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?
Comments
Did you really not find anything about the term “egg town”? I read this on a blog. No idea if it’s bullshit or not:
Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering, during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that is also highly perishable. Nobody wants to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they have their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would use the term like “If I were you I would stay away from Bogart. That’s an egg-town.” Of course, the lack of trust among salesman was also high, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town’s customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman ventures into Bogart only to find it is truly an egg-town. He is either persuaded to not visit a town that has good customers or is tricked into visiting a town that can only offer eggs. The term “egg-town” represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case.
Also, count my dad in as one of the people who didn’t hear the ending and totally didn’t get it. He kept insisting the kid was Sawyer’s.
And I’m not willing to venture into much discussion elsewhere, but did people really think Aaron has Down’s Syndrome? Or that he looked like he did? (Because I’ll admit that flashed through my head briefly, but then I dismissed it.)
I’m not buying that “egg-town” definition for one second.
And I didn’t read through the whole comment thread, either. I just scrolled to the end to see how the flame war turned out.
And all this talk of eggs has got me hungry for beef donburi now.
I like to think that not everything in lost has a deep meaning and that it was called eggtown because Locke tried to serve Ben some eggs. Of course I am horribly wrong with this, and probably the third letter of every episode title this season spells out the secret to what the black smoke is.
If ever a show was over analyzed, it’s Lost. I thought the episode was okay but it didn’t reveal much. I thought the courtroom scene where the lawyer asked Jack if he loved Kate was completely over the top. On to next week, the previews look good.
This episode felt like a set up to this week’s, some good stuff but nothing too great ( i agree jack’s courtroom scene was a bit much ), plus it’s tough to top the Sayid Ultimatum.