Matt and Justin's Lost Rewatch

Because You Left

MATT AND JUSTIN SAY:

It seems that the hits just keep on rolling as we leave Season Four and enter Season Five. There’s a certain point around the end of Season Four where for me, the show hits an amazing stride that follows through all the way until Jack closes his eye for the last time in “The End”. “Because You Left” is probably not my favorite season opener, but it is an awesome episode and a great introduction to my favorite season. Here’s some things I noticed.

We don’t yet know who’s in the bed, but it says 8:15 on the alarm clock.

A man gets out of the bed and begins playing a record player, a nice nod to the Season Two premiere where we see Desmond play a record as well. This time, “Shotgun Willie” by Willie Nelson is the song selection and it plays while this mystery man goes about his morning which includes checking in on a baby. Little did we know at the time that we were looking at a baby Miles! Interesting that the record begins to skip as Faraday would later try and explain the phenomenon of the Island moving in time to Sawyer as a record skipping. It stops on “if you can’t play the record”.

It’s then revealed that this mystery man is Marvin Candle! Nice to see that the barracks are hopping with DHARMA action. He is filming the orientation film for station two, The Arrow, and states that its primary purpose was to watch the hostiles.

It’s interesting that Pierre is wearing a lab coat with the Swan logo on it, considering that Radzinsky is trying to keep the station pretty secret, on a need to know basis, as we’ll see later in the season. Usually Pierre wears that matching lab coat to the station he’s doing the video for.

He is interrupted which doesn’t sit well, and he heads down to the construction site of the Orchid. I love that you can see the donkey wheel in the sonar picture the man hands him.

Candle then goes into a tirade about the electromagnetic energy behind the wall and how unstable it is. He also mentions to the man that time travel is an option if the matter is not handled correctly then storms out. On the way out, he bumps into a man revealed to be Daniel Faraday. “Did you hear that? Time travel. How stupid does that guy think we are?” And, it becomes another great LOST fake out to start the season.

In a podcast, Damon and Carlton announced that the opening to this season was originally planned to be what is now the opening of “The Life and Death of Jeremy Benthan”, where the Ajira survivors encounter an alive and well John Locke on the beach. However, they decided to open the season with the scene that gives a little more insight into the season as a whole: time travel, as well as a hint that we’ll somehow end up in Dharma times.

We get the name of the episode from something that Ben says to Jack. Jack asks why this is all happening and Ben simply says, “It happened because you left, Jack.”

Jack then shaves off the ridiculous beard ending the two and a half season mystery of why he thought that was a good look to begin with. I kid, I kid.

Am I remembering incorrectly, but wasn’t there originally a scene where Ben takes a box out of the vent in the hotel wall? Or is that in the next episode. I just remember the slight mystery behind what that box was about and you don’t really ever see that box again.

And, let the nosebleeds begin as we see the first flashes of the Island moving through time, a popular site for the first part of Season Five. The first official nosebleed doesn’t come until a bit later in the episode when Charlotte gets one.

Neil Frogurt! We get our first glimpse of the man behind the legend as he is one of the passengers on Faraday’s raft coming back to the Island.

Daniel says that they must have been inside the radius, thus moving with the island. However, Sawyer no longer sees the freighter (which I always assumed was inside the radius as well since they moved the boat closer to the island in the finale) so I guess Jin’s piece of wreckage was already blown into the radius before the island moved.

“Your camp isn’t gone. It hasn’t been built yet.” WHAT?!

Again, Aaron, or Goober as he is more commonly known to Kate, is in pajamas. Does the kid not own real clothes?

Kate tells Aaron, regarding the cartoon that he’s watching, “If he goes into that tunnel, he’s never coming back out.” A bit of a stretch, but the same could be said for the heart of the island, tunnel-light. You go in, and you don’t come out the same, unless you’re special, like Desmond.

As mentioned earlier, Faraday begins to try and explain the Island moving with the analogy of a records player: “Think of the Island like a record on a turntable. Except now the record is skipping. Whatever Ben did, I think it may have dislodged us. From time.”

