Sunday, June 30, 2013

Rewatching Lost: Season 2

Previously on Rewatching Lost:
Rewatching Lost
The First 20 Episodes
Season 2, Episode 3
Stuff That I Don't Want to Forget to Notice
Analucia and Mr. Eko

I just finished season 2. It was very entertaining. If the entire rest of the series had followed this train of thought, it would have been fantastic. As it stands, however, just like season 1, season 2 has absolutely nothing to do with the ultimate story line. Like literally nothing. Season two is all about the hatch and pushing the button. Also they introduce the Dharma Initiative and we get to watch the orientation videos to the swan station and the pearl station. At the end of season two Desmond turns the failsafe key on the hatch, probably just so they don't have to keep writing someone in there pushing the button.

Again, what really bothers me about season 2 in retrospect is that it has nothing to do with the ultimate story line. It was massively entertaining and managed to answer a bunch of questions while raising a bunch more, specifically with the Dharma Initiative stuff. In the finale of season 2 they introduce Charles Widmore and Penny Widmore, the only plot points that will be relevant for the remainder of the series. I just wish they had focused on the Dharma Initiative instead of all the other stuff they introduced. As it stands, the Dharma Initiative has nothing to do with seasons 5 or 6 or the ultimate story they told. It was just a red herring. At least that's how I remember it.

There are tons of clues that they are in purgatory, too many to even list. Also they raise the possibility that the entire series is just taking place within Hurley's mind. This is never broached again, but I had forgotten this episode, and this interpretation is probably as valid as any other that's offered in the remainder of the series. I know it's not the intended interpretation, but it's certainly as valid as the rest.

I'm sortof already dreading watching seasons 3 and 4, and I'm wondering if I'll get through them without getting super frustrated. I don't know. I guess we'll see.

On the next episode of Rewatching Lost:
Season 3

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Rewatching Lost: Analucia and Mr. Eko

Previously on Rewatching Lost:
Rewatching Lost
The First 20 Episodes
Season 2, Episode 3
Stuff That I Don't Want to Forget to Notice

It's hard to say exactly what the original plans were for Analucia and Mr. Eko. Michelle Rodriguez is apparently not fun to work with and got fired. Adewale long last name apparently hated being in Hawaii (what?) and didn't want to be on the show any more, so both characters were written out. I recall Carlton Cuse saying that Mr. Eko was originally going to figure very prominently into the story line, except then they had to write him out. Analucia, who knows. I think she probably served her purpose. Libby, I didn't really get to her storyline, but she was probably pretty useless. The thing where she was in the mental institution with Hurley never really went anywhere.

Some other stuff:
* After Analucia kills Shannon and she's talking to Sayid, they're both going on about how their lives sucked up to that point and you get the sense that neither one of them is really happy with themselves. Analucia says, "I feel dead." and Sayid in the same conversation says, "What good would it be to kill you if we're both already dead?" So they're feeding into the purgatory idea after most likely having decided that they weren't going to go that way.

* Mr. Eko has some gems: "Don't mistake a coincidence for fate." and another one, "You live in a world where righteousness and evil are very far apart. But that is not the real world." I think both of these lines are pretty important to the story they're trying to tell.

* I want to talk about the books they've referenced, but I don't have time right now. Specifically Watership Down, Turn of the Screw, and Lord of the Flies. Later for that. Turn of the Screw is most important of those. Ok, later.

On the next episode of Rewatching Lost:
Season 2

Monday, June 24, 2013

Rewatching Lost: Stuff That I Don't Want to Forget to Notice

Previously on Rewatching Lost:
Rewatching Lost
The First 20 Episodes
Season 2, Episode 3

First, Shannon's father (Boone's step-father) was killed in a head on collision with an SUV, which is to say that he was the guy that was killed by Jack's ex-wife when she was driving like a woman all over the place. I just watched the episode where Shannon gets shot. I had literally no recollection of that episode at all. Not a single thing that happened seemed familiar.

Second, when John Locke meets his birth mother, she originally tells him that he has no father, and that he had been immaculately conceived. This is obviously not true, but you could probably read this either way. If you want him to be the savior, then he is. If you want him to be the anti-savior, then he's that, too. Like Darth Vader, I guess. John Locke has a fucked up life to the point that he lands on the island. He's kindof a wimp, essentially the opposite of what he is on the island. Blank slate.

