Lost S06E01: Welcome Back Huh???
February 5, 2010
© ABC
[Ed. Note--Our managing editor Felicite Fallon will also be doing The Yeti's recaps of the final season of that show we're all obsessed with, Lost. Normally our TV recaps are very picture-intensive, but with this show it's like "Why bother? It won't to help us be any less confused." So yeah, no pictures. Sorry? Anyway, Spoiler Alert! (Duh)]
Listen here, Lost. If you think you can just walk out of my life for eight months without so much as a postcard to let me know your characters were alive, if you think you can play these crazy head games with me by tearing apart the very fabric of space and time just to torture these poor sad nitwits who got trapped in your nonsensical web of sadism and shouty gunfire—oh hell, you can do whatever you want as long as you give me more delicious, delicious Ian Somerhalder. Lost, I’ve missed you.
So, Lost is back. Yay for us! But boo for the castaways, who now seem stuck in parallel dimensions (or maybe just elaborate fantasy escapism/audience mindfuckery), one in which the explosion of the hydrogen bomb plan didn’t work but conveniently blasts them out of 1977 and into the present, and one in which it apparently did, and they land in LAX like nothing happened, which really is the worst reward I can think of for all that effort. I’ll take the smoke monster and Ben Linus’ terrifying stare if I never have to endure another layover in LAX. You’re there for eight hours with the yelling kids and that awful beeping noise the security guards’ carts make when they back up and there’s nothing there but a Burger King and a newsstand and—oh, but this isn’t really about me.
Anyway, So the one-time castaways are riding along to LAX like nothing happened. But things did happen! Because it’s different now! Jack has this mysterious shaving cut and Cindy, fearing the return of the alcoholism-fueled mountain man beard, only slips him one minibottle of booze instead of two! Hurley is lucky! DESMOND IS ON THE PLANE! Boone is—hi, Boone! It is so great to see you again, seriously, and um, wow, you look great! Maybe, we could grab coffee sometime or uh, oh hey, where’s Shannon?
And let’s not forget Charlie nearly dying in the airplane bathroom, instead of drowning in the most tragic and heartbreaking television death of all time basically. Jack saves him by pulling the bag of heroin out of his throat, but as Charlie is escorted back to his seat, he shouts bitterly at Jack that he was SUPPOSED TO DIE. Either way, watch where you’re throwing those anvils, Hobbit. You’re gonna hurt someone.
Once our heroes have landed at LAX, we are reminded of all the ways in which their pre-island lives were awful. The airline lost Jack’s father’s coffin, Locke is in a wheelchair and sans one bag of knives, and Kate is back in handcuffs. Kate runs from the cops as an excuse to let her point a gun at someone’s head, (this show is contractually obligated to have someone do that every 10 minutes) and also to escape into a taxi with Claire, probably so they can have lots of agonizingly, secretly significant interactions. You know, girl talk. Welcome back, Claire. Your authentic Australian accent is like a soothing balm after the cavalcade of terrible imitations we are subjected to on this show.
On the island, our heroes are in considerably more perilous circumstances. Despite Sawyer’s best efforts to save her, Juliet dies in his arms after a coffee invitation, her last words being “I have to tell you something, it’s really important…” This show is so meta? Who am I kidding—half the time they don’t even have the courtesy to drop a hint or two that something is important (I’m looking at you, Black Rock). The non sequitur coffee invitation and the offer to go Dutch could mean many things—one, that Juliet is an empowered 20th century woman, or possibly that she is flashing sideways, or that her mind is wandering as we’ve seen is sometimes an effect of time travel (like Charlotte’s final hours), or one of a million other things no one has thought of. Either way, she is very, very dead and Sawyer is very, very angry and Jack is very, very mopey. But then angry and mopey seem to be their two favorite emotions so I don’t see what’s so special about this particular anger vs. mope contest.
The castaways have more pressing problems, anyway—Sayid is dying from the bullet in his abs, and ghost Jacob comes to visit Hurley, telling him to take Sayid to the temple, where are they promptly attacked by yet another band of Others, the Other Others? Just how many Others are there? How do they decide who lives where? Is it a merit system or more based in nepotism? I bet Richard would let anyone guard the temple if they promised not to spill his moisturizing and eyeliner secrets to everyone.
But the Other Others can’t save Sayid. Then they collectively freak out when Hurley tells them Jacob is dead, and shoot off a firework, which seems pretty festive for such a sad occasion. Maybe they are celebrating that with Jacob gone, he won’t be bringing any more yahoos to traipse through the jungle and get a lot of people killed. Or maybe they were trying to warn the other Others [Ed. Note--the Original Others? Or the Other Other Others? We've all lost track] on the other side of the island (do you see what I’m saying about the name?), who don’t yet know that Jacob is dead.
Speaking of the other Others, crazy things are going down! Ben has just seen Coca Cola Classic Locke lying peacefully dead in the sand and is a tad wigged. Richard, fearing that some sort of unexpected mischief has gone down, sends Ben back into Jacob’s hideout with a few of Jacob’s men, where New Coke Locke promptly morphs into the smoke monster and kills them all. The smoke monster spinoff is looking more plausible every day! Coke Zero Locke chats with Ben about all the improvements he has made to Coca Cola Classic Locke, who was a loser and a failure, but Ben seems to think the change in marketing direction was ill-advised. Locke disagrees, strides outside, steals Richard, and walks out, leaving everyone kind of buh guh wuh?
Oh, and then Sayid comes back to life. But is it really Sayid or is it Jacob reincarnated? If so, then I must say he could not have chosen a better vessel for his gentle, benevolent, altruistic, totally not-manipulative spirit.
Tags: ABC, Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Daniel Dae Kim, Daniel Roebuck, Dominic Monaghan, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emilie de Ravin, Evangeline Lilly, Fredric Lane, Henry Ian Cusick, Ian Somerhalder, Jeff Fahey, JJ Abrams, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Ken Leung, Kimberley Joseph, L. Scott Caldwell, LOST, Mark Pellegrino, Matthew Fox, Michael Emerson, Mysteries, Naveen Andrews, Nestor Carbonell, Sean Whalen, Smoke Monster, Television, Terry O'Quinn, Time Travel, WTF, Yunjin Kim, Zuleikha Robinson
