Lost 6.01/6.02 "LA X, Parts 1 & 2"

Lost: 6.01 “LA X, Parts 1&2”

“It worked.”

Well, Darlton said they’d come up with a new method of storytelling for S6, and they did. No more flashbacks, no more flashforwards, just two different possible worlds running simultaneously. Fringe and Flashforward are both running with Hugh Everett’s “Parallel Worlds” theory right now, which is where Lost had been heading all along. (Cliff Claven factoid: Hugh Everett is the father of E, the lead singer of the Eels.) So will the two timelines continue for the full season, eventually coming together in some epic way? Because so far I’m REALLY intrigued by the possibility of watching the lives of these people and how they would have unfurled if the plane hadn’t crashed. I thought all along the do-over would be something they’d show us for the first episode or so and then continue on the island, but keeping two storylines? AMAZING.

“You did this.”
Did anyone else feel terrible for Jack throughout the episode? Like Locke, he thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was helping people. But Sawyer glares at Jack (who’s as broken as anyone else in the episode when his bomb idea doesn’t work) in one timeline, while Charlie glares at him in another. It’s like, if destiny exists, poor Jack is destined to piss people off wherever he goes even when he thinks he’s trying to help. I thought he looked particularly haggard in this episode, and maybe that’s what raised my sympathy so much. Is there no timeline where Jack can just be happy?!

Free Will vs. Destiny
Again the show’s overarching theme was there in a big way. Charlie says he was supposed to die, and in the original timeline, that’s exactly what happened. When they find Montand’s body, he had on him one of Kierkegaard’s books. Kierkegaard believed in choice and free will and believed in experience over theory. Perhaps Smokey attacked Rousseau’s crew for those beliefs? (Interestingly, he also studied the personal and psychological reactions people had when faced with certain circumstances, as if he were the real father of the Dharma Initiative, who ran many psychological experiments that covered similar material.) There’s an idea in the episode that no matter which path you choose, the outcome will be the same. Jack will always be the guy rushing to someone’s side, and will be hated for it. Locke will continue to believe in his greatness, even if no one else does. Boone says he’d be by Locke’s side, just as he was on the island. When Kate knocks the marshall out, he incurs the exact same wound on the same side of his forehead that he got when the case whacked him in the head. When Kate runs into Jack as she’s stepping out of the airplane bathroom, she looks at Jack like she’s immediately taken by him, just like she did on the island. When Sawyer sees Kate’s handcuffs in the elevator, he’s immediately attracted by her bad-girl nature and helps her out.

Highlights:
• DESMOND!!!! Reading Salman Rushdie. Thanks, writers, for handing me a book in the first 5 minutes of the season. :/ Thankfully, Rushdie is one of my favourite authors. I wasn’t able to see the title, but it really looked like the cover of Haroun and the Sea of Stories (a book I read about 15 years ago and adored...). If that’s what he’s holding, I can already think of the possibilities of what would link that book to Lost!
• The underwater island!! It really IS Atlantis! Loved as we rushed past the school of fish, and did you see the Dharma symbol on the tail of the shark? HAHA!
• Hurley: “I’ve got a gun!! And I know how to shoot it!!” as he desperately tries to load a bullet into the chamber. LOL!
• Boone! Frogurt! I thought Maggie Grace was coming back but I guess no?
• Ben to Ilana: “I’m sorry, who are you?!”
• “Asking me who’s in the shadow of the damn statue doesn’t mean you’re in charge.” HA!! You GO Richard!! Anyone notice we actually see Richard more unravelled in this episode than ever before? He gets angry, almost violent, and up until now he usually steps back holding his coffee cup and looking like he’s on Prozac.
• CHAH-LIE!! I literally jumped up and hopped up and down around the living room. Like a bunny with a number 8 on my butt.
• The Temple! It actually reminded me a lot of the temple where Jin and Sun were married... minus the colour.
• Sawyer after being told a 341 is confidential: “Well if it’s confidential how the hell am I supposed to know if I see one?”
• When Sayid is carried out of the water, he’s in a Christ pose.
• Claire!
• Ben: “You’re the monster.” Not-Locke: “Let’s not resort to name-calling!”
• Not-Locke says the last thing Locke was thinking was, “I don’t understand.” Then says, “Isn’t that just about the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?” Yes... it is. It made my chest hurt when he said that. :(
• Followed by Hurley leaning in and saying to Sayid, “Hey dude... if you ever want to talk, I’m around.” You’re KILLIN’ me here, people!!
• The Man in Black and Alpert coming face to face. WOW.

