ABC
Before you read this post, go deep, deep underground and watch last night’s Lost.
It’s so easy to focus on story, story, story this season of Lost that I may not be giving enough attention to the performances, but there were a few worth noting last night. Daniel Dae Kim, for starters, who has to do much of his work nonverbally, especially now that Jin is separated from Sun. From his perplexed meeting with the Frenchies to his making Locke “promise” not to bring Sun back, he manages to convey not only what he’s unable to say but his struggle to say it.
Terry O’Quinn makes Locke a man of deep belief but also human and frail—as much mystical faith as he may have in the Island, when he falls into the well and ends up with a bone shard sticking through his leg, he’s agonized and afraid.
And Rebecca Mader had some fine moments in what we must assume was Charlotte’s death scene—right?—as she flittered about her life, from her present self to her youth (“Love Geronimo Jackson!”) to her arrogant scholarhood (“I know more about ancient Carthage than Hannibal himself”) to her girlhood, in that achingly sad last line: “I’m not allowed to have chocolate before dinner.” (The Constant sickness: it’s basically young people getting Alzheimer’s.) Whether it was her performance or Jeremy Davies’, I was surprisingly moved by it, considering we’d had relatively little time to get invested in their story.
Oh, and let’s not forget one more masterly performance: whoever the actress was who played “Nadine.” There is a certain way of carrying yourself, a certain way of walking last in a line in a jungle, that simply screams, “I am going to get separated from my group and killed by a monster now”—and she nailed it.
On to the story. If it wasn’t clear already, the producers of Lost are now all in. This is an all-out time-travel story now—and if you’re going to do that, why not have a dozen or so flashes an episode?—and it’s a full-speed ahead serial, with no pretense of a self-contained story arc that newcomers can jump into. You are either on board with Lost now, or you’re not, this show is saying, and if you’re not—well, there are the first four seasons on DVD, and you can come back and meet us when you’re ready.
So: Christian is in fact Jacob. Or vice versa. And is a little annoyed that Locke let Ben delegate to himself the job of leaving the Island. He apparently is not corporeal enough to give the injured Locke a hand up, or is simply too lazy. He is the Jacob of the Island, and yet he is also evidently still Jack’s father. He is surprisingly talkative. [Update: OK, deferring to the comments, we don’t know that Christian is Jacob. He sure is speaking as though he were—but he could still just be speaking for Jacob. So, back on the unanswered questions list.]
Eloise, if we needed further confirmation, is Daniel’s mother. Charlotte, if we needed further confirmation, did grow up on the Island. Daniel, if we needed further confirmation, is going to time-travel back to the Dharma-era Island. And evidently broke his own can’t-change-the-future rule in the name of love. He must have known it could not work. And yet—as he says of Locke’s plan—we’re beyond science here.
The flashes, like labor pains, are getting closer together. And Sawyer has a nosebleed. (Why Sawyer?) And John Locke is giving the Donkey Wheel a spin, hoping he gets lucky. Let’s hope that Island healing kicked in on that leg before he ends up in the middle of Tunisia or wherever.
Now for the hail of bullets:
* So Charlotte became an anthropologist to find the Island. And—apropos her finding the polar bear in Tunisia—was learning a lot about Carthage. Why Carthage? (Is that about the vintage of the temple in the jungle?) And am I right to think we must not be far away from seeing the four-toed statues again?
* I’m assuming, by the way, that there are all sorts of things to tease out from the hieroglyphics on the temple, but my Conversational Pictogram is a little rusty.
* With the possible exception of Eko’s encounter, this may be the longest look we’ve gotten at Smokey, but I don’t believe I picked up anything revelatory—let me know if you did. Also, isn’t it interesting that Rousseau’s husband argued that Smokey is not a monster but a “security system”—a description we’ve heard before—only after he went crazy?
* Speaking of which, we—well, at least I—had theorized that the “sickness” that afflicted Rousseau’s crew was some form of the Constant disease, but it looks much different.
* One fun aspect of the time-travel twist is that the references to early episodes come fast and furious. There was Rousseau’s music box from “Solitary.” Any others?
* Daniel on Jin’s reappearance: the blast threw him in the water, and he’s been flashing along with the rest of them. I’m not sure Jin’s survival is any more plausible explained by a scientist, but I’m going along with it.
* The image of Sawyer holding the rope suddenly buried in the ground was both funny and horrifying. (Slightly less horrifying since we knew Locke had fallen into the wheel cavern.)
* Funniest line of the night: “He’s Korean. I’m from Encino”? Or “Next thing you know, he’ll be talking about a submarine”?