LOST 1x05 – White Rabbit
Feb. 16th, 2024 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsLOST 1x05 – White Rabbit
I would like to state up front that I can tell my opinions of this episode are tainted by having taken almost two months off since the last episode I watched. I could say this does something to replicate what the original viewing experience must have been like, with potentially lengthy hiatus at times, but I don’t think anyone would have taken a long hiatus this early.
So any report I was building with the show has been taken away, which probably makes this episode seem worse than it was. But I don’t think I liked this episode.
I don’t think I like Jack, although I was coming around to him a bit by the end of the episode. A lot of the time Jack…doesn’t seem real. He seems like a designed designated hero character for a TV show, surrounded by a bunch of people who - at least in some cases - seem less prescribed (this definitely does not include Locke, but we’ll come back to him). But even that doesn’t quite work as an explanation for why I’m having a hard time with him. I think why I’m a little more open to seeing what happens after this episode is that this story introduced a lot of things that could be interesting for his characterl but it doesn’t make me confident that we’ll get a more interesting character out of this.
Intellectually, I’m not even sure what I’m about to say is that big a complaint, but I’m going to run with it. It may be partly my sketchy memory, but I definitely don’t feel like up until now we’ve had any sense of Jack also dealing with the death of his father. Like I said, intellectually, I can rationalize this; he’s been quite busy, I’m not sure when we should have seen that this was weighing on him. And from a production standpoint, even if it wasn’t a detail in their minds in the pilot, this episode would have been written before or around when the series started filming, so it certainly could have already been in the writing by the time those episodes were locked. So I don’t know why it bothers me that we haven’t had this foreshadowed, or at least I didn’t notice it/lock it in my brain that we did.
Except for the fact that the flashbacks are…not very good. I think splitting them between Jack’s childhood and the recent past was a mistake, and obscures the slightly at odds themes introduced. If we’re focused on Jack’s struggles with leadership and whether he has what it takes, then it doesn’t connect at all to the reveals about the more recent past. If we’re focused on Jack’s unresolved issues with the fact that his father just died and he hadn’t even fully processed that before being thrown into the stress of the plane crash, then the childhood stuff doesn’t fit.
And also maybe I just don’t like that it’s Jack’s story that leads to resolving the water supply issue. That’s the kind of thing that definitely comes from being the designated hero; at the least it needed to start with an actual choice on Jack’s part rather than being following a ghost from the time he left the beach. I kind of think the water search plot should have gone to Walt and dad-of-Walt (I guess that name hasn’t stuck in my head, but Walt did), maybe looking for how Vincent survived the crash or something. It may not (likely wouldn’t) have worked, but that’s off the top of my head, because I don’t default the plot to focus on Jack.
It especially stinks of main character treatment because ‘The Island’ chooses to direct Jack to the water source. There are a dozen other major characters and three dozen others among the survivors, why was it Jack that ended up with this plot point? This is what I mean by it probably should have at least started with Jack setting off on the search of his own choices and then as he got tireder and dehydrated and more caught up in his own head, then The Island had the option to slip in and toy with his mind a bit. Even better if Jack had made the choice to go on this search in spite of his already frazzled condition because he was trying to avoid…well again you have to pick a theme, but either the pressures of leadership or having time to sit and think when he could get hit with his grief about his father.
After this episode I have to say, I don’t know if the writers ever got frustrated with fans trying to connect everything and conclude that everything is significant, but they set themselves up for it in episode 5. That was laying it out pretty bluntly, and not doing anything to disprove it in the episode where the belief was laid out. I continue to want to punch Locke for exactly this reason (I may be struggling to like Jack, but I think I could end up hating Locke), he too is a character designated by the narrative, in his case to spout ‘wisdom’ and ‘insight’ into the way thing work in this story. And I already don’t like it; I no likes it, precious.
Even if I didn’t know how messy this show gets, I think I would still be getting vibes of Battlestar Galactica. The fact that they were produced around the same time probably deserves some cultural reflection, because I suspect it speaks to something people were feeling at the time. It’s all very much…things are out of control, but something in in control. Whether it was the Cylons’ plan or capital-G-God in the BSG world, or The Island (and probably also God) here; things may not make sense to you, but it’s all part of God/the Cylons/The Island’s plan. Only for that plan to become so convoluted and remove all the agency from the characters we actually care about.
Then again, this may just be my atheism showing. And what makes me perhaps not the best qualified to try and tap into the cultural mindset that led to both shows. But I would point out that the end resting on fulfilling that God’s design didn’t go over well with a lot of fans of either show.
