In which there are some thoughts on Lost, and some links to boot

Tonight's episode of Lost took place almost entirely in flashback, telling the relatively straightforward (straightforward for Lost, that is) story of how Michael Dawson became Kevin Johnson. I was worried that they'd play the WAAAAAAALT! card again, but luckily that unfortunate boy remains in New York, in the care of his grandmother. Though I don't feel that it's adequately explained why, exactly, Michael doesn't feel like he can tell his mother where he's been for two months, that nixes my fear that I was in for an entire season of Michael shouting, "MY BOY! I have to get my boy! I will kill because of my boy! WAAAAAALT! YOU CAN TELL I'M WORRIED ABOUT WAAAAAAALT BECAUSE I HAVEN'T BEEN SHAVING!!!"

Still a little unclear on the timeline: Michael has been gone for something like a month, but it seemed as though he'd been back in New York for a while when Tom (who, it turns out, is not of the heterosexual persuasion) came to find him. Anyway. The boatbacks I had been anticipating provided less detail than I expected, and we didn't see Zoe Bell once, which leads me to believe that there may be more boatbacks -- possibly from Charlotte or Frank or Miles, but my money's on Faraday -- in the offing. It's weird to realize that we'd be halfway through a regular run of the new-structure Lost, and past the halfway mark for the strike-shortened variety. The presence of the Others was finally mentioned in this episode, so I wouldn't be shocked to see them come back into play -- to make a ploy for / attack on Ben? -- pretty soon.

Caught a quick reference to Kurt Vonnegut on the game show that played in the background as Michael attempted to shoot himself. Vonnegut is the author of the sci-fi classic Slaughterhouse Five, which is the most obvious inspiration for Desmond's time-pilgrim act. That's more an Easter Egg for fans than a clue, but there you have it.

Stay tuned in the next couple of days for a more in-depth recap. In the meantime, some links to tide you over . . .

• After the recent unpleasantness, I found my interest in Lost redoubled, partially because it's been the only new thing on that wasn't mind-numbing reality drek. To that end, I went seeking a podcast, and eventually settled on this one, put together by husband-and-wife duo Ryan and Jen. They attempt to recap episodes in just 8 minutes (quite literally a breathtaking feat), and then spend the meat of their show on analysis, both their own and others'. As Hawai'i residents, they're also able to peek in on filming from time to time. The spoilers are light, the atmosphere is fun, and the production quality is high.
• A personal hero of mine is Mr Stephen Fry, the British actor, novelist, game show host, and all-around person of wit. Turns out he has a blog. It's not updated every day, but it's usually worth a gander when it is, especially if you're into technological geekery.
• Good for a giggle.

And now, with my NCAA Tournament bracket in tatters (damn my faith in the Pac-10), I move to try to claim the five bucks I bet somebodyorother that Portland State wouldn't come within 20 of Kansas. I leave you with a video, starring Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead fame:

Lost: Episode 4.07, “Ji Yeon”, or: Welcome to the Suck

Let’s get this out of the way right up top: I do not care for Jin & Sun episodes. Call me a xenophobe, call me heartless, call me a sucker for plot over character, but Jin & Sun, for lack of a better term, bore me shitless. Their brand of domestic angst sets my mind to wandering -- to the banana cake in the fridge, the bourbon in the cupboard, or, so help me, to Smallville. I feel like what there was for them was explored way back in season one, and whenever they turn up now, it’s just to let us know that, yeah, their marriage used to suck, Jin used to be a first-class SOB, Sun couldn’t keep it in her pants, but wow, the island appears to have solved that problem. Hey: I get it. Why don’t you tell me if Miles Straume is still chewing on that hand grenade?

So I was not predisposed to like the most recent episode of Lost. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that it further explored a relationship I have long since grown bored with, it was also a weak outing, the kind of thing I was hoping we had left behind when the show’s producers announced the show would be ending come 2010, and we had fewer than fifty episodes left. With seven episodes down this season, and another several casualties of the late and unlamented WGA strike, I feel like there ought to be some urgency. Not that every episode has to be a classic, but when nearly a third of it is wasted on uninspired filler, well . . . that’s another ten minutes they don’t have to tell us something important, or give us something surprising about a character.

Lost is a great television show, but it is not great in an unqualified way. Since the second season, it has more than once fallen to repeating itself (gee, do you think Locke has gullibility issues?), it has allowed characters to become one-note and then allowed them to dominate the show (WAAAAAALT!), and it has torpedoed its compelling romantic triangle by turning its apex into high-functioning idiot. “Ji Yeon” dipped its foot in a few of these traps, and some others along the way. At any rate, this all just a lengthy preface to what we’ll call a formula-in-refinement:

Jumpin’ Jack Flashback: Jin (flashback) & Sun (flashforward)

Sigh.

