LOST
Season 3
Episode 19
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“The Brig”

Given the pet theory I’ve been nursing for quite awhile now (that Locke’s scumbag dad is the conman responsible for Sawyer’s childhood tragedy), I quickly smelled Locke’s lie. Still, it led to one of the most intense sequences this season, as Sawyer is trapped in the Black Rock with the man who destroyed his life and single-handedly made James the man he is today. (A sequence that also led directly into one of the most morbid endings I’ve ever seen on network television.)
Ultimately though, Locke used Sawyer. Sure, dear old Daddy deserved it, and yes, the old fart is responsible for Sawyer’s pain as well, but Locke used James. How honest is that in Locke’s journey to discover the Island’s mysteries?
At any rate, Sawyer now has the evidence of Juliet’s hidden agenda, so, uh-oh, Julie baby…

Speaking of mysteries though, so Juliet and Jack are sharing a secret, a secret Juliet says they should share with Kate, but Jack resists that idea. What is up with that? Has she told Jack about her secret tapes to Ben? (He was nosing around Sun last episode…)
I still think it was a mistake to tell Jack about Naomi (Parachute Girl has a name now) and the high-tech satellite phone thingie, but hey, let’s see where that goes.

Meanwhile, another of the many theories regarding the nature of the Island is tossed out there and apparently shot down. Here, it’s “the Island is Hell”; in episode 2.18 (“Dave”), it was “the Island is someone’s wild imagining.”
Of course, based on Daddy’s story of how he got to the Island, it seems that Ben’s “magic box” isn’t only a metaphor, it’s an outright lie. The man is such a mindf*cker.
So to the outside world, Oceanic 815 crashed into the ocean and all the passengers died. Is that a massive cover-up, or what? So if Dharma is keeping the gears moving so efficiently out there, how can they not know what’s going on on the Island?

Meanwhile again, Rousseau is scrounging around the Black Rock for dynamite? Whatever for? Honestly, I’m still dubious about the whole Alex is my daughter/Alex is Ben’s daughter/Ben conveniently stepped in one of Rousseau’s traps deal, that I’m leery about her motives. But, as with telling Jack about Naomi, let’s see where this one goes too.

Heading into this season’s home stretch, people.
And yes, gentlemen, you are dazzling us. (See Lost Episode 9 review. Archive: March 2007.)

(Image courtesy of aol.com.)

LOST
Season 3
Episode 17
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“Catch-22”

Like Hurley said, this is future crap.
So it’s Des and his flashes, and being placed in a situation where he must choose if he’s willing to sacrifice Charlie for the sake of the possibility that Penny’s about to arrive on the Island. (Catch-22, indeed.)
We also see Des’ brief life in a monastery, making wine, before he’s whisked off by Penny. (Huh. First Eko’s stint as a priest, and now Desmond. What is it about Lost and men of the cloth? Maybe Kate was a nun for awhile…)
Speaking of Kate, she can be such a doofus. After making her solid choice back in the cages, now she’s hurt ‘cause Jack is making time with that two-faced lying slag Juliet, and she jumps Sawyer’s bones. At least Sawyer was canny enough to figure out he was being used. (And isn’t that cute? He gave her a mix tape…)
Getting back to Des, it’s an interesting perspective he voices, that maybe his flashes are a test. Maybe the test is knowing all this is inevitable and resisting the urge to change what he sees.
I was also about 94.6% sure that it wasn’t gonna be Penny there, hanging dead from the tree. I certainly didn’t wait for almost a year just to have her wind up on the Island, dead.
But really, who was that?!

(Image courtesy of sparklies.org.)

LOST Season 3 Episode 15 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Left Behind”

Getting back to the Others plot thread, the episode opens with Locke saying goodbye to Kate, before things go totally off the wall, and Kate gets gassed, and wakes up in the jungle, handcuffed to Juliet!
That’s an interesting notion, which, among other things, lets Kate in on the fact that Jack knows she and Sawyer got it on, and that she “broke his heart,” as Juliet puts it.
The gals even get into a scuffle that ends with Kate dislocating Juliet’s shoulder (which she then admits has already been dislocated a number of times in the past).
By the time they get back to the Barracks, Ben and company are gone, having left Jack and Sayid behind. The episode ends with Jack deciding that Juliet comes back with them to the camp.
You know what? I don’t trust Juliet. I’ve said it before: Anything she does and says is suspect in my eyes.
For all I know this is all a ploy so the Others have someone on the inside. As Juliet says to Kate, Ben loves mind games.
Centerpiece of the episode: definitely the Monster chasing Kate and Juliet through the jungle. As per the usual though, all we see is the black smoke, which apparently doesn’t like the sonic barrier that surrounds the Barracks. Hmmmm.
I’m still of the mind that “the Monster” is mechanical in nature, and that it’s moving largely underground, and the smoke we see is its exhaust. (Though why the smoke often seems sentient is beyond me.)

