THE LOST ANALYSIS
Score: 7.2 / 10 
Season Two
- Man of Science, Man of Earth
- Adrift
- Orientation
- Everybody Hates Hugo
- ... And Found
- Abandoned
- The Other 48 Days
- Collision (aka Old Habits)
- What Kate Did
- The 23rd Psalm
- Hunting Party
- Fire + Water
- The Long Con
- One Of Them
- Maternity Leave
- The Whole Truth
- Lockdown
- Dave
- S.O.S
- Two For The Road
- ?
- Three Minutes
- Live Together, Die Alone, Part One
- Live Together, Die Alone, Part Two
Episode One: Man of Science, Man of Earth
The second season kicks off with Doc Salinger, Davy Crockett and Freckles peering down the hatch they've carefully blown into a thousand pieces. The Doc thinks the ladder looks a bit rickety and splintery (ouch!) so forbids the other two from going down there. They ignore him. The Doc, furious with their disobedience, tells everyone else that 'no matter what happens, he will watch over them - his flock - and guide them to salvation and the dawn'. This all-new Messiah complex is because flashbacks reveal he can heal crippled people with his tears and running shoes. No word yet on the water to wine thing, although Merry, in particular, remains hopeful. The Doc, liar that he is, then immediately abandons everybody else to check out the hatch, which happens to be the home of a gun-wielding former stadium mountaineer the Doc once knew. Coincidence? I'm guessing 'yes'.
Episode Two: Adrift
For no good reason, half of this episode is spent rehashing events that were shown in the previous episode, albeit from Davy Crockett's and Freckles' point of view. This technique serves its purpose - namely, to keep us from falling asleep at the other half of the episode, which is all about Sawyer and Black Dad tediously squabbling with one another over who was most responsible for Black Kid's kidnapping at the end of last season. Eventually, after much splashing of water and bullet-removing, it is agreed they will blame Hit Man Jin who has abandoned them or drowned to death or something. They celebrate their detente by having Sawyer swim with a shark, which, while highly stupid and dangerous, is also good for a laugh. They wash up ashore only to find Hit Man Jin hasn't drowned to death at all, but has instead been inexplicably strapped to a plank by some other mysterious island inhabitants. Oh, and the other half of the episode? Ended on the exact same cliffhanger as last week. Coincidence? I'm guessing 'yes'.
Episode Three: Orientation
The guy in the hatch continues to point his gun at Davy Crockett's fool head, while the Doc looks on. Eventually, the hatch guy gets tired, because it feels like he's been holding the gun on Davy Crockett for three episodes now, and when Freckles comes crashing down on top of him, he accidentally shoots his Commodore 64 computer. This is bad news, because, according to a short film hosted by Troy McClure, if you don't press a button on the computer every 104 minutes, the world will end. Just like in Windows Me. Elsewhere, Sawyer loses his gun. This is because some babe with hot lips has defeated him in a battle of wits. So no surprises there, surely.
Episode Four: Everybody Hates Hugo
The Doc has gone power-mad with the discovery of the bunker beneath the hatch. He starts decreeing that it be kept secret, with the news to be divulged only to those he deems 'worthy, stouthearted or of maidenhead pure'. For the most part, he's ignored. Still, so insane with power is he that he makes the audacious misjudgement of putting Porky in charge of the food. This leads to the inevitable tragic results - ie, a Porky-centric flashback episode. In other news, Freckles has a shower, making this the finest episode of the show to date.
Episode Five: ... And Found
Black Dad has decided to go wandering around the jungle, looking for his son. Nobody's quite sure where this idea has come from, but, on the other hand, Black Dad has been hit by a car more than once in his life. Still, when Hit Man Jin thinks your idea's a bit loopy, you've gotta know it's not one of your best. In flashback news, we also discover Hit Man Jin used to be a doorman who specialised in letting small children urinate where they pleased. Back at the main beach, Mrs Hit Man Jin has buried her wedding ring, then destroyed a vegetable garden. So there's kookiness everywhere.
