"The Substitute"

JANUARY 22, 2011

FOCUS: LOCKE
EPISODE: 6.4
AIRED: FEBRUARY 16, 2010

I can't recall how long they kept it up for, but one of the things I liked about S6 was that it was following the "order" of the first season with regards to which character it focused on. So like "Walkabout" was the 4th hour (3rd airing) of the first season, following a Kate episode, "The Substitute" is the 4th hour of Season Six, following yesterday's "What Kate Does". The episodes aren't as GOOD, sadly, but it's a nice little reference of sorts for people who can remember such things.

One thing I noticed about the "flash sideways" version of Locke this time around - he's got more of a sense of humor about his condition. When he falls out of the chair early on, and then the sprinkler system turns on, he almost laughs at the absurdity - the old Locke would have started screaming or hitting shit. Power of Katey Sagal I guess, who returns after a lengthy absence. It's also one of those things that sort of makes me wonder if they knew that these flashes were indeed part of the afterlife, because again - how complicated is this "waiting room"? And besides, wouldn't Locke consider Helen (who doesn't go to Lost Heaven, for the record) a more important part of his life than fucking around on the Island? Just doesn't add up.

The episode is also Dogen/Lennon free, making it the least annoying episode of the season thus far. I particularly love how drunken Sawyer instantly recognizes what no one else has been able to for the past week or so (how long was S5 in Lost-time? Lostpedia stopped keeping track) - that Locke isn't Locke. In fact Sawyer himself didn't pick up on it during their brief encounters last season, so maybe Dharma whiskey has some sort of vitamins in it that improves your perception? Or it's just another example of a character completely changing his demeanor once the audience knows what he technically should have known all along. I'm currently being bugged by this sort of nonsense on Supernatural too (spoilers!), where we learn that Sam no longer has a soul, and then he began acting like Chip from Not Quite Human, failing to understand basic sarcasm and such.

The highlight of the episode is of course the big reveal, that Jacob had pegged six of our heroes as possible replacements some time ago (and of course Jack would be #23, though Hurley would have made more sense - and it would have made Dave's joke about Leonard from "Dave" even funnier). I wish they had dwelled on a few of the crossed out names a bit more, however - we see a ton of names but none of them are really legible. I would have applauded seeing "Arzt" up there. They could have worked in a good Scott/Steve joke too. But as goofy as it is, I like the idea that it really was pre-determined that all of these people would end up on the Island, and perhaps it was just coincidence or an amazing stroke of luck that they ended up arriving at the same time; if Desmond or any of the Freighter Folk were candidates, the concept would be less hard to swallow I think, but we don't get to see any of the other names.

The episode also offers one of the best one-two laughs in the show's history, when Ben gives his wonderfully awful eulogy: "John Locke was a believer, he was a man of faith, he was a much better man than I will ever be. And I'm very sorry I murdered him", followed by Frank's response ("Weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to."). Good ol' Frank. It's weird that Jeff Fahey was finally added to the main cast (the other freighter folks were added right away) for the 6th season when he barely had any screentime or anything of significance to do until the very end of it, but at least it was a sort of "guarantee" that he would be around for a while.

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"What Kate Does"

JANUARY 21, 2011

FOCUS: KATE
EPISODE: 6.3
AIRED: FEBRUARY 9, 2010

While it still has too much Lennon and Dogen for my tastes (ANY Lennon and Dogen is too much for my tastes, admittedly), "What Kate Does" is an improvement over the 2nd half of "LAX", proving once again that the show works better when focusing on a character on and off the island and working in the other folks as necessary. And, as anyone who has read this site for the whole run knows by now, focusing on Kate is always a good thing for me (she also ties Jack's record for centric episodes with this one, by my count).

When I started I said I would try to look at her role more objectively, to see if I could agree with the many folks who hated her - and I still don't get it. I fail to see how she's somehow an "annoying" character; she's tough, her "gray area" that a lot of the characters possess is fairly compelling, and she's one of the few who can be counted on to protect her fellow castaways, even the ones she's not particularly close to. Hell she even helped rescue BEN in Season 4 - that's a heroic act! And she gets a great "Flash Sideways" story here, realizing that Claire was pregnant and risking getting caught by going back to the airport area to help her. Yeah, what a jerk. Her breakdown after realizing Sawyer's misery is partly her fault is also quite moving, and Ms. Lilly really makes you feel the weight of everything that's happened to her over the past few years.

