The Best Week(s) of T.V. Ever, Part Two: Lost

This is my second in a three-part series of evaluating the third seasons of three of the best shows on TV. My first piece dealt with Veronica Mars, and I’ll be covering Battlestar Galactica in a subsequent article. Now, though, I turn my attention to Lost.

This show gets my award for single best first five minutes of a season opener (“A Tale of Two Cities”) ever. As we watched what initially seemed like a rather dull book club, the sudden appearance of a familiar face (Goodwin) made me believe we’d ventured into an Other-flashback. Of course, the “earthquake” happens, everyone runs out of the house, and we begin to see more familiar faces: Ethan Rom and “Henry Gale” (who we now know as Ben). Looking to the skies, they saw neither bird nor Superman but a plane cracking in half. As we see Ethan ordered to go become a member of the fuselage survivors and Goodwin ordered to infiltrate the Tailies, we realize very quickly that this is no “real” flashback. We’ve just caught a glimpse of the lives of the Others prior to the arrival of Oceanic Flight 815, and this is no collection of lean-tos and shacks: this is a full blown town. Streets are lined with modest, pastel homes, white picket fences, and I’d be willing to bet Vincent is not the only puppy on this island. Welcome to Otherville.

From here, “The Tale of Two Cities” becomes pretty typical for an episode of Lost. As has been tradition, the season opens with a Jack-centric episode, complete with only vaguely informative flashbacks. By the end of episode 3.01, we’ve seen a lot more of the Others. They seem to be holding Jack captive in or near the Hydra station, an underwater “hatch” that has been alluded to since season one, where we witnessed a mysterious rope leading underwater. Meanwhile, Sawyer and Kate are being held in giant cages, the previous occupants of which were likely those pesky polar bears. One of the most enjoyable bits of this episode, at least for me, was watching Sawyer try to extract food from the elaborate lever system. My psychology-oriented mind jumped for joy at that one. Here is one test subject that will likely never learn helplessness, but watching the Others try will be awfully interesting.

The two most interesting points of the episode involve the only two females featured: the new Juliet and our old friend Kate. Juliet appears to be a long-standing member of the Others of high rank who is given the job of breaking Jack. As Jack is nothing if not stubborn, hers is not the easiest of tasks. While I would not say he is broken by the end of the episode, he’s certainly calmer—this woman is good at her job. The fact that I’m even vaguely interested in what’s going on with Kate surprises me, but damn if I’m not insanely curious about what happened between her and Ben on the beach.

The second episode of the new season, “The Glass Ballerina,” eased the biggest fear I had at the end of episode one: that we were going to have to relive each period of time in triplicate, once for each set of survivors on the island. Fortunately, even though the second episode focused on Sun, Jin, and Sayid, there was a definite forward movement of time as we continued to look back at Jack, Sawyer, and Kate. This episode’s flashbacks gave us considerably more insight into Sun and Jin’s relationship, as we discovered that Sun actually did have an affair with Jae, her English tutor. Depending on how much time passed between this flashback (and Jae’s ultimate death by suicide), this raises the question of exactly whose baby Sun is carrying.

On the island, further strife is caused between Sun and Jin, as Jin becomes more and more protective of Sun and her unborn child. Sun resists his protection and joins with Sayid (who has correctly guessed that Sawyer, Jack, and Kate were taken) in a plot to capture and torture two of the Others. Predictably, the trio fails, and the Others end up taking their boat and almost Sun, who shoots an Other in self defense.

In the Others’ camp, Sawyer and Kate are put to hard labor. While there is some pleasant sexual tension between Sawyer and Kate, the only real point of interest came when Sawyer took the opportunity to kiss Kate and tick off his captors, which gave him the chance to get himself into a nice little brawl with the guards. Sawyer being Sawyer, he planned this all as an opportunity to learn just what kind of people he was fighting. His discoveries, for the most part, please him: only two “real fighters” in the batch, plus Juliet, who coldly held Kate at gunpoint to stop the fighting. Sawyer judges her quickly and declares her the true danger. He believes, and I agree, that she would have killed Kate without blinking.

The final moments of the episode show Ben offering Jack an awfully sweet deal: do what Ben wants when the time comes and Jack can go home. Do I believe Jack will take him up on this? No. What I do believe it implies is that Jack isn’t nearly as important to the Others as he thinks he is. He’s expendable, important only in the short run. It seems to me that Sawyer and Kate are being groomed to become a part of them. As Ben said, “it’s going to be a hard two weeks.”