s3e01: A Tale of Two Cities

It's hard to believe that it's been four and a half months since the Season 2 finale, doesn't it? It's also hard to believe that after all the punches in that episode, the premiere would be such a letdown, but that was my first impression.

The pre-title sequence was pretty cool - at least, the last minute of it was, while the rest was mostly misdirecting filler. But after that, things kind of go downhill. Far too much of what's becoming a Lost staple, where one character asks a question that the audience wants to know the answer to, and the character of whom the question is being asked says nothing and sometimes just walks away. After a while that stops being mysterious and just gets irritating. The flashback scenes were, as far as I'm concerned, among the most useless in the show's run. (And, again in somewhat typical fashion, a character doesn't just say one sentence that could clear up a misunderstanding. Why didn't Jack's dad just say, "Dude, I didn't sleep with your wife?" Getting flustered and rambling about "letting it go" only makes things worse, guy!)

Still no explanation of what the Others want with Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, of course; some experiments are apparently going to be conducted (maybe?), or at least something that will make Kate's next two weeks unpleasant, but naturally there's pretty much no hint of what that is. Also, the Others somehow have all this information - and apparently it's ridiculously detailed, right down to the emotional state of Jack's ex-wife - yet when do they ever get off the island? And it's in neat little binders and everything so it's not like they have it e-mailed in. Once more, typical Lost - the more things are revealed, the less sense they tend to make. It's a good thing (or maybe a bad thing, depending on how you want to look at it) that I started with last year's premiere and not this year's, because I doubt it would have hooked me at all. But it's too late now.

Next week: Sayid, Jin and Sun attempt a daring sailboat rescue that probably fails. Benry Gale wants the boat (maybe because he gave his to Michael). Probably more happenings in Dharmaville, too, although I don't know that any made the teaser.