The episode also opens up more of the mystery of the sideways world, when Ethan appears at Claire's hospital. The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around was that everything from 1977 on would have been different, not just from the moment that their plane would have crashed, so at first (ironically) I was thinking "Well this can't be real, he should be on the island!". Now, knowing that it WASN'T real, I realized my error - if the bomb went off in 1977, his parents would have escaped, returned to the mainland, and had him there. Ditto for Desmond being on the plane - it's perfectly logical (in a Lost sort of way) that he could have been on a trip, as there would be no island for him to be stuck on.

However, on the other hand, Ethan's presence (as well as Keamy and other folks who'd appear along the way) just confuses me - is the entire world in this waiting area? Where do they go? I think we should have gotten a glimpse of "Lost Hell". Plus, maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't Michael not allowed in the flash-world because of his Island crimes? Wouldn't Ethan be under the same restriction? He killed one of the random castaways, beat the piss out of Jack, nearly killed Charlie... Just seems inconsistent to me.

I didn't mention the "Sayid dies" story yesterday, because here is where it got really annoying so I figured I'd save it. Part of why I hate the Lennon and Dogen characters is because all they do is create more questions (that are never answered) when we should be getting answers to the existing ones, and this is a perfectly good example. What do they mean by "infected" or "claimed"? Why poison him - if they wanted him dead they can just shoot him or Dogen could use some of his badass martial arts skills. HOW did he become infected? What the hell is up with the water turning color? WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE TWO ASSCLOWNS? Etc. And it just continues the complete destruction of Sayid's character - he gets to redeem himself a bit when they're on the sub later in the season, but "Evil Sayid" is easily one of the dumbest decisions they made this season (and there are plenty of them).

To be fair, there is one scene with Dogen that I like, when him and Jack talk (in English). There's nothing particularly exciting about it, but I like seeing Jack talk calmly to someone he is at odds with, instead of just mocking him the entire time like he did with Locke pretty much every time they met over the past 3 seasons. And Dogen's explanation of why he doesn't speak English was pretty good, especially since he's saying it to Jack, a guy who knows from saying shit no one wants to hear.

Oh, and Claire returns, saving Jin by shooting that asshole Other who made me long for the old Jin, who would have beat the guy senseless after two seconds of his bitching. Kate casually drinking water while he explained why he hated her so much (and then hitting him again) was hilarious though, so I guess that's better than a Jin beatdown. Still, Daniel Dae Kim hasn't gotten any good action in a while, and he hasn't had sex for at least three years - gotta be a lot of pent up aggression there (Jin, I mean, not Mr. Kim). Speaking of which, another thing about the three years they spent in Dharma-ville - what did Jin do all that time? Did he just give up trying to get back together with Sun? She thought he was dead, so she had an excuse, but he knew she was OK. Kind of lazy.

Tomorrow - the return of Helen! All hail the hiatus from Sons of Anarchy!

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"LAX"

JANUARY 20, 2011

FOCUS: EVERYONE
EPISODE: 6.1
AIRED: FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Usually I liked the idea of a two hour Lost (in its prime I could have watched it all day), but in the case of “LAX”, they should have split it in half and let me (and presumably others) enjoy the good first half on its own, then return to get disappointed by the 2nd half a week later. A wise man once pointed out why the ending of a movie is so important to get right – it’s what the audience remembers most about the overall experience. A lackluster movie with a great ending – you can come out feeling positive. On the other hand, a movie can be great for a while, but a terrible ending mars the experience and results in a lot of negative feelings (see: A.I.).

“LAX” is a case of the latter – the whole 2nd half, with the temple shit, is borderline awful, almost nearing “Fire + Water” territory with its inane, out of nowhere character actions and utterly horrid new plot developments. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if we ever got any explanation for the “temple” or where Zach and Emma went (or even Cindy, for that matter), and with 16 hours to go, I don’t want new characters! Hell, I LOVE John Hawkes, but both his character (Lennon – ugh) and Dogen are sub-Nikki and Paulo as far as I’m concerned. Apparently Hawkes didn’t think much of it either, so I feel a little less guilty about dismissing his appearance here, but it’s still pretty telling that the sight of a favorite character actor in subsequent episodes would cause me to groan instead of cheer.

