Tag Archives: Fuck Yeah Sayid

“It’s good to see you out of those chains.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I’m going to be as eloquent as possible here, okay?

HOLY FUCK, LOST IS BACK!

Last night’s premiere episode, “LA X, parts 1 and 2,” which was #10 on our Top 100 Moments Of Lost, if you didn’t notice, was easily the most anticipated two hours of television this year (so far, at least), right? And, to me, it was extremely satisfying, and in typical Lost fashion, frustrating with the new questions it sets up, and anticipation it builds.

Did Jughead explode and reset the timeline?

The answer is yes! We see our favorite characters right back there on Oceanic flight 815, flying from Sydney to Los Angeles, encountering a bit of turbulence as it soars over the submerged Island we’ve been getting to know so well over the last 5 years.

We see a few familiar faces, and notice some absent ones, and learn that this timeline wasn’t born out of Oceanic 815 not crashing on the Island, it’s was created specifically by the explosion on the Island in 1977.

That’s 30 years of a whole new world to explore, and one that we’ll get to do flash… sideways… backs (technically we’re flashing back to an alternate universe 2004 from 2008, right?) all the while…

We’re in our regular “timeline” on the show, on the Island, with our favorite castaways, and those wacky, crazy Others. Jacob’s dead. Sayid is dead, then not. And the Jacob’s nemesis? Turns out HE IS ACTUALLY THE FUCKING SMOKE MONSTER. And also kind of badass, right?

And more than a little scary, which is, not surprisingly, a nice fit.

High praise should be more than paid to Terry O’Quinn, who has played the broken and weary but always hopeful John Locke so perfectly the past 5 years only to turn it all on it’s head, to be a new character, seemingly evil incarnate with a masterful ability to fool and manipulate. That mad gleam that Locke always had in his eye? Now it’s fully shiny.

And we’ve spoken volumes before about Matthew Fox’s performance as Jack, who’s always been a little broken, a little deranged, and he’s the same here, always feeling hunched over with grief and the vapors of failure that hang over like black Smoke Monster clouds. He just feels like an outsider, in the “real” timeline and in that “sideways” timeline, as he watches Rose and Bernard canoodling across the aisle from him. The only real shine that enters his eyes is his momentary passing Kate on the plane and later when he meets wheelchair-confined alterna-John Locke, a man who did go on his walkabout and maybe feels that bit of hope again when the spinal surgeon tells him nothing’s irreversible.

That looks suspiciously like connective tissue to a looming mystery, friends and readers. That, or Jack really missed a spot when he was shaving his chest.

Also, I would love it if our only glimpses of sideways Charlie are just those as he’s being lead away to jail for trying to kill himself in the airplane bathroom.

RIP Juliet. Oh, and Sawyer and Juliet’s love.

Also, the Others! Well, no just the Others, but the temple dwelling Others. With their leader, Dogen, who only speaks Japanese because English leaves a nasty taste on his tongue, his aide and translator, Lennon (named for the fact that he wears the same glasses as the famous Beatle?), and the return of Cindy and those fucking kids, with their waters of life that are seemingly polluted by their messianic figure’s demise. And with the news of Jacob’s passing, they’re afraid of the rise of the Smoke monster? Isn’t he the security system for the temple? And if he’s a smoke monster, is it possible that Jacob was also a smoke monster in some natural form?

It wouldn’t be a Lost season premiere without new mysterious characters, new mysterious locations, and well… new mystery, right? And also this:

And we’re all here, on the edge of our seats, ready to discover it together. Now, I’ve said too much, way more than I had intended to, but the excitement and the curiosity, it just springs forth. More importantly, what did you think?

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost, part 5: “I’m sick of lying!!”

Posted by counterforce! on

We know your LOST BONERS must be huge by this point. Only a little while until the premier. Why don’t we knock out the Top 10 in the meantime, eh?

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost!

PART FIVE

10. Marco: The “LA X” Premier. Can you feel it? I mean, can you fucking feel it as it gets closer? That beating you hear, those loud insane drums, that’s your heartbeat. That’s the sound of your blood rushing through your body, to your brain, to your genitals, getting you ready as the circles closes tighter and we get near tonight’s premiere episode. I could make it even more surreal for you there, but let’s just say that we’re taking a chance here and saying that THE SHEER EXCITEMENT alone for tonight’s episode, “LA X,” especially after watching that new promo, is in the top ten greatest moments of this show.

9.  Benjamin: The pan over to the plane crash in the Pilot episode.

I don’t want sound like a broken record here, but Lost’s first episode is the best television pilot ever made, and it’s not even close. Who wasn’t floored when the camera panned around some bushes on the beach to show us the carnage of a motherfucking plane crash?

The shot, on just a technical level is superb. Then you throw in the excellent sound editing, the way the noises slowly resolve into screams, and the creepy music.

And the clever camera trickery that at one moment gives us an idyllic beach and the next chaos just around the corner. I don’t think anybody who watched this first 10 minutes of this show changed the channel.

