Lost: Expose

Recent episodes of Lost have been so full of fan service that I haven't felt the need to write about them. There were some decent flashbacks, some long-term mysteries resolved, and a really brilliant WTF. But last night's episode pleased me more than anything since the season two finale, so permit me to geek out off the top of my head.

Hardcore fans know that the entertainment media, because they had nothing better to do at the time, made a big deal about the fact that Lost was acquiring a few new actors for season three. Among them were Kiele Sanchez, who Wikipedia tells me wanted to be a VJ and is married to the guy who wrote Stranger Than Fiction, and Rodrigo Santoro, the "Tom Cruise of Brazil," whose favorite actors are Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino (again, according to Wikipedia), which means he is driven by a delicate balance of loving his paychecks and a legitimate desire to chew scenery.

Paulo (Santoro) and Nikki (Sanchez) were introduced in the third episode of the season, "Further Instructions." They instantly annoyed fans for not being Bernard and Rose. But the fan hate was cemented two episodes later in "The Cost of Living", when The Guy From Oz decided he couldn't live in Hawaii anymore and was offed by the smoke monster. That was the episode where Nikki pointed out something anyone with, say, John Locke's infinite hypothetical fantasy coolness should have realized already, and Paulo flushed a toilet in a hatch. What was up with that?

Now we know. As with John Locke's apparent ineptitude pre-"The Man From Tallahassee", Nikki and Paulo now make complete sense. I don't know if everything was planned from the start or if Lost is merely the best example of retroactive continuity on television evar. Either way, I feel my defense of this show is now completely justified.

Though I've avoided "next week on" promos ever since NBC insisted on spoiling Boomtown--note to the networks: advertising what minute a shocking twist will occur ruins the shocking twist--I still went into this episode knowing someone would die. By this point, even casual fans of the show know that if someone is going to be written out of the show on a certain week, then that episode will focus on them. Since I knew that this episode would focus on Paulo and Nikki, I figured there was a 50/50 chance one of them would be offed by the end of the hour.

Nikki died in the teaser. After a short flashback that included Billy Dee Williams as himself in the Lost version of She Spies, Paulo was found dead shortly thereafter. What followed was one of the top ten episodes of the show, as Nikki and Paulo's history, both before the crash and after, unfolded in the course of 42 minutes.

I'm going to break our spoiler policy here and not write about what happened next. Whoever you are, whether you've watched the show or not, you have to see this, and it would be a shame to spoil it. It's an excellent entry point into Lost and the most insider-y episode of the series to date at the same time. It's a first season style mystery, a third season reinterpretation of the canon, and full of knowing winks for the most jaded viewer.

I haven't loved Lost this much since "Walkabout." Just watch it already.