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Feb 3, 2010

LOST Episode 1 Breakdown

A pretty solid season premiere last night, you can’t beat two hours of Lost after a 6 month hiatus, sure there were the usual solutions to their lame mysteries that made no sense, but we’ve grown to accept that over the years. So the big Season 6 Plot seems to be them doing two alternate timelines, one where Jack’s big plan to blow up the Swan worked, and one where it did not. They kicked us off with Jack on Flight 815, not crashing this time, just getting constantly annoyed by fellow passenger Rose (at least some things don’t change in alternate realities), and those disturbing old people PDA’s. Let’s just hope these alternate realities fizzle out quickly, do any of us care what would have happened to any of the people if the flight hadn’t crashed, I know I don’t, they’re mostly just regular folk, they even had to make a lame plot about Kate escaping from custody to try to make their lame alternate reality interesting.

Obviously Katie escaping from custody and outsmarting that cop for the 25th time is a little farfetched, but luckily it is not the only gaping plot hole in the absurd alternate reality. Right off the bat I suspected a dream or some lame flashforward fakeout from the producers since Jack’s hair was much longer than the buzz cut he initially sported on Flight 815. Then there was the fact that good old Desmondo was on the flight, even if the island had been blown up, and Dez’s around the world Sailing trip had been successful, why in the hell would he be flying from Austrailia to Los Angeles, the only logical explanation of course is that Desmondo’s powers carried over when the timelines split and he remembered the original timeline, and took Flight 815 so he could hang out with his old Island buddies.

Then they changed the Charlie timeline, originally when the plane crashed Chaz had just dropped his heroin in the toilet and was about to flush, so we’re now led to believe if the plane hadn’t crashed he would have picked the H out of the toilet and swallowed it? I’m not biting, plus if he was suicidal, there are a lot of better ways to do it than choking on a bag of H that is probably covered in that blue airplane toilet water. It was nice of Dominic Monaghan and Boone to come back for an episode for their lame alternate timeline, I was a little disappointed they couldn’t get Shannon, not like the actress has anything going on, and what was the explanation for where she was the whole flight while Boone and Locke chewed the fat. Also, humourous to think of Frogurt and Artz being pumped for the alternate timeline, so they could cash one more paycheck . Lastly, what was the deal with Christian Shepherd’s coffin going missing, didn’t Jackie find that coffin on the Island in Episode 2, so it had to be on the flight; there is a simple explanation for that one at least, that clerk Jack talked to clearly had a necrophiliac look to him, he was probably having some fun with Christian’s corpse in the back, and will return it to Jackie after a few days. That Christian is a dashing fella, we might also remember him as Bob Warner, one of the few lucky actors to pull off the double dip of the two best shows on tv, Lost and 24. Anyway obviously this alternate storyline is going to go on for a few more episodes and only continue to get lamer. If we wanted to see side by side alternate relaties we could watch that lame Gwyneth Paltrow movie or that episode of Scrubs where J.D. does/does not get caught checking out some girl’s rack.

Despite the classic Lostiness of throwing in a lame plot line, all the other storylines they have going on seem to be firing on all cylinders, the H-bomb team teleported through time to wherever Sun and her gang are at, another solid brawl between Jack and Sawyer and the “heart-breaking” goodbye between Sawyer and Juliet (I don’t care what Irwin’s readers think, Penny and Desmond, they aren’t). At least Miles got a chance to use his talking to the dead powers, as I requested. Also awesome to see the ghost of Jacob, turns out Hugo’s insanity really worked out for the good of the team, hopefully Jacob and Hurley form some kind of super team like Pat Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg. They did finally show us the temple and sure enough there was quite a team of Others hanging out there, leading us to the patented Lost contrived way to add new characters at the beginning of a season. Let’s delve into that quickly…

In Season 2 they had the tail section joining up with team (Ana Lucia, Libby, and Bernard, three misfires right there), some psycho Scotsman hanging out down the Hatch (Yes! Desmondo!), as well as a kidnapped ballooner they suspected of being an Other (Ben, another strong character). In Season three they introduced the Others (Juliet and Tom, not bad) and had two random wierdos pretending they were there the whole time (Nikki and Paolo, so hated the fans made the producers kill them off). In Season 4 Widmore’s team came to the island for some wacky hijinks (Farady, Miles, Charlotte, and Lapidus; Faraday and Miles added something to the table). In Season 5 they already had too many characters, but still felt the need to add a bunch of Dharma bit players through the time traveling angle (Rog Linus, Phil, Horus, Radzinsky), a couple old school Others (Alpert’s role was dialed up, a Young Hawking and Widmore also served to annoy) and some new plane crash survivors (Ilana is the only one left I think). Now in Season 6 it appears the Temple posse is the latest bunch of actors to join the cast, namely that John Lennon wannabe and samurai wannabe, possibly Cindy the annoying flight attendant also, after one episode I would say the chances of them panning out are pretty remote.

