Sixteen guards impalin’
Fifteen pokers a scorchin’
Fourteen ladders a snappin’
Thirteen mirrors a smashin’
Twelve Others a crushin’
Eleven graves a diggin’
Ten Ajira Passengers a rottin’
Nine slaves a slashin’
Eight Losties a tazin’
Seven mothers a bludgeonin’
Six cars a crashin’
Fiiiiive hit and ruuuuuns!
Four Others blown up.
Three Candidates dead.
Two throats a slashed.

AND A FLOCKE WHO FELL INTO THE SEEEEEEA!

THANK YOU!

“Everybody dies, Kiddo.”

So I just realized that this finale is overall going to rank lower than the Nikki and Paulo episode. What? Oh, yeah, you can go. Ordinarily I can’t stand the “Bwah hah hah, your opinion is wrong!” type of poster, but I totally don’t blame you in this case. This is a tough one to get past. No hard feelings.

So now I’m pretty sure I’m writing in a vacuum, but on the off chance that you’re still reading, let’s do this thing!

The Man in Black is dealt with once and for all as Part 2 begins. Kate finally gets a truly awesome moment, as she arrives just in time to prevent Flocke from killing Jack. But too late to stop him from mortally wounding him. In any case, Jack throws the ****er to his death, and it’s hard to ask for a more spectacular end.

From there, there’s little left to do in this storyline aside from getting characters to their final destinations. Jack and Kate have what is actually quite a moving goodbye, before she and Sawyer hightail it to Hydra Island. Hurley and Ben stay behind to help Jack to the cave, where Jack, anticipating his own demise, hands the protector job off to Hurley. Descending into the cave, he manages to get Desmond to safety, puts the cork back, and the island stops sinking. And the light comes back on in the real world, or whatever it was that was happening out there.

At Hydra Island, there’s one last beat in the Claire/Kate story. She’s reluctant to get to the Ajira Plane, saying the island made her crazy. But as a wise man once said, crazy people don’t think they’re crazy, which shows that there’s some hope for Claire. The three make it just in time, it’s all suspenseful, but then it takes off! There’s Richard getting a chance to resume a mortal life, and Miles looking downright amazed that the finale is over and he’s still alive. And up in the cabin, Frank brings the whole thing full circle by muttering “Amen.”

I’m amazed, and quite happy with this collection of survivors. I had never noticed this before, but the last traditional 815er flashback, Whatever Happened Happened, established that Kate, Sawyer, and Claire all had a good reason to come back from the island alive and well, so it feels good that they’re the three to make it home. I’m thrilled for Sawyer in particular, he arrived at the island one man, changed into another, and now gets to go live the rest of his life as a new man.

Hurley appoints Ben as his #2 guy, reasoning that he’ll need someone with experience. Is this way, way, more than Ben deserves? Probably. But if Locke forgives him, I suppose I should.

By the by, a huge hand to Michael Giacchino for everything in this episode. All the major themes gets one last big statement, and best of all are the reprises of Parting Words and the Survivor’s theme when the plane takes off and the light is restored, respectively.

Jack is spat out in the same spot as the Man in Black (thankfully not turning into a Smoke Monster), where he stumbles back to that bamboo grove. Here, the Live Together, Die Alone (almost) theme comes back and hits us hard. The final image of Jack’s eye closing was a little predictable after the producer comments about how Season 6 would mirror Season 1 in reverse, but no matter how we got here, the show had to end this way.

Ok, the alternate universe. So…

There’s some criticism to be had with this flash sideways business. Essentially a whole third of the season had very little to do with the story that had been developing for six years. I’m happy to look at this as the “Alternate Universe” season in the same way I look at S5 as “The Time Travel Season,” but I can’t argue with anyone who doesn’t like that this whole Flash Sideways concept only came in at the tail end. Take them out, and aside from leaving Locke, Sayid, Jin, and Sun with unbearable ends, it has no impact on the primary narrative of Season 6.

But that wasn’t a huge deal to me. You could say the same for many of the early flashbacks. I have more of a problem with this whole life after death concept. First, I often have nothing but praise for fiction that explores the idea of an afterlife (or lack thereof) and explores it well. We’ve all wondered what comes after death. Anyone who claims with 100% certainty that there is either something or nothing is full of it. Maybe we blink out of existence, maybe we’re reborn as someone else with no memory of our previous life, maybe there’s nothing but our bodiless consciousness floating in a black void, with our only escape from the eternal boredom and isolation an inevitable descent into insanity. Not that I’ve thought about it.

On Lost, death brings you to an idealistic place where love is the driving force, where you get to reunite with all of your friends. A places where coincidences are plentiful and you’re faced with challenges that are suspiciously thematic. And then you get to ascend to a bright and featureless place with your soulmate at your side. Not a bad place to wind up in, but did Lost completely earn this happy ending?

Personally, I think the need to disguise this as an alternate universe and then reveal it as OMG TWIST AFTERLIFE at the end may not have been the best idea. There was little foreshadowing of a life after death in the series, it never felt like a major theme. To suddenly put that on the table here at the very end and reveal it as a quite sentimental place, there’s a certain amount of audience manipulation here. It doesn’t really speak to the human experience: whatever’s after death, I think it’s safe to say that it isn’t what we see in the show.

