The entire time I was like, they’re not going to do it, they’re not gonna do it- Bang.
I haven’t been this shocked by a death since Alex last season, and that was just tragic and sad (and possibly poignant? More to follow). The death of Little Ben was both tragic and sad, but with a whole whack of temporal paradox mindfuck thrown in for good measure.
Like, if Little Ben is dead, then we no longer have a show. Our entire show just came undone. Way to go, Sayid.
But, as we have been told, there are rules; whatever happened, happened.
Dead is dead.
And, up until now, we’ve been able to go along with that. But the rules themselves are at contradiction with each other now. The world of Whatever happened, happened cannot exist now within the world of Dead is dead.
How they resolve this incongruity will decide the course of the rest of the show.
I’m so stoked. That was the best episode ever. Little Ben is dead.
Is Ben ever going to be pissed about this.
Of course, it wasn’t the best episode ever. For instance, I for one, am going to go thumbs down on the flashback/forward things. I mean, yes, it was cool to see a little Sayid who, like erstwhile Eko always had a bit of the bad ass in him, and yes, we always assumed we’d see how they came to be on 316 in flashback. I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so… mundane. This new girl is not interesting and her face is funny and I’d like her to go away now please. Thank-you.
Caesar interests me a little more, what with his get up and go to check out Hydra Station and score a hidden firearm.
And yet I can appreciate how having Caesar seduce and detain Sayid is not the sort of twist Lost writers are going for this late in the game. So I’ll just back off on this. We had to explain how Sayid got in handcuffs and now we have. Fantastic. Fortunately, in the glorious present day of 1977, things were a lot more … I want to say awesome. I want so say intense. I want to say the word that’s the intellectual equivalent of an orgasm but there isn’t one; I want to pound on the keys of my keyboard as hard as I can because that’s just how unbelievably great everything else was.
The return of Roger Workman. The Carlos Castaneda nod. Olden (?) and his wondrous sugar cubes.
This guy deserves his own aside because he’s my favorite Dharma to date, and because he’s the ‘He’ of the ‘He’s our You’. Now aside from the fact that he appears to be a torturer, he doesn’t actually seem to do anything worse than tie his prisoner’s to a tree and dose them with acid. And the fact that he listens to a gramophone and lives in a teepee just warms my heart.
Did anyone get a chance to read his job title off his uniform? Does anyone have a screencap of that? Because I want that job.
The scene where Sayid is tied to that tree and tripping shall go down as one of my favourites of the series. Comparable to the scene where Hurley spills the beans in ‘the Lie’, it had a whole whack of temporal paradox mindfuck barely averted by the fact that –unlike Hurley’s mother- they didn’t believe him.
I still believe that Radzinsky now possesses many of the pieces of puzzle; namely that Jin was freaking out about a plane moments before Sayid was found within the perimeter; Sayid, who then claimed to have arrived on an airplane.
Not that anything like this could possibly matter anymore, now that Little Ben is dead and we don’t have a show.
Can’t wait til next week.
Oh yeah, I can’t believe I almost forgot to go into the whole ‘death of Alex/death of Little Ben’ connection. Aside from being the two most shocking deaths on the series thus far, I think we can see now just how messed up ‘changing the rules’ is going to make us. That was the point where things began to diverge.
“Haven’t I told you John? I always have a plan.”
So sayeth Ben in ‘There’s No Place Like Home.’
Well, he’d better have a really good plan, now.
My quick and dirty theory as to how disaster could be averted: okay, well, I don’t really have one. But we know the Island is a pretty funky temporal place, a place where miracles happen. So either the Island will protect future Ben from the changes in the timeline long enough for him to … I really have no idea what he could do here, actually, but he’d do something badass… Or, we will see a scene wherein Little Ben meets his Mom and she says words to the effect of: “Get up Ben. You have work to do.”
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Nama-what?
"Sure I am this day that we are the masters of our fate; that the task which has been set us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable will-power, salvation will not be denied us."
