309 – Stranger in a Strange Land

Review:

I expected to give this episode a 0.0 but I was surprised when I rewatched it.  It is a bad episode but I had only remembered the awful parts.  the flashback was most definitely irrelevant and annoying.  The Sheriff, Isabelle was a waste of space and has no bearing on the story.  Juliet’s court case was vague to the point of being useless.  And the tease with Cindy and the kids was maddening.

Before I rewatched it I was willing to write this episode off as being non-canon in my mind.

But I was surprised.  What I did like was the parts about Karl and Alex, and I especially like what Tom says to Jack about his perspective on The Others (see the Mr. Friendly section below for more info).  The episode is probably still the worst episode ever, but at least it’s not a zero.  1.5/10.0

Season 2 in review

I’m done another season.  Just like last time I’ll post links to all of the episodes.  Also here is a link to my “Season 1 in review” post, in which you can get to all of the season one revlysis’.

In this season review, I’m listing all of the episodes and the ratings I gave to them.  Then I’m listing the big story arcs that last through this season.  Then I’m linking you to the theories I came up with this year.

If you are in a rush, or just don’t like reading all this stuff, at least skip down to the part about Locke’s story, that is the section I hope everybody reads.

Ratings

201 – Man of Science Man of Faith – 6.0
202 – Adrift – 6.0
203 – Orientation – 9.5
204 – Everybody Hates Hugo – 8.0
205 – …And Found – 2.5
206 – Abandoned – 2.5
207 – The Other 48 Days – 10.0
208 – Collision – 3.5
209 – What Kate Did – 9.5
210 – The 23rd Psalm – 7.5
211 – The Hunting Party – 5.0
212 – Fire + Water – 0.0
213 – The Long Con – 4.0
214 – One of Them – 8.5
215 – Maternity Leave – 9.0
216 – The Whole Truth – 4.0
217 – Lockdown – 9.5
218 – Dave – 9.0
219 – S.O.S. – 2.0
220 – Two for the Road – 8.5
221 – ? – 9.0
222 – Three Minutes – 7.5
223 – Live Together Die Alone (part 1) – 10.0
223 – Live Together Die Alone (part 2) – 10.0

The average rating for this season is 7.0.  The average for season 1 was 6.5.  I don’t find that shocking at all but I can imagine others might.  I believe that Lost has improved as it went, there have been lulls but they usually don’t extend for a whole season.

As for surprises this season, there weren’t many.  I knew that I loved “The Other 48 Days”, and the finale.  I also knew that I hated “Fire + Water” and “…And Found”.  I didn’t expect myself to dislike “Man of Science Man of Faith”, but that’s just because when I look back all I remember is that glorious opening scene.  The middle of this season really slows to a crawl, after I had got past “Everybody Hates Hugo” I was not looking forward to most of the episodes following.  But I forgot about episodes like “What Kate Did”, “Maternity Leave” and “Lockdown”.  In all I think this season is ridiculed way more than it should be.  The majority of the people who hated this season are those who started watching the show in season one believing that it was a simple drama in a tropical location.  In season 2 they were forced to suspend their disbelief and watch a sci-fi show.  So they left, if you look at the ratings you’ll see that it’s true, most people left in season 2 before it really got exciting.

Arcs

There were a few themes or story arcs in this season that I feel must be talked about.

The Tailies

The Tailies are a moderately contentious subject amongst Lost fans.  Many people hated them, but I loved them.  The first half of the season is essentially dedicated to them.  It really was an epic story, the writers added three major characters; Ana Lucia, Libby, and Eko; and two minor characters; Bernard, and arguably Cindy; to the cast.  This on top of a new recurring star, Desmond.  They had only killed two characters, Boone and Shannon.  The cast got pretty bloated pretty fast.  I can see why they did this, season one showed us the backstories of almost all the survivors.  (Kate and Locke were the only ones who had real, obvious mysteries remaining, correct me if I’m wrong.)  The writers needed some new material, they didn’t want to show trivial flashbacks of the main characters (which they still did).  So they tried to add new characters.  It almost worked.  Out of the four permanent Tailies, one of them had an intriguing flashback.  Eko’s life was amazing, I think we can agree on that.  Ana Lucia was depressing.  Bernard was filler.  And I don’t even count Libby’s flashback, but I’m sure it would have been great if it had happened.

So fans people hated the Tailies.  These are the same people who will be complaining about change until they die.  They complained and were answered.  At this point in the show only one Tailie remains, and he is just a recurring star.

The truth is that this storyline was vital.  If you put yourself into the role of a season one writer, you’re told you have to stretch this show out for an indiscernible amount of time, what do you do.  I’d come up with two ideas, the tail section and having red-shirts coming out of the woodwork.  And neither of those ideas really worked (at least not for the majority of the fans). 

Now that the show is in it’s second last season, dwelling on old forgotten storylines is essentially useless.  But I just want everyone to know that The Tailies weren’t a mistake, they had a purpose and they were an inevitable addition to the cast.

