Lost — Season 4

[Warning -- Contains spoilers]

At last. After enjoying the first season and suffering through chunks of the subsequent two, I couldn't see what any of the fuss was about over this show. Oh, it was ambitious and mad, all right, more so than any other series ever made. But hype and cliffhangers do not a show make, and with only a few exceptions the show could not compete with even the weakest of Sorkin-era West Wing, Whedonverse TV and certainly The Wire or The Sopranos. The third season in particular wasted so much of my time that when I stumbled across a good episode, I felt it was just the writers' attempt to keep ratings afloat over a quality shift. Nevertheless, the final four or five episodes kicked things into a higher gear than ever before, and the absolutely perfect season finale for once earned a nail-biting frenzy instead of just forcing one on the audience.

But that's nothing compared to the fourth season. When my friends and seemingly the entire Internet stressed the show's brilliance to me, I can only assume the fourth season is what they had in mind. I haven't seen such a turn-around in a series since Angel made up for its dead-end of a fourth season with its transcendent final season, and this may top that as a mea culpa (I'd still pick Angel S5 for quality). The establishment of a concrete end following "Through the Looking Glass" split the proposed final 48 episodes into three seasons of 16 episodes each, though the writer's strike cut this season down to 14. In my review of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I cited the web miniseries as the greatest thing to come out of the 2007-08 WGA Writer's Strike. That proclamation may have been somewhat premature, as this is the only true television series that actually benefited from its truncated length, as each episode sprints forward with great new twists, characters and situations that add more story per episode than the entire second season and most of S3.


The last season ended on an uneasy note, with the promise of rescue from a boat that Charlie -- right before his tragic demise -- discovered had ulterior motives and the knowledge that at least a few characters indeed made it off the island and that the strange little patch of land still exerted a pull on them. It was heady stuff that needed to be tackled as soon as possible, so I was nervous that the writers would do their usual shtick and answer a few questions while raising too many too quickly, only to pull it together in the final stretch.

Not so, as "The Beginning of the End" rivals the preceding finale for rich storytelling and emotionally involving character drama. Chief among the changes it brings are the four characters from the freighter Kahana sent to the island to retrieve their fallen comrade, Naomi, and ostensibly to rescue the survivors. They are physicist Daniel Farady (Jeremy Davies), psychic Miles Straume (Ken Leung), archaeologist Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader) and Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey), a pilot who was supposed to be the one flying Oceanic 815 the day of the crash. It's a strange crew to be sure, but they acclimate in no time.

Ben's desperation to keep people on the island last season seemed more borne out of megalomania than concern for the island, but the Kahana crew slowly divulge that their freighter is not here for rescue: they're paid by Charles Widmore, father to Penny (Desmond's on-again off-again girlfriend), and they're on the island to find and capture Benamin Linus. The four who interact with Jack and Locke's branches of the survivors are not there for destruction but research, their reasons for coming to the island explained in the excellent "Confirmed Dead," easily the best flashback episode since "Walkabout."

Not only are these new character given compelling stories, however; for once, the old characters don't fall into their usual tricks while we wait to see more of the new guys. Linus in particular grows from his calmly sadistic self into a sort of tragic figure; he knows the real fight is with Widmore, so he devotes all of his attention to convincing the Oceanic survivors of the impending danger and starts scheming for the inevitable fight.

So, it's wartime yet again for our poor characters, this time against a team of mercenaries led by the ruthless Keamy (Kevin Durand), who actually manages to surprise and even hurt Ben through his disregard for any sense of morality. Jack just wants to get off the island, but now Locke sees that, underneath Ben's selfishness and egoism, he's right to fear the arrival of this freighter (and not just because they're after him). Widmore built a mock-up of Oceanic 815 to place at the bottom of the ocean to make the world believe that all hands were lost, so why would he want any of the actual survivors to make it off the island in his efforts to purge the Others.

Ben could destroy people with mind games, but Keamy prefers a more direct approach.

This gripping new conflict splits old factions and joins new ones, and it's juxtaposed wonderfully with the new flashforwards, which make episodes like "The Economist" and "Ji Yeon" all the more interesting. The writers know how confusing it can all get, and that's why they made their trippiest (and greatest) episode yet, "The Constant." The island is still the great mystery of the show, with no explorations of what is is, only what it can do. One of those things is apparently bending the time-space continuum, as Frank must be very careful to follow an exact bearing as he pilots his helicopter to and from the island. When he goes slightly off-course, Desmond, already the victim of some temporal displacement, becomes "unstuck in time." Upon reaching the freighter with Frank and Sayid, he alternates between the 2004 present and his '96 past in the Royal Scots Regiment.

