“Where do you think you’re goin’, Blondie?”

I can’t figure this out: Both parts of The Incident are approximately 42 minutes. But Part 2 contains only three flashbacks, compared to Part 1′s seven. The 2007 storyline is seen far less frequently in Part 2, there are only two brief scenes before the final act, and unlike Part 1, there is no subplot with Ilana/Frank until they appear at the end. Part 1 also features two storylines in 1977 that receive equal screentime, but both have converged in Part 2. And there’s no noticeable difference in pacing between both parts. So where does the running time in Part 2 come from, I wonder?

So, flashbacks. The one involving Jack brings us back to one of the first scenes in the Pilot, and the one with Hurley is one of the very last things to happen chronologically before the Oceanic 6 returned to the island. Neat, that. Notably, Hurley is the only with whom Jacob talks openly, foreshadowing that he may have an important part to play in the final season. ABRUPT TRANSITION. Sawyer leads Jack into a clearing to try and talk him out of his plan. When that doesn’t work, they have their long awaited showdown as bombastic music plays. Hot damn this finale is climactic.

This pains me a little bit, because it’s the one weak spot in this mindblowingly awesome episode… the love polygon being the crux for the entire story. Jack’s doing it all for Kate. Maybe a bit extreme, but ok. Kate going along with everything suddenly… stupid, but she’s a perpetual wild card who is defined by what Jack and Sawyer are doing. It’s not a shining moment, but it’s consistent for her. And Sawyer goes along with it because he lost Juliet, so why not?

But why does Juliet suddenly want to blow up the island and erase everyone’s life? Because oh noes Sawyer looked at Kate when Rose and Bernard were talking about true love. Now to be fair, this isn’t the sudden jiffy-pop plot turn designed entirely to serve the story I once thought it was. There’s been an undercurrent of quiet hostility towards Kate from Juliet ever since Namaste, but it was never talked about outright. So this doesn’t undercut Juliet’s trademark cool, collected rationality that badly. But it’s still a problematic sequence, The quickie flashback to Juliet’s parents getting divorced seems like a transparent attempt by the writers to justify her present decision, but all it does is jar because it’s the one flashback that doesn’t feature Jacob. And it’s just the extremity of all these decisions. These are ostensibly grown ups who would rather blow up a nuclear bomb and play God with all kinds of lives instead of talk out their relationship problems.

All right, shake it off. Still lots of good stuff ahead.

After all that is out of the way, the rest of the episode is straightforward. The big gunfight at the Swan Site is spectacular, and I had never noticed this before, but Dr. Chang actually swipes Razindsky’s gun and holds it on him. Dr. Chang is now awesome. And everybody braces for a nuclear explosion, but as Jack Bender puts it in the special features, “S*** hits the fan on a whole other level.” In the midst of all this chaos there’s time for a Daaaww Moment, (“Dad!”) and a nice gruesome end for Phil. But I always dread that moment where Phil gets impaled, because I know what’s immediately going to follow.

So this time, I was totally going to watch the episode without crying uncontrollably at the scene where Juliet is pulled into the pit. My icy icy heart remained intact up until Sawyer said “Don’t you leave me” just before Juliet GAWDAMMIT IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN! ;_; Stupid Lost, stop making me feel things! But Jesus, this scene. It’s just so heartbreaking, agonizingly drawn out, the score is powerful, Holloway and Mitchell act their hearts out. Even knowing that Juliet lives long enough to not die pointlessly, and knowing that she and Sawyer will at least get a little more closure in the next episode, and will in fact wind up happily ever after in due course, it’s the most difficult scene in the series.

It’s hard to believe that after the sheer intensity of this entire sequence, there’s an entire act and three major plot turns still to go. But it’s back to 2007, where Richard, Sun, and myself all badly need a drink after everything that’s happened. But no, this finale isn’t tragic enough just yet, so here comes Ilana, who gains Richard’s trust by asking him the statue question. After which, she unceremoniously dumps the body of the real John Locke onto the beach.

