Lost Episode 3.13, "The Man From Tallahassee"
Original Airdate: March 7th, 2007

The Rundown:

• Kate, Sayid, and Locke attempt to talk to Jack. Kate and Sayid are taken captive by the Others.
• Locke puts a gun to Ben’s head and demands to be led to the Others’ submarine.
• In flashbacks, we learn that Locke was paralyzed when he was pushed out a window by his con artist father.
• Just as Jack is about to leave the island for good, Locke appears, dripping wet. The submarine explodes in the background.
• Locke’s led to a room in the Others’ camp by Ben, and sitting in the room is...Locke’s con artist father?!

The Review:

"I’m here for the summary," John Locke says.

My ears perk up. My entire posture straightens. I am excited, and intrigued.

BOOM. Cut to commercial.

Then I realize--he didn’t say "summary," he said "submarine." Which is far less interesting to me. So I loosely tune out again, and my body relaxes.

It’s telling that just the mere misheard whiff of revelations is still enough to get me excited about Lost again. Is it telling about the show itself? Probably not. It’s more telling about me, and my predilections as a viewer of television and consumer of popular culture.

I forgive INCREDIBLY easy. All it takes is ONE great episode, or even a great MOMENT, and any TV series can instantly win me back into its good graces. It’s a variation on the battered wife syndrome--call it the battered viewer syndrome.

"But Lost, you keep teasing and teasing and not paying off," I whimper. "It hurts me."

"Come here, baby," Lost replies. "It’s okay. Let me tell you about this giant box, and whatever you imagine, well, it shows up inside the box."

"Okay, Lost. You’re really not that bad. I love you still. See you next week, sweetie pookie."

The thought of John Locke and Benjamin Linus together in a room with a handgun and conversation had me drooling all week long. I kept thinking of the glimpses of the episode offered in the commercials, and I geared up to be smacked upside the head with really great Lost mystification.

Because as much as I complain about the endless questions that go nowhere, and the endless absence of any viable answers, there is something still thrilling about getting close to the heart of the show’s mysteries. Right now, there’s no one sitting nearer to those mysteries than Ben, so when he appears, it’s always a reason to pay close attention, because you never know what might slip out. And when it does slip out, it’s just so smarmy and coy, thanks to the brilliant performance by actor Michael Emerson. Even when the story lines have been confounding and aggravating, Emerson’s Ben has always sat eerily at the heart of it all, compelling by his mere strangeness.

So did the episode pay off like I thought it would? Of course it didn’t. My hopes were high, and as is so often the case lately with Lost, my hopes were not realized.

However, it was still a worthwhile cat and mouse match between Locke and Ben. I enjoyed the manipulation-within-manipulation about it; Ben used classic reverse psychology to make sure that Locke would do exactly what he wanted done. Ben has become the classic character to NEVER trust, and yet, people keep on trusting him. Occasionally, he honors that trust, but most of the time? He’s out for...well, I guess he’s out for himself, or the island. It’s hard to know what he’s out for, since he’s still such a cypher.

As for the flashback, a bit of a letdown at the end of the day. It felt rushed, like the writers only had a few hours to come up with an explanation for Locke’s paralysis, and so they pulled out the dusty "My daddy stole my kidney!" story line and added a tail end to it.

At the end of the day, not a bad hour of Lost--there’s always something good to be said about a show that lets two strong actors (Emerson as Ben and Terry O’Quinn as Locke) face off in a series of extended scenes. Even if they’re not saying much worth hearing, it’s in the WAY they say it, so engagingly and precise.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"The Man From Tallahassee"

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.