Because You Left/The Lie

I’ll start this review by saying that I think Season 4 was the absolute best season of Lost so far…even better than the premiere season. It was consice (largely due to the writer’s strike), it had a very compelling plot…just an all-around fantastic string of episodes. So, I had some high expectations heading into a new batch. And this premiere did not quite meet them.

I’m not sure why. Maybe I’ve grown accustomed to the character-centric flashbacks. Every time I start to hear that “whoosh”, I’m generally prepared to delve into whoever is on screen’s backstory, and now we jump into one of at least six stories, which take place at any point in the Lost timeline. I guess it’s fine…it fits into the time-bending nature the show has taken on. And I know there’s a lot of story to tell and only a finite numer of episodes to tell it.

Which brings me to my next issue. Man, there’s a lot of narrative. Heroes really fell bad into the pitfall of trying to cram WAY too much story into a season, and this episode seemed to do the same thing. You’ve got Locke’s journey on the island, everybody else’s journey on the island, Sayid’s story, Hurley’s story, then Sayid and Hurley’s story, Jack’s story, Jack and Ben’s story, Ben’s story, Kate and Aaron’s story, Sun’s story…whew, it’s exhausting. There have always been a lot of threads weaving through Lost, but it seems like there’s just an excess here.

I hate to gripe and gripe, because I didn’t not enjoy the episode. We got a lot of answers (assuming Faraday knows what he’s talking about) regarding the nature of the island and its time-hopping. The frequency of the jumps got a bit confusing pretty quickly, but I imagine that we’ll see it settle down soon, one way or another, since Faraday was deep undercover (literally) in the opening moments of the show, which I’m sure took some time to acheive.

I’m also interested in Ben’s off-island character. He’s still a scheming little bugger, but it’s obvious that he’s lost a lot of his hard edge now that he’s back in the real world. Michael Emerson still does a tremendous job, it’s awesome to watch him work.

As I finish up this review, I think I may understand why I was a bit let down. Lost has always required viewers to be engaged in the story. It’s never been “check your brain at the door” television. You have to watch…pay attention…and think. I think this episode kicked that up a notch. It’s almost like the past four years have been training for the real mindfreak that’s in store. I’ll probably rewatch it again this weekend ready to really take it all in.

All in all, it was a pretty decent episode. I’m SO glad that Lost is back, even if I admittedly may have set my standards too high.

Next week brings us “Jughead”, in which “Desmond goes in search of a woman who could be the key to helping Faraday stop the island’s erratic movements through time, and Locke discovers the identity of the unknown forces who have been attacking the survivors”.