Lost Top Ten

Here are are my top ten moments from Lost, Season 5. By moments I don't mean events that are the most significant in the Lost storyline, but rather the moments that had the strongest effect on me.

Almost every episode had at least one memorable moment, and many had more. I decided to pick at most one per show. Here they are, in ascending order:

10. This Place Is Death - Jin reunites with the gang. Sawyer's uninhibited glee showed us better than anything else he was a changed person.

9. Tie, Some Like It Hoth/Follow The Leader - Miles and Hurley discuss their different methods of talking to the dead/Chang gives Hurley an impromptu current events quiz.

8. The Variable - Faraday is killed by his mother.

7. LaFleur - Stuck in the early days of the Dharma Initiative, Sawyer walks out to meet Hostile Richard Alpert and surprises him with unexpected information.

6. 316 - The Oceanic 6 (sans Aaron), plus Ben and Lapidus, reunite on a new flight. They nervously eye each other--they have a good idea what's about to happen.

5. He's Our You - Sayid figures out his purpose and shoots young Ben.

4. The Incident - We finally meet Jacob.

3. The Life And Death Of Jeremy Bentham - Ben stops Locke from committing suicide--and then murders him.

2. Jughead - Locke marches into the Others' camp demanding to see Richard. The hothead who wants to kill him turns out to be Charles Widmore--and another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

1. Dead Is Dead - Ben meets Smokey. First he's shown his past failings and when the smoke clears, there's his beloved daughter, Alex. He apologizes, but she'll have none of it. Instead the reunion gets ugly as she slams him against the wall and threatens to destroy him.

A few notes:

Jack and Kate, arguably the two leads, barely figure in my top ten.

In almost every episode, Hurley or Sawyer or Miles say something funny. The tie at #9 are my two biggest laughs of the seasons.

For #8, it's not the shooting so much, which we could feel was coming, as who shot Faraday. And it actually gets better in retrospect, when you realize how tragic it makes everything Faraday's mother did up to that point.

On the other hand, my top pick seems less powerful in restrospect, if certain indications from the finale are correct. If it's just Smokey-Alex telling Ben to listen to Smokey-Locke, it's not as big a deal. (However, this may not be the case, as I will try to explain some time next week.)