the awesome/terrifying freedom

"thanksgiving" just got into the outflix film festival in memphis!

"loaded" just got into the broomfield film festival!

woohoo!

written by: edward kitsis and adam horowitz. the guys are clearly damon and carlton's favorites.

directed by: stephen williams. a veteran 'lost' director.

yet another episode that goes into the 'will play much better when you can see it back-to-back with the next one' category. we spent an hour saying goodbye to charlie, and then had the goodbye cut off in mid-story. after all that (effective) emotional rape, he'd better die next week, that's all i have to say.

i'm trying to stay off fan sites b/c apparently the script to the finale was leaked and spoilers are -everywhere-. who would want to be spoiled on this? who reads the last page of a book before they've gotten there? idiots.

there's only one episode left! not much time to wrap up some lose ends that i think need to be addressed.. here's my questions/talking points for this week:

1. the van. was the entire purpose to hurley's van episode to tease out ben's father's story? it seems like that van still needs to play a part in the final showdown.
2. room 23. we can assume that it brainwashes you, but to what end? what do you become/believe after being strapped in it? was jack put in it?
   
3. will jack's flashback next week be on-island, or pre-island?
4. will alex finally meet danielle? she's met everyone else.
5. rose/bernard return - why?
   
6. did desmond -actually- go back in time?
   
7. what is the season-ending game-changer going to be?
   

1. it lovely seeing all those sparkly new dharma vans in ben's episode, but in planning for the other's attack, it seems like the losties have forgotten that they have a car! can they just drive away? or at least drive to a new spot? what happened to the season 1 caves? why can't they just go back there?

2. room 23 was too big a nugget to just drop in and not address again before the finale. it was so frustrating that kate and saywer never grabbed the kid by the shoulders while they had the chance and said TELL US WHAT THE HELL THAT ROOM WAS FOR. now they have the chance. they'd better do it. which brings me to #3:

3. if jack's flashback is on-island (which, due to recent episodes, seems less likely), i would love to find out that he had been 'room 23'd.' but now that jack is talking a little more, it doesn't seem like he's actualy holding onto any major piece of information anymore - but i could be wrong. last year, at this point, we got 'three minutes,' in which we find out how the others got michael to do what he did.. will we get a similar story about jack?

if jack's story is from his past and goes off-island, then i'm really hoping it's a followup to the lackluster thailand tattoo story. i'm holding out hope that the writers will be able to rescue it by giving a satisfying conclusion to what felt like half a story .

4. i have this awful feeling that alex is going to die accidentally. one of the losties, who doesn't know shes a good guy, will kill her, or the dynamite plan will backfire in an awful way. rousseau and ben will both morn, maybe rousseau will finally get to meet her before she dies, and then it will be a vengeful war between them..

5. damon and carlton have said that they can't justify flying in rose and bernard unless they have a good story for them - so what's the story going to be? i can't help but think that one or both of them is going to die.

6. so charlie's street flashback, which weirdly crosses him with sayid through nadia, was interesting. at first i thought 'oh my god.. desmond is going to show up, like he did in 'flashes before your eyes' and he's not going to recognize him, and it's going to be crazy!' but then desmond -didn't- show up, which i think is very very important. because of the perfectly-timed rainstorm, i believe that this was intended to be the very same moment we saw in 'flashes,' but the designers made a deliberate choice to have charlie in a slightly different outfit. i was wondering if we would get a scene where charlie 'retroactively remembers' desmond from the street, and here it seems clear that this is not the case. 'our' charlie never met desmond before coming to the island.

what i think this tells us is that -if- desmond went back in time, he went to an -alternate- timeline, where things have proceeded slightly differently (naomi's timeline). whatever changes he caused by going back will not directly effect the survivors on the island. however, the alternate timeline continued on, and in it, the plane crashed somewhere else, with no survivors.

while the scene didn't have desmond in it, it does have this pretty cool tivo moment, a sticker on charlie's guitar that says 'i was here moments ago'



7. everyone is abuzz with how the finale will 'change everything.' what could it possibly be? some ideas:

• i can see the game changer as confirmation of on-island time-shifting - michael and walt appear, and walt is man-sized - this is more an eventual inevitability than a shocker, though, but still, boom.
  
• claire and aaron get onto the helicopter, fly out to the ship, which turns out to be manned by others. they take arron and throw her overboard. her body sinks to the bottom of the ocean, to the alternate timeline plane wreck, and she comes to rest by her still-pregnant alternate corpse. boom.
  
• locke appears at the end of the episode, with hair, throws a knife into the chest of a cast member (bernard? ben?), and introduces himself as jacob, the leader of the island. boom.
  
