A Tale of Two Decent Episodes
… And one big heaping piece of filler episode.
First a word about the filler: Further Instructions.
What’s missing from the title is what viewers did for one hour: wait. As in the phrase “Await further instructions,” and boy did we ever. Nothing happened in the Locke centric episode.
We didn’t learn much new about anyone or anything. Nothing was truly at stake as the island’s polar bears have a pretty bad track record versus the humans. Locke’s pre-island life has meanderings in the criminal underworld, and yeah, we get it, he was a lovable loser.
It’s my understanding that “Further Instructions” was originally scheduled for airing as episode two of this season, but was switched with “The Glass Ballerina” for good reason. Things happened in Ballerina: Sun was unfaithful to Jin and was exposed as a liar and potential murderer, both directly (shooting the woman on the boat) and indirectly (having an affair with her lover).
In the B-storyline of Ballerina, the crafty Sawyer got a measure of his captors along with a bit of action from Freckles. Meanwhile, the makings of another triangle started between Jack, Juliet, and Ben. Soup anyone?
Which brings us to “A Tale of Two Cities,” the other decent episode so far. “Two Cities” is a fairly literal episode, thankfully. It tends toward my thought that Lost is at it’s heart a failed utopia story, pure and simple.
For two seasons we’ve been rooting for the bad guys — the passengers of Oceanic flight 815. Utopian societies fall from internal disagreement often caused by the outsiders who interrupt the everyday. Yes, Ben believes he’s one of the good guys, and he might literally be a “good guy,” but even book club members can argue that good and bad are never black and white. The actions of everyone on Craphole Island are shaded in grey.
What of next week’s episode? Think Savage Taming 101, then tune in for Utopian 12-step programs and other textbook brainwashing techniques.
