After a decidedly lacklustre and claustrophobic third-season pilot that came as a severe shock after the sustained brilliance of season two, Lost is back with a vengeance, reminding us just how good it can be, and why it still remains one of the most intriguing and consistently interesting shows on telly at the moment. Not to mention funny. This is a delightful episode, making the most of the foibles of the show’s most quirky characters, such as Locke, Charlie and Hurley.
‘Further Instructions’ begins with Locke lying in the jungle. We don’t even have time to wonder how he survived the explosion of the Hatch, and why he’s ended up where he is, when a naked Desmond goes running past. Not to mention that Mr Ecko’s Big Stick falls from the trees and klaps Locke on the head. Take that, the gods of the island seem to say.
Locke builds a ‘sweat lodge’ within the empty framework of Mr Ecko’s church – a neat comment on inter-denominational faith? – tells a disbelieving Charlie to stand guard (against what, the possibility that Locke might devolve to a monkey?) and proceeds to eat a sludgy paste that resembles the Alien Goo from The X-Files.
So why the retro Native American Indian rituals? Locke has been struck mute by the explosion at the Hatch – either that it was the sight of Desmond’s skinny butt wobbling past – but manages to communicate to Charlie that he needs to speak to the island. Ah, okay. But what will the island say?
Boone pops up like a road kill victim from a bad Stephen King movie, ostensibly to help Charlie find his way so he can “bring the family back together”. Just like a psychopomp from the same Stephen King movie, Boone wheels Locke through a dream version of Sydney airport, where the entire cast gets a cameo. Even Ben-not-Henry is manning the x-ray machine.
Boone instructs Locke to “clean up his own mess”; he finds Mr Ecko’s Big Stick covered in blood. “They have him; you don’t have much time.” Locke exits the sweat lodge and scares the pants off viewers with an almost subliminal image of a snarling polar bear.
Now that we know there is an abandoned zoo on the Other side, the idea of polar bears on the island suddenly doesn’t seem so preposterous. Except this polar bear seems to have dandruff, because it is conveniently losing fur, leaving a trail like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. Unless it’s Vincent in bear’s clothing.
Charlie and Boone set off in pursuit of Mr Ecko’s near-corpse, and stumble upon what’s left of the Hatch. Rather than having exploded, it seems to have imploded, leaving a weird kind of inverted crater. Which still doesn’t explain how anyone survived … [Or maybe they didn’t. Remember the ‘reboot’?]
Boone mistakes Hurley for a polar bear – well, perhaps that’s not such a big mistake. Incredibly, Hurley’s first word of the third season is the eponymous “dude …” Hurley breaks the news to the rest of the camp that the Triumvirate has been captured by Hobnob Henry. The rest of the camp seems remarkably disinterested. Hey, didn’t a big implosion just take place at the Hatch? Where is the panic and disorder, folks? Or is island living starting to get to them? This isn’t Club Med, after all.
In an instant of sublime serendipity, Hurley lends Desmond one of his fulsome tie-dyed t-shirts. This turns poor Des into a cut-rate Jesus of Nazareth from a Discovery Channel documentary. Who seems to be spouting the future. Or did he, naughty boy, just read ahead of his script?
The rescue mission to save Mr Ecko stumbles across another puzzle, namely a toy dump truck and some bones in the polar bear’s cave. Locke defeats said bear with hairspray (using it as a flamethrower, in case you wondered), and Mr Ecko is rescued with much gnashing of teeth (the bear’s, and the viewers’).
Boone hasn’t worked all the Alien Goo out of his system, for he imagines Mr Ecko opening his burning eyes and instructing him portentously to rescue the Triumvirate.
The most inspired moments of the show are the flashbacks to Locke’s time spent on a fruit-picking commune … with a sideline in growing dope as a cash crop. Reasonable, science-driven Locke a Flower Child by default? The rational Locke who harangued Charlie for his association with the drug culture?
With just the right balance of revelation and obfuscation, and a generous dollop of humour and weirdness, this is a wonderful episode that highlights the peculiar whimsy of Lost.
