Lost Season 6, Episodes 1-2 – “LAX” – review
Review, Television | Matt Cibula | February 3, 2010 at 10:07 am
How does one recap a two-hour show that in itself is trying to recap its previous five seasons? Come on, you guys, it’s Lost; can’t just go blow-by-blow, and plus you all watched it anyway. Instead, we will examine some themes and motifs and answered questions and stuff. OR BY GOD WE SHALL DIE TRYING. And if you think there will be spoilers…you are correct.
Our main motif: descent. As we hurtle headlong down the path of this season, and this series, we will have to dig deeper and go further down into all its mysteries before we can surface. This is made abundantly clear in this episode’s action. We start on Oceanic Flight 815, just like nothing ever happened, with Jack looking out the window, la de dah, la de dah. Suddenly, the plane starts to shake violently, like we’re going to do the whole thing over again—but no, it stops, it’s all good, we’re still all alive. (S0 nice to see Rose and Bernard together and happy again…although isn’t she now just going to die of cancer?) Jack talks to his seatmate Desmond, whom he kind of remembers a little bit but maybe not. This is kinda bogus, because Jack remembered him right away, before (“Hey, you were the guy in the stadium when I was running stairs!”), but whatever.
But then…the descent! Our camera plunges down DOWN DDOOWWNN through the clouds into the ocean and across the ocean floor until we see, uh, GASP, The Island Is At The Bottom Of The Ocean. Boom.
But then, gasp, we see the end of last year scene, again, and then suddenly Kate’s in a jungle tree and everything is weird and muted like there’s been a massive explosion or something. Uh, what? So she has to descend to the ground, where she finds her hearing again and a whole bunch of other Survivors. Well, and Miles. But wow, there’s Jack, and uh-oh, there’s Sawyer, and hey, Hurley and Jin and dying Sayid! The whole gang! And they’re still on the island!
So what the hell does this mean? A couple of things. First of all, we now have two realities. Should have expected that, what with all the time travel. As we know from reading science fiction, TT can take you one of two ways: either into a universe-resolved single reality, or into universe-refuses-to-do-all-the-hard-work double, or triple, or infinite realities. And that’s what we have here. While Sawyer is kicking the crap out of Jack, screaming “It didn’t work!” he’s also back on Oceanic Flight 815, because it DID work after all. Ha ha, joke’s on him, and on our handful of Survivors (pretty sure these are all just the ones touched by Jacob in the past reveals).
Although, of course, this doesn’t REALLY mean that there are two realities. Because the plane would be in the air in the past, relative to the current island action, wouldn’t it? I’m a little mixed up. Anyway, I think the window might still be a little open, is all I’m saying.
So that’s what we’re going to get from now on—one group of our characters is safe and sound, one is unsafe and unsound. In the sky, Sawyer is all happy-go-lucky, like he never killed the wrong guy in Australia, chatting with Hurley, who is somehow saying, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” when in fact we know that before he went to Australia in any version of the story he was freaked the hell out by his lottery numbers and success, because that’s the whole reason he went there in the first place, right? But on the island, Hurley’s still seeing ghosts (JACOB OMG) and Sawyer is acting all Wolverine, sneering and snarling and blaming Jack for Juliet’s death…
…but wait! She’s still alive under all the metal that went down after her! So they do a heroic rescue and Sawyer grabs her and they kiss and THEN she dies. Oh. Later, thanks to Ghost Whisperer Miles, we know that she says “it worked.” Dang, how does she know?
The jungle folks soon run into all kinds of new trouble: new bad guys headed up by new Asian Ass-Kicking Dude and his semi-Buddhist minions. They will kill them, but Hurley mentions Jacob, and there’s an ankh in the guitar case and a secret message, and the water’s not clear but Sayid isn’t quite dead but then he is dead, and all kinds of stuff happens.
More importantly: When the island got unstuck in time, the audience got unstuck in certainty. We went right along with the characters; we used to think we knew which end was up, but suddenly we were unmoored, just like the Black Rock and the airplanes that keep crashing into the island. There was a very direct parallel between each viewer and each survivor: we learned our information at the same time, we got scared when they were scared, happy when they made out, etc. Easy way to build an audience, oldest trick in the book.
But now, thanks to the paradox of time travel, we are suddenly in two realities. One of them is up in the air, the other is back in the jungle. The latter we understand, because it’s pretty much like life: you stumble around until you find something you like or that seems useful, then you try to guard it from outsiders. That’s the story of the Hatch, the Temple, virtually every location in the show, and it’s how we think of ourselves.
But in the other, “happier” reality, where there is no crash, we are in the strange position of knowing more than the characters do. We KNOW that somewhere they crashed, while they are blissfully unaware. Actually, that’s the case on the island too: we KNOW that they actually didn’t crash, while they think they still did. Because to them that IS the reality. Dramatic irony—we know more than the characters do, and we’re all set up for tragedy now for real.
And we should mention the fact that in the non-crash reality Jin is still a dick to Sun and Kate is still a prisoner (although she gets away and gets into a cab where HOLY CRAP CLAIRE IS THERE) and Jack is probably still an alcoholic with daddy issues (LOL they lost his dad’s coffin) and life isn’t necessarily better for anyone. Hell, even Rose is probably just going to die of cancer now. So bad fortune can be good, vice versa, blah blah blah.
