After last week‘s action-packed, mind-bending episode of Lost, I had high hopes for this week’s installment. I hoped that there would be allusions to physical laws, mathmatical theories, and the theory of relativity. Or that the series, which is now a blogged about by the Washington Post and has legions of intricately-researched fan sites, would give me some new twist to investigate. So did it? Eh, not so much.
The plot did move along, though, in a way it didn’t in the last season. But it felt like the writers were simply going through the motions, dutifully moving the plot along, without having much fun along the way.
But, the show’s creators, true to their word, did answer questions. They showed us that Claire’s baby Aaron makes it off the island, possibly making him one of the Oceanic Six, and that John Locke, the former employee of a box company, is a serious bad-ass. Locke’s putting a live grenade in a captive’s mouth and having him hold down the pin with his teeth is a tactic even veteran interrogator Sayid would approve of.
There were also some nuanced allusions to the time lag on the island and its other special properties, which I had hoped for more of. There is a reference to the film Hugo watches, Xanadu, which emphasizes the idea the island is in its own space/time bubble. While Hugo watches the movie, Sawyer is reading The Invention of Morel, a novel about a man on an island who creates a machine capable of reproducing reality (a reference to the “magic box” that reproduced Locke’s father on the island).
One more nuanced, but notable visual clue to future plot points was Aaron’s survival off the island. It reminded me of what the Australian psychic said to Claire before she got on flight 815: “It is crucial that you raise this child yourself.” Aaron may be little, but my prediction is he’s going to be a huge part of this season’s plotline.
Photo courtesy of ABC