Jin: Well, that was a waste. Jin’s flashback was essentially a fakeout, and one that I can’t imagine worked well for the attentive viewer. Aside from Jin’s obviously-dated technology (chunky cellie; minor detail that I in fact missed the first time through), the entire tone of the Jin’s scenes told us there was something up, because they clashed so egregiously with the tone of Sun’s. Having failed to build suspense with Jin’s flashbacks, the show ultimately failed to give us any points of character, either: we already knew that Jin used to be a fanatically-devoted employee of Mr Paik, Sun’s father. I don’t think it really served much purpose to remind us. Toss in some failed slapstick, and I think we’ve laid an egg, ladies and germs.

Sun: Sun’s flashforward, in which she goes into premature labor, survives, and is visited by a an extremely creepy Hurley in a suit (did anybody else go to a disturbing visual place when Sun told Hurley that they were alone?), was a little more like it. And then: OMFG JIN IS DEADED!!!11ONEONE11! Though there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot going on in this version of the future, we were left with a few things to chew on: Why was Sun’s regular doctor unavailable? Is Jin really dead? (My vote is no. Or yes, maybe. I don’t know. Howzabout those Mets?) Is Hurley ever going to cut his hair? And what’s the point of wearing an expensive suit if you’re not even going to shave? And at least one question was answered: Sun is the last of of the Oceanic Six.

Meanwhile, back on the Island . . .

Sun and Jin pack up to head for Locke’s camp, as Sun has become convinced that Daniel and Charlotte are not all they claim to be. Juliet, apparently frightened that Sun and her baby will die, spills the beans to Jin (whose progress with English has been remarkable) about Sun’s affair with that bald dude from last season. Jin, after a real clunker of a philosophical conversation with Bernard, decides that it’s better to forgive and forget than to . . . do whatever it was he was going to do otherwise.

This was the real meat of the episode. The gimmicky flashforward/flashback structure was kind of lame, but the moments after Sun’s confession-by-proxy really showed up the fact that Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) and Yunjin Kim (Sun), unlike some of their compatriots in this show, have the chops to measure up to their looks. Daniel Kim, in particular, was good in these moments as a man who has trained himself for years to suppress all emotions other than rage: His first reaction is that same rage, but slowly the rage breaks as he examines what has become of his life and his marriage without the boiler-room pressure that caused him to behave that way in the first place. Though it turns on a clunky conversation in which Bernard deeply misunderstands the concept of Karma, the eventual reconciliation, in which Jin tells Sun, essentially, that he deserved her infidelity when she committed the act, but now they’ve changed, was nice. Oh, man. Never redeem yourself on this Island. Never admit to it, at any rate. Don’t you remember what happened to Charlie? Boone? Shannon?

Freight Days a Week

Just as in “The Constant”, we meet a mysterious personage played by a notable actor (this time the venerable Kiwi stuntwoman Zoe Bell), only to dispose of them within minutes. I can only assume that Minkowski and the mysterious Regina, who takes a dive off the boat wrapped in chains, will be seen more in the inevitable boatbacks that should be coming soon.

The boat is no less mysterious than the island, even if its captain, a rough Aussie named Gault, seems surprisingly straightforward. Below decks pipe-tappings, mystery blood stains, unexplained missions in the helicopter, and the advanced “cabin fever” that Gault blames for the deaths all leave me with the impression that we haven’t really left the island after all. I find myself dubious about whether our Oceanic Six will even be leaving this season. Despite its mystery, we are given three pieces of information that would seem to be key: First, the boat belongs to Penny Widmore’s old man (unsurprising), Ben may have faked the crash (see above re: surprises), and the boat’s janitor appears to be Michael, cleverly disguised as former Phoenix Suns star Kevin Johnson (DUN! except not).

The Michael reveal might have been less of an anticlimax if not for two things: First, and most important, there’s the small matter of Harold Parrineau’s name being in the credits, and having been all season. I suppose that this could have flown over the heads of some viewers, but if you’re reading this, you’re either A) my mother (hi Mom!) or B) a pretty serious fan of the show who probably knows who Harold Parrineau is. Once we found out there was a boat, and Ben had a man on it, it was a fairly safe bet that it was going to be Michael out there. Second is that the way they attempted to build up the suspense by copping out last week on Ben’s confession to Locke (“you’re going to want to sit down for this”, or whatever he said). This actually pretty much ruled out anybody other than Michael, because who else would be surprising to Locke (and therefore the viewer) is even a candidate? Unless it was Boone or Anthony Cooper back from the dead, the only real candidates were Michael and Walt -- and whether or not Walt has gotten “taller”, to use Locke’s word, he’s still not old enough to be anybody’s man anywhere. Their attempt to build up the suspense killed it.

