Thursday, April 23, 2009

The 'Lost' clip show: wha happen?

Life's too short for me to watch clip shows, so I skipped over last night's one on "Lost." Anybody who did watch it, feel free to discuss it.

36 comments:

  1. It's on my DVR right now. My original impression was that it would be a clip show, but according to the description it was going to be about the three year gap after Ben moved the island. So I was hoping for some new info. Like how Sawyer became LeFluer and ended up with Juliet.

    Was I incorrect? Is it just old clips?

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  2. I didn't want to waste too much time, so I watched it as I was falling asleep, and yes, it was just a clip show.

    In the past, I've found their clip shows to be illuminating, and have noticed how they foreshadow some events and ideas. For instance, from one of the first clip shows in the first season, they included the scene of Hurley and Sayid sitting on the beach listening to the old radio broadcast, talking about what time they were in (at least two seasons before they actually introduced any of the time travel elements). Also, in a lot of the recent ones, they include the clip from Ben's childhood where the Dharma teacher is telling the class about the dormant volcano on the island (hmm.... I wonder if that will have anything to do with how the end of the show plays out).

    Anyways, this one mainly focused on events since the rescue. I found it interesting because it edited together the full stories of each of the O6. We got to see all the Jack scenes edited chronologically, which was interesting because you got to see how the relationship with Kate, and his descent into beardedness played out.

    But other than that, absolutely no new insight, information, hints, or foreshadowing.

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  3. I think there was one big nugget of information, if I heard correctly.
    It was confirmed in the narration that Charles Widmore was the one who faked the Oceanic 815 plane at the bottom of the ocean. This had been left a bit ambiguous, even after last week's scene with the dead guy whose mind Miles read.

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  4. Just a heads up - Damon & Carlton have said before that these clip shows aren't canon. They don't participate in the writing of them and with everything that's going on in the editing room, etc, they don't review them either. There have been mistakes before, so that Charles Widmore nugget may or may not be true.

    But I want it to be.

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  5. It was basically a chronological ordering of all the major scenes in the last two seasons, from the O6 leaving the island to when the Ajira flight landed. No new footage or insight, as far as I could tell.

    It was very strange to see everything chronologically with no flashbacks or flashforwards, and I'm not sure why they felt this was needed unless production had slipped and they needed a time-filler. Hope this doesn't count towards one of the episodes in this season.

    When's the season finale?

    (Word verification: hosednes, which is the state of being hosed.)

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  6. I appreciated the chronological ordering of events but I was hoping for an answer as to what finally convinced Hurley to return to the island...or did I miss something?

    Almost any Lost (minus tattoos and court dates) is better than no Lost at all. This season is that good.

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  7. Widmore staging the wreck isn't news.

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  8. Rhonda wrote:
    >>I appreciated the chronological ordering of events but I was hoping for an answer as to what finally convinced Hurley to return to the island...or did I miss something?>>

    We haven't seen that story yet. Presumably we will before the end of the season.

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  9. @EOTW - *Confirmation* of Widmore staging the wreck is the news.

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  10. Watched it this morning. Never a bad idea to get caught up on the details. For the archivists: It was Nestor Carbonell's turn to do the narration.

    Lifola!

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  13. Extremely dry narration. I'm surprised it was Carbonell, it could have been anyone.

    Very straightforward show and not particularly *interesting*, but it is *helpful* in helping even a regular view keep track of the details.

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  14. This was good for people like me who watch every episode but don't obsess enough to have memorized all the myriad details. So it was a nice from a review standpoint. Definitely not useful for hardcore Lost bloggers and the like.

    Can anyone tell me how many new episodes are remaining for this season?

    Also, if we aren't seeing Rose, Bernard, and the dog simply because the writers don't have the vision and creativity to find a way to include them, I'll be severely disappointed.

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  15. I skipped it entirely and will wait for next week.

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  16. Batmanuel!

    Other than seeing that continuity could be made out of Jack's beard, this was certainly not essential viewing. But then, I've also watched most of this season's episodes at least twice, so I'm not the casual viewer this was intended for.

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  17. I didn't find it all that successful, as it didn't really clarify much in terms of chronology, despite being an attempt to put the O6 events in chronological order. They skipped some things, like Sayid's whole ordeal with the girl and the mysterious Economist. They didn't really seem to attempt to put unrelated events in a clear order, for instance when did Sun talk to Widmore in relation to when Hurley went into the nuthouse again, etc. And it didn't explain some of the more confusing chronological things, like if Jack bought his first ticket to Sydney the night Locke died, why does it seem like he's been flying back and forth for at least weeks by the time he sees the obituary and attends the viewing?

    (And if the explanation is that Locke had been hanging there for WEEKS before anyone found him, how was his body restored to a state suitable for a viewing, let alone a resurrection? I myself like to think that it was a job by the most talented fictional restorative artist in Los Angeles, Rico Diaz).

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  18. Carbonell should have used his Batmanuel accent, it would of made it much more entertaining.

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  19. I did not realize it was a clip show when I turned it on. Once I realized it was, I left it on and went to make lemon icebox cookies. I don't have the hang of lemon icebox cookies. Total waste of an hour for me.

