'Lost': The Beginning of the End

Season 4: by most fans' count, the best of the seasons to date. But do they say that because it truly IS the best, or simply because it's the most recent? Keep that in mind as we pore through these final thirteen episodes in the We Have to Go Back series. I myself think it's indeed the strongest, but I'm trying to keep an open mind as I start the last leg of this long, Lost journey.

(Want to read my first take on this episode? Check out my recap.)

The Beginning of the End

4) In Short

"Show me the way to go home...I'm tired and I want to go to bed."

8) On the Island

Hurley's happy to hear from Jack that the plan worked, and that help is on the way. Poor freakin' Hurley. Kate returns from an unsuccessful search for Locke. Crazy Eyes Shephard declares that he'll kill Locke if he ever sees him again. Murder is momentarily put to the way side as the Lostaways revel in the possibility of leaving the Island. Rose gets a bit cheeky with Claire, saying she owes Charlie a little sumthin' sumthin' once they are back on the main land. Rose rules.

A bloody Ben begs Danielle to take Alex as far away as possible. He insists that everyone that stays will die. Calling her his "daughter" earns him a punch from Danielle. Most things said to Danielle tend to end that way.

On the beach, Hurley confesses to Bernard that he was once a millionaire. However, now that he's been declared "dead," the money will be gone, and he'll be free from the curse. He decides to do a cannonball into the ocean. Look closely, as this is the last moment Hurley might ever be happy.

As he returns to shore, he sees Desmond pulling up to shore in his boat. There's confused chatter all about. While Desmond tries to explain about the people on the boat, all Hurley wants to know about is the status of his friend. The group falls quiet as they realize Charlie is dead. As the group argues whether or not to call Jack to warn him, Hurley throws the walkie into the ocean. Well, then. Everyone grabs a gun and heads towards the radio tower.

Jack gets a call from Minkowski, who wants to talk to Naomi. Kate is shocked to see that her supposedly dead body is no longer there. Ben insists he has no idea where he she went. Jack hands torches out to the group so they can return back to the beach, but wants to follow a blood trail into the jungle. Kate thinks it might be a dummy trail, but Jack's having none of it. Ben watches the interaction with a keen eye before Jack leads him and Danielle after the trail.

At night in the jungle, Sawyer asks Hurley if he wants to talk about Charlie. Hurley's not in the talking mood. (Would Season 1 Sawyer ever ask that question? Such a nice character moment.) Hurley falls behind a bit from the group, and in his search for Sawyer, finds something else entirely: Jacob's cabin. Cue the Joey Lawrence: whoa.

Danielle tracks the blood to the end of its trail. Turns out Kate was right about Naomi. As Jack reaches for the phone, Ben reveals that he saw Kate snag the phone during her earlier goodbye with Jack. "At least someone knows what the hell they're doing," mutters Ben, in full on Season 4 snark mode. Snarky Ben is frakking awesome.

Kate is tracking the real trail when she gets a call. Damn telemarketers, always interrupting a good hunt. Minkowski's right peeved that he still can't talk to Naomi. As Kate hangs up, she notes blood dripping on her shoulder. She looks up, and Spider-Girl, aka Naomi, leaps from the trees and holds Kate at knifepoint. She answers Minkowski's call, but doesn't tell him about Locke's Knife-A-Pooloza. She instead tells him of her original accident upon crash landing. After sending him new coordinates, she begs Minkowski, "Tell my sister I love her." And then dies. Bye bye, Naomi. Look forward to your whispers.

Hurley approaches the cabin the way I approach a plate of vegetables: with great fear and trepidation. He peeks inside and sees many of the same things we saw inside the cabin in Season 3, with one huge freakin' exception: Christian Shephard, in his traditional blue suit and white sneakers, rocking contentedly inside the cabin. Jacob's eye comes into frame quickly, bespeaking terror, and Hurley flees from the scene.

