If you’ve wondered what the Lost craze is all about, but realize you missed the boat and can’t just jump in, both G4 and the Sci-Fi Channel are airing all of the previous seasons, beginning with the pilot tonight. Just passing it on.
Archive for the “Lost” Category
So who is behind this advocacy group?
Oops. Hat tip to Ace (did I mention that mu.nu.via was down all day yesterday, so I didn’t get my Ace or Jawa fix?) The Lost marathon, that is. Just started the penultimate episode of the season. Then, the two-hour finale, and the TiVO will be clear. And the commenter is right. I got BSG and Lost mixed up. BSG is one more season. Lost is 48 more episodes, to be broadcast over the next three seasons (starting Thursday, 1/31). Oh. And I’m getting ready to fry chicken. Sunday. Fried chicken. You know.
Lost has been on hiatus since May 23, and I’m not really part of the ultra-geeky obsessed-with-Lost movement, so I hadn’t visited Lostpedia or any forums until just yesterday. I had forgotten all about the “Jack and Kate!” and “Jack and Sawyer!” groupies. If you don’t watch it, Lost is an arc-show, meaning that the episodes lead into one another, and don’t stand on their own (you can’t jump in and start watching it), and a puzzle show, as in “WTF is going on?” For three seasons, the writers have been tossing puzzle pieces on the table. They are ending the show this season (they may have to run over partly into next season, with the writers’ strike), and they have a lot of questions to answer. A whole lot. Please explain how a huggy-kissy “Jack and Kate!” scene (worse, episode) would answer those questions. If it wouldn’t, then it would be an annoying waste of film. Lost is not a romance, or a chick flick. If it were, we wouldn’t watch it. What is this fascination with turning everything into some syrupy huggy-kissy “Ooooo! They’re in love!” horse manure? My theory: Too many teen magazines. Seventeen to go. Lost episodes, that is. I found that they weren’t nearly as irritating to watch as they were the first time around because I know the season changed direction. I’m up to the smoke monster killing Mr. Eco (boy, that was sad; he was a fascinating character, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is always good, one of the more under appreciated and under cast actors alive). Very, very few (if any) questions answered in those five episodes, though.
BSG season three is now all burned to DVDs, and deleted from the hard drive. Lost is next–23 hours in 22 episodes–though I’m not going to start that until after Memorial Day. It’s possible that I’ll find at least the first half of the season less annoying now that I know that the Survivors do, in fact, start fighting back. For dinner, I’m thinking Thai, maybe a green chicken curry, with lots of fire and shredded fresh basil all over the top. And coconut ice cream for dessert, of course.
After weeks of well-justified complaining about Lost, John Podhertz stated that the show had “unjumped the shark with the season finale. I will grant that after a whole season of veering off track, Lost returned (partly) to its roots with the two-hour finale, but unjumped the shark? Well, maybe, but I’m reserving judgment. It was easily the best episode this season (which compared to the first two seasons, isn’t saying much). I suspect, however (though I do not hope) that Podhertz is nearer the mark when he says:
I’ve had a “Chris Carter” feeling about Lost all season, and I’m sorry to say that the finale did nothing to alleviate that feeling. Oh, what’s a “Chris Carter” feeling? Remember the antepenultimate season of the X-Files, how they advertised it before the season started as “The season that will answer everything!” and how the season didn’t answer one single question the writers had created–and all because neither Carter nor the writers ever had any idea of where the show was headed and were making things up as they went along? I’m getting the same feeling about Lost. I could be wrong, but I suspect the writers don’t have any more idea what’s going on with the island or anything else than we do, but we’ll see. The problem is that the writers have set up three seasons of unexplained mysteries, and if you don’t watch Lost, well, it ain’t All in the Family. Lost revolves around mysteries. Mysteries are the whole point of the show. And the writers have hundreds of major and minor mysteries to explain. Yet, in the finale, they decided to introduce yet another major mystery at the very end, when it looks improbable that they’ll manage to adequately explain the major mysteries they’ve already created, namely: Earlier this season, we saw the Others recruiting Juliette. Then we find that the Others are not, in fact, the Dharma Initiative nutjobs, but somebody else (who murdered the Dharma Initiative nutjobs on the island, and