Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

It's that time of year again for the dedicated LOST fan. Time to go out, pick up the new DVD set, scarf up the new special features and re-watch the episodes in a much more compressed time period that the agonizing weekly schedule in which they were originally aired. Actually, it was "that time of year" at the end of last year, but since late 2009 sort of slipped through my fingers, I'm pretending it's still December and that anyone who's gonna want the Season 5 DVD set doesn't already have it. As successive seasons of the once mega-hit, now respectable-hit-but-really-a-cult-show series have gone by, it's become increasingly pointless to tout a particular season's DVD set as a good jumping off point for new fans. As LOST has hurtled towards the end date that it's had in mind since 2007, the show's writers have noticeably cut down on their attempts to write anything close to "stand-alone" episodes that brand new viewers can feel comfortable jumping into with no prior experience. At this point, you're expected to know something about the story, or else be content with the brief "previouslies" given at the beginning of each episode. If not, you can try to be valiant and retain all of the information presented at motor-mouth speed in recaplet features such as "LOST in 8:15" or the cheesy clip shows that the show airs to stall for time every now and then, but let's be honest. If you haven't lived with this series for a few years and had the time to get to know the characters and let the myriad unanswered questions roll around in your brain, then I don't recommend starting now. Hole up in a bunker where nobody can spoil potential surprises for you, wait until the series is over and the talk has died down, and then if you still find yourself curious, start with Season 1. Only the most die-hard marathon DVD viewers could possibly hope to start now and catch up with the entire series (or at least get a decent overview) before Season 6 gets too far underway (which apparently, not even the White House could manage to hold back), so LOST noobs, the Season 5 set is not for you. Stop reading now. Do not pass "Go". Do not collect 3.2 million dollars.

And now I shall address existing fans who have laughed and cried and gasped and wanted to throw things at their TV when watching this series throughout the years. You probably watched this Season on TV, or else you've waited patiently for the DVDs so that you could scarf it down at your own pace (and I applaud your restraint - I'm not that strong). I'd say, you definitely want this. LOST's fifth season was perhaps its most daring, and its most ludicrous, but in a highly entertaining way that still gave focus to its intriguing characters, and still presented us with a story that made every action and reaction count, despite the show's increasingly bold steps toward science fiction. I'd almost be bold enough to say that it might trump the first season as the show's best year thus far, though that's tough to say, because it was such a different beast back then, with its focus almost entirely on the strained relationships between the survivors of Flight 815, with the network putting the brakes on most of the overt sci-fi references that the writers wanted to work into the story even then. The story has expanded gradually outwards each season, adding layers upon layers of the mysterious island's history, the current nefarious inhabitants of the island, the people still alive in the outside world who want to find the island, and most surprisingly, the lives of the few survivors who managed to escape the island. The show's fourth season took a timeline that had previously inched forward maybe one month per season, and suddenly catapulted it a few years into the future to meet up with real-time, using the flashforward device to tell us what happened to the Oceanic Six after they were rescued. Season 5 picks up the story there, beginning to tell us why on Earth these people would want to go back, what they have to go back to, and what happened to the people they left behind. And this is where the story gets truly bizarre, jumping between different time periods and eschewing the traditional flashback device almost completely for several episodes because it's already got so many balls in the air that focusing an episode on a single character's backstory would simply feel out of place. It's a tricky balancing act, but LOST pulls it off quite well, revisiting several thematic elements from earlier in the series that fans were eager to see explained, and... oh, what the hell, I'll just give it away, placing us right in the thick of the history only hinted at in earlier seasons by putting time travel at the forefront of the story.

Yeah, that's right. TIME TRAVEL. The plot device that is often tantalizing when used in science fiction, but rarely satisfying, as many movies and TV shows to come before LOST have made the rules of time travel inconsistent, arbitrary, and all too convenient, or inadvertently exposed weaknesses in the writing by way of contradicting their own established history. While there are some elements of LOST's take on time travel that still don't make sense to me, I think the series has hinted at the fact that it was coming several times in earlier seasons (going as far back as Season 2, and like I said, they wanted to mention it in Season 1 but the idea squashed at the time and the showrunners were actually quoted as saying "there is no time travel in LOST" because, up until that point, it wasn't allowed), so it's not like this was a desperate move to revive a dead-end story. They'd been wanting to go there for a while, and the whole "move the island" missive from the end of Season 4 finally made it a reality. What helps keep this from seeming like a desperation move is (a) the presence of a scientist on the island who can explain the ground rules, giving the story a framework to explore over the course of the season, and (b) the way it places the characters in interaction with a history they already know bits and pieces of, posing tantalizing questions about what can/cannot be changed and what caused what. While this does have the side effect of scattering the characters throughout different story arcs taking place in multiple time periods, it's not nearly as troublesome than some of the other "split the cast up" contrivances that plagued Season 3. With the exception of one or two characters, every major player is fully invested in the story going forward, and the split timeframe doesn't take away the concept of a typical LOST episode centering on a single character (with a few exceptions), and that's important since it's the characters that make the show. You'll have to learn to live without the typical flashback/flashforward structure, but I think seasoned LOST fans will adapt just fine.

Even if Season 5 is certainly one of the show's best seasons, the DVD set turns out to not be as solid as those for the earlier seasons due to a lack of special features. We've come to expect the usual behind-the-scenes featurettes and commentaries from cast and crew, and this time around, I feel like they saved a lot of the most intriguing stuff for the Blu-Ray release. Granted, there were some interactive featured on the Blu-Ray version that simply wouldn't translate to the medium of DVD, but I still feel like we got robbed of a few things that are simply "click and watch", and I don't even feel like they really tried as hard with the Easter eggs this time around. Season 4's DVD set featured two full discs of bonus material to make up for a short season, and while I'm glad 5 and 6 get to run a little longer because of it, I still feel like they could have made room for more. So be warned, there are a few extra tidbits that the LOST fan will find amusing and perhaps even informative, but if you're gonna buy this, do it because the show's worth rewatching (or watching for the first time), because there's nothing as cool as Season 1's expansive feature on the making of the pilot or Season 2's "LOST Connections". Given the time travel, I expected something a little more clever in the packaging and menu layouts. But we'll get to that later. First, let's discuss the actual show.