So that means it’s a place with little connection to the story, in which meaningful development was only occasional, and it’s here solely to facilitate a happy ending for the Losties. But it’s the damnedest thing; I love the Losties. I sympathize at all the misery the island put them through, and I want to see things work out well for them. I was overjoyed to see Sun and Jin remembering their past, Claire, Charlie, and Aaron rebuilding their surrogate family, Jack getting another chance to see his father, the reunions in the church, all of it. Maybe the writers weren’t playing fair, but I will not lie to you, I found many scenes in this episode to be deeply moving.

The Sawyer/Juliet awakening scene is the best way to talk about what I’m getting at. His AU story was based on an interesting concept, is Sawyer the same man even when he’s a cop? The show then proceeded to give him no character development, and make him face the hunt for real Sawyer that had been previously resolved. Then he meets Juliet again, and everything relating to the character in this world is rendered meaningless in favour of a joyful reunion scene. Part of my mind was saying “The show is resorting to some cheap tricks to bring this moment about.” A far louder part of me was quite literally crying tears of joy. “SAWYER AND JULIET FOUND EACH OTHER AGAIN, I DON’T CARE HOW IT HAPPENED, I’M SO HAPPY.”

So that’s the bottom line. This revelation winds up rendering the flash-sideways a mixed bag. But there’s so much pleasure to be had in many of the reunions throughout the episode, I can’t not love The End on a certain level. Even if that level is a purely sentimental one.

In the end, although I was interested in the AU’s nature and the mythology, more than anything I wanted satisfactory resolution for the characters on the island. That’s what the series was really about, a disparate group growing and seeking redemption in a setting that just happened to be a kooky island. And the main character arcs ultimately resolved themselves within that universe quite well. Jack’s final transition to Man of the Island was immensely satisfying. Hurley’s rise as a leader was unexpected, but makes sense on close examination. Sun and Jin came to the end of their long, tumultuous marriage. Sayid turned away from utter nihilism in a critical moment. Sawyer managed to stay on his redemptive path despite a lot of potential to backslide. Ben accepted responsibility for all the terrible things he’s done. And Kate… stayed out of the way And after that’s through, we get to look ahead and get a glimpse of what happened to them next. The island stuff was the main course, the afterlife was a dessert.

So that’s Lost. A group of people wound up on a crazy island. And like that teacher in high school we all had, the island put these characters through all kinds of misery, but for the most part their experiences made them better people. Their reward for that is a blissful afterlife. It’s a nice thought, and a nice ending. Not an amazing ending that gathers all stray threads, one that’s far better in the moment than it is on further reflection, and nowhere near as profound as it might want to be. But things work out really well for the characters. It’s just… nice.

Unless you’re Anthony Cooper of course. But f*** that guy. Sorry, one more for the road.

I know that the finale is divisive. You either hate it or think it’s the greatest episode of the series. For my part, I now think that it’s flawed and actually renders the season as a whole flawed, but as an episode, it’s nevertheless hugely effective on an emotional level. And because of that, I’ve decided that I do quite like The End, but not enough for me to put it among the very very best of the series. That’s allowed, right?

Unofficial Rating for Part 2: 9.5/10
Official Rating for The End as a Whole: 9.5/10
Ranked 2nd out of 16 episodes.

Season 6 Ratings/Rankings
16. Across the Sea (6/10)
15. Recon (7/10)
14. What Kate Does (8/10)
13. The Package (8/10)
12. The Substitute (8/10)
11. Happily Ever After (8.5/10)
10. The Last Recruit (8.5/10)
9. Sundown (8.5/10)
8. Dr. Linus (8.5/10)
7. Lighthouse (8.5/10)
6. What They Died For (9/10)
5. Everybody Loves Hugo (9/10)
4. Ab Aeterno (9.5/10)
3 LA X (9.5/10)
2. The End (9.5/10)
1. The Candidate (10/10)

Average: 8.5/10

Complete Ratings/Rankings

114. Stranger in a Strange Land (5.5/10)
113. Adrift (5.5/10)

112. Across the Sea (6/10)
111. Everybody Hates Hugo (6/10)

110. Hearts and Minds (6.5/10)
109. Born to Run (6.5/10)
108. Every Man for Himself (6.5/10)
107. 316 (6.5/10)

106. Whatever the Case May Be (7/10)
105. Man of Science, Man of Faith (7/10)
104. Further Instructions (7/10)
103. Collision (7/10)
102. The Greater Good (7/10)
101. Recon (7/10)
100. The Glass Ballerina (7/10)
99. I Do (7/10)
98. LeFleur (7/10)

97. The Whole Truth (7.5/10)
96. Special (7.5/10)
95. The Moth (7.5/10)
94. Ji Yeon (7.5/10)
93. …In Translation (7.5/10)
92. Abandoned (7.5/10)
91. Eggtown (7.5/10)
90. He’s Our You (7.5/10)
89. Orientation (7.5/10)
88. Dave (7.5/10)
87. A Tale of Two Cities (7.5/10)

86. Par Avion (8/10)
85. The Long Con (8/10)
84. What Kate Does (8/10)
83. Something Nice Back Home (8/10)
82. Fire + Water (8/10)
81. The Package (8/10)
80. D.O.C. (8/10)
79. Solitary (8/10)
78. House of the Rising Sun (8/10)
77. …And Found (8/10)
76. Namaste (8/10)
75. What Kate Did (8/10)
74. The Hunting Party (8/10)
73. Whatever Happened, Happened (8/10)
72. The Substitute (8/10)
71. Some Like it Hoth (8/10)
70. Lockdown (8/10)
69. Homecoming (8/10)

