LOST: Jughead - Is Sawyer Running Out of Nicknames?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

January 28, 2009

Now that we’re past first couple of hours of season 5 it appears that we’re not going to be splitting focus too often now. Episode 3 of the new season, Jughead, pretty much confines us to the island again and increasingly intriguing story developing amidst our unwilling time travelers. This time they get to spend a day in the company of a Hydrogen Bomb named after a popular character from the Archie Comics.

While it has been suspected for some time we now seem to have some confirmation that Richard Alpert is indeed the founder of the Dick Clark Fountain for Eternal Youth, and we suddenly have the answer as to why he visited Locke as a kid. It’s an interesting circle that this storyline with Locke now follows. Apparently something about him made him “chosen” to become the leader of The Others. Now it’s seemingly feasible that it was Locke himself who started these events in motion with conversation with Richard 50 years previously.

So apparently, there’s more to tell about The Others, who they are, where they came from and what the hell is going on at the island. The concrete bunker back at the hatch: apparently Jughead’s current home in the present? Maybe not.

For those that are keeping score at home, the show is coming dangerously close to actually looking like the writers and producers actually did have some grand plan in mind for the last 3 seasons as many random pieces start to seem like they are falling into some coherent structure.

In any case, let’s wrap this up with my Season 5, Episode 3 State of Lost Assessment:
• Daniel Faraday: Great character, but still starting to look like the biggest pussy of all time (if you’ll forgive the expression). If you want to talk about a screwed up way to profess your love for somebody, he hit upon it this week. I have two observations on his confession of his affection for Charlotte this week. First, what’s with Charlotte anyway? What the hell does he see in this moody, humorless bitch with the bloody nose? I’ve found the character pretty easy to dislike since her first appearance last season. Looks like Faraday probably just emotionally bonds with any woman that will give him the time of day. Apparently, though he may have “bonded” a little too much with some chick back at the university, whatever he’s alleged to have done. Quick acknowledgement to either the writers or the director of this week’s episode: a very nice double take at the end of the episode after the Island “relocates” in time and Faraday approaches Charlotte. Momentarily, it looks like he’s approaching her and she turns to refute his affection. Turns out the wench isn’t rejecting him, she’s just getting ready to keel over dead. Nice misdirection.

• Charles Widmore: if we needed any more reasons not to like Widmore, seeing him as a young, cocky US Army soldier helps take the cake. Something tells me that before the end of this season, we’re going to see Widmore as a good guy or at least a sympathetic character though. With Ben’s commitment to him to kill his daughter, we’re obviously headed toward an unpleasant scene sooner or later.

• Sawyer is running into a serious brick wall. As the show progresses we are running thin of nicknames. I may have missed something but I believe the biggest nickname bomb we got this week was simply a rehash of a “Frogurt” reference, and technically, we don’t even know for sure from show canon if “Frogurt” was a really a nickname or not. Just because the guy apparently had something to do with the Frozen Yogurt industry doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t the guy’s real name. Still, Sawyer’s hitting a dry spell. We’ve come to expect a certain pattern from him and when one of the pieces is missing it throws the entire “Sawyer” balance of the show off. Sawyer’s only constant is the nicknames. Be a jackass, be introspective, be a good guy, be a jerk, then point a gun at somebody. That’s Sawyer in a nutshell for 4 years.

• Desmond really is getting to be a fruitcake. I’ve liked the character from early on, but his whole nervous, uncomfortable sense of duty grows tiresome. Also, I don’t know why, but his pronunciation of “Penny” I’m just about done with. Regardless of how he pronounces it, I just simply still can’t get that picture of “Penny” from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse out of my head. Also, the easy prediction: Penny and Desmond’s kid just isn’t named Charlie in honor of Charlie who gave his life for the castaways last season, but with all the whacked out time travel nonsense going on, he may just end up BEING that Charlie. But I digest.

• This Week’s Spin-off Idea: Sawyer and Miles: Psychic Con. After the saga of the castaways and the Island finally closes at the end of season 6, Sawyer becomes fast friends with the psychic Miles. After bonding over a couple of bottles of Dharma Initiative wine, they realize that they have a common interest, making money, which makes them a perfect team. Together, Miles’ talent to talk to the deceased along with Sawyer’s expertise at running cons enters them into a long term plan of running scams on dead people. In the pilot episode, Miles makes contact with the ghost of a mobster who wants to get some secret off-shore bank account funds to his dear old mother. Hilarity ensues when Sawyer calls Miles “Mr. Sulu.”

We’ll assume next week that we’ll be back to the mainland to continue to see how Jack and Linus try to get everyone back to the island. I had sort of assumed that they would spend the majority of season 5’s 16 episode run getting them back to the island. It seems to me that it would quite a stretch if they only have the 70 hours Desmond’s jeweler (the old lady, for those that lost track) seems to think they have.