Lost in Space (2018) s02e05 – Run

It’s nearly a concept episode of “Lost in Space.” John Robinson (Toby Stephens) is stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft, injured, without medical attention. Daughter Judy Robinson (Taylor Russell) is racing to get to him but her SUV breaks down. They’re on an alien planet and there are metal termites. She’s going to have to run for it. Along the way, there are flashbacks establishing their relationship together before Stephens went and pissed everyone off by re-upping in the Navy.

There’s the additional detail Russell isn’t Stephens’ biological daughter, which has the constant visual reminder Russell’s Black and Stephens is such a ginger you can see him getting a sunburn during scenes with overcast skies. Russell being Black doesn’t figure into the story at all—“Lost in Space”’s future Earth has its problems but apparently they got institutionalized racism licked—and being his step-kid barely matters. There are some good implications related to it—eventually—but the show never explicitly states them. They’re just character backstory for Russell.

It’s a good A-plot. Derivative as all hell—Russell runs into raptors in the desert and has some Jurassic Park adventures, before finding herself in a Tomb Raider level and having to jump between rock outcroppings to beat the level. But Russell’s good and Stephens’s closer to it than ever before.

Though it’s hard to imagine a similar episode with his biological kids—Maxwell Jenkins and Mina Sundwall—possibly because the show reduced their character depths this season.

Jenkins’s subplot this episode is going to get his robot with mom Molly Parker and slightly ominous company man JJ Feild. Their subplot is mostly notable because the show again leans in on the space-campers everyone zooms around in looking like the Millennium Falcon.

Sundwall has a Nancy Drew subplot following Parker Posey around the mothership. Sundwall wants to know what Posey’s scheming and has to enlist the aid of not boyfriend Ajay Friese. They too find themselves in a Star Wars “homage.” If it were any director besides Jon East, there wouldn’t be quotation marks. With East, however, I’m not sure he gets it.

Vivian Lee has the script credit. Besides the Jenkins subplot, everything’s solid. Sundwall and Friese are fun together and the Nancy Drewing does give Sundwall some personality, which has been lacking lately. Russell and Stephens’s A-plot is really effective, mostly thanks to Russell (and the writing). It’s also where the special effects break down again, just like last episode. The CGI team must’ve been in a hurry; or just couldn’t figure out sand.

There’s a good cliffhanger too.

Lost in Space (2018) s02e04 – Scarecrow

Since this episode doesn’t have the opening titles, I spent the entire thing terrified Leslie Hope directed it too (she did the excellent job last episode), and that goodness was somehow a fluke. Nope, those intolerable, endless, pointless low-angle shots are courtesy director Jon East. It’s the worst direction on the show ever. I should’ve been satisfied with the middling.

Also concerning is the script. Kari Drake gets the credit, and, Writers Guild procedures aside, her name’s been on enough of them to foreshadow. There’s going to be a really trite scene between family members where they talk in less than soap opera platitudes. In this episode, it will be Molly Parker and Maxwell Jenkins. She’s just discovered him doing something she didn’t want him to do, but then the experience makes her realize with great power comes great responsibility. She tells him a context-free story about her mom like it resonates outside the platitudes. It does not.

Parker’s one of the show’s sturdiest actors. She can handle what it throws at her. But even she’s “Lost” in this nonsense.

The family’s been rescued by the mothership, which is no longer abandoned because Parker and Toby Stephens have seen Alien 3 and figured out how to contain the enslaved alien life-form humanity’s been using as a ferry driver across the galaxy. I expected the show to get into how beating and torturing an alien, even if it’s a scary metal alien, is wrong, but not really. New guy—combination roboticist and espionage-type—JJ Feild is very sad about all the torturing he had to do. There’s this interminable shot of him moping after watching Jenkins just, like, talk to the robot sincerely and get a better response for a while. I kept waiting for there to be a reveal—and there’s a bit of one—but the point is Feild’s super-sad about having tortured the alien for years.

Those developments all come in the last third of the episode. It doesn’t really have acts—there’s a reveal cliffhanger involving the robot, ignoring Stephens being in actual dire danger—but the first third is about the Robinson family not being special once they get back to the mothership. Other than Jenkins, who everyone whispers about. Really hoping they’re not going to do a messiah arc. Not as much as I hope they keep Ignacio Serricchio and Taylor Russell platonic, but second only to that one.

Parker helps the other space-camper moms organize wires; Mina Sundwall just hangs out, Jenkins is supposed to be chilling too, but he’s intrepid. Russell, Stephens, and Serricchio all get put to work on the desert planet where they’ve been camping out. We get to see Russell and Serricchio in their daily lives—she’s just a medical student again; he’s just one of many mechanics again. No one cares they galavanted across the galaxy.

Stephens gets grunt work but at least reconnects with Raza Jaffrey (who finally gets to be charming) and Sibongile Mlambo (who finally gets to be sympathetic) before ending up in danger because the colonists aren’t thorough like his family would have been.

Parker Posey’s got a machinations plotline involving getting out of trouble. It’s pat but necessary.

The episode also features some weak special effects, and the new supporting actors, outside Feild, are often wanting.

It’s probably the worst episode? I can’t think of anything comparable. It’s not an easy episode—inserting the cast back into their previously unexplored (outside flashback flashes) mundane existence. Doesn’t help East’s direction is bewildering and bad, or the script is trite whenever it tries to be sincere.

Beaten (2005, Jon East)

Does the BBC have to dedicate a certain amount of time to socially conscious programming because it’s partially government funded?

I’m not asking that question as a swipe at Beaten, which is an hour-long special about spousal abuse… but it sort of feels like it was made to fulfill a requirement. The plot’s creative, but just because the route from A to B to C is different, if C is the whole point, the route doesn’t matter.

Robson Green and Saira Toddin—both in hard roles, given the twists, do well.

The direction’s too flashy and impressed with digital editing, but it’s generally all right.

The format is what ends up failing Beaten. The story deserves more. Writer Alison Hume does a good job and instead of being an interesting, slightly suspiciously motivated short film, I’m sure she could have written a solid feature. One with texture and layers.