The Back To The Island column for "Recon" has been discovered in a sock drawer for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.
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Thursday, March 18
Recon (S6, Ep. 8)
The Back To The Island column for "Recon" has been discovered in a sock drawer for your reading pleasure on Chud.com.
Please feel free to Digg it if you dig it!
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Bill Pullman & Bill Paxton.. sure, one was Chet from Weird Science and the other was Lonestar from Spaceballs.. I've had trouble telling them apart.. you could even throw Jeff Daniels in the mix (if you're my mom).. also.. Cole Hauser from The Family that Preys can sorta be grouped into that Thomas Jane/Josh Lucas bunch.. my girlfriend swore it was the dude from Hung in that movie.. Man, you could write a book on just that subject alone!
ReplyDeletePullman/Paxton are another perfect example of the Jane/Lucas Dynamic, Rodney. Mind if I steal that example to slip into the column today?
ReplyDeletePlease, by all means..
ReplyDeleteJosh Duhamel and Timothy Olyphant have always been mixed up for me. Hard to tell who is who until you hear them speak...or until you see them act
ReplyDeleteLove the columns- I took others to task for pointing out this is not best episode. No, after the Linus-centric show last week, yes, this is not the best, but I thought it did a great job to illustrate something I think PROVES the second snake theory. The choices they are making on the island NOW in season six reflect how they will end up.
ReplyDeleteLinus asked for forgiveness and might be on the side of the angels so he gets the chance to redeem his relationship with his daughter for example...
Sayid on the other hand has become the flocke tool and never overcame his own killer instinct = no nadia, not worthy, and still killing!
but back to the show... some of the stuff WAS over the top, but it was still worth watching and will ALWAYS be better than a Kate show.
I LIKE the lack of clarity... the producers said this was going to be a reminder of the first season and it IS!
How weird was it when we finally learned Locke could walk but had no idea why?
We are still getting new questions even as they get closer to the end and as frustrating as it is, it ALWAYS was.
I love it and will take a bad episode, even with Sawyer the cop boinking a suspect, than pretty much anything else on TV
I agree with everything you've said, Todd. And like you, I'll take an "average" episode of Lost over pretty much anything else on television.
ReplyDeleteBut I'd be dishonest if I didn't note my problems with the episode. Some of these problems are a result of my own impatience, and I tried to make that clear by clarifying that my second viewing was kinder than my first.
I very much appreciate you reading, and thanks for your comments!
Best,
M.
And Duhamel and Olyphant are another great example of this phenomenon. They look more-or-less alike, have both had periods of relative famousness, but never at the same time, and never at the level of "SuperFamous."
ReplyDeletelove the Demolition Man reference! Do you watch any of the previews that ABC puts out? I watched the 2 for next week's episode and I feel like we're gonna get some more answers.. however, I've felt that way before this season.. do you think that if Jacob is looking for someone to replace him that anti-Locke is doing the same? or that Jacob knows he's going to win this game and needs a replacement whereas anti-Locke feels like he will win and doesn't need one.. could we see Lost ending like the beginning of the finale for season 5 with 2 people.. one good, one bad (presumably) sitting on the beach starting the game over??
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed it a little bit more on rewatch, Morse. It wasn't the greatest episode in the world, but every time Terry O'Quinn was on screen my jaw was on the floor. He really is a phenomenal actor.
ReplyDeleteThe whole 'corrupted religion' thing is interesting and kinda sums up why I'm distrustful of Jacob. He's been far too content to let his followers do pretty terrible things in his name if you ask me, when he could probably have intervened at any time. That higher purpose better be worth it, dagnammit.
My thoughts on Claire/Sayid and the sickness: it genuinely seems as though there is something inherently wrong with both of the characters now that can't just be put down to circumstance. Sayid wouldn't just have let Claire try to murder Kate, and Claire would never have tried to do so in the first place. Or make a creepy animal skull baby for that matter.
Claire's situation could potentially be explained away as craziness brought on by her isolation and manipulation, but Sayid has only been acting like this for a day or so. I think the infection genuinely exists, and I'm starting to suspect what it essentially does is make people very susceptible. It seems to take away their free will, allowing Smokey to mould them to do exactly what they want.
This to me would explain Claire's erratic behaviour in this episode - Smokey allowed her to attack Kate as a means of manipulating Kate later, but then took Claire aside and essentially told her to change her point of view now that it no longer suited his purposes. Does that make any sense? The sad side of this is that there would be little room for redemption, as there is barely any of the original person left to redeem...
