the awesome/terrifying freedom

weeee! here we go!

directed by: jack bender. jack gets all the best episodes. jack runs the show from the hawaii end of the production. jack is responsible for getting all of the other directors on the same page, for defining the visual style that is 'lost.' and he gets all the best episodes because he can pick which ever ones he wants to do. check out this amazing interview with him.

written by: carlton cuse and drew goddard. another example of writing teams being split up this season to work with the show runners. drew goddard has had his hand in some of the best eps of this season, including "the man from tallahassee" and "flashes before your eyes." all in all, a lot of the best people on the show were working on this one.

and it showed. and boy did this one have it all, and boy did it give us some answers! in fact, it maybe gave us too much to chew on: my only lame complaint. i would have been happy not to have seen the final juliet/ben plotting scene until later on, or even not at all - my guess is that juliet is absolutely not going to follow through with ben's ultimate plan, otherwise they would never have shown us that scene. remember michael? we saw his double cross, then we went back and saw how he was coerced to do it. now that we know juliet has been primed to double cross the losties, it's not as dramatically interesting anymore to have her go ahead and follow through. no, we were shown this scene because juliet has her own very specific agenda, which won't become clear until we see ben again.

but i'm jumping ahead. first off, thank you writers for giving sayid the -real- questions we want asked. honestly, i do not care how long it takes them to answer those questions, but what i do care is that the writers address our need to hear them asked. if someone in the story isn't asking the same questions as the audience, it means the writer is behind, the audience is ahead, and becoming more and more frustrated.

(i think this is why 24 just completely dropped off my watch list this year - after they blew up a nuke in episode 4, they failed to deal with the consequences. the story veered into a poorly conceived family drama, that had me yelling 'a nuke just went off! in la! why does any of this matter!?')



this episode was completely thrilling - a great example of how it can be worth sitting through a slower-paced bridging episode to get to the payoff, and what a payoff it was. at last we know a huge part of what -the deal- is with the others, and learning it sets up puhlenty of drama. so women who conceive on the island die? i guess we'd better find out who the father of sun's baby is, huh? that's just fantastic - because now that she could die, she can't hold onto her secret about her affair anymore.

and here's the even creepier aspect - kate and sawyer were intended to mate, in order to give juliet a disposable test subject.

so does ben have some other way off the island? what can he now offer juliet to get her to follow his plan?

what i loved most about it though, was seeing juliet's flashback providing the thread to weave so many things together - ethan, goodwin, the book club, mikhail, the sub, claire's abduction..

according to insiders, we have the following updated flashback order to look forward to:

3.17 Desmond Hume
3.18 Jin & Sun Kwon
3.19 no flashback!
3.20 Benjamin Linus
3.21 Charlie Pace
3.22-23 Jack Shephard

there have been several different rumored flashback lineups - one of which had karen and gerald degroot receiving their own episode (gasp!). but maybe even more shocking is the revelation that episode 19 will have no flashbacks, for the first time ever. i am definitely intrigued, and also quite happy to see that we'll get ben's flashback in that crucial climax episode 20.

and the 2 part finale is jack's. excellent. i think jack is holding onto an ace and is waiting for his moment to play it. or was he brainwashed in room 23?

now that the story has gained momentum, i almost can't believe the season is nearly over, and that we'll be heading into a fourth year of this story. i haven't heard anything about whether damon/carlton have been successful in lobbying abc to set an endpoint for the series, but it feels like we are at least at the halfway point. let us all continue to pray that they get the endpoint they'd like and can tell the story as they have it planned out.