San Diego Trip

After roughly ten days out on the West Coast, I’m back in New York, and have successfully made it through my first comicon experience. San Diego was pretty much what everyone said it would be, jam packed with people, a grueling trip and also a lot of fun. We were out there shooting stuff for the Grant Morrison project, and wound up doing twenty six interviews over four days, which is a lot tougher than it sounds when just walking people up to the interview site can be a fifteen minute round trip.

But, I think we got a lot of great stuff, and were able to talk to the vast majority of people that we wanted to talk. Some of the people we talked to were Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Cameron Stewart, Chris Weston, Jill Thompson, Frazer Irving, Matt Fraction, Jason Aaron and many more. I’ll be posting clips of these interviews over the course of the next few weeks, primarily stuff that won’t end up in the film, but is interesting on its own merits.

Because we spent so much time doing these interviews, there wasn’t that much time to spend on the show floor. I wound up buying only two comics the entire show. Wednesday was the day I spent the most time on the floor, and that was insane with people trying to snap up free stuff. I got a free copy of the first JH Williams/Rucka Batwoman issue, and Flash: Rebirth, both of which I wanted to check out anyway, so that was good.

The floor, and show in general, reminded me of basically a double sized New York Comicon. The major difference was the much more significant film presence here. At New York, there were a lot more comics sellers, and the floor felt a bit more manageable. Here, there were basically two cons. On the left side of the floor was film stuff and video games, while the right was more typical comics sellers and random vendors.

Because of the huge crowds, I wound up not making it into any panels at all. Work meant there was no time to line up that early, so I missed getting into Avatar by about five hours, and Lost by probably about a half hour. I’d have loved to see both, but ultimately it was probably not worth the wait.

The weird thing about being at the con is that you don’t get any of the buzz or news that’s covered in the mainstream media. I didn’t hear about the Marvelman announcement until I called someone who was still on the East Coast, I got very little buzz about any of the films, and am just now catching up on which films “won” the comicon buzz war. And, I think that there’s very much two cons. Comics haven’t disappeared from the con, they’re just one piece of a larger spectrum. It would still probably be the largest specifically comics focused convention, it’s just even that huge comicon is dwarfed by the Hollywood presence, or the random anime fans or whatever else is going on.

But on the ground level, it’s the comics stuff that sticks with me, and because it’s a more limited social scene than New York, everyone clusters in one place and by the end of the weekend, you’ve got a very singular scene of comics people hanging out, and that was a lot of fun. It’s tough to go out until two every night, then be up at 8 or 9 to get back to the con, but it’s definitely worth it.

So, where does comicon stand today? It’s still getting bigger and more crowded, but I had a really fantastic time.

I topped it all off yesterday with a trip to Imperial Beach, the town where John From Cincinnati was filmed, and took place. It was pretty amazing to go along and recognize locations from the series, and feel the vibe that the show had. The beach was great, there were a ton of people surfing, and it definitely felt off the beaten path, not the kind of touristy area that much of California is. If you’re in the area and a fan of the show, definitely make the trip. It’s the closest you’ll get to a second season.

Public Enemies

Yesterday, I finally went to see Michael Mann’s latest film, Public Enemies. Mann has made some of my favorite films, going back to Heat and The Insider, but it wasn’t until I saw Miami Vice in 2006 that he became one of my favorite directors. The Insider is still probably the stronger film on the whole, but Vice was so perfectly atmospheric and inventive in the way it told its story. It’s the closest a Hollywood blockbuster has come, and possibly ever will come, to the poetic film language of a Wong Kar-Wai or Terence Malick.

Mann embraced digital video with Collateral, and refined the aesthetic on Miami Vice, emphasizing the unique properties that digital video has, rather than running away from them, and he continues that exploration with Public Enemies, a film that feels like no other period film to date. What Mann does is use the visual language typically associated with very realistic, of the moment works and then spins it to depict the world of 1930s crime. The effect is to ground you in the reality of the moment in a way the vast majority of period films fail to do.

Most characters in period films feel alien to us, they speak in a different language and take part in large scale conflicts that have become cultural myth. And, typically ensconced in lush cinematography and production design, they feel a part of a glamorous world that’s more alien than any piece of sci-fi. Enemies turns the conventions on their head, by stripping the past of that idealized glamour. We see movie stars on the screen, in the film’s finale, and the characters we see feel far removed from that world. The harshness of the digital video makes it at times feel like we’re watching people wearing costumes in the present day, not people in the 30s. But, the thing is, that’s what the past was really like. They lived in the same world as us, walked on the same streets, wearing those kind of clothes.

I could see people saying it feels wrong to have that aesthetic in a work set in the past, but I’d argue that it actually gives the characters an emotional immediacy that is rarely seen. This is an arty, personal drama, played out against the backdrop of the 1930s. Unlike most period films, there’s no attempt to give us a sweeping view of the world, the primary focus is very intimate. In fact, the scenes that don’t work as well are the ones that try to give context for Dillinger’s flight by establishing the world that Hoover and Purves inhabit.

The Purves/Dillinger dichotomy is an echo of Heat, which was all about juxtaposing the lives of criminals and the cops who were trying to catch them. That film was brilliant because it made you care equally about everyone, you wanted Deniro’s character to get away at the exact same time you wanted Pacino to catch him. In its expansive world building and split point of view, it achieved the same emotional effects as The Wire.

Here, Purves feels much more one note. Christian Bale is an actor whose consistent intensity can make it difficult to find any kind of emotional identification point. I don’t want Bale to follow DeNiro down the path of awful comedy franchises, but I’d love to see him stretch by taking a role like DeNiro’s pot smoking lowlife in Jackie Brown. And, because the character isn’t as fully realized, the scenes focusing on him feel mostly superfluous, particularly against the emotionally engaging stuff with Dillinger and Billie.

The relationship between the two of them captures some of the same feeling of the fantastic Colin Farrell/Gong Li relationship in Miami Vice, the sense of trying to live in the moment, while facing down an inevitable split. I like the way the relationship just sort of happens, there’s something of a meet cute, but it’s really just established and we accept it and move on. The development is very subtle, lacking the obvious emotional beats we’ve come to expect from a Hollywood film. It’s the casual intimacy that sells it, notably the first sex scene, and the scene in the bath. The jump from that bath scene to a bunch of feds busting Dillinger was particularly jarring and effective in establishing the inevitability of Dillinger’s downfall.

This film follows Mann’s approach in Miami Vice of decentralizing the narrative and instead immersing you in the specific psychology of our main character. Dillinger does very little in the film, there’s a bit made of his charm over the public, but the show he puts on for the world isn’t emphasized, nor is much of the mythology built up around him. You get hints of Dillinger as a kind of Robin Hood figure, but there’s no direct exploration of how the people feel about him or the context of the world he’s in or any of that. Instead, we infer the world around him and build it through the story.

And, the film resolutely refuses to hit the usual beats, there’s no montage of big money spending, and even the bank robbery sequences just show the bare minimum of visually evocative images before moving along. It’s not about the action, it’s about our emotional engagement, and emphasizing the reality of what doing this stuff would actually entail. That’s not to say the film is unerringly realistic, the sequence at the end where Dillinger wanders like a ghost through the office of the task force designed to capture him is a beautiful way of showing him looking back on his life before his death.

Much like with Miami Vice, the film features an extensive supporting cast that is not particularly developed as characters in the traditional sense. The rest of the crew don’t have those little quirks that typically pass for character development, instead they’re just there. I couldn’t say most of their names or specific jobs, but you get a sense of who they are, and the world they inhabit just by the way they behave. The performances are strong all around, but not showy or attention grabbing. You just accept these people as the characters they are. Even Depp, one of the world’s biggest stars, disappears into the role, coming alive when he’s with Billie, but spending the rest of his time devoted to the mission.

Even more radical than the narrative dedramatization is the aesthetic. I loved the way that many of the action scenes were lit almost solely by the machine gun fire. Think of the shootout in the woods, where Purves’s gunfire standing on the car turns the scene into an almost abstract series of sparks puncturing the darkness. The sound of the guns is far from what we typically hear in a film, stripping away the big sounds and playing them more like large scale firecrackers.

Mann is one of the only filmmakers to understand how to use the unique properties of digital to create images that have a mystery and beauty that eclipses 35mm film. This film reminded me of Inland Empire at times in its low lighting, and reality with magic slipping in aestethic. Think of something like the way that Billie’s makeup always looks very much like makeup that’s been applied by an actual person, not the perfect makeup of a typical film character. That builds the reality of the world, but I think it’s also beautiful.

As the film moves towards Dillinger’s death, the eerie abstraction continues. He walks out of that theater, a gunshot explodes and we see chaos in the streets and that’s it. It’s not an overwrought finale, it just happens. He never finds out that Anna betrayed him, it just happens. Some would say that Mann’s dedramatized goes too far in depriving us of the pleasure we might want from a film like this, but in eschewing the expected beats, he takes characters away from the prison of being in a period film or a gangster film and finds the real people underneath.

I don’t think the characters and emotion is quite as deep as Miami Vice, but this is a really interesting followup, deepening the stylistic innovations of that film, and again playing with the unique aesthetic of digital video to deepen our emotional investment with the character. This film is almost like Ashes of Time, Wong Kar-Wai’s film which used the genre elements, in that case martial arts action, as a kind of abstract visual commentary on the character beats. That’s what all the shootouts are here, precursors to Dillinger’s inevitable death.

Mann has grown so much as a filmmaker, and reinvented himself in a really interesting way. I love his early work, but I’m much more interested in the approach he’s taking now. It’s great to see an artist remain so vital this far into his career. This is the best movie of the year so far, and I’m sure it will be high up when it comes to make the year end top tne list.

Lost: 5x14-5x17

Appropriately, I’m writing the post for the last piece of Lost season five on a plane. This season finale was the show’s best episode since the season two finale, “Live Together, Die Alone,” combining pretty much all the elements that make the show work, the weird scientific elements, the religious power of the island and its mysterious history into a relentless episode that resolved very little, but felt more satisfying than either of the past two finales.

But, first the buildup to that episode. Farraday’s trip through time in “The Variable” gave some better context for the life he’d been leading, and gave us a better understanding of why Eloise has such a strictly deterministic view of the world. She’s known for thirty years that she was going to shoot and kill her son, and that contributes to her detached, almost godlike demeanor when she speaks with Desmond. She feels that we’re all subject to the rule of destiny, and so she carries a sense of fatalism through her entire life. It must have been painful for her to see Daniel grow up and realize that he is becoming the man she’ll shoot on the island.

These episodes tie Eloise and Widmore much more closely to the history of the island, clarifying that both of them acted as leader before Ben’s ascension. Presumably they were there during the era when the Dharma people got killed, though Eloise seems to have left the island earlier than Widmore. She’s not on bad terms with Ben, like Widmore is, presumably because she knows that Ben plays a role in bringing Jack and Kate back to the island, so that they can fulfill their destiny and ensure that Daniel gets killed.

A lot of these episodes deal with similar time issues as The Invisibles. Because it’s a pre-determined time continuum, everything that has happened will happen. They are powerless to change the past because past/future are all relative and one day our present will be someone else’s past. The notion is present is merely a function of one’s position in the timestream at any given moment. Daniel thinks that he can avoid his fate, but everything he does to try to defy it only leads him closer to his death.

