>: 48 THE TALE OF TWO CITIES
and it begins.
we get the classic eye opening closeup that opens 2/3 of the episodes, looks female. she goes for the CDs. looks like penny widmore, i'm thinking we're mirroring the desmond opening from last season premiere. this is borne out by Downtown, an old tune with a similar beat, tempo, and chord progression to Make Your Own Kind Of Music. Then the beeping, an oven this time, not the computer. and the chorus swells, nice parallels to the beats in the first minute last year.
and the book club. the old dude doesn't like the book, 'no metaphor, by the numbers religious hokum, science-fiction'. i think that line's supposed to mean more than it does on the surface. the criticized book, which is this chick's favorite (and she's turning out not to be Pen, but the resemblance is uncanny), winds up being Brother Stephen King's 1976 debut Carrie, as evidenced by a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of the original hardcover 1st edition (during which the Ladies Bass and Mann did not blink). don't know when this is or who this chick is, but if she's pissed and willing to go to bat for Brother King, we're on her side. even though ben can't stand it and doesn't show.
then, shaking. which makes me think these are all others and we're on the island, that's the swan a-trembling, maybe this is the original incident from the orientation tape. yep, outside, looks like the island, there's ethan and there's the artist formerly known as henry gale. when everyone looked to the sky, i figured the aliens were landing and was already wondering whether or not that was a mistake. but no, much better. that shot of 815 breaking apart in the sky was beautiful. love the way TAFKAHG immediately dispatches ethan and goodwin 'you're one of them, i want lists in three days.' hardcore. nice little village they got there, gazebo and all. so what, they living the utopian ideal, based on the notions of the original john locke?
amazing opening, top drawer.
all these new names in the cast, crazy to see emerson and gainey, such great guest stars (TAFKAHG and tom) there in with the regulars.
whoa, nonono, what's this? jack flashback? no, we're doing the others flashback this time, that's the way they led. i'm questioning that right off. maybe lots of different flashbacks zinging around? yeah, he's dreaming, maybe it'll be all right.
sawyer in a cage. outside. immediately suggesting a difference between his and jack's state of quarantine (infected/immune, either one could be either state). sawyer sees another new logo, looks like an octopus or squid. as soon as you see the picture of a fork and knife on that big old red button, you know conditioned response fun is on the menu.
and juliet introduces herself before the commercial break. is her last name widmore? i think, yes.
oh no, back with a jack flashback, can't stand his ex.
and right away juliet tries to dominate him, get him off the chain.
and the obligatory seasonal kate-bathing scene. WEAR THIS was creepy in an alice in wonderland DRINK ME sort of way. knew she was going to see TAFKAHG. what a performance, my second favorite scene of the evening, their meal. so polite and measured he is. kate says sawyer's name first. 'i did all those things so you would have something pleasant to hold onto because, kate, the next two weels are going to be very unpleasant.' cripes, we get a timetable, that's not good news, should take up at least this first stretch of episodes.
jack finds his pop's # in the ex's cell, seeming to confirm what was set up christian chose the name sarah for his new friend ana-lucia.
was that christian's voice on the intercom talking to jack? sounded like 'let it go, jack'. jack sums things up pretty well by asking juliet 'what the hell is going on here?' yes, that is the question. i the answer comes in a subsequent scene: 'it's pretty much about everything.' that is the correct answer. but what does it mean? douglas adams fans will recall 42 is also the correct answer.
was carl, the kid who let sawyer out, a tailender? or another mole? ominous how they carried him off into the woods like that but we do know they have a penchant for the theatrical.
hey, open on jack and juliet after the break. i wonder what's going on at the swan. if anyone's alive. but, no let's make jack do what we want to then turn around and give him no food, walk right out of the room.
man, sure bought that christian was going to see sarah. of course not. a freakin support group, can't believe locke wasn't off to the side. the flashback pretty much paid for itself when jack screamed 'i won't let you sleep with my wife!' and then divebombed his father. some think the patient jack was working on when he saw his dad take the call (the nurse asked jack if he was sure the patient was capable of taking his own meds) was tom, the not bearded. there IS a resemblance.