Ah- it's been my take that most of what at least Ben has been doing has been because MIB was impersonating Jacob? Most of the direction seemed to come from ? to Richard to Ben, do we really think that so much that COULD have killed HIS candidates came down from him?
ReplyDeleteThanks Morse, strong column.
ReplyDelete- I like your celebrity doppleganger theory. I was one of those who cried "Tina Fey," but it was actually more of a "Liz Lemmon (Lemon?)? I don't think Zoe looks much like Fey's appearances as herself, but with her mussed up hair, geeky demeanor and cover story, she seemed a lot like Fey's character on 30 Rock. It actually distracted me for a second. But no big deal. I still agree your "only one" theory.
- When Anti-Locke told Sawyer he wasn't worried, i thought it was because he knew/knows Sawyer can't be killed because of Jacob's touch. Or at least that it is excessively difficult. I wasn't sure even after he offered the "best liar" explanation if that wasn't just a cover/easier reply.
- I didn't have as big a problem with a lot of the "plausibility-stretching" elements of the episode. Especially since I buy that the guy who looks like John Locke is the smoke thing. but the one thing that i had trouble with is the idea that the taking off in a jet that landed (but still crashed and had it's windshield shattered by chest-stabbing tree parts) is at all a viable strategy for leaving the island. Unless they are going to turn it into a big boat. Or they could just strap all their huts together and float away to rescue.
- Speaking of that plan, I'd suggest that instead of the '86 Mets, Widmore has the Harlem Globetrotters locked away.
- Speaking of the Harlem Globetrotters and castaway redheads, something in Faraday's plan must have worked, because as you acknowledged Charlotte apparently got WAY hotter since that island ended up on the ocean floor. Is that what not seeking out your past does for you? Damn.
I'm kind of surprised that people are still discussing the validity of "the sickness" at this point. I thought that it was fairly definitively answered in "This Place is Death" in Season 5. It is the episode that showed the backstory of Rousseau. It seemed pretty definitive that her lover, Robert, was not behaving normally when he tried to murder Danielle, who was pregnant with his child.
ReplyDeleteI guess the biggest question then, is not if the sickness is valid, but how did Sayid and Claire get infected, and is there any hope?
I'm inclined to agree with Scott. What seems to be unclear is how the "sickness" or "infection" takes you. As an audience, we are too prone to clinging to the first utterance of a word, even when it comes from an unreliable narrator. Rousseau was the one who said that her team was infected. Dogen called it something else, but the translator said the closest word to it was "infected." So this is clearly not a literal thing like rabies, but rather something else and probably related to the spirit or soul. It could simply be "under the spell of the smoke monster."
ReplyDeleteIt occurred to me that the reason that Sayid did nothing when Claire attacked Kate was that Sayid already knew Claire was going to attack Kate and that MIB/Smokey/Locke was going to intervene to be a hero. He let it play out because that is what he was instructed to do.
What's interesting to me is that Sayid is essentially doing the same thing for Smokey as he did for Ben. In both cases Nadia is his justification, but we can be certain that given a choice Nadia would reject such activity for him in both cases.
I have a parallel between the MiB and Norman Bates. As the MiB revealed that he had a crazy mother, it makes me wonder why exactly Claire disappeared in season 4 the way she did. Most theories I have seen think that Clare actually died when the freighter mercs attacked Otherton/Dharmaville. I offer up the idea that once crazy mom Rousseau was offed, the MiB immediately needed a "crazy mom" on the island. Thus he immediately went after to Claire as the replacement. I also ponder whether the pregnancy problem may have been induced by higher level Others (as Dogen held more information/responsibility than Ben) in order to thwart the MiB ability to corrupt new mothers.
ReplyDeleteGood point, Scott and Miles. I agree that the actions of the french team in This Place is Death and of Claire and Sayid in Season 6 so far have made it fairly obvious the 'infection', or whatever you want to call it, does exist. It would also definately make sense that if Claire was part of a pre-arranged plan to attack Kate then Sayid would also be in on it.
ReplyDeleteSomething I found interesting was that (according to Jorge's podcast) the script referred to Sayid's blank gaze as melancholic, which suggests that he feels compelled to behave in a certain way, but doesn't necassarily approve of what he is doing. I don't know whether this is a common symptom of being 'claimed' though, as Claire does just seem completely bonkers nowadays. Maybe over time any misgivings just disappear?