MagneticMediaFed

True story: last night I got home from the Beck concert, watched Lost and sat down at my computer. I had this cool idea that I was going to call a friend of mine, talk to him about the show and then transcribe our conversation (which was agreed upon before the call) to use as today’s post. I figured it would be something a little different. Perhaps MMF readers would get a kick out of it. But then I spilled my beer on my keyboard. Now, the spacebar doesn’t work at all and the rest of the keys stick, so I’m typing this from my roommate’s room (thanks Paul!). Anyway, now that I’m at a different computer I can transcribe that conversation, and you can read it by clicking below…

RJP: So I was taking notes, as I usually do, and I right off the bat I wrote down that Lost is the craziest show to regularly get 15 million viewers on a given week.

AK: Yeah. This was another episode that I felt raised far too many questions for the amount of answers you get. It kind of answered the questions about the polar bears, and where they came from, but I was disappointed that Locke went up against them instead of the smoke monster. But the reason I called was because, well, what the fuck is deal with Desmond being able to see through time!?

RJP: I didn’t understand what the hell was going on with that.

AK: That might have been the craziest thing they’ve raised in a while.

RJP: In terms of the story, that’s definitely crazy. I mean, I thought the whole Boone dream sequence was so weired that imagine if you just tuned into Lost because your friends kept talking about it and this was the episode you saw. What would you think?

AK: My roommate is trying to watch Lost, and he checks in every season — he missed the entire first season, right — he tried to watch the first episode of the second season with me and I was trying to explain what was going on, and he didn’t get, like, how important the reveal of the hatch was, and how they’ve been building that forever and ever. So then he gave up on it, but then tried to watch again because a guy at his work kept talking about it, and now he’s not watching it again. It’s basically impossible to jump into.

RJP: It in weird way it speaks highly of the people who do watch it, in that its still quite popular. I’m actually surprised more people haven’t fled the show because its so impenetrable.

AK: I feel like if you’re a long-time viewer it will reward you. That’s what I liked about the first two episodes this season, they had some very long-term payoffs. This episode — especially Locke’s flashback — it didn’t have anything to do with anything.

RJP: I think thematically it had something to do with it, but the problem is he didn’t shoot the guy, so you don’t know what happens. If his flashback had ended with him shooting the kid, that would have been pretty crazy, and it would have said something about Locke as a person. The whole point of the episode was that Locke had to correct his previous mistakes, and it seemed like the whole point of the flashback was that he didn’t correct a mistake that he needed to and now I’m starting to think that maybe the commune desides to beat the hell out of him and that’s why he’s in a wheel-chair.

AK: That’s interesting. I like to think that the show is suggesting he did shoot him even though they didn’t show it because Echo calls him a hunter at the end.

RJP: Was he imagining Echo saying that he was a hunter or did he really say it?

AK: I think he was imagining… The show is suggesting that Locke shot the guy even though we didn’t see it.

RJP: That could be, and I’d believe it. I liked the flashback, but it just didn’t give you the twist that most of the other — or at leas those in the first season — gave you.

AK: Have they showed the commune before?

RJP: No.

AK: I swear to god I’ve seen a television show recently where a girl goes to a commune and they have this dark secret, and then she gets out of it, or something. I don’t remember the rest…

RJP: Oh my god! You know what I was thinking? It’s funny that my second favorite show on television had a hidden marijuanna fortress.

AK: Oh yeah, because Veronica Mars did too.

RJP: Yeah.

AK: I’ll have to go back and try to figure out where I saw that idea before, because I know they lifted it from somewhere, and do you know what? Wikipedia will have it tomorrow, I know that. The next day I always read Wikipedia, and do you read Doc Jenson of Entertainment Weekly?

RJP: Oh, no.

AK: Well there’s this guy, this writer for Entertainment Weekly, his name isn’t really Doc Jenson — I don’t know why they call him that — anyway he has this column where he writes about Lost all the time and frequently posts all the burning questions. Episode by episode he writes about which questions are raised and which questions raise other questions. I don’t know which day they’re posted but you should read that — he puts out some freaking crazy theories sometimes. I haven’t been reading long enough to see if any of his theories pay off, but you should check it out.

RJP: That’s cool.

AK: And then what’s Hurley going to do?! He had this look on his face like he was going to use Desmond’s new powers for evil, or something.

RJP: You’re right, the more I think of this episode the more I’m like, “What the hell just happened?” Why was there, like, a Tonka truck in the cave?

AK: Yeah, I don’t know where they get these toys from. Do you remember when the Others had that bear? It showed someone dragging it when we saw their feet.

RJP: Absolutely. It was kind of like Michael from Peter Pan.

AK: Where do they get anything from?

RJP: Well last week suggested that the do have contact with the outside world.

AK: Yeah, the Others do, but what about the main castmembers. Now that the hatch is blown up they won’t have a lot of the luxuries that they used to have.

RJP: SO. Where would you rate this episode in the grand scheme of things?

AK: Not very good, because right now its so unsatisfying. And I just can’t get over Desmond’s reveal that he knew Locke was going to make a speech. And then they made that reference to The Hunk– that the radiation empowered him somehow and know he’s a supergenious… I don’t know. And like I said, the flashback wasn’t very satisfying either.

RJP: Last week on the Lost PODCAST, which proves I’m a total nerd, they said that last week’s episode and this week’s episode were suppose to be flipped in order. Obviously it didn’t need to be, but I’m glad they did it that way as the Jack, Sawyer, Kate storyline is so self-contained I kind of wish they’d just stick with that for the first seven episodes or whatever.

AK: Did they say why they ultimately decided to switch them?

RJP: They didn’t so much. But to me, the first episode really got the ball rolling and so why completely jump to a different story altogether when you can build off the momentum of the first episode.

AK: Yeah, it’ll be a really hard two months after this first set of episodes is over, because they aren’t going to solve anything and we’ll just be left with another cliffhanger.

RJP: I’m to the point where I’ve excepted that that is going to happen forever and just appreciating the episodes for what they are, I guess.

AK: Yeah, I do too, but there are some episodes where I just feel you’ve got to give me something.

RJP: Its true. It didn’t really have a beginning, middle, and end. It kind of reminded me of the previous week’s episodes of Heroes where you just kept waiting for something to happen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 11:03 am and is filed under ABC, Lost. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.