A New Thing Bonus Feature: Thank you!

Only a couple more posts to go in this series about how I've changed the way I approach writing (and then we move on to Phase 2 of the New Thing). I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've been discussing this with me - especially the people who've approached me or asked after me, concerned that I'm OK.

I'm fine.

Consider this series of posts about the New Thing to be something like a character arc. While they started off describing a low point (which really was about 6 to 8 months ago), they'll end up in a good place. I'm really enjoying writing at the moment, and a lot of other elements of my life are going well too.

So, thank you for your concern and good wishes.

Also: how freaking cool is Lost right now? Evil Good Desmond. Zombie Sayid. Off-handed answerings of enormous questions, and Jack? Jack is a compelling character again? I couldn't believe it when they did it with Sawyer, but making Jack awesome seemed almost impossible to me.

Three fantastic episodes in a row, really interesting situations having been set-up to explore, and absolutely no character is safe (except for maybe Hurley and Jack).

Loving it.

Lost: Second Impressions III

The finale of Season 1 was exciting stuff, had a great momentum, and we would have continued straight on into Season 2 if the disc had worked.

A couple of weeks later we managed to watch the opening three episodes of Season 2 in a row. This is something I've wanted to do for a while - my memory of watching these week-by-week was that they were a bit frustrating in the way they replayed the same events from different points-of-view. Watched in sequence ..., well it was good fun but the repetitiveness was still there. And perhaps that's a part of the explanation for the start of the huge drop-off in Lost's audience during Season 2: a slow, repetitive start followed by a huge dose of mythology (with buttons to be pushed and Dharma Initiative orientation films to be watched).

... Also, my advice is never to play a drinking game where you have to scull every time Michael yells either "WALT!" or "They took my boy!"

Based on reading a few 'Favourite Episode' lists that are floating around the net, we decided to skip forward to the highlights of Season 2. This meant we missed out much of the Dark Charlie, and the long con with the guns stuff.

Instead we skipped forward to the one-two punch of Shannon's spotlight episode followed by 'The Other 48 Days'. Shannon is still a favourite character, and her spotlight episode goes to great lengths to make her sympathetic and someone we're willing to root for. And then Ana-Lucia shows up. Unfortunately, Shannon may be a sympathetic character but she's not iconic in the way Jack, Kate or Locke are - therefore: bye-bye Shannon.

(Is it worth noting here that I like Ana-Lucia? I'll go into that in more detail if it seems relevant.)

The Other 48 Days, which I thought would be terrible given that most of the characters it developed are now gone (although at least one of them will return in Season 6)

was great, actually. Really rewarded rewatching - even though some of Goodwin's behaviour bugged me now that he's been fleshed out as a character in subsequent episodes. It just seemed to me that his conversation with Ana-Lucia should be much more reasonable and less darkly villainous ... but it wasn't really a deal-breaker for me.

In our next re-watch session we sat down to the very character-centric The 23rd Psalm, an Eko flashback episode that I found moving and involving.

This contrasted with an episode I thought I was really going to enjoy: Meet Henry Gale. The introduction of Henry Gale into the show is one of the pivotal moments of Lost, but rather than being character-focused, it's an episode about people shouting at each other and using torture as the option of first resort. So, it felt plot-heavy and not particularly insightful. Pretty great Sayid performance though.

Lost: Second Impressions II

I'm rewatching episodes of Lost, Season 1. Just gotten through eps 6 to 12.

The pacing of the show starts to seem a bit off from about episode 6 (the Sun flashback). All of a sudden the show stops watching these characters, and starts forcing them to make decisions, such as 'Stay on the beach or go live in the caves'. It's a huge plot point that gets rushed through - whereas, staying true to the tone that the show's set up, it should take at least an episode to work through.

That's followed by Charlie's episode (saving Jack from the cave in), which feels very traditional in a 'Here's the plot, and here's the metaphor' kind of way.

Basically the pacing of episodes and character motivations in the stories have become faster, more traditional / conventional. Sort of treating the characters and plots like playing pieces in a game to be shifted around into more interesting positions.

For a while I found it less satisfying, but then I started getting into the accelerating pace -
as if the first 9 episodes were an overture. Now we've been hit by the plot - three seemingly separate events that are in reality closely related:

• Clare is kidnapped by someone who was already on the Island
• Locke and Boone discover the Hatch
• Sayid finds Rousseau and learns that there are Others, whispering in the jungle.

There have also been a couple of good character centred episodes (Sayid, Clare). Clare's episode, in particular features three moments of note:

• Her psychic has a baffling change of heart, expanded on in this post
• An amazing dream sequence that features Locke with white and black eyes (significant given Season 5).
• The statement that Aaron is a significant figure in the destiny of the Island.

Jack and Kate are still central, and Kate is still fantastic - highly involved in everything, taking charge. Sawyer is, at most, an amusing annoyance.

Lost: Second Impressions I

The rewatching of Lost has begun. An opportunity to compare my early reviews with my memories of the first season's episodes, and filter all of that through my understanding of what's going on up to the end of Season 5.

Surprisingly, the first three episodes actually aren't as 'reality' based as I remembered. They've set up the basic structure of the show: that there are big questions to be answered and weirdness to be understood - the monster and the polar bear are chief among them. Rousseau's distress message that's been playing for 16 years is another.

