Join Scott, Robert and Paul as they talk about Inception, its perplexing critical reception and how it succeeds where so many other films haven’t this summer, and afterwards, a discussion of Paul’s recent Comic-Con experiences and how far-reaching the event itself has become.
Let us know what you think in the comments (or get in touch with us here) and look forward to more podcasts in the future!
The end has arrived for the survivors of Oceanic 815 and while we’ll never get to follow any more adventures on that mysterious island, here’s what worked (and didn’t work) for us in “The End.”
“It worked.”
That’s really all I can say about the goings-on in the two and a half hour series finale of LOST.
After multiple viewings of the finale and so much reflection on the series as a whole, I’ve come away with a greater appreciation not just for science fiction or spirituality or even the age-old debate of fate versus free will, but also for the inherent capacity for love and compassion that I believe is in all people. It’s a deeply personal reaction that I only half-expected to glean from a show like LOST. After spending so much mental energy over the last couple of weeks trying to figure out the logistics of the show, I realized after the finale that I still wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. The mythology, the setting, the much-cherished characters; they all came together to create an elaborate tale based on the simple concept that everything has a beginning and an end. On such an abstract level, I can’t help but relate it to events that have taken place in my own life.
Several years ago, I found myself in a place that brought me together with people from all different walks of life. While everyone brought their own past experiences with them, we also encountered new life experiences as a group as time went on. Although some didn’t last long and others were introduced along the way, the dynamic of the group was always a key factor in the equation. There were good times and troubling times, but we all soldiered on and did what he had to do to keep moving forward. Some stepped up when it mattered most and others provided support and leverage when it was needed. But then our time together began to grow short. Many fell by the wayside and it became so that the only decisions left to make were often the hardest ones. In the end, no one would survive what was in store for us in the larger scheme of things. Everyone fell prey to events that were beyond any of our control and driven by hands more powerful than our own, no matter how much we persevered. The best we could do was take our lumps with pride and do what we felt was honorable and right for our own souls. Ultimately, the point came where the only thing left to do was to simply let go.
Now, none of that took place on an island, and there were never any struggles of life and death. Instead, it was just a job—a job where I got to work with some great people that lasted nearly six years and yet ended with everyone losing out. I don’t have any illusions that there was anything special bestowed upon me, and maybe the people who were a part of it would be surprised to know that I still get choked up about it now and then, but it was a time in my life that I’ll never forget. The point is that whether it’s time on a job, with your family or a group of friends (or even strangers), closing out those special times in life happens to all of us at some point or another. As painful as it is when they end (and they all end eventually), they’re all the more rewarding when you can look back on them with new perspective. Those are the times that enrich us with strength and hope and make us better people, but they don’t last forever. Life simply will not allow it. So that moment of letting go and realizing that you have to move on is a truly powerful thing, and for me, though I didn’t even see it coming, the finale to LOST reflected that in a profound way.
On the surface, this show has been about being lost on an island, lost at sea and even being lost in time, but it’s also about being lost in life. And I don’t just mean that general feeling of “where’s life taking me?” but also in the sense of understanding what matters. At the beginning of the story, our characters are given a new beginning and while it’s rough going at first, they eventually begin to find their way. Knowing what to value and what to stand up for isn’t always easy, and having reason or faith on your side doesn’t always make you right, but everyone has to stand for something. But standing your ground is only worth doing if you can help your fellow man along the way. In my eyes, that’s the story of the survivors of Oceanic 815. Everyone who was in that final scene in the church stood their ground at some point on the island and did what they thought was right for the benefit of others.
As it turns out, the story of LOST is also as much about death as it is about life. In the end, everyone dies. It’s the one inescapable fate that we all succumb to sooner or later, and for those of us who have either lost someone or have nearly lost our own lives, death also becomes a point of higher understanding. Everything you do in your life is up to you, but what you do in death is maybe the most important. Even if you’ve been dealt a bad hand, your life is still yours to make the most of, and when you draw your last breath, the most important time in your life will be the one you look back on with the most vivid, meaningful memories.
All told, if there’s a definite moral to LOST, it doesn’t present itself front and center—and nor should it—but instead lets viewers decide what parts of it mean something to them. Perhaps that’s the beauty of a story like LOST. The meaning and insight that I take away from the show is my own, and if someone else doesn’t get anything at all out of it, I suppose I can’t fault them for it. Maybe they weren’t paying attention, or maybe they weren’t ready to understand. Or maybe, like a cast of strangers on a flight from Sydney, we’ve just lived different lives.
“The End” was one of LOST‘s best episodes—fun, thrilling, heart-wrenching and mind-expanding—while also being deeply frustrating, failing to sum up any of the series’ long-term mysteries in a satisfying way.
