As different as "Lost" starting with season two is to the first season (or the first two thirds of that season), there has always been something which has made "Lost" distinctive as genre television, something which set the action episodes apart from other action shows, the romance-driven episodes apart from other shows with a heavy focus on romance, the episodes which were heavily focused on science fiction apart from science-fiction TV shows. No, it isn't the setting which did that, it's the writing. "Lost" has had its ups and downs, but only the first stretch of episodes in season three felt as... typical as "Jughead".
There has always been a spark to the writing on this show, something which occasionally appeared even in the weak episodes, and while "Jughead" is not a bad episode, mostly thanks to the Desmond scenes and the general story being told here, which is perfect material for classic "Lost" storytelling (even the hydrogen bomb, which is just poorly-handled here sadly), it is a poorly-written one, and featured some very poor guest actors. Elizabeth Sarnoff, not counting "Meet Kevin Johnson" and "Two for the Road", has never been responsible even partly for a truly great "Lost" script (and has been responsible for some of the very worst, including "Eggtown" and "Stranger in a Strange Land") and is undoubtedly the weak link in the writing team right now. "Jughead" doesn't only feature almost unrelentingly poor dialogue, but makes some very amateur and silly mistakes. No, this isn't me trying to give a lesson in scriptwriting to a far more experienced writer who writes for one of the best shows in television history, it's a frustrated fan expressing their opinion. There are certain things which are generally accepted as examples of bad scriptwriting, and I felt several of them were present, not only in the dialogue but in the structure and nature of the scenes themselves.
It hurts to write this even more since I love Desmond as a character, and thus far found all the episodes which focused on him to be excellent, and three of them absolutely brilliant ("Live Together, Die Alone", "The Constant", and "Flashes Before Your Eyes"). I'm not expecting much agreement from anyone with this review, but I do have to ask what on earth anyone found particularly impressive about the storytelling, characterization, or dialogue in this episode? Television is, for the most part at least, a writer's medium more than it is a director's medium, yet the episode's bright spots came in veteran director Rod Holcomb's first effort as director on "Lost" since "Hearts and Minds" in season one.
"Jughead" was a good story, but it wasn't good storytelling. The long-awaited reunion between Charles Widmore and Desmond, which had the potential to be something special, turned out to be mundane genre television and entirely predictable in almost every regard. Out of the episode's several plot twists only the reveal that Charles Widmore was once an Other as a youth was executed with any aplomb. I ask my fellow "Lost" fans to answer this one question: what about this episode is any different from the rest of genre television? I saw nothing fresh, new, or exciting about anything here. This show has nearly always been a tour-de-force of storytelling, but the writing here is so expected, predictable, by-the-book, and simplistic that I found it genuinely dispiriting. Rarely have I disagreed with the consensus as much as I do on this episode, which appears to have been very well-received. On the bright side of things, Locke's story this season is turning out to be very interesting indeed. Instead of seeming hokey or silly, the idea that Locke made his own destiny is in fact, so far at least, turning out to be the best move the writers have made with the character in several seasons.
There has always been a spark to the writing on this show, something which occasionally appeared even in the weak episodes, and while "Jughead" is not a bad episode, mostly thanks to the Desmond scenes and the general story being told here, which is perfect material for classic "Lost" storytelling (even the hydrogen bomb, which is just poorly-handled here sadly), it is a poorly-written one, and featured some very poor guest actors. Elizabeth Sarnoff, not counting "Meet Kevin Johnson" and "Two for the Road", has never been responsible even partly for a truly great "Lost" script (and has been responsible for some of the very worst, including "Eggtown" and "Stranger in a Strange Land") and is undoubtedly the weak link in the writing team right now. "Jughead" doesn't only feature almost unrelentingly poor dialogue, but makes some very amateur and silly mistakes. No, this isn't me trying to give a lesson in scriptwriting to a far more experienced writer who writes for one of the best shows in television history, it's a frustrated fan expressing their opinion. There are certain things which are generally accepted as examples of bad scriptwriting, and I felt several of them were present, not only in the dialogue but in the structure and nature of the scenes themselves.
It hurts to write this even more since I love Desmond as a character, and thus far found all the episodes which focused on him to be excellent, and three of them absolutely brilliant ("Live Together, Die Alone", "The Constant", and "Flashes Before Your Eyes"). I'm not expecting much agreement from anyone with this review, but I do have to ask what on earth anyone found particularly impressive about the storytelling, characterization, or dialogue in this episode? Television is, for the most part at least, a writer's medium more than it is a director's medium, yet the episode's bright spots came in veteran director Rod Holcomb's first effort as director on "Lost" since "Hearts and Minds" in season one.
"Jughead" was a good story, but it wasn't good storytelling. The long-awaited reunion between Charles Widmore and Desmond, which had the potential to be something special, turned out to be mundane genre television and entirely predictable in almost every regard. Out of the episode's several plot twists only the reveal that Charles Widmore was once an Other as a youth was executed with any aplomb. I ask my fellow "Lost" fans to answer this one question: what about this episode is any different from the rest of genre television? I saw nothing fresh, new, or exciting about anything here. This show has nearly always been a tour-de-force of storytelling, but the writing here is so expected, predictable, by-the-book, and simplistic that I found it genuinely dispiriting. Rarely have I disagreed with the consensus as much as I do on this episode, which appears to have been very well-received. On the bright side of things, Locke's story this season is turning out to be very interesting indeed. Instead of seeming hokey or silly, the idea that Locke made his own destiny is in fact, so far at least, turning out to be the best move the writers have made with the character in several seasons.