Lost: The Rewatch Thread - Page 3

I get the feeling that, had I been listening to the podcasts, my experience with the show would have been somewhat different.

I'm glad I didn't opt into those. I seem to remember Diva making a similar comment about how the podcast had set up expectations that weren't fulfilled.

And on a related note: I'm not including any of the ancillary ARG materials in this rewatch. Nothing on Joop the Orangutang, nothing on the Valenzetti equation, and nothing on Mittlewerk, et al. It's outside the show-proper, so I'm choosing to ignore it. If others are interested in including that info, or podcast-related comments, I'd welcome the input. But speaking strictly personally, I'd like the show to account for itself, so to speak.

Thank god.

And that makes even more sense. Thank you.

Scott and who?

'splain, please?

The Moth

The Moth (ep. 7)

What a moving episode.

Charlie's flashbacks tend to really hit home for me. I've never been in a rock band, or developed a heroin habit with an older brother, and yet I find Charlie's past sometimes difficult to watch. I'll say up-front that I'm already dreading the episode where Charlie becomes a copier salesman and steals his girl's stuff. That episode makes me feel dirty somehow, and I think most of the credit for that, and for the genuine power of The Moth, should go to Dominic Monaghan.

Random thoughts:

Charlie’s confession? Hilarious.

Great, subtext-laden, Confessional Priest Line #1: “We all have our temptations, but giving into them – that’s our choice. Life is a series of choices, isn’t it?”

That line ties oh-so-neatly into the various conceptions of free will and determinism that the show has so aggressively toyed with in a literal fashion this year. These concerns have been present from the word go.

The two looming themes of this episode, metaphorically-speaking, are choice and communication.

Oh, how I loathe Charlie’s brother in this episode. He’s named Liam, which solidifies the Oasis homage (something the show will comment upon directly when it has Charlie play Wonderwall in a Desmond flashback), and he’s an ass.

Granted, as nicely and subtly illustrated by the episode, Charlie’s choices were/are his own, and he cannot and should not blame his brother for his addiction, or for the obviously-gaping hole of insecurity he carries around inside of him. But all of this does not change the fact that I’d knock Liam’s smug teeth out and send those preppy, former-user-now-professor glasses of his flying.

We as an audience know that Charlie should have taken his brother’s offer – that, despite past wounds there are always opportunities for forgiveness – but we understand (horribly) why he doesn’t. Because Charlie’s right: Liam’s never looked out for him.

I’m pretty sure that The Moth is the first episode to bring up the fact that really, none of the 815ers should have survived. Sayid and Kate have this conversation as they go to triangulate a radio signal.

Hey! Neither Boone nor Shanon screws anything up this episode!

This is how you know you’re watching a well-constructed drama: you know that their attempts to contact the outside world will fail, and you know that the cave-in which buries good ol’ Jack this episode won’t kill him. And yet, the episode remains compelling. Good job, Lost.

I remember really, really hating where Michael’s character ended up, but I’m liking him right now. There’s a wonderful moment in this episode where Michael takes charge of the dig to rescue Jack, and the look of dawning pride on Walt’s face is heart-warming.

Sawyer’s arc is playing MUCH differently this time around. His interactions with Kate here are just plain sad. Holloway’s a better actor than people have given him credit for.

The moth metaphor that names the episode, and which Locke offers to Charlie as justification for the detox method Locke is using, is really lovely. And now that we’ve met Jacob, and heard him and the MiB discussing that unidentified ship (Black Rock!) on the horizon, it also encapsulates what seems to be Jacob’s philosophy:

“Struggle is nature’s way of strengthening it.”

Monaghan sells the hell out of the ending of the episode, asking Locke for the drugs a third time (and the genuine look of disgust/disappointment on Locke’s face is utterly perfect), but then burning them in the fire and making the choice to be free. I don’t believe Locke when he says that he always knew Charlie could do it, but I do believe in the awed look on Monaghan’s face just before the title card slams home at the episode’s end. There’s transcendence in that look – a kind of hard-earned elevation - and it makes the knowledge of what’s to come particularly bittersweet.

