"Fire + Water"

NOVEMBER 5, 2010

FOCUS: CHARLIE
EPISODE: 2.12
AIRED: JANUARY 25, 2006

One of the things I’m most looking forward to as I re-watch every episode back to back is deciding once and for all what the worst episode of Lost is. I often say it’s the one about Jack’s tattoos, but I can’t remember the on-island story in that one, which might be fine. “Fire + Water”, however, is pretty worthless on and off the island, and now even more so with the show’s conclusion in mind (which I’ll be spoiling in a bit, so if you haven’t seen S6 yet, don’t read this review!).

Charlie’s flashbacks reveal... his brother was a drug addict and he had a need to take care of his loved ones. Gee, they haven’t covered that ground yet, thanks for the insight. The baby commercial is just stupid – I get that they were supposed to be washed up, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have them reduced to playing in a Chuck E Cheese or something? Liam also seems to kick heroin in a day or so – the timing structure of the flashbacks is a bit fuzzy.

And yet it’s still not as bad as the island stuff, where Charlie goes apeshit despite not using drugs, tries to drown the baby, sleepwalks... it’s just a mess. Also, Locke’s treatment of him is totally out of character – I get that he’s frustrated, but he also seems to be hanging with Claire more than necessary just to spite the guy. Seems Locke would be trying to help Charlie, not make his situation worse.

Then we have the baptism nonsense, which in hindsight makes either makes no sense or the writers seem to be suggesting Christian beliefs are nonsense. Claire specifically asks if her and Aaron both need to be baptized in order to stay together in the afterlife. Since they DO end up in the afterlife together, that either means that everyone was Catholic/baptized (which, they're not - Locke dismisses it, Sayid is Islamic, etc.) or Lost’s writers don’t believe baptism has a point, right? Don’t forget – they knew how the should would end! Nothing is just there for the hell of it, right?

Also, why does Locke keep all of the statues/heroin? If he thinks the heroin has any medicinal value, why keep it in the statues? Wouldn’t it make more sense to break them, get the H, and give it to Jack (the DOCTOR), instead of locking it in a room that Jack (or anyone else) apparently won’t know the combination to?

The only thing to a saving grace the episode has is the couple of scenes between Hurley and Libby, as their glorified platonic relationship begins to grow. There’s an odd moment about the washer and dryer being new (huh?), but otherwise it’s just a sweet and funny little subplot, plus it hints about her time in the institution, one of the 395 or so things that they went out of their way to implement into the show and never explain. But you gotta love Hurley’s cluelessness, plus Sawyer’s rare moment of genuine selflessness when he helps Hurley get her attention.

Hell even the Lostpedia entry for this episode is crap – whoever wrote the synopsis has stuff all out of order and in some cases repeated. Ugh. At least once I’m done with this project I’ll probably never re-watch any of the episodes again (maybe season 6 just to make it even with the others, which I’ve watched 3-4 times each), so I can take comfort knowing I won’t have to sit through this one ever again.

Where are we?