Locke hikes up to the top of a mountain just in time to see Yemi’s drug plane crash over head. He picks up a virgin Mary statue that fell out as it flew over. Uh, awesome. This answered the question of how a small plane could take off in Africa and end up on the island, because the island moves.

Locke then discovers the crash site of the drug plane and begins to scale the mountain side only to be shot down by Ethan. I wonder if Locke getting shot and falling off the cliff while climbing up is why he couldn’t do it “later” with Boone in Season One. Almost like his subconscious knew it was dangerous and he temporarily lost his ability to walk, forcing Boone to make the treacherous climb. Or, it could have just been that the Island took Locke’s legs back to prevent the man of destiny from being harmed.

Flight 23 boarding at gate 15 comes over the intercom as Sun comes down the escalator in the airport. Sun is flying Oceanic, no doubt on her golden pass.

Widmore tells Sun, “You showed me no respect. I will be respected Sun.” He reveals what we pretty much already knew; that their common interests are to kill Benjamin Linus. Again, this story line had great potential, but was wasted.

Hurley gets the funny line of the episode with this to Sayid, “Maybe if you ate more comfort food you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.”

Sayid plants the seed in Hurley’s mind: If you ever run into Ben, don’t do what he wants, do the opposite which we will see him do soon when he hurls a pizza pocket at his head and runs. I wonder if Hurley and Ben ever laughed about the pizza pocket incident during their time ruling the Island together.

Sayid is an amazing fighter. I mean I would not want to mess with him. And, that’s the first and only time I’ve seen anyone use a dishwasher to kill someone.

Daniel lays down a very important rule to know regarding the time travel: “You cannot change anything. You can’t. Even if you tried to it wouldn’t work. Whatever happened, happened.” Of course that phrase “Whatever happened, happened” becomes very important and the name of a Season Five episode.

Miles says that Widmore spent 20 years trying to find the island, however we know this isn’t so. The purge was in 1992 and Ben had Charles banished from the island sometime after that, so even if Widmore left immediately after the purge, it’s only been 12 years.

The flashes in time must have been hard for the set dressers. They’d have to have a scene one way, then tear it all down. Then build again. Tricky!

Richard comes to see Locke and takes the bullet out. Richard tells Locke that he (Locke) is going to be moving on soon. He gives Locke the infamous compass that we saw during the testing of Locke by Richard back in the 1950s in Season Four. He also tells Locke that the only way to save the Island is to get your people back to the Island. Locke asks him how he is supposed to do that. Alpert replies, “You’re going to have to die John.” We will of course see John die at about the midpoint of Season Five in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” in one of the best scenes of LOST ever. Funny that even though we watched him die, none of us really thought he was dead until the big reveal that every scene of Locke from that point forward was actually the MIB inhabiting his body. This scene also expertly shows how tight and on-track MIB’s plan was.

I was amazed at how much more sense all of the time travel seemed to make during the rewatch. The pieces all fall together a little easier.

We then see Charlotte’s first nose bleed as I mentioned earlier. She says something that further pointed us in the direction of her true origin on the Island, “I Haven’t had a nose bleed since I was little.”

As per usual, we get a doozy of a final scene. Faraday goes down to the back entrance of the hatch and begins banging on it. Desmond answers the door in his haz-mat suit. Desmond is clearly still rattled and nervous just as when they LOSTies found him down there. Faraday then begins to tell Desmond what is going on and that he needed to find Eloise Hawking. He also tells Desmond that he is uniquely special and that the rules don’t apply to him which we will certainly see in Season Six. It is then revealed that it was a dream to present day Desmond. Almost like a flash sideways of sorts. But he tells Penny that it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.

I used to be very confused about this scene. How could this have happened? Didn’t Faraday violate what he said before, that “whatever happened, happened”? But, in rewatching, it doesn’t violate it, it actually plays right into its hand. This conversation ALWAYS happened. Faraday didn’t change anything. He always banged on that door and talked to Desmond. There was no change. Desmond didn’t really “remember” it before because he was going crazy down there any way. My main question though is the timing of Desmond having this memory return in a dream as it synced up to what was happening on the Island. But, I think we have to just chalk this one up to convenience of plot.

Desmond then reveals our next stop: Oxford University where a certain tenacious Englishwoman awaits.