The House Next Door

I'm willing to give Lost a long leash like you, but Kate had better be working with the Others or her escape turning into a non-escape makes NO friggin' sense.

While I certainly agree there's a lowbrow entertainment value to the Sawyer episodes, (great casting of Bill Duke) there wasn't much going on here for me.

Unfortunately for the producers and writers there's already one thing I'm tired of this season: The Others. Emerson's Ben is a windbag (I thought he was going to break into song in the last scene last night); I sort of miss the fun that he had in his "Henry Gale" performance last year. Elizabeth Mitchell and (briefly) Paula Malcomson have had some good moments,but it seems clear that the actual purpose of the Others' behavior will be put off as long as possible. (Who thinks they rose up and killed the Dharma scientists?)

If I'm counting correctly Locke, Sayid, and Son & Jin have each only appeared in one episode this season. I think that spells trouble.

Todd:

I neglected to mention it in my column, but I was actually quite dazzled by the unbroken take of Kate scaling the cage and escaping out the top (which is then done in reverse as she crawls back inside) which is both a testament to Evangeline's physicality as well as the confidence of the show to just let the moment play out naturally. Quite cinematic for television I thought.

Thematically however, you are correct. More evidence for the "boy these people are stupid" file.

Simon:

Like The X-Files I often find the episodes that are more stand-alone in nature are more interesting (at least on initial viewing) than the ones that try and tie together heaping handfuls of mythology with emotionally-hefty back-story. This episode offered a familiar story with really familiar beats but I thought the business with a temporarily neutered Sawyer was endlessly entertaining and I'm sorry to see that element of his character gone so quickly.

Also, I think Emerson's keeping this show watchable. I find him much more interesting now that he's been empowered (and dressing like a Bible salesman) as he's required to try out half a dozen different tactics on each survivor in the service of an as yet determined end-game. It's possible he'll wear out his welcome but I'll take this over the inevitable "Kate's on the run again" episode that we're do for any day now.

It was a pleasure to see Kate do something, anything, besides be in jeopardy and look anxious about her safety and her man troubles. That said, Sawyer was clearly the center of this episode -- and not just because he claimed the flashback; his slightly affected but intriguingly self-conscious surliness is much more interesting than Kate and Jack's milquetoast fretting, Sayid's fretful good guy thing, even Hurley's audience surrogate attitude. He's got a Malibu noir vibe that's not quite like anything I've seen. I used to despise him, but he's grown on me.

Andrew, I too worry that the Others are becoming a distraction/evasion from the heart of the cast and the (presumed) narrative, just as the Tailies were last season. It was an exciting and generally satisfying (though typically random and dumb) episode -- one damned thing after another, Saturday morning serial style -- and the Sawyer-behind-bars flashback was exactly the kind of fantasy tough guy b.s. the character and the show really needed. (I'm waiting for the episode where we see Locke competing in the Iditarod, or the one where Jack is a prizefighter who has to throw a championship match otherwise the crime boss will kill his adopted Siamese twin daughters.) But I still feel somewhat sheepish about continuing to watch, considering how meagerly they dole out the revelations, and my sneaking suspicion that they're just making things up as they go, withholding and obscuring certain elements because they don't have much more of a clue where things are headed than the audience does. I'm addicted to a series that consistently irritates or disappoints me. It's like that Annie Hall joke about the two people in the restaurant. One says, "The food is terrible," and the other says, "Yes, and such small portions."

How weird, I'm seeing Blogger in German! Fortunately all the comments are still in English.

The only reason I still watch Lost is my husband likes it, and it's nice to do something together at the end of the day.

Andrew, I'm having a tough time accepting how much of a pass you gave this episode. Yes, it was great when Kate climbed out of the cage, but then she climbed back in! WTF?! About the best parts of the episode were Sawyer's flashbacks (and it's not often we can say that the flashbacks have value) and that bit with Jack disabusing the Others that he cares whether or not they live or die.

