Eggtown

"Eggtown" is the fourth episode of the fourth season of Lost and the writing debut for supervising producer Gregg Nations (fans may recognize him as the friendly guy from The Fuselage who actually answers a fair few questions) who co-wrote this episode with Elizabeth Sarnoff. I'd love to say that it's a good debut, but it is actually pretty dull and uninspired to say the least, only remaining vaguely watchable and entertaining in spurts due to the well-established characters and the decent beach camp scenes, especially the one involving a phone call to the freighter and Charlotte's bit with Daniel.

Although "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Whatever the Case May Be" are the most cringe-worthy of episodes, "Eggtown" isn't really too far off, even though it is significantly better than those two. There's some really, really awful dialogue and silly contrivances, and the courtroom scenes are the ultimate hang-your-head-in-shame moments for a "Lost" fan, even worse than Bai Ling. Ultimately however, as previously stated, there are just enough interesting things going on that this episode doesn't become a complete turkey, it's really just the god-awful flashforward and the rubbish writing for Claire and Sawyer that stand out as being especially worse than usual for Kate episodes.

The direction is, as per usual for Stephen Williams, competent but uninspiring, relying far too much on attempting to look stylish and energetic (see the scene where Kate first arrives at the courthouse). "Eggtown" is one of the weaker episodes in the series, though certainly far from being as bad as some others mostly thanks to the story somewhat advancing. The script really is bad.