Season 4, Episode 10 – Something Nice Back Home

After last week’s amazing episode, this week left me saying…meh.

For being the leader of the Losties, Jack seems to be in distress a lot…it’s like there’s an episode every season where he’s either sick or captured or something. Doesn’t exactly make for the strong leader image I’d like to see in Jack. This week, the good doctor was down with a bout of appendicitis. I’m assuming it served to lay the foundation for things to come, but it seemed really forced. Maybe that’s the idea though…as Rose pointed out, why would Jack get sick on an island that heals everyone else, and at this pivotal juncture?

And I know L. Scott Caldwell is probably busy doing other stuff, but does anyone else find it somewhat jarring to have Rose gone for long stretches of the season, only to return for one episode to impart some words of wisdom? Just me? Okay.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, Claire and Miles are making their trek through the jungle back to the beach. Claire drops the hint that she’s been seeing things (there was a hallucination/vision scene filmed for her intended for last week’s episode, but it was cut). Miles has his own visions again as well…sensing the violence that occurred on the spot they were standing. I wasn’t too surprised that he found Karl’s body, but I was SHOCKED…and a little upset…that he found Danielle, too. She was such a great character, I was sure that she’d have survived the shot that she took. Rousseau…heck, ANY Season 1 character…deserves a better sendoff than that. Of course she’ll be back in flashbacks and such, but I feel like her arc wasn’t really completed.

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that this season has been much, much darker than anything we’ve seen. Between the borderline insane asylum we see on the freighter, Rousseau’s and Karl’s brutal, sudden deaths and subsequent freaky corpse discovery, and Alex’s absolutely shocking death last week, this season is at a depth that I never expected we would see. I love it.

Back to the story…that night, the jungle company make camp. Claire awakens to see Christian Shepherd holding Aaron. (To help with speculation, check out this spoilery clip from the recent “Missing Pieces” campaign.) When Sawyer awakens the next morning, they are both gone. He finds Aaron alone in the woods, but Claire is nowhere to be seen.

Finally, we come to the flashforward. As a friend of mine said, it’s a Jaters’ dream come true. Taking place after the events of Eggtown (Kate’s episode), but before the events of Through the Looking Glass (Season 3 finale), we find that Kate and Jack have definitely hooked up, and it seems that they’ve been in that role for a while…they seem very comfortable together (and they got Aaron a Millennium Falcon toy, which makes them the best parents ever).

Jack heads to see Hurley again, but, even though their meeting was pretty strained last time, this time it’s apparent that Hurley has gone off the deep end…though he could be the sanest of them all. He refuses to take his meds or even talk to the doctors, because he believes that the Oceanic 6 are all dead. He did make a very good point…Jack and Kate’s current life was pretty darn close to Heaven…and in last season’s finale, Jack’s life was pretty darn close to Hell. Hurley left Jack with a couple of bombshells…first, Charlie left Jack a message that “You’re not supposed to raise him” and that Jack would have a visitor soon. Since he had already seen his father once that day, it was pretty easy to figure out who that visitor would be…and this seems to have driven him to his future chemical dependency.

I wonder what’s recording on Jack and Kate’s Tivo.

Finally, we learn that Kate has been sneaking around, doing favors for Sawyer. I’m sure this favor relates to Sawyer’s secret daughter, Clementine, which makes Kate’s hesitation to talk about it understandable, I guess. You’ve got to feel bad for Jack, though…he thought he was finally out from under Sawyer’s shadow, only to find that he is still on Kate’s mind. They fight, culminating in Jack exploding and yelling that Kate is not even related to Aaron, which the boy overhears. Jack loses it and walks away.

Like I said, not the greatest episode ever…no big revelations, save for Jack and Kate’s hook- and break-up. Mostly laying the groundwork for next week…a Locke-centric episode which promises to be great.

Episode grade: B

Season 4, Episode 9 – The Shape of Things to Come

If Daniel Craig steps out of the 007 shoes, I think that Michael Emerson would be a fitting successor to the James Bond genre.

“The Shape of Things to Come” was EASILY in the list of my top episodes, primarily because it focused on the single greatest aspect of the show…Benjamin Linus. Between his genuine fear when he heard “Code 14j”, to his desperate play to save Alex and his subsequent mournfulness when she was surprisingly shot, we got our first, I believe, real look into Ben’s soul.

He showed that he was not nearly as helpless as he was making himself out to be to his captors. I loved the moment with the shotgun in the piano bench as well as when he calmly walked into closet and locked the door behind him. Ben always knows exactly what he’s doing, there’s no doubt.

