I have to go back!

LOST. SEASON 5. So sorry to take so long on responding. The weather in Portland has been amazing, so when I'm not working (which has been, um, difficult lately) or running because I no longer have an excuse, I often find myself sitting out on the grass in the front yard reading because there is such little time to enjoy sunshine in Portland it seems. But I digress.

It's been so long since I read your response to my post, I had to go back and read it again. I guess I should again, just to be safe, give a SPOILER ALERT as I will take no efforts to restrain myself from talking about when happens in the episodes. So my biggest conclusion from reading your email is that we agree too much on the show! I usually get get pretty riled up in conversations with people -- arguments with my sister over whether to trust Juliet and an ongoing battle with a coworker over just about everything related to one Ben Linus, whom I still contend will have his ends if not his means vindicated -- but I read your post and pretty much agreed with everything you said. I am completely with you on the Juliet-Sawyer/James relationship and perhaps it is that sense of a truly meaningful union that should have given us the hint that it would end poorly. (Side note: One of my roommates thinks Elizabeth Mitchell is the hottest actress in Hollywood. Discuss) In response to one of the questions you posed, I don't know how far you are with me on this idea but I think that much of what we have seen on the show has been orchestrated by our cosmic warriors. I do think Loophole wanted John to move the island and eventually get off the island and come back so he could be used to kill Jacob and Ben got in the way because he wanted to be as useful to the entity that he thought was Jacob as it turns out John was becoming. My view is that these guys see the broad range of the timeline of the island instead of just the immediate event -- either because what happens is predetermined or because they can simply see the entire string of events of the events that cause the actions, we don't know that specific yet -- and that much like "the island" course-corrected to kill Charlie (hmmm...perhaps that is code for Loophole or Jacob, methinks), our two adversaries do not see an individual event as preventing their ultimate ends, just a bend that has to also be straightened out.

Alright, so I actually do want to move on to season 5 as a whole, which I think you laid the ground for quite well even before commenting on it specifically. This season really threw me at first, as I think was the intention. I do not agree that season 4 was too plot centric -- quite the contrary, seeing the future plot development of our Oceanic 6 brought a new dimension to the characters, especially in the hearbreaking episode detailing Sun giving birth. The first half of this season, however, eschewed from the episode blueprint used all but a handful of episodes that blended the current timeline with character development from the past and later the future. Because of that, it wasn't until the eighth episode (when I might add we also returned to the more traditional character-driven format) that my way of remembering the seasons becomes apparent: who the new people are. First season were the survivors/losties/Oceanic 815 whaever you want to call them; second season were the tailies; third season was the Others; fourth season were the freighters; and then it turned out that the fifth season were the Dharmas.

Although I did find myself emersed in trying to figure out what this whole time-travel stuff meant and geeking out on that, I don't know about you but I became a bit detached from the show. Not to the point where I would stop watching, mind you, but definitely watching without a whole lot of emotional involvement in the episode. I do agree that the shorter seasons do weed out a lot of fluff, but I would have liked to have seen what was happening with Sun or have cared more when Charlotte died. I know the writers had to cut out some backstory on the freighter people last season because of the strike and we were told they would revisit it this year, but I would have to criticize the writers for not giving us the opportunity to know these characters better. One of the apt comments you made in your post was on the way ability of the writers to make the viewer question moral assumptions about characters and I found that Charlotte in particular never got the opportunity to transcend being a selfish harpie. And, no, her as a cute little kid didn't cut it.

Did the season succeed in the end? Yes, I do think it did. It left me wanting more and I assume on repeat viewin I will not get a little bored in the middle, as I find happens in seasons 2 and 3. Withat a finally like that, how could it not please? What I particularly appreciated was how I thought it answered a lot of questions and made clear where we are coming from but at the same time leaving a lot of mostly new questions. The issue of time travel, as you brought up, will indeed be an important issue, but at times it felt a little like a gimmick this past season. They are going to need to prove to me next season why we needed this adventure. My guess is it will tie into how the debate of free choice and determinism pans out. I will say if the idea of time and how it relates to the broader issues of the show becomes a major focus, I am quite excited. Perhaps it was because they had to spend so much time dissecting the time travel they did not have as much time to explore what it means, and I look forward to season 6 brining that up. That would be the ultimate way to tie form to function and account for why the show chose to pair up different timelines throughout the entire run of the series. We might have discussed this before, but books/movies/televsion that play with time by either running multiple stories at the same time (one example being, um, Lost) or through reinvention of timelines (a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are generally pieces for which I am a bit of a sucker. The idea of how past and future experience are tied to the present and what the existence of these concepts mean is a topic I find bother intruiging and particularly dramatic in a way that comes across best in works of fiction or film. If Lost ultimately becomes a dramatic telling not just of good and evil but how actions and time are a web of interconnectedness, I will in the end likely be even more of a fanboy.

So I think this is a bit shorter this time. I'm definitely up for more Lost conversation, but I do want to get into some other posts. I do want to finally write that other post I mentioned (OK, I'll stop keeping you in suspense -- it's a comparison of the British mini-series State of Play and its American film remake). Yeah, that and about a half a dozen movies I have watched recently for which I really should write. I will try not to take as long next time.

To the Nines

9

NINE

While I await your next post on Lost (or whatever else you want to talk about), I thought I'd say a word about two upcoming movies that, I must admit, I'm pretty intrigued by.

