You Want One Too Ginger?

Because You Lied Part 1

I’m back from vacation and yes, I did watch the season premier in my resort hotel while in Disney World, so over a week late, here are my thoughts on the premier event.





'Because You Left'' skipped back and forth along the island's timeline, leaving the castaways (and us) to puzzle out their time/space whereabouts. It was made possible by all the bandwagon fans that have fallen off over the years the ones LOST doesn't have to worry about alienating anymore. ''Because You Left.'' How ironic. The premiere did what all LOST premieres aspire to do: activate a wide swath of story in deft, dynamic fashion and remind us just who these characters are. Jack the reluctant hero. Kate the lonely fugitive. Hurley the cursed clown. Shirtless Sawyer, the abandonment-forged rogue, distraught over departed and dead friends, best expressed the episode's tenor of heartbreak and disorientation. He also best embodied its nervous subtext. The producers have joked that leaving Sawyer half naked for the whole episode was meant to pleasure those for whom the genre stuff might be displeasing. Yet he also stands for a show that took the risk of exposing a big part of itself to the audience a part that it has often had to keep hidden for fear of being rejected. I will try as much as possible to keep this all in order as it happened in the episode and I will save parts from “The Lie” for a separate post. Like I said, I’m going to try.

Marvin Candle - Not Exactly a Morning Person

Chang is all bitter about getting out of bed when his alarm blared at 8:15 (dun dun DUN!) AM. He puts on a little Willie Nelson ("Shotgun Willie" from 1973) and in a not-so-subtle shout-out to the speech Daniel Faraday would make a few scenes later, the record starts skipping. Our opening scene this season is a mirror of Desmond's morning routine from S2. But while Desmond was a morning person, Candle is clearly not off to a good start. Dharma's making him shave with those miserable Shick disposable razors, and he's bitching fiercely at everyone he sees. We then see a baby who we can only assume is the same baby that was crying off-screen in the video that aired at Comic-Con this past summer (which you really need to stop everything and watch if you haven't yet, because it's very much related to what's going on so far this season). In that video, Chang indicated that the infant was a boy, which made a lot of people jump to the conclusion that it must be none other than our favorite ghost buster, Miles. The theories contend that once Miles grew up, he blamed Ben for killing Daddy Chang in the purge and is now out for revenge. But how did Miles himself escape the island and the purge? Apparently Chang is without his wedding ring in later videos so perhaps his wife divorced him and took their son with her; assuming it was possible to leave the island. If this theory about Miles is true, it would certainly give a whole different twist to the words he shouted at Ben in "Eggtown": "Do not treat me like I'm one of them... like I don't know who you are ... and what you can do!" I thought that Miles and Ben had some sort of history during that scene, the one that concluded with Miles demanding the $3.2 million to forget he saw Ben.

Anyway, back to Marvin Candle who has important work to do, yet he's annoyingly tasked with creating another bullshit Dharma orientation tape. He couldn't care less about 'gathering intelligence on the island's hostile indigenous population', or about the wanna-be Sawyer cameraman, whose haircut and facial hair offer us visual duplicity, right from the start. Candle is summoned to the place where he knows the real work is being done. You'd think he might want to oversee this site more closely: sweaty guys with giant drills are one centimeter away from puncturing an unlimited energy source. After explaining how close they all came to instant oblivion, Candle's only too happy to bring the ignorant foreman up to date on the intricacies of time travel. He does this out of frustration, but mostly he does it because it allows him to not-so-subtly deliver to us the big rule of the upcoming season: Nothing from the past can be changed. The 'wow' moment in the opener is the appearance of Daniel, who we realize is back in the 70's and dressed in a Dharma jumpsuit. The question isn't how he got there, the question is why. Faraday obviously plans to do something, and he's infiltrated Dharma to learn the status of the frozen donkey wheel.

