This Fantastic Journey rejig - - -or Gilligan's Island,if you must be snide- - - has been speaking to the geek in me from first cop because how can it not? Plane crashes on an uncharted, mysterious island with polar bears and smoke monsters and secret hatches and possibly with a mind of its own and that's all in Season 1 alone.
It's the multi-flavored wet dream for every boy who's ever had adventures in his head - - - which is every boy. It milks the hook of the tantalizing mystery until it hurts, until you doubt if the payoff will be as sweet as you hope it would be - - - J.J.Abrams' Alias ,after all,was a sad epic of blah when things got more out there and this is even more squirrelly with the out-there.
You stick with it , though, because, halfway through Season 1 , the off-island backstories became more intriguing than the on-island adventures , or at least more fertile to sift for clues - - -this is a show whose every nuance and cranny you pore over to figure out. You stick with it because you actually start caring for this chaingang of failures - - - yeah, even bratty, annoying Claire. You stick with it because it may not be Deadwood but it's damn good TV.
Season 2 is where it all allegedly pear-shaped but see it in one go and there's none of that sag . And Dave has to be the creepiest 45 minutes ever shown on TV now that Chris Carter has gone dark . . . unless you count Season 3's The Man Behind the Curtain.
Season 3 is where everything gets outer-there. The season finale has everything you expect of season finales - - - some answers, more questions,a mulch of clues, even a Last Life in the Universe rip, an impossible vision that makes you tingle, a hug on the beach that makes you cry, a declaration of love that makes you swoon, a skirmish that makes you whoop, a reverse sign of the cross that breaks your heart and possibly, possibly, rescue at last. It was enough. It all could have ended right there.
And then the rattlesnake in the mailbox.
Those final five minutes. . . and suddenly, everything changes. Suddenly, all bets are off.
Suddenly, it's a whole new level of fucked-up.
"I'm sick of lying!"
"We have to g. . ." . . . ahhh, but that would be telling.
Finale's entitled Through The Looking Glass. Make of that what you will. And see you in February.
EDIT: No time for trackback but just stumbled on something Lindelof said about a big clue to everything being embedded in the pilot episode that would only become clear in the series finale . . .and speculation on why they decided to entitle the pilot The Pilot and something about Jack telling Kate he took flying lessons. . . hmmmm. Need to crack open my Season 1 box. Later.
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