-William Churchill
To the writers of Lost: Just explain the Smoke Monster. Then I’ll sit through however many episodes of doey-eyed, porch-waving melodrama you want. I Promise. Until then, however, assume I don't care.
So Sawyer, like Churchill before him, likes to read a book each night, because it helps him think. Well, I hope he’s read enough in the past three years to outthink the writers of Lost, because I have a feeling they have a very unpleasant ride planned.
And I’m not talking about marital problems either, because if I have to deal with that when we have So Many Other Important Things To Worry About, then I will chuck my remote control through my television and go live in a cave.
Problem the first I name Radzinsky. After years of pondering over the man who left us a minor discoloration on the Swan ceiling, the man whom the blast door map was his “baby”, Lost fans were finally introduced to him in Namaste, only to discover that Radzinsky is a total jerk.
Also, he’s going to ‘go tell Horace’ which shouldn’t be a big deal, since our man LaFleur pretty much has the man in his pocket. But what, exactly, is he going to tell Horace? Because if he opens with how Kwon was going ballistic over a mysterious plane moments before a Hostile appeared in their perimeter, I think Team LaFleur might have a problem.
Since we know that the hatch gets built, and Radzinsky gets his pet project, I think he might have the ear of a Higher Authority.
Namely, Pierre Chang. Because Science Rules, on the Island. Or at least, it did in the 70’s. Now what consternation this must have caused Jacob who freaks out over a flashlight I can’t even begin to imagine, but despite the fact he gets dragged out of his lab from time to time to give uniforms to janitors, I suspect Pierre Chang is guiding the Dharma Initiative. Horace Goodspeed is just the plain-faced hippie pablum they use to sell their brand.
Problem the Second I name, Where the Fuck is Daniel? For that matter, where the fuck is Desmond? I can’t put my finger on it, but the absence of these two men from our storyline should be a cause for some concern. Desmond’s probably burying his wife and gunning for some revenge of his own, which will bring him back as some point in time, and Daniel…
Jack: Did you say Faraday? He’s here?
Sawyer: Not anymore.
Wtf? I guess we’ll chalk him down with Claire?
This is bad, mojo, people.
And speaking of bad mojo, Christian Shepard.
I have oft-long postulated my theory that Christian Shepard is the devil. I don’t think quite in the literal sense, but if we go back to John’s early backgammon reference, “two sides, one light, one dark”, the Christian is definitely speaking for the Dark Side.
Which brings us to Problem the Third, which I name Christian Shepard, or ‘the Future ain’t what it used to be’.
We haven’t actually seen Jacob since a brief incorporeal cameo in ‘the Man behind the Curtain’ wherein he said the very ominous words “Help Me” and, as stated earlier, freaked out over a flashlight. On every occasion since, when the Island has spoken, it has used Christian Shepard. He told John to leave the Island. He told him again.
There are two people whom he seems to desperately want off the Island: one is John and the other is Aaron. What we see then, when Sun and Lapidus arrive at the ruined docks, the deserted Barracks, is the future in which he has succeeded.
As Vozzek pointed out before me (and damn those early re-cappers, anyways) does it strike anyone else as odd that after years of inhabiting the Barracks, the Others left up the pictures and signs reading “recruitment center”? Or are we supposed to believe that they were thoughtful enough to leave things exactly as they found them when they left.
This future is different, somehow.
And hey, where are the Others, anyways?
An episode without Richard Alpert is one that leaves me cold and dead inside. Like this one did, even though I enjoyed it thoroughly.
And hey, Sun, what are you doing in the future anyway? Don’t you know that Jin’s back in 1977 watching Star Wars and wondering if he’s ever going to get to check his facebook ever again?
Maybe you should stop lying, Sun. Just stop it.
In closing, I present one last problem to our castaways who have now found themselves stranded in time, as well as space. That problem is 1978.
In Christian Shepard’s little tour, 1978 is the last year with a photo. If the future can be changed (and we have to accept at this point, that it can) then the Incident may come a lot sooner than anyone could have thought – those with the foresight to know there’s an Incident coming, anyways.
And hey, it’s little Ben!