--CHARACTERS--
I'm trying to focus on who these people are, why they're important to the show, and what I think of the acting and their story arcs this season. Mild spoilers abound, so read at your own risk.

Because They Left...

Jack Shepard, played by Matthew Fox
Jack has historically never been one of my favorite characters on LOST, despite being the de facto lead. I always found the character to be rather uptight and stubborn. That all begins to change in Season 5, as the story picks up from his shambles of a life after rescue from the island and tracks the course of his ill-conceived deal with Ben to get everyone back to the island. Jack shows a surprising ability to cooperate and roll with the punches in many of these episodes, even adopting zen-like qualities for a while that eerily echo other characters he used to quarrel with. Who knows, I'll probably be back to disliking him in Season 6, but whether calm and collected or paranoid and antagonistic, Matthew Fox plays the role extremely well.

Kate Austen, played by Evangeline Lilly
Flashing forward several years in the story of the survivors who made it off the island gave a lot of gravity to Kate's story in Season 4, saddling her with the responsibility of caring for Aaron, son of the missing crash survivor Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin), who is conspicuously missing for all of Season 5. Caring for Aaron and having the good sense to end her romantic relationship with Jack seem to have helped this character grow up a lot. Season 5 shows her to still be cunning, drawing on the skills she learned by necessity while on the run as a criminal in her former life as she goes to great lengths to protect the son that most of the rest of the world assumes is really hers. This is an improvement, but the writers still can't seem to get a handle on her true motivation - in some episodes she does the things that she does for Aaron and Claire, and in some episodes it seems like she's still hung up on Jack and/or Sawyer (despite thinking that Sawyer is quite possibly dead). Kate will forever be LOST's most frustrating character, but at least the new timeframe in which the story is being told allows her some opportunity for evolution.

Hugo Reyes (a.k.a. Hurley), played by Jorge Garcia
For a comic relief character, Hurley seems to get saddled with more and more weight on his shoulders as the series hurtles towards its conclusion. Out of the group known as the "Oceanic Six", he seems to be the conscience of the group, the one who wants to protect his friends but who also feels the guiltiest about lying to the rest of the world. What's most refreshing about Hurley is not the fat jokes made at his expense, or even the amusingly silly comments he makes when trying to make sense of the ridiculous situations he ends up in, but rather how he often shows a keen ability to just go with the flow and make the best of a situation, regardless of how crazy it is. Hurley's actions in Season 5 aren't as pivotal to the plot these days, but he's often along for the ride when discoveries are made that will turn out to be crucial plot elements later, and there are a few instances of audience amusement (and even a surprise cameo appearance) due to his belief that he's being haunted by dead people.

Sayid Jarrah, played by Naveen Andrews
Sayid's post-island story turned him into a shadowy operative tricked into working for a former nemesis. Season 5 tracks his quest to become a free man and to live some semblance of a normal life off the island, while also documenting the extreme actions he sometimes goes to in the belief that it will protect his friends. However, it's those same "friends" who he sometimes gets the most adversarial width, making Sayid a bit of wild card who could send the story spinning off in a completely different direction when you least expect it. For a character who I once thought was on the brink of being written out of the show for lack of a good story, his involvement this season turns out to be crucial to the final outcome.

Sun-Hwa Kwon, played by Yunjin Kim
Sun was the victim of one of Season 4's most tragic moments, when an exploding freighter left her as a grieving widow, the relief of her rescue from the island being hampered by her sorrow over her dead husband. Sun's manipulative side gets played up more and more as the character becomes more cold and detached, willing to make a deal with the devil himself if it would help her to get back at the people she believes responsible for killing her husband. For a character who started as one of the show's most unassuming and softspoken individuals, it's almost hard to believe she's the same person now, as Sun is afforded plenty of chances to be cunning and backstabbing in her own quiet way.

Benjamin Linus, played by Michael Emerson
You can tell that there's a certain joy to Michael Emerson's craft when he plays Ben, a devious little child who gets an inordinate amount of glee from making ominous, veiled threats and just being a lying, cheating b@st@rd in general. Yet in his new role as the dejected former leader of the Others now banished from the island, Ben seems to show a few chinks in the armor, revealing that he doesn't always have the ace up his sleeve that you've come to expect. At times he's almost petulant, but then he'll turn around and do something unpredictable just when we think he might turn out to be a good guy. No longer the show's main antagonist, but still trapped somewhere in the land of grey, Ben is definitely a great character to have around as a monkey wrench in the gears of the crash survivors' lives.

Desmond Hume, played by Henry Ian Cusick
Is Desmond even in this season? Barely. This mysterious man who has lived on the island for several years and who miraculously survived the rescue attempt along with the Oceanic Six, is told by another character early in the season that he is special, that the rules don't apply to him. Apparently one of those rules is the one that says a regular character with top billing on a TV show will appear in most of that show's episodes. Given the potential that Desmond is loaded with and the way his previous experience with jumping through time may help to inform the predicament of those still trapped on the island, it's a shame to see the character walk away from the action and leave so many threads unresolved. Whether this was due to Cusick's behind-the-scenes legal troubles involving alleged sexual harassment, or whether it was just due to the writers having too many irons in the fire, I don't know. But Desmond is tied up with some of the most important pieces of the show's mythology, so I really hope we get a reprise from him in Season 6, because his scant appearances in Season 5 are way less than satisfying.

Frank Lapidus, played by Jeff Fahey
While not a regular character in Season 5, Frank actually gets more to do than Desmond this year. He was first introduced as the helicopter pilot that brought the "freighter folk" to the island in Season 4 (with a backstory involving him getting bumped and replaced by another pilot on the ill-fated Oceanic Flight 815 that got our main characters into this mess in the first place), and he too was one of the lucky few who made it off the island in one piece before it disappeared. While not as acerbic as some of the other smart-mouthed characters on the show, Fahey plays Frank with a sort of dry wit that makes him a lot of fun to have around, and I'm glad they found an excuse (however contrived) to bring him back into the ongoing story.

