Lost: "The Incident"; Bombs Away

Well, I have to say, after recommending to everyone I know a Battlestar Galactica that basically went up in flames at the end, I'm getting a little tired of spending my social capital on shows that seem to do their best to make me regret it in the morning.

Said another way:

Sorry for the TERRIBLE finale.

Let's put it in perspective, shall we? Way back in Season 1, when Lost was still riding high off its almost 30 million viewers and spending its days wistfully looking forward to receiving a first (and likely only) Emmy Award for best dramatic series, the powers that be on the show decided to end their historic first season with one of the most unsatisfying finishes in recent television history: A shot of a ladder. Now, in the seasons that followed, Desmond, the button, the Dharma Initiative, the Others, flash-forwards, Jacob, the smoke monster, and everything else would all be introduced and serve as wonderful plot devices on a wonderful show, but during that first hiatus all the writers deigned to leave us with was that "The Hatch" had a ladder in it.

And the Lost fanbase (at least in number) never really recovered.

To be sure, ever since that fateful day it appeared that the Lost showrunners had learned their lesson. The finales of Seasons 2 (failsafe), 3 (flash-forward), and 4 (island exodus), all answered significant, long-asked questions in packages that were both narratively satisfying and mysterious enough to sustain the fanbase during the long break between installments. The crippling anticlimax that was "The Incident", however, unfortunately proves that no such lesson was learned.

Last night's episode essentially revolved around three plot lines: Locke's journey to murder Jacob; Jack's journey to murder everyone (okay, okay change the timeline); and Jacob's journey to influence the 815ers at critical moments in their past (presumably to bring them to the Island). Unfortunately, none of the three plot lines really resolved in any reasonable way, especially not when one considers that it will be almost nine months until we come back to any of them.

Let's take them one at a time.

Jacob's Journey

By far the most interesting portions of the episode revolve around the show's reveal of Jacob in the flesh (if that is an accurate description for an apparently immortal ethereal being), and the revelation that there is another entity on the island, essentially Jacob's dark opposite, who has apparently wanted to kill Jacob for a very long time (the opening of the episode shows these two "men" looking out at an old Galleon, presumably the Black Rock, though the omnipresent hieroglyphs and statuary imply a far older connection).

While this relationship is interesting (and proves to be critical in the closing moments of the episode), the bulk of Jacob's remaining appearances revolve around making appearances in the pasts of the 815ers. He pays for a lunchbox (New Kids on the Block!) that young Kate tries to steal, he gives Jack a candy bar after his infamous "angel hair pasta" surgery, he (apparently) sets up Sayid's love Nadia to be killed by a passing car, he (again, apparently) heals Locke after his "fall" from the apartment building, and he outright tells Hurley to get on Ajira 316.

Why, does he do these things? Who knows. For our purposes he's simply a ladder in a hatch for the time being. Do I think that the producers of Lost are building towards a battle of the righteous against the evil and that sides will be taken and lines will be drawn? Yes, I do, and Jacob's journey implies that the ingredients are all there. But I am reviewing this episode, today, and for a finale, Jacob's story left very little for even the most dedicated Lost viewer to hang his hat on.

Locke's Journey

Okay, so I haven't been blogging in a while, I admit, but if I had, I would have pointed out that the "reasons" given prior to the finale for Locke's resurrection were never satisfactory. When combined with the fact that in "Dead is Dead" Locke never appears at the same time as the smoke monster, I have been pretty sure for a while that what we were dealing with with Locke was in fact an apparition of the Yemi or Christian variety.

What I hadn't been expecting is the revelation in this episode that Jacob, the Island, smokey, etc. are not necessarily playing on the same team. Indeed, the "shadow" peoples' expressed concern that others had been using Jacob's cabin implies that the dead body apparitions are very different from Jacob. This implication is only strengthened, I would imagine, by the fact that Ghost Locke talks Ben into "killing" the man, after revealing (in choice of dialogue) that Ghost Locke is, in fact, Jacob's long lost antagonist.

While I enjoyed coming to the realization that Ghost Locke had apparently been manipulating Ben solely because he was incapable of murdering Jacob himself, and that Ghost Locke had essentially ordered Ben to follow him by taking on the guise of Alex in "Dead is Dead", there really was no general resolution to the plot line. Was Jacob good? Bad? Other (pun intended)? Why did he let himself die? What's Ghost Locke's end game?

Sure we have the ingredients: A set up for a garden of Eden tale, ala Paradise Lost, featuring Jacob in the role of God, unnamed antagonist guy in the role of Lucifer, and Ben and Locke (and presumably Richard) serving as unwitting pawns, but in the end those ingredients haven't been formed into any kind of cogent whole. And we know that they won't be for a very long time.

Dr. Stangelove's Journey

By far the worst aspect of the finale, Jack's plot line fell apart on about 1,000 different levels.

First, the motivations of the characters throughout this episode felt patently false. Jack's gonna blow up the world because he has a messiah complex? Nope, it's because he lost Kate, and he'd rather never have met her if he doesn't get to tap that every night.

Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet? They hijack a fricken submarine in order to stop Jack's absurd plan, but all three wind up providing cover fire during project trinity. Why? Well for Juliet it's because Sawyer looked at Kate with those big puppy-dog eyes earlier in the episode, and well, she would rather never have met him if she doesn't get to tap that every night. Sawyer? Well I guess it's because he couldn't beat Jack hard enough to make him stop, and because he's mopey because Juliet doesn't want to ever have met him. And Kate? You know, the one who will be going directly to jail without passing Go if Jack's plan is successful? Well, she agrees to help because Jack asks her to again, albeit a bit more softly this time. Don't even get me started about Hurley, Miles, Jin, etc. The show doesn't even bother to address why they might be okay standing on top of a nuclear detonation.

In short, the characters move along throughout this episode like so many chess (or perhaps more appropriately, backgammon) pieces, and the writers barely bother to make their motivations any deeper than the average episode of One Tree Hill, despite the presence of a large-scale nuclear weapon in one of their backpacks. Since the Jacob/Locke plot line (never mind the motivations of the "shadow" people) is all but indecipherable without one's own time travel device as well as an expert-level grasp of both classical Latin and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, this finale could only be saved by at least resolving what happens when the bomb finally goes off.

Of course, the show doesn't bother to do that.

Instead, like the hatch of yore, we are left pondering a season in which, for large chunks of time, the producers built up to mythic revelations (Jacob, the bomb, etc.) that never really paid off. How is anyone to know where the show goes from here? Maybe the real secret is that it's a backdoor pilot for a new Star Trek series from J.J. I mean, didn't the Enterprise fly through the Lost logo a few weeks back. Did anyone check for a Dharma logo?

Sarcastic asides aside, nine months is a long time (time enough to have a baby!). After that finale, how can anyone be expected to care?

Other random thoughts:

Promises, Promises - My wife actually caught this one, but did anybody notice that a number of the Jacob-tinged flashbacks involved one or more (in the case of Jin and Sun) 815ers making promises of some kind. Kate promises to be good, Sawyer promises to "let it go", and Jin and Sun make promises to love one another. I don't know if there's anything to it or not (Locke and Jack notably don't have any similar dialogue in their flashbacks), but its worth noting all the same.

Locke's Death - Well, I guess the presence of Ghost Locke (and of Corpse Locke for that matter) means that Ben really did kill Locke at the end of Season 4 (or 3, or in the middle of this Season depending on how you want to look at it). What a sad way for the character to die. It puts forth the question: If Lost is, as I've posited, truly a story about redemption what, if anything, redeemed Locke before the end? If the answer is (as I suspect) nothing, than either his is the great tragic story of Lost, or we should be on the look out for a true resurrection before all is said and done.

Reckless Driving - Jacob's flashback with Sayid is perhaps the most ambiguous of the ones presented in this episode. Did Jacob save Sayid from being run over by a reckless driver, while simultaneously allowing Nadia to die? Did Jacob cause Nadia to die by holding back Sayid, thus causing Nadia to stop in the street? Was the car accident really an accident or was something more nefarious at play? I suspect it will be up for interpretation for quite some time (if not forever), so it basically comes down to what one chooses to believe. I believe Jacob caused Nadia's death, but that's because I'm like Frank on this one: you can usually count on the people that insist they are the good guys to truly be bad in the end.

Count to Five - Interesting to see the infamous count to five scene as (we presume) it actually happened. Especially interesting since Jack notably did not mention that his father was so instrumental in his "count to five" philosophy when he was imparting the same to Kate way back in Season 1.

Man of Science - Was anyone at all disturbed by the ease in which Dr. Shepard shot up the various Dharma compounds visited in this episode. I mean, even disregarding the implausibly accurate shooting of our favorite spinal surgeon, is it really heroic to shoot up a bunch of hippie scientists? I guess when you really want to get over your ex-girlfriend you don't really care how you get there.

