Stuff about television.
“I’m making a statement.” (Al Capone)
Second episodes are always a hard thing to pull off. In this case even more so: you have a pilot directed by Scorcese and the assignment that you have to emulate his style. Good luck. It was immediately clear the cinematography was a lot more modern this time around – the Chicago opening shot a fine example of this. But is that a bad thing? Hell no. No one can imitate Scorcese anyway. (more…)
“You can’t be half a gangster Nucky, not anymore.” (Jimmy)
The moment Boardwalk Empire started with that twenties-style fade-in, I knew I’d be in for something completely different. Of course, I kind of saw it coming, what with Martin Scorsese directing, but still. The characters! The sights! The music! The story! It was just as I’d hoped it would be. In fact, no. It was better. (more…)
Boy, that took a long time, I said while I was watching the second to last episode of the season. But all those characters, all these plotlines, all those details – they’ve finally come together. The series finally has a sense, a direction. My co-viewers looked at me and rolled their eyes. A correction was in order. “Fine: I took a long time.” (more…)
Who would have thought? Well, actually, with the succes of movies like High School Musical, pretty much everyone. But still! For those not in the know (shame on you!): Glee is Fox’ hit comedy. It’s a musical series set in high school. We follow Spanish teacher Will in his quest for the reboot of the Glee Club – a club specialized in singing and dancing. But he runs into some problems along the way – the obvious overpresence of nerds and misfits in his club will soon turn out to be the least of his worries…
All that jazz
So it’s a musical series. If you don’t like musicals, stay far away, because this thing goes very deep. Sure, I guess you could watch it for the engaging characters or the hilarious comedy. The problem is: the characters aren’t all that engaging and the comedy isn’t that hilarious. Without the music, this series would have been just another mediocre teen series.
But the music – oh the music! Some songs are just executed so brilliantly that I can’t help singing or dancing along with them. A few high points of the first season to help you get started: Madonna’s “like a virgin”, Van Halen’s “Jump”, Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” and an awesome cover of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface”. If that doesn’t have you going, then I don’t know what will.
Go Sue!
What makes this series so watchable – aside from the music – are the characters. One thing I’ve noticed concerning this, is that Glee is at its best when it’s not entirely taking their characters seriously, but write them as if they were.
Confused? One thing to criticize throughout Glee is that there’s an ever growing focus on drama. For every one of the funny moments, there’s a tear jerker. They try to do things fifty-fifty, but towards the end of the season, they were clearly struggling.
So the series is at its best when it gently mocks the characters. If you’ve watched the finale, there’s a brilliant montage about halfway through that will show exactly what I mean. These are the moments where the series really shines. Unfortunately, as the first season goes along, it tends to get more serious and less funny. Fortunately for me, the music did get better as it went along, too, so at least I got distracted.
In All…
I’m very curious to see where the second season will go. I’d think a lot of restrictions they had on the first season (budget-wise, for example) have been lifted, seeing how they snatched some Emmies. It’s a dangerous position for a series like Glee to be in. The first season already had some moments where they brought in expensive Guest Stars (Olivia Newton-John for example) and I just cringed all the way through. I hope they focus on their own characters, on that snarky humour thing they’ve got and on the fabulous execution of their musical numbers.
Glee is awesome. Every episode fills me with joy, just like a musical is supposed to do. Sure, it’s corny and the plot can get deeply stupid, but then the brilliantly executed music starts and I forget all about it. Oh, and Sue Sylvester. Never forget about Sue Sylvester.
There is a lot of things you might have against “The Event”, NBC’s replacement for Heroes (and the self-proclaimed spiritual successor to LOST). It’s very complicated, it follows a set of rules unknown to the viewer and it scrambles the plot around just for the sake of it. Every character seems to know more than you. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But for some reason, after about twenty minutes, I got sucked into it and was on the edge of my seat.
An Event
Nobody knows what “The Event” is. After having watched the Pilot, you can guess that it might involve aliens or at least some paranormal activities. But what this Event is, or when it is… nobody knows. Is the “present time” described in the Pilot (e.g. everything happening in the airplane – because every good pilot starts with an airplane) the Event? We don’t know – and frankly, it didn’t really concern me.
It’s hard to divulge anything about the story – mainly because the story didn’t really open up to us. It seems to revolve around a man named Sean, who finds himself enjoying a holiday with his girlfriend at one point and is hijacking a plane a week later. Sean’s story (and those of the other characters) seems to be put in a bag and shaken up: everything is told in achronological order.
