Season
3, Episodes 13 and 14- “The Man from Tallahassee” and “Exposé”
Summary:
Locke
is visited by Peter Talbot, whose mother is seeing Anthony Cooper. Locke tells
Cooper to end it. He is later informed that Talbot is dead, and heads to
Cooper’s apartment to confront him. Cooper then pushes Locke out of his 8-story
window, thus paralyzing him and putting him in a wheelchair. Locke’s group
infiltrates the Barracks at night, but Kate and Sayid get captured. Jack
refuses to leave, and says the Others are letting him go home. Locke asks Ben
where the submarine is and Ben predicts he wants to blow it up. Preparing to
leave, Jack and Juliet encounter Locke on the dock and the submarine blows up
behind him from the C4. Ben and Richard Alpert lead Locke to a room where he
finds Cooper tied up.
In
flashback, we see Nikki filming a TV show “Exposé” and having a relationship
with producer Howard L. Zuckerman. She and Paulo conspire to kill him and steal
his bag of diamonds. Having crashed on the island, Nikki and Paulo search for
their bag. They find the Pearl, and Paulo finds the diamonds in the lake but
does not tell Nikki because he fears she won’t care about him after they get
it. He goes to hide them in the Pearl and sees Ben and Juliet form their
kidnapping plot. He later retrieves it during the search for Eko. Nikki
realizes Paulo has been holding out on her and confronts him in the jungle,
throwing a medusa spider on him. The spider paralyzes him to the point of
near-death and she grabs the diamonds. After more spiders bite her, she buries
the bag and runs off, stumbling out of the jungle, mumbles something, and
seemingly dies. Hurley thinks she said “Paulo lies” and they find Paulo also
seemingly dead. They try to determine what killed them. When Sun insists it was
the Others, Charlie admits to dragging her back in the previous season. They
find the diamonds and bury the two alive, not realizing they were paralyzed the
whole time.
Review:
There were few episodes more anticipated
than this one; the revelation of how Locke became paralyzed. His first two
centric episodes ended with big emotional crescendos and I think most of us
were expecting the same here (even if the intervening flashbacks never came
close to matching those initial highs), so it comes as a bit of a letdown that
it all boiled down to Cooper shoving him out an eight-story window. Surprising?
Yes. Emotional? No. Complex? No. Maybe the buildup and hype was part of the
problem. Or maybe the conflict between the two men should have boiled to the
surface and given both the chance for another great performance. But they
didn’t go that route.
One of the most interesting scenes here
is in Ben’s house when Locke chides the Others for having food and houses and
all the amenities of a regular lifestyle, calling it a “cheat”. Locke has
viewed the island as a pure experience, where man can be one with nature and
work on himself. Ben’s group has basically used cheat codes to taint the spirit
of that adventure, and Locke is insulted by it. But is it really a matter of
principle, or might he just be jealous? At the end though, Ben regains the
upper hand as he presents Locke with the thing that he requires in order to
improve: Cooper. This whole “magic box” speech was pretty dumb, to be honest.
It was plainly just a metaphor, which Ben even confirms a few episodes later,
but I wish it hadn’t been mentioned at all, since people apparently still talk
about it as if it was a mystery. I do think the reveal was a good one, and was
even more effective than the window push.
“Exposé” is an episode that should never
have developed as much affection from the fanbase as it did. It starred the two
most hated characters ever, the flashbacks made them appear more capable than
our main heroes at discovering things, and, other than one bit with Charlie,
was a self-contained story that served almost no broader purpose for the show.
And yet, it is a great episode. Instead of shrugging off N&P by blending
them back into the invisible background Losties, they put them front and
center, and added insult to injury by showing them discovering things like the
Pearl station before our other characters, and giving them a humorous backstory
that has them chasing the diamonds. The diamonds could even be seen as a
metaphor for Nikki and Paulo: pretty to look at, but barely-seen and serving no
intrinsic value on the island. The wackiness of Billy Dee Williams and “Razzle
dazzle!” helps us get onboard with them early. The original idea for flashback
(before they were decided to be killed) was to have all the Exposé stuff and
only reveal at the end that it was a TV show. That would have been cheap, so
thankfully it was changed up.
The running gag of the characters not
knowing who N&P are is the icing on the cake. If there is one sore spot, it's Nikki's obsession with the diamonds even in the immediate aftermath of a plane crash, which makes her seem inhuman - contrasted with Paulo's quiet shock and simple simple desire to be with his one true love. Their deaths combine two of
my greatest fears: spiders and being buried alive. It’s maybe the most brutal
and horrifying exit in the whole series, and is the perfect ending to the
joke-filled romp we’d been having up to this point. A funny death (see: Arzt,
Ilana) would have made it seem like a weird parody of Lost, but the final
gut-punch grounds it back to the show we know and love. As for the characters
we actually care about, Charlie finally admits he was the one who
fake-kidnapped Sun a season ago, trying to free his soul of guilt before his
inevitable demise. It feels a little disjointed with all the other humor here,
but is a thread that keeps us within the show’s canon.
Farewell, Nikki and Paulo. I’m not
exactly sure what you deserved, but it wasn’t this.
Connecting the Dots:
Talbot is the last name of a character
in the “Find 815” ARG, which I will discuss later. No connection between him
and the Talbots in this episode is ever established, although he apparently
does have a bit of money.
Richard only shows up to open the door
for Locke, but from Richard’s perspective they’ve already met – a few times in
fact, notably in the 1950s army camp and in Locke’s childhood. He’s already on
the lookout for signs that Locke might be special.
The Medusa spider is one of the
monster’s forms. Makes you wonder why he didn’t just stay as the spider and bite
everybody.
We get confirmation that the Others were
watching the survivors in the Swan via the Pearl station. This particular
occurrence happens after the Beechcraft falls but before Locke and Eko visit
the Pearl. How long were they spying from the Pearl? Did it go back to
Desmond’s time? They didn’t seem to know much about him, nor did they ever
seemingly find the entrance or else they would have taken it long ago.
Ranking:
1.
Tricia Tanaka is
Dead (9/10)
2.
The Cost of
Living (8.5/10)
3.
Flashes Before
Your Eyes (8.5/10)
4.
Exposé (8.5/10)
(This episode has self-referential humor, callbacks, more from dead characters,
and a run-through of some classic “Lost” moments. A perfect way to address the
Nikki/Paulo situation, and an insane way to take them out.)
5.
Enter 77 (8/10)
6.
The Man from
Tallahassee (8/10) (Some good dialogue and finally a reveal for Locke’s
paralysis. Good twist at the end.)
7.
Par Avion
(7.5/10)
8.
Not in Portland
(7/10)
9.
Further
Instructions (7/10)
10. The Glass Ballerina (7/10)
11. Every Man for Himself (6.5/10)
12. A Tale of Two Cities (6.5/10)
13. Stranger in a Strange Land (4.5/10)
14. I Do (4/10)
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