Lost - 'What They Died For' (6x16)

Tonight's Lost was definitely one of the better episodes of the season, and particularly during the opening sequences with Ben and Widmore, I was reminded of the show at its peak, with all kinds of machinations and scheming from two of the show's most exciting characters. After that, it was a mix of mythology payoffs and frustratingly slow moving alt-verse stuff that made for a great episode, but one whose schizophrenic intensities made it hard to build momentum going into the finale.

Let me start off with what I felt didn't work, specifically, once again, the juxtaposition of the alt-verse story with the island stuff. In the season's most consistently exciting episode, “The Last Recruit,” there was a great sense of momentum as all the Oceanic survivors came together in chaotic situations, mirroring the intense island action. Here, even though the survivors were still coming together, the intensity wasn't there. The primary reason for that is that we still, one episode from the end of the series, don't understand the stakes of the alt-verse story.

It's clear that Desmond is bringing all the characters together for a reason, but nobody except for Desmond, and now Hurley, has any agency in the story. It's always exciting to see Desmond in the alt-verse because he's doing something. The others are just being manipulated into certain situations. For a show that is supposedly “character-centered,” it makes no sense to have all your characters having no agency whatsoever to keep a mystery alive. That's what the terribly misguided alt-verse structure has done, and it's not only made for weak scenes on its own, it totally undercuts the feeling that everything on the island is coming together to a close. Even if you're totally engaged with both stories, they don't compliment each other.

It's implied during most of the season that Smoke Locke leaving the island creates the alt-verse, so presumably the characters in the alt-verse must come together to defeat him. But, if him leaving the island is so bad, why is the alt-verse not that bad? The Desmond episode implies that the world there is false in some way, devoid of real love, but this episode has a lot of warm, sweet moments. So, how are we supposed to feel about that? If they're going to fight to destroy this world, are we seeing scenes like Ben's just to make us feel bittersweet about that world being destroyed, or perhaps sad at seeing who Ben could have been? But, in a world without love, why would Ben be a better person than in the main verse?

These are interesting questions, but they're ones that preclude being really engaged with the story. I did love a few of the alt-verse scenes this week. The Ben and Danielle scene is really powerful, particularly when juxtaposed with the killer Ben we see on the island. But, what does it mean in the overall context of things? That's key to adding that extra layer of meaning beyond just what is inherent in the scene itself.

The best scene in the alt-verse was Locke finally going to Jack to get “fixed.” We witness Locke going through the same journey he went through on island, going from a skeptic to believer and in the finale, we'll probably see him walk and become like the Locke we saw on the island at the beginning of the series.

Presuming that the alt-verse was created by Locke escaping the island, I feel like it would have been much better to play the first fifteen episodes of the season out without any alt-verse, have Locke escape, then do two full episodes of alt-verse and compress the stories we saw across the season into one episode. Generally speaking all those stories were based around surprise at seeing how things were different, so compressing them only makes them stronger. Then, we'd presumably return to the island proper in the final episode.

The big question then is how does the detonation of the nuke relate to the alt-verse. The whole nuke story has gone unmentioned for a long time, but it's still presumably related to the creation of the alt-verse. I had assumed that the alt-verse was a result of the island being destroyed in the 70s, leading to the different world we see, but if that's the case, then why did Ben Linus and Pierre Chang survive the detonation of a hydrogen bomb? Did the bomb ever actually go off? This is all hazy stuff that's a pretty big logical gap in the series, and hopefully it'll be addressed next week.

The island story has a bunch of interesting developments, including the return of a character who's been missing from the series for nearly two seasons, Ben Linus! After being neutered and sidelined for much of the past two years, he's back on the forefront, with the same ambitious scheming that made him the series' driving engine for much of its run. While I love some of the Ben material from last season, his character has generally been getting dragged around by various groups for two seasons. I always loved when he was on his own and had tricks up his sleeve, so it was great to see his mysterious closet back, and to see him in control.

The beauty of the character in season two was that he was always in control, even when he was imprisoned in the hatch. In season six, there was a briefly touched on redemption arc, but that never really went anywhere, so now we've got a Ben working to take control of the island again, or at least I'm guessing that's what's happening, it could be a double cross. Either way, there's not much island to take over considering everybody on it has seemingly been killed.

I love Widmore and Ben because they allude to a much larger world, a far reaching struggle that is different from the somewhat limited world that our main castaways inhabit. I love how they go on and off island, and I love the spy movie feel of their interactions. The big difference between them and the castaways is that Ben or Widmore always have agency, they always are after something and they actually do things. That makes for better drama than people being confused and not asking questions.

So, even though this side of the story doesn't really reveal anything. It's already implied that Desmond was a “last resort,” but the scenes work because of the wonderful shock and catharsis of Ben shooting Widmore, and taking control of his own destiny. The callback to Alex works, and resolves the cliffhanger from way back in “The Shape of Things to Come.” Why do the rules no longer apply? Who knows, but I don't really care since the scene works. The whole scene had me wishing that this had happened earlier to give the show's two best actors more chances to play off each other.

Who else does Ben want to kill? That's an unknown at this point. Is he going to try and kill Jack, who's tried to usurp his role as island protector? Perhaps he's going to kill Richard for withholding Jacob from him for all these years. Either possibility is interesting, and it's great to have Ben back in the mix.

Though Richard was taken out by the Smoke Monster, I'm assuming that he'll play a part in the finale, as will Miles who conspicuously ran wildly out into the woods. That's another character who finally got some good material and killed it. Claire is also out there, so there's a lot of last minute rescue possibilities. Perhaps she's already teamed up with Desmond?

The other big development is Jack accepting the role of Jacob. This is something I predicted a while back, and flows logically out of the character development we've seen for him this year. He's stepped into the role that Locke had claimed for himself and come around to believe in the power of the island. I like the callbacks to the wine ceremony from last episode, though this entire episode has me feeling like last week's episode didn't really add anything we didn't see explained here more concisely.

That said, I wouldn't be totally shocked to see a left field Jacob turn from Hurley who notably mentioned how relieved he was to not be Jacob. The stakes are in place for the final battle, the protectors of the island versus the Smoke Monster who's trying to destroy it. It's taken a while to get here, but it seems like a nice setup for the finale.

That said, there's still a lot of questions about the series in retrospect with the decision to make the Smoke Monster's motivation be leaving the island. I preferred the idea of him and Jacob as embodiments of good and evil, and Jacob using the island as an experiment to see if people could not destroy themselves and be good. If the light at the heart of the island is human goodness, wouldn't all these failed experiments indicate that we already live in a bad world?

It's a very Christian feel, as Jacob struggles to atone for an original sin that unleashed this great evil force. It pollutes the world, and now they're fighting to keep that sin bottled up so that the world is not corrupted. This is a logical thematic thing, and fits with what we've seen on the series to date. The idea is presumably that no love exists in the alt-verse because the Smoke Monster escaped the island and the light went out. That's why all the glimpses of the prime-verse are colored in that glowy yellow shade.

We also find out that the people were chosen to come to the island because they were alone before. That explains to some extent why the flashbacks were used in the earlier seasons, and why they were all so depressingly similar. That said, I don't think we needed to see that stuff to understand it, we could already see it from the way the people behaved on the island. It seems to be up to our characters now to end the cycle of violence and destroy the Smoke Monster, using Desmond's powers somehow.

The notion of this cycle existing far before Jacob pushed his brother into the cave complicates things a bit. Did the evil they're trying to stop begin in that moment, or was it always present in the island, along with the good? Is that why the temple water infects people, and why Jacob's adopted Mother killed his birth mother. That would make sense, that the source of darkness is the same as the source of the light. It's all hard to reconcile, and I feel like it makes a lot more sense if Jacob is even older than is alluded to here. Is Jack destined to destroy his “brother,” perhaps Sawyer, to keep the cycle going.

There's a lot of questions, and the alt-verse really complicates it all. Let's hope it all resolves itself in a satisfying way with the finale. This was a really strong episode in a lot of ways, and has me excited for the finale. I think a really strong end is within reach, but it's going to require a quicker pace and the creators to finally stop messing, and resolve this alt-verse stuff on an intellectual level so we can feel it on an emotional level. I'm eager to see it all come together at the concert and perhaps see the return of the Locke we once knew. And Juliet too! I'm feeling better about the finale than I did before the episode, but there's still a ton of stuff to do and not much time left.

Lost: The Ten Best Episodes

Since I've been pretty harsh on Lost this year, I wanted to go back and write about my ten favorite episodes of the series, going into the end. Since I watched it in a pretty compressed time frame, it can sometimes be tough to remember what happened in specific episodes, but I did my best to break them out and find my ten favorites.

10. Orientation (2x03) - This episode finally resolved the three episode long Mexican standoff that opened season two, but that's not why it's memorable. To this day, no moment on Lost has been as astonishing for me as the 16mm Dharma Orientation film, which raised so many new questions and ideas, ideas that took four seasons to fully pay off. That film was such an astonishing piece of world building, even after a season long flashback to the 70s, I still want more background on Dharma.

9. There's No Place Like Home (4x12-4x14) - Though less goundbreaking and game changing than any of the previous three season finales, this episode still has a bunch of killer moments. This is the end of the line for an era of the show in which Ben was the main character motivating the action and he goes out with the incredible high point of moving the island through the frozen wheel device. It's a moment of almost religious power, and ties in wonderfully with the emotional hit of Sawyer abandoning the helicopter and washing up with Juliet. The rest of the episode is filled with great moments, including a key Jack/Locke confrontation, but those two moments linger.

8. The Shape of Things to Come (4x09) - Alex's death was one of the most shocking moments in the series, and Ben unleashing the Smoke Monster one of its best action sequences. As I mentioned above, this was an era where Ben ran the show, and he was never better than here, his emotional attachment to Alex contrasted with his power hungry nature. It also featured a great off island story, with an exotic James Bond feel. This was an era where the show's world was expanding, and the island was just one piece of something larger.

