For the past few weeks I’ve stuck with the “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” line and avoided talking much about Lost.  Don’t get me wrong–it hasn’t been horrible or even bad, and I will watch it until the end no matter what, it’s just been kind of a disappointment for me.  I’ve said before it’s because I have high standards for it and once the standards are set it’s extremely difficult to lower them.

Here are a few things about Wednesday’s episode, “The Variable,” that are kind of indicative of the problems I’ve been having with the show all together this season.  Obviously, you should consider this a spoiler warning, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a clip of Michael Emerson on Jimmy Fallon.  I feel bad for the guy because he’s typecast as creepy and probably will be for the rest of his life.  I saw an interview once where the interviewer kept saying, “God, you’re so creepy!” thinking he was trying to be creepy but he wasn’t, and he looked really hurt.  I think he could be the next Christopher Walken.

I just got the latest Star Trek book, a Voyager novel named “Full Circle.”  It picks up after the Destiny trilogy left off for the Voyager crew.  Anyway, when I opened it up the first thing I saw was this:

I’ve been critical of Lost this year and I don’t think I’ve been able to really articulate why.  I love science fiction, and am usually all over time travel stories, but am having a very hard time with it playing such a large part of this show.

I had a much better time in the first few seasons when we were all speculating, wondering if time travel really was the answer, and it blew my mind when Daniel launched that rocket from the boat to the island and found that it was 31 minutes out of sync with the rest of the world.  That was intriguing just enough… I really wasn’t looking to go back and forth 40-50 years at a time.

It’s kind of like table salt.  You put on the right amount, things taste delicious.  You open the top of the shaker and pour it on, suddenly the food is gross and unappealing.

Well, here we are.  With a heaping mound of salt on my delicious steak.  There’s not a whole lot I can do.  That’s the way the story is developing so I’m trying my best to just accept it.  Except Lost has always been an intelligent show, with writers who weren’t afraid to write intelligently, and not for the lowest common denominator of the audience—you know, those who consider Heroes good television.

So I am angered and disappointed that they’ve decided to incorporate such a clichéd story development in the show.

What would happen if you traveled into the past and killed your own grandfather?

No one knows, that’s the first question that comes to mind when you talk about time travel.  There are more time travel stories that revolve around that concept than anything else.  And now, that includes Lost.

It’s not a grandfather, literally, but it’s the same scenario.  If Sayid goes into the past and kills Ben, who is largely responsible for all of them getting thrown around the timeline anyway, and therefore Ben does not exist in the future—how can Sayid go back in time to kill Ben in the first place?

There are three classic answers here.  Number one says that he can’t.  I thought they were hinting at this when Michael’s gun wouldn’t fire back in season four.  Fate just wouldn’t let it happen.

Number two is “alternate timelines.”  Also known as “Heroes.”  Also known as “the cheesiest of the cheese of Star Trek, and why people make fun of it.”  Similar to “it was all a dream.”

Number three is that it was predetermined.  In other words, there is no such thing as free-will, and you were always meant to go back and time and kill your grandfather (or Sayid killing Ben).

The producers of Lost have given us clues that I’m still applying to the show, such as (1) the universe has a way of course correcting, and (2) there are no alternate timelines.

So, this rules out #2 (no alternate timelines).  And it has a way of combining #1 and #3 into something very obvious, which is that young Ben just won’t die.  We’ll see him in a hospital bed and that’ll be it.  He’ll be healed up nicely by mid-April.

In fact, I’m 100% sure that Ben won’t die.  Which might be completely obvious, and maybe I’m explaining things that are already very clear to everyone except me… but if we’re 100% sure that Ben won’t die, what’s the point of having him shot in the first place?  Usually when characters get shot it’s so that we can wonder about their fate and if they’re going to pull through or not.

I get the impression here that the writers want us to not only wonder that, but are trying too hard to get us to ask but what does that all mean and how is it even possible?!? If they didn’t want us wondering and asking those things, they wouldn’t have made it the cliff hanger.  The problem is that, if the writers are playing by their own rules, the outcome is 100% clear and it’s not even fun to think about.

As long as I’m being Negative Nancy I’ll also point out that I’m getting a little overdosed on the gimmick of them focusing on a character before we know who it is.  This happened twice in the last episode.  Early on, we see a fat man rush into a hotel room and shuffle around for about 30 seconds before it’s revealed that Sayid is about to kill him.  Then, when they go to the man in the tent—who Sawyer identifies as “Our You”—the camera holds on his face for about 2 seconds too long when he comes out of the tent.

Bottom line:  I don’t like being force fed mounds of table salt.

Let’s see what happens next week, I suppose.

What did you all think?

Last night’s episode was great and I found that I actually accepted all of the time travel details.  The “thirty years earlier” title card felt totally natural.

One aspect I hope is true about all of this is that the Others know about certain events and have since day one.  This would make more sense to me because it would mean there is only one timeline (where everything is predetermined), rather than people going into the past and changing things.  For example, you can’t go back in time and change the past, because you were predestined to go back in time and do something in the first place.

There are two examples here that jumped out at me.  In Season Three, when Sawyer, Jack and Kate were behind held captive at the Hydra Station, Pickett (the guy who wanted to kill Sawyer) made them all break up rocks and do a lot of manual labor.  That never really went anywhere, except once Jack asked Juliet what they were building, and she said, “a runway.”  Jack said, “what for?”  And she sarcastically said, “the aliens, Jack.  I don’t know.”

I don’t have a video, but here’s a deleted scene that confirms they were building a runway:

And then yesterday, two years after that, we see Frank land the plane on the island after miraculously discovering it had a runway.

That was awesome.  The pay-off for that one line took two years, but it’s just more evidence that this whole show has been planned out.

Another, less-concrete example is “The List” from Season Two.  Remember the Others had a list, and certain people were on it?  And remember at the very end of Season Two, when the Others had a group of survivors tied up at the pier when it was revealed that Ben was the leader of the others?  Those survivors they were holding captive were all the survivors who now live in 1977.

Ben might recognize them since he presumably met them all when he was a child.  But their “coming” to the island in 2004 might have also been predicted… Nostradamus style.

Other thoughts:

Good for Sawyer for putting Jack in his place.  “That’s the difference between you and me, Doc.  You react.  I plan.”

When Ethan recruits Juliet before she comes to the island, he tells her that he is familiar with her work.  Cuz she delivered him as a baby!

…and that’s all.  Bye.

Wait, it was a rerun.  I thought the whole point of the abbreviated seasons and late starts was so that the whole season could run all at once.  I’m T.O.’d, here, I feel shafted.  Should we expect more of this, ABC?