Lost: The Incident

Well, last night's 2-part season finale was a tense, exciting, emotional roller coaster ride that delved deep into the Lost mythology, answered a lot of questions while opening up new ones, and gave almost all the major players some great character moments. We enjoyed the hell out of it.

Until it was over and we really started thinking about it.

If you consider all of Lost to be one long story arc (and really, you should), and if you break that arc down to Acts 1, 2, and 3, then upon some reflection, we can't help but declare that last night's episodes demonstrated some poor writing, no matter how enjoyable it was. Act 1 would have been seasons 1 and 2, starting off with the crash of 815 and all the work done in the first 2 seasons to set up the backstories of all the characters, provide some interpersonal conflict and set up adversarial relationships between the protagonists and the other people who have interest in the island, both the Others and the DHARMA initiative. Act 2 further heightens the drama as the central conflict becomes more pronounced and we learn that there are multiple forces (including Widmore and Eloise) struggling to achieve some sort of goal involving the island and ending with the Oceanic 6 back on the mainland, coming to the slow realization that leaving the island was a mistake. Season 5 started the 3rd and final act, with the 06 returning to the island to complete whatever it is they were supposed to do in the first place and the central conflict becoming even more pronounced as we learn, bit by bit, who all the other players are (or were) and what their connections are to each other (DHARMA, Widmore, Hawking and to a lesser extent, Rousseau). Fine, that's all good.

But when you consider that last night's finale represented the halfway point of the final act and it was only then that we were introduced to a brand new character who has never even been hinted at (Jacob's opposite number, who others are already referring to as Esau) and who appears to have been at the center of everything that's happened so far, we can't help but consider it poor form on the part of the writers. It's a cheat; a classic deus ex machina and to be frank, it pissed us off a little bit.

We have no choice but to put that aside, though. There's way too much to talk about and ponder and we're just going to have to accept that the writers pulled a fast one on us (and not in a good way). The appearance of Jacob didn't jibe with anything we'd been thinking about him, but when you really think about it, we haven't really EVER been told anything about the guy. All we really had to go on was Locke's spooky encounter in the cabin and we're guessing that wasn't Jacob at all; it was Esau. The entire story has been about the conflict between these two characters even if we didn't know it. It seems that Esau had been manipulating Locke practically from the moment he arrived on the island, all to make him believe that he had a greater destiny.

Well, sad to say, but Locke's only destiny was to die so that Esau could somehow take his place and be in position to murder Jacob. If we had to guess, we'd say that the smoke monster and the various apparitions around the island (most notably, Christian Shephard, but also Claire and Yemi, Eko's brother) were all manifestations of Esau. Credit where it's due, the reveal that Locke's body was in that cargo box was a huge shock and it did help to explain why Locke has been acting so strangely the last few times we've seen him. It also explained the scene last episode where "Locke" sent Richard to tell Locke that he had to leave the island and die. It wasn't about Locke fulfilling his destiny; it was about Esau making sure Locke died.

Alright, enough of that Jacob/Esau stuff. Let's talk about something else. Like ROSE AND BERNARD, Y'all! And even Vincent! It was wonderful to see them again and they were really sweet, even if it takes suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to believe that they managed to stay in the jungle for three years without being detected by either the hostiles or DHARMA. We suspect this will be the last time we see them and we STRONGLY suspect that means that they are the "Adam and Eve" skeletons found in the cave way back in season 1.

We enjoyed the various flashbacks to the main characters' lives. We have to give a shoutout to the casting people because that little girl who played young Kate looked EXACTLY like a ten-year-old Evangeline Lilly. So much so, that we wonder if they're related. How telling that Jack's oft-repeated "count to 5" story didn't happen exactly the way he told it. The little shit neglected to mention that it was his father who suggested he do so. And speaking of the little shit...

Jack, you're willing to blow up an entire island, risking the deaths of hundreds of people all because Kate dumped you? What kind of asshole are you? And Juliet! You decided to go along with it because Sawyer snuck a glance at Kate? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Let us help you out here: KATE IS NOT WORTH IT. What is it about that girl that causes normally sane people to kill themselves over her?

Speaking of which, wow, that goodbye scene with Juliet and Sawyer was excruciating. We kind of figured going into the finale that Juliet wasn't going to make it out alive, but how sad for her that she never got to see her sister again. Granted, she might somehow survive all this (because she inexplicably survived what looked like the equivalent of a ten story fall) but somehow we doubt it. At least she went out well. She had a death scene that rivaled Charlie's for most heart-wrenching and heroic of the series.

Now, what the hell does that final flash of light mean? It couldn't have been any more ambiguous. The central question around the whole finale was whether Jack's plan was going to work. Would the detonating bomb correct the timeline or not? Well, before we can even answer that one, we have to find out if the bomb even detonated. That flash could have been an explosion or it could have been a time flash triggered by all the electromagnetism. So, either the bomb detonated and the timeline corrected itself; the bomb detonated and the timeline didn't correct itself (although that would mean the deaths of all the major characters and that doesn't seem likely) or the bomb didn't detonate and a time flash jumped all the survivors out of 1977 and most likely back to the present day. We're worn out. Discuss amongst yourselves. Yes, we know we missed a lot (like Ilana and her backup dancers) but our fingers are tired. You guys do it.

[Photos: ABC.com]

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Lost, S5E15: Follow the Leader

Just so we're all on the same page...

