Lost

So the wife and I have been recording Lost episodes and never got around to watching any of them. So for the last couple of weeks we’ve been running mini-marathons to get caught up on the episodes. As of last night, we’re 100% caught up.

I will say that this season has been a pretty good one. One thing I’m happy with is the fact that they seem to solve “most” of the mysteries they introduce within just a couple of shows. This is so much better than how this series started when they introduced the Black Smoke and the Polar Bear Monster way back in the first season, and then didn’t even touch on those again until pretty much this season. Kind of like the Numbers Hurley won the lottery with. We know the numbers are cursed, but honestly I’m not sure if, to this day, they’ve ever really explained why - other than they were the numbers printed on the hatch.

So let’s run with a couple of these other items that haven’t yet been explained.

1) Libby. Libby died around the end of season 3 (if I remember right). She and Hurley had a little romance there for a bit, and one of the most perplexing things we see with her is when she’s at the Mental Institution as a mental patient WITH HURLEY. What in the heck is that all about?

2) Richard Alpert. After watching season 5, we pretty much find out that Richard has been on the island for pretty much the last 60-ish years. What I’m really impressed with are the skin products he’s been using because after 60 years, he hasn’t aged a day! If that’s the result of Mary Kay, I’m making an order. But if this dude has been on the island for 60 years and hasn’t aged at all, who in the heck is he? Also, so far, the island has “chosen” Charles Whitmore (sp?), Ben Linus and now John Locke to be the leaders. Both Charles and Ben have failed, and we have yet to see what Mr. Locke will do…BUT if Richard Alpert has been around for 60 years, why hasn’t he ever been the leader? At the very end of the last episode, Ben Linus made a reference to him as an “Advisor”. I’m sure Mr. Alpert will be explained more next season, but for now, this dude is a mystery. Aside from that, during WWII when they were on the island, and even in 1977, have you noticed that everyone around him is British, but he's an American?

3) The Others. Where did they come from? We kind of now understand the Dharma Initiative, but we still have no clue where The Others really came from. This season we at least understand they arrive around WWII (if my memory is correct), or were they there before WWII? But these dudes live in the forest and just move around all over the place in tents? They all have nasty dispositions, except for Mr. Alpert, who also seems to be the pseudo-leader of them all back in the day, before Whitmore and Linus “grow up”. They have a truce with the Dharma folk, but apparently they existed on the island long before Dharma arrived, so why didn’t they all just merge together into one big camp? When Dharma is building houses and crap, The Others decided to just stay out in the jungle and rough it like Grizzly Adams? Of course we already know it stays like this for a while until Ben Linus (once grown up and in charge) decides to raid the Dharma camp, kill everyone and take it over. But still, The Others are never fully explained, and I think it’s largely due to Richard Alpert being associated with them. If they explain him, then I’m sure it’ll explain The Others.

4) Christian. Where did he come from and what in the heck is he doing? For a couple of episodes I thought he was Jacob. But now Locke wants to go meet Jacob so I’m lost again (imagine that). So Christian (Jack’s Father) is just alive and well on the island in some sort of real form, but vanishes and appears like a ghost, and he’s telling Locke how to do things and that he should stop following and trusting Ben and all that. He also tells Locke how to fix the unhinged “wheel of time” to get the island stable again. He’s almost more of a riddle than Richard Alpert right now.

5) Jacob. He’s been a mystery since, what…the 2^nd season? I almost think the writers of the show invented him to add mystery, but are now crapping their pants trying to figure out how to explain him. He apparently sits around in some old cabin that can move around as needed…? ...OK… We also just found out that Ben has never really been to see Jacob, although Ben did first take Locke there (or at least Locke followed him) way back in season 3. So I don’t know if this is an error in the script, or they’ve decided they did screw up and now they’re trying to fix it all so they can better explain Jacob. Hopefully we’ll figure this one out soon.

6) The Island. We’re finding more and more out about the island, but it’s pretty much a breeding ground of imagination. I think it should be renamed from “The Island” to “Fantasy Island” – that’s more fitting.

There is so much going on in this show, and it’s completely unreal and incomprehensible, my fear is that the ending is really going to blow. This show is going to have one of those endings where it’s either all explained as being a fantasy in Hurley’s mind while he’s sitting in the Mental Institution, Space Alien technology, or some mystical Aztec or Egyptian sorcery/god making people do all these things – and that would be REALLY disappointing. But it’s going to happen, because when you create a story line like this that’s so completely fantastic and unbelievable, the only way to really answer it all is explain it with something just as fantastic and unbelievable. I’m reminded of the movie “Tommyknockers” by Stephen King. A whole town became completely obsessed with technical ideas and inventions, and became somewhat “possessed” as a community. So how did Mr. King solve it? An alien spaceship buried in the ground in the woods - and half-dead aliens were using their mental powers to take control of all the people. Maybe to some people that’s a great ending, but to me it’s like deflating a really cool looking balloon slowly, instead of letting all the air go at once by popping it and being shocked by the big explosion.

Lost season finale on Wednesday!