the blast door map

unfortunately, many of the videos shown during the panel are not in these videos. a couple are posted separately..

first: apologies for the wait on the season 5 finale analysis. the reasons behind the holdup are twofold: 1) the sheer scope of topics to cover is daunting, and 2) february is a long way away.

fortunately, jacob was recently retconned into my early childhood where he politely reminded me to finish the things that i start. sometimes we just need a little push.

my m/o has usually been to wait until the podcast has been posted before posting that episode's analysis, so i plan to do the rough equivalent here; damon and carlton are in radio silence until their presentation at comic-con next month. that presentation promises to shed light on the content and direction of the final season, which i will recap and explore for you here. comic-con is july 23-26. if you know any way i can score a ticket, i will, um, i will mention you on this blog!

so, august 1, look for my epic, in-depth analysis of both the season 5 finale, and the season as a whole - informed by the revelations to come at comic-con.

see you then.

i loved the han/leia scenes between juliet and sawyer. she is just as tough as he is - she proved it while giving him orders back in the season 3 olden days, building the runway for ajira 316. my elizabeth mitchell notable subtlety of the week is the tiny tiny mona lisa smile she has after being punched in the face by phil. it's as if she's saying 'finally, these people are learning how to play the game like the others.' this week we will certainly see the other side of the outrigger boat gunfight, in which juliet shot someone from the other boat. please please please don't let it be that juliet accidentally killed herself. (though if 815 lands, it doesn't matter. in fact, we may see a lot of beloved characters die before the bomb is finally ignited, if it's ignited.)

9. minor gripes.

• love quadrangle returns. my heart sank at the staging and execution of the scene where kate climbs down the ladder into the sub as foil to sawyer and juliet's plans for a happy future. it feels easy, obvious, and not nearly as interesting as seeing these people work together. how great would this have been if kate enters the scene, and then sawyer convinces juliet that everything is going to be alright? kate is there to find claire, and juliet should know that. bringing back this artificial obstacle is a disservice to characters that we know are smarter. the only thing that can save it is if hurley pops his head in and calls it out. 'dudes! you two are totally together!' i feel like a scene of kate's capture by the dharmas must have been cut. her mission was to stop jack from detonating the bomb.. but now she seems pretty happy to just sit on the sub quietly.

• the show has too often used the misdirection of tricking us into thinking someone has been shot, then showing the bad guy drop dead instead, then showing a third party savior holding a smoking gun. please concoct new form of surprise/misdirection, thanx.

• sun steps forward from the crowd and asks locke if jacob can bring her husband back. every episode, depending on where it's set, has either sun or jin saying some variation of 'if there's a chance i can find my huband/wife, then i have to stay.' if they're not going to use jin for anything else, his character should have stolen a jeep and gone searching the jungle for sun by himself.. why haven't they given either of these characters actions to play??? jin is finally able to speak fluent english and is given absolutely nothing to say.
  

• was this disastrously fake cgi shot of the sub really necessary? it looks like a halo screenshot. the rendering of the water is unforgivable. the surface is a recognizable, repeated pattern, and the waves in the sub's wake are perfectly symmetrical and totally unnatural. when did the show proper become via domus? though the shot sucked, i think it was important to show us that the sub actually did leave port, and the inside of the sub isn't just a '20,000 leagues under the sea' ride at disney.
  

• coming attractions. these really really suck sometimes. i didn't need to see that sayer and juliet get back on land, wielding rifles. someone said to me 'but c'mon, you knew they were going to end up back on the island..' no. i did not know that. this is the show that flashed forward. this is a show that surprises. i hate having setups ruined like that.
  

10. a theory.

i have a theory that the smoke monster is actually a device through which a person in the past can peer into, and probe the future. somewhere in the tunnels of the temple are the controls - and perhaps we will discover by show's end, what their ultimate objective is. an objective that ties together the actions of the smoke monster since its first appearance. when jack and company emerged in the tunnels 30 years prior to ben's 'judgement,' i imagined that they might find the 'controls' to the monster, and in trying to operate it, accidentally kill mr. eko. whoops.

11. preboomer.

ben: then why are we going to jacob?
locke: so i can kill him.
(boom)

superlong wtf-face from ben here. we don't yet know what this means, but it sure means a hell of a lot to ben, who's just been told by the ghost of his daughter that he must do everything locke askes him to do. how much does ben even know about jacob? how much does alpert even know?

12: bookmark.

just a reminder of how far we've come, and how little we have left in the story:

chapters read: 101
chapters remaining: 19

thanks to rob. k for edits/suggestions.

• ben calls widmore from the docks, telling him that he's about to shoot penny. we all thought widdy was in london - i guess the time of day should have been a clue.
  
• turns out, widmore is already in los angeles. did he follow desmond there?
  
• um.. ok, uh, so after ben hangs up on him, maybe widmore then called eloise and said 'long time no see. hey i think my daughter that i had with the chick i left you for just got shot. oh and that desmond guy you saw last night is with her. can you go and see if they're ok? i'll stop by and say hi.'
• eloise says 'ok, but i will slap you later.'
• widmore shows up, he and ellie have a 'sacrifice-off'
• ellie wins saying 'i had to send my son to the island, knowing full well that..' 'he's my son too..' (old lady smack)

i want to know: why was widmore suddenly in los angeles on the day ajira 316 took off? whom did he place on the plane? and whom did eloise place there (aside from our heroes)? both of them would know 'what lies in the shadow of the statue,' so, i'm stumped.

what we do know is that widmore's body (as some have speculated) is not in ilana's trunk. this scene establishes that neither eloise nor widmore were on flight 316.



one thing i loved about this episode, was that faraday's first weepy scene was the first time we saw of the 'wreck' of flight 815 in season 4's 'confirmed dead.' since that point, the show has teased us for over a year about who actually placed the wreck there - and now we learn that just minutes later, widmore walked in and flat out admitted it.

people have wondered why he was crying about the crash.. i think it's because desmond had told daniel the entire story when he visited him in the late 90's. now that dan's brain is a jumble, he sees the crash and knows it's important, but doesn't know why.

written by: melinda hsu taylor and greggory nations. gregg nations is of course lost's star script supervisor, and lord of all continuity. whenever there are continuity problems, i blame his archaic system of ms word documents. gregg has also co-written the blah 'eggtown .' melinda hsu taylor is new this season, and previously co-wrote 'the little prince.'

directed by: jack bender. best director on the show.

director of photography: john bartley. the jungle looked normal in this episode! is it only when we're around the hostiles that they apply the yellow filter? was it the colorist's week off? that said, there was a lot of great photography in this episode, as well as the impressive 'swan station under construction' setpiece.

nutshell: back to character-based stories - this ep nailed parent-child redemption a hell of a lot better than ben's encounter with the floating face youtube aftereffects tutorial of doom.

key considerations:

1. miles.
2. daddies.
3. juliet's moment.
   
4. naomi n' libby.
5. bram n' ellie.
6. island layout.
7. hurley. (and minor gripe)
8. details.
   
9. the clip show.
10. preboomer.
    

1. miles.

one of the many things i absolutely love about 'lost' is their handling of surprises - damon and carlton know what savvy fans have already guessed, and reveal these points offhandedly. the revelations don't patronize fans but also don't diminish the power of the surprise for those that didn't see it coming. the revelation that pierre chang is miles' father was played as a matter-of-fact occurrence, discovered and dealt with years ago. a lesser show would have artificially postponed miles' discovery for three years just so we could see his wtf-face when he runs into his mom in the lunchline. miles has pretty much put the issue to bed: dad is here, he's a bastard, probably best if i avoid him. but if you didn't see it coming, you get to enjoy the surprise through hurley's reaction to the news. claire's half-sibling relationship to jack was revealed in a similar, matter-of-fact way, as well as locke and sawyer's mutual connection to anthony cooper.

the dramatic arc of this episode centered around miles' need to deal with his inner demons. he has a power, sure, but he also lies about it in order to extract money from people. he joins widmore's team purely for a paycheck, but once he gets called out by bram, something changes, and his sense of honor compels him to return the money he stole from a client.

what 'lost' does sometimes is artificially frame flashback events so that it appears to say something about a character's arc, but it breaks down when you look at the context of the full timeline. miles gives back the money he stole - so it's not just about the money anymore - it seems like 'he's changed,' but don't forget that once miles gets to the island, he tries to extort 3.2 million from ben the very first chance he gets. so sometimes it is just about the money, i guess. you could make the argument that miles gave the money back to his deceived client because it was a case specifically about father/son love, and he came to resent deceiving the client about an issue that is deeply personal to him.

in any case, miles does need to talk about all this. he sure didn't put up much of a fight when the opportunity arose for hurley to tag along on his super secret mission. miles needed to unload, finally, about the craziness of both his weird power, and the fact that he's now living two doors down from his 3 month old self, not to mention long lost daddy.

while it all seems a bit tangential to the overall story of 'lost,' i think we're being set up for this season's finale: the incident. i can't see how establishing and developing the relationship between miles and chang can lead to anything but a tragic ending. it's very likely that 'the incident' leads to the loss of chang's arm (unless smokey gets that one too), leads to mom's premature death and hair loss, and also transforms baby miles into the chinese haley joel osmet.. we shall see.. the point is that this episode is all about buildup. sure, miles' mini emotional moment watching his father play with his own baby self was poignant, but if they do it right, that moment will be nothing to compared to what they must have in store for these two characters. remember, chang's feeding and care of miles was the first scene of the season - chang and miles, like desmond and juliet (also introduced in season openers) will have crucial roles to play in the season's closing chapter.


it was so wonderful to see ken leung get a complete episode to himself. he's a smart, savvy actor who's able to wring maximum effect out of very few words. damon and carlton love that. 'i'm in the circle of trust.' 'that douche is my dad.' miles is a snarky smart ass in a totally different way from sawyer, who is merely sarcastic. snark vs. sarc.

also handled wonderfully was the undercutting of miles' emotionally cathartic moment with chang's offhanded request, 'miles! i need you!' and then miles' choking, '..you do!?' a hilarious and unexpected way for the writers to say 'yeah, you thought we were going to do the obvious, didn't you? well we did, but not how you thought we would. we are brilliant, we know.'
2. daddies.

yes it's another character with daddy issues. all the best cowboys have daddy issues. more daddies! quick roster of who has daddy issues: kate, jack, locke, ok nevermind.. it will be easier to list main characters who have not had daddy issues as part of their stories: juliet. jin has more of a father in law issue. jin also has boat issues. sayid. oh wait no, they gave sayid daddy issues this season! rose and bernard. vincent. anyone else? will we learn that one of our beloved original cast members is actually from the future and is the child of one of the other original cast members? is sun actually ji yeon?

3. juliet's moments.


you know, she just rocks. i'm discovering that my ideas of what the 'behavior of awesomeness' would be are actually defined by elizabeth mitchell's performance of juliet. when roger linus innocently enters the infirmary, she has a tiny moment of hesitation.. she doesn't know what to do: 'should i lie and say we moved him to another area? should i stall, should i join in his panic? should i incapacitate him? (we know that she could, too).' unlike last week's scene with ben and cesar, in which ben's lies were horribly transparent, here's a scene where the lie is played correctly. juliet's ability to improvise is impressive, (kate just kind of watches her do it) and her moment of stillness before uttering... 'well. here we go' is just kickassery at its finest. as john august said in his blog, 'i would watch juliet boil water for an hour.'

i was also struck by another of juliet's moments of silence: just after sawyer asks her to get some rope to tie up phil. her pause before doing so held the weight of her question to sawyer in 'he's our you.' in that ep, juliet quietly asked sawyer, (or did she tell him? one of juliet's tricks is to put periods at the end of questions) 'it's over isn't it. ..this. us. playing house. all of it.' at the time it seemed like she was reacting to kate's return. but now, the fullness of her fear is clear, and this moment solidifies it: it's all over, maybe not their relationship, but their days of dharma bliss are officially done. all the stability and happiness that fate granted them (but withheld from the oceanic 6) is over.

4. naomi n' libby.

how great to see naomi again, mostly because it reminded me that 'oh yeah, miles came to the island on the freighter, that's right.' it's been so long since we've had reference to his origin, that it was good to have this little callback to season three, when she dropped in via parachute. remember that? that was season three folks! they're using naomi similarly to how i imagine they would have used libby, had she not needed to die: drop her in as a connective tissue when necessary, but as a character, there is really nothing new to learn about her.

which brings me to libby. there are gaping, open holes in her story, and i hope they get told. we were promised after her death that we would get her story through other people's flashbacks, and now damon and carlton are saying in the podcasts 'there's really nothing more to learn about her.' it's bullshit. cynthia watros is waiting by the phone! put her in the background of every scene! they could tie up libby with one flashback scene, and i hope they do it in season 6.

5. bram n' ellie.

ah yes, we knew that 'inconspicuous' guy standing among the background survivors of 316 had to be more than ajira's frogurt. ilana and bram are on the same team. they're packing up their mysterious crate, and both of them are asking people ''what lies in the shadow of the statue?'

but whose team are they on? i thought for sure ilana was working for widmore, but (in what was probably the biggest mythological reveal of the episode) we've learned that bram is working against widmore. and ilana doesn't know ben - so the only logical person left for them to be associated with is eloise. are we looking at a threeway battle for the island?

miles' van abduction encounter with bram was interesting because it revealed that bram's organization (while not performing van abductions) seems to have cleaner motives than widmore (the question of whether widmore actually funded the staged wreck of flight 815 seems to have been settled by the corpse naomi provided for miles' audition). bram's people offer no money to miles, only an alternate chance to learn the secrets of his past. they play the emotional card with him, and fail. maybe at the end of it all, bram and ilana are the true good guys?

so, if these are eloise's people, what is their relationship to the statue? were they 'infected' long ago? when whatever happens at the temple to make you into an other, does it somehow imbue you with the answer to this mysterious question?

in 'flashes before your eyes,' her first appearance on the show, eloise demonstrated an ability to see points in the future. she knew desmond's entire future life story, and proved it to him. here is that scene again, for reference:



she later said to desmond 'the island isn't done with you yet.' so what else does she know? can she forsee something about what's going to happen in the 'final showdown?' is she trying to assemble her troops?

what exactly was the power dynamic between her, alpert, widmore, and ben?

6. island layout

miles picks up the body of a man in 'grid 334,' which is hostile territory (that is some damn ballsy truce-breaking), and contains an electromagnetic force strong (and specific) enough to rip a filling through someone's head. on first viewing i thought that 'grid 334' was a separate area from both the orchid and the swan construction sites, but after being dropped off at the swan, chang says to miles that he'll 'get a ride back from radzinsky,' indicating that we're in the same area where miles first picked up the dead body.

7. hurley. (and minor gripe)

my theory was wrong. hurley is not the circular origin of the numbers - meaning that he doesn't use his memory of the numbers to 'create' them in the past. i felt certain that hurley himself would somehow dictate which numbers were chosen. how fantastic would it have been if in 1977 the numbers were chosen randomly, by hurley, pulling each one out.. like the lottery girl. alas no. the numbers are deeper than that, and apparently do have a larger part to play in the story.

the 'hoth' storyline was cute, but it's also my minor gripe. a shoutout to the fans who have recognized all the star wars references along the way. 'empire strikes back' might be the ultimate daddy issues movie. there was something just a touch hokey and wink winky about it, though, when the references to star wars have always been rather sly. (my favorite is in season one, when michael and jin are building the raft, and michael says, exactly like han solo, 'no, no! this one goes there, that one goes there!') but the overt discussion about luke losing his arm because he couldn't work things out with dad (more irony, since chang is about to lose his), was too on the nose. (there is some hilarious discussion on this week's podcast about the debates in the writers room about exactly what hurley was trying to 'fix' in the 'star wars' saga. they agreed that hurley was actively trying to restore lucas' original idea to set 'jedi's' final battle on kashyyk instead of endor.)

what did work was hurley's discussion of how his own father issues became resolved, which finally put the strangeness of hurley's actions in the episode into proper context. see, the island is really just an extremely exclusive and elaborate support group for getting over your daddy issues. the show will end once the rest of the cast figures that out - all they have to do is sit in a circle and talk.

i enjoyed the scene where he and miles compared powers - neither of them have discussed exactly what happens to them when experiencing paranormal communication before. i also liked that hurley pointed out pierre chang's multiple aliases, which means damon and carlton haven't forgotten the issue, and probably whatever it is that makes chang have aliases is coming in 'the incident.' what if chang is split into multiple copies, all of which believe they are married to mrs. chang? the experience freaks her out and she flees the island with her son.. sounds more like battlestar galactica than 'lost,' though. (update - i just rewatched the opening scene of the season, and while shooting the arrow orientation film, chang refers to himself as 'marvin candle,' so the use of aliases actually predates the incident. i got no theories now.)

8. details.


interesting parallels between the opening shot of this episode, and the opening shot of the season: both are shots of clocks. both are shown at times corresponding to the numbers of flights destined for the island. both clocks are interrupted by mrs. chang, following discussion of miles.

10. preboomer.

MILES: Dan.

FARADAY: Hey, Miles. Long time no see.

(boom)

while not an earth-shattering preboomer by any means, daniel's appearance raises a lot of questions: what has he been doing in ann arbor? how long has he been there? what kind of timeline altering trouble has he managed to get himself into while on the mainland? why has he come back? why has he come back now? why does he look so worried? is he going to try and stop the incident from happening? is he going to cause the incident? how does he go from the ann arbor science team submarine to being a crewmember digging out the cave in the orchid (where we saw him in the season opener)? next week is daniel's episode.. hopefully we'll find out.

since there is no new episode of 'lost' this week, the analysis of episode 13, 'some like it hoth' will go up on thursday, along with some commentary about the clip show they are running on wednesday instead of episode 14.

'lost's' clip shows are interesting because they judiciously condense the story in ways that deeply hint at where they intend to go.. so while there's no ep, it will be an interesting glimpse into what they feel is important for us to remember as we head into the final act of both the season, and the show.

see you thursday!

written by: brian k. vaughn and elizabeth sarnoff. the last time these two worked together, they churned out the craptastic 'meet kevin johnson.' this season brian also co-wrote 'namaste,' and 'the little prince.' sarnoff co-wrote 'lafleur ,' and 'jughead.'

directed by: stephen williams. i think it may be time to start phasing stephen out of 'lost's' roster of directors. if you ask me, he failed this episode, and failed it hard. his episodes this season have ranged from low-grade mediocrity to merely serviceable: 'because you left,' 'the little prince,' and '316.'

director of photography: court fey. new fun thing to do: look up the crew of 'lost' on facebook. it's amazing how open the world can be sometimes. check out his 'lost' reel on his website to see some of the amazing work he did throughout the 3rd and 4th seasons. this is his first episode in season 5. i realize that many of my gripes about color correction are not actually the fault of the dp, so i'll lay off on that a bit. i would like an explanation, though, about why it's suddenly appeared in the show.

nutshell: a flawed episode that probably played better on paper, but was marred by lackluster direction and effects.

1. ben.
2. locke.
   
3. widmore.
4. penny.
   
5. smokey.
6. ilana.
7. preboomer.

1. ben.

this episode was lacking in the very things that make ben great: cleverness and subtlety.

the tricky thing about using ben as a central character is that in order to connect to him emotionally, we have to believe at least a couple fundamental truths about him. the problem is that he's so enigmatic, and his lies have flipped back and forth more times than can be counted - watching him is filled with such distrust that it's actually alienating.

and so the big challenge of this episode was to make us believe some fundamental truths about ben:

• he really truly loved alex. no, seriously, he did.
  
