The 'Lost' season premiere: Timeless | The Watcher

Source: The 'Lost' season premiere: Timeless | The Watcher

The 'Lost' season premiere: Timeless

The post below discusses Wednesday's two-hour Season 5 premiere of “Lost.” There’s some new information from executive producer Damon Lindelof about things that occurred in the season premiere, the complete versions of answers to some questions I had to trim from this recent interview with Lindelof and executive producer Carlton Cuse, and some thoughts of my own about the episode.

It’s probably best if you’ve seen the two season premiere episodes that aired Wednesday, “Because You Left” and “The Lie,” before proceeding.

Before we get down to business, here is a link to the funniest "Lost" recap ever at the Throwing Things site. Additional links to recent "Lost" stories are here. I'll try to add more links to the end of this item throughout Thursday.

Here are a couple of questions I had after watching the season premiere, and Lindelof’s answers to them:

We saw the island skipping through time in the season premiere -- is it going to stick with a few time frames, or keep traveling a lot in time? Will that aspect of things get toned down a little?

Lindelof: All we can say is, whatever convention we’re using in the premiere episodes -- nothing in the show is season-long.

There are actually sort of three acts to the season. The first act is the first seven episodes, the second act is eight through 13, and the final act is 14 though 17.

Every time that you think that the show has settled into, “Oh, is this all about the Oceanic 6 trying to get back to the island and the island is skipping through time,” it changes. But we don’t want to tell you how it changes or what frequency it changes. All we can say is, there are a lot of twists and turns this year.

The question that bothered me most, or gave me the biggest headache, in the season premiere had to do with Faraday knocking on the door of the hatch. Desmond answers the door and they talk. How come Desmond doesn’t remember that encounter the whole time? How come he doesn’t recall that encounter at the hatch door with Faraday from the time it happened up to and including when we see him in the season premiere, which is years later? Why wasn’t that incident a memory for him?

Lindelof: A) That’s a very good question to be asking, and certainly not one that we ignore. B) Listen carefully what Faraday is saying to Desmond, in terms of why he believes this information he’s telling Desmond is going to transfer.

Finally, something happened to Desmond way back at the end of the second season of the show, something incredibly significant. Which imbues him with a certain power, for lack of a better word, that nobody else on the show has, and that was demonstrated regularly throughout Season 3, in terms of what happened to him at the end of Season 2. This makes him a bit of a wild card.

What we would advise you, and the fans whose heads are hurting, is to say, if you apply common sense rules to Desmond’s memory and cognition as it moves through the show, you will drive yourself crazy. But if you fundamentally accept that his consciousness can bop around in time, and where it lands is more an aggregate of destiny rather than logic, you will be able to sleep a lot better.

Here are the complete answers to some responses that were trimmed when I first posted this interview with executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

We’re told that bad things happen once the Oceanic 6 left the island. When will you get into that? Is that also Season 6 territory?

Cuse: Part of it unfolds this season, part of it unfolds next season. ... We were talking before about keeping the show on a character level, that’s really what it comes down to. Yeah, the island is skipping through time, or our characters are, but what are the consequences of that for them in terms of their survival, in terms of their relationships, in terms of whatever their ultimate destiny with the island is? Those are the pertinent questions.

I just wanted to ask you a lightning round of quick questions, if I could, about various characters this season. Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle -- is he around this season?

Lindelof: All we’re willing to say is that the season premiere is not the only time that he appears in the season. We’re showing you that scene for a reason, and in the spirit of what the show does, sometimes we show you a scene, and you think understand the context of that scene, but once you watch [a version of it] again a year later, it has an entirely different meaning. We will be seeing Dr. Chang again.