Relevant 2 My Interests

Top 10 Films of 2011

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Continued from my complete list of 2011 films started yesterday.

10. Thor (4 Stars)

I loved the production design of Asgard, but the story felt flat. There never seemed to be much as stake on Earth. And very little on Asgard. In fact the only real threat was against the evil Ice Giants, upon whom Thor attempted to commit genocide. At the end of the movie nothing had really changed for Thor. He was no longer exiled to Earth, nor had he ascended to the throne of Asgard. (Daddy was still alive!) His brief tenure on earth did not convince me he was in love with Natalie Portman, nor that he cared enough about humans to ever return (ya know, in later movies).

9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow: Part 2 (4 Stars)

In general, I have liked each successive Harry Potter film more than it’s predecessor. A pretty good trend for an 8-film series. While this a last movie is a fun and satisfying conclusion, its “Part 2” nature makes it feel like an extended third act of the previous film.

8. The Muppets (4 Stars)

A strong return to the big screen for the long absent Muppets. Jason Segel and company manage to not botch the spirit of original films or the beloved characters. New Muppets – Walter and 80’s Robot – were great additions. Unfortunately, the film spends too much time telling us to feel nostalgic for the Muppets without giving us much new to be nostalgic for down the road. With a couple exceptions the music was unremarkable, as were most of the human casts’ performances. The biggest problem is that the story belongs to Walter and Jason Segel as opposed to Kermit, Piggy, Fozzy, Gonzo and the gang. Still it’s got all the silliness, bad jokes, and good-natured zaniness you hope for from the Muppets.

7. X-Men: First Class (4 Stars)

I could watch a whole movie of just this young Magneto traveling the globe exacting revenge on his foes. Loved seeing him and young Xavier working together then becoming enemies. However, didn’t much care for the so-called first class of other new mutants. Special effects are sub-par here and there.

6. Captain America: The First Avenger (4 Stars)

This movie had the thankless task of tying together all the other Marvel films – Iron Man, Hulk, and Thor – before the upcoming Avengers. I thought it did that delicate dance perfectly. The film was fun and struck a tone of All-American heroism without being cheesy.

5. Super 8 (4 Stars)

Those darn kids were great in this homage to E.T. and all things 1980’s-Speilberg! The monster was okay too, I guess.

4. In Time (4 Stars)

Director Andrew Niccol’s latest sci-fi thriller has similarities to, but is not quite as good as, his previous film Gattica. But I’m a sucker for dystopian future sci-fi with themes of class warfare, immortality, and the like. Justin Timberlake (almost) always takes on interesting projects, but he usually has a stellar cast to prop him up. Here he’s the lead and most everyone else’s performances are average. The film takes a strange, unearned turn toward future-Bonnie and Clyde toward the end. I’m giving this film a high ranking simply because it’s an original, thoughtful, beautifully shot piece of sci-fi.

3. Drive (4 Stars)

This film is flawed, and at times, even felt sophomoric. However it’s original, and I’ve spent more time discussing this film’s merits than any other of 2011, so I’m giving it my number three ranking. First, for something called “Drive” there very little actual driving. Second, it’s problematic that the getaway chase during the opening 10 minutes was more interesting than the rest of the film. Third, sometimes the story’s internal logic felt compromised for the sake its extreme violence. (Common gangsters would, I believe, kill each other with guns, not stab each other with forks or down a guy in the ocean – very difficult.) But director Nicolas Refn makes bold choices as he unravels his dark tale. And I’ve had plenty of conversations about whether the film is moody and cool or cheap and gimmicky, and whether Ryan Gosling’s character is brave and heroic, demented and violent, or just a fella in love.

2. Real Steel (5 Stars)

I don’t have any kids (yet), so it’s rare that I get this excited about a PG-rated kids movie, unless a.) it’s by Pixar, or b.) it’s based on something form my childhood, like The Muppets. Despite what the trailers would have you believe, this is actually a touching father/son story that would be cool for an actual father to take his 6-11 year old son to see. Plus it’s got awesome boxing robots. What else do you need?!

1. Bridesmaids (5 Stars)

From PG-rated family fare to this – an R-rated comedy where one woman takes a dump in a sink while another woman takes a dump in the street. It’s embarrassing putting this “chick-flick” (but really it’s not) at the top of my list, yet it was one of the best movie-going experiences I had this year. I’ll console myself with the fact that there is serious talk about nominating Bridesmaids for “Best Picture” at the Oscars this year. This film was purposefully (and smartly) mis-marketed as “The Hangover for chicks.” But (despite what was advertised) the movie is not about a gaggle of girls who suffer the consequences fom a weekend of debauchery. It’s about one woman’s struggle with friendship, rivalry, and attempting to be someone she’s not. (But how are you going to market that stuff to guys?) Plus it’s frickin’ funny.

Films of 2011 (23-11)

2012-01-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

My yearly rankings, rantings, and ravings about the films I saw from 2011.

23. Gnomio & Juliet (Ughh)

The ads for this Shakespeare/Garden Gnome CGI mash-up did not communicate that it was executive produced by Elton John and that every 10 minutes or so Elton John songs would be sung with revamped gnome-related lyrics. CGI design was unpleasant. Why does this exist?

22. Red State (0 Stars)

Kevin Smith gets political. Or more political than usual. In what the writer/director has said will be his final film, Smith has a group of horny teens hunted down by a group of hyper-conservative religious zealots in their Waco-like compound. Not funny and completely joyless to watch.

21. Sucker Punch (1 Star)

To understand just how unthinkably bad this film is, one needs only to read the plot synopsis (Spoiler Alert!): After murdering her pedophile father, a teenage girl is committed to mental asylum. To escape the daily horrors of the asylum, the girl imagines that she and her fellow inmates (all sexy teenagers) are actually erotic dancers (prostitutes?) in an old-tymie saloon. However, (as if this weren’t strange enough) whenever the girl dances, she imagines that she and her cohorts are some kind of badass warrior women fighting giant samurai robots, zombie Nazis, and the like. In this dream-world within a dream-world, she concocts a plan to help her friends escape. But before she can join in their freedom, she receives the titular “sucker punch,” getting lobotomized by Don Draper.

20. Take Me Home Tonight (1 Star)

Some comedies are so generic, so by-the-books and uninspired, they make me think that, given a million dollars or so, I could direct that movie in my sleep. I wish someone would let me try. Here Topher Grace, famous for playing a ho-hum, nice guy high schooler in the 1970’s, plays another ho-hum, slightly post-high school, nice guy going to some kind of post-high school, high school party, set in another slightly retro era – the 1990’s.

19. Scream 4 (2 Stars)

Didn’t care for the new crop of young people made to be slaughtered in this unnecessary sequel. Didn’t feel the horror tropes parodied in this film took into account the drastically altered horror landscape during the 11 years Scream 3 – post-Saw, post-Hostel, yadda, yadda.

18. Water for Elephants (2 Stars)

If you thought maybe Robert Pattinson probably isn’t a bad actor, maybe he just chooses to act strange because he’s playing a sparkly vampire and all. You’re wrong. He’s even worse here. Unfortunately, Reese Witherspoon isn’t much better in this one.

17. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (3 Stars)

Thoroughly watchable, but all too familiar tale of man creates monster while trying to cure Alzheimers, monster brtrays man for keeping monkeys in cages. Tale as old as time.

16. Your Highness (3 Stars)

It’s quite a feat that what amounts to a fart/poop/penis-joke filled dramatization of a Dungeons and Dragons game was given this seemingly large-budget, effects-driven, epic treatment. The fact that Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel were tricked into participating earns this a solid 3 stars.

15. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (3 Stars)

I’ve never cared for Guy Ritchie’s take on Holmes. But this movie is as action-packed and fun as its predecessor – more so even. The first half is a little confusing and clunky – understanding why Rachel McAdams is entangled with Moriarty and so forth. But once she dies (Spoiler Alert!) things really start moving. Jared Harris is always delightful as Lane Pryce on Mad Men, and he’s also great here as Moriarty. Robert Downey Jr. is, presently, probably my favorite working actor, but Holmes is not among my favorite characters he’s played.

14. Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (3 Stars)

The most outlandish, and therefore the most fun of the Transformers films, the third installment crystallizes all things that make director Michael Bay a singular cinematic force and reviled by film-lovers: nonstop action, explosions, female objectification, crass patriotism, and no-holds-barred, robot-on-robot, limb-ripping, head-smashing murder – all dressed up as PG-13, family-friendly entertainment!

13. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (3 1/2 Stars)

A nice straightforward standalone adventure, following the convoluted train wreck that was Pirates 3. While the previews for this one looked less than promising, it’s got every bit as much high adventure and absurdly-choreographed swashbuckling as its predecessors. For being among the world’s most notorious pirates, Jack Sparrow spends most scenes here pleading that innocent lives be spared. Guess he’s gone a little soft.

12. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (4 Stars)

I keep saying I would have paid the $18 IMAX ticket price just to see the scene where Tom Cruise scales the outside of that Dubai tower. Filmgoers are so inundated with action scenes these days, it’s difficult to do create never-been-seen-before action sequences. Director Brad Bird (of Pixar fame) manages to pull that off multiple times in this fourth MI installment.

11. Immortals (4 Stars)

This movie has pretty much everything I want from one of these re-imagined, hyper-stylized takes on the Greek myths. Like the best cinema it transports you to a unique time and place where characters face quests and foes that are truly epic. But this is not your grandpa’s Jason and the Argonauts – the violence in this one is brutal, and some of the imagery is as creepy as anything from The Cell. The movie’s fault may be not establishing the pantheon of gods better. Only three gods have names (Zeus, Athena, and Poseidon). During most of film it seems there’s only about six of them living up in Olympus… until the epilogue where it looks like there are about a gajillion of them.

I’ll forego the usual list of films I still want to see/should have seen from last year, and just mention that, as always, the list below consist of only what I saw. I know many other worthy and better films came out last year.

In fact, what strikes me as valuable about the list is not my mini-reviews – these are, after all, merely opinions, the snarkings of a film snob. What stands out to me is the type of films I chose to see.

My number one genre is clearly the so-called “genre film” (shi-fi/fantasy/action-adventure/horror-thiller). I also like comedy, but rarely go to see them in the theater. Comedies play just as well on DVD at home a year later.

You’ll notice I didn’t see a single “serious” drama or art house film this year, despite, in the past, being a defender of such fare. I still appreciate those films, but despite critical hype, I now feel fine seeing them when I see them.

When people ask what type of films I want to write/make, the answer should be obvious. Look at the list of what I like, instead hemming and ahwing and sawing, well, I like a bit of everything.

Come back tomorrow for my Top 10 of 2011!

My 9/11 Story

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here on the tenth anniversary of Sept 11th, 2011 my 9/11 story seems hardly remarkable compared to what so many went through. And yet, if my singular perspective is worth setting down, then today might as well be the day to do so. Ten years ago the world changed for my generation. We had no Pearl Harbor, no JFK assassination to remember. The Cold War had been over since before I was a teenager. 9/11 was a shocking wake up call from what now seems like one of the most peaceful and prosperous times in American history. Ten years later it's hard to remember what that time was like, looking through the lens of the divisive and cynical America we live in now.

As well as I can remember it, this was my experience on that day and the time that followed.

I was 19 years old. A sophomore attending Ball State University. That Tuesday, of course, started like any other. I woke and headed from my dorm room in Dehority hall to Noyer for breakfast. Entering the lobby I remember finding it odd that the usual pop radio station was not playing. Instead, there was some kind of serious news program on the loudspeaker. I didn't catch what was going on and headed into the cafeteria. I ate breakfast alone. I remember the room was quiet, but I didn't think anything was particularly unusual. After breakfast I headed out through the opposite lobby. This time catching those important words from the radio newscast: "Attack on America" and something about the World Trade Center collapsing.

Crossing from Noyer to the theater building my head was swimming. My world was already different. We didn't even know who the enemy was, but I remember thinking America is going to war and I was ready to fight for my country if I had to. This was important.

I went to my theater lighting class to find that the professor had the news projected on a big screen. The order of the news events that day has, for me, always been sketchy. It was already past noon in NYC, and most of the big shocks had already occurred before I started watching the news. But I made it to class just in time to watch the second tower collapse live on TV. By that time we knew two planes hit NYC, one hit the Pentagon, and another crashed in Pennsylvania. This was huge.

I had a presentation to give that day. Some kind of lighting analysis. The prof turned off the news so I could give my quick presentation. A couple other students followed. Then we were dismissed early. I headed back to my dorm room to start watching the new like everyone else seemed to be doing.

So many people comment on how eerily clear the skies were that day. But it's true. In central Indiana, seven hundred miles away from the tragedy, the weather was beautiful. Solid blue skies with hardly a cloud. And everyone was looking up to see if something else was going to happen. But there was nothing. Not a vapor trail to be seen since all the planes were grounded.

Many classes were canceled that day, but I went to my next class just to make sure. This was an American Government class. If anyone knew what was going on a government professor would, right? Government class consisted of some speculation about who was responsible for the attacks. I remember strong suggestions about China being responsible. The idea being if we were to go head to head with China in an old-school war, America would be terribly out-manned. We just didn't have the numbers.

This seems so naive to me today. While China may be an economic adversary of sorts to the US, modern nations aren't in the business of physically attacking each other anymore. We just can't be. But that's how we thought about wars back then. Nation states attacking each other. Borderless terrorist organizations just weren't in the cultural consciousness at the time. This professor also dismissed class early, and it was back to the dorm room for more news.

Eventually I got on the phone with my mom. I don't remember who called who. But I remember her crying. She was certain there would be a war and she was afraid I'd be drafted. It's funny remembering that I was ready to go to war, but that my mom obviously didn't want that for her son.

I got antsy watching the news in my own room, and headed to a hall where my friends lived. The behavior in the dorms was usually silly, crazy, crass. But this afternoon it was somber. Wandering from room to room it was more news. More speculation about who was responsible. Waiting for more towers to fall. Who knew there were more than two towers in the World Trade Center complex? Guesses about how many casualties there would be. I remember early guesses that it could be tens of thousands of people killed. Eventually the number was lowered to less than 4000.

Even back then, before each of us had a camera on our phone, it seemed remarkable how many camera angles came flooding into the news stations. Countless videos of the same events. People running through the streets away from clouds of smoke. It's remarkable how earlier disaster movies got that sort of scene right. Then there were the people who jumped out of the towers. That was somehow the most awful sight because there was no fire or steel to hide the death. Even that first day we were asking how many times are they going to show this footage?

By the evening we just wanted to know what was going to happen? What we were supposed to do? But there wasn't an answer. I guess we had to go on as usual. It was my friend Lynn Downey's birthday. We decided to get out of the dorms, unglue ourselves from the TV, and go out for her birthday as planned. We went to the Mezza Luna in downtown Muncie, which is one of the nicer joints in town and sort of like stepping out for young college kids. There were about eight of us there that night. We ordered Italian food, drank coffee, and tried to act like grown ups. We tried to act like this was a normal night even though the only certain thing was the common feeling of uncertainty.

I don't remember when the details of how the perpetrators carried out the attacks was first reported. Despite the reports that this was a sophisticated, complex, and highly-orchestrated attack, I couldn't help thinking how perfectly simple it was. I mean, a few razor blades and a few guys who knew how to fly a plane. That's all it took. And they got us. They in spectacular fashion. And whatever the government is or isn't doing to protect us since 9/11, clearly the enemy hasn't pulled of anything like this again. Bombs on trains and subways across Europe haven't had the scope or impact of what happened that day.

Over the following decade, a feeling has crept in that America is involved in some ideological war with Islam. Or course, politicians try to color that notion by saying that we at war with radical Islam, or better yet, just ideological extremists. The current feeling is that it's been that way ever since 9/11. But I don't remember that feeling cropping up right away. At the time it seemed unclear who these attackers were, let alone what they were. Our enemy was the groups that supported these terrorists, who just happened to be Muslim, not the so-called "Muslim world" as the sentiment seems to be today. Maybe other people remember America turning against Muslims that day, but I don't. As a boy from Indiana, interaction with the Muslim faith or actual Muslims was so far from my personal experience, it hardly seemed like part of this equation to me.

In the days and weeks that followed there was a pervasive spirit of solidarity with New York city. Groups from all over the world were making banners to show their support for NYC. These banners got hung on the sides of skyscapers all over the city. Ball State got in on the act, and I remember painting my name on a giant banner being made outside Pruis Hall. Coincidentally, I hitched a ride on the truck that would carry the banner to NYC. The truck dropped me off at the remote football stadium parking lot where I kept my car at the time. The truck then presumably went on to NYC. Although I heard our banner never actual got displayed anywhere. There was just too much support, I guess.

Six months later, during spring break, three friends and I took a whirlwind tour of Washington D.C. and NYC. We visited the Pentagon on the six month anniversary of the actual day of the attacks. The wounds were still fresh and everyone was still on edge. Cameras were not allowed (and still probably aren't) in the immediate proximity of the Pentagon. I got yelled at for carrying a video camera by some guys in cammo with automatic riffles. Lynn snapped a few photos in defiance of the "no camera" signs. You had to stand across the freeway if you wanted to take pictures with permission. There was still a lot of construction equipment outside the Pentagon. The wall that had been struck, I believe, had been mostly rebuilt. Lynn was interviewed by news cameras about why college students had decided to visit the Pentagon on this day.

Ground Zero in New York was even more dramatic for me. Looking into the giant holes that were still being excavated. The cross that was erected from two steel beams. The charred and mangled globe that had once stood at the WTC, but was moved to Battery Park as a monument. And mostly strikingly, the fences near Ground Zero, which were layered with notices of missing persons, pictures of lost loved ones, and letters of support for the victims and their families. Six months had passed, and even late at night it was difficult to make it through the crowds that surrounded these fences praying, singing, and showing respect for the tragedy that took place there.

In the aftermath of 9/11 and as the facts became known, I clearly never enlisted in the military. Obviously there was no draft. The wars that followed were not the type we had known before or were expecting. This never-ending and objective-less "War on Terror" was not the sort that the masses were eager to enlist in, like they did after Pearl Harbor. Certainly many thousands did enlist as a result of 9/11, but the reasons for war and who the enemy is was often less than explicit.

How my life is now "different" is not as clear for me as it is for so many who were direct victims of the attacks. I didn't know anyone on the planes, in the Trade Center, or at the Pentagon. I haven't lost anyone close to me in the wars that have followed. I've had cousins and old friends from school who have fought, but to my knowledge, they've all made it home in tact.

I've experienced the same changes as everyone else. The increased security at airports, museums, and other public places. As the inevitable government surveillance has increased, I've been part of the somewhat ironic public reaction. As fears of cameras monitoring us everywhere we go increases, so has everyone started to carry cameras on themselves at all times, making their own photos and videos public. As we fear that our personal details will be tracked by the government, so we all willingly make every detail of our lives public through social media.

For me, the "spirit of the nation" has changed. We are less optimistic. We are more divided. More spiteful of ourselves, of our fellow citizens, and of the rest of the world. This is not all a direct result of 9/11. There are political, cultural, financial, and technological shifts that have contributed to this "post-9/11" world.

It's perhaps most ironic that America was never more beloved by the rest of the world than immediately following 9/11. But ten years later we are perhaps more hated than ever. In the time after the attacks there was more unity in our country than any time in my lifetime. But how quickly that turned to become a more divided and ideologically entrenched country than ever.

Those are my memories of the events of 9/11. Somehow both remote and dramatic. And this is how I've experience the world changing since then. In ways both meaningful and ephemeral.

Relevant 5 - Feb 6-12

2011-02-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

A re-cap of the best stuff I watched last week.

LOST SEASON 6 Rewatch Complete!
Finally knocked out the last few episodes: "The Candidate," "Across the Sea," "What They Died For," and "The End." Jo and I finished our rewatch of Lost Season 6. The season is so generally disappointing that we really felt no urgency to push through it. Actually, the final 3 episodes and the ending they crafted worked much better for me on a second go round. I was more inclined to buy their whole Jacob replacement justification, and the notion of "moving on." It's too bad these ideas doesn't really have much to do with the majority of the rest of the series. So many of the characters were so mishandled in the last season, and so much vital information was ignored, which is why S6 is such a bummer.

In case you didn't get enough Lost-related humor in the last 6 years of your life, my buddy Eric Branscom did a stirring musical tribute to LOST.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD (2008)
A Korean western I had read about some time ago. None of us had seen it, and it turned out to be a real winner. Totally different than I expected. I was anticipating a small and quirky, something more avant-garde, and, quite frankly, something weirder. Instead it was a pretty spectacular epic, and very much a take on the story of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY -- had a lot of the same broad story beats. This was set in the late 1800's Cambodia at a time when the Japanese army was occupying much of the far east continent -- an unusual and surprisingly effective setting for a straight up western. I'm always impressed with how so much Korean cinema has a unique energy and aesthetic to its action sequences and a different set of expectations as to how narrative should play out. This was a good one to stumble upon.

500 DAYS OF SUMMER (2009)
Starring indie pixie princess Zooey Deschanel. Goes to great lengths to remind us all just how precious and perfect she is. Great flick chronicling various snapshots of a sometimes beautiful, but ultimately imperfect and temporary relationship. A movie trope I hate is when two cahracters cute-meet and bond over movies and music. You're IN a movie, find something to talk about other than movies! (Also, you're a screenwriter writing a movie, find something to write about besides movies!) They also bonded over looking at architecture. Don't get me wrong, it's a great moive, but it's like the screenwriter read "Stuff White People Like," didn't understand it was ironic, and decided to include all that stuff.

THE GREAT SILENCE (1968)
Pretty great flick in which the bad guys totally kill everyone at the end. It's about the end of the "bounty killer" era in the American west, based on a true life mass slaughter that took place in Utah. Sergio Corbucci directed. Not quite the visual masterpiece of a Sergio Leoni film. Ennio Morriconi score. Film could definitely stand to have an update. Remake should parallel the silent hero with the silence of the American people to the unjust laws that made the slaughter of a religious group (the Mormons, in this case) legal.

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965)
I thought I had seen all three hero-with-no-name films by Sergio Leoni, but apparently missed this one. This one somehow seems the most "mainstream" of the trilogy. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef have an almost BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID buddy-bandit vibe going on at times.

And, in case you missed it, here's the super-classy opening number The 2011 Writers Guild Awards, which I associate produced. "Write it Gay" performed by hosts Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

And if you've got a better name than "Relevant 5" for these possibly-recurring posts, please make a suggestion!

Essential Lost

2011-01-09T09:00:00.001-08:00

Ever since May’s inner conflict-inducing series finale, I’ve been unable to bring myself to watch Lost again, write about Lost, or write about anything else if you haven’t noticed. Just kidding, the real reason for lack of blogging has to do with projects keeping me busier than ever. However, right after the finale I developed a theory – a method of rewacthing and a way to direct the uninitiated who ask “Should I watch Lost?”

When people ask what the show is about, you usually have to launch in with: “Lost is about plane crash survivors who end up on a deserted island… Well, not really deserted. And there’s a monster. And then they start time traveling… for some reason. And there’s these two brothers who are immortal… or something… and they are engaged in some kind of unending struggle to… well, it’s complicated.” Then you wind up saying you just have to watch it, which elicits the response, “I don’t know if I’m up for all that.”

The Rules

So here’s my theory for boiling Lost down its essential story to make a less daunting challenge for first timers and rewatchers. The rules for what episodes to watch:

1.) Every season premiere and season finales. They always pack the biggest game changers and wildest cliffhangers into the bookends.

2.) Every Jack, Locke, Desmond, and Ben episodes. Let’s face it – these characters’ journeys are the story of the show.

You could stop right there and probably have a pretty essential Lost experience, but I’ve added in a few more rules:

3.) The first and last centric episode for each major character. Since these characters are around all the time, you at least need a little info on who they are and how their stories end.

4.) All Character-centric episodes. There's a couple of these.

5.) Episodes including deaths of major characters. You’ll miss these characters if they’re suddenly gone without explanation.

6.) Plus, I’ve thrown in about a few other episodes that contain essential exposition or that fill in major gaps.

The uninitiated can get through Lost in like 75% of the time, and for rewatchers it leaves out the many ultimately irrelevant storylines.

Certainly I recognize that some of the notoriously worst episodes (“Stranger in a Strange Land”) make the list, while beloved characters like Hurley, Sawyer, and Sayid get shortchanged, but at least you get rid of most of Kate’s terrible back story. What I’m concerned with here is overall essential story.

