Review: Lost 2.8: Collision

Ana-Lucia talks to Sayid.
From Wikia

Lost - Season Two, Episode Eight - Collision
Written between 30th and 31st July 2013

Collision is about the coming together of the two subplots that have driven the early part of this season, and it's also about revealing why the fuck Ana-Lucia has been so tetchy and trigger-happy. The result is an episode which I can with pride call one of my favourites ever, and in this patch of reviews that line is going to be a very common one. The way that Collision treats every single one of its characters is, for me, the height of what this show has the potential to do, and the closure it brings to the past six or seven weeks is just spectacularly well-rounded and loaded to the hilt with cinematic symbolism.
     Ana-Lucia has just shot Libby, and everyone is freaking out, not to mention her. While the rest of her group shy away from her and begin to seriously doubt her mental capacity, she ties Sayid to a tree while Eko, against her wishes, takes a dying Sawyer to find the other camp. Sawyer is taken to the Swan, where Kate and Jack treats him, before Eko is forced to stop Jack and Michael from going to release Sayid by force in his own badass way. As the rest of the group leaves to join the main camp, Ana and Sayid discuss their individual sins and Ana lets him go, with Sayid denying himself revenge on the argument that they've both done bad things and are "already dead". The two camps meet, and as two couples reunite, Jack and Ana meet as the respective leaders of their camps and share a meaningful look.
     In her flashback, we see Ana-Lucia as a cop coming back to work after being shot in the stomach while out on patrol. She is on-edge and angry, forcing her mother (who is also her captain) to put her in a cop-car in order to avoid her transferring to another division. They respond to a burglary and Ana goes a bit mental with her gun, prompting her partner to be concerned. Her shooter is brought in by the cops, but Ana refuses to ID him, instead letting him go free and shooting him six times in the chest in a parking lot.

Mr. Eko, resident spiritual badass mofo.
From Wikia

     I would go so far as to say that Ana-Lucia is one of the most well-characterised female characters in the show's history, and that's despite the fact that she has a very vocal hatedom in some places. Ana-Lucia is a victim of trauma, one who is constantly places in positions of power that she finds all too easy to abuse. The opportunity for vigilantism or in harsh methods seems rational to someone who not only suffered in the way she did but who was allowed by the negligence of her colleagues to use her power as a police officer to seek retribution for that suffering in a very short space of time. Because of this single-minded vigilantism, she finds it difficult to work with other people and thus her frankly disasterous time as leader of the Tailies came out as harsh and controlling because she was leading them in the only way she knew how.
     And, as happened in the first season, her centric helps to redeem her. It explains her trauma, and it brings out a different side of her steeped in guilt for the things she's done both now and in the past. The way she refuses to let Sayid go because, "I killed someone he loves", gets me every time, as the way the line is delivered speaks a thousand more unspoken words of empathy and regret. The final shot, with her and Jack and in a moment of black-and-white symbolism, is a moment of perfect contrast for their prior meeting, in which Jack was the angry and unreasonable one. Jack and Ana-Lucia's stories continue to intertwine right up until her premature end.
    The rest of the episode's characterisations were well done too, even if the past few episodes have made it a little difficult for me to get back into our main group of characters. That was the point of this episode, really, to reintroduce us after a fortnight or so to the main personalities at the camp, which it did nicely with Jack Kate and Locke as they reacted in their own way to Mr. Eko. Eko himself is continuing to be my favourite character, especially in the way that he rations words so exquisitely. "What do you want? Peace? Justice? Revenge?". We will discover in a fortnight just how awesome Eko is, but the past few weeks alone have been enough reason for me to seriously love this guy.

Bernard and Rose, and Jin and Sun, are reunited. Aww.
From Wikia

     I like good characters, and this episode had them. There was so much awesome in the space of so few minutes that I could hardly keep up, from Ana-Lucia's deep problems with herself and with other people to Eko and Locke's immediate underlying curiosity in one another as the equvalent "spiritual guys" from their camps. It was human and it was about real drama, about a group of people joining with another and the tragedy and regret that went with it. It was Lost at its most absolutely superb, and if you can't see that, then I pity you profusely. And, I tell you, we ain't even at the top yet.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: We discover, rather well-wordedly, What Kate Did.