Lost's Follow the Leader: A Recap of the Weirdest Show on TV

One thing one can say about Lost, it is certainly a different kind of show. What other show has depicted time travel, islands that "move", the dead coming back to life, multiple corporate conspiracies, among other things?

The most recent episode of Lost, Follow the Leader, was typical. Some spoilers may follow.

Lost: Follow the Leader started with Daniel Faraday, the slightly insane quantum physicist being shot to death in 1977 by the woman who would become his mother. In fact, it looks like Eloise Hawking is pregnant with the child she just assassinated. Birth. Death. The great cycle of life.

It seems that just before he died, Daniel Faraday hit upon a solution to the whole island problem that would prevent, it is hoped, all the horrible things that have happened since Oceanic 815 first broke apart and crashed on the island. It involves, naturally, the explosion of a 1950s era hydrogen bomb over a pocket of energy. On any other show this would be a big deal. On Lost, however, it is just another day on the island.

Meanwhile, in 2007, John Locke (named for an Enlightenment philosopher, by the way) has come back from the dead and has become leader of that mysterious tribe of folks known as the Others. Following instructions from the island (yes, it appears to be sentient enough to order people around) he arranges for the Others denizen named Richard to meet his earlier self in order to dig a bullet out of him and give him some instructions about getting people back on the island and dying. This was covered in a previous episode, but now witnessed again from another perspective. John Locke then proceeds to lead the Others on a trek to visit the mysterious island character named Jacob, not so much to have a conversation, but to kill him.

Meanwhile, back in the Carter era, Sawyer and Juliette are being knocked around by members of the Dharma Initiative. They finally bargain for a couple of tickets off the island in exchange for ratting out where the Others are. Kate, who is not too sure about setting off nukes, joins them on the last sub out. Sawyer is day dreaming about buying up shares of Microsoft and living off the fat for the rest of the twentieth century. Fat chance is what I say.

There are some other stuff happening too, but you get the gist. Not exactly the sort of thing that happens on a typical cop or doctor drama. In fact, if you haven't been following Lost religiously, what you have just read is likely to be bloody confusing. Lost started with a plane crash and a bunch of castaways and spiraled into maximum weirdness. My advice is to buy up the existing DVDs of the previous seasons and spend several weeks during the summer catching up. It will be worth your time.

Lost is the creation of J.J. Abrams, by the way, who has also created the new Star Trek film, which oddly enough also has time travel as a theme. The season finale of Lost airs next week on ABC.

Source: Lost: Follow the Leader, TV.Com