WWWednesday: Lost, Season 3: Smoke and Mirrors

Some fans of Lost consider Season Three its best season. It is a pivotal season, with the growing hints about Jacob and the smoke monster/Man in Black. Two things make the season a fan favorite; the introduction of a character many people loved, Dr. Juliet Burke, and the plotline involving Charlie, which, unlike most plotlines in the show, actually resolves, and with meaning.

Season Three aired from October, 2006 through May, 2007. As always I’m indebted to Lostpedia for the facts and details. This column will include spoilers for this and future seasons.

In this season we see our first true “death as sacrifice.” We meet a super-powered Other, Richard.
We lose Mr. Eko, the former Nigerian child-soldier-turned-warlord-turned-priest, as he searches for redemption and is killed by the smoke monster. Locke  temporarily joins the Others and begins a power struggle with Ben Linus.

The end of Season Two left Jack, Kate and Sawyer held captive by Ben Linus and the Others. When Season Three opens, it’s with a woman we haven’t seen before, Juliet, and she’s hosting book club. An acrimonious debate about the merits of Stephen King’s Carrie is interrupted by the roar of a jet engine overhead, and everyone runs out to see Oceanic 815 streak across their sky and break apart. In an instant, everything changes, and we see that this supposedly suburban group is really a complex of The Others.

Plotlines for Season Three include 1) Charlie’s fate; 2) The Pregnancy Problem; 3) Desmond’s Superpower, and 4) The Boat. New characters are introduced, including conflicted Other Juliet, and Alex, Ben Linus’s adopted (stolen) daughter. The show makes a half-baked attempt at involving other castaways in storylines, specifically Nikki and Paulo in their own film-noirish episode, with predictable lack of success.

With the end of Season Three, we get the first of the flash-forwards which will continue in Season Four with the story of the Oceanic Six.

But now, the story:

Jack, Kate and Sawyer are kept prisoner. Jack is inside somewhere, apparently underwater (an aquarium tank, it turns out), while Sawyer and Kate are kept in outdoor cages, which Kate can easily climb out of. They are also under camera surveillance, which never occurs to them (oddly, since spying and surveillance has been the one constant in Other behavior). Sawyer and Kate are treated badly—taunted, forced to do hard labor breaking up rocks, while Jack watches movies and eat sandwiches. It turns out that Ben, the leader of the Others, needs Jack to operate on a tumor on his spine. Juliet also reveals herself as a traitor to Ben when she secretly asks Jack to kill him during the surgery and make it look like an accident. Jack engages in brinksmanship with the Others, threatening to let Ben bleed out on the table unless Kate and Sawyer are freed. He refuses to go back with them though, because he got to look at the camera feeds and saw them having sex, and his feelings are hurt. The biggest “secret” of the Jack and the Others story is that they are no longer on The Island, but a smaller island across a channel, about a mile away.

Sayid, Jin and Sun took Desmond’s sailboat and tried to plan a rescue, but they were overrun by Others. Sun shot one in self-defense. The Others got Desmond’s boat.

Back at the beach, the story reveals that Desmond travels in time, and he has had “flashes” of Charlie’s death. (Later we’ll discover that Desmond’s ability is more superhuman than that.) are several expeditions in this season as people traipse off to try to use the Dharma computers, and Eko goes on a spiritual quest that ends with him leaving the show. Eventually, they get Jack, who brings Juliet along with him. The Pregnancy Problem is revealed, and most importantly, its risk to the pregnant Sun.

This is classic Lost: puffing up a plotline with gravitas and mystery only to dump it by the side of the road like a burlap sack of unwanted kittens some time later. Walt is the best example of this, but the pregnancy problem is a close second. Ben lured Juliet, a doctor and medical researcher interested in conception and gestation, to the island to address a problem among the Others. Pregnant women and their fetuses die before the women reach their third trimester. This is 100% consistent, and (we find out later) hasn’t always been the case. Juliet has been unable to solve the problem but somehow she has determined that it only affects women who conceived on the island. Hence, pregnant Sun’s conception date is important. This problem, an existential threat to the Other colony, exists primarily to put Sun in jeopardy, and secondarily to create some motivation for Juliet—a motivation which, directed by the script, she later abandons.

