The Lost season premiere is always an exciting event. It is the most anticipated episode of the year for me. While I believe that the finales have all been of outstanding quality, the excitement of a finale is tempted by the knowledge that it is the end of the road. The premiere though? You have the entire season ahead of you, with endless possibilities and the hope of seeing what happened to Montand’s arm is still alive.
With that in mind, allow me to give my thoughts on the first four season premieres:
“Pilot”--I did not watch Lost until season two, so I missed this the first time around. I had seen the commercials for Lost and my thoughts were something like “How do you make a show about survivors of a large plane crash? First of all, how would there be survivors? If there were survivors, how would they not be found within a short period of time?”
I’m not a huge television watcher. Other than Lost, the only shows I watch religiously are Monk and The Office. I also like 24 and Burn Notice, and other than that, I don’t really watch anything but sports on TV. So for me to be drawn to a show to the extent that I am to Lost is unusual. But as I saw some of the critical praise for the show over the summer of the first hiatus, and learned about the intriguing mystery of the hatch, I decided that this was a show that I should watch. So I read all I could on the internet--episode summaries and the like, and watched the clips that were available (this was before iTunes had the episodes, and the DVD came out pretty close to the season 2 premiere date).
So by the time I actually watched “Pilot”, I knew what the plot was and I knew who the characters were. When I heard a roar and saw the trees shake, I knew that it was the monster that was responsible. I never got the opportunity to watch this episode with a tabula rasa, and it was nobody’s fault but mine, and I regret that.
But even watching it while knowing what was up, I could see why this episode had captivated so many other viewers. It is tremendous, from the beach explosion to Charlie’s haunting question, “Guys, where are we?”
“Man of Science, Man of Faith”--this was the first episode of Lost I watched live, and it was more than enough to keep me on board with this new (to me) show. Once I realized what I was watching in the opening sequence, I had instant respect for the storytelling of the producers. And “Make Your Own Kind of Music” will always represent Lost to me. Season Two may be just about everyone’s least favorite season of Lost, but this to me is the second-best premiere.
“A Tale of Two Cities”--by the time this episode aired, I was a full-blown Lost fanatic. The episode is kind of slow, the green light is not friendly on the eyes, but it sets the somber tone for the first portion of the season effectively. And the first five minutes, for me, topped even the opening of “Man of Science, Man of Faith”.
“The Beginning of the End”--I was convinced that this season would open with the eye of a character we had not met, on the freighter perhaps, listening to music on his iPod. “The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” would be a nice choice, I thought, keeping with the theme of 60s pop. Alas, we got a pile of papayas…oh yea, and the reveal that there was a group called the Oceanic Six.
More than any of the other premieres, this one felt to me like it was a “wind-down” episode from the previous finale, without a whole lot of new on-island revelation. Don’t get me wrong--it was a fine episode with a few of great moments (Abaddon, Jack tries to shoot Locke, Faraday parachutes onto the island). But it seemed to be more of a utilitarian purpose than not. The next episode, “Confirmed Dead”, was when Season Four really hit the ground running.
So what can we expect tonight? I don’t read spoilers; my only exposure to any future material is the ABC promos, and I don’t watch any that show full scenes. So what I’m about to write will look silly by tonight.
If history is any guide, we can expect a huge revelation before the discordant music plays and “LOST” spins across the screen. I have no idea what that will be, and that’s the fun part. I didn’t guess we’d see the inside of the Hatch right away, I didn’t guess we’d see where the Others lived, and I didn’t guess we’d learn that only six left the island.
The good news is that a lot of the “set-up” function seemed to be taken care of in “There’s No Place Like Home”--the Oceanic Six was rescued, and since we’ve already seen their flashforwards for a whole season, we should be ready to get into serious off-island business. And with two episodes tonight, we hopefully will be able to see both the off and on-island situations (remember how Season 3 left the fate of the Hatch inhabitants hanging until episode 3?) The on-island stuff should be fascinating: where did the island go, and how did that affect its inhabitants? Will the small scattering of non-Others left (Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte, Rose, Bernard maybe Faraday or Jin if he’s alive) join with the Others? Here I’ll hazard a guess: no way. The tension between Sawyer and Locke was obviously palpable when they pulled guns on each other over Hurley’s status in “The Shape of Things to Come”. I anticipate that Sawyer will take a Jack-like skepticism towards Locke, ironically as Jack on the mainland is going to try to tote his carcass back to the island.
