Thursday, October 05, 2006

Lost: "A Tale of Two Cities" Review

It is no secret that Lost is my favorite show currently on TV. It perfectly blends sci-fi with drama and character development. Last night was the season premiere. What did I think of it?

When we last left our survivors, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were taken by the Others. This episode explains what is happening to them. But first, in the newest tradition of Lost, the first five minutes of the episode was a bit of misdirection. We are shown a seemingly normal day in the life of one suburban woman. Except she isn’t in suburbia, she’s an Other on the island, right before Oceanic Flight 815 crashes. This was a big bang right out of the gate and was magnificently played.

The episode then switched to the soap opera trio. Jack’s in the previously hypothesized underwater hatch, Sawyer’s in an animal cage, and Kate awakens in a gym shower. She dresses in new clothes provided by the Others and gets a chilling warning from Henry Gale, their leader: “The next two week are going to be unpleasant for her”.

The woman seen in the opening, Juliet, is interrogating Jack. Jack is upset at being captured and is being stubborn. The flashback this week does center on Jack, as he falls apart during the divorce proceedings as there is a breaking up his marriage to Sarah. Jack suspects Sarah cheated on him and is trying to figure out with whom. He thinks his dad is the one, and confronts him. This drives his previously sober for 50 days dad to fall off the wagon and Jack gets arrested for attacking his father. In the end, Sarah bails him out, and Jack sees the man Sarah is with. Sarah refuses to identify him, leaving Jack destroyed.

Juliet and Henry (who is identified as “Ben” by Juliet) seem to be at odds with each other. Whether or not this will lead to Juliet’s defection or is just an internal struggled to control the Others is yet to be seen. I do enjoy seeing the Others side of life, as it is very different from what we have seen over the past two seasons.

Was this episode perfect? No, not by a longshot. There seemed to be too many commercial breaks, and the fracturing of the story into three different locales (Jack’s, Kate’s, and Sawyer’s) hurt the story. It seemed more like a second or third episode, not a season premiere. It was a solid episode nonetheless.

3 ½ Fish Biscuits out of 5.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home