Essential Lost Episodes

So here’s the breakdown of what episodes you’re left with:

Season 1 (20/24 Episodes – 83%)

1x01 The Pilot, Part 1 – Season Premiere & Jack-centric

1x02 The Pilot, Part 2 – Season Premiere

1x03 Tabula Rasa – First Kate-centric

1x04 Walkabout – Locke-centric

1x05 White Rabbit – Jack-centric

1x06 House of the Rising Sun – First Sun-centric

1x07 The Moth – First Charlie-centric

1x08 Confidence Man – First Sawyer-centric

1x09 Solitary – First Sayid-centric

1x10 Raised by Another – First Claire-centric

1x11 All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues – Jack-centric

1x13 Hearts and Minds – First Boone-centric

1x14 Special – First Michael & Walt-centric

1x15 Homecoming – Major Character Death

1x17 …In Translation – First Jin-centric

1x18 Numbers – First Hurley-centric

1x19 Deus Ex Machina – Locke-centric

1x20 Do No Harm – Jack-centric & Major Character Death

1x23 Exodus, Part 1 – Season Finale & All Character-centric

1x24 Exodus, Part 2 – Season Finale & All Character-centric

Season 2 (14/24 Episodes – 58%)

2x01 Man of Science, Man of Faith – Season Premiere & Jack-centric

2x03 Orientation – Locke-centric

2x06 Abandoned – First Shannon-centric

2x07 The Other 48 Days – Major Expositional (Talies)

2x08 Collision – First Ana Lucia-centric & Major Character Death

2x10 The 23^rd Psalm – First Mr. Eko-centric

2x11 The Hunting Party – Jack-centric

2x15 Homecoming – Major Expositional (Claire)

2x17 Lockdown – Locke-centric

2x19 S.O.S. – First (and Only) Rose & Bernard-centric

2x20 Two for the Road – Last Ana Lucia-centric & Major Characters Deaths

2x22 Three Minutes – Major Expositional (Michael)

2x23 Live Together, Die Alone Part 1 – Season Finale & Desmond-centric

2x24 Live Together, Die Alone Part 2 – Season Finale & Desmond-centric

Season 3 (14/22 Episodes – 63%)

3x01 A Tale of Two Cities – Season Premiere & Jack-centric

3x03 Further Instructions – Locke-centric

3x05 The Cost of Living – Last Mr. Eko-centric & Major Character Death

3x07 Not in Portland – First Juliet-centric

3x08 Flashes Before Your Eyes – Desmond-centric

3x09 Stranger in a Strange Land – Jack-centric

3x13 The Man From Tallahassee – Locke–centric

3x14 Expose – First (and Only) Nikki & Paulo-centric & Major Characters Deaths

3x16 One of Us – Juliet-centric (Okay, so here I’m cheating by including this instead of “The Other Woman” because this is a much better Juliet episode and much more important to the overall Lost-mythos.)

3x17 Catch 22 – Desmond-centric

3x19 The Brig – Locke-centric

3x20 The Man Behind the Curtain – Ben-centric

3x21 Greatest Hits – Last Charlie-centric

3x22 Through the Looking Glass – Season Finale & Major Character Death

Season 4 (10/14 Episodes – 71%)

4x01 The Beginning of the End – Season Premiere

4x02 Confirmed Dead – First Freighter Four-centric

4x05 The Constant – Desmond-centric

4x08 Meet Kevin Johnson – Last Michael-centric

4x09 The Shape of Things to Come – Ben-centric

4x10 Something Nice Back Home – Jack-centric

4x11 Cabin Fever – Locke-centric

4x12 There’s No Place Like Home Part 1 – Season Finale

4x13 There’s No Place Like Home Part 2 – Season Finale

4x14 There’s No Place Like Home Part 3 – Season Finale

Season 5 (13/17 Episodes – 76%)

5x01 Because You Left – Season Premiere

5x03 Jughead – Desmond-centric

5x06 316 – Jack-centric

5x07 The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham – Locke-centric & Major Character Death

5x08 LaFleur – Major Expositional (Sawyer)

5x09 Namaste – Major Expositional (All Characters)

5x10 He’s Our You – Major Character Death (Sorta)

5x12 Dead is Dead – Ben-centric

5x13 Some Like it Hoth – Last Miles-centric

5x14 The Variable – Last Daniel-centric

5x15 Follow the Leader – First Richard Centric & Major Character Death

5x16 The Incident Part 1 – Season Finale

5x17 The Incident Part 2 – Season Finale

Season 6 (17/17 Episodes – 100%)

6x01 LA X Part 1 – Season Premiere & Major Character Death

6x02 LA X Part 2 – Season Premiere

6x03 What Kate Does – Last Kate-centric

6x04 The Substitute – Locke-centric

6x05 The Lighthouse – Jack-centric

6x06 Sundown – Last Sayid-centric

6x07 Dr. Linus – Ben-centric

6x08 Recon – Last Sawyer-centric

6x09 Ab Aeterno – Last Richard-centric

6x10 The Package – Last Jin & Sun-centric

6x11 Happily Ever After – Desmond-centric

6x12 Everybody Loves Hugo – Last Hurley Centric

6x13 The Last Recruit – All Character-centric

6x14 The Candidate – Jack & Locke-centric

6x15 Across the Sea – Jacob & MIB-centric

6x16 What They Died For – All Character-centric

6x17 The End – Finale

In total 88/118 episodes = 75% make up what I call Essential Lost.

I suppose the biggest irony is that this plan includes watching the entire 6^th season, of which I love very few episodes. That said, I think this boils off some of the fat, might be less daunting for the un-watched, and possibly an interesting rewatch experiment of the over-watched.

I know the Lost-purists will hate this idea and that it robs the series of some of its great memories, but I’m not talking about ditching these episodes forever, just about looking at what’s really important after everything we learned about the series.

Just got Season 6 for Christmas and will probably attempt this soon.

Top 10 Films of 2010

2011-01-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

Turns out I only saw 20 new films last year, which means a full 50% made my top 10 list, not a very discriminating percentage. Films 1-7 are worthy contenders. Films 8 & 9 make the list because I'm an unapologetic fanboy. Film 10 is a kind of a surprise for squeaking its way into the last spot. I imagine had I seen either 127 Hours or Black Swan, the list would have look a little different.

10. How To Train Your Dragon (3.5 Stars) - Dreamworks brings its A-game with this one. A lot of fun. Character design still inferior to Pixar, but the action-adventure here is pretty great.

9. Tron: Legacy (4 Stars) – A surprisingly satisfying sequel to a 28-year-old classic that in no way needed a sequel. You can pick apart the story, but it looks and sounds truly unique. The Daft Punk score made the film.

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (4 Stars) – You can enjoy all the Harry Potter films without actually knowing what’s going in them. Same thing this time, only worse. (What’s the deal with Voldemort? Who cares.) There were about a dozen places in this one where, if I had not recently read the book, I would have been lost. The film’s breakneck pace, in an attempt to cram in as many details from the book as possible, causes it to rush past some major emotional beats and brush over important plot details. They could have benefited from the clarity brought by a bit more exposition. While heavy exposition is usually a bad thing, this is undoubtedly a nerd movie and nerds eat exposition for breakfast. Why not pour it on?

All that said, this is perhaps my favorite of the Potter flicks so far. It’s an amazing feat that they kept this cast of child actors and major British thespians together for a full decade of 8 films. Also amazing that they’ve let what started as a kiddie movie franchise get this mature and dark.

7. True Grit (4 Stars) - Jeff Daniels and Matt Damon depict a couple most fun-to-watch movie characters I've seen in ages. The kid's pretty great too. Wonderful dialogue. The climax (or lack thereof) is a little less than satisfying. It's my theory the Cohens' bleak philosophy doesn't allow the fulfillment of the little girl's revenge plot to have the emotional weight it deserves.

6. Kick-Ass (4 Stars) – One of the coolest most fun films in a long time – that is until I saw Scott Pilgrim. A foul-mouthed 11-year old girl inflicting massive violence ain’t for everyone, but if you’re down with that, this is a raucous deconstruction of the superhero film.

5. The King's Speech (5 Stars) - A small little story, very well acted, beautifully shot, delightful and uplifting. Deserves the great buzz it's getting. However, I feel that people are giving it "Best Picture" credit simply because no one makes movies like this very much anymore, not because it's actually the best picture of the year. Colin Firth does deserve Best Actor through.

4. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (5 Stars) – This movie slipped though the cracks without getting the credit it deserves – quite possibly changing the game for what we can expect from visual effect. This film was a non-stop special effects onslaught, and all the effects are perfect and super stylish. Not only was it cool but it was tons of fun and actually quite funny.

3. Toy Story 3 (5 Stars) – This is the part where every year I marvel about how these Pixar dudes are able to pull it off again! This is the third film in the Toy Story franchise and manages to possibly be most heart warming. Sad, scary, and fun in all the right places.

2. The Social Network (5 Stars) – Morally complex. At various points in this movie I picked sides with everybody, I wanted each character to screw the other characters out of the deal. It was like a modern day strike-it-rich oil tycoon tale, but instead of finding oil, the protagonist creates the next Internet sensation, something many a modern businessperson dreams they could do. The film deftly traverses the pitfalls of working in a speculative and creative business.

1. Inception (5 Stars) – What more can be said about Inception? It looked cool, right? It didn’t change my world immediately upon viewing as much as it did for others. However the following days and weeks filled with discussions and articles, impressed on me just how intricate and thoughtful the movie really is. Chris Nolan has got to be the most impressive working director of the last five years or so.

And, of course, here are some of the titles I need to see:

127 Hours, Black Swan, Never Let Me Go, Alice in Wonderland, Despicable Me, Tangled, The Expendables, Date Night, Due Date, The Book of Eli, Prince of Persia, Get Him to the Greek, The Runaways, Hot Tub Time Machine, Date Night, Machete, Wall Street 2, Buried, Frozen, Twilight Eclipse, Let Me In, Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Films of 2010 (11-20)

2011-01-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

Wost to best, here's my take on the year in cinema... or, what I saw of it anyway.

20. Cop Out (1 Star) – I actually had high hopes for this one. Tracey Morgan and Sean Williams Scott, always hilarious. Bruce Willis, always solid. Kevin Smith venturing into his first mainstream comedy. Should be a fun ride, right? If this was supposed to be a purposely-bad movie, then it didn’t really commit. Kevin Smith apparently can’t do parody. He can only do Kevin Smith movies. You pretty much feel sorry for Bruce Willis as he suffers his way though every not-funny scene.

19. Youth in Revolt (2 Stars) – The Cera charm is wearing thin. Actually, the idea of Michael Cera playing two version of a character – one his usual nerdy self and the other a rebellious badass – should be hilarious. Unfortunately this swerves far into arty-farty territory and lacks the emotional depth to make the hipster pretentions palatable.

18. The Wolfman (2.5 Stars) – Because we need more werewolf movies.

17. RED (2.5 Stars) – Was this supposed to be a comedy or spy thriller? Couldn’t tell, but it was definitely annoying in places. The old guys didn’t seem old enough for a film whose name means “Retired Extremely Dangerous.”

16. Robin Hood (2.5 Stars) – What’s most interesting about this film is figuring out what parts of the script remain in tact from when the film was called “Nottingham,” and was to star Russell Crow as the Sherriff, with the man in tights as the villain.

15. Cyrus (2.5 Stars) - John C. Riley and Jonah Hill play quieter, subtler (if not a little more psychotic) versions of their usual manic on-camera personas in this unique little indie comedy. John C. Riley’s character is an editor, and I’d venture a guess that the film’s writer/director is probably a real-life editor based on the way Cyrus was cut. In many key moments the story is moved forward entirely through voice over montages, an interesting editorial maneuver.

14. Clash of the Titans (2.5 Stars) – Didn’t manage to capture the sense of wonder and awe in its far away mythic universe the same way the original does. Remarkably, what I liked most about the new Tron is that it managed to do just that.

13. The Other Guys (2.5 Stars) – This movie is 35% better than Cop Out.

12. The Town - This film gets a lower score less because it's not a great film (Affleck pulls major double duty by directing and starring here). It has more to do with me being generally unexcited about its two main concepts: 1.) being a straight-up gritty crime drama and 2.) being set in Boston. Boston folks is real cuz they grew up on the streets where it's tough and stuff. I get it already.

11. Iron Man 2 (3 Stars) – Call me old fashioned, but I always like when superheroes do a little more day-saving than what happens here. Cool. Fun. But not as good as the original.

Check back tomorrow for my Top 10!

LosTalk: The End (6 x 17 & 18) and a Lost Post Mortem

2010-05-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

So Dead is Dead, and Whatever Happened Happened, and the full emotional weight of Lost withdrawal has set in.

It's Tuesday night and there's no new Lost. Not this Tuesday, not any Tuesday, not any other day of the week ever again. I'm sitting here, head still spinning two days later. After years of arguments, thoughtful discussions, and countless words written, I'm still trying to process how I feel about the finale.

This post is long. How could it not be. Read it in chunks if you have to.

So what just happened Sunday night? I spent the first two hours of the finale absolutely loving it. The island was crumbling, Jack was throwing down with Flocke, Kate was saving the day (for once!), Frank was surviving, people were escaping. Over in the Flashsideways World everyone was converging, people got to fall in love all over again.

I was right there with them. I could live with this ending -- even if it didn't explain why Mikhail wouldn't die, or how Dharma knew to contain Smokey behind a sonic fence, or why the Others bury their dead at sea, or why the ancient island dwellers worshiped a fertility god. Forgetting all they stuff, I could live with what was happening. All the right heartstrings were pulled.

I loved it right up the moment with Jack walked into the little Unitarian church room with his father's coffin. I thought, please let Christian Shepherd be up and waking around -- that would be the perfect weirdness to drop into this second universe that had been mostly void of hocus pocus. I don't know how they'll explain it, but just do it...

And they did. And then I kinda hated everything that came out of his mouth... the explanation of what was really going on... how the story was really ending.

I know some people loved this ending, found it emotionally fulfilling. I know other people are furious about it. I'll try and get down why it's left me queasy, and maybe it's best to start by asking what I would have wanted from "The End."

So-called "answers" aside, what I really wanted was the Losties to save the day and to save themselves. (They don't all have to live obviously, but it'd be nice to see some of them make it home and happy.) You might say, yo, what's wrong with you? That's exactly what DID happen! Jack saved the island and at least six people survived.

Saving the Island

Sure. Jack did save the island (and in the process redeemed Locke's memory). But after six seasons, it's never been clear what saving the island means. So the island has the energy, the light that's in all of us. So what? What does it mean if the island is destroyed? What happens to the world if Black Shirt escapes? What happens if the light is extinguished? Oh, the light goes out in all of us, you say? Wait, the light was extinguished and I'm pretty sure we're not mean to believe the whole world died, or went evil, or became soulless or something.

Just last week we were told THIS was the reason the Losties came, suffered, and died. But there's nothing really tangible about what, at the very last minute, became the main stakes of the show. Usually in these ticking clock scenarios we understand the terror of what might happen. We know what will happen if James Bond doesn't disarm the nuclear bomb, or if the Rebels don't destroy the Death Star.

Here I don't know what will happen if the island sinks. In fact, I've already been shown a world where the island IS sunk, and that world doesn't seem so bad -- everyone's falling in love over there. And with a half hour left in the show my mind is still racing to connect the two worlds, and to figure out how the Losties might save the day in a world where the island is destroyed.

Surviving the Island

And yes, a rather random assortment of characters did fly away and presumably lived full lives. Thank goodness the important characters of Miles, Alpert, and Frank made it! It is interesting that Claire and Sawyer got to go home. After all, when Jack wanted the Oceanic Six to go back and rescue everybody, Sawyer and Claire were really the only major characters left behind that they knew were alive.

But these characters getting to live happily ever after is somewhat diminished when THE REAL END is revealed for what it is... purgatory and heaven (or some permutation thereof). And EVERYONE is there, or almost everyone.

The After Life

The mythos of Lost was recently expanded to tell us the island is not just a source of time travel, teleportation, and healing, but it is THE source... of magic, and light, and, I don't know, the Force or something. Like I've said, that's a big mythos.

Now the mythos is even bigger because we've got concrete proof of an afterlife, one that comes in two phases: a temporary purgatory-like phase, and a final happy heaven-like phase. That's a spicy meatball!

I know that sometimes as an audience member you've got to turn off the literal mind, and just appreciate what they want you to feel and appreciate what it's supposed to mean. I have a tendency to lean on the overly analytical mind (duh!). At the same time you've got to ask what's really going on here and how does it relate to this story we've spent so much time with.

Purgatory and Heaven

So what is really going on here? Apparently in the world of Lost you've got a soul, and after you die it goes to this purgatory place, a purgatory that looks an awful lot like your real life (except your plane doesn't crash!). And the best part -- all your buddies' souls are there too. Not all your buddies, just your closest buddies. And somehow all your buddies' souls knit together a matrix of their collective consciousness that plays out together in real time.

Now this purgatory isn't about paying penance per se. It's about "letting go" of your past life, so you can move on. How do you let go? By bumping into your soul mate, a.k.a your Constant. Once you've found your old soul mate you're ready leave purgatory for the happier heaven place, and it's best if you go together will all your old friends. This doesn't sound quite like "letting go" of the old life to me.

It should be mentioned that not everybody gets this purgatory/heaven experience. Some people (like Michael) who have done questionable things (like killing a couple ladies) get their souls stuck on the island. I'm not sure if that's unique to the island or if souls can get stuck elsewhere.

Also, certain people in purgatory seem to doing a little penance. For instance Ben (who's killed countless people) gets the purgatory/heaven combo, but he (like Ana Lucia) isn't quite ready to head into the light with the rest.

Finally, not everyone from your real life who appears in the purgatory matrix is really there. Take Mikhail, who was shot and killed in purgatory. What happens to you when you die in purgatory? Or take the reborn baby Aaron. He's more of a soul prop for his mother Claire. Surely the real Aaron, who we assume lived to adulthood in the real world, would get his own purgatory where his soul is an adult. Who wants to be stuck as a baby for eternity? (Or maybe that would be nice, dunno.)

No idea why in purgatory Eloise Widmore believe that Desmond's actions are a "violation," and why she, Dan Widmore, and Charlotte are not ready to move on the heaven.

Also, somehow physical scars from the real world can open up on your purgatory body: Jack's neck and side wound.

After seasons of speculation that the island might be purgatory (a pretty good theory), it seems cheap to say the island isn't purgatory but there IS a purgatory you've just never seen for five seasons.

I know there's a lot of room for interpretation with what we were shown. And I know I'm leaning on over literal analysis. Let's just say it is what is. Now how does this ending fit with the rest of the story?

Whatever Happened to Flashing Sideways?

I suppose what frustrates me most about this purgatory/heaven scenario is that it's the most flagrant misdirection yet in a show full of red herrings. When the curtain was pulled back, the reveal felt cheap instead of brilliantly satisfying.

(BTW, I was always more a fan of Sayid/Nadia than Sayid/Shannon.)

Compare that to the Season 5 finale when we learned that Locke was dead and Black Shirt had been masquerading in his body for half a season. In one moment we learned the man of faith, who's special insight we had been following since day one turned out to be wrong! It was devastating, but Lost can be a harsh mistress. It was also brilliant because, standing on the doorstep of the final act, the bad guy was at his most potent and our characters at their most helpless.

Alternatively, the reveal that the Flashsideways World was in fact purgatory lacked the brilliant "gothca" effect. It was melancholy and, frankly, didn't make sense with the story leading up to it.

In S5 our main question was can you change the past? Our heros most desperate action - detonating a nuke and creating the Incident - was taken in hopes of doing just that. And now we know their actions were in vain. The nuke did nothing.

Faraday was wrong, there are no variables, you can't change the past, and whatever happened, happened. No one can come back from the dead, not even in alternate timelines.

(Yes, the nuke zapped them back to the future. Again we have to plug our ears and go "nah, nah, nah" ignoring who or what controls the time travel. Add it to Jacob's kinda sorta powers list.)

Then in S6 the main question is which timeline will be Jacob's one true end? Did Jacob create this timeline as a backup plan? Do Jacob and Black Shirt even know or care about this Flashsideways timeline?

Well you can throw that whole debate out the window because the two timelines never coexisted. The Flashsideways wasn't even a timeline. Just the collective consciousness of a bunch of lost soul buddies, a.k.a. purgatory.

The fact that the plane never crashed in purgatory doesn't matter. These events have no bearing on the real life events of the story. In fact you don't even need this whole magical island story to have this ending. The story could have been about two plumbers who died and go to plumber purgatory until they let go of plumbing and "move on."

It's ironic that in the spirit world everyone's lives are rather mundane, compared to the real world in which their lives were literally filled with supernatural, miraculous, pseudo-science, conspiracy, and gobbledygook.

Sunken Island

Add to the list of red herrings. The sunken island we were shown in the first minutes of Season 6 is absolutely meaningless. None of the main characters in this "world" had ever been to the island (except Ben) so why does it exist and why is it at the bottom of the ocean?

This image exclusively fueled a season's debate over how the worlds were connected, how they spawned from the same moment (the Incident), who would sink the island and how. All this debate was for naught!

Just How Special Are You?

Learning that Desmond was Jacob's failsafe, last week we could assume Jacob wanted Desmond to arrange the characters' "enlightenment" over in the Flashsideways world. That Desmond would be responsible for the timelines convergence, etc.

However that's obviously not true. The Flashsideways not-actually-a-world had nothing to do with Jacob's plan. Apparently Jacob needed Special Desmond only to do exactly what he did, a reletively simple feat -- remove the stone and put out the light -- so that Black Shirt could be killed. How Jacob knew this would work when Black Shirt did not is beyond me.

Yet Desmond did so much more! Not only does Desmond's special reaction to electromagnetic energy allow his consciousness to travel between times, it also lets his consciousness travel INTO THE SPIRIT WORLD!

Somehow when zapped by Charles Widmore's machine, Desmond's mind flashed into his purgatory-bound soul and came up with a plan to round up his friends and tell them this isn't their real life. Is this something Jacob wanted him to do or even cared about? If Desmond hadn't had this miraculous intuition, who knows how long it would have taken our wandering Losties' souls to reconnect and move on.

That's a pretty special ability if you ask me.

"It Only Ends Once"

Very true. But with the debate out the window over which timeline would be Jacob's one true end, what do Jacob and Black Shirt's philosophizing amount to?

"Across the Sea" showed us Black Shirt's cycle. The earlier island protector had to find her replacement between candidates. The seemingly special candidate became Smokey (like Locke), and the reluctant candidate eventually took the mantle (like Jack). The selfish humans seemed like a threat to the island and had to be purged (like Dharma and so many others).

But did that cycle really end? The island still has a protector, and won't Hurley have to find his replacement when his time is over? And did Jack's self sacrificial choice during his brief tenure as top dog somehow equal "progress" for mankind at large?

The series ultimately seemed just as concerned with our character's choices to find each other in purgatory as their choices in the real world, choices that have no bearing on actual mankind. Offering a choice to everyone in purgatory makes their dramatic choices during life feel meaningless (although, I suppose the real notion of purgatory has the same implications).

What I liked

I did like that we got both Jack sacrificing himself to save the island and Hurley becoming the good-willed new protector -- fates they both seemed headed for. I didn't think we'd get both though.

I like that Frank survived, somewhat justifying that none of the Losties batted an eye or even mentioned his name after he seemed to blow up in the sub. He got to fly the plane home as he seemed destined to do.

(Hopefully there was enough gas left to make it anywhere.)

(And hopefully they left on a correct bearing so they're not stuck in the island's time travel bubble for a millennium. Is the time travel bubble a natural property of the island, or was is put there by Jacob and disappeared when he left?)

I like that Kate took the final shot that did away with Smokey and saved her man Jack.

I liked that we got nearly everybody back this week, including Rose, Bernard, Boone, Shannon, Charlie, and Vincent. (I guess Nikki and Paulo were too expensive to get.)

I liked all the reunions during the Flashsidways. I could have seen more Juliet/Sawyer, but now I'm revealing my true stripes a bit too much.

I liked that the whole affair was appropriately melancholy and joyful to conclude a story six years in the making.

What I Missed

I'm not going to attempt some kind of list about what Lost left "unanswered." Lots of other bloggers have done that. But I will mention my biggest four unresolved issues, all hearkening back to Season 1 and 2 mysteries:

Walt, his special abilities, and mysterious appearances got no resolution.

Aaron's prophesied birth and the importance of him not being raised by another.

Who are the Others really? What's their special relationship with death? What do they really know about the island and Jacob's purpose? If nothing, then why are they so freaking weird?

What did Dharma really know about the island besides it's time travel energy. They somehow knew how stop Smokey with that fence. They even built a house over the Smokey summoning toilet. Why are there hieroglyphics on the hatch countdown clock? Why do some of their members carry the ankh - a symbol of eternal life. Seems to be some crossover with the Others that was never clear. Were they really trying to save the world with the Valenzeti equation and how does that relate to Jacob's one true end?

I appreciate the fact that there are uncontrollable factors that affect TV production and story lines -- actor's schedules, actors leaving for other shows, writers coming and going, production budgets, number of episodes ordered, etc. The complexity of Lost's many plots is part of the appeal, and I would never expect 100% of everything to be wrapped up nicely in a bow.

But at the end of the day, winding down plot lines isn't like controlling an oil spill. They're not a force of nature that must be fought. These are just plot lines that were created by someone, surely someone should have had some idea how to finish them!

It's under-whelming that these brilliant writers and producers who crafted compelling and thought-provoking moments throughout the years, didn't at least imagine up resolutions for as many of their mysteries as their fans have.

You might say, dude, more was answered than you want to admit. Sure, you can take any aspect of the show, and looking at it through five hazy lenses of what "might" be going on, and speculate about the reason for things. But you can also swap out those lenses for five different ideas of what "might" be going on and get a different picture. There's a dissatisfying lack of clarity to it all. That same lack of clarity is what's made the show so fascinating and worthy of discussion over the years.

Alas, sometimes I feel that Lost has been so thought provoking to me because its murky forest-for-the-trees focus, its muddled paths of cause and effect, its here-one-minute-gone-the-next quality of significance -- all remind me of real life more than just about any other work of fiction I know. Lost deserves kudos for enabling discussion among the masses about faith, science, freewill, fate, and Patsy Cline music.

Thanks For the Journey

Many a blogger has focussed their final analysis on thanking those that shared the journey with them (perhaps in leu of feeling truly satisfied with the show, which to me feels like enjoying the icing without the cake). I'd be remiss if I didn't do the same.

Lost truly has been a journey, and it's been a focal point for my LA-based "family." Those who made the commitment to be there most weeks really shared something, and became part of the inner circle of friends.

Thanks to those who introduced me to Lost. I was a late Season 2 bloomer.

Thanks to my wife and friends for hosting Lost night over the years and throwing some really spectacular parties.

