TV is the New Reading

‘LOST’ for words

Complex show’s sixth season premiere a mind-bending ride

Alternate realities are expensive.

When it comes to quantum physics, I am a dilettante. A rank amateur. I don’t have the mind, the math or the mental capacity to be especially good at it and I recognize this.

But when physicists discuss alternate realities that co-exist based on luck of the draw or decisions that get made, my instinct is that this is not the case. That is, depending on whether I hop into the shower or wait for Dave Thompson to read the weather first, there’s now two entirely different universes, one in which I leave at 9:15 a.m. and get to work safely and the one in which I leave at 9:20 a.m. and get into a car accident.

To me it feels like people are making all sorts of decisions all the time and we don’t need to split off a new sun, a new earth and an entirely new universe everytime someone sleeps in a bit. I would suggest that all of these potential alternate realities that could happen resolve themselves into whatever did happen and that becomes our history and our best window on what actually happened.

The writers of “LOST” appear to disagree.

The sixth season of “LOST” premiered this week and it seems to hold out that more expensive notion of alternate realities -- where whatever could possibly have happened (along with several things that could not) continues to play out as what is happening.

We already had a handful of castaways hopping around through the island’s history like Scott Bakula in “Quantum Leap.” We have a couple John Lockes, one of whom seems also to be the smoke monster and/or Jacob's nemesis -- and Jacob as well, who himself appears to be some fixed and ancient point on the island (right up until he is knifed by Ben).

Not forgetting that this is an island with a powerful magnetic anomaly, a smoke monster, and a freezer with a giant wheel-type mechanism in it which, if it is turned, teleports the island someplace else.

In Season Six, an atomic bomb detonated near the magnetic anomaly in the 1970s sank the island to the bottom of the ocean. The castaways aboard Oceanic Flight 815 fly over it unimpeded and land in Los Angeles none the worse for wear. John Locke is still in his wheelchair, Charlie is arrested for felony possession, Kate escapes her warden in a cab with a very pregnant Claire and the body of Jack’s late father has gone missing. Jin is detained for bringing a wad of undeclared cash into the country and his estranged wife, Sun, is pretending not to speak English.

Alternate timelines

Meanwhile, another version of the island is still bopping around, along with the versions of the castaways that popped back in time and spent three years in the Dharma initiative, and some who came back in a different plane sent by the late Daniel Faraday’s mother. Sawyer recovers Juliet from the wreckage of the Swan hatch, breathing vengeance on the castaway version of Jack. A recently murdered vision of Jacob directs Hurley to bring the wounded Sayid to the Temple. There they encounter a group of Others led by a mysterious man named Dogan who finds their names on a sheet of paper stuck in a hand-carved ankh inside a guitar case ...

OK, I guess what I’m saying is that there are now multiple realities playing out. There’s one in which Juliet managed to detonate the bomb and blow up the island so that none of the castaways ever got stuck on the island, as well as the timeline that led to Juliet’s presence on the island and allowed her to blow it up in 1977. Which means that there’s a version of Juliet who was never on the island at all, as well as the one that was brought in by the Dharma initiative to help with fertility studies in 2001 who popped back in time and fell in love with Sawyer.

There seem to be a few different versions of Hurley bopping around now as well, and perhaps even more confusingly, the body of John Locke who Ben murdered, flown in with Mother Faraday’s crew and brought to the statue where the time-traveling version of his live body -- or some version of it that also becomes a smoke monster -- is tormenting a group of Jacob’s followers, as well as the version who, along with everyone else and possibly even Desmond, is looking for his knives in baggage claim in the Los Angeles airport -- “LA X,” the title of the two-part episode.

Do the alternate realities refuse to resolve because of the weirdness of the island? Or because after five seasons it would be truly unsatisfying for the whole thing to be resolved just by blowing it up? Can such diverse realities, warped by immeasurable forces -- and in which people are simultaneously alive and dead and taken over by a smoke monster -- be resolved?

Well ... we do have at least 16 more episodes in which to find out, and I for one am looking forward to seeing what they do with them.

“LOST” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Back Back to Shows Back to Main Page Next