The Prestige TV Podcast - Prestige TV Hall of Fame: ‘Lost’ Season 3 Finale, “Through the Looking Glass”

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Joanna and Mallory get together to discuss another entry in the Prestige TV Hall of Fame: the ‘Lost’ Season 3 two-part finale, “Through the Looking Glass.”  Other Prestige TV Hall of Fame episodes from ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ and ‘Succession’ can be found in the 'Prestige TV Podcast' feed. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Welcome back into the PrestiHTV podcast feed. I'm Jonah Robinson. Joining me here today for a very special Hall of Fame episode.

It's Mallory Rubin. Hi, Mal. How are you? Joanna! We have to go pod. We have to go pod. We have to go pod. Not Penny's pod.

All right. So we are here to talk about, we're here for a very special reason. You may have noticed that occasionally in the Press East TV podcast feed, we like to award sort of a Hall of Fame status to a particular episode of television. We've done it for succession, for curb, for Sopranos. We're here today to do it for a little show you might have heard called Lost. ABC's television series lost, inspired a lot. It's a very important television show,

very near and dear to our hearts. Yes. And given how much, I mean, if you listen to us talk about the end of Yellow Jackets, the first season of Yellow Jackets, you will have heard Bill and Mallory and myself talk about Lost a lot

because there is a lot of connected tissue between Lost and Yellow Jackets. So using Yellow Jackets as a sort of Loose inspiration. Mallory and I decided to hop on here and talk about a Hall of Fame lost episode. And note that I said, a Hall of Fame lost episode, not the Hall of Fame lost episode, because once we tell you what our episode is, you are going to start screaming at home because you're going to be like, why isn't it this or that or the other thing? And I'm here to tell you, this is a promise from me to you. I'm staring at Mallory right now, but I mean it to you, the listener.

Oh, you're looking into my soul. I love it. This is not the last Hall of Fame lost episode we will do. So relax. I'm going to give you a broad umbrella spoiler warning, right? Okay, so here it comes.

Good idea. Yellow Jackets is something that I think is on the table, the entire first season of Yellow Jackets. We're probably not going to talk about it too much. But if we want to draw some comparisons, I just want to let you know, we might draw specific plot point comparisons. We might not, but it's a possibility.

So you haven't seen yellow jackets. What are you doing with your life? Put down your listening device. Go watch it. Come back. Listen to us talk about loss. Number two, spoiler warning, the TV series lost. The whole thing, I was going to say, we'll probably just at least want to be up to date up through season three.

I'm saying it's all on the table. Okay, it's all of it. It's all on the table. It's been a minute since lost on the air. You've had some time. It's all on Jack's operating table, folks. All of it. All of lost all the old jackets.

Bam, boom, done, the end. All right. We had some debate about what episode to pick. Yes. A healthy debate. Yes. Because as you noted, there are so many good choices. A lot of good reasons to pick a Hall of Fame episode of Lost.

I think there's one that, like, most people, when you ask them what the best episode, there's a very popular answer. It's not our answer today. Mallory, do you want to tell the people what we picked? Joanna. It would be an honor and a privilege to tell everyone listening what we've picked. We are inducting into the prestige TV podcast Hall of Fame, Lost Wing, through the looking glass, the two-part season three finale. And I'm so glad that you emphasized early that this is A inductee and not the because we can say definitively that Lost is the kind of Pantheon show that presents numerous very, very, very, very worthy contenders. We could have started in any number of places.

This felt like the right place to both of us to start for a number of reasons that we'll obviously outline today. But how many episodes ultimately could have been eligible for this honor and will be over time? Is it four? Is it eight? Is it 15? Is it 16? Is it 23? Is it 42? Is it 108? 815. No, there aren't that many episodes.

Anyway, I love that you decided we've designated an entire wing to loss in the in the Presti's TV Hall of Fame. Absolutely. Season 3 finale, through the looking glass. This episode aired May 23rd, 2007. It was written by, you might have heard of them, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Kuse, the executive producer of the show, and directed by Lost all-time director. Jack Bender, also an executive producer on the show. Jack Bender for folks who

don't know chapter and verse lost and that's okay, you didn't spend the entire pandemic rewatching it like, I didn't, that's okay. You might know Jack Bender from his work on a really important episode of Game of Thrones. He directed The Door and another one, but he directed the door and here's what Jack Bender is best known for, which is ripping your heart out and tromping all over it. He gets extremely emotional performances out of his actors. specialty. So we will see this on hand today as we talk about this episode. Should I tell the folks are listening? What happens in this episode? Briefly? Yeah. All right. Give a brief synapsis. It's tough. I'm to see a two-hour season finale, a third season of a show. You may or may not have

watched for a while. But here's, here are the main beats, which is Jack and a bunch of the survivors are headed to a radio tower and he's there with Kate, Ben. There's a bunch of people with him. They're trying to unblock a signal down on the beach in a place called the looking glass station. Charlie and Desmond are trying to further unblock a signal so that we can make contact with a freighter that we have been told belongs to Penelope Woodmore's Desmond's long lost love. Okay? So all of that's happening on island.

