It’s hard to believe that production for Season 5 of Lost is starting in 12 days. With the gear-up of production comes the trickling of casting news. The first Lost news this year regards 2 new characters, Caesar and Ilana.

Caesar is described as “a dangerous, physical and extremely intelligent male between the ages of 35 and 45. Although his intentions are unclear, this much is certain: He’s as skillful at charming people as he is at killing them. He also has a dark past…”

As for Ilanna, she’s “a European female in her late 20s to early 30s who possesses great intelligence, but who’s also dangerous as all get out. She’s alluring and apparently used to getting her own way.”

Jeff Jensen at EW, where the scoop comes from, points out that Caesar was the name of the primate who led the revolt against the humans in Planet of the Apes. Could Lost’s Caesar be Ben’s predecessor as leader of the Others, who ordered the gassing of the Dharma Initiative?

One of my least favorite new characters on Lost is Miles. Why? Well, I just don’t care for the whole “super powers” thing that he has going on. Sure, I can accept the smoke monster, and the Polar bears, and a moving Island….but a dude with esp that can talk to the dead is where I draw the line.

right.

Anyway, I just don’t care for this particular addition to the Lost line-up. So I was glad this scene was cut from “The Economist”. It gives Miles even more powers - this one apparently being sonar or something. There’s no doubt we’ll be seeing more of Miles and is super-skillz in the next season of Lost, and for those of you that are Miles fans (both of you) this deleted scene should be a treat.

Season 4, Episode 13 - There’s No Place Like Home (Part 2)

Think about what you watched last night. Then imagine that taking place in half the time. Thank you, ABC, for granting Lost one more hour.

This season has been, far and away, my favorite season so far of Lost…eclipsing even the first season, I think. The WGA strike actually benefited the show, in that the fat had to be trimmed, and the show was cut down to its rawest form. And the finale was a worthy sendoff.

Let’s look at what was awesome. First, Keamy. I wasn’t crazy about him when he first came around a few weeks ago, but last night he became one of my favorites. To begin with, we had this meeting of the two most able fighters on the island, him and Sayid. Best fight scene I’ve seen on television in a while. And then I thought we were going to have another Mikhail on our hands again…remember how our favorite cycloptic Russian just wouldn’t die last season? The scene in the Orchid station was one of my favorite of the night, kind of playing like a horror movie.

Which brings us to Ben. His murder of Keamy was just another example of why I love Michael Emerson. Ben knew that Keamy’s death would result in the destruction of the freighter…was it genuinely a crime of passion, or was it a part of the plan that Ben always has (as they reminded us in the recap)? Also, the thing with the wheel was kind of strange, but how do you pull off moving an island without making it look funky?

The moment between Desmond and Penny was another of my favorites of the night. It’s amazing how this little story that is almost never touched on can bring a smile to my face. She’s his hero…it’s beautiful.

Oh, and Walt got freaking enormous. They had to get him off the island…there’s no way they could explain away a growth spurt that huge in 100 days.

So, questions. Things were pretty bad in the days leading up to the Oceanic 6 leaving the island…what could have happened after that that was bad enough to make Locke leave the island? And why did he take up an alias? That makes it seem like he was taking up permanent residence back in the real world. And why would none of the survivors call him by John Locke, only by Jeremy Bentham? Here’s what Wikipedia says about the real Bentham:

Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical, and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, for the concept of animal rights, and his opposition to the idea of natural rights, with his oft-quoted statement that the idea of such rights is “nonsense upon stilts.” He also influenced the development of welfarism.

Bentham’s position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexuality.

So what is next season going to look like? It’s tough to even get my head around it…I’m guessing it will be a mixture…what happens on the island after the Oceanic 6 are gone that spurs Locke to go bring the survivors back, and the story of Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley and Sun inevitably heading back to the island.

Last season’s finale was nothing short of mindblowing, and had me frothing for what would happen next. While this finale wasn’t that huge, it was still a very worth sendoff to a tremendous season. I’m excited to see what happens next.

Episode grade: A
Season grade: A+

For those of you who will be at Comic Con in San Diego, taking place July 24-27, it appears that the next phase of the Lost Experience will be kicking off then. Check out the details at the Octagon Global Recruiting site, which was advertised during the finale.

Tonight brings the two-hour finale of the fourth and arguably the best season of Lost so far.

