As promised:
http://community.tvguide.com/thread.jsp ... 4#comments
TV Guide Lost critique:
Lost
March 14, 2007: "There Is Hope and There Is Guilt"
by Sabrina Rojas Weiss
First, a disclaimer: I'm writing this while on vacation in Montana with the in-laws, sans DVR power, struggling though a time-zone change and on a really spotty hotel WiFi connection, so I'm counting on all of you for the Easter eggs and clever quotes. Just be forgiving and give me some brownie points for trying when I should be resting up for the slopes.
I hope all of those complainers out there are finally satisfied that we're getting a few answers. I wonder if Rousseau's sad response to Kate about her lack of questions about Alex were the writers' oblique response to such criticisms. Really, if things were revealed at a faster pace, I'm not sure there would be a show left. Tonight we've discovered that yes, just as we suspected, Claire really is Jack's half sister. Yes, the Others do live on that same island. Yes, there is an ongoing obsession with car accidents on this show. Maybe, if anything Patches said is true, the hatch explosion disrupted communication with the outside world.
Still unanswered: how Desmond's Charlie-death visions work, and how many times he's actually lived through these events. As stimulating and rewarding as it must be to save someone's life on a daily basis, I can't imagine how boring the other stuff — conversations about the weather, brushing his teeth, eating meals — must get each time he relives it. Charlie must be a real klutz, too. Claire, Sun and Jin can set up a bird-catching device without slipping to their death, but Charlie can't be allowed such near a danger. The writers must be having fun with this game: How many ways can one not-so-adventurous little hobbit accidentally kill himself?
On to Claire, whom most of us practically forgot about, other than the question of Jack's father. Poor girl had been relegated to holding the infant-actor of the week and whining about Charlie's mood swings. Suddenly she's coming up with the first plan to get off the island we've seen since Michael and Walt set sail. And she wasn't even lying that she got the idea from watching nature shows (am I the only one who imagined something more glamorous, like a childhood spent with zoologists?). When they finally did get the tagged bird my father-in-law asked this one: "Are they writing that message on something waterproof?"
We don't know how old Claire was when she got into the car accident, or what caused the argument with her mother. It could have been just some angry teenager thing. I liked the dark hair on Claire, even if it looked a bit too obviously wiggy half of the time. My problem with this flashback, though, was that it was really hard to have much sympathy for the characters. We'd never seen Claire's mom conscious; rebellious teenage Claire seems like a different character entirely; Jack's dad has always been this rather wooden bad guy; and Aunt Lindsay wasn't much of anything. There's just not enough there for me to care about. Maybe they should have thrown in something with the numbers or some magical healing powers just to keep us interested.
Meanwhile, what we definitely could have seen more of was this new intrigue with Patches and not-so-clumsy Locke. I suppose the C-4 means he did in fact know what he was doing when he entered 77. Still can't fathom his motives, other than that if we'd had the Flame around, the show's mysteries would have been solved instantly. It is pretty clear why he wanted Patches dead, though. "The John Locke I know was par--." Wait a second, did he kill Rose, too? Well, I guess he had no idea that fence would kill the guy, but it was still a pretty cold-blooded move. But this gang has seen so much in their last 80 days of existence, watching someone be electrocuted didn't seem to faze them much. I thought Patches' death was unnecessarily graphic, but they got straight to work on that climbing device. (Gee, that's not much of a security system if it can be climbed over so easily. Something tells me that's not quite all that's keeping the Others safe.) Also, there's this bit about the "List." I need someone to refresh my memory, but wasn't a list mentioned back during one of Locke's first flashbacks? I'm sure it is meant to allude to religious theories of predestination, but it mostly just brought to mind Heroes. Anyway, there is one sight that can shock Sayid, Kate and Locke: a relaxed, happy Jack playing football. Cue the creaky airplane sound effect!