Sayid and Jack are traipsing through the 1977 jungle with Eloise Hawkings and Richard Alpert; Sawyer, Kate and Juliet are in a sub heading off of 1977 island where they will presumably recreate Three's Company off in the '70s somewhere; Jin, Miles, and Hurley are basically wandering around not knowing what to do next; and Locke is off with 2007 Richard (as well as Ben and Sun) to kill Jacob.

Alrighty, then! That's EXACTLY what we thought was going to happen. Say what you will about this show, it's damn good at going off in directions you couldn't have imagined.

So, it looks like we're back to Hero-Jack. Leader Jack, instead of Janitor Jack or Junkie Jack. Which means only one thing: we're back to "insanely focused on one thing while disregarding what everyone around him is saying" Jack. We've been down this road before with him and a LOT of people wound up dead. We're not feeling very hopeful about Jack's plans to literally blow up the past.

What exactly IS that plan, anyway? Detonating a hydrogen bomb is going to kill everyone on the island, unless we slept through that day of nuclear physics during grade school. Why is someone like Eloise rushing off to do this? Yeah, we get that she wants to erase her murder of her own son (whom she appears to be pregnant with, judging by Charles' little belly caress), but she'd be killing both herself and unborn Daniel just by setting off the bomb. Are we missing something here?

And how exactly is he planning on detonating it anyway? We doubt that was covered in med school. Last week they had Jack set off an explosion by firing a gun at some fuel tanks, a classic movie myth that's been debunked so many times, we half thought the writers put it in there on purpose as a wink to the audience. We can accept it once, but if Jack tries to detonate a hydrogen bomb by firing a gun at it next week, count us out.

We suspect this is why Sayid's tagging along. He always was basically The Professor on this Gilligan-free island, able to whip up or repair pretty much anything mechanical or electronic that comes his way. Of course he can figure out how to set off a hydrogen bomb! He's Sayid, motherfuckers! He kills men with his feet!

So Kate and Jack have another little spat. This time, it's not over whether or not his plan will work; it's over why he would ever want it to work in the first place. Kate brought up good reasons why they shouldn't try to change history, but we couldn't help thinking, "Uh, Kate? 300 dead people, remember? Who gives a shit about you wanting to preserve your little love triangle? Just say it: you don't want to go to jail." And so Jack and Kate SPLIT UP. FOREVER. AGAIN.

If there's one thing Kate's really bad at, it's exits. If she's not literally riding away from explosions or pulling people out of cars she deliberately crashed, then she's getting her childhood sweetheart killed in a hail of police gunfire. The girl can't walk out of a room without setting it on fire. This time, she escapes from the island by almost literally stepping over the dead bodies along the way and jumping into a submarine right smack in the middle of Sawyer and Juliet's profession of love to each other. We originally applauded the writers for recognizing that Kate and Juliet were too smart to get caught up in a hands-off-my-man catfight, but we have to admit that Juliet gave her a look last night of utter hatred and frankly, we couldn't blame her.

Not that Kate's trying to get between them or anything. She just wants out at the moment. But Juliet and Sawyer had been through so much together;much, much more than Jack and Kate ever went through; and it was so sweet, seeing them tell each other again that they've got the other's back. They have seriously replaced Desmond and Penny as Favorite Couple in the Lost yearbook. And we felt doubly bad for Sawyer because he was so proud of himself for being a leader and saving his people and he got what seems to always happen to those who would presume to be leaders on the island: a busted up face and a forced exit from the island. But this is James Ford, people. He may look a little downtrodden and confused now, but it remains to be seen how he's ultimately going to take all these latest developments.

And since this episode is all about the leaders; from the deposed Ben and Sawyer to the revitalized Jack, no discussion would be complete without John Locke. We confess, we have no freaking idea what's going on with him. When he first did the Jesus thing, we liked the new confident, purposeful Locke, but last night he was coming off like crazy Locke again. His gleeful "I've got a purpose now," to Richard was groan-inducing. It just sounded too much like the old Locke to us and let's face it, the old Locke was a bit of a fuckup, wouldn't you say?

Compounding this was the revelation that Jesus Locke sent Richard to time-bouncing Locke with the instructions that he had to get them all back and die in the process. It was a fantastic scene and we all love when the puzzle pieces fall into place on this show, but it opens a can of worms. If we consider that Locke left the island and died, not because it was destiny but because a time-bouncing Locke told Richard to tell him to do so and also consider that Richard appeared in Locke's life for years, checking in on him from the time he was a baby, not because of destiny, but because a time-bouncing Locke told him to do so, and we add to that that Locke failed his first test with Richard (when he was a kid) and it's looking to us like Locke might not be following some grand destiny at all. Locke's just getting bounced around by the island and he's got delusions of grandeur about it. We could be wrong about that but Richard seems awfully skeptical of Locke's place in the hierarchy.


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost, S5E14: The Variable

Was that a fucking awesome episode or what?

When Kate, Jack, and Daniel were traipsing through the jungle, we said "FINALLY. THAT'S what we've been missing for so long!" We don't watch Lost so we can see a bunch of people living in '70s suburbia, for god's sake. We want to see bloody, dirty, frantic people sweating and running through the jungle for their lives, dammit! Although even we were taken aback at how abruptly things went from That '70s Show to Apocalypse Now. We had a bit of an issue with how stupid Kate and Jack were being by strolling up to the gun locker in broad daylight, thinking no one would notice, but the ensuing firefight was just the kind of bump up in action the show desperately needed. And speaking of action...

