Lost In Space “Contingencies On Contingencies”

Well, this is it for me: the penultimate episode.  Only one left to finish off this story of the Robinson family.

So, really, this is just a set-up for the finale.

Look, as I said with the previous episode, I enjoy Lost in Space but have a hard time writing it up.  This is a family-friendly adventure show.  It has nice character moments, good stakes, and likable characters.  What tensions are there?  John doesn’t trust the Robot as the episode opens, owing in part to John’s blaming the Robot for Will’s sudden need for an artificial heart.  By episode’s end, the Robot has regained that trust by fending off dozens of its own kind at the hydroelectric plant before they could finish sabotaging the colony’s defensive system.  Said system goes down anyway, but the colonists might have a fighting chance because…well, Maureen and Grant found a cheat to turn the system on.

Also, Judy has a line about how many kids back home have artificial lungs because of Earth’s bad air, an idea that more or less blows my mind because I can see an artificial heart working, but mechanized lungs sound a lot more complex to me with my limited understanding of biology.

And since this is still Lost in Space, there are still those nice character moments.  Penny finally settles on one guy to be her boyfriend after going back and forth between two.  Will tells two kids how heroic their late father was when it came to helping Scarecrow.  Grant and Maureen have an honest conversation about why she never mentioned Judy before, told in a way that suggests to me that Grant doesn’t hold any grudges and is just glad to know his biological daughter exists now.  That’s rather impressive given how Maureen and Grant use old family home movies of John with a young Judy doing things, and it wouldn’t be out of the question for Grant to be a little upset at least due to how much he missed with the daughter he didn’t know he had.

But again, this is Lost in Space, a show where the closest thing it has to a human villain is probably Dr. Smith, and she’s been known to do more right than wrong thanks to just spending time with the Robinsons.  They have that effect on people.

Well, I guess there was still that Hastings guy, but he came back to this episode just to die at the hands of a robot.  But really, this was set-up, and I have very little to say as a result.

And yes, I swear I like this show.  I just have very little to say about it.