Intro to The Others

Another addition to the cast was The Others.  We knew that The Others existed, we even saw a few of them last year, but in season one they were essentially boogey-men.  The second half of this season showed us what they could be.  They could be humans, they could be right, or they could be pure evil, they could be a cult.  Unfortunately we didn’t actually find out many cold hard facts about them until season 3, but the season 2 tease sure was fun. 

We met a few very important Others:

Ben is the most prominent, I’m sure by now we all know that he was meant to be a guest star but he was good enough to add to the cast.  Ben adds a danger to the show that it had been missing.  He also proved to us that The Others were heartless and not to be trusted, that idea was slowly dismantled in season 4, but the potential danger of The Others is still in the back of our minds thanks to Ben.

We also met Bea, Ms. Klugh, a very mysterious, beautiful woman who exudes calm control.  She confused and intrigued me from her first scene, I still miss her.  She appears to be The Other in charge of Walt,

We met Tom.  Well we originally met him in season one, but he has a much bigger role and Ben’s surrogate in this season.  A funny and dangerous character.

And we met Alex.  The story of Alex was amazing.  In season one we found out that Rousseau had had a child.  I largely ignored that, but when Alex came into the show it was amazing.  Suddenly these characters who had been so evil, might actually be people with personalities and emotions.  Alex tried to do the right thing from the sidelines, unfortunately in this season she is essentially a background character.  But I think it’s safe to say that we all noticed her and were very intrested in her.

Locke’s story

I’ve been pushing my perspective of Locke this whole season (and most of the last season too).  I see Locke’s journey as a point A to point B journey with a serious detour in the middle.

Point A was when he crashed on the island, he gained the use of his legs and started out on his journey.  (Note: point A could have happened at any of the times when Richard tried to get him to come to the island.  Unfortunately Locke didn’t answer that call.)

Point B is when Locke took over control of the Others and started to listen to Jacob.  Locke was fated to go from Point A to Point B.  Unfortunately he insists on taking the long way there.

The detour that I speak of is The Swan (or The Hatch, whichever you prefer).  He accidentally finds the Hatch and immediately thinks this is his fate, it isn’t.  I can’t say that enough, it was not Locke’s fate to go into The Swan and press the button.  That was an important job, but it wasn’t Locke’s job.  Locke was meant to join Jacob and The Hostiles (who later became The Others).  Locke became preoccupied with The Swan.  The island tried to warn him away.  In the episode Dues Ex Machina the island intercedes, it takes away Locke’s ability to walk as a warning.  Then when he doesn’t get that clue, it leads him to Yemi’s plane, the plane is hanging over The Pearl.  Locke doesn’t find the Pearl, The island kills Boone.  Locke freaks out but still doesn’t find The Pearl.  Instead he goes to The Swan.  He never goes back to the place where the plane fell, and therefore never found The Pearl.  If he did, everything would be different.  He would have climbed down there and had his little freak-out and realized that it was all just mindgames.  He would have left and Jacob could have guided him to his true calling, as his messenger and as the leader of his minions, The Others.  But that didn’t happen, instead Locke went into The Swan and joyfully pressed the button, thinking he was doing his life’s work.  We all thought he was an idiot, the character was just too great to have to sit down in a hole pressing a button.  In the end everything got completely bungled up and the Swan imploded leaving Locke with no choice but to try to pursue his destiny, which he finally did in seasons 3 and 4.

So there you have it, that’s how I see Locke in season 2.  Unfortunately many people see him acting the fool in the finale and write him off as misguided, and that is true, but only in season 2.

Theories

I came up with a few theories this season, some are trivial and some are serious, none of them are true game changers.

The Whispers

The whispers or voices or whatever you want to call them, have annoyed me for quite a while.  I don’t have the patience to listen to every single occurrence or to decipher what they are saying.  I really doubt that they have a high significance.  But while watching season 2 I came up with a theory about them, I don’t want to write the whole thing out again, you can read it here.

Hurley’s Powers

I don’t think I need to go to deeply into this, since I just posted it yesterday.  You can go here to read it.

Eko, Charlie and Locke are dead

I’m just posting this one today.  After rewatching season two it occurs to me to ask questions that I had forgotten about.  Most notably the question, what happened to the people who were in the hatch when it imploded?  After thinking about that it occured to me, how strange it is that three of the characters who were in the hatch have died since.  And really these three deaths were the most important deaths in recent history of Lost.  You could say that they were destined to die.. again.  I believe that they died at the end of season 2, and they were esentially zombies for the rest of their lives on the show (like Claire in season 4).

Read that theory here.

So there you have it.  On to season 3!

– izi

220 – Two For the Road

Review:

This is the most infamous season 2 episode.  When I think back to season two this is what comes to mind.  That scene still affects me.

As for the rest of the episode, it was mighty good.  The flashback showed a surprising connection between Ana Lucia and Christian.  We had a very large clue as to the connection between Claire and Christian, and subsequently Jack. 