Because They Stayed...

John Locke, played by Terry O'Quinn
It would be an understatement to say that the bald, middle-aged Locke is a man with a new lease on life. That's only because he seems to get about three such new leases this season. Left on the island at the very beginning of his tenure as The Others' new leader when it vanished at the end of Season 4, Locke gets taken on the wildest ride of them all as LOST tells the fascinating story of how he got from A (the island) to B (the outside world living under the alias Jeremy Bentham) to C (dead). And leave it to LOST to kill off a character and then still feature them as a series regular! Like his one-time adversary Jack, Locke undergoes a transformation in personality this season, though it seems to happen in reverse, going from the naively faithful man believing everything happens for a reason and the island shows you what it wants to show you, to being a man who exudes confidence and control, barging in to demand answers where he would have previously waited on the island to make its move. Even though you know what's coming for this character, his time spent on the island is nothing less than suspenseful, and that's a testament to both the writing and Terry's top-notch acting.

James Ford (a.k.a. Sawyer), played by Josh Holloway
Audiences either love this former con-man for his snarky and politically incorrect nicknames and insults, or hate him for the same. While as verbally vicious as ever in Season 5 (with added edge due to his dismay over the freighter explosion at the end of Season 4), we also see the weight of added responsibility on this man's shoulders, left to try and cobble together whatever's left of the 815 survivors and figure out what on Earth those irritating white flashes in the sky are that started when the island was "moved". He's alternately heroic and petty, eventually settling into a new life that is fitting, given his colored past, and yet a surprising step forward for the character. Sawyer's most intricate "long con" turns out to be one of the most exciting plot developments in the history of LOST.

Juliet Burke, played by Elizabeth Mitchell
The dejected fertility doctor, stolen away from her life back in the "real world" and held against her will for over three years by The Others despite Ben Linus repeatedly dangling the carrot of "going home" in front of her, had hit rock bottom when we last saw her, finally having settled in with the 815 survivors only to see that group fragmented, their hope of rescue destroyed, and now the movement of the island itself likely dashing all hope of rescue for the foreseeable future. Juliet is sensitive but strong, calling upon her skills learned during her days as one of the show's baddies to now become one of the remaining survivors' trusted leaders, which leads to an interesting relationship with people once considered her enemies. At times it's hard for me to believe there was a LOST without Juliet (and I've said this about Ben before, too). To me, she is the strong female lead that Kate was never able to become. Elizabeth Mitchell gets plenty of chances to spread her acting wings this season, including one of the most climactic and harrowing scenes in LOST history, one which I still can't get out of my head months after seeing it.

Daniel Faraday, played by Jeremy Davies
Thank God a time travel show has the good sense to keep a physicist around to explain what's going on! Half of it could be mumbo-jumbo, as far as I'm concerned, but for a character whose dialogue is heavy on exposition and technobabble, Davies infuses the character with a squirrely personality that makes him highly entertaining to watch. He's a man of words more than action, and even though his origins and original mission are dubious, the character has such a vulnerability to him that I want to put an arm around his houlder at times and tell him it'll all be OK. And yet he can be one of the show's most dangerous characters when a brilliant idea comes into his head. Faraday is yet another character whom I now cannot imagine LOST without.

Miles Straume, played by Ken Leung
This cocky, smart-mouthed paranormal expert was introduced as part of the same "freighter mission team" that Daniel arrived with last season, and though we've had very little time to focus on the character so far, his sarcastic attitude has upped the show's ante for witty dialogue and his surprising decision to remain on the island gave the character a little extra intrigue to be explored in Season 5. Having Miles and Sawyer in a lot of the same scenes is almost too much smart@$$ to handle at times, but Miles turns out to be a more trustworthy character than you might otherwise expect, still keeping his own agenda hidden but proving to be a valuable asset to the group due to his unusual ability to hear the memories of the dead.

Charlotte Lewis, played by Rebecca Mader
This sharp-tongued, red-headed anthropologist rounds out the group from the freighter that landed on the island last season, and Charlotte was even more explicit than Miles about her reasons for staying, hinting at a strong connection between her and the island. She also knows that Daniel's got puppy dog eyes for her, and while you might think this show doesn't need one more romantic story arc, Charlotte's presence turns out to ramp up the stakes for the other characters in an unexpected way. Sadly, the character's a bit underused and she never gets a flashback on her own, so whatever she knew that led her to the island in the first place will likely remain hidden, unless Season 6 can dream up a clever way to explain it.

Richard Alpert, played by Nestor Carbonell
One of LOST's most mysterious characters was slowly introduced back in Season 3, remaining mostly in the shadows until late last year, when the story started to hint that his apparent lack of aging wasn't just the result of bad makeup in flashback scenes. Richard is a constant (if you'll forgive the term) despite the erratic nature of the time travel story, with his presence in any scene always causing the audience to be surprised at the things he knows and the things that are as much of a surprise to him as they are to us. He's the Panchen Lama of The Others, the "advisor" type character whose job is to keep an eye on their leadership and decide when it's time for a new leader to inherit the island. He's a lot more than that, apparently, and I'm glad that Carbonell's commitments to other networks conveniently vanished so that he could get a lot of screen time this season. He'll finally be made a regular for Season 6, which should be awesome.

Because... Um, Spoiler Alert?

Jin-Soo Kwon, played by Daniel Dae Kim
Could a man standing on the deck of a freighter survive its explosion? Hey look, I can't get around the fact that Jin, Sun's presumed-dead husband, is present and accounted for in Season 5. The question is how - whether it involves time travel or whether he was just lucky enough to survive. Either way, he's a man out of his element this season, who must continue to grapple with language barriers (despite his great strides in the ESL department) and the overall foreign-ness of life on the island. Even when he seems to be a mere victim of circumstance, Jin's experiences are a window to a few of the most interesting events of Season 5. I'm probably doing a bad job with the smoke and mirrors here, but Jin's one of my favorite characters, so I have to give Daniel Dae Kim for continuing to play the part superbly despite his ambiguous job status.

