Lost Re-view: Adrift

The second episode of Lost's second season simply couldn't match the high quality of the season premiere. It doesn't help that it focuses on the character I most dislike, Michael. But more than that -- according to the Lost fan sites, the episode had a troubled development process.

Apparently, this hour was originally developed to feature Sawyer flashbacks. Actors were cast, and filming began on some of the scenes that would have been included in that episode. But the producers saw the footage that was coming in, and decided they didn't like what they were seeing. Later on in the season, with the entire production process running barely ahead of a figurative runaway boulder, there wouldn't have been any time to do anything about it. But here, early in the season, they decided that they could afford to lose a few days' work. They scrapped the flashbacks, rewrote new material for Michael, and the result was Adrift.

The writers credits on the finished product went to Steven Maeda (a new staff writer hired for season two) and Leonard Dick (a returning veteran of season one). The hour was directed by series regular Stephen Williams.

Perhaps it's because the flashback material here was written so quickly, but that component of the episode takes very little time (just four scenes), and makes very little impact. We've already learned that Michael gave up Walt against his will. This episode fills in a sort of "middle period" after his car accident where he tried to mount a legal battle to keep him.

The first flashback shows Michael in a low grade lawyer's office. Outside the window, the still-standing World Trade Center towers establish a rough time frame (though I've read this detail was only added after the episode's first broadcast). The lawyer doesn't even get Michael's name right, then confides that if he's the best Michael can afford, he has no chance of winning this "David and Goliath" confrontation.

Next is an arbitration meeting where the lawyer hired by Susan (Walt's mother) eviscerates Michael. Then later, a scene were Susan meets with Michael one-on-one to plead with him to just let Walt go, to let Susan provide for him and not press the issue in court. In the final flashback, Michael has relented, and meets Susan and a young Walt in the park to give him a gift (a stuffed polar bear) and say goodbye.

And that's really all there is to it. The scenes are meant to play off the present, where Walt has been taken by the Others. Yet I'm not sure what statement is really being made here. Is it supposed to be a juxtaposition that Michael once let Walt go and now is fighting to get him back? Is it pure emotional resonance, depicting two occasions where Walt left Michael's life? It's hard to say when the dramatic punches are so weak... and especially when there are far more interesting things going on elsewhere in the episode.

That would be what's happening down inside the Hatch. This hour "rewinds" a bit into the events of the previous episode, showing Locke at the top of the shaft as the light flips on and Kate is dragged inside. We see him tie off his plane cable "rope" to climb down in himself.

When he reaches the bottom, he takes off his shoes and leaves them -- in the spot where Jack noticed them last episode / will notice them when he arrives later. (Tenses get a little weird here, folks.) Locke spies the Dharma Swan station logo on the wall -- it's displayed prominently for reasons that will be significant a little later.

But when Locke finds Kate, Desmond sneaks up behind him with a rifle and demands, "are you him?" In the full spectrum of the show, we know that Desmond is referring to his official Dharma replacement on "button pressing" duty, though this is left quite mysterious for the moment. Locke tries to improvise that yes, he is "him," but when Desmond tests him ("What did one snowman say to the other snowman?"), the ruse is pierced.

They try another approach -- the truth. Kate reveals they are survivors of a plane crash. 44 days ago, Locke says. Desmond flinches at this piece of information, and it's a cool moment of planning ahead by the writers that won't make sense until the second season finale, in which we learn that Desmond is himself responsible for their plane crash. But for now, there's 20 episodes between here and there.

Spurred on by Kate's "tell the truth" tactic, Locke presses on. He outs Kate as a fugitive and encourages Desmond to have her tied up. Locke is made to do the honors, and takes the opportunity to slip her a concealed knife before she's locked in a dark room.

Kate frees herself with considerable effort, and fumbles around for a light switch when the door to her room won't open. She finds herself in a pantry stacked high with Dharma-labeled food. (Notice the logo again, viewers!) She grabs a fistful of Apollo bars and escapes through a vent in the ceiling into the air ducts.

Meanwhile, Locke is trying to gain Desmond's trust by revealing all about the plane crash. Desmond is glad for the confirmation that there is still a real world out there beyond the walls of his bunker, but he's very concerned to hear if any -- and how many -- of the crash survivors have "gotten sick." Before Locke can press about what in the world that means, however...

