>: 106 AB AETERNO
You don’t know what to think after the one-two of gasping to the Previously on L O S T . . . starring Alpert followed by a reprise + a few lines of the sole Ilana flashback from the fifth season finale. The Ilana-centric is fine, but don’t play with us up top.
But no, it’s time, what a fireside reaction from Ricardus, opening with that insane half-cackle before launching what we’ve always hoped for, the guy who’s been here the longest’s summation of What The Fuck? And, predictably in hindsight but such a fine thrill the very first time, dude finally starts walking around and telling us the score. Everybody’s dead. And in Hell. With both hockey sticks. I love how the shot where Richard drops the “in hell” line is all Hitchcock askew, my man in the lower left corner.
Wild way to set the tone for the episode, make it seem like it’s probably the long-awaited Alpert-centric, but still fucking with us because of the fact that we opened with a continuation of the only Ilana-flashback, all of us just really trembling at the wild notion that any kind of a –sideways situation might also, as ever, come blasting out of nowhere to redlight us, because, really, there are thresholds and overloads, and let’s just leave it at: I was really sweating the amount of potential narrative formats in my immediate future while fast-forwarding over the first commercial break. Just the full spectrum of what they could still do.
And in terms of time, it’s three minutes total pre-titles, three minutes with Jack/Ilana post-titles and then, yeah, thirty-nine glorious minutes of secret origin. Lapidus just asks How? And we’re trapdoored into the glory of Ricardus astride his steed, galloping through the woods. Quite a gauntlet to throw down, and I confess that I was shocked not to get the Lindelof/Cuse/Bender double A-Team credit for this episode.
Man, that doctor really conjured old WalterBishop from Return of the King. Was totally ready for him to just bite the hell out of a small tomato or series of grapes and the juices to run down his chin in slow-motion. My problem with this scene is it extends one of my biggest gripes with the series, the way Desmond just fatalities ex-CIA Brother Justin out of nowhere out on the rocks to finale Season Two. Same thing here, scans as, Derp! Time’s up, he’s got to die . . . and fatal head injury, caged shot in three . . two . . aaaand
That priest was the real deal, though. Straight out of a Rodriguez flick. To the point that he was conjuring Tarantino for me. Always welcome.
But then, oh, such an almost unbearable tease to drop Magnus Hanso but keep him off-screen, apologizing in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by solving the Black Rock and statue mysteries in the same scene (barely a third of the way into the episode, mind), then, yes, motherfucking taking him out like three minutes later, again off-screen via Bendis exposition, so cruel and way way too much to take, I’ll never recover, no comment at this time, or at least until the holidays, but man. Really feel just totally molested. Maybe teased is closer. They abused my imagination.
Too bad for all of the other guys in chains that the dude who bought Alpert was such a damn efficiency expert that he went right down to take care of that dead slave weight like immediately, because the old Silas Adams Locke monster was definitely right there Johnny on the scene, only took a couple minutes, which, again, props to the efficiency expert for commanding the long game even though it must be said that it left him a little bit blindsided as far as the short game goes.
Ha ha, that is why we have horror, though, so that some terrible creature from out of nowhere can turn up or roar down in, tear it up, and balance the scales in terms of things like our man, the efficiency expert.
And it’s hard, sometimes, when that iconic madness strolls down the pike, CRIMINAL’s springing to mind right here, something obviously and immediately identifiable as classic that you’re experiencing the moment it's released, but that monster scene on the Black Rock with Alpert, even to type that phrase man, juxtaposing all that on-screen black smoke that conjures flashes of Eko with that same perpetually off-screen trick in Season One that, at the time, was a little eye-rolling to the point that you were like, Yah, it’s maybe almost working now in an again Hitchcock way, but What is the Monster, Really? Such a satisfying bookend.
If you didn’t automatically, rewatch the Monster Considers Alpert scene through the lenses of 2.10 and every time that sound effect turned up in the first season.
Wow, and then that bit with not being able to reach the rain coming down. Leave no trope behind, y’all.
Then when the boar shows up, combined with all the on-screen Monstah, suddenly and of course, we get the sense that this week is just like but soooo much more wide-ranging and sweeping than 2.07, when all of a sudden they dropped the entire damn Eko/Ana first season on us in a single episode, except, yeah, as always hoped and prayed for, this one digs so much deeper, not the first season from a different perspective, but think of it as Seasons -42 to -23 leading up to the 815 Crash at 0, if you can but dig it. Trying 4 to say 16 that the novel idea of using the boar AFTER the monster in a completely anticlimactic sense in terms of threat escalation fills in another dominant Season One motif and does a fine job making it look like the experience of crashing on Our Island is universal, no matter what year it is.
