Lost (spoilers)

[picolas]

yeah... i was really distracted by how shitty the smoke monster looked.. and the pilot is becoming incredibly annoying/squinty. very clumsily written.

[Pas]

Yeah there's hardly anything to say after such an episode... it's almost puzzling in terms of lack of quality.

The smoke monster is straight out of a sci-fi channel tv-movie

[©brad]

Huh, I must have watched a different episode b/c I thought it was pretty awesome. Definitely a lot better than the last two. The smoke monster has always looked shitty and cheesy. And the writing is often clumsy. These beefs didn't seem anymore severe last night than usual. 

[polkablues]

I'm with you on this one. I'm not really understanding all the hating on what I thought was a really interesting episode. Of course the smoke monster looks shitty, it's an absurdly ambitious effect to try and do on a television budget and schedule. I care more about how we got to see a very different side of Ben than we've seen before, and the intriguing possibilities set up by what Smoke-Alex told him. Not to mention what the hell's going on back at the beach.

[SiliasRuby]

I'm also with polka and C-brad. Its getting though to a point where my head is really starting to hurt from thinking about when we are in story.

[mogwai]

i get wee feeling that john and ben has switched personalities, before locke died he was kind of unsure of himself etc and ben was confident and knew everything. after locke was resurrected and he seems very confident and the scene where he tells ben to go under the temple is one example, where ben felt very afraid. i dunno, just feels like that. i'm also very interested where exactly christian shepherd will appear since we don't know what happened to claire. and i think it will end with a mushy tearjerker over the top reunion scene with jack but i look forward to it. rewatching old episodes kinda help refreshing the memory doesn't it?

[pumba]

Is it at all possible that the oceanic 6 / new dharma initiative were also passengers on the black pearl? Or was Danielle's group the only passengers from the boat? I really think Jack/Hurley/Kate etc have been there even before the dharma initiative.

[Gamblour.]

Huh, I must have watched a different episode b/c I thought it was pretty awesome. Definitely a lot better than the last two. The smoke monster has always looked shitty and cheesy. And the writing is often clumsy. These beefs didn't seem anymore severe last night than usual. 

The smoke monster actually looks pretty amazing in The Shape of Things to Come. It's the first thing I watched when I got the Blu ray. But then again, nothing will top the crap awfulness that was the ship exploding last season. Anyway. The smoke monster wasn't why the episode was bad.

Locke was very one-note: confident. Yeah yeah, we've always known the island wanted him. He pretty much just come off annoying the entire episode. I was surprised that they revealed why Ben was all fucked up/Penny's fate so quickly and without much fanfare. But Ben gushing a bunch of blood out of his mouth in the water was pretty awesome.

[mogwai]

Is it at all possible that the oceanic 6 / new dharma initiative were also passengers on the black pearl? Or was Danielle's group the only passengers from the boat? I really think Jack/Hurley/Kate etc have been there even before the dharma initiative.

just a question here, the black rock ended on the island due to a previous moving the island thingie, right? it's like if for an example benjamin's great great grandfather in a drunken stupor moved the wheel so the island disappeared and by accident the black eherm...! rock! was sailing and when the island appeared again it appeared under the ship that it became shipwrecked.

[diggler]

i've never taken issue with the way effects are handled on the show. for the most part they're handled pretty tastefully, with few exceptions (the boat explosion being one, which would have been infuriating if they had tried to get around showing).  the only gripe i have with episodes like this is that it seems like they're rushing through interesting character stuff. Rousseau's story felt like it needed more time, and if thats all we're going to see of widmore and ben's relationship on the island i'll be disappointed.  i loved the actor they found to portray younger widmore and i would've liked to see more of him. 

some interesting tidbits: the manner in which ben took alex came across more as him saving her from widmore as opposed to taking her for himself. i loved the moment of hesitation when ben saw charlie emerge from the boat. anytime emerson shows any glimpse of humanity he's electrifying. as over the top as ben is as a character last night showed that emerson plays him with a lot of restraint, which is why it's so jarring to see him out of his element like he was last night. 

so is that what ben meant by widmore "changing the rules"? widmore said that if the island wanted alex dead she would end up dead, but does it really count if it's widmore who sends the killer? i suppose that could be some sort of course correction considering he sent ben to kill her in the first place and she ended up dying in the same manner. last night felt clumsy because they crammed too much in, but i've still been enjoying this season a lot.

ceasars death was fantastic!