Why, oh why couldn't someone at least clip Radzinsky as payback for being the most irritating character of the season? We know he lives for another 15 years and winds up as a stain on the ceiling of the Swan, but couldn't just a little blood be drawn to satisfy us? Granted, it looks like everyone involved in that gunfight is in some dire need of glasses because they were all, at most, 5 yards away from each other and none of them could land a decent shot. Kate and Jack have fairly limited gun experience (and it's been a while for them), but Radzinsky and his posse had no excuse for being such lousy shots. And speaking of gunslinging...

It's strange how believable a couple Kate and Jack become when they're slinging bullets. All that sighing and staring bullshit does them no good as characters. It's when the stakes are high that you can really see how well they work together. Then again, the same thing happened to Sawyer and Juliet. We never would have accepted those two as a couple, but after they spent their time in the jungle watching each other's backs, suddenly they got all sweet with each other. And speaking of our star-crossed lovers...

Our heart breaks for poor James, who was clearly in over his head and not thinking straight at all. Did he really think that he and Juliet were going to live happily ever after on the beach where it all started? Level-headed Juliet seemed to realize that but, because she loved him (and because she clearly didn't want him anywhere near "Freckles"), she tearfully agreed to a plan that she knew was never going to work. And speaking of dumb plans thought up by smart people...

Daniel, you moron. What made you think wandering into a Hostiles camp waving a gun around was a good idea? You almost had us with your big speech about free will being the variable that can change history. We were open-mouthed when you told Chang you were from the future and did the Gay Gasp when you told him that Miles was his son. We thought "Alright! Here's a man with a plan! Let's get this shit started!" But no, you had to go and do something really, really stupid and wound up fulfilling your lifelong destiny, which apparently was to get killed by your mother. And speaking of the winner of All-Time Worst Parent on Lost...

Our minds are reeling with the knowledge that apparently, Eloise has known all Daniel's life that he was going to die at her hand and ACTIVELY PUSHED him toward that destiny. What. A. Bitch. At least she had the decency to show some feelings of remorse when she confronted her baby daddy, Charles (woohoo! Got that one right!). And speaking of Widmores and destiny...

Is this it for Penny and Desmond? Did they finally get their happy ending and their involvement in this clusterfuck is over? Certainly, they deserve it, but Lost without Desmond is like...something good without...something....that makes it...better. Oh, you know what we mean. It sounds horrible, but we kinda hope baby Charlie gets kidnapped or something. After all, it was a little weird how they made a point to say "This nurse will watch your baby." Maybe we're just being a little jumpy, but it's never a good idea to leave your child unattended on this show.

What else? It was fun seeing so many characters together at one time in the LaFleur/Burke living room. The last time we saw that many characters together was on Ajira 315 and most of them couldn't even look at each other, let alone have a conversation. Best line goes to Hurley. "Wait, you were in 1954? Like, Fonzie times?" It was also heartbreaking to see Daniel fulfill his destiny even further by telling the young Charlotte what we knew he was going to tell her. There's always a chance we're wrong and he survived that bullet from his mama, but in retrospect, the whole episode felt like it was leading up to his death. It remains to be seen (of course) what's going to happen next. Will Jack and Kate try to blow up the island to change history and prevent all this shit from ever happening to them? Will Sawyer and Juliet ever manage to get away from Asshole Radzinsky or is this it for them? And what about Jin, Hurley and Miles? And Baby Ben? And for crying out loud, we're getting tired of asking this, but WHERE THE HELL ARE ROSE AND BERNARD?!


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost S5E13: Some Like it Hoth

Gotta love that episode title, a tip of the hat to the hardcore nerds.

Last night's episode was an enjoyable little character-driven amuse bouche before the countdown to the fireworks of the upcoming season ender. We loved it, especially since a Miles-centric episode has been a long time coming. Of all the late arrivals to the cast of Lost, Miles has always been our favorite, probably because ever since con man Sawyer warped into responsible LaFleur, the show has been sorely lacking in smart-assery.

And we got some primo smart-assery last night. One great thing about having such a large cast is that there are almost endless possibilities for character matchups. We can't recall Hurley and Miles ever spending that much time together and it was a hoot to see them playing off each other. It was especially fun to see them comparing their "superpowers." An even bigger hoot was the revelation that Hurley, the ultimate geek, hears "1977" and immediately thinks "Star Wars." To the ubernerds out there (of which Tom is proudly one, with the Wonder Woman comics to prove it) the year 1977 is like "33 A.D" to a Christian.

Looks like we can add Miles to the long list of characters (almost all of them, really) on this show with daddy issues. Still, we think ol' Dr. Chang may be the least offensive daddy of the bunch. Miles' mother made it sound like he basically kicked them off the island and we suspect that someone, either Daniel or Miles himself, tipped him off that a purge was coming and he did so to save their lives.

But it wasn't all just character bits last night. The plot is progressing nicely and we were happy to see that the repercussions of Kate's decision to hand Ben over to Richard weren't given short shrift. The tension is mounting and no line summed that up better than Juliet's typically understated "Well, here we go." Thank God Sawyer verbalized how stupid a move it was for Kate to be drawing attention to herself by speaking to Roger about his missing son. We're glad SOMEONE mentioned it. Jack may have thought her heart was in the right place but he didn't exactly demonstrate smart thinking by injecting himself into the drama either. Things are quickly coming to a head and we have no idea what's going to happen now that Sawyer and Juliet have a knocked-out, tied-up Phil stashed in their cabana.