It’s a little difficult to know just what Sayid takes away from this scene. After all. Lots of people can be called Ben, and from what we saw, no one really had time to pull Sayid aside and explain the whole time-travel shtick. But Sayid’s a sharp guy. He knows a Dharma van when he sees one. He’s probably put a thing or two together.
-William Churchill
To the writers of Lost: Just explain the Smoke Monster. Then I’ll sit through however many episodes of doey-eyed, porch-waving melodrama you want. I Promise. Until then, however, assume I don't care.
So Sawyer, like Churchill before him, likes to read a book each night, because it helps him think. Well, I hope he’s read enough in the past three years to outthink the writers of Lost, because I have a feeling they have a very unpleasant ride planned.
And I’m not talking about marital problems either, because if I have to deal with that when we have So Many Other Important Things To Worry About, then I will chuck my remote control through my television and go live in a cave.
Problem the first I name Radzinsky. After years of pondering over the man who left us a minor discoloration on the Swan ceiling, the man whom the blast door map was his “baby”, Lost fans were finally introduced to him in Namaste, only to discover that Radzinsky is a total jerk.
Also, he’s going to ‘go tell Horace’ which shouldn’t be a big deal, since our man LaFleur pretty much has the man in his pocket. But what, exactly, is he going to tell Horace? Because if he opens with how Kwon was going ballistic over a mysterious plane moments before a Hostile appeared in their perimeter, I think Team LaFleur might have a problem.
Since we know that the hatch gets built, and Radzinsky gets his pet project, I think he might have the ear of a Higher Authority.
Namely, Pierre Chang. Because Science Rules, on the Island. Or at least, it did in the 70’s. Now what consternation this must have caused Jacob who freaks out over a flashlight I can’t even begin to imagine, but despite the fact he gets dragged out of his lab from time to time to give uniforms to janitors, I suspect Pierre Chang is guiding the Dharma Initiative. Horace Goodspeed is just the plain-faced hippie pablum they use to sell their brand.
Problem the Second I name, Where the Fuck is Daniel? For that matter, where the fuck is Desmond? I can’t put my finger on it, but the absence of these two men from our storyline should be a cause for some concern. Desmond’s probably burying his wife and gunning for some revenge of his own, which will bring him back as some point in time, and Daniel…
Jack: Did you say Faraday? He’s here?
Sawyer: Not anymore.
Wtf? I guess we’ll chalk him down with Claire?
This is bad, mojo, people.
And speaking of bad mojo, Christian Shepard.
I have oft-long postulated my theory that Christian Shepard is the devil. I don’t think quite in the literal sense, but if we go back to John’s early backgammon reference, “two sides, one light, one dark”, the Christian is definitely speaking for the Dark Side.
Which brings us to Problem the Third, which I name Christian Shepard, or ‘the Future ain’t what it used to be’.
We haven’t actually seen Jacob since a brief incorporeal cameo in ‘the Man behind the Curtain’ wherein he said the very ominous words “Help Me” and, as stated earlier, freaked out over a flashlight. On every occasion since, when the Island has spoken, it has used Christian Shepard. He told John to leave the Island. He told him again.
There are two people whom he seems to desperately want off the Island: one is John and the other is Aaron. What we see then, when Sun and Lapidus arrive at the ruined docks, the deserted Barracks, is the future in which he has succeeded.
As Vozzek pointed out before me (and damn those early re-cappers, anyways) does it strike anyone else as odd that after years of inhabiting the Barracks, the Others left up the pictures and signs reading “recruitment center”? Or are we supposed to believe that they were thoughtful enough to leave things exactly as they found them when they left.
This future is different, somehow.
And hey, where are the Others, anyways?
An episode without Richard Alpert is one that leaves me cold and dead inside. Like this one did, even though I enjoyed it thoroughly.
And hey, Sun, what are you doing in the future anyway? Don’t you know that Jin’s back in 1977 watching Star Wars and wondering if he’s ever going to get to check his facebook ever again?
Maybe you should stop lying, Sun. Just stop it.
In closing, I present one last problem to our castaways who have now found themselves stranded in time, as well as space. That problem is 1978.
