(no subject)
Okay, I realize I haven't updated lately, and I'll try to do a personal entry later, but for now I decided I wanted to talk a bit about Lost before tonight's episode.
I don't think I've really said much of anything about Lost in here all season, so it's a bit overdue. For starters - dammit, show, you've done it again. I didn't think it would happen, but I got back into the show majorly. I mean, I never completely gave up. I got way behind at times and had to catch up, but that was always the plan - I was always going to catch up, always going to see this through. But mostly in a "well, I've come this far" sense.
But now, I'm hooked again in a big way, and honestly I'm really regretting ever getting out of it, because Lost is and has always been one of those things that benefits from the fandom. There's a whole lot going on in the world of theory and speculation and clue-solving, so being a Lost fan is, in a way, a lot easier and a lot more rewarding if you've got some company. I've still been reading TWoP, and since TLo started blogging Lost over at ProjectRungay I've been reading their posts, but trying to get back into the forums and everything seemed too hard so I haven't done that. But damn, I WANT to! I LIKE the complexity and the clue-solving and the screen-capping and all that stuff, and I hate that I'm not in the middle (or even on the fringes) of it anymore. It's like the ride's about to end and I'm not even sure if I'm still on board. Blah.
ANYWAY, I used to write a lot about Lost in here and I'm not sure if I've said two sentences about this season, but hey, now's as good a time as any to start, I suppose.
And for some reason I'm quite...curious...about tonight's episode. I'd say excited but I'm not sure if that's quite right. I don't know if I have a GOOD feeling about this episode, I just definitely have a feeling, haha.
First: dear show, I DO NOT CARE about Sun and Jin and their looming reunion anymore. To be honest, I've never cared - and I mean that as much as I possibly can; from the first season I never really cared abut Sun and Jin. They've just never been very compelling or accessible or sympathetic or whatever for me. But beyond that...it's gone on too long. They've been teasing this reunion FOREVER now and apparently the writers think it's a source of tension, but they've stretched it out too far and nobody CARES anymore. By now it isn't even a "they'd better get it over with tonight" thing because I honestly don't even care if they do or not. It's NOT a source of tension, at least not for me, and I don't care if it doesn't happen tonight, but I'M JUST SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT. So if they don't reunite them tonight, they'd damn well better not TALK about it at all.
Second: Um, something needs to HAPPEN tonight. Like serious happenings, not the "Desmond was the package" type of revelation that they string along for way too long so by the time they finally get to it it's not a revelation because everybody already figured it out. It just feels like for a while now we've just been jogging in place. And it isn't that they're not working on the plot, it's sort of just a side effect of having this 5000 piece puzzle with only 10 more pieces to put in. In a lot of cases, we can see exactly where the piece goes by now, so even things that are revelations don't feel like it anymore because they're not surprising. And I think they're also trying too hard to make sure everyone stays with them. Again, it's those 5000 puzzle pieces. SO MUCH STUFF has happened over the course of this show, and so much of it is small stuff or stuff that was handled subtly or almost easter-eggy stuff. So now everything they try to do, it's like they're reiterating too much stuff before hand to make sure we get it. Some of that is certainly necessary because there IS a lot that you could potentially miss, but I think they're worrying too much. Cindy at TWoP made a good point - there's what, six episodes left now? Nobody is going to bail right now. Pretty much for the first time in the show's history, you can stop worrying about keeping everyone on the ride and just FULL SPEED AHEAD DOWN THE FINAL DROP. Come on, the final rush should be FUN, right? Since I'm already too far into this rollercoastery metaphor: it's like they're at the top of the final hill but they've got the brakes on and we're sliiiiding down slowly but it's too slow and the brakes are screeeching and irritating the hell out of everyone and YEAH it's going to be fast and crazy and we'll probably all throw up when we get off but WE DON'T CARE ANYMORE IT'LL STILL BE FUN AND WE JUST WANT TO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Third: This season sort of feels really forced. And as much as that sounds like a complaint, it's not totally, because it's understandable. Trying to bring this whole mess to some sort of resolution...yeah, it's not easy, and it makes sense that the last season (or at least the latter part of the season) would seem a little forced. But what I'm noticing is that they seem to just be alternating between the plot/exposition/explanation/revelation parts and the comic relief/character/sentimental/relationship/fanservice parts. Didn't Lost used to handle that balance better? Didn't they used to keep it balanced by stacking their stones in the middle of the scale, rather than putting them all the way to one end or the other and just alternating ends? Now we just have certain scenes where Locke explains things, or Jacob talks, or whatever, and other scenes that are just there for character purposes or for fun. And those scenes all fall into a few categories now: there's the "omg who does Kate love" show, the "Sawyer talks funny" hour, the "lolz Hurley is fat "game, the "dear god can there please be a spin-off involving Miles" hour, and of course the ever-present "Sawyer takes his clothes off" hour. It's just that even a lot of the lighthearted bits feel tired by now.