• he really truly feels responsible for her death. like, actual guilt - he feels it, he really feels it!
  

getting us to care about ben is no small task. the writers really had a tall order to fill. and i think it's all there on paper - we learn that ben's abduction of alex was not, as we originally suspected, part of the others need to abduct children because of their inability to procreate. no - ben had in fact been sent on a mission to 'exterminate that woman.' ben's decision not to kill ether rousseau or alex would become a point of contention between ben and widmore up until their last meeting on the dock, as widmore is banished from the island (now we know that widmore didn't push the donkey wheel). widmore says to ben:

I hope you're right, Benjamin, because if you aren't, and it is the Island that wants her dead, she'll be dead. And one day, you'll be standing where I'm standing now. You'll be the one being banished, and then you'll finally realize that you cannot fight the inevitable. I'll be seeing you, boy.

so, was widmore's killing (by proxy) of both rousseau and alex merely delaying the island's inevitable timeline? why would jacob want them dead (if that's indeed what he wants)? if jacob turns out to be one of our lead characters transported back in time, with foreknowledge of things to come with a manipulating hand in making those things happen, why would he push for rousseau to be killed? what would an early removal of rousseau/alex from the timeline accomplish?

beyond this, ben's inability to kill rousseau/alex was juxtaposed by his similar inability to kill penny/little charlie. saddling ben with this weakness and then using it as a parallel between past and present was the episode's most inspired invention.


one thing we know about ben is that he is an amazing liar. so it made absolutely no sense that in the scene with cesar, ben is suddenly an atrociously shitty liar about his knowledge of john locke. i have to chalk this up to bad direction - ben has never, ever lied that badly in the history of the show, and we were meant to believe that this tactic worked? it felt like a director 'helping' the script by having the actor 'play' the lie. the scene as written was an excellent chance for ben to truly win cesar's trust. the dramatic irony of knowing ben is lying (and seeing just how well he does it) would have made the interaction much more interesting. poor cesar. his entire time on the show was defined by his shoulder bag and the gun he put into it at the start of 'jeremy bentham.'

mythologically, we're still left with some questions about ben/rousseau/alex

• how was rousseau able to change the numbers transmission to her distress call when dharma was still in full operation in 1988? she would have been all over their tv screens breaking into that radio tower.
  
• why did the others leave rousseau's distress call running in the tower once they took over the dharma resources?
  
• how was ben 'raising' alex if he was still living among the dharma people in the barracks until she was 4?
• ben tells rousseau to run when she hears whispers. does this mean that going into the temple makes whisper noises preceed your every entrance?
• i expected ben to be more backlit during the alex abduction. i still buy it, but rousseau could totally see his face. i buy that she didn't ever put one and two together with jin, but this scene skirts the line of whether she would have recognized ben as the abductor of her child when he first got caught in her trap.
  

2. locke.


we're just now getting to know this 'newly reborn' locke, and i'm finding it rather frustrating. the writers allow ben's character to call out the frustration - 'how is it you just know things? where does it come from?' and locke replies with a smug 'i'm not sure,' then hits ben with the ultimate bitchslap, 'now you know what it was like to be me.'

one of the things that makes this show great is that when it's at its best, its characters are so strong, that it seems like you can throw literally anything at them and they will respond in a believable way - the success of the recent time-jumping plotline is a testament to that skill. but the handling of locke's resurrection doesn't yet feel right from any angle. sun is not responding correctly, ben is not responding correctly, even locke doesn't seem to be responding correctly. when locke says to sun, 'it's weird for me too,' it's not enough. ben says he's scared to death of locke, but seems to be lying (again) about that. if ben is truly scared of locke, that fear should have pervaded every aspect of their interactions together.


many people are happy to see the return of locke's season one-esque confidence - but that confidence was tempered by his many clashes with jack's extremely reasonable objections at the time. in a trio of sun, ben, and locke, it's sun who must serve as the audience proxy. she can't just sit there looking scared. she's got to have something to do other than wait for a 60 year old jin to walk out of the jungle and make out with her.

the questions have to be screamed from the rooftops: is locke still locke? is he possessed by the ghost of jacob? is he like christian shepard now? if cesar had shot locke, would it have mattered? can locke even die again? is he actually alive? will he disappear in the season finale like a certain someone on bsg? after this episode aired, many many blogs, twitters and facebook statuses immediately (and rightfully) proclaimed 'wtf is going on with this show!?' we were asked to follow a character who's not entirely his character anymore, to a place he doesn't know how he knows about, to do a thing he doesn't understand. not very compelling drama. now locke thinks he might know how to reunite sun and jin.. somehow.. meh.

3. widmore.


despite the problems of the episode, there were some interesting things happening. the key question about widmore is what exactly these 'rules' are that he and ben are supposed to abide by. in the season 4 episode 'the shape of things to come,' after alex was killed, ben said to widmore 'you broke the rules,' and then promised to kill penny in revenge. up until that point, the only real discussion of 'rules' were temporal ones espoused by ms. hawking. but now it looks like being 'an other' comes with a set of moral guidelines that ben trusted enough to be genuinely shocked when keamy pulled the trigger on alex. i had thought that ben's shock at alex's death came from his confidence that she would not be able to die because of island time rules - not some gentleman's agreement. are these rules imprinted in you after you visit the temple?

rules for being an other:

1. at some point, you must have really bad hair
   
2. speak latin
3. make sure your tape player with the 'whisper' recording is always working.
   
4. learn kickboxing
5. master mysterious gazes
6. babies babies babies: abduct them! adopt them!
   
7. no off-island babymaking
8. don't kill daughters (adopted or otherwise)
   

it doesn't make sense that ben was so deeply surprised that widmore broke rule #8 after he'd already broken rule #7. it also looks like penny is not the daughter of widmore and eloise hawking, so she and faraday are not half-siblings after all.

4. penny.


and penny is not dead. as awful as it would have been, i was kind of hoping she would be, since her death would activate desmond's storyline again. i'm more curious than ever about how they're going to write desmond back into the show. another dream/memory from faraday? an upcoming episode is called 'the variable,' which seems designed as a desmond-centric episode to go hand in hand with 'the constant.' hopefully it will live up to the standards of its predecessor.

5. smokey.

i've saved my deepest disappointment for last. damon and carlton must have known that they'd be raked over the coals for the effects in this scene. the design of the temple was reminiscent of a set from 'lost treasure of the grand canyon,' an original syfy channel movie starring shannen doherty. the heiroglyphic carvings look like styrofoam, even though the main portrait of anubis (very likely the statue) and smokey having a chat was interesting.


the smoke effects pouring out of the stone grate were nicely done, until we got inside it and saw the flashes.


this is not 'lost.' this is mansquito. or any movie on this list. what should have been an emotional catharsis was marred by effects that not only looked bad, but even if done well, betray the visual language of the show. apparently smokey has access to the season 4 dvds and was able to cut together a nice clip reel from the footage. i really hate when shows recycle footage for use within the show. the camera is an omniscient observer - using show footage in this way is a sloppy breaking of the 4th wall. smokey should have his own point of view. the ancient toilet drain required to 'call' smokey was more interesting than anything in the temple. turns out that all smokey does is a hazy version of 'this is your life' before deciding whether or not to throw you against the rocks. what if the smoke monster actually made ben relive that moment? what if we only hear the voices? what if the images were more subtle - the way they were during eko's encounter with the monster?



what if he had to deal only with ghost alex? what if he had to pass a test administered by ghost alex? what if this scene actually had emotional depth behind it? what if the flashes inside the smoke showed us things we hadn't yet seen on the show?? what if there was some mystery surrounding his final exclamation, 'it let me live'? it's too bad. this one scene ruined the whole episode for me. if these are the kind of answers we can expect in the show's final season, then maybe the people who bailed on the show at 'the button' had the right idea.6. ilana.


she was obviously hired by widmore to bring sayid back to the island, but it seems that she, and others have another mission. did widmore stack the plane with soldiers for 'the war' he promised locke was coming? will it be 316ers vs. 815ers? what's in the crate? what's in the shadow of the statue? were ilana and the rest of the 316ers 'infected,' or are they exiled others? or did the 316ers pow-wow real quick while lapidus was away and decide on a password?

7. preboomer.

'it let me live.'
(boom)


it should have been an amazing moment. i should have been wiping tears offa my face. you know i love my wtf preboomer faces. well the only wtf face at the end of this episode was mine. wtf happened to this episode? wtf is this show going to do to right these wrongs? wtf am i writing this blog for? michael emerson deserved so much better. the show's present day storyline needs to find its focus, and fast.

most shows have one logo/typeface that is used ubiquitously to brand the show. 'lost' however has several different treatments for its title, which is unusual, and considered by many designers to be sloppy. the multiple typefaces are surprising, especially since the show is produced by disney, which manages all graphic aspects of its properties very tightly. i'd love to learn about the reasoning behind the show's font decisions. another reason i find the multiple fonts surprising is 'lost's' heavy influence from 'the prisoner,' which made impeccable use of its one distinguishing typeface, albertus.

i suppose the argument for the multiple typefaces is that, really, it's the title itself that is 'the brand.' i'm impressed by the number of people on various social networking sites who, in their list of favorite tv shows, reference the show in all caps, ie: LOST. some people will even put an additional space between each letter so that it better resembles the final title: L O S T.

let's look at the different uses of typography on the show.



first there is the opening floating logo, which starts out of focus in the distance, comes into focus for a split second, and then passes the camera, disappearing forever. the opening title is a metaphor for the entire show of course - it tells you in about 5 seconds everything you need to know: this is a show about mystery that will only seem clear for a split second before moving onto the next unanswerable question. the font is futura, which matches the opening credits, as well as the menus on the excellently designed dvd menus. it's almost worth shelling out for the dvd's just to see all the menus.



the opening title is often criticized for being shoddily rendered - you can see the polygon seams flicker during the moment that the letterforms are in focus. the offending area has been selected in the photo above. this is also the precise moment on the soundtrack when weird electronic 'sparkle' sounds can be heard. i don't think it's deliberate, but that bad graphics rendering is all i can ever look at as those letters fly by.

i love futura. so does wes anderson, who has pretty much adopted the font as his calling card. it has an elegant simplicity that is unimposing, and yet not completely characterless (the way, say, helvetica is characterless - and yes i've seen 'helvetica' and i still hate the font).

now, the 'boom' title.



this title is inexplicably typeset in verdana, with a photoshop roughen and emboss filter applied to it. why the font change? why not keep the typeface consistent? verdana!?? if helvetica has no character, then verdana is the awkward guest at the party who only wishes they were as cool as helvetica. verdana doesn't even count as a real font, if you ask me. it was commissioned by microsoft to be legible in highly pixellated situations. it's such a strange choice. as an experiment, i recreated the final 'boom' title in futura, to match the opening:



not a perfect rendering. it's difficult to find the correct amount of 'roughen' without distorting the letterforms, but you get the idea. i think it works, and it would unify the show's look.

the two title treatments are thematically very different. the opening poses a question, builds mystery and is about uncertainty. the closing is a definitive stamp that says 'this is the show.' it's the answer to the opening - so maybe it makes sense that the 'answer' looks different than the question. as an answer, it's also roughed up - it's been through shit, it's been through all the shit you just watched in that episode. again, it's similar to how 'the prisoner' ended every episode with the prisoner's face rushing toward the screen, then the 'slam!' of prison bars in front of him.

the third treatment of the title is the one that appears in promotional printed and web media outside of the show itself. it's used in the posters, on the dvd cases, action figure boxes, and on all other official materials:



i thought perhaps this font was something unique like attriumvirate-inserat, but no, it's simply impact (the short leg of the 'L' gives it away), with a rough texture applied to it. millions of highly specific fonts at their disposal, (we're talking about disney here!) and they chose from the drop-down list in microsoft word. impressively though, the 'lost' design team has been very consistent with their use of this title treatment. the texture and its placement has remained exactly the same since season 1.

i can understand the need for a title treatment like this, since futura doesn't quite convey the scale and scope of the show. even a futura bold, or futura heavy with this same texture applied doesn't quite look right. it looks more like 'the darjeeling limited' than 'lost.' here's futura given the same texture/treatment as the print version:



hmm. i think it could have worked..

i do like the posters and dvd cases adorned with the impact font logo, and i enjoy the way the dvd box sets look next to each other on the shelf. i'd love to design a set of dvd boxes one day - that first season box is crucial to setting the standards that must be followed by subsequent boxes. then the season two box establishes the variables with which each subsequent season will define itself - usually with color palette. the season 4 dvd box has an especially clever touch - here is the outside:



when you slide the case out of the translucent plastic cover, the '4' is replaced by a subtle '6' in the water, and the images of the oceanic 6 are highlighted, brought to the foreground, and even embossed on the box - and baby aaron has moved from claire's arms into kate's. very subtle, and classy.

directed by: bobby roth, who has only directed one episode of 'lost' before - 'the man behind the curtain,' which makes him a natural choice to helm a revisiting of new otherton in the dharma days. this season it looks like they've been very selective about directors they've invited back - rather than switiching between jack bender and stephen williams for the entire season, they're bringing back directors who have excelled at telling the stories of particular characters.

written by: damon lindelof and carlton cuse. i've got to say straight off how impressed i was by this episode. of course it's always best to look at the big picture of 'lost' rather than in the unfair chunks we get week by week. it's meant to be seen on dvd, sequentially, in all-day marathons that irritate our significant others. thankfully, damon and carlton are showing us that they're aware of the mid-season sins they committed, and are using the end of the season to explain their actions. it hurts me to think how close we are to the end of this season (and the grand finale), but the narrative direction of these past three episodes has restored my faith in the show.

director of photography: john bartley. something horrible has been happening to the jungle footage this season. the overly yellow color-correcting is getting out of hand. see minor gripes.

lowdown: not the greatest episode ever, but certainly the best kate-centric one, and a return to that season-one feeling.

nuggets:

1. hurley vs. miles.
2. kate.
3. sawyer.
4. juliet.
   
5. jack.
6. ben.
7. gripes.
   
8. preboomer.

1. hurley vs. miles.



this scene was another fantastic piece of writing by damon and carlton proving that, yes, they are still in touch with their audience. whew. hurley mentioning 'back to the future' echoed the cries of a thousand fanboy blogs. this time it's miles, rather than daniel, who serves as the calm, reasoned voice of damon and carlton telling the audience 'there is one timeline!' ryan mcgee felt that miles' confidence in the rules was misplaced, but i don't think so - miles has had three years to ponder it.

but then hurley stumps miles with the ultimate question: 'ok so why didn't ben recognize sayid way back in season 2 then?' (i'm pretty sure hurley didn't say 'season 2,' but i'd have to check the transcript)



i must admit my disappointment here - i think that the show could withstand the scrutiny of having ben remember sayid - as i worked out at length in last week's entry. i wish that instead of being stumped, miles had said 'hurley. you're talking about ben. c'mon.'

2. kate.



one of my favorite things about 'lost' is how a seemingly unimportant episode can later become vital in the larger scope of the story - such as the ho-hum 'the whole truth' from season 2 in which sun discovered that she was pregnant. later, when the life and death stakes of island pregnancy were discovered, this events of that episode took on dire new meaning.

here we have kate reconnecting with cassidy, who she met in 2001, after cassidy had been betrayed by sawyer, but long before kate would ever meet him. it's too bad cassidy didn't have cards with sawyer's photo saying 'don't date this guy.' that episode, 'left behind,' was perhaps one of the weakest of season 3, and did nothing to quell that small sense of dread that comes with the discovery that this week we're going to have to sit through a kate-centric episode.



cassidy was first introduced to the show in the season 2 episode 'the long con' (which is what damon and carlton have been accused of perpetrating on the audience for five years now). in that episode, cassidy realizes that sawyer is a con man, and begs him to teach her his trade. the first thing he shows her is how to sell fake jewelery outside of gas stations, which is what kate finds her doing several months later. you could argue that the unspoken recognition sawyer and kate had for each other as outlaws is the same force that brought kate and cassidy together. another probable force bringing them together is damon and carlton saying 'uh, we don't have an end date yet, and we're running out of flashbacks.. let's pick two names out of a hat and have them meet each other in the past.'

but kate. i had some serious fears about where they might go with kate.


kate in an alternate timeline in which her father's abuse leads to low self-esteem rather than murder.

thankfully, we now know that when sawyer asked kate 'why did you come back,' she was not about to reply: 'for you sawyer. i came back for you!' thank the dharma gods. if she had said that, a little part of my love for the show would have died. she might as well have been coming back to the island to get her goddamed toy plane. remember that? we like to pine for it, but season one was not perfect.



kate has never really had a good, clear objective - which is the reason everyone groans in horror at the thought of kate-centric stories. but this episode's revelation comes as an almost direct response to my complaint last week that the show had forgotten claire: kate's mission is to find her, and reunite her with aaron. it has nothing to do with sawyer. it has nothing to do with jack. it's the best thing the show has ever done with kate, and it shows in evangeline lily's performance. she's an actress who seems only as interested in her character as we are, and i'm thrilled to see how this plays out.


this must have been an interesting casting call. 'someone who looks like claire, but not really.'

what has also been refreshing is that my great fear about the post '316' O6 flashbacks is that they have not been about 'being convinced' to go back - they've (so far) either been about situation or decision.

i had predicted that kate's last-minute hop into jack's bed was an attempt to get pregnant, since it might be her last chance to do so, ever. alas, that odd decision has not been addressed yet.

3. sawyer.


sawyer in an alternate timeline in which anthony cooper never conned his parents.

you know what was so great about this episode? not a whole lot happened, but the writing was spectacular, which is why it felt like season one again. it was about smart people taking stock of a situation and deciding, after smartly weighing options, what to do next. maybe the most shocking thing damon and carlton could have done was allow their characters to act like true adults, which juliet, kate, and sawyer all managed to do. there's hope for sawyer and juliet - because kate has no intention of reuniting with sawyer, and sawyer's priorities are settled. this episode managed to capture that liberating feeling of being over someone. if you've ever become true friends with an ex's new lover, you know what i'm talking about.

4. juliet.

elizabeth mitchell has been cast in the pilot episode of the new version of the 80's sitcom, 'v.' hopefully this is a situation in which she is only in the pilot, and not an early indication that dire things are in store for juliet.


juliet in an alternate timeline in which santa claus is real.

this isn't so much about juliet as it is about how impressed i am with elizabeth mitchell as an actress. in every episode she has a moment that shines through with crystal clarity. this week it was her momentary far-off look causing kate to ask 'what?' and then she drops the bomb:

JULIET: ..maybe there's something they can do.
KATE: ..they?
(pause)
JULIET: the others.

her matter of fact, almost sad delivery is devastating. juliet knows what it means - and it's almost as if she discovers in that moment that this is how ben the boy became ben the monster. and it's all jack's fault.

5. jack.



..or is it!? can jack be blamed for not wanting to help? it does seem strange that he came to the island only waiting for some 'purpose' to be thrust upon him, but when that possible purpose (save ben!) doesn't suit him, he rejects it. it raises interesting questions of 'free will' versus 'destiny.' if he did save ben, then the universe would merely course correct and bring ben's temple transformation about in a different way, right? so maybe jack has the right idea: sit back like the rest of us and watch the show.


jack in an alternate, very loud, brightly colored, irritating timeline.

juliet's confrontation with jack was another fantastic example of the show subverting our 'love quadrangle' expectations. it's no accident that damon and carlton decided to have her walk in on him while getting out of the shower. they wanted to set up the most potentially sexual situation possible between them and then crush it with reality. these two, like kelly clarkson, are not hooking up. as there will be no alternate timeline, there will be no love quadrangle.

6. ben.


ben in an alternate timeline in which his acting sucks in an astonishingly bad way.

richard alpert takes ben to the temple, do 'do something' to him that will both 'remove his innocence' and 'make him forget everything.' verrrrry interesssssting.

to see the others tied to both the temple and the experiences of rousseau's crew is very exciting. points:

• is 'the sickness' experienced by rousseau's crew actually what makes the others, the others?
• will we perhaps see alpert's arrival to the island, and initial encounter with smokey & the temple?
• is this temple-transformation the reason that the others were not jumping through time during the flashes? (in which case cindy and the kids might not have been jumping)
  
• was juliet taken to the temple?
  
• ..and if she was, was the effect removed when she was branded after her trial for killing pickett?

