Ooooooooooh…

On the sixteenth day of Lost Again, my true love gave to me:

Sixteen bodyguards impalin’…

After a spectacular first hour that at times felt like a continuation of “The Incident,” now we’re branching out and setting up the new status quo for Season 6. That means it’s an episode that is long on set-up and heavy on moving from place to place, but luckily, things avoid getting tedious.

Dudes, Sayid got shot four reviews ago, and I’m running out of ways to type “Sayid continues to be on Death’s Door.” The Losties take pity on me and decide to resolve this story, loading Sayid onto a stretcher and heading over to the Temple. It’s a great journey for fans of continuity, you see Montand’s one armed corpse, and the cast has to avoid the hole in the floor that Ben fell through. But the group is captured, and taken to Dogen (we all have an opinion of him) and Lennon. Oh good, another long haired bespectacled jerkass, I was just starting to miss Rzinsdski.

Sawyer and Miles stay behind to bury Juliet, with Sawyer kicking off the trend this year’s trend of always having the male character’s hair soaking wet for no reason. Juliet’s dying words being dragged out seems to be an excuse to give Miles something to do, but I like his obvious hurt when he realizes Sawyer only wanted him to stay behind for his gift. Both get captured by the Others (offscreen).

Nestor Carbonell has been admitted to the main cast this season. Which means it’s time for his all knowing and calming aura to evaporate, as he has the **** scared out of him by the Man in Black and is knocked unconscious by a punch to the throat. Before that, Locke, who will hereafter be referred to by his fan preferred portmanteau “Flocke,” spends some time insulting his likeness’s memory. It is the best and creepiest moment of either of these two hours.

Welcome to final round of reviews! I hear this season is about two demi-god like figures battling for supremacy of the island. Sounds good, I can’t wait to see who Frank has to fight.

I absolutely love LA X… Part 1. Part 2? We’ll see. But Part 1 is again in the style of the Season 4 and 5 premieres, showing us all the characters who were in play last year, resolving all the cliffhangers concerning them, not burdening us with too many new elements right at the beginning. Every scene advances the story, throws some interesting tidbits at us, sets up the major theme of the season, and is just a really well directed hour, atmospheric, exciting, or emotional wherever it’s appropriate.

The opening (or rather, the second opening) is one I love, what with Kate up in a tree for the first time since Season 1 (maybe) and the muffled sound and all. She and Miles quickly find that they’re in 2007, and the love triangle is actually resolved here in the first ten minutes. Jack and Sawyer are both lying unconscious side by side, and after looking between them briefly, Kate runs over and rouses Jack. That’s as much as I intend to say about the love triangle until the finale. Sawyer is understandably upset at Jack, but all is momentarily dropped when they hear Juliet crying out beneath the swan site wreckage.

Hurley is watching a gravely injured Sayid, who muses on what happens when he’ll die. That’s when Jacob appears. It’s really neat that Hurley’s ability to see the dead comes into play here, even if it does slightly undercut one part of The Incident. In a series like this, I love it when a major force of good is destroyed in the penultimate installment, leaving the force of evil an even bigger threat than usual. And yet he’s still around, providing advice, all of his rules are still binding the Candidates and the Man in Black. But anyway. Jacob tells Hurley to take Sayid to The Temple.