Hurley runs away, but is shocked to find the cabin directly in front of him. As the door swings open, Hurley closes his eyes and wishes the cabin away. Much to his surprise, it works. Even more to his surprise, John Locke is standing right next to him. Hurley and Locke agree that Jack should never have called the boat. Locke tells him that if they don't convince Jack of this, then Charlie died for nothing.

The factions all meet up by a section of Oceanic 815 deep in the jungle. Oh boy, here we go. Hurley takes responsibility to tell Claire about Charlie. Kleenex time, y'all. Cry time's over, and now it's PUNCH TIME! Crazy Eyes hits Locke, and holds him at gunpoint. And amazingly, PULLS THE TRIGGER ON JOHN. Probably sensing this might happen, Locke previously took the bullets out of the gun. Damn, that's just...wow.

Locke and Jack have a standoff in front of the remaining Lostaways. Jack wants to go to the beach for rescue; Locke wants to hole up at New Otherton. Hurley starts the movement towards Locke, much to Jack's amusement. The remaining folks split roughly in half, with a suddenly Scottish Sawyer telling Kate he's off to do what he's best at: "Survivin'." Seriously, listen to him say that. He's flippin' William Wallace all of a sudden.

Jack and Kate wait in the rain alone, waiting for rescue. Thunder gives way to the sounds of a helicopter overhead. The two see someone parachute out of the chopper, and head towards the figure. A scrawny, bearded man takes off his helmet, and says, "Are you Jack?" FARADAY! HI! LOVE YOU! BIG FAN! (Oops, I'm getting ahead of myself.)

15) Off the Island

Ah, papayas. Peaceful papayas. And BOOM go the papayas as a familiar red car bursts through them, revealing that we're not on the Island but in Los Angeles. A clean-shaven Jack Shephard fixes himself a vodka-laced breakfast and mutters, "Damnit," while watching the Camaro careen all OJ Simpson-like down the highway.

When the cops eventually pull over the car after the Camaro crashes into a series of mirrors, who do we see but Hurley, looking like he's seen a ghost. He runs from the cops holding him at gunpoint. As they finally drag him away, he shouts, "I'm one of the Oceanic Six!" Oh, because we know exactly what that means at this point. Welcome back, Lost!

Big Mike, Ana Lucia's old partner, is interrogating Hurley in a holding cell. They are watching video footage of a convenience store, in which Hurley is spooked by something off-screen. Big Mike tells Hurley that he knew someone on Oceanic 815: everyone's favorite trigger-happy ex-cop. Strangely, Hurley denies ever meeting her.

After Mike leaves the room, Hurley sees what looks like an underwater view in the two-way mirror. In it, a hooded figure swims up, and places a hand that says, "THEY NEED YOU" up against the glass. The glass shatters, and water fills the room. Hurley calls for help, but when Mike returns to the room, it's returned to normal. Mike wants to know if Hurley's trying to get committed; Hurley cries with joy at hearing that option.

Hurley's back in the friendly confines of Santa Rosa, playing Connect Four. A nurse tells him he has a visitor, a man by the name of Matthew Abaddon. He tells Hurley that he's an attorney for Oceanic Airlines. He says Oceanic feels terrible about the recent events, and offers him an upgrade on behalf of the company. Something about Abaddon gives Hurley both the heebies AND the jeebies. After Abaddon fails to produce a business card, Hurley gets up to leave. As he stands, Abaddon asks, "Are they still alive?" The question stops Hurley dead in his tracks. He freaks out, and Abaddon slinks away. Creepy.

Hurley's outside, drawing a picture of an Eskimo outside an igloo. Hmmm. A fellow patient tells him to watch out: there's a man staring at him. That man? Charlie Pace. Whoa. He tells him not to freak out the way he did in the convenience store. Charlie looks pretty calm for a dead guy. "I am dead...but I'm also here," he says, in what feels to me like an insanely important line in terms of understanding how life/death works in Lost. And then, he asks Hurley what the five fingers said to the face. SLAP!