Charles Widmore, played by Alan Dale/Tom Connolly/David S. Lee
Many TV dramas are stories of good vs. evil. The struggle between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore, which we learn a lot more about this season, might just be an example of evil vs. evil. We're never sure which man's in the right, if either of them are, but we know there's a long, sordid history between the two of them which involves the island. Widmore has become far more than the rich snob we met late in Season 2 whose sole purpose seemed to be making Desmond's life miserable as retaliation for dumping his daughter Penelope (Sonya Walger), but the more we learn about Widmore, the more he sees that he's got his fingers in pretty much everyone's pie. The time travel focus means that we get to see three different actors playing Widmore in different time periods this season, which fleshes out a lot more of the character's backstory than we could have ever hoped to get through flashbacks.

Ilana, played by Zuleikha Robinson
While no new faces were added to the full-time cast in Season 5, this character of unknown allegiance shows up midway through the season, and seems at first to simply have gotten entangled with our characters due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She gradually reveals herself to be a tough, Ana-Lucia type (remember her from Season 2? I don't blame you if you don't), albeit with less sneer and more self-control. She doesn't get her own moment in the spotlight per se, but she's an important secondary character to watch, the only character introduced in Season 5 to be upgraded to series regular for Season 6.

--EPISODES--
Here's where we get into the more explicitly spoilery stuff. I try not to give away anything earth-shattering here for those who haven't seen the season, but since one episode builds off of the events from many others before it, you've been warned.

5.1 "Because You Left" ****1/2
"Time is like a street. Alright, we can move forward on that street, we can move in reverse, but we can not ever create a new street. If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time. Whatever happened, happened." --Daniel
The first episode back takes LOST's tried-and-true formula - the flashback or flashforward for a single character or group of characters informing the main story - and defiantly throws it out. This was a bit alarming to me at first, especially since that classic flashback "whoosh" was retained but repurposed as a signal that we were jumping from the A story in one time period to the B story in the other. But season premieres on this show work best as ensemble pieces, and as such, it really made sense this time around to just forge ahead with the story, pick everyone up where they left them off after the Oceanic Six's rescue and the island's disappearance, and basically make sure not a single minute of it is wasted. Daniel Faraday almost steps in as the central character here, playing an important role in helping the remaining survivors on the island make sense of what the heck's going on, while three years later (?) back in the "real world", Jack and Ben get their unholy alliance underway, attempting to make good on the promise of bringing them all back to the island that Jack's started whining about in that pivotal moment at the end of Season 3. Observant fans will love the callbacks to important points in LOST history provided by the island being dislodged from time, and in classic LOST fashion, there's a baffling opening scene that will make you wonder who on Earth we're looking at and why on Earth this could possibly be important for the first minute or so until... Oh. Wait, WHAT??!!

5.2 "The Lie" ****1/2
"You killed three people?" --David Reyes
"No. Sayid did." --Hurley
"Oh. Well, that's better." --David Reyes
It's hard for me to differentiate the second episode from the first, since the two aired on the same night originally. But this one focuses in more specifically on Hurley, still not following the traditional flashback model outside of a stage-setting first scene, but definitely using his perspective to move along the present-day Oceanic Six storyline, which as you might expect for a Hurley episode, involves some hilarious hijinx. Hurley's parents, Carmen (Lillian Hurst) and David Reyes (Cheech Marin) are always a hoot whenever they appear in an episode, and I could probably watch an entire trilogy of action/comedy buddy movies about Hurley and Sayid, if such a thing ever existed. Elsewhere, back on the island, Sawyer and Juliet's attempts to keep their meager band of survivors intact and start a new life in whatever time they happen to be trapped in is full of both intriguing moments and hilarious ones, with an extremely high smart-mouth quota thanks to dependable recurring characters Rose and Bernard (L. Scott Caldwell and Sam Anderson) and the canonical debut of Neil Frogurt (Sean Whalen), an obnoxious character previously only mentioned offhand and seen in a single webisode. It's the little moments like these that add levity amidst the peril and the breakneck pace at which the story has suddenly been pushed forward. LOST may be an entirely different beast this season, but such nods to the past remind us that they don't forget the amusing little details.

5.3 "Jughead" ****
"If you'd been going through what I have, James, maybe the more appropriate question would be, WHEN the hell have I been?" --Locke
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Desmond-centric episodes - I've always found the character intriguing, but episodes that focus on him tend to do so to the detriment of the original cast who made us care about the show in the first place. This was most pronounced in last season's The Constant, which turned out to be one of the finest episodes of the series despite nearly everyone we loved taking a break for a week, and it's notable that here in Jughead, Locke and Sawyer are the only "old-school" characters who make an appearance. It's really Desmond's show off-island, as a sudden realization prompts him to bring himself and the love of his life, Penny, out of hiding for the benefit of those he left behind on the island. Daniel Faraday once again owns the island-based part of the story, as he and the rest of the survivors face an unexpected antagonist who, like pretty much any people residing on the island, aren't pleased to find someone else there. Daniel's intelligence and ability to think quickly and techno-babble his way out of a situation prove to be great assets to the group, and entertaining to watch. Keep an eye on the people that he and the other Losties have a run-in with - they'll become important later.

5.4 "The Little Prince" ****
"Who the hell do you think you are? Why don't you just stay away? Why don't you leave me and my son alone?" --Kate
"Because he's not your son, Kate." --Ben
Aaron Littleton, at the ripe young age of 3, is about the only character we don't need to see a flashback for. We've known him for his entire life, and known that he'd be of great importance to the series ever since we first saw him in the form of Claire's protruding belly in the show's pilot episode. But here is where Aaron seems to finally get an episode of his own (to the extent that a child actor can be relied upon for such a thing - which really means it's his impostor mother Kate's episode), which provides a bit of background on why Kate chose to pass Aaron off as her own kid, who knows her secret, and what they're trying to do to pry the kid away from her. At least Kate's motivations are clear here - this episode probably makes a lot more sense as a result than your average Kate story. Watching her plot and scheme and live life on the run is somehow more satisfying when it's not as petty and self-serving as it used to be. And her discomfort at having to cooperate with Jack despite their awkward history makes their scenes together more interesting than they've historically been. Back on the island, expect a little deja vu when the characters come into contact with their own past. It's one of the show's more clever usages of archive footage. This is one episode that I think helped to restore the viewers' faith that they would get around to filling in the blanks on mythology they'd only hinted at previously.

