'Lost:' 'Everybody Loves Hugo' (Even When He Tells a Fib . . . Unless You're Richard Alpert)

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Lost.*

I’m really getting into the glimpses of the post-crash Lostie lives bleeding into the consciousness of the uncrashed Losties in their sideways flashes. It's very encouraging.

Last week, the sideways-flashing Desmond Hume got glimpses of his life on the island and his experiences with Penny Widmore only after he was submerged in the water during his car accident (caused by Charlie Pace, he of the "Not Pennys Boat" message on his hand), as well as when he shook hands with Penny.

Charlie Pace had flashes of the woman he believes he's meant to be with (the assumption is that he saw Claire) when he was choking on the bag of heroin when his Oceanic 815 flight experienced turbulence, only to be brought back to consciousness by Jack Shephard who saved him.

Daniel Faraday Widmore got them when he saw someone we can only assume was Charlotte, but we don’t know a lot of the details.

Libby had one when she saw Hurley on a TV ad for his restaurant chain, Mr. Cluck. Hurley had his when Libby -- whom he encountered by “accident” in a restaurant after he was stood up by a blind date -- kissed him during a beach picnic, which was ironic because the post-crashed Hurley and Libby never got to enjoy their picnic on the island because Michael shot Libby.

Meanwhile, I’m also in love with the idea of Desmond, in his suave duds and shades, tracking down the Oceanic 815 passengers in the sideways-flashing alternate universe and prodding them – Jacob-like – into uncovering their hidden memories (if that’s what they are, memories) of their island/post-crash experiences. This is, to me, a very promising development.

As for Hurley – who was the main focus of this episode – I found it curious that in both of his realities, he’s behaving differently than the Hurley we’ve come to know and love. The Hurley in the sideways flash is a successful businessman and a respected philanthropist. The Hurley in the post-crash/post-Jughead life is asserting himself like a leader, blowing up the Black Rock wreck (after which I think the unhinged Richard needed a sedative, or 10), even lying about seeing Jacob and saying that Jacob told them to find Locke and walk right into the arms of the Man in Black. Surprisingly, Jack trusted Hurley, even when he too suspected that Hurley was lying. (Is this a step Jack needs to take -- submission -- in order to become the new Jacob, as I’m guessing he’ll wind up being?)

Three major unexpected turns which I didn’t see coming in “Everybody Loves Hugo:” 1) Ilana blowing up. 2) The Man in Black/Smoke Monster/Locke chucking Desmond down a well (kinda wish it was a rabbit hole, to go along with the Alice in Wonderland analogy the show’s been milking) and lastly 3) The shocking episode capper with the sideways-flashing Desmond intentionally running down wheelchair-bound John Locke with a car at high speed as Locke was in the school parking lot heading to his own car. My mind melted at that point as teacher Ben Linus (who killed Locke in the post-crash world) hovered over sideways-flashing Locke who was bleeding on the pavement.

Oh, and we learned, via “Ghost” Michael, that the other “ghosts” who whisper in the jungle are “stuck” on the island a direct result of something they'd done . . . like in purgatory. “We’re the ones who can’t move on,” Michael said.

So what does that mean for the likes of Walt, who wasn’t dead when Locke saw him while he was lying in the pit of Dharma employee remains after being shot by Ben? Or when Walt appeared to Shannon? Certainly Walt didn't do anything which would warrant him being stuck on the island. And why would people saw “ghosts” off the island, like Hurley seeing Charlie at the mental hospital and Jack seeing his dad in the hospital lobby? Can the ghosts travel off the island AND still be stuck there?

Quotes of note:

“Do you believe that two people can be connected, like soul mates?” Libby to Hurley.

“That happen a lot? Dead people yelling at you?” Miles to Hurley. Hurley replied, “Dead people are more reliable than the live people.”

“If that thing leaves the island, that’s it, it’s over,” Richard said of Man in Black/Smoke Monster/Locke. When asked what “it” was he replied, “Everything.”

What did you think of “Everybody Loves Hugo”? About the revelation that the ghosts are “stuck” on the island because of what they did? The new development that the post-crashed/post-Jughead experiences are bleeding into the consciousness of the uncrashed Losties? Desmond running down Locke?

Image credit: Mario Perez/ABC.

