Lost in Space (2018) s02e07 – Evolution

Well, the robot’s back. Only took seven episodes. As Maxwell Jenkins teaches the robot how to care for horses, the episode flashback to JJ Feild’s intentions—cripple the robot and force it to fly the mothership to a new galaxy. Juxtaposed against the robot trying to tell Jenkins it’s not nice to subjugate other beings. And then Molly Parker’s around to… I don’t know; get in her screen time. She’s really had nothing to do for this particular arc, though I guess playing Jesus’s mom is a lot less demanding once Jesus gets his robot back.

That whole plot—which has some good action sequences and solid character development (for the robot)—is about whether Feild will turn against his conniving superior, Douglas Hodge, and betray Jenkins and Parker. It’s reasonably effective throughout but not particularly interesting.

Similarly, the plot on the mothership has Toby Stephens barging onto the bridge and telling off captain Sakina Jaffrey—she might be captain of the ship, but she doesn’t make decisions about his family without talking to him—then overhearing a mysterious message. He’s got to find out what he heard, so Stephens teams up with Parker Posey. They have a whole subplot about trust and fellowship and hacking. It’s Posey’s least interesting plot arc this season and probably Stephens’s most interesting one, outside of flashbacks.

The rest of the cast—Taylor Russell, Mina Sundwall, Ignacio Serricchio—are all auxiliary. At least until the end, and the family gets back together for a big twist and a setup for the next multi-episode arc. Because it turns out Hodge and Feild don’t just have nefarious plans for the robot, they’ve got plans affecting the humans we care about too. Well, the humans the main cast cares about. It takes so long to uncover Hodge’s nefariousness… the entire regular cast has gotten safely aboard the mothership to get the next arc underway.

Even with the suspense on the A-plot with Feild and the robot, it’s kind of a bridging episode. It’s a very active bridging episode, but that activity is busyness. Will Feild be revealed to be a scheming jerk, will Parker be revealed to be a scheming jerk—everything hinges on reveals because the episode’s got nothing else really going on.

To some degree, the episode gets away with it thanks to Tim Southam’s direction. The occasional action sequences are good, regardless of playing like Jurassic Park meets City Slickers, and the robot’s arc is solid. If the episode weren’t so dependent on the reveal, it’d probably be solid for Posey and maybe even Stephens. Less Stephens. His outburst with Jaffrey doesn’t play well.

Daniel McLellan gets the script credit.

The episode’s functional and adequate, which isn’t exciting as a success or failure. Luckily, there’s Southam to make it occasionally seem exciting.

Lost in Space (2018) s02e06 – Severed

JJ Feild is shaping up to be more likable than I was expecting, but also far flatter. “Lost in Space” shrugs through its male casting too much. He spends the episode being secretive about his plans if the robot-finding expedition is successful. He’s down on the planet with Molly Parker and Maxwell Jenkins, horseback riding to get to where the robot’s supposed to be. I’m not sure why horseback riding. Again, maybe someone demanded horses if they came back for season two. Otherwise, it’s just to drag out the episode and provide Western thrills. Western Jurassic Park thrills.

And perfectly good ones. It's an outstanding episode despite Feild being too bland and the horses being a little much. Okay, fine, the whole Jenkins, Parker, and Feild arc isn’t the greatest stuff, but it’s okay, and the rest of the episode more than makes up for it.

While the robot hunt is on the planet, there’s practically no other action on the planet; Taylor Russell and Toby Stephens don’t get any arcs this episode; they had their episode. Now it’s other folks’ turn, in this case, Mina Sundwall and Parker Posey.

Sundwall and Posey are on the mothership where the metal-eating termites have gotten on board. The episode does a quick flashback to show how the termites got aboard when they made a big deal out of the mothership being safe a couple episodes ago. Then it’s go time, with the termites quickly feasting on the mothership and trapping Sundwall and Posey. Ajay Friese is there too—the combination stranded and besieged plot happens right after Friese helped Sundwall Nancy Drew last episode and Rob LaBelle as Sundwall and Friese's school teacher.

They’re going to have a very dramatic arc where they face death and destruction multiple times, and characters have to do things they never thought they’d do. It’s a suspense storyline, and it’s excellent.

Figuring into it is Ignacio Serricchio, who knows how to save the imperiled, but he’s having trouble convincing anyone to listen to him. It’s a particularly great episode for Serricchio, who’s also lost a lot of screen time this season, and an easy series best for Sundwall and Posey. They’re in mortal danger for extended periods; it’d be hard not for it to be series best.

