4 posts tagged “lost”

Last night's Lost season finale was a lot of fun. We got to see time travel (maybe), heroic sacrifice, reunions, death and destruction.  Highlights below (spoilers ahoy):

• Lots of running around back and forth by everybody.  Locke, Hurley and Ben escape from Keamy's team and are able to access the Orchid Station.  Locke and Ben attempt to "move" the island.
• We see the Oceanic 6 make their escape from the island.  Unfortunately, they leave Michael and Jin probably dead, and the remaining survivors (including Juliet and Sawyer) on the island.  Lapidus the helicopter pilot aids their escape.
  
• Heroic sacrifices galore (Desmond, Jin and Michael attempt to disable the bomb on the freighter, Sawyer gives up his seat on the rescue helicopter so everyone else can make it, Juliet stays behind to make sure everyone else makes it onto the freighter).
• We see how Ben escapes and time travels to the future in his Dharma parka.  We also see him use the "Frozen Donkey Wheel" to enable the island to be "moved".
• We see Claire haunt Kate and Christian Shepard as Michael's angel of death.  Mr. Eko returns as an unseen ghost haunting Hurley.  We see Michael and Jin probably killed by an explosion on the freighter.  Ben causes this by killing Keamy in a selfish act of revenge (Keamy had a kill switch attached to his heart; when he died, the bomb on the freighter went off).
  
• Miles, the man who can see dead people, wants to stay on the island.  He reveals that Charlotte may have other reasons for wanting to come to the island (she may have been born on the island).  Meanwhile, Daniel was shuttling a group back to the freighter when the island was "moved" and may have been caught in its effects.
• Happiest moment of the two hour episode is when Desmond reunites with Penny, who helps the Oceanic 6 create their cover story. To protect the island and its inhabitants from Charles Widmore, the Oceanic 6 lie to the world about what happened to them.
• In the future, everyone hates Jack for what happened in the wake of their rescue (Sun hates him for letting Jin die on the freighter, Kate hates him for his abandonment of her and Aaron, Hurley hates him for his abandonment of him at the insane asylum).  Sayid is still killing people on Ben's behalf.  Walt (having grown very tall) visits Hurley at the insane asylum.  I get the feeling he will have a role in their return.
  
• We finally discover who was in the coffin at the end of last season (Jeremy Bentham, a.k.a. John Locke).  We see Jack and Ben plot how they will get the Oceanic 6 together to go back to the island (and on to Season 5).

Overall, this was very satisfying.  We see all the loose ends from last season's finale tie together nicely with this season's.  They haven't answered all of the questions, but they've kept it interesting.

The Office Season Finale: That was a funny episode; a huge improvement over the last few episodes.   A lot happened this week (SPOILERS AHEAD):

• Toby leaves Dunder-Mifflin to go to Costa Rica, but never tells Pam about his crush on her.  Michael can't withhold his irrational hatred of Toby, even as he leaves.
  
• Toby's replacement, Holly (played by Oscar nominee Amy Ryan), starts to like Michael (is that even possible?) while helping "mentally challenged" Kevin (the funniest part of the episode)
  
• Phyllis takes over for Angela as the office party planner and does an excellent job
• Pam gets accepted at her graphic design school, but will need to spend three months away from Jim in New York
  
• Jim, realizing that all of the best moments in his relationship with Pam have occurred at the Office, decides to propose to Pam.
  
• Andy proposes to Angela, although at the end of the episode, Angela ends up in Dwight's arms
• Ryan gets caught double-counting sales to Dunder-Mifflin Infinity and gets arrested.  Over the course of the season, he was shown being an arrogant jerk, so this was deserved.  Ryan was putting pressure on Jim to make sales, so Jim closes some deals and pushes back on someone in management for the first time.
  
• Jim chickens out of proposing to Pam because he doesn't want to steal Andy's thunder
  
• Michael talks to Jan and finds out she is having a baby via in vitro fertilization (isn't that expensive?  Jan still isn't working).  Michael agrees to be Jan's Lamaze partner.
  