68. Left Behind (8.5/10)
67. Confidence Man (8.5/10)
66. Enter ’77 (8.5/10)
65. The Economist (8.5/10)
64. Maternity Leave (8.5/10)
63. The Other Woman (8.5/10)
62. The Lie (8.5/10)
61. Happily Ever After (8.5/10)
60. Exodus: Part 1 (8.5/10)
59. Pilot: Part 2 (8.5/10)
58. Catch 22 (8.5/10)
57. The Little Prince (8.5/10)
56. Tabula Rasa (8.5/10)
55. S.O.S. (8.5/10)
54. The Last Recruit (8.5/10)
53. Three Minutes (8.5/10)
52. Sundown (8.5/10)
51. ? (8.5/10)
50. Dr. Linus (8.5/10)
49. Raised by Another (8.5/10)
48. Lighthouse (8.5/10)
47. One of Them (8.5/10)
46. Two for the Road (8.5/10)
45. The Variable (8.5/10)

44. Meet Kevin Johnson (9/10)
43. White Rabbit (9/10)
42. Confirmed Dead (9/10)
41. Do No Harm (9/10)
40. What They Died For (9/10)
39. Cabin Fever (9/10)
38. Exodus: Part 2/3 (9/10)
37. Jughead (9/10)
36. Everybody Loves Hugo (9/10)
35. All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues (9/10)
34. Tricia Tanaka is Dead (9/10)
33. Flashes Before Your Eyes (9/10)
32. Deus Ex Machina (9/10)
31. The Cost of Living (9/10)
30. Outlaws (9/10)
29. There’s No Place Like Home: Part 1 (9/10)
28. The 23rd Psalm (9/10)
27. Follow the Leader (9/10)
26. The Other 48 Days (9/10)

25. One of Us (9.5/10)
24. Because You Left (9.5/10)
23. Numbers (9.5/10)
22. This Place is Death (9.5/10)
21. The Brig (9.5/10)
20. The Man From Tallahassee (9.5/10)
19. Ab Aeterno (9.5/10)
18. The Beginning of the End (9.5/10)
17. Walkabout (9.5/10)
16. Not in Portland (9.5/10)
15. Greatest Hits (9.5/10)
14. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (9.5/10)
13. LA X (9.5/10)
12. The Man Behind the Curtain (9.5/10)
11. Live Together, Die Alone (9.5/10)
10. The End (9.5/10)
9. Dead is Dead (9.5/10)

8. Exposé (10/10)
7. The Candidate (10/10)
6. The Constant (10/10)
5. Pilot: Part 1 (10/10)
4. The Shape of Things to Come (10/10)
3. There’s No Place Like Home: Part 2/3 (10/10)
2. The Incident (10/10)
1. Through the Looking Glass (10/10)

Season Ratings/Rankings
1. Season 4. Average: 8.88/10. My Rating: 10/10
2. Season 3. Average: 8.45/10. My Rating: 10/10
3. Season 5. Average: 8.53/10. My Rating: 9/10
4. Season 1. Average: 8.28/10. My Rating: 8.5/10
5. Season 6. Average: 8.5/10. My Rating: 8/10
6. Season 2. Average: 7.92/10. My Rating: 8/10

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

*boom*

Thanks again for reading!

“LOOOOOOOCKE!”

I haven’t rewatched the second half of this finale as of now. So keep that in mind as I open this by saying… I’m more ambivalent about The End than I thought I’d be.

When all was said and done, the sentiment among a lot of us fans after was something like “Overall Season 6 didn’t set the finale up as well as it could of, but the last episode itself was amazing.” That was pretty much my feeling too, but actually watching Season 6 again, I can’t 100% get on board with that anymore. This whole business with the Man in Black, the Rules, the Light, the Cork, it all got quite convoluted, and this time, that directly impacted how good the finale was for me. I still don’t know exactly what the cave is for. I still don’t know what happens when Desmond pulls the cork out, why it seems to impact the Man in Black’s mortality, why he’s no longer bound by the “Rules” that stop him killing candidates and leaving the island. It’s made clear that Jack and the remaining Losties have little idea what’s going on either, they simply let things play out, and it’s only luck or fate that causes events to conspire in their favor.

Most important, I’m still not sure of what the stakes are. The cork being pulled sets in motion the erosion of the island, that’s all we can be sure about. We still don’t know what impact this will have on the world at large, or just why it will be so devastating if the Man in Black makes it off the island. It’s a little bit like the end game of Season 2 or Season 5, in which events are bigger than the characters and a little beyond their grasp. The difference in those cases, the focus was kept on the people involved and how they reacted and how they tried to figure out what was going on. That human element is nowhere near as strong in “The End,” we’ve basically got all these character playing out one final conflict against a backdrop that often distracts and confuses. There’s as much spectacle and entertainment as the previous three finales, but it’s less satisfying.

On the island, anyway. The AU stuff plays fine. But even so, the worst moment of The End is found in the first half, as Sayid reunites with Shannon. Here’s what I think happened. It was up in the air all season long as to whether or not they could get Maggie Grace back. So Sayid’s arc was kept a little bit ambiguous, they had to continue to subtly set up Nadia as someone Sayid could potentially end up with, just in case they had to drop her into the end. But then they closed the deal with Maggie, gave her priority in the finale as an original Season 1 character, and wound up discarding the Sayid/Nadia thing that had been built up over all this time. I’ve never talked to anyone who thought it was a good idea.

