Hide review
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.
"I'm Sayid - do you like my hair?"
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
flash
back 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.
The art of waiting
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.
Hide
review