8. Marco: The giant FOUR-TOED FOOT STATUE.

Let me just quote Sayid for a moment here: “I don’t know what’s more disquieting, the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes…” Exactly. I’m glad that they gave us a lot of glimpses of rest of the statue in season 5, especially in the finale (for the longest time we were like, “OMG, is it Tawaret or Sobek?” Ancient Egyptian God intrigue!)(Team Tawaret won. Go fertility!), and wonderfully, it only confuses us more. But ever since the introduction of this massive mysterious beauty in the season 2 finale, “Live Together, Die Alone,” from the biggest minds to the most infinitesimal, there’s no way you couldn’t have been just a little captivated by this tease.

7. Marco: Eko meets the Monster. From one thing that’s kept audience enthralled for years now to the mother of all mysterious goings on on the Island of Lost: The motherfucking Smoke Monster. In particular, the scene in which it was revealed to us in all it’s bizarre, gorgeous glory there in “The 23rd Psalm,” when it comes screaming out of the jungle to confront Mr. Eko, who merely turns and faces it down, and he doesn’t have the sonic fence that Juliet had in “Left Behind.”

There, as Charlie watches from a tree, Mr. Eko stares into the eye of the black foggy beast, and it seems to stare right back into him, with flashes from his life off the Island appearing in little electrical surges through it’s wisps. And if I just take it there for a moment, this moment alone, with all it’s possible implications that one couldn’t even begin to fully grasp at, gave me a boner.

…and further ignited my hatred of Charlie. I can understand his climbing up into a tree to hide, that makes sense. He’s no Mr. Eko, that’s for damn sure (even though Charlie did have a weird crush on Eko throughout season 2), but what kills me is after the Monster apparently judged Eko okay and left him there in peace (for the time being), how does someone like Charlie not go running back to camp and scream, “OMG, guys, guess what I just saw out there in the jungle? THE MOTHERFUCKER MONSTER is what, and you know what? IT’S MADE OF A NANOTECH-like SWARM OF INTELLIGENT BLACK SMOKE!!!”

Benjamin: Not to defend Charlie, but let’s be honest, if he dude had run back to camp, the rest of the castaways would have been all “yeah, sure, black smoke. Fucking tweaker. Go play some more shitty guitar and stroke it to the pregnant chick, limey.”

Marco: Side query: Do you think that the man in black/the dark man/Jacob’s nemesis/Esau (too many Stephen King references there, sorry) is actually the smoke monster when he’s not taking on the guise of deceased human forms like Locke, Christian, Eko’s brother, Yemi, or Alex? If so, go back and watch the scene between Jacob and his nemesis at the beginning of “The Incident,” and when Jacob asks him if he’s hungry, the man in black merely says, “No thanks, I just ate.”

6: Benjamin: Desmond asks for Penny’s phone number. “I won’t call you, for eight years!” Maybe it’s my own fantasies of disappearing from the world for while, but the wrap up to “The Constant” gets me every single time.

How would you react if an ex demanded your phone number, promising not to call for 8 years and giving you an exact time to expect the phone to ring?

And then, 8 years later after being missing for years, he calls? I love this whole sequence. “Eight years from now, I need to call you. And… I can’t call you if I don’t have your number.”

Des and Penny, who are kind of the heart of the show, finally get their reunion. “I’ll find you!” Penny gasps, crying. If you didn’t get a little misty during this scene then you’re a fucking robot.

5. Benjamin: Jack and Locke’s argument in “Orientation.” “Why do you find it so hard to believe?” “Why do you find it so easy?” “It’s never BEEN EASY!” Three lines of dialog that distill Jack and Locke to their base ideologies.

Our two tortured heroes were perhaps never so honest with each other. If Lost were  movie, this would be its Oscar reel. And I think it gives necessary weight to Locke’s conviction: he’s not just a blind follower, he’s gone through quite a lot to arrive at this moment, but he needs someone else to share it with him.

4. Marco: Locke screams and bangs on the hatch in “Deus Ex Machina” after Boonie dies, and then… the light comes on. The thing about characters like Jack and Locke, the men of science and faith, respectively, isn’t just so much their belief systems, but their failings. Jack represents our very base, very human failings and insecurities. His suffering is so tragic and real, and not unlike the things we can all go through. And Locke, well, Locke is no stranger to similar failings, but he’s also a man looking for answers, for a place in the larger context of the world and what it all means.

And when you begin to scream out big questions to the universe of that nature, you’re bound to be let down, in a much bigger way. You’re going to fall from such a larger height, only in this case, it wasn’t just John’s hopes that took a tumble, it was also Boone, “the sacrifice the Island demanded,” Locke later reasoned. And there, when Locke was at another in a long series of moments of crushing defeat, screaming and banging on the door to the impregnable hatch, essentially asking the universe why he was nothing in it’s eyes, a light from inside comes on. And John Locke, at his very lowest there, is bathed in this new light…

3. Benjamin: Jack’s “Live Together, Die Alone” speech in “White Rabbit.” He wasn’t always the greatest leader. Ok, he usually wasn’t one, but for this shining moment, Jack really was the leader and hero of the castaways. Bonus points for a speech that doesn’t just have to apply to plane crash survivors on an island. If there’s a message in Lost, it’s in this scene.