So all that’s out of the way. Keep in mind that I do quite like the finale, but I’m going to be harsh on it in places because it’s the last episode, and if I don’t wind up calling it one of the best episodes of the series, I feel I should at least be clear why. Now, the stuff I liked:

As things get started, we see that everyone has been upgraded to the regular cast. Too bad Mira Furlan, Alan Dale, and Mark Pellegrino don’t make it into the last episode, I feel like they’re main characters over the likes of Eloise Hawking, for one.

On the island, events begin to unspool at a breakneck pace, and the scene between Flocke and Sawyer at the well (got to mention that hilarious resigned groan Ben makes when he gets punched in the face) sets the tone. Now the Lostie/Smokie conflict is fully out in the open, and the characters are hilariously blunt about their intentions. There’s a scene between Jack and Flocke that basically goes “I’m trying to kill you.” “I’m trying to kill you too.” “Let’s get on with it, then.”

It just wouldn’t have been right if we didn’t get one last little update on the status of Rose, Bernard and Vincent (the show heroically resisted the urge to make a “Lassie, Timmy is trapped in a well?” type reference). Flocke shows up and promises not to kill the retired couple if Desmond goes with him, which I think is Empty Promise #87.

The result of this was something that thrilling for me personally. The entire series, I desperately wanted Terry O’Quinn, Michael Emerson, and Henry Ian Cusick to all be in one scene together, simply to see if the screen could contain that much epic. I was dismayed at various points over the course of Season 4-6, since their characters constantly looked like they were on the verge of getting killed off or written out. But at the very end, it’s finally happening! The scene itself is nothing special, but I don’t care!

Miles discovers that Richard is actually not dead, which I think actually increases the island’s population by something like 11.1% at this point. Richard of course is still intent on blowing up the Ajira Flight, but Frank Lapidus does what he should have done seven episodes ago… reminds them that he’s a pilot.

Yes, Frank! Despite our tongue in cheek elevation of the character to Godlike status, his role really has been minimal all season. At best, he got a single line every episode, and then met an ignoble end. And now, we see that he’s been your classic Christ figure all along. Oh yes, THREE DAYS AFTER HE MET HIS WATERY DOOM, HE IS RISEN. HE IS COME AGAIN. IN FRANK I BELIEVE-EH!

My thoughts on the resolution of the afterlife are… complex. Since that story dominates Part 2, that’s where the majority of my thoughts will go. As the finale begins, it’s as though the show is now under a Cosmic Deadline (I really do depend on the reader having read TV Tropes), as suddenly, characters are having lovely little remembering sequences at an absurdly high rate. Juliet shows up to bring about Jin and Sun’s epiphany, and that’s all very nice, but I think I slightly prefer Hurley’s broad grin at seeing Charlie again for the first time in God knows how long. The funniest moment in the whole finale, for some reason, is when Charlie later mutters “I was shot by a fat man.”

Many of the characters gather at the concert, where Dr. Chang emcees the evening. I like how they don’t even try to age up the actor 25 years, they just keep shining a very bright light on him. There’s actually this very soft, very bright look to all the Afterlife scenes in this episode, I don’t know what that is in After Effects, but I like it. Anyway, we see (and hear) what a truly dreadful idea it was of Faraday’s to combine classical music and Driveshaft, but that doesn’t stop a series of D’awwww moments from breaking out. Daniel and Charlotte see each other again. Claire has her baby, and she, Charlie, and Aaron reform their little nuclear family. Kate, naturally, has her memory triggered by reacting to what everyone else is doing. There’s even a slightly touching moment with Ms. Hawking being concerned that Desmond means to take her son away. She truly is a horrible and selfish person, but at least this time, she’s got her priorities right.

On the island, everyone has hooked up at the Heart of the Island. Of course, Jack brings Flocke straight to the source and completely jeopardizes it in his first day on the job. First, he and Desmond have a conversation about the world Desmond saw in Happily Ever After. Desmond is convinced that nothing on the island matters, and Jack can come with him to this wonderful place. “We spoke to each other,” he says. “You seemed happy!”

Desmond pulls out the cork, and stuff happens, basically. Ben actually gets a really nice moment in which he pushes Hurley out of the way of a tree, which may have made a decent end for him, but thankfully he lives on into Part 2. Part 1, of course, ends on this image.

Great cliffhanger, or greatest cliffhanger?

Unofficial Rating for The End Part 1: 8.5/10

There’s a simple but perfect moment in this episode… the opening scene in which debris from the sub washes up onto the shore. Sawyer contemplates it, then Kate joins him, followed by Hurley and Jack. Before Jack brings the story back on track, the four spend a few seconds staring into the ocean. A rendition of “Credit Where Credit is Due” underscores this, almost the same arrangement that we heard in the post crash scene in the very first episode. It brings us back to a time when the wreckage was massive chunks of airliners, and there were 12 times as many survivors. It really just struck me in this moment how many lives have been lost since the series began.

I suddenly felt a lot of affection for these four people. It’s a sad thing when a show practically decimates its cast, but you find yourself clinging to the few people who are still hanging in there. I think it’d be fair to say that from the beginning, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley have been the most heavily featured and most iconic Lost characters (as well as Locke, whose presence still hangs over everything), so it feels fitting that that it comes down to them for the ending.

So it’s almost a shock when we FINALLY see the Miles/Richard/Ben party again. And although a lot of crazy things happened to the A Team over a period of a couple of days, these guys have barely made it from the Black Rock to the Dharma Barracks. SHHH! **** off! Don’t question it! There are other people! On the island! Still alive! It’s so nice!

