? Alt U Charlie similarly used a car crash to “wake up” Desmond. Does The Man in Black know about the Alt U? Does Jack? Something important happened but it is totally ambiguous — and it is the kind of AWESOME ambiguity we can all spend the next week thinking about. And isn’t THAT really the central thing in the success of LOST?

5 broadcasts left — 4 more before the big ending.

Desmond is escorted by Widmore against his will to a big machine that moments earlier killed someone. Team Widmore switches the machine on (Desmond will be ok because he survived a magnetic explosion or whatever at the end of season 2). We go into the Alt U and stay there till the end. Desmond, happily working for Widmore, is instructed to deliver Charlie, of Driveshaft fame, to play with his musician son Faraday at an event hosted by Eloise Widmore (nee Hawking). But Charlie, after giving a speech about love at first sight when he saw Claire as he was dying on the plane, crashes the car into the water and BAM! Desmond sees “NOT PENNY’S BOAT” written on his palm. In a CAT scan machine (which involves magnets) at the hospital he sees other flashes of Penny. At the party he hears her name but Eloise will not let him investigate because “he is not ready.” Faraday comes to his rescue because he also had a vision of love at first site with a girl at a museum (Charlotte) — and he had a much bigger revelation, writing down insane quantum mechanic science stuff; he even knows about the nuke. Faraday points him toward his half sister Penny and Desmond meets her at the stadium and they agree to go out to coffee. Desmond faints and goes back to the machine where he is ready to help Widmore with whatever. Sayid interrupts, kills someone, and convinces Desmond to come with him. Back in the Alt U Desmond is ready to wake up the others, and asks Fischer Stevens to get him the manifest for flight 815.

Let me talk very briefly about what I did not like, because I am about to fawn, kind of a lot. Charlie’s speech about love — the actor cannot quite pull it off and it came off really cheesy. Also the women of Lost continue their descent into utter uselessness, as they serve merely to inspire their men — three in this episode — onto greater deeds, without actually doing much.

Even with that, this is one of the great Lost episodes, alongside The Constant, and The Shape of Things to Come and Walkabout. Start with the simple things. Just like The Constant, Happily Every After anchors an insane science fiction story in some pretty basic and cheesy ideas about love. Like the Constant it got to have its cake and eat it too, using all the cliches of love but using the sci-fi to reinvigorate them. Love is beyond time and the only thing that can save our lives — literally true in The Constant. Love happens at first sight — because you knew that person in an alternate universe. Love is so powerful you will faint with joy — because it is time for your mind to return to the machine that propelled you into another world. Love inspires musicians — to write quantum mathematics. The mother of the woman you love will stand in your way — because she has some mystical sense that the universe cannot allow Penny and Desmond to meet.

Lost needed some mad science to balance out the fantasy elements, and here ya go — you don’t get more mad science than the box Desmond was put into, with the giant electric coils. Lost needed to do SOMETHING else with that Alt U, which up until now had just been this big everyone -is-someone one trick pony — and now it has a thrust, a direction, something to get involved in and root for. What better fix than have one of your best characters on a mission to wake everyone up — to get everyone in the Alt U to know about all the things we are invested in in the main U? And what a wonderfully conflicted mission given how happy everyone is in the Alt U and how miserable they are in the island U. Are they supposed to give up happiness to stop the Man in Black? And we have the recent island conflict Desmond knows nothing about right now — an innocent at the mercy of Camp Man in Black. This is as good as it has ever been.

Random thoughts:

Thank god the Alt U is not somehow to end of the show, as some had theorized; that Jacob was going to reward everyone by fixing their lives and that the Alt U was not the result of the bomb going off, but some magic he will work in the finale. It really looked like that was what it was for a minute. I don’t know why I did not want it to be that, but I didn’t. I wanted universes to collide, and now they are.

Fischer Stevens is taking on the Abaddon role Lance Reddick had — Widmore’s mysterious driver who “get people where they need to go” as he told John Locke in Season 5. I loved Fischer Stevens being cast in season 4 — having a small bit in The Constant — and was sad the writer’s strike meant he did not get as much time. This made up for that a bit. Also — remember when he was the Indian in Short Circuit (look him up on YouTube to remind yourself)? Wow you would not be allowed to do that today.

That coffee shop Desmond and Penny are going to? Juliet will be there with Sawyer “going dutch” or whatever she said to Sawyer as she was dying at the start of this season.

Next week, about Hurley, looks to be a massive guest star smash week, in which every actor who played a dead person comes back. Awesome.

Who is Penny’s mom? Does it matter?

