Yeah, the donkey-wheel time-shifting stuff, I can buy, because it’s not like I’m sitting here thinking, “HEY! That’s not the way that donkey-wheel time-shifting really works!” But the AP/high school stuff is an attempt to show things the way they work in the real world, so when they screw it up, it’s jarring.
I didn’t like the whole school blackmail thing either because I know that’s not how it works IRL, and it took me out of the episode. All they had to do was find a teacher or administrator who can tell them how to make their idea work. If they can infuse so much ancient mythology and obscure novels and whatnot, certainly they can run the basic storyline past a teacher or two so as not to alienate a substantial chunk of the audience.
The issue is not that I should suspend disbelief because the whole story is fiction. The issue is “what happens when you add a super island, time travel, and smoke monster to an otherwise normal world?” Screwing up the details of the “otherwise normal world” shouldn’t be written off as just another part of the fiction.
Oh, please. School principals can’t write effective letters of recommendation because they’re not in the classroom? Perhaps superintendents, buts principals do interact with their students, and one such as Alex who goes above and beyond would easily be on her principal’s radar. Doubly so if she’s applying to his exclusive alma mater.
Can those who say “the school stuff is all wrong!” explain it to those of us who didn’t see anything wrong with it? Because I’m genuinely curious.
Ffrankly… who cares? All we’re meant to take away from that storyline is that Ben is not an inherently bad person, and that in an alternative time line, he doesn’t betray Alex, but sacrifices for her. The end. I really just can’t get that worked up about whether high school principals actually give recommendations.
I’ll admit the badly written blackmail sub-plot jarred me too - and I’ve never AP’ed or blackmailed anyone. But I forgive the writers not bouncing the scheme off of actual teachers and simply take the whole thing as “Ben has a good heart, witness making the right but difficult choice.”
Remember the speech Jack gave Kate in Ep1 Season 1 where he encountered a surgical mishap and fear threatened to consume him (which he abated by counting to 5). I can see the writers, in their attempt to dab the speech with a swab of veritas, phoning a neurosurgeon to ask, “What could happen in surgery to scare the shit out of you?” then quickly jot down the jargon “nick the nerve sac” (or whatever it was).
But sometimes the writers have to plunge into areas not their expertise. Otherwise they would have to staff a consulting team with con-artits, submariners, pilots, workmen, etc.
Perhaps I’m desensitized: I’m a computer programmer. Has there every been a realistic depiction of how computers work on any entertainment screen?
I’m guessing he’s well respected in academic circles and has been known to send Yale a ton of brilliant students over the years via the pipeline.
Question. Do all West Coast schools look like that, or was that the same school where they filmed the Mark Harmon film, Summer School?
You mean a few simple key clicks DOESN’T “override” the system?
My favourite howler is Scotty’s stiff armed rendering of transparent aluminum (after delightfully chiming “Hello, computer” into the mouse). A close second is Independence Day/virus/need I say more?
We have come a long way, though, since it was deemed sufficient to LIST a BASIC program on the screen to show the computer “processing”…
You guys complaining about the high school recommendation issue remind me of the Trek nerds who argue whether it really was possible for Jeordi to reinvert the phase discombobulators at warp speed.
Anyway, I’m still diggin this show, have no freaking clue what is going on, and am as L O S T as ever.
“Repeat to yourself/it’s just a show/and I should really just relax.”
What did Ben get wrong in his class?
I’m a teacher. While inappropriate relationships would be grounds for dismissal, a principal who quits does not choose his/her successor. The school board hires a new principal and would probably look for someone with a degree in administration, or at least some experience on that level. Ben, who had great ideas, is not experienced enough to take over the whole school. Actually, he probably is experienced enough, but a school board would not consider him so.
For every moment that I’m irked with LOST, there have been dozens of moments of great entertainment. Not that we can get any geekier in here, but it is a similar feeling I have when playing a nice chewy, detail oriented console game. At first blush, the attention to detail hugely enhances my enjoyment, and I run around just interacting with the environment, looking at vistas, etc. Then, in spite of myself, I start taking it all for granted and the boundaries that the game pushed passed are forgotten in the fog of doing battle against the game. What had previously been chortles of glee when I realized I could pick up and drink bottles of beverages strewn around the game for a small health bonus, becomes unbridled rage when I’m in a boss fight, with barely any health and I run to a bottle sitting in the corner of the game only to find that it isn’t one I can drink. Why? Why have you betrayed me so, you fickle-fracking-detail-oriented-bastard-developer-people?!?? Then perspective gradually returns and I realize that the bad is far out-weighed by the good.