This is another very entertaining combination of characters, but there’s regrettably not much time for dialogue between them, because Widmore and Zoe both show up in the Barracks. And Flocke is on their heels. A great thing about The Candidate is how I now heavily associate this character with unstoppable despair. And sure enough, when the proceedings are through, Widmore and Zoe are dead, Richard looks that way, and Ben has seemingly gone dark again. Only Miles had the good sense to run for his life. He’s still alive going into the finale, and people with a betting pool on Lost deaths heave a great sigh. I love this whole subplot, it wouldn’t have felt right if there wasn’t one more beat in the Ben/Widmore rivalry before the end.

Something even more important is going on elsewhere, Jacob is sitting the Losties down and actually giving them some answers. But even this story has a lot of melancholy, as Jacob announces early on that they will “never see him again.” Even he’s leaving? Of all people? This series really is ending. Jack steps up as the island’s new protector, and he has one damn job: don’t bring the Man in Black to the light. Jacob failed to do this within one day of his appointment, I bet Jack does better!

The afterlife mostly concentrates on Ben and Desmond, which is great, because it leaves the finale clear to focus on the core 815 survivors. Among many unexpected sights, we see Danielle Rousseau smiling warmly, and of course, ULTIMATE JACKFACE.

http://i45.tinypic.com/rjjinb.jpg

Elsewhere, Locke comes around about Jack’s surgery offer, and Desmond gets arrested as part of a gambit to get Kate and Sayid out of prison, and it’s joyous to behold. Although, I wouldn’t have put good odds on a major cliffhanger going into the finale being “We are going to a concert.”

On the other hand, for the fifth episode in a row, the episode ends with the music swelling as Terry O’Quinn makes a declarative statement. “I’m going to destroy the island.” I think we all knew it would come down to this in the finale. Are you excited? I’m excited!

Rating: 9/10
Ranked 5th out of 15 episodes.
Average: 8.43/10

All they had to do was make a better episode.

I see what they were shooting for. The Candidate was in many ways the climax of the first fourteen episodes. So the idea must of been to show us just how all of this began, before launching into the resolution of the series as a whole. It was a risky choice, so what Damon and Carlton really needed to do was deliver a jaw dropping and revelatory hour of television that vindicated their decision to hold off on Jacob and Man in Black’s backstory until this late in the game. And that’s not what we got. We got an episode that, first of all, was nearly impossible to judge as a standalone hour of television, because its placement in the season meant that a lot of us were resenting it for breaking up the momentum of the real storyline.

Even keeping that in mind, it’s still kind of boring. I actually like it far less than I did the first time around.

Ok, here we go. First, I mind many things in this episode so much less than its more vocal detractors. There’s the magic light of course, but it’s just the mysterious electromagnetic energy we’ve been seeing for many seasons. I was perfectly content to let that be something that simply is with no explanation, and this episode doesn’t really do anything to change that. Nor do I have a real problem with the acting. Alison Janney, though certainly not at her best, is serviceable in the role of Mother. The two child actors can’t compare to some of the surprisingly good pre-teens we’ve seen on the show before, but the only time their acting pulled me out of the moment was when Jacob wanted to stop the MiB from leaving. And Pellegrino and Welliver are reliable as always.

And the concept of the episode, at its most fundamental level, isn’t bad. It has all the trappings of a great Lost backstory, the manipulative parent figure, complicated family dynamics, characters wanting things and being overcome by greed, and then paying terrible penalties for it. And like in Ab Aeterno, there are many moments of great cinematography, and Michael Giacchino’s score is often amazing. And the subtext of the episode, illuminated by the Damon/Carlton commentary, is kind of interesting. It turns out that Mother is carefully manipulating the situation so that the Man in Black will murder her and relieve her of the burden of being the island’s protector. Tracing that keeps things a little interesting.

But as I said, it’s all kind of boring. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Despite the fact that I may intellectually realize that a lot of this episode is well done, I’m just not engaged by it at all.

The biggest problem might be obvious and very simple… no one from the main cast shows up. I’ve been thinking about all the times in which a mysterious figure receives the spotlight and is transformed into a compelling character in a single episode… something Lost excels at. There were all the early Season 1 flashbacks, Eko in 23rd Psalm, Desmond in LT,DA (I’d argue) Nikki and Paulo in Expose, Richard in Ab Aeterno. Their flashbacks may have been longer and more involved, but we still saw our Losties in the present, and we were quickly able to place their backstories in context with the ongoing narrative. In Across the Sea, we get archive footage of House of the Rising Sun in the final minutes, and despite its intended purpose, that feels more like an attempt to remind viewers of an obscure and long forgotten mystery (Terry O’Quinn looks shockingly young though). If, like Ab Aeterno, we had had a few minutes with the Losties on either end of the hour, what might the reaction have been? Probably still tepid, but I don’t know if there would have been as much outright venom.

And unfortunately, I think this episode has some negative effects on the overall season, because it’s meant to set some high stakes for the finale. Mother makes a number of claims here, about the light, about why the Man in Black can’t leave, etc. But I think Lost’s tendency to have characters constantly making ominous claims that turn out to be lies are finally backfiring. If I don’t take Mother at her word about the light, if I don’t listen to Widmore, to Isabella, to Jacob, if I can’t get invested in the drama of the season’s mythology, the Lost writers have themselves to blame. That’s not a problem confined to this episode, but it’s probably the best example.

And I used to say that at least the episode gave us some answers. No more! It’s kind of sad that the most satisfying reveal is Adam and Eve. Aside from that, the Rules get some illumination. Whoever is in charge of the island gets to dictate what exactly happens. And Jacob, upon taking over, apparently creates a highly specific series of rules that prevents his Candidates from harming themselves and being harmed, that prevents the Man in Black from leaving and killing Jacob, and on and on. I’ve expressed my dissatisfaction at this catch all “Jacob did it” answer before and I do so again.