Speaking of knowing what he’s doing, it’s apparent that he has some form of control over Cerebus (a.k.a. Smokie). Ben is obviously ruthless, and is willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish what he wants, but it’s becoming obvious that he’s not pure evil like he seemed to be early on. He obviously cares about the other people on the island, which ties into the next point…

Charles Widmore. There’s your pure evil. He wants the island for his own evil purposes, and Ben is doing what he can to stop that…up to, but not, killing Widmore himself. Is that connected to “the rules” that Ben talked about a few times? I don’t even know where to begin speculating on it. And we’re obviously heading toward an intense finale, with an impending showdown between Ben, Penny, Desmond and Charles. Flippin’ awesome.

Michael Emerson’s performance alone makes this easily my favorite episode of the season, and in my top five for the series. Phenomenal.

A+

Is it just me, or has the past month flown past?

Just a friendly reminder that Lost returns to air tonight with its second batch of episodes, beginning with “The Shape of Things to Come”, a Ben-centric episode. ABC’s official description:

Locke’s camp comes under attack, and Jack tries to discover the identity of a body that has washed ashore.

Tonight is also the latest of Lost’s many timeslot jumps…it airs at 10/9c after an all new Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy.

When we left off, Sayid had just revealed Michael’s true identity to the Freighties, and Karl and Rousseau had been shot by snipers while heading to “the Temple”, causing Alex to call out that she’s Ben’s daughter.

It’s been officially confirmed that the extra hour that Lost’s producers had been asking for has been approved by ABC. What’s interesting is the manner in which it was granted.

Apparently, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty’s respective slots on May 22 were already pretty ironclad. So rather than shuffle them around, ABC got a little creative with the scheduling.

May 15 will see Ugly Betty at 8/7c, Grey’s Anatomy at 9/8c, and part one of the Lost finale at 10/9c. On May 22, we get the Ugly Betty finale, followed by the newly two-hour Grey’s finale. Finally, on May 29, an encore of part one of the Lost finale airs, followed by the two hour Lost finale. That’s right…three hours of Lost. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself…I may asplode.

It’s interesting that the good fortune that fell to Lost in the form of an extra episode spilled over into Grey’s Anatomy, too.

So you may have to wait a week longer to get your Lost resolution for the season, but it means you get an extra hour of resolution (or filler…hopefully not).

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, you know that the WGA strike played havoc with a lot of shows’ programming schedules. Lost was definitely one of them. What was originally going to be a 16 episode season was, briefly, only going to air the first batch of 8 episodes. Then, when the strike lifted, the opportunity arose for a slightly more complete season of 13 episodes.

Word is that Lost producers are in talks with ABC to extend the season by an extra hour. This excites me for a whole host of reasons. First, and most obvious, I’m always up for more Lost.

Secondly, though, to me this means that they don’t have enough room to tell their story in 13 episodes. This points to something that should excite every Lost fan in the room…less filler! If there’s one huge flaw about Lost, it’s that, in previous seasons, it’s spent too much time doing nothing. Hopefully, the producers’ desire to have a bit more time to really tell the story illustrates a tighter season…without wasteful episodes like last year’s “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”.

The big question that arises, then, is one of scheduling. If Lost is to return on April 24, then that places the current finale right in the middle of sweeps, on May 22. Obviously, the network is not going to air a finale after sweeps week. Will they bump the return date up? Or maybe air an episode on a different night (like one episode Wednesday night, and the next episode on Thursday)? Or lump two episodes together into a two-hour finale? My money’s on that one.

Now none of this is set in stone, so it could change at any moment. But I think it’s definitely good news all around.

Season 4, Episode 8 – Meet Kevin Johnson

So last night saw the last episode of “Block One” of Season 4, and also heralded the return of Michael, who we haven’t seen in almost two full years. I really enjoyed the structure of this episode…rather than hopping back and forth off the island, we had a solid block of flashforward, bookended by our island time. Last year’s Desmond-centric “Flashes Before Your Eyes” did the same thing, and I think it’s a nice breath of fresh air to mix it up.

The semi-major revelation was the fact that, somehow, the island has some kind of far-reaching abilities. There have been several events that have happened off the island that have seemed a bit contrived, but now we see that the island somehow can control events extra-island events. For example, if a person as more work to do, the island will not let that person commit suicide. That explains why Jack couldn’t jump off the bridge in last season’s finale. I think I like it…I’m not sure. The idea that, once you’re caught up in this island’s net, you can’t get out…it has some serious consequences for our castaways.

