405 – The Constant

Review:

I cried the first time I watched this episode, and I cried again when I rewatched it this time.  This episode is glorious and a half.  It manages to mix intense and confusing sci-fi with a perfectly written love story.  Wow, I can’t tell you how much I love this episode.

And not only that but it includes all of my favorite characters.  Desmond was my first favorite character and his love story with Penny was my favorite storyline.  Then Daniel came along and I questioned my complete loyalty to Desmond.  Now that Desmond and Penny’s love story is mostly over Daniel is my favorite character but I still love them all.

I also love sci-fi themes and I love how these writers do it.  They insist on making it logical, which is reassuring and entertaining at the same time.  It’s all great fun.

I also found out a lot by rewatching this episode.  Like Locke’s possible fate, and the importance of nosebleeds.

If I could give it more than 10 I would.  10.0/10.0

In Preparation for Season 5: Lovers

Here is the fifth episode from sl-Lost‘s In preparation for Season 5 videos.  This time it’s about the couples that have formed during the course of the show.

– izi

404 – Eggtown

Review:

This episode is dull.  It’s very necessary, but it’s quite boring.  It does answer the question from the end of season 3, how did Kate get free of those pesky murder charges?  But beyond that Kate’s story was dragged out.

I did like three scenes in this episode though.

The first one was the part with Diane speaking to Kate.  I believe that Diane is a vitally important character and finding out that she’s stayed alive, miraculously, was quite interesting to me.

The second one was when Miles talked to Ben trying to get money out of hm in exchange for silence.

The third was the memory game that Charlotte was playing with Daniel.  I find that scene to be extremely important and I’m sure it will have a big bearing on Daniel’s season 5 storyline.

But I can’t ignore that this episode was sub-par.  4.0/10.0

In Preparation for Season 5: Meet the Cast (1)

Here is the third episode from sl-Lost‘s In preparation for Season 5 videos.  This time it’s about The Cast, not the whole cast, just Josh Holloway and Evangeline Lilly.

– izi

403 – The Economist

Review:

This episode is secretly an episode of Alias.  Seriously, it really seems like it.  Having a character go under cover then fall in love and get burned is a very basic Alias plot-line.  That’s not a bad thing, these writers are much better than the Alias writers so they do a better job.  And I’m sure they’ll have bigger plans with Sayid.  In season 5 I expect many more episodes like this one.

On the island there is a little bit of character shuffling.  Charlotte and Miles trade places, Kate goes to the Barracks, Sayid and Desmond head out to the freighter on Frank’s helicopter, and Daniel and Charlotte decide to stay on the island.

Daniel gets to have a lot of fun on the island.  He conducts a test with surprising and worrisome results.  Uh-oh, if only we knew what he was talking about

Most of the exciting things happened in the flashforward.  But no matter how exciting it was the falshforward only accomplished two things, it told us that Sayid was one of the Oceanic 6 and that he’s killing people for Ben.  For being such an intense story it didn’t reveal a lot.

Moderately good episode 7.0/10.0

In Preparation for Season 5: Redemption

Here is the second episode from sl-Lost‘s In preparation for Season 5 videos.  This time it’s about Redemption of the characters.

– izi

402 – Confirmed Dead

Review:

This episode is our introduction to the four Freighter Folk.  If you’ve been reading this blog for very long you should know that I love new characters.  And I think that by season 4, the writers have hit their stride with their intros (they weren’t so good at it in season 2, and they only got it half right in season3).  They know what they did wrong in the past and really don’t want to make those same mistakes.

So we get these new characters.  If you ask me they each deserve warm welcomes.  I love these characters.  (I really only count three of them, but you can read about that later).

As for the episode, it accomplished a lot.  It gave us slight insights into each of these characters (we haven’t got much beyond this episode, unfortunately).  It also explained why they were sent to the island.

And right at the very end of the episode we get a wonderful lead-out.  Ben reveals that he has someone on the Freighter.  I love this new format, each episode ends with a slight cliffhanger that leads into the next episode or the rest of the season.

This episode is very fast pace and it gives us a lot of info. 8.0/10.0

Matthew Abbadon says that all of four Freighter Folk were chosen for a reason.  They all had a purpose on the island.  In the section below I will guess at what I believe their purposes were.

Foreign Theories: Anon’s Annie theory

A very faithful NCJL reader and commenter, Anon, recently posted a glorious theory about Annie in the comments section of my revlysis for The Man Behind the Curtain.  This theory is intensely detailed and well planned out.  Here it is in full:

Annie – I came up with this way out there theory about Annie.

Widmore owned the island. Annie’s Widmore’s daughter too (making her Penny’s sister) and he bought her to the island when she was very young (notice she’s very experienced with the way things are). Widmore would come and go from the island whenever he wanted but he wouldn’t let Annie leave. Annie and Ben became close and eventually married. Annie somewhat knew how obsessed Ben was with eventually ruling the island and how consumed he was with the island’s power. She didn’t like it and tried to stop him visiting Jacob all the time.

