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Lost Episode 3.3, "Further Instructions"

Episode 3.3, "Further Instructions"
Airdate: October 18th, 2006

I'll say this much: I fully support trippy television.

Any time a series is willing to attempt a weird dream sequence, featuring off-kilter camera work and strange visuals that mystify the mind, I'm in favor of it. Whether it makes sense or not, whether it has any relevance to the story or none whatsoever, I'm there.

Lost joins a proud modern tradition of hour-long series with unforgettable trippy dream sequences, from Twin Peaks to The Sopranos, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where creator Joss Whedon devoted an entire EPISODE to a series of trippy dream sequences. Good stuff.

I think I'm such a fan because the trippy dream sequence instantly shatters any possible preconceptions one has about the very format of television storytelling itself. The only rule is that there are no rules. Anything can happen--midgets can appear from behind red velvet curtains, fish can speak in the voices of dead friends, and Hurley can work as an airline employee. Even on Lost, which frankly seems to be abusing the dream sequence/hallucination as plot development a bit too often, it's a barrel of laughs

Maybe it's just because I am such a trippy TV fan, and the trippiest part of "Further Instructions" came in the episode's first twenty minutes. But I felt as though the episode started very strong and slowly petered out.

Part of it, too, is that I just found it hard to buy the "Locke as hippie pothead drug supplier" flashback. It's true that they're creating these characters whole cloth over the course of many seasons, filling in blanks from their pasts as time goes by, which requires patience and an open mind on the part of viewers, since the people we're watching are literally transforming before our eyes because of what we learn about who they were before the island.

That doesn't mean this Locke we saw at the commune somehow gels with the Locke we've seen donating a kidney to his evil daddy and hooking up with Peg Bundy. In fact, it seemed a pretty huge stretch, and didn't seem to serve any story purpose other than justifying how Locke could embrace the idea of the "sweat lodge" where he drops hallucinogens and dreams about Boone.

Otherwise, what'd we get, really? A few good one-liners from Charlie, a pretty awful computer-generated polar bear, and Desmond.

Oh, Desmond. Would that I could give a hoot about your mysterious ability to predict the future. As a season one plot twist, I would have perched upon the edge of my chair with excitement; last season, it would have livened up the otherwise droll proceedings.

Coming as it does now, in episode three of season three, when we're already reeling from some pretty huge mysteries regarding the Others and Jack/Sawyer/Kate and the nature of the hatch and hey what about that ARCTIC SCIENCE OUTPOST FROM THE END OF LAST SEASON OH EM GEE LOLLERS, I can't seem to care.

Honestly, how much more of this do they think we can take? So Desmond knows what's going to happen before it happens. Weird. I cannot even fit that into my brain alongside the other garbage happening on this island that I don't understand. At this point, Hurley could sprout giant wings like a chicken and breathe fire, and I would have no reaction whatsoever.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again, since I have a feeling I'll be saying it a lot over the course of these reviews: The plot on Lost seems to be writing checks that the story can't cash. In other words, they're in way over their heads, they don't have an idea where this will end up, and so to keep the fire burning, they just toss on more confounding mysteries.

Whatever. At least the episode ended relatively well--Locke seems to be stepping up to occupy the position of interim tribe leader in the absence of Jack, which is an intriguing development. The Locke/Jack dynamic has always been one of the show's most interesting vibes, so it would be neat if they explored it fully and carried it out to a logical conclusion at last. Locke's faith versus Jack's reason is a showdown that's been brewing since practically the first episode, and I'd love to see it explode into a massive showdown between warring factions of the castaways.

Then again, I love to see talking fish on my teevee set, so what do I know?

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"Further Instructions" (Not yet posted on iTunes)

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