Okay, let’s talk Lost.

  

This season has been consistently inconsistent.  It has gone from the highest heights, like the universaly beloved Flashes Before Your Eyes, to the dreadfully low, such as the mind-numbingly bland Tricia Tanaka Is Dead…to the simply strange, like Stranger in a Strange Land.   But the past few weeks have had the longest stretch of good episodes the third season has seen. 

  

Now, the Nikki and Paulo characters have gotten a lot of grief in the Lost fanboy community, and frankly, I’m not sure I get why.  Was it because they just kind of showed up out of nowhere?  Or did people genuinely find them annoying as characters?  I guess it really doesn’t matter anymore, but that’s just a question I’ve had brewing.

I absolutely loved this episode for what it was…just a quick snapshot of people who have been on this island all along that we haven’t gotten to visit yet.  I think that, if Nikki and Paulo had been an essential part of the group all along, then this episode would have been a great way to finish off their character arc.  But their story, as we know it, could only be told most effectively in one episode.
 
And what a tremendous episode it was.  Let’s take a look at some of the high points:

  • Spiders!!! — So Arzt says that he’s found several new species of insects on the island, right?  Combine that with the DHARMA-branded shark, the polar bear living on the tropical island, the “Hurley-bird” and the fact that, at the ”monster sound”, the spider army mobilized and rose up against Nikki and smote her down…man, what the crap is/was the DHARMA Initiative up to?
  • Hitchcock!!! – I love the Hitchcock feel, of the whole thing.  I really feel like the paralyzed thing has been done by him, but I just can’t place the film.  And the diamonds were as much an example of a MacGuffin device as anything I’ve ever seen.  Just brilliant.
  • LANDO!!! –  Come on, Billy Dee Williams?!?  How could an episode of Lost possibly be bad with Billy Dee Williams?

Anyway, I thought it was a fantastic episode.  And next week, we get a rumble in the jungle with Juliet and Kate, which should be a blast.