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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Lost - Season 4 (US)

  
  

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Keith, like a scientist
12:17 / 01.02.08
So, it's back! Let the speculations begin.

As far season openers go, it was pretty decent, and gave us a new split in the group akin season 1's split. Locke leading the people afraid of the "rescuers" and Jack leading the "we think we want to be rescued."

And, shocking to me, the flashbacks were actually flash forwards again. Hurley focused, with a smattering of Jack. The mention of the "Oceanic 6" is gonna make speculation rampant. We know of 3 now: Jack, Kate, Hurley, with possibly coffin person being a 4th.
 
 
Rhayader
14:20 / 01.02.08
Nothing actually happened, and the bit with Naomi felt a bit contrived and pointless.
 
 
buttergun
18:53 / 01.02.08
Supposedly "Jacob" (the dude in the shack) was Christian Shepard, aka Jack's father. The other guy seemed to look like Locke?


I thought it was a good episode...easing into the season. I skipped all of the pre-episode and after-episode "oceanic commercial" sh#t. Stupid marketing crap. I'm kinda glad Charlie's gone. I remember last year I liked the idea of the "flash forwards" but some didn't. I still feel the same way. I'm thinking Jack, Kate, and Hurley struck some bargain with someone to get off the island, but in the process had to claim that the others who stayed behind (for one, I'm guessing Locke) were dead. Maybe it was like those who left the island were selling their souls in some fashion to be able to leave. But obviously some people (represented by the "lawyer" Abbadon) think those who remained on the island are still alive, and want to find them. Or maybe the "they" Abbadon was referring to are a totally different group -- maybe the Dharma Initiative people (ie Ben?). One of the beauties/infurities of Lost is the writers can just make it up as they go along, and we of course empower them by worrying over every angle of their convoluted storytelling. Hell, if we spent this amount of thought on ending the Iraq War, it would be a distant memory by now.



I'm thinking the finale of the show will be those who left the island returning to it to save those they left behind, or maybe even just going back there to stay forever. What I really want to know about is the dead coming back to life -- Jack's father in previous seasons, and now Charlie.
 
 
Mistoffelees
19:49 / 01.02.08
The mention of the "Oceanic 6" is gonna make speculation rampant. We know of 3 now: Jack, Kate, Hurley, with possibly coffin person being a 4th.

Michael and Walt could also be two of the "Oceanic 6", since we know they have already left the island. Of course, that doesn´t mean they ever made it back to the States alive.


I really want to know about is the dead coming back to life -- Jack's father in previous seasons, and now Charlie.

We know Hurley had an imaginary friend and has mental problems, so I just assume his Charlie was a hallucination, so long as there are no real explanations that and how he survived his drowning.

I liked this first episode of the season. It was a bit slow, nothing much really happened, but still it was entertaining and I didn´t feel they were stalling because of a lack of ideas. They better pick up the pace with the next episode though.

And I also prefer the flash forwards to the flashbacks. Often, I was bored with the flashbacks, especially Kate, Sawyer and the Korean couple. I never felt it added to the main story and it felt repetitive. Especially when for no good reason Kate met a black horse and Sawyer met his pig(?).
 
 
Seth
22:39 / 01.02.08
I just assume his Charlie was a hallucination

He would also have to hallucinate the guy who said, "That guy keeps looking at you" for that to be true. Conceivable, yeah... but it seemed placed there to indicate there was something more going on.
 
 
CameronStewart
02:47 / 02.02.08
represented by the "lawyer" Abbadon

Oh god, was that really his name? That's a bit...on the nose, isn't it?
 
 
Evil Scientist
09:34 / 05.02.08
It's only a minor thing, (I'm not a huge fan of the show but I watch it), but I did like that bruised and beaten Ben was practically healed up by the end of the episode. It's a handy little Macguffin that "accelerated healing factor" trick of the island.

Not a terrible opening and it left me with some stirring interest to watch beyond feeding my general fanboy love of Mira Furlan.
 
 
CameronStewart
12:00 / 05.02.08
I just assume his Charlie was a hallucination

He would also have to hallucinate the guy who said, "That guy keeps looking at you" for that to be true. Conceivable, yeah... but it seemed placed there to indicate there was something more going on.

Also, Charlie had a new haircut...
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
18:58 / 07.02.08
New jacket, too. And as my Mum said... "he seems much happier now he's dead, doesn't he?"

I don't think it's been suggested that the dead are coming back to life. I think people in the 'dead' column of the list of minor and major characters are occasionally reappearing to people in the 'live' column... doesn't mean they've come back to life, or even that it's really them. My money's still on the 'dead people' being Jacob, that he's using them to communicate with the island's inhabitants. Jacob's hut doesn't appear to be an entirely real place, does it? Hmmm...

