Lost Episode 5.05: Die Together, Live Alone by Luhks

I have had the privilege of writing about each Lost episode over the past two seasons. The show has produced some excellent episodes in that span, most notably Episode 4.05, The Constant. Desmond’s Season Four time trip (penned by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) was by all means an outstanding achievement, an emotional and cerebral journey that reshaped the viewer’s outlook on the series. A full season later, audiences now have been treated with Episode 5.05, This Place is Death, written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. This veteran Lost writing tandem brings it own unique blend of dark humor, introspection, and thematic connections to the show. In my opinion, This Place is Death is the finest Lost episode since the ending of Season Three, which concluded with the Kitsis/Horowitz classic Greatest Hits and the Lindelof/Cuse epic Through the Looking Glass. In its own way, this episode similarly alters perspectives on Lost’s past, present, and future. The Island means many things to many people, and quite possibly its most important meaning was expressed in those four words: “this place is death.”

Lost Episode 5.04: The Motherland by Luhks

In seasons past, the fathers of Lost have assumed center stage and pushed the mothers into the background. From the opening scene of Season Five, motherhood has started to play a more prominent role of the story. The first character shown on-screen was a woman who may or may not have been the mother of Miles. (The reveal of Miles’ long-term exposure to the island in this episode lends much credence to that theory.) Kate began the season with a pair of lawyers pounding on her door to remind her that she was not Aaron’s real mother. Locke began the season alone, until a statue of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, fell from the sky. The Lie included a small reminder of Sun’s recent delivery, with the throwaway line that Ji Yeon is safely at home with grandma. That epsiode also culminated with an emotional exchange between Hurley and his mother. Thus far, Carmen Reyes is the only non-islander to expose the Oceanic Six Lie, and she accomplished that feat solely by virtue of maternal instinct. The opening scene of Jughead inducted Penelope Hume into the Mothers of Lost Club, and then chronicled Desmond’s attempts to track down the mother of Daniel Faraday. (If you accept the theory that the retro British Other Ellie is the current Space-Time Sheriff Eloise Hawking, then Faraday’s time-jumping may have linked him to his mother in a borderline paradoxical/incestuous way.)

Lost Episode 5.03: Beyond Belief by Luhks

Beginning with the initial episodes of Season One, Lost has been preoccupied with the idea of revisiting the past. The prevailing episode structure, designed around flashbacks for a single character, explored the connections between a character’s history and the present. As the story expanded, the show began to revisit its own past in different ways, by crafting a web of literal and metaphorical connections between each of its characters. Lost adopts the position that no character can be understood in a fixed point in space and time, but only in relation to the character’s past and to other characters. Season Five’s The Lie and Jughead adopt a new structure, which contains only a single flashback in the opening scene. The on-island events of the episode still take the viewer into history, but through the storytelling device of time travel rather than flashback. The resulting structure has a contradictory effect on the narrative: the relationship between the island characters and the past become quite literal; the relationship between the island story and the off-island story becomes more figurative.