7. Some Like it Hoth (5x13) - I really loved all the 70s era stuff, but this is one of the high points. It hits on a comedy level, with Hurley's attempts to write The Empire Strikes Back, but also has some of the most spot on emotional content of the entire series, as Miles finally comes to terms with the father who he believes abandoned him as a child. Science fiction devices can be used to literalize emotions in a way that isn't possible in reality, and the scene with Miles watching his father tending to a younger version of himself, and seeing that he did love him does that perfectly. And, unlike every other character on the show, Miles gets to confront his parental issues and come to terms with them. Miles was already a great character, but this made him even stronger and deeper. It's a shame they gave up on developing him this year.

6. Through the Looking Glass (3x22) - The end of an era for the show, this episode is best known for the shocking flashforward revelation at the end, which was great and integral to the series' evolution. But, it's also got a great fight with the Others, the chaotic promise of rescue from Naomi and the freighter, and the fantastic action setpiece in the Looking Glass Dharma station. The emotional high point is Charlie's death, and the classic “Not Penny's Boat” scene. A really fantastic, epic finale.

5. Greatest Hits (3x21) - But it's topped by its precursor, this incredibly sweet episode that goes a huge way to redeem Charlie from his season two “Darth Hoodie” era, and earn him serious fan affection that continues to this day. Charlie and Claire worked really well as a couple in late season three, and this episode solidifies that family. It's also the farewell to the beach camp era of the show, sending the flashbacks out on a high note. The emotional stakes of the finale are so high because of this episode laying the groundwork.

4. La Fleur (5x08) - The show's most ambitious gambit, sending all our characters to the 70s for half a season, begins here, and it opens up the show's most rewarding era. This episode gives us the series' most satisfying romantic relationship, Sawyer and Juliet's. Those two characters had both grown to be favorites before they got together, but together they're each matured and grow in really interesting ways. It's a great example of showing character change through action happening in the present, in a subtle, but revelatory way, rather than explaining it through pop psychology. I love the world they build here, I love the three year time jump and I love just seeing our characters happy and engaged in this world. To be totally honest, I'd rather have seen an entire show about the Dharma Initiative than the Lost that we got, and that's thanks to episodes like this.

3. The Incident (5x16) - This episode had some off elements to it, notably the fluctuating motivations of Juliet and Kate, but it's also perhaps the series' most successful fusion of its scientific and religious mythologies, all wrapped up in an emotionally intense, riveting hour. After three seasons of buildup, the episode finally introduces Jacob, and manages to make him live up to the hype. We get a better sense of his character and motivations here than in all of his season six appearances, and even the could have been out of left field idea of the Fake Locke fits perfectly with what we've seen before. Other highlights include the Rose/Bernard farewell scene, the Jack/Sawyer fight, and of course the series' single strongest emotional moment, Juliet's fall down the hole and Sawyer's raw emotion as he struggles to hold her. This one's a winner all the way through.

2. The Man Behind the Curtain (3x20) - Just as “Orientation” was a massive download of information that opened up infinite story possibilities, this episode gave us an entire world to explore through his flashbacks to Ben's experience with Dharma as a youth. I love the world they built here, and no episode contains the density of information we get here. In addition to our first glimpses of the Dharma world, we find out that Richard is immortal, and also see the massacre that wiped out the Dharma Initiative. It's one of the show's most shocking, brutal moments, and something that I'd have loved to return to before the series ended. Still, talking about answering questions, this one resolved a lot. It also featured one of my favorite scenes in the series, Locke and Ben's trip to the cabin to see Jacob. The scene is creepy and has a strange aura of mysterious power about it, going right to the subconscious. Ben's backstory is one of the greatest 'answers' the show ever gave.

1. Live Together, Die Alone (2x23) - While I obviously tend towards the later years of the show, no single episode has topped what this one did. I'm sure people are wondering why “The Constant” is on here, and I do really like that episode, but even more dazzling is how efficiently the Desmond/Penny love story is set up here. Desmond solidified his status as one of the show's best characters here, and the flashbacks in the Hatch are some of the strangest, most disturbing the series ever did. That stuff alone would make this a classic, but we also get the great confrontation between the Others and Jack/Kate/Sawyer and the first appearance of the mysterious statue. But, the high point is the incredible sequence in which Locke decides to not push the button and Desmond is forced to detonate the hatch. This is a sequence with a religious power, and watching it, I was just in it emotionally. It's the series' greatest moment, and the show has never quite matched the apocalyptic swirl of power this episode contained.

See, I don't hate the show! And, I'd love for one of the final two episode to join the list here. Other than the dreadful first season finale, which, while not the series' worst episode by any stretch, is its most disappointing and exemplary of what makes show frustrating, they've never failed to nail an ending. So, I'm keeping the faith and eager to see how it all plays out. Until then, these are the series' finest hours.

Lost - 'Across the Sea' (6x15)

I'm a bit late on this one, been traveling this week, but I just saw the episode and while it's quite interesting on its own terms, I think it's also symptomatic of a lot of the problems of the show throughout its entire run.

The discussion surrounding the show has often been consumed by questions and answers, the need for people to find out the answer to the various mysteries set up over the course of the series' run, and the creators' often frustrating refusal to resolve mysteries in a timely or satisfying way. For me personally, the mysteries don't really matter as an end to themselves. What has always frustrated me is that the show dwelled on mysteries for such a long time, at the expense of real narrative and character progress. And now that the series is winding down, it's clear that a lot of the questions that really interested me over the run of the series will never be answered.

So, it's frustrating to see an episode of the show that is ostensibly about providing answers, but doesn't really tell us anything new. Sure, it's nice to know that Jacob and the still unnamed Smoke Monster character were brothers, but it's a case where the relationship was so well sketched through actual character action on the island that it seems pointless to add in all this Oedipal trauma backstory, which begins by outright saying we're not going to answer any real questions because that only leads to more questions.

That notion is key to the series as a whole because it demonstrates the creators' basic misunderstanding of story structures. The notion back at season two or three was that there wasn't enough story to last for a lengthy run so they had to parse it out in small bits, but coming to the end of the series, I see countless stories that interest me that will never be addressed. I'd have loved to see more of Jacob's interaction with island inhabitants over the ages. I'd have loved to get a better understanding of his dual god and man nature, and also more of the Smoke Monster's motivations.

The decision to withhold this episode until the end of the series is frustrating because everything was already implied, and if this information was out in the open, we could have engaged with it more and actually used it to build new stories instead of as a retroactive explanation for stuff we already figured out. The genius of the opening scene of “The Incident” was that it was rich with portent and feeling, all the tension and drama of this episode played out in microcosm. It didn't frustrate me there to have these two characters come out of nowhere because they felt totally organic to the world and so important.

But, both this episode and “Ab Aeterno” feel redundant and turn what felt like an utterly epic and spiritual conflict into something more mundane. Would I rather not know who Jacob is? Probably not, but what I really wanted to know was how does Jacob, a god like figure, make decisions. How does he engage with the world and experience things? In “The Incident,” you had the sense of a being with a vision that transcended space and time as he weaved the various threads of the characters' lives together to prove the Smoke Monster wrong.

So, it's frustrating to take this omniscient, otherworldly character and bring him down to the same Freudian psychology that motivates every other character on the show. Not every single action in human history has been motivated by bad parenting, and to reduce Jacob to yet another victim of parental misguidance strips the character of so much of what made him special. You can either make Jacob a god beyond our understanding or a real human being. What we see here explains to some extent his actions later on, but not why he started this quest to prove that humans are good, or how he's able to leave the island to get Jack and co.

I feel like this episode suffered a bit from Phantom Menace syndrome, in that it ends at the point where things are starting to get interesting. I think it was interesting on its own terms, but there's so much more interesting Jacob stuff I'd have loved to see, and this didn't answer any of the really interesting questions, the ones that aren't about abstract concepts and ideas, but instead actually pertain to the characters and show we've been watching for the past six years. I don't think anyone really cares about who Adam and Eve are, since that's not a question that leads to more interesting stories, but finding out what the interaction between Jacob and Ben, through Richard, was like would at least give us a better context for the often convoluted and mysterious motivations of the Others in the early days of the series.

The same is actually true of “Ab Aeterno,” it took an entire episode to tell what should have been the first five minutes of the story. The reason this Jacob stuff feels disconnected from the series is that it is, but it doesn't have to be. “The Incident” worked so well because it put Jacob into the world of the series, and retroactively tied a lot of things together. This episode just tacks on a story that basically says these things happen because they happen and they'll continue to happen.

What about the episode itself? I admire the audacity of doing something so outside of the show's normal world, and barely even showing any of the regular characters, and I think the basic story worked, but felt emotionally simplistic.

Ultimately, I think this whole season would have been vastly improved if this Jacob material was threaded throughout the other episodes as the cutaway story, tracking from Jacob's origins to the plan that brought the characters to the island. That would remove the pointless alt-verse stories, and have given a chance to resolve a lot of confusing points from the past, while also reinforcing the notion of the island as an eternal struggle to protect this essential human goodness.

But, that was not to be. As it is, I'm still really excited for those final few episodes, but I'm increasingly feeling like the series peaked with years four and five, and this ending is not going to satisfy. And, that's not because of the answers issue, it's because this season has had no character development at all for anyone but Jack and Sawyer, so it'll be hard to make us care about whatever happens on anything but an intellectual level. Lindelof and Cuse say the show is about characters, not mysteries, but if that's the case why didn't anyone get real, meaningful development this year?

Lost - The Candidate (6x14)

After a fantastic episode a couple of weeks ago, which built a lot of forward momentum, an ill timed week off and a generally week hour has slowed everything back down. This episode will probably get some big reaction for the deaths and ending, but it's a pretty terrible episode, with perhaps the most pointless flash-sideways of the season, and a plodding island story that kills a couple of people, but drags along the way and doesn't feel in any way like a show in the last couple of episodes of its life span.

Perhaps my biggest issue with the episode is a kind of unfair one, and that's that it just isn't good enough to be this close to the end of the show. When you've got four hours of show left, the stakes are raised, and not only does the show have to be good at its own terms, it's got to compete against all the possible stories out there to tell. Was this the best way to spend one of the show's final hours? I don't think so, and unfair though it may be, that weighed on my perception of the episode.

