“Lost” — The Man Behind the Curtain
Harry Potter and the Inscrutable Island
Massive spoiler related commentary right after the break…
First and foremost, it takes one massive sack of onions to end your episode with a bullet in the chest of your best character while he lays in a mass grave. Given Locke’s “magic” I suspect he isn’t dead, but for a brief moment let us assume that he is.
WHAT!? How on earth can you kill off Locke when there are so many other annoying main characters ripe for the plucking (i.e. Jack and Charlie)? Especially on the heals of an episode where Mr. John Locke drops a dead body at the feet of Ben and then proceeds to beat a foreigner to a bloody pulp.
Luckily for us, he probably isn’t going to die… probably.
Otherwise, the episode continued to do what most of the latter part of this season had done: teased us by delivering answers to questions we’ve long had only for us to zoom out a little and realize the answer was far more confusing than the actual question — an invisible man who lives in a literal haunted house? Nice touch.
Down on the beach I was hoping for a few more fireworks once Sawyer played the tape for everyone (and how is flipping the tape over suppose to make them NOT hate Juliette? Really, they should hate her more). The best line of the episode was far and away when Naomi (parachute girl) interrupted the bickering amongst the castaways about being thought of as dead, saying, “Don’t you want to be rescued?”
Jack is still on my list. What a jerk. Just because the beautiful blond with the big eyes is on your side doesn’t mean you can treat everyone like children. So what if you’re a doctor? Apparently the island has magical healing powers which means you might not be quite as amazing as you thought you were.
The flashback was good, even if it makes the VW Microbus episode from a few months back a bit less whimsical. My only complaint was that [is it Richard?] seemed so much older than Ben in the flashbacks but now seems way younger. I guess I can attribute that to more of the islands “magic.”
What’s interesting is that I’d say the show is as frustrating now as it was last November, and yet I’m enjoying this batch of episodes way more than I probably have any right to. This makes me optimistic for the 16 episode seasons. No dilly dally, just forward progression. It helps, of course to give the characters that are fun to watch a bit more screen time.
Seriously though… Locke better not die.