Answers:
• I thought I’d add a new subhead in this year to catalogue all of the answers we actually get.
• Shadow Seekers are Jacob’s bodyguards. The Man in Black should know, I would think, so for now I’ll take his word that that’s who they are. It still leaves the questions about how they know about the island and where their allegiances come, etc.
• “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” Smokey = Man in Black. Not a surprise.

Did You Notice?:
• As soon as Jack takes the bottle from Cindy and says, “It’ll be our secret,” I knew things were going to be different. In “Pilot, Part 1,” Jack says to her that she’s breaking several FAA regulations, and then Charlie comes running by. Jack also seems a little drunker the first time around.
• Throughout the episode, when it moves between timelines you don’t hear the familiar “whoosh” sound, but instead you hear that screechy sound that happens right before a time jump.
• Rose says, “It’s OK, you can let go.” Which is exactly why Jack created this timeline in the first place: to let go of everything that’s caused him pain in the last 3 years.
• I loved when Jack looked in the mirror and at first I thought, “OMG, does he have a memory of being on the island and now he’s realizing he looks 3 years older?” but then he leans in and it’s just a razor cut on his neck.
• I mean this only as an observation, not showing a preference for one side over the other, but the writers were NOT doing the Skaters any favours with this episode. Kate looks at Sawyer, then Jack, and runs to Jack.
• Hurley doing the “commercial” for Mr. Cluck’s is referring to the Mr. Cluck’s commercial that they showed at Comic-Con.



• Death gave Jacob a haircut!
• You know, I’ve always found the Jin/Sun thing in the early days to be inconsistent with what we later know about them. His whole, “do up your top button” thing seemed to be somewhere they were going with the couple and then switched gears. Since then we’ve seen him flash the little flower at the airport to her and then we find out that he’s reassured her he’ll get rid of the watches and then they’ll run away together... But then again, all of that happened right before he ran into Hawaiian shirt man in the airport, who told him that no matter where he goes, Paik will be right there. That’ll put anyone on edge.
• Damon Boone says to Locke, “If this plane goes down, I’m sticking with you.” Sadly, in the other timeline the Beechcraft goes down and he’s with Locke at the time. And... it doesn’t do him any good.
• Did anyone else think for a second that maybe, in this timeline, Locke could actually walk and he really wasn’t pulling Boone’s leg?? I half-expected Locke to stand up at the end.
• Ben just looked like a shell of himself as he stood there staring at the fire... what a great moment. Though I’ll admit for a moment I thought Ben was so broken we’d never see the old manipulator again... but I know he’ll be back. 
• Poor Sayid. First, in the finale when Sawyer says he needs 5 minutes of Jack’s time, Jack wanders away without letting on that Sayid is bleeding out in the truck. In this one, Jin goes racing over to Jack to tell him that Sayid’s getting worse, and ends up down in the hole helping him move debris off Juliet before running back to the van, hurling Sayid inside and racing back over to Juliet.
• Jack is trying to revive Charlie and says he needs a pen. He actually needs one for real, yet in the other timeline where he landed on the island, Boone asks him if he needs a pen and Jack says, “Yes. Please go find me many pens” just to get rid of Boone. Now he actually needs one for reals.
• Jack to Charlie: “Yeah, you’re alive.” I almost cried at that line. Charlie’s alive. :::sniffle:::
• Juliet’s dead. :::sniffle::: Wah.
• Frogurt was wearing a red shirt. Hahaha!
• They seemed to pull the wheelchair out of a compartment, and yet in Sydney Locke was told they didn’t have any such thing and they had to carry him onto the plane (which, again, I ask... really? He didn’t have to go pee once in a 16-hour flight?!)
• Hurley’s also wearing a red shirt. Which has me REALLY REALLY worried. Please change shirts, Hurley. Soon.
• Was anyone else yelling at Kate, “Grab the case!!!” when she was running out of the bathroom after knocking out the marshall?
• The John Lennon circa 1968–looking dude played Sol Star on Deadwood. Think he knows Oldham and the Man in Black? And is he the walrus?
• As the Japanese guy is reading off Jacob’s latest list, there’s a guy standing behind him who looks familiar... is that an Other we’ve seen in previous seasons? He looks a little bit like Aldo... with a big red hat.
• Jack trying to revive Sayid with Kate sitting by him saying, “Jack, what are you doing, he’s dead” was reminiscent of the scene where Charlie appeared to be dead in the jungle and she begged him to stop and he refused... and revived Charlie. But here, he gives up. Jack has learned to let it go – is that always a good thing?
• Man, I’ve been watching too much Fringe. When Doc Arzt was retrieving his baggage from the carousel, I jumped for a minute because I thought I saw the Observer standing next to him! Then I thought it was Dave... and then realized nah, it’s just a bald guy.
• I couldn’t believe it when Kate didn’t just take Frogurt’s cab. She’s on the run from the law... I’ve been standing in those taxi lines at airports before and watched people cut in and jump in cabs and no matter how much yelling everyone else does, they just drive off.
• Wow, Zack and Emma have gotten old! But unlike with Walt, three years have passed so they can continue to use the same actors. It made me sad that these little kids who just wanted to see their parents have not only been denied a happy childhood with their family, they’re being treated like servants by the Others.
• Notice how disconcerted Miles looks as he’s sitting next to Sayid... he knows he’s not dead dead, because he can’t seem to communicate with him at all.
• I loved seeing Jack and Locke meet for the first time and Locke actually being a comfort to Jack. Remember back in “White Rabbit” in S1, Locke talks to Jack about how we chase things and Jack really listens to him, the way he listens to him here. I gasped when he mentioned he was a spinal surgeon... imagine if he could fix Locke and become Locke’s saviour?!
• Alpert starts shouting, “Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!” because he knows if they do, the smoke monster will come back.