7. gripes.


richard alpert strides through the normal-looking jungle. then, moments later..


richard alpert strides through a 'cold case' flashback.

i'm not sure if it's a) a choice to differentiate the past from the present, or b) necessary because of bad weather/light conditions in hawaii this year (exec producer jean higgins mentioned in a video podcast that it had been rainier this year than they'd like). it's a shame because that kind of artificial color just isn't 'lost.' in the season one dvd extras, there's an interview with jack bender where he talks very specifically about the deliberate choice to light and shoot 'lost' realistically - so much effort was put into making the beach and jungle look natural and untampered with. it's a shame to see the show getting 'cold case-y.'



another minor gripe is this idea that sawyer broke kate's heart. it doesn't really ring true. their only real 'breakup' occurred at the barracks after locke evicted kate and sent her back to the beach. kate and sawyer had some falling out after he expressed relief over her not being pregnant. but heartbroken? hrm. i don't think so. it's a minor gripe though, because thankfully, kate's objective doesn't involve sawyer anymore.

final minor gripe is ben's memory being erased: weak. first he was anakin/darth vader, now he's c-3po??

8. preboomer.

this is truly the season of wtf-faces. after a full episode of 1977 goodness, we transition from ben's 'rebirth' to his 'reawakening,' in the 'present' with the now 'resurrected' locke sitting at his bedside.

LOCKE: hello ben. welcome back to the land of the living.
BEN: (wtf!?!??!)

(boom)

(thanks to rob konigsberg for edits and suggestions)

(composited by rob konigsberg.)

directed by: greg yaitanes, who has not directed for 'lost' since season 1, where he helmed two excellent episodes: 'solitary,' and 'special.' 'solitary,' was sayid's first flashback episode, so i'm sure everyone was quite happy to have greg back to tackle more of his backstory.

written by: eddie kitsis and adam horowitz. after this season, i think these guys are better at continuity than damon and carlton. highlights: 'this place is death,' 'the lie,' 'ji yeon,' and 'greatest hits.'

director of photography: edward pei. check out the last two video podcasts for a fascinating visit to the soundstages in hawaii where all the interiors are shot. the illusions perpetrated on the show go far beyond the obvious. sometimes two halves of a seemingly pedestrian scene are shot 2 weeks apart. once again, this episode had the set decorators working overtime - russia was impressive, but iraq got shortchanged.

nutshell: a long slow buildup to a full-on omfg ending. also, this show is becoming 'return of the jedi.'

topics of conversation:

1. ben.
2. sayid.
3. jack.
4. sun.
5. desmond.
6. sawyer.
   
7. gripes.
8. details.
   
9. preboomer.
   

1. ben.



first:

• ben is not dead.
• ben is not going to die (not in 1977, anyway).
• there will be no alternate timeline - events we have already seen are not going to change.

my theory: what we witnessed in that final, shocking moment was, in essence, ben's birth, which gives new meaning to when ben said he was 'born' on the island. surviving being shot in the chest by a person he trusted, admired, and placed all hope for his future is a somewhat formative experience in a young boy's life. it's the kind of event that could plant that crucial seed to transform someone from relatively well-adjusted to a completely creepy enigmatic expert liar. it's rather like when darth vader was 'born,' and how obi wan referred to him as being separate from luke's father.

while he had no knowledge of 'the rules,' sayid's attempted murder of ben is the first time that a character has actively challenged faraday's 'rule' of time travel: "whatever happened, happened," which is also, poignantly, the title of the next episode. what it means is that no matter how hard sayid tries, he cannot undo the events of his past, or ben's future, despite his position in the timeline. and in the oldest of time-travel tropes, whatever sayid does in hopes of preventing the future, is in fact guaranteeing it.

the two men now have a kind of an amazing relationship with each other. let's look at ben's story:

• i'm a boy with a crappy dad

• my dead mom appears and says, 'you need to be with the hostiles!' richard says 'be patient!'
  
• i wait for years to join the hostiles
  
• finally, a hostile appears, he promises to take me to his people!
• i risk everything to make it happen. the burning van thing was not easy to wrangle.
  
• out of frickin nowhere the guy shoots me in the chest!
• (prediction) jacob saves me. this is the beginning of my understanding of his power. after getting shot, i'm gonna make damn sure i always maintain control of the situation.
  
• (a lot of stuff happens)
• 2001: richard says 'this is going to surprise you.. remember juliet? she's going to solve our pregnancy problem.' i recognize juliet and begin to understand the workings of the island.
• 2004: juliet diagnoses me with cancer.
• 815 crashes. i get the passenger manifest from mikhail. the names look familiar. i compare it to dharma records and photos and realize that the people who vanished from the island during the incident have returned.. including that crazy guy who shot me!
  
• research on the passengers reveals that janitor jack is actually a spinal surgeon. whew!

• i throw myself into one of rousseau's traps. the first person rousseau brings is the guy who shot me!

• as i scheme to get my tumor removed, save the island from widmore, etc.. i end up having to push the frozen donkey wheel.
• i end up in 2005, and decide to make sayid's life hell. i shoot his wife and exploit him as a killer. i realize that these actions are eventually going to cause sayid to shoot me in the chest.

• i understand that being shot by sayid is what made me who i am. so i press sayid even harder. my job now becomes to ensure that he shoots me.
  

'lost' has one timeline, and each episode of the show provides us with new tiles that snap into place. just like the show itself - each piece of the timeline we see becomes 'locked-in,' and all retcon scenes, and surrounding bits of story must fit what's been established. tampering with this undoes the dramatic stakes of the story.



one thing that was unclear until this episode, was exactly when ben and his father arrived on the island. we now know that it was 1973, a year before sawyer, juliet and the rest of the time-jumpers appeared. this gives olivia goodspeed and horace a timeframe in which to break up. considering that horace isn't pining after olivia the same way he frets about amy's continued attachment to her dead husband, i'd say horace dumped olivia and sent her away.

a moment to rewatch: when locke tells ben that jin is still alive - something changes in ben. is that the moment ben realizes that this is when jack, kate, hurley, and sayid jumped into his childhood?

2. sayid.

the story from sayid's perspective:

• i killed a chicken. woo. dinnertime!
• i shoot myself so nadia can escape.
• (lots of stuff happens)

• i crash on craziness island, hook up with hot blonde chick. ..hm? who's nadia?
  
• shannon is shot. dammit!
• rousseau takes me to ben, caught in her ewok trap.
  
• i torture ben, it's fun.
• i escape the island. marry nadia. ..who's shannon?
  
• nadia is shot. dammit!
• ben shows up and says widmore shot nadia. ben says 'kill all these widmore people.' i say 'ok.'

• kill kill kill.
• in moscow, ben says 'ok you're done.'

• confused, i wear a yellow t-shirt for the first time in my life. also, i build houses.
  
• ben shows up and says i need to start killing people again. why does he keep goading me to shoot people?
• 'ana-lucia 2' gets flirty at bar, just like 'ana-lucia 1.' we're totally gonna do it. ..nadia who?
  
• 'ana-lucia 2' kicks me in the face, arrests me and puts me on a plane to guam. dammit!
  
• whoosh. young ben gives me a chicken salad sandwich. little does he know, since childhood, chicken unleashes my killer instinct.
  
• if i kill ben, the purge won't happen, radzinsky and inman will press the button, the crash won't happen, i will be living in LA with nadia, and she won't get killed by widmore (or ben).
  
• aw screw it, i'm shootin' ben. what difference does it make? though, it'd all make a little more sense if i'd found out that he killed nadia beforehand.
• waiting to disappear like in 'back to the future' and 'frequency' (also starring elizabeth mitchell!) and reappear in new, happier timeline...
  

bounty-hunter ilana is clearly working for widmore, who as we know from his bedside chat with locke, wants the oceanic 6 back on the island as much as everyone else. this nonsense about taking sayid to guam is just cover to get sayid on the correct flight. what surprises me is that widmore didn't use his pull with sun to get aaron on the plane as well, which would have been exceptionally easy. aaron's absence from that flight may be the reason we ended up in 1977.

3. jack.



here's what missing from jack's storyline, and had better be addressed very very soon. one of the most emotional moments of season 4 was his discovery that he had in fact left his half sister behind. he should probably be asking 'has anyone seen claire? she's my half sister!' kate should probably be asking that too.. she may be off the show, but since they're bringing her back in season 6, the payoff will be better if we get the sense that she's actually, well, missed.



is the grand finale of the show actually building towards a big, on-island shepard family reunion? is the jacobean reincarnation of christian shepard collecting his children so that he can redeem himself for his sins against them?



is all of this like when ghost anakin shows up at the ewok party to smile over his children?

4. sun.



the most compelling argument i've heard for why sun, lapidus, and ben were not sucked back in time off the plane is that locke simply did not invite them to the island. i can't think of any other reason - that's the only factor we know of that separates those three from the others. some people have argued that ben didn't go back because his younger self is already present on the island in 1977 - and that this means sun is also somehow present on the island at this time. i don't think so. the island clearly has no qualms about jumping people into situations where they might run into themselves. also, the idea that sun is on the island in 1977 raises yet another birthdate continuity error since sun's 1980 birthdate has been established from very early on in the show. we've also seen sun as a young girl breaking the glass ballerina in korea. it's unlikely that she was ever on the island as a child. however, connections between her father and widmore have been established* - so it's not improbable that her family is somehow tied to the island.

the other argument is one that frustrates me: "sun didn't jump to 1977 because the island 'has work for her to do' in the present. this is similar to arguing that lapidus didn't get sucked off the plane because he needed to safely land it on hydra island. these arguments pull at the show's theme of destiny vs. free will - and i think can be true in retrospect, but i don't believe that damon and carlton have ever used this kind of circular justification for the same reason that they are not allowing multiple timelines: it deflates the dramatic stakes of the show. if things are just going to start happening because they 'need to,' why watch at all? no one's choices would ever make any difference.

as i suspected, the blame for the rebecca mader/charlotte birthdate mixup lies squarely with damon, carlton and gregg nations. clearly, they did not initially plan to kill her in the manner that they did.

article here.

written by: brian k. vaughn and paul zbyszewski. both always work as co-writers, but with different partners each time. brian co-wrote 'meet kevin johnson' (boo), 'the shape of things to come' (yay) and 'the little prince' (mostly yay). paul zbyzewski is new this season and has previously co-written 'jughead' (superyay).

directed by: jack bender, the show's main director, and whose only misstep thus far has been 'the life and death of jeremy bentham.'

cinematography by: john bartley who is alternating with edward pei this season. john has been with the show since season 1. while neither dp has quite compared with larry fong, the work in these past couple episodes seems to be a little less rushed, perhaps because the show isn't quite as frantically running the crew around hawaii for as many locations anymore.

in short: 'namaste' is a strong episode dealing with 'the arrivals,' which is necessary, though we still don't know where we're going.

notables:

1. radzinsky!
2. sun
3. sayid
4. ben
   
5. sawyer
6. questions
   
7. podcast
8. minor gripes
   
9. preboomer
10. p.s.
    

1. radzinsky!



do you remember radzinsky? he's appeared on the show before, in the season 2 finale. radzinsky made a very special cameo as a bloodstain on the ceiling of the swan station hatch:



it was radzinsky himself who drew the blast door map! i owe my entire blog to that crazy suicidal architect. he was inman's original partner, before desmond crashed on the island and took over radzinsky's button-pushing duties.


inman adds to radzinsky's original blast door map painting.

and now we see that radzinsky was a paranoid hothead (prone to shooting oneself in the face), and possibly one of the designers of the hatch itself.



radzinsky's presence in the show means that we may get answers to some of these long-standing questions:

• what was the swan station's purpose before 'the incident?'
• what was 'the incident,' and why did it necessitate the pushing of the button?
• why didn't the hostiles take over the swan station after the purge?
• did radzinsky go insane because the swan station lost contact with dharma after the purge?
  
• was the purge (whose gas was inert after a few hours) actually 'the virus' that desmond habitually took injections for?
• why did food drops continue after the purge?
  
• when ben was held captive in the swan station in season 2, a) did he know its function? b) did he know it existed? c) did he understand the consequences of goading locke into not pushing the button?
• why do 'the numbers' appear on the outside of the swan station hatch?
• why do 'the numbers' have to be entered into the computer? why those numbers? couldn't it just be any old numbers?
  

2. sun.

some theories about why sun was not sucked off the plane and sent to 1977 along with the rest of the oceanic 6.

• her hair is much longer now, and the island liked her old haircut better.
• without a proxy for jin, she wasn't recognized by the island.
  
• the island responds to the body chemistry of pregnant women, and after having had jin's child off-island, her chemisty is sufficiently changed so as not to be recognizable to the island as being the same person.
  
• it would just be way too easy for her to reunite with jin, and we need that to take another season and a half.
• the woman we're watching isn't actually sun, just some lady who looks like sun, because her character is all over the map right now (though her ben oar-smack was a great moment).

but whatever the reason for sun not jumping, it must be part of the same ruleset that thus far inexplicably had juliet jumping in time with the freighties and 815ers. when you think about it, since charlotte, miles, and daniel were jumping, it's just as puzzling that lapidus wasn't plucked off the plane as well.

christian shepard laid it out quite succinctly for sun: 'i'm afraid you have a long journey ahead of you.' so how in the world is sun going to get to the same time period as jin? who will be transported to which time period? will it involve yet more pushings of the wheel? sun and jin's mission to reunite is presently the only story arc we know the show is building towards. we don't have any idea where jack, kate, hurley, sayid, ben, locke, lapidus, desmond, miles, daniel, or juliet are heading.

3. sayid.



next week's episode is called 'he's our you,' and damon and carlton confirmed in the podcast that the phrase is spoken to sayid, as in 'dude, sayid, this guy you're about to meet, he is the resident ruthless badass torturer guy of the dharma initiative, so be prepared to feel the pain, the kind of pain you would bring on a mysterious person obviously keeping secrets.' yeowch.

stupid island couldn't yank the 4 of them off the plane and put them in close proximity?? sayid just missed his chance to be faked onto the dharma sub with the rest.



but it's really sayid's encounter with ben that is the most interesting. here is where damon and carlton must be soo happy that they cast someone as enigmatic as michael emerson in the role of ben. since he literally could be lying at any time, they've been able to retcon any of ben's actions or statements in deeply flexible ways.

jin meeting rousseau in 1988 was already pushing the limits of 'yeah we met before, but i'm not going to recognize you 15 years later, and the audience is going to buy that.' now we're being asked to go even further..

now that we've seen ben introduce himself to sayid as a boy, we can easily assume that young ben also knew saywer, kate, jack, hurley, and juliet at this time. which means that as an adult, when we presumed ben was meeting them for the first time, he already knew who they were. we're now meant to swallow the rather large, but not unswallowable pill that asks us to rewatch seasons 2 and 3 and believe that ben's enigmatic performance when he 'meets' these people is in fact masking this prior knowledge. oh, writers of lost, you are walking on thin, thin ice.

however some things potentially make sense..

4. ben.



let's look back at ben's actions through the lens of him having met all these people as a boy:

• ben has a boyhood obsession with dharma van-fixer juliet, and (i'm guessing) will be crushed when juliet vanishes/apparently dies/returns to her proper time. he learns from alpert that juliet is in miami, and is, of all things, a fertility expert. this explains the root of ben's juliet obsession as having come not only from his childhood, but was in fact a boyhood fixation on juliet herself. i've mentioned before - but harper's line explaining ben's possessiveness, 'you look just like her,' will take on new meaning, because juliet is 'her.'

• when the plane crashes and ben gets the passenger manifest, ben knows exactly who he's interested in: jack, kate, saywer, and hurley. ben's extensive files on these people make more sense now because the files have been building up for years, not just in the brief time after the plane crash.
  

• it's also interesting that these are the four people that ben insisted michael bring back to him at the close of season 2. when the burlap sacks are yanked off the heads of those four, ben looks at them and sees the faces of his childhood staring back at him, looking younger than he remembered.

• what doesn't make as much sense (and perhaps it will, if the writers don't fall through the ice) is why adult ben expressed little initial interest in sayid, when he presently seems to be a person of deep interest to him as a child. we know that this interest is because young ben feels an affinity toward the hostiles, and is anxious to learn/help/become one of them. the fun irony is that when sayid first met ben, it was ben who was imprisoned, and sayid introduced himself by accusing ben of being an 'other' and saying 'my name is sayid jarrah, and i am a torturer.' meanwhile ben is thinking 'holy shit, i'm about to get tortured by the hostile that i gave a sandwich to when i was a kid!' the fact that sayid doesn't look any older wouldn't phase ben, since his good buddy alpert also seems immune to aging. will the show retcon in a bunch of adult ben flashbacks where we get to see his 'holy shit! these are the same people from my childhood' realizations?

sayid gives ben the beatdown in the swan station, in the episode 'one of them' from season 2.

it all makes me nervous. the show has already proved to me that it's not quite as adept as i had hoped about handling this extremely complex mythology. my deepest fear is that details will be overlooked, the timeline will not mesh, and we as the audience will be indirectly told 'yeah, just ignore that little part, otherwise none of this is gonna make sense.'

despite the character-based strengths of both 'lafleur' and 'namaste,' my faith in the plot-based core of the show is somewhat shaken. damon and carlton, the almighty gods of 'lost' wrote the two worst episodes of the season, which should have been the shatteringly brilliant apex of the penultimate year. perhaps they finally wrote themselves into a corner and fudged their way out of it - but the fact is, right now we have no idea where this show is going, and until the 3rd act conflicts are introduced, i can't be anything but worried about the integrity of the show.

5. sawyer.



but speaking of character-based strengths, here is the best example. i love what's happening with sawyer right now. i love his position of power, and i love the effortless control that's come with it. his scene was jack was such a beautiful reversal of everything we've come to expect from these two men - and what i loved about the scene was how surprised jack was to be schooled by sawyer, and then to see his oh-so-rare smiley face relief at not having to take responsibility for everyone anymore. in the three years that have passed, jack and sawyer went on opposite paths: jack into utter destruction, and sawyer into a life of love, respectability, and professionalism. while i love seeing the irony of it, it makes me wonder even more what jack's role is going to be.. because right now he's totally neutered.. and seems to be pretty cool with it.

6. questions.

• what happened to faraday, that he's 'no longer with us?'





• who is the mysterious lady sitting on the floor behind sun? a crew member? a claire stand-in? a mistake? an easter egg?

• when the rather conspicuous door flew open behind sun, lapidus, and christian, was it just misty, or was smokey oozing into the room.. taking the form of that woman sitting on the floor?

• why does christian show sun the 1977 recruits photo? jin isn't even in that photo! why didn't he show her the 1974 recruits photo which would have jin, sawyer, juliet, miles, and daniel in it? was it all for the sake of a clever visual transition? hmm. there is one random asian guy in there. christian shepard clearly thinks we all look the same.
  

• when will we see the other side of the outriggers-at-sea shootout scene?
• christian must be pretty lonely, and happy to have someone to talk to. what is his relationship to alpert and the rest of the hostiles?
  
• if amy and horace's baby is ethan, how is he saved from the purge, and why is his last name changed to 'rom?' (btw, juliet's reaction to finding out she's holding her future plumber: awesome)

• who is this guy? the character is named 'bram,' and had one reaction shot in 'namaste,' when lapidus was addressing the crowd of ajira socks. i instantly recognized him from dexter. he's an up-and-coming actor, with roles in choke, and jj's new star trek movie, so he's not gonna just be a silent ajira background survivor. maybe he's the guy juliet shoots from the outrigger?
  

7. podcast.

most interesting podcast tidbits:


kristin bell was supposed to play 37? yeah, i don't think so.

• the question of charlotte's birthday is settled. damon and carlton squarely blame rebecca mader for not wanting to play someone who's 37, and claim she had the line about her birthdate changed on-set. at the time, the repercussions were not anticipated, and it slipped through the cracks. they both admitted 'we screwed up.' while they did in fact screw up, i call bullshit on the rebecca mader blame game. charlotte was never conceived as being 37 years old. there is no way on earth that kristin bell, who they originally wanted to play charlotte, would ever pass as a 37 year old woman (kristin's actual birthdate is 1980, just a year off from charlotte's). my theory: after being disappointed with mader's performances, they sought to write her out as fast as possible, and came up with the dharma-child scheme as a way to keep her character important while losing a substandard actress. the detail with the birthdate would have to be overlooked/explained away. i wish i could know the original charlotte plan, had kristin bell accepted the role.

let's take another look at the swan orientation film...