(and, God, still just hoping and hoping, I mean, they can do anything with this show, but wouldn’t it be magnificent if somewhere near the end, it just all of a sudden jumps back to the 8th or 4th century, or way further back, I mean, still, now, the possibilities, I’m cherishing them while they’re still x-quantities)
(and but, talking years, didn't the auctioneer that Desmond stormed in on in 3.08, the one selling Widmore the first mate's journal from the Black Rock [the one he mailed to the New Frontiersman right before they set sail, remember], didn't that guy say that it set sail in 1845? I swear he did)
(too, clearly, and for the parenthetical hat-trick, that was obviously not the Black Rock coming in that first scene of the last season finale)
But see, though, what the hell’s going on? (again) Is the Isabella on the Black Rock the Monster? Or was she Jacob? Or separate? Really the ghost? I mean, the Monster sure seemed to kill her, but it’s not like it was her in the first place. And he could have been just staging it, obv. I’m positive that this is all going to not only make perfect sense but slice us on the keen blade of its brilliance when all’s said and done, but there are still so so many questions.
Crazy how Silas Monster gives Alpert the same task as Dogen eventually does to Sayid with regard to him. Really almost too much to take.
Quite a one-two-three there, the Monster finally reverse-echoes Locke’s line from the premiere about it being good to see Alpert out of the chains, but that’s just the opening act, reverse-quotes Don King from When We Were Kings, “I need y’strength!” before how kind of Gone With The Wind homoerotic it trapdoored into there before the break, You and me, Big Boy, we’re gonna take em all on!” Maybe it was just the torchlight.
The Devil/Jacob took his body and humanity. That’s clearly some kind of big deal/news. Gah.
It’s not until the Monster→Jacob stroll that I realize how hard Nestor Carbonell is killing it. Buried in the character, knocking it out.
And coo-ee, Jacob’s almost as perfect and scary of a fighter as Ethan. An efficiency expert of a different flavor.
“Why should I stop?!?”
This episode is just a landmine, of course what we maybe should have expected for the eighth week out, but, you know, I was not prepared. The principal supporting characters are Jacob and Titus Welliver, the latter of whom I knew I was going to aneurysm over seeing if it happened before the ultimate finale. To say nothing of the unscheduled Secret Origin of Richard Alpert.
Uh-huh. And I think Jacob’s “No one comes in unless I invite them in,” is pretty much the major and maybe only answer we’ll get about that loophole business.
Malevolence.
Or Malevolence, Evil, Darkness.
That was my call for episode title. Which I think was quite reasonable. Hahah.
And you have GOT to dig Jacob making the pitch to Richard. I love how squirrelly he is. Just turns it on like the best old time preacher.
Worth noting here, he straight up proves that Original Locke’s his biggest disciple, drops the 1876 pitch with no variation from Locke giving it to Shannon or Boone or whomever 128 years later. Everybody gets a new life on this island.
With all this laissez-faire attitude Jacob’s dropping on poor wtf?Richard, it's hard not to draw the direct God comparison. To the point that that’s surely not the answer if they’re giving it to us even now, but they are sure messing with us, yas.
Or “Live Forever” as title. Really thought that had to be it, with the Oasis/Phonogram connection. Thing is, both guys have now touched Alpert. Does that mean everything?
And the white rock shows up, we’re all together for the first time. The monster disappears exactly like he did in the Black Rock, but the shot angle is reversed.
I love how much elusive closure the last scene seems to give us, Hurley dropping the Oda Mae Brown and all, and just how gorgeous they photographed it, but really, What’s The Deal? At this point, it’s a fair question. Who or which what was Isabella? Jacob, Nemesis, or more like an actual electromagnetic resonance ghost? She seemed legit to me, option 3, I mean.
And it’s great how, right at the emotional point, Alpert can suddenly hear her and Hurley drops out as medium, they’re just talking to each other. Makes no sense, but the moment carries you.
Then I was sure Hurley’s translation of We all go to hell was the title.
We think we’re done, but no, there's still the frankly insane chemistry of Jacob and his nemesis/thrall/whatever’s going on there with Titus Silas. Just watch it again, I’m done.
Actual title = "from the everlasting/eternity." Literally no one in the world guessed it, I’m certain.
Namaste forever, how about. There is a tide of infinite sadness surging up over the horizon, and none of us are ready, no matter how much we've prepared, how hard we've tried.
