Lost - Because You Left

**** / ****
When am I? -- Locke, with a gunshot wound bleeding, giving him fits

Well, John. That's all relative. -- Alpert is in a bit of a hurry, trying to "patch" John up before "time is up".

To think all of this fractured time imbalance (close as I can come to describe it in my own words) Ben tells Jack is caused by his leaving the island. He stays perhaps none of it happens. I would love to see that challenged. Like Sayid tells Hurley later in the episode, if you come across Ben and he tells you something, do the opposite. Ben has lied too many times, so trust in anything he says is perhaps not wise.

Jack is so broken, though, a vulnerable and defeated man I almost thought Ben perhaps felt sympathy for despite all of their animosity, hostility, and rivalry on the island.

Sayid seems to try and keep Hurley from being available at the institution, as Ben realizes in a news report that securing him won't be as easy as he expected it to be.

I was telling a friend that while it is a hell of a lot of fun watching this unique, eclectic group now on the island, with Sawyer becoming this inserted defacto leader for those no longer associated with Locke or Jack, how the creative team is able to cleverly bring forces towards the Oceanic Six off-island to lure them back to where they were so desperate to leave definitely impressed me.

I’m really digging this development between Widmore and Sun, such an unlikely potential alliance that was so unexpected to me. Ben’s death specifically is Sun’s reasoning for possibly associating with Widmore, but I am all the more curious as to how this teased partnership will continue. Nonetheless Widmore seems very similar to Sun’s own father, even talking about golf with him to Sun when she approaches him on the street, supposedly disrespecting him due to her flippant approach. He is just used to being addressed as an intimidating figure, but Sun just walks up on him throwing up the island in his face. Sun just being dragged into a room at the London airport gives us an idea of just how much power Widmore really has.

As far as off-island goes, we’re told the six have been away from the island three years. Aaron is this little kid calling Kate mommy, but when an attorney and his associate arrives with a court order for blood samples to determine if she is the biological parent or not, it is once again an uprooting and flee from yet another temporary home. Sayid had been killing for Ben but when he convinces Hurley to leave with him hired killers become a nuisance he will need to outfight. The use of an open dishwasher’s cutlery in what was supposed to be a safehouse proves to be quite a weapon! Sayid can also send a thug over a railing to the asphalt in a crashing heap, with poor Hurley (holding a gun he picked up to help is friend) only looking over, his picture snapped by a passersby. So Sayid is constantly avoiding killers, Hurley is now considered a suspect in men Sayid killed, Jack is a pitiable mess Ben must lead by the hand, Sun is seemingly intertwined with Widmore, and Kate is on the lam with Aaron in tow: quite an opening episode for the first season just off-island!

And with Locke’s unique adventures (he spots the drug plane crashing, and is even shot by Ethan shortly after it while calling out to see if there are any survivors, only later to find the ship on the ground, securing fabric to wrap around his wounded leg; Alpert arriving with a compass and supplies ready to pull the bullet and help stop the bleeding; Alpert telling him he must bring the survivors back to the island; Alpert informing Locke he must die in order for those who left to return; Ethan nearly shooting Locke after Locke tells him he’s supposed to assume the role of leader from Ben), not to mention, the true introduction of Daniel Faraday, time traveling physicist—and our first real introduction to the man behind all of those Dharma Orientation videos, slipping into roles, performing for the camera then retreating to The Orchid to command the construction workers not to break into the rock, protecting the wheel Ben eventually turns—this episode is a machine of developments with no off-switch. No breath taken, busy and exciting, the episode unloads a great deal information.

I’m an absolute mark for time travel in television and film. I LOVE it as a device and in storytelling I embrace the Pulp Fiction style where linear isn’t necessarily preferred. It does create this off-kilter, jerky unfolding of events, backwards and forwards, but when an island—thanks to Ben’s turning of the wheel—suffers “time hiccups”, or as Daniel describes it “a dislodging in time”, the narrative can take us into unpredictable places. Even as the fourth season gave us details regarding how the past, present, and future might work itself out, the missing portions that fill in the gaps (something happens, a twist or unveiling, that packs a wallop, rattling us with questions as to how this or that could possibly happen) are what excite the most. I love how incredible events that knock us for a loop get their exposition…in the order of how Creative sees fit. It is a lengthy ride that takes us through bumpy backroads and everywhere in between.

The Orchid opening where Candle (or whatever his name is) explains how the “limitless energy behind the rock wall could provide the ability to manipulate time” after feeding his baby, listening to a record that skips, and going through a morning routine is just the kind of surprise Lost wields with impressive regularity. The ordinary and extraordinary in the opening of the episode within the life of this man seeking to control an energy perhaps he had no business pursuing. Dicking with time might not be wise and the island might not like such intentions.