presumbaly predated them on the island). This creates a thorny problem for the writers: How did the Others first gain access to all the Dharma infrastructure so they could take it over (which they did), and second, how did they manage to pass themselves off as Dharma on the mainland–which they did? Did they also murder all of the nutjobs on the mainland? (One of the things that they did remarkably well was the filmstrips–they are so amazingly, frighteningly 70s authentic, as is the whole Dharma concept, and that’s coming from somebody who survived the 70s). In the finale, they introduced yet another group, these people on the freighter, who for whatever reason (if we are to believe Ben or Walt or Jacob or The Island or whateverthefrak the mysterious personality that takes on different forms is–there’s another major mystery they must explain) are trying to “hurt” The Island. Uh, okay. So they’ve got to explain who these people are, what “hurting the island” means and why these people want to “hurt” the island, plus who the Others are, in addition to what both the island and The Island is (Lost addicts will understand the distinction), and what’s going on in general–and more, but I’ll get to that below. I realize it was the season finale and they needed a cliffhanger, but you don’t need to create yet another major mystery to make a cliffhanger. Then, there are all those mysteries from the first two seasons that the writers seem to have dropped entirely. What about Walt, you know, the dead bird, the polar bears, the appearances, what was that all about? And probably even more important, what about the Numbers? The last time the writers incorporated the Numbers into an episode was the one where they blew open the hatch. It seems the writers have conveniently forgotten these things, which is another reason I’m getting that “Chris Carter” feeling about this show. Then Jonah Goldberg says:
Perhaps. But being the cynical old coot I am, I’m more inclined to believe that the writers have figured out with an infinite number of episodes, they have to suddenly decide where the show is going and what’s been going on. I don’t hope that’s the case, but if we keep getting more unexplained mysteries next season, I suspect Lost will lose its viewers.
I was getting this same feeling through the first half of the season, but now that the Survivors have actually started taking up for themselves, it bothers me less. And if the writers are trying to make us sympathize with the Others, they’re doing a remarkably poor job of it. It’s kind of hard to sympathize with a group who murdered forty-some people in cold blood. If they wanted us to sympathize with the Others, they wouldn’t have chosen to present them that way. I can see people sympathizing with Ben killing his father (let’s fact it, the man was a pig), but the whole Dharma Initiative? I don’t think morality has sunk that far. And that brings up another mystery that must be explained: How did Ben–as far as we know, the only Dharma nutjob left alive–take over an aggressive group and gain the iron-fisted control he has now? I don’t necessarily swallow the “Jack’s father is alive after all” subplot, either. We didn’t see him. And one of Jonah’s correspondents had exactly the same reaction to this I did when he said:
In the “flashforwards” from the finale, Jack wasn’t exactly stable–or sober. He tried to kill himself. He’s living in a drug-induced fog. I think it’s more likely that Jack has lost touch with reality, and only believes his father is alive. And there’s another mystery: Are the writers ever going to address the fact that Jack and Claire have the same father (though neither knows it), or are they just going to let that drop and hope we won’t remember? One of the central properties of the show has been this “Six Degrees of Separation” thing they’ve been feeding us in the flashbacks. All of the Survivors are in some way connected, though few know it, and none did before the crash. There’s something else for the writers to tie up, and it seems they have enough to do without introducing new mysteries, unless the new mysteries are required to explain all of the others. Not that I didn’t like the finale. I did. I liked the way it crystallized Ben as the “anti-Locke,” as being obsessed with the island (and The Island) itself (though maybe he and Locke are more aligned than either thinks). I liked the time shift, from flashbacks to flashforwards. I liked the way it returned focus to the island, instead of an increasingly tiresome conflict between the Survivors and the Others. None of the characters has any meaning outside the island–they set that up in the first two seasons. Until the finale, the island had become just another place. But will next season be an improvement over this last one? If the writers want a job, it had better be.
