At the start of Medusa, I was a little annoyed.  This season hasn’t grabbed me at all and it really ignores a lot of the good work done by seasons 1 and 2.  The mere notion that Medusa is living in the Land of the Lost, with a stone garden that’s never been seen before, and a river that has never been explored… it’s all too much!  Rick, Will and Holly stood on a mountain top in season one and saw the closed universe so much that they saw themselves at the other end.  When they explored the river, they met Jefferson Davis Collie, the revolutionary war veteran.  You can’t tell me that they overlooked, not just Malak from Survival Kit, but Medusa and her garden too?  I just don’t buy it.  It’s pretty clear that the writers are ignoring the past.

That, or I am.  After being annoyed by the gross oversight, I had a thought.  We know that season 2 ended with some devastating earthquakes (and season 3 opened with their aftershocks).  It is possible that the quakes unearthed previously unseen areas.  The little matter of who ends up there is also subject to some thought: nothing has to appear here in order.  For all we know, Medusa arrived after the Marshall’s, because time in the Land is different to what we understand.  So with these ideas in mind, I was far happier with this episode than where I started. 

Having said that, I was still disappointed by poor writing.  Will speculates that nothing that has gone down the river has ever come back.  Um… yeah, Will.  That’s how rivers work.  You don’t put a stick in the water, watch it go downstream and then turn around to come back like a salmon on his way to meet his lover.  There’s also the matter of Medusa wanting to turn the family to stone but she’s totally unwilling to do it unless the whole family is together.  Isn’t it important to have diversity in the garden?  Why have an entire family clustered together?  Just get on with it: get Holly, and when the others show up, turn the others to statue.  

However my most glaring issue was Jack’s victory over Medusa.  First off, I would have liked it if he talked to her about things first so maybe she could have been an ally, but knowing my proclivities, I realize that was a long shot.  What isn’t a long shot is how Jack wins: he gets Medusa to look at her mirror.  (The image of her turning to stone was actually chilling, and I applaud that!)  He then tells Will how he remembered what to do because of the story of Medusa: “it seems the hero in it was able to watch her in the mirror when he killed her…”  So… is this the afterlife?  And can she die again?  Jack should be more concerned that he killed someone who was killed before.  Like the more modern Lost, there’s a mystery that doesn’t make sense, or we have to wonder if this is some sort of purgatory.  That changes the very nature of everything we’ve seen before, but our awareness of what this place is seems to change with every passing story.

On the other hand, there’s some really good continuity that seems almost as incongruous as Medusa.  Cha-Ka remembers learning about fishing and Will chastises him for throwing the pole into the water like last time.  This is in reference to the earlier fishing attempts this season.  That might not be as impressive as the statue of the colonial soldier, presumably the aforementioned Jefferson Davis Collie, that’s in the garden – a throwback to the season one episode Downstream.  And Cha-Ka makes the comment that he’s learned to talk like the humans which is most likely a reference to the gift of the Builder last season.  So for all the oversights that we have in this series, we also have a lot of really solid world building.

In the end, there’s a lesson about vanity, anger and other vices being a negative things that bring us down again proving that this series had educational merit.  Even teaching about Medusa is a good thing to introduce younger viewers to the Greek legends.  (Perhaps they could explain why Medusa’s face is green, but her feet and neck stay flesh-toned?  Sorry, I’m talking crazy!)  

This was an improvement to all that we’ve seen so far this season.  Not perfect, by any means, and certainly not season 1 or 2 quality, but it’s an improvement from where we’ve been.  I can only hope things get better in the next episode.  If I’m honest, this was the show I was most looking forward to of all the shows I’m writing about right now, but after the last few, the wind has been taken from my sails.  I still have forward momentum, but can I come back to what I had before or am I like a stick on the river forever heading downstream?   ML