The Candidate

I understand that ABC wanted to run as many episodes of Lost during the "sweeps months" of February and May as possible, and this is why the show had to take one week off for a re-run in the midst of its final season. But I think it's very unfortunate that this one week break occurred right here where it did. Having now seen tonight's episode, I feel it really needed to come hot on the heels of the last new installment. The needed "break" would have come better at practically any earlier point in the season.

Now mind you, I thought this was a pretty fantastic episode. I think it would be hard not to think so. But the table wasn't properly set. There was no re-cap at the start of the hour, and with all the details one has to track watching Lost, a few just weren't quite clear in my mind. For example, where the hell were Ben and Richard this hour? I can't for the life of me remember how or when they got separated from the rest of the group. And honestly, it wasn't important, given the emotional content of this episode, but it detracted and distracted from the drama a bit for me. I guess I should have taken notes.

Anyway, what do we have? The removal of ambiguity, I suppose, in the Jacob/Smokey conflict. Jacob may have seemed not quite on the level at points in the past, but then, he never took actions that led to the deaths of some of our beloved characters.

First, we lost Sayid. It was an interesting and fitting conclusion to the arc his character has had this season. He's always been a man caught between trying to be good, but unable to forgive himself for being evil. Early this season, he was told he was evil, and so completely embraced that. But we now learn that Desmond did get through to him, preparing him for his ultimate redemption this week -- sacrificing himself to save the "candidates."

Well, some of the candidates. Sadly, we lost Sun and Jin and well. That one hurt. There seem to be an inordinate number of Lost fans caught up in Jack/Kate, Sawyer/Kate, Jack/Juliet, Sawyer/Juliet, or whatever. But the real love stories of the show were Desmond and Penny (though that didn't develop until later into the show), Rose and Bernard (interesting that we saw Sideways Bernard briefly tonight), and Sun and Jin. Their reunion was two seasons and change in the making, and now we see how bittersweet a reunion it truly was. It's appropriate that Jin pledges not to leave her again, and the two die together; but sad that they leave a young daughter behind (who Jin never got to see in person!), and that their reunion was so short lived.

Of course, we haven't quite completely lost any of these characters, as all are still alive in the Sideways world. Even with the mountain of emotion going on in the main Island plot line, there was still room to advance things in the Sideways story too. We got a touching story from Locke about how he ended up in the wheelchair in this world, and a perhaps even more touching admission from Jack in the same scene.

That's a lot of emotion for one hour!