Any bets on Islandless-Sayid and Shannon rekindling their hot & heavy (and completely unbelieveable) romance from the earlier episodes?
HRose
5722
What sucks with this episode is entirely in the stupidity of characters’ motivations (see zengonzo’s post some pages back). And Richard talking in riddles in a way that feels both artificial, unexcused and extremely irritating at this point (it’s the 7th episode of the last season, stop fucking buying time).
Hiding things from each other without a single reason beside trying to make up mysteries for the audience is some of the worst TV writing you can find. This whole episode has opaque exposition just for the sake of opaque exposition.
Don’t ask me “why I watch Lost” because I still love the majority of the series and liked a lot the pilot, Locke and Jack episodes this season. Kate, Sayid and this one were crap. Including the ridiculous ending with Widmore that seemed ripped from a James Bond movie.
P.S.
A look at the wikipedia revealed this episode was written by those who wrote Kate’s episode: I’m not surprised.
This episode did have one of those patented “just TELL him already, goddammit!” scenes that make me want to throw something at the TV - couldn’t Hurley have just TOLD Jack that Jacob warned them about going back to the temple, instead of stalling and trying to lead him off in the wrong direction?
Jacob had already explained to Hurley that there are some people that you can just tell things to directly (like Hurley), and some people you can’t (like Jack). Hurley probably thought that if he just came out and said that Jacob didn’t want them to go back to the temple that Jack would respond by bee-lining straight for it.
I liked this episode, but I have to admit, I’m really sick of people (like Richard) saying things like “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you” to people known to have time travelled and seen dead people walking around and shit.
The reason this doesn’t bother me has a bit of an involved explanation, so bear with me for a second. Whenever you’re in a group of friends, you sort evolve a certain vocabulary. I’ve been friends with several groups of people throughout my life, and each group has had their own idiosyncrasies and sayings and expressions, and their own weird sense of humor. I’m sure everyone here has experienced this to some extent. And so it is with Lost, I’ve gotten used to the show having a certain vocabulary, a certain way of having characters talk about things that bothered me a lot at first, but just like with a group of friends where you learn their quirks and how certain people say certain things at certain times, I just expect Lost characters to talk in a certain way now.
And so, that brings me to Richard, and if that line had come from someone who was known to talk more forthrightly, like Hurley, it would bother me, but coming from Richard, I thought it fit really well, because Richard and a lot of the peripheral characters in Lost just talk like that. And they continue to talk like that. It doesn’t even matter who their audience is, or how bizarre the situation is, they just have that voice, and it continues to be the same, and that’s why it doesn’t really bother me. It did bother me a LOT in Season 1, I have to admit, which is one of the reasons why I was constantly irritated with this show when it first started. But by now, it’s grown to be one of the quirks of the show that I not only accept, but even enjoy.
It’s like my second college roommate, who latched onto the expression “WAAAZZAAAAAP” back in '92, and said to us constantly in order to purposely annoy the shit out of us. And then, a few months later, we were all doing it, and it felt comforting instead.
You didn’t sell me on the idea.
The sort of thing I’m talking about never bothered me in season 1. If Richard didn’t expect the season 1 Losties to believe he didn’t age that would have been perfectly reasonable because back then they hadn’t spent the last 4 years witnessing shit that is outside of well accepted reality. Now that they’ve seen all this crazy shit (with Richard being aware of at least some of the craziest shit), it just seems like such a lame thing to say to someone.
In short, someone that travelled back in time 30 years and saw you looking exactly the same as you look in the present day probably is going to believe you don’t age, so don’t say stupid shit Richard.
HRose
5728
I can’t pinpoint anymore the good and bad side.
Right now I absolutely hate Jacob. He’s the most irritating character who enjoys being mysterious and smug and only deserved to be slapped for eternity. So I sympathize with Richard when he tells Hurley that he shouldn’t listen to Jacob. In parallel with Ben’s story on the island. Both go against Jacob for a DAMN GOOD reason. In every single case Jacobs demands stuff that is not deserved and that is itself ridiculous. I also will never sympathize with any narrative whose thesis is that doing all sort of crimes in the name of blind faith is GOOD.
So all this would mean very plainly that the writers just wanted to disguise Jacob as the good guy by dressing him in white and make him look peaceful when he is instead the villain. The consequence is that Locke is now the hero. And I can easily sympathize with that because Locke now gives very solid motivations to his party and little on bullshit (while Jacob basks in bullshit and smugness).
