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Here’s what the critics had to say about the third episode of Lost Season 5, “Jughead.”
EW‘s Adam Vary fills in for Doc Jensen with a lengthy recap and some pretty out-there assumptions that don’t add up for me (Charlotte as “Ellie”‘s daughter? really?), but Doc Jensen still managed to weigh in with his usual intelligent dot-connecting in a brief post about the episode: “Jughead” rocked. Let me be clear and plain about this before cluttering your mind with my usual nonsense: I loved the episode. The pleasure it gave was visceral…
Maureen Ryan, aka The Watcher, of the Chicago Tribune loved the ep but was left with only questions like this doozy: Are Alpert and his band of militaristic young men and women native to the island? Or did they come along more recently? Obviously we’ve seen the signs of a very old civilization on the island. Do the Others come from that native group, or is there something else going on?
Ryan McGee over at Zap2It gushed: I find both Des-centric and Faraday-centric episodes to generally be flawless, and getting both in one episode was like getting an early, awesome, mind-tripping birthday present.
Televisionary voices the same opinion I have that Ellie, Ms. Hawking, and Faraday’s mother are all the same person, but takes it a step further with Widmore’s involvement: It makes me wonder just how close Hawking and Widmore really are. Is Widmore just Faraday’s benefactor? Or is there a closer relationship there? Something like father and son?
Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger offers up thoughts-a-plenty in his depth-filled recap. About Darlton’s master plan, he says: The more I see of the new episodes, and on how they reflect back and amplify things we saw in the past — the more I zip back and forth through time right along with Desmond, Dan and the rest — the more confident I feel.
io9‘s Lynn Peril liked “Jughead,” despite asking this funny yet pertinent question: Who names a rat after their mom — and what would their shrink have to say about it?
Newsarama‘s Troy Brownfield enjoyed it, offering this fascinating theory: Considering Richard’s agelessness, his use of the compass, and other bits, I’m pretty sure that Richard Alpert was aboard the Black Rock when it ran aground on the island years previous.
Jay Glatfelter at the Huffington Post has another intriguing thought: Faraday exclaimed to Ellie that the Others need to bury the bomb and then cover with cement or lead. Remember way back in Season 2 when Sayid stated that the swan hatch had thick walls of concrete not seen since Chernobyl? While I am not certain that this is the cause or reason for the 108-minute countdown clock to hell, it seems like a good candidate.
I completely agree with Adam Sweeney at Film School Rejects on this point: The beauty of the time travel layer in the story, which may in fact be the most important thread in the fabric of the show, is that it provides limitless options for the writers. Not only that, but it allows the viewer to wrap their head around the progress of the show in a very unlikely way.
Courtney Reimer at Pop + Politics‘ (who liked last week’s season premiere) didn’t seem to be watching the same episode the rest of us saw: The story was all serious serious faces, frowns, and furrowed brows. No fun. The signature whooshing and climaxing Lost sound-effects didn’t even come with the payoff they usually bring… I even started to drift off to sleep halfway into the episode as Desmond made his way to Oxford. Yawn.
New York Magazine‘s Emily Nussbaum could teach courses on Advanced Blog Snarking. While she didn’t hate everything about the episode, her negatives outnumbered her positives: If we have to watch Jeremy Davies moon over the swooning redhead for one more minute, we’re going to set off the hydrogen bomb! When the freighter arrived, Faraday was a twitchy, guilt-stricken exoskeleton of nerd fear. Charlotte was an icy swashbuckler with C.S. Lewis’s name and the entitled air of an international spy-heiress. Now, she’s bleeding out the nose, quietly touched at his virile confessions of ardor? Oh, it’s just pissing us off.
Image: CTV.ca.