2. Marco: “Not Penny’s Boat,” from near the end of “Through The Looking Glass.”

So vague, and yet, so heavy with potential meaning are these three words written on Charlie’s hand that he shows to Desmond as the room he’s in fills up with water and he drowns.

Just like Locke can find the light to continue on when he’s literally at his lowest, covered in another man’s blood, these two guys in a thirty year old DHARMA station underwater can find victory snatched away from them at the last possible moment, when they were at their highest. And Desmond can’t really fully know what Charlie meant by that or what he saw/heard to make him convey this message, but he knows what that moment isn’t: the happy ending they were hoping for. Perhaps you can’t cheat fate. Whatever happens, happens. The universe will always course correct, right?

Benjamin: This is my favorite scene in the series. Who would have guessed that a sodding tool like Charlie would go out with the most epic and moving death scene of all. Love the message on his hand, love the understanding that comes between Desmond and Charlie. Crossing himself while he drowns is a beautiful grace note to end the scene.

and here we go. The greatest moment in the history of Lost…

1: Benjamin: Jack’s flashforward revealed in his meeting with Kate at the airport.

This was the moment that forever changed the show. It was an excellent show before this scene, and a legendary one after it. “I’m sick of lying. We made a mistake… We were not supposed to leave,” Jack pleads to Kate.

The twist isn’t just neat on a plot level, it’s devastating on an emotional one. We learn that they did make it off the Island, but rather than triumph, somehow it’s all gone terribly wrong. It didn’t just feel like a glimpse into our characters’ futures, it felt like a warning about our own. What awaits our heroes isn’t rescue but tragedy. Narratively, it’s genius, and the kind of story-telling structure they’ll be teaching in writing classes in 20 years.

After this flashforward, we not only had the excitement of the events on the Island, we got a peeks into the future at lives torn asunder, and on top of every other mystery in the show, the question of how did it all go so wrong to end up like it did at the airport, a drugged up Jack, completely bottomed-out, screaming “We have to go back, Kate! WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!!”

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost, part 4: “It only ends once, everything else is just progress”

Posted by Benjamin Light on

If you haven’t already, you might want to check out:

But before you do, make sure you put on some trash bag diapers, you know, like the astronauts wear.

We have already been taking a wonderful ride down memory lane, and at this point, every scene on this list is one of those “fuck me, I don’t believe what I just saw” moments. That reminds me, nowhere in this whole list did we find time to recall one of my favorite lines of the series. “Boone was a sacrifice that the Island demanded,” should go into the Dialog Hall of Fame. We love you, John Locke, and we left off with John in a mass grave, mortally wounded by Ben for being Jacob’s pet. And now let’s look back at a classic encounter with Ol’ Smokey…

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost!

PART FOUR

25. Kate and Juliet face the Smoke Monster at the sonic fence in “Left Behind.” I think we all learned a lot from this scene. One of the A-team finally sees the Smoke Monster in all its glory. We know the monster will attack an Other. We know the sonic fence is a defense against it, perhaps the only reason for the fence. And we also learned that Kate + Juliet + handcuffs + rain & mud + popping shoulder joints back into sockets = hot!

24. The Frozen Donkey Wheel. Ben will help John move the island by blowing a hole in the Orchid’s containment chamber, climbing down a ladder, through a tunnel and then turning an ancient-looking ice-covered wheel. Millions of theories about the Polar Bears being trained to turn the wheel are born.

23. Sayid confronting ‘Henry Gale’ in Lockdown. “It was all there, your whole story, your alibi, it was all true. But still, I did not believe it to be true. So I dug up that grave. And found that there was not a woman inside, there was a man. a man named Henry Gale.” Fuck Yeah, Sayid! This is possibly my favorite Sayid line in the whole series. Marco and I often joke that the writers must continuously contrive ways to separate Sayid from the other Castaways, because if he was there for a lot of these other moments, the show would have only lasted a season, he’s that fucking competent.

22. Keamy executes Alex. You never saw this coming. There are tons of action and drama shows where somebody’s got a gun to a family member’s head, and the relative always relents rather than let the other person die. Always. Except on Lost. Not only did Ben not relent, he disavows Alex as she pleads for mercy, and Keamy actually pulls the trigger, killing a teenage girl on primetime TV. Shocking, tragic, riveting.

21. The hidden map. “Lockdown” was one of Lost’s classic game-changer episodes, and nothing got more buzz than the map. Entertainment Weekly did a whole spread on it in their next issue, enhancing and translating all the tantalizing latin clues, references to Cerberus, the Sickness and other hatches painted all over the blast door.

20. Sawyer slaps Faraday in “Because You Left.” Not only do we get a passible scientific explanation of the time-jumping from Faraday, we get: “Shut it, Ginger, or you’re getting one too!” Nobody talks down to Sawyer. Plus, there’s just something hypnotic about Jeremy Davies’s stilted, hazy delivery as Faraday explaining Science.

19. The Incident. We heard about it way back in Season2, and it didn’t disappoint. Jack had a bomb…

and Juliet was determined to set it off, leaving us with the most wide-open cliffhanger ever. Literally anything could happen in Season 6 at this point.