And YAY! Daniel's back and he doesn't appear to be crazy anymore! What he's been doing for the last 3 years is a mystery. Has he spent the entire time in Ann Arbor, the Ground Zero of the DHARMA Initiative? Has he met the mysterious DeGroots, the driving force and benefactors of the DI? Are WE ever going to meet them?

It was also fun to see Naomi again. She was a relatively short-lived character but the actress who plays her is so charismatic that we always sit up a little straighter when she makes an appearance because we know we're going to be treated to some answers. Looks to us like Widmore really was the one behind the fake Oceanic plane found in the ocean. Of course we always thought so, but there was still some doubt since Widmore claimed it was Ben who did it. We also know why Miles asked for the specific sum of 3.2 million dollars from Ben to keep him from the freighter folk: it was exactly double what Widmore was paying him.

Let's see...what else? Oh, yeah: the dead DHARMA guy they had to cart out to the Orchid. Who knows? Although we suspect they might be using dead bodies for time traveling experiments. Maybe. Then there was Bram, the guy who briefly kidnapped Miles and asked him to join "the side that's gonna win." You may or may not remember, but he's one of Ilana's backup dancers, which forces us to re-ask the question that we asked last week: "WHO THE HELL IS ILANA AND WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING?" Our guess? She and her backup dancers are working for Mrs. Hawkings and the entire story of Lost is about three separate factions, Ben, Widmore, and Eloise, fighting for control of the island. After all, Widmore told Locke (what seems like a long time ago) that a war was coming. We suspect the rest of season 5 will be about getting the Losties out of the '70s and then Season 6 will be all about the upcoming present-day battle to come.


[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost S5E12: Dead is Dead

Even if every other scene in last night's episode consisted of Kate, Sawyer and Jack staring at each other and sighing, it still would have been an awesome episode because PENNY IS ALIVE, Y'ALL! Not only that, but Desmond is the MAN. Was that not the most satisfying beatdown you've ever seen in your life? Of course it forces the question as to how Desmond could deliver said beatdown after being shot in the chest, but Mrs. Hawkings told him that the island wasn't finished with him yet and we all know that if the island has plans for you, ain't nothing out there that can kill you.

In typical Lost fashion, this was an episode that appeared to answer a lot of questions, when in reality, it raised more new questions than answered old ones. Still, it was a deeply satisfying episode because we saw a scared, penitent Ben dealing with a confident, bemused Locke and that role reversal was a delicious thing to see.

Let's run down what we now know and what we now DON'T know.

We now know: that Ben, for all his faults, has a weak spot for mothers. We kinda knew this already, since it's been shown that the death of his own mother affected him deeply and his need to protect the pregnant women on the island bordered on mania (what with the "kidnapping and forcibly injecting them with drugs" bit and all) but last night's episode deepened that trait and gave us a more sympathetic Ben than we've ever seen before. He couldn't kill Penny once he saw that she had a child and he couldn't kill Rousseau for the exact same reason.

We don't know: Why Rousseau didn't seem to recognize Ben when she captured him and turned him over to Sayid in Season 2. Bitch was pretty crazy at that point but there's no way she didn't recognize the man who stole her child.

We now know: That the whispers are definitely The Others, since Ben told Danielle to run away whenever she heard them, the strong implication being that it meant his people were close by.

We don't know: How is it that Ben was hanging out in the Others' camp and even going on missions for them (with Ethan tagging along) while living in the DHARMA compound at the same time?

We now know: The whys and hows of Charles Widmore's banishment from the island. He fathered a child with a non-Other, which means Penny's mother isn't Eloise Hawkings, as many people had theorized.

We don't know: Why and how (not to mention when) Eloise herself left the island. She was mentioned in last week's episode as being one of the leaders of the Others (by Richard). That was 1977. Alex was born in 1988 and she looked to be about 5 at the time of Charles' banishment, putting that at around 1993 (which makes some sense because the purge took place in 1992). So, some time between 1977 and 1993, Eloise left the island, either forcibly or by choice.

We now know: That smokey lives in the basement of the temple and predates the DHARMA Initiative by a couple millennia, since the hieroglyphs we briefly saw depicted Anubis conversing with it, which means that, yes, the statue that we saw several episodes back was almost certainly Anubis. And speaking of that statue...

We don't know: WHO THE HELL IS ILANA AND WHAT THE HELL IS SHE DOING? "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Ooh! Ooh! Pick us! We know! The well that leads down to the donkey wheel! Clearly, there's a lot more to her than we know, since she apparently brought a stockpile of guns on to the plane and she has some cohorts among the passengers. We originally thought she worked for Widmore, but consider this: Ben called Widmore from the docks mere hours before boarding the plane and told him he was heading back to the island. Widmore waved him off, saying it was impossible to get back to the island. If Widmore believed that, then he couldn't have been the person who arranged for Ilana and her backup dancers to be on the plane, right? Maybe they're working for Eloise?