The marketing for this final season used “All will be revealed” as its tagline. After having three full years to wrap up the show, almost none of the LOST‘s big questions — Why can’t babies be conceived on the island? What was Walt’s significance? Where were the supply drops coming from? Why were the Others kidnapping specific people? — were answered. Sure, there was some beating around the bush, but “each question will lead to another question” (still pissed at you about that one, Darlton), and while we kinda sorta learned what the Island was (it has a glowy cave that’s allegedly important) and what the smoke monster was (a mean man who fell into the aforementioned glowy cave or something), none of that means anything to my puny human brain. The answer is, essentially, God did it, or more precisely, anything strange that ever happened was the work of godlike creatures who were manipulating, for good or for bad, the humans who happened upon their playground. This is not a satisfying LOST conclusion for me.
In retrospect, this has largely been a wasted season of Lost. While it was great to see Terry O’Quinn gleefully hamming it up as the Man In Black, the redemption of Ben, and the season-long arc of a newly humbled Jack, it’s more than a little infuriating to hear Darlton tell us that we didn’t need to see the stuff we wanted to see, but it was absolutely necessary to spend 20 minutes on alt-Sawyer’s failed courtship of alt-Charlotte. Worst of all, to me anyway, was the fact that Locke never came back to save the day. While the man of faith’s specter loomed large over the proceedings, with Jack giving the Man in Black a mighty good tongue-lashing about dishonoring his memory by taking his face, I really hate that the show’s best character met a sad and lonely death after living such a sad and lonely life. Characters like Desmond and Sawyer, who seemed extremely important in earlier seasons, were pretty much just long-haired handsome dudes along for Jack’s ride.
Like everyone else in the entire universe, I am very mixed on the flash-sideways, now more than ever. While I heard a lot about people crying during every one of the realization moments, the only one that meant much of anything to me was Sawyer and Juliet’s. Otherwise, you saw one and you saw ‘em all: two people touch, they get a goofy grin on their face, they realize they’re… dead I guess? After the Jin/Sun connection, the rest of them got pretty monotonous. I honestly got pretty angry when I was watching the last scene, but I’ve come around a bit on it in the days since, especially after reading a bit about Tibetan Buddhist bardo states. The idea of a dream realm where you work out your issues of life before moving on to heaven unencumbered by earthly baggage is interesting, and adds a bit more resonance to Locke and Ben’s flash-sideways episodes earlier this year. I think most of us would’ve preferred that the show ended on an earthly note, but it’s not our show, is it?
On a technical level, “The End” was one of the best-made episodes of television ever. The pacing was impeccable, never moving too fast or too slow. Jack Bender’s direction was expansive and cinematic, giving just the right tone and feel to every scene. The climactic final battle between Jack and Locke felt appropriately apocalyptic, particularly when the cliff fell away into the ocean. And the performances left every character with a nice moment, especially Jorge Garcia’s panicked reaction to being the island’s newest guardian.
Still, there are so many holes for longtime fans of the show to overlook. There are actually more mysteries that have been answered than you may realize, but imagine the emotional gut punch this final season could’ve been had Darlton weaved the thousands of loose threads they’ve left dangling over the years into a completed piece. It’s as apples to oranges a comparison as one can make, but compare the final season of LOST to the final few seasons of The Shield. That show began its exit plan in its third season, just as LOST did, and used its fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh seasons to build the series as a whole into an unbearably intense morality play spanning its entire run, culminating in what stands in my mind as the greatest series finale ever. Or compare LOST’s final season to its closer cousin Battlestar Galactica‘s final season. Though some felt the show flew off the rails in its last minutes, the season’s worth of episodes that preceded them were riveting, emotional masterpieces. Way too much of LOST‘s final season feels like *SPOILERS IF YOU PLAN ON EVER WATCHING BSG* Starbuck’s final moments, an unexplainable character who is so unexplainable, in fact, that she ends up completely unexplained, and goes POOF into the wind never to be heard from again *END OF SPOILERS FOR PROCRASTINATING NERDS*.
So, do I feel like I’ve been robbed of six years of my life because the last episode of LOST was disappointing on a mythological level? Absolutely not, and anyone who says so is a complete and total moron. I have never enjoyed a show—and being a part of its fan community—more. LOST is undeniably one of the greatest series in TV history, and I doubt we’ll ever see anything this challenging and bizarre on television ever again. I will miss it terribly.
Well, barring any future “Hurley and Ben Run the Island” spin-off, it appears that LOST is finally over. Before I get to my thoughts on “The End,” here’s a little history of LOST and I: I didn’t love this show at first. I remember LOST, Boston Legal, and Desperate Housewives all launched out of the ABC gate the same fateful fall (and Grey’s Anatomy showed up later that very same season), and for some reason I chose the Housewives campy intrigue (hey, the first season was well put together, before it all went to sucksville) over what I assumed would be a dramatic retread of Gilligan’s Island. I (much like Darlton, if rumors are correct) didn’t think LOST would make it past its first season. It seemed too serialized for broadcast television. And then a funny thing happened: It hit it big. REAL BIG. People were sucked in. So, I tried to catch up a few times throughout the first season but still didn’t love it. Then I returned for season 2, still not loving it (I don’t miss Ana Lucia or, blasphemy I guess, Eko). But somewhere in the course of season 2 I really couldn’t stop watching. I’d get angry at the show for not answering questions, and for recurring bouts of lazy writing, and relish in the moments that it got right. All the way up to “The End” (God, that title sounds more and more obnoxious every time I type it) this was true.