We can finally be assured of what the freighter’s true objective is…they are there to wipe out everyone on the island. Apparently Mr. Widmore has his sights set on the island for some reason, and is determined to kill everyone who knows anything about it. I wonder…has he been intrigued about the island for a while, and his daughter’s lover, Desmond, just happened to stumble upon it…after crashing while competing in a race that Widmore himself arranged? He sure did go to a lot of effort to throw off the chase, knowing that 815 crashed there…what with digging up bodies, buying a 777 airliner and dressing it up Oceanic-style, and sinking it where no one could ever hope to resurrect it.

Anyway, it would appear that not everyone on the boat shares this evil intent. Frank, who seems to be the resident expert on Flight 815 (though he didn’t recognize Michael…curious), is interested in saving the survivors. I hate that we didn’t get to see any of Faraday…and Miles, assuming he sticks around, could become my favorite character on the show.

One thing that I really appreciated was that we know that Ben is telling the truth while the islanders don’t. He’s sitting there telling them that the people on the boat are only there for one purpose…to kill every person on the island. For once, the audience is saying, “Listen to Ben!” How did he become the protagonist all of a sudden…

…or is he? Saying that he wanted to protect Alex, he sent her away to “the Temple”, presumably another DHARMA station, and Danielle and Karl followed her. Once they get there, they come under sniper fire, and Alex’s mother and boyfriend are both, possibly, killed. First of all, surely Danielle isn’t dead. I mean, come on, it’s the French Chick…she’s been a pretty huge player so far…and the only send off she gets is an episode with a handful of lines and getting shot down? I don’t think so. Karl’s a loser, though, so who really cares? Next, who is/are the shooter/s? Surely Ben wouldn’t have sent his daughter on a death march. Could it be the freighter team? They haven’t struck me as a shoot first, ask questions later group.

Can you imagine if this episode was the last bit of Lost that we would get in 2008? Talk about unfulfilling…man, I am so glad we’ve got more new episodes coming our way. I really enjoyed it…no real gripes to speak of. Only a month left until it returns in its new post-Grey’s slot.

Episode grade: A-

Season 4, Episode 7 – Ji Yeon

The past few episodes have been a bit of a relative slump for this season. While the first few installments really seemed to start off with a bang, the previous two weeks have seemed to be…well…filler. Ji Yeon, unfortunately, continues that tradition.

In the “main” storyline, Sun convinces Jin that they should not leave the island, and they decide to join in Locke’s camp. Juliet pleads with Sun to leave the island for the sake of her baby…and finally reveals the secret of Sun’s affair to her husband. This results in them staying in Camp Jack. And then they all make up and everyone’s okay. So the characters are in the exact same place as they were when they began the episode. Zero character development = filler.

Elsewhere, Desmond and Sayid are still stuck on the freighter. They receive a note from the mysterious mole on the boat, telling them not to trust the captain. They meet said captain, who reveals that the boat is the property of one Charles Widmore, the father of Des’ beloved Penny. Some chick commits suicide. The captive duo are then lead to their new, roach-infested, blood-stained quarters. This lead to my favorite moment of the episode…the return of Michael, in the guise of janitor Kevin Johnson. I love the barely contained surprise, and somewhat rage, between the characters.

Then, in the flashbacks and flashforwards, we discovered that Sun had a baby girl, named Ji Yeon. Somewhere however, apparently between the “rescue” and the baby’s birth, Jin met some kind of untimely end.

And that’s really it. There weren’t any major revelations…we already knew the freighter was Widmore’s boat, and that they were not really there to rescue the castaways. We already knew that there was wreckage of Oceanic 815 that has been recovered. Granted, these revelations were made to new characters, and that new information has new meaning for them. But, since the series has a finite end in sight, this show has to continue to dish out answers and continue to push the narrative forward. This episode did neither of those things.

Episode grade: C+

UPDATE

So when I was watching the show, I saw all of the dates on the tombstone except for the important one, I guess. Take a look at this picture…especially the date on the far right.

Click to enlarge

Jin’s date of death is actually listed as 2004-9-22…which, for us Americans who don’t read dates like everyone else in the world, translates to September 22, 2004. Sound familiar? That’s the date of the Oceanic 815 crash.

