LOST / 3x22, "Through the Looking Glass"

Oh, jeez, this one's late. But it's the last one about a (new) episode I'll be doing till, oh, February so you can forgive me for dragging this one out.

Upon second viewing I'm almost willing to proclaim this episode one of the show's best ever. Like Sixth Sense, they had to be sure the episode could withstand repeated viewings and it does remarkbly well. There were moments when they were trying not to date themselves (like Jack constantly referring to his father and the use of Nirvana's "Scentless Apprentice" from the early nineties) and moments when they were almost trying to give it away (Jack using a RAZR-type cell). There was always enough to think maybe this wasn't a flash forward and just barely enough to hint that it may. I thought it might be when we saw Sarah very pregnant -- I wasn't sure how long it was between Jack and Sarah's separation and the crash but I was sure it wasn't anywhere near long enough for her to get that pregnant. The RAZR was a giveaway but I wasn't sure if it was just a continuity/prop error. I couldn't figure out what the use of a flash-forward might be -- until the final scenes both on the Island and off.

For the mainstream media the biggest question about LOST may be if the Losties will ever get rescued. But for me it was always more character based: Will the Losties ever discover the Island's purgatory-esque properties and use them to their advantange? Jack himself was the first to reailze the Island granted everyone tabula rasa. Yet he never quite took that to the next level: if the Island grants a clean slate, does one actually learn from what was erased to form a new, better identity?

The final two scenes of "Looking Glass" proved that Jack had learned nothing. He repeated the same mistake he had always made, trying to be the hero at all costs, and by doing so earned himself a future where he was just like his dad -- drunk, alone and in search of closure a world away. Now instead of being a show about getting rescued off an island, Gilligan's Island in the Twilight Zone, we have, finally, a show more focussed on what makes that Island so special and what it does for those who find it. We've been given the impression that the Island was indeed worth staying on and fighting for, but it's never been clear if we were to just take that on faith. Now we've got proof, in the plaintive cry of Jack, "We have to go back!"

It was a shocking twist that rebooted the show and set a new course.

Now the big question: Will Season 4 be set off-Island? Will each episode reveal what the Losties are up to post-rescue and flashback to the Island and the events of the rescue itself? I think so: some of the last flashbacks of Season 3 scraped the bottom of the barrel and there wasn't much left about these characters to go back to. The show needed another layer of history to peel back and got it by leaping ahead into the future. Are we going to see the other Losties in similar dire straits as Jack? Will each be consumed by the past they were running from? Will Sawyer fully turn to the dark side and become as ruthless as the man he killed? Will Jin and Sun's marriage fall apart again? Will Claire fail as a mother? As was strongly hinted in "Looking Glass", will Kate stop running only to be tied down by a man, probably Sawyer? Will they learn from their parents mistakes or just repeat them?

*Notice that Kate was all done-up, living in LA and driving a fancy car -- What the hell happened to Kate Austen? I'm willing to bet post-rescue she quickly became the most "marketable" of the Losties and got swept up in a whirlwind of instant fame and fortune. And that may have nabbed her an awkward but quickie "feel good" pardon.

*What was Ben thinking? Did he really expect to stop all the Losties by himself? If this was Ben's ultimate test as master manipulator, he failed miserably. His biggest mistake, one repeated over and over again by every character, is he believed too much in himself at the expense of others. He always walked that thin line between supporting the existence of free will and then subverting it with hs machinations. The two ceased to coexist when it ran up against Jack who was in no mood to negotiate.

*Save the Junkie, Save the World: Oddly enough, I was OK with Charlie dying. Just as Charlie resigned himself to his fate so I was prepared to let him go. Now I see that the unfulfilled promise of "Greatest Hits" was really just to set-up the payoff an episode later. While we spent all of "Hits" expecting Charlie to get whacked (or at least drown), him surviving felt like a cop-out not just to the viewers but Charlie himself. By "Looking Glass", Charlie just wanted to get it over with and have his lasting heroic moment.

RIP Charlie Pace. You all... everybody.

*Here's a Fuselage post about who was in the coffin and what was written in the obit. I'm pretty sure who died isn't important. It's that Jack failed the Losties by getting them rescued off the Island and this person's death, whoever it was, was just another nail in his own coffin.

*And I'm almost completely certain Christian Shephard is dead as disco. His son's rantings about him being alive were drug and alcohol induced. Actually, it might just be that Jack's totally lost his mind: he did say he flew over the Pacific every weekend hoping his plane would crash on the Island.

*OKAY: So Season 3's over. What next? Well, I'll be guiding the LOST Rewind, a "viewing club" rewatching the entire series from the beginning and focussing on all the plot and thematic elements that have been illuminated after three season worth of show. It'll be housed at the Fuselage though I hope it grows to something every LOST fan can take part in. Details and schedule to come shortly.