ABC has this to say:

The face-off between the survivors and the freighter people continues, and the Oceanic Six find themselves closer to rescue. Guest starring are Jeremy Davies as Daniel Faraday, Ken Leung as Miles Straume, Rebecca Mader as Charlotte Lewis, Jeff Fahey as Frank Lapidus, L. Scott Caldwell as Rose, Malcolm David Kelley as Walt, Nestor Carbonell as Richard Alpert, John Terry as Christian Shephard, Sonya Walger as Penelope “Penny” Widmore, Alan Dale as Charles Widmore, Kevin Durand as Keamy, Francois Chau as Dr. Marvin Candle, Anthony Azizi as Omar, Alex Petrovitch as Henrik and Starletta DuPois as Michael’s mom.

The fun begins tonight at 8/7c on ABC with a repeat of part one of the finale from two weeks ago.

Check back tomorrow for our review.

Season 4, Episode 12 – There’s No Place Like Home

I was reading an interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse the other day, and they were talking about how they were sitting around editing the finale and wondering how they ever thought they were going to fit it into the time they had. Now I feel their pain. There was a TON of stuff going on…so much that it almost felt overloaded at times. Imagine having to shave a whole hour off of what we’ve got now.

So…where to start. We see the Oceanic 6 making their arrival at home, and we finally hear their story in full…they floated on life cushions for days until the eight survivors landed on an uninhabited island. That number fell to six before they were rescued. (Why? Why not just say that they were the only survivors? To add some credibility to the story…or is there more to it?)

Sayid was reunited with his long lost (and soon to be dead) Nadia in a very touching scene. Sun stepped up to her father and put him in his place, taking control of his company with the large settlement she received from the crash. Hurley returns home to his family, only to start to slip back into insane-Hurley-mode when he sees the dreaded numbers on the odometer of his birthday present.

In the best scene of the night, Jack finally has the funeral for his father. After the ceremony, Carole Littleton approaches Jack and tells him that Christian was Claire’s father (though she had no idea that Jack even knew who Claire was). I think that moment was the best acting that we’ve seen out of Matthew Fox yet…I loved how he had to contain his feelings about Claire, who he became close with on the island, but still emote surprise to Carole. Great stuff there.

Island stuff now…first off, let’s talk about the original search party from the freighter. I’m really liking Daniel, especially now that he’s making goo-goo eyes at Charlotte and acting all heroic, going back to the island that he is so obviously terrified of. My biggest complaint is about Miles, though. I loved his character and was really excited to see where he was going to go, but he’s basically faded into the background over the last several episodes. Bring back Miles!

As usual, Ben stole the show last night…especially considering how little he was actually in the episode. Between the 15 year old crackers and “How many times have I told you…I always have a plan” he can take simple, mundane lines and turn them into something wonderful.

I think I’ve got the moving the island thing figured out…as close to figured out as possible when it comes to Lost, that is. Back before the season even started, ABC released an Orchid Station Orientation video (check it out here), which has led many to speculate that this station has some form of time-bending properties…and with all of the time-jumping stuff that’s been going on this season, that theory has gained more and more credibility. I think we’ve been thinking “how do you physically move an island?” The question is not where they’re going to move the island to, but rather when they’re going to move the island to. I could go much deeper, but I’ll let your own imaginations do that for you.

Great setup for a finale! This episode reairs at 8/7c on May 29, followed by the two-hour finale.

Season 4, Episode 11 - Cabin Fever

Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.

Not a lot of answers in last night’s episode…just more questions.

Apparently the powers that be have been grooming John Locke since his very birth. (Interesting note: the song that Emily Locke was listening to at the beginning - Everyday by Buddy Holly. What happened to Buddy Holly? Died in a plane crash.) Richard Alpert made not one but two trips to visit John over the course of his early life (with all the time travel that we’ve been seeing this season and last, I’m guessing that he travelled back from some point in the future). It seems that the island has many people “in on it”, as it seems that John’s grandmother recognized Alpert, and John’s caregiver when he was young as well as his teacher in high school really seemed to push him in that direction. Then, years later in therapy, Matthew Abbadon shows up to plant the idea of a walkabout in Locke’s head.

On the freighter, we continue with some of the grittiest stuff in Lost’s history. Keamy is ready to kill Michael because of his betrayal, but Mike’s island immunity power kicks in and jacks up Keamy’s gun, so he must resort to a good old-fashioned beat down.

This led to one big question: the second protocol. Keamy and Captain Gault have dual control keys to access a vault that contains…something. In this particular case, it reveals Ben’s new location on the island. Could this be something that was written by someone in the future with some kind of ultimate knowledge of everything that came before? Or is it like the box that Ben has where anything you want will appear?

