I Think I'm Lost: Deus Ex Machina

I did something that I promised myself I wouldn’t do. I watched season one of LOST again. Well it was actually just one episode, and a damn good one at that. It’s the John Locke episode with the one and only Swoosie Kurtz as his fur clad estranged mother.

I noticed a few weeks ago that ABC has been playing season one at 1:30 late Saturday night/early Sunday mornings (I had just finished SNL). This week I decided I would treat myself to a bit of perspective and watch an old episode. The info on the cable told me it would be “Fire + Water” the episode where Charlie tries to drown baby Aaron. Turns out it was “Deus Ex Machina,” an entirely important episode in the lineage of LOST.

I had been against re-watching LOST since I began watching it. I wanted to rely on my memory (and, yes, lostpedia) to piece this mystery together. I didn’t want to delve into the past of the show for fear of it tainting with my perception of its present (ha!).

I forgot that LOST has always played with time. It constantly shines light on its characters from all angles of their existence and I forgot how mysteriously the past spoke to the present during the show’s first two seasons.

Turns out it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch this show knowing (part of) its fate. It’s almost like watching the episodes from this side of the looking glass, where the past, present and future all dance around each other.

Right now I’m watching John Locke get swindled by Anthony Cooper aka Sawyer (who as we all know swindled the parents of our beloved James Ford aka Sawyer) and knowing the fate of this terrible and despicable man is so pleasing. And without realizing it the first time around, this dynamic between John and his father is still perfectly relevant in the grand scheme of the show; looking back on it did not make it seem superfluous, minuscule or unimportant. The flashback remains a valuable tool in the narrative.

The true joy of watching this early episode was its present. It has everything to do with what it was like a mere handful of days after these people crashed on the island. It was a really new time. I mean, Boone is there and Kate and Sawyer and Jack (who is relied upon constantly for medical advice) and Michael and Jin all live together and Sun has her garden and a thick Korean accent. I was filled with joy revisiting early life on the island. It’s pure nostalgia for the present.

This is the episode where Boone gets into the plane! (“Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs…”) Pivotal, really. His death not only marks the first departure of a regular cast member but also ushers in the birth of Aaron, who goes on to become quite a controversial character (hello, he’s part of the Island Dynasty). This is also where the show becomes dangerous in a way - the first time a character’s life is compromised by another’s.

This is also the EXACT episode I was watching (alone in the middle of the night on the couch at La Condesa) when I decided I needed to keep a journal. The journal ended up being mostly exclamations, quotations and questions rather than fully-formed thoughts. Here is the (short) entry for this episode:

Poor Boone, I don’t want him to go.
Who’s to say what’s right or wrong anymore? It depends on who you trust and what you’ve done.
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”
Boone… is this it?

I am personally shocked that I did not reference this episode's end in my LOST journal. What an ending!! After discovering he has lost the feeling in his newly reanimated legs, getting rudeboxed by his fake father and his REAL mother, coercing Boone deep into the jungle (only for Boone to get rudeboxed by a Nigerian priest’s drug plane falling off a cliff), dragging said Boone all the way back to camp with numb toes and shrapnel in his calf and then stealing away in the night, John Locke pounds on the eye-shaped hatch’s window. This is the first time we can see – the hatch is a giant eye, the window its pupil. He curses the island for misleading him, curses himself for believing things were getting better. Then the light goes on. Have all his prayers been answered? Is he on the right path? Was Boone’s accident in vain? And what the fuck is this light?!...LOST

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I Think I'm Lost: Oh My Oceanic Six!

Every season has had it's overarching mysteries. Season 1 had the hatch door, Season Two had the discovery of the tail end and the discovery of the Others, Season Three had pregnancy issues, Charlie's prophesied death and what exact the Others are doing. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Oceanic Six.