• the title of this season's finale is 'the incident.' yeeeeeeeeeeeeee. perhaps it is 'the incident' which finally merges the cast into the same time period? perhaps we will see dr. marvin candle's arm ripped off by smokey? by widmore? (widmore is still around, if what he says about ben tricking him is true) or perhaps chang's arm gets transported to 2007 while the rest of him stays behind? or perhaps his arm is chopped off and used to grow both dr. mark wickmund and edgar halliwax? notice that dr. mark wickmund is considerably younger than dr. marvin candle.. wtf is going on here? are we supposed to ignore that, or will it be explained? are all the versions of pierre chang the results of reckless time experimentation resulting in multiple versions of himself occupying the same time? did they all have to agree on different names in order to avoid confusion? notice how in the orientation film, dr. marvin candle says 'using the computer in this manner (for communication) will compromise the integrity of the project, and, worse, could lead to another incident.' if a disabled computer leads to 'another incident,' then perhaps the original 1977 incident will give a peek at what might have happened in 2004 had desmond not turned the failsafe key.
  

• damon and carlton are having a contest to name the secret ending scene of the finale. this is not as exciting as getting an actual clue about the final scene. the genius of the 'frozen donkey wheel' is that it sounded random, but turned out to be literal. i suppose they feel they can't follow it up, so it's back to a truly random codename. (the first two codenames were 'the bagel' and the 'challah.' the flashforward ending of s3 was coded as 'the rattlesnake in the mailbox.')
  

8. minor gripes.

all in all, this was a tight episode, though it concerned itself mostly with moving chess pieces around the board. the show is still very gradually exposing a) the new situation, and b) the new objectives. i think we've got the situation now - next episode must tackle objectives.



but here's the minor gripe. when the new dharma initiates arrive, they are greeted by the welcome video of pierre chang/marvin candle/mark wickmund/edgar halliwax. it is the same video playing in 'the man behind the curtain,' when ben and his father arrived on the island. problem is that pierre is wearing a lab coat with the swan station logo on it, and clearly at this point, the swan station hasn't even been built yet. maybe they printed the labcoats early, and chang is a big ol' showoff? 'ooo look at me, i have a coat for a station that hasn't even been built yet, suck on that noobs!'

9. preboomer.

this episode was all about sayid and his wtf-face. no one even got a chance to tell him the date, so he's completely disoriented.



he sees jin, wtf!?



he sees sawyer, wtf!?



he sees young ben, wtf!?
(boom)

you know i love a good wtf-face preboomer.

10. p.s.



while bsg's finale was overall quite strong, if 'lost's' endgame starts explaining phenomena by simply calling them 'angels,' i will find damon and carlton's homes, and leave flaming dharma-logo poobags on their doorsteps.

lost and battlestar have always gone hand-in-hand, each trying to one-up the other. while thematically different, both shows followed very similar narrative arcs - killing major characters, exploring enemy perspective, even sharing the idea of resurrection.. i've always felt this way about the two shows' goals: lost is more ambitious, but less successful; while bsg is less ambitious, but more successful. bsg's finale raises the bar for lost: it's ron moore and company's final hand in the 4 year game they've played with damon and carlton. now it's our boys' turn. let's hope d&c can learn from both the successes and failures of bsg's grand finale.

(again, special thanks to rob k for edits/suggestions)

written by: elizabeth sarnoff and kyle pennington. sarnoff has really written her way back to redemption this season. she previously co-wrote this year's excellent 'jughead,' after having been associated with many of the show's weakest episodes. kyle pennington's only other credit is co-writing last year's 'cabin fever' with sarnoff.

..this friday. hey, with no new episode of 'lost' this week, (yes, it's true) a later posting will help us all deal with the programming break. see you friday!

written by: carlton cuse and damon lindelof.

directed by: jack bender.

director of photography: edward pei. part of the decline in photography this season may be due to the show working new dp's into the fold. after last week's mediocre footage, i'll be watching who shoots what episodes from here on out. edward also dp'd 'the little prince.'

in short: deeply disappointing. i nearly broke my brain trying to squeeze these scenes into the timeline. my faith is shaken. 'jeremy bentham' too much resembles 'meet kevin johnson.' if you watch passively, though, it's a great episode.

1. disappointment.
2. continuity.
   
3. kill me once, shame on you..
4. fresh arzts and frogurts.
5. the big question.
   
6. podcast tidbits.
7. appreciations.
   
8. preboomer.
   

1. disappointment.

i placed a lot of hope on this episode's ability to flesh out and smooth over the sins of last week. but instead it stoked a secret fear that builds up in me when 'lost' begins to lose its way: that what damon and carlton think is great about the show are not the same things i think are great. this episode held enormous potential to unveil tantalizing missing pieces of the larger puzzle. unfortunately, it reminded me that 'lost' is most disappointing when the mystery proves to be more interesting than the revelation.


why would abaddon withold this info, when it would only strengthen locke's resolve to return to the island?

this episode's flashbacks bore the weight of revealing the incidents that drive the entire off-island storyline. we've seen so much of what came about from these scenes that they took on a mythic quality. in the end they failed to live up to that standard. most unfortunate is that this failure rendered the entire 'getting back' storyline inert. this is the episode, more than any other, in which we needed an answer to the big question: how will bringing them back save everyone on the island? until we understand this key point, we cannot dramatically engage with the show's core objective. and the longer they hold off giving this answer, the more i fear that there is no real answer at all.

don't get me wrong - the payoff can still come. i'm just worried. if that answer isn't satisfying, i think we'll look back on 'lost' and say that the show ultimately lost its way when it started flashing forward: a jaw-dropping revelation at the time, but one that may contain no further intrigue beyond its initial brilliance.

on the positive side, we've seen the show pay off on high expectations before, and the episode by itself stands up well enough, thanks to great performances from michael emerson, terry o'quinn, and matthew fox.

but, as ryan mcgee says, the show is sinking under it's own narrative weight. please prove us wrong. please!

2. continuity.



in last year's finale, the name 'jeremy bentham' took on hyper-serious importance - for whatever reason, the O6 chose to refer to him by that name, and never as locke, for fear of being watched, or overheard.. where did this fear come from? i expected that locke's appearance would rattle everyone he came to see. except for jack's scene, all locke really did was mildly irritate them. but if you look at the whole story, these ho hum conversations were supposed to have..


do we care anymore what compelled sayid to 'rescue' hurley?

• ..somehow compelled sayid to leave habitat for humanity, decide that 'hurley must be protected,' kill a man sitting outside hurley's asylum, and go on the run.

• ..shaken up walt enough to fly across the country to visit hurley merely to ask 'why are you guys lying?'

kate's not really upset. she just wishes she'd twisted the 'you're an obsessed old man' knife a little harder while she still had the chance.

• ..disturbed kate enough to burst into tears because jack thought she might go to bentham's funeral.
  

locke's meeting with sayid was puzzling. he's now building homes in the dominican republic, when everything we've seen of him before and after this point off-island has cast him in a james bond role. what is it that caused him to go back into mercenary mode to rescue hurley from the asylum? clearly it's not the result of this conversation. i had thought that ben had sent sayid on the hurley rescue mission, but now it's clear ben had nothing to do with it (in 'the little prince,' ben asks sayid why he broke hurley out of santa rosa - sayid said only that he 'had to make sure hurley was safe.') i'm now completely mystified about sayid's motivation and direction as a character. unless a new conflict is introduced soon, i think he's in danger of becoming monster food.


hey walt, remember that time you appeared on the island and told locke he 'had work to do?' no? well, locke doesn't remember it either.

'wrong,' is probably the best way to describe locke's new york encounter with walt. it felt like the writing staff that never really knew what to do with walt, was relieved when they finally wrote him off the island, and are now adding this half-hearted coda to be done with him for the rest of the show. it's the 'lost' equivalent of chrissie calling jack and janet from her aunt's house. it would be extremely disappointing if this is the only payoff we get for walt, who has been told as often as locke that he is 'special,' who scared ben and the others enough to have him sent away, and possesses powers of foresight, telepathy with birds.


dear 'lost,' remember how you reminded us about walt's power in 'room 23,' from the missing pieces?

we wanted a spark of the fascinating relationship between these two that grounded much of season 1. we wanted locke to say that he had seen walt's image on the island. we wanted walt to have more to say than just having had a weird dream. have walt's powers increased? gone away? does walt give a shit about vincent anymore? or anyone else on the island?

in 'the little prince,' sawyer asks locke:

SAWYER: Hey, Locke? What are you gonna say to her?

LOCKE: Sorry?

SAWYER: Kate. What are you gonna say to her to get her to come back?

LOCKE: I haven't figured that out yet.

clearly locke didn't spend much time thinking about it while recuperating in the tunisian hospital either. here's the problem with locke's worldwide rejection tour: every scene was an errand. locke did no convincing at all. he merely stated a request, and then left after being given the answer. dramatically inert. i understand how one by one, each rejection builds up to locke's attempted suicide, but on the obverse, the scenes don't explain the other character's actions.

my friend spencer called me up after the show and ranted 'how many times do i have to watch them be convinced?? aren't they already convinced??'

it's disheartening that we are still not done seeing them 'be convinced.' the missing pieces from '316' are still going to be filled in. even though i no longer care, we'll find out why kate gave up aaron and changed her mind, why hurley changed his mind, and how sayid was arrested. if those scenes are are trite as 'the life and death of jeremy bentham,' i'd honestly just rather not know. let kate say 'oh, i saw a ghost,' and move on. i don't care. they are back on the island, the entire 'leaving the island' plot arc was jumbled and misguided, feels trivial, and i'd rather the show just moved on to whatever it's going to be about now that they're back.

other continuity problems (from lostpedia):

• In the Season 4 finale "There's No Place Like Home," Jack told Ben that Jeremy Bentham visited him and said that Ben was off the island.
  
• Jack also said Bentham told him that after the Oceanic Six left the island, "some very bad things happened. And he told me that it was my fault for leaving."
  
• Also in the finale, Jack told Kate that Bentham said that returning to the island was "the only way that I could keep you safe - you and Aaron."
  
• In "Because You Left," Jack further told Ben, "Sawyer, Juliet, everyone from the boat... and everyone we left behind - John said that they'd die, too, if I didn't come back."
  

Locke (Bentham) said none of these things when he visited Jack in this episode.

• Last season Walt told Hurley he had been visited by Jeremy Bentham. Locke never referred to himself as Jeremy Bentham during his conversation with Walt in this episode.
• Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is portrayed in earlier episodes as a place Jack can stop by after work to visit Hurley. However in this episode, the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is identified as being in Santa Rosa, CA which is over 400 miles from the hospital where Jack works in Santa Monica, CA.

ultimately, this one episode tried to cover too much material at once, and required a level of narrative compression that isn't usually employed on 'lost.'

3. kill me once, shame on you..



the only portions of the show that provided compelling new information were those taking place post-resurrection. what did we learn?

• jacob knew a plane would be landing on hydra island - and had the runway built specifically for that purpose.
• some people vanished off the plane, and others didn't.
• the plane appears to have landed in the same future time period where sawyer discovered the ajira water bottle on board one of the outrigger boats.
• lapidus took one of the outriggers with 'some woman,' who i think must be sun, who for some reason did not vanish.
• locke was murdered by ben, for some reason.
  

ben has now killed locke twice. c'mon locke. stop getting killed by ben. it's lucy, charlie brown, and the football. omg, 'lost' is one giant metaphor for 'peanuts.'



4. fresh arzts and frogurts.


here, this mango will make you forget all about that off-island story.

i was so excited that nearly all the socks were finally killed - and now here we are with a whole new planeful of socks! gahhhhhh. can we just nuke hydra island? please?

5. the big questions.

why did ben kill locke immediately after hearing the name 'eloise hawking?' up until that point, ben was going to work with locke in getting the O6 back together. ben knows how to collect people, and as soon as he got news of jin being alive, you could see the wheels cranking.. 'ok, we'll use jin to get sun back.. i'll use aaron to get kate back.. we've already got jack.. hurley is easy..'



clearly ben knows hawking from the island days - and probably what we'll see play out in future episodes is the exact nature of the young ben/widmore/ellie island feud. did ben trick both widmore and ellie into pushing the wheel? is ellie penelope's mother? or charlotte's mother? does faraday have an 'oops i liked my sister' skywalker complex? is everyone on this show somehow related to each other?

i had such different expectations for this scene. i expected ben to actually talk locke into hanging himself. i thought he would convince locke that his purpose was to be christian shepard's proxy on the plane, with the promise that he'd be resurrected once they land on the island. i think it would have been more interesting than yet another ben-allegiance flip-flop.

why did only hurley, jack, and kate get whooshed off the plane? i have no idea. it falls into the same category as why is juliet time-jumping if she wasn't on flight 815? we're gonna get answers right? it will all be clear right? 26 episodes to go, and it's all gonna make sense, right?

6. podcast tidbits.

the podcast is often very funny, and i recommend checking it out. but if you just want to know the main points, here they are:

• yes, we will find out what kate did with aaron. meh.
  
• no, we are not yet meant to know whose side to be on: ben's or widmore's. erm.
  
• damon and carlton fully debunked the theory of sawyer losing his toe, becoming an ancient island hero, and having the four-toed statue built in his honor. hmm.
  

7. appreciations.

since i've spent so much time griping about this episode, here are things that impressed me:

• better photography and pacing.
  
• production design got a huge workout this week. this episode had as many sets and locations as a feature film.

• seeing the ajira plane landed on the runway was a fantastic payoff

• egyptian influence in the island's ancient history has been hinted at for some time. now hurley is drawing the sphinx.
  
• flash structure: now that everyone is back on the island, will we now be flashing between the 815ers in the 70's and the 316ers in the 'present?' if sun wasn't sucked into the past, will she and jin have to communicate à la 'the lake house?'

8. preboomer.

CAESAR: You know him?
(slow burn)
LOCKE: Yeah. He's the man who killed me. (boom)

the timing on this preboomer was different. it was an instant boom instead of a (pause) boom. and i think a good choice. the pause boom gives us a moment to take in the holy shit moment, jin's wtf-face, or the revelation. the instant boom is more like the sopranos finale, cutting off mid-moment. nice change. but how about this:

CAESAR: You know him?
LOCKE: (shoots ben through the head) I did. (boom)

i know a lot of people liked this episode. i hope i haven't been a debbie downer. i'm just upset that these last two episodes do not withstand the scrutiny that's justified this blog.

written by: showrunners damon lindelof and carlton cuse. it's their show. they define it. and they are certainly defining a huge part of it with this episode.

directed by: stephen williams. 'lost's' #2 director, who alternated episodes last season with #1 director jack bender.

in short: a few missteps and a couple raised eyebrows at some big contrivances have me waiting for the full picture before judging. many scenes did not work, for which i mostly blame the director. a strong opening and closing nearly save it.

1. hawking
2. jack
3. the missing pieces
4. 46 hours earlier?
   
5. recreation
6. reincarnation
7. doubting thomas
8. best lines
9. noticeables
   
10. preboomer
    

1. hawking.



this scene was unfortunate. the set was damn cool, but fionnula flanagan's delivery of the expository speeches was overwrought with an almost put-on 'mystery voice.' i wish i could see jack bender's version of the scene, which probably would have given us a more matter of fact and abrupt ms. hawking. she would have left her listeners in a daze, and viewers reaching for the tivo rewind button.



explanations can be difficult. anytime a story phenomenon is explained, the writers run the risk of playing the 'midichlorian card' and completely demystifying something that was much better left alone. so all this business about the island being on a pocket of electromagnetic energy.. it doesn't carry the show anywhere. damon and carlton know this, so through the avatar of ms hawking, it feels like they're telling us:

oh, stop thinking how ridiculous it is and start asking yourself whether or not you believe it's going to work.

i think this is where d&c lost a lot of people, who said to their tv screens, 'uh, no, that is not going to cut it, thank you.'

this episode was about suspension of disbelief. the idea that going back hinges on recreating the circumstances of flight 815 on flight 316 is so ludicrous that it trumps the entire time-jumping concept introduced in the season premiere.

the show takes a lot of risks, and this conceit is one big-ass gamble. you can't say they didn't know where they were going. damon and carlton have been running in this direction ever since they put locke in that coffin - they knew why and how he died two years ago, and i'm hoping that this week's episode fills in the narrative gaps we've been aching to learn for over a season now.

'316' was written and shot as 'episode 7.' meaning, the original plan was that we were not meant to see it until after seeing this week's episode 'the life and death of jeremy bentham.' upon reflection, damon and carlton decided that it actually plays better to flip the order, so we got '316' a week earlier. i'm extremely curious to see how this affects our understanding and processing of the story. perhaps they wanted to get the weaker ms. hawking exposition out of the way, or maybe they wanted us to understand that our heroes do get back to the island even sooner than expected.

2. jack.



i'm frankly puzzled by the scene with jack's grandfather. for a show that is usually so deliberate and nuanced, i don't want to believe that damon and carlton simply wanted to 'flesh out' jack by showing us a little more of his family. was putting those shoes into jack's hands the entire point of the scene?



yes, there are some thematic resonances: the magician and his rabbit invoke suspension of disbelief. jack's grandfather, like jack, wants to be 'anywhere but here,' reinforcing jack's decision to never return to the 'real world' again. but i would much have preferred a scene with either his mother, or his ex-wife. so much of jack's backstory is about his failed marriage. a scene where he finally gets closure and says goodbye to sarah would have been much more satisfying.



since that didn't happen - what is the story trajectory for jack? now that he's back on the island, it's pretty much an open book. will he have to win juliet back from sawyer? (will juliet be 'with' sawyer after however long they've been stuck in the dharma initiative?) will jack try to win kate back? will jack become island leader and protector against the forces of widmore? i have no idea, but hopefuly we'll find out in episode 8. whatever it is will be the basis of act 3 of all of 'lost,' so it'd better be good.

what i do find intriguing though is that jack and locke, post-resurrection will have to deal with each other in a father/son kind of way, which is going to raise some serious issues for jack.

3. the missing pieces.

• kate suddenly changes her mind. what made her go from 'aaron is MY baby!' to 'aaron who?' in about 2 hours flat? did claire appear to her again? did she hand aaron off to claire's mom? does kate see a different island ghost? what could possibly have happened? and then, what made her decide to literally dive back into jack's bed? is it because upon deciding to go back to the island, she realized it's her last chance to have her own baby?
  

• hurley suddenly changes his mind. and not only that, he knows where and when he needs to be, he's got a guitar, and he's bought up 78 of the available seats on the plane. did charlie appear to him again? ..or any number of the ghosts he's been seeing? maybe the entire dead cast of the show appeared at the same time? i'd love to see that scene.

• sayid shows up, escorted by an fbi agent (and new recurring character). this person is probably one of ben's many sleeper agents planted in convenient occupations throughout los angeles. after sayid walked away at the dock, ben simply had to engage 'plan b' to get him on board.

• ben is bloody at the marina. it's obvious that he headed down there to kill penny, who arrived in los angeles with desmond. but it seems that everything did not go according to plan.. so, is penny still alive? did charlie jr. die? whatever happened made ben nearly miss the flight.

4. 46 hours earlier?

so jack wakes up on the island, then we see the title card '46 hours earlier,' which is when ms. hawking told him that his 'window' would be closing in 36 hours. were the 10 missing hours on the flight? and did ms. hawking mean to say 'window of opportunity?' i'm sure there were arguments in the writers room over the best way to phrase this.

what's making the show difficult to describe are the differences between time as experienced by the characters versus time in linear form. a character jumping through time may only experience 10 minutes, but 2 years may have actually passed. gregg nations must want to shoot himself right now. of course he can't, because his 'work' isn't 'done yet.' ba dum pum!

