Summary: Flashbacks show that Liam was intoxicated during the birth of his daughter and was later kicked out for dropping his daughter. He returns to Charlie and secretly sells his piano in order to repair his own life. On the island, Charlie has frequent dreams about needing to save Aaron and starts acting irrationally. Charlie goes to Eko who says Aaron must be baptized. Locke follows him to his secret stash and takes it away from him. Soon after, Charlie decides to baptize Aaron himself and lights a fire to distract everyone while he does it. Claire notices and everyone stops Charlie. Locke punches him.
The Good: The Hurley and Libby story is decent for a B-story. There are a couple of decent laughs, and this new relationship does serve to get us to know Libby a little better, which is welcome. With better execution, there's a good story here for Locke. Freeing Charlie from addiction was one of his first successes on the island, so it should be easy to see why he would be so frustrated with Charlie seemingly returning to drug use. The Bad: Unfortunately that's all I have for the good. This episode was all-around terrible. One of this show's best strengths is its ability to make me sympathize with just about everyone. So it's quite a big shock when an episode like this one comes around in which almost every character is completely unsympathetic and I find myself detached from everyone's emotions. Charlie gets it the worst. He's not using drugs, but he may as well be with how irrationally he behaves all the time. He's a liar whose motivation and behaviour is so suspicious, and we're never given an adequate explanation for why he is acting like this. Claire on the other hand, is just an outright bitch for most of this episode and somehow I can't even sympathize with her fear of Charlie. Locke behaves completely out of character throughout this episode. For whatever reason he seems to have abandoned his faith to take care of Claire, and all of his actions are wildly different from the character that I remember from season 1. Lastly there's Eko who is frustratingly vague and unhelpful throughout the episode. The sloppy character writing leads into a plot that makes no sense and is simply frustrating to watch unfold. Just like in "Everybody Hates Hugo", this episode opens up with a strange dream sequence. I don't know why these sequences keep coming up when they seemingly aren't even relevant to the story. It diminishes the impact of dreams when they aren't used to advance the plot like they did back in "Deus Ex Machina". Anyways, these dreams provide a forced catalyst to make Charlie behave irrationally through a lot of stupid moments. The sleepwalking scene was poorly done. It seemed an innocent mistake and should have gone down as a big misunderstanding. It wasn't Charlie's fault, yet people inexplicably treat it like it was his fault, including Claire who goes to the extreme and slaps him for no real reason. It's really frustrating stuff, yet it's nothing compared to what came afterwards. Charlie decides that the best course of action is to light a fire that could destroy the camp so he could secretly baptize Aaron. In what world is this a good idea? Why would he do this? This is actually worse than Hurley's decision to bring dynamite into the hatch. The plan is stupid, and it's hard to believe that somebody who is sober would behave like this. Then we have Locke, a pretty peaceful guy normally, punching Charlie hard for his actions. This has to be one of the most out-of-character actions that anyone has taken in this show. I could maybe understand if Locke had been pushed to this point, but he really wasn't. He seems frustrated, but we aren't given a chance to explore why he feels this way. Is he disappointed in the island? In Charlie? Why? How does it make him feel? None of this is explored whatsoever, and that makes analyzing Locke's behaviour feel like guesswork instead of character analysis. On top of all of this nonsense, Charlie's character arc is completely useless. There is no meaningful story being told about him. It's just rehashes of what we already knew from season 1. Charlie has struggles with addiction (The Moth), and he has a desire to save others (Homecoming). Is there anything in this episode that we couldn't have figured out about Charlie from the aforementioned episodes? The flashbacks also fall into being useless filler. Once again Liam screwed Charlie over by selling his piano for his own selfish gains. We have already seen Liam screw Charlie over before, so what's the point of showing us the same story again? It's a completely empty storyline. Also I really could have gone without seeing that stupid diaper commercial being filmed. The Unknown: Will Charlie's dreams be relevant? I doubt it. Does Hurley actually know Libby from somewhere else? Why is Eko marking trees? Best Moment: It's really, really hard to find a good moment. I'll go with Hurley and Libby talking in the hatch. Character of the Episode: Hurley. Conclusion: This was bad. Just when I thought that "Lost" was finding its footing again, we get this. This season has to be the most inconsistent season of television I've ever seen. There have been some genuine high points, but the good gets soiled when we got awful episodes like this one. Something really needs to change because episodes like this are just unacceptable for a show of Lost's caliber. Score: 32
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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