I believe the episode you missed is This One. “Further Instructions”, Episode 51 (Season 3, Episode 3).
You can read a synopsis of the one you missed here
It also contained a good Hurley line, when he found Desmond (and unfortunately, the trailers spoiled this line in advance, dammit!)
Hurley: “So the hatch… blew off your underwear?”
Ya know, I realized after I posted I should have left out the “e” but it was too late to edit it. It was my fervent hope that someone would get my point without obsessing over the typo. sigh
I assure you you do nothing of the sort. NOBODY talks like that; movie and television dialogue is almost never like real life. If you were to actually have someone tape and transcribe the way you and your friends talk you’d be shocked at how different it sounds from “Buffy” or, for that matter, almost any television program or movie you have ever seen.
In real life, conversation is rife with filler, repetition, sentence fragments, more filler, and is very prone to interruption and simultaneous talking. The discrete give-and-take of film dialogue doesn’t happen in real life, at least not as perfectly as it does in film. Film dialogue always counts for something; real life dialogue is at least one third nonsense, “Ums” and “ahhs” and grunts of assent.
What’s irritating about “Lost” dialogue is that it’s deliberately obtuse in an effort to keep the characters in the know; the direction they’ve chosen to take the show requires everyone be almost universally ignorant of what everyone else is up to, which leads to everyone “speaking” as if trying to be deliberately impenetrable. Good film dialogue still doesn’t sound like real life but it’s written so that you THINK it sounds like real life.
A good example of this is the recent film “The Break Up.” There’s a scene early in the film when Jennifer Aniston’s and Vince Vaughn’s characters get into a terrible argument, and it’s very realistic by the standards of film dialogue, so much so that it’s actually kind of uncomfortable to watch, because it reminds you of real life nasty, mean fights you’ve seen or participated in. But it STILL omits all the filler, repetition, non-verbal sounds and sentence fragments that characterize real speech. It’s like a filtered version of real life, but it works because in real life you don’t remember all the meaningless crap you spew, you only remember the critical elements. “The Break Up”'s fight scene omits the crap, and shows you only the realistic critical elements.
“Lost” contains neither; a lot of the dialogue is absurd.
I think we are referring to two different things lol. I agree no one has the same overall talking patterns at tv and movie, or rather, tv and movies usually do not write dialogue that has a natural talking flow except for a few example where the director is specifically trying to achieve that effect.
I meant the way that we play with the language is similar to what the characters on Buffy do. And in terms of what the original poster said, we also use pronouns in ways in which it isn’t always obvious what they are referring to (and sometimes even when it seemslike it obvious it might not be). And actually we might purposely talk in our own special way to a stranger but not to obfuscate - rather to either be playful or to draw them in to our social group.
But real life versus tv talking patterns wasn’t the main issue anyway, and the example they gave from another show wasn’t really relevant to the point they were making about Lost, which is the way that some plots seem to rely on characters talking in ominous ways and not telling each other things. There I agree with you that it often seems absurd. Sometimes it serves the shows themes of people using information and secrets to gain power and form cliques, or of characters trying to protect others from scary information or protect themselves from having to relay information that seems unbelievable. But often it comes across as bad writing. Can we think of a couple of the worst examples?
nobody raising what i thought was a Really Big Plothole yet?
question: Desmond is talking to Charlie and (who? Hurley?). he starts looking back and forth like he’s trying to make something out/make up his mind. then he’s pelting off to the beach where he rescues Claire (and by exclusion, Charlie). later, when Charlie and Hurley are pinning him down/getting him drunk, Charlie taunts him with the line, possibly paraphrased, “And you heard the lightening too?” when Desmond says he “heard” Claire yelling for help.
ok, with that background… clearly Charlie didn’t buy that Desmond could be hearing Claire – he even says something about them being a mile away (probably hyperbole, but still). so the logical question in my mind is: if Charlie didn’t think Desmond could actually hear Claire, then it would seem pretty obvious that Charlie wouldn’t have heard her either. so rather than doing a Marathon Man to the water, why didn’t Desmond do something much more sensible, like just keep Charlie talking, right where he was, if the objective is to keep Charlie alive?
yes, yes, i know it would lack all the TV drama of a Valiant Rescue Scene, blah blah, would’ve missed the nice shot of Desmond’s terrifice tan… did i say that aloud?
but seriously… if Charlie was the only one in actual danger (which assumes Claire would have somehow been rescued no matter what), why did he have to go for the big rescue and OBVIOUSLY clue Charlie that Something Is Up?
(and is all this Charlie-must-die still a fallout from Jack having resuscitated him from the hanging?)
Nothing says she wouldn’t have died. We know Charlie’s the important one. We don’t really know if Claire is important enough for the universe to keep alive, or if she’s expendable. But how long could Desmond have kept Charlie there in the woods after someone on the beach noticed Claire floating out there? They couldn’t have heard her scream for help, but they would have heard a commotion on the beach. We have to assume someone was going to see her eventually and there would be panic on the beach - Charlie, crazy-in-love with Claire, would be the first in the water and nobody would be able to stop him. Making sure he got there first, Des kept Charlie from ever going in the water.
Someone will likely beat me to this, however: Dez’s objective was to keep Charlie alive, but Claire was still going swimming regardless. If Charlie was kept from going into the water, someone still had to save her adorable Aussie ass.
That was definitely out loud.
Plus, he probably isn’t smart enough to decide whether the universe would spare Claire or not.
I’ve heard he’ll never be an important man…
But he is important man. If pressing the button helped save the world then it’s more import than anything that anyone else has ever done.
If the universe wanted to get rid of Charlie, he wouldn’t have survived the hatch explosion. His survival is going to be the key to the whole island dilemma.
whispering
Save the washed up heroin addict… save the world!
I think Desmond may be wrong. I just don’t believe the universe cares enough about Charlie to go through all the trouble.