Episode 3.14, "Exposé"
Original Airdate: March 26th, 2007

I hopped onto Google just now to find a good quote from Rod Serling, the on-camera host and major creative force behind The Twilight Zone, to start off my review. I found words eerily applicable to last night’s Lost, almost as if Serling had written one of his famous narrations for the episode, "Exposé," decades ago:

"There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy."

It’s suspicion that destroys Paolo and Nikki in "Exposé," via a classic caper plot that somehow fits perfectly when interpolated onto a deserted island and a pair of scheming castaways. So, yeah, eerie indeed.

But that’s not the real reason I looked up Serling--I was actually searching for some wide-reaching quote about the genius of The Twilight Zone, since that’s exactly the television landmark that "Exposé" reminded me of. At long last, after a season full of vamping and stumbling around mysteries unexplained, we have our first truly brilliant episode of Lost--one that’s largely devoid of bigger questions but instead focuses on a handful of characters and a much smaller mystery delivered in almost a classic "cozy" fashion.

Much like "The Other 48 Days," last season’s episode detailing the experiences of the "tailies" since the plane crash, "Exposé" provides almost an alternate history of the castaways and their time spent on the island--or at the very least, a distinctly alternate view. We mostly follow Paolo and Nikki, two incredibly minor supporting/background characters, through a series of flashbacks that begin in Sydney before flight 815 and conclude just moments before their "death."

For weeks, the Lost writers have teased us with Nikki and Paolo--at first, they were just window dressing, then you started to wonder if they could be something more. At one point in "Exposé," Sawyer finds a walkie-talkie exactly like those used by the Others, and suggests that Nikki and Paolo could themselves have been in cahoots with the Others, in a classic Lost pre-commercial cliffhanger.

What turns out to be true is that Nikki and Paolo weren’t affiliated with the Others at all--when Paolo was hiding his bag o’ diamonds in a toilet in one of the Dharma Initiative stations on the island, he found a walkie talkie, and swiped it. Apparently he then never used it again--just one of many teases the writers provide toward how Nikki and Paolo continually brush up against the show’s larger story and the island’s many mysteries.

Yet at the end of the day, Nikki and Paolo never really involve themselves in anything that’s been happening on the island over the past eighty-odd days, because they’re too consumed by their greed. Their sole obsession is the Russian doll containing $8 million in diamonds. It’s a terrific MacGuffin, a purely mechanical device that at the beginning of the episode holds endless fascination for the viewer, but by the end becomes absolutely meaningless. Throughout, you’re constantly wondering what the object could be, and you start to think, "Hey, what if it’s some big fat secret thing that blows this whole show wide open?"

Instead, it’s just stuff. Diamonds which, as Sun points out to Sawyer, are worthless on the island. The Sun/Sawyer/Charlie interactions form one of a handful of connections that "Exposé" makes to the larger Lost story, with Charlie finally admitting to Sun that he and Sawyer cooked up the scheme to kidnap her, not the Others. Sun reacts about as you’d expect, slugging Sawyer in the face.

The other tantalizing connection to the ongoing mysteries on Lost comes when Paolo hides out in a bathroom in one of the Dharma bunkers as Ben and Juliet appear to spy on Jack via closed-circuit television. Yet even that is merely passing, and totally ignored by Paolo. He’s more worried that he’s gonna be found out in the bathroom, and his diamonds are gonna get swiped.

I almost don’t want to reveal too much more about the nuts and bolts of this episode, since it’s really worth watching. Even non-fans of Lost will get a kick out of downloading this one and experiencing it. "Exposé" is the latest in a set of episodes in this third season that propose a new potential template for Lost--single-episode, largely unconnected stories that take a clever plot hook and exploit the hell out of it for fourty-four minutes.

"Exposé" is a relentlessly smart, even smart-ASS (several lines come off as sly swipes at the show’s fan base) installment in the Lost saga. It’s the first time in months that I’ve been overwhelmingly excited about the future of this show. The big mysteries of the island and its residents? Not so interesting these days. An hour-long version of The Twilight Zone set on a deserted island with a cast of intriguing characters? Bring that ON.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"Exposé"

Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.