Thanks to the people I've met online and shared conversation with.

Thanks to my LA readers who want to argue with me each week.

Thanks to my readers from back home and from growing up. I'm glad we got to share a common interest after all these years.

Thanks to those readers I don't even know but have decided to chime in from time to time.

It's because of all of you that writing any of this was worthwhile, and because of you Lost became the encompassing life experience it has been.

(I kinda doubt this is the final word I'll ever write about Lost, and I do hope to post pics of the finale party asap. Thanks to the "Lost Media" site for letting me steal their screencaps without permission!)

And now I'll succumb to ending this post like every Lost blogger is supposed to...

Namaste.

LosTalk: Why They Died (6 x 16)

2010-05-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Here we are a few hours away from the Lost series finale, and I haven't written my post on the penultimate episode. Better late then never, I guess.

Fireside Chat

The dwindling group of surviving Candidates and remaining Season 1 Losties sit down for a little heart to with Jacob... who they can all see now for some reason.

(BTW, when the eternal mysterious Jacob allowed himself to be killed last season, I'd assumed there would be more immediate consequences, that Jacob's presence would be gone and that the fate of mankind was now only in man's own hands. However, immediately after death, Jacob's ghost pops up and continues to manipulate. And now, while his ashes are burning, everybody can see him for his swan song??? Yet when his ashes are gone, so will he be... for good)

(Also BTW, when you burn ashes, don't you get more ashes? That's what ashes are -- what's left over after burning stuff. )

(One would assume Jacob's ashes would have been a powerful tool against Smokey who is allergic to ashes.)

This is the scene of scenes. It's THE explanation.

The Losties were all brought here as Candidates to take over Jacob's role as island guardian. Wait a sec. We've known that for like 10 episodes!

Jacob admits this was only necessary because he made a mistake -- killing his brother in vengeance, which turned Black Shirt into Smokey and unleashed a deadly evil onto the island. It seems Jacob is hoping his replacement will do a better job than he did, perhaps even destroying Black Shirt, which is something MOM made it "impossible" for Jacob to do.

Jacob is also hoping for "progress" that will break the island's cycle. He's been obsessively studying mankind for ages 1.) to discover if man is as evil as his MOM insisted and 2.) to find the right persons to offer the choice of replacing him. By offering man the choice to protect the island's eternal light, he hopes his successor will do better than he did, when he was forced to take the job.

Jacob and Black Shirt as representatives of good and evil is long out the window. We've been shown they were both just people who made murky choices and agendas that seemed right in their own eyes.

The dueling brothers as symbols of fate vs. freewill is also not as clear cut as it might have been. Although "choice" seems to be Jacob's coup de grace in the long game he's been playing.

This is the backdrop and reason for Lost. It's why the characters were brought to the island, why they suffered, and why they died.

"You're Like Me Now"

So Jack taketh of the cup and he dranketh of it. Anyone surprised that the megalomaniacal Jack was the one to decide he was the solution to mankind's problems?

Jack had been primed, pretty much since seeing his childhood home in the Lighthouse to accept any task that the island offered him. And so our hero from the start has finally accepted his mantle.

Widmore's War

An interesting turn was finding out that Widmore had been contacted by Jacob shortly after the freighter was destroyed. Jacob had showed him "the error of his ways."

There had always been some disparity between Widmore's island-coveting agenda in Season 4 and the way he seemed genuinely concerned for the greater good when guiding Locke back to the island in S5. I guess a little visit by Jacob, Widmore's formerly silent leader, was all it took to turn him around. With Widmore's new perspective, Jacob allowed him to come back to the island after decades of searching for it.

Now, instead of seeking to take back the island, he's come to fight Black Shirt, who he formerly knew only as "myth, ghost stories, and noises in the night."

With Widmore dead, what is up with his planned for war? He's still got a army of mercinary-scientists raring to go. And Flocke still has a bunch of Others at his disposal. Will any battling actually happen tonight?

Key Failsafe

Widmore brought Desmond back to the island to be Jacob's "failsafe." Remember Desmond once used a failsafe key to prevent another Incident-like disaster, and perhaps, when he survived the hatch implosion at the end of S2 was when the Scotsman was imbued with his Special time travel abilities.

Does this mean that had one of the Cadidates not taken over the Protector role, Desmond could still save the day? It seems Desmond is already serving his purpose, at least over in the Flashsideways Universe.

There he's busy making the FS-Losties remember their alternate lives, usually by beating them up or nearly killing them. However FS-Desmond's actions are a little premature (at least according to FS-Eloise Widmore).

Desmond is rounding up everybody in the FS-world to get them to Daniel Widmore's concert (more on this in a sec). It's interesting that he used Ana Lucia to spring them out of jail, but when Hurley (who somehow recognizes her from their other lifetime) asks if she should come too, Desmond says she's not ready yet.

That's a clever workaround winking to the fact that Ana Lucia may not have even been on the FS-Flight 815, since she was still on the police force in this timeline, and Christian Shepherd may never have invited her to be his bodyguard in Australia.

Meanwhile, in the Original Timeline, Desmond may still have work to do for Jacob. Such a big deal has been made of his resistance to the island's electromagnetic energy it seems only reasonable that he'll be thrown down the glowy energy hole, the wellspring from which both the goodness of light and evilness of the smoke monster emit.

"I'm Going To Destroy The Island"

Each season of Lost ends with something being blown up. Last season they detonated a nuclear bomb. How do you go bigger than this? Destroy the whole island -- the setting and concept of the entire show.

Now, what can this mean?

First, Black Shirt promises Ben Linus that if he helps him, Ben can have the island all to himself. Then he says Ben must help him destroy the island. How can Ben have the island if it is destroyed?

It seems that Demond's main failsafe work is happening over in the Flashsideways world, where we also know the island has been sunk. Perhaps, Black Shirt is finally aware of Jacob's backup plan in creating an alternate universe, and he's going to counteract that plan in that world somehow. Ben can keep the original island when all is said and done.

Ben Bad

It's good to have evil Ben back, outwitting his rivals with selfish plans. All it took was revisiting the place where his daughter Alex was shot and watching Widmore negotiate to save his own daughter Penny. Ben snaps and finally gets to kill his rival Widmore.

The question is whether Ben goes through with helping Black Shirt or not. We've been through ups and downs with Ben, he's been redeemed many a time, so in the very end what choice will he make?

Meanwhile good guy FS-Ben is having dinner with Alex and mum, Danielle Russeau -- a nice cameo I did not expect this season.

R.I.P. Richard Alpert???

Richard Alpert got blasted into a tree by Smokey. Is that the end of him?

Final Guesses

Mere hours before Lost is all said and done, is it too late for more wild speculation? Of course not!

In the FS-world all signs point toward the concert. A concert where Dan Widmore and Charlie Hume will perform. A concert hosted by Eloise Widmore at Pierre Chang's Museum, where Charlotte Lewis works, that Sawyer and Miles will be attending, and to which Desmond is dragging Sayid and Kate.

A couple of my favorite movies end with music and dance when there's no other logical or emotionally satisfying ending availible: Little Miss Sunshine and Napoleon Dynamite. Is Lost going to use this kind of emotional device to resolve itself?

I've often thought (although never said out loud) the only satisfying ending to Lost would probably be all the characters at a party breakdancing to "Jump Around" by House of Pain. (Actually most movies and TV shows would be better if they ended with this song.) Ahem. Anyway, like I said, all signs are pointing to a concert-set finale.

Will the emotional power of music make everyone remember their other lives and fully know what they have to do? The concert, first mentioned in the Desmond-centric "Happily Ever After" seemed like a one-episode throwaway plotline. Now it seems where the story is headed.

Eloise Hawking, after all, is the person orchestrating this concert, and for my money, she holds the biggest mystery in the FS-universe. The Losties have each received glimpses of another world that they, for the most part, don't understand.

But Hawking clearly knows what's up. She tells Desmond looking for Penny at this time is a "violation," that he should be happy with Charle's Widmore's approval, the one thing he's always wanted. Perhaps, like we've suggested, this universe is just a pacifier world, giving the Losties what they want, but only till a pre-orchestrated moment of convergence.

A couple other thoughts from "Happy Ever After," which I just re-watched, since it seems about the most significant episode this season:

More Sacrifice

In the Original Timeline, Charles Widmore tells Desmond he has to make a sacrifice. Does this mean sacrificing his life by jumping into the heart of the island? Desmond may be willing to do this since he knows about the alternate timeline.

Could jumping into the spring "put out the light" and end this timeline? That would mean sacrificing his son who lives only in this timeline. Losing a child fuels Ben and Widmore's rivalry. (Aaron and Ji Yeon are both about to be born in the SF-world, unlike Charlie Hume.)

Who Sinks the Island?

Also, it previously seemed that that FS-island might have been sunk in some kind of move to defeat Black Shirt. Now it seems the island was sunk BY Black Shirt. But either way, someone will have to travel between universes or back in time to do it.

When Desmond met Jack on the FS-Flight 815, he's wearing a wedding band. I had given up on putting stock in minor details like this as proof of anything to come. However, re-watcihng "Happily Ever After," Minkowsky specifically points out Desmond has no wedding band. Is this evidence that the Desmond we see on the plane is actually a time traveling Desmond on an island-sinking mission over the Pacific?

Final Questions

The big questions of this season are obviously, first, who sinks the island, how, and for what purpose?

And, second, which timeline ends up being Jacob's one true end? And what, if any, significance does this hold for mankind at large? It still seems that all these shenanigans only pertain to the fate of a few dozen characters. However, the island is the wellspring of a light that lives in everyone, but where's the threat of putting out that ligiht? The scope of the significance of all this has still sadly not been made clear.

While it seems like we know a bunch of things that ought to happen in the final 2 1/2 hours, they've got me in the dark as ever as to how it will end.

LosTalk: Across the Sea (6 x 15)

2010-05-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

And then there was THAT episode.

I'm gonna quit snarking for one installment, and take a sober look at this week, likely to be the most clarity we get on the backdrop of the island, Jacob and Black Shirt.

Certainly this was not a great episode. The acting was bad, but how could it not be when they're forced to deliver cryptic exposition for a solid hour. Such on the nose rehashing of old dialogue -- or should I say, ret-conning of the show's mythos.

Lost really forced it's hand with this one. That is, they HAD to have this episode. Ever since the reveal of the uber-puppet masters at the end of Season 5, we knew something like this was coming. To be honest, there was very little that surprised me about what we were shown this week. (I was a little surprised at how blatant they were with the glowy energy hole, more on that in a sec.)

For the most part this was the easiest way to weave together a tapestry of the island's history:

Jacob and Black Shirt, twin brothers. Seemed likely. Jacob is the island's protector. Already knew that. Black Shirt doesn't like people, just wants to go home. Got it. Jacob replaced the previous island protector. Yup.

Despite confirmations of what's *really* going on, I get the sense last night left most Lost fans with a sick feeling to their stomach. How could it not. No matter what was behind the curtain, the reveal was certain to disappoint a large number of guessing fans.

That said, I think the reveal would have been more satisfying if you could tell it had been carefully planned from the beginning. I'm trying to be patient for 10 more days until "The End," but I'm just gonna re-call what I've said often for seasons now -- they've been writing this from the hip.

That doesn't mean there haven't been consistent themes present from the beginning, brilliant setups and payoffs, and well-planned multi-season arcs. However, if you can't see now that this conclusion was NOT planned at the beginning, then you've got some self imposed fan blinders.

I did not hate this episode, much of it HAD to be that way based on what they've constructed. I'm just looking at it for what it is -- a somewhat futile attempt to sweep together the crumbs they've wildly scattered for years.

(I'll save the diatribe I deleted from this section for my Lost post mortem in just over a week.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not fully disappointed yet. With 3 1/2 hours to go, I hope -- nay, I EXPECT to have my mind blown once more. They've done it time and again. I'm just admitting now that it won't end neatly or completely.

The Energy

The island has a protector, and despite what some characters say, the island needs protected. The energy contained on the island -- you know, the stuff that make time travel and teleportation possible -- is also the source of life. A spark of this energy is in all humans, it's what makes us human, makes us good.

Wow. There you have it. We know just how wide a net they want to cast with this mythos. The island isn't some anomaly where mysterious supernatural things occur. The island is the source. It's eden.

Successor

Jacob is not the first island protector. Nor do I think his crazy adoptive Mom was the first. As we already know, Black Shirt looks at the island like an ongoing cycle of destruction, but Jacob seems to hope for some kind of "end."

That said, Jacob has been assembling Candidates to be his replacement, which would seem to perpetuate the cycle. What gives?

Jacob seems much more meticulous about finding his replacement than his mom was. The wonder twins just seemed to fall in her lap, and it was unclear which she was raising to be her successor.

The Twins

The only thing more annoying than when screen moms give birth and shout their new child's name (usually followed by dying), is when a mom has a twin and say she only had ONE name picked out. That's a new one.

In usual cryptic Lost fashion, it's too late to give Black Shirt a name. If we found out his name was like Bob or Loquat it'd be annoying, right?

Is he the Biblical Esau? Yeah they are brothers. But in the Bible, Esau is the older brother. And Jacob schemes with his mother to take away Esau's inheritance. Not exactly a parallel for what's happening here.

The brainwashing video in Room 23 mentioned "God loves you as he loved Jacob" a reference to Biblical Jacob. Unclear how that applies here.

Some Other Others

I like that we got to see this set of Others. The ones Flocke mentioned to Desmond. The ones who dug wells to find the source of the magnetic energy.

By they way, what were they speaking -- Latin? Is that why all the contemporary Others have to learn Latin, because it's Jacob's native tongue?

If these folks were compass-using, Latin-speaking travelers, I assume that puts them AFTER the Egyptians who built tunnels, temples, statues, and the basement under Ben Linus' house.

"Special"

Just like Desmond, we don't know why someone is Special or just what that means, but apparently it gives you some intuition and ability to use time travel energy. Black Shirt seems to exhibit just that.

Donkey Wheel

So they dug down to the energy and created a "system" that lets you off the island. Would have been nice to sees the Latin Others field test this concept. The wheel system hadn't been assembled yet, so how did they know this would work? Oh year, Black Shirt is Special.

For Black Shirt to have materminded his plan for sending Locke jumping through seemingly random time skips, it seems he's got some grasp and control of the whole time travel racket.

Mad Mom

What's particularly confusing about Mom is that she's a murdering mad woman. Why is she charged with taking care of the most important place on earth? Is she good or bad? What's her beef with humanity and why won't she let the boys off the island? It make the whole protector of the island gig seem not all that benevolent.

She seemed to have some magic, saying things like, I've made it so you two cannot harm each other. Although it's not really clear what she can and can't do. She's got some magic wine that turns Jacob in the new protector, and she seems to know going in the glowy energy hole is bad.

When she finds out Black Shirt has devised a way of leaving, she goes street rat crazy. Somehow she fills up the well, destroying his machine. And she burns down the Latin Others' village and kills them all.

(So who built the fully constructed donkey wheel that Ben and Locke used? Did Black Shirt build this one himself?)

Smokey Rising

Jacob tosses Black Shirt into the glowy energy hole, which does the weirdest thing ever -- kills his natural body and turns him into a shape-shifting, mind reading, weird-sounding smoke monster. Of course! This seems to amplify the brotherly feud.

Is Black Shirt the first ever smoke monster? Perhaps not.

Ghost Mom/Smoke Monster?

Even way back when, there were dead people appearing on the island. The Twins biological mother, who was killed by Mad Mom, appears to young Black Shirt. She leads him to the Latin Others and tells him mankind ain't that bad.

Now, is she a real ghost? Or was there already a Smokey on the island manipulating Black Shirt into his future role. That would bring some symmetry to the cycle. After all, if there are repeated island protectors, why wouldn't there be repeated Smokey Monster villains?

Thus the struggle to keep the Smoke contained and the island safe would play out generation after generation.

(On the Other hand, I wondered if Mad Mom was also a Smokey Monster herself. How else would she unleash such carnage on the Latin Others.)

The Rules

So none of that mythos has a reasonable explanation -- it just is what it is. We don't know why it's that way, we just jump into a previous cycle. But it pretty much fills in the holes we needed for the island's history.

The one thing I feel like this episode should have handled better is the many rules governing Jacob and Black Shirt. They can't harm each other, can't kill candidates, can't leave the island while candidates are alive -- WHY though? Did mom's magic just create these arbitrary rules?

And do these rules have ANYTHING to do with the rules that apply to Ben and Widmore. Seemingly not. Do they have anything to do with the rules that "don't apply" to Desmond? Not sure.

Adam and Eve

Oh yeah, we've finally got the identity of our very own Adam and Eve: Black Shirt's empty flesh husk and his dead adoptive mother. Husband and wife don't exactly equal mother and son. Nor do the white and black stones exactly represent the two skeletons. Nor are these two characters representative "first" Losties.

So the metaphor isn't perfect. But at least is an OLD mystery solved, and the characters are important to the overall mythos.

Themes

I kinda dug the theme of Jacob and Black Shirt's utter isolation on the island. Per the title, they believed in a land "Across the Sea" without understanding what it was. Kind of like Artistotle's cave metaphor, they percieve shadows of what the world was like. Or like man looking out at the stars wondering if we're alone. Like looking for the spiritual world, believing, but not understanding, what's truly out there.

Back then at least, Jacob and Black Shirt had a skewed view of mankind. --Man, who they are protecting by protecting the energy, but also whom they they must protect the energy from.

(Yeah, Jacob leaves the island as he pleases later. What's up with that?)

Next Week

As I write this, unpacking last night's episode, I'm starting to wonder if we'll see anymore of this time period. As always, it's like where THAT CLOSE to having a clear picture, but not really. There are so many things that need more clarity I can't see us visiting this time again in the last 3 1/3 hours, which I assume will play out like one big finale.

I mean, we've gotta see Jacob and Black shirt be replaced, some kind of war with Widmore's army, Black Shirt leaving and destroying the island, Juliet's date with Sawyer, find out who Jack's ex-wife and David's mom is, and Desmond's gotta work his magic to converge the two world's. Whew. I think we've got some weirdness in story.

LosTalk: The Candidate (6 x 14)

2010-05-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

Black Shirt has been scheming for decades, centuries even, to kill Jacob and then kill all Jacob's candidates. There was only one missing piece in his elaborate plan... a man's digital watch.

Not a lot of mythos or plot to unpack this week, but at least we got some good old fashioned major character killin'!

More Fish Biscuits, Anyone?

Widmore has captured all the Losties and locks them up in the Dharma bear cages. (I guess Lost feels that simple visual references to previous seasons will suffice instead of actually explaining things.)

Anyway, Widmore threatens to kill Kate if the Losties don't get in the cages, explaining that Kate isn't important to him. Sawyer confirms that Kate's name was crossed out in Black Shirt's cave. This would have been a great opportunity to provide a cogent reason for why Kate isn't a candidate and why she isn't one of THE numbers. Or they could have used this time to explain what Widmore knows about the candidates and how he plans to use them against Black Shirt. Alas not.

Smokie to the Rescue

Black Shirt explains to Jack he needs Jack to convince the others to trust him. (Isn't this the plot of like every episode of Lost? Someone needs somebody to get some folks to trust them.) Jack's believes he has a purpose on the island and won't be leaving but agrees, for some reason, to help Black Shirt convince the gang to go.

That night, Jack teams up with the Smoke Monster (you wouldn't have seen that duo coming way back in the Pilot) and they break the gang out of their cages.

Ajirah Plane Plan

Suddenly it's morning, and Black Shirt plus his recruits make it to the Ajira plane. Flcoke kills a couple of Widmore's guards and obtains a digital watch -- the missing key to his mater plan! After climbing the fastidiously constructed bamboo stairs to the plane, Black Shirt realizes the airliner has been rigged with explosives.

Black Shirt claims Widmore planted the C4 to kill all of them. However, wasn't it Alpert, Ben, and Miles who recently left to blow up this very plane to prevent Black Shirt from leaving?

In the tradition of Locke before him, Black Shirt won't leave without stuffing some of the explosives in his backpack.

All of You Must Go

Back in S5, Hawking made a big deal about all the Losties being present on Ajirah 316 in order for them to be able to return. This bit of hocus pocus never got explained, and now Flocke has claimed that all have to be together in order to leave.

It strikes me that maybe Eloise was duped into believing this, after all where'd she get her info? Remember, it was ghost Christian (actually Black Shirt) who told Locke to gather the Oceanic 6 and to find Eloise who could send them back. Perhaps there's nothing magical about them all being on that flight -- the proxy system was just a rouse. Black Shirt simply needed all Jacob's Candidates back on the island so he could kill them before escaping.

In any case, we know it's Black Shirt, not Widmore, who wants the candidates dead.

Sub Plan B

Since the plane is rigged with explosives Black Shirt decides they should leave on Widmore's sub. (Sawyer had been planning to take that route anyhow.)

Wait a sec, if Black Shirt is planning to blow up all the candidates, why not just do it on this pre-rigged plane? Why trek all the way over to the sub? Anyhow...

Left Behind... Again

They arrive at the sub to find themselves in a gun battle with more of Widmore's army of dofus mercenaries. Kate gets shot! (Another Kate-death fakeout.) Most of the major characters make it into the sub... except Crazy Claire.

Sawyer stops, considering whether to go back for her. Back in S4 sawyer ran into a fire fight to rescue Claire. This time he decides to leave her behind. Again. Granted, Claire has done lost her mind now and is a possible Zombie.

I'm Melting!

Jack makes a heroic move to save his friends... He pushes Flocke into the water. Water is like Kryptonite to Black Shirt! Water kills Black Shirt. Wait, no, it makes him swim a little bit before getting out of the water again.

Jack changes his mind and ducks into the sub because he was being shot at, or to help Kate, or something.

Black Shirt is happy because now all of his eggs are in one basket... er, sub. He doesn't mind that Claire got left because he's only concerned with killing Candidates. (Wait a sec, what was with all those Others Black Shirt recruited from the Temple? Remember he gave them a "choice" to stay and be killed or follow him off the island? Oh nevermind.)

Sawyer and Lapidus start yelling for the sub pilot to "dive" because they're both comfortable with submarine vernacular.

Da Bomb

Jack finds a time bomb in his pack. So that's what the digital watch was for! Black Shirt finally has the necessary tool to kill the Candidates. There's no time to resurface before the bomb explodes.

Jack is familiar with the show's rule that Black Shirt cannot kill the Candidates. However, if I'm not mistaken, the rule that Jack should be familiar with is that candidates cannot kill themselves (a la he and Alpert's game of dynamite roulette). Anyway, Jack has faith that they won't die.

Sawyer says "screw that" and defuses the bomb, which causes the watch to countdown even faster! Black Shirt clearly used his background in electrical engineering to rewire the wristwatch.

Then things get street rat crazy.

Rest In Pieces Sayid... For real this time... For now

To save the gang, Zombie Sayid grabs the bomb and runs to the far end of the ridiculously long sub. He gets killed in a fireball. Did the "darkness" reach his heart and overtake him as Dogan suggested? Seems like Sayid was still capable of a selfless act.

I was actually kinda hoping we'd see Black Shirt make good on his word to bring Nadia back to life for the Iraqi.

I prematurely called R.I.P. to Sayid last season. This time I think it will stick. That is, until Black Shirt leaves the island, evaporates this timeline, making the Flashsideways World the real timeline... where Sayid and EVERYBODY is happily alive.

R.I.P. Jin and Sun

Sniff. Wait, what? We waited a long, long, long time for their reunion, and they turn around and kill them! At least they went out speaking their native tongue, English... I mean, Korean.

Jin decides to intentionally orphan his child by staying with Sun. They die in the saddest way possible... holding hands.

Remember when Lost was a survivor's tale about who would make it off this mysterious island? Jin and Sun were close to the top of the list of characters still deserving to make it home for a happily ever after. Not anymore.

With their tearful deaths, Lost has completed it's notorious tradition of prematurely killing off all it's racial minority characters. (Yeah, I know Miles is still alive out there somewhere.)

R.I.P. Frank

Oh, and they threw in one dead white guy for good measure. Frank spent most of this season nodding at other characters' plans and delivering bad action movie quips.

All along we knew they were keeping him around to serve some big purpose in the end. Maybe to fly the plane home. Maybe we'd learn why Jacob made his alarm clock malfunction keeping him from piloting the first flight 815. Maybe we'd learn why Smokey killed Pilot Norris in the cockpit. Why was Frank eventually brought to the island on the Freighter and then again on Ajirah 316? They island wasn't done with Frank yet.

What's that? He got killed by a big metal door? I guess the island is done with him. ABC is like, we paid this name actor to live in Hawaii another year and a half for this?! I love how Jack, Hurley, and Kate didn't even bat an eye about Frank dying while mourning to others.

Black Shirt the All Powerful

Somehow Black Shirt knows that Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer are still alive. I guess he can sense them. Add that to his ever-expanding list of powers and limitations: can't directly kill Jacob or candidates, can't go over water, stuck on island while Jacob and Cadidates are alive, can't change forms anymore (questionable), can rewire wristwatches... oh yeah, can turn into a killer Smoke Monster

Dead AND Alive

Four major deaths made our death board last night, but don't worry everyone will be alive any happy at the end when the Flashsideways Universe takes over. I get the feeling EVERYONE in the original timeline might die in the next couple weeks. At least, everyone who doesn't turn into the new Jacob and Black Shirt.

The Candidate

As per the the title of this week's episode, we found out who Jacob's Candidate was!!! Nevermind, we just found out Locke is a candidate... for an experimental surgery.

Jack turns into a psycho stalker trying to find out how Locke was injured. He even tracks down Anthony Cooper, a drooling vegetable in a nursing home. We find out, in this world, Locke crippled both he and his father in an amateur plane crash. Significant? Probably not.