Six of our castaways have been rescued, but you have to wait to find out who! What a brilliant structure it was! We eventually find that Dr. Jack goes back to both spinal surgery and denial, Hurley goes nuts (but not really because he's just been to the island and you can't really blame him), Sayid's living up to his potential working as a globe-trotting assassin for "the good guys," Sun's halfway across the world from the other five and doing whatever the fuck she wants, because she's a woman scorned, and Kate was absolved of her heinous crimes, only to go on living a luxurious life with a fabulous wardrobe! Oh, and Aaron is her son.

Poor Kate. Yikes. Is she not wracked with guilt? "You're not even related to him!" Are we actually supposed to believe she likes playing Mommy?! Oh god, there's that horrific moment when the O6 get off the plane and everybody has their own special "Mommy Moment" (even Sayid gets a smooch from Hurley's mom) and then there's Kate, just looking around seemingly terrified, overwhelmed and, yes, lost, having her own little "Mommy Moment!" It must haunt her. I mean, it does. When you got Others waking you up and then calling you in the middle of the night to distract you so that Claire can sneak in for a peek of her own baby and then you run in wielding a gun and screaming at her to not touch her own freaking baby that YOU helped deliver, you're being haunted! Sheesh, Future Kate! Get it together. She's clearly ready to get back to the island, otherwise the apparition wouldn't have told her not to bring him. Something about the way she said it. "Bring" somehow implies that Kate's resolved to go back to the island.

I dunno. Maybe it wasn't an apparition at all. Maybe it was actually Claire. Is Claire even dead? People have expressed this thought to me, and I'll admit it, I was 3/4 of the way to coming to terms with her death after Keamy and his team shot a rocket into her new 2 bedroom - 2.5 bath rancher in "New Otherton," BUT I believe her to be alive and safe and well but changed. Claire somehow must have easily given into the idea of the bloodline when Christian/her dad/"Jacob" told her whatever he had to tell her about the Shephard lineage.

Jack is meant to be on this island. Everyone knows it but him and he keeps making mistakes, on and off the island, present and future, all of this is clear. The brilliant move was presumably made by Jack's father and his (half)sister who left his little old nephew in the woods, so that the baby would be found by Sawyer and protected by Sun and ultimately raised by Kate (and Jack), as Kate's. This child must weigh heavily on Jack's mind, now that he is burdened with the knowledge of his relation the child. This child, the next heir to the Shephard Island Dynasty, becomes a huge catalyst for Future Jack's lament. That and the fact that Kate's still sharing part of herself with the idea of Sawyer. Geez Dr. Jack, get over yourself. (i just remembered when my friend dave told me he had a dream where dr. jack literally stabbed him in the back. typical...)

Selfless Sawyer emerged as a really pleasant component of this season. All season he's been filled with compassion, care, thoughtfulness. propositioning Kate, carrying Claire out of burning buildings, attending so tenderly to Hugo. The man jumped out of a flying helicopter into the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific for the sake of his fellow man!! Thankfully he got back to the island (all shirtless and dripping, out of breath and dashing as ever). Methinks he and Lady Juliet shall be quite the formidable duo.

Sun's alliance with Widmore will undoubtedly weigh heavily on the fate of the Oceanic Six and their return to the island. Seems Paik has been doing business with Widmore for some time and I wouldn't be surprised if Sun comes back with A LOT of power and a lot of vengeance. The woman is forced (by Kate) to carry this baby to the freighter, to protect him and when she finally gets a second to find her own husband, the father of her unborn baby, Kate (again) forces the baby upon her and confines her to the helicopter. Kate goes after Jin, but what happens? Oh, Dr. Jack swoops in to take her away and she bats her beautiful lashes and gets whisked away, maybe forgetting that she just PROMISED to get Jin. God, you'd think after being marooned with someone for two months you think they'll respect you enough to follow through! Ugh! No wonder she's pissed! The second of the "two people...responsible for his death" must be Kate.

What are these confrontations going to be like?? Kate and Jack, Hurley and Jack, Sun and Kate, Aaron and Jack! I feel like I'm in the first act of a Cheaters episode and I'm sizing up the craziness of the cheatee to see how buck wild it's going to get in the last ten minutes when she and Joey Greco storm a Dave & Busters to catch some trash with a fake ponytail and a blur over her face having dinner with her man when he said he was at the gym!

