Hello there, and welcome to the first part of my review of season 3. Things are really heating up and getting insane and twisted and AWESOME, and there is much to be said about it! Let’s get cracking!
Mere SECONDS into season 3, in the season premiere “A Tale of Two Cities,” events occur that alter our entire perception of everything that has happened on the show so far. Season 3 opens with a woman we’ve never seen before living in a cute little suburban cottage and having a book club in her living room. After 2 seasons of being stranded on an island, running from billows of black smoke, and pressing underground buttons, this calm setting is a welcome change. The image of this kindly blonde woman baking cookies and discussing a Stephen King novel with her neighbors brings us as viewers back into our comfort zone; this is the archetype of the American Dream that we all know so well and are so very comfortable with seeing on TV. This woman is clearly a suburban housewife that may remind us of our mothers, aunts, or even of ourselves. “What a cute little house. What nice people, having a book club meeting. Nothing to be worried about here!” the audience thinks. When I first watched this scene, I figured this was somebody’s flashback, or maybe what was going on in civilization while the main characters were stranded. Even when Ethan showed up (Yeah, remember him? The Other who kidnapped Claire and was later killed in a brawl with Jack back in season 1?), I refused to be pulled out of this safe environment that the show was presenting to me, thinking “This must be before he came to the island, before he was an Other.”
And then, the woman (who seems to be called “Juliet”) steps off of her property. And we see the backdrop of this landscape that had seemed so quaint to us mere seconds before. It’s the frakkin’ island. She meets up with Fake Henry Gale, calling him “Ben,” and then we see Flight 815 fall from the sky. Oh. My. GOD. We, as the audience, have been majorly duped once again. The writers have lulled us into this false sense of security, painting a picture of everything “homey,” getting the audience to really latch on to this blonde woman and her cute, housewifely ways, getting us to think that maybe, just maybe, we had a new character on our hands who was sweet and motherly, and then dashing these hopes to the ground along with Flight 815. So, now we’re left with the knowledge that this sweet, seemingly benign woman and her book club friends are all Others. Where does this knowledge leave us? It leaves us having been tricked into sympathizing with the Others and seeing them as regular people, specifically Juliet. This is an extension of Ben’s “We’re the good guys” assertion at the very end of season 2, because now we really have seen them as “good guys,” if only for a few minutes. What does this mean for the show? Clearly, a radical change from everything we thought we knew.
Now that I’ve taken two lengthy paragraphs to discuss events that take about 3 minutes to play out on screen, let’s look at those 3 minutes’ implications on the rest of the season. Throughout the first half of this season, the writers really flesh out Juliet as a character now that they have their foot in the door. For the first few episodes of the season, we as the audience see her holding Jack captive. This presents a sort of paradox about her character, since we have also seen her in a quaint little setting where she seemed like a kind, sweet person. Just as the Others are playing mind games with Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, the writers are playing mind games with us. Our sympathies obviously lie with the characters we’ve known and loved for two seasons, but as the first half of the season progresses, we catch more and more glimpses of the kind side of Juliet that we saw briefly in “A Tale of Two Cities.” This comes to a head in the seventh episode of the season, “Not in Portland,” in which we see Juliet’s back story, and see that everything she has done to Jack, and even her being on the island in the first place, are indirect results of her very human desire to be there for her sister. This takes the whole theme of moral relativism to new heights, because the Others have been built up as antagonists for two whole seasons, and now suddenly the show is forcing us to see one of them as a regular woman with feelings and desires, no different from all of the castaways. We see that she is essentially Ben’s prisoner, just like Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are. It makes us wonder if all of the Others are being held on the island by Ben against their will, and if our perception of them as ruthless savages has been wrong all along.
But enough about them; let’s talk a little bit about the flashbacks we’re seeing. It seems that, once again, the writers may be running out of flashback ideas. Some of the flashbacks aren’t nearly as interesting as the main storyline, and a few even leave you wondering “Why did we even need to see that? What does that add to this character?” The main episode I’m speaking of is “Stranger in a Strange Land,” which chronicles how Jack got his tattoo. Granted, one could argue that the events of this flashback help put some of Jack’s later actions toward Juliet into context, but I feel like his actions toward her would have been believable even without this episode. All in all, I found this flashback unnecessary to the storyline and to Jack’s character development. However (and this is a big “however”), the writers seem to be aware of the fact that some of the flashbacks aren’t very strong, and take measures to counter it, which prove very effective. In this season, the writers bring out some big flashback guns. Things we have been wondering since season 1 as well as plot twists with huge implications are stunningly revealed in some of the flashbacks. It’s almost as if the writers knew all along that the flashbacks were going to get a little less interesting around this time, and purposely saved a few big reveals to stick in as well. Either that, or they just felt like withholding stuff from us. Who knows? Anyway, the episodes “Par Avion” and “The Man from Tallahassee” hit us like a one-two punch (and yes, I am aware that “The Man from Tallahassee” is technically from the 2nd half of season 3, but I feel like it needs to be discussed now). In these two episodes, the writers serve us a mind-blowing family tie regarding Claire, as well as the knowledge of how Locke became paralyzed. These two big reveals are more than enough to make up for some slightly sluggish flashbacks!
The first half of season 3 introduces another simple yet significant change in the show. That change is the use of humor as one of the show’s main elements. Sure, in past seasons, there’s been a snarky Sawyerism here, a Hurley “Duuuuuude” there, but never before have there been entire plotlines that are, in and of themselves, funny. The first two seasons, which covered the first 2 months on the island, dealt a lot with the shock and trauma that came with surviving a plane crash and being stuck on an island, haunted by mysterious enemies. Now that it’s been a couple months, and the castaways are used to their new way of life, “settled in,” if you will, the shock has died down a little. This is the characters’ way of life now, they all know each other pretty well, and day-to-day living isn’t as difficult as it was at first. These factors open up the door for a few funny story lines, even though new life-threatening problems are constantly plaguing the characters. It’s a great juxtaposition. My favorite funny subplot has got to be when Sawyer loses a bet and isn’t allowed to call people by nicknames for a week. Because of the way time progresses on this show, one week on the island ends up spanning five or six episodes, so we get to see a lot of Sawyer hemming and hawing, wanting so badly to call Kate “Freckles,” or Sayid “Aljazeera” or Hurley “Jabba,” but ultimately restraining himself. Another fun one was Hurley tricking Sawyer into being nice to his fellow castaways (“That’s gotta be the lamest con in the history of cons!”). Although the overall tone of the show remains definitively serious, and I would definitely still categorize it as a drama, rather than as a “dramedy,” if you will, seeing humor take on a slightly more prominent role in the series makes for great fun.
Before wrapping up this post, I want to take a quick look at the Sawyer-coaster. Right now, what I said about him at the beginning of season 2 goes for him again now. Just like it’s hard to hate a guy being carried around on a stretcher, it’s equally hard to hate a guy being kept prisoner in a cage like a lab animal. So, I’m once again sympathetic for the guy, especially with how much he’s grown to care about Kate. He’s constantly protecting her from the wrath of the Others in one way or another, and even begins to value her life over his own. Still, he seems to have no concern for Jack’s well-being, despite Jack being a fellow prisoner in the Others’ camp. So I guess he’s gone from caring about nobody but himself, to caring about nobody but himself and Kate. It’s a start. And, without spoiling anything, there is a MAJOR Sawyer-coaster event coming up, but is it a peak or a low? We’ll find out! Also in my next post, we’ll explore Ben’s back story and discuss the castaways’ lack of communication with each other, among other things. Until then, I’ll see you in another life, bruthah!
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