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My slightly more considered thoughts on Lost episodes 2.1 and 2.2.
I saw the first two episodes of Lost on Tuesday after much waiting and I pretty much liked them. I didn't entirely like them, because it's Lost and it does lots of things that are not conducive to making me fall head over heels in love with it. Though I am, like, totally addicted and in its eternal thrall. I quite love the word thrall. But these are things that I am thinking.
In the hatch...the biggest of all the big mysteries apart from the really big one...was a crazy Scottish man called Desmond, and he was surrounded by strange (as in mundane) '60s paraphenalia and kept playing this Mama Cass record. This is greatness. Possibly it's just an example of the writers' trying to come up with something that no-one could possibly have guessed, but it's undeniably a bit hilarious. Lost is good at earthy anticlimax. I'm so glad it isn't nanites (yet). Nanites is a synonym for magic. I love to think of Locke standing hopefully on the hatch waiting for it to reveal its secrets while deep within Desmond's peddling away on his exercise bike, making smoothies and listening to Mama Cass.
I still don't know...I haven't yet seen 2.3...why Desmond is hiding from sick people in the hatch. What the Dharma logo that lives on his overalls and his olives actually signifies. Why Desmond has a bunk bed and the second bed is made up. I don't think Desmond/Ethan works. Why Desmond has a magnet and a mural. If Desmond mends legs for a living. Who He is. Who the Others are (I was EVERYONE to be the others, or it doesn't work). Why Walt was adamant that the hatch should not be opened. What the snowman said to the other snowman.
Questions irritate me.
Non-questionable points. There was some great imagery in Locke's journey down the hatch: before entering Desmond's cute little apartment with its cheesy pop music and jars of olives, he takes off his boots, ostensibly so he can move silently - but it's just what you do before going into a temple. And he appeared before Desmond with his palms bleeding. Rope burns, but it was a very potent image. And then he claims to be the 'Him' for whom Desmond's been waiting...and I think he genuinely does believe himself to be Him. Coincidentally or not - Desmond's turning on the light to see who was looking in was doubtless coincidentally reassuring, but the whole spine-mending thing seems a bit less random - he's certainly been singled out for special treatment on the island. But he isn't Him. Because he didn't know the answer to the snowman riddle. And now he's Box Man again, which is the last thing he wanted to be in the hatch. Poor Locke.
I did rather love the saga of Sawyer and Michael on the various raftlike fragments. I liked them sitting forlornly on the big bit of raft shouting alternately for Walt and Jin, which shouldn't have been in the least bit amusing, but there you go. And I liked even more their sitting sulkily on different bits of raft that refused to drift away from one another. And I like it when Sawyer is accidentally nice to people. I didn't entirely like that the shark had a sort of Dharma brand-name thing on its tail. Sometimes I think sharks should be allowed to be sharks. And the lack of Jaws music. I suppose that was almost entirely a good thing. But still....
There was a certain amount of less good stuff, and the flaws really begin to manifest about 24 hours after the event. The dialogue for the first 75% of the double-bill was generally pretty dire...a real downturn from the bulk of the work in season 1. Luckily much of this was due to their trying to cram as much recapping exposition in as possible, though I kind of thought that was what Destination Lost was all about. Particular lowlights include Locke's discussing the black smoke with Kate in a very stilted and unnatural fashion. People don't say useful things in Lost. And it almost seemed to be too fast-moving - I shouldn't complain about that, but Lost generally piles on the events in a non-linear way, so the viewer gets loads of new stimulii but never sees the resolution of any one thread. These episodes seemed to power away in one direction, and though the answers we got here patently threw up tons more questions, they were a bit more sizeable than those we've had in the past. But that wasn't really a problem.
Jack was a problem. I hate Jack. I hate his boring storyline with his boring wife and his silly silly wig. And Sawyer's suddenly knowing things about boats. That'd been Michael's excuse to turf him off a few episodes back...he knew nothing about boats. Until he needed to.
Locke grinned too much. Don't milk the grin. We know you're good at it.
But mostly I thought it was...promising. I'd been dreading well-organised conspiracy theories that revolved around every minor character's somehow conspiring to drag the 48 to the island. And nanites. What we had was a scared, crazy Scottish man, surrounded by books and olives, terrified of a disease that doesn't necessarily exist (unless he means falling off cliffs, 'cause that's been happening) and who definitely didn't want Locke and Jack and co. to be here.
