getting LOST again...

Man! A pretty sweet return to the land of LOST. I first watched the season premiere on replay this weekend while home sick. Tonight, I mostly listened and a little bit watched it again while Rowan gave it his first viewing. I was putting the last coat of paint down in my bedroom and couldn't give the show my full attention. Probably better off for Rowan not to have me hopping up and down in anticipation of Sawyer getting his punishment and later his reward, heh heh. So funny how PLANET OF THE APESy that felt to me in parts.

Fake Beard:	It took the bears two hours!
Sawyer:	Yeah...? How many were there?

=)

Anyone else getting a STAR WARSy vibe off the three featured "cool kids"? I think that the writers laid the groundwork very entertainingly for Sawyer to fall into the Han Solo role. Kate as Leia, no big stretch. Alas, no bronze bikini, but that gross of halter tops and tanks in the cargo hold of Oceanic 815 doesn't hurt any, eh? And Jack. For some reason, in this episode, I really felt this strong vibe that he's not meant to be with Kate. That the scoundrel is the one who gets the girl. Jack gets a kiss, but in the end, he ends up going Jedi (no love) anyway. And... if we follow the STAR WARS model, that would make Jack and Kate brother and sister...

Hrmm... Whaddyathink?

Loved the pre-title segment. Frickin tantalizing, no? The first minute or so, with just Juliet prepping for the book club, was a nice bit of disorienting red herring deja vu. I think that they got the timing or mood (and the music?) or SOMEthing to match our first introduction to Desmond in the hatch way back when, before we saw his face, when he was a mysterious figure on the stationary bike, y'know? Maybe the doorbell for Juliet comes at the same time as the button alarm for Desmond? What with the deja vu and all, I couldn't be sure who the woman was. I feel like the show wanted me to think it was Desmond's ex, back in the real world, listening to the same music, for whatever reason associated with him, and bucking up for another tough day ahead. I think that the creators must consciously cast for tall willowy (is that the word?) long haired blonde women for key roles, partly to muck with us, and partly perhaps to give them some flexibility for deciding who or what their significance is at a later date. Of course, I'm thinking of that woman that Jack's dad tries to get past in Australia, when he's yelling in the rain at her about how "she's my daughter, too!" and such, y'know? The woman in the door—tall long-haired blonde.

Ah, music. Is it Patsy Cline on the radio in Jack's flashback when he's talking his ex-wife? Or is it something more big band/loungey...? Frack. I can't remember now. I DO remember placing it, tho, connecting it to an earlier LOST. What do you think? Isn't it the same time-travelling (Hurley's joke remark) broadcast that Sahid's repaired receiver picks up on the beach that one night...? Wait, it's big bandy/loungey, cuz that went with the "happy times on the LOST island" montage at the end of that episode. I'm pretty sure that the Patsy Cline was from the "Tom and Sara" episode, y'know, actually Anna Lucia and Jack's pop.

Book club. What the heck is the book that they're reading? Juliet claims it's her *favorite* book and everyone seems to agree that it's something that Ben (aka Henry) would despise. Book clubber Adam calls the book, "Popcorn," and continues to knock it by saying, "No metaphor... by-the-numbers religious hokem pokem... science fiction!"

When the Others are all drawn outside after the quake and witness the mid-air break-up of Oceanic 815 (pretty frickin awesome sight), we see that Juliet is holding a book by Stephen King. I don't know the King oeuvre so well, but when Rowan mentioned King's name out loud while he was watching, I thought of FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, a collection of four stories, one of them being THE LANGOLIERS. The club doesn't refer to multiple stories, and Adam's "religious hokum" criticism don't seem like it fits, but I tell you hwhat, the basic premise of THE LANGOLIERS seems pretty germane. Ever read it?

Well, let me boil it down to the LOSTy parts. It's about what happens to the pilot and passengers of an airplane when it apparently encounters a special kind of storm that basically rips them out of our universe/spacetime/continuity, and sends them to a sort of in-between dimension, a kind of limbo. Sound at all familiar? The particulars are different, but I could see how this story might bring out strong opinions and feelings among an apparently well-educated bunch who might have had a similar fate befall them, donchathink?

Maybe there's a better fit King work that I've forgotten or just don't know about, but, given the story's premise, I like THE LANGOLIERS for this.

When the view pulls back, away from the Others' little compound, or village, if you will, and shows us a long view of the island, and the smoke trails of the free-falling fuselage and tail, I had a pop cultural epiphany. The Island! As the list of mysteries of the LOST island continued to grow, I'd thought of several island and island-like scenarios from entertainment mythology that might have been inspirations and source material for the LOST isle. Movies, shows, episodes, stories, and story elements... FORBIDDEN PLANET, FANTASY ISLAND, ANGRY RED PLANET, those three episodes of STAR TREK with the sentient energy beings, "It's A Good Life" TWILIGHT ZONE with Will Robinson and the cornfield...