These are two main plots. There's also a little segment of, we like to call it the husband squad down on the beach. And that is Bernard and Jin and everyone's husband, Saeed, are down on the beach. Try to protect the camp from the others. Okay. So all of that's happening on island. Off island, a very beardy and depressed Jack Shepherd is doing some things, saving people from bridges, generally spinning out, taking flights, calling people on his Motorola

razor phone, all its stuff is going on. And at the very end... Tearing out clippings from the newspaper. The very end. He goes to meet someone at the airport. It is Kate Austin, and all of a sudden, all the stakes unlost flips forever on its heads because what we assumed as a flashback, which was the entire premise of the show, up until the end of season three, we find out as a flash forward, we find out the job.

we find out that Jack and Kate at least gone off the island. And not only that, but Jack thinks they need to go back. Oh, my God. I have a chill. Like, seriously. My heart is racing and I have chills listening to

describe something that I watched literally mere hours ago. I went in the process of all this Charlie Pasteyes. Okay. So, I did a little thought experiment on Twitter this morning where I asked people. Like, we had already picked this episode,

but I thought I knew the answers, but I just wanted to make sure I asked folks on Twitter sort of what was the number one iconic just image from lost for casual viewers, blah, blah, blah. And I got a lot of answers. But the most common one by far is from this episode. Yes.

Charlie paces his hand up against the porthole, not Penny's boat. Sharpie on his hand, okay? Right before he dies. Also on the list, though, was a very beardy Jack Shepherd saying we have to go back. Absolutely. It was up on the list for people. There's also a lot of hatch stuff that's on the list for people. But two iconic, iconic lost moments in this episode.

And the last thing I'll say in this recap thing is, like, because we want to talk about Yellow Jackets, which is a show that owes a lot to lost, but Yellow Jackets is operating with some flashbacks. We get some backstories on the girls. But the main tension is a flash forward tension. It's a dealing with the trauma of your post-playing crash post-survival experience and the toll that takes on you many years later.

That's the main tension that you LJEC is concerned with. And that's what we thought the flash forward example in this episode and going forward was key to talk about. Mel, like, what do you want to say about this episode of television? I don't even know where to begin, honestly. I'm glad that you have some 250, 300, maybe more hours of lost podcasting committed to the public record because, you know, this will be a a morsel of the Dharma initiative provided feast that is the lost experience. I think, I guess we'll start before we dive into why this is a Hall of Fame lost episode, maybe in the running, certainly for, in the running for best lost episode ever.

And I think unambiguously top five. Top five. Probably unambiguously top three, but certainly unambiguously top five on really anybody's list, no matter how much variance there is outside of that. I think the thing that I love so much about this episode is that it gives us the signature lost brew. And we can talk about all of these ingredients more in detail as we go, but as like a preview, just the recipe sheet, you have the mythology, the mystery, the intrigue, right? Boom. You have the heart, the emotional poignancy and heft.

You have the philosophical stimulation, the tension between these key themes and key ideas. You have real meaningful character progression and reflections on human nature. You have some sort of structural brilliance. And you have something that when you are experiencing it for the first time is going to awe you, right? The first time you see this episode is something that I feel like people who love lost will remember forever. Whether you came to it late, whether you watched it right when it aired. And it is so rewarding. on a rewatch. There are always new layers to appreciate. And completing lost and then returning

to this episode, it allows you to open up every single aspect and angle of what makes loss so special and so memorable still to this day. And we were texting as we were watching it after. And it's like, I just did a full lost rewatch during quarantine. So not just. I mean, it's almost, God, it's almost been almost two years now at this point. It was like one of my early COVID binges was to rewatch Lost because of you, because you were doing your pod and you asked me to join you for an episode and I was like, I got it. It was a season three episode and I was like, I better get cracking on my rewatch. I better watch it all. Yeah, yeah. Just could not possibly have had more fun rewatching all of Lost, which is one of the seminal shows in my life, the first show I ever

podcasted about way back when in the day. And one of the shows and stories that's unlocked so much about my imagination and the way I like to think about stories and the communities that spring up around them. So it's just a very meaningful thing. And this episode is, such a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes lost special inside of a single episode, inside of a single character arc, but also I think so lasting. And so rewatching this, I was just like, now I want to do the entire thing again. Just like Jack, I feel like we have to go back. Like, I want to do it all again, even though I just did it. I got inspired to start another rewatch, honestly, watching this again. Yeah, me too. Yeah. It's amazing. The pull it has.