Other random stuff: Oh yeah, Locke is pretty much fully revealed as not only the Man In Black, nemesis of Jacob, but also THE SMOKE MONSTER! So that’s a mystery solved. In the form of Smokey, he kills a lot of people, even cheating to get a guy out of the chalk circle by hitting him with a rock. And everyone’s pretty freaked out that Locke is walking around when Locke’s dead body is lying on the ground; in fact, Richard catches a face jammy from Bad Locke and is carried off into the jungle by him. Ben goes around doing his crazy-eyes thing, mostly to no avail. So there’s that. And Ilana is still hot but ineffectual.
Also: Desmond is on the plane, but then he isn’t. Charlie tries to die on the plane, but Jack saves him (what the hell was in Charlie’s throat?), only to get yelled at. And Shannon never comes back from Australia, which would be more interesting if, y’know, Shannon was.
And further: in the temple, Sayid wakes up. BUT IS HE SAYID REALLY? Smart money says he’s actually Jacob, who was the one who said he should go to the temple in the first place. But smart money has been wrong before.
Okay there is some other stuff, but it will have to wait. This was a great jump-off, and who the eff knows where it’s going next. Love that.
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The stuff in Charlie’s throat was the heroine — just like in the Madonna statues.
I’m betting that the leader in the temple is the none other than the captain of Black Rock, while the translator is the author of the journal that Widmore was bidding on.
About the ‘bogus’ statement about jack and desmond’s meeting:
If the Alternate Time Line was created by Jughead, it appears that the explosion destroyed/sunk the island and killed everyone on it. That would mean that Charles Widmore was killed, and Penny very possibly never existed, or if she did it is now in a different reality. This opens up the opportunity for Desmond and Penny to never meet, but also DEFINITELY destroys the chance for a Round the World Sailing Race, as it was hosted by Widmore, which makes it so Desmond doesnt enter the race, which means he doesn’t train for it, which means he isn’t running up and down stadium stairs when Jack hurts his ankle.
Nothing bogus about it!
(in other words, Jack doesnt recognize him from a previous meeting, or at least not the one we saw in the show earlier. There is a very good chance he has a sense of the OTHER reality)
What do you mean; “…and life isn’t necessarily better for anyone.” Over a hundered passengers of Flight 815 died in the crash and on the island – they are instead alive. Its actually better for most of those on Flight 815.
so, does no one think that Jack & Co., are no longer in the 1970s? when the NuOthers sent that flare up when they freaked out that Jacob was dead, Lapidus & Co., saw the flare. Either the 1970s folks moved ahead in time, or the 2007 folks moved back in time.
They aren’t back in the 70’s. Sun never went back to the 70’s.
Did Hurley really see Jacob or was that the monster in Jacob’s body (dunno if the monster can even touch Jacob’s body, though…)? And if so, what for?… I don’t trust any dead person in the show anymore.
Here are the questions that I have:
How does Hurley see the dead people and is Jacob only dead on the one timeline.
Did Juliets consciousness cross the timelines? Seems by what she said to Miles that it did.
Why did they use such crappy CGI on the sunken island?
I like the idea that the temple people are from the black rock, makes sense since they set it up with the discussion between Jacob and MIB with the ship in the distance.
I just wonder how they are going to reconcile the two timelines. Like i really hope we do not see two distinct endings personally. I have a feeling that theywill overlap somehow.
I believe that the reason they’re showing us the alternate timeline with the Oceanic passengers is b/c they’ll have to make a choice. Its seems that Smokey has this notion that humans don’t understand the beauty of the island. They’ll have to make that choice in the end most likely.
i know Sun wasn’t originally in the 1970s. what i’m asking is if both groups on the island are now existing during the same time period, because Jack’s group was present when the flare went off in the Temple, and Richard, who was with the group and Locke’s dead body on the shore, saw the flare. Someone even asked him, “What was that?”
Sorry, that answer is yes.
So, if the flight attendant and the two kids are with the New Others, it can’t be all the way back to the old old days when the Black Rock first crashed, but the translator looks like he is from the “sixties” with the John Lennon specs. Doesn’t it have to be before 1977 for the island to even be there? Wondering?
@Pam: No they are all in 2008 (09? whatever) on the island. The flash-to-a-parallel-dimensions where the island was underwater and the plane never crashes were exactly that. I flash to a different dimension entirely riding alongside our current timeline.
Its like two trains riding next to each-other, island jack and safe jack both exist at the same (ish?) time and apparently have limited consciousness of each-other.
Emmett Brown best explained it in Back to the Future 2. At some point in the past, most likely the nuclear explosion, the timeline veered off its original path creating two separate entities.
**MORE SPOILERS**
Apologies for the excessive quoting down below, but I needed it to illustrate my point!
Lost is so good because everyone has a different take on it, and luckily the writers have something better than we do! 
