Waaaaaay the hell back in what, May? June? I mentioned that I'd be writing my thoughts about the LOST second season finale (
see, I did say that), and as we get within only a few hours of the season 3 premiere (tomorrow, Wednesday, October 4 @ 9 EST in North America) now seems like the appropriate time.
One of the benefits of writing a review four months late is that you really don't have to worry about ruining it for fans that haven't seen the subject of the review yet: Either you're a LOST fan and you have seen the season 2 finale already, or you don't watch it, meaning
I have more taste in my penis (see
True Romance if you don't get that quote) and I'm spoiling a show you don't watch.
I've read some online commentary about how the second season wasn't as good as the first, that the show gets more ambiguous as it progresses, etc. I couldn't disagree more. Or louder, or whatever. I found this past season to be way better than the first season; more focus on what is actually going on with this island, more confrontation with the ubiquitous Others, and less with the religious crap, (although its still there - don't want to lose 75% of that demographic, eh ABC?).
The finale is a veritable bonanza of revelations for the fans. It opens with a boat showing up off the coast of the island, right in the middle of the funeral for the recently slain (by Michael) Anna Lucia and Libby, and the ensuing chaos effectively ends whatever semblance of grief was being shown for the drunk driving duo (please excuse the real-world reference).
Jack, Sayid and Sawyer swim out to the boat only to find that its sole occupant is Desmond, the guy that was manning the hatch at the beginning of season 2. He is drunk and tells a story about how he couldn't get away from the island, even after heading due west for two weeks. Snowglobe indeed.
After making some plans of his own with Sayid, Jack and the rest of a posse consisting of Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, and Michael head out to 'rescue' Walt. Along the way the group is followed by some of the others, and after killing one of them, the posse demands answers from Michael.
They stumble on an enormous pile of canisters and an end point for a pneumatic tube system. Inside the canisters are hundreds of the notebooks written by people working inside the hatch Locke and Echo found at The Question Mark (The Pearl). Turns out the Pearl was the experiment after all.
The posse gets captured by the Others, and taken to a dock, there to await their fate at the end of the episode.
And what of Sayid? He, Jin and Sun take Desmond's boat around to the other side of the island, in an attempt to ambush the Others and thwart Michael's plans. Along the way they spot the remains of a gigantic statue, which just for the hell of it, has only four toes. Hmmm.
They get to the Other's supposed encampment, only to discover that it was all window dressing, likely exclusively for Michael's benefit.
Meanwhile Locke has locked Echo out of the hatch and with Desmond inside is intent on letting the numbers run down once and for all.
Echo enlists Charlie in attempting to use dynamite to blow open the blast door that Locke has erected, and in so doing only badly injures himself and Charlie in the process.
Flashback time: Turns out that Desmond has been on the island for over three years, most of which was spent with Inman (remember him?) until Desmond killed him once he realized Inman was lying to him about everything. Before his death Inman told Desmond about a 'failsafe' device that could be used to disable the device inside the hatch, but no one knows what might happen were the failsafe to be used. Desmond returned to the hatch after killing Inman only to find the device in 'system failure' and all hell breaking loose in the hatch.
Back in the present (2004, close enough) Desmond realizes that it was in fact him that crashed Oceanic Flight 815 by not inputting the numbers into the computer in time. This is confirmed by verifying the date and time of the plane crash against the printout from the Pearl that clearly shows the time the system failure occurred. Oops.
Locke destroys the computer before Desmond can input the numbers again, and Desmond decides that he has to use the failsafe and trust that he is doing he right thing. Guess he thinks he has something to atone for. He uses the device, quenching the magnet behind the walls of the hatch and an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy is released.
Back on the dock, Michael is reunited with Walt, and Hurley is set free to warn the rest of the Losties never to come looking for Jack, Kate and Sawyer.
Cut to a scene of some kind of monitoring station (Iceland mebbe) recording the electromagnetic event and calling their employer: Penelope Widmore. This is significant not only because of who it is, but because finally we get to see that the island does exist in the real world, finally shutting the people in the
Purgatory Camp up for good. Hopefully.
The episode ends with the Losties sitting around camp, trying to figure out where everyone went and just what the hell happened. Pretty much what all of the viewers were thinking too. What a great payoff for the fans.
There's a good article summing up the finale as well as some reasonable thoughts about where the show is going
at this link.
Along with watching reruns of the show over the summer hiatus, I played the LOST Alternate Reality Game (ARG), an online and real-world game attempting to ascertain what the Hanso foundation is really up to. The ARG consisted of sniffing out clues in the real world and online in the form of billboards, emails, video clips, fake sites, etc. I sucked at the game because I just didn't have the hours and hours some people seemed to have to pour into it. The game is over now, but if you're so inclined,
here is a shortish summary of what the game finally revealed. Alternatively, check out
LostPedia for an in depth examination of the game in its entirety. Any fan of the show really should know what the ARG was all about. There's some shocking stuff about the nature of the island.
As part of the ARG, I also read the summer novel,
Bad Twin by Gary Troupe (a fictional passenger aboard the doomed Oceanic flight 815), a novel published to whet the appetites of LOST fans for season three. It was a really good read, but did very little to illuminate anything significant about the Hanso Foundation or any of the other backstoried elements. But it was still very cool, and I will admit to being marketed into wanting that book.
And for the LOST fans with a sense of humour (you must be out there somewhere - it can't all be religious symbolism and visions, can it?) here's a link to a really funny comparison between LOST and Gilligan's Island, written as if by an 11 year old girl. Here's a sample:
More on the Lost Numbers on Gilligan's Island:
4 - number of sleeping huts on the island
8 - animals not native to the island
15 - things that wash up on shore
16 - number of times Gilligan foils rescue attempts
23 - number things Gilligan drops on the Skippers head
42 - number of people who visit the island
Here's the link to the full article.
And here's my current collection of LOST sites, wherein I have spent far too much of my precious free time this past summer, mostly involved in the aforementioned ARG:
The LOST Report
LostPedia - The definitive LOST resource
High definition episode screen caps
Official ABC LOST site
Inside the Experience
The Hanso Foundation
The Valenzetti Equation
Finally,
here's a terrific article from TIME that tries to pin down the appeal of an episodic science fiction show that common sense would've predicted cancelled after only a few episodes.
I can't WAIT for tomorrow night.
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