“She’s not my daughter. I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me.”

Yesterday I began analyzing Lost season 4.  Here are some of my favorite and least-favorite moments from that over-all terrific season!

“Is he talking about what I think he’s talking about?”  ”If you mean time-traveling bunnies, then yes.”

Favorite Episodes:

4.2 “Confirmed Dead” – A great episode that begins to introduce us to the “Freighter-Folk” and raises a whole heck of a lot of new mysteries.  We see Daniel Faraday watching the discovery of the Oceanic 815 wreckage and crying.  We see Charlotte investigating an archaeological dig in Tunisia, where the skeleton of a polar bear (with a Dharma collar!) has mysteriously been found in the middle of the desert.  We learn of Mile’s ability to communicate with the dead.  We see Laipdus, who was also watching footage of the Oceanic 815 recovery, at which point he becomes convinced that the bodies are not actually those of the survivors, and we learn that he was supposed to have been the pilot of 815 that day.  We see Naomi being recruited by the mysterious Abbadon.

4.5 “The Constant” – A phenomenal episode, without question one of the very best of the series. Leaving the island, Lapidus is forced by a storm to shift slightly off the precise bearing that Daniel gave him. As a result, Desmond’s mind is somehow thrown back in time and exchanged with that of his younger self, still serving as a soldier in the Scotts Royal Regiment. Over the course of this mind-bending hour, we are given an enormous amount of information about Daniel Faraday’s time-traveling experiments (information that will prove critical to our understanding of season 5).  We also see, in an intriguing scene, Charles Widmore at an auction, bidding on the first mate’s log from the Black Rock (the ship we know is beached on the island), which we learn had formerly been in the possession of Tovar Hanso (an apparent ancestor of the founder of the Dharma Initiative).  Suddenly we are forced to reconsider Mr. Widmore — he’s not just Desmond’s troublesome potential father-in-law, he’s a man with some sort of connection to the island.  But, of course, none of this fascinating back-story would matter at all if not for the episode’s emotional center: the star-crossed love story of Desmond and Penny.  Their tearful reunion, when Desmond calls her from the freighter’s radio room after having obtained her phone number in the past, is wonderfully powerful stuff, and a highlight of the season (and the series).

4.9 – The Shape of Things to Come – In one of my favorite flashforwards of the season, we see Ben appear (wearing a Dharma parka!) in the middle of Tunisia. (We’ll soon learn that this is where he went after turning the island’s wheel in the season 4 finale – and this explains how the Polar Bear skeleton that Charlotte found in Tunisia in “Confirmed Dead” wound up there.) Ben kicks the ass of some locals (using a weapon familiar to readers of Y The Last Man – a nice nod since this episode was written by Brian K. Vaughan), and then sets out to recruit Sayid’s help. It seems that poor Sayid finally found and married his love, Nadia, but that she was soon after killed when she was hit by a truck. Ben tells Sayid that Charles Widmore was responsible. Desperate for vengeance, Sayid agrees to work with Ben to kill all of Widmore’s men.  The story-line on the island is every bit as tragic and compelling.  The dead body of the freighter’s doctor washes up on the beach, an apparent result of more island-related time dilation, since when they radio in to the boat they learn that the doc hasn’t died yet!  Keamy and his men attack the barracks, killing most of the castaways hiding there,and blowing up Claire’s house. Keamy demands that Ben surrender or he’ll kill Alex. Ben refuses, and in a shocking moment Keamy shoots Alex in the head. A furious Ben enters a secret compartment in his house and summons the smoke monster, who decimates Keamy’s men.  At the episode’s end, we see Ben off the island, paying Widmore a visit in his bedroom and vowing to kill his daughter, Penny, in exchange for Widmore’s killing his.  Filled with I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened moments, this episode is a great example of season 4’s renewed narrative intensity.

“You’re more lost than you ever were.”

Least-Favorite Episodes

4.6 “The Other Woman” — In flashback, we meet Harper Stanhope, the Others’ psychiatrist, assigned soon after Juliet’s arrival on the island to meet with her regularly. The two women seem to take an instant dislike to one another, exacerbated when Juliet begins an affair with Goodwin, Harper’s husband.While the humanization of Goodwin is interesting, Juliet comes off looking pretty poor here (sleeping with a married man).  I also found this episode’s depiction of the cruel love-sick Ben (who declares to Juliet “you’re mine”) to venture too far into over-the-top moustache-twirling villainy, far less interesting than the more subtly manipulative Ben we have previously seen.