White Flashes - Despite the apparent nuclear detonation sending us off on the long hiatus, it's worth mentioning that all we really saw of the explosion was a white flash. Why is that significant? Well, since "Flashes Before your Eyes", and very prominently throughout this fractured Season 5, Lost has been using the device of a white flash to indicate time travel on the Island. In the absence of evidence of an actual explosion, why should we assume that the Island didn't simply time travel, perhaps as a result of Dharma tapping into its electromagnetic energy. If that is the case, perhaps the losties jumped back to 2007 and left the bomb behind them. Maybe the explosion still occurred in 1977, or maybe the Dharma Initiative created the Swan hatch and hooked up the unexploded nuclear core to some kind of a device, we'll call it a failsafe, that would only utilize the nuclear energy if certain Scottish yachtsman were to one day turn a failsafe key. Maybe...
More after the jump...

Battlestar Galactica: "Daybreak Pt. 2"

(My apologies. Family and work responsibilities prevented me from updating this blog, but I have been keeping up with both Galactica and Lost, and I wanted to comment on the Galactica series finale before going back and filling in the holes that I am leaving by "skipping ahead." With that said...)



"Earth is a dream..."

Well what exactly am I supposed to do with that? My instinct is to say that "Daybreak Part 2" (and Part 1, really) is an impeccably directed, terrifically acted, fantastically scored, balls-to-the-wall...piece of dreck. An episode that while technically sound and at times even great, drops so many balls that it hurts, maybe even cripples, the experience of watching the entire run of the show for the last five years.

Too harsh? Perhaps.

But when a show you have been following with so much passion and emotion gives you an ending akin to the very worst treacly, preachy mess you can think of, an ending that actually uses the open-ended, nonsensical nature of the plot points introduced during the show's last three years to point out the "presence of the divine" before failing to explain those same plot points in any kind of satisfying way, what would you call it? I imagine that some of you might just use a stronger word than "dreck". Making matters worse, there can be little doubt after this one that the creators of Galactica are very skilled at the more technical aspects of their craft.

From the opening salvos of the Colony attack to the last moments we get to spend with Adama (note I didn't say the very last minutes of the episode), "Daybreak" is a testament to ambitious television making. But the writers simply didn't give these tremendous actors, directors, and all the other people clearly pouring their hearts and souls into the project something substantial to work with. And that is a real, real pity.

Because this episode takes its dear sweet time in doing anything substantive (long-form flashbacks will do that to a show's momentum (see, for all its greatness, Lost)), I don't think a great deal of plot synopsis is necessary. Suffice it to say, all of the main characters get elaborate Lost-style flashbacks to Caprica before it was nuked, those volunteering to stay with Galactica (including "surprise" volunteer Gaius Baltar) jump to the Colony and rescue Hera, Starbuck leaps Galactica to Earth, our Earth, by playing All Along the Watchtower on the FTL drive, and the characters give up all their technology to live with Neanderthals in our ancient past.

The end.

But even in that short synopsis, the major issues which cripple the finale are apparent.

First, it's difficult for me to see the presence of an Earth-2 as anything short of a complete cop-out. Much of the impact of this season's high-water mark, "Sometimes a Great Notion", was predicated on the idea that the "Earth" the fleet found in that episode (actually the episode prior) was our Earth. That we, the audience, could take lessons from the fact that we were actually Cylons, not colonials. That, like the humans in "Planet of the Apes", we had destroyed ourselves.

These revelations helped give a different perspective to events onboard Galactica. They gave the series added emotional resonance. And they were all lies.

Having the fleet arrive on the "real" Earth (at least the one with an Australia) and having Adama simply name it Earth to reflect the fact that "Earth is a dream" is a cop-out plain and simple. It is, in my opinion, patently unacceptable slight of hand that treats the most dedicated members of the audience(those likely to have been the most vociferous in their support of the low-rated program) with little more than contempt at their dedication.

Unfortunately, this is but one half of the finale's dual dose of ill-conceived plot points. Even more problematic is the methodology the writer's used to get the fleet to Earth 2 in the first place, and just what that methodology means to the meaning of the show.

A couple years back, M. Night Shayamalan (when he could still do no wrong) made a movie with Mel Gibson (when he could still do no wrong) called Signs. In that movie, the presence of God and the divine was established in the way the members of a small rural family, unbeknownst to them, had been providently given the tools to ward off an alien invasion in the coincidental idiosyncrasies of their seemingly insignificant lives. In other words, the plot of Signs eschewed one of writing's golden rules by deliberately using the concept of "coincidence" as a major plot point.

Unfortunately, while it is may make for interesting late night philosophical discussions, the concept of coincidence as the "footprint" of the divine is a fundamentally flawed premise on which to rest a scripted narrative. This is because coincidence on its own is essentially random. That's what makes it "coincidence" rather than "plan". By making random happenstance the thesis on which your story is premised, you can't help but make your audience a bit nihilistic as to the meaning of it all. After all, if the whole point of a story is that "God's plan is mysterious and unknowable" what point is there in trying to suss out any other meaning?

Like Signs, "Daybreak" suffers from these same nihilistic tendencies.

Why was the Colony destroyed? Because a piece of debris happened to kill a Raptor pilot while her missiles were armed, before another piece of debris happened to jostle the dead pilot in such a way as to launch the missiles when it was most beneficial to the colonials.

Why did negotiations between the colonials and the Cylons break down? Because one of the "Five" had killed another of the Five's spouses and that secret was revealed at the perfect time to cause mass mayhem.

How did the fleet find Earth 2? By "playing" All Along the Watchtower on the FTL drive.

Who played that fateful song? The dead (yet strangely corporeal) spirit of Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace.

And how is this all explained? In a wooden soliquily given by the terribly underserved character of Dr. Gaius Baltar, who points out all of these coincidences and strange events (including the presence of the "Head" people), as proof of the existence of the divine.

Unlike Signs, however, Galactica had five full years of back stories and open plot points to make hollow with this feeble attempt at a wrap-up. And the answer to any and every question ever posed by Ron Moore and company was apparently "God."

What are Head Six and Head Baltar? Uh...angels? Demons? Gods?

What is Kara Thrace? Uh...an angel, maybe?

So Kara actually killed herself when she inexplicably flew into the Maelstrom in Season 3? Yup...so it would appear.

And how did she come back? God.

Who gave Starbuck the coordinates to Earth? God.

How did Starbuck originally wind up on Earth (in Maelstrom)? Uh...God's ability to transport matter.

Why didn't God lead Starbuck to Earth 2? Unknown...God's plans are mysterious.

How is Starbuck the "Harbinger of Death" (as foretold by the Hybrid)? Unknown...possibly because she ended Cylon resurrection, though it seems odd that the creators of the show would highlight this portion of the prophecy a few episodes ago if that is the case. Nah...must be God.

Who are "they" in the Hybrid's prophecy and why must they not "follow" Starbuck? Not only do I have no idea on this one, it appears that the producers of the show simply dropped this from the prophecy entirely. Starbuck does little in Season 4 that anyone should not follow. She leads humanity to "its end", but not to its death. Why would humanity not follow her? In truth, I think the prophecy's "they must not follow her" was simply a smokescreen designed to encourage distrust of Starbuck, and the writers felt that they could explain it away as innocuous at some point in the future. That being said, never before have I seen a show so completely ignore a portion of a prophecy that it spent such large amounts of screen time establishing. Even the beleaguered Alias made token efforts to explain the "she will rend the greatest power unto utter desolation" prophecy. Galactica's effort here was a joke.

What is the "truth of the opera house?" No idea. That the Galactica's CIC is the opera house? That Hera is the key to everything? Must be God.

Who is the Dying Leader? You could certainly read that Galactica was the dying leader, given its "death" in this one, but I think Roslin is the more correct answer. She does die before Adama builds his cabin so you could argue that at least this prophecy was fulfilled.

What triggered the Final Five in the nebula? Uh..."All Along the Watchtower", weren't you watching?

Right, but what is "All Along the Watchtower" in the narrative of the show? Uh...a message from God containing the coordinates of Earth 2.

Convenient. And how did Hera get the musical score to "Watchtower" (and was it Dylan's version)? God (and, no, it was McCreary's version, couldn't you tell?).

See what I mean? Like Signs, the entire purpose behind the inexplicable events on the show seems to have been to give form to the show's concept of divine will. And like Signs, that explanation for everything can't help but feel hollow in the end.

So what do I do with this finale? There can be little doubt that Galactica on the whole has given me many more good memories than bad. From debating with a friend the rightness of Roslin's attempts to steal an election she knew she must win, to the raw awesomeness of Galactica falling through the atmosphere of New Caprica before jumping to safety, I can't change the fact that I loved this show. And the action portions of "Daybreak" do more than enough to evoke those fantastic memories. But the plodding flashbacks, the nonsensical narrative, and the (literal) deus ex machina ending, hurt everything that came before.