Thanks, Jacob. Much appreciated.

Great point. And that's a great moment to call out generally, because it ties together so much of what we now know about Sawyer all by itself.

The first time through, Sawyer's withholding of information from Kate about Jack's cave-in shenanigans (The Moth) was just dickish and petty. Now it's still dickish and petty, but so very understandable at the same time. Let me know if you agree.

I'm not sure what insights I have, but I appreciate that you think I do! As for the slack, it's cut. Chime in whenever you like on whatever you'd like. I know for a fact that I'm not wringing all the goodness out of these eps as I hit them. Plenty more to discuss when you get there.

Confidence Man (ep. 8)

It's Sawyer's turn to get a flashback, and it's a doozy. Sawyer's rationale for becoming the man he was chasing didn't quite make rational sense to me the first time around. It felt too twisty to be emotionally true. But I buy it now, after seeing this episode and remembering (some of) what's to come.

This episode continues the Sawyer-sadness-parade. Watching a man attempt suicide by proxy, with full (if vaguely remembered) awareness of how he got to this point, is not fun. But it is sort of powerful.

Random thoughts:

-This episode gives us the first instance of SawyerPorn, as he emerges from the water naked in front of Kate. You're no Ursula Andress, pal. Still, the women dig you, so I can't begrudge them their beefcake.

-Great Sawyer Line #1: "Hell of a book! It's about bunnies."'

-Watership Down, as I'm sure everyone already knows, contains a character named Fiver, who has the ability to see the future in terrifying visions. If you are feeling charitable (and I am) you could suggest that this was a sneaky way for the show to plant the idea of Desmond's future flashes from the beginning. You could also point out the fact that Sawyer is reading it, and that he, Juliet, Miles and Daniel end up much like the rabbits of the book, infiltrating a potentially hostile warren (the Dharma Initiative).

-Great Boone Line #1: "Shannon has asthma...she's been embarrassed about it since she was a kid. Guess breathing's not cool."

-Jackface! makes its first appearance in this episode as Jack confronts Sawyer over the missing medication.

Everyone thinks that Sawyer has the medicine, and thanks to Locke, who uses what appear to be jedi-mind-tricks, Sayid becomes convinced that Sawyer is also the mystery-person who knocked Sayid out last episode during an attempt at radio communication.

This brings up an interesting point about Locke, and his view of the Island. He's willing to sacrifice an innocent man (at least, innocent of this particular act) to cover up his own crime and ensure they are not rescued. He arms Sayid with a knife. Locke's something of a mystic, and he seems compelled to help people to some sort of peace with themselves (See: Charlie and Jack), but he's also curiously ruthless. I'm wondering if the duality that Jacob and MiB appear to express is similarly expressed in Locke. We have the concern for others and the pattern of assisting them not through direct action, but through subtler assistance, and we have the cold manipulation of others to further his own ends. Then again, it's essentially the case that every character on this show has that same sense of duality as well. Still, it's Locke we see with one white eye and one black further along in the season in that creepy dream sequence.

-Sawyer spends this episode looking for a hurting, and he gets his wish. Jack beats on him in front of the others, again for the medicine, but instead of telling Jack that he doesn't have it (twist!), he asks for more with his sarcasm. We'll find out at some point later on that "Sawyer" was in Australia to find the real Sawyer, tipped off by the T-000 (known in human form as 'Robert Patrick'). But the T-1000 has set 'Sawyer' up, and instead of killing the man that ruined his family, he shoots someone random that owes money to Patrick's character (never trust a machine). His death wish here makes even more sense when we remember that he's carrying all that fresh guilt.

-Peter DeLuise, of 21 Jump Street fame (I'm so old), guests as the husband of the woman Sawyer is sleeping with and conning. I'd like to imagine that Lost takes place in the same universe as that show, and that DeLuise's former teen-detective is almost screwed over by Sawyer.

