Greatest Hits

Judging solely on the merits of the Charlie storyline (and its related flashbacks), tonight's episode of Lost was, in my opinion, the best one this season.

I'm not really sure I ever completely believed that Charlie would die in his big dive at the end of the episode... but that was completely irrelevant for the story to pack a powerful emotional punch. Every single moment played strong and perfectly: The flashback when Charlie (and the rest of Drive Shaft) first hears their song on the radio. The moment during a down-and-out stretch in his life when someone called him a hero. The fact that the best moment of his life actually took place there on the island. His guarded "non-goodbyes" to Claire and Hurley. Especially his goodbye to Aaron, and leaving behind the ring (whose significance we'd just learned). And most of all, the last moments in the boat with Desmond, as he embraces his fate. Like I said, I found all of this to be the best Lost has been this entire season. (And that, by the way, is not really a slam on this season. I thought it was pretty worthy of sitting along side many of the more emotional storylines from earlier seasons, too.)

The rest of the plot in the present? Well, it did have its moments -- mostly those featuring Rose and Bernard. Man, have I missed them this season. I'm not sure I even realized until seeing them back on screen again just how much I've missed them this season. Their moments were sweet and funny, and welcome.

But the rest was just moving the pieces into position for the finale next week. And at times in a very hamfisted and showy way that held no internal logic -- it was just for the sake of setting up a season finale. Why Jack's insistence that "everything has to happen at once?" Well, no other real, logical reason other than "so that it will all take place in the season finale." Why drag everyone up to that clearing to waste some of their limited supply of dynamite on blowing up a demonstration tree when a simple "we've got some dynamite from the Black Rock" would have sufficed? Well, no logical reason other than "it looked cool."

And I feel like maybe I've been cheated out of a piece of story between Carl and Alex. Last we saw, Carl just ran off into the jungle. Now we find out Alex has been helping him live there all along. Surely they can't have been getting away with this without someone noticing. Ben, or someone loyal to him? Or someone against Ben, helping keep the secret perhaps? All I know is, I feel like "secret love," while perhaps a bit cliche (and maybe not actually all that interesting between two characters we don't really know all that well), still sounds more interesting to me than some of the tales we actually have been shown this season.

But even with the flaws, there was far more good about this episode than not. Now here's hoping it leads us into a quality finale next week.