Television Review: Three Minutes (Lost, S2X22, 2006)

Three Minutes (S02E22)

Airdate: 17 May 2006

Written by: Edward Kistsis & Adam Horowitz
Directed by: Stephen Williams

Running Time: 44 minutes

The creators of Lost, having woven a tapestry of bewildering mysteries and character intricacies, faced a narrative tightrope walk by the latter half of Season 2. The understandable imperative to begin unpicking some of these knots, however, carried with it a significant risk: that in choosing a more conventional and sensible route to unfold the complex plot, the series would become predictable to its most devoted viewers. For an audience habitually analysing every glance, hatch monitor, and line of dialogue, the absence of genuine narrative surprise could drain tension and foster disengagement. A prime example of this precarious balance is found in Three Minutes, the last episode before two-parter season finale. While competently executing its function as a narrative bridge, the episode offers painfully few major surprises, functioning instead as a checklist of anticipated revelations and logical character progressions, thereby rendering much of its runtime an exercise in confirmation rather than discovery.

The main plot deals directly with the immediate aftermath of the bloodshed in the Swan Station. Ana Lucia and Libby are buried, an event which serves to emotionally charge the survivors, making them pliable to Michael’s ostensibly urgent plan for a retaliatory raid on the Others’ settlement. Michael’s proposal is superficially logical yet immediately suspect upon scrutiny. He argues that a small, five-person party armed with guns is ideal to avoid detection, yet he bizarrely insists on a very specific roster: himself, Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley. The deliberate exclusion of Sayid—objectively the most tactically experienced among them—is a glaring anomaly that the script itself acknowledges, having Sawyer pointedly question it. Michael’s weak justification only heightens the audience’s suspicion, which is precisely the point. When Sayid discreetly warns Jack that Michael may have been “compromised,” it confirms what the viewer has already deduced. The episode thus spends its A-plot having characters slowly arrive at a conclusion the audience reached minutes, if not episodes, prior.

This lack of surprise is compounded by the episode’s central flashback, which provides a simple and utterly sensible explanation for Michael’s actions. His irrational, one-man quest for Walt was, as anyone could predict, doomed. He predictably stumbles into Picket (played by Michael Brown), one of the Others, is captured by Mr. Friendly, and witnesses Jack’s failed parley. The settlement of the Others is revealed exactly as Michael later describes it, but the revelation that he was an interrogated prisoner, not an observer, adds little dramatic weight. The deal offered by the enigmatic Ms. Klugh (April Grace)—bring Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley in exchange for Walt—is a straightforward transactional MacGuffin. The emotional core, the titular three-minute reunion with Walt, is affecting due to the performances, but its content (Walt’s warning not to trust the Others) merely reinforces the audience’s existing stance. The flashback, therefore, functions not as a twist but as a procedural debrief, methodically ticking boxes on a list of questions left open since Michael’s return.

A more interesting, if subtle, narrative thread lies in the B-plot, which charts a shifting power dynamic among the characters. Mr. Eko’s fanatical devotion to the Button causes him to retreat into the Swan, abandoning his church project and, symbolically, his role as a spiritual leader. Charlie, feeling discarded, is thrust back into his addiction narrative when Vincent fetches the heroin-filled Virgin Mary statues. His decision to throw them into the sea is a powerful moment of personal resolve, but its impact is curiously externalised. Locke witnesses the act, nods approvingly, and in a visually potent but narratively convenient moment, abandons his crutches and walks away, his faith and physicality seemingly restored. This subplot feels less like organic character development and more like a mechanistic reset: Charlie is cleansed, Locke is re-empowered, and both are repositioned for the forthcoming finale, all with a tidy, foreseen efficiency.

Written by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, Three Minutes is, ultimately, a solid and competently directed episode of television that fails to tell the audience anything they hadn’t already strongly suspected. To its credit, the script avoids indulging in outright ‘Idiot Plot’; characters like Sawyer vocalise the audience’s logical objections, and Sayid’s paranoid instincts are correctly calibrated. However, it falters in failing to provide a believable in-universe reason for Michael’s insistence on including Hurley. The demand to bring the peace-loving, physically unfit, and least violent survivor on a dangerous military raid is so glaringly absurd that it serves less as a credible element of the Others’ plan and more as a clumsy narrative flag, explicitly designed to scream ‘trap!’ to both characters and viewers. This undermines the suspense, making the waiting game until Sayid’s warning not a slow burn but a foregone conclusion.

Yet, just as the episode threatens to solidify into a predictable march towards a finale where the raid ends either in catastrophe or with Michael’s unmasking, the creators hurl a masterful monkey wrench into the works. In the final moments, as the survivors stand united in grief, a sailboat miraculously drifts into view off the coast. This single image is a stroke of narrative genius. It instantly obliterates the carefully constructed, interpersonal tension surrounding Michael’s plot. The arrival of a potential means of escape or, at the very least, a transformative logistical asset, threatens to throw every individual plan and agenda—the raid, the Button, the personal quests—into utter disarray. It is a brilliantly disruptive cliffhanger, a reminder that Lost is at its best not when it is answering questions sensibly, but when it is capriciously expanding the board. In an episode largely defined by predictable confirmations, the sailboat’s appearance is a thrilling, unexpected question, proving that the series’ capacity for wonder had merely been dormant, not extinguished.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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