The Plot Thickens
Episode 3 of The Stranded begins in the past with the school still intact and the various students taking class together. Arisa is handed a letter cursing her while Anan is tasked with moving to the front of the class and throwing a rock at the window. He doesn’t do it of course but this happens to form the catalyst for the lesson – the person to break a social norm makes it normal for others to follow. This brings us back to the present, as Nahm brings a wet cloth to May and they tend to the teacher, Professor Lin, lying unconscious in the infirmary. Meanwhile on the beach, the various students cheer prematurely as they manage to get the motor going for the boat…until it sputters and fizzles out. Anan is made captain of the boat for when it’s ready to set sail, given it was his idea, and his name is added to the list of people setting sail. As the group continue to look around, Ice hallucinates, seeing an unconscious body under the wreckage, prompting him to drown his sorrows in alcohol. After a confrontation with Ying, she leaves him alone while we see someone (or something) lurking in the distance, knocking over a paint pot in the other room. After recruiting the girls to help sew up clothes for sails, the students reluctantly hand over their clothes, with Jan leading the charge and cutting up her own shirt. Just like the early parts of this episode showed, the other students follow suit and start chopping up their clothes too. This episode we’re graced with various flashbacks for Kraam, whom we see the childhood of, along with him hallucinating and seeing visions of his Father down by the shore. However, as he says his goodbyes, he finds a strange cloth on the floor that may hold answers. Back at school, Arisa figures out the numbers may be related to co-ordinates and perhaps a key toward finding something hidden around the island. Believing that the audio tapes may have something to do with it, she searches in the library for clues, leading her to a hardback version of Gone With The Wind. Using the date the book was originally published as a clue, Arisa tries to make sense of the numbers while Kraam speaks to May by the shore-side about the boat and his doubts about it working. Instead, they both decide to go spear-hunting by the shore where they grow closer together. Consulting a map of the island, Arisa and Ying realize the coordinates do infact lead into the jungle. After an awkward kiss ensues between the two, Arisa heads off alone to an old World War II tower. As she leaves, a fight breaks out on the shoreline during twilight. The episode then closes out as ominous humming accompanies thick fog spreading in the woods while Ice begins have a seizure. Nahm meanwhile, approaches Professor Lin in her bed and watches as their teacher’s eyes suddenly flicker open. With a slow pace and a few random subplots thrown in for good measure, The Stranded begins to buckle under the weight of its various mysterious elements. Unfortunately it’s something that holds the show back a lot and here we see that come to fruition as we reach fever point with the number of questions hanging over the show. So far we’ve received no answers to these questions and every episode appears to be piling on the weirdness and intentional mysteries in a bid to keep you sticking around. Unfortunately if The Stranded doesn’t start delivering some answers soon, people are likely to switch this one off before the finale.
