Lost : In Translation pt. 1

This is the first post of my new weekly review, summary, and insightful look at the newest episode of Lost. It's gonna be chock-freaking full of spoilers, so if you watch the show and haven't seen the latest episode, do not read what I am about to write.
This first post is gonna be a bit of a bastard. Not only did I have the two hour season premiere to watch and analyze, I also am going to give a brief look back at the series, reviewing the biggest current mysteries left open from last season. So, let's go folks.
PART 1: Last season's mysteries and revelations and pertinent information.

The Oceanic Six, pictured to the right (minus Aaron) claim to be the only survivors left over from the plane crash. They are lying to protect those who stayed on the island from Charles Widmore, who went so far (maybe) as to plant a fake plane full of dead people at the bottom of the ocean to fool the world. The Oceanic Six, as of the end of Season four, have been off of the island for three years. What have they been doing?

Ben Linus, the (maybe? sort of?) leader of The Hostiles saved the island by turning his little cog thing in the basement, therefore changing the island's place in the time space continuum. In return, he was forcibly transported off of the island (Tunisia, to be exact.), and several months into the future, where he immediately started pounding on brown folk with an extendable baton. And believe it or not, try as I might, I can't find pictures or video of that. He was also seen entering Widmore's apartment late at night, and informing Widmore that he's going to kill his daughter, Penny... or possibly, Charlotte? (Pet theory. She's english, she's been to the island, she's kinda weird looking, etc.) Also, in a strange statement from Ben, we learn that the two men can't seem to harm each other.... Hrm.

Sayid, who has lost more lovers than any other Iraqi Torturer EVER is pictured to the right, with his last girlfriend who was killed. He makes it home alright, and manages to find the love of his life who he lost so long ago, Nadia. They get married, but it doesn't last long, because she dies in an 'accident'. Ben find out about this, and convinces Sayid it was murder, so in a very strange twist, Sayid has been working as ben's henchman for the past few years, doing all kinds of awesome shit. He was last seen killing a motherfucker while breaking a mental patient out of the Psych Ward.

Iron Jack grows an epic beard.

Last we saw of Claire she was chilling in Jacob's house with her deadbeat and literally dead dad, neglecting her parental duties. I mean, letting Christian hold Aaron is one thing, pawning him off on Kate's even worse. Kate has been raising Aaron by herself, and even though she has a kid, she has that old Kate tendency of not wearing pants, making Aaron the luckiest little kid in the whole world. One night, Kate-splosion finds Claire (or rather, a vision of Claire) in Aaron's room. Claire tells her not to bring Aaron back to the island, while totally flipping her shit. However, the worst this can all lead up to is Kate and Claire having a half-nude catfight in the rain, so I'm looking forward to the conclusion. Also, we know Kate made a promise to Sawyer before he was left behind, but we don't know what it is. It's driving Jack flippin' crazy. Hence, beard. (or was the beard 'cuz Claire's his half-sister? I can't remember.)

Charlie drownded. He was last seen doing a shit ton of heroin with G.G. Allin in rocker's heaven.

Locke's in the coffin. Wait, WTF? And he has to go back to the island with the rest of the unhappy family that is The Oceanic Six. However, let's remember that the island fixed Locke's spine. If it still needs him, he might very well be revived just by going to the island.... Not that we know WHAT he was doing off of it.

Last we saw of Michael and Jin suggests that they died in the Freighter explosion, however, considering we're getting into twisty-crazy time travel mechanics, I doubt we've seen the last of either of these guys. At least not Jin. I mean, look at him over there to the right. Does he look like a man who's going to die?


Desmond... lived happily ever after? No, wait, that can't be right.

Richard Alpert. Time Traveller or Highlander?


Hurley's back in the good old psych ward, hanging out with Charlie and Mr. Eko and all kinds of dead people. No mentions of Dave yet, but he's probably there too. The scary black dude who just might be the smoke monster Cerberus or something came to visit him, as did a teenaged Walt. (pictured right)

Sun Damage has been busy damaging shit back home in Korea. She bought majority share in her father's business, which to a businessman is the equivalent of tying them to a post and raping them to death, and she also confronted Widmore, and my guess is, later killed him. Sun Damage is not to be fucked with. Oh, and she has a daughter now.