18. Walt is kidnapped from the raft in Exodus, pt 3. A classic “out of the frying pan and into the fire” moment. Just when the raft folks think they’ve found rescue, they get Mr. Friendly and “Only the thing is, we gonna have to take the boy.” WALLLLLTT!!!

17. It’s Locke in the casket. This secret was so big the producers filmed a fake take with Desmond in the casket, just in case. After seeing everything that happened in between, it makes perfect sense for Jack to attempt suicide after learning of John’s death. They were philosophical opposites, but they needed each other.

16. Sayid shoots little Ben. I bought Marco a shirt that says “Guns don’t kill children, Sayid does!” This was the ultimate question, can they really change the timeline? Apparently not in this way. Sayid is faced with the decision you often hear about in hypothetical: “if you could go back in time to kill someone evil when they were still a child and innocent, in order to prevent future suffering, would you? Should you?” Sayid makes the choice only men like he are capable of making. But as Faraday warned, “whatever happened, happened.”

15. The sky turns purple in “Live Together, Die Alone.” We all wondered what would happen if the button didn’t get pushed. The answer: it’s not just a psychological experiment. Desmond finally finds his courage and turns the failsafe key, turning the sky purple and imploding the hatch. Des would never be the same afterward, communication was apparently cut-off from the mainland at this point, and the magnetic disturbance was enough to point Penny’s search team in the right direction.

14. Ben summons the monster. How epic was “The Shape of Things to Come?” It’s all over this list. Among the many, many shocking moments was the reveal that Benjamin Linus apparently has the power to summon the monster. Smoky shows up in all it’s terrifying glory and makes quick work of Keamy and his men. The monster, much like Enoch Root, remains a mystery, but it’s always awesome when he makes an appearance.

13. The Island disappears in “There’s No Place Like Home.” When Ben said he’d move the Island, he wasn’t kidding. With a flash of light, boom, it’s gone, nothing but a ripple in the ocean where it used to be. The writing in this episode was so crafty, not only was the disappearance amazing, it took away the only land mass for Lapidus to land the helicopter on, causing them to crash.

12. Jacob and the dark man have a chat on the beach in “The Incident, pt 1.” The music is excellent in this scene, so foreboding and mysterious. Unlooked for, the season 5 finale stuns us by starting off with an introduction to Jacob and his dark opposite. The scene crackles with hidden allegorical meaning. “It always ends the same.” ”It only ends once. Everything else is… just progress.” Not often you get a primetime network TV show that encourages its viewers to contemplate the great mysteries of life. We’re all better for it.

11. Locke in the wheelchair in “Walkabout.” This reveal was so good we took it out of the flashback moments. Lost’s Pilot episode was perhaps the best pilot ever, but it was “Walkabout,” and the revelation that Locke was paralyzed before the crash, that took the show to the next level. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” shouts John, nicely establishing his key character trait: the belief that his is destined to do great things. When we saw John in his wheelchair, we knew this show was something special.

Up next, the top 10 greatest moments of Lost (though we suspect Season 6 will have something to say about this before it’s all over with.)

The 100 Greatest Moments Of Lost, part 1: WWAAAALLLTTTTT!!!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

There was a year, probably the year that Return Of The King and the third Matrix movie came out, where I kept hearing the same tagline: “Everything that has a beginning has an ending.” Talk about pompous and wanting to be epic (and falling short, especially that year). And yet, sadly, this phrase works for Lost, but maybe with some modifications: Everything that has a beginning, a middle, and an ending will end, but not necessarily in that order.

Fuck me, this has been a long time coming. It feels like those last few moments of “The Incident” ended a forever ago and we’re so close, and I’m freakishly excited. You know how you finally go on that date with that hot person and you’re nervous and you’re worried about having shit in your teeth or how your hair looks and are you funny enough? And you’re freaking out this date is just tanking (this is obviously a very cliched date, I know), but then that hot, amazing guy/girl says, “Hey, why don’t you come back to my place for a drinky drink?” I’m like that excited. That kind of excited with a mixture of a 100 Hiroshimas. So, you know, the return of this show on Tuesday night is serious business.

And let’s start looking back at how we got here, and how I could possibly be this excited as we begin looking at…

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost!

PART ONE

100. Workman: “So are going to go back and kill Hitler or some crazy shit like that?” Marvin Candle/Edgar Halliwax/Mark Wickmund/Pierre Chang: “Don’t be absurd! There are rules!” From the season 5 opener, “Because You Left,” this is quite the meta statement. And I think it’s safe to say that Miles’ dad is one of Counterforce’s favorite characters.

99. Ben ditches the sling after the Ajira 316 crash in “Namaste.” This is a personal favorite of Benjamin Light and Occam Razor, and makes you wonder if Ben’s broken arm could be fixed after such a short time back on the Island or were his injuries just another ruse?

98. Jack shoots the oil cans in “The Variable,” while loading up on guns with Faraday and Kate before heading out to see the Others. Jack in 1977, when not making sandwiches and doing janitorial duties, is pretty nuts, man.

