[LST] A Tale Of Two Cities

TV Programme: Lost
Season: 3
Episode: 1
Date I watched this episode: 04/07/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 year, 7 months, 13 days.
Centric for: Jack, Juliet

I currently rank "Lost" as my fifth favourite programme of all time (after only Farscape, The West Wing, Alias and Smallville) and is the second favourite which has new episodes for me to watch (the first being Smallville, which I'll be watching again once I've finished The New Adventures Of Superman). Needless to say, after such a long drought period, my level of excitement for this episode was just unbelievably high. Like I said in the pre-season notification, I bought this season way back last summer. In fact, I placed the original order exactly 1 year and 1 day before watching this episode. It's just been sitting staring at me on my shelf, while for one reason or another I haven't been able to actually start watching it.

My reaction to this episode? Wow. WOW! This show really hasn't lost any steam (excuse the pun) by being in its third year. This premiere episode was one of the best premieres I have ever seen, but then the season 2 premiere was also absolutely amazing, so I shouldn't have been too surprised.

Imagine my excitement. I sat down and put that DVD into my player, my hands almost trembling. I'd been waiting for this moment for so long and now it was finally here. Following the typical language-selection screen (which I'd forgotten about, with those arty background images), and the Buena-Vista International logo (which always reminds me more of Alias than Lost), there followed a series of trailers for DVD shows. These trailers went on longer than those on any other DVD I own, about 10 or 15 minutes, but it really made me feel like I was at the movies.

Finally, it was time to start the episode. Admittedly, that opening sequence is something I've seen before, but it is one of the only bits I've seen from season 3, and it was a long time ago. Still, I was able to sit back and enjoy this flashback, which introduced the new character of Juliet, and the village that The Others lived in at that time. The scenery is just so great, a new departure for the series, and I hope we get to see more of this, which vaguely reminds me of "Liberty Village" (from [ALS] "Welcome To Liberty Village"). (Incidentally, this was the only episode partly written by JJ Abrams since the pilot itself).

Ben's (the character's real name is suggested in this sequence and revealed at the end of the episode) sense of leadership and quick thinking is shown off here, and in fact it's the only time we've really seen him in action so far. As for Juliet herself, well I think she is a really interesting character. She doesn't feel like a villain, and I wonder if she has been forced into this. She has a mysterious, almost uncomfortable look on her face most of the time, and admits that she used to work for DHARMA "a long time ago".

Next scene we see is a flashback, and at this point I was really on-edge, dying to see the fate of the characters on the island. The show was teasing me with a few minutes of fairly incidental footage before getting to that moment. And then we get it: the first appearance of Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard in the episode. Regardless of what people say, he really is the main character of this show, and the first to appear in season 3. The dark, gloomy atmosphere of his cell, together with his frustration of being stuck, just added to the mood of the episode at the time. His escape attempts and stubbornness (even to the point of putting his own health at risk) throughout the episode were so in-character and had an almost animal feel to them, although Juliet was not in the least phased by all this.

And from there, the "episode proper" started. I thought it was a very bold move to have an episode carried by only a few characters, but with such a large cast they really are able to do that. When I wrote in my pre-season notification about the locations of various characters, it didn't even cross my mind that we wouldn't see most of those groups in the first episode. However it's only Jack, Kate and Sawyer that we see, together with Ben and Juliet. They are all within some sort of DHARMA facility, but in three very different locations: Jack is in an underwater section (incidentally, how cool is that?) called "The Hydra" while Kate/Sawyer are in an above-ground section somewhere else. Since Ben and Juliet are seen in both sections, it's reasonable to assume that they are close together. The new actors Rodrigo Santoro and Kiele Sanchez were also credited for this ep, but did not appear.

The producers really showed their confidence in the show by taking this first episode very slowly. In fact, not a lot happened worth discussing, but this didn't ruin the episode, it just made it a very pure establishing episode. Instead of lots of action, we just see Juliet slowly probing Jack until he gives into her demands, Kate enjoying a nice relaxing breakfast with Ben (again a beautifully decorated on-location shoot), and Sawyer trying to figure out how to use those bear contraptions (with typical Sawyer sarcasm, especially towards the mysterious Karl).

The flashback sequences for Jack were very well in-keeping with the theme of the episode. Nevertheless, Jack's flashback episodes are usually some of my least favourite ones, and I didn't really enjoy this story, though it seemed necessary for telling the main story. Jack and Christian have a very complicated relationship though which was interesting right from the start of these sequences. Jack's realisation that he just wants to see Sarah happy, is something of a turning point for the way he approaches the situation he is currently in.

This season premiere differs greatly from the last in that it doesn't really answer any questions. Last year we got to find out what was in the hatch, but here we are just posed with more questions. We still don't know why the three of them have been brought here, though Ben did say to Kate that it was going to be very unpleasant. I'd harbour a guess that those weird injections have something to do with it though.

This was an awesome episode and a testament to how great the writing still is on this show. Obviously I'm still looking forward to seeing the other characters in episode 2, but this was a worthy and hype-building start to the season.