I’ve been trying all season to keep my wife from abandoning the show, but last night’s episode makes it really hard…
For one thing, I’m really tired of how much time we spend punching people in the face. Other Guy (Pickett?) punches Sawyer. Benry punches Sawyer. Sawyer punches Benry.
Our entire plot was spent on (a) a flashback telling us nothing we didn’t know already and (b) a red herring. The most surprising thing about the pacemaker is that it was whisked away within the same episode, instead of dragging it out for 6 weeks. What was the big-ass needle for, anyway?
And after all the random violence and wasted time, we do get the tiny shredlets of plot advancement: an Other has a tumor, and there are 2 islands.
If all you are interested in is plot advancement then maybe you should just read the episode synopsis after the show. If watching the characters doesn’t do it for you any more than maybe you should move on to another show. Maybe it would have been better if the show was only one season long and all the questions were answered at the end. That is not what this show is. There is not going to be a big revelation every week. I don’t mean this as snark or as an insult to you. I just don’t understand all the “this show is now dead to me” posts. I stopped being interested in ER years ago. When someone posts an ER thread I don’t bother opening it. If this show stops interesting me I won’t post in the weekly discussions anymore.
Really? I find the fisticuffs quite satisfying and too few and far between, especially when one of our guys gets on in on an Other. If there’s one thing this show needs, it’s more punches to the face. (And more cowbell, of course.)
I just read the “Lost is dead to me” thread after posting this, and realize that my post here was probably inappropriate. My apologies.
It’s not plot advancement I seek per se – just a tiny bit of payoff. Some indication that the writers are not just making it up as they go along. I (and of course, millions of other viewers) have invested more thought & emotion in this show than anything on TV in the past decade…throw us a bone now and then, guys?
Characters…I think my problem with this season is that we’re spending too much time with the least (to me, of course) appealing characters. I don’t particularly like Jack. Sawyer is cool, but last night’s flashback was not particularly insightful, and the present-day Sawyer spent most of his time getting beaten up. Kate…meh. I’d like to see more Charlie & Hurley.
No need to apologize. I didn’t mean to pick on you specifically, your post wasn’t bad as those kind of things go, it was just the most recent one. I really can’t see how I disagree with any of what you just wrote. To me the least interesting thing going on is any kind of love triangle. I like seeing all the characters and they have been focusing too much on the caged ones. I think they are just setting up the scene for whatever the early season cliffhanger will be. You may have to wait for your payoff untill the bulk of the season happens early next year.
I’ll agree on the more punches needed aspect. There’s nothing more satisfying than payback/comeuppance.
“You and me Zeke, we ain’t through”, as Sawyer reluctantly drops the gun at the night time Others line-drawing confrontation.
I liked how Sawyer intentionally got in a fight during the day labor (and got some smooching in too), for the simple purpose of sizing up the various captors. I also liked the way he described it: the one guy whose punch packs quite a wallop; another who had some martial arts training, but he thinks he could take if it came down to it; the rest of them who’d clearly never really seen much real action; and Juliet who Sawyer could tell would have shot Kate “no problem”.
Yeah he does his share of idiotic things, but Sawyer more than anyone else (and possibly due to being a con man) always has his eyes open and is always sizing people up and looking for an opportunity. However infallible the Others seem to be, he’s pretty much your worst nightmare in a makeshift prisoner environment – just waiting for a slipup. He’s smart, he can stand up to torture no problem, and is not afraid to get punched or even laid out.
Badass.
In fact, I think it’d be satisfying to see Sawyer, (non-pussified) Sayid, and Eko take on the Others. Basically three guys who have seen more actual action than all the Others put together. Kinda goes back to those threads we had here recently about martial artists and tough guys versus hardened, experienced streetfighters.
In real life I’d definitely want the former Nigerian warlord, Iraqi soldier, and prison hardened con man on my side. You can have the drugged out rock star, the troubled teen on the run from the law, and the schizophrenic lottery winner.
