I'm just going to post my analysis from my Facebook Lost group I've started. Suffice it to say, I'm giving this an Excellent: THIS is more like it! All Oceanic Six, which in the first handful of episodes would leave me very dismayed but with some MAJOR plot movement! Plus, Ben gets his ass handed to him, the Six, er Five, er, Seven go back to the Island and LAPIDUS is with them! So, did anyone notice that Ben was a little drenched when he was talking to Jack on the phone? Maybe he had to go for a swim? Who’s on a boat? I get this funny feeling that maybe, just maybe, that promise that Ben had to take care of had to do with Widmore – In other words, Penny’s dead. What does that mean for Desmond? I don’t know, but I am fairly sure that the Island isn’t done with Des yet. The truth is Mrs. Hawking suggested all the way back in season three’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes” that time will course-correct if you do not go along with it. Desmond was not supposed to leave the Island nor was he to end up with Penny as Ben was always to kill Penny after Widmore’s men killed Alex. Also, whatever happened to Aaron led to Kate needing to go back and why ever Sayid is with a Marshall (hmmm… a Marshall, eh?) is why he is on a flight to Guam. So, Jack, Kate and Hurley are reunited with Jin on the Island at the end! Cool! But where or better yet when are Ben, Sun, Lapidus, that dude that talked to Jack, and better yet, where’s Locke’s casket? If they needed to recreate the event as closely as they could, does this mean Lapidus is going to get killed by the monster in a tree? Will Sayid’s marshall end up dying? Will the plane split in three and the tallies be put through hard times, maybe becoming the group shooting and Sawyer and company in the last episode? Will all of the people in the forward cabin die? At the same point in time, did the plane even crash? Was there an event that led to Ajira 316 to crash like Desmond not pushing the button? I’m not necessarily sure about that. Maybe the flash we saw just grabbed the people the Island needed to come back. I’m actually rewatching parts of the episode as I write my analysis. The discussion with Ben and Jack about the apostle Thomas as well as Locke’s note obviously harken back to the man of science, man of faith debate going all the way back to season one. Yeah, so Jack and Kate slept together again. Great. The moment she sees good ol’ Sawyer, we all know what’s going to happen there! Also, with these events that we obviously need to see yet (Why Sayid went against Ben pre-season 5? What happened to Ben at the pier? For that matter what brought Sayid into the Marshall’s hands? What brought Kate back to Jack and to make the decision to go back to the Island?) mean that we may see more flashbacky episodes as opposed to the “36 hours earlier” captions? When Oceanic 815 went down, Hurley had a comic book of Green Lantern and Flash in Spanish, the major point of that issue was the polar bears. When Hurley’s waiting for Ajira 316, he’s reading Y: El Ultimo Hombre, or in English, Y: The Last Man. According to Wikipedia, Y is the story of Yorrick Brown, a young amateur escape artist and his monkey Ampersand. Every mammal with a Y chromosome has been somehow wiped out, with the exception of Yorrick and Ampersand. The cover is to #15 (which just happened to be on the Wiki page) is part of an arc that tells the story of Yorrick and some of his women friends trying to save astronauts who were left on the International Space Station when the plague hit. It also involves hidden twin geneticists. Don’t know when that might come into play, but one of those points may be important. All I know for sure is next week is bound to be pretty frikkin’ cool! Spoiler: Promo for next week Anyone else notice that Ben was there when Locke was getting ready to kill himself? The best exchange of the night: JACK: (asking about Ben) Is he telling the truth? MRS. HAWKING: Probably not.
I rated the episode below average because I felt like nothing happened during the episode. It ended the same way it started, and that's a big strike against it in my books. Here's hoping next week is better.
I thought this was a GREAT episode, and I am very glad that they are back on the island. My favorite quote of the whole show? Lapidis: We're not going to Guam, are we?
Below Average - Worst episode of the season by far. This episode was just a "flashback" (no pun intended) to the older style of Lost - all mysteries for the sake of mysteries. People talking to each other but really saying nothing. Everything cool so far of Season 4 was out the window. Everything frustrating about Season 2 and 3 on display. And then Flight 316... Geez. The only interesting part of the episode was the pendulum room and the discussion about it. That's it.