5. recreation.

not like rec-center 'recreation,' but creating again 're-creation.' here's what ms. hawking says:

If you.. want to return, you need to recreate as best you can the circumstances that brought you there in the first place. That means as many of the same people as you are able to bring with you.

the idea is interesting, but i don't think was sufficiently developed. by creating a re-creation situation, damon and carlton allowed the show to get meta in a way it hasn't done since the self-referential 'exposé.' now we're looking at the accidental and circumstantial events surrounding flight 815 and applying them to flight 316 in deliberate ways. some interesting parallels:

• hurley reads a comic book again (y: the last man by 'lost' writer brian k. vaughn. read it.).
  
• hurley = charlie by bringing a guitar on board
• sun = rose by hoping to reunite with long lost husband, and holding onto his wedding ring. in the pilot episode, rose held onto bernard's wedding ring because his fingers bloat when they fly. a sexy couple, them.
  
• sayid = kate by being escorted on board by a federal marshall.
• sayid's federal marshall = kate's federal marshall. she is likely one of ben's people.
  
• random middle eastern guy = sayid? purely for tokenism? i hope not. that actor is a superstar in morocco, so he's definitely sticking around for a few episodes.
• jack = jack?
  
• kate = claire? if she's pregnant..
• frank lapidus = seth norris, doomed pilot of flight 815, and possible monster food if he gets back to the island.
  
• ben = ..sawyer? (did ben also just commit a revenge murder?)
• cheeky flight attendant = cindy? c'mon island, you made the rules. do not break them. you'd better be taking cheeky flight attendant to the island too!
  

jack asks kate the question we all asked about the show itself in season 1:

JACK: Hurley, Sayid... being... on the same plane. How did they end up here?

KATE: They bought a ticket.

JACK: You don't think that it means something? That somehow... we're all back together?

KATE: We're on the same plane, Jack. Doesn't make us together.

if the island is going to 'pull' all the proxies off of flight 316, who else is getting pulled off? are there more of ben's people on the plane? in 'the lie,' ben asked butcher shop jill if 'gabriel and jeffrey' had checked in. are they on the plane? why will the island pull ben off the plane (we can be certain it will.)? who is he a proxy for? will others from the back of the plane be pulled off?

now there are two giant, ridiculous, ludicrous, patience-testing questions. the first one is: why is the time jumping happening because they left? and the second is: why do they need to re-create flight 815?

perhaps the closer they come to matching the circumstances of their arrival, the more closely they will arrive in the correct time. not having walt on board, not having someone in a wheelchair, all the discrepancies, as ms. hawking said 'would be.. unpredictable.' what she didn't go on to say was exactly what the variables were, but it makes the most sense for that variable to be time. the mismatches between 815 and 316 plopped them down sometime in the 1970's - the height of geronimo jackson.

given the evidence, it seems flight 316 passed over the island during a time flash. during this flash, 'the island' identified certain people as 'belonging to me,' plucked them off the plane and deposited them around the island. this 'decision' by the island must also be related to the selective process by which the time flashes choose who does and doesn't jump with each flash. careful damon and carlton.. this is starting to get really really complicated.

6. reincarnation.

ms hawking called locke's body a 'proxy' for jack's father. apparently, having this proxy is tremendously important to the success of locke's mission. it's the reason locke killed himself, and it's the reason alpert told locke 'you're gonna have to die, john.'

all of this is tied to the island's intrinsic reaction to dead bodies brought there. the island has interesting rules about death and birth:

• if you're dead when you arrive, your body disappears, and you reappear on spooky occasions.. boo!
  
• if you're alive when you arrive, and then leave, you can't die until you've 'done your work.'
• if you're pregnant when you arrive, you can have your baby there, yay!
• if you get pregnant on the island, and try to have the baby there, you die boo.
  
• if you get pregnant on the island, and try to have the baby off the island, you can live, yay!

will these factors tie together in a logical way? do all of these rules have to do with course correction? if the island is a governing body, it doesn't seem very concerned about creating future generations. perhaps the island is concerned with maintaining some sort of population equilibrium that is tied to the original discoverers of the island's power. perhaps everyone who's ever come to the island is a proxy for one of these original people - and all the 'accidents' that have brought people to the island are actually there by a course correcting force of destiny that is the island trying to reconvene some kind of ideal situation. uhh.. yeah, i just typed that and i'm having trouble following it myself. damon and carlton have a lot of esplaining to do.

question is: what will the island do to locke's body? the flash of light certainly zapped it out of flight 316. will locke wake up, alive and well, and that's that? and if so, wtf!? is this the ultimate extension of his miraculous ability to walk after the crash of 815? first time around, legs healed; second time around, death undone. and after being resurrected (as we know he will be) will he still be locke? will he be jeremy bentham? will he be jacob? (though i think we won't fully understand jacob until season 6, episode 15ish.)

7. doubting thomas.



i think what rubbed rob k., and others so wrong about this episode was that a) several scenes were not executed well, b) a huge swath of mythology was dropped on the floor of the looking glass station with an unresonant thud, and c) we were twice asked by d&c to 'just have faith.'

ben tells the story of doubting thomas - and while i liked ben's description of thomas' reaction to the resurrection ('he just couldn't wrap his head around it'), something felt, well wrong about the whole thing. the tone wasn't right.. the buildup towards getting back to the island was rushed. no one really wrestled with the question of whether or not to go back (and two of them have children!). it wasn't fully dealt with. and the surest way to instill doubt in someone is to tell them to 'just have faith.' faith is something you either have or you don't. it can't be requested or ordered into someone.

but i do have faith. at parties, when it's revealed that i'm deeply into 'lost,' i'm often asked 'well, do you think they'll be able to pull off the big finale?' and i always say 'yes.' i do have faith, because that faith has been earned in 4 seasons of fantastic season finales (though season 4 was somewhat marred by the writer's strike). point is, damon and carlton know how to write endings. they know how to weave a mystery and they know how to unleash jaw-dropping revelations. they prove this again and again, week after week on a small scale, and then they do it year by year on a large scale.

in addition, since negotiating the end date in january 2007, they have had over two years to plan their endgame. so, i have faith, not because they tell me i should, but because they have both a history of excellence, and no excuses for failure.

8. best lines.

echoing what we've always thought about the socks:

JACK: And the other people on this plane--what's gonna happen to them?

BEN: Who cares?

and:

LAPIDUS: Is... that Sayid? And Hurley. Wait a second. We're not going to Guam, are we?

9. noticeables.



the photo on ms hawking's chalkboard says 'u.s. army,' and has the date of alpert's 1954 camp.



christian shepard's sneakers finally, ho hummedly explained.



ben, of course, reads 'ulysses.' an appropriate reference. like 'ulysses,' 'lost' is becoming unnavigable without a guidebook.



jack pours himself two drinks. he is interrupted before getting a chance to drink either of them. first the island says 'drink!' now the island says 'don't drink!'

10. preboomer.



gotta say, while the meat of this episode wasn't the best, the bread of this sandwich was top notch. jaw-dropping opening, and another 'wtf!?' face from jin to take us out. they should have jin's 'wtf face' end every episode from here on out.

let's talk about what this preboomer means: after locke stabilized the wheel, the leftbehinders became similarly stabilized in time - trapping them in the 1970's, where they had no choice but to join dharma and start a life there. faraday becomes part of the mining team at the orchid, jin joins the security team.. and i bet sawyer and juliet have been trying to play house about as successfully as jack and kate's attempt.

here's the real jawdropper: if jin and company have indeed been stranded for several years, we've jumped in time in both the on and off island storylines. i felt certain that there would never be a narrative time jump in the island story. for 4.5 seasons, the experiences of the people on-island have been narratively continuous. it's been the baseline that's held the show together despite its complexity.



but if we've now indeed skipped ahead (even though we may technically be in the past) on-island, it means that the show can return to a traditional flashback structure, flashing back to story points from the skipped period of time. yikes. remember jack's first monologue to kate? the one where he talked about doing surgery, and the girl's nerves spilled out of her like angel hair pasta? that's kind of what's happening with this show right now. hopefully everyone can feel the fear for 5 seconds, sew it back up, and get back to the business of kicking ass with clarity, simplicity, and focus.

a successful tv show is made by a team of artists, all working together. excellence in each aspect brings something to the whole. i just rewatched most of the pilot episode, and was struck by how much the photography on 'lost' has changed over the years. the show barely resembles itself anymore.

nothing illustrates this more glaringly than by comparing the opening sequence of the pilot, to the opening of the most recent episode, '316.'

here's a side by side comparison. right side is from '316,' left side is from the pilot. click to make it bigger.



now, i think the opening shot of jack's eye is actually an unused take from the pilot. the angle is exactly the same (though pulled out a little bit), and every tiny wrinkle, lighting highlight, even the clumping of his eyelashes is identical. this is the same shot. however, the shot is missing the effects plate used in the pilot - which shows the reflection of the trees towering over him as his pupil constricts. instead, in '316' you can see the reflectors and even the camera reflected in his eye. sigh.

the shots that follow are like a homemade remake of the pilot's opening scene. it lacks the attention to detail and the dynamics of the original. it felt amateur.

the second shot of jack's face seems determined to make him look as fat as possible. the lighting is flat, and it instantly betrayed that this was not the opening scene.

the wide shot of jack lying in the grass is also lacking in dynamics. the sun hits the area to the right, and the rest of the shot feels like its been pulled up in color correction to make up for underexposure.

and finally jack's pov of the trees towering over him is now shot with a conventional lens. the tress don't tower so much as just 'be.'

now i understand that the goal here was not to recreate the opening scene exactly. the goal was to trick us momentarily, and then make us scratch our heads as we subtly see the differences - but those differences should have not have been in quality of footage!



something new i've noticed this season is that the jungle scenes are getting excessively color graded with a lot of yellow. i'm not sure why this is happening - are they just getting bored and feel like trying new things? or has hawaii just been uncooperative in the sunlight department?

the pilot's director of photography was larry fong, who stayed on for about half of season 1 before moving on to work with zach snyder on '300' and 'watchmen.'

michael bonvillain and john bartley have been trading off as dp since season 2, and have both done amazing work since then, but since descending into the hatch, something has been lost in the look of the show. it's starting to feel like tv, when it once so stunningly felt like a feature film, every week.

apologies for the late posts. have been out of town the last two weeks. generally, look for new posts on mondays. i like to use the time to reference the podcasts, chew over details, and even do some research. having the weekend allows me to be more thorough. here we go:

written by: eddie kitsis and adam horowitz. these guys are on a roll. for season 5, the duo were promoted to executive producers, giving them very strong voices in the show's endgame. they wrote the second episode this season, hurley's 'the lie.'

directed by: paul edwards, who has directed a handful of episodes throughout the seasons, all of them pretty good, including 'what kate did,' 'two for the road,' 'par avion,' and 'cabin fever.'

in short: an astonishing episode that pays off on a plethora of setups stretching back to season 1.

1. rousseau and the unlikely jin coincidences
   
2. charlotte and the place of death
   
3. smokey and the temple of doom
   
4. off-island and the general yawn of disinterest
   
5. christian shepard and the mystery of the buttoned-up top button
6. eloise hawking and the continuing enhanced episode irritation
7. montand's arm and the many detailed references of years past
8. john locke and the many questions surrounding him
   
9. preboomer and the teeny tiny gripe
   

1. rousseau and the unlikely jin coincidences

so here's the thing everyone's been wondering: what exactly is the season 1-4 history between rousseau and jin? does it make sense that rousseau didn't 'remember' jin upon running into him again, 16 years after she first met him in 1988? after analyzing rousseau's interactions with the survivors, she is rarely seen with the group of survivors as a whole, and when she is, it's usually just before the group splits into two camps, and get this, she has always been in the opposite camp from jin. here is the breakdown of the rousseau/jin timeline:

• Thursday, 4 November 2004: (exodus, part 1) rousseau appears at the survivors camp to warn them that the others are coming. she speaks to the survivors as a group, jin is among them, but never differentiates himself. at this point he also doesn't speak any english.
  

• later that day, jin leaves on the raft. rousseau is not present for the launch. this is also the day that she leads a small group to the black rock, and tells them of montand's arm, the 'sickness,' and refers to smokey as 'a security system.'

• Friday, 5 November 2004: (the other 48 days) jin returns to the island after washing up with the tailies and doesn't rejoin the beach camp until Monday, November 8. (boy, it sure seemed like jin was gone a lot longer than a weekend, didn't it?)

• Monday, 20 December, 2004 (greatest hits) jin is part of the group jack takes inland to explain his plan to defeat the others: by using dynamite to thwart their attempt to abduct the pregnant women. jack's group (with jin) meets rousseau in the clearing, after she has retrieved dynamite from the black rock. after the demonstration, the group quickly splits up: jin stays behind to ignite the dynamite, while rousseau leads the rest to the radio tower to turn off her distress call. (through the looking glass)

• Tuesday, 21 December, 2004 (the beginning of the end) the survivors (including rousseau) convene at the ruins of the plane's front end and split into two camps: jin goes with jack, rousseau goes with locke. this is the last time rousseau and jin cross paths.
  

so, here's my conclusion, and while it's slightly cagey, i'm fairly certain that this is the way d&c will be spinning it: after their adventure together, yes, rousseau would surely remember jin; however, after 16 years in isolation, for her to see a similar looking person in the background of a group of people is not sufficient cause for her to have had a moment of recognition. that said, it would have been awesome if in season 1, there was even a tiny hint of recognition after rousseau saw jin amongst the survivors. but it's simply not there. this is a story point that was developed late, and retconned into the larger storyline. they got really lucky that jin hadn't really had any previous interaction with rousseau - or rather, we got lucky, otherwise we might never might have learned the story of montand's arm.

looks like my theory about jin being rousseau's constant is incorrect - the 'sickness' experienced by her crew seems to have come from the temple, not from time jumping.

2. charlotte and the place of death



wha!? they libbied her! they nikki/paolo'd her! she had, what, five lines her entire time on the show? was this really the grand character arc they had planned? here are some theories:

• the writers never really liked her. the role was written for kristin bell, who turned it down for to do 'heroes' instead. damon and carlton got their first choices on all the other new season 4 characters except charlotte, and may have been disappoined by mader's performance.
  

• she failed to connect to the audience. the only episode where charlotte got to do anything of note, 'the other woman,' was rebecca mader's real audition: with the audience. while it's true that she didn't ever get much to do, it's also true that she never did much with what she had. at the moment ken leung (miles) is getting little more than punchlines, but man can he nail every one of them.

• this was always the plan. there is only one season left. there are a lot of storylines to tie up in relatively few episodes. charlotte was always designed to die, and then figure back into the show as a child than an adult. kristin bell's career was taking off, and in a bit to get her on the show, they promised a short character arc the start. it's also quite possible that we will see more of rebecca mader as a ghost and/or in flashbacks.

but i don't think this was always the plan. as a character, charlotte was one of 'lost's' handful of failures. she expressed no opinion or perspective on any issue, and was entirely defined through faraday's inexplicable attraction to her. charlotte was an anthropologist so that she could guide us through the temple and read the heiroglyphs and keep our heroes from getting the 'sickness' that afflicted rousseau's science team. guess that plan's getting a bit course corrected.

also: she became an anthropologist in order to find the island? not cartographer? oceanographer? geologist? what was young charlotte exposed to that led her to believe that anthropology would be the field to lead her home? also, if daniel was present with her as both an adult and child, why wouldn't he be her constant?



charlotte's last words were 'i’m not allowed to have chocolate before dinner.' ryan mcgee made a great prediction that daniel will try to give young charlotte an apollo candy bar when warning her about coming back to the island.

3. smokey and the temple of doom



it's hard to believe just how much information was packed into every minute of this episode - the opening segments with rousseau were among the most riveting in the show's history. following the french crew as they discover the numbers transmission, and then trek into the jungle, brought back the feeling of both season 1 and 'the other 48 days' - reliving the horror/adventure through a new cast of characters.

right away, we encountered smokey, aka cerberus (according to the blast door map). damon and carlton have said that each time we see smokey, we must learn something new. let's quickly recap what we know about smokey:

• attempts to drag certain people underground
• stops directly in front of certain people, seems to 'download' their memories
• can be repelled by the sonar fence, built by dharma
• can be repelled by dynamite
• can at least be summoned, if not controlled by something underground.
• is connected to the hieroglyphs and ruins seen throughout the island.
• 'downloaded' memories are somehow connected to ghost manifestations (eko's brother)

new things learned:

• partial possible purpose: protect 'the temple.'
• capable of removing limbs
• can play with people's brains (the sickness?)
  

the temple, the heiroglyphs, smokey, and the ghosts all seem somehow related. i have a feeling that this season we will get a jaw-dropping revelation that neatly slots in the missing piece of the puzzle - like when juliet's flashback single-handedly explained the entirety of the other's actions regarding claire's pregnancy.

so, what is in the temple?? it was first mentioned last season, when ben sent rousseau and alex there, telling them it was the 'only safe place on the island.' rousseau didn't express any hesitation to trek back to the place that destroyed her crew, which seems like a continuity error. however, i do think it's possible that by the time the writers decided to kill rousseau, they had formulated the plan to bookend her time on the island with reference to 'the temple.'

in the most recent podcast, d&c said that what we've seen of the temple is merely the 'outer wall' of a much larger structure.. hmm..

this is the season of mythological payoff. damon and carlton have gone on record saying as much, and have gone further to say that next season is the season of character payoff, and will return to the feeling of season 1: with the plot/character balance tipping back toward the latter.

4. off-island and the general yawn of disinterest



officially, this episode is classified as jin/sun centric. greg nations, whose job is keeping 'lost's' continuity, has said that the centricity of an episode is found in the opening scene, which makes sense. this episode was about sun coming to learn that jin is still alive, and about jin deciding that sun should believe he is dead; at the center of it all is jin's wedding ring, ironically used as 'proof' of both points.

otherwise, meh. the gun-pointing and side-switching, the 'meet me at the dock so we can drive to a church' (why not just meet at the church?), and the obstacles that serve only to stall returning to the island (sayid and kate say 'seeya,' hurley runs to jail) have been testing patience for 5 episodes. it echoes the structure of season 3's 6 episode mini season that locked kate and sawyer in polar bear cages.

at least damon and carlton knew we would be frustrated by this off-island story before the season even began airing. here's a january quote from damon:

I think everyone, writers and fans alike, feels the show is at its best when our characters are together... but the fact of the matter is that the story is constantly twisting and turning to keep them apart. Let's face it -- Absence makes the heart grow fonder... but there's nothing sweeter than a reunion. All we're willing to say at this point is that if we were to spend the entire duration of Season Five with the Oceanic Six trying to get back to the island, we are fully aware that the audience would strangle us.

so they are coming back soon. maybe tonight. ms. hawking's 70 hour time limit helped up the urgency as well.

5. christian shepard and the mystery of the buttoned-up top button



the return of the ghost of christian shepard! this question has been puzzling me since season 3: ever since christian appeared in jacob's cabin, his wardrobe changed deliberately and dramatically. his ghost, when seen by jack (or vincent, in the webisode 'so it begins,') is always wearing a dark suit with white tennis shoes.



after appearing in the cabin, and when seen by others, he is wearing the same brown striped shirt, buttoned up to the top.



the implication seems clear: this person is different from the other ghosts, including whatever it is that appears to jack in similar form. this person tells locke 'say hello to my son,' while jack has been 'saying hello' to the ghost of his dad for quite a while before locke appears off-island.