One thing about re-watching this episode knowing what the flash sideways are all about – it’s a lot less confusing (i.e. Desmond on the plane), but I was expecting that. However, I had forgotten how many examples there were of what was my main problem with the ultimate answer (spoiler!) – if this was some sort of waiting room for Heaven, why is it so violent and confusing? Why does Kate’s idea of the afterlife involve fighting once again with the Marshal (p.s. him giving in to her bathroom request when she calls him “Edward” just adds to the “have these two fucked?” suspicion I’ve had for years) and holding cabbies at gunpoint? Why would Boone’s involve being in the coach section without his sister, who he probably would be trying to get to join the mile high club with him? It just added to the confusion a lot of people felt when the finale aired. “All this shit was heaven? Who gets shot at in heaven?”

But the island stuff, pre-Temple, is quite good. The fact that Juliet was still alive was a nice surprise (so Sawyer, Richard, Kate, and everyone else on that plane in the finale – they never get a death scene or any sort of wrap-up, but Juliet gets to die twice?), and Sawyer’s total hatred of Jack was terrifying and even sort of understandable. Most of the time they fight, I’m on Jack’s side, but Sawyer’s got the upper hand here – it really is his fault Juliet’s dead. Speaking of their rivalry, I love the moment where Kate wakes up and sees them both unconscious, and she has to “choose” who to help first (and my boy wins!).

The full on reveal of “Locke is the smoke monster is the Man In Black” is great too. Again I wish they had used it in the S5 finale, but it doesn’t make it any less significant here – it’s great that something legitimately shocks Ben for once. There’s some muddled storytelling in this section (why is the Man in Black “disappointed” with the Others? They didn’t work for him), and I don’t get why he smacks Richard around, but it gives Terry O’Quinn a renewed bit of energy, and I like how Smokey figures out a way to get around Bram’s little protective circle too.

And even though they’re not “real”, the flash sideways do allow for some nice character moments. The scene between Jack and Locke is quite nice (first time they’ve been civil to each other since what, Season 2?), and it’s always nice to see Arzt again. And good call on leaving out the tail section people (except for Cindy, never quite got how she was in the back of the plane since she walked further toward the front after giving Jack his drink and the plane crashed 30 seconds later), since they probably couldn’t have gotten them all back anyway – just don’t show the tail section! Problem solved. It’s a shame Eko never came back though – the promotional art for the 6th season showed EVERYONE, dead or not (even Vincent!), including our favorite drug dealing priest, but he never appeared.

Speaking of Eko – I wonder if his “church”, when finished, would have resembled the one they all ended up in at the end of the series before “moving on”. I always assumed that he would be building a Catholic church (the one he “owed” Yemi), but perhaps if he was around for a while it could have been modified to be multi-denominational. If so, I’m guessing the final scene wouldn’t have been so annoying to some, as it would have tied into something from the show. Oh well. Over the years, Cuse and Lindelof have never really spilled too many details on things that “could have been”, so I doubt we’ll ever know.

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"The Incident"

JANUARY 18, 2011

FOCUS: EVERYONE!
EPISODE: 5.16
AIRED: MAY 13, 2009

It’s over! “The Incident” is a decent finale for a mediocre season, though it sadly suffers from some of the same problems (no Desmond? Still no Claire?) and doesn’t really have any big reveals – apart from explaining why “Marvin Candle” doesn’t have a hand, the big mystery solved is... John Locke is dead. For two years in a row, the finale ends with a camera panning around and revealing Terry O’Quinn in a suit and trying hard not to breathe.

Of course, in the S6 premiere we get the physical/visual reveal that Locke was Smokey, so at least they didn’t drag it out for too long, but still, Jacob’s line about “finding the loophole” made a pretty weak reveal – they should have ended things on the “Sorry you had to see me like that” scene from the next episode (which aired 8 months later) – THAT would be a good cliffhanger. Especially since Ben (who gets a rare good line at Richard’s expense when he questions whether he’s making shit up as he goes along – usually it’s Richard who gets the good lines!) still doesn’t seem to know what’s really going on – it’s a reveal to the audience but not to any of the characters. At the time it aired, it was pretty frustrating, and rather lackluster to boot. And if you missed the opening scene it wouldn’t even have made any sense.