And also... should we be calling these flashforwards? Although they're occupying the same position in the episode's structure (subordinate b-plot) as the flashbacks did, as far as the narrative structure is concerned, they're not being used in anything like the same way as the flashbacks were previously. The flashbacks revealed hidden aspects to the characters personalities and histories that, secretive buggers that they are, they weren't about to tell the other people on the island, thereby allowing for dramatic irony and for the most part eliminating the need for exposition without increasing the likelihood of narrative ellipsis. The glimpses of the future appear to be occupying a different role - as the series winds down the last three seasons, the 'flashforwards' have the potential to instead act as hooks to keep the audience on their toes, and on the edge of their seats about both the ending of the show and the unfolding of events on the island as they, hopefully, reach crisis/climax - "only six survivors? but we already have three... or is it five? who's the sixth? does that mean the others are still on the island, or dead? wait a sec, it's going back to the island... OMGDON'TGOINTOTHATCAVE! THAT'S THE ONE FUTUREJACK MENTIONED IN EPISODE 12!"

Cracking first episode back. Re-established relationships between characters after the break, gave us more Jacob Weirdness, it was Hurleycentric (I'm all about the Hugo), and Jack is going more and more out of control as he tries to keep everyone alive and safe. ("If you hurt my friends I'll kill you... You hurt my friends, so now you're gonna die... if Ben tries anything I'm gonna kill him... if Locke comes back I'm gonna kill him... if any of y'all step on my bunion I'm gonna kill alla you..." (copyright 'I'm Gonna Git You Sucka 1988'))
 
 
Evil Scientist
08:57 / 08.02.08
as the series winds down the last three seasons

I'm trying to see how they can stretch it out for another three without pole-vaulting the Carcharodon carcharias.

Still I am looking forward to my dreams of a Locke-led insurgency of Survivors/Others battling the evils of the DHARMA Initiative (as I presume the folks on the ship are).
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
11:12 / 08.02.08
Making good use of Lance "Lt. Daniels" Reddick's inherent slightly creepy lizard-likeness A++ will watch again
 
 
CameronStewart
12:30 / 08.02.08
I liked last night's episode except for that one utterly baffling scene where they're showing the underwater wreck of flight 815 on national television, including a long lingering closeup of a shriveled, decomposing corpse with a hotline number flashing under it for those with information to call in. This bore so little resemblance to anything that would happen in reality that it was surprising to me that it made it onscreen.
 
 
buttergun
13:14 / 08.02.08
Thanks Cameron...glad someone else felt that way.

However...I do recall back in '96 the Mexican channels showed some grisly footage of an airplane crash, including rescue workers hacking down corpses which were suspended in the air, tangled in vines and tree branches. Stuff which of course would never be shown on US television...so hell, maybe Lapidus (aka the drunk pilot) was watching Telemundo with the English audio option on?

I'm happy to see Jeremy Davis (from one of my favorite films, "CQ") here...though the ghostbuster guy's a bit much. His flashback scene was ridiculous, on par with the "psychic" in Claire's flashback, Season 1. If we suddenly have this guy traisping about the island, communing with the spirits of all those who have died there, etc...then Lost will have finally crawled so far up its own ass that there's no hope for it.

Anyone else notice the loss of the flashback/flashforward structure? We saw the discovery of the plane's remains on the ocean floor, though this is something Jeremy Davis's (from whose POV the scene was) character would not have been privy to. Also, we saw a flashback to...can't recall her name, the girl Locke killed last season. I'm not complaining mind you, just pointing out that this episode wasn't relegated to the usual POV straightjacketing that past Lost episodes have been.
 
 
CameronStewart
13:35 / 08.02.08
I dunno, I'm not ready to take Miles' apparent ability to talk to the dead at face value just yet. I think we'll find out that there's more to it, or that he's a fraud.
 
 
MJ-12
11:51 / 09.02.08
So the overall theme this season seems to be "who beats the shit out of Ben this week?" I'm hoping we get to see Claire do it soon.
 
 
Tsuga
19:00 / 09.02.08
If we suddenly have this guy traisping about the island, communing with the spirits of all those who have died there, etc...then Lost will have finally crawled so far up its own ass that there's no hope for it.
Oh, come on fer chrissake. You're talking about the show that has an invisible guy in a disappearing cabin, polar bears wild on a tropical island, a guy who can see the future, a plane full of interconnected stories (including two brothers that crashed in planes on the same island years apart), a puff of smoke that can pick people up, magical regenerative powers from the place itself, and there's more. That show never got a chance to jump the shark, it was already mid-air when it started. Which is fine really, I enjoy it, no matter how ridiculous the story and characters are (sure Jack, you're going to kill everyone, aren't you? So menacing). You can't complain at this point about some infusion into the story of another absurd element. Well, you can, but why bother?
I do hope there is some explanation at the end that makes some semblance of sense, though I'm not holding my breath.
 