But until that long view of the Others' village nestled in the tropical island, I didn't think of The Island and The Village from THE PRISONER! I can't believe I didn't even try to FORCE some relevance or comparisons way early on. Now, I feel like it could be a good clue-model, as well as entertaining, to refer to when trying to suss out the enigma of the island.

If you're not familiar with THE PRISONER, it's a kickass metaphysical secret agent spy game series from the British mod 60s, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan (of SECRET AGENT MAN and SCANNERS fame =). You might remember it as that thing you didn't get in an episode of the SIMPSONS from maybe a few years back, when Homer sets himself up with an investigative news website as "Mr. X." After running out of real and true scandalous exposes, he starts making stuff up. In the process he inadvertantly fabricates a story that turns out to be an actual conspiracy. The Powers That Be decide that he's an intelligence threat and has to be taken out of the game. So, they gas him and abduct him, dropping him on an island where superspies are sent to retire and have tea parties. There's a lot of people getting gassed unconscious and also a scene where a giant white inflated ball is sent to capture Homer, and he pops it.

Any of this ringing a bell?

The theme music on that show rocks, btw.

Well, it's all references and send-up of THE PRISONER. The Island is run by an unknown organization. It's unclear if it's in cahootz with world governments, but it may be, as agents who quit their intelligence jobs from several different nations end up relocated there, forcibly, odds are. They are each assigned a number, no names, and given a home in The Village, a community on the island where everything they need and want is provided, except a means of leaving, of course. The apparent goal of the island is to contain individuals who possess vital and dangerous information, while attempting to convert them to the Island's unknown cause and/or extract their valuable intelligence.

Pretty frickin neat, eh?

It's hard to believe, and in the end, just a plain shame, but the idea of The Island from THE PRISONER was co-opted and updated, and surprisingly well, for the Academy Award overlooked DOUBLE-TEAM, starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman. I made a point of seeing it (alone : P) because it was one of the first U.S. releases that had the Tsui Hark (ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA, CHINESE GHOST STORY, ZU) name on it. I *think* it was directed by Ronny Yu—maybe by Hark himself?—and it had some really excellent story and visual devices (REALLY!), but, well, it's a Van Damme/Rodman film. Oh, also, Mickey Rourke as a freakishly swollen villain. Unfortunate.

Okay, so, LOST's island as a PRISONER island? Okay, you see a plane break up in the sky overhead. Who are YOU going to ask to RUN across half an island to the respective crash sites and assume the roles of fellow passengers to infiltrate the survivors' makeshift communities? Okay, okay. For whatever reason, you want your uninvited island guests to believe that you and your colleagues are living as near-savages, who can you ask to pull off such a masquerade? Okay, okay, okay. Living on the island, you'll need people knowledgeable and trained in survival, medical, and technological skills of all kinds. What kind of people would fit those bills...?

Spies? Black ops specialists? Super soldiers?

Who likes to have secret island bases? Frickin supervillains, that's who! Hanso made his money in the arms business. An opportunistic businessman with a technology fetish. Maybe he's really more Lex Luthor or Blofeld than Rockefeller Foundation... With some Disney and Hughes mixed in...

Yeah, I still like my amusement park notion, and even feel like the polar bear pen and aquarium totally support it. Am I wrong?

So, it's a chocolate superscience compound (perhaps a prototype utopia) wrapped in a candy amusement park shell. A Tomorrowland, but with an actual working space program, y'know? Only, before the park officially opens, a bit of the hidden research goes haywire, and maybe it turns out to be serendipitous, something to be exploited, and the superscience continues, but the park operations are abandoned, as the need for cover (and availability of patrons) is no more.

Who was the baddie in MOONRAKER? Maybe it's like what that dude wanted to do—gather the 80s-sexiest and brightest together in a space station while the rest of the world destroys itself, then go back and repopulate and rebuild the right way. Oh, but he was a bit more proactive than that, couldn't be troubled to wait for everyone else to finish themselves off. So he was gonna wipe everyone out w a virus.

Maybe some of the now-Others were sent to the island to take out Hanzo's operation, and in the process they messed up and zapped the island into its pocket dimension by accident.

Crap. There are still supply drops... somehow.

What happened to the Oceanic "good ones?"

Does Walt talk to, and thru, machines?

*sigh*

I'm rambling.

Did you happen to catch the LOST "census" in Samantha Bee's segment on THE DAILY SHOW Monday night? Wait for it... wait for it... (about 90 seconds in)

Check out Sahid's flowing locks =)

Keep on keepin on~