Lost 2.01 - 2.12 plus BSG link
Dec. 6th, 2006 01:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI finally got my hands on the second season of Lost. Now, I could not help but notice these recent months that several folk on my flist fell out of love with the show, but as for me, half-way through the season (last episode I watched was the one where Charlie has some strange notion of baptism and finds himself replaced as Joseph), I'm still impressed and entertained as ever.
To start with my least favourite character, Jack so far doesn't make me push the fast forward button as much as he did last season, though his flashbacks are as predictable as ever. (Though then again, there are probably only as many stories you can tell about the Dedicated Driven Doctor type, and I've seen them all before with doctors I cared more about.) Which is partly because the show gives him scenes with Locke, and those are naturally interesting. By now, I've seen interviews quoted wherein it is said that Jack was originally supposed to die in the pilot, with Kate, who'd have not been a fugitive, becoming the leader of the group, but the network insisted on a change. (Sexists.) I would growl, except now that I'm half through season 2, methinks Ana Lucia is the character that Kate would have been had the network not insisted on Jack-as-leader, and I do like Ana Lucia. (Who'd have been right at home in Miami in Dexter, methinks.) The episode detailing how her group spent those 46 days was gruelling and showed how this formed her, with the later episode giving us her background pointing out she already made the step to murder once. At the same time, I like that the show differentiates between explaining and excusing; things like Ana Lucia's treatment of Nathan is as wrong as - over on the other side of the island - Jack telling Sayid to torture Sawyer has been, no matter how much reason they have to suspect the, to use a bad euphemism, interrogated.
My favourite among the new characters is of course, don't faint of suprise, Mr. Eko. At first sight of him I thought "show, don't do this, don't serve up the awful stereotype of the brutal big black brute", and lo and behold, they did not - and without going for the opposite stereotype (the Big Black Saint, see also Uncle Tom or more recently one of the main characters in The Green Mile). Instead, it twisted both stereotypes and came up with an intriguing and three dimensional character. Eko's story, from child/youth recruited by warlords/gangsters to druglord/gangster himself to what appears to be Locke's opposite number as the other island shaman, never rang false, partly because it makes the difference between explanations and excuses as well. Seeing teenage!Eko protect his younger brother by performing his first murder is harrowing but doesn't change adult!Eko's culpability in his own crimes.
Back to the regular crew: figures the first episode showing us the whys and wherefores of Shannon from her pov in flashbacks would be the one she dies. When reviewing the first season, I complained that it seemed Abrams & Co. wanted to have their cake and eat it with Shannon/Boone, i.e. incest-but-not-incest because they're not actually blood related, when the storyline would have been the same if they had been "real" siblings instead of stepsiblings. Someone commented, which I didn't understand at the time, that the story would have been changed because it would have taken away Shannon's motivation for doing those scams with her boyfriends on Boone. Now of course I get it. (Though American law must be very different from German if Shannon's father can leave everything to his wife while still having a teenage daughter.) Perhaps most interesting to me about the flashbacks was that Shannon's stepmother (i.e. Boone's mother, right?) didn't just look a lot like Shannon despite not being her biological mother but had basically the same persona Adult!Shannon presents to the world. Also, letting Boone basically betray Shannon (as she must have seen it) by accepting the job from his mother goes a long way of explaining the anger in her as well.
What Kate Did: I take it there was some controversy about that one? Not sure why, if so, because having Kate kill her step (and as it turns out, actually biological father) not for his wife beating or for sexual abuse (the episode makes it quite clear he never did more than looking, not that that wasn't twisted enough) but because she found out he's her biological father and saw that as an irreversible taint on her was a great idea, imo. It's messed up and raw and thus I approve. Plus it made sort of sense of her mother's previously shown reaction on her deathbed.