I'll be interested to see if Sawyer runs into this version of Anthony Cooper, and if he'll still want revenge with him in this state.

Claire 2.0

Claire shows up at the hospital, not to deliver her baby, but to ask why Christian left her a music box in his will. Jack doesn't know why, but they do look longingly into the music box's mirror. I wonder if these weekly mirror moments are subtly telling us this world is a reflection of the other world. Hmm.

Jack tells Claire she can come live with him. Why not. She's already gone to the hospital with a gun-toting car thief and brought creepy-stalker Desmond to her adoption meeting. Par for the course.

Next Week

Finally. Forget Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, and all those distracting characters. At last we get an episode about the show's true main characters, Jacob and Black Shirt. Now Locke's backgammon speech and the occasional appearances of black and white stones will all make sense!

This close to the end, it feels like Lost is saying, remember all that wacky stuff from seasons 1 through 5? It all makes sense. Don't worry about it. Here's what the show's about now.

I know I'm dogging a lot on Lost recently. However, I've re-watched some of this season and I like the episodes all better the second time through. There's an initial shock of "You're doing WHAT with the show?" each week that wears off after time.

LosTalk: The Last Recruit (6 x 13)

2010-04-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

The best episodes of Lost leave you wanting another hour when they are over. This week was the first time I'd felt that way in a long time, which is interesting because nothing spectacular happened, no mind-blowing reveals. Probably the fact that all our characters have finally convened in both time lines made this week satisfying.

The Last Recruit

The episode's title presumably refers to Jack. I suppose he was the final recruit rounded up by Black Shirt to go home.

This doesn't make a lot of sense, since all our Losties are planning to double cross Flocke and leave the island without him. Doesn't seem like any of them are his recruits.

Man of Science, Man of Faith

I have a tendency not to believe anything the liars Damon and Carlton say about what's coming in the show. However, they've long promised that Season 6 would bring a satisfying conclusion to Jack and Locke's science/faith contention.

Yet it's hard to see that happening when Locke is dead and gone. Meanwhile Jack has taken up the faith position, believing they've come back for some greater purpose. Are we to take it that Black Shirt-as-Locke has assumed the man of science role?

Flocke said this week that he chose Locke because he was a sucker, easily duped into believing he had a purpose. This sounds like Jack's former skeptical opinion. But Black Shirt's assessment of Locke should be taken with a grain of salt, since he was the one who duped Locke.

We're starting to see the chinks in Black Shirt's scheme, that his understanding of the greater purpose may have some blind spots. After all, Jacob touched Locke along with the rest. Jack now believes in their purpose, so they may bring some redemption to Locke's position in the end.

Christian

In a big reveal, Black Shirt confessed to Jack that he was always responsible for the Christian Shephard appearances on the island. Throughout the series ghost Christian's appearances were sometimes benevolent (leading them to water) and sometimes manipulative, tricking the Losties into springing Black Shirt's trap.

Re-watching the series this past year, it was my guess that Black Shirt was responsible for a great deal of the supernatural events on the island - all part of his master plan. And ghost Christian was a big part of it.

Black Shirt also confirmed he can only take on the form of the dead, although not explicitly only those whose bodies are on the island. It seems it was important to have Locke's body back simply so he could trick Ben and the others into believing Locke had resurrected and was truly special.

Manifestations, Ghosts, and Walt

The show makes it difficult know what's going on with all the dead-folk appearances. I've complained before, there's too many rules for how and why the dead show up. Black Shirt may be responsible for a great deal of these apparitions, but there are still exceptions.

If we're to believe ghost-Michael, the souls of certain people who've done bad things are stuck on the island, thus the whispers.

Hurley sees stuck souls on the island, but he also seems to see ghosts in general, on or off the island.

Black Shirt confirmed he cannot get off the island, so what was with Christian's appearance to Jack in the hospital? Jack forgot to ask Flocke about this incident while he was being so divulging.

Further, Claire appeared to Kate off island. This was just a dream, but certainly someone had an agenda behind it.

All of these manifestations dealt with the dead (or possibly dead - Claire). There's one appearance that totally breaks the mold: Taller Ghost Walt appearing to Locke at the mass grave. Walt most certainly isn't dead, so what gives? I hope, please, please, that they're going to involve Walt in a big way in the finale, and that this moment is addressed.

Walt's admonition to Locke's seems to fit Black Shirt's MO. He told Locke he had "work to do." This spurred Locke on to complete Black Shirt's purpose. I believe it was later revealed Walt told Locke to stop Naomi and Widmore. So if this wasn't Black Shirt, then what was Walt doing there and serving whose goals?

Desmond

In further on-island happenings, Desmond is stuck at the bottom of a not-too-deep well. When Black Shirt realizes Desmond is Widmore's secret weapon, he sends Sayid to kill him. (If Desmond is still a Candidate, this may explain why Black Shirt can't kill him and why he didn't die falling into the well.)

Desmond (hopefully!) convinced Sayid not to kill him in a nice scene that reminds us of Michael's guilty soul. Sayid is obeying Black Shirt so that Nadia will be brought back to life. Desmond asks Sayid what he'll tell Nadia he did to bring her back - implying, can you live with the guilt of killing an innocent man to bring her back? Michael, you'll recall, went mad with guilt over killing Libby and Ana Lucia to get his son back.

The Getaway

The reconvened Losties pull a fast one on Black Shirt, stealing a sailboat (The Elizabeth? I can't keep track anymore.), and escaping to Hydra Island.

Sawyer

Sawyer once again uses his head. He's the only Lostie that applies what he knows about the island, it's rules and nonsense.

After three years living in Dharma days, he knows the only way on or off the island without a correct, ever-changing bearing, is on a sub. That's a good enough justification for ditching the Ajirah plane plan and stealing Widmore's sub.

Crazy Claire

Kate is at least staying true to her word about rescuing Claire. Against Sawyer's judgement, they let Claire flee on the boat with them.

There was a real moment there when I thought Claire was going to shoot Kate. I know a lot of fans have been hoping for Kate's demise for a long time.

Change of Heart

Sailing to Hydra island, Jack has a change of heart. The Losties are ready to escape once and for all, but Jack's new sense of purpose tells him they didn't all return to the island just to leave again. He remembers how wrong it felt when they left the first time (questionable...), and since Black Shirt clearly wants them all to leave, Jack surmises that Black Shirt may be afraid of what will happen if they stay.

Jack then swims (with his backpack!) back to the main island and reconvenes with Flocke. What he expect to do hanging out with Black Shirt and some random nameless Others is unclear.

Reunion, Finally!

The rest of the gang land on Hydra island and encounter Widmore's army. And who's been chilling in Widmore's camp? Jin.

Unexpectedly, after nearly 2 seasons and three years apart, we have Jin and Sun's tearful reunions. Seeing Jin, or course, brings Sun's ability to speak English back. (What a pointless plot line!) Although, one might have expected the Korean pair to greet one another in their native tongue.

I'll be honest, their reunion wasn't as joyful as I hoped simply because I was afraid they were going to get fried crossing the sonic fence. The possibility of liquidation was a real distraction.

Flassideways Universe

In the alternate timeline, they nicely worked out a way to bring all the storylines together, with most of the characters convening at the hospital. I won't get into all the plot lines, but a few things stood out.

Jack was hanging out with his new BFF, his son David. The dialogue teased us gain with mentions of David's mother. I kept looking around the lobby waiting for Juliet to show up and work that love quadrangle back into the new time line.

There was another big tease when we saw Sun recovering in her hospital room. She was holding hands with Jin after learning her baby would be alright. Then there was this loooong pull back out of the room. I was totally expecting Juliet to be her baby doctor at the hospital.

After being mowed down by Desmond, Locke is on Jack's operating table. Does the doctor have the healing gift in this timeline? Is it possible his patients' miraculous recoveries in the Original Time line had more to do with Jacob's touch? I think most of us expect Locke to be walking in this time line too.

Destiny Desmond

Checking people off the manifest, Desmond visits Claire, but what exactly did he do for her? Did Desmond arrange for her to meet the Shephard family lawyer before signing Aaron's adoption papers?

Presumably, since Christian left everything to Claire in this timeline, she'll receive her inheritance and not have to give Aaron up for adoption.

Back So Soon?

I guess since they gave Zuleikha Robinson star billing this season, they needed to use her as much as possible. We didn't have to wait long after her death to see her again.

Even she somehow lives in Los Angeles in the FS-Universe and just happens to be the Shephards' lawyer.

"It Only Ends Once"

The big question for the Season, of course, is which of the two timelines will prevail, which will become Jacob's one true end?

While a couple weeks back I theorized that this timeline was just a pacifier universe, giving the Losties what they want so they won't suspect their true destinies lie somewhere else. However, this week I couldn't hep feel that the FS-Losites are the recipients of what many of the OT-Timeline Losties are working toward.

Sayid just wants Nadia alive. Well, she's alive in the FS-world.

Kate wants Claire to have Aaron. It looks like she may not give him up in the other world.

Jin and Sun are in love and free from the shackles of her father now in FS-America.

Is this destiny's way of working out the OT-character's plans in ways they did not expect?

Wacky Theory of the Week

Another not-well though out idea of mine, just some broad stokes. So we've got radiation-resistant Desmond at the bottom of the well that leads to the time travel energy. Surely he'll do something down there.

If Black Shirt gets everyone to leave the island "everything" will cease to exist.

What it, Des time travels them into the past right before the plane leaves the island. The plane leaves ending that timeline and *somehow* lands on the island in the flashsideways world.

The Losties then sink the island, sacrificing themsleves so their happier FS-selves can live.

Overly simple, disregards lots of plot and themes, doesn't make sense, but could be a possible direction.

----

Next week's episode: "The Candidate." Can Jack be both Black Shirt's Final Recruit and Jacob's Candidate?

Relevant 5: week of April 12, 2010

2010-04-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

5. The Spiral Staircase (1945)

Directed by Robert Siodmak, Written by Mel Dinelli, based on a novel by Ethel Lina White

Jo left town for the weekend, so of course I took the opportunity to check out old mystery movies from the library! Could I be any more pathetic?

This classic thriller is a direct precursor to the modern slasher. A psycho killer hunts down a group trapped in an old mansion, only instead of sexy teenagers, back then the victims were mostly stuffy, rich people.

This is an excellent example of what you're forced to imagine being worse than what is shown on the screen. Until the reveal, we never see more than one of the killer's eyes and his hands, making the slayings (or worse) of his female victims all the more disturbing.

The main character (and potential victim) is mute, so she couldn't scream or call for help. The reveal of the killer was a little predictable (process of elimination - pretty much everybody else was dead!), although his motivation was not setup at all beforehand, which I found kind of weak.

4. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Written by Paul Dehn, Based on the novel by Agatha Christie

I remember my mom being a huge fan of these Poirot films. I feel like there used to be a huge audience for this kind of stuff. So what's the modern equivalent of these old mysteries, and where did this whole audience go? These must be the same people watching CSI and Law and Order five nights a week now. I know my mom sure does! But these modern mysteries are much more graphic and sexed-up than their formal older counterparts.

This kind of material was a big deal back then. It garnered stars like Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Michael York, and a bunch of other old names that sound familiar but whose faces I didn't recognize.

This movie had a lot of talking and a few shots of the train. Not a lot else going on. There were some clever moments, but nothing really that funny. I guess the people who liked this sort of thing were into "clever."

3. The return of Glee (Tue, April 13th)

Somehow they are still trying to call this Season 1 of Glee, although I'm almost certain this show has been on the air for close to a year and half with two extended hiatuses.

I know as a former theater kid and show choir member I'm supposed to be into this show, but I think my extended sighs every time they start to sing is evidence that I'm not the target audience. On account of Tivo, I now have to sit through Glee immediately after Lost Night for the next 5 weeks. After that, Jo can watch Glee on her own. ;)

However this episode did include one of the funniest lines I've heard in a while: "Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?"

2. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

Directed by Steven Shainberd, Written by Erin Cressida Wilson, Based on the novel by Patricia Bosworth

This is the first script I read after moving to Hollywood that was eventually made. I read this as an intern for Ed Pressman Films, who produced the biopic of the famous photographer. The film is almost word for word as I remembered reading the draft.

The film is beautifully shot and well acted by Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey Jr., and Ty Burrell (Modern Family). This film came in that brief bubble where Nicole Kidman carried a lot of art house cred, and right before rehabilitated Robert Downey Jr. exploded as the new "it" man.

This is one of those women's lib stories where the central character leaves her "oppressive" husband and the "burden" of her kids to go "find herself" by running around with a bunch of freaks and weirdos. A shining example of wise life decisions.

The film's main weakness is failing to communicate who Diane Arbus is and why her contribution to photography is significant. I assume she's famous for photographing the midgets, transvestites, and amputees she hung around with in the film, however we never see her take photos of any of them. After reading the script and watching the film I know all about her "imaginary" affair with a wolf-man, however I still don't know who Diane Arbus is.

1. Frequency (2000)

Directed by Gregory Hoblit, Written by Toby Emmerich

This movie is kinda like Season 5 of Lost. It has a time travel plot with characters separated by exactly 30 years, it starts Elizabeth Mitchell, and even has a character named Jack Shepherd. Weird.

The screenplay was written by Toby Emmerich, whose only other writing credit is The Last Mimzy (yecht!), however Emmerich has produced a laundry list of fantastic and successful films.

Jo told me I'd think this movie was cheesy. She forgot what a sucker I am for all things time travel related. The aurora borealis plus something about string theory allows a son (Jim Caviezel, Jesus from The Passion of the Christ) to talk to his deceased father (Dennis Quaid) over a HAM radio. Actually the same HAM radio, just separated by 30 years.

Despite the corny setup, I totally dug how the film handles it's time travel issues. The son is a cop who, using old case files and help of his father, solves a string of murders 30 years in the past. However each time dad prevents a murder in the past there are immediate consequences for the son's life in the future. The dad's actions eventually endanger the mother (Elizabeth Mitchell as a brunette with a terrible east coast accent).

The story is interesting and the concept is executed logically, however, some of the dialogue is corny. If you have information from the future NEVER tell anybody HOW you know what's going to happen, it's just common sense! This is the fastest way to the loony bin, jail, or worse.

Rewriting time so the father survives all the way to the present day was a bit of a stretch. The ending is a little saccharine for my taste, but overall I really enjoyed this one.

LosTalk: Everybody Loves Hugo (6 x 12)

2010-04-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! Lots of meat to talk about this week!

Just a little disclaimer: I write these blogs after a single viewing - no re-watching - and before I read anybody's blogs, etc., so that the opinions and theories are my own (or ones I steal from Lost Night friends!). Although I do sometimes first watch (and recommend) the hilarious Puppet Chang recap videos!

First Casualty, Finally!

You'll recall at our season premiere party we constructed a "death board" for betting on who would survive the series finale. Of course, the alternate universe showed up and made the game rules kind of muddy.

We've been waiting all season for someone to kick it (someone, unlike Keamy, who wasn't already dead), and we finally got our first... Ilana!

Her premature explosion really makes her about the least important starring character in the series. Really, what was the point of this character? It's like they got into the final season and realized, hold on, we've got WAY too many characters in this show!

Ilana's mysterious pre-island flashback with Jacob was revealed to be a dud. All Jacob did was tell her to protect the candidates (which she can no longer do) and to follow Richard's orders.

She brought a whole team with her to do this, and now all of them are dead! Remember the flashback where Ilana's team kidnapped and tried to recruit Miles? What was that about? These guys had secret questions ("What lies in the shadow of the statue?") and an apparent agenda, but they pretty much did squat!

A major explosion sent bits of Ilana raining down all over the beach, yet there's always the chance that we're not done with her story yet. There was some suspicion that she may have been immortal or indestructible like Richard or Mikhail. And even if she' dead Hurley and Miles can both talk to her.

Hurley

Remember back when Hurley's specific mystery was all about the numbers? Now somehow he's all about seeing dead people. Just pointing that out.

I was hoping this week would address WHY Hurley sees dead people. Alas, not.

Hurley does step up into much more of a leadership role. Mabye we'll have a hobbit-like type reversal, where the most unsuspecting of people will turn out to be the biggest hero in the end.

Michael

Hurley got a new ghost friend this week... Michael. Michael shows up and tells Hurley not to blow up the plane, which is what Alpert, Ben, Miles and the late Ilana were all about doing to keep Black Shirt trapped on the island.

Hurley can see pretty much everybody who died on the island (and even some folks who didn't - Richard's wife, Isabella), so why can't he see Libby, the one person he'd like to have a Ghost moment with?

The Whispers

Suddenly Hurley, as if he was reading from a fan's Lost Mysteries Blog, blatantly asks, "What are the Whispers?" (Way to organically work in those answers, guys!) Then Michael's all like, "Yeah, those are the souls of people stuck on the island, like me."

Okay, mystery answered, I guess. Of course, in early seasons, when the Whispers were a big deal, the murmurs in the jungle were often a sound cue for when the Others were about to appear, which doesn't make much sense with this answer.

And why are souls stuck on the island anyway? I know it hearkens once again to the island is a sort of purgatory, but this has been disproven, right?

It's kind of like how we've seen Smokey act as the "judge" or souls, but then we later learned Black Shirt was just manipulating people and sizing them up to see if they were useful to him. It has to be one or the other, it can't be both!

In the same way the island can't be purgatory AND a place where battling demigods are stuck AND a time traveling-teleporting rock. Oh wait, it IS all those things. I'll be amazed if this can be made more logical somehow.

It Takes All of You

Because Michael said not to blow up the Ajirah plane, Hurley makes a power play and leads his friends back to Man-in-Locke's camp. Hurley made a good argument for not destroying the plane - because they'll all be stuck there with a pissed off Black Shirt. However, I have no idea what made him want to go see Flocke. Maybe I missed some dialogue.

All the remaining candidates have now been assembled, including Frank, who is a "possible candidate" according to Ilana. (Speaking of too many characters, Frank hasn't said or done anything meaningful since his return to the series last season. All he did this week was shake his head a couple times!)

Flocke said the only reason they made it back to the island is because they all came together (still unexplained!) and the only way they could get home again would be together. Okay. Hurley, as I mentioned, simply leads them all together for no clear reason.

Another Explaination

It's possible still that Hurley's visions of dead people are not, in fact, visits from stuck souls. Remember, he was visited for years by ghosts OFF the island. Perhaps all his visits are simply manipulations by Black Shirt, which was my original guess. We know Black Shirt has been responsible for ghost visits before: Yemi visiting Eko, Alex's confrontation with Ben, etc.

It might make sense that Michael was actually just Black Shirt convincing Hurley not to blow up the plane, his mode of escape, and to bring the remaining candidates to his camp.

Reunion... Almost!

When Jack, Hurley, and Sun arrive at Flocke's camp, where Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, and Claire are chilling, this is the first time all our surviving Losties have been in the same place since they split into two camps at the beginning of Season 4.

Wait! No, almost! Jin still isn't there. He's with Widmore, for no good reason, on Hydra island. Apparently they're waiting till the last second of the final episode to reunite Jin and Sun.

Jack, Leader or Follower

When Jack sees Locke seemingly alive and well, he's like -- aw snap. While just about everyone with Jack at the beach camp had run into Black Shirt as Locke, apparently no one thought to tell Jack their dead friend is running around out there.

So Jack, the leader from the beginning, is taking a back seat, while Hurley, always the follower, is taking the lead. The circle is now complete.

Flocke makes a peace offering by handing his knife over. I'm not sure that's a big enough gesture coming from a man who can turn into a Smoke Monster whose trademark is killing people.

Richard

Richard hints again that if Black Shirt gets off the island everything will "go away." Tell us what this means already.

Well, Well, Well

After finding out Desmond is Widmore's secret weapon, Black Shirt takes the Scotsman to a well and throws him down it. When I first saw the well I thought, come on, that was closed up the last time we saw it! However, Black Shirt explains there are multiple wells around the island. I guess this makes sense since there are multiple pockets of electromagnetic energy.

Black Shirt explains that the wells were built by hand a long time ago. People were trying to discover why their compasses didn't work over certain spots on the island. I wonder if they were built before or after Jacob and Black Shirt came to the island. Maybe THEY helped build the wells.

Blonde or Brunette

Black Shirt saw a random burnette kids staring at him in the jungle. Who is this?

Last time he saw a young blonde who we guessed may be a young Jacob. Is this a young Black Shirt? What does it all mean?!

Libby

In the Flashsideways Universe, Hurley runs into Libby and they have their long awaited picnic on the beach. We got more Libby than I expected in this episode.

It's another case where instead of resolving her Original Timeline questions, we get a random new encounter in the FS-world. Did this episode provide adequate resolution to her character?

We were still waiting to find out why Libby was in the mental hospital. Was she a spy keeping an eye on Hurley? Was she on the plane as a possible plant for the Others or Widmore? (BTW, was she supposed to be on the FS-Oceanic 815?)

Apparently, our resolution is that she was simply crazy - in both universes. Which makes me ask was she a practicing clinical psychologist before the crash? Is being a crazy clinical psychologist conflict of interest?

Another way to look at it is that neither Hurley nor Libby were crazy in either universe, they were always just plagued with visions of another lifetime and visions of the dead.

I was happy with the Libby scenes this week. I guess we'll chalk up here giving Desmond his sailboat as sheer coincidence. However, that was always further fuel that LIbby was some sort of spy working for Widmore or the Others.

Desmond, Angel of Destiny

Desmond, able to see uniquely between the universes, is paying visits to the Losties in order to push them toward their true destinies. We see that he was behind Libby and Hurley's date. He's got the flight manifest in hand, so we know he'll be visiting the rest.

The question is, does Des simply want people to remember their other life before offering them some kind of choice? Or is he trying to actively create certain circumstances for the Losties - like giving Hurley and Libby their "date" with fate. Is he trying to make the characters become the people they were in their other lives?

How did meeting Penny let Des know what he's supposed to do? Whatever Des is trying to do, it all seems to be happening very easily for him. People seem unnaturally open to the idea of having an other life in an alternate timeline.

You can almost look at Desmond as a sort of Jacob now. Bouncing around between characters, "touching" them, and influencing their destinies.

Locke Down!

They've run out of episodes and apparently have to double up characters in the flashsideways scenes. Des visits not only Hurley, but also Locke.

I got a kick out of Dr. Linus suspecting Desmond was some sort of lecher hanging around a high school all day. Des was actually there waiting for Locke... waiting to run over the handicapped man!

So why plow down Locke? Three guesses come to mind:

1.) Des is recreating the Losties circumstances in the OT, and Locke is "supposed to" be dead.

2.) This episode made a big dead out of showing us that on-island Des thought that Black Shirt was actually Locke. Perhaps FS-Des remembered Locke throwing him down a well and was out for revenge.

3.) Des wanted to give Locke a near death experience to spark his memories. Similar to Charlie driving the car into the ocean, which sparked Des's memories of another life.

Ben

I'm disappointed with the role Ben has taken. When it was revealed the Ben and Locke were the center of Black Shirt's scheme, it cemented, for me, the importance of Ben to the series. That plus the fact that Ben "always had a plan," it's a let down to see such a compelling character just tagging along in these final moments.

Zombie Sayid

It's also dissatisfying to see such a great conflicted character like Sayid reduced to just an emotionless stooge for Black Shirt.

Overall

Pretty great episode this week. This is starting to feel like old school Lost: plenty of carnage and explosions. The Black Rock blew up! Our Losties are back to lying to and manipulating each other. There were way too many mysteries and cryptic nonsense thrown at us! Just like old times!

And how about that Willy Wonka soundbite over the promo for next week. Weird.

RELEVANT 5: week of April 5, 2010

2010-04-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Here's something that MAY become a regular feature on the blog. (After all, I've got to find something for this blog to be about when Lost is done!) Five quick blurbs on the best of what I've been watching, reading, and bumping into on the Internet over the last week.

Mainly, because my memory is not what it once was, I find myself, at times, hardly able to remember what I watched last night, let alone all the things I've read and seen over the last month. I've needed a way to collect and organize thoughts on all the media I'm consuming, so that when someone asks me if I've seen anything good recently, I don't reply with a stymied, "err....."

These entries aren't supposed to be reviews, per se, but more so they are my way of getting down what stood out to me and what I took away from a particular work. Lest you think me a little obsessive (and if you've read my Lost posts you know that's obviously the case), consciously reacting to material is a vital part of the process for me as a cinemaphile and writer.

Now, I'll stop yammering and get down to business for last week:

5. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (V1:#1) Bloodlust! (1994) 2 1/2 Stars

I've had a hankering to watch some good old MST3K for several weeks now, so I finally bumped a few discs to the top of my Blockbuster queue. Bloodlust was an 1961 film about some teens who end up on a deserted island where an eccentric millionaire hunts humans for sport.

I was surprised to find my feelings about MSTK3K were much the same as they are about Weird Al Yankiovich these days - that is, It's so clean, so tame, I can't believe this used to be nearly mainstream entertainment! That's not to say there weren't jokes about sex, drugs, etc., but the jokes were all so polite and subdued they hardly registered as jokes. It's amazing how we've lost our appreciation of wry wit in favor of in-your-face crassness.

The jokes per minute ratio in MST3K was far less than I remembered. As a teen watching the show on Saturday mornings, I recall recognizing Mike and the robots' banter as jokes, but much of it went straight over my head at the time. It's funny that now, some 15 years later, many of their pop culture references are so dated I still don't get some of it.

Much of the show is still downright hilarious - the expert-level sarcasm and obscure references. There's a certain moodiness to everything from the show's creepy theme song to the do-it-yourself quality of the set and special effects that makes you wonder how this was ever allowed on TV. This series launched a generation of masochistic bad film lovers, of which I am proudly one.