Lost is also quite sophisticated in the way it reveals some of these things: 'The Island can heal' has huge ramifications, immediately establishing that the show is 'not quite real', but it's totally implied - never stated explicitly - in Locke's episode: Walkabout

There's an emphasis on Jack and Kate in these early episodes that seems ... disproportionate to where the show ends up going. Two things that come out of that though are that Kate is great in these early episodes - proactive, gung-ho, involved with everyone. I really want to know when she lost her energy as a character.(*) Also the first meeting between Jack and Kate, when she sews up his wound, is played in such a delightfully off-beat way that it actually set up the possibility of a time loop, that she's travelled back in time to re-experience this moment ... which was the first of several exciting 'Did the writers know what they were doing right from the start' moments in these first 10 episodes.

(*) It's an energy that the writers seemed to want to restore to her, halfway through Season 5 when we learned why she actually went back to the Island.

For instance, there's an enormously interesting moment between Locke and Walt, where Locke explains backgammon to Walt. That there are 2 players - one light and one dark. The significance of this is huge, given what we learned in the last two episodes of Season 5.

Here's what I said originally about the third episode

Later eps of Lost feel like a TV show. This feels like just watching interesting stuff happening. It's not doling out too many plots twists or starting to over-dramatise more than a few characters by involving them in soap-opera issues. The show's just letting people be people.

There a joy in seeing these characters are going to evolve. Michael (who in about 10 episodes time will reveal himself to have a satisfyingly consistent attitude towards Walt). Rose's faith that other people have survived the crash. It's also odd to see so many characters established who disappear in later episodes: Charlie, for instance, and Boone and Shannon (who are both playing much better for me now)

There's also a joy in reconstructing the history of the characters and the objective timeline of the show. For instance, Locke's insistence that he has a destiny, that he HAS to go on the walkabout actually comes from an episode (in Season 4?) when Mr Abaddon visits Locke in the hospital.

My major concern so far is that there's no subtext no story happening below the surface (the stuff that I enjoyed so much when I rewatched Buffy Season 3 recently.) There is a grand game happening below the surface of the episodes, in the background, and in the past ... but I'm not sure that's enough to keep me rewatching. My fear is that, basically, Lost will turn out to be a story about interconnections and conspiracies and grand philosophical ideas ... and maybe not so much about people ...

Previous Lost reviews

Lost - Season 5 - The Dharma Years (Part I)

This run of episodes has been the strongest Lost has been for me since the end of Season 2.


*** SPOILERS, JENNI. ***


*** YEAH, I KNOW YOU'RE NOT WATCHING IT, BUT YOU TOTALLY SHOULD BE. ***


*** WHY BOTHER, YOU ASK? BECAUSE SAWYER IS AWESOME AGAIN ***


*** TRUST ME. I WAS RIGHT ABOUT VERONICA MARS AND SUPERNATURAL, WASN'T I? ***

Introducing time travel is proven to be an extremely elegant way of getting a lot of backstory about people whose lives have been touched by the island. More importantly, by taking the pressure off people like Sawyer we've seen them blossom. From Sawyer's character arc lows in Season 2 (the long con with the guns) and Season 3 (he freakin' shot Tom in cold blood), he's now become a hero, a leader, a person to admire.

And all the people who stayed on the island now have a lot to lose. I'm totally invested in them.

Meanwhile, they've given Kate something interesting to do - seriously, giving her a mission that doesn't have anything to do with the boys and that goddamn love quadrangle will (I assume) make her way more fascinating to watch, and lead to further exploration of the island. I'm also in awe of the character transformation they're making Jack go through - his acceptance of the island is planned for him undercuts all the potential Jack-Locke conflict we've been expecting, and opens up many new areas of their personalities to explore.

Plus it's so nearly came close to unbelievable, top-moment-of-TV-everness with that cliffhanger between Sayid and Ben. I would probably have tried to have this show's babies if it had followed through on opening up an alternate timeline in which one of the lead characters never existed.

The show is totally recapturing the magic of Season 1 for me. It's ambitious, inventive, and driving towards the finish line. And I have to wait two more weeks for the next episode.

Lost ads

More, here.

Lost - Season 5 so far

Very quickly (and yes, spoilers if you haven't been watching. Massive spoilers.):

• Flaming arrows?
• Sayid kills people with his feet? And a dishwasher?
• Benjamin mother-fraking Linus?
• Penny and Charlie?
• Daniel Faraday's unsettling past?
• Jughead is still out there.
• Time travel? Exploring the island not only in space but in history? And putting an end to time travel?
• Sure - they spent a little too long off the island, but the stuff that happened there at the very end was fascinating.
• Sawyer and his band of sarcastic geniuses joining the Dharma Initiative? In 1974? For three years? Let me rephrase: Sawyer has been a happy and productive part of the Dharma Initiative for three years. W.T.F?
• Killing off nearly all the remaining survivors of Oceanic Flight 815? And then crashing another fraking plane on the island?

I honestly have no idea where this show is going to go next. It's like Dollhouse in that respect. Hatches? Numbers? Frak that. We have just watched a team of writers dismantle their own premise, bury the parts, and simultaneously all drop acid. What happens from this point on is going to be fascinating.

Oh yeah, and ... THE STATUE IS BACK!