On the island Sun is approached by The Man in Black who says he can take her to Jin. She runs from him and hits her head and looses the ability to speak English, though she can still understand English, and write it. Richard returns and tells them they have to destroy the plane, but Sun is not on board, because she just came to get Jin and get home, and destroying the plane is not going to get them home. When The Man in Black gets back to camp he finds Widmore’s team has taken Jin, and takes Sayid to Hydra Island to confront Widmore. Widmore gives Jin pics of the three year old he has never seen and lets him know what the stakes are, and his assistant, Tina Fey, turns out to be a Geophysicist who wants Jin’s help with the pockets of energy the island contains. Sayid, sent by The Man in Black to investigate, discovers “the package” in the room Widmore kept locked was Desmond. In the Alt U, Jin and Sun are not married, but her father knows they are involved, and emptied her escape bank account while sending Jin to unknowingly pay Keamey for his own execution. Sun gets shot in the free for all involving Mikhail, who dies shot in the eye, and tells Jin she is pregnant.

There were things I liked in tonight’s episode: The Man in Black explaining that he sent Sayid to find out what was in that room because he does not like secrets, the scene where Jin sees pictures of his kid was very well acted, the meeting between The Man in Black and Widmore (who says he only knows The Man in Black from ghost stories or something to that effect), Keamey is always awesomely terrifying in the most unsettling way. And I was very glad to see the Geophysicist. One thing I want from the end of LOST is that neither fantasy nor science fiction should reign supreme and I am very glad to see some weird science back in the picture for the first time in season 6.

And a lot of the complaints I have are maybe stupid at this point. I have been watching Lost for years. What this show does is tell small stories about people — like Richard’s story from last time, or Sun and Jin here — while dangling mysteries which barely advance from episode to episode. Obviously it is the individual stories rather than what the island IS that is the point of this show; I know it is not exactly the same thing but Lost at times feels very much like the Canterbury Tales to me in this regard, a collection of stories with an overarching point (the trip to Canterbury) that is obviously not THE POINT.

The AV Club review of Lost from a while back pointed folks to this David Mamet memo to the Unit writers (http://bit.ly/9NYxxS) and it is a good link. I love David Mamet and I think he is right. It should be about characters and conflict; if it is about information — like what the island is — this is bad, because this can be summarized in a pamphlet. In theory one thing I liked about the end of Battlestar Galactica (and my hatred for the final eight episodes of that show is serious) was the info dump a few episodes from the end — a clear sign that the mythology was not the point, the characters were. So I recognize that the writers of Lost are in a bind here. I am not going to excoriate them for the stall stall stall structure, because however much I am aggravated by this, I could have bailed way back when it took so long to get into that damn hatch. I am compromised on this point.

For me the problem with the last episode was not that Richard did not have lots of mythology to show us, but that a lot of the story was uneconomical, and so slack on conflict — we knew so much of it already, and it was more powerful hinted at, and much covered ground we had already seen such as the attempt by the Man in Black on Jacob using a surrogate, or the theory that the island is Hell. My problem here is similar. I appreciate that the final season is the time to bring everything back, to appreciate the return of people and places. But so many Lost episodes this season have relied on that final punch of BAM — Widmore’s Back! Claire’s Back! Jin’s Back in the Alt U! plus all the little “everyone is someone” gags — that when Desmond is back! some of the necessary force is lost. Same with the way everyone in the ALt U is ending up at the hospital with Jack. The surprises need variety — the 5th time the magician does the same card trick I stop being so interested.

People get mad at Lost for giving too little “information” about the island, but one of my big problems with this episode is that it is too much “information.” How much time is being spent catching everyone up? We used to complain no one tells anyone anything on this island, but I am staring to see why — it is boring to have to tell everyone individually about the cave, and the lighthouse wheel, and what the Man in Black wants and why it is bad if he gets it, as Jin and Sun learned separately here. And it is much much worse if people in these conversations do not speak English as part of a plot point introduced in this same episode.

So the amnesia. After the first episode of season 6, my friend Lucas said “What kind of self-respecting screenwriter can type -SAWYER, I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU. -WHAT IS IT? [JULIET DIES]. I felt like an idiot typing “She runs from him and hits her head and looses the ability to speak English, though she can still understand English, and write it.” I can’t imagine how someone wrote that into a script for millions. I could feel my friend Katie, whose primary complaint is that a complex show with strong female characters (remember back in Season 4 when Sun was on a revenge mission and confronted Widmore with the power of her father’s empire now at her command) — a complex show with strong female characters has become a show about boys in a battle between good and evil and the search for the savior. All this may turn out to be more interesting (and it better not turn out Jacob is simply good and the Man in Black simply evil), but in an episode by episode guide I have to take each episode on its own. I could hear Katie screaming about Sun from here. Even if it turns out it is some kind of bleed through from the Alt U, that is not going to save this plot point for me, which should be relegated to the Flintstones.

