503 Ratings

Here are the Nielsen ratings for the last episode of Lost:

503 – Because You Left

11.07  million viewers

4.8/11  18-49 viewers

I still believe that the viewership should be closer to 15 million than 10 million, but I admit that this 11.07 number is a good sign.  Almost all the people who watched the premiere came back this week.  That’s moderately unusual for Lost (see old ratings).  After hearing from some of my less young friends and relatives it seemed like the sci-fi portion of the show kinda scared and confused them.  Honestly I would expect that the average Lost viewer would be confounded by the last few episodes.  That doesn’t reflect badly on you or me though.  As a blogger and someone who reads blogs I don’t count myself as an average Lost viewer.  I believe that we make up a very vocal minority.I agree with Darlton’s outlook on this season, it’s risky.   But if they can keep this up then I think I can stop worrying so much about the ratings.

- izi

503 – Jughead

Review:

I’m trying my hardest not to be bitter about this episode.  It destroyed my two favorite theories (maybe).  If everything in this episode is to be taken at face value then Jacob is not Horace Goodspeed, and Daniel is not Charlotte’s father.  [sigh]

This episode centers mostly around Charles Widmore (notice, correct spelling of his name).  We see that he has effected more than we ever could have guessed (I presume).  He was on the island as a young man, and he was funding Daniel’s research, he also had connections to Daniel’s mother, who I believe is Ms. Hawking ans also the Ellie that we see in this episode.

This episode has a lot of Other/Hostile goodness.  We get to see Richard in what looks like a leadership role, but he insists that he isn’t at the top of the ladder.  We find out that all the people that we saw in The Lie were Hostiles.  What is conspicuously missing from this episode is the Dharma Initiative.  But in there place were other island intruders, this time it was the American government.  They were trying to test a hydrogen bomb on The Island, this seems almost tame compared to most of the mystrious intentions that people bring to the island.  It’s intensely interesting to watch The Hostiles back then, and I’m sure that seeing Widmore and Ellie (Ms. Hawking) back then was important.

Off the island Desmond and Penny have an unexepcted (for me) child.  They name him Charlie (cute at first, then strange after you think about it for a second).  Desmond tries to fulfill Daniel’s request to find his mother.  He finds out that Daniel was actually a mad scientist (shocking, I know) and that he left a woman unstuck in time.  He also met with Charles Widmore who told him to continue on to L.A. to find Faraday’s mother (1 huge clue towards Ms. Hawking).

For the reasons mentioned at the beginning I want to give this episode a low score, but this episode is chock full of info and I’m really enjoyingthe time travelling tour of the island’s history.  I also especially enjoyed Desmond’s story and the lack of Kate, Jack, Sayid and Hurley and their terribly depressing, unmotivated lives.

What I didn’t like about this episode was the need for a bomb and the inclusion of the American Army, I don’t see the point of those two things.  But I guess they needed some sort of danger.

8.0/10.0

The NEW Whispers Theory

The more I think about this theory, the more likely it seems.

I have an old theory regarding The Whispers, it’s old and not terribly exciting.  After the last two episodes I want to create a new theory about The Whispers.  I now believe that The Whispers are the group of time travelling Oceanic survivors and co.  Daniel says that they will fail if they try to communicate with themselves or people that they know, perhaps The Whispers is them trying.  Or maybe it’s not them, but it’s other people in the same time travelling loop.

Anywho, I’m going to write this up on my theories page soon, hopefully it will make more sense there.  Stay tuned.

- izi

Foreign Theories: The Island NEEDS its Constant

This is a great way of thinking about what’s happening on the show, I wish I had though of it.  By treating the island as a character you can imagine that it needs it’s Constant to come so that it can stop jumping around in time.  The writer, Tapdawg from DocArzt, tries to guesss who the Constant is, I don’t think I’d take the comparison that far.  If there is an actual Constant for the island then I’d have to agree with Ben, it’s likely all the surviving Oceanic Survivors. We’ll See.

Here’s the theory.

- izi

502 – The Lie

Review:

This episode was Hurley-centric. That hardly means anything anymore though. He got one single flashback and one vision. Having an episode “about” a character isn’t what it used to be. It occurs to me that the last episode was probably Daniel-centric, but again, that doesn’t mean much anymore.

At the beginning of this episode we see Jack convince the Oceanic 6 and co. to go with “The Lie”. Then this episode continues on with Hurley and Sayid’s story. Hurley now has an unconscious Sayid in his car. He first consults with his ghostly guide, Ana Lucia, then he goes to his parents house. Sayid’s obviously in trouble but it takes a while to do anything about it. Hurley admits to his parents that he’s been lying for a long time, he even tells his mother the real story. In the end he rejects Ben’s offer to go back to the island and he turns himself over to the cops. Most Hurley episodes are funny. The one that isn’t, the season 4 premiere, was tragic in it’s own way and really got us in the mood for season 4. This episode seems to be all over the place. It’s sometimes funny, and it’s never really sad, but at the same time this isn’t a funny episode. I think the writers got a little stuck on the Hurley parts of this episode.