It’s sad to lose Farraday, he was a great character, one of the better of the new additions to the show in season four, and it still seemed like he had a lot of story to tell. Will we ever get to see what’s up at Ann Arbor, and who exactly the DeGroots and Alvar Hanso are? That stuff isn’t strictly essential to the show, but I hope that we get at least a bit more time hopping in season six to cover the creation of the Dharma Initiative, and more of the ongoing history of the island.

Let me start off with the one thing I found problematic in the finale, because the vast majority of it worked fantastically, and that’s the rapid flip flopping of Juliet’s motivations. As Sawyer and Juliet get on the sub, there’s some lingering pauses, leading us to believe that Sawyer has some kind of scheme in the works and is going to get off the sub and go back and save his friends. That’s the motivation he had three years earlier when they chose to stay behind, though likely some of that motivation was also to stay behind for Kate.

But, as we’ve seen Sawyer has grown a lot over the last three years, and together he and Juliet have found a place to call home. There’s a heavy emphasis on Sawyer’s frustration at having the life he built over the course of his time with Dharma torn apart by the arrival of Jack and Kate. Considering the glimpses of Sawyer’s past that we’ve seen, this is the only time that he’s actually had any sort of regular stable life. The show is about people lost on an island, but what the flashbacks in the early days emphasized is the notion that very few of these people have anything to go back to on the mainland. Maybe the characters are all meant to stay on the island, hence Jacob’s involvement in their lives to subtly push them there. In the case of Sawyer, the home had had was torn apart, and he can’t be bothered trying to save things anymore, he’s walking away from it all to go live with Juliet on the mainland.

This desire for escape ties in thematically with the scene with Rose and Bernard in the jungle. They also emphasize the idyllic comfort of the island. What is there for them to go back to when they’ve got each other? They’ve walked out of the ongoing conflict between various factions for control of the island and just chosen to live their own lives. It’s like Boy in the second volume of The Invisibles, the war holds no allure for them anymore if they can just be together. And, it’s a great example of the way that more and more people are viewing the island as home. Everyone who leaves it spends the rest of their lives obsessed with its mysteries.

You know things were going to be trouble when Kate winds up on the sub with Sawyer and Juliet, as she’s surely destined to cause trouble. The problem with the episode largely stems from the way the writers choose to write Juliet and her sketchy motivations for constantly changing her mind throughout the episode. She decides to leave with Sawyer, then decides that morally she needs to stop Jack from detonating the bomb. This could potentially make sense, though I wanted her and Sawyer to leave the island together, and let Kate go off on her mission.

The bigger problem comes when Juliet decides that she is going to help Jack set off the bomb, because of the way Sawyer looked at Kate. So, even though she acknowledges that he’ll stay with her forever, she all of a sudden decides that that isn’t enough because she thinks that he still loves Kate more. That’s problematic on a story level for a couple of reasons. One is it makes Juliet seem awfully flaky, and turns this whole atom bomb storyline into yet another adolescent trouble within the love triangle.

But, more importantly, as Miles says, no one really seems to think through the plan. If you’ve got an incident involving an unspecified release of electromagnetic energy, wouldn’t it be likely that setting off this atom bomb would be precisely the thing that kicks off this incident? And, even if the plan goes ahead as planned, that would mean essentially killing the people that they are, and choosing to revert to the people they were before the island. I don’t think that’s something that most of them would want, considering how miserable they all seem in their flashbacks.

From Jack’s point of view, his motivations are unclear. He’s already seen that going back to the mainland doesn’t solve anything, the memory of the island haunts him. I suppose his thought is that once you go to the island, it has such a hold on you that you can never return and have a happy life on the mainland. So, he has to go back and prevent himself from ever going to the island in the first place, thus ensuring that he remains in his regular life, and never has the deviation to adventure that the island represents. Essentially, if you’ve never had excitement in your life, you don’t notice when you’re bored.

And, ultimately it all comes down to hinge on Jack’s belief that he messed things up so badly with Kate that he has to reset all of spacetime to get another chance with her. This is obviously illogical, since she’ll go to jail, and he’ll never even meet her, but he’s not thinking logically. Why everyone goes along with it is the bigger question. No matter how bad some of their time on the island was, how could they be complicit in trying to wipe away many years of their life? It seems particularly odd for Sawyer to go along with this.

In a show like Buffy, we see small scale personal emotional conflicts played out as grand scale battles for the fate of the universe, and it works because of the way that they choose to frame the metaphorical battles. I could see a story like this work on Buffy, using the bomb and time erasure as metaphor for lost love and the desire for another chance, but it doesn’t make as much sense in this show, which is ostensibly reality based.

So, that’s my major issue with the finale. I don’t buy the rapidly shifting character motivations, or everyone’s decision to just detonate a nuclear bomb, which is much more likely to just kill them all than reset space time.

But, it did lead to some great moments of action spectacle, as they all storm the Swan station and have a big shoot out. The high point though was definitely the activation of the electromagnet, which echoed the season two finale’s similar onrush of metal objects.

It also made for an emotional peak that made up for at least some of the shifting character motivations. After telling Sawyer she didn’t believe he loved her the most, Sawyer does everything he can to save Juliet from being pulled down into the magnetic field. It’s an awesome scene, hitting really strong on an emotional level, thanks to the epic visual context. It gets closer to some of those Buffy moments I mentioned earlier, where the nuclear bomb detonation plan just has too many real world logic gaps, this moment married the visual spectacle and action tension to a huge emotional payoff. The actors are really raw, and it pays off the entire relationship that developed between Sawyer and Juliet over the course of the season.

That said, losing Juliet from the series, very troubling. I’m sure she’ll be back a few times thanks to the trippy time aspects, but in detonating the bomb, present day Juliet is presumably dead, or perhaps zapped somewhere else in time where she and Sawyer won’t be together. Elizabeth Mitchell was a standout in the cast, and pretty much the only effective female character left on the show. So, if anyone had to die, it shouldn’t have been her.

The way this story plays out raises some interesting questions about the seeming disconnect between what I’m guessing is the creators’ intended or perceived perception of the character dynamics and my own emotional response. They seem to still believe that people have a strong interest in Kate and Sawyer being together, or at least in this triangle being perpetuated. At this point, Kate is like Riley from Buffy, a really annoying character who just keeps sticking around and getting a prominent place in the show. The relationship between Juliet and Sawyer was much more real and emotionally engaging than the constant drama of anything involving Kate.

But, I do love the audacity of igniting the nuclear bomb, leaving pretty much everything up for grabs in the sixth season. I’m assuming that the timestream hasn’t been altered, and this bomb might be what propels everyone back to 2007. But there’s a lot of different options, and even though nothing was specifically resolved, it felt emotionally satisfying in a way that the previous two season finales didn’t quite achieve.

Jumping across time and space, all this stuff probably wasn’t even the high point of the finale. Right from the first scene, this episode was expanding the series’ scope and clarifying what the essential conflict of the series is. We thought that it was Widmore vs. Ben, or Dharma vs. hostiles, a sort of society vs. nature conflict, as the hostiles continually repel invaders, or integrate them into their group.

But, it turns out that the conflict is actually part of a much longer, ongoing struggle between Jacob and another man, who have a sort of bet going on another the exact nature of humanity. Jacob seems to continually bring new groups of people to the island, as a way of exploring whether they can overcome their interpersonal conflicts, and stop being violent and live in harmony. Meanwhile, his associate, who doesn’t seem to have an official name, but I’ll call him Esau, based on what other people online seem to call him, schemes to undermine Jacob and sow conflict within the groups.

This clarifies much of what we’ve seen over the course of the series, by framing the individual conflicts within the context of a much larger conflict. The island has some wonderful healing powers, but it also shows people things that threaten them and incite them to violence. Jacob has a very Christlike demeanor, he’s the one who seems able to heal people, the good at the heart of the island. While Esau is more like Satan, showing people what they want to see in order to manipulate them into his service.

As we find out at the end of the episode, Esau manifests himself in the form of Locke when Locke returns to the island, enlisting Ben into his service, and playing on Ben’s weakness and guilt to ultimately get Jacob killed. Esau presumably is the Smoke Monster, and is also able to manifest in many different forms on the island, appearing to Jack as his dad, and Ben as his mom, so many years earlier, as a way of getting Ben to join the Others and set in motion the lengthy chain of events that led to this moment. Esau also manipulated Rousseau, getting the rest of her group killed, so that her baby would be in a position for Ben to take her, raise her, and ultimately allow her to get killed.

The potential problem with any story like this is that it reduces our heroes to pawns of much larger forces, merely playing out an endless war. But, I think this works well in the context of this season because we’ve already been dealing with the notion of characters unable to change their paths within the timestream. The timestream is predetermined, but are our actions within it predetermined? The story takes on a mythic resonance, tying back to Greek mythology, where humans struggled to assert their authority in the face of gods who sought to direct their destiny. It also feels very Invisibles, in the notion of this grand conflict between the force of darkness and the force of light. Jacob functions as Barbelith, seeking to move people to the island so they can evolve beyond war, while Esau is like the Outer Church, seeking to perpetuate the endless conflict between humans.

This put the series in a much larger context. Every conflict over the course of the entire timeline can be integrated in to the larger conflict between Jacob and Esau. As we see in the episode’s flashbacks, Jacob travels through the world, subtly influencing people so that they wind up on the island, where they are “supposed to be.” At first, I thought that Jacob was being portrayed as a sinister force, helping Kate get away with her shoplifting, and assisting Sawyer in writing the letter that would ultimately lead to him spending his entire life committed to vengeance.

But, it seems more like Jacob is there, subtly working to ensure that everyone makes the choices they need to to wind up on the island, and in the position to overcome their past failures and make themselves better. It’s essentially a conflict between optimist and pessimist, Jacob believes that people can better themselves, while Esau believes they will always devolve into war and violence.

The Sawyer and Kate scenes obviously direct the two of them down a set path, but the Jin/Sun and Jack scenes are subtler. In the case of Jin/Sun, the flaw that brings them to the island is Sun’s desire for escape from Jin, and during their time on the island, they are able to work through that issue, to overcome the conflict, and be together. Similarly, even though Jacob ostensibly encourages Sawyer’s vengance, he is really putting him in a position where he can finally confront his problem and overcome it. The island gives everyone what they need, the chance to confront the issues that dominate their civilian life, and Jacob gives them all a subtle nudge, an encouragement to persevere and get to the island where they can change and get better.

The question arises, why didn’t Jacob appear to Ben, why is he so secretive? I’m not really sure why, other than perhaps the idea that in the conflict that Jacob and Esau have, Jacob can only set people on their path, he can’t step in to help them until they’ve reached some kind of personal enlightenment, at which point he will finally appear to them. It would seem that Richard is the only one who’s actually be in contact with Jacob, though Locke presumably actually did see/hear him when he went to the cabin in “The Man Behind the Curtain.”

Jacob tells Locke “Help me” there. The fact that Jacob did appear to him implies that Locke was closer to being on his path than Ben was, and perhaps Jacob was reflecting on how close Locke was to achieving his destiny and being the leader that the island needed.

