S04E01: 'The Beginning Of The End'

The opening instalment of Lost's fourth season failed to build upon the heightened levels of excitement generated by last year's finale. A sense of intrigue still pervaded proceedings, but it all very much felt like the calm before the storm and lacked the impact that one would expect.

The much vaunted flash-forwards, tantalisingly previewed in the third season finale, were given their first full deployment through glimpses of Hurley's troubled future. They were largely ineffective, spending too long trying to convey short snippets of information - namely that Hurley has paranoid hallucinations and only six survivors make it off the island. The latter fact certainly hints at explosive developments in future episodes, although it also functions to annoy as we don't know what happened in between.

The present day narrative was sadly dogged by a baffling piece of plotting. Naomi had previously been stabbed by Locke, thus incurring the wrath of Jack, and was presumed dead with her apparent corpse lying in the background as the moralistic doctor had an upbeat chat with Kate. If Jack was so indignant over Naomi's slaying, why did he not make a reasonable effort to check whether she was alive or not, or at least try and revive her. The whole 'oh, I thought she was dead' attitude he adopted when she disappeared was very out of character and detracted from the following events, which simply served as a simple plot function rather than a natural continuation of the story.

Nitpicking aside, 'The Beginning Of The End' fulfilled its purpose by ensuring that the action was reasonably diverting, particularly Hurley's spooky encounter with Jacob's abode, and that our hunger for answers is still strong. Let's hope that the narrative moves along quickly though, and doesn't dawdle like the episodes at the start of the third season.

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