Lost: “Because You Left” and “The Lie” (Episodes 5.01 and 5.02)
If you watched the back-to-back episodes of Lost last night, you know this will not be a recap. It’s simply not possible. When Ben worked loose the frozen wheel in Season Four’s finale, he scattered the house of cards that was any semblance of order to Lost’s storyline. Now, hapless fans don’t just have to follow a double plot of flash-backs and flash-forwards, but a “present” completely unglued from chronological time.
As Daniel, the show’s resident physicist, explains, the blinding light and sonic boom that erased the island last season occurred because Ben turned back time…sort of. In Daniel’s analogy, Ben shook loose the “record of time” that was smoothly spinning forward, and now the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 are skipping around like a scratched LP. The question is no longer where are they, but when are they.
In the midst of this roller-coaster ride, Rose makes a good point. While rubbing two sticks together to make fire, she snaps, “We are trying to focus on what we can control!” In the face of crisis, the survivors turn to detail. In the face of a story so complex that ABC aired an hour-long recap, here is a list of memorable details; sometimes it’s all we can do.
1. Willie Nelson’s “Shotgun Willie” opens the episode, and then proceeds to skip around in a hefty little piece of foreshadowing: “If you can’t make a record…if you can’t make a record…”
2. We see enigmatic Dharma Initiative speaker Dr. Change off-camera. After all his stiff recordings, it’s nice to see him let a “What the hell?” fly as he learns there are problems at one of the stations.