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tori_reviewsLOST 1x10 – Raised by Another
You know, it had always been so obvious to me that this title meant this was a Claire episode, that I didn’t stop to think that a slight alteration in the title could make it “Raised by an Other,” which may or may not play into anything in the long run. In spite of having watched the reviews, I seem to never quite get what the Others group is, but watching the show I might finally understand at some point.
I really don’t have much to say about this ep, it’s good, it’s specifically a good character piece, but it doesn’t inspire me to a whole lot of thoughts.
Regardless of my opinion of psychics in real life, most stories tend to have them be at least somewhat real. It doesn’t usually bother me, but somehow it does in this case. I think it’s because Claire and her friend had a fairly healthy attitude toward seeing a psychic at first; they find it fun and maybe provides a little insight into what to do at a big life event, but they are ideas that need to be further considered and filtered through reality, and not something to live one’s life by.
This guy is also creepy as hell. And that’s before getting into the implications of him forcing Claire’s life into a specific shape that he apparently foresaw (which…lands in thoughts that can probably wait until we see more of how this story handles the idea of fate). I suppose a bit of it depends on what he might have seen as fate if Claire didn’t raise the baby (and get stranded on the island), because maybe the baby’s John Conner or something and so the fate of world and human race hangs on keeping the baby on a specific destiny; but we’re not given insight into how this fate is for a good outcome.
And I do bring up John Conner for a reason, if you didn’t read my SCC reviews you might not be familiar with my Time Master John theory, that at some point John became so tied to the wheel of fate that he’s actually having to orchestrate events so that they happen the way he knows them because he assumes without that lifeline the fate of mankind will be worse.
Maybe it would help if I thought we would get any more on this psychic and why he played it the way he did. Not any time soon, I don’t insist on getting an answer like that in the next few episodes, but I’d like to get something that made him more than a plot device and mystical signpost. And I don’t have that confidence built up yet I suppose. As much as I’m hesitant to give this show confidence on paying off grounded real world stuff, I’m finding myself to be a particularly hard sell on any confidence that I’ll like the mystical side of things. For as much sci-fi and fantasy as I watch, I can be a hard sell on outright mystical stuff. Magic in the sense of ‘people can do things they can’t in the real world’ I can buy into but destiny and the like are a different matter entirely.
The other thing to comment on seems to be Claire and Charlie’s relationship which…I’m feeling kind of odd about. I think if I felt more connected to any of these characters these two would be shipper catnip to me. Their relationship at present isn’t all that shippy, it wouldn’t need to go that way, which means it’s exactly the kind of ship I’m likely to care about becoming romantic even if it doesn’t in canon. And yet I’m not invested enough in them, I don’t have enough read on who either of them are to know what they would see in each other, for me to care about the acorns that seem to be thrown around.
I guess I was both right and wrong about them already having taken attendance a few episodes ago. They did have the flight manifest, and they did use it to account for the dead, they just didn’t fully compare it with an account of the living. And Sawyer must have been traveling under that name for it to have not come up especially now; they’d all be more than happy to suspect Sawyer of something nefarious if he also wasn’t on the passenger list.
LOST 1x11 – All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
I may have reached the point where I don’t really care to do much with the reviews anymore. This is sort of reminding me why most of my review projects are of shows I’ve seen before to greater or lesser degrees. I do think it would be different if I had something I really latched on to, then I would have some stick to measure with even if just in terms of whether a story/episode was good in terms of whatever that thing I care about it, but so far my appreciation for the show is mostly of the ‘it’s just doing its thing’ level; and it does its thing fine, but that doesn’t offer me a ton to dig in to.
Thinking on it, I think even when I have done reviews of new things or new to me things I do usually still have a buy in that I know or expect I will be invested in. Or I burned out on them within a handful of episodes. In this case I’m almost halfway through the season before my lack of buy-in is starting to be a problem for the reviews.
Beyond all that I guess I’ll let out some short thoughts on the episode.
-When Walt praises Locke for bringing knives it sounds like he thinks someone else should have thought of that in terms of their survival here. I don’t think this is badly written or misunderstanding, I think the writers are very aware that it sounds that way. It’s just an odd thing to do.
