Adrift (Lost)

This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Adrift"
Lost episode
A black man and a white man, both wearing wet clothes, sit on a raft made of bamboo at night.
Michael and Sawyer on the destroyed raft
Episode no.Season 2
Episode 2
Directed byStephen Williams
Written by
Production code202
Original air dateSeptember 28, 2005 (2005-09-28)
Running time41 minutes[1]
Guest appearances
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Man of Science, Man of Faith" 		Next →
"Orientation"
Lost season 2
List of episodes

"Adrift" is the second episode of the second season of Lost and the 27th episode overall. The episode was directed by Stephen Williams and written by Steven Maeda and Leonard Dick. It first aired on September 28, 2005, on the American Broadcasting Company. In the episode, flashbacks depict Michael Dawson's struggles for the custody of his son Walt Lloyd. The realtime events show Michael and Sawyer, who have just had their raft destroyed, becoming hostile towards each other as they drift back to shore, while Kate Austen and John Locke enter the mysterious hatch and encounter Desmond Hume.

The storyline picks up the raft storyline which was left hanging after season one's finale, "Exodus", and also revisits the events seen in the previous episode, "Man of Science, Man of Faith". Originally envisioned as a Sawyer episode, the episode was rewritten to focus on Michael. The sea scenes were shot on the Hawaiian shoreline. "Adrift" had 23.17 million American viewers and stands as the second largest audience on the series' run, but received negative reviews, which focused criticism on the flashbacks, the raft scenes, and the lack of plot advancement.

Plot

Flashbacks

In the flashbacks, Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau) struggles with his ex-girlfriend Susan Lloyd (Tamara Taylor), who has asked Michael to sign away his paternal rights to their son, Walt. Although Michael initially resists, suing in order to keep his custody, he eventually relents as Susan persuades him to doubt his own motivations and whether he is pursuing his own desires or Walt's best interests.

On the Island

After

flotsam and performing CPR. Michael then wakes up, and blames Sawyer for making him fire the flare, drawing their attackers to them. Shortly after, the two notice a shark
is encircling them; Michael believes the shark was attracted to Sawyer's bleeding wound, and the two have continuous arguments.

Back at camp, after

strange marking
. Kate then climbs into a ventilation shaft while Desmond interrogates Locke about the outside world and finds out about the plane crash.

The plotline converges to the same point at the end of the previous episode, "

Matthew Fox
), and after channeling him to the computer room, forces Locke to greet Jack as seen in the previous episode.

Back at the raft, Michael and Sawyer see one of the raft's pontoons, and they decide to board it. Sawyer swims to the pontoon, giving Michael his gun in case the shark appears. When it does, Michael fires several times, apparently injuring the shark. Michael then joins Sawyer on the pontoon, and when the morning breaks, he cries, realizing that he should not have brought Walt with him on the raft, and blames himself for his son's kidnapping. At this point, Sawyer notices that they are back near the island. When they wash ashore, they meet Jin running toward them, hands tied behind his back, shouting the word "Others", and fleeing a group holding him captive.

Production

A black man wearing a white shirt. A panel with the logo for the San Diego Comic-Con is seen behind him. In front of him are a water bottle, a plastic cup, a microphone and a paper reading "Damon Lindelof".
Harold Perrineau had swimming lessons between the first and second seasons in preparation for this episode.[2]

Season one's

Others on Michael's boat. When production of season 2 started, the writers decided that season premiere "Man of Science, Man of Faith" would focus on the hatch, leaving the raft for the second episode. To avoid bloating the first episode, some of the hatch storylines, such as Locke's incursion, were left to be revealed in "Adrift".[3] The episode was originally going to be Sawyer centric, and was to feature actress Jolene Blalock as a guest,[4] but this was rewritten "at the proverbial last minute" and changed to a Michael-centric episode.[5]

Director

DHARMA Initiative insignia can briefly be seen near its back fin. This was an inside joke or "easter egg," which turned out to be more visible than had been intended.[6] While a mechanical shark which required three puppeteers was built, the shot of Michael being attacked was done with a shark fin being held by an underwater crew member.[2]

