Lost: How Hard Is It To Pull A Trigger, Folks?!

I don’t usually post Spoiler Warnings on my Lost posts, because I figure any good discussion of a show after the show has aired will have spoilers in it and most reasonable people could, would and should expect that without the post’s author holding their hand. Tonight is different. Tonight’s episode was the season finale and has big stuff that I’m going to talk, whine, laugh or grouse about. And I don’t want any of you to read this post before watching the show and think to yourself “Wow. Now I hate Coble as much as Coble hates Jack.” Because you’d be wrong. No, you wouldn’t be wrong to hate me, but you would be wrong to think you hate me as much as I hate Jack. Because I truly don’t think it’s possible. Sometimes I wonder if I hate Jack as much as I hate Jack. And then I tell myself that hate is wrong. But then I tell myself that Jack is fictional, so hating him is not as wrong as hating, say, a blogger who spoils the Season Finale of Lost.

Okay. Here’s the part where I come clean and admit that I figured this was what was up. Between some article I read that said this season finale would “turn the flashback structure on its ear” and the fact that the title of this episode was Through The Looking Glass, I kinda gathered that this would be an episode where the Island part was flashback and the gritty real-world part was the Now.

What I didn’t expect was that the Real World Now part would be Requiem For A Dream. Do I pity Jack for being a suicidal alcoholic junkie? Are you kidding? Absolutely not. Leave it to Jack to suffer in the most self-absorbed way possible once he gets around to suffering. And now, on to the bullet points, because my thoughts are so jumbled and I can’t write in cohesive paragraph form right now. Ah! A tribute to the writers of Lost! An inability to create coherent connective tissue that ties together salient points! Anyway…on with it.

• Oh, John Locke! How you at last lived up to your namesake by forcing Jack to follow his free will and fall victim to the consequences which followed. While I admire the thematic philosophy behind your actions, I ask you. How hard is it to pull a trigger?

• Walt is now approximately forty-five. Nice try shooting him with a low camera angle, but no one is fooled. That kid is now discussing IRAs over golf at the club. Now either The Producers were trying to convince us that he was still a wee lad or the Mystery Of Walt’s Age is another Island conundrum.

• Back in The Now, Jack kept referencing his father as though Christian Shepherd (you know, I’ve never even bothered to touch on the symbolism of that name. Anyone else wanna give it a go?) were still alive. Now that means one of two things. Either Jack has gone round the twist entirely and is so clearly nutwhacky as to be disregarded OR the Island has worked some time-magic whereby Christian Shepherd returned alive with the rest of the Lostlings.

• A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the shots of Charlie being shot through with an arrow reminded me of St. Sebastian.And now again tonight, St. Sebastian shows up in two places. It’s the name of Jack’s hospital, a fact we glean from the voice-over news coverage of Jack’s It’s A Wonderful Life “Clarence” moment. Then we have the oblique reference when Mikhail, shot with an arrow, comes back to life long enough to blow Charlie’s porthole.  [diiiirty!]  So of course I think it’s important that we look at a few things about St. Sebastian.

1.  He is associated with healing during the plague.   So the island itself–which heals a variety of plagues–can be a figure of St. Sebastian.
2. He is the patron saint of soldiers and policemen–Sayid and Ana Lucia
3. He is of a class of saints known as athleta Christi, or Atheletes of Christ who are guardians of the heavens.  Remember Desmond running his race?
4. He is associated with resurrection, since he didn’t die after the arrows pierced him.

Clearly the writers have some import associated with St. Sebastian that they want us to know about.

•  I do give the writers credit for a couple of things.   It was nice that they made the key to disarming the switch a musical series that Charlie was the most likely to remember.   It answered the question of why they went to all the trouble to keep Charlie alive only to kill him now.  He served a purpose, much like Owen Meany.   Of course, if I were to serve a larger purpose I’d hope it’d be more dramatic than remembering the notes to “Good Vibrations.”     The other prop I give to the writers is the return of the Microbus.   Granted, I thought that episode stood on its own merits, but it was nice to feel like they weren’t just fooling around.

• I’m resisting the urge to whine overmuch about the whole “person who takes drugs for legitimate medical reasons becomes an addict by default” storyline, but I will gripe about my other pet peeve.   Yes, I realise Sawyer and Charlie were both trying to save Hurley by not letting him come along on their missions.  But WHY ON EARTH does his weight have to be the excuse BOTH TIMES?    Not only is it lazy writing, but it was also out of character for Charlie.

• Yay, Hurley saved the day.  Seriously, make the show about Hurley.

• Whose funeral was it that broke Jack up so badly?  I didn’t see the news clipping, and I realise it’s going to be yet another mystery that we’ll probably never have the answer to.   Part of me wants to assume that it was Ben.

• So which “he” does Kate need to get back to?  I guess we’re all to assume it’s Sawyer, but I’m sure that some big Sweeps Twist will reveal that it’s either Locke or some random guy like Hurley or Walt.

• Huh.  I wonder why Kate’s not a fugitive.  Or perhaps she is, and that’s why she had to meet Jack at Wayne and Garth’s Baberaham Lincoln plane-watching spot.

I swear, I think it was kind of a cool mindfrak that they stole from Battlestar Galactica’s Season 2 Finale  did the time jump, but I’m a bit miffed that there are going to be so many new mysteries on top of the old ones.  I mean, I’m still curious about the smoke monster, the polar bear, the Temple and Jacob.   Now I’ve got to start figuring out real-world stuff, too.   Oh well.   I reckon we’ll have fun with it when the show comes back.  In 2008.