Lost (spoilers)

[Kal]

This was a superb episode filled with lots of info... I think you people are already too hard to please with this show. Not all episodes can be as good as 'the constant', but most of the episodes this season have given us clear information that moves the story forward, and its moving pretty fast. i thought it would take the entire season for them to come back to the island, or for john to get off and go find them, etc. of course all their encounters with john off-island will be shown at some point, but the pace now is really good and exciting.

[MacGuffin]

'Lost': Digging Inside Season 5
Time travel. Quantum physics. A plot twist straight out of ''Weekend at Bernie's.'' This is turning out to be the series' most daring -- and geektastic -- outing yet. And that's saying something.
By Jeff Jensen; Entertainment Weekly

Across the street from a neatly tended cemetery on the island of Oahu, there is a gated lot where the past, present, and future of Lost all come together. The Others' submarine, Henry Gale's hot-air balloon, Locke's outrigger — all beached on the grass like so many Black Rock shipwrecks. And inside a large soundstage, hidden away from prying eyes, Lost's iconic castaways are huddled on a top secret set, trying very hard not to totally spaz out. The action being shot for the year's 12th episode is almost spoilerifically indescribable, but we can report — perhaps to your great relief — that most of the gang is back on the Island after an early sweep of time-travel episodes that kept many of them separated by distance and history. Jack (Matthew Fox) sits tense and terse, dressed as...uh...can't say. Sawyer (Josh Holloway) bursts through a door, freaking out over...someone. Someone who is bleeding. A lot. As Kate (Evangeline Lilly) eyeballs both her men, trying as always to decide between them, psychic hustler Miles Straume (Ken Leung) cradles a shotgun while fretting about — and we think we're getting this right — the catastrophic collapse of the space-time continuum! (Or maybe he said ''the economy.'' Same difference, though, right?)

No, Lost definitely isn't playing it safe, even though it has every reason to do just that. Coming off a critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated fourth season and entering its next-to-last year, ABC's brilliantly odd, infectiously frustrating crypto-drama (airing Wednesdays at 9 p.m.) could have attempted to keep its no-longer-huge-but-still-fervently-fanatic base sated and stable until 2010's Gimme all my answers NOW! series-capping season. Nope. Didn't even try. Instead, Lost has opted to start season 5 by baring its potentially alienating geek soul and challenging its audience even more with gonzo storytelling. Thought the show was confusing before? Try this on for size: Time travel. Quantum physics. Hydrogen bombs. And a Da Vinci Code-meets-Foucault's Pendulum-meets-Weekend at Bernie's conspiracy to save (or destroy) the world, the linchpin of which involves U-Hauling the corpse of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) back to the Island. When the gloriously strange saga of Lost finally concludes next year, season 5 is likely to be remembered as the one when the series came out of the closet and declared itself. But here's hoping it doesn't lose everyone in the process: So far this season, Lost is averaging 11.3 million viewers, down 3.4 percent from last season, and a far cry from the series-high average of 15.9 million in season 1. But the producers say: Come what may. ''The fear is that Lost just became an AP class, and really, what's one's incentive for taking an AP class?'' says exec producer Damon Lindelof. ''But the show has gotten to that point where it had to let its freak flag fly. It needed to announce, 'You wanna know what the Island is? You wanna know why these people were brought to the Island? You wanna know what their purpose for being there is? Well, it might be a little weirder than you would've hoped.'''

But is it too weird? ''I was a little worried about the start of the season, to be honest,'' says Lilly, battling back a cold and enjoying some late-afternoon Hawaii sun in between takes. ''It might sound terrible to say, but the mythology of this show eludes me. I am all about the characters and the interplay of the relationships and the angst of redemption and retribution — all those good nuggets. So, in my biased view, I've been running around telling the world: 'Be patient! It's just the first half of the season! We'll come back!''' Her costar Matthew Fox has another, more optimistic take. ''It feels very different from what Lost has felt like in the past, but in a really good way,'' says the actor, sporting neatly parted hair and some dangling iPod earbuds. ''There will be many, many answers, lots of things from past seasons that left the audience thinking, 'That's never going to pay off' — but it does, in really cool ways that make you go 'Holy s---!' The season has a real feeling of things coming together, and it builds a groundswell of momentum for the end of the show.''

So, baffling or brilliant? Let the debate begin.

Of course, Lost has always been pretty off its rocker. Ghosts. Locke's legs. Smokey the monster. Those who've hoped Lost would avoid sci-fi answers may have been fooling themselves. ''Honestly,'' says Lindelof, ''the non-genre answer just isn't that interesting.'' And now it's clear the time-travel element of the Island (beyond just the flashbacks/flash-forwards) has been part of the show from the beginning. Among the clues: the never-identified cave skeletons (might they belong to time-tossed castaways?); the name of the company that recruited Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) to the Island, Mittelos, which is an anagram for ''lost time''; the sprinkled-in Stephen Hawking references. ''Whenever the show presents something about the history of the Island — like coming upon the Black Rock slave ship — these are things we are setting up for the endgame of the show,'' says Lindelof. ''This season, it's like the audience is finally opening up a present that was actually bought and wrapped years ago. At least, we hope they think it's a present.''