As Jin and Sun are my favourite couple on this island, I was thrilled we got more flashbacks for them, this time going back before their first encounter. Again, kudos on the avoidance of clichés by making the rich boy Sun's parents set her up with not dislikable or using him to let Sun do the "rebellious daughter refuses to marry parent-dictated intended" story, but making this into a plausible match she very probably would have gone through with if he hadn't been in love with someone else. Jin's side of the story underlines his very different social status again, and while it was a shameless teasing of the audience, I loved how often she passes him in the hotel entrance without noticing, and how they finally do meet each other by accident when he's looking in the direction of someone else. And the two actors continue to have so expressive faces and eyes that I wonder, at times, whether the Korean scenes need subtitles at all.
My favourite single person on the island, otoh, fares so well in present day and in his flashback episode which makes me suspect he's being set up for a fall in the second half of the season (don't spoil me). Present-day, because I somehow can't see Locke remaining content with the bunker (comfy interiors and button to be pushed notwithstanding) as the sole pay-off to the mystery he sacrificed his sort-of-son for; sooner or later, he's going to look for more, plus he now has that book Eko gave him. (Page 47? Okay, wrong show.) And flash-back-wise, because while Helen persuading him to let his rotten father and treatment-by-same go was touching to see, this is still before whatever cripples him happens, and I think - I'll have to rewatch Walkabout to be sure, though - that the phone sex service woman he talks to there is someone he asks to call Helen, so that relationship is bound to end in doom and gloom as well. That being said, the scene with the father was one big suckerpunch, precisely because the guy was so casual and matter-of-fact. "You're not wanted." And you could see, despite the outward age, how emotionally young Locke is at that point. Terry O'Quinn is great in the role.
Now: where's Danielle? Because I miss Mira Furlan and her crazy twisted chemistry with Sayiid. Off to get the second half of the season....
On a different note and show, and found via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skywaterblue: the problem of Lee Adama, summed up. Note: not Lee's problem(s) but the way the show has been writing him, or not.
To start with my least favourite character, Jack so far doesn't make me push the fast forward button as much as he did last season, though his flashbacks are as predictable as ever. (Though then again, there are probably only as many stories you can tell about the Dedicated Driven Doctor type, and I've seen them all before with doctors I cared more about.) Which is partly because the show gives him scenes with Locke, and those are naturally interesting. By now, I've seen interviews quoted wherein it is said that Jack was originally supposed to die in the pilot, with Kate, who'd have not been a fugitive, becoming the leader of the group, but the network insisted on a change. (Sexists.) I would growl, except now that I'm half through season 2, methinks Ana Lucia is the character that Kate would have been had the network not insisted on Jack-as-leader, and I do like Ana Lucia. (Who'd have been right at home in Miami in Dexter, methinks.) The episode detailing how her group spent those 46 days was gruelling and showed how this formed her, with the later episode giving us her background pointing out she already made the step to murder once. At the same time, I like that the show differentiates between explaining and excusing; things like Ana Lucia's treatment of Nathan is as wrong as - over on the other side of the island - Jack telling Sayid to torture Sawyer has been, no matter how much reason they have to suspect the, to use a bad euphemism, interrogated.
My favourite among the new characters is of course, don't faint of suprise, Mr. Eko. At first sight of him I thought "show, don't do this, don't serve up the awful stereotype of the brutal big black brute", and lo and behold, they did not - and without going for the opposite stereotype (the Big Black Saint, see also Uncle Tom or more recently one of the main characters in The Green Mile). Instead, it twisted both stereotypes and came up with an intriguing and three dimensional character. Eko's story, from child/youth recruited by warlords/gangsters to druglord/gangster himself to what appears to be Locke's opposite number as the other island shaman, never rang false, partly because it makes the difference between explanations and excuses as well. Seeing teenage!Eko protect his younger brother by performing his first murder is harrowing but doesn't change adult!Eko's culpability in his own crimes.