We now know: That the island definitely considers Locke to be the man in charge, since it took the form of Alex just to tell Ben to back the fuck off Locke and do whatever it is he says. Yes, that was the island/Smokey speaking and not Alex's ghost. Remember when Smokey killed Eko and took the form of his brother just before it killed him? Same thing here.

We don't know: Just what the hell it is Locke is supposed to do to reunite with the rest of the Losties. We assume he's probably going to head back the Orchid and the donkey wheel, since that's the only time-jumping apparatus on the island. Since it looks like Ilana and her crew are heading in that direction as well, expect to see a showdown at the Orchid soon. Hey! Does that mean it was Ilana shooting at Sawyer and Juliet and the rest of them during that canoe chase back when the island was skipping through time?

We now know: That the show doesn't spend nearly as much money on makeup and special effects as it should, since Ben's flashback wig looked ridiculous as did the confrontation with Smokey under the Temple.

We don't know: Why they couldn't just cast a younger actor to play flashback Ben, especially since the guy who played 40-year-old Widmore (in the scene where he met L'il Ben for the first time) looked almost exactly like the older Widmore.

Okay, we're sure we've missed plenty of things, so feel free to point them out.


[Photos: Lostpedia]


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Lost: S5E11: Whatever Happened, Happened

You would think, since we've been bitching about Kate all season and since we've been bitching about the '70s storyline for the last month, that we'd be UBER bitching about last night's episode.

Shows how much you know. We loved it.

We'll go even further: we think it was one of the best shows of the season and probably the best Kate-centric show they've ever had. There are a lot of reasons for this and you're gonna sit there and listen to them. Ready? Here we go.

It was one of the best of the season because for the first time in a long time, we were given a show that seamlessly blended current and former timelines, gave us insight into the actions of a main character (one we had assumed we'd had all figured out), while over everything, there was heavy tension because the stakes were high. In short, it was a classic Lost episode.

See, we were whiny about last week's episode because it spent a lot of time on Sayid without really telling us anything we didn't already know about him. This episode offered up a Kate we haven't seen in a long time: a heroic Kate. For too long, she's been the ruler in a dick-measuring contest between Jack and Sawyer or she's been stuck being the mommy for reasons that made little sense to us. We once again see a Kate that has her own motivations and owns her actions. It was actually a little thrilling and made us pine for the days when she trekked off into the jungle against the orders of the men around her and did whatever the hell she thought was right at the time. That's a Kate we can love and we finally saw her again last night.

On top of all that, it filled in the blanks on the periods missing from Kate's story and gave us some of what we already figured out while pulling the rug out from under us as to WHY she made the choices she did. We (like so many other Lost fans) figured that Sawyer's whispered favor to her on the helicopter was a request to find Cassidy, his old flame, and their daughter, Clementine. Unsurprisingly, we were right, and the scene of their meeting offered us so much more than we had imagined.

We love the relationship between Kate and Cassidy. They seem to really get each other in a way that no one else in their respective lives do. It's rare to see female friendships on television that revolve around true bonds and deep understanding rather than the backstabbing of Desperate Housewives or the treacly "thank you for being a friend" of say, Golden Girls or Sex and the City. These are 2 unconventional women who have been there for each other and don't judge each other for the things they've done. We LOVED the way Cassidy delivered the line, "Oh my God...that baby isn't yours, is it?" She got it in a second and rather than judge Kate for the lie, she judged her for thinking she could lie to HER, of all people. Further, Cassidy uttered the truest line yet about Jack without ever having met him: "Yeah, well. Your Jack sounds like a real piece of work."

We do think Cassidy had it a little wrong about Sawyer. It made sense that she wouldn't have nice things to say about the guy, but ultimately, we don't believe that Sawyer hopped out of that helicopter just to run away from Kate. Yeah, he pretty much admitted to it later, but we don't trust his opinion of himself or of his actions. Jumping out of that helicopter was what set Sawyer on the road to heroism because it was his first truly heroic act. Yeah, he was scared of his feelings for Kate and yeah, he didn't think he deserved her, but he jumped because he was a hero, not because he was a coward. Cassidy was wrong and Sawyer was wrong when he agreed with her.

And speaking of Sawyer, how WONDERFUL when writers let adult characters act like real adults. We don't know if this will remain true in the long run, but right now, Sawyer's with Juliet and he's not tossing that aside because Kate showed up. He made that clear and we love him for it. Of course, that means that if the writers want to maintain some romantic tension, someone in that love quadrangle is going to have to die, and by default, that person would have to be Juliet, so THAT makes us more than a little nervous. Still, for now, we're happy. Sawyer and Kate DIDN'T act like self-involved twits and they DID state firmly their reasons why. Sawyer loves Juliet and he ain't leavin' her; Kate came back to the island to find Claire.

Wait, what? Kate came back to find Claire? And those dirty writers let us think she only came back to find Sawyer! Clever, clever writers. All this time, we thought Kate came back for purely selfish reasons and instead, she came back for the best reason of all. To find the mother of the child she's been raising. And the genius of it is, it all remains perfectly true to the character as we've known her. Kate is nothing else if not a user. It's her main character flaw. She uses people (men, mostly) to get her from point A to point B and then she runs away from those people. She realized last night that she'd been using Aaron to get over Sawyer (and it didn't hurt that the little tyke helped to keep her out of jail), but once she realized what she'd done, she gave him up. This wasn't running away. She did absolutely the right thing by giving Aaron to Claire's mother (something we never saw coming) and then offering her pledge to her that she was heading back to the island to find Claire.

