Return and Review: Lost 4.8: Meet Kevin Johnson

Michael ponders whether to activate his "bomb".

I'm back! As promised, I've come back from my hiatus with the next episode of Lost. I'm not going to get into exactly why I was gone (mainly because it's not very interesting), so let's get on with the show! I'm not going to start with one of those disclaimers anymore; if you want to know more about the show in more detail, look at some of my previous reviews.
     Michael, this episode's focus, was a character long gone by the time I started to watch the show. Suffice to say he wasn't a "fan favourite," with his irritating mannerisms, similar to Abby Grant's sole motivation, annoyed viewers for two seasons. At heart the character was something that quite a few of the viewers should have been able to empathise with: a father concerned for the welfare of his son. If anything, Michael was brought down by execution rather than writing.
     Meet Kevin Johnson is a new start for a character once reviled for his idiosyncracies, and in that respect it's an interesting turning point for the character. Suspending this season's flashforward device for yet another week, the episodes' subplot time is instead used for one large flashback straddling the middle of the episode. One of the things I really like about this Season is that it isn't afraid to juggle its format to make things more interesting; that really worked with the preceding episode, Ji Yeon, and especially for The Constant. By contrast, its use here feels forced and contrived, as if the writers couldn't find any other way to fit in their explanation of what this character has been doing for the past month or so.

Michael meets Kevin Johnson.

     In spite of this, the flashback itself is quite a good one. Michael, guilty for telling his young son about his two murders and having to make him live with said information, has been trying to kill himself. After finding himself unable, he is stopped in an alley by Other Tom Friendly, who tells him that "the Island isn't ready yet" and that he still has work to do. Said work is what leads him to the freighter; he has apparently been assigned by Ben to board the ship, now revealed to be owned by series-baddie Charles Widmore, and blow it up. After some early jitters, an encounter with the violent Martin Keamy and his gun-toting team makes him try to use the device. A phone call from Ben, hiding on the island, reveals that Michael's job is rather to sabotage the ship, and there are good people on it.
     This expositional flashback is neatly bookended by events in the present. The flashback is triggered when an astonished Desmond and Sayid quiz Michael on what the hell he's doing there, and afterwards they turn him over to the captain. The Island storyline leads neatly into next episode at the freighter gunmen get closer to Ben, kidnapping his adopted daughter Alex. It's a little odd, even for Lost, that all of the episode's events surround the central character in some way or another, directly or indirectly. I suppose it was an attempt by the writing staff to put more emphasis on his new character; one that instead makes his return feel underwhelming.

Sayid forces Michael to confess.

     The episode's main purpose was as a transitional and expositional aid, and it succeeds in both areas as well as keeping Lost's known emotional force pulsing throughout. In the Season as a whole it really doesn't feel as if it fits as neatly as I would like, but that's surely to be expected when the episode is trying to clean up a mess left from events two years prior. Job well done, then.

Thanks.

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I'm going to be giving Being Human Series One and Two a break, as well as Ashes to Ashes. I'll continue with Lost (it's getting good now!) and I'm considering beginning reviewing every episode of Jeeves and Wooster.

Thanks.