Anyway, that's sort of all my complaints, and that probably turned into a total rant but in general I'm enjoying this season, I just really want to get moving. I'm excited to see how it pans out.
There's a few little threads that I'm really intrigued by. I guess foremost is the obvious question of how the sideways reality relates to the island reality. I suppose I favor the theory that detonating Jughead split the two realities - the sideways reality would be the one in which it worked and the island got destroyed (or rather, sunk) and Oceanic 815 never crashed, and the island reality is the one in which the bomb WAS the Incident.
BUT - what I really love is the connection between the two and the blurring of the lines. We've seen a few characters have some memory issues and get sort of confused in the sideways reality, and they either seem to remember stuff from the island, or they seem unable to remember stuff from the sideways reality. We've seen odd connections in the sideways reality, like Desmond showing up on the plane, Jack inexplicably bleeding, Sawyer letting Kate go in the airport, Claire thinking of the name Aaron without knowing how, Kate seeming to recognize the name somehow, Sawyer's safe word with the cops being LaFleur, etc. And then - and this is maybe the most curious for me - there was Juliet seeming to slide sideways into that reality just before she died on the island. I like the idea that maybe something similar happened to Sun when she got knocked unconscious, and her inability to speak English was related to her different life in the sideways reality.
I was super interested in the possibility of Richard being a slave on the Black Rock, so I'm glad that theory turned out to be correct. Makes me happy.
Hmm, what else? OH, how freaking creepy is Sayid now?! I love it, Naveen Andrews is just handling it spectacularly.
Anyway, I'm running out of steam so I'll call it quits, at least for now. I might try to write more about Lost until the end, and I'm sure I'll write after the finale.
I don't think I've really said much of anything about Lost in here all season, so it's a bit overdue. For starters - dammit, show, you've done it again. I didn't think it would happen, but I got back into the show majorly. I mean, I never completely gave up. I got way behind at times and had to catch up, but that was always the plan - I was always going to catch up, always going to see this through. But mostly in a "well, I've come this far" sense.
But now, I'm hooked again in a big way, and honestly I'm really regretting ever getting out of it, because Lost is and has always been one of those things that benefits from the fandom. There's a whole lot going on in the world of theory and speculation and clue-solving, so being a Lost fan is, in a way, a lot easier and a lot more rewarding if you've got some company. I've still been reading TWoP, and since TLo started blogging Lost over at ProjectRungay I've been reading their posts, but trying to get back into the forums and everything seemed too hard so I haven't done that. But damn, I WANT to! I LIKE the complexity and the clue-solving and the screen-capping and all that stuff, and I hate that I'm not in the middle (or even on the fringes) of it anymore. It's like the ride's about to end and I'm not even sure if I'm still on board. Blah.
ANYWAY, I used to write a lot about Lost in here and I'm not sure if I've said two sentences about this season, but hey, now's as good a time as any to start, I suppose.
And for some reason I'm quite...curious...about tonight's episode. I'd say excited but I'm not sure if that's quite right. I don't know if I have a GOOD feeling about this episode, I just definitely have a feeling, haha.
First: dear show, I DO NOT CARE about Sun and Jin and their looming reunion anymore. To be honest, I've never cared - and I mean that as much as I possibly can; from the first season I never really cared abut Sun and Jin. They've just never been very compelling or accessible or sympathetic or whatever for me. But beyond that...it's gone on too long. They've been teasing this reunion FOREVER now and apparently the writers think it's a source of tension, but they've stretched it out too far and nobody CARES anymore. By now it isn't even a "they'd better get it over with tonight" thing because I honestly don't even care if they do or not. It's NOT a source of tension, at least not for me, and I don't care if it doesn't happen tonight, but I'M JUST SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT. So if they don't reunite them tonight, they'd damn well better not TALK about it at all.