It's a matter. So, you know, we could talk a little bit about the Lost Legacy. You and I have never had a chance talk about that on a Ringer podcast, so it might be worth just briefly talking about it. It's incalculable, I think. I don't think I said that word beautifully. But, like, you know, it's, you don't know until you study a text like Lost, how much it's baked into all the television that we watch now. Because there's a format that did not really exist before Lost, that everyone, like, euphoria. Euphoria does these flashback cold opens, like these little stories and you say,

oh, it's a Cal episode. Oh, it's a Cassie episode. that's a loss. That's a thing they got from Lost. You know, like, Yellow Jackets is an obvious example. Station 11 is a slightly less obvious example, but it's in there.

Like, it's just everywhere. I just cannot, like, ever possibly fully explain what impact the show has. And the way in which the finale was received and the way in which some people like to toss Lost on the Ash Heave of History, I think is a really narrow view

of the lasting impact of this show. And I think what I found when people rewatch a show or watch it for the first time now outside the pressure cooker of such a big pop culture hit, the finale lands really well, actually, for a lot of people. So just as for the finale, and honestly, I was tempted to pick the finale for this episode. That would have been a heat check right at the start, but I would have been there. We could have pulled it off, I think. But I think I love that you mention this brew, because as much as I love Yellow Jackets,

it's a really, really fun show. I don't know that it's going to, I mean, it's early yet. It's early days. It's only season one. But I don't know that it's going to land that same way because there's a couple things that Lost had an advantage over Yellow Jackets. First of all, loss is the blueprint, right? The Yellow Jackets is kind of following.

Secondly, Loss is really interested in, and Yellow Jackus has room to get here, but really interested in, like, spirituality and faith and love stories and all sort of stuff. And we haven't really seen that, like, really soulful, soulful. Death, Yellow Jackets strikes me as like a harsher, snarkier, funnier show, and I like it a lot, but it's not quite giving me that like, let's go to church with Lost feeling. What do you, what do you think, Mal? Is that fair? You know, it depends if there's human flesh waiting inside the church. None, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you just said. I think that Lost is such a special show to both of us that I think our stance here will surprise no one, right?

But I really do consider it context of pop culture conversations tragic that there's so much emphasis placed on what in the moment in real time felt like a letdown for people with the finale because I think that whether the finale as an episode or the final season as a final season of TV or any of that is, your personal favorite, I think there is so much there to reward the journey. And I think Lost was never about the end point. It wasn't about the destination. It was about the journey and that frankly, for the characters and viewers alike, thinking about the journey, interrogating the journey, understanding how we think about the journey and why that's something we care about it all in the first place, right? When we decide to go about our days and interact and build relationships and move through the course of our own existence, like that sincere interest in examining the choices people make

and the ties that bind them inside of a show that can give you the action and adventure and thrills that unfold with Hurley driving the VW through the others, right, at the camp, or like a quiet little kernel of emotional heft, like Rousseau and Alex having the most. moment that they have inside of this episode, the number of characters. I mean, it is astonishing to go back in our modern-day TV landscape of six or eight or ten-episode seasons and go back to, you know, 20-plus episodes in the early seasons of lost in a total, you know, well north of 100. But, and you talk

about this often in your work, and I love, I love the way that you return to this idea. The thing that that afforded was these beautiful moments to invest in who these people are, right? And so when you get to these high, high, high tension points like Charlie deciding everything that he decides in this episode, right? And what that unlocks for us about one of the core tensions at the heart of lost and areas of interest for the creators, which is how does free will exist in a world where so many people are always talking about fate and destiny, right? Yes. It's not just that Charlie does it. It's not just the way he navigates everything with me. Kyle, it's not just that he, because a musician programmed, the keypad can crack the code of good

vibrations, right? And how on the one hand, that would feel so affirming and like there was some plan. And on the other hand, like that might feel like, well, then wait, what do my decisions matter? If that's the case, right? And I just love that, that constant dissonance and also harmony at the heart of lost. The moment that he talks to Penny and breaks through, the moment that he shuts that door on Desmond, the sacrifice and what it means for everybody, for Desmond, for Claire and Aaron, for everybody else who's a survivor is trying to get off that island, but also what it means for Charlie, right, for the culmination of his growth and his arc and everything that we've been through with him and that we've seen him go through with the people in his life. Like, that's an

unbelievable thing to be able to achieve inside of 85 minutes of total runtime, right, across the two-part finale. And then you have something like the flash. forward reveal, which is one of the best twists in TV history. And so to be able to pull off, too, of what you, I loved that prompt you threw out on Twitter. You know, I think that some of the other nominees like Jack and Locke, as you noted, looking down into the hatch, and there are many things that you could throw out. But irrefutably, two of the most iconic moments in lost history, and thus in TV history are inside of this finale. I don't think we can sing its praises enough. I love everything you just said about Charlie.

