And we're baaaaaaaaaack on Friday night after having been bumped to Saturday morning last week. (That damned volcano!)
You know it's an odd episode when (arguably) the best moments involved Kate. This was an "advancing the pieces" week -- little memorable (with one obvious exception), almost nothing objectionable, and a truly unexpected conclusion (if you can trust that it will last more than a week.)
This Intro bloc now regularly links to the three other discussions that I follow on Lost (collectively "The Aforementioned Three"): the one at the Onion's analytical "AV Club" (which has excellent comments), the effusive Entertainment Weekly site, and the Bored Duo (plus the perspicacious Chadwick Matlin) at Slate (which is worth visiting for the "Previously on Lost" video feature.)
If you jump off of the boat, please bear in mind that there are:
SPOILERS BELOW
And the answer to last week's quiz is: it's an everybody flashback episode. Sideways World is getting crowded. Still somewhat pointless, but crowded.
SPOILERS BELOW
If you are one of the writers of LOST, this is fair warning: if I meet you, you will be thrown down a well, and if you can't explain to me how Christian (as Smokey?) got out to the freighter, gave Michael permission to "go now," and was preceded by the whispers of dead souls in the process, you will not be appearing in future episodes. If you can't explain how Christian (as Smokey??) got to Jack's hospital on the mainland, this will happen to you twice.
This was an odd episode -- not weak, exactly, but not as much going for it as other recent ones. It was nice to see that You All Everybody was the subject of the flashback, we got a nice reprise of Sawyer jumping off of the helicopter (except that it was Jack jumping off of Sawyer's boat), and we had some other interesting developments, but nothing wonderful for an episode placed at such a pivotal moment.
Let's start with Jin and Sun, Island version. Their reunion scene was one of the worst examples of dramatic self-upstaging -- hell, what they did was so bad there isn't even a term for it! -- that I've ever seen. When they're running to see each other, meeting right at the point of the sonic fence, one can hardly avoid thinking -- maybe because of that guy who got fried at the beginning of the Desmond episode not long ago, eh? -- that the Widmorons are not going to get the fence powered down in time! As they were running towards each other, I'm thinking "oh no, Korean Barbecue!" And then -- uncommented upon -- that doesn't happen. Instead, we get a brief reunion followed by events making it also a temporary reunion, but that doesn't even matter because we're still thinking about the sonic fence and the likelihood of seeing Sun and Jin fried. The abortive and distracting sonic fence peril wasn't an accident, but I can't remember ever seeing a significant threat, that has been built up to in multiple episodes, deliver less of a payoff to viewers. What was it about? "Don't worry, love conquers all, so if you're running towards your One and Only and meeting just at the point of a sonic fence, Widmore's people will surely deactivate it in time, you betcha!" It was one of the weirdest moments ever on the show, and that's before Lapidus chips in -- after Sun's apparently pointless loss of speech is revealed to have been, indeed, temporary as well as pointless -- with "Looks like somebody got their voice back." O RLY?
The Sideways Jin and Sun developments are also pedestrian, even if you suspect (as I do) that Jin is lying, probably about the fate of the baby. (Or he could be withholding information about her -- maybe she can't have more kids, so cue Juliet the Fertility specialist -- but do they really have time left for that?) So what was the point of that whole shooting Sun in the gut thing, then? Did the writers just want to waste some time so they'd have less time left to solve the mysteries? Some people think that the whole arc was there to show more of a link between the realities, but couldn't they have found a way that actually answered a mystery or advanced the plot?
Speaking of going nowhere: did we really need the whole Jack-meets- Claire-at-Ilana's-office "Touched by a Scotsman" storyline? What did it advance? Did we really need to see Ilana -- not the most natural choice for a family law attorney on her best day -- again, especially when the juxtaposition with Desmond made her acting seem even more wooden? (Woodener?) And did we really need to see Jack's son again? So Jack's home life is getting better? Umm ... ok! Did it really require so much airtime? Maybe the Sideways Jack and Claire meeting will turn out to have been important, but at this point, we see nothing much -- I guess the point was just that Jack and Claire met in both timelines, woo-hoo! -- and time is running out. This might make sense if, as some suspect, each cast member has to play "Choose Your Timeline!" in the last episode, but that is not how I'm betting -- at least in this paragraph.