Cut to Mad Claire in the hole, three weeks back: "He's coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop him."
But no, it’s time, what a fireside reaction from Ricardus, opening with that insane half-cackle before launching what we’ve always hoped for, the guy who’s been here the longest’s summation of What The Fuck? And, predictably in hindsight but such a fine thrill the very first time, dude finally starts walking around and telling us the score. Everybody’s dead. And in Hell. With both hockey sticks. I love how the shot where Richard drops the “in hell” line is all Hitchcock askew, my man in the lower left corner.
Wild way to set the tone for the episode, make it seem like it’s probably the long-awaited Alpert-centric, but still fucking with us because of the fact that we opened with a continuation of the only Ilana-flashback, all of us just really trembling at the wild notion that any kind of a –sideways situation might also, as ever, come blasting out of nowhere to redlight us, because, really, there are thresholds and overloads, and let’s just leave it at: I was really sweating the amount of potential narrative formats in my immediate future while fast-forwarding over the first commercial break. Just the full spectrum of what they could still do.
And in terms of time, it’s three minutes total pre-titles, three minutes with Jack/Ilana post-titles and then, yeah, thirty-nine glorious minutes of secret origin. Lapidus just asks How? And we’re trapdoored into the glory of Ricardus astride his steed, galloping through the woods. Quite a gauntlet to throw down, and I confess that I was shocked not to get the Lindelof/Cuse/Bender double A-Team credit for this episode.
Man, that doctor really conjured old WalterBishop from Return of the King. Was totally ready for him to just bite the hell out of a small tomato or series of grapes and the juices to run down his chin in slow-motion. My problem with this scene is it extends one of my biggest gripes with the series, the way Desmond just fatalities ex-CIA Brother Justin out of nowhere out on the rocks to finale Season Two. Same thing here, scans as, Derp! Time’s up, he’s got to die . . . and fatal head injury, caged shot in three . . two . . aaaand
That priest was the real deal, though. Straight out of a Rodriguez flick. To the point that he was conjuring Tarantino for me. Always welcome.
But then, oh, such an almost unbearable tease to drop Magnus Hanso but keep him off-screen, apologizing in the most dramatic fashion imaginable by solving the Black Rock and statue mysteries in the same scene (barely a third of the way into the episode, mind), then, yes, motherfucking taking him out like three minutes later, again off-screen via Bendis exposition, so cruel and way way too much to take, I’ll never recover, no comment at this time, or at least until the holidays, but man. Really feel just totally molested. Maybe teased is closer. They abused my imagination.
Too bad for all of the other guys in chains that the dude who bought Alpert was such a damn efficiency expert that he went right down to take care of that dead slave weight like immediately, because the old Silas Adams Locke monster was definitely right there Johnny on the scene, only took a couple minutes, which, again, props to the efficiency expert for commanding the long game even though it must be said that it left him a little bit blindsided as far as the short game goes.
Ha ha, that is why we have horror, though, so that some terrible creature from out of nowhere can turn up or roar down in, tear it up, and balance the scales in terms of things like our man, the efficiency expert.
And it’s hard, sometimes, when that iconic madness strolls down the pike, CRIMINAL’s springing to mind right here, something obviously and immediately identifiable as classic that you’re experiencing the moment it's released, but that monster scene on the Black Rock with Alpert, even to type that phrase man, juxtaposing all that on-screen black smoke that conjures flashes of Eko with that same perpetually off-screen trick in Season One that, at the time, was a little eye-rolling to the point that you were like, Yah, it’s maybe almost working now in an again Hitchcock way, but What is the Monster, Really? Such a satisfying bookend.
If you didn’t automatically, rewatch the Monster Considers Alpert scene through the lenses of 2.10 and every time that sound effect turned up in the first season.
Wow, and then that bit with not being able to reach the rain coming down. Leave no trope behind, y’all.
Then when the boar shows up, combined with all the on-screen Monstah, suddenly and of course, we get the sense that this week is just like but soooo much more wide-ranging and sweeping than 2.07, when all of a sudden they dropped the entire damn Eko/Ana first season on us in a single episode, except, yeah, as always hoped and prayed for, this one digs so much deeper, not the first season from a different perspective, but think of it as Seasons -42 to -23 leading up to the 815 Crash at 0, if you can but dig it. Trying 4 to say 16 that the novel idea of using the boar AFTER the monster in a completely anticlimactic sense in terms of threat escalation fills in another dominant Season One motif and does a fine job making it look like the experience of crashing on Our Island is universal, no matter what year it is.