But, the episode itself is deeply flawed. Let me start out with a reliable punching, the alt-verse stuff. After last week's great drawing threads together episode, we go to yet another Jack wants to fix something storyline, something that was played out back in season one, but rears its head once more. I'm sure you can read stuff into the storyline, and if this had been the third episode of the season I'd be ready to do that. But, once you've blown up the alt-verse conceit in the Desmond episodes, just having Locke mutter something about the button isn't enough any more. This story had no place in this chunk of the season, and at this point, there's no way that the alt-verse storyline can pay off in a way that justifies the many digressions and tangents it's taken. At this point, things need to be coming together, and this story didn't do that at all.

The whole thing was a debacle, and arguably even worse than the dire Sun/Jin sideways scenes. Why was this here? Who decided this was a good use of show time? It's a baffling call, hitting the same tired beats again and again. I don't think it's inherently a bad idea to take time out from the drama to tell a small story near the end, but it needed to hit harder emotionally.

And, that sequence dragged the whole episode down by pulling momentum from the show every time it was cut to. That said, the on island stuff wasn't helping. We've already seen our characters shuffled around to various locations for reasons outside their control and imprisoned by larger forces for the entire season, so why not do it one more time? There's a lot of sloppy bits in the first half, not the least of which is the worst casting choice of the series, the guy playing main Widmore goon. He looks like he should be working in an office IT department, not shooting people on an island, and that takes you out of the scene.

Things continued in a fairly perfunctory way until the bomb on the submarine. This was a great sequence in many ways, it looked fantastic, and was arty and beautiful and reminded me of a James Cameron film. The sequence itself worked great. The problems came in the way it resolved a lot of the long running arcs of the season.

The whole season has had this runner of Sayid being turned evil, only he never really did anything evil, and there was no real emotional conflict about what to do with him. He was just sort of there, which is okay if he's being kept on the shelf to do something later. Instead he gets a pointless sacrificial depth that I suppose was meant to redeem him, but wound up making me just wonder why they brought him back in the first place. Both him and Claire had the 'infection' idea going on, but it's unclear what that did to them, I'd rather have seen this play out in a more dramatic way, and now that the character is dead, it's unclear why he came back for this season at all. With so many characters around, why not just let him die last year?

Lapidus is another baffler. I figured they were keeping him around to fly the plane off the island, but apparently he wandered around for a season just to die. Why have him there at all? It makes no sense, I enjoyed the character, but he never really got to do anything. I have no problem with having extraneous characters who don't have a purpose in the show's endgame, but at least give him a unique role, as he had last year with Sun. Ultimately, I'm annoyed that such a great actor got wasted saying one jokey line an episode for two seasons before getting killed.

The Sun and Jin death worked well, and nicely echoed Charlie's death in season three. I loved the shot of Jin's hand floating away after his death. What does this mean for the two of them in the alt-verse? We'll see. That said, this is another set of characters who wandered around the whole season with no real purpose and then just get killed.

But, I guess you could say everyone wandered around with no real purpose. All the talk of fate and destiny can be cover for lazy writing, and that's what this episode felt like. I always hate when a convoluted series of events is explained by “That was his plan all along,” and this episode just never gelled. I loved the execution of the final sequence, but the writing throughout was sloppy and squandered much of the momentum of the previous episode. I hope things are righted for the push towards the series finale, but it feels like the writers got distracted by the alt-verse and the Jacob storyline and forgot to actually give the characters any agency or emotional arcs in the final season.

Confusing Choices by Major Companies

It amazes me sometimes that major corporations can make choices that seem so obviously misguided, yet they pass through the many layers of approval needed to get a project greenlit. Here's a couple of things that have baffled me recently.

The first would be the just announced X-Men: First Class project. Of all the comics properties, X-Men is my favorite, but I've been generally unmoved by the four films to date. I'd argue that X-Men's serial nature makes it ill suited to film, which requires more structured stories. The X-Men stories that people remember, like Dark Phoenix or Days of Future Past, all draw on a lot of continuity and character development, unlike things like The Killing Joke or The Dark Knight Returns. The major difference between X-Men and other comics properties is the fact that the X-Men characters for all of Claremont's run were actual human characters, unlike most DC or Marvel heroes, which are archetypes.

Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine and many others all grew and changed over the course of the run, and you can't capture that in a film. But, at least the first two X-Men films had a coherent internal mythology and did a decent job of capturing the characters and their dynamic. Last Stand didn't work creatively, but I don't think it ruined public perception of the franchise. So, I'm really baffled why Fox chose to stop making new X-Men movies and start doing prequels. Wolverine makes sense since he was the series' breakout character, but why do a movie about Professor X and Magneto? We all know how it will end, and I just can't imagine a really good movie possibly being made out of that premise. It's something that's interesting in the context of an ongoing narrative, but not in and of itself.

Audiences have consistently shown a reluctance towards prequels, outside of ones that are total reboots. So, why do that instead of just moving forward with 'present day' stories for the franchise? There was a great setup for a Young X-Men movie coming out of The Last Stand, focusing on Rogue, Iceman and Kitty Pryde. I'd have loved to see that, and it seems like the perfect way to target teens and do a soft reboot to alleviate the bad taste of Last Stand. I'm sure First Class will do okay, but I think doing something based loosely off New Mutants, with some of the existing characters in teaching roles and a cast of younger mutants based on the teen characters from the comics would be a much bigger hit with fans and general audiences. I'm as big an X-Men fan as it gets and I have no desire whatsoever to see First Class.

Another recent baffler is the comic book Ultimate New Ultimates. The Ultimates used to be arguably Marvel's premiere franchise, a best seller that was talked up all over the net, even its nonpresence, during the length delays, were a prime talking point. But, since the end of Millar's The Ultimates 2, the branding of the franchise has been absolutely baffling. First, Marvel did the apparently abysmal Ultimates 3 with a different creative team.

After this failure, it might have been smart to bring back the original writer, which they did. But, for some reason, Marvel chose not to go with a simple title that would explain what the book is about. Instead, they made Millar's book Ultimate Comics Avengers, and have another book called Ultimate Comics New Ultimates. As someone who loved The Ultimates, I'd be pretty inclined to buy new Millar Ultimates stuff, but even as a gigantic comic book fan, I have no clue what the content of either book is. And, who was the one who greenlit a book called Ultimate Comics New Ultimates? We know it's a comic and we know it's Ultimate. Why not just call it Ultimate Pages with Images and Text on Them That Are Previously Unseen and Still Ultimate In Case You Didn't Catch That the First Time.

What separates this book from Millar's? How does it draw from the previous Millar Ultimate series? I have no idea, and I'm not particularly inclined to work to find out. And, keep in mind, this is in the line that's designed to be accessible to new readers.

How are these choices made? Shouldn't the goal of branding to make it clear what something is. Apparently not in this case, and that's a big problem in comics in general. Book names are not self explanatory, what separates Uncanny X-Men from X-Men: Legacy from Astonishing X-Men from just plain X-Men? The big problem with any initiative to draw in new readers is that you can put out a book like the early days of the Ultimate line that is supposed to be accessible, but how is someone who isn't already familiar with comics going to know to pick up Ultimate Spider-Man instead of Amazing Spider-Man?

A similar problem from both Marvel and DC is trade paperback chronology. Trying to pick up Ed Brubaker's Captain America, there's a bunch of Volume 1s and 2s, but how do they all piece together? There's no master number system, so where does The Death of Captain of America Vol. 1 fit in comparison to Red Menace Book Two? I can understand not wanting to have Captain America Vol. 20 out there, but make it easier for people to read your books, not harder.

DC usually does a better job, but it can be hard to piece together stuff from company crossovers. I'd love to see an official guide to reading all of Geoff Johns' books or how all of Morrison's fit together. That would help them sell more books, because if you could show the connection between Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis, that expands the audience of both titles.

I'm the kind of person who will do a bit of research to figure out what's going on, but a lot of people won't, and you should make it as easy as possible to follow a series. Marvel and DC aren't really doing that most of the time.

Lost - 'The Last Recruit' (6x13)

It's amazing to watch an episode like “The Last Recruit” and see the show all of a sudden jump from meandering hit and miss episodes to an urgent, action packed, but emotionally focused hour that serviced all the characters well and was wall to wall great scenes and excitement. It's great to see that the creators finally decided that things happening and people doing stuff can result in an interesting episode of the show!

A big part of what made the episode great was the show once again abandoning the extremely constrictive one person flashback structure that prevented the first three seasons and the first chunk of this season from achieving consistent greatness. The alt-verse scenes are converging in interesting ways, and cutting from story to story gives it all a lot more momentum than the drawn out vignettes from the early part of the season. Any alternate universe story is interesting not because of something inherent to what's going on, but in the difference between the expected norm and what we're seeing. Now, we get a lot of difference, and also the excitement of seeing Desmond's plan in motion and all the characters coming together.

In general, the episode benefitted greatly from cross cutting and the multiple fronts of action. There was a sense of events converging and colliding that gave each scene an added meaning. Cross cutting, when it's used best, makes each individual scene more than the sum of its parts. The big example for me is the end of Return of the Jedi, which is as perfectly structured a climax as anything out there, with each set piece building and informing what's next. Magnolia is another great example, where nine interesting stories become one riveting whole thanks to their combination. Ultimately, cross cutting should result in something more than the sum of its parts, and that's what this episode had.

On a visual level, it was a lot more exciting than the rather sedate season to date. The boat stuff looked great, and I particularly liked the image of Jack leaping off the boat, deciding to stick with the island and not return. That scene was great for a number of reasons, most notably for finally acknowledging the mistake that leaving the island would be for most of the characters. A lot of the season five going back to the island arc has been sort of muddied this year, as leaving the island again becomes a key motivation. Why would Hurley want to leave the island, when going back was so terrible for him? Why would Jack? So, it's nice to see the show address that.

Jack knows how bad things were, how without purpose or direction he felt. In that sense, it was similar to the alt-verse, where the characters live in a world without love, color or light. Only in this case, Jack knew what he was missing and suffered all the more because of it. Sawyer has never had the luxury of leaving the island, and for him, it's now the sight of so much pain. I like when he tells Kate he's done going back. He decided to stay twice before, once during his first day in the 70s, when he convinced Juliet to stay behind, and later in “The Incident,” where Juliet and Kate forced him to go after Jack. He doesn't want to do that anymore, he just wants to go, and is working to ensure that happens.