4.8 “Meet Kevin Johnson” – This is a fun episode, and it’s great to have Michael back on the show. But I have serious problems with the events portrayed in Michael’s flashbacks. It seems to me that the events depicted would have had to have taken place over MONTHS. When we first meet up with Michael in this episode, he is already suicidal over his guilt and his split from Walt – the implication is that Michael has already been home for a while. And it must have taken additional weeks for Michael to prepare for his task of infiltrating the freighter and then travel to the port in Fiji, and then we must consider the time it would have taken for the freighter to find the island. As I wrote, all of that seems like it would have taken MONTHS. But if you think about it, Michael left the island during the season 2 finale. The freighter has already found the island two-thirds of the way through season 3 (when Naomi parachutes onto the island). Since every episode of Lost pretty much takes place during a single day, that means that only 2-3 weeks, maximum, elapsed from the time that Michael left the island until the time that he returned, disguised as Kevin Johnson on the freighter. I don’t think that tome-line works at all, and it really undermines this episode. I also hate the ending, in which Rousseau and Karl are gunned down in the jungle (by Keamy’s men, which we’ll learn later) and Alex is taken prisoner. I can’t believe how easily the tough, cunning Rousseau – who survived all by herself on the island for 16 YEARS – walks right into the trap set by Keamy’s men. That’s pretty weak.

“Those things had to happen to me. That was my destiny. But you’ll understand soon that there are consequences to being chosen. Because destiny, John? Destiny is a fickle bitch.”

Favorite moments from the season:

4.3 “The Economist” — Daniel Faraday’s rocket experiment that clues us in on the mysterious bubble of time-dilation surrounding the island.

4.4 “Eggtown” — Hurley’s response when he realizes that Kate has tricked him into revealing where Miles is being kept: “You just totally Scooby Doo’ed me, didn’t you?”

4.8 “Meet Kevin Johnson” — Libby’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-her split-second appearance in Michael’s nightmare!

4.9 “The Shape of Things to Come” —  Keamy forces Alex to deactivate the sonic pylons, which causes a phone to ring in Ben’s house, something which really perplexes Locke & the gang! They ask Ben about it, and Ben immediately realizes what has happened – so, in another great moment, Ben quickly whips out the gun he’d apparently been keeping hidden in the seat at his piano!

4.11 “Cabin Fever” — Richard Alpert’s enigmatic visit to the home of a young John Locke.  (Eagle-eyed Lost viewers couldn’t have missed the young Locke’s drawing hanging on the wall, of what appears to be the smoke monster!)

4.12 “There’s No Place Like Home” Pt. 1 — At the memorial service for his father, Jack meets Claire’s mother and learns a staggering secret: that Claire was his half-sister.

“I’m here to tell you that the island won’t let you come alone. All of you have to go back.”

I’ll see you back here next week for my thoughts on Lost: Season 5!

My season-by-season analysis of Lost continues!  Click here for my thoughts on season 1, here for my thoughts on season 2, and here for my thoughts on season 3.  SPOILERS ARE AHEAD, gang, so beware!

“Rescuing you and your people… I can’t really say it’s our primary objective.”

There were times, watching seasons 2 and 3 of Lost when they originally aired, when I must admit that my faith in the show wavered.  There were so many mysteries raised but not answered, and after the terrific first season there seemed to be many times when the show was spinning in circles, narratively.  But season 4 firmly established Lost, in my mind, as one of the greatest TV series of our time, as opposed to a show that started off brilliantly but then slowly settled into mediocrity (cough 24 cough).

The writers brilliantly reinvigorated the show by abandoning their signature story-telling device, the use of flashbacks.  Instead they began presenting us with tantalizing flash-FORWARDS that hinted at what would befall to our castaways in the time between the on-island events of 2004 and what we glimpsed of 2007, when we met the desperate, suicidal off-island Jack in the season 3 finale.  That finale set up all sorts of questions: How did the castaways get off the island?  Why did only SOME of the castaways leave?  What happened to everyone else — were they dead, or did they decide to stay for some reason?  What happened to Jack (and the other Oceanic Six) in their three years off the island?  What drove Jack to become the destroyed, shell of a man that we saw in the season 3 finale?  Whose body was in that coffin??

