Summary: In the flashsideways, Jack offers to fix Locke's back with a surgery but Locke refuses. Jack is unable to let it go and pursues Locke's history to his father, who was in the same accident as him. Jack talks to Locke about it and tries to get him to let go but Locke refuses. On the island, MIB arrives at Hydra Island and breaks the candidates out of Widmore's captivity. MIB finds C4 on the plane and decides they have to leave on the sub. Sawyer plans with Jack that Jack will push MIB in the water while the others escape in the sub. Widmore's men arrive and a shootout starts. Kate gets shot and Jack takes her into the sub. MIB and Claire fight back, but Sawyer leaves them out and gets the sub to leave. Jack finds a timed explosive in his bag and realizes MIB planned it out. He determines that MIB can't kill them and tells everyone to let the timer run down - they won't die. Sawyer doesn't listen and tries to defuse it, but it ticks down faster. Sayid takes the bomb and runs, the explosion kills him. The sub starts to sink and everyone tries to get out. Frank is knocked out by a door and is left in the sub. Sun is trapped by a heavy object and Jin stays behind with her. They both die. Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer are the only survivors. MIB realizes they survived and goes to finish the job.
The Good: This worked far better than most episodes this season. The island story moved at a rapid pace and was packed with excitement and drama at every turn, building up to a tremendous climax. I thoroughly enjoyed the build-up, as it set up a lot of the conflict for later in the episode. MIB makes a key point on why he should be trusted, Sawyer also has an excellent moment where he pretends to trust MIB before forming another plan to betray him. And we get some good scenes with Jack who remains loyal to his friends while maintaining that he will stay on the island to find his true purpose. Then the episode hits with its magnificent twist. The reveal of the bomb on the submarine is a real heart-stopping moment, set up beautifully by MIB's ominous statement that the "sub is the last place you want to be". The impact of the moment is fantastic and it makes MIB's plan crystal clear in just a few quick moments. He wasn't able to kill any of the candidates, so he only pretended to be their friends enough to be suspicious so that they would betray him and ultimately kill each other. It's a fantastic reveal that finally gives us an answer on MIB's motives, which are superbly well written. You get the sense that MIB has been turning candidates against each other for years on end and rubbing it in Jacob's face. On a more immediate note, the bomb reveal is massive because it comes off as an immediate death sentence. "Lost" has always been so good at these high stakes scenes where multiple characters have to come together and solve a problem under time pressure ("Pilot Part 2", "Orientation"), and this may very well be the best of them. The urgency is there as everyone argues, and all of the logical solutions are brought up and ruled out. Then we get into the fantastic heart of the scene as Jack gets a chance to show us how he has changed. The man of science has become the man of faith as he pieces together MIB's plan and tells everyone that nothing is going to happen. This is a monumental moment for Jack, one that directly calls back to his experience with Richard and the dynamite in "Dr. Linus". But in a tragic twist, Sawyer doesn't have any faith in Jack and refuses to listen. And why shouldn't he? The last time he listened to Jack, Juliet got killed. It fits that Sawyer doesn't listen, and it leads into the spectacular moment as the timer ticks even faster, with death becoming an inevitability. Such a fantastic scene with fantastic writing, one that had me at the edge of my seat the entire time. Everything that comes afterward doesn't quite live up to the high quality, but it is still excellent television. Being trapped on a sinking sub is a terrifying idea, and the horror of that idea brings a high level of suspense. The escape is filled with great moments like Hurley, in denial, going to get Sayid, and Jack being unwilling to leave Jin behind. And tragically, we lose some of the main characters in excellent scenes. I have my issues with all of the deaths (see: The Bad), but I still found most of them to be effective. Sayid's death is a good way to redeem the character, and having him give his life to save the others is in-line with what he would do. I just wish that Sayid had been given a stronger story that built up to this moment. Jin and Sun's death is brutally emotional, and carries most of the emotional weight of the episode. Their last words are well done, and having Jin go back to Korean was a beautiful little touch. The flashsideways story is also quite strong. It doesn't progress the plot forward, but thankfully the story is powerful and told so well that it overcomes that issue. The episode cut to the heart of both Jack and Locke and it built beautifully to their final scene at the end of the episode. It was wonderful to see Jack express how Locke helped him process his father's death, and Jack returning the favour to Locke was an outstanding moment. We also get to hear Locke's story of his own guilt, which was terrifically portrayed by Terry O'Quinn as always. Then of course we get a tremendous juxtaposition as this time it is Jack asking Locke to let go and take a leap of faith, and when Locke ultimately refuses, it is Jack who gets to say the memorable "I wish you had believed me". The whole scene was written extremely well. The flashsideways had some other strong moments. It was great seeing Anthony Cooper again, even if he was only there for a short scene. I also loved that Jack obsessed over Locke and went as far as to hunt down his father to get the truth. That's such a pure Jack move, and it contrasts nicely with how Jack has changed for the better on the island. I also loved Jack's scenes with Claire and him acknowledging her as family was touching. We were robbed of these scenes in the main storyline because of Claire's craziness and being left behind, so it was nice to get them in the flashsideways instead. The Bad: The deaths didn't quite deliver. One big reason is because the characters who died are still alive in the flashsideways, so the impacts of their deaths are lessened. Hell, we literally see Jin roaming the hospital hallway mere seconds after he dies! The specific deaths have individual reasons for not being as powerful as they should have been. Frank's death was as memorable and impactful as a wet fart. The character stuck around and did absolutely nothing for a season before dying an unceremonious death. Whatever. As I've been saying for the last while, Jin and Sun's death was lessened by how much the characters had been shoved to the side the past two seasons. And of course, I was waiting the entire time for Sun to tell Jin that he had a daughter and should have saved himself for her sake. But instead that fact was completely ignored, which was very sloppy writing. And again, I was really frustrated by the fact that they were speaking English rather than Korean. The scene of them talking in the cages felt awkward because it was in English instead of Korean. Lastly, we get to Sayid. Sayid's death was massively disappointing because of the amount of questions that died with him. I guess we never will learn more about the "infection", which makes me question why so much of season 6 was spent building up mystery around what happened to Sayid and Claire if we were never going to get answers. That's very sloppy. One big nitpick I have with the sinking sequence is that "Lost" has severely underestimated how difficult it is to swim while carrying somebody else. The submarine is sinking and far away from both the surface and the island (note that Frank never got instructions to get the submarine to go back towards the island!), so the distance to swim to get to land will be gigantic. Unfortunately, there is no way I can buy that anyone would have survived the sinking submarine because of this. The Unknown: Why were Widmore's fences offline at the start of the episode? Just how incompetent are his men? Also, we still don't know anything about why Widmore is here and what his motives are. With just 3 episodes left, I really hope we get more on him. Why isn't Locke able to kill the candidates? Is Jacob somehow protecting them? Is Frank actually dead? We didn't really see him die. I can't see nay way he would have survived though. Best Moment: The argument between Jack and Sawyer leading up to the explosion of the bomb, but you could choose many other scenes too. Fantastic stuff. Character of the Episode: Jack. Conclusion: This episode was a terrific example of how to do tension-based television, and it worked as a dramatic and climactic piece of television, while also having a strong emotional core. Sure there were some problems regarding the character deaths, but overall this is still superb stuff, and I hope that it's a sign of great things to come for the rest of the season. The best episode of the season so far. Score: 77
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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