Nightmares
I love this – even if the show seems to be throwing a tantrum for the sake of throwing one. There’s no real reason (yet) as to why the story is told this way. It might present itself at a later time, though. What it effectively does is create a horror scenario, a nightmare. Because you are missing pieces of the puzzle, certain scenes have an almost dreamlike quality. Who hasn’t dreamt of returning to their room, only to find out their room has gone? It’s these kind of tricks this pilot lives on – tricks that might get old over time, as we find out more and more of the story behind the Event. But hey, that’s the future, babe.
In all…
It’s hard to say anything about this Pilot. Is it a character story? Maybe. Is it a conspiracy story? Probably. So many questions and no answers. But I see that as a good thing. This Pilot felt so refreshing and new that it instantly had me hooked.
But in the long term? It remains to be seen. There was no exceptional cinematography going on. It was mostly tricks, like a fun house. How many tricks do they have up their sleeves? Can they really expect me to watch an entire season – let alone a series – of people knowing more than I do? Or will the multiple perspectives of the same events get me more knowledge over time?
It’s hard to say. But I’m sticking with this one for the time being.
You might argue that FlashForward was ill-fated to begin with. Surely, it had a stellar cast, some fine people in the writer’s room and a pitch to end all pitches: the entire world blacks out at the same time and gets a glimpse of their future.
So how was this ill-fated? The thing was marketed as “the next LOST”, which is sure to make you catch a shit storm: LOST fans are the most annoying fans of a TV show ever. After that, it all just went downhill.
October sixth
I remember watching the pilot and being pretty much blown to pieces by the initial 20 minutes. There was so much going on: a car chase, an operation, a guy wanting to kill himself… And then they all went limp. When they came to, I found the episode to be focusing on too many people. As if they were biting off more than I can chew.
Twenty episodes later, I can only confirm my initial fear: there was too much packed into this thing. Too many characters. Too many flashforwards. Too much info addition in the flashforwards over time: “Hey, I remember this formula on the mirror that I didn’t before.”
What?
But that’s not where the problems end. Throughout the entire “series” (which it is now, technically, as the sheep’s been shot), you’re left wondering who those people are. Who are you watching? Olivia (played by Sonya Walger – she is just drowning in her role here) is on the road with an FBI agent for two entire episodes, and we do not find out anything about their personal relationship towards each other. Who are they and why are they working together? The only redeeming quality was the side-plot concerning Bryce, the guy who was going to kill himself. And even that story had a very incredulous ending characterwise.
In All…
The list goes on like that and you’re left wondering but one thing: who are these people and why should I care about them? And that’s what ultimately killed Flashforward. It’s not the sometimes harebrained plot or the continuous retconning. If you want to make a crazy science fiction series, be my guest. I’ll gladly watch it. But be sure to think of the one good reason some science fiction series work and some don’t: the characters.
This one didn’t work. What a shame. What a waste of a good pitch.
Unbelievable. It’s been a day since I watched the LOST series finale, and I’m still thinking this through. I might review this baby twice – one emotional review (the one you’re reading now) and one later on, when I’ve digested it all. It was just so much to take in – it was incredible. And I still don’t quite get it. I understand, but I don’t get it. Yet. Ah, such is LOST. It offers answers when you least expect them. You just have to look. That’s the great puzzle, isn’t it?
The Episode…
I love LOST finales. What they tend to do is set up something exciting, watch that situation play out in the first half of the episode and then switch to an entirely different, more complex problem. In Season 1 we had to hide from the others but ended up blowing up the hatch door, in Season 2 we wondered what information Desmond would bring and saw the hatch blow up, in Season 3 there was the fight with the others succeeded by the rescue, in Season 4 we wanted everyone on the boat but not on the boat. Season five appears to be the only exception: everything was in place right off the bat. Season six continues the trend set by the first seasons: smokey dies about halfway through the episode. But saving the island is what needs to be done next. It’s great – it always leaves you wondering what’s next and keeps you on the edge of your seat.
It turns out the cave with the light is a metaphor for the island – and the thing actually has a fail-safe key. It’s a cork. For those who don’t remember: Jacob told us the island was a cork. So now we know how literal we have to take that. Very, apparently. I like the symbolism – even if the presence of a crafted chamber inside a cave was a bit weird. Where does it come from? Obviously, this is one of those questions leading to another question and can be answered when you consider things for a second, but still. Then again, it’s those little moments that make LOST’s mysteries into LOST’s mysteries.