The robot hunt is fine. There’s a strange inertness to the scenes because Feild and Parker are usually just there to discuss simmering subplots for later or listen to Jenkins exposition dump on them. It’d work better with Jenkins alone, it’d work better with better music (“Lost in Space” can mimic Williams, but it can’t actually do good John Williams-esque from scratch), but it’s reasonably okay. This whole robot thing better pay off. Especially when the show noticeably struts in its non-robot plot lines.

Fine writing, credited to Katherine Collins, and excellent direction from—of course—Tim Southam.

It’s a swell episode.

Lost in Space (2018) s01e09 – Resurrection

It’s unfortunate Molly Parker and Parker Posey are only going to get antagonistic scenes together because they’re good opposite one another. “Lost in Space” hasn’t really tasked Posey, and this episode’s the closest so far. Posey has kidnapped Parker after inadvertently killing Toby Stephens and Ignacio Serricchio. How was Posey supposed to know Parker was acting as ground-based mission control and Stephens needed her to fly his spaceship into orbit. Posey’s abject inability to assess the ground situation before she unleashes her schemes stretches credulity. It’s the most unbelievable thing in the show. No way Posey would’ve made it so far.

Posey’s plan for getting off the planet is to turn back on the robot’s spaceship and have it fly her out of there. She promises she’ll send help for the stranded survivors, but Parker doesn’t believe her. It’s also immaterial because they will not figure out how to turn on the spaceship until the last possible minute. They will learn many things, not just about the robot and his spaceship but the show in general. Turns out humans didn’t all of a sudden discover interstellar travel when there was a calamitous asteroid strike on Earth, one of the alien ships crashed (or something), and so NASA or whatever stole its engine.

There are flashbacks, complete with cute moments with static electricity for Mina Sundwall and Maxwell Jenkins, and Parker does really well with the figuring out.

The A-plot is Jenkins and Sundwall discovering they inadvertently found the secret to getting off the planet a few episodes ago—fossilized animal dung. They’re not sure what kind of animal it’s from—Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa tells them it’s an apex predator—but they know where to get it: a cave where everyone has to remain silent while chipping away at poop stalagmites. The whole band of survivors gets involved, including Raza Jaffrey and Sibongile Mlambo, who get maybe their series-best material here. Jeffrey’s got an excellent scene opposite Jenkins (who’s convinced Stephens is still alive because why not believe in the impossible, it’s a sci-fi action disaster show, after all, and it’s not like Stephens isn’t top-billed). Jaffrey’s out of line and awkward, but Jenkins is being obnoxious. Then Mlambo has a good scene opposite Sundwall and Jenkins, easily her best fully conscious scene.

Taylor Russell spends the episode trying to find and rescue Parker, which the script sets up like a big problem only to reveal it just requires Russell to check the GPS on the SUV Posey stole.

It’s a slight but good arc for Russell, who starts the episode almost telling Jenkins off for being the dipshit who let out Posey.

I just realized—Molly Parker Posey.

Anyway.

It's a little too perfunctory a script credited to Kari Drake, but Tim Southam directs the heck out of it. The cave sequence is a combination of Alien and then Jurassic Park, so, basically, what if Roland Emmerich wasn’t a terrible director.

The cliffhanger’s a tad annoying—the show really seems to be leaning into outrageous hard cliffhangers to encourage bingeing, something the show didn’t do earlier in the season—but for the season’s penultimate episode, it’s very solid.

Lost in Space (2018) s01e07 – Pressurized

So, there’s a lot good about this episode. Director Tim Southam leans in heavy on the “we’ve got John Williams music anyway, let’s make it like a Spielberg” to good effect. There’s a very nice arc for Taylor Russell and Ignacio Serricchio (who still aren’t romantic, yay), and there’s a pretty good one for Molly Parker and Toby Stephens. Maxwell Jenkins and Mina Sundwall have a brother and sister bonding arc because Jenkins is so upset about what happened at the end of last episode.

We don’t see Jenkins tell his family about it, so there’s no resolution to that significant plot point and character development moment. Instead, he and Sundwall come up with activities to show the state of his grief over telling his robot to self-destruct. Not even an “I know why you cry” moment. It’s got to be the biggest dodge the series has done to date. Not sure if they didn’t think they could write it or Stephens or Jenkins could act it.

Anyway.

