The "Getting Lost" series is about a Lost newbie's attempts to watch all five seasons of the show for the first time, just as the sixth (and final) one rolls along.

What I Watched on Week 8: Season 3, Episodes 1-10 ("A Tale of Two Cities", "The Glass Ballerina", "Further Instructions", "Every Man for Himself", "The Cost of Living", "I Do", "Not in Portland", "Flashes Before Your Eyes", "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Tricia Tanaka is Dead")

It finally happened.  After laughing pretty hard when a freak meteorite crashed on Hurley's chicken store, I told myself, "maybe you should stop watching for a while."

You see, now that I've hit the third season, some switch in my mind got flicked, and I'm now thinking, "hey, we can actually finish this!"  Last week I finished nine episodes.  This week, I finished ten.  Pretty odd, considering that there wasn't really that much ground covered in most of these episodes.  Or maybe it's because my schedule was, surprisingly, free.

But it was this week when I found myself really watching Lost.  I guess it's because I've become dead curious about who exactly the Others are.  Of course, I still don't have an answer.  I'm currently thinking they're part of the Dharma Initiative that were left behind when the project got terminated or something.  Of course, that's wrong.  Maybe this is another experiment altogether?

But I didn't really have time to think about that.  I spent half the week getting puzzled over Ben and Juliet's constant flipping: seems they're adhering to a slightly off-beat set of morals.  While I understand what they mean when they say they're not the enemies--after all, they do have better facilities than a bare beach--I don't understand why they have to be so antagonistic to Jack, Kate and Sawyer.  Surely that's the opposite of what they are, right?

Just to add to the confusion, Juliet's a bit of a renegade, siding with the supposed bad guys just to get home.  And the quiver in Ben's voice just gets to me.  He's like Puss in Boots in the Shrek movies: looks sinister, but doesn't sound like it.

But apart from that, there wasn't really much.  I figured it's hard to squeeze in so many events in 40 minutes or so; the slower-than-usual pace was forgivable.  (That, or because the people who seemed to be trigger-happy--Michael and Ana Lucia--were gone, making things a bit calmer.)  The only jarring bits were where things could've gone better.  I know Nikki and Paulo were so despised by the fan base, but I didn't expect them to show up just like that--it could've been more acceptable if they ended up camping elsewhere when the plane crashed.  "I Do" felt a bit weird because it all amounted to sex and Jack wanting them off the island.

And "Stranger in a Strange Land"?  Oh no.  I actually think it would've been more interesting if they flashed back to, say, Alex and Karl, just to provide a parallel to Jack trying to save Juliet.  Being "marked" is a flimsy, flimsy thread.  (And to be honest, do I really have to know what Jack did after the divorce?  Felt mere impulse.  So not like him.)

But the one thing I thought of giving a bit more time to today was "Flashes Before Your Eyes", and partly because John put it in his list of best experimental television episodes.  To be honest, I thought it was mostly filler--a full episode devoted to a flashback?--until I realized that it wasn't a flashback.  I mean, Desmond couldn't possibly see the future before he got to the island, more so try to interfere with it, right?  Maybe his life flashed before his eyes until he got tossed back to reality.  Nah, too real.

And then I realized that it happened after he flicked the fail-safe and killed the hatch, and I thought, this is time travel, and that electromagnetic anomaly is messing up things.  But I'm still thinking about it.  A part of me can't accept that time travel answer by itself, never mind that I already know future seasons will deal with that.  I mean, it can't be just Desmond, never mind his proximity to the actual thing.

I really should stop watching for a while.  Just a couple of days, just to settle down my excited brain cells, maybe to mourn Eko's death, and to wonder about that smoke monster again.  I've never been more stumped in my Lost watching.  Must be the speed.  Folks, the inevitable is happening: I'm stuck in a web, and Charlie has yet to die.

One last question, though: is the van significant?


The series so far:
Week 1: An Introduction and the First Six Episodes
Week 2: I Want My Australian Accent Back!
Week 3: The Week I Felt Like Locke
Week 4: All These Numbers Are Giving Me A Headache
Week 5: I Tried So Hard, Shannon, But I Can't Seem To Like You
Week 6: "I Guess It's All Relative Now, Huh?"
Week 7: The Science of Going in Circles





- Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of ABC)