You got me back.
About once a year, when I’ve given up on Lost, showrunners Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse pull me back with an unexpected and wonderful episode. This week was that episode for me.

I was never a Sawyer fan. I liked him well enough but could not understand why he was everyone’s favourite. But this week didn’t have any perpetual Emmy-nominees (Ben and Locke), it didn’t have the go-to leading man and lady (Jack and Kate), there was no funny sidekick guy (Hurley) and my favourites didn’t even show up at all (Sun, Desmond, Sayid; my real favourite- Charlie- having been dead now for 2 seasons). This week hinged entirely on Sawyer, with a little help from Juliet, and I loved it!

I think what I liked was the diminished amount of crap. That’s not to say that this episode didn’t have any of Lost’s signature crap (outlandish time travel, convenient relationships, bad hair, talk of the world’s most annoying love triangle, etc…) but, for the first time all season, the crap took a backseat and the characters took over. We finally got to see Sawyer and Juliet this week, not just as plot devices or exposition delivery services, but as characters with hearts and minds and strengths and weaknesses. And that’s what got me back. I didn’t have to hear Locke tell me how he’s “special” and I didn’t have to watch Sun prove that she’s badass nowadays. There was no talk of destiny or mythology or even physics. But rather we saw a Sawyer who just wanted someone to have his back and a Juliet who wanted to feel something other than powerless.

Sure, this episode did foreward the absurd sci-fi destiny crap by solidifying the island’s present existence in the 70s and reuniting part of the Oceanic 6 (Jack, Kate and Hurley) with those that were left behind (Sawyer, Jin and Juliet). But what it really did was get me back on board with the first human story I’ve heard from them all year, and I came away from it excited for next week, and that’s a very good thing!

Be sure to check out the accompanying podcast to this review by searching “My TV” in the iTunes store.