What is Richard’s role in all of this though? He was granted immortality by Jacob many years ago. Perhaps the price of that was that it took him “out of the game” to some extent, so that he can listen to what the leaders on the island want to do, but can’t actually direct them himself. He seems to function as Jacob’s custodian of the island, directing things, but not actively interfering. It’s likely that Richard was on the Black Rock and arrived in the opening scene. Hopefully next season will bring us the long awaited Richard flashback.

One of the interesting things about the show at this point is that it feels like there’s so much story left to tell. In the early days, story points were doled out at snail’s pace, intercut with seemingly endless flashbacks retreating the same territory. At this point, I’d love to see more of the Dharma Initiative, more of the foundation of the Dharma, more of the early days of the island. There’s so much stuff out there to explore, and I’m not sure how much of it we’ll actually get to. It makes me wish that the show was paced a bit faster in the early days, leaving more time to hang out at Dharma here and get further insight into their world. Obviously the show has made a quantum leap in these last couple of seasons, but considering how much story there is, I’m not sure why it was doled out so slowly in the first place.

The Jacob/Esau conflict echoes the stated motivations of the Dharma Initiative, to form a better world, a utopian place where world peace can be achieved. So, Jacob was presumably influential in drawing Dharma to the island. He keeps bringing different types of people to the island, seeing how previous groups failed and then trying things again. The island’s good and bad elements become representative of the larger good and bad within humanity. We all have the capacity for good and evil, and each personal battle becomes representative of the larger struggle.

But, if Jacob has such a large reach, why is it that the island, with Jacob as proxy would “punish” people for leaving? Perhaps devotion to the island is a manifestation of devotion to Jacob’s mission of making a better world outside the presumably fallen place that is the real world. So, the more the real world infects the island, the less chance there is to make it better. In general, the people who abandoned their real world incarnations and grew and changed have succeeded the most on the island, while people like Jack, who remained wrapped up in their old selves failed to fulfill Jacob’s will.

Time is relative, but we’re presented with Jacob dying at the same time the nuclear bomb goes off, which implies that Jack’s desire to erase his time on the island is the ultimate affront to Jacob. To be on the island is to be in harmony with Jacob, so to try to erase that harmony from time entirely would lead to Jacob’s death, or at least the seeming death of the physical form he currently embodies, and perhaps a victory in the war for Esau, the definitive proof that people can always be manipulated through their weaknesses to do bad things, to even kill the people who they saw as god. That’s essentially what it is when Ben kills Jacob, a revenge against God for bringing so much pain into his life.

The visual design of Jacob’s temple was fantastic, and the whole scene, particularly intercut with the electromagnetic event, echoed really nicely the similar test of faith in the season two finale, when Locke had his faith in the island/Jacob vindicated through the electromagnetic event. In this case, Ben’s faith is rendered invalid, as he follows the lead of a false prophet, and kills the person who may have allowed some things to be taken away, but also gave him everything he had.

As I’ve said before, Ben is always a more interesting character when he’s out of power. So, the idea that he has to do everything that Locke says makes him very compelling. It’s also interesting to see Ben, who believes that he always has the answers, put in a situation where he’s totally out of his depth, caught in a war between two gods.

The escalation of events at the finale was particularly well done, as we find out that Ilana and her crew seem to have a very deep connection to the island, going back to the days when Richard was Ricardos. Perhaps they’re the ones who really are trying to save it. They knew where Jacob was, and also know that the cabin has been corrupted after he let it, as it was inhabited by Esau in the guise of Christian Shepard. That raises questions about what exactly happened to Claire, why did Esau lure her away, and where is she now? Was it all part of getting Kate to take the baby, and split up her and Jack to set the nuclear bomb plan in motion? Aaron was the divisive thing between them, and the detonation of the bomb in 1977 may have aided in killing Jacob in the present, or at least set in motion the events that led everything to happen.

In a season about the immutability of time, it’s great that the final conflict comes down to beings who can move through time and space, creating chains of events to play out their wills on a lower human level. It’s the exact same thing as John a Dreams or the Harlequinade in The Invisibles.

It would seem now that Locke actually was killed by Ben in the hotel room. The thing that led him there, that led him to bring all the Oceanic Six back was actually Esau’s manipulation. He told Richard what to tell the real Locke, thus setting in motion the path that would lead to the death of Locke and the creation of Fake Locke. Esau has co-opted the image of Jacob’s leader and used him to bring about Jacob’s destruction. Will the real Locke ever return? It’s not looking likely, but his body is still kicking around, so who knows.

Well, this was easily the show’s best season on the whole, doing so many fun and inventive stories, and hitting some really strong emotional beats along the way. The Sawyer/Juliet and Dharma stuff was fantastic, and this season finale was top notch all around. I found some of the mainland stuff early on a bit lacking, but everything picked up eventually and we got a wide variety of story. Particualrly notable was the Jacob/Esau stuff at the end, which seemingly comes out of nowhere, but actually clarifies so much of the thematic development of what came before. And, kudos to the production and Mark Pellegrino for making Jacob feel like such a key character even though we’d never seen him before.

Where does the show go from here? There’s a lot of options, they could parallel the detonation of the bomb and Jacob’s death to say that the timestream is now open and everyone can do whatever they want to do, unbound by what’s happened before. I’m guessing we’ll see a bit more island history, before getting into a final battle that will answer the question of whether everyone can move beyond conflict or if they’re doomed to repeat it.

Going into Dark Tower spoilers a bit, the Jacob stuff reminded me a lot of the very end of the last book, or the end of The Stand. In The Dark Tower, Roland ends his quest and is told that he did things wrong, and has to go back and do it all again, only after that can he ascend up another rung of karma, and get closer to leaving his mission behind. It becomes about evolution, and in this case, rather than one man struggling to change things, it’s an ongoing series of visitors, each trying to get it right.

In the context of The Stand, we saw all our characters defeat the dark man, Randall Flagg, but he turned up elsewhere at the end, setting the whole thing in motion. That’s the same core conflict as Jacob/Esau, and the question here is whether the show will let everyone triumph and end the cycle of violence, or just allude to a possible ending in the future, once they finally get things right. Either way, it’s rich thematic material, and does a great job of synthesizing so many seemingly random elements into something resembling a cohesive mythology. Well done.

My next Lost experience will be the Lost comicon panel a week from today. It’s great to be caught up on the show and not have to worry about getting spoilers for anything that’s already aired. After that, it’s the long wait until season six debuts. But, I’m definitely excited to see it happen.

I started out this rewatch with the promise that I’d give Lost one more chance to impress me, and though there were some ups and downs, I’m totally on board. I still think the first three seasons have colossal structural issues, and the first season in particular feels very basic and underdeveloped compared to what comes later. But, once the endpoint was set, the show became remarkably consistent, and continuously entertaining and thought provoking. The first three seasons will probably keep it out of the pantheon of greatest series for me, but I could easily see it moving in to my top 15 all time when I make the list, particularly if they stick the landing next season.

Going to San Diego

Today, I’m leaving the East coast to head out to California to do some filming for our Grant Morrison documentary at the San Diego Comicon. As a long time comics/film/TV fan, this is essentially the biggest event I could ever attend. I’d always wanted to get to San Diego at some point, and this year it just happened.

I’ve got a pretty busy schedule of interviews set up, with some really cool people, for the Grant project. Beyond that, I’m hoping to get to the Lost panel, the Joss panel and the Dr. Who panel, and see if the biggest con in the world means the biggest values in the world when it comes to buying some trades. I’ve heard that San Diego is so huge you can’t even comprehend it, so I’ll see if it lives up to that reputation. Either way, I’ll be out in California for ten days, after the ultra crappy weather here for the past few months, that’ll be nice.

So, look for reports out of San Diego, during if I’ve got time, or a big compilation after. And, also hopefully my computer battery will be strong enough that I can do my writeup of the last Lost episodes on the plane. Short take is the finale was amazing, probably the series’ second best episode behind “Live Together, Die Alone,” but with one glaring error, the inexplicable motivations of Juliet. More on that soon.

And, if you’re at San Diego and have something to say about Grant Morrison, shoot me an e-mail and we can schedule a time to shoot with you.

Lost: 5x05-5x13

This batch of Lost episodes takes us through some of my favorite material the show has ever done, as well as some slightly frustrating stuff. But, in general I’m loving the 70s era stuff, and the turns that the show has taken in this season.

There’s two primary threads in this batch of episodes, one is the tracking of how the Oceanic Six make it back to the island, and the other follows the island based characters as they join up with the Dharma Initiative. I’ll start out with the mainland stuff, since I found that much more poorly executed, and a generally lackluster end to the Oceanic Six arc.

The mainland stuff that worked best was Locke’s journey around the globe in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” After turning the wheel of time, in a really cool scene, he met up with Widmore, who once again casts doubt on who’s the “good guy” and who’s the “bad guy” in his ongoing feud with Ben. We’re inclined to side with Ben, simply because we’ve spent so much more time with him, but ultimately neither of them seems particularly reputable. The introduction of the third group of people, the new crash survivors raises even more questions.

But, that stuff is all so hypothetical, it’s hard to say anything definitive about it. The factions battle over the island, almost like gods, while our characters suffer or prosper at their hands in the middle of it. The Locke episode was one of the most downbeat and atmospheric episodes the show has ever done. I don’t think it’s one of the series’ strongest episodes, but it worked well as a trial for Locke, he passed through suffering on the mainland and is now reborn on the island, his quest vindicated.

The problem with the episode for me was more in how it relates to “316.” “Bentham” seemed entirely about the characters telling Locke he’s insane to want to go back to the island, but in “316” they all go back, seemingly of their own volition. I get why Jack is going back, his life has gone to hell and he blames it all on leaving the island. But, even after her spotlight episode, I don’t get why Kate went back. What is her plan for rescuing Claire, and if she did go back for Claire, why isn’t she looking for her at all?

The structural decision to not say why anyone went back to the island doesn’t make much sense, and I doubt we’ll get a full explanation for why Hurley chose to go back before the season ends. It makes particularly little sense for them all to have such a turnabout after utterly rejecting Locke’s entreaty. It felt like the writers decided this mainland stuff was over, so everyone just went back all of a sudden, logic be damned. Maybe more attempts to clarify the motivation will happen in the next few episodes, but after so much stuff with the Six, it didn’t feel totally motivated for them to return. There’s a lot of playing with “destiny” and what the island wants, and in this case that feels like a shortcut replacing real character motivation.

“316” did have a really downbeat, palpable atmosphere, but the illogical character beats were what I ultimately took away from the episode.

But, part of my frustration with going back to the six, and particularly Jack and Kate, is that it means time away from the people on the island, who are by far the most interesting characters at this point, and their entry in to the Dharma Initiative is one of the most fun episodes in the series’ history. As longtime readers probably noticed, I have a massive affection for the Dharma material, going back to the very first Pierre Chang video, which I still think is the best three minutes in the entire series. So, to see the full operation in its glory days is great.