The first is 9 (trailers), whose trailer I saw in the sidebar, inspiring this post. (Keep in mind, watching the trailers was the full extent of my research for this post, so everything that follows may be completely wrong.) In a post-apocalyptic future (with a retro-futurist aesthetic), a group of small, walking, talking rag dolls must survive and defend themselves against the machines that've taken over and destroyed the world. Though Tim Burton was only a producer, it displays a very Burton-esque sensibility and visual style—charming but dark, gothic, with mixed time-period/technology cues (Matrix-esque machines and spinning-newspaper newsreels). In a world where even a Terminator movie gets toned down to a PG-13 rating, I'm impressed that the makers of 9 were willing to make an animated film featuring cute, merchandizing-ready characters with PG-13-level "violence and scary images" (according to the MPAA); I don't think anyone who's seen 9's trailers would think they'd be walking into The Care Bears Have Tea with Rainbow Brite, but I'm sure they were still under some pressure to make it more child-friendly and mainstream. I can't say for sure if they were able to resist that pressure or not, but the trailers seem to display a rather unique, and uncompromising, vision. Plus, I'm loving the cast they've assembled: Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly (even if you don't like Walk Hard, you gotta love Dr. Steve Brule), Martin Landau, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, and Christopher Plummer (Captain von Trapp!); my only regret is not being able to see them all actually acting together, live-action-wise.

Also coming out this fall is Nine (trailer), a musical film based on a stage musical based on a play based on Fellini's film 8 1/2 (trailer) based on Fellini's life. I saw 8 1/2 for the first time not so long ago, and though I found it arresting and intriguing in many ways—first and foremost visually—I think I need to watch it at least once more. (As is often the case with watching a film, reading a book, etc., for the first time, I think I was too focused on trying to follow what was going on plot-wise; I read somewhere recently that when Nabokov taught Anna Karenina, he started by telling his students the ending so that as they read they'd focus on Tolstoy's literary craftsmanship and not on "what's gonna happen.") Nine sounds like an intriguing idea (at least on paper) and has some impressive talent involved—the late Anthony Minghella and Michael Tolkin writing the screenplay, starring Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Dame Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman (hopefully starting to atone for Australia), Sophia Loren, and Fergie (!)—but I have to say that the factor most likely to get me in the theater when it comes out is Daniel Day-Lewis. Not only would I see one of those Movie movies if DDL were in it, but (at least based on the trailer) he seems eerily to capture and embody Mastroianni's performance (though since this is DDL we're talking about, I'm sure we're going to get much more than just a Mastroianni impression). I'm certainly not anti-musical, but they aren't often films I anticipate months in advance; Nine is.

P.S. — You said earlier that you'd been watching a British mini-series that you might post on. What was it? I ask because I too have been watching a British mini-series, the 1981 ITV production of Brideshead Revisited with (among others) Jeremy Irons, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Laurence Olivier. (When the film with Matthew Goode and Emma Thompson came out last year, even the most favorable reviews said, "It's good, but the mini-series was better," so I decided just to watch the mini-series; it's taken it this long to get to the top of my Netflix queue.) I'm still working my way through it (eleven hours total), and so far it's not exactly action packed—the last episode I saw mostly just consisted of Sebastian being a mopey alcoholic the whole time and everyone else worrying about this—but the compelling story and fantastic performances make it one definitely to look into.

Lost in the "Lost" Universe

LOST

I have to admit, writing this post seems a bit daunting, not just because it's in response to your last post, which covered a lot of territory, but also just because it's about Lost, a show that could have a whole library's worth of analyses and theories written about it.

Oh yeah, and SPOILER ALERT. Duh, this is Lost we're talking about after all, people.

When I said that "The Incident" could've been called "WTF?" it's because that episode seems to have changed the rules of the Lost game in a lot of ways. Right out the gate, we not only meet Jacob for the first time—and I have to admit, I wouldn't in a million years have guessed that the mysterious figure behind the Island's doings would be one of Jackie Treehorn's goons (the non-"Chinaman") and the bumbling hitman from Mulholland Drive—but also his mysterious, previously unknown counterpart; and two hours later Jacob was dead (maybe), and we discover that Locke is dead for good after all (maybe), his place taken for the last several episodes by that counterpart.

(As for the new guy's name, I like "Loophole," though I've been kinda partial to "Esau" myself, i.e., a counterpart and rival of Jacob. Other names I've heard are Samuel (from the casting call), the Man in Black (often shortened to MiB, despite its Smithian connotations), Smokey (i.e., the Smoke Monster), the Adversary, the Rival, the Nemesis, etc.)

I agree, though, that despite the changes and surprises, "The Incident" is nevertheless consistent with the themes we've seen running through the show from the beginning, especially the "Man of Science, Man of Faith" one you pointed out. As you said, it applies not only to the Jack-vs.-Locke conflict but also to the other conflicts around which the storyline centers. Indeed, Lost is characterized by several conflicts revealed over the course of the show, each with a wider scope than the previous ones. From the first episode there's been the conflict between Jack and Locke regarding the survivors' role on the Island (or whether they have one at all). Starting in the first season, the Island-wide conflict between the survivors and the Others arose. Although at first the Others simply seemed to be driven by hostility to outsiders—the American soldiers who brought Jughead, the DHARMA Initiative, the Oceanic 815 survivors—they're clearly operating according to a deeper worldview than just territoriality; as you noted, when Michael asked Ben at the end of the second season, "Who are you people?" Ben answered, "We're the good guys." The Others seem to be Men of Faith—which helps to explain Locke's on-again-off-again relationship with them—holding a deep belief in the Island and in Jacob, despite seeing very little firsthand; as we just found out, even Ben got his instructions from Jacob secondhand through Richard. The survivors, on the other hand, in general seem more like Men of Science, following Jack's leadership and making their first priority leaving the Island, not exploring its mysteries. (A notable exception to this would be Boone, who started following Locke's lead back in the first season; look what happened to him.)