'Lost Untangled:' The Substitute

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost*



Lots of Lost fans are busy around them there internets saying that they're pleased with the most recent Locke-centric episode, "The Substitute." I'm not one of them.

I know I'm supposed to be embracing this whole sideways flash novelty -- otherwise known as the parallel reality comparing the uncrashed Losties' lives against the post-crash/post-Jughead Losties' existence on the island. I completely embraced the flashbacks in the early days, the revolutionary flashforwards introduced in the season three finale to awesome effect. I was even willing to suspend the plaguing feeling I got when I worked really hard to follow along with the time travel business which occurred last season. I've loved wading through the literary, Biblical and pop culture allusions and the various clues. I've paused the show to examine what was on screen, like the map on the Hatch's blast door that had pinned down Locke in the season two episode "Lockdown."

But the sideways flashes conflict with everything we've come to learn about the backstories of the Losties.

While I watched "The Substitute" with my spouse, another Lost fan, and saw that Locke got fired for deceiving his boss about his Australian walkabout (pretended he went on a business trip paid for by the company), that Locke was with and getting married to Helen and that he was considering inviting his "father" to their wedding, we were thunderstruck. Did none of the previous episodes we'd watched over the years have any meaning? Were they all for naught?

I dug out DVDs of previous seasons to confirm how wildly divergent these sideways flashes were from the history of Locke we'd been presented. Previous episodes showed that Locke told his obnoxious boss that he'd saved up vacation days and was going on the walkabout, about which his pinheaded boss mercilessly harassed him. The love of his life, Helen, had left him, even when he was down on his knees offering up a lifetime of wedded bliss, because of his obsession with his con man of a father. His father pushed him out of a high-rise window rendering him paralyzed when John threatened to expose him as a con artist. Just before leaving for Australia, John had found a woman named "Helen" on one of those pay-per-chat phone lines (typically used for, well, you know), had been regularly speaking with her for eight months, and asked her to accompany him on the walkabout, only to have her tell him that she couldn't go out with a customer.

Events in people's lives would obviously have changed if Oceanic 815 hadn't crashed on the island and if the Dharma Initiative was halted in the 1970s following the detonation of Jughead. But, seriously, how would all of these other things have changed and how, in the short time that's left until the series finale, can writers possibly make all of this seem logical, logical in the world of Lost, that is?

The Numbers -- which we now know correlate with numbers Jacob assigned to possible "candidates" to replace him to be protectors of the island (very cool twist) -- were always bad luck for Hurley. He thought they were cursed. He thought he was cursed. People around him got hurt and he attributed that to the Numbers and his bad luck. Look at poor Tricia Tanaka. How is it possible that by preventing the Oceanic crash on the island and changing the island's history, that, somehow, Hurley would be a successful businessman? That he'd be a different person?

I was on board with the let's-see-how-this-alternate-reality-of-uncrashed-Losties plays out. Found it interesting, seeing if their lives would've been better (or worse) if their plane had safely landed in LA. But having fundamental bedrock stories about these characters' backstories become so radically transformed, I just can't wrap my head around it. After years of carefully constructing these characters, to toss out everything we've known about them as if the past never happened -- at least not as we've been told that events had occurred -- makes me wonder if the rest of the future episodes are going to tick me off in the way "The Substitute" did.

But it wasn't all bad. I DID like, totally bought and was thoroughly entertained by the scene with Ben Linus as a history teacher complaining that his colleagues had left an empty coffee pot and dirty coffee filter in the coffee maker in the teachers' lounge. It made sense because his father would've never gone to the island had Jughead gone off and therefore, Ben would've lived an entirely differently life, as opposed to the Hurley's suddenly lucky storyline.

Are the writers going to try to create some forced storyline about Locke's dad that, because the island blew up, he somehow never became a con man, therefore he never conned Sawyer's mom so Sawyer's dad never killed her and then himself, that he never conned Locke out of a kidney and later pushed him out of a window rendering him paralyzed? So Locke got paralyzed in some other way?

I'm with Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley, who, when informed about these new sideways flashes, told USA Today, "I was like, 'What?' It's a lot to swallow.'" And feel similarly to a Boston Globe TV critic who said, "I'm enjoying this season, but only when I'm able to let go of that gnawing, and very human, hunger for logic and sense."

