Previously on LOST: The Candidate
Previously on LOST is a weekly column recapping and analyzing each episode from the final season of Lost. (Warning: May contain spoilers!)
“The Candidate” was easily the most eventful episode this season. Unfortunately, it was a case of quantity over quality, with most of the emotional events failing to strike a chord, while others left me scratching my head.
The first half of the episode got all of the major characters to the dock on Hydra Island ready to board the submarine and “get the hell off that island.” All major players made it aboard except for Claire and Flocke. However, the tide quickly turned when the Losties found out that the Man In Black had pulled the old switcheroonie on Jack and managed to get some C4 in the sub. Jack made a pretty convincing argument that the bomb or Locke couldn’t kill them. Sawyer wouldn’t hear anything of it, and failed to disarm it, causing its detonation.
The fate of the Losties was sealed in an action many are calling Sayid’s “redemption”. Sacrificing himself to get his friends as far away from the explosion as possible. For me, this was a complete joke. Was he was faking his “sickness” to gain the trust of MiB all along? After watching this, I don’t even know who or what Sayid was supposed to be this season. I would have cared more if Sayid had never been revived, and made his decisions clearly based on his own will rather than adding the confusion of the sickness. It’s a long shot, but I hold out hope that the writers can still explain his erratic behaviour this season.
The death of Sun and Jin was another bust in my opinion. I think that the writers blew their load having them reunite the last episode. They had been together for all of five minutes’ screen time before they died, which gave the scene no weight whatsoever. It might be a personal bias, but Jin speaking English still doesn’t fit to me (poor post-production audio dubbing didn’t help). I thought the writers were going to deliver when he started speaking Korean, which immediately felt better to me and added to the moment. My satisfaction quickly evaporated when they returned to English for their final words and more so when the scene concluded with a series of shots, that played like a parody of Titanic. From the camera movement through the water filled cabins, to the shot of Sun and Jin’s hands drifting apart, this was just plain lame.
If that wasn’t enough, the four survivors: Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sawyer, had a nice “let it all out” cry on the beach, just to remind the viewer that the submarine scene was supposed to be sad, in case you didn’t realize while you were watching it. I understand that the actions made sense for the characters having been through it, but it was acted very poorly. Personally, the only reason I was sad is that it looks like Lapidus might be gone for good.
For me, the flash sideways was the most entertaining part of the episode. Jack and Locke are the two most important characters in the show and it’s always interesting to see them interact. I thought the paralyzed Anthony Cooper device worked well, especially the idea that in the alternate reality Locke’s father got hurt before Locke could ever find out he was a con artist. The internet is abuzz with theories that the airplane crash device was introduced so that Alt-Locke can fly everybody back to the island. I was hoping that we would find out that Cooper’s paralysis was the result of a driving accident when he blanked out and crashed, which would have tied in to the appearance of Locke’s father on the island in Season 3, which is still a complete mystery (remember Ben’s magic box?).
A lot of people seem to like this episode just because a lot happened. While I can appreciate an action-packed episode, the scenes just didn’t deliver. Let’s put it this way: I will remember enjoying the episode where Sawyer needed glasses more than the episode where four of the main characters died.
The best and worst thing about LOST is that if the last three episodes are on par with the previous seasons, all will be forgotten.
Discussion Topics
- Lapidus, Jin, Sayid… who’s dead, who’ll be back?
- Will Locke fly back to the island?
- What’s the consensus on Sayid’s “sickness”?
-->