>: 101 THE SUBSTITUTE
Really, that opening sequence?
Just as fast as I can:
-open with what can pretty concretely be held up as the mirror double of Locke’s first moments after the crash, instead of jumping up in triumph to pitch in for the save, he can’t maintain the rear double wheelie and crashes to the lawn and just before that can even begin to sink in as humiliating, the sprinklers drop the rain motif right back in on us, but of course the opposite of that attuned to the Island thing we traditionally associate with it then
-the timeline’s shifted because Locke’s about to be married to Helen, which immediately gives us the had no idea we needed it pleasure that we all might take from seeing still crippled Locke lounging in the bathtub coming back from Peg Bundy telling him, “You’re a sweet man,” with, “I know I am,” and at that point you have to pause the frame and really appreciate the smile on O’Quinn’s face, because seriously, there is no way he could have seen this one coming over the bend, just like the rest of us, but, on point:
-Another bizarro flip. He and his father appear to be tight, based on a single remark from Helen. Mad, so that was it, was so looking for him just to have been faking the paralysis and REALLY have been out on the walkabout after all this time, but he was simply rocking the fakeout in the premiere. But still in with A. Cooper/Sawyer? Probably?
-and then just when I’m thinking, so, what, the flipflash-sideways is just going to be the Monster tearing shit up? with Locke in the tub than it is fucking go time black smoke monster P to the O to the V – time, roaring around, stalking Sawyer rocking Iggy, then moving on to drop the same routine on Richard that original Locke did on Ben back in 3.20, only, of course, this time it’s the fucking Smoke Monster, so quite a bit happening this week pre-Title.
Randy shows up with a character-capping performance, fine work from whomever that was. The You’re Fired, DERP Salute! is too much.
Richard is not down with Candidates? Really? But old Bram was privy? Seems a bit odd.
Got to love Richard’s refusal to get down with the Locke monster, though.
And who’s the kid? Someone new? Or someone we know, Aaron or Jacob from the past or future, nonsense the way all those mutually possible options hold each other in check. At this point even the choices seem to be scheming, conspiring.
Also great how before Ben can even finish telling Ilana the story, she’s like, You said THESE were Jacob’s ashes? they go in mah pouch right here.
“He’s recruiting,” was my initial guess for episode title.
Followed immediately by Raw Power, then certainly Search & Destroy.
Ha, and then so strange, the tune coming to an end and just old Sawyer and Locke but not really Locke staring at each other in he and Juliet’s old bedroom. Never would have guessed or charted this from what I was loving four or five years ago but I suppose it feels about right, though of course a bizarre and ridiculous progression.
“Here’s to being dead.” To think what I’ve been drinking to, lo these many Wednesdays + whenever they moved it from where it should be. Always to your health, hoss!
Love LockeMonster’s This Ain’t Yar House, James bit, so true.
Followed by Sawyer’s three reasons he’s on the Island, great example of character conveyed through dialogue..
And you just know Locke’s robotic gantry is going to destroy the finish on Hugo’s Hummer before even that aspect of this Locke parallel comes up just as ineffectual as you’d imagine.
And from that random Hugo temp thing, you want to start putting it together, Oh, this is how he wound up selling houses to folks like Nadia, but of course, we’re just swimming in all the simultaneous possibilities and have forgotten that that happened years ago, certainly before Oceanic 815 crashed or didn’t, then all of a sudden Sawyer is reprising his role with Kate back at the climax o’3.9, validating the hallucination except this time instead of a horse, it’s some boy, but who? No telling, after he comes back with some of the rule talk first popularized by Ben round midnight in Widmore’s suite at the end of 4.09, the monster drops Locke’s catchphrase and at first it struck me so wrong, particularly when he repeats it before the drum/commercial hit, but what if and I know it’s just an astronomical impossibility but what if the original character’s storyline could be saved and it was that he was infected or invaded by whatever the Monster Has Always Been but then in the end he overcame it and became what he had always hoped to be, the special person who made the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone.
Favorite bit of the episode: Alpert’s “We need to go now!” Sawyer, we need to get the fuck out of here. Man, how backward does James have to be to not just get right behind that, I mean, wouldn’t all a y’all?
Surreal temp interview for Locke
but when Rose walked in? had to wonder and suddenly realized where she and B wound up.
and Steinbeck returns. Fine episode to recommend BLAZE before.
Why is the Monster stuck in the form of Locke? These kind of questions sometimes fall by the wayside, amidst the rest.
Killer eulogy from Ben with Lapidus batting cleanup.