After three seasons of seeing the show's conflict as an on-Island struggle between the survivors and the Others, in the fourth season the circle expanded again to a conflict between Ben and Widmore, being fought both on and off the Island—and, as we saw recently, fought for many years. To continue the science-vs.-faith dichotomy, I think you're right that Ben is the Man of Faith in this conflict and Widmore—a successful businessman with one foot in the outside world even while he was leading the Others—the Man of Science. And I'll point out that their conflict, like the one between Jacob and Loophole, is circumscribed by as-yet-unclear rules, which seem to preclude killing each other directly.

Finally, with "The Incident," the circle of conflict expanded yet again to the relationship between Jacob and Loophole, apparently two long-lived beings who can summon outsiders to the Island (Loophole to Jacob: "You brought them [the ship] here.") and take others' forms (definitely Locke, maybe Christian Shephard and others), over hundreds of years. How does their conflict translate to the science-vs.-faith theme? Though we only have one brief conversation to go on, at this point I'd argue that Loophole is the Man of Science, in that he thinks he knows what will happen when outsiders arrive based on what's happened in the past ("It always ends the same."), while Jacob seems a bit more of a Man of Faith with his more philosophical view. On the other hand it could be the opposite: Loophole seems to have a deterministic attitude, one perhaps in line with the predestination and "destiny" associated with Men of Faith like Locke, and is opposed to bringing outsiders to the Island, like Ben and the Others. I don't think the fact that Jacob visits certain of the Oceanic 815 survivors is necessarily conclusive one way or the other, since he visits both Man of Science Jack and Man of Faith Locke. Honestly, I couldn't say with much conviction that one of these guys or the other is on the side of science or faith, of free will or predestination, much less of good or evil (despite their trying really hard to make Loophole seem like the evil one, with his black shirt and urge to kill). This show's upset our ideas of "good guys" and "bad guys" too many times already for that: The Others have gone from the evil incarnate who kidnapped Claire and Walt to the defenders of the Island from the likes of Widmore (maybe); the freighter's civilian passengers (Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus) have gone from potential antagonists (remember how quick Miles was to pull a gun on Jack and Kate after he arrived, or how Faraday did his best to tell them as little as possible?) to just part of the gang.

So Loophole can assume the form of other people, apparently so long as those people are already dead—assuming your and Mallory's theories are right and Christian (dead) and Smokey (in the form of Eko's brother Yemi and Alex, both dead) are vessels/embodiments/avatars of Loophole as well as Locke. I hadn't noticed this before, but none of those four were buried, so I think that's pretty significant. (And what does this mean for the "Charlie" that Hurley's been seeing? Charlie's body's still down in the Looking Glass Station, unburied; on the other hand, Hurley also plays chess at the mental hospital with Eko, who was buried.) I think there's a very strong case for "Christian" and Smokey actually being Loophole, but if that's so, it opens a huge can of worms with respect to what we've seen so far. If that's the case, then Loophole wanted the Island moved, and by Locke, not by Ben. Was this to transport Locke off the Island, so he could take his place? (If he just needed Locke to die, there were plenty of opportunities for that on the Island.) Was the time-skipping that resulted from Ben's turning the wheel unintended, or does it fit into Loophole's or Jacob's respective plans? Does Ben know so little about what's going on that he'd take orders from Jacob's enemy (even in Alex's form)? What does it mean that Ben apparently can "summon" Smokey (though with varying degrees of success)? What does it mean that Smokey took the form of Yemi, and then killed Eko? (A theory I've heard was that Loophole was seeing if Eko would be suitable for the role he ended up using Locke for—both men had strong spiritual sides, a sense of mission, and potential as leaders—but found Eko not easy enough to manipulate—remember that Eko realized that it wasn't really Yemi. Eko's last words to Locke, "You're next," weren't directed to the whole group (as I'd assumed), but to Locke in particular; Loophole would try him next as a candidate for his plans.) What does it mean that "Christian" appeared to Michael right before the freighter exploded? Given Widmore's apparent eagerness to help Locke in his quest to bring the Oceanic Six back to the Island, what's his relation to either Jacob or Loophole? Loophole seemed opposed to outsiders coming to the Island, so why did he, as "Locke," have Richard tell the real Locke to bring the Oceanic Six back, and possibly, as "Christian," later tell Locke the same thing in person and help him to turn the wheel? And how does the DHARMA Initiative, Men of Science par excellence, fit into all this? On the one hand, they might have been another instance of Jacob's bring outsiders to the Island to "prove [Loophole] wrong"; on the other, they were practically at war with the Jacob-loving Hostiles/Others.

