the blast door map

written by: showrunners damon lindelof and carlton cuse. it's their show. they define it. and they are certainly defining a huge part of it with this episode.

directed by: stephen williams. 'lost's' #2 director, who alternated episodes last season with #1 director jack bender.

in short: a few missteps and a couple raised eyebrows at some big contrivances have me waiting for the full picture before judging. many scenes did not work, for which i mostly blame the director. a strong opening and closing nearly save it.

1. hawking
2. jack
3. the missing pieces
4. 46 hours earlier?
   
5. recreation
6. reincarnation
7. doubting thomas
8. best lines
9. noticeables
   
10. preboomer
    

1. hawking.



this scene was unfortunate. the set was damn cool, but fionnula flanagan's delivery of the expository speeches was overwrought with an almost put-on 'mystery voice.' i wish i could see jack bender's version of the scene, which probably would have given us a more matter of fact and abrupt ms. hawking. she would have left her listeners in a daze, and viewers reaching for the tivo rewind button.



explanations can be difficult. anytime a story phenomenon is explained, the writers run the risk of playing the 'midichlorian card' and completely demystifying something that was much better left alone. so all this business about the island being on a pocket of electromagnetic energy.. it doesn't carry the show anywhere. damon and carlton know this, so through the avatar of ms hawking, it feels like they're telling us:

oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is and start asking yourself whether or not you believe it's going to work.

i think this is where d&c lost a lot of people, who said to their tv screens, 'uh, no, that is not going to cut it, thank you.'

this episode was about suspension of disbelief. the idea that going back hinges on recreating the circumstances of flight 815 on flight 316 is so ludicrous that it trumps the entire time-jumping concept introduced in the season premiere.

the show takes a lot of risks, and this conceit is one big-ass gamble. you can't say they didn't know where they were going. damon and carlton have been running in this direction ever since they put locke in that coffin - they knew why and how he died two years ago, and i'm hoping that this week's episode fills in the narrative gaps we've been aching to learn for over a season now.

'316' was written and shot as 'episode 7.' meaning, the original plan was that we were not meant to see it until after seeing this week's episode 'the life and death of jeremy bentham.' upon reflection, damon and carlton decided that it actually plays better to flip the order, so we got '316' a week earlier. i'm extremely curious to see how this affects our understanding and processing of the story. perhaps they wanted to get the weaker ms. hawking exposition out of the way, or maybe they wanted us to understand that our heroes do get back to the island even sooner than expected.

2. jack.



i'm frankly puzzled by the scene with jack's grandfather. for a show that is usually so deliberate and nuanced, i don't want to believe that damon and carlton simply wanted to 'flesh out' jack by showing us a little more of his family. was putting those shoes into jack's hands the entire point of the scene?



yes, there are some thematic resonances: the magician and his rabbit invoke suspension of disbelief. jack's grandfather, like jack, wants to be 'anywhere but here,' reinforcing jack's decision to never return to the 'real world' again. but i would much have preferred a scene with either his mother, or his ex-wife. so much of jack's backstory is about his failed marriage. a scene where he finally gets closure and says goodbye to sarah would have been much more satisfying.



since that didn't happen - what is the story trajectory for jack? now that he's back on the island, it's pretty much an open book. will he have to win juliet back from sawyer? (will juliet be 'with' sawyer after however long they've been stuck in the dharma initiative?) will jack try to win kate back? will jack become island leader and protector against the forces of widmore? i have no idea, but hopefuly we'll find out in episode 8. whatever it is will be the basis of act 3 of all of 'lost,' so it'd better be good.

what i do find intriguing though is that jack and locke, post-resurrection will have to deal with each other in a father/son kind of way, which is going to raise some serious issues for jack.

3. the missing pieces.

• kate suddenly changes her mind. what made her go from 'aaron is MY baby!' to 'aaron who?' in about 2 hours flat? did claire appear to her again? did she hand aaron off to claire's mom? does kate see a different island ghost? what could possibly have happened? and then, what made her decide to literally dive back into jack's bed? is it because upon deciding to go back to the island, she realized it's her last chance to have her own baby?
  

• hurley suddenly changes his mind. and not only that, he knows where and when he needs to be, he's got a guitar, and he's bought up 78 of the available seats on the plane. did charlie appear to him again? ..or any number of the ghosts he's been seeing? maybe the entire dead cast of the show appeared at the same time? i'd love to see that scene.

• sayid shows up, escorted by an fbi agent (and new recurring character). this person is probably one of ben's many sleeper agents planted in convenient occupations throughout los angeles. after sayid walked away at the dock, ben simply had to engage 'plan b' to get him on board.

