Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 5:00 am
Lostwatch: That's a Long Flight from Miami
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen last night's episode of Lost, make a small incision in your kidney and don't stitch it up until you've finished watching it.
So: This is the first Lostwatch since the time.com folks turned on the Comments spigot, so I'm counting on you to do the lifting here. But here are my thoughts.
* First here's a discussion topic: Lost fans are kind of like Sopranos fans. Both shows have good and bad episodes, both deserve their share of criticism, but both get hated on for their own virtues. The Sopranos is great, among other reasons, because it defies the normal TV expectations of closure and pat endings. And yet every season, fans criticize it for just that: The stories drag on! None of the feuds get resolved! When's somebody gonna get whacked? Likewise with Lost. Is it cryptic, teasing, byzantine? Does it fold together endless stories and raise more questions than it answers? Yes--that's the ride you signed up for. As long as the writing stays sharp, the characters stay genuine and the questions stay interesting, I'm fine with that.
* OK, the episode. Good to see a flashback that actually adds to our understanding of a character. Juliet's history--longtime doormat, her trust taken advantage of--makes her announcement at the end even more curious. Is she betraying Jack, gaining her freedom by enslaving him to Ben? Does she have that in her? And the big question: if she was Other-napped because of her work as a fertility expert, is her work now done, and what was it? (By the way, I haven't done the math, but at least one theory holds that, given the amount of time Juliet has been on the island, she would have arrived on 9/11/01. If not, it's certainly close.)
* "The old Wookie prisoner gag." I've been laughing about that since I saw the screener 3 weeks ago.
* The whole Clockwork-Orange brainwashing scene adds another twist to the question of what the Others believe. They repeatedly say things that indicate that free will is important to them--"I want you to want to save me"--but, clearly, they're not above a little old-fashioned brain-frying.
* All in all, the episode did a good job of moving the story forward, if for no other reason than getting Kate and Sawyer off the island, thus getting us closer to reuniting the two-island storylines. (That would also provide a reason to keep Jack out of the action for a while in coming episodes, as has been rumored.)
* OK, one gripe. Alex--who I guess we now have to call "Alex Linus"--may be the worst performance now on network television. Like, Sofia Coppola - Godfather III bad. As Mrs. Tuned In said, "That woman makes Evangeline Lilly look like Judi Dench."
* Finally, longtime J. J. Abrams fans: when Juliet's evil ex got nailed by the bus, who out there thought of Todd Mulcahy getting run over on Felicity? Anybody?
13 Comments to “Lostwatch: That's a Long Flight from Miami”
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About Tuned In
James Poniewozik writes TIME magazine's Tuned In column, about pop culture and society. Tuned In, the blog version, is about the stuff we used to call "TV," whether it's in your living room, on your computer or -- once the networks figure out the technology and line up the advertisers -- in your dreams themselves. Read more
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Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 10:49 am
I wonder if Jack's gonna end up in the Clockwork Orange room?
(by the way, Mr. P... been reading you since UofM circa 1990, and must say I fondly miss Dr. Style)
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 11:03 am
Oh, God, Dr. Style! Let's all be thankful that college newspapers were not online in 1990.
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 11:03 am
I thought it teed up the rest of the season. No complaints here. JP - how could you file a gripe about Alex but not her boyfriend. I couldn't stop laughing about his "acting." Do you think they realized right before shooting that they failed to cast the character and forced some poor production assistant to play the role?
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 11:27 am
You caught that the suddenly flattened ex-husband was named Edmund Burke, right? To go along with Hume, Locke, Rousseau... somebody took a political science course in college... (I'd add Kelvin, Ford, and Austen to the historical character surnames, and there are probably others.)
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Have you ever noticed how many deadwood actors end up on Lost? Is there a connection...the actress who plays Calamity Jane is everywhere these days!
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I didn't think that Juliet was grabbed because she was a fertility expert. I thought that she was grabbed because she had the power of having her wishes come true.
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Chris,
I would think the connection is that an HBO series is a great showcase, and the actors now have time on their hands. Though I guess Kim Dickens showed up before Deadwood was cancelled (not counting the movies). After Carnivale went off the air, Clancy Brown showed up in the Iraq flashback.
Besides Dickens, Paula Malcomson and Rob Weigert, are there any other Deadwoodies I'm missing?
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 2:53 pm
How can you mention Juliet's ex-husband's name being Dr. Burke, and ignore the fact that she has undeniable chemistry now with Dr. Shepard? Clever, ABC....way to cross-promote your shows.
My big question now is about time....Mittelos is an anagram for "lost time", the guard was reading a Brief History of Time, and Juliet was specific about her "time" on the island...does time move differently on the island? More slowly than in the outside world? More quickly?
And is the time conundrum a way to let Walt age (he can grow taller and older off the island, so when/if he returns, and it's only days later, they can explain his growth spurt)?
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 3:25 pm
OK, this may be a bit far fetched, but here goes... While Mittelos is an anagram for "Lost Time", it's also German for something that "lacks a middle" or is "centerless".
I seem to remember that during Juliet's first interview with the rep from Mittleos that he mentioned Juliet was able to medically impregnate a male field mouse in the lab. So what if Mittelos' purpose (and that of the Others and their Island experiment) is to successfully achieve male pregnancy? Could Mittelos, rather than meaning centerless, be more symbolic of something that is womb-less, e.g., men?
The Others seem to be fixated on male babies/kids, what with Claire's and Walt's kidnapping. Plus, (I think) all of Rousseau's friends who died were men; were they used as guinea pigs?
Thursday, February 8, 2007 at 5:06 pm
To Al,
While that is a fascinating concept I make it a strict rule not to have anything to do with mpreg. (Man Pregnancy for those who have not played in the deep end of fandoms.)
I suppose, scientifically speaking, the challenge of a male pregnancy is along the lines of making the barren fertile but I mean...c'mon. Who wants to see Jack waddling around the Other's island complaining about lower back pain and his craving for pickles an ice cream?
Anybody have a theory for that rather noticeable line about God and Jacob?
Friday, February 9, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Alex Linus? I am having a hard time believing that. From what I remember, Juliet did a good job of merely implying that Ben is Alex's father ("when your father wakes up...") rather than saying anything concrete. Even if so, are we really meant to take this word in the literal sense, or are they more "family" in the same meaning as Locke's "family" on the commune? Rousseau was pregnant when she received the distress signal.
Saturday, February 10, 2007 at 10:21 am
Taking a visit over to mittelosbioscience.com offers a few surprises and hints at perhaps what's to come.
Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:22 am
Burke killed by bus: shades of Nip/Tuck. I sure hope Mittelos had a hand in it; if not, unbelievable. (And, if memory serves, we didn't hear brakes in either instance.)