The last thing I have to say does not have anything to do with what I wrote above, but it needs pointing to. Someone in the comments here or on my blog made a great point — this show needs to end with the castaways telling Jacob and the Man in Black to screw off (I am not super clear if Smartpop want me cursing on this blog, so as an invited guest I am going to be polite). That is what a good ending is going to look like — not because of the mythology, but because of the emotional satisfaction, which is the only kind of satisfaction that is likely to be possible here, and the only one that should be desirable, probably.

Ilana tells the castaways that Richard knows what to do next, but Richard, upset that Jacob is dead and his life has no meaning, storms off, claiming they are dead and this is hell. The episode unfolds as a massive flashback, showing how hundreds of years ago Richard, looking for medicine for his wife, accidentally killed a man, and ended up on death row where he was purchased as a slave; the ship crashes on the island where the Man in Black and Jacob manipulate him, each claiming the other is trouble. The Man in Black promises Richard he can have his wife back if he kills Jacob; Jacob explains the Man in Back cannot be allowed to escape and gives Richard eternal life. Back in the present Hurley, telling Richard what his wife is saying, helps Richard to return to Team Jacob to prevent the Man in Black from bringing hell to earth.

One of the things I have always liked about Lost is how you never know what kind of story you are going to get: How to find food on the island, crazy time travel science fiction with Desmond and Faraday, temple fantasy with Kung Fu Guy and a Spa of Life, three dudes fixing a truck, Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Nikki and Paolo. Tonight was a period piece Telenovella mostly in Spanish, and you have to admire the audacity of how straight the first act of the story was played: Melodrama, Spanish, an accidental murder, a man on death row pleading for forgiveness, and not an island plot point in sight. (When a commercial for Windows 7 came on, the one in French with subtitles, it really started to feel like I was reading a book).

But a lot of tonight’s episode felt like filler, and I think it would have even if I had not been lead to expect more with such a juicy focus at the halfway point in season 6. A lot of it had been implied before to great effect, like how Richard came to the island as a slave in the Black Rock. Some of it we had already been told, like Jacob making Richard eternal. And some of it did not really add much, like Richard’s accidental murder of a doctor to save his wife. The story of a man who wanted to kill himself but cannot, and who tries to redeem his earlier crime of murder, told with an unusual structure for the show (one massive flashback bookended by two scenes in the present) — I already saw this when Michael did it in season 4. The theory that the island was hell and everyone on it is dead had already been raised by fans AND incorporated (and dismissed) on the show when Locke’s Dad claimed it back in season 3, and when Naomi told Hurley that the rest of the world found flight 815 and everyone was dead.

What was good was Jacob’s metaphor of the island as the cork keeping the evil (the Man in Black) in the bottle, preventing it from getting out and brining hell to earth. This raises the stakes of the show considerably, something I was looking for. I had wondered why we get a Richard story before a Sun and Jin Flash-Sideways — perhaps it is because the Alt U, where the island sunk, will give us a chance to see what happens if it is no longer holding the Man in Black back.

I also liked the little bit where the slave ship was run by Captain Hanzo. The guy that bought Richard was named Whitfield (thanks to Sara for looking this up) — a name that might someday morph into Widmore? (Or is this over-reading? It was more interesting to me when I thought the name was “Widfield”)

I have to end with something that both my wife and my friend Kevin Maher pounced on, something pretty genius. Kevin wrote me this:

“I don’t know my Bible or Greek mythology, but I do recognize a Chuck Jones cartoon reference when I see it. Tonight’s last scene in LOST may very well be an homage to “A Sheep in the Deep” and other cartoons starring Sam the Sheepdog and Ralph the Coyote.”

[The five second sound bite]

http://www.pioneernet.net/curtis/sounds/morn_sam.wav

[a whole episode on youtube -- go to the 5:50 mark to see the final exchange that feels like the end of this episode of Lost.]

Kevin continues: “On the surface it’s a joke that these two are mortal enemies, but they are civil co-workers before and after work. (The same way a Prosecutor and Defense Attorney might share a drink at the end of a day.) But on a “deeper” level, the sheepdog is the protector (Jacob) and the coyote is a menace (Man in Black).”

