LOST: “LA X”
First, let’s dispel the notion that what I’m going to do is recap the show as it happens. I’m not. You can find recaps all over the damn internet — Hulu has them here (Part 1) and here (Part 2), for example — that do the job better than I will anyway. What I want to discuss is how the show is put together, what’s changing, and what might be happening next. This includes how I was right about the new narrative device… and how I was wrong about it.
Suffice to say: Spoilers follow.
Even before we get to the actual premiere, let’s talk about the recap special that aired first. There have been lots (and lots) of recap specials for this show, but this one was interesting, to me, because of what it left out. I’m thinking specifically of Michael and Walt, here. Both of them were fairly major players in Seasons 1 and 2, and both were cut out of the recap special pretty much altogether. (As were the Tailies, my wife points out.) Does this mean we won’t be getting closure on Walt’s role in the Island weirdness?
As for the premiere itself, let’s talk about the new narrative device they’re using to tell this season’s story. I thought we’d see flashes sideways to alternate timelines, and that seems to be what’s happening, so I was partly right. I can’t tell from this premiere — the two parts of “LA X” — but it looks like we’ll be following a single alternate timeline from Oceanic 815 on through these characters’ lives, instead of hopping from possibility to possibility.
Truth be told, sticking with one alternate timeline is probably smarter, anyway. It’s simpler, if nothing else, and that’s valuable at this late stage of the show.
The episode doesn’t open with Lost’s signature opening eyeball, but we do see Kate’s eye open right near the beginning. So that’s something. (The sound design during that opening, with the post-explosion ringing in Kate’s ears adding a great disorienting element, is just great.)
Now that we’re back in the Island’s modern-day “present,” with Rose and Bernard presumably still stuck back in the 1970s, does that mean we’ll find some evidence that says it was their bodies found back in the cave in Season 1?
Anyway, what’s interesting about the alternate timeline, to me, is how much can presumably be different for the characters as a result of sinking the Island thirty years earlier. The show’s interconnected flashbacks showed how changes in one place can be felt throughout the fabric, the tapestry, of these people’s lives. Will we see how it is that a hydrogen bomb changed Desmond’s life to the point of putting him on Oceanic 815? Probably not. All the show needed to do, though, was establish that everything’s connected enough for the ripples to travel far. It spent five years establishing that.
More than anything, though, the alternate timeline leaves me wondering if people are really better off in it. We spent the first few minutes of the episode checking off things that suck for the Castaways if they don’t get cast away, from Charlie being an addict to Kate going to prison to Sun & Jin’s marriage being all-but-doomed. (Charlie: “I was supposed to die.”) Now I’m deeply curious to see how far we’ll follow the alternate lives of which characters.
One thing that didn’t occur to me at all, though, was that Jacob might appear to Hurley as a result of, you know, actually being dead. Huh.
We’ve also never seen Ben Linus like this, have we? Rattled and helpless? I hope we get our old Ben back before the show’s over — though I appreciate that a man whose slain his god should take a good few episodes to get over it.
Even now that we’re all back in the same time on the Island, the two different storylines — this one following Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Co.; that one following Not-Locke, Ben, Sun and Co. — don’t quite seem to be meshing. While Jack’s troupe is going to the Temple and meeting a bunch of ren-faire hippy-pirates (who have apparently been hidden on the Island this whole time), Locke and Ben spend a lot of time not going anywhere.
Weirdly, I can’t honestly decide how I feel about the show having an arch-villain after all this time. It should bring vital momentum to the final arc here, but so far I don’t feel like it has. Still, Lost’s progressive series of mysterious “others” (not necessarily Others) has certainly expanded. The Them to our Us now appears to be a form of shape-shifting malevolence. (Or an incarnation of a being that might be known as Set, if Jacob is Osiris, or Esau, if Jacob is that Jacob.) What are we gaining by having a clear-cut Bad Guy?
Well, we’re gaining more and more Indiana Jones-style elements of gunfights and supernatural punishment, so that’s something.
But why do we spend time watching everyone on the trip under the Temple wall navigating a hole in the ground only to rush to the Temple just moments later? Seems like a weird choice.
Other things: We get what seems to be another list of names, this time sent along in Jacob’s balsa-wood Giant Wondrous Ankh of Messaging. We get a hint of Richard’s background (Not Locke says something like, “Nice to see you out of those chains,” which I took to be a reference to the Black Rock, which was a slave ship, wasn’t it?). We get the great cycle between Sayid and Ben continuing; it’s been a cycle of torture, captivity, lies, murder, shootings, and, finally, resurrection: just as Sayid shot Ben, which led to Ben being taken to the Temple, Sayid was shot by Ben’s father and subsequently taken to the Temple.