In other news Kate meets with Sun. Sun tells Kate that she forgives her for leaving Jin behind. Then she tells Kate to defend herself and Aaron by any means necessary.

On the island the people left behind are having trouble getting by. They can’t make fire and when they finally do get food they get attacked. They are shot at by The Hostiles (I’m assuming, I know). Then Sawyer and Juliet are captured by Dharma people, and saved by Locke.

Right at the end of the episode we get to see the mysterious Mrs. Hawkins at work. She is behind a huge machine that appears to be searching for the island. It’s also revealed that she’s working with or for Ben. This was my favorite part of the episode by far.

Good episode, but the Hurley stuff wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. 7.5/10.0

501, 502 Ratings

Ah yes, back to the numbers that I love to hate.

Here are the Nielsen ratings for the last two episodes of Lost:

501 – Because You Left

11.66  million viewers

5.2/13  18-49 viewers

502 – The Lie

11.08 million viewers

5.0/12  18-49 viewers

This is not good people.  Take a look at some of the other ratings.  There were about 12.1 million people who watched the finale.  Almost that many came back to watch the premiere.  Premieres usually get way more viewers than normal episodes.  The season 4 premiere got 16 million viewers.  I don’t think the show is going to get canceled, but this is still a bad sign.  The worst thing that could happen is probably a cut in the budget.  I really don’t want that to happen.

Source

- izi

501 – Because You Left

Review:

(I’m going to try not to start every revlysis with the word wow, or whoa.  It’s tempting but it’s going to get repetitive.)
Yowza!  That was intense.  So we spent about eight months debating whether the island went forward in time, back in time, or moved in space, it turns out we were aiming way too low.  It seems as if the people on the island are just taking a tour of the islands history.  They are moving in time (and sometimes space) and experiencing different eras on the island.  (Just for you’re reference, I’m going to call that skipping.)

This episode stated with a Desmond-like flashback, this time with Pierre.  We see Pierre’s baby, and we see what a typical day in the life of the Dharma boss is like.  We get a great reference to the Frozen Donkey Wheel, showing how Dharma found it.  And Daniel shows up, seemingly in the past.

That leads into what happened immediately after Ben turned the wheel.  Simply put, the people on the island moved in time.  First they were sent to the time when Yemi’s plane crashed.  Ethan shot and threatened Locke, and that was that.  Then it skipped forward to an unknown time, after the Hatch was blown up.  It could have been after 2004, or it could have been during seasons 3, or 4.  Richard visits Locke and tells him that he has to bring everyone back to the island.  They skipped again to a pre-crash time period.  Daniel visits Desmond and tells him that Desmond has to go visit Dan’s mother in Oxford.  And that’s the end of that.

Back to the Oceanic 6 storyline.  Ben and Jack continue preparations to go back to the island.  Kate get’s served with papers which demand a maternity test (is that right?).  And Sayid and Hurley have an adventure.  Sayid has apparently gone rogue, doing the opposite of what Ben wants, he tells Hurley to do the same.  Sayid kills two more people and Hurley is seen with a gun, implying that he’s the killer.  Sun gets another conversation with Mr. Whidmore.  We learn that their common interest is Ben (luckily) and he demands some respect.

The skipping story element is glorious.  It has the potential to solve all of the mysteries of the island.  Now they can go back to any time period and learn everything about the people there.  We can see what happened with Rousseau, The Hostiles, Dharma, The Others and even the original people, the ones who built the four toed foot and Ben’s door.  This is very exciting.  Ironically the Oceanic 6 storyline, the exciting part of the last season, has now become the least exciting part this season.  Oh well, it’s still fun, just less so.

9.5/10.0  (Just because my brain hurts.)  It’s going to be a lot of fun watching the people on the island fail, trying to change the future.  They’re going to have a fun season.

Season 5 premiere tonight!

The long wait is over.  Lost’s penultimate season begins tonight!  It starts with a clip show at 8pm.  At 9 they air the premiere and at 10 they air the second episode.  It’s going to be insane (of course).

Unless I’m feeling extremely energetic, you can expect my revlysis tomorrow.  I’ll post the ratings on Friday and then I’ll try to talk about it over the rest of the week.

For all you east coaster, please don’t post spoilers in your comments too soon.  I’m in the Pacific time zone so I’ll be seeing the episode really late and we don’t want to spoilerize each other do we?

Obviously by the next day I will be posting all kinds of info about that episode so if you’re watching the episodes later on your DVR or some other comparably tech then avoid the site until you watch the episodes.

Seeya tomorrow.

- izi

Season 5 tomorrow

Only one more sleep until the big day!

- izi

In Preparation for Season 5: Oceanic 815

Here is the next episode from sl-Lost‘s In preparation for Season 5 videos.  This one is about the flight, Oceanic 815.

- izi