Yet it’s obvious that there’s something rotten even in Locke. And sometimes there are some sparks of true goodness in Jacob. So the third possibility is that both these guys are shades of gray and usually just thinking about themselves and simply using people for their own purposes and tossing them aside when they aren’t anymore useful.
But in that case there’s still the isle. If neither Jacob nor Locke define a purpose on their own, then it’s the island who gets the role of direction. And Locke this episode made clear that the island needs indeed someone who stays there even if Locke gets off.
So we’re probably going to see a ping-pong this season between Locke and Jacob about who’s better than the other. But the real question is what the hell the island IS andwhy all this fuss that went on for six seasons.
DT1
5729
What was even funnier about that is, Jack says, “Try me” and Richard says, “Not yet.” However, Richard is heading off to get himself killed! It seemed like his time to tell Jack anything was about to get real short.
HRose
5730
Being immortal I don’t think Richard was in a rush to kill himself.
So he could have as well sat down with Jack, explained EVERYTHING and then get killed as a favor. But no, sitting down and sharing what they know is Lost’s biggest taboo.
P.S.
Thinking about it. It’s telling that Richard lost faith in Jacob but is still convinced Locke is no better. He didn’t jump to the other faction like Ben.
DT1
5731
This aspect of Jacob’s character is like the Old Testament where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. I hope it veers back to sci-fi but it feels a lot like fantasy with god-like creatures right now.
ME: So, how’s it going?
FRIEND: You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.
ME: Did you see Lost last night?
FRIEND: I can’t tell you that. You’ll just have to trust me on this.
ME: Uh … sure. Where do you want to go for lunch?
FRIEND: You’re not ready to know that – yet.
ME: What are you talking about? You were the one who invited me to lunch!
FRIEND: Did I? Are you sure?
ME: Are you on meds or something? You’re not making any sense today.
FRIEND: We don’t have time for this!
ME: What? Fine, then let’s go eat.
FRIEND: Not now. The time is not right.
ME: Never speak to me again you miserable piece of shit.
So I think the Losties are really in a mental hospital under sedation getting their brains stimulated with electricity to cure them of… what? Stupidity? Bad dialog? Mental illness? Yeah, that last one, 'cause these people are messed up - you got a homicidal woman who kills her stepfather, a surgeon with daddy issues who needs an anger management course desperately, a loser in a wheelchair with delusions of relevance, a guy who thinks he can listen to the last moments of dying people, a guy who thinks he can talk to dead people, a musician who who pokes drugs into his veins at every opportunity… and on and on and on. F.u.c.k.e.d u.p.
And all of these people have bad nasty self image problems, low self-esteem. They mostly don’t play well with the other kids on the playground. These people need some work, some serious get-r-done work, and whoever or whatever is running this brain-fixing mental clinic has the real deal, a gold-plated, hi-falutin’, bleeding-edge piece of high holy technology, a machine that will force them, yes, force these mofos to confront their problems head on, balls to the wall, pedal to the metal, in a super-duper fantasy setting, tastefully tricked out in tropical decor, and if the first scenario doesn’t work, this deus ex machina has others, oh yes, many others, and it will throw shit at these people until they are by-God cured. Or dead. Or worse.
At least, at the very least, dear Lord please, please, pretty please, don’t let them wake up on Mars in the series finale.
Just don’t.
bloo
5734
If I see a snowglobe, some show producers are going to die.
HumanTon pretty much nailed it.
arctangent, if they were well-adjusted, the show would be kinda boring.
Yeah, it reminds me of the later seasons of the X-Files, where somehow Scully STILL doesn’t believe in wierd shit.
I thought it was more interesting to compare the results of the two for the daughter. In one timeline, he pretty much causes her death, and in another, he saves her, even though his bond with her is lessened. To me, the story is trying to show the corruptive influence of the island - how it took his bad tendencies and pushed them to the point that he’d do anything and sacrifice anyone.
This just made network television interesting to me. I never knew.
jason
5739
They all died in the crash of Oceanic 815.
If that winds up being how it ends, I’ll be unhappy.
I guess I’m not sure if you dudes just heard of Lost or you’re joking, but they’re not all dead and they’re not in a snowglobe. They’ve even made the snowglobe joke on the show. The show’s creators have said many times that they’re not all dead, it’s not purgatory, that it takes place in the “real world” and that it’s not a dream.
I guess another bomb-type reset where they undo everything and they do all die in the crash is possible, but not likely. The only reason the plane crashed was because of the island so if it does crash in some third timeline that means the island is still there and it doesn’t make much sense for them to die and the island to be there. Plus as goofy or annoying as the show can be I think Lindelof and Cuse know how lame of an ending that would be.