I guess in many ways it is the age old question of whether it's the journey or the destination. Do the earlier events on Galactica lose some of their luster knowing that, in the end, it was all a function of God's unknowable will? Undoubtedly. But is the impact of those events ruined? Not quite.

In many ways, I feel that the show I thought I had been watching, like the characters' "Earth", was but a dream. Taking Adama's lead, then, I'm simply going to rename things to suit that dream. From now on I will be referring to Lost as "Battlestar Galactica".

There, that solves everything.

Once again "Battlestar Galactica" is the best show on TV.

Mission Accomplished.

Quick Thoughts:

Caprica - Perhaps I'm just a cynical person, but the flashbacks in this one served so little purpose that I can't help but think they were designed solely to establish Ron Moore's ability to pen his prime-time soap set on pre-nuke Caprica. Another mission accomplished, I suppose.

The Head People - I think in the past I would have spent some time determining whether or not Head Six really wanted Baltar to join the rescue mission at the beginning of this episode. But since I think it's apparent at this point that Ron Moore and company really had no particular plan in mind (divine or otherwise), I don't think I'll waste your time. As far as I'm concerned, the scene towards the beginning of this one with Baltar and Head Six was included purely to add some drama as to whether or not Baltar would stay behind (as if there was ever any doubt).

Quick Forgiveness - Was anyone else bothered by the fact that Chief Tyrol got off so easy for his murder of fellow "Final Five" member Tory? I mean, not only is murder as vengeance generally unacceptable even in the fleet, he also murdered one of the last five members of an entire race (the Earth Cylons certainly seemed significantly different from their colonial counterparts) and jeopardized what, at the time, seemed to be the only chance for a brokered peace for humanity. And his only penalty is being relegated to Scotland to invent prehistoric golf? Doesn't seem right.

The Importance of Being Hera - Ok. So retroactive continuity aside, we are really to believe that the Head people (angels?) were simply maneuvering Baltar and Caprica Six so that they would "save" Hera during the Colony raid (did they actually save her from anything)? That simply does not match up with everything else they have done throughout the history of the series. I mean, why did Baltar need to lead a cult, for just one example. Also, aside from the fact that Hera's running about the ship in the middle of a firefight was as inexplicable as it was frustrating, what makes her so important? I get that she's the future of the races and all, but let's say, worst case scenario, that she were to die. Both Helo and Athena survived. What's to stop them from making another one?

Helo's Resurrection - Okay, so Helo wasn't actually resurrected in this episode (which is apparently more than I can say for other characters on the show), but weren't we to assume in the scene where Athena is applying the tourniquet that Helo would die if she left him to chase after Hera. That's what's implied when she state's "you'll bleed out", right? And then, when we later see Athena and Hera reunited, they are both shaking from the shock of it all, Helo nowhere to be seen. Yet, in the final moments of the episode we see the full family reunited, giving us the only truly happy ending of the entire series. How was Helo saved? I sense a last minute editing change...

Boomer's Redemption - So Boomer works with Cavil to return Ellen and steal Hera, but on the way back to the Colony, Boomer gets a heart (three sizes too big) and becomes attached to her doppelganger's little girl. She then kills a Simon who is working on Hera before returning her to the fleet and dying at the hands of Athena. Really? Boomer changed her mind about the Cylon endgame solely by virtue of her long road trip back to the Colony? I guess Cavil should have parked it a bit closer to the fleet, eh?

The Coward's Way Out - Speaking of Cavil, how anti-climatic is it to have the main bad guy simply blow his own brains out during the climatic final act of a five year marathon? And why did he do it anyway? Surely the Cylons had been in worse positions than the one facing them at the Colony (at least before the nukes). Just anti-climatic.

Coda - Though it doesn't have the sweeping impact of Moore's "God is the answer" initiative, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the huge error that was the "150,000 years later" Coda. I mean, the show had, for all practical purposes, just ended with the majestic shot of Adama at his love's grave with Bear McCreary's drum-fuelled score leading us out the door, when all of a sudden we are in Times Square witnessing a meta-commentary on the state of the world with Head Six and Head Baltar (and, most meta of all, Ron Moore himself) and video clips of toy robots? This is how one of the "best" shows in science fiction history ended? A mistake on all counts.
More after the jump...

Vacation

Hey, all. Just a head's up, I will be spending the next ten days at Mickey's vacation home in central Florida. As a result, I will unfortunately not be blogging for that time, and will miss three scheduled entries (2 Galactica's and one Lost). I intend to catch up once I'm back on the 9th, but until then feel free to add to the comments. See you soon. More after the jump...

Lost: "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

"There's a war coming, John."

Wow. What an hour of television that was. I think that only the creators of Lost could take an episode featuring 80-90% information we already knew (or thought we knew), and make it as twisting and riveting as anything else on television. From the very start (Where are we? When are we? Is that Locke? Is he...resurrected?), this episode fires on all cylinders and never looks back. And as the icing on the cake, the performances are fantastic. I haven't been a fan of Locke as a character for some time, but the look of utter despair on his face at the very end, after the way the Oceanic Six treated him...heartbreaking.

But before we got to that emotional endpoint, we got a whole lot of back story on what happened after Locke turned the wheel of fate but before the "crash" of fated Flight 316. Because this episode is, at the end of the day, very similar in style to the "answer dump" I described in my coverage of Galactica's "No Exit", I think it's probably useful to do the same thing as I did there-summarize the new information we learned about the show's timeline before delving a bit deeper into the important bits in my "Quick Thoughts" section.

Without further ado, here is what we now know (or think we know) about Island life after witnessing the events in "Bentham":

-1950s: Widmore takes over the island to lead his people, the Others.

-1980s: Widmore is exiled from the Island through Ben's trickery. (As we have seen no real evidence of this move (the Dharma purge?) and because the information comes from Widmore's mouth, this should be taken with a grain of salt.)

-2004: Ben spins the frozen donkey wheel of fate.

-2004 (relatively speaking): Locke spins the frozen donkey wheel of fate.

-2005: Ben awakens in the Tunisian desert (from Season 4).

-2005-2007: Widmore sets up a camera to monitor the Island's "exit point" in Tunisia.

-2007: Locke (2004 edition) awakens in the Tunisian desert.

-Widmore tells Locke his story and promises to help him. He gives Locke the "Jeremy Bentham" passport.

-Locke hooks up with Abaddon. He recognizes Abaddon as the man who gave him the idea to go on his Australian walk-about.

-Locke approaches Sayid, Walt, Hurley, Kate, and Jack in various manners in an effort to get them to return to the Island (the bulk of this episode).

-Jack buys a round trip ticket to Australia (in an effort to crash on the Island).

-Having "failed" in his mission, Locke prepares for his suicide before being talked down by Ben.

-Ben, upon hearing some important bit of information from Locke (either about Jin or Mrs. Hawking, see below), alters his approach and murders Locke.

-Locke is resurrected after the crash of Flight 316.

As you can see, there is a lot to take in here, and the pieces are disparate enough that I think my "Quick Thoughts" section is better suited to giving each piece a proper discussion. Suffice it to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the episode and have absolutely loved this season so far. If there is any regret I have about the way "316" and "Bentham" lined up, it is that we have been far too long without seeing Sawyer, Faraday, or the rest of the Team Time Traveler. Judging by the ending of "316", however, that seems likely to change in the very near term.

My Quick Thoughts:

Supernatural - Unless the writers have an out that I'm not thinking of (a distinct possibility given the apparent intelligence of the show's writing staff), I think Locke's miracle resurrection and the magical disappearing Six means it's about time to talk about whether or not Lost is, at the end of the day, science fiction or high fantasy. I mentioned this a little bit last week, but the show's mysticism quotient has been going up fairly steadily ever since the ghost of Jacob was introduced way back in Season 3. I, for one, prefer my Lost with a more steady dose of science fiction rather than with apparitions, resurrections, and other supernatural occurrences, but Locke's revival certainly seems to have taken us down a mystical road from which we may never return.

Truth be told, the introduction of amateur ghost buster Miles might also be correctly pointed at as the moment when Lost exchanged its regular robot shark jumping for something more of the ghost variety, but if not then, than certainly now. I mean, how can Locke's resurrection be explained through "natural" means? A really convincing coma? And what about the "why?" Why was Locke revived? What makes him so special? How did the Island accomplish so miraculous a task? Even time travel seems unlikely to yield a satisfactory answer. I recognize that the show's writers wanted us to ask these questions, but I just don't see a scientific way for the show to answer them. That being the case, my hopes for a satisfying resolution to the show, though still high, took a significant hit with this one. I suspect they will continue to take significant hits as the show becomes more and more obviously supernatural in its leanings. I hope I'm wrong.

