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Friday, February 29, 2008

L-O-S-T Season 4, Episode 5

Let's start with Doc Jensen's Article first. And also, if you didn't check it yesterday, check out his teaser article too.

In the meantime, from Frank:

Last year at Comic Con (a comic book convention) the creators of LOST spoke on a panel. They also showed a preview of sorts of Season 4 (the season we're in), but it didn't show any new footage, it was just a new orientation video. I watched it then and didn't think much of it.

But in rewatching it, I think it's a bit more telling as to where(when?) this season is going.

I suggest checking it out, or check it again if you've already seen it:

The Orchid Video on You Tube.

JJ started this week:

L O S T: The Constant

I will tell you...

that was amazing. i love a Desmond episode. a Desmond episode is like three steps above all the rest in my opinion. a lot to say today... i'll delivery my analysis shortly. but let's get talking people. wow. wow. wow.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

H:

Off the top of my head, I loved the Daniel Farraday “Remember the Numbers” to Desmond and that Hanso is the one who put The Black Rock painting on auction. And WTF is up with Penny’s dad buying it?

Anonymous said...

Todd:

I totally agree w/ JJs assessment, last's nite episode totally rocks...howbeit a tad confusing when discussing possible time travel or consciousness travel. It's going to be interesting to see how the time distortion is unfolded in the plot.
Very interesting that Penny's dad was bidding on a book formerly owned by Hanso. Didn't catch though what ship the log book was from. Anybody catch that?

Does last nite mean that Desmond is one of the Oceanic 6 as he was spotted by the people on the freighter?
What gives w/ Penny's call to the boat causing the yellow light to flash? Does she know who she is calling?

Everyone should check out Doc Jensen's teaser article for last nite's episode.. "The Constant" on www.ew.com

Anonymous said...

PK:

Violently agree – finally gave us something to chew on. Best show in ages.

Anonymous said...

Julia:

What a great episode! I’m not so sure if I’m a big fan of the whole “time travel” angle of the show, but if they continue to handle it like they did last night, then I am on board with it. Here are some of my thoughts:

I’m with you JJ – every Desmond episode is a great episode. The actor who plays Desmond is just fantastic. And I especially liked how this episode didn’t really have any other subplots – it was pretty much all about Desmond and the time-travel question. And it was completely an edge of your seat kind of episode…amazing stuff.

I think it’s been pretty clear that Penny’s dad is somehow involved in the whole Hanso/Dharma/conspiracy thing…wasn’t the pregnancy test that Sun used from Widmore Industries? But I loved how they dropped in the Black Rock painting and ledger…will we ever get to see what is in the ledger? And why does Alan Dale (the actor who plays Widmore) always seem to play the evil corporate titan? He played a similar role in the OC…just without the accent.

Was anyone else teary-eyed at the Penny-Desmond Christmas Eve phone call? I’ll be so sad if those two don’t find each other again before the end of the show…if anyone from the island deserves a happy ending, it’s Desmond. I just hope he doesn’t fall victim to the nosebleed/brain aneurysm.

Since Desmond is Faraday’s constant, does that mean that Faraday has done the same time-travel trick? Or is he just prepping in the event that he suffers the same fate?

Anonymous said...

From JJ:

awesome.

as i already said, a Desmond episode is just a few cuts above for me. Henry Ian Cusack knocked it out of the park again with his intensity and passion. great job.

so, Desmond was in the hatch and that alone was quite a stunner when we found him living down there pushing the button. then we got Desmond's first flashback episode to reveal all about the hatch and meet Penny and Kelvin for two hours. great stuff. that was followed up with Desmond going back in time to relive his breakup with Penny and throwing the ring in the river and hearing the old woman tell him he had to go to the island and turn the key or we all die. amazing - first episode to toss out the bouncing back and forth from the island to the outside world (the whole event was one long mindbending thrasher for Desmond only to wake up back on the island, having lost Penny all over again). We followed that up with Desmond becoming a monk and meeting Penny for the first time (his only standard style episode), but here we go back to throwing out what's been done for something completely different again. amazing job writers! i was glued to the tv and was dying for more when it was over. the cross cuts in mid-sentence and abandoning the "whoooshing" sound was pure genius to convey the immediacy of Desmond's jumping from past to future. awesome.

can i just say - how brilliant is it to approach this time travel concept purely from it being something in your consciousness? that is totally original! everything i can ever recall seeing or reading about time travel has always involved a machine or a contraption or another dimension... but for it to purely to be confined to the mind is sheer inventive storytelling. that was really impressive.

the numbers were everywhere! so much so, you could barely keep track: 2.342 on the device (23 42), Penny's address is 423 (4 23), Desmond has jumped back 8 years, etc. totally crazy.

The auction of the Black Rock's captain's log is totally freaking cool. how anxious was everyone to want to know exactly what is in that book once the name "Hanso" was mentioned by the auctioneer? since Penny's daddy wins the bid, do the Widmore's know all about the island as of eight years ago? did Mr. Widmore and Penny have knowledge NOW that Desmond is on the island once he vanished three years ago because daddy Widmore has the log and would have then known about the island possibly from what it says?