6. eloise hawking and the continuing enhanced episode irritation

woah, ellie! let's look at our ellies:



did daniel meet his own mother in the past?



did daniel name his time-jumping rat after mommy?



yes he did! the screenshot above aired on abc the week after the season premiere, and stated ms. hawking's first name a full three episodes before we were narratively intended to discover it. thank you abc for sapping the joy out of this episode's final revelation. moments of revelation are great because they either confirm your theories or blow your mind. whether it 'seemed obvious' to you or not, leaked information isn't cool. this was an irresponsible in-show spoiler, and it's not the first time the popups have spilled info.

damon and carlton have said that info in the popups is by a marketing group and not sanctioned or canon - but the popup writers do have access to several episodes at a time, and tip answers that might be coming in the next week's episode. i urge you again, do not watch the enhanced episodes. or better yet, call the marketing firm that writes them and complain.

7. montand's arm and the many detailed references of years past



this episode was just packed with referential awesomeness:

• journeying to the radio tower, which was broadcasting the numbers transmission (referred to in season 1)
• rousseau's pristine music box, later fixed by sayid
• robert referring to smokey as a 'security system' (which is what rousseau called it in season 1)
• seeing the mysterious 'sickness' that both desmond and rousseau have referred to, and which i honestly thought had been forgotten by the writers.
  

8. john locke and the many questions surrounding him

why was the wheel off its axis? is it just old and wobbly after ben pushed it? is it stabilized now, and if so, how will that change the nature of the flashes? will locke appear in the desert in tunisia? when are the left-behinders now? was the well dismanteled and buried, or did they flash to a point before the well was built?

an interesting nugget from the most recent podcast about tonight's episode: damon and carlton wrote the next two episodes simultaneously, and it doesn't really matter what order they are viewed in. wow. cannot wait. tonight's is called '316.'



is this in reference to 'john 3:16'? you know, the bible verse about 'everlasting life?' omg, you guys. I KNOW WHO JACOB IS:


9. preboomer and the teeny tiny gripe

eloise: alright. let's get started.
(boom)

hrm. this episode played like 'jughead,' where the precommercial breaks were stronger than the preboomer itself. aside from general irritation with the off-island story, the slight preboomer is my minor gripe. i felt the scene was also missing a clear moment where desmond recognizes ms. hawking from the ring shop. i like rob k's suggestion that this would have been a stronger ending:

christian: say hello who my son.
locke: who's your son..? (flash)
(boom)

written by: brian k. vaughn and melinda hsu taylor. brian comes to 'lost' from the world of comics. he wrote the absolutely incredible serialized graphic novel epic 'y: the last man,' and is a natural choice to join the staff of 'lost.' he's cowritten some good eps: 'catch-22,' 'confirmed dead,' and 'the shape of things to come.' his major misstep is the awful 'meet kevin johnson,' written with elizabeth sarnoff. melinda joined the writing staff this year after having worked on 'women's murder club,' 'the vanishing,' and 'medium.'

directed by: stephen williams, back in the big chair after directing the season premiere.

in short: best "kate" episode in a long time.

topics:

1. bloody noses
2. specific dates
3. flash rules
4. the french
   
5. aaron and sun
6. the rest
7. gripes
8. preboomer

1. bloody noses.

ah, so now we know that the bloody noses correspond to the amount of time spent on the island. which means that charlotte has been there the longest, somehow, which really needs to be explored soon, or else the audience is gonna start demanding a little nikki/paolo action on her. miles was the next to get his bloody nose, which only tells us that he's been there less than charlotte, but longer than juliet (who we know has only been there 3 years). that little tidbit of info makes it quite likely that miles is pierre chang's baby from the season 5 opening scene.



if that's so, it looks like the 'incident' could explain many things:

• the loss of chang's arm
• the destruction of the orchid
• the necessity of the swan
• the development of miles' psychic abilities
• removal of miles to the mainland

charlotte is clearly younger than miles, so while she may have spent the most time on the island, miles (if he is the chang baby) was probably there first.



since juliet now has bloody sniffles, i'm guessing it's oh maybe one or two more flashes before sawyer and locke get hit with them too.

of course the big question that isn't addressed yet and one which had better have a damn satisfying answer is: why is all this happening because they left? it's just not enough of a reason to get behind emotionally yet. what will locke say to jack when he finally gets off the island? "alpert said you have to come back. uh, that's pretty much it."

we at least have a ticking clock urgency to get them back before everyone dies of nosebleed timesickness, but it's still hard to get behind the conceit when the reasons for it are artificially obscured by the plotting. the writers deliberately flashed away before alpert could have a chance to tell locke. narratively, this was a mistake. if it's going to drive the central action for the better part of a season, we need to know. just tell us! and then we can stop being distracted by the question and start caring about the characters again. i'm all for reverse storytelling, but my deep fear about the season is that this question will never be sufficiently answered. please please please let me be wrong.

2. specific dates.

the on-island story took place during 3 time periods:



i.) the survivors flashed out of alpert's 1954 camp to november 1, 1994, the night of the storytelling cliché in which a birth (aaron) must be accompanied by a death (boone). (see also the simultaneous ji yeon birth/jin-is-dead reveal). given that locke and sawyer are the only two original cast members on the island, this is the best date to choose, since the day's events hold the power to profoundly affect both of them.



i was quite moved by the scene where sawyer watches from afar as kate assists in aaron's birth, two months earlier. aaron's fate was the centerpoint of the episode, and revisiting this moment was a nice way to bring things full circle: we revisit aaron's on-island origin, as his fate hangs in the balance off-island. the scene also gives sawyer a chance to pine for kate, who he believes is dead. it does what 'lost' does best: converge real emotional weight with sci-fi storytelling. (also, emilie de ravin was thrown a much needed paycheck for reusing her season 1 footage.) interestingly, two other 'presumed deads,' charlie and jin were also originally present at the scene of aaron's birth, but not shown here.



ii.) now, where did the island send our heroes next? the camp has been abandoned, and somehow invaded by people in old boats with new waterbottles from ajira airlines. this is the future, and i guarantee that later this season we will see the other 'side' of this scene. do jack, kate, and the rest return via ajira airlines? is ajira controlled by alpert/ben's mittelos bioscience conglomerate?



do they land an ajira plane on the unfinished runway kate and sawyer were forced to work on at the start of season 3? also, did juliet just shoot one of the oceanic six on the other outrigger boat? ..or did she just shoot herself!? dun dun dunnn..



iii.) after being shot at by mysterious people in a similar outrigger boat - our crew is flashed to the evening of rousseau's science expedition shipwreck: sometime in 1988. dudes. when locke turned over that can with the french on it, i was jumping out of my seat.

3. flash rules.



how many people expected our heroes to be stuck in the middle of the ocean without a boat, as the sparkle noise of an impending flash began to grow? the thought crossed my mind. then, upon discovering that the boat had traveled with them, i thought, "how convenient!" but the rule of the island taking anything they are 'holding on to' had already been established when the zodiac raft first travelled back in time with faraday and frogurt still on board. what we don't know at this point is whether this outrigger boat will continue to jump around, as the zodiac seems to have (though it was apparently stolen in the future jump-point.. did it vanish from underneath the thieves, or become permanently fixed in the future at that point?).



also: are cindy and the kids jumping around in time too?

lostpedia has been tracking our heroes inventory:

• John Locke's knife
• Sawyer's machete
• A U.S. M1 Rifle (.30-06) with 7 rounds, maximum (Sawyer fired one)
• A U.S. M1 Carbine (.30 Carbine) with 11 rounds, maximum (Juliet fired four)
• The contents of Daniel's backpack
• An outrigger canoe

i love that it's back to basics again. i also think, in 4 episodes of the show, we've now only seen one full day of 'island time,' as experienced by the time jumpers - i believe the overnight stay in 1988 is the first time they've had a chance to sleep since the initial flash.

4. the french.

damon and carlton have made good on their promise to show us rousseau's backstory - but the question now is 'how long will we stay in their time period?' will we see montand's arm blown off at the black rock? will we learn about the 'sickness' that forced rousseau to kill the entire crew? (was the sickness related to island-time jumping?) will we see the birth of alex and subsequent kidnapping?



what's most troubling about rousseau's past is the discrepancy in her story as it relates to what was happening with dharma at the time: if rousseau arrived in 1988 that means she gave birth to alex and set up her french transmission (discovered during the pilot episode, running for 16 years) all while dharma was still in full operation. ben's purge of dharma did not occur until december, 1992. if alex was taken before the purge, then she was somehow spared from the gas and then later adopted by ben. if alex was taken after the purge, she would have been 4 years old, and rousseau's claim that alex was taken a week after the birth doesn't hold up. it also seems unlikely that she'd be able to infiltrate the radio tower and post her own transmission without interference before the purge (and even after it, really). so, a lot of questions to answer.

and that's not even getting into the logistics of how rousseau, having met jin in 1988, didn't recognize him when she met him again in 2004. the only thing that kind of allows it to work is that, though they did meet previously, jin and rousseau never had any real interaction. when jin first met rousseau, back in season 1, he didn't speak any english, and was quickly sent off on the raft. i think damon and carlton are passing this off similarly to locke's childhood meeting with alpert: it is such an anomaly that she simply never made the connection.

but what about this: what if the frozen donkey wheel is pushed shortly after rousseau's shipwreck? this would be the push that exiles widmore from the island.. the french crew starts jumping around in time and gets the minkowski's.. except for rousseau.. because rousseau's constant is jin. though she never makes the connection, jin's appearance in the past is actually what saves her from 'the sickness.' and the post wheel-push time-jumping explains the 4 year gap between alex's kidnapping snd the purge. just a theory..



the episode is called 'the little prince,' which is in reference to the lovely french novel of the same name - and is filled with parallels to themes explored in 'lost.' the 'little prince' lives on an asteroid called B612 (or besixdouze, the name of rousseau's ship). an entire post could be devoted to the story parallels - if you're interested, just reading the wikipedia synopsis will give you an idea of how themes of isolation, redemption, reincarnation, imagination, faith, hubris, science, exploration and many others relate to 'lost.'



speaking of reincarnation, the name 'canton-rainier' on the van driven by sayid and ben is an anagram for 'reincarnation.' yep. we're goin' there folks. also, 'carpet cleaning' is an anagram for 'placenta cringe,' a facial expression we've seen a lot on 'lost.'

5. aaron and sun.



does anyone actually 'want' aaron? i don't think so. ben used aaron as a way to get kate running straight back into jack's arms, and i think that's it. sun has aaron now, but i don't think she's holding him for widmore for any other special purpose. if aaron has powers similar to walt's, narratively, i think we'd be seeing evidence of it by now. aaron is just a kid, who's about to say bye bye to mr. choo choo cartoons forever..



it was important that jin be revealed as alive in this episode because now our dramatic investment in sun changes. we know definitively that she is wrong about jin, and can now hope that she doesn't make any number of horrible mistakes that will doom them both. i kind of liked her as the bad guy - and she may still operate as a double agent. it's likely that she will provide widmore with information to get to the island (whether deliberately or not), and widmore's return will likely provide the central conflict for the final season of the show.



if sun returns to the island, leaving ji yeon behind, it changes my prediction for her storyline: now jin will watch while sun dies as punishment for becoming a villain. jin escapes the island and reunites with ji yeon in korea. together they will visit sun's makeshift grave, which rests in place of jin's original, false grave. 'lost' loves ironic circles..

6. the rest.

so what are bernard and rose up to? have they found time to 'make fire?' are the other survivors running around messing up the timeline wherever they can? some of their adventures would make for another awesome 'missing pieces' web series. damon and carlton were asked this question in the last podcast, and promised that bernard and rose are not dead (if those characters were going to die, we would probably, uh, see it), and that we will find out where they've been and what they've been up to eventually.

7. gripes.



though this was technically a 'kate' episode, the off-island story just isn't nearly as interesting as what's happening back in the jungle. like i said earlier, not understanding exactly why it's so important for them to get back is sapping the dramatic tension out of the off-island pursuit.

in addition, kate and jack's storyline is as tedious as teenage gossip. she wears pants, he has chest hair, she loves him, she doesn't wear pants, he doesn't have chest hair, she cringes, he's ugly, he's hot again, it rains, she cringes, she likes him again. fortunately, since all the players are at the dock and ready to head out we won't have to endure it much longer.. looks like desmond will find ms. hawking and meet up with them on his own. so, i guess walt doesn't need to come? or lapidus? maybe ben already rounded them up?

funny thing - i wasn't sure if the rain in the show's "hawaii los angeles" was there because it was in the script, or because it just plain rains a lot in hawaii and they had to go with it. but the next day a torrent just like the one in the show fell on us in LA. so yeah, sometimes it does rain like that here. and it probably was in the script, because the LA rainstorm segued perfectly into rousseau's besixdouze shipwreck storm.

8. preboomer.



whether or not you were surprised by the appearances of rousseau and jin, this preboomer was not about those revelations as much as it was about the dawning horror on jin's face as he realizes he has no idea what the frack is goin on. boom. best preboomer of the season so far. bravo.

written by: elizabeth sarnoff and paul zbyszewski. 'the sarn' has written some of the worst episodes of 'lost:' 'stranger in a strange land' (she must get so tired of damon and carlton ripping on that episode), 'eggtown,' and 'meet kevin johnson.' she always collaborates with another writer, so her episodes are hit and miss. when she's writing with damon or carlton, the quality of the episodes are of course much better. what's notable though is that she co-wrote last season's locke-centric 'cabin fever,' so it made sense to have her helm this episode, which ties directly into it.

but who is paul zby..sze...ski? he is new to the writing staff and was the creator of the similarly high concept (but ultimately failed) show 'daybreak,' which was basically 'groundhog day' meets '24' starring taye diggs. i kind of enjoyed 'daybreak,' and though the concept seemed incredibly limited, i was curious to see where it might go. he's seems a logical choice to join 'lost,' and judging by tonight's episode, a good partner for the sarn.

directed by: rod holcomb, who has only directed one other episode way back in season 1, the ho hum boone flashback "hearts and minds.' in the meantime, he's been directing all over the place, 'numb3rs,' 'shark, 'moonlight,' 'invasion...'

1. is alpert immortal?
2. a compass manifested from nowhere?
   
3. what's 'enhanced' about 'enhanced' episodes?
4. what is jughead's story?
5. why would they name their kid charlie?
6. when on the island would you like to go?
7. what is the significance of widmore being an other/hostile?
   
8. what awaits desmond and penny?
9. is theresa the girl in faraday's photo?
10. coolness?
    
11. minor gripes?
12. preboomer?

1. is alpert immortal?



i do not think so. i think we are seeing alpert at his actual age, and in his actual time when locke trots down the hill to meet him in 1954. upon receiving the compass, alpert seems surprised, and needs locke to explain the entire concept of time travel to him. if alpert had already been jumping around, he might not know locke yet, but he wouldn't be surprised by the phenomenon.

ok, so many things to love about the scene with alpert, and it requires going back and re-examining alpert's appearances in locke's childhood.

• when locke first appears to alpert, it seems unreal - alpert has to be convinced. locke tells him, 'okay, well i'm gonna be born in two years. don't believe me? check it out!'

• alpert goes to the birth. ok now here's where it's just awesome, because in 'cabin fever,' alpert's presence at locke's birth felt like a major retcon, and now suddenly the plot point is paid off in a way that makes complete sense with the story. seriously, bravo. so alpert's seen that the man calling himself john locke two years ago was in fact telling the truth. on to step 2:

• test that kid! here's where it gets a little sketchy. now we don't know exactly what alpert was testing for. he goes to visit locke again when he's 5 and spreads out a collection of objects and asks him 'which one of these is already yours?' alpert is of course trying to figure out when in time he is supposed to meet locke. if the compass had actually been locke's all along, it's entirely possible that at 5 years old he would have chosen it. but alpert discovers that locke does not possess it yet, and is frustrated - probably because at that point in his time, something is happening on the island making it imperative that he locate their next leader. but the question is whether this was only a test to find the right moment in time to meet locke, or whether it actually was a leadership test. would picking the compass have been confirmation of both things?

• in 1972, alpert tries one more time to meet locke, from afar, by attempting to recruit him to the mittelos science camp, which locke refuses. this is the point when ben linus encounters alpert in the jungle, and is presumably cultivated as the new leader from that point, since we know of no other attempts by alpert to contact or lure locke to the island.

• while alpert first met locke in 1954, locke's first (remembered) meeting with alpert took place in season 3's 'the brig.' while overlooking the other's tent camp. alpert formally introduces himself, and makes no hint of having known locke previously, but the introduction is conspicuous in retrospect. the scene continues wth alpert suggesting that sawyer be the one to kill locke's father. (note that the others camp in that scene seems to be in the same shooting location as alpert's 1954 camp, though it must be a different spot on the island because the ruins are not present. i think this particular clearing in hawaii has doubled for many island locations.)

2. a compass manifested from nowhere?

so wait, where is this compass from exactly? did alpert own it originally? does he have two compasses now? why else would he ask locke to give it to his younger self as a form of proof than if he didn't already own it, or know of it? if not, then this is a compass that has come from nowhere, and that exists only inside a circular loop of time, being passed from alpert to locke back to alpert ad infinitum. rob has an elaborate compass theory, which he should post in the comments!

3. what's enhanced about the 'enhanced' episodes?

NOTHING. AVOID THE 'ENHANCED' EPISODES AT ALL COSTS. they are sloppily written, contain spoilers from future episodes and will actually diminish your enjoyment of the story. i'm not the only one who thinks so. a letter writing campaign to ABC may be in order, or perhaps a telephone call to Met|Hodder, the company that writes the awful things. here's their number: 818.842.4265. more on this in a separate post.

4. what is jughead's story?



big ass leaky bomb gets buried deep underground with a lot of cement. it sounds quite a bit like the swan station, with its huge cement wall and radioactive signature, doesn't it? there are a couple of possibilites for jughead's fate:

• jughead is responsible for the destruction of the orchid station, and is referred to as 'the incident' by dr. marvin candle.
• or jughead is safely buried in the swan station, but interacts unpredictably with the island's energy - making the pushing of the button necessary.

i have a good feeling that this season we'll learn about the genesis of the swan station - what the true purpose was, why pushing that button was truly necessary, and also what exactly happened to the island when the failsafe key was turned... and i think jughead will definitely have someting to do with it.

5. why would they name their kid charlie?



this was just wonderful, and perfect. charlie. as lostpedia notes, they have simultaneously named the kid after both the man who kept them apart, and the man who brought them together. charles widmore did everything in his power to keep desmond away from penny (though now it seems he was merely ushering fate along), and it's because of charlie's final communication with penny that her boat was able to find the island. beautiful.

there sure are a lot of kids on this show now! aaron, ji yeon, charlie jr.. will the show (or island) flash to a point in the future when they are grown? will damon and carlton launch a lost:babies spinoff? incidentally, i loved that penny's birth scene was set in the philippines. i suspected it as soon as des said he was looking for 'ephram salonga,' which is as quintessential a filippino name as 'jack shepard' is euro-american.

6. when on the island would you like to go?

it looks like this time shifting device is going to be the means by which we learn the island's greater history, which is why charlotte is going to be -very- important. she's going to have to do a lot more than just decipher heirogylphics if they are in the actual time of their writing.. so here's my timeshifting wishlist:

• just after the black rock appears. we should meet the captain, whose journal was purchased by widmore at an auction. we should find out how that journal made it off the island. and perhaps we'll find out the captain's name is... jacob? the FDW looks like a ship's steering wheel.. it's not an actual ship's wheel, but is it from the same period?
  

• when the four-toed statue is whole. how about if our survivors, after a flash, ride the zodiac raft back around the island, and come upon, in full glory, the enormous, complete, and utterly awe inspiring statue that once stood there. perhaps we'll also see the incident leading to its destruction? um, here's a little something to chew on.. remember how sawyer stepped on that stick and we got that ultra gross closeup of him pulling it out of his foot? why so much focus on that moment? ...think he'll lose a toe? yow, my head is spinning...
  

• rousseau's arrival on the island. she may be dead, but she's not over yet. after her storyline was summarily clipped off the branch last season, i immediately thought 'wait a second - damon and carlton promised that we would see her backstory!' well, they made the promise again this year at comiccon without saying anything further. hmm...
  

• the incident. i want to see dr. marvin candle/pierre chang get that arm blown off.