Whee.
In the hatch...the biggest of all the big mysteries apart from the really big one...was a crazy Scottish man called Desmond, and he was surrounded by strange (as in mundane) '60s paraphenalia and kept playing this Mama Cass record. This is greatness. Possibly it's just an example of the writers' trying to come up with something that no-one could possibly have guessed, but it's undeniably a bit hilarious. Lost is good at earthy anticlimax. I'm so glad it isn't nanites (yet). Nanites is a synonym for magic. I love to think of Locke standing hopefully on the hatch waiting for it to reveal its secrets while deep within Desmond's peddling away on his exercise bike, making smoothies and listening to Mama Cass.
I still don't know...I haven't yet seen 2.3...why Desmond is hiding from sick people in the hatch. What the Dharma logo that lives on his overalls and his olives actually signifies. Why Desmond has a bunk bed and the second bed is made up. I don't think Desmond/Ethan works. Why Desmond has a magnet and a mural. If Desmond mends legs for a living. Who He is. Who the Others are (I was EVERYONE to be the others, or it doesn't work). Why Walt was adamant that the hatch should not be opened. What the snowman said to the other snowman.
Questions irritate me.
Non-questionable points. There was some great imagery in Locke's journey down the hatch: before entering Desmond's cute little apartment with its cheesy pop music and jars of olives, he takes off his boots, ostensibly so he can move silently - but it's just what you do before going into a temple. And he appeared before Desmond with his palms bleeding. Rope burns, but it was a very potent image. And then he claims to be the 'Him' for whom Desmond's been waiting...and I think he genuinely does believe himself to be Him. Coincidentally or not - Desmond's turning on the light to see who was looking in was doubtless coincidentally reassuring, but the whole spine-mending thing seems a bit less random - he's certainly been singled out for special treatment on the island. But he isn't Him. Because he didn't know the answer to the snowman riddle. And now he's Box Man again, which is the last thing he wanted to be in the hatch. Poor Locke.
I did rather love the saga of Sawyer and Michael on the various raftlike fragments. I liked them sitting forlornly on the big bit of raft shouting alternately for Walt and Jin, which shouldn't have been in the least bit amusing, but there you go. And I liked even more their sitting sulkily on different bits of raft that refused to drift away from one another. And I like it when Sawyer is accidentally nice to people. I didn't entirely like that the shark had a sort of Dharma brand-name thing on its tail. Sometimes I think sharks should be allowed to be sharks. And the lack of Jaws music. I suppose that was almost entirely a good thing. But still....
There was a certain amount of less good stuff, and the flaws really begin to manifest about 24 hours after the event. The dialogue for the first 75% of the double-bill was generally pretty dire...a real downturn from the bulk of the work in season 1. Luckily much of this was due to their trying to cram as much recapping exposition in as possible, though I kind of thought that was what Destination Lost was all about. Particular lowlights include Locke's discussing the black smoke with Kate in a very stilted and unnatural fashion. People don't say useful things in Lost. And it almost seemed to be too fast-moving - I shouldn't complain about that, but Lost generally piles on the events in a non-linear way, so the viewer gets loads of new stimulii but never sees the resolution of any one thread. These episodes seemed to power away in one direction, and though the answers we got here patently threw up tons more questions, they were a bit more sizeable than those we've had in the past. But that wasn't really a problem.
Jack was a problem. I hate Jack. I hate his boring storyline with his boring wife and his silly silly wig. And Sawyer's suddenly knowing things about boats. That'd been Michael's excuse to turf him off a few episodes back...he knew nothing about boats. Until he needed to.
Locke grinned too much. Don't milk the grin. We know you're good at it.
But mostly I thought it was...promising. I'd been dreading well-organised conspiracy theories that revolved around every minor character's somehow conspiring to drag the 48 to the island. And nanites. What we had was a scared, crazy Scottish man, surrounded by books and olives, terrified of a disease that doesn't necessarily exist (unless he means falling off cliffs, 'cause that's been happening) and who definitely didn't want Locke and Jack and co. to be here.
Whee.