Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Fox renewed my show! My shoooooooooooooooow! Another season of improbable action scenes, BSG cameos and weekly felonies!
I'm actually thrilled with a Fox decision. This is a strange and wondrous new world.
***
I'm still sifting through how I feel about "Across the Sea." I'm beginning to think I loved it a lot, but so much depends on how much it echoes through the next two episodes. I think what I'm still most gobsmacked by is how ambiguously gray Jacob turned out to be. I never thought he was sweetness and light, but the man is essentially Cain. Virtually everything that's happened for the last thousand or so years stems from his single act of vindictive violence. Not that Eden (and we are all assuming that's the Island is, right?) was pure to begin with; the Island was stained by murder and kidnapping long before Oceanic 815 crashed. I've seen more than one person bring up BSG's "All this has happened before, and if will all happen again" (which was nicked from Lexx, adding a nice meta element I've always liked) in relation to his episode and I think it's completely intentional. Lost has always been a show of patterns and echoes and repeated mistakes. The Woman being reborn through the ages in Danielle and Claire. Others coming to the Island, settling and being slaughtered. Children separated from their parents (Michael and Walt, Claire and Aaron, Danielle and Alex, even Jack and Christian). Thwarted ambition ("Don't tell me what I can't do," Juliet and Sawyer's foiled attempts to leave, Jin and Sun's constant separations, everything Dharma and Widmore have ever tried to do).
And can I say how happy I am that they've basically stated "This is a magic island"? (And my crack "The Island is actually a giant TARDIS" theory doesn't look nearly as crazy anymore, does it?) Inside the Island is...whatever you want to call it. A divine spark. The light of creation. The Force. And because of Jacob, Not Locke was touched and changed by it, meaning that if he leaves the Island he takes the light with him (or at least that's my theory.)
And I'm betting on Hurley to be Jacob's final replacement. I know the show wants us to think it'll be Jack, but Hurley is the one who can see the Island's ghosts. He's special, just like Not Locke, but without the darkness. I think Jacob is trying to bring his game to a close and break the Island's murderous pattern. Who better to do that than Hurley?
***
This was kind of an A-to-B episode with some really effective moments (I loved that first reveal of their true fishy faces.) And could Son work that cape or what?
I've seen some people come down on the Doctor for "committing genocide" but I don't think that's fair. He didn't kill the girls --- Isabella's father did that when he blew up the building, something the Doctor certainly didn't want to happen. And sinking the city wasn't some far-off plan he had time to thwart; it was happening. Could he have offered to find them a better planet? Sure. (Although has anyone ever taken him up on that offer?) Still, it's not all that strange for the Doctor to feel less than charitable towards aliens who have already killed people, and even so he was trying to talk her down even as she threw herself into the canal. We've seen the Doctor commit outright genocide before and this wasn't it; this was an old-fashioned Fifth Doctor rocks-fall-everyone-dies story.
I like Rory. I don't like him with Amy, but I like him. This was exactly how I expected to see their relationship; he was already twitterpated with her in "The Eleventh Hour," insisting he was her boyfriend while she would only admit to the "sort-of," and I think the only thing that's changed is the dress and the ring. He's been her best friend forever (have we seen her have any female friends? So far it's just been Rory and Jeff) and to me it's clear that while he's been in love with her most of that time she's looked at the fifty people living in her village, shrugged and decided she could do a lot worse. She's settling, she knows it, and I think Rory probably does too. It's not the most flattering character trait, but considering that she made Rory dress up as the Doctor it's not exactly something new.
Next week is a dream machine, one of my favorite plots ever. Now we see what's really going on in their heads.:)
I'm actually thrilled with a Fox decision. This is a strange and wondrous new world.
***
I'm still sifting through how I feel about "Across the Sea." I'm beginning to think I loved it a lot, but so much depends on how much it echoes through the next two episodes. I think what I'm still most gobsmacked by is how ambiguously gray Jacob turned out to be. I never thought he was sweetness and light, but the man is essentially Cain. Virtually everything that's happened for the last thousand or so years stems from his single act of vindictive violence. Not that Eden (and we are all assuming that's the Island is, right?) was pure to begin with; the Island was stained by murder and kidnapping long before Oceanic 815 crashed. I've seen more than one person bring up BSG's "All this has happened before, and if will all happen again" (which was nicked from Lexx, adding a nice meta element I've always liked) in relation to his episode and I think it's completely intentional. Lost has always been a show of patterns and echoes and repeated mistakes. The Woman being reborn through the ages in Danielle and Claire. Others coming to the Island, settling and being slaughtered. Children separated from their parents (Michael and Walt, Claire and Aaron, Danielle and Alex, even Jack and Christian). Thwarted ambition ("Don't tell me what I can't do," Juliet and Sawyer's foiled attempts to leave, Jin and Sun's constant separations, everything Dharma and Widmore have ever tried to do).
And can I say how happy I am that they've basically stated "This is a magic island"? (And my crack "The Island is actually a giant TARDIS" theory doesn't look nearly as crazy anymore, does it?) Inside the Island is...whatever you want to call it. A divine spark. The light of creation. The Force. And because of Jacob, Not Locke was touched and changed by it, meaning that if he leaves the Island he takes the light with him (or at least that's my theory.)
And I'm betting on Hurley to be Jacob's final replacement. I know the show wants us to think it'll be Jack, but Hurley is the one who can see the Island's ghosts. He's special, just like Not Locke, but without the darkness. I think Jacob is trying to bring his game to a close and break the Island's murderous pattern. Who better to do that than Hurley?
***
This was kind of an A-to-B episode with some really effective moments (I loved that first reveal of their true fishy faces.) And could Son work that cape or what?
I've seen some people come down on the Doctor for "committing genocide" but I don't think that's fair. He didn't kill the girls --- Isabella's father did that when he blew up the building, something the Doctor certainly didn't want to happen. And sinking the city wasn't some far-off plan he had time to thwart; it was happening. Could he have offered to find them a better planet? Sure. (Although has anyone ever taken him up on that offer?) Still, it's not all that strange for the Doctor to feel less than charitable towards aliens who have already killed people, and even so he was trying to talk her down even as she threw herself into the canal. We've seen the Doctor commit outright genocide before and this wasn't it; this was an old-fashioned Fifth Doctor rocks-fall-everyone-dies story.
I like Rory. I don't like him with Amy, but I like him. This was exactly how I expected to see their relationship; he was already twitterpated with her in "The Eleventh Hour," insisting he was her boyfriend while she would only admit to the "sort-of," and I think the only thing that's changed is the dress and the ring. He's been her best friend forever (have we seen her have any female friends? So far it's just been Rory and Jeff) and to me it's clear that while he's been in love with her most of that time she's looked at the fifty people living in her village, shrugged and decided she could do a lot worse. She's settling, she knows it, and I think Rory probably does too. It's not the most flattering character trait, but considering that she made Rory dress up as the Doctor it's not exactly something new.
Next week is a dream machine, one of my favorite plots ever. Now we see what's really going on in their heads.:)