Spoilers.
Lost Official Site
The Time: Wednesdays, 9:00 PM, ABC
The Show:
When
Oceanic Flight 815 from Sydney to London went down somewhere over the
Pacific, the survivors of the crash found themselves marooned on a
tropical island. But this is no ordinary island; it has
unusual magnetic, temporal, healing and seemingly supernatural
properties, and is fraught with constant danger. There is
a mysterious black smoke-like creature, polar bears, and even
apparitions of the dead roaming the forest. The island is
also the former secret haven of a group called the Dharma Initiative,
who were running experiments utilizing the unique properties of the
island via research stations that dot the landscape. Now the
Oceanic survivors, led by Dr. Jack Sheppard, Kate Austen, James
“Sawyer” Ford, John Locke, Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, Sayid Jarrah and
others, seek a way to escape the island and its many dangers.
But there are people, both living on the island and seeking the island
from outside, who are at war for control of it, and the Oceanic
survivors find themselves caught in the middle. Told via
nonlinear fashion that incorporates flashbacks and flash forwards, Lost is one of the most unique and densely mythological shows on television.
The Stars:
• Matthew Fox – Dr. Jack Sheppard
• Evangeline Lilly – Kate Austen
• Josh Holloway – James “Sawyer” Ford
• Naveen Andrews – Sayid Jarrah
• Terry O’Quinn – John Locke
• Jorge Garcia – Hugo “Hurley” Reyes
• Daniel Dae Kim – Jin Kwon
• Yunjin Kim – Sun Kwon
• Michael Emerson – Benjamin Linus
• Henry Ian Cusick – Desmond Hume
• Elizabeth Mitchell – Juliet Burke
• Jeremy Davies – Daniel Faraday
• Nestor Carbonell – Richard Alpert
• Alan Dale – Charles Widmore
• Reiko Aylesworth – Amy
The Episode: “The Story of the Oceanic 6″
The title says it all as the details of the events of the Oceanic 6 – as well as Desmond, Ben, and Locke – from the time they got off the island till they returned is recounted in this clip show episode.
The Lowdown:
I got my Lost education online as I digested Seasons 1-4 in the span of about two months last year. So I got used to jumping right to the next episode whenever I had completed the one before. It was quite lovely. Season 5 is the first experience I’ve had in having to play the waiting game and so I fully understand what it’s like to be wowed by this dense mythology and then have to 167 hours before the next installment…of more dense mythology. And of course as with any season-long show, there are going to be production gaps that result in reruns. We could have been re-watching “Jughead” “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” or “This Place is Death” this week, but instead we get a clip show recounting mostly the off-island story of this current season. Now while I’m dying to get to the last four episodes of the season, if we have to have a down week, I’m glad that the producers decided to toss us a bone other than taking the easy way out.
“The Story of the Oceanic 6” tells in mostly linear time the exploits of Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sun, Sayid, Aaron, Locke, Desmond and Ben once they each got off the island in their own particular ways via narration. It’s sort of like the “Lost in __ (Minutes)” they did on the DVDs, but nowhere hear as frenzied (I watched one of those and almost exploded like a blipvert victim from Max Headroom). It also helped to clarify and put into order the erratic storyline going down over the first half of this season. It also reminded me of a couple of things I had forgotten, like Ben jumping 10 months into the future when he landed in Tunisia.
Overall, not too much more to say about this episode in particular, as it’s nothing more than a smartly-edited rerun. For a show with so much story having already been told, it’s actually sort of nice to take a step back, catch a breather and go over important details before moving on in the absence of new story. It actually would have been really nice to get one of these recounting the island Losties narrative in the off week between “LaFleur” and “Namaste” back in March. Hell, what would really be nice is if we could get one spotlighting the entire history of a certain character or group in any off week during the season. That’d be a great way to pass down time in-between new episodes during the season.
So I really don’t mind this episode this week if we have to go without a new one. Now give me one on island mythology and history, one on the history of DHARMA, the Others / Hostiles history, and maybe a few on the flashbacks from Seasons 1-3 and so on. In fact, how about giving us one of those a week during the summer recounting someone’s complete story? Now there’s an idea.