LOST: And Now For Something Completely Different

In this final episode until the longest month of my life is over (beware of the ides of March, I was told; I should have listened), we get what feels like three separate vignettes: real time Freighter, past time Michael, and the obligatory cliff hanger ending, real time Island. This new format, the Tarantino, is questionable. As much as I like to defer to the hidden wisdom of the High Council of the LOST Scribes, I must protest the ending. It had nothing to do with the story, and felt like the ending to Great Expectations: as if, after feeling an initial reaction of everyone not having their hearts leap out of their bodies at the sheer glory of the original ending, the author went back and modified it to give the audience what they wanted. Dickens added a romance. LOST added two deaths and yet another cliff hanger.

So, first, Ben, with the collected self that seems to say, "I know how this is going to end," sent his daughter Alex, her boyfriend Karl, and her birth mother Danielle off to join the others in the specified Other's Special Place. Halfway through their journey, Danielle and Karl kick the bucket by way of bullets and leave Alex to surrender. The question: Freighter fire or Friendly fire? Certainly, the silencers on those guns seem above the technological reach of the Others' armory, and in flashback Michael witnessed the freighter crew gearing for battle, but when in the world did they land a strike team on island? It seems that the initial team, minus Miles, would abhor the thought of violence, and I'm betting that Frank would refuse to fly such warriors to the fray. The other option would be that Ben sent his rival in parental affections as well as the boy who might knock up his daughter on a one way mission. This seems the easy way out of such a cliffhanger, and I fear that it is the truth.

But the real story was Michael's. I for one liked seeing the consequences of his leaving the Island. At the end of season two, there were many questions, and the first being, how does Michael explain his sudden reappearance? Well, apparently he doesn't. And thus his life sucks.

So a man with nothing to lose, and hungering for some sort of redemption that flows like a river motif throughout LOST, is recruited by (a finally out of the closet) Tom to wreck the ship. It all proceeds pretty much in a standard line from there, except for the part where I could have sworn Michael and Naomi were going to be crushing on one another. But in all truth, I just desperately want Naomi back in the show somehow.

Oh, and P.S.: the Island is a demigod. Huh. It won't let Michael commit suicide. And it seems that the Island has the power to reach across half the world, into Manhattan, and project images of the dead. So, in a show that revolves so continuously around fate, we are finally given the fate machine, The Great and Terrible Oz, the Island.

The new information we were fed was the fact that it wasn't Ben, but Widmore who planted the plane between the palisades of the ocean floor. Now, this might start an argument as to who is telling the truth, but the Widmore story is not only backed up with paper evidence, but makes more sense: as someone who wants to be the only one to find the Island, dealing with the rest of the world in one move is much more to his advantage than Ben's, because, from Ben's point of view, no one yet has been able to find the Island, so why attempt such an expensive misdirection?

IN OTHER NEWS, Karl dyed his hair then died, George used to be really cool, a clean Danielle looks the same as one who has been dirty for seventeen years, a clean Danielle died a very bad death for a character with her abilities on the show and her ability to scare me in real life, and, gosh darnit, why can't they work Naomi back into the story?

And as we say goodbye to LOST, we are reminded of the immortal words of Semisonic, that "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Yes, Battlestar Galactica starts next Friday, April 4th, so take your pants off now, because the premier will knock them off, anyway.