It Happened Because You Left, Jack

Back at the funeral parlor, Ben gives Jack the final guilt-ridden push to get going. Unlike Marvin Candle, Jack has the Gillette Mach 3. He quickly ditches the sub-commander beard as Ben goes over the plan to retrieve Hurley, Sun, Sayid and Kate. Aaron's name is conspicuously absent from this list. Now I know many of us don't like Jack, but, I find his jittery ruin relevant and his redemption yearning poignant. Bemoaning his god-awful life, Jack moaned: ''How did this happen?'' Ben snapped: ''It happened because you left.'' Two interpretations. (1) Sarcasm. Ben's basically saying: You know, if you stayed on the Island, things would be different. (2) Something more cosmic. Ben's matter-of-fact declaration combined with Richard Alpert telling John Locke that to save the island, he had to bring the Oceanic 6 back poses the question: What really caused the island to vanish? Was it the frozen donkey wheel or was it actually the Oceanic 6? Could it be that the very act of leaving so disrupted the predestined flow of history that it knocked the island offline? And can you explain to me what I just said? More ambiguous line readings open to multiple interpretations: Ben asked Jack if Locke had spelled out exactly what had gone down on the Island after they left. Jack: Nope. Ben: ''Well, I guess we'll never know.'' Do you think the Machiavellian maestro is truly that clueless or do you think he knows stuff and it serves his interest to make Jack think he doesn't? Think this through. The premiere gave us the answer to Ben's probing inquiry: After Jack and company bailed, the remaining castaways started ricocheting through time. The opening sequence, in fact, revealed that at least Faraday is destined to make a stop in the mid-seventies Dharma Initiative past perhaps right about the time Ben and his widowed father arrived on the island. If this is where/when the season is going and if the rest of the time traveling castaways will be joining Faraday in the Dharma heyday the implication is clear: Ben has probably known the castaways or known about them since he was a kid! Now, although he's left before, Ben was always able to go back to the island. This marks the first time in his life where the island has gone on without him, and that alone makes Ben himself a little bit lost.

See You in Another Life

Locke gets zapped through time alone, squinting up at the sky in the now quintessential rain-soaked LOST scene. Notice how the rest of the cast members meet together on a sunny beach: it's only Locke that gets reborn through the use of the rain metaphor. John Locke is slowly evolving into his destined role as leader of the Others. The island, or Jacob, has chosen him for this task. To begin this metamorphosis, Locke is made to shed his previous life and start anew and as he skips through the island's different time points, I have a hunch he's going to inherently start to know things in the creepily omniscient way of Benjamin Linus.

Sawyer - Kicking Ass, Shirt or No Shirt

As much as Faraday has grown on me, his reluctance to explain things has always chewed my ass. Thank God for Sawyer, who after four full seasons is finally done following people blindly through the jungle simply because someone says 'there's no time to explain'. Sawyer literally slaps the answers out of Daniel. It's as if the slap suddenly marks a mystery-resolving turning point: answers come pouring forth - GOOD answers - and for once it's wholly satisfying. The island has moved through time, and their camp is not built yet or as Daniel puts it, perhaps they themselves have moved through time. There are arguments for both sides.

If it were the island moving through time and the terrain physically changing, wouldn't the inhabitants have changed with it? Wouldn't our characters have gotten older or younger just as the trees grew taller or shorter? Somehow the 815'ers and freighter four are skipping through time in their current physical bodies (and clothing). This is completely unlike Desmond's mental trip through time last season, where his mind could only jump into places his body happened to be in that era. This season's characters can skip forward and backward, their position on the island fixed, interacting with the places and people of whatever time period they happen to be thrust into. Of course, the possibility also exists that they're time-tripping within their own minds, much like Minkowski, and physically they're all lying comatose on the beach in the island's current timeline but that's a can of worms I choose not to open just now.