Landing on Hydra Island -One of the most disorienting aspects of this episode was its very beginning. Despite the fact that we could immediately recognize the man we would soon call "Caesar" from his brief cameo in last week's "316", the introduction of the woman who was escorting Sayid in that same scene threw things for a loop. At least for me. My mind immediately began jumping to conclusions. Is this a flashback? Did they know each before Flight 316? If this is the Island, are we seeing scenes from the past in order to show us that these people were also on 316 in an effort to return? If it is the Island, why can we see Locke looking off at a major landmass off the Island's coast?

Speaking of Locke, the addition of the one man who we were pretty sure was dead in the last episode made it even more difficult to see the scene for what it was: The 2007 crash of Flight 316 on "Hydra" island (where the Others held a captive Jack, Kate, and Sawyer prisoner at the start of Season 3) combined with the miraculous reappearance of John Locke. It's a testament to the show's producers that they continue to make scenes like these interesting ones when the same would most assuredly be quite a bit less so in the hands of a more tentative crew.

Putting the Pieces Into Place - Finally, we get a main character (Abaddon) admitting to having manipulated the lives of the Flight 815 survivors (or at least John) for his own "nefarious" ends. It's been evident for some time that the survivors have lived lives of shared destinies (this has been the case ever since various players in the castaway's back stories began making regular appearances in the back stories of other castaways). The only question has been whether, narratively speaking, we were meant to assume that this was all intended as a meditation on coincidence or whether or not shadow players were manipulating things behind the scenes.

Now we know of at least two factions (Widmore and Mrs. Hawking (who herself may or may not be beholden to Ben)) who have been manipulating the lives of the castaways in an effort to get to a certain endgame scenario. The question is why? If the future is as immutable as Faraday suggests, there should be no "game" here. Either Locke is ruler of the island in 2012 (or whatever day the "war" is won) or he isn't. Nothing that Ben, or Widmore, or God himself does to try to change that fact should have any effect. And yet we see both sides in this power struggle investing unfathomable resources (a permanent camera fixated on a small piece of Tunisian desert anyone?) in an attempt to win it. Something more must be going on here.

Can Locke Walk? - One question which the show deliberately avoids answering is whether Locke can walk when he's off the Island. Because of the leg injury he sustained in his fall in the well of destiny (not to be confused with the wheel of destiny, it's in the next room over), it's plausible that Locke simply has a broken leg throughout this episode's events. That being said, it's also plausible that he simply can't walk once off the Island and that he's using his broken leg as a "crutch" (pun intended) so as to not reveal that fact to the Six. Just something to ponder.

Dead Men Tell No Tales - Perhaps my favorite scene of the episode began with Hurley's nonchalance upon Locke's arrival. "Didn't make it, huh?" Of course Locke has no idea what he's talking about, but to Hurley, John must be just the latest in a long procession of recently deceased visitors. One wonders though, if the scene can't be viewed as having a greater meaning.

Hurley's reaction to Locke's arrival implies that at least he thinks he has been getting something like "dead person" updates from the Island. In other words, he may have been visited by Charlotte or any other recently killed Islander who he wouldn't otherwise know to be dead. What makes this even more interesting is the possibility that Hurley may be privy to some "future" events on the Island. Remember, to the Six the year is 2007, but assuming that we aren't just going to skip over years of the Islander's lives, when the Six return to the Island the year will be 2004 (at least relatively speaking). If someone died in the three years between the two points, (Juliet as an example), could Hurley have already been visited by that person's ghost when he arrives on the Island? Wouldn't a plot line featuring Hurley and a person he is sure will die be an interesting one?

A Christian Shepard Indeed - It's interesting to note that the only reason Locke "succeeds" in Operation Island is because he receives information from the "ghost" of Christian Shepard telling him to say hello to his son. And also because Locke's smart enough to figure out the identity of Christian's progeny. (Though I don't understand why Christian couldn't be Hurley's father. What, he couldn't just have a Hispanic mother? Christian's too good looking? That's racist, man. Or why Locke assumes that Christian's son has to be one of the Six at all? I digress.) Without that little piece of information, Jack would never have realized that his father was still "alive" and the events we have seen this season would never have occurred.

Permanent Exit - Another interesting tidbit is the fact that the wheel of destiny does not randomly spit out people (or polar bears) to parts unknown. It spits them out at a very specific (specific enough to be watched by camera) spot in the Tunisian desert. Why Tunisia? I have a theory on that. Tunisia is literally on the other side of the world from the likely South Pacific home of the Island. Nice symbolism isn't it? The Island literally can't send someone any further from its confines without also sending that person off the Earth entirely. Exile, indeed.

The Stand - Though I know I've mentioned Stephen King's literary masterwork,The Stand, when discussing Battlestar Galactica, I think it bears examining again in connection with the morality play which Lost is quickly becoming. In the book, Good and Evil (capital letters both) famously fight for the fate of humanity in the remains of an Earth ravaged by the superflu. After the apocalypse, those few who are immune from the disease split into groups based on their decision to align with the forces of Good (in virtuous Boulder, Colorado) or Evil (in less virtuous Las Vegas). The decisions made by these innocents decide the fate of mankind, and it is implied throughout King's work that although virtuous characters have a destiny, that destiny could just as easily be shaped by Evil if allowed. The creators of Lost have often said that they have been influenced by The Stand in creating their own masterpiece, but no where is that more evident than in Widmore's claim in this one that a war is brewing and that it's result will ultimately be decided by one John Locke. Widmore's "call to arms" even echoes the warnings made by The Stand's own Mother Abigail that "there's a storm coming" though whether or not this was an intentional reference by the show's writers (or simply a case of similar ideas requiring similar language) is anybody's guess.

Good and Evil - As I mentioned when talking about The Stand above, it is very clear that Lost is slowly but surely being turned into a type of morality play of epic proportions. Unlike Stephen King's work, however, there are still substantial questions in Lost about which side is actually playing on the side of the angels. Throughout the first few seasons of the show, we were led to believe that Ben was Evil incarnate. And truth be told, he is as manipulative a character as has ever appeared on prime time television. But is he Evil? At the end of Season 2 Ben did claim to be one of the "good guys." Ever since, we have been slowly but surely led around to his way of thinking. After all, Widmore sent a group of armed men to take back the Island and kill the survivors didn't he? Well, what if, as Widmore suggests in this episode, Ben is and always has been the root of Evil as it relates to the Island? Is it an act of evil to remove him from his perch? Of course not.

But the truth is that we simply can't know which side of this fight to root for at this point. Both men seem to have virtually unlimited resources, and both seem to be capable of committing atrocious acts (Despite Widmore's protestations in this episode, I don't believe for a second that he didn't authorize the murder of Alex last season.) Indeed, if one man is the Devil and the other is an Angel, we have received no evidence about which is which at this time. As a matter of fact, I think, and have thought for a while, that neither Ben nor Widmore is playing the role of Good here. Instead, I strongly suspect that the Six (or at least Locke) will have to protect the Island themselves to prevent it from being exploited by either man. In other words, the choice between Ben and Widmore may well wind up being the show's biggest red herring.

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff - An interesting question surrounding the magic of the time traveling Losties has been what exactly is causing them to "flash" when none of the people around them (like a young Charles Widmore) are traveling along with. What makes the Losties so special? Well this episode gives us a little greater insight into that, if only because Flight 316 contains some people that "flashed" and some people that didn't. (We'll disregard for the time being that according to the show's rules Jack and company should have "flashed" in mid-air with everything they were touching at the time (like their airplane seats)).

Jack, Kate, and Hurley...all flashers. Lapidus, Ben, and Locke...no flashing. Sun and Sayid...still open questions, if only because they weren't seen in one timeline or the other during the events of "316" or "Bentham". What separates the two lists? I have no idea. Both contain people that had been on the Island before, and the later list contains people that were on the Island for fewer, more, and exactly the same number of days as the Six. (Of course, maybe the Island should have "flashed" Locke but it had to choose whether to send his dead body back into the 70s or simply resurrect his tired butt. Decisions, decisions.) Whatever the reason (and I hope there's a reason), the distinction certainly seems to be an important one.

"Some Woman" - Despite previously setting foot on the Island throughout the whole of season 4, one of the many people who didn't "disappear" during the crash of Flight 316 was apparently Mr. Frank Lapidus. We don't get a lot of information about his whereabouts in this one save for the notion that he escaped with "some woman" and one of Island's three longboats. Who is the woman? Could it simply be the plane's stewardess? That answer seems almost too inconsequential to merit mention. If it's one of the Six (Sun?) why didn't she "disappear" with her fellow Flight 815 survivors?

As a side note, the presence of the longboats themselves essentially confirms the notion that the survivors of 316 at some point in the future (and probably at Locke's suggestion) take the two remaining boats over to Flight 815's beach. It is here where the time travelers stumble upon them and steal one of the boats for themselves. The only question now is whether Locke or Ben is one of the figures shooting at Sawyer and friends during the events of "The Little Prince".

