PCP on TV - Lost Season 5 better late than never!

Welcome back to Pop Culture Panorama.  Today I’ll be talking about the TV show Lost.  If you’ve been reading my blog all summer, you know that I’m working my way through the entire run of the show before the regular fall TV shows come back on, as I had never watched it when it was originally on the air.  I’ve now completed the 5^th season and these are my thoughts and observations about this show. (WARNING:  mild spoilers ahead if you’re like me and never saw the show before).

• Interesting coincidence when time traveling?  When Locke gets shot in the leg by Ethan, he’s standing more or less in the same area where his legs gave out on him back in the first season, underneath the crashed drug smuggling plane.  Was that why his legs gave out back in season 1?
• Also, how many times has Locke been hurt in the legs now?  He had the blast doors come down on it, gotten shot in the leg, and he even gets a compound fracture this season when the time jumping causes him to fall down the well.  Poor guy finally gets the use of his legs back and they keep failing him anyways.
• Understatement of the season:  after Locke shows up and saves Juliet and Sawyer from the Others, all he says is their names and “Good to see you.” – cut to commercial.  No long exposition, just a nice understatement before the break.
• Man, Widmore was a jerk in the past, quick to kill first and ask questions later.  I suppose that hasn’t changed much over the years.

Read the rest of the post after the jump:

