Reception
23.17 million American viewers tuned into "Adrift", making it the second most-watched episode in the show's history, behind the season opener.
Reviews were mostly negative. Mac Slocum of Filmfodder.com said the flashback storyline "wasn't all that interesting". Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Jensen called the flashbacks "among the poorest and most clumsily integrated flashbacks we've seen so far", as he felt nothing new was learned, and also disliked Michael's on-Island storyline, noting he "got the sense that the actors and directors weren't quite sure what to make of these scenes". Jensen however complimented the Hatch scenes, considering that Terry O'Quinn's performance and his interaction with Henry Ian Cusick were "salvaging the first mediocre episode of the season". Ryan Mcgee of Zap2it thought that revealing the Hatch events through different perspectives a "fresh narrative approach", but complained about the lack of plot advancement, and considered the raft storyline "three times as long as needed, with a really fake shark attack to boot". IGN's Chris Carabott gave the episode an 8.2 out of 10, praising Perrineau's performance and the flashback, but the website later ranked "Adrift" 80th out of the 115 Lost episodes, jokingly saying that the shark should have eaten Michael "and save us a lot of 'Waaaaaalt!' and 'They took him. From my hands!' shout fests". A similar list by Los Angeles Times ranked the episode as the fourth worst of the series, describing it as "boring". New York magazine listed "Adrift" in its "Twenty Most Pointless Episodes of Lost", complaining about "grinding the story to a halt" and the "plodding" flashback, and saying that the episode would have been improved if Sawyer and Michael reached land faster.
Read more about this topic: Adrift (Lost)
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