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The hatch is opened and the true identity of "The Others" is revealed.
After the perfection that was Season 1, I couldn't help but wonder if ABC's Lost would be able to put on a repeat performance the second time around. After all, the previous king of the tube, "The OC", had managed to deteriorate exponentially after each subsequent season.Maybe expecting writers to keep pumping out such high quality material for so long was asking too much. Thankfully, Lost managed to hold serve the second time around, being equally as entertaining as when our castaways first crashed on the mysterious island.
I'm tempted to say that Season 2 was actually better than the first since there were some really high points such as finding out what was in the hatch, a slew of shocking deaths, some flashbacks that really hit home, and a more in depth look at "the others". But the first installment had its moments as well with a lot more Jack/Sawyer tension, a much better Locke, and the suspense of all those unanswered questions.
And it's that last item that makes the choice between Season 1 and Season 2 so tough. Is it more entertaining to be in suspense awaiting the answers, or to feel the satisfaction of finding them out? Definitely the best part of Lost's second season was all the mysteries that were finally solved. But the downside is that sometimes the answers you create in your head are better than what the truth really is. For example, I thought "What Kate Did" was a lot worse than "What Kate Really Did". Yet for every one of those semi-disapointments, there's a hatch with a crazy Scottish dude, who's been living down there for years and saving the world by typing some numbers into a computer every 108 minutes. How do you compete with that?
The answer is, you don't. Does it ultimately matter which season of Lost was better? Not unless you're an obsessive-compulsive freak like myself, who gets enjoyment out of ranking pointless things like my Top 5 WWF Wrestlers of all time. The main thing is that both seasons were spectacular, and the best one-two combo that Television has ever seen. And so with that thought in mind, I'll move on to the main part of this article... Right after I complete my list of the Top 5 first and second season combos of all time.
Season 2 Cast:
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Matthew Fox
(Dr. Jack Shephard)
Whenever I do a "Season Review" for a TV show, I like to go back and look at what I've written in previous years. Part of it is so I don't repeat the same thing twice, and part of it is to see if the subsequent season addressed any of the issues I brought up.
While covering Jack last season, I mentioned how he had tendencies to go a little crazy at times, and "not quit" to the point where he ended up doing more harm than good. I'm a big fan of Jack, being a future doctor
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| myself, so this character flaw of his really bothered me. Then I did my surgery rotation, and found out that Jack's flaw was just a realistic portrayal of what surgeons are actually like. Trust me, you have to be a little crazy to do that job. You end up sacrificing your time, your family, any shred of decency - basically your life just for the ego trip of being the top dog. Do you save a bunch of lives along the way? Sure. But in the end, it seems like the Maserati in the driveway means a little more to most of these guys. Unless your one of the few who still have a heart left like Jack, which in that case your life is still ruined but you're beloved by millions of people every Wednesday night.
Over all, I'm giving a fat A+ to Matthew Fox, this season. He's come a long way from that time he got cancer in San Francisco.
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Evangeline Lily (Kate Austen)
So Kate's been on the run for blowing up her mother's abusive husband... Hmm...
I gotta be honest - I was hoping for something a little more juicy. I guess the writers had to go with an offense that was wrong, yet justifiable in order to keep the masses liking her. But I would have preferred it if she had done something that was flat-out inexcusable like being a contract killer or something. Would have been a little less Hollywood, and a whole lot cooler.
Anyway, it appears that I will be
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| getting my wish for a Kate/Sawyer hook-up like I asked for in my Lost Season 1 Review. The writer's definitely created some distance between Evangeline Lily's Kate and Jack with the addition of Ana Lucia into the cast. Then again, it was actually Ana Lucia who had a "close encounter" with Sawyer. And she is dead. So maybe the Jack and Kate romance hasn't been put to rest. But I still say Sawyer is the better suitor, especially since neuro-surgeon Jack is way to good for a troubled soul like Kate. |
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Josh Holloway
(James Ford, a.k.a. Sawyer)
If Matthew Fox is getting an A+ for his portrayal of Jack, then Josh Holloway deserves an A++. One of the big gripes I had with Season 1 was the way they turned Sawyer into a creampuff towards the end. Apparently the writers have found DeROK.Net, because in Season 2, they gave me the WWF-like twist I was waiting for.
In the episode "The Long Con", Sun was mysteriously captured while working in her garden...
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| Jack and Locke were fighting over control of the islands gun supply, because Jack wanted to form an army to go after the others...
Sawyer convinced Kate that it was Jack and Ana Lucia who had kidnapped Sun to rally the castaways, who begs him to warn Locke...
Sawyer warns Locke and watches the hatch while Locke hides the guns...
Jack comes for the guns and is all ticked off that Locke moved them...
Jack and Locke start to argue on the beach over who should have control over the guns...
Until Sawyer emerges from the jungle and says that now he has all the guns, making him the top dog on the island.
How'd he do it? Well, turns out he played on Charlie's hurt feelings towards Locke and had him capture Sun and follow Locke to his new hiding place for the ammunition. He had everybody doubting everyone else, when the whole time he was the one orchestrating everything.
"The Long Con" is definitely one of the best Lost episodes ever. Most people probably don't appreciate it since it lacked romance/mystery/secrets-revealed, but this is the type of "Lord of the Flies" intrigue I had hoped for when this series premiered. Too bad they neutered Sawyer shortly after this episode and he's back to being a wuss.
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Terry O'Quinn (John Locke)
I've had a lot of good things to say about Season 2, so you might be wondering why I can't really say that it's better than Season 1. The biggest reason behind my indecision is Locke.
Locke is my favorite character, hands down. His strong beliefs and his quest to find the meaning behind the island are what separate him from all the other castaways. That being said, Season 2 brought a large amount of uncharacteristic doubt into Locke's picture.
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Sure there were times in the first season where he struggled to come to grips with what was going on, such as when he collapsed on the hatch door, only to have a beacon of light spring forth. But in the second part of the series, there was outright denial on Locke's part.
I can understand where the writers were coming from on that angle. I just didn't enjoy watching it personally. Thankfully Locke appears to be back on track in Season 3, which is a big plus for fans of the "Man of Faith".
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DeROK.Net's review of Lost Season 2 is far from over. There's still many more survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 to commend and critique!
Continue on to Part 2 of The Lost Season 2 Review
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