LOST: LaFleur is 25 Years Too Soon

Posted by ScuzzBuster

March 5, 2009

Since last season we’ve been hearing the same refrain over and over again. In every possible worried tone and accompanied by every possible facial contortion from Jack we’ve been hearing “We’ve gotta go back to the island.” “You’ve gotta go back to the island, Jack.” “We’ve gotta go back to the island, Kate!” “You shouldn’t have left the island, Jack.” Just like Faraday’s description of the island being a record skipping, this refrain had gotten old. Two weeks ago it was a relief to actually get their rear ends back to the island so we wouldn’t have the hear it again. So now what?

The entire season so far I’ve been nagged by the question “Why?” Why exactly do they need to go back to the island? Strip away all the magic, voodoo and mysticism about which dead man’s shoes have to be put on what corpse to make it happen, there had to be some real reason that these down-on-their-luck losers we call the Oceanic Six needed to go back to the island. What are they supposed to do once they get back there?

So after all this build up the answer all along as been: Nothing! They don’t have to do anything once they get back to the island. Apparently, their mere presence on the island was the solution to all the time-flitting woes and nosebleeds. After this week’s episode, I had to explore how I felt about this.

It’s brilliant. It’s not very satisfying, but it’s exactly the right answer to the question. This was a fork in the road for Lost. Lafleur ends up being the strongest episode of Season 5 so far. With the return of the castaways to the island, the show could go in a couple of different directions. Either there could have been silly mystical fantasy task that they needed to accomplish, or the show could get back to what it does best by creating character drama.

Lafleur sends a strong message that in middle of all the paranormal mumbo jumbo, magic, and insanity that this show only works because we need to emotionally invest in these characters and this episode shows that the writers haven’t lost sight of this.

On the other hand I have dreaded this moment since the season started. The reunion of the Oceanic Six with those that stayed on the island was going to dredge up this Sawyer, Kate, Jack triangle that I just have no real interest in exploring. I actually found just a little bit of evil pleasure in this week’s internet rumors that Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate, may not be back for season 6 because she was confirmed as being somehow involved in some other potential roles that would seemingly signal that she would not be a regular on Lost next year. If they kill Kate, problem solved, right? No triangle can have only two corners.

But then they did something ingenious yet evil. In a brilliantly structured episode bouncing us back and forth over a three year period we are weaved into an entirely new twist that a season ago would have seemed ludicrous, but in the span of 60 minutes becomes utterly believable and intriguing. Sawyer and Juliet? What? So now who do we root for?
Personally, I don’t care about rooting interests. I firmly accepted Sawyer’s proclamation that yes, indeed, three years is enough to get over someone. Even though we’ve been booted around half a dozen different decades for the past 7 or 8 episodes they’re all on even footing now. It’s been three years for everybody. Kate still seemed pretty happy to continue to invite Jack into her Snuggie sleeved blanket. Everybody’s got somebody right? Should be a happenin’ double date back at the Dharma camp.

Obviously they aren’t going to be making things that easy.
Basically, the point of this rambling is simple. Lost needs to be about people, not things and events. The mysterious time traveling island and the insanity surrounding it is a great backdrop and motivator to keep the story moving but what keeps me tuning in to this show is the characters. For whatever reason, I care about what happens to these fictional people. I still maintain and accept the fact there is element of geeky coolness to the sci-fi and fantasy element of the program, but I’m dying to know what’s going to happen to our people. I want to know how Linus and Widmore are going to get their comeuppance in the end, what John Locke’s fate is going to be, who Sawyer is going to end up with, how Faraday is going to handle spending at least the next three years watching his one true love grow up as a child and whether Richard Alpert is a good guy or more of a devil incarnate than Linus and Widmore combined. Bring it on.

This is why the question of “Why” the Oceanic Six needed to get back the island is best left unanswered for now, and maybe forever. It’s not important.

Because a bullet list is only a bullet list if you have at least two items for it, here are this week’s Lost thoughts:

• Irony of the week: earlier this week, ABC announced the axing of Life on Mars, the remake of the UK drama about a cop who get’s knocked out and wakes up to find himself in the early 1970s where he tries to adapt. Lost has been the lead-in program to Life on Mars this season, and I think it’s a little bit ironic that ABC cancels a show about a present-day guy being pushed to the 1970s right on the heals of the Lost changing it’s current storyline to have all of it’s key players now stuck in 1974. I guess there’s only room in the prime time line up for one 1970s era program.

• How Many Toes? The mysterious alien statue makes it’s reappearance in a brief, tantalizing glimpse. Gotta love this about Lost, throwing a tidbit out for a brief moment than coming back a couple of years later to tease us again. This better not be something they never explain.

• It’s Not Gonna End Well. While everything seemed like it was all good for those left on the island blending into the Dharma initiative, we still know that Dharma is doomed to slaughter at the hands of the Others and as far as we know, there was no aging Sawyers or Oceanic Six Members among them at the time. Living the rest of their lives on the islands starting in 1974 is obviously not the destiny of our plane crash survivors.

• This Week’s Main Event: Lafeur vs. Batmanuel! Yes, Lost fans know Nestor Carbonell as Richard Alpert, the ageless mysterious genious behind the people we still only know as “The Others” but us lapsed fans of the short-live series The Tick know his true identity as Batmanuel, the romantic Hispanic Superhero that courted Captain Liberty (played by Liz Vassey) in the wickedly funny 2001 series.
This week we saw the uneducated con-man Sawyer negotiate with Richard Alpert to prevent hostilities between The Others and the Dharma Initiative. In my proposed face off between James Ford and Batmauel the outcome is easy to predict. Sawyer wins the fight, but Batmanuel gets the girl.

“I’m not alone. Uh, spinsters, shut-ins, toll booth attendants — these are alone people. Batmanuel is lone — as in Lone Ranger, or, uh, lone wolf. Alone is an unfortunate predicament. Lone is an aesthetic choice.” — Batmanuel in The Tick.

Classic Batmanuel: