It's the beginning of the end on Lost, and last night's two-hour season premiere "LA X" (written by showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) started laying the groundwork for Lost's final run of episodes. It was packed full of revelatory moments, big questions, nasty shocks, and confounding choices; in other words, it was 100% Lost. Here are three things that worked like a dream, and three things that left me scratching my head:
WHAT WORKED
The Smoke Monster Reveal
There had been enough clues last season that Jacob's adversary was the smoke monster, so it was smart of Cuse and Lindelof to get that revelation out of the way almost immediately with a scene where the new Locke transforms into Smokey, thrashes all his enemies around, then bon mots to Ben, "I'm sorry you had to see me like that." I'm not sorry -- in a season where the stakes seem to be growing ever greater for our heroes, it's good to know that the primary villain is actually something that's been around since the pilot.
Jack and Locke's Alternate Meeting
Some of Lost's strongest scenes have been confrontations between Jack and Locke, and they've been incredibly hard to come by over the last few seasons. How nice, then, to get a significant scene between the two men in Lost's alternate timeline -- and what's more, to see them actually relate to one another in a way that the tumult on the island never allowed them to do. Once upon a time, it seemed inconceivable that Lost would actually kill Locke off before the end of the series, so one of the primary pleasures of the reset timeline will be checking in with one of the show's most iconic characters.
Continuity Porn
As soon as I saw Cindy the flight attendant on Jack's reset flight, I crossed my fingers that she'd show up on the island, as her disappearance-cum-Stockholm-Syndrome there was an intriguing early-series development that totally dropped off the radar. Sure enough, Cindy did appear in the Temple -- alongside Ana-Lucia's wards Zach and Emma! -- and while we still don't know what it was that convinced Cindy to go over to the Others, at least it was nice to see that she hasn't been forgotten.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK
The Reset Timeline...Yet
The jury is still out on season six's confounding alternate timeline. Firstly, it never made sense to me last year that Jack and the gang would blow up the h-bomb just to make life easier in a parallel universe; "Who cares about some alternate versions of our characters?" I thought then, and I had the same feelings last night. The audience's investment isn't with these bizarro versions but with the characters whose histories we know and love, so the more time that was spent on the flash-sideways, the more anxious I became for the action to return to the island. Maybe the point of these flashes will reveal itself as we get further away from the airport, but watching a less dramatic version of Oceanic Flight 815 didn't exactly have me gripping my seat rest.
The Lack of a Central Focus
Lindelof and Cuse have said repeatedly that the final season will be very character-focused, but they ironically eschewed the character-centric format that kicked off seasons two, three, and four. The fourth season premiere was a great example of why that strict focus has so many virtues: Even though the series was introducing potentially tricky concepts in that episode (a flash-forward timeline, the Oceanic Six), seeing it all unfold from Hurley's perspective grounded the mythology in something human. Lost ditched that idea in season five's muddled premiere, and though last night's episode clearly wanted to pay homage to the pilot, it felt similarly hamstrung by its lack of focus. With so many balls in the air, it might actually benefit Lost to adapt to a narrow, character-centric perspective instead of tabling it just to get to everything.
The Diminishing Importance of Our Main Characters
For the first three seasons, Lost worked like gangbusters since the primary conflicts were either castaway vs. castaway or castaways vs. Others. Since then, the series has pulled back to reveal larger figures battling each other, but the show is in danger of marginalizing the characters we already know and love. Season four implied that the primary war would be fought between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore, while season five went even bigger and suggested that the show's true rivalry is between the godlike Jacob and his enemy. That's all well and good, but weren't things a little more fun when Sayid and Sawyer would spar and it felt like the most important thing going on? Last night's premiere made a welcome move to set Jack and Sawyer at odds, but it still feels like the only real war that was set up is the one between the smoke monster and the Temple Others. I haven't watched six seasons just to see the main characters caught in a crossfire between more important forces. Here's to hoping that Jack, Kate and the rest can become plot drivers again, and not just foot soldiers.