Of course, there's a lot more to Lost than just the mythology. A great thing about the show is that, though it's very much about themes and ideas, the characters aren't just ciphers for those ideas. They're real, full-blooded men and women, not just archetypes. This last season in particular has been a great one in terms of character development. Jack's evolution, first glipsed in the flashforwards in the third-season finale, from convinced Man of Science to Man of Faith is complete; his visit from "Jeremy Bentham" planted the seeds of doubt, the old Jack destroyed himself with booze, pills, and despair, and the new Jack gradually grew from a passive faith in the Island and "destiny" (seen when he refused to help little Ben after Sayid shot him, believing events would just take their course without his involvement—which, of course, they did) to an active faith, dedicated to detonating Jughead, preventing the Incident (though I think Miles hit the nail on the head with his comment about that), and erasing the last three years of their lives. Whether his new direction will prove more successful than his previous one—which brought the mercenaries, sent the Island skipping through time, and was eventually seen by Jack himself as a mistake—remains for next season.

No less remarkable has been Sawyer's transformation from the ne'er-do-well black sheep of Oceanic 815 to the responsible, trusted head of DHARMA security and Juliet's old man. We saw just how far he's come when he basically told Jack, and with a lot of justification, that he's a better leader than Jack ever was, patient where Jack was rash and open to compromise where Jack was stubborn. Juliet's always been interesting too, given her ambiguous relation to the Island's various factions; her membership in the Others was always halfhearted, and she first joined the survivors as a double agent, justifiably distrusted by the rest. It was wonderful seeing these two great characters together in '70s Dharmaville, though it's a shame that we only got to see a few episodes' worth of their three-year relationship, since I found it much more interesting and enjoyable than just about any other romance we've seen on the show. There wasn't a whole lot of melodrama, they were both really comfortable and natural with each other; in that respect, it was a lot like Bernard and Rose's autumn romance. The Sayid-Shannon and Hurley-Libby romances back in the second season seemed doomed from the start; Jin and Sun's relationship always had some drama or another popping up (He's a jerk! She secretly knows English! Is the baby his or not?). And Charlie and Claire's relationship always kinda seemed more platonic than romantic; maybe it's because she's been either a mom or a mom-to-be since they met, so romance wasn't her first priority. The Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle—becoming a rectangle with the addition of Juliet in the third season—never seemed very healthy for any of them, a fact further illustrated the last couple seasons with Jack and Kate's failed off-Island relationship and the contrast with Sawyer and Juliet's stable, grown-up relationship in Dharmaville.

One more thing about Jack: I agree that the flashback about his "counting to five" technique was a pretty significant perspective on him, and I think it'll color my view of his actions in the prior seasons when I get around to rewatching the show from the beginning (as I surely will someday). In addition to his self-doubt, something that really struck me about that scene was that Jack gets angry at his dad for embarrassing him in front of his team during the surgery. In reality, it was Jack who embarrassed himself by first making a potentially fatal mistake and then getting too flustered to fix it himself; he should've thanked his dad for helping him to save the patient's life instead of yelling at him. It seemed to show that he was more concerned with looking like a leader than with actually achieving a positive outcome. That scene and the one in Dharmaville in which Sawyer tells him how he sucked as leader of the survivors highlight Jack's weakness and the damage that weakness has caused: He thinks leadership means always being in control, always being right, and always taking action, even when he doesn't really know what to do.

Whew, two long posts and we've mostly just been talking about one episode. What a show! As for the fifth season overall, I think the main question is what role the time travelling will end up playing in the overall scheme of things. Was it an accident, or has Jacob or Loophole been planning it all along? It couldn't have been a diversion—it leads to the Incident, Ben's becoming an Other, and "Locke's" becoming their leader—but it still seems pretty left-field. (I keep track of the seasons with a sort of mneumonic: the first season was, well, the first season, laying the foundation; the second was the Hatch season; the third was the Others season; and the fourth was the freighter season. I'll always think of the fifth as the time travel season.) A criticism I've heard is that the last two seasons have been too plot-driven, and not character-driven enough (this coming after a lot of people complained that the second and third seasons didn't have enough plot and were "spinning their wheels"). Though there's been a lot of great character material, I sorta see where they're coming from. I ascribe it partly to the shorter seasons (damn your eyes, underpaid screenwriters!), the fact that the creators know that the show's days are numbered (they found that out during the third season, right?), and the show's ever-broadening scope, which I think makes a greater focus on plot and mythology inevitable. As annoying as some of those episodes were where nothing really seemed to happen, they gave the show a chance to breathe. Also, looking back, a lot of those episodes weren't as devoid of mythology as they seemed at the time; for instance, "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," in which everyone does nothing but dick around for an hour, is the first appearance of Roger Linus (or at least what's left of him). That's one reason why I'm looking forward to rewatching the whole thing from the beginning.

There's a lot more than can be said, as you know, but I think I'll cut myself off here and await your response. One last thing: A small role in "The Incident" was played by a Reedie! Sonya Masinovsky played "Russian nurse" in the flashback in which Jacob visited the bandaged-up Ilana at the hospital, and even got a couple lines (though they were unintelligible to a non-Russophone like myself). I didn't know her at Reed or anything, but I knew I recognized her from somewhere when I saw her. Pretty cool. We Reedies really get around.

I think I could write an entire blog on this

LOST. SEASON 5 FINALE: "THE INCIDENT" PARTS 1 & 2.

DANGER! DANGER! THIS POST BE FULL OF SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE SEASON FINALE OF LOST DO NOT READ THIS POST. I AM MAKING NO EFFORT TO PROTECT FROM SPOILERS.

OK, now that is out of the way so we can get with it. The title of this post is definitely true and as such I am going to say from the outset what my game plan will be: (1) I will state the basic thematic elements that I always view the show through, (2) I will give a "review" of sorts on what I thought of this episode (teaser: It ranks up as one of the best), and (3) I will give my take on the biggest issue to arise...Jacob.