“LaFleur” features many great moments, as we see Sawyer’s continued rise to leader, alongside his co-pilot Juliet. I love the dynamic that’s developed between the two of them, which comes to fruition in the great scene on the dock, where Sawyer sells her on staying on the island for a while, even though she’s wanted to do nothing but leave for the past three years. He and Juliet are great because there’s very little of the will they, won’t they drama of the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle. There’s not the constant posturing for position. Without Jack on the island, Sawyer is the undisputed alpha male, and that means he doesn’t have to be as over the top as Jack was, he knows that Juliet will support him, and they can run things together.

This leads to the seamless jump from Sawyer selling her on staying on the island, to three years later, where everyone is living a basically happy life. I found myself wanting to see even more of that three year gap, to just stay in this world forever, where LaFleur runs things, and lives with Juliet and everyone’s happy. There’s that old adage that happy people is boring, but I just love the world of Dharma so much, and it’d be great to discover it through the eyes of our characters. Thankfully, it looks like we’ll get a glimpse into upper management through the eyes of Farraday in an upcoming episode.

Hanging out in the world of Dharma, everything’s chill and times are good, so it didn’t please me much to see Jack and Kate turn up, to mess with the perfect setup and domestic bliss of Sawyer and Juliet. It’s weird how you find yourself invested in certain characters and couples on a TV show. Why do I care so much about Sawyer and Juliet together? What makes that important to me as a viewer of the show? A lot of it is the maturity of the characters, and the quiet dynamic between them. Juliet is easily the most interesting female character on the series, carrying a moral complexity and demeanor that Sun and Kate can’t match. And her being with Sawyer calms him down and makes him grow a lot, as he tells Kate later on.

So, with my affection for them, I was glad to see that Jack and Kate’s return to the island didn’t ruin their relationship, or lead to a lot of adolescent bickering. Jack and Kate seem totally out of their depth, and wind up essentially ruining the life that everyone has here. It’s interesting to consider that this show is called Lost, but now that the Six have chosen to come back to the island, what does the endgame become? Getting ‘rescued’ isn’t enough, the search for happiness ceases to be connected to a specific end, and becomes a more general existential journey. So, maybe in the Dharma Initiative Juliet and Sawyer were rescued. Juliet got the kind of community she was originally promised, while Sawyer was able to reinvent himself and become a better man, unencumbered by his past. He’s left behind the Sawyer name, the mark of the man who shaped him into a con artist who couldn’t show his real feelings, and became someone else.

That makes the discussion between Kate and Cassidy on the mainland feel so off. The Sawyer they talk about isn’t the character we’re watching now, and I don’t think that he jumped off the plane because he couldn’t face being with her. Cassidy in particular seems to cast her own, justifiably negative, view of Sawyer on to Kate.

I’ve talked a lot about the divide in complexity between characters who were added later in the series and ones who were there from the beginning. At this point, Sawyer and Locke have been reinvented and grown into characters just as complex as the new batch, while we’ve shed Lost 1.0 characters like Charlie and Claire, but pretty much all the Oceanic Six still feel tied to the archetypal roles they had in the show’s original conception. Sayid and Sun have suffered from some inconsistent development, and the lack of a long enough focus to really propel their own narrative forward. Sun smacking Ben with the oar is a fun moment, but beyond getting Jin back, it’s hard to say what her agenda is. Sayid gets put through the same torture beats again and again, though I did love the tripped out truth serum scene where he reveals that he’s from the future. That leaves Jack and Kate as the most frustrating characters because they still suck up so much screen time, but just don’t feel as real as the best characters on the show.

Anyway, the reappearance of young Ben kicks the narrative back into forward motion after the sojourn at Dharma town. These episodes, particularly “Dead is Dead” give us a lot of insight into the history of the Others and the development of Ben into the person he became. I’m curious about the idea that he lost his “innocence” by being healed in the temple. Locke tells Ben that they’re going under the temple, not into it, which is where the smoke monster resides. What resides in the temple itself? Perhaps the island demands a sacrifice in order to heal Ben, in the same way that Locke had to sacrifice Boone to continue his ascend to ruler of the island status.

That episode followed up on the interesting stuff with Sun and Lapidus meeting Jack’s dad in the abandoned Dharma cabins. What is Jack’s dad at this point? Is he actually reborn, or is he just a manifestation of the island’s will, in the same way that Alex is for Ben? The stuff with Sun looking at the picture of all the contemporary characters at the Dharma camp reminded me a lot of the end of The Shining, raising the question of the island as a mystical space that requires people to fulfill specific roles.

Ben forces Widmore to leave the island because Widmore spent too much time on the mainland. The island has specific rules, and those who believe in it most seem to get the most out of it. You could argue that the reason Sawyer, Miles and Juliet and are so happy for three years is because they chose to stay on the island and follow its will. By leaving the island often, Widmore broke the covenant with the island, and could no longer be its leader.

Has Ben broken his covenant by moving the island? Perhaps, rather than rule the island, Ben must now serve Locke. I think there were some effects issues with the incorporation of old clips inside the smoke monster, but I loved Alex appearing and yelling at Ben, telling him to follow Locke. And the Smoke Monster’s lair raises questions about just how long this island has been around, and how many regime changes it’s had.

I’m guessing that at least some of next season will delve even deeper into the history of the island, perhaps finally showing us the origin of Richard Alpert, and where this statue comes from. The statue seems to have major significance to the new group of people on the island, who seem to have come there by design, in the same way that the Oceanic Six did. How did they know that all the Six would be on the plane? Are they in cahoots with Ben, or an independent group?

So, there’s many questions out there, and the happy days of Dharma for Juliet and Sawyer seem on the verge of crumbling. But, at least we got one more comparatively light episode there, “Some Like it Hoth,” which featured some funny time travel material, and at last, an extended spotlight on Pierre Chang, who’s confirmed to be Miles’s father. I think Miles is one of the most fun and interesting characters on the show, so it was great to see him get the chance to do a bit more than usual. Some of the flashback stuff fell into the contrived beats that old flashbacks did, but I loved the scene with him, Hurley and Chang driving around, and the promise of a possible beer together. Chang has become such an iconic figure through the movies that pretty much anything he does is of interest to me.

I’d have loved to spend even more time in the world of Dharma, but it looks like it’s almost at an end. I’ve got four episodes left to go, then I’ll be all caught up and looking at a six month wait for the final season. I’ll probably wrap the season tomorrow, then write up those last episodes, stay tuned.

Lost: 5x01-5x04

Lost’s fifth season throws off the last shackles of the series’ strictly divided flashback or flashforward structure and establishes a two pronged narrative, partially on the mainland, partially on the island, with the island half doing its own journey through time, sending the characters backwards and forward through the island’s own history. It’s a fantastic device, giving us the opportunity to explore a lot more of the island’s own history, and give the characters still on the island something new to deal with. However, the series is once again suffering to some extent from the problem it had during the first three seasons, and that’s a disparity of interest between the two narratives. In the past, it was the flashbacks that didn’t work so well, now it’s the 2007 mainland stuff that’s got me wanting to jump out and over the other storyline.

More on that later, for now let me just praise the dizzying journey that was the season premiere. The opening sequence is a great riff on the now iconic “Make Your Own Kind of Music” Desmond introduction, finally bringing legendary Dharma video host Marvin Candle/Pierre Chang out of the confines of old VHS tapes and 16mm film and into the glorious clarity of the show’s reality. I still think the first orientation film in “Orientation” is the series’ finest moment, raising possibilities I’m still waiting to be fully realized three seasons later.

What that video sketched out was a vision of the Dharma Initiative as a utopian, forward thinking organization that also had a strong undertone of menace. I’m still waiting to see the full story of the Dharma group, to see the people depicted in that video, and understand what went into the creation of the Initiative in the first place. The teaser here in the first episode indicates that our characters will soon find their way there, and we’ll get greater insight into the glory days of the Dharma Initiative. But, not so much yet.

The island story so far this season is easily the strongest the show has ever been. After teasing so many events in the island’s past, it’s really exciting to travel back through all these eras. The Dharma era is the one that interests me most, but the stop in the 50s, to see the Others in conflict with the US army has a lot of good stuff as well. It’s a great structural device to allow us to simultaneously get background history/exposition filled in, and keep our present day characters moving forward in their own stories.

I’ve always enjoyed time travel stories, and it seems that the series is sticking to the Invisibles model of time travel, which is that every movement through time has already happened, so you can’t actually change anything, you do things that you do because you already did them in the past. It’s a view of time which essentially denies the idea of any kind of present, all time exists as what Morrison in The Invisibles called the “allnow.” So, Richard can send his own compass from the future back to the past with Locke so that Richard from the 50s can show it to young Locke in the 60s. I like seeing how seemingly random elements like Richard’s appearance in Locke’s past now becomes something motivated and more significant.

This season flows seamlessly out of season four, a contrast to the semi-reboot feel of seasons two and three. Each season has its own distinct feel, but the narrative link between this and season four feels tighter than say the jump to the world of the Others in season three, or the structural switch in season four. It gives the impression that the creators had a much tighter plan when building these last three seasons, so scenes from Locke’s flashback last season can link together in a way that we can’t expect the glimpsed Claire giving birth scene to tie with the present.

It’s become more apparent as the show goes on that the real core character is the Island itself. I thought that the flashbacks felt pointless because of their narrative disconnect from the rest of the show, but seeing the off island stuff here, I felt a similar disinterest next to the island action. The Island not only serves as the narrative hub, it’s what makes characters more interesting. The closer a character gets to the mysterious force that is the Island, the more interesting they become, though I suppose that could simply be a function of my love for the quasi-religious force that the Island exerts over the characters.

The reason that people like Claire and Charlie, or even Sayid or Jin never felt essential to the show is that they had no real role to play in the drama of the Island itself, which in the wake of the Widmore/Linus revelations, has become increasingly the main focus of the series. Those characters didn’t have the mystical revelations that Locke, Ben or Desmond did, so even when they’re at the center of the narrative, they don’t feel as central to the show as even someone like Faraday or Miles does here. The characters had some strong moments, but they’re not what makes the show so distinct.

It’s widely acknowledged that most of the show’s best characters were introduced in the show’s later seasons, and that makes sense since the real narrative of the show only came to the fore in the later days. The show isn’t about wanting to leave the island now, it’s about controlling the island, or understanding the Island, with the Island itself functioning as an all purpose metaphor for that which beyond traditional human understanding, be it God or some other divine force. So, characters like Ben, Richard or Desmond are all more attuned to that understanding of the show than the earlier conception of an island filled with a myriad of horrors.

The off island action here isn’t anywhere near as bad as the flashbacks of yore, but it focuses on two characters who have become increasingly frustrating to watch, Jack and Kate. The ostensible stars of the show, I find them far less compelling than pretty much anyone else on the show. Jack is interesting sometimes, as when he came into conflict with Locke in last year’s finale, but the stuff here feels like plot mechanics playing to move the story along, and I’m not looking forward to Jack’s return to the island, simply because I think the character dynamics there are much more interesting without him.

