"Lost" Eggtown (2008)

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Eggtown" is the fourth episode of the fourth season of Lost and the writing debut for supervising producer Gregg Nations (fans may recognize him as the friendly guy from The Fuselage who actually answers a fair few questions) who co-wrote this episode with Liz Sarnoff.

There are no major revelations in this episode and it's really quite predictable in general. The Kate flashforward, while much more interesting than another 'Kate runs' flashback, mostly exists to get the 'how did Kate not end up in jail' problem out of the way, and does so in a predictable but mostly satisfying manner. The best material in the flashforward is Kate's interaction with Jack and the revelation that she is raising Claire's baby (think back to season one and the psychic and that fact gets much more interesting).

The on island stuff is much more interesting. I love Locke's character in these episodes, and one of his best lines in the entire series so far has to be "I'm John Locke and I am responsible for the well-being of this island". That whole scene in the boathouse was interesting though I suspect the grenade is probably not real. Hey, what's up with Miles asking Ben for 3.2 million dollars? That was the funniest scene of the episode for me, as the last thing I expected to happen was an extortion attempt for such a ridiculously specific amount, and less expected were the blank stares exchanged when Ben asked "why not .3 or .4?". I have no idea if that was intended to be funny, but it was.

We get a healthy dose of fairly annoying relationship talk in this episode with Kate and Sawyer exchanging typical and not-so-interesting dialogue, and Jack in his pre-"WE HAVE TO GO BACK" stage asking Kate out in the flashforward. All this stuff is fairly uninteresting and if I was a first time viewer randomly dropping in on ABC while these conversations were on I would hesitate to give the show more of a chance. Still, other than these relatively minor flaws, tonight's episode was a solid, well-written episode of Lost that knocks the pace down another notch, returning to the standard 'slow but good' pace Lost usually keeps at this stage of the season. I sincerely hope it picks up again though because this did seem more than a little out of place as far as season four goes.

The most interesting part of the entire episode was the discovery that the chopper still hadn't reached the freighter (or the freighter is denying contact). I'm assuming this is going to be resolved next week.

All in all, a solid episode that keeps things going.

7.5/10