• and of course: the crash of flight 815. i want to see how it hits the ground. all the pieces of that plane are stored in a warehouse in hawaii. we will be revisiting the crash at some point before the end of the series.
  

7. what is the significance of widmore being an other/hostile?



man, i just don't know yet. it was hinted that he had been to the island during his bedroom scene with ben - but there are so many questions now: how did he get off the island? was he exiled by alpert? why was he unable to go back for so long? did he fund/create the dharma initiative with the specific purpose of wiping his own people off the island?

he's been painted as a ruthless hothead ('tell us where your people are or i'll chop off her other hand'). i think it's unlikely that the show will drop anther reversal on the ben/widmore conflict and suddenly make widmore a good guy. the bigger arc here is that ben is redeemed as a hero - and we come to understand why he is so disturbingly cold after being engaged in war with the evil that widmore truly is. i think we've met our voldemort.

of course the other question is: who exactly are these hostiles/natives/others? where did they come from? where do 'new' hostiles come from? was ethan part of that 1954 camp? what about sympathetic muffin-burn lady amelia? is she there? bad-plastic-surgery harper? ms. klugh? pickett? goodwin? mr. friendly? has alpert just been doing a lot of recruiting?

8. what awaits desmond and penny?

first a note about episode structure. aside from episode 1, both 'the lie,' and 'jughead' actually do begin with a traditional flashback that whooshes to that central character's 'present.' after that initial first scene, the rest of the show spends its time whooshing between on and off island in their two set time periods. we've yet to see how this is handled with an on-island character, but i expect it will be similar.



knowing that ben is after penny, i'm surprised that widmore would give up ms. hawking's location (seems pretty clear now that ms. hawking is faraday's mother), and then ask desmond to go back into hiding with her. if anyone knows desmond is determined, it would be mr. widmore, who also must know that ben likely has some relationship with ms. hawking. he's pretty much sending penny to her death, though i don't think he means to.

frankly, i'm afraid. desmond is a main character, but penny is a guest star. the show just might kill her, which would be awful, but like alex and rousseau found out: it's not a good idea on 'lost' to have your major story arc resolved. we still need to see how the ben/penny revenge story plays out, but i have a feeling it will not be in favor of the difficult-to-schedule guest star. it's also possible that little charlie was introduced to replace penny as desmond's new 'reason to live' once they've killed her off. yep, sorry to be a buzzkill, but the more i think about it, penny must die. both widmore and ben need equal rage and motivation as they enter the show's endgame. i will miss sonya walger. her 'stop bullshitting me' moment was fantastic.

9. is theresa the girl in faraday's photo?



compare:



yes, i think so. for a second i thought it was ellie, the hothead blonde 1954 that faraday thought was familiar looking. i'll talk more about her in a future post.

plotwise, why does desmond need to find this woman suffering from the minkowskis? is it to cast doubt on faraday's abilities? or was it simply to reveal widmore's involvement in faraday's research (which given that faraday was on a widmore mission, isn't such a huge revelation)?

10. coolness?

this episode featured only two characters from the original cast of the show: sawyer and locke. we never saw any of the oceanic 6, not even mention of ben. not many shows can come close to pulling off that kind of feat - and what's even more amazing, is that damon and carlton have done it after taking loads of heat for separating kate, jack, and sawyer from the main cast at the start of season 3.

of all the great moments in this episode, i think this was my favorite:

RICHARD: And it never occurred to you that they might follow you?

JONES: Follow me? Their leader is some sodding old man. What, you think he can track me? You think he knows this island better than I do?

(CUT TO: Locke overlooking the camp.)

11. minor gripes?

ok, this is waaay minor. but as my friend david pointed out - the pre-commercial break moments were a hell of a lot better preboomer moments than the actual preboomer. so my minor gripe is the..

12. preboomer?



charlotte goes re-re and collapses. one of those 'new plot point' preboomers, which i'm guessing will lead to a charlotte episode next week. kind of an 'eh' after such a strong episode. but can't wait to find out when they are now..

as a coda, i'd like to extend a big 'break a leg!' to my friend allyson, who has an audition for 'lost' on monday. if she gets the part, i may have to have her write a guest column about her experience on set. fingers crossed!

the preboomer is a mid-story climax, that when executed well, is deeply thrilling for reasons that aristotle laid out in 'the poetics.' here are the types of preboomers:

• asks a fundamental question the audience is also asking. done right, these enhance the thrill of audience/character empathy and mystery. the classic one is of course the first preboomer, when charlie asked: 'guys, where are we?'

• amplifies an emotional state. these are usually the 'happy' preboomers that don't have 'booms' but lovely strings accompanying the final title. usually occurs with a redemption, a reunion, or a triumphant conclusion (will the series finale will have this type of 'boom?'). it's not always happy, though - it amplifies any emotional state, such as when sun visited jin's grave.

• brings full closure to a storyline. like when two hated characters are buried alive.

• crystalizes an ambiguity. these are usually delivered by ben. my favorite being s2e16, 'the whole truth,' when ben says, 'you guys got any milk?' or from s3e16 'one of us,' where juliet, after being revealed to the audience as a double agent, ties up her tent flap in one, cold brisk motion.

• disambiguates a previous unknown while simultaneously raising new questions. this is the core of what 'lost' is about. like when kate says 'i love you aaron,' it confirms that the child she's been speaking about for the past hour is in fact aaron, but also leaves us wondering 'how?!?' or when ben says 'because i have a man on the boat.' okay, yes, that makes sense, but again, 'how!?!'

• defines a character's objective. these usually aren't shocking or surprising in any way, but generally reveal that a choice has been made about how to proceed next. these are fairly common, ho hum preboomers that ususally sound like 'how long do you think it would take to train an army?' or 'i'm going to find john locke.' i'm gonna do this, i'm gonna do that, boom.

• introduces a completely new plot point. at libby's funeral, sun sees something on the water and shouts 'boat! boat!' somehow, locke's father is sitting there in front of him. 'dad?'

• creates a reversal. aristotle talks about this idea, called peripetia: when black becomes white, when good becomes bad, when what you thought was true is shown to be false - the skillful unravelling of these revelations are the core of storytelling. such as when michael, after shooting ana lucia and libby, opens ben's cell, stares at him, says nothing, and then shoots himself in the arm. it causes us to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew about michael since he left, and yet the event is also perfectly logical and in line with the natural course of events. brilliant. damon and carlton know their poetics.
  

want to see all the preboomers? ALL of them? well, you're in luck. someone with nearly as much time on theirs hands as i have has gone ahead and compiled them for each season. it's interesting how there is less consistency in the preboomers than you'd think. the original sound effect was very diferent from the one used now, and on several occasions the 'boom' is a trumpet blast, harp string, or other instrumentation orchestrated by michael giacchino. it's also a really great way to quickly remind yourself of how big this story is, how far it stretches, and what an incredible achievement it is.. so far.

check them all out here:

season 1:


season 2:


season 3:


season 4:

written by: eddie kitsis and adam horowitz. eddie and adam are the comedy team of the writing staff. they usually write the hurley episodes, and they are also champions of 'the socks,' or background players who have tangential storylines. we have them to thank for arzt, the development of bernard and rose, but we also have them to blame for the creation of nikki and paolo. they keep track of who is scott and steve, and of course are big fans of 'frogurt.'

directed by: jack bender - lead director of the show. until 5.1, he had directed every premiere and finale (minus the pilot, of course), plus just about every other episode you can think of as being 'awesome.' jack bender is my hero.

in brief, i thought this was a pretty great episode, encompassing a lot of humor and character moments, but also giving us a good chunk of mythology to go with it. in contrast to the first episode, most of this one takes place off the island.

the big questions:

1. whose episode is this?
2. when are the survivors now?
3. how many times has locke entered a scene by throwing a knife into it first?
   
4. is it so hard to make fire?
5. is charlotte going to die?
   
6. why should i care about frogurt?
   
7. what is ms. hawking doing?
8. who was that butcher lady?
9. why (structurally) are they jumping around in time?
10. what were the great moments?
11. was this preboomer any better?
12. any gripes?

1. whose episode is this?



the producers defined this as a 'hurley' episode - which makes sense, because we spend the most time with hurley, and the episode is framed by his actions. it sets him up as uncomfortable with The Lie, allows him a chance to finally tell the truth, and also take decisive action by getting himself arrested. there's even an old school inner-consciousness whoosh flashforward from when hurley says to sayid 'when you need my help, you won't get it' to him driving a passed-out sayid through la. ah the delicious irony. is this how 'centric' episodes are going to be handled from this point on? i think probably, yes. the show is telling us 'we are done with observing the pasts of our characters, now we're going to interact with it.'

the opening shot of this episode was pretty great too - and it's too bad that it had to be preceeded by the 'three years earlier' titlecard. that was unnecessary, and removed part of the joy of placing the scene in the greater timeline. watching a mystery hand grab beer and walk through a doorway has never been filled with more tension. how wonderful to see frank lapidus again! and drinking this very appropriate fictional beer:



we still don't know if frank is supposed to return to the island as well. probably not, since ben hasn't mentioned him, but i'd sure appreciate it if the show at least addressed why he doesn't have to go back.

while the opening shot was fun, the following scene on the boat was ho-hum. mostly exposition for the sake of those poor souls who don't know the story, and a chance to do what 'lost' must sometimes do: shoehorn an episode theme into the framework of character-centric time flashes. when hurley says that line to sayid, 'when you need my help, you're not gonna get it,' it sure is convenient to flash-forward to a future point when it's ironic, but don't forget that just a month after he said it, sayid and nadia were laughing and sipping coconut drinks at hurley's birthday party.

2. when are the survivors now?

we don't know yet, other than that they have jumped to a time before the plane crash, and are being attacked with flaming arrows by hand-hungry british people in jumpsuits. the jumpsuits resemble dharma, but i didn't see any logos. perhaps they predate dharma? something about the haircuts and clothes suggest the anywhere from the 50's - 70's.. the one called jones is british.. perhaps they are the 'first time' widmore made it to the island, which miles referred to in the previous episode? we just don't know yet.



because episodes 1 and 2 aired back to back, it feels like the opening scene was foreshadowing this attack. pierre chang, while shooting the orientation film for the arrow station (this is the station that the tailies took refuge in), tells us the station is devoted to combating the hostile natives of the island. i think this is just thematic coincidence: the arrow station probably was not a storehouse for actual flaming arrows. plus, the arrow station is way on the other side of the island, over a day's journey from the survivor's beach. i think these guys predate dharma.

3. how many times has locke entered a scene by throwing a knife into it first?

this question popped into my head, and i thought for sure that someone on lostpedia would have already counted for me. sadly, no. i'm a diehard fan, but not that die hard. the knifethrowing flourish needs to be used judiciously, so as not to become one of locke's clichés. but i'll bet money he throws a knife into someone in this season's finale.

4. why is it so hard to 'make fire?'



did anyone else feel like the exchanges between rose and bernard were thinly-veiled dirty metaphors for their lovin' (or lack of it)? awkwaaard... on the podcast, damon and carlton love to joke about rose and bernard's sex life, referring to a planned spinoff called rose and bernard: love island, and how the censors cut all the sex scenes between the two. there ain't no doubt in my mind that dialogue like this...

ROSE: You really think that thing is gonna work?

BERNARD: Rose, I've told you a hundred times. Of course it's going to work. Yes, it's better than two sticks together.

ROSE: Bernard, that's what you're supposed to do is rub -

BERNARD: Well, I think this is going to work better.

ROSE: Look, I think you've got too much wood here in the inside. That's gonna smother the leaves.

BERNARD: Rose, if you don't have enough wood the leaves just burn out.

...is the result is a writer's room drinking game.

5. is charlotte going to die?



i sure hope so. so she's got the nosebleed, can't remember her mother's maiden name, and is about to start going totally fisher stevens. will we learn her story through a psychotic dislodging from time similar to desmond's in 'the constant?' at this point charlotte is essentially a blank slate. they've dropped some clues that she's been to the island before, and she seems to think she was born there. so her constant is probably around there, somewhere. i hope it's a good story. right now rebecca mader is barely capable of carrying my interest much less an entire episode.

but. here's what i think is fantastic about the introduction of the freighter folk - these are characters designed by the writers to carry us to the END of the show. their storylines were developed and conceived after the end date was set, so their express purpose is to reveal the island's mysteries and bring the plot to its final resolution. right now faraday is doing the heavy lifting, but each of them will have their turn to guide us through a different mystery: faraday will guide us through the time shifting, miles will handle the metaphysical, and charlotte (the anthropologist) will deal with the island's history. she'll know how to read the heiroglypics. basically she's 'andie' from 'the goonies,' who saved the day because she knew how to play the bone piano... which sounds like something else rose and bernard might enjoy doing. ba-dum-pum!

6. why should i care about frogurt?



frogurt's death was a fantastic payoff to three years of podcast jokes, and has been almost a pet project of writers eddie kitsis and adam horowitz. after first being mentioned in the podcast, diehards squealed with delight when frogurt was actually mentioned on the show in the rose/bernard episode 's.o.s.' but sadly, frogurt was only mentioned, and not seen until the 'missing pieces' leading up to season 4 last year. he's played by sean whalen, who you might recognize from the 'got milk' commercial in which he loses a radio trivia contest because he cannot speak the words 'aaron burr.'



frogurt's death was beautifully executed. in order to raise the stakes in a given situation, someone must die, and who better than a redshirt? and then they actually put the guy in a red shirt! and simultaneously paid homage to that other great death, dr. arnzt! eddie and adam are sometimes too cutesy for me, but i think this is one of their best episodes. i forgive them for nikki/paolo.

7. what is ms. hawking doing?

ms. hawking is trying to find the island. and for that she needs a very loudly whooshing foucaultish pendulum and an apple iii. she must really like her oregon trail.



covering the apple logo on her monitor is a very tiny dharma logo we haven't seen yet, but which has appeared in the video podcast, and on the ajira airways promo tie-in website:



let's talk about ms. hawking for a sec. damon and carlton have said many many many times that any questions you have about how time travel works on the show can be answered by rewatching her first scene with desmond in season 3. here are both of her scenes:



ms. hawking introduces the idea of 'course correction,' which i've written on before as an extension of the structure of the show itself. through all of the previous 4 seasons, the writers have been going 'back in time' and showing us new pieces of the timeline. occasionally things happen that force them to 'course correct:' an actor drops out, the audience hates a character, the writers go on strike.. and so they (like the god of destiny on 'lost') must reweave events to reach their foregone conclusions. this is why i love this show: it is as much about itself as it is about its content.

so who is ms. hawking? she is probably faraday's mother - has likely been to the island at some point.. perhaps at the same time as widmore? she is chummy with the head monk at the monastary desmond lived at. perhaps she has something in common with jean claude van damme? timecop? she has the means to locate the island, a commodity widmore would kill to have.. and perhaps sun will get it for him. (rob and i disagree deeply about sun's motivations. he believes that she is going to double cross widmore. i think she's going to become absolutely evil. in some ways the ambiguity about her position has made her the new juliet.)

damon and carlton are adamant that there will be no paradoxes on lost. there will be no undoing what has already been done, because dramatically, once you've done this, the audience no longer has any reason to invest in what happens to the characters if it can all be undone later. characters who die, are dead. events that happened, happened. what we are watching on the show, just like faraday described it, are pieces of one long unchanging timeline, like a string. we go forward and back, but there will never be another string. rob brings up an interseting point that it feels like locke is not actually dead, and will be 'resurrected' at some point later. while it's probably true (we don't yet know exactly what happens to bodies brought to the island), i don't think his 'resurrection' or whatever it ends up being will be explained by paradox.

8. who was that butcher lady?



seems like there is a network of people who were once on the island, planted around the world. butcher lady and ms. hawking seem to fit this category. also richard alpert, in the number of times we've seen him off-island, as well as mr. friendly and ethan. what has not yet been explained is exactly how off-on island transportation took place before the turning of the frozen donkey wheel. now that the wheel is turned, it's clearly not so easy to go back. ben asked jill, the butcher lady, if 'gabriel' and 'jeffrey' had checked in yet - is ben collecting more than just the oceanic 6? perhaps the upcoming 'event window' in 70 hours is the last chance for everyone on the outside to get back. some of them must return, and others just don't want to miss the boat.

9. why (structurally) are they jumping around in time?

the prospect of where this season could go is so exciting. one of the key reasons to jump the cast around in time would be to explain one of the central island mysteries. and i think we'll see that this season. sawyer banging on the door of the hatch is just the beginning - imagine this: remember all those times, especially in season 1 and 2, when the jungle air was filled with tension and you heard.. whispers? what if. what if the whispers.. man, it gives me chills just to think about it. but what if the whispers are actually the survivors, now, watching themselves make crucial mistakes in their lives, trying to fight against fate to prevent themselves from doing it? they try and try to affect change, but as faraday said, what happened happened, and all that happened... was that they heard whispers. check out the whisper transcripts. not all of them fit this theory, but many of them do, especially whispers taking place after the point when the writers would have known what they were doing (mid season 3)

if these first two hours are any indication, this is going to be a season about rewarding fans for having watched so closely during the last 4 years.

10. what were the great moments?

• hot pocket shot put
• i heart my shi tzu t-shirt
• 'why is there a dead pakistani on my couch?'
• hurley's rehash of the entire plot of lost for his mom.
• mom saying 'i believe you.'
• hurley's dad watches 'exposé'
  
• sun starts to get a little bit scary
• frogurt flambé
• i did kinda think for a moment that they might chop juliet's hand off. hey, if it's good enough for arrested development, it's good enough for darlton.
  
  
  
  

11. was this preboomer any better?

MS. HAWKING: 70 hours is what you've got.

BEN: Look, I lost Reyes tonight. What happens if I can't get them all to come back?

MS. HAWKING: Then God help us all.

(boom)

the line was a bit ho-hum, but was pretty good because a) it circled back to pierre chang's 'then god help us all' line in the opening, and b) OMFG it's ms. hawking!!!

12. any gripes?

i kind of liked ana-lucia as a character, and was maybe one of the only people upset when she was killed off. damon and carlton have maintained that it was always the plan to kill her, but i don't think so.



remember when jack sat down with her and said 'how long do you think it would take to train an army,' and then dropped the idea completely? i think they had big plans for ana lucia that just didn't pan out. it's too bad. my one minor gripe is about guest stars returning to the show to play their dead characters: i always find it disappointing when i see that they're playing ghosts instead of flashbacks. as ghosts they can offer nothing but guilt or guidance.. it's much more exciting when we might find out more about who they were and what else they might have contributed to the bigger story. ghosts are a cop-out. also, the throwaway reference to libby was annoying. if there's any ghost scene i'd actually like to see played out, it would be hurley getting a chance to say goodbye to libby. i'm still really peeved about her lame cameos in michael's episode last year. what a waste.

check back on wednesday for my treatise on preboomers. analysis of wednesday's episode 'jughead' will likely go up on friday. questions, comments? post below!

(thanks to rob konigsberg for edits/suggestions)

because two episodes were aired back to back, i'm going to write on them separately - especially since it was not damon and carlton's intention that the episodes be viewed as a two hour block. there is a lot to discuss. this season is not for the uninitiated, not at all.

written by: damon lindelof and carlton cuse, the head honchos.
directed by: stephen williams, who, in the new shorter seasons, directs in rotation with chief director, jack bender. he's directed some classic episodes ('not in portland,' 'greatest hits,' 'confirmed dead,' 'there's no place like home, part 1,') but he's also responsible for some of the weakest last season ('eggtown,' 'meet kevin johnson,' 'something nice back home.')

of course, the general consensus seems to be 'what the fuck is going on!?!?!?' i have quite a lot of faith that damon and carlton are aware that most of the audience is scratching their heads, which is why they have most of their main characters doing the same.