[Kal]

Yeah I liked the episode but it definitely seems like they're rushing through a lot of info that has been building up for years. I mean, knowing the whole backstory of him a Widmore, him and Rousseau/Alex, plus what happened between him an Penny is a bit too much for one episode. That is what bothers me about Lost in terms of its structure. There are episodes when nothing happens and there is a very simple and slow storyline, and sometimes they just put everything into 40 minutes and the writing is a bit sloppy.

So weird that Cesar was killed so quickly, but it was pretty cool. I'm also grad they took a break from Sawyer/Jack, etc.

One thing that bothered me was that Sun and Lapedus found the photo from 1977, showed it Ben, and then they did not discuss it at all with Locke. It would have been an interesting conversation because Locke is the one who saw Sawyer and the others last before leaving, and would understand how they got stuck in time. So it makes sense that they should have had the discussion.

[Gamblour.]

Yeah I liked the episode but it definitely seems like they're rushing through a lot of info that has been building up for years.

THAT is what I meant to say.

[MacGuffin]

'Lost': What lies in the shadow of the statue?
Source: Los Angeles Times

Good ol' "Lost." Even when they announce a week in advance what the episode will be about -- in this case, lots more information on the Smoke Monster -- they manage to throw us a surprise from left field.  Tonight, we fully expected to see the scoop on the temple, the monster and what happened to Penny, but who could have expected the revelation that Ilana and a few other passengers from the Ajira Airways flight were apparently Others all along (though of the exiled and ticked-off-about-it variety).

The giveaway? Their code with one another: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" The answer? We don't know for sure yet. Though there are a few options. "Death" is my guess, but depending on the definition of "lies" it could also be "Ben." How cutesy are the Others? Not very. I'm sticking with "Death."

Why "Death"? That has a lot to do with what Ben saw underneath the temple. (Technically the wall surrounding the temple, but let's not get bogged down in details). Finally, after so many years of people asking "What is the Smoke Monster?" we got, if not exactly a definitive answer, then at least as close to a full answer as I think we're going to get. Down there in the Smoke Monster's lair, which looks like an unused set from "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Ben learned that: 1) The Smoke Monster sleeps beneath the stone grid and 2) Instructions say that it was a force used by the Egyptian god Anubis to judge the dead on their way to the afterlife.

Presumably that also clears up the question of whom the broken, four-toed statue depicts. It's Anubis' island, and Ben and Locke and even Widmore are merely visitors.

The evolution of our main characters continues, and this week we got to see the formation of the new dynamic between newly chastened Ben, forgiven by the island for allowing his daughter to die, and Creepy Zen Locke, who has found in death what he never had in life -- a sense of inner calm and peace. He's no longer a man blindly casting about for something or someone to believe in. He believes in himself, and that's all that matters. It also helps that somehow Locke seems to have all the answers to the island that Ben once had. In our new "Lost" world order, Sawyer is the new Jack. Locke is the new Ben and Sun is the new Desmond (she just wants to be reunited with her true love).

Visually, this is the most beautiful episode we've seen in a long time. The island looked amazing, especially the shots of Locke and Ben paddling to the main island. I don't know what the extra cost of filming in Hawaii is, but scenes like this totally justify the extra cost. Amazing.

To be honest, the scene of the swirling Smoke Monster was a little too Indiana Jones for my tastes. I kept waiting to hear Ben scream, "It's beautiful!" and have his face melt off. But I appreciated the ideas behind the Smoke Monster even though its execution was a bit lacking. For all the lying and double-dealing Ben's engaged in over the last few seasons, his heart apparently has been mostly in the right place. At least when it came to his daughter. And his warning that came in the form of Alex herself ended in a much nicer manner than Mr. Eko's final encounter with the Smoke Monster in the guise of his dead brother.

But it leaves a big question. If Alex and Eko's brother were manifestations of the Smoke Monster, what is Christian? And Claire? And Locke himself, for that matter. As Ben said, the island doesn't bring people back from the dead as part of its usual routine. Are they all aspects of Smokey? I suspect so.

Finally, for those looking closely a few more books were added to the extensive "Lost" reading list. On the shelf in Alex's old room were "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Roots" and a book that I'm 99% certain is "Flowers for Algernon." After several bookless weeks, "Lost" seems to have gotten back to giving us what we want: weird mysteries and a few good books to add to our nightstand.

[polkablues]

It's about time Faraday's back.  But another two week wait???  Fuck that.

[MacGuffin]

Was it me, or did teen Miles look like Rufio?