Lost-vivor: “Stranger in a Strange Land”
Posted on February 22, 2007 @ 12:49 am
Welcome to Week Nine of Lost-vivor — all the mystery and adventure of Lost with an added dash of Survivor-style competition. Here’s the deal: after each week’s airing of Lost, I’ll arbitrarily award and deduct points from the characters based on their actions during the episode. I’ll tally up the Lost-vivor scores as the season progresses, and, at the end, we’ll declare a Lost Season Three champion! You can catch up on the action so far at the Lost-vivor archives.
Please note that the section ahead contains spoilers for last night’s episode of Lost. Proceed at your own risk.
After last week’s outstanding episode, I found “Stranger in a Strange Land” disappointing. On the plus side, Jack didn’t seem nearly as wishy-washy this week. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s being played by the Others, Juliet and maybe even Alex included. Everything Jack sees — whether it’s the surveillance room or Juliet’s trial — it seems like he’s meant to see. Maybe I’m just paranoid after Ben’s many deceptions last season, but I still have trouble believing Juliet is on Jack’s side in any meaningful sense.
Anyway, back to the episode. Overall, I thought “Stranger in a Strange Land” dragged, and it was difficult to discern any significant movement forward in the show’s overarching storyline. I know people have made this comparison a hundred times already, but Heroes manages to make progress toward revealing its mysteries and following through on its “big” storyline every week. Maybe it’s not fair to compare a show that’s not even a season old to Lost, but it’s disheartening to feel that all we’re getting most weeks are further insights into characters we already know really well thanks to the last four or five times they were featured in flashback segments.
One last thing before we get to the scores. The previews hyped that last night’s episode would reveal the answers to three of the show’s biggest mysteries. One was obviously the origin of Jack’s tattoo (wow, I can sleep soundly knowing that story). The fact that Cindy is living among the Others was probably the second mystery, but what was the third? That the missing children are still alive? That’s a pretty sorry set of mysteries if you ask me.
Wow, I’m negative today, aren’t I? Let’s get to the scores; that always cheers me up.
| Jack:
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| Kate:
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| Sawyer:
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Jack was the central character in last night’s episode and he actually gained points? Really?! Welcome to Bizarro Lost-vivor. Hell, at the rate Jack’s going, he might even pass up Sayid by the time Season Five rolls around. Despite a very minor setback, Sawyer remains in the top spot this week, while Kate steadily climbs up through the rankings.
After nine sense-shattering weeks of Lost-vivor, here are your standings:
- Sawyer (171) (-1)
- Desmond (142)
- Locke (135)
- Kate (122) (+9)
- Sun (107)
- Hurley (105)
- Claire (104)
- Vincent (100)
- Paulo (99)
- Nikki (98)
- Charlie (88)
- Sayid (88)
- Jack (80) (+4)
Well, ladies and gents, that’s another exciting week of Lost-vivor in the books! It looks like we’re heading back to the beach next week for a Hurley-centric episode. Oh, and was that Vincent I saw in the preview? If so, Sawyer’s days as Lost-vivor numero uno may be numbered. Go, Vincent!
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Lost-vivor |
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agreed. I was bored and disappointed with this episode, the commercials made it seem like something crazy would be revealed. Instead they give an inaccurate translation of jack’s tattoo (who cares?) and just more meaningless filler to drag people on through more commercials to make ABC even richer.
This series is losing me fast, I give it a D-
In defense of the “three mysteries” thing, ABC does the commercials, not the Lost guys. Damon and Carlton even said in the last podcast that they only really revealed one mystery and just touched on two others. So ABC is really just beating down their own show with unfulfilled promises.
My memories of the Lost promos did not hype “Stranger In A Strange Land” but an episode in the next couple weeks - I think they said several questions would be answered, including who are the Others… This link says that Episode 11 reveals what the Others are doing and what the connection is between Dharma and the Others.
I zoned out about halfway through the episode and started surfing the internet while listening to it. Last week’s episode almost jumped the shark when Desmond was physically reliving his own flashback, but now they’ve gone back to making filler episodes so they can match ABC’s contractually-obligated 5-season quota for a series that was only supposed to last 3.
It’s cases like this where I’m convinced the money behind the show doesn’t even watch the show.