The character of Charlie Pace is so interesting. So, you know, Dominic Monaghan, like, coming into loss, Dominic Monaghan is coming off of Lord of the Rings. He and, you know, it's worth mentioning, right, that Evangeline Lilly and Matthew Fox and all these other actors on the show, they were not a big deal at all. You know, Matthew Fox had done party of five. Evangeline Lily was an absolute find for this show. Dom Monaghan was, like, the biggest actor on the show. And what happened with Charlie Pace is really interesting. as a rewatch study of what can happen if you rush through a character arc,

is they sort of arced out on Charlie kind of early. They burned through his backstory of like, okay, he battled with addiction. That's his backstory. And then they just didn't know really how to use Dom Monehan. And so when you rewatch lost, the Charlie stuff really does start to feel like wheels spinning. And a character that was positioned as like a third lead on the show with Jack and Kate in the pilot becomes really backgrounded. they just weren't sure what to do with him.

The writers have talked about this. This is a thing. So, you know, an obvious solution for a character you don't know what to do with is, like, you read them out somehow and on a show like Lost, they might die. But to give Charlie such a beautiful end when they had really, like, emptied the tank on him. And so then to forever cement him as not, oh, this is a mistake we made, but like, this is just an iconic character with an iconic arc. And especially, you know, you mentioned the loss preoccupation with free will and fate, which is so beautifully underlined in this episode, but also that loss preoccupation with, can I change who I am ever fundamentally?

And that's something that Yellow Jackets is kind of interested in, too, in terms of like, what does my power set? What does my skill set mean in this setting versus back in the real world, right? And Charlie, what's great about this two-parter is the episode right before it is called Greatest Hits. And it's a big runway with Charlie up into this episode where Charlie just basically goes through his life looking at all the things that he did that he's proudest of running up to this episode. And then he just makes this decision. And what's really interesting about the death that Charlie Pace here is that he didn't have to die, honestly. Like, you know, in the physics of it all, McCyle shows up. Love McCall, one of my favorite minor loss characters of all-time.

Alt-timer. Michael shows up, knocks on the window with a grenade. Charlie definitely is time to get out of that control room and go with Desmond out the, you know, at the moon pool. Or there's a lot of options that Charlie has. He chooses to die because Desmond has told him, as you alluded to, Desmond has told him that Charlie and Aaron will make the two people he cares about most will make it off the island safely only if Charlie flips the switch and then dies. So he sacrifices himself in this moment. In a moment where the episode is tricked him into thinking he's not going to have to, you're like, oh, he did it.

Yeah. And he doesn't have to die. He's going to make it. And in that moment, he writes not Penny's bone on his hand. In a Sharpie that he has had since the pilot. It's like this long, there's so many long payoffs in this episode. But the Sharpie, like, Charlie has been like, writing life and fate on his, like, you know, finger tape since the opening of the show.

He used that Sharpie to make his greatest hits list in the last episode. And here's the Sharpie again, just when he needs it, to scrawl not Penny's Bone on his hand and create an iconic forever TV moment. I just, it's perfect. It's perfect television. It's perfect. I love everything that you just said. And I love that question that you posed and, you know,

or noting that the show poses about change and human nature. And one of the areas in which lost always, but particularly at its best, is so nimble and so adept, is weaving together what in less deft and capable hands would seem like disparate threads, right? And it ultimately all ends up reinforcing the impact of something like that. So it's hard to say the word constant in a Lost Hall of Fame episode without talking about actually the constant,

which we will certainly, I think, mention before we go today. But taking something that is a constant in Charlie's life, right, that is a through line, a totem in some ways like that Sharpie, and using it not to reinforce how tethered and anchored somebody could be in their own mistakes or bad habits, but actually to bring to the four the growth and progress that he has made. And with his, I love the way that you're putting it about his decision, his choice, and his choice ultimately to die, because, you know, Lost is obviously heavily populated throughout

with these very intellectually stimulating and invigorating literary references, philosophical references. And of course, one of our favorites to always circle back to his Hume, right? Desmond Hume, David Hume. And what is one of the philosophical tenets that he is most associated with? It's compatibleism, right? The idea that free will and the idea of deterrential, Permanism don't actually have to be mutually exclusive. And it's really an interesting creative

exercise and intellectual exercise to grapple with how that could be true on what that would look like inside of not only our collective shared experience, but each individual person's course. And for Charlie to make the decision when so much of his life was defined by letting people down, right, by not coming through for the people that he loved and cared about, by being one of the reasons that something bad happened to somebody that he loved to channel that purpose into pure conviction to ensure that no matter what, not because somebody told him, but because he decided that it was the thing he believed he had to do to make the decision to protect those people that he loved no matter what. That's like a really beautiful and meaningful thing that is not only

