By Ryan Sexton, Assistant Entertainment Editor
For the uninitiated, "Lost" is more than exploding planes, impossibly attractive people running around with firearms and coconuts and some uncontrollable form of time travel on an island. But not too much more. The viewers of the confounding sci-fi hit let out a year of fanboy angst from the first words of dialogue as the first episode of the final season began: "You can let go now," said Rose to Jack Shephard as the turbulence on Flight 815 calmed.
For viewers who haven't kept abreast of recent happenings in the show: it's available for your viewing pleasure on ABC's website. It would be easier to give an elementary tutorial of quantum mechanics than to recount the plot to an unlearned individual (incidentally, that is involved in the show too). Basically, the show centers on the survivors of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, which hit a mysterious and extremely elusive island in the South Pacific. In the first season, twenty-two episodes of pure, "Survivor"-style eye candy unfolded after the crash. Gradually, and as creator J.J. Abrams intended to from the start, the show got more esoteric, involving and science fiction-oriented over the seasons.
At the end of season four, Ben, the leader of the nefarious others, created a rift in time and caused some of the survivors to go back to 1974. At the end of the last season, season five, the survivors detonated a nuclear weapon to try to get back to the present (the scientific implications of this can be looked up on Wikipedia or a viewing of "Back to the Future.") The episode that aired Tuesday night makes it appear that this worked. The episode depicted lateral timelines that the bomb split up. 1974 is gone, but the 2004 plane that was supposed to originally crash at LAX landed! Some survivors of the bomb detonation are scattered in the present. Dramamine might help the nausea associated with viewing.
Right after the explosion, Hurley and Sayid are sequestered near the beloved Dharma hippie van, but Jack, Sawyer, Miles, Jin and Kate are near the hatch. They run into each other and discover that Juliet, the woman who detonated the bomb, is buried beneath rubble. After unearthing her, Juliet and Sawyer reunite, but Juliet dies five minutes into their conversation, and Josh Holloway, portraying Sawyer, makes some football noises and cries convincingly. He's sporting sunburn, undoubtedly the effect of being exposed to a thermonuclear blast.
One the 2004 plane, things are much nicer than on the present island. There are complimentary weak martinis in plastic cups and tray rests. The plane flies quite nicely, and despite Charlie almost overdosing on heroine in the plane and John still being paralyzed, everyone gets off the flight okay.
The fact that Jacob is dead and talking to Hurley isn't surprising. But the introduction of "the temple" and the "other others" that the Oceanic gang encounters are almost too much. There was so much non-linear story to juggle that the new addition of so many characters was painfully disorienting. However, having the "other others" resuscitate Sayid in the temple's water riveted viewers to the screen for the last twenty minutes or so of the premiere. It should be said though that for someone unacquainted with the show, no amount of Jack administering CPR or characters sentiments would have been enough: you had to know what you were looking at!
By far, the most shocking moment of the show was seeing John Locke's body dead on the ground, but seeing him talking to Ben and Richard in other scenes. After a grisly cloud of smoke comes in and kills thugs sent to Kill John inside the temple, John drops the ultimate bomb "I'm sorry you had to see me like that."
"The Lost Supper" (Photo courtesy of larryfire.files.wordpress.com)