Kate is another character the writers have struggled with over the years, they never can seem to agree on whether she’s a damsel in distress or a totally capable fighter. Here, she’s stuck with the most boring female plot line possible, the transformation into a mother. Wouldn’t it have been much more interesting to see Hurley or Jack struggling to raise a kid, and Kate just slipping away on the boat, never turning herself in and facing prosecution? It just seems like the most obvious way to spin the character, and I’ve got no emotional investment in her connection to Aaron, who she never really dealt with on the island. I also don’t buy the woman who burned every bridge she ever had deciding all of a sudden to settle down and become a suburban mom. It doesn’t make much sense, and was never given any real motivation. There seems to be a big deal being made about Kate wanting to keep Aaron despite the fact that he’s not really her son, but I just don’t have any investment in it.

The other vexing thing about the off island stuff is that hanging around with this batch of characters has taken away a lot of the evangelical fervor that made Ben so compelling last season and turned him into more of a generic trickster manipulator bad guy. I loved him and Locke competing for the affection of Jacob last year, but the more power he has, the less interesting he is. In season two, imprisoned in a room, or season four, subject to Locke’s leadership, he’s easily the most interesting character on the series. But, as here, or at the start of season three, when he’s already in total control, his manipulation has no real end. There’s some interesting stuff with him, particularly the meeting with Ms. Hawking, but I want to see him get back to the island, or at least perhaps interact with Locke after Locke gets off the island and becomes ‘Jeremy Bentham.’

But, there’s some good stuff on the mainland too. I really liked the stuff with Hurley and his parents, and his crumbling belief in the effectiveness of the Oceanic Six lie. He’s the only character to actually have supportive parents, even if it means a recasting of his dad from child abandoner to nice guy. I don’t necessarily mind that since it seems like a natural growth of the events we saw in “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” and it’s a lot more interesting than hitting the same bad dad beats again. But, in general, the on island action is more interesting.

At this point, the on island characters are all much more engaging than the people on the mainland. Sawyer continues his growth, and his grief over surviving while he believes Kate died is sublimated by some extent to his and Juliet’s ascension as the alpha leaders of the remaining survivors. Sawyer is a much more compelling leader than Jack, and I really like the interaction between him and Juliet. Juliet knows the sacrifice he made so that the others could escape, and she respects him for that, she’s willing to comfort him as he suffers through his pain. Juliet remains the most fascinating female character on the show, still carrying a bit of mystery, but also a strong, independent leader. I forsee a relationship between her and Sawyer, which makes sense, both of them feel so much more mature and centered than Kate or Jack, and I’d be glad to see them end the quadrangle once and for all.

The freighter people have also become some of the most interesting characters on the show. We get hints that both Charlotte and Miles have been on the island a lot longer than previously expected. Daniel is definitely the center, particularly in the episode where he negotiates the burial of the hydrogen bomb in the 50s, but Miles adds good color. They’re all pretty compelling characters.

The revelation that Widmore was on the island as a younger man is perhaps the key piece of information revealed by the trips through time. It sets up why he’s in such conflict with Ben over the island, and also makes clear the central conflict that’s raged throughout time, between the Others and invaders to the Island. In this case, those invaders are British and American armed forces, later on it will be the Dharma Initiative, and even later, the castaways.

The conflict invariably seems to end in the absorption of some of the invaders into the group of Others, while the rest are destroyed. That’s how it went with these army people, and later with the Dharma group. The wheels are moving to set up the return of Jack, and all the characters forming a unified front against a grand invasion by Widmore, and perhaps a series finale that has them take up permanent residence as the new Others.

But, we’re not there yet. For now, the show is rolling along. On the whole, this season has been top notch, really expansive and mind bending in ways the show has only hinted at before.

Lost: 4x10-4x14

The fourth season of Lost was by far the series’ most consistent, so it stands to reason that where other seasons fluctuated wildly between drawn out, boring middle patches, and brilliant finales, the gap between regular episode and finale would be less in this season. The finale is still strong, with a couple of great moments, but in general, feels more like just putting together a bunch of pieces we already knew than progressing the story in a totally unexpected fashion. Those story developments needed to happen, but I almost wish we had to get to them an episode earlier, then gotten a bit more new stuff in the finale.

As it is, I’d argue the season’s high point was Ben’s trip through time in “The Shape of Things to Come,” an episode that contained the season’s biggest “game changing” moment and solidified Ben as the series’ central actor, pushing all the stories forward just as he pushed the wheel of spacetime forward at the end here. In general, that episode spoke to the divide between the characters who are still interesting, and those who have basically exhausted themselves.

Jack and Kate are certainly exhausted at this point. Both were fairly simple characters to begin with, and hammering the same beats over the course of many flashbacks didn’t help them. Turning Kate into a protective mother in the flashforwards seems like the most easy and obvious way to go with a female character. I’m sure we’ll see Kate in action at some points this year, but most likely just in service of protecting her ‘son,’ and I think that’s a boring direction. It worked great with Ripley in Aliens, but I don’t see any particular motivation for Kate’s motherhood all of a sudden, why would someone who was all about running earlier in her life all of a sudden decide to settle down?

The reason is that she’s got to be a contrast to Jack, who’s gradually sliding back into bad old habits. We see their relationship dramatized in fast forward, jumping from engagement to separation in a few flashbacks. Jack is playing the same beats we saw in his flashbacks with Sarah, and apart from the intriguing appearance of his dad, not too much exciting happens there.

You’d think that the flashforward structure would make the island action largely irrelevant, but in most cases, I found myself still preferring the island stuff to the flashforwards. For one, it’s still where most of the narrative momentum is, and where most of the questions are. The flashforwards, though far superior to the flashbacks, still suffer from the fact that the characters are disconnected from the island and the core mystical experience of the show. There’s more questions raised and answered, but apart from Sayid and Sun’s stuff, we’re getting that much real forward movement.

But, the on the island action is better than ever. Though the ultimate scene in the cabin was a bit anticlimactic, I enjoyed Locke, Hurley and Ben’s trip to see Jacob in “Cabin Fever,” particularly Locke’s dream vision of Horace Mathematician, raising again the specter of Ben’s past destruction of the Dharma Initiative. I loved seeing them in their heyday in “Man Behind the Curtain,” and I’m hoping we’ll get another glimpse in the not too distant future.

The cabin scene itself had the feel of Twin Peaks’ Red Room, it’s a classic other space, with spatial temporal properties that don’t adhere to the typical rules of behavior. Based on what we see in this episode, and the finale, it seems like Christian Shepard has become a form through which the island can present itself to others, and enact its will. How he will contrast to the eventual appearance of Jacob remains to be seen, but his appearance to Claire, and his later appearance to Michael indicates that he’s a form through which the island can enact its will. Claire’s chilled out demeanor in the cabin raises a lot of questions, she’s more interesting now than she ever was during her many normal days on the island.

Starting last year, but coming to prominence in this season is the notion of the island exerting a will of its own over characters. It feels that Michael has a role to play, and he’s not allowed to die until that role is finished. This recalls The Invisibles’ cosmological structure, which posed that each character has a specific role to play in the realization of an end, in that case, the supercontext, and that our choices will inevitably result in that end. With the introduction of time travel as a prominent element in the final episode, it’s clear that some of that predestination, fate vs. free will thematic exploration will come to the fore in the next season.

The moving of the island scene is the high point of the finale for me. It’s the only scene in the episode that recaptures the feeling of religious otherness that made the season two finale so special. Ben starts out in a scientific space, the video cues us to view this as similar to the Hatch we saw previously in the second season. But, after he blows through the hatch, he finds himself in a strange fantasy realm, where all of a sudden it’s cold, and there’s an ancient looking wheel that can activate travel through spacetime. As he turns the wheel, we see everyone connected by a strange feeling, again echoing the explosion of the hatch in season two, then the island disappears, and we don’t see it again this year.

After Ben leaves, Locke moves on to take his place as leader of the Others. This is a plot development that was teased in season three, as well as in Locke’s flashbacks, and finally comes to fruition here. Why doesn’t Richard lead the tribe himself? I’m guessing we’ll see more of the mechanics of the hostiles/others society next season. The axis of conflict has now shifted from others/castaways to the island vs. society. And, because we’ve watched this whole show about the island, I’m more inclined to side with the mystical reverence of Locke than with the people who just want to get home.

This episode does feature a key development in the Locke/Jack rivalry, as Jack’s lie indicates that Jack accepts that Locke was right, at least to some extent. There is a mystical piece of the island, and it may be guiding them forward to a specific destiny. I’m guessing that season five will focus largely on Jack dealing with that realization, as he struggles to get back to the island and correct the mistake he made by leaving in the first place. Where does Locke’s dead body, and the alias Jeremy Bentham factor into this? I don’t know that yet.

Though I found some of the finale a bit perfunctory, I thought the boat escape and explosion stuff was really well executed. The ferrying of passengers between the island and the boat, accompanied by a great score cue, was very visual and dynamic. And, the explosion of the boat, as Jin tried to get their attention was a great moment. I’m sure he’s still out there somewhere, we didn’t see a body.

Desmond and Penny’s reunion was also really well done, a great payoff to their long separation. Though, it does leave me questioning where the character will go in the next season. We’ve still got Ben’s desire to kill Penny out there, so perhaps he and Desmond will come into conflict over that.

But, the character who impressed me the most in the finale, and has grown the most in general, is Sawyer, who’s right up there with Ben and Locke as the most compelling characters on the series. He definitely started out as a riff on the Han Solo archetype, but he’s grown into the hero role subtly over the past few seasons, and now is the one to step up and sacrifice himself and stay on the island so everyone else can leave. It’s a great moment, and I like him and Juliet sitting on the empty beach, wondering what’s going to happen now that everyone else has left.

So, season four ends with most of the answers from the season three cliffhanger answered, but a lot of stuff still in flux. I think this was easily the series’ best season, and it just flew by. I’d imagine watching seven months after season three, and seven months from season five, it had to be a bit frustrating since it’s very much a middle act. A lot of new elements are introduced, and the scope of the story is vastly expanded, but not much is resolved, and we’re still waiting to get to the real story about what’s up with Daniel, Charlotte and Miles. I’m guessing now that there’s fewer people on the island, we’ll see more of them, and I hope so. They all have potential as characters.

In general, I’m much more interested in seeing what happens on the island, and I’m hoping they don’t elide over the three years spent there without Jack and Kate, just to keep the ostensible stars of the show in the spotlight. I want to see how Locke runs the island now that he’s got everything he wanted, and I want to see whether Sawyer and Juliet join up with him, or try to keep their own society going. What does Sawyer do now that he’s decided he’s not going back to society, and that the island will be his world? And how will Ben get back to the island?

I’m sure Jack and co. will get back eventually, but I’m not as concerned with that. That said, I think all the plots are in a really interesting place, and most of the characters are a lot more interesting than they were at the beginning of the season. Sun’s proposal to Widmore, Sayid’s work with Ben, the scope of the show has expanded, and I’m curious to see how all the threads will tie together.

X-Men: Manifest Destiny and The Immortal Iron Fist: The Last Iron Fist Story

Matt Fraction is a comics writer who I’d heard about for a while, and always seemed like the kind of writer I’d be into should I read his stuff. I read the first volume of Casanova a while back, and enjoyed a lot of it, but also found it a bit convoluted, full of great ideas, but without the emotional grounding to make them meaningful. The reason I’d argue Morrison is the greatest comics writer, and I’d go so far as straight up greatest writer around, is that even as he’s spitting out a ton of crazy ideas on each page, he still emphasizes the character’s emotion. A classic case is Robin’s return from the supercontext in the last issue of The Invisibles, the first time through, I didn’t know what was happening, but he made me feel what was happening.

