directed by: daniel attias, who has only directed one other episode of 'lost,' hurley's first centric ep, 'numbers.' perhaps his unfamiliarity with the show is part of the reason for the episode's tonal failure in the island scenes. it worked to have a newcomer direct ben's episode because it was a simpler character-based story, but this episode had an incredibly difficult task of balancing comedic and dramatic tones, unexpected explosions, and character motivations that require deeper understanding of the show. the pacing of scenes was strange, music cues felt rushed - the reunification of the two camps should have been a much bigger moment, instead it felt squelched.
cinematography by: john bartley. some really interesting choices here - for the first time in a long time, the island wasn't candy green, but set in more pastel tones, and it's hurley's perfect life in the parallel world that is now set in bright, saturated, mr. clucks colors.
quickly: though i liked a lot of things in this episode, there are a lot of elements that were not handled very skillfully. for the most part it is a bridging ep that served to position the players for the 3rd act. jack and locke are now face to face, finally!
- parallel hurley
- ilanna
- desmond
- michael
- more
- jack and locke
- what went wrong
- what went right
- preboomer
- next episode
i loved the way the writers used the parallel to close out libby's story in a satisfying way - it acknowledged that she was originally in the mental health institute with hurley, but shifted her reasons for being there. this was way more satisfying than cynthia watros' previous appearance as a blanket-carrying nurse-ghost who haunted michael and had two inconsequential lines.
i love libby, and though this episode had problems, i found it hugely satisfying to see her character back, to get some closure on her backstory (even if it's a parallel backstory), and to get full closure on the dangling story arc the show left us with and then teased us about for 3 years after her character's death. of course the lingering questions about her past - why does she hate her ex husband, david? why did she give her boat to desmond? why was she originally in the institution? - are now rendered moot.
a huge part of the post-island parallel world apparently converges around the golden state natural history museum: miles' dad works there (loved that pierre chang narrated the opening montage), charlotte works there, eloise's fundraiser is there, daniel is performing there with drive shaft.. is it a natural history museum or comiccon?
at first i thought that in the parallel hurley wasn't a lottery winner at all, that it was purely hurley's 'love of chicken' that catapulted him to success - but jorge garcia's podcast makes reference to a bit that was cut, detailing how parallel hurley picked his winning lottery numbers off the serial number of a dollar bill.. interesting.
parallel hurley's story revolved entirely around his meeting with libby and eventual recovery of some of his island memories - which is confusing, because everyone who 'wakes up' in the parallel world is actually 'remembering' things that haven't yet happened in any timeline - we're still only seeing events in the parallel within one week of flight 815 landing, and in the original timeline hurley doesn't even meet libby until a month after the crash. desmond 'remembers' that he has a son named charlie, who wasn't even born until late 2005.
so it seems more like when the characters 'wake up,' they remember their entire other life.. somehow they're able to carry memories back and forth. hm. it's a tricky conceit, and difficult to get behind dramatically.. i'm still holding out hope that they can pull it off, because connecting these two strands is the greatest challenge the show has ahead of it.
what's most troubling to me is that the show set up an entirely new concept to resolve in one season, when there was no shortage of existing open mysteries. i think the audience wanted to see a full season of strands coming together, not a bunch of new strings trying to weave themselves in. damon and carlton do love to challenge themselves, and they certainly haven't shied away from reinventing the show before. all we can hope for at this point is that the pieces will lock together in a way that not only justifies, but reverses our frustration with the parallel - such that we'd watch it again happily, this time knowing exactly what is going on.
2. ilana
i was surprised and shocked by her explosive departure - it didn't bother me at first because i didn't see it coming, but on rewatch i'm irritated that the writers chose to dispense with her this way - they turned her into a shannon-level hysterical idiot lunatic. it's fine to decide to kill her suddenly and unexpectedly, but don't have it be because she randomly becomes a different, incredibly stupid person, literally throwing water bottles into the bag with the dynamite. all that buildup and intrigue, a character we were just getting to know and like, then blammo? kill her using a miscommunication, or an unavoiable accident, or even kill her the way arzt was killed - in the midst of being very very careful. it felt random and pointless - yes, some characters pointed out that maybe that was the point, but it's not a very skillful execution in making a point of pointlessness. she deserved much more. i really liked ilana - and had real hope that she would do something terribly difficult and brave to bring about the endgame.