(and, God, still just hoping and hoping, I mean, they can do anything with this show, but wouldn’t it be magnificent if somewhere near the end, it just all of a sudden jumps back to the 8th or 4th century, or way further back, I mean, still, now, the possibilities, I’m cherishing them while they’re still x-quantities)
(and but, talking years, didn't the auctioneer that Desmond stormed in on in 3.08, the one selling Widmore the first mate's journal from the Black Rock [the one he mailed to the New Frontiersman right before they set sail, remember], didn't that guy say that it set sail in 1845? I swear he did)
(too, clearly, and for the parenthetical hat-trick, that was obviously not the Black Rock coming in that first scene of the last season finale)
But see, though, what the hell’s going on? (again) Is the Isabella on the Black Rock the Monster? Or was she Jacob? Or separate? Really the ghost? I mean, the Monster sure seemed to kill her, but it’s not like it was her in the first place. And he could have been just staging it, obv. I’m positive that this is all going to not only make perfect sense but slice us on the keen blade of its brilliance when all’s said and done, but there are still so so many questions.
Crazy how Silas Monster gives Alpert the same task as Dogen eventually does to Sayid with regard to him. Really almost too much to take.
Quite a one-two-three there, the Monster finally reverse-echoes Locke’s line from the premiere about it being good to see Alpert out of the chains, but that’s just the opening act, reverse-quotes Don King from When We Were Kings, “I need y’strength!” before how kind of Gone With The Wind homoerotic it trapdoored into there before the break, You and me, Big Boy, we’re gonna take em all on!” Maybe it was just the torchlight.
The Devil/Jacob took his body and humanity. That’s clearly some kind of big deal/news. Gah.
It’s not until the Monster→Jacob stroll that I realize how hard Nestor Carbonell is killing it. Buried in the character, knocking it out.
And coo-ee, Jacob’s almost as perfect and scary of a fighter as Ethan. An efficiency expert of a different flavor.
“Why should I stop?!?”
This episode is just a landmine, of course what we maybe should have expected for the eighth week out, but, you know, I was not prepared. The principal supporting characters are Jacob and Titus Welliver, the latter of whom I knew I was going to aneurysm over seeing if it happened before the ultimate finale. To say nothing of the unscheduled Secret Origin of Richard Alpert.
Uh-huh. And I think Jacob’s “No one comes in unless I invite them in,” is pretty much the major and maybe only answer we’ll get about that loophole business.
Malevolence.
Or Malevolence, Evil, Darkness.
That was my call for episode title. Which I think was quite reasonable. Hahah.
And you have GOT to dig Jacob making the pitch to Richard. I love how squirrelly he is. Just turns it on like the best old time preacher.
Worth noting here, he straight up proves that Original Locke’s his biggest disciple, drops the 1876 pitch with no variation from Locke giving it to Shannon or Boone or whomever 128 years later. Everybody gets a new life on this island.
With all this laissez-faire attitude Jacob’s dropping on poor wtf?Richard, it's hard not to draw the direct God comparison. To the point that that’s surely not the answer if they’re giving it to us even now, but they are sure messing with us, yas.
Or “Live Forever” as title. Really thought that had to be it, with the Oasis/Phonogram connection. Thing is, both guys have now touched Alpert. Does that mean everything?
And the white rock shows up, we’re all together for the first time. The monster disappears exactly like he did in the Black Rock, but the shot angle is reversed.
I love how much elusive closure the last scene seems to give us, Hurley dropping the Oda Mae Brown and all, and just how gorgeous they photographed it, but really, What’s The Deal? At this point, it’s a fair question. Who or which what was Isabella? Jacob, Nemesis, or more like an actual electromagnetic resonance ghost? She seemed legit to me, option 3, I mean.
And it’s great how, right at the emotional point, Alpert can suddenly hear her and Hurley drops out as medium, they’re just talking to each other. Makes no sense, but the moment carries you.
Then I was sure Hurley’s translation of We all go to hell was the title.
We think we’re done, but no, there's still the frankly insane chemistry of Jacob and his nemesis/thrall/whatever’s going on there with Titus Silas. Just watch it again, I’m done.
Actual title = "from the everlasting/eternity." Literally no one in the world guessed it, I’m certain.
Namaste forever, how about. There is a tide of infinite sadness surging up over the horizon, and none of us are ready, no matter how much we've prepared, how hard we've tried.
Cut to Mad Claire in the hole, three weeks back: "He's coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop him."
posted by rb at 3:14 AM
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