In Christian Shepard’s little tour, 1978 is the last year with a photo. If the future can be changed (and we have to accept at this point, that it can) then the Incident may come a lot sooner than anyone could have thought – those with the foresight to know there’s an Incident coming, anyways.
And hey, it’s little Ben!
It’s a little difficult to know just what Sayid takes away from this scene. After all. Lots of people can be called Ben, and from what we saw, no one really had time to pull Sayid aside and explain the whole time-travel shtick. But Sayid’s a sharp guy. He knows a Dharma van when he sees one. He’s probably put a thing or two together.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Lost Love: LaFleur recap
Whatever happened, happened; and Daniel faces the time-traveler's Lolita complex, poor guy.
Juliet is the Betty to Kate's Veronica, and if she doesn't start getting pissed about that soon, I, for one, will be very surprised. Fortunately Sayid is newly widowed, but not too newly, if you know what I mean, and of course, Ben still has that psychopathic crush alluded to in one episode ("the Other Woman"), so things may well end up happily ever after for Betty. I mean, Juliet.
At this point in time, I have no idea where the writer's are taking us, but man(!) am I ever loving the ride. In today's -apparently last- island time travel tour of awesome, we got to see an intact statue looming over the island, staring out to sea like a sentinel. The 'staring out to sea' bit meant that we only got to see enough to confirm that four toed people look more-or-less like their five-toed counter-parts. Not seeing the face still makes it possible for the "Sawyer-is-the-four-toed-statue" theory to be proven correct. Except for the fact that, living in Dharmaville these past (?) three years, I'm pretty sure they'd've mentioned something as traumatic as LaFleur losing his big toe.
Take that, stupid "Sawyer-is-the-four-toed-statue" theory.
So now that the time travel vacation is -again, apparently- over (there is still Locke's future discrepancy to be reconciled mind you) all that is left now is to recall the people, the places, the exotic locales, "other" languages, etc and so forth.
Most slide-shows are comparatively boring, but not this one. Island time travel vacations make for the best anecdotes ("Remember the time we found that leaking nuclear bomb?") at ping pong games and book club meetings.
I can remember feeling really bad for those left behind last season; sure, the O6 didn't exactly lead idyllic lives, but you got to admit, that settlement sounded pretty sweet. I was wrong to feel bad for our "Island Eight", however; really, I should have been feeling really, really bad for them.
First, let us recall that initial despair so eloquently summarized in the visual of a distant plume of black smoke. Then the total loss of supplies. The flaming arrows. The land mines. The Others. The nosebleeds. The Bomb. The French Chick. The Temple. Montand's arm. The Orchid/Well/Rope-in-the-ground-predestination-paradox. And finally, the statue and the Dharma Initiative and the Truce and a brief glimpse of the Other's rather stringent funeral rights.
What an awesome trip. Poor bastards.
Is it just me or did we lose somebody? Some bodies?
Rose and Bernard? Adam and Eve? A black stone and a white one to symbolize their ummm.... racial deliciousness?
I'm just putting it out there. And of course, we shot John into the future in a cannon and lost Charlotte to some malicious writer's pen.
This was no multi-million dollar cover-up cruise line, time travel safari took names; it took them and wrote them down in the big black book of death.
So now what?
Well, first off, I think we need to seriously consider the possibility that an unburied body raises as an evil zombie intent on keeping Jacob locked up in his creepy cabin and letting Smokey run around without a leash. Yup. That appears to be the case.
Also, I think Jin is going to be really disappointed when he finds out his wife is 30 or so years in the future. Still, just think how good his english will be by then! Wait, will he even remember Korean? It's a shame really, but in the wake of Charlotte's death there appears to be something of a vaccuum in Korean conversationalists. Could be awkward.
Seriously though, Jin; good for you. It's like your an actor who knew how to speak english this whole time!
If Juliet's track record is any indication, she'll kill a little (or a lot of) time being the Other Woman in the Kwon marriage, though I myself hope she breaks out of the cycle. She deserves so much more.