There is no reason, ever, for any of the Losties to believe anything that an Other tells them. If an Other said the sky is blue and water is wet, I'd check for myself before putting any faith in it. I simply could not believe that Sawyer believed that they could put a pacemaker into him under those conditions: it's open heart surgery, you idiot! Do you think you'd be up and walking around so quickly? Do you think they'd keep you in such a grungy environment? (Well, yes, if they just wanted you to die of infection -- but if they want you dead, why not just kill you?)

It was stupid, and even though Sawyer isn't a doctor there isn't a chance in hell that he would believe that they had actually given him a pacemaker, because for the most part, he is not an idiot. And yet, in this episode, he was.

But by far the biggest problem with this show is its relentless forward motion. There are a million things that have not been explained, and at this point, I believe they never will be. Why were the Losties all treated to visions of loved ones or important people? Was that horse real? What's the deal with polar bears, anyway? And the big jungle-stomping, smoke blowing force-field-y thing? We've never got an answer to any of these questions, and what's worse, no one on the island ever talks about them or shows any curiosity.

Ben & co may talk a good game about not being killers but an awful lot of passengers died after landing because of them -- not to mention the kidnapped children. Sure, Walt and Michael got away (we think), but what about those other kids that were snatched from the Tailies? Now that Libby and Ana are gone, does anyone even care about them?

For me the worst aspect of this program is that the writers have sucked all the enjoyment out of the characters themselves. There isn't a one that I care about anymore, with the possible exceptions of Bernard and Rose, and Hurley, although we haven't seen much of them this season. All the allegorical and mystical happenings that made this show intriguing have been swept away, and we're left with this ridiculous hostage setup. As you can probably guess, I find it extremely irritating.

Sawyer is hot.

I know you folks are concerned about me, so I want to let you know that I narrowly escaped being completely sucked back into Lost last night during some accidental exposure. I guess you'd call it a relapse after my radical cold turkey withdrawal early in season 2, but a short lived one I pray.

Listen you guys, I know you probably won't believe me, but I feel it's my duty to tell you that I am almost positive that Lost is a Communist plot to turn us all into helpless drones. Through prolonged exposure to the addictive experience of endless second guessing, self doubt, other doubt, near paranoia, rage inducing almost satisfaction -- etcetera -- they are trying to turn our brains to mush.

OK, OK, "Communist," I admit, is a euphemism for a more contemporary threat. But the warning still stands. I implore you all to get out while you still can. My brush last night with the dark side only convinces me further.

Since there seems to be general agreement, even among those die-hard fans, that the show is trashy, irritating and half-assed (with an aura of muscular certainty cloaking its general half-assedness), and that even during good weeks it verges on being not worth the trouble, I wonder: does it get better, even pull together, if you wait and watch an entire season on DVD?

I ask because without the constant commercial interruptions, and the week's wait from episode to episode, I wonder if the experience isn't a bit more like reading a club-footed but hellaciously entertaining airport novel -- one of those doorstops Stephen King still churns out, and that you might stay up all night reading even though you're rolling your eyes every other page.

I wouldn't know because I've never watched the series that way. Just asking. Is it as problematic as I think it is, or is the medium itself (commercial network TV) the real problem?

Matt, yes! This is exactly what happened to me: I was able to tolerate the irritating exploitive elements of the show when watching the first season on DVD, sans commericals, and being able to immediately watch the next episode.

It's when I caught up to real time and had to watch it on TV and had to experiencing the formally irritating now infuriating (to me) pre-commercial cliffhangers, AND waiting a week (rather than fifteen seconds) for the next episode, that it was actually relatively easy for me to say forget it.

The contrast in experience was considerable. I really don't know where I'd be if I had started watching the show weekly from the start.

I attribute the almost massive backlash against Lost to the scads of people who watched season one on DVD and then dove in to season two and had to wait. . .and wait. . .and wait. And think about the stuff that just didn't make sense.