I guess that's basically it. I don't have much else to say right now. All of the tail end people don't last much more than a season. The only exception is Bernard who's on sporadically for the remainder of the series. Another example of them trying to expand the show beyond its original intention without much success. Also Bernard had a planned comeback from the very beginning, so he was in the original plan.\

Final thought, the music that goes with each scene is fantastic, wonderful, dramatic, all that.

On the next episode of Rewatching Lost:
Analucia and Mr. Eko

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Rewatching Lost: Season 2, Episode 3

Previously on Rewatching Lost:
Rewatching Lost
The First 20 Episodes

Season one ends in a very dramatic but predictable way. Skip ahead to season two.

Within the first three episodes of season 2 we find out that The Others definitely exist and that Desmond is in the hatch and we watch the orientation video of the Dharma Initiative's swan station. Basically all of this happens actually in the 3rd episode. The first two episodes were a pretty clever telling of how they opened the hatch and discovered Desmond. Anyhow, this third episode is the beginning of the cluster fuck. Season one is basically irrelevant to the eventual story line as a whole, there is nothing revealed except the back stories. Incidentally, basically everything I remember about the back stories happens in the first season, with the exception of finding out what Kate's original crime was.

I get the feeling that they went home over the summer after knowing this was a big hit and they completely retrofit a bunch of stuff into what was going to be an otherwise fairly straightforward story line. It's like how Star Wars was accidentally awesome so George Lucas then had to flesh out a whole bunch of story after that, eventually ending up with Ewoks, and then super eventually ending up with Jar Jar Binks. This is the observer principle at work. Fucks everything up.

Meta-Observations:
* I know I'm reading a lot into this, but these three things all happen in season 2, episode 3.
- John Locke asks his father why he stole his kidney from him (dick move) and his father says, "There is no why. You think you're the first person who ever got conned?"
- After watching the Dharma Initiative orientation video, Jack questions Desmond about the need to push the button every 108 minutes. And he says, "Do you ever think that maybe they put you down here to push a button every 100 minutes just to see if you would? That all of this, the computer, the button, it's just a mind game? An experiment?"
- Shortly thereafter, Desmond runs away and Locke tries to convince Jack to stay and push the button with him and also the computer is broken at this point. And then Locke says, "It wasn't supposed to happen this way."

I'm going to offer those without any analysis because I'm clearly biased.

On the next episode of Rewatching Lost:
Stuff That I Don't Want to Forget to Notice

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Rewatching Lost: The First 20 Episodes

Previously on Rewatching Lost:
Rewatching Lost

There are 25 episodes in season 1, and I am through 20 of them. I guess it would make more sense to write about the end of season 1, but I don't know, I just kinda feel like doing it now. I just watched the episode where Boone dies and Claire's baby is born. It was a really good episode. The episode before that one was the one where they introduce the numbers.

Random shit:
* Charlie dies early on in the series when he and Claire get kidnapped by Ethan. Ethan leaves him hanging in a tree and then Jack CPRs him and he doesn't wake up. And then like a minute later he wakes up. I want to call that foreshadowing, but I also feel like it would be a stretch.

* People who have killed someone so far include Kate (they haven't said who yet, but she's admitted to murdering someone. Spoiler alert: it's her dad.), Sawyer (the guy who he thinks conned his parents, but it was the wrong guy), Charlie (kills Ethan when everyone else wants to take him alive for questioning), Jack (kills the federal marshal in more of a euthanasia than a murder after Sawyer shot him in the lung instead of the heart), and I want to say Sayid, although maybe he's just about torture up until now, though that won't be true for the entire series. I mention this just to ponder the idea that Michael is not allowed into heaven because he shot somebody. I feel like it's Shannon (God, I hope it's Shannon) or maybe it's Analucia. Anyway, that shit's mad racist.

* Walt is magical and possibly evil. This subplot never goes anywhere.

* Twice so far Jack has made promises to people and they've used the line, "I know you promised, but I'm letting you off the hook." First was Rose, when Jack promised he would stay with her until her husband came back right before the plane crashed. Second was Boone, who Jack promised to heal, but then he died. Fun fact: Jack's (ex)-wife is Julie Bowen from Modern Family. This whole thing is a running theme where Jack is too committed to shit once he decides to do something. I'm not sure how this plays out in the end based on my memory, but I'll keep an eye on it. (Get it? An eye. As in at least 5 episodes have started on a close up of some character's eye.)

