>: 104 DR LINUS
Never worth noting before, but the Cable episode description this time out is wonderful, actually points out a facet that I missed.
The tempo of that first scene is just nuts. It’s funny to think about them filming that.
Guessed what island Dr. Linus was going to write just as he was first taking chalk to board. Had to be Elba. Ben and Napoleon, never saw it before tonight, man.
And Artz has formaldehyde on his shirt, hilarious counterpoint to Hurley having Artz on his shirt. I wanted more from the grouping of Ben and Locke and America’s Favorite Biology Teacher herded into the same I.S.D. by whatever long-distance force is actually being exerted, is somebody please for God's sake going to address the issue of fate vs coincidence and probability manipulation? we’re running out of time.
Can’t believe we get the entire bit with Miles doing psychic Island Messiah forensic work before the titles. And I usually can’t stand that mirrored dialogue thing, that old saw about standing over the body with a bloody dagger, and you’d never in a million years think that it would play so well when Miles gives the line right back to Ben maybe five minutes after the first time Ben says it, but somehow, here, it works.
Wild to see Ben taking care of old Roger, the sweetheart. Could have done without them explicitly bringing up the Island and what might have been, I mean, really, that’s the topic of their one conversation that we get to see? We can do better than that, especially with how well these guys play off each other under this new dynamic. Hell, not wanting to choke Roger is just a funny feeling.
Da Fug? Mario Van Peebles is directing this? I have never needed C. Rock reprising the Weeping Pookie Sucking On A Crackpipe scene more than ever, and if I got it in this episode, it might ruin the series. But it might be worth it, so good. Scotty!
OOooohhhh. Whoooooaaaaa. Ilana is finally actually telling one of the 6 that they’re Candidates. About damn time. Wonder what Kate did to bump herself up to 51 and apparently remove herself from contention.
In the instant that Hurley didn’t say anything in response to Jack’s “Well, at least he’s not just stalling,” I was begging, just gnashing my teeth, I mean, for Hurley to lean forward and bite back, “Well, at least he’s NOT JUST MUSSOLINI, EITHER, JACK!” but of course that didn’t happen.
Fantastic scene on the beach, Ben going through Sawyer’s stash, finding that book THE CHOSEN by Chaim Potok (my favorite line on the Amazon summary being: “This is not a conventional children's book, although it will move any wise child age 12 or older, and often appears on summer reading lists for high school students.” A DHARMA Summer Vacation Island Read, in other words), then Lapidus mentioning nostalgia - which always for me is best described to others as a yearning for the childhood that was and wasn’t, along with the bittersweet longing to consume everything that Alan Moore has and hasn’t written in one sitting - followed by Ben’s stone cold delivery of “Come on,” batting cleanup, just ridiculous.
Ha, and Ben and Alex are on Chapter 19, hitting the King Number, as opposed to any of Hurley’s. Sounded like they were cruising around in pre-Black Rock history about three decades back. It’s funny that Alex calls the principal a pervert. That’s such a loaded term, it conjures images much more lurid than the principal banging one of the nurses. I mean, it could have gone a lot worse than that, from where you hope it doesn’t go when she first slips up and alludes to it.
I was kind of hoping that the episode would end with Ben X getting shot into his own grave along with dominating the principal back in LA, and hopefully not banging his favorite student, but wouldn’t the door closing on that particular abomination-about-to-happen be quite a demented way for this one to drum-cut to the four letters?
Also insane: Richard Alpert being like, That Jacob you’re talking to is the bad guy too, the guy who’s been ALL these dead people, and we’re all like ‘Wait, Wha?’ while he just walks off on the single line, “Die.” My man the season six regular came to work and clocked in.
I have now watched Richard Alpert say, “I am not a cyborg,” eight times. It seemed better to stop there. If there is truly any balance in the world, then this would be the episode title. So now we know.
