LOST: Thoughts on “Par Avion” Episode

I know I’m a couple of days late posting, but my work on a new novel has taken precedent. Anyhow, here are my thoughts on the most recent LOST episode.

“Par Avion”  (I think I’m  remembering  the name right) was kind of like Raisin Bran;  it’s not my favorite, but it’s fairly satisfying and it helps keep things moving.  Let’s start with the positives.

Claire’s back-story was interesting, though not entirely a shocker. My secret hope was that the people subsidizing her mom’s bills were the Widmores, and that she had actually been run off the road by a Widmore Construction truck. Alas, it was more of a Star Wars, soap opera, “Luke, I am your father” moment. So she and Jack are half brother/sister, which is interesting, but not particularly compelling, at least at this point. I do like knowing a little more about her character, as the sense we get of her on the show to this point has been kind of two-dimensional. My hope  was/is that we would learn more that would help us  better understand Aaron and what’s so unique about him, but this was still worthwhile.

By far, the coolest part of the whole episode, which made the whole hour worthwhile, was seeing Jack playing football with Mr. Friendly/Tom. The question now is: did they brainwash him, or is he pretending to buy in? Or maybe something else happened, but keep in mind this is only days after their big blow-up, with him being left behind. Now all of a sudden he’s back on the other island, sipping mai-tais and rubbing elbows with the Hostiles. The other possibility is that there’s some sort of time/space distortion issue here, so that what we’re actually seeing is a Jack who has been there, happily cohabitating with the Others for some time. How this works out depends on the whole past/future dichotomies they keep throwing around lately.

If they don’t resolve that this season, at least a little bit, I may be compelled to throw my TV off a cliff.

The security fence was interesting, though this – not surprising – has been the object of discussion for all of the LOST fanatics online. Why would they spend so much money on a security perimeter that has such an obvious weakness? Is it only to keep animals in/out, and if so, ain’t it a little elaborate for that? Does it keep people in or out, or both? Maybe it’s only meant to slow people down, and not so much keep them out permanently. After all, they have weapons and the like, so if they were monitoring the perimeter, which they don’t seem to be doing currently, they’d know when there was a breach.

My biggest thing with the fence scenes was why they had Kate go over first. Someone had to be last going over, and if there’s no one else left to hold the back of the tree trunk as a counterweight, doesn’t it make sense to have the smallest person go last?  My wife pointed out, however, that the other actors are either likely too fat, big or old to actually do that scene, so Kate was the one filmed doing the stunt by default.

Here’s what kind of sucked about the episode:

A Claire flashback with nothing about Aaron should not be allowed this deep into the season. They dangled the Aaron story out there two years ago and have done nothing with it since. No fair. Too many loose ends gives the impression we’re on a wild goose chase, though it seems, with the last few weeks, that we’re getting somewhere again. I know this is trivial, but the note Claire attached to the bird, though sufficiently poetic and dramatic, was possibly the most impractical rescue note ever. Also, how in the heck are they going to keep it from getting wet? This is, after all, a sea bird. The first time it sits in the water, the note is toast.

Overall, these are minor gripes, and I found it t be a pretty solid episode. It appears Ben returns next week, and we FINALLY learn what happened to Locke to paralyze him.  About damn time, I must say.  It’s hard to believe we’re so far into season three already, but it’s definitely getting good the past month or so. Let’s hope they keep up the momentum.