The "Getting Lost" series is about a Lost newbie's attempts to watch all five seasons of the show for the first time, just as the sixth (and final) one rolls along.

What I Watched on Week 10: Season 3, Episode 20-23 ("The Man Behind the Curtain", "Greatest Hits" and "Through the Looking Glass"); Season 4, Episodes 1-4 ("The Beginning of the End", "Confirmed Dead", "The Economist" and "Eggtown")

Charlie's dead, and as much as I want to feel bad for him, I just can't.

Okay.  So I actually do.  Most of the third season, after all, was dedicated to Desmond trying to save Charlie from imminent death, knowing all too well that there is absolutely nothing he can do.  Lightning strike?  Safe.  Drowning while saving Claire?  Safe.  Rousseau's arrow to the neck?  Safe.

But by the time it became clear that Charlie must die, I stopped feeling any pain for whatever he did.  Or, at least, attempted to.  Watching "Greatest Hits" was a pain in the chest: you see him listing down the best moments of his life, ending with the rather poignant "the night when I met you", knowing all too well that this is when he dies, and not looking at all worried.  I think he just wanted to get it over with and move on.  And that was what's going on in my head, too: Charlie must die and spare us the pain of mourning.

Alas, the writers decided to have him swim to the Looking Glass and encounter two more Others.  Talk about extending the agony.  I had to wait an hour or so for Charlie to actually drown and die, and by then I was a bit relieved and a bit exasperated.  "Finally, he's dead," I thought.  But it was comforting to think that he did all that for love--his love of Claire, of course, and then there's Desmond's love for Penny, because if not for that, our agony would've been painfully extended further.  It was also comforting to know that Desmond chose the right time to let Charlie die.

But I see Claire's face and I feel chest pains again, ohhhhh.

I'll get ahead of myself and start pondering about time travel.  Thanks to circumstance, I know that at one point in the remaining episodes some will find themselves stuck in the past.  (But don't spoil me on the details.)  But with the idea of Desmond not being able to change the outcome of anything he sees, well, whoever's stuck in the past must feel bad for themselves, because they can't really do anything but, well, get stuck.

Okay, Henrik, don't spoil yourself too much.

I also thought the whole you-will-die-Charlie storyline was a good introduction to what the writers had planned by season 4: those freaking flash forwards.  "You mean Jack was battling addiction after going to Phuket?" I remember thinking, until I realized that he can't be possibly connected to Kate before the crash--and then he starts babbling about returning to the island and all is revealed.  Now that I know it's a flash forward, I'm naturally curious as to how it all happened, especially since some of the events are pretty much against what we know of some of the characters right now.  In other words, it's inevitable.  So, yes, Desmond, I think I get you.

Again, my mind is gravitating towards the island being a spiritual entity rather than a freaky, scientific one.  After all, all the things that happened on this island--and whatever happens in the very end--would not have happened if the plane didn't crash, if Desmond didn't fight his hatch buddy, if Christian didn't dilly-dally in Sydney, if Claire didn't get pregnant, if Charlie didn't start using heroin, you get the drift, right?

I mean, look at the proof!  They wouldn't meet that annoying Miles guy if not for the electromagnetic anomaly.  Juliet would've known that the Looking Glass isn't flooded if not for Ben following the advice of an imaginary friend.  In fact, Locke wouldn't have split the survivors up if not for his pursuit of an imaginary friend he perceives as real.  (Of course, Jacob is not an imaginary friend--or Ben and Locke possess some special gift like Walt.)  Maybe the same thinking explains for why the island wants people out of it--me thinking that the island is purging itself of people, through the smoke machine, or contacting off-shore freighters, or tricking inhabitants into killing the Dharma Initiative or something.

Then again, how should I know?  I'm entering season 4.  I'm crossing the threshold of confusion, keeping in mind what my friend Alyssa said in my second week of watching.  "That's when things started to become really confusing for me," she told me yesterday, without really clarifying anything--and perhaps for good measure, since figuring Lost out has become an impulse for me, to the point that I had to stop myself from buying a book relating the show's concepts to philosophical ones.

So, to prepare for it, I am officially taking a break.  Well, not really.  I'm writing this a day before I take a holiday, riding a plane to some island... and I hope that plane lands on the intended island, rather than crash on another one.  Maybe I should bring my season 4 DVDs, to please the powers that be.  Goodness, I have become paranoid.  Or not used to seeing Fringe's Phillip Broyles as the same weirdly scary guy on Lost...


The series so far:
Week 1: An Introduction and the First Six Episodes
Week 2: I Want My Australian Accent Back!
Week 3: The Week I Felt Like Locke
Week 4: All These Numbers Are Giving Me A Headache
Week 5: I Tried So Hard, Shannon, But I Can't Seem To Like You
Week 6: "I Guess It's All Relative Now, Huh?"
Week 7: The Science of Going in Circles
Week 8: You Know, Like in Cartoons, When You Watch Too Much and Your Eyes Swell?
Week 9: Can You Help Me Untangle This One, Brother?





- Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of ABC)