5.5 "This Place Is Death" ****1/2
"When I was little, living here, there was this man, crazy man, and he really scared me. And he told me that I had to leave the island and never ever come back. He told me that if I came back, I would die." --Charlotte
Such a lovely, uplifting episode title, isn't it? LOST is all about the death this season, and this episode in particular deals with people we've already watched die, people who might be about to die, people who other characters have presumed dead... it's definitely one of the show's more fascinating entries, and it's refreshing to see an episode based around Sun and Jin that is also quite generous when it comes to downloading new tidbits of island mythology. The weird thing is that, unlike past episodes focusing on the fateful Korean couple, the two are involved in completely different storylines and never cross paths. Sun, ever the sneaky one, makes bold step toward getting her revenge on a person she believes to be responsible for Jin's death, except I don't think that goes nearly as well as anyone involved would have hoped. As for Jin, well, I don't want to spoil what intriguing events he gets to bear witness to or where this episode fits into his story chronologically... but let's just say that guest star Melissa Farman does a great job of stepping into a formidable role, playing a younger version of an established LOST character whose past was ripe for exploration. Also, even though Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim share no scenes, the mere prop that connects the two characters' storylines makes for a surprising, heartfelt, and ultimately ironic moment.

5.6 "316" *****
"Wait a second... We're not going to Guam, are we?" --Frank
Put quite simply, this is one of the best "mess with your head" episodes in LOST history. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a big fan of Jack episodes, but Season 3's Through the Looking Glass was the character's finest hour since the pilot, and this episode finally brings to fruition the promises made by that episode, while also hearkening back to the pilot in a number of eerie ways. Here, Jack manages to assemble a less-than-ideal subset of the people who left the island, seeking the help of the mysterious Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan) for the lowdown on how to return to the island. It's loaded with bizarre parallels, and even a bit of religious imagery that scarily enough comes straight from the mouth of one Benjamin Linus. You won't know whether to chuckle or be freaked out at the confluence of events that leads to this episode's climax, and by the time the oddball intro sequence is finally put into perspective, you'll think you know what's about to happen next, only to be proven very, very wrong. Aside from the slight suspension of belief required when we dig unnecessarily into Jack's family matters (let's just say his dead father only appears by proxy this time around), the episode is otherwise superb, and it sends the story reeling in a completely different direction from what the season had established thus far.

5.7 "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" ****1/2
"There's a war coming, John. And if you're not back on the island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win." --Charles Widmore
Bringing LOST's propensity for telling stories out of order to a new level, this is one of those episodes that completely plucks you out of the ongoing narrative for the sake of a long, meaty flashback. I asked once how a dead character could possibly have a flashback, but given that Terry O'Qiunn is still a major player on the show, of course we all had to assume that at some point he'd get his time in the spotlight, which would finally explain to us how he left the island, how he found the rest of the people who escaped and tried to convince them to all come back, and ultimately, how he died. I love these sorts of fill-in-the-gap stories where you think you know what's about to happen, only to be proven wrong about both the sequence of events and the people involved. The various survivors' responses to Locke range from hilarious (Hurley) to heartbreaking (Kate) to downright cold-hearted (Jack and Sayid), and hey, Locke even gets to visit taller non-ghost Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) while he's out and about on his ill-fated quest! Terry is 100% believable here as a man at the end of his rope, and while he's always played Locke as a gullible sad sack who still defiantly believes in destiny, it's amazing to see the limit to which this character's sanity can be taken. The climactic scene between Locke and Ben near the end of the episode is one of the most suspenseful and devious in the entire series - these two have always been golden whenever they've shared the screen.

5.8 "LaFleur" *****
"The record is spinning again. We're just not on the song we want to be on." --Daniel
Here we catch up with the people who it was Locke's mission to save - the ones still trapped on the island. Poor Sawyer hasn't had a solid moment in the spotlight since Season 3's Every Man for Himself, and when he finally gets his due here, it turns out to be one of LOST's most emotionally compelling episodes, albeit one that takes a leap of faith to fully buy into. Confusing as it might sound, the story could be construed as either a flashback or a flashforward, jumping back and forth between two points in the lives of the same group of people, showing what the time spent trapped on the island has ultimately done to them, and how they've assimilated into their environment. Sawyer's past as a conman is put to good use here as he and Juliet and the remaining freighter folks end up having to think very quickly, so as not to reveal their true nature as unwitting time travelers. You really get to see the emotional effects of these decisions upon Sawyer and the people he has to grudgingly admit he cares about and feels some degree of responsibility for - looks like our little scruffy scam artist is all growed up! To have the hope of rescue placed in front of you, only to then face the reality of God knows how many more years trapped on that island... I really feel for the guy, even if he had nothing to really go back to. But what he finds here that makes his life worth living for is one of the most important moments in Sawyer's story arc - and then of course some other folks have to crawl out of the woodwork at the worst possible time to screw all that up. Sigh.

