LOST - Season 5 [2008]

“Time is like a street.
Alright, we can move forward on that street, we can move in reverse,

but we can not ever create a new street.
If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time.
Whatever happened, happened.”

After the perfect in every way fourth season that tore everything apart in the it’s mind-blowing finale, LOST show runners Damon Lindlelof & Carlton Cuse had the challenging task of putting everything back together again.

Season Five follows the Oceanic Six, three years after returning to civilization as things are beginning to go so very, very wrong for them as they are haunted by the memories of the island and it’s ghosts.  It’s up to Jack to start rounding them up to return to the island, only none of them want to go back.  Meanwhile, the other storyline follows the characters, still stranded on the island, living a sporadic time-travelling nightmare.  

Cuse & Lindelof handle the time-travelling aspects of the story with grace by embelishing on the ever-expanding mythology behind the history of the island. With an all ready complicated story to follow, it could have easily fallen apart and pummeled into the ground with plotholes galore.  Instead, they manage to keep the story moving forward at a brisk pace and use the time traveling to answer many of the questions raised in the past four years without hitting too many bumps in the road.

Season Five’s biggest weakness is it seems to run around in circles a little too often.  With the time-travel and story being told from so many different character's points of view we find ourselves often returning to moments that we’ve seen too often all ready.  For the most part, not much character development is ever really explored but we are treated to some fantastic table-turning moments between John Locke and Ben Linus.

An overall entertaining season but could have been condensed a little bit in the action and focus more on characters.  No matter….the sixth and final season is where it all matters.

17 episodes.  44 minutes each.

Must See Episodes:

5x03: Jughead:  Desmond-centric episode.  Great to see the dynamics between Desmond and Faraday.  2 fantastic characters that never really shared any screen time until this episode.

5x07: The Life & Death Of Jeremy Bentham: Locke-centric.  I could watch Locke drinking a glass water and be enthralled.

5x14: The Variable: Faraday-centric.  Daniel Faraday is one of the best characters to come out of the series.  Plain and simple.

Episodes To Avoid:

5x02: The Lie: Hurley-centric.  A little too goofy for the beginning of the season.

5x06: 316: Jack-centric.  Very slow paced and not enough mystery just leaves you kinda bored.

Buyer's Guide:

LOST is widely available on DVD/Blu-ray in single season sets or a complete series collection.

3½ “2 Lockes 1 Corpse” out of 5