• hurley is stepped on by a 400 foot tall, four-toed man. boom.
  
• desmond will get hit on the head again, and will go back in time to the day he followed inman outside, didn't press the button, and caused the plane to crash.
  this time he will stay inside, push the button, and the plane crashes elsewhere, changing everything and restarting the entire story. boom.
  
• don't forget, the finale happens just before christmas, island time. jack runs into a clearing where libby, ana lucia, his dad, eko, boone, shannon, nikki, paolo, the others, and everyone else shout 'surprise! merry christmas!' and reveal that for his xmas present, jack's family chipped in, and this whole time he's been playing the game. boom.
  

minor gripe(s) of the week: nadia's hero speech was a little heavy handed, and crossing nadia with charlie -and- locke in this 'two ships passing in the wind' style feels arbitrary. is it just because that actress is always available?

how is charlie able to make this swim? i've been re-watching season 1 with my roommates, and in the 5th episode, "white rabbit," a woman named joanna dies at sea, and charlie stands there saying with deep regret "i don't swim.. i don't swim." it would have been a nice moment if jack remembered this incident when challenging charlie.

oh and alex, i hate to break it to you, but your 'boyfriend' is a total 'mo.

written by: elizabeth sarnoff and drew goddard. looks like damon and carlton, having exercised major quality control over the bulk of the season, are now willing to hand the reigns over, and on an incredibly important episode.

directed by: bobby roth, who has been around forever, another lost debut.

it's tough to write a response to this week's episode because ryan stole so much of my thunder with his shattering theory about how "the story of “lost”, it turns out, might just be the story of locke turning into jacob." i'm happy my prediction about seeing roger and the van was correct, though i didn't expect roger 'work man' would be ben's father.

seriously, read ryan's recap this week. he does an excellent job of laying the whole thing out.

i also recommend listening to this week's official lost podcast - damon and carlton are punchy from having just watched the first cut of the season finale, and at one point can't stop laughing at their own joke about how it will be revealed that the dharma shark, dubbed 'ezra james sharkington' got his dharma tattoo from bai ling. there's also some nice acknowledgement from both of them that jack's tattoo episode sucked ass.

the big questions:

1. is locke dead/will he die?
2. wtf is jacob?
3. does alpert age? do any of his camp age?
4. who is part of alpert's camp and who was 'brought' to the island?
5. what happened between ben and alpert during the years between their meeting and the purge? what about annie?
   
6. who else survived the purge?
7. don't forget the rest of em!
   

1.) locke is not dead, and locke will not die, not yet anyway. though, seeing as how locke's entire backstory has been neatly tied up this season, it's quite possible that 'locke as we know him' is dead. will he supplant ben as leader of the others? locke and jack are more than just characters - they represent the opposing viewpoints at play: man of science, man of faith. will the season 1 tensions between locke and jack escalate to a series finale battle between their two camps? science vs. faith on a grand scale?

2.) it seems pretty obvious to me that it is terry o'quinn wearing a wig in the jacob screencap.


as far as speculation, right now, jacob is 'the hatch.' and trying to predict what he might be at this point is like trying to extrapolate the entire dharma storyline from season 1, episode 11, the hatch's first appearance. what could jacob be? that damned four-toed statue is the only bone we've been thrown regarding the island's older history - so every time there's a new mystery, i try to tie it to the statue. so, my only real guess at this point is that jacob is an energy, or spirit, or something originating from the four-toed people. that's all i got so far.


i do think that the island's dormant volcano will have something important to do with jacob. ben's class, taught by samantha mathis, reminds us that there is, in fact, a volcano, and then there is the mysterious ash (volcanic?) encircling jacob's house.. foreshadowing?

3.) on the blogs and comments people have been wondering if it was just a bad makeup job on alpert, failing to make him look younger. uh, these people are stupid. ben meets alpert as a boy, and now ben is older than alpert. if they wanted to 'make up' alpert to look younger, they would have cast a kid in the part. the real question is whether this non-aging trait is specific to alpert, or if it applies to all of his camp.


when alpert recruited juliet, he showed her an xray of a 70 year old womb in the body of a 26 year old woman - so it looks like alpert is referring to the woman's apparent age, and not her literal age.. and perhaps it is this localized womb degeneration that gives the others problems. did the dharma have pregnancy problems? they were there for a long time, surely it would have come up as an issue much much sooner.. was ben lying to juliet? is it only those in alpert's camp who actually have the pregnancy/death risk? is sun going to be fine after all?

4.) which takes us to the next issue - what exactly is the composition of the others? how many parts dharma, hostiles, recruits, and captures? ben seemed to infer that there were some other few dharma people who had escaped the purge. was he referring to desmond and inman? and why have they brought certain people, like mikhail over? where did the younger others, who could not have been born there, come from? we know alex was kidnapped from rousseau. i'm lookin at you, aldo and matthew. were they also stolen from unfortunates who crashed there?