Yet if it's the island that's moving beneath them, our main characters are somehow keeping their memories. It seems that the other (and Other) inhabitants of the island are not. If you watch, I don't think the other inhabitants can even see the flash of light coming. Richard sees it when Locke is initially zapped (maybe because it was the originating timeline), but doesn't even squint when John quantum-leaps the second time. Ethan makes no notice of it as it goes off behind him just as he's about to shoot Locke. But the clincher comes when Richard later tells John "You'll be moving on soon", meaning that it's Locke that's moving and Richard is staying put. So as Faraday says, they've been 'dislodged' from time. To me, this makes our stranded islanders ten times more interesting than the Oceanic six. Suddenly we can be shown anything and everything that's happened on the island: it's like the ultimate unlimited flashback, we've waited the whole show for. Any mystery answered at any time. We see the Beech craft crash, we see Ethan again, Ana Lucia shows up, Libby says hi - the writers can use this as a vehicle to show us every single thing we've always wondered about, from how the Black Rock got on the island to the origins of the four-toed statue. As long as our characters keep skipping we're treated to front row seats for all of the important events, landmarks, and happenings in the island's entire history. The Enchantment Under the Sea dance has officially started.

Widmore - Playing Sun or Getting Played?

En route to L.A., Sun is pulled out of the airport queue and tossed into a security holding room. This time, Widmore has waylaid her. Since he's been searching for the island for 20 years, a detail dropped by Miles, he wanted to accept Sun’s offer. Sun's confrontation with Widmore didn't tell us much, but when she revealed her motive of wanting Ben dead I thought it completely disingenuous. Sun doesn't care about Ben. Sure, Ben has been a bad man, but was he responsible for Jin's death? No. That was Keamy whose bomb blew up the freighter, which belonged to Widmore, who wanted everyone on the Island dead. It should be Chuck's blue blood that Sun should want spilled. Maybe she's playing double agent, pretending to be a Ben Hater but really a Ben Friend tasked with spying on their mutual enemy. She's trying to use Widmore to get back to the island, and to do that she needs to convince him they've got common interests. Widmore seems way too smart to be played like that. Still, if he knows the same things Ben knows about getting back there, he knows that Sun will be needed. As the two of them play this game, I'm guessing Sun wants to know what happened to Jin and/or believes Jin to still be alive. Compared to what's happening to Sawyer's crew, this storyline is about as interesting as Paolo discovering the toilet still worked.

Loading Your Dishwasher Knife Side Up? Pure Bad Ass

I suppose we'll never get tired of watching Sayid kicking the crap out of people. It seems his picnic-on-the-beach days are officially over. Sayid has abandoned romance and elevated himself to James Bond-like levels of super human bad ass ability: killing at will, avoiding fried foods, and generously tipping his chicken waitress. Sayid effectively tells Hurley that Ben Linus is evil, going as far as to make sure that Hurley never listens to him again (whatever happened between Ben and Sayid will be saved for a flashback in a forthcoming episode I suspect). This immediately struck me as a mistake and we later see that it'll throw serious kinks in Ben's plan to get the O6 back to the island. Sayid's rage toward Ben is driven by the death of Nadia, and by the vile things Ben had him do. Just as we the viewers are trusting in Ben's master plan to reunite everyone, it appears that Sayid's mistrust in him is going to make getting everyone back to the island a season-long process.

The safe house was not so safe. ''You know, maybe if you ate more comfort food you wouldn't have to go around shooting people,'' Hurley told Sayid, whose unrepentant attitude after killing out of sheer paranoia was truly disconcerting. Sayid is motivated by a danger-detecting Spider sense that's been on mega-tingle since the dubious death of Jeremy Bentham, a.k.a. 'He Who Shall Not Be Openly Referred To As John Locke'. Hurley delivers one of the episodes best lines with "I got to get me a cool code name." Sayid got the best of his shadowy enemies; he tossed one off the balcony and impaled another on some dirty cutlery but not before getting shot with a tranquilizer dart. Hurley was caught on phone-cam with the bad guy's gun in his hand and incriminating blood-red ketchup on his shirt: Oops. ''I never should have left the island!'' he cried, carting his snoozing bodyguard to the car. On the run, nowhere to go, madness encroaching, no grease bomb to comfort him. The Curse, renewed. Important here is that Sayid's would-be assailants have been tasked with bringing him back alive (unfortunately for them). Assuming they work for Widmore, he realizes that Sayid (and Hurley) are an integral part of once again finding the island. Possessing them would also bring Ben out of the woodwork.