Beep.

The sound that Lost fans would be haunted by for the entire season. The final four minutes of the Swan station's countdown clock have begun. What follows is a sequence that was hugely compelling and mysterious the first time around, further stealing focus from the drab Michael flashbacks. Though it's no longer mysterious once you've seen all of Lost, it is still momentous (being the introduction of such a major plot element) and thus still quite enjoyable. Desmond forces Locke to enter The Numbers on the computer, and the mysterious timer resets itself to 108 minutes.

And then they hear Jack arriving at the top of the shaft, calling out to them. Desmond uses his complicated series of mirrors to take a look, but doesn't recognize the good doctor from his own past. He starts up the record player to provide a distraction.

We now revisit the moments that closed out the previous episode, this time from a new perspective. We see Kate call out to Jack from her hiding spot in the vent, unable to be heard over the music. We see the showdown where Desmond holds Locke at gunpoint, and where a bullet nearly hits Kate in the vent. We see Jack recognize Desmond. And we...

Well... nothing. Infuriatingly, this episode ends this particular plot line in exactly the same place it ended the last time we saw it. I have a little more appreciation for the dramatic technique of this now, but at the time it first aired, this episode just pissed me off.

Though it did so not really because of the repetition of the Hatch story, but because of the lackluster Michael story. I've already covered his boring flashbacks. The "present" material surrounding him doesn't accomplish much either. It's basically 15-20 minutes of him yelling... for Walt, at Sawyer... just yelling.

It starts with Sawyer rescuing Michael from the ocean and pulling them both onto a bit of raft debris. Saywer has to perform CPR to save Michael's life. (Bummer.) Then Michael screams for Walt for a while. Sawyer tries to get him to conserve energy. Telling Michael what to do, no matter how much sense one is making, goes over about as well as usual.

Later, Michael decides to blame Sawyer for his misfortune. "You feel guilty. You made me fire that flare." As though they were out there in the ocean trying to do something other than find a boat, you know?

Then, courting a horde of angry "jump the shark" accusers, an actual shark shows up to harass the two of them for a while. Sawyer gets an oh-so-manly moment where he digs the bullet out of his shoulder himself with his bare hands, but then we're back to more yelling.

Sawyer comes to the realization that the people on that boat who took Walt were the Others, and from the Island itself. "Shut up," is about all he gets from Michael on this. (No "thanks, now I know where I can start looking for Walt.")

They drift along in the current, coming to one of the raft pontoons still intact from the wreckage. When Sawyer goes to retrieve it, the shark returns to menace. Before Michael takes it out with the gun he was pissed off at Sawyer for having in the first place, we get an interesting camera angle below the water that reveals a frame or two that would have the Lost fans bouncing off the walls. The tail of the shark is branded with the same logo Locke just saw earlier this episode inside the Hatch!

And this is indeed explained in time. Among Dharma's many odd experiments were a series of genetic modifications on animals -- polar bears, sharks, and birds (that are not saying "Hurley," dammit!) among them.

Anyway, the pontoon is recovered, a more stable life raft than the falling-apart collection of bamboo Michael and Sawyer had before. On the pontoon, they survive until morning. Michael finally breaks down and accepts that what happened is his own fault, that he never should have brought Walt along on the raft. But he swears he will get his son back, with a conviction that is proved out by Michael's actions near the end of the season.

The two then notice that the current has taken them right back to the Island. Home sweet home. They wash up on the shore... and then see Jin come running out of the jungle, screaming in panic and bound at the wrists. They can't understand the stream of Korean, but do make out one clear English word: "Others."

Shadowy figures -- though not actually the Others, we'll later learn -- approach on the beach. How they're actually shadowy in broad daylight is a bit of a mystery. (Practically speaking, the roles of Libby and Bernard had seemingly not been cast yet.)

And there you have it, save one very brief moment in the caves between Charlie and Claire that comes about halfway through the episode. Claire spots the statue in Charlie's bag that he took from the Nigerian plane. Just a little reminder to the viewers, keeping the heroin subplot alive.

I think with knowledge of the whole and the greater patience that goes with it, I don't have as low an opinion of this episode now as I did the first time I saw it. Still, it stole a lot of the momentum built up by the awesome season premiere. I rate it a C+.