LOST 401
I have been very excited about the beginning of this season of Lost for quite some time. My excitement was augmented by my meeting/sitting next to Matt Fox (Jack Shepherd) on a plane from Seattle to Redmond, OR in late December. Alas, last night I was not able to watch the show, so I will watch it today. However, this morning’s blog feeds did not bode well for episode 401. From Commentary’s blog Contentions comes this short post. And I quote:
Gibberish. It was absolute and total gibberish. Once again, it simply set up a series of new unanswered peculiarities rather than doing a thing to address the 27 plotlines its writers have already laid out. In particular, the revelation that Dr. Jack’s doctor father is also an Invisible Man living in a cabin on the Lost Island — if you’ve never watched, don’t ask — relocated Lost to the land of camp. I don’t think there is now any question that the writers and producers of Lost are just making it up as they go along, that they have created mysteries without first knowing the solutions and that, when they reach a dead end, they just make up another mystery. We’ve been had.
Damn it. Of course, this is exactly the crap that every Lost fan is afraid of, and exactly the type of writing that convinced me in the middle of Season 2 to stop watching (I decided to keep watching, in the end). I hope my feelings on the episode are somewhat less negative, but I doubt it.
Cheers.
“Bruce”, over on the Commentary comments section (get to it from my link here), seems to disagree. I can only hope that tonight I agree with you, “Bruce”.
Well I watched it. And I have to disagree with the Commentary post. I really enjoyed it. I think they really did a nice job. Really happy with 401. Hope you all are as well.
I have to agree with the first guy. Not a fan at all. Each season has left at least a mystery or two unanswered, and now they are splitting the time-line to include a future, instead of just having repeated flashbacks to the past. I can conceive (barely) of a way in which that could turn out cool, but it is time they start answering questions before creating new ones.
Also, they could totally redeem the show by letting Lock but the hurt on Jack. Each season Jack has become less and less likable. And Lock is really the only remaining bad-ass on the show. I mean why the hell did they have to make the redneck and the Arab turn soft!
I thought it was a pretty good episode - just watched it last night myself. It set up some interesting plot lines for the season. To contradict Tim, I think that the future “flash-forwards” are right in line with the show’s whole f’ed up sense of space and time. But, I do agree that they are probably just making it up as they go along– at least it’s semi-entertaining. Plus, it’s pretty much one of the only shows on. They are able to get around the writer’s strike by just not having writers, instead the plot is just generated by a randomness algorithm and that’s why there’s no continuity or answers.
Well. I’m hooked again. Episode 2 rocked — and no flash-forwards!
In response to aboone: it’s not that I thought it was out of line with the earlier seasons to have flash-forwards, I simply don’t like them. I was on the fence about the flash-backs starting from the very beginning. I’m not sure it really adds anything to the show. Sure any show has to create character development and Lost seems particularly bent on muddying up distinctions between good and bad guys — and this is a reasonably unique way to accomplish those things, but not the best way, and probably not even a good way, in my opinion.
However, episode 2, two thumbs up.