“No, trust me, you don’t want to be on board that sub.” – Not Locke to Claire
This wasn’t the best Lost episode of the season by a long shot (and, to be fair, there have been a number of brilliant ones in this final season), but it wasn’t nearly at the level of that dreary-ish one that focused on Sun and Jin a few months ago now. “The Candidate” is fast paced and action packed and moves the storyline along, particularly in the “main” one featuring Not Locke and our band of misfit heroes trying to make one last gasp to escape and get home. Except for Jack (Matthew Fox), who’s not “ready” to get home yet. Something tells me that no one’s quite ready to go home, of course. Not quite yet.
We also lose several major characters – or at least seemingly so, as this is Lost after all. For the level of what that loss should have meant, story-wise and emotion-wise, I didn’t quite feel the impact. Sayid’s seeming “redemption” if we could call it such in grabbing the C4 and dying to save some of the others on the sub, for example, didn’t have nearly the impact of Charlie (Dominic Mongahan) doing his underwater wave goodbye seasons ago.
And Sun and Jin literally going down with the ship (again, we’re not definitively sure of this!) was very rushed and didn’t have the despairing and agonizing quality that you’d imagine would be spent on these two major characters drowning in a final lover’s embrace, right? So does that tell us that somehow they’re going to survive, or was there simply too much plot to pack into this episode and too many plot holes to fill up after six seasons of universal mysteries being spun out?
The alternate storyline was the much slower and character-driven section this week, and while it’s always nice to see Matthew Fox and Terry O’Quinn (who plays both the “real” and Not versions of John Locke) get screen time together, I wasn’t totally engaged in Jack’s attempts to convince Locke that he could use his spinal surgeon’s wizardry to help Locke walk again. The “candidate” has the double meaning of Locke’s potential to have a successful surgery, as well as the developing notion of the mystic and mysterious names that appear on a wall back on the island. I would have liked to learn more about the latter than the former this week.
So, as a chief Lost fan and apologist, I’m more than willing to grant the show slack at this late date but have to say that this was a somewhat offbeat note in a mostly stellar final season.
More thoughts on “The Candidate”:
- Jack (Matthew Fox) talks to Dr. Nadler, Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson), who we know from the island! Dr. Nadler was also on Oceanic 815… “Pretty weird, huh?”
- Not Locke (Terry O’Quinn) on why Jack should trust him: “Because I could kill you, Jack, right here, right now… and there’s not a thing you could do to stop me.”
- Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) get to discuss their daughter – seems like they’ve been kept apart in the main storyline for about 100,000 years.
Doesn’t it seem like we’ve watched Kate (Evangeline Lilly) or Sawyer (Josh Holloway) reach for keys through a cage/jail door a superfluous number of times by now?
Jack visits Anthony Cooper (Kevin Tighe), finds out it’s John Locke’s father.
“I wish you hadn’t believed me,” Locke says from his sleep in the hospital bed.
“No, trust me, you don’t want to be on board that sub.” – Not Locke to Claire (Emilie de Ravin)
- Body count update<strong>: </strong>a<strong> </strong>bunch of Widmore’s no name guards, Sayid (a blow’d up Naveen Andrews), Kate (shot up), and Sun (drowned up)
- The sub filling up with water reminds me of The Poseidon Adventure. And Jin tortured over trying to save the trapped Sun reminds one of both Titanic and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) circa Lost season three or so, right?
- “What happened happened, and you can let it go.” – Jack, back in the alternate storyline
- Dude, seeing Hurley (Jorge Garcia) cry does not make for good times. Sad Hurley is sad time for everyone.
- “It sunk.” – Not Locke. But he’s still going to finish what he started. Uh oh.
From Around the Web: Lost, “The Candidate”
- TV Squad: I was a little surprised that Sun didn’t play the child card on Jin to get him to save himself. After all, they do have a child still alive out there somewhere, and the safety and welfare of that child should be the top priority of Sun in that moment of her life.
- The Watcher: The first two-thirds of “The Candidate” felt like a war movie or a commando flick, and it was tautly shot by Jack Bender as such. There were some terrifically framed images at the plane and near the sub; in particular, I’m thinking of a couple of wide shots as the group approached the plane and some swooping shots down by the dock.
- A.V. Squad: Nice that the writers gave the Kwons a chance to catch up before killing them. A quick confession though: As moved as I was by the Kwons’ demise, when Jin said, “I love you, Sun,” I turned to my wife and said, “I say it in English because I really mean it.”
Some stats and info about Lost, “The Candidate”
TV SHOW – Lost
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 14
AIRED ON – March 4th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – ABC/Hulu
GENRE – Drama, Adventure Shows, Science Fiction
CREATED BY – J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon Lindelof
CAST – Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Junjin Kim, Evangeline Lilly, Terry O’Quinn, Naveen Andrews, Matthew Fox, Daniel Dae Kim, Emilie de Ravin, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick, Dominic Monaghan, Harold Perineau, Ken Leung, Elizabth Mitchell, Nestor Carbonell, Jeff Fahey
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.