Episode Six: Abandoned
We learn more about The Princess this week. She's convinced she's seen Black Kid wandering around, all ghostly-like. Crazy Arab correctly calls her out on this as 'bald-faced, blonde-style chick-madness'. The Princess takes umbrage and demands Crazy Arab believe in her claims, no matter how clinically mad and untruthful they may be. "I need you to believe in me," says The Princess. "Okay," says Crazy Arab, because he knows on which side his euphemistic bread is buttered. "I need you to believe I saw Black Kid." "Okay." "I need you to believe that I'm going to be shot to death by Hot Lips coming in all paranoid-like from the parallel plotline running through this episode." "Say what, now?" says Crazy Arab, a little too late.
Episode Seven: The Other 48 Days
The regular cast take the week off as we take a closer look at what happened to those economy class fools who'd been at the back of the plane. Thankfully, we manage to tell their story in a single episode rather than a season and a quarter. The back half of the plane is led by Hot Lips, who, apart from the butt-kicking, no-nonsense hottie we've seen in previous episodes, is also a world-class digger of holes. We see her lead her team through several attacks by The Others, dig the afore-mentioned hole, torture an innocent man and skewer a not-so-innocent one. She's assisted in this by a large, shirtless man with enormous man-nipples who pretends to be mute for 40 days. No sensible reason was offered for his lack of chattiness, although we are led to believe it may have been a ploy to make Hot Lips cry (!?). Regardless, she still ends up shooting The Princess at the end of the episode. So we still have what personal counsellors might describe as 'an outstanding concern'.
Episode Eight: Collision (aka Old Habits)
We delve more deeply into the past of Hot Lips this week and discover she's a renegade rogue cop who knows the system's broken and who is going to clean up her town her way. In this respect, she is much like Dirty Harry or Judge Judy. Meanwhile, back on the island she ties Crazy Arab to a tree for interrogative purposes. No more hole-digging for her. While those two rap about murdering The Princess and stuff, Freckles cures Sawyer of bulletpox by the underused nursing technique of nibbling his ear. Doc Salinger, meanwhile, chooses firearms from the hatch arsenal. The Doc is furious. Don't any of these shot people know he had a golf game going?
Episode Nine: What Kate Did
Freckles is all over the shop in this particular episode. In no particular order, she's kissing The Doc, hanging out with a horse, murdering (via flashback) her stepfather, abandoning her computer data entry responsibilities and being strangled by Sawyer (who is apparently possessed by the stepfather and/or the horse). Still, it could be worse. She could have been murdering The Doc, abandoning Sawyer, hanging out with her stepfather, being strangled by the computer and kissing the horse. So she's not gone completely crazy. In other news, Black Dad installs MSN Messenger on the computer so he can chat with his son, who is not receiving adequate internet supervision and who is therefore just going crazy with the emoticons. LOL! ROFLMAO!!! :-) :-)
Episode Ten: The 23rd Psalm
There's a new force in town and his name is Father Eko. We've seen him in previous episodes, of course, beating the snot out of Sawyer, not talking to nobody, beating the snot out of The Others, showing off his giant man nipples and so forth. In this particular episode, we learn more about his dubious Nigerian past, shooting people, protecting his brother, smuggling drugs, threatening to burn down his brother's church and in between flashbacks, he also manhandles Merry and makes him reveal the location of his drug stash. So, y'know, we've come a way since After M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahy. The monster also shows up and Father Eko ain't a-scared of it neither. Not surprising, as it's finally revealed to be just some disappointing black fog. Merry, of course, still pees his pants. "It's gonna rain!" he says.
Episode Eleven: The Hunting Party
Enough is enough for Black Dad. He's off to find his son and make him get off the chat rooms and out in the fresh air. He heads off, but not before arming himself (you know how it is with kids today). For kicks, he also pops The Doc and Davy Crockett into a makeshift prison, which doesn't go down at all well. The Doc grabs some guns of his own and he and Davy Crockett head off in furious pursuit. When Sawyer hears about this, he invites himself along too. He's not missing out on a butt-kicking. Freckles wants to play the chasey-games too, but the boys won't let her. "No girls aloud!!" they say. "You'll just end up getting captured and being a total damsel." "Will not," says Freckles. But she does. In flashback news, the Doc sort of cheated on his wife, but she outdid him. Lift your game, Doc!
Episode Twelve: Fire + Water
Merry's going out of his teeny tiny little mind, dreaming about babies trapped in pianos and other, equally overt, religious iconography. Everybody suspects he's back on the 'horse', which Merry denies despite rapidly growing evidence (eg his baby-napping, his tedious flashbacks to his band days with Pippin and, perhaps most tellingly, his, uh, secret stash of heroin dolls). Desperate, he consults Father Eko, which is perhaps not the most inspired notion, as the good father is busily marking which trees are going to be his friends. Not permitted to join Father Eko's arbor parish, Merry starts his own Church of the Arsonist Junkie, sets the camp on fire and tries to baptise the baby himself. Davy Crockett is therefore left with little choice but to do what most of use have wanted to do since Day One on this ruddy island. Namely, punch Merry in the head. Then the Doc lies to Merry, telling him he needs stitches, just so he has an excuse to stick a needle in his face. So it's all good.
Episode Thirteen: The Long Con
Enough, according to recent estimates, is still enough. Following a flashback to the time he watched the movie The Sting, Sawyer looks around and notices that pretty much everybody else on the island has the IQ of beef jerky. So while The Doc and Davy Crockett argue over the combination for the gun locker (The Doc thinks it should be an encrypted sequence of random numbers freshly regenerated each day, Davy Crockett thinks it should be seven) and Freckles and Hot Lips squabble over who is the hotter (Doc: "Ladies, you're both really hot"), Sawyer concocts a detailed scam involving fake kidnappings, cunning lies and the manipulation of the increasingly brain-fried Merry. The upshot? Sawyer now has control of all the guns on the island. Not that Crazy Arab and Porky care one iota. They've built a radio and are learning to jitterbug.
Episode Fourteen: One Of Them
It's been weeks since Crazy Arab tortured anybody and that's surely too long for anybody's liking. Fortunately, the writers agree and drop a hot air balloonist into his brutal, merciless arms. That Crazy French Chick shoots the Hot Air Balloonist (possibly Richard Branson) in the back with a crossbow to make sure he's got no chance of escaping Crazy Arab's wrath and then leaves him to it. Even Davy Crockett is in on the torturelust, locking The Doc out of the torture chamber when he threatens to go in there and nicen things up in his usual tedious fashion. It all ends in brutal savagery and the doomsday clock thing sorta - but not really - counting down to zero. In other news, Sawyer follows up on his triumphs of last week by outwitting a frog. Much to the surprise of Porky, who'd gone with the smart money and bet the other way.
Episode Fifteen: Maternity Leave
Like so many modern parents, Pregnant Chick has nappy brain. This causes her to conclude that her baby needs special medicine from The Others. The Doc takes this slight in good spirits - he has important torturing to oversee and a golf game in the afternoon. Freckles, however, sees Pregnant Chick's quest as a chance for a girl's day out. "It'll be just like Thelma and Louise," she says, hoping PC doesn't remember how that movie ended. Alas, none of the other women can go (Hot Lips: serving DUI sentence, The Princess: still dead, Mrs Hit Man Jin: 'I no speak English', etc) so they're forced to travel with that crazy-ass French woman. "She's no Brad Pitt," sniffs PC.
Episode Sixteen: The Whole Truth
Mrs Hit Man Jin is pregnant! Quite the feat, given that Hit Man Jin's spermatazoa have a tendency to hang out with the rest of the non-swimmers in the Wading Pool. But Hit Man Jin refuses to see this as an issue. "It's a Christmas miracle!!" he declares via subtitles, as he wipes his brow and curses the hot June island sun. Hit Man Jin, providing viewers with a unique blend of hot-tempered rage and childlike optimism. In other news, Davy Crockett has taken to shaving while The Doc showers. He claims it's to do with the pore-opening powers of steam, but the Doc remains unconvinced. Mostly because he's been taking cold showers since the day Hot Lips arrived.
Episode Seventeen: Lockdown
It's World Championship Poker on the island. After an effortless elimination of Porky and Freckles, The Doc and Sawyer get down to some serious card-playin'. It's standard Texas Hold'Em rules with a minor variation in that contestants play for fruitstuffs and medicine rather than boring old cash. The Doc eventually wins, of course, his vast experience running the Salinger Gambling Den back in the Party of Five days shining through. Sawyer scowls sexily and asks the Doc why he didn't try and win the guns back instead. Rather than admit that he'd forgotten Sawyer had all the guns, the Doc foolishly tries to make some cool, tough guy comment. This, of course, doesn't work at all. Elsewhere in this all-gaming episode, Davy Crockett and the resident torture victim enjoy a quick game of Pin The Blast Doors On The Torso.
Episode Eighteen: Dave
Porky is visited by his imaginary friend (who, without a word of explanation, turns out to be Charlotte's second husband from Sex and the City). The Imaginary Harry Goldenblatt tells Porky the entire island is just a dream concocted by his (Porky's) comatose mind. For Porky is still back in the nuthouse, where he is trying to recover from having sunk a boat with his monstrous obesity, thereby drowning over 300 people! (Or a couple - I have no time for numbers). The Imaginary Harry Goldenblatt tells Porky the only way to escape from the dream is to jump off a cliff to his death. Sadly, he's talked out of this by one of the chicks from the back of the plane, who then sucks face with him. She's also later revealed, in direct defiance of the sanctified laws of probability, to have been in the same nuthouse as Porky at the same time!! In torture news, Crazy Arab, having had a gutful of Parachute Guy's lying mouth full of lies, decides to shoot his lying head clean, like, off. But Hot Lips stops him. She's becoming less and less fun each episode.
Episode Nineteen: S.O.S
Enough is, once more, enough. Bored with torturing, The Doc decides it's time to go visit T'Others and see if he can't organise some kind of torture victim trade. He takes Freckles along with him. One would assume it's for the cuteness factor and, y'know, the wet t-shirt wearing. But nope, The Doc only wants her along because he knows T'Others don't want her. Even more stupidly, he tells her this. He goes on to reveal he'd initially asked Crazy Arab to join him (again, let's assume for the cuteness and the wet t-shirt wearing) but Crazy Arab knocked him back, so Freckles was really a second choice option. Oh, Doc, your seduction skills could use some brush-up. That masculine jawline will only get you so far, man. In other news, there is a lame-assed attempt to build a lame-assed S.O.S sign on the beach. This fails. Because of the lame-assedness.
Episode Twenty: Two For The Road
Michael is back and he's got all kinds of inside goss on T'Others. He's of the opinion they're 'lame' and a 'bunch of spackers'. They apparently 'live like animals' with 'neither iPods nor broadband'. He also says they've got, like, totally no weaponry. Just one gun, some home-made slingshots and a Big Book of Insults. This all sounds gangbusters to the rest, so they head off to get some guns from Sawyer. Ana-Lucia has already procured one, of course, by, y'know, shagging the daylights out of him. Which is just as well, because Michael ends the episode by shooting her to, like, death. In Hurley news, his attempts to be romantic have Failed Humorously. Slightly less humorously, Michael shoots his girlfriend dead too. Oh, Michael, you've changed, man.
When You Crunch The Numbers: Over the last five episodes, Sawyer (+98%) has been Lost's MVP (most valuable player). Rose (-62%) has been LVP (least valuable player). Hurley (-3%) has been MIP (most indifferent player).
Episode Twenty-One: ?
Eko takes valuable time out of his busy church-constructing and non-shirt-wearing schedule to go on a scavenger hunt with Locke. Why? Because Eko's dead brother told him to do so in a dream, of course. The brother also told him to wield a giant axe wherever he goes, so nobody's calling the good Father on, y'know, the wild-eyed craziness. Very wise. He and Locke eventually find a giant question mark hidden under a plane, a different hatch hidden under the question mark, a video tape hidden under the hatch and, of course, a creepy 1970s scientist not at all hidden on the video tape. The creepy scientist explains how the entire show's a psychological experiment to see just how much nonsense television viewers will put up with. Rather a lot really, it seems.
When You Crunch The Numbers: Over the last five episodes, Sawyer (+89%) has been Lost's MVP (most valuable player). Bernard (-75%) has been LVP (least valuable player). Jack (-10%) has been MIP (most indifferent player).
Episode Twenty-Two: Three Minutes
We flash back to Michael's time with T'Others and discover he's been promised his son back if he just performs a small favour for T'Others. Y'know, on top of the murdering and prisoner-freeing. He simply has to get The Doc, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley over to OtherTown. To accomplish this, Michael proposes the four of them join him in attacking T'Others. "You really want to take Hurley?" says Sawyer. "Yeah, wouldn't Sayid be a way better choice?" adds The Doc. "Y'know, given his lethal brutality." "Psshaw!" says Michael. "Hurley's my man." "Really?" says Hurley. "Because, dude, I'm, like, totally useless." In other news, that scatterbrain Eko has abandoned building his church, his attention distracted by some new glittery project. This forces Charlie to build his Church of the Junkie Hobbit himself. Needless to say, this results in an utter shambles.
When You Crunch The Numbers: Over the last five episodes, Sawyer (+77%) has been Lost's MVP (most valuable player). Bernard (-75%) has been LVP (least valuable player). Charlie (-5%) has been MIP (most indifferent player).
Episode Twenty-Three: Live Together, Die Alone, Part One
Michael's taking The Doc, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley off to sacrifice to T'Others. Fortunately, Sayid has a plan. "Go along with him," he advises the Doc. "Pretend you trust him. Give him a gun without bullets or bullets without a gun - your choice. Meanwhile, I will commandeer the yacht that has drifted back to shore with that no-hoper from the opening three episodes of this season on board. I will force the seaworthy Koreans to sail me around the island past a statue with four toes where I will build a fire that will emit black smoke. You five must then join me at this fire where we will launch our surprise attack on T'Others and murder the living snot out of them and their cattle." "Hold on a sec," says The Doc. "I'll just get a pen." Meanwhile, Locke has, uh, locked himself in the hatch where he plans to let the Doomsday counter count down to zero. Eko knows that in a world-threatening crisis, you should always rely on hobbits to save you. So, he boldly enlists the aid of Charlie to save the day and stop Locke. Oh, Eko. You need to learn how to distinguish between Academy Award-Winning fiction and Emmy-snubbed reality.
When You Crunch The Numbers: Over the last five episodes, Locke (+69%) has been Lost's MVP (most valuable player). Bernard (-94%) has been LVP (least valuable player). Charlie (+9%) has been MIP (most indifferent player).
Episode Twenty-Four: Live Together, Die Alone, Part Two
It's the season finale and Locke has decided to celebrate it by letting the numbers count down to zero to, y'know, see what happens. The previous hatch guy (Desmond) doesn't think this is one of DC's greatest ideas, given that he's worked out last time somebody (eg him) didn't type in the numbers, it caused, uh, the plane everybody was on to crash. Does this deter Locke? Don't be stupid. Eko also disapproves of Locke's behaviour, but for different reasons. If things are going to go massively awry, he wants to be an integral part of it. So he lets off some spare dynamite. He enlists Charlie's help in this, so you know it just ends in a colossal fucking shambles. Anyway, numbers aren't typed, there's electromagnetic madness and blinding white light everywhere, people start speaking in tongues, a two-headed goat is born, etc until Desmond blows himself up to save the day. Elsewhere, The Doc, Kate and Sawyer are left blindfolded and captured with the suddenly blowdart-wielding Others, while Michael, having had a gutful of the show, rides off in a boat with his son. But fret not, Gentle Viewers, for his departure is compensated by the arrival of a pair of, uh, Siberians (?). Look, I don't know. We'll try and sort it all out again next season.
When You Crunch The Numbers: Over the last five episodes, Locke (+87%) has been Lost's MVP (most valuable player). Jack (-93%) has been LVP (least valuable player). Christian Shepherd (-8%) has been MIP (most indifferent player).
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