The Flash Sideways…
They were the obvious question going into the finale – and the segments that showed us the emotional end to this saga. The revelation – that they shared a subconscious space in which they were waiting to move on together – is nothing short of breathtaking. Obviously, it seems corny at first. But imagining being together in death is just such a wonderful though, in my opinion. So peaceful. It works even better on a second viewing: you can sense that these people are finding each other again, but that rediscovery is also final, and as they are doing so, they are actually already saying goodbye.
So, for me, the flash sideways make perfect sense. Things that seem strange and illogical finally seem right. Jack has no son. He created him to let go of his daddy issues. And him being a “dural sack expert” is just another way of him being told to quit counting to five – he can do it. It’s nothing short of brilliant, and it delivered such an emotionally gripping final episode that it sends shivers down my spine when I even think about it.
There were so many little things. The flash sideways noise being the noise of the Ajira plane taking off. Jack’s wounds. Sayid leaving Nadia. Locke getting his back fixed. Rose telling Jack “You can let go now” right after the turbulence hit. The final piece of the puzzle is so pretty you can just stare at the picture over and over again. Even if it’s corny. I don’t care.
In All…
My first reaction is that there could not be a more fitting end to this show. We got delivered the craziest bunch of broken people, and what better way is there to end the show than to heal them all. At the moment, I don’t get why people would feel cheated for not being told certain mystery elements. Granted, they are exactly why I got into the show, but experience has taught me that answers to questions can be pretty damn disappointing (Horcruxes, for example).
It’s going to be hard letting go. I always have one series that complete eats me up. Before LOST, it was 20th Century Boys. After LOST… I don’t know yet. After I finish one of these obsessive series, there’s always a period of mourning. I just can’t get into anything else yet. There’s plenty of things I want to watch, but just… not now. Not yet.
I’m looking forward to watching it all over again in a few months. If I’m up for it, I might write down the questions I have trouble finding an immediate answer for, and seeing what I can come up with. I don’t need the instant gratification of knowing what every little detail means. I’d rather open the pot and taste exactly what kind of island stew is brewing.
What a crazy trip it’s been. Thank you for a great six years, LOST!
Favourite Quote: Locke: We’ve been waiting for you.
If it’s not clear to you by now, let me give it on a silver plate: the final episode will be an emotional roller coaster ride, with some awesome action in between. If you’re still in denial, thinking you’re going to get answers to all your questions – think again. What this season has been doing is different, more subtle: they’ve been leaving a bread crumb trail for us to follow. Yes, that means that when it is over, you’ll have to watch it all over again.
The Episode…
After a mythology heavy episode, this one really nailed the character counterpart: most of this episode was all about people trekking through the jungle, shooting each other unexpectedly, or being eaten by the smoke monster. And that’s what LOST has been doing at its finest for the last six years, so why complain now? The episode was a brilliant set-up to the final one. The pieces are in place (although some seem to be missing, like Desmond) – now it’s up to Jack and Locke to play their game of island chess.
On the flash sideways side, there was some pretty nifty stuff going on too. It’s taken a while, but it appears that the Losties will finally be meeting – at a concert, nonetheless. I love the idea of them gathering in one place, I wonder what that will mean? Giacchino also went all-out with some magnificent musical wonderwork, making the scene where Desmond meets Hurley unforgettable.
The Questions…
So Desmond is the fail-safe. What does that mean? It appears that Desmond is the emergency Jacob in case Jack fails. But what if the logic stretches out beyond that, and hints us to what the sideways universe might mean?
Look at it this way: Desmond seems awfully close to being Jacob in the flash sideways. He’s gathering everyone, showing them what it’s all about, trying to make them remember. Does this mean that the flash sideways are what happens after Jack failed to kill the man in black? Is Desmond trying to set everything straight again? I think this is an interesting possibility for the flash sideways – they would finally make sense.
In All…
I didn’t talk about so many things – Richard, Ben, Miles (where is Miles?), but with the final coming up, I’m trying not to overthink things and just see where they go. It’s going to be one hell of a battle in the end, and I have no idea what’s going to happen. I wonder how much excitement they can possibly cram into a series finale. I wonder if my head will explode?
