Tuesday, May 11, 2010

>: 111 THE CANDIDATE


Before we even get started, let all acknowledge and tremble before the decision to amalgamate what surely must be, we don’t want to tell ourselves these things but oh Christ unless it’s the line through the finale which of course wouldn’t be a problem but unless that then we’ve probably sat through the final Desmond episode, which is of course what nobody wants to really stare in the face and deal with right now or in the near future, but if you do the math on that, the end of the arc that first shot out into narrativespace with the second season finale, you realize that that means they, Lindelof & Cuse, made the decision to combine the last Jack- and Locke-centrics for the penpenpenultimate episode, and I was just screaming this tonight at my friend driving me home, but veiling it in the subtext of yelling about 3.22, the last episode he’s happened to have seen (also, oh dear Island Faithful, you will recall, one of Our Very Favorite Episodes Of All, the Bearded Jack Episode), but yes weren’t we trying to GET STARTED?

The Jack- & Locke-centrics definitely stand, throughout the run, as some of the series’ best (along with Desmond and Sawyer and of course Eko's trinity, but later for all that). Slamming them together, now, is about Too Much For Me, I feel pretty good about capitalizing.

So. The Episode.

The opening juxtaposition of the two of them hits a rhythm that sets a perfect surreal tone for the scene.

Certainly heading through the titles, “HE’S COMING” or “THE CANDIDATE” are contenders for episode title. But I don’t retain that information through the initial viewing of that episode. Or more get overrided by other contenders.

Bernard’s (!) “PRETTY WEIRD, HUH?” takes precedence though, one has to think (if Bernard future tense quoting U2 at Jack at the end there slides it in for you like it did for me and obscures the correct choice).

Locke Monster springing the whole I Want To Save Them bit on Jack clamps down on my noggin, a mousetrap with long sharp pointy teeth.

And Goodbye Elizabeth Sarnoff. And Jim, whoever you were. But then the unexpected and, as ever, crushing Bender directing credit. Thought we weren't going to see you in that chair until next week! Looks like we’re just going for it, sprinting for the finish line from here on out.

I HAVE YOUR RING also jumps out as an excellent title, at any point in any continuum.

Monster!

What’s so great about the next scene, when the monsters break the other monsters out of the cages, is that it’s an, I guess wasn’t it? logical escalation on the original encounters in the first season. But, you know, just Monster Time again. Jack popping up though really cranked it up. Followed by “I’M WITH HIM” which just HAD to be the episode title at that point, I made the decision to stick with that one, no matter what.

Man, all of them drawing down on Sayid, dispelled by Jack hammering home the interchangeability of HE’S WITH ME and ONE OF US to far greater extents of perfection than I am comfortable with in this moment in May when the sky is always falling right over my shoulder, just out of sight.

But yeah, again and again and again, so meta-OLD SCHOOL, we’re all just now hoping Will Ferrell doesn’t come barreling out of the jungle naked. You can already tell that this last one, the entire season, is going to be a really interesting and much more dynamic thing to parse as a whole than even they usually are. I mean, my God.

Minute 19. Hell and come on, yeah.

The detective angle back in LA with Jack trying to figure the accident, not fulfilled because he hadn’t fixed Locke, with the music, there was at least a chapter’s worth of Chandler just in that scene that ended with the original Sawyer as vegetable, followed by the simple hilarity of the Locke Monster, still Terry O’Quinn, of course, but really, the layers of what’s going in to the execution and critical analysis and self-critical analysis, and where it all sets upon the overall definitive grand hypothetical list of archetypes

I think I’m just down here with Desmond in the well, actually. I’ve only now realized. Yammering to myself.

Now, see, though.

They lay it out for us so clear, might as well get slapped over the face. Locke Monster finds the wires, four bricks of C4 etc, explicitly confesses to all assembled what his master plan of the entire episode is, while attributing that plan to Widmore. Except they have to betray him to do it. Certainly making that pair of pre-season Last Supper promo pics much more resonant.

“Just get him in the water, I’ll take care of the rest.” I’m pretty curious about that rest, and who told Sawyer what about that, seems pretty random, here. Am I forgetting something he learned while palling around him with him at the top of the season?

