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whathoWe're a bit upset. I mean, only in the way people get upset about a popular television programme that isn't going the way you wanted it to go. We don't want sympathy cards or anything.
Everybody Hates Hugo was, sadly, one of the worst episodes I've seen to date. Second worst, I think. Just between The Moth and Do No Harm. This is rather sad because I love Hurley very much, but this episode was nothing but filler...it was fairly well summed up by the quite piffling magnitude of its flashback, which concerned Hurley's falling out with a pal over his winning the lottery (which just doesn't cut it when we know he has issues about being cursed by the freaky numbers and worrying that he keeps accidentally killing people). It was a single missing scene and it told me absolutely nothing of any importance, except maybe that Hurley and Locke used to work for the same boss. And maybe that Hurley is perpetually closer to a nervous breakdown than we previously had cause to suspect.
My brother and I are having pretty major Lost flashback related issues actually. My brother is threatening to stop watching soon. The island business is going along at a fair enough clip, though the whole dividing up the food business in 2.4 was dull and unimportant. But the flashbacks are becoming irrelevant time-fillers that do no more than reiterate points for the sake of brand new viewers and create a few welling emotional moments. We're learning nothing new and we're not seeing the old material presented in a more impressive fashion. Also the flashbacks and the main plot - the island business - used to be more or less synergistic. The good ones did anyway. I can't imagine better flashbacks in either Walkabout or Deus Ex Machina because the ones they had were complementary and even integral to the island plots.
Locke's flashback in Orientation was frankly pretty poo. There are so many potentially weird and wacky writerly choices when it comes to drawing up Locke's backstory. He worships a hatch in a jungle. He thinks it's his destiny. He has magic mending legs. His father stole his kidney. I DON'T CARE that he once had a conventional soap-opera-esque healing relationship with the very nice but comparitavely uninteresting Helen. I care about how he lost the use of his legs and how he came to believe in fate and destiny and being special when his father's betrayal ought to have knocked it out of him. In Helen's hideous expositional monologue at the end of Orientation, she states that Locke couldn't quit his nightly jaunts to his father's gates in order to commit to a relationship with her because he was scared of moving forward and didn't know what the future would hold. This is so much arse. He can't commit to Helen because he's too busy stalking his father and he can't quit stalking his father because he wants answers and acknowledgement. It had nothing to do with fear of the future and leaps of faith. The writers shoehorned in that stuff about leaps of faith because they needed the flashback to tie into the island plot, and they made Helen say it out loud because no sensible viewer would ever have gleaned it for themselves because it basically wasn't there. I can very easily see a better and entirely different flashback in place of the quite useless and uninformative one we saw in Orientation. And Everybody Hates Hugo. And Adrift. Oh dear. I want them to stop sacrificing character development to the island plot. I want them to do that right now.
That's another thing. They've already wasted a Locke flashback, which is a bad and evil thing to do, but I'd really rather they didn't then trample over his character development on the island. Coming out of the hatch in 2.4 - the hatch he's been wholly obsessed with for some weeks now and that led to the death of his favourite acolyte - after the rather shattering revelation about what's down there should've been a pretty big thing for Locke. He should've been devastated that his destiny was to press a button that may or may not do anything or overjoyed that he was saving the world or some such thing. He should not have been peeling fruit and talking benignly to Charlie and Hurley about food. Stop wasting Locke, people. It upsets me hugely.
Also this was the episode that was supposed to feature Locke in a hammock. What happened there then?
I hate Ana Lucia. I hate that they finally have a much-needed woman character who's allowed to lead people without the men getting all eugh about it and yet she is vile and I can't like her even a little bit. I cannot speak of her at length because I hate her so much. In this episode she decided that Sawyer wasn't allowed to speak because it made her feel big, so she hit him every time he tried to speak. I knew people like her when I was eleven. I'll own that she's doubtless very defensive because about 18 people she knew have been eaten or something. But I hate her anyway. And they made her smile at Sawyer as though secretly they intend us to like her. WE DON'T. We need Ethan and the monster back. We need them now.
Bernard was quite sweet but so foreshadowed. At least he didn't mind other people talking.
See, there were things I liked. Hurley's dream was both the funniest and most disturbing of all the dream sequences yet. The random chicken man was scarier even than Locke's freaky eyes in Claire's baby stealing dream. I like watching Sayid do stuff such as hacking his way into concrete walls in search of enormous magnets. (I hate when these tasks lead to Kate in the shower.)
But we're still a bit upset.