Reception

Ratings

23.17 million American viewers tuned into "Adrift", making it the second most-watched episode in the show's history, behind the season opener.[7][8]

Critical reception

Reviews were mostly negative. Mac Slocum of Filmfodder.com said the flashback storyline "wasn't all that interesting".[9] Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen called the flashbacks "among the poorest and most clumsily integrated flashbacks we've seen so far", as he felt nothing new was learned, and also disliked Michael's on-island storyline, noting he "got the sense that the actors and directors weren't quite sure what to make of these scenes". Jensen, however, complimented the hatch scenes, considering that Terry O'Quinn's performance and his interaction with Henry Ian Cusick were "salvaging the first mediocre episode of the season".[10] Ryan Mcgee of Zap2it thought that revealing the hatch events through different perspectives was a "fresh narrative approach", but complained about the lack of plot advancement, and considered the raft storyline "three times as long as needed, with a really fake shark attack to boot".[11] IGN's Chris Carabott gave the episode an 8.2 out of 10, praising Perrineau's performance and the flashback,[12] but the website later ranked "Adrift" 80th out of the 115 Lost episodes, jokingly saying that the shark should have eaten Michael "and save us a lot of 'Waaaaaalt!' and 'They took him. From my hands!' shout fests".[8] A similar list by Los Angeles Times ranked the episode as the fourth worst of the series, describing it as "boring".[13] New York magazine listed "Adrift" in its "Twenty Most Pointless Episodes of Lost", complaining about "grinding the story to a halt" and the "plodding" flashback, and saying that the episode would have been improved if Sawyer and Michael reached land faster.[14]

References

  1. ^ "Lost - Netflix". Netflix. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  2. ^ a b Keck, William (2005-09-13). "'Lost' in the face of death". USA Today. Retrieved 2010-12-23.
  3. ^ Jack Bender, Damon Lindelof, Bryan Burk, Carlton Cuse (2006). "Audio commentary for "Man of Science, Man of Faith"". Lost: The Complete Second Season (DVD). Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
  4. ^ Kathy Lyford and Brian Cochrane (April 21, 2009). "'Lost': 'Our greatest wish is that fans feel it was all worth it'". Variety. Archived from the original on 2010-12-24. Retrieved 2010-12-23.
  5. ^ Jensen, Jeff, (February 5, 2008) "'Lost': Season 2 Episode Guide Archived 2012-10-06 at the Wayback Machine", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on January 19, 2009.
  6. ^
    Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Featurette
    , disc 7. Released on September 5, 2006.
  7. ^ "Weekly Program Rankings". ABC Medianet. October 4, 2005. Retrieved 2008-07-29.
  8. ^ a b "Ranking Lost". IGN. 2010-06-02. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
  9. ^ Slocum, Mac, (September 29, 2005) "Key Points from "Adrift": Lost Blog", FilmFodder.com. Retrieved on January 15, 2009.
  10. ^ Jensen, Jeff, (September 29, 2005) ""Lost": Michael treads water; Locke goes deeper Archived 2012-10-06 at the Wayback Machine", Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on January 9, 2009.
  11. ^ "'Lost': Adrift - Lost - Zap2it's Guide to Lost - Zap2it". 2010-01-23. Archived from the original on 2010-01-23. Retrieved 2018-08-27.
  12. ^ Carabott, Chris (2009-06-12). "Lost Flashback: "Adrift" Review". IGN. Retrieved 2010-12-13.
  13. ^ VanDerWerff, Emily (2010-05-23). "'Lost' 10s: Every episode of 'Lost,' ever (well, except the finale), ranked for your enjoyment". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 17 July 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-27.
  14. ^ Connelly, Michael Alan (2010-05-18). "The Twenty Most Pointless Episodes of Lost". New York. Retrieved 2011-01-11.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Adrift.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adrift_(Lost)&oldid=1217384145"