Lost: Enter 77Not as compelling as the Desmond episode, but still a more solid entry than we got the last two weeks. I think part of it may have been that I'd heard such an early buzz about this episode that it raised my expectations and hopes to a point that no TV show could really meet (unless it's by Joss Whedon).
I've got to say that the past three weeks, I've not seen the point of the flashbacks. And this comes from someone who has defended the format time and again to those who wonder why we're still doing them. So, after his particiaption in the Gulf War, Sayid tried to escape his past, only to have it catch up to him. He's tricked into coming to a restaurant, taken hostage and tortured so that the restaurant owner's wife can see him treated as badly as he treated her. In the end, she comes to him, seems to forgive him and we're left hanging. About the only connection to what was unfolding on the island was that in the flashback and the home of guy with an eyepatch, there is a cat.
Honestly, we've seen better Sayid flashbacks in the past two seasons. And we know he's a bit haunted by what he did. But he will still do it if the ends justify the means. And he's good at it.
So, we didn't really till any new ground here. Which is a shame really, but it seems as if the flashback segments are getting shorter. I just wonder if they're running out of things to do with the characters in these segments.
I don't think they have....I just think they're not taking the next step.
Meanwhile, the storylines on the island are interesting. Locke, Kate, Sayid and Danielle find the home of the eyepatch man and he reveals a large number of answers. The Dharma Initiative is gone, he's the last member of it, etc. He's also got a satellite dish that could be used to communicate with the outside world. As we find out in the course of the hour, it's not working, but Sayid thinks it could have been put back on-line.
We never find out becuase Locke manages to blow up the house. Locke plays chess against the computer, winning and unlocking some more footage of the Dharma scientist guy we've seen several times before. The last screen is to push 77 if the house has been invaded. We see the house wired in the basement and it doesn't take much to put two and two together. The fact that the house blew up at the end wasn't shocking. It was all there and you could easily put it together if you paid attention.
What is interesting is Locke's decision. I think he had a good idea of what would happen should he enter 77. As I've said before, Locke has a good reason for wanting to stay on the island and I can see why he'd want to destroy a chance to communicate and be forced to leave. And I don't think we've heard the last of this conflict between he and Sayid..and if you did watch the previews and they gave away any of these details, please don't tell me. Like I've said before, I avoid previews at this point because they give too much away (unless it's footage for
Spider-Man 3 and then I'm all over it...)
Meanwhile, on the beach Sawyer is challenged to a game 0f ping-pong. The bet--if one person can beat him, he has to stop calling everyone nicknames for a week. If he wins, they give back all his stuff they took while he was off with the Others. A lighter plot but one that worked and it gave us a chance to see life on the beach. Also, was there an inside dig at the two new characters who appeared out of no where by Sawyer?
Jericho: Heart of WinterThis episode would be a good one to take a long winter's nap through.
There were elements here that should add up a good episode. You've got the town struggling as winter storms advance and there's a lack of fresh meat. You've got Hawkins and Sarah going to meet the Old Man but finding out that three of the agents in their group have been comprimised. You've got Sarah trying to find the package and killing her contact to do it.
But yet, all of this is not enough to make a good episode.
The problem is there are so many bad scenes between the interesting ones that maybe I'm missing something between rolling my eyes. We go out hunting and encounter..well, evil guys in a black truck. We've established going too far out of town is dangerous, so no new ground here. It's a chance to wreck the truck, get Skeet in trouble and have him almost die. As he's stuck under the truck, he confesses his big sin from his time in the Iraq war, which I guess is supposed to answer some questions but it felt more like throwing us a bone. Also, I can't see Skeet's character being that tortured over just one thing. We need more than that..if that's all we get on this I will be annoyed.
Also annoying is how stupid Hawkins is being. He doesn't see that maybe, just maybe Sarah is up to something. This is a guy who somewho senses that Skeet is watching him through a telescopic lens and yet he doesn't see the deception under his own nose. Even in the end when Sarah decides to go out for a walk even though we've previously established it's frigidly cold outside and being out after dark in Jericho is not a good idea.
But he NEVER sees through this.
And then we've got Emily and Roger...which that's a yawn-fest. I think we're just wasting time until he catches her with Skeet. Until then, color me bored.
Not hard to do really. The whole show did that this week..and more.
Labels: Jericho, Lost, tv shows
posted by Michael Hickerson at 3/09/2007 12:50:00 PM |
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