Lost - "316"

An eye blinking open. Cut to a wide shot of Jack Shepard, lying in the grass, decked out in a suit and tie. Any of this sound familiar? After spending three miserable years lying to those closest to them and hiding from sinister forces beyond their comprehension, Jack, Hurley, Sun, Kate, Sayid, Ben, and Locke are back on the island. How they got there was the focus of this occasionally frustrating but mostly exhilarating hour of television.

After a prologue showing Jack, Kate, and Hurley actually on the island, we flashed back to see how they got there, picking up where we left off last week. Mrs. Hawking took Sun, Jack, Ben, and Desmond down to the Lamp Post, which is an L.A.-based Dharma station that tracks the island. According to Mrs. Hawking (who got in one of my favorite lines tonight in this scene, in reference to whether or not Ben was lying), they had less than 36 hours to make it back and there happened to be one commercial airline flying a route over the island's location: Ajira Airlines Flight 316. The plan was to recreate the conditions from Oceanic 815 as much as possible, in order to get the island to take them back. I'm not very clear on what that means or how it works, but I'm sure that's a season six question. Desmond opted out, despite Mrs. Hawking's sinister warning that the island wasn't done with him yet, but everyone else was in.

Then Jack got a little extracurricular time with Mrs. Hawking where he learned that he was going to have to give Locke something that belonged to Christian Shepard. Conveniently, later he received a pair of the elder Shepard's shoes from his grandfather. But before we jump ahead, I want to look at a pair of scenes that fall in between those two points. In the first, Ben tells Jack the story of Thomas the Apostle, someone who volunteered everyone to go with Jesus to Judea, where he would surely die. Later, Thomas refused to believe that Jesus had risen until he felt the wounds from the crucifixition. But upon feeling them, he became a believer. Everyone does, according to Ben, eventually, and it seems like our boy Jack is finally coming around. But Ben's religious devotion to the island was questioned (in my mind) minutes later by the conspicuous appearance of a magic show. Magic shows are built on creating belief in what is ultimately just an illusion. Is that what's happening here? Are Jack et al being convinced by a massive sleight-of-hand? Or was the magician there simply to further the themes of doubt and belief?

After all that Kate showed up, told Jack she would be coming along (without Aaron), and slept with him. The next morning, Jack went to the butcher shop and picked up Locke's body after getting a call from a bloody Ben, located in a marina. Given what he said earlier about keeping a promise, it seems clear that Ben paid a visit to Penny. What happened beyond that is unclear, and perhaps as big a cliffhanger as anything else, but given the state he was in, I'm doubtful that Ben actually killed her (or maybe its just wishful thinking on my part). So Jack traded shoes with Locke and got the coffin ready to go after sharing a powerful scene with Locke's corpse (I especially liked the line about Locke laughing his ass off).

Finally we got to the airport, where the entirety of the O6 (except for Aaron) happened to be there. Sayid escorted by a marshall, Hurley carrying a guitar, and Jack hauling along the body of man he neither understands nor respects, but feels bonded to nonetheless. And just like Hurley's nearly missing the closing of the cabin of 815, Ben just barely made it in time to catch his return flight to the island. After an awesome plane ride, and a reveal that their pilot was none other than Frank Lapidus, Jack finally tore into Locke's suicide note. And just as he was reading the words "I'm sorry you didn't believe in me," Ajira Airlines Flight 316 hit turbulence and some kind of time flash, bringing us back to where we started. But before Jack, Kate, and Hurley could track down the rest of their crew they ran into a Dharma Initiative volunteer who just happened to be Jin!

A few nitpicks: I understand that having everyone show up suddenly and without explanation at the airport was a plot necessity in order to A) get everyone on the flight and B) provide some flashback material for the O6, but it felt a little rushed and sloppy. Also, while making it a Jack episode was an understandable choice, some of the action dragged towards the middle. But honestly, my biggest complaint is that we have to wait a week to find out what will happen next. We've been waiting for this moment for a long time and Lost delivered. The giddy excitement of watching everyone find their way back to the island made this episode the most fun of the season, while perfectly pivoting into the season's next phase.

A-

The Theory-Down

5. Will there be any ramification from not bringing Aaron back? I'm going to guess no, because both Christian and Claire have indicated that they didn't want him to come back. What about Waaaaaalt? How cool would it be if it turned out he was on 316 (doubt it)? And I'm pulling for Lapidus to make it through the crash. I was very happy to see him back again.

4. So, what happened at the marina? I've already said that I don't think that Ben killed Penny, and I'll defer to our fearless leader Michael, who thinks that when Ben tried it, Desmond delivered an ass-kicking.

3. What got everyone to the airport? Its pretty strange, isn't it? I'm going to guess that Hurley got some visitors from the island who told him he had to go back and Sayid was caught by an agent of Widmore who was escorting him to Guam.

2. From the last scene we can surmise that when Locke moved the island, he stuck it in place during the Dharma-era. And that the Losties still left there have been killing the time by volunteering for the Dharma Initiative. I think this is about to get very interesting.

1. That white time-flash seemed to indicate that the passengers of the plane were travelling back in time. This would make a lot of sense since they seem to have landed in the 1970s. However, does this mean that the island was there, in 2008, and if so, why didn't everyone just crash onto the 2008 island? Did everyone travel back in time?

P.S. Since we're wrapping up the first act of the season, now seems like a good time to go back and reevaluate the episodes so far. I tend to get a little excited after getting some new Lost, and I usually overrate some episodes so, with that in mind, here are my new revised grades. I'll keep the old ones up in the old recaps, just to keep myself honest:

Because You Left - A
The Lie - B-
Jughead - A-
The Little Prince - A-
This Place Is Death - C+ (the whole Charlotte thing really pissed me off)

All in all, I think that the different structure for this first part of the season was an interesting, if not entirely successful experiment. The result was a slightly more conventional show that had a tough time finding the same emotional resonance, partially due to the breakneck pace and partially due to the lack of flashbacks/flashforwards. That being said, we've learned a lot over the last five weeks and I think we're at a very exciting spot. I can't wait to see where we go from here.