Finally my rewatch of Lost has reached season 3 which I'm slow burn watching with my sister whose never watched it before. Its been a gap of nearly two years since I finished season 2 and the wait has been due to watching a number of shows with my sister and getting some variety in our viewing. Like with previous seasons I want to say something about my memory of this season and thoughts going in.
Season 3 is one of my favourite episodes, its one where as viewers our status quo is shaken as we get to see more of the others and the island. We start to do some deep dives into characters that were introduced and as a series we reach what I call the "lock in" phase where the show decides viewers are either in deep enough to go Full Lost or their out. Also a little bit of trivia, long term viewers who watched the show on initial broadcast may remember that during this season Virgin got into a spat with Sky and Sky 1 got taken off the Virgin subscription and replaced with Virgin 1 which didn't carry Lost. As a result I'm watching the series on the same box set that I watched the show on originally after the episode about Jacks tats.
Anyway onwards with the episode, we start with a fantastic cold open where we're introduced to Juliet whose preparing to host a book club meeting in a suburban setting. During the meeting there is an explosion and after some impact shocks the club members go outside and see the Oceanic 815 breaking up in mid air just as its about to crash - OMG we're in a flashback to the opening events of the first ever episode! We get a few cameos of Others who we've already met come running out of their houses Henry Gale, Ethan and Goodwin. Henry sends the other two off to infiltrate the survivors and we get a camera pan showing the suburban area is a small village of the island that we haven't seen and Juliet is an Other!
I'm going to cover the flashback briefly as quite frankly its uninteresting, we're seeing Jack after the break up of his marriage and how his obsession with Sarahs new partner impacts on his life. The most important impact is that Jack drives his father back to drink creating the events that will result with him being on the Oceanic 815 crash. We get a moment later in the episode where Jack is offered the chance to find anything about Sarah and refuses. We know Jacks obsessive nature and the damage it can do and this moment is about as cheap as a Mick Foley pop.
The action taking place in the present revolves around the Losties who were abducted in the finale of last season. Of note the pre episode recap mostly features characters from this episode so we only see three of the main regulars with the fates of the rest unseen for now. Jack, Kate and Sawyer are kept separated from each other for most of the episode. We learn that they are being kept in another Dharma station called The Hydra which seems to be at first glance an animal research station that is partly under water. Three seasons in and we finally get an explanation for the polar bears! We see glimpses of the station, some fun stuff with Sawyer as he completes some obstacles in his cage and wins a fish biscuit, Kate sees the showers and gets treated to breakfast before being caged. The highlight of the opening episode is the scenes between Jack and Juliet in the shark cage. Elizabeth Mitchell gives an incredible low key performance and debut as Juliet and she is the hook of the episode. She's playing Juliet as someone whose had her soul ripped out and is dead behind the eyes, as an acting decision this works.
Of note in this episode is the brief (so brief the meme of no polar bear explanation exists) explanation of the polar bears and the breakfast scene that a number of fans became so obsessed about that Damon Lindelof had to issue a press release saying that it contained no hidden meanings. Its a 7/10 for me, a slow but intriguing start with hopefully some more meaty episodes around the corner.
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