The problems with the show are still present in season one, but the DVD format (and the fact that it was so damn different from everything else at the time) obscured that for many.

Furthermore, the people I know who watch the show on ABC's Internet site (where the commercials are minimal) tend to like it better than those who watch it on TV. There's something about Lost that makes the viewer crave information, and the DVD (or online) experience simulates what happens when you're reading the end of a popcorn novel -- you can turn the pages faster and faster and faster. When you have to play by the producers'/network's rules, it feels all the worse, I think.

Also, Lost gives off the aura of being "about" something, even if it isn't. A series like 24 (which owes its life to attracting new viewers on DVD before season two) never gives off the impression that it's anything more than a vaguely conservofascist remix of America's Big Fears at the moment, and I think that's why those who first view it on DVD are able to watch it on network as well (though, it should be noted, there's a considerable contingent of "I watched season one in one day on DVD, and it was great. This season has so many plot holes, though!" wandering about the Interwebs for that show too).

Obviously we're moving inexorably to some sort of "pay as you go" form of serialized TV where you can buy an individual episode for cheap with ads, more for fewer ads or even more for no ads. And then you can buy it again for the most on DVD. And I think an argument could be made that that's when the network TV model will truly take off.

Todd, you write, "Obviously we're moving inexorably to some sort of "pay as you go" form of serialized TV where you can buy an individual episode for cheap with ads, more for fewer ads or even more for no ads. And then you can buy it again for the most on DVD. And I think an argument could be made that that's when the network TV model will truly take off."

I wonder if you could clarify what you mean by that last line. When you say "that's when the network TV model will really take off," I assume you mean the new network TV model, whatever that is -- i.e., the post-DVD, post-cable, post Internet model, where the viewer is able to personalize the viewing experience according to his or her own personality and lifestyle, minimizing ads in exchange for paying more, experiencing a show piecemeal while enduring more ads and long breaks between episodes, etc. Because clearly, over the last 20 years, the network TV model as we've always known it has taken a progressively worse and worse ass-whupping at the hands of other media, to the point where it had no choice but to start thinking like a content provider rather than a destination point.

In fact I am often surprised that there are any commercial broadcast network series left that draw big audiences at a particular time each week -- Lost, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, 24, Prison Break, many of CBS' procedurals, and so forth. They seem to be the last remnants of the old way of watching television -- a residual echo from a time when "television" meant three broadcast networks, PBS, some syndicated local chaff, and almost nothing else. It's revealing to realize that NBC cancelled the original Star Trek due to low ratings, but the size of the networks' ratings pie has shrunk so much since then that if the series got the same audience today, it would be one of the most popular shows on the air.

nspector,

I think a lot of the complaints about the show's allegedly stupid characters, who never seem to talk about their dead fellow passengers or the weird shit that was never explained, has to do with the fact that this is a slower-than-real-time show. We've been watching for more than two years, yet the characters have only been on that island for two months. This might explain why there are no "remember when..." moments among the cast. Also, I think it's obvious that the polar escaped from the cage where Sawyer now sits--fish biscuit, anyone? Otherwise, most of you are right: this is a very dumb, very addictive program.

I agree with most of the frustrations listed above, especially the sneaky suspicion that they’re making it up as they go a long. More irritating are the hamfisted attempts to answer fans when they get caught with their pants down (see modern Laundry Machine in Hatch). I have no doubt that we’re due for some cheap lines of dialogue regarding the lack of communication.

Joel:
After the Polar bears escaped from the cage, did they take the ferry or the submarine to the main island?

-Fred

"All the allegorical and mystical happenings that made this show intriguing have been swept away..."

And that's what made this show special. Without it, it's The Nine.

Joan, absolutely correct on Sawyer's surgery. That was just mind-numbingly stupid.

And this other island, or Other island: now all the geeks over at The Tail Section and The Fuselage can come up with some physics based mumbo-jumbo about why this island can't be seen. Pure teduim, I tell you. But, like everyone else, this lab rat will keep watching, even though this act, which used to be enjoyable, feels, with each new episode, more and more dispirited.

