Time to fasten your seatbelts, folks — The Brig is the first of four consecutive amazing episodes. In fact if it weren't for the different episode titles I'd swear it was a five-hour season finale.
In the previous few episodes the questions were starting to mount. Why did the Others abandon the Barracks? Where did they go? Where the hell did John Locke get to all this time?
Hence The Brig gives us a rewind and a new perspective, much in the same vein as "Three Minutes" except a lot more interesting. It starts back at the moment Locke sees his own father (Anthony Cooper) in Ben's basement, just before the Others abandoned the Barracks. Thanks to Locke's agreement to tag along, we follow their journey to a distant encampment amidst a set of ruins.
It is there that Ben tells Locke what he must do to truly let go: kill his own father. Locke fails to follow through with the task in front of the group, but when Richard gives him a major heads-up he gets a second chance. He leads Sawyer to the Black Rock (the brig), where Cooper is tied up. After one of the best dialogue snippets you'll hear in the series, Sawyer realizes he's facing the man he's been chasing all these years. So long Mr. Cooper, you disgusting slab of filth. Two birds, one stone. Sawyer got his man, Locke got his ticket to legitimacy in the view of the Others.
The storyline is interesting enough at face value but what's lost in the summary is the underlying dynamic. Ben is the leader of the Others and a devoted follower of Jacob, yet he developed a tumor. Locke was paralyzed until crashing onto the island, now fully healed, and he shares a special "communion" with the island. The insecure Ben is clearly threatened by this and is interested in nothing more than securing his power. The first step in that effort was to embarrass Locke. Since Plan A failed we'll get to see what Plan B is in the next episode.
At the beach camp, Kate finally tells Jack about Naomi. Jack returns the favor by refusing to tell Kate about some sort of information he shares with Juliet. Serious trust issues... for now.
Bonus points for planting an early seed and having Danielle visit the Black Rock. It's easy to forget why she made a seemingly random appearance, but this in fact it does play a part at a later time.
This is a Locke-centric but it's tough for me to decide whether O'Quinn or Holloway deserve top honors. Oh hell, why must I decide? I'm declaring it a tie.
They're both at the top of their game during their trek to the Black Rock, especially in the scene where Sawyer tackles Locke and holds a knife to his throat. See it for yourself, Holloway genuinely acts like a man who's at the end of his rope.
Once they're in the Black Rock they take it to an altogether new level. O'Quinn calmly sits outside the chamber where Anthony Cooper's being held, sharpening his knife and waiting for the drama to unfold. Holloway's in the chamber with Kevin Tighe (Cooper), his intensity building with every venomous line that spews out of Cooper's mouth.
Once again Tighe deserves major credit for making me hate his character so vociferously. There's truly no weak link in the acting here, main or guest cast.
There are no huge explosions, no Smoke Monster chases, not even a high-octane fight scene. So how is it that The Brig can be so highly rated in this category?
Answer: visuals and photography. Just about every minute of The Brig leverages the beauty of the island itself, while the constructed scenes are just as visually enticing and convincing.
The ruins were the first example, with huge chunks of ancient stone and torches illuminating the Others' tents. It truly felt like we'd gone to some far-off and mysterious place.
The inside of the brig is the next example. We'd been inside the Black Rock before but this was the first extended scene that gave us a chance to settle in. The tense standoff between Sawyer and Cooper is dark and foreboding in every respect, from subject matter to the set design.
Even the little things, such as the design of Ben's actual tent, deserve accolades. For some reason one of my favorite shots (visually speaking) is when Locke first enters Ben's tent. The backdrop of yellowish canvas gives that scene a distinct flavor from the rest of the episode.
Major credit goes to director Eric Laneuville for capturing the intensity of Locke's failed attempt at killing Cooper at the ruins, and then Sawyer's successful attempt at the Black Rock. This episode was extremely smooth from beginning to end and Laneuville deserves acknowledgment for that.
I'm going to sound like a broken record by the end of Season 3 so I'll just put it plainly here: from The Brig all the way through Through The Looking Glass the Longevity rating is going to be very high. I'd even go so far as to say it's the best 4-episode set in the series if we're going strictly by consecutive episodes.
Seriously. After all the flashbacks we've seen, after all the tragedy we've witnessed in the lives of our beloved Losties, who would've thought that a single episode — scratch that, a single MOMENT in a single episode — would bring a very satisfying conclusion to not one but TWO characters' storylines. Sure, there's plenty of tragedy coming up for both Locke and Sawyer, but at least for now we got to see them eliminate their common source of agony. This was a glorious moment in the series and a major turning point for at least two main characters.
It's also very significant that Locke passed Ben's first test, for it would trigger far more severe confrontations between the two over the next few seasons.
When I first decided to include "overall atmosphere" in the Redux rating system, The Brig is one of the episodes I had in mind.
From the moment Sawyer is locked in the brig with Cooper until the time Cooper takes his last gasp, there was nothing that could've pulled my attention away from the television. That was intensity personnified and Giacchino's accompanying score amped it up even further. When Locke stepped in and whispered "thank you" to Sawyer, that might've been the first time I'd exhaled in a while.
Since I was overjoyed at seeing Cooper's demise I should confess to being a bit of a hypocrite. I gave Kate a bunch of grief for vigilante justice so I really shouldn't celebrate it when Sawyer enacts it himself. Perhaps if we'd witnessed more of Wayne's disgusting acts, and perhaps if Wayne had been brought to the island where no real judicial system existed, I might feel differently.
I suspect LOST exposes hypocrisy within a lot of us as we decide which characters to support and reject. For now, all I can tell you is that it was a glorious moment to see Locke pull that body bag over his shoulder and march off toward the Others.