very fulfilling for Charlie and for the season three finale, but that is at the heart, the core strand of DNA to why lost is such a rich and layered and rewarding story in the first place from start to finish across the characters. I want to talk about two things. I do want to circle back to Dezum for a second, but I want to talk about one thing you said about the decision to do the right thing, the heroic thing. Something that I love about Charlie's decision here is that he does it and he does it without trying to earn any points off of it with he doesn't tell Claire what he's going to do. He doesn't tell Hurley what he's going to do. He says goodbye. of them without telling them what he's going to do. That is such, such an antithesis to Charlie's

character thus far. And then also as a payoff to, it's really hard to make this death feel poignant and satisfying when all season, Desmond has been saying, you know, you're going to die Charlie. Like, you know, like, we've heard him say it over and over again. So, like, it's not a surprise. We've been told for episodes. But what it is kind of a surprise, especially in network television, of that era is for the bad thing to actually happen. Because we're sitting here comfortably podcasting in a post-thrones era where Thrones forever sort of changed the way that we expect to watch TV and heroes and stuff like that. But this is a pre-thrones hero death.

You know, it's not the first one necessarily that Lost has and it's not the last one, but it is the first big one. And I think for that reason it sticks out in the real life and death stakes of this show, you know? Absolutely. And also I think, like, in addition to just the heart-wrenching nature of it and the tears, you know, it's like instant water works for me, no matter how many times I've seen this scene, no matter how many times I've seen Charlie. But like, honestly, if I see it, if I see a GIF on Twitter, I'm just like, well, I guess I'll go cry now. It has that kind of impact. And part of it, it's everything we just talked about Charlie and his arc and the themes of play there. But part of it is the context, right? And like, I think that gets back to what you're saying about. You're anticipating and there's a sense of like, looming dread that actually somehow enhances the ultimate impact of the moment because of the context around it, which is that they're about to get out, you know, and like to be so, so, so close and to know that ensuring that the people you care about can do the thing that you can't, because you can't, it's just really, and again, like you said, not the first time and not the last

time and lost, but it stands out as one of the most, you know, impactful deaths in the run of the show. And I think beyond the run of the show, because it really pulls at and brings together all of those different strings. It's just an incredible moment. And like, it's such a visceral image. It's just devastating. And like, I think that it's one of those things, too, that kind of transcended the show. Like, people who have never seen an episode of Lost, no, not Penny's Boat and have probably seen that visual and have some sense of what it means. But, like, I don't, think that that diminishes any of the impact if you then sit down to watch it. Like, it just lands so fully. And it's midway through the episode because we then still have to get to the

Flash Forward Reve, which is just incredible. I mean, there are television shows that never achieve anything like that. There are television shows that build in their entirety toward that one moment. And it's one of two things inside of this episode that reach that kind of fever pitch and scale. It's just astonishing. In the middle of a series. And like, and we should talk about how this flash forward flip. Let's like, like let's roll to the flashboard and say that like, it came at a time when,

so, you know, season one of Lost was its most watched. Season two was only a little bit under. And then season three saw a massive drop off after the first chunk of episodes and ratings because people started to be like, do you have a plan?

Are there going to be answers to my mysteries? What am I watching here? What's going on? That whole tension of like, how long do you keep the mystery box hidden? All of that sort of stuff started to, rear its head. And when this happened, and eventually the writers are like, we have a plan, we're going to go out in just a couple seasons. And we have a plan. And this is what we're running

towards. I think that renewed a lot of people's faith in the show. It renewed a lot of people's interest in Jack Shepherd. Jack Shepherd is in the worst episode of the season, arguably the worst episode of the series earlier in this season when we have to watch why Jack Shepherd got his tattoos in Thailand. Very bad episode. And it's the episode that the creators of the show brought to the network to be like, we have to end this thing or else you're just going to get more of this. Okay? So audiences are a little like, okay, have we seen everything we want to see from Jack?

Sure. Okay, we haven't seen him with a beard like strung out on Oxy yet. But okay. And then you find out, oh, no, this is the, now we're suddenly really reinvested in, in what's happening with Jack. And it enters that territory that Yellow Jackets is really playing in in that like, that trauma, the guilt of survival, the trauma of having, like, and who you left behind, and the decisions you made and the things that you carry with you, and the mystery tension

for the viewer, it's a brilliant, brilliant moment when, again, Evangeline Lily steps out the car, and she's had a blowout, and she's got Islander, and you're like, oh, no. Alt-timer. We're somewhere else now. This is an all-timer. It's unbelievable. I'm glad that you mentioned that context around the show. at the time.

I love, maybe this is a good time to mention it before talking about Jack and that trauma a bit more, the episode title, which, as is often the case with a great lost episode name, plays in multiple levels and hits in multiple respects.