The death toll rose by two this week, as Captain Gault and the good doctor both fell by Colonel Kurtz’s Keamy’s hand. And, as I’m sure you’ll remember, the doctor’s body has already turned up on the island, so once again we’ve got a time-jumping mindscrew. And so now, the army of mercenaries is again headed to land to wipe out the inhabitants, though this time, our heroes have Sayid on the way to help them.

Meanwhile, in his trek through the jungle, Locke has a vision of Ben’s old buddy Horace Goodspeed building a house for him and his wife. Horace seems to be stuck in some kind of time loop of his own, as he repeats himself several times. He does manage to plant the idea with John to return to the communal pit where the bodies of the DHARMA Initiative are buried, where John finds a map disclosing the location of the cabin.

In the midst of this journey, we get to the crux of the episode. This installment was about being chosen, and all that it entails. John has wanted for all his life to be special, but seems to fall short every time. Ben, on the other hand, feels that he has been chosen, but is rethinking what that means.

Once there, John is the only one willing to enter the cabin. Lo and behold, Christian Shephard is there waiting. I don’t think anyone who follows the show closely would have been really surprised by this…but I was surprised to see Claire there (though I shouldn’t have been…the last time we saw her, she was with Christian. What was surprising, though, was her coolness about the whole thing. Her baby, the one thing that has driven her character since the beginning of the show, is miles away, she knows that there are mercenaries coming to annihilate everyone on the island, and she’s the calmest and most laid back that we’ve ever seen her. Did she get a glimpse of the future and see that all will turn out well? Or, as is being widely speculated, is she dead and Jacob has taken over her earthly coil?

John only has time for one question, and he chose “How can I save the island?” Christian seemed to approve of this question, and in the final moment, we got our answer…he has to move the island.

This brings up ALL KINDS of questions. First, why? My guess is that the island is in some kind of time bending bubble. The comic book shown to young John early in the episode pictured a bubbled island floating in clouds…and way back in the first season, the comic that Walt was reading depicted a similar thing. Second, how? Hook up some cables to the freighter and drag it? Doubtful. Maybe the island has some kind of propulsion system itself. Or maybe it’s something deeper that we just can’t grasp yet. I’ll go with that.

All in all…decent episode. Nothing spectacular, but no real filler. Just an on par Lost episode.

Tonight marks the final episode before the three hour (spread over three weeks) finale of the fourth (and best yet) season of Lost. Here’s what ABC has to say about the episode.

Cabin Fever
Locke discovers the location of Jacob’s cabin, and life aboard the freighter becomes increasingly perilous.

Locke-centric episodes are always great ones, so I’m very excited. Nestor Campbell, who plays the apparently ageless Richard Alpert is listed in the guest stars, as well as Christian Shephard and Matthew Abbadon.

Check back tomorrow for our review!

Season 4, Episode 10 – Something Nice Back Home

After last week’s amazing episode, this week left me saying…meh.

For being the leader of the Losties, Jack seems to be in distress a lot…it’s like there’s an episode every season where he’s either sick or captured or something. Doesn’t exactly make for the strong leader image I’d like to see in Jack. This week, the good doctor was down with a bout of appendicitis. I’m assuming it served to lay the foundation for things to come, but it seemed really forced. Maybe that’s the idea though…as Rose pointed out, why would Jack get sick on an island that heals everyone else, and at this pivotal juncture?

And I know L. Scott Caldwell is probably busy doing other stuff, but does anyone else find it somewhat jarring to have Rose gone for long stretches of the season, only to return for one episode to impart some words of wisdom? Just me? Okay.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, Claire and Miles are making their trek through the jungle back to the beach. Claire drops the hint that she’s been seeing things (there was a hallucination/vision scene filmed for her intended for last week’s episode, but it was cut). Miles has his own visions again as well…sensing the violence that occurred on the spot they were standing. I wasn’t too surprised that he found Karl’s body, but I was SHOCKED…and a little upset…that he found Danielle, too. She was such a great character, I was sure that she’d have survived the shot that she took. Rousseau…heck, ANY Season 1 character…deserves a better sendoff than that. Of course she’ll be back in flashbacks and such, but I feel like her arc wasn’t really completed.

