Lost Presents
In the first year of Lost, the formula was simple. There'd be a story of what's happening in the present on the island interspersed with one of the character's flashbacks. Now they're all over the place, and you can never be sure what they'll show.
The most recent episode, "LaFleur," was surprising. I expected to see more of what was happening at "present" on the island. Instead, after two episodes of getting everyone back, we took yet another step into the past to see what happened to those left behind. (I might add the sneaks they showed last week were a bit misleading as to who would be on the show and what it was about.)
I, and I think most fans, expected them to pick up with the left-behinders meeting up with the re-Losters, but that only happened at the end. As for the present present, with Locke et al, there wasn't even a whisper. It was pretty much all about Sawyer's gang and what they did over three years. No one knew they needed to "catch up" with the Losties off the island, but I guess the island wanted it that way.
This was a Sawyer episode. I think his transformation is complete. In the first season, he was almost the bad guy, and he remained a shady character well beyond that. Now he's pretty much a straightforward hero, brave and altruistic. (Maybe he needed to come out of Jack's shadow to be fully reborn.)
The irony is we've followed the characters on the show for 108 days on the island, and now they've lived another 3 years, before we catch up with them again. (We've seen some of what happened during the intervening period, but only a few selected days here and there.)
There were a fair amount of revelations filling in the backstory, which is always nice. We had a tantalizing glimpse of the statue, presumably a long time ago. It looked Egyptian--like Hurley's drawing last week. We got to see Alpert again, and once again, a Lostie had the advantage over him. (After years of getting their butts kicked because they didn't know their way around, I like these moments.) We saw the child Charlotte. Was that Daniel promising to himself he wouldn't tell her not to come back? And Charlotte disappeared with the latest flash--will we see her again? We learned a bit more about Horace, and why the Others let the Dharma Initiative last so long. We saw New Otherton, the submarine, the sonic gate and other favorites.
Now we know certain things that will happen. Biggest of all, we know the DI will bite it big, but not for a long time. I guess the Lost people won't warn them (or be believed if they do). The most interesting question is what of Ben? Is he on the island yet? He'll have to get there soon, since it's 1977 (I think) and he meets the Losties in 2004. When he arrived on the island, he was about 10. I guess he's a little younger than I thought. But if he is there, or if he gets there soon, will he see Sawyer and the rest? If so, how will this effect him later. Even if he misses them, are there any pictures of the strangers who came into camp, or rumors of Juliet the great obstetrician?
I don't know where there'll be going, but I assume with Jack, Kate and Hurley back, it's going to cause a lot of trouble and confusion. (It would be too hard-hearted for Sawyer to dump Juliet now, so that means either Jack gets Kate, or Juliet has to die to clear the way.) The most confused might be Jack, Kate and Hurley, who were told they needed to save their friends; their friends are doing just fine, while these three are now stuck back on the island, and in 1977. (Actually, no one's exactly stuck--if you're in with the DI, you can go back to the mainland, but you have to live in the past.) They may have to figure how to integrate the old Losties into the DI, but the bigger question is how do they get back to the "present." I wouldn't be surprised if that's the "incident" that Marvin Candle referred to in his video. And that Faraday helped engineer it. (Will Faraday come back with them, or be stuck in a loop, or what? Also, did he actively try to figure out if they could get back to the present during those three years, or just not care?)
As for Locke's time, I wouldn't be surprised if Sun is there. While it makes more sense that all the Losties who left one way return the same way (though without Aaron, it was noted things could be "unpredictable), we did hear Lapidus left with a woman for the main island, and that would be likely be Sun searching for Jin. If she does find him, she'll be pleased to know how well he now speaks English.
(I had a stray thought. The specific amount of money Miles asked Ben for? Maybe it's just how much Widmore was willing to pay him for handing over Ben.)
By the way, at the beginning of the show, we saw actor Patrick Fischler as part of Dharma security. Fischler is best known these days as rude comic Jimmy Barrett on Mad Men. I sure hope Mad Men is back by the time this season of Lost is finished. I'll need something to carry me through the long summer.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
3 Comments:
I totally agree that Ben can't have overlapped with the LaFleur era (1974 to 1977) of the DI. Sawyer and Juliet and Miles show their faces in the yellow house suburb every day. Not only would Ben remember this, but he would never have gotten jealous of Jack if he knew that Juliet was going to live with Sawyer for (almost?) three years.
The official date of the Purge is 1992. Ben certainly had to be between 18 and 30 years old at that time, based on his relationship with his dad. He was about ten years old when he arrived on the island. So he arrived between 1972 and 1984.
But I would like to put the purge slightly earlier, because I think it's a continuity error for the purge to be after Alex's birth in 1988. (Otherwise, who raised her after she was stolen? And why didn't Danielle notice all the Dharma cars zooming along the roads? And you'd think the DI would have updated their music if they lasted to 1992.) So if the purge was in the late 1980s, then Ben arrived anytime in the 1970s.
So if they are consistent, he will arrive soon after the LaFleur era. Charlotte must be gone by 1977. And Annie presumably is already present in the village.
I was happy with the episode, because it's nice for the island group to age 3 years, to match the Oceanic Six. On the other hand, I often feel cheated by "Three Years Later" -- that's okay for the backstory, but not the main story!
When the plane passed over the island, the time flashes grabbed Jack, Hurley, and Kate off the plane, but not Lapidus or Ben. I think that logically they should have caught Sun and Sayid too. Which means that the woman with Lapidus is someone we don't know yet.
Maybe Sun and Sayid ended up wherever Rose, Bernard, and the redshirts are?
Trivia: My TV isn't hi-def, but someone claimed that the statue was holding an ankh. Paul had an ankh. And "Horace" sounds like "Horus".
One oddity. It would be absurd to suppose that Ben isn't at least 18 years older than Alex, so he was born no later than 1970. At his birth, Horace drove by in a car with Olivia. Later, when Horace brings the Linuses to the island, Olivia is a schoolteacher.
I had assumed that Horace and Olivia were married. But now it appears that Horace is single in 1974, and married to Amy in 1977, and yet if my theory is right Ben's arrival on the island is after these events. So either Horace and Olivia are divorced and yet living near each other in the Barracks, or they were never really an item after all.
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