‘Lost’ Wednesdays: ‘Maybe you should’ve put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist’
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I’ll just say upfront that due to weird scheduling in the rest of my life, I haven’t had as much time to read ‘Lost’ stuff as I normally would have. In addition, I’m a little short on time, so this piece will be shorter than usual. We wouldn’t want ‘Lost’ Wednesdays to become ‘Lost’ Thursdays, right?
Anyway, let’s jump straight to what you guys have had to say to me.
Reader Debbie asks, via e-mail:
‘I don’t understand why Sun and Jin aren’t married in the flash-sideways. I thought the timeline changed just before the crash, yet they were married before that.’
Debbie, I guess I’d say that by now, it should be clear that lots more is different in the flash-sideways universe than you’d expect. Jack has a son, Locke seems to have a better relationship with his dad, Nadia is married to Sayid’s brother, and Ben is a high school history teacher. And those are just a few of the changes. It seems clear that we still don’t really know what it is that’s caused all of this, but I think it’s obvious that it wasn’t anything so simple as the bomb sinking the Island and changing everything.
On to your comments!
A number of you said that you hope Juliet is the doctor who saves Sun and Jin’s baby in the flash-sideways plotline. I would love to see that happen, definitely, but the fact that Elizabeth Mitchell is so busy with ‘V’ has me thinking that she won’t be turning up very often. That said, though, I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see her at least one more time, and if she’s going to pop up again, why not as the doctor who saves the baby? I’d buy it.
A couple of you took issue with the fact that I called the aphasia plotline far-fetched. And, sure, I’ll buy that aphasia can come on at random times for weird reasons in real life. What I’m taking issue with is more the fact that it comes on right when the writers need Sun to suddenly not be able to communicate with the group again. It’s just a little too convenient from a plot standpoint for me to not roll my eyes at it just a little bit. That it happened because she hit her head really hard (the classic reason TV characters get brain injuries) made it seem even worse. Is it possible? Yeah. But as a piece of TV storytelling, it felt just a little too easy.
Some of you were even more upset about the ‘V’ countdown clock than I was (and the gambit didn’t help the ratings for the return of that show one bit). Joe Adalian has the rundown of what others said about the device. Here’s hoping ABC doesn’t bring it back any time soon.
Dan thinks the fact that Sun and Jin weren’t married in the flash-sideways is a subtle clue the writers are tossing us as to which of the two is the true candidate. He writes:
I think this detail correlates to the question of which one of them is a true candidate and which Kwon is actually on the wall in the cave and the wheel in the lighthouse due to the shared, married last name. It came up as a question several times in this episode. I am led to believe that it suggests that Jin is the true candidate -- even though I’m sure I am wrong.
I’ve been leaning toward Sun (or Ji-Yeon) being the Kwon listed on the cave wall recently, just because I can’t imagine the show would have all of the final candidates being dudes, but Dan’s theory has me second-guessing myself.
Inthemix takes issue with my continuing to mostly enjoy the season and the flash-sideways plots, saying that they’re taking up time that could be spent on explaining away five seasons’ worth of backstory. Obviously, I disagree. I think the show has done a very good job of explaining a bunch of big things already, but it’s doing so in a way that seems largely organic to the storytelling process. Last year, when ‘Battlestar Galactica’ ended, there was an episode called ‘Dead Lock’ that had several scenes where the characters stood around and explained the show’s backstory to each other. We now know everything there is to know about that backstory, but the episode was almost indescribably boring. I’m glad the ‘Lost’ producers are heading the other direction, even if they don’t answer absolutely every question. That’s what post-finale blatant ploys to take our money, such as novelizations and comics, are for. That said, inthemix makes a strong case for why some think Season Six is a waste of time. I think I’ll always disagree on that point, but inthemix is a good spokesman.
KarenJ has my favorite comment of the week, probably because it involves Desmond (whom I may as well just admit I have a huge, huge man-crush on):
Wasn’t Desmond wearing a jacket from one of his ‘leaping’ or flashback episodes? I’m not great at that stuff, but it sure looked familiar. Plus the long hair and shabiness? He looked more like a ‘flashback’ Desmond than a more recent Desmond.
I really think Desmond (with a possible assist from Daniel Faraday) is going to be the key to figuring out just how these two timelines relate to each other. And I would be even less surprised if it turns out that he’s still unstuck in time somehow and that he’s arrived at the Island from some other moment in time entirely. I think it’s safe to say that Desmond is the free agent that seems most likely to pull all of the strands of the story together, and I’m tremendously excited to see what the show has in store for him. (After all, the Desmond-centric ‘Flashes Before Your Eyes,’ ‘The Constant’ and ‘Jughead’ all rank among the show’s finest hours. A good track record!)
And with that, we’ll end this post. Remember to send me your e-mails and Tweets for this weekend’s ‘Lost’ weekend, and we’ll see you then.
-- Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)
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