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Spoilers!
First, the not-so-great:
So far, as I mentioned in my review of “Further Instructions”, I am fairly dissatisfied with their handling of the whole Swan thing. It was an example of something that’s becoming common on Lost: A mystery, introduced early on, that continued to become more mysterious as (vague) information was revealed, and then forgotten. The chain of questions/answers goes something like this:
Q. What’s in the hatch?
A. A guy.
Q. What’s the guy doing?
A. Pushing a button.
Q. What’s the button do?
A. Stops something from happening.
Q. So… what happens if the button’s not pushed?
A. Something bad involving electromagnetism.
Q. And what sort of effect would it have?
A. A bad effect. For example, it brought down Flight 815.
Q. Ok, is there any other way to stop it?
A. Yes. You can turn a key.
Q. What happens when you turn the key?
A. The sky turns purple, Desmond travels through time, and the hatch explodes, but neatly deposits its inhabitants in the jungle.
Q. Hmm… ok, but what does it all mean?
A. What does what all mean?
Q. The key! The electromagnetism! The damned hatch!
A. Oh, that’s blown up now.
They’ve done a similar thing with the Others. In revealing more of them to us, we actually don’t know very much more about them than we did two seasons ago: We still don’t know why the kidnapped Claire, or why they kidnapped/killed so many Tailies, or why they traipse around in rags with fake beards, or what in the hell they’re doing there in the first place. All we know is that…
Well, not much. They live in a village and can watch baseball. And their only medical facility appears to be very far from their dwelling. And they’re working on something. And they had bears. And they have a fertility doctor. And at least one of them (Ben) lived on the island his whole life.
Pickett’s vendetta against Sawyer was just stupid.
Also, I hate Paolo and Nikki. And I did not care for the sudden elimination of Eko (the only Season 2 character left now is Bernard, and I don’t think we’ve seen him or Rose all season).
In all, the narrative structure of the season has been a bit weak. I think there was too much focus on the Hydra early on, instead of intercutting beach action with Others-related events. But then again, there hasn’t really been any beach action. Since the abduction of Kate/Sawyer/Jack, and the explosion of the hatch, and the escape of Michael, the Beachies have: Had some booze, argued, and tooled around in vans.
What happened to the concept of War against the Others? Locke’s speech about finding their friends amounted to being just speech. The Beachies should have, at the very least, been starting to explore again. Oh well, at least Kate has gotten back in touch with Danielle. She has maps.
(Sayid had her maps. Why haven’t they been used at all? You’d think they would show things like the Others’ village and the Hydra Island. You know, things that, way back in Season 1, would make someone say something like, “Hey! There’s a village!”)
Finally, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Jack’s tattoos and I didn’t need an episode wasted explaining them. Are they also going to spend an episode revealing the circumstances behind Charlie’s most recent pre-island haircut?
Now, as for the not-so-bad:
I do love more genuine mystery. I was super-psyched by the sudden appearance of “Patchy” back in “The Cost of Living.” Apparently tonight’s episode should revisit him, so I’m interested to see where that will go.
Also I’m pleased with the overall direction of the plot. I’m glad that after a bunch of nonsense, it’s basically down to just Jack with the Others. (Although I think that if that’s where they were going with it, they should have just had them take Jack from the start.)
Plus they’ve kept the flashbacks nicely rotated. I enjoy that they haven’t been completely Jack-centric— although he’s had two so far this season, he had a total of four in Season 1. In “Not In Portland” they had the first flashback for an Other, which was a great idea.
Finally, Ben. Ben is the best damn character on the show and he needs to be in at least forty minutes of every episode.
What would I like to see?
There are still a lot of great places they can go this season. Some of the things I would love to see in the coming weeks would be: Flashbacks for Danielle or Ben, more screen time spent in Otherville (rather than superfluous Dharma Stations), and somebody growing some damn balls besides Kate.