Jin is not one of the Oceanic 6. So now I’m confused…it was teased that we would know the identities of all the Oceanic 6…but Jin seems to have never left the island. Did they consider little prenatal Ji Yeon to be one of the survivors, too?

Now that we have something to talk about, I may have to bump my review up to a B.

TV Jab cowriter Michael and I have had many a conversation about Lost, and its ability to have a satisfactory ending. His concern, as well as many other fan’s, I’m sure, has been that the only way that the show can end is to go with the “it’s all a dream” ending, which has been done to death in everything from St. Elsewhere to Newhart (now there’s a throwback for you). On this weeks official Lost podcast, producer Damon Lindelof gave a definitive answer on that very issue…

“We’re not interested in ‘all a dream’ storytelling…You can have dreams on the show, but you won’t ever have a character waking up, going ‘it’s all in a snowglobe’…we can confirm that Lost is not all a dream.”

Now, I guess you can start with the “he said it wasn’t a dream…but it could be something like the Matrix” argument, but I choose to believe that we can rule out that, in my opinion, lazy plot device. It’s safe to say that what these characters are experiencing is real…in some form.

Oh, yeah, and Lost is on tonight, and we officially find out who Ben has on the boat (though that doesn’t exactly take any powers of divination to figure out), as well as the final two members of the Oceanic Six.

I’ll admit, I’ve never been a huge comic book nut, but the forthcoming Iron Man flick has me really pumped. With Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role and with Jon Favreau in the directors chair, it’s got the makeup of something great. Plus, the previews have been incredibly awesome.

The newest trailer will be shown during this week’s Lost, a Desmond-centric episode entitled The Contrast. So there’s one commercial break that you won’t have to fast-forward through.

Lost is on Thursday night at 9/8c. Iron Man premieres May 2.

Season 4, Episode 4 – Eggtown

Broken record time…this is the best season of Lost yet. No doubt about it. It’s almost like the show has been reinvented, and its new form is just as good, if not better, than before.

Tonight’s episode was a Kate-centric flash forward, dealing with her trial, post-rescue. I know there has been some speculation that Kate may not actually be one of the Oceanic Six, but that she somehow snuck her way off the island. That can be laid to rest.

We discover in the early moments of the show, also, that Kate has a son, which will lead to a BIG reveal at the end.

On the island, Kate is determined to figure out what Miles knows about her past. He tells her that he will give her all she wants to know if he can just have one minute with Ben.

Being the hoochie that I’m coming to realize that she is, Kate enlists Sawyer to distract Locke while she sneaks Miles into Ben’s cell. Miles reveals that he is willing to lie to the people on the boat and tell them that Ben is dead in exchange for $3.2 million. Like Ben said, why this specific amount? Also, Ben seemed pretty nervous about the “him” that Miles works for. Hanso, maybe?

After she is discovered and banished by Locke, she ends up in bed with Sawyer, and them skips out on him the next morning, heading back to be with Jack’s group. I loved his comment about her inevitably getting pissed at Jack and coming back to Sawyer, along with her subsequent reaction…a slap across the face.

The off-island events didn’t hold my interest as much as the other episodes have this season. Granted, it was interesting to see that the survivors had developed some kind of cover story…that they crashed in the water and they were the only six to survive. But the rest seemed a bit too much like filler. Maybe it had something to do with the strange wardrobe choice for Kate. The high-collared, early-1900′s style was kind of weird.

I’ll admit, the ending got me. I was trying to understand the timeline and try to figure out who the father of Kate’s baby was. I was actually expecting for her to go upstairs and we find Sawyer…but the ending we got was phenomenal. Apparently, Kate has taken custody of Aaron, Claire’s baby. Did Claire meet an untimely end on the island and Kate stepped in…or did she just ask Kate to take the baby with her? I’m so intrigued.

Also, this is a perfect example of how this show can make a scene play one way, and then, when you go back and watch it again, it has a completely different message. Remember the scene where Claire is asking Kate to hold Aaron? Kate is hesitant, and at this point, the audience thinks it’s because she has a son of her own and misses him. But now we realize that she is being honest…she really is uncomfortable with children…which really says something about her being willing to take care of Aaron later on. Beautiful.

As for this next part, it didn’t really fit into the recap, but I absolutely LOVED the throw-back to Season 2 in the hatch with Ben and Locke. Ben plays mind games, Locke loses his temper and throws his plate of food, and Ben smiles evilly. Another one of those nuances that I love about this show.

All in all, this was my least favorite episode of the season. But the worst episode of the best season still puts it right on top.

A-