Like I said above, You never know what you are going to get on Lost. At the bare minimum it is going to make the final episode pretty exciting, cause there is no way to know what it will be about.

In tonight’s episode Sawyer is sent by The Man in Black to do recon on Hydra Island where he discovers a bunch of dead bodies from the Ajira flight and some survivors who turn out to be not survivors at all, but part of Widmore’s team. They are setting up pylons to keep out the smoke monster and get Sawyer to agree to lure The Man in Black there; but Sawyer cons them, and tells the Man in Black everything they said not because he is concerned for the Man in Black but because he thinks while they are fighting it out he can steal Widmore’s sub and get him and Kate out of there. In a subplot Claire tries to kill Kate and the Man in Black has a little talk with them both. In the Alt U Sawyer and Miles are cops, but Sawyer has a secret (he is after the man who killed his parents); Miles susses it out of him in part by getting Charlotte to sleep with him and look through his stuff. Then Sawyer runs into Kate, running from the cops.

First off, and this has nothing to do with anything at all, the Last time Widmore was putting a crack team together he got Miles, Charlotte, sexy Naomi, Keamy (the most evil man in the world), the dude from The Wire, Fischer Stevens and Zoe Bell (who didn’t have much to do because of the writer’s strike, but still) and Jeremy Davies. This time he has a poor man’s Tina Fey, and Chip from Kate and Allie and yoghurt commercials (seriously, check imdb.com). Widmore is going to have to make up with Michael Emerson to even think about having a team with the acting chops to take on evil Terry O’Quinn.

The alternate U continues to expand toward some things that will matter soon: a larger sense of how it is connected to the Island U. Charlie’s brother in the police station and Sawyer meeting Kate not as much as Miles mentioning the museum where his dad Chang works with Charlotte. Dharma leaders and Faraday — the one man on the show with the potential to cross universes — cannot be far behind.

I loved that this episode set up two ways of getting off the island — the plane and the sub — and that neither one was magical in nature. This is going to be in part a straight up fight for resources which seems appropriate for a story about people stranded on an island. Not that I don’t want to see what happens if you move that donkey wheel one more time; I just like how simple a thing we have on the board. That whatever the Man in Black is he moves around like the rest of us.

Speaking of which the real star moment of this episode was The Man in Black telling Kate that he was a person, and that he had a mom, and that his mom was crazy, and he has been working through that for a long time. He earlier mentioned to Sawyer that he was a man once. Now we get however small a part of his backstory. Off the top of my head I have no idea what it means — if this is going to turn out to be biblical I don’t know my bible well enough to guess who he might be. But I like it, and I like how the “bad mommy” thing is one more iteration of bad-daddy island — the show has always been about kids dealing with bad parents, which may point to it being about God and his Children. The Man in Black continues to be wonderfully persuasive — I adored his simple explanation to Kate of how things went wrong with Claire and that he took responsibility for what happened, and how, for Lost, he is so straightforward, admitting to Kate that he is not Locke, and telling Sawyer that he “is that Smoke thing” so matter-of-fact-ly, in the best line of the night.

For all that I liked though the episode felt like something closer to filler, in part because I am getting tired of the Alt U a bit — the principle of Everyone is Someone gets old fast. I am ready for it to coalesce into something more complex, something that will interact with the main U, something that will bleed through or whatever. It’s getting there, but as on the Island U Act 2 involves a lot of moving the pieces into position as a set up to the endgame. It’s part of how TV works, and I don’t know what else they are supposed to do, but I am very eager for that endgame.

My hope is that the next episode, focusing on Richard, will be a game changer. This is what I was talking about last time — people on the island know things, but no one ever asks them anything, or they never volunteer information. The Man in Black keeps saying he will explain everything, and Terry O’Quinn sells it — I really believe he will. But an episode focusing on Richard — I don’t see how they are going to do that and NOT reveal a whole bunch of new stuff, especially given the “flash-diagonally-sideways” structure (which I guess they could break, but it would be so much better if they didn’t). I mean if anyone can figure out how to stall and not give information it is the Lost writing staff, but I hold out hope. This is the moment for the show to turn one more time as it approaches the end.

[UPDATE: minutes after I went to bed I remembered that John Locke, rather than The Man in Black, was the one with the crazy mother, which was surely what the Man in Black was referring to when he spoke to Kate. I mean it is still possible that the Man in Black also had a crazy mother -- this is Lost after all, and the exchange was ambiguous -- but in any case I was supposed to remember that when he spoke, and it slipped my mind somehow. I don't know how I forgot about Swoosie Kurtz. I love Swoosie Kurtz. Sorry.]