Run Kate, Run!

Yeah, we know the drill. The safety and security of Kate and Aaron’s fraudulent post-island lives officially implode with the arrival of lawyers employed by a mystery client demanding genetic proof that Claire's kid was Kate's son. Busted! Kate and Aaron are the last of the O6 still secure in the lair of the real world, so triggering Kate's flight instinct was the surest way to jolt her into leaving that comfort zone. The possibility of her losing Aaron would be the one thing that would get Kate to consider going back to the island too which is why I'm pretty sure Ben sent those men to her house (or maybe Sun?). There is no paternity lawsuit. Ben's a sneaky bastard! The camera focus on the framed picture of Jack reminded us that Kate's heart is in flux. But after last year's smooch and whisper with Sawyer in the chopper, one of the most genuinely romantic moments in a show that has often struggled to generate credible love story drama, I can't imagine her really winding up with Jack.

The Island's Always Had a Bad Case of the Time Hiccups

I think the island has been held relatively in place, and time, for most of the show, but has been showing increasing signs of 'skipping' for some time now. Most likely this began after the electromagnet was destroyed. Even before Ben turned the wheel we've seen deliberate and sometimes instant changes in the fabric of LOST; i.e. the picture frames in Miles' flashback, the food rearranging itself in Ben's fridge, the clocks that skip ahead hours in mere minutes. Most dramatic of all was the lantern in Jacob's cabin shattering and then re-forming itself as time rewound itself in that particular scene. These things are now somewhat explained through Daniel's skipping record player analogy, and for the most part can be put to rest. Questions remain however, as to why things would change in what is supposed to be a character's off-island flashback.

John Locke and the Quest Destiny

When we last left, Ben had anointed The Man of Faith, the new leader of the Others. But his inauguration was rudely interrupted by time warp fluctuations. Locke and the Left Be hinders first landed on the day the drug plane arrived; the one that brought Mr. Eko's brother and all those smack-stuffed Virgin Mary idols. (According to Lostpedia.org, this event occurred in the late 1990s.) Then, after getting shot in the leg by Tom Cruise's Cousin (better known as Ethan the Other, and yes, William Mapother is Tom Cruise‘s cousin) with what appeared to be an old, WWII-era gun, Locke zipped forward in time to a point in island history after Boone's death; we know this, because the drug plane was no longer in the trees and the hatch was cratered. (It's possible that Locke had traveled to a point wayyy in the future of our story: when he was met by Richard Alpert, the ageless Other knew the O6 had successfully made it back to civilization and that bringing them back would save the island.) Alpert tended to Locke's gunshot wound and gave him an old compass; the same compass that Alpert used in his testing of young Locke in ''Cabin Fever.'' Then, before he swooshed away; this time backward in time to the early 2000s and the Desmond era of the hatch; Alpert told Locke that to become the savior that the island needs him to be he must die! Loved the buzz-kill irony and the deadpan humor: LOCKE: ''What is that?'' ALPERT: ''It's a compass.'' LOCKE: ''What does it do?'' ALPERT: ''It points north, John.''. The Jesus/sacrificial lamb/resurrection foreshadowing is irresistible. For now, let us note that like many of the other characters, Locke looped back to his LOST beginnings, a maimed man crashed to earth who has an encounter with island magic that puts him on a hero's journey and requires a major leap of faith. It is happening again. Maybe here, in the island's past, Locke will find the resolution and fulfillment he couldn't get in the island's present.