Did I like the finale of LOST? Short answer: Yeah, I guess so. I was compelled by all two and a half hours, certainly. Do I still think it lacked answers to some questions? And had logical holes galore? You betcha. I’ve always thought the assurances from Darlton and critics alike that this show was about the characters was a load of bull. I was going to point out that, if that were true, why were some characters (cough, Kate, cough) still 2 dimensional until the very end. But I thought Gawker did an awesome job of conveying that point already. And anyway, some of the characters were important to me.I did rather enjoy when some characters were on screen. It was nice to see Sideways (Heavenways?) Sawyer and Juliet reunite. Still, much like I’ve wondered about much of this show, were Darlton making up the Sideways storyline as they went along? Why give Jack and Juliet a kid? Why put Ben and Rousseau together? If they did know all season long, then were they trying to mislead us so we wouldn’t realize too soon that this was a a Heavenways storyline? It all just seems sort of manipulative. Heartfelt, but manipulative. I guess that’s LOST in a nutshell. I don’t regret the six years I spent watching. It was fun, but like a kid with motion sickness who just got off Space Mountain, I’m just sort of content this ride is over.
We’re really interested to know what you thought of the finale and the show as a whole. Did you find the finale satisfying? Or did it somehow ruin six years of TV? Comment!
Our favorite show about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island kicks things back into gear, after last week’s audience-dividing excursion. Oh yeah, and lots of people died.
“What They Died For” is clearly the first hour of the series-concluding “The End”, so grading it as a standalone episode would take it out of context. But I did enjoy it a good bit more than last week’s willfully elusive “Across The Sea” on a gut level. The pacing quickly picked up from where it left off with “The Candidate” two weeks ago, and I certainly was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I’m excited about—not dreading—the series coming to an end Sunday night.
When LOST is firing on all cylinders, though, it engages the gut, mind and heart, and I wasn’t feeling a whole lot of the latter two. Jacob’s campfire appeal to the remaining candidates was so low key that I can barely remember it even happening. I wasn’t expecting the sermon on the mount or anything, but I expected a little more poetry and inspiration from a moment the whole series has been leading up to. And I guess asking for answers to plot holes like “Why can everybody see Jacob now?” or “Who told Ben island stuff when he never saw Jacob?” is mostly pointless now because that’s not necessary information according to Darlton.
Heading into the finale, I’m mostly resigned to not getting answers about mythology, since the few that have been provided are sketchy at best and ridiculous at worst. My one remaining hope is that LOST ends by doing right by its characters, and giving them sendoffs that are worthy of people we’ve grown to love over these six long years (as opposed to the ignoble fates of Ilana and maybe Richard). Did John Locke, far and away the series’ best character, really die a poor clueless sap? Did Ben, his weaselly murderer who found redemption in this season’s best moment so far, really turn bad again for no discernable reason (though I think he’s playing double agent to the MIB who conned him)? Will Sawyer, Hurley and Miles find a new path of happiness? Will we care about Kate? We’ll know in 4 days, and then TV won’t be nearly as interesting.
Oh LOST. Why do I like you so some weeks and other weeks write long diatribes about how frustrated your episodes make me? Or: Oh LOST, why must your episodes leading up to the end of your seasons (or in this case, series) always be the consistently awesomest (totally a word, no matter what the red squiggly spell check thingy tells me) episodes you have to offer? There’s a whole bunch I enjoyed here: Sidways Ben romancing Sideways Danielle. Yes, please! Hell, I even got excited about Ana Lucia busting Sideways Desmond and Friends out of the prisonmobile (maybe, after seeing her in the credits, I was just relieved she didn’t turn out to be SideJack’s baby mama?).
And speaking of miracles, Kate(s) didn’t annoy me as much (probably because the writers don’t have time to make her the show’s Gilligan-esque muck-er-up-er anymore) either. And Zoe and Widmore finally died! And Ben’s a badass again (though I still hope he ends up with Sayid-esque redemptive martyrdom at the very least, by the finale). Why, oh why LOST, couldn’t you have spread some of this awesomesauce out into some of the previous episodes? Whatever. I now can’t wait until the finale. My advice to the writers, in the words of RuPaul (that’s the second time in one season I’ve managed to mention LOST and RuPaul in the same thought process — quite a gift I know): “Don’t fuck it up.”