But we also see, now, where the Other stewardess (Cindy?) went off to, and where those Other children arrived. So we’re getting somewhere.
Lastly, I must mention the sequence at the end of the first hour, when Oceanic 815 lands and we watch everyone deplane. Bittersweet, that, and wonderfully done. But also, there’s this: Did Desmond deplane with everyone else? Or are we to think that he mysteriously appeared and disappeared from the flight? We’ll see, I hope.
Update: I’d meant to post a link to this scene from Lost’s pilot, with commentary by Damon Lindelof, which you can find at EW.com, but I forgot. Click through and enjoy.
What’s interesting to me is the possibility that the alternate timeline is more than just a deviation from the lack of the crash — it was deviating even before the crash (Jack is nervous as opposed to Rose, he’s drinking a little less, Hugo won the lottery potentially without the numbers and without the bad luck, some players are missing from the table, others like Desmond are added).
It’ll be interesting if we start to embark on a world with shifts that are less subtle.
A very curious intro to the final season. Dying to see where it goes from here.
– c.
Right on, Chuck. The detonation of Jughead wouldn’t just affect Oceanic 815 — it would presumably alter everything from the moment of the blast onward, in ways both big and small. For example, it’s presumably responsible for the sinking of the Island.
The question I have, since Juliet’s message was “It worked,” is whether the two timelines are literally connected in the text of the show, and how so. Will we see some way of moving between the two of them? Is moving between timelines something we’ve seen done with Miles (same pictures, different frames) or Desmond already?
Miles is a good example of that — I always wondered if the “ghosts” of the show are actually crossovers from alternate realities.
Thus, I suspect the timelines will be connected in a very real way, and somehow we’ll move between them (or someone will, at least, and we’ll be along for the ride).
One thing that excites me is how rewarding this show is from the perspective of “fertile discussion grounds.” Philosophy, literature, time travel, character arcs, story-building, so much to talk about. I like to think that this’ll be the type of show people will be yammering about in 20 years, just because there’s so much there. It’s not perfect, but it certainly makes the effort.
– c.
Someone on another comment thread suggested that, in the timeline in which Oceanic 815 didn’t crash, Juliet and Sawyer will meet for coffee and go dutch, just as she was murmuring about as she died on the island. I like the idea that there was possibly some kind of information crossover from one reality to another. In the alternate timeline, the island’s underground, so she should probably be somewhere in the US when 815 lands (possibly Miami, where she was working when Richard Alpert came to her?)
As they were deplaning, all I could think was “this feels so very, very wrong.” Which means they were getting it so very, very right. I hope to be able to evoke that kind of reaction with my writing someday.
[As they were deplaning, all I could think was “this feels so very, very wrong.” Which means they were getting it so very, very right. I hope to be able to evoke that kind of reaction with my writing someday.]
Well-put.
They do know how to evoke a feeling over there in the Lost Bunker.
I wonder if all the writers live in hatches.
– c.
Regarding the recap episode. I know the guy who edits those episodes (in fact he used to hold my job many years ago). From what I’ve heard, he’s only seen the season premier before hand – he doesn’t have any additional knowledge of episodes or scripts further into the season. The recap episode is designed to get you up to speed for the season premier. So the lack of Michael and Walt doesn’t necessarily indicate that Walt will be absent from the season, just that he won’t be in the premier episode (which he wasn’t).
I had also predicted the Sliding Doors narrative device (although I never said so on the internet so you’ll have to take my word for it). There’s certainly going to have to be some communication or cross-over between the two realities in order to make the LA X time-line pertinent to the ongoing story. I think we’re already seeing some slight evidence of that with Desmond mysteriously appearing and then disappearing from the flight, the disappearance of Christian’s body, and Juliet’s “It worked” line.
I found the literary easter-egg of the episode, Kirkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, was intriguing. I’m not familiar with his work, but a Wikipedia search mentions that the book contrasts concepts that Kirkegaard calls the “Knight of Faith” and the “knight of infinite resignation.” Easily plays into the general themes of the show, but I wonder if it has special significance for this episode: if the dual time-lines themselves represent different sides of a thematic coin.
I hope in my heart of hearts that we’ll see Daniel Faraday re-enter the fray from the LA X time-line. I’m looking for a Schrödinger’s cat reference and it would only sound right coming from him.