On the other side of the Island nothing really happened, Jacob’s old enemy revealed that he was the smoke monster, and that yes he really can’t pass through ash, then he yelled at Ben and kidnapped Alpert, some pretty uneventful happenings after the crescendo of killing Jacob, but it looks like they are setting up a faceoff against Jacob’s enemy and it looks like he’ll be staying in John Locke’s body or at least his smokey counterpart. Hopefully Team Jacob can rally and pull off the upset, a strong move by Jake preserving Sayid, that guy is kind of badass, definitely a good fella to have on your side in any upcoming war. So all in all a decent first episode, we’ll just have to wait and see where the rest of the season takes us…


12 people have chosen wisely: on "LOST Episode 1 Breakdown"

Univarn said...

Say what you want about "samurai wannabe" Hiroyuki Sanada is awesome, and his addition to the cast makes me jump up and down for joy (watch the movie The Twilight Samurai if you don't believe me).

I've always liked John Hawkes, but yeah his Lennon-esque character threw me for a big *huh?*.

It shall be interesting to see how the "alternate" timeline (or whatever we're calling it) plays into the series.

Rachel said...

I like the alternate timeline. One dispute of should they or shouldn't they drop the bomb was how would their lives be any better never having crashed on the island. I think the alternate timeline will show that life wouldn't have been all sunny had they never crashed, hence the island has a purpose.

Nick said...

I agree with Rachel.

Lavina said...

YES , Rachel life life wouldn't have been all sunny. I am enjoying the show but in future the timing for the show will be a problem for me . I don't know what will be happened then.

Fletch said...

As usual, Kid Vegas and I disagree when it comes to the really important things - I'm intrigued by the dual universe thing they got going, but I pretty much hated everything that happened on the island. Count me amongst the hordes of people wondering why in the hell this show needed MORE characters - not to mention ones with bizarre, "quirky" tendencies ("English tastes bitter on my tongue" or whatever.)

Sayid is now gonna be Jacob. Which is cool, but sucks, since I liked the guy they had for Jacob.

WTF were Richard and the rest of those fools doing for hours on end outside the foot? Campfire tales? Singing Kumbaya? It was bizarre to have them apparently out there doing nothing for what must have been hours if not days (though that's par for the course for Sun).

Glad I wasn't the only one that noticed the difference between Jack's Season 1 flight hair length and his Season 6 version. Guy they decided to just let that one go.

Some good stuff, Kid. Don't listen to the haters.

And for the record, in case there's any confusion, Kid Vegas is not an alias of mine. He's posted here in the past as a guest contributor - you may know him as Gaylord. Some things to know about Kid Vegas:

* His spelling and grammatical errors are matched only by his ego.

* He is to be taken with many grains of salt, but is not to be underestimated.

* He is a solid blackjack player and rules the Strip when he's not out scrounging for dates.

Ed Howard said...

I liked the alternate timeline. And the inconsistencies, or at least most of them, seem to be intentional, as in, setting off the H-bomb didn't just change things so the plane wouldn't crash, it changed things in other, smaller ways too. So: Hurley is now "the luckiest guy in the world," Charlie tried to swallow the heroin instead of flushing it, Sawyer seems way too upbeat to have just come back from killing the wrong guy, as well as more subtle touches like Cindy handing Jack one bottle of vodka instead of two. It's a totally different reality and I'm sure they'll continue to examine all the ways in which things were changed. I for one am looking forward to it.

I thought it was a great episode overall, and thought the island stuff was great. The new evil Locke is fantastic, Terry O'Quinn is clearly having so much fun playing that part. And the scene where he describes the real Locke's pathetic final thoughts: so heartbreaking and poignant, especially juxtaposed against the glimpses we get of the still-crippled alternate timeline Locke.

As for the new Others, whatever, but I did love the fact that we finally saw the Temple.

Rachel said...

I agree with Ed about all the small differences: they are clearly purposeful. I guess dropping the bomb caused a butterfly effect 3 decades later, including Jack skipping a haircut and Charlie actually getting one.

Personally, nothing this show can give us could ever possibly be worse than the Smoke Monster. I've hated that thing and its ridiculous CGI since the first time they showed it.

kid vegas said...

You guys are crazy, how could everyone want to see a season worth of this alternate reality, everyone is just living their regular lame lives, we already know what would have happened to everyone anyway from the flashbacks in the first 3 seasons.

It would be like glimpsing an alternate reality where I was raised Mormon and I had 5 kids and all I did all day was change diapers, yeah its different, but gambling, drinking, and carousing are the source of my powers. There are some things we just don't need to know, and what would happen to the Oceanic 6 if the plane hadn't crashed makes the list...

Anonymous said...

a few thoughts....
what's up with the lame graphics for the island underwater...also, juliet and sawyer...just yuck..and the smoke monster is simply ridiculous. where are my favs...dez,echo, and the kickin ass sayid? and ben is now just pathetic, what next...

Frasky said...

Ah! Quite lengthy post.Is everybody ready for the tonight's episode of Lost season 6.

Sasha James said...

It kind of sucked that we had to go through Juliet's death all over again, but whatever.

Jack and Kate are returning to their Season One roles, which is very reassuring. Kick-ass Jack and Kate are the best.

And I'm with most people here: the Flash-Sideways are awesome.

Unknown said...

I agree 100% about juliet and sawyer.. they're no dez and penny. when she was his constant i cried.. juliet is just annoying!