So none of them even tries to get any answers anymore? Hawking seems to know about the Island, the Dharma Initiative, etc., and none of them says to her "Who are you? How do you know all this? How did the Island get to be such a crazy place? What was the purpose of the Dharma Initiative?"...etc.? Two other oddities: - In previous episodes, the Others seemed to be able to make it back and forth between the Island and civilization at will. Now, it sounds like you need to find the right window of time, and crash a plane along the appropriate route??? (Maybe this is just a consequence of the Donkey Wheel being moved....or maybe Ben no longer has the resources of the Others since he left the Island???) - Widmore gave Hawking's address to Desmond.....so one would think that he knows about the Lamppost......so shouldn't Widmore then easily be able to figure out how to get back to the Island? And two other random observations: - Hawking has some kind of paper or newspaper clipping or something on the wall that has to do with her time on the Island, which is dated September 23, 1954. Flight 815 crashed on September 22, 2004, almost exactly 50 years later. Sept. 22/23 is also the date of the equinox that marks the start of fall in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere (whether it's the 22nd or 23rd depends on which year you're talking about and which time zone you're in). - I'm guessing that we'll soon be transitioning back to the oldschool Lost format, with a "main" storyline, and character-specific flashbacks. The main storyline would pick up from the crash of Ajira flight 316, with the Oceanic Six flashbacks covering what happened to Aaron, why Hurley and Sayid got on the flight, etc., and folks like Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, etc. getting flashbacks regarding how they joined up with Dharma in the 1970s (assuming that's when they are). I haven't read spoilers on this point, but I would guess that that's how they'll do it.
What to do you mean "anymore?" That's LOST for you. As someone said above, this really was a typical LOST episode complete with very few answers and tons of new questions. I've kind of gotten to the point where I enjoy reading these threads more than watching the show. I've come to the conclusion that the answer to all this is going to be the LOST version of Star Trek's technobable, and I'm not going to understand it, and/or like it. So I'm more focussed on the more mundane questions now. For example just what the hell is Ben up to, and what were him and Sayid doing last season. And why did they have a falling out?
The cold opening was pretty interesting, just trying to figure out exactly what was going on. Aside from that I didn't like it. After a strong start to the season I thought this episode was a huge miss. Watching this episode was like watching a alcoholic friend creeping back in to the bottle just when you thought they were finally clean. Like someone mentioned before... nobody asks any fucking questions. We're just back to people doing things just to move the plot and set up future plots. This whole episode was just an exercise in lazily loading ammunition for future episodes. Fariday's mom's speech just rubbed me the wrong way. It was corny and kind of felt like the writers trying to hold the audiences hand as they just told you outright what they wanted you to know. I half expected her to just start looking at the camera and talk directly to the audience. The revelations also weren't all that exciting. The whole thing about recreating the circumstances of the first crash sounded stupid to me, which just added to crappy nature of the whole encounter. (It gave me flashbacks to the horrible ending of AI where David talks to the blue fairy.) To make things worse they just out of the blue, dump Jacks grandfather in to the mix and then expect us to give a shit when he finds his father's shoes in the luggage. If they were going to be that ham fisted with it they should have just had the grandfather bust through the church wall kool-aid man style and just hand Jack the shoes. Kate sleeping with Jack again reminded me of that video clip of sayid being a stand up comic, and it actually made me laugh during the episode. It was something like "Jack and Kate went up the hill, then Kate came down with Sawyer because she is very promiscuous.... and uh...." The new mysteries! I'm actually curious about these but I'm dissapointed that they're all kind of just brought in succession like some cheesy old mystery movie. I hope at least those are handled better than this episode. I'm guessing it must be Sun who ruthlessly persuaded at least some of the 6 to come back, particualrly Kate. It'll set up an interesting conflict later, which I think means Sun may have to die. I dunno, how the episode was set up felt very manipulative. I can see that they'll slowly reveal each of the secret reasons why some of the 6 went back and why Ben looked so fucked up, and I already feel tired.
