602 – LA X (part 2)

Review:

(Sorry for the confusion everyone, I prematurely published this last night before it was done.)

So I can’t give this episode the same credit I gave the premiere, for the invention of this new and wonderful format, but that still doesn’t make this a bad episode.

This is the episode where we finally get to see the Temple, inside and out.  That’s a pretty big accomplishment.  With the Temple comes a lot of Others action, always a favorite of mine.

We also get a last word from Juliet, “it worked”.  I have a feeling that line will be extremely significant as this season goes on.

Back on the beach there is quite a bit of fun.  “Locke” takes control of the situation.  First he makes sure Ben feels as bad as possible about what he’s done, then he spouts off some actually logical assessments of the Oceanic survivors, then he takes down Richard and throws him over his shoulder.  This guy means business.

In the Islandless timeline we’re left with mostly a Kate story.  She escapes from under the Marshall’s care and pretty much gets away.  We get our first glimpse of Claire in a long time.

Jack loses Christian and has a run-in in with the strangely positive Locke.  They get along and Jack promises to fix Locke.  Kind of a great setup for future episodes.

The contrast between the two Lockes, on the Island and off the Island is quite amazing.  Terry O’Quinn is angling for another Emmy.

Oh yeah Sayid didn’t die.  Yeah, who would have thought he’d survive?  Truly shocking (I need to find a way to properly express sarcasm, it never really comes out right).

I think I’m still buzzed from the excitement of this new format so I might not be being totally objective here.  I’d say this episode counts at about a 9.0 on my scale of awesomeness

601 & 602 Ratings

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

Recap Show (at 8pm)

9.89 million viewers

4.1/11  18-49 viewers

601 – LA X (part 1) (at 9pm)

12.42 million viewers

5.7/14  18-49 viewers

602 – LA X (part 2) (at 10pm)

11.75 million viewers

5.5/14  18-49 viewers

You know what my favorite part of all of this is, we beat NCIS in the demos.  They had almost twice the actual viewers but we’re younger.  Yay!  I hate it when shows like NCIS do well.

Ratings from here and here.

– izi

601 – LA X (part 1)

Review:

I started watching this episode thinking that I was not going to enjoy it.  I thought that either we’d have a timeline reset or not, it was one way or another.  I would have been unhappy either way.  With the Reset I would have been bored with that time period and I would have hated to see all that “progress” disappear.  Without the Reset, Juliet and Daniel died for nothing, and frankly with a title like LA X and news that every former cast member was coming back, it wasn’t possible for there not to be a Reset.  So I pretty much ignored Lost during the hiatus.  If I spent too much time thinking about it I would make myself angry.

At Comic-Con Darlton asked us to trust them.  And I’m very glad that I did.  They are geniuses.  I would never have guessed that they were doing to diverging timelines.  I’ve heard a few bloggers suggest it as a possibility, but frankly I rarely believe anything my fellow bloggers say, I wouldn’t say that to their face, but it’s true.  Seeing it in action is just glorious.  It’s literally the best of both worlds.

As for this episode specifically, it was awesome.  The inevitable scene that showed that the plane didn’t crash and then underwater Island reveal was perfectly devastating (not unlike the underwater Oceanic 815 wreckage).  At that point I was ready to resign myself to the fact that the writers had chosen the more boring route of starting over.

But that was just the first intro.  The second was another slow reveal of another timeline.  Too good.  Suddenly we were presented with a new format and an amazing new story.

Cut to the beach and we have more insanity.  It’s casually revealed that “Locke” is Smokey.  Smokey tears up some people with guns and blows our mind (what’s new).

Then Jacob shows up to visit Hurley and it turns out he’s very dead but he isn’t helpless, he seems to have a plan, or at least hope.  It’s very comforting to hear Jacob giving orders even from beyond the grave.

All of this is peppered with visits from characters we thought dead.  Charlie and Boone were exciting to someone out there, not me.  But the return of Juliet was quite wonderful.  I still wish that Juliet and Sawyer could have had a happily ever after, but I realize I’m being naive.  That’s not the kind of show I signed on for.  What we did get was a small amount of closure and at least a new final image of Juliet (If I have to see that scene with Juliet’s slow death again… well I’ll outline my plans below).

My expectations for this episode were at about a 7 maybe an 8, but this is honestly a 10.0, mostly for the introduction of this glorious new format (Smokey=”Locke” didn’t hurt).