LOST 1x01-02 - Pilot
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tori_reviewsOff to a great start remembering to post on any kind of schedule. I was only committing to twice a week and I still didn’t make it the first round.
LOST 1x01-02 - Pilot
I don’t know whether future multi-parters will be reviewed as a single thing or broken up into episodes, but I figured this one at least was always meant to be seen as a two hour single story so that’s how it’s being reviewed.
And I’m inclined to say this is a really good pilot and I can see why it made a huge splash at the time. This would have definitely stood out from most of the network TV offerings in 2004 as something very different and intriguing. At least to the general audience people checking out things on network TV. Like I said in my series intro, I’m not sure this would have the same immediate grip on people who were more versed in genre TV, but it’s not off-putting to that end of the spectrum either.
Really, my bigger reason for saying this pilot is good rather than great has more to do with it being almost 20 years old. You can tell that this was filmed in that weird era of aspect ratios, most shows were being filmed in 16:9 at this point, but they had to account for being shown on a lot of 4:3 TVs. I kind of wonder if this would even be so obvious to younger viewers who weren’t there for that time in history, but it stands out to me because I remember things being shown this way.
I’m not saying that there is wasted space to be cut out for 4:3, but there are times when the way shots are framed stand out. And that maybe the director isn’t quite sure how to block scenes around those dual needs, because sometimes the way a camera focuses and tracks through scenes just has me aware of the camera in a way I don’t think I would be if it was more natural.
It was most noticeable in the first beach scene. The camera space doesn’t seem used to greatest effect. And since I don’t feel like it’s amateur work, I land on saying it’s because the dual aspect ratio needs got in the way.
Although it could also be a bit of dissonance that visually this makes it seem like a weird mid level of TV production style when otherwise it’s a high budget TV show. It does still look a bit ‘TV’ in a time when there was a greater distinction made between things that looked ‘TV’ and looked ‘cinematic.’ There is clearly money on the screen here, it’s not that it looks TV cheap, but it doesn’t exactly have a clear directing style either, which is still a factor in TV production since constancy is important when many directors will work on any season.
Now, here’s the thing. I can spend that long on technical thoughts, because I really didn’t get drawn into the characters or the mystery. This isn’t entirely a criticism, it’s not a terrible way to handle a pilot episode, to give a sampling of a lot of aspects that will be developed as the series goes on. I don’t think this pilot would necessarily have been as effective if it had been told from a single character’s POV. The story is about the day after the plane crash, and each of the characters gets to illustrate different aspects of that.
But it does pretty much lock in my ‘good not great’ rating. It’s very good at what it does do, but it’s lacking elements that would make it higher rated with me.
It is sort of weird how many of these actors I know from other projects, either before or after this. Except the ones that I probably most should know. I don’t know that I’ve seen Jack in anything else; and while I know Evangaline Lily is Wasp damned if I would recognize her. But Damon Salvatore, Merry, Lt. Matheson, Belle, Terry O’Quinn’s assortment of character actor roles, and that’s the ones I am most aware of.
What, your go to with Daniel Dae Kim isn’t Crusade? Well it still is for me. Maybe seeing this show will make me default to him as another character, but that will always be what I knew him from first. Do he and Mira Furlan’s character get to interact later in the show?
And as far as the mystery goes, this is pretty much fitting right with my perception of how it works. It’s well put together to get people talking about it, which is part of why it’s a good pilot, but it’s not actually all that interesting to me. And I mean that both about the island mysteries and the character ones. It’s fine setup, but it doesn’t mean anything until it gets paid off.
Which is pretty much exactly what I was hoping I wouldn’t feel about this show. It’s probably okay to feel this about the pilot, but over the long term I will need to be invested in the steps along the journey and not only care once we get to the destination.
Hmm, I think the characters I got the most interested in were probably Sayid and Shannon, with a Hurley taking the bronze. Sayid is probably the one I want to know more about the most; I think Shannon might have been the best portrayal of a character going through this insanity; and Hurley is just nice and likable.
Part of the reason why I say this pilot wouldn’t have been as effective played through a focus character is that it would probably have been Jack we were following and…I’m not sold on Jack yet. I’m not disliking him exactly, though his head-bobbing acting gets on my nerves. He’s also very much generic vaguely hero man at this point, and there’s nothing to be sold on about that. But even then, he’s not Ward in the AoS pilot, where being generic hero man immediately made me resent him being around, so there’s that.
I sort of feel like Sawyer could be interesting to watch, but I definitely don’t like him at this point. Sawyer is very much hitting the bad boy beats, and I rarely care much about bad boys. I sort of feel like Kate isn’t played with enough ambiguity considering what’s being set up about her past, I’m not sure what I think they should have done differently, but I wish she seemed a little…deeper, I guess (although I could probably find a better word). I’m pretty sure I’m going to hate Locke, he wasn’t in this episode enough to hate, but he’s already pushing a few of my buttons.
I did have a leg up on knowing character names, although there are a few that I don’t think sank in even with that leg up. And a few I know I wouldn’t know if I didn’t have a leg up. In spite of how sometimes I want to call the show out a bit for some obvious lines to make sure that the audience does get character names. And it’s not awful about it, so I guess I’ll let it slide in the pilot.