Last week I spent so much energy laying out everything I thought about this show and how everything would end up fitting together (which you can read here), that if this episode wouldn’t have been as revelatory (and kind of shocking) as it was, then I might have just lost my mind. Seeing Jacob sit down and try to explain the island and the Losties’ purpose there was hardly as painful as I had expected it would be if the moment ever came. Wondering what would happen when the Man in Black and Widmore finally stood toe-to-toe was answered swiftly, and yet, not quite in the way I’d expected. And seeing Ben play his shifty card one more time was maybe the creepiest of all.
In fact, I hope that anyone who had problems with “Across the Sea” and why it even existed can look back and see how it makes a bit more sense now. If we hadn’t had that episode to tell us about the light or Jacob and the Man in Black’s past or Jacob’s life-changing mistake, having all that crammed into the main narrative—as opposed to a standalone episode in some ancient past where it’s a little more forgivable—would’ve made it seem all the more ridiculous. Or had Jacob murmured his incantation, passed the cup of water to Jack and said “Now you’re like me,” and we were given no further explanation…whoo-boy!
But I’m glad that the show’s back on its feet. In flash-sideways world, it’s still not clear to me what Desmond’s setting up—perhaps some kind of trippy rave where they all drop acid and take a ride on the Wonkatania to the island?—but the moments with alt-Ben and alt-Locke as two suffering men who discover a new future awaiting them (or do they?) were definitely highlights. On the other hand, not only did the action on the island heat up, but it’s about to boil over. The Man in Black is on the warpath and takin’ no shorts while Jack makes the choice to become the Gandalf to his Balrog. Tell me you don’t want to see that showdown! It seems like there’s still a lot of ground to cover, and two and a half hours of TV is easily a feature film in itself, but I have a feeling this Sunday’s finale is going to be one hell of a ride towards the finish line.
Only two and a half hours left! Have any other thoughts on this episode before the finale?
The day we got to learn more about Jacob and the Man in Black has been a long time coming, but was this the right time and the right way to do it? Fans that we are, we try to gleam something of note from it all.
One thing’s for sure—the people that make this show have quite the brass pair. There have been plenty of moments throughout this series that made me think that a line had been crossed, but none like what I experienced with “Across the Sea.” The moment when we discover that Jacob and the Man in Black are actually brothers, even the moment when we find out what happened to their real mother, didn’t prepare me for the reveal of The Light. It crossed my mind for a split-second that I’d been duped. Frankly, the whole conceit of “a mysterious light that is the heart of the island and possesses the key to life or some such thing” is almost too pie-in-the-sky for me; it just seemed to come out of far left field. And yet, thinking about it afterward, I suppose it’s a reasonable explanation for what the DHARMA Initiative ended up calling an electromagnetic anomaly. I say if you can buy one then you should be able to buy the other.
Otherwise, I was happy to get some context for who Jacob and the Man in Black are and why they’re doing what they’re doing to our Losties–even though it might have been nice to have gotten it sooner. I’m just hoping that it’ll pay off in the final hours of the show. But more than that, I came away from this episode appreciating it for all the things it made me consider. I’ve seen reactions all season about how this show doesn’t answer anything but it finally dawned on me this week when we never learned the Man in Black’s name–something I totally expected would be revealed–that LOST as a television series isn’t about what you get out of it. It’s about what you put into it. You want to know the Man in Black’s name? Pick one. I think that open-ended-ness is meant to encourage the viewer to use some imagination and fill in the blanks where they see fit.
For example, when Locke first saw the smoke monster in Season 1, he described what he saw as a “beautiful bright light”, and in most religion, Satan (AKA the Lucifer or the Morning Star) is, in fact, sometimes referred to as the bearer of light. So could it be that our bad guy the Man in Black, after going into the heart of the island, came out as Satan and ages later showed his true nature to Locke? I’d say maybe so. (Actually, I’ll have a lot more to say on this soon.) You might feel differently, and it’s possible that neither of us would be spot-on.
Also, after seeing how this all played out ages ago, I finally see the parallel to the struggle between God, Satan and Job front and center. It’s not necessarily a direct translation of it, but all of the important pieces are there. Think of the island as of God, the Man in Black as Satan and each of the Losties as a take on Job. Everyone that has come to the island has been confronted with their sins and transgressions and been forced to come to terms with why their fortunes have taken a turn for the worse.
And yet, the show never seems to take a definite moral stance and allows room for judgment by the viewers. It all speaks to larger themes of LOST and if nothing else, I think “Across the Sea” was important to help us understand this as we head into the finale next week.
There seem to be a lot of angry LOST fans out there today. This surprises me a little. All anyone’s wanted this season is answers, answers, answers and there were certainly a lot of answers in “Across The Sea”. Except, we didn’t really get any answers at all, we got stuff happening without any explanation of the how or why. After spending the whole season building up “Across The Sea” as the episode that answers all, we got what we always get with LOST: murky, cryptic question-raising that deliberately frustrates us with the empty promise of answers later. Except, there’s no more later. We’re five-sixths of the way through the final season. The show will end up running 118 1/2 hours and 115 of them have aired. Do you feel satisfied yet?
