What I Liked About Season 5

So, I've been quiet on the Blog for a while, which is driving some of my friends and readers a little crazy. I apologize for the silence, and hope to more than make up for it in the next couple of months.

A lot happened in Season 5, the penultimate season of Lost. The writers and producers were in a bind, because they couldn't reveal too much, but they also couldn't just leave the story limping along, either. And in some respects, they did a fabulous job. This post will talk about what I liked about the Season. I hope that you will post what you liked as well.

All quotes are from Lostpedia.



I really liked the time traveling aspect. Until John turned the wheel in This Place is Death, the Left-Behinders found themselves skipping through time at an ever-increasing rate, putting their lives in danger, and eventually killing Charlotte. Each time we visited the Left-Behinders, I was on the edge of my seat, worried about what would happen next and exhausted by the time changes. These scenes shows Lost at its best, with the frantic pace with characters who acted, well, characteristically.

Juliet and Sawyer’s love story. I know that I declared myself a proponent of Kate and Sawyer earlier in the season, but watching the mature relationship between Juliet and James turned me into an apostate. I am voting the scene where James brings Juliet a flower as the most romantic involving any members of the Dreaded Quadrangle.

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The fight between Sawyer and Jack, because honestly, they’ve been headed toward this for five years now. Well, three for them. (Sadly, no picture. Can you believe it?)

Any scene that featured Miles and Hurley together. These two are comic gold. Hurley has always been the go-to guy whenever comic relief is needed, but his relationship with Miles ramped it up exponentially. Hurley served as us in his discussions with Miles about time travel, and Miles learned, just as we did five years earlier, that there’s more to Hugo than meets the eye. And only Hugo could successfully compare Miles’ daddy issues to Luke Skywalker’s in the Empire Strikes Back. I heard some people were thinking that Miles would die in the season finale, since his storyline with Pierre Chang resolved itself, but I’m hoping that we get to see him until the very end, coping with Hugo.
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Hugo’s confession to his mother about the crash, the island, and the lie. How many of us have tried to explain to non-Lost fans the appeal of the show, and then realized that what we were saying just didn’t make sense? As Hugo stumbled over his words and tried to explain to his mother just what was going on, a huge lump took center stage in my throat. The words are worth reciting:

HURLEY: Okay. See, we did crash, but it was on this crazy island. And we waited for rescue, and there wasn't any rescue. And there was a smoke monster, and then there were other people on the island. We called them the Others, and they started attacking us. And we found some hatches, and there was a button you had to push every 108 minutes or... well, I was never really clear on that. But... the Others didn't have anything to do with the hatches. That was the DHARMA Initiative. The Others killed them, and now they're trying to kill us. And then we teamed up with the Others because some worse people were coming on a freighter. Desmond's girlfriend's father sent them to kill us. So we stole their helicopter and we flew it to their freighter, but it blew up. And we couldn't go back to the island because it disappeared, so then we crashed into the ocean, and we floated there for a while until a boat came and picked us up. And by then, there were six of us. That part was true. But the re... But the rest of the people... who were on the plane? They're still on that island.
[Carmen puts her hand on her son's wrist.]
CARMEN: I believe you. I don't understand you, but I believe you.

Finally getting to meet Pierre Chang. We’ve seen Pierre Chang in various Dharma Initiative videos, both in the show and through the internet (several, apparently, were shown at various Comic Cons), using different aliases (what’s that about, anyway?), orienting new DI recruits to their new assignments/tasks. We always knew that he was a cranky scientist, but now we got to see him as a principled family man who was willing to believe some crazy talk about his son coming from the future.

The birth of Charlie Hume. I must say I was tickled pink, first that Desmond and Penny had a baby, and secondly, that they named the child after Charlie. Some bloggers used some strained Lost logic to determine that Charlie Hume was actually Charlie Pace, but I’m still on record as saying that I find it far-fetched, and honestly, I feel that such a twist would actually ruin the poignancy of both Charlie’s death and his namesake.

How much fun was it getting to meet the young Danielle Rousseau, and watching her transformation from a young, naïve scientist, to a woman capable of murdering friends and devastated by the loss of her child to Ben? Mira Furlan, the Rousseau we know and love, asked for her character to be killed off (I guess she was tired of Hawaii), so this allowed us to finally learn her story.

Ben’s humor. Not many can pull off a dry line as well as Mr. Linus. Case in point, when Kate accused Ben of starting legal proceedings to remove Aaron from her custody and Jack defended Ben, Ben responds, “No, Jack. She’s right. Sorry.” That "sorry" made me laugh out loud! No one can take semantics to such an extreme either. Ben told a furious Jack he never lied to Jack about John not seeking Ben out; instead, Ben sought out John Locke.

Ben’s apparently successful murder of John Locke in The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham. It was so unexpected, yet so in character for Ben. I was completely shocked.

