Lost episodes 2x01-06
“Man of Science, Man of Faith” to “Abandoned”
Everybody who’s anybody in 2005 wanted to know about the hatch. What was it? What would we see inside? What was it for?
The start of season two mostly gives us answers to this, in a way that raises many more questions. The hatch is a bunker with a button you have to press every 108 minutes or the world ends. You have to type in the numbers in this process. It was built by the Dharma Initiative to control some kind of electromagnetic incident. A man called Desmond lived inside who pushed the button for three years.
But what is the hatch for? What purpose does it serve for the television series Lost? What does it all mean, thematically?
The hatch, at least in my head, is about bringing the real world back to the survivors. Season one was about the characters finding who they are when cut adrift from the world, being offered the blank slate of starting over. But the blank slate was always more of an aspiration than a certainty. Without spoiling anything, much of season two is about the other side of that coin: what if they didn’t take it? What if they can’t escape the past of who they are? What if they’re destined to make the same mistakes over and over again? Or what if they’re not? What if they don’t have to become alienated with the power of controlling the potato chips?
The hatch really lets the show do this. It’s quite literally modernity, albeit 70s/80s modernity so it looks cool on TV. When Kate says “at least we have jobs now”, the implication is “we have a power structure”. People can fail now. Time has passed. Things have happened. Most importantly, that button is going to need to be pressed every 108 minutes or else. That means they can’t exactly all leave and get rescued. They’re more permanently settled on the Island.
And there’s the other side of the hatch: it’s a story engine.
No one expected Lost to become a breakout hit of 2004-05. Everyone from ABC execs to Disney bigwigs Michael Eisner and Bob Iger to Damon Lindelof himself was totally unconvinced this show could generate new stories for over 100 episodes. But, you know, that’s the job. Like pushing the button. It just needs to be done forever and ever in perpetuity or the world ends. I’m not saying the hatch is a metaphor for making the second season of Lost, but I’m not not saying that.
The tail section fills the same purpose. Here are three new series regulars capable of providing brand new flashbacks to come. God that must be a relief for the writers considering the five stories they have here. Jack and Locke’s attempts are fine, even if they’re kind of in the middle of big emotional arcs. We can’t expect the flashbacks to be the definitive statements on characters now, so this is the best they can hope for. Hurley and Sun/Jin’s stories are kind of sweet companion pieces to the on-Island action which, again, is fine. It’s nice. It’s not adding a lot of meat to the bones. Michael’s flashback feels the least worthwhile. It paints itself as this dramatic encounter while telling us exactly nothing we do not already know about the man. Shannon’s is, I guess, technically her first episode, but it mostly exists to fill in blanks from Boone’s flashback last season. And in doing that, it’s just trying to make us feel sorry for her before she bites the bullet. It’s getting a lot harder for the writers to tell these stories.
As the episodes go on, there’s a kind of soap opera element to the show emerging. I absolutely do not see “soap opera” as a derogatory term. Perhaps the show’s greatest influence, Twin Peaks, was a pure soap 90% of the time (in its first incarnation). What matters is that it’s a story engine TV has known how to exploit for decades, so it’s useful to the show right now. But Lost’s execution of the soap opera tropes is kind of, well, bad. Charlie and Claire are having relationship difficulties while he hides a heroin addiction. It’s fine, as these things go, but what does it mean? Why are we telling soap opera stories? It feels like it’s just to kill time.
Killing time is the thread that runs through the whole second season of Lost. I’m being quite harsh here, as I think “Man of Science, Man of Faith” and “Orientation” really are good episodes. But it’s all very structured, very preordained stuff to start setting off from Point A but not yet arrive at Point B. The show teases us about the Others before revealing that these are a totally different group of people. The forward momentum isn’t there.
Lost season one was lightning in a bottle and the show spent the next two years trying to figure out how on Earth you can recapture that feeling again. It’s never exactly the same show. The first season had a spontaneity to it with a sense that the show could really shift gears episode to episode. The double header of “Deus Ex Machina” and “Do No Harm” might be the most powerful example of this. That all came from a chaotic writers’ room as a bunch of talented people with different sensibilities brought varying things to the table. In order to work as a long running show, Lindelof and especially Carlton Cuse brought a more disciplined writing process to the show, in which there was less room for experimentation.
The “new” Lost would emerge from this... eventually. They had to figure out some things along the way, succeeding where most buzzy first season shows fail. But it’s a process and they’re not there in season two. The season is a little overthought and contrived, when part of the magic of Lost is in its ability to go anywhere. The answer to what’s in the hatch is season two. Just as the button has to be pushed every 108 minutes, every day, in perfect routine, so does the show feel a little too set in a pattern this year. But just hang on in there, ok. Better things will come.