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SEASON 5 EPISODE 1 RECAP




Marvin Candle - Not Exactly a Morning Person
Our opening scene this season is a mirror of Desmond's morning routine from S2. But while Desmond was a morning person, Candle is clearly not off to a good start. Dharma's making him shave with those miserable Shick disposable razors, and he's *****ing fiercely at everyone he sees. His record player is skipping ominously, drawing dark parallels to the way the island is currently skipping through time. Candle's got important work to do, yet he's annoyingly tasked with creating another bullshit Dharma orientation tape. He couldn't care less about 'gathering intelligence on the island's hostile indigenous population', or about the wanna-be Sawyer cameraman, whose haircut and facial hair offer us visual duplicity, right from the start.

Suddenly Candle is summoned to the place where he knows the real work is being done. You'd think he might want to oversee this site more closely: sweaty guys with giant drills are one centimeter away from puncturing an unlimited energy source. After explaining how close they all came to instant oblivion, Candle's only too happy to bring the ignorant foreman up to date on the intricacies of time travel (huh?). He does this out of frustration, but mostly he does it because it allows him to not-so-subtly deliver to us the big rule of the upcoming season: Nothing from the past can be changed.

The 'wow' moment this opener is the appearance of Daniel, who we suddenly realize is back in the 70's and dressed in a Dharma jumpsuit. The question isn't how he got there, the question is why. Faraday obviously plans to do something, and he's infiltrated Dharma to learn the status of the frozen donkey wheel.

It Happened Because you Left, Jack
Back at the funeral parlor, Ben gives Jack the final guilt-ridden push to get going. Unlike Marvin Candle, Jack has the Gillette Mach 3. He quickly ditches the sub-commander beard as Ben goes over the plan to retrieve Hurley, Sun, Sayid and Kate. Aaron's name is conspicuously absent from this list. Ben asks Jack if Locke told him what happened after the island was moved, and he seems genuinely disappointed when Jack doesn't know. Although he's left before, Ben was always able to go back to the island. This marks the first time in his life where the island has gone on without him, and that alone makes Ben himself a little bit lost.

See You in Another Life
I was thrilled to see we learned right away what happened to those on the island. When the finale aired last year, I was afraid they'd give us five or six off-island episodes before they revealed the fate of those who stayed behind. I think the writers learned not to isolate the show this way, as they did in S3 with the Others and their beating zoo. Instead of creating a building anticipation to see the rest of the cast we were all strong-armed into depression by the dreary cages and shark tanks.

Back to S5. Locke gets zapped through time alone, squinting up at the sky in the now quintessential rain-soaked LOST scene. Notice how the rest of the cast members meet together on a sunny beach: it's only Locke that gets reborn through the use of the rain metaphor. John Locke is slowly evolving into his destined role as leader of the Others - the island, or Jacob, has chosen him for this task. To begin this metamorphosis, Locke is made to shed his previous life and start anew. And as he skips through the island's different time points, I have a hunch he's going to inherently start to know things in the creepily omniscient way of Benjamin Linus.

Sawyer - Kicking Ass, Shirt or No Shirt
As much as Faraday has grown on me, his reluctance to explain things has always chewed my ass. Thank God for Sawyer, who after four full seasons is finally done following people blindly through the jungle simply because someone says 'there's no time to explain'. Sawyer literally slaps the answers out of Daniel. It's as if the slap suddenly marks a mystery-resolving turning point: answers come pouring forth - GOOD answers - and for once it's wholly satisfying. The island has moved through time, and their camp is not built yet... or as Daniel puts it, perhaps they themselves have moved through time. There are arguments for both sides, but I think the latter to be true.

If it were the island moving through time and the terrain physically changing, wouldn't the inhabitants have changed with it? Wouldn't our characters have gotten older or younger just as the trees grew taller or shorter? Somehow the 815'ers and freighter four are skipping through time in their current physical bodies (and clothing). This is completely unlike Desmond's mental trip through time last season, where his mind could only jump into places his body happened to be in that era. This season's characters can skip forward and backward, their position on the island fixed, interacting with the places and people of whatever time period they happen to be thrust into. Of course, the possibility also exists that they're time-tripping within their own minds, much like Minkowski, and physically they're all lying comatose on the beach in the island's current timeline... but that's a can of worms I choose not to open just now.

Yet if it's the island that's moving beneath them, our main characters are somehow keeping their memories. It seems that the other (and Other) inhabitants of the island are not. If you watch, I don't think the other inhabitants can even see the flash of light coming. Richard sees it when Locke is initially zapped (maybe because it was the originating timeline), but doesn't even squint when John quantum-leaps the second time. Ethan makes no notice of it as it goes off behind him just as he's about to shoot Locke. But the clincher comes when Richard later tells John "You'll be moving on soon", meaning that it's Locke that's moving and Richard is staying put.

So as Faraday says, they've been 'dislodged' from time. To me, this makes our stranded islanders ten times more interesting than the Oceanic six. Suddenly we can be shown anything and everything that's happened on the island: it's like the ultimate unlimited flashback, we've waited the whole show for. Any mystery... answered at any time. We see the Beechcraft crash, we see Ethan again. Ana Lucia shows up, Libby says hi - the writers can use this as a vehicle to show us every single thing we've always wondered about, from how the Black Rock got on the island to the origins of the four-toed statue. As long as our characters keep skipping we're treated to front row seats for all of the important events, landmarks, and happenings in the island's entire history. The Enchantment Under the Sea dance has officially started.