Getting to know Richard Alpert. Last season, we had little of Alpert-action because the actor, Nestor Carbonell, who apparently has heavily-lined eyes without the help of make-up, was in a really bad nighttime soap with Jimmy Smits. Thankfully, on two levels at least, the show folded, and Alpert was back to guide, protect, and amaze. Even though we still don’t know who the hell he is, at least we know his role a little better.

Sayid’s response to Oldham’s truth serum was the lightest part of a very serious and dark episode. Sayid gave his interrogators nothing but the truth, but the truth was so bizarre, that all but one of his listeners thought that Oldham gave Sayid too much serum. This exchange is also worth another look:

OLDHAM: I'm going to ask you a few questions. I want you to relax and answer them truthfully...Not that you'll have any choice about it. What is your name?
SAYID: [Clearly drugged] Sayid. Sayid Jarrah.
OLDHAM: All right, Sayid. Why were you in handcuffs when we found you?
SAYID: Because...because I am a bad man.
OLDHAM: Were you running away from your people?
SAYID: What people?
OLDHAM: The hostiles.
SAYID: I am not a hostile.
HORACE: Then where did you come from, Sayid?
SAYID: I came on a plane.
OLDHAM: What plane?
SAYID: Ajira flight 3-1-6.And that's how I returned to the island.
OLDHAM: "Returned"? You've been here before?
SAYID: Oh, yes. The first time, I was on Oceanic flight 8-1-5. It crashed. I was here for a hundred days. Then I left. Ask Sawyer.
OLDHAM: Who's "Sawyer"?
RADZINSKY: Who cares?! None of this matters. Ask him about the Flame.
HORACE: [To Radzinsky] Quiet.
OLDHAM: What do you know about our stations here?
SAYID: I know the Flame was a communication station. The Pearl was to observe other stations. The Swan was to study electromagnetism. But, of course, that was before the incident--
RADZINSKY: [Interrupting] The swan?! How could he know what we were gonna name it? We haven't even built it yet! I told you! He saw the model! You see?! He is a spy!
HORACE: [To Radzinsky] Hey!
RADZINSKY: I knew it!
HORACE: Radzinsky! I'm not gonna tell you again. Cool it.
SAYID: You're all going to die, you know.
HORACE: [To Sayid] What?
SAYID: You're going to be killed.
HORACE: How exactly would you know this, Sayid?
SAYID: Because I am from the future.
OLDHAM: [To Horace] Maybe I should've used half a dropper. Oops.
[Sayid begins to laugh uncontrollably.]
SAYID: You...You used exactly enough.

Somehow Kate became extremely likable in the episode Whatever Happened, Happened. Kate-centric episodes usually end up annoying me, but by the end of that episode, I wanted to hug her, not throttle her. She did the right thing, giving Aaron back to this grandmother, and decided to return to the island so that she could find Claire (I’m sure finding Sawyer was the last thing in her mind). Lastly, unlike Jack, she realized that it was immoral to let a boy die just because he would grow up to become, well, Ben Linus, and took action, in her Kate way, to save him. This doesn’t mean that Kate didn’t manage to annoy me later in the season, just that I found myself sympathizing with her for the first time ever in a Kate-centric episode.

Penny lives! Last season, Ben promised Widmore that he would kill Penny in retaliation for Keamy’s murder of Alex, a violation of “the rules”. I’m sure I’m not the only one who worried that Penny was a goner when Ben showed up in 316 wounded. Finally, in Dead is Dead, we saw what happened. To this day, I think Ben changed his mind about killing Penny when Charlie poked his head out to see what was going on. Regardless, Ben deserved the thrashing that Desmond meted out.

I also thoroughly enjoyed how Rose and Bernard handled their three years in the 1970s. I thought it was remarkably romantic and sane. I heart Rose & Bernard.

Watching Ben’s comeuppance. I’ve loved watching Ben over the years as he’s manipulated just about everyone with whom he comes in contact. Ben loves being in control, and frankly, he’s quite good at it. To tell the truth, I didn’t think that any one of our Lostaways would figure out that Ben was a lying, manipulative jerk. Jack never got it, and the real John Locke never got it. But Sun did. Watching her whack Ben on the head once she learned all she need to learn from him was extremely satisfying. Later, we didn’t know just who was manipulating Ben when he returned to the island with not-Locke, but either way, it was also edifying. I will be curious to see how he handles learning that he was not serving as John Locke’s bitch after all, but some super being who’s been fighting Jacob for years.

The mythology. From the references to ancient Egypt (discussed earlier) to Latin, from “What lies in the shadow of the statue” to fighting on the right side, to finally meeting Jacob, this season was heavy on the mythological subtext. This is just one of many reasons why Lost will be discussed in college courses in the future.

Watching Neil Frogurt take a flaming arrow to the chest. He was really annoying. It was pretty satisfying to see Phil die too.

There was so much to love about the season, and I realize as I worked on this that there were other scenes I've left out. Oh, well. I hope that you'll let us know what you liked about Season 5. And expect another post on what I didn't like about Season 5.