"LA X" (Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2)

This is it. The last season premiere of Lost ever. The beginning of the end as it has been advertised. Based on what we saw last night, I can only quote Hurley in the Temple (but with considerably less sarcasm and considerably more excitement): "This is gonna be awesome." The concept of the "flash-sideways", as the producers have referred to the new parallel timeline, opens up whole new story lines for the familiar characters.

Best Lines

• "I'm sorry you had to see me like that." UnLocke to Ben after transforming into the Smoke Monster and back again.
  

Note: I've decided to separate the "Did You Notice" section into one for the 2004 parallel timeline and one for the 2007 island version. It seems only fitting.

Did You Notice? - 2004 Parallel Timeline

• Jack was not seated on the wing as in he was in Season 1.
• Cindy the flight attendant only gave Jack one bottle, not two as she had in the first episode.
• Jack's and Rose's reactions to the turbulence were reversed. In the pilot, Jack was the one calming Rose. Was this because Jack knew what had happened or could happen or would happen? Alternate universes make my head hurt.
• Rose was reading Weekly Woodsman magazine. The back featured a flying saucer with the X-Files phrase "The truth is out there." Is this a hint as to the origins of Jacob and the Man in Black?
• Rose's comment to Jack, "You can let go", had a great double meaning considering Jack always tries to fix situations and has a hard time moving on.
• The Oceanic Airlines pilot's voice was done by the same actor who played him in the first episode before being taken out of the cockpit wreckage by the Smoke Monster - Greg Grunberg, who currently plays Matt on "Heroes" and is the lifelong friend of Lost creator, J.J. Abrams. See, it's not what you know, but who you know!
  
• Desmond is on the plane whereas he wasn't originally in Season 1. With the island submerged, I'm guessing his life took another path. Did he seem familiar to Jack because they had briefly met at the stadium when each was running? Or did this not occur because Desmond didn't need to train for his round-the-world boat race and Jack was having another deja vu?
  
• The book Desmond was reading was Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. The larger part of the plot of this children's book occurs on a fictional satellite of the Earth's, named Kahani, whose orbit is controlled by "Processes Too Complicated To Explain". These processes enable it to fly over every single point on Earth. Kahani itself consists of a massive ocean which itself is composed of an infinity of stories.
• I absolutely got goosebumps when the camera zoomed out of the plane's window and dived down through the clouds, plunged underwater past the submerged sonar fence, New Otherton (including the swing set) , a shark bearing the Dharma logo on its tail, and stopping on the statue's four-toed foot.
• So what does the submerged island mean to this timeline? Has it been underwater since the 70's, the result of the Jughead bomb going off or some other reason? Was Ben off the island when the disaster occurred? Did Juliet never go there and is still in Portland? Will she and Sawyer be able to have coffee (going Dutch) as she hoped when she was dying at the hatch? Did Rousseau and her team never land on the island in the 80's? Is this why Hurley's winning lottery numbers were lucky and not cursed?
• How great to see not only the previously gone regulars (Boone, Charlie) but Arzt, who was last seen splattering Hurley due to unstable sticks of dynamite, and Frogurt, not dying from a flaming arrow to the chest but sleeping between Boone and Locke, then later waiting in line for a taxi.
• Obviously, not only is the future changed for some characters, but also their pasts prior to the plane leaving Australia. Hurley considers himself lucky and had been Down Under expanding his chicken franchise and not investigating the origin of The Numbers. Boone was unable to convince Shannon to leave her abusive boyfriend. (In reality, the actress Maggie Grace allegedly wanted a lot of money to return now that she has moved on to making movies.)
• Jin's comment to Sun to button up her sweater was similar to a comment he said to her on the island.
  
• Boone's comment to Locke about "pulling his leg" is a dark-humored reference to the leg amputation Jack had wanted to perform on Boone after his fall from the drug plane. Island Boone refused so the medical supplies could be used for the other survivors instead.
• Sawyer calls Cindy the flight attendant "Earhart" as in Amelia Earhart, the aviatrix who disappeared in her plane.
  
• Jack looking for his pen to perform a tracheotomy on Charlie has ties to the scene in the pilot when on the beach Jack told Boone to find a pen in order to keep him busy while Jack was saving Rose.
  
• Charlie's comment "Am I alive?" was another one of those with a double-meaning. Was he also subconsciously aware of what had already happened?
• Did Desmond simply return to his original seat or is it more likely that Jack saving Charlie caused him to never have been on the plane in the first place? Is Desmond once again jumping through time?
• I loved how brilliantly all the actors came off as so unhappy, even miserable, as they exited the plane. The one outcome the island versions of themselves all struggled for was lost (no pun intended) on them. Was ending up on the island actually better for all of them?
• I anxiously watched as Locke remained seated while everyone else left the plane. Would he stand? Was it possible his past had not left him crippled? But no, there was the wheelchair. His talk of adventure to Boone was just that. But is it possible that Locke's condition will turn out to not be the result of his father pushing him out a window, but from the hit-and-run in his childhood that Richard Alpert averted in the other timeline?
  
• Where is the coffin containing Jack's dad? And does Locke's missing suitcase of knives tie into this?
• The ballpoint pen Kate was trying to use to escape her handcuffs was actually taken from Jack when she exited the plane's lavatory and brushed against him. This was the same pen Jack was trying to find in his coat when Charlie was choking.
• The marshal escorting Kate suffered a head wound on the restroom counter not unlike the head wound he got when the plane originally broke apart and a briefcase struck him. Will we see more similarities between the two timelines?
  
