6461

Uhm, could someone make me a banner like Marvel’s Civil War.

I AM WITH THE SMOKE MONSTER.

6462

You can accept a great deal of things about this show that are seemingly arbitrary and ridiculous, but this is the stumbling block for you?

I predicted 5 months ago, in my blog, that you’d call me dumb.

6463

Internal consistency.

That guess is purely, unjustified speculation. We get to play with what we have, but never in the show was said that “word” = invulnerability.

One thing is not answering the nature of the magic light, another is to make arbitrary rules for every plot point. Lost may be bad, but not THAT bad.

6464

By the way, let’s assume the unmom is smoke monster.

Then why the hell she needs a guardian? SHE is guarding the pool of light. The pool of light is the object being guarded, but the pool of light generates the smoke monster. Who has no intention to guard the pool of light and actually wants to go off the island.

And now Jacob instead of guarding the pool of light guards a smoke monster, who originally was the guardian of a pool of light.

How can this make sense?

6465

The kind of change I’m talking about we’ve only seen twice.

Him walking around in his ‘normal’ state, talking with Jacob or whoever. He does it as MiB, then later in his Locke guise.

His other appearances are basically one offs, for a specific duration and purpose. And usually only to one person, not whole groups. Those are similar to his smoke monster appearances in that respect.

6466

Interview with Cuse and Lindelof about this last episode.

Okay, you’ve now said at a couple of points here that you’re not going to reveal the name of the Man in Black. Is there a significance to that, or you’ve just decided you prefer the air of mystery it gives the character to not give him a name?

CC: I think for us to explain why we’re not giving him a name veers too far into the territory of explaining things that we don’t feel the need to explain.

6467

At this point it’s pretty clear that Lost is going to go right ahead and ignore some basic writing precepts for its big conclusion.

Namely that while magic is fine as a premise for a plot(suppose you could turn invisible, what happens?) it’s an unsatisfying explanation for plot points unless it’s established far in advance, and should never, ever be used as the central explanation of a story that’s framed as mystery (how did someone break into the sealed room and commit the murder? A wizard did it!) because it makes it clear to the audience that the writer is not playing fair.

I guess it’s possible they’ll come up with some explanation of the Island’s Magic Glowy MacGuffin Power that makes us all say, “Of course! It was staring us all in the face all along! Not only does that explain where the power comes from and how it is able to recruit guardians, but also why tossing a person into the heart of its normally healing power turns them into an evil CG smoke monster who sounds like cicadas!”

But I’m pretty sure we’re gonna get, “A wizard did it.” (Or rather, “Mother made it that way.”)

6468

Damn. After reading that I like the show less. They refuse to accept any sort of criticism and basically insult their entire fan base.

6469

And they can’t even admit a very small thing like not knowing who the skeletons were when they introduced them.

What smug assholes.

BSG has a lot of the same flaws as Lost, and Ron Moore has plenty of flaws as a writer, but damn do I respect his honesty about that show.

6470

TEAM SMO-CO

6471

A rather harsh, but insightful commentary can be found here.

6472

This show is so terrible.

6473

The only thing remotely interesting in this episode was Titus Welliver. Take him out and it’s a steaming pile.

Someone give Welliver a series and not let Cuse or what’s his glasses near it please.

6474

Yeah, he is great. How 'bout a Deadwood spin-off?

I’m pretty surprised that opinion seems to have wheeled so heavily on this episode, which, from my perspective, has been the first to feed out some real, actual background to the island (turtles though it might be), which I don’t think has happened since they all tripped back in time.

What was going so well in the fourth-to-last episode that went sour in the third-to-last? They hadn’t been going anywhere. That left-field herd-culling from the prior episode, which seemed to instantly regard multiple main characters as superfluous, was a far worse and sloppier case of storytelling than anything in this episode. Skeletons excluded - that felt like a gawdawful, cheap rib-nudging from the writers. I’m surprised they had the restraint to not immediately blow the horn and cut to commercial.

It was always going to be Turtles All the Way Down, right? There hadn’t been any impression of unifying theory for quite some time.

So, given the miserable pacing of the entire season, what about this episode seemed to put it off-course? What material in the preceding episodes provided more insight? It has been nothing but empty metaphors and arbitrary rules.

Or is this a ‘last straw’ thing?

6475

Our belief is that the real resolution of the show and the one that matters is what happens to these characters.

Hey, good job on keeping them mostly-obscured until the third-to-last episode of a six-season series, then.

6476

Not at all. They covered that in the dialog. Man Who Wants to Hump Light originally wanted to hang out with people because that was where he was from. Then he did that for thirty years and found out that they were all dramatic sons of bitches, but he still wanted to get away from Allison Janey, so he used them like tools to try and escape. Jacob didn’t trust them to begin with, and he still doesn’t, but he believes that people aren’t universally evil. The only part that isn’t well explained is why Jacob thinks people can be good, given his limited experience with them, but Curly Haired Bastard’s perspective on humans is pretty well laid out. It’s worth noting that Jacob HAS to bring people to The Cork if he ever intends to quit his job, so he, at least, has a legitimate motivation to drag dudes there.

6477

But she was stabbed before she said a word. That seems to be a key. Unlocke got to talk and thus that makes the knife worthless.*

DOH! Didn’t realize this was already pointed out.

6478

Pretty much all the dialog between Jacob and Smokey this season has been exactly that… they are playing a game with arbitrary rules. You/we can’t kill the candidates, we can’t kill each other, candidates can’t kill themselves, as yet undiscovered reasons exclude people from being candidates while still alive, and a human can’t kill us unless they can stab us before we speak. In this episode alone there were many references to games, knowing the rules and making up rules. Either its part of Lost, or its the Lost writers laughing at the audience. How you see it will probably determine whether or not you are going to enjoy the end of the show.

6479

Because this episode opened Schrodinger’s catbox.

In addition to moving the “Turtles All the Way Down” scenario from probable to certain, this episode had a vaguely phoned-in feel to it, and that might be rubbing people the wrong way.

6480

I would love to see a Battlestar Galactica style remake of this show in 20 years where they cut the fat and keep the good stuff in.

But this run, despite excellent moments, is definitely weak.

And Kate must die in the last episode. Please.