- I have been really impressed with the acting on the show of late -- some of the distinctions between characters on the island world and the sideways world have been positively Draper/Whitman-esque. This week I was particularly struck by Matthew Fox, of all people: Jack of the alt.universe is a positively lighthearted soul compared to his counterpart back on the island. Terry O'Quinn always dazzles in this regard -- the Locke who's still with us, while tormented in his own way (and for reasons we now know!), doesn't fill me with the wave of sadness that the defunct one always did.
- Are we supposed to have seen Claire's music box before? I have no recollection of anything of the kind.
- Salt water can't be good for bullet wounds, right?
Everything else will have to wait for the comments. (Three more episodes.)
I don't think I've ever actually cried over Lost before, but give me a good "I know I'm going to drown now but I've made my peace with it" scene, and I am a waterworks.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Alan on two things: (1) Mutually assured drowning with not a word about the offspring back in the real world? Nuh-uh. (2) Saying goodbye to infected Sayid without any explanation of what the heck's been going on with him for the last few episodes is annoying.
But all in all, a pretty great episode, without any of the hey, those whispers? yeah, they're what you'd decided they were exposition that we've been getting of late.
The music box is new, I believe, but the song it plays, "Catch a Falling Star," was the song Claire always used to sing to baby Aaron, and her mother sung to her....
ReplyDeleteThe pacing of this season seems very haphazard, but it did get very dusty towards the end of the penultimate act.
ReplyDeleteThat was positively Whedonesque. (Jennifer J. and Russ - there you go.)
ReplyDeleteI mostly dealt with the dust fine until Hurley sobbed. That was the end of me for the night.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting the feeling that the last few episodes are going to be at a ridiculously breakneck pace.
You know, when Charlie died, it meant something. I really would have thought that Sun and Jin deserved at least that much. I'm kind of hoping that when the worlds resolve at the end, they're still alive.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree about O'Quinn and even Fox, though.
BTW, minor point, but I don't think I've ever remembered the number of a flight I was on a week after I took it. How come everyone on Oceanic 815 remembers that number so well?
ReplyDeleteI am holding out a faint hope that Lapidus is still alive. Although, more realistically, I am going to be terrified ever time Miles is on the screen - if that actually ever happens again.
ReplyDeleteI can quibble about some things (the timing on the final bomb countdown was WAY off), but the overall sub sequence was just astoundingly well-made and emotional. This is a very special show.
<span>Whedon would have put one of those poles *through* Sun, but yes.</span>
ReplyDeleteMarsha, when I see a man cry on screen I automatically start blubbering...just can't help myself.
ReplyDeleteWell, Darlton say that this means something too.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that link. :)
ReplyDeleteMotherfuckers. I thought I wasn't going to see anything better than the episode of Justified that I watched just before it, but I was wrong. Best of all, "what happened happened, and you just have to let it go." After the finale last season, which explicitly reprised some key scenes from each of the prior finales, I thought this season was going to have more of a deja vu quality to it. As the show hits the home stretch, it's finally doing that. Little things like the Apollo bar or Locke reaching for a watch (one of the keys from last season) and big things like the watery grave that recalled both Charlie and Michael's deaths seem like analogues to this season's mirror motif -- events of the past are reflected in events of the present.
ReplyDeleteAs for where we are, my count is:
Original Oceanic passengers 10 (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley on the beach; Claire at the dock; Cindy and two blond kids, Rose, and Bernard at various places in the jungle);
Dharma captive 1 (Desmond; and I guess we're never going to know what Dharma remnant put Clancy and Des in the hatch, kept airdropping supplies, and kept the Others from going in and getting him);
Ancient Mariner 1 (Richard);
Freighter Team 1 (Miles);
mixed Others unknown;
Widmore team unknown (but at least two -- Widmore and Sheila Kelley);
Smoke Monster 1.
That was me.
ReplyDelete<span>Thanks for the link, but I'm still very frustrated with Sun and Jin's death, especially after confirmation that the intent was to pull a Whedon tonight. But having the love triangle plus Hurley be the only survivors just brings back so many of my frustrations with the show. Sun and Jin have always been held at arms length from the central plot, meaning that they're worth on the show really was just to tell their own story, and with this ending, it feels like that story was sacrificed for one that I care far less about. It cheapens the characters, like they were just filler (token filler, if I'm feeling cynical). I wanted more for these two, but this ending, and really the whole final act of their story, feels like a waste.</span>
ReplyDeleteI thought I recognized the song, thanks for providing the context!
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, this made me giggle.
ReplyDeleteVERY dusty in here during the sobathon on the beach. Also, I am now confused, because I thought the whole point of the smoke monster plot was that we didn't want him to get off the island. Didn't Jacob ever say that? Or am I inferring it because it's what Mocke said he wanted to do? I'm confusing myself.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of Whedon, a friend reminded me of an Angel storyline where Illyria started time jumping, and during a time jump killed a bunch of the main characters- but as those characters, who were still in an earlier part of the timeline, realized what was going to happen, they were able to prevent the deaths. There is a tiny part of me that hopes that they can "take it back" in this instance also. I'm also wondering if Jin and Sun are going to end up in a cabin next door to Rose and Bernard.