Worse still, Darlton employed some surprising smugness towards the show’s devoted fans that, at least to me, crossed the line between good-natured ribbing and outright mockery. They know we’re expecting a lot from this episode and confound those expectations right out of the gate with a bitchy one-two punch (“Every question you ask will be answered with another question” and “I only had one name”). That’s not playful, that’s being an asshole. I have been eminently patient with LOST and have had unshakable faith that there was some sort of method to the madness, but there were too many glaring missteps in this episode for me to overlook, the first of which is the placement of the episode in the season as a whole. After building up an incredible amount of tension in recent weeks, the action grinds completely to a halt to explain some backstory from thousands of years ago. Wouldn’t this episode work a lot better as the season premiere, dovetailing nicely with the Jacob threads introduced in the season five finale? Even if you’re able to overlook the issue of who Alison Janney’s character was, why she knew what she knew, how she got there, why she’s so prone to lying and deception, and so on, shouldn’t Jacob be a little more inquisitive as to what exactly his mission as island caretaker is before he devotes all of eternity to doing it? Does she, and later Jacob, have some kind of magical power that would enable her to fill in a well and kill an entire village full of burly dudes overnight? And seriously, the Man In Black has no name? Really? Even after living with a group of people for 30 years, you have absolutely no handle. Well if Darlton won’t give him a name, I will. I’m calling him Timmy from now on.
But none of that holds a candle to the show’s possible jump-the-shark event, a scene we may look back on as the moment when LOST crossed from the sublime to the ridiculous… the donkey wheel. Boy did I feel sorry for Titus Welliver, the incredible actor playing Timmy who once delivered David Milch’s golden dialogue on the late, great Deadwood. Let me get this straight. You’ve found this unexplained, important light source that’s magnetic. There are “smart men among you” in your village. So you decide to dig into the ground, insert a donkey wheel that will manipulate the light and water, and somehow that will teleport you off the island? And you know all this because you “just know”. Because you’re “special”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a gigantic plot hole covered up with sloppy, sloppy writing. I know this is the ancient version of the hatch, but the writing and introduction of this element of the story was so mishandled and strange that I was taken completely out of the show.
I get what Darlton are going for with this cryptic writing and labyrinthine mythology. They want us in the state of mind of the characters, ordinary people who stumbled across something extraordinary. They don’t fully know or understand what’s going on, so we don’t either. They’ve also said that the idea of laying it all out there is terrible because it would be like the Architect scene in The Matrix Reloaded, a boring and obvious way of laying out the secrets behind something big and confusing. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For example, in the donkey wheel scene Alison Janney’s character could’ve said to Timmy, “This is wrong! You’re special! You can [insert abilities here]. You’re supposed to be [insert what his destiny is]. If you keep doing this, you’ll [insert stakes here]!” Normal people don’t talk like that, but they also don’t speak in the cryptic non-sequiturs LOST’s writers are ever so fond of. Which would you rather have, LOST fans?
There are things I liked about this episode. The outlines of the action felt like a Bible story, and I like the idea that Jacob and his mother are imperfect, sometimes murderous beings who nonetheless appear to be the good guys. I’m a little fuzzy on what exactly happened there at the end when Jacob threw Timmy into the water and down the…. whatever, but I’m a little intrigued by the theory that Timmy is dead and Jacob’s wrath unleashed whatever evil creature was down there which is now taking Timmy’s form, in other words, that Jacob has spent thousands of years protecting the world from his own angry mistake. That being said, we’re another episode closer to the end and I’ve never had less faith in the show.
Clearly, just looking at my Twitter and Facebook feeds, many people loved this episode. So I’m gonna go against the popular tide. I didn’t love it—not for where this ended up in the run of the series. Placed where it was in the run of Season 6 I thought it unnecessarily diverted attention from where I wanted it to be—in the ‘present,’ on-island. This would’ve been a nice side-story to run between Seasons 5 and 6 but since we have just 3.5 hours of show left, I felt it was just a distraction. While I like the mythology side of LOST and have been interested in the Jacob/Flocke story, that’s not where I wanted to be right now. And that’s kind of how I feel about “Ab Aeterno” as well on second thought. Just as I think they spent a little too much time futzing around with The Temple, I feel like we’re taking detours here in Season 6 that just aren’t all that interesting to me.
Now, that said…it sure solidified the direction of this season (also something I wish had come earlier) and the end-game. A lot of ground was covered here that frankly had to be before the final-final chapter, like the origins of Smokey, the bodies in the caves, the back-story of Jacob and (did they mention what his name was?) Smokey, the building of the donkey wheel. And in true LOST fashion this episode opened up plenty more question threads I’m sure will never see solved. But hey, that’s LOST huh?
Where the story’s kind of losing me this season is in how many things we just have to “believe” about this show. Like the mystical light that emanates out of some hole you could search for for years and never find. Where did Allison Janney’s character come from? Why’d she kill Claudia? Obviously she’s in tune with the island but what’s all that about? How much did she know about other people being on the island? Why didn’t she kill them before they corrupted ‘her’ son?