In other words: The producers have a master plan — and an exit strategy. But that master plan couldn't be unleashed fully until Lindelof and partner Carlton Cuse negotiated a series end date during season 3, a.k.a. The Year Lost Learned a Show About Castaways Stranded on an Island Can Last So Long No Matter How Clever It May Be. ''The same way our characters were sort of locked in cages in season 3, when the show went awry,'' says Cuse, ''we felt locked in cages because we didn't know if our mythology had to go two more years or nine.''

Now uncaged, the producers face the challenge of telling their story successfully without unraveling the franchise. Cuse and Lindelof are keenly aware that time-travel yarns have had a spotty record of late (Life on Mars: struggling; Heroes: ugh; Journeyman: anyone? Bueller?) and that even the smartest stuff has the unfortunate side effect of causing serious brain crampage. The producers promise an approach to time travel backed by researchable science (Popular Mechanics even has a Lost blog analyzing it) and grounded in humanity. Cuse and Lindelof allow that the season premiere — in which a fragmented narrative mirrored the Island's erratic skips through time — may not have totally nailed that value, but they believe it was a necessary starting point. ''The complex episodes come early this season,'' says Cuse, ''but they lead to greater rewards downstream once the audience understands the rules of the game for the year.''

Seeing that plan play out has been heartening to Lost's cast, many of whom were left feeling alternately OMG! and WTF? by the season's first scripts. ''The first episode was wonderful, [but] it was also a lot to digest,'' says Jorge Garcia, adding that the storytelling of the Hurley-heavy second installment left him baffled enough that ''it totally went over my head that it was a Hurley episode.'' More worrisome to others was the possibility that a sci-fi emphasis might compromise the show's identity, limit its possibilities, and make the drama even less accessible to non-geek-minded viewers. ''I'm mixed about it, to be honest,'' says Daniel Dae Kim, whose presumed-dead Jin was discovered alive and well — and in the Island's not-so-distant past — on the most recent episode. ''One of the things that attracted me initially to this show was how universal the themes were and how different the kinds of stories it could tell. Now, I feel with the sci-fi we're becoming definable in a way that maybe we weren't in the first season. At the same time, I like how the writers are showing allegiance to the true fans. The people who stayed with us are being rewarded with the more complicated and nuanced storytelling that they've been hungering for.'' As for ABC's feelings about Lost's dive down the sci-fi rabbit hole, senior VP of current drama programming Kim Rozenfeld says, ''There were aspects that were certainly unorthodox, but we were comfortable because we knew how they set up the larger story.''

Despite her early season jitters, Lilly says she's committed to the producers' vision. ''You're either along for the ride and part of it, or you're not. And if you don't trust the writers, you might as well get off the boat,'' she says. ''I respect that they do things that could potentially alienate parts of their audience, because that means they are being true to their story and not being manipulated by outside pressure.''

And that story is still capable of addressing very relatable human themes. ''Usually in shows, the cliff-hanger is all about who's shacking up with who,'' says Leung. ''On Lost, the cliff-hanger is about the meaning of existence. What does it mean to be alive?'' Jeremy Davies — whose quirky physicist Daniel Faraday has emerged as a major player of late — credits Lost with allowing him to process the recent deaths of his father and a close friend. ''There have been so many compelling synchronicities between my life and Faraday's story line,'' says the actor. ''I'd be in a lot more trouble, personally, if I didn't have this opportunity to channel these energies within me.''

As for Lindelof and Cuse, they're channeling all their energies squarely onto the Island. ''We feel like the audience will be really clamoring to get back to the Island after these first seven episodes,'' says Lindelof. ''And they'll get a big massive dose of it for pretty much the remainder of the season.'' The next four episodes will tell the story of how exactly the Oceanic 6 get back (and which of them, too), as well as how the Left Behinders on the Island get their crazy quantum merry-go-round to stop spinning before it kills them: In the Feb. 11 episode, the nosebleeds-and-brain-scrambling time-travel sickness takes a deadly turn. In episode 7, airing Feb. 25, we'll find out not only how Locke got off the Island but how he wound up in the coffin as well.