I mean, this girl rules. She fixes cars. She delivers babies. She's sarcastic. Compassionate. Brilliant, but tolerant of the stupid people around her. Let's face it, she's a goddess.
Which is why it's all the more plausible that, rather than Sawyer, the four-toed statue is Juliet, somehow, if only because she really, really, freaking deserves it.
Certainly it's her likeness carved into the statue of my heart.
Juliet is the Betty to Kate's Veronica, and if she doesn't start getting pissed about that soon, I, for one, will be very surprised. Fortunately Sayid is newly widowed, but not too newly, if you know what I mean, and of course, Ben still has that psychopathic crush alluded to in one episode ("the Other Woman"), so things may well end up happily ever after for Betty. I mean, Juliet.
At this point in time, I have no idea where the writer's are taking us, but man(!) am I ever loving the ride. In today's -apparently last- island time travel tour of awesome, we got to see an intact statue looming over the island, staring out to sea like a sentinel. The 'staring out to sea' bit meant that we only got to see enough to confirm that four toed people look more-or-less like their five-toed counter-parts. Not seeing the face still makes it possible for the "Sawyer-is-the-four-toed-statue" theory to be proven correct. Except for the fact that, living in Dharmaville these past (?) three years, I'm pretty sure they'd've mentioned something as traumatic as LaFleur losing his big toe.
Take that, stupid "Sawyer-is-the-four-toed-statue" theory.
So now that the time travel vacation is -again, apparently- over (there is still Locke's future discrepancy to be reconciled mind you) all that is left now is to recall the people, the places, the exotic locales, "other" languages, etc and so forth.
Most slide-shows are comparatively boring, but not this one. Island time travel vacations make for the best anecdotes ("Remember the time we found that leaking nuclear bomb?") at ping pong games and book club meetings.
I can remember feeling really bad for those left behind last season; sure, the O6 didn't exactly lead idyllic lives, but you got to admit, that settlement sounded pretty sweet. I was wrong to feel bad for our "Island Eight", however; really, I should have been feeling really, really bad for them.
First, let us recall that initial despair so eloquently summarized in the visual of a distant plume of black smoke. Then the total loss of supplies. The flaming arrows. The land mines. The Others. The nosebleeds. The Bomb. The French Chick. The Temple. Montand's arm. The Orchid/Well/Rope-in-the-ground-predestination-paradox. And finally, the statue and the Dharma Initiative and the Truce and a brief glimpse of the Other's rather stringent funeral rights.
What an awesome trip. Poor bastards.
Is it just me or did we lose somebody? Some bodies?
Rose and Bernard? Adam and Eve? A black stone and a white one to symbolize their ummm.... racial deliciousness?
I'm just putting it out there. And of course, we shot John into the future in a cannon and lost Charlotte to some malicious writer's pen.
This was no multi-million dollar cover-up cruise line, time travel safari took names; it took them and wrote them down in the big black book of death.
So now what?
Well, first off, I think we need to seriously consider the possibility that an unburied body raises as an evil zombie intent on keeping Jacob locked up in his creepy cabin and letting Smokey run around without a leash. Yup. That appears to be the case.
Also, I think Jin is going to be really disappointed when he finds out his wife is 30 or so years in the future. Still, just think how good his english will be by then! Wait, will he even remember Korean? It's a shame really, but in the wake of Charlotte's death there appears to be something of a vaccuum in Korean conversationalists. Could be awkward.
Seriously though, Jin; good for you. It's like your an actor who knew how to speak english this whole time!
If Juliet's track record is any indication, she'll kill a little (or a lot of) time being the Other Woman in the Kwon marriage, though I myself hope she breaks out of the cycle. She deserves so much more.
I mean, this girl rules. She fixes cars. She delivers babies. She's sarcastic. Compassionate. Brilliant, but tolerant of the stupid people around her. Let's face it, she's a goddess.
Which is why it's all the more plausible that, rather than Sawyer, the four-toed statue is Juliet, somehow, if only because she really, really, freaking deserves it.
Certainly it's her likeness carved into the statue of my heart.
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