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Lost - 4x05 - The Constant

Likes: Who can argue with answers? Speculation about the unusual temporal state the island seems to be in has been widespread since very early in the show's run, so it's extremely pleasing to have some of the details fleshed out and, in the same episode no less, have characters on the island verbally acknowledge the situation. The editing and acting were both very effective in creating a sense of urgency as Desmond raced to save himself from the condition to which Minkowski ultimately succumbed, and yet the slower moments between Desmond and father and daughter Widmore were equally well crafted. Minkowski himself was an excellent guest character, serving his purpose admirably while not lingering on to further expand the outward-spiralling cast list.

Dislikes: Not a whole lot to complain about this week. Sure, some characters (*cough* Sun and Jin *cough*) were absent again, but when the main story is this interesting it's not really an issue. My only real problem with The Constant is the precise nature of Desmond's movements in time. Each jump back to the past lasts exactly the right amount of time for him to complete his particular objective, whether that be a few minutes to phone Penny or several hours to take the train down to Oxford to meet Daniel. Of course, it may transpire that the island (or some other agency) had some kind of control over his flashing back, but within the confines of the episode it was portrayed as more of a random effect.

Overall: Almost certainly the best episode of the season thus far, although I don't think I'd rate it above last year's first Desmond jaunt, Flashes Before Your Eyes.

Rating: 6 out of 7 DHARMA Stations

Well it has taken some time but we finally learned what happened to the helicopter. I was pretty sure that it would tie into the the fact that there is a time differnce from the freighter and the island, but was very interested to see how it was resolved. The Constant ended up being a Desmond centric story and it touched on the idea of time travel just as Flashes Before Your Eyes did in season 3.

I really enjoyed this episode and found myself on the edge of my seat a number of times. It was interesting to see the younger version of Daniel and how he reacted to Desmond being there. All the time travel stuff was fun as well, as I always get a kick out of those sorts of stories. The only dissapointment was that there was so little activity on the island, but given that the audience has been wondering about Sayid and Desmond I suppose it was fair enough to focus on them for the episode.

The Constant scores 6 out of 7 DHARMA Stations.

Lost - 4x06 - The Other Woman

Likes: The whispers are back, which is a nice reminder to all us Lost-lifers that certain unresolved mythology plot points haven't been forgotten about. Also back is the great tradition of guest actors returning to play now deceased characters - The Other 48 Days was probably my number one episode from S2, so seeing Goodwin's involvement in the Juliet-Ben back story fleshed out was pleasing.

Dislikes: Unfortunately this week's island A-plot involved a sequence of coincidental meetings in random jungle clearings. Why Daniel and Charlotte decided to keep it a secret that they were saving everyone's lives is beyond me - it might have been believable if it were Charlotte alone (in which case we could assume she was lying), but Daniel seems to have good intentions and no desire to hurt the castaways. Juliet's back story also wasn't that interesting, despite the A Tale of Two Cities and The Other 48 Days connections. Could a more involving story have been on the cards before Nestor Carbonell (Richard) became unavailable? Who knows, but surely to goodness if you're doing an Others flashback you just gotta have Ethan in there!

Overall: A disappoint comedown from The Constant, but perhaps it would be unfair to expect more at this stage of the season.

Rating: 3 out of 7 DHARMA Stations

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Lost - 4x03 - The Economist

Lost Lesson of the Day: Ben is a big fat liar.

Happenings: I'll forgo a summary this week in the interests of getting this written before a new episode airs. On island, people wander back and forth in the jungle. In flash forward, Sayid is both a badass and a sucker.

Likes: Sayid has one of the most interesting back stories, and yet he hasn't exactly been in the limelight the last couple of seasons. The simple fact that he is one of the 'Oceanic 6' is enough of a twist for me, not least because I assumed the pre-titles sequence was a flashback when it began. Hopefully this device will allow him to be drawn more into the flashforward A-story concerning Jack's desire to return to the island. This week's flashforward is a bit more self-contained than I'd hoped for, but it was still fairly strong and it's early days yet. The fact that Ben will leave the island in the future is enough of a hook for now, but I'll be disappointed if we don't see other members of the 6 crossing paths in a more purposeful manner soon.

