LOST: midway through Season 5

So I finally got Season 5, and before I get into it, I just need to rant a bit about the fuckwit who sent it to me. I ordered it on 2/23. The listing promised, "same day shipping!" On 2/26, I got a notice that it shipped. I e-mailed the guy to ask why the delay, given the explicit promise of immediate shipment in the listing. He said he was selling stuff because he was moving, and it just got delayed in the chaos. It turns out, from the postmark and tracking record, that he didn't even send it until March fucking 2. What's more, in mailing a dvd set, wouldn't you at least use a padded envelope, if not a box? Not this douche. He just wrapped a plain, thin paper envelope around it. Nothing appears damaged, but even so . . . He offered a refund if I returned it unsatisfied. As long as it plays, I'm not returning it, but I certainly plan to ream him in the feedback.

Okay, a few general things I haven't said about Lost yet, that I've wanted to: jeebus, this is some beautiful television! Between the production values of this and BSG, I'm just about scratching my head and asking why we need feature films. The longer narratives are so much more satisfying, good teevee writers can make them more sophisticated, and if they can look this good this consistently, I'd as soon watch a story in this form, with more natural pacing, than squeezed into the artificial sausage-tube of time for which an audience can be expected to sit quietly/comfortably in a darkened theater.

Then, one thing (among plenty others) I haven't gotten around to saying about Battlestar Galactica yet is how much I love the opening title/credits sequence. It's beautifully done, with great moments from the show (seeing Roslin take the oath always brings a tear to my eye) and hauntingly gorgeous music. Lost's title moment (not even long enough to call a sequence) is, in its own way, as amazing--a wonder of minimalism that chills me every time.

So, Season 5. Wow, for a while there I almost couldn't recognize this show as the same one I started. It changed in setting (big chunks of nonflashback story taking place off-island), mood (the mysteries have grown a lot less ominous, partly through having been partially answered, but also from plain old familiarity at this point), and narrative structure (no more flashbacks) (Sean T. Collins makes both of the latter points here). I wouldn't say the writers did the greatest job of getting the Nine Unknown Oceanic Six back to the island, but now that they're there, it feels like I can stop holding my breath waiting for the crap off-island stuff to stop.

I guess I should acknowledge a few off-island moments that I liked. Ben first owning up to that lawyer as his lawyer, then matter-of-factly confirming Kate's heated accusations while Jack's in the middle of denying them and trying to calm her down, made an amusing one-two punch.

Locke's episode was just outstanding. The drumbeat of failure as one after another of the Final Five Cylons Oceanic Six turned him away was a little predictable, but I'm not sure there was any way to avoid going through those motions that would still deliver the payoff we got. The visit to Helen's grave was more poignant than it had any right to be. Abaddon uncharacteristically misses the point when he tells Locke she was going to have that aneurysm no matter what choices he made in the past, and would be dead anyway. The point is that Locke blew the only real chance to love and be loved that ever presented itself in his life (and maybe in hers?), and the finality of her death underlines that as cruelly as possible.

When Locke winds up in the hotel room with the cord in his hand, it feels earned, but still plays out pretty much according-to-trope . . . until Ben kicks in the door! Man, do those two play off each other in that scene. Ben talking Locke down off the table made for some profoundly affecting dialogue and physical acting. The murder is excellent, too, but I don't think they provided the strongest or clearest transition between what Ben was saying (sincerely, I believe) and what he ended up doing. Times like that, I wish the writers would "respect" me as an audience member a little less and "spoon-feed" me a little more.

As for the on-island happenings, so far it's absolutely the Season of Sawyer. One of my biggest LOL moments to date came when Jin rattled off a ton of Korean and then demanded that Charlotte translate. Sawyer, mistaking the situation, yells at Miles--the nonwhite guy sitting next to her--"Yeah, translate!" Miles: "He's Korean. I'm from Encino. [unspoken: I guess we all look alike to you.]"

Seeing Sawyer and Juliet together, I was struck--no, sledgehammered--by how much better I like them as a couple than any combination that includes Jack and/or Kate. Now Jack and Kate are back. I groaned aloud at the look on Sawyer's face when Kate stepped in-frame. To quote Todd VanDerWerff, "This being TV, where adolescent crush-level dramatics hold sway, I expect this will turn into a wacky love quadrangle, but I also sort of hope Sawyer and Juliet just jilt Jack and Kate and say, 'Thanks, but we're much happier now.'"

Okay, so what about the whole getting-back-to-the-island bit? The first thing I'll say is that I was hoping for the most spectacular crash-footage yet. Instead of raising their game, however, they seem to have decided to skip it altogether. Hugely disappointing to me--but then I'm only halfway through the season, so it's possible they'll come back to that and deliver what I wanted.

Sean notes one conundrum that occurred to me:

There was something profoundly fucked up about all of these people . . . risking the lives of everyone else on that plane in order to save them and their friends, or give their lives a sense of purpose, or whatever. (Hurley at least tried, but dude, the stewardesses are fucked regardless. And Jack, seems like you asked about the other people on the plane a wee bit too late, considering you were already in the air, dickhead.) There’s two ways of looking at this, I suppose: One is that the writers ignored this and want you to ignore it too, except in the very broad “Hurley is good because he cares, Ben is bad because he doesn’t, Jack is basically good but kind of a dick because he only sort of cares” strokes they painted it with. The other is that the writers know it and want you to know it too, that they want to convey that all these people are profoundly damaged and selfish.

I don't see any reason why this moral quandary need have arisen (not that moral quandaries should be avoided--they're often the stuff of great conflict--but this one seems unintentional, and certainly unexplored). It's like the writers went out of their way to step in that hole. All the writers had to do to avoid it was not give the characters any influence over whether the plane would crash or not. LadyHawking could, alternately, have declared that the plane was destined to crash, and they'd better buy their tickets if they wanted to be on it. Or, she could have noted its flight-path over the island and said, "Maybe it will crash or maybe it won't, but this is as good a chance to get back as you can hope for." As for their motives to go back--jeez, I thought that was the whole point of all those depressing flashforwards, to show that they were so miserable off-island that they'd all have their reasons for wanting to go back. So why also make it part of their motive that each one who goes along helps the group as a whole get back via plane-crash?

To reiterate, I think it was a tremendous cop-out, not to force the characters to go through the horrors of another crash.

Onward! . . .

UPDATE: Just started the episode that begins with the landing on the island. On a fracking runway. I don't care how bumpy it was, or that a tree speared through the cockpit--that was NOT the crash I was looking forward to. Lame, lame, lame.