After reading this teaser about last week’s Lost episode, I had high hopes. All I can figure is that whoever wrote this breathless post was either a pre-teen or on some bad drugs. Yeah, Claire came down with some strange illness, but we find out what it is at the end of the episode. That’s also when we find out that Juliet is a cast-iron cold lying bitch who has infiltrated the camp for the Others. Like that’s a surprise. There was far less “revealed information” than the article suggested. We find out that the house (the one blown up a couple of episodes back) really was the communications station. Yawn. We find out how Juliet got to the island. Yawn. We find out that there’s some kind of island effect that causes the immune systems of pregnant women to attack their babies. Okay, that could be interesting. We find out that Juliet’s sister is alive and gave birth to a son. Yawn. We possibly learn the reason for Juliet’s antagonism toward Ben. Except that this episode called into question how literally we can interpret the flashbacks. Now that is perhaps the most interesting thing that happened this episode–though it’s also potentially annoying. Did Juliet actually want Jack to let Ben die on the table? Are the flashbacks about how she got there reliable? If so, why is she still cooperating with Ben and the Others? I’m starting to get the feeling that the writers are flying by the seats of their pants. That’s not good.
I was extremely unhappy with this season of Lost (which had been on hiatus until this week), because I was sick of seeing the Survivors as helpless victims. The series turned that corner this week, and I was extremely glad to see it — and now, I don’t have to mark Lost off the must-see list. A lot of people are hailing it as one of the best episodes ever. I can’t say I agree that overall, it was — though it did what the show badly needed to do: Have the Survivors fight back. It was immediately obvious who was trying to recruit Juliet (in the flashback), and just as obvious what was going to happen when she said the only way her ex-husband would let her go was if he got hit by a bus. Still, the show turned the corner, and from the previews, it looks like there’s going to be more fighting back. Excellent.
Real television resumed last night — though I admit, I was getting pretty disgusted with this season, and if the eternal victimization of the Survivors doesn’t end soon, I will be finished watching Lost. Yes, I watch American Idol, though I was so disgusted by last season’s contestants — particularly the idiot who won — that this season, I despise all contestants on basic principle until they give me reason not to. You won’t see me blogging about it, unless we get another crop of loser, no-talent, one-trick ponies like we got last season. If that happens, I’ll go nuclear.
Because no, it doesn’t belong up your anus, Emily. She goes on and on with a long list of ridiculous “criticisms” of Lost, directed toward me in the comments thread. Let’s deal with them one by one.
Apparently, you’re not capable of making a point without being a snarky bitch, eh, babes? Yes, I read it. I didn’t reply to most of it because it was bullshit. But now that you’ve decided to be a snarky bitch, I will. Don’t bite, babe. I bite back. Hard.
Well, I don’t know. That’s the point — which you seem to be too fucking stupid to get — we don’t know. Why that’s so difficult for you to understand, I’m not sure. And speaking of difficult to understand, you apparently are too fucking stupid to distinguish between a label and a product line. Hint: Most of those house labels are not separate product lines, babe. Go back to elementary school.
Stupid how? It’s one of the few things he’s done that made sense. (I can’t believe I’m defending one of the two characters on the show I dislike the most.) He wanted Walt back. That’s what he had to do. Sorry, you can’t just say “That was STUPID!” without explaining why you thought it was stupid. Logical? Probably not. Understandable? Wholly. Not, mind, that I wasn’t a bit pissed off by it. Ana Lucia was just starting to become an intriguing character — something Michael has never been — and they killed her off. I would have preferred to see him dead. But then we would have lost the whole “get Walt back” storyline.
You weren’t paying attention. They didn’t know. Jack (the other of my two least favorite characters) was skeptical. But even if they did know — which they did not — there’s something to be said for going anyway, and attempting to turn the situation to your advantage. Hell, at least they weren’t playing victim, like the Survivors are doing full-time now.
I fail to see what the boat had to do with anything. They were operating on the idea that Michael was betraying them (though no, they did not know it when they started out). They went to try to turn it to their advantage. The only way to have done that, since they had no idea where the Others were, was to follow Michael’s directions. The boat is irrelevant.
Well, there’s a question — and we’re back to that point you’re too fucking stupid to get: We. Don’t. Know. Apparently, you also haven’t grasped another point that’s been obvious since the first season: There’s something crucial about every one of the Survivors. Hurley? The numbers. They wanted Hurley specifically for a reason. We don’t know the reason. That doesn’t mean it’s stupid. It means we don’t know the reason.
Except that we know the Others don’t live on the island, and it’s unclear how much time they actually spend on the island. Or have you stopped watching?