The Charlie’s Fate storyline looks powerful here in comparison, because for once the show did what it promised and delivered on the set-up.

As a viewer, my problem isn’t that the show dropped storylines whenever they got awkward. Lots of television shows have done that in a variety of ways. What irritated me on rewatch was the pretense that these plots had meaning. In any work, a plot exists to bring characters together and give them conflicts to work out, problems to solve or issues to explore. In Lost, all too often the show relied on the actors to play scenes as if things mattered… but they didn’t. Eko, who is played by Adewalle Akinnuoye-Agjabe, a master of gravitas, is a good example. Frequently the character stares off past the camera, draws a breath, and utters a response to some meaning-of-life question… only the response is something like, “I dunno, could be anything, I guess.” The show includes survival issues, questions of ethics and morality, and metaphysical elements, and none of them connect in a coherent way. “Could be anything, I guess,” could be Lost’s unofficial slogan.

Women and their unborn children dying really aren’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of Season Three—I mean, it’s not like we know those women, right? Probably, (it’s never explained) something is out of balance on the island. We already know that the island heals, and it has cured cancer. Most likely the gestation problem is because (spoiler alert), Ben, who claims he speaks for Jacob, the mystical leader of the Others, really does not. The Others’ storyline is a lot like the Lion King, where a false leader/usurper brings drought and starvation, until the True Leader is reinstated. Only without the songs.

The castaways discover that there can be radio communication beyond the island, only Ben’s shut it down. Charlie’s story dovetails with the discovery of The Looking Glass, an underwater radio post Ben is controlling. Why is it underwater? No one knows, just like no one knows what Kate and Sawyer were breaking up rocks for, or why Ben chose to use 1970s Clockwork-Orange style brainwash-torture on Alex’s boyfriend. None of these things make sense or are explained.

This makes it sound like I hated Season Three, and that’s not the case. Juliet was a good addition to the cast. Charlie’s storyline has a heartbreaking ending that he absolutely earned, and, as I said, it was the first plotline that actually led to a conclusion. Season Three held one of my favorite Hurley episodes, “Trisha Tanaka is Dead.” Hurley, who more than most has every reason to succumb to despondency, instead once again rallies for optimism. The present-tense story of the ep is Bros With Beers Doing Stupid Stuff, but it’s fun stupid stuff. Charlie faces his sense of powerlessness and his fear of death, and the whole episode is a breath of fresh air. I didn’t love the Locke/Sawyer episode “The Brig,” but the chemistry between actors Josh Holloway and Kevin Tighe carried their scenes for me… and the background of that tale, as Locke is manipulated by Ben, showed us more about Ben. Ben is seriously threatened by Locke, especially once he learns that Locke has heard Jacob’s voice.

At the end of Season Three, we’ve met Richard, who seems to be a force working against Ben and aiding Locke in connecting with Jacob. We are crystal clear on just how narcissistic Ben Linus is.

In the final episodes, the castaways believe that Penny Whidmore, Desmond’s true love, is on her way in her boat, and they need to send her a signal. This means diving down to the underwater station, fighting off the Other minions sent to hold it, and signaling the boat. After a few problems, like being hit over the head and tied up, Charlie, who volunteered to do the dive, has gotten free with Desmond’s help. He’s avoided certain death and is messaging Penny. In the final few minutes of the season-ender, Charlie learns that the freighter nearing the island was not sent by Penny. He is attacked by a resurrected Other, and the underwater station is flooding. To save Desmond, Charlie makes the ultimate sacrifice. As he drowns, he writes three words on his hand, holding it up so Desmond can see them: “Not Penny’s Boat.”