Lost, Season 3, Episode 14, “Exposé” (3/28/07)

I was ready in advance to dislike this episode. These two “out of nowhere” characters just didn’t fit in with the show, and I couldn’t figure out how the writers were going to make their story interesting.

And as far as I’m concerned, they did a good job with it. I actually ended up liking this episode, and was okay with an ep that didn’t necessarily have to deal with the island mysteries/mythology. I loved how the flashbacks were reminiscent of the episode “The Other 48 Days” (the story of the Tailies) in that the flashbacks included flashing back to the plane crash (where the producers/editors did a great job of inserting Nikki and Paolo into the crash footage!) and during the time on the island. Great stuff.

Well, you’ve been asking all year, “Who the hell are Paolo and Nikki?” Now you’ve got your answer.

Nikki and Paolo: Nikki, a successful actress and guest star of Exposé, and Paolo, her lackey, are a pair of cons who set out to steal diamonds from the producer of Exposé and after getting away with it, they run off with the diamonds. The flashback scene of them at the airport, and having to hear Boone and Shannon arguing (ahhh, the good old days!), was interesting in that it set up the obvious comparison to Boone and Shannon…..they always argued, and so do Nikki and Paolo, and Nikki saying “Promise me we’ll never end up like them” to Paolo. He promises. Doesn’t he know that you can’t make promised on this show?? Funny stuff. It was also funny on the set of Exposé when Nikki’s character, Corvette, gets killed and she says “I was the guest star, I’m supposed to be killed”, and the producer talks about ways of possibly bringing her character back (“She was wearing a bullet proof vest”). While on the island, they search for the bag that held the diamonds (and Paolo’s nicotine gum) because it had been lost in the crash. In the process of looking for the bag, they discover the drug plane (that had Eko’s brother, Yemi on it), and they find the Pearl Station. Paolo later descends into the Pearl Station alone because he had, unbeknownst to Nikki, found the diamonds, and wanted to hid them in a place where he didn’t think they’d be found. While in the Pearl, he had to hide when Ben and Juliette came in and were watching Jack (then in the Swan Hatch) on the videos. Ben & Juliette discuss a way to capture Jack not knowing that Paolo was listening. It doesn’t matter because Paolo doesn’t really interact with Jack, so never gives him the heads up of this meeting. In the meantime, Nikki has asked Dr Arzt (he of the exploding dynamite fame) for help in locating the bag and sees him collecting insects and bugs from the island. One of them is a Medusa spider whose venom can paralyze a person for 8 (one of the numbers) hours, and that the scent of the venom will bring the male Medusa spiders from all around.. Discovering later that Paolo has the diamonds, Nikki throws the Medusa spider on him and takes the diamonds. Paolo tells her he hid he diamonds because he was afraid she’d leave him if she had them. Looking touched and maybe a bit embarrassed about what she’s done, Nikki notices that she is now surrounded by hundreds of the Medusa spiders who have come because of the female spider that stung Paolo. She herself gets stung, but before becoming paralyzed buries the diamonds, and then runs to the beach, where she falls down near Hurley, Jin and Sawyer. As she goes down, she whispers to Hurley to Sawyer. Sawyer thinks she says “Power lines”. Hurley thinks she says “Paolo lies”. I think she said “paralyzed” as a way to let them know she’s been paralyzed and that she is not dead. Didn’t work. Then to have the Losties bury them alive, well that was freakin’ awesome, eh?

Billy Dee Williams: !!!!!!!!!! Awesome.

Shannon and Boone: I like when we get a Shannon and Boone visit. Of course this one was from the “Shannon is still a bitch” time frame, but it was nice to see them again.

Sawyer: Still getting beat by Hurley at ping pong. I love it. Hurley: "Nikki's dead!" Sawyer: "Who the hell's Nikki?" ha ha! Still didn’t know who Nikki and Paolo were, even though Nikki had been asking Sawyer for a gun (in the flashback) right after he had returned from Otherville. Sawyer reminds her that the “A Team” had taken them all! Ha ha! Also funny that Sawyer is back to his nicknaming ways by calling them Nina and Pablo. (Hurley: "Have some respect, you know their names, dude." Sawyer, "Pardon me, HUGO." ha ha!) After finding Nikki and then finding Paolo a bit later, both of them paralyzed but the Losties assume they’re dead, he finds the spot where Nikki buried the diamonds and digs them up.

Hurley: Starting to become a take-charge kind of guy as he was standing up to Sawyer a couple of times, most notably when Sawyer called Nikki and Paolo Nina and Pablo. When he finds the Exposé script in Nikki’s tent, he calls it “only the most awesome hour of television”. Reaches out to Desmond to see if his ability foresaw the Nikki and Paolo incident, and Desmond said no, his visions aren’t regular, they just happen. Hurley replies, “As far as superpowers go, yours is kind of lame”. Ha ha ha!!!!

Locke: “Things never stay buried on this island” he tells Paolo. John was watching “Exposé” on TV in his flashback episode from last week. If you remember, the show he was watching in his apartment had dialogue referring to “the Cobra”, who happens to be the bad guy in Exposé.

Charlie: Admits to Sun that it was he who had kidnapped her. He said the Sawyer had him do it in order to scare the Losties into taking action against the Others. He apologizes to her, saying he never meant to hurt her.

Sun: After Charlie tells her about the kidnapping, she approaches Sawyer, and confronts him about it. He asks if she’s going to tell Jin, and she says “No, or we’ll be digging another grave”. But she does slap Sawyer right across that unshaven face pretty good. Yeah Sun! (I’m guessing that her pregnancy should start showing soon, eh?)

Jin: Was with Sawyer and Hurley when Nikki came out of the woods and collapsed, and also was with them when they found Paolo in the same condition. Jin also believes “monster” did this to them.

SMonster: Paolo repeatedly mentions “the monster”, to which Nikki keeps telling him that there’s no monster. However, after Nikki throws the spider on Paolo, right before the hundreds of other spiders start showing up, you can briefly hear that noise the SMonster makes..that clanking sound. Could the spiders have been the SMonster? I’m starting to wonder if the SMonster is just part of the island…not created by Dharma or Widmore, and is the island’s own built in safety feature. It doesn’t kill everyone (Locke is still alive after seeing it up-close), so maybe it’s the islands brain, or thought center, or screener of good people. Maybe the SMonster is totally in charge of the island and the Others, the Dharmas and the Losties are all part of it’s own experiment. Maybe the SMonster is conning them all……

Misc:
1. Locke told Paolo, who was trying to bury the diamonds on the beach, that “things don’t stay buried on this island”, and at the end of the ep it made me wonder if it meant that maybe Nikki and Paolo would somehow be saved by the island and will return.
2. Mr LaShade: this was the character mentioned in the Exposé who was the good guy, but turns out to be The Cobra, the bad guy. Wonder if this is a nod to the fact that maybe on Lost someone who currently appears to be the “good guy” will turn out to be the “bad guy”.
3. Sawyer reading “Evil Under the Sun”,
4. I wonder where Rose and Bernard have been?
5. Michael and Walt….where are you?

Until next week,

Razzle Dazzle!

*joe

Screen shots can be found here: http://lost.cubit.net/forum/index.php/topic,2640.0.html

And here (under the ‘screencaps’ tab): http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/