Review: Lost 5.8: LaFleur

Sawyer is content with his new life.

The series was due a Sawyer-centric episode, not having time for one in Season Four due to the Writer's Guild of America Strike. Covering what happened to the Leftbehind's after Locke turned the wheel, LaFleur pushed all of my buttons by mixing all of Lost's aspects and spinning them in an interesting way, mixing science ficiton and good old-fashioned emotionfest. LaFleur is the best episode of this season so far.
     The leftovers wait as Locke turns the wheel, and after another time-flash they find themselves in 1974. Wandering to start again on The Beack, they come across two men torturing a woman, and Sawyer kills them. It turns out that the woman was a member of the Dharma Initiative, and that the two men were from the Others, known to Dharma as "The Hostiles." The leftovers take the corpse of the woman's wife, Paul, back to the Dharma Initiative where they are questioned by their leader, Horace Goodspeed, who we saw the ghost of back in Cabin Fever. Richard Alpert arrives to question Dharma about the loss of his men, but James (going by the name LaFleur) goes and resolves the situation by using his knowledge of the events of 1954 to gain Richard' trust.
      In 1977, we see that James LaFleur is now Dharma's Chief of Security. Two workers report seeing Horace drunk and throwing Dynamite around. James then helps Horace's wife Amy, who is having their baby and who has just gone into labour. Since there are no other fertility specialists on The Island, James is forced to employ Juliet's help. The baby is born with her help, and later James visits their home and gives her a flower in thanks. It's then revealed that over the past three years, the two have become lovers. In the morning, James receives a call. It's from Jin, and he has found the three others.

James uses timey-wimey knowledge to help Dharma.

      This particular era of the show's history has a wonderful theme running through it of pre-ordination coming not from "destiny" but from time travel. I think this is such a wonderful quirk of Lost. Everything mystical in Lost can have a semi-scientific explanation, even some of the worst recesses of Season Six. Like in Mawdryn Undead, LaFleur has two storylines running parallel to one another, in different time streams. I loved it there and I love it here; it's Lost's twisty turny plotting at its logical best.
      And, despite my hated for the Quadrangle, I think that LaFleur did it well. Sawyer and Juliet's relationship made sense; they bonded over their rejections by Jack and Kate and had three years to work their relationship. Jack and Kate make sense through sheer idiocy; they're both as vapid and empty headed as one another.
     LaFleur was simply good characterisation put to good plotting. Lost ususally falls down on one or the other, but here it was the perfect hand and everything fell together in a way that makes LaFleur one of the best episodes of the series so far.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We set up the second half of the series in Namaste.