the blast door map

you see. patience. we have officially entered the meaty interior of the expository phase of the dramatic arc of season 4.

if only we could have had a 2-hour premiere, and seen these eps back to back. this is the feeling you want to walk away from a major episode of lost with. but the events of the finale had to be dealt with. once done, we're now in the season.

i'll say it again. i keep saying it. i'm a damned 32 year old man who works in reality tv. this is the best show in television history. and that is because television is changing, and the show is changing television.

but i digress. let's talk about the episode.

directed by: stephen williams, who i would call jack bender's #2. after jack, stephen has helmed the majority of the series' best episodes.

written by: drew goddard (cloverfield), and brian k. vaughn (y the last man)

and we begin with the finale of the find815 viral game, in which the wreckage of flight 815 is discovered. i must be honest, i did not pay any attention to find 815, because the producers had nothing to do with its development. i must say though that i am impressed with how seamlessly it fits into this episode.

from there we are treated to a single, brief flashback of each of the 'rescuers.' and a MAJOR rule was broken tonight. it's in the show bible, that no one dead gets a flashback, and yet we see naomi's crucial scene with mr. abbaddon from hurley's flashforward last week (nikki and paolo seemed to get a port-mortem flashback, but we didn't discover until the end of that ep that they were not technically dead yet).

so here's the weekly laundry list of puzzlements and commentary worthy thoughts:

1. rescuer connections
2. the discovery of juliet as a 'native.'
3. mr. abbaddon
   
4. photos photos photos
   
5. taller ghost walt
6. asking the audience's questions
   
7. ben's man
   

and now we truly see the ramped up pace of this new season. let me take you back to the past for a moment. a past when there was no end date set. a past when nikki/paolo devices were used to fill out a 23 episode season. a past when it took a full hour to find out sun was pregnant, that jack fucked a psycho thai tattoo lady. were we still in those days, each rescuer would have had a full episode of flashbacks. last week, an entire episode would have been spent searching for naomi's disappeared body.

we are seeing some serious momentum here. let's look at each.



daniel faraday: jeremy davies as a physicist (or is he? naomi caled him a mental case in her flashback piece). fantastic. his flashback was briefest. all we know is that he cared enough about flight 815 to cry when they found it. we sure have come a long way from the days of thinking the island was purgatory, haven't we? his name references michael faraday, who studied electromagnetism, a moderately important factor in fight 815's crash.



miles straume: i found this rather interesting. the show rarely confirms supernatural ability in the way his brief flashback and moment with naomi's body does. even the 'psychic' who tried to convince claire to raise her baby had his ability thrown into doubt. but here we seem to have objective camera-omniscient verification of a character's physic ability. now, it's totally possible that they'll undermine it later, but it definitely gave me pause. for now, the show is treating his ability as fact. i freaking love ken leung. his few bits in the last few eps of 'the sopranos' were riveting.



charlotte staples lewis: kristin bell was offered this role. and you know, i'm glad she didn't take it. i was pissed at her for choosing (the far inferior) heroes over this. but she's a fag hag and wanted to hang out with that homo zachary quinto instead. fine. i'm much happer to have rebecca mader. exotic. unknown. mysterious. sympathetic. she's the new libby (speaking of, we've been promised a libby wrap-up this season)! having her land in proximity of locke's team was a stroke of genius. the vest. brilliant. her desert scene is obviously inspired by a very similar scene in close encounters of the third kind, in which francois truffaut finds a ship in the middle of the desert (shades of the black rock, yes?). she's sort of an indiana jones. she clearly knows something about what dharma is - and dharma now clearly has a global presence. her name: c.s. lewis.



fank lapidus: time to go back and re-watch the pilot. get it? huh? get it? re-watch the pilot? har de har har. no seriously. did the pilot (jj abrams' best friend greg grunberg, prisoner of heroes) in the pilot have a wedding ring on? someone will check. i'll let you know. ok so frank was supposed to have piloted the plane that day. i should have been watching the set decoration more closely during frank's flashback, but i'll be honest with you here. i paused the dvr and immediately called the 1-888 number on the in-show tv screen. yes, i'm that guy, stop judging me. want to hear the oceanic hotline? 1-888-548-0034. was the cow he saw a monster-vision?



now. think about it. you run a very expensive colony on a distant island. you know that this colony is in the midst of some very strange phenomena. one day, contact with that colony disappears. who do you hire to investigate?