I really hope I'm wrong. I hope it's all going to work out in the end. Guess that depends on whether I'm a fan with faith or a fan who's become jaded because she fears she's being taken down a rabbit hole.

Is 'Lost' Too Complicated for Its Own Good?

In a column reminiscent of something Dave Barry might write, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll penned a sarcastic piece saying that Lost isn't as complicated as some of its fans may make it out to be:

"A large plane crashes on a Pacific island. Some of the passengers survive but most don't. After a time, the surviving passengers discover that other people also live on the island. They call these other people the Others.

After a time, a freighter happens by, and a helicopter from the freighter eventually rescues six of the survivors. The six return home -- most to the United States, one to Korea -- and resume their lives, somewhat chastened by the experience. The people remaining on the island try to create a viable society, but there are inevitable difficulties, like time travel.

And that's it."

Clearly, this was written with Carroll's tongue firmly planted inside his cheek because he then proceeded to detail some of the insanely convoluted details of the story. But the column is funny nonetheless and takes aim at one of the show's biggest criticisms: That it loses viewers because people perceive it to be too dense. (Or people are too dense to understand it, whatever the case may be. I don't get most of it, but I'm still an avid viewer.)

If ratings are any indication, viewers are fleeing the island odyssey faster than Hurley can hurl a microwaved Hot Pocket at Ben Linus. Ratings for its two-hour fifth season premiere last week were down 26 percent compared to its fourth season premiere, and ratings dropped "for every half-hour it was on" TV, the Los Angeles Times reported. Did the island time travel aspect -- which continues to befuddle me -- turn folks off?

What say you Lost fans, do you think the show gets an unfair reputation for being too complicated? Do you have friends who won't watch it because they say it's too confusing? Do you find yourself scratching your head after episodes?

Image credit: ABC.

Still Catchin' Up, JUST Saw 'Lost' Premiere . . . Brain is Cramped

When my family and I arrived back home from a week at Disney World on Sunday evening -- after traveling for eight-plus hours -- The Spouse and I were too tired and lacked the brain capacity to take in the two-hour premiere of Lost that was burning a hole in my DVR. Last night we were finally able to settle in for the two-hour island extravaganza.

*Warning: Spoilers ahead. Do not proceed if you have yet to see the new Lost episode.*

And after watching the antics of the Oceanic 6 & Co., I'm starting to grow concerned about how the second half of this series is going to play out. Can the writers tidily wrap everything up in a neat bow? Will things make sense by the time we get to the last episode or will we have to, because we're Lost fans, pretend as though everything makes sense?

In order for this new phase of the show to make sense, we have to buy into the fact that the island is time traveling, but our castaways -- plus freighter crew folks and Juliet -- remain the same, as if they're being moved like game pieces along a timeline.

We're supposed to continue to believe -- without being given a reason -- that the people who were on the island but are now back in the real world are able to see people who have died on the island, like Hurley's Ana Lucia sighting (and saying Libby said hello!) and Jack seeing his father in the hospital.

Hurley's recap provides a vivid description of what the writers still have to explain for this all to come to a fabulous conclusion (link to the video here):



One of my favorite TV shows, Alias, lost some of its creative mojo when the writers didn't seem as though they knew how to fit the individual episodes into a larger picture to logically complete the story. I hope the same fate doesn't befall Lost. In order for it to play out to my satisfaction a lot of questions must eventually be addressed, not just abandoned. However I am patient. I will wait.

That being said, as for last week's two-hour season premiere, I was left feeling intrigued.

I was surprised to see so much focus on Hurley. (Cannot wait to see how one of TV's great evil geniuses -- Ben --is going to bust Hurley out of jail.)

The notion of the island itself time traveling, while the people who were on it (or in the water next to it) when Ben triggered the time traveling subterranean wheel remain the same, puts an entirely different twist on the show. Thus far, the series had only leaped backward and forward in time to illustrate something about the characters' backstories and personalities.

However now that some of the characters themselves have been unmoored from time -- time travel had seemingly been limited to Desmond and Daniel -- all bets are off. Throw in what Daniel said about how you cannot change what has already happened, yet he went against that line of argument by visiting Desmond when he was hatch-sitting to urge him to seek out his mother, and I'm hooked, as well as crossing my fingers that I won't be disappointed

Now that you've had time to ponder the season five premiere, what do you think?

Image credit: ABC.