Note: I am watching the first four
episodes of Season 5 on DVD. The VHS commentary will resume starting
afterwards.
I didn’t realize it until the most
recent rewatch that the opening of every new season of Lost is similar
to how David Simon opened every season of The Wire. We would see a
conversation or scene that would largely be disconnected from the action of the
overarching story but that thematically would prove to fundamental for Simon’s
theme for the season and the series overall.
It's now very clear that Darlton
was doing the exact same thing with each season of Lost, though in a
different format usually by misdirection. So in that sense, the opening of
Season 5 seems to be following the same format of Season 2 and 3. We see an
individual beginning a routine that involves listening to a song that is
disconnected to the mood of the series. In Season 2, Desmond was listening to
Make Your Own Kind of Music as he began what appeared to be his morning
routine. In Season 3, Juliet was listening to Petula Clark’s Downtown as she
seemed to prepare for a book club. Both times we found we were back on the
mainland; each time we learned we were still on the island. In Season 2,
Darlton was telling us we’d be spending the season in the hatch; in Season 3,
they told us we were spending time on the island.
So as we see a man getting ready
for work, feeding the baby, and listening to Shotgun Willie on a record player we’re not particularly
stunned to find that we’re on the island. What is stunning is when we see when
the man we’ve been watching walks into the barracks, turns around…and begins to
film one of the Dharma Orientation films we’ve been watching since Season 2. He
begins to tell us about the Arrow (the station the Tailies were hiding at when
we first met them) but before he can started, someone bursts in and asks for
“Dr. Chang.” At last we have a real name to go with the face – though the
writers still refuse to tell us which actor is playing him.
Then we go down to the Orchid,
apparently when they were first constructing it. By this point the viewer has
already accepted that we’re watching a flashback to the time of the Dharma
Initiative and we do what we always do at the opening of Lost (and
really the whole series) we just go with it. Dr. Chang is clearly alarmed by
what the foreman has told him and what he sees. He also tells us pretty much
what we gathered from watching the Orchid film in Season 4: the station’s
purpose involves the manipulation of time. He is dismissive of the idea of time
travel and orders the foreman not to go any further with his drilling. Then he
storms off, bumping into a worker as we go. Then the worker approaches the
station – and we see it’s Daniel Faraday. The foreman says to him: “Time
travel. Does he think were idiots?”
Even for the opening of a Lost
season and even after what we saw throughout Season 4 this is the kind of thing
that makes your head explode. But as the episode will make clear the moment we
come back to the island; time travel is going to be one of the major themes of
Season Five that will eventually effect every single character whose still
standing in the aftermath of Season 4.
The first half of Season 5
basically will take the format of flashing between those who were rescued at
the end of Season Four and those who were left behind as the Oceanic 6 begin to
make their way back to the island. Because of that, let’s divide our time
between those two groups.
It doesn’t shock us that we start
the episode with Jack still at the funeral home, waiting for Ben to take Locke
with him. Jack’s mood doesn’t seem to have changed one bit since we saw him but
it’s actually disturbing. The man who was determined to lead every step of the
way for four seasons is now being led by the nose by Ben, the man he spent most
of his time on the island fighting with. It’s possible Jack is still drunk or
stoned at the beginning of the episode, but it’s just as likely he has nothing
left in him to fight with, and it’s tribute to Matthew Fox that this is
incredibly powerful.
It's also clear, years after the
fact, that Ben clearly knows the way to get everybody back on the island is
through Jack and that in order to do so, he has to manipulate him. At this
point it’s basically too easy: I’d say Jack would follow him into hell, but
he’s already there. Now that he has Jack on his side, Ben shows his true
colors: he says it’ll be simple to manipulate Hurley because he’s crazy and he
barely seems to care as to what actually happened to those left behind. Nikki
Stafford asks in the Any Questions as to why Ben says: “I’ll guess we’ll never
know” when they’re ostensibly going back to save those same people. But it’s
not a real question because Ben doesn’t care about them.
I’m pretty sure that by now Ben
doesn’t care about anybody. I don’t know if he had a plan the last three years
to get back to the island but now he has one. (I’ll eventually reveal why I’m
pretty sure he’s only moving now.) He cared nothing when he killed Keamy and
blew up the freighter. He clearly didn’t care what might happen to everybody he
left behind when he moved the island. He doesn’t even care about the Oceanic 6
beyond what they can do for him. Ben wants to get back to the island. Full stop.