While the Sun-Jin and Jack-Claire interactions left something to be desired, the show did have some nice interplay at points and a lot of it involved Kate. Her dialog with Sawyer in the police station was rather intriguing, even though it seemed to be leading us nowhere (other than reminding us that Sawyer didn't want people to know he'd been to Australia -- which we knew.) If this had happened with ten hours left in the show, it would have been better. The Sawyer-Jack discussion on the boat that ended up with Jack swimming to shore was excellent, to my taste the most important and memorable moment of the episode. But the scene that surprised me in its effectiveness was the Kate-Claire dialog, where she apologized to Claire and lured her onto the boat. Add this bit of salvation to Desmond's apparently talking Sayid out of killing him and one wonders just how effective this whole "claiming" thing is -- and why Dogen apparently felt that it was so irreversible as to justify Sayid's death. (Maybe someone had been a little bit misinformed, huh? Whoops!) The most interesting takeaway from this is that Sayid is (web consensus is) apparently willing to lie to Smokey. This means that the writers could truly cross us up by showing us Desmond's corpse in the well next week. I'd cheer the audacity, much as I like Desmond. What the hell -- less than five hours left, do we really need him alive in Island world?
I have to admit feeling a little sorry for Smokey. Not only does he lose Sayid's loyalty (we think), and Claire's compliance (evidently), and not only does he lose his collection of Candidates, but Widmore proves that he can blow up anyone who is standing near him. (No, the bombs weren't intended to blow up Smokey -- and Widmore presumably knew that that was impossible. They were intended to blow up Smokey's army.)
We didn't follow the Richard/Ben/Miles trio this week -- and I can't wait for us to do so soon. We did get a dash of Sideways Miles and a nice scene with Sideways Ben, though -- although, again, even the well-acted scene between Ben and Mr. Locke could easily have been blue-penciled if they care about solving some mysteries.
Sigh. We need a stiff shot of Line of the Week to perk us up. So here goes:
Line of the Week (comic relief division): when Miles says "I've got a live one here!" Oh, indeed, sir!
Line of the Week (macho dramatic division): "Git off my boat!"
Line of the Week (nonchalantly begging for one's life division): "what will you tell 'err?"
My guess is that the second entry wins, although the first one should.
The most disturbing thing I've read this week -- maybe this year -- about the show is that the writers/runners (specifically Lindorf and Cuse) say that they don't "owe us" any answers other than the one about the relationship between the Sideways and Island timelines. That's going to be really, really disappointing, if that's what they're doing. That will hurt box set sales. I see a few reasons to retain hope, though:
First, they can do a lot of quick exposition through Miles if they want to. Pump the dead for information! Solve mystery after mystery, boom, boom, boom. Start with Adam and Eve! (By the way, my hope is that they will turn out to be the bodies of characters named Adam and Steve, just to piss off the fundies.)
Alternatively, they can solve many mysteries with exposition during the Jacob/Smokey flashback episode, which is the one after next. This looks like it may be the most difficult episode to write of the entire series. Who else will be in it? Current characters in past lives? Are we going to have a reincarnation drama? I have some horrible visions of the characters playing roles in ancient Egypt, Hurley as a eunuch, Claire as a princess, Sawyer as a Pharaoh -- OK, maybe not Sawyer as a Pharaoh ....
Finally, let's note that UnLocke's promise to Sayid -- that he'll reunite him with a living Nadia -- can be met if UnLocke destroys the Island timeline and sends Sayid and whoever else in a lifeboat to the Sideways timeline, where Nadia is alive. If Smokey is an evil genie, a Monkey's Paw, then that's what we'd be likely to see.
And, with visions and fears of how the series will resolve itself (and why they're not further along with it!) clanging through my head, I'm taking next week off. Of course, so is the series. People have wondered why -- for those not raised in the industry town, they're pushing the last four days of LOST into Sweeps Weeks, of course! If anyone wants to toss together a wildcat diary for the off-week, be my guest! (But then you have to give back what you took. Oh, that reminds me that I forgot to write about Zoe. Oh well.)
PREVIOUSLY ON LOST FRIDAY NIGHT DISCUSSION
Episodes #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, and #11!