WE HAVE TO GO BACK I____>: 1-4

All right, since I, 1) didn’t start doing these until the second episode of the second season, and 2) am powering through the entire series one last time to get ready for the home stretch, it seemed like I ought to finally slam out a few thoughts on this first season along the way. Not for every episode, though, surely, just going to do one entry per disc (or maybe multiple discs later, we’ll see).

>: 1 PILOT

So. The pilot. How does it hold up, after all this time, light years past caring about who the Others are or What’s in the Hatch? Pretty damn well. Have seen that opening scene just too many times to count and it still bowled me over on the 42-inch screen with the orchestra booming. Really hit me, though, when the credits started in after the initial adrenaline surge, Jack starts walking around and the Giacchino score swells and then we get that list of actors, the original first-string team, so many of whom have left us. It was pretty powerful, watching that sequence in 5/6 hindsight, knowing a great deal of What Happens Next, where lots of pieces fall.

I think I read the line in Entertainment Weekly, that the first season is “a master class in capturing the imagination,” and I really can’t put it any better than that. From the moment Jack opens that eye, they’ve got us.

Noticed a couple of interesting things in the two-part pilot. Hadn’t sat through it in at least a couple of years, I guess, and so was very struck at the end of Part 1, when Jack gets separated from Charlie and Kate post-cockpit and Kate’s freaking out and grabs Charlie and says, “WE HAVE TO GO BACK for Jack!” There’s your logline for Season 5 and your ramp-up catchphrase for Season 4, just hanging out barely forty minutes into the whole production.

>: 2 PILOT (PART 2)

Then, at the end of Part 2, after Sayid and crew have made the hike to get high enough to use the transceiver and we’ve heard the strident cello Walking Music for the first time and Sawyer’s busted out the marshal’s gun (that, after changing hands a few times will eventually be used to accidentally kill the blond on the very same trek!) to kill the polar bear and we hear Rousseau’s message for the first time, then Kate says, “We have to lie,” in reference to not sharing their findings with the rest of the group. Of course, that sentiment is quite a plot point for the Oceanic 6 in Season Four, so, funny to find it hanging out, nestled in here right at the beginning, as well.

And, talking We Have To Lie, this is the first time that I’ve ever caught a weird little continuity-glitch. When Jack, Kate, and Charlie come back from the cockpit, Boone asks if there were any survivors. Jack says No and the camera cuts to the other two, rocking the tacit cover-up, as well. Then, on the aforementioned transceiver hike, Boone just makes a random reference to the pilot telling them how far off course they were. Not that they couldn’t have let him and Shannon and Sayid and Sawyer in on it during the walk/climb, but it seemed like a funny thing to highlight and then omit the middle part.

Never noticed before, but that scene where Kate takes the gun off of Sawyer, when he walks away laughing and shaking his head, that’s it, right when she got him.

>: 3 TABULA RASA

And so we begin the tradition of the no-dialogue end of the day montage scored by Hurley’s Discman that was used to great effect so many times in Season One. Never picked up that Joe Purdy song, need to do that. That last shot, man, Locke seemed so sinister! Totally the bad guy. We had no idea.

(Oh, did mean to point out, really just reiterate because it’s been done everywhere, but Locke explaining roulette to Walt in the second part of the pilot seems a lot heavier after the end of Season Five. White and black, good and evil.)(Silly, but as he was breaking it down for the kid, I just had to squint, “Yes, but are you really John Locke?”)

>: 4 WALKABOUT.

Such a fine, fine episode. Will always remember rolling with Stew to get him some new glasses the weekend after that aired and killing time while we waited with, “There’s this new show you’ve GOT to see.” Worth noting how they play with the chronology of this one, after we’ve barely oriented ourselves from the pilot’s post-crash/pre-crash jumping and then the first –centric episode (Kate), we open with the Locke response to the first scene of the series, opening his eyes after the crash. They filmed that so well in the pilot, because though he jumps out at you several other times before he starts talking, when all that other shit’s going on, you can’t really make out that it’s him and it makes this episode’s ending so much more powerful.

Not just a terrible lot of things that hindsight brought to this one, it was pretty happening on its own present-tense merit. That first shot of Christian Shephard standing by the tree is forever chilling. And the scenes with Randy giving Locke shit are a lot funnier knowing that Hurley owns the company and for some reason hooked his old Mr. Cluck’s supervisor up after bringing a meteorite down on the joint.

Taken in immediate succession, these first four episodes are a lot to process, even if you already know every beat. Bring on demented Jack, the first Locke/Jack head-to-head, Willie singing the Koreans to sleep, Adam & Eve and Charlie the Moth, and some good old-fashioned tree-tied torture.