…umm, I did also have some thoughts on…not-Damon (also haven’t committed that name to memory). Oddly enough (considering how this could get hit with my hatred for Damon) I kind of want to like him here, but the show seems determined to make him unlikable. At least I think they know what they’re doing unlike the writers of TVD, so these writers haven’t yet fallen that fat in my estimation. I actually don’t like that he’s being painted as such an idiot here, partly because it often seems like it’s just there to prop Jack up, and I may have mentioned that I’m not digging that aspect of things.
But it also brings to mind that once again the themes of this episode are muddled so that cause doesn’t really connect to effect. Jack’s big speech at the end is what people need to hear, but it doesn’t come from his arc during the episode. All the suspicion and paranoia and accusations flying around camp happen after he’s gone off into the forest. It’s also a little bit hurt by only really seeing the main characters involved; they have a decently sized cast, but there is somewhat of a problem showing division among the survivors while not engaging with the community as a whole. We’re not even really shown how this circumstance is affecting the more temperamental or hot-headed of the camp, mostly sticking with the rational and level-headed ones.
You know, BSG’s water episode was at more or less the same point in its run as this is (counting the miniseries as a couple of episodes), and although that isn’t my favorite ep by any means, it’s better than this. And the fact that I think BSG is shaping up to be better than Lost troubles me, since I ultimately remember being mostly disappointed in BSG.
Also, and this is potentially petty, as it’s only a problem because of something I’m glad the show does. But when filming so much of the show outside, and the plot focuses on them waiting for rain, maybe don’t have potential rainclouds in the back of so many shots. At least not without working it into the plot somehow, by having people actually watching and hoping for rain and how frustrating it is when the rain doesn’t get to them. I do appreciate the outside filming, especially these days when the fake sets are so upsetting to me, and it has that over the very claustrophobic BSG, but it doesn’t quite work with the narrative.
Oh, and I did forget to mention that I don’t know if it’s a problem with the filming or if it just looked wrong with my eyes, but the bit with Jack’s cliffhanger looked bad. Anytime we were looking down at him I kept thinking the ground was like two feet under him. Which made the scene funnier than it was probably meant to be; since the under-shots were clear about him being higher up.
I would like to state up front that I can tell my opinions of this episode are tainted by having taken almost two months off since the last episode I watched. I could say this does something to replicate what the original viewing experience must have been like, with potentially lengthy hiatus at times, but I don’t think anyone would have taken a long hiatus this early.
So any report I was building with the show has been taken away, which probably makes this episode seem worse than it was. But I don’t think I liked this episode.
I don’t think I like Jack, although I was coming around to him a bit by the end of the episode. A lot of the time Jack…doesn’t seem real. He seems like a designed designated hero character for a TV show, surrounded by a bunch of people who - at least in some cases - seem less prescribed (this definitely does not include Locke, but we’ll come back to him). But even that doesn’t quite work as an explanation for why I’m having a hard time with him. I think why I’m a little more open to seeing what happens after this episode is that this story introduced a lot of things that could be interesting for his characterl but it doesn’t make me confident that we’ll get a more interesting character out of this.
Intellectually, I’m not even sure what I’m about to say is that big a complaint, but I’m going to run with it. It may be partly my sketchy memory, but I definitely don’t feel like up until now we’ve had any sense of Jack also dealing with the death of his father. Like I said, intellectually, I can rationalize this; he’s been quite busy, I’m not sure when we should have seen that this was weighing on him. And from a production standpoint, even if it wasn’t a detail in their minds in the pilot, this episode would have been written before or around when the series started filming, so it certainly could have already been in the writing by the time those episodes were locked. So I don’t know why it bothers me that we haven’t had this foreshadowed, or at least I didn’t notice it/lock it in my brain that we did.
Except for the fact that the flashbacks are…not very good. I think splitting them between Jack’s childhood and the recent past was a mistake, and obscures the slightly at odds themes introduced. If we’re focused on Jack’s struggles with leadership and whether he has what it takes, then it doesn’t connect at all to the reveals about the more recent past. If we’re focused on Jack’s unresolved issues with the fact that his father just died and he hadn’t even fully processed that before being thrown into the stress of the plane crash, then the childhood stuff doesn’t fit.