And you’re just so sure that Locke is going to connect with Jack and there we’ll be, which, see below, but then poor Helen thinks she’s just opened the briefcase of a serial killer, and again, it’s grating to hear Locke deliver that catchphrase, just for the disabled children in the eighth row who weren’t thrown into seizures by the repetition before that commercial break
NOW WE GO DOWN was my next guess.
Love Giacchino’s theme as they do in fact go down, another mirror with the melodic inverse to his original striding cliff ascension themes.
And then the rock. I’m going to need a little bit more time with that.
Ben Linus, European History Teacher. Sweater vest. Reeling.
And a last scene you can really sink your teeth into. The numbers suddenly show up to correspond with most of our favorite original castaway candidates, coupled with, in a horrifying bout of Verbal Kent/Bryan Singer USUAL SUSPECTS nostalgia, surely not, AFTER ALL OF THIS TIME, top of the B-Team Tucker Gates suddenly resorts to the classic now-that-you-know/putting-the-pieces-together flashbacks with the old Season Five finale flashback key moments, except noticeably excluding the opening and reigning bit with young Katie Austin shoplifting the New Kids lunchbox scored by Patsy, and the middle bit with more-than-slightly-wounded Ilana (also excluding the Juliet flashback, but I think we can group that one under a different column at this time) but O’Quinn and Holloway and everyone who’s getting any camera time are all firing with all barrels, and it’s never been more fun to consider the chorus, the extras, I’m talking about all of the actors who play the characters who get benched for weeks at a time, which, really consider it, that’s like at least half of every listed regular all in a bar, together, like the rest of us just barely able to figure out what might be going on but wondering all the while, always getting their scene pages all by themselves, gutted from the main fluid cohesive screenplay, but imagine every name still listed as a regular who you don’t see just blasted at the party alongside each other, the ones whose performances they get to see shoulder to shoulder with the ones who haven’t acted or even been called in weeks equally blindsided and delighted by these last twists of the snaking narrative.
EPILOGUE: I meant to say last week when they opened with Kate after the DoublePilot, but that definitely forecast a Locke Walkabout this time out and Holy Shit that it happened but, if it holds true, ought to give us a Jack White Rabbit next time out. Followed by, what was it, Koreans, Chahlie, Sawyer? That was in fact the original first season rotation. SUCH a cool idea to settle in to that bookend structure. If it holds, Cap’n, if it holds.
Breathless, as ever, Island Faithful. I will always picture you as you are.
Just as fast as I can:
-open with what can pretty concretely be held up as the mirror double of Locke’s first moments after the crash, instead of jumping up in triumph to pitch in for the save, he can’t maintain the rear double wheelie and crashes to the lawn and just before that can even begin to sink in as humiliating, the sprinklers drop the rain motif right back in on us, but of course the opposite of that attuned to the Island thing we traditionally associate with it then
-the timeline’s shifted because Locke’s about to be married to Helen, which immediately gives us the had no idea we needed it pleasure that we all might take from seeing still crippled Locke lounging in the bathtub coming back from Peg Bundy telling him, “You’re a sweet man,” with, “I know I am,” and at that point you have to pause the frame and really appreciate the smile on O’Quinn’s face, because seriously, there is no way he could have seen this one coming over the bend, just like the rest of us, but, on point:
-Another bizarro flip. He and his father appear to be tight, based on a single remark from Helen. Mad, so that was it, was so looking for him just to have been faking the paralysis and REALLY have been out on the walkabout after all this time, but he was simply rocking the fakeout in the premiere. But still in with A. Cooper/Sawyer? Probably?
-and then just when I’m thinking, so, what, the flipflash-sideways is just going to be the Monster tearing shit up? with Locke in the tub than it is fucking go time black smoke monster P to the O to the V – time, roaring around, stalking Sawyer rocking Iggy, then moving on to drop the same routine on Richard that original Locke did on Ben back in 3.20, only, of course, this time it’s the fucking Smoke Monster, so quite a bit happening this week pre-Title.
Randy shows up with a character-capping performance, fine work from whomever that was. The You’re Fired, DERP Salute! is too much.
Richard is not down with Candidates? Really? But old Bram was privy? Seems a bit odd.
Got to love Richard’s refusal to get down with the Locke monster, though.
And who’s the kid? Someone new? Or someone we know, Aaron or Jacob from the past or future, nonsense the way all those mutually possible options hold each other in check. At this point even the choices seem to be scheming, conspiring.
Also great how before Ben can even finish telling Ilana the story, she’s like, You said THESE were Jacob’s ashes? they go in mah pouch right here.
“He’s recruiting,” was my initial guess for episode title.
Followed immediately by Raw Power, then certainly Search & Destroy.