I guess where I’m coming from with this episode is that I’m much more interested in the mythology when it is more closely intertwined with the personality conflicts of the characters we’ve been following for 6 years rather than people we’ve barely met and completely new characters. Not saying that this episode doesn’t have its place, but with 3.5 hours left to go…come on!
Tensions are high, but maybe that’s the mindset that’s required going into the final leg of the LOST saga. Which side of the coin are you on?
After a week away, LOST returns anew and drives us straight into the deep end—literally. We hope you’re caught up because, ahoy, sailor, there be major spoilers ahead.
I have to admit that I initially had a hard time sticking with this episode, and I couldn’t help but think that not having a new episode last week broke some of the momentum that had been building. From the first scene with alt-Jack and alt-Locke in the hospital to the action on the island, it all seemed to fly by in rapid bursts and none of it seemed to matter. Jack wakes up and Sayid tells him something, Sawyer gets feisty and Widmore tells him something, Locke needs Jack’s help and tells him something. Blah, blah, blah.
Even the developments in the flash-sideways, while filling in some blanks about alt-Locke and his alt-Dad, felt less compelling than if they would’ve been revealed earlier in “The Substitute.” Although, having alt-Locke mutter “Push the button…I wish you had believed me.” in his sleep—a nod to Locke’s pleas from Season 2 and suicide note from Season 5—was a nice reminder of the character we’ve come to know for the last five years.
And then, in an inspired move, all hell seemed to break loose back on the island. Smokey storms Widmore’s camp and frees the Losties, then rolls up to the the Ajira plane, kills Widmore’s guards and tells the Losties that they’ll have to make for the sub to leave the island. It all happened so fast that I thought—for a moment, at least—when there was no resistance at the sub that they would all actually board it and Smokey would find his way off the island, but no dice. Bullets start flying, Kate takes one to the shoulder and everybody dips into the sub leaving Claire and Smokey behind. And after that, it only got worse.
It wasn’t the way I’d imagined the episode going at all, but I thought it was a bold move, and judging by the shocked reactions from viewers, I think it was a strong finish on our way towards the finale. While it’s sad that we won’t get to see a more-rounded Sayid, who apparently found his moment of redemption in the clutch, it’s a lot more sad that we won’t see a better end for Sun and Jin. I think back to my theory that maybe they got their happy ending in the flash-sideways after all.
So Jack is the new Jacob, huh? I never coulda guessed, given that Matthew Fox is the top-billed star of the show and the name “Jack” is basically the 21st century version of “Jacob”. I think everyone is probably pretty impressed with “The Candidate”, an episode that unfurled at a breakneck pace, delivered lots of forward movement, and killed about a half-dozen characters. I wasn’t all that impressed though. Even with that body count, I wanted a tad more blood. I would’ve loved to see Kate die, though I now think she’s in Jack Bauer ridiculous immortal territory: this character who’s made absolutely no development since episode 2 of season 1 took a bullet to the chest and somehow made her way out of a sinking submarine several hundred feet underwater by being dragged to the surface by a 400 pound man. I also really wanted Smokey to completely decimate Widmore’s camp and kill that mean ol’ coot once and for all.
It’s all part of my slow LOST comedown, an experience that’s a bit like watching The Matrix Revolutions. The endless possibilities that the first installments offered are now narrowing down to a smaller and smaller cone, and when that final moment comes I have less and less confidence that it’ll be the whammy that washes all my doubts away. Now that we’re at the end, it’s hard to look back on the early parts of this season without thinking about just how much time has been wasted. How many new characters and set pieces were introduced when we could’ve been bringing closure to the old ones? Why introduce another entire group of Others when almost nothing is explained about who they are or why they’re there? The list of explanations that are due in the remaining 4 1/2 hours of this series grows longer and longer and the show seems less and less interested in answering them.
All that aside, I absolutely loved Terry O’Quinn in full blown villain mode. He has clearly relished playing the bad guy this whole season, but seeing him walk into a hail of gunfire to snap a henchman’s neck and sporting an evil grin while telling Claire that she doesn’t want to be on the sub was truly fantastic. The show has lacked a strong antagonist since Ben was Henry Gale, and seeing Smokey’s true colors gives the show a strong baddie to root against. Jin and Sun’s sad farewell felt a tad rushed to me, but it definitely tugged at the heartstrings. Imagine how we would’ve felt if we’d had a whole episode devoted to them leading up to it.
I kind of feel like Sodapop Journal’s resident cranky old man when it comes to this show. Another of LOST’s final episodes, another episode I didn’t necessarily love. RIP Jin and Sun? That was a touching moment, watching Jin refuse to leave her side (or her blockaded front, as the case may be) in the sub. But I have a hard time mourning anyone on this show at this juncture, after they’ve spent all season trotting out dead characters in the Sideways World.
