A Look at the Entire Season so Far (And to Come)

Since Season 2, I've been kind of obsessed with charting the arc of each season as a whole. Lindelof and Cuse once said they try to structure Lost like Harry Potter: it's all one big story, but each season, like each book, is also its own story, and each episode is another chapter.

Naturally, that's similar to any book series: Harry Potter was just their popular example. But it's not similar to any TV show: most try to be as episodic as possible, and the ones that are serialized tend not to do as good a job giving each season its own flavor while simultaneously making everything feel like a continuous story.

In broad strokes, the seasons could be called:

1. The Survivors
2. The Hatch (also: The Tailies)
3. The Others
4. The Freighter (also: The Oceanic Six)
5. The Dharma Initiative

...with Season 6 to be named later.

Narrowing into Season 5, you can break up each episode by the character it's based around:

1. Because You Left -- Everybody.
2. The Lie -- Hurley.
3. Jughead -- Desmond.
4. The Little Prince -- Kate.
5. This Place is Death -- Sun & Jin.
6. 316 -- Jack.
7. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham -- Locke.
8. LaFleur -- Sawyer.
9. Namaste -- Everybody.
10. He's Our You -- Sayid.
11. Whatever Happened, Happened -- Kate again.
12. Dead is Dead -- Ben.
13. Some Like it Hoth -- Miles.
14. The Variable -- ?
15. Follow the Leader -- ?
16. The Incident (two hours) -- ?

There were plenty of episodes without flashbacks this season, which sometimes made it harder to pinpoint who each episode was about. "Because You Left" didn't have much of a focus, which was forgiven because it was the premiere.

But you'll notice that the less character-centric the episode is, the worse the episode is: "The Little Prince" and "This Place is Death" were some of the lower points of the season because, even though they felt like they should be Kate and Sun/Jin episodes, respectively, they were too all over the place to be satisfying.

Likewise, "Namaste," as I wrote at the time, felt like a filler episode: it existed to get everyone from Point A to Point B and didn't really have a focus. It wasn't bad -- it just couldn't be great.

The true help in seeing the whole season laid out like this is that it's easier to guess who the following episodes will be about. If the end of "Some Like it Hoth" was any indication, Faraday will be the focus of next week's episode, "The Variable." And since the characters so often go hand-in-hand with each other, expect Desmond to pop up as well. (Even episode three, "Jughead", was about both of them -- Desmond was hunting down Faraday's mother off-island, and Faraday was the focus negotiating with the Others and talking to his young mom on the island.)

As for "Follow the Leader", there's really only one major character that hasn't starred in her own episode yet this season, and that's Juliet. If I'm right, it's about time: she's been marginalized slightly too much over the past few episodes. And if my interpretation of the title is correct, the episode might be about Juliet in the middle of a Sawyer/Jack power struggle.

Finally, "The Incident". Judging from some casting and set reporting that I've read about but won't repeat here, I have some idea of who the focus of "The Incident" might be, though since it's the season finale, it will basically be about everybody. Look for lots of people to appear in off-island flashbacks, and on the island look for everything to come to a head with all the Dharma intrigue and time travel business that's been going on.

TAGS: Dharma Initiative, Faraday, Follow The Leader, Jacob, Juliet, Season 5, Season Arc, The Incident, The Variable
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