LOST — Page 12

Finally got to see the last few episodes a couple of days ago. This season left me feeling pretty positive about the show's future, a few crappy episodes (which is unforgivable when there are only 13 of them), but over all fantastic. The whole coffin thing wasn't a shocker, especially since Locke was everyone's first guess right after the season three finale aired.

I liked how after Locke and Ben descend the elevator to the Orchid, Locke asked if it was the "magic box" Ben told him about in season three. The whole magic box thing came from the novel The Third Policeman (Desmond is seen with a copy of this book way back in the beginning of season two), and in that book to get to the magic box you must descend a massively deep subterranian elevator. That was a cool reference to the book.

New season starts at the end of next month. A few teasers and short previews are online now, and surprisingly already an amazing amount of leaked spoilers if your into that (though very minor spoilers, like the fact that they resurrect Jin with a cyborg parts, and that Widmore wants to turn the island into a large theme park/resort, where the attration is a series of adventure scenarios with robot actors and the guests as the heroes. Total rip off of Westworld... and I am just making this up of course, haven't read the spoilers, but they are out there).

I think this season is off to a great start.  I love time travel fiction. Now after seeing the first two episodes, I went back to this season five preview clip from the last comic-con. It makes a lot more sense now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCVCzplSa6A

The idea of a secret video made by the DHARMA Initiative guy and Daniel Faraday was a good one. The idea of framing that video with this kid at Comic-con SUCKED. Why would DARMA have a booth at a Comic-Con? Let's have a bit more verisimilitude please.

It is because the Lost comic-con event caters to the overly obsessive part of the Lost fanbase, and they were pushing their last online Lost game, which exists for the overly obsessed fans as a way to build up interest in the show between seasons. They always tie these things in with comic-con. The last game was something about becoming a recruit for a revival of the Dharma Initiative, so they set up a booth at comic-con to promote it. I guess you could register at the booth or online. They have done the same kind of thing between seasons 2 and 3 and between 3 and 4. It is always cheesy and pretty lame, but some of these people really get into analyzing every little aspect of show and they really eat this crap up. 

The only part of it that is worth while would be cool things that come out of it like the clip of Faraday filming the orientation video guy, or last years Orchid orientation video out takes. In the end, the framing of the video is something you can just cut out. 

And yeah, so far this season has been off to a great start. Was finally able to sit down and watch these two new episodes a few hours ago. I hope they keep it at this quality and don't drop the ball for the sake of cheap tricks like the poison gas station episode last season, where they spend the whole episode making you think Dan and C.S. Lewis are evil, then flip it at the end and make it turn out that it was just a big misunderstanding and they only had to knock out Kate and leave her with a bleeding head wound and a possible concussion lying unconscious in the middle of a dangerous jungle because it would have taken them too long to explain to her and convince her that the evil men who kidnap small children and pregnant women, and lock people in animal cages, and strap kids to chairs to brain wash them (in other words, some people Kate already knew were pretty f-ed up and able to do great evil) built a toxic gas releasing station solely for the purpose of killing everyone on the island in the event of an emergency that Dan and Charlotte felt the need to disable. I hate episodes like that. Oh, or the episode where Sun has her baby and they try to make us think Jinn is on his way to see her, only to cheaply reveal at the end of the episode that he died on the island and we were watching two separate sets of flashbacks.

We have been bombarded with four years of mysteries, many that have been revealed, but plenty of others that it feels like the writers have pretty much forgotten about (I want to know who the hell Monton is and how the hell he lost his fricken arm! Monton and his arm are pretty much the whole reason I still watch the show, I have been waiting anxiously since the end of season two to learn more about ol' Monton). Barely thirty some episodes left in the series, slightly more than your traditional 20+ episode season, and they have a lot of ground to cover. Really hate to see them waste it on cheap tricks and meaningless episodes they do nothing to push the story along. Here is hoping season five doesn't feel the need to pull crap like that. (At least Frogert was done away with quick and painlessly without the need of another Nikki and Paulo incident).

I have to say the last episode was rather disappointing. Not because there was anything particularly wrong with the episode, but because we have gotten whole episodes dedicated to mundane things like Jack's tatoo. Then after years of mystery shrouding the incident with Rousseau and her crew, we are only given less than 20 minutes to address it. I am glad after nearly four years of waiting, I finally got to see Montan lose his arm, but in the end it was rather lackluster and unsatifying. I would have really liked to have seen a traditional flashback episode for Rousseau. She was an important enough character for the first four seasons that she most definitely deserved one.