Matt's Key to Watching Lost

I've never actually written much about Lost and as such have never had the opportunity to really flesh this idea out as most conversations about the show revolve around recent plot developments and what new information we might know. To begin a discussion (and I am all for an extensive series of posts on this show, should you be up for it), I must first make clear the basic themes that I find dominate the show and from which every important element arises. They are ideas that started during the first season and are also the name of two significant episodes in the second season.

Man of Science, Man of Faith: I realize it might appear simple to say that I think a show is based on conflict. Wow! What a revelation! I would say, though, that there is a specific conflict on the show between elements of science/rationality and faith/mysticism. One of the reasons I find the writing on this show to be of such high caliber is that they find ways to weave themes through the entire run of the show and every development of them allows for the sometimes fantastic (re: Jacob) to make sense.

The episode bearing this name is the season premier of season 2, but the idea developed during season 1 as we first saw the conflict between the two men to whom if literally refers: Jack and Locke. The two men's first major conflict was over where to put the camp and our knowledge of Jack as a doctor and Locke as a man who was healed already put the two men at odds as leaders. In the season 2 premier, the conflict is over going into the hatch and, if memory serves me, it is then that Locke first begins the idea of his destiny being tied to the island. Every interaction I see between these two men, I view in relation to the conflict between science and faith. The actual, tangible idea of getting off the island compared to the idea that all of the survivors were meant to be on the island, for example. It just makes sense that Jack would lead the people off the island while Locke would remain on the island because of everything we know between the two of them.

There are other areas where this idea continues to flourish. The original battle was Jack vs. Locke but in seasons 4 & 5 we were being set up for a battle over the island between two other men: Ben vs. Widmore. We have Ben whom we see as connected to the idea of Jacob and leading the others. Definitely a man of faith. We have Widmore who runs a business off the island, pays for Daniel Farady's research and sends the scientist to the island. Man of science. I also find the basic structure of the show reinforces the idea as well with most episodes in the show's cannon mixing action with pathos, fantasic island developements with normal stories of a person's life. It is a bit of a stretch to include this as definite science vs. faith conflicts, but form seems to be following function if you connect the island vs. home scenes to what is becoming the ultimate manifestation of science vs. faith.

More on this at the end, but I see Jacob vs. the black-shirt guy (I will refer to him as Loophole for the sake of convenience) as the ultimate, cosmic manifestation of this science vs. faith conflict. It seems that the direction the writers are heading is setting up that conflict not necessarily as exploring a more cosmic interpretation of free-will vs. predestination. If you have not watched the show through the lens I have, it might seem like I'm trying to make a stretch but having watched every episode looking for this, I can tell you that everything makes sense as you watch it and I would frequently notice more additions to the theme in nearly every episode. I was thinking about your email (to those who might read this, I made sure Owen had watched the episode before bothering to write this) where you wrote you might call the episode WTF. What struck me as I read that was that it made me realize that although I was certainly not expecting to see Jacob take human form and get stabbed by Ben and thrown into a fire by a fake John Locke, I was not surprised. It seemed to fit in with the idea of this conflict as growing from an idea from Jack and Locke's conflict over destiny to this cosmic conflict over...destiny.

Live Together, Die Alone: This is the name of the season 2 finale -- an episode that happens to be especially pertinent to the season 5 finale, but the show reversing itself is probably an entire post on its own -- and if science vs. faith is a main conflict in the show (according to me), Live Together, Die Alone is a unifying principle for the interaction between the characters -- namely that there is a connection between them that seems to be much more than just having crashed together. Jack actually uttered the phrase "if we can't live together, we're going to die alone" in the the fifth episode of the show ("White Rabbit") in relation to surviving as they waited for what they expected would be rescuers. As you know, things have changed considerably but a truism for the show is that whether by choice or by destiny, these characters are all drawn together. No matter what happens, when I watch the show, I am always looking for how the characters are going to be reunited or joined together in some way. With all of the interweaving plotlines of the characters before they landed on the island, it became inevitable that they would have to live together and they would only be alone in death. The theme was only reinforced in this episode with Juliet actually uttering the lines before the group went on their mission to drop the bomb.

"The Incident" Parts 1 & 2

I will have you know, I watched this episode a second time to be prepared for this post. The first time I watched it was great, but there was some drinking of very good wine with our good friend Katie that did distract a bit from what was happening and so I wanted to have a firmer grasp of what happened. I also wanted to process everything that was happening because it was a dense episode. My conclusion after the second viewing was that it belongs on the list of the show's best. Lost is at its best when it mixes the action/science-fiction elements with the dramatic/character-driven stories. What first set the show apart from being a castaway show was how it would have the island and then flashback to how the character's past was informing his/her actions on the island. As the show has changed, I have still been most connected to episodes that find the right balance -- a fine example would be "The Constant", an episode focused on Desmond and Penelope, not my favorite characters, but I think would one of the finest episodes in 5 seasons. "The Incident" found that balance for me and although there are quibbles (I think Sun's storyline could have been more significant), it had significant plot development that moved the sci-fi elements of the story forward, significant new mythology, and moving character developments that brought everything that was happening down to a more personal, emotional level.

