LOST 1x09 – Solitary
Mar. 1st, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsLOST 1x09 – Solitary
I’ve brought up many times how I feel that episodes that fall just short of excellence can be more disappointing than just okay eps, and I feel like this one would fall into that trap if I was more…invested in the show where I would be disappointed. There is a lot that’s good here, and basically nothing I think is actually bad, but there’s something that’s keeping me from just saying that this is a good episode.
Some of that may be from putting the a and b stories together, as they have such different tones. I’m hesitant to name this as the cause though, since I think both plots get about the right amount of screen time and are both paced alright, and there are reasons to put the light b-plot with the heavy a-plot. The more I think about the reasons, the more I think it was the right move, though I don’t know how many of them the writers had in mind when they wrote it, but I’m going to start with my gut reaction being…less than positive about it.
Because I think the Sayid and Danielle (who is named clearly enough to not have to be not-Delenn) side of the story would have played really well as an isolated story (with the flashback story to break it up). It could have gone farther too, and with the bit extra time there would have been room. Because doing a story of isolation and fear of the unknown outside the door (or the person inside with you) never quite provokes as much terror as it could have if the writing had gone all in on it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have this reaction to Mira Furlan’s introduction, B5 had more than the usual amount of scenes/plots/episodes just locking a couple of characters in a room together and seeing what happened.
But although I guess I sort of want a different tone and take on those scenes, I am coming around to think that there are ways that the contrast in the plots works. Because we have Danielle who has been without community for years, while we see the crash survivors pulling together as a community and keeping each other from falling into the fear and despair that we see in Danielle. It also does play into Danielle’s parting remarks about watching the community for signs of sickness; seeing the community that could be at risk the same with the science team was, gives us something to fear for and potentially lose.
Much as I don’t like this idea, I think the problem might be Sayid. The flashbacks are the only place we’re really exploring his character (which we’ll come back to), while he doesn’t have that much of an arc in the present. He’s mainly a vehicle to introduce Danielle (look I don’t feel like looking up how to spell her last name, especially since I’ll likely have to do it repeatedly) and therefore a few more mysteries about what’s going on on the island (some less mystical [for now] mysteries at least). But the fact that her situation and the situation with the camp in the b-plot stand in stark opposition to each other doesn’t have any bearing on the story we get. This isn’t Sayid deciding he’s better off with the group than alone, or that he has responsibility to take what he’s learned back to the group, he’s just trying to get away from the lady torturing him.
You know, there’s something I ought to wonder about my brain, so I might as well take a moment. Because a and b plots don’t have to be connected, even thematically, they often don’t necessarily in a lot of shows I watch and like so I’m well aware of this. I don’t need them to be obviously connected in other shows either. But I think it comes back to how much this show invites existing in themes and metaphors, which could come to pose a problem as we keep going with it; because when I care about a story I don’t relate to it through themes and metaphor, I’m not very good with themes and metaphor, I have to like it for what’s in the text. And this is still flirting with that line of interest.
Anyway, before I lose any more of my train of thought, let’s talk about the flashbacks. For one, why play these by sci-fi rules but we don’t with Sun and Jin’s a couple episodes ago? I think I can guess why they went with it (we see Sayid speaking English, there’s no language barrier that would be confused if we saw him speaking English in the flashbacks), but I can’t help feel like there’s something…else at play here. It could be that the actor doesn’t actually speak the language and they’re skating by on expected viewer ignorance (mine included) of different accents to think his accent is accurate for the language that would be native to his character (like how Mira Furlan’s accent is Yugoslavian, not French). Or it could be that the PTB don’t want Sayid to be *too* Iraqi for American audiences (especially in 2004); I notice they mostly don’t have Nadia wearing a headscarf or hijab either.
I do really like these flashbacks, it helps that again they form a consistent story, and even one that it makes sense would be on Sayid’s mind at this time. I’m mostly willing to say it’s probably a feature rather than a bug that we don’t know whether Nadia’s innocent or not during all this; but I’m not quite sure of that assessment. It depends on what else we may learn about Sayid and Nadia’s relationship. Because with things as they are, I’m not sure this speaks well of Sayid. Not because he’s a torturer or all that, that’s its own thing, but because he doesn’t know who Nadia is; is she a person who had knowledge and could stand up to torture? Was she brave enough to keep speaking out and drawing the authorities attention even though she wasn’t involved in any organized resistance? We also don’t know whether Sayid agrees with whatever her principles are, or if he just decided to protect her because she was familiar to him.
This doesn’t work against this episode exactly, but it does contribute to the feeling of unfinished stories that I know are big issues for this show. And left unchecked, it can start to feel that the writers are just passing the buck down the road and making up the answers later when they can sort of fudge how to get from point A to point B.