Frankly, we're just happy that SOMEONE remembered that Claire even existed.

To add to all the sisterhood/motherhood themes running around, we had some fantastic scenes between Juliet and Kate. Again, we had characters acting like real adults (instead of backstabbing soap opera bitches) and we had two women taking control of a situation because they strongly felt it was the right thing to do.

In other news, Jack is still a douchebag, but at least we get more scenes of characters TELLING him he's a douchebag. LOVED that scene with Juliet storming into the bathroom, furious with him for his selfishness. We will say, though, he did get a great line in with Kate, when she said "I liked the old Jack," and he responded with a genuinely wounded "You didn't like the old Jack." Still, one good line doesn't change the fact that he was acting like a douche. We all know what a horrible person Ben Linus turned out to be, but only a douchebag would refuse to operate on a dying child.

And besides, in the douchebaggiest twist of all, Jack's refusal to save Ben is what ultimately turned him into an Other. Along with the oh-so covenient memory loss that will make him forget that Sayid ever shot him, we're wondering if that trip into the Temple will also possess him with the "sickness" that took Rousseau's team. Are all the Others - the true Others, not the hired help like Juliet - "possessed" by the smoke monster? That would explain why some of the Tailies, like Cindy the flight attendant, acted so weird after they went off with them.

And finally, the episode ended the best way it possibly could, in the present, with John Locke smiling creepily over the shocked Ben. We can't WAIT to see what happens next.





[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost: S5E10: He's Our You

Expect this to be a fairly short post because, except for the last 90 seconds, almost nothing happened in last night's episode. To be blunt, we thought it was the weakest episode of the season so far.

One thing we did kind of like about the episode is that it marked a return to the season 1 through 3 narrative technique (and one for which the show is known) of focusing on one character and using flashbacks to both comment on the current actions of that character and to fill in some background on them. We suspect, since there are so many dangling plot elements regarding how and why the O6 got on Ajira 316, we're going to be seeing more of these as the season winds down. That's fine by us. We're dying to know what Kate did with Aaron or whether or not Sun met with Widmore before boarding the plane or what the hell happened to Desmond and Penny. The problem is, Sayid's flashbacks revealed almost nothing we didn't already know or strongly suspect.

The first flashback, to his childhood in Iraq, strongly echoed (no pun intended) Mr. Eko's backstory. Sayid killed so his brother (?) wouldn't have to. Nicely done and it set up the theme of the episode: that Sayid is, at his heart, a killer. Of course, we knew this already because the only character who racked up a higher body count during the course of the show is Ben himself. We've lost count of the number of people Sayid has killed both on and off the island so a scene spelling out that he's a killer seemed a little superfluous to us. It's like having a flashback for Jack showing he's a doctor or for Kate showing she's an annoying, self-centered, cock-teasing pain in the ass (oh come on, we had to work that in somewhere).

It seemed as if this episode was going to explain how and why Ben and Sayid had their falling out. We always suspected that Sayid must have discovered that Ben had his wife killed or at the very least that he had been lying to Sayid all along about the people he was ordering him to kill. Well, there were no answers here at all. Ben and Sayid parted ways because...well, they just did, is all. Why that resulted in Sayid telling Hurley to always do the opposite of whatever Ben tells him, we don't know. And we kinda wonder if we're ever going to know because it seemed as if the writers thought they were filling in all the blanks, as if they've written the final chapter on the Ben/Sayid alliance.

Not that the episode was completely without merit. We'll get to the "shocking" ending in a bit, but what stood out to us was how certain scenes echoed older, somewhat iconic scenes from earlier in the series. To go along with the Eko echo, we had a scene in a bar with Sayid and Ilana that was eerily similar to the scene where Jack and Ana Lucia first met in the airport (doubly so because the actress looks so much like Michelle Rodriguez that it's a little distracting) and we had Sayid tied to a tree, ostensibly being tortured (even if they just dosed him with some acid on a sugarcube, how very '70s) while Sawyer looked on, which of course strongly echoes the scene in season 1 when it was Sawyer tied to the tree while Sayid tortured him. All very clever callbacks which make us wonder if it's just about the writers being clever or if there's something else going on that actually causes these echoes to happen.

Which reminds us, part of the reason we're getting a little antsy with the whole "back to the '70s" subplot is because ever since the time shifting stopped there's been almost no magic or mystery. It's all very plodding and we only have so much interest in seeing Horace or Radzinsky in the flesh and we've REALLY lost interest in the whole love quadrangle going on between Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet. Just love the one you're with, bitches, and save yourselves a shit ton of trouble. More of Locke staring off into the distance and saying something cryptic and less meaningful glances and long pauses between pretty people with extravagant problems, please.

Hey, remember when we said this was going to be a short post? Ha. Fooled ya.

We felt bad for Sawyer as everything he built up for himself over the last three years started to unravel in front of his eyes and despite his chest-puffery of last episode, he doesn't seem to have the skills to fix the situation. On the other hand, the growing annoyance of Sawyer (and to a lesser extent, Juliet) with the arrival of the other 815ers struck us as a little misguided. They DID come back to save your asses, y'know. It's not their fault that you all decided to play house in DHARMAville.