then jack takes juliet prisoner. with that door, i thought the whole big deal was infection. never saw torrents of water coming, no. seems obvious now, the wheel on a submarine door he was turning. right before the flood broke, you could hear a sound previously associated with the monster in the early episodes, that sort of mechanized keening.
then sawyer uses a black rock to win himself a DHARMA fish biscuit. i love it. he and kate get to share a cellblock in the island zoo, nice last shot there. hey, wonder if eko survived, or if he's lying broken and bloody, mangled and crushed under tons of metal?
let's check back in with jack.
so, we're in the hydra, an underwater DI station, juliet tells us. 'THEY called it the hydra' is an interesting distinction, 'they' being the operative word, but then she kind of dances around it when jack tries to nail her down about being what's left of them. so, those two stacks of paper are jack's life. bet they've got stacks for everyone, too. implying a connection between this crew and the security system/black smoke monster/cerberus that flashed eko's life at him when he confronted it on 1/11.
who was the dude waiting for sarah after she posted jack's bail? the flash we get of him, his eyes and mouth look reminiscent of TAFKAHG. but not him, i don't think. second uncanny resemblance of the show, though. BAD TWIN was all about widmore twins, could this guy and/or juliet be widmore twins? just stabbing in the dark now. really just looking/needing sarah's Other Man to actually be an Other Man from the island, to justify all this time spent back here.
jack asking if sarah was happy then crying is not the way i would've powered the big ending home. left me a little cold.
great last little bit, though. emerson can do so much with just a line and that face. and TAFKAHG's name is ..... ben. the stephen king hater! villain most foule! this casts his 'what, no stephen king?' crack when locke tries to lay some dostoevsky on him in a different light.
soooooooooooooo, wonder what happened at the swan. can't believe we have to wait another week to find out. if they even give it to us then. overall, i found this a very enjoyable episode but less than it should've/could've been and i'll tell you why. i felt like they broke the covenant, man. after that unbelievable opening, they stick us with yet another jack flashback and we still don't even know who sarah's Other Man was. nice moments with the captured trio, just can't beLIEVE we have to twist in the wind another week wondering about all those great characters who got blown up.
i'd give the opening top points, but score the remainder of the episode a bit lower because i felt cheated we jumped from what looked to be an juliet/others flashback to what they've been doing offscreen for the past two seasons to, instead, the Slow Death of Jack's Doomed Marriage part IV. they dropped the ball there, feels like now, though this sort of thing has been known to arc back into worthwhile later on.
but, spectacular opening and breakfast with ben and kate aside, seeing the four big white letters hit at the end, i kind of felt like jack, sitting there with my back to the wall like they told me to before turning around and walking out of the room with my grilled cheese sandwich.
i'm sure the first three eps (or maybe all 6-7 here will all be strung together in a single burst) will be amazing, but the week-to-week is hard.
it's only been 140 days i've been worried about those dudes. another 7, then.
we get the classic eye opening closeup that opens 2/3 of the episodes, looks female. she goes for the CDs. looks like penny widmore, i'm thinking we're mirroring the desmond opening from last season premiere. this is borne out by Downtown, an old tune with a similar beat, tempo, and chord progression to Make Your Own Kind Of Music. Then the beeping, an oven this time, not the computer. and the chorus swells, nice parallels to the beats in the first minute last year.
and the book club. the old dude doesn't like the book, 'no metaphor, by the numbers religious hokum, science-fiction'. i think that line's supposed to mean more than it does on the surface. the criticized book, which is this chick's favorite (and she's turning out not to be Pen, but the resemblance is uncanny), winds up being Brother Stephen King's 1976 debut Carrie, as evidenced by a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of the original hardcover 1st edition (during which the Ladies Bass and Mann did not blink). don't know when this is or who this chick is, but if she's pissed and willing to go to bat for Brother King, we're on her side. even though ben can't stand it and doesn't show.