5.9 "Namaste" ****
"I heard once Winston Churchill read a book every night, even during the Blitz. He said it made him think better. It's how I like to run things. I think. I'm sure that doesn't mean that much to you, 'cause back when you were calling the shots, you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn't think, Jack, and as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead." --Sawyer
Rumors abounded back in Season 3, when it became apparent that LOST was filming scenes set in the 70's with big blue VW buses and bright yellow cabins, that LOST was going to give us our first "DHARMA Flashback", showing life on the island during the DHARMA Initiative's heyday. We sort of got that, but the episode turned out to be Ben's first flashback, The Man Behind the Curtain, and there was still a lot left about DHARMA to be explained. This episode, as should be obvious from the greeting in its title, follows up on that story, not from young Ben's perspective, and really not from any single character's perspective at all. It's a pretty fascinating glimpse into the scientific research that once took place on the island, giving shadowy characters previously only seen on old films (Francois Chau's man of many aliases, Pierre Chang) or merely mentioned by others (Eric Lange's bullish Radzinsky) a chance to fully come to life before our eyes alongside DHARMA denizens such as Roger Linus (Jon Gries) and Horace Goodspeed (Doug Hutchinson) who we previously got to know through Ben's eyes. Even the lives of DHARMA underlings are explored, somewhat humorously and ironically, given the people playing those parts. The same setting many years later, albeit deserted and dilapidated, provides the eerie backdrop for a story involving few of the survivors who returned to the island and who are now searching for clues as to their lost friends' whereabouts. Ever the mysterious presence on this show, the ghost of Jack's father Christian Shepard (John Terry) is there to lend a bit of mysterious advice, or perhaps just to creep people out. One can never be sure with this guy.

5.10 "He's Our You" *****
"A twelve-year-old Ben Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I'm doing?" --Sayid
The character of Benjamin Linus was first introduced to us in an episode centered around Sayid, so it's only fitting that Sayid's episode this season focuses heavily on his adversarial relationship with Ben, particularly the years he spent as Ben's hitman, manipulated into service by the promise of revenge against those who killed his wife Nadia. All of that finally comes to a head, leading to the events which pull a reluctant Sayid back into a hare-brained scheme of Ben's that he could have sworn he'd been smart enough to have escaped by now. But Sayid's one of those characters who is always thinking three steps ahead even when the enemy appears to have the upper hand. In this case, it's hard to be exactly sure who Sayid's friends and enemies are, as people he once shared a camp with are now treating him as a prisoner, and he develops an unexpected rapport with a much younger Ben Linus (played by Harry Potter doppleganger Sterling Beaumon). It's a masterfully woven story, one in which you have to continually ask yourself who's playing whom, right down to the gasp-and-stare-in-disbelief conclusion that undoubtedly had the fan forums and water coolers of America buzzing for the entire week after the fact. This might be the best episode of the season, and since Sayid had the dubious honor of being at the center of the first two seasons' worst episodes (not the character's fault, just inconsistent writing at the time),it's great to see the character done justice with such a fascinating story.

5.11 "Whatever Happened, Happened" ****
"You know, when we were here before I spent all of my time trying to fix things. But, did you ever think that maybe the island just wants to fix things itself? That maybe I was just getting in the way." --Jack
The words of Daniel Faraday that help to set the ground rules for what can and can't be done in this show's version of time travel haunt the decisions that Kate, Jack, and the others have to make in this somewhat maddening episode that seems to want to cheat the way out of the previous one's cliffhanger. I go back and forth on whether it's really a cheat or whether I'm just not looking at the story from the right angle, but in any event, it does pose some interesting questions about destiny versus freewill. The life of a character known to be alive at a later point in the story hangs in the balance, and Kate turns out to be surprisingly compassionate while Jack is unexpectedly cold, once again causing tension between the two. On the list of things for these two to be fighting about, I'd say it certainly beats the petty suspicions that ended their relationship in the past (um, future? Whatever.), most of which centered around Aaron. Kate's flashbacks (forwards?) in this episode once again focus on Aaron, while also revisiting a past acquaintance, Cassidy Phillips (Kim DIckens), as part of a series of events which give her a bit of perspective on parenthood and whether she's truly cut out for it. It seems a bit unfair for Kate to get two episodes this season while Juliet gets none, but to be fair, Kate is much more interesting with Juliet around. The awkwardness between the two characters begins to escalate in this and the surrounding episodes, which the actresses must have had fun playing, since apparently they really enjoyed working together. The way that this story leads into the next episode's story, which focuses on an almost completely separate set of characters, is quite well done.

5.12 "Dead Is Dead" ****1/2
"I've seen this island do miraculous things. I've seen it heal the sick, but never once has it done anything like this. Dead is dead. You don't come back from that, not even here." --Ben
Big things are promised by this Ben-centric episode, which tells us right off the bat that we're going to see the infamous "smoke monster" again, and for the most part, the episode delivers. No, you won't learn what the smoke monster is, or exactly what its relationship is to dead people. But if you've had a love/hate relationship with Ben for the time he's spent on the series so far and you want your chance to see the character squirm and suffer and even get beat down, this just might be your episode. Not only are the tables turned with him no longer being the man in charge of the island, he's now got the added weight of having to seek out old Smokey as punishment for past sins, not the least of these being the gross negligence that led to the death of his daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde). It's another episode that's heavy on Ben/Locke interactions, which means that the dialogue is dripping with sarcastic quips and ironic subtext, and dropping Sun into the middle of that storyline was a genius move (with Frank Lapidus thrown in there as a wild card, just for fun) on the part of the writers. But that's not all. Another movement is beginning to rise up on the island, among a set of characters we're only barely just getting to know, who will become important toward the end of the season.To think of them as another set of "Tailies" would be to severely underestimate the situation.

5.13 "Some Like It Hoth" ****1/2
"That douche is my dad." --Miles
At long last, after a season and a half of gracing our screens with his acerbic quips, Miles finally gets to tell his side of the story, dating all the way back to his very first super-creepy encounter with a dead body when he was a little kid. See, Miles is all about hearing the dying thoughts of dead people, and Hurley is all about being haunted by dead people as if they were still alive, so this is also a pretty slick pairing for a goofy "buddy comedy" sort of episode, even if Miles is a pretty tough guy to be buddies with. You'll learn a bit about how Miles got recruited for Charles Widmore's freighter mission here, and also where the heck Miles came from in the first place, and you'll want to label; him a selfish b@st@rd at times, but then pull back and realize he's not totally heartless. Meanwhile, Sawyer, Juliet, and the others find themselves in an escalating web of lies involving the life-or-death gamble from the previous episode, and you just know it can't end well for them once their poorly-patched secret makes its way around the old Coconut Telegram.