On the other hand, that opening scene is much more enjoyable now that we know more about Jacob and the Man In Black. I always liked seeing Titus Welliver pop up, but knowing their history makes their rather casual conversation quite amusing to me. I also enjoyed knowing that Richard was on the Black Rock, which adds another layer to MiB’s accusation that Jacob “brought it there”. Obviously I’ll talk about it more when the time comes, but I didn’t hate “Across The Sea” – I hated its placement in the season. I would have preferred their story got dished out in little standalone scenes like this one, because it didn’t bother me then and I enjoy the scene even more now.

The highlight of the episode is easily the big Jack/Sawyer fight. While the two have gotten along for the most part over the past 2-3 seasons, the time they spent at each others throats in S1 and 2 never really resulted in a full blown fight like this one; I mean – HOLY SHIT. Sawyer even kicks him in the balls! Even Ben never looked as mangled as Jack does at the end of their brawl. Since Jack only fights Locke’s body, this is pretty much the alpha and omega of “long time coming” fights on the show.

The big climax at the exploding Hatch site is good too. Sucks that established continuity kept us from getting to see Radzinsky suffer (another reason why it was a bad idea to make him such a villain), but at least we get to see Phil, who was even more annoying, meet the business end of some metal rods. Plus I just like seeing shit fly around. Also, both in this and the fight scene, Jack shows remarkable recovery skills. Sawyer’s beating leaves him bloody but running at full capacity (even the kick to the babymakers didn’t seem to phase him), and then he takes a full toolbox to the back of the head, which could kill a man easily, but Jack recovers from it without even a noticeable wound.

Speaking of Jack’s skills, his flashback was one of the best, as we got to see Christian (as Christian!) for the first time in a while, and it showed the “Count to 5” story that we heard in the pilot. It’s odd that it was his father that had to tell him to do this, but I guess he just left that part out in order to sound more awesome to the hot girl cleaning his wound. Some of the other flashbacks aren’t as successful – it seems like he actually caused Nadia to die, which sets off the chain that led to Sayid being brought back to the island – not exactly a heroic thing to do. Seems like there could have been an easier way to do it too. Also, unless Ben was lying, the guy who ran her over meant to do so, so wouldn’t she have gotten killed anyway?

And Jack also manages to shoot a guy this time! It’s kind of weird that Jack would be killing people, but I guess if he figured nothing he was doing that day would ever really happen then it would be OK. However, this produces a plot hole/time travel gaffe thingie in his logic – he sets off the bomb which keeps the plane from crashing, but it was only the result of him crashing on the island that would allow him to bring the bomb there, right? So the bomb wouldn’t go off unless he crashed, which he wouldn’t- ah fuck it. Kate sure is pretty, huh?

Actually, they do answer one other question – where Bernard and Rose (I just noticed that their name makes Bernard Rose, the director of Candyman) have been all this time. As it turns out, they just decided to ignore everyone else and live on the island peacefully (with Vincent!), having grown tired of their nonsense. I love that! Kate tells them Jack has a bomb and Rose replies “Who cares?” So good. I also love “We traveled 30 years through time and you’re still finding ways to shoot each other?” Hahahaha, I love these two. Their little coda with Juliet is also kind of sad, almost like they knew she’d be the one that wouldn’t come back from their adventure.

Oh man, that part. This makes the 3rd time I’ve seen it and I still tear up. As I mentioned a few recaps ago, Sawyer and Juliet made for the most realistic couple that the island “created” (meaning not counting Rose/Bernard, Jin/Sun, Desmond/Penny), and I think their reunion in Lost Heaven was the only one I cried at in the series finale, as well. And to this day I don’t know if she wanted to leave to be on V, or if they decided to kill her off and she booked V to keep on working, but either way it’s the rare death that didn’t seem like the result of something besides their plans for the story (i.e. having to kill Eko off early because the actor wanted to leave, or killing Nikki and Paulo because everyone fucking hated them).