Maybe Jacob makes up these rules based on his own well established viewpoint on humanity, but I don’t feel like Across the Sea comes any closer to telling us why he and the Man in Black feel the way they are. Here’s how most of the conversations go “Why are humans bad, Mother?” “Because they are.” “Why am I not like them?” “Because you’re special.” Same goes for the Frozen Donkey Wheel. I don’t want a mitochlorian explanation, but how am I supposed to buy that an ancient people realized that an electromagnetic light and water system would allow them to leap through space time? Oh, “Because there are smart people here.”

And the whole thing with the Smoke Monster’s origin. Is he the Man in Black fused with some sort of darkness, or is the monster a separate entity that takes on the MiB’s form. The episode seems to suggest the later, but that means everything we learned about the MiB is pointless. Doubtless Darlton left this deliberately unclear so that fans could have their own theories, but there’s that, and there’s forcing the audience to fill in their own story beats so they can make the episode work. Mother says something like “Every answer I provide will only lead to another question.” Fair enough. SO STOP RAISING MORE ****ING QUESTIONS.

Although I wanted to see the Man in Black get consumed by the light and dissolve into Smokey. That would have been cool.

Darlton:
In the commentary, the two claim that they didn’t know Adam and Eve would be Mother and MiB exactly, but they did plan on them being two mythological figures that were directly responsible for Jack, Kate, and Locke being on the island. That’s……… entirely fair. Ok, one point to Darlton.

Well. I seem to have typed up a number of paragraphs, and I’ve used up a number of words to basically say… yeah, I’ve got nothing. I dare say this write-up is so bad that it retroactively ruins a lot of what came before. But don’t worry, the final three reviews will be great, I promise that they’re focused entirely on the characters we know and love, and will provide a satisfying resolution to this series. Of reviews.

Before that, final word on Across the Sea… I’d say that on a cooly objective level, the episode should get about a 7.5/10 because it has many strong aspects from a technical and story construction standpoint. But it gets a 5/10 on a scale of my personal enjoyment. Let’s compromise with…

Rating: 6/10
Ranked 15th out of 15 episodes so far.
Average: 8.39/10

In a move so unexpected it was almost expected, Darlton took some big climactic events, and threw them into the fourth to last episode. So the escape attempt from the island, the culmination of MiB’s evil machinations, the deaths of some major characters… they’re all here! The result is the most intense and relentless single hour episode of the show since Season 4′s “The Shape of Things to Come.”

One thing I love about The Candidate is how insane the pacing is. It looks like we’re going to spend a good chunk of the episode in the cages before we- SMOKEY ATTACK, everyone out! Now it’s time for an escape attempt on the plane DONE BY END OF ACT 2, moving right along. I remember watching this episode with my brother and joking about how the assault on Widmore’s sub would be over by the next commerci YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE IT, BOMB IN A SUB TIME!

If the season was spending the first fourteen episodes trying to trick us into thinking that Flocke may actually be a good guy, it was doing a terrible job. But there was still some suspense associated with the character, because we were wondering when he would finally spring his trap. His moment is here at last, and it’s effective beyond anything I was expecting. Not that Jack and Sawyer don’t see it coming. That keeps the tension level high early on, as the two try to outgambit Flocke. Unfortunately, Flocke not only anticipated this, but his master plan actually depended on Sawyer not trusting Jack as a result of his Jughead plan last season. You really have to hand it to him.

There’s a lot of action in the episode, well shot and well scored as always, but this close to the end, there’s even more bite to it than usual. There’s a sense that the show no longer has to worry about character conservation. And indeed, GASP, Kate just got shot! Virtually all the Others and all of Widmore’s people have been wiped out. There goes Sayid, that character we’ve been following for six years is gone now (but not before doing the right thing when it counted). Frank just got knocked unconscious by a door, there he goes to a watery grave. Of the eight major characters on the sub, only two escape unscathed. A respectable 8/14 major characters from the beginning of the series were in play at the start of the episode, we were down to a pitiful 5/14 just an hour later. The mind reels.

And oh man, Sun and Jin. Their last moments together are devastating, and I can’t believe it ended like this for them. But I couldn’t stop thinking about where they started as characters and how their relationship has grown and changed. Their problems have become increasingly heightened over the years, they’ve gone from marital issues to being separated by distance to being separated by time. Sad as it is, this reunion in death feels appropriate, and is the best possible way to put an exclamation point on their love. And with three hours left, killing off two of the characters with some of the strongest motivators to leave the island raises the danger to a whole new level.

The only quibble, maybe Ji Yeon should have factored into Jin’s decision, and Sun probably should have brought her up in their last scene. But to be fair, we’ve seen virtually no evidence that Sun was a particularly good mother, and Jin never got to know their daughter. I wonder if things might have been different if they had had more time?

When you consider the sheer volume of events that go down in this episode, the fact that an afterlife story is squeezed in there boggles the mind. Quite honestly, although the Jack stuff was brief and low key this episode, I felt like it was necessary from a pacing perspective. All the island events are so relentless and grim, that getting a breather every now and then is much appreciated.