5.) this is hinted at in the podcast as being a 'major missing story beat' in ben's background. also, we do not know what became of his friend annie. was she also gassed? what happened? we've been promised that we will find out.

6.) i'm wondering what exactly ben's knowledge of the swan station was at the time of the purge. did he not learn of the station's existence until after the first earthquake? i'm not sure how the writers are going to explain that one - though i can see that as a 'work man,' ben wouldn't really ever have full knowledge of what dharma was up to - and perhaps the pearl station explains why he never bothered to purge inman and desmond from the swan: dharma double blinded the importance of their task by making it appear to be meaningless.

7.) ben and locke's story was so engaging that it's easy to forget that back on the camp, a whole bunch of shit is about to go down. i just love that juliet. i alternate between cheering her on and wanting to smack her. her 'turn the tape over' moment was inspired, and the impending dread of the attack was, i think, even more palpable than the similar threat introduced at the same point in season 1! also - how much deep shit is sun going to find herself in? her face, as the tape played - first shock that juliet was betraying her and the camp, then total fear - because it's only a matter of time before jin puts all the pieces together and confronts her about the truth of his pre-island sterility. she still might be able to get away with keeping the affair secret, though.

next week - will charlie die? if so, how on earth will they execute it in a way that is both inevitable and surprising?

minor gripe of the week: ben's birth - we're tricked into thinking that the birth we're witnessing is on the island, because of the jungle setting. and if you hadn't put it together already, you might even think that we're watching one of the others give birth, giving the scene the dread of the mother's impending death, knowing what we know about what happens to preggies. but it's revealed that no, we're not on the island at all - this is way back when, and it's 32 miles outside of portland. very cool. but the problem is that 'today' on the island it's ben's birthday, and 'today' it's december 22. no way is december 22 just outside of portland going to look like a tropical summer on the island. i guess they had to make a choice: drop the birthday angle, or drop the false island tease, and in the end they decided to go ahead with both and hope no one noticed. annoying, but still not nearly as bad as that mrs. hawking photo.

my first short, thanksgiving, has been invited to be programmed as part of the philadelphia int'l gay and lesbian film festival! woohoo!

best. news. ever.

what makes me crazy is shortsighted "fans" who think that this is bad news, like the show has been 'cancelled' or something. no no no no no. this allows them to tell their complete story and end it properly.

so it's rumored to be ending in 2009! that part about it being 'not quite 2 seasons' is verrrry interesting.

my guess:
season 4: 22 episodes
season 5: 17 episodes

total number of episodes: 108.

it's really nice to see abc's support of the show, and recognition that it needs to be in an earlier slot, and it needs to run back to back, like 24. it'll be a long wait, but like battlestar galactica, it will be worth it.

written by: damon lindelof and carlton cuse, the show runners, and the 2 people responsible for the grand arc of the lost story.

directed by: eric laneuville. this guy's been around forever. handful of emmy noms and a win for i'll fly away, a show from the early 90's i've never heard of. he directed episodes of l.a. law and quantum leap! though his lost pedigree is not the strongest. he directed the rose/bernard episode, s.o.s., my least favorite in the show's history. though he also helmed season 2's the other 48 days later, one of my favorites. this season he also directed the wimsical but slight hurley episode tricia tanaka is dead.

so this is one of those eps where i really would love to have the dvds, because it demands that you just go right on to the next episode.

many threads and questions in this ep:

1. what do the others expect of locke?
   
2. the others are not all muffins and bookclubs.
   
3. what's rousseau gonna blow up?
   
4. sawyer's dénouement
5. keeping and not keeping the naomi secret
   
6. the jack/juliet plan
   
7. is naomi from the future?
8. about that plane wreck and those bodies..
9. about that 'old' place they're going..
   

1. it gets irritating that locke isn't asking any of the questions i want to hear: how did you get here, dad??? what is the point of all this, ben?? at least the writing lately has allowed other characters to express the audience's frustration, but locke seems content with ambiguious answers, maybe because he enjoys doling them out so much.



2. so what's really going on here with the others? cindy seems to be fully indoctrinated as an other. did she have to kill her dad too? maybe she got a free pass when her boyfriend gary troup was sucked into the turbine? it hadn't struck me until now that we haven't truly addressed the reason -why- they're on the island at all. why do they stay there when they have the ability to leave? what does it offer them? it's a big question, which probably won't fully be answered until next year. next week, however, it looks like we'll get a pretty good picture of where they came from.



this story of locke's admittance to a commune hinging upon killing someone was very elegantly foreshadowed in episode 3 this season, further instructions. "are you a farmer or a hunter, john?"

