I'm of two minds where last night's two hours of new Lost are concerned. I thought there was no shortage of things to love about the kick-off to Season Five - the cameo return of a cast member we hadn't seen in a couple of years, the trips back down Memory Lane to re-visit past events on the island, and that awesome opening with Daniel Faraday at the building of the Orchid - but that the second hour didn't live up to the high level of the first. A little Hurley goes a long way, after all, and hour number two had more than enough of that for my tastes.
Perhaps the biggest negative in my mind, though, involves the seemingly-inconsistent treatment of time travel that was demonstrated throughout. Faraday made a very passionate attempt to educate Sawyer and his companions on how "you can't change the past" and yet the episodes were full of examples of them doing just that. I'll buy that the rules were intentionally broken with Desmond - seeing as he's already got a history of affecting events while bopping back and forth in time and may therefore by "special" in that regard - but what about everything else that happened? Had Ethan Rom really encountered - and shot! - John Locke before flight 815 crashed on the island (as was shown last night), and if so, why didn't Ethan recognize him when he infiltrated the group later? (It's still possible that they'll explain that away later, but I'm not holding my breath.) And are we really to believe that the soldiers that Locke and the others killed (who were possibly WWII fighters?) had always died in that way? It's a relatively rare occurrence when someone in the mainstream gets time travel "right" (12 Monkeys comes to mind) and I fear that Lost's Season Five writers may not be up to the challenge.
Overall, though, it was a great couple of hours and I'm thoroughly jazzed at the prospect of another 15 or 16 installments to come over the next four months!
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That's an interesting point about Ethan Rom not recognizing John when they DO crash on the island. Did he actually come in contact with Ethan? I remember Charlie, Claire, and someone else (Jack?) being there when Ethan took Claire and Ethan was subsequently gunned down like a dog.
But I don't specifically remember Locke being around (possibly being obsessed with getting into the hatch). I'm not saying he wasn't there to be recognized...I guess we'd have to verify by going back to that episode in whatever season that happened.
I was trying to figure out the Desmond timeline...and even wondered why Daniel said that this wouldn't "affect him". Why? Because he was in the hatch? Anyways, I started tracing his actual trip to Oxford where he met Daniel (presumably in the past...but possibly in the future since he and Penny are going now). Also, I wonder if the picture of him and Penny on the boat that he held so dear hasn't even been taken yet! They are, after all, on a sailboat heading to Oxford.
Then I was clarifying whether, in the Locke flashback to when he was a boy and visited by Richard, if the compass was one of the items that Richard put on the table for him. Sherry believes it was one of the items. This was when Richard was trying to determine if a young John Locke was "special".
I have to admit, I was quite enthralled in the full two hours. I probably could have done with less Hurley and more skips in time..but hey...they just started.
I also blurted out at the end, "I wonder if that old woman is Jacob.." Benry is clearly intimidated by her and there is a clear subordinate role there. Interesting...
I think I understand why Ethan didn't recognize John. It's because he was dead by the time he would have had the memory to recall him. Remember that John is in the present meeting an Ethan in the past, so it would take an Ethan in the present to have this memory of John.
This kind of works for Des and Faraday, too - Des had the memory flashback after Faraday met him in the past. The problem that I can't get past is that it should have been Des in the present that had the memory (just hours after getting off the island) and not Des in the future that had the memory (years after getting off the island). If it was something that he remembered in the past, we would have had to explain Des remembering Faraday somehow as "that guy I thought was the replacement"
Otherwise, it is what it is - it's Lost. Suspension of disbelief takes place for the duration of the show and we soak it all in ;)
I did think that the second hour ended a little weak, but from what I remember of previous seasons the early episodes generally did. It's later in the season where they really keep you on the edge.
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