• ben is bloody at the marina. it's obvious that he headed down there to kill penny, who arrived in los angeles with desmond. but it seems that everything did not go according to plan.. so, is penny still alive? did charlie jr. die? whatever happened made ben nearly miss the flight.

4. 46 hours earlier?

so jack wakes up on the island, then we see the title card '46 hours earlier,' which is when ms. hawking told him that his 'window' would be closing in 36 hours. were the 10 missing hours on the flight? and did ms. hawking mean to say 'window of opportunity?' i'm sure there were arguments in the writers room over the best way to phrase this.

what's making the show difficult to describe are the differences between time as experienced by the characters versus time in linear form. a character jumping through time may only experience 10 minutes, but 2 years may have actually passed. gregg nations must want to shoot himself right now. of course he can't, because his 'work' isn't 'done yet.' ba dum pum!

5. recreation.

not like rec-center 'recreation,' but creating again 're-creation.' here's what ms. hawking says:

If you.. want to return, you need to recreate as best you can the circumstances that brought you there in the first place. That means as many of the same people as you are able to bring with you.

the idea is interesting, but i don't think was sufficiently developed. by creating a re-creation situation, damon and carlton allowed the show to get meta in a way it hasn't done since the self-referential 'exposé.' now we're looking at the accidental and circumstantial events surrounding flight 815 and applying them to flight 316 in deliberate ways. some interesting parallels:

• hurley reads a comic book again (y: the last man by 'lost' writer brian k. vaughn. read it.).
  
• hurley = charlie by bringing a guitar on board
• sun = rose by hoping to reunite with long lost husband, and holding onto his wedding ring. in the pilot episode, rose held onto bernard's wedding ring because his fingers bloat when they fly. a sexy couple, them.
  
• sayid = kate by being escorted on board by a federal marshall.
• sayid's federal marshall = kate's federal marshall. she is likely one of ben's people.
  
• random middle eastern guy = sayid? purely for tokenism? i hope not. that actor is a superstar in morocco, so he's definitely sticking around for a few episodes.
• jack = jack?
  
• kate = claire? if she's pregnant..
• frank lapidus = seth norris, doomed pilot of flight 815, and possible monster food if he gets back to the island.
  
• ben = ..sawyer? (did ben also just commit a revenge murder?)
• cheeky flight attendant = cindy? c'mon island, you made the rules. do not break them. you'd better be taking cheeky flight attendant to the island too!
  

jack asks kate the question we all asked about the show itself in season 1:

JACK: Hurley, Sayid... being... on the same plane. How did they end up here?

KATE: They bought a ticket.

JACK: You don't think that it means something? That somehow... we're all back together?

KATE: We're on the same plane, Jack. Doesn't make us together.

if the island is going to 'pull' all the proxies off of flight 316, who else is getting pulled off? are there more of ben's people on the plane? in 'the lie,' ben asked butcher shop jill if 'gabriel and jeffrey' had checked in. are they on the plane? why will the island pull ben off the plane (we can be certain it will.)? who is he a proxy for? will others from the back of the plane be pulled off?

now there are two giant, ridiculous, ludicrous, patience-testing questions. the first one is: why is the time jumping happening because they left? and the second is: why do they need to re-create flight 815?

perhaps the closer they come to matching the circumstances of their arrival, the more closely they will arrive in the correct time. not having walt on board, not having someone in a wheelchair, all the discrepancies, as ms. hawking said 'would be.. unpredictable.' what she didn't go on to say was exactly what the variables were, but it makes the most sense for that variable to be time. the mismatches between 815 and 316 plopped them down sometime in the 1970's - the height of geronimo jackson.

given the evidence, it seems flight 316 passed over the island during a time flash. during this flash, 'the island' identified certain people as 'belonging to me,' plucked them off the plane and deposited them around the island. this 'decision' by the island must also be related to the selective process by which the time flashes choose who does and doesn't jump with each flash. careful damon and carlton.. this is starting to get really really complicated.

6. reincarnation.

ms hawking called locke's body a 'proxy' for jack's father. apparently, having this proxy is tremendously important to the success of locke's mission. it's the reason locke killed himself, and it's the reason alpert told locke 'you're gonna have to die, john.'

all of this is tied to the island's intrinsic reaction to dead bodies brought there. the island has interesting rules about death and birth:

• if you're dead when you arrive, your body disappears, and you reappear on spooky occasions.. boo!
  
• if you're alive when you arrive, and then leave, you can't die until you've 'done your work.'
• if you're pregnant when you arrive, you can have your baby there, yay!
• if you get pregnant on the island, and try to have the baby there, you die boo.
  
