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Lost Episode 3.10, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead"

Episode 3.10, "Tricia Tanaka is Dead"
Original Airdate: February 28th, 2007

Okay, so now the shark is back in the water again. And swimming a bit.

Watching Lost for me has become a roller-coaster ride of sorts, not so much in that I am emotionally involved with the characters, but that I find myself experiencing wild and divergent feelings every week about the quality of each episode.

It’s not so much like it was back in season one, when I maintained this blissful buzz throughout each Wednesday night as this incredibly compelling story unfolded. It’s more like one week, I’m thinking, "I don’t know how much more I can stand," and the next week, I’m thinking, "Now THIS kicks my behind."

"Tricia Tanaka is Dead" was more of a behind-kicking installment, thanks to any number of reasons, but mostly because it delivered exactly what I can most easily swallow in my Lost these days: A relatively stand-alone installment, focusing on one character, that takes a creepy/weird/funny bit of strangeness and explores it. Basically, The Twilight Zone with lots of sand.

"Tricia" focuses on Hurley, who has seen his share of flashback episodes to be sure. Hell, all the characters have at this point. And the return to a few of the series’ dusty chestnuts--the numbers, and Hurley’s awful luck--didn’t at first seem promising.

But damn, they pulled it off. The episode just had a gripping command of style, character, and emotion, guiding the viewer gently through its paces and slowly unpeeling the layers of its innards.

(Do you know what that means? I sure as hell don’t.)

The crux of the story is that Hurley, Sawyer, Jin, and Charlie are going to miraculously repair this old beaten VW van that was discovered in the jungle. I knew we were in for some strange fun when I saw Vincent the dog running up to Hurley with a dead guy’s arm in his jaws, the keys to the van hanging from the hand’s fingertips.

In flashbacks, we return to Hurley after his big lottery windfall, where TV reporter Tricia Tanaka is killed by an unexpected meteorite ("...or asteroid, I don’t really know the difference," says Hurley) after meeting up with our Hugo.

We also get to meet Hurley’s dad, a bit of stunt casting that could easily remain just that, if the actor cast wasn’t Cheech Marin. Known best for his pot-smoking past as one half of Cheech and Chong, he’s now a fairly well-established actor in his own right, and he brings a gentle goofiness to his role that slyly draws from what we already know of Hurley to create a man who clearly influenced Hurley in his early life to become the vaguely hippie-esque gentle soul that we know on Dharma Island.

Just as with the Desmond-centric episode of two weeks ago, I appreciated "Tricia Tanaka is Dead" as a welcome respite from the JackOthersJackKateSawyerJackJackOthersBenJulietJackJack slog that this season has become. It is not an earth-shattering moment in this show’s history. It has absolutely no significant revelations, nor does it claim to. It’s a well-done character piece that has a nice emotional lift at the end.

And even if I am damn, DAMN sick of the lame J.J. Abrams slo-mo music montage that closes every other episode of this show, I’ll admit the conclusion lifted my spirits a bit. A refreshing change for a series that typically tends to crush my interest instead.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"Tricia Tanaka is Dead"


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.

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