Lost S6E1&2: LA X

"Nothing is irreversible."

Okay, if our viewing experience of last night's two-part premiere could be summed up in a sound effect, it would be "SQUEEEEEEE!" If it could be summed up in a facial expression, it would be a shit-eating grin. If it could be summed up in textspeak it would be "OMGLOL WTF?" Not coincidentally, "SQUEEEEEEE!" "WTF?" and shit-eating grins is about all you could get out of us last night. It was so nice to be back and the creators threw a whole bunch of "welcome home" bits at us. They've been pitching this as a season anyone can jump in and understand without previous Lost experience, but we don't see how that's possible. It's all about the payoffs that come from watching the show all along. And those payoffs were coming one right after another.

What we're trying to say is, how awesome was THAT?

In keeping with the theme of last night's show, we're just going to bounce all over the place on this one. Not because we're trying to be thematically appropriate but because it's over 15 hours and two viewings later, and we're still trying to wrap our heads around it. Besides, we never were the strict recap types. We'd rather throw out our observations and opinions to start a conversation.

Okay, so. There are two timelines now. The "A" timeline, the one where everything in the previous 5 seasons happened as we saw it, and the "B" timeline, where Oceanic 815 landed safely in Los Angeles. So the questions start immediately. Did Juliet set off the bomb, causing the alternate timeline? Does this mean that Jack did it yet again and came up with a plan that in one timeline, caused the deaths of Juliet and possibly Sayid (we'll get back to that) and in another timeline, sunk the whole fricking island to the bottom of the ocean, presumably killing everyone on it? When are these fools going to realize that every time they let Jack lead, people die? Sometimes by the dozens.

And that B timeline has an awfully unsettling feel to it, wouldn't you say? First Jack notices a mysterious cut on his neck in the bathroom on the plane, then HELLO? DESMOND?!?! What the hell is Desmond doing on the plane? And where did he disappear to? And while it was fun to see Frogurt and Arzt again, it was unsettling seeing a Charlie so deep in the throes of his addiction that he wanted to die. It was unsettling seeing a Hurley proclaiming himself the luckiest guy in the world. It was REALLY unsettling to hear Boone say to Locke "Are you pulling my leg?" (remember how he died?) and then following it up with "If this thing goes down, I'm sticking with you." (remember WHY he died?) Then there's the B-side Kate, who's not exactly having a fabulous time in the new reality. That Marshall is just this side of a Keystone Kop what with all the times Kate's managed to slug him and give him the slip. And we were treated to one of the best "in another life..." moments (in an episode chock full of them) when the fugitive Kate commandeered a cab with Claire in the backseat, pregnant with the child that, in another life, Kate would raise for her. We also got Jin in trouble with customs and Sun not willing to dig him out of trouble. As UnLocke said later in the episode to Ben, crashing on the island was the best thing that ever happened to these people. This B timeline is probably going to serve to illustrate that. We're not predicting a lot of happy endings for the B-Sides.

Although there was that intriguing scene with Locke and Jack in the airport. It's funny. Through all the multiple viewings of every previous episode, we never actually made the connection that Locke had a spinal injury and Jack is a spinal surgeon. We have no idea where that little B storyline is going to go.

One more thing about the B timeline and then we'll move on. We wondered why the hell we had to sit through another heartbreaking Juliet death scene, but we came up with a theory. Just before she dies, she uttered the seemingly nonsensical "We should go for coffee some time. We can go Dutch." Now, this echoed Charlotte's death scene when she said "I'm not supposed to have chocolate before dinner" just before dying. The episode was full of echoes and we'll get to some of the others in a minute, but this one stands out. Charlotte uttered those nonsense lines and then later, much later, we saw WHY she said those lines and we saw them said in context. We think the same thing's happening here. At some point, we're going to see B-side Juliet and she's going to say those lines. This means that just before she died, A-side Juliet got some sort of glimpse of the B timeline. Why else would she send the "It worked" message to Miles? Also, B-Jack initially seemed to have some residual memories of the A timeline. These two timelines aren't as independent of each other as they first appear.

Okay, moving on from alternate timeline theorizing, let's get back to that echo thing we mentioned. We had Boone obliquely referring to his death. We had Juliet's death scene mimicking Charlotte's. We had Jack standing over an unconscious Charlie, trying to save his life. We had him consider a tracheotomy with a pen (something he considered with Rose in the pilot, right after the plane crashed). We had yet another scene of people peering down a deep hole where the Hatch once stood. We even had a scene with Hurley treating a stomach wound and trying not to throw up or pass out, like he did back in season one when Jack was treating the Marshall on the beach. We wonder if the writers threw all these references to iconic scenes from the show's history as a shoutout to the fans or if they're making some point about all the time travel and alternate histories. Either way, each callback gave us a little thrill.

Okay, what else? Oh, yeah. Sayid. Here's another theory: Sayid really is dead and we're seeing Jacob doing a riff on his nemesis' body-stealing schtick. And as for that nemesis... call him UnLocke, call him Smokey, call him the Man in Black, but one thing's for sure, he definitely seems to be the bad guy in all this. It appears that the entire mission of The Others is to serve Jacob by keeping his enemy in check. Hence, the ash circles and the sonic fences and such. This would explain why the NEW Others or the Other-Others, those dirty hippies living in an old Tomb Raider set, lost their shit when Hurley told them Jacob was dead. They knew that meant Smokey was large and in charge.

And Smokey did a little muscle-flexing, killing off most of Ilana's backup dancers and knocking out Richard before slinging him over his shoulder. Throw out any theories you can think of because THAT whole part of the storyline just leaves us open-mouthed. It's not like we have a handle on anything else going on, but the UnLocke storyline has us the most baffled as to where it's going to go.

Still, it means more scenes between Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn and these two actors have a clearly productive relationship. They simply bring out the best in each other. "You're the monster." "Let's not resort to name-calling." And it has to be said, for all Smokey's apparent evil, he gave a truly touching, sad, and honest eulogy for John Locke, who died never understanding and who never received a eulogy from anyone.

So? What next? Who the fuck knows? We're just happy to be along for the ride. If there's any guess we can make, it looks like UnLock is about to unleash hell on The Others, otherwise, why are they all going "The Orcs are coming!" back at the temple?

Oh, and we forgot to mention Sawyer and how he is awesome and we cheered him beating on Jack. Plus the Sawyer and Miles scene, which showed their history and depth of feeling for each other. And why did B-Sawyer seemingly help B-Kate escape the airport? Honor among thieves kind of thing or something else? Plus, where were B-Michael and B-Walt? Did they not get on the plane? And seriously you guys, what is up with those dirty hippies? And the big wooden ankh which apparently had their names on a list inside it? And what the hell did they do to Cindy Stewardess? And did A-Rose and A-Bernard wind up in 2007 on the island like the rest of the A-group did? And is there anything we missed?

We're pretty sure you can answer that last question.

Pictures courtesy of ABC TV.

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