It’s the same typical thing with LOST fans: they spend years asking for answers, and when they finally get them, they throw a temper tantrum because, hey, their theories were wrong. And what plotline is more likely to be overtheorized? That’s right: Jacob and his nemesis, our very own Man in Black. This my review for “Across the Sea”, what may go down into history as the most controversial LOST episode ever.
The Episode…
So, apart from one throwback montage, there were no cast members to be seen in this episode. Obvious: it enrolls sometime around the birth of Christ. Interesting time to begin this, right? LOST finally opens the cupboard entirely, and shows us what started it all: an ancient myth, not quite unlike Cain and Abel (what we were already guessing). The myth shown in this episode is one of the oldes myths around – a myth about rivaling brothers – and, for me, it suits its purpose: it shows us that this story is as old as time itself. There’s no point in asking where the mother came from – because she also had a mother. That’s just the way the universe works.
What I am finding a bit hard to swallow is the following: in the last episode, we witnessed how the Man in Black killed three – or four – of our beloved friends. In this episode, however, we see that this evil wasn’t always evil, that it’s actually pitiable. I’m not sure whether I want to feel pity for this guy or not. I know this fits perfectly into the LOST idea of thousand shades of grey, but I’m not sure. The easy way out of this show would have been if there was ultimate evil. It might still happen, though. I’ll see where they take it.
On the other hand, Jacob was shown in a very bad light. He’s a crybaby, a mother’s boy, and obediently does what he’s told. Just like his brother, he’s not polarized anymore. Do I want this? How will I understand this when the show is over?
The Questions…
In general, the viewers seem to be in two groups about this episode. There’s the people like me, who think this episode did provide us with answers, and there’s the ones who feel cheated: that LOST created a mystery to solve another one. I think the problem with choosing a mythical path for your end-game is that you’re bound to reach the end of your logic, of your why-questions, and end up asking whether there is a God or not. Because LOST doesn’t want to ask this question (as it is a spiritual show and not a religious one), people are annoyed. Don’t understand me wrong though – they would have been more annoyed if a God actually came into play.
That being said, on to why I think this episode delivered. Obviously, the most visible explanation (who Adam and Eve are) isn’t the most important one. It was – in my opinion – executed with the sole purpose to give the viewership an immediate reward. But the best LOST rewards are usually so deep under the surface that you just have to dig a bit more to understand it.
What this episode delivered, in my opinion, was a sense of how this island works. The key lies in the Mother’s line, later uttered by the Man in Black: “It always ends the same”. There’s a mythical island, with powers you’ve never seen before (powers we have witnessed: the Swan, the Incident, Desmond’s flashes…), powers that seem semi-scientific but really go way beyond what science can understand. People want to find this island (the people who built the statue, the temple, the Dharma Initiative…), but they always wipe themselves out in the end. Someone else over at the SomethingAwful forums said it a lot better than me:
Jacob needs to find a replacement, he simply can’t guard the island forever because eventually he’ll grow so tired of it he’ll let the smoke monster leave just so it’ll end. If Jacob admits that the smoke monster is right, that humans are all evil, then he’ll have lost the right to keep the smoke monster from getting loose and destroying them. He’s been bringing candidates to the island since the early days of man, sometimes they study the island and build temples and monuments to their homeland’s gods and sometimes they try and learn the secrets of the island for themselves. Eventually they’ve all killed each other. They have never known more about the island than the characters we know so they aren’t really important. The smoke monster is not able to kill any person that Jacob has touched, marking them as a possible replacement. The people are able to kill each other though, which is the point of the game. If the smoke monster can get a candidate to kill Jacob and then get the replacement to decide the world isn’t worth protecting then the smoke monster wins.
Those are the rules to the game. Everything else can be brought back to that. Obviously it reeks of Deus ex Machina, but it’s a damn nice Deus ex Machina if you ask me – because it’s a literal one. How else can you explain the mysteries on this show? Did you really want to see Jack, Kate, Sawyer and everyone else going “Yes, I too have diabetes! That’s why crashed on this island! And that’s why Walt killed those birds!”?
Next Week…
Next week marks the return of our Losties, who apparently will be starting their quest to find Desmond. Is Frank truly dead? I hope not, but hey, what better ending would there be for this guy?