The result is some truly inspired storytelling that makes the best sense of time travel as any other show or film you're likely to see: he vacillates bewildered from a freighter full of potential hostiles to basic training where he inadvertently earns the ire of the drill sergeant, much to the chagrin of his buddy Billy -- and if that isn't a reference to Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse-Five, I'll eat my hat. For a show that spent much of the last season adrift in terms of internal logic, seemingly at the mercy of the writers' imaginations, it's impressive how this episode can leap into that death trap that is time travel and emerge unscathed. I didn't think "Through the Looking Glass" could ever be topped, and certainly not by an innocuously placed episode in the early section of the season.

For the first time, I really have to struggle to come up with anything solid to critique on the show, and anything I can pinpoint generally only applies to one episode and is not some thematic or character flaw that runs through the season. The flashforward of Kate's trial in "Eggtown" and her subsequent relationship with Jack in that episode and "Something Nice Back Home" only show the worst aspects of those characters -- Kate's uselessness as a character, Jack's need to be in control -- that we've seen time and again. Still, the latter episode is worth watching for the subplot involving Jack's appendicitis and makeshift operation, giving the show its first real survival scenario since the first season.

The only episode that stands out as truly weak is "Meet Kevin Johnson," which brings back Michael at the expense of all continuity. In an episode comprised mostly of flashbacks, we see Michael and Walt get off the island after the events of S2, only for Michael to go mad with guilt and try to kill himself. The island won't allow him, however, so he begins taking orders from Ben via off-island communications by a then-alive Tom. Ben assigns him to the Kahana, where he plays mind games because, well, I guess it's the old story about the frog and the scorpion, innit? The problem with this episode is that it crams all of Michael's inner turmoil into about slightly more than a week, and it sullies a once-interesting character. Michael's guilt could (and should) have been a fascinating arc, but it's instead relegated to this episode that shows, not tells -- and not well, at that.

Lindelof responded to the criticisms of this episode by mocking "nitpicking" fanboys and defending the script thusly: "it's television." That is everything that was wrong about Lost at its worst moments in the second and third seasons: a total lack of effort in making the show obey its own logic in favor of simply doing things the writers think are cool. It's that mindset that kept me from fully investing in the series for so long, and to see an episode obeying this half-assed notion of screenwriting in the middle of such brilliance is grating.

Hey, the insanity is actually cool for once!

Happily, that's the one episode that falters in an otherwise outstanding season of television. The three-part finale, "No Place Like Home," does not reach the same heights as the previous season ender in terms of future plot implications and character moments, but it makes up for it in pure craziness that, in contrast to some of the stranger elements of the previous season, works. I mean, you can move the damn island? For such a revelation not to mean jumping the shark in a lead-lined fridge that survived a nuclear detonation takes finesse, and the writers pull it off with style.

Of the 14 episodes, (or 8, depending on how you count multi-part episodes) -- the first three episodes, "The Constant," "The Shape of Things to Come" (which will likely land Michael Emerson an Emmy) and the finale -- are on the short list of the series' finest moments. With the exception of "Meet Kevin Johnson," the rest are all high-quality.

Apart from Cuse and Lindelof, who are on fire this season, the best writers are mainstay Drew Goddard and comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan, author of several of the best comic series of the decade. Vaughan came aboard last season as a story editor and wrote the solid "Catch-22," but his scripts with Goddard demonstrate the best character exploration the show has to offer. With Vaughan producing, the lines seem sharper, the characters more defined outside of their ubiquitous father issues and the plots don't get ahead of themselves, even as they take some of the boldest steps yet seen. Showing us who got off the island might have robbed a lesser series of the intrigue of the increasingly apparent evil of the Kahana, yet the show is structured in a way that makes it obvious that the "Oceanic Six" aren't the only people who lived through the ordeal, and that those people must return to the island to save the ones left behind.

As much as I'm a fan of Vaughan, though, it would be a disservice to pin the upswing in quality entirely or even mostly on him: the deadline might have been a stunt to convince wavering viewers that the writers had a plan, but Cuse, Lindelof and their team of writers clearly display a set goal with these episodes, and the show excels because of it. Lost's fourth season, quite frankly, belongs on any sensible list of the greatest seasons of television of the last 20 years and, given the proliferation of ambitious, cinematic TV in that time, in the medium's entire history.