-These flashbacks are boring. I don’t care about Jack, I think father’s an asshole, and I don’t like watching medical dramas anyway. I also don’t think they connect at all to the storyline in the present, as none of this seems to be weighing on Jack, nor is it the situation with Claire and Charlie.
-I guess maybe the reveal that the patient was pregnant has some small connection? But I still don’t get what that connection might be.
-Jack is not far away from the asshole label himself, but he mostly just seems like an idiot. The flashbacks don’t even really do anything for establishing something as obvious as his moral code.
-Kate’s assumption about being lead on a false trail seemed really obvious to me, especially when there was a split in what they were tracking. For all I was tempted to assume that we were getting another instance of LotR callouts that the letters of Lorien do not idly fall, it really didn’t fit the facts we’d been told. If Claire and Charlie were being dragged, that would mean there had to be more that Ethan involved with dragging them away. And having extra people involved means more eyes that could have spotted Charlier taking the letters of Lorien off his fingers.
-I suppose we don’t know whether Claire was taken in the same direction as Charlie, whether they hanged him before continuing on with her or if they’d already split the captives up.
-Was there any reason to think Charlie even could be resuscitated? Because he could have been hanging there for an hour for all Jack and Kate knew. Which means I don’t really give credit to Jack’s increasingly bad CPR for bringing Charlie back. It seems more like woo mystical Island nonsense or like this is a role playing game and the GM decided not to kill off a player character but hadn’t invented a resurrection mechanic in this setting. Maybe thinking of this show as an RPG would give me something of my own to latch on to until the show provides a hook that gets me.
-Boone wanting to be part of this mission is just his normal character, he’s been well meaning but incompetent from the moment the plane crashed. And while I find that pleasant enough (especially compared to being Damon), it’s not terribly interesting.
-I think the well meaning but incompetent might be rubbing off on Locke too; tossing flashlights around seems like a bad idea when they certainly aren’t going to be able to replace it if it broke. But because he’s the great Locke even his misses give him something useful. I don’t even dislike Locke that much in this episode, he’s not being too mystical Island woo up until the end, but I’m no nearer warming up to him.
-I’m not sure what I think is up with Locke’s near meta analysis of breaking the characters down in to simple descriptions. I feel like it’s notable, but I’m not sure what the note says beyond that simple observation.
You know, it had always been so obvious to me that this title meant this was a Claire episode, that I didn’t stop to think that a slight alteration in the title could make it “Raised by an Other,” which may or may not play into anything in the long run. In spite of having watched the reviews, I seem to never quite get what the Others group is, but watching the show I might finally understand at some point.
I really don’t have much to say about this ep, it’s good, it’s specifically a good character piece, but it doesn’t inspire me to a whole lot of thoughts.
Regardless of my opinion of psychics in real life, most stories tend to have them be at least somewhat real. It doesn’t usually bother me, but somehow it does in this case. I think it’s because Claire and her friend had a fairly healthy attitude toward seeing a psychic at first; they find it fun and maybe provides a little insight into what to do at a big life event, but they are ideas that need to be further considered and filtered through reality, and not something to live one’s life by.
This guy is also creepy as hell. And that’s before getting into the implications of him forcing Claire’s life into a specific shape that he apparently foresaw (which…lands in thoughts that can probably wait until we see more of how this story handles the idea of fate). I suppose a bit of it depends on what he might have seen as fate if Claire didn’t raise the baby (and get stranded on the island), because maybe the baby’s John Conner or something and so the fate of world and human race hangs on keeping the baby on a specific destiny; but we’re not given insight into how this fate is for a good outcome.
And I do bring up John Conner for a reason, if you didn’t read my SCC reviews you might not be familiar with my Time Master John theory, that at some point John became so tied to the wheel of fate that he’s actually having to orchestrate events so that they happen the way he knows them because he assumes without that lifeline the fate of mankind will be worse.
Maybe it would help if I thought we would get any more on this psychic and why he played it the way he did. Not any time soon, I don’t insist on getting an answer like that in the next few episodes, but I’d like to get something that made him more than a plot device and mystical signpost. And I don’t have that confidence built up yet I suppose. As much as I’m hesitant to give this show confidence on paying off grounded real world stuff, I’m finding myself to be a particularly hard sell on any confidence that I’ll like the mystical side of things. For as much sci-fi and fantasy as I watch, I can be a hard sell on outright mystical stuff. Magic in the sense of ‘people can do things they can’t in the real world’ I can buy into but destiny and the like are a different matter entirely.
