Reviewing "316"

For the first time since I can remember, I didn't see Lost at its regularly scheduled time. I had long-standing dinner plans on Wednesday night and had to work all day Thursday, pushing my viewing back to late last night on ABC.com.

In practice, it was no big deal. In fact, it sure is nice knowing there's an episode sitting there, just waiting for you to watch it. But it was a strange experience -- over 24 hours without Lost when the rest of the world had it. I couldn't frequent particular websites in fear of something being spoiled, and I had to let calls from my sister and mom -- whom I suckered into watching a long time ago -- go unanswered.

Perhaps the wait did me good, because I consider "316" to be the best show of Season 5 so far, hands down. "Jughead" was a lot of fun, but "316" was everything I want an episode to be. It was also the first mid-season episode to be written by Lindelof and Cuse -- as in, they actually got the "written by" credit as opposed to their normal "executive producer" credits -- since "The Constant." Either that means they're both really good writers, or, since they're the bosses, they get first dibs on the episodes with good stories. I'm guessing both.

"316" played almost like a reboot, a pilot for "Lost: Part 2" -- it even opened in an identical manner to the original pilot. In broad strokes, the episode chronicled the final two days before the Oceanic Six made it back to the island, culminating in their return. But very conspicuously, it left out key details of what happened to everyone in those two days except Jack. Of note:

Ben: he leaves the church by telling Jack he's "fulfilling a promise to an old friend" -- which can only mean he's going to try to kill Penny. But the next time we see him is the next morning, frantic and with a blood-stained face, telling Jack to pick up Locke's body for him. Clearly things didn't go the way he had planned.

Kate: when Sun shows up with a gun pointed at Ben, she takes off with Aaron. The next time we see her is much later that night, broken and defeated and sans-Aaron, demanding that Jack never ask about the little kid again.

Sayid: he splits when Kate does. But there he is, roughly 36 hours later, brought aboard the plane in the custody of a mysterious woman.

Hurley: last we knew, he was in jail but was probably going to get sprung by Ben's lawyer. But Ben himself didn't get Hurley to come -- Hurley didn't even know Ben was involved. So who did?

All of these will no doubt be answered in flashbacks in the weeks to come -- a pretty ingenious way of getting us excited about flashbacks again, for my money. More importantly, I actually care about the Oceanic Six again. That was one of the painful things about the beginning of this season, in which even Sayid's ninja-like awesomeness began to feel a bit stale. No longer.

The character we did follow was Jack, who climbed on the plane grinning like a little kid that the gang is finally back together again. ("Just because we're here doesn't mean we're together," warned Kate.) Remember how last week I complained about Sun not getting good enough material when she found out Jin might not be dead? Jack got good material this week. He was given time to breathe and think and articulate his thoughts in scenes, and Matthew Fox was up to the challenge. So far this season, the scenes have all either been (A) action, or (B) explaining the plot. This week, everyone got to be a character, whether that meant Jack explaining to Kate the anecdote about giving his dad's corpse his tennis shoes, or muttering to Locke as he was changing his shoes: "wherever you are, you must be laughing your ass off."

The episode also had its own arc and felt emotionally self-contained, something else I complained about prior episodes lacking in last week's recap. (I can only assume the Lost writers jumped ahead in time, read my recap, then wrote the episode based on my advice.) It started and ended in the same place, one character was front and center, it provided answers while creating questions, it was patient, and the writing was just extremely sharp.

Some random notes:

-The introduction of the mysterious man and woman on the plane was executed flawlessly. They appeared just enough to haunt the scenes without drawing too much attention to themselves. (Light spoiler -- readers of this site might remember their names are Caesar and Ilana, and they're recurring this season with the possibility of becoming full-time cast members in Season 6.)

-It occurs to Jack to ask what's going to happen to everybody else on the plane. "Who cares?" replies Ben. That's a pitch-perfect Ben moment, but it did get me thinking about the ego-centrism of everyone involved. Jack only realizes that he may be voluntarily putting lives in danger when he sees the people sitting in coach. Only Hurley had the foresight to buy every remaining unbought ticket on the plane, out of fear for the lives of innocent men, women, and children. It was a hugely classy move for Hurley but reflected badly on everyone else -- not just Ben, who at least admits he doesn't care.

-I didn't even catch many of the similarities between the Ajira flight and the Oceanic flight, so thanks go to my girlfriend and Jeff Jensen's recap: Sayid was prisoner instead of Kate; Ben got their just in time instead of Hurley; and Hurley brought a guitar case in memory of Charlie.

-My dream of having Walt show up went unfulfilled, but the show attempted to make up for it with the surprise addition of Frank. When his voice came over the intercom I started cheering. Let's just hope he doesn't end up like the last pilot.

-So the island isn't done with Desmond yet. I'll admit that I have no ideas about how his character will continue, or what happened during Ben's mission to kill Penny. Perhaps they'll be answered at the same time, although I would err on the side of Penny being fine and possibly even getting the better of Ben. Ben seemed downright sheepish when he called Jack, and I doubt the show would drag out the question mark if Penny really was murdered.

-Interesting that the plane didn't crash -- or, if it did, that Jack, Hurley, and Kate "flashed" onto the island before it happened. Did just Jack and co. experience the flash, or was it the entire plane? Based on what we know about the island's electromagnetism and time-traveling capabilities, I'm inclined to believe everyone on the plane -- and perhaps the plane itself -- went through a similar flash. That means that there's a whole new group of crash surviving extras out there -- and just when the show finished killing off all of the original ones.

-Mrs. Hawking's reveal that the island is constantly moving reminded me of the terrific 1997 movie Cube, a cult classic from Canada that spawned two direct-to-video sequels. In it, a bunch of strangers wake up imprisoned, without knowing why, in a series of interconnected cubes the size of small rooms -- some of which are booby-trapped. Lost fans might really enjoy it, but be warned -- it's bleak.

-Jack's visit to his grandfather was conspicuous. Sure, it served the purpose of getting his father's shoes, but the time devoted to the introduction of this never-before-mentioned character implies that larger plans are at work.

-The reveal of Jin at the end was fun. His hairstyle, coupled with his relative comfort at wearing a Dharma jumpsuit and driving a Dharma van around, seemed to confirm that when Locke turned the wheel, the island stopped moving but was stuck in the Dharma era -- and Jin and co. have been inhabiting it for at least a couple of weeks. Interesting -- it's been three years for the Oceanic Six but possibly less than a month for them.

Next week is titled "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham," which I'm assuming means we're not going to return to the island story until the week after. Did Locke really kill himself? If so, did he do it out of depression or because he knew it would spark the Oceanic Six's return? And will he be reincarnated? And if he's not, doesn't that mean next week could be his last episode?

TAGS: 316, Ben, Jack, Locke, Recaps, Season 5
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