Before I delve into anything about the May 4th episode of LOST I just have to say that there was some very surprising news that I almost didn’t hear on JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE later that same night. I’ve been a long time fan of KIMMEL but haven’t watched or DVR’d the show for a long time because I work and already can’t watch all the TV I’ve already got on my plate (another reason to get the HD TiVO already so I can go portable too!). Yesterday, however, Executive Producer of LOST Damon Lindelof sent out the following Tweet:

Sorry, that’s the one I read in my head after watching THE CANDIDATE. The real Tweet was:

JORGE GARCIA was a guest and just at the close of the interview, almost drowned out by the cheers of the crowd and the band as they go to commercial KIMMEL made the special announcement that LOST’s climax would not take up two hours of television programming time that night. It would actually take up 2 and a half hours of programming time. Yup, the series finale just got 22 minutes longer folks because (I’m assuming and hoping) they just couldn’t cram that much awesome into the time they were given.

Now that we’ve gotten that bit of business out of the way, and since I’m sure you’ve already heard or read the news about the finale, let’s move on to taking a look at what happened on the 14th episode of this final season titled THE CANDIDATE. As always I remind you that I write this with the assumption that you are reading this because you’ve already seen the episode so if you haven’t this is your final warning.

I was really looking forward to sitting down today and writing out the fact that I in fact hit the nail on the head with a prediction I had made. I was all excited and I went back to find out what column I had written it in and much to my own horror it turns out that I never actually seemed to write it. This really bummed me out so let me now tell you the words that I could have sworn that I put down in print.

I don’t like to speculate on what is coming up but I really hope that the ‘Candidates’ don’t some how get tricked into going along with whatever UN-LOCKE/SMOKEY JOE has planned. He’s not ‘allowed’ to kill the candidates so this means that he probably wants and needs to kill the candidates. Every time he says he needs them all to get off the ISLAND the part of the sentence that I hear him purposely leaving out is the word ‘dead’ after all and before to get off the ISLAND.

I don’t know what article I completely abandoned and discarded some time after writing that but oh how I wish I still had it to present to you as proof that I saw this one coming. Explained as simply as the way I had before pressing the delete button it’s pretty clear, right? At least I did say in this week’s column for recommendations that with the remaining number of episodes of LOST there was a high probability of an important character body count increase this week, so there’s one for the win column.

Yes, that’s right those of you who didn’t take my warning and have no idea what happened in THE CANDIDATE, main characters died. I knew it was going to happen the very moment that UN-LOCKE/SMOKEY JOE handed JACK his backpack that the previously seen explosives were going to be in that backpack. If UN-LOCKE had a big bad guy soup handle mustache when he handed that backpack over he would have been twirling it with one finger and saying “mwuahahaha” under his breath.

So with most of our favorite LOST-ies stuck in a submarine they found the bomb and did everything wrong. SAYID took a final shot at redemption by grabbing the bomb and running to the other side of the sub before he was blown to bits (which makes sense because SAYID is so bad ass he HAD to go out in a blaze of glory). Our favorite pilot FRANK took a flying door to the face and JIN stayed with SUN after she was trapped behind debris proving that true love means staying with someone so you both can die together. I personally would have had JIN try to break my hip or pelvis so I could be pried out from behind the wreckage but clearly it was time to lighten the load.

This show did leave me with a lot of questions, but not in the usual LOST sense. I wouldn’t say I’m pondering plot holes however there are certain things that don’t add up to me.

• After SAYID some how gets through the sonic fence he cuts the generator power so all the LOST-ies can be un-caged after UN-LOCKE as SMOKEY JOE takes care of the guards. Shortly after there are two guards at the plane. Why didn’t SMOKEY JOE just go all kinds of nuts and make a clean sweep of the whole smaller ISLAND?
• JACK figured the bomb couldn’t go off because UN-LOCKE can’t kill any of them. Just like the stick of dynamite he shared with RICHARD ALPERT he’s convinced that nothing will happen. (Think of it like a mathproblem LOCKE can’t kill Candidate and LOCKE makes bomb so LOCKE BOMB can’t kill Candidate). SAWYER doesn’t believe him, pulls the leads, and the timer stops only to quickly speed up (No Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!). How is tampering with a bomb different then JACK lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite if he too can’t kill himself? I have to believe that JACK’s logic was somewhat flawed because he was able to get out of the situation alive so the magic voodoo power of the ISLAND or whatever didn’t need to intercede. This could mean that JACK is probably going to be there to the very end (and doesn’t bode well for SAWYER since he pulled the wires and ka-BOOM!). This is kind of funny to think about since the original intention was to kill JACK at the end of the show’s PILOT episode.
• Where the hell was CHARLES WIDMORE after the first five minutes? Did he know that LOCKE was coming and made way for the main ISLAND to try to fulfill his electronmagnetic dreams?

The flash-sidewayswhateveritis also pointed out something else that, if allowed to play out, won’t bode very well for flash-sidewayswhateveritis SAWYER since he still has a blood feud with ANTHONY COOPER who it now turns out is a vegetable. Sorry SAWYER, no revenge for you in the other dimension/reality/confusion. This also is the only real revelation to come out of the flash-sidewayswhateveritis other than the fact that LOCKE mutters things about the ISLAND in his sleep and once again JACK is found to be looking into a mirror, this time that of the music box his father left CLAIRE.

Just as many on the Internet have suspected it’s pretty clear that SAYID didn’t in fact kill DESMOND. His little speach about leaving something in a well caused millions of female viewers to cheer all at once.

The one thing that was nice to see was something we haven’t really seen in a while on LOST: actual mourning. After escaping the submarine of doom the quartet of Hurley, Jack, Sawyer and Kate now realize that from all of flight 815 they are all that is left. They’ve just lost two definite friends, 1 kinda friend and 1 dude they shared a secret with. They break down. They cry. All of them (well, except Sawyer because he got bonked on the head and is out of it). It was nice to finally show these characters have a real moment after all hell broke loose. They’re usually running around and dealing with seven types of crazy so they haven’t really had these moments recently. Nice touch.

That’s all I’ve really got to reflect on this week folks. Next week’s episode is titled ACROSS THE SEA and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be an AB AETERNO style flashback look at the life of JACOB and UN-LOCKE/SMOKEY JOE, which is perfectly timed since it’s pretty clear now that even though JACOB isn’t a saint SMOKEY JOE is pretty much THE bad guy.

See you next week!

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