The on-island highlight was Daniel's experiment. It's great to finally have someone on the island who can start actively trying to figure the place out - a role Sayid explored to a small extent in season 1, but was soon diverted away from. Granted, Daniel might not want to call in the airstrike quite so close to the precious helicopter next time, but hey the guy's a physicist so he gets at least one mulligan per episode in my book.

Dislikes: The island A-story was a little underwhelming, with Sayid trudging to the barracks and back only to be duped by Hurley of all people, but I guess it's only fair that the writers try and curb the accuracy of Sayid's intution a little - he's been right about so much it's hard to imagine people following Jack and Locke when they've got such a prescient alternative. Likewise, the island B-story was stretched to breaking point - yes, it's nice to hear Jack's baseball callback, and Frank is hard to dislike, but you'd think these people would be going crazy standing around for hours at a time while there's a functioning helicopter not 10 yards away.

Rating: 5 out of 7 DHARMA Stations

Predictions: Jeff Fahey (Frank) is the only one of the four new arrivals to be listed in the guest cast instead of the main credits, which leads me to believe that he'll be disappearing for a while as of next episode and Sayid and Des will be disappearing with him. I'm guessing it'll be episode 6 at least before we see the freighter, which would be a shame really because the shot of the helicopter veering away from the island had a similar effect on me as that of the raft in season 1 - that sense that the show is going somewhere!

I think you have to go back to Enter 77 to find another Sayid centric episode so I was interested to see what we were going to learn about him this time around. He comes up with a plan to get Charlotte back and asks the freighter people if they will take him to the ship - they agree on the condtion that Miles tags along on the trip. It was quite interesting to see the effect the island had on the package that was sent from the ship: there's a time diffence between the Island and the freighter. There was also a nice reference back to the end of season 2 about leaving the island and having to stay on course or bad things could happen.

Likes: I enjoyed seeing Sayid in assassin mode, Jack and Kates little chat at the start of the episode, and also the big reveal at the end concerning Ben. The flashforwards were good and especially the ones toward the end of the episode, which seemed to be connected with this season's story arc.

Dislikes: I didn't think Hurley's betrayal worked that well in that it seemed they were forcing the conflict between him and Locke - it just didn't seem to ring true with Hurley's character. Sun and Jin again have been pretty much left out again, with the freighter people taking up a lot of room.

The Economist rates 4 out of 7 DHARMA Stations.

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Lost - 4x02 - Confirmed Dead

Sometimes it's hard to know what the writers of Lost are thinking. Okay, so it's always hard to know what the writers of Lost are thinking, but this week there were more "Seriously?!" moments than usual. Let's take a closer look...

Happenings: On island, the action centres around the arrival of four of Naomi's colleagues: Daniel Faraday, Miles Straume, Charlotte Staples Lewis and Frank Lapidus. Despite Jack's previous conviction that rescue was imminent, relations get off to a shaky start when it's revealed that Daniel is carrying a gun. Shakier still is their first encounter with Miles, who brandishes his own firearm and accuses Kate of killing Naomi. The hostilities are tempered slightly, however, when Miles seemingly communes with Naomi's spirit and confirms Kate's story implicating Locke. Reinforcements arrive from the beach in the form of Juliet and Sayid, and the group head out to find the other parachutees. Helicopter pilot Frank turns up unharmed, crucially with his helicopter in similar condition, but Charlotte has the (mis?)fortune of landing nearest to Locke's ragtag group of rebels on their way to the barracks. Ben shoots Charlotte. Charlotte's wearing a bulletproof vest. Locke smacks Ben around. Ben explains what the new arrivals want: him.

In flashback, we're given snatches of back story on Daniel, Miles, Charlotte and Frank. Daniel weeps uncontrollably at footage of the 'wreckage' of Oceanic 815, without knowing why. Miles convinces a boy's ghost to stop haunting his grandmother, slyly pocketing said ghost's hidden cash stash in the process. In Tunisia, Charlotte bribes her way onto an archaelogical dig and unearths some Dharma branded evening wear. Unconvinced by the underwater crash footage, Frank calls the Oceanic hotline to contest its authenticity. In a meeting with Matthew Abaddon, Naomi questions whether her four new colleagues are up to the task ahead.