4. White Dog (1982) -1 Stars (so bad it's good)

Directed by Samuel Fuller, Written by Samuel Fuller and Curtis Hanson

Speaking of bad films, White Dog is the story of a racist dog and the black animal trainer who attempts to rehabilitate it. Paramount suppressed the release of this film because, despite the blatant attempt at racially progressive themes, the whole thing comes off as distasteful. The movie first saw the light of day in a 2008 Criterion DVD release.

In the film, a background actress (who can remarkably afford a home in the Hollywood Hills) adopts a dog, who, she later learns, was trained by trailer trash rednecks to attack black people. After a few fatal and nearly-fatal attacks, she takes the dog to expert Hollywood animal trainers for reconditioning.

According to the disc's special features (which are arguably worse than the film), we learn the writer intended the animal trainer to recondition the dog to hate white people. The director felt that ending was racist, and opted for a more vague ending where, arguably, the rehabilitated dog mistakes the animal shelter's benevolent white owner for the redneck who abused it as a puppy. The dog then attacks the owner and must be put down despite the incredible progress it made.

This high-minded yet ineptly misguided film is delightfully bad. From cringe worthy dialogue to vanishing subplots, you can't help but scratch your head trying to think who they ever thought this film, hardly more than a preachy PSA, would be marketed toward. My favorite part was when the Hollywood animal trainers were throwing darts at a cardboard cutout of R2D2, complaining that children's obsession with robots was creating far fewer roles for animals in the movies!

3. Clash of the Titans (2010) 2 1/2 Stars

Directed by Louis Leterrier, Written by Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi

I'll admit I love all kinds of uneven and imperfect films. While the Titans reboot is fun, it fails to push any of the buttons that would have let me buy into the less than perfect film. A quick rundown of where the film missed the mark for me:

First, I didn't like of the characters enough to want to go on this adventure with them. There was a sardonic old man, and the Merry and Pippen-like comedy duo who all try their best win us over. While the witty banter-in-the-face-of-danger was funny enough, they were too arrogant and obnoxious from the start for me to laugh along. Nobody from the city of Argos was worth saving. We only meet two egotistical monarchs, a religious zealot, and a princess who, while benevolent, is still a little snotty.

Second, the plot made no sense. I won't get into all the pointless subplots and side characters or all the things that happened for no reason. Case in point: Hades' whole racket is that Argos will be destroyed by the Kraken if they do not sacrifice princess Andromeda. After Persius finishes his quest, Andromeda is hanging right there ready for sacrifice, but the Kracken goes ahead with destroying the town anyway.

Third, I wasn't blown away by the effects. I did dig the design of Olympus (but didn't think it was used or explored adequately) and Argos looked pretty cool. However, as usual, the effects sequences were all unintelligible frenetic motion shots, which never slowed down enough to communicate a sense of grandeur or terror. Was Medusa a cool looking character? Who knows, she didn't slow down once so we could get a look at her weirdly-morphing face.

Four, they fail the imbue such rich mythic subject matter with any sense of wonder. While the original Titans may be corny, and I haven't seen it in years, I remember how wonderfully foreign and epic it all felt. If you can't make your characters likable, at least give them an aura of mystique. For example, Io carried with her no sense of other-worldliness. Instead she's just the hot chick along for the ride, smiling at the right times, and inexplicably busting out the martial arts when the time calls.

I'm serious that if they could have nailed any one of these issues above, I would have been sold. There's so much potential with swords and monsters. Instead I spent one scene after another getting more disappointed. Yeah, Titans is fun, but it never became more than a generic CGI-driven action movie.

2. Harry Potter Book Series 5 stars

Written by J.K. Rowling

Finally, at Jo's recommendation, I dove into the HP series last July. Since then I've blown through all seven books, the first six I listened to on CD (and the voice acting by Jim Dale is incredible - 134 difference character voices!). I just finished Deathly Hallows in book form.

Forget the fact that these are young adult books, I was immensely impressed by the rich and complex universe set forth in the series. The books respect their own inter-continuity like no other series I know. Small gags in one book turn into major plot elements in the next. A deep tapestry of memorable characters and themes run throughout the series. While I'm a fan of the movies (the latter ones more so than the first two), very little of this depth or complexity comes across in the films.

The first few books are classic British whodunits, while the later books grow more and more intricate and deal more with the overarching mysteries and purpose surrounding Harry's life. I was perhaps most impressed with how the final installment was able to bring the many many disperate characters and plot lines to a satisfying conclusion.

1. Battlestar Galatica (2003-2009) 5 Stars

One of the best serialized Sci Fi shows, if not just about my all around favorite TV series ever. Which is amazing because, during the years this aired, I never watched it, dismissing it as a cheap remake of a cheesy 1970's Star Wars ripoff.

Instead I found a show full of compelling characters and gut-wrenching moral drama in every episode. Not to mention some of the best action and special effects on television. The first two seasons are about moral compromises made in the name of survival, and if society and democracy can stand after such blights on the record of humanity. The second two seasons become about forgiveness and moving on.

Like the Potter series, BSG is full of wonderful setups and payoffs, sometimes seasons later. The show balances its motif of fate vs. choice surprisingly well. And ultimately, after walking its characters down some very dark paths, it delivers an ending of hope. More remarkably, the finale manages to wind up all its dangling plotlines and mysteries in a single climax that cogently addresses the supernatural elements (instead of conveniently letting those elements fizzle out).

While they are different beasts, BSG shares a lot of similarities with Lost - season-spanning mysteries and themes of faith vs. science. And BSG manges to be coherent and address its internal mysteries in ways I'm afraid Lost may not pull off at this point. (Believe me, I'll be happy to eat my words on this.) This show gets my highest recommendation.

LosTalk: Happily Ever After (6 x 11)

2010-04-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

Finally, an episode that gives a little direction to this waffling season! Everyone's rejoicing like "Happily Ever After" was a return to form for Lost. While this was certainly one of the most interesting episodes of the season, this week's Desmond-centirc episode doesn't stack up anywhere near the quality of past Desisodes like: "Live Together Die Alone," "Flashes Before Your Eyes," or "The Constant."

I guess people are just happy that, unlike some recent S6 episodes where nothing of substance happened, we can at least feel the drive toward the conclusion with "special" Desmond's promise that, "he already knows what he has to do." Of course, exactly what he's going to do and what the stakes are is clear as mud as always.

There's probably two reasons everyone's so excited about this episode. First, it finally brought some direction to the existence of the Flashsideways Universe. Second it confirmed that Desmond's specialness will be key in connecting the two universes.

Desmond's No Good, Very Bad, Metaphysical Day

In the FS Universe Desmond works for Charles Widmore, the powerful LA-based (?) organized crime boss. It's unclear if Desmond is some kind of hit man or simply a highly paid errand boy, but he's very chummy with old Widmore and apparently very happy being single, which he mentions to many complete strangers.

(Jacob and Black Shirt's scales on Widmore's wall.)

All he has to do is get a suicidal Charlie Pace (who, "in another life, brutha" Des named his son after) to a charity concert to play with Daniel ~~Faraday~~ Widmore. Throughout his exciting day, everyone starts talking to Desmond about true love, love at first sight, destiny, and alternate realities. All very casual stuff to talk to complete strangers about.

(Charlie reenacts a scene from when his character was interesting.)

In fact, the bulk of the episode was taken up with these vague abstract conversations. It's almost as if the character had to shoehorn in enough metaphysics and psuedo-science for an entire season because there was no more time to work these elements into the story organically.

In a Universe...

I will admit this episodes turns on its head some of my theories about the nature of the Flashsideways Universe. It had been my guess that the FS Universe was sort of "free will" universe where our characters were working out their own destinies free of puppet masters and supernatural meddlers. However, this episode made it seem that the new timeline was created to merely satisfy our Losties desires without them fulfilling their true destinies. Kind of like a babbysitter timeline, while the true parent timeline is out doing something else.

Eloise makes clear to Desmond that he's been given the one thing he's always wanted: the approval of Charles Widmore. As if Demond is just being placated, pandered to, until a time when he's really needed? How many of the other Losties is this true for. Many of their lives are happier, but is does this timeline have them doing what they are "supposed to" do?

Eloise ~~Hawking~~ Widmore

One thing does make sense in this new universe, and that's how last names are assigned. Unlike the original timeline where last names (like Faraday) can be handed out at random regardless of your parents' names.

It's curious that other characters may have random "mirror moments" where they glimpse memories of another lifetime, but Eloise seems to have a clear understanding of what's going on in a metaphysical sense. This is similar to her understanding of what was happening to Desmond when he first went time skipping in "Flashes Before Your Eyes."

Here, Eloise tells Desmond he's not supposed to meet Penny yet, that he's right where he's supposed to be, etc. Almost as if in this universe (as in the original timeline) Eliose has carefully constructed Desmond's circumstances so he'd be at the right place at the right time. Is she the only one who knows what's happening? Is charles in on it too?

"Special"

We all know "the rules" don't apply to Desmond, and this is what allows him to consciously skip through time and, apparently now, through different universes. This specialness will presumably allow Des to work in both timelines and bring the show to its conclusion.

(Desmond becomes Dr. Manhattan.)

Widmore apparently knows the rules don't apply to Des because he survived a electromagnetic disaster. Although how Widmore got the report that Des survived the Hatch implosion is anybody's guess. After putting him in the electromagnetic donut box, I was expecting Des to wake up naked in the jungle again.

It would be nice however, if some clarity were brought to whether Desmond's rules have anything to do with the so-called "rules" that pertain to Widmore and Ben Linus and the "rules" that govern Jacob and Blackshirt. What are these rules? Will they please put them all in a memo for us?

Now, if Eloise is keeping Des away from Penny for a reason, then it looks like Daniel has thrown a wrench in her plan by introducing the universe-crossed lovers.

(Dan does his best Sean Lennon impression.)

When Desmond touched hands with his Constant it seems that the memories of their other life came flooding back to him. Back on the island, Des tells Widmore he knows what he has to do. But are Desmond's plans really in line with what Widmore and Eliose had set up for him, or is he going rogue?

(Who said you could leave FlashForward?)

Des seems very willing to follow when Zombie-Sayid disarms Widmore's Tina Fey. Are Desmond's plans in the FS Universe only or does he have work left to do on the island?

(Widmore's Tina Fey)

If anything, Desmond's line "I'll see you in another life, brutha" has proved to be extremely prescient, and is perhaps good evidence the the show runners have long had a plan for what to do with this character.

Manifest Destiny

After meeting Penny and realizing that this is not his real life, Des asks driver Minkowsky if he can get the flight manifest for Oceanic 815. Of course a chauffeur can get the flight manifest! (Maybe Widmore runs Oceanic airlines in this timeline too.)

(That's why they call him George "Manifest" Minkowsky.)

Des says he has to show all the passengers from the flight something... and we can feel the conclusion swiftly approaching! Presumably he's going to tell all the Lostie's this isn't their real life, and somehow persuade them to choose the other universe where their true destinies lie.

One problem here, most of those passengers on that list are dead in the other timeline. Most of them died in the crash! Desmond's going to have a hard time convincing hundreds of people there's a better life waiting for them in an alternate universe where they are dead!

Or the show can conveniently ignore this, and Desmond can only talk to the important characters.

****

Can't wait for next week when it looks like they'll adress why Hurley's been seeing all these dead people.

LosTalk: The Package (6 x 10)

2010-04-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

What is likely the last Jin and Sun-centric episode did NOT end with their long overdue reunion. Seriously guys, just get those two back together already!

Mikhail

The little scene with our favorite Russian Other sans eyepatch really sums up the story telling problem they've created by introducing the Flashsideways Universe. We now spend half the final season in a universe we didn't know about and don't care much about. Mikhail's cameo was almost completely meaningless.

It could have been far more satisfying to spend the little time afforded this character addressing the many Mikhail-related lingering questions from the Original Timeline: did Mikhail die when blowing up the Looking Glass station? Has he ever died or is he just nigh invulnerable? How does Mikhail relate to the series' other death/resurrection elements and near-immortal characters?

Those are pretty big questions, right? Instead we learn that Flashsideways-Mikhail is for some reason is living in LA and working as a stooge for Charles Widmore. Big deal! Then he gets shot through the eye... What poetry!

Charles Widmore

Probably the most interesting part of the episode was Charles Widmore's confrontation with Black Shirt-in-Locke. He tells Flocke that everything he knows about his is "a combination of myth, ghost stories, and noises in the night." Interesting, but I'd say Widmore knows a little bit more about him then that, since he brought along his own sonic fence to keep Smokie out. (Remember, this is just days after Widmore sent Locke's corpse on Ajirah 316.)

I've mentioned before, it's strange that Widmore's second assault on the island is geared around defeating Black Shirt, when he sent the freighter almost exclusively to capture Ben Linus. It makes you wonder about his priorities and understanding of who the real threat is.

Part of me wonders if the real secret agenda of the freighter mission wasn't to simply deliver Faraday to the island to ensure he went time tripping at the appropriate moment. Again, it seems Hawking and Widmore raised Faraday as a sacrifice and sent him to the island to ensure everything happened as it was "supposed to." Perhaps, the chance of destroying his rival Ben Linus was just a bonus part of the mission.

Widmore has twice mentioned that if Black Shirt gets off the island everything people care about will cease to exist. I was wondering if he meant the FS Universe would cease to exist, or if he's referring to the Original Timeline. However, Black Shirt doesn't seem bent on erasing universes. Does Black Shirt know this will happen if he leaves, or is Widmore just using a figure of speech to imply "bad things will happen."

Widmore or Hume = Wallace?

Finally we found out what (who) Widmore was keeping in the locked room on his sub, and, as expected, it was Desmond. During "The Lighthouse" Jacob talked about summoning someone to the island (presumably number 108, "Wallace").

The likely guess was Desmond, but then we saw Charles Widmore's sub approaching. Perhaps, Jacob meant Desmond after all. Hard to say, but I doubt we'll get another reference to this name or number on Jacob's wheel.

Jin, Sun, and Zombie Sayid

What was Sayid doing swimming around Hydra island at the right time to find Desmond? In fact why did Black Shirt bring Sayid along on this trip? In fact why did Black Shirt even go over to Hydra Island after just sending Sawyer on a "Recon" mission there? Ughhh.

The only thing that happened on-island this episode was people getting moved from one place to another. Oh yeah, and Sun bumped her head and can't speak English anymore. I don't care what universe it's in, that's stupid.

(But she can still write in English... and emoticons!)

Nothing really interesting happened in the Flashsideways Universe either. Gangster Jin handed $25,000 over to US Customs without a fight, and then pregnant Sun gets shot in the chest. I mean, that's a big deal, but this whole universe has lost my interest.

But at least we knew how long until V came on.

LosTalk: Ab Aeterno (& Dr. Linus & Recon) (6 x 7 - 9)

2010-03-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand, it’s my weekly discussion (complaining session) about the latest episode Lost. Excuse my two-week absence. Some heinous work hours threw me off my Lost-blogging game. Before diving into the long-awaited Richard Alpert episode I want to give a couple quick thoughts on the last two weeks.

Dr. Linus (6 x 7)

In my opinion, the chat between Ben Linus and his aged father Rodger in the flashsideways was to clarify that life before the Jughead Incident happened as it always did: Rodger brought young Ben to the island as part of the Dharma Initiative, Jack and company arrived via some time travel nonsense, and they blow up the bomb. In the new timeline spawned from that moment, Rodger and Ben (and presumably a lot of the DI and maybe even some Others) survive the blast and leave the island at some point before it sinks.

If you ask me, the grand finale for this show very well may involve whatever sinks the island. If so, I’d interpret that as the human characters ridding themselves of the supernatural meddlers (Jacob and Black Shirt) and creating a “fully free” will universe.

I also enjoyed the Original Timeline scene where Richard and Jack play dynamite roulette. Richard hoping to kill himself, and Jack showing signs of belief in his unknown purpose as one of Jacob’s chosen.

I dug this scene because it harkened back to the times when Michael was unable to kill himself. Perhaps Michael was still a “candidate” at that time. In any case, this may explain many a close call with death our Losties have escaped throughout the series.

Recon (6 x 8)

Charlotte and Sawyer knocking boots – gimme a break! They’re just mining fan fiction sites for flashsideways content now.

My big question is how did Widmore and his submarine crew get back to the island? It took him 20 year to find it the first time. It’s literally only been like a week since Widmore was in LA with Eloise Hawking looking over Penny and Desmond at the hospital. Hawking said this was the first point in time when she didn’t know what the future held anymore – presumably meaning that Daniel Faraday’s journal included information up until the Oceanic 6 returned via Ajirah 316.

We’re to believe in the following week Widmore found the island again and rustled up a new team of submarine mercenaries to go wage his war. I want to know what Widmore’s intentions are? (I mean, besides reclaiming the island.) When he sent the freighter, his target was simply Ben Linus. This time he’s gearing up for a war with Black Shirt/Smokey. Did Widmore even know about Black Shirt back in his Other days? Also, what was his intention sending Locke (or Locke’s corpse) back to the island? He seemed surprised to learn from Sawyer that something was walking around in Locke’s body. In “The Lighthouse” Jacob hinted that he summoned Widmore this time around. What gives?

Ab Aeterno (6 x 9)

“Ab Aeterno,” Latin for “From Eternity” was one of my favorite episodes in a long time. Playing out with old-school flashbacks, Alpert’s backstory provided “answers” to a number of lingering mysteries. Mad props to Nestor Carbonell for putting those acting chops to use this week. I have few criticisms and mostly interpretation to offer for this episode.

We meet Richard and his wife Isabella on the Canary Island’s in 1867. So Alpert’s been ageless for 140 years. That’s old, but not that old. I think we were all expecting him to be a couple hundred to a couple thousand years old.

The Black Rawk!

As hinted earlier this season, Alpert was taken as a slave aboard the Black Rock. BTW, is it even plausible that they were still taking slaves (and white slaves at that) to the New World after the Civil War in America was over?

A ship officer refers to the ship's Captain, Magnus Hanso, ancestor of Alvar Hanso, founder of the Dharma Initiative. The officer reports that Hanso is dead moments before getting smote by the smoke. This confirms Black Shirt taking the form of Smokey isn’t a recent phenomenon.

I’m guessing this is the extent of the Hanso backstory we’re going to get. It’s unfortunate that we don’t know what connection (if any) the Hanso family has to this island. One would assume that Black Rock’s journal (purchased by Widmore in Season 4) is what brought Alvar and the DI to the island in the first place. However, I doubt the first mate had any time to make entries about this island before his untimely death. It’s also unclear how his journal got off the island.

According to the auction house, the ship's journal was said to be discovered among some wreckage off Madagascar in 1851 – 15 years before the Black Rock crashed on the island??? Is this more time travel nonsense or just Lost inconsistency? Or maybe the journal was lost before this episode’s voyage ever happened – boring. Anyway, Lost is out of time to make any kind of meaningful narrative out of Hanso and the Black Rock’s ledger, I’m afraid.

So the Black Rock approaches the island in a storm at night. And yet when we met Jacob and Black Shirt chilling in the beach in “The Incident” we saw what was certainly hinted to be the Black Rock in the daytime on a clam sea. More inconsistency? An entirely different ship? Was the Black Rock circling the island for 12 hours waiting for a tidal wave to hit?

That’s right, a tidal wave. Cause that’s what it would take to send a ship like the Black Rock crashing into the head of a 100 foot tall statue. I mean, I like that they explained how the statue got destroyed and how the ship ended up in the middle of the jungle. But it was pretty unclear how the ship got up that high.

“Where Are We?”

Once every season or so Lost likes to hint that the island may be hell after all, sort of harkening back to some original Season 1 theories that the island was purgatory or hell or something. It’s interesting that one of the last times the island was called hell also took place inside the Black Rock. Anthony Cooper, Locke’s father (or at least a manifestation of him) told Sawyer that they were all dead and that this place was hell.

At the beginning of this episode Alpert says the same thing to Jack and the Losties. It’s unclear though if Alpert really believes what he said. The episode went out of its way during the flashback to have Jacob prove to Alpert that he was truly alive by nearly drowning him. Convinced that he is damned to hell, Alpert then asked to be granted eternal life.

(Jacob is kind of like the Genie from Aladin. He can’t bring anyone back from the dead, he can’t make anyone fall in love, there’s no wishing for more wishes, and he can’t absolve you of your sins. But Robin Williams left that last one out.)

(P.S. Alpert spoke really good English for like his second day of trying.)

So I’m not sure why Alpert told everyone they were dead before running off to the grave of his wife, who is really dead. I guess he just said that to mess with the Losties’ (and our) heads before attempting to switch from Team Jacob to Team ~~Edward~~ Black Shirt.

Confusing the issue is the fact that Alpert told Sun back in S5 that he saw Jack and company all die back in the 70’s. So does he believe they are dead or not? Or did he just assume they died in the Jughead blast?

I Can See Dead People

It seems a little redundant to have two characters who can see dead people although in different ways: Miles and Hurley. I had assumed that all of Hurley’s visions were just manifestations by Jacob or Black Shirt, but clearly this season they’ve confirmed these are real ghost sightings.

Bringing more confusion to the whole “you’re all dead and this is hell” thing is ghost Isabella’s presence on the island. When Alpert saw her after crashing on the island, she was clearly a manifestation of Smokey used to trick Alpert into murdering Jacob. However, why is she there when Hurley sees her? Does this island somehow attract/collect souls. Maybe not. We know Hurey saw people who died on the island while he was in LA. So what to keep him from seeing someone who died on the Canary Islands appear on this island?

Old Theories Coming True (Sorta)

Lost is coming really close to an old Season 3 theory comparing the series to a Twilight Zone episode called “The Howling Man.” In that show a monk named Jacob had the devil trapped in a cell, but an unwitting man accidentally frees the devil, and that man spends his life trying to recapture the devil.

In S3, when we met “Jacob” as a ghost trapped in a cabin, “The Howling Man” became my favorite theory. When ghost “Jacob” asked Locke to, “Help me,” some fans assumed the Losties would unwittingly free this evil force upon the world.

Then, in the S3 finale’s flashforward, we find Jack shouting, “We have to go back!” as if they did something awful. The assumption was they would have to find this evil “Jacob” fellow and return him to the island.

That would have been brilliant. Unfortunately it didn’t play out quite like that.

Instead the O6 left before freeing the evil force, and then returned for varied and unclear reasons. It wasn’t until the S5 finale that we learned Jacob wasn’t the one trapped in Jacob’s cabin (confusing), but that there was a separate unnamed evil force on the island, who we now affectionately call Black Shirt. So only now, after Black Shirt executed his ridiculously complex time travel plan to kill Jacob, is he free and getting ready to leave the island. And yes, when/if he gets off the island it will be the unwitting fault of the Losties, the Others, and pretty much everyone in the show.

So maybe (and it’s a big maybe) post mortem-Jacob is trying to align the Losties, Widmore’s team, and the remaining Others together to fight Black Shirt to keep him from leaving the island or perhaps getting him back if he manages to escape. Or perhaps Black Shirt will escape, unleashing pure evil on the world, and our Losties must choose to destroy the timeline they are in and sink the island in the other timeline before Black Shirt has a chance to ever escape.

The Silence of Jacob

So Jacob’s job seems to be to keep evil trapped on the island. At the same time he and Black Shirt are wrapped up in an endless game about the fate of mankind – are they always evil or will someday they choose to do good? Black Shirt seems tired of playing, and yet Jacob keeps bringing people there time after time – a little sadistic maybe.

Is this game part of their greater purpose? Maybe they have to play it? If so, the question has been, ever since we first met the pair last season – why does Jacob stand idly by and let Black Shirt manipulate the humans into doing terrible things?

Well, he addressed that this week, and his answer was pretty much right on with what I’d expected. It’s similar to the argument about why would God allow evil to exist in the world? Because if God had made mankind robots, forced to do good, then their good wouldn’t be meaningful. Mankind was given freewill with the hopes they would choose to do good.

Jacob said something like he shouldn’t have to tell people what to do… He shouldn’t have to force them. That’s why I liken Jacob and Black Shirt as not simply good vs. evil, but free will vs. fate, a theme that’s been with the show since the beginning.

And yet we’ve seen Jacob influence our characters very directly by his touch. Well, Jacob clearly isn’t God, and as some have theorized, maybe his manipulation of the Losties somehow violated his purpose and that’s why he allowed himself to be killed. To put choice directly in the hands of the humans.

****

Great episode. Hopefully each week forward will take big bites out of dangling mysteries like this one did. Can’t wait to see how they wrap this up.

LosTalk: Sundown (6 x 6)

2010-03-04T18:29:00.000-08:00

Pretty great episode this week mostly because Sayid got to kill a lot of people and Smokey offed a ton of Others.

Dogan

The Other's new leader accidently killed his own son while driving under the influence. Jacob met him shortly after this and offered to bring his son back to life if Dogan came to the island and served in the Temple. We don't know if Jaocb kept his word or not. We also don't know what Dogan's obsession with that baseball is. In the Original Timeline was Dogan's kid a little league star instead of a piano protege?

(Dogan reflects on how he used to throw a mean curveball.)

Regardless, Black Shirt as Flocke makes a similar offer to Sayid - promising to bring Nadia back to life if he sides with Smokey and kills Dogan.

Sayid drowns Dogan in the resurrection pool. (BTW, whatever happened to "Dead is Dead"?) Once Doogan is dead Black Shirt is free to break into the temple. I thought the ash circles were what stopped Smokey? Is Dogan himself also some kind of protecting force against Black Shirt? Too many new "rules."

Cindy and the Kids

They just keep teasing us with Cindy and the kids' presence in the Temple. There's so many lingering mysteries to clear up this season - wouldn't this be a good one to get out of the way like now?!