And also maybe I just don’t like that it’s Jack’s story that leads to resolving the water supply issue. That’s the kind of thing that definitely comes from being the designated hero; at the least it needed to start with an actual choice on Jack’s part rather than being following a ghost from the time he left the beach. I kind of think the water search plot should have gone to Walt and dad-of-Walt (I guess that name hasn’t stuck in my head, but Walt did), maybe looking for how Vincent survived the crash or something. It may not (likely wouldn’t) have worked, but that’s off the top of my head, because I don’t default the plot to focus on Jack.
It especially stinks of main character treatment because ‘The Island’ chooses to direct Jack to the water source. There are a dozen other major characters and three dozen others among the survivors, why was it Jack that ended up with this plot point? This is what I mean by it probably should have at least started with Jack setting off on the search of his own choices and then as he got tireder and dehydrated and more caught up in his own head, then The Island had the option to slip in and toy with his mind a bit. Even better if Jack had made the choice to go on this search in spite of his already frazzled condition because he was trying to avoid…well again you have to pick a theme, but either the pressures of leadership or having time to sit and think when he could get hit with his grief about his father.
After this episode I have to say, I don’t know if the writers ever got frustrated with fans trying to connect everything and conclude that everything is significant, but they set themselves up for it in episode 5. That was laying it out pretty bluntly, and not doing anything to disprove it in the episode where the belief was laid out. I continue to want to punch Locke for exactly this reason (I may be struggling to like Jack, but I think I could end up hating Locke), he too is a character designated by the narrative, in his case to spout ‘wisdom’ and ‘insight’ into the way thing work in this story. And I already don’t like it; I no likes it, precious.
Even if I didn’t know how messy this show gets, I think I would still be getting vibes of Battlestar Galactica. The fact that they were produced around the same time probably deserves some cultural reflection, because I suspect it speaks to something people were feeling at the time. It’s all very much…things are out of control, but something in in control. Whether it was the Cylons’ plan or capital-G-God in the BSG world, or The Island (and probably also God) here; things may not make sense to you, but it’s all part of God/the Cylons/The Island’s plan. Only for that plan to become so convoluted and remove all the agency from the characters we actually care about.
Then again, this may just be my atheism showing. And what makes me perhaps not the best qualified to try and tap into the cultural mindset that led to both shows. But I would point out that the end resting on fulfilling that God’s design didn’t go over well with a lot of fans of either show.
…umm, I did also have some thoughts on…not-Damon (also haven’t committed that name to memory). Oddly enough (considering how this could get hit with my hatred for Damon) I kind of want to like him here, but the show seems determined to make him unlikable. At least I think they know what they’re doing unlike the writers of TVD, so these writers haven’t yet fallen that fat in my estimation. I actually don’t like that he’s being painted as such an idiot here, partly because it often seems like it’s just there to prop Jack up, and I may have mentioned that I’m not digging that aspect of things.
But it also brings to mind that once again the themes of this episode are muddled so that cause doesn’t really connect to effect. Jack’s big speech at the end is what people need to hear, but it doesn’t come from his arc during the episode. All the suspicion and paranoia and accusations flying around camp happen after he’s gone off into the forest. It’s also a little bit hurt by only really seeing the main characters involved; they have a decently sized cast, but there is somewhat of a problem showing division among the survivors while not engaging with the community as a whole. We’re not even really shown how this circumstance is affecting the more temperamental or hot-headed of the camp, mostly sticking with the rational and level-headed ones.
You know, BSG’s water episode was at more or less the same point in its run as this is (counting the miniseries as a couple of episodes), and although that isn’t my favorite ep by any means, it’s better than this. And the fact that I think BSG is shaping up to be better than Lost troubles me, since I ultimately remember being mostly disappointed in BSG.
Also, and this is potentially petty, as it’s only a problem because of something I’m glad the show does. But when filming so much of the show outside, and the plot focuses on them waiting for rain, maybe don’t have potential rainclouds in the back of so many shots. At least not without working it into the plot somehow, by having people actually watching and hoping for rain and how frustrating it is when the rain doesn’t get to them. I do appreciate the outside filming, especially these days when the fake sets are so upsetting to me, and it has that over the very claustrophobic BSG, but it doesn’t quite work with the narrative.
Oh, and I did forget to mention that I don’t know if it’s a problem with the filming or if it just looked wrong with my eyes, but the bit with Jack’s cliffhanger looked bad. Anytime we were looking down at him I kept thinking the ground was like two feet under him. Which made the scene funnier than it was probably meant to be; since the under-shots were clear about him being higher up.
