I went looking around the internet for an explanation of the title of last Thursday’s “Lost,” which was called “Eggtown.” That turned up nothing, forcing me to resort to a Steve Miller Band reference. It’s tenuous at best, but I assure you that one bad title is not indicative of my entire oeuvre.
One thing you do discover looking for “Lost” stuff on the internet is that “Lost” fans are wacky. Reading the comments just on one random blog posting about the episode, you can find:
- People who didn’t hear the end, and missed the entire point of the episode
- Eighteen-paragraph long analyses of how this episode’s flash-forwards fit into the overall space/time continuum theory on the island
- DOES ANYBODY KNOWS WHAT THE BLACK SMOKE IS???????
- At least a dozen calls to order
- Detailed explanations that refer to characters by names I don’t recognize at all
- Whoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!! [note: that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the exclamation-point 1 used non-ironically.]
- Debates over whether the baby would technically count as one of the Oceanic 6
- Debates over who’s hotter
- A tangential flame war over Downs syndrome
I dunno what I could add to all that. I thought it was a fine episode, continuing the momentum of this season without blowing me away or anything. I could see the end coming from a mile away, as soon as they showed Kate & Claire at the clothesline and Sun talking about her baby (as opposed to “our baby.”)
Attempts to turn Locke back into a bad-ass fail when he comes across as such a tool at the beginning. There’s a real fine line to his character, and they keep jumping back and forth over it — this is like the eight thousandth time he’s gotten completely played by Ben, which doesn’t make him seem like a tragic figure under the control of an evil mastermind, but like a doofus. And the way he handled Kate’s mini-insurrection wasn’t so much power-mad dictator as snippy condo organization spokesman. Making a dude bite down on a grenade doesn’t do a whole lot to make him seem any cooler.
Especially when said dude is, after only two episodes, already giving Michael a run for his money as most annoying person you could ever get stuck on a deserted island with. I think the real mystery of the island is how it manages to attract such a ridiculously high jackass-to-normal-person ratio. Any day now I’m expecting a catamaran to wash ashore carrying the dehydrated bodies of Andy Dick and Nancy Grace.
I don’t know any particularly big questions raised by this episode, except how does the end tie in with the prophecy that psychic gave Claire? That horrible things would happen if her baby were raised by someone else? Is it somehow the cause of Jack’s beard?