Alex, Rousseau, and Karl are all dead. In like, five minutes real time. There's one entire bloodline down.

Libby (pictured right) is dead. We still have no fucking clue who she is.

Um... The Island's fucking gone, man.


PART 2: The Season Premiere! Yay!

Alrighty, now for the good part. The episode opens on Marvin Candle/ Dr. Cheng going through his morning routines, although for some reason it doesn't want to show us who's doing it, so we don't learn it's good old Marv until he starts filming the introductory video for The Arrow station. Almost as soon as the good doctor starts filming, there's some big crisis, and he has to run down to where some random construction dudes are drilling for time travel. Then we get our first big revelation.

Daniel Mothafucking Farraday was there.

Ok, it's not THAT huge, but now we know that, like his partner Charlotte, he has visited the island before. He's probably there to awkwardly research time travel, as per usual.

Then we're back in present day as our main hero, Iron Jack, and our previously main villain, Ben Linus, steal a corpse together... Lost is weird. Anyway, they have to steal the corpse to get back to the island, according to Ben, and Jack's so fucked up on pills he's probably not even paying attention anymore... That is, until he fuckin' shaves. Then he's back to his old self again, saving lives and breakin' hearts. Yeah. Even though Ben states that they will probably never know what became of the people who stayed on the Island, WE find out in the next scene.

Apparently, they started skipping around to different time periods, allowing this awesome sentence (to Lost fans anyways) to be a true review of the episode... Ok, here goes. Locke is walking by himself on the island, having been separated from the others, when he manages to dodge the plane carrying all the heroin and Yemi from Africa when it almost hits him. He then watches it crash into the canopy area, and when he investigates, he get's shot by Ethan, then tries to convince Ethan that he is now Ethan's leader, and Ethan almost shoots him again, but time changes, and all of a sudden Richard is digging out the freakin' bullet and throwin' compasses around willy nilly. Then he tells Locke that he has to die to get the Oceanic Six to come back. So now we know why Locke is dead. Not how, or even why he needs to die to get them back, but we have a vague understanding of how he ended up back in the real world, and in a coffin.

See, that shit wouldn't have been possible in the second season. That being said, though, I fucking loathe time travel. Reasons why later.

So what are Sawyer and Juliet and the rest of the gang up to? Well, Sawyer slaps Daniel Farraday, at which point Daniel goes into an explanation of the finer points of their time inconsistencies. At first they were in the time before their camp, and later in a time after the hatch was blown, but basically it boils down to the concept of a record skipping, in Daniel's words. Anyways, despite the fact that Daniel repeatedly states that you can't change things in the past, no matter what, and convinces Sawyer that it's useless to ask Desmond for supplies because they never met, yadda yadda, Daniel manages to turn right around, meet Desmond in the past, and talk to him, and when Desmond wakes up in our time, he suddenly remembers meeting Daniel way back when, so... Yeah, Daniel totally changed the past. THAT my friends, is why I hate time travel. It makes absolutely no sense. But this blog isn't the place for my personal opini-... nevermind. Anyways, moving on.

Charlotte gets a nosebleed and Daniel knows what's happening to her, but in typical Lost fashion, he ain't telling, but apparently it's serious shit.

Back in the real world: Sun is trying to catch a flight on Oceanic Airlines, but she's waylaid by security, and locked in one of their interrogation rooms. This proves to be the doing of Widmore, whom apparently, Sun chose to let live for a little while longer. He says that she hurt his feelings, and she tells him she wants to kill Ben.

Meanwhile, Hurley and Sayid make their way to one of Sayid's safehouses after they break out of the psych ward. Sayid has apparently had a falling out with Ben recently, and decided to take his ball and go home, because they ain't friends no more. He warns Hurley not to trust Ben, which Hurley should have already known. All that aside, Sayid discovers his safehouse has been compromised, and in punishment for some broken tape, he proceeds to kill three men, throwing one down on to some knives in a dishwasher. That is why Sayid is my favorite Iraqi torturer. The three dead guys manage to knock Sayid out with their little poison darts posthumously, and Hurley's left with an unconscious Iraqi and nowhere to go. He does what any logical thinking man would do, and brings him home to mom and dad... but not before stopping to talk with Annalucia.