Lost — Season 3

[Warning – contains spoilers]

Every pre-conceived notion I had of JJ Abrams' and Damon Lindelof's Lost -- that it was rambling, unfocused and so (forgive me) lost in its own mythology that it simply made up the rules as it went along -- was dispelled with the solid first season. While the dialogue was somewhat stilted and the writers relied too much on distracting flashbacks to give insight to the characters instead of mixing development with action like the best of them, it was a compelling paranormal mystery with great twists that worked.

The second season was a noticeable step down, as the sudden imbalance between narrative and character only exposed the weaknesses in writing. It expanded the scope of the series, but too often we were subjected to long stretches of inactivity with flashbacks that mostly served as filler. Nevertheless, when it hit the second half it started tying together all the new threads of the tail section survivors and really showed how big a threat the Others posed, and the result was gripping even if its foundation was built on sand.

But as soon as I got into the third season, all those initial reservations were at last proved correct: where the second season sacrificed narrative for the sake of character development (most of which was redundant anyway), this season cranked the madness up to 11. Character development now takes a backseat to an incessant barrage of new mysteries and answers to old mysteries that are often more bewildering than satisfying.

The Others have been a force on the island since the first season, but we got our first glimpse of them in S2: we didn't learn how they came to live on the island, but they looked like survivors of some other catastrophe who'd simply gone mad -- understandable, given the strange horror of the island. Apart from a rusty old boat that they ended up giving to Michael for betraying his friends, they seemed to have nothing but the clothes on their backs even though they knew practically everything about the Flight 815 survivors. Well, just go ahead and kick those notions to the curb, because the very first reveal of the season changes everything you think you know about this strange, psychotic group.


The revelations of the Others and their living conditions pose a slew of interesting questions, all of which are immediately buried under even more questions with each passing episode. The season ran for six episodes before going on hiatus, and these six episodes make the wheel-spinning of the middle of S2 look like visceral and masterful storytelling in comparison. For one thing, the flashbacks are at an all-time low: Sun and Jin's is utterly useless, Locke's simply shows that even people who aren't related to him betrayed him and Kate's, well, it's a flashback for Kate. They're all the damn same. Even worse, everyone who didn't already have father issues -- Hurley, Claire, even Ben -- now have them. God, is that the only thing they could think of to give these characters "depth"?

Lost has always raised a lot of questions, but many this season are of the sort the writers don't want people to ask: why would Linus do his best to antagonize the survivors if he was trying to get Jack, a noble doctor through and through, to operate on him? How many times are they going to give us the same flashback and expect us to care? Why are the scenes of Kate, Sawyer and Jack in captivity so boring instead of tense?

Hey look! They actually killed off a character people liked! (But only because he asked to be let go.)

Worst of all is the addition of two characters named Nikki and Paulo. A common complaint of the show is that we only see the actions of 15 or so survivors while the other 40 only show up when a few people need to die, but whatever the proper way to address this flaw was, Nikki and Paulo are pretty much the polar opposite. They act as though they've been a part of the action since the first episode, and their backgrounds as con-artists only stress the redundancy of character writing on Lost. The writers were at least cogent enough to understand how terrible these two were and killed them off, though even the episode that dumps them is incredibly weak because of their increased presence.

Things pick up with the post-hiatus episode "Not in Portland," as we see Juliet's flashbacks, which begin to answer questions about the Others and puts to rest the lingering questions over why they're so obsessed with taking children. Juliet's arc is one of the finest of the series so far, as it not only fleshes out her character and the Others' connection to the outside world but that there are factions of Others that don't necessarily like Ben's leadership.

Nestor Carbonell's never-aging Richard Alpert is one of the more interesting of the Others.

There's also an interesting subplot involving Desmond, who survived the hatch explosion sans clothes and can now see visions of the future. "Flashes Before Your Eyes" sustains the momentum of "Not in Portland" as Desmond learns that Charlie will die and tries desperately to prolong the inevitable. Charlie fell victim to some truly shoddy writing in the second season, going from a noble addict who had no real reason to stay alive but was charming and interesting enough to stay to an annoying, stagnant brat whose attempts to use humor as a coping device made him seem callous and flippant. But with the knowledge of his impending death hanging over him for over half the season, we see his paranoid side as well as the kindness that won me over in the first season. His attempts to maintain a relationship with Claire just long enough to say goodbye are touching and, inverse to the previous season, some of the best character writing the show has ever offered.