As for that ending...was it really a shock? It seemed to us that the whole episode was leading to that point anyway. Sure, it's a shock to see a 12 year old get shot point blank by an adult on network television but does anyone really believe that Sayid managed to kill l'il Ben? Before we say something we'll regret later (because you never can tell what the hell these writers are going to do next), we admit we can toy with the idea that somehow Sayid managed to change the past or create an alternate timeline, but we seriously doubt it. L'il Ben will get miraculously healed by the island and/or the two secret doctors hanging out in DHARMAville will be forced to come out of the closet and save his life.

Of course, it didn't escape our notice that l'il Ben slipped Sayid a copy of Carlos Castaneda's A Separate Reality when he was in that cell and you just KNOW the writers gleefully wrote that little Easter egg in just to fuck with the fans' heads.

No, more important than a possible time paradox is the fate of Sayid now. His actions were alarming not because he shot a kid, but because he seemed resigned to his fate as a killer in such a way as to make us think that HE thinks he's at the end of the road. We can guarantee that before this is all over, at least one major character will be dead, but we're really hoping not to see any major deaths for a while. Save that for the series finale, writers. Please?

[Photos: ABC.com]

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Lost S5E9: Namaste

Last night’s episode was a great one for character reasons, but kind of a lousy one for plot reasons. Ever since the show landed in the ‘70s, the plot has slowed down to a crawl. It’s great to see the Losties placed in this situation and it’s interesting to see how they were moved around the chessboard to get to this point, but we’re getting a little antsy and we’d like to see things move forward a bit. Since the first part of the season was such a rollercoaster ride, we’re hoping that this is just an “eye of the storm” moment for the season.

Another annoying thing: the show sometimes treats certain things as shocking revelations when they’re clearly nothing of the sort. It wasn’t shocking to see l’il Ben show up at the end since we all knew he was there anyway. Why go to the trouble of hiding his face and waiting for the big reveal? Who didn’t know as soon as a kid showed up that it was Ben?

Lest you think this minor bitching indicates that we hated the episode, let us tell you what we loved:

THE RUNWAY! We do so love when we get something right. As you may recall, the runway that Ajira 316 landed on was the same one Kate and Sawyer were being forced to construct way back in S3 when they were held captive by the Others, which forces the question: How the hell much does Ben know, anyway? The answer is looking more and more like: EVERYTHING. And that makes him even more dangerous than we thought. He knew a flight was going to crash on Hydra island; he met Sayid 30 years before Sayid met him; and apparently there’s been a picture of Jack, Kate, and Hurley hanging in the DHARMA barracks (where he’s lived almost his whole life) for 30 years.

Kinda makes you wonder why, way back in S2, he put Kate, Hurley, Jack, and Sawyer on that list he gave to Michael. He knew who all of those people were and he’s known it for 30 years.

As for Sayid, we have absolutely no idea where that plot strand is going. Either he winds up being welcomed into the DHARMA community, gets set loose back out in the jungle, or killed. It seems pretty unlikely that Sawyer can convince the DHARMAns (new word) to welcome him with open arms, so things are looking mighty grim for our favorite Iraqi assassin.

As for Sawyer…the writers have done a bangup job taking him from asshole, to charming asshole, to full-on hero and leader. We were practically doing fist pumps when he quietly tore douchebag Jack a new asshole. It’s about time someone pointed out that the so-called “leader” of the Losties has a pretty lousy track record.

Leadership is something of a recurring theme with this show. Who is the leader of the others, Ben, Locke or Richard? Who is the leader of the Losties, Jack, Sawyer, or (again) Locke? The roles seem to shift constantly depending on circumstances. We can’t help but note that in all the jockeying for leadership, the women automatically take the back seat as if there’s no question that they’re not meant to lead.

And speaking of the women…

SUN WHACKING BEN WITH AN OAR = AWESOME. “I lied.” Any character that gets a chance to knock Ben unconscious is okay by us. It’s driving us crazy that we’re not getting an explanation as to why she’s in the present when the rest of the O6 wound up in the past. Half-baked theories: It has something to do with the wedding ring (since they keep making a point of showing it) or it has something to with the fact that she was the only member of the O6 who wasn’t personally “invited” to return to the island by the messianic John Locke.

Our love for Juliet grows with each episode and we are SO looking forward to her telling Kate to back off from her man. Elizabeth Mitchell plays her in such a way that it’s virtually impossible to read what’s going on in her head, which can make some of her scenes a little chilling. She’s a lot like Ben in that respect. “Hi Kate, I’m Juliet. Welcome to the Island.” A perfectly innocuous comment but it’s still dripping with subtext.

Kate’s in a holding pattern, plot- and character-wise right now. She doesn’t seem to have much in the way of motivation and she only seems to exist to further the love triangle subplot. We do wonder when the moon-eyed Sawyer is going to get around to asking her if she took care of that favor for him.

In fact, there’s, once again, a lot not being said among these characters. We realize that they have to maintain a certain distance from each other to keep up appearances, but come on. There’s some MAJOR catching up to do. Jack and Sawyer had a chance, but as always with those two, it wound up being another dick-measuring contest between them.

Let’s see…what else…

Oh! Baby Ethan! Sorry, but that pulled us right out of the story. We’re supposed to believe that Ethan was only 27 when he died? Come on. The constant problem of actors on this show portraying characters much older or much younger than themselves is getting to be something of a joke. Although we did love the look on Juliet’s face when she realized just who she was holding in her arms.