Towards the end of the second episode when the surviving character of “John Locke” was speaking, he constantly spoke about “John Locke” in the third person to Ben, like that he isn’t really John Locke… like he’s something else with John’s likeness for his own convenience, someone else who Richard has already encountered but isn’t really John. Or he’s the islands reincarnation of John in a higher power, the black smoke. He likens himself to the dead John Locke, in that he knew his life before being on the island was pitiful, yet he still wants out.
In the battening down the hatches scene at the Temple, the 1960’s John Lennon translator guy (who has remarkably similar glasses to childhood Ben) was with Hurley:
Hurley: “Guess we’re not getting out of here, huh?”
Translator: “This isn’t to keep you in, it’s to keep HIM out.”
Hurley: “Him? Who?”
—Cut to John and Ben—
Ben: “What are you?”
John: “I’m not a ‘What’, I’m a ‘Who’.”
(A “who” can be a “him”, it can’t be a “what”)
Ben: “You’re the monster.”
John: “Let’s not resort to name calling”
Ben: “You used me, you couldn’t kill him yourself so you made me do it”
John: “I didn’t make you do anything…”
(the ‘I’ hints that it’s not really Locke that Ben sees because even though that’s who he’s talking to)
John: “You should know, that he was very confused when you killed him.”
Ben: “I seriously doubt that Jacob was ever confused”
John: “I’m not talking about Jacob, I’m talking about John Locke”
— Forward a few scenes to Monster Locke and Richard —
Is Richard *really* surprised to see the second Monster Locke? I’m not sure if he is, because he only verbally reacts after the Locke character does. He could be so dumbstruck by the shock, and Locke’s comment is just about Jacob being metaphorical “chains” holding Richard back.
Richard: “Don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him.”
John: “Good to see you Richard, it’s good to see you out of those chains”
Richard: “You?”
John: “Me. (crash bang wallop) I am very disappointed, in all of you.”
— End of my thinking cause I’m about to contradict myself —
Infact, I’ve just had a further thought that blows my previous theory out of the water, the comment by John about “chains” – the smoke monster always had chain sounds grinding all the time… “out of those chains”?
Whatever… I’m rambling! Anyone who got this far I hope it sparked some theories on a couple of very thought provoking episoides!!
Anyways, my favourite quote from these episodes is “Nothing is irreversible” by Jack, good point to the alternating storyline’s / plots or whatever!
Much lost love, and much love for Lost, antonius
Thanks Bill. I was going in the wrong direction. I suspect Doc would have zoomed the DeLorean in and time-traveled them back to the future 2009! Perhaps Jacob’s death was the catalyst that time-traveled them back to the future and left the 1977 timeline on the ocean floor?
Following up with Antonius on John Lennon guy. Did you notice right after John Lennon guy says “if you friend dies we’re all in a lot of trouble” the sound of John Lennon’s “All you Need is Love” is the music bed for the commercial? Coincidence? Ha
“John: “Good to see you Richard, it’s good to see you out of those chains”
Is this a reference to when Richard came with the Black Rock? Was he perhaps a prisoner/slave on the ship, and haven’t Smokey and Richard had any encounters for several hundred years(as we presume the Black Rock.
Was it the people from the temple that bombarded the losties with arrows and spears during one of the timeflashes(season 5), but to which time was that timeflash?
They are all in the same timeline: 2008, remember when Jacob was saying “They’re coming…”, and also the hatch was blowed up by the explosion that Desmond did, not the one that the nuclear bomb did, Jin also mentions that they travelled in time.
And let’s not forget that Jack’s hair in the safe reality is the same as the one in season 5, he was with a shorter and different hairstyle when he boarded the flight 815 in season 1. So I think he has an “alternate reality awareness”.
Personally, responding to Lucas, I think the whole haircut thing is just a small plot hole the directors need us to overlook. There’s a video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-1qzelSWpE) that shows everyone pretty much ACTS the same way they do up until the point of the crash, then things change.
They did their best to do a scene by scene match, but with Jack essentially playing “2 characters” (Original time line and alternate time line), there might be slight appearance discrepancies.
You’ll also notice the characters talking about their ears ringing when they wake up on the island post-Jughead. We assumed in season 5 that the flash of light we saw was Jughead’s explosion, but we find out it may have been that with a combination of a time jump, as character’s always complained about ears ringing/headaches/nosebleeds when time jumped before.
As far as Sayid being Jacob, that’s kind of a hard way to weigh in on…I mean, the island DID heal Ben in the same way. The water wasn’t clear though, which suggests something was wrong, probably Jacob’s death. So, Sayid could be a “second coming” of Jacob…too early to tell.
I thought that lost was great until i started to watch LAX.
What a waste of public time, i mean how can anyone be so Fùçking stupid as to edit 5 previous seasons and make a mis mash of crap and overlay it with a boring monotonous voice. I actually changed channel after 5 minutes it was absolutly crap. In fact i have never seen a bigger bunch of shit in my life and anyone that is thick enough to buy the DVD should be lined up with the producers and shot.
They have gone to far, i have better thing to do with my life than spend 2 hours on a fucking recap, get the shit of the air and pretend it never existed, lost should be buried and lost forever. Bunch of idiots