I'll get this out of the way immediately: I don't feel Through the Looking Glass is the most amazing LOST episode ever. If you're okay with that, by all means read on!
In some ways TTLG gets back to the formula that was so successful in Exodus: lots of island time, Losties split into groups, all kinds of loose threads seemingly coming together for one last mind-blowing moment.
Off-island we've got a strange thing cooking. A bearded Jack is on the verge of suicide when a woman crashes her car behind him. Over the course of this storyline he pops lots of pills and booze, gets an "emergency contact" visit from a pregnant Sarah, and tries unsuccessfully to be the surgeon-of-record for the car crash victim. He's a mess. My questions the first time around: What's going on with Jack? And how is this season finale material?
On-island we've got Jack leading most of the Losties to the radio tower, Locke struggling to get out of the DHARMA pit, Charlie and Desmond squaring off with thugs in the Looking Glass, and the Rambo team back at the beach camp. BOOM! Explosions and seven Other deaths in the first fifteen minutes, that's got to be a good sign for an amazing finale!
And it certainly WAS amazing at certain parts. Ben cutting off Jack's group before they reached the radio tower was when things really heated up. Danielle finally spoke with Alex, Ben psyched Jack out with a faux command to shoot the Rambo team, and we even got a little bit of shipper stuff thrown in the mix (Juliet kisses Jack, Jack tells Kate he loves her in an awkward "high school dance" sort of way).
Hurley coming to the rescue at the beach camp was a triumphant moment indeed. Sayid breaking his captor's neck with a leg-scissors move was the cherry on top. Sawyer shooting Tom Friendly was chocolate sauce on top of the cherry. It looked like the Losties were winning the war!
But alas, at a great cost. Desmond's vision comes to pass after all, with Charlie flipping the switch and — after a frantic chat with Penny — drowning in the chamber thanks to Mikhail's grenade at the porthole. But just before his death he scribbled the iconic words on his hand: "Not Penny's Boat". The people on the freighter weren't Penny's people after all.
This touches on a topic that's been discussed quite a bit in the LOST community, but I can't just ignore it. It's highly debatable whether Charlie really needed to seal his own fate, at least not in the fashion that he did. Even if he'd let the main chamber flood there would've likely been enough time for he and/or Desmond to grab the necessary gear (if I'm not mistaken Desmond was already holding it) to survive. If that didn't work there were still a possibility of the water leveling off at the top of the porthole and giving them enough time to plan an escape. But I realize this is the kind of nitpicking I usually despise, so I'm not deducting anything based on what-ifs.
Now we switch back to the off-island storyline for the moment many LOST fans consider the highlight of the entire series. We weren't seeing flashbacks of Jack but flash-forwards, a point punctuated when he meets Kate at an airport and yells "WE HAVE TO GO BAAACK!"
Boom, LOST title, mind = blown. Except in my case, I can honestly say I didn't feel like my life had suddenly flipped on its end, which is apparently the reaction many others had. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was EXTREMELY cool how they pulled off the fake-out, but it certainly didn't shock me as much as other moments in the series.
Damon and Carlton were very wise to flip the direction of the flashes beginning with TTLG. They knew what the audience knew, that many of the flashback storylines were getting a bit stale (even though they kept S3 reasonably fresh with Juliet, Ben, and Desmond-centrics). So not only was TTLG's big revelation very cool, it was also very necessary. I have a hunch that S4 might not have gone so well had they stuck with the same formula.
What keeps me from putting TTLG in my Top 10 is that I feel certain parts become a tad sluggish over two hours, notably the flash-forwards and the Jack-team's trek to the tower. I know that's sacrilege to many LOST fans but it'd be disgenuous to simply say what I think people want to hear.
Just when I thought I'd seen all Matthew Fox could offer, he comes up big all over again. I'm mostly referring to the off-island storyline, where he's consistently hopped up on booze and pills and slurring his words. Fox needed to convince us that Jack had hit rock-bottom. Mission accomplished.
He was just as impressive on the island, particularly in the scene where Ben makes him believe he'd just heard fatal gunshots on Bernard, Jin, and Sayid. A bullet might as well have hit Jack based on his reaction. His final warning to Tom was beautifully delivered and uncharacteristically blunt:
JACK: I'm going to lead my people up to the radio tower. And I'm gonna make a call. And I'm gonna get 'em all rescued, every one of them. And then I'm gonna come find you, and I'm gonna kill you.
The scenes are so fractured amongst the other actors it's pointless to try to assess them all, but most of them broke dead even (i.e. good stuff). Notable exceptions:
Bonus points to James Lesure, who did a great job as the flash-forwards' Dr. Hamill. His reactions to Jack's drunken rants had me chuckling quite a bit.
Deductions for Brian Goodman (Ryan Pryce), who was about as cookie-cutter a bad guy as you'll find on LOST.
What's a finale without explosions anyway? The explosion sequences at the beach camp were sweet moments of victory indeed, with various Others flipping and flying every which way, flames and debris spouting into the sky.
Hurley running over Pryce with the DHARMA van was executed quite well. I confess I haven't read the "behind the scenes" excerpts of that moment if any exist, but I can tell you that it looked pretty convincing in real-time.
Anything related to the Looking Glass station itself was well-coordinated, from set design to directing. Bender must be happy to know that his "Not Penny's Boat" shot is right up there with the most iconic images in the entire series.
Jack beating Ben to a pulp, while certainly satisfying as a viewer, just didn't look all that fluid or convincing. I'm not sure if it was the camera angle or Fox being overly cautious with his swings or both, but something was off. Compare this scene to Desmond pummeling Dr. Linus in Season 6 and it's really no contest.
Walt standing at the edge of the DHARMA pit was a bizarre visual, and not because he was significantly taller. The camera angle made it seem as if he was standing in a hastily constructed set instead of the jungle. The shots of Walt just felt disconnected from the scene in some way.
I can definitely watch TTLG repeatedly and enjoy certain parts every time. The beach-camp war on the Others and the Looking Glass scenes are built for the long haul, without a doubt. But there are moments that would inevitably feel exponentially slower each time around.
Once you remove the shock of the big reveal the off-island storyline is actually a bit sluggish. One confrontation with Dr. Hamill is fine; two confrontations suggest the storyline might've been stretched out a bit. As noted above, I do think the radio tower trek was a bit uneventful compared to, say, Exodus where something bizarre, deadly, or intriguing was encountered every few minutes.
TTLG's significance can't be overstated. We say goodbye to our beloved Charlie, Danielle's reunited with Alex, outgoing communications are enabled (setting up the freighter arc), and rescue appears to be imminent.
There are very few scenes with more emotional impact than Charlie's death in the Looking Glass. The craziest part is I was genuinely shocked by it even though I was warned as far back as "Flashes Before Your Eyes". I figured I'd outsmarted Darlton, that I wasn't going to fall for their obvious setup. The joke was clearly on me but the punchline was heartbreaking.
I wouldn't say I felt elation when Jack made contact with the freighter; I would describe it more as cautious optimism. But it was truly heartwarming to learn that Bernard, Sayid, and Jin hadn't been killed after all. I don't know that I was ever fully convinced they'd been killed to begin with, but it was no less a relief when I saw them alive and well at the camp.
Atmosphere is where I think TTLG has a little bit of a problem, at least in terms of finales. Exodus is the gold standard of finales for a reason — once they set foot in Dark Territory, or came upon the Black Rock, or ran up to the Hatch, that was atmosphere at its finest. Other than the Looking Glass station and the nighttime beach-camp battle I wasn't really feeling a whole lot of atmosphere.