Run Kate, Run!
Yeah, ... we already know this drill. I won't even count how many times we've seen it before. Kate and Aaron are the last of the O6 still secure in the lair of the real world, so triggering Kate's flight instinct was the surest way to jolt her into leaving that comfort zone. The possibility of her losing Aaron would be the one thing that would get Kate to consider going back to the island too... which is why I'm pretty sure Ben Linus sent those men to her house. There is no paternity lawsuit. Ben's a sneaky bastard.

I'm not sure if the 'tunnel of no return' reference in Aaron's cartoon was meant to describe Kate's opinion of the island, but it seemed to be something along those lines. And the strategic placement of the Jack and Aaron photo was there either to remind the less dedicated viewers of their relationship (hey, it's been a while), or to indicate that maybe Kate hasn't completely gotten over the idea of being with Jack. Maybe both.

The Island's Always Had a Bad Case of the Time Hiccups
I think the island has been held relatively in place (and time) for most of the show, but has been showing increasing signs of 'skipping' for some time now. Most likely this began after electromagnet was destroyed. Even before Ben turned the wheel we've seen deliberate and sometimes instant changes in the fabric of LOST's world - the picture frames in Miles' flashback, the food rearranging itself in Ben's fridge, the clocks that skip ahead hours in mere minutes. Most dramatic of all was the lantern in Jacob's cabin shattering and then re-forming itself as time 'rewound' itself in that particular scene.

These things are now somewhat explained through Daniel's skipping record player analogy, and for the most part can be put to rest. Questions remain however, as to why things would change in what is supposed to be a character's off-island flashback. I've got my own kooky ideas on this, and am still working on that theory.

Widmore - Playing Sun or Getting Played?
Sun's confrontation with Widmore didn't tell us much, but when she revealed her motive of wanting Ben dead I thought it completely disingenuous. Sun doesn't care about Ben. She's trying to use Widmore to get back to the island, and to do that she needs to convince him they've got common interests. Widmore seems way too smart to be played like that. Still, if he knows the same things Ben knows about getting back there, he knows that Sun will be needed. As the two of them play this game, I'm guessing Sun wants to know what happened to Jin and/or believes Jin to still be alive. Compared to what's happening to Sawyer's crew, this storyline is about as interesting as Paolo discovering the toilet still worked.

Loading Your Dishwasher Knife Side Up? Pure Badass.
I suppose we'll never get tired of watching Sayid kicking the crap out of people. This is the guy who once built a fully-stocked love hut in order to smoothly seduce Shannon, mere days after her brother's violent death. It seems his picnic-on-the-beach days are officially over. Sayid has abandoned romance and elevated himself to James Bond-like levels of super human badass ability: killing at will, avoiding fried foods, and generously tipping his chicken waitress.

Sayid effectively tells Hurley that Ben Linus is evil, going as far as to make sure that Hurley never listens to him again. This immediately struck me as a mistake, and we later see that it'll throw serious kinks in Ben's plan to get the O6 back to the island. Sayid's rage toward Ben is driven by the death of Nadia, and by the vile things Ben had him do. Just as we the viewers are trusting in Ben's master plan to reunite everyone, it appears that Sayid's mistrust in him is going to make getting everyone back to the island a season-long process.

Important here is that Sayid's would-be assailants have been tasked with bringing him back alive (unfortunately for them). Assuming they work for Widmore, he realizes that Sayid (and Hurley) are an integral part of once again finding the island. Possessing them would also bring Ben out of the woodwork. Miles even states that it took Widmore twenty years to find the island 'the first time', and seems to hint that he's not going to stop until he finds it again.

What Comes Around Goes Around
Great line! Richard's character keeps getting better and better, and his meeting with Locke solidifies the fact that LOST's characters themselves are skipping through the island's timeline. And as it turns out, items can travel with them too. The bullet Ethan fired into Locke's leg is still there when Richard finds him in the future, and the compass he gives him makes the trip back to the past. Richard's sole interests are the island, and as appointed protector of the island that's now where Locke's loyalties lie as well. Apparently the island itself is in danger, and the only way to save it is to get the O6 back.

Despite repeated admonishments from Daniel and Ms. Hawking, this is the first nagging indication (this season anyway) that time can in fact be changed. If everything that happens is destined to happen anyway, why would Richard be running hellbent through the jungle to give Locke important information between timeskips? It can be argued of course, that that's how it 'happened' the first time so it's just happening all over again. Still, everything points to the fact that the Oceanic Six were definitely not supposed to leave. This very statement seems to infer that there was an original scenario (the desired scenario?) where they actually did NOT leave. Only by bringing them back can the island's current situation be 'fixed'... but perhaps there's another way. Maybe changing the fact that they left at all can accomplish the same thing?

In the end Locke asks how he's going to convince Jack, Kate and the others to come back at all. His track record isn't exactly good with them at this point. Richard responds by telling him that he'll have to die to accomplish this, which is something we already know. Why he has to die, or how that happens, are questions for the end of the season