Back to the regular crew: figures the first episode showing us the whys and wherefores of Shannon from her pov in flashbacks would be the one she dies. When reviewing the first season, I complained that it seemed Abrams & Co. wanted to have their cake and eat it with Shannon/Boone, i.e. incest-but-not-incest because they're not actually blood related, when the storyline would have been the same if they had been "real" siblings instead of stepsiblings. Someone commented, which I didn't understand at the time, that the story would have been changed because it would have taken away Shannon's motivation for doing those scams with her boyfriends on Boone. Now of course I get it. (Though American law must be very different from German if Shannon's father can leave everything to his wife while still having a teenage daughter.) Perhaps most interesting to me about the flashbacks was that Shannon's stepmother (i.e. Boone's mother, right?) didn't just look a lot like Shannon despite not being her biological mother but had basically the same persona Adult!Shannon presents to the world. Also, letting Boone basically betray Shannon (as she must have seen it) by accepting the job from his mother goes a long way of explaining the anger in her as well.
What Kate Did: I take it there was some controversy about that one? Not sure why, if so, because having Kate kill her step (and as it turns out, actually biological father) not for his wife beating or for sexual abuse (the episode makes it quite clear he never did more than looking, not that that wasn't twisted enough) but because she found out he's her biological father and saw that as an irreversible taint on her was a great idea, imo. It's messed up and raw and thus I approve. Plus it made sort of sense of her mother's previously shown reaction on her deathbed.
As Jin and Sun are my favourite couple on this island, I was thrilled we got more flashbacks for them, this time going back before their first encounter. Again, kudos on the avoidance of clichés by making the rich boy Sun's parents set her up with not dislikable or using him to let Sun do the "rebellious daughter refuses to marry parent-dictated intended" story, but making this into a plausible match she very probably would have gone through with if he hadn't been in love with someone else. Jin's side of the story underlines his very different social status again, and while it was a shameless teasing of the audience, I loved how often she passes him in the hotel entrance without noticing, and how they finally do meet each other by accident when he's looking in the direction of someone else. And the two actors continue to have so expressive faces and eyes that I wonder, at times, whether the Korean scenes need subtitles at all.
My favourite single person on the island, otoh, fares so well in present day and in his flashback episode which makes me suspect he's being set up for a fall in the second half of the season (don't spoil me). Present-day, because I somehow can't see Locke remaining content with the bunker (comfy interiors and button to be pushed notwithstanding) as the sole pay-off to the mystery he sacrificed his sort-of-son for; sooner or later, he's going to look for more, plus he now has that book Eko gave him. (Page 47? Okay, wrong show.) And flash-back-wise, because while Helen persuading him to let his rotten father and treatment-by-same go was touching to see, this is still before whatever cripples him happens, and I think - I'll have to rewatch Walkabout to be sure, though - that the phone sex service woman he talks to there is someone he asks to call Helen, so that relationship is bound to end in doom and gloom as well. That being said, the scene with the father was one big suckerpunch, precisely because the guy was so casual and matter-of-fact. "You're not wanted." And you could see, despite the outward age, how emotionally young Locke is at that point. Terry O'Quinn is great in the role.
Now: where's Danielle? Because I miss Mira Furlan and her crazy twisted chemistry with Sayiid. Off to get the second half of the season....
On a different note and show, and found via
skywaterblue: the problem of Lee Adama, summed up. Note: not Lee's problem(s) but the way the show has been writing him, or not.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 12:42 pm (UTC)I'll read your post once I've seen the rest...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 12:29 pm (UTC)/grin
I made it up to, umm, S2E07? I think? And lost interest, again. But I do like Eko and Locke, so I ought try it . . .
Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading!
Date: 2006-12-06 12:29 pm (UTC)My response to the other major new character to emerge this season, Ana Lucia, will be controversial - I thought she was a great character and the levels of hate for her that seem to have developed in the fandom just show how much difficulty some people in such an allegedly feminist community as media fandom have when dealing with the "strong woman" they claim to want when she isn't lovable, feminine and romantically-motivated enough. You cannot tell me that an identical Antonio Lucio Cortez would not have had fangirls swooning with the angst and emotion lurking beneath that hardened and wounded facade, the tragic slash potential lurking in his relationship with Sayid...
Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-06 12:38 pm (UTC)Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-06 12:40 pm (UTC)Having observed this phenomenon in other fandoms, I'm not surprised, though sad, to hear that Ana Lucia is hated. *headdesk*
Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-06 02:28 pm (UTC)Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-06 07:40 pm (UTC)Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-07 07:10 am (UTC)Some hardcore Jack/Kate or Sawyer/Kate shippers who thought she'd be canonically paired with Jack or Sawyer.
Generally just people who thought she was a nasty thug.
Re: Ah shit! Sorry, delete the previous comment notification if you got it in email without reading
Date: 2006-12-07 09:42 am (UTC)Michellel Rodriguez: just having seen her in that one role, I couldn't say anything but this, but she sold Ana-Lucia as an interesting complicated woman to me. More about her and the others in the second half review I just posted...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 02:25 pm (UTC)Back to the regular crew: figures the first episode showing us the whys and wherefores of Shannon from her pov in flashbacks would be the one she dies.
I was devastated by this, basically because I actually came to adore Shannon at some point - not that I was aware of it! I really liked her somewhat dubious connection to Walt, and I'd love to get your opinion on that as well.
saw that as an irreversible taint on her was a great idea, imo.
OK, yeah, I confess to being one of the people who were confused by this, because it's messed up, yeah, but Kate is presented as such a heroine on the show that I find it conceptually confusing. Through her Sawyer is brought into the running as a compassionate character in Confidence Man, and the writers also go to great pains to make her vulnerable and all the rest of it when it comes to Jack - but the killing of her father seemed, to me, to be a little at odds with her character post-crash. I don't know. Maybe I'm misreading it, but there does seem to be a world of difference between pre-xcrash Kate and post-crash kate that still makes me think we're missing something.
Now: where's Danielle? Because I miss Mira Furlan and her crazy twisted chemistry with Sayiid. Off to get the second half of the season....
Without being spoilery, there's a great episode about mid-way through the season that has great Kate/Claire/Danielle interaction that makes me long for more girl-time on the show. My main quibble with S2 was the sheer amount of time devoted to the will-they-won't-they Sawyer/Kate/Jack triangle, wich makes me not care about Kate, rather than the girl-talk that really humanises her. Plus, I like Claire a great deal so more screen time for her is always a bonus for me. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 07:49 pm (UTC)Having now seen Maternity Leave, I know what you mean. Will post on the rest of the season anon! BTW, if you want to read my take on the first season, it's here (http://selenak.livejournal.com/195279.html).
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:55 pm (UTC)Gahhh, this is my pet peeve -- it's become urban legend, but it's NOT TRUE.
In the original verison of the script -- as in, literally JJ's first draft -- Jack died. Then he showed the script to people to see what they thought, while he himself evaluated what he'd written. People who read the script (probably including some network brass, but also including his frequent creative collaborators and friends like Greg Grunberg) all said, "I like Jack, don't kill him." So he kept Jack alive when he went back through and started reworking it -- a process that involved the creation of many new characters, etc.
So the network didn't insist on anything. JJ didn't wimp out and accept that a male character had to be the lead, and it astonishes me that anybody would ever think this of the guy who helmed "Felicity" AND "Alias."
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 06:25 pm (UTC)Lost is still my favorite show, though I can see why some fans lost interest in it last season. It definitely deviated from the tone of the first, with all the hatch and Dharma stuff. But I love shows with lots of twists and turns and secrets to be discovered. The more they throw in there, especially the little hidden clues and secondary character connections, the more invested I get in it.
I loved your take on it. :) And don't worry, Danielle will be back. She'll be in "Maternity Leave," which I think is a few epsidoes after "Fire + Water."
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Date: 2006-12-06 07:44 pm (UTC)(And hey, Ana-Lucia is a good name for a cat!)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:30 am (UTC)Sadly, Jack doesn't get much more interesting though I think he's an improvement on S1.