So, of course, the looking glass is literally the name of the Dharma station under the water, right? It is, of course, a famous, Lewis Carroll literary reference, right? It is a recurring motif and reference across Lost, right,

chasing this rabbit, this white rabbit. For Jack specifically. For Jack specifically, exactly. What is the logo for this particular looking last Dharma station? It's that rabbit. And I love the way it plays not only as core canon inside of the show, right? but this nod to like the propulsive force of our own curiosity, right?

And there's so much post-lost finale, specific to lost and as you're observing, more broadly about how we consume pop culture, how we navigate the force of frankly our own expectations when we throw ourselves so fully into a story and then move toward an end that is not in our control, right? I love this moment inside of loss to think about this and the way that it is incorporated from like a meta, meta text into like cortex because that propulsive force of our own curiosity, it's the thing that we chase, right? We chase that rabbit down that rabbit hole, just like the characters do in pursuit of answers, which I think we both implore people to remember we got a lot of for a long time. We really did. We really did.

We got so many. Oh, boy. Yeah. And we're through the looking glass in terms of what we're doing in that latest carol book, Alice goes through the looking glass and now she's in the looking glass world where everything is sort of backwards. And so that's, you know, we're flipping from a flashback to a flash forward. Yes. This inverted kind of expectation and like reversal of our logic inside of the universe. The Jack Beard, I'll just say it is great. Let me just throw that out there and get that on the record. I'm a big fan of it. What do you think of Jack's Jeep? I feel compelled to say that out loud. I love it. I like the whole get-up, honestly. I like the Jeep.

I like the denim jacket. I like the beard. I'm obviously very concerned about Jack and the state that he's in throughout the episode. But in terms of just the visual palette, I'm a fan. Sorry to overstate the achievement. When Jack says to Kate, they made a mistake. Like, before we even see Kate, you know, we see him, like, with all of the oceanic map, the maps, right?

And the paraphernalia, like, shrewing about him in this. derelict apartment. And obviously he's, you know, he's in a state throughout the episode that we're trying to, like,

reconcile what we know about Jack's backstory with mapping that onto a certain timeline. I should say, let me just throw this out there. You know this. But I did not watch

Lost the first few seasons in real time. I caught up before the end. And so I did not watch this when it aired in real time. I was catching up on this episode.

And I, knew that we have to go back was this like defining moment, right? And this massive thing still fucking landed when I got to enjoy it for the first time. And it has every time since. And you see Kate pull out like you said and you're like, it's not just the twist. It's not just the bold decision to completely change the game and reinvent the nature of the show. It's what Jack is an individual character unlocks then for the show as a whole and it's like macro ambition

because what is Jack doing on the island and what has he been doing? He is trying to fix things, right? And trying no matter what it takes, even at the expense as he hears on the walkie when he's duped, right, of Saeed and Jin and Bernard, even at the expense of their lives

of getting them off that island no matter what, right? Yeah, yeah. And to hear him say that they made a mistake, to hear him say we were not supposed to leave to hear Cade say, yes, we were. And then, of course, the iconic, we have to go back.

You're just like, awed by the balance of answering questions, right? They got off the island. At least some characters got off. How? Who? When? What does it mean?

Especially because we have this not Penny's boat freighter mystery then. But what could have happened to this person who was driven fully by this compulsion and need, not only to get himself off that island, but to ensure that he got everyone else off to, what could have changed to lead this character

of all characters to say these things? What would that mean and what would that have required? And what would that mean moving forward? And so it enriches everything that we've seen to that point, and it sets the stage for this, like, boundless sea of possibilities moving forward. It's just, it's this incredible pivot point inside of the show that makes lost ultimately more like,

It's less like a linear path and more like the wheel that bends spins, you know? It's all connected to each other at all points in time. And that's one of the reasons I love it so much. Wow, Frozen Donkey Mail reference. I love to see it. To yes and your point, I think not only has Jack reversed his trajectory in that moment when he says we have to go back, he sounds like John in that moment. And the idea that like we spent so long with this man of science, man of faith binary,

with Jack is a man of science. And I'm a man of faith. That's one of my all-time favorite lost moments. I love that. It's so good. And so the fact that Jack, yeah, exactly. The mystery is not, I mean, the shell game mystery of who got off the island and when, which runs throughout season four is so fun, honestly.

And it's one of the fun parts of Yellow Jackets because you're like, how are these groups of teenage girls going to coalesce and breakup and whatever in terms of like to bring the survival? that we know where they are. That's the season four shell game of loss that they're playing on yellow jackets. I love it. It's my favorite.

But that emotional journey is even more pointed and interesting. How did our man of science become a beardy man of faith? Like what happened here? And I think the major mysteries that are caked into that flash forward where we get who's in the casket.

Kate says, I have to get back to him. We don't know who she's talking about. Like all of that stuff is caked in there, a little like breadcrumbs for the future for us. And then... Part of why it's such a rewarding rewatch. Exactly. And then on Island, there are little breadcrumbs for the future here. You get, I think, your first really meaningful Sawyer and Juliet interaction, a moment where they feel like a team of equals, something that you and I love.

