- So about last night's LOST "fall season finale" ...
Man, I just feel like few others I've talked to are on the same wavelength with me on LOST. Let me summarize: to me, much of Lost's first season was spectacular - the best season of scifi / fantasy drama since the heyday of The X-Files - just totally captivating, fun, and thought-provoking. But the Season 1 finale, where anticipation and intensity was built up to unbearable levels, just killed it for me - with the now infamous "inside the hatch is ... a ladder!" cliffhanger ending, all the momentum the show had built up just burst like an untied balloon. This sense of frustration with the show carried over into much of Season 2. While the second season definitely had its moments, I never took to most of the Tailie characters, and felt that the show was just totaly getting off track and off-focus. Even as pretty much all of Season 1's mysteries were left hanging, an entirely new set of riddles were introduced, and as a weary fan I was becoming less and less invested in the show's mythology, especially since the only really interesting stuff going on had to do with the characters' interactions, not with the overarching plot. That being said, Season 2 had a pretty interesting finale, and I welcomed the character house-cleaning that removed the extremely annoying and one-note Anna-Lucia character from the cast. So that brings us to Season 3, where going in I was really, really on the bubble ... to be honest I wasn't even all that excited about the show, which for me got completely eclipsed last season by the quality of 24, Veronica Mars, and other shows that last year were to me better written and better-plotted than Lost, by far. And going into the first few eps of Season 3, I still felt that sense of frustration ... the flashbacks seemed tacked on and extraneous, the myth-arc seemed to be an unfixable mess of random plot points and unresolved mysteries, and characters like Locke seemed to lose much of their bite and interest-level from the superlative Season 1 episodes. When I read that TV Guide review that declared the Season 3 premiere to be the best ep since the pilot, I was excited, but was in disbelief after having watched it - not only was it not that great of an ep, but this season's premiere was, in many ways, a disappointment - the resolution of the exploding-hatch plotline was terrible, the Others' motives still frustratingly murky, and most of the formerly main characters had all but been rendered irrelevant.
But that was then, this is now. To me, the last three episodes of Lost have been pretty great. And yet, I seem to be the only one who feels this way. Whenever I talk to someone, they are either in the "I've always loved Lost, loved Season 2, and love love love Season 3" camp, or in the "liked Season 1, disliked Season 2, and dislike Season 3 even more, and will probably stop watching any minute" camp. Am I the only one whose dwindling faith in the show has been almost fully restored thanks to the quality of the last few episodes? That's not to say that, in the bigger picture, this show doesn't still have some major, major hurdles to overcome to get back on track. I am really, really hoping that the end of this six-episode arc doesn't mean a return to Season 2 style unevenness. But man, this sort-of self-contained storyarc really allowed the writers to focus on the immediate drama at hand, and create a Jack/Sawyer/Kate-centric story that has been filled with tension, drama, and excitement.
Last night's ep, to me, completed a trifecta of amazing episodes of LOST. While the bigger-picture questions still loom, the last few eps have masterfully tightened the focus from the larger mystery of the island to the interpersonal drama between our three principle characters and the Others, who despite still-enigmatic origins, have become the most hate-able villains in quite some time. This ep was just intense, from start to finish. Even the Kate / Sawyer caged-heat sexytime scene was set up really, really well ... and yeah, let's just say that if Sawyer had to go, he picked the right way to go ... you know? The final operating-table scene was just pure drama, and the final sequence had to have your heart racing and wondering "what happens now?"
In the bigger picture, while there have been some great myth-arc related moments in these last few eps (the smoke monster vs. Eko, the emergence of Eye-Patch Guy, etc.), what makes these eps really notable is the great dramatic buildup that occurred between all of the main characters as they were held captive by the Others and desperate for a way out.
It's yet to be seen if LOST has what it takes to really weave a compelling and fulfilling overarching sci/fi fantasy plotline - the rest of the season will be make or break in that regard. But, no question, this show knows how to deliver top-notch character drama, and this quasi-finale was proof that Lost can still be the best in the biz at delivering a compelling and nail-biting hour of televised drama, a level of acting, character, dramatic pacing, and intensity that is second to none. Anyone else with me?
My Grade: A
- Also, finally watched Monday's HEROES. I have to say, the show has done a great job recently of giving some of its initially less-interesting characters a much better level of depth and coolness. Ali Larter, for one, has helped make her character better by leaps and bounds over the last one or two eps. I've been down on her acting until now, where she's done a pretty impressive job of playing at Rose & Thorn-esque dual personalities. But the heart of the show is still Hiro, who just makes everything else so much more fun through his presence. Just his expression as he showed the kid the comic that he stars in was priceless. Also, I definitely respect the fact that things are moving forward on this show at full steam. I mean, why not? Why should a show about superheroes be relegated to a Lost-style methodical episode-to-episode pacing? So yeah, I definitely feel that with each episode, HEROES has become increasingly more watchable. But still, it's just lacking that extra something to make it special, to really make it stand out. Even this ep's revelation that that kid can somehow "fix" machines through his mind ... what should have been a huge shocker was just kind of "meh." It just felt arbitrary and again, like an idea that I've seen before, notably in Brian K. Vaughn's Ex Machina. And it's funny, I was reading the EW article about Heroes where Jeph Loeb was joking about how naive Tim Kring was about superhero mythology, to the point where he suggested a hero with magnetic powers, not realizing the character he envisioned was basically the X-Men's Magneto. Kring even admits that he didn't read JMS's Rising Stars series, because he realized how similar it was to Heroes. I mean, okay, so the guy is just "stumbling" on all these pre-used concepts, but even if they're new to him, it just gives Heroes this semi-generic feel to it. I feel that to really get to that next level, Heroes needs to do two things: 1.) get a few really gravitas-filled actors - the equivalent of a Terry O'Quinn on Lost or William B. Davis on the X-Files or Dennis Haysbert, formerly of 24, to help give the show a bit more dramatic cred. The show needs more of that, of the kind of actor who makes you cheer whenever they come on screen, who can deliver even an over the top line with intensity and gusto. 2.) Blow open the main superhero/conspiracy theory main plotline with a storyline that is not only mind-blowing but original - something that even a big scifi fan can look at and say "huh, I've never seen that done before." Obviously there will be SOME aspects that seem familiar, but the show just needs that boost of freshness and originality. As for this ep, like I said, pretty good, and a definite improvement over the earlier eps. But not quite on that level of "great" just yet.
My Grade: B
- Alright, that's it for now --- until we meet again.
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