Gouge Away
missy aggravation / some sacred questions
BENTHAM!! Wait. Who?.. Why? (Spoiler-riddled Lost thoughts after the jump…)
Was it just me or was this episode funnier than usual? Perhaps it’s because Michael Emerson is so brilliant at playing Ben every single thing he says makes me laugh. In a way the general sense of whimsy I was feeling throughout most of the episode kind of got in the way of one of its best scenes. It probably wasn’t even the episode itself — more me and my school-girl like giddiness that had been brewing at work all day as I awaited the finale and then amplified exponentially when Kate’s car stops and then backs up kicking off this years finale just as last year’s season ended — I loved that.
Anyway, all of this came to a head at that point where the island disappeared and there was that *BLOMP* of the ocean as if god-almighty had literally picked it up and taken it away and it caused me to laugh, because, well, it’s just such a great visual and, well, funny. I had a similar reaction when Jack’s dad showed up and told Michael it was OK for him to die now. His out-of-nowhere appearance and frankness in his statement was just so pitch-perfect when it comes to this show and its Svengali-like control over us causing me to just smile and think, “Damn, this is funny stuff.” Unfortunately, in this case it was milliseconds before Sun lets out one of the most soul-crushing screams ever after seeing Jin presumably blown to smithereens. But that’s why this show is so great. The way they can take such a preposterous premise further and further into the absurd and yet still have us emotionally grounded to the characters. It’s a thing of beauty.
As far as Lost finales go, this one for me falls somewhere right in the middle. If this was by design or not I’m sure we’ll never know, but the decisions that were made with the story were perfectly selected, and that final shot, well, we all knew it was coming. The fact of the matter is you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone, anywhere to top last year’s episode and so the misdirection with certain payoffs (primarily the apparent end of the Desmond/Penny arc) actually served as a perfect counter-weight to their own inability to out-shock us.
In a way, of the show’s four seasons, this one actually provided the most closure. Outside of the last act, it wouldn’t be too hard to think of it as a series finale, and now that we’re officially into the last third of the series, it seems only right that certain things begin to get resolved. Of course in typical Lost fashion this isn’t to suggest that everything is getting resolved. Here are a few of the new questions:
- Jeremy Bentham. Why? It makes me wonder if that really was Locke. What with all the time-travel potential, I’m curious if we have a doppleganger situation on our hands.
- Are Desmond and Penny, like, off the show now? That would suck. There was a period when I was convinced he was actually the main character.
- Is Jin dead? Seems likely, but it also seems like he didn’t get nearly the romantic death that every other major player has had.
- Is Sun a total badass in the future (present?) or what?
- Wait, why did Ben have to blow a hole in the wall? Hasn’t this process been done before? Shouldn’t the hole have already been there?
- February 2009? Really?
So what did everyone else think?
Tags: ABC, Cliffhangers, Lost, Season Finale
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:12 am
I think the last time the Island was moved, was before the DHARMA Institute came along and built that magnetic chamber next to the passageway that led to the wheel. And that would have been some time after the Black Rock ended up on the Island. I’m one of those people who thinks that Charles Widmore was the Captain of the Black Rock and he’s the one who moved the Island. That banished him and it explains why he’s been looking for the Island ever since.
So that’s why Ben had to break through the back wall of the Orchid chamber.