Lost Season Five Finale: You’ve Shark Jumped On Me

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Lost, I am not sure when it happened. But lately when I look at you, I feel nothing. No inward stirrings, no heart palpitations, no jittery nerves. There were fleeting moments that recaptured our early days of romance, like when you ditched the time traveling stunt and got back to the good ol’ fashioned flashback, narrative arc, in “LaFleur.” Sawyer being dreamy, and making eyes with Juliet, and not being a douchebag, and Le Sigh…

And there were moments, like the episode when Ben kills Locke that were magnificent. Shivers up spine.

I think the first stirrings of uncertainty I had was when you came up with this Frozen Donkey Wheel and Time Travel. It just seemed a little…. hokey. Kind of not like you. I mean, you’ve always been pushing the border of silly and darkly mysterious—smoke monsters, polar bears, and four-toed statues will do that to a show.

But the first two, even three, seasons, you had a nice riddle-like quality to you. There was a duality and a complexity, yet, at the core, it was very simple. It was us v. them. Live together, die alone. Every man for himself. Pick a team. Choose an alliance. Good guys v. bad guys. The thrill was in the impossibility of not being sure if our team was fighting the good fight, or if the Others and Ben were who they said there—the good guys—when that seemed sort of impossible since they were doing all sorts of kidnapping and killing and stuff. But then, so was our team.

I don’t like this new Ben, the one who admits he’s never seen Jacob, who is easily manipulated into doing a deed for someone else, the one who admit he lies and who whines like a baby, “Why not me?” This Ben has no clothes. He is not the one who I love —who was once all powerful—and wicked, wicked, wicked. Wicked awesome. This Ben, well he’s too obvious. He explicates everything. Like the rest of the show, he’s explaining everything. Ben was interesting when he never showed his hands.

Lost, you are no longer interesting because you are showing all your cards; yet your writers think that because they are doing a lot of hocus pocus—Look over here! Time travel! Stuff blowing up! New couples! Weird undead Locke! —that they aren’t revealing too much, when in fact, they’ve read too many message boards.

There have been so many scenes that didn’t ring true this season.

The time you showed us what Ben saw in the smoke monster using bad CGI, instead of leaving more to the imagination, and Michael Emerson’s impeccable acting. The time Eloise Hawking bounced across a floor in a fucking cape and trilled, “You alllllll have to go back,” in a ridiculous room with weird pendulum-type objects swinging around. In this episode when Juliet explains to James and us, as if we are very small children, that she’s changed her mind because of how he looked at Kate. Really, we didn’t know that? Well, I never!

I know we complained a lot in the first four seasons because you wouldn’t tell us everything we wanted to know, but that’s also exactly why we loved you so much, because you would dole out little drips of information ever-so-carefully. Each reveal took forever and it was such a treat and we would savor it all week long, wondering about it, turning it over in our mind, reading message board post after message board post, until we were lulled into happy Lost sleep. Now, it feels like we’re on an I.V. of Lost drip, only it’s not coming bit by bit, but by a flood. It’s way too much information. It’s sort of like the relationship between paparazzi magazines and celebrities. The more you know about them, the less interesting and mythological they seem. “Celebrities: they’re just like you and me” is the worst thing to happen to movie stars. And TMI is the worst thing to happen to Lost.

So for the season-ender. Someone has to die, right? No one seems to root for Juliet and Sawyer, but I believed that they are supposed to be together not he and Kate; and I believe that Kate and Jack are supposed to be together. But is Juliet this season’s Charlie? Is she sacrificing everything because she thinks something will be better?

More importantly, let’s discuss the business in the shadow of that footsie thing.

We started to figure out that something was not the same with Locke. Did we need to see the body to confirm this? No, we did not. Because you also had that opening scene where the other dude tells Jacob that he’s totally coming back and killing him; so being above the grade of kindergarten, we could have figured that out.

Couple of things we noticed:

• Jacob has to touch everyone. Everyone he brings back to the Island, he touches. Why?

• Does Jacob purposely orchestrate this group so they will come to the Island to help get him killed? Remember when he said to Locke in the cabin a few seasons back, “Help me?” Did he mean for Locke to save him from the killing, or save him by killing him?

• Remember that weird moment earlier this season when Ben comes to help Locke off the chair to stop committing suicide, and as soon Locke mentions that he knows how to get back because he’s seen Ms. Hawkings, he kills Locke? Is that because Ben already knows that Locke is going to come back and make him kill Jacob?

• On whose side is Ellie and Widmore? Are they opposing? Is Widmore on the side of the bad guy in the beginning of the episode? Do we even know that Jacob is a good guy?

• If they reset time, does this mean they are also stopping the evil Locke killing Jacob segment of time?

• Nestor Carbonell is hot.

• Why is Richard suddenly so passive and un-sage-like? Why is he just the advisor and not the leader?

• Who wants to join Bernard and Rose? (Raises hand).  
• Will Sayid bite it?
• Were you also as confused as Sawyer?
• Maybe Juliet and the weapon didn’t set off the incident. Maybe it just happened anyway.

• What if Miles was right? Maybe they weren’t supposed to do anything at all?

• What if Faraday was just a mad scientist and that was a guidebook of crazy person scribblings?

• Where does all of this leave Desmond?

• Is Ben evil? More importantly, will he ever be wicked awesome again?

And finally, What do you mean I have to wait till 2010! What am I supposed to do until then? What if I die? I’ll never find out what happens!

Lost, these are the reasons I continue to be with you. I’m giving you a second chance.

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