Like "The Constant", one aspect that made this episode stand apart was the directing. Usually on this and many other television shows, the director is forgotten and the writers get all the glory. But Jack Bender has directed all of the premiers (save the first one) and finales as well as a number of the most significant episodes of the series, including "The Constant." What he does on these shows is blend the different timelines so spectacularly and focus on pacing the show to drive the drama. This was evident in this show in how much information and how complex the plotlines were but how well they were blended together. The cuts and visual cues connecting the flashbacks of Jacob to the current situations were revealing without being didactic. He also was able to direct some great performances out of his actors.

Let me say that the Juliet and Sawyer plotline was heartbreaking and one of the more emotional developments that I can recall in the show, so props to lead writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who penned the script. The show has been accused of being melodramatic at times and I think that is probably apt. It is also the case that some of what happened on the finale could have been a groaner. The line where she tells him if she never meets him then she will never have to lose him is a dangerous line as it is almost too raw to sound like something someone would say. But I would argue that the character Elizabethe Mitchell has created has always led up to that scene. The show has subtly showed Sawyer unable to avoid the lure of Kate since she came back and so even though he has never said anything about Kate, the line made sense to us from Juliet's point of view. During that show we saw Juliet's fear, concern, and ultimate heartbreak well before her confrontation with Sawyer. She made that line work. Juliet's character and Mitchell's acting really were one of the best after-pilot additions to the show. The scene where she was sucked into the hole was a bit cliche of a setup with the use of the loved one slipping out of someone's hand. But Mitchell and Josh Holloway both played that moment so well that I got a bit misty-eyed. Both times I watched it. Knowing so much about these characters, that scene was so significant and there was so much more going on than simply losing a lover and that made it so much more significant for those long-time fans. She represented Sawyer becoming the man he thought he could never become and it was, literally, slipping from his hand. That is what I mean when I say Lost is at its best: It brought the whole bomb/incident down to how it relates to people we care about and takes full advantage of the long-tail story we know about its main characters. Those flashbacks aren't gimicks -- they are just as important as the action on the island.

I will also contend that the developments with Jack was a great bit of character-driven action. A number of fans have grown annoyed by Jack in the last couple of years but I posit that the writers intended this. The season 5 finale to me showed both a collapse of Jack's adherence to science over faith (he said not to give up on John to Richard Alpert, even) and his acknowledgment of his failure as a leader. I do think he was sincere when he said he wanted to go back and never have to lost Kate, a similar sentiment to what Juliet would soon tell Sawyer. But even more so he was recognizing that he had failed -- he had been the one at fault in losing her. To me this showed him realizing that the Jack he had created on the island -- the one who Kate fell in love with -- was false and he could not be the man and, I think one will find, the leader he thought he was forced into by the survivors. Much of what the writers have done with Jack on the second half of the show's run is show his downward spiral from being a leader and in effect put questions in our mind about the nature of this role. From the beginning of season 4 (when he tries to shoot Locke), we see him slide into the eventual drunk who wants to go back to the island only to mope around and do nothing before deciding to blow up the whole experience. It's at time subtle and hard to follow because of the scattered timeline, but there is a definite trajectory toward Jack losing his moral leadership role that leads us to him wanting to erase everything that happened and try again and as he says, if it is meant to be then it is meant to be.

Notice he's also abandoning everything he stood for when he was the leader (also, free-choice vs. predestination, ahem). What spoke to me most in relation to Jack and helped me see the scene with him and Sawyer as Jack's ultimate defeat as a leader was his flashback scene, which I contend was the most significant one. Something I have not seen mentioned by anyone on the internet is that we found out that Jack lied about the story that he told Kate that bore such significance to him and how we came to see him as a leader (I think it was even the pilot where he first told the story). He conveniently leaves out the part when he tells the story that it is his father telling him to take the five seconds to let all of his fear out and instead casts it as his own revelation. To me this shows that, as Jack's dad says, he is the one who doubts his own leadership abilities -- he knows he's a fake from the beginning and when he starts to slide it is really him coming back to what he really is and he starts to see destiny as making sense because he was unable to break free from his own.

Ah yes, and then there is the 2007/Jacob plotline. But I think I will talk about that more in the next section. I would instead like to point out I also found there to be several items put in there that showed just how well plotted the show has been:

• Rose, Bernard, and Vincent arrived after a long absence. There were a lot of people questioning what happened to them and some thought they might just be gone for good. Instead their absence made the reappearance so much more significant and I know my heart leapt for joy when I first saw them. That couple has always been in my mind one of the better minor-role additions to the show.
• Speaking of Rose and Bernard, it is likely we got the answer to a long-ago mystery. All the way back in season 1 they found a male and female skeleton in a cave and dubbed them Adam and Eve as they died together (with, I read on Lostpedia, one white stone and one black stone and are guessed to have been there 40-50 years). Doc Jensen, who writes one of the more prolific Lost blogs, on Entertainment Weekly's site, of all places, I think nailed it by guessing the two skeletons are Rose and Bernard.
• Speaking of long-ago mysteries: the four-toed statue. At the end of season 2 we saw the statue and wondered what the heck it was and got absolutely no answer for a long time but knew it had to be significant because they obviously had to put in effort to create the odd piece of set. It became one of those mysteries that kind of went by the wayside but some, like my sister, were intent on finding out what was going on. Now we find out it has a lot of significance: It is the home of Jacob. An example of how the show leaves crumbs along the way only to circle back and use those to show something significant.

Where Are We Going Now?

