How the hell did I miss that Claire identified Christian Shepherd as her *dad* last week? Did we get that confirmed earlier and I missed that too? I knew it was a widely held assumption, but *damn* I gotta stop watching my recordings late at night.
So this episode was mostly filler, but I'm willing forgive this for two reasons. One is that what was not filler was ooey gooey John Locke goodness and quite honestly that's an easy formula to keep me liking the show. Setting parallels between John and Ben is narratively sound, quite interesting and makes keeping Ben around (he was, apparently, supposed to be only a minor character at one point) seem sensible and worthwhile. That John is a man who until his walkabout fought his destiny and now is the island's chosen warrior helps the entire story move along.
The second reason is that while the rest was largely filling in lines between dots on a map (getting Sayid closer to saving people off the beach, explaining the doctor's death, etc) - I can't knock the show for filling in a few gaps when I so frequently knock the show for *not* filling in the gaps. Gaps like how Ben could control the smoke monster or why Abaddon would at one point be working to get John on the island and one point working with Widmore.
See - I just can't help myself.
But with this episode the picture gets clearer, not cloudier, and that always helps. We can see how some leave the island, some stay behind (I doubt they all die at this point) and the island moves away (as we could guess by Widmore's inability to return to ti) and leaves the "war" in the state we see during the flashforwards.
Course, massive holes still abound. Like how Claire magically seems to be, well, dead. How dead people seem to appear in dreams and in real life on the island. How physical things on the island can seem to vanish and reappear - but the Jacob ... er, I mean, the island can't simply vanish a troup of psychotic mercenaries. Why a group of scientists would even be mixed in with said mercenaries in the first places (does Faraday really seem the type to wait around for people to get slaughtered? Or stupid enough to think the mercs would be doing anything else?). Stuff like that.
But for a show seemed mostly interested in padding it's own character subplots, the show has come a long way this season.
Friday, May 09, 2008
TV Watch: Lost, Cabin Fever
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11 comments:
Claire being Jack's half-sister was from Claire's last backstory-bit from Season Three. He came to visit her after she put her mother in hospital.
I should stop reading your Lost posts; I've only seen to the end of Season 3 and I'm getting a hell of a lot of spoilers. Just not so many that it's not interesting.
Could you guys not have random spoilers for episodes of shows I haven't watched yet in your feed?
Thanks.
Yeah I know the Lost schedule itself is a bit of a mess. That's actually one of the reasons why I have the title of the episode in every post now (before it was just a blurb).
The feed is kind a all or nothing thing, though, and when I didn't have posts included in the feed, I got feedback on that - so a catch 22.
Best I can do is add the Season/Episode somewhere, so that's it's easier to see quickly what's a new episode (but mostly - it's always the latest US airing).
Insofar as dead people appearing off and on the island in dreams and in reality, I think you need look no further than your comments from last week. (It's all the smoke monster/possibly-the-island.)
I'm more interested in how Miles' apparent ability to actually talk with the dead will work with/against the island's ability to use the images of the dead for its own purposes.
About Faraday, in a word, yes I think he's that kind of person. I think, given his experiments, and his understanding of how the island works, time works, etc, he's got a pretty detached view of life, death, etc. He seems to be content to sit back and observe what's going on, perhaps because he has some sense of where it's ultimately going anyhow.
Come to think of it - I think you're completely right about Faraday. He does have that dissociated view with the island, like it's a very interesting specimen, but just a specimen all the same.
All of the Frieghties do seem to have enough darkness in them to justify the trip. Miles is a mercenary who isn't against taking money from moms, Charlotte and Naomi are/were pretty militant and Faraday is a bit broken. The only one who seems like the might be on their "side" is the pilot.
re:Smokey ... I think what will be interesting is to see if the writers will be consistent enough to follow their own rules when everything is said is done. The SM is already a kind of weird combination - there's the chain/train sound, the mind reading deal, the ability to appear as dead people (presumably). It's a lot to bundle together.
It seems like where all of this leads is that there's a connection between space/time, the after life, and electromagnetism. Somehow, all of these things seem to be connected together at the Island. Clearly the smoke monster can be controlled through electromagnetism, and those shields they have up, but at the same time, it doesn't appear to be "of this world".
Another interesting aspect of this is that the island seems to have ordained two factions to fight over it. What's fascinating about that though is how it doesn't appear to fall in line with a good/evil break down. Ben has dome some pretty awful things, but you get the sense that Widmore is the more clearly malevolent force here. Ben doesn't seem to be unethical or evil, per se, but rather adhering to a set of rules he isn't bother to explain to anybody else.
Oh right ... speaking of time and we had the whole doctor thing. He gets killed, thrown overboard, travels back in time and washes up on the beach. Then Faraday calls the boat.
Someone correct me here - isn't that the opposite of Faraday's missile test? At that point didn't the boat call Faraday to tell him something had already happened, but then he witnessed that event later?
So in both cases one point is alerting the other of a future event, but it seems like the points have flipped.
Which probably doesn't mean much other than we can't assert any specific rules to the behavior.
It has to do with the exact heading taken by the parcel journeying to/from the island. That's why Faraday has been repetitive about telling the pilot to travel exactly along a certain heading. And it's why the captain was sure to tell Sayid to travel along that same heading. Altering the path can alter time, if not space as well.
Really puts a new light on how Michael, Sawyer, Jin, and Walt traveled for days and still ran into the Others' sub when the Others' base was only a quick jaunt away, and on the other side of the island.
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