So Many Questions...
• So... if the Swan never existed, then Desmond wouldn’t have been there pushing a button every 3 minutes. But, how did he end up on the plane? Does this mean that his boat crashed on the island in the first place because of the electromagnetism and without the island there, he was able to complete the race? Or does it mean that Widmore never had the race in the first place, confirming the long-held belief that Des was just his guinea pig all along? Is he with Penny or no? So many questions about Desmond being on that plane!!
• Jack wonders if he knows Des from somewhere. Is it the island or the stadium in LA? Because interestingly, when Des first sees him in the hatch, he INSTANTLY remembers Jack from the stadium. And yet here, he doesn’t have a clue who Jack is.
• Would a hydrogen bomb have simply thrown everyone back into the trees? And not obliterated them? I’m with Sawyer on that one... I think the island flashed them ahead 30 years just as it was about to go off, but it left the bomb behind. That would explain why everything that was on the construction site has been completely blown away.
• Why can’t the Man in Black cross the line of ash?
• Do the people outside the statue see the smoke monster? Wouldn’t that have tipped Richard off as to what was going on in there? Why don’t they rush inside?
• It was weird to see Ben cowering behind a stone during the Statue Massacre, simply because he’s always looked this sort of thing straight in the face without blinking. It’s like he’s a changed person... could the death of Jacob changed Ben back to the person he was before he was “changed” in the Temple? Could some of that little boy Ben be back?
• Juliet says, “We could get coffee some time... we could go Dutch.” Was that a line from early in their relationship? Or was she actually getting a glimpse of the other timeline for a moment and she could see herself talking to someone else?
• So... were the people at the Temple just the other Others that Richard sent on ahead back in season 3? Or are they always at the Temple? Why are they dressed so differently than they were in New Otherton? Cindy just had her regular clothes on in season 3, and now she’s looking like the rest of them. It’s like they only just got the newsflash that peace signs, round glasses, and fringe vests are in style... 40 years too late.
• Who is the Japanese guy in charge at the Temple? Why haven’t we seen him before now?
• I can’t help but wonder: Did Jacob deliver his lists to Ben in ankhs, too?
• Is this the same procedure that Ben went through when he was taken to the Temple? Was he drowned and came back to life?
• The Man in Black says he wants to go home. But where is home? More importantly, WHEN is it?!
• The Man in Black says to Richard that it’s nice to see him when he’s not in chains. Could he have been a slave on the Black Rock when Jacob brought it to the island? And if so, why would the Man in Black hate him so much? Was it because Jacob made him immortal and not the Man in Black?

Next week: