LOST 5.06 metareview
February 20, 2009 by Robin Parrish
This week’s metareview of Lost 5.06 “316” is a very mixed bag, even though most of these reviews are overall positive. People get pretty picky when it comes to their Lost — they know how they like it and what they want from it…
I’m not offering a quote from this week’s Entertainment Weekly recap by Doc Jensen, because his recap/review this week brought me dangerously close to no longer being a fan. He took some swipes at Eloise Hawking, which bothers me in a big way, but his obsession with making literary connections goes so over-the-top this week, it very nearly makes a mockery of being a Lost fan. Even though he liked the episode (for the most part), I found the whole article to be a major turn-off.
The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan: For all the questions this episode raised, it built up the suspense nicely — by the time the Ajira Airways flight left the tarmac in L.A., I was quite excited to see what would happen next.
Time’s John Cloud: Damon and Carlton had said fans would strangle them if they spend the entire season getting the O6 back to the island, so rushing them there and then filling in with flashbacks seems the exact right move.
Variety’s Cynthia Littleton: Going back to one of the central mysteries about dear ol’ Jacob, this is a show that has presented us with ecclesiastical questions and concerns. And God love ‘em for it, especially our spiritual leaders, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who wrote this seg.
E! Online’s Kristin Dos Santos: This was a good old-fashioned Lost episode. You can tell because of how we are left with tons of new questions after the fact!
Zap2It’s Ryan McGee: Finally, off-Island action that comes close to approaching that on the Island.
Televisionary, aka Jace Lacob: …this week’s episode was absolutely brilliant, offering us some new mysteries to ponder while fulfilling viewers’ wishes that the Oceanic Six return to the island. And while I still have some head-scratching questions, I thought that the return to the island was handled beautifully: a bit of haunting mystery, a wallop of blind faith, and a flash of white light.
The Star-Ledger’s Allan Sepinwall: “316″ is the first episode of season five to leave me feeling wholly unsatisfied… The problem was the decision to tell the episode from Jack’s point of view… Jack was the only character among those who wound up on Ajira Airways Flight 316 who had neither reservations about returning to the island, nor any logistical obstacles towards getting there, and so there was no story to tell here.
Popular Mechanics’s Michio Kaku: …last night’s episode of Lost, “316,” dropped a huge piece of the jigsaw puzzle into the laps of the show’s devotees.
Huffington Post’s Jay Glatfelter: I believe this episode gave us the foundation for the rest of the series. Enough new mystery and story for our Losties to get through. God, I love this show!
Film School Rejects‘ Adam Sweeney: 316 probably won’t register with some fans as being as exciting as some of the previous fifth season chapters, but the dialogue was much smoother and the message more insightful.
TV Squad’s Jonathan Toomey: Whether you’ve been prepared for it or not, Lost is becoming a very different show… This is just the natural progression of what has become the most densely written sci-fi drama ever.
Paste Magazine’s Rachel Dovey: Last night’s Lost pulled religious (primarily Catholic) themes into the mix again, and I started to settle into it, realizing that this show is all about that twilight zone between the real and imaginary, the sacred and the secular, the bizarre and highly mundane. It pushes us into those uncomfortable places, and perhaps therein lies its brilliance.
If Magazine’s Emerson Parker: …it was fascinating to see just a scant few episodes after actually getting off the island that they tried so long to get away from.
Cinema Blend’s Katey Rich: I really did figure it’d be many more episodes before we actually saw the Oceanic Six make it back to the island, and I’m thrilled they took care of this– and a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo about how they did it — in one zippy episode.
HoboTrashCan’s Chris Kirkman: I’ve got to hand it to the creative team behind Lost — even though this episode would have been considered a cross between filler and transitional in the old 22+ episode format, they really made this one pack a punch.
Pop + Politics‘ Courtney Reimer: Episode six not only felt like starting over, it also felt like the season finally, and in some ways literally, got off the ground.
New York Magazine’s Emily Nussbaum: …we found this episode satisfyingly nutbar, a return to the Island, with strategic narrative slices removed just to mess with our heads.
io9’s Lynn Peril: I suspected that whatever followed last week’s fabulous episode might seem weak by comparison, but “316″ more than held its own.
mlive.com’s Troy Reimink: The pace of some early-season episodes has been off-putting, and it was nice to enjoy an installment that didn’t feel rushed.
Mania’s Stephen Lackey: This is as near a perfect episode of Lost as there has ever been.
Creative Loafing’s Allison Keene: This has to be my favorite season so far, if only because of the payoffs to theories and setups from the past.
Image: CTV.ca.
Most people are getting it right, but a few of those excerpts just baffle me. It’s not that I don’t like Allan Sepinwall’s review because it’s the only negative one — but because it seems to be negative for horribly misguided reasons. In my opinion, this was the best episode of the season thus far; each episode needs to have its own main character in order to have its own satisfying arc, and a lot of the previous episodes this season have suffered from a rushed lack of focus. Sepinwall has it almost 100% backwards. Film School Reject’s Adam Sweeney seemed to get it just right: this episode wasn’t as “exciting” as some of the earlier nonsense this season but was better-written, and is an example of why the show has been successful for so long. Anybody can write a sci-fi show with a heavy mythology — and most of them fail. Lost didn’t because of its pace and focus on character, both of which were lost in episodes like “The Little Prince” but found again in “316.”