What are they even going to do, the O6? I assume Ben's rule of everyone coming back also applies to Walt? At least they found a way around the fact that the Future actors actually have aged three years. Oh and poor Jack, yet again he's going to have to drag a dead body back to the island. Maybe that means John Locke will be the next "Jacob." That would be cool.

Season 5 bodes well. I'm mainly curious about where exactly Daniel is, because last time we saw him he was on a dinky zodiac with a bunch of nameless extras. Maybe he'll find Jin. Strong points include Charlotte, the "terribly things" that happen on the island now that it's moved, the islands current "location," anything to do with the island and, of course, the wrangling of the O6! I'm hoping we don't leave Des and Penny for a long time. I like to see them in the fold. And it will be absolutely and undeniably unacceptable if they do not address the Life and Times of Danielle Rousseau! That woman deserves more than a bullet in the back and we all know it! She was a warrior and a survivor, a changed woman with a story to tell. She survived for 16 YEARS on the island ALONE! That was a seriously disappointing moment. Perhaps the biggest in the series for me.

But also some of the greatest Lost moments have been this season: Desmond's time loop, the discovery of Flight 815, the castaways finally achieving their goal of rescue, however tainted it may have been. And seriously, going into the future launched the enjoyment and storytelling of this series into the stratosphere! This is a television show with an actual timescape. It's unlike anything ever on television and they prove that now more than ever.

Kudos to you LOST!

I Think I'm Lost: The Constant

There's just too much to say about this episode so I'll keep it simple:

1) I believe Daniel to be caught in a time loop also (he alluded to susceptibility due to exposure to radiation and he uses Des as a constant)

2) Penny + Desmond = Love!! They HAVE to get back together

3) I think Desmond was maybe just willing himself to remember Penny's phone number. As he approached the ship in the helicopter he knew he would need to contact her. Why did he specifically go back to a time when he KNEW he would get Penny's number? Was that his present self sending a message to his past self? Did the past actually happen? I think so. The reason he didn't remember it freely is possibly because of the hatch's implosion and also possibly because at that time in the past, he was possessed by his future self and therefore didn't register it in his present memory (his present memory being, of course, his memory at the time).

4) Ugh, this episode is just too confusing! It's hard to form coherent thoughts about it because it was just so terribly layered and textured. Kudos to you, LOST writing staff.

5) If there's anyone that should be with you when you forget who you are, when you are, where you are or what you're doing, it should ALWAYS be Sayid!

Pat and I are off LOST while we're in Aus, so be careful what you say! I'll have a season 4 recap up by mid June. Until then, stay LOST...

I Think I'm Lost: Eggtown

One Miss Casey Collins tarnished my appreciation of this episode a bit. I will quote the wall post from her I received the day after this episode’s premiere. Keep in mind I had not watched it.

Aaron: stolen baby or in the hands of his rightful owner after the death of his mother?

You can imagine my horror when I read this. My mind was swarmed with confusing questions: Is Claire dead? Who stole Aaron? When does this happen, in the present or the future? Ugh. It was terrible, but I put it out of my mind until I watched the episode.

This is a great episode, as are all Kate-centric episodes. Think about it. They’re all wonderful. I think it’s because hers is the most conflicted of characters. I also think maximum Evangeline doesn’t hurt the cause.

I am not quick to judge in regards to Kate’s baby-stealing. I even think it’s a little hasty to call it stealing at this point. I did like that her character was literally put on trial this week, and we were forced to examine who she is. The answer, as I said before, is that she’s supremely conflicted. She’s selfish but she’s trustworthy. She loves Jack but she loves Sawyer. She’s a beautiful lady with a killer smile but she’s a fugitive. We know she is good, but Jack (and assumedly the Oceanic Six) need to lie in order to help her cause. Only time will tell why Kate has Aaron. All I know is it’s always great to see another episode about Kate and I’m glad to know they’ll be coming until the end.

