Lost, Ep. 21: Greatest Hits
“You all goin’ swimmin’!/
You all goin’ swimmin’!/
Flailing around like you’re stupid fish/
Lacking the needed gills!”

This is the week before the big finale, which means it’ll be a lot of lead-up to the huge events that are upcoming, and will hint at the things to come. A Charlie-centric plotline made about as much sense as having a Rose and Bernard flashback right at the end of season 2, but somehow they made it work by keeping the flashbacks to a minimum and focusing on the island conflicts. Karl and Alex are working against the Others to warn the Losties; Sayid, Desmond, and Charlie are trying to turn off the frequencies jamming the satellite signal so Sayid can work on trying to get them off the island; the Losties are rigging the tents to blow up the Others when they come to take the pregnant women; Ben shows he’s not the merciful person he’s made himself out to be… there was a LOT happening in this episode without it feeling too busy. Almost every character had a moment:

-Charlie relived his “greatest hits”
-Hurley got to say good-bye to Charlie
-Claire and Aaron had some screen time
-Sayid talks to Jack about the sat phone
-Sun tells Jin that she saw the baby on the ultrasound, but fails to tell him anything else about, you know, dying and stuff (welcome to Sun’s House of Withholding Information)
-Rose and Bernard ARE NOT DEAD!!! Talk about a shocking reappearance!
-Ben shows his vicious side, and the other Others look skeptical

Big inconsistency… or is it??
-on Day 5 or 6, a woman named Joanna died when she was out swimming and got pulled out by a current. Charlie stood on the beach, completely helpless as Jack and Boone swam out to save her, saying over and over, “I don’t swim!” (interestingly, he doesn’t say he CAN’T swim, but that he doesn’t). In this episode, he seemed to be able to swim down to that rig underwater pretty naturally, and we saw at an early age his father taught him how to swim. While I’m assuming he wasn’t really the Junior Champion swimmer that he tells Jack he is (he needs to say it to convince Jack to let him go) it appears he really can swim. So… did the writers forget what happened at the beginning of season 1, or was Charlie a coward who didn’t try to save a woman when he could have? Jack seems to remember every little person and word from three years ago, yet he doesn’t remember Charlie telling him he doesn’t swim??

Did You Notice:
-Rose and Bernard AREN’T DEAD. I’m hoping they didn’t bring them back just to sacrifice Bernard in the next episode when he doesn’t shoot quickly enough or something.
-now we know why Rousseau was collecting dynamite from the Black Rock when Locke was out there
-Jack’s still annoying
-YRE2OL is the license plate on the vehicle that DriveShaft is taking to their show when they hear themselves on the radio. If you assign numbers to the letters, it adds up to 77. That number has appeared throughout the season, most prominently in Enter 77.
-Charlie holds his pen in a REALLY weird way.
-when Sayid’s going over the map of the Looking Glass hatch, a tiny bug runs across. If you turn up the volume, you can hear it squeal, “Yay! I’m on TV!!”
-when Ben comes marching into the camp, Alex appears to be skinning one of his white bunnies
-what’s with Alex handing over guns all the time? Last week she handed a gun to Locke and told him she’ll need it, and now she hands one to Karl.
-the irony in Lee giving Charlie the DS ring (which, turns out, doesn’t stand for Drive Shaft, as we’d thought), where he says Charlie will get married and have a child. Lee was the one who ended up doing that.
-Jack continues to be annoying
-apparently the only song Charlie knew when he was a busker was Oasis’s “Wonderwall.”
-the woman he saved in the alleyway is Sayid’s Nadia. That ties her to Locke, Sayid, and now Charlie.
-Charlie lets Desmond take over pulling the rope so he can do some writin’. Nice.
-in the first 2 seasons, bad Charlie was always denoted by hoodie up, good Charlie was when it was down. When he sees Claire for the first time, he pulls it down, as if to show he wants to change his life now.
-Jack = annoying

Questions:
-When everyone is tromping through the clearing at the beginning to see Rousseau, Claire is with them, as is Charlie and Jin, Aaron’s only two other babysitters. Who’s taking care of the kid?
-Sun has always kept important information from Jin: he doesn’t know that she knows his dad is alive, he doesn’t know that his mother is a prostitute, and he doesn’t know that she’s fully aware of what he did for a living. She always keeps him in the dark, but it’s always for his protection. But we saw what he was driven to do because of her lying to him before; what will this lie bring?
-how many of the Others will actually carry out Ben’s plan? Richard looks skeptical; I wonder if he’ll go looking for Locke instead?
-Karl tells everyone what happened, and then we cut back to the present. Rousseau’s standing right there and looks unaffected by everything Karl’s just said. Why isn’t she more moved by the fact her daughter is on the good side?
-Rose tells Bernard that this isn’t pheasant hunting in Montgomery County. They met and lived in Michigan, so why is she talking about a county in Ohio like they’re both from there? Are they?
-will Charlie’s ring blow up with the camp?
-why did Claire come off as a really pessimistic, distant person when Charlie sits down next to her for the first time? In the first season, she seemed like the ONLY person who had any hope and just kept up her spirits. Now she was more like the black-haired goth girl from “Par Avion.”
-was anyone else going, “Noooooooooooooooo” when Desmond offered to take Charlie’s place?? As much as Charlie annoys me, I don’t want them to kill him off, but I also didn’t want the episode to build up to Charlie just being a coward again.
-Was knocking Desmond unconscious really necessary? Desmond would have given in had Charlie told him to, he just couldn’t stand to see Charlie jumping to his death and being so sad about it.
-so who are the people who run into the station at the end? One looked like she could have Claire’s older, more cynical sister, and the other’s a Zooey Deschanel lookalike.

Oops: When Charlie first jumps in, the weight belt doesn’t seem to weigh him down at all, and he swims by pulling it up alongside him. Only later does he hold it straight out in front of him, indicating it’s heavy.

Interesting Facts:
-Charlie swims for the first time at Butlin’s. Butlin’s was a real summer camp, and you can see more about them here.

Next week: The finale!!! Two hours of insanity, and the writers have promised to sow the seeds for the next season, like they always do in their season finales.