What choice did he have? Jack has all the power in the scenario, no matter what they do. Gale is going to die if Jack doesn’t operate and remove the tumor. They can put a whole SWAT team on Jack while he operates, but it doesn’t change anything. Jack’s action was futile anyway, though he doesn’t know that, because he doesn’t know they’re on another island.
You’re assuming that she was being honest with Jack about letting him die on the table. I don’t see how we can assume honesty on the part of any of the Others — particularly her (and at least we agree in our evaluation of that character). We she actually asking Jack to let Gale die on the table? Or was she posing some kind of test, with Gale’s knowledge? We. Don’t. Know.
As I said, I suspect they’re red-shirted ensigns to be.
First, he didn’t take everybody else. Second, we know the Others are in contact with the outside world. If I were Gale, my first option would be to find somebody in the outside world, somebody I could trust, to do it — and certainly not take Jack, whom I could not trust, to do it. Seems pretty logical to me.
Not only did they ask questions, but put out a warrant on her. And burning up the house had nothing to do with insurance, or did you miss the whole abuse thing? And I think we can agree that Kate’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
You’re assuming they weren’t on that plane for a reason — that they just happened to be on it. That’s not an assumption you can make on this show — in fact, it’s a pretty stupid thing to assume, given that nearly all of the Survivors have had either direct or indirect contact with one another before getting on the plane.
Here’s a clue, babe: The actor and the show are two different things. What oddball ideas some Brit actor may or may not have hasn’t a damn thing to do with the show.
Shrug. Don’t care. I can’t think of one relationship on television — you do realize that this is a television show and not reality, right? — that hasn’t seemed contrived to some extent. So? Who cares? You’re making unjustified assumptions and expecting far too much for television. Take that telephone pole out of your ass and enjoy it, or stop watching it. See, nobody gives a damn whether you like it or not. The show is a phenomenon either way. [You’re the last person who should be complaining about condescending remarks, considering that your whole post dripped condescension from beginning to end. That’s why you got it back. In spades. And will any time you do it. Capiche? ed.] On my latest Lost article, Doghouse commented:
I have two related frustrations with Lost. First, I just can’t escape feeling that the writers want me to somehow sympathize with the Others, and I have a very strong, violently negative gut reaction to them — all of them. Second, I’m sick of seeing the Survivors as victims. Enough, already. It’s not that they’re passive; it’s that the writers make them victims. Why, for example, couldn’t Sawyer have grabbed the gun and shot the guy before the other one pointed his at Kate’s head? I’m just sick, sick, sick, sick of seeing the Survivors as victims. Let’s kill a couple of the Others. I want blood. First, Lost. Bad episode. First, it’s completely — unbelievably — out of character for Jack to have refused to operate on Ben. I don’t care how pissed he is. It’s unbelievable. Second, maybe I’m dense, but why does whatshisname want to kill Sawyer? Sawyer had nothing to do with his wife’s death. What’s the motivation there? Worse, it makes little sense in light of the writers’ seemingly trying to force some “moral relativism” on us and get us to like the Others. And why is it going off the air until February, ferchrissakes? February? Now, BSG. This was perhaps the stupidest episode ever. I’ll side with everybody else on that. I’ll even agree that it was a clumsy, ham-handed attempt to get us to wring our hands about genocide — clumsy and ham-handed like Quincy MD, if you remember that show (that’s what TV was like when I was an undergrad, and I thought we’d gotten past being beaten over the head with the “issue of the week.”) Except for the quality, the episode was right out of the 70s. Hey, maybe that’s it. The Democrats are stuck in the 70s and bring back McGovern to advise them on the war (don’t everbody laugh at the same time — it’s not nice). BSG gives us 70s TV, complete with the “issue of the week.” Let’s hope we’re not seeing a trend here — why do you think everybody was getting high at the time? I won’t side with everybody else about Helo. Unlike Jack, Helo was perfectly understandable and in character, whether you approve of his betrayal or not. Ferchrissakes, he’s married to a Cylon. Why would you expect him to do anything but what he did? Sure, Tigh executed Ellen (his wife), but that showed an unusual strength of character, especially for the most flawed character on the show. It’s unrealistic to expect that same strength of character of every character on the show. I didn’t like