97. Regina (stunt woman Zoe Bell) kills herself on the Galaga. (Sea madness!)(Or, is it… time madness?)

96. Locke breaks his leg on his fall towards the frozen donkey wheel/meets with Christian/Smokey down there in “This Place Is Death.” The sound is so visceral and you feel Locke’s pain as he struggles to get up and move to that wheel, to pull it, and then… “Say hello to my son!”

95. “WAAALLLTTTTT!!!” from “Adrift.” I remember this annoying the shit out of me all 700 times that Michael screamed it out, but it clung to the inner walls of my memory like a tattoo.


94. Locke meets young Charles Widmore in “Jughead.” This moment, to me, is classic Locke, the man who deals with obstacles, but considers no one his enemy. Has any of the other characters met this 17 year old piece of snot who would cause them so many troubles in the future, they’d probably kill him. But not Locke. Once he learns the young man’s identity, he unleashes that trademark smirk. When asked what the name means to him, Locke merely replies, “Nothing. Nice to meet you.”

93. Jack and Sawyer’s poker game in “Lockdown.” It doesn’t take long before Kate, who’s watching the whole game, appropriately adds, “Should I get a ruler?”

92. “I screwed her, man.” From seeing who has a bigger dick to this, this touching confession that Sawyer makes to Jack about Ana Lucia in “Three Minutes” is some damn near heartwarming potential bromancery, right?

91. Rose and Bernard re-united in season 2′s “Collision” after 50 days apart.


90. Kate and Jack’s hate sex encounter the night before Ajira 316.

89. Jack’s “I married her!” line to Desmond in “Orientation.”


88. Jack and Kate get caught in a net. Why is this one of our favorite moments? Because of the SEXUAL TENSION! Duh. And it’s kinky.

Also, I’m gonna cheat here a bit and declare lucky #88 a TIE with another of my favorite moments: the scenes between Jack and the then (and still, as a lady sometimes should be) Juliet in the aquarium in “A Tale Of Two Cities.” Jack is held captive, at his wit’s end, his entire being frayed and stressed to the limits, and there’s Juliet, with the face of an angel, pushing him just a little further. It’s an amazing mash up of smoldering and vulnerability and one of several examples I would provide to anyone foolish enough to tell me this show isn’t sexy. (Another example would be #90, obviously.)


87. Sayid, in the rain, with a gun, from season 1′s “Homecoming.” Ethan is back and he’s threatened to kill someone every day until Claire is returned to him, so our 815ers form a posse to take him down. And of course Sayid is the badass Angel of Death.


86. Phil gets killed during “The Incident.” This guy was a serious itch in second half of season 5 and then they scratched it.

85. Karl and Rousseau are killed by Keamy and the mercenaries at the end of “Meet Kevin Johnson.”

84. Ana Lucia and Goodwin face off in “The Other 48 Days.”

83. Jin and Mr. Eko hiding from the Others, in season 2′s “…And Found,” and those bizarre glimpses of dirty bare feet, and teddy bears being dragged along, further tantalizing the mysterious of who the fuck are these people?


82. Hurley is writing The Empire Strikes Back in in “Some Like It Hoth.”

from here.

81. “He walks among us, but he is not one of us.” It’s what it says, but it’s not what it means,” Jack, from “Stranger In A Strange Land.”

80. Sayid hears the mysterious whispers while escaping Rousseau in “Solitary.”

79. Jack and Kate’s conversation in the Others’ rec room in “The Man From Tallahassee.” Just another link in the long chain that has been the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet/Ana Lucia love “triangle.”

78. Faraday sends the message to the future via Desmond’s head and his being an exception to “the rules” referred to at#100 at the end of “Because You Left.”

77. Jack gets to see the Red Sox win the world series in “The Glass Ballerina.” This is a simple but powerful moment that shows why Lost is more than just some gimmicky show, taking a simple line of dialogue from season 1 about Jack’s dad’s baseball team, the Red Sox, always  the team of losers, and showing that sometimes losers can win. Emotional resonance!


76. Nadia the cat silently judges Sayid at the end of “Enter 77.”

See you tomorrow with PART 2!

Top 5 of Lost: #2, “Through a Looking Glass”

Posted by Benjamin Light on

Lost

Marco and I agreed to put this one at number 2, but in my book it’s 1A. I’ll be honest, I fucking love this episode. I can remember getting off from work, coming home at 3 am and watching this immediately and being so fucking floored I think I just ended up staying awake all night.

After this episode, you will need a drink. And maybe a cigarette.

After this episode, you will need a drink. And maybe a cigarette.

I think that after the series is over, people will look back at “Through a Looking Glass” as the narrative climax. Everything comes to a head and it’s all crashing down on poor, flawed Jack’s shoulders. This is Jack Shephard’s crucible.

Jack and Ben

Previously? on Lost. The castaways have set up and ambush for the Others on the beach.

Nadler, Jarrah and Kwon, Attorneys at Law

Nadler, Jarrah and Kwon, Attorneys at Law

And Charlie has swam down to the Looking Glass underwater Dharma Station to push a button, only to find it filled with feisty OtherBabes.