The title of the episode comes from his line to Jack, but as we see everything
that went wrong happened because he left. Ben’s just saying what he has to in
order to keep Jack on board.
It’s clear getting the remainder
is going to be a problem. We go to Kate and she is now facing the arrival of an
attorney demanding a blood sample. I have more than enough understanding of the
law to know that this is entirely a power move because this is not the kind of
thing any attorney could do and hope to get away with.
The reason I didn’t think this was
Ben’s move is because the last thing that would convince Kate to come to the
island right now is to go after Aaron. He’s right that he knows that Kate will
run (the way she immediately starts getting packages and money makes it very
clear she’s been prepping for this since the trial ended) but it’s clear she’s
not leaving without Aaron, and right now she has no plans to bring him anywhere
near Jack. Perhaps this is the reason I initially thought this was a move from
someone more powerful – and it’s not a coincidence the next Oceanic we see is
Sun.
Because of the huge problems were
about to have with Sun very soon, it’s easy to forget just how incredible
Yunjun Kim was in the first half of Season 5. The scene where Widmore confronts
her in the airport is immensely powerful. Widmore is clearly not used to being
disrespected in public and having his secrets flaunted, least of all by a woman
who nearly ended up killed at his hands. But Sun has spent her life at the beck
and call of a powerful man and doesn’t even flinch. When Widmore asks her what
their common interest are, her response is the most chilling thing we’ve heard
her say: “To kill Benjamin Linus.”
We’ll never learn how Sun learned
Ben was off the island as well (the best theory at the time was Locke told her,
but we’re not sure he went to see her) or whether she actually wants to kill
Ben or is merely using this as bait to gain Widmore’s trust. We remember her
word that two people are responsible for Jin’s death, and it’s clear she thinks
one of these men is the person involved.
Sayid is taking Hurley back to the
safehouse and watching him there doesn’t seem to be any part of the man we
loved the last four years. He wants to protect Hurley but he barely seems
interesting in talking to him. He doesn’t seem to care who the man he killed
outside Santa Rosa was. And it’s pretty clear that he was sure there was a good
chance the safehouse would be compromised when he took him there. What is clear
is that he has no interest in doing anything Ben tells him to do, which
confirms he has no desire to go back to the island.
I sometimes wonder if the
operatives who compromised the safehouse were Widmore’s or Ben’s. Given that
one uses tranquilizers on Sayid and the aftereffect (after Sayid kills him)
puts him out for what seems to be nearly a day (Sayid will be unconscious until late in the next episode) I wonder if the operative was Ben’s in the first place. We’ll
learn later on that he’s had people watching the Oceanic 6 and we all know how
expendable he thinks his people are to the greater good. Given Sayid’s attitude towards him (and we’ll
eventually learn its more than justified) perhaps he thought the easiest way to
get Sayid back to the island was by force. (Which is exactly how it turns out.)
Perhaps that dart was also powerful because it was meant for Hurley who
is…bigger than Sayid and certainly less likely to trust Ben. Hurley’s last
words of the episode seem to indicate he’s leaning towards it but he’ll spend
the next few episodes waffling.
And now, we go back to the island
immediately after Ben turned the Frozen Donkey Wheel. It’s understandable that
the survivors, who are scattered all over the place, are in a state of
disarray. It’s not just that the helicopter’s gone along with everyone who
played a leadership role in the first four seasons, or that the freighter’s
been destroyed, it’s that the camp is gone. Along with the Others.
Not shockingly given what we saw
in the opening, Dan takes on a position of leadership in the next several
episodes. What is shocking is how efficient he seems in comparison with the Dan
we knew in Season 4. At the start of the season Dan didn’t seem to know
anything about the island. Now he seems to know everything.
He realizes that the island has
been dislodged in time, like a record player skipping. (That’s also why the
record player we saw in the opening was skipping.) He thinks the island could
be moving through time – or as is happening, the survivors are moving through
time. It’s never clear why the survivors are jumping and the natives of the
island aren’t, but there is a possibility that some force may be deliberately
moving them so that they can see things – or more importantly, one person can.