Meanwhile, Hurley pulls a fast one to groom Sawyer for taking the leadership reins (since all the alpha dogs are gone from the camp), also another interesting idea.
Of course, the one Sawyer’s gonna have a difficult time to get on his side is Sun, and no one can blame her, really. She was used as a pawn in Sawyer’s power games, roughed up and terrorized. She should make Sawyer squirm a good long time.

As for the flashbacks, they’re centered on Kate, as she crosses paths with Cassidy (who, of course, doesn’t mention the name of the con man who broke her heart and knocked her up).
The episode’s flashbacks are okay, as far as they go, but I’m not certain they add anything particularly significant to our knowledge of Kate. Even her meeting Cassidy seems a bit gimmicky, since it wasn’t exactly pivotal. (It’s not like Cassidy was thinking of an abortion and Kate convinces her to keep the baby.)

At any rate, the episode was fine, and certainly better than “Stranger in a Strange Land” (arguably still the lowest point of the season), so it’s all good, so far.
We’re approximately two months away from season’s end, and I’m honestly not sure where we’re going and what the cliffhanger’s gonna be this time out, but hey, I’m all eyes and ears.

LOST Season 3 Episode 14 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Expose”

It’s interesting that I’ve got a lot to say about an episode that does nothing whatsoever to forward the island plot threads…
Lots’a pluses, though.

So we find out Nikki and Paulo’s stories and end up with an interesting CSI on the island/morality tale/re-working of an old TV show convention.
A) the “murder mystery” was passable, though the second Artz (hey, dude! Good to see ‘ya!) talks about the Medusa spider, bam! There’s your culprit, Grissom. Though I must admit, I didn’t catch the whole “Paulo lies”/”paralyzed” thing. Sneaky…
B) again, passable, in that we have seen this sort of morality tale before (ultimately, they both end up getting what they want, and they can’t even enjoy it).
Also, I’m not entirely convinced this sort of side story has a proper place in Lost, given that at the end of it, both characters are (apparently) dead.
Lost flashbacks have always helped me understand characters and motivations better; once I’d seen where these people were coming from, it would become clear why they did certain things. But in this particular case, Nikki and Paulo end up dead. So what if I understand them better now? Thing is, I didn’t really know them at all. And perhaps that’s one of the points of this episode, that we never really know people, the way the other 815ers had no idea what this couple was up to.
But because they were introduced in Season 3, and hardly did anything at all in the past 13 episodes, I had no feeling for them one way or another, other than to hope that they contributed something significant to the show’s narrative before they died (as has sometimes happened in the past).
Well, if their ultimate contribution was this little morality tale, I’m not so sure it was all worth it.
C) Remember how your favorite TV shows of yesteryear would have those episodes where characters would reminisce, and we would see recycled clips from episodes past (among other things, a strategy to control a show’s budget, since you essentially shaved off the production cost of one entire episode)?
Well, this episode does it in grand style, not just by bringing back the dead (yay, Maggie Grace! And Evil Blush-On Man* himself, Ian Somerhalder!! And Leslie!!! I mean, Artz…), but by astoundingly inserting Kiele Sanchez into the amazing footage of the crash wreckage from the pilot.
Additionally, now that we know their story, it also becomes apparent why we never really saw a lot of them in the first two seasons, as they apparently had their own agenda, searching the island for a little black bag… (And didn’t they pull the old “someone hid something in the bathroom/oh, that’s why he went to the bathroom in that episode” trick with Charlie already?)

So, all in all, it was an enjoyable episode, though ultimately, it feels like a diversionary tactic, not having moved the island story forward and not really making me understand Nikki and Paulo any better. (What it did was neatly explain to me why I hadn’t seen them before.)
I don’t really see any long-lasting ramifications of this episode, unless 1) either or both of them pull a Beatrix Kiddo and somehow manage to dig out of their graves, or 2) that despite Sawyer’s poetic gesture, the contents of the little black bag become a plot point for the future… (And not in some hokey sort of “Here, Ben and the Others, take this and let us go, please” “Oh, sure, why not? I’ve always wanted these…” way, either.)
We’ll just have to see, won’t we?

* What I named Somerhalder after his recurring role in Smallville, where he played Adam Knight, one of those guys who gets involved with Lana, only to get Clark jealous, only to reveal himself to be a baddie. (Also, see Jensen Ackles, currently on Supernatural.)