I prefer the idea that the show is about people finding their destiny and actualizing themselves through adventure and extraordinary events, not through retreating into domesticity. An ending where everyone goes home wouldn't satisfy me. I could understand it for characters like Sun and Jin, but not for everyone. This episode complicates the moral axis a bit, Jack has finally done something that made me like the character, but in the process he seems to have allied himself with Locke, who's clearly got malevolent intentions.

One of the big events of this week was the show finally bringing Claire seriously into the mix. The big problem with the dark/crazy Claire arc has been that the character was never that strong or compelling to begin with. She and Charlie were sweet together, but other than that, she just sort of sat around the whole series, and then wandered off into the woods with Christian Shephard. So, it's hard to emotionally engage with Claire, or be that shocked by the change in her. She's still a wild card, and it's unclear whether she's going with the group to turn on them, or if she's really betrayed Locke. I'm also not that interested in the whole Aaron arc, it's unfortunate that every single female character left alive on the show has become defined by having children or taking care of them. But that's always been a problem, Juliet was the only great female character the show ever produced.

And speaking of Juliet, she remains one of the great enigmas of the alternate universe. You've got to assume at this point that she's Jack's wife, and I'm curious to see what that means should she remember the prime-verse and her relationship with Sawyer. I hope that the teased relationship with Sawyer and Kate in the alt-verse isn't meant to imply that they're actually each others' 'soul mates.' At least the main-verse, Sawyer still seems driven by his rage at Juliet's death, but it's unclear if she or Kate is his true love. That was the issue that led to the nuke going off, and it looks to be central again as we move towards the end of the series.

It's actually smart writing in a genre series to combine a relationship base with an out there plot element. It gives things an emotional ground, and in the case of the nuke story, did tie a bizarre plot element to character stuff. The problem in that case was that the character motivations didn't seem to quite justify wiping out all of reality, so we'll have to see if it plays better here.

Also notable this week was the seeming confirmation of the alt-verse as a world where everyone gets their wishes granted, but in a twisty way through Desmond's conversation with Sayid. Sayid does indeed get Nadia back, but she's with his brother, and he'll be forced to do terrible things to protect her, just as he did in the prime-verse. The question of wish fulfillment is more complicated for the other characters. Some people have that sort of be careful what you wish for thing going on, but others just have a straight up good life. It seems to be mostly the candidates who had things go well, perhaps tempting them to go to the alt-verse, even though it deprives others of love. They would get a paradise, but the rest of the world would be in hell.

That interpretation would fit with what we've seen from Sun and Jin, Jack, Sawyer and Locke to some extent. It seems clear that alt-verse Locke will have to make some kind of choice and play a part in defeating Smoke Locke. In his own episode, he chose to accept 'what he can't do' and be happy in his domestic life. Will he have to make that choice again? There's still some mysteries surrounding the alt-verse, but things are becoming a bit clearer. My guess at this point is that everyone will have to make a choice between their lives on the island and their lives in the alt-verse, and that choice will determine whether the Smoke Monster escapes the island.

This episode was in some respects largely a moving the pieces episode, but it did a great job of giving all the characters interesting stuff to do, and thanks to effective cross cutting across multiple stories, it had a lot of momentum and was riveting throughout. This is how you build to the end of a story, and it's a shame it took twelve episodes of meandering to get here. But, if they keep up this momentum to the end of the show, it's going to be a great finale.

Doctor Who - "Victory of the Daleks" (5x03)

I'm a bit behind on this week's Doctor Who, thanks to my trip to C2E2, but I'm caught up on it now, and it was quite an enjoyable episode, but as with seemingly every TV review I've been writing recently, I've got a couple of overarching concerns.

My major concern has nothing to do with the quality of the episode itself, so much as the use of the daleks, who have always been positioned as the ultimate foe for the Doctor, and were treated perhaps a bit too casually in this episode. The big concern with any arch foe is that the more times you use them where neither side actually wins the less potent the relationship is. This is a big problem in comics, where it's tough to find a new spin for the latest Batman/Joker or X-Men/Magneto fight. But, it's equally a problem here.

In the Davies era, apart from the dire “Daleks in Manhattan,” the way to keep things fresh was to raise the stakes every time they appeared, starting with one Dalek in “Dalek” to the galaxy spanning battle in “Journey's End.” It generally worked, and unlike a lot of internet critics, those epic Dalek finales were among my favorite episodes of the series. “Parting of the Ways” in particular was absolutely dazzling, and “Journey's End” was the hardest hitting emotional moment of the series to date.

So, I was happy to see the Daleks, and I think this episode did a generally strong job of keeping them menacing and interesting. My concern is that once again it was about the Doctor trying to eliminate the Daleks forever, something we know is not going to happen. Why not do a story where he just accepts that the Daleks are there and fights them one battle at a time. No one out there thinks that the Doctor is going to win the final Dalek battle in a one parter that's the third episode of the season. Similarly, the whole blowing up the Tardis gambit didn't work, since we know that wouldn't happen. The episode ultimately was about setting up future Dalek stories, so I would have preferred an approach a bit closer to “Dalek,” where the menace is more in theory than in practice.

That said, my concerns here were primarily about the use of the Daleks themselves. The episode itself was pretty strong. The Daleks versus WWII era bombers space battle was my favorite moment of the new series to date, and captured that manic pulp excitement that the show does so well. The Star Wars parallel jumped out to me, and it worked there.

I also really liked the beats surrounding the scientist struggling to find his humanity, and the way that Amy helped him rediscover the person he was. It was a really satisfying moment in the story, and a great moment for her as a character. This Doctor seems harsher than Tennant, and Amy is bringing a softer approach. It's a dynamic reminiscent of the Eccleston era, when Rose was helping the Doctor find his heart again. But, this Doctor seems even more full of anger, and I'm curious to see how that's going to develop over the course of the season. So far, the emotions this series have been more hidden than in the Davies era, which is partially why I haven't responded to it as much, but I'm eager to see how they develop the character.

This was actually my favorite episode of the season to date. It was the most consistently strong and had some great character bits. I particularly liked the tease of the crack in spacetime at the end, and how that's been playing into the overall season arc. And, next week looks like it should be full of great stuff, as Moffat revisits two of his classic episodes on the series.

C2E2: Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods Panel

This weekend, I'm making the leap from comicon attendee to comicon panelist, when my Respect Films colleagues and I do a panel/preview of our upcoming Grant Morrison documentary at Chicago's C2E2 Comicon. The panel will be taking place on Saturday from 1:45 to 2:45 in Room E271A.



We're going to be screening about 15 minutes of material from the film, the first time any material will be publicly screened. You'll get to see a lot of interesting visual stuff from Grant's archives, and hear from many of the big collaborators over the years. We'll also be announcing and screening the trailer for a new project at the end of the panel, so you won't want to miss that!

I'll also be signing copies of my Invisibles book, Our Sentence is Up, if you want to grab a copy of that. Matt Fraction recently called it "Indispensable. Belongs on your Morrison shelf right after THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM and right before JLA." You must heed that advice!

Lost - 'Everybody Loves Hugo' (6x12)

Tonight's Lost does a good job of keeping up the momentum and intrigue of last week's great Desmond episode, even as it raises some potentially troubling issues, both going forward and in retrospect about the direction of the season as a whole. But, the Desmond/Locke stuff alone was fantastic, and I'm eager to see where everything winds up going.

Let me start with what worked best about this episode, and that's Desmond's role as cross temporal angel of destiny, most notably the extended discussion with Smoke Locke that was full of subtle manuvering and gamesmanship as each one seemed to be testing what exactly the other knew. Smoke Locke seems fairly certain that Desmond is aware of his true nature, but Desmond seems unphased, as if it's all part of his plan. What exactly did Desmond and Widmore agree on doing last week? It's unclear, but Desmond seems to be a wild element, something Smoke Locke hadn't considered, hence his attempt to dispatch him into the electromagnetic hole.

Desmond's stuff in the alternate universe is, outside of last week, the first example of those sequences really working to enhance and inform the narrative. Desmond has a clear goal, and we're witnessing his action, which moves the plot forward, through the emotional arc of another character. It's an efficient way of doing things, and by the end of the episode, it's clear that the focus of the episode was not so much Hurley's reunion with Libby as it was a step of Desmond's mission being completed, hence the episode ending scene in which Desmond runs over Locke.

Why did he do this? It could be an attempt to mimic Locke's on island injuries and make him walk again. Or, it could simply be an attempt to put Locke through the same kind of near death trauma that made him and Charlie see into the alternate universe. Why do it in such a haphazard and dangerous way? Perhaps there's still a link between alternate universe Locke and his on island counterpart, so Desmond lets himself get pushed down the well knowing that he can get back at Smoke Locke from the alternate universe. Either way, it's an intriguing and dynamic scene that does a great job of building momentum going into the next episode.

The Hurley alt-verse story worked much better than previous ones because we actually had an idea of the stakes and purpose of what was going on. It was great to see Pierre Chang again, though I'd have preferred an hour of him recounting what happened to his life between the detonation of the bomb and the present, in either the alternate or present universe, but it's not my show! That said, did we ever find out if Chang is still alive in the present? Miles seems to have not known his dad, but we never saw him get killed in the Dharma massacre? I guess it remains an enigma.

But, the core of the story worked on an emotional level, and made sense as a demonstration of the principles first presented in last week's Desmond story. For the first time, it felt like we had two forward moving stories, not a digression taking time away from the main narrative. And, I think the character beats generally worked.

That said, I did have a couple of issues with the episode. The smaller one is the way that action on island is presented. I've already talked about the problematic fact that most of the characters have spent the entire season sitting around not doing much, and in most cases, waiting for some vague supernatural figure to tell them what to do. As Locke says, there's a difference between doing nothing and waiting, but when most of the characters are literally sitting there with no character arc or long term emotional issues, then that's doing nothing.

In the case of this episode, Michael fills the role of Jacob, telling Hurley what he needs to know to move the plot forward, but also taking away real character agency. I suppose the idea is that Hurley overcomes his own fears about begin a leader and takes control of things, but so much narrative information is conveyed by this omnipotent presence that it makes the story a bit boring. This is particularly frustrating since there's some cool potential stories to be had from a group scouting to find where Locke is, rather than just being told by a ghost.