5.14 "The Variable" ****1/2
"For the first time in a long time, I don't know what's going to happen next." --Eloise Hawking
Another character who was way overdue for a flashback was Daniel Faraday, and just to ramp up the anticipation for this explanation of his past, he returns to the storyline here after a maddening absence throughout the middle part of the season when he could perhaps have proven most useful to the other Losties. But he's back, as squirrely as ever, and armed with some new and rather radical ideas on how to get everyone out of the predicament they've gotten themselves into. Yep, it's time for more time-travel mind-bending, and if you need a "Time Travel for Dummies"-type guide to help you sort it all out, just listen to the hilarious banter between Miles and Hurley on the subject; I think you'll work it out for yourself eventually. The Variable is meant to be a title that plays against The Constant, and it's only fitting that Desmond also reappears after a long absence in this episode (alright, so he was in Dead Is Dead, maybe for all of one minute), tying up a few loose ends in the story involving him and Penny and how that all relates back to Daniel's predicament, but it's still a bit unsatisfying given the episode you'll want to compare it to and the ominous promise given to Desmond earlier in the season that still hasn't been followed up on by season's end. The Variable is an episode that presents some big, mind-blowing ideas with a lot of action to go along with it, but that can also be a bit maddening at times due to the whole "Why didn't they think of this earlier?" factor that sometimes plagues the characterizations on this show. It's worth noting that this episode marked the series' 100th hour, so while it isn't a star-studded extravaganza or anything, it does mostly stick to LOST's strengths and it does justice to the milestone achieved by its creation.

5.15 "Follow the Leader" ****
"I've been told that for some time, you all have been accepting orders from a man named Jacob. And yet, oddly enough, it seems that no one has actually seen him. Now I'm sure there are very good reasons why his existence and whereabouts are secret. I just don't know what they are. And to be honest with all of you, if there's a man telling us what to do, I want to know who he is." --Locke
This is probably the most maddening episode of any in Season 5 - even more so than the Kate-centric ones. (Note that I still rated it four stars - it's hard to be anything less than tickled by most of this season.) It's probably a matter of expectations versus reality - go into it expecting nothing and you'll find a brilliant exercise in manipulating both the characters, to put them all where they need to be for a stunning finale, and the audience, by showing them bits and pieces of stories they already think they've heard from different perspectives. The maddening aspect of this episode is Richard Alpert - not that it focuses too much on him, but rather, that it doesn't focus enough. He's the only character present in both the past and current time periods, due to his apparent agelessness, and while the flashback "whoosh" takes us at times from 70's Richard to modern-day Richard, the story doesn't reveal a single new thing about Richard, so it's not really his episode, or anyone's in particular. Locke's surprising new schemes and Ben and Richard's surprised reactions to them are probably the focal point of the A story, while some leadership issues emerge as Jack and Kate once again clash with the others in the B story, eventually clashing with each other over the validity of Daniel's crazy plan. Be on the lookout for some fun ontological paradoxes in this one!

5.16 "The Incident" *****
"They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same." --Man in black
"It only ends once. Everything that comes before is just progress." --Man in white
LOST has always been rather brave and inventive with its season finales, with some of their stunts in recent years (making Desmond, a guest character at the time, the pivotal character of the Season 2 finale, faking us out with Jack's flashfowards in Season 3) ranking among their most jaw-dropping twists. Season 5 takes a good stab at blowing expectations out of the water once again, this time placing complete faith in a previously unseen character (expertly played by Mark Pellegrino) who just so happens to be involved in the mother of all flashback crossovers. (Remember in the early days when we were fascinated that so-and-so's mom was in so-and-so's flashback? That was nothing compared to this.) Having the cast split between two time periods doesn't exactly make it easy to bring those stories together in a coherent fashion at the end, but it's this mysterious new character who bridges the gap. By all accounts, all hell is about to break loose on the island, with Jack and his crew about to take a stand worthy of the Alamo, while several decades later, Locke has finally taken the place Richard promised him as leader of The Others, and wastes no time taking them on their first field trip. What follows is surprising and shocking, fulfilling curiosities about fairly large pieces of mythology stretching as far back as Season 2, and also posing tantalizing questions about the very nature of the final season - it's seemingly impossible to predict what the first scene of Season 6 could depict, since what happens "next" is an extremely relative question. Glossing over the lack of Desmond's appearance (a full-time contracted player not appearing in the season finale? Boo!), and a couple of head-scratching flip-flops in certain characters' allegiances, this is an ingeniously written episode, expertly acted by pretty much all involved, with enough tension packed into it to almost guarantee a good bout with heartburn. And you will not get that final scene out of your head easily. It's visceral, it's frightening, it's bafflingly open-ended. I literally exclaimed, "Not fair!" at the final cut to LOST. And that isn't even the big secret scene (code name "The Fork in the Outlet") that the producers went to great lengths to hide from the spoiler hounds. Yep, this one's that good.

--SPECIAL FEATURES--

Episode Commentaries
I was really disappointed with these compared to past DVD sets. Only two episodes - the season premiere Because You Left and the pivotal mid-season episode He's Our You - are discussed by their respective writers, with no cast contributions this time around. Granted, the cast tended to either goof around, spend all the time complimenting each other and the show, or go off on irrelevant tangents in most of their commentaries, but at least we got more of 'em in the past. Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse do have a lot of intriguing things to say about the premiere, and they warn you to listen to the commentary until you've watched the full season for very good reasons. Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, a dependable writing team responsible for some of the most intriguing episodes of LOST over the past few years, also have a reasonably interesting commentary on He's Our You, when they're not just horsing around. But with nobody to comment on anything after that, especially involving the repercussions of time travel that could profoundly impact Season 6, it seems like a bit of a lead-up to nothing. Shouldn't Matthew Fox get the chance to comment on an episode one of these days? 316 was one of the show's finest to ever focus on Jack. We haven't heard any commentary from Terry O'Quinn since Season 1; his thoughts on Locke's strange journey this season would have been welcomed. And Jeremy Davies would no doubt have been intriguing commenting on his Daniel Faraday's pivotal actions in The Variable. Interviews elsewhere have shown these actors in particular to have intriguing things to say about their characters, and while they don't know where the story is ultimately headed, I've always enjoyed hearing about the experience of making the show from their perspective.