Excellent observations about watching this show on the net, and dvd's, and considering the time factor: our three years, their 71 days.

I want Ben to drop on someone the fact that Bush was re-elected. That could be terribly amusing.

I want Ben to drop on someone the fact that Bush was re-elected. That could be terribly amusing.

He did, two weeks ago just before showing the Red Sox clip.

Count me among those who watched the first two seasons on DVD, and it was absolutely preferable to watching this season unfold in TV-time. If I got bored by an episode of Locke number-punching I just had to fire up the next one rather than wait a week (or more) for my next shot.

So I'm trying not to be too hard on this season, and I also tune in expecting good trash rather than great art, but after this 6-ep miniarc is done I may wait for fall to binge on the rest of season 3 on DVD.

I can't believe I'm getting killed for being too soft on this show. Who saw that coming?

Matt:

The show absolutely plays better on dvd than it does in weekly, serialized form. It's a show about misdirection and dragging its feet until the writers can figure out a suitable rabbit to pull out of their hats, which grates on the nerves when you find yourself waiting weeks for any sort of pay-off. It's also, I suspect why many viewers have some misguided notion that the first season was so fantastic and the show has been utter shite since. Take the fantastic 2-part pilot and equally swell 2-part finale out of the equation and you had a season that moved in fits and starts with frequent digressions that was never quite as rewarding as it seemed. But when watching anywhere from 2-4 episodes in one sitting, the plot begins to blur together and there's a sense of accomplishment. In reality, the show has never been more than 4 great episodes, 8 good ones and 10 middling ones. Plus, as Todd pointed out, there was really nothing like it on television and the shiny new penny factor obscured many of the problems. Matt’s Stephen King analogy however is apt. If it’s engrossing enough you forget how absurd this all is.

Joan:

See, I initially agreed with you about how absurd the surgery business was but to be fair, he did at least check to make sure there was an incision scar (I’d actually been afraid he wouldn’t, it’s just that kind of a show) and the bit with the rabbit was just bizarre enough to let a part of me give in to the premise, even if higher up on my brain-stem I was fully aware that it was all a put-on. The bit w/ Kate’s non-escape was, realistically, not the smartest move ever, but she clearly has feelings for Sawyer even if she denies it and leaving him behind in his nurtured-state would likely signal his doom, so in the simplified, comic-book logic that’s this show’s bread and butter it made passing sense (or at the least didn’t beg for me to smash it).

This has never been a character show. I don’t know how many times I can hit upon this point: these are superheroes and stock characters, which initially was helpful as it explained how they could bravely face down a marauding polar bear or climb into a teetering airplane high in a tree when no sane person ever would, but as the show went along it found less and less organic island adventures for the cast to participate in (why do we never see these people concerned about where there next meal is coming from? Watch a single episode of Survivor and you’ll see a group of hungry, miserable, tired people and they’re only on their own for 6-weeks and have Jeff Probst’s smug face instead of death from killer clouds of smoke), hence all the drawn-out Hatch business which was essentially a glorified place-holder. That, and we keep going deeper and deeper into these horribly shallow characters where in the past 4 weeks we’ve seen Jack as a stalker, Sun having a character-shattering affair, Locke part of a whacky tabbacy farm and now Sawyer in Oz.

Anonymous:
Polar bears are excellent swimmers. I’ve also been hearing some interesting theories about how the polar bears play into all of this (stuff involving Dharma and the final goals of the initiative) that has me intrigued and willing to cut a little slack. For now.

I was going to say. . .

If the straw that snaps the suspension of disbelief camel's back in re: Lost is a polar bear making a swim of a few miles, then I'm not sure the show is right for you.

I think y'all have nailed it with the dvd viewing experience vs watching weekly installments. The frustration mounts from week to week and month to month, whereas when you've got the whole season on disc in front of you, you can bull your way through the whole mess and feel some sense of ending, if not resolution.