Faraday stated that the main "rule" of time-shifting is that it's impossible to change the past. If something didn't happen the first time around, it can never happen then we see Locke encounter Ethan at the site of the newly crashed drug plane. How could that meeting have transpired? Wouldn't Ethan have freaked out when he sees Locke again at the survivors camp after the crash in 2004?

What Comes Around Goes Around

Great line! Richard's character keeps getting better and better, and his meeting with Locke solidifies the fact that characters themselves are skipping through the island's timeline. As it turns out, items can travel with them too since the bullet Ethan fired into Locke's leg is still there when Richard finds him in the future. Despite repeated admonishments from Daniel and Ms. Hawking, this is the first nagging indication (this season anyway) that time can in fact be changed. If everything that happens is destined to happen anyway, why would Richard be running hell-bent through the jungle to give Locke important information between time skips? It can be argued of course, that that's how it 'happened' the first time so it's just happening all over again. Still, everything points to the fact that the O6 were definitely not supposed to leave. This very statement seems to infer that there was an original scenario (the desired scenario?) where they actually did NOT leave. Only by bringing them back can the island's current situation be 'fixed', but perhaps there's another way. Maybe changing the fact that they left at all can accomplish the same thing? In the end Locke asks how he's going to convince Jack, Kate and the others to come back at all. His track record isn't exactly good with them at this point. Richard responds by telling him that he'll have to die to accomplish this, which is something we already know. Why he has to die, or how that happens, are questions for the end of the season.

Daniel Faraday and the Broken Record

We now know why LOST decided to put a guy on the island with time travel expertise. Mr. Explain-It-All likened the castaways' quantum leaping to a skipping record, and the image I got was a dislodged record needle bouncing across vinyl, trying to find a new groove to settle into. That certainly fits the episode we saw, wherein the island and/or the castaways moved erratically through history. LOST gave us another example of a skipping record that was a little different: Dr. Pierre Chang's stuck-in-a-rut ''Shotgun Willie'' album. Over and over, we heard the refrain: ''You can't make a record.'' If this, too, was a time-travel analogy, it more accurately describes a different form than the one modeled by the episode's narrative. ''Shotgun Willie'' better exemplified the whole time loop thing, where one experiences the same events over again, à la Bill Murray in Groundhog Day or Desmond in ''Flashes Before Your Eyes.'' I wonder if this is where LOST is headed once the skipping stops and a groove is found: a twisty time loop tale, in which we witness the castaways in the past helping to generate the island history that sets the stage for their future drama. Faraday's presence in the Dharma Initiative '70s suggests as much. Or maybe we'll see the castaways brought back to the point when Oceanic 815 crashed and experience anew their whole saga.

You'd Best Explain Why You You've Been Banging on my Door, Brotha!

A bunch of stuff happens here. First, Charlotte's nosebleed. This is an ominous indication that all this time skipping might have bad repercussions later on. Maybe Charlotte's in need of a constant, but that doesn't make much sense because it seems that Faraday could easily fill that role. Her headaches and memory loss later in the 2nd episode are in indication that things are 'getting worse' which are Daniel's exact words from last season during the card flipping scene. Next, Daniel leaves his pack behind. This doesn't seem intentional, but it's important because it allows him an excuse to see Desmond alone. The fact that Sawyer didn't meet Desmond at the door can be attributed to Daniel's statement of "If it didn't happen, it can't happen" but it can also be chalked up to Desmond needing about 20 minutes to put his protective suit on. At this point, Faraday tosses aside all previous assertions that time cannot be changed and suddenly tells Desmond that he's special. He alone is uniquely qualified to change time, and for some reason the rules don't apply to him. I've theorized in past seasons that this is true, and that it happened the moment Desmond turned the failsafe key. Being at the epicenter of that event launched Desmond on his first trip to what seemed to be an alternate timeline (not a past or future timeline) in “Flashes Before Your Eyes“. In that episode he was completely certain of the outcome of a soccer game, yet the game ended differently than he remembered it. This was the first indication that things could be changed. Even as Ms. Hawking showed up to convince Desmond that they could not, he went on to keep Charlie from dying. Course correction might've killed him in the end, but not before Charlie (who was suspiciously the only person who could've done so) turned off the jamming device. This led to the freighter finding the island, and the O6 being able to leave. It can be argued that Desmond caused all of this to happen, through his knowledge of future events. He can, and already has, changed the rules. Desmond is identified as the magic person who can 'make his own kind of music'.

