Lost 6.1 & 6.2, “LA X”
Lost 6.1 & 6.2, “LA X”
Feb 09What a long, strange trip it’s been.
I don’t think I’ve followed anything as faithfully as I’ve followed Lost. Aside from my marriage, it’s the longest commitment I’ve ever made.
So it’s hard to believe it’s almost over, and moreso, that at least most of the questions that have stacked up over the years are about to be answered. I’ve occasionally lost faith in Lost, and it’s been because of their inability at times to keep all their plates spinning. Creating a mythology on television has to represent a pact with viewers–you keep watching, and eventually, you’ll find out what the hell is happening.
Instead, thanks to a mid-series period of floundering storylines and repetitious character beats (Jack’s a control freak! WE GET IT THANKS), that pact began to wither. Fortunately, the producers and ABC put a dotted line in the sand to end the series in 2010, and the show almost immediately gained much-needed focus.
Now here we are at the end, the only end, my friends. (The Doors AND the Dead quoted in the same article?! Unpossible!) And it feels…good. Great, even.
SPOILERS AHEAD, in case you haven’t seen this episode yet.
One of the approaches the Lost producers seemed to take in overcoming the mid-series blahs was to completely reinvent the show’s structure. From the beginning, every episode has essentially been both flashback and present time, focusing usually on a single character. The single-character focus remained, but they moved instead to flash-forwards, creating this new level of mystery: How did they all get back, and why did they need to return to the island? Those flash-forwards became hopping around the timeline, to 1977 and other eras.
Now we have the flash-sideways, taking us to an alternate reality/timeline/universe where Oceanic 815 never did crash. Still focusing largely on single characters, just following them in a completely different version of our main timeline.
It’s a bold move because it introduces yet another question mark in a season that should be mostly exclamation points and periods. At the same time, there’s something nostalgic and bittersweet about it too; as the show ends, we’re basically being taken back to the beginning, only this time, we see how things could have gone if the horrible inciting event of the plane crash had never happened. Time will tell whether we are meant to wish these characters could live in the non-crash world or the crash world, but just that initial dynamic, going all the way to the start as we approach the finish, is sorta moving by itself.
Most of all, I love how the show is so firmly, so squarely about its characters now, even as all the ads and hype and excitement really centers around “What’s the smoke monster?” and “Why did the island disappear?” Sure, it got to be a drag to watch yet another Jack-centric or Kate-centric episode back in the day, but there’s no question that long-term viewers are invested in these people, thanks to the constant focus on their lives and feelings even as the island mythology was being crafted. It’s reminiscent of the alien mythology mixed in with the will-they-won’t-they of Mulder & Scully during The X-Files, only perfected.
Then you have Smokey the Locke. Of all the villains we’ve seen on this show, from Ben Linus to Charles Widmore, the last and greatest is one of the island’s own. And what an amazing part for Terry O’Quinn to sink his teeth into for these final episodes. He is knocking it out of the park.
“LA X” has given us a nice start to this final season of Lost, setting up a potentially intense conclusion to the series with some deep philosophical underpinnings. Can we change our destiny through the decisions we make, or are we inevitably destined to end up on a deserted island that’s actually not deserted but instead is packed full of polar bears, Egyptian statues and Dharma Initiatives? Only time will tell, but it will be told, and I can’t wait to hear.
