EPISODE REVIEW: Lost: “Variable” (Season 5, Episode 14)

The hundredth episode of Lost gives me something that few shows can say this far in to their run: “Well I didn’t see that coming.” Granted, Lost has managed to do that for us fairly consistently through its run, and this season in particular has been pretty much a case study in dropping a hard plot twist sixteen times per season, yet still managing to keep a coherent story. Even so: I didn’t see that coming.

Play by play:

In 1977:

Faraday gets off the sub, having evidently been living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and working for Dharma HQ for much of the intervening three years. Miles takes him to see Jack, then tells him “You’re not supposed to be here, My mother was wrong” and runs off to the future site of The Hatch, where we see that quick glimpse of him bumping in to Dr. Chang in the tunnels from earlier in the season.

He attempts - and fails - to convince Dr. Chang that he needs to evacuate the island, and tells him he’s from the future. Chang is understandably disbelieving of this. He then blows Miles’ cover, but Miles - in a move that’s surprisingly sensible for a psychic - denies the whole thing, and says Faraday “Took too many drugs on the sub.” I totally didn’t see this whole thing coming, even though nothing really arises from it.

Everyone meets up at Casa LeFleur to discuss their options, with the security goon still tied up in the closet. Sawyer doesn’t want to leave. “For those of you who just got here, it’s no big deal, but for us we’ve been here three years, and this is our home.” The options are 1) Steal the sub and run away (Which is resoundingly voted down); 2) Go back to the beach and start over again at square one; or 3) There is no option three. Well, there is, but they never actually got that far because Faraday explains that he needs to go meet The Others and talk to his mom. Sawyer attempts to re-establish order and squelch the idea, but Jack undercuts him (The bastard!). Jack decides to take Faraday and Kate to the Others, Sawyer tries to talk her out of it and accidentally calls her “Freckles” which gets a very prim/startled look from Juliet who says “The fence code is blah blah blah. We’re done here anyway. Let’s go.”

Kate, Faraday, and Jack attempt to steal a van from the motor pool along with some guns, but that bald jackass Radzinksy shows up and a gunfight breaks out. They get away, but Radzinksy takes a bullet in the hand.

While Sawyer and Juliet are packing up, he admits he should have listened to her all along, but there’s some tension there. Radzinksy and his goons show up in tow, quickly find Phil the Idiot Guard in the closet, and take the both of them prisoner. Meanwhile, en rout to The Others we get some exposition about how any one of them can die at any time - do we need this? Is anyone still having trouble following the time travel aspects of the show? Really? - and then unleashes his grand plan to destroy the anomaly underneath The Swan using Jughead, the atomic bomb from 1954. If he does this, he thinks he can prevent their awful future from happening, and their kind of boring present from happening.

Kate says “This isn’t right, what he’s trying to do.”

Busting in to an Other campsite and pulling a gun on Richard, Faraday is shot and killed by his own mother before he can explain his plan, but he does wax on quite a bit about how she’s his mother and she knew all about how she must have known he was doomed to die, and sent him to the island anyway, then he dies.

I did not see that coming!

In the early 80s - maybe 1983 - we see Eloise discouraging young Faraday from playing piano so he can concentrate on science.

In the late 1990s - we see Faraday graduate from Oxford, the youngest doctor in the history of the college, already romantically involved with his lab assistant (Whom you’ll recall, got her brain time-scrambled and went in to a coma later on). Eloise is dismissive of the girlfriend, and tells Faraday there’s No Time For Love, Doctor Jones, and gives him his journal. We find his research grant is being paid for by Charles Widmore.

In 2004 - We see