This: we keep going deeper and deeper into these horribly shallow characters... is not something I had really considered before. Of course now that I am thinking about it, it's obvious how thinly each character is drawn, but it seems to me that the writers are making an attempt to flesh them out this season, and all they're doing is betraying what little characterization they had previously established.

That seems to be the motif for this season: show us that the good guys are innately, horribly flawed (Jack a stalker, Sun a liar and an adulteress), and the obvious bad guy really does have a heart of gold (Sawyer giving his "commission" to his infant daughter, anonymously). This rehabilitation of Sawyer is the most troubling, of course, since last season it was painfully (really, those flashbacks were excruciating) revealed that even though he loved that woman (who became the mother of his child), he still screwed her out of a fortune. Clearly, then, he had a heart of blackest coal. So what gives with the tender feelings -- and even more unlikely huge cash gift -- to the tyke he hasn't met?

FWIW, I don't have any problem with the polar bears swimming to the other island. I do have a problem with polar bears living on a tropical island in the first place. However, I have some niggling idea that they have something to do with those two guys at the observation station in Siberia (or wherever) that notified Desmond's girlfriend (who can remember all these incidental characters' names? Not me.) when the hatch blew up. Hmmmm: two guys in the arctic, polar bears are from the arctic, there must be a connection, right? Quick, somebody smack me before I get sucked down into the maelstrom of endless speculation!

At any rate, Andrew, I'm sorry if you thought my rant was in any way directed at you. It wasn't, I just needed a good vent. You're right, of course Sawyer would've been punished badly if Kate had left him there, and so of course she couldn't leave... but the pacemaker thing had me so irked I wasn't willing to concede that at the time.

Conversations like this make watching the show worthwhile. Thanks.

In my research for writing these articles I learned that polar bears die of over-heating at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, so not only is it odd that there'd be polar bears on a tropical island, their survival would be physically impossible. So that should be a big old hint that they are not your average bears.

Lostpedia, my go to site for all things Lost at 1am PST on Thursdays, points out a couple of points regarding the bears.

First: the blast doors with the inivisble writing shown in "Lockdown" briefly read "STATED GOAL, REPATRIATION ACCELERATED DE-TERRITORIALIZATION OF URSUS MARITIMUS THROUGH GENE THERAPY AND EXTREME CLIMATE CHANGE." So if we're to believe this than the bears have been genetically altered to withstand the climate. Which begs the question of "why?"

Second: "the Valenzetti Equation" which was introduced I believe in the online "Lost experience" refers to a doomsday prophecy which also ties into the numbers. This is from Lostpedia: "One of the factors it considered was the effect of climate change on life, which could, at least in theory, cause the end of mankind. The DHARMA Initiative seeks to alter the Valenzetti Equation by changing one of its factors. If the DHARMA Initiative can enable life (in this case, bears) to adapt to warmer climates than it is used to, then it could alter one of the variables in the equation, thereby fulfilling the goal of the DHARMA Initiative. The bear research could be used to enable humans to adapt to the warmer climates they may face in the future. "

I find most of the theories sort of tedious and even this one is a little bit more academic than I'd like (I'm not really doing it justice here) but at least the polar bear thing doesn't feel quite so arbitrary. Food for thought any way.

Joan:

No offense taken. My protest was mostly out of jest and amusement. I'm at best a skeptical fan of the show and most of my reviews that I've written for this site skewer negative. But I've got to be honest to how I feel as I watch a particular episode, and this one didn't especially bug me and for long passages, was actually quite enjoyable. Gaps and logic, shoddy writing and swimming in a sea of clichés? Always, but the episode was so pulpy-feeling (even the bit with the pacemaker reminded me of Abrams' MI:3) it was easier to just go along for the ride.

... and the next two episodes will change everything.

Anybody kept track of how many times now they've used that "change everything" meme? That's getting more than a little tiresome - it's like a constant bait and switch - Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football....