Great ending to what was, unfortunately, an uneven season.  The best part of the season was the stories of the various couples (Jim & Pam, Michael & Jan, Dwight & Angela).  The writers seem to be running out of office politics types of stories, but we'll see if they have any juice left after they launch the spin-off series next spring.

Lost:  This was a great set-up to the Season Finale in two weeks.  It's kind of like The Two Towers in the Lord of the Rings trilogy where all of the chess pieces get moved around the board.  What I liked (SPOILERS AHEAD):

• We see a flash forward with the Oceanic 6 arriving in Hawaii after their rescue.  It was nice to see them greeted by their families.
• Hurley, Locke and Ben working together as a team to save everyone on the island.  I like how Ben is still an untrustworthy bastard, even if he tries to be a hero.
• We find out the danger posed by the freighter (lots of C4 explosives on board) and Keamy's team of mercenaries.  Daniel Faraday is aware of the danger of the Orchid station from his time travel adventures (we don't know how, just that he knows).
  
• The Sawyer and Jack team-up to try to stop Keamy's team.
  
• We see hints of the future of the Oceanic 6: Hurley and his mental health issues, Jack and the trauma with his late father, Sayid and Nadia reuniting, Kate bonding with Aaron, and Sun resolving her previously unspoken conflict with her evil father.  Jack also discovers that Claire was his half-sister.
  
• Daniel and Sayid start to take some of the Oceanic 815ers back to the freighter (they didn't know it was rigged with explosives).
• Sayid and Kate get captured by Richard Alpert and the Others.  It's going to be fun to see the war between Widmore and Ben play out.
• I suspect that Juliet will be one of those killed in the finale.  She's not one of the Oceanic 6 and her story seems to be coming to an end.  She lost out in the Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet love quadrangle.  Ben "owns" her, but Widmore seems to be killing off anyone of value to Ben (his "daughter", for instance).
  

Overall, an excellent episode with lots of intrigue.  I can't wait for the finale.

The Office: It's still a bit uneven.  I think the strike hurt the comedies the most.  While I enjoyed parts of the episode (mostly Andy's incompetence on the golf course), it was mostly flat.  Nice development for Pam and Jim to take more control over their careers.  Otherwise, it was uneventful.  Hopefully, the season finale will improve upon these last few episodes.

Lost:  They're gonna move the island?!!!  How is that supposed to work?  More mythology, more better.  We don't necessarily get more answers in this Locke-centric episode, but you get a lot of head scratchers as to what's going on.  Like:

• Richard Alpert (and Matthew Abbadon) was watching Locke from his birth and monitored him while he was growing up
  
• Locke's birth and life story closely mirror Ben's (premature birth, outcast status growing up, etc.)
• Locke was always a man of faith and rejects science (via the Science Camp run by Mittelos) when he was a teenager
  
• The freighter seems to exist in the past compared to the island, as the doctor has just now been killed (but has already washed ashore the island)
  
• Horace Goodspeed, the Dharma hippie who got Ben and Ben's father onto the island, built the appearing/disappearing cabin of Jacob
• Jacob didn't show up, but Christian Shephard did
• Claire may/may not be dead, as she is communing with her and Jack's definitely dead father, Christian
• Ben and Locke have reversed roles, where Locke is now the chosen one of the island; also, Ben was not the leader of the Others during the Purge.  They didn't say who was.
  
• Sayid to the rescue!  Sayid heads back to the island to save everyone while Desmond's destiny lies on a different path (aboard the freighter waiting for Penny?)
  

Overall, an excellent episode that sets up the three-part season finale where we see the Oceanic 6 come home.

In the episode of Lost last night, we find out how Michael ends up on the freighter.  Overall, a pretty good episode.  More evidence of what a manipulative bastard Benjamin Linus is.  Loved the weirdness of how the island prevented Michael from committing suicide twice (the car crash and the gunshot to the head).  I have no idea who to believe is responsible for the faked Oceanic 815 crash at the bottom of the ocean.  It's a shame we have to wait another month before they conclude this season.