Likes: It was an unusual move to dive straight into the identities of the 'rescue' team, and a welcome one - the season 2 premiere introduced Desmond, but it was 20+ episodes later before we were treated to his first flashback. Short-term questions are answered fairly comprehensively, most notably that the freighter has brought these people on a mission to locate Ben. Less clear is what they're supposed to do with him, although the shadowy meeting between Naomi and Abaddon towards the end gives the impression that Ben has made it onto yet another enemies list. There are a few nice lighter moments - Jack winking at Kate, Frank being welcomed to the island by a cow - but also the odd telling comment, particularly Sawyer's warning to Locke that Ben has already planned their undoing. The fact that the helicopter survived intact is a more interesting proposition than the alternative (remember how long Desmond's boat lasted last season?), although whether it will remain in good condition much longer, or indeed ever return from the freighter, is anyone's guess.

Dislikes: With 12 main characters and plenty of recurring guests surviving from last season, what the show did not need this year was 3 new regulars (Daniel, Miles and Charlotte) arriving simultaneously. Factor in Michael's return to the main cast and you can probably anticipate many more episodes in which central characters don't appear at all - Desmond, Sun and Jin were this week's screentime casualties. The recurring guests don't stop coming either, with Frank making his first appearance and Abaddon popping up again. Even Naomi managed a posthumous flashback. It all adds up to a rather unsatisfying package as Jack, Kate and Locke monopolise proceedings and the likes of Claire and Hurley simply nod along in the background.

As much as I like the idea of changing up the execution of the flashback device, debuting 4 new characters in the same episode was a strange choice. Only Miles really gets anything to significantly flesh out his character; Daniel - who you would think would be our way into the group, as Jack and Juliet have been before him - gets only a few seconds, interesting though they may be. Focussing on Daniel may have been the more conventional approach, but then there's a good reason for certain conventions. Sharing out the flashbacks amongst a group of characters is a nice idea, but it should have been saved for later in the season, when we might have more reason to care about these people.

Of course, this wouldn't be a proper rant if I didn't bring up accents. As good as Lost is at breaking down character conventions, Confirmed Dead introduces us to yet another hard-headed, well-spoken, English anthropologist. Essex must be absolutely crawling with them!

Lastly, do we really need to see Ben being violently beaten again? Jack gave him a kicking in both Through the Looking Glass and The Beginning of the End, and this week Sawyer gets his licks in twice. Please people, give the poor evil genius a break.

Rating: 3 out of 7 DHARMA Stations

General Reaction: Well 2 episodes into the fourth season and the writers have had to set up some new characters. I suppose when you kill off Charlie and a few of the Others you're going to need to do that.

For me, the episode was treading water even though we learnt a lot about the people from the freighter. It will be interesting to see wether the helicopter manages to remain intact, as Locke seems intent on keeping himself and the rest of group on the island. I'm looking forward to seeing how this season plays out and eagerly anticipating the moment when Jack, Kate and Hugo leave the island. Confirmed Dead rates 4 out of 7 DHARMA Stations.

Points of Interest:

• SF versus F - It looks like the supernatural themes brought to the fore in last week's episode are being taken forward fairly rapidly. Does this mean that I was wrong and Hurley was really talking to Charlie's ghost?
• Ghost Whisperer - Characters who can see the future are pretty common in SF, but Desmond's abilities have been handled in quite an original way thus far. Characters who can see/talk to ghosts are equally common (Matthew Fox played one in Haunted back in 2002), so let's hope Miles's talents are taken in new directions too.
• Dharma dig - The apperance of the Hydra logo at the archaeological site suggests Dharma's roots run a lot deeper than the research commune Ben grew up in.
• Not Penny's Boat - We now know why Naomi's people came to the island, but if Ben is all they want then what do they need an anthropologist and a physicist for? Is this some sort of attempt to resurrect the Initiative?
• POV - Drew Goddard, writer of hand-held monster movie Cloverfield, co-penned this episode as well as Lost Moment #13. Both feature first person camerawork, from Daniel and Vincent's perspectives respectively (!).

Points of Contention:

• Before the watershed - Would a TV station really get away with showing footage of decomposed corpses from an air disaster during the day? Would they even get away with showing the same at night?
• Work clothes - Why is Daniel dressed in a shirt and tie? Are the costume department simply bored of dressing people in grubby t-shirts, or is there something to be gleaned from Dan's attire?

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