Timebending / Mindbending: alright. this will be tough, but i had it all worked out in the shower this morning -- let's see if i can remember how i figured it out. so the time lag we saw two eps ago with Daniel's payload rocket was like 45 minutes or something. and island time was slower than outside world time... in this episode we see that it took the chopper more than a day to make it to the freighter according to Jack. ( incidentally: how big of a tool was Jack in this episode? he's a doctor and the electromagnetic thing effecting Desmond is like a big "duh, i don't know?" moment for him! what does it take to convince that guy that the island is a weird place!!! the hatch didn't do it. he witnessed the magnetic pull through the wall, Sayid explained it to him, he's been told of the hatch's implosion, he saw the sky turn purple! but none of that means anything to Jack. all the evidence in the world wouldn't convince that dork of anything outside of his narrow worldview!) so anyway, this all made me think of when the plane crashed last season and immediately after that, Benry took Juliet out to the flame station, Mikhail had already pulled up news footage about 815's demise. we've been speculating that the news footage was part of the cover up due to it's immediacy. but now we have the time lag to consider... the calendar on the freighter seems to be in sink with how many days the Losties have been on the island, but that space between the island and the outside world seems to be where all this time bending occurs. the rocket is late between the island, the helicopter is early arriving back on board the boat between the island and the freighter according to Sayid, Flight 815 certainly must have experienced the same thing when it was torn apart, actually crashing much later that the time it was determined by the outside world to have disappeared! ok... then you have Goerge Menkowksi telling Des he looks older when he sees himself in the mirror (how great was Fisher Stevens in the part - and how did the same thing start to happen to him i wonder? was he exposed to something we don't know about? has he been to the island before?) and you've also got Faraday figuring it all out and acting fast to keep Desmond alive. awesome, intense, brilliant stuff. So i think the island and the outside world and in sink, but things passing through the space around the island cause time trouble - slowing time on the way in, reversing it on the way out -- but only briefly (not like real time travel). what say you guys?

Finally, as usual the Desmond / Penny stuff was heart breaking. when they were on the phone cutting back and forth and finishing each other's sentences... wow. loved it. loved it. loved it.

alright kids. what have i missed? i'm sure it was a lot, but people need to work around here!

Anonymous said...

H:

The only thing I would say is that Walt had powers before he was on the island, right? So, does this mean that you have to be pre-disposed to time travel/mysterious powers before you get on the island in order for you to have an off-island effect? Because I’m pretty sure that none of the other Losties are running around time-travelling yet and it didn’t happen to either Sayid or the Pilot. Sayid was on the island and had to have been affected by the radioactive blast too? Unless it was only radioactive when it brought the plane down but after this weeks episode, it seems like every airborn plane/helicopter has trouble around the island.

Speaking of “bending” time Did anyone notice that the coordinates page that Daniel prepared for the helicopter ride was not a direct line from the island to the boat (which as we all know would have been faster) but was a right angle, out to the middle of the ocean and then a hard turn to get to the boat. Just saying. I can’t remember the coordinates off-hand but I’m sure there were numbers in there somewhere.

If Desmond can jump time like that… maybe he called Penny at another point and told her that he was on an island. Or she could have figured something out from her Dad’s ledger.. she really believed he would call and that plus the ledger and the general location where he got lost during the race just had her looking for an island.

Anonymous said...

Frank:

meh, it was alright.

just kidding. I loved it too.

Not much more to add to JJ's always insightful email, but here are a few things I remember from the episode that stood out:

Editing - as I fancy myself a film editor (an award winning film editor, I might add), I loved watching the shifting in times from both a technical standpoint as well as an acting standpoint. If it isn't clear already, Desmond might be the best actor on the show (tied with Benry and Hurley (ya, I said it, Hurley - think back to some teary eyed scenes of his and some of his more 'mental' times)).

"Looks like you have a friend on the boat." My money is on Micheal. Might be an obvious choice, but it has to be him. He's also Ben's 'guy on the boat'.

Liked the Black Rock painting... Widmore buys it, reads it, gets interested in finding the boat, is probably behind the hunt for the island, etc etc. Good stuff.

Gotta go back to the acting... good stuff here. Thought Fisher Stevens character was wasted - a good performance and pivotal, but seemed too short for a bigger-named actor. Might we not see the end of him? There's definitely a story there about him being to the island before.

Loved the interaction between Des/Penny in 1996, but even better was the phone call. Back to the beginning of this email, the editing was fantastic. Especially at the end of the call when they cut back and forth really fast. Very gimmicky, but worked perfectly in relaying that they both knew they only had a few more seconds.

Don't recall the exact scene, but a few episodes back when physics-dude was watching tv, didnt he react something like 'finally' like he was waiting for something to happen (that he may have remember back in 1996) that would bring him to this island? Oh, and radiation experiments + not wearing lead shield on head = crazy physics-dude.

Good stuff.

Anonymous said...

Frank:

It was mentioned in the show that a high level of radiation causes this. Desmond's hatch explosion for him, physics-dude no-lead-head-shield experiments (potentially) for him. As for Fisher Stevens... maybe just too many bad 80's movies?

Anonymous said...

H:

I know they say that but they're not always right... also, just to a JJ point earlier...

The idea of jumping time consciousness is definitely interesting. I love that. I also want to point out that they put that Orchid video out there...where the rabbit ACTUALLY jumped time. There were two of them in the same room at once, right?

Anonymous said...

Because Ben is a liar so Michael wouldn't have been given the right coordinates.

Anonymous said...

JJ:


could the bearing be different to compensate for ocean currents?

Anonymous said...

Frank:

Ya, and/or it could be because they are at different parts of the island.

Anonymous said...

H:
Liz and Julia will join me in saying that for a Desmond-centric show...
I was disappointed that he wasn't shirtless at some point.

Anonymous said...

Julia:

Definitely. But it was still wonderful...

Anonymous said...

Liz:

Confirmed!
;)

Anonymous said...

Frank:

Hah.

Hey, wait a minute. Charlie was in the hatch too! That might explain why he can still travel around? Hmmm, hadn't thought of this yet.

Sure, he's dead, but that's just a small detail.

Might be on to something here...