So that’s it for Season 5. It’s an odd season in that the middle episodes were better than the opening/closing ones, and it’s also the one riddled with the most plot holes and unanswered questions, making it the weakest (assuming I don’t like S6 less this time around), but it’s still valid entertainment. And while I didn’t like some of the decisions they made along the way, I appreciate the insular nature of the season as a whole – there were no attempts to make it accessible for newcomers (many episodes didn’t even bother with “Previously...” recaps), or shoehorn in some new characters that would look good on a poster or TV spot (guessing no one wrote up any Phil/Radzinsky slashfic). It was a fans-only affair that some fans didn’t like.

I’m taking tomorrow off, so S6 will start up on Thursday. We’re almost done!

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"Follow The Leader"

JANUARY 17, 2011

FOCUS: RICHARD (!)
EPISODE: 5.15
AIRED: MAY 6, 2009

It’s about time, a Richard episode! While “Follow The Leader” doesn’t really explain anything about his past, and involves folks doing stuff that doesn’t really concern him directly, he’s the linchpin of the episode, and gets some of the best lines (his response to Jack asking him about carrying the bomb is priceless). So it’s his episode, dammit. And unlike his REAL flashback tale, it doesn’t annoy fans at a crucial period in the storyline by leaving all the main characters on the sideline for a week.

On the contrary, this one has a lot of good moments for our heroes. I particularly enjoy Kate having to point out to Jack that he is starting to sound like Locke, and their conversation re: “misery” is truly heartbreaking – he totally wants to Eternal Sunshine her! That’s some cold shit, especially since now that Sawyer has Juliet, he has her all to himself again. And speaking of those two, I liked their scene in the sub – like Desmond and Penny in the previous episode, it could almost be a good finale for the characters (by this time it was already known that Elizabeth Mitchell would be leaving the show). If not for Kate’s surprise appearance, the sub could have gone off into the sunset and it would be more or less an acceptable conclusion for their characters.

And Hurley’s “faceoff” with Chang! Oh man. Again, they actually pay off a funny throwaway line, where Hurley worries someone will ask him who the president is in 1977, in order to advance the character arcs a bit (as it leads to Chang believing that Miles is indeed his son). But it looks like the actor playing Chang is having fun too, which just makes the scene all the more hilarious. “You’re 46?” And the cutaway to Jin when Hurley says that there was no Korean War is just brilliant. God I miss that dumb, lovable bastard.

Sayid also got to show a bit of his old self again, which was much appreciated. As the character most ruined by the final season, and largely under used this one, it was nice to see him have another strategy discussion with Jack (when this had originally aired, I had long since forgotten that he used to be sort of like Jack’s right hand man – a fact that was easier to recall when watching back to back). I also like how Jack didn’t bother to give Eloise a hand when she surfaced from the pool, but ran over to help Sayid when he popped up a few minutes later. Bros before son-killing hos.

As for the Locke part of the storyline, again it makes a lot more sense now that you know he’s the smoke monster. Richard even mentions that there’s something different about him, which I had originally pegged as sloppy inconsistent writing on the writers’ part. Not sure why he’d still go off and kill boar and such, but for the most part it’s one of those things where I almost feel kind of stupid for not even considering that he might be Smokey.

Richard’s line about watching all of the Dharma folk all die doesn’t make any sense though. By now he should be sort of familiar with Jack and Kate, who never died in any iteration of the story (at least, not yet in Jack’s case), so why does he say that? He couldn’t be referring to the bomb going off, or he would have died too (as far as we know, he’s ageless but not invincible). If there was some scenario where they’d be gunned down by Radzinsky or something, we should have seen it, somehow. My guess is that they had nothing better to go to commercial on so they just threw that in there.

Also I’m getting sick of Sun and Jin repeating that “if there’s a chance my husband (wife) are on this island...” Yeah, we get it. Y’all want to get back together. Take it up with the writers who insanely decided to keep you apart for two seasons and stop torturing us and making me stop liking you.

Tomorrow – the S5 finale! All will be HUH?

