Tag: lost

We got a very intriguing and engaging finale for the excellent season 5. Although some aspects of this season closer didn’t sit well with me, it was excellent anyway. When a tv show has you thinking even a few days after you saw it, the producers must have done something right :). I am sure I’ll spend some more blogposts on this one !

Let me get out of the way what I thought was a bit cheap. Introducing Jacob as a ‘real’ character at this point felt wrong, so late in the series. Now all of a sudden, we learn that he has been manipulating people’s lifes all this time and somehow lure them on the island, this also explains a lot of the ‘coincidences’ where the losties had already some ties to each other before coming to the island. Deus ex machine comes to mind : literally "god from the machine") is a plot device in which a person or thing appears "out of the blue" to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty. I really wonder when they came up with this. But anyway it’s here and we got to deal with it. The casting of Jacob could have been a bit better, he didn’t look at all like I would have pictured Jacob.

Basically the very first scene of Jacob weaving some tapestry and meeting with Esau on the beach, was the most important scene on Lost so far. We finally get to know what is going on. It seems that two ‘demi-gods’ are playing some sort of game. Jacob is trying to proof a point, where as Esau desperately is trying to find a loophole in order to kill Jacob. Jacob keeps bringing people to the island, and Esau claims they will only corrupt and eventually kill themselves.

Some people claim it’s a battle of good and evil (hence the black and white shirts), but I am in the other camp that says it’s freewill vs. fate. Jacob does some horrible things as well (distracting Sayid as they cross the street wasn’t very nice). All in all very intriguing ! And it seems the Widmore vs Ben is sort of a mirror of their game. On the other hand in the greater scheme of things, that one is somewhat minor than the Jacob vs Esau game. The Locke / Ben situation was apparently the loophole, that Jacob helped set up as well. Was Juliet the variable though ? As she was the only one not getting a Jacob’s touch in the flashbacks.

The other thing that was just plain dumb was the whole Sayid, Jack, Kate etc story line. In less than 2 hrs (as Sayid claimed), they crossed over to the other island, ran to the drill site after meeting Rose and Bernard (which was a great moment btw!). Oh yeah they also had 2 gunfights where Jack was dropping Dharma guys like flies while not getting shot himself, and a fistfight with Sawyer.

Juliet dropping down the hole was sad, the scene with Sawyer grabbing her hand was very moving. But how did she ever survive that fall ? And a nuke that’s set to blow up (by McGyver Sayid) on impact, didn’t blow up, but we’re supposed to believe that it did after Juliet slaps it with a rock ? My guess is that it never did blow up and the Dharma folks build the swan station on top of it. The flash we say at the end was another time travel thing, and the losties in 1977 are back on their way to 2007 (imho of course ;)).

That sounded overly critical, but overall it did make for some very nice and exciting television ! Of course I was sitting on the edge of my seat during that all. Also Ben in his current mode is very fun (I was enjoying some quiet time Joooohn). And then the big surprise of Locke’s body in the box. We already noticed that Locke was being different, and especially this episode he was starting to act ‘out of character’. Still a nice surprise though :). And very well acted by Terry O’Quinn. Kinda sad Locke now is really dead :(.

What exactly is the whole purpose of that Ilana gang ? Besides carrying a box with a dead guy for an entire episode ? And indeed, for what is Lapidus a good candidate ? The flashback with Jacob and Ilana didn’t seem to serve any purpose. We don’t even know her, much less why she was in a cast in some foreign hospital. And I don’t believe they’re the Good Guys. I don’t believe in good and bad at all anymore on this show.

So many more thoughts on this episode, but at least I’ll have something to blog about while we wait for season 6 !

Links:

Buddy TV

What’s Alan Watching ?

The transmission

Wow, a very different episode from last week. The story is moving on on all fronts (or moving back to our time it seems) as we get closer to this Season’s Closing Episode ! Bit hard to express all the thoughts that come up after watching this one, but I’ll give it a try ;).