One of the great strengths of season 4 is that way that, in decidedy un-Lost fashion, every one of those above questions were answered by the end of the season.  Season 4 feels like the most complete of all the seasons of Lost, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and in which all of the major questions raised at the beginning of the season (well, really by the finale of season 3) were answered by the end of the season.  That all this was accomplished despite the fact that the season was truncated due to the lengthy writers strike is quite astounding.  (Season 4 was scheduled to be 16 episodes long — much shorter than the 24 episodes-per-season that seasons 1-3 were — but it was shortened to only 13 episodes because of the strike.)  In many ways, I suspect the shortened length of the season turned into one of its greatest strengths.  There’s no flab in season 4 — with only 13 episodes to play with, the writers didn’t have a moment to waste.  As a result, every single episode of the season seems critical to the narrative, and the story rushes forward like a freight train from start-to-finish.

“I’m here, Charles, to tell you that I’m going to kill your daughter. Penelope, is it? And once she’s gone, once she’s dead, then you’ll understand how I feel, and you’ll wish you hadn’t changed the rules.”

I love that, in a surprising change of pace, the first episode of season 4 gives us a spotlight on Hurley!  I enjoyed meeting Matthew Abbadon (played by Lance Reddick, who played Cedric Daniels from The Wire!), though I wish we’d seen more of him during the year.

While season 2 introduced us to the Tailies, and season 3 spotlighted the Others, here in season 4 we meet the “Freighter-Folk.”  Looking back, it’s interesting to contemplate just how critical these characters (Daniel Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus) have become to the show.  (This is in contrast to the Tailies, who were pretty much all dead — except for Bernard — by the time season 2 ended.)  Lost’s writers have repeatedly noted how the Freighter-Folk were the ones most impacted by the writers’ strike shortened season — we’d have to wait until season 5 to have many of our questions about them answered.  But this doesn’t weaken their story-lines in season 4 for me at all.  If anything, now having seen season 5, during my Lost rewatch project I found myself even more hooked by the intriguing glimpses we got into these enigmatic Freighter-Folk (such as the weird scene when Charlotte tests Daniel’s memory with playing cards in “Eggtown”).

“You people had therapists?”  ”It’s very stressful being an Other, Jack.”

As the season progresses, there is great fun to be had in watching all the pieces fall into place on the island for the events that we know, from the flashforwards, will be happening to our castaways.  Much of season 4 has a tragic inevitability, and watching Jack & co. struggle mightily to get off the island while we know of the misery that awaits them makes for powerful, compelling viewing.  In the two-part finale, “There’s No Place Like Home,” we see the moment we’ve been anticipating for 4 years – the castaways (some of ‘em, anyways), disembark from their rescue plane and are joyfully reunited with their families (some of ‘em, anyways).  We see the press conference in which they tell their (made-up) story.  (Note that in the cover story, the castaways left the uncharted island on which they had been stranded 108 days after the crash.  That’s a familiar number!!)  Then we get a fascinating series of glimpses into how the Oceanic Six spent their 3 years off the island, scenes that help put into context many of the flash-forwards we’d seen all season long.

Then, finally, we circle back to the Jack/Kate “we have to go back!” scene from the end of season 3. Kate angrily tells Jack that she’s spent the last 3 years trying to forget all the horrible things that happened to them the day they left the island. Jack returns to the funeral parlor, where he meets Ben and we see that the “Jeremy Bentham” in the casket is actually John Locke. Ben tells Jack that they ALL must go back to the island.  Bring on season 5!

“I’ve heard you tell that story so many times I’m starting to think you believe it.”

I’ll see you back here tomorrow, for more specific thoughts on my favorite & least-favorite moments from season 4.

I don’t take the Oscars very seriously, and I always find myself in strong disagreements with the films and performances chosen by the Academy to be recognized.  And yet, I love watching the Oscars, and for many years one of my closest friends (since kindergarden!) and I have always used the Oscars as an excuse to get together, enjoy some great food and drink, and talk about movies.  So I’m pumped for the show this Sunday, and I hope that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will be entertaining.  (For the record, my favorite host in recent memory was Jon Stewart, and I hope someday he’ll be given the reins of the show again.)

To prepare, let’s review the Best Picture nominees:

Avatar — Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.

The Blind Side — Haven’t seen it, and have absolutely zero interest in changing that.

District 9 – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.

An Education — This is the film from 2009 I was most bummed to have missed, and I hope to remedy that shortly.

The Hurt Locker — Click here to read my review.

Inglourious Basterds – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.

Precious — I missed this one too.  I must confess that I don’t have any burning desire to see this film, but it seems to be well thought of so perhaps I’ll give it a chance on DVD…

A Serious Man – Click here to read my review.