What have Cindy and the kids been doing in the Temple these three years? Why were the kids kidnapped? To be experimented on or for their own "protection?"

Was Cindy always an Other? Was she a mole on flight 815 from the very beginning?

Every time we've seen her since her S2 disappearance, she's seemed pretty comfortable being an Other. Was she just indoctrinated by the Others? Are she and the kids happier this way? We're they given a better life as Carl suggested?

My deep-seated fears are returning that they may never answer such questions with any kind of real clarity!

Sophie's Choice

Black Shirt gives the Other's a choice: either leave the island with him once and for all OR they can stay and be killed. What a choice?! I mean, we still have no idea what their allegiance the island is about. Seriously, why stay?

Team Ilana

Ilana has cobbled together a disparate team of survivors including Sun, Frank Lapidus, and Ben Linus. Ever since learning that Jacob was killed, they've taken their sweet time getting back to the Temple to save everyone. They even stopped along the way to bury the real John Locke.

(What's the Egyptian symbol for "Push this brick"?)

They arrive for the tail end of Smokey's death raid. In fact, from the looks of it, the ONLY person Ilana's team managed to save was Miles! And if I'm not mistaken, Ben get left behind

Zombie Losties

A couple core characters have now been claimed by "The Darkness." Claire is completely cuckoo and has been without a proper comb for three whole years. (I thought we were going to see her put the smack down on Kate for stealing her baby, but apparently she's more interested in following "her friend" off the island.) And now Sayid has gone bad and starts killing people - except that's what he did BEFORE he was possessed.

Are the "claimed" individuals themselves anymore or just puppets of Black Shirt? Are they truly evil? They still seem to act like themselves, although Claire has lost a few of her memories. (Remember Richard Alpert said young Ben Linus would lose certain memories if he was healed in the Temple pool. I'm not sure getting the dunked in the pool equals being taken over by Smokie-sickness though.)

What's the future for these characters? If it's simply a sickness then maybe they can be cured. However, if they've truly been zombified, then there may be no hope for these characters - not in this timeline anyway.

What's My Motivation?

What really makes this season feel kinda flat is not knowing what Black Shirt is all about. His long-gestating plan, as revealed in "The Incident," was all designed to do one thing - kill Jacob. And after decades of work, Black Shirt got what he wanted. You'd think, as far as Black Shirt is concerned, that now's the time to celebrate.

If Jacob being alive is what kept him confined to the island, then why doesn't he just leave now? Instead, it seems he's got all these other unclear objectives - that he's still "got a lot of work to do."

He's still in the business of manipulating people and getting people to join his side. He apparently wants to get revenge on the Other's who kept him trapped for all those years. But he doesn't seem concerned with killing ALL the Others, just the ones at the Temple. And he doesn't even kill those guys without first giving them a choice (insert "freewill" theme here).

Dogan made a big deal of calling Black Shirt "evil incarnate," which means we can probably assume Black Shirt isn't ALL bad. In fact, ever since Black Shirt killed Jacob, and the usually-black title screen turned white, they've been hinting that maybe Black Shirt is the good guy.

I have a hard time buying Black Shirt as good since so much of this series will probably boil down to he and Jacob's initial dialogue on the beach. Black Shirt expressed that mankind always corrupts, always destroys. Jacob counters with something that sounds like hope that man will eventually choose some kind of spiritual progress. I can't imagine the character with the malevolent opinion of man being the ultimate good guy.

The other option is that neither character is truly good or bad. Maybe they're both shades of grey. In fact, they both share similar manipulative tendencies. We learned they both made similar promises to characters in the last episode alone.

Regardless of this pairs moral orientation, the plot is getting especially frustrating not know what Black Shirt is trying to do!

The Final Season

Ever since Season 2 there's been consistent grumbling that the writers were making it up as they went along and there would be no possible satisfying ending to the show. I used to be one of those grumblers, but the show regularly blew my mind enough times that I became a believer in its overall direction. As I said, some of those ending-letdown fears are returning.

It's not that I don't think they can "answer" all their questions satisfactorily. It's that in all the previous seasons, even when a million confusing issues were raised, the show always felt precise and intricate.

This season, however, the characters seem to stomp around like they're in some B-grade horror film. The carefully-crafted backstories, the intricacies of the island's complex mythos - it all seems tossed to the wind, and the Losties are just blasting at random toward whatever conclusion is coming. That's what has made the season, thus far, seem somehow unsatisfying.

For Realz Theory of the Week

Last week I took a lot of heat - probably rightly so - for my not-well thought out Desmond returning to the island on the Elizabeth theory (possibly time traveling there from S2 or some nonsense). Anyway, here's a much better theory that I'm happy with.

So we've got these two concurrent timelines now, created by The Incident. No matter how you slice it, both of these timelines have always been going on, we just didn't know about the new "Alternate Reality." Jacob however said it can only end once, yet two timelines would lead to two different endings. right?

In a "Whatever Happens, Happens" universe, there ought not to be the possibility of multiple timelines because you can't change time. However, maybe when you blow up a nuclear bomb in a pocket of time travel energy you can get some "unnatural" results.

As we've seen there are unnatural things bleeding into the Alternate Reality from the Original Timeline. Possibly any number of unnatural occurrences in the Original Timelines could be the same thing - something bleeding in from the Alternate Reality. Perhaps in a universe where multiple timelines shouldn't exist, this means the two timelines are unstable - sort of breaking apart.

There's a feeling that somehow the Alternate Timeline is an epilogue of sorts to the whole story, and yet it seems that this timeline runs, and always has run, concurrent with the Original Timeline. So how can this timeline be Jacob's one "end" without erasing the Original Timeline that we care more about?

Well, what if, because these timelines are unstable, things get so bad for our Losties in the Original Timeline that they are faced with a choice (insert the overall "freewill vs. fate" theme again). Our Losties, perhaps informed by someone who can slide between timelines (Desmond, maybe Juliet), have to choose at the end to destroy one of the timelines. And like all good heroes they decide to sacrifice themselves so their better versions may live in the AR.

The unstable timelines part is the bit I really like, but I'll take it one step further.

Jacob says it only ends once, and yet he and Black Shirt seem to be caught is a kind of cycle. We've gathered that the "candidates" they're seeking may be to replace themselves on the island. Presumably they are not the first dueling pair on the island either. Perhaps Jacob's one end also involves breaking the cycle of these dueling fates.

We've seen them both manipulate our human characters, and the results have put the humans through hell. However in the AR, we see a world that seems to be free of Jacob and Black shirt. No one's seemingly been pulling the strings on our 815 passengers and their lives look much different. Not that it's all happily-ever-after for all these characters, they've still made mistakes and got problems to work out.

But at least in the AR the characters get to work out their problems themselves. They may even help each other out (as we saw Sayid discovering a tied up Jin this week, and we assume Locke may receive treatment from spinal surgeon Jack), but at least the humans get to make the choices on their own, free of manipulative supernatural powers.

Perhaps letting the humans choose a world without their endless cycle of manipulation is Jacob's one true ending and test for man.

And just like at the end of The Matrix, Hellboy, and every science fiction movie ever made - it's the freedom to choose one's own fate that is the most human thing of all.

And on that sappy note, I'll sign off.

LosTalk: The Lighthouse (6 x 05)

2010-02-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

“The time for questions is over!” They’re just promos, people! Stop getting so mad at the TV! This is Lost – of course the time for questions isn’t over! The show’s many questions are all still so vague, I’m not sure what kind of clear-cut answer people really expect until the series has finished showing us stuff.

I’ll switch things up this week and start by looking at the Alt Reality events.

New and Old Scars
Jack still can’t locate Christian’s missing body in the “flash-sideways-es” (I’ve fallen in line and started calling them that). He’s walking around sans shirt AND sans stupid-looking star tattoos. Then he notices an unfamiliar appendectomy scar.

In this timeline we learn that Jack had his appendix out at age 7 or 8, so how does he have this fresh-looking scar? It’s some kind of transference from the Original Timeline, just like the cut on his neck he noticed during the flight. So we’ve got some serious evidence for things crossing between timelines here.

It’s interesting these “physical déjà vu’s” kick in around the Oceanic 815 flight in the AR, even though the new timeline began with the Jughead detonation way back in 1977. There’s still something significant about this date in 2004. It’s almost as if Flight 815 is the fulcrum point in this time loop that has The Incident on one end and the events triggered by Black Shirt in 2007 on the other.

Poppa Jack/Momma Who?
The big change for Jack in this reality is that he has a teenage piano-prodigy son named David. But who’s the mother? It’s gotta be someone we know. It’s boring if it’s just Sarah (his ex from the OT) and he happened to meet her 15 years earlier this time round.

The only logical guess is Juliet, and it’s their lovechild from med school or something. That’d be a convenient way for them to continue beating us up with the love quadrangle.

Dogan, the Samurai-Other leader, is hanging out in LA at David’s piano recital. Another ridiculous coincidence – why would this guy live in LA? Or are the AR Others methodically checking in on our Losties?

The Kid Stays in the Picture
My initial theory (hope) was that the AR would turn out to be the temporary arc that somehow folds back into the Original Timeline. However, now that they’ve introduced a son for Jack to love, it’s hard for me to believe they will end up just erasing this universe and this kid’s very existence. (Although, who has time to get emotionally connected to another character at this point?)

This leads me to suspect the AR will somehow turn out to be the ultimate ending. That it’s a sort of epilogue somehow caused in part by things to come in the OT.

Of the last three episodes, I appreciated this week’s use of the flash-sideways. For the first time they were able to contrast OT Jack and AR Jack in a way that felt meaningful to the story. Unlike last week, when we had a real Locke in one story and a Black Shirt as Locke in the other. Their stories have little to do with each other.

A Little Too “Meta” For Me
Much of S6 has become very self-referential and self-aware. While I appreciate that they’re revisiting old story elements, the characters are winking to the camera a bit much for my taste. Blatant examples of this were found last night in the Original Timeline.

Jack and Hurley are back to traipsing through the jungle and Hurley gets cute about how this feels just like old times.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones
Further, they FINALLY revisit Adam and Eve, a S1 mystery that was never mentioned again. Hurley raises the notion that maybe these skeletons belong to THEM due to some time traveling misadventure that hasn’t happened yet. Adam and Eve somehow being two of our Losties was a theory way back before time travel was ever introduced to the series.

The fact that Hurley suggests maybe the Skeletons are two of the Lost gang indicates to me that this will NOT be the case. The black and white stones found on the corpses seem to hint that the bones might be the predecessors of Jacob and Black shirt who are now (possibly) looking for their own replacements.

Magic Mirrors
Per ghost Jacob’s instructions, Jack and Hurley evenltualy make it to the titular Lighthouse. The once again self-aware characters ask what the audience is shouting at the TV – how did the Losties not see this place before?!

This magical location is apparently what allows Jacob to watch his potential candidates and future game pieces off the island. A series of magical mirrors show different locations around the world corresponding with different “degrees” on a mechanical wheel.

On the one hand this felt like sort of a rehash of last week. We see again that Jacob has associated a lot of people (presumably 360 potential candidates) with various numbers. And our surviving Losties correspond with THE Numbers.

It seems redundant to have two locations with the names and numbers. However apparently both Jacob and Black Shirt have been keeping tabs. But who works from which location?

Unlike last week, we do see that Kate gets a number – 51 – although her name (candidacy?) has been scratched out. She’s still alive, so why is she crossed out? Also, she was touched by Jacob, so why is she not one of THE Numbers?

The Other Number
Jacob asks Hurley to turn the mirrors toward degree 108 to signal someone who has been summoned to the island. 108 is the final number significant to the Swan Station.

However Jack, in his worst-ever manic freakout, smashes the mirrors before we get to see who’s coming.

So who is 108? It’s gotta be someone Jacob needs for his coup de grace, someone not yet on the island. Walt? Aaron? Perhaps Desmond, the person who pressed that button every 108 minutes for 3 years?

Or is Jacob summoning someone altogether new? A little HiDef DVR searchin’ led some to find number 108 apparently listed as “Wallace.” Maybe it will be David Wallace from The Office, now that’s he’s been effectively written off that show! I don’t know how many new characters I can take this close to the end!

(Wallace is listed between S. Radzynski and "Mr." Friendly. Ha!)

This Week’s Wacky Theory
Jacob seems to indicate he knew Jack would destroy the mirrors, but it was important that Jack be where he is right now. As Jack commiserates on the edge of a cliff, Jacob says, “Sometimes people just need to stare out at the ocean for a while.”

We know someone is coming. Presumably Jacob wants Jack to see this person’s arrival. Now for the theory! What if the person is Desmond and what if he’s arriving on the Elizabeth, the sailboat he first arrived on?

Stick with me. People are already guessing that Desmond’s specialness might allow him to jump between the timelines, that we may have already seen this occur with his presence on the AR flight 815, and maybe event when he went time skipping after turning the failsafe key.

Another Desmond mystery that always stuck out to me was the 5 weeks he spent lost at sea during Season 2. He took off one way, and like Pac Man, came back from the opposite direction, not knowing where he’d been.

Perhaps in one of his sailboat trips, in EITHER timeline, he might have ended up coming to this critical juncture. Desmond’s history of blackouts and memory loss may make this feasible. I’m not saying this makes sense with any given timeline, but it’s a fun idea to me.

So Claire is an Ax Murderer
I almost forgot to mention crazy Claire and her freakish skeleton baby bassonette. She’s been “claimed” by Black Shirt/Smokey. And I believe, like Sayid, she died before her possession, most likely during Keamy’s rocket attack on the Barracks.

Zombie Claire has been killing Others with an ax and bear traps for three years, believing they stole her baby. (Even though she willingly left Aaron behind to leave with Christian back in the day???)

Then Flocke swings by Claire’s coo coo compound to pick the psycho killer up on the way to storm the Temple. She refers to Black Shirt as her “friend.” It’s unclear if she sees him as John Locke or not.

More Duel of the Fates
This season still feels really foreign to me. The focus of the series seems off. Now that Jacob and Black Shirt’s struggle has come to the fore, it seems like our characters’ histories and struggles have taken a back seat.

This was my fear from way back when the veil was lifted on some of the human puppet masters. In a show whose central theme is free will vs. fate, if our main characters are simply puppets or chess pieces in someone else’s battle, then it diminishes their significance.

Also, I have a hard time with Jacob’s repeated appearances to Hurley. To me, his choice to sacrifice himself on mankind’s behalf is diminished if he’s still running around out there as a spirit. His choice to die should have been total and final.

****

Overall, I still feel like the plot is crawling forward at a snail’s pace and the Alternate Reality is a waste of precious time. However last night was a marked improvement over the previous two weeks.

LosTalk: The Substitute (6x4)

2010-02-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

Another cleverly titled episode this week. “The Substitute” refers to John Locke’s new job in the Alternate Reality. It also refers to the way Locke is sort of a substitute for Black Shirt, er, vice verse. Actually, I’m not really sure who’s substituting for whom back in the Original Timeline.

(Locke Fail!)

Someone help me out here, did Black Shirt say something about Jacob looking for a substitute for himself? Someone to “protect” the island after his time was over. Is Black Shirt also looking for a sub to take over his island role?

This week was less a character-centric episode and more an actor Terry O’Quinn-centric episode, considering we were watching the real Locke in the AR and watching Black Shirt as Locke in the OT.

It strikes me that very little has happened in the last couple episodes. Really, all that happened last night was Flocke led Sawyer into a cave, and Ilana led the beach crew away from the Foot. Seriously, Ilana’s subplot consisted of leaving and that’s it! As we’re racing toward the series conclusion you’d think they’d want to cram a little more plot into each episode.

More on Black Shirt
Flocke promises Sawyer all the answers if he’ll just follow him to an undisclosed location… of course! And we do get a few answers about Black Shirt. Well, maybe they’re more like clues than actual answers.

Black Shirt confirms that he was once a mortal man and had a life off the island. Interesting, I would have pegged these guys as more like immortal demigods than average folks who were given special powers.

Black Shirt once again hints at his history with Richard Alpert. He says all he ever wanted was Richard to be on his side. He feigns surprise that Jacob never explained his motives to Richard, insinuating that he is the nobler of the two rivals. He suggests that Jacob kept Richard around as a “candidate” to be his replacement. However Richard remains convinced that the newly-freed Black Shirt is all bad news.

If Black Shirt is the master manipulator that I’ve assumed he is, then of course he’d paint Jacob as the villain. He goes on to tell Sawyer that Jacob manipulated all of them, some from a very young age. And we’ve seen this is apparently true.

I’m still holding out that Jacob was the free will proponent and that Black Shirt remains the one resigned to accept man’s destiny. Yet Black Shirt’s point about Jacob’s influence has always been problematic.

Who’s That Boy?
Black Shirt twice runs into a little blond boy who seems to freak him out. He’s surprised when Sawyer can also see the kid. The first time we see the boy he’s got blood on his hands.

So who is this kid? A manifestation of young Jacob? Why? Possibly Aaron? He’s back in LA and is only three. This boy looks to be about five.

The boy tells Black Shirt, “You can’t kill him.” Who does he mean? Sawyer? Richard? I thought perhaps it was a reminder of a general rule for these beings that they cannot kill any people. But we’ve seen Black Shirt (as Smokey) kills tons of folks.

Connecting the Dots
Lost notoriously has so many dangling mysteries left to resolve that I hoped this season might address a big mystery each week. While we rarely get concrete answers on anything in Lost, I do appreciate that they’ve been connecting some dots in the past couple weeks. Last week we had “the sickness” at least addressed as Smokey possession.

This week there were callbacks to a couple more big Season 1 mysteries. Flocke leads Sawyer down into a cave containing black and white rocks on scales.

First I want to point out that never in the history of film and television has any character successfully crossed a rope bridge or climbed a rope ladder without perilous consequences. Those things are just deathtraps, I guess.

Black Rock/White Rock
Anyway, the black and white rocks on the scales reminded me of the two stones found with Adam and Eve’s skeletons in S1. Since Jacob and Black Shirt are possibly looking for their replacements, I’m wondering if Adam and Eve weren’t the island’s predecessors to Adam and eve. (I realize Jack used his carbon dating eyeballs to estimate the skeletons were 50 years old and that Jacob and Black shirt have been around at least a couple hundred years. Just postulating here.)

What’s the purpose of the scale in this remote cave? It’s ironic (corny) that Black Shirt tosses the white rock away, upsetting the carefully balanced scales now that Jacob is dead and he is free, tipping things in black’s favor.

The Numbers and the List
Then we get to the coolest part of the episode. Flocke takes Sawyer into a room with names scrawled all over the walls. Many (if not all) of these names belong to the Oceanic 815 survivors, and they’ve been crossed out one by one, presumably as each character died. The remaining names are of the surviving Losties, all of whom Jacob touched. Accompanying each name is a number, and the numbers just so happen to be THE Numbers.

While this may be a little contrived, I do like the fatalistic significance it ascribes to the Numbers. I was afraid they weren’t going to find a way of giving the cursed Numbers any real significance. I love that in some way each number is somehow linked to one of the main Losties. Is this Jacob’s master LIST?

Again, it’s interesting that Jacob touched Locke, yet he ended up dead. A little DVR searching confirmed that Kate Austin’s name was not shown on the cave walls. She too was touched by Jacob, and yet many seasons ago it was emphasized that Kate was not even on Jacob’s list. Hmmm.

On an unrelated note, I loved that Ben gave Locke’s eulogy and admitted to murdering him.

Meanwhile in an Alternate Reality…
We learn that in this new timeline Locke seems to have a great relationship with his dad. We can probably assume that Anthony Cooper never tossed him out an 8-story window then. So how did Locke become handicapped in this reality?

The big reveal was that Ben Linus is alive in this timeline and works at the Los Angeles school where Locke is substitute teaching. I assumed they wouldn’t create a whole timeline without a Ben Linus, but it begs the question how did Ben get off the island now that it has sunk to the bottom of the ocean?

If the island sunk due to the Jughead blast, young Ben should have died with everyone else. If the island sunk at some other point during the intervening years, then when are we going to learn about this whole new island history?

I can’t wrap my head around the point of showing us the alternate timeline. How will it cause events in or possibly wrap back into the original timeline? Perhaps Desmond (and possibly Juliet) will jump back and forth between realities, tying them together somehow.

I’ve said it before, but it was always my assumption that IF we got an alternate timeline with no 815 crash, then somehow the Others would be waiting there in LA on behalf of Jacob and/or Black Shirt to round up the Losties who were “supposed to” be on the island.

Perhaps the appearances of Ethan and Ben in this new timeline are not just casual coincidences. Perhaps we’ll find an Other carefully waiting to interact with all our Losties, just waiting to spring a trap and drag the Losties toward their “new destinies.”

If not, if this timeline is just to show us what their lives might have been like, then it seems like precious screen time being wasted on a fan fiction-like “what if” scenario.

***

This episode was definitely an improvement on last week. Let’s hope for more connected dots next week and little faster plot progression.

LosTalk: What Kate Does (6x3)

2010-02-10T16:38:00.000-08:00

There have been worse episodes of Lost, but last night’s was perhaps the least enjoyable to watch that I can recall. The things I liked about this episode were completely overshadowed by forced (and unsuccessful) dramatic tension, wild character inconsistency, and frenetic plot activity without really advancing the story at all.

(The backlash amongst our Lost-watching group was so bad that instead of posting pics of last night’s episode, I’ll instead show photos of a happier time – Our S6 premiere party.)

First I’ll look at where this episode fell completely flat.

What Did Kate Do?
What a missed opportunity with last night’s brilliant title. In Season 2 we had “What Kate Did,” in which we finally learn that she killed her father. Now that we’re experiencing an alternate timeline, I’d have expected the cleverly titled “What Kate Does” to explore her crime (or possible innocence) in the new timeline. Especially since the Comic Con teaser video from last summer suggested that in an alternate reality Kate didn’t kill her dad, but accidently killed someone else.

Granted, Kate-centric episodes are often among fans’ least favorites, but in “What Kate Does” Kate does almost nothing! She drives Claire to the hospital and that’s about it.

Crazy Claire
Claire used to be a favorite character of mine, and her absence was felt throughout Season 5. Yet her long-awaited reintroduction in S6 seemed unremarkable and terribly mishandled. For some reason the young mom-to-be is too scared to meet her baby’s adoptive parents, so she asks a gun-wielding maniac (probably the scariest person she’s ever met) to tag along with her. By the end of the episode AR Claire and AR Kate are bff’s.

AR Claire says she just “knew” she was supposed to give her baby the name Aaron. This is a further hint that the AR characters somehow retain trace memories from the other timeline.

A Hard Pill To Swallow
Back in the Original Timeline team Jack are being held prisoner in the Temple with the newly resurrected Sayid. Jack is acting his usual megalomaniacal self – blaming himself for everything that’s gone wrong, and assuming he and only he is the solution to every problem.

When Doogan, the Others’ new leader (they got tired of waiting for Locke apparently), wants to give Sayid a pill for his mysterious condition, Jack does what any idiot with a hero-complex would do – he takes the mystery pill himself!

(The Smoke Monster even showed up!)

The Temple Others
The Others have always been cryptic and weird, but I assumed it was because they have some dark secret too great to tell outsiders. But here we are in the Others’ secret temple – this is their “backstage space,” one place where they can truly let down their hair and be themselves - and yet they’re STILL acting like cryptic weirdos.

If we were ever to get a glimpse of who they truly are and what they’re all about, it should be now. I want to understand their spiritual fanaticism and their secret agenda. But these Temple Others are being as secretive and vague with each other as they always were with the Losties.
The Other-guard who led Kate and Jin away from the Temple was apparently one of the same Others Kate and Sawyer escaped from back in S3. This is another example of the strange way the Others can go back and forth between the hocus pocus of the Temple and mundane day to day life of working in the old Dharma stations.

Now here’s what I DID like about last night.

At Least He Asked
For Jin it has only been about 4 days since team Jack miraculously appeared. However it was over 30 years ago for the rest of the world. Jin finally asks Kate where her plane landed, which is reassuring that he still wants to search for Sun. Kate doesn’t get around to answering that she mysteriously teleported off the plane from the future.

This brings to mind the fact that no one from team Jack has bothered asking what year they are in, although they know they are some time after Desmond blew up the hatch.

(Vincent wants some Dharma Beer.)

Sawyer’s Lament
Sawyer, in one of only compelling threads of the episode, was given a chance to mourn for Juliet. We learn that back in the 70’s he was getting ready to propose, but now that she’s gone he blames himself for keeping her on the island leading to her death. Sawyer throws her ring into the ocean (much like Desmond threw Penny’s ring into the rive Thames), resigned to being alone for good.

His heartfelt moments were unfortunately overshadowed by Kate’s usual MO of running back and forth between Jack and Sawyer and being completely unhappy with whichever guy she’s with.

But at least he got to mourn, which is more than Claire ever did after losing Charlie.

(World's worst security team.)

Down With The Sickness
I enjoyed that the episode seemingly addressed the old “sickness” mystery. It seems that Sayid has been infected by the Smoke Monster, much in the same way that Russeau’s shipmates were infected back in the 1980’s. This is presumably the same sickness that the Dharma Initiative tried to inoculate against.

It’s annoying that the Others are so cryptic and incapable of describing what’s happening to Sayid. The attempt to shroud his condition in mystery comes off as lame. They say he’s been “claimed” by a darkness. Why can’t they just say he’s been possessed by Smokey, Black Shirt, the island’s evil power, whatever. Why is communication so hard for these guys?

This raises the question why did Jacob want Sayid taken to the temple if, when he was dipped in the “healing waters,” it led to Sayid being possessed by his Nemesis?

