After watching Lost‘s first season on DVD, I called a friend who had been watching it from Day One and said, “I don’t know if this show should go past four seasons. But if they really want to stretch it, I have an idea: They should jump ahead and follow everyone after the rescue, with flashbacks to the island.”
He agreed this was cool.
So tonight, when Jack showed up wearing a beard on an Oceanic flight, my spider-sense started to tingle. And I knew, immediately, that we were seeing a post-rescue Jack.
And God, was it good.
With this episode, Lost has done what I thought was impossible — it has made me crave it again, with a hunger I haven’t known since somewhere in the second season. Yes, there were still some niggling annoyances (Charlie locking Desmond out of the command room instead of getting out himself and just running like hell — they would have had PLENTY of time to escape the Looking Glass). And I am really, REALLY tired of Mikhail the Super-Regenerating Russian. When he tapped on Charlie’s window with a hand grenade, I groaned. It was like a bad parody of a Friday the 13th movie. I’m starting to wonder if Mikhail’s real name is Kenny and he’s originally from South Park, Colorado, not Russia.
Either that, or maybe he’s descended from Rasputin.
Anyway, given the island’s predilection to heal people, I couldn’t even take seriously the many, many deaths this episode. Although God knows it was beyond awesome to see Sayid snap that guy’s neck with his feet. (In three episodes, of course, that guy will be walking around.)
All that aside, I was truly amazed at the writers’ guts in showing that Jack is not the hero they originally wanted us to believe he is. For more than a season now, Jack’s treatment as a hero has been at odds with his actual portrayal. Now we see that his destiny is, in fact, to screw up, make the wrong decision…and live to regret it.
Lost is back. Now we just have to make it through the long wait until January, 2008. Fortunately, we’ve gotHeroes this fall to make it hurt just a little less.