Lost: Oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is!

I wasn’t into the idea of watching an entire hour about the Oceanic Six, but this episode wasn’t too bad. Even though it was a Jack episode, and almost nothing actually happened in it.

The basics: The Oceanic Six, minus Aaron, plus Ben, go back to the island.

That’s pretty much it. But, I guess I’ll offer a few more details.

First, Mrs. Hawking gives us all a history/physics/guilt-trip lecture in her best chipper-high-school-teacher voice. The Oceanic Six, she says, have 36 hours to get back to the island. To do so they have to get on Ajira Airways Flight 316, which will be heading over the island’s location on its ostensible route to Guam. But instead of saying that they absolutely need the entire Oceanic Six to go, like they’ve been saying all season, she says they just need as many of them as they can get. Jack and Sun are immediately on board with this plan. So is Kate (without Aaron) after she’s had a few mysterious hours to think it over, and then in the end Sayid and Hurley show up at the airport too. Also, Mrs. Hawking tells Jack that they need to bring Locke’s body on the flight as a “proxy” for the deceased Christian Shepard, because they need to replicate the original flight as much as possible, which is totally not the real reason. Also, Jack has to get his dead father’s shoes and put them on Locke’s feet. Um, yeah. Anyway, they get on the plane and it starts getting severely turbulent and I cover my eyes, but it doesn’t crash; instead, we fade to white, and then Jack, Hurley, and Kate wake up on the island.

The good:

• The opening sequence is really cool. We open with a close-up shot of Jack’s eye that mirrors the pilot episode’s, and then we get to see Jack King of the Jungle, thrilled to be back home, running through the forest after Hurley, who’s shouting for help. Instead of running to the beach, he runs to the waterfall, where Hurley is struggling to stay afloat. Jack dives in and helps him, then spies Kate nearby, passed out. Jack has forgotten he’s a doctor so he just shakes her until she wakes up. Then we get a title card — “46 Hours Earlier” — and cut to the not-as-good L.A. portion of the episode.
• When they get to the airport, Hurley, assuming the flight will crash, buys all the remaining tickets — 78 of them — so no one can get on standby. I have mixed feelings about Hurley, but when he does stuff like this (as he does pretty often), it makes me want to love him. (Meanwhile, appropriately, Jack only thinks to ask Ben what will happen to the other people on the flight once they’re already taxiing down the runway. Ben’s equally appropriate response: “Who cares?”)

The bad:

• “This is ridiculous!” Jack shouts to Mrs. Hawking at the start to the ep, serving as a proxy for the audience. “Oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is!” says Mrs. Hawking, serving as a proxy for Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.  “And start asking yourself whether or not you believe it’s going to work. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith, Jack.” Okay, okay, Damon/Carlton, I’ll give you another season and a half to justify all this if you promise to stop acting so desperate about it.
• While in Mrs. Hawking’s church, we have to listen to Ben telling us a Bible story about Doubting Thomas.  It’s about faith or whatever. Give it a rest, Ben. If I wanted soap operas to preach at me about faith I’d be watching 7th Heaven reruns on The Hallmark Channel.
• It really was a mostly okay episode, but nevertheless, what with all the Jack angst happening, there were a couple of moments where I seriously found myself wondering what Sawyer and Juliet were up to right about then.

The stuff that will matter next week:

• Mrs. Hawking reveals some stuff about the history of the island, including how the Dharmas first found it. Apparently the island is always moving, which is why the flight 815 survivors were never rescued.
• Jack and Kate hook up again, and Jack clearly wants it to last, but Kate has a lot more on her mind than nookie. “We’re on the same plane, Jack,” she says. “That doesn’t make us together.” Ouch.
• We’re told that Locke committed suicide, and he left a note for Jack that just says, “Jack, I wish you had believed.” Uh, okay.
• We don’t know what made Kate, Sayid, and Hurley decide to get on the plane to go back to the island. Something happened to change their minds in the 36 hours between when Jack and Sun arrived at Mrs. Hawking’s church and when the flight took off. Although Sayid may not have made the decision for himself, since he gets on the flight escorted by a woman with a badge. Also during this time, Kate ditches Aaron, or something, but she refuses to answer any of Jack’s questions about it. (Look, I’ll give them exactly two episodes to tell us where Aaron is before I start ranting. That’s all the trust you’ve earned, show.) Also, Ben turns up covered in blood, which may or may not be his, due to something that happened in that same time frame.
• We don’t know exactly how they got back on the island. All Jack, Sawyer, and Kate remember is getting knocked around on the plane and then waking up on the island, with Sun, Sayid, and Ben nowhere in sight. The “46 hours” thing would seem to indicate that they lost some time.
• The Ajira Airways pilot is Frank from last season. He’s got a terrible haircut and is surprised to see the Oceanic Six on his plane. But he figures out what’s going on pretty darn quick. I hope we get to see him on the island soon.
• A random passenger on the flight speaks to Jack, and gets shown a couple of times sitting with the Oceanic Six in first class. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a new character for the roster.
• Then, at the very end of the ep, Jack et al see a Dharma VW bug drive up to them, complete with a Dharma driver — but wait, it’s Jin in a Dharma jumpsuit! Love it. I want Jin to pop up in unexpected places at the end of every episode from now on.

So, now we’re in the 70s, I guess. But Locke was sure that bringing the Oceanic Six back to the island would stop the time-traveling. So does that mean our islanders are in the 70s for good? Or at least for a multi-episode arc? That would explain Daniel’s jumpsuit in the season premiere, too. And it would just generally be cool. I think it would be fun to hang out with the Dharma folks for a while.

Next week, we have to watch a whole episode about Locke. Noooooo!!!! Waaaalllltttttt!!!!

Season 5, Episode 6: 316 (originally aired February 18, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Land of the Lost by J.B. Perlow.

For more on Lost, click here.

Wednesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC