From the Field

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

March 17th, 2010

Michael Landon’s on TV. He’s on a TV on my TV, inside this episode of Lost, and he’s teaching Laura about life and death. It’s a snip from Little House on the Prairie, and the curly-haired saint is sharing his thoughts on achieving eternal life through laughter and memory. L.A. Sawyer is watching intently, hanging on Landon’s words, musing in silence as he sits alone and awash in the light from his television screen. This is a message! There’s a reason Lost’s creators chose this clip. There’s some vague foreshadowing, like a glint from the river bottom, but it’s hard to know what it means.

Which gets me to thinking about basic human instincts, like our desire to find pattern and meaning in chaos, or our perpetual search for answers to the unknown or unknowable. If I was truly invested in this show, I might spend an hour looking up that Little House clip to figure out its context. I might find a transcript of what Michael Landon actually said, and I might spend another hour thinking about how that applies to the world of Lost. I would do all of these things because of my desire to find meaning amongst the chaos, and it would all stem from my faith in the show’s creators. The human propensity for faith, it seems, is an integral component to Lost’s story arc. The most faithful of Lost’s followers have carried on because they’re invested in a compelling story that is full of mysteries yet solved. They have faith in the story, faith in the writers and creators, and they’re committed to finding pattern in the chaos.

Which makes me wonder: Do Lost’s creators really intend to deliver the windfall of answers required to satiate the hungriest of faithful Lost followers? If I had to bet money, I’d say that this story will end up leaving just as many questions unanswered as answered. But that’s what makes a fictional universe great, right? The unknowable, the endless search for answers, the canon of thought and swirling mystery folded into its very structure. It is, in many ways, its own religion. And like all great religions, there is a leap of faith required to follow on into the chaos, with the hope of finding some meaning out there among the mysteries.

But enough of my abstract speculations. I won’t bother with an entire episode recap, but I will say that this show certainly set a high-water mark for classic double-crosses! The episode kicks off with L.A. Sawyer giving the ‘ol double-cross to a con-woman he was sleeping with. Back on The Island, Sawyer is sent to Hydra island to do a little recon for Zombie John. He finds a young woman and a giant pile of dead bodies. The woman promptly gives Sawyer the sly ‘ol double-cross when he confronts her about the bodies on the beach, leading him into an ambush of gun-toting goons that take him back to a submarine to meet a man named Whitmore. This meeting sets up the dreaded (and rarely attempted) triple double-cross. Sawyer sells Zombie John out to Whitmore, paddles back to The Island and sells Whitmore out to Zombie John. And then! In a final scene between Sawyer and Kate, he dismounts with a double-cross that has Zombie John and Whitmore fighting it out while he and Kate flee in the submarine. Hoo-boy, was it ever a delicious twist of allegiances! More to come, my friends. So much more.

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