I also really enjoyed Sawyer’s arch in this episode. I love that he desires domesticity so much, that he really started showing his love for Kate. He wants to protect her. He wants to love her. And given the turmoil that’s currently going down on the island it’s really refreshing to see LOST go back to its roots in human yearning and a desire to feel accepted.

Something that came up in The Economist was addressed quite poignantly in this episode: Ben’s “occupation.” We know the Frieghter Folk are after him, we saw his special room and all of his passports, we know he has Sayid doing his bidding in the future. Then Miles expresses my confusion so concisely:

“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of them, like I don’t know who you are or what you can do.”

The thing with Ben is that he’s always been impossible to trust. He says he’s a good guy, but he does seemingly bad things. It’s like Juliet says: “Ben’s a liar. Or the people on that boat intend to do us harm.” Ben is quickly becoming a main player in this game. I still think he’s only a regional manager, though, and all I want to know is who the CEO is.

I Think I'm Lost: The Economist

If I hadn’t ruined it for myself (damn you, lostpedia!!) I would have been surprised to find out Sayid was the fourth member of the Oceanic Six. But when I think about it I’ve always known he would be one of the few to get off the island. And he’s definitely my top choice for people I’d stick with if I were one of the castaways, so no surprise, really more like an affirmation. But still, there’s something inherently sad about him now. Just like Hurley before him, and Jack before them, I am deeply upset with the state of Sayid in the future. Whatever happens to make him side with Ben is yet another future mystery to add to the ever-growing pile. He seems trapped though. I feel like there must be a part of him that doesn’t want to be doing what he’s doing. I guess that was symbolized through his relationship with the lady he ended up killing. He’s a romantic. He always has been and he probably always will be. It is comforting to know he has a much better grasp on reality than either Future Jack or Future Hurley.

I love that he’s an assassin! Finally his brilliant and deft skills are being used to their full potential, trotting around the globe with gun in hand, eliminating threats to humanity. Now if someone could just teach him how NOT to have girl hair.

I Think I'm Lost: Confirmed Dead

This was a fantastic episode in my mind, perhaps my favorite of the season so far. I just love that the creators of this show can so seamlessly integrate new characters. I LOVE Daniel Faraday! There are just no ifs ands or buts about it, frankly. Miles is going to need to grow on me, but I believe he may come in VERY handy given the fact that he SPEAKS TO THE DEAD! Yessss! Charlotte is totally the new Juliet and I love that she is responsible for the greatest LOST mind-fuck since Libby in the mental hospital: The Tunisian Polar Bear! What a brilliant addition to the cast and the story. Frank, I like. I don’t yet love, but I feel like he’s almost one of us, given that he was meant to be on Flight 815. He’s sort of comforting in that sense.

Speaking of which, the discovery of this flight in the ocean is really just a nightmare for me, the last thing I wanted or needed as a viewer who thinks he has a relatively good idea about what’s going on. UGH! WHAT IS HAPPENING!?! All I can say is whoever has the power and means to plant an entire plane and hundreds of dead bodies in the ocean and get away with it is just too powerful for me to even comprehend. Confirmed Dead is a true milestone for LOST: it proves we’re playing a whole new ball game!

I Think I'm Lost: Update

As many of you know after watching the LOST season 4 premiere I refrained from viewing week-to-week so that Patrick, Katie and I could sit and watch the first 5 episodes of the season without interruption (except for the occasional break for Dry soda and visits with Mr. Dobbington Price III). Let me tell you, I have not experienced the uninterrupted view for about a year and a half, when I watched the first two seasons on DVD. I was in physical pain by the end of it. This is the ONLY way to watch LOST!! No waiting, no “next week on…”, no days upon days of conjecture and wondering. It brought me back to the times when LOST seemed endless and perpetually significant. We’ve obviously decided to wait until our return from Australia (pending we even make it back through the South Pacific [I think we’re both secretly hoping for a crash on a deserted island]). Ok enough of this, on to my thoughts.

PS. Sorry it's taken me so long to get these up. Wi-fi's hard to come by Down Under.

