A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

FOUND OBJECTS: This post has spoilers about things that happened on the Lost season finale, "The Incident." I don't know too many people who both care about Lost and haven't watched the finale, but if you're one of them, stop reading.

This came up in the comment thread Wednesday night, but I just wanted to highlight something. I thought it was an excellent (but not pantheon-level) Lost, but mostly I was impressed with how intricately-written it was, weaving together not just the basic mythology, the Romeo and Juliet B-story, the turtles-all-the-way-up (tm Carmichael Harold) escalating conflicts (survivors vs. survival; survivors vs. Others; Others vs. Dharma; Ben vs. Widmore; Jacob vs. Esau), but also a number of allusions to prior season finales. To be clear, I'm not saying these are coincidences or minor similarities, in the nature of a high-school "compare and contrast" paper. I think these were explicit callbacks to the prior finales and restagings of pivotal scenes or shots. To wit:

• In the Season 1 finale, "Exodus," Jack takes a volatile explosive (old dynamite) from an anachronistic source (an inland-beached galleon) and carries it in a backpack to the Swan hatch, to blow it up. In "The Incident," Jack takes a volatile explosive (a plutonium core rigged to blow on impact) from an anachronistic source (an underground Egyptian temple) and carries it in a backpack to the Swan hatch, to blow it up. "Exodus" ends with the camera going down the hatch. "The Incident" ends with the camera going down the hatch (though it is shot in the accelerating style of the last shot in the pre-credits opening of the Season 2 opener, "Man of Science, Man of Faith," when the camera went the other direction).
• The Season 2 finale was "Live Together, Die Alone." In "The Incident," Juliet answers Sawyer's "what do we do, Blondie?" question with "Live together, die alone." The climax of "Live Together, Die Alone" is the implosion of the Swan, followed by Desmond, laying underneath the station, turning the failsafe key, triggering a fade to white. In "The Incident," the Swan implodes, followed by Juliet, laying underneath the station rubble, beating the bomb with a rock, triggering a fade to white.
• In the Season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass," Ben asks to speak with Jack alone before Jack does something that will cause everyone on the island to die. "The least you can give me is five minutes," he says. "Five minutes," Jack responds, and Ben invites Jack to "have a seat on the rock." In "The Incident," Sawyer asks to speak with Jack alone before Jack does something that will cause everyone on the island to die. "I need five minutes, that's all ... you owe me that much, Jack," says Sawyer. "Five minutes," replies Jack, and Sawyer invites Jack to "take a load off" on the rock. Also, in "Through the Looking Glass," Hurley rides to the rescue in a Dharma microbus. In "The Incident," Hurley rides to the rescue in a Dharma microbus.
• The big reveal in Season 4's finale, "No Place Like Home," is that the object in the box is Locke's corpse. The big reveal in "The Incident" is that the object in the box is Locke's corpse.