I’ve brought up many times how I feel that episodes that fall just short of excellence can be more disappointing than just okay eps, and I feel like this one would fall into that trap if I was more…invested in the show where I would be disappointed. There is a lot that’s good here, and basically nothing I think is actually bad, but there’s something that’s keeping me from just saying that this is a good episode.
Some of that may be from putting the a and b stories together, as they have such different tones. I’m hesitant to name this as the cause though, since I think both plots get about the right amount of screen time and are both paced alright, and there are reasons to put the light b-plot with the heavy a-plot. The more I think about the reasons, the more I think it was the right move, though I don’t know how many of them the writers had in mind when they wrote it, but I’m going to start with my gut reaction being…less than positive about it.
Because I think the Sayid and Danielle (who is named clearly enough to not have to be not-Delenn) side of the story would have played really well as an isolated story (with the flashback story to break it up). It could have gone farther too, and with the bit extra time there would have been room. Because doing a story of isolation and fear of the unknown outside the door (or the person inside with you) never quite provokes as much terror as it could have if the writing had gone all in on it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have this reaction to Mira Furlan’s introduction, B5 had more than the usual amount of scenes/plots/episodes just locking a couple of characters in a room together and seeing what happened.
But although I guess I sort of want a different tone and take on those scenes, I am coming around to think that there are ways that the contrast in the plots works. Because we have Danielle who has been without community for years, while we see the crash survivors pulling together as a community and keeping each other from falling into the fear and despair that we see in Danielle. It also does play into Danielle’s parting remarks about watching the community for signs of sickness; seeing the community that could be at risk the same with the science team was, gives us something to fear for and potentially lose.
Much as I don’t like this idea, I think the problem might be Sayid. The flashbacks are the only place we’re really exploring his character (which we’ll come back to), while he doesn’t have that much of an arc in the present. He’s mainly a vehicle to introduce Danielle (look I don’t feel like looking up how to spell her last name, especially since I’ll likely have to do it repeatedly) and therefore a few more mysteries about what’s going on on the island (some less mystical [for now] mysteries at least). But the fact that her situation and the situation with the camp in the b-plot stand in stark opposition to each other doesn’t have any bearing on the story we get. This isn’t Sayid deciding he’s better off with the group than alone, or that he has responsibility to take what he’s learned back to the group, he’s just trying to get away from the lady torturing him.
You know, there’s something I ought to wonder about my brain, so I might as well take a moment. Because a and b plots don’t have to be connected, even thematically, they often don’t necessarily in a lot of shows I watch and like so I’m well aware of this. I don’t need them to be obviously connected in other shows either. But I think it comes back to how much this show invites existing in themes and metaphors, which could come to pose a problem as we keep going with it; because when I care about a story I don’t relate to it through themes and metaphor, I’m not very good with themes and metaphor, I have to like it for what’s in the text. And this is still flirting with that line of interest.
Anyway, before I lose any more of my train of thought, let’s talk about the flashbacks. For one, why play these by sci-fi rules but we don’t with Sun and Jin’s a couple episodes ago? I think I can guess why they went with it (we see Sayid speaking English, there’s no language barrier that would be confused if we saw him speaking English in the flashbacks), but I can’t help feel like there’s something…else at play here. It could be that the actor doesn’t actually speak the language and they’re skating by on expected viewer ignorance (mine included) of different accents to think his accent is accurate for the language that would be native to his character (like how Mira Furlan’s accent is Yugoslavian, not French). Or it could be that the PTB don’t want Sayid to be *too* Iraqi for American audiences (especially in 2004); I notice they mostly don’t have Nadia wearing a headscarf or hijab either.
I do really like these flashbacks, it helps that again they form a consistent story, and even one that it makes sense would be on Sayid’s mind at this time. I’m mostly willing to say it’s probably a feature rather than a bug that we don’t know whether Nadia’s innocent or not during all this; but I’m not quite sure of that assessment. It depends on what else we may learn about Sayid and Nadia’s relationship. Because with things as they are, I’m not sure this speaks well of Sayid. Not because he’s a torturer or all that, that’s its own thing, but because he doesn’t know who Nadia is; is she a person who had knowledge and could stand up to torture? Was she brave enough to keep speaking out and drawing the authorities attention even though she wasn’t involved in any organized resistance? We also don’t know whether Sayid agrees with whatever her principles are, or if he just decided to protect her because she was familiar to him.
This doesn’t work against this episode exactly, but it does contribute to the feeling of unfinished stories that I know are big issues for this show. And left unchecked, it can start to feel that the writers are just passing the buck down the road and making up the answers later when they can sort of fudge how to get from point A to point B.