I Think I'm Lost: The Beginning Of The End

(Um, I guess this is your spoiler alert!)

Four things:

1) I loved it, I love the future, yes, yes, I see it and I love it. I love how all the mysteries lying in the future are now lying in the past, with a whole new set of mysteries about the past...which was the future. The narrative really is contained or as Desmond put it "it's a bloody snowglobe!" There is something so sad about seeing Future characters. Just like Future Jack did with Jack, Future Hurley has chipped away at the fine and noble fabric that was Hurley, leaving only a deflated shell of a once great warrior. But Future is the new Past, so I'm ok with it.

2) Charlie. "I'm dead, but I'm here." And the other guy saw him, so he must really BE THERE. Right? Well, I suppose it is a mental institution... But let's think a moment on how this may further play into the Life/Death theme that seems to be becoming important. Let's remember that dead people often appear on the island. Let's remember Future Jack spoke of his father writing prescriptions and actually be upstairs at the hospital. Does the island manifest the dead both on and off the island? Is this a curse of all those unresolved and desperate? Apparitions? Heavy... (But for one second didn't you think that Charlie was still alive and at some point in the narrative they find a way of bringing him back, or it actually never really happened and he was fine all along? Just a thought)

3) Something happened. Something big. Future Jack referred to it when pleading with Future Kate: "I can't keep lying." Future Hurley assumed Future Jack thought he "went nuts and told them everything." Mistakes were made. Bridges were crossed. And burned.

4) Goddam you, THE OCEANIC SIX!?! You can't do that to me! This is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night. For the last 30 hours all I've been hearing running through my head is "I'm one of the Oceanic Six. Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic Six!" Ok, so now we know how many come back. And thankfully we know half now: Jack, Kate, Hurley. I'm going to support my previous theories and say that John Locke was also one. This is because a strong part of me believes he was in that coffin. But given the recent legitimate schism, I don't know if Locke would even think about leaving the island. And besides just because someone came back doesn't mean the rest aren't still alive on the island. I mean, remember that scary black man who tried to take Hurley away. "Are they still alive?" 'They' could be anyone: the Hostiles, other survivors of the crash, hell, even the current invaders from Naomi's ship. ANYONE. Geez, knowing all your friends were having ridiculous action-adventures on a mystical island in the middle of nowhere and not being able to rejoin them must be really tough. Will, as Hurley predicted, the island find a way to bring them back? Can their mistakes be undone? Is a Lost island never found again or will the Oceanic Six live to fight another day? REGARDLESS, I can't believe this shit. I have to know and I have to know now. Talk about plaguing my thoughts! "I'm one of the Oceanic Six" is definitely the new "We have to go back, Kate! We have to go back"

I Think I'm Lost: The Future

I just want to throw down some of my theories about what's going to be happening on LOST in this and the coming seasons. As we all know, it's practically impossible to predict what exactly will happen, but we also know that the theories are endless.

First of all, we know these people on Naomi's boat are not coming to save the survivors of Flight 815 and the big question being begged by the network is 'What are they there for?' I've thought for a long time about what exactly is on this island. What are the Hostiles, formerly the Others, protecting and why? What are these mysterious "island properties"? How did Locke get legs and how did Jin get sperm? My theory is that this island is the site of some sort of Fountain of Youth. It's a unique life source that cannot be discovered by the global public for fear of worldwide corruption.

I think Kate's pregnant with Sawyer's baby, but I think she's going to "take care of it", if you know what I mean. I think Sun's going to die and the crouching tiger/hidden dragon I've always known was inside of Jin will finally come out. He's going to go crazy and rip shit up all over the island, like the next Danielle Rousseau: a foreign recluse with a vendetta. I think Claire is going to leave on a helicopter with Aaron (probably early in the season), because I believe Desmond's visions are correct. I think the tension between Jack and Locke is only going to get worse. And I think Ben will die on the island.

