Breaking bread and drinking from Lost’s cup.
I’m two hours into Lost’s final season and I already feel as though I’m trifling with a world of which I know too little. I have stumbled upon an ancient book of spells in the forgotten wing of the library and conjured the road to hell with a cursory reading. I’m the wayward square who wanders into the roadhouse bar and is greeted with a record scratch and pitying stares. The grizzliest man at the bar sneers and spits at his side. “You look lost, boy.” Everyone falls about the place with laughter and knowing pats on the back, and I sheepishly nod my head in agreement. In other words, I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.
Two hours in and I don’t have much to go on besides a few hard facts culled from this evening’s viewing. Juliet’s dead. I say this with assurance, but one can never be sure of death’s permanence on The Island— she’s the only one of three dead from this episode who remained dead, and a 66% chance of returning from the grave is pretty good odds for anyone. She was granted a brief session of afterlife communication in which she relayed to Sawyer that “it worked.” I presume the ghost of Juliet was referring to the bomb she set off in the magnetic well, but the meaning was ambiguous and her words were small comfort to Sawyer who was still pissed at Jack over the whole thing. I hope she returns in one form or another; the tender moment she shared with Sawyer down in that hole seemed to soften his edges in a disarming sort of way.
There are two Johns in this tale. One lies on the beach, asleep or unconscious or dead in the sand, and the other is an evil sort that inspired Ben to murder. Bizarro John is the embodiment of something cursed, there’s no doubt. His flesh deflects bullets and when he’s cornered he becomes a roiling cloud of black smoke that is capable of coiling up men in dusty tendrils and tossing them haphazardly around a room. A frightening beast to be sure, and he seems particularly upset with Richard, assuming the beating Bizzaro John gave him just before dragging him off into the foliage is any evidence.
The kind eyes of Zombie Jacob.
Jacob is a helpful jungle zombie who emerged from the green in time to give Hugo a guitar case and some advice on how to save Sayid, who is rapidly expiring from a gunshot wound. He had kind eyes, and its hard to imagine why Ben was compelled to stab and set fire to this agreeable soul. Jacob’s influence on the characters’ course of action remains strong despite his otherworldly existence and thanks to Hugo’s ability to see zombie ghosts. Their partnership and Jacob’s suggestions to care for Sayid lead the group to a temple of angry Others who would have just as soon killed the entire crew if it weren’t for Hugo dropping Jacob’s name. They reverse course and agree to help Sayid after Hugo produces the guitar case, a giant wooden ankh is lifted from it and broken in half, and a note from Zombie Jacob is discovered therein. Everybody likes a guy with kind eyes.
The Others appear to be a survivalist group of mixed interests and one Australian flight attendant. They are led by a stony-faced man who dislikes the way English tastes on his tongue. His henchmen dunk Sayid in a dirty life-giving pool and end up drowning him, though it’s hard to say whether this was their fault or whether Stony-face wasn’t watching his over-sized hourglass closely enough. The group is naturally grief-stricken, but they brighten when, miracle of miracles, Sayid wakes from death some time later and asks the same question most of us would ask after drowning in a life-giving pool: “What happened?”
And with that, the first episode in the final season comes to a close and my journey down the dimly lit road of Lost’s story line has just begun. Viewer’s will note that I have not touched on the parallel world in which the Oceanic flight touches down safely in L.A. and life carries on as usual, but the split narrative was too much for me to digest on the first pass. I hope this parallel world bears more Bizarro fruit, and that John’s counterparts get their own superhuman copies. Now that I’ve had my first immersion, I realize that I am doing a cruel disservice to Lost’s storytellers and their aim to create a narrative arc that is not open to the casual interloper. I am a trespasser, but I look forward to dissecting the next installment.
Posted on February 3rd, 2010
Like most of you out there in this god-forsaken world, I too have seen many of today’s sharpest minds held captive by the unending story arc of Lost, ABC’s nearly six-year-old tale of plane-wrecked survivors living on (escaping from?) some haunted isle in the middle of a nameless sea. As you might have gathered from reading the previous sentence, I have avoided any semblance of understanding or interest in the show for some time now despite certain friends’ cultish fascination with the series. I have eavesdropped on numerous conversations filled with unanswered questions that beget more questions, which are then soon soaked in wild-eyed hypothesis. This maddening spiral has continued unabated for many seasons, and from what I gather, few of Lost’s mysteries have been solved and virtually all loose ends remain loosed.
