Reactions to “The Beginning of the End”

The premiere of Lost season four was on Thursday night. Did you watch? I watched and taped. That’s right - not all of us are lucky enough to be blessed with a DVR/TiVo or whatever. But don’t be ashamed, you don’t have an autographed photo of Kurt Vonnegut. Oh wait, that’s my sister. Well, then I guess I’ve got nothing.

Except oodles of things to say about Lost.

This is highly classified spoiler material, people - so you should only click to the jump if you’ve seen the episode.

The title of the episode was, “The Beginning of the End.” Here’s a fun fact to know and tell to start us off: I think ‘beginning’ is a hard word to spell. I’m pretty competent when it comes to spelling (in grade school I never stressed about all of those spelling tests) but there are some words that always get me. And ‘beginning’ is one of them. The process of beginning something can be harder than spelling it, or so I hear. But Lost had no problem beginning season four with a bang. Or should I say a crash?

We saw Jack (I typed Charlie first, I was thinking of Charlie Salinger) almost clean-shaven, mixing a drink, and watching the news. This was inter cut with scenes of a car speeding down a street on the news program. The car was sporty - white and orange, I believe. I couldn’t begin to tell you what kind of car it was other than ‘fast’.

The car crashes.

If you had to guess a Lost character to have been behind the wheel, you might think of someone like Sawyer. Instead, it’s Hurley. As he’s being arrested he’s asking if they know who he is, and he calls out that he’s one of the “Oceanic six!”

Obviously the people saved from the island must have gotten famous, and they were in the media with that catch-phrase. But the number is the curious part. Just six? Only six people made it off the island? We’ve already seen Kate, Jack, and Hurley - so that leaves just three more places. And one of those might include the person we saw dead in the casket.

I was glad they didn’t just write Charlie off with some quick scene. They honored him greatly, playing up character’s reactions. I thought this was done very well. The hardest parts to watch were when everyone was reuniting and Claire was standing alone holding her baby, Aaron, wondering why she was unable to spot Charlie. I’m sad just typing that.

The other very sad moment was when Hurley spoke up for Charlie’s choice to warn Desmond that the boat wasn’t Penny’s, and he wanted to hide from the people that were coming to ‘rescue’ them. His argument was powerful, powerful enough to sway others, even Sawyer, into going with him.

Of course, we’ve already been told that this was a huge mistake. But we don’t know why - we don’t know how it played out. It sure has me excited, though.

Backtracking a bit, I want to mention that there was a very cute little moment between Sun and Claire where they’re looking after Aaron. Sun joked to Claire that she’s happy she’ll be able to give birth in a real hospital - a reference to the fact that Claire had Aaron on the island and has been raising him there since.

When I first started watching Lost I think I came in on the first Claire-centric episode of season one and I thought the show was all about her and her baby and she was the main character. And I had to struggle internally because I so heavily disliked Emilie de Ravin for her portrayal of Tess Harding on Roswell. I know you should never judge someone by the part they play, but the association was so hard to let go of for a while!

Now, while I had thought that maybe we were seeing the flash forwards as forward past the season 3 finale, I was wrong. Because Jack mentioned wanting to grow a beard. So obviously it’s a decline from here - that puts him where he was in the finale. In this episode he swears he’ll never go back. But we’ve already see him say that he has to.

Instead of flashbacks, this year it looks like we’ll be getting flash-forwards. We sort of know the end-game, as we always do (in the flashbacks we always know that they end up on the island) but we don’t know the way in which we get there. If I’m not making sense it’s because the show is messing with our concepts of time. Which, incidentally, is my next point.

I’ve heard speculation that this year deals with time travel. And I guess that would make sense of the fact that I think we saw Charlie. I mean, Hurley saw Charlie - all cleaned up, but he was an illusion I think. That’s what had made Hurley crash the car and go crazy. And Charlie has never looked sexier or more like a rock star to me, let me just tell you that.

And in the last scene, we see someone and - I’m confused. Was it Charlie? Future!Charlie? An undead Charlie? Cause that would be cool. Hmm…no, that wasn’t Charlie. But I think he’s still around!

Okay, and now I have a spoilery video from YouTube that was released at Comic-Con in 2007. *Draws the curtains* Station six of the Dharma Initiative: The Orchid:

Is it maybe a little funny that it’s such a dangerous lab but he only needs a couple minutes to tell them the safety precautions?

They mention a ’shift’. A time shift?

That was the same bunny, was it not? What do you think? What do you know? What do you think you know? Where is my other sock? These are important and haunting questions.

Also, I think my cat just ate a bug, and is eying another. But that’s okay, I had scheduled ‘bug hunting’ as my ‘to-do’ for six a.m. today, anyway.

Until later,

Jessica

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Top image from lost-media.com.