Second: Um, something needs to HAPPEN tonight. Like serious happenings, not the "Desmond was the package" type of revelation that they string along for way too long so by the time they finally get to it it's not a revelation because everybody already figured it out. It just feels like for a while now we've just been jogging in place. And it isn't that they're not working on the plot, it's sort of just a side effect of having this 5000 piece puzzle with only 10 more pieces to put in. In a lot of cases, we can see exactly where the piece goes by now, so even things that are revelations don't feel like it anymore because they're not surprising. And I think they're also trying too hard to make sure everyone stays with them. Again, it's those 5000 puzzle pieces. SO MUCH STUFF has happened over the course of this show, and so much of it is small stuff or stuff that was handled subtly or almost easter-eggy stuff. So now everything they try to do, it's like they're reiterating too much stuff before hand to make sure we get it. Some of that is certainly necessary because there IS a lot that you could potentially miss, but I think they're worrying too much. Cindy at TWoP made a good point - there's what, six episodes left now? Nobody is going to bail right now. Pretty much for the first time in the show's history, you can stop worrying about keeping everyone on the ride and just FULL SPEED AHEAD DOWN THE FINAL DROP. Come on, the final rush should be FUN, right? Since I'm already too far into this rollercoastery metaphor: it's like they're at the top of the final hill but they've got the brakes on and we're sliiiiding down slowly but it's too slow and the brakes are screeeching and irritating the hell out of everyone and YEAH it's going to be fast and crazy and we'll probably all throw up when we get off but WE DON'T CARE ANYMORE IT'LL STILL BE FUN AND WE JUST WANT TO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Third: This season sort of feels really forced. And as much as that sounds like a complaint, it's not totally, because it's understandable. Trying to bring this whole mess to some sort of resolution...yeah, it's not easy, and it makes sense that the last season (or at least the latter part of the season) would seem a little forced. But what I'm noticing is that they seem to just be alternating between the plot/exposition/explanation/revelation parts and the comic relief/character/sentimental/relationship/fanservice parts. Didn't Lost used to handle that balance better? Didn't they used to keep it balanced by stacking their stones in the middle of the scale, rather than putting them all the way to one end or the other and just alternating ends? Now we just have certain scenes where Locke explains things, or Jacob talks, or whatever, and other scenes that are just there for character purposes or for fun. And those scenes all fall into a few categories now: there's the "omg who does Kate love" show, the "Sawyer talks funny" hour, the "lolz Hurley is fat "game, the "dear god can there please be a spin-off involving Miles" hour, and of course the ever-present "Sawyer takes his clothes off" hour. It's just that even a lot of the lighthearted bits feel tired by now.
Anyway, that's sort of all my complaints, and that probably turned into a total rant but in general I'm enjoying this season, I just really want to get moving. I'm excited to see how it pans out.
There's a few little threads that I'm really intrigued by. I guess foremost is the obvious question of how the sideways reality relates to the island reality. I suppose I favor the theory that detonating Jughead split the two realities - the sideways reality would be the one in which it worked and the island got destroyed (or rather, sunk) and Oceanic 815 never crashed, and the island reality is the one in which the bomb WAS the Incident.
BUT - what I really love is the connection between the two and the blurring of the lines. We've seen a few characters have some memory issues and get sort of confused in the sideways reality, and they either seem to remember stuff from the island, or they seem unable to remember stuff from the sideways reality. We've seen odd connections in the sideways reality, like Desmond showing up on the plane, Jack inexplicably bleeding, Sawyer letting Kate go in the airport, Claire thinking of the name Aaron without knowing how, Kate seeming to recognize the name somehow, Sawyer's safe word with the cops being LaFleur, etc. And then - and this is maybe the most curious for me - there was Juliet seeming to slide sideways into that reality just before she died on the island. I like the idea that maybe something similar happened to Sun when she got knocked unconscious, and her inability to speak English was related to her different life in the sideways reality.
I was super interested in the possibility of Richard being a slave on the Black Rock, so I'm glad that theory turned out to be correct. Makes me happy.
Hmm, what else? OH, how freaking creepy is Sayid now?! I love it, Naveen Andrews is just handling it spectacularly.
Anyway, I'm running out of steam so I'll call it quits, at least for now. I might try to write more about Lost until the end, and I'm sure I'll write after the finale.