Doogan tries to give Sayid a poison pill via Jack. He says the pill will only work if Sayid takes it of his own free will. It seems inconsistent that young Rousseau was able to shoot her possessed shipmates, and yet Sayid apparently cannot be killed except by his own choosing.

(Our Lost "Death Pool," betting on who lives and who dies in S6.)

Crazier Claire
Finally, we learn that Claire was also “claimed” by the darkness. This explains why she looked so creepy when hanging out in the cabin with papa Christian way back in S4. We find her in the jungle at the end of the episode looking crazed, much like Rousseau did after being a recluse for many years. Are we to assume that Claire has been setting these traps in the jungle much like Rousseau did? If so why?

I can’t wait to find out what Crazier Claire has been up for three years and what happens to a person who’s been possessed by Smokey for so long.

If Sayid and Claire are truly in the same condition, then we can assume Claire died (probably in the explosion when Keamy’s team invaded New Otherton) and then came back possessed by Black Shirt. Yet her transition was almost instantaneous, whereas Sayid’s body lay dead for some time.

Ethan
Ethan appeared in the AR as Claire’s LA-based doctor. There are a few things to consider about what his appearance means. Last week we were shown the Island on the bottom of the ocean, as if it were sunk by the Jughead detonation in this new timeline. This would suggest that Widmore, Hawking, young Ben Linus, Richard Alpert and all the Others are dead in this reality. However, Ethan could feasibly be alive because he would have been shuttled off the island with the women and children hours before the Incident.

On the other hand, if somehow the Others still exist and there are still island puppet masters at work, then I can imagine a scenario where many of the Others have come to Los Angeles to round up the all Losties who were “supposed to” be on the island. Ethan might be a plant to get Claire and Aaron.

So let’s toss this episode in with the bottom 10 Lost episodes ever. Let’s just hope Lost gets it’s game back. We’re driving toward the conclusion at a very fast pace here, and there’s no more time for poor writing and wasted episodes.

LosTalk: LA X (6 x1-2)

2010-02-05T16:51:00.000-08:00

Welp. That just happened.

(Jack's face expresses how I felt after that episode.)

As far as season openers go, this was among the most satisfying. So much was confirmed and so much is completely new in these two episodes it’s hard to know where to start.

Duel of the Fates 
First, I’ll just point out that I called the possibility of two dueling timelines resulting from The Incident way back after Comic Con when Darlton teased us with S6 having a totally new “flashing” paradigm. Lost never commits to an answer until it absolutely has to. With so much of S5 dedicated to the debate over whether the Losties could change time(fate), they’ve gotten away with avoiding answering even that enormous cliff hanger by giving us BOTH results.

My guess was that Jacob and Black Shirt would each be in control of one of the timelines until one reality eventually wiped the other off the board.

I’d suggest that Jacob is control of the “original” timeline. After all, his final words were, “They’re coming.” Lo and behold, team Jack shows up from the past just when Black Shirt thinks he’s won. However this timeline is also the result of Black Shirt’s scheming. Black Shirt’s plot didn’t exactly include a future in which the bomb worked.

In the Alternate Reality (hereinafter “AR”) it’s hard to defend that Black Shirt is in control, or winning, or whatever. This is totally new territory, and since time was reset (and the island seemingly destroyed) back in 1977, we have no idea what Jacob and Black Shirt have been up to for 30 years. Perhaps they were both destroyed and this timeline shows the results of mankind’s true free will, unaffected by the influence of both these powers.

Jacob has promised, “It only ends once.” Yet we’ve got two simultaneous timelines running, which would imply two different endings. My guess is that one timeline will wipe the other out, fold into the other, or somehow cause the other; thus making the temporary timeline just more “progress” that leads to the one true end.

Confirmations & Answers 
After years of clues and endless speculation, the show seems on track to start confirming certain things and taking us to long expected places. For example:

• Confirmation that Black Shirt is Smokey. I loved when Flocke said, “Sorry you had to see me like that.”

• Confirmation that Black Shirt/Smokey cannot cross the ash circles.

• We finally got to visit the temple.

• As expected, Cindy and the kids were waiting at the temple. We saw them leave for there 3 seasons ago.

• We found out the contents of Hurley’s guitar case. I assumed we’d be waiting much longer for this one.

• As guessed, Jughead certainly did send team Jack time traveling to join the 2007 Losties (at least in one timeline).

Déjà vu All Over Again 
In the AR, the big question is do the Losties somehow retain memories of their experiences in the original timeline? There’s no reason to believe they would. They’ve had 30 years to become different people. Yet the episode seems to hint that Jack was “feeling” things on the plane that he didn’t understand.

How about the other Losties? Will they “know” one another when they start bumping into each other for the first time all over again?

Clearly in the AR some things have changed. Hurley seems more successful and less cursed. Shannon didn’t even get on the plane. And the biggest difference is that Desmond (coincidentally?) was on board Oceanic 815.

Or was he? The way Desmond basically disappeared (and Rose and Bernard didn’t even see him) hinted that maybe he was all in Jack’s imagination. This is another example of what master manipulators the Lost writers are. They know exactly what questions they’re forcing their fans to ask with every cryptic plot twist.

But why would Jack imagine Desmond? Jack and Desmond presumably never met in this timeline, since Des would never have been training to sail around the world to impress Penny’s father.

This raises another question. In the AR, if the island presumably was sunk when Jughead detonated, then wouldn’t young Ben, Widmore, Eloise, the Others, the Dharma Initiative folks, and everyone ALL have died in the past?

Penny and Faraday would never be born. Desmond would live his life without the influence of Widmore and Hawking. In fact most of the influential “puppet masters” would be killed in this blast. (Granted, I don’t really expect them to have an AR without Ben Linus and the Others, but with the island on the bottom of the ocean, it seems logical.)

What I can’t wrap my head around is where is the AR storyline going? How can the timelines possibly affect each other? And how will it lead to Jacob’s “end” if these characters seem free from the influence of Jacob and Black Shirt’s game?

How many times in one episode can we watch this poor woman die?
 Meanwile, In the Original Universe Jack and company conveniently flash into the right time period. Seriously, who’s controlling the time travel here?

So, uh, Juliet survived detonating that nuclear bomb next to her face. Keeping her alive for like two minutes into this episode seemed to diminish her final powerful scenes last season.

I’ve can imagine a few reasons why they might have done this. 1.) It lets Sawyer know that Juliet hit the bomb, which makes clear that she wanted to create a timeline in which they were never together. Without this, Sawyer would have mourned Juliet forever and would seek revenge on Jack for causing her death. But having confirmation that she hit the bomb (story-wise) releases Saywer from his commitment to her, freeing him up to get back with Kate later. Yecht.

2.) As Juliet is dying she mumbles about going double-Dutch on a date with Sawyer. This is similar to when Charlotte’s consciousness began drifting through time during her death. I’d suggest that Juliet is not drifting through points in time as much as she is drifting between alternate timelines. Her comments about going double-Dutch mean we’ll probably see her and Sawyer get together in the AR somehow. (Can you believe they’re dragging this love quadrangle on past her death and through alternate universes?)

3.) Since Juliet while apparently slipping between timelines also hints that the two realities will affect each others. She also tells Sawyer (via Miles’ ghost-whispering skills) that “it worked” – confirming the existence of both timelines.

Legend of the Hidden Temple
 Like Haley Joel Osment, Hurley can see dead people. He apparently can also see dead demigods, because Ghost Jacob appears to him and tells him to take the mortally wounded Sayid to the Temple. Granted, we don’t know exactly what Jacob IS, but it seems odd he’d have a soul or ghost like your average mortal. (More on souls in a moment.)

So we finally get to see the Other’s ginormous Temple, and it’s swarming with weirdo-variety Others, plus lots of new characters to meet. The guy in charge (how many leaders do these Others have?) is named Doogan and looks like he stepped out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Then there’s a guy named Lennon who looks like, well, John Lennon. And then there’s a guy with a turban, which, to me, is supposed to underscore how Jacob has summoned many people throughout the ages from all over the world.

These Others are shocked to learn that Jacob is dead and seem to suspect that Black Shirt is on the loose. They bust out the magical ash and the bamboo fireworks launchers. War is coming to the Temple.

I’m confused at the disparity between the somber, spiritual weirdo Others and the garden-variety Others who have book clubs, watch Xanadu on VHS, and have jobs in science and medicine. What gives? Ben Linus may have led the Others astray during his tenure, but it’s curious how he, Juliet, Tom, and the New Otherton crew could slip off their shoes, put on ugly robes, grab primitive weapons, and blend in with the weirdo Others.

Red Shirt alert! Did you notice all the Temple Others wore red robes? Does this mean they’re all already dead? Contrast this to when they held an Other-funeral and wore all white.

Soul Man 
Before dying Sayid worries about where his soul will end up after torturing so many people. Jacob has other plans for the torturer, instructing Hurley to take his body to the Temple where the Iraqi will be dunked in the healing waters and restored to life. (Before you resurrect, your arms automatically go out to the side in a cross-shape like that. It’s just gravity. Duh.)

The common assumption is that Jacob will inhabit Syaid’s body the same way that Black Shirt inhabits Locke. But the episode made a big deal of showing that the circumstances are different in these two cases.

Locke’s lifeless body is still lying on the beach while Black Shirt has taken on the physical appearance of Locke. However, we see the real Sayid come back to life; and IF that’s Jacob in there, then he’s taken over Sayid’s actual body, not just conjured up a facsimile.

Some clues about souls are discussed in the AR. AR Locke tries to comfort AR Jack about losing his father’s corpse (again!). Jack says the airline doesn’t know where Christian is. Locke asks, “How could they know where he is?” - meaning where his soul is.

Now that Black Shirt has taken on the form of John Locke and Jacob is possibly indwelling Sayid, one could ask the same question of them. On a show concerned very much with death and the afterlife, the important question might be where are their souls?

(Sayid's face expresses how I feel about all that resurrection stuff.)

Back in the AR Jack tells Locke that nothing is irreversible, referring to fixing Locke’s broken spine. Could this statement also apply to what’s happening with Locke and Sayid on the island? The possibility of resurrection makes even death reversible. Perhaps when Jacob and Black Shirt are done with Locke and Sayid’s bodies, we’ll get the real John Locke and Sayid back intact?

I’m The Man in Black 
We got a lot of good intel on Black Shirt finally. Bram shows us that the ash circles are used to stop him (although not effectively enough to save his own life). The Others are making with the ash since it looks like Flocke is about to storm the Temple.

I enjoyed Flocke’s assessment that John Locke was the only survivor to realize how sad and pathetic his life was back home and to embrace that there was something more significant on the island. As we watch the AR 815-ers land in Los Angeles, I think we’re going to get a glimpse of just how sad and pathetic all of their lives become.

Richard reluctantly acknowledges who must be indwelling Locke’s form. Clearly Alpert and Black Shirt share some history. Flocke tells Richard, “It’s good seeing you without your chains.” The easy assumption is that Alpert was brought to the island on the Black Rock slaver ship – Was he a slave though?

Flocke mentions that unlike John Locke, he does wish to return home. It seemed to me he means to get off the island. I’ve assumed he and Jacob were banished to the island to play their little game with mankind’s fate. However, is it possible that he and Jacob have more human origins, like Richard? Other fans assume he simply means to get back to the Temple. He’s clearly been hanging out underneath the Temple as Smokey for quite some time.

The suggestion that Black Shirt’s true home is the Temple raises one of the more nagging questions to our understanding of everything. What if Black Shirt is the good guy, and Jacob is the bad guy? Well. Maybe anything.

Random Thoughts
I loved seeing Arzt and Froget featured in the AR 815 flight. Lost has so many wonderfully annoying side characters. I’m just waiting for the Nikki and Paulo cameo this season.

It was fun to finally see Richard wig out. He’s usually so calm and serene. But his world is clearly falling apart.

Finally, I wonder where Rose and Bernard are. Did they flash to 2007 with team Jack? If they didn not time travel, it seems like they’d be dead on the bottom of the ocean with everyone else in the AR? This doesn’t bode well for them becoming Adam and Eve.

Lastly, my wife and a friend devised a morbid death chart for S6. All our Lost-watching regulars filled out who we thought would survive until the season’s end. My death count was pretty high. The person with the most correct guesses at the series finale wins.

I had reservations about the rules of this game however, since this is a show with time-resets, resurrections, and so forth. Immediately this episode kinda messed with the game’s playability. We can’t really count someone as dead until they die in both timeline, right?

Overall, a pretty mind-blowing couple episodes. They can’t all be this game-changing. I don’t have time to write this much and you don’t have time to read this much each week!

LosTalk: Greatest Hits

2010-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

A friend posted her Greatest Hits Lists (best and worst of the first 5 season of Lost) awhile back, and I thought I’d participate by making my own. As we come dangerously close to the Season 6 premiere of this monumental TV series, here’s a final look back at some highs and lows of the previous 5 seasons.

Top 10 Best Episodes

10. The Pilot (1x1) – One of the all time best pilots: great actors, great characters, great action, provocative concept, plus polar bears and monsters.

9. Deux Ex Machina (1x19) – This episode can be seen as a microcosm for Locke’s entire journey and for the series as a whole. Locke receives special insight presumably from the island. It leads him to the beachcraft wreckage, which gets Boon killed. Essentially the series has been about Locke’s seemingly special purpose, which turned out to be the Loop Hole Black Shirt has been crafted over decades to kill Jacob. Locke’s Mouse Trap explanation in the episode is an appropriate analogy for Black Shirt’s complex scheme.

8. The Shape of Things to Come (4x09) – Ben allows his daughter to be killed to save his own skin. In retaliation he unleashes a freight train-like Smokey on Keamy’s mercenaries. In the future we learn that Ben once stole the island away from Charles Widmore, and they’re in a war to wrestle back control of the island.

7. The Man Behind the Curtain (3x20) – Ben’s first flashback episode, and our glimpse of the Dharma heyday. Meanwhile Locke meets some kind of ghost-like spirit he believes is Jacob, but who we now assume is the loophole-creating Black Shirt. The Other’ are impressed with Locke’s sense of purpose, so a jealous Ben shoots him in the gut.

6. The Constant (4x05) – Great Desmond episode that sets the stage for time travel to become a fixture of the series. The Penny/Des phone call reunion was one of the most upbeat moments in a season that found our characters’ plights growing bleaker and bleaker.

5. Walkabout (1x04) – The first Locke-centric episode reveals that the island has healed a crippled man, but is he a mysterious threat or does the island have a “special” purpose for him?

4. Live Together Die Alone (2x23) – Lost tends to pull out all the stops during season finales. This is the first episode to blow open the island’s mythology by hinting at prior conflicts between Dharma and the Hostiles. Michael has secured rescue for he and Walt, but at the cost of killing two fellow survivors. Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are handed over to the Others who turn out to be led by Henry Gale. Locke loses his faith and blows up the hatch. And for the first time we learn that a.) the outside world still exists and b.) someone out there is looking for them.

3. There’s No Place Like Home (4x12) – This action packed season finale finds the future Oceanic Six members scrambling from all corners of the island to find rescue. But with the freighter full of C4, the helicopter out of gas, and the island about to be “moved,” there’s nowhere to run. With the turn of a frozen donkey wheel, the island we spent four seasons on vanishes.

2. Through the Looking Glass (3x22) – The Season 3 finale that brought us Charlie’s heroic death scene. The Losties first real chance of rescue turned out to be “not Penny’s boat.” And the series broke the mold on flashbacks by giving us our first flashforward. We learn that not only do some of the Losties escape the island, but something is so wrong they “HAVE GO BACK!”

1. The Incident (5x16) – In one fell swoop this season finale realigned how we look at the entire series. Prior to this, fan theories were just blind guesses at what might be happening behind the scenes on the island. The Incident lifted the veil on Jacob and Black Shirt as the island’s two powerful puppet masters. We learned that Locke was sent skipping through time to foretell his own “special” place on the island. Locke’s journey was an elaborate setup to convince Ben to kill Jacob when the time was right. But the now-slain demigod has his own backup plan in the works. The remaining Losties are “coming” to strike back at the manipulative Black Shirt.

If someone wanted to quickly watch the essential Lost episodes to catch up before Season 6, I’d suggest watching every season premiere, every season finale, and every Locke, Desmond, and Ben Linus episode.

Worst 5 Episodes

5. I Do (3x06) – Kate marries Nathan Fillian. Who cares? Can we get back to Nikki and Paulo already?

4. The Little Prince (5x04) – What are these O6 guys freaking out about? It makes no sense. Sun is now a vengeance-seeking assassin? Let’s get them back to the island already, okay? Oh yeah, those guys are inexplicably skipping through time getting nosebleeds! Hold off a sec on that return, okay?

3. Homecoming (1x15) – Charlie gets off drugs and sells photocopiers… and does very little else of interest.

2. Stranger in a Strange Land (3x09) – Jack gets his awesome tats from Bai Ling? I assumed that mark on Juliet’s back was going to mean something. Guess not.

1. Fire + Water (2x12) - They waste a lot of time building a church while Mr. Eko makes it clear he doesn’t know what baptism is about. Meanwhile Charlie’s freaking out again, stealing baby Aaron, and so forth. (Charlie was so unlikable by the end as S2, I’m amazed they redeemed him well enough to make his death meaningful by the end of S3.)

Top 10 Characters

10. Christian Shepherd - I’m going out on a limb with his pick, but you know things are going to get intriguing whenever ghost Christian shows up. Also, his life was so interconnected with other characters - Jack, Claire, Aaron, and Ana Lucia – I figured Christian would turn out to be the key to the series, especially back when we all suspected Christian WAS Jacob. Let’s hope Jack gets to resolve some of his daddy issues in S6.

9. Richard Alpert – Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he age? Was he on the Black Rock? Why doesn’t her remember meeting various time travelers during different points in history? Why do his eyes look like that? Always intriguing when he shows up also.

8. Michael – To me Michael had one of the most human stories of the original castaways. Protecting and bonding with a son he never knew. Granted his character became a little one note – “WALT!” But it was fascinating seeing him get pushed over the edge – killing his friends to save his son.

7. Sawyer – Best character arc of any major player – bad boy to hero. Plus he’s the most consistently funny part of the show.

6. Hurley – Everybody loves Hugo.

5. Sayid – Time to kick some butt. Rough backstory – being a torturer. Rough forwardstory – losing Nadia.

4. Desmond – You’ve got some explaining to do. Why are you so special? Why do the laws of time travel not apply to you? He’s also got the shows best romance, and is one of two characters I strongly felt deserved a happy ending.

3. Juliet – The other character I felt most deserving of a happy ending – too bad that’s not gonna happen. She didn’t ask for this life – the Others turned her into a liar, a spy, and a killer. For ages she was a mole we didn’t know if we could trust. Down deep she’s a caring fertility doctor who wants to make life, not take it. I’m disappointed she won’t be around to solve the island’s fertility problem.

2. Ben Linus – He’s fascinating every second he’s on the screen… and hilarious. Can we ever truly trust or understand his motives? Everyone knows he was a bit part that evolved into one of the show’s central characters. Another good kid the island turned bad.

1. Locke – No doubt. The heart and soul of the series, and the central character in Black Shirt’s long con. Lost is a show about con men and men being conned. Locke is the essential conned man. But even though he was wrong, his sentiments about fate and the nature of the island will prove true. Even if he wasn’t innately special, he carried with him half the show’s dual theme.

Top 5 Best Moments

5. Penny and Desmond’s Reunion (The Constant) – Des got a bit of his long deserved happiness.

4. Walt’s Kidnapping (Exodus) - “WAAAAAAAAAALT!” Who are these bearded Other guys?

3. Charlie’s Death (Through The Looking Glass) – They redeemed him just in time to make his heroic death heatbreaking. “Not Penny’s Boat”?

2. Juliet’s Death (The Incident) – Her separation from Sawyer being yanked into the abyss was Emmy-level performance material. Then, in an effort to change fate, she set off the nuclear bomb yelling Sawyer’s trademark “son of a bitch!”

1. The reveal that Locke’s body was in the box (The Incident) – Black Shirt was posing as Locke; Locke actually had NOT resurrected half a season ago; Black Shirt was behind the madness of the time loop – all this was reveled in a single pan. Not only this, it was the same exact gag they used in the S4 finale when they panned to Locke’s body in the coffin! But this time the pan realigned what we knew about an entire season and the entire series.

Top 5 Quotes

White Rabbit (1x05)
LOCKE: I'm an ordinary man, Jack, meat and potatoes, I live in the real world. I'm not a big believer in magic. But this place is different. It's special. The others don't want to talk about it because it scares them. But we all know it. We all feel it. Is your white rabbit a hallucination? Probably. But what if everything that happened here, happened for a reason? What if this person that you're chasing is really here?
JACK: That's impossible.
LOCKE: Even if it is, let's say it's not.
JACK: Then what happens when I catch him?
LOCKE: I don't know. But I've looked into the eye of this island. And what I saw was beautiful.

Confidence Man (1x8)
SAWYER: Baby, I am tied to a tree in a jungle of mystery. I just got tortured by a damn spinal surgeon and a gen-u-ine I-raqi. Of course, I'm serious. You're just not seeing the big picture here, Freckles. You really going to let that girl suffocate because you can't bring yourself to give me one little kiss? Hell, it's only first base. Lucky for you I ain't greedy.

Exodus (1x24)
LOCKE: Do you really think all this is an accident – that we, a group of strangers survived, many of us with just superficial injuries? Do you think we crashed on this place by coincidence – especially, this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason.  
JACK: Brought here? And who brought us here, John?  
LOCKE: The Island. The Island brought us here. This is no ordinary place, you’ve seen that, I know you have. But the Island chose you, too, Jack. It’s destiny.  
JACK: Did you talk with Boone about destiny, John?  
LOCKE: Boone was a sacrifice that the Island demanded. What happened to him at that plane was a part of a chain of events that led us here – that led us down a path – that led you and me to this day, to right now.  
JACK: And where does that path end, John?  
LOCKE: The path ends at the Hatch. The Hatch, Jack – all of it – all of it happened so that we could open the Hatch.  
JACK: No, no, we’re opening the Hatch so that we can survive.  
LOCKE: Survival is all relative, Jack.  
JACK: I don’t believe in destiny.  
LOCKE: Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet.

Numbers (1X18)
HURLEY: Okay, that thing in the woods, maybe it's a monster, maybe it's a pissed off giraffe, I don't know. The fact that no one is even looking for us, yeah, that's weird, but I just go along with it because I'm along for the ride, good old fun time Hurley. Well guess what? Now, I want some friggin' answers.

Orientation (2x3)
LOCKE: If it's not real, then what are you doing here, Jack? Why did you come back? Why do you find it so hard to believe? 
JACK: Why do you find it so easy? 
LOCKE: It's never been easy!

Top 5 Major Mysteries:

5. Why’s Desmond Special? How can the laws of time travel not apply to one guy?

4. The Statue/The Wheel/The Temple - Who built this stuff and why?

3. The Others – Where do they come from? What do they really know about the island they claim to protect? What’s their special relationship with death?

2. The Smoke Monster – I guess we’ve got a lot of intel on this monster now (possible judge of souls, tool of Black Shirt), but I still don’t know what it is or how it got there?

1. Jacob and his lists – What has this guy really been telling the Others to do? Was it even him or Black Shirt? If he’s been silent to the Others for years, then why? What is “the end” Jacob would like to see?

Top 5 Minor Mysteries:

5. Who are Adam and Eve?
4. What’s up with infertility issues on island?
3. Why does Mikhail not die?
2. Why is Richard Alpert ageless?
1. Who broke the ash circle?

Here's hoping S6 will answers most of these lingering issues. Feel free to post your favs and least favs in the comments.

Lost Season 5 Rewatch: Episodes 5x15 - 5x16

2010-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

Wow. Here we are after months and months of rewatching. Just a couple more episodes to review before diving in the final unknown terrain of Season 6.

Follow the Leader (5 x 15)
This supposedly Richard-centric episode doesn’t really delve into the ageless man’s backstory in any satisfying way, but for some reason as a Locke-fan I find this episode to be among my favorites of the season.

First, I’ll look at a couple things that Richard said. When Sun asks him if he knew her friends back in the 1970’s, he says yes, “I saw them all die.” We can assume he means he believed they all died when a nuclear bomb hit a pocket of electromagnetic energy. However, in The Incident Richard doesn’t actually SEE them all die. He wasn’t even around the Swan site when the screen went white.

1.) Perhaps Richard means since he was around, he assumes they died. 2.) Perhaps this is yet another hint that the 2007 folk are in an alternate timeline, and here he refers a past in which he DID see them die. Or 3.) Perhaps our ’77 Losties will not die or disappear from the Incident, maybe they’ve got more work to do in the 70’s, and he sees them die later. This is another case where I can’t decipher if the Lost writers are masterfully cryptic by leaving things open to such varied interpretation, or if the writing process of this complex show is so chaotic that things are unintentionally vague.

Clearly Richard remembered the time traveling Losties from the 70’s. Did he not remember them when he met some of them again in 2004? Did he not realize some sort of time travel magic was at work?

Richard, finally getting a chance to talk to his missing leader, asks Locke, “Where did you go?” when he disappeared in a flash of white light 3 years prior. It seems Richard has no understanding of the island’s time traveling qualities. And yet he’s gotta know something’s up with the people who’ve visited him at different points in history. However, if he knew that time travel is possible, then he might not be impressed with the seemingly miraculous prophecy of John Locke’s coming. And if Locke’s arrival is not impressive to Richard, then Black Shirt’s plan falls apart.

