A Tale of Love, Alas: And Other Episodes
Life of the Party sets up an intergenerational, interfamilial odd-couple buddy-comedy scenario that it never makes the most of. Donate Slant is reaching more readers than ever before, but advertising revenue across the Internet is falling fast, hitting independently owned and operated publications like ours the hardest. If you like what we do, however, please consider becoming a Slant patron. You can also make a one-time donation via PayPal: I would just chime in to say a that the opening sequence was very effective.
The idea that Benry presumed there would be survivors was a stretch, but it does seem clear that the Others have a protocol in place for dealing with people who blunder into their hidden bubble. On the hand, the Others seemingly 1 didn't know this particular crash was coming and 2 didn't know the anything about the people on the plane. On the other hand, they were able to work up a full dossier on Jack and, presumably many of the other survivors, within two months. The dossier, as well as the energy and infrastructure needed to create their little neighborhood, raises questions about what the Others' link to the outside world is.
It's clearly more than just the supply drops in perpetuity mentioned in the Sri Lanka video. Of course it's quite possible the Others too are pawns in a game they don't understand.
If the memories aren't implanted somehow, then we're looking at a different sort of answer entirely with regard to how the survivors seem to have been predestined to wind up on the island and may in fact have been selected for reasons unknown to us now. Posted by hornswaggler on I think the trouble with "Lost" may be that the writers just don't have the discipline necessary for a long game, the kind of discipline David Milch brings to "Deadwood" and David Simon brings to "The Wire. Abrams is an absentee landlord with ADD. The first two seasons of "Alias" were really good, but the last three often spun into complete ridulousness or endless re-treads of ground already covered, a pattern "Lost" seems to be slipping into.
The first season of "Lost," before it seemed to became purposefully obtuse to prolong the life of the series, was the best. It remains to be seen whether they can bring it back to that level, or will continue to rotely milk it like a cash cow.
Lost Recap: Season 3, Episode 1, “A Tale of Two Cities” | The House Next Door | Slant Magazine
Posted by Anonymous on I like the fact the sandwich Juliet was about to give to Jack was slightly burned. Obviously the dear woman is not the greatest cook. Posted by Big Blotto on This has all been really satisfying to read. Just so you know, I'm a recovering Lost viewer. After the first season and maybe two episodes of the second seasons, I had to do something radical; I had to go cold turkey. I was just getting more and more angry at the way the show at distrusted and disrespected me, the viewer. I know that's harsh language, but that's exactly how I felt. The cliff hangers within cliff hangers just became obscene.
I mean, I swear, I'll come back after the commercial even if someone's life is not hanging by a jungle vine. And, as Pete was getting at, the six new mysteries for every one not really revealed, became tiresome and really does begin to feel like a con. And just plain disrespectful on such a smart show.
I understand the pressure to throw a wide net, but I think it's a misguided notion: I laughed outloud at your Montana flashback, Andrew. People talk so much about the writing on Deadwood--rightfully. But what is left unsaid is just as remarkable. What is spoken in the silences on that show can be breathtaking--a testament to the acting, of course, as well as the writing. The Lost characters become less and less interesting the more their irritatingly simplistic motivations are revealed; the Deadwood characters become increasingly layered and compelling with very little back story.
This is not because of some mystical effect of "filling in the blanks however you want to," in my opinion--though the show does have a kind of magical alchemy in all sorts of it-shouldn't-work ways--but because, as a couple of people have said concerning Jack's treatment of Boone, their complexity is revealed through their actions. These actions do include judicious references to thier lives before Deadwood of course, but almost always in an enriching way, rather than a tie-him-up-in-a-bow-way.
But I don't want to give the impression that I wasn't taken with Lost. The first season had been taped for me and I watched the whole thing within days. I could bear the cliff hangers as long as I could put the next episode on immediately and very much enjoyed the intermittent superior writing. It was when I had to wait a week in between that it really started to feel like some kind of diabolical candy.
Posted by NSpector on I know I'm late to the game here, but I thought the exact same thing about Indy and Marion; esp.
Which is then further reflected in Sawyer's and Kate's banter Posted by TuckPendleton on I didn't see it that way. To me, the final exchange served less to "reveal" Ben's identity as to address the strained relationship of Ben and Juliet. But that's just me, I guess. Posted by manuel on It had a very Indy and Marion feel to it, which is cute on a surface level but when you come right down to it speaks either to the shallowness of the character or the obliviousness of the writers. Somewhere along the way every sexually available woman on the show has been killed off leaving this lop-sided triangle to set hearts a flutter and it hasn't been interesting to watch since season one.
