TV Watch: Lost, The Lie

Lost is at interesting crossroads. The show should be setting up the closing acts at this point - but this isn't something that Lost is particularly good at. Lost is a show which has gotten a lot of mileage teasing the audience, although in recent seasons it was running out of gas with that tactic.

Bringing the story lines out of the flashbacks and into the flashforwards helped bring fresh ideas into the plot, so what we should be watching for is whether the flashforwards will likewise run out steam and the climax will feel something like a cymbals clash, or if we're going to get a tightly group ending which will bring the entire show together.

After seeing The Lie I'm not entirely certain which I'd place a bet on.

For one thing, the flashforwards already feel a little weird. Three years is a decent chunk of time, and one one end we have Locke and company time jumping around and on the other we have Ben and company trying to get the band back together. Where until this point we had a basic question - why does anyone want to return to the island, now we ... well we have the same question but about half the characters seem sold on the idea anyway.

This doesn't really concern me too much, as the concept of a general pull back to the island for Hurley and Jack isn't much of a stretch in the overall scheme for the show and the writers have given us some pretty good material for fleshing out the characters a little more. I'm even good with Jack just wanting to go back because he's a sad drunk and Hurley because he won't feel as insane.

It doesn't go far in explaining as to why if they all won't make it back, "God help us all", but that's the tease the show is still building anyway.

Our time travelling island crew gives us a decent amount of fan appeal and gives the writers to start splicing that three year gap pretty much how they want. Faraday is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters on the show. He's appealing but flawed and gives the viewer a kind of advocate that they sorely need.

I mean damn, someone finally stopped in the jungle and explained something. I nearly cried.

I wonder where Jacob went on all this, but I kind of wonder if Locke hasn't been somewhat "Jacobized", and I'm guessing we'll know more as we get closer to his "death". We seem to have a kind of backhanded explanation to the "whispers" from previous seasons - people being displaced in time creating a kind of temporal doppler effect. My guess is that will slide into explaining the problem with say, Kate's horse, or a Sahara polar bear. Or even Adam and Eve (which two Losties do we think that might be?)

A thumbs up from me, looking forward to the rest of this season. I'm still afraid that the show will leave huge swaths of details by the wayside - but I think they're heading for an ending that is at least interesting.