“Lost” is going out on top of its game

I’ve made no secret of it. Me and The Missus are huge Lost fans. If you’re not familiar with the show, now in its sixth and pre-ordained final year, it’s about… oh, never mind. Stop reading now, in that case.

The Last Boy Scout and his missus are also big fans, so most every late-Tuesday night he and I email our thoughts and theories to each other about that week’s episode.

I, for instance, was bored by last week’s show, the Sawyer-centric one. Turns out that even though he’s a cop in his flash-sideways (I warned you to stop reading if you’re not already a fan), his character remains a self-centered shit-head both on the island and off. Dramatically, it was uninteresting to me. He’s the exact same guy in both timelines as he was in the pilot episode. That’s not a character arc, that’s a character flatline.

The episode was especially disappointing following the previous week’s excellent “Dr. Linus” episode where Ben appeared to be redeemed in both timelines. I say appeared because there’s still seven episodes left to go, so we don’t know if this is the final twist yet for Ben’s character. But what a great, unexpected, completely character-driven episode of weekly TV.

Just before last night’s show started, I was reading “Lamb; The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.” One chapter opened up with the narrator referring to Jacob from the book of Genesis doing battle with an angel, and defeating him. How it was the first time a human had bested an angel. I reflexively applied this context to the “Jacob” character on Lost and was rewarded with an insight: Perhaps Jacob and his nemesis, the unnamed Man In Black, not-Locke, are supernatural beings. One, not-Locke, a fallen angel and the other, Jacob, tasked as his warden. I have a feeling they’re both being punished for something, but only time (and the remaining 7 episodes) will tell.

TLBS referenced “some” fans who have complained that the show has added too many new characters this year and had lost the focus on the show’s core characters, mostly cast regulars from the series premiere.

Personally, I’m a bit bored with most of the original characters, including Jack, Sawyer and Kate (still interested in Hurley and Sayid, if you’re keeping score.). It’s the constant infusion of new blood (Michelle Rodriguez and Mr. Eko, Ben, Juliet, Eloise Hawking, Lapides, Miles and Farraday), new storylines, new storytelling techniques, that keeps this show exciting for me. I think it’s remarkably cool that some of the most vital, interesting characters have been added to the show late in its run.

What other show would have the cajones, in the middle of their swan-song season, to devote an entire episode to the backstory of what had up until that point been a minor character like this week’s Lost did? And unleashed major, massive revelations, just like I predicted they would when I heard this week’s show was going to feature the ageless Richard Alpert character.

Good Lord, it even worked as a love story for me. The guy playing Richard (Nestor Carbonell, inset), is terrific and I’m delighted he had a whole episode to himself. I hope Emmy voters were watching. (If you like him, you’ll have to check out the live-action “Tick” TV series to catch some of his earlier work as BatManuel.)

Additionally, the writing and directing this week were jobbed-out to relatively no-name writers and directors. None of the show’s producers (Lindelof, Bender, et al) were even credited with this week’s game-changing episode.


I think by series’ end, the first-season castaways will be back front and center. And they’ll probably be interesting again.

I have another prediction, too. I don’t follow the online fan forums so I don’t know if anybody else has put this idea out there already: I think Desmond & Penny’s baby, named after the character “Charlie” who died at the end of season three, is somehow going to grow up to become Charles Widmore. So far Widmore’s connection to the island has never really been explored. We know he was there for a while as a young man, and as an old man is obsessed with trying to find it, but other than that, bupkis.



This week really raised the bar for the rest of the season, in this geek’s humble opinion.



Here are the titles of the remaining episodes of the season, starting with this week’s:

6.9 Ab Aeterno (“since the beginning of time”)

6.10 The Package

6.11 Happily Ever After

6.12 Everybody Loves Hugo

6.13 The Last Recruit

6.14 The Candidate

6.15 Across The Sea

6.16 What They Died For

6.17 TBA

6.18 TBA