3. desmond
some people are thinking desmond ran over locke as a sort of retribution for pushing him into the well in the original timeline. i don't think so. i think desmond knows that locke is supposed to walk - and that this is the only way to get him back on the operating table.
it's vague. it -could- be that desmond is acting out of retribution, and it will just turn out that his actions result in locke being able to walk again.. but i think it's similar to how charlie didn't want to kill desmond by driving off the pier, he just wanted to 'wake him up.' well, it looks like what it will take for locke to wake up is having his spine cut into by jack.. several pieces are in place to converge at the hospital.
4. michael
argrhghr i hate michael!
5. more
the idea of michael is always so much better than actually seeing his petulant whiny performance on screen. since the episode featured libby heavily, it made a small bit of sense to include him in this story, but every time the character appears there seems to be a multitude of disconnects that happen: the writer's don't seem to have any clear idea of who michael is, other than one of the most unlikable characters ever written this side of ana lucia. he's bossy, he's self righteous, he's a know-it-all, he's completely self centered. add to that harold perrineau's performance which only makes those qualities worse. plenty of characters on 'lost' have immoral and questionable motives, are gleefully unlikable, but perrineau seems to be the only actor who actually judges his character while he's performing. i can almost hear him saying 'god i hate hawaii, i hate this awful show, why am i back here? didn't i die?'
if michael is going to be brought back into the mix in the final season, then the focus should have been walt, who played a much bigger thematic role in the early stages of the show. why didn't michael ask hurley if he'd seen walt off the island (which he had)? why not have hurley confess to michael that he lied to walt, allowing him to believe that his father is still alive? does ghost michael even remember that he has a son? do the writers?
it doesn't make any sense to me why hurley would ever listen to anything michael says, ghost or not. i feel like the show works best when it makes connections i didn't realize were there, and when it has a steel-suspension bridge continuity of emotional drive for each character. yes, hurley asks michael 'why should i believe you?' but michael doesn't say anything that would have anyone convinced.
the show is most frustrating when it does this:
character a: you have to do this.
character b: why?
character a: because you have to.
(pause)
character b: ok.
the real unanswered question here is: whose side are the ghosts on, and are the ghosts true representatives of the people they once were?
why not have ana-lucia appear to hurley again? she has some actual ghost-history of helping him. by throwing michael into the mix, the ghost logic is thrown all out of whack - and up until now, there was a very clear pattern. nothing is more frustrating to me than when the show proves itself guilty of the randomness that casual viewers accuse it of. i love defending 'lost,' though the job becomes more difficult when the writers throw in stuff like this.
5. the reversal of jack and locke
ok. i hate michael but i love jack again. i loved jack's scene with hurley, which addressed that jack has made a concerted effort to let go of the leadership position through almost all of season 5. this scene was about jack taking control again, perhaps this time with a better understanding of how leadership should work. it reminds me of harry potter's revelation in the final book, when he's told that only he could be the leader, because he has no ambition for power - it's his unwillingness to lead that primes him for control. for jack, leadership is totally about trust. jack gives hurley his complete trust despite knowing that hurley is lying. the result is that hurley can now easily give that same trust back to jack. again, it's important to remember that two weeks prior, jack attempted suicide. he has absolutely nothing to lose - he's kind of the opposite of sayid now; his previous self is gone, he's someone new and he's becoming the ultimate version of this new person. he's taken locke's previous role as believer in the mystical power of the island.
i have a feeling now that we'll see jack successfully operating on locke in the parallel, allowing him to triumphantly walk again. meanwhile, island jack will be engaged in a battle to the death with smokey/locke. maybe the best thing about this episode was that it finally got our iconic heroes face to face again.
while jack had a character-based reversal, locke's reversal is purely plot-based. really, locke's reversal doesn't count as a reversal because there is literally a different person wearing his appearance. i love this quote from damon lindelof: 'locke is now the voice of a very large subset of the audience who believes that when 'lost' is all said and done, we will have wasted six years of our lives, that we were making it up as we went along, and that there’s really no purpose. and jack is now saying, 'the only thing I have left to cling to is that there’s got to be something really cool that’s going to happen, because I have really, really fucking suffered.''
more than anything, that quote tells us whose side we should be on - damon and carlton have sided with jack, and they are essentially telling us, 'you will not feel that you've wasted your time. something cool is coming.' unless of course they're using locke as a clever way to excuse any dissatisfaction with the finale..
there was an interesting moment when locke asked desmond who he was and des replied simply 'you're john locke.' i'm not sure what to take away from that, though. why did locke decide that desmond needed to be pushed down the well? does smokey know that desmond is a threat given his electromagnetic resistance? why didn't he ensure that desmond died?
