The Top 5 Most Over-rated "Lost" Episodes

With the premiere of Lost's final season only a week away, I thought I'd look back at the show and rate the episodes. This list is concerned with those episodes that everyone talks about, but just aren't as good as they are cracked up to be. Warning: Spoilers abound!!!

5. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham -- we waited through an entire season and eight episodes before learning how the guy in the coffin got there. When finally the story was told, it was decent, but left some hanging chronology issues. Most glaring is Jack's timeline. Here it seems that Locke is brought into the hospital, talks to Jack, then very soon after is killed. But the very first flash forward told us that Jack spocke to Locke a month before. A whole month goes by! And it needs to go by for Jack to grow his Grizzly Adams beard and circle the drain. There are good things about this episode. But for all the drawn out build-up, it lets me down some. Oh, and exactly how did getting the Oceanic 6 back help the island?

4. Fire + Water -- Not bad, but this seems to be a major benchmark episode to people from season two. I like Charlie. I like Charlie episodes. But it seems there's a fervor about this one that it doesn't deserve. Heck, an entire documentary featurette was devoted to it on the DVD. It seems to me that even if Charlie went about it the wrong way, he at least had Aaron's interest at heart. Why is that bad? And why is baptism the answer; doesn't that imply Aaron will die? The Aaron thing has really not paid off at all so far, which is worrisome. I also don't understand why Charlie bothered to start a fire and take the baby when he could have just brought a cup of water over and splashed it in the baby's face. I'm further depressed by the lack of scriptural knowledge on display, as Mr. Eko says that John the Baptist cleansed Jesus of his sins, and baptism is reduced to "what gets you into heaven".

3. Flashes Before Your Eyes -- Was this actual time travel or not? I'm truly befuddled as to what actually happened for Desmond before the island as opposed to how it happened in this episode. The course-correcting universe theme seems ripped off from Final Destination. I also do not quite understand how traveling to one's past equals having visions of the future. Don't get me wrong, I like this one. I like the drunking singing around the fire. And it does push the season in a new direction. But I'm amazed that when a lot of craziness flashes before an audience, they will hail it as great because they were confused.

2. Through the Looking Glass -- Damon Lindelof keeps referring to this one as one of the best season finales. I just don't see it. I know that the sudden leap to flash forwards was a big deal. It was shocking, and we talked about it. But on the whole, there's not much to this episode. It's two hours of people walking uphill! Most of the big "reveals" were predicted (the fact that Sayid and company didn't die for example). And of course, all the stuff in the Looking Glass station was a joke. Mikhail has more lives than Jason Voorhees. The situation we see is not what Desmond described, as there was no switch for Charlie to flip (it was a keypad), and no helicopter ever took Claire and Aaron away. Furthermore, for all the talk of how heroic Charlie's death was, there was clearly time and ability for him to escape. Oh, and his "not Penny's boat" message didn't really help anything, did it? All this adds up to a lot of frustration. The good bits do not come close to "Exodus" or even "The Incident" for great finales.

1.The Constant -- I like this one. I do. But over and over again I hear people talk about how it is the best episode of Lost and it just plain isn't. I'm glad Des got back with Penny. I'm glad we saw some of his time in the service. But I'm still confused about Desmond's timeline regarding Penny (they weren't together, but she still wrote him love letters while he was in prison?). And as good as the episode is, most of it's credit goes to its lofty concept. The logic also confuses the audience; many of those I hear from think that a constant HAS to be a person, which is not what the episode said at all. Finally, it's primary focus is on Desmond to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Lost has been much more effective on a number of occasions. For me, as good as "The Constant" is, it surely doesn't even approach the Pilot, let alone best episode ever.