This is a Post About the Lost Season Finale

| 3 Comments

Spoilers ahoy.

The Season Four finale was strong overall and definitely seals up this season as a departure from the poorly-paced crappiness of seasons past (especially Season Three). Plenty of information revealed, lots of plot progression, and a healthy-sized dosage of mystery for its own sake. There have been many explanations floating around for why Season Four has been better constructed than before -- the two principal theories being that the writers now have a hard and fast end-date for the show, allowing them to develop a clearer vision for the remaining story, and the fact that the writers' strike this past year forced the writers to pack more information into fewer episodes. Whatever the explanation is, I likes it.

Having the first scene begin exactly where the final scene of Season Three ended was clever, and strongly suggested that we would find out who Jeremy Bentham is (which we do, predictably, in the very last shot of the episode). At first the fact that Kate stopped the car and got out to yell at Jack seemed a tad jarring, but it makes sense. Until that point Kate's attitude toward Jack's suggestion that they go back seemed to be "Oh, you're a crazy drugged-up fool." Now we know that Kate adamantly refuses to go back to the Island and is enraged by the very idea. The final scene, in which Ben teams up with Jack to try to get the Oceanic Six-Plus-One back to the Island indicates that getting everyone together and willing to return will be a project next season.

The flash-forwards were uneven. The Hurley scenes were great, further teasing out the Bentham mystery (via yet another season finale cameo by WAAAAAALT), and the fact that Shere Khan and company are still relentlessly tailing the Oceanic Six and trying to get their filthy paws on the Island. Kate flashbacks/forwards are almost universally dull, and last night's was no exception. We have no idea whether Claire was really just a dream or an actual communication from the Island. The Jack/Ben scene is unclear on this. We don't know whether the Island wants all six/seven of them back, or whether it wants all of them to stay away, and Ben needs to somehow finagle his way back to the Island by getting them back all at once. The fact that Christian took Claire without taking Aaron, coupled with the dream sequence, suggests that the Island, or some force on the Island, doesn't want Aaron there, but we have no idea why.

The Sun flashforward was 100% dumb for reasons I'll get into below.

As for the Island action, we again got to see a lot of Ben, and a lot of Michael Emerson's acting talents. The Ben/Locke odd couple routine was entertaining, particularly where Ben shakes the flowers at him. It was just a very natural moment. Ben's numerous attitude shifts in the episode were all well-done. His casual, matter-of-fact, "Okay, now what?" reaction to being rescued amid a hail of gunfire and the deal that the Others worked out with Kate and Sayid (whose fight with Keamy, by the way, was awesome); his irritability while setting up the Island move as Locke peppers him with questions (in retrospect there's actually a lot going on here -- He's resentful of Locke for taking his place as the Island Prophet, he's full of rage at the idea of going after Whidmore, he's sad about leaving the Island, etc.); his loss of control when he attacks Keamy... In what was one of the episode's best moments, we see his face turn from exertion to anguish as he rotates the mechanism that moves the Island, realizing that he's about to leave the Island forever (though not really, perhaps, based on the final scene).

There were some good smaller moments on the Island involving the ancillary characters, that set up some things that will no doubt be explored in the coming seasons. The scene with Miles and Rose was great, pitting Rose's unflagging and fanatical commitment to etiquette and propriety against Miles' relentless irreverence and indifference. What was great here is that Miles, jerk though he is, once again goes along with things rather than spark open conflict. Rather than challenge Rose, he just says, somewhat sarcastically, "M-may I eat these peanuts?", just as he never seriously challenged Sawyer's assertion of authority over him.

We find out that Charlotte has some prior connection to the Island but we get no further information whatsoever (other than Charlotte's tendency to react incredulously when people reveal to her that they know things about her she's trying to keep secret). We don't get much Dan action, and we still have no idea why the newscast made him cry or who was with him when he was watching it (I have a feeling it will somehow turn out to be Charlotte, but don't quote me on that).

