Get
comfy, folks. Lost is back, so commence scratching
your heads in confusion. Like the previous two seasons,
Lost continues its trend of “opening eye”
opening shots, usually belonging to someone of greater significance
throughout the impending season.
Season
1’s eye belonged to Jack, a surgeon whose U.S.-bound
plane had just crash landed on an island somewhere in the
South Pacific – we think. The bulk of the season centered
around Jack’s struggles to gain self-control, wrangle
his inner demons, and assume an authoritative stance amongst
the rest of the island’s castaways … or Losties
as we preferred to call them at the time.
Season 2 opened on the eyeball of Desmond,
a mysterious man who had been living for some time inside
a bunker sealed shut by one of the mysterious items from
the first season – the hatch. While our dear Losties
set to work blowing the hatch door open, Desmond was living
out his cyclical lifestyle as instructed – entering
the mysterious set numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) into a
rather dated computer every 108 minutes. Desmond passes
this burden onto the Losties, but eventually returns to
help answer some questions, kinda.
Now
we meet Juliette, a woman living amongst the Others, a group
of inhabitants on the island believed to be associated with
the Dharma Initiative. We learn that these so-called Others
live in uniform houses, all colored yellow, and pass the
time with activities such as book of the month club meetings.
Then
a rumble occurs, and we learn that Desmond had let the timer
run down in the Swan station. A look to the sky confirms
this, as Oceanic Flight 815 splits in two, and splashes
into the ocean. Oceanic indeed.
So, what does Season 3 hold in store for
us? More confusion? Bring it on. It would seem that Henry
Gale, or Ben as he is called by Juliette, is preparing Jack,
Sawyer, and Kate for some sort of two-week experiment. Each
one is being held independent of one another at first, the
boys getting treated to scummy accommodations while Kate
is given a hot shower and new clothes.
Why does Gale select Kate for an Oceanside
rendezvous? What does he hope to learn from her? Not sure.
Juliette, however, is busily extracting information from
Jack – who just so happens to be the subject of this
week’s flashbacks. We are treated to an interesting
display of distrust on behalf of the dear doctor in regards
to his ex-wife and their divorce. At one point, Jack’s
paranoia has led him to believe that his ex’s new
beau was in fact his own father. We know his paterfamilias
is troubled, but he’s hardly that kind of scumbag.
 |
One
can’t help but wonder if jealousy won’t come
back to haunt Jack in the near future, as Sawyer and Kate
seem to be cozying up to one another. Speaking of Sawyer,
he spends most of the episode in an abandoned bear cage
(perhaps of the polar variety?). Inside the cage is a food
dispensing machine, which Sawyer eventually figures out
how to operate, leading to one of the wittiest moments of
the episode when Mr. Beard-O, or Tom, exclaims, “I
see you got yourself a fish biscuit. It only took the bears
two hours.”
Developments abound, and it’s too
early to really know how all of these planted seeds will
pay off over the course of the season. In the meantime we
are left to wonder what the rest of the Losties are up to.
What happened to Eko, Locke, and Desmond? Most importantly,
what was with that closing shot from the Season 2 finale?
Next
Week: The rest of the Losties finally emerge, hopefully
mounting on an expedition to save Kate, Jack, and Sawyer.
Meanwhile, Henry Gale hopes to get his hands on the boat
they made off with at the end of last season. Wednesday
can’t get here soon enough.