Ha, and then so strange, the tune coming to an end and just old Sawyer and Locke but not really Locke staring at each other in he and Juliet’s old bedroom. Never would have guessed or charted this from what I was loving four or five years ago but I suppose it feels about right, though of course a bizarre and ridiculous progression.
“Here’s to being dead.” To think what I’ve been drinking to, lo these many Wednesdays + whenever they moved it from where it should be. Always to your health, hoss!
Love LockeMonster’s This Ain’t Yar House, James bit, so true.
Followed by Sawyer’s three reasons he’s on the Island, great example of character conveyed through dialogue..
And you just know Locke’s robotic gantry is going to destroy the finish on Hugo’s Hummer before even that aspect of this Locke parallel comes up just as ineffectual as you’d imagine.
And from that random Hugo temp thing, you want to start putting it together, Oh, this is how he wound up selling houses to folks like Nadia, but of course, we’re just swimming in all the simultaneous possibilities and have forgotten that that happened years ago, certainly before Oceanic 815 crashed or didn’t, then all of a sudden Sawyer is reprising his role with Kate back at the climax o’3.9, validating the hallucination except this time instead of a horse, it’s some boy, but who? No telling, after he comes back with some of the rule talk first popularized by Ben round midnight in Widmore’s suite at the end of 4.09, the monster drops Locke’s catchphrase and at first it struck me so wrong, particularly when he repeats it before the drum/commercial hit, but what if and I know it’s just an astronomical impossibility but what if the original character’s storyline could be saved and it was that he was infected or invaded by whatever the Monster Has Always Been but then in the end he overcame it and became what he had always hoped to be, the special person who made the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone.
Favorite bit of the episode: Alpert’s “We need to go now!” Sawyer, we need to get the fuck out of here. Man, how backward does James have to be to not just get right behind that, I mean, wouldn’t all a y’all?
Surreal temp interview for Locke
but when Rose walked in? had to wonder and suddenly realized where she and B wound up.
and Steinbeck returns. Fine episode to recommend BLAZE before.
Why is the Monster stuck in the form of Locke? These kind of questions sometimes fall by the wayside, amidst the rest.
Killer eulogy from Ben with Lapidus batting cleanup.
And you’re just so sure that Locke is going to connect with Jack and there we’ll be, which, see below, but then poor Helen thinks she’s just opened the briefcase of a serial killer, and again, it’s grating to hear Locke deliver that catchphrase, just for the disabled children in the eighth row who weren’t thrown into seizures by the repetition before that commercial break
NOW WE GO DOWN was my next guess.
Love Giacchino’s theme as they do in fact go down, another mirror with the melodic inverse to his original striding cliff ascension themes.
And then the rock. I’m going to need a little bit more time with that.
Ben Linus, European History Teacher. Sweater vest. Reeling.
And a last scene you can really sink your teeth into. The numbers suddenly show up to correspond with most of our favorite original castaway candidates, coupled with, in a horrifying bout of Verbal Kent/Bryan Singer USUAL SUSPECTS nostalgia, surely not, AFTER ALL OF THIS TIME, top of the B-Team Tucker Gates suddenly resorts to the classic now-that-you-know/putting-the-pieces-together flashbacks with the old Season Five finale flashback key moments, except noticeably excluding the opening and reigning bit with young Katie Austin shoplifting the New Kids lunchbox scored by Patsy, and the middle bit with more-than-slightly-wounded Ilana (also excluding the Juliet flashback, but I think we can group that one under a different column at this time) but O’Quinn and Holloway and everyone who’s getting any camera time are all firing with all barrels, and it’s never been more fun to consider the chorus, the extras, I’m talking about all of the actors who play the characters who get benched for weeks at a time, which, really consider it, that’s like at least half of every listed regular all in a bar, together, like the rest of us just barely able to figure out what might be going on but wondering all the while, always getting their scene pages all by themselves, gutted from the main fluid cohesive screenplay, but imagine every name still listed as a regular who you don’t see just blasted at the party alongside each other, the ones whose performances they get to see shoulder to shoulder with the ones who haven’t acted or even been called in weeks equally blindsided and delighted by these last twists of the snaking narrative.
EPILOGUE: I meant to say last week when they opened with Kate after the DoublePilot, but that definitely forecast a Locke Walkabout this time out and Holy Shit that it happened but, if it holds true, ought to give us a Jack White Rabbit next time out. Followed by, what was it, Koreans, Chahlie, Sawyer? That was in fact the original first season rotation. SUCH a cool idea to settle in to that bookend structure. If it holds, Cap’n, if it holds.
Breathless, as ever, Island Faithful. I will always picture you as you are.
posted by rb at 1:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home