You all everybody

I’m not even going to bother recapping the whole thing here, just go watch it if you haven’t. And if you have, watch it again.boom

This is the episode that turns the whole show on its head. You think you’re watching a JackBack to a dark time in his life, when you’re actually watching a flash forward. The writers have the balls to say, “yep, they get off the island, and it’s a huge fucking mistake,” and then fold the entire story back in on itself like a crease in space-time.The shortest distance between two points is no line at all

My least favorite character on the show dies, and it turns out to be the most moving death in the series. Charlie warning Des and then signing himself as he drowns is gut-wrenching and uplifting at the same time. I think this is partly due to Charlie somewhat redeeming himself in the prior episode, but he was helped by the fact that “Greatest Hits” remains the only time where we get to see a flashback to when a character is happy.not pennys boat

I think this scene, which starts with Charlie punching out a Beach Boys song on a keypad and getting a surprise call from Penny, and ends with his sacrificial drowning, is the finest 5 minutes in all of Lost.last rites

But I also want to talk about Jack. Even though Charlie steals the best moment, this is the definitive episode for Matthew Fox and Jack. The JackFace is off the charts. I mean, just check these out:jackfaceJackface!JACKFACE!!!!!!

Damn. Jack was at the end of his rope when the episode started, in both timelines. And then things got worse.

These two are totally screwing in Season 5.

These two are totally screwing in Season 5.

Off the island, he misses the chance to kill himself because he’s such a goddamned hero (I think we can assume now that the Island wouldn’t let him die; fate being a fickle bitch).

Forgive me

And on it, his plan just keeps getting worse. The ambush fails and Jin, Sayid and Bernard are captured. Then Ben shows up and pretends to have them executed. And just when things are looking up, John Locke shows up to put a knife if Naomi’s back.Locke still has his fastball

Fox does a great job both with Jack’s stoned distress in the future and his pained determination in the present. His biggest moment of action, beating the shit out of Ben, isn’t his moment of strength, it’s his moment of weakness.Beatdown

Jack is at his absolute breaking point here, and, perversely, we know from the 4th season that things get progressively worse for him every day after until he leaves the Island. It’s not hard to imagine how he came to pill-popping in the future.

doctors store their good shit between the menthol and cherry cough drops

Remember kids: doctors store their good shit between the menthol and cherry cough drops

And there were like 50 other great moments in the episode, too:

WAAALLLLLLLTTTT!!!

  • We finally get to see the Radio Tower that the French Woman was broadcasting from.
  • We see undead Mikhail without his eyepatch.
  • We learn it’s “not Penny’s boat” *sniff*. Russo reunites with Alex.
  • Sawyer kills Mr. Friendly. Jack gives Juliet the weakest “I’m only doing this cause Kate is watching” kiss of all time.
  • Waaaaalllllttt!! reappears.
  • Mikhail: not dead! And then he dies! No, wait, he doesn’t! Well surely he must be dead now? (I fully expect him to return).
  • The writers find a way to redeem that cheesy Hurley episode.
  • Sayid kills a guy with both hands tied behind his back, which we always knew he could if he wanted to.

Oh, and the coffin.The funeral of Jeremy Bentham

Sigh. What a phenomenal 2-hours. And this was just the second best episode of Lost so far. Tomorrow, the best, and also, the Season five premier in just 40+ hours.

We have to go back, Kate.

We have to go BACK!we have to go back

Top 5 of Lost: #4, Walkabout

Posted by Benjamin Light on

I never noticed this before today, but the noise Locke’s adding machine makes at the box company is the same noise the smoke monster makes. The sound guy even adds some reverb to it going to commercial to complete the effect. That’s fucking planning ahead.

Lost

Previously, on Lost. Oceanic 815 crashes on an island and the survivors band together for safety on the beach while something big knocks down trees in the jungle. Up to this point, Lost had already hinted at a few mysteries: The French Woman’s Transmission, The Monster, The Polar Bears — but with the fourth episode, Walkabout, we begin to see the more mystical, spiritual side of the show. And that side is deftly realized in a castaway suddenly thrust forward as a Major Character: John Locke.

"Do you want to know a secret?"

"Do you want to know a secret?"

We would only find out later just how critical Locke is to the dynamic of the show, but for now, he’s the great white hunter who is first to realize the need for survival skills, as the other survivors still cling to the idea that rescue will be coming at any moment.

"You either have very good aim, or... very bad aim, Mr...?

"You either have very good aim, or... very bad aim, Mr...?"

In Locke’s flashbacks as a paper pusher in LA, we quickly see the contrast in him on and off the island. The crash has become Locke’s walkabout, and while everyone else is panicking, he’s finding himself. Locke and his Risk-playing, white-man tactician ways are unique, yet instantly familiar. He becomes a character we thought we always knew. I think one of the secret appeals of Lost is that everyone, deep down, wants to crash on a deserted island, (provided they survive of course). The island, in our modern, dull society, is a place where we can become who were really are. And Locke becomes the mysterious, confident hunter. “Call me paranoid,” says Jack, “but anyone who packs a suitcase full of knives…?”

"Locke. His name is Locke."

"Locke. His name is Locke."

