Phuket
I just saw a Lost rerun of what's considered one of the weakest episode, "Stranger In A Strange Land." It's where we learn how Jack got his tattoo. This tv.com episode guide, in fact, has it tied for last with "Fire + Water" (definitely a weak episode).
I admit the flashback isn't much, but there's some reasonably intense scenes with Jack, Ben, Alex, Juliet, Kate, Sawyer, Karl and Cindy. It's a good sign when even your weakest episode has a lot to recommend it.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:15 AM
4 Comments:
I liked Fire & Water, except that I didn't find Charlie's actions believable given how his character had been developed.
I also didn't find Sawyer stealing all the guns believable in the next episode.
It seemed as if the writers needed bad-guys, so they turned Charlie and Sawyer bad in an unjustified manner.
Fortunately, they got re-gooded not long after that.
You're referring to "The Long Con," which I had serious problems with. It wasn't so much Sawyer and Charlie being the bad guys as what they did, which made no sense. In fact, I wrote about it at the time.
The whole point of a con is, when it's over, that you either fade away into the night, never to be seen again, or the mark you've taken doesn't even know he's been had, or that you're behind it. Instead, Sawyer openly steals the guns and still plans to live alongside everyone else. This is no good. They'll not only hate him, they can also easily keep a 24-hour watch on him until he coughs up the guns. He certainly can't use them for any purpose himself.
And unless I'm mistaken, it turned out having all the guns didn't make any difference. Once the Losties needed them, they were able to get them.
Fire & Water also had Mr. Eko's lectures on Christian baptism, which were bizarrely incorrect. The first time around, I thought the writers hadn't bothered to do any research. Now, seeing how careful the show is in general, I lean to the theory that they were portraying the fact that Eko, despite his claims to be a priest, had no actual training in religion past age eight or so.
Was Eko's death always planned? It seemed as if his character was supposed to play a major role, but he never really did. In many ways he was redundant with Locke -- the eccentric character who senses the island telling him to do odd things.
The story I've heard about Eko is the actor wanted to leave the show so the producers gave him a premature death. (There are also rumors he wasn't pleasant to have around and that's the real reason they killed him.) When they killed him it made it seem we'd gone to a whole lot of trouble just to get Bernard across the island. (Libby's death also wasn't planned, supposely. Not at first, anyway. But when the producers saw that Ana Lucia was so unliked, they felt killing her wouldn't have enough impact. Also, they didn't see Libby's story on the island moving much further. Or it could be both women had DUIs.)
Eko was meant for more, and certainly he vied with Locke for the coolest guy most in touch with the island. I think he was meant to be an echo of what Locke was--and also a signpost for Locke, showing him how to get in touch with the mysteries of the island, and how not to lose faith. (I have to admit, considering his strong showing in season 1, the Locke of season 2 comes up short.)
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