In comics, there’s a lot of lower tier writers who can spin ideas and do the crazy pop Kirby inspired Silver Age madness, think Ellis, Joe Casey or Fraction, but few of them manage to capture very real emotion amidst the craziness. That was my problem with Casanova, I really liked it, but it was too surface cool to really dig in deep emotionally.
After reading the first volume of his Iron Fist run, and the first volume of his X-Men, I’ve got similar feelings, I liked them both, but didn’t quite love them.

Of course, I should add that both these books were co-written with Ed Brubaker. Brubaker’s a guy who is frequently hailed, but I’ve never read anything by him that I loved. The first volume of Gotham Central played exactly as it was pitched, Homicide or Law and Order in the DCU. And, if I don’t watch Law and Order for free on TV, why would I want to pay $10 to read the equivalent of one episode. The first volume of his Catwoman was alright, but I didn’t think much of his X-Men run. Deadly Genesis was yet another attempt to write “The Anatomy Lesson,” playing off past history rather than doing anything interesting and new. As a long time X-Men fan, it’s probably the worst X-Men comic I’ve ever read, just misconceived on every level. The lengthy journey to Shiar space in his run proper wasn’t much better. I hate writers who use the “long lost brother” as a shortcut to build character rather than just making a character who’s interesting on his own terms.

As someone who approaches works from an auteurist perspective, that makes it difficult, particularly when I’m going in with the bias that I want to like Fraction’s stuff and I dislike Brubaker’s stuff. At least in the X-Men, Fraction took over as the sole writer after this batch of issues, so I’m guessing most of the direction was his, Iron Fist I’m not so sure.

I’m getting more acclimated to the DCU, but I’m still not totally sure about all the characters and worlds there. However, I’ve read the vast majority of important X-Men stories ever written, so I can easily jump into that universe. In these issues, we see the X-Men starting up a new status quo in San Francisco, one that follows thematically off a lot of what Grant was doing in his run. In discussing his run, Grant talked about how writing X-Men is like doing jazz riffs on the original Claremont run. These issues remind me the most of the Paul Smith era, where the team had a lot of downtime, and there was a heavy emphasis on personal relationships, mixed with a bit of the Romita era struggle between mutants and humans.

Smith was my favorite era on the book, and transporting that feel to the present day with Grant’s mutants as metaphor for gay people/evolutionary force outracing the ‘cavemen’ works well. This feels very hopeful and progressive in the same way as the early days of New X-Men, before the characters got trapped in their own soap opera. Thematically, this is a more logical followup to Grant’s run than Whedon’s Astonishing run, which had its moments, but felt more like it was looking back. This run feels a bit like Volume III of The Invisibles, in the sense that the X-Men have won the war, they’ve evolved and they’re just waiting for the world to catch up.

I think some moments work better than others, but in general I like the forward thinking celebrity take on the team, and the street level day after tomorrow style reality based approach to the concept. I like how everyone seems so relaxed, and is actually enjoying themselves for once.

I’m also intrigued by the return of Maddy Pryor. I loved the character, and don’t like to see her turned into a villain, but perhaps she’ll function more as a manifestation of Scott’s guilt about both abandoning Maddy, and leaving Jean for Emma.

But, the book isn’t quite perfect. The biggest issue from a narrative point of view is the disconnect between the mutant de-powering and the story Fraction is trying to tell. If there’s only 198 mutants left in the world, why would a group like the Hellfire Cult still exist? Grant’s X-Men hinged on the revelation that humanity would become extinct a few years into the future, so it made sense to build a mutant society. Here, it’s the opposite, and the structure would make so much more sense if mutants really were coming into prominence, not barely surviving.

I suppose the point is that finding a mutant baby gave them hope for the future, but I think with 198 left in the entire world, things would be a bit more dire. This is not to mention the absurdity of so many mutants losing their powers, but none of the major characters getting depowered.

The other issue is the much criticized, and in most cases deservedly so, art of Greg Land. I don’t hate Land’s art at all times, but I find his weird traced air brushed style falls into uncanny valley territory, so close to real that it seems more fake than, say, the randomly placed Terry Dodson pages in #500. And, his much commented on tracing of porn faces definitely shows up in his drawings of Emma Frost. He’s not totally awful, I think the scene in the club with Dazzler at the end works pretty well, but I’d have much rather seen someone like Phil Jiminez on the book, who could bring the pop sexy aesthetic Fraction is going for, without going into creepy un-sexy like Land.

But, I definitely liked it, I think it’s a more compelling new direction for the book than we’ve seen from Brubaker or Carey, and definitely calls back to the Morrison era, which I love. I’ll be picking up the next trade next time I’m at a comic store.

His Iron Fist was objectively a better comic. It’s a more ambitious story, and moves much faster and further than the X-Men issues do. The comic reminded me of Casanova, in its emphasis on pop moments. There’s a lot of scenes in there that are the sort of fanboy “fuck yeah” moments, hundreds of ninjas battling an Iron Fist who can use his powers to charge the bullets of his gun, and blowing up a train with women who turn into birds. This is all great stuff.

The problem is I found it hard to emotionally relate to most of what was going on. Part of it was unfamiliarity with the world, or current status quo of Iron Fist, but it was also due to the art. I think Aja’s art on the book is aesthetically astounding, these are gorgeous, moody pages, that rank among the most striking art I’ve seen in a long time. The problem is, I found it hard to emotionally relate to the characters because of all the shadows and moodiness. If you can’t see Danny’s face in the mask, and can barely see it out of the mask, how can you get a sense of who he is?

But, I definitely liked the story on the whole, and will probably check out the next volume. And I hope we get to see more of Luke Cage, Colleen and Misty Knight, their entrance in the last issue is one of the best moments in the comic.

So, is Fraction the next great comics writer? Perhaps, I’m not totally sold yet, but I’m intrigued by this work, and I’ll be checking out more to see how he develops.

Lost: 4x01-4x09

As I mentioned, I’ve been rolling along through Lost’s fourth season. A Fourth of July weekend spent watching many episodes has me backlogged for blogging, just writing about it as I’m approaching the end of another season already.

When I started rewatching Lost, I was fine with revisiting episodes I’d already seen, but it’s this territory of the show that I was really curious about, the moment where people stopped complaining about it and started embracing it again. I’d heard a lot of wild things about what happened in the two most recent seasons, and to date, I’d say that the fourth season is by far the most consistent, and pretty easily its best, though some of the problems of the past do still persist. But, in general I’ve been really impressed by the way they restructured the series, and turned the persistent generation of questions rather than answers into a strength, making it possible to keep us interested in the events of both the present on island timeline, and the future “Oceanic Six” stuff.

The biggest surprise for me so far has been the fact that even after nine episodes, the six people to be rescued still haven’t made it off the island. Following the revelations of “Through the Looking Glass,” I assumed we’d take an episode, maybe two of three at most, to get Jack and co. off the island, then split our time between on island storylines and off. It obviously didn’t turn out that way, since we’re almost at the end of the season, and no one’s even left. So, I’m assuming that the Six won’t actually leave until the season finale, and presumably they won’t be leaving on the freighter as originally assumed.

One of the best choices the producers made was setting up the idea that a limited number of people make it off the island, and raising the question of how both Hurley and Jack could make it off the island, if Hurley goes with Locke’s nativist crew to the Others’ camp. What series of events could occur to bring Hurley, Jack and Kate back together to get off the island? That’s the question underlying the first couple of episodes.

The highlight of the first episode was definitely the disorienting sequence where Hurley encounters Jacob’s cabin in the woods, and trips out as its spatial orientation seemingly shifts around him. I loved the original Jacob’s cabin sequence, and am really interested in seeing Hurley, Locke and Ben get back there, which will presumably happen in the upcoming episode “Cabin Fever.” But, this glimpse of it was enough to intrigue for the next batch of episodes.

It’s probably a bit hypocritical to criticize the show for the random mysticism of something like the Smoke Monster, then rank the random appearances of Jacob’s cabin as one of my favorite things on here. I think the reason the cabin works is because it’s a more benign fear. There’s nothing inherently menacing about the cabin out there in the woods, but it has such an aura around it, partially because of how Ben described it when he and Locke traveled there, but also due to the way its presented in the story. It’s like how in Doctor Who, I could tell that the Daleks were a huge deal, even though I’d never seen the old show. Just the way that they were presented made it clear this mattered, and that’s how it feels with Jacob’s cabin. I also think the presentation of the physical cabin is more effective than the CG smoke monster, though the monster does get a great moment in “The Shape of Things to Come.”

Anyway, the next episode introduces a bunch of new characters, all of whom seem pretty interesting, though they haven’t gotten the chance to do that much yet. One thing that’s interesting about the season is the way that the pacing makes it feel like very little time has passed, I’d guess it’s maybe five days since the season finale nine episodes in, but it still feels like a lot of stuff has happened. The people from the freighter aren’t that well established, most of them slipping into the background following their spotlight episode, but Faraday and Miles both have had some good moments, and I think they all had pretty compelling introductions.

The nature of their mission has become a bit clearer as the season has gone on. It seems like they’ve been sent by Widmore to capture Ben, so that Widmore can get Ben out of the way and take over the island, using it to forward his own interests. Based on the flashforward in “The Shape of Things to Come,” it seems like the mission goes awry, possibly thanks to Michael sabotaging the boat, and Widmore is now scrambling to find another way to the island. Based on the information I’ve got now, it seems like Widmore is involved with the Dharma Initiative in some way, and he knows about Ben releasing poison gas to kill the Dharma people a few years back.

The question arises of when exactly that gassing scene was supposed to take place. It’s hard to say based on the actor’s age, but considering the clothes they were all wearing, it seemed like it was the 80s at latest, though perhaps fashions change slower on the island. Either way, it seems like there’s been an eternal struggle between forces seeking to use the island for the betterment of the mainland, and the Hostiles/Others, who want to keep the island to themselves. Ben, like Locke, now finds himself a disciple of the island, seeking to defend it from all who would attempt to use it for their own agenda.

It’s also notable that at this point in the show’s run, virtually all of the original characters are essentially irrelevant to the show’s master narrative. I’m sure people debate endlessly the question of whether the creators had a plan from the beginning, or if they’ve been making it up, a debate which I’d argue is predicated on a false legitimacy of some original plan. The world that you create on paper and the world that exists when something is actually made is hugely different, and it makes sense to make the best use of the resources you have.

I’ve already mentioned how the show seems to “burn” through its characters because it doesn’t really let them grow. Sun and Jin have moved forward to some extent, but they haven’t really changed that much because of the island. Their relationship has moved to a stasis point, but there hasn’t been the sort of really dynamic character growth you see on something like Buffy or The Sopranos. The greatest strength of Buffy is the way that the characters feel totally different in season six versus season one, to the point that just jumping from one to the other you’d probably think it’s impossible that these could be the same people. But, watching the show, you see the gentle evolution that moves them forward, and makes it clear that it’s the same person underneath. Sun and Jin, or Claire or even Jack and Kate are basically the exact same people they were in season one, it’s only their circumstances that have changed.

