Image from Lost: Enter 77
© ABC

Mania Grade: A+
Episode: Enter 77
Stars: Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Mathew Fox, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell
Created By: JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof

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"Lost: Enter 77"

Wow, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, writers of this episode and producers of the series are really trying to pay fans back fro the heaping helping of blandness we were served last fall.  This episode offers a solid balance of drama, humor, and intrigue with little filler.  The episode is broken into three segments, the flashback, the ping pong game, and the eye patch man. 

Locke, Sayid, Freckles, and the French lady are still on the hunt for the subdivision of “the Others” when they discover a cow, actually a small farm and a bunker with a satellite dish.  Inside they find the eye patch guy whom we saw in a video feed briefly in a previous episode.  At first the eye patch man gives the group a cock and bull story that Sayid, being a man who’s learned over the years how to read people, sees right through.  There’s a fight before the truth comes out that the eye patch man is one of “the Others”.  In fact he’s not alone in the station, when the other person is revealed in a hostage standoff with Sayid holding a woman and eye patch man holding Lock, the woman tells eye patch man to kill her, and he does.  This is the same woman from the season two finale and she could have provided a great deal of information about “the Others”. 

In the bunker, there’s all the things you’d expect, DHARMA food and liquor, furniture, inoperable communications equipment, and oh yeah a chess playing computer.  We’ve learned that Locke has a crazy addiction to the DHARMA computers and he usually does the wrong thing with them, and this time is no exception.  He plays the computer and beats it revealing a video switchboard of sorts telling him keys to press for communications, sonar, and a sequence to push if “hostiles” invade the base.  Oh did I mention that the base is wired for explosives?  Locke tries the communications option and the sonar option but both are inoperable.  Eventually the group leaves the base with eye patch man and a map Sayid found that shows the way to the home of “the Others”.  But before he can leave, Locke has to key in the last option on the computer, which as you might expect sets off the explosives destroying the base and the satellite dish.  This ending did bug me just a little because its obvious the station had to go in order to keep the castaways from being able to repair the dish, which is something Sayid has demonstrated that he could probably do, and get communications off the island.  But we do have a map and our merry band is headed for “the Others”. 

The flashback this week is one of the most tightly cut I’ve seen in many episodes, probably because it was one of three parts of the episode instead of the usual two that’s become standard this season.  The tight presentation of the flashback served the drama of it and the episode overall.  This week we get to see a bit of Sayid’s time in Paris as a chef.  He is discovered there by a woman he once tortured in Iraq for something she didn’t do and her husband sets Sayid up and captures him.  Then he begins torturing Sayid trying to get him to try to admit that he tortured his wife.  Sayid initially insisted that he wasn’t the one who tortured the woman regardless of what’ done to him.  It’s only when the woman visits Sayid alone and talks to him about what she went through during the torture and after that he tearfully admits that he in fact was the one who tortured her.  She shows him the mercy he didn’t show her and sets him free.  This flashback plays heavily into how Sayid deals with the eye patch man and the woman he held hostage.  When Sayid is advised to go ahead and kill the eye patch man he refuses saying that he’ll make the decisions on what happens to the prisoner.  Sayid is very good at what he does, torturing and reading people and he himself is tortured by all that he’s done and everything that he’s been asked to do since the plane crash.  His character is one of the most fascinating on the island and it’s good to see him get some screen time.  Also a cat plays a big part in the mercy shown to Sayid and that same cat just happens to be a pet of the eye patch man.  Curiosity didn’t kill the cat this time because Sayid sees it again in the forest after the base explodes. 

The third part of this episode begins with Jin finding a ping pong table that was in the hatch prior to the explosion.  Sawyer, still smarting over the castaways taking all of his stolen goods while he was a way sees this as an opportunity to get his stuff back.  He challenges them to a game where if he wins he gets his stuff back and if he loses he can’t use any nicknames for a week.  Ironically this episode features some of the funniest nicknames yet.  So Hurley takes the challenge and in a humorous hustle beats Sawyer.  At the end Hurley brings Sawyer some “reading material” and tells him (paraphrasing) “here’s some of your stuff because you’re the kind of person who needs stuff”.  This is a real observation for Sawyer’s character, especially since we know Sawyer’s history.  He feels comfort in stuff, especially when compared to relationships he’s tried to have, and now with Kate gone he needs the comfort.  This was a good character moment for “Hugo” and Sawyer. 

While we didn’t get any major answers in this episode we did get a new character that’s sure to be a fan favorite and plenty of forward momentum.  The castaways trying to save Jack learned a little more about the island and they found a key that will carry them even closer to their goal.  Here’s to a filler free episode!