We also witnessed some of the tragedy between Hurley and Libby.  This episode is terribly upsetting but it’s also one of the most memorable episodes ever.  8.5/10.0

208 – Collision

Review:

There’s not much to say about this episode.  It’s the aftermath of Ana Lucia shooting Shannon.  There’s some good character development, but it’s unnecessarily dark.  I don’t think we needed another overly guilty character in the show.  Ana Lucia’s flashback wasn’t wonderfully exciting, it just shows that she’s been having a pretty terrible life for a while now.  Her second flashback is much more significant.

For an episode that follows “The Other 48 Days” it does pretty good at easing us into the regular island life that lasts for the next few episodes.  But this episode isn’t really memorable.  It has no mythology in it at all, although the introduction of Eko to the other survivors was pretty important.  I’d say 3.5/10.

207 – The Other 48 Days

Review:

And here it is people, one of my favorite episodes of all time.  I could watch it over and over and love it every time.

In this episode we get to see what happened to the poor Tailies for the 48 days before we saw them.  So while we were feeling sorry for the main survivors, thinking that their lives were stressful, we had no idea the kinds of things that could have been happening.  The non-Tailies were lucky that they got Ethan, the less competent Other.  All he was able to do was botch a kidnapping of Claire, then get himself killed.  On the other hand The Tailies went through hell.  If you haven’t watched this episode recently I suggest you do, it’s quite an ordeal.

The problem is, it makes me dislike the whiny people that we watched for all of season one. 

10/10 without a doubt.  I love on-island flashbacks and I love when the writers mess with the shows format.

(Note: Just for fun, since the writers changed the format of this episode, I thought I’d change the format of my revlysis.  I got rid of all the names of the survivors who aren’t in this episode.  And I’m putting pictures on the side in chronological order.)

206 – Abandoned

Review:

Yay, it’s the end of Shannon!  They do a pretty good job of making us not hate Shannon after she’s dead, at least not for a few episodes.  In the end it’s too hard to ignore the fact that there was no chemistry or logic between Sayid and her and she was a bitch and stuff.  But her flashback was definitely sad, there’s no arguing with that.

There’s some exciting Tailies stuff, but it’s nothing compared to what happens in the next episode (I’m so excited).  Shannon’s story is just not cinematically or dramatically exciting so it’s really tough to care about it.  But Shannon does die so it’s not all bad.  I’ll give it another 2.5/10

205 – …And Found

Review:

We see how Sun and Jin meet, thrilling stuff.  We also get to see The Tailies in action, and a slight glimpse of The Others.

All in all this was a dull episode, I love The Tailies, but there just wasn’t enough of them to offset the boringness of a Sun and Jin flashback.  2.5/10

204 – Everybody Hates Hugo

Review:

Hurley’s flashback is sad enough/happy enough to cry to.  Seriously, a tear.  When you see what the poor guy went through after he won the lottery, and then when he saw it all happening again when Jack put him in charge of the food.  Sad.

Also on the other end of the island, Jin Michael and Sawyer are introduced to The Tailies, for real this time.  We get a glimpse of how hard they had it.  The Tailies storyline was one of my favorite in all the seasons of Lost, so I love to watch it again.

This episode was good but not for the usual reasons.  This is more of a transition episode, we are just getting introduced to the Tailies, as people, and the people at the beach are learning to live with The Swan.  We had a melancholy Hurley story and we also had a very surprising introduction to The Tailies.  8.0/10.0

203 – Orientation

Review:

We find out a lot about Desmond in this episode.  We see the picture of him and Penny, surprisingly, and he tells them a little about his time in The Swan. 

Desmond also gives Jack and Locke the Orientation.  Though that orientation we get our first glimpses at the Dharma Initiative.  During season 2 we learn a little about Dharma, but we should be paying special attention to Dharma now because it will be the focus of season5, apparently.

We also learn about Lockes past.  We meet the real Helen (Katey Segal!)  And we see that his father issues are very long lasting.  The flashbacks in season two are much less important than the season 1 flashbacks but I think that Locke’s are still pretty good.  For some reason I never get tired of watching Locke struggle through life.

On the other side of the island, Sawyer, Michael and Jin are being tested by The Tailies.  Of course I love that.

This episode is one of the most important episodes in the season, I feel it is more important than the premiere episode (of season 2).  9.5/10.0 

202 – Adrift

Review:

We go back down The Hatch in this episode.  The portions in the hatch are a lot more exciting and informative from Locke and Kate’s perspective.  Unfortunately we spend half the episode dwelling on Michael and how sad it is that Walt is gone.  Foretunately the last scene is glorious, when The Tailies come down the beach with their spiked sticks and clubs it is so wonderfully forboding.

For some unknown reason they chose to have a Michael fashback in the second episode.  This was truly, one of the most useless Lost flashbacks.  We already knew that Michael lost Walt to his girlfriend.  They decided to redo that storyline, this time with lawyers.  It accomplished nothing, it just made MIchael seem weaker, if that was possible.

This episode was about two thirds good but one third very bad so I’ll give it 6/10.