Walkabout is the story of why Locke was packing those knives. It is a perfect building-block episode, expanding characters, plot and “mythology” in every direction as it goes. There is no A story and B story. There’s flashbacks with John Locke, Charlie and Hurley trying to catch a fish for Shannon, Kate and Michael going hunting with Locke, while Kate also tries to plant an electronic device in a tree for Sayid, Claire begins gathering personal effects for a mass funeral and Jack tries to comfort a catatonic Rose, while going a little crazy. (side note, that shot above is fucking beautiful. Not only does Lost have excellent writing, but its photography and direction are better than most big-budget films. Kudos to the entire production crew.)

The Colonel at work

The Colonel at work

All these elements make a great episode, but then we also have two awesome reveals. The first: Locke meets the Monster. We don’t know what happens and Locke isn’t telling but he survived. Locke’s encounter with the Monster is one of the enduring mysteries of the show.

"I've looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful."

"I've looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful."

But perhaps even more key is the second reveal, which is probably the moment when Lost officially rose to The Next Level.

"Don't tell me what I can't do!"

"Don't tell me what I can't do!"

Terry O’Quinn does a wonderful job capturing the frustration of a man who believes he is capable of more than his body allows. Seeing John in the wheelchair, and suddenly realizing how slyly he was framed in all of the other flashbacks, is an epiphany not just for the show, but for the viewer as well. Only now do we realize all that is possible on the island. Locke is the embodiment of a universal human condition: the belief that there’s more inside of us than other people can see. And the lasting appeal of Lost won’t be the twists, but the excellent character drama that those twists create.

"Boone was a sacrifice that the island demanded."

"Boone was a sacrifice that the island demanded."

See you in another day for #3, brotha!

Countdown to Lost, #5: “Why are we continuing to play this little game when we all know it has moved to the next stage?”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Previously, on Lost: The sky turned purple and Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are taken away with the Others. After witnessing some late night polar bear cage love between Sawyer and Kate, Jack ensures their escape. But Kate plans to go back to rescue Jack…

Which brings us to our #5 top episode of Lost, “Enter 77.”

A quick summary: On the island, Sayid, Kate, Rousseau, and Locke are still making their way into the heart of darkness that is Others territory following the heading that they got from Mr. Eko’s Jesus stick and hoping to rescue Jack when they come across a communications station in the middle of the jungle. Inside it is one man in a DHARMA initiative uniform who shoots Sayid upon sight, assuming that he’s one of “the hostiles.” Realizing that he’s not, he brings Sayid and the others (except for Rousseau, who bailed into the woods as she is prone to do) in and sets about treating Sayid’s wound (which doesn’t require much more than a bandage because it’s the fucking island!). There’s also a cat there that looks eerily familiar to him…

When the man, named Mikhail Bakunin (who is the man with the eye patch seen on the monitor in the ?/Pearl station)(and in classic Lost style is named after a real life person, in this case a Russian anarchist), is questioned by our heroes about how he’s survived for (he says that he’s the last living member of the Initiative) so long, especially since “the purge,” he says it’s because he’s made a deal with the hostiles (whom we know as the Others): he stays the fuck out of their way and they stay out of his. But being that Sayid is Sayid and he sees through all form and manner of bullshit, he knows this is a lie. Mikhail is not only an other himself, but he’s not alone here in this shack in the woods.

Meanwhile, Locke is hanging out in the back room of the cabin, which is actually DHARMA station4 “The Flame” (wonderful foreshadowing to the fate of the station and the end of the episode itself), playing a computer chess game on Mikhail’s decades old PC. There’s a nice exchange between Mikhail and Locke around here where Mikhail tells Locke that he thinks the computer cheats but Locke says that computers can’t cheat, that cheating is one of the things that makes human beings uniquely wonderful.

Meanwhile out in the living room of the communications shack, Sayid, Kate, and Mikhail continue chit chatting and slip sliding away, bullshitting each other wonderfully when Mikhail finally and famously cuts the shit and says, “”Why are we continuing to play this little game when we all know it has moved to the next stage?”

There’s a nice little throw down here (in every episode that he’s in up until the last one he’s in, Mikhail is always beaten up and usually tied up by someone) and of course Sayid wins. He’s Sayid, after all (he once broke a guy’s neck with his legs, just like Suzanne Somers, but deadly). They tie up Mikhail and do a little searching around because Sayid is positive they’re not the only ones there.

Locke, tasked with watching over the subdued Mikhail, instead goes back to his chess game. He beats it somewhat luckily (utilizing a move similar to the one used in a match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov) and the game goes away and he’s taken into a video prompt program starring none other than Dr. Marvin Candle (he of many nom de plumes), who offers different assistance based which number sequences are punched into the computer. Finally it comes up to “Has there been an incursion on this station by the Hostiles? If so, enter 7-7.”

Down in the basement, Sayid is proven right when he and Kate find none other than Mrs. Klugh!

Mrs. Klugh is played wonderfully by the lovely April Grace, a beautiful actress with a perfect cold and even gaze. I imagine she could soothe the most savage of beasts just be staring at it blankly for long enough. She held her own nicely against a savage Scientologist in Magnolia and her character’s name in Lost is cute little joke: Bea Klugh. Be a Clue.