But here we are! The Lost creators, spinners of endless yarn, are soon to tie their ends and bring the series to a close. The final season begins tomorrow night, and now that I’ve avoided the previous five seasons of this story I thought I’d make the tireless Wednesday morning water cooler recaps a little more entertaining. I, a bitter and critical man, will watch the final season as a curious and open-minded outsider who, with the aid of hindsight, shall attempt to connect with the characters, their plights, and the plot lines as they come to a close. Expect an update each week as I follow along with the series, and don’t worry: I promise to remain objective.
Posted on February 1st, 2010
Conan O’Brien: comic genius.
So much has transpired! I have left the country and returned. I have read books and watched movies and tasted foods. I have started the year of 2010, now twenty or more days passed, with the greatest of cheer and simplest of joys. But not all is well with the world. An earthquake devastated Haiti some thousands of miles away, and the world sent their doctors and money and rations to repair the people and places that were left. The bells are tolling, counting the dead.
Here, on America’s shores, a different bell tolls. It is the death knell of traditional television, and its deep metal tone echoed out across the country last night when Conan O’Brien stepped down from his Tonight Show slot. For whom does this bell toll? For the broadcasters that cannot adapt to a world of entertainment consumers that time-shift their interests. It tolls for the men who rely on Neilsen and the antiquated ratings system that they read like tea leaves. It tolls for the old guard, the ones who didn’t get it right, the ones who cast Conan out and into the shadows in the face of a popular uprising.
From those shadows shall emerge a man supported by the young and savvy. They will lift him on their shoulders with cries of “Coco! Coco!”, and this writhing sea of faithful will carry him on to his next venture, his next comedic palace and pulpit. They will cheer for him and rejoice in the pact made between this man and his followers, the pact that says, “Together, we will have fun.” Somewhere, someone smarter than NBC will discover the right way to monetize the passion for this man in a world of increasingly fragmented interest and attention.
The culture is changing, the bell is tolling, traditional television is dying, but Conan will be just fine. There are just too many, like myself, who love him and will carry him on into the great unknown expanse of entertainment’s future.
“Coco! Coco! Coco! Coco! Coco!…”
Posted on January 23rd, 2010
Happy Holidays or whatever! I’m keeping it casual because it’s a recession year and I’m still not sure that the holidays are actually here yet. They are, of course, but this year’s cheer feels a little half-hearted. Maybe I’ve been ignoring all the ham-handed retailers pitching me on the “most wonderful (shopping) time of the year,” and the dated Christmas specials on TV, and the cheap plastic Santas in creepy shop window displays, or maybe I’m a cold husk of a man. Whatever it is, the spirit just isn’t in me this year and I waited until the eleventh hour to get a handful of gifts. But hey! That’s why Amazon.com gets a special nod from me this season. I did virtually all my shopping virtually, from the comfort of my home, mousing my way through Amazon’s site until I had secured some passable gifts to send to my family. And then I had Amazon.com gift-wrap them all and ship them directly to their houses like Santa Claus himself! No middleman action for me, and all of the gifts will arrive on time, neatly wrapped by some mystery set of hands that are certainly more adept than I at wrapping things up in festive papers. What a country!
In spite of sounding like a complete shill at the moment, I’d also like to acknowledge Amazon’s airtight returns department. I recently bought a multimeter to test some parts of my pinball machine (more on that topic in a future post), and one of the functions on the meter was dead on arrival. I’ve never had to return anything to Amazon before, but after three clicks and a print-out I was on my way to drop the package back in the mail, postage-paid. I requested a replacement through the returns process, and within 30 minutes I had an email in my inbox explaining that the new multimeter would be at my door the next day. They just made this lazy consumer’s Christmas a little merrier.
Posted on December 21st, 2009
