s2e03: Orientation

Spoiler warning. Please note that this will be implied in pretty much every future post, so I don't want to hear any whining.

So, this episode... not the greatest. The season premiere was awesome, the second episode had its moments, but this... it seemed to have "filler" stamped on huge chunks, like the writers really only had a couple things they wanted to squeeze in there (Jack and Locke coming to an understanding, how Locke came to be this way, starting the "fate of the tail" plotline) and had to fill up the rest with Jack being a nearly insufferable boring ass. Locke's backstory was pretty slow too, and the appearance of Sayid and Hurley felt all but perfunctory. It would not at all be exaggeration to say that the coolest moment by far was the revelation in the teaser for next week that Jin apparently speaks English. (Not only English, but unaccented English at that, which raises further questions.) It's a shame they had to blow something so potentially huge, but you can see how they'd need to pull everyone back in who might have been annoyed at this episode's relative crappiness.

I don't think there's an episode from the first season that doesn't hold up in one way or another - those that are slower on advancing the overall plot at least work in a lot of decent backstory. There are a couple of relative clunkers, but even a bad episode of Lost isn't awful and I'd rather watch it than much of what's on TV, so I'll grant that. Still, this early in the second season I would have hoped for a little better, not a stopgap episode, which is how this one felt.

We open pretty much exactly where episode 2 left off, continuing this season's trend of leaving virtually no second unchronicled (and a number of seconds chronicled far too many times). Jin has run out of the jungle, tied up, as Michael and Sawyer come ashore - he gasps, "Others!" As we open here, the huge black guy beats the crap out of Sawyer, and they all get dragged off and thrown in a hole. (Why this didn't happen to Jin the first time is unclear.)

Back to the hatch. We have to see parts of things AGAIN, which is really unfortunate since the editor appears to have gone on a bender and completely changed the order of the dialogue from the previous episodes. Anyway, Kate goes to hit Desmond with a gun, his gun goes off, and the computer gets hit. Desmond has a spaz and tries to fix it, but ends up making things worse. Meanwhile, Jack is even more obnoxious than usual and it finally seems to get to Locke a bit, explained by his backstory in which it's shown that he used to be just as bad at letting go of things as Jack has been shown to be. We also meet Helen, the name Locke later (earlier) uses with the phone non-sex worker. Gee, I wonder how this ends.

Michelle Rodriguez shows up! She gets dumped in the hole and it's revealed that she was on the flight. Then she kicks Sawyer's ass (not a good episode for him), takes his gun, and is hoisted up out of the hole, because she's either one of or in cahoots with the people who seem to be the "others," which probably means they're not them.

Jack and Locke watch a film stamped with the same seal we see around the hatch and on the shark - it belongs to the Dharma Initiative. The film is vague but seems to suggest that the whole thing is some sort of social experiment. Jack says as much to Desmond. Desmond's response is "Yeah, but what if it's not?" Jack doesn't really have a comeback for that.

The computer seems unfixable so Desmond takes off running. Jack follows and confronts him. Desmond finally recognizes Jack and inquires about Sarah; hearing that they were married but now are not, Desmond is apparently satisfied (that makes one of us) and leaves. Welcome to Plot Hole Island. I assume they have to call this back at some point.

Sayid and Hurley are brought by Kate. Hurley sees the food that will apparently get him in a lot of trouble next week. Sayid fixes the computer apparently by waving his hands around, and then Locke convinces Jack that he has to press the button because Locke doesn't want to be alone in having faith that something larger is going on. Jack waits until the last possible second and then presses it. Locke declares "I'll take first shift" (since the counter must be reset every 108 minutes) and... we're done! Are you as bored as I was?

So we learned basically nothing about the Others. Next week it seems like we will, and if we don't at least there will be some character development in the form of Hurley doing dumb things or what have you. I'm most interested in this Jin thing, though.