Please don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of this show, having watched it since day one. I’m just doubting the writers know even one iota of where they want to take these characters. They give us tremendous amounts of back story to replace the lack of progress they’ve made with the show. The past two weeks are a perfect example of this having wasted three episodes focusing heavily on the history behind Desmond and Juliet while refusing to address them in the present day.We know Desmond can predict the future and we even kinda know why, but the episode made no attempt at connecting that to any sort of forward progress. Just rehash, remix and repeat. With Juliet we found out what she was up to before she came to the island but in all honesty, it didn’t really tell us much as to her current motivations. It was wasted space where they show could have tried to shift this thing out of neutral.

What about the statue? The other hatches? The smoke monster? Locke? Hurley? Claire? Rousseau? That black lady with teh cancer? The numbers? The aftereffects of the hatch imploding? THE OTHER HATCHES? Sun and Jin? Charlie and his recovery over Eko’s death? Does he finish building the church? The church? THE OTHER HATCHES? The list goes on and on but instead we’re treading water, waiting for the shark we just jumped to come back and finish us off. But NBC in its infinite hype decides to inform us that this week we’re going to discover all sorts of things and have all sorts of questions answered. See every episode of Heroes I’ve reviewed for my opinion on such promises.

That said, this episode was a little better having only spent about half our time with a storyline concerning Jack and his adventures in Thailand with a girl named Achara. The other half actually took place in modern day and revolved around the usual trinity of Jack, Kate and Sawyer. I remember there being other characters on this show and they used to be more than accessories to those three but that was so long ago I’ve truly forgotten what it was like.

So Jack gets moved out an outdoor holding pen while Juliet is cuffed and imprisoned for killing Danny and letting the prisoners escape. More likely is that she’s being punished for trying to move this plot along. We go around in circles in the flashback game as Jack tries to figure out what Achara does for a living. All we know is she gets paid in envelopes, sneaks off and has “a gift.” Contrary to popular belief she’s a tattoo artist and not a lobbiest for big tobacco. Well more to the point she “marks” people because she can “see who they really are” which begs the question from Jack, “well who am I really?”

Captain Obvious would like to answer that, if Achara would be so kind as to go be crazy in the corner for a minute.

Jack is the rich, privileged son of a rich, privileged man. He has this faux crisis in his life, gets dumped over and over and eventually ends up on a retarded island where he bumbles around pretending to be a leader, eventually culminating in him being kidnapped by the Others to perform spinal surgery on their leader. Somehow all that translates in some Chinese characters and bad tattoo art chisled onto his shoulder. The judge over Juliet’s case Isabel can apparently ready the letters and they play a little game with the audience called, “Who Can Be The Smarmier Fuck Over Something The Audience Doesn’t Know?” Basically she knows what it means and finds it ironic. Jack knows what it means and is indignant. The audience has no fucking clue what it means and gets to sit there, the proverbial monkey in the middle of this ridiculous game.

Otherwise in Kate and Sawyer-land, we discover from Karl that the Others actually live in houses “with backyards” and not in abject poverty like previously thought. Oh, and the next night there would be no moon and they’d get to see the “Teddybear Constellation.” Well gee, all my questions have been answered so far. Thanks Lost.

Comments are closed.