• I liked the symmetry for Jack – waking up in the bamboo forest on the island when he came back on the Ajira flight, just like he woke up in the forest from the Oceanic crash.
• This show does reunions so well.  The happiness on Jin’s and Sawyer’s faces when they find each other in the time jumping was great.  Same when Hurley, Kate, & Jack meet up with Sawyer.
• I cracked up at Frank Lapidus’ deadpan reaction and resigned sigh upon seeing the Oceanic 6 all on his Ajira 316 flight.  “We’re not going to Guam are we?”
• Ben was all bloody and battered for the flight of Ajira 316, the 7^th episode of the season, but we don’t find out why he was like that until the 12^th episode, when it was revealed he tried to kill Desmond and Penny, and Desmond beat the living daylights out of him.  This show does that all the time, throwing in a little thing then not having it resolved until several episodes later.
• Possible goof by the writers or temporal anomaly caused by the 815er’s interference?  When Sawyer & Juliet saved Amy from the Others, she would later go on to marry Horace and they would father Ethan together.  However, in past season’s a blonde woman, Olivia, appeared to be Horace’s love interest in the DI.  Were they not able to get that actress back onto the show so the writers were forced to make the change?  Or did they make it so that Sawyer & Juliet changed the past?  Time travel can be a pain.
• Speaking of that, Amy & Horace have a kid together, Ethan.  The same Ethan that will be a part of the Others.  Does that mean that Ethan would not have existed if it wasn’t for the time travel??  Also, how did he survive the Purge?
• Sayid is becoming more and more ruthless as the show goes on.  This season, he shoots a child Ben in cold blood. 
• After Jack refuses to save Ben’s life, Ben is brought to the Others for them to treat his gunshot wound.  Richard warns them that he will lose his innocence.  Does that mean that had Jack treated Ben, Ben wouldn’t grow up to become the sociopath he became?  And if so, does that mean Sayid’s shooting of Ben was what made him go evil in the first place?  If so, then the very man Sayid was trying to stop from existing was made by Sayid shooting him.  That’s like if a Jew went back in time to kill Hitler and failed, but that was what made Hitler start hating the Jews.
• Possible goof by the writers:  Back in season 2, Danielle Rousseau captured Ben and turned him over to the Oceanic survivors, especially Sayid, telling him that Ben was one of the “Others.”  In Season 5, we see the flashback to the night when Ben kidnaps Alex from Danielle, and Danielle clearly sees who the kidnapper is.  Why didn’t Danielle shoot or torture Ben herself when she could have back in season 2?  I know she’s crazy and all, but I still doubt that she would have forgotten the face of her child’s abductor.
• Also, so Widmore wanted Rousseau and her baby killed but Ben did neither.  Killing a baby?  Widmore is even more cold blooded than Sayid.
• I loved that Hurley was writing Empire Strikes Back with some “minor improvements” to send to George Lucas.  If Hurley really wanted to help out George Lucas, he should have sent him a script for Return of the Jedi that doesn’t feature Ewoks, and scripts for the prequels that leave out Jar-Jar Binks.
• I really liked Miles’ line when he sees the body from the swan station, with what appears to be a gunshot wound to the head, after Radzinsky says there was an accident and he fell into a ditch.  “The ditch had a gun?”
• In that same episode I also enjoyed the way that Hurley taunted Miles that his way of talking to the dead was cooler.
• Overall this season, Radzinsky was kind of a douche.  I’m glad that according to Kelvin back in season 2, he ultimately was stuck with pushing the button for years (after his drilling at the Swan site caused the problem in the first place) until he killed himself.
• Holy cow moment:  Learning that Widmore was Daniel’s father.  Did not see that coming.
• Early in the season Hurley was freaking out about being found out as from the future because he was afraid someone would ask him who the president was.  Sure enough, Dr. Chang asks him this very question in a series of questions to find out if Hurley was a time traveler or not.
• Fun with time travel:  Resurrected Locke has to go and have Richard be at the right place and time to treat the time-jumping Locke’s bullet wound, and give him the compass and the other information needed to help the time-jumping Locke.
• I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Rose & Bernard all season long until we saw them in the finale.  It was good to see them again.
• There is no way that a nuke from the 1950s would be small enough to fit into a backpack.  Sorry, but that’s just not possible.
• Wondering what was in the box from the Ajira plane (Locke’s body) had me feeling like Brad Pitt at the end of Seven:  “What’s in the box!?”  Based on its size though, I had a feeling it was Locke’s corpse.  Still a great twist though.
• Based on Jacob’s reaction to seeing the now known as fake Locke, it’s revealed that Locke is the Man in Black.  That means that the Man in Black, who manipulated Ben into killing Jacob, is a master manipulator, if he was even able to fool Ben.
• What an ending to the season, such a mega cliffhanger with the nuke going off.  I can’t wait for season 6.
