Lost Episode 5.16 The Dark and The Light by Luhks

There are only two types of Lost fans: those who watch the show for the Characters, and those who watch the show for the Mythology. The statement I just made is, of course, a false one. It reflects a gross generalization, which oversimplifies the complex motivations of a wide spectrum of individuals into two categories. Look no further than the Season Five finale, The Incident, for evidence that the definitions of ‘character’ and ‘mythology’ overlap each other as to make the classification nearly meaningless. Jacob, the central force lurking behind all Lost mythology, is in fact a character. Nevertheless, that exact thought has probably crossed the mind of every person reading this article, in one form or another, at some point in time. Our world is so complex and chaotic, that if we never made such generalizations, if we never drew such dividing lines, then we could never understand anything. All science, art, and even language depends upon a binary choice between ‘X’ and ‘not-X’. Even when we stare into a random and meaningless abyss, a Rorschach inkblot, we instinctively need to find some greater meaning within it, to find some pattern in the black ink on white background.

Lost Episode 5.14 The Hole in the Heart by Luhks

All five seasons of Lost follow a parabola of sorts, with highest points of action at the beginning and end of each year’s collection of episodes. Season Five literally opened with a lot of flash, a razzle-dazzle series of time jumps backward, forward, and sideways. Eventually, the drama settled down into a smoothly-curved valley inside the happy yellow houses of the 1970s Dharma Initiative. Episode 5.13 Some Like it Hoth, which closed with Miles peering into the window of the Chang home, represented the last fleeting moment of domestic tranquility before the Island accelerated back into crisis mode. The Variable revamps the show’s conflict quotient, without using any Because-You-Left-style or Constant-style time travel. Instead, it relies on the old Lost tools of the trade: a tragic series of flashbacks, a handful of twists and reveals, and a desperation plan to get everyone back to where they are supposed to be. Along the way, Jeremy Davies provides the year’s best performance (by any cast member not named Terry O’Quinn), during both his first lead effort and his swan song. The Variable is one of those rare achievements that succeeds both as a character study and as a thrilling piece of plot development.

Lost Episode 5.13 Nobody's Perfect by Luhks

With only three episodes remaining, the grand canvas of Lost’s fifth chapter is coming into view. Even after several months, the season premiere still seems like a fresh part of the collective consciousness. As with its season-opening predecessors, the first scene of Season Five established the overarching tone for the story that followed. Man of Science, Man of Faith began with button-pusher Desmond peering up from the Swan station at Locke and Jack above him. A Tale of Two Cities introduced trouble in paradise for Ben and Juliet in the Others’ village. The Beginning of the End highlighted the tenuous return to civilization for the Oceanic Six. Because You Left shifted the spotlight away from the core group of characters into the Chang family home. Nearly every element of that scene hinted at the story elements to be explored over the next few months: the inner workings of the Dharma Initiative, the ongoing war with the Hostiles, time travel, the famous Hitler hypothetical, dead characters reborn, uncovering ancient ruins, false identities, domestic tranquility disrupted by crises, mothers, fathers, and children.

Lost Episode 5.12 Kill Ben, Vol. 2 by Luhks

Although it might seem odd to reveal a story's ground rules just before the final chapter, Lost has always thrived by revealing things out of order. The titles of episodes 5.11 and 5.12 make for an intriguing pair. Whatever Happened, Happened recycles the words spoken by Lost physicist Daniel Faraday twice already this season. In due course, the equally redundant phrase Dead is Dead was also spoken by Ben midway through this episode. These two titles express rather explicitly two main rules of storytelling that have been established and tested over the course of the series. In order to maintain the dramatic weight of any chapter, two principles are necessary. First, the past cannot be changed. Second, death is permanent. Only in science fiction do these basic tautologies of life need to be proven. The life-threatening injury to young Ben Whatever Happened, Happened provided a not-so-subtle lecture followed by a not-so-subtle demonstration of that first rule. The main plotline then went to great lengths to prove that Ben’s gunshot did not kill him, but helped transform him into the man he became, even with some unnecessary amnesia ex machina thrown in to eliminate possible inconsistencies. Again, for the second straight week, the powers that be were asked to judge whether Ben Linus had a right to live. As an child in the hands of adults, and as an adult in the hands of Island gods, the end result turned out to be the same.

Lost Episode 5.11 Kill Ben, Vol. 1 by Luhks

Thus far, Season Five of Lost has been a veritable bloodbath. During the first ten episodes, characters have been slapped, shot, stabbed, scorched, smashed, shredded, strangled, skewered, spinally-snapped, sonically-showered, and stricken with sci-fi sicknesses. Episode 5.10 He’s Our You was one of the most violent episodes in recent memory, not just in terms of its physical brutality, but also the wounds inflicted on the psyche of Sayid Jarrah. The final scene ended with the cold-blooded attempted murder of a 12-year old boy, struck down with a bullet through the chest. The follow-up, Whatever Happened, Happened, reveals the domino effect set off by that event. Episode 5.11 shows no further acts of violence, but instead focuses on the combined efforts to save young Benjamin’s life. On Lost, no good deed ever goes unpunished, and the rest of Ben’s adult life is Lost history. Repairing his body is itself a destructive act. Mr. Linus can look forward to thirty years of lying, kidnapping, and murder on a massive scale. The adult Linus would undoubtedly be back next week to add further crimes to his lifetime total. Of course, if you adopt Hurley’s theory about being erased from existence, then Ben’s personal path of destruction would be incomparable to the harmful effects of changing history, by letting him die. Regardless, though, episode 5.11 provided sixty minutes of relative peace within a season of escalating bloodshed.