It is an interesting point that they don't ask more questions. I remember this drove me crazy back when Juliet joined the survivors; why don't you ask her about the Others like what their damn name is??? This ep didn't bother me at the time, I think because they're all so scared and hunted that they're grateful to get a magic answer of how to go back (Jack specifically of course). There's also the fact that the others clearly didn't trust Hawking so why bother to ask questions to someone who will just lie to you?
Average. Not a whole lot grabbed me about this episode, but it wasn't bad either. I'm tired of the shenanigans on the mainland. The means to return to the island seemed contrived. There weren't a lot of great character moments either. The funniest moment was when Ben said he had to tie up a loss end and then next appeared all beaten up. But, that really isn't that funny. Unfortunately, even though at least some of them are back on the island we'll still have to watch mainland stuff. We've got Johns life next week. And undoubtedly answers to what happened to Aaron, how Sayid and Hurley (dang, forgetting the spelling) showed up, what happened to Ben, how Sayid got arrested, etc. That all just seems a bit too drawn out. Do we know who that chick with Saied is? I'm either forgetting (totally possible) or she's new. Mr Awe
did I miss what Sun did with her kid? How don't how she could leave her behind knowing she was headed back to an island that may be really hard to get away from again.
It's possible that the plane did crash in the present but that the O6 simultaneously flashed to the past. We don't know at this point. But it seems probable that the O6 is in the past and based on the series, you'd expect a flash to go with that. Mr Awe
I'd probably label this a transitional episode as it seems to have brought the O6 (and extras) back to the Island quickly so they can delve into the ongoing story there. IT's opened the doors for more stories to be told, which everyone's mentioned already. It's not as much story progression as we've had in previous eps this series, but a lot of doors were opened. I'm mostly looking forward to seeing what the 'loose end' was with Ben. My first assumption was that he'd killed Penny so that Desmond would come after him. I also assumed most of the other passengers (including the one focused on) were there on behalf of Widmore and must be the only person who didn't think Kate killed Aaron - my first thought was that she gave him to Kate's mum as she would still be in LA. Top three moments were seeing Jin at the end working for Dharma, Frank showing up on the plane (though wthout the beard.. not right) and Bens 'Who cares?' Though despite Bens hints of evil (again) when he told Jack Locke's death wasn't his fault, it just seemed as if he felt to blame. Which we'll find out next week. Lockes note was brilliant though - a short, sweet guilt trip. My vindictive side likes it. The flashing though... I'm wondering if the passengers have split time lines. Maybe the O6 joining their friends in the 70's and the rest crashing in the future. Though I'm more curious to see how long everyone stays in the 70's.
Man I love this show! Always zigging, when I think their gonna zag. The new cast member, Jack talked to at the airport was also in Vantage Point with Mathew Fox. I wonder which time period, Sun, Ben, Sayid and Lepidus are in. Oh and Rose and Benard gonna join the DI, like Jin evidently has.
If Ben has killed Penny, I may lose interest in the show. Her relationship with Desmond was the only one I cared about any more. The series itself is fascinating, with all of its mysteries, but I won't care as much if Desmond is only around to seek vengeance on Ben.
I've been thinking about this. I think the marina scene was misdirection. Yes I know, the writers of Lost would never do that. But I think Desmond and Penny had to arrive by plane as the boat ride would take much too long. Instead I think Ben fought with Sayid, got him arrested, and supplied evidence that Sayid killed a golfer in Guam. That way he was put on the plane for extradition purposes. Okay, I don't remember where the golfer was but he could have killed someone there. Man I love this show. But I'm still waiting to find out Chrisitan was on the Island previously...
Siyed mirrors Kate the first time(being brought onboard in hand cuffs by a US Marshal) & I think Kate is mirroring Claire.(worried about the right choice for her baby) Who is Sun mirroring? I think Ben went after Penny because that was his "promise" to an old friend. Killing Penny also gives Desmond a reason to come to the island. Gertch, the length of the boat ride might not matter if the Island moves. marc0702, Sun left her baby with their grandparents. Seeing how she was set out to kill Ben, she already knew she wasn't returning to him. She bought out her fathers company and probably set up a trust fund for him. So her child is safe and set for life. Arron is with him I think because the clue was telling the Grandmother that the baby has a new playmate.