"I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble." -Richard Alpert
"Why do you think I tried to kill him?" -Ben

Locke really is different from the person who died, some episodes ago. Eve Richard notices ! He seems to be even more in touch with the island, or at least thinks he is, which becomes evident when he gets the timing to have Richard help himself in the past, exactly right. Ben is very surprised and so is Richard. Apparently Richard doesn’t know everything either, he was very surprised to see Locke again after three years, and even more surprised to hear he actually died and came back.

Richard telling Locke to get everyone back on the island and having to die, was very weird. A time travel paradox, circle kind of thing, and those are very hard to wrap your mind around. Then Locke proceeds to arrange a march on Jacob in order to kill him. Can Jacob even be killed ? I thought he only showed himself when he wanted himself to be shown. I guess we’ll see how that ends in the final episode of this season.

Continue reading Lost 5×15 – Follow The Leader – Good Riddance

We got an amazing Faraday centric episode this week ! The flow was a bit better than Sayid’s episode. Though a few less flashbacks/forwards would have been fine as well.

Everything fell into place in this episode. The scene from the season 5 opener, with Chang at the drill site. An emotional wreck Dan, watching the plane crash. Dan telling Charlotte to get on the sub etc.. So I thought that was it, tieing everything together and moving on with the story.

I tried to avoid telling you this. I didn’t think I could change things. But maybe I can.

But the whole point of this episode was Dan desperately trying to change the future. And in the end he found out that ‘Whatever happens happens’. Was this really Dan’s destiny, to be shot by his mother in 1977 ? You would think his mother had bigger plans for him, but she now even had to send him back to the island. ‘Don’t talk to me about sacrifices !’ Eloise tells Dan’s father Widmore.

Continue reading Lost 5×14 – The Variable

A very entertaining episode this week. A bit different from the few previous ones as it had a somewhat lighter tone. This one tells the story of Miles. It turns out that it was true what most people were already expecting: Miles is indeed the son of the Dharma Initiative video man Chang.

At some point, early in his life, Chang sent Miles and his mother off to the main land though, and never saw him again. We haven’t seen how this went down, maybe he saw the impending doom coming down the road or something else was up and thought it was safer to send them away ? The final scene was quite touching, even Miles got a bit teary eyed, where Chang was reading a story to his son.

The scenes with Hurley and Miles in the van were very funny. It’s funny that Hurley thinks he has some sort of similar gift as Miles does. “You’re just jealous that my gift is better than yours” was hilarious.

In his review of this episode, Alan Sepinwall asks what would you do to improve "Empire Strikes Back", as it is already so good. Well maybe we have been watching the Hurley improved ‘Empire’ all this time :).

An excellent episode this week ! This was basically the story of Ben and how he deals with his guilt over being responsible for the killing of Alex. In the flashbacks we learned that his fight with Widmore is based around him not killing Alex when they found Rousseau. And he didn’t kill Rousseau either. It’s clear by now that neither of them are very ‘good’ guys to be honest. Widmore gets tossed off the island for having off-island affairs (a business, a wife and a daughter)

Every time you hear whispers, you run the other way !

Locke was especially funny this episode. Apparently relieved to be living again, he has a somewhat more relaxed attitude and appears to be more lighthearted. My favorite quote when Ben says he couldn’t let John be killed (again) : “No sense in me dieing twice, right ?”. There is something about those shoes by the way, that’s why we got the scene with him putting on his shoes on the dock.

And of course the “now you know what it’s like to be me” exchange with Ben was brilliant.

I guess I wasn’t the only one cheering for Desmond when he smacked Ben around. Ben didn’t seem too confident when he was going after Penny. I especially liked the look on his face when Charlie showed up. That’s when he had second thoughts and Desmond was able to get him. The “your father is a terrible human being” was a bit odd, coming from a cold blooded killer, but I guess Alex was one of the few things he really cared about. Still Ben tells Sun that ‘he’s sorry’. It isn’t clear at this point why ? Or is it for shooting him ?