-Great Claire Line #1: "I'm the only Australian who loves peanut butter."

-In movies and on television, you always see people getting beaned over the head with hard objects and being knocked cleanly out. This always bothers me. It's an arguably necessary/hyper-useful contrivance though.

-Sayid is an eager torturer. We'll see in the next episode that he's struggled with this for much of his life, and Ben's comment about Sayid in Season 5, and Sayid's eventual agreement with him, seem prescient in reverse, if that makes any sense. The Iraqi really is at ease with pain and bloodshed. That he is is arguably tragic, but it doesn't make it less true.

-Lost distinguishes itself from much of the television herd by SHOVING A KNIFE THROUGH SAWYER'S ARM. And showing it. Hardcore, Lost.

-As all of this hyper-macho chest beating is going on, we catch glimpses of other castaways, including Sun and Jin. The audience, and Michael, now know that Sun can speak (surprisingly good) English. Jin and the other castaways do not. It says so much about the state of Jin and Sun's marriage that Sun hides her skill and essentially consigns him to Chewbacca status.

-The Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle starts here! I'm sure you're all as thrilled as I am. Allow me to postulate my Obvious Rule of Attraction (for fictional women): The more tragically distant, emotionally scarred, and dark-but-potentially-redeemable you are, the more attractive you are to a woman. Add extra points if you are also (a) a criminal or (b) undead.

-The whole 'empty jar standing in for actual peanut butter' thing is enormously cheesy. And it's kind of CharliePorn. Which no one wants to see.

Sayid breaks off from the group because he's ashamed of his actions - time to become Rousseau-bait.

-And we have yet another music video ending. Oh soaring piano and scratchy white-blues vocals, oh invisible peanut butter and Korean alternative medicine, how you unite us in our strife.

Woundwort and Ben share a lot of similarities. It seems as though, like the religious underpinnings we've seen in the show, that the books that are name-checked provide a level of subtext. Which is fun. If you're inclined you can find ways to relate the basic story of the book to both the Others and to Dharma.

It's interesting to note also that the Black Rabbit of Inle shares some similarities (in this subtextual sense) with the Smoke Monster. In WD, the black rabbit is the servant of Lord Frith, who we can compare to Jacob.

If only Rousseau spoke with the voice of Zero Mostel.

Solitary

Solitary (ep. 9)

-Apropos of nothing in particular, I’d like to make mention of the fact that I’m watching these episodes on a wonderfully large television screen. The first time through, my wife and I huddled (relatively speaking) around the television I’d saved from college for our Lost fix. This is much better. I heartily recommend the experience if it’s available to you. It’s choice, as Ferris would say.

-Flashback-wise, it’s Sayid’s turn to ride the snake. Unlike many of the other castaways, Sayid hasn’t so much evolved away from, or built upon, his past and pain, so much as he has devolved, or deconstructed, himself from a man attempting to chase peace into a man who embraces blood. As someone who loves Naveen Andrews’ work on this show I find it terribly sad but also terribly impressive.

-Sayid’s wandering along the shoreline on his repentance hike, and this gives the show a sterling opportunity to inject another piece of mythology into the narrative. Namely, ‘the cable.’ In retrospect, we now know that this cable snakes down under the water and to the Looking Glass station, where Charlie will make his final sacrifice. For now though, it’s just a creepily-incongruous cable. Some hilarity ensues when Sayid makes a big show of lifting the cable out of the sand to examine it - only the camera angle lets us clearly see that the cable is quite visible where the sand meets the water.

-As Sayid preps to follow the cable into the jungle, we see Sawyer licking his wounds both literal and figurative, and now I’m just ticked off at him. Get your self-pitying s*** together, Sawyer/Ford/LeFleur! Fortunately, Kate speaks for the audience when she wisely advises our favorite con man to make an effort with the larger group.