Serricchio and Russell are still working with colony leader and general asshole Raza Jaffrey. Does someone call him an “asshole?” Maybe. The quickly deteriorating planet is making things difficult for everyone out and about (except Parker Posey, who has an uneventful field trip to get her plot in place for next episode). The expedition has to do a timed special effects sequence to get back home, and something goes wrong, leading to a casualty and a stand-off between Russell and Jaffrey. Russell may be a doctor and all, but what does she know, Jaffrey says.

Serricchio’s got to take a side, which then has further repercussions.

It’s a manipulative arc, to be sure, but expertly directed by Southam and very well-acted by Russell, Jaffrey, and Serricchio. If “Lost in Space” doesn’t screw up Russell and Serricchio’s friendship, it’s looking likely to be the best thing about the show.

Parker and Stephens are on their own day trip. Thanks to unexpected seismic activity, they end up in mortal danger. Since Parker and Stephens know the planet’s breaking up, but no one else is aware (well, Sundwall, but it’s only important later on), it adds a certain dramatic weight to their arc. Plus, they finally get a scene together where they aren’t mad (or Parker isn’t mad) and can appreciate one another. It’s… better? I’m not sure what “Lost in Space” gets out of the Robinson family being mad at dad Stephens for the first six and a half episodes of a ten-episode season, but I’ll bet it’s less than twenty minutes of material.

Parker holds up their arc.

There’s a big development in the rescue plotline, which leads to a compelling hard cliffhanger. The cliffhanger also ties into the Posey plotline, as it works to verify her seemingly random lies.

Southam’s direction is first-rate. He really likes doing this kind of show. The scene where they lay on the John Williams isn’t even good. It’s just the most appropriate place for the music.

Lost in Space (2018) s01e03 – Infestation

After two episodes making a lot of noise but not really doing anything productive, Toby Stephens finally finds something he’s good at—fighting fuel-consuming alien eels. It’s another job the killer robot could do better, but the killer robot is too busy protecting Maxwell Jenkins. Once the robot deems there to be too much danger for Will Robinson (Jenkins), he blockades the kid in a storage closet until the rest of the family can solve the problem. Not too sure about the robot’s critical thinking skills.

Also in the storage closet is Parker Posey, because it’s her bedroom. They don’t have anywhere else for her to stay; Molly Parker showing her the room is one of the few comic beats for the adults this episode. There’s some kid banter, but it’s a high-stakes episode otherwise. The eels are consuming the fuel at an alarming rate, and it’s a race against time. If they lose too much fuel to take off, they’ll be trapped in the glacier forever.

So the A-plot is that crisis, with the episode also spending some time on Taylor Russell’s PTSD from being trapped in the ice in the first episode. She was there for hours, thinking she would freeze or suffocate or both, and even though mom Parker’s a smart lady, she doesn’t understand PTSD. Luckily, Stephens does and is going to help Russell whether she’s talking to him or not.

Stephens’s character—the rough and tumble career Marine—is an odd fit with the rest of the family, partially because he and Parker don’t have any chemistry together, and the show’s been telling us for ages she hates him. The kids aren’t thrilled with him either. And it’s an almost entirely physical performance, with Stephens feeling like the Netflix streaming version of Hugh Jackman or if he were believable as a dad, Michael Fassbender. It doesn’t help the show’s trying to make him… questionably reliable. This episode seems to be turning it around a little, especially with the bonding with Russell.

Because Russell’s so far the only character who isn’t either questionably reliable, dangerous, or annoying. Parker, Stephens, and Jenkins all have failings (though Jenkins’s character is eleven, which qualifies the situation a little), Mina Sundwall actively pesters and nothing else, and Posey’s a villain. Russell’s not the show’s protagonist, but she’s the closest thing to a hero it’s got.

As for Posey’s villainy, we get some flashbacks explaining how she got on the colony ship, including a fantastic cameo from Selma Blair as her sister on Earth (Blair and Posey as sisters should be a show), but also the trouble she got on while onboard. Posey leans into impersonating a psychologist, trying to figure out how to manipulate the family she’s found herself stranded with.

The episode opens with an opening title sequence—the previous episodes did not—and it’s not great but does distinguish a new phase of the show. As does composer Christopher Lennertz leveraging the original “Lost in Space” theme song from John Williams. The music’s all very Williams-esque, including a spaceship sequence out of a Star Wars movie. Lennertz makes it work really well. So well it’s a surprise they didn’t start doing it in the first episode, but this episode’s also got a different director (Tim Southam) and doesn’t feel like part of the pilot movie. It does, however, feel like they’re still setting up the season instead of doing the show.