LOST Road Trip

‘Lost’ creators know how series will end

Stephanie will be here any minute, but I was quickly scanning my reader and the following caught my eye.

They compared the process to a road trip, which can often include alternate routes and unexpected stops.

More to come on this later, but I love that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are theorizing the show in terms of road trips. I hadn't thought about the anti-road trip plot, but I'll see where that take me. :)

Lost and Found: The Moth and Confidence Man

I'm way behind on posting these, so here's my attempt at getting back on track...

The Moth:

• This is Charlie's withdrawal episode. I mentioned in earlier posts that there seems to be a real disconnect between what we say about honesty and how much information the characters choose to share with one another. Both Locke and Jack openly lie to others about Charlie's situation. This makes me think about the other crimes that characters choose to disclose to their fellow castaways. Michael admits to not having been very involved in his son's life, and it quickly becomes common knowledge that Sayid has a background in torture, yet Jack's alcoholism, Jin's "enforcer" job, Charlie's drug abuse, and Kate's laundry list largely remain hidden. At this point on this island it would make sense for everyone to cautious of revealing past "sins," but it seems odd to me the lengths that some are willing to go to protect the "sins" of others.
• Kate annoys me. I'd forgotten how long the sexual tension with the Kate, Jack, Sawyer triangle has to go on. It's not so much that I mind the triangle plot line, but the whole part where Kate abandons the transponder in order to run back to Jack's side is what I find rather problematic. I think that I'm bothered by Kate's behavior because at this point, she's the only one who is fawning all over the other. She is constantly abandoning her plans or activities to be with Jack, and this invokes some really problematic stereotypes for me, especially since we are only 8 days into the crash at this point.
• I love Charlie. I really like that Charlie gets to both screw up and be helpful in this episode, but I really like that the producers chose to let him find his own way out of the cave instead of simply being the labor for someone else's plan.
  

Confidence Man

• I hate this episode. The torture really bothers me. Up until this point in the series the violence has been primarily contained to the aftermath of the plane crash (which was well constructed violence as M pointed out) or the mystery of island (the "monster" has claimed one victim), but this episode introduces the intentional and calculated human to human violence. Yes, Sawyer can be a jack@$$, but the whole torture in the jungle was really difficult to watch.
• I hate that they choose Sayid to instigate the violence here. Invoking his famous homophone namesake, Edward Said's ideas about western conceptions of the "East" seem to be the driving force here. While I recognize that Sayid's character later deconstructs some of these problematic images, we don't get that in this episode. We get a Sayid who is "othered" in more ways than I can count and given that the episode originally aired a little over a year after we invaded Iraq, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the "bad Iraqi" who we will later reveal to be not so bad plot.
• Sawyer has feelings! In addition to the fact that we genuinely feel sorry for Sawyer after the who torture debacle, we see Sawyer's emotional baggage here as well. I appreciate that Sawyer doesn't pretend to be as innocent as many of his companions, but I also appreciate that we get to see an emotion other than sarcasm (is that an emotion?) or resentment.
• Breathing is not cool; Boone is right! Inhalers make you a loser. Shannon still annoys me. I feel like she the cheap adolescent chick lit, who has invaded my science fiction novel.
  

Lost and Found: White Rabbit and House of the Rising Sun

It's been a while since I had a chance to continue my rewatching of LOST, but I managed to get in two episodes lately.

White Rabbit:

• This is the episode that is probably most well known for Jack's "live together, die alone" speech; a speech that is quickly followed by the suggestion to move camp to the caves and the first of 2 camps on the island. What I was most struck by this episode was Jack's interaction with Boone. We've known for quite some time that Jack doesn't want to be the hero, but Boone really wants people to see him as a leader. If only he'd found that pen on the pilot a little faster...
  
• The real leader, in this episode, despite the fact that everyone dismisses him is Locke. The more I watch these early episodes, the more I see how intricately crafted Locke's character was from the beginning. It's not his "I've seen inside the eye of the island" that interests me as much as it is his awareness of his surroundings and ability to know what everyone needs in these early days. Charlie and detox, Walt and companionship, Sayid and the need to appear in control, etc.
  
• White Rabbits and Allusions: I remember that when I first watched this episode I had a brief moment of satisfaction when I saw the White Rabbit reference and thought "obviously, Jack is seeing his father because the island is some sort of (drug induced?) dream." When I watched it this morning, I was thinking about the broader series and the larger plot of Carroll's novel. Alice goes down the hole, her adventures take place there, and then she she awakes. Sawyer, however, is reading Watership Down in which nearly the entire novel focuses on life within rabbit holes/burrows and the mythology and folklore that grows around such developing civilizations. I like the way that both of these allusions set up the burrowing that will happen in coming episodes via the Dharma stations and the ways that fans have developed a culture for the people on the island.
  
