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A significant very-early-on death, for example, is annoyingly abrupt, not to mention borderline silly, turning the Black Smoke, one of Lost’s seminal elements, into almost a parody of itself. And though I don’t mind the show’s refusal to reveal major mysteries – it’s the journey folks, not the destination – it became a bit obvious that Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were pointedly avoiding asking the Others anything that would be to revealing, like, say, “Who the heck are you?”
But man, once Lost gets rolling, there’s no stopping it. If you thought the introduction of Henry Gale was a masterful plot development in Season 2, there are about eight developments that equal it here.
Jack pulls a marvelously surprising bait-and-switch at the end of episode 6, “I Do.” Meanwhile, back at the beach, Desmond develops a strange new talent – and what happens to him following the implosion of the hatch, told in episode 8, “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” will be heaven for any sci-fi geek.
In episode 11, “Enter 77,” we meet a man who claims to be the last living member of the mysterious Dharma Initiative – an organization, by the way, that we find out all about in Ben’s masterful flashback episode, “The Man Behind the Curtain.”
Along the way, we’re also treated to more of the character associations that the show is famous for; most significantly, a past connection (that many fans predicted) between Locke and Sawyer is revealed, and the way it’s handled in episode 19, “The Brig,” feels like something out of a whacked-out Cormac McCarthy novel. (That’s a compliment.)
The connection is first set up in probably one of the season’s best episodes, “The Man from Tallahassee.” We finally found out how Locke ended up in a wheelchair – and that’s not even the best part of the episode.
There are a few unimportant episodes, but even those are not without their charms. Episode 10, “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” survives pretty much on Hurley’s comic-relief status alone (although it gains some significance after watching Ben’s flashback). And episode 14, “Expose,” ends the story arc of one of Lost’s most notorious flubs: a couple known as Nikki and Paulo.
The two characters, played by Rodrigo Santoro and Kiele Sanchez, had supposedly “been there all along” – i.e., they crashed along with everybody else but we just hadn’t noticed – but their introduction early in season 3 was very clumsy, they were generic and uninteresting, and fans hated them. The way their plotline is wrapped up in “Expose” feels almost like an in-joke, and doesn’t really pertain to everything else on the show, but is still a (rather shocking) example of black comedy at its absolute finest.
The end of the season, which really begins with episode 17’s introduction of a mysterious woman named Naomi, ramps up the momentum to textbook perfection. Episode 21, “Greatest Hits,” is the entire series’ emotional high point; if you’re not moved to near-tears, you just might ...
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