Lost: The BrigAn interetsing thought occurred to me during the close moments of this week's
Lost. Is Locke now to our group of castaways what Ben is to the Others?
It's not that Locke necessarily has the authority Ben does with the group, but with Locke's pulling of strings and manipulation of Sawyer to do his dirty work, Locke took some very Ben-like tactics to get what he wanted. Locke read a file, figured out how Sawyer could help him and then manipulated events in order to get Sawyer and his dad together.
Also, Locke seems to playing his own game with the castaways. He warns Sawyer that the Others are coming in three days to take the women who are pregnant and reveals that Juliet is betraying them all. He even goes so far as to give Sawyer proof of Juliet's duplicitious ways, which brings up the interesting question--just how did Locke get hold of the tape recorder. I can't see Ben letting it out of his sight for very long, esp. in packing up for whatever trip they're on. Is the end of the journey for the Others the beach to take Sun, Kate and whoever else may or may not be pregnant.
And should Locke come back to the beach after he finishes his personal walkabout, will what he's done be understood? Or will he now become like Jack, who is viewed with skepticism and doubt about where his true loyalties are.
That, of course, leads to another question--is Jack in on it. It seems he and Juliet have some kind of plan or scheme going...at least that much was hinted to Kate when Kate ran to tell him about the new girl who had shown up in camp. I wonder why everyone took Kate into their confidence....did they hope she'd run to Jack and tell him? And it seems as if Jack and Juliet know about the rescue attempt or aren't suprised by it...so what do they know? Is the ship somehow there for them? Are they being selfish in hoping that only they can leave the island, thus leaving everyone else to their fates?
And is everyone really dead and we're just in purgratory or hell? Somehow that seems a bit too easy, but if it is perguatory, it would tie into my theory of how everyone gets what they want, gets peace and then leaves the island.
Of course, we have to wonder if this peace has come for Locke through the death of his father, what else is there in Locke's past that is holding him back from nirvana.
What I liked about this episode best was that it took the basic story structure--flashbacks that affect the current chapter--and it tweaked it enough to keep the formula interesting. Seeing a specific time-frame for the flashbacks was nice, as well as being given details to what had happened to Locke over the time we were away . Hitting the high points without a lot of other filler in there was nice (gee, if only they'd done this in the fall set of episodes). And I can see how this storytelling structure could work if they decided to use it for other castaways....
And I will give the writers credit--they didn't make us wait two seasons for answers to questions about what Locke would do next. I was worried that this would be teased to us like the why was Locke in a wheelchair question was.
It feels like we're moving and building toward something big....or maybe that's just me catching the promos.
Heroes: Five Years Gone"What if" episodes are nothing new in the sci-fi genre. Every show worth its salt has done one of those someone wakes up and the world is different kind of things.
One of the classic
Doctor Who stories from the 70s created a situation where if not stopped, a scientific project will go awry and destory the world. And then, the show took us to a parallel universe where that happened before taking us back home. In doing so, the show upped the ante and the tension in the final few minutes as the Doctor raced against time to save the world.
Same thing here with
Heroes. All season, we've known that our heroes have to stop the explosion from taking out New York. But here we see why that has to happen and I think that will lend a lot more dramatic tension to the end of the season as the group works to do this.
I did have some big questions left from it though--the biggest being how did Sylar manage to surive all those years without someone catching on that he wasn't Nathan. I wondered how Parkman didn't somehow read his mind and catch this, but maybe Sylar gained the power to block Parkman's mind reading attempts. It was an interesting twist to see Nathan transform into Sylar, but like I said--lots of questions in my mind.
What did work is seeing how Hiro goes from wide-eyed, enthusiastic Hiro to the Hiro from the future who is battle weary and battle hardened. Having Ando around helped and you can't help but think the guilt of losing two people he cared about in such a short span of time (Ando, the girl from the diner) might have been what sent him down the path. Also, we've seen Hiro needs Ando as a counterpoint, a way to keep him on the path toward his true destiny--whatever that is.
We also get to see how the other heroes have turned out--from where Bennett is. What was conspiciously absent (at least to me) was the Eric Roberts character...what was his role in the future that we saw?
I will give
Heroes credit that this episode was a lot more entertaining than last week's. Like I said, promising to blow up the world and then showing us what happens becuase of it is a nice trick. It should be interesting to see where the final three episodes of the season take us and just how much or little the heroes change this possible vision of what is to come...
Labels: heroes, Lost, tv shows
posted by Michael Hickerson at 5/04/2007 09:09:00 AM |
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