Lost
Do No
Harm
original airdate: 04-06-05
Up is down. Black is white. Alias
was more interesting than Lost. Whaaaat?! Yes,
it’s true. This week Alias, which has degraded
this season to a mere shadow of its Season 1 and 2 brilliance,
was actually pretty intriguing. Whereas Lost sadly
degraded into an episode of ER, which actually
died on the table many years ago. OK, maybe that’s
too harsh (about this episode of Lost, not ER).
It was still a fair episode. Just not a lot happened, and
it was certainly no match for last week’s outstanding
entry.
The
episode essential rotates among three stories in the following
order of descending screen time: Jack’s efforts to
save Boone, Claire going into labor, and Jack’s wedding
via flashback. Oh, and there are a few scenes regarding
Sayid’s courtship of Shannon. All pretty mundane stuff
seen on countless other shows.
And
that’s the problem. Lost is an unusual show
set in an unusual place where unusual things happen. Except
for this week.
Sure,
there’s entertainment value in seeing Jack and Sun
(who clearly learned English via The Discovery Channel)
having to use what’s at hand to try to save Boone.
And there are some nice tense moments when Jack must decide
whether to take drastic action. But non-hospital births
(not to mention the cliché of simultaneous death
and birth to show the so-called Cycle of Life) and romantic
picnics have shown up ad nauseam elsewhere. And they certainly
don’t rate on a show that last served up mysterious
portals, creepy visions, and a harrowing back-story about
a man being conned out of his kidney by his estranged birth
father.
Perhaps
it’s fitting that this episode has one of those music-filled
endings also seen on other dramas. Ironically, it’s
the same type of ending that earlier this season the writers
cleverly skewered by having Hurley’s Walkman crap
out in the middle of the music.
As if
to apologize for a boring episode, ABC offered up a preview
that had more to offer in 60 seconds than in the previous
60 minutes. It was if they were trying to say, “please
keep watching, it’ll get interesting and strange again.
Really.”
Hopefully,
though, some of preview scenes were red herrings, e.g.,
vision sequences instead of actual happenings. If not, then
ABC has really done a disservice by showing too much.
In the
meantime, the spare brain time not being used to dissect
Lost this week can go towards trying to figure
out just what Sloane and Jack are up to…
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