The lengthy reliance on the flashback structure precluded a serious evolution of character, because the structure made all character evolution a function of past experience. I think that was a huge mistake because it prevents people from changing based on what was presumably the biggest trauma/moment of their lives, the plane crash itself.

The characters who remain interesting and relevant to the plot are the ones who’ve changed on the island. Locke is the central example, he has a key role in the island mythology, and with the death of his father, he’s definitively severed ties to the man he once was.

Sawyer has also remained prominent, and made the very relevant point to Kate that there’s no reason for him to go back to the mainland. He’s got a better life on the island than on the mainland, and through his transformation into something of a hero, he’s proven that he can be a better person. His relationship with Kate is handled in a really strange way, as she continually uses him, with no particular motivation behind her actions. I suppose she’s mad at him for being happy that she isn’t pregnant, but should that be the only thing directing her behavior. Shouldn’t she be right with Sawyer on not wanting to go back home?

Her character is written in a nonsensical way most of the time, veering from damsel in distress at the start of season three to competent action hero later on. Here, we see her in the future back home, and still get little insight into her behavior. Why does she keep so distanced from Jack? Why does she choose to take on care of Aaron?

One thing that always bothers me in works of fiction, particularly TV shows, is when female characters get pregnant. I think being pregnant is often done as a cheap cliffhanger, like “I love you” to bring gravity to a character’s relationship without really justifying it. And, being pregnant invariably makes the woman a weaker character. So, it bothers me to put such emphasis on all the female characters as potential baby growing engines, which is what Juliet’s presence, and the question of the mysterious pregnant woman deaths on the island does. And, making Kate a mother off the island only dulls that character as well. Can’t one woman on the show be defined by not being a mother or potential mother? How long until we get to the flashback where we find out that Juliet became a fertility doctor because she couldn’t get pregnant herself?

In light of the Jack/Kate continued flirtation, the seemingly developing relationship between Jack and Juliet feels odd. The writers continually bounce back and forth, with no insight into why the characters are behaving the way they are. Why not bring all that tension to the surface and resolve it once and for all? But, I suppose it gives those characters something to do, since they’re all pretty much irrelevant to the overall plot of the show.

But, I don’t really miss any of those original characters, largely because they’re not as interesting as the new people. Ben, Desmond, Charles Widmore, even the freighter people are all more dynamic than most of the originals. I think a major part of that is the fact that the show started out dealing with a whole bunch of different types of characters on an island trying to survive. That’s not what the show is about at this point. It’s about some kind of long lasting, globe spanning power struggle for control of a mysterious island. So, people like Sun and Jin don’t have a huge role to play in that power struggle. I still think their individual episodes are effective, and I’d argue that you could give the characters more stuff to do, particularly Jin, but the way they’re written that doesn’t happen.

So, Ben basically takes over the show, and it seems like the central conflict will involve Ben trying to kill Penny Widmore as revenge, possibly manipulating Desmond as a way to find her. That will bring Desmond in conflict with Ben, but Ben will surely try to manipulate and control the situation.

I should mention a bit about “The Constant,” an episode that seems to be one of, if not the show’s most beloved. I went in with those expectations, and as such probably wasn’t as blown away as most people. I think that the stuff with Penny and Desmond in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” was more effective than the army scenes, but I did love the implications of Desmond and Faraday figuring out the nature of his time travel. The question that still lingers is whether Desmond always did these things in the past, and he’s just playing out a time loop now, or if he’s actually changing the future by doing this.

But, the high point of the episode was definitely the phone call between Penny and Desmond at the end. I love the idea that the love the two of them share is what connects them across time, and is what ultimately anchors him in the present. It’s a very efficient metaphor, and the emotion of their reunion, even if it was only on the phone was palpable. In speaking to her, he not only vindicates his sanity and save himself, he also proves that she still loves him, he’s got someone waiting for him when he gets home. So, it was definitely a great episode, though I wouldn’t say it’s the series’ best.

“The Other Woman” indulged in a lot of old Lost bad habits, particularly the nonsensical motivations of Charlotte and Dan in the power station. If their goal all along was to turn off the gas, why not tell Kate that rather than act all mysterious and smack her on the head with the gun? If it was to release the gas, why stop just because Juliet is there? Either way, it makes no sense. That said, I did like the way that Ben made such a point of saying that he owned Juliet. The scene worked, but because the characters have been separated for so long, it didn’t have any immediate relevance to what was going on. As played, it became an excuse for Jack and Juliet to kiss in the present.

This season also brings us the return of Michael, which was spoiled a bit by Harold Perrineau’s presence in the credits from the start. I’d been vaguely aware that he’d return to the show at some point, but his appearance would have been a bigger surprise had he not been in the credits for six episodes before appearing. “Meet Kevin Johnson” wasn’t a season highlight, but it’s interesting to see him back, dealing with the consequences of what he did. His flashback story prefigures the sort of existential post island trauma that Jack and Hurley deal with in their respective flashforwards.

The flashforwards do invert the show’s structure, and to some extent the show’s axis of action has moved off the island, but even there, it’s not really about what our characters are going through. The off island action that matters is the Widmore and Ben stuff. I loved the reveal at the end of “The Economist” that Sayid was working for Ben. In general, Sayid is much more interested as the emotionally burnt out James Bond figure than doing yet another guilt about torturing flashback.

The flashforwards work because we’re inherently more interested in them than in the past stuff. I suppose at one time there was a novelty to being like what was Boone up to off the island or something like that. Now there’s a novelty in seeing what people do after they’re rescued, and also finding out who was rescued in the first place. Most importantly, we’ve got this ongoing mystery of why they chose to lie about what happened on the island, which all connects to the ongoing Ben/Widmore conflict. But, it’s still at the core the same structure as the flashbacks, juxtaposing the island story with another thematically connected story. The difference is that now we’re actually interested in both sides of the story.

The Ben/Widmore conflict came to a head in what I’d say was the best episode of the season to date, “The Shape of Things to Come,” which throws the little society Locke has created into chaos when the freighter people come to retrieve Ben. I loved seeing Ben get gradually more freedom in the camp, he knows exactly how best to play Locke to get what he wants. I also liked the nod to Philip K. Dick’s Valis, which deals a lot with the will of a mysterious godlike entity, in this case the pink lazer called Zebra. I’ll have to see how the season plays out to see if the Valis nod has any deeper meaning.

Anyway, everything gets kicked up a notch when Ben fortifies his camp and remains seemingly in control of the situation even as they’ve got his daughter at gunpoint. The great twist here is that Alex actually does get shot, prompting Ben to declare that the rules of the game have changed.

I’m a bit frustrated by Alex’s death, I think the character had a lot of potential, and I’d have loved to see more of her relationship with Rousseau. This is a kid who’s presumably never left the island, how would she feel to go back to the mainland? But, if she had to die, at least this way she went out making a big impact on the story.

I also wish we got to see a Rousseau flashback before she got killed. For a character who’d been on the show so long, her death was pretty abrupt, but the cast is already so crowded, I guess somebody had to go.

Ben summons the smoke monster and the monster has his best appearance ever, ripping up the soldiers and clearing the way for everyone to escape. This episode is one of the best juxtapositions of on and off island action, since we already see the impact of what happened with Alex. It changes the stakes, and puts Ben’s goals in conflict with Desmond’s reunion with Penny. At this point, Ben is essentially the protagonist of the show, the one who actually does things that push the story along, while everyone else reacts.

That final Widmore/Ben scene hints at a lot of stuff in the island’s history, and I’m eager to see the presumed connection between Widmore and Dharma, as well as some background on how the rules of their conflict got established.

So, I’m loving the show right now. It’s a lot tighter than it was before. There’s still some frustrating stuff, particularly with the Jack/Juliet/Kate axis, but the rest of the show’s pretty strong, and I can’t wait to see what happens when Locke, Ben and Hurley get to Jacob’s cabin, and presumably get the direction that will guide them to the next stage of the storyline. I'm hoping to catch up to the end of season five by the time I go to comicon, so I'll be able to go and see the Lost panel there. At this rate, I think I'll make it.

Lost: 3x17-3x22

This batch of episodes features answers to some of the major ongoing questions surrounding the series, as well as a format changing event that promises a much better show in future seasons. I’ve seen the first four of the fourth season, but I’ll stick primarily to the end of season three, because there’s a lot of stuff to talk about there, and then I’ll probably do another post exploring the start of the fourth season.

Let me start at the end, with the twist that alters the formal structure of the series and opens up a whole new range of interesting possibilities. I’d heard about this twist in the ether when the show was airing, so I knew what to expect going in, but it was still quite a moment when Kate showed up in the final moments and you realize the full extent of what we’ve just watched.

I think the sequence was deliberately designed to be, to some extent, a generic Jack flashback. But, it also had an intensity that’s missing from typical flashbacks, so that even without the flashforward element, there was still a deeply apocalyptic feel to the events, particularly Jack’s insane ranting about his father in the hospital. Seeing a scene of flashbacks like this makes it clear how often the flashbacks were just phoned in, without any real emotional investment.

I think it’s tough in a show with twenty-two episodes to keep up the intensity and emotional engagement that the best of the show offers on a consistent basis. Why couldn’t previous Jack flashbacks be as simple and powerful as this one? The answer is because it’s very, very difficult to do so, and that’s why it’s great to leave behind such a tired storytelling device in favor of something new. So, the flash forward is a very welcome change, and that cliffhanger made me jump right over to the first episode of the fourth season. I imagine it was a very long summer when that first aired.

The finale as a whole was a bit frustrating because the episode basically just stopped and relied on that final twist to cap it all off. It certainly was a strong note to close on, but I feel like I would have liked to see a bit more resolution to the island story itself. The season two finale is still my favorite episode of the series, and even though it left a bunch of cliffhangers, there was a strong feeling of emotional resolution. The creators had learned their lesson from not revealing the interior of the hatch in season two, and gave a strong sense of closure there. The destruction of the hatch was a cathartic moment of almost religious transcendence, and nothing in this episode matched that.

I think part of what frustrated me was that the setup was so engaging and effective, weaving a tapestry of approaching doom for our heroes that reached its height in the season’s penultimate episode, “Greatest Hits.” It all started with the return of Locke to the camp, and his trip with Sawyer to kill his father. I loved the flashbacks to Locke with the others, which gave us further hints of their society, though even at season’s end, it remains unclear what their overall goal on the island is, or why Cindi has joined up so fervently.

But, at least we find out that they presumably captured Anthony Cooper and brought him to the island for John to kill, as a final test of John’s allegiance to the man that he was. Locke claims that he won’t be a murderer, despite shoving Mikhail into the security thing mere episodes before and seemingly killing him without remorse. At this point, Locke and Ben are in a strange relationship, Locke’s loyalty has transcended either side in the conflict, he believes he serves the will of the island. On his messiah kick, he might feel that just killing this man would be wrong, but to let Sawyer do it is a way of letting the island work its will in another way.

The scene with Sawyer gradually realizing this is the man he’s been looking for for so many years is really well done as well. I love his slow build rage, culminating in the vicious death by choking. The island brought Locke a way of doing what needed to be done, and he has used it to bring about his desired end.