Once Oceanic 6 folk are back in the jungle, Lost will begin to shift back to character-centric episodes with off-Island flashbacks/flash-forwards. And episode 12 is a big one for Kate. ''Season 5 is about do they or don't they make it back to the Island, and every character has their reasons,'' explains Lilly. ''This is the episode where we understand the decision Kate has made. There's so much more than meets the eye.'' While Kate comes into focus, Jack will gain strength and start seeking his true destiny — good news for those not fond of Doc Shephard's despairing, hero-resisting, mangy-chin-bush-wearing shame spiral. ''I've always believed part of what was destroying him was his lack of physical proximity to the Island,'' says Fox. ''He is fated to do something on the Island, and he has fought that with every fiber of his body, and in doing that, the Island is destroying him from afar. When he finds himself back in this place, he's wide-eyed and alert. He knows he's in the path of his own destiny.''

Jack's rejuvenation may also involve renewed romance with Kate, though Kate-whipped Sawyer could put up a fight — presuming he hasn't fallen for Juliet. Or someone else: The Island's female hottie population is set to increase later this season with the addition of 24's Reiko Aylesworth and New Amsterdam's Zuleikha Robinson. Despite last year's helicopter kiss-and-whisper between Kate and Sawyer (contents of said whisper will be revealed soon), Lilly believes that the audience is rooting for Kate and Jack. ''But I could be completely wrong!'' she laughs. ''What I've noticed is that the audience tends to root for the coupling that gets the most screen time — and right now, what they're seeing is Kate and Jack.''

Whichever way romance blows on Lost, Fox hopes that it just doesn't...well, blow. He feels the show has sometimes indulged the lovey-dovey stuff for the sake of ratings. ''That's someone going, 'People love romance, so just turn the buttons and dial it up,''' complains Fox. ''Look, I understand that. But it has to be f---ing credible. Our world doesn't lend itself to conventional romance. Yearning? Yes. Desire? Yes. Passion? Yes. And when those things play out in the context of survival s--- that's gotta get done, where people's lives are f---ing at stake — that's cool. But romance? I haven't always bought it for Jack and Kate, and I haven't always bought it for Kate and Sawyer. The show's too intense for that.''

Besides, it's not like pandering to the audience is likely to grow it — not at this point. News flash! Lost — brainy, challenging, locked into an evolving, serialized story — is a tough choo-choo to jump aboard if you're not already up to speed. Ratings are likely to continue to inch down as opposed to up. But the producers aren't sweating it. ''For most showrunners, existence is predicated on 'If I get good ratings, I get to keep doing this,''' says Cuse. ''But we know Lost is ending, no matter what the ratings are. So we're just trying to make sure that we end the story well and we get it executed on film the way we want it.'' However, the storytellers hope that anyone who has ever been a Lost fan will tune in next year as the show moves into payoff mode and begins resolving long-term character arcs. Indeed, compared with this year, season 6 sounds like it could be something of a blast from the season 1 past. Lindelof teases that the sci-fi-heavy season 5 (which includes more Smokey, four-toed statue, and numbers intrigue) ''sets up where we need to go in season 6, which will be much more grounded and character-centric than it is this year.''

Whatever form it takes, Fox believes they will go out strong — with or without massive ratings. ''People will remember it the way they want to remember it,'' he says. ''What I will remember is that Lost was one of the most innovative, risk-taking, smartest shows ever. That's how I want to remember it. And I think it deserves that.''

[Gamblour.]

Ah, but remember course correction. We're to assume, based on Faraday's encounter with Desmond, that what they do in the past retroactively affects it (he had a 'memory' of it suddenly). When Jin tells her not to go, that is what was supposed to happen, so maybe before Jin was there, there was some other reason why she doesn't go in there. Whatever it was, it results in the same outcome. Does that make sense? Jin cannot change anything, so what happened when he was there was supposed to happen.

Or am I completely wrong? Rousseau not recognizing Jin means that it's because he hasn't gone back in time yet.

i don't think that works. Desmond is an exception to the rule because of his exposure to the hatch. Locke, for example, is not an exception because he had already spoken to Alpert about going to his birth. And there Alpert was in season 4 and in Locke's childhood. no retroactive future memory formation. therefore Rousseau had met Jin before. i'm 99% sure of this.

You're totally right. But then why doesn't Desmond remember Faraday? What makes him special to not have experienced Faraday the first time, but now he does?

[ElPandaRoyal]

Ah, but remember course correction. We're to assume, based on Faraday's encounter with Desmond, that what they do in the past retroactively affects it (he had a 'memory' of it suddenly). When Jin tells her not to go, that is what was supposed to happen, so maybe before Jin was there, there was some other reason why she doesn't go in there. Whatever it was, it results in the same outcome. Does that make sense? Jin cannot change anything, so what happened when he was there was supposed to happen.

Or am I completely wrong? Rousseau not recognizing Jin means that it's because he hasn't gone back in time yet.

i don't think that works. Desmond is an exception to the rule because of his exposure to the hatch. Locke, for example, is not an exception because he had already spoken to Alpert about going to his birth. And there Alpert was in season 4 and in Locke's childhood. no retroactive future memory formation. therefore Rousseau had met Jin before. i'm 99% sure of this.