then, shaking. which makes me think these are all others and we're on the island, that's the swan a-trembling, maybe this is the original incident from the orientation tape. yep, outside, looks like the island, there's ethan and there's the artist formerly known as henry gale. when everyone looked to the sky, i figured the aliens were landing and was already wondering whether or not that was a mistake. but no, much better. that shot of 815 breaking apart in the sky was beautiful. love the way TAFKAHG immediately dispatches ethan and goodwin 'you're one of them, i want lists in three days.' hardcore. nice little village they got there, gazebo and all. so what, they living the utopian ideal, based on the notions of the original john locke?
amazing opening, top drawer.
all these new names in the cast, crazy to see emerson and gainey, such great guest stars (TAFKAHG and tom) there in with the regulars.
whoa, nonono, what's this? jack flashback? no, we're doing the others flashback this time, that's the way they led. i'm questioning that right off. maybe lots of different flashbacks zinging around? yeah, he's dreaming, maybe it'll be all right.
sawyer in a cage. outside. immediately suggesting a difference between his and jack's state of quarantine (infected/immune, either one could be either state). sawyer sees another new logo, looks like an octopus or squid. as soon as you see the picture of a fork and knife on that big old red button, you know conditioned response fun is on the menu.
and juliet introduces herself before the commercial break. is her last name widmore? i think, yes.
oh no, back with a jack flashback, can't stand his ex.
and right away juliet tries to dominate him, get him off the chain.
and the obligatory seasonal kate-bathing scene. WEAR THIS was creepy in an alice in wonderland DRINK ME sort of way. knew she was going to see TAFKAHG. what a performance, my second favorite scene of the evening, their meal. so polite and measured he is. kate says sawyer's name first. 'i did all those things so you would have something pleasant to hold onto because, kate, the next two weels are going to be very unpleasant.' cripes, we get a timetable, that's not good news, should take up at least this first stretch of episodes.
jack finds his pop's # in the ex's cell, seeming to confirm what was set up christian chose the name sarah for his new friend ana-lucia.
was that christian's voice on the intercom talking to jack? sounded like 'let it go, jack'. jack sums things up pretty well by asking juliet 'what the hell is going on here?' yes, that is the question. i the answer comes in a subsequent scene: 'it's pretty much about everything.' that is the correct answer. but what does it mean? douglas adams fans will recall 42 is also the correct answer.
was carl, the kid who let sawyer out, a tailender? or another mole? ominous how they carried him off into the woods like that but we do know they have a penchant for the theatrical.
hey, open on jack and juliet after the break. i wonder what's going on at the swan. if anyone's alive. but, no let's make jack do what we want to then turn around and give him no food, walk right out of the room.
man, sure bought that christian was going to see sarah. of course not. a freakin support group, can't believe locke wasn't off to the side. the flashback pretty much paid for itself when jack screamed 'i won't let you sleep with my wife!' and then divebombed his father. some think the patient jack was working on when he saw his dad take the call (the nurse asked jack if he was sure the patient was capable of taking his own meds) was tom, the not bearded. there IS a resemblance.
then jack takes juliet prisoner. with that door, i thought the whole big deal was infection. never saw torrents of water coming, no. seems obvious now, the wheel on a submarine door he was turning. right before the flood broke, you could hear a sound previously associated with the monster in the early episodes, that sort of mechanized keening.
then sawyer uses a black rock to win himself a DHARMA fish biscuit. i love it. he and kate get to share a cellblock in the island zoo, nice last shot there. hey, wonder if eko survived, or if he's lying broken and bloody, mangled and crushed under tons of metal?
let's check back in with jack.
so, we're in the hydra, an underwater DI station, juliet tells us. 'THEY called it the hydra' is an interesting distinction, 'they' being the operative word, but then she kind of dances around it when jack tries to nail her down about being what's left of them. so, those two stacks of paper are jack's life. bet they've got stacks for everyone, too. implying a connection between this crew and the security system/black smoke monster/cerberus that flashed eko's life at him when he confronted it on 1/11.
