Lost Season 5 Episode 8: ‘LaFleur’

I officially think Lost is no longer about our Oceanic flight survivors being Lost and more about viewers being Lost as to what the hell is going on.

Now that John Locke or Jeremy Bentham - or whatever Locke’s going by these days - has saved the day, our Oceanic flight survivors, who stayed on the island, are trapped back in time. Much like Marty McFly, all they want to do is get “Back to the Future.” Now that the present is actually the past, Lost season 5 episode 8, “LaFleur,” flashes forward three years to a time when Sawyer, Jin, Faraday, Juliet and Miles have made a life for themselves with the Dharma Initiative. This clears up a question raised earlier this season. How is it that these five suffered from nose-bleeds if they were on the island for only a few months? The answer is that they actually lived on the island decades earlier thanks to the miracles of time travel. I’m just waiting for the Star Trek Next Generation level Paradox.

In our present time stream, three years before Sawyer’s team becomes full fledged Dharma members, Sawyer negotiates with the never-aging Richard Alpert to maintain peace on the island between Dharma and the island’s indigenous population. This negotiation wins him a key position with the folks at Dharma.

Lost Season 5 episode 8 ends three years after Locke saved the survivors of Oceanic flight 815. Sawyer, who now goes by the name of LaFleur, builds a new life for himself with Juliet, while seemingly forgetting about Kate.

“LaFleur,” however, ended a little to nice and neat my taste. Throughout our flash-forwards in season 4 and 5, we saw the Oceanic 6 three years in the future. At the end of “LaFleur,” Sawyer is reunited with their fellow Oceanic 815 survivors who have also aged three years. This was blatantly forced. Would it not have been more interesting if some of the survivors had aged more than others? Maybe, that was a production concern. Who wants to pay extra to cast older look-alikes?

One key moment of Lost, “LaFleur,” was when Juliet delivered her first baby on the island. We now know that sometime in the 70s or 80s people could have children on the island. What eventually brought about the end of newborns is still up in the air. Could it have something to do with Jughead? Sawyer did bring up the buried nuke to Richard to gain the ageless man’s trust.

What will happen between Sawyer and Juliet now that Kate’s back in the picture? Most likely she’ll slap Sawyer, and find a quick respite in the arms of Jack before going on alone.

This episode was a touch on the dull side. And, with survivors of Flight 815 reunited minus Locke, I wonder what the next steps will be to keep this story fresh into the final few seasons.