Very important to both of us. As you mentioned, the Alex and Brousseau meeting is there. the like what's going on with the freighter stuff is there. The VW van circles back to something you brought up earlier, this idea of the 22 episode season that allows you to luxuriate in episodes that you wouldn't be able to have in a 10 episode season. And so we get an entire episode that is just Hurley trying to get that van started. That's what Trisha Tanaka's dead.

One of my favorite lost episodes is just about Hurley and Sawyer and Jen and Charlie trying to get the van started. For it to pay off. So then it seems like a sort of slightly filler episode, but you don't mind because you're having such a great hang with some of your favorite characters. And then for it to pay off in this daring rescue moment, for Sawyer to pay off the season one finale

by killing Tom Friendly and saying, this is for the boy, for Waltz. I mean, for Juliet to firmly align herself with the Losties to fully betray the others and go to the other side. I mean, and then Ben Lines gets punched in the face so many times. Pommold. What else could you want?

Pommelt. And he gets punched in the heart via walkie-talkie a few times when multiple people in his camp are like, why didn't you tell me this? What game were you running here? And so there's a lot of Ben Jacob Island mythology quietly mixed in. It's not necessarily our central focus, but it does set the stage nicely for a lot of what's to come on that front too. I'm really, really. I'm see this is so fun. I don't want to stop. I'm so glad you mentioned you made the lock point because that is so, so central. So it makes us such a compelling jack. episode, and particularly so because Locke is barely in this finale. I mean, he's in it. Of course, you know, we have the like horror seeing him wake up in the pit of bodies and that's a great moment with Walt and then him emerging to hurl the knife and everything. But he's relatively speaking, not one of the central players in this episode. And I'm always a little bit surprised by my personal draw to the episode because the LLock episodes are like consistently among my favorite. I just love them so much, and they're so compelling to me.

But much of the core of what makes Locke episodes interesting is still here. It's just shifted to different characters. And that shift, that seamless organic osmosis, when you realize that that is what you're watching, you get that really meaningful extra like oomph of realizing that that's happened for you too. you've been absorbing all of those lessons along the way just like the characters, right? And I mean, we've mentioned the length of the seasons multiple times. Like, this is what?

Episode 71 and 72 total? We're really far in at that point. Really, really far in. We've spent a lot of time with the characters. We have a good stretch to go still, but it's a difficult kind of alchemy to think about shows today matching. Because if Yellow Jackets,

think about the way we're like talking about how, whoa, five seasons of Yellow Jackets, would that be too many? Well, that would be 21 fewer episodes than what this is here, right? Which is just kind of amazing to think about. I want to make sure I mention this because I forgot to mention it earlier and it's very, very, very, very, very, very important. In this episode of Lost, Neveen Andrews, a.k. Saeed Jara, kill someone. People remember it as his thighs. It's not as his ankles.

but like it is still one of the most iconic kills in all of lost history. And again, that alone, you could just be like the episode where Sayyed kills someone with his ankles. Like that alone is an incredible moment from Mars. Everyone's running around the sand looking for guns and Syed's like, I'm fine here. I'm just going to kill this guy. I mean, all right. Let us quickly say some other episodes maybe that we considered to discuss here. Not the definitive.

list, certainly, but some that were in the mix for first inductees here. What were some that you, I mean, I'll just start and say, the constant ever heard of it? The very obvious one is the constant. It is an iconic episode of Lost, but that's been done. And maybe we'll talk about it in the future, but like, I'd both talk about how great that episode is. I'll just put on the record that I'd love to. I'll call you, I'll call you in eight years, Valerie. And we'll talk about the constant. What else were you thinking? Red phone in hand, Joe.

Talk about one of the most iconic images in lost history. You got to have a full Christmas deck decor behind you, as Penny does. I'll, I can promise you a potato lock, Kian, a menorah. I don't know. A full menorah. I'll do my best. I'll do my best. The constant earned the number one spot on the ringers list of best TV episodes of the 21st century.

So it goes without saying, but just to say it, we can. consider that a absolute top-tier pantheon installment of TV, one of the best episodes of loss, one of the best episodes of TV. We discussed Walkabout quite a bit. We gave some serious thought to Walk About, season one episode four, John Locke episode, one of my absolute favorites. I think Walk About, let me say this. I'm going to say this, and then I'm going to say, I reserve the right to change my mind at any point, including in the next five minutes on this very podcast. I think if you made me say right now, the constant through the looking glass and walkabout are probably my three favorite episodes of Lost.