• Although we couldn't see, are we to presume this version of Claire was also pregnant and her trip to LA was to give up the as yet unborn Aaron for adoption?
• Add Jack's comment to Locke, "Nothing's irreversible", to our list of double-meanings.
  

Did You Notice? - 2007 Island Timeline

• The iconic close-up of Kate's eye continues the tradition.
• How many of you momentarily freaked like me when you thought there was something wrong with the show's sound only to realize it was done to reflect Kate's temporary hearing loss?
  
• While Jack and the others lay on the ground close to the hatch after the explosion, how did Kate end up in a tree? Was she next to a sapling in 1977 that thirty years later grew up under her?
• I liked the new sound effect that indicates moving from an island scene to the parallel timeline and vice versa. The traditional "whoosh" has now been replaced with a spinning, off-kilter sound - almost as if something is out of sync.
  
• Terry O'Quinn needs to get an Emmy nomination. He was brilliant in both his menacing and chilling portrayal of UnLocke and his subdued alternate Locke. I even believed him as dead Locke on the beach! And this is only the first two hours of the season.
• The Man in Black is able to deflect bullets. Doesn't that make him the Man of Steel?
  
• One of the first of (hopefully) many answers this season: The Smoke Monster is the Man in Black. Of course, we still don't know who the Man in Black is! And does this mean that all the past figures (Christian, Kate's horse, Sawyer's boar, Eko's brother, Ben's daughter) were all manifestations of the Smoke Monster/Man in Black? They all share a visual darkness about them, whether it be their clothes or fur or hair.
  
• The circle of ash goes back to Jacob's cabin where it encircled it, presumably to keep the Man in Black out of the cabin. Or was it to keep him trapped?
• Does Hurley's red shirt forecast a bad end for him? In classic Star Trek, the red-shirted security officers, always an extra, usually died within minutes of beaming down to a planet while the stars of the series escaped unscathed.
• The book Hurley finds by the one-armed Montand's skeleton is philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. The title is a reference to a line from Philippians 2:12, "...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling." An important theme is the conflict between theology and philosophy.
• The ghostly whispers heard off and on for the past five seasons seem to come from the Hostiles, the island's original inhabitants.
• Juliet's "really, really important" comment that "it worked" leads me to believe that in her passing she was able to see the parallel outcome where the plane didn't crash.
  
• The over-sized Egyptian ankh symbol from the guitar case can also be found on the four-toed statue and on a necklace worn by Paul of the Dharma Initiative.
• Jacob's list of names included those he touched in the past - Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid.
• The two children, Zack and Emma, that were with former flight attendant Cindy, were originally from Oceanic 815's tail section. We had last seen all three at the Hydra Station when Kate and Sawyer were being held captive.
• UnLocke's comment to Ben that "he wants to go home" makes me think he and Jacob are unable to leave the island until whatever they are charged to do is completed. The redemption or downfall of mankind? I'm still sticking with my aliens testing the human race over the God and Devil theory.
• UnLocke's flip remark to Richard about being out of his chains seems to indicate that Richard was originally a slave on the Black Rock, the sailing ship from 140 years earlier.
• The temple's pool is obviously the same place where Richard Albert took young Ben after Sayid shot him. Remember that Richard warned Ben would not be the same. Will Sayid suffer the same consequences.
• Was the water in the pool connected to Jacob and his death caused its muddiness? Is Jacob to water like the Man in Black is to smoke?
  
• I think we all caught the Christ-like pose of Sayid as he was taken from the pool, his arms outstretched.
• Jack's desperate attempts to revive Sayid reminded me of his more successful revival of Charlie after Ethan had hanged him.
  
• What did Lennon, the Asian man's translator, want so desperately to tell Jack in private?
  
• I will admit that I took Sayid's resurrection at face value. I presumed the healing waters of the pool saved him. Then, after talking to a number of co-workers, they felt Jacob now inhabited Sayid similar to what the Man of Black was doing. I could see that since we last saw dead Jacob standing over Sayid at the van, telling Hurley to get Sayid to the temple. But I could also argue that the Man in Black took the form of Locke while his dead body remained separate as opposed to actually inhabiting the corpse.
  

The Numbers - 2 3 4 5 6 8 10 15 16 23 42 108

• Jin said Sayid was at the van 2 minutes away.
• Locke told Boone he had spent 10 days in the Outback.
• Boone commented to Locke that he couldn't go 2 days without his cell phone.
• Upon arriving in Los Angeles, the pilot of Oceanic 815 said there were 6 miles of visibility and 5 mph winds.
• Jack told the airline agent that his father's funeral was in 2 hours.
• Miles said Sawyer took out 4 of the Hostiles before being subdued.
  

I'm sure there are moments I have overlooked or forgotten to comment on, but three hours of blogging is taking it's toll. (In fact, I almost posted this without addressing Sayid!) Next week, the premiere's second hour will be replayed as the enhanced version (comments along the bottom of the screen) at 8 p.m. ET followed by the new episode, "What Kate Does" at 9 p.m. ET. The website eonline says "It will be an entirely different series with an entirely different framework after the end of next Tuesday's episode." The site also says the last 10 minutes set the stage for what is to come. Can't wait.