Lost in Space Episode 7 Review: Pressurized

| April 15, 2018 |

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ThisLost in Space review contains spoilers

Lost in Space Episode 7

I of the almost mannerly aspects of Lost in Space so far has been its investment in problem solving as a plot device. The evidence, itself opens with the ultimate problem – Help! We've crash-landed on an alien planet! The whole conceit of this whole thing is for our characters to find a solution.

Even beyond that though, every episode has been presented as featuring a series of additional problems that the characters must face up. Help! Judy is trapped in the ice! Help! At that place is a weird dinosaur on the loose! Help! There is a big hailstorm coming!

For the most part this has made for watchable and interesting, if non riveting telly. "Pressurized" is where all the problem solving becomes a bit much. The episode presents crises and their resolutions equally a substitute to storytelling and not as augmentations of it. Not only that just the problems in "Pressurized" take begun to get repetitive.

Judy, Victor, Don, and company are still on their way dorsum from the gas mission. Judy wants to get dorsum to the Jupiter 2 quickly to let her mom know what they've discovered about Dr. Smith's identity. Don prefers the "look and face up Smith to her face method." They settle on a horribly executed half-measure in which Judy radios home and unexpectedly gets Smith on the line. She doesn't handle it very well.

Smith is likely cognizant of the fact that her ruse will soon exist up but information technology's going to take awhile for Judy to go back to warn anybody as the planet begins to showroom some of those signs of "volatile seismic activity" that Maureen was talking about.

Judy and Don'due south groups race confronting the exploding ground makes for good, kinetic boob tube. Information technology'southward also another welcome reminder of just how wide open up Netflix has opened its wallet for this testify. Unfortunately, Lost in Space 's dedication to turning this crisis into another problem-solving exercise makes the whole matter seem overly familiar.

Even though someone actually dies this time (a rarity for the show thus far) the characters' Chariot race doesn't provide materially different bug to solve from what they've been doing all this time anyway. And the bug that are new come forth with clichés. The moment one of the "redshirts" involved gets a proper noun, information technology's entirely too clear that his days are numbered. His name is Evan and he likes surfing, you lot encounter. Now feel please feel something, anything equally he dies.

The circumstances in which Evan meets his fate are far too Philosophy 101. Information technology's the Trolley Problem if the trolleys were replaced by expensive all-terrain vehicles designed for intergalactic landscapes. Evan selflessly exits the Chariot equally they are racing confronting time to re-secure the tanker to the Chariot. Unfortunately, he doesn't make information technology all the mode and a geyser blasts him off the Chariot and under the overturned fuel tank.

Judy requests that the fuel tank be moved immediately to salvage Evan'south life but Victor points out that if they practise and so, the rock holding the tank together volition exist removed and all the oil they just risked their lives for volition spill out. He orders that they wait for a new container to arrive. Don, who has goose egg if not a heart of gold, cannot abide by that and lifts the tank, himself, abandoning all the gas they recovered. Evan is saved but only momentarily. He later dies from his injuries on the ride back.

The effect with the "Evan or oil" conundrum is how carefully and literally constructed information technology all is. For the commencement time in the show's brief history, a trouble has arisen that seems like a writerly contrivance rather than the natural result of living on a dangerous landscape. Not only that but the moral consequences of the deciton-making process are spelled out then literally.

"And then we lost the fuel for nothing," Victor's driver says.

We know, dude. Nosotros just saw. Let information technology breathe.

Other problems that arise in "Pressurized" are used as a shortcut for grapheme development. Will is understandably upset that he just ordered his Robot friend to spring to his death. This creates a narrative opportunity for Penny and Will to connect as she'south really decided non sneak out for one time in her damn life and they remain the simply two currently aboard the Jupiter 2.

Information technology's nice that Penny is trying to aid her brother merely her attempts to do and so experience suspiciously like something a screenwriter could come upward with. Penny does things like having Will "fly" around the engine room on a heavy piece of machinery or amalgam a scale model of Robot together not considering they're helpful but because they interpret well visually.

Thankfully, Mina Sundwall and Maxwell Jenkins have enough chemistry to nigh make information technology work. On a plot level it'due south just an example of the evidence becoming also singularly focused on problem solving. Is Penny the kind of person who would avoid a candid conversation with her depressed brother? Sundwall does a good enough job selling that she is merely information technology's hard to milkshake the sense that the show didn't know how else to present Will's sadness other than as a trouble to be solved.

Funnily plenty though, the most flagrant function of the episode'southward overreliance on problem solving may also be its all-time plot. Later on Smith successfully uses his superpsychotherapist powers to suggest that Victor may have Angela the gun, John and Maureen head out in their Chariot to question her. On their way, withal, they encounter the aforementioned tremors that felled Judy'due south mission and crash into a tar pit. After John attempts to lasso them out of it, the Chariot actually sinks under the tar, trapping John and Maureen.

"You know what this reminds me of?" John asks Maureen. "That apartment in Glendale nosotros had with no AC."

It reminds you lot ofthat, John? Not the time yous and Maureen got stuck under a satellite on the very same planet like three weeks ago?

This is a peculiarly egregious example of Lost in Space existence far too locked into to a detail way of storytelling. The only way it knows how to engender any level of change between estranged married couple John and Maureen is to lock them into a confined space and take them retrieve their manner out.

Still, thanks to the outright professionalism and talent of Toby Stephens and Molly Parker: it works. The level to which John and Maureen are able to rebuild trust and a rapport while submerged under that tar pit makes me upset with the satellite situation from a few episodes back and not this i. That was the imposter, you see. This is where therealcatharsis happens.

And it is both legitimately cathartic and hilarious when Maureen squeaks "I love yous too" later their helium-assisted escape.

"Pressurized" also begins to set up what will presumably be some of the season'south final crises. Smith ventures out to Robot's "expiry" spot and reassemble him pretty quickly as we all suspected. There is nonetheless a missing "spark" to him though and even though the pieces are assembled; he won't fully come back to life. By examining Will's video transmissions she seems to exist onto to something.

Smith, who confesses to the unconscious Robot that her real name is "June Harris," is motivated by something much simpler than we could have imagined. She just wants to go to Alpha Centauri to start a new life. She's gone nigh that in a roundabout way but she's on the verge of gaining admission to the planet's greatest weapon so who am I to judge?

When Victor returns domicile from his mission and tells his family that they lost the fuel, his son, Vijay, comes clean. He tells his father what Penny told him near the black hole and Victor assures his family that they're going to become off this rock one way or another.

Those sound like intriguing, open-concluded problems that require creative solutions. I trust Lost in Infinite to find compelling answers. This fourth dimension around, nevertheless, could have used fewer issues and solutions.