Jin and Sun tonight. I like Jin and Sun. I hope they are not mangled.
Everybody Hates Hugo was, sadly, one of the worst episodes I've seen to date. Second worst, I think. Just between The Moth and Do No Harm. This is rather sad because I love Hurley very much, but this episode was nothing but filler...it was fairly well summed up by the quite piffling magnitude of its flashback, which concerned Hurley's falling out with a pal over his winning the lottery (which just doesn't cut it when we know he has issues about being cursed by the freaky numbers and worrying that he keeps accidentally killing people). It was a single missing scene and it told me absolutely nothing of any importance, except maybe that Hurley and Locke used to work for the same boss. And maybe that Hurley is perpetually closer to a nervous breakdown than we previously had cause to suspect.
My brother and I are having pretty major Lost flashback related issues actually. My brother is threatening to stop watching soon. The island business is going along at a fair enough clip, though the whole dividing up the food business in 2.4 was dull and unimportant. But the flashbacks are becoming irrelevant time-fillers that do no more than reiterate points for the sake of brand new viewers and create a few welling emotional moments. We're learning nothing new and we're not seeing the old material presented in a more impressive fashion. Also the flashbacks and the main plot - the island business - used to be more or less synergistic. The good ones did anyway. I can't imagine better flashbacks in either Walkabout or Deus Ex Machina because the ones they had were complementary and even integral to the island plots.
Locke's flashback in Orientation was frankly pretty poo. There are so many potentially weird and wacky writerly choices when it comes to drawing up Locke's backstory. He worships a hatch in a jungle. He thinks it's his destiny. He has magic mending legs. His father stole his kidney. I DON'T CARE that he once had a conventional soap-opera-esque healing relationship with the very nice but comparitavely uninteresting Helen. I care about how he lost the use of his legs and how he came to believe in fate and destiny and being special when his father's betrayal ought to have knocked it out of him. In Helen's hideous expositional monologue at the end of Orientation, she states that Locke couldn't quit his nightly jaunts to his father's gates in order to commit to a relationship with her because he was scared of moving forward and didn't know what the future would hold. This is so much arse. He can't commit to Helen because he's too busy stalking his father and he can't quit stalking his father because he wants answers and acknowledgement. It had nothing to do with fear of the future and leaps of faith. The writers shoehorned in that stuff about leaps of faith because they needed the flashback to tie into the island plot, and they made Helen say it out loud because no sensible viewer would ever have gleaned it for themselves because it basically wasn't there. I can very easily see a better and entirely different flashback in place of the quite useless and uninformative one we saw in Orientation. And Everybody Hates Hugo. And Adrift. Oh dear. I want them to stop sacrificing character development to the island plot. I want them to do that right now.
That's another thing. They've already wasted a Locke flashback, which is a bad and evil thing to do, but I'd really rather they didn't then trample over his character development on the island. Coming out of the hatch in 2.4 - the hatch he's been wholly obsessed with for some weeks now and that led to the death of his favourite acolyte - after the rather shattering revelation about what's down there should've been a pretty big thing for Locke. He should've been devastated that his destiny was to press a button that may or may not do anything or overjoyed that he was saving the world or some such thing. He should not have been peeling fruit and talking benignly to Charlie and Hurley about food. Stop wasting Locke, people. It upsets me hugely.
Also this was the episode that was supposed to feature Locke in a hammock. What happened there then?
I hate Ana Lucia. I hate that they finally have a much-needed woman character who's allowed to lead people without the men getting all eugh about it and yet she is vile and I can't like her even a little bit. I cannot speak of her at length because I hate her so much. In this episode she decided that Sawyer wasn't allowed to speak because it made her feel big, so she hit him every time he tried to speak. I knew people like her when I was eleven. I'll own that she's doubtless very defensive because about 18 people she knew have been eaten or something. But I hate her anyway. And they made her smile at Sawyer as though secretly they intend us to like her. WE DON'T. We need Ethan and the monster back. We need them now.
Bernard was quite sweet but so foreshadowed. At least he didn't mind other people talking.
See, there were things I liked. Hurley's dream was both the funniest and most disturbing of all the dream sequences yet. The random chicken man was scarier even than Locke's freaky eyes in Claire's baby stealing dream. I like watching Sayid do stuff such as hacking his way into concrete walls in search of enormous magnets. (I hate when these tasks lead to Kate in the shower.)
But we're still a bit upset.
Jin and Sun tonight. I like Jin and Sun. I hope they are not mangled.
