Lost Season 2 Posted by CK-Auctions
Posted by CK-Auctions
Season Two begins with "Man of Science, Man of Faith", and almost immediately it tells us precisely what is in the hatch. We don't know why it's there -- in fact, we don't know a great deal about it -- but over the course of the first three episodes, we learn quite clearly what it is supposed to be (at least from one perspective), and that revelation changes everything for many of the lostaways, particularly Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn). These two men have spent their time on the island, and much of the time before that, facing internal struggles between science and faith. While Jack leaned closer to the former and Locke to the latter during the first season, there is a duality within each of these men, and the significance of the hatch places even greater strain on those internal battles. Each of these characters has faced the harsh realities of the world, and yet each has been a part of an event that can only be described as a "miracle". How they cope with their past and face the challenges before them on the island -- most notably the hatch -- is one of the more compelling aspects of the series, and it is a running theme for the entire second season.
While further setting up the mysteries of the hatch, the second episode of the season ("Adrift") seeks to tell us what happened to the raft that was under siege in the first season's finale. Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) is nowhere to be found, Sawyer (Josh Holloway) has a bullet lodged in his shoulder, and Michael is distraught over the kidnapping of his son. Adrift on the ocean with no land in sight and no sail to guide them, Michael and Sawyer have to fend for themselves in what is largely a two-person piece. Unfortunately, the considerable talents of these two men are completely wasted, as the episode is packed with motivationless bickering, unreasonable character actions, and a lot of whining from Michael. In fact, for as interesting as his character can be for short bursts during this season, Michael's contribution to the show has devolved almost exclusively to yelling, "WALT!!!!" or growling, "they took my son" before disappearing for episodes at a time. He pops up now and then for an interesting scene or two, but the character struggles of a man trying to connect with a son he barely knows that made Michael so compelling in the first season are all but gone. He has two flashback episodes, and neither of them presents any new information that we didn't already know or couldn't figure out through context. Sayid (Naveen Andrews), too, is largely wasted, underutilized with a single flashback and saddled with his nonsensical "love" of Shannon (Maggie Grace).
Herein lies the major obstacle that the second season of Lost faces. So much of the first season was driven by character development, through flashback woven into the fabric of the present, and it worked very well; but after a while, unless it is a truly great character, you start running out of interesting stories to tell from the past that actually relate to the events on the island. This was evidenced most prominently with Kate (Evangeline Lilly) in the first season, when by her third flashback, viewers were simply bored with her. To their credit, the writers pull back on her quite a bit, giving her one lone flashback episode and almost conceding defeat with the straight-forward title "What Kate Did".
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