3x14, "Exposé"

OK... I reacted too harshly to "Exposé" the first time around. After watching it again, I realized what I'd missed. The first time I was mostly disappointed because Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had led me to believe Nikki and Paulo's awkward insertion into the storyline would lead to something important. They even used "iconic" to describe how we would view the pair afterwards.

Well, I think their deaths were certainly iconic, as I will never be able to forget that.

But was it worth it solely for an ending -- albeit a spectacular one -- to just one episode? Damon and Carlton had been saying they wanted to do a "redshirts" story, showing what the other background characters were up to while the leads went off on their wacky adventures. Supposedly, they thought an episode about random characters we'd never met before would be too jarring so we needed to be introduced to them somehow. I disagree with that. If this had been our first real introduction to Nikki and Paolo, the episode may have actually worked better within the context of the show.

It's the running gag in all genre shows that redshirts are disposable and always manage to get themselves killed. This episode definitely played into that. But really, by bringing them forward from the background, Damon and Carlton made them more than redshirts, only to dispose of them as if they still were just that. For whatever reason, Dr. Artz's sudden appearance and death made more sense -- probably because he actually contribued something useful to the overall story, while Nikki and Paolo at first appeared to be there as just set dressing. Introducing them so awkwardly though made Nikki and Paolo seem like intruders. Lindelof said as much in a short post-mortem interview with TV Guide, saying he realized fans perceived the two as "crashing the party."

Maybe the best redshirts episode I've ever seen was, appropriately enough, one on Star Trek: Next Gen. It ignored all the other stars and just focussed on five lower tier officers. We'd never met them before but each was a subordinate of one of the leads. It showed all facets of how these background characters lived, better still it compared their lives to the more exciting ones of their superiors. They were less important, knew it and struggled with it and against it. One of them died when she was given the opportunity to actually do something meaningful. That ending was inevitable, but somehow made every redshirt death on the show a little more poignant.

I didn't really get that so much in "Exposé". Instead a lot of their crossover appearances in the show's past seemed forced and contrived. Meanwhile, I was waiting for appearances that would have made more sense and shed some light on things still in the dark -- like how Scott (or Steve) died.

But by itself Exposé was quite a piece of work, which is why it should've been treated like a stand alone episode, with little build-up.

It's no coincidence the diamonds were hidden within a matryoshka doll. "Exposé" was a show, within a show, within a show. It deftly mocked network TV's over abundance of crime procedurals (CSI: The Island!) by turning LOST into one. A few posters at The Fuselage even made comparisons to Hitchcock. While I think that's going too far, Exposé definitely headed in that direction with its pulpy tone and film noir inspired structure. And, bless 'em, they followed that forumla all the way to its logical conclusion with a macabre ending perfectly suited to such an episode. If LOST really is a stew of all genres of storytelling, this will go down as one of the prime examples of it.

This was all set-up beautifully by the opening segment, establishing Exposé as a show mocking Baywatch (or maybe Baywatch Nights). So even for those who'd never seen anything like it, they now had a baseline to come at the rest of the episode.

*Now, there's a couple really interesting Exposé related nuggets to keep in mind for the future:

-Locke was actually watching Exposé in "The Man from Tallahassee"
-Hurley's comment about waiting four seasons to find out who The Cobra is could be a hint we'll have to wait till Season 4 to find out who Him/Jacob is or was.
-And keep in mind that The Cobra was apparently one of the lead good guys of Exposé... could the real "Cobra" be hiding in the midst of the Losties on the beach?

*One last thing that Dean pointed out: it's again no conincidence they replayed Jack's pivotal "Live Together, Die Alone" speech. Nikki and Paolo behavior contradicted that entirely from the very moment they crashed: Nikki wanted the diamonds, Paolo wanted Nikki and each cared for little else. Paolo could've saved a lot of people by sharing what he overheard about Ben's plan.

The "Box" that gives you everything you want continues to work in mysterious ways. While the Losties will never know, Nikki and Paolo both ironically got what they most wanted: Paolo will never be separated from Nikki, while she will never be parted from the diamonds.