The Life and Death of Logic and Continuity: Lost Recapped

Gregg Nation needs to get fired.

Mr. Nation was profiled last month in the New York Times because he's the man responsible for keeping track of all the comings and goings on Lost; he's the script coordinator (and, also, a co-producer). Mr. Nation has an entire Word document devoted to this task and, were he to print it out, the file would apparently rival War and Peace for pages. The article in the Times paints him as one of those people who have a dream job--the only thing he really has to do is watch Lost for a living and keep track of it. Millions of people do that every week, but Mr. Nation is the only one getting paid for it.

Well, apparently he missed a few episodes. Because "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" played fast and loose with the chronology of the show and completely sullied what was otherwise a pretty fascinating episode. Truncated, forced and, ultimately, very damaging to many truths we've already established, this is one of the episodes that Lost-haters could have a field day with. I don't think I'm completely around the bend in saying that "Life and Death" seriously hurt the fabric of the show.

And so, Gregg Nation needs to be fired.

Just to backtrack: we know that at the end of season three (and at the beginning of the season four finale), Jack had been fired from his job at the hospital and was living in relative squalor in a room strewn with maps and old Oceanic plane tickets; he had taken up the hobby of flying around the world praying for a mid-air collision. We also know that when Jack showed Kate the obituary for "Jeremy Bentham" she recoiled in anger. Said Kate: "why would I go to the funeral," and, "when he came to me, and I heard what he had to say, I knew he was crazy."

Here, you can watch it all for yourself:



Great stuff.

And yet tonight, it all got undone. "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" would have us all believe that Locke talked to Jack in the hospital following his car accident (an amazing scene, p.s.), and that almost immediately after, Jack bought his first ticket to Sydney. Then Locke got murdered by Ben (spoiler alert!) and Jack saw the obituary and called Kate. So in the span of, at max, a few weeks, Jack became a crazy drug addict, lost his job, grew a giant beard and flew to Sydney, Singapore and anywhere else he could think of.

Huh?

Meanwhile, Kate went from seeming to feel genuine pity for Locke when he came to see her, to treating the mere thought of him as if he were a relative of Bernie Madoff.

Sayid? Well, Locke found him building houses for some Habitat for Humanity International-like organization in the Dominican Republic. One week he's helping people and doing good, the next he's assassinating some poor slob outside of Hurley's mental hospital.

Need I go on? Okay, I will: How about Walt, who when he came to see Hurley during the season four finale said that Locke had referred to himself as "Jeremy Bentham". And yet tonight, Locke never even mentioned the name "Jeremy Bentham" to Walt. Along the same lines, it didn't sound like Locke told Jack that Ben was off the Island, but when Jack and Ben were standing over the coffin at the end of season four, Jack said he was aware of Ben's post-Island life explicitly because Locke had mentioned him.

Why has it become increasingly hard for Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who wrote tonight's episode, to keep track of what they've already established? If Lost expects us to follow along with the detailed obsessiveness of a CSI-investigator, why can't we expect the same thing from the people actually creating the show? And what made this all so maddening and frustrating is that all it would have taken was a little fix in the dialogue. Instead of Locke coming off the Island three years later, why couldn't it have been two years? Or two years and six months even. Anything would have made more sense with regards to what has already happened.

The sad part of all this is that "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" was really made up of some fantastic parts. Terry O'Quinn was masterful throughout (Emmy alert!), specifically in his scenes with Lance Reddick, Jorge Garcia, Michael Emerson (natch) and Matthew Fox (double natch). Watching Locke visit each member of The Oceanic Six (sans Sun) was like some bizarre and awesome take on A Christmas Carol with Locke playing the role of "The Ghost of Island Past". Hell, even the reason the show gave for why Walt isn't involved in the trek back to the Island worked fine for me. As Locke said, "he's been through enough." Malcolm David Kelley, we'll see you in another life, brother.

Oh! And Locke actually figured out that Jack was Christian's son... by using common sense. Christian clearly wasn't the father of Sayid or Hurley, so that could only leave Jack. Fabulous reveal!

It's too bad all of those goodies were lost in the wreckage of bad chronology. This isn't like last week, when some fans complained that there weren't any reasons given for Kate abandoning Aaron, Hurley getting out of jail and Sayid ending up in custody. Those questions will be answered, just as sure as this is Lost. I didn't think you had to be above a sixth grade reading level to realize that Lost sets things up and then goes back to show you how they happened at a later date, but apparently you do.

Still, if they answer those questions in the way they filled in some answers tonight, I won't be happy either.

And for that, Gregg Nation should be fired.