 
buttergun
22:44 / 09.02.08
Tsuga, thanks for bringing me back down to earth. Seriously, you've encapsulated all that's frustrating and enjoyable about the show in one tidy paragraph. You're right. I'll lay my qualms about "ghostbusting" to the side and just give the show a break. We're way past the point where strictures of reality can be applied to it...but really what gets me, realizing this, is how people still want to claim that the show is "deep." Surf on over to Entertainment Weekly's website and check out the weekly posts their writer does for the show...picking apart every piece of dialog as if it will reveal some eternal truth.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
17:54 / 10.02.08
i was also glad to see Jeremy Davies - having just watched Herzog's RESCUE DAWN [which also features LOST's video guide Dr Marvin Candle (François Chau) as a Governor who tried to make Christian bale sign some papers].

so, the Challengers of The Unknown / Fantastic Four have reached the Island. I'm cool with that, love LOST when it's SciFi more than anything else.

Faraday mentioning how the light there is weird and doesn't spread? totally there with the Hollow Earth theory.

polar bear remains in Tunisia [complete with Dharma collar]? totally there with it also, and the LAND OF THE LOST refferences. [I still think four-toed statue might be a refference to Sleetaks, hehe]

Locke questioning Ben about the monster at gunpoint? writers laughing at fans' questions, hahahaha.

oh, and Ben's mole in the freighter? my money's on Michael, who never really got to mainland. Ben doesn't give anybody anything without asking something back. I was intrigued also by Miles posessing a picture of him in some office or airport. has Ben been using the submarine to go back to the US? so far we were led to believe the guy had grown in the Island only...

and i used to hate this show on season one.
 
 
Mistoffelees
18:03 / 10.02.08
oh, and Ben's mole in the freighter? my money's on Michael, who never really got to mainland.

Good idea. Also, the spy could be the woman he´s shot at. If she is his spy, he knew about the vest and by shooting her, he could have tried to divert people from thinking, she might be one of his people. Also her apparently being happy to be on the island (when she had just got out of the parachute), her knowing of the bear collar, and her question about the baby.
 
 
Spaniel
08:10 / 11.02.08
Fully expect to see Michael this season. He was ever present in the mobisodes, so I'm thinking he's probably back in the mix. As for Walt, well that's a lot trickier. It occurred to me yesterday that Walt was always going to be a difficult to fit into the show beyond one or two seasons, because he's still growing. That said, depending on how far into the future the flashforwards are set (I'm sure this has been established, but I can't remember off the top of my head), it may well be possible to get Walt back on the show without resorting to horrific contrivance.

On the topic of Hurley just hallucinating Charlie: puhlease. The show spells out what's going on when Hurley says "I think it [the Island] wants us to go back, Jack". Okay, so the ontological status of the Charlie entity isn't entirely clear (I tend to cleave towards HB's interpretation), but that his message is a real one certainly is.

The only dissapointing thing about this season thus far is the fact that I still can't download the bugger legitimately. Sure, in theory episodes can be bought from the Sky website, what they don't tell you, however, is that you need a bloody expensive Sky contract (more expensive than my mother's, who was entirely prepared to let me use her account to get at the goods), on top of paying individually for each episode. Not only that, but the sign-up procedure is such a fucking rigmarole it doesn't bear thinking about, which all adds up to really, really big pile of fucking stupid on Sky's account. I mean making it easy on the customer is bloody web 101 stuff, but for some super crazy reason, Sky feels that customers will fork out for pricey annual contracts and wade through a swamp of forms to get something they can get for free with little or no effort.

Fucking idiots. Wake the fuck up.
 
 
Spaniel
09:24 / 11.02.08
Well, looking over my thoughts at the end of last season, I find that I'm broadly in agreement with myself, and that a few questions have been fully or partially answered. We now know, for example, that Jack is a minor celebrity, and that the glasses and the beard are as much a product of wishing to retain some anonymity (in the flashforward discussion with Hurley he talks of growing a beard for that very reason), as they are a product of his general gloominess. With that in mind it's become clear that the "hero twice over" line almost certainly referenced his "Oceanic 6" status. The question of what the future Losties have been lying about has also edged towards an answer in that we now know that they've been keeping mum re the status of the folk back on the Island, and as a consequence have almost certainly had to invent a cover story.

Of course, where, if and how Michael and Walt fit into the cover story is anyone's guess.
 
 
Spaniel
12:27 / 11.02.08
Just can't leave it alone.