Tomorrow's episode, entitled The Beginning Of The End, is going to be a whirlwind: new faces, new places, time traveling, darkness, running, jungle, maybe the return of some treacherous island creatures. I bet Island Time won't exceed one day if that, and the narrative won't progress in leaps and bounds. But it's going to be full of character development, rich with convention and it's going to do a superb job of, as it's title suggests, beginning the end of this fine series.

Tune in tomorrow at 8pm on ABC.

I Think I'm Lost: The Present

Now that I have DVR my whole outlook on LOST has changed. As I find going week-to-week pretty close to torture, I am attempting an experiment. Because Patrick is going to be arriving here in LA in late February we've decided to wait, and well up the episodes that air between now and then, and watch them all in one fell swoop. My thought was 'Hey, I've waited 8 months so far, what's one more?'

Well, we've already broken this pact. We've both been invited and, in his case, forced to join LOST premiere parties tomorrow. We talked and decided that we shall attend the premiere and then practice the restraint we're both confident we have. My thought was 'Hey, I've waited 8 months so far, I deserve a little LOST!'

So I am totally and utterly, in every way possible, completely ecstatic about tomorrow night!! I am going to be meeting some new LOST fans (which is always great because you get to hear their thoughts and comments), have a tropical drink or two and let my mind begin racing again after it's been laying fallow for months!

But what about the month in between now and the end of February when Patrick arrives!? It's seriously going to be hard staying away from LOST episodes that are going to be recording on my own television! I'll just need something to do on Thursday nights, like knitting or basket weaving or card house building!

You can expect my thoughts on LOST's premiere episode later this week, but be wary of what you say to me about the show after that. I think I'm making the right choice.

What do YOU think??

I Think I'm Lost: The Past

You may notice that I did not title this post Telly on Telly. That is because when I talk about LOST I am not speaking "on" it. I am speaking "of" it. This isn't Telly on LOST, it's Telly in LOST. This show completely consumes me like no other constructed narrative piece of writing and vision. I am in awe at its relentless ability to furnish such a unique feeling of, well, loss. It's the only time on television (or movies for that matter) when I get the overwhelming sensation of originality. It's like Jagerbombs of jouissance!

It all started when I began to feel left out. I had always heard LOST was great, and I never actively avoided it to be non-conformist (only to end up loving it, like I did with Titanic and Harry Potter), I had just never seen it. And I only knew it was about some people who crashed on an island, waiting to discover what the monster was. My friends would bring it up, ask each other questions and theories. I would always say, "Well aren't they just going to find another bigger scarier monster once they find out what this one is, until there are no more monsters to find?" They'd sorta stare at me blankly, ignore it and move on. I realize now it's not because what I'd said was wrong - that is, after all, how the show works - it's because I didn't know what I was talking about.

I thought I had had some exposure to shipwreck survival stories. I had read Lord of the Flies, at least enough of it to find out what the first "monster" was (not to mention the second and third) and the Swiss Family Robinson was pretty fresh in my mind - the first monster is finding food and shelter, second is exploration and the third is....pirates?? I don't know, I've never actually finished the story. Anyway, my point is that I was always a little skeptical of this new survival tale. I was convinced that it would follow a formulaic convention that already existed a million times over.

Oh, boy was I wrong. My friend Patrick sat me in front of his television one Sunday afternoon with a precious DVD box set of Season 1. He'd been a loyal fan of the show since Day 1, when he whimsically decided to watch it with a college roommate rather than fight the impending boredom of another school night. I had nothing to do for the next week so I knew this was my time. I watched two season, 44 episodes, almost 2000 nail-biting, mind-boggling, time-traveling minutes of LOST, in three days.

Sometimes I look back on those three days as a joyous and fruitful time for me. Other times I look back upon it as a curse. Patrick blessed me with a knowledge I never knew existed. But I've been doomed to lead a life of pure and utter confusion and, like Cassandra, it's as if I'm screaming to the heavens at the top of my lungs and no one can hear me! LOST is something different. I promise you it's nothing you've seen before.

The 4th Season of LOST begins tomorrow. If there's ever a time to start watching, it's now.