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that this season has been much, much darker than anything we’ve seen. Between the borderline insane asylum we see on the freighter, Rousseau’s and Karl’s brutal, sudden deaths and subsequent freaky corpse discovery, and Alex’s absolutely shocking death last week, this season is at a depth that I never expected we would see. I love it.

Back to the story…that night, the jungle company make camp. Claire awakens to see Christian Shepherd holding Aaron. (To help with speculation, check out this spoilery clip from the recent “Missing Pieces” campaign.) When Sawyer awakens the next morning, they are both gone. He finds Aaron alone in the woods, but Claire is nowhere to be seen.

Finally, we come to the flashforward. As a friend of mine said, it’s a Jaters’ dream come true. Taking place after the events of Eggtown (Kate’s episode), but before the events of Through the Looking Glass (Season 3 finale), we find that Kate and Jack have definitely hooked up, and it seems that they’ve been in that role for a while…they seem very comfortable together (and they got Aaron a Millennium Falcon toy, which makes them the best parents ever).

Jack heads to see Hurley again, but, even though their meeting was pretty strained last time, this time it’s apparent that Hurley has gone off the deep end…though he could be the sanest of them all. He refuses to take his meds or even talk to the doctors, because he believes that the Oceanic 6 are all dead. He did make a very good point…Jack and Kate’s current life was pretty darn close to Heaven…and in last season’s finale, Jack’s life was pretty darn close to Hell. Hurley left Jack with a couple of bombshells…first, Charlie left Jack a message that “You’re not supposed to raise him” and that Jack would have a visitor soon. Since he had already seen his father once that day, it was pretty easy to figure out who that visitor would be…and this seems to have driven him to his future chemical dependency.

I wonder what’s recording on Jack and Kate’s Tivo.

Finally, we learn that Kate has been sneaking around, doing favors for Sawyer. I’m sure this favor relates to Sawyer’s secret daughter, Clementine, which makes Kate’s hesitation to talk about it understandable, I guess. You’ve got to feel bad for Jack, though…he thought he was finally out from under Sawyer’s shadow, only to find that he is still on Kate’s mind. They fight, culminating in Jack exploding and yelling that Kate is not even related to Aaron, which the boy overhears. Jack loses it and walks away.

Like I said, not the greatest episode ever…no big revelations, save for Jack and Kate’s hook- and break-up. Mostly laying the groundwork for next week…a Locke-centric episode which promises to be great.

Episode grade: B

Season 4, Episode 9 - The Shape of Things to Come

If Daniel Craig steps out of the 007 shoes, I think that Michael Emerson would be a fitting successor to the James Bond genre.

“The Shape of Things to Come” was EASILY in the list of my top episodes, primarily because it focused on the single greatest aspect of the show…Benjamin Linus. Between his genuine fear when he heard “Code 14j”, to his desperate play to save Alex and his subsequent mournfulness when she was surprisingly shot, we got our first, I believe, real look into Ben’s soul.

He showed that he was not nearly as helpless as he was making himself out to be to his captors. I loved the moment with the shotgun in the piano bench as well as when he calmly walked into closet and locked the door behind him. Ben always knows exactly what he’s doing, there’s no doubt.

Speaking of knowing what he’s doing, it’s apparent that he has some form of control over Cerebus (a.k.a. Smokie). Ben is obviously ruthless, and is willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish what he wants, but it’s becoming obvious that he’s not pure evil like he seemed to be early on. He obviously cares about the other people on the island, which ties into the next point…

Charles Widmore. There’s your pure evil. He wants the island for his own evil purposes, and Ben is doing what he can to stop that…up to, but not, killing Widmore himself. Is that connected to “the rules” that Ben talked about a few times? I don’t even know where to begin speculating on it. And we’re obviously heading toward an intense finale, with an impending showdown between Ben, Penny, Desmond and Charles. Flippin’ awesome.

Michael Emerson’s performance alone makes this easily my favorite episode of the season, and in my top five for the series. Phenomenal.

A+

Is it just me, or has the past month flown past?

Just a friendly reminder that Lost returns to air tonight with its second batch of episodes, beginning with “The Shape of Things to Come”, a Ben-centric episode. ABC’s official description:

Locke’s camp comes under attack, and Jack tries to discover the identity of a body that has washed ashore.

Tonight is also the latest of Lost’s many timeslot jumps…it airs at 10/9c after an all new Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy.

When we left off, Sayid had just revealed Michael’s true identity to the Freighties, and Karl and Rousseau had been shot by snipers while heading to “the Temple”, causing Alex to call out that she’s Ben’s daughter.