Here’s the big confusing thing about the episode. We need you to discuss it because we can’t figure it out. When 316 was crashing and the island came into view, you could briefly hear the recording of the numbers being recited. Now why is that? They went to the radio tower in S4 to remove Rousseau’s distress call. There shouldn’t be anything coming out of that radio tower, so why are the numbers transmitting again?

Okay, we’ve rambled enough. Your turn.

[Photos: ABC.com]


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Lost, Season 5, Episode 8: LaFleur

What a fantastic episode last night, one of our favorites of the season, despite (or maybe because of) the lack of shocking revelations. Not that there weren't some juicy tidbits to be had. For instance:

♦ Sawyer and Juliet! Wooo! Ever since the shirtless Sawyer washed up on the beach and fell at Juliet's feet, we suspected this was where they were heading with the characters. For the longest time, it was a development that we had a hard time believing. Well, no more. The writers did a fantastic job getting these two together in such a way that it not only seemed natural and believable, it seemed inescapable. The scene at the dock when Sawyer talks her out of leaving on the sub by asking her "Who's going to have my back now?" may just have been one of the most romantic scenes in the history of a show that isn't lacking in romantic scenes. We were yelling "Kiss her! KISS HER!"

♦ Juliet has great hair when she has access to plumbing and electricity doesn't she?

♦ Loved the scene where Sawyer (in a callback to his alias "LaFleur") came home with a single flower for his lady love, although it illustrated something we find a bit annoying, if not disturbing about how female characters are written on the show. Too often, we get introduced to these kickass woman capable of just about anything being reduced to housekeeping tasks. Kate went from running from the law on 2 continents, to swinging through the jungle with a gun, to spoonfeeding a baby that wasn't even her own. Penny went from an adventurer who spent years scouring the globe looking for her man, to a mom folding laundry. And now we have Juliet, a world class fertility specialist, a crack shot with a rifle and now she's in a kitchen draining spaghetti for dinner. The only one who went from submissive to kickass is Sun and the general consensus on that character is that she's heading in the wrong direction. Don't get us wrong, it doesn't really piss us off and we doubt it's deliberate on the writers' part, but there's a subtext there we don't much like.

♦ Another Wooo! moment: we finally got to see the entire 4-toed statue, albeit from behind and only for a second. This screencap leads us to believe that it's definitely a statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld. After all, didn't Charlotte once say "This place is DEATH?" Isn't Cerberus (the name for the smoke monster) also a Greek god of the underworld? Doesn't it look like that statue is holding an ankh (the egyptian symbol for eternal life) in its hand? And didn't an ankh play something of a part in the unfolding story of how the Losties wound up in the DHARMA camp? Hmmmm.

♦ It's possible that the writers are actively TRYING to make us hate Jack and Kate because we did NOT want to see the Sawyer/Kate reunion after he finally found some peace with Juliet and we were kinda pissed at him that he lied to Juliet about where he was going.

♦ Speaking of which, what's the purpose of having the O6 return to the island? By the time they got there, the rest of the Losties were for the most part, safe. Clearly, the story's not over yet, but there's a reason why they had to return and we haven't been told what it is yet.

♦ WHERE THE HELL ARE ROSE AND BERNARD?! They better not be dead, y'all. We had assumed they were going to turn up in the DHARMA camp at some point, but no such luck. Are they with the Hostiles now?

♦ Speaking of the DHARMA camp, Faraday's heartbreak at seeing the young Charlotte in 1974 was a tear-jerker, no? Here's the problem: Charlotte arrived on the freighter in 2004 and died (if you can believe it) only a couple weeks later. Flash back to 30 years earlier and there's a young Charlotte of about 4 years old. There's no way the adult Charlotte was 34 years old when she died. Then again, they do tend to fudge the ages of these characters as they relate to the actors playing them. Locke and Ben are playing characters significantly younger than the actors and Christian and his father are playing characters significantly older than the actors. We guess it's just one of those things you have to accept in the show.

♦ Speaking of Ben, shouldn't the young Ben be around somewhere in the DHARMA camp? And where's Miles? He admitted he'd been on the island before. If they saw young Charlotte, shouldn't there be a young Miles wandering around somewhere?

♦ So how come a woman in 1977 can give birth on the island but women a couple decades later die from it? Could it have something to do with the poison gas used in the purge to kill all the DHARMA people? And who was the baby she gave birth to? Come on, it has to be SOMEBODY we already met.

♦ Loved the scene with Sawyer and Richard. So, there's a truce between the Hostiles and the DHARMA camp? We'd like to know more, please.

♦ And finally (although we could probably go on for another 500 words), attention must be paid to Josh Holloway, who knocked this episode out of the park. We still got glimpses of con man Sawyer in the ways he can lie so smoothly at the drop of a hat, but we also saw the culmination of this character's growth. From the man who let everyone believe he stole Shannon's inhaler to the guy who grins from ear to ear (showing off those killer dimples) at the news of a successful birth on the island and who, without any unease can openly tell a woman he loves her as he tenderly gives her a flower, it's been a great ride for the character. Although let's face it, no one, not even Sawyer himself, believes that he's really over Kate. Forget her, James! Move on! Leave her and Jack to their breathy sighs and staring contests! You've got the ass-kickingest woman in the world and she's got great hair! And she can fix your car even!


[Photos: ABC.com]


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