I was too busy at first thinking about the audacity of Darlton using the same reveal two finales in a row to be truly hit by all the ramifications; Locke has been dead for ten episodes, he was seemingly just a pawn his entire time on the island, the man from the first scene is Locke now, he’s also probably the smoke monster or at least he controls the smoke monster, who has also been manipulating Ben. That’s all stuff that hits you when the show is over. In the moment, I was too caught up in Ben’s speech to Jacob, Emerson’s best moment of the season. Then Jacob says “What about you?”, the worst possible thing he could have said to a grudgeful man holding a knife, and it’s time for Ben to stab another character to death in a finale. That shot of Locke staring at Jacob’s burning corpse, a horrible inverse of the real Locke staring at his burning wheelchair way back in Walkabout, is absolutely bone chilling.

And then it’s back to the past one last time where everyone escapes the Swan and Juliet is still alive and she hits Jughead with a rock L O S T with inverted colors and… sigh. Sure Lost, toss one more mind gnawing cliffhanger onto the pile. See if I care. Because although the actual process of watching the episode is over, The Incident is just getting started with you. After the more immediate emotional impact of stuff like Juliet’s fall wears off, and after you’re through going “Did they all die? Did the plan work? Will the last five seasons really be erased?” there’s so much more to be considered. You have to fully realize that John Locke has met the most tragic fate imaginable. You have to realize that Jacob has been killed as well, and wonder what that might mean for the island. You have to re-examine the entire series with the newfound knowledge that Jacob was not the only demigod on the island, and figure out which of the mysterious happenings can be attributed to him or to the fellow who has assumed Locke’s form. There’s certainly enough here to keep you busy for 8 months, but I’m starting on Season 6 tomorrow so nyeh.

And so ends another finale. There’s a flaw that’s more glaring than anything in either of the two previous finales, but for 80 out of 85 minutes, The Incident is just as or even more riveting than anything we’ve seen in Lost to date. The momentum of the story is unrelenting, the tragedy is devastating, the mythological advances are stunning, all of the implications are staggering and of course, the entertainment value is through the roof. Another Lost finale that does so much and does it amazingly well.

Unofficial Rating for Part 2: 9.5/10
Official Rating for The Incident as a whole: 10/10
Ranked 1st out of 16 episodes.

FINAL RATINGS/RANKINGS
16. 316 (6.5/10)
15. LaFleur (7/10)
14. He’s Our You (7.5/10)
13. Namaste (8/10)
12. Whatever Happened, Happened (8/10)
11. Some Like it Hoth (8/10)
10. The Lie (8.5/10)
9. The Little Prince (8.5/10)
8. The Variable (8.5/10)
7. Jughead (9/10)
6. Follow the Leader (9/10)
5. Because You Left (9.5/10)
4. This Place is Death (9.5/10)
3. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (9.5/10)
2. Dead is Dead (9.5/10)
1. The Incident (10/10)

Average: 8.53/10

And so ends Season 5! It had a thrilling opening arc, and then a careful build up to the now expected amazing final stretch of episodes. It’s a year that pushed sci-fi concepts and plot density as far as it could go. It seemed to me that Season 5 was meant to be the story driven season, the big mythology season. On those terms, I thought it did it a great job… except when it comes to that darn 5.6-5.8 stretch. I can’t help but feel that two out of three of them fell relatively flat, which is a shame because they were meant to transition us between between the season’s two distinct arcs. That didn’t quite happen, and although time travel gave the season some degree of unity, this sometimes felt like two mini seasons that were sloppily thrown together.

If not for those weak tent pole episodes, I’d probably put Season 5 into the same God Tier as Seasons 3 and 4, but it must be content with its home in my Really Good Tier, along with Season 1. Where will Season 6 wind up? I’m honestly not sure myself, but S5 at least left the path clear for S6 to focus more on character resolution. Join me over the next sixteen days to find out, starting with another twofer review for LA X tomorrow!