And the list changes, depending on where I am in my life, what's on my mind, what's in my heart. Those are the three, I think, that I think about the most often. But the problem is that the list of favorite lost episodes for me is like 40 episodes deep. And any of those could be in contention for the top five at any moment in time. There are just so many great ones. I mean, so many. So many. The pilot. We considered the pilot just to truly groundbril.

breaking moment in television, just the scope of what they created there. I think especially like Yellow Jackets as an impetus, like thinking about starting something that sparks a lot of theorizing and energy around it, the pilot and Walkabout would have been good contenders here for sure. And Walkabout is such a good episode. That's the episode where we discover four episodes in that this character we've been seeing walking about was in a wheelchair previously to the crash, and your mind is just sort of like, what happened here?

And there's a few episodes in that first season and season two that have, what we like to call early TiVo moments, the numbers, which is a season one episode where you see the numbers on the side of the hatch that, you know, that have bedeviled Hurley for a long time before the crash. That was a big TiVo moment as in, I mean, it makes me feeling you shouldn't even to say the word TiVo. But like, how many people listening to this are Googling TiVo right now? And then I'm going to trigger other people by going, boobo. That's the sound of your TiVo. Yeah, I remember it well. But people, like, people didn't freeze frame TV before TiVo, really. And so that was the beginning of this whole, like, Reddit detective era of television is, like, freezing the numbers or in the episode lockdown.

Yes. Yeah. The map on the back of the hatched door. Like, that's another freeze frame moment, you know, where people froze and then just, like, poured over every detail. Like, you just couldn't watch television that way. before lost in TiVo and stuff like that. And now showrunners rely on the fact that people are going to freeze for him and be like, wait a minute, Titanic came out after the plane crash.

So what is this journal really saying here? Right. What does it mean that this pair of converse is on this pair of feet standing above this pit and this necklaces on this neck? Yeah, totally. You mentioned numbers. Like that stretch at the end of season one, numbers, Deiasex Machina, do no harm. And then Exodus, the finale.

unfucking believable stretch of television. I mean, Exodus is on my list. Exodus has my favorite Michael Giacchino musical cue of all incredible musical cues. That ended season one. And then frankly, I would throw out the season two premiere, Joe, man of science, man of faith, the fucking Desmond opening. The Desmond intro. Cass Elliott. It's just incredible.

Oh, I love that. My wild card nominee that I probably could have convinced. I know what you're going to say. And the answer is yes, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Is the floor, which is probably my favorite episode of Lost, which is a big Sawyer episode. But it goes, but it really, but it's so good. It didn't feel like a great episode to talk about in the context of yellow jackets, but it does really go into that whole like can a person change. But it has to do with a. It has to do with the television. It has to do with an era of loss where we're heavy into time travel. As far as we know, it's not a big yellow jacket. It's cute. Oh no, I love that. Season 5 is actually my favorite. Yeah, it's my favorite. But that's what Yellow Jackets is doing. So, you know. I love it. Oh, my God. Season 5 is so good. The incident I love. Going back to season four, the shape of things to come. I mean, there's just, oh, there's no place like home. The season four finale, there's so many. Speaking of a different time, this episode airs in May 2007. Yeah. Our tiny minds are blown by a flash forward. Season 4th, season 4th, does not premiere until January 2008. For a number of reasons, including the Rider Strike, there is a, what is that, a seven-month gap between the two seasons, which might seem

like nothing now because we're used to waning a year between seasons, but that was not the case with network shows of 22 episodes. Like you had the summer to think about and theorize, but not seven freaking months or whatever to dwell in the mystery. And then season four is impacted by the writer's strike. It's a whole thing. and all the seasons after this are shorter. So it's just like, I mean, there's just so much hanging around this episode. I'm so glad it's in the Hall of Fame. No one can take it down.

We've put it up. It's here. Enshrined with like bolts. You can't. No, no arguing. We did it. Anything else you want to say about the looking at? Just that it's an absolute thrill for me to talk lost with you.

Genuinely. Genuinely a pleasure and a treat. And this episode, through the looking glass, we're talking about sports more. You know, we're texting about the 49ers. We were texting about the Giants. This episode, Joe, it's a 300 game winner. You know, it's a 500 home run hitter. Any Hall of Fame credential you want to throw out this season three finale brings.

And I always carry in my heart, Vincent, who I love, and I always carry lost in my heart and it's just a real joy for me to talk about it with you. I feel like it's like, and the Man of Faith, Man of Science binary with us is like, Joe of musicals, Mal of Sports or something like that, and you're going to like turn me into a Mal of Sports eventually. You'll get me there. All right. Well, that's it for us here right now on the Press East TV podcast feed.

We'll be back with Euphoria episode and some other fun stuff in the feed. If you haven't listened to our Ozart breakdown that Van and I did, this is. It's just so much going on constantly and the speed. Interesting people talking about talking to me and other people about television. So this episode was produced by the wonderful Sasha Ashall. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you somewhere else across the ringerverse, perhaps on the literal podcast called the Ringer's. Bye.

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