The idea of Jack and Locke forming a friendship of sorts in another life, something I loved in the premiere, is something that receives welcome expansion here. In the last episode solely focused on one character, Jack continues to feel uneasy about the world in which he finds himself, he finds himself wanting to help Locke without being sure why, and he continues to run across people who turned out to be on Flight 815 (Bernard has totally been enlightened at this point). Locke can’t quite accept Jack’s help, and this is notably the only afterlife story in this final stretch that has a really downbeat tone to it.

And finally, even within the context of this fictional, made-up universe, the question of how Locke got paralyzed and what happened to Anthony Cooper is one I still really wanted to know. And as we find out, he’s braindead! Hooray! F*** that guy!

So we end The Candidate with the supporting cast virtually decimated. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley are alone in the world, all they can do is lick their wounds and mourn their friends. The Man in Black has been exposed as an evil mastermind, but his plan was only semi successful. Desmond is sitting around waiting to reenter the story. And of course, Miles, Ben and Richard are still out there as wild cards, but with the plane out of commission, their eventual purpose in the story is now unknown. There’s a feeling that everyone needs to regroup and events have come to a head, at least temporarily. This actually does feel like a natural spot to break up the season and do an all Jacob/MiB mythological extravaganza.

In theory, anyway. Come back tomorrow for Across the Sea!

Rating: 10/10
Ranked 1st out of 14 episodes.
Average: 8.39/10

NEW TOP TEN ENTRY: 7th, pushing out “The Man Behind the Curtain.”

I’m only starting to realize that Lost and my rewatch series are just about over. I said back in May that the show wouldn’t be done for me until I watched the whole series a second time to see how it played, and that day is almost here. And I have no idea how I’m supposed to look like I’m pretending to work without these reviews. I can’t go back to Freecell. I can’t. But that seems like a post-Christmas kind of worry. What have we got today?

Ah, The Last Recruit. I don’t know if I should even try padding this review out, since it was one of THOSE episodes. One that was quite entertaining, moved all characters (both versions of the characters, at that) towards their ultimate destination, progressed in an exciting fashion, but had maddeningly few noteworthy events to talk about.

The endgame has started, as Widmore is now threatening to blow up Flocke’s camp in retaliation for Sayid’s theft of Desmond. Sawyer takes advantage of the confusion to make his escape to Hydra Island, taking with him Jack, Kate, Sun, and Hurley. And Frank, which is really nice of him, considering that they’ve only met a couple of times. Sucks for Miles, but maybe Sawyer just assumes he’s dead at this point, as most of us would. All of this leads to a great confrontation between Sawyer, who has been changed for the better by the island but is justifiably sick of how much misery it’s caused him, and Jack, who strongly believes that he still has something to do before he can leave. Sawyer knows Jack’s tendency to do his own thing against other’s wishes, and orders him off the boat. It nicely sets up their new skeptic/man of faith dynamic for the crucial scene in The Candidate.

Sayid and Claire were malleable to the Man in Black’s orders up until this point, whether because of the Sickness or outside forces, but things start to change here. Sayid goes to finish Desmond off in the well, still believing that Flocke will be able to bring back his true love (whoever that is), but is stopped when Desmond asks a completely legitimate question: Would she still love you, knowing what you did? And Claire wavers between being happy to see her old friends and being resentful of them for abandoning her, ultimately deciding to abandon Flocke when Kate offers her a chance to get back to Aaron.

Claire and Jack finally get a chance to have a scene together knowing that they’re brother and sister, but that reunion is postponed in the Afterlife. They still learn of their connection thanks to Ilana, and a business suit and American accent becomes her quite nicely. Desmond continues to be all knowing, bordering on being a stalker, and Sawyer and Miles meanwhile manage to arrest Sayid. In a development suspiciously free of conflict, Sun not only survives her shooting but her baby is going to be just fine too. Locke is not is as bad a shape as the previous episode suggested, and Jack prepares to operate on him. The afterlife stuff isn’t quite as strong as some of the best early character centric stories (Substitute, Lighthouse, Dr. Linus specifically), but bringing everyone together is a welcome development at this stage.

Although it’s nice to see Sun and Jin back together, their reunion scene is a little underwhelming. It’s not like Lost hasn’t done a lot of great scenes like this, including the one in Season 2 where Sun and Jin were only separated for eight episodes. Maybe those pylons are just too distracting, maybe it’s the editing, maybe it’s Frank’s silly commentary. I just wish Frank had been present through the entire series so he could add a comic relief tag onto every dramatic scene. Like after Jack resurrections Charlie in Season 1, “Talk about a breathtaking moment, eh Kate?”

The last scene of the episode seems to leave the entire cast on the brink of total ruin. We’ve gone the entire season with surprisingly few major casualties. But with only three more present day episodes, we’ve got a great deal of the cast held at gunpoint, Jack, Flocke, and Sayid being bombarded with Widmore’s artillery, Desmond possibly dead at the bottom of a well, and the highly expendable trio of Ben, Richard, and Miles waiting to reenter the story and get their asses killed. Disaster feels inevitable, even without seeing the next episode, and The Last Recruit is another fine stepping stone towards that point.

Before we go…

Rating: 8.5/10
Ranked 7th out of 13 episodes.
Average: 8.46/10

As we get back to Team Jacob, Richard is still urging everyone to blow up the Ajira Plane. Ilana arrives with some dynamite, and finally prepares to assume a prominent leadership role in

Oh my God, that was hilarious!

So one woman is dead and the other one is rendered speechless. To avoid unfortunate implications, the Losties decide it’s time to go and visit Team MiB so they can pool the female characters together. But before that can happen, Hurley blows up the Black Rock, a harbinger of how the series is about to start burning bridges all over the place. Miles, Ben, and Richard opt to go off to destroy the Ajira Plane by themselves, an expendable grouping in a final season if ever I saw one.

