Lost Update: Y'All Everybody

Episode Title: Greatest Hits Air Date: 5/17/07

With next week’s final approaching quickly, there are lots of balls of story being juggled by the “Lost” writers right now, and it’s nice to see everything really clicking for the show again. “Lost” stumbled a bit early this season and some viewers walked away from the show, but hopefully they’ll come back to it when the DVDs come out this summer, because it’s been as good as (or better than) the first season for the last four or five weeks.

Last night’s Charlie-centric episode was no exception. Charlie has been kind of worthless for, oh, two season now, but last night reminded me of why I found the character likeable and appealing…and it was in no small part due to the resurrection of that stupid song from his former band, Drive Shaft. It’s so ridiculous, but I love “Y’All Everybody.” I want to see Oasis cover it for real at a show sometime…that would be boss.

With The Other approaching and the survivors preparing for their arrival, Juliet tells the group that Ben is jamming all communications from the island in an underwater hatch and someone must swim into a supposedly flooded room and turn it off.

Desmond has one of his flashes and tells Charlie that it’s time…he has to die if he want to help Claire and her baby get rescued. A stoic Charlie agrees to sacrifice himself for the good of the group. It’s all very “Poseidon Adventure” or “Armegeddon.” The flashbacks were actually effective and poignant last night, because they scenes of Charlie remembering the best moments of his life before he knowingly goes into a situation he won’t walk away from. It was a nice change of pace from repetitive character beats in the flashbacks, and served more of an emotional purpose than a storytelling one.

Meanwhile, Jack has a plan for The Others. He tells everyone that Juliet has been instructed to mark the tents with the pregnant women with white at night so The Other know which tents to invade. Jack plans on filling the marked tents with dynamite and then “blowing them all to hell” (his delivery of the final part of the plan was classic Matthew Fox over-dramatic acting. He could teach a master class.)

The group realizes they must also head into the woods and turn off Russoau’s distress signal, which might also interfere with communications from the outside world, and that turning off her signal, flipping off Bens’ jamming signal, and the “blowing them all to hell” must happen all at once. It’s like a video game challenge for the survivors.

When Alex’s traumatized boyfriend shows up at the beach to tell the survivors that The Others are coming sooner than they feared, the group realizes they don’t have enough materials to wire the dynamite. So Sayid has another plan (he always does.) Three people will hide in the woods and shoot the dynamite when The Others’ enter the tents. Like in the end of “Jaws.”

Bernard shows up after an unexplained thirty episode absence and volunteers to be one of the shooters, demonstrating his expert marksmanship that was never alluded to in a previous episode. Whatever, it’s nice to have he and the always hilarious Rose back. Where have they been for so long?

The episode ends with Charlie and Desmond taking the boat out to the underwater hatch. Demond offers to take Charlie’s place, but Charlie knocks him out to ensure that he does it himself. What did I say? Just like “Armageddon.” You know, JJ Abrams was one of the 500 writers on that movie, so it’s not a shock. Just sayin’.

Ready to die, Charlie takes the plunge and swims to the bottom, entering the hatch…and surfaces inside a decidedly non flooded room. An ecstatic Charlie celebrates not being dead- until two bad ass chicks run out brandishing guns. Uh-oh.

So we’ve got Charlie being held prisoner in an underwater hatch, Jack and co hiking out to turn off the distress signal, and Sayid, Bernard, and Jin waiting in the shadows for The Others to attack, all of it culminating in next week’s episode. Oh yeah, and we still don't know the fate of poor, shot in the back John Locke.

Anybody think the Jack's plan is going to go perfectly in next week's finale? If you said yes, I’ve got a mystery island in an unknown region of the world to sell to you.