“Greatest Hits” was on track to become one of my favorite episodes, and that’s saying something.  I don’t typically like Charlie episodes…I find that they usually tend to be tedious and just continue to make Charlie look more and more like a loser.  But, dang it, I loved everything about last night’s episode…almost…and that little “almost” changed the episode from one of the best of the season to…meh.

I’ll start with the non-Charlie stuff.  We covered a lot of ground here.  The question from a couple of weeks back about what Danielle was doing with that dynamite has finally gotten some resolution, and it was an answer that I wasn’t expecting.  After Juliet told Jack that the Others were coming to take the pregnant women, the good doctor enlisted Danielle to help them.  They’ll rig the tents with explosives, and when the Others come, they’ll “blow ‘em all to hell”, in Jack’s words.

While Jack is concentrating on saving his people from the Others, Sayid is focusing on contacting the ship anchored a few miles off-shore.  He believes that it is Danielle’s radio tower that is blocking their ability to make a transmission, but Juliet says that it is the underwater station, dubbed “The Looking Glass”.  She says that she has never been to the station, and that it is connected to the island by a cable (an answer from all the way back at Season One).

Let’s talk about Juliet for a sec…and the fact that she’s still a dirty liar.  She knows that the Looking Glass is not blocking the signal, and that it is in fact Danielle’s tower that is keeping them from making contact.  But, for whatever reason, she doesn’t want them to get off the island, so she directs them to the Looking Glass.  Just my speculation.

The return of Carl brings about a first for the show…multiple flashbacks in one episode.  Okay, so not a substantial second set of flashbacks, but…yeah.  Anway, we go back a few hours to the Others’ camp, as Ben is returning from his fateful encounter with Jacob and Locke.  He lies to the group, telling them that Jacob wants them to move up their timetable.  This makes me believe even more that Ben has Jacob held captive, and is using the fact that he is the only one that can see him as an excuse to bring about his own agenda with the Others.  In this scene, though, Ben seems completely different than the character we’ve seen before.  If Ben was a little crazy before, he’s completely nuts now…if he was bad before, he’s completely evil at this point.  There was just something completely different in the character…Michael Emerson never fails to impress me.  I would not be surprised at all to see him at the Emmys next year.

Back at the beach, there are the required arguments about who will stay behind to blow the dynamite.  Jin and Bernard are chosen, and it’s down to Sayid and Jack.  I loved the bit between them, and specifically Sayid convincing Jack to go with the group to hide, using the line, “This afternoon you said you were our leader.  It’s time for you to act like one.”  It’s great to see people finally putting Jack into place.

So let’s look at the Charlie side of the story now.  Word on the street has been that Charlie will indeed die this season, and I think everyone was expecting it to happen last night…I know I was.  And it was the perfect episode for him to die.  For the most part, I haven’t much liked the flashback episodes that accompanied a character’s death, especially regarding Ana Lucia’s flashback last season and Eko’s flashback this season.  I think that the big reason for this was that we hadn’t been given sufficient time to get to know those characters before they were killed off.  But we’ve known Charlie for three seasons now, and “Greatest Hits” was a fantastic send-off episode for a character we’ve become so familiar with. 

Desmond has a flash that says that everyone will be rescued if Charlie deactivates the Looking Glass…but that he will sacrifice himself in the process.  Beginning to see the inevitability that he has to die, Charlie has begun to write a list of the best moments of his life, all of which are told in flashbacks…hence, his “Greatest Hits”.  #5 was when he first heard his song on the radio.  #4 was when his father taught him how to swim.  #3 was the Christmas that his brother gave him the family heirloom…a ring with “DS” on it.  #2 was when the woman that he rescued called him a hero (was that Nadia, Sayid’s love from earlier?).  And #1 was when he first met Claire.  All together now…awwwwwww.  The stuff with him and Hurley and Claire and “Turnip-Head”…well, I’ll be honest…I kind of got a little misty.  This was the perfect way to bring closure to the character.

But then he didn’t die.  And that is the “almost” that turned the episode around for me.  Up until, literally, the last 30 seconds of the episode, I was in love with it.  The character arc of Charlie was completed, and was at its natural endpoint.  It’s like the writers said, “Oh, hey, before you die, we’ve got one more little thing for you to do.”  That just threw off the whole dynamic of the episode.  But that’s just my opinion, I guess.

I know that “Greatest Hits” was, in large part, simply set-up for next week’s finale, “Through the Looking Glass”.  But, since Charlie didn’t die, I think this one has to fall more into the “filler” category.

All images courtesy of Lost-Media.com