Lauren, that’s a nice idea — that Juliet and Sawyer will go for coffee in the other timeline. I’d love to see that play out.
Jeremy, thanks for that info. When I really think about it, of course it makes sense that only the premiere would be in mind when they put together that recap special. I hope there’s still some chance of getting more on Walt’s story. And I’ll gladly take your word on foreseeing the alternate-timeline device; I know I’m not the only one to have put some dibs on the flash-sideways idea.
The Kirkegaard allusion is a good one, for sure. It makes me think about how we see Jack go from a Man of Science to a Man of Faith, and highlights the question of just who the hell Jack is now. It may be noteworthy that Jack ends up saving Charlie’s life on the plane without using medicine per se, but just his bare hands. Even in the alternate timeline.
And amen to Faraday; I sure hope he’ll have a happier tale in the X timeline than he did in the, what, prime timeline? (Primeline?)
I’m nursing a notion that Juliet saying that “it worked” is a hint that as she died and left that branch, she crossed into the “never went to the Island” timeline. Then again, I might also take it to mean that the on-Island is happening sequentially prior to the “never went” timeline. The nuke got them back to the present, but something else has to be done for them to accomplish the “never went” timeline itself.
Of course it all feels very much like Schroedinger, and them being the cats.
The name of the episode is just fantastic, too: LA X:
LAX – airport
LA X – “the X”, which could be saying:
- The crossroads
- The Cross (Sayid did just come back from the dead after Judas stabbed God to death)
- The missing variable
Etc. Good, complex symbology as always.
You might like this: side-by-side comparisons of the old timeline and new timeline LAX flight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-1qzelSWpE&feature=player_embedded
– c.
I’ve only seen the first hour of the two at this point, but I couldn’t resist joining in. Before seeing the season opener, I predicted that the final episode of the series would show everyone on the plane arriving safely at LAX, de-boarding, going their separate ways, never knowing what they did (or could have) experienced together. To my mind, that would have been a poignant, bittersweet conclusion, no matter how the story arrived at that point.
So the opener threw me off.
But also made me think: While the show explores leaps through time, so does the narrative. We’re often given scenes that we later learn didn’t happen when we thought they were happening (Sun’s post-Island labor and delivery, for instance, was intercut with pre-Island scenes of Jin rushing to a delivery, creating a false impression of temporal unity and an emotional sucker punch when that impression was stripped away).
Some part of me wants to throw out the possibility that we’re not seeing an alternate timeline of 815’s safe arrival per se, in that it’s not a sideways leap, but rather the progression of some as-yet-to-be-shown development. The assumption is that the nuclear blast both sank the Island in the ’70s and returned Jack et al to their present on an intact Island. Perhaps the blast solely returned them to their present on an intact Island, where they will proceed through a chain of events that will ultimately sink the island and return (some of) them to a safe flight to LAX. Narratively, however, we’re seeing the post-Island-sinking events intercut with pre-Island-sinking ones.
No, I don’t actually believe that. I support the multiple-reality theory. This was just a fun mental exercise, brought to you by someone who enjoys nonlinear storytelling (and thinks Locke and Ben are two of the best, most complex characters to appear on TV).
I don’t think the Man In Black/Smoke Monster/Zombie Locke is an arch-villain per se, so much as he’s just another of the driving forces behind the happenings on the island. Despite apparently being the smoke monster, he’s limited in his power; otherwise, why would he have needed Ben to kill Jacob for him? It’s my theory that he’s no more the arch-villain than the Others were, or than the Boat People were, or that Charles Widmore was, or that Benjamin Linus was. Villainous, yes. With his own agenda and motivations, definitely. The thing that’s been the Big Bad since the very beginning? I doubt it.
“And amen to Faraday; I sure hope he’ll have a happier tale in the X timeline than he did in the, what, prime timeline? (Primeline?)”
I’ve been referring to the original timeline as Prime Universe, and the plane-landed-in-LA universe as Earth-815. It helps me to keep them straight.
Maggie, good point. You’re almost certainly right about Not Locke (or Darth Locke, or Flocke, or whatever we’re calling him) not truly being an arch-villain. This show doesn’t leave much that simple for long, do they?
On top of that, there’s an interview with Damon Lindelof somewhere (I can’t find it now) where he says that we, the audience, might want to rethink which side we’re on as we get further into the season. Jacob may not be a good guy, and the Man In Black may not be the bad guy, per se. They’re both players, one light and one dark, undertaking an ancient game. Or so implies Season 1.