the return of Lost

[pop culture]

posted by catherine / January 07, 2005 /

previously on lost: claire and her Baby of Evil are kidnapped and charlie's strung up on a tree by the evil ethan but brought back to life by jack; locke and boone are the new batman and robin of the island, going around on escapades discovering a weird metal underground thing that looks suspiciously like a door; and in flashbacks we discover the major, major daddy issues of jack.

this episode starts off with tide threatening to engulf the island, therefore forcing everbody to start hauling ass closer to the jungle in order not to be tsunami'd. yeah, it seems a little crass in hindsight, and the pictures of humongous waves crashing in the island are a little too killer wave-ish, but those poor execs at ABC are so overworked that no one could expect them to redo this part of the episode for sensitivity's sake.

meanwhile, sawyer, whose accent and southern adages keep becoming ridiculously more stereotyped, stalks kate in the jungle and they end up taking a sexy swim together in a picture-perfect waterfall. i note with pleasure that kate has Thighs of Thunder. well, actually, not really at all, but she's no rapidly diminishing waif. anyway, they're all flirty in the water until they dive down and find a pair of rotting bodies, still strapped into airline seats. nothing'll kill a love buzz faster than decomposing corpses! there's a suitcase under one of the seats that kate wants, and she ends up fighting sawyer over it, but sawyer steals it away and protects it by sleeping with it between his legs. ew? kate keeps trying to take it away from him, though, because it's the now-dead US marshal's suitcase and has something of great value to her in it.

eventually, after jack has helped kate dig up the dead marshal's body to get the suicase key (there goes the zombie theory; his body is definitely not walking around elsewhere) we get a somewhat retarded and boring flashback that ends up revealing that a) kate is a liar b) kate is a bankrobber c) kate is a maneater d) kate really knows how to handle firearms and e) kate killed the man she loved and will also kill you if you don't let her have the tiny toy plane in the suitcase which belonged the man she both loved and killed. huh? there has got to be more to this storyline. right? there could be connotations made between the toy plane and the plane they were all on, but, erm, i'm not sure exactly what they would be. was he a plane terrorist? a pilot? did she have something to do with the plane blowing up midair, killing her love? additionally, i forgot to mention that kate and jack discussed the US marshall, guns, crime, etc, in front of sun, whom they believe to not speak english, but who, of course, speaks english perfectly well. so she now knows some shit.

the only other significant storyline in the episode is between sayid and shannon. sayid, amongst many meaningful glances, convinces the self-pitying shannon to translate some french on mathematic documents that he stole from the Crazy French Lady (who, by the way, is still out and about as far as we know). she doesn't want to at first, but eventually figures out that the french notations are nothing more than the lyrics to "beyond the sea," which she then sings, very nicely, as sayid looks at her rather tenderly. but THEN the camera pans from that nice scene to boone standing in the trees behind them and staring at them with absolutely the most psychotic expression i've ever seen. which i think can only help boost my incest theory. gross, i know, but nothing brings in the ratings during sweeps season like incest!

overall, this episode was terribly boring, especially after all the interesting Baby of Evil/Jack's Father of Evil backstories of previous shows. the monster stompy thing didn't make another appearance; however, my buddies susan and kanishka have rather interesting theories regarding that. susan noted that the metal casing that boone and locke discovered looks an awful lot like the outside of an airplane; kanishka thinks that the monster stompy thingy might not be an animal, but rather a large piece of construction equipment, akin to a bulldozer, and that the Crazy French Lady and/or Ethan and/or Whomever could be creating some sort of enormous complex, perhaps underground.

next week we get locke knocking boone unconscious, and this snippet from the Lost web site: "When Locke learns that Boone wants to tell their "secret" to Shannon, Shannon's life is placed in sudden peril, and the shocking truth about her past with Boone is revealed. Meanwhile, Kate is puzzled by Sun's mysterious behavior, and a hungry Hurley must repay a debt to Jin."