
I've been poking at doing a Top-10-Episodes-Of-LOST picspam, and while doing so have noticed a couple interesting things.
It also led me to reflect on some things not directly tied to episode trends or whatever.
Since none of this would have any place in the aforementioned picspam, if I ever even get around to doing it, I'm going to post them here.
1. There are four Charlie-centric episodes: The Moth, Homecoming, Fire + Water, Greatest Hits. All but one of those is strongly Claire-influenced as well. "The Moth" is not only the only Charlie-centric episode where Claire doesn't play a major role; she doesn't appear in it at all. ...this is made all the stranger by the fact that The Moth is followed by Confidence Man, which is infamous for its Charlie/Claire adorableness. (Peanut butter. ♥)
2. Walt has never had (and likely never will have :/) his own flashback episode, and I want to say he's the only original member of the main cast not to have one. He has a scene in Michael's first flashback episode (there's a flashback in Special to Walt and Brian and Susan at home in Australia, the bird dies, etc.) which is clearly his flashback, not Michael's, as Michael is not present for the scene, but the episode is otherwise entirely Michael's. And aside from the dead bird thing, the scene tells us nothing about Walt.
2a. As an aside, I think this is an interesting and weird choice because it's never repeated. We have multi-person-centric episodes (a lot of season openers and closers, plus episodes like "Confirmed Dead), and we have episodes that center around somebody who has pre-Island ties to someone else on the Island (Shannon & Boone, Sun & Jin, etc.), but in the former case the episode's flashbacks are split approximately evenly between participants and in the latter the flashbacks are clearly from one person's POV (hence how we get half the story with the bloody-shirt bathroom scene from Sun's POV in one episodes, and then half a season later get the rest of the story from Jin's perspective). "Special" is the only case I can think of where the flashbacks are entirely from Person A's perspective except for one isolated scene.
2b. Also, having said this, someone is going to point out another original cast member who didn't have a flashback episode. Or another case of isolated-flashback-from-Person-B's-perspective. I welcome corrections.
3. There are a lot of stories I don't think are going to get tied up before the end of the series, and that makes me sad. I mean, these are stories that logically don't need tying up; they're not relevant to the main plot, most viewers would have forgotten about them by now, and they never were all that important to the story being told. Still, I get attached to minor characters and minor plots and it makes me sad.
4. I miss the old-school feel of the show. I like where it's gone, I think they've taken the story in the direction it needed to go in, and I don't think the season one tone was sustainable. But I miss it; I miss the camps, and Shannon sunbathing, and Hurley wondering whether Vincent can track water, and everyone worrying over food supplies, and the sense that the Island was unknown but knowable (as opposed to full of people if you just walked a couple more feet I mean seriously how did you not know about the temple and New Otherton and the friggin' lighthouse and *rages*), and I have to say I miss the big hulking corpse of Oceanic 815 sitting over half the scenes. Not sustainable, but fabulous.
5. Hey, remember way back in the day when people were raging over the introduction of more characters? About how, dammit, we're attached to "our" characters, we don't want them pushed in the background for some new characters, this is the moment the show jumped the shark! ...how many of those people do you think are now listing Desmond, Juliet, Ben, Richard, Daniel, Miles, etc., among their favorite characters?
5a. Also, remember that other group of people who insisted that if Darlton were introducing a new bunch of 815 survivors they would turn out to be important to the story, dammit? Remember how most all of the Tailies were dead within a season and a half and didn't really do that much while they were there? ...ahaha. I mean, I love Bernard, and I love Libby and she is still relevant, and I'm glad we had Eko even for as short as we did, but really.
5b. Srsly, if we'd had Frank from the beginning, either the plane wouldn't have crashed (win for them!) or we would have had six seasons of Frank Lapidus on our screens (win for us!) Why did this not happen?