Television Review: Enter 77 (Lost, S3X11, 2007)

Enter 77 (S03E11)

Airdate: 7 March 2007

Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damond Lindelof
Directed by: Stephen Williams

Running Time: 42 minutes

During Season 3, there was a great deal of hidden drama behind the scenes of Lost, principally involving tense negotiations between the creators and ABC regarding how long the series should run. Lindelof and Abrams had originally envisioned three seasons, but the network, impressed by unexpectedly high ratings, wanted ten. By Spring 2007, a compromise was being hatched: the network, seeing ratings plummet and facing a fan backlash over the slow plot advancement, agreed to end the show after three more seasons. Rumours about this arrangement began to trickle onto the Internet, but for fans of Lost, the next three years began to look longer than they would actually be. One of the reasons for that anxiety can be found in the uninspired, conventional, middle-of-the-road episode Enter 77.

The main plot deals with Locke, the de facto leader of the beach survivors, continuing his expedition to try to locate Jack and free him from the Others. His group, which includes Kate, Sayid and Rousseau, stumbles upon a Dharma Initiative facility that includes milk cows and a satellite dish. Rousseau, not wanting to risk her life, temporarily leaves them. The facility, later revealed to be the Flame Station, is approached by Sayid, which leads to a brief firefight in which Sayid is hit in the arm. The man with an eyepatch, faced with superior numbers, surrenders.

Later, within the facility, the man introduces himself as Mikhail Bakunin, the last Dharma Initiative employee on the Island, and tends to Sayid's wound. Bakunin describes himself as a Soviet Army veteran and communications expert who was hired by Dharma after the end of the Cold War and survived the conflict with "the Hostiles" known as "the Purge." Sayid, being a veteran interrogator, easily senses that Bakunin is lying, that he is actually one of the Others, and that he might not be alone in the facility. Bakunin is overpowered and left in the care of Locke, who becomes obsessed with a chess computer programme. After winning the game, he is given another orientation video in which a Dharma top representative asks him to enter the numbers "77" in case of "hostile incursion." Locke does precisely that before he is taken prisoner by Bakunin.

In the meantime, Sayid and Kate have discovered a large cellar where they go to investigate and notice explosive devices set to go off. They are attacked by Ms. Klugh, who is overpowered and taken prisoner. When they get to the surface, they see that Bakunin has taken Locke prisoner, but instead of a prisoner exchange, Klugh, speaking in Russian, orders Bakunin to shoot her, which he does, before being taken prisoner himself. Using some of the maps of the Flame Station, the group sets out for the nearby "Barracks," which should be the Others' headquarters and where Jack might be hidden. But soon after, Locke says that he typed "77," and the Flame Station is destroyed in a massive explosion. Sayid is angry at Locke, but the group has no option but to go forward.

The main flashback again deals with Sayid. He is described as working under an assumed name as a chef in Paris. Sami (played by Shaun Toub), an Iraqi expatriate, recognises him as Iraqi and offers him a better-paid job in his own restaurant. Sayid agrees, but it turns out to be a ruse to have him captured. It transpires that Sami's wife Amira (played by Anne Bedian) recognised him as a former Iraqi Republican Guard officer responsible for her being tortured and forced to commit a crime that she did not commit. Sayid, whilst admitting his past career, maintains that he never knew Amira. Privately, he admits his guilt and apologises to her, and she lets him go, telling her husband that it was a mistake.

The B-storyline is set at the beach, with Sawyer trying to retrieve his stash that had been looted during his absence. He agrees to a ping pong match with Hurley, wagering that he would stop using nicknames for a week if he loses. Hurley, whose past involved playing a lot of ping pong, easily beats him.

Competently directed by Stephen Williams, Enter 77 features some interesting action scenes, but all of that is compromised by the Idiot Plot cliché. Locke and his expedition find a location that might be even more valuable to the survivors than the Swan Station: communication equipment that could lead to contact with the outside world, a treasure trove of intelligence, and, even more importantly, a source of food. Yet it all goes up in flames because Locke felt compelled to play chess and could not be bothered to tell the others about his computer games. More importantly, the explosives were—like the proverbial Chekhov's gun—found by the other characters, yet nobody thought to secure them or question why they were there. The destruction of the Flame Station is thus rendered not as tragic necessity but as careless contrivance.

Furthermore, the flashbacks continue to plague Lost at this point in its run. The Canadian actress Anne Bedian delivers a powerful performance in the flashback sequence, bringing genuine emotional weight to Amira's trauma and her ultimate act of mercy. However, the flashback again does not tell us anything about Sayid that we do not already know. We are well aware that he was a torturer in the Republican Guard, that he carries guilt for his past actions, and that he is capable of both brutality and tenderness. This particular backstory adds nothing new to his character arc; it merely restates established facts with different window dressing. By this stage in the series, the flashback structure has become a crutch rather than a creative device, and episodes like this one suffer for it.

As for the ping pong subplot, it is a rather lame and uninspired attempt at humour that, more than anything, shows the depletion of creative energy among Lost's producers. What should be a moment of levity instead feels desperate, as though the writers needed to fill screen time and reached for the first available gimmick. The Sawyer-Hurley dynamic had already been well established, and this subplot contributes nothing to either character's development or the overarching narrative.

The character of Bakunin—named, in typical Lost tradition, after a historical thinker famous as the spiritual father of modern anarchism—looks interesting and provides some lore for the series. Andrew Divoff imbues him with an unsettling intensity, and the notion of a supposed Dharma survivor raises intriguing questions. Yet this potential is largely wasted when his true allegiance becomes apparent too soon. The revelation that he is one of the Others strips away the ambiguity that might have made him a genuinely compelling antagonist, reducing him to yet another obstacle for our protagonists to overcome.

Enter 77 is not a terrible episode of television. It is professionally made, features some engaging performances, and advances the plot, however marginally. But in the context of a season struggling to justify its existence, it represents precisely the kind of wheel-spinning that frustrated viewers and led to the very ratings decline that forced ABC's hand. It is a competent piece of network drama, but it is not great Lost, and for a show that once seemed capable of greatness, that is criticism enough.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

==

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9