* John Locke is named after an Enlightenment philosopher who was very influential in developing the idea of empiricism. Short version, you are born a blank slate (tabula rasa) and you learn only through experience and rational thought. He was the first guy to write about man's right to life, health, liberty, and possessions, which was converted into the phrase you recognize from the Declaration of Independence. I don't think the writers wanted a super deep exploration of Locke's ideas, I get the sense more that they were interested in the "blank slate" that the island's John Locke got when he ended up there. Although it's also worth mentioning that John Locke was one of the first guys to deal with social contract theory.

* The French lady is named Rousseau, another enlightenment thinker who wrote a book called "On The Social Contract." Fun fact, Jean Jacques Rousseau was not actually French, he was from Geneva. Also, he wrote a famous book about the importance of education (Emile) but the five kids that he fathered were raised in orphanages. Anyway, the French lady is sortof the anti-social contract person of the island. She killed all of her colleagues on the island after having gone crazy or maybe they all went crazy, or maybe both. But both Locke and Rousseau are enlightenment thinkers and both dealt with social contract theory and I guess there's something to that.

* Jack's name is Jack Shepherd. Get it, shepherd?

* I assume Sawyer is supposed to bring to mind Tom Sawyer, known rapscallion, but ultimately pretty good guy. Also, I still have no recollection of the Sawyer story line. The only thing I remember about him were addressed in his one flashback episode this season, through episode 20 anyway, and even then there was stuff I didn't recall. I know he was there the whole time, but I don't recall what role he plays in any of the events that transpire.

* The Sun and Jin story line is much deeper than I remember. I recall by the end being really into their subplot, but that must have been the case from the beginning.

* I feel like this first season was set up for them to have been in purgatory all along, but then the writers changed their minds. I know they said that wasn't true, but I still can't shake that feeling.

* My memory says that the single best episode ever was the first episode of the second season. And I'm almost up to that episode. Also Desmond might be the best character, so I'm excited for that.

* This first season is super tight. There are no plot lines shooting all over the place. One solid through line about where are we, how do get off, are we alone on this island? The back stories blend perfectly with the episodes. It's just really well done.

On the next episode of Rewatching Lost:
Season 2, Episode 3

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Universe is Cool as Fuck

Ok, read a little bit about this here or just link straight to the video that lays forth a 3D map of the entire known universe. Because the universe is cool as hell.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Rewatching Lost

So, really this blog has been about nothing if it hasn't been about Lost. And recently I started to rewatch Lost, as it is available for streaming on Netflix. I haven't yet decided if this is an exercise in masochism, as my feelings towards Lost haven't really changed since it ended. I felt like the writers let me down, especially in the last season. I felt like I invested a lot of time and energy into the series hoping some of it would get wrapped up in the end, and really almost nothing got wrapped up. Like, practically nothing.

I guess I decided to watch it again without having to be surprised by everything that happens and with the benefit of knowing what happens (at least what I remember) and decide if I really was led astray. I guess I'm giving it a second chance. I want to decide if they really bit off more than they could chew, or if all of that stuff was there for a reason. I have never seen any episode more than once, with the exception of the finale, which I watched twice.

And now I've rewatched the first 8 episodes. Here's what I got so far:
* In the very first episode, Locke teaches Walt how to play backgammon and describes it as light versus dark in sortof a heavy handed way, which would obviously come back into play later down the road.
* Locke doesn't get killed by the smoke monster early on, but it is implied that he faces him down and sees into the soul of either the island or what we would find out later is the smoke monster. They don't show him facing down the smoke monster, they only imply it. They also haven't actually shown the smoke monster yet, only wind and trees being bent. And I guess there's something to that and the fact that Locke would later become the smoke monster, or I guess the converse of that is more appropriate.
* Sayid has that picture of Nadia and on the back she writes, "You will see me in the next life, if not in this one." After setting that up and knowing that he gets with Shannon at the end still makes me mad.
* I don't really remember the Sawyer story line at all.

On the Next Episode of Rewatching Lost:
The First 20 Episodes