• if you get pregnant on the island, and try to have the baby off the island, you can live, yay!

will these factors tie together in a logical way? do all of these rules have to do with course correction? if the island is a governing body, it doesn't seem very concerned about creating future generations. perhaps the island is concerned with maintaining some sort of population equilibrium that is tied to the original discoverers of the island's power. perhaps everyone who's ever come to the island is a proxy for one of these original people - and all the 'accidents' that have brought people to the island are actually there by a course correcting force of destiny that is the island trying to reconvene some kind of ideal situation. uhh.. yeah, i just typed that and i'm having trouble following it myself. damon and carlton have a lot of esplaining to do.

question is: what will the island do to locke's body? the flash of light certainly zapped it out of flight 316. will locke wake up, alive and well, and that's that? and if so, wtf!? is this the ultimate extension of his miraculous ability to walk after the crash of 815? first time around, legs healed; second time around, death undone. and after being resurrected (as we know he will be) will he still be locke? will he be jeremy bentham? will he be jacob? (though i think we won't fully understand jacob until season 6, episode 15ish.)

7. doubting thomas.



i think what rubbed rob k., and others so wrong about this episode was that a) several scenes were not executed well, b) a huge swath of mythology was dropped on the floor of the looking glass station with an unresonant thud, and c) we were twice asked by d&c to 'just have faith.'

ben tells the story of doubting thomas - and while i liked ben's description of thomas' reaction to the resurrection ('he just couldn't wrap his head around it'), something felt, well wrong about the whole thing. the tone wasn't right.. the buildup towards getting back to the island was rushed. no one really wrestled with the question of whether or not to go back (and two of them have children!). it wasn't fully dealt with. and the surest way to instill doubt in someone is to tell them to 'just have faith.' faith is something you either have or you don't. it can't be requested or ordered into someone.

but i do have faith. at parties, when it's revealed that i'm deeply into 'lost,' i'm often asked 'well, do you think they'll be able to pull off the big finale?' and i always say 'yes.' i do have faith, because that faith has been earned in 4 seasons of fantastic season finales (though season 4 was somewhat marred by the writer's strike). point is, damon and carlton know how to write endings. they know how to weave a mystery and they know how to unleash jaw-dropping revelations. they prove this again and again, week after week on a small scale, and then they do it year by year on a large scale.

in addition, since negotiating the end date in january 2007, they have had over two years to plan their endgame. so, i have faith, not because they tell me i should, but because they have both a history of excellence, and no excuses for failure.

8. best lines.

echoing what we've always thought about the socks:

JACK: And the other people on this plane--what's gonna happen to them?

BEN: Who cares?

and:

LAPIDUS: Is... that Sayid? And Hurley. Wait a second. We're not going to Guam, are we?

9. noticeables.



the photo on ms hawking's chalkboard says 'u.s. army,' and has the date of alpert's 1954 camp.



christian shepard's sneakers finally, ho hummedly explained.



ben, of course, reads 'ulysses.' an appropriate reference. like 'ulysses,' 'lost' is becoming unnavigable without a guidebook.



jack pours himself two drinks. he is interrupted before getting a chance to drink either of them. first the island says 'drink!' now the island says 'don't drink!'

10. preboomer.



gotta say, while the meat of this episode wasn't the best, the bread of this sandwich was top notch. jaw-dropping opening, and another 'wtf!?' face from jin to take us out. they should have jin's 'wtf face' end every episode from here on out.

let's talk about what this preboomer means: after locke stabilized the wheel, the leftbehinders became similarly stabilized in time - trapping them in the 1970's, where they had no choice but to join dharma and start a life there. faraday becomes part of the mining team at the orchid, jin joins the security team.. and i bet sawyer and juliet have been trying to play house about as successfully as jack and kate's attempt.

here's the real jawdropper: if jin and company have indeed been stranded for several years, we've jumped in time in both the on and off island storylines. i felt certain that there would never be a narrative time jump in the island story. for 4.5 seasons, the experiences of the people on-island have been narratively continuous. it's been the baseline that's held the show together despite its complexity.



but if we've now indeed skipped ahead (even though we may technically be in the past) on-island, it means that the show can return to a traditional flashback structure, flashing back to story points from the skipped period of time. yikes. remember jack's first monologue to kate? the one where he talked about doing surgery, and the girl's nerves spilled out of her like angel hair pasta? that's kind of what's happening with this show right now. hopefully everyone can feel the fear for 5 seconds, sew it back up, and get back to the business of kicking ass with clarity, simplicity, and focus.