Helen of Santa Monica - While it's simply another sad footnote in the practically continuously sad life of John Locke, the death of Locke's one true friend, Helen, is used by the show's writers here as a poignant touchstone to discuss what it means to have a destiny. When Abaddon tries to allay Locke's sadness by telling him that Helen would have died with or without him, one can't help but be struck by the simpleness of Locke's response: "Would she?" I couldn't help but be reminded of all the many stories we hear about long time spouses following their newly departed mates off the mortal coil in relatively short order. Sometimes relationships can be destiny too, and the reminder of that in an episode brimming with other more "important things" is the type of thing that truly elevates Lost above the rest.

Locke's Motivation - Ever since the end of Season 3, I had assumed that the suicide that so affected Jack (which, at the time, I also assumed was either Locke's or Ben's) was some kind of ruse. Primary characters don't usually commit suicide on prime time TV. When, earlier this season, Richard informed Locke that he would have to die in order to convince the Six to return, I assumed that was the key. Locke really was going to commit suicide, but it would be with the knowledge that his death would save the Island. It would be a noble sacrifice, like Michael's. Of course that's not how the scene played out. Instead, Locke's suicidal desires were played as being very, very real. Locke viewed himself as a failure, and he intended to kill himself for being incapable of saving the friends and Island that he loved. As I mentioned, this was a surprise to me, if only because Locke had at this point been told of his "need" to die. I would think a man like Locke, a man so tied up in his own fate, his own destiny, would have viewed his suicide as a tool. I guess Jack's angry speech really got to him.

(The fact that Jack's speech actually did lead Locke over the edge, before being talked down by an inscrutable Ben Linus, also helps to explain why Jack takes the news of Locke's "suicide" so poorly in Season 3. He did, in a very real way, cause Locke to become suicidal through his words.)

Why did Ben Kill? - Though I don't believe we can yet know the answer to this one, it's worth discussing just what happens in the scene between Ben and Locke. At first, Ben seems very honestly concerned about saving Locke from his own suicidal desires. This makes sense, because there is simply no reason for Ben to save Locke if he was just planning on murdering him and making the murder look like the very sucide he had just spent so much time preventing. What then makes Ben change his mind? It's difficult to say, but it appears to me that it is the moment he learns of Jin's survival that he decides to kill Locke. (As an alternative theory, it could also be the moment he learns that Mrs. Hawking has the key to returning to the Island, but I think his gaze turns sinister before that revelation). What then is Jin's importance to this story?

As I said above, I don't think that we can know what this scene is all about at this point. If I had to hazard a guess, I would bet that Jin wasn't "supposed" to survive the explosion on the freighter. Like Ben's previous warning to Widmore about "changing the rules," perhaps the fact that Jin's alive means that whatever knowledge of the future Ben had been working with has somehow been irrevocably altered. Maybe Ben had, at the beginning of the scene, accepted that he had to help Locke, but Jin's survival meant that everything was essentially up for grabs. All of this is, of course, rampant speculation on my part, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

WAAAAAAAAALT! - How about seeing good old Walt again? The fact that Locke goes to visit him at all implies that there's some benefit to having him come back to the Island (or rather Abaddon's acceptance of the trip implies the benefit). What could it be? And if Walt's vision is correct (as we are almost certainly supposed to assume), in what kind of trouble does Locke find himself on the Island (after wearing the suit that the show's producer's used as code for his death). Could the Others be rallied against him? Or does Ben awake and convince the Flight 316 survivors that Locke is not to be trusted (which would of course be true irony from Mr. Linus)? Hmmmmm...
More after the jump...

Battlestar Galactica: "Deadlock"

"Any mythic revelations? Nope, nothing to report sir."

Well that's perhaps the understatement of the year.

After the monumental answers provided in last week's "No Exit", the show's producers apparently thought that they deserved a week off. I hope that whatever the Canadian equivalent of Atlantic City is was kind to them, because it certainly wasn't as nice to the show. Really guys, I hope you struck it big.

To begin with, practically nothing happens in this episode, "mythic" or otherwise. Sure, Ellen arrives and stirs up trouble (interesting to see that the "real" Ellen so nicely matches the brainwashed human version, though I could have done without the deliberate baby killing), Adama oversees the Cylonification of the Galactica, and Baltar, dear Baltar, finally gets a plot line. Unfortunately, that's about it.

With four episodes remaining, "Deadlock" puts us no closer to anything the show has been building towards. Whether it's the discovery of a "home" for Humanity (and the "good" Cylons), what Starbuck is or how she led the fleet to Earth, the nature of any one of about three prophecies ("Dying Leader", "Truth of the Opera House", "You must not follow her", etc.), the location of Cavil and the endgame between the "good" and "bad" Cylons, how and why the Final Five were "triggered", or anything else, nothing in this episode moves the major plot lines of the show forward at all.

(As a side note to the above, isn't it interesting that the show should have so thoroughly established in this one that we are to see the Six model as "good"? Perhaps it's just me, but I didn't see Cavil holding a gun to any of the other models' heads when they were all doing bad acts on Caprica. Isn't this a bit like forgiving soldiers for war crimes because they were just "following orders." Nobody made Caprica or any of the other models commit the atrocities they did (at least not that we know of), and yet we, like the members of the fleet, are just supposed to forgive and forget. Despite the mutiny arc, not enough attention has been paid to how incredible a request this is and how it is being perceived by the less militaristic members of the fleet. I can't imagine that it's going over well.)

Perhaps the worst thing is that this episode makes me feel that I might have been too strident in my criticism of the "mutiny" plot line. It was Shakespearean in comparison. Had I known at the time that the show's producers felt so good about the number of episodes remaining in the series that they could afford to take an episode off, I wouldn't have made such a big deal about the show "spinning its wheels." If the writers otherwise only had 5 episodes of plot than we could do worse than spending three of the other episodes on a cool little mutiny story line.

But wait, wasn't I just writing about the way in which the information given to us last week seemed rushed (If it seems like I've been complaining about this show a lot lately, it's only because of how much I've enjoyed it over the years. I just want to see it end with a bang.) There were so many "answers" given last week and the method of delivering them was so mechanical and inorganic that I just assumed that the show's writers had so much plot to dispense that they simply had to give us a talking heads episode to "catch us up" to where we needed to be. Given the fact that outside of the death of Caprica Six's baby, nothing of any importance actually occurs in this one, I can't imagine that the real estate of a second hour couldn't have been used to better effect to realize the "answer dump" in a more organic way.

Quite frankly, I have no real desire to delve any further into the minutiae of this one. The whole thing just disappointed me. As always, it was very well acted, with particular credit to the scene in which a tearful Colonel Tigh tries to convince Caprica Six that he loves her, but superior acting alone simply can't cut it when the stakes are so high. Bring on next week, it can't come soon enough.

My Quick Thoughts:

A Blended Population - As a little bit of insult to injury, even the "big points" in this episode had the tendency to fall flat. The ship is blending together, Cylons and Humans. We get it. The real question is why the Admiral hadn't gotten it before the end of the episode. Are we really expected to believe that he didn't understand what the mutiny was all about? The mutineers certainly did. Baltar's incredulity at Adama's obliviousness towards the end of the episode was a nice touch (and stand-in as an audience proxy), but it doesn't explain how Adama could have missed the obviousness of it all in the first place. His arc in this one is completely based on his being less than intelligent, something that we know he's not. As such, it seems completely artificial all the way through the episode's end credits.

"Dying Leader" Report - As mentioned last week, the show's continuing emphasis on what is happening to the ship has only strengthened my belief that the Galactica herself is the "dying leader". Nothing in this one really changed my perception on this one way or the other, except to note that the numerous mentions of the Galactica becoming Cylon does leave the writers with another "out", narratively speaking. If, as was suggested to me by some other fans, there simply is no way to adequately convey that the Galactica is the dying leader (I don't believe this for a second, by the way, given the abilities of the Galactica writing staff) then the whole plot line has to mean something else, and the Cylon transformation may just be that "something".

In this scenario, the Galactica was never the "dying leader". The cracks were simply a plot device to get Adama to authorize the Cylonification of the ship: a transformation that, in the most literary sense, could serve as a mirror for the transformation occurring in the composition of the ship's crew. While this is a fairly clean reading of the plot line, it still seems too trifling for the show's producers to have spent this much time establishing. Still, the existence of an inconsequential hour like "Deadlock" gives me pause. If the show's writers can waste so much time on this nothing, who's to say that they couldn't have created the whole "cracks in Galactica" plot line simply to point out the transformation that was obvious to everyone in the fleet (save for Bill Adama, see above) weeks ago.

