Episode 3.9, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Original Airdate: February 21st, 2007

I’m not very happy with Lost right now.

The phrase "jump the shark" keeps drifting through my mind. It’s a phrase I hear a lot, and tend not to agree with very often; inevitably, if someone someplace suggests that a show I love has jumped the shark, I completely disagree. It’s rare that I become completely frustrated with a show, to the point that I see no value whatsoever in watching it.

And to be fair, I did like last week’s Desmond-centric episode of Lost an awful lot. There is still great potential there, and I’m even a little bit excited about next week, when we’ll finally get back to the castaways as a group and see people we haven’t encountered in what seems like forever--Sun, Jin, Locke, SAYID.

(Is it just me, or is the writers’ complete ignorance of Sayid’s character one of the show’s greatest logical flaws? Sayid is a brilliant, driven man. If the show chose for a second to acknowledge its own internal logic about him, he’d have built his own gas-powered dinghy and floated off to civilization alone weeks ago.

(Then again, no one would even notice if he had, since they’re all too busy waiting for Jack and Kate and Sawyer to return for their lives to have any meaning. At least, that’s how it seems. But I’m bitter, I know.)

This week, though--this week marks some kind of signpost in my journey through the wacky, wild world of Lost. It marks the episode when I would truly say I believe this show has jumped the shark, or punched the polar bear, or whatever.

ABC’s marketing department doesn’t help, honestly. All week they’ve been hyping this episode as one when "three big questions will be answered." I watched the episode, and damned if I can tell you what those questions were. Does "What does Jack’s tattoo mean?" count as one of those questions? Cause if so, I didn’t even realize he had a tattoo till last night’s episode. That’s like saying someday we’re gonna learn where Hurley’s back mole came from. What back mole? And why do I care again?

There was a palpable disappointment in my mind from the earliest moments of the episode, when I realized it would be another Jack-centric installment. I am so damn sick of this character. On your average show, the lead characters don’t become boring because you are drawn in by the events those characters participate in each week. On Lost, the flashbacks are just pumping backstory into your brain. If it’s a compelling character or a compelling backstory, that’s fine. If it’s not, you’re stuck wading through it whether you like it or not, cause you hope they’ll finally fill you in on where the Others come from, or what the Dharma Initiative really is, or blah blah blah.

Man, it’s just a SLOG when it’s a Jack episode at this point. What else can they possibly reveal about the character? That he used to be a woman? That he’s had a rampant man-crush on Locke since day one? That he’s the Big Smoke Monster on the island?

I won’t even get started on all the new crap they decided to toss into the "mythology" this week, because it’s just too damned annoying. But I must mention perhaps the true shark-jumping moment for me, which involved the introduction of two new star-crossed lovers (literally! OH, how romantic!) into the mix: Alex, allegedly Ben’s daughter, and Karl, her boyfriend and the dude who was found trapped in a chair in a FREAKY sensory overload room of some kind.

Yeah, remember that room? I mean, seriously! Inexplicable, but still COOL. Weird in a good way.

Well, the shocker here is that Karl isn’t a character who seems at all affected by his time in that room. Instead, he is a character driven because he’s in PUPPY LOVE WITH A GIRL. It’s like a bad OC episode somehow got remixed into Lost.

And that final montage! I mean, come ON. Seriously?! These two stupid characters we just met are staring up at the STARS wistfully, and I’m supposed to care WHY?!

Shark, meet Lost. Watch in slow-motion as it glides above your head.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"Stranger in a Strange Land"

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.