Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Variable

Tonight was a rather twisty, turny episode of Lost that followed one of the big conventions it seems the show has set up for its characters -- if the episode centers around your flashbacks, there's a fair chance you'll be dead by the end of it.

Daniel Faraday's backstory was painted in more tonight, but the episode was really even more revealing for his mother. It takes a really cold woman, or a woman really dedicated to fate and/or the Island, or some combination of all these things, for her to raise her son from childhood to fulfill the destiny of being killed by her hand. It certainly paints an older episode in a new light, the one in which she educated Desmond (time hopping for the first time) about the rules of destiny when a person's death has been pre-ordained.

Speaking of pre-ordained death, did it strike anyone else as a rather ominous bit of editing when Daniel told Jack "any one of us can die," then followed by a long, lingering shot of Kate?

For the big mystery lovers, we're now leading up to "the incident" refered to on that footage from the hatch's videotape (from clear back in season two), that was edited out and spliced back in by our intrepid heroes. It seems likely this will catapult the time travelers back into their own time somehow.

But as usual with good episodes of Lost, the character bits shone over it all. It was an interesting story for Sawyer, who has finally found stability and a place where he belongs, now going to lose it all. Desmond keeping his promise not to leave Penny again was a touching scene. The flashbacks of a swiss-cheese-brained Daniel victimized by his self-experimentation were sad, even knowing as we did that his mental health would be restored by The Island. Daniel's last (and futile) plea to a young Charlotte to try and save her life was also bittersweet.

Things are racing toward the finish for this season now.

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