who was the dude waiting for sarah after she posted jack's bail? the flash we get of him, his eyes and mouth look reminiscent of TAFKAHG. but not him, i don't think. second uncanny resemblance of the show, though. BAD TWIN was all about widmore twins, could this guy and/or juliet be widmore twins? just stabbing in the dark now. really just looking/needing sarah's Other Man to actually be an Other Man from the island, to justify all this time spent back here.
jack asking if sarah was happy then crying is not the way i would've powered the big ending home. left me a little cold.
great last little bit, though. emerson can do so much with just a line and that face. and TAFKAHG's name is ..... ben. the stephen king hater! villain most foule! this casts his 'what, no stephen king?' crack when locke tries to lay some dostoevsky on him in a different light.
soooooooooooooo, wonder what happened at the swan. can't believe we have to wait another week to find out. if they even give it to us then. overall, i found this a very enjoyable episode but less than it should've/could've been and i'll tell you why. i felt like they broke the covenant, man. after that unbelievable opening, they stick us with yet another jack flashback and we still don't even know who sarah's Other Man was. nice moments with the captured trio, just can't beLIEVE we have to twist in the wind another week wondering about all those great characters who got blown up.
i'd give the opening top points, but score the remainder of the episode a bit lower because i felt cheated we jumped from what looked to be an juliet/others flashback to what they've been doing offscreen for the past two seasons to, instead, the Slow Death of Jack's Doomed Marriage part IV. they dropped the ball there, feels like now, though this sort of thing has been known to arc back into worthwhile later on.
but, spectacular opening and breakfast with ben and kate aside, seeing the four big white letters hit at the end, i kind of felt like jack, sitting there with my back to the wall like they told me to before turning around and walking out of the room with my grilled cheese sandwich.
i'm sure the first three eps (or maybe all 6-7 here will all be strung together in a single burst) will be amazing, but the week-to-week is hard.
it's only been 140 days i've been worried about those dudes. another 7, then.
posted by rb at 12:44 PM
2 Comments:
This episode helped solidify two theories I have had for a little while. First, everyone who loves to deny it.....This show is about Jack. It started with Jack and will probably end with Jack. Second....there was some crap on the ABC web site last season about there being a HUGE revelation in the 1st episode that everybody missed. Something that was in everyone's face and no one has seemed to address it. I think the big "revelation" from the first episode is that Christian Shepard is either alive, or a MAJOR player in this whole ordeal. Just my 2 cents.
allo, gentlemen. sorry it's taken this long to get back to you, local computer no workee.
let's see-
josh: 1) offhand, i can not recall an episode that opened solely flashback. they tricked us with the desmond/hatch bit 9/21/05 of course, we thought it was fb but tweren't and kate blowing up wayne was memorable lead-in to the title but think there was on-island before that. all of which is to say, think this was the first all-fb pre-title and did NOT feature jack, part of why i felt a little cheated, figured it was juliet-centric
2) henry's line is 'what, you don't have any SK?' which to me does not indicate preference, more like locke maybe reminds him of juliet so he's making a one-man inside joke. i feel like there were strict others book club rules (like there wouldn't be, right?) and one absence=expulsion, which ben took voluntarily. prob nothing, but it would be great if they twisted that around in 10 episodes or something)
3) totally missed that, too freaked out about all the new names in the cast (one in parTICular). great spot.
carl sure seems like a mole. wait, not your stepfather. of course.
hope you're right about the swan guys. and wrong.
and Dealer of All Things Sequential:
good point about jack. and very interesting about christian. news to me about the Big Revelation. yeah, he definitely is the most recurring flashback character and remember jack WAS hallucinating him nate fisher sr-style waaaay back in episode 5. i think he's a great actor/character, hope he does turn out to be on the island.
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