A Love to Last Forever - Perhaps it's just me, but the major problem I had with the Caprica Six baby story line is that I never bought into the fact that Colonel Tigh loved Caprica, and certainly not to the extent that he loved Ellen. Knowing that the audience was aware that Cylon women could only conceive in love (as was established in the Athena/Helo plot lines many years ago), I think that the mere fact of conception was used as a bit of a proxy by the show's writers for the love that Tigh was supposed to feel for his knocked-up Cylon girlfriend. In Hollywood parlance, the whole relationship seemed to me to be a case of the writers "telling" rather than "showing." "Tigh must love Caprica," they seem to be saying, "otherwise he never would have conceived a child with her". Never mind that outside of a few tearful scenes in this one (all practically post-baby), we never felt like we really got to see Tigh internalize that love.

After Ellen - As mentioned above, it was really interesting to see Ellen return to her "human" ways as a conniving, manipulative, ahem...witch. The Ellen in "No Exit" seemed almost calm and aloof by comparison, sparring with Cavil as she did. One could be forgiven for thinking after watching "No Exit" that the mind wipe voodoo worked on the Final Five by Cavil changed their personalities in fundamental ways, but the return of Ellen as Galactica's own Lady Macbeth pretty quickly dispels that notion. Apparently even the brain washed Final Five were still inherently themselves, they just thought that they were human. As I said, interesting.

Wall of Shame - Maybe it's just me, but I thought that having the Cylons put pictures of dead "skinjobs" on the wall of memory was far too distasteful. And this coming from a guy who hasn't even had 99.5% of his species exterminated less than five years ago by the very "people" that now seek to remember their fallen comrades. Perhaps more to the point in terms of fleet dynamics, are we even on the same ship that almost rose up to take control from Adama for being too much a Cylon-sympathizer? You mean to tell me that no angry Galacticans tore those pictures off the wall? It's one thing to ask Humanity to silently and graciously move past the differences that define the species. It's quite another to ask them to allow their own memorial to be co-opted by pictures of the very people that required them to create it in the first place.

More after the jump...

Lost: "316"

"We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Well, that was unexpected.

Despite the fact that I generally know better then to guess at where Lost is going in the long run, I really felt I had this whole Season 5/Season 6 thing worked out. Season 5 had to be about getting the Oceanic Six back to the Island. It had to involve different missions taken on by Jack and Ben to convince the Six to come back together. It had to find the Six back on the Island, probably mimicking the results of the original crash, and feature a major character saying something like "we're back" to mirror Jack's cries from the end of Season 3. So far, so good, right? Except for one small additional fact: the return had to happen in the Season 5 finale.

What then do I make of the producer's move to put the Six back on the Island so soon into this young season?

In a word: Genius.

First, the negative. The rapid return of the Oceanic Six would seem to undercut the importance of the show's fourth season. If the Six were going to return to the Island so soon after they left, why were we made to spend an entire season (more if you count the end of Season 3) establishing the epic nature of their flight to freedom? It seems like wasted time in retrospect. The fact that the Six even left the Island seems like it may be little more than a footnote in the history of the show before too long. A footnote that took a full season and some episodes to resolve.

With that small bit of negativity weighing on the proceedings, why then do I still think of the episode as "genius?" First, it truly was unexpected, at least by me. I mean who really thought the Six (minus one) would make it back to the Island so soon. With the mission of what I thought to be an entire season accomplished in little over a month, the possibilities for the remainder of the year seem endless, and that's a really good feeling to have about one's favorite show.

More importantly, at least to the standing of this particular episode, the producers did something really smart. By embracing the ridiculousness of the episode's premise (and really, if this was always the way the Six were going to return it was going to be at least slightly ridiculous) the producers were able to grapple with the very same questions of faith vs. reason that so fueled the show during Season 2.

Let's face it. The "plan" in this one is ludicrous. The Oceanic Six are told that in order to make their way back to the Island they must recreate (at least some of) the circumstances of Flight 815. This includes bringing a dead body (Locke as proxy for Christian) and, as if to add insult to injury, making that dead body seem as much like its Oceanic 815 counterpart as possible. As Faraday said in last week's episode, when it comes to the return of the Six, the show is really leaving the science behind.

But unlike other episodes of the show, where otherwise smart characters (like Jack...most of the time) ignore the very reasonable questions that would flitter through the mind of any sane person in the same situation, here the very theme of the episode is the "leap of faith" being asked of the Six, particularly Jack. Neither Mrs. Hawking nor Ben give Jack or any of the other Flight 815 survivors any reason to believe in the power of Locke's corpse. Or further, why in the world that same corpse having Christian's shoes should in any way impact their fate.

It is this very lack of information that so noticeably distresses Jack (who had, until this point, jumped into the "faith" pool with both feet) throughout the course of the episode, pushing him to the point of scrounging for booze in his darkened apartment (though thankfully Ms. Austen proved to be a more alluring alternative). When combined with the notions of providence that are introduced into the mix (Jack just so happens to stumble into a pair of his father's shoes shortly after being told that he will need such an item in order to make the trip), it's no wonder that he begins to lose it.

But Jack's doubt is the very reason why so ridiculous a plot line actually works to the benefit of the show. Had Jack, and Sun, and Hurley, and the rest simply embraced "the crazy", the creakiness of the premise would have been exposed for the world to see. But instead, by having the show's main character (and audience proxy) balk at what's being asked of him, the show is able to turn a liability into an asset.

As I said: Genius.

Now, in no way am I trying to excuse the episode for being, well, rather mechanical in its attempt to get the point across. In one of the episode's more clunky scenes, the writers have Jack verbalize his doubts to Locke's corpse. Scenes where one person essentially talks to themself are always difficult, but at least here, the show somewhat earned the monologue by earlier showing Jack as tortured by the ridiculousness of the task at hand. Another scene, again with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, features Ben all but calling Jack a "doubting Thomas" as he relates the tale of the famous Christian apostle. These are not the episode's high points, but (and I'm sure Locke would approve) they all work together to serve a greater purpose.

As a result, the fact that the scenes in this episode are somewhat clunky does very little to dissuade me from my belief that the episode is one of Lost's best. Very rarely does episodic television (or mainline movies) deal with the nature of what it means to have faith, particularly in this most metaphysical of contexts. Lost has grappled with this territory quite often during its run, and each time I think the message it tries to deliver is a bit more focused and a bit more powerful. While you'll see below that I am of two minds about just how "mystical" I want my Lost, I think that, without a doubt, "316" is a step in the right direction.

My Quick Thoughts:

Echoes of the Past - This episode features a very provocative opening, with Jack appearing in the jungle much as he did way back in 2004. While this was no doubt the reason that the show's producers elected to include the sequence, I do wonder about whether or not the loss of tension in the plot was worth it. I suppose since we knew that the Six were going to make it back to the Island one day that it wasn't a huge reveal, but it did pretty clearly establish that they'd be making it there in this week's installment.

Lost hasn't used the "X hours/days/weeks earlier" conceit as much as some other shows I could name (cough...Galactica), but I have always thought that if it isn't used for a very specific reason (giving a glimpse of the characters in a chaotic situation, for instance, and showing how they got from some tranquil starting point to their own personal mayhem) the use of the device runs the risk of taking all dramatic tension out of the proceedings. In this one, the vision of Jack's arrival on the Island served no real purpose save to provide a nifty callback opening. I suppose one could argue that it also served to add a sense of importance to the rest of the episode, but that all seems pretty artificial at the end of the day doesn't it?

Raised by Another - As far as intrigue goes, there is little that could match the words of warning Kate gives to Jack when he asks about Aaron's whereabouts. What happened to the little guy? Did Kate give him away? Was he taken from her? Were Ben's lawyers waiting for her when she got home (or to wherever she was going)? And what is Aaron's importance in the grand scheme of things, anyway? The psychic that Claire visited so many years (and seasons) ago was pretty specific on that point. Or is that simply another plot line that fell down the memory hole to sit alongside mentions of Walt's "special" abilities?

Lamppost Station - So the Dharma Initiative wasn't limited to setting up Octagonally marked base stations solely on Skipping Record Island. And somehow the Initiative knew of the Island's existence before they had ever been to the Island itself. Hmmmmm...could a post-Island Charles Widmore somehow be responsible for the whole Initiative project?

Neither the Time nor the Place - Is it just me, or does the scene in which a tearful Kate throws herself at a booze-ready Jack seem more than a little bit out of place? I mean, as far as we know, Kate has either just given up Aaron or had him forcibly taken from her. And Jack, he's having so many doubts that he's ready to turn back to drink. Yet despite this, both are apparently in the mood to do a little something extra. Struck me as odd. I'm sure we (or the show's writers) could justify it in the "two desperate people, desperately clinging to one another" school of character motivation, but it just didn't feel right to me. Anyone else?