He asks Charlie if he knew he was going to die. Charlie says yes, and didn't tell his friend because he knew Hurley would try to stop him. He tells Hurley he still has work to do, that "they" still need him, but Hurley counts to five and Charlie disappears, not unlike Jacob's cabin on the Island. That's a touch more than coincidence.

Jack meets up with Hurley inside the Santa Rosa basketball court. The two exchange small talk; seems Jack's thinking about growing a beard. Oh, and he sucks at basketball. Hurley soon asks Jack the real reason he's there. Turns out, Jack's worried about Hurley's admittance into the facility, wondering if Hurley was going to "tell." As Jack leaves, Hurley tells him he made a mistake. He's sorry he went with Locke on the Island. But then he says something else that makes Jack stop in his tracks:  they were never meant to leave the Island, he says. The Island is going to do everything it can to make them come back, he insists. When Jack states they are never going back, Hurley seethes, "Never say never, dude."

16) The Mythology

In an Easter Egg on the Season 4 DVD, Damon Lindelof compares the reach of the Island to that of DC Comics' Plastic Man. In essence, it's a nominally stagnant entity that can reach out towards seemingly limitless distances depending upon the object it needs to grasp. In this episode, we start to see how that grasp plays out.

Not that the Island only started to reach out and touch someone/something when the Oceanic 6 left, but it's the first time we as viewers start to understand that there are forces at play off the Island that once seemed limited to Island-only activities. For instance, we know now that the accident upon the bridge in Season 3's "Through the Looking Glass" was a product of the Island keeping Jack alive. In "Meet Kevin Johnson," we'll see a host of ways in which the Island keeps Michael alive long enough to fulfill his potential destiny.

So if the Island's powerful enough to crash a car halfway around the world, and keep Michael's gun from successfully firing, why does it need any help at all? That seems like one powerful Island there, one that would do just fine on its own. Problem is, of course, that the Island itself (or the forces that we understand as those from the "light") is not strong enough to merely will things into existence. It requires a partner, if you will, in order to complete its tasks.

Let's revisit, yet again, one of my favorite moments in Lost history: when Ben Linus tells Jack Shephard that the good doctor has to WANT to do the spinal surgery that might save Ben's life. That element of free will is the necessary catalyst to ensure the Island's will be done. I couldn't help but think of this exchange as I watched Jacob literally open the door of the cabin to Hurley in this episode. It's not enough that Jacob needs help: Hurley has to want to help him.

The same fear that prevents Hurley from entering the cabin is the same one that keeps him from truly investing in Charlie's message from beyond the ether at Santa Rosa. If you notice, Hurley literally wishes away both the cabin and Charlie in this episode. The will that could aid the pair instead banishes them. So, in Season 5, we'll more than likely see an evolution on the part of the Oceanic 6 as they drift ever closer towards actively wanting to save the Island. It's that desire that will make all the difference.

23) The Moment

Oh hi, notChristian. Mind telling me what the hell you're doing inside Jacob's cabin?

42) In Retrospect

1. I can't state effectively how much I love the small scene between Sawyer and Hurley at night in the jungle. It's not showy, and it's almost over before you know it, but it establishes 1) how much Hurley can humanize anyone, and 2) just how far Sawyer's come on his time on the Island.
2. Speaking of Hurley's effect on people, note that in following Locke to New Otherton, they are really following Hurley. He's their moral compass at this crossroads.

108) In Summary

It's an episode devoted almost entirely to setting up the shortened season. The show needed to establish a new threat to the Lostaways, split them up into two pairs, and introduce the flash-forward mythology of the Oceanic 6. And on all fronts, it's successful.

However, there's something a touch mechanical to the whole endeavor, almost as if they had to figure out a way to shift the on-Island actions away from the former super objective (getting off the Island) towards the second, and more important super objective (saving the Island). Luckily, with the arrival of the Freighter Four, things are about to take off.

Leave your thoughts about this episode below!

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude, then peruses Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group. He also encourages you to join the all-new Zap2It's Guide to Lost Twitter feed. Pretty soon he'll have as many platforms as Hurley has crushed papayas.