LOST 1x01-02 - Pilot
I don’t know whether future multi-parters will be reviewed as a single thing or broken up into episodes, but I figured this one at least was always meant to be seen as a two hour single story so that’s how it’s being reviewed.
And I’m inclined to say this is a really good pilot and I can see why it made a huge splash at the time. This would have definitely stood out from most of the network TV offerings in 2004 as something very different and intriguing. At least to the general audience people checking out things on network TV. Like I said in my series intro, I’m not sure this would have the same immediate grip on people who were more versed in genre TV, but it’s not off-putting to that end of the spectrum either.
Really, my bigger reason for saying this pilot is good rather than great has more to do with it being almost 20 years old. You can tell that this was filmed in that weird era of aspect ratios, most shows were being filmed in 16:9 at this point, but they had to account for being shown on a lot of 4:3 TVs. I kind of wonder if this would even be so obvious to younger viewers who weren’t there for that time in history, but it stands out to me because I remember things being shown this way.
I’m not saying that there is wasted space to be cut out for 4:3, but there are times when the way shots are framed stand out. And that maybe the director isn’t quite sure how to block scenes around those dual needs, because sometimes the way a camera focuses and tracks through scenes just has me aware of the camera in a way I don’t think I would be if it was more natural.
It was most noticeable in the first beach scene. The camera space doesn’t seem used to greatest effect. And since I don’t feel like it’s amateur work, I land on saying it’s because the dual aspect ratio needs got in the way.
Although it could also be a bit of dissonance that visually this makes it seem like a weird mid level of TV production style when otherwise it’s a high budget TV show. It does still look a bit ‘TV’ in a time when there was a greater distinction made between things that looked ‘TV’ and looked ‘cinematic.’ There is clearly money on the screen here, it’s not that it looks TV cheap, but it doesn’t exactly have a clear directing style either, which is still a factor in TV production since constancy is important when many directors will work on any season.
Now, here’s the thing. I can spend that long on technical thoughts, because I really didn’t get drawn into the characters or the mystery. This isn’t entirely a criticism, it’s not a terrible way to handle a pilot episode, to give a sampling of a lot of aspects that will be developed as the series goes on. I don’t think this pilot would necessarily have been as effective if it had been told from a single character’s POV. The story is about the day after the plane crash, and each of the characters gets to illustrate different aspects of that.
But it does pretty much lock in my ‘good not great’ rating. It’s very good at what it does do, but it’s lacking elements that would make it higher rated with me.
It is sort of weird how many of these actors I know from other projects, either before or after this. Except the ones that I probably most should know. I don’t know that I’ve seen Jack in anything else; and while I know Evangaline Lily is Wasp damned if I would recognize her. But Damon Salvatore, Merry, Lt. Matheson, Belle, Terry O’Quinn’s assortment of character actor roles, and that’s the ones I am most aware of.
What, your go to with Daniel Dae Kim isn’t Crusade? Well it still is for me. Maybe seeing this show will make me default to him as another character, but that will always be what I knew him from first. Do he and Mira Furlan’s character get to interact later in the show?
And as far as the mystery goes, this is pretty much fitting right with my perception of how it works. It’s well put together to get people talking about it, which is part of why it’s a good pilot, but it’s not actually all that interesting to me. And I mean that both about the island mysteries and the character ones. It’s fine setup, but it doesn’t mean anything until it gets paid off.
Which is pretty much exactly what I was hoping I wouldn’t feel about this show. It’s probably okay to feel this about the pilot, but over the long term I will need to be invested in the steps along the journey and not only care once we get to the destination.
Hmm, I think the characters I got the most interested in were probably Sayid and Shannon, with a Hurley taking the bronze. Sayid is probably the one I want to know more about the most; I think Shannon might have been the best portrayal of a character going through this insanity; and Hurley is just nice and likable.
Part of the reason why I say this pilot wouldn’t have been as effective played through a focus character is that it would probably have been Jack we were following and…I’m not sold on Jack yet. I’m not disliking him exactly, though his head-bobbing acting gets on my nerves. He’s also very much generic vaguely hero man at this point, and there’s nothing to be sold on about that. But even then, he’s not Ward in the AoS pilot, where being generic hero man immediately made me resent him being around, so there’s that.
I sort of feel like Sawyer could be interesting to watch, but I definitely don’t like him at this point. Sawyer is very much hitting the bad boy beats, and I rarely care much about bad boys. I sort of feel like Kate isn’t played with enough ambiguity considering what’s being set up about her past, I’m not sure what I think they should have done differently, but I wish she seemed a little…deeper, I guess (although I could probably find a better word). I’m pretty sure I’m going to hate Locke, he wasn’t in this episode enough to hate, but he’s already pushing a few of my buttons.
I did have a leg up on knowing character names, although there are a few that I don’t think sank in even with that leg up. And a few I know I wouldn’t know if I didn’t have a leg up. In spite of how sometimes I want to call the show out a bit for some obvious lines to make sure that the audience does get character names. And it’s not awful about it, so I guess I’ll let it slide in the pilot.