6. what went wrong
the episode had sporadic narrative focus. hurley's parallel story worked best because it had the clearest sense of beginning middle and end - but between michael's appearance, ilana blowing up, the black rock blowing up, hurley pretending to see jacob, and the hackneyed explanation of the whispers, it was all over the map.
but tonal problems aside, the absolute dumbest thing to happen during the episode was when the whispers are heard, and hurley randomly says 'hang on, i think i know what these are,' then walks ten paces to a clearing where michael appears and tells him 'oh yeah, the whispers are ghosts who 'can't let go.' kthnksbai.'
ghosts who can't let go?? i want to hit some writers over the head for that bullshit. i'm seriously worried for the show if this is the kind of 'explanation' we can expect from upcoming episodes. it's a textbook example of bad exposition: revealing information without any character engagement whatsoever. darlton always talk about how they want their info to be revealed through action - so instead of having desmond tell us 'wow i just flashed to some other weird timeine,' we actually go on the journey with him. instead of having things explained, we see the motivations behind the actions.
what we needed, in order for the ghosts to be satisfactorily explained was a real motivation behind the specific placement of those sound effects. why do they whispers always preceed the others and not the crash survivors? does it have something to do with being dipped in the temple? can the island ghosts almost speak to those who have been temple dipped, and thus spend eternity chasing them around, hoping that they'll be heard? the point is, they're writers, their job is to come up with a story, and this was pure bellyflop. i can think of a million ways it could have been better - which is when the show frustrates me most, because usually it blows my mind by brilliantly executing things i never would have conceived of.
underwhelmed by the destruction of the black rock - mostly because i had no emotional investment in it as a 'savior' for our camp. hurley's camp doesn't know what move to make next. richard wants to blow up the plane. hurley decides (randomly) to listen to michael and thwart richard's plan. hurley blows up the ship, along with all the remaining dynamite. then he decides that the best option is to talk to locke. about what exactly? the episode asked us to get behind someone who has no idea where he's going, why he's making the choices he's making, or what the goal is. hurley's island story was literally an hour of 'hurley's random choices as an experiment in leadership.' now, if this felt more deliberate - and it used the parallel story to juxtapose it in a cool way, it could have worked. if parallel hurley is totally on top of things, a natural leader, a go-getter.. meanwhile island hurley is a trainwreck who can't make decisions.. with clearer thematic underscoring, the episode could have been more successful as a character study.
7. what went right
i was totally satisfied by the parallel storyline. in the island story, i gasped several times - ilana's demise was infuritaing but still surprising. could not believe that desmond was pushed down the well, and was totally surprised by the locke-run-over incident - great stunt! overall, things happened at a quick enough pace that i generally wasn't distracted by the lack of craftsmanship in the writing - where was the style and grace of eddie and adam's 'dr. linus??' it was a fun, fast-paced, emotionally inconsequential episode, and that's the best i can say about it.
8. preboomer
locke's wtf face after being hit by desmond's car
(boom)
pretty damn good, i must say, and the second preboomer to take place in the parallel - perhaps focus will start shifting more towards the parallel now that all the main characters have had their featured episode. the shot of locke's face was deliberately similar to the shot of his face when jacob touched him after he was thrown out the window - which raises the question: how did locke end up in the wheelchair in this timeline? if he was still thrown out the window by his father, why are they on good terms with each other?
9. next episode
it's a mystery! no centricity has been announced - damon and carlton said in the last podcast that it will deal with a variety of characters.. hmm.. we have six hours of show left, and then it's all over. i enjoyed this episode, but i didn't love it. if i got the script, it'd have red all over it. fingers crossed that it is a return to form.
2 comments:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Agree completely, the Ilanna decision was horrible and dumb. Why did we waste time beginning to like her character. Awful.
Yay, you're back!