It’s like on 24 or Heroes when someone “dies.” We all know they’ll be back, so it’s just “ta-ta for now.” (Ironic, then that Walt is like the one character that didn’t get fatally written off and we won’t necessarily see him again). And being that a “Kwon” is a candidate, we still can’t cross that name off DarkLocke’s wall since as everyone’s pointed out since we saw the last name (instead of say, a first) on the wall, there’s still their kid.
But, in other LOST reactions: What’s this, Jack actually has some brains and some balls all of a sudden? And super grifter man Sawyer managed to get conned by a Smoke Monster, and boarded a sub full of explosives? If I wanted characters to start acting abnormally, I would’ve watched LOST’s timeslot competitor Glee instead. Still the episode wasn’t all bad. We saw Katey Sagal again! And Kate got shot! Yaaay! …But she didn’t die. Booo. Meh, it’s OK, nobody dies for long anymore anyway. Next week: Jacob flashbacks? I hope we find out that the only thing he and The MIB can agree on is their love of black and white cookies.
Danger Island. There was a show I watched growing up called “The Banana Splits” (greatest kids show ever—YouTube is your friend) and they showed a live action, short cliffhanger serial called Danger Island. It was action packed and it would jump right in to where it left off every week, and if you didn’t know where it started or how they got there, you were pretty much out of luck. But yet, while incredibly cheesy, it would suck you right in and you wanted to watch the snapshot of these characters stories. I don’t think I ever really watched or know how that story ended, and it didn’t really matter. It was fun to watch. No matter what happens in the last LOST episode, there is no way all of us are going to be totally satisfied with the way the story ends—or doesn’t end—or whatever will happen right before that last frame goes dark. And honestly, it won’t change the way I feel about the show.
Now, I am not saying that LOST and that incredibly cheesy and fabulously lame (in a good way) cliffhanger serial are one in the same but this week’s LOST episode gave me that same feeling and vibe I had watching Danger Island. If I had never watched one single episode of LOST and “The Candidate” was my first experience with it, it would make me want to go and find and watch the rest of the series to how we got to this point.
Did we just see Locke be defined as the “Bad” finally? I was leaning that way myself. He was just helping a bit too much with everything; trying too hard to convince everyone that he was on their side. Although, the scene with the smoke monster being shot at/taking out Widmore’s troops and Jack saying “I’m with him” almost had me thinking he might be the “Good”. I was actually kind of cheering for Superman Locke when the bullets did nothing to him and he walked towards the airplane, but the second he handed Jack the backpacks, my first thought was he gave him the explosives and he wanted them dead.
In the alt-timeline, everything is still coming to a head. Jack finding out everyone was on this Oceanic 815 flight along with the characters all almost being drawn together by fate to be connected and in the same place at the same time. It’s looking like there will be a flashpoint where something clicks and maybe happens that ignites how the story ends.
Regarding the little mirrored music box, I wonder if the mirrors in it are somehow a connection to the mirrors in The Lighthouse? When Locke was sleeping and talking about things which seemed to be connected to the Island timeline, I couldn’t help but think, are dreams going to be somehow connected to the back and forth of the timelines? Or how one can see the other?
I think it’s also becoming quite clear that Jack seems to be The One. The catalyst to whatever happens in the end. How awesome was Sayid when he took the bomb and ran? Go find Desmond and you are the one Jack and then BOOM! And poor Jin and Sun—at least they were together. But as I sat there watching their demises, I couldn’t help but think we haven’t seen the last of them. Or is that the end for those characters?
All in all this was an action-packed, thrilling episode that was far from some of the bridge episodes we have had of late. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Even shed a tear or two when I saw the tear roll down Hugo’s cheek.
How will it end? Can’t wait to find out. Still the best show ever.
Quite the difference in opinions over “The Candidate.” Some positive, some not-so-positive. As always, we’re interested to know what you thought!
Things are starting to come together and move forward for our Losties—both on the island and in the flash-sideways. This week, Jack is at the center of most of the action, but there’s a bigger picture starting to form.
Wow last night’s episode went by fast. Maybe too fast. Tons of little things happened. To me, the most interesting detail of this episode was one of the smallest. When Sun was being wheeled into the hospital alongside Locke, she looks over and starts freaking out. I don’t know if that moment means that’s when she got her Island memories back, but it definitely stood out to me as a significant moment. Timelines merging and whatnot! Have we decided that Desmond knows everything and is just helping things along by getting people where they “need” to be?
Now I’m going to jump around as wildly as last night’s episode and bring up a few further moments that were awesome/unexpected. When Claire found everyone leaving on Sawyer’s boat I thought for sure she was going to go postal on Kate. I was worried it’d be the end for her. But surprisingly, she didn’t (maybe as referenced by Hurley’s “you can always be brought back from the dark side dude” comment?). Or when you see her watch everyone leaving including her brother, I thought ‘hey, maybe she’s gonna shoot Jack too—after all he did help raise Aaron with Kate.’
