Lost Season Five: Episodes 1 and 2

Given that there seems to be some interest in Lost around these parts, I’m going to be blogging about the show each week. Originally, I’d planned to do episode recaps but I think it would be more fun to offer bullet points on the crazy-ass coincidences, offer half-baked theories and document all the WTF moments of each episode. Here are my thoughts on ‘Because You Left’ and ‘The Lie’, the first two episodes of the fifth season of Lost.

Spoiler Alert: Do not read further if you plan on watching these two episodes at a later date. Do no read further if you will never watch Lost. It will make no sense.

Onto the hail of bullets:

- It was great to learn that the star of the Dharma orientation videos, variously known as Edgar Halliwax and Marvin Candle, is actually Dr Chang. Any chance his new-born daughter is Charlotte, who, as an off-hand comment by Miles last season led us to suspect, may have been born on the island? Probably not, as the baby looked Chinese.

- Note that Dr Chang’s alarm goes off at 8:15.

- Sweet shout out to the opening scenes of season 2 and season 3. In the second season Desmond listens to The Mama and The Papas. In the third, Juliet to Petunia Clark. Now we get Chang listening to Willie Nelson. Also, nice foreshadowing of Faraday’s explanation that the island is like a broken record.

- In the stunning opening scene, we see that Daniel Faraday is working with the Dharma Initiative. It soon becomes obvious that this is present-day Faraday and the island has moved in time. Or is it? We learnt in ‘The Constant’ that, like Desmond, Faraday can also experience time travel. Has he traveled back in time to infiltrate the Dharma, and for what purpose?

- Who set the lawyers on Kate? As Sun points out, it is not someone who wants to go public or he/she would already have publicly revealed that Aaron is not Kate’s son. Three candidates come to mind, the most obvious of whom is Ben Linus. Ben has the motive: forcing Kate on the run should help convince her to go back to the island. But it could certainly be Charles Widmore, who thinks this might help him get more information from Kate about the island and the survivors. A third, although somewhat unlikely, possibility might be Sun. Despite her weak denial, it is very likely that she blames Kate for Jin’s death. Denying Aaron his mother would be pretty sweet revenge considering Sun’s daughter will never meet her father.

- In the first season, Locke found boars with his hunting skills. Miles just hears dead boars.

- Given that Desmond met Faraday in the past in ‘The Constant’, why he doesn’t he remember him?

- We get lots of old characters and situations making an appearance. Why was Ethan so shocked that Ben would appoint John Locke as the leader? Is it simply because the man was unknown to him or did the island move back so far in time that Ben isn’t their leader yet? And Ana Lucia warning Hurley not to be caught by the police shows that the island can work in the real world, too. This would mean that Charlie and Libby (or at least their ghosts, or whatever these apparitions are) actually did meet Hurley and Michael. They were not hallucinations.

- Now we know what Richard Alpert wanted the adolescent Locke to pick when he visited him. It wasn’t the dagger; it was the compass.

- Richard Alpert never seems to age because he is moving back and forth between time. Thus, present-day Alpert kept visiting Locke at different points in his childhood because he knew that Locke would eventually lead The Others. Maybe he was trying to hasten the process, although that didn’t work, probably because the future can’t be changed in significant ways. Or at least that’s my theory.

- Hurley’s dad watches Expose. Apparently, Nikki’s death wasn’t enough to take the show off the air.

- Those with a good memory would have recognized the woman who told Ben that he has 70 hours to get the Oceanic Six back to the island. That was Mrs Hawkings, the woman who refused to sell Desmond the ring back in season 3 because that would change the future. Here’s a theory about her: Faraday told Desmond that he should seek out his mother in Oxford. Given that Faraday is a thirty-something Englishmen, his mother would likely be British and in her sixties. Mrs Hawkings is the only one who fits the bill.

- Why is Sayid so pissed off at Ben? Did he find out that Ben had Nadia killed just so he could acquire the Iraqi’s services?

- It is quite puzzling that Sun would want to kill Ben. As far as she knows, Ben had nothing to do with Jin’s death? Is she lying about that just so she could get close to Widmore. Or is she working with the mysterious Economist, who we heard about, but was never shown, in season 4?

- Did Charles Widmore control the island only to have it wrested from his control by the Dharma Initiative? It seems more of a possibility given that the paramilitary guys who attacked Sawyer and the other Losties were British.

- This is a question I expect to ask every week: What is Ben up to?

- Next weeks episode is titled ‘Jughead’. Anyone care to speculate how it will tie in with Archie comics?