For the record, the school stuff didn’t ruin the episode for me or anything. I just found it a bit jarring.
Not the class stuff - the letters of rec and the blackmail. As several have noted, principals don’t get hired like that.
I also have to wonder as to just how stupid the principal was. If those email messages were sent from his school computer, all sorts of people have access to them and he would know that.
*NOTICE
Any or all use of, or access to this system and all files on this system may be monitored, copied, recorded, audited, inspected and disclosed to authorized site personnel, law enforcement and other agencies.
Unauthorized or improper use of this system may result in administrative disciplinary action and/or civil and criminal penalties.
By continuing to use this system you indicate your awareness of and consent to the above terms and conditions of use.
Disconnect immediately if you do not agree to the conditions stated in this warning or you are not authorized to use this system.
And have a nice day! *
That’s what I see every time I log onto my school email account. The District IT guys can check this stuff at any time.
During the episode this didn’t bother me at all, but later it started to tickle my interest. It was still on balance an excellent episode.
Nearly all of the main characters have issues with their fathers, at least almost everybody for whom we’ve seen any flashbacks or know much of their history. [ul]
[li]Jack’s father constantly told him that he ‘didn’t have what it takes,’ and Jack was constantly looking for approval that he never got. [/li][li]Kate killed her abusive stepfather, whom she later found out was her actual dad, because her mother had been having an affair with him while married to the man Kate thought was her father. [/li][li]Sawyer’s father killed his mother and then himself, with little Sawyer watching while hiding under the bed, after his mother had an affair with a con man (Locke’s father) who swindled her out of all of their money. [/li][li]Locke was raised in foster care, and when he found his father in adulthood, it turned out that his father was just conning him into donating a kidney, but wanted no further relationship with him at all. When Locke kept pursuing him, his father pushed him out a high-story window, breaking his back. [/li][li]Ben’s father blamed Ben for his mother’s death during childbirth, and was emotionally and physically abusive. Ben personally killed him during the Purge of Dharma folk by the Others. [/li][li]Claire was raised by a single mother, and found out only in adulthood that her missing father was an American (Jack’s dad) who’d been having an affair with her mother but never wanted anything to do with her. (OK, this one is weak)[/li][li]Hurley’s father abandoned him and his mother when he was a kid, only returning to live off Hurley’s lottery winnings once Hurley became rich. [/li][li]Sun’s father is a mob-boss-like leader of a large corporation who forces her husband to do his dirty work, scarring Jin and nearly destroying their marriage. [/li][li]Jin is ashamed of his father’s low class and status, and pretends that his father is dead. [/li][li]Walt and Michael had a very charged father-son relationship, although I don’t know if that falls into the class of daddy issues per se. [/li][li]Miles felt that his father abandoned him and his mother when he was a baby, and doesn’t forgive him until time-traveling to Dharmaville, meeting his father, and realizing why he did it.[/ul][/li]Granted, not everybody has daddy issues that I can think of, like Juliet, Charlie, Daniel, Eko, Ana Lucia, or Desmond (he has father*-in-law* issues.)
Well, Daniel’s dad was Widmore, who he only met a couple times and had no idea he was his father. Who also sent him back to the island to be killed.
But it’s not. They already showed the date on Claire’s sonogram that said it was 2004.
OK, but what was actually depicted on screen “This board respects you and would likely go with whoever you choose” didn’t seem super outlandish to me.
I agree. He wasn’t saying it was Dickless’s hire to make, but rather he was so respected that if he said “no one can take over and run things the way I run them but Ben Linus” Ben felt certain it would happen.
Seems reasonable to me as well.
As for Dickless’s counter threat, I am sure that Ben could have included the recommendation in his threat as some have suggested; but that was not the point.
I think instead the Ben of ATL realized that he was not the type of person who played games like that. I think part of his acquiescence to Dickless was an acknowledgement that the more he raised the stakes, the bigger the risk he posed to Alex’s well being. It was a less lethal version of his standoff with Keamy, but it was also a nice parallel, as all these ATLs are, to the island events of this episode.