podcasts!

Alright bitches. Remember how I posted that jankety two minute thing?
Gone!

Though I suck at technology, Dave and B have mastered the fine art of podcast uploading. Hallelujah! B tagged them all as podcasts over in the label section of the blog to the right, but I'm slapping them down here as well. Just cuz.

Tabula Rasa
Pilot Part Two
Pilot Part One - final thoughts
Pilot Part One

There is some pretty epic commentating going on. Do not miss it.

Walkabout by Sam

This is the first in a long chain of incredible Locke-centric episodes. Remember how much I was ragging on the first three episodes? Yea, that's not going to happen with this one. Terry O'Quinn's portrayal of John Locke completely restored my faith in this show.

Hopefully we'll find a way to upload our podcasts soon, because a lot of what we say in the moment I can't remember now. Also, I know other shit happens in this episode (transceiver/Jack's smokemonsterdad/etc) but I'm not interested in that. Locke is life.

Only in the last season, when we were watching the flash-sideways, did I start to consider that the flashbacks people were having impacted their island lives. It's so evident in this episode! Right after his dick-manager tells him that he can't go on his walkabout, Locke is laying in the grass listening to Michael wail about his leg wound. Locke gets up and hunts the shit out of the boar because no one, not even L'oreal Kate, tells Locke that he can't do it. She can walk Michael back on her own, thanks.

It becomes standard, but this is our first glimpse into the sorry life of pre-island Locke. He's of the nerdy RPG sort, comfortable in his cubicle but committed to the idea that he's meant for more. His manager? Way to tell a man in a wheel chair that he's not capable of overcoming anything. What an asshole. It should've been him that got hit by that meteor, not poor Tricia Tanaka. Anyways, Locke is a shell of person before he crashes on the island. His loneliness leads him to a really dark, sad place. How awful that his believing someone would want to go to Australia with him is a delusion. Anyone who watches this episode and fails to connect to that part of Locke? I don't wanna know 'em.

In this show, there's a trend of capable, walking men looking at a guy in a wheelchair and telling him he can't do shit. Locke goes to Australia without his phone companion and gets told again: You can't do this.

He can't do this? This is his destiny. He's supposed to do this.

He's supposed to do this. An orderly in a later episode plants the seed that this walkabout is what he needs to do. Locke goes there and is brutalized for his physical ailments and his plane crashes. Who is that guy? The orderly guy that eventually becomes Locke's cab driver? A creepy and less-invested version of Desmond? A friend of Jacob and Richard? It starts to become a little too convoluted if I consider it for too long. But I'm starting to trust my instincts. Locke really was pushed out of a building, forced into a wheelchair, denied his walkabout and given a second chance at walking about with all the other survivors. When Locke is strangled by Ben, that is when he dies. His first and only death that is ever shown to us. I'm going the man-of-faith route this time.

Man-of-science-ly, there is plane wreckage. Our final image is physical evidence that somebody's plane crashed. Like all of their physical baggage, Locke and company get to leave their emotional wreckage on that damn island. From what I can recall, when they all have their moment of dawning in the flash sideways, they don't remember anything that didn't happen on the island. Locke doesn't see himself being denied his walkabout. On the island, in his natural life, he walked about and that was what he remembered and that's what helps HIM let go. I maintain that the show opening and closing on Jack's eye doesn't change the third-person perspective this show has. We have to have a central character to help us cement what's happening in a show like this. They picked Jack, probably out of convenience. Good-looking, leadery doctor. Of course he's the one you start with! But he isn't the point of the show. His eye is the one we open on, but it isn't the only one. It's a story-telling device. And I'd argue that no one is more important than the next person, even the screaming Shannons. I don't consider every person in my life to be this stepping stone to greater spiritual knowledge. They're people. Their pasts matter. Their presents matter. And just like I don't live my life like I'm the one who matters most, I don't like considering a story where only Jack matters. Jack's a survivor, just like the rest of them are. They're all on the last half of their walkabout, trying to sort through their internal messes before they get to the end of the line.

Out of everyone who crashes, Locke is the first, the most ready to drop his baggage on the beach and get to gettin. Yes, he has the occasional "woe is me" moment. But for the most part? He brings the people boar. He is willing to accept this reality because he recognizes what an opportunity it is. Everyone else is so hung up on being rescued they don't see that they're being offered a chance at the kind of rescuing they really need. If they hadn't crashed on the island? I don't think they would've ended up in that church together. They would've mattered to different people, lived different lives...being the bad ass that he is, Locke seems to know that before anyone else.

Locke is also the first person so far to survive a personal encounter with the smoke monster. His face right before that happens doesn't exactly mesh with his declaration later on that what he saw was "beautiful." What does that bastard smoke show my darling Locke? Whatever it is, it convinces him that he's on the right path, doing the right things, being the man of faith and that that's what matters. Yes, that ends up screwing corporeal Locke. Sure, that's gotta be kind of shaming and embarrassing for the man considering his history of being conned and used by everyone he trusts. But I don't think that Jacob's brother, Sir Smoke, will ever get to any space where he'll have a shot at entering that church. Locke still wins.