• Lots of dolls at the bottom of ponds (Ophelia reference on steroids) are creepier than empty coffins or decaying bodies.
  

House of the Rising Sun:

• Honesty v. Deception: I'd never really thought about Sun and Charlie as being opposites before. Sun desperately wants to speak her mind and interact with everyone else, but chooses deception again and again. Even her plan to leave Jin in the airport is based on the deception of redecorating the house. At the same time we see Charlie trying to hide his drug issue that is even more obvious because of his honesty in every other aspect of his behavior. He tells Jack and Kate to stop "verbally copulating" which may be one of my new favorite lines.
• I'd forgotten that Jin and Michael had a rocky start. That makes me have a new appreciation for their later bomb defusing adventures.
  

Lost and Found: Tabula Rasa and Walkabout

I was wide awake at 5:00 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, I had a little extra time to watch a second episode. As a warning 5:00 am LOST thoughts are not profound in the least bit (see item one under Walkabout for proof) :)

Tabula Rasa

1. This in one of my least favorite episodes. Really, it is less about blank slates and starting over and more about 39 minutes of watching a guy slowly die and 4 minutes of everyone deciding to get along and be friends. I like that we get Kate's backstory (or at least a very small piece of it), but for me it gets lost in the constant screaming of the marshal. Maybe that's the point, Kate can start over because at this point, no one really has the time or energy to care what she did in her past. Kate can only really start over if the marshal dies, so I understand that killing him is a plot device, but for me this episode becomes more about him and less about Kate.

2. I'd forgotten how dependent Jack was on other people from the very beginning. While he may be pegged as the leader, he never really makes a decision on his own. I like that he listens to women, something Jin still needs to get better at, but Jack's interest in Kate is so sexualized.

3. Sawyer's nicknames: I really like Sawyer's nicknames, but had forgotten how mean they were at first, and how the rest of the characters' responded. The early one's were generally descriptions of weight (Hurley) or ethnicity (Sayid) and come across more a sign that Sawyer doesn't care enough to learn names, rather than the signs of affection that they later become. At the end of this episode, Sawyer does call Kate "Freckles" for the first time.

Walkabout:
1. What happened to all the boars after season 1. Did they kill and eat them all? Do boars only live in one small part of the island? I'm nearly positive that the survivors have been back to that stretch of beach, but the boars seem to have gone into hibernation since season 1. I know this is a really small detail, but all I could think about this entire episode was "what happened to all the boars?" Are they controlled by Ben like everything else? Maybe there are just a handful of boars that live on the island. We know that there are at least 2 adult boars and a handful of "piglets." I can't remember which one Sawyer gets in a feud with later this season for "staring" at him, but I guess the real question is did the boars in hiding move with the island at the end of this season

2. We know that the island has healing properties--Locke can now walk, soon we will learn that Rose has been cured of cancer--, but this is also the first episode where we see Christian Sheparad (Jack's father who died in Australia and was being flown back to the US). This is the first of the "I see dead people" moments on the island. If Christian Shepard can come back to life, that gives hope for Charlie and Clair, right?

3. I have no more thoughts on this episode because I seriously spent 40 minutes pondering the state of the boars on the island.

Lost and Found: The Pilot Pt 2

I didn't enjoy part two as much as part one, but I still found it very interesting.

1. Lots of unresolved issues: Sawyer and Sayid get into a fist fight about the infamous "what is the criminal" question. Ironically, Kate breaks it up with a distraction, but the most fascinating part of this episode for me was that Sawyer very angrily tells Jack "you're the hero." In those early days, and even the first couple of seasons, it was strongly suggested that Jack was the key to survival. Now that I see that this was pointed out in the pilot (pts 1 &2 were originally shown together), I am more comfortable with my reading that since that point the show has tried to make Jack anything but the hero.

2. Jin is a complete chauvinist asshole in this episode. I really can't think of any other way to describe him. He completely dominates Sun, even though we later learn she was trying to leave him. He's jealous. He's rude. His only redeeming quality is that he give Claire a piece of seafood and Aaron kicks again. He's come a long way to convince me 4 seasons later to hope he wasn't killed in the explosion.

3. Hurley is still one of my favorites. He "assists" Jack in holding down the Marshall while Jack removes the shrapnel. I'm convinced that I like Hurley, especially in these early episodes, because he doesn't have the anger and resentment issues that the others do. He does have self-esteem issues, which is something I identify with more than anger, but from day one on the island he thinks about others.