• Sci-Fi actors from other stuff showing up on Lost:  Neil “Frogurt” has been in Men in Black, Star Trek: Enterprise, & Waterworld.  Ben’s associate in LA Jill was also on Star Trek: Enterprise.  The teenage Widmore was also a voice in Battle for Terra.  The actor behind middle-aged Widmore was on Angel & Charmed.  Jack’s grandfather was on the X-Files.  Caesar was in the recent Conan remake.  Ilana was on both the X-Files & its spin off the Lone Gunmen.  The actress playing Amy appeared in Stargate Universe, Aliens vs Predator Requiem, & the Dead Zone.  Jerry from the DI was in the Bionic Woman reboot, Hulk, & Buffy.  Phil from the DI was in Moonlight, Star Trek: Enterprise, Angel, & Charmed.  Radzinsky was in Firefly & Angel.  The copilot of Ajira 316 was on Charmed, No Ordinary Family, & Star Trek TNG.  Oldham was in Blade Runner, True Blood, Babylon 5, The Pretender, & the X-Files.  Miles’s mom (Pierre Chang’s wife) was in FlashForward, Species, & Medium.  In Miles’ flashback, the man with the dead son that he helps was played by Dean Norris, who’s been in a ton of scifi including in Terminator 2, Total Recall, True Blood, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Starship Troopers, The Pretender, & The Lawnmower Man.  The middle-aged Eloise was on the Highlander TV series.  Bram was on The Pretender.  Jacob was on Supernatural, The Ghost Whisperer, Fear Itself, Chuck, Knight Rider (reboot), & the X-Files.  The Man in Black was on Star Trek: Voyager, The X-Files, the Total Recall TV series, & an episode of the Twilight Zone reboot.
• Body count for the season on the island:  38.  Wow this season had a high death toll.  It’s a good thing another plane comes to the island, because they kill off a whole lot of people this season.  For starters, during the time-jump to the past, Neil “Frogurt” is shot in the chest by a flaming arrow by the Others, along with at the onscreen death of at least 7 more survivors of 815.  Then the survivors trip a claymore mine on the island, killing at least 2 more 815ers.  The Other Ellie comments that there had been 20 people on the beach, but only 5 at the creek (and 2 just died in the mine explosion) now (minus Rose & Bernard in hiding, and Juliet & Sawyer elsewhere) so that means that 13 died between the flaming arrows attack and claymore mine explosion.  Continuing the body count:  Locke throws a knife into the chest of an Other that has Sawyer and Juliet at gunpoint.  A very young Charles Widmore (who we only knew as “Jones” at that point) snaps the neck of an Other that was about to be helpful to Juliet, Locke, & Sawyer.  When being chased in the outrigger canoes, Juliet shoots one of the people on the other canoe that was shooting at the survivors.  When Jin is with Danielle Rousseau’s team in the past, he witnesses Nadine get killed by the smoke monster, and he witnesses Montand get his arm severed as he’s pulled into a hole by the monster (and his corpse is later found in the hole in season 6).  Jin then time jumps to when Rousseau killed the 3 remaining members of her team, and witnesses the killing of one of them and sees the other 2’s bodies.  Charlotte dies as a result of brain trauma from all of the time jumping.  A member of the Dharma Initiative, Paul, is killed by 2 Others.  When Sawyer & Juliet confront them, they kill the 2 Others, saving Amy from the DI.  During the rough landing of Ajira 316 on Hydra Island, the copilot is killed by a tree branch that smashes through the cockpit, impaling him.  Ben shoots and kills Caesar when Caesar tries to stop Locke & Ben from leaving Hydra Island.  A random DI redshirt is killed at the Swan station site when the magnetism rips a filling out of his head through his brain.  Daniel is shot and killed by his own mother (who doesn’t know that she’s his mom yet).  Sayid shoots one of the Others that had been threatening Kate.  After Sayid is shot and wounded, Jack shoots 2 members of the DI in Dharmaville.  At the Swan, Jack kills 1 DI member, Juliet kills 2, and Kate kills 1.  Because of the unleashed electromagnetism, Phil gets impaled by rebar when he tries to kill Sawyer.  Jacob is stabbed to death by Ben.
• Body count off the island (because of the importance of 2 of them I’m counting them this season unlike past seasons):  7 total.  Sayid kills the 2 people waiting for him and Hurley at the safe house, after killing the 1 guy watching Hurley at the mental hospital.  Ben shoots Widmore’s employee Matthew Abbadon, and strangles Locke to death moments after talking Locke down from hanging himself.  Sayid kills the last of Widmore’s people that Ben had him kill (in a flashback between 2004 and 2007).  We see Nadia’s death, as she’s splatted by a car.
• Maybe body count (cliffhangers to next season):  Sayid has been shot by Ben’s dad and is critically wounded, Juliet is banging on a nuclear bomb, causing it to detonate, and everyone else was standing very close to the nuke as it detonated.  Richard himself states that he saw everyone die from the explosion.
• Past seasons items resolved:  Yes, the boat with Daniel and other people on it was pulled along with the island when it relocated.  Yes, Widmore had been on the island before, and was in fact a prior leader of The Others, before he got exiled and Ben took over as leader.  No, Ben didn’t have the Smoke Monster imprisoned under his house, but he could summon it there.  We found out how Richard knew to be at the hospital when Locke was born, because Locke himself told Richard in 1954 what day he’d be born in 1956.  Jin survived the explosion of the freighter, and was stuck time jumping along with the rest of the group.  We learned what the 4 toed statue looked like – it was a giant Egyptian deity statue.  We also know that it was still standing at the time that the Black Rock was off the coast of the island.  We now know what the Incident was, and what happened to Dr. Chang’s hand that caused him to have a prosthesis in some of the orientation videos for the Dharma Initiative.

Ok so that was season 5.  What a great show so far.  I’m so excited for it to hit its conclusion in season 6.  I’m definitely glad that I’ve spent my summer watching this show.  For those of you that haven’t watched Lost, be like me and watch the whole thing in order, you won’t regret it.  That’s all for today, thanks for stopping by!