Spoiler Alert: Please do not read this unless you have seen both "Because You Left" and "The Lie". Thanks.
Six days after the LOST Season 5 premiere event and my head is still spinning.
Wow. Just wow.
I love that the season opened with a shot of an old-school alarm clock - it's 8:15 AM! Then our favourite Dharma Initiative orientation film star, Dr Pierre Chang, the man with the many aliases went through his morning rituals - feeding his baby, showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, and playing some Willie Nelson on the old turntable. The fact that the record started skipping on the line, "can't make a record if you..." probably foreshadowed Daniel Faraday's analogy later in the episode.
We learnt that The Arrow is station #2 and was designed to develop "defensive strategies" and to "gather intelligence on the hostile indigenous population" - that is, the Hostiles. I wonder what exactly kind of work Horace Goodspeed was doing there before he was killed in the Purge? Hmmm...
And then the incident at the construction site of The Orchid set the tone for the episode, and probably for the rest of the season and series. Did y'all see the frozen donkey wheel on the sonar printout? And then my favourite physicist disguised as a construction worker walks in! Dan looked troubled and/or worried. I wonder why... And why did he seem to be hiding from Dr Chang?
Then we saw what happened to the LOSTies when Ben moved the Island: the Left Behinds were transported to the time before the beach camp was even built! Also, the burning freighter disappeared from Juliet and Sawyer's views; on the other hand, from the Oceanic 6, Desmond, and Frank's perspectives, the Island, the Hydra Island, and the freighter all disappeared. I wonder what happened to the burning freighter: was it transported to a different time, or did it sink?
Locke, on the other hand, was left alone - he was previously seen talking with Richard Alpert - in the middle of the jungle, where it was raining. As he walked through the jungle, he spotted a yellow plane - as in the Nigerian plane that was very important to our dearly departed fake priest Mr Eko - crashing and ending up where he and Boone found it in "Deus Ex Machina". Then Ethan fired at least a few shots at him, one of which hits his leg. He knew Ethan, but the Others' former surgeon did not know Locke. Then there was another flash several years into the future. Richard found Locke and treated his bullet wound even if Locke never told him about it! Then we learnt that Richard Alpert knew that the Oceanic 6, Desmond, and Frank were back home. He also gave Locke a compass - similar to the one he showed a young John in "Cabin Fever" - and told Locke to return it to him because the Ageless Wonder would not recognize Locke when he next sees him! Guess what? Richard Alpert also told Locke that, in order to save the Island, Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Hurley, and Aaron need to go back to the Island. In order to do that, Locke's gonna have to die! Then a flash, and Locke was alone, holding the compass that Richard gave him.
At least, we have an idea what was happening to the Island. I think. Daniel Faraday told the Left Behinds that what was happening to the Island is similar to a record skipping - just like the Willie Nelson vinyl record at the beginning of the episode. According to him, whatever whoever (Ben, actually) did dislodged them from time. Either the Island or the people on it - the Left Behinds - are moving through time.
There it is: time travel. Damon Lindelof had said in an interview with The Star-Ledger that time travel has been in the DNA of the show from the very beginning. The first obvious occurrence of time travel in the series was in "Flashes Before Your Eyes," where Desmond travelled to the past after turning the fail-safe key. But is it really the first episode with obvious time-travel elements? Hmmm... Don't know yet. But if I were a betting woman, I'd say it's not.
Anyway, Sawyer, Juliet, and the rest of the survivors asked Daniel if they could do anything to change things. What did Dan say? That they cannot change anything in the past. "Even if you tried to, it wouldn't ever work," Faraday insisted. He used a street as another analogy: Time is like a street - we can move forward and in reverse, but we cannot make a new street. He also mentioned that he had been learning about the Dharma Initiative all his adult life. Why? Anyway, he said that they cannot stop it. Sawyer asked who can, but Daniel did not answer him.
Later, we learnt that Desmond is the only one who can help the Left Behinds, because he is "special - uniquely and mysteriously special". Daniel told him to go to Oxford and find his mother. He was going to tell him her name, but another flash interrupted Daniel.
Desmond woke up beside Penny, who was now presumably his wife. A normal person would call that a dream, but the uniquely and mysteriously special Desmond called it a memory!
Wait a minute. Who is Daniel's mother? Is it Ms Hawking, as some online theorists and bloggers have posed? Is it Annie? Is it someone we haven't seen before?
Anyway, I'm worried about Charlotte. Her nose started bleeding, she was having a "bloody" headache, and she could not remember her mother's maiden name - symptoms of lack-of-constant syndrome. Minkowski and Desmond experienced the same symptoms (except the headache). The former died because he did not have an anchor, a constant - someone or something that exists in both past and the future, and that the traveller deeply cares about and could recognise; the latter did have one - Penny. Who is Charlotte's constant? Will she be able to contact or recognise her constant before anything happens to her? Is she in mortal trouble??? I hope not.
Later on, when they were all back at the beach (non) camp, the survivors were freaking out about the lack of supplies. The most notable of these are Rose, Bernard, and Neil Frogurt. The latter started to lose it, especially when nobody could even make fire! And then he was hit by a flaming arrow. Whatta way to die. More flaming arrows attack the Left Behinds, and several more redshirts die. When enough redshirts are dead, a few military men with British accent demands what Juliet, Sawyer, et cetera, were doing in their island! They threatened to cut off Juliet's hand, but Locke saved her life by throwing a knife into the back of one man. Then the tables were turned - Juliet and Sawyer grabbed the Brit blokes' guns and pointed the firearms at the Brits.
Well, that's it for what happened on the Island during the two-hour premiere - "Because You Left" and "The Lie". Next post would be about the off-Island events. Hopefully I'd get to finish everything by 20:00 tomorrow. Haha.
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