Lost: Because You Left & The Lie

By Teresa Jusino

I’ve missed you, Lost. Don’t you ever sneak off like that on me again, you hear?  Welcome to Season Five, people!

First of all, can I say how much I loved the hour-long recap that kicked off the Lost-stravaganza last night?  Not only because I needed it (there’s a lot of Lost mythology even for me, and I’ve been watching the show regularly for years!), but because I got a kick out of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse Mystery Science Theater-ing their own show!  Priceless.  Even they know how insane it’s all gotten, and they don’t give a crap.  Mr. Lindelof – if you’re ever looking for a second wife, leave a comment below and I’ll have my people contact your people.

Now, I could try to recap the two hours of running, time travel, hauling bodies, and seeing dead people, but if I did I think my nose would start bleeding and my brain would get all screwy, so you can read the recaps of Because You Left and The Lie on your own.  Or, you could just watch the scene where Hurley explains the truth of the Island to his mother, which provides the BEST RECAP OF THE ENTIRE SERIES THAT I’VE EVER HEARD!  Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already seen it and are dying to know what I thought about it.  As you should.

Lost is the kind of show that inspires Mystery Science Theater-ing.  It’s funny, but when I heard a friend of my housemate was coming over to watch the season premiere, I made sure she “knew the rules” in advance.  No talking during the episode except during commercials.  And yet, like Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we sat there speaking our interpretations of things and shouting announcements at the screen.  It’s the Orientation Films guy!  It’s Daniel – awesome! It’s the show that Nikki was on!  Who?  Nikki!  As in “Nikki and Paulo!”  He’s watching the show she was on!  Oh my God, Hurley’s dad is putting caviar on a freaking pepperoni sandwich!  He’s like, the EPITOME of classlessness.

And yet, this running commentary highlighted a problem with Lost.  The audience is too savvy, so it’s become more and more difficult to surprise us.  Just as everyone and their mom knew that Michael was Ben’s “man on the freighter” last season for about five episodes before it was “revealed”, I called just about every major character reveal in the episode.  As soon as Hurley was pulled over, I said It’s going to be Ana Lucia.  As soon as we saw a mysterious figure in a hood with white hair poking out from underneath, I said It’s going to be the woman who sold Desmond Penny’s engagement ring! The group I was watching it with knew that Jack was going to get involved with getting Sayid, and a friend of mine called Sun as the “mystery person” who called Kate.  Lost, you’ve made us too smart and now the students are besting the teacher.  Step up your game!

On a not-so-acceptable note, the dialogue in this episode was also predictable, and my group of friends and I were uttering certain lines seconds before the characters did.  Not cool, writers.  You’re better than this.  Ditch the clichés, please.

However, this is not to say that these episodes weren’t great.  They were.  We’re starting to get into the meat of what the series is about.  Daniel repeating the principal rule of time travel: Time is on a string.  We can go forward, we can go backward, but we can’t create a new string. The truth that we can’t change the past, or that if it hasn’t happened, it can’t happen is poignant considering what these poor characters have been through.  But what does that mean for the future?  Ana Lucia warns Hurley not to get arrested, yet in order to escape Ben he chooses to do just that.  Daniel affects the future through his use of Desmond as his constant, and Desmond chooses to help once he remembers that Daniel told him to go to Oxford.  Certain things are laid out, but the characters still have choices to make, and their paths are still uncertain.  Lost makes the fight between science and faith, between destiny and free will really interesting.  These first two episodes of the season set up even more questions (fun!) while beginning to answer the ones that already exist.  They were a great beginning, and I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks.

Questions/Theories:

• Why does Marvin Candle go by that name, when his real name is apparently Dr. Chang?
• The Island’s time-travel element is probably why women can’t carry babies conceived and born there to term.  It’s also probably why people seem to heal like Wolverine (didn’t Locke just recently get shot in the chest??).  How much of the Island’s healing power is related to “electromagnetics”, and how much is related to time?  And how much is related to things supernatural?
• Several friends of mine think that Sun set up the investigation into Kate’s relationship with Aaron to further her dealings with Widmore.  She certainly has a motive….
• I still think that Alpert is Locke’s real father.

And I’ll close with my favorite quote from the episode:

• Maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.

Amen, Hurley.  Amen.

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TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. She has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan, which beat up her Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man crush in a fight proving once again that writing skill trumps gadget skill even when that gadget skill is attached to bulging biceps.  Teresa is also an aspiring fangbanger.  Visit her in The Red Room.

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