-Kate and Jack talk torture, which gives me the opportunity to note that, as trenchant and relevant as much of this back-and-forth is to our current ‘War on Terror’ (and I, like may others, firmly believe that the Iraq war provides much of the subtext in this show), it’s still subtle enough that in twenty years the dialogue will still be relevant, and not particular to this time and place in history (though hopefully relevant only in an academic sense).

-This applies to the flashback sections featuring Sayid as well. Although we're clearly watching him participate in specific conflict, those scenes of him performing his 'work,' and between he and Nadia, are going to play far down the line.

-Sayid discovers jungle traps, and although he thinks he’s cleverly avoiding them, he sets one off with his steps – a nifty nod to the ease with which the Others will later be portrayed moving through the jungle, and the way in which Richard breaches the fence. Rousseau is wise to their tricks.

-There’s a lot of small directorial moments in this show that help make the experience more ‘cinematic,’ and less traditionally televisual. Two brief examples from the scene where Rousseau cuts Sayid down: the shot of the knife cutting the rope, and the shot of Rousseau approaching Sayid.

-The great Scott Paulin (Teen Wolf, as ‘Lolley,’ Captain America, as ‘The Red Skull,’ and Pump Up The Volume, as ‘Brian Hunter, aka, Christian Slater’s dad!) pops up as a dude with a bothersome rash. I like to imagine that when he’s not onscreen, Paulin is using the pirate radio methods pioneered by Happy Harry Hardon to attempt off-Island communication. Maybe he’s talking to 21 Jump Street?

-Great Hurley Delivery #1:
Jack: “Things could be worse.”
Hurley: “HOW?!”

-Rousseau’s first line, in a multitude of languages: “Where is Alex?”

-Rousseau tells part of her story to Sayid in this episode during an extended ironic 'look now the torturer is being tortured' sequence, and given Diva’s comments, I wanted to see if they matched up. I went back to This Place Is Death immediately after this episode, and compared the two. I’ll slap up that comparison after this, because it’s kind of long in and of itself. But I'll mention here that we get our first glimpse of the music box Jin will find breaking down in the sand during This Place Is Death.

-Ethan Rom! Our favorite non-815er makes his debut in this episode, and he’s introduced after having gone hunting with Locke – assumedly a very odd experience since it’s the first time Ethan has seen Locke since ol’ Col. Kurtz suddenly winked out of existence beside the Nigerian plane (Season 5).

-Interesting Rousseau Comment #1 (addressed to captive Sayid): “I know what you are.” Note that she does not say who.

-This is probably obvious, but I hadn’t noticed how well Nadia embodies the qualities that Sayid seeks to cultivate in himself: pacifism, humility, peace of spirit. I like that he chases those things literally in trying to find her, that in her absence on the Island he chases them within himself, and how the desire for those qualities seems to die when Nadia dies.

-In the finale of Season 5 the MiB comments (paraphrased) that ‘it’s always the same. They come, they fight, they corrupt…’ And he’s right, at least to an extent. Much as I love these characters they do terrible things to each other.

-I love that Hurley builds a golf course. And I love how happy it makes everyone.

-Any excuse to put Shannon in a bikini is a good excuse. It nicely balances the Sawyer/CharliePorn of last episode.

-Another slice of mythology enters the show in this episodes final moments. Sayid races through the jungle having been let go by Rousseau, and is momentarily surrounded by The Whispers. There are entire websites devoted to decoding these moments, and from what I’ve seen of the attempts at translation, they hint at a whole other level to the show – one that will be fully explored next year. Those who have a ‘Matrix’-esque theory about Lost have a fine piece of potential evidence with these Whisper incidents. What do you think they are?

A more complete Rousseau analysis to come shortly.

Rousseau's Story (A briefish comparison between Solitary and This Place Is Death)

Rousseau's Story (A briefish comparison between Solitary and This Place Is Death)

Diva made good points earlier in the thread regarding the consistency of Rousseau's story. I wanted to see how the story from Solitary held up in light of This Place Is Death, the episode which lays out some (but nowhere near all, and this is key) of Rousseau's early Island moments. Let me know what you think.