Yeah, the same Annalucia who got shot. this one:

She tells him to avoid cops no matter what, and to hurry home, etc. And she parts with 'Libby says 'Hi'', which was just awesome. After that, Hurley takes Sayid to his swank pad and turns him over to a very confused mother and father.

Kate, meanwhile, is having a rough time of things too. A couple of suits from a law firm with a private contractor demand to do blood tests to determine whether she is Aaron's real mother or not. Instead of sticking around to ask questions, she grabs a gun and Aaron, and once again, she's off. She wanders aimlessly while Aaron complains, and then she gets invited over to visit Sun in L.A. Sun had some very urgent girl talk she had to get out, and I'm not sure why this scene was in there in it's entirety.

Around this time, Ben tells Jack to head back home while Ben works out some shady business in a butcher shop with what appear to be more others. It's clear Ben has ulterior motives at this point, but really, who needed to be told that? As Ben's running his sneaky little errand, Cheech drives Sayid's unconscious body to Jack, who gets him to wake up. When Jack tells Ben he has Sayid with him, Ben seems slightly unhappy. I guess it wasn't part of his plan.

Back on the island, everybody's trying really hard to make fire, and despite six months of experience living on a deserted island, they are failing at it miserably. Some random guy named Neil is bitching about there not being any fire when he gets shot in the chest by an arrow on fire. As his life seeps out of him, Neal learns what irony is, but nobody cares because they're all trying not to be on the receiving end of such fiery, flaming irony. A whole bunch of no namers get killed by the flaming arrows being rained down on the beach, but no actual characters are injured, so crisis averted, I guess? While running, Sawyer and Juliet get captured by the enemy. They're going to cut Juliet's hands off, but suddenly a whole lot of Locke starts raining down on them, and they all end up dead. That is the last we see of the island in this episode.

Back in the real world, Hurley is making a hot pocket when Ben walks into his house and offers to help and protect him. Hurley responds by throwing his one and only hot pocket at Ben, missing, and then turning himself over to the police, confessing that he killed all of the people that Sayid killed. Ben exits into the shadows.

The last scene shows an unknown figure doing math and working with computers in a very 'The Hatch' type situation. the figure then goes upstairs, revealing that the hidden lab/research center is below a church. When the mystery figure arrives at the top of the stairs, we soon realize it's the old lady whom Desmond met while he was unstuck in time, who tried to sell him a ring, and then refused to sell him a ring. She gives Ben a seventy hour time limit to make this work, or else. Ben flips out and tells her he can't do it because Hurley turned himself over to the cops. When he asks what will happen if he fails, she replies 'We're all doomed'.... and then nothing.

Whew... Ok, that was a big one. As far as beginnings go, this one looks really promising. Really, I'm just hoping they keep the time travelling stuff to a sensible minimum. I mean, I like the idea of dead characters being alive again for a little while and I want to see this guy to the right alive again just as much as the next guy, but if they do it too much, it will take the emotional weight away from the show. I mean, Jin is one of my favorite characters, and his 'death', had no emotional impact on me whatsoever. Even if he really is dead, just introducing the possibility of time travel 'saves' lessens the impact. Other than that, the show is still going strong, and despite what the writers said, I doubt we'll be seeing more answers in this season than questions. At least if the first episode is any indicator.

So... there you have it. A 'brief' summary and some personal thoughts on the season 5 premiere of Lost. If you have anything you'd like to add (stuff I missed, skimmed over, etc.) or just want to say your own opinions or theories, please feel free to leave a comment. Next week, I'll be reviewing the next episode, and you can all rest assured it will probably be much more coherent and short. Thanks for listening guys.

'Til next time
-Justin





P.S. I know the video is from season 1, but hey, I like it.