The ‘judgment scene’ was very well done. Ben got to see images from the past and eventually ‘it let Ben live’, accompanied by the usual Smoke Monster sounds. I assume Alex in the moments thereafter was another one of those ‘island dead people manifestations’ of the likes of Christian Sheppard. It was very clear about Ben having to follow Locke and especially not kill him again.

Loved the look on Ben’s face when he told Locke “it let me live” ! Very well done Michael Emerson ;).

The Transmission

What’s Alan Watching

A Kate centric episode this time, and I usually don’t really care for those. But this one was decent. Some great quotes and a few very interesting scenes. The story how and why Kate returned to the island was told, along with some more info.

Time isn’t a straight line for us anymore !

The scenes with Myles and Hurley were very amusing. Hurley playing the role of the general lost audience who are now a bit confused about the whole time traveling thing. Neither Hurley nor Myles seemed to have definite answers, even though Myles at first thought he did ;). The title referred to this part of the show as well. Apparently this is the way Ben was supposed to become the leader of the others, just like Jack wasn’t supposed to operate on him this time around. Juliet didn’t get that memo yet though :).

Maybe there is something THEY can do…

Alpert about reviving / saving Ben: his innocence will be gone and he will always be one of us. What does that mean ? Are the others like undead people ? Zombies ? Why did they insist on getting that body from that guy that was shot a bunch of episodes ago ? Sounds a bit like voodoo at the moment, hope this will be revealed shortly !

Don’t have much to comment on Kate’s story. Seems to be pretty straightforward, although she cared more for Sawyer than I thought she did.

Last scene with Locke sitting next to Ben’s bed was wonderful: Hi Ben, welcome back to the land of the living !

A Sayid centric episode this time. Actually it couldn’t have been more Sayid centric if it wanted to. The episode fills most of the gaps of his story. What happened to him once he got back from the island and how he got back again. All the flashbacks didn’t make it a very fluent episode, it felt more like a bunch of outtakes stitched together, but it had some nice and interesting moments nevertheless.

A twelve year old Ben Linus brought me a chicken sandwhich !
How do you think I am doing ?

What we learned this episode:

• Sayid has always been a remorseless killer (or at least that’s what I got from the silly ‘chicken scene’).
• Sayid was dragged back to the island by someone who works for someone else (Widmore ? Ben via a proxy ?) and was miraculously on the plain that crashed on their way to Guam
• Ben used lies and more lies about Locke’s death in order to get a grip on Sayid again.
• The people Sayid has been killing were working for Widmore and Ben claims they were a threat to ‘Sayid’s friends’

Those are the main points I can think off while writing this.

Does anyone actually believe Ben is dead ? We all know by now that the island doesn’t let people die when their time isn’t up yet. I am more interested at the moment what exactly Ben’s plan / agenda is. He seems to be working on his own now (or he might think for the island), but I have no idea what it is that he is up to. That’s puzzling me at the moment ;).

What’s Alan Watching ?

Also check out Jay and Jack’s new video website : nudia.tv

TvSquad review

An enjoyable episode again, it continued where LaFleur ended. We swap back and forth between the ’77 crew and the plane crashers (this is getting confusing).

Lapidas: This guy is dangerous ! That boat I came in on, was filled with commandos just to kill him !
Ben: And how did that work out for everyone ?

Kate coming back to the island must make Juliet feel uncomfortable, and I guess that’s why she is initially off the list of new recruits, but I guess she changes her mind and some to the rescue in the end.

Seeing young Ben and baby Ethan was funny, though to be expected. Young Ben already seems to be eager to know about the Hostiles. We’ll see what plan Sawyer has to break out Sayid.

Only thing that was odd was Sun not going back to ‘77. I guess she wasn’t meant to be back on the island. Jin gets all upset and gives away his cover (or at least makes him very suspicious) by frantically go search for the plane, which of course didn’t crash in his timeline. I loved the picture of the class of ‘77 being shown to Sun by Christian Shephard. It was scary seeing him appear in the abandoned Darhma village. Wonder what the journey will be he is referring to, I am sure we’ll see in the upcoming episodes !

What’s Alan watching