Lost Episode 5.10: Natural Born Killers by Luhks

The tenth episode of Season Five arrives with the perplexing, pronoun-filled title He’s Our You. Taken out of context, the name seemed to suggest what many Lost viewers have theorized for years: the existence of multiple timelines. The potentially misleading title of the episode’s main literary reference, A Separate Reality, suggests something similar. This week’s cliffhanger ending, in which Sayid shoots a 12-year old Benjamin Linus in the chest, tested the limits of Lost’s timeline consistency. In the early seasons, moving through time served only as a metaphor for the mental journey of Lost characters, but literal time travel has become the primary plot device of the current season. The concept of symbolic character doubling has also permeated the story since the beginning. If the Lost characters obtain the power to change their past, then the days of Parallel Sayid lording his cowboy hat over Regular Sayid might not be far behind. To borrow a few words from Meet Kevin Johnson, Season Four’s similarly themed exploration of human freedom: NOT YET. The beloved Lost universe took one to the chest, but space-time remains intact as long as little Benjamin keeps breathing. The audience must continue to accept the most unpleasant elements of the timeline, because even minor change would erase the good elements along with it. As James reassured Juliet early in the episode: “Nothing’s changed.”

Lost Episode 5.09: Balance of Power by Luhks

Even by Lost standards, Season Five opened with unprecedented degree of Christian symbolism over its first seven episodes. In the first segment of that arc, John Locke watched the Virgin Mary fall from the sky; the final segment revealed his death and resurrection. The past two episodes have borrowed religious imagery from different sources, even further into human history. LaFleur of course embraced a number of ancient Egyptian influences. (In last week’s article, I overlooked another hidden reference. The new Dharma characters, Jerry, Phil, and Rosie, were named after The Grateful Dead, a band named for a passage from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which describes burial rites and the role of Anubis.) Episode 5.09 Namaste shifts its spiritual focus about 3,000 miles east, from the Nile River to the Indus River. The first frames of the episode show the now-familiar Flight 316, with its prominent India-based Ajira Airlines logo. The word ‘ajira’ has several translations in different languages, but it translates from Hindi as ‘Island’. The episode’s title comes from Dharma Initiative’s favorite Hindi phrase. The saying Namaste can express either a welcome or a farewell. Literally, it means: “I humble myself to you,” but, as with so many other Lost titles, this one proves to be more ironic than literal. The episode was filled with different greetings, with characters expressing varying degrees of humility towards each other. Throughout the numerous power struggles in the episode, the prevailing question seemed to be: who is humbling themselves to whom?

Lost Episode 5.08: Nothing Stays Buried by Luhks

As the Lost storyline inches ever closer to its narrative ending, it continues to reveal more of its chronological beginning. Due to the nonlinear storytelling format, The Beginning of the show’s timeline has transferred from one scene to another over the five seasons: Jack’s childhood in White Rabbit (which may have been preceded by scenes of young James and Eko); Ben’s birth in The Man Behind the Curtain; Locke’s birth in Cabin Fever; then Widmore’s flaming arrow attack of 1954 in The Lie. The opening scene of LaFleur, which coincides with the ending of This Place is Death, briefly takes the audience deeper into the Island’s past than ever before. Now, if you placed all Lost on-screen events in chronological order, there would be a new beginning. The first moments in our show’s history, millennia in the past, were the following: Locke fell down deep below the Island’s surface, while Sawyer tried to hold on; and Charlotte’s body gave a few last breaths, while Daniel tried to hold on. Although some even older event might take its place over the remaining episodes, the Lost universe now begins with Death.

Lost Episode 5.07 Another Life, Part Two by Luhks

Who is John Locke? There are many different ways to answer that loaded question. The easy answer is that John Locke is the greatest character ever to grace our television screens. While that statement may be true, the response is not quite complete and certainly not satisfying. So, who is John Locke? When Locke first entered the spotlight in Season One’s Walkabout, he set out on a journey of self-discovery. One would expect that an ordinary man would come to understand himself pretty well after fifty years, but Locke is still trying to find an identity. He features in every scene of Episode 5.07 The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, as he interacts with characters both young and old, around the globe. Each of these characters offers him a different look into the mirror, to help him answer that same question he set out to answer before boarding Oceanic 815. Who is John Locke? As the episode begins, newcomers Caesar and Ilana set out to understand this mystery man before them. He has a name. He has memories. Even after all of his experiences, I doubt that John himself could offer an answer to that question.

Lost Episode 5.06 Another Life, Part One by Luhks

Legend has it, during Season Three, ABC reached a compromise when they decided on the show’s end date. (My memory might be incorrect, or the information might not even have been accurate in the first place.) The show’s writers wanted to finish the series with two more seasons, but the network of course wanted to keep its valuable product for at least three more. Their solution was to reduce the length of the final seasons, and divide up the remaining 48 episodes over three years. Then, the infamous writers’ strike complicated matters even further, and the fourth season became even shorter. The fourth season finale, There’s No Place Like Home, ultimately delivered plenty of excellent drama, but it did not provide quite the same sense of narrative finality as its three predecessors. Basically, the Season Four conclusion did not move into any new territory, but it merely filled the gaps created by the superlative ending of Season Three.