Season
3, Episodes 1 and 2- “A Tale of Two Cities” and “The Glass Ballerina”
Summary:
A
flashback shows the Others, including Juliet and Ben (the fake Henry Gale)
witnessing the plane crash from a compound in the middle of the island. Before
that, Jack is following Sarah, demanding to know who her new lover is, and he
falsely suspects Christian. In the present, Jack wakes up in a dark holding
cell and is questioned by Juliet who says they are at the Hydra DHARMA station
and shows him a dossier on his life. Sawyer wakes up outside in a cage with another
prisoner, Karl, nearby. The two of them briefly escape but Sawyer is dragged
back and Karl is taken away. Kate is treated to a meal with Ben who tells her
the following days will be unpleasant, and is then put in Karl’s old cage.
Sun
is sleeping with Jae Lee but is discovered by her father. Mr. Paik orders Jin
to kill Lee. Instead, he roughs up Lee and orders him to leave the country, but
Lee then commits suicide by falling onto his car. Ben orders Colleen to attack
Sayid’s group and steal the boat. Sun, Jin, and Sayid are split on whether to
wait for Jack or to sail around to find him, but they reach the dock to build
another signal fire. Sayid wants to lure the Others with the fire and question
them, but doesn’t want Jin to know – yet he figures it out anyway. Pickett
leads Kate and Sawyer to a clearing where they are ordered to break rocks, and
Alex appears to Kate, inquiring about Karl. Sawyer attempts a mutiny but Kate
is used as leverage to compel him to stop. Colleen’s group sneaks onto the boat
and a shootout occurs, resulting in the Others stealing the boat. Ben tells
Jack information from the outside world and promises to take him home.
Review:
DAT OPENING, DOE. I remember when this
first came on, there about two seconds where I literally thought I had the
wrong channel on. Which is what they wanted. That’s such a great upward-view of
the plane breaking apart, and then the smash-cut pull backwards to show the
entire island. And you’ve got Ethan and Goodwin and Ben there to give you
creepy vibes. The drawback to this is that now the mysterious aura of the
Others is essentially evaporated – kinda hard to view these people as monsters if they have a book club and bake muffins. The process of slow, incremental
discovery has (usually) worked wonders for this show, so to get the full
picture in the first minutes is a little bit of a bummer. But hey, it’s still a
great moment.
Wish I could have similar praise for the
rest of the episode. I’ve already made clear that I don’t care for Jack or
Kate, and while I do like Sawyer he is not as great when involved in love
triangle nonsense. So, it’s a little rough with this Hydra Island arc, and with
no trips to the main camp. Not even Sawyer’s glee at solving the fish biscuit
contraption is enough. From a storytelling perspective, this at least is a big
step for Jack in his ultimate destiny. By asking his captors if Sarah is going
to be alright and happy, and then looking relieved when he gets his answer, he
is beginning his process of letting go of the real world – a process that will
eventually lead him to return to the island and become protector. The flashback
is pretty boring but it helps push that agenda. So there’s something, at least.
“The Glass Ballerina” is…well, I don’t
like using the word “filler”, but it’s pretty close. Our boat trio is waiting
around to be attacked, and some drama is manufactured to give it a narrative
(“He knows I betrayed him”….a little much, Sun?). The Others steal the boat but
it is never used again until the end of season 6, so it’s mostly just a way for
the writers to remove a possible means of escape from the story. The episode’s
title comes from the opening flashback, where young Sun breaks the ballerina
figure and blames it on the maid – an overt example of Sun’s lying ending up
hurting others. The Jae Lee subplot is resolved in dramatic fashion, and
although Jin has once again spared his target, this time it still ends in
death. Is there something deeper to dig up in this? Probably. But it’s not a
story I’m especially interested in at the moment, so I’ll just leave it there.
The rock quarry is one of those weird
mysteries that initially seemed to be left unresolved for a long time until it
randomly shows up later. It’s so mundane, but treated as such an important
task, that it naturally piques your curiosity but not to the point where you
think the entire plot revolves around it. The perfect kind of mystery, really.
Ben showing Jack the Red Sox championship win was the perfect cherry-on-top to
that little running thread, and the first news from the outside world (and REAL
outside world, no less) shakes us out of our tropical island bliss to remind us
that there is something real and tangible that these people are wanting to find
again. One of the few beats from Hydra Island I actually like.
Connecting the Dots:
Amelia, the woman Juliet talks to in the
opening sequence, is not seen nor mentioned again outside of a mobisode.
Theories that she is an aged version of Amy Goodspeed were effectively quashed
when the encyclopedia confirmed Amy died in the Purge, although it might have
shaded Amelia’s comment about Ethan in a different light. Interestingly, in
“Carrie”, the book they’re reading, the last page has a letter from a woman
named Amelia claiming her daughter Annie has psychic powers. Perhaps she is the
mother of Ben’s Annie? Since we never hear anything more of either of them, we
can never know for sure.
We never learn the identity of Sarah’s
lover.
Tom’s line, “It only took the bears two
hours”, is now explicit confirmation that bears were used by DHARMA (as if the
Swan film wasn’t enough). But it does show us that they appeared to be testing
the bears’ intelligence in working the contraption.
Another Tom line, that Kate is “Not my
type”, is foreshadowing of Tom’s homosexuality.
The rock-breaking and -hauling is to
build the runway for Ajira 316. Presumably Jacob ordered this, but it’s not
fully explained.
Ranking:
1.
The Glass
Ballerina (7/10) (Another perfectly decent, average Sun and Jin episode.)
2.
A Tale of Two
Cities (6.5/10) (The opener is killer. The rest is mostly setup.)
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