Just like most of the episodes of season two of “Lost,” “?” suffers from sloppy writing, logic flaws and lack of continuity.
Last week, two principle characters were shot by another character in one of the most exciting twist-endings of the TV season. But “?” doesn’t continue the momentum the last episode set up for this one. “?” doesn’t spend nearly enough time on the deaths of Ana-Lucia and Libby (who were shot by Michael) and isolating the grief to just a few main characters, instead of the huge cast of characters in this show who didn’t even appear in this episode or the last one. (Where is Claire, exactly? Hatch No. 6?)
“?” gets its title from the map Locke saw in the hatch during the lockdown a few episodes back. Mr. Ecko, the island’s resident priest/assassin/con-artist has dreams of various characters telling him to help Locke discover the location of the question mark on the map. Dreams as plot advancement are always interesting in J.J. Abrams shows (except when it’s a Charlie episode, because nothing that happens in Charlie episodes is ever a good thing).
Mr. Ecko and Locke find the location of the question mark from the map on the island, and what they find is a very disappointing new hatch where they discover the hatch they currently are running is a giant psychology test to see just how easy people can be manipulated. Locke has a freak-out, which is awesome and is an example of good continuity based on the previous Locke episodes of the season, but unfortunately the reveal of the hatch-as-rat-maze brings up some serious logic flaws in terms of the writing of this season and the future of the show. Why spend so much time developing the hatch storyline? Why spend so much time on the opening of the hatch in season one? If the writers are planning on revealing the hatch and the numbers are actually meaningful, they only have a few episodes to do it in – the season ends in a couple of weeks.
IN OTHER DEVELOPMENTS…
• Jack administers heroin to a dying Libby to ease her pain, proving that the Virgin Mary statues have another purpose on this island other than advancing Charlie’s paper-thin plot.
• We discover where Sawyer has been hiding his stash – under his tent. Hehe.
• The Lostaways don’t tell Hurley, Libby’s pseudo-boyfriend that Libby is dying and spewing up lavender blood until the day after Libby got shot. What the hell were the writers thinking?
• Day changes to night and night changes into day faster than fans logging onto the hansofoundation.org website during another Hanso commercial during this episode’s airing. Hello, continuity? Where did you run off to? Did you all go to “Alias”?
• Mr. Ecko’s flashbacks go nowhere and teach us absolutely nothing new about his character. But we do get to see Claire’s psychic again. And he receives more story development than Claire has received all season.
• Ana-Lucia died instantly from her gun-wound, and Libby dies at the end of the episode the following day (or the following month, because you can never be too sure with this eppy’s time inconsistencies). Her death is tragic. But most tragically, how are we now going to find out about why Libby was in Hurley’s flashback a few episodes back?
Rating: 2 out of 5 questionably dropped storylines
It’s one thing to fire two actors from a show because they got DUIs and embarrassed ABC for a few weeks. But it’s another thing to provide very little reason within the writing of the show for the killing off of two major characters. Are the people running “Lost” right now fit to do the job? J.J. Abrams, you’ve never been needed back to your show more than now.
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