Anyway. The freighter sequences were more effective than the flashes, and certainly gave me the creeps, but mostly this was heavy lifting for a future episode in which we are told exactly what has been happening on that boat since Kevin Johnson got on board.

The Mystery Measure: 5 out of 10

In the Mystery Measure, I assign an arbitrary number out of ten. What does it mean? Well, it could be based on how mysterious an episode seemed (the pilot? a 10). It might be based on how many answers we get (“The Contant”? Another 10). I’ll tell you this: stall-tactics and filler get low scores, episodes that advance the plot get high ones, and I reserve the right to give an episode a low score if I didn’t like it.

We were given some answers, it’s true. For instance, we now know the entirety of the Oceanic Six: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Aaron, and Sun. For those who cannot see the forest for the trees on the subject of Aaron, all I have to say is this: Get over it. Objections like “he’s not in the manifest!” and “he didn’t have a ticket!” are irrelevant. “Oceanic Six” would be a media-contrived appelation for the people who left the island who had been associated with that plane. They’re not making fine distinctions based on the manifest.

But it felt as if the answers were largely ones we could have guessed. The Michael reveal fell flat for me, and honestly, I was fairly sure Sun was going to make it off the island before giving birth. We already knew that proximity to the island’s borders messed with the mind. And while we were given some new questions to ponder (#1: what is up with Hurley’s lecherous “gooooood”, anyway?), I didn’t find them all that compelling.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, and It’s All Small Stuff

Future installments of “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” will be more in-depth than this week’s, because I feel a lot of the small stuff has been gone over already. In the future, this is where we’ll dig into the minutae, and I’ll stop reviewing and start theorizing. So I’ll discuss one specific this week -- Jin’s headstone -- and then issue a generalized warning. Peep this people:

Lots of people are going nuts over the dates on this. On the right side, we see that Jin was born on 27 November 1974, and “died” on 22 September 2004, the date of the crash. Obviously, this isn’t the case. But remember the story that Jack told at Kate’s trial: The plane crashed. Eight people survived initially, but two of those died. Those who remain are the Oceanic Six.

A lot of people are freaking out over the question of “who are those two people”? I think the answer is pretty simple: they’re nobody. They have no existence outside the context of the lie. Clearly, many more than six people survived the crash, and many more than two have died on the island. A short list: Boone, Shannon, Libby, Eko, and Charlie. That’s excluding characters who were minor and characters I loathed. Those extra two were invented to give the lie some contours, so it doesn’t seem like some kind of obvious lie. Whether Jin dies or not (and I’m not convinced he will), the only way it matters if he is one of those “extra two” is if his corpse is brought back to the mainland with the Six.

The dates on the left show Sun’s birthdate: 20 March, 1980. Looks like Jin was a cradle-robber, eh?

The generalized warning: Just because there’s an “Oceanic Six” consisting of the six listed above, that doesn’t preclude other people getting off the island. Obviously, we’ve already seen Ben, not one of the six, off the island, serving as Sayid’s spymaster. Any of Desmond, Juliet, Rousseau, Faraday, Charlotte, Miles, Richard (Captain Guyliner, Ben’s #2, who has been mysteriously absent all year), and other people I may be forgetting, could be off the island, but unconfirmed. I wouldn’t bet on Rousseau leaving, not after so long, and I’d bet that at least one of Faraday, Charlotte, and Miles gets greased before the final reckoning. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Desmond and/or Juliet made it home.

And Now, Your Moment of Jackface

Over on Lostpedia, they appear to have caught onto Matthew Fox’s tendency to make what we’ll charitably call exaggerated facial expressions when letting us know his character is experiencing duress of one kind or another. This week’s will be subdued, because Jack’s screen-time was limited, but here’s a classic example. And so, without further ado, your moment of Jackface:

The “Well, if you need anything, remember that I’m incredibly smug” Jackface.

The End Is Extremely F'ing Nigh

Damon Lindelhof of Lost mourns the death of television.

The LA Timesreports that this strike could be the beginning of the end for Friday Night Lights, the football drama that is much beloved by a small portion of the population. More a spiritual descendant of My So-Called Life than Monday Night Football, FNL has never had good ratings and could die on the vine if the strike curtails programming before its ratings can rally.