LOST on Location
As always, these little vignettes look at the filming of various episodes, focusing on the technical skills needed to pull off such visually dramatic scenes as the survivors being attacked by a hail of flaming arrows, a canoe chase in the pouring rain, and the bizarre, cataclysmic "indicent" that takes place in the finale. I'm always impressed by the ingenuity and bravery of this show's effects coordinators and stuntmen. But this isn't where you go to get insight into the plot of the show.

Building 23 & Beyond with Michael Emerson
Cast member Michael Emerson takes viewers on a tour of the studio in Burbank where the show is written, and also where editing and post-production are done. It's mostly a meet-and-greet with several members of the staff, many of whom pretend to be intimidated by Michael due to the nefarious character he plays, but that gets old after a while, since most of what's happening here is in the writers' brains, pinned to walls, or stored away on a computer, and there's not really all that much for the viewer to see. Mostly a fluff piece here.

An Epic Day with Richard Alpert
Another behind-the-scenes featurette follows Nestor Carbonell during a marathon final day of filming for the season finale, since the ageless Richard Alpert was the only character to be involved in both storylines of that episode. From a very early morning in the makeup chair (which proves once and for all that the man doesn't wear eyeliner - perhaps the most interesting piece of information shared here!) to an extremely late night nearly a full 24 hours later where he finishes up with the second unit, it's a good look at the hard work actors have to put in to meet the physical and mental demands of filming out in the elements in Hawaii. I was hoping for some thought-provoking tidbits on Nestor's character, but oh well. They're making him a regular in Season 6. We'll get answers.

Making Up for LOST Time
Here Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the brains behind the whole operation, dig into the difficulties of making LOST a full-on time travel show while ensuring that the audience is able to track with the multiple time jumps, that it never becomes too complex or too commonplace, and that they don't fall prey to the common pitfalls of time travel stories. (I think they did a pretty good of this, personally.) I found this piece reasonably intriguing, if a bit short - messing around with time means that continuity experts such as the show's in-house lexicon Gregg Nations are really kept on their toes. They go a teeny bit into the science and philosophy behind their decision to take LOST in this direction, but mostly it's just about how to draw up crazy diagrams and description to make sure the writers don't contradict one another. And for those who don't get all the crazy sci-fi stuff... look, there's shirtless Sawyer!

Mysteries of the Universe: The DHARMA Initiative
Every LOST DVD set has a piece de resistance, and while you've got to get the Blu-Ray to enroll in the interactive "LOST University" project, the DVD viewers at least got this creative piece, which has echoes of the conspiracy theory documentary on the Oceanic Six from last year's set, but this time around it's a spoof of one of those cheesy expose shows like "In Search Of...": that aired in the 70s and 80s. Purportedly a transfer of an old VHS tape from the early 80s (complete with cut-off commercials and marks left by dirty tape heads, etc.), this mockumentary hits all of the amusing cliches of the era while attempting to show us what the real world might think if they started uncovering clues of the DHARMA Initiative's existence, as if it were a secret society like something out of The Da Vinci Code. Fans who have paid attention to the lore previously established in the shows about shadowy figured like Alvar Hanso and the DeGroots only hinted at in the Orientation films and in other multimedia tangentially related to the show will geek out most over this. It might fill in a few small gaps in terms of answers about what happened to so-and-so or how so-and-so became part of DHARMA, but for the most part it's there to make us chuckle at how on Earth such a multi-billion dollar project could have been conducted covertly and kept secret from the general public. Watching this is nothing like watching an episode of LOST, but you can see the same devious mind behind the show's more outlandish plotlines working their magic here.

Bloopers
The usual. I get a brief chuckle out of them, and the occasional practical joke is fun to see, but for the most part it's just flubbing lines and saying funny (and occasionally censored) things to cover for it.

Deleted Scenes
I didn't find any of the cut scenes to be particularly illuminating this time around. Generally they just fill in blanks on how character A knew about situation B which caused them to go to place C - stuff that was cut for time and that audience members had probably extrapolated on their own at this point. An extended version of Daniel's explanation of the rules of time travel does prove helpful, though.

Easter Eggs
Even though Easter eggs are never a listed feature on a DVD set, and you could argue they don't drive the value of such a purchase because of that, I've still come to find the LOST DVDs dependable for a series of amusing items tucked away in unexpected corners of the menus from year to year. This year, the DVD set's hidden features are greatly diminished from previous years, with only slight changes to the main menu on a few discs qualifying as "Easter eggs", and the amount present on the Bonus Features disc being vastly smaller than the amount present on the analogous Blu-Ray disc. Why they did this is beyond me - I know DVDs have a smaller capacity, but I feel like some of this stuff was held back just to entice us to shell out more for the Blu-Ray version. In the end, it's probably all stuff you'd only watch once anyway, so who cares, right? But none of the ones present on the DVD have that "You've just gotta see this!" quality that you'd eagerly show off to a fellow LOST fan. They're all kind of humdrum, with the amusement of finding the hidden menu dots being greater than the actual payoff of watching the Easter eggs.

In any event, bonus features are exactly what they purport to be: simply a bonus. You could leave them out entirely and still get a mind-blowing season of television that is well worth rewatching (alas, if only I'd thought to make this recommendation in time for you to get up to speed for this week's Season 6 premiere!) Pick this set up if you love the show enough to want to relive all the twists and turns. Otherwise, you've got http://abc.com/ (who frequently makes the entire series available on streaming video) and iTunes for specific episodes, and Lostpedia for all of the episode summaries and deep research into obscure elements of the show that your heart could ever desire.

Alrighty, LOST fans, that's it for this review. I'll see you at the end of Season 6! (Or, if I die before then, maybe I'll see an alternate you in a parallel timeline!)

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older