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"The Variable"

JANUARY 16, 2011

FOCUS: DANIEL
EPISODE: 5.14
AIRED: APRIL 29, 2009

Congrats, Lost! You made it to 100 episodes, which was something increasingly rare for a show to do in the age of Tivo and Hulu and all this other shit that puts my job at risk. But given the serial nature of the show, they couldn't really do much to celebrate the occasion in-show, as say Friends or something would do (big guest stars or something). Instead, "The Variable" is definitely a die-hard fans only affair, focusing on one of its strangest characters (one we haven't seen in several episodes to boot) and featuring the clumsiest shootout in action/adventure show history.

Seriously, Jack seemingly can't hit the broad side of a barn when the Dharma assholes start shooting at him (mostly due to Daniel's idiotic decision to carry a gun in his hand like it was a notebook or something that DOESN'T CAUSE PANIC). Now, one could argue that Jack, being a doctor and all, didn't want to just shoot people, but it hasn't stopped Juliet. Plus he seems to be taking his job as a janitor very seriously, and most janitors I've known are never more than a spilled soda or puke puddle away from opening fire. And apart from Dan, the "bad guys" obviously can't hit any of our guys, so we basically have a 2-3 minute shootout of no consequence (that no one else comes to help either side shows how ineffective it was - I like to picture someone looking out the window, seeing these yahoos shoot up everything BUT each other, and figure they had better things to do).

Later, Daniel has one of his best ever scenes, where he explains that none of them were safe since for them it was their "present" (something I hadn't thought of), and then explains what he plans to do - stop the energy from ever being released, which would kick off the chain of events that led to their plane crashing in the first place (something I HAD thought of). It's a bit vague, but we're led to believe that it was his studies at Ann Arbor that allowed him to realize that they COULD change things in the past, unlike what he thought before. This is part of the problem with time travel in rushed TV shows - it took a while for me to wrap my head around the fact that he'd been gone for three years, let alone that it was the time he needed to figure out that he was wrong. So it's clumsy, but I stand corrected: it wasn't inconsistent writing on their part with regards to the "Whatever happened, happened" concept - it was just vague writing for what was kind of an important change in a character's beliefs.

This could have been remedied if they had scenes of him at Ann Arbor in the flashbacks, instead of nonsense about his mom disapproving of his girlfriend (or, since it was the 100th episode, they could have pushed for an extra 10 minutes or something). They also needn't have bothered with the "reveal" that Widmore was his father (hey, that means his "constant" is also his brother-in-law!), because it's not important and just seems like "fan-wanking". We never know why him and Eloise split up (maybe because she shot their time-traveling son?), and until that moment I never even considered that Daniel's father was unknown. You know, I don't know who Sawyer or Charlotte's dads are either, I'm surprised they didn't make up some nonsense for that too. WE DON'T NEED TO KNOW ALL OF THEIR FATHERS.

I quite liked the first scene, of Daniel playing the piano and frustratingly declaring his desire to "make time". As someone whose time is stretched dangerously thin (having an unhealthy obsession with earning Xbox Achievements doesn't help), I really sympathized with him here, and it made me kind of sad that Daniel died at the end of the episode, as I was sort of hoping he would figure it out.

Yesterday I mentioned that this was a "sequel" of sorts to "The Constant", because it dealt with the other side of the equation, but when I said that I had forgotten that this episode had what almost seemed like a send-off for ("Constant" stars) Desmond and Penny. He reiterates his love for her and that he would never leave her again, and we find out that his injuries are not life-threatening. And Ben has apologized and no longer plans to kill Penny (though they don't know that), so it could very easily and acceptably be the last time we see these two (indeed it WAS in season 5), as all of their issues have been resolved and there are no major unanswered questions about them, provided we accept "he was exposed to radiation" as the reason for Desmond's unique time traveling skills. Which we should, since they never explain it any further.

Tomorrow - a Richard episode! That's three "first time" centric episodes in a row!

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...

"Some Like It Hoth"

JANUARY 15, 2011

FOCUS: MILES
EPISODE: 5.13
APRIL 15, 2009

It's a shame that Miles (I'm spelling it right now) wasn't introduced earlier in the show, because his chemistry with Jorge Garcia makes for one of the best pairs the show has - I'd go far enough to say they were more amusing than even Hurley and Charlie. Also, if they had more time, perhaps we could get an episode explaining why he had like 39 facial piercings at one point in "Some Like It Hoth", seemingly before he made a living charging folks to tell them what their dead relatives were saying.