Even as a kid, Ben was kind of creepy.

Sadly, the show dips south again, with a particularly bright exception being "The Man From Tennessee," in which Locke -- having bought Ben's rhetoric since he himself has tried to stay on the island since the start -- slowly ingratiates himself with the Others and must prove himself to them. It's an instant classic that demonstrates Ben's ability to manipulate others on multiple levels so he's still pulling the strings even when they think they've figured him out, as well as Locke's growing alienation from the survivors as the prospect of rescue becomes less a pipe dream and more a solid possibility. Finally, it shows just how powerful the Others are, on or off the island, as they deliver a special surprise to Locke as a last test of loyalty.

The season does not kick into a consistently high gear, sadly, until the survivors brace for open conflict with the Others. Last season, Jack secretly asked Ana Lucia what it would take to mobilize the survivors into an army to to fight the Others, and he starts laying out plans for a war the second he returns from the Barracks. While he cannot outsmart Ben, he realized what a monster Ben really was, something that Locke hasn't yet. Indeed, as redundant as several of his flashbacks are this season, they are effective in establishing Locke as someone so desperate for love after being denied it all his life that he's one of the most gullible men on the planet. The island offers him the only spiritual connection he's ever felt in his life that's actually reciprocated, so he's more than willing to believe Ben's rants about protecting the island even as his actions solidify his own power over allying the Others and the survivors against those who might do them harm.

Jack's preparations play out in the (literally) explosive finale, "Through the Looking Glass," the best episode of the series since its pilot, if it is not the pinnacle of the first three seasons period. After a season of big questions, bigger plot holes, possible time travel and a lack of big character moments outside the flashbacks of Ben and Juliet, nothing less than a masterpiece would offer a satisfying conclusion, and that's exactly what this is. The booby-trapped beach offers some thrilling action scenes, while Charlie's dive to meet his doom is one of the most tragic moments of any show I can think, and when his efforts to break the jamming signals reveals the horrible truth of the newly arrived boat that promises rescue, Charlie must spend his final moments essentially telling Desmond that he died in vain.

This season showed the Others on the verge of splintering under Ben's leadership, and what Charlie and Desmond uncover in the Looking Glass sets up a schism between the survivors. Everything about the episode, from Charlie's death to the mini-war with the Others to the revelation that casts the imminent rescue in uncertain light to the introduction of mysteries that are genuinely intriguing, shows a level of sophistication in the writing that was all too rare this season. But the greatest aspect of the episode was the abandonment of the flashbacks in favor of flash-forwards, which show that some people indeed made it off the island, and that Jack now wants desperately to return.

Oh sure, now you want to go back.

Regardless of the patchy writing of the rest of the season, the acting is still top-notch from the people you'd expect: Matthew Fox maintains his ability to match Jack's firm leadership with his insecurity and his need to fix things, while O'Quinn continues to make Locke fascinating no matter how many times the writers back him into a corner. But it is Michael Emerson who completely walks away with the third season and will keep you watching even when you're tempted to stop giving the writers chances: a bug-eyed, unassuming sort of chap, his psychological warfare makes the Joker's seem like child's play. What initially seems like the odd moment of honesty and empathy is soon revealed to be yet another facet of his mind games with the survivors. Emerson makes Linus one of the most terrifying villains in TV history, and he rarely lays a hand on anyone.

All in all, the third season of Lost took all the flaws of the first two seasons and magnified them to the point that they now drowned out the positive aspects of the show. The usual unwillingness to kill major characters while Others drop by the handfuls has gotten ridiculous, and at this point there's hardly a survival element to the series at all. And the writers seem to know about these flaws, because characters will often make light of them. But Nikki and Paulo, the never-dwindling survivor count, the inanity of the love triangle, these are major issues that should be addressed instead of just accepted like nothing can be done about them.

The writers set a definite end-date for the series before the season finale, which might explain why it so effectively propelled the story forward for the first time in ages. The final few episodes -- among them "One of Us," which showed that Juliet could be as fearsome as her boss, the moving "Greatest Hits" and the Ben-centric "The Man Behind the Curtain" -- surpassed just about anything in S2 short of "Man of Science, Man of Faith" and "The 23rd Psalm." After nearly tuning out, I suddenly found myself more eager to keep going than ever. Let's hope the fourth season delivers.