And Artz gets “With whom?” right after Ben shirks proper grammar for the way people actually talk one timestream over when he quite unnecessarily asks Ilana for whom he’ll be digging that there grave on the beach. I wouldn’t have pointed out one without the other.
Linus, you’re a real killer. Strong episode title contender. Any fool just showing up who doesn’t know about the way it went down with Martin Kimi and Alex is missing a pretty substantial layer this week out.
Oh, man, you see how bad it is, when Richard’s there in the Black Rock working on the dynamite saying he wants them to help him out and make him dead, there’s a little bit of slave chain dangling down into the frame just to the right of his head, and stab my eyes if it don’t look just exactly like an 8, someone make it stop, I need some anti-numbers.
And then, wait, Richard seems here to just be linking his whole immortality ageless thing with being touched by Jacob. More of a curse, you say? Alarums!!!! Wait. Wait. Are all of our people on the wheel, these Candidates as featured in the Season Five finale, now Alpert-level immortals? This, just tossed off before all the dynamite-upgrade Russian roulette fun really gets crackling. Love the escalation of that last minute before commercial, Jack lighting the fuse and sitting down. What’s wonderful about it is that it’s so ludicrous, and yet we all know ahead of time that that’s THE ONLY IMAGINABLE COURSE OF ACTION our boy Jack can possibly take at this point, it’s getting to be a hilarious thing, what is the most balls-out crazytime that Jack could do for us right now? and then he nods to himself, realizes what his only move is just a second or two after we do, and then goes for it. Jack Shephard!
(and man, a few years ago, I would have slapped you in the face if you shot this back in time and tried to convince me that that name was going to work as an exclamation on a comparable level to that of tried and true “Jack Bauer!” Consider, the inherent and seemingly insurmountable difficulty of persuading anybody watching weekly installments of Season Two of L O S T opposite All-Time Best Season Five of 24 dropping in right before 2.10 and taking out two regulars in the first fifteen minutes of that particular day.)
I Have No Idea Why should be the title of every episode. I Have No Idea Why, Part 104. The adventure continues. Jack destroys this scene, fantastic escalation from the bit with Locke down in the Swan, on Ben’s maiden 2.14 voyage, when he was not quite Henry.
After the fuse goes out, Jack just up and says it, “We have to go back to where we started.” Ka is a circle. It’s certainly going to be an insane ride back to whatever wildness is reflecting out of Jack’s pupil, if they’re really going to sew it up to perfection. (of course, if it was perfection perfection, this here humdinger would have been broken down into 108 episodes, but, you know)(not really one to complain about five extra episodes)(but, on the other hand, what a perfect symphony of content and delivery it would have been, alas!)
I really really wanted LA Ben’s power play to work. Couldn’t believe Principal Reynolds had Ben’s e-mail ready to go. And, too, haven’t said, we’re supposed to believe that Danielle Rousseau, or whatever her last name is since she’s maybe married to Robert, they’re just off-screen, at home in LA, or wherever the school is? The LA timeline in this season is just yawning out into forever isn’t it? In terms of implied question to definitive answer ratio.
Also, using that scene in the principal’s office to split up Ben running for the gun and what happened next, at a point when I personally believed either he or Ilana could be toast, is one of the best occasions upon which that trick has been thrown, all-time.
Gor, Ilana dropping that “I’ll have you,” business at the end of such an emotional scene really lays you down every time.
They sure drop the expectation reversal on you with that first scene after the last commercial. Ben comes into the office, fiddles with the nameplate and you think it’s definitely his and he sold Alex down the river, then she rolls in and you think or hope maybe somehow he found a way to do both things and then Reynolds, Reynolds!, comes in and pops the balloon. LA Ben did the right thing, of course. Here, he appears to be, no question, a good person. Of course, wait, this is trapdooring into the whole we’re all only products or victims of our own individual circumstances debate, and the only thing separating a fellow from being a megalomaniacal-fast-talking-master-of-the-short-con-who-might-be-persuaded-to-not-only-stab-the-Fucking-Guy-With-All-The-Answers-by-firelight-but-I-guess-what’s-really-germane-here-is-let-Kimi-shoot-his-daughter-rather-than-get-taken-prisoner kind of guy from the sort who throws his hopes for career advancement under the bus for the girl who was his daughter in another life, and is actually pretty sweet, seems like. Let us sidestep the question, island faithful.
