Continuing our review of past episodes leading up to the premiere of Season 5 in Jan/Feb 2009…
For those of you that don’t remember, this was LOST’s first big twist ending. Through the first 3 episodes, Locke had been a mysterious fellow, but seemed to be doing OK physically. But in the show’s final sequence, we learn that Mr. Locke was confined to a wheelchair prior to arriving on the island. If you’re a frequent visitor to this site, you probably know that I didn’t start watching LOST until the 2nd season. So, I first watched this episode on DVD just before Season 2. And unfortunately, someone had already spilled the beans to me about Locke having been in a wheelchair. So it didn’t have the same impact on me as it may have had on some of you. If it did, I’d be curious about it. Was it here that you knew LOST had you hooked? Or by some wild chance, did you see it coming? Please leave your comments below.
In addition to the big Locke reveal, there were also some interesting events in this episode. It was the first episode with island “weirdness”, as a “strange man” (later revealed to be Christian Shepard, Jack’s dad) appeared and then disappeared. (You could count the first non-visual encounter with the monster “weird”, but this was the first shared visual weirdness.)
And finally, this episode marked Locke’s first encounter with the smoke monster. Why didn’t it try to kill him or take him like it does in subsequent episodes? Maybe we’ll get that answer at the end of the series.
For me, this episode was the first to really capture my imagination. The pilot episode and “Tabula Rasa” were interesting, but this episode, despite knowing of Locke’s secret, was the one that started to make me believe that I was going to be a big fan of this show.
One last comment: it’s amazing to me how different this show was at its start compared to where it is now. I doubt that it could really be any other way, but the plot advancement in the current crop of episodes is miles ahead of Season 1 and its focus on character development. It’s quite interesting to contrast this episode with Season 4’s “The Shape of Things to Come”.
I think it’ll be almost as interesting as comparing this past week’s “Something Nice Back Home” with the next re-view episode, “White Rabbit”…
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