Anyways, long story short, Mrs. Klugh is taken hostage by Sayid at gunpoint and outside they find… drum roll please… that Locke has been taken hostage at gunpoint by Mikhail. It’s time for a standoff. Sayid vs. Mikhail. They’ve had the multi-layered conversational stand off, and then the physical tussle stand off, and now the gun to somebody else’s head stand off. Mrs. Klugh converses with Mikhail in Russian, telling him to do something that he doesn’t want to…

And many fans have often wondered what Mrs. Klugh was doing there and, well, the answer kind of makes the end of this stand off a little more tragic. According to Andrew Divoff (who was in A Low Down Dirty Shame, just sayin’), who played Mikhail, he played the scene and the character as if he and Mrs. Klugh were lovers.

Pausing that recap there at the standoff, let’s talk about the flashbacks in this episode…

It’s a Sayid episode, which, well, I should say before anything else that Sayid, who is one of my absolute favorite characters on this show, was the character that really worried me the most when the show started. The post-9/11 nature of the show has only been alluded to in one episode so far (in a Sayid episode, of course), and I thought it was brave to have an Iraqi character on the show, but I was worried about caricature. I was worried that the word “terrorist” would be thrown around all the time (and I think it was once, in the Pilot, by Sawyer, of course). But the creators of the show did something fantastic here: On a show premiering right in the middle of our crazy war fever with Iraq, they not only featured a main character who was Iraqi, but who had been a member of Saddam’s Republican Guard. And a torturer, no less. And they made him once of the most articulate and passionate characters on the show. And, of course, one of the most badass.

In case you didn’t notice already: Sayid is Batman.

So the flashbacks in this episode, which I love, are from a time after Sayid left Iraq but presumably before he made his way to England and Australia. He’s living in Paris (even though he apparently didn’t know French later on) working as a chef when he gets an offer from a man named Sami trying to lure him away to work in a different restaurant. Sayid goes to investigate this job offer, which is a trap. He soon finds himself locked in a store room, tied up, and accused by Sami of having tortured his wife during his days with the Republican Guard. This subplot is deliciously Death And The Maiden-esque, especially as Sayid pleads his innocence.

Sayid is kept there in captivity for several days (echoing Jack, Sayid, and Locke holding onto Ben in the Swan), suffering through beatings but still maintaining that there must be a mistake and that while, yes, he was a torturer back in Iraq, he was not the one who tortured Sami’s wife, Amira.

And then one morning Amira shows up in the room with Sayid. She shows him a cat that she once rescued (who looks just like Mikhail’s cat, Nadia, named after the gymnast Nadia Comaneci, but echoing Sayid’s lost love, Nadia) from some boys who were torturing the cat with firecrackers. The cat frequently bites her, Amira tells Sayid, but she forgives it because she knows that the cat will always be scarred by it’s experiences and will never learn to feel safe again. Breaking down, Sayid admits to her that he was the one who tortured. He tells her how her face haunted him for years afterward. With Sayid finally showing her the respect of admitting what he did to her, Amira forgives him and lets him go.

Back in the present day (and I’m going to ignore the on island B-story back at the beach with the rest of the survivors of 815 because it literally involves Sawyer and everyone having a good ol’ time with a ping pong table and Playpen magazine)(but it was the origin of Paulo‘s internet nickname of “Takes A Shit guy”), with the stand off over, Sayid and Kate drag Mikhail with them and Rousseau rejoins them. They’ve grabbed some maps from The Flame that will guide them to the Barracks (which the Others’ village is called) and Rousseau suggests that since they have the maps they should minimize their risks and just kill Mikhail right there. Sayid refuses though, deciding that Mikhail will be his responsibility.

And then Locke rejoins them. And then The Flame, because of Locke, blows up, and this will be only the beginning of Locke’s destructive quest for answers this season. The rest of the group are furious at him since the Flame could’ve been their only hope for contact with the outside world, but the damage is done. They decide to keep moving and as they set out, Sayid spies Mikhail’s cat there in the jungle, the one that looked like just Amira’s cat, as it watches him go.

Fuck Yeah Lost: You’ll have to forgive me the length of that recap (I know it’s no Dick Cheney writing about Lost, but hopefully it didn’t kill you), but even at #5 on our list, this episode is just that good, and that perfectly shows you what the best of this show can be (and how weird to be talking about this show on the day of a huge plane crash?). The action, the adventure, the heart, the depth of suffering one can carry in their own heart. And the way the show can play upon you being able to guess some of it’s obvious reveals. And when we tell you we put some serious thought into picking this list, you can believe us. For the longest time, the #5 slot was going to be either this or “The Economist,” which is perfect in it’s own Alias starring Sayid sort of way, but if you talk about “The Economist,” then you have to talk about “The Shape Of Things To Come” and you’re trapped.

The big reveal: This episode, despite being simply a classic, is all about the big titillation. Any reveals were small and very character driven, which is very nice. And as always, Naveen Andrews is more than game for it.

And then: After this, you had the rescue party’s continued trek into the heart of Others’ territory, reunions and explosions, “I’m sorry, Charlie, but you’re gonna die,” arrivals and not so much with the departures, DHARMA beer and Three Dog Night, and Claire and the birds.

See ya in another blog post, brotha!