No allegory ‘Lost’
Genesis, Sigmund Freud, “The Odyssey,” Flannery O’Connor, “The Sopranos,” Carl Jung, “Dr. Strangelove” -- Wednesday night’s season finale of “Lost” was so chockablock with archetype, mythology and cultural references it was like watching Joseph Campbell on crack.
It opened with a man (in a cave, so throw in Plato) hunched over a spinning wheel (Penelope at her loom? Or just a reference to the Blood, Sweat and Tears song?) then cut to two men on a beach. Their garments vaguely period, their speech decidedly modern, they argue over a frigate on the horizon. One man (in black) says that he knows they are coming because the other man (in white) brought them.
“They come, they fight, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt,” he says bitterly. “It always ends the same.”
“It only ends once,” says Mr. White serenely. “Anything that happens before that, it’s just progress.”
A nice little tagline that could certainly double as an explanation of the big, messy but still fascinating work in progress that is “Lost.” With a very impressive shot of a CG statue standing like the Colossus of Rhodes thrown in, it was one of the more powerful opening scenes of a season finale and begs the professorial question: So, class, what have we learned?
Well, the guy in white is Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), earlier a mysterious authority figure now proved long-lived if not immortal. But who is he really? God? And does that then make Mr. Black Satan? Is the island perhaps Eden, existing outside space and time to serve as a kind of spiritual laboratory?
The rest of the episode never quite lived up to the opening, but certainly those and similar issues were addressed. Personal choice versus fate, logic versus emotion, science versus faith, all were embodied by one sweat-sheened character or another.
In perhaps the most telling moment, Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly), having decided to ditch the sub and row that boat ashore, meet up with Bernard (Sam Anderson) and Rose (L. Scott Henderson) who quickly inform them that they are “retired” from all manner of conflict. Bernard and Rose, the island’s John and Yoko, just want to be together.
Everyone else, however, remains happily locked in one battle or another. Jack (Matthew Fox) believes that following Daniel Faraday’s (Jeremy Davies) plan to detonate the hydrogen bomb will erase the last three years and make everything all right again. Kate, Sawyer and Juliet disagree but go along -- Kate for love of Jack, Sawyer to prove his love of Juliet and Juliet because she thinks Sawyer still really loves Kate and she will Do Anything to avoid heartbreak.
Fortunately, Ben (the unflappable Michael Emerson) and Locke (Terry O’Quinn) are providing an antidote to every bromance on television. Locke, with a newfound swagger and most alarming grin, is off to kill the Wizard (that would be Jacob), except he’s going to make Ben do it. And Ben, who has been told by his dead daughter he must do whatever Locke says, pales at the thought, but does not falter.
Except, Locke may not be Locke. But Ben, a bitter Cain to Locke’s Abel, dutifully wields his knife. Meanwhile, over at the Swan, Juliet doesn’t quite ride the bomb down the rabbit hole, but she quickly follows it and then beats it until it finally explodes. Or at least it seems to explode -- in a negative reflection of “The Sopranos” finale, the screen goes white.
But there were times in these overly stuffed two hours when you couldn’t help but laugh as images of a “Lostian” writers room grasping at straws and old college theses rose in your mind. But then it only ends once and everything that happens before is just progress.
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