The other thing to comment on seems to be Claire and Charlie’s relationship which…I’m feeling kind of odd about. I think if I felt more connected to any of these characters these two would be shipper catnip to me. Their relationship at present isn’t all that shippy, it wouldn’t need to go that way, which means it’s exactly the kind of ship I’m likely to care about becoming romantic even if it doesn’t in canon. And yet I’m not invested enough in them, I don’t have enough read on who either of them are to know what they would see in each other, for me to care about the acorns that seem to be thrown around.
I guess I was both right and wrong about them already having taken attendance a few episodes ago. They did have the flight manifest, and they did use it to account for the dead, they just didn’t fully compare it with an account of the living. And Sawyer must have been traveling under that name for it to have not come up especially now; they’d all be more than happy to suspect Sawyer of something nefarious if he also wasn’t on the passenger list.
LOST 1x11 – All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
I may have reached the point where I don’t really care to do much with the reviews anymore. This is sort of reminding me why most of my review projects are of shows I’ve seen before to greater or lesser degrees. I do think it would be different if I had something I really latched on to, then I would have some stick to measure with even if just in terms of whether a story/episode was good in terms of whatever that thing I care about it, but so far my appreciation for the show is mostly of the ‘it’s just doing its thing’ level; and it does its thing fine, but that doesn’t offer me a ton to dig in to.
Thinking on it, I think even when I have done reviews of new things or new to me things I do usually still have a buy in that I know or expect I will be invested in. Or I burned out on them within a handful of episodes. In this case I’m almost halfway through the season before my lack of buy-in is starting to be a problem for the reviews.
Beyond all that I guess I’ll let out some short thoughts on the episode.
-When Walt praises Locke for bringing knives it sounds like he thinks someone else should have thought of that in terms of their survival here. I don’t think this is badly written or misunderstanding, I think the writers are very aware that it sounds that way. It’s just an odd thing to do.
-These flashbacks are boring. I don’t care about Jack, I think father’s an asshole, and I don’t like watching medical dramas anyway. I also don’t think they connect at all to the storyline in the present, as none of this seems to be weighing on Jack, nor is it the situation with Claire and Charlie.
-I guess maybe the reveal that the patient was pregnant has some small connection? But I still don’t get what that connection might be.
-Jack is not far away from the asshole label himself, but he mostly just seems like an idiot. The flashbacks don’t even really do anything for establishing something as obvious as his moral code.
-Kate’s assumption about being lead on a false trail seemed really obvious to me, especially when there was a split in what they were tracking. For all I was tempted to assume that we were getting another instance of LotR callouts that the letters of Lorien do not idly fall, it really didn’t fit the facts we’d been told. If Claire and Charlie were being dragged, that would mean there had to be more that Ethan involved with dragging them away. And having extra people involved means more eyes that could have spotted Charlier taking the letters of Lorien off his fingers.
-I suppose we don’t know whether Claire was taken in the same direction as Charlie, whether they hanged him before continuing on with her or if they’d already split the captives up.
-Was there any reason to think Charlie even could be resuscitated? Because he could have been hanging there for an hour for all Jack and Kate knew. Which means I don’t really give credit to Jack’s increasingly bad CPR for bringing Charlie back. It seems more like woo mystical Island nonsense or like this is a role playing game and the GM decided not to kill off a player character but hadn’t invented a resurrection mechanic in this setting. Maybe thinking of this show as an RPG would give me something of my own to latch on to until the show provides a hook that gets me.
-Boone wanting to be part of this mission is just his normal character, he’s been well meaning but incompetent from the moment the plane crashed. And while I find that pleasant enough (especially compared to being Damon), it’s not terribly interesting.
-I think the well meaning but incompetent might be rubbing off on Locke too; tossing flashlights around seems like a bad idea when they certainly aren’t going to be able to replace it if it broke. But because he’s the great Locke even his misses give him something useful. I don’t even dislike Locke that much in this episode, he’s not being too mystical Island woo up until the end, but I’m no nearer warming up to him.
-I’m not sure what I think is up with Locke’s near meta analysis of breaking the characters down in to simple descriptions. I feel like it’s notable, but I’m not sure what the note says beyond that simple observation.