Last season there was some speculation about Mikhail running to meet Naomi when he was intercepted in the jungle. Could it be that he was on his way to kill her? Afterall, in addition to being an all round hard man, Mikhail does run the Island's communication hub, and we now know that Ben has a mole onboard the boat, a mole that he likely communicates with using said equipment. These facts, seen in the light of the newbies stated mission* (to extract Ben), suggest that it's more than possible.

On an tangentially related subject, it's amazing how a little distance can help to clarify things. It seems to me that we now know what the Swan was for, or at least we know a good chunk of its purpose: to regulate and control the electro-magnetic anomally. Reason being (or at least a significant reason being), that if it isn't kept under control it has a tendency to blast into the atmosphere and alert every Tom, Dick and Harry to the Island's location, hence the recent up surge in off Island attention.

And talking of that attention, it would seem that there are three factions at work here: the Boat people - working for the organisation that now employs Cedric Daniels, the bunch that Ben deals with, and Penny's mob. Of course, the first two factions may be one and the same, but at this juncture that seems unlikely.

*It wouldn't surprise me if they turned out to have multiple objectives
 
 
Spaniel
13:49 / 11.02.08
Annnnnnd finally...

Folk in the know are speculating that the season may well get a bunch of additional episodes now that the Writers' Strike is (almost) over.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
13:54 / 11.02.08
In all the events of the episode, I completely forgot about the Dharma polar bear in Tunisia. It's nice to have a good confirmation that time/space is definitely screwy between the island and the rest of the world. What it means is anyone's guess, but it seems pretty high science fiction, so I'm happy.
 
 
Spaniel
14:08 / 11.02.08
Why's that confirmation? Am I being thick?

As far as I can see there's a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary
 
 
Spaniel
10:36 / 12.02.08
Ah right, yeah. I've just rewatched the show and I see what you mean. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's confirmation, but that polar bear could well point in that direction.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
11:35 / 12.02.08
producer says it will be 13 eps. long. just like a BBC show, heh.

Bos, any good theories on why the Dharma polar bear would pop up in Tunisia? a cop-up like the faux-Oceanic plane underwater? or is that a döppelganger plane full of real people created when "our" plane breached into the Island's reality?

that orientation video with the double rabbits could back this up a bit...
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:41 / 12.02.08
We've already had some confirmation that time is a little funny around the island, if you accept that Desmond's quantum leap last season was real.
 
 
Spaniel
13:23 / 12.02.08
Yeah, time shenanigans definitely aren't out of the mix (Lindeloff and Cuse have pretty much confirmed it, although "the future is fixed" apparently), that's for sure. Whether that means that the Island is in an alternative reality/timestream/thingamy, is anyone's guess.

Now I need to go an remind myself of Desmond's story.

Christ, it's soooo good that the show can stop treading water, stop introducing potentially superfluous new elements, and get down to bringing this stuff together.
 
 
Spaniel
13:29 / 12.02.08
Oh, and cheers for the very good news, Hec. I'm actually very happy with only 13 episodes - a condensed season means an action packed season.
 
 
Spaniel
13:49 / 12.02.08
More...

On the subject of Dan Faraday - here's some info on his famous namesake, Michael (from Wikipedia)

Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current, and established the basis for the magnetic field concept in physics. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena

Emphasis mine.

It's perhaps also worth noting that his patron was none other than John 'Mad Jack' Fuller a famous 18th Century philanthropist, patron of the arts and builder of follies. Not only that, but he used to live in my home village.
 
 
Evil Scientist
13:51 / 12.02.08
Hell yeah. I've been on and off with Lost from the start (got bored half way through S1, picked it up again at the start of S3, barely noticed the difference). The past two episodes have really picked up my interest levels.
 
 
Spaniel
14:38 / 12.02.08
I find it constantly fascinating how it has such a strong appeal for some people (evidently me), and yet fails to grab others of a geeky bent.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
14:45 / 12.02.08
i suppose - at least how i felt it at first - that was because S1 stretched the action too much and felt soapoper-ish at times. well, some eps still do, but then Twilight Zone comes crashing.
 
 
Uatu.is.watching
18:49 / 13.02.08
any good theories on why the Dharma polar bear would pop up in Tunisia? a cop-up like the faux-Oceanic plane underwater? or is that a döppelganger plane full of real people created when "our" plane breached into the Island's reality?

This kind of echoes what I was thinking after watching last weeks episode. Charlie says "I'm dead, but I'm here" to Hugo. That got me wondering about the dead passengers on the ocean floor. It would seem that the castaways are dead, but also on the island. The almost-pilot noticing the pilot's missing ring, might hint that I'm off here, but it's worth thinking about. It certainly seems like the survivors who are not part of the Oceanic Six are presumed dead ("They're alive, aren't they?" or whatever it is that Lt. Daniels asks as Hurley freaks out), but it's a little early to know for sure.
 
  

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