1. the opening sequence
2. the first flash
3. the second flash
4. the third flash
5. the fourth flash
6. three years later
7. preboomer
8. points of interest
   
9. minor gripe

1. opening sequence.

fantastic. a wonderful play on previous openings: waking up, preparing for the day, and then realizing exactly who and when we are in the story as dr. marvin candle/mark wickmund/edgar halliwax/pierre chang is revealed, shooting an orientation film. some cool tidbits:

the first shot:



rather than begin with an opening eye (or exploding papayas), season 5 begins with a flip-clock turning from 8:14 to 8:15. "815" is of course the flight number of the ill fated plane and two of the numbers. but what this shot also says is that 'this season is going to be about time.'

what is also interesting about this opening is that chang and his wife have a baby. was this baby born on the island? if so, what exactly happened to change things? is that change related to 'the incident?' also, does this baby grow up to be someone we know? perhaps it's miles (hat tip to carla)? we know nothing of miles's past at this point, so...?



notice the orchid station under construction - a huge set to build for 2 shots (unless of course we're going to be spending a lot more time here this season..), but it was interesting to see the station's exterior in pristine construction after only having seen it in ruins. was the destruction of the orchid station the 'incident' that led to pushing the button in the swan station? in this opening, chang is wearing a swan station logo lab coat, which may be a continuity error if he's already filmed the swan station orientation film, in which he has a prosthetic arm. however, if it's not a continuity error, the prospect of learning the story of dr. marvin candle's missing arm this season is very very exciting.

so we learn that the chief purpose of the dharma initiative is to harness and exploit a 'limitless power' held underneath the orchid station. i think it's safe to say that the 'magic box' metaphor ben used when trying to describe the island's power to locke in season 3 is this very same power. if you can manipulate time, you truly can have everything. but of course there are rules.. rules that ben and charles widmore are bound by.

i wasn't shocked when daniel farraday appeared at the end of the scene - because this video from last summer's comiccon presentation had already primed us, not only for time travel, but also for a pierre chang/farraday meetup, as well as an important baby:



the opening sequences to seasons 2 and 3 followed desmond and juliet as they listened to music, and prepared for their days, only to be interrupted by outside forces. will chang, as the central character of the season 5 opening, become as integral to our story as desmond and juliet? how great to be that actor, huh? hired for a bit part in s2, integral part of the story in s5?

what i did find surprising was that this wasn't the end of the opening sequence - i expected the lost logo to fly by after chang said "then god help us all,' but two more scenes followed, jumping us from past to future, and then back to present, with the whole thing bookended by farraday. past, present, and future. cue up the 'house of pain,' cuz this season's theme is 'jump around.'



i jumped with die-hard fan glee to see that neil 'frogurt' had been surreptitiously planted on the zodiac raft next to farraday with no fanfare or attention. he was just there. and not referred to at all for the first hour. obviously, there will be more on frogurt in the next post.

so far, it seems my prediction was correct: no more traditional flashbacks - at least that's held true for these first two episodes. i thought this would also mean the end of the 'whoosh' noise, but the whoosh persists because we are still technically 'flashing' in time. the noise was traditionally used to highlight a character's inner consciousness - how their memory of the past transitions into the present. now we're no longer looking into consciousness in quite the same way, so the noise merely delineates a time shift.

i was (and others were) a bit irritated by the 'three years earlier' and 'three years later' title cards. part of the joy of the show is the disorientation that comes from trying to figure out exactly where and when we are, and all of the scenes following one of these title cards contained plenty enough information for us to figure it out for ourselves. i'm blaming network meddling, even though the cards probably made the show easier for casual viewers to follow.

2. the first flash.

much has been made about the similarity between these two events: desmond turning the failsafe key, and ben pushing the frozen donkey wheel. let's look at them. here's 'the anamoly' from when desmond turned the failsafe:



and here's the donkey wheel turn:



these are two similar, but also very different events. in fact, they are the opposite of each other. the failsafe is a distinctive low frequency hum, and the FDW is a high pitched, rising shriek. the key difference between these events is that after the failsafe event, the island suddenly became visible to penny's research team in the arctic, whereas the FDW moved the island completely, hiding it. i think we're going to learn some important things this season about how the energy in the swan station and the FDW are related, and i'm willing to bet that it wasn't a very good idea to move the island without the protective energy of the swan station in place, and the jumping around we're witnessing now is a result of that.

after the first jump, the survivors realize that their camp is gone and begin hiking towards the swan station. we weren't sure at this point, but it seems that locke is jumping to the same points in time as the survivors - he watches the african drug plane crash (a seriously genius OMG moment), which lostpedia's timeline places in the late 1990's.



the next OMG moment is when locke is shot and his attacker is revealed to be ethan. john tells him his full name, and ethan says his full name back to him shortly before the island whisks locke away. here's where it gets interesting. farraday says to sawyer very very clearly (in fact, damon and carlton have also said it to the fans very very clearly): what happened, happened. if it didn't happen before, it can't happen now. so. this means that ethan met john locke previously, and that when ethan encountered locke waaay back in season 1, he had met him before, and knew it. this is something that would not have even been dreamed about way back when they were shooting season 1, but because it's been established that ethan is one of the hostiles, and would be used to the idea of timeshifting, i'm still willing to buy the idea.



ethan's first scene on the show (s1e9, 'solitary') comes after he's been established as locke's hunting buddy. wow. a beautiful tie-in to ethan's introduction. we didn't get to see it in season 1, but i bet you we'll see ethan's first post-crash meeting with locke this season. i'm betting that we'll also get a nice little retcon scene where ethan runs back to the barracks and tells ben about someone named 'john locke' who said he was the new leader and then vanished into thin air. ben ponders it curiously, until one day, years later, a plane crashes on the island and guess who's on board - john locke. it would explain ben's strangeness and seeming foresight throughout his entire history with locke.

2. the second flash.

it's now nighttime, and the african plane is both fallen off the cliff, and burned. the hatch is imploded. richard alpert comes to locke's rescue and has knowledge of the moment john 'disappeared,' so it's probable that the survivors, at that moment were actually in their 'correct' time.

alpert's scene with locke here is crucial, and i cannot wait to find out how this all plays out. alpert tells locke that he has to get everyone back who left, and that in order to do it, he's going to have to die. the scene also employs a favorite device on 'lost,' which is the 'countdown crisis' preventing anyone from going into detail because events are imminent. alpert doesn't have time to explain, only enough to stress the importance of doing it.

so why is it so important that these people return? does the island, as a whole, require its own 'constant?' was something torn when they left, and what are their true destinies if so? if time is 'course correcting' itself - preventing people from dying, moving them around the globe to fulfill mysterious duties, what is the ideal endgame it's working towards?

one question that hasn't been answered yet - and i'm disappointed that it hasn't (damon and carlton addressed the question in a podcast over the summer, and promised it would be addressed in the premiere.. no dice): when ben says 'they ALL have to go back,' who exactly does that entail? does that include walt? lapidus? desmond?



alpert gives locke his compass, the same one from the test he gave locke as a child.



it makes me wonder if eventually we'll look at that scene from locke's childhood again with better understanding of what's going on. it seems that richard alpert doesn't age, but it's more likely, given the story direction, that he's simply been jumping through time. he's part of the 'indigenous' people of the island, so he probably has full control and understanding of its power. if he is jumping through time, what was it that made him decide to check out locke as a child?

i'm excited that alpert is on hand to be a major player in the story again. had 'cane' been a hit, nestor carbonell would have been unavailable, and the writers would have had to course-correct their own story and get these plot points out through a different character (probably isabel). (that said, i was completely floored by the number of guest star cameos they managed to line up for these first two episodes. on podcasts they talk about the difficulty of getting sonya walger (penny) and alan dale (widmore), who both work on other shows constantly (last year widmore scenes were actually filmed in london because dale was in the west end production of 'spamalot.') i used to have secret anxiety that the producers would be unable to get certain actors they needed in order to tell the story.. thankfully, 3/4ths of season 5 is already in the can and i can rest easy.

interesting tidbit: miles and charlotte have this little exchange:

CHARLOTTE: Do you think he's looking for us?
MILES: Who?
CHARLOTTE: Widmore.
MILES: It took him like twenty years to find this place the first time. I'll start holding my breath now.

..when was 'the first time?' i think we'll get a big peek into that backstory this season.

fun line: sawyer - 'son of a..

4. the third flash.

'...bitch.' the hatch is restored and undiscovered. desmond is inside. because of the dynamic of desmond's scene with faraday, it's likely that this flash places the action after desmond has killed inman - which means the plane has crashed, but very recently, because the hatch hasn't been discovered. i loved how sawyer marched right over to the hatch's back door, and how the scene was staged to give some feeling about the geography between the two locations. it's a small point, but man locke must have been so frustrated that he and boone went to so much trouble digging out the hatch when the back door was just down the hill and around the corner. doh!



but here's what i find interesting - fate will not allow desmond to open the door as long as sawyer is the one knocking. they didn't meet before, and they cannot meet now. desmond first met saywer in season 2, after returning from the tailies side of the island - they cannot meet sooner than that, no matter how hard sawyer pounds the door. it gives us some insight into how the writers use the idea of destiny: once faraday decides to start knocking, desmond will 'decide' or rather, 'be ready' to answer the door, simply because: it happened.

faraday's notebook has become a magical device, telling him, somehow that yes, at this moment, contact was made with desmond. who knows how he might have that in his journal, but of course he also had this:



i loved hearing on the audio commentary for 'the constant,' that jeremy davies has deep personal interest in quantum physics, and has some real knowledge of it - enough that he wrote all the journal pages himself, as well as the equations on the chalkboard in his lab.

this storyline is something of a replay of the plot from 'the constant,' where daniel implores desmond to make contact from another point in time. in 'the constant,' faraday told desmond to find himself at his lab in oxford. now faraday is telling des to find his mother there, her name is...

5. the fourth flash.

doh! we don't yet know exactly where the fourth flash has taken us, but it is clearly back before the crash, due to events in the next episode, which i'll discuss soon.

6. three years later.

what interests me is the overall decision to place 'future' events three-years later. the inciting incident was locke's death (as jeremy bentham) after visiting the o6, trying to get them to come back. but why does this 'memory' of faraday telling desmond to help them pop into his head at this point in time as well? probably it's just storytelling convenience.. and possibly inconvenient too.. if faraday's mother is ms. hawking (who i'll talk about in the next post), then she is quite clearly in los angeles, not in oxford. but when faraday told desmond about her, it was three years prior, so she easily could have been in oxford at the time. confusing, i know. bottom line: ms. hawking may or may not be daniel's mother, we don't know for sure yet, but probably she is.

again, the idea of 'the constant' is going to be extremely important this season, which is why 5 weeks of writing time went into writing that episode last season. if desmond is faraday's constant, he needs to get back to the island or faraday will die. and the rest of the o6 and the people who left are constants for the others, possibly the entire island - so when they finally return, some kind of equilibrium will be restored.



as far as what is going on off-island: sun is playing kate like a fiddle. what a bitch! 'i don't blame you. how's jack?' damn cold. oh, i jumped ahead - that's actually from the next episode. of course, sun's behavior is somewhat justified because she is out avenging jin's death - but i have a bad feeling that she'll go to extreme measures (is she truly her father's daughter?), and the karmic price she'll have to pay for becoming a supervilian megabitch is watching jin die again.

speaking of jin - and we're all pretty sure he ain't dead, i'm interested how they will swing it. he was on the freighter, which was visible from the beach, and given its disappearance, was outside the island time-travel radius, which means jin's 'survived' body is not jumping through time with them: it's been sitting out there for three years. unless he's on a piece of freighter debris that floated into the radius before the jump occurred. given his survival when the raft exploded, it's not impossible.

as many other bloggers have pointed out, hurley getting arrested feels like a contrived obstacle toward getting everyone back on the island. other than that, our off-islanders don't really know anything more than we do at this point, and it will serve the story best to get them back to the island as soon as possible. damon and carlton seem to know this as well. they understand that the show's dynamic works best when the cast is united - but in order to be united, they have to be split up for a while first. how else can we can get a nice slo-mo michael giacchino scored reunion scene? damon and carlton have promised us 'this won't be a full season about getting back to the island.'

the big question is: where is the show heading now? what is the objective to be reached in the grand conclusion? for as complicated as the 'harry potter' plot was, it remained simple: kill voldemort; live happily ever after. we don't yet know who the voldemort of 'lost' is - either ben or widmore, maybe even 'jacob,' but the grand finale will be the destruction of whatever force seeks to exploit the island, the placement on the island of all those to wish to stay, rescue for all those who wish to leave, and security that they will remain hidden forever. that is the end of the show. in classic 'lost' fashion, it will have soaring strings, redemptions and reunions, and one hell of a preboomer. speaking of:

7. preboomer.

i've written a separate, extensive post about preboomers: what makes them rock, what makes them suck. stay tuned for that. in the meantime i'll only say that this episode's preboomer...

DESMOND: We're leaving.
PENNY: Leaving to go where?
DESMOND: Oxford.
(boom)

...sucked.

8. points of interest:

• faraday's metaphor about a skipping record was a lovely tie-in to the opening montage.
• kate's first line is to aaron: 'oh, i think choo choo knows better than that. he goes in that tunnel, he's never coming back out.' which is probably pretty great advice for kate to follow herself.
• the worker's nosebleed down in the orchid station is gonna be important, as are all future nosebleeds.
• another fantastic sayid fight scene. the dishwasher knives. loved it.
• hurley's line about bentham: 'i need a cool codename.'
• charlotte. this actress is not like elizabeth mitchell, who can take nothing and make it intriguing. right now this girl has nothing to work with, and consequently has no character or presence in the show. she is in fact, entirely defined by jeremy davies' want of her and nothing else. here's hoping they tell her story, whatever it is, and then kill her. they can even go the libby route: kill her, promise to tell her story, and then don't!
  

9. minor gripe.

really just one. when sun's passport is scanned by security at the airport, we see this closeup. click to make it bigger:



now, come. on. COME. ON. any second unit director who's getting closeups for a show like 'lost' knows that closeups of documents are going to be freezeframed, analyzed, and scrutinized. every word can be read. it's why they've gone to the trouble to make sure that sun's birthday is correct, and that the korean is legit. so, their graphic designer went to all that trouble, and they shoot it on the screen in photoshop? look at the lower corner. not only that, rob k. points out that this oceanic desk lady has not yet installed her windows critical updates. and she's not connected to the network. sigh. still, not as bad as the tragic ms. hawking/monk photoshop composite. but perhaps they'll explain that too - maybe she's able to jump in and out of photographs!

how about some video?

season 1:



season 2:



season 3:



season 4:



season 5:



season 6:



season 7:

in preparation for season 5, i thought i'd take a look at each of the four season-opening sequences:

season 1:

opening shot: jack's eye.






this first sequence of the pilot establishes several things about the vocabulary of "lost:" the closeups of eyes opening, mystery, and disorientation. jack wakes up in a bamboo forest, sees vincent, tries to piece things together, steps out onto a lovely beach... and then turns around HOLY SHIT there's a giant airplane wreck.

season 2:

opening shot: desmond's eye



we don't know who this person is, but it's carefully shot to make us think maybe it's jack, in flashback - but whoever it is, this is clearly a flashback because we're watching him put a classic oldie on the record player ('make your own kind of music'), seeing an old computer, a cool apartment, a kitchen.. we must be watching jack at some point befo... BOOM RUMBLE. wait. ok, what does that mean? ok, this guy clearly isn't jack.. no.. HOLY SHIT the camera pulls back back back and connects itself to the last shot of season 1, with jack and locke peering into the hatch.

season 3:

opening shot: juliet's eye



there have been a lot of episodes in season 1 and 2 that begin with opening eyes. in the commentary for 'ji yeon,' editor/director steven semel said that they've been moving away from it so as not to wear out the convention. it's interesting to note how differently jack's eye extreme close up has been shot from the other two: jack's shot has a wider depth of field, is entirely in focus, and shows his iris closing behind the reflection of the trees towering above him. a much more complicated shot than it appears to be.

juliet and desmond's eye-shots have very narrow depth of field, keeping only the plane of the iris in focus. desmond's eye reflects the "window" of the hatch, and juliet's eye shows a hint of a window. neither are as dynamic as jack's shot.



the season 3 opener is my favorite because of how it plays on conventions established in both previous openings. juliet, like desmond, puts another classic song on (downtown), only this time it's a cd instead of a record - and her identity is not hidden from us, she looks in the mirror and pulls herself together (a moment that is beautifully called back in her second flashback episode).



i gasped upon first viewing, because i thought she was penelope widmore - and season 3 was going to pick up exactly where season 2 left us. but no, instead we're going to watch this mystery woman make muffins, have a book club meeting and RUMBLE.. everyone runs outside and HOLY SHIT there's henry gale and ethan and goodwin and there's the plane, breaking apart in the sky. an amazing opening that took the structure of the season 2 opener and exploded it to a deeper level.

season 4:

opening shot: a pile of papayas



here the tease was compressed into this single shot, meant to make us think we were on the island. here's what i wrote about this shot when it first aired:

the shot holds for an uncomfortably long time. we hear seagulls, we see the ocean in the background. we are on the island. rather than give us an entire fakeout scene, as we've had in seasons 2 and 3, the fakeout is encapsulated in this one shot, as hurley's camaro bursts through the fruit. not only are we off island, that shot also describes in miniature, the overall philosophy of the season: "you think you know what this show is about? you think it's about being on an island? well let's just drive this here car through what you thought this show is about."

and then we see someone drinking orange juice, an echo of the opening to season 2, when we saw desmond do the same. this time it turns out to be jack. and we're teased out and teased out as to who the driver of the car is.. sharp viewers will recognize the camaro from his flashback episode.. it's hurley. and it turns out to be hurley's episode. which is also a change. the season premiere flashback has previously only belonged to jack.

not exactly a "HOLY SHIT" moment, though it was forgivable because we were given the ultimate "holy shit" during the final seconds of season 3.

so, what will season 5 bring? an opening eye? a new character? orange juice? i am seriously hoping for a damn good HOLY SHIT moment.

players of the dharma initiative alternate reality game, meant to lead-in to season 5, got a strange email recently, saying that the financial crisis had 'shut down' the dharma initiative. it was hard to tell if this is supposed to be part of the game, or if something had indeed happened.

well, now all is clear. damon and carlton confirm that the ARG for season 5 has been scrapped due to budgetary concerns. frankly, i'm more interested in what they'll be providing anyway: behind the scenes teasers for the upcoming season.

the ARG's always annoyed me anyway. while a nice distraction, aside from the 'missing pieces,' they were not considered canon, and were not written by, or developed by the show's producers.

each season of lost is a complete story unto itself. like the harry potter books, each provides a piece of the larger picture, but also contains a central theme. i love how each season's dvd box set of 'lost' has a different color scheme and look. and now this. at first i thought it was a piece of fan art, but after checking abc.com, i've got to make my disappointment official. wtf!? this is exactly the same color and style as the season 4 poster! not only that, the season 4 poster contained all kinds of tantalizing clues about what we could expect from the show. this poster offers nothing more than confirmation that daniel farraday is not dead, charlotte and desmond are joining us from the cast of 'little people big world,' and claire, as reported, will not be joining us.

my hope is that this is only a teaser, as the official season 4 poster was not released until a month before the premiere.

here's a great article profiling a q&a damon and carlton did for the 2008 screenwriting expo.

among their answers:

• overall mythological structure was not determined (or even really thought about) until the show was given a full season order beyond the original 12 episode deal.
• michael emerson was cast to play ben for a 3 episode stint, which also served as his audition for the character to be the leader of the others.
• "this year will probably be a little bit more science fictiony."
• mr. eko's botched storyline was the result of adewale akinnuoye-agbaje absolutely hating hawaii, and wanting to leave by the time they'd shot his second episode. "originally he was going to be someone who challenged Locke for the spiritual leadership of the castaways." such a shame. that could have been soooo good.
• possibly joking about their 'favorite scene from the series finale,' they said: 'it involves a volcano.' tantalizing, as the island's volcano has been mentioned a couple times.
  

here it is:



the new clips are exciting - it looks like season 5 is going to be all about 'getting back,' probably with the O6's arrival coming right at the s5 finale..