Before Flocke goes to visit Jacob, he runs a little “errand.” This errand is the opposite bookend of a scene from the beginning of Season 5. In this scene Flocke has Richard tell a time-skipping Locke to go see a “younger” Richard, that he must bring his friends back to the island, and that he’s got to die. On first viewing, not knowing that Locke wasn’t himself at the time, this scene was maddening. It seemed that Locke’s own delusion started the time loop and set himself up to become the Other’s leader. However, once we learn that Locke isn’t himself, but rather Black Shirt in disguise, we realize that an outside force set Locke’s journey into motion, and the way I look at it, is the cause of almost everything the Losties have been through.

When ’77 Eloise Hawking decides to help Jack with the bomb plan, she says doing this will, “take it all back.” Interesting that initially Eloise desires to change time with Jack – presumably to prevent killing her future son. When we next meet her as an old woman she seems to be doing the opposite. She does everything she can to ensure time does not change, insuring that every thing happens as it always did. Going so far as to send her son off to die.

Much discussion this season has been framed around measuring why different Losties do what they do. It seemed each of the O6 had their own reason for going back, instead of one clear reason as we had imagined would be the case.

Now, in these final episodes, we have to question why each Lostie does or does not want to go along with Jack’s plan. If Jack’s reasoning for erasing the past 3 years is so he’ll never lose Kate, it’s funny that he’s willing to create a timeline in which Kate is heading for jail and they’ll probably never meet.

The Incident (5 x 16)
So much can be said about what I consider to be the all time best episode of Lost. It’s great not because of the particulars of the story, acting, or anything; but because it realigns our understanding of the entire series. We certainly don’t know everything yet, but I believe based solely on the events of The Incident we can create a working theory for the show as whole. We know what powers are pulling the strings even if we don’t know why, Locke’s journey is brought full circle, and we learn Ben has been just as much a pawn as Locke.

While this episode pulls back the curtain on so much information, it also ends with a cliff hanger leaving us unsure of where the next season will begin, who’s alive and who’s dead, and not even knowing what time or reality our characters will be in.

I still stand by much of what I said after a first viewing, but here’s a look at a few things that stand out to me during the rewatch.

Team Ilana refers to Frank Lapidus as a possible candidate. Candidate for what? Well, if an invisible Black Shirt needed Locke’s body to take on a corporeal form, what if Jacob, now dead in body, needs a vessel to indwell as well? Team Ilana seems to be fighting Black Shirt on Jacob’s behalf. Suppose Frank is their candidate for giving Jacob a new body.

That’s just my guess. Here’s another crazy theory to stack on top of that. I assumed that Hurley will play some special part in Jacob’s plan – after all, he’s still carrying around Jacob’s guitar case holding who knows what. I had assumed Hurley might be Jacob’s future vessel. What if Frank, Ilana’s “candidate” for Jacob, is the person Juliet shot during the outrigger chase? Frank’s body would be no longer unusable, so they turn to Hurley or someone else to be Jacob’s vessel. There - enough wild speculation.

There’s much that can be said about Jacob and Esau, who’s good and who’s evil, and what Jacob’s intentions were in all his visits with our Losties. Here’s a thoughtful article laying out all angles and opinions on the black and white duo.

I still dig the line where Jack tells Richard “not to give up on” Locke. Yeah, Jack was probably just saying it because he’s got his own Locke-like faith journey. And yeah, this statement probably just further perpetuates for Richard the myth of Locke’s future arrival. But I also get an inkling this may be a clue to the audience not to give up on Locke either. I don’t really expect the real Locke to be brought back to life now, but you never know. Locke seemed to always care deeply about the redemption of his friends (Charlie, Boone, etc.), it’d be a shame if he himself never got his own redemption.

A repeated viewing cleared up what Ben knew about Jacob and Black Shirt – Nil. Ben admits he took Locke to the cabin pretending that’s where Jacob lived. Little did he know (apparently) that an invisible Black Shirt actually lived inside.

As I’ve said, much can be made of the Lostie’s confusing reasons for wanting to detonate that H-bomb. Jack, as we know, did it because he lost Kate (among other reasons – he also did it out of a sense of destiny).

Juliet’s sudden and saddening change of heart is harder to swallow. One moment she’s charging off to save everybody, the next she’s ready to die. Her childhood flashback to justify this reversal seemed out of place in an episode where every other flashback involved a visit by Jacob. Apparently because Juliet’s parent divorced when she was young, she decides that she and Sawyer are not “supposed to” be together. Wouldn’t a mention of her own divorce prove that love sometimes doesn’t last? She goes on to say, “Just because we love each other doesn’t mean we’re meant to be together.” A little bit of jealousy turns Juliet into a Locke-talking destiny-head. And Juliet was the one invoking free will in Season 3!

The article I linked to gets into the specifics of each of Jacob’s visits. The stand-out visit is the extended conversation Jacob has with Hurley. He emphasizes Hurley’s right to choose what he does. Does choosing hold special significance to Hurley, or does this scene simply establish Jacob, to the audience, as the advocate of free will? I subscribe to the theory that Jacob and Black Shirt represent Free Will and Fate, respectively. These two concepts have been regular themes of Lost since the beginning, as I’ve traced throughout the rewatch.

More importantly, what’s in the stinking guitar case? (Watch it turn out to just be a guitar!)

Much can be read into the scene where Ben kills Jacob. I’m curious about Jacob’s line to Ben, “What about you?” Jacob certainly allows himself to be killed. This line seems almost like he was provoking Ben to do it, and this comes shortly after emphasizing Ben had a choice in what he was doing. Hmm.

So Where Are We Now?
After Juliet set off the bomb, or whatever happened, turning the screen white and the letters black – where will we find ourselves next season?

The’s a few obvious choices. 1.) The Losties will be landing in LAX, in an alternate timeline in which flight 815 never crashed thanks to the Incident being prevented. I hope not. I don’t like the idea of erasing 5 seasons worth of character development. I’m starting to think all this alt timeline stuff is just a red herring. Lost almost demands a Whatever Happened, Happened timeline to make sense of the complex mosaic of flashbacks.

2.) The Incident happened as it always did, and the blast somehow sends out time traveling Losties to 2007 to join the rest of the gang. After all Jacob’s dying words were, “They’re coming.” They’ll arrive just in time for Widmore’s war between Team Ilana and the Others and – who am I kidding, I’m still confused about who’s working for whom.

3.) The gang neutralized the Incident, and they’ll find themselves still alive and hanging around the Swan worksite. That’d be a little anti-climactic for me, but there’s dangling threads to be covered in the 1970’s – like Hurley possibly recording the numbers, etc. They’ll have to find another ride back to 2007 at some point.

4.) Who knows! Maybe some combination of the above. What if they’ve created two parallel timelines, one controlled by Black Shirt, the other by Jacob? And the upcoming war involves one timeline wiping the other out.

With such a massive cliff hanger, it’d be hilarious if the season premier didn’t even address where/when our Losties are, and instead, finally gave us our long awaited Richard Alpert on the Black Rock backstory.

Thanks to my readers who’ve stuck with my longwinded rewatch posts. It’s been fun and I can’t wait for S6 to begin. I’ll have to find something new to waste my time writing about in just a few short months!

Lost Season 5 Rewatch: Episodes 5x11 - 5x14

2010-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Continuing my look back at Lost Season 5 in light of all we now know.

Whatever Happened, Happened (5 x 11)
So Ben Linus’ bad dad Rodger actually seems kinda chill this season. When his son gets shot and goes missing he actually gets upset. Considering how he was depicted before, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the guy didn’t give a crap, taking his son’s disappearance as a blessing.

I always felt the way Kate and Cassidy casually meet up again was a lost opportunity. To me the drama of Sawyer telling Kate to look after his kid was not about whipping up a blind jealous rage in Jack – how dare you help HIM! To me the more interesting moment should’ve been when Kate realizes Sawyer’s baby momma is the SAME person she was on the run from Jonny Law with. Alas, our Losties never seem to pay attention to such coincidences. Only Hurley gives these occurrences a second thought – and he’s the crazy one.

Jack’s new I’m “supposed to” be here attitude really ruins everything Sawyer and company had going for them. At this point Jack doesn’t have a clue why he’s back, he’s just waiting for a purpose to fall in his lap. Kate, on the other hand, has the only good reason for returning – to find Claire, those mother of the baby she stole. Yet for some reason, Kate acts all weird and won’t tell anyone what her reason for coming back is.

I still like Hurley and Miles discussion of the nature of time travel. Especially since this episode presents the first “chink” in the Whatever Happened, Happened argument. Hurley wants to know why adult Ben Linus didn’t remember the Losties shooting him as a child. Perhaps they ARE creating an alternate timeline. Perhaps adult Ben DID remember them. (A personal favorite theory, however the rewatch of S2 seems to debunk this.) Of course, this very same episode provides a workaround to this question. Young Ben’s mind has been wiped of his memories of Sayid shooting him.

When Richard takes Ben to the temple for healing he says young Ben will “forget this ever happened” and “his innocence will be lost.” Some people think this loss of innocence is what turned Ben bad. However I see this statement as a possible allusion to when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge. Their innocence was gone, and they knew the nature of good and evil. It’s possible the Temple ceremony truly made Ben an Other, opened his eyes to the true nature of the island and the struggles therein. (Of course, not knowing exactly what the Others know of Jacob and Black Shirt, it’s hard to take this argument too far.)

Dead is Dead (5 x 12)
Richard makes a couple statements that indicate that even he, the island’s ancient advisor, doesn’t know the nature of the powers at work here. At one time he says “Jacob wanted it,” and then he says, “The island chooses who…” I’ve been of the mind that the island doesn’t have a will, that everything attributed to the island is just the workings of Jacob and Black Shirt. However, here even Richard is unclear on that matter.

Ben says to Locke, “I knew this would happen,” referring to Locke rising from the dead. The care with which Ben preserved Locke’s body for the return indicates this might be true. But what were Ben’s real motives for coming back? Did he truly wish to be judged by Smokey for killing Alex? Did he want to bring about whatever glorious future was promised by Locke’s return? Or did he just, as I suspect, want to wrestle back control of the island?

To me it’s possible part of “the rules” keeping Ben and Widmore from killing each other is that they both know they are alive through the arrival of flight 316. Ben even builds a runway accounting for this. But once 316 is over, no more of the future is written for these two. As far as they’re concerned it’s GAME ON for taking back the island.

Flocke poignantly tells Ben “now you know what it’s like to be me” when Ben hasn’t a clue what happening anymore. Black Shirt sure is playing the part of Locke well, even down to the petty spitefulness.

I can’t even wrap my mind around whether the flashback of Ben stealing baby Alex is anything like older Danielle Rousseau’s account – that was SO many episodes ago. Still it’s interesting that Ben tells young Rousseau to run when she hears the whispers. We’re still no closer to knowing what the whispers are or what they mean. But his warning seems to indicate it means the Others are near.

Ben assumes he’s going into the Temple to be judged by Smokey, however Flocke leads him underneath to the tunnels where Smokey dwells. These tunnels certainly are ornate. Do the Others know of them, or ever use them? Richard and Eloise knew their way around them, but Ben seems like he’s never been down here before. Kinda odd to dispose of a nuclear bomb in the place where the island monster hangs out.

Finally, are a majority of the Others still hanging out in the temple all these years after Ben sent them there at the end of S3?

Some Like It Hoth (5 x13)
This is perhaps the most unnecessary episode of the season. With everything racing towards its conclusion, finding out Miles’ back story doesn’t feel like a priority right here. Especially since Miles has never used his “I talk to dead people” ability to any major advantage. Seriously, if you’ve got a superhero like this, let’s see some serious ghost whisperer action!

We can assume the leaky hydrogen bomb pumping straight into Dhramaville is what gave Miles his powers (much like Spider-man) and is also what gave Miles’ mom her cancer.

We do get a look at the status of the Swan station here, and from the looks of it, there’s not much built yet. As I’ve said, in the Swan Orientation Film Marvin Candle explains the Incident happened shortly after experimentation at the Swan began. During the season finale it seems the Incident happened during Swan construction. I suppose the answer is just that the drilling we saw is not construction, but rather Radzinsky’s experiments, commencing for some reason before the actual station was completed.

And am I coo coo for Coco Puffs or were they hammering the hatch serial numbers into the metal door here, but in S2 the numbers are on the concrete base of the hatch. What gives, guys?

And what’s the further meaning of the numbers and why are they played from the radio tower if they’re just a serial number? Will we see Hurley record the number at the radio tower himself? I assume the Losties time in the 1970’s is over, but who knows.

The Variable (5 x 14)
If Dan Faraday changed his mind about the nature of time and has decided to prevent the Incident, why the heck did he wait so long to come back to the island? I mean he gave himself like 48 hours to save the day. It’s almost as if he only came back because he learned Jack and company somehow arrived from the future. Lucky coincidence for Dan. He’s like, glad you’re here, I need you guys to help save you guys!

When Faraday raises the alarm with Dr. Chang, he tells Miles, “I’m just making sure your dad does what he’s supposed to do.” To me, this betrays he’s still got a Whatever Happened, Happened mentality. My underlying suspicion is that Faraday was lying to Jack and Kate about his plan – that he KNEW sending them to “prevent” the Incident would actually cause the Incident. That like his parents, Faraday was just trying to ensure the timeline played out the way it was supposed to.

However, there’s the moment when he goes to talk to Charlotte. Sure, Faraday is a constant emotional train wreck, but if he truly wanted to change time then he’d start by not giving his true love, baby Charlotte (creepy!) that cryptic warning. Further, what he says to Charlotte is that, “I didn’t think I could change the future, but maybe I can.” This candid line supports the idea that Faraday truly believes his “humans are the variables” theory. So I flip flop on whether I believe Faraday wanted to prevent the Incident or to ensure the Incident happened as scheduled. I believe we’ve got some important info left to see regarding what Faraday was up to for those 3 years in Ann Arbor.

In flashbacks Eloise Hawking seems genuinely surprised that Dan got a research grant from Charles Widmore. Curious, since Hawking and Widmore seem to share the goal of sending Faraday back to the island.

Meanwhile, in 2007 Hawking and Widmore are together at the hospital where Desmond is recovering. Why are they there? My original assumption was that they were going to take young Charlie Hume for some dubious reason. Now I believe they’re going to bring Desmond back to the island for some purpose.

Lost Season 5 Rewatch: Episodes 5x8 - 5x10

2010-01-04T07:00:00.001-08:00

Welp, it’s a new year and here I am still writing about this crap. My continuing look back at Lost Season 5 in light of all we know now. The rewatch is drawing quickly to a close and Jo and I are getting jazzed about the Season 6 launch this February.

The early part of S5 was not among my favorite stretches of Lost – the chaos of those episodes seemed to take a shotgun approach to advancing a story that had heretofore been drawn with a scalpel. I was never going to give up on the show that I had become so committed to (obsessed with). Thankfully one episode, LaFleur, put the series back on track for me.

LaFleur (5 x 8)
Suddenly the flashes are over and nosebleeds have stopped, nobody’s blipping off planes anymore, and the inexplicable nonsense has given way toward more character-driven stories again. It doesn’t hurt that this episode gave us a glimpse of the statue in its full glory, a promise that the series would eventually round back toward some of the early dangling mysteries.

Our Losties find themselves in 1970’s Dharma heyday, and we learn more about the island’s history through our time travelers first hand experiences. We see the strained truce between the DI and the Hostiles.

It’s interesting that after killing two Hostiles, the Dharma members insist that they bury the bodies. Shortly after this Richard Alpert comes to the Barracks demanding “justice.” And apparently because the Hostile’s bodies were buried, he demands that Dharma member Paul’s body be delivered in exchange.

Couple these events with the fact that Paul wore an ankh pendant – a symbol of eternal life, and the same symbol held by the statue – and we begin to question the Other’s special relationship with death.

Originally this episode made me suspect the Others were all resurrected dead people. However, in a few episodes Desd is Dead will debunk that theory. And yet, considering Richard’s seeming immortality, Mikhail’s cheating death, the Other’s strange funeral rights, and the many visits by ghosties, one can assume there is something going on here with the Others and the afterlife.

This episode is also great because Sawyer’s transformation from bad boy to hero is complete. Not only is he a good leader concerned with keeping his friends safe, he’s one of the few Losties to ever put their knowledge of the island to use – recalling both the Black Rock and the island’s fertility problem as he negotiates the problems facing them.

Sawyer seems committed to waiting on the island until Locke returns. We find him three years later still waiting and searching for the rest of the Losties. However, once Jack and company arrive saying Locke sent them, Sawyer doesn’t seem too happy to follow their plans.

It’s interesting Amy Goodspeed seems to suspect that Sawyer and company are not who they say they are, but because they saved her life she lets them keep their secret and live within the DI.

At the same time, and in a single episode, Lost delivers the most compelling and stable relationship it’s created among its main characters – Sawyer and Juliet. In a few brief scenes here and later in Follow the Leader, Suliet became my favorite “ship” (gag) and one that was devastatingly broken up too soon after.

Of course they couldn’t let Sawyer and Juliet exist for even one episode without dropping Kate back into the mix. I suppose their relationship was doomed from the start.

Namaste (5 x 9)
It’s worth noting that when Jack and company flashed off flight 316 it turns immediately from night to day. So it would seem the plane encountered it’s own time warp when approaching the island. It wasn’t a continuous landing in 2007 as I has supposed.

BTW, who finished the runway? When we first see it in S3, the runway is just getting started. Ben leaves the island a few weeks later with no time to complete the project. Did the Others continue building it after he and Locke left them leaderless?

Ben tells Sun, “How would I know where they are?” referring to Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid. Is he being truthful (HA!), or did he truly not understand (through Dan’s journal or some other means) that the Losties had been in Dharma days with him as a child?

It interesting that Black Shirt, fate, or whatever was controlling the time flashes left Sawyer and company in the 1970’s for 3 years, the exact same time that the O6 were off island. In fact the only people that “lost” time in all the time skipping were Ben and Locke - Locke being almost 3 years “younger” than the rest when he died.

We see Radzinsky’s sweet model of the Swan. It’s somewhat confusing whether the station had actually been built just days later at the time of the Incident.

We see baby Ethan, who was delivered by Juliet. Why wasn’t Ethan evacuated with the rest of the woman and children? When did he get abducted by the Others?

I love the scene when Hurley worries someone will ask him who’s the President in 1977. A great setup for the gag just a few episodes later when he doesn’t know the answer.

One of the more confusing bits in this episode is when Sun and Frank visit the Barracks in 2007. The place is in shambles, and there’s Dharma signage still left on one of the buildings. It seems like the Others had removed all the signage and this was to suggest Sun and Frank landed in an alternate timeline. However, the game of Risk left set up seems to confirm this was still in the same (only) timeline we know about.

I suppose showing us the sign at the “Processing Center” was just to let us know this was the same building our time travelers were at in 1977. To my knowledge we had never seen this building before this episode anyhow.

He’s Our You (5 x 10)
I didn’t like that our new heroic Sawyer let them torture Sayid, but I supposed there’s a bit of poetry here bringing things full circle. Sayid, after all, tortured Sawyer some years before (later!).

Radzinsky confirms that they haven’t even built the Swan yet. It’s a bit confusing since Marvin Candle tells us in the Swan Orientation Video that the Incident happened AFTER the experimentation at the Swan station began.

Since Ilana is working for Jacob, did she know what was going to happen on that flight? Did she know they’d make an emergency landing on the island, and did she know Sayid and the gang would disappear in midair? She certainly seems to have a plan once they land.

And finally, in an effort to explore whether our time traveling Losties can in fact change the past, Sayid shoots a kid in the chest. What a show! I love it.

Top 10 Musical Acts of the Decade

2009-12-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

So I'm less than qualified to make an authoritative list in this category, and I'm NOT going to try to come up with cogent arguments for all by picks. That said, music plays integral role in my pop culture sphere and oftens holds a meaningful place in my life (goodbye Indie 103.1, hello again iTunes playlist).

This is simply a list of my favs that are also important to the musical landscape of the past 10 years. My taste tends to lean toward rock, but as cross pollination between musical genres increased over, there's some other stuff on this list too.

10. The Airborne Toxic Event - Perhaps not the most important band of the era, but I've got a soft spot for these guys as my buddy who writes a music blog followed them on a couple tours. What I like about ATE is the genuine sentiment (often desperation) in their lyrics. While I'm a sucker for recent mainstream hipster indie-rock fare, full of electronic bleeps and bloops and whatever, most of that stuff is SOOO ironic, it doesn't carry the weight to make one of these lists. ATE plays songs so heartfelt the remind me of a lot of the great 90's alternative bands.

9. The Shins - These guys.

8. The Arcade Fire - Those guys.

7. Regina Spektor - She plays the piano good.

6. Johnny Cash - What's he doing here? Well he released many albums this decade actually - mostly full of re-released tracks. The one most significant to me is American IV: The Man Comes Around, an album Cash put out in 2002 after being diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease. It's a somber album dealing amost exclusively with death, judgment, and forgiveness. For those who flippantly say they "hate country music," Johnny Cash is a great starter step into a broader world of amazing folk and American roots music.

5. Beck - His stuff from the 00's is surprisingly as good as (possibly better than) his stuff from the 90's. I've just started to appreciate the lyrical similarities between Beck and Bob Dylan.

4. Muse - On the track "Black Holes and Revelations," lead singer Matthew Ballamy shows off a set of pipes almost as good as Freddy Mercury.

3. Gorillaz - Amazing experimental fusion of rock, rap, hip hop, and a variety of other influences. Oh yeah, and the band pretends to be cartoon monkeys.

2. DJ Danger Mouse - From his parntership with Cee-Lo in the duo act Gnarls Barkley to producing for the Gorillaz, this DJ and musical engineer may arguably be one of the most influential music makers of recent years.

1. Jack White - Including The White Stripes and all his side projects, Jack White has had a hit album almost every year this decade. His guitar-driven rock is mainly blues inspired but sometimes varies to everything from folk to experimental rock.

Happy New Years, everyone!

Top 10 TV Series of the Decade

2009-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ironic that the year I cancel cable is the year I started devouring more TV than ever. Thanks to Hulu and my Blockbuster queue I can inhale entire TV seasons at a time.

10. Deadwood (2004-2006) - David Milch's expletive-laden gritty western paints a purportedly "truer" picture of the gold rush-era frontier. I don't know if it's truer, but it's certainly more colorful. Timothy Olyphant plays a conflicted sheriff in a lawless town where anybody can be a villain and the only gain is gotten by questionable means.

9. Mad Men (2007-present) - Yeah, yeah, yeah - critical acclaim and all that. But it deserves every bit of it. The delightful thing about Mad Men is watching society treat as normal all the things we've come to vilify - smoking, excessive drinking, blatant sexism, letting your kids play in the street, etc. And this was supposed to be a time of progressive revolution?

8. Dexter (2006-present) - Isn't it creepy finding yourself rooting for a sociopathic serial killer? Expertly written and acted. Watching Dexter slice up bad guys who've slipped through the law's fingers is a new guilty pleasure of mine since my wife brought it to my attention a while back.

7. Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-present) - For me discovering Curb was a watershed moment in realizing what comedy TV was allowed to be. I had never seen something so genuinely painful to watch, but I couldn't look away. Larry David's self parody is a despicable man, yet we feel sorry for him because we've all experienced trapping ourselves in inescapable awkwardness thanks to our own stupidity. Or is that just me?

6. Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) - It's hard to compare a show that got cut off after one season to shows that have run for a full decade. But this Judd Apatow-created sitcom about growing up a loser struck a nostalgic chord that rang true for children of the 80's. A unique set of characters whose stories were cut off just as they were getting interesting.

5. Firefly (2002-2003) - Another short lived series. All 13 episodes of Joss Whedon's Sci-Fi-Western are endlessly rewatchable. Engaging characters, clever dialogue, and plot twists that consistently turned genre conventions on their heads - it's understandable why Firefly fans are still bitter about this show's premature cancellation.

4. 30 Rock (2006-Present) - The funniest cast currently on network TV ups the prime time jokes-per-minute ratio. 30 Rock respects its audience enough to assume they'll catch all the pop-culture references, clever wordplay, and non sequiturs.

3. The Office (2005-present) - To all the haters who still insist the British Office is better - time to get over it! The American Office has expanded and transcended its predecessor to become one of the seminal TV shows of this decade. With an environment and real life situations all working folk can relate to, The Office's real achievement is taking an ensemble cast of mostly unlikable character-types and making each one of them endearing.

2. Arrested Development (2003-2006) - This was the other watershed comedy series for me. The complexity of the jokes, the intricate callbacks, the absurdest humor - all coupled with one of the strongest comedy casts ever -- this single-camera laugher was the death knell of the traditional sitcom.

1. Lost (2004-2010) - Anyone surprised by my pick here? A cross-genre Mystery/Sci-fi/Thriller/Soap Opera that has changed how TV is viewed and made. Compelling characters. A fantastic cast. Complex plot lines. Mind-blowing reveals. Story payoffs that come seasons after they were set up without forced exposition. Lost truly rewards audiences for paying attention and keeping up with its complex mythology. Themes of faith, fate, and free will interwoven into a human story about friendship, trust, and survival.

Honorable Mentions:

Entourage (2004-present) - I still don't understand why this show is a hit among those who don't work in the entertainment industry. I discovered Entourage's funny-because-it's-true shock value while I working on a nightmare-inducing producer's-assistant desk. I couldn't turn the show off because of the sick feeling I was still at work while watching from home.

The Amazing Race (2001-present) - Season 3 of Amazing Race was the only reality show that was "appointment TV" for me. The human drama was real because racing across the world with a loved one is truly stressful, it doesn't have to be manufactured. Amazing Race has won Best Reality Series at the Emmy's seven years straight since the category's inception. They should just call it the "Best Amazing Race" category.