Ilana getting blown up by dynamite was a surprising moment, but didn't do much for me emotionally, and the characters' lack of reaction to it reinforces that. I will say that it's nice to trim the cast down a bit, and I also like the decision to fork off some characters and have them do different things. Ben in particular has been totally wasted this season, and hopefully sending him, Richard and Miles off on this mission will give all those characters something interesting to do. Ben was such a brilliant character in seasons three and four, and it's a shame that he's being so ill served by this season.

My bigger issue with the episode is the reinforcement of this idea that everyone has to find their soul mate to get back in touch with life in the real world. The problem with this is that romantic relationships have never been a centerpiece of the show, and though Hurley and Libby had a couple of sweet moments, there's nothing in the show to suggest that they're soul mates. That idea works for Penny and Desmond because we're so invested in their relationship, but to assume that Hurley is Libby's soul mate just because they had some good banter once is a bit over the top. I understand the concept in universe that the island brings people together who need to be together, but from a storytelling point of view, it's giving a bit too much credit to a minor development from four seasons ago.

Love as the great universal connector just doesn't seem to fit with the themes of the series we've seen to date. Apart from Desmond, nobody in the show has really been defined by their relationships, and it seems odd to swerve now and make those so central to the endgame of the series, particularly when it doesn't seem that tied to the good/evil Jacob mythology in the main universe. The idea of the Man in Black creating a world without love is a great one, but I think that the notion of 'love' needs to be a bit more general than the romantic one presented here.

On that note, the developments in this episode only reinforce my complaints about the narrative structure and content of the alt-verse material in the early days of season six, right up through 'The Package.' I'd argue that you could take 'The Package' out of the series and lose virtually nothing. That's just not good storytelling, every episode should have something important to say, and develop the characters in some way. 'The Package' isn't an episode that laid groundwork to make the Desmond episode work, it was just sort of there and then 'Happily Ever After' came out and took us in a totally different direction. But, the alt-verse segment there, and indeed most of the previous alt-verse segments, don't particularly mesh well or gain added resonance by the revelations about love in this episode. In fact, they only serve to confuse what seems to now be a fairly clear message.

Maybe some other major twist will come along to put everything in perspective, but it seems increasingly unlikely, and to me, it feels like the creators just wanted to kill time and throw in some cameos before bringing us to the point where they could reveal the truth about the alt-verse.

So, even though this episode featured some riveting scenes, most of which involved Desmond, it also raises some concerns for the continued development of the series. I guess we'll have to wait and see how everything sorts out down the line, but I can say that the teaser for next week was fantastic, and has me very excited to see how it all develops.

Doctor Who - "The Beast Below" (5x02)

'The Beast Below' is a pretty solid episode of Doctor Who, but one that does raise some questions about what the show will be like under Moffat, and whether or not he'll ever match up to the heights of the Davies era. It's definitely too early to tell, but this episode definitely raises some warning signs about the future.

The biggest difficulty with this season so far versus the Davies era is the general shift in story format. The Davies era was a kind of hyperoperatic melodrama with personal soap opera style stories writ large against a backdrop of cosmic craziness. Moffat's stories, both in the Davies era, and in the first two episodes of this series, feel much more like fairy tales. There's always children present, and a focus on making ordinary things around us come alive with fear. The almost obsessive presence of child characters is the one that jumps out to me most, as the Mandy character in this episode had no point to the overall narrative.

I really enjoyed all of Moffat's episodes under Davies, but I never loved them in the way that a lot of people did. In fact, my favorite episode he's done is the Silence in the Library two parter, which was his most poorly received. That episode was absolutely amazing, but I've seen a lot more of 'Blink' or 'The Girl in the Fireplace' in the first two episodes of his solo run.

That's not to say that these episodes have been bad, it's more that it raises concerns for the future about how wide and varied the show could be. Davies definitely had certain themes and setups he returned to all the time, but I loved those themes and responded to them emotionally, and nothing in these episodes has gotten to me as much as even a small moment from a weak Davies episode, like Donna and her grandfather looking up at the stars, as she waits for the Doctor in 'Partners in Crime.'

Davies had this messianic view of the Doctor that was a bit much at times, but Moffat's version of the Doctor is still in formation, or at least a bit unclear at this point. In this episode, he's angry at humans, then ready to kill the space whale to save them. He's definitely more of an enigma than Tennant, and seemingly more prone to mood swings, but I don't feel like I totally understand him yet.

On this episode specifically, certain elements felt like Moffat by numbers, but some of it worked very well. The opening bit with Amy hanging outside the Tardis was great, and in general, her character is working well and doesn't feel like a retread of the emotional beats from Rose or Martha's time in the Tardis. The general sense of adventure was strong too, the show is always fun and exciting in a way that few other things out there are.

I also may be being a bit unfair since Davies seasons often started off pretty weak, and what lingers in my mind is the high points, not the clunker episodes. So, I'm eager to see how things keep developing, but this episode didn't wow me.

Director Oeuvre Rankings

I decided to rank some directors' films in order of preference. Read on, and let me know if there's any big names that I may have missed and should rank, or any major works I haven't seen yet.

Paul Thomas Anderson
1.Magnolia
2.Boogie Nights
3.Punch Drunk Love
4.There Will Be Blood
5.Hard Eight

Stanely Kubrick
1.2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Eyes Wide Shut
3. Barry Lyndon
4. The Shining
5. Dr. Strangelove
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Lolita
8. Full Metal Jacket
9. Paths of Glory
10. The Killing
11.Spartacus

Tim Burton
1.Batman Returns
2.Beetlejuice
3.Edward Scissorhands
4.Ed Wood
5.Batman
6.Mars Attacks!
7.Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
8.Sweeney Todd
9.Sleepy Hollow
10.Big Fish
11.Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
12.Corpse Bride
13.Alice in Wonderland
14.Planet of the Apes

Quentin Tarantino
1.Kill Bill Vol. 1
2.Inglorious Basterds
3.Jackie Brown
4.Kill Bill Vol. 2
5.Pulp Fiction
6.Death Proof
7.Reservoir Dogs

David Lynch
1.Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
2.Mulholland Drive
3.Lost Highway
4.Inland Empire
5.Blue Velvet
6.Wild at Heart
7.Dune
8.Eraserhead
9.The Straight Story
10.The Elephant Man

Steven Spielberg
1.Raiders of the Lost Ark
2.Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
3.Close Encounters of the Third Kind
4.A.I. Artificial Intelligence
5.Jurassic Park
6.E.T.
7.Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
8.Jaws
9.Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
10.Saving Private Ryan
11.Catch Me if You Can
12.Schindler's List
13.Munich
14.War of the Worlds
15.Minority Report
16.Hook
17.1941
18.The Terminal
19.The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Richard Linklater
1.Before Sunset
2.Waking Life
3.Dazed and Confused
4.Before Sunrise
5.School of Rock
6.subUrbia
7.A Scanner Darkly
8.Slacker
9.Fast Food Nation
10.Tape
11.Bad News Bears
12.The Newton Boys

Kevin Smith
1.Chasing Amy
2.Clerks
3.Dogma
4.Clerks II
5.Mallrats
6.Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
7.Zack and Miri Make a Porno
8.Jersey Girl

Michael Mann
1.Miami Vice
2.The Insider
3.Heat
4.Collateral
5.Public Enemies
6.Ali
7.Manhunter
8.Thief
9.The Last of the Mohicans

Wong Kar-Wai
1.Fallen Angels
2.2046
3.Chungking Express
4.In the Mood for Love
5.Happy Together
6.Days of Being Wild
7.Ashes of Time
8.My Blueberry Nights
9.As Tears Go By

Stephen Soderbergh
1.Solaris
2.Schizopolis
3.Full Frontal
4.Sex, Lies and Videotape
5.Out of Sight
6.Traffic
7.The Informant!
8.The Limey
9.Ocean's Twelve
10.The Girlfriend Experience
11.Ocean's Eleven
12.Bubble

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1.The Marriage of Maria Braun
2.Berlin Alexanderplatz
3.Veronika Voss
4.Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
5.The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
6.Lola
7.The Merchant of Four Seasons
8.Love is Colder than Death

Coens
1.The Big Lebowski
2.O Brother Where Are Thou?
3.Barton Fink
4.Blood Simple
5.Fargo
6.No Country for Old Men
7.The Man Who Wasn't There
8.Burn After Reading
9.Intolerable Cruelty
10.Raising Arizona
11.Miller's Crossing
12.The Ladykillers

Todd Haynes
1.Velvet Goldmine
2.I'm Not There
3.Safe
4.Far From Heaven
5.Poison

James Cameron
1.Aliens
2.Terminator 2: Judgment Day
3.The Abyss
4.Avatar
5.The Terminator
6.Titanic
7.True Lies

Martin Scorsese
1.Goodfellas
2.Bringing Out the Dead
3.Taxi Driver
4.The Departed
5.The King of Comedy
6.After Hours
7.Raging Bull
8.Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
9.Mean Streets
10.The Aviator
11.Cape Fear
12.The Last Temptation of Christ
13.Casino
14.Shutter Island
15.New York, New York
16.The Age of Innocence
17.Gangs of New York
18.The Color of Money
19.Boxcar Bertha
20.Kundun

Woody Allen
1.Manhattan
2.Annie Hall
3.Sleeper
4.Vicky Christina Barcelona
5.Everyone Says I Love You
6.Deconstructing Harry
7.Stardust Memories
8.Match Point
9.Bananas
10.Zelig
11.Love and Death
12.Small Time Crooks
13.Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex
14.The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

Alfred Hitchock
1.Vertigo
2.North by Northwest
3.The Birds
4.Psycho
5.Rear Window
6.Strangers on a Train
7.To Catch a Thief
8.The Man Who Knew Too Much

Wes Anderson
1.The Royal Tenenbaums
2.Fantastic Mr. Fox
3.Rushmore
4.The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
5.Bottle Rocket
6.The Darjeeling Limited

Sofia Coppola
1. Lost in Translation
2. The Virgin Suicides
3. Marie Antoinette

Spike Jonze
1. Being John Malkovich
2. Adaptation
3. Where the Wild Things Are

Kim Ki-Duk
1.3-Iron
2.Samaritan Girl
3.Spring, Summer, Fall Winter...and Spring
4.Bad Guy
5.The Isle
6.Time
7.The Bow

Park Chan-wook
1.Oldboy
2.Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
3.I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK
4.Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
5.JSA
6.Thirst

Lost - 'Happily Ever After' (6x11)

This week's Lost brought back perhaps the series' most beloved character, Desmond, and with him, the promise of some kind of major reveal about the time screwiness that's been going on in the alternate universe. As the episode ends, it seems like the nature of the alternate universe has finally been revealed, though questions certainly still linger. The final reveal is great, and fits with a lot of the ideas I've had about the series as a whole, but the episode itself doesn't quite make it to classic status thanks to it hitting a lot of the same beats we've already seen in the alt-verse throughout the season.