LOST Season 3 Episode 10 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”

What is it about Lost and bad fathers?
Fathers on this show are conmen, drunks, abusive, crooked, or coldly controlling. Now you can add “absentee” to the list.
As it turns out, Hurley’s dad (played by Cheech Marin; too bad Chong wasn’t along for the ride) abandoned the family 17 years ago, and suddenly pops back into their now nouveau riche life to straighten out the son he walked out on all those years ago (and have some really long overdue sex with the missus).
And even as we get another peek into Hurley’s past, the island story (which I said last review was moving at a snail’s pace) begins to chug slowly along as Kate and Sawyer make it back to camp, finally getting Locke and Sayid off their a$$es and on the road to rescuing Jack.
So, although I was kind of expecting there was more of a story to the meteor hitting the fast food joint (and what happened to Marguerite Moreau?! She ran off with DJ Qualls? Come on! I thought there was more of a story there too.*), this episode does play better than last week’s, and not just because the island story is gradually revving up.
We also have nice little scenes of Jin being taught English (first by Sun, then by Sawyer), as well as the payoff to the whole “let’s get the VW running,” as Sawyer gets back to camp with a whole lotta beer and no one to share it with.
And now that they’ve finally informed Danielle that her daughter may very well be alive, I should mention something that didn’t occur to me till a few days after I’d written my review of episode 7 (“Not In Portland”): if Alex really is Ben’s biological daughter (and not simply adopted), then why is it that Ben came into the survivors’ lives through his “misfortune” of getting caught in one of Rousseau’s traps? If Ben really is Alex’s biological father, then Danielle must know who he is, shouldn’t she? Or was she in on it? Did she knowingly allow Ben to insert himself into the survivors’ lives because she struck some kind of deal with Ben? (I have always thought that if Ben is such a smart guy, how stupid was he that he got caught in one of Rousseau’s traps? And what, he was traipsing around the jungle all by his lonesome? The all-powerful leader of the Others? I dunno…)
Or is that how far gone Danielle is that she can’t even recognize the father of her own child? Or maybe the Others’ Alex is just a young woman who happens to be named Alex and isn’t actually Rousseau’s daughter. Was there even a real Alex to begin with? Maybe Rousseau’s just completely loony and this stolen baby episode never really happened.
So many questions…
Then again, this is Lost.

* And I love Marguerite Moreau! Please tell me we’ll see her again. Since we see the point when Hurley leaves for Australia in this episode, the only chance we’ll see Starla again is if we do see the events leading to DJ Qualls running away with her…

Parting shot: Still waiting for Paulo and Nikki to make that significant contribution… What’s his excuse this week? Oh, yeah. He was gonna get some bananas. Right.

Parting shot 2: Hurley should really think twice before chasing Vincent out into the jungle. I mean, I love the dumb dog, but he was one of the key factors in Shannon’s death by Ana-Lucia…

LOST Season 3 Episode 7 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Not In Portland”

The long wait is over and we’re back on the island (or, at least, the other island of the Others), and Ben’s still on the table and Kate and Sawyer are running for their lives.
We also see Juliet’s pre-island life in Miami, where her efforts at getting her ill sister pregnant apparently bring her to the attention of the Dharma Initiative (or what’s left of it, at any rate).
Still, we’re not shown her first arrival on the island, so we still have no firm idea of the exact state of the program some three years ago (when she claims to have arrived).
Ben, meanwhile, tough little bugger that he is, awakens while his back is gaping open and he’s bleeding to death. His words to Juliet are unheard by us, though she claims that Ben made her a deal: help Kate and Sawyer get back to their island, so Jack can finish getting the tumour out of him, and he lets her go, back to her life in the real world.
Still, I don’t really trust Juliet. She can seem really sweet (and she looks a lot like a blonde Carrie Anne-Moss; yowzah!), but I don’t trust her. At this point, anything she says and does is suspect in my eyes. Plus, Tom did say she and Ben have a “history.” (And she was making a deal with Jack to let Ben die on the operating table, fer efs sake!)
And, speaking of history, it seems that Alex is Ben’s daughter. So now we just have to determine whether that’s biological, or if he ended up adopting her after she was taken from Danielle. (I’m trying to think back to season 1, to Rousseau’s recollections, and I don’t remember her mentioning any other name except Alex’s. I was also under the distinct impression that all her other team members died. When I have time I’ll go back and check those episodes out…)
So Jack’s asking Kate to tell him the same story he told her way back in the pilot episode pays off in a big way as not only does it coincide with a little accident on the operating table, but it’s also a neat little goodbye from the Doc to Kate, with the added “Don’t come back here to get me.”
So for the time being, Jack’s with the Others. So what do the rest of the survivors do without a doctor?

Parting shot: So Ethan’s been with the Initiative for some time now…

Parting shot 2: Nice. Brainwashing through techno. See? Your parents were right when they said raves were bad for you…

(Originally posted 021407)