Up – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.

Up in the Air – Click here to read my review, and here to read my comics poking fun at the film.

As for MY choices for the ten best films of 2010?  Click here to read my list.  (To refresh your memory, my favorite film from 2009 was Where the Wild Things Are, a film that, you might have noticed, didn’t make the Academy’s list.  Oh well.)

Enjoy the show, everyone!

After months and months of reading praise for Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, I finally was able to see the film on DVD.  (Once again, thank you Netflix!)  I am extremely pleased to report that, for me, the film lived up to its hype.

In the bravura opening sequence, we meet Delta Company, an elite unit of the U.S. Army serving in Iraq.  Delta Company consists of the men who get called in to disarm and/or detonate I.E.D.s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and all manner of other sorts of explosives before they can kill any U.S. servicemen/woman or others.  The tense, harrowing first few minutes of the film tell us everything we need to know about the incredible bravery and ability of the men of Delta Company who we’ll be following through the film, the excruciatingly difficult task that they are called upon to deal with every single day, and the high fatality rates of their assignments.

The Hurt Locker focuses on three men in Delta Company.  Anthony Mackie plays Sgt. JT Sanborn — a tough, by-the book officer of great professionalism.  Brian Geraghty plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the team.  Eldridge struggles with the weight of the life-and-death assignments that he must take on every day, but we never see those concerns affect his performance in the field.  Then there is Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner in a phenomenal, star-making performance.  SSG James is assigned to head up Delta Company after the death of their previous field leader.  James is an extraordinarily talented officer, but we quickly learn that he is not one for by-the-book procedures.  This brings him into conflict with Sgt. Sanborn, who judges James to be reckless and dangerous.  Young Eldridge finds himself caught somewhat in the middle.

That could be the plot of a great movie, but The Hurt Locker isn’t really a drama about conflict within a military unit.  Though we see evidence of that conflict that I have just described over the course of the story, The Hurt Locker isn’t concerned with typical Hollywood war-movie character arcs or story-lines.  Rather, director Kathryn Bigelow has created a film whose main purpose, it seems to me, is to put the viewer right in the middle of the intense, every-moment-could-be-your-last job that these men serving in Iraq have been given.  Through careful direction, tight editing, and above all stupendous acting, The Hurt Locker consists of one nail-biting sequence after another.

The film is episodic in nature.  In less capable hands this could be a weakness, undermining the narrative thrust that a successful film needs to achieve.  But under the sure guidance of Ms. Bigelow, the episodic structure of the film becomes something extremely powerful.  In each new sequence, the men of Delta Company are confronted with yet another harrowing encounter, where death seems to be one small wrong move away.  I kept expecting some larger storyline to emerge.  About an hour into the film, Delta Company is traveling through the desert after having completed an assignment when they encounter a broken-down truck of English mercenaries who have captured two members of the insurgency.  One of the mercenaries is played by Ralph Fiennes.  Aha, I thought, this is going to be the story that takes us through the rest of the film.  Maybe Ralph and his guys aren’t what they seem.  Maybe the insurgents are going to get away somehow and our guys are going to have to track them down.  I’ve seen a lot of war movies, and I could begin to guess how this was going to play out.

Thankfully, I was totally wrong.  We spend an intense 10-15 minutes with Ralph Fiennes and his team in that difficult situation (in which the characters find themselves pinned down by snipers).  But then the film moves on to the next day in the life of Delta Company, and we never see those English dudes again.

As I wrote a moment ago, it would be easy for this episodic structure to fall apart by the end of the film.  I have seen similarly structured movies that are interesting for the first half, but after a while one gets bored by the assemblage of short, disparate adventures.  But in The Hurt Locker, not only did I find myself growing only more engaged with the characters and the film with each “episode,” I would argue that this structure is the very point of the film, and the key to its power.  It doesn’t matter how tough one particular day is in the life of the men of Delta Company.  The next day, and the next tough assignment, is just around the corner.  The Hurt Locker isn’t the larger-than-life story of movie super-heroes — it’s the true-to-reality story of the brave, talented, and very human men (and women) who take on this work.  And that makes it all the more compelling.

If it were about a fictionalized conflict, The Hurt Locker would still be a visceral, edge-of-your-seat action film.  That it attempts to capture the experiences of some of the men and women serving our nation in Iraq gives it an increased resonance that only adds to the film’s power.  This is a masterfully assembled piece of work.  It’s difficult to watch at times, but it is well worth your time.