On my last entry into this Revisiting Season 3 series, I took a lot of heat for not absolutely loving Flashes Before Your Eyes, in which Desmond apparently actually does travel back in time.  I think this sort of reaction is indicative of a weird characteristic of Lost fandom – the dismissal of subjectivity.  In the world of television drama, Lost has to be just about the most subjective show on TV.  There's so much depth to each and every episode, so much going on, that every episode is going induce a vast array of opinions.  So, I'm not saying this because I'm bitter (I'm not), but what's so wrong with someone not liking one specific episode as much as you?  We're all Lost fans here, right?  Flashes Before Your Eyes was, to me, not the best episode of Lost ever.  It was very good, as most episodes are, but I thought the time travel stuff was a little silly, in that it opens up a big can of worms that's going to be hard to ever explain.  But, that's the beauty of Lost – the significance of past episodes can always be altered by new episodes.  If Flashes Before Your Eyes is truly a key to the mysteries of the island, then as yet un-aired episodes will flesh that out, at which point we can all alter our past opinions.  

All right...let's get to some more episodes, shall we?


Episode 12 - Par Avion

Claire learns that Christian Shepherd is her father.  It appears, however, that she never bothered to learn Christian's last name, or else you think she may have put together her relationship with Jack.  Claire and her mother get into a car accident, Claire is unscathed but her mother dives head first into a coma.  Christian has been paying for the hospital bills and eventually comes to meet his daughter.  Considering the relative worthlessness of Claire in general, it wasn't a bad flashback, obviously punctuated by the big Jack-and-Claire-are-siblings reveal.  However, most of the good stuff happens on the island.  We learn that when the hatch exploded, the Others lost all contact to the outside world. Locke, Sayid, Kate, Rousseau and Mikhail reach the security wall, which Locke pushes Mikhail through, seemingly killing him.  Desmond saves Charlie one more time, as Claire and Charlie try to catch a bird to tie a rescue message to.  But, the best moment of the episode was the huge WTF moment in the last scene, when Locke, Sayid and Kate reach the Others camp and see Jack throwing the football around with Pickett.  When I first saw this scene, it definitely blew my mind.  Great way to set up the Jack going home story and give the rest of the season some nice momentum.

Rating – 7/10

The flash back is only good because of the reveal.  On the island, Claire actually does something worthwhile, while the discovery of the fence, the seeming death of of Mikhail, and Jack's contentment in the Others camp make for a very good episode. 


Episode 13 – The Man From Tallahassee

Oh, good god, this was a great episode.  Locke is depressed in his flashbacks, eating TV dinners inside a crappy apartment.  He's a approached by a youngster who says his mom is being conned by Locke's father.  Locke confronts his father in a floral shop, tells him to leave the woman or he'll call the cops.  Later, some authorities find Locke and tell him the kid was found dead.  Shocked, Locke goes to his father's apartment.  He wants to think that his father didn't kill the kid, and his father assures him of this but then he bull charges Locke and knocks him through the apartment's glass window.  Locke plummets eight floors to the ground.  This solves the mystery of how he got paralyzed.  This reveal did not disappoint.  Back on the island we get some cool duplicity when we find Ben in his wheelchair as he recovers from surgery.  Kate insists on trying to rescue Jack, even though he looks content.  At night, she finds him in his apartment playing the piano.  She's quickly captured, however, thanks to security cameras.  Sayid is also caught, but Locke isn't.  He finds Ben.  He makes Alex go get Sayid's pack for him, which holds the explosives.  Eventually, he blows up the submarine just as Jack and Juliet are about to go home.  Locke is then captured, and is taken to see the previously mentioned “Man From Tallahassee”.  It's his father.

Now, there's a whole hell of a lot going on here.  How did Locke's father get to the island?  Is Ben's magic box anything but a metaphor (which he later says it is)?  Did Ben really trick Locke into blowing up the sub, or is Ben just taking credit for it?  Locke's communion with the island starts getting discussed in more depth with Ben, but still, Locke's insistence on blowing up the sub is insane.  This was the episode that Terry O'Quinn submitted to the Emmys for the Supporting Actor category that he eventually won.  It was deserved.

Rating: 9/10

Not a dull moment in this episode.  Two big reveals (Locke's paralysis, dad on the island), the sub explosion, Sayid vaguely telling Alex about his mother, Kate and Jack's goodbye, and Ben toying with Locke.  Great stuff. 


Episode 14 – Expose

Oh, Nikki and Paulo. You should have never entered our lives.  Here are the positives about Nikki and Paolo: 1) Kiele Sanchez is super hot and often scantily-clad. 2) Rodrigo Santoro was Xerxes in 300, which was sweet. 3) In reality, they appeared very little and were relatively harmless. 4) It brought Billy Dee Williams to Lost. 5) Their last episode was actually pretty good, especially the end when they were buried alive. 

Expose is one of those cool, atypical episodes of Lost whose flashback spans the time span of the 815 survivors on the island.  It's an elaborate set-up, with Nikki and Paulo as con-artists/jewel thieves and their island-long relationship of paranoia and greed.  Dr. Arzt became an important piece of the episode, which was cool and Shannon and Boone returned briefly, and for no real reason.  But, really, it was the most inconsequential episode of season 3.  It was a throwaway episode, and it took us away from the best action on the island, at the Others camp.  It was a pragmatic and easy way for the writers to rid the show Nikki and Paulo.  Simple as that. 

Rating: 5/10

Actually a pretty cool episode, but it had little importance in the big scheme of things  Sawyer got some good screen time, Nikki pretended to be a stripper and the immortal Billy Dee gave a surprise cameo.  Other than that, eh.

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