-Rousseau tells Sayid that they were a science team that crashed on the Island, breaching their ship’s hull on the rocks. This isn’t what we see in Season 5. Instead, we see them float to shore on a raft, having rescued Jin from the water. We can rationalize this by saying that their ship ran aground on rocks that are somewhere off-shore, and that they bailed in the raft. But it still feels like a retcon.

-Rousseau then tells Sayid that the crew managed to survive for two months, but that something happened on the way back from the Black Rock (the first mention of the mysterious ship, which we now believe to be the same ship seen in the season finale, and the same ship which Richard builds in a bottle a few episodes before that – I am now near-certain that this indicates Richard was a slave on that ship, or a member of its crew).

This sounds like its inconsistent with what we’re shown in season 5, but I don’t know that it is. I’ll admit upfront and without caveat that it would have been neater and easier to stick with the story as it was originally told, and not explore the moments around that story, which is what it appears they’ve done. It seems to me that what we’re seeing are moments Rousseau didn’t tell Sayid about, mixed in with moments that she did. This ‘makes sense,’ but the approach does leave parts of her story open to fair criticism.

-Rousseau’s team is attacked immediately by Smokey in Season 5. Her story in Solitary doesn’t mention this, but that’s not an error in and of itself, more of a retcon by previous omission. I suspect that in season one, the writers had not firmed up the notion that the Monster would be in some way responsible for ‘the sickness,’ or if they had thought that far ahead, that they had a more elaborate/time-wasting way in which to tell the story.

-Montand is dragged into the Temple, and in season One she doesn’t mention this. But that’s not an error either, just another omission. Whether these two omissions are ‘acceptable’ to you is completely up to you. I’d argue that they are. They aren’t contradicting anything, they’re filling things in. The key part, I’d argue, comes in Season 5 where, just after Robert and his fellow scientist descend into the Temple, Jin disappears.

Jin leaps forward at that point, and suddenly, based on poor ol’ Montand’s arm, we’re at least a month if not two from that first day. This is consistent with Rousseau’s story. If going into the Temple somehow made Robert and the others ‘sick’ (a term the writers are careful to have Danielle use again when she confronts Robert in Season 5, also calling a startled, time-jumping Jin one of ‘the carriers’ the same word she uses in Season one) it’s very possible that this sickness did not manifest itself immediately, or was subtle in manifestation, or is not in actuality a ‘sickness’ at all, but instead the ‘enlightenment’ of the others (brainwashing?). We aren’t given any evidence, in fact, to show that the Temple made Robert and Co. ‘sick’ at all. We’re assuming that.

So, it’s logically consistent to say (for now) that between when Jin disappears and reappears, Rousseau and the rest of the remaining crew discovered the Black Rock. It’s possible to suggest that whatever the ‘sickness’ is also made Robert aware of certain facets of the Island, like the Black Rock or the ‘security system.’ Finally, it’s very possible, and backed-up by Rousseau’s warning that Sayid should watch his fellow survivors closely, that this ‘sickness’ is such that the people affected continue to act just as they always have, but are capable of turning violent on a dime (just as Robert does in This Place Is Death). All of this leads me to believe that what Rousseau believes is a sickness is actually a variation on the Room 23 training we saw Karl receive in Season 3.

But that’s so convoluted, you object. Why not simply show us Jin popping up in the jungle and Rousseau et al headed back from the Black Rock? I have no idea. What I know is that Rousseau’s story, hull breach aside, still holds. It’s just not that cleanly explicated, and I suspect that it was done this way because something about this ‘sickness’/enlightenment/mind control is a major plot point for the final season (as well as the fact that for all the obvious planning that was done in the first season, there were probably concepts being set up that weren't fully thought out yet). The alternative is that the writers attempted to retcon portions of R’s story for no real reason, or that they goofed up, and for the time being I’d prefer to believe otherwise - since the circumstances allow for that belief.