It's not a coincidence that during
this episode Locke is entirely isolated: Locke has essentially been on his own
journey since the series began. Lost has been making this clear
throughout the series, increasingly having Locke become more isolated with each
new season, but they’ve never made the point as bluntly as here. I’m pretty
sure that’s why the first skip takes place at the time the Beechcraft is about
to crash on the island; it was his decision to follow it that would lead to
Boone’s death and make it impossible for any of the survivors to ever trust him
willingly.
Locke’s journey in this episode is
a microcosm of everything that led him here. He follows the plane, climbs up
after it this time, and is shot by Ethan. Ethan’s abduction of Claire and
Charlie led to Locke finding the hatch which he thought was his destiny in the
first place. He doesn’t understand what happened, but he adapts after the flash
and is confront by Richard, who again seems to have all the answers just like
he did when he gave Locke Sawyer’s file in The Brig. (His calm, as we shall
see, is a façade as he himself is being manipulated.) Like everyone else Locke
has encountered on the island Richard refuses to answers his questions, gives
him instructions that make no sense, and Locke goes along with it because he’s
being told the island is at stake. And even though Locke doesn’t understand, he
goes along with it – even when Richard tells him he’ll have to die.
Dan has an understanding of what
is happening on the island but when it comes down to what to do, he has no more
real answers than Locke is getting. He leads everybody through the jungle to
the hatch (which has been blown up) and tells them they have to stay there and
wait for the next flash. He also gives them a lesson on time travel and gives
another catchphrase: “Whatever happened, happened.” It is very odd that Dan is a man of science
but he has the same belief in destiny that Locke has; it may be in regards to
physics rather than faith, but the result is the same.
The problem that’s not
particularly useful after the next flash. Miles objects when Juliet tells them
to go back to the beach, but I don’t think that Dan has much of an alternative
strategy other than wait for something to happen. Sawyer and Juliet, the ones
who have been here the longest react to this differently. Juliet seems numb to
everything that’s going on. It’s possible she’s still trying to sober up after
getting drunk, watching the boat sink, which may be why she’s taking everything
as well as she does and seems kind of amused by so much of what’s happening. There’s
also a possibility that she’s feeling a lot of guilt: she knows that when the
freighter blew up, everyone who went on the raft died – and that includes Sun,
who she wanted to save both her and her baby. Now the entire family is dead.
(Of course, she might have gotten drunk out of grief. You can’t tell.)
Sawyer’s dealing with his own
grief the way he deals with everything: he’s pissed. Of course, he’s got more
of a reason to be angry: his sacrifice for Kate seems only to have gotten her
killed, people he genuinely cared about are likely dead as well, he’s still on
the island with nothing, and now it’s jumping through time. Sawyer’s default
mode is belligerence but in this case it seems rational. Josh Holloway
demonstrates why Season Five will feature some of his greatest work as he
pounds on the back door out of desperation and screams at Dan over at what he’s
lost.
But as bad as things are, it seems
very clear that they are going to get worse. When Dan sees Charlotte’s
nosebleed, he’s alarmed and we kind of are too: we saw this on Minkowski before
he died and one of the workers had a similar bleed, and we saw how that turned
out. It’s not clear what Dan sees when he goes through the notebook, but it’s
worth noting he remembered that random phrase he scribbled in his journal years
ago: “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.” And he’s
praying that turns out to be the case.
And it turns out to be right. It’s
not clear what the rules are and why only the survivors are jumping through
time. But it does seem that there is something special about Desmond. Because
even though he shouldn’t hear the pounding he does. And when the sounds of the
flash begins Desmond clearly hears it. We will never know what Dan’s
strategy might be to save him and his friends but he thinks that the only
person who can do it is his mother.
(In this case, it’s worth noting
Dan’s instincts really led him wrong. And indeed, its possible the only reason
he thinks his mother can save him is because she told him too. Confused? You
will be.)
The last character we see is the
only other person who got off the island: Desmond. It’s clear that he and Penny
have married, and that it’s been three years since he left the island. Why he
only got the message now is never clear. And we also know that Desmond has no
desire to deal with anything remotely involving the island. But we also know
that Desmond is a man who believes in both honor and love. And so the last shot
of Because You Left is Desmond finding himself, out of both, going somewhere he
has no desire to go – and completely unaware that he will be putting the people
he loves in the crosshairs of a man who has sworn before his father-in-law that
he has every intention of killing the woman Desmond has sworn he will never
leave again.
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