Monsters of Television

“You’re with me now.”

It is a moving the pieces episode, as Jason Mittell noted. I’m not going to gripe about it, though a part of me really wants to. I defended “Recon” when it aired, but that was in large part because the episode was both narratively and emotionally needed, a breather episode as I called it, a way to regroup after the havoc in previous episodes.

“The Last Recruit” lacks the emotional necessity that made “Recon” work. Without the emotional attachment, “The Last Recruit” feels like narrative vegetables, something that’s good for the story, but that I don’t really want. Did we have lingering questions? Yes (well, question, really, and that was Desmond’s fate down in the well), but there wasn’t much else hanging in the air that we needed to recover from in the previous episodes. So “The Last Recruit” may serve, as Mittell notes, as the first hour in the show’s two-part finale structure (tramping through the jungle, getting onto transportation, things exploding) before settling into the thrilling conclusion. Read more »

“Dead people more reliable than alive people.”

I don’t have a whole lot to say about “Everybody Loves Hugo.” This is probably for the best as I’m pretty busy (hopefully the unexpected Glee rant helped ease your need for a fix) and should really be doing other things.

It wasn’t that I didn’t find the episode enjoyable, I did, but it’s clearly the kick off to the tail end of the season as, finally, I think all the pieces are in place (there I go, assuming our characters are pieces in a chess game between larger than life entities…wait…), and I’d almost rather wait and see what happens next week before giving any thoughts about this week. Read more »

“There’s always a choice, brother.”

Call this one “Greatest Hits (Flash Remix by Desmond Hume).”

Throughout “Happily Ever After,” Desmond relives (if that’s even the right word) his best moments from the Island-existing reality in the flash-sideways, albeit slightly scrambled. The episode provides a place to wriggle into the narrative idea of what “caused” the flash-sideways and how it can be reconciled with the rest of the show.

And what’s the thing that reconciles it? The same things that you need to make a good a film: a girl and a nuclear weapon. Wait… Read more »

“Jin is waiting.”

“Sun, wait!”

Better late than never.

That phrase could be applied to both my super timely review of the most recent Lost and the episode itself. It’s been 19 episodes since Sun and Jin last had a centric episode. It’s been longer for some characters (Hurley is at 22, Desmond at 21) but I make mention of this gap because the show, unlike with Hurley or Desmond, continues to makes us aware of the fact that Sun and Jin have been separated for what seems like an eternity (for the audience, anyway) and that their roles in the final stretch of the show has been significantly smaller than many other characters. Read more »

On thee thou must take a long journey:
Therefore thy book of count with thee thou bring;
For turn again thou can not by no way,
And look thou be sure of thy reckoning:
For before God thou shalt answer, and show
Thy many bad deeds and good but few;
How thou hast spent thy life, and in what wise,
Before the chief lord of paradise.
Have ado that we were in that way,
For, wete thou well, thou shalt make none attournay.
-Everyman

Is it okay to admit that I was a bit bored with the episode? It wasn’t that it was bad, because it wasn’t. Richard’s story has been the most anticipated of the season given that for three seasons now he’s been the mysterious gatekeeper, the man with an inkling of what’s been going on in the Island for the past 140 years. As this season as unfurled, it’s been clear that Richard perhaps had even less of an inkling, stuck in the dark as much as anyone else Jacob brought to the Island. And now with Jacob gone, Richard’s eternal life is at a dead end, with no master to serve and no exit. He’s in no position to tell anyone anything. Read more »

“It’s sad really, how little you actually know.”

My thoughts on “Recon” will be briefer than usual for a Lost review. It’s nothing against the episode, I did enjoy it, but there’s not a great deal to pick apart in this episode. This isn’t a bad thing. We, as an audience, need a breather every once in a while (especially for next week’s episode) and the writers need time to get things into place as we’re about to hit the halfway point of the season, and as long time watchers of the show know, the halfway point is where things to tend to pick up as the season hits the home stretch. Read more »

“It was on this island that everything changed.”

This may be the best, most compelling episode (yet) of the final season of Lost, for many reasons.

"You were larger than life, you came and you conquered..."

It’s an episode that provides even more nuance to Benjamin Linus, a character that’s been going strong for seasons now, and who knew that there was much nuance left to be mined (obviously Michael Emerson, thus proving, yet again, his acting ability).

It’s an episode that gave even more weight to the flash-sideways structure than any previous one, one that navigates ideas about destiny and choice, and manages to provide redemption for a character who has done horrible things (never mind that fans had long since forgiven Ben Linus anything based on the sheer amount of charisma the character has).

But the episode also begins to map out the season’s most compelling new character, Richard, while still providing a bit of meta commentary, though this time significantly more subtle than in “Lighthouse.”  After last week’s episode that emphasized the big picture narrative of Smocke’s goals to leave the Island, to see what the Island means to a man who who wanted to protect it, and himself, it made for damn fine television. Read more »

“You think you know me but you don’t.”

So I was wrong: the show is quite willing to give us two crazy main cast members.

Sayid is officially on the train to Crazy Town

But the crazy is tempered by the fact that crazy Claire and Sayid are still, in some way, regular Claire and Sayid. Both still have flashes of gentle smiles and I think we can all agree that both are still rather attractive (as Miles noted about Claire). What each is going through, as their infections sink in deeper and deeper into their hearts, is that their central motivations come to the forefront, for better or for worse (mostly for worse)

When “The Substitute” aired, I argued for the flash-sideways as a lens, using an analogy I stole from a professor of mine to explain to students how genre functions: when you look at something as one particular genre, those traits come forward while the other traits recede a bit (“Think of His Girl Friday as a screwball. Now think of it as a social problem film.”), leaving you with whatever you’re looking for. With the flash-sideways, the same principle is applied, just this time with character traits and motivation.

With “Sundown,” we perhaps the clearest deployment of that idea yet.

Read more »

“He can’t be told what that is. He has to find it himself.”

I’ve been talking a fair bit about ideas of leadership and trust, two issues that I think are core themes of this season, and are issues that are hinted at in small ways during the episode. But I want to take a step back and think, briefly, about another element that the show has decided to engage the audience with.

Like “Exposé” before it, this season has been decidedly meta-textual, and this particular episode allows that tendency to stretch out a bit. The writers and Team Darlton (who penned this particular episode) are speaking to fans about the show and about the show itself. It could come off as a cheeky and mildly self-indulgent, but the show nicely manages to avoid these by speaking through Hurley. Read more »

“But you. You ain’t scared.”

John Locke was always scared when he was on the Island, scared that it would always go away: his ability to walk, the connection he felt, scared he’d go back to his old life with boxes and phone sex operators. As a result, Locke was always driven to solve any possible puzzle the Island laid out at his feet (or that he assumed the Island laid out at his feet). It would keep him there, safe and in control. Destiny may’ve brought John Locke there, but John Locke would do everything within his power not to leave.

But then there’s Smocke (apologies to readers of Maureen Ryan’s blog but Flocke just isn’t good enough for me, and Locke-ness Monster is too much to type every time). Here’s a…an entity with all the answers (or we assume has all the answers). There’s no mystery to the Island for him, and there’s no desire to stay. But Sawyer’s wrong about Smocke. There’s one thing that Smocke is afraid of and that’s Jacob. Read more »