Lost Season 4, Episode 2 Review: 'Confirmed Dead'

Season 4 of Lost continued last night on ABC and as usual, the episode raised more questions than it answered. After last weeks revelation that Hurley may be more in tune with the island than we originally thought (even more so than Locke), the castaways were put on hold so that we could find out more about the new island visitors, The 'not Penny's boat' crew.

The episode started with an underwater search. Two separate vessels were searching the ocean floor and communicating back and forth with each other. Shortly into the segment one of the vessels comes across something, a plane! Then we go into a flashback where we are introduced to the first new cast member: Daniel Faraday played by Jeremy Davies. In the flashback we see him watching television, and on the TV we see that the Oceanic flight 815 plane was found in its entirety on the ocean floor. There were no survivors.

Flash forward to the island to pretty much where it left off with the helicopter crash (although later we find that it didn't crash at all). Kate and Jack meet up with Daniel who explains that there are four team members, himself included, who came to the island. Because they had to bail from the helicopter, the other three members ended up other places on the island, however they have tracking devices on them, so by using the satellite phone, they are able to locate the other team members.

Throughout the episode we get flashbacks for each of the other three team members. The second flashback introduces us to Miles Straume, played by Ken Leung. Miles seems to be able to communicate with the dead as we see in his flash back, he talks to a man who was murdered and is able to find a wad of cash hidden in his bedroom. Obviously he doesn't use his power for good, but it seems that his gift can come in handy on the island.

Our third flashback brings us to Tunisia where an archeological dig is taking place. We are introduced to Charlotte Staples Lewis played by Rebecca Mader. She is an archeologist who is very interested in a dig that is trying to be kept secret. She pays her way onto the site and proceeds to tell her partner that what they are digging up in the desert is a polar bear. She breaks apart the rock and sand and pulls a collar from the bear's neck and on it: the Dharma symbol. This particular symbol has a tree in the middle of it. I'd have to go back and watch the DVD's because I'm not particularly sure if we've seen this symbol yet. I think that maybe it symbolizes the station where Kate, Jack and Sawyer were being held, but they never put a name to that station. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

The fourth flashback takes us to a store were a man is watching TV and repeatedly sinking a toy plane into a fish tank. Here we are introduced to the fourth new character, Frank Lapidus played by Jeff Fahey. On the television, announcers are showing images of dead bodies in the plane, particularly the pilot, who died in the crash. Upon closer inspection, Frank calls the Oceanic hotline and tells the manager that it isn't the pilot on the plane because he knows the pilot and knows it isn't him by his missing wedding ring. How do you know that they ask? Frank states: because I was the one who was supposed to be flying that plane!!

Our fifth flashback includes Naomi and the fifth new character to be added to the Lost roster, Matthew Abbadon. He was introduced to us in last week's episode when he visited Hurley in the mental hospital and asked the chilling question: are they still alive? After Naomi and Matthew's meeting, questions were raised as to Oceanic's involvement in locating the survivors.

So lets recap: The newbie's came to the island, we found out a little bit about each of their backgrounds, they also clearly stated that their primary objective wasn't to rescue the survivors, but instead to locate Ben Linus, why? We still don't know. In addition we found out that Oceanic possibly (more than likely) staged the 815 wreckage because they were more interested in finding the island than any possible survivors. So why is this all going on? My guess can only be that Naomi is working with the Dharma Initiative, and their objective is to find the island, exterminate anyone who is inhabiting it (gas masks in the case anyone??) and begin again.

Dharma is well aware of the islands power and when Ben wiped out the original members, the experiments stopped. I believe that Dharma is trying to regain control of the island so that they can continue their work. As for the members of Naomi's team, I'm not sure if they really understand why they were picked for the mission, I can only assume that whoever they are working for didn't tell them the whole truth behind locating the island in the first place. All we can gather is that someone is trying to find the island, gain control and that Oceanic is most definitely in on it.

As for the Oceanic 6, the promos told us that next week we'll find out another member of the Oceanic 6. There is much debate over who the 6 are, as for me, I've decided to stay away from the spoilers so its still a guessing game. I'm very excited to see where this season is going though. All Hail JJ Abrahams! This is going to be a great season of Lost!
Sources:

"Characters of Lost." Wikipedia.Org