s3e12: Par Avion

So, is the new trend to reveal secrets that have already been revealed, only we get to make sure that they're true? If you saw "Two for the Road" (s2e20), you most likely already suspected that Jack's dad was also Claire's dad, so while this episode confirmed it, that can hardly be considered a major surprise. Also, while the backstories can still be interesting, I can't be the only one who thinks that they have far too little to do with the main stories these days. I guess Claire's backstory reveals why she has this wild mood swings from lovey-dovey to histrionic bitch? Maybe? Whatever, I could absolutely not care less about the Claire/Charlie plot.

I do still wonder if Jack's dad isn't dead. He's just connected in so much in the past - also, if he is dead, then the fact that he's Claire's father really doesn't mean anything, and is just kind of a dopey connection on the part of the writers. Since Claire never gets his name, it's hard to imagine how she and Jack could find out about this - I guess the Others could tell them, since they probably know in that way of theirs, but why would they feel a need to? It's too bad, because when the connections are done right they can be great. The moment late in Season One when Sawyer tells Jack about meeting his dad was, for my money, the single best moment of the entire series. I'm not kidding.

In the much, much more interesting plot, Locke is becoming kind of a shady character, leading up to next week. He "unintentionally" kills Mikhail by tossing him through the "fence," and then it turns out he took some C-4 from the house, not long after claiming he didn't know that it was there. They all climb over the fence, and then freak out because Jack appears to be playing football and having a grand old time in St. Othersburg. The spike of the ball right at the end made me chuckle.

Next week: a mystery worth knowing the answer to! We finally find out how Locke got paralyzed (at a guess, his dad was involved somehow), and then apparently he has some sort of score to settle with Ben, or wants to know the answer to something, or something. We're on kind of a roll right now - tonight's episode wasn't great mostly because it was a Claire/Charlie episode first and foremost, but the rest of it wasn't bad at all and as Claire/Charlie episodes go, it was fine, I guess. I think next week's episode could be one of the best in a while, although it does mean the return of the most pathetic character in TV history, Backstory Locke. We'll see.