Lost and found
‘Lost’ thundered back into our lives Wednesday with a two-episode season premiere that shocked, awed and set a breakneck pace for the rest of the season.
The beginning of season five finds our favorite island castaways split into two groups: the Oceanic Six, who are six members of Oceanic Flight 815 who have made it back to civilization, and the 30-odd people still left on the island.
However, there are problems. The survivors on the island are shifting around in time and are experiencing all sorts of dangers, from flaming arrows (which make for the best death scene since Dr. Arzt’s untimely demise), to gun-toting, WWII-era British marines.
Back in L.A., Jack (Matthew Fox) and Ben (Michael Emerson) are getting ready to try and convince the rest of the Oceanic Six to return to the island. But Kate (Evangeline Lilly) is on the run again Sun (Yunjin Kim) is out for revenge, Hurley (Jorge Garcia) has escaped from the mental institution, Sayid (Naveen Andrews) has gone a bit paranoid, and it looks like Ben has ulterior motives yet again.
The crazed rollercoaster began early – with Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davis) showing up someplace he shouldn’t be – and ended with a screeching halt as Ben conferences with someone completely unexpected.
Emerson once again turns in perhaps the show’s best performance. Ben will be destined to go down as one of TV’s best villains, thanks to Emerson’s ability to be über-creepy and deliver his lines in a beautifully sinister fashion.
‘Lost’ does officially and unavoidably depart for the land of science fiction, if it hadn’t already. Time travel and the notion of being ‘unstuck in time’ play crucial roles, and it appears that they will from here on out.
It’s the time travel aspects in these first two episodes that make the premiere thrilling, complex and borderline confusing. There are about three distinctly large, mind-boggling twists in the two episodes.
(Note: at some point, the creators of ‘Lost’ should dedicate an episode to Kurt Vonnegut, since they’ve completely snatched the ‘unstuck in time’ bit from him.)
And then there’s everything else we’ve come to love about ‘Lost’: the sarcastic Sawyer and his nicknames, Hurley’s on-cue comic relief – when confronted by chief bad guy Ben, for instance, he throws a Hot Pocket at him. Pepperoni, by the look of it.
Not to mention there’s rampant foreshadowing/foreboding occurring. It looks like there’s a very distinct possibility that a main character will bite the dust next time.
Actually, it’s a guarantee. Rebecca Mader is filming a movie as we speak, ‘Men Who Stare at Goats.’
Creators/writers J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber and Carlton Cuse are going to have to follow up a very impressive opening act. They tightened the reins on their show considerably over the last year, and they will have to keep a strict watch over it this season to keep up this high-speed tempo.
They will also have to deal with two separate camps, a problem they had in seasons two and three. Hopefully they’ve figured out not to let us go too long without hearing from both groups.
But in today’s sea of middling TV choices, ‘Lost’ truly remains on an island all its own.
Published on January 25, 2009 at 12:00 pm