Most flattening and unbelievable, the old school first season music montage. Could not handle it. Perfect orchestration, how Giacchino first builds out of the chords from Ben’s theme, just the first couple bars, then right into something from the first season (or just a I-IV reminiscent of same). Those endings are really one of my favorite things about the first season, and it’s incredible to get one this time out, right when they’re hammering home, for the second time explicitly, Hey, this is mm maybe a bit like the first season, yes? An embedded message should have jumped out at me before now, maybe the overriding theme of this entire outing, that the only point of ANY of this, the reason that all of this is happening is for these connections, this random springing flourishing latticework of human interaction, bonding, the folks you’d be happiest seeing walk out of the jungle if you found yourself out on a beach setting up camp.
Don’t you wish you had a button for that? The slow motion beautiful orchestra moments of your life? When you get home for Christmas and see your entire family for the first time all year? Or somehow find yourself sitting there a couple of decades older alongside the old gang, everyone back together, despite it all. Or happen to gaze upon your true love and the light hits him or her in some new way, and you realize all over again, how you've been feeling all this time.
For those momentous occasions that we want to savor, there’s the Giacchino Button. Available in quarter- and eighth-time settings, some themes might not be unique, but all will be crushing.
And I would have been fine with just ending there. But we also get the return of Widmore, which does confirm that it’s 2008, or thereabouts, everyone hasn’t wound up in some far-flung era. Which, hey, nothing seems off the table at this point.
I suddenly realize that the word Namaste will always make me nostalgic for these years.
And that I'll see a grainy Marvin Candle every time. And still think that's his name, believe it.
The tempo of that first scene is just nuts. It’s funny to think about them filming that.
Guessed what island Dr. Linus was going to write just as he was first taking chalk to board. Had to be Elba. Ben and Napoleon, never saw it before tonight, man.
And Artz has formaldehyde on his shirt, hilarious counterpoint to Hurley having Artz on his shirt. I wanted more from the grouping of Ben and Locke and America’s Favorite Biology Teacher herded into the same I.S.D. by whatever long-distance force is actually being exerted, is somebody please for God's sake going to address the issue of fate vs coincidence and probability manipulation? we’re running out of time.
Can’t believe we get the entire bit with Miles doing psychic Island Messiah forensic work before the titles. And I usually can’t stand that mirrored dialogue thing, that old saw about standing over the body with a bloody dagger, and you’d never in a million years think that it would play so well when Miles gives the line right back to Ben maybe five minutes after the first time Ben says it, but somehow, here, it works.
Wild to see Ben taking care of old Roger, the sweetheart. Could have done without them explicitly bringing up the Island and what might have been, I mean, really, that’s the topic of their one conversation that we get to see? We can do better than that, especially with how well these guys play off each other under this new dynamic. Hell, not wanting to choke Roger is just a funny feeling.
Da Fug? Mario Van Peebles is directing this? I have never needed C. Rock reprising the Weeping Pookie Sucking On A Crackpipe scene more than ever, and if I got it in this episode, it might ruin the series. But it might be worth it, so good. Scotty!
OOooohhhh. Whoooooaaaaa. Ilana is finally actually telling one of the 6 that they’re Candidates. About damn time. Wonder what Kate did to bump herself up to 51 and apparently remove herself from contention.
In the instant that Hurley didn’t say anything in response to Jack’s “Well, at least he’s not just stalling,” I was begging, just gnashing my teeth, I mean, for Hurley to lean forward and bite back, “Well, at least he’s NOT JUST MUSSOLINI, EITHER, JACK!” but of course that didn’t happen.