The apex of this humor is in this episode, when Miles gets frustrated with Hurley and snatches what he thinks is his journal, but turns out to be his "improved" script for Empire Strikes Back, which is three years away from existing. It's a genius throwaway gag, because it's the sort of shit I'd do (wait, I just called myself a genius. Sorry), though I'd probably write a better Halloween II. When Miles reads some of it aloud I nearly shit myself the first time (especially his pronunciation of "ROARRR"), and I always love the references to Hurley's poor spelling (Jesus Christ dude, BOUNTY HUNTER?).

But what makes the episode work is that it's not just a throwaway bit of humor - Hurley actually uses the film as an example later on, convincing Miles (or at least planting the idea in his head) that talking to his dad might not be such a bad idea. Hurley gets his facts screwed up (says Luke got his hand cut off as a result of freaking out after learning Vader was his father - he got his hand cut off first!), but the point is valid, and I liked that they were able to make something a little more meaningful out of what was a damn funny scene. Also, without that earlier scene, it would have been just another lameass Star Wars reference in the middle of another geek property, so it wasn't annoying either. Well done!

And this is the "Jack does chores" episode I've been waiting for! See, when characters on TV shows are doing something kind of odd, I like to think about the (unseen) process that got them there. Like there's an episode of The Simpsons where Bart finds Homer propping his car up with a wicker basket in order to change the oil - I like to think of Homer realizing he has no jack, figuring out something that was the right size, carrying the basket outside, etc. For some reason it just makes it funnier to me. Likewise, I enjoyed the mental image of Jack waking up in the Dharma Initiative in 1977, getting breakfast, and then figuring he'd do Roger a solid by walking around and cleaning up Dharma classrooms for the guy. Honestly, it probably would have made more sense for Roger to be doing his work normally (while drunk) and then Jack, under the guise of wanting to help, found him and pretended to be his pal but really just trying to figure out what Roger suspected about Kate. Too bad Jack wasn't assigned cleaning up the polar bear poop - we could see how far he'd go to keep up the ruse.

Speaking of the classroom, I never noticed that Dharma uses a different grading system than I'm used to - an A is not anything from 90-100, but 93-100 (and a B is 92-85, a C 84-77, etc). So what would be a B in my school (84) is now a C+? Harsh! I know different countries have different systems, but you'd figure they'd just use the standard North American system since it's a North American show (I suspected it was a Danish system, since Alvar Hanso is from Denmark, but their system is some baffling nonsense that includes negative numbers and the like). So I think it's just a sort of minor "Easter Egg" for careful viewers that alludes to their tougher education system. Kind of funny.

Back to thinking about characters doing stuff we don't see - when did Hurley ever watch the videos to know that Pierre Chang had a "stage name" of Marvin Candle? Was this a mistake? Or did Hurley get bored one day while on button duty in the Hatch and watch them? Speaking of the Hatch, I liked seeing its "origin", but the whole thing about putting numbers on the door by hand was just stupid. Why would a bunch of construction guys give a shit about banging a serial number into an emergency exit door? The whole "the number is smudged" bit was painful too, there only to give Hurley a chance to say the last number. Sometimes their obsession with the numbers got to be a bit too on the nose for my tastes; Hurley could have just as easily spotted them stenciling QUARANTINE on the door (which would have made the reveal a lot more eye-catching, I think - I had actually forgotten that the numbers were on the door and I just watched it 2 months ago! This aired 4 years later!).

One other nitpick/question - what's with folks needing corpses on this show? In "LaFleur", Richard said they needed the body of the Dharma guy that was killed, and in this one Chang has a corpse delivered halfway across the island. It's never explained, and unlike other unexplained nonsense (like Ben's "list" of people that he had Sayid kill), it seemed like there could have been something interesting behind it. Plus I have no logical guesses for it - Ben's list could have just been some associates of Widmore or former "Others" who, like Widmore, had been banished and may be looking to return to the island. But the corpse stuff? I got nothing. Y'all Unitologists?

And Daniel finally returned! Which means tomorrow is the underwhelming "sequel" to "The Constant"!

Where are we?

PLEASE, GO ON...