I love Locke episodes. Much like he does for the survivors on the show, he helps bring me back to a place where I believe that all of this has a meaning and a purpose. Even though the final scenes were romantic and pretty, I still think it's really clinical to dismiss everything we've been shown like it doesn't matter if it happened or not. It matters.

Tabula Rasa by Sam

Our first Kate-centric episode. Of course it involves her ripping off the false arm of an Australian farmer. Why wouldn't it?

Plot-wise, we know the drill. Kate, a somewhat decent criminal, is watching the air marshal die. I liked this episode on first viewing. Second time? After the finale?

To paraphrase Jack:
"We all died three days ago. We deserve a clean slate."

Initially, I was convinced that season one was purgatory. After being told by all the Lost-sites/writers/etc that it was not purgatory...that little line, the fuckin' title of the episode? Post-finale I feel somewhat foolish for having believed that it was something past "Let's make an interesting little un-world where we can deal with our daddy-issues and move on!" It's a shame that it's shaping up to be exactly what the finale claimed. I'm considering it entirely possible that none of the island stuff ever happened. What a mess, if that's the case.

I'm a bitter-betty today. Better to take it out on Lost than on my unsuspecting husband, right?

The one moment in this episode that is sticking out in a positive way is the part where Kate asks Jack why he can't just let the cop die and he looks at her straight-up and says "Because I'm not a murderer." She doesn't correct him. He just says it and walks the hell away. Ballsy stuff.

Don't go thinking that I'm just hating on Lost for the sake of it. I love this show. I love Locke and Desmond and Eko and I love what so much of the story says about the human condition. But I'm still struggling with how reductive that ending was; I'm not swung by it yet. People finding peace? Yes, that's nice. But some of us liked the whole "keep evil at bay! save the world, save the cheerleader" thing. Reverting back to "it was always a character show" is a shiny version of "what we put our characters through was for their own good in the after life and that's about it."

Boo to that! I'm staying on the side where Sawyer really shot that cop (and fucking missed) instead of just creating a world where he could shoot one because he needed to ascend yea I'm already not interested. It's just plain cooler for this stuff to have really happened. I'll chin-up soon, I promise...

Pilot, Part two by Sam

The second part of the pilot was the episode that turned me off to Lost my first go through. It took a random purchasing of season one dvds by my mother to get me re-interested in the show. Who the hell shoots a polar bear? And why do French people have to get involved? I hate the French.

Going through it a second time, I liked it about the same amount. It's a slow moving episode. We realize that Charlie is a devoted-heroin user. Sayid knows how to work a transceiver. Sawyer is a complex guy.

I don't have much to say about this episode that didn't get said in the podcast. Boone is still hot and Locke is still awesome. But I don't really like part 2 all that much. I think it's one of the weaker episodes in the show, truthfully. It reveals a lot about the island, I guess. Other people have crashed there. Polar bears run rampant. Shannon speaks French very reluctantly.

Meh. I don't really care for this episode. You?

Pilot, Part 1 by Sam

This damn show. Even if I'm disappointed with the final fifteen minutes of the series, the first fifteen SECONDS of the opening episode are enough to put that all right. I'm sucked back in all over again and I barely care that I know how it ends. There's so much to wonder about still.

I really hope that we're able to upload our podcasts because I think B and I did a bang up job. Also, her thoughts on Shannon's incessant screaming need to be shared with the world.

Like Bridgette, I didn't have any major OHMYGODOFCOURSE! moments watching this episode post-finale, but it was certainly different. I remember the curiosity of the first few episodes where you don't know that Kate was the one with the cuffs or that Charlie was snorting the bad stuff in the cockpit. Establishing those things immediately might've been too much considering how much chaos is set up in the first episode, but I like that they started laying the ground work. A plane full of people crashing on an island...it's cool that they didn't just let that be the driver of the story. These people are going to have issues before they rack up all the island-miseries.

Even in its most obvious moments, there's something really classy about the way that we're introduced to everyone in the pilot. We see a twitchy Charlie. A sweet Hurley who gives pregnant little Claire the extra dinner. Lame ass screaming Shannon who paints her toenails. Well-meaning Boone who brings those damn pens about three hours too late. Force-of-nature Jack who takes charge and can single out every cry for help in the middle of exploding engines and general turmoil. Suck-it-up-and-do-the-damn-thing Kate, who stitches up Jack in one of the most over-referenced scenes in Lost.

And Locke. He was my main man before my beloved Desmond came around. I was immediately interested in Locke. Physically, he looks a lot like my dad. Wrinkles around the eyes, sweet smile, bald as all hell. But past that...what a badass!, smiling at Kate like that when she's stealing a dead man's shoes. That's BOLD! I want to be that person. It's awesome to see that scene again, knowing his history, knowing that he really wasn't that person until he got to the island. Way to take charge of a new chapter in life.

Essentially, re-watching the pilot made me realize just how innocent and pure everything seems upon first glance. Who knew Sayid was a torturer who'd end up working for his nemesis Ben, die, get zombiefied by the smoke and explode himself in a sub? The hell kind of show is this?

Awesome, that's what. Bring on the next episode!