You're totally right. But then why doesn't Desmond remember Faraday? What makes him special to not have experienced Faraday the first time, but now he does?

I've been thinking, don't know if this theory stands (I'm a big fan, but I don't re-watch a lot of episodes, so this may not work): You can only affect people from the past that you'd already met in the future. Like, Faraday meeting Desmond outside the hatch, he gave him the memory because that person existed in both his future and in that moment of the past he travelled to. Same with Danielle - she didn't recognize Jin at first because she had never met him when the plane crashed, but then Jin travelled to the past and when he met Danielle again, he established a connection - they had both met in both parts of the timeline, that's why when we go a little further to the future, Danielle knows who he is. Or with Alpert - John knew him in the island, then he went to the past and told him to go and visit him at the house, so, having met in both timelines, Alpert was able to go there. Or maybe this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but it's kind of nice to theorize.

[picolas]

no. that logic is waaaaay too shaky. time doesn't work like that. desmond is the only one who can get away with not making total time sense and even there i get pretty uncomfortable believing the show's logic/hoping they haven't fully explained it.. maybe rousseau just forgot jin in her madness? still he'd be kinda hard to forget, being a guy who mysteriously vanished in front of her.

[SiliasRuby]

I'm watching Jin being a badass on 'charmed'...its so awesome!

[MacGuffin]

Fox moves 'Idol' against 'Lost'

As if "Lost" wasn't having a tough enough time with audience erosion.

Fox is shaking up Wednesday night by swapping reality hit "American Idol" and freshman procedural "Lie to Me."

Once the singing competition moves into the finals March 11, Fox will pivot "Idol" to 9 p.m., turning its Death Star against ABC's "Lost" for the rest of season. "Lie to Me"  will stay out of the way by shifting to 8 p.m.

Though "Idol" and "Lost" tend to have different audiences, last week Fox aired a two-hour "Idol" that stretched into the 9 p.m. hour and seemed to take a little steam out of the mystery thriller, whose ratings have fallen with each episode this season.

The time-period swap move might seem opportunistic, but Fox has been planning this for awhile -- especially if the network sensed "Lie to Me" could use some additional cover from "Lost" and CBS' "Criminal Minds." But "Lie" has held up well, typically drawing roughly the same rating as "Lost." 

For "Lie," this is a mixed blessing. The Tim Roth drama won't have nearly as much competition in Wednesday's 8 p.m. dead-zone ... but it won't have "Idol" for a lead-in either. 

For "Lost," this is the first time in two years it's faced "Idol" and ABC unfortunately can't turn back time to when the show was pulling 15 million viewers.

[Sleepless]

That was a bit of a scary episode. I liked how it started out a Jin episode, and then turned into a Locke episode. I was hoping next week would be all about Jeremy Bentham, but it seems not... maybe week after?

I don't understand the whole complexities of the time travel issue. Mostly I'm just along for the ride, and will accept whatever happens. I do have my own vague understanding of the rules of how everything works, but there is no way I could summarize or explain it.

It does seem Jin always had gone back in time to save Rousseau because when time shifted to a few months later and she was killing the crazies, she still remembered Jin then - and since he's continuously time traveling, time passing should not be that linear.

As for all the Lost spin-off Off The Island... is any further proof needed that Jack and Kate are the most boring characters on the show. I did like that little moment with Ben though when Jack and Sun were threatening to kill him, and he pulled over. You really felt sorry for the guy, and it was further validation to my belief that Ben is a hero. Why does everyone keep acting like he's some evil villain?!?!

[MacGuffin]

I was hoping next week would be all about Jeremy Bentham, but it seems not... maybe week after?

In episode 7, airing Feb. 25, we'll find out not only how Locke got off the Island but how he wound up in the coffin as well.

[Sleepless]

I'm so clever.

[polkablues]

MacGuffin is my constant.

[Kal]

How funny is this, I just saw Walt on a "Tyson's Anytizers" commercial. Sucks growing up and having to leave Lost for this shit.

[bonanzataz]

How funny is this, I just saw Walt on a "Tyson's Anytizers" commercial. Sucks growing up and having to leave Lost for this shit.

what sucks is that they showed it a couple of weeks ago during one of those "enhanced editions" of lost right before the new episode. yeesh, way to rub it in.

[Pas]

***sigh***

at least now we know Jack's grandpa and also his father's shoes

[modage]

it wasn't bad, but it was definitely a bridging episode.  an in-betweener.

it's tough when you have a character that has to deliver that much exposition while the other characters stand around and go "so what you're saying is..." and make sure the audience is following.  it's tough.