One more thought (apologies if this was already discussed):
Might Ethan have been Juliet’s husband? We know there are husband-wife couples among the Others. At the book club reading, we see Ethan doing some home repair type stuff on Juliet’s house. He might just be the neighborhood handyman, but I got more a husband-fix-it type of vibe for some reason. Maybe it’s just me.
That’s what I thought, too. It seemed like a little husband/wife psuedo-spat over the plumbing problem rather than what you’d say to the handyman. Of course, they’re all pretty tight, so who knows.
Oh, and just to be a complete hypocrite, I posted my take on the whole “Lost is dead to me” thing over in the other thread, in which I liken it to the video game Half-Life.
See, that’s where this show’s strength lies. I was so much more satisfied learning Jin understands more English than we think, and watching him cock the handgun, then having yet another bizarre mystery thrown onto the pile.
Do we know he was a hitman? I might have missed something. I thought he was muscle, a goon even an enforcer but do we know he killed for him? We saw we he was supposed to do something but he didn’t.
He seemed pretty familiar with the gun Sayid gave him. If he’s used one, I doubt he was just wounding people to get their attention. I got the impression that he had killed some people and only held off of killing the bald guy because it was actually somebody he knew.
For sure. Never know when you’ll need to give someone a little face time with Mr. Coffee Table.
See, for some reason I have the the impression that the Others are just a bunch of chumps and chumpettes that happen to have the upper hand due to the fact that they’ve lived on this island their whole lives, and have access to the guns, remote video and audio surveillance and a host of fun toys like submarines. They’re not really any match for our little band of misfits with morally-questionable histories. It’s just that it’s THEIR TURF.
Sorta like cowboys and indians. “They don’t leave tracks.”
i think Jin has gone out of his way to be everything BUT a hitman, even when those were his implicit orders from Father-Out-Law. he’s done a major tapdance between his personal morals and obeying orders–putting a major beating on that factory owner/whatever guy instead of letting him get killed, smacking down Bald Guy/Sun’s maybe-lover and ordering him to Get Out of Dodge rather than killing him (of course Baldy then does the Big Dive on his own, so he probably got the credit anyway).
Jin’s not a hardened killer… but don’t mess with or threaten his family or anything he holds dear. he’s worked too hard for what he has to allow anything to threaten it. i see him definitely willing to fight to the death in those instances–and the death he’d be aiming for isn’t his.
I’m not particularly fond of the face punching either. But it’s because their makeup people are decent and keep scars and scabs around for a while. I was really sick of looking at Benry’s split lip, and it was almost healed and Sawyer walloped him in the teeth. Now we get another six weeks of Split Lip Benry
Call me weird but I get sick of looking at dirty, sweaty peope. Give them some caked-on blood and scabs, and it’s worse. And don’t get me started on my dislike of five- six- and seven-'oclock shadow…I don’t find any of this “yummy” at all.
Of course…this is the dumbest rant ever. Because what the show’s makeup and wardrobe people are doing is making it more realistic. Just happens to be icky too.
Except the problem with that as I see it comes from episode 2x07 “The Other 48 Days”. When Ana Lucia is having the conversation with Goodwin (before she ends up killing him). She’s already found the “list” that was being carried by one of the kiddie-abductors that she killed earlier – the list that had the names of the kids that were taken.
Ana: Did you kill him?" Goodwin: Nathan was not a good person. That’s why he wasn’t on the list. Ana: What about the kids? Did you kill them, too? Goodwin: The children are fine. They’re better off now.
And of course we have in the season 3 premiere Ben telling Ethan and Goodwin to make “lists”. So whoever did the kidnapping of the tailies, I’m sure Goodwin was involved with it. If there is another separate group (the Teddy-Bear Draggers), they are involved with our “Others” somehow. I can’t see that they are totally separate, from the Goodwin conversations.
Of course, there are some inconsistencies. In the same conversation I referenced above, Ana says:
“You ran out of the jungle 10 minutes after the crash… You weren’t wet…”
Although from the season 3 premiere, it sounded (and looked) like the Others were more than 10 minutes away, when Ethan and Goodwin were sent off on their missions. Although Ana could have been disoriented from the whole crash, and maybe it was more than 10 minutes.