Fantastic scene on the beach, Ben going through Sawyer’s stash, finding that book THE CHOSEN by Chaim Potok (my favorite line on the Amazon summary being: “This is not a conventional children's book, although it will move any wise child age 12 or older, and often appears on summer reading lists for high school students.” A DHARMA Summer Vacation Island Read, in other words), then Lapidus mentioning nostalgia - which always for me is best described to others as a yearning for the childhood that was and wasn’t, along with the bittersweet longing to consume everything that Alan Moore has and hasn’t written in one sitting - followed by Ben’s stone cold delivery of “Come on,” batting cleanup, just ridiculous.
Ha, and Ben and Alex are on Chapter 19, hitting the King Number, as opposed to any of Hurley’s. Sounded like they were cruising around in pre-Black Rock history about three decades back. It’s funny that Alex calls the principal a pervert. That’s such a loaded term, it conjures images much more lurid than the principal banging one of the nurses. I mean, it could have gone a lot worse than that, from where you hope it doesn’t go when she first slips up and alludes to it.
I was kind of hoping that the episode would end with Ben X getting shot into his own grave along with dominating the principal back in LA, and hopefully not banging his favorite student, but wouldn’t the door closing on that particular abomination-about-to-happen be quite a demented way for this one to drum-cut to the four letters?
Also insane: Richard Alpert being like, That Jacob you’re talking to is the bad guy too, the guy who’s been ALL these dead people, and we’re all like ‘Wait, Wha?’ while he just walks off on the single line, “Die.” My man the season six regular came to work and clocked in.
I have now watched Richard Alpert say, “I am not a cyborg,” eight times. It seemed better to stop there. If there is truly any balance in the world, then this would be the episode title. So now we know.
And Artz gets “With whom?” right after Ben shirks proper grammar for the way people actually talk one timestream over when he quite unnecessarily asks Ilana for whom he’ll be digging that there grave on the beach. I wouldn’t have pointed out one without the other.
Linus, you’re a real killer. Strong episode title contender. Any fool just showing up who doesn’t know about the way it went down with Martin Kimi and Alex is missing a pretty substantial layer this week out.
Oh, man, you see how bad it is, when Richard’s there in the Black Rock working on the dynamite saying he wants them to help him out and make him dead, there’s a little bit of slave chain dangling down into the frame just to the right of his head, and stab my eyes if it don’t look just exactly like an 8, someone make it stop, I need some anti-numbers.
And then, wait, Richard seems here to just be linking his whole immortality ageless thing with being touched by Jacob. More of a curse, you say? Alarums!!!! Wait. Wait. Are all of our people on the wheel, these Candidates as featured in the Season Five finale, now Alpert-level immortals? This, just tossed off before all the dynamite-upgrade Russian roulette fun really gets crackling. Love the escalation of that last minute before commercial, Jack lighting the fuse and sitting down. What’s wonderful about it is that it’s so ludicrous, and yet we all know ahead of time that that’s THE ONLY IMAGINABLE COURSE OF ACTION our boy Jack can possibly take at this point, it’s getting to be a hilarious thing, what is the most balls-out crazytime that Jack could do for us right now? and then he nods to himself, realizes what his only move is just a second or two after we do, and then goes for it. Jack Shephard!
(and man, a few years ago, I would have slapped you in the face if you shot this back in time and tried to convince me that that name was going to work as an exclamation on a comparable level to that of tried and true “Jack Bauer!” Consider, the inherent and seemingly insurmountable difficulty of persuading anybody watching weekly installments of Season Two of L O S T opposite All-Time Best Season Five of 24 dropping in right before 2.10 and taking out two regulars in the first fifteen minutes of that particular day.)
I Have No Idea Why should be the title of every episode. I Have No Idea Why, Part 104. The adventure continues. Jack destroys this scene, fantastic escalation from the bit with Locke down in the Swan, on Ben’s maiden 2.14 voyage, when he was not quite Henry.
