LOST AGAIN: 6.1 “LA X Part 1″
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.
Over at the statue, after an agonizing wait of one day, I finally get to see how things play out after the discovery of Locke’s corpse. After Locke sends Ben out to fetch Richard, Frank lets loose this bon mot to Sun off of her inquiry about Ilana and Bram.
“Other than the fact that I know they were on the Ajira flight with us, all I know is they knocked me out and dragged my ass to some cabin, which they promptly burned, then brought me here along with the dead guy in the box. They say they’re the good guys.”
Now this is unforgivably unwieldy exposition. The majority of people watching by this point are hardcore fans, and have no need of a refresher. Anyone who is just tuning in because they’re thinking “Oh yeah, Lost, I wonder how ****ed up that’s gotten since I stopped watching?” will still find this completely meaningless and baffling without any context. But Frank gets away with it. Why? Because he’s FrankgoddamnLapidus!
Now it’s time for the bodyguards to enter the statue and confront Locke. Bram does not heed the fact that he’s the only character in this subplot who hasn’t scored a Series Regular credit over the hiatus, and holds a gun on the zombie that just killed the magical island God. As we all know, it ends really badly, and Locke shows that he’s the smoke monster. One of the most awesome reveals of the whole show, and I love it. Hmm, this whole sequence is the first of many mass murders in Season 6… Why, this is giving me an idea for a Christmas carol!
Sawyer makes it to Juliet, where they thankfully get one real moment together after she fell into DON’T MAKE ME THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN! ;_; Understandably, some were irritated that Juliet’s death was drawn out, and even knowing what happens in the second hour, I’m a little annoyed at the ol’ “I have something to tell you…” *dies* trope. But the goodbye was worth bringing Elizabeth Mitchell back for, even without the afterlife hint.
And now, the Alternate Universe! Let’s just drop all pretenses and start calling it the Afterlife. Needless to say, there will be more than enough time to talk about this place as a whole and individual character arcs in upcoming reviews. Here, it’s all about what would happen if Flight 815 didn’t crash, so lets enjoy it on those terms.
Transitioning from the hydrogen flash to the clouds is a fantastic, Holy S*** moment. Jack is on the plane, it’s the first flashback from the Pilot, there’s all the old characters! Desmond’s appearance on the plane is still a great, jaw dropping moment. And in spite of the usual noticeable CGI, that long shot down into the ocean and across the submerged island is just awe inspiring. I can’t think of a better way to start the final season.
It seems to me now that Rose and Bernard alone seem to know right away that they’re in an afterlife. She says to him, “I missed you” when he gets back from the bathroom, and tells Jack that “He can let go now.” And later on, Sun comments on how happy they are. It seems that near death in the Afterlife allows you to glimpse your former life, and true love catalyzzes you to fully remember it, so it would make sense that Rose and Bernard would immediately know what’s happening. I’ll have to closely watch their later scenes in The Substitute and The Candidate for more clues, but anyone who hasn’t rewatched LA X, I highly recommend that you do so.
Going around the plane, the first hint that things might be askew appears when Hurley calls himself the luckiest guy in the world. Sawyer cautions him against telling others about his money, which at this point could be a set-up for a long con. Sun and Jin are back in their familiar dynamic, but you’re right to wonder if anything may have changed.
Locke and Boone have themselves a little conversation, the first of many Afterlife scenes that come dangerously close to being cutesy. “So you were
It’s great to see these familiar faces again, right down to the minor characters like Arzt, Frogurt, and Edward Mars, even though a couple of conspicuous by their absence. Dominic Monaghan, Ian Somerhalder, and Elizabeth Mitchell are all starring in other TV shows, and they seemed happy to come back for a cameo. But Maggie Grace is too busy? Something isn’t right there…
Even with the hints that something is a little off, this first episode sticks with the characters as we know them. Like a lot of people, I’m constantly asking “What If?” And that often extends to fiction. I may or may not have read a few alternate universe fanfics in my time. And now, here’s a show in which the honest to goodness writers are officially showing us what may have happened if things had gone differently at the beginning of the series. In concept, it’s an amazing idea for taking the show full circle, and LA X Part 1 executes that to perfection.
As an episode that is one half immediate aftermath of “The Incident” and one half a look at Oceanic 815 if it never crashed, I was really into it. And the crucial theme of death and the afterlife is set up right away through Sayid, Juliet, and everyone in the flash sideways universe. Full marks to the first half of the episode!
Unofficial Rating for Part 1: 10/10
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