Tonight was our last episode of Lost for a few weeks (thus further forestalling a new "Lost vs. Veronica Mars" matchup). I have mixed feelings about this "going away" episode.
At the time I was watching it, I was really interested and into what was going on. Seeing some details of Claire's season one abduction was compelling. Any episode with Rosseau usually gets my interest. There were a few interesting revelations (as usual, leading to new questions) such as the "theatrical glue" that is apparently used by The Others to play dress-up (transforming Ethan's superior into grizzly "we're gonna have to take the boy" man).
But then the episode ended, and the luster almost immediately began to fade. Not because I didn't feel like I got enough answers. Because I felt like I didn't get enough drama. The best episodes of Lost have been the ones that have had strong emotional issues at the core -- the first Locke episode of season one, Boone's final episode (and the Jack flashback that accompanied it), Kate's final season one episode in which she "got her childhood friend killed."
This episode had almost none of that. The final beat where Henry Gale was driving a wedge between Locke and Jack was one of the few moments of drama in the whole hour. The rest was arguably intriguing as far as the "uber-mystery" goes, but was dramatically flat. Surely the events we saw cannot be the "trauma" that caused Claire to block the abduction from her mind -- almost nothing traumatic actually happened to her! She was apparently doped to drunkenness the entire time, neither an active character in her own story, nor experiencing any real emotion as things happened to her.
At least the other season two flashbacks, the ones that have "told us nothing we didn't already know," carried some drama and emotion -- Charlie's betrayal by his brother, Hurley losing his friend as a result of winning the lottery, Jack getting divorced from his wife, and so on. Claire's "not a flashback" (because it did not in fact take us back to a period before the island) had no resonance; it was exposition.
Provocative exposition, maybe, but exposition nonetheless.
2 comments:
(ABC:Lost::McDonalds:Breakfast)
I loved this episode, but you are absolutely correct. It lacked an emotional core. Perhaps Locke's outburst at the end will dovetail into another Locke episode the next time ABC decides to grace us with a new episode.
I wonder if "Maternity Leave" could have achieved its goal with a dramatic punch. "The Other 48 Days" was a breezy expository episode that offered more drama.
I am relieved that the "pirate-others," "others," "Ethan," and possibly Dharma are all one and the same. The uncertainty was driving me nuts. And now there's a "him" they all answer to.
Ethan and Goodwin were on the same mission in their respective camps, which was obvious. Ethan must have determined Charlie wasn't "a good person."
My wife couldn't stand that Claire would leave her three-week-old baby behind with no obvious food source. That bothered me, too. Yes, the baby's in more danger in the jungle, but leaving him behind with no food and adding further lag between finding any medicine and administering it to him is just as risky, if not moreso.
I concur with being bothered that Claire was leaving her baby behind. I had hoped there would at least be mention of a make-shift breast pump or something.
Anyway, this was a potato chip of an episode. A tasty snack that satisfies a craving but is ultimately unfulfilling as a meal.
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