On to the second half of season two, where we dive further into the secrets of the hatch and learn that the mysteries of the island go deeper than an underground hatch.

LOST – Views from a Veteran – Season Two: Episodes 12-24

“You wanna change? Then change” – Libby in “Dave”

Welcome back fellow veterans (and other Lost fans), to the exploration of the second half of season two.

In this season, we delved more into the background of the characters to discover what made them the way they are on the island. However, the flashbacks were already getting quite tiresome and, at some points, the main story just seemed an excuse to showcase a particular flashback. This problem becames further exemplified in season three, where some of the worst episodes of Lost reside.

A flashback episode is successful when the character it is focused on becomes more relatable, or more understood because of it. In this season, there were only a few examples of flashbacks that truly brought the characters to life more than their story on the island. For example, in “One of Them,” you finally learn where Sayid learned to interrogate, and in the finale, “Live Together, Die Alone,” Desmond’s background is brought to light.

This season also saw the series take its first careful steps into the realm of science fiction with the Dharma Initiative, electromagnetism, the healing properties of the island and even time-travel!

I know that you are thinking, that time travel wasn’t even introduced until season three. And yes, you are right, but there was a subtle hint about time-travel in the episode entitled “The Long Con.” At the very end of that episode, Sayid and Hurley were listening to a radio playing some very old music. The producers have confirmed that the radio station, WXR, is from the 1940’s, and was the show’s first encounter with time-travel.

As you all know, my goal with these posts are to identify the connections between the larger mysteries of the show and how the series ended. In the episode “Dave,” it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Dave was a construct of the MiB trying to get Hurley to kill himself (since he could not do it himself). But, like all things with this show, it raises more questions – like why couldn’t the MiB kill the candidates?

There are many more questions that we have yet to receive explanations for, and I will not go through them here. But, I will briefly discuss one mentioned in the episode “Three Minutes.”

In that episode, Miss Klugh tells Walt that she doesn’t want to send him back to “the room.” During season three, there were a series of mobisodes online (included on the fourth season DVD), that were essentially deleted scenes that spanned the first three seasons of the show. In one called “Room 23,” Juliet and Ben discuss an alarm going off in a room that supposedly houses Walt, as well as the fact that the Other’s are scared to go near the room, and that there are a large number of dead birds outside. All that is known about the room is that the Dharma Initiative (as well as the Others) performed psychological experiments there, shown in season three with Alex’s boyfriend Karl in the episode “Not in Portland”.

The second season of Lost also had one of the most shocking moments in the entire run of the show, when Michael suddenly killed both Ana Lucia and Libby in order to get his son back. I remember watching that episode live, and everyone’s mouths there just hit the floor in sheer surprise, as no one could have seen that coming.

And now, the part that you have all been looking for to – the final count of “Lost-isms” for season two!

There have now been a total of fourteen fights, with Jack & Ethan and Sawyer & Sayid with the top spot of two fights each.

Sawyer has now said “Sonofabitch” 12 times, and Desmond has said “brother” an impressive 19 times already!

The last category I will introduce is one I will call “Ben beatings,” as Benjamin Linus gets beat up a hell of a lot of this show, so I thought it would be nice to count the violence against him. So far, he has been beaten only once, but that will quickly change.

Lastly, the top “Sawyer-isms: “Doc” still has the top spot with 22 mentions, with “Freckles” close behind with 15. And we have a three-way tie for second with “Hoss,” Chief” and “Chewie” with four references a piece.

Coming soon will be the first half of season three, where many loyal viewers abandoned the show due to its bizarre schedule and lack of an engaging story.

“We are stuck in a bloody snow globe” – Desmond in “Live Together, Die Alone.”