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GET
A weekly commentary of the television showby Carlos R Savournin
3 - 1 : A Tale of two Cities
*This commentary contains spoilers. Do not read if you have not seen the above mentioned episode.*
In what is probably the best five minutes of television, Lost’s teaser opening took us to a flashback of unexpected proportions. Mirroring last season’s opener, we get a musical interlude; “Downtown” by Petula Clark plays on a CD while we see someone, a woman, prepping for some kind of gathering. She looks lonely. Somewhat resentful. About what? We don’t quite know yet. Outside, a quaint little suburban town where neighboring men help fix cars, and where others gather on a sunny afternoon for a book meeting hosted by a beautiful woman named Juliet. Suddenly, an earthquake interrupts the calm afternoon and everyone is forced outside where every neighbor and resident of the small town looks up to the sky.
Oceanic flight 815 is disintegrating overhead. Ripping into two parts, the tail end of the flight falls to the ocean while the
fuselage keeps its course. This is when we discover that this quaint little town is occupied by none other than Henry Gale, who rushes out of one of the houses, begins shouting orders. He tells Ethan and Goodwin to take two routes, one to the tail section; one to the fuselage – and finally, we discover how and why these two infiltrated the groups of castaways. And that quaint little town, we find out, is nothing more than a spec on the vast space that is the mysterious island.
Last we left, Jack, Sawyer and Kate were taken prisoners by the elusive Others, and in this episode, we discover that they are being held in separate prisons; Sawyer in an animal holding pen, Kate in a locker-room shower, and Jack in a dark underground prison which is later revealed as an aquarium for sharks and dolphins (remember the shark stamped with the Dharma Logo in season 2?). All awake to discover themselves alone, and each of them desperately in search of their friends.
The story centered around Jack and his doomed marriage to Sarah who refused to tell him the identity of her new beau. Jack, driven by determination to find out, suspects everyone, even his own father, Christian, who has been sober for 50 days. By the end, we know Jack’s father was not sleeping with Sarah, but when Jack confronts his father, Christian is driven back to the bottle bringing credence to Jack’s hesitation toward going to Australia to find him when his mother orders him to in season 1.
Meanwhile, Jack meets Juliet, the new Other. She offers him food, and he declines – even attempts to kill her once, but when Juliet begins to read Jack’s entire life from a file, he becomes subdued. She mentions Sarah, and Jack practically becomes unable to stand. “Ask me anything you want to know about her,” Juliet tells Jack. The entire episode surrounded the mystery; Who is Sarah’s new man? But all Jack asks is; “Is she happy?” Juliet smiles. “Yes. She’s happy.” And for a moment we believe her. Jack becomes weak. Crying, he huddles to the floor and Juliet leaves the room to meet none other than the conniving Henry Gale – who we now know is named Ben.
“Good job,” he tells her, and like a good little worker-bee, Juliet smiles and thanks him.
So was she telling the truth? Did she know that Sarah was happy? Or did she say it simply to get Jack to become the good little lab rat they need him to be? If it’s one thing we know about the Others, it’s that they can not be trusted and they’ll say anything to get what they want.
And let’s talk about that file Juliet had for a moment. Much like judgment day where your sins are read to you from a book, Juliet sat there rattling facts about Jack’s life, including about his father’s death which she claimed to have an autopsy report from. There’s no doubt in my mind that she had all the information before her, but the main question here is how did they get all that information in the 60 days the survivors have been there? Do they have powerful outside sources? Are the Others working for the government thereby having easy access to all this information about the passengers? Or have the passengers been a part of a grand scheme and were put on that plane none the wiser?
Back in the other prisons, Kate is ordered to take a shower and to don a little Sunday dress for a romantic beachside breakfast with Ben (Henry Gale for those who find the transition difficult – like me). Handcuffed and refusing to eat, Kate demands to know why the production; why the dress and breakfast.
In good ol’ Ben fashion, he tells her that he wants her to have something nice to hold on to because the next two weeks are going to be hell. If Kate is to face the same torture Ben did when they held him captive, then he’s right – and we see something in the hard-boiled Kate we rarely get to see: fear.
Another mind game? Scare the wits out of her to keep her in line?
Possibly.
And then there’s Sawyer who is trying desperately to work a contraption that slides food into the cage. He gets it to work for a dry biscuit with the word Dharma engraved on it. Finally getting to work, one of the Others tells him that it only took two hours for the bears to figure it out… Polar bears, maybe? But the biggest mind game that took place was Sawyer’s own.
Kate is escorted to the prison across from his. When the two lock eyes, they are somewhat comforted by each other’s presence. But when Sawyer asks about the Sunday dress she is wearing – her answer comes in the form of a cry. He offers her his food. She accepts it, and the longing stare exchanged leads us all to believe that the two will hook up which has been rumored on the net for the past month. And if next week’s previews are any indication, it must be true.
But I think it’s too simple. Personally, I think she’ll go for Jack – but that’s just me.
All in all, the season opener was strong, picking up right where the last episode left off. In a season that will be split in two (6 new episodes back-to-back before a 13 week hiatus), the first episode was set up to put us in motion for an action-packed follow up in an episode called “The Glass Ballerina” airing October 11th.
Until next time, Welcome Back, and Get Lost.
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© Savournin, 2006
All pictures are property of ABC Television and the Walt Disney Company