In All…
I liked this episode. It’s very hard to the take the LOST way of writing seriously if none of the characters we know and love are in it, though. We’ve come to expect a certain way of acting, of delivering strange lines, and it’s just weird to focus and entire episode on actors who aren’t used to this. We’ve never had anything like this before, and it was kind of alienating.
I think that in retrospect, we’ll look at this episode as a quick briefing to get into the season finale. All this stuff about LOST jumping the shark – three episodes from the ending! – will be forgotten once Hurley returns to the screen. It’s kind of the commercial break before the third act.
A long review – for a very, very intellectually tiring episode. See you next week!
In a normal LOST cycle, this would have been the season finale. It was gripping, it tore me apart, we found out some things that enlarge the scope of the mystery, and we had to say good bye. That kind of sums it up. That means I’m threading on unknown grounds now: the third act of the movie is over, the curtain has fallen. So what’s next?
The episode…
This episode was, without a doubt, the most disturbing LOST episode ever. I can stand losing Sayid – him deciding to do something good on a whim showed us that he was a good guy. Obviously, some of his storyline is left hanging. I personally think this will be the case with every character on the show (and will cause some people to be disappointed): Sayid incorporated the sickness, but what was it, in the end? Was it being persuaded by Smokey? It must have been. This makes the Sundown episode even more tragic: Dogen told Sayid – who had been fighting internally for six seasons – that he was a bad guy, and Sayid, tired by the fight, believed him. Interesting take on the sickness, and it makes sense if you look at Rousseau’s crew in season five. They were all persuaded by the monster, that was “only a security system”. Which was a downright lie. Oh LOST, you deviously humanist series.
Sayid had only been gone for moments when Sun and Jin got the axe in what I think to be the most disturbing LOST death ever. Just like Juliet’s death in the Incident, it was torn over multiple scenes – but opposed to Juliet, who had been a tragic-fated character right off the bat, it was never quite clear whether Sun and Jin were indeed tragic. It so appears they are: they spent six seasons trying to find each other, only to be killed in doing so. Makes sense why their reunion wasn’t the big tear-jerker scene. It’s really, really harsh, but I understand. I just would’ve wished for Jin to see his daughter. At least she’ll be in good Korean hands; and Mr. Paik will have a chance to redeem himself for all the mistakes he’s made towards Sun and Jin. You can do it, Mr. Paik.
Closure, twice over. Surely, it didn’t come the way or at the time we expected it to come, but it fits. It’s hard to admit it, and it makes me boil inside, but from a narrative point of view, these deaths fit. But what about Frank? Sure, it would be awesome to have him say one line per episode for about three seasons and have him go down saying “Aw Hell” and being hit in the head by an exploding door… But I want to see Frank again. Hey, I guess they filed him in the Ilana column. That’s the column where they put newly added characters that won’t get exposition because the fans get pissed every time one does. Nikki and Paolo were still awesome to me (in an sarcatic way), so meh.
The Questions…
The cat’s out of the bag. For anyone left in doubt, we now know that Smokey is a bad guy. But what about Jacob? He’s responsible for a lot more deaths than Smokey is – after all Jacob caused the Losties to crash on the island, killing hundreds. Smokey, on the very next day, killed one person: the pilot. A few red shirts and an angry black priest later, he might have reached half of Jacob’s death amount.
Is this a “greater good” kind of thing? Is Jacob indeed an evil bastard? Oh LOST, I guess we’ll only know for sure who’s light and who’s dark in the near future…
Next week…
Next week promises to be something we’ve never seen before. Apparently, the episode will feature next to no cast members. Instead, we’ll get a more than healthy dose of Jacob and Smokey. The rules of the game might finally be revealed. I wonder if our man in black will finally get a name?
This might sound stupid, but whether or not a name is given to our nemesis seems very important to me personally. I remember that, when the show had only just begun and J.J. Abrams was still actively involved, Abrams gave a lecture about a box: it’s not about what’s inside, but the mystery of what might be. The thought of this box – also alluded on LOST sometime in the third season – intrigued me. Now, the question remains: do we want the ultimate thing in this series to have a name? Won’t every name be a disappointment?
In All…
Gripping, sad, so sad. There’s just nothing to say about this episode. Even if I did write so much, words appear to fall short. Getting on that submarine was the worst decision they ever made. In doing so, the LOST writers have effectively done the hardest there is to do for an author: kill your darlings.
Favourite Quote: Jin: “I won’t leave you. I will never leave you again.”