3. rousseau has been hangin' around a lot this season. the writers don't want us to forget she's out there, and now she's got dynamite. we've been promised a rousseau flashback next year. the thought alone excites me. i hope they do it justice. in 'stranger in a strange land,' my least favorite ep of the season, there was a starry montage of alex and carl looking to the sky from opposite ends of the island. we haven't seen carl since. has he teamed up with rousseau?

4. i wondered who would be surprised that locke's dad turned out to be 'the real sawyer.' i happy to read on other's blogs that casual viewers, those who had forgotten about sawyer's quest, found that reveal to be hugely satisfying. it was played similarly to the jack/claire half-siblings plot point: not a big dramatic moment, but a development that opens itself slowly through the episode. josh holloway did really great work here. the actors this season must be so happy to get all these great scenes to sink their teeth into. i couldn't help thinking, though, as sawyer killed cooper, 'this is exactly the same way princess leia did jabba the hutt.'

5. as ryan points out, choosing sayid to keep the naomi secret was an inspired choice. equally inspired is how quickly the secret falls apart. sayid can't help playing with the phone in the open, and once kate knows, everybody knows. kate's confrontation with jack was interesting. when she mentioned the parachuter, jack/juliet exchanged a look, as if they knew this was coming. does this also have to do with mikhail frantically running to naomi's beacon? after communications went out, have the others been expecting their many mainland operations to come searching?

6. we got a little hint of jack actually having a plan at the end of this ep, as i've suspected - though whatever he's got brewing with juliet is about to get blown to hell when sawyer comes marching back to town with that tape recorder. poor juliet. will she ever get a break? so what is their secret? i don't think we have enough information to even guess at this point. whatever their plan is, it doesn't involve rallying troops for an inevitable battle - it seems to hinge around just waiting - waiting for something to happen, and kate's news about naomi looked to be just that 'something.' it's frustrating that they are gonna hold onto the jack secret until the finale. rrgh!

7. the writers made sure to point out that naomi's phone was more advanced than anyting sayid had ever seen - and the screen design is suspiciously similar to the iphone.. is it a futurephone? so here's what i'm thinking: does time off the island progress at -our- rate? in the off island world, is it may 2007, while on the island it's december 21, 2004? at the end of season 2, where in time were we when penelope received the arctic "we found it" phone call?

of course all they have to do is ask naomi "what's today's date!?" and we'd know, but no one other than desmond would have a reason to think the timeline is wonky. damon and carlton speak regularly about the importance of the walt/michael storyline. it seems to me that off-island time must move at our rate, to explain walt's growth when they eventually reappear.

8. naomi is not lying about the wreckage of the plane and the bodies being found. cooper said the same thing, and it's too far a stretch to connect their motives to tell the exact same lie. the dharma/widmore/others seem plenty equipped to stage a wreck.

another theory is that naomi is from an alternate timeline in which desmond attempted to save the plane from crashing (by continuing to push the button), in the same way he's now trying to save charlie's life, and similarly, all he did was postpone. the plane crashed anyway, off the coast of bali. but it's unlikely that's the case. i was really really hoping for an 'alternate timeline' story for nikki/paolo and didn't get it, so i'm not holding out for that anymore. "othercorp" is rich. they staged the wreck to protect the island.

9. so, the big-ass old column they tied cooper to wasn't the camp's final destination.. ben said they were going to an 'old' place. that column looked pretty similar to... it's four toed-statue time, peeps. i'm guessing that smokey is tied to the civilization that built the statue, and uncovering that story will be next year's hatch.


many character-based aspects of the story are winding up - sawyer has killed the real sawyer, we know what kate did, we know how locke was paralyzed, and he's faced the man who did it - there are still some big character questions left, but for many of the leads, it doesn't seem like there is as much flashback story left to tell.

damon and carlton have been mum about how successful they were in negotiations with abc to end the show on their terms - i hoping that all of these concluding threads are an indication that they did get their way and are now bringing us into act 3 of the larger story, knowing exactly how many episodes they have left before the grand finale. please please please let that be the case.

minor gripe of the week: i would have shown desmond's discovery that naomi had been hired by penelope. that's a huge moment of confirmation in the desmond story. instead we learn it long after his discovery. probably there wasn't time, and they couldn't shortchange the sawyer story.

also, that dharma van had better become important soon.

my friend vincent is on the cover of dotnews magazine. in the interview he mentions my short that he starred in, thanksgiving.

still trying to get that damn thing into a festival.

figure out which one is the spoof satire!






via towleroad