LOST---the Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Part VIII

Well, who would have imagined a random rerun, eh? Usually television shows play a slew of reruns while newer episodes are being made, but not LOST. Anyway, this episode was kind of bittersweet. Seeing as though foreknowledge of it being an episode centered around the Dharma Frag Grenade Sniffers did not make this week too exciting, this episode was rather good.

The good:

1. If the writers suddenly decided to say “fuck all” to the plot and everything else except for Hurley, LOST would still be a great show. Hurley is much more than simply comic relief, of course, but his one liners still remain quite entertaining. “Oh….what?”

2. The writers continually get bashed in these reviews, but this week there is no grain of salt against them. This episode was very well-written. Its most impressive feat was how dramatically yet smoothly the writers implemented the surviving Losties into the Dharma Boo-Boo-Bang-Bang storyline.

3. Ben getting decked in the back of the head by Sun. That consequence for Ben was so satisfying. It actually scared me when it happened. The power of the hit was astounding.

4. People have finally started calling him “Sawyer” again. This “James” and “LeFleur” stuff was just not working.

5. Although I do hope everything works out for him in the end, it was great to finally see Jack get shut up for once.

The bad:

1. Apparently LOST is losing money. Last time I watched only seven minutes of programming between commercials was during a marathon of B horror films on the Sci-Fi channel.

2. As said before, this episode featured the Dharma Poo-Bear Industries more than any other Season Five episode yet. It upgraded Dharma’s characteristics from skilled multi-tasking to handy-dandy-extremely-conv

enient-multitool-that-does-lots-of-things-and-can-speak-any-language-yet-still-cannot-seem-to-define-to-outsiders-what-it-is-they-actually-do. And they have big parties for doped up new recruits, and houses with plumbing and electricals, and a truce with dahahdhahajsioeei….who really cares anymore.

Purgatory:

1. I know I said in previous reviews that I like what Sawyer has started to become, but I might recant that statement if the writers decide to take Sawyer’s character to a more Locke-like state, at least in terms of his relationship with Jack. Jack and Sawyer have never really gotten along, I guess, but I do not think this show needs yet another Jack-Locke relationship.

2. I love how Ben cannot even deliver food to a prisoner, even as a little kid, without freaking out every living thing within twenty miles.

The ugly:

1. In previous weeks, Abrams reduced his time-travel craze to a minimum. However, he brought back a small stack of it for this episode, and covered it with his “time-travel idea” fingerprints. He has placed different characters in different time eras, and judging by what Christian Shepherd showed to Sun, it appears that what the Losties do in the past effects the future that Sun ad Ben are in. So the question now becomes: is this the same timeline as when the Losties originally landed on the island in season one? This idea is very bothersome, for reasons I feel but cannot explain. It has to do with the whole “we know we’re going to crash on this island twenty-seven years from now so let’s warn ourselves about what’s going to happen” idea, which I personally find to be cheap(which, since it is LOST, comes as no surprise) .


This episode is a credit to the creativity of the LOST writers, though it suffers from its usual pattern of alluding to other episodes. However, that is a minor setback in this week’s installment. All of the episodes have this pattern, but of all the season five episodes so far, this one did it the least, so bravo. So now let’s watch the Losties fuck it up as usual.

 

Ciao.