John 3:16 - "And God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son..." It would be hard to have a discussion of this episode without making note of the most obvious element of its religious symbolism. While the show has occasionally delved into Christian theology in the past ("Christian Shepard" anyone?) rarely has it name checked anything as well known as this perhaps most famous of Bible passages. In the greater scheme of things it's difficult to put the verse in context within the whole of the show. Is Locke intended to be Jesus? Ben, Judas? Jacob, God? My guess is that no so literal interpretation was intended. Instead, the show's producers likely simply wanted to highlight the theme of sacrifice that was at the core of Locke's mission, and do so in a way that highlighted the concept of faith in a broader context.

Guitar Hero - Though we are never explicitly told how Hurley winds up booking some 70 odd tickets on Flight 316 (a really nice touch by the way, showing Hurley as someone who is trying to save as many people as possible from death or Island doom), we are given a rather big hint in his carrying of a guitar case throughout the episode. Don't we know someone who was good friends with Hurley and prominently carried a guitar? Hmmmm...I can only guess as to why Charlie would have asked his friend to return his guitar to the Island (or maybe it was necessary to "recreate" the circumstances of Flight 815), but I think it's clear that that he paid another visit to our favorite cursed lottery winner. This of course raises the question of who or what Hurley's ghost visitors really are. If they have real outside knowledge of current events (such as the location of the Island and the flight that passes through the window necessary to get there), then they can't simply be figments of Hurley's imagination. Are they truly spirits from the beyond? Smokie somehow made manifest off the Island? The Head Cylons from Battlestar Galactica? Time will tell.

Ben's Enemy - As an intriguing aside to the main events of the episode, Ben is forced to ask Jack to recover Locke's body due to the fact that Ben was otherwise incapacitated running an errand the night before. We are never told what the errand was, though we get to see the byproduct of its completion in Ben's bruised and battered face. What happened? Since I think that Hurley's guitar case basically answers the question of how he found his way onto Flight 316, I think the answer to Ben's injuries lies with the remaining mystery guest on the doomed flight: Sayid. When we last saw Mr. Jarrah prior to the flight, he was busy abandoning Operation Island for parts unknown. When we next see him, he is in the custody of what we can only assume is a U.S. Marshall (though why he would be being extradited to Guam is a mystery). My best guess is that Ben somehow framed and called the cops on Sayid before "detaining" him until he could be taken into custody. There is no question that Sayid could have inflicted the physical harm we saw on Ben's face, the only question is why he wouldn't have finished the job if given the chance. Maybe the Island is protecting more than one ex-Island inhabitant...

Now I'm Bathed in Light - I think the most interesting decision the show's producers made in this episode is with respect to the actual mechanic that puts the Six (minus one) back on the Island. Flight 316 doesn't really crash per se, its simply that the Six experience a white flash and arrive on the Island (in Jack's case in a circumstance almost identical to the one he found himself in after Flight 815). The whole thing takes on the feel of the divine, dovetailing nicely with the theme of questioned faith pervading the entirety of the episode. Still, what makes a good theoretical discussion on the show (the concept of faith) does not necessarily make a good plot point. Are we just to assume that the hand of God returned the Six to the Island? Is Mrs. Hawking's previous statement that the universe has a way of "course correcting" to be taken as literally true?

I like the mystical elements of the show as much as the next guy, but only in so far as they can be serviced by the very real rules that the show's producers have so far put down. That's what makes the show's slavish observance to the "closed loop" theory of time travel so interesting. If the whole of the show winds up being encapsulated in Faraday's previous warning to Charlotte that we were going to "leave science behind" I am going to be mighty disappointed.

A Score to Remember - In truth, I have very little to add on this point, I simply wanted to make mention of the absolutely wonderful score put down by Michael Giacchino in this one. A beautifully themed score is a weakness of mine, and I will generally feel quite differently about a show or movie with excellent musical themes than I will about one with without. As a matter of fact, the Lost score is perhaps one of the first things that I really loved about the pilot back in 2004. As in the past, the producers of the show really let Giacchino soar in this one, particularly in the scene where we get to see the faces of the Six (minus one) taking off on fated Flight 316. It without doubt adds an air of gravitas to the proceedings, really heightening the notion that "epic things" are afoot.

Future Imperfect - With the presence of the Ajira water bottle in the longboats earlier this season, we can now be all but certain that the Island's time travelers found themselves in a post-Flight 316 future during the events of "The Little Prince". This leads to the inevitable question of why the survivors of Flight 316 were shooting at the fleeing Islanders. Were they simply mad about the stolen boat? Do the non-Oceanic Six members of Flight 316 harbor some grudge against the current Islanders, or perhaps a deeper connection to the Island? One thing's for sure, given the fact that the show's producers love to "loop" time to show us known events from different perspectives, we can be pretty confident that we will again see the boat chase, this time from the other side.

More after the jump...

Battlestar Galactica: "No Exit"

"It's in her bones, Admiral. Her bones are rotten."

And so the final season begins in earnest.

As I said last week, while the "mutiny" arc was rousing good fun, I couldn't help but view those episodes with the eye of a terminally ill hospital patient: things that would have seemed so important just a few short months ago simply weren't when faced with the encroaching certainty of the end. I hyperbolize, but it's nonetheless difficult to imagine an episode that could be more different from the mutiny arc than "No Exit."

To begin with, "No Exit" features virtually no action of any kind. Where the halls of the Galactica had just recently been filled with the sounds of small arms fire, here the only sounds are those of Chief Tyrol and his crew inspecting the creaking innards of the once proud ship. The rest of the episode's "plot" is essentially relayed in the form of two stories: one being told by the injured Anders, whose brain trauma has apparently allowed him to remember his life as a Cylon before the war, the other being told as the interplay between a near-psychotic Cavil and the newly-revived Ellen Tigh over the course of the 18 months after she was murdered by her husband, Saul.

As a result of the lack of action, "No Exit" can best be thought of as what I call an "answer dump" episode. We've seen these before, whether as an attempt to appease mystified network executives (Season 3 of Alias), or as an attempt to appease a dwindling and confused fan base (Season 6 of X-Files). (While I'm sure that there are more examples of the form, these were simply the first two that sprang to mind. Interesting side note: both episodes share the same name, "Full Disclosure".) While Galactica certainly doesn't have to worry about either of these factors this late in its run, it has to worry about something else - expediency. Otherwise there really is no reason to have an entire episode of television devoted to background exposition, but with the end looming, I imagine the producers of Galactica felt as if they had no other choice.

Fortunately, the questions themselves are interesting enough that the show can survive an hour-long stint of mere talking heads. Here's a quick summary of what I think we know after this episode (please feel free to correct me in the comments if you think I missed or mischaracterized anything):

- In the beginning, the Humans lived on Kobol.

- They invented the race of Cylons.

- The Cylons rebelled ("All this has happened before...").

- The Kobol Cylons invented resurrection (but not faster than light travel).

- Humans and Cylons went their separate ways after the war, Cylons to Earth and Humans to the 12 colonies.

- At some point, the Humans begin referring to their rebellious Cylon children as the "13th Tribe."

- Earth Cylons then learned how to procreate without resurrection. The secrets of resurrection were lost to them.

- Earth Cylons invented a new race of AI.

- The new race of AI rebelled (The results of this rebellion are the remains of Earth that we see in "Sometimes A Great Notion").

- Prior to the Earth AI rebellion, Tigh, Ellen, Tyrol, Tory, and Anders were tipped off that a revolution was coming. They began work to restore the resurrection program and prepared themselves to be resurrected in a ship orbiting Earth once the bombs fell.

- After the destruction of Earth (2,000 years before the beginning of Galactica), the Final Five traveled to the colonies at sublight speed to tell Humanity to be respectful of any AI progeny it created. They arrived after the first Cylon war, too late to prevent any rebellion.

- The Final Five then elected to counsel the centurions, themselves having developed a religious belief in one true god. Thinking that this belief was critical to preventing the cycle of war, Ellen and the rest of the Five became leaders of the Cylon people, creating 8 model "skinjobs" to move the Cylons towards humanity and religious salvation. "John" Cavil was the first.

- Cavil, resentful of being created with the limitations of a human and jealous of Ellen's love for the other models, "poisoned" the DNA of model number 7, Daniel, who, we are led to believe, never came online as a Cylon (I do suspect, however, that the show has at least one last secret in store for us on this score.)

- After the "poisoning" Cavil takes command of the Cylon people and "boxes" the Final Five, removing their memories and forcing them to live among the 12 colonies as Humans.

- The Galactica mini-series begins.

- The Colony at which the Five produced the skinjobs remains "still there."

As you can see, there is a lot to take in from "No Exit", and that's skipping any description of the limited "action" that makes up the episode (namely Tyrol's convincing Adama to make the Galactica part Cylon, Anders becoming brain dead after having the bullet in his head removed, and Boomer freeing Ellen from the clutches of the vile gangster John Cavill). While this is exactly the kind of thing I've been looking forward to ever since the show raised so many mythology-based questions in "Sometimes a Great Notion", I still can't help but think that there was a better way to get all of this information across, one that didn't involve a full third of the season being used to tell a pretty traditional coup narrative.

