Lost, “Dr. Linus”

Obligatory cut for les spoilers…

First, I must get something out of the way: I hate the flash-sideways. I did not start out hating the flash-sideways. I was an enthusiast in “LA X,” and even in “The Substitute.” Yet along the way something struck me: they don’t matter. The thing about both flashbacks and flashforwards was that they impacted the character you were watching. You could sit through an interminable round of I Am Jack’s Daddy Issues knowing that at the very least they would enrich your understanding of how Jack became the Jack Shephard we see on the island. They were intriniscally part of the Island story because they haunted the character in question. The problem with the flash-sideways is that they have no relationship to the characters we’re watching. This makes them at best mildly affecting, fan servicing, less interesting rewrites of characters. (Because, let’s face it: every single person in the world is less interesting than he or she would be if stranded on a magical jungle island.) And, yes, I’m sure that in the end the two universes will unite — but that doesn’t change the fact that I have sat through these episodes with a terrible sense of frustration at the disconnect.

It doesn’t help that I think the writing this season has been subpar. I have a huge amount of respect for the Lost writing team and the work they’ve done, and I don’t really feel that this respect has diminished — we’ll always have “The Man Behind the Curtain,” et cetera. But there has been something faintly unpolished and utilitarian about the writing recently. Dialogue that mechanically conveys information, oddly flat and awkward sentences, scenes that feel contrived and unreal. I find myself wishing every week that I could have at least done a polish on the script — eliminating arrhythmic words here and there, crossing out thudding repetitions.

However. I did think that this episode was, for this season, incredibly strong. It’s hard to write dialogue that Michael Emerson can’t break your heart with. The man is just an honest actor. How satisfying to see Ben standing in his own grave, and finding a sort of salvation. I also thought the moral point was beautifully made: that the right choice is to return in shame and make amends to the people who despise you, rather than to run from your sins and seek power in another place. I find myself hoping that Ben really is, as indicated by the book in the tent*, The Chosen. At the end of this journey I think he will have acquired the wisdom that the role would take.

Also, although I had reservations about the new despondent!Richard, I find myself as captivated as ever every time he’s on screen. Richard is my dark horse favorite character on the show, “dark” being the operative word because I feel it’s the word that in all its aspects best describes Richard. There is something depthless about him that hints at depth, an obscurity, a hint of the darkly comic, a secrecy that you want to explore. Richard’s suicide mission was not as well-set-up as it really needed to be, but Nestor Carbonell absolutely sold it to me. It’s the something mysterious in his eyes when he sits there in the dark — dark again — almost like laughter, but also like trust, or fear, or hope. I wanted that scene in the Black Rock to never end.

I have no comment on the flash-sideways, though, for the reasons previously mentioned. All the actors are great in them, but there’s something lessening about — for instance — playing out the drama of Ben and Alex in the tiny world of a high school. Think how huge that drama was on the Island. One of the most shocking, horrific things we’d ever seen. It loses its power if reduced to our little modern world. There’s a moral in there, probably, but I’ll take the sublime over the beautiful every day.

*Chaim Potok’s The Chosen is, by the way, a fantastic book and one that everyone should read.

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