As we know, origin stories always suck, and last week wasn’t really any exception. In fact, not only were they saddled with an origin story for Iron Man, they were also saddled with having to retcon/reboot war profiteer/womanizer/drunken Tony Stark in to a Peter Parker-esque teen with a heart of gold. To be honest, they didn’t fail nearly as bad as I’d anticipated, even if the whole plot felt artificial and silly.
This week was much better, shorter on the action, longer on the character-based story. Still not great by a long shot, but not terrible, and better than last week.
The hundredth episode of Lost gives me something that few shows can say this far in to their run: “Well I didn’t see that coming.” Granted, Lost has managed to do that for us fairly consistently through its run, and this season in particular has been pretty much a case study in dropping a hard plot twist sixteen times per season, yet still managing to keep a coherent story. Even so: I didn’t see that coming.
There is a not-very-narrow line between ‘acting’ and ‘putting on a show.’ It’s fairly broad, but it’s also occasionally hard to delineate exactly, and dependent somewhat upon culture, period, and venue. On the one hand, acting is acting is acting, right? But on the other hand consider Noh drama in Japan which moves at a speed that makes glaciers seem freakin’ sonic, and uses this staid unreality to emphasize the emotional elements of the story in a sort of hyper realized fashion. To a student of Japanese drama, a particularly slow performance can be moving, brilliant, more real than real.
Is there a fourth group at work in this show? I'm beginning to suspect there is, but we'll get to that after the play-by-play.
In 1977
- Miles is born on The Island, though we don't actually see this happen.
- Miles parents split up acrimoniously, and Miles and his mom leave the Island, though we don't actually see this happen, and it's possible it actualy takes place in early 1978.
- Kate and Sawyer come back from giving lil' Ben to The Others.
- Sawyer has other matters to attend to, and asks Miles to wipe the tapes from the Sonar Fence.
…And so it all comes down to this: The Season finale, and very likely the series finale as well. We start off where we left off last week, with Sarah in Jail, and John and Cameron on the lam. Shirley Manson from Garbage tells the bald dude to move John Henry, but he points out that they can’t - JH has progressed to such a level that there’s no longer a clear distinction between machine and software. Much like a human brain, you can’t point to a specific location and say “That’s my soul,” rather who and what we are permeates our ‘hardware’ holographically. That’s the point JH has gotten to.
In 1977, America’s favorite compulsively lying sociopath wakes up in a tent, and talks to Charles Widmore, who sets lil’ Ben on his path of being a Dharma mole.
I’m sorry for how late this review is. Real life has interfered yet again with my glorious little dream world, and I wasn’t actually able to even watch the episode until yesterday. Actually, owing to band practice (“Republibot 3.0 And The Republibot 3.0 Orchestra, Featuring Republibot 3.0“) most of the Lost reviews have been delayed by a day or two, but this week was just late out of all proportion. I’m sorry about that. I hate to keep people hanging. Republibot: You heard it here last!
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