what he did, but I wasn’t offended or surprised that he did it. And is it just that I lived through the Cold War that I’m apparently the only person who wondered why they didn’t use the disease as a “nuclear deterrent”? It didn’t occur to the writers. But think about it: They could have held the disease over the Cylons’ heads and staved them off, while simultaneously solving the genocide question. That’s what Ronald Reagan would have done (and that possibly explains why the writers didn’t think of it). No Starbuck? Hello? About the only thing I did like about this episode was that we got another example of Adama and Roslin, one (Adama in this episode) playing the conscience of the king to the other. I’m not sure why, but I find their relationship fascinating. And what did I say last week about the Hybrid? Frank Herbert. I was right: This episode we got a Gom Jabbar. It won’t be long before we get a Mother Superior and the BSG equivalent of the “weirding way.” Of the two, it’s hard to say which was worse. I think I’ll stay agnostic on that one. There wasn’t much new information in last week’s episode, other than the fact that the Others have Jack, Sawyer, and Kate on another island close enough to The Island they can see it, and the spinal X-ray. This week’s episode, however, was full of developments. Let me first register my disappointment with the writers for killing off Mr. Eko (that’s twice you’ve done that — I was just starting to really find Anna Lucia fascinating when you killed her off). From his death, we know that Rousseau was wrong about the nature of the “Monster.” It doesn’t seem to be a security system as she thought, and we know it can take the form of a human being. The producers said on a podcast before this season started that we would see the “Monster,” and that we had seen the “Monster” before, but not realized it. I’m thinking that Dave was the “Monster.” Consider that all of the “apparitions” characters have seen (Kate seeing the black horse, Shannon seeing Walt), other characters have also been able to see — except for Dave’s appearance to Hurley. The appearance of Dave was different from all the other apparitions, in that nobody but Hurley could see him. My guess is that Dave was the “Monster” (though you could also make the case that nobody else could see Dave because Dave was a figment of Hurley’s imagination, before the plane crashed on The Island). We now know that in addition to the Survivors and the Others, there is at least one other person in one of the stations. Well, the man with the eye patch could have been one of the Others, but if so, we haven’t seen him with them. So that blows out of the water the idea that all of the stations (except Hydra, obviously) are abandoned. I had figured out at the end of last week’s episode that the Others had kidnapped Jack to operate on (probably) Ben, and I was correct. I’m not sure what to make of the Ben-Juliet conflict, or her trying to get Jack to “let Ben die” on the table. I suspect that she’s nastier than Ben. I doubt that Jack will. I suspect that if Ben dies on the table, it won’t be because Jack let him die. But if he does die, I strongly suspect the Others will get nastier after Juliet takes over. Of all the Others, I trust her the least. And those “new” characters, that couple. Are they going to develop into characters, or are they going to be red-shirted ensigns? And why haven’t we seen Bernard and Rose so far this season?
We haven’t watched this week’s episode yet — largely because we saw the preview from last week’s episode. I have a very strong, very negative, visceral reaction to the Others. I get the feeling the writers want me to sympathize with them, even as they murder, kidnap, and treat their captives — major characters in the show — like animals. Something has to happen here. Either Sawyer, Kate, and Jack need to be freed or escape soon, or they need to strike back and kill a few of the Others. Right now, watching Lost just makes me angry. I don’t like watching shows that make me angry.
I’m not sure what happened to the writers when they wrote this week’s Lost episode, but that was a low point. Mysterious? Fine. Also, I’m getting a bit sick of the Others subplot. For some reason, I get the feeling the writers want us to sympathize with the Others, though that’s pretty hard to do, given that they’re kidnappers and murderers. And the first two episodes this season certainly did not endear us to the Others. So go, Locke, save Sawyer, Kate, and Jack (yeah, though I do find him intensely annoying) and let’s see a few of the Others get killed. That’s what I want to see, anyway, particularly Ben and Juliet. They both need to be killed. Violently.
This was the first episode I’ve seen on live TV (well, I TiVOed it). I got hooked on this show this summer, after buying the first season DVDs. Anyway, the season premiere was Wednesday night. We watched it last night. Spoilers below, so don’t click if you haven’t seen it yet.
|
