LOST Revisited- Season 4, Episodes 3 and 4

Season 4, Episodes 3 and 4- “The Economist” and “Eggtown”

Summary:

Sayid offers to bring back Charlotte in exchange for a ride to the freighter. Kate and Miles go with him and they are lured into a trap at the Barracks. Sawyer convinces Kate to stay. Faraday sets up a science experiment, asking Regina on the boat to fire a payload at his GPS coordinates but it does not show up for thirty-one minutes, showing a discrepancy in time off and on the island. Juliet brings Desmond to the chopper. Sayid returns with Charlotte, having traded Miles to Locke. Frank takes Sayid, Desmond, and Naomi’s body into the chopper and they take off. In flash-forward, Sayid confirms he is one of the Oceanic Six to a wealthy businessman and kills him on a golf course. He meets a woman named Elsa in Berlin, as assigned by an employer. He sleeps with her but warns her to leave because he is going to kill her employer. She shoots him, having been an assassin herself, but Sayid kills her before she can bring him to her boss. He goes to his boss’s place to patch up the wound, and it’s revealed to be Ben.

Miles offers to tell Kate what he knows about her if she lets him speak with Ben. She breaks Miles out and takes him to Ben, blackmailing him into giving Miles 3.2 million dollars in exchange for telling his boss that Ben is dead. Miles tells Kate that the world knows her past crimes. Locke threatens him with a grenade. Kate gets intimate with Sawyer and reveals she is not pregnant, but that she is heading back to the beach. Charlotte tests Faraday’s memory with playing cards and hears from the freighter that the chopper hasn’t arrived yet. In flash-forward, Kate attends a trial for her crimes, and her lawyer wants to use her “son” to help build her character. Jack is called to testify, and lies on the stand for her. They eventually agree on a plea deal of ten-year probation. Kate returns home, to where two-year-old Aaron is waiting for her.

Review:

As with many things on this show, or any show, for that matter, the thing about Hurley’s fake story (when Sayid enters the Barracks) doesn’t play because it seems like something we would have seen already. So there’s not a whole lot of suspense there, and it only provides Sayid an island-story and gets him into the same room as Ben so that the flash-forward reveal has some context. Ben on the island is in a pretty subservient and helpless position at the moment so the time jump informs us he will be leveraged into a power position again at some point (also they should not have waited so long between him first speaking and showing his face, as it was pretty obvious). The Elsa subplot does not cover any new ground, unfortunately. After a long stretch of great episodes that began in mid-season 3, we go back to something average (and then below-average with “Eggtown”). And with a title that has no relevance to the show as a whole, it’s no wonder “The Economist” tends to be a kind of forgotten episode.

My favorite part is actually Daniel’s science experiment. His awkwardness is on full display now, and it’s his twitchiness that guides us through this weird space-time dilution and makes it a palatable concept as opposed to a science lesson. We’ve long known that there has to be some sort of “bubble” surrounding them, and this helps get the point across without having to physically put it in front of us. It is also a tiny step in preparing us for the eventual time travel. The emotional hook of “The Economist” occurs when Sayid and Desmond lift off in the chopper. It’s actually a very significant moment. Sayid has spent this entire show looking for a way off, and Desmond even longer than that, and now they are rising above these familiar trees and hills, and finally leaving to safety (except not really, but we’ll get to that). Michael and Walt already left, but they were not presented as protagonists in that episode, and it felt more like exile. This also gets our minds spinning as to how the Oceanic Six might escape. The first piece is already moving, and it’s only episode three.

That long run of strong, or nearly-strong, episodes finally comes to a mushy end with “Eggtown”. In addition to being maybe the dumbest title on the list (and possibly a weird wordplay on pregnancy), Kate’s motivation in freeing Miles makes very little sense. Why does she need to ask if her crimes are public knowledge? Shouldn’t that be obvious? I guess it’s meant to be a way of asking if leaving the island is worth it, but she has to know that even if she returns to civilization in any sort of public way, the proper authorities are going to know about it. Sure, she could do it covertly and spend the rest of her life in hiding, but what sort of life is that? It’s clear that her best course of action, at this point in time and with the information that she has, is probably to stay on the island. But Kate is never one to stay in one place too long, as she sleeps with Sawyer, tells him she’s not pregnant, and then whisks off back to the beach. I’ve said my piece with the love triangle thing, so all I’ll say is the ping-ponging back and forth seems driven by plot needs, and not character needs. That’s never a good sign.

The brief memory game with Faraday and Charlotte further helps humanize them, and Miles offering to bail on his mission in exchange for money shows us he is only an instrument and not a driving force of danger, which paves the way for us to get on his side, as dickish as he might still be. The grenade provides some comic relief. The flash-forward is somewhat boring, but is at least necessary to tie up the loose thread of Kate’s criminal history, so she can be free to maneuver alongside the Oceanic Six in their hair-brained schemes. The Aaron twist was a nice idea, although it isn’t explicitly clear if he is one of the O6, which leaves open the Jin possibility in “Ji Yeon”.

Connecting the Dots:

Naomi’s R.G. bracelet could possibly be referring to Regina, but because we don’t know her last name it’s only speculation.

There was a really good theory I read about the time discrepancy in regards to the payload experiment, but I lost the bookmark and can’t find it again. But I’ll summarize. Essentially, it says that the amount of time “lost” in going in and out of the island’s bubble is dependent on the mass of the object moving through. The bigger the mass, the longer it takes to go through the bubble. The helicopter is massive and contains four fully grown humans (including Naomi’s body). It takes nearly a whole day for it to reach the freighter, from Jack’s point of view. The payload is such a small object, it takes only 31 minutes. And the calls between the island and the freighter are simply radio signals, meaning they have no mass, and are thus able to pass through with no dilations. This is never figured out by the characters, but it helps ground that aspect of the mystery.

The economist himself is only known to be a Widmore associate and that he shirks new technology, and that’s it. He’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and in a season 5 flashback Ben says everyone on the list is dead. If he was a character of any significance, we would have seen it.

The card game is meant to test Daniel’s memory, which had deteriorated due to his experiments. He is making some progress, which means the island may be healing it.

Ranking:

1.      Confirmed Dead (9/10)

2.      The Beginning of the End (8.5/10)

3.      The Economist (7.5/10) (Average episode ends with two great hooks – Sayid finally leaving the island, and his employment with Ben.)

4.      Eggtown (5/10) (Kate continues to make bad/irritating choices, and the twist at the end barely makes up for it. The beach scenes are the only interesting parts.)

Next time: Desmond gets tangled in time,and Ben loves Juliet, who loves Goodwin, who is married to Harper.