"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Lost 5.4: A Saving Skip Back in Time

Whew, a powerful, tender, heart-wrenching Episode 5.4 of Lost tonight -

1. Jin's alive! I expected he would be. How did he survive? He must have time traveled to the past, a split second before the explosion on the boat would have hit him. We have now seen, several times, that the island's jumping through time can save characters on the verge of death. Juliet was about to be shot when a yank in time saved her....

2. Jin (back in time) is picked up by Rousseau's people - young, pregnant Rousseau. Very nice touch.

3. Back in L.A., in our present, Ben's up to his old, complex tricks - on the side of good or bad, we still can't tell. He puts in motion a series of developments that seemed designed to take Aaron away from Kate - but maybe Ben is only doing this to make sure that Jack and Kate get closer together, which they do.

4. Sun, who doesn't know Jin survived, is about to shoot Ben, and who knows who else. Everyone has to survive, though, if the island is to stop skipping though time. Too bad that lawyer who was bothering Kate wasn't in the group - Sun could safely kill him without any risk to stopping the island's time skipping.

5. Which better happen soon, because the nosebleeds are spreading - now Miles and Juliet as well as Charlotte have them. Charlotte was born on the island, very likely Miles (if he's Candle's son - but he says he was never on the island before) ... But what about Juliet? We have no reason to think so, but, who knows, maybe Juliet was born on the island, too, and that's the real reason Ben and Richard brought her back a few years ago...

6. One of the best Kate and Jack episodes in a while ... Kate telling Jack she was always with him, when Jack asks her in a brief flashback, on the boat away from island, if Kate will be with him in supporting the Oceanic Six story ... And the smile between them when they meet tonight in LA was very real...

7. Sawyer sees Kate, too, in one of the time skips back on the island, when Kate is delivering Claire's baby. He doesn't say anything to her, it's not easy but he wants to leave the past alone. And neither does Locke, when he has a chance to warn his younger self, just after Boone dies, of the pain that's in store for him.

Faraday already told us that the past cannot be changed. And, apparently, neither do the people on the island want to, when they're given a chance.

It's a crazy universe, all right, but, it seems to have a penchant for wanting to conserve itself, or not unravel time and space on the island and our tenuous hold on understanding this brilliant story any further than need be...

Looking forward to more next week.







5-min podcast review of Lost 5 Hr 4


See also
: The Richard-Locke Compass Time Travel Loop ...

and Lost Returns in 5 Dimensions and 5.3: The Loops, The Bomb





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11 comments:

tvindy said...

It seemed an obvious tactical mistake to take one boat and leave the other on the beach for its owners to pursue them. That was such an obvious mistake, and Locke doesn't make many of those.

Anonymous said...

It is getting rather good, isn't it.

Nice that they've figured out a way to write episodes that leave you wanting more, without resorting to simply stacking mysteries on top of one another.

tvindy said...

It's interesting to see that the pillar of light that Locke saw emanating from the hatch actually was extremely bright. Desmond attributed it to just switching on a light on his way to the bathroom, but it really is more of a beacon.

Anonymous said...

I made the same point Dr. Levinson about Juliet possibly being born to the island. Maybe they wanted to bring her back, because she does have a strong connection to the island being born there. It's definitely possible.

Or maybe it has to do with what Faraday was talking about...the amount of time you have spent on the island. Charlotte and Miles were clearing born there, Juliet spent three years, which means Locke and Sawyer are next.

tvindy said...

It's funny how Charlotte seemed to nearly (or completely) die and then apparently made a full recovery. I wonder if this is more than just a time-travel illness. Perhaps the island is somehow changing them. (If it is just an illness, it's possible that Locke won't be affected, since the island protects him.)

Also, I wonder if we'll be seeing the four-toed statue again as Locke and company row around to the other side of the island. Maybe we'll see a more intact earlier version.

Paul Levinson said...

Good thought about the island changing Charlotte, after her brush with death, so that she no longer has nosebleeds.

There's a science fiction story from the 1950s, in which a human is on an alien planet, the environment almost kills him, but then he starts feeling better - the environment has changed him into an alien, now comfortable in the environment....

tunabananas said...

Great premonition about Jin! You are quite good at those!

Joe's wry response when Kate says she was "always with" Jack- "yeah honey, 'cept when you were with Sawyer!"

I must have missed an episode, as I don't recall ever being informed that Charlotte was born on the island... would love it if they would develop her character more, as I feel a natural affinity for redheaded anthropologists *grin*

Paul Levinson said...

Well, has Joe done any experimenting with time travel? :)

Charlotte said very briefly in an episode last year that she was born on the island ... may have been the same episode in which we saw her in the desert, unearthing some bones, but I'm not sure...

Rachel Snyder said...

I'm loving this season so far! My expectations were already quite high going in, but the first four episodes have far exceeded them :)

I agree with Tara about the length of time people spend on the island affecting how quickly they become sick. I don't think Juliet was born there, which would explain why she's only just now getting sick, but because she's been there longer than the 815ers she's more susceptible than they are. As far as Jin is concerned, I doubt he time-traveled before the explosion, but rather that the island found some way to keep him alive. After all, there were initially 70 survivors of a plane that broke up mid-air, which to me seems far more improbable than one guy surviving the Kahana explosion.

And oh, the episode in which Charlotte implies she had been born on the island (her words to Daniel were "Would you believe I'm still looking for where I was born") was sometime in the Season 4 finale.

Carrin Mahmood said...

Pleeeeeeeeease, somebody...help me remember the "rules" of the constant. You know Penny was Desmonds "constant" so he didn't get the nose bleeds/death. I thought it was someone who knew you in two diffrwnt times, so why wouldn't all the O815-ers and the Cgarolette and the gang be each other's constants

tvindy said...

I'm not sure if the constant rules apply in this situation. Desmond was traveling back and forth between two different periods in his life, but it appears that the island itself is traveling randomly to all sorts of time periods in its history, including to at least one period where not everyone had been born yet. They would need a single constant to be present in every time period. Also, I'm not sure the nosebleed and death problem is related to what was happening to Desmond. I don't recall him, or the other time-shifting fellow on the ship, having nosebleeds.

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