What I find sort of baffling though, is how Abrams, who built his television career writing for smart young women on Felicity and Alias allowed the show to turn into a boys club. I can respect your defense of the show using the "Stephen King" argument, not only because the show seems to acknowledge as much with this episode one can almost transport the bitchy rant from the book club about how "it's pure popcorn" and "a garden variety religious metaphor" being applied to discussions of this show but because I recognize many of the same strengths and failings in the show as well, and ultimately that's why I keep coming back to watch.
I will say this though: Granted that was an epic novel but there's a way to tell a story this way and still turn it on its ear. Good point though about the show as Rorschach test. Posted by Andrew Dignan on The failure of these characters to talk to each other--to share information in an organic way, or to seek it when it's important--is probably the main reason I booted this show off my season-pass list last May. I don't need to see Terry O'Quinn badly bewigged in yet another flashback about his kidney-yoinking daddy. I need to see these people behaving in a way I can relate to, and they just don't.
Posted by Sars on I know I said I would shut up, but I do agree the writers probably have an explanation for what's happening that's sure to please almost no one. At this rate, Lost has become something where what YOU think about what's happening almost says more about you, yourself, than it does about the show. Whatever the writers have can't possibly be as intricate as the dozens of incredibly detailed fan theories.
Posted by Todd VanDerWerff on I thought this was one of the worst episodes in the show's history--a monotonous, obvious, repetitive slog through the same plots and themes Jack has daddy issues; Jack always needs to "fix something"; Kate and Sawyer have the hots for each other; Ben-ry Gale is creepy and calmly menacing, etc. As always, the characters behaved more like the pawns of a lazy screenwriter than actual human beings--Kate and Sawyer see each other for the first time since being abducted by the Others, and rather than attempt to ascertain what the hell's going on "Where'd they take you?
Why are you wearing handcuffs? How long have we been here? How many of them are there? The episode's opening scene was one of its most maddening--in the span of about three seconds, Ben watches a plane explode over the island, immediately determines that there will be a large group of survivors, and launches an elaborate plan to infiltrate their ranks. Andrew pointed out that their level of readiness would seem to indicate that they knew it was coming, but the entire scene still felt off--they knew something momentous was on the way, but still had time to bake muffins and have a book club meeting?
Posted by Vic on I would like to extend an invitation to you to join in on a collective blogging section of our upcoming winter issue of Reconstruction. The deadline is October 20th. If you already have a post on this you can feel free to use it, or, if you are interested, you can submit a new one.
We will link to each statement from the issue at our site, with the intent of creating a hyperlinked list of statements on blogging that can serve as an introduction to blogging or an expansion of knowledge for those already blogging. If you are interested please contact me at mdbento gmail. I'm increasingly convinced that the whole show is a con. But when we get it, it won't be something specific or intricate: Not quite "it was all a dream!
I'm also pretty irritated about the way the show presents itself. Especially with the season openers, the entire show is predicated on the idea that it's going to reveal a secret of the island. But it hasn't revealed a damn thing. But was that ever a mystery anyone cared about? Did you ever read or hear anyone watching the show say "wow, that was intense! And I wonder why the plane crashed to begin with.
But they had to explain something, so they chose something that didn't matter.
ALL EPISODES
To the trained warrior whose life was war — whose life was death — peace could seem a disease. The samurai survived as a class, becoming administrators, scholars, Confucian moralists, tea masters and so on. Slowly, over time, death receded from their immediate outlook on life. Death did not die. Its torch was passed. A raging fever seized the populace.
TOKYO (6 a.m.)
Their 17th-century successors were earthier types — townsmen, merchants, penny-pinchers, money-grubbers whose thrift as proverbial as their profligacy in the one place where profligacy was the unwritten law: In two lovers, Tokubei and Ohatsu by name, committed suicide together in the Sonezaki forest in Osaka. It was wildly popular. Lovers seized their daggers. Love suicide inspired love suicide. The world was hopeless. Life made love impossible. Chikamatsu sang them on their way: Tokubei is a seller of soy sauce, Ohatsu a prostitute.
They love each other but Ohatsu has been purchased, in effect, by another customer. What can the penniless Tokubei do? Nothing, and as for Ohatsu, she has no more control over her own life and body than a slave would. Tokubei sinks into despair, but Ohatsu rallies: They slip away into the forest. Their strings of tears unite like entwining branches.
They have become models of true love. Love stories were its heart and soul. And love stories, almost always, were death stories. Love is anarchic, uncontrollable, anathema to a government bent above all else on order and control. The law gave no quarter. Rulers imposed death, lovers defied it, or courted it.