Episodic Classics: Lost, "Something Nice Back Home" & "Cabin Fever" | Season 4, Episodes 10 & 11
Past, present, and future start to converge to bring our season to a close
“Just because I’m happy doesn’t mean this isn’t real.”
Lost’s title card is an iconic part of the show’s aesthetics, but it doesn’t always match up cleanly with what we’re seeing. There are times when the cut to black followed by an ominous sound as the logo spins into place feels like it lines up well with the moment at hand: in “Cabin Fever,” for instance, Keamy is interrogating Michael and knocks him unconscious, which reframes the theme as a reflection of his uncertain fate.
There are other times, though, where it doesn’t seem like it fits. In “Something Nice Back Home,” the cold open concludes in the first Jack-centric flashforward of the season, as he wakes up in Kate’s bed. That’s not fully confirmed until the end of the scene, but he trips over a Millennium Falcon, and therefore it’s no shock that Aaron’s surrogate mother Kate is the one he finds in the shower. It’s a romantic moment between two characters the show is obviously treating as an OTP, and so it seems…
