Television Review: Adrift (Lost, S2X02, 2005)

Adrift (S0202)

Airdate: 28 September 2005

Written by: Damon Lindelof
Directed by: Steven Maeda & Leonard Dick

Running Time: 41 minutes

The premiere of Lost’s second season, ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’, appeared, for a glorious moment, to be the series’ zenith. Having masterfully sustained a high-wire act of mystery and character for a full year, the revelation of the hatch and the introduction of the enigmatic Desmond suggested a bold new narrative direction. Many experienced viewers, however, harboured a quiet suspicion: having scaled such heights, the only possible trajectory was down. Few could have predicted that this descent would be confirmed quite so swiftly and definitively. Adrift, the season’s second episode, is a profound disappointment. While it ranks as the second most-watched episode of the series in the United States during its original run—a testament to the premiere’s powerful hook—it proved, by that point, the show’s most significant creative misstep for both critics and fans, a frustrating exercise in narrative marking time that exposed the strains of the show’s expanding mythology.

The episode’s fundamental premise stems from co-creator Damon Lindelof’s sound, if pragmatic, structural idea: the twin cliffhangers of the opened hatch and the destroyed raft were too consequential to be resolved in a single hour. Thus, the premiere dealt with the former, leaving Adrift to pick up the pieces of the latter. The execution, however, is fatally flawed. We open on the aftermath of the Others’ attack. Michael, left to drown, is saved and resuscitated by Sawyer, who sustained only a shoulder wound—the first of several conspicuously convenient survival choices. Rather than focusing on the dire immediacies of survival—no food, water, or bearing—the pair quickly devolves into bitter, circular bickering. Michael’s despair over Walt’s abduction is understandable, but the script by Stephen Maeda and Leonard Dick renders him whiny and unsympathetic, his fixation blinding him to the peril at hand. Their conflict feels staged and repetitive, a poor substitute for tension, only interrupted when a shark—bearing a barely-visible Dharma Initiative insignia as a limp in-joke—provides a fleeting jolt. Their eventual discovery of a remaining pontoon and the sunrise revelation that currents have returned them to the Island’s shoreline lacks any sense of earned progression. This inertia culminates in a confusing encounter on the beach with a tied-up Jin, fleeing from armed figures, a sequence that feels more like a placeholder for future conflict than a compelling scene in its own right.

The accompanying flashback is emblematic of the episode’s lack of ambition. It offers a merely functional, emotionally manipulative reconstruction of Michael’s failed custody battle for the 14-month-old Walt. While Saul Rubinek brings a weary warmth as lawyer Finney, the beats are relentlessly predictable: the sympathetic lawyer, the uphill battle, the ultimate capitulation to Susan’s demands. It adds little new psychological depth to Michael, serving instead as a blunt instrument to underline his present-day desperation, a characteristic instance of the series telling us what we already know about a character rather than revealing something new.

Parallel to this, the episode revisits the hatch events from the premiere, albeit from Locke’s and Kate’s perspectives. This constitutes the episode’s most glaring redundancy. We witness Locke’s descent, his discovery of the underground station, and his capture by the paranoid Desmond, who is convinced the world has ended. Terry O’Quinn, as ever, delivers a performance of nuanced intensity, finding layers of fascination and cunning as Locke negotiates with his captor. Evangeline Lilly also gets a well-directed action sequence as Kate uses a covertly passed knife to escape through a ventilation shaft. Yet, these are minor compensations. The bulk of these scenes simply retell events the audience witnessed a week prior, with added dialogue that often merely explicates the obvious. Desmond’s intriguing paranoia and possible dissociation from the Others—hinting he may be more akin to the unhinged Danielle Rousseau—are the sole nuggets of fresh intrigue. Otherwise, it feels like narrative treadmilling, an obligatory briefing for casual viewers who joined at Season Two.

The technical execution compounds these writing failures. Filming at sea is notoriously difficult, but director Stephen Williams fails to overcome these challenges. The extended nighttime sequences on the flotsam look stagey and theatrical, with the full moon and burning raft remnants providing an unconvincingly uniform, studio-like glow. The effect is one of artificial constraint, undermining the vast, perilous oceanic setting the story requires. This lack of authentic atmosphere makes the interpersonal drama feel even more cloistered and contrived.

Ultimately, Adrift suffers from a profound lack of inspiration and a sudden, alarming predictability. For the first time, Lost feels safe. The entire original raft crew—Michael, Sawyer, and Jin—survives the ordeal unscathed from any meaningful injury, a clear reluctance to risk major cast changes so early in the season. Harold Perrineau’s later vocal complaints about the poor writing resonate strongly; the episode reportedly began as Sawyer-centric before a last-minute rewrite, and it shows in the awkward, unbalanced character dynamics. The episode exposes a looming structural issue for the series: with an ever-expanding cast and a mythology requiring constant explication for new viewers, the narrative was beginning to bloat, risking repetition over revelation. Adrift is a worrying harbinger of the narrative drag and expository heavy-lifting that would occasionally bog down the series’ future. It proved, dishearteningly, that the sceptics were right: after the hatch blew open, the only way was down, and the descent began with startling immediacy.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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