• the island has a mystical quality. we need a proven psychic.
• the island is home to en electromagnetic anomaly. we need a physicist.
• the island is home to an ancient civilization. we need an anthropologist.
• the island interferes with electronics. we need a great pilot, with personal motivation for success.
• the situation is going to be incredibly dangerous. we need a military, or field ops professional.

2. there's nothing greater that seeing characters instantly shift objectives. frank's instant deduction that juliet was not on the plane was as riveting as -our- season 1 deduction that ethan wasn't either. in fact, seeing frank, daniel, and miles have that moment filled me with a small bit of empathy, remembering the thrill and fear that accompanied that initial discovery.

now. let's talk about 'the natives.' dharma knew of the natives. so much so that there was a special code to input in the computer if 'there has been an incursion by the hostiles.' it makes complete sense that after the anomaly, after the sky turned purple, after losing contact with the island, they would realize that the entire initiative had been compromised by the hostiles. what they didn't realize is that it had been going on undetected for 16-17 years.

3. so it stands to reason that mr. abbaddon is part of the current incarnation of the dharma initiative - whatever part of the initiative is still flying over the island and dropping pallets of food whenever the proper code is entered. having lost contact, abbaddon's assembled a team to go in and take out the traitor. how they would know the traitor is ben is beyond me at this point.

4. but there is that photo of ben.



and it sure doesn't look like it was taken on the island. ryan has an elaborate theory that every one of ben's actions can be tied to his childhood girlfriend annie. i agree wholeheartedly. ben kept the doll she carved him after all these years. heed my word. at some point, before the end of the show, a woman in her 40's will appear, and in some jaw dropping moment we will discover that she is annie.

interesting that miles has the photo of ben, and naomi had the photo of desmond. from her rule-breaking flashback, naomi was hired as the leader of this rag-tag team, why wouldn't she have a photo of the primary objective? (and why would she have it as a bookmark in a portuguese copy of catch-22?). for all the excitement that accompanies discovering that they're after ben - we can't forget that naomi seemed to be surprised about finding flight 815 survivors and passed herself off as working for penelope, using her photo of penny with desmond as proof. was the truth kept from her? was naomi telling what the thought was the truth?

and while we're talking about penelope.. how is it that her signal appeared as soon as charlie turned off the jammer?

5. reference to walt. taller. this is huge. it was unclear if we were supposed to 'notice' that walt had aged significantly in the finale. but yes, he's aged. i think if we see him again, it will only be in flash-forward. is he one of the oceanic 6? is he in the coffin? who knows.

6. thank you. what i love about this show, is that when it works best, the characters are all asking the same questions i'm asking. even if they don't get answers, the fact that they are sharing my experience is the essence of skillful storytelling. locke points the gun at ben and says 'what is the monster.' brilliant. just to have him ask that, i'm so appreciative.

7. ben's man on the boat. now how was that for a pre-boomer? (a pre-boomer is the last line of the episode that immediately precedes the ending 'boom' of the lost logo. last week's pre-boomer: weak.) and we must know who ben's man is, yes? hands up for michael.

prediction: michael's flashback will take us back to even more moments unseen before he left to collect jack, kate, hurley, and sawyer. ben has some greater leverage over michael, what it is remains to be discovered. i'm going to guess that ben shows michael that his influence reaches off-island (reinforced by juliet's confrontation with michael in the missing pieces where she revealed that ben allowed her off-island sister live). ben convinced michael that even though they get off the island, he still has the power to kill walt, or do whatever. this leverage forces michael to continue to play out ben's plan, making him 'ben's man.' the boat has been in the vicinity for awhile, and mikhail has been monitoring their communications. ben has known of everyone on the boat for some time now.

minor gripe of the week: um. i'm honestly having trouble thinking of one. a lot of rules were broken this week. it's the first time we've had location titles, flashback of the dead. it's not a gripe. you get the feeling they're breaking rules because they just don't have the time anymore. which is the greatest reason to break the rules ever.