Let me start out with the big reveal, namely the nature of the alternate universe, and Desmond's purpose going forward in the season. It seems that the alternate universe is a world that shouldn't be, but was brought into existence through the detonation of the atom bomb on the island, which consequently uncorked the Man in Black and let him loose into the world. And, more specifically, it ensured that Jacob was not able to intercede in the lives of our main characters to bring them to the island. Without their destiny on the island, they have varying levels of success, but all seem to feel that something is missing in their lives, and they struggle to fill that hole in various ways.

The vague allusions of Jack looking in a mirror in the season premiere are expanded here to Charlie describing his vision of Claire, and Desmond experiencing a hallucinatory journey through his life in the core timeline. It seems that people who died in the main timeline are easier able to access their memories. Both Charlie and Faraday are aware that something is wrong in this world, that they're missing the love that gave them joy in the core timeline.

I'd argue that even more important than the specific love for Claire was the sense of purpose and feeling. The hallucinatory joy he talks about is what being on the island gave them all, it took them out of failed, troubled lives and gave them purpose and destiny. That's been one of my key readings of the show throughout, the idea that the island was not a curse, but a blessing because it let them all reinvent themselves and find a happiness that alluded them on the mainland.

That's why all the characters trying to leave the island baffled me, since things seemed so much worse on the mainland, that's why the entire atomic bomb plan made no sense, and now the results of the plan seem to reinforce the reading. At the core of the show was the conflict between Locke and Jack, between faith and reason. Locke had faith that they were on the island for a reason, and he exalted in the opportunities that it gave him. It took Jack a long time to come around to that viewpoint, but at this point in the run, he's taken up Locke's mantle and is advocating a surrender to destiny and service to the island.

So, the implication is that a life without going to the island is a colorless kind of hell where no one feels as vibrantly as they do in the main timeline, and the only way to tap back into that feeling is through love. The major question here is how does that fit with what we saw in the previous alt-verse stories. The early ones, Jack and Locke in particular, seemed to offer the alt-verse as an ideal world, where the characters are able to overcome the conflicts that defined them before the island and find happiness and peace.

However, perhaps that happiness comes at the price of greatness. You could admire Locke accepting his place in the world, but isn't that also a form of surrender? He's letting people tell him what he can't do and surrendering to an acceptable life, but one that's not all it could be. Would Locke rather have the adventure he had on the island or be happy with Helen? I'd argue that he'd probably be happier on the island. It would make sense that the two people who must wholeheartedly buy into Jacob's mission, Jack and Locke, would receive the greatest temptation from the Man in Black, the happy lives they never thought possible. If we get to the point where the characters have to choose between their alt-verse lives and their on island lives, it would make sense to give Jack the greatest temptation since he has the greatest faith.

One could argue that the island is there to let every character grow and be their best. Someone like Sawyer changed so much because of his experiences, and particularly his relationship with Juliet. All the characters who've stuck around and been at the heart of the show have become much more than they were at the beginning, they've felt more and opened up in a way we never saw them do in the flashbacks.

This episode goes on to posit love as the 'constant' for everyone, the thing they can hold on to to remain grounded as they drift further and further into the alt-verse. It's love that brings back Farraday's memories of who he used to be, and allows him to access the part of himself that was once alive on the island, the him that should have been. It's love that lets Charlie see his true self, and the same for Desmond.

At the end of the episode, it seems that thanks to meeting Penny, he has freed his consciousness to travel between the two worlds, and he will go on a mission in both worlds to warn everyone about how wrong the alt-verse is and try to save the main world. In the main universe, I'm guessing he's going to try to stop Smoke Locke from escaping, while in the alt-verse, he's going to try to make the characters remember the false nature of their universe. Ultimately, I'm guessing everybody will have to make some kind of choice between the alt-verse life and the main-verse life.

I think that this episode did do a great job of explaining and contextualizing the alt-verse. However, it didn't make up for a lot of weak stories getting here. Even in this episode, there's moments that seem meant to be surprising, like Desmond working for Widmore, that don't have much impact. The alt-verse only came alive when we saw its relationship to the main one, because that gives us a context for understanding how these stories matter. That's a lot more interesting than just seeing a bunch of characters who've died appear in random roles.

But, in general, this was easily the season's best episode, and if the rest of the series is centered around Desmond's mission, I won't be complaining. A lot of the Lost characters, even great ones like Ben and Farraday, are interesting on a conceptual level, Desmond is one of the few who engenders a really strong emotional connection, so he's a great 'constant' for the series itself, reminding us why we care even when the stories don't work so well.

The on island stuff this week was particularly fantastic. I love the return of the strange science experiments, the Watchmen evoking particle reactor and the strange Jurassic Park style setups. Widmore is killing it every week, and I'm eager to hear more about his overall mission, and perhaps get some more of his backstory.

So, the episode does answer a lot of questions, but much also remains unresolved. Particularly of interest to me is what will happen when we see Juliet in the alt-verse. She knows that the bomb worked to create the alt-verse, and was conscious of that in the main-verse, but will that transfer? And, will she be Sawyer's constant? Will he be tempted by her to accept the alt-verse, or will the producers play up the Kate/Sawyer thing again, as alluded to by the end of his solo episode.

We'll see I guess. I'm feeling a lot better about the show going forward. I think we could have gotten to this place in a much more efficient way, but at least things are looking good going forward.

Doctor Who - "The Eleventh Hour" (5x01)

After a while where I didn't have any shows I was really excited to watch week to week, it's getting to be an embarrasment of riches with Lost, Breaking Bad (which I'm still working on catching up on, but will be weekly soon), soon Treme and today the new season of Doctor Who, featuring a new Doctor and new producer. I didn't enjoy the first episode quite as much as the rest of the internet, but I think it's a strong introduction to the character, stronger than either of the new companion introductions from RTD's run. And, even if the main plot never quite came together, there's enough great moments along the way to make it a solid episode.

While it was frustrating to have the show take nearly two years off between series, I think it made it easier to transition to the new Doctor. Tennant's run was decidedly closed off by the epic “Journey's End,” and laid to a gentle sleep over the course of the five specials. I was still very sad to see him go at the end of “The End of Time,” but it felt appropriate and I was emotionally ready to move on. The closure those specials provided made it clear that we had reached the end of one story, and this series is the beginning of another.

And, I think Matt Smith did a great job of keeping consistent with the character we'd seen under Eccleston and Tennant (as well as the previous guys), but not feeling derivative. He seems a slight bit edgier than Tennant, a bit more prickly, but still with that same joy for life. After one episode, I accept and believe him as the Doctor, and that's perhaps the greatest thing this episode could achieve.

Similarly, I really like Amy Pond, and am curious to see how their relationship develops. I feel like Davies did all variations of the Doctor/companion in love, so I'm not sure where their relationship will go and how it will develop. The obvious set up is for some kind of love triangle, or at least emotion triangle, between the Doctor, Amy and Rory, but we'll see how that goes. I'm assuming that he will not return her to her wedding morning as promised and that will be a source of conflict.

In terms of specifics about the episode, I think the opening sequence worked really well, and had a great fairy tale quality. It brought us into the world of the new Doctor and set up Amy's personality and their chemistry. The thing that didn't work for me was the conceit of the door that you could only see out of the corner of your eye, it feels like a retread of previous Moffat ideas, like the statues from “Blink.”

And, the A story of the attacking aliens and coma people didn't do too much for me. It felt like things took a while to get rolling again after the opening, like we were one step ahead of the characters for most of it. There were some fun gags and character beats, but I never really felt the enormity of the threat. I know it's a season premiere and it's not time for an operatic epic conflict yet, but this one felt really flat for most of the episode.

Things picked up with the great moment of the Doctor slamming the fire engine ladder through the window and tricking the Multi-Form alien into exposing itself. And then the final scene on the roof was a fantastic declaration of purpose. As a viewer who's been through several doctors now, the montage of old doctors, punctuated by Eleven walking through and claiming his identity was the high point of the episode.

And, the final beats in the Tardis were really strong as well. The new design looks great, and it left me eager to see what happens next. So far, I didn't feel the same emotional charge as in the best of RTD's episodes, but it's early going, and the trailer for the rest of the season looks fantastic. I'm on board with the new Doctor and am looking forward to having the show finally back on a weekly basis.

Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass the movie is getting some pretty strong heat media wise, to the point that the actual comic seems like a foot note. Thanks to the movie being optioned and produced before the series was even complete, it's easy to feel like the source material is superfluous at this point, and that's increasingly how I was feeling before reading the comic. After reading it, I found a strange, flawed, but deeply personal story. But, what does it mean to have a personal story when the guy who wrote it is kind of a delusional egomaniac?

First off, I'll say that Kick-Ass generally works. It's a fairly strong character based story, but one that at no time is as radical or innovative as Millar seems to think it is. Alan Moore cracked on Geoff Johns quite a bit for retreading his ideas with Blackest Night, but this series really feels like a retread of those late 80s grim and gritty superhero comics that Moore and Miller did, quite literally in this case imagining what it would be like for a superhero in the real world. Of course, that reality lasts for about an issue, by the end, after several superhero team ups, we're firmly in an elevated genre world. I think that undermines the series' basic conceit, but I think it functions in an interesting way as Millar exploring his own fame and success, to suddenly find himself not being a pretender to star status, but actually being a star.

