Lost: Season 5

Lost is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I'm really unsure about where it's headed after this messy season. Throughout its run, the show has taken flak from some for being too hard to follow, too confusing, and too far-fetched. But in my opinion, Lost has been remarkably solid in terms of leaving no plotholes or impossibilities in its massive wake. Until now. I mean, the show has been a sci-fi disguised as a primetime drama since its inception, but things always at least made sense within the realm of the show itself; it's fruitless to note every non-realistic detail when it comes to science fiction, but a good science fiction is at least consistent with itself. That all changed this season. Minor spoiler here, but time travel becomes an intricate part of this season. And the thing about time travel is that there are a number of interpretations for what the "rules" and physical limitations of it would be. Those readers who remember my Back to the Future recaps may recall me ripping into time travel theory, but that's not important right here. What is important is that everyone in Lost has always maintained that one cannot change the past. Time is linear, and even if you can find yourself able to manipulate its passage, you can never change events that occur. "What happened, happened," is both a Lost time travel mantra and the name of a fifth season episode. The logic is that if I go back to 1975 and do something, then I do not create an alternate future back here in 2010. Instead, when I return to 2010, it's exactly the same, and in fact, the thing I did in 1975 was something that I always did in 1975. There are paradoxes here, to be sure, but the important thing is that predetermination has always been the law when it comes to time travel in Lost. Then, with just three episodes to go this season, everything changed. Daniel Faraday, the character who was always the resident time travel expert on Lost, suddenly changed his mind and said, "it turns out, I was wrong, and we can change the past after all!" His revelation totally undermines what he's been saying all season and left me shaking my head at Lost. Worse yet, main character Jack Shephard takes it upon himself to go to drastic measures in 1977 in order to alter the timeline of events that leads to the original plane crash in 2004 that stranded him and several others on the island in the first place. Now, it's been confirmed for a long time that next season is the final season of Lost. These first five seasons have consisted of so much build-up, and have asked so many questions that still remain unanswered, that I've been looking forward to the sixth season for years now. But the way this season ends - and it's a mighty cliffhanger of a season finale - the door is opened for the sixth season to start in essentially one of two ways. Either Jack's drastic plan has worked and he has saved his future self's plane from crashing on the island in 2004 in the first place, or, in a beautiful twist of tragic irony, Jack has only caused the very thing he was trying to prevent. If it's the latter, I'll be thrilled, as the whole "you cannot change the past" and "whatever happens has always been what happened" philosophies will win out. But if it's the former, I'd be terribly disappointed. All this build-up, and for what? Just so Jack and Kate and company can get a "Madden Rewind" and be alive and well and total strangers back in the year 2004 when they board their no-longer-doomed plane from Sydney to Los Angeles? The thing is, I used to have all the faith in the world in the Lost showrunners to answer all the big questions and tie everything up not only neatly but in an awesomely unpredictable way. Now? I'm not so sure. And I was hugely nonplussed to learn that season six's first episode is in fact titled "LA X." You know, the very airport that the original castaways were headed for when their plane went down in the series premiere. Maybe this is a red herring, and maybe the showrunners are just trying to fool us into thinking along the very lines I just described. But I fear that this is no false alarm. I worry that the fifth season's finale will mark the moment when Lost finally did jump the shark. There were other problems with the fifth season too - a huge lack of cohesion, too many inexplicable things occurring (why was Sun the lone Lostie who ended up in 2007 when the rest went back to the seventies?), and the abandonment of the flashback as a character-building, story-telling device. Many characters suffered this season, and few showed any growth while some actually regressed. Jack was especially awful, as by season's end, he was willing to risk life and limb to change the future, and his reasoning was that this way he might still have a chance with Kate - never mind that they'd be complete strangers if their plane landed in L.A. safely, as Sawyer points out. The largest exception to characters suffering was Ben, the off-and-on villain and ally to the survivors, who was pushed to new limits and taken to new heights. But even Ben was mishandled a bit. One key moment (alright, spoiler coming up) has the survivors run into young Ben in '77 and interact with him. Young Ben is a nice, gentle soul. But one character shoots him in an attempt to change the future (eliminate Ben from the get-go, and he'll never become the heinous man who does so many terrible things). I was hoping that this would change Young Ben, and turn him into the evil, manipulating, untrustworthy person he becomes. And I also thought this run-in with the survivors would give Ben some experience with them and allow him to know just how to manipulate them once he was an adult in 2004. But instead, the incident is explained away and swept under the rug with a cop-out "Ben won't remember any of this once he recovers" comment. Why waste such a good opportunity? It just seemed like a season of missed opportunities to me. I give it a nine out of ten - still stellar, mind you, but also still the worst Lost season to date. I reserve the right to change my mind, especially if everything wrong with this season ends up resolving itself in the final season. But as things stand right now, there are a few too many flaws for my liking. Heroes has never once reminded me of Lost, but for the first time, Lost has actually started to show shades of Heroes. I never thought I'd say that, but it's an inconvenient truth. Here's looking forward to (and hoping for) an awesome sixth and final season. I know Lost has enough left in the tank. It's up to the writers to make the right decisions, execute, and deliver. I can't wait.