Total Spoilers.

Kill Bill, my favorite movie of all time, does a bit of a trick between its two parts. Volume 1 is a kick-ass action spectacle. Volume 2 is suddenly all character driven, and features one nearly bloodless kill where volume 1 featured dozens of exploding corpses. Going from volume 1 to 2 is a test — are you in this merely for the violence? or are you in this for the storytelling?

Over the years, Lost has put us through a similar kind of test. The show was originally designed to be just a realistic island survival story with no science fiction/fantasy elements. Season one reflects that — it is mostly realistic. Stories about hunting boar and whatnot. The sci-fi/fantasy button is rarely used and when it is, it is not hit that hard. A monster we don’t see. A mysteriously healed man.

The reason the show was a hit had partly to do with the fact that, as a mostly realistic show, it allowed a mainstream audience to enjoy the sci-fi bits without feeling like total nerds. A bit like how DJ Earworm gives me license to enjoy Kelly Clarkson. And the nerds like it, because it frankly represented them pretty well. It had cool sci-fi with none of the cheesier drawbacks like blue cat people riding dragons with USB ponytails (to quote my office-mate Carlos).

As Lost continued, the normal story began to wear away, revealing the sci-fi fantasy comic book underneath more and more. People’s tolerance for the show depended on what their tolerance for this kind of material was. The show often felt like it was designed to slowly indoctrinate people naturally resistant to sci-fi fantasy comic book insanity to creatures made of black smoke, nonsense electromagnetism, four footed statues, moving islands, and alternate universes. A sister of a friend who stopped watching around the opening of season two was appalled to learn years later they were traveling through time.

The premiere episode of season 6, the cleverly titled LA X (note the space that makes the X a variable), continued the trajectory of season 5. It more firmly — in fact shamelessly — embraces comic book material. Alternate Universes especially is a comic book thing more than anything else — that is more hard core nerd than your usual film with robots and aliens. But as comic books become more mainstream through superhero movies we are going to see it more and more (and already have in Fringe).

Bam! we are in an alternate universe (with Jack looking in a mirror at his mysterious wound on the plane to Jack back on the island).

Bam! Jacob has pulled an Obi-Wan Kenobi and is back already as a ghost (remember the Hurley Star Wars jokes in season 5?).

Bam! Our villain (still nameless, which is irritating — this was the time to name him) — can turn into black smoke and kill people (confirming a long held suspicion that the black smoke can look like people and is the various ghostly things people have seen on the island). You can protect yourself from the smoke monster with a circle of ash, like magic (you will remember the circle of ash around the cabin in season 3).

Bam! our guys are running around evil temple labyrinths with evil whispers (the whispers are less ridiculous when we heard them before in a more neutral context). Lost continues its often fun genre smashing at the temple, where of course the barefooted Asian guy both cuts up tiny trees, hates the sound of English (like Pai Mei in Kill Bill) and knows martial arts. (Senior Chang from Community would have freaked out). The Others have gone from hobo natives, to suburban scientists, to chilled out temple-spa people, a bit like how Baltar on Battlestar Galactica went from being a scientist, to Christ, to Karl Marx, to Osama Bin Laden, to a Farmer. When you don’t know what to do, do everything, apparently.

Bam! A giant wooden ankh is used as an envelope (There is not an easier way to transmit a note? Hurley never looked in that case? The case he thought his best friend’s guitar was in? I guess he is still nervous he is crazy).

Bam! We have a magic healing spa and an hourglass timer bought at a renaissance festival where we once just had “people on this island heal quickly. What are we going to eat?” (also our guys freak out about Sayid being drowned. As my friend Brady pointed out there is something ridiculous about their lack of trust for magic when they are following the orders of a ghost. Also wasn’t that the Pet Cemetery pool that brought Ben Linus back wrong? Also, didn’t it not work when the Asian guy tested it? And if Ben had access to it all along why not use it to heal his spine cancer in season 3?)

Bam! Sayid turns out to only be “mostly dead” (is he Jacob now?I thought for sure that would be the final line, but no joy.)

The show fully embraced its role as a straightforward fantasy show. If you like that kind of stuff you will like it; if not, not. Lost shows a certain amount of principle in this regard. This is who we are and we are not ashamed of it.

As an occasional self-loathing comic book fan, it can be a little much for me at times. I did not hate it, but I can’t quite fully embrace it either. It could also be the lag of 8 months. It may take me more than a few episode to get into it fully. Right now it can feel, in parts, too much like the Kevin Sorbo Hercules TV show, with none of the irony.

Two things I like — It looks like the Alternate Universe will give us a John Locke and Jack Story one week, maybe a Claire (who we did not see for all of season 4) Kate Story the next. I don’t know how it will all go but one thing I like — one thing that makes comic book alternate universes fun — is that anything can happen. The first episode is already having fun as audiences get to compare: John went on the Walkabout (or at least claimed to), Desmond is on the plane, Jack’s dad is not on the plane, Hurley feels lucky, Boone would have put his trust in Locke had the plane crashed, and so on. And anyone can die without having to get rid of the actor from the show, who will continue in the main story, which at least makes that world more genuinely dangerous. My hope is that since the final story arc is Jacob’s Enemy wants off the island and our guys have to stop him, the alternate universe will actual SHOW us what happens if he does get off, the damage he will wreak if their destiny is not fulfilled, if they don’t crash on that island and hold him back. (I have not really thought this idea through: these are first reactions.)

The other thing I liked was the sense the alternate universe gave of the way strangers COULD be connected. The sense that if things were different every stranger in your life could have been someone massively important. That was a nice human moment. As was the moment when Locke’s chair came down the aisle of the plane and you could see on his face how he enjoyed the fact that Boone did not know he was crippled. I maybe wish the scales had been a little more weighted to things like this, and not so much with the Kung Fu Bonzai Tree No Shoes Guy in the spa.

Loose notes:
-DHARMA SHARK! Season 3 callback.
-They did not really have the budget for that opening shot where the island is underwater, but the idea is pretty neat.
-The music seemed a little overbearing, maybe? or that could have been my new speakers.
-Greg Grunberg came back to do the voice of the pilot! Nice.
-Sol from Deadwood! — the 6th person from Deadwood to be on Lost.
-Cindy and the kids was nice. — I liked that they are going to — or maybe did — address what happened there. (I feel like I want a little more here, but I could be wrong)
- I have a note here about that final scene between Alternate Universe Jack and Locke — that Locke says something suggesting regular life was pitiful, implying that we should enjoy the comic book silliness, because of the way it lets us escape the real world. But I lost it.
-Richard WAS on that slave ship, as fans had guessed a while back.

*****

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