Maternity Leave: Filler and Few Finds
The last few episodes of Lost have been great, but are we seeing more filler than usual?
Every scene in a story must do at least one thing: Advance the plot, reveal information about character, or provide exposition/backstory essential to the audience. It can be argued that adding to a thematic might also be on the list, but it alone doesn’t make a scene interesting or necessary.
There are a handful of really important moments in Maternity Leave that I see playing out, and they probably take up single lines on paper.
Zeke, aka Mr. Friendly, tells Ethan that “he” isn’t going to be happy with Claire being brought to the medical facility before Aaron’s birth. Is “he” Alvar Hanso? Also, everything The Others do amongst themselves appears good, purposeful and within the boundaries of their project.
Danielle’s daughter Alex is beautiful, as there are no ugly people in the world of Lost.
Claire asks Sun if she’s a mother. The answer is no, but we’ll see how this plays out in Sun’s next flashback (tomorrow night?). Missing children, family deaths, parental issues are all over our castaways, and they remain tremendously effective in allowing viewer identification with the characters.
Kate discovers Zeke’s costume makeup, but who will she mention it to first: Jack or Sawyer? Locke?
Locke’s breakdown under the questioning of the prisoner in the hatch is something I’ve seen coming for a long time. It’s no coincidence that Locke appeared with black and white pupils in Clarie’s dream. I think there’s one more Locke flashback in this season and it’ll have a dark ending much like these past few episodes.
A lot of the season two episodes ask us how far we’d go to accomplish our goals. I think most of the episodes answer the question without judging the characters outright. Even The Long Con doesn’t necessarily say that Sawyer or Charlie is “evil.” Maybe at the very least Sawyer is honest about his nature?
