I loved this week’s episode of “Lost” (“LaFleur”). I’m guessing that the reason the last couple of episodes have been so exposition-heavy and tedious is that they were all just anxious to get back to the Island and telling stories that people actually care about. (Spoilers follow, if you’re concerned about that kind of thing).
This one pushed all my buttons, so much that even when I thought it was about to go off the rails, they’d do something to remind me they still were in complete control. I loved all the character moments in it: Juliet’s clumsy “some kind of sonic fence… or something” line and then Sawyer’s calling her on it. Sawyer’s calling Richard Alpert “your buddy out there with the eyeliner.” Sawyer’s spur-of-the-moment lie about the Black Rock. Sawyer in general; the character annoyed the hell out of me for… well, pretty much the entire series up until just recently.
But the episode was designed to make Juliet look like a total bad-ass, so much so that I started to worry she was going to get killed off soon. Clearly, they were setting her up for the love quadrangle, just in case you weren’t in love with her character yet, but I think they overdid it. I think if Kate had seen this episode, even she would be saying, “Yeah, okay. You win.” She went from consoling a guy who’d just had his girlfriend die and vanish, to taking out a bad guy with a perfectly-timed sniper shot, all within five minutes. Then she fixed a van and delivered a baby, which was kind of overkill, really. It reminded me of Janeane Garafolo’s old bit about George Clooney’s character on E.R. and how he was designed to be like catnip for women: on top of looking like George Clooney and having issues only a good woman could fix, he was a pediatrician.
Whatever they did, though, it worked. It was obvious how this episode was going to end, even before Sawyer’s “can you get over someone in three years?” speech. Still, when Hurley came out of the van I let out a disappointed groan. Great, those guys again. When was the last time they did anything for me?
Although it was a neat bit of tension to advance both groups by three years, I wonder if they would’ve gotten more drama out of having it be three years to Jack/Kate/Sun/etc., but only a week or so to the guys on the island. And although they’re doing a fantastic job of filling in pieces, I’ve still got to wonder:
- Is that for real the last of the time travel? Seems like some wasted opportunities, things that they wouldn’t be mentioning if we weren’t gong to see them again: the statue, the Black Rock, the whispers in the jungle, more of Rousseau’s backstory, etc.
- Speaking of Rousseau: when we last saw her group meet the smoke monster, when was that? It’d have to be sometime in the early 90s, if she were still pregnant with Alex, right?
- When did the new castaways, Ben, and Locke land? Are they somewhere in the early 70s part of the island?
- Why didn’t our Dharma gang spend these three years planting stuff in the jungle to help themselves after the crash landing? Seems like Sawyer at least would’ve left himself some guns or books or smokes or eyeglasses, and avoided a lot of the hassles he had in season 1.
- When does Miles get to use his ghostbuster powers again? There’s got to be something they’re saving him for, right?
Speaking of Miles, one of the cool things about watching the show on iTunes is that it’s a lot easier to do embarrassing screen grabs:
