…I can’t say a whole lot about them. Sorry, but you know how it is with the press lockdown on these things: nobody at the network likes spoilers. I will, however, offer up five random tidbits from each episode to perhaps further your excitement ’til they air back to back on January 21st:
Episode 5.1:
* Willie Nelson’s “Shotgun Willie” is used as the background music to the opening sequence…and the fact that it’s on vinyl is, if not technically important in and of itself, something that indirectly ties into a point of comparison later in the episode.
* Time is very much the essence of the episode, a factor which lends itself to offering up several familiar faces that we haven’t seen in quite some time, but if you’re someone who gets a headache from the rules and regulations of time travel, prepare for a migraine the size of Montana. On the other side of the coin, however, this means that it’s finally Daniel Faraday’s time to shine!
* We get our first proper encounter with someone whose face has been well known to us for several seasons now.
* Sawyer spends virtually the entire episode with his shirt off. This has nothing to do with anything in the plot; I just figured it might give the ladies out there a little something extra to look forward to.
* And just as a helpful piece of kitchen advice, always put your knives point down in your dishwasher. I’m just sayin’. You never know when it could pay off for you.
Episode 5.2:
* One of the Oceanic Six has a mainland encounter with a long-dead islander…sort of.
* There is a moment which is almost certainly a winking tribute to “Weekend at Bernie’s.”
* The father of one of the characters makes a return appearance…and that character’s mother, too, for that matter.
* Fire = bad. Fire attached to projectiles = very, very bad.
* When you hear the line “good to see ya” uttered late in the episode, you will grin and possibly cheer.
Stay tuned, because I’ll be screening episode 5.3 when I’m out at the TCA Press Tour from Jan. 7 – 16, and I’m sure I’ll be able offer a few more tidbits from that installment as well.
For starters, let’s address that silly spy report I linked to at the end of my last post. I had a feeling that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof would film some decoy endings to keep people guessing, and my suspicions were confirmed on three separate occasions. The first occurred during Jack and Locke’s discussion about the island’s potential powers. As soon as Locke made a point of asking Jack to stay, it was pretty clear that the reason Jack is so upset over the death of Jeremy Bentham in the future is because he considered him his best chance to get back to the island. The second clue happened right after, during Walt’s visit to Hurley in the mental institution, when Walt mentioned that Bentham was the only person to visit him in New York. Finally, the third is probably the most obvious (ABC’s commercial about the alternate endings on tomorrow’s episode of “Good Morning America”), but if you hadn’t already figured out that Bentham was Locke by then, well, you’re just not paying close enough attention.
The night opened with the Oceanic Six on a plane back to Hawaii. After Jack coaches the group on their “story,” they arrive to discover an Oceanic Airlines-moderated press conference set up to allow reporters to ask the survivors questions. Among the topics covered included the fate of Jin (Sun says he died when the plane crashed), the birth of Aaron (he’s being played off as Kate’s biological child), and confirmation that no other people could have possibly survived. But that wasn’t the juicy part.
In fact, Richard Alpert didn’t only visit him as a prematurely born baby (I’m still curious as to how Alpert manages to remain the same age for nearly 50 years), but he contacts him twice more throughout his childhood – once under the guise of a “school for special kids” and again via a pamphlet for a Portland-based science camp. Then, as an adult going through rehab following his accident, Locke is visited by another Dharma suit: Abaddon, who suggests that he experience the Australian walkabout to help discover himself. It’s all very coincidental, and while the writers utilized this same tactic in the first two seasons, those instances weren’t bound by such disbelief.
