Thoughts on Lost: Season 2

All right, so I FINALLY finished watching the second season of Lost.  I had to take a personal hiatus from the show for various reasons before the last five episodes, and coming back after weeks away from the show made me realize a bit why the show may have been so hard to watch as it aired week after week.  It's not only a complex show, but there's a constant energy on the show to make something happen, to find answers, to get off the island (well, some characters want to stay on the island, but I digress).  When you take weeks off in between, that energy kind of dissipates for the viewer, and it becomes hard to get back in.  Also, the fact that the time the survivors spent on the island was "only" 100 days before some of them get rescued, and yet it took three YEARS to show all of that, again kind of kills the momentum.  But anyhow...

I had mixed feelings about this season, but very much enjoyed it overall.  I think this season had better  individual moments and episodes than a great overarching narrative (really, not much happens until the very end), and there were also some pretty iffy moments and character choices throughout.  The acting has remained top-notch, and the cinematography and music are still excellent.  Also, my strategy of going through this chronologically has continued to pay off, as episodes that would have greatly annoyed me if I'd seen them the way they actually aired were enjoyable (basically anything to do with the Tailies), and knowing character motivations gave some different twists to situations, like with "Henry Gale."

Things I liked:

The opening of the season, with Desmond going through his morning routine in the hatch, was genius; for someone who watched it as it aired, it would have been even more disorienting and cool, I would think.  Maybe the only time so far where watching the show "in order" spoiled a cool moment, although spoiled is really too strong a word.

Well, Ben, of course.  Michael Emerson is a fantastic actor, and the character comes across powerfully on screen.

There were a stretch of episodes, and I can't for the life of me remember which ones, but I think it included "Everybody Hates Hugo," where the endings were actually extremely sweet and happy; it was a welcome tonal change, at least for a little while.

All the character deaths, save for someone about to go on a date (I don't want to spoil anything here if I can help it due to some friends wanting to watch the show for the first time this way eventually), were extremely justified and good narrative choices, I think.

The whole pushing the button thing, and the eventual discovery of the central hatch with the observation screens and notebooks is a great idea, especially when it gets revealed what the real experiment going on is.

Things I didn't like:

The whole Tailies plot felt very heavy-handed, and if watching the show normally, would have been quite annoying to me.  The Other 48 Days, an entire episode devoted to flashbacks with them, and mainly featuring Ana Lucia being annoying and paranoid, would have irked me to no end, but breaking it up into small chunks scattered chronologically throughout the first and second season made it all much better.  Overall, the biggest letdown of the season.

There were a bunch of little plot points that didn't make a whole lot of sense, such as why Locke felt a need to slide under the blast door when he could have just crawled through the vent, or why Henry Gale even got captured in the first place.  Also, there's something that doesn't quite sit right with me as far as why the Others would go out of their way to convey a country bumpkin image to the survivors, but whatever.

Best episode: There wasn't one true standout, unlike the first season with Outlaws.  I loved both episodes that were Hurley-centric, especially Dave, which I thought was remarkably well-handled in terms of making even the viewer question reality.  Also, Maternity Leave was strong and very nicely written in terms of resolving the whole Claire amnesia thing.  Finally, I liked the season finale quite a bit.

Worst episode: Well, the obvious one is The Other 48 Days. What's strange is how once the Tailies were separated from each other and integrated into the camp, I liked each character much more, even Ana Lucia.  But I think the episode that I watched normally that I disliked the most had to be Fire + Water, where Charlie goes crazy and tries to basically kidnap and drown Aaron.  It made absolutely no sense, and was never really even resolved at all.  Sigh.

All right, on to Season 3!