Oh, and I was yelling at my tv during the scene in the sub... it was just getting overwhelming. Sayid, Lapidus, Kate (less sad about this, sister kind of needed to get shot), Sun, Sawyer, Jin... Talk about things going from 0 to 60 in no time flat. At least now Lapidus, Sayid, and the Kwon's get to become whispers on the island/ Hurley hallucinations.
Also of interest are reports about next week's episode being unusually structured for this show and being heavily carried by a guest star that we know and love from other work---don't want to get all spoilery. And the finale is going to be 2.5 hours long!
ReplyDeleteOkay, for the rest of us: define "pull a Whedon."
ReplyDeleteKill someone off just to prove you can and make it shocking, ala Buffy's mom, or Tara, who were both main characters in Buffy.
ReplyDeletecalliekl, I think the smoke monster still wants to get off the island, but he has to kill all of the candidates in order to do so. One of the candidates is supposed to take over for Jacob, but if they are all dead, then there is no one to keep Smokey on the island. Like Jack said, the island won't let Smokey kill the candidates (just like he couldn't kill Jacob), but since Jack brought the explosives on the sub, Jack is the one who killed the people on the sub, technically. Jack was the major threat to Smokey because Jack doesn't want to leave the island and Smokey can't leave unless there is no one left to keep him on the island. At least that is what I think they were trying to get at last night.
ReplyDeleteOr Wash in Serenity, made all the more powerful because he dies just after a moment of triumph--"I am a leaf on the wind, watch as I soar" gets me every time.
ReplyDeleteOkay, remind me: where are Miles, Ben and Richard now? Back on Original Recipe Island, with ... ?
ReplyDeleteI also really expected Sun, while telling Jin he had to leave her on the sub, to say something like, "Don't make our daughter an orphan!" But I suppose if she had said that, we might have considered Jin staying with Sun to be a less romantic, less selfless move.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I also would have liked an explanation for Sayid's transformation beyond "he went into the weird water thing, died, and came back 'infected'."
Ben, Richard, and Miles went to look for grenades at either the Dharma station(s) or New Otherton (with the intent of finding some way of blowing up the Ajira plane after Ilana, um, used up the dynamite).
ReplyDeleteActually, James is the one who is technically responsible for killing Sun, Jin, Lapidus, and Sayid -- Jack wanted to let the timer run down, convinced that nothing would happen, just like in his dyn-o-mite! chat with Richard inside the Black Rock. But James lacked faith and yanked out the wires anyway, causing the timer to accelerate.
ReplyDeleteThe who can do the killing thing has me thoroughly confused. Why couldn't the dynamite that Richard and Jack had on the Black Rock explode, but Locke's bomb could explode on the sub?
ReplyDeleteMan, I'm sad about Sun and Jin. While I know a lot of people have invested their Lost romantic hopes into Desmond and Penny, Sun and Jin were my favorites, the one I wanted to see have a happy ending. We'd seen so much of their past, seen how much they'd both changed and grown, and I really wanted them both to go home together to their daughter. I'm not holding out a lot of hope that they're alive anywhere other than the alt-verse.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the reveal that Smokey doesn't need to get off the island WITH all the candidates, he can only get off the island by killing them - and can't do it himself.
And I'm really curious what's going on with Ben, Richard and Miles - last we saw them, they headed off into the jungle, I think back to New Otherton? I have no idea why or what they're doing, but Ben and Richard have been so integral to the show (and Miles so interesting) that I'm eager to see them come back.
Kate seemed awfully okay on the beach for someone shot in the chest and dragged out of a sinking sub. And yes, I have to agree with callie, she really did need to get shot. Or honestly, someone did - after all the shootouts they've had, it was time for a bullet to actually hit a main character.
Maybe, as Adam C. points out, it is an issue of faith. Jack believed that Richard and Jack wouldn't be killed, but Sawyer didn't have the same faith on the sub? Or maybe the island was done with Sayid, Sun, and Jin? Also, Richard can't die because that was his gift from Jacob. In theory, I would assume that gift still holds even though Jacob is dead. Maybe Jack was only protected because he was with Richard?
ReplyDeleteI still think that there will be more casualties if it is to come down to the one candidate and Smokey. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong about that.
This was confusing to me, too. Jack's argument that Locke wouldn't have put a timer on the bomb if he could have just blown them up holds a certain amount of logic. But it is defeated by the fact that Locke set the timer and stuck the bomb in Jack's backpack. If Locke needed the candidates to try to disarm the bomb in order to kill them, why wouldn't he have put it in a prominent place on the sub? What are the odds Jack would have opened the backpack in the first 4 minutes of getting on the sub? Did Locke really intend to risk his chance to kill them all on that coincidence? More likely, Jack would have gotten thirsty after a while, went for a bottle of water in his backpack and found explosives attached to a timer that had reached 0:00 and thought, how quaint. (Unless I missed something and the timer was triggered to start once the backpack was opened.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, what's going on with Widmore? Believing smokey is always risky, but why would Widmore send two guys to guard the plane (or send two decoys to guard an explosive-rigged plane) but leave his submarine essentially unlocked and unguarded? I believe there were just two guys on board the sub and a few guys in the woods who didn't even start firing until Jack tossed smokey in the water several minutes after Sawyer and his crew walked right onto the sub. Shouldn't he have at least put some fences up to keep smokey away from the sub?