4. Shannon needs to go....NOW...really, she translated the message, now get rid of her already.

Lost and Found: The Pilot Pt 1

There are no more LOST episodes for a long time, and it's summer, and we got a new computer than is capable of watching the online episodes without exploding, so I'm going to rewatch the old episodes and blog about it here. To be fair, I totally ripped this off from M, but I think it's a great idea, so I'm going to try it to. If you don't watch LOST, and you read my blog (something that doesn't apply to many of you), then feel free to skip any post that starts Lost and Found.



1. I can't believe that until now, I never caught the double meaning of the title. In my mind, pilot was "first episode" and at the time, I never thought about the significance of the pilot when I watched this the first time. In additon, I had not yet learned that everything has a double (or at least misleading) meaning on LOST and that nothing is simple. The pilot as a character appears for only a matter of minutes in this episode, but he introduces the Black Smoke--a character that will plague the island for the next several seasons. Ironically, in season four, it's also the pilot that leads the helicopter pilot Frank (aka Kenny Rogers) to discover that Oceanic is being less than honest about the fate of the airplane.

2. Hurley got the crap jobs rights from the beginning, but he is also still one of my favorite characters. He's the one who suggested that they bury the dead, he's the one who got meals together that first night. He may not be the social leader like Jack, but he definitely is key to pulling the island together.

3. I've never seen so much bamboo in any episode since. When Jack wakes up in the forest and runs for several minute through nothing but bamboo.

4. The Oceanic Six get so much screen time in their intros that I'm convinced that they were pegged (or at least strongly considered) from the beginning of the show. Sawyer is quite and on the sidelines, but we don't learn as much about him in this episode. Hurley is taking care of Claire. Sayid builds the fire. We get a quite extensive intro to Sun and Jin, which looking back now is rather odd.

"If you mean time travelling bunnies, then yes"

"If you mean time travelling bunnies, then yes" these are my random thoughts on LOST...

I should have been working on school stuff today, but instead I rewatched the LOST season finale. I'd watched last Thursday when it aired, but due to other circumstances, I felt like I needed to rewatch when I was more focused.

When I lived in Springfield, there was a large LOST following that seems to have dwindled over the years. This year, I have gotten to watch periodically with two friends and chat about it via email with one or two more, but I don't feel like I've had the ongoing critical discussions that I had when I first started watching.

When I watched the finale, I felt like the beginning of the finale had moved away from that critical aspect to be more Rambo-like. Lost has always been violent--it started with a fiery plan crash, but I still have a hard time staying interested in the explosive laden mercenary who runs around as if he showed up on the wrong film set.

I don't think that I have any profound feelings or predictions about the series. I'm semi-shocked that when Jacob told Locke to "move the island," the prophesy turned out to be a literal instruction. I'm excited that the show appears to be turning back toward the science and mystery of the island and farther away from "exactly how bad are the people on the boat." In essence, I felt like we spent a little too much time on that question this season. At the same time, I realize that the boat (and the people on it) are an means to getting the Oceanic Six off the island and explaining this season's introduction of the flashforward.

A friend sent me an article in Slate that I found very interesting it's discussion of Lost's narrative arcs. Although the series is often known for raising more questions than it answer's, the author notes that it is the unreliable narrator of the flashback/forward that complicates what she sees as a otherwise simple storyline in order to prove that the writer's do have a masterplan. She describes the season's minus the flashes as:

Here's a breakdown of the first three years: 1) Are there other people on this island? 2) There are other people on this island. 3) Oh, my God, the other people on this island are way mean!

I'm not sure that I agree with the need to even have the debate as to whether the writers have a master plan or not. If they've committed to a seven season run, then they have to have a basic shell (at least something to sell to ABC), so all of the debate about changing things as they go along seems to be more the result of frustrated fans who can't get a clear picture of the rules of this world.

Other random thoughts about this season:

• I love the one liners. The writers have created some very quotable lines. My favorite is probably during Hurley surprise party when he walks in with a statue of Jesus ready to attack a burglar and his mom says "Jesus Christ is not a weapon"
• I'm getting tired of Jack. Everyone else seems to be working through their issues, but Jack's seem to be compounding.
• The whole Aaron is 5 weeks old is the most unbelievable thing I've heard yet on the show. I'll go with the giant wheel in the basement of the greenhouse before I'd believe that one.
• The pop-ups have gotten much better. When they were first introduced them, they had very basic info, but now they actually seem to offer some insights.