So, can the past be changed or can‘t it? Faraday says “No.”, and then attempts to do just that. Apparently, “Fate” has rules and lots of them, and not all of them are spelled out, so many questions we may have about time travel on LOST remain unanswered, for now. For example: Can the castaways interact with their past selves? (Maybe this explains the whispers: they belong to time traveling castaways observing their past selves, but forbidden by Fate from being seen or interfering.) But we were told and shown there are exceptions to the rules, given to those who are ''uniquely and miraculously special'' and Desmond is one of those people. And because he is, Faraday was able to send Future Off-Island Desmond an SOS via Past On-Island Desmond. I initially thought ''Hey! Shouldn't Island Desmond remember Daniel Faraday?'' After all, in ''The Constant,'' we saw Pre-Island Desmond visit Pre-Island Daniel at Oxford. But that was an example of mental projection time travel, not physical time travel, and I'm guessing LOST adheres to the controversial perspective that memory resides not in the physical structure of the brain, but in the electrical currents of consciousness. Anyway, Faraday told island Desmond to find his mother and suddenly, 'Hiding Out From Charles Widmore on Penny's Boat In The Present' Desmond woke up recalling this island event. That Desmond had no previous recollection of this encounter, and you would think he would. All of this leads to this conclusion: the past CAN be changed, but probably not in any way that creates catastrophic paradox. Time is like a street; you can move forward or in reverse, but you can't create a new street. Sawyer wants to take advantage of their flashes to warn Jack and the others away from the boat, but "If we try to do anything different, we will fail, every time. Whatever happened, happened." When Faraday tells Sawyer they can't stop the flashes and Sawyer asks "Then who can?", the shot cuts to a fallen, hapless Locke, and our narrative has come into play again; maybe Locke can stop the flashes. But we should be careful of believing every suggestion; after the O6 is found by Penny and they decide they have to lie, Hurley resists, and proclaims to Sayid that someday Sayid will need Hurley's help, and he won't get it. Of course Hurley goes well out of his way to help Sayid. The beer Frank brought up is called Jekyll Island Red Ale; it's a fake beer named after an island off the coast of Georgia, but it also recalls Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's famous tale of science and dissociate identity, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Hurley wants to be a Hyde, but his Jekyll always wins, quite the opposite of Stevenson's Jekyll.

Oh, and how much do you wanna bet that Daniel Faraday's Oxford mom is that lovely lady from Desmond's previous time travel jaunt, the one and only Ms. Hawking?

Did you notice that both of Pierre Chang's arms were fine and functioning?

When you saw all the Dharma people milling outside in everyday garb, and then saw the Dharma folks on the film set wearing Dharma jumpsuit, and then saw Chang pout like a petulant actor, did you find yourself wondering: How much of The Dharma Initiative was legit and how much of it was total theater?

The last issue I want to bring up about Faraday is that, judging from the opening scene of the episode, it looks like he's either been time-jumping without the rest of the group, or has been able to break away from them for extended periods of time in order to sneak around with the DHARMA crew.

Well that wraps up "Because You Left" I will be back with comments on "The Lie" soon.

I have to give credit to Vozzek69, Luhks, Erika, J.Wood, Doc Jensen, Dark UFO, and the ODI for portions of this post.