So, on to what I didn't like. The freighter bomb made no sense at all. Why on earth would Keamy go through all the trouble of (1) smuggling a ton of C4 onto the boat, (2) secretly building a bomb out of it, (3) rigging a remote detonator, and (4) programming the remote detonator to go off by monitoring his own heart rate, and then not tell anyone about it? Or, rather, tell only Ben, somehow relying on the fact that Ben will be so concerned with the fates of a bunch of strangers on a boat who have come to the Island with the specific intention of stealing it from him that he'll immediately surrender? Either he's just crazy, which isn't very interesting, or he's just spiteful and doesn't want anyone else to survive if he doesn't. There's just no way he can realistically expect any useful leverage from the bomb. It's a completely illogical set-up for some pretty dumb plot points. To whit:

An uninteresting exploration of Ben's morals. Ben has always talked about how he doesn't kill innocent people, blah blah blah, but then reacts with Cheney-liked indifference when Locke tells him he just made the boat explode. Presumably, we're supposed to think that this is part of Whidmore having "changed the rules" by killing Ben's daughter, though this fails under Ben's own logic. He absolves himself of responsibility for the deaths of Libby and Analucia because Michael actually pulled the trigger, but never gets a straight answer from Keamy as to whether Whidmore told him to kill Alex before going off half-cocked in search of vengeance. So that was dumb.

The exploding freighter was also a unnecessarily dramatic and non-sensical way to kill off Jin and set up the completely bonkers Sun flashforward storyline. We're supposed to believe that Sun, witnessing her husband and the father of her child get exploded on a boat, swears blood vengeance on the two men she holds responsible for his death (her father and Whidmore), returns to Korea, and then executes her vengenace through... lopsided business deals!!! Seriously, what the hell. The Sun rudder has been broken ever since the beginning of Season Three when she killed (!!!) one of the Others and we never heard about it again. Expect some mad Sun crappiness going forward, folks.

Another nitpicky thing: Unless the Island is floating, which it shouldn't be based on the fact that people are able to get to it and from it using a special set of coordinates, there should have been a much more dramatic set of waterworks when it disappeared. A vanishing volcanic Island would create a hole in the ocean from the surface to the ocean floor. The water rushing in to fill the void would create much more of a disturbance than the modest bloop-bloop we saw in the episode. I'm just saying.

There's certainly more to talk about, but that's about what I have to say. And next season, three words: Weekend at Locke's.

3 Comments

Jin isn't dead.
No corpse = not dead.

They have been trying TOO long to get us to bite that Jin is dead and he doesn't even get a death scene?

I don't buy it.

I think my biggest question after the episode is what happens to Dan and the redshirts on the zodiac when the island disappears and the freighter goes pop?

I think Sun's weird scene with Charles W. probably happened after she spoke with Locke/Jeremy... so she knows that Ben was responsible for the boat explosion and she is trying to get back at him.

I also don't buy that Ben acted on emotion, they seemed to make a big deal out of him clearly hearing what Keamy said. I think Ben was just tying up some loose ends, and maybe sending a message to Whidmore.

I am also guessing that Miles is next in line for leader of the island...

1. The Keamy-Sayid fight was immensely satisfying. I didn't even consider the possibility that they'd square off before it was already happening, but it was really good.

2. Michael Emerson is an underrated comedic actor. Also, I think Ben is the Steve Urkel of "Lost" - random character that catches on with the audience and suddenly becomes the fulcrum of the whole show. Perhaps off island, we will see the cool, Stephon-Urquelle-esque version of Ben.

3. I agree that Ben totally knew what he was doing when he killed Keamy, but at the same time, I think Richard knew what he was doing when he only shot Keamy in the back, instead of the head.

4. Juliet's beach boozing recalls Desmond's similar beach boozing after his boat couldn't leave - the desperation of someone who realizes they're never going to be able to leave. You have to think she had some inkling or inside knowledge not to leave.

5. The writers have a lot of trouble not making female characters boring/implausible, especially in flashbacks/forwards.

6. It really sucks for those redshirts that got ferried out to the freighter on the first Zodiac trip, but weren't invited on the helicopter to escape from the freighter.

7. Here's some things about Jeremy Bentham I picked up in a freshman seminar on violence and politics:
a. He believed in this prison system called a Panopticon, where the discipline came from the design of the prison - inmates could be observed from all sides, at all times, but could never determine if they were being watched at any given time. Dharama-esque.

b. Bentham doesn't believe in the concept of natural rights, of which John Locke was a champion. Betham'ss philosophy is all about the best possible outcome for the most people.

c. After he died, Bentahm's body was preserved and put in this glass display case (with a fake wax head, since the real one was damaged). His friend, and later, an English college, kept the corpse on display. So, yes, Weekend at Locke's is totally hapening.

Other Blogs

Law-Type Blogs

Other Webcomics

Log Archives

eXTReMe Tracker

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by hb published on May 30, 2008 10:42 AM.

The Strangers and The Sixth Sense Are the Same Movie was the previous entry in this blog.

Lessons from My First Game of Ultimate [Frisbee]* is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Powered by Movable Type 5.04