That being said, an "answer dump" episode really lives and dies on the answers which it provides. Though I will always believe that there was a more organic way for Ron Moore and company to present the information, I can't deny that the answers themselves are incredibly thought-provoking and have me ready and raring to go to see next week's episode.

Some Quick Thoughts:

A Dying Leader - I almost did this as a separate post last week, but given the fact that, in my view, the hypothesis was only strengthened in "No Exit", I thought I would mention that my thoughts on the Galactica as "dying leader" where certainly received very differently by certain members of the fan base, particularly on Alan Sepinwall's blog.

Here are a few excerpts:

Anonymous said...

"How could Galactica be the dying leader if the "dying leader will know the truth of the opera house"? The hybrid is clearly talking about Laura Roslin."

I said...

"Judging from the five figures waiting in the wings in those scenes, I think one could argue that the "truth" was in fact the identity of the final five Cylons. If that is the case, who knew better than Galactica the identity of those five? All five were on Galactica for significant periods of time, and perhaps more importantly, remember what the trigger for the final five was: a song coming from within the ship.

Looking at it from that perspective, I think it's more than plausible that Galactica "knew" the truth of the opera house and conveyed that truth in the nebula at the end of season 3.

It may not be the most obvious reading of the "opera house" prophecy, but in my experience the most obvious reading is usually not the right one. (For instance, I don't think that Starbuck will be leading humanity to its "end" in the most literal way (death). Instead I think she will lead them home.)"

This analysis went over well with some people...

"Richard Hoeg - though I'm not entirely convinced they are going in that direction or would be able to play out that metaphor for mass consumption easily enough, you do present one of the best theories about how/why Galactica being the dying leader would be the case."

"First, I agree with all of Richard Hoeg's post"

And not so well with others...

"And to Richard Hoeg: keep your blog to yourself. You are wrong."

"Richard Hoeg: are you being obtuse on purpose? Kara Thrace is the harbinger of death! Not some nice happy "end."Galactica is not a dying leader. It is not a cylon. It is antiquated old battleship. Get off it - if the writers meant what you are suggesting, the show would be completely stupid."

I had the last word (but only because I took it.)

"First, with respect to Kara's "harbinger" prophecy. I know that the way it's presented implies that Starbuck is bad business, but let's look at each statement individually.

"Kara Thrace will lead the human race to its end."

As I've already stated, this doesn't mean anything independently. She might be leading them to death or to their final home. Could go either way.

"She is the herald of the apocalypse."

One reading: Following Starbuck will destroy the fleet. Second reading: Starbuck led the fleet to Earth, a planet that had most definitely experienced an apocalypse.

"The harbinger of death."

As I stated before, she enabled the fleet to end Cylon immortality forever. In a very real way she was the harbinger of death. The prophecy was even highlighted during this episode. (In the alternative, as mentioned above, she also was mainly responsible for bringing the fleet to Earth, where the Colonials, including Starbuck, found little else but death.)

"They must not follow her."

Admittedly, I don't know what to do with this one except to note how the statement specifically uses two general pronouns to hide its true meaning. Who are "they?" The Colonials? The Cylons? Who is her? Starbuck? Perhaps, but remember we have just been introduced to a new Cylon who is expected to "claw toward the light". Could the "her" be Ellen? I'm sure we'll find out.

Finally with respect to Galactica as "dying leader" I note only two things. First, there is no reason to believe that the category of "leader" is limited to living beings. Think of "loss leaders", or "leading economic indicators" (so often in the news today) for examples of when leadership is not specific to a given individual. Second, note that the concept of dying is also not limited to the living. "My car just died." In a universe with a "disease" that affects only machines (Cylons), it seems odd to limit the definition of "dying leader" in the way you suggest."

Suffice it to say, I feel that my positions were only strengthened by the lengthy scenes in "No Exit" discussing the deteriorating integrity of the Galactica. Look at the quote at the start of this post. Tyrol twice refers to the Galactica as female and discusses with Adama the fact that "her" bones are rotten. Some might even say "wasting" away. I think the facts speak for themselves.

New Intro - I loved the new intro with all of its focus on Ellen and the fact that "all of this has happened before." I just wanted to point out to all those that suggested that the "mutiny" arc didn't involve at least some amount of stalling for time, that the presence of a brand new introduction to a show with only six episodes remaining is a highly unusual step for the show's producers to take, and one which I think reflects the added importance of this episode and the episodes to come. As always, these comments are not intended to overly critique what I thought was a very good trilogy of episodes. My intent is simply to point out what I believe is becoming ever more obvious, that the true "final episodes" skipped straight from "Sometimes A Great Notion" to "No Exit" with nary a stop in between.

Said another way, I have absolutely no problem imagining a scenario in which Tyrol hears something funny in Galactica and Anders has an unexplained stroke in a hypothetical episode immediately following the events of "Sometimes a Great Notion." Would anything in "No Exit" really have to change to accommodate this revised scenario? The scene in the dead quorum's chambers, sure, but anything else?

Cavil Knows Best - If you're anything like me you had long assumed that the reason the "skinjobs" were not permitted to think of the Final Five (though we saw how effective that programming was) was because the Five themselves had programmed the skinjobs that way (or, in the alternative, the skinjobs had placed the block in their programming out of an extreme sense of piety). In this episode, we find out (though induction rather than by exposition), that Cavil must have been the one to program the other skinjobs to not think about the Five.

The show's producers really took a number of steps in this episode to personify Cavil as the evil that had previously been attributable to all Cylons, but the realization that Cavil knew who the Five were all along has to be one of the most significant (particularly since we have no present connection to the murdered Number 7). As Ellen points out, Cavil knew their identities and still he tortured Tigh on New Caprica, still he took advantage of Ellen, and still he hunted Anders. Cavil is the very definition of evil and a useful antagonist for the end run of the series. I wonder, however, whether or not his evil sufficiently absolves the rest of the Cylons for their part in the genocide of Humanity, though it certainly seems to be the producers' intent.

Boomer's Gambit - The fact that Cavil introduces a resurrected Ellen to Sharon "Boomer" Valeri well before the events of this episode casts an entirely new light on the Cylon rebellion which occurred during the first half of this season (or last season depending on your point of view). During that rebellion, the deciding vote to "lobotomize" the Cylon raiders was made by Boomer, marking the first time that an individual Cylon had ever voted against their model number.

Of course, what we now know is that Boomer was given significant information that the rest of her line didn't have when she was introduced to and got to speak with a resurrected Ellen Tigh. The rest of the Eights wanted to prevent the lobotomization because they didn't want the raiders to fire on a member of the revered Final Five. Boomer, on the other hand, had a name to put with at least one of their faces, and when Ellen refused to apologize for the hurt that she had inflicted on Cavil, the die was cast. Boomer would eventually change her mind in this one, but not before starting a full scale civil war.

Humans Only - It was a small moment but an interesting one when Adama ordered Tyrol to fix his ship with a crew that was "humans only." Despite his willingness to work with both Tyrol and Tigh, it's clear that Adama doesn't really think of the two as Cylons. In contrast, the look on Tyrol's face was perfect, telling us all we needed to know about just how aware Tyrol is of his new status, as well as his thoughts on the inherent "racism" of the Admiral's request.

I'm a PC - Just as an interesting type-casting aside, I felt it necessary to note that the brain surgeon who was assigned to work on Anders was none other than the "PC" from Apple's famous "I'm a Mac" ads. I guess we can assume that the Cylons aren't running Leopard. Perhaps they prefer Linux?

Glowing - Really good staging in the scene where Anders sees all of the people at his bedside as glowing angels. It was easy to see that everyone the producers put in the scene was a known Cylon except for Starbuck. Does the glowing aura around Starbuck indicate that she too has a Cylon secret to share? Or was the glowing simply a side effect of Anders having a bullet lodged in his skull? You can read the scene either way, though I think the fact that Anders didn't have any information to give Starbuck in this episode tacks away from the theory that she is a Cylon. It's all too obvious an answer at this point.

The Leeward side - Perhaps one of the more cloying and artificial plot lines on the show has always been Lee Adama's. The show's producers never really seem to know what to do with him, and this episode is no exception. So when, in his one significant scene, he has a heart-to-heart with President Roslin in which she tells him that he will essentially be serving as president of the colonies because he was always "the one", pardon me if I gag a little. While I certainly have enjoyed many of Apollo's scenes throughout the years he has been fighter pilot, lawyer, presidential wannabe, quorum delegate, "john", husband, philanderer, mutineer (so often forgotten in the excitement of the past few weeks), and basically everything except for "the one." Just seems a bit too pat to me.

No Baltar - Nothing much to say here, just noting that a character who had seemed so important as few as five episodes ago once again got short shrift in this one (He didn't even appear). Oh well.

More after the jump...