This leads to one of my favorite episodes of the series to date, the trip into Ben’s backstory, “The Man Behind the Curtain.” The episode works equally well in the present on the island, as Locke and Ben travel off in search of Jacob, as it does in the past, with our first sustained glimpse into the world of the Dharma Initiative on the island.

The three minute Marvin Candle video from “Orientation” is still my favorite moment of the show to date, and this is the first time since then that we get a real new insight into what the Dharma group was about, and how they functioned on the island. It feels like a mix of cult and commune, with everyone in very defined roles, presumably working for the good of the whole while living a kind of fantasy existence apart from the world as a whole.

Everything we see of the group seems like an ideal world, but there are hints of darkness underneath. While Ben’s at school, there’s some kind of attack, which may or may not be the incident referred to in the Hatch video. It’s also unclear how much of the experiments surrounding the Hatch and Pearl station were going on at this time. Things seem so good, but presumably all those experiments were happening at this time, the shiny surface a mask for some of the more sinister explorations going on underneath.

We’re also told once and for all that Dharma and the Hostiles are two distinct groups, thanks to the appearance of the seemingly ageless Richard Alpert. Alpert’s name is drawn from a philosopher/guru, also named Richard Alpert. I read his book “Be Here Now” a few months ago, and it focused mainly on transcending materialism and the structures of society and expanding one’s mind through Buddhist practices and the use of LSD. That would fit with the idea of the Hostiles as people retreating from traditional society. If Richard is seemingly immortal, is that due to the power of the island? Why does he not age when he’s off island visiting Juliet? That’s unknown, what is significant is that Richard sees in Ben someone who’s in deep communion with the island and has the potential to be important down the line.

Ben winds up working with the Hostiles to kill his father and wipe out seemingly the entire Dharma commune. The show has always dealt with bad dads, but seldom in so explicitly oedipal and Freudian a scenario as we see here. Roger “Work Man” has nothing but disdain for Ben after he “killed” his mother. A Freudian reading would likely be that Roger’s hatred for Ben is the same subconscious hatred that all men feel towards their kids in competing for the love of their mother. That’s the reverse Oedipal, on the same level, Ben is drawn to his mother, and winds up killing his father, seemingly a way of proving his love for his mother. I’m sure on some level his affection for his mother is harmless, but the way it’s presented, there’s an element of transgressive danger, which gives it that oedipal feel.

The scene of Ben converging on the compound to find all the dead bodies is one of the most powerful images the show has come up with to date, and was nicely expanded on in the present when Ben throws Locke into the Dharma mass grave. There’s definitely a significance to Locke winding up in that grave, and it all seems to tie in to Ben’s relationship to his new father figure, the mysterious Jacob.

Jacob has been mentioned before, but here we get the background on him, he’s the mysterious force or person guiding Ben’s actions on the island. But, who exactly he is and why he does the things he does remains shrouded in mystery. With Locke challenging Ben for authority among the Others, and for connection to the island, via his healing, Ben decides to bring Locke to Jacob, probably hoping that Locke will not see what he sees, vindicating Ben’s leadership.

The clear allegory here is Jacob as God. To believe in Jacob without evidence of his existence is faith. By controlling access to Jacob, Ben puts himself in the priestly role of interpreting the word of God for the people, and thus preserves his importance to the camp. Without him, they would be directionless, receiving no guidance from Jacob. The question arises what did these people do before Ben came along? Was there a previous prophet who saw Jacob, was there a similar Ben/Locke rivalry in the past?

Locke goes with Ben, and winds up at the creepy cabin in the woods. I love this setting, both in its initial appearance, and later in the season four premiere when Hurley has an even trippier visit there. I latch on to certain concepts with this show, the Dharma stuff is a big one, but Jacob’s cabin is another that just grips my mind for whatever reason. On one level, you could view it as a sort of cheesy poltergeist style scene, but I think the whole thing worked wonderfully.

Locke seems to have no faith, and thinks he’s exposed the fraud perpetuating the myth of the Wizard of Oz, only to find out that Jacob is apparently quite real, and tells Locke to “help me.” Locke sees no one in the chair, except for a brief moment when he catches someone’s face. It would seem to Jacob appears to people based either on their faith in him, or their connection to the island.

The significance of “help me” is unclear as well. Is it that Jacob is trapped by Ben somehow, or did he just tell Locke that so when Ben asked him later on what Jacob said to him, Locke would say “help me,” in the context of asking for help for his gunshot. Either way I’m intrigued, I thought the hints of Jacob in the first part of the season seemed kind of pointless, but I really like him now, or at least the idea of him, and am intrigued to see more. The idea of Jacob in general feels very Stephen King, and Dark Tower in particular. And, I think the show is at its best when it has the genre bending quasi-pulp, quasi-religious feel of those books.

One of, if not my biggest, issue with the build up to the finale was the handling of Jack in the last few episodes. I like the idea that Sayid and Desmond feel they can’t trust him with the discovery of Naomi, creating a kind of low scale schism in the camp that makes a lot of sense. Even if they can trust Jack still, I think their faith in Juliet should be shaky at best. But, then the show goes and turns that whole storyline into an excuse to mess around with the Jack/Juliet/Kate/Sawyer quardrangle. And, the way things play out, we wind up with Jack simultaneously angry at them for not telling him about Naomi and telling them that he had a secret plan just he and Juliet knew about.

I’m still not sure how the show feels about Jack at this point. Characters will call him out on his behavior from time to time, but he stills seems to be positioned as the hero, and I think that’s a really tired, boring approach. If you suspect Jack of colluding with the Others, would him saying he has a secret plan with Juliet dispel those suspicions? Wouldn’t it only enhance them?

Regardless, the return of Karl, and their frantic prep with the dynamite works really well, as we get some final emotional moments before splitting everyone apart. Charlie, who’d been raked through a series of awful storylines in season two, has made it back to being a pretty likable character by the end of season three. He became part of a likable B team of characters with Jin, Desmond and Hurley, and the ongoing specter of his imminent death moved closer and closer as the season progressed. That funereal element was enhanced by a strong series of flashbacks, which tripped through the best moments in his life. I’ll admit I dreaded the onset of more Charlie flashbacks, but this batch worked great.

In general, the buildup to the finale was fantastic. Pieces were being moved around, but there was a heavy sense of emotion, and Charlie and Claire’s parting in particular was really sad and emotional. In a lot of cases, it’s the buildup to the action that really matters, that’s where the emotion is. The action itself functions as a release for the audience, real tension is in knowing something awful is coming and moving inexorably towards it.

And, Charlie’s boat trip is a great example of that, as he and Desmond sail out to the underwater hatch, each knowing what has to happen. I think Charlie hitting Desmond with the oar was a bit over the top, but ultimately necessary for the story. Though, Desmond doesn’t seem to have handed over the list, I guess it got too wet in his swim, or perhaps we’ve just moved on.

I loved the underwater hatch, which felt like something right out of an old Bond movie. The arrival of one eyed unstoppable villain Mikhail only enhanced that. In general, I think the underwater hatch stuff was the best payoff of the finale, with real tension and emotional closure with Charlie’s death. The two major issues I had were the continual rebirth of Mikhail. The grenade was one jump too many, why not have it be one of the women out there? The other issue was the fact that it wasn’t quite clear why Charlie couldn’t escape. I guess he felt he had to die to keep the timeline and get Claire off the island, but surely they could have had some switch that required him to stay in there, and build the scenario so his death was more necessary than it seemed.

Elsewhere in the finale, the shootout at the camp was great, a really exciting and well executed action sequence. Because TV shows are working with such a smaller budget, I feel like the action sequences are much more thought out and well integrated into the plot than in most blockbuster movies. I thought this sequence was really tight and fun to watch in the way that the bloated CGI fests of something like Wolverine or Transformers aren’t. Of course, a big part of that is our emotional connection to the characters, but as I said before, it’s that buildup that makes the scene work, the intricate groundwork laid down that makes the scene play well.

But, in the case of this episode, the buildup was the high point since we got very little resolution for what was going on in the island. It remains unclear why Ben went out to meet them alone, apart from plotting reasons. What was his strategy, to just tell them not to get rescued? That seems absurd, though clearly his point about people having no reason to leave resonates with the flashbacks it was juxtaposed against.

The show, in its reality based premise, puts every viewer in a kind of what if position, thinking about what we’d be on the island. Would I be the Jack? The Locke? The Nikki and Paolo? Ostensibly, the plane crash is an awful event, and not something we’d want to undergo, but the show also offers a fantasy for the viewer, the fantasy of living a life of adventure and urgency, far away from the more sedate civilized lives we live here. In this world, a boring office guy like Locke can realize his true potential and become a hero. I’d argue that a show like this, and other post apocalyptic narratives, ostensibly offer a nightmare scenario that is actually a dream scenario. The show isn’t saying it would be terrible to crash, it’s saying it would be amazing, that within all of us lies an adventurer, just waiting to be unleashed.

And, the flashforward reinforces the idea that going home only brings back all the old problems that people had been running from. No one had a happy life off the island, so why would they want to leave? It’s something to work towards, a purpose. What purpose do they have once they’re home? Then, all the problems resurface and Jack has to find a new purpose, in this case, to go back to the island.

Locke can forsee this, and is doing everything he can to keep people on the island. He is a zealot, believing he works in the island’s service, the island told him to “help me,” and now he’s going to do that. So, he knifes Naomi, throwing everything into chaos. Jack has seemingly led the people to salvation, now Locke raises the idea that he might be a false prophet.

And then things basically end. The helicopters are imminent, and rescue seems in sight. Clearly someone got rescued, but how and why will wait until next year. I think the episode was pretty strong on the whole, and the buildup was great, but I would have liked a bit more emotional closure in the island’s present day. But, I suppose the first time through, people were just thinking about those mind blowing final moments, and not so concerned about anything else.

The third season’s in the books, and it was easily the show’s most inconsistent, featuring some of the series’ best episodes, but also indulging in a lot of its worst tendencies early on. If I had to rank them on the whole, I’d say season two was probably the strongest, season three second and season one the weakest. I know people still worship season one as some kind of platonic ideal of the show, when the flashbacks were great and everything worked, but I think the ideas at play here are so much more interesting than the simple presence of the Monster or some random Nigerian people. And I think Ben and Juliet are much more compelling than Boone or Shanon or most of the original castaways.

But, I’m someone who generally likes shows better as they go on. I think it’s because I have such an investment in long form narrative, I’m more concerned with character and thematic evolution than in story. Yes, the stories on an episode by episode basis in season one were probably tighter, but I prefer the sprawling, ambition of this season, and I’d hate to see the show “go back to basics.” The flashbacks in many cases never worked right from the beginning. The first Sawyer flashback episode is a total mess, and the first Charlie is equally awful. And I find the question being asked in this series of episodes much more interesting than anything in season one.

I give season two the slight edge because it had a stronger first half, and a better emotional payoff in the finale. But, this season had many fantastic episodes, and most importantly, made it through the dark time to probably the strongest sustained run of episodes to date, with the stuff from “One of Us” on.

And, as I said, I’m already into season four, which is proving to be the best season to date. I don’t think all the show’s flaws are fixed, but it’s consistently much stronger than any season to date. More on that soon.