Reading the series in this way requires an understanding of the extratextual Mark Millar persona, something that's been of particular interest to me in the context of working on the Grant Morrison doc. I don't know Millar and have never met him, but I have this picture of him through the people we've talked to that paints him as an ambitious fame hungry guy who got a taste of success and star power in the early 00s and has been rolling to bigger and bigger things ever since. I think his writing has suffered for this, Civil War was terrible, and his Fantastic Four wasn't great compared to the iconic work he did on The Authority and The Ultimates.

The weaker works suffered from feeling a bit generic, his authorial voice was subsumed to the general needs of the Marvel universe in a way they never were on The Ultimates. I didn't want to read about the Marvel U version of Iron Man or Captain America after reading about the Ultimate versions. To me, those are the definitive takes on those characters, and it's telling that the films have drawn so heavily on Millar's work. The Ultimates is a really strong distillation of everything that works about the Avengers concept, and it has interesting things to say about fame and media culture, which is the unifying theme that ties together most of Millar's signature works.

The Authority is the first riff on that, the superhero as rock star, and The Ultimates escalates it to the superhero as tabloid fixture, as modern celebrity. But, both those works are written solely from the perspective of cool insiders, it may be an aspirational text, but there is no reader surrogate. It's key to note that all The Authority and Ultimates characters are sexy, powerful and famous beyond their costumes, they don't have to work to win peoples' admiration, it's inherent to their image.

Kick-Ass flips the perspective on this, showing a character who's spent his life admiring those kind of characters (and in some cases those exact characters to enhance the “reality” of the book), and decides that the best way to become famous and beloved is to become a superhero. For Millar, being a superhero isn't about being a symbol of humanity's best potential as a species (as it is for Morrison), it's about gaining fame, power and notoriety. There's this fixation on MySpace friends and critical heat throughout, and when Dave hangs up the mask early in the book, what brings him out of retirement is not the need to do good, but the desire to one up Red Mist and get his headlines back.

So, the whole thing becomes this strange petty quest of one self-perceived loser to gain social capital in the form of fame. He may pursue a relationship with Katie, but the love that he really wants is not a meaningful emotional connection with one person, it's the dilute adoration of the masses. Either way, he's never able to put his true self out there, either to the public or Katie, it's like he doesn't have the self confidence to let his true self be loved, he needs to hide behind a facade.

The whole pretending to be gay subplot may seem like Millar's excuse to make a bunch of gay jokes, but it seems to be key to the work in many ways. In Kick-Ass, Dave sees the way that a mask makes it easier to do things he never could as himself. The gay persona is another mask, and as the work goes on, we see less and less of the real “Dave,” he fades into this progression of false identities, playing a part to satisfy a particular audience who needs to see him in a particular way.

This has great resonance with the idea of fame itself. The person who becomes famous or beloved by the masses isn't a real person, it's a construct built by PR people and the media to be an accessible, relatable presence for people. Incidents like the Tiger Woods troubles are interesting because of the disparity between the 'real' person and the self that he presented to the world.

Dave's status as a fanboy is emphasized throughout, and the whole work often quite literally deals with the idea of the superhero as adolescent male power fantasy. Only this time, Dave is taking the very thing that makes him a social exile, his comics habit and nerdiness, and is turning it into an asset, showing up the people who socially ostracized him by becoming something cooler and more loved than them, Kick-Ass.

And, you can easily equate the idea of a 'real' superhero jumping off the comics page with Millar's own comics being turned into movies. What was once this niche hobby relegated to dingy shops is now front page news, and comics like Wanted or Kick-Ass are household names. Millar himself is a media figure, and he feels like he's blazing the trail of taking these books to larger and larger audiences.

So, it's appropriate that Kick-Ass is turned into a movie right off the comics page since it's taking the Kick-Ass idea and realizing it into a star studded big budget movie. Even within the comic, there's meta resonance that Big Daddy, the seemingly ultra cool impeccable assassin, the biggest 'star' in the universe, is funding his missions by selling old back issues of superhero comics. This comes mere months after Nic Cage, the actor portraying him in the film, is forced to sell his own back issues to get out of debt. The meta implication is that Millar, and comics, are so cool that even the badass hero, or ultra popular movie star, love them, that deep down all the cool people are really just fanboys.

So, the entire book plays as this strange mirror version of Millar's own fame and increasing media profile. He's got the MySpace friends now, he's hanging out with celebrities, he's been taken out of his regular life and become something more.

One thing I haven't really seen mentioned in conjunction with the book is how structurally similar it is to Wanted. Both books chronicle the story of a loser who gets pulled out of his ordinary life into a world of excitement and adventure. That's a pretty basic story structure, but there's a lot of resonances, particularly the self hatred the protagonist feels. Is Millar writing about this because it's how he feels about himself? Or, is it a calculated way to appeal to the fanboys who comprise his target demo?

Either way, the book itself is always entertaining, if nowhere near as revolutionary or groundbreaking as Millar might think it is. I will give a big commendation to John Romita Jr., who told the story in a really compelling, visual way. I always had to read both the images and the text to get all the information, and that's unfortunately a rarity in today's comics. On the whole, it's a satisfying read, but perhaps a bit too indebted to the 80s style deconstruction of superheroes and offers very little in the way of new insight into the genre.

Lost - 'The Package' (6x10)

Another week of Lost, another episode that exemplifies most of my issues with the previous season six episodes. There's some really great scenes in here, and the final reveal is very satisfying, but both the on island and particularly the alt-verse stuff is a lot of wheel spinning with not too much payoff.

First, let me deal with the downside of the episode. With any long running work, a looming end raises the stakes for what you've got to do. Not only must the episode be satisfying on its own terms, but with limited time, every story, every scene has to deal with being the best possible use of the time left. I don't like to judge a work based on what I want it to be rather than what it is, but I don't think anyone could consider this Sun/Jin story the best use of the series' remaining time.

More than any of the other flash-sideways, this one didn't even deal with the characters on an emotional level. Some of the beats in the hotel room were nice, particularly the shirt unbuttoning thing, but the characters were so far from their on island counterparts that they don't even resonate emotionally with what we've seen those people go through. That means that it's harder to emotionally engage with the characters and the whole thing doesn't work. I'd compare it to watching these two actors in another movie. You get that Sun/Jin resonance thanks to the performers, but it's not the same people. Even fan service allusions like Mikhail's return don't make for a satisfying story.

Most troubling is the realization that with only eight episodes left, there's no way that all these alt-verse stories will find a satisfactory resolution, nor is that were I want screentime expended. If alt-Sun/alt-Jin never do anything else, why did we spend this time with them in the first place? I'm increasingly unclear about the purpose of these stories in the overall narrative, and the decision to only tell us how Jin got in the fridge we saw him in several episodes ago doesn't help move things forward. That's characteristic of the worst of Lost, the idea that we'd really care about how Jin got in that fridge. Why not just pick up there and let us catch up on what happened.

On island, a lot of good stuff is happening. My biggest issue right now is that character motivations are very unclear, primarily due to the fact that so many of the characters who willingly came back to the island now only want to leave. I thought we'd moved towards the idea of the island as an end in and of itself, as the purpose these people have been seeking. Sun seemed eager to get away from her daughter and fuck around with Widmore in season five, so I don't buy her only wanting to find Jin and go back. I prefer the idea that these characters have become part of a larger world and the simple desire to go home will only prove as dissatisfying as it was to the Oceanic Six earlier. Jack is the only character who seems to realize the magic of what's happening, while everyone else is still in seasons one and two mode.

But, other than these issues, there was a lot of great stuff here. Things are mounting towards the eventual war, and the Widmore/Locke confrontation was as good a scene as we've had this season. Terry O'Quinn has been absolutely owning this season with his seemingly benevolent menace, and here he had an equally ambiguous force to reckon with. I also loved the scene with Richard getting his troops ready and making his plan.

Richard's speech makes me think that the eventual split at the end of the series might come down to people who believe in the higher purpose of the island battling people who want to leave it. Jack has come around to believe that this is where he's meant to be, and destroying the plane is the ultimate symbolic gesture to indicate that. By destroying the plane, he is reenacting again the opening of the series, and acquiescing to his fate. SmokeLocke, Kate, Claire and the others who want to leave have resisted the will of the island and seek to return to the world.

It would make sense to stage the final battle around the plane because of its resonance with the series opening, and clearly the creators have an interest in bringing stuff full circle. It would also make the stakes clearer in the war and give them a relatable hook. Throughout the series, we've seen the island function as a transformative engine, giving people what they want, and sometimes punishing them when they want to leave. You could argue that Juliet's death in “The Incident” was a consequence of her and Sawyer's decision to leave the island. Committing to stay on the island means it will protect you, trying to leave means it will fight against you. Locke is invulnerable on the island, but off island, he is killed by Ben.

But, I'm guessing things will all be shaken up next week by the return of Desmond, the man who may finally be able to hack the alt-verse/prime-verse divide, or at least shed some light on the larger purpose of things. Either way, it's great to finally have the character back, and I'm eager to see how he plays in the narrative.

Lost - 6x07-6x09

I was traveling, and then sick, so I haven't been able to post reviews of the last few Lost episodes. So, I want to do a post to sum up some of my feelings about the series at this point, and my hopes and fears about the rest of the season.

Lost, like a lot of other works that have a fanatically devoted fanbase (think Star Wars or Evangelion), has a lot written about it, but very little objective analysis of the quality of the work. So much of it is centered around the series' internal mythos that more general looks at what does and doesn't work in the storytelling doesn't really happen. With this series, so much of the dialogue centers around what answers we'll get and how new revelations integrate with what we've seen before. It's more of a puzzle approach to criticism, while I feel like the focus on answers excuses some of the series' more basic problems.

To me at least, the show never became frustrating because it didn't reveal answers. If you just want the answers, wait until May and read a Wikipedia page. The show became frustrating, both in the early years, and in this season because it has characters struggling with mysteries and nothing else. The creators are fond of saying that this is really a character based series, but the storytelling doesn't support that. The show has generally been most successful on a conceptual level, and frustrating on a character level, since devices like the flashbacks, or the flash sideways, lead to a notion of character that is inherently contrary to ongoing serial storytelling.

The universe of Lost has always been based around revealing secrets, be it the drawn out revelations about the nature of the island, or the way that the flashbacks ostensibly revealed the true nature of the characters on the island. The problem with that has always been that I feel like most of these people are going to be more affected by being stranded on an island than by the small scale slights that happened to them on the mainland. Characters should grow and change over the course of the series, and that's why the flashbacks were a structural failure. I'd argue the show would have been more interesting if we never saw the flashbacks at all and had to speculate about who the people on island were, or had it revealed in season four when everybody made it back to the main land.