After the fuse goes out, Jack just up and says it, “We have to go back to where we started.” Ka is a circle. It’s certainly going to be an insane ride back to whatever wildness is reflecting out of Jack’s pupil, if they’re really going to sew it up to perfection. (of course, if it was perfection perfection, this here humdinger would have been broken down into 108 episodes, but, you know)(not really one to complain about five extra episodes)(but, on the other hand, what a perfect symphony of content and delivery it would have been, alas!)
I really really wanted LA Ben’s power play to work. Couldn’t believe Principal Reynolds had Ben’s e-mail ready to go. And, too, haven’t said, we’re supposed to believe that Danielle Rousseau, or whatever her last name is since she’s maybe married to Robert, they’re just off-screen, at home in LA, or wherever the school is? The LA timeline in this season is just yawning out into forever isn’t it? In terms of implied question to definitive answer ratio.
Also, using that scene in the principal’s office to split up Ben running for the gun and what happened next, at a point when I personally believed either he or Ilana could be toast, is one of the best occasions upon which that trick has been thrown, all-time.
Gor, Ilana dropping that “I’ll have you,” business at the end of such an emotional scene really lays you down every time.
They sure drop the expectation reversal on you with that first scene after the last commercial. Ben comes into the office, fiddles with the nameplate and you think it’s definitely his and he sold Alex down the river, then she rolls in and you think or hope maybe somehow he found a way to do both things and then Reynolds, Reynolds!, comes in and pops the balloon. LA Ben did the right thing, of course. Here, he appears to be, no question, a good person. Of course, wait, this is trapdooring into the whole we’re all only products or victims of our own individual circumstances debate, and the only thing separating a fellow from being a megalomaniacal-fast-talking-master-of-the-short-con-who-might-be-persuaded-to-not-only-stab-the-Fucking-Guy-With-All-The-Answers-by-firelight-but-I-guess-what’s-really-germane-here-is-let-Kimi-shoot-his-daughter-rather-than-get-taken-prisoner kind of guy from the sort who throws his hopes for career advancement under the bus for the girl who was his daughter in another life, and is actually pretty sweet, seems like. Let us sidestep the question, island faithful.
Most flattening and unbelievable, the old school first season music montage. Could not handle it. Perfect orchestration, how Giacchino first builds out of the chords from Ben’s theme, just the first couple bars, then right into something from the first season (or just a I-IV reminiscent of same). Those endings are really one of my favorite things about the first season, and it’s incredible to get one this time out, right when they’re hammering home, for the second time explicitly, Hey, this is mm maybe a bit like the first season, yes? An embedded message should have jumped out at me before now, maybe the overriding theme of this entire outing, that the only point of ANY of this, the reason that all of this is happening is for these connections, this random springing flourishing latticework of human interaction, bonding, the folks you’d be happiest seeing walk out of the jungle if you found yourself out on a beach setting up camp.
Don’t you wish you had a button for that? The slow motion beautiful orchestra moments of your life? When you get home for Christmas and see your entire family for the first time all year? Or somehow find yourself sitting there a couple of decades older alongside the old gang, everyone back together, despite it all. Or happen to gaze upon your true love and the light hits him or her in some new way, and you realize all over again, how you've been feeling all this time.
For those momentous occasions that we want to savor, there’s the Giacchino Button. Available in quarter- and eighth-time settings, some themes might not be unique, but all will be crushing.
And I would have been fine with just ending there. But we also get the return of Widmore, which does confirm that it’s 2008, or thereabouts, everyone hasn’t wound up in some far-flung era. Which, hey, nothing seems off the table at this point.
I suddenly realize that the word Namaste will always make me nostalgic for these years.
And that I'll see a grainy Marvin Candle every time. And still think that's his name, believe it.
posted by rb at 1:48 AM
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