ReplyDeleteI think it's safe to say that between the tanker mission and this one, Charles Widmore has a lousy HR person. His staff just seems completely ineffective at accomplishing goals to his satisfaction -- this time around, nothing's ever ready soon enough.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the bomb wouldn't have gone off if it had stayed in front of Sawyer and Jack. By running away with it, Sayid (who I think stopped being a candidate when he was died the first time) ensured that the explosion of the bomb would kill only him directly. Of course, it indirectly and not surprisingly killed two actual Candidates, but I don't know if the Lost Rules view Palsgraf v. Long Island RI as precedent.
ReplyDeleteI think your last sentence is the answer, CM. By the time we saw the timer, I think it read something like 3:53, so perhaps it was triggered by opening the backpack and was set for 4 minutes of time to act. Jack's theory was that nothing would happen if they let it tick down -- that since Flocke couldn't directly kill them, the only way it would blow up was if one of them intervened in some way. James didn't listen.
ReplyDeleteMy recollection of the dynamite scene: Richard says you need to blow me up because I can't kill myself. Jack starts to think "hey, if he can't kill himself because Jacob touched him, then I probably can't kill myself either." Jack lights the fuse on the dynamite, having faith that since he can't kill himself, the dynamite won't actually blow. Fuse sputters out, Jack and Richard both look relieved. And....scene.
Jack was the agent lighting the fuse in the Black Rock; Jack can't kill himself; ergo, dynamite does not explode. Similar logic last night: Flocke can't kill them; James is the agent trying to disarm the bomb, defying Jack's faith that nothing will happen -- as Jack put it, only one of us can kill the rest; ergo, there IS no more Sayid.
Makes you wonder who replaced Matthew Abbadon. I'm guessing it was Herc.
ReplyDeleteI'd probably remember mine if it crashed.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean Seamus?
ReplyDeleteWhoops, I guess I forgot Ben.
ReplyDeleteHerc was the gigantic fuckup on The Wire who was always ruining people's lives by his sheer thoughtlessness. Seamus is Chet from Kate & Allie.
ReplyDeleteHerc was the fuckup cop from The Wire who was always ruining people's lives with his thoughtless and lazy policing. Pretty sure Adam C. actually meant Herc. Seamus was Chip from Kate & Allie, and no matter how many times I see him, I cannot think of him as anything else. At least Vinnie from Doogie Howser won me over on the Sopranos.
ReplyDelete<span>Isaac presumes correctly. I was playing off the fact that Abbadon was played by The Wire's Lance Reddick, who, as Cedric Daniels, was Herc's superior on early seasons of that show.</span>
ReplyDeleteI accidentally found out about this (don't read the NY Magazine interview with Evangeline Lilly, everyone! Even if you don't mind spoilers because it's kind of a lame interview) and could not be more excited. As if LOST didn't already command incredibly unrealistically high expectations as it is.
ReplyDeleteWhat they said, basically. I'd be damned if I could find where he said this, but Joss has justified the need for these deaths because it makes the threat real, giving teeth to the "anyone can die" threats. In the case of Serenity, I think it worked brilliantly, because as heart wrenching as it was to see Wash go, I couldn't name a single person I'd want to put in his place. And since I loved that whole ensemble so much, seeing everyone get beat up so hard fighting the reavers, I was terrified the whole time that we'd lose another.
ReplyDeleteWhy this doesn't work as well for me here is that Sun and Jin have never really been allowed into the core of this story, and Sayid only occasionally was allowed to alter things there. Killing off all the supporting characters in one fell swoop, I'm only reminded how frustrated I am with the wobbly core of Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, who are occasionally great on their own (even Kate!) but having sat through the love triangle shenanigans, seeing them on the beach is a reminder that the stories I've really loved on this show have been on the peripheries.
But in that world, of course, it didn't.
ReplyDelete(I'm talking about all of the "Wait - Oceanic 815!?!" in the Sideways world.)
ReplyDeleteI think AC has it right here, insofar as there is some underlying logic. Also, in a broader sense, James is now in the position Jack was in at the season's start: He was sure he had to do X, did X, and people the characters care about died because he was wrong.
ReplyDeleteNot a bad analogy at all, especially given that the Lostaways have basically been relying on info provided by Fuzzy DunLocke all season long.
ReplyDeleteNice one, Russ. I wish I could "SuperLike."
ReplyDelete<span>I have invested my Lost romantic hopes in Sawyer and Juliet. Surely one of the final episodes will reunite Sawyer with his resolute blonde woman. Right?</span>
ReplyDelete