LOST #309: "Stranger In A Strange Land": Flashing Back Or Forward?
Jack saves Juliet's life; Kate and Sawyer struggle on their way back to the beach and the origin of Jack's tattoos is revealed.
There is a lot of resentment of the latest LOST flashback story all over the Internet and although it may have seemed somewhat random and disjointed from the overall storylines I do not really get why the backlash.
Is it because it felt unoriginal following that groundbreaking Desmond flashback that may not even have been a flashback a week earlier?
Now, those of you who know me, know that I'll enjoy pretty much anything with Matthew Fox in it. But there's much more to my reluctance to dismiss Jack's latest flashback story as disjointed and uninspired.
If we learned anything the week before it is not to take LOST flashbacks at face value any longer. Never forget that "only fools are enslaved by space and time" (I can already sense how pretty soon everyone will be irritated by this catchphrase).
Having said that, I thought it was awkward the doctor's flashback took place on Phuket beach in Thailand, one of the regions affected by the devastating tsunamis triggered by massive underwater earthquakes in the Indian Ocean in December 2004.
The catastrophe occurred on December 26, 2004 and last night's episode took place on December 3, 2004. Which got me thinking - what if the 'flashback' was actually a 'flash-forward'?
What if Jack spent some time in the region as a doctor following the destruction to help the local relief efforts and the story takes place before his departure in say 2005 or 2006?
That of course does not make any sense whatsoever, because Jack gets his tattoos in Thailand and already has them on the island in 2004. But with all this time-looping, I just have a feeling there's more to Jack's flashback than meets the eye at this instant.
And I'm wondering if the upcoming tsunamis will have any impact on the LOST storytelling as we should be getting to Christmas 2004 by the end of the season.
Elsewhere, I immensely enjoyed the new character Isabel and her creepy and placid manner. The producers have surely done a wonderful job casting "Others" this season.
ABC's marketing department may have slightly exaggerated the significance of the episode as I am still having problems to see what three major questions were answered in the episode.
Obviously, one of them was: "Are Cindy and the children alive and what happened to them?", but that may actually have been a bit of a disappointment because ABC's previews and LOST moments have already revealed that back in December. I was hoping to get a bit more of a back story as to what happened after they were abducted and why do they seem to like being with "The Others".
Speaking of which, I believe when Cindy said "We're here to watch" with a rather surprised expression on her face (as in: "what kind of a question is that, Jack? what else would we be doing here?"), what she meant was they they were there to watch the trial, not Jack in his cage. But the writers of course made her reply in a vague manner to further confuse the viewers. Or that is at least what I believe.
We also learned Ethan was a surgeon, but was that one of the three questions we were supposed to get answers to?
I actually felt sorry for Sawyer when Kate failed to deny she had 'pity sex' with him. Her feelings for Jack are obviously still there. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure he will soon do something nasty to make us hate him all over again.
The closing moments on the boat taking Jack, Juliet and Ben to "Othersville" were filled with significant looks giving us the shape of things to come. Is Juliet, however, worth Jack's efforts? What is her true agenda?
Some of the other questions going through my mind - how come Karl doesn't know "The Brady Bunch" if "The Others" have access to US television? What did Jack mean when he said about Isabel's translation: "that's not what they mean"? Why do "The Others" dislike the other island? And yes, what 3 questions did we get answers to?
Labels: Lost, Lost Recaps
posted by Justin Van De Kamp at
2:45 AM
1 Comments:
Sorry to say, but the Producers told us that ABC had over exaggerated the episode. I liked it, it was an intresting episode. I dunno, somehow I think that Cindy and the kids there to watch, I dunno, I think it means something more than that. Tricia Tanaka is dead, next weeky eppy, I heard it brings us back to when Lost was fun, as it stars our lovable "little" jinx, Hurley. Sounds really good, but its going to be a fun episode, Im not crossing my fingers for anything big. HOWEVER, I do hear that episode 11 is going to be another good one, finally dishing out the answers to how the others are connected to dhrama. So good times are ahead.
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