She got pregnant but the island made her miscarry so she began to despise the island because it not only took away her baby, it was slowly taking away her man. Then one day Ben comes back to the Barracks with newborn Alex, and he and Annie raise her for a few years. The fertility problems continue now for the whole of the Initiative and Richard is planning to purge them so the natives can rule again. Ben is adamant about not purging, because of Alex and Annie. Richard insists Alex will be okay but never promises Annie’s safety. Annie overhears this and heads to Mikhail. She knows he can contact the outside world but can he leave? He comes clean and tells her about the submarine (she was too young to remember she came to the island in it) and she makes her plans to leave. Ben lets her because he knows that’s the only way she’ll survive.

Before she leaves she tells Alex to never agree with her father if she feels he’s doing the wrong thing or too consumed with the island – we see that attitude in her all through the show – what if the reason Ben let her act that way was because it reminded him of Annie?

She leaves and goes to live with Penny for a while, meeting Des and enjoying a normal life but still missing Ben. Eventually Des goes missing and Annie thinks he may have landed on the island so sets out to help Penny find him whilst telling Penny everything about the island. Charles does not know she’s off the island. Eventually, when Penny rescues Des and the O6, Annie is on that boat too, meets the O6 and helps them form the big lie. She tries to ask them about the island but none of them will budge, too disturbed by it all. She is shocked when one of them mentions John Locke however, because Richard and Ben had been working together to try to get him to the island for years.

After the week on the boat, she, Penny and Des sail around for a while, then Annie gets a call from Kate saying she’d feel better if Annie lived in L.A (they became good friends). Annie goes to live in L.A and Kate eventually stays with Annie after breaking up with Jack. As time goes on, it becomes clear the O6 want to go back to the island, something that scares Annie so she backs out and breaks all contact with them. One night Penny calls her and tells her someone tried to kill her, she’s okay but injured. Annie feels guilty for leaving Penny and heads to her and Des. They decide the only safe place for Penny and Des to be is…the island.

Somehow, Des, Penny and Annie arrive at the island before the 06 do (Pen and Annie have seriously mad navigational skillz) and make friends with the left behinders thanks to Des. Locke has left the island, Annie is a little disappointed to have missed meeting the “special” one. Annie heads back to the barracks for the first time in years and breaks into Ben’s house and sees his pictures of Alex as a teen. Very emotional. She heads back to the beach camp where everyone is and doesn’t tell anyone about her past. One day Richard comes to the camp and is less than pleased to see Annie again but doesn’t reveal who she is. Things are going swimmingly otherwise and Annie even tells Sawyer that Kate is still alive AND is keeping his promise.

One early morning, Annie is asleep on the beach when she hears some voices. She opens her eyes and can see the O6 coming up the shore with a coffin. The voices wake the rest of the camp and it’s reunion time. Annie heads back to her tent and gets something out of her backpack. She heads back out, a little upset at all the reunions with no one to greet her (Kate’s busy with Sawyer lol) and then she sees Ben. They hug, tears everywhere, and we see Annie is holding her Ben doll. It’s all very sweet then suddenly Annie hears a muffled cry. Then a thud. Another. And another. She opens her eyes and breaks away from Ben. Staring at…the coffin. The thuds and cries get more frantic. Sayid opens the coffin and Locke bursts out, gasping for air. He stands up, shakes himself off, looks back at all the stunned faces.

“Hello, again”.

LOST

– izi

In Preparation for Season 5: Connections

The Lost fansite www.sl-lost.com , for fans of Second Life and Lost, has been posting videos to get you prepped for season 5 of Lost.  Their site is awesome and a half, even if you don’t have a Second Life account.  They have an insanely well updated news sections and a very large and vocal community.  I encourage everyone to check them out.

For the next few weeks I am going to post their Preparation for Season 5 videos.  Here’s the first one, dealing with Connections.

– izi

401 – The Beginning of the End

Review:

The writers did a very strange thing when they wrote this episode.  They chose to have Hurley as the central character.  Hurley is rarely a driving force in a storyline and when you look back it hardly seems like he’s around for most of season 4.  But I believe having him open the season was a genius idea.  It did what a season premiere should do, it took the insanity down a notch.  Luckily for us taking it “down a notch” doesn’t mean much in Lost.  This episode opened up many a new mystery.

The Oceanic Six was introduced, which was enough to keep us all buzzing around water coolers (I think I need a better office job, that could never happen where I work).  The intro of the O6 kept us guessing for a long time, but it wasn’t a lasting mystery.  That is what we asked for so we should be thankful for that.

Jacob was seen, and more importantly Christian was seen in Jacob’s cabin.  It was all crazy stuff, I’ll talk about it more below.

The survivors and their on-island friends were split into two distinct and slightly opposing groups.  This allowed us, the fans, to divide ourselves into Locke supporters and Jack supporters (guess who I went with).

And right at the very end we met the second of the Freighter Folk, and my new favorite character, Daniel Faraday.

Quite the eventful episode.  And it was only the beginning of the craziness.

This episode had everything we could ask for in an episode, new mysteries, new characters, divisions, engaging flashes, and intense emotion.  The perfect start to an amazing season.  As far as premieres go, I think this one was very good.  Compared to the season 2 and 3 premieres this one was a classic.

9.0/10.0