And before all THAT happens, Ben darkly predicts that after what happened to Ilana, the island has similar plans for everyone else once they outlive their usefulness. It’s a disturbing idea, because it brings up these questions of predestination and free will again. Was Ilana marked for death like Charlie? Did the island/universe force her to mishandle dynamite? Maybe the island just stopped protecting her after she told the others about the Candidates and left her free to make her own choices and mistakes… which in this case involved mishandling dynamite.

Michael also drops in to tell Hurley what the Whispers are… they’re the dead people on the island who can’t move on. Hmm… so they’re essentially excitable dead people who get agitated in anticipation of some kind of confrontation. It fits with everything that came before. The answer doesn’t leave any new questions of its own. It ties into a major theme of the season, especially the finale. Wow, a direct, relevant, non ambiguous answer to a long term mythological question that’s free of contradictions. I think I like this.

Jack, Hurley, and Sun reunite with Team MiB in the closing moments, where Flocke has spent the episode leading Desmond into the jungle. Love love LOVE their scenes together. Desmond has now seen that there’s a life after this one, and since it seems to be a happy place, there’s nothing Flocke can do to frighten him. This seems to be the first time that this entity seems thrown, and it’s great to see. I love the range of expressions that pass over Flocke’s face just before he throws Desmond down the well.

The flash-sideways give us our Hurley fix, with an unexpected side order of Desmond Hume, Cosmic Matchmaker. Of all the characters, Hurley is the one most obviously in a better spot than his counterpart was in 2004, so thankfully little time is wasted on some kind of personal problem. Instead, it’s all about seeing Libby again and reconnecting with her despite her being in a mental institution, and as a result, he seems to have the same epiphany that Desmond did in Happily Ever After. It’s interesting how upbeat the Afterlife is tonally compared to the island. The Lost writers seem to be experimenting with a story arc that actually builds to something really positive, and it’s working.

Well, until Desmond runs Locke the **** over in the last scene. So much for Locke getting to live happily in one universe, since that looked pretty fatal… but we’ll see…

Overall, Everybody Loves Hugo starts moving towards the climax in earnest, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Rating: 9/10
Ranked 3rd out of 11 episodes.
Average: 8.45/10

As the episode opens, Desmond is back on the island, courtesy of Widmore. He is promptly thrown into a bizarre electromagnetic device. Ah, Desmond making crazy eyes and screaming angrily as he’s thrown into a situation he has no grasp of… this is how I remember him. It was hard to figure out what was happening on the first viewing, but now the situation seems simpler. They wished to test Desmond’s resistance against the electromagnetism. Widmore is thrown by Desmond’s sudden eagerness to help at the episode’s ending, which means there was an unintended consequence; the machine just about killed Desmond, and allowed him to catch a glimpse of his afterlife.

That afterlife dominates Happily Ever After, an episode that’s surprisingly sparse from a plot perspective. Basically, Desmond follows a long trail of familiar faces, eventually meeting the woman of his dreams. Along the way, he starts to realize that there’s something about his seemingly perfect life that isn’t quite right. The chief pleasure is seeing all of these guests stars. Widmore as a benevolent boss to Desmond is a lot of fun, and so is Daniel Faraday getting to live out his life as a musician. It’s even kind of fun to see Ms. Hawking again, back in her role as someone who stops Desmond seeing Penny in the name of some weird greater good. It’s a great, unexpected surprise to have Charlie around, in a substantial role no less. Hell, Desmond himself feels like he’s been gone from the show as long as Charlie, but here he has more screentime than certain series regulars have had all season.

Inevitably, the best moment in Happily Ever After comes from the Desmond/Penny scene, which Henry Ian Cusick and Sonya Walger do a great job selling (it was nice to be reminded of why I found her appealing after sitting through FlashForward for so long). Somewhat unexpected is how Desmond seems to faint, and wake up suddenly aware of where he is and what he needs to do. This episode was promised to change the discussion surrounding the flash-sideways, and I’m not sure that happened, but it was nice to see some more outright acknowledgment that there was something not quite right about this universe.

Happily Ever After seemed to provide fuel for the Epilogue Theory. The idea was that this alternate universe somehow co-existed with the Lost universe we’d been following, and would be the place the Losties wound up upon dying. There, Desmond would “awaken” them, allowing them to put their old lives in context with their new ones, and then get a chance to enjoy the happy ending they had long been denied on the island. It was an afterlife instead of an alternate universe, but the same basic idea, at least in broad thematic strokes. And so many of the same people who hated the idea then proceeded to love the finale. *shrug*

But there was one nagging thing bothering me about this though. For this ending to work, something cataclysmic would have to happen on the island, something that put it underwater and wiped out the entire cast. The problem with that, Desmond would be living happily ever after with the wrong Penny, leaving his real true love back in the real world with a fatherless kid. I don’t like the idea of Faraday’s plan in Season 5 basically serving as a gigantic mislead, but I like even less the idea of Desmond and Penny being denied their happy ending. I guess that means I care more about the characters than the story.

Happily Ever After is certainly no Constant, it’s not even a Flashes Before Your Eyes, but it’s still a worthy entry in the Desmond/Penny sci-fi romance Lost subgenre. I’m ready for danger and death to ratchet up for the rest of the series, but this episode was just… nice.

Rating: 8.5/10
Ranked 6th out of 10 episodes so far.
Average: 8.4/10