I'm not going to turn this into one of those gigantic explorations of Lost theories. I could go on forever. I feel, though, like I should bring up the 2007 plotline from the episode and instead of just saying what I thought of it, it seems best to say where I see it taking us and give you my idea of where we're going as it relates to everything I've already discussed. As I mentioned, I think the show is going to turn into a battle between the forces of free-will vs. predestination and also the general idea of good vs. evil, as that dichotomy is another found extensively throughout the show ("We're the good guys," for example). I have listened to the two lead writers of the show discuss Stephen King's The Stand as the piece of literature that has the most influence on the show. I have not read the book (I actually bought the paperback today and the more than 1,100-page novel is going to be my summer reading), my understanding is that it is about the ultimate battle between good and evil on Earth. It seems like that is what is being set up for our castaways.

So first, just to make sure we are on the same page, it was fairly explicit that the John Locke of the island is not the actual Locke, who was instead in the cargo hold as we saw at the end of the episode. The person who we thought was Locke was the man in the black shirt from the beginning of the show looking for a loophole to kill Jacob. Jacob mentions to "Locke" that he has finally found his loophole, which was our cue to know who he was. That explains Locke orchestrating his own death (he tells Richard to tell his earlier self he has to die), acting differently (Richard notices this), wanting to kill the other people from the plane, and then at the end being much more menacing than the usual Locke, especially when he kicks Jacob into the fire. My guess is Loophole has been involved in much more than orchestrating Ben stabbing Jacob and has been manipulating others, even master-manipulator Ben, for quite some time. He was the other being inhabiting Jacob's cabin. My guess is also that he was the "Christian Shepherd" we saw walking around. Keep in mind that Jack was told Locke had to stand-in for Christian and that both Locke and Christian were not buried -- something the Others seemed quite insistent on happening to their dead before. My sister came up with that theory and it sounds correct to me. My theory is that Loophole is also the smoke monster, which we know manipulated Ben into following fake Locke in the form of Alex (who we also did not see buried). Behind the scenes the writers have always been building to this final battle between the two forces, which we are not so sure about.

So what happens now? The explosion happens and we have a negative version of the Lost ending followed by a shot of Jack's eye, mimicking the very beginning of the series. Jacob said after being stabbed that "they are on their way" and my guess is he didn't mean the other people from the 2007 Ajira flight 316. He meant our castaways, Oceanic flight 815. In the timeline of all of the characters, I think the two plotlines where running parallel in time and that the explosion Juliet created will bring them back into the correct moment in time and they will be on the island much like the beginning of the show. They won't be in Los Angeles, they will be on the island and nothing will have changed because as Miles said, perhaps what Jack was doing was exactly what he was attempting to prevent. Nothing will have changed. Those who Jack touched (notably not Juliet who had a flashback that conspicuously had no touch from Jacob, like the rest whom he physically laid a hand on) will be brought back, which is why he reached out to them in the first place. Where it goes from there, I do not know. I also do not know how Richard is connected to all of this as he does not seem to age, much like Jacob and Loophole. I am also not certain that we know yet whom we should be rooting for. The Jesus-like allusions bestowed upon Jacob are, in my view, likely head fakes trying to cause us to see him as the good one when we do not really have enough information and I don't see the writers as wanting to endorse a particularly Judeo-Christian reading of their show. Much like I still contend Ben's ultimate ends will be righteous, if not his means, if I were to venture a guess I would say that the same will happen with Loophole.

There is much more I could write about Lost and I would say my next thought would be to write about season 5 as a whole, which was originally my idea but there was too much in this two-part finale to cover. If you want to get into some theorizing, that's cool. I was avoiding it here so as to keep my post from being even longer than it already is. I hope you made it all the way through and there should be some sort of prize. Anyway, definitely write back because I'm curious to see what you thought.

Captain Kirk listens to the Beastie Boys

STAR TREK

And Madea is a Starfleet admiral. And Winona Ryder is Spock's mom.

Aside from these and other examples of random oddness, I really enjoyed Star Trek. My understanding is that J.J. Abrams intended it to be enjoyable for both Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike, and if this weekend's box-office numbers are any indication, he's succeeded at that much at least. As for where I stand with regard to Trekdom, I never saw a whole lot of the original series, though I enjoyed what I did see; I was pretty dedicated to The Next Generation as a kid, though my interest waned with each successive series (I don't think I've seen an episode of Enterprise all the way through). I've seen most of the movies at least once, though The Voyage Home and First Contact are probably the only ones I've seen more than once. In other words, I'm familiar with the Star Trek universe, but I'm by no means what you'd call a Trekkie. Maybe that makes me the target audience for the new movie; I don't need it explained to me what the Federation is, or why someone passes out when Spock pinches his neck, but I wouldn't necessarily run out to see a movie just because it has "Star Trek" in its title.

If that's the case, and I am the demographic this movie is shooting for, then I can see why it's doing well at the box office. Regardless of how good it was as a Star Trek movie, it was pretty damn good as a summer sci-fi-adventure movie. There's plenty of action—in fact, the movie rarely slows down for more than a couple minutes at a time. Though the pace is pretty breathless, they still manage to give us a good sense of most of the characters amidst all the running and explosions. As I said before, I'm not the biggest expert on the original series beyond the basics—Kirk is a confident womanizer, Spock is logical but with a dry sense of humor, McCoy tends to be irritable—but most of the cast got the chance to convey their character in a particular and memorable way. Unlike the other actors, Karl Urban went beyond this by not just playing Leonard McCoy, but playing DeForest Kelley playing Leonard McCoy, down to matching his speech patterns and mannerisms. It wasn't just an impression, though, more of an "embodiment," like when a good actor portrays a well known historical person (here's an example of what I have in mind), so what could easily have been an impediment in Urban's performance actually made it memorable (in a good way).

