How do you continue after such a mind-boggling premiere? You change the picture in typical LOST-style, and instead of delivering an episode that is mystery-focused, you go back to the very core of the show: the characters.
The Episode…
In line with last Season, this season also kicks off with a Hurley-centered episode (I kind of see Because You Left as a prologue, a short setting of the framework in which this chapter of the story will enroll). It seems Hurley is considered a great character for making bridges between seasons (bridges which at times can be confusing), which doesn’t really seem so unlikely. Anyway: I love it when they dig into Hurley. Jorge Garcia just seems to keep on adding layers to what essentially started as an uninteresting
at character in the background. Kudos!
Ben did some remarkable things again – it’s interesting to see his off-island in
uences. We saw him take a package out of an air vent, show up at a butcher’s (brilliantly shown and cut, in my opinion) and – perhaps most breath-taking of all – in a church, in front of Ms. Hawking. Nice to see her again, even if the actress doesn’t really convince me. Is she Daniel Faraday’s mother? I’m willing to bet she is… And what was she doing in that basement? Looking for the island, perhaps? I also love the fact that a new confrontation between Ms. Hawking and Desmond is only a matter of time. Say what you will: the writers really know how to get the most out of their characters (unless they kill them off).
The Lie marked the end of Frogurt. Haven’t seen a redshirt go out with such a bang since Arzt back in season 1. Nice exit Neil! Who were the people who shot Team Island? Are they the same people that tried to cut off Juliet’s arm? They wore jumpsuits – people said they were Dharma but I’m not buying it. Where’s the Dharma logo, for instance? I thought they were Danielle’s crew, but they sound a wee bit too English for that. Although… no one said the crew was French – we just knew Rousseau herself was. Although Montand isn’t exactly a British name.
The Questions…
Will I be right after all? Will the answer to question 7 (Rousseau’s expedition) be answered soon? Are these her crewmates? About question 9 (Charles versus Ben): we now know that Ben’s allied with a lot of people – what I suspected to be a personal feud between two powerful people (analogous to the game of chess between Charles Xavier and Magneto in X-Men) might just turn out to be a hidden war between two much larger forces…
In All…
I loved this episode. It was full of this sad yet funny awkwardness that is Hurley – but, just like in The Beginning of the End (season 4’s Hurley episode) the drama overweighed the fun (see the quote below if you don’t understand what I mean). It had some nice plot twists (Ana Lucia’s “Don’t get arrested” got an entirely different meaning at the end of the episode – could the ghosts be siding with Ben then?) and a great set-up for next week’s episode (Jones’ crew).
Favourite Quote:
Hurley: Okay. See, we did crash, but it was on this crazy island. And we waited for rescue, and there wasn’t any rescue. And there was a smoke monster, and then there were other people on the island. We called them the Others, and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches, and there was a button you had to push every 108 minutes or… well, I was never really clear on that. But… the Others didn’t have anything to do with the hatches. That was the DHARMA Initiative. The Others killed them, and now they’re trying to kill us. And then we teamed up with the Others because some worse people were coming on a freighter. Desmond’s girlfriend’s father sent them to kill us. So we stole their helicopter and we
flew it to their freighter, but it blew up. And we couldn’t go back to the island because it disappeared, so then we crashed into the ocean, and we
floated there for a while until a boat came and picked us up. And by then, there were six of us. That part was true. (Whispers) But the re… But the rest of the people… who were on the plane? They’re still on that island.