WOW, and then at the exact halfway point of the episode, Locke says, “Push the button,” and “I wish you had believed me.” They are playing all the hits!

Jack likes his Apollo bars.

I love how he qualifies his apology to Claire for dickish behavior with dickish behavior. Oh, the nuances of Jack, Bearded or otherwise.

Man, the beats of this. Everything coming together, like it’s already over and nothing left to say, all’s done. This entire thing all of sudden has a pedal-to-the-floor GoTime vibe.

HAHA, we should have mentioned Giacchino a few more times by now, but the fact that he drops the Sub Theme in right as Sawyer dives down into the hatch, so perfect, and I swear if they ever make fractal maps of old television series, you know how that winners’ platform is going to look, why does that theme always suggest Verne to me? There is no explicit connection.

Which would be just a hell of an episode title? It's late.

So, it still seems to me to be slightly breaking the rules if you hand Jack the backpack with all four blocks of C4 in it. I mean, if you can’t directly kill him. Can you just hand him that shit, that you’ve got a four-minute timer on? (because how can you resist?) But even if you’re telling him the opposite of how it’s actually going to go, and manipulating and massaging the situations into correct alignment . . . I don’t know, this seems like breaking the rules. I think he’s doing enough to explicitly, directly kill them right here and now.

They make if feel like such a trick and coup, though, still, leaving Locke behind.

Kate shot. Then the bomb. And then. Okay. I didn’t get that. Made it to the fourth pass through this week before realizing that the trinity of deaths all occur after the 8:42 mark of airtime (because I came away from all three previous viewings thinking that Sayid took off like twenty minutes before all that business with the Kwons, what dilation between those emotional impacts)

Oh, man. And then Jack summing quite a bit up with the NOTHING’S GOING TO HAPPEN speech. You see how I immediately spotted the correct title and got distracted.

But then you’ve got to love the next just too improbable reach, Jack’s like, “Oh, there are RULES,” and correctly extrapolates that out of the Oahu sky, and tells Sawyer they’re being manipulated into killing each other, to which my man James replies with aggression and no small amount of foreshadowing.

And then of course, shocking when Sawyer just pulls the pins out at 1:31. Really? We’re not going to get to see-?

Oh, yes we are. Of course.

All three times, too, I’ve retained Sayid’s “Because it’s going to be you, Jack,” as “Because You’re the One, Jack,” which, I guess, is just me shifting back to what I know, archetypal revision.

Of course, TITANIC, now. Suddenly.

If Jack and the Kwons knew they were all saying goodbye to each other, which I think they did, I don’t think it would have been too much for one or all of them to say Goodbye or I love you. In hindsight. Just the swimming away like that, the looks between them, so sad.

Man, I made it until the last frame of the red light flashing, when she finally let him go. But then just how he drifted off.

Aw, but right back with Jin after the commercial break. Messing with us so bad, now. And we’ve already seem him do this, go into Sun’s room last week? Reeling through the years.

The Alternate Sunken Island Secret Origin of Locke! Still, even more, a failure. Rings so true. Not what I wanted.

LET IT GO is the title of this episode.

Or saving it for the finale would be fine.

Ah hahahahahah, can’t believe Jack quoted Locke’s suicide note at him in LA. For the climax of their fused-centric! GAAAAHHHH!

Oh, man, though, and I am not kidding, that is the best Jack Cry of the entire series in the surf there, and I used to be making fun but am really being serious now. Communicating the emotion, Boss.

So.

Summing up, to escape, it appears as though the Locke Monster in Black has to kill Jack and Sawyer and Hurley and apparently not Kate, though she’s certainly a freckled wild card at #51, while Richard and Ben and Miles are still out there somewhere, presumably having rigged Ajira Flight 316 with C4, and also Widmore and his reduced security forces are scrambling around the periphery in whatever semblance of opposition they can muster.

Three to go.

There’s just no telling now, structure and –centric-wise. Obviously the finale will be b=Batshit. Maybe that will be the Jacob-centric. Are we going to get Widmore? Christian Shephard? I’ve always taken all these things for granted, and now I’d be elated to get just one. The Monster-centric.

Oh, the spaces in between, dammit and again, the yearning and delight in those spaces in between. I've been sad this entire week, the convergence between Only 3 To Go and INFINITE JEST.

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