From the Field

The Outsider’s Guide to Lost’s Last Season: Episode Five

March 3rd, 2010

I’m standing and looking out my window now, hardly watching the TV turned on beside me. The gray ceiling of Chicago winter feels exceptionally oppressive this evening. It reflects the sallow glow of street lamps, turning dirty piles of snow into diseased scoops of yellow-orange sherbet. [Ed. note: There is no such thing as "sherbert." I have unwittingly added an extra "r" to sherbet for more than twenty years without correction. I now stand corrected.] The fifth episode has finished, the earth has rotated another handful of degrees, the world outside my window is still frozen, and somewhere, in some fictional time-space, on some godforsaken island, an army has amassed in support of Zombie John.

I don’t have much detail to share on tonight’s episode. My heart wasn’t in it. The hour kicked off with Sayid’s forgettable L.A. subplot, spoiling an already soul-dampening dinner. I ate with my hands and sullenly chewed my way through a pile of cold chicken parts and cheese slices, perking up slightly as I finished the plate to watch as Island Sayid and Stony-face battled to the death. Stony-face decided to forego the final blow and instead told Sayid to leave the compound, just as you might tell a mangy dog to get on, scram, and don’t ever come back, ya here? The scene and the dinner were equally disappointing.

My spirits continued to flag as the episode wore on. I checked the clock twice and stood to stare out across the city, the sky choked with cloud, the TV playing on and filling the room with strained string instruments. Kate returned to the temple, Claire was banished to a pit, Zombie John convinced Sayid to do his dirty work. The gamut of emotion, the rise and fall of a character’s arc in a short, two-minute span: Stony-face shares the story of his life with Sayid by the pool; a crescendo of music, a palpable tenderness, and without another word Sayid yanks Stony under the water and drowns him. Stony-face’s hippie sidekick rushes to the pool in time to get his throat slit by Sayid. It’s a hopeless finish for a pair of short-lived characters.

The winter grows long, the mysteries deepen, and my thoughts drift to Sawyer. Sawyer, where’d you go? You and Zombie John made a pact, remember? But you haven’t reappeared. I wonder if you aren’t off doing what any sensible man might do when faced with the oppression of winter or the loneliness of island life. I bet you’re back at your house, sipping from your whiskey bottle, waiting for the world to end.

I turn away from the window and turn off the TV. I think I’ll have a little sip from that bottle myself.

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