The only major character that gets shortchanged is John Cho's Sulu, who only gets one brief scene with dialogue (in which he embarrassingly does the starship equivalent of leaving the parking brake on) and one action scene where he shows off his ability as a swordsman; unfortunately, neither of these scenes gives the opportunity to convey much in the way of personality or relationship with the other characters. I'm glad the movie is a bit more generous with the rest of the cast, because that serves to demonstrate one of the greatest assets of Star Trek in any form, the interaction of a broad range of characters thrust together, forced to co-operate, and ultimately coming to appreciate one another. The fact that the film succeeds as well as it does is due—more than its story, script, special effects, or anything else—to its characters, and so the fact that, for the most part, it does very well in that department is what makes Star Trek a real pleasure to watch. If they keep making Star Trek movies like this one—and I don't see why they wouldn't, based on the return they seem likely to get on their investment—this once-tired franchise should have a new lease on life.

P.S. — The Onion: "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as 'Fun, Watchable.'"

And now for something completely different

My sis brought the first of this up to me and I thought you would enjoy and then I liked the second one so I included it as well. Don't view the second one if you haven't been watching Lost this season.




AGAIN, IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN WATCHING THIS SEASON AND SEEN THE 10TH EPISODE "HE'S OUR YOU", WHICH AIRED 03/25, SKIP QUICKLY OVER THE NEXT VIDEO AND DO NOT LOOK AT THE TITLE. (Although for what it's worth the information in the title is a bit inaccurate but still would give something away)

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Oh no Hugh di'n't

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. THE READER. So we usually end up being homers it seems and write about movies that we liked. So I thought I would mix it up a bit. Also, I will have to say that this might be the oddest combination of movies I have chose to review but as I started it about Wolverine (TRAILER) I didn't want to just write about how it sucked and was acknowledging that it's major flaw is also found in The Reader (TRAILER), another rather lame effort.

So first, Hugh's folly (and no, I don't again refer to the musical number at the Oscars). Let me get out of the way the obvious reasons why I don't recommend spending $10 to see the movie. OK first to be nice, I like Hugh Jackman, it had some good effects and it was in a way mindless entertainment -- but I think if I want that I will just wait for DVD. So it was the kind of movie were there are constant inconsistencies and pieces that just don't make sense (why did he fight in the Civil War if he is Canadian? Why is the guy who he finds out is not his actual dad in the first 5 minutes of the movie played by Jackman? Why does he age to exactly Jackman's age and then stop? How does he get a motorcycle back after a big action scene?) and I'm not one who generally catches all of these sort of issues in movies. Bad dialogue. A scene where his claws looked really fake. Oh and the lack of any characters other than Wolverine that we care about.

Aside from that, the big problem with the movie partly results from being a sequel: We know how it is going to turn out. I thought X2 actually did a pretty good job telling the background of Wolverine and I'm not sure we needed even more buildup to what we found other in that movie. I think there might have been a way to do it, though, if the filmmakers hadn't made the glaring mistake of forgetting that we know what will happen. In order for an action movie to work, there has to be some tension and there are a number of reveals that it builds to that amount to a shrug because we already know what will happen. He gets tricked into being transformed. Knew that. He picks the name Wolverine. Who didn't see that one coming? He doesn't die in any of the big battles and neither do characters we know show up in later movies. Duh? If they had tried to build the story around issues for which we were already not aware, the movie might have stood a chance but it might be that there just wasn't enough story to build a movie around anyway. As painful as it is to give positive recognition in this case, I was discussing with a coworker today that not building to surprises in known plot elements is something that George Lucas did well in the Star Wars prequels. So as you can see it does not necessarily ensure quality.

Wolverine might be OK for a rental when you just want to not think about things but I can't endorse it too much when there are other comic book movies being made, like Ironman, that are able to be entertaining and still contain some level of quality. I can't say, however, that I hated the movie completely.

So how does this connect to The Reader, a movie which in two years will only be remembered as the one that finally earned Kate Winslett an Oscar? (side note: As much as I like Winslett, she in no way deserved a Best Actress recognition for this movie as there is not way you could convince me this was a leading role) Like Wolverine, there are a number of flaws in the movie -- including the fact that it is dull -- but the biggest for me was that the crux of the whole movie was something that supposedly was a surprise about Winslett's character but it's kind of in the title and just about anybody seeing the movie knows it already. It seems like such a let down when you realize that is going to be what everything hinges upon. This is a very mild SPOILER ALERT that I think you probably already know but if you are really paranoid and think you might actually be unaware of it, skip to the end of the paragraph and read no more. We are supposed to be surprised that she can't read and somehow this is supposed to change our interpretation of the character in the past and what she does in the pivotal part of the movie. But we already know so it's printer much a shrug that makes it about as fulfilling as the rest of the movie.

So there's my connection of these two movies. I love finding a way to connect two movies that are dissimilar by finding a connection like this. Especially when it means I can write about two recent movies I saw at once (score!). Also, I think it could start some conversation if you have any thoughts on movies that try to treat known facts or obvious events as surprise events in the movie. It is a bit of a pet peeve of mine in movies and one that I think we see way too often by lazy screenwriters. Any movies that bring this to mind?