The biggest problem with the flashbacks was the implication that they were a satisfying way to pay off the audience's need for character development, allowing the on island time to focus more on mythology questions. In stereotypical terms, the flashbacks, or current flash sideways, are there for the female or casual viewer who doesn't really care about the island, while the on island stuff, with its action and mythos is for men or more committed viewers. This strict division has reached its apex this year, where most of the characters have no arcs at all on island and the island material is heavily intellectual, with most emotion restricted to the flash sideways.

Now, yes, there's some arcs happening on island. Sawyer's gone through some stuff, as has Smoke Locke and Jack, but other than that, everybody's basically sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. Why not devote some time to giving character arcs to people like Miles and Ben, who haven't done much at all this year. Ben is particularly frustrating since he was the propulsive causal engine for the show in seasons three and four, but hasn't been doing much this year. Take him out of this season, or take Lapidus, Sun, Miles, Ilana and Kate out of this season and what changes? Not too much, and that's not good writing.

This really frustrates me since I felt like season five did a fantastic job of servicing all the characters in a satisfying way, and still progressing the mythology stuff in a way that felt integrated with the emotions of the story. Even something like the love quadrangle issues surrounding the nuke were a bit hackneyed, but gave that story an emotional resonance that led to arguably the most emotional moment in the whole series, Juliet's fall down the hole.

That said, some of the concepts and ideas of the season are amazing, I love the idea behind the Jacob/Man in Black conflict, and the way it resonates with things we've seen throughout the series. It's a great narrative engine to bring all the characters together and lead to a big climax. It's also strange and surreal in a way that TV shows so rarely are.

I really dug the Richard episode, and a lot of the Sawyer episode. But, it's frustrating for me to see no one really analyzing the significant structural and emotional flaws in the series. Character based storytelling can't be just telling a random ten minute story about a different version of the character from the series. Character based storytelling is telling stories that derive from characters doing things, and dealing with the consequences of their actions, and sadly, the on island stuff right now is pretty much the opposite of that.

So, I guess what I want to see is more objective analysis of the structural elements of the series, and the way that the series is dealing with character and emotional issues, rather than reviews that just focus on the answers, or saying the season sucks. With shows like this, with a really committed fan base, it's hard to do that objective analysis, but surely there must be someone else out there feeling the same frustrations with the show as I am, who's still loving elements of the show, but just wishes it could be better.

Update from the UK

If you're wondering why there was no Lost post this week, or any posts at all, the short answer is that I've been in the UK doing more shooting for the Grant Morrison documentary! It's been a while time, and if you want a glimpse of some of the adventure, head over here to see some images from the trip. It's been pretty surreal to get to interview Grant in the first place, but to then get to interview him and Frank Quitely simultaneously, and also head out to his amazing house has been a surreal privilege. Look for a full account of the full journey when I return, but for now, let me give you some recommended reading...



Yup, that's the final release copy of my book Our Sentence is Up. The book started with all The Invisibles posts I did here, but was then edited, expanded and topped off with a 70 page interview with Morrison. One fan was lucky enough to get a picture with the author!



It's available at fine comic stores all over, even the Forbidden Planet here in Glasgow, and if you want to order a copy online, hit up Forbidden Planet's website. I'm really proud of the book, and would love to hear the feedback of any readers who've had a chance to check it out. You'll also be able to grab a copy from me at C2E2 comicon in Chicago next month.

Look for a more thorough update when I return, but for now, let me leave you with this...

Lost - 'Sundown' (6x06)

This week's Lost has many of the same issues that have plagued the season as a whole, but also finally kickstarts the story a bit and ends on a major high note that will hopefully propel us forward to bigger and better things as the season goes on. But, as in the first three seasons, the structure prevents the episode from being entirely satisfying.

I know a lot of people criticized the flashbacks in the early days of Lost for slowing down the narrative or distracting from the 'answers' that everyone wanted, and the consensus narrative is that it took the dire Bai Ling episode to turn things around and let the creators show that the show needed an endpoint. The flashbacks, and these subsequent flash-sideways, are inherently problematic and should never have been part of the show's structure. The main reason is that they distract from any attempts to build atmosphere and coherent narrative momentum. The much maligned Bai Ling story is actually better than most of the flashbacks because it had an atmosphere that matched the island happenings, so even though the narrative elements of it were pointless, it fit well with the on island story.

In an episode like this, the rising action on the island is undercut by the need to build up an off island story, and that is crippling to the momentum of the episode as a whole. The effect of the flashbacks has always been that of randomly flipping between two different stories with little connection between the two. The entire point of intercutting stories is to make each feel like something more, and that's how it worked during the flashforward era, when our advance knowledge of events played into the on island action in interesting ways, and the off island material actually gave us new information. Compare the fourth season's “The Economist” to this episode, and you'll see there an episode that was full of interesting loose ends and questions that seemed to come out of nowhere, but gradually came together with the main narrative, whereas this episode only raises the same question as any of the other alt-verse stories, what's up with the alternate universe, and how will it eventually connect to the main story?

The thing about the alt-verse that makes it so frustrating is that the characters there are not the characters we know. They are versions of them, but they're not at all connected to the past five years of show that we've watched. If you're arguing that a character is not fundamentally altered by the events of the series we've watched, why did we bother watching it? And if, as the creators so often argue, the real pleasures of the show are in the characters not the mysteries, then wouldn't telling stories that don't involve those characters not be of much interest to the audience? Or, are they arguing that all the interesting work with the characters was done in their initial conception and in the flashbacks and the island stuff didn't matter.

And these alt-verse stories have gotten pretty predictable in their formula, always returning to the boring 'core character dilemma' that the writers beat to death in the first three seasons. Part of the reason the characters who were introduced later are so much more interesting is that they weren't reduced to a one line pop psychology character motivation to fill out endless flashbacks. We know that Sayid wants to escape a life of violence, but always returns to it. We know that Jack wants to 'fix' things, but can't fix himself because of issues with his father. We know that Kate is a loner who runs away, but has a heart of gold. These are boring stories, and just because you twist it around and have things end well in the alt-verse doesn't make them any more interesting. Do that, plus throw in a couple of surprise cameos and you've got a flash-sideways. This one wasn't as dire as the previous ones, but when shit's finally going down on island, I don't really care about the fate of alt-verse Keamy.

Continued objections to the structure aside, this episode had a lot going for it. There was some more of the annoying tell, don't show plot construction that's been prevalent this season, but there were also a lot of fantastic moments, and a real sense of apocalyptic dread. As we see Dogen continuing to manipulate, it becomes less and less clear which side is right in the battle between Jacob and SmokeLocke. If Locke really can give everyone what they want, is that such a bad thing?

It's insinuated that Locke's prizes could lie in the alt-verse, where everyone seems to get what they want, and haven't fallen prey to the troubles that beset them on the island. That makes sense with the structure, but I think it betrays one of the central appeals of the show, which is that going to the island is actually a good thing for most of the characters. The show isn't a nightmare scenario, positing what would happen to you if you were stranded on a desert island, it's more of a dream, imagining what would happen if you could leave your old life behind and live a meaningful life of adventure.

I think part of why I liked the middle years more is that they were largely about the island as something great, something that people are struggling to get to and control, because the island is cool and exciting, more exciting than our world here. With the Dharma Initiative, we saw our most concentrated dose of the island as a utopian experimental space in which people can remake the world in whatever image they choose. This season is retreating from that and returning to the first season conception of the island as an obtrusion standing in the way of people getting what they want. Perhaps SmokeLocke's greatest trick is to take people away from the island and strand them in a bland world where they get what they want, but at the cost of becoming stronger, better people.

Dogen seals his own fate by choosing not to kill Sayid, and allowing him to join forces with Locke. Why does he do this? He doesn't want any more killing, after removing himself from his son's life to save him, much as Juliet did with her sister. He seems tired of life on the island, and after seeing what it has turned him into he presumably decides to give up the fight and finally pay back his debt to the island.

Sayid kills him because he has chosen to embrace the evil within himself, like Claire, he is now controlled by his desire. It's notable that much of Jacob's, and the Dharmas', philosophy seems derived from Buddhism. It is only by giving up things, the life you led off island, and surrendering to the flow of things that you can find enlightenment. Desire is the prison that holds you back. Ben crosses to the other side and kills Jacob when his desire for personal recognition and to finally meet Jacob overwhelms his faith in the natural order of things. Someone like Richard is the most zen character on the island, and over the long course of his life will always help things happen as they need to be.

Perhaps “What happened, happened” is another way of saying that you can only be in tune with destiny, you can't try to change it. Jack's detonation of the bomb is an affront to Jacob because it's saying that he knows better than God what should happen to the world. Of course, that's assuming that Jacob's way is the right way. You could also argue that the bomb, and now Locke's offer to take everyone home, is an attempt to return things to the way they should be, and counteract Jacob's meddling. That said, he preys on peoples' selfish motivations in a way that Jacob doesn't. He is trying to give people what they want, and the more you want something, the more likely it is to slip away.

Either way, the final moments of the episode are fantastic. Dogen's death felt like a jolt to the show, the first time since “LA X” that I've felt any significant story momentum. The death of Lennon kept that rolling, as did the awesome sudden appearance of the beach crew. The chaos of the smoke monster attack on the temple was fantastic, bringing to mind the chaotic intercutting of the end of Empire Strikes Back. This is a case where intercutting adds a lot to the story, with Miles' run raising the stakes on Locke's entrance. The whole scene was wonderfully executed and it was particularly great to see Miles, Lapidus, Ilana and Ben getting something to do again.

Though some may deny it, this season is incredibly similar to season three structurally, in the sense that we're introduced to this new environment that's pretty cool at first, but then our characters just sit around waiting for something to happen and not asking the right questions. Then, things finally break out around the sixth episode and the season starts rolling.

So, this episode had some issues, but at least we're going now, and I'm eager to see what happens next. But, it may be a couple of weeks before I can post the next recap because I'm going to be in the UK. So, stand by for those when I return!