And it looks like the con man got conned by Widmore, huh? “Deal’s off!” Oops. I did love the reunion of Jin and Sun though, with the exception of Frank’s painfully obvious “now she’s talking” line. Did we really need that? Even more than before I’m wondering why we needed the Temple episodes at all since Widmore just exploded the lot of Others that remained. And I’m left wondering who the hell that mysterious kid in the forest that we saw last episode is. When will we know? Great episode, went by too quickly. I’ll have to watch the last three over again in the near future just to let everything soak in.
Ah, the “chess pieces moving into place” LOST episode, how I will sorta miss thee. Set-up episodes like “The Last Recruit” have a hilarious amount of transportation: hiking, sailing, ambulances, elevators. And while we all love narrative pay-off, you’ve got to have slower episodes like these to ratchet up the tension so the stakes feel that much higher.
Set-up episodes don’t always do that tension-ratcheting part so effectively; just look at last month’s fairly yawn-worthy “Recon”. “The Last Recruit”, though, felt like it was in hyper-drive, crashing characters into each other left and right. There were a lot of potentially fascinating allusions to past seasons last night—Jack jumping off the boat echoing Sawyer’s jump off the helicopter in season 3, “We’re done going back”—but the ones that impressed me most involved the episode’s A-story relationship between Jack and Locke. The series as a whole, especially in the first three seasons, has played up the “Man of Science, Man of Faith” angle with these two so much that it was overtly laid out as a title in Season 2. But as both have slowly switched sides in that fight, with Jack now the weary soul who reason failed and Locke (though we’re not sure who’s pulling his strings) preaching atheist nihilism despite being an immortal who can turn into a murderous cloud, it seems possible that Locke will be cured by science in the flash-sideways while Jack is paralyzed on the island. Yes, that last part is a bit of a leap on my part, but I think his perspective switched to Locke’s from season 1 in that final scene for a reason, and he was being dragged around very conspicuously. Guess we’ll get an answer in two weeks (WHAT WILL I DO NEXT TUESDAY NIGHT?!).
One last note, it looks like the rest of what was left of the Others probably got blown to bits tonight, which will conveniently release the show’s writers from explaining one of the strangest and most haunting mysteries of season 2: how and why did the Others bring Cindy and other Flight 815ers into their ranks? Great dodge, guys.
I love LOST—real hard. Its pacing and episode “types” remind me of another favorite of mine, The Wire. There were times when I was watching The Wire (like the first two or three episodes of season 2 after an awesome season 1) that I wondered why they would have these set-up episodes.
I always compare it to reading a book. In books, every detail and every character can be fleshed out as much as the writer wants them to be. You know, like the shenanigans Stephen King likes to pull (which I enjoy), but his last two books were over 700 and 1000 pages respectively. That kind of fleshing out is pretty hard to do in a TV series.
But both The Wire and LOST are two of the best TV shows at doing the best they can without losing the “common man” fan and the hardcore geeks like us. “The Last Recruit” was just that. A bridge. Quite a few of the episodes this season are going to make watching the series on DVD quite enjoyable.
I was glad to see Sun and Jin reunited and then kind of punched in the stomach by the subsequent, Widmore-commanded prisoner taking. It reminded me they first found the Others and I was half expecting a “white flash” and a time jump to seal the deal. Jack has come full circle. He is now a Man of Faith. His character has been to fun to watch progress. And I am also intrigued with what happened to Desmond at the hands of Sayid.
Two weeks until the ride continues? This may be a good time to go back and watch some of the earlier episodes.
With each passing episode, my early theories about the flash-sideways and their meaning seem to fade further and further away. I’m not fully convinced yet—and I don’t think I will be until the finale—but watching both of the timelines bring characters together in new and strange ways is pretty fun to watch. There wasn’t much to say about the characters that we don’t already know, but everyone’s on the move and the endgame is near.
Still, seeing Kate and Sawyer banter back and forth again whether in the police station or on the island hatching their plan, or seeing Locke and Jack break away for a little confab over who “believes” and who doesn’t, or even just seeing Sayid driven by his heart again (despite all outward appearances)—it all made me think of episodes past when things were much different and the stakes weren’t so high. You know, back when LOST was just a show about survivors of a plane crash, i.e the good times.
There are only a handful of episodes left and I still can’t imagine how it’s all going to end, but these last few episodes have really driven it home that we’re coming to a conclusion. Last week I went off on a Willy Wonka tangent about how the show’s going to be getting faster and crazier (and how less-invested viewers might be wise to tune out), and that appears to be the case after watching “The Last Recruit.” If this episode was any indication by how fast as it flew by, I’m only a little worried that we won’t have time to really soak it all in as the series comes to an end. But I’ll still watch and love it.
Our reactions were fairly positive, but ratings put this episode at one of the least-watched episodes in the series. Was it a big strive forward or just “ho-hum” for you?