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  20. @EOTW
    Not to be a spoiler nazi but a lot of us don't want to even hear the titles of upcoming episodes or what character may be featured. FYI.

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  21. Not to be a spoiler nazi but a lot of us don't want to even hear the titles of upcoming episodes or what character may be featured. FYI.

    Yeah, I deleted the two comments in question.

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  22. Unlike most, it seems, I foudn the special to be... I have to stop short of saying I enjoyed it, because it was a little dry, but it shed light on some of the continuity I missed with all the skipping around. For example, I somehow missed that Jack and Kate were living together, let alone engaged. All this time, I thought he was just stopping by her house periodically, acting crazy. I also didn't really get how long it was between Loche returning from the island, his death, and Jack going beard-crazy.

    In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that despite watching the show every week, I had no idea what was going on until I saw it in clip-form. I'm not sure how I feel about that- retroactively confused? time-delay annoyed?

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  23. I thought it was great. Got to see Jack's progression - beard growth even. The clip shows are always good for sorting things out and remind me to see things from a wider perspective.

    Also, the clip show made it apparent to me that both Hurley and Sun's reasons for getting on the plane are yet to be explained.

    I'd also like to mention that besides these occasional clips shows, the LOST replays that CBS does over the weekend around midnite are a really great way to see older eps that still inform the current eps. e.g. they just replayed Through the Looking Glass, and seeing Alex alive and staring down her dad.

    Well it's fun for me since I'd never bother to pop in an older season DVD, but here the DVR does it for me. :)

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  24. @M Chavez --

    Sun's reason for getting on the plane makes more sense than anyone's -- she now knows that Jin is still alive.

    I think only Hurley's reason is unknown.

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  25. @Sandar and Andrew - god, how I love(d) Batmanuel. And yeah, it would have been awesome had Batmanuel been doing the narration for last night's clip show.

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  26. Sun's reason for getting on the plane makes more sense than anyone's -- she now knows that Jin is still alive.

    But the show at some point needs to deal with Ji Yeon: where she is, how much (if at all) Sun struggled with leaving her behind, etc. I suppose there's a danger that it'd wind up being too similar to the Kate episode from a few weeks ago, but Sun did abandon her own biological child to pursue Jin, and that needs to be acknowledged, significantly.

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  27. As a parent, I have to say that Sun's reasons for going back to the island make LESS sense than anyone else's. She has a toddler at home, and she seems to risk making her an orphan without any thought. All I kept saying to my husband when she agreed to return was "she's being horribly irresponsible." They really need to address this, because it has made me think less of Sun as a character. I always really liked her, but now, whenever I see her, I just think of the fact that she abandoned her child.

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  28. Yeah, that's pretty much how I was viewing it. Kate was given air-time to show her heartbreak in leaving Aaron, for the greater good of 'rescuing' Claire. With Sun, she just simply showed up at the terminal, and even Jack showed his surprise. So something must've happened. Of course the reason for leaving the country is to rescue her husband. But the reason for leaving her child is left unexplained.

    One small thing I forgot to mention about the whole 'watch older eps. and relish the details' thing - Charlie was destined to crack the code in the Looking Glass station because the programmer who came up with the code was a musician. So now I'm curious to see if they'll reference how that came to be. {cue mysterious music}

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  29. I didn't watch the clip show, but during season 5, I've re-watched all of seasons 1-4, and it's given me a lot more faith the show runners knew what they were doing--at least in a macro sense--from the beginning. It's amazing how certain themes, like the aforementioned time travel convo between Hurley and Sayid, were introduced early to the series.

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  30. Eli's coming, hide your heart girl

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  31. With only 3 episodes and 4 hours left, I’m afraid Sun abandoning her child will be left unexplained.

    Also, sorry if I spoiled anything for anyone earlier, I should know better, especially since I read a super major spoiler today on the ew.com boards. Just a hint to everyone who wants to stay spoiler free, don’t read the comments on EW. They are not as awesome as Alan is in making sure people stay unspoiled.

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  32. Aside from the possible confirmation of Widmore's involvement in the fake crash, the clip show seemed to say that Kate knows that Aaron is related to Jack.

    As far as I knew, this is still a secret Jack is keeping, did I miss something, or was the clipshow script playing fast and loose with it?

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  33. Kate and Jack were holding unto the secret; there were quite a few troubled looks between them after Claire's mother revealed Claire is Jack's half-sister. I believe it a given that both understood the deal.

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  34. I don't watch clip shows. Period. Ever. For anything.

    They are a cheap way to add another episode and that is lame.

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  35. It's not an added episode, it's just a skipped week. With most shows, you get a re-run or a preemption for a sporting event or movie or some other show. With Lost, you get a clip show. Same diff.

    And yeah, I thought it was pretty clear that Kate overheard Jack finding out about Claire being his half-sister and all. Even if not, he clearly told her, or else why would she know Claire's mom is Aaron's grandmother, eh?

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  36. Hmmmm . . . the clip show on the Oceanic Six. What can say but ZZZZZZ!

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