We’ll probably figure out the island’s mystery on our own, well before the series ends.
I’m a Lost die hard. So long as they make new episodes, I’ll watch.
That said, it really does look like Heroes has learned how to capitalize on every mistake that Lost makes, not just in terms of storytelling, but also in terms of marketing. Heroes obviously has some big story archs (the explosion, Sylar, Mohinder finding a cure/identifying other Heroes, etc.) but has very quickly moved through several smaller plots, and Lost has struggled with that. Just as a quick example, we found out very early on that Claire (cheerleader) was adopted, and we already know who her real mother and father are, and some of the implications of that knowledge. Towards the end of last season in Lost it was presented to us that there’s a chance that Jack and Claire (not the cheerleader) might be related, but whether or not that actually matters to anything on the show is anyone’s guess. Moving things along so quickly helps the viewer forgive a lot of mistakes - has anyone else noticed that Ando and Hiro have been in Vegas, NY and Texas at various times in a very short time span, all with the same rental car, bouncing around wracking up rental charges, gas expenses, and eating waffles all the time? This strikes me as ridiculous, but I don’t even care because at least they’re always involved in something. Bottom line - Heroes tells you in the preview what is going to happen, and it does in pleasantly unexpected ways. Lost… not so much.
I am starting to worry about Lost, because it felt like before the characters drove the story, and it feels like now the development of the story is not allowing the characters to function properly. One of the keys to good character development and storytelling is having your characters actively perform to the most of their abilities, and having those actions advance the story. Jack is being written in a way so that he is completely tanking in this department right now. He comes face to face with Cindy, asks a good question about why she’s with the Others, and she says its complicated. Jack we assume is intelligent because he’s a doctor, and he obviously has some time and isn’t going anywhere because he’s in a cage. You would think he would press and try to find out something useful, and say “Well, explain it to me, because I’m not going anywhere for a while now.” But he doesn’t, and the story goes nowhere. He did ask the right question to Tom to find out about “The Sheriff” which opens up some potentially interesting consequences, but blew it again when he got to talk to Alex and used his question to determine where Juliet was. That moved the immediate story along, but not much else. Essentially, he went 1 for 3, which is certainly not indicative of working to the best of his ability, and I’m not even going to get into Sawyer and Kate mailing it in with Carl. The past two episodes I thought were great, but they need to take a mulligan on this one. They had all sorts of steam going and now the engine sputtered and they really need to get back on track.
I would say one of the “big secrets” revealed was that the “Others” only worked on the small island, but their village was on the main island. I didn’t remember hearing about that before.
I’ve got to disagree with you on Kate’s standings. She and Sawyer didn’t do ANYTHING with Carl when they had the chance. Sure, they asked a few VERY general questions, but I would have SAT on that boy and drilled him for hours!
Okay ignoring for a moment that my last sentence sounds disturbing, you get my point, right? I think it was crappy writing to have Kate and Sawyer basically ignore the fact that they have a fount of Others info right in their hands.
That episode sucked. Here I was, all primed for Charliepocalypse, and instead I got Bai Ling, who’s basically only famous for dressing badly. BOOOOO!
So is anyone enjoying Lost these days? Everyone I know whose been a die-hard Lost junkie over the first two seasons agrees that this third season is awful with a capitol A! I’ve even considered stop watching but everytime they do a non-Jack/ Kate/ Sawyer episode I’m hooked again. Maybe the solution to all of our problems is to stop putting all the focus on the three dullest characters (with thepossible exception of Sawyer who just gets dragged down by Kate & Jack)on the show.
Heroes does rock hard, let’s hope it can keep this pace up!
How could Kate do anything but lose points on that episode? She once again suddenly decides they must go save Jack when they’re halfway back to the island where they can.. I don’t know… get more people to help them? ARGH! How stupid can one person be?
And the nicest thing I can say about that episode was that it sucked. Even though Heroes is only in its first season, I’d have to say that I’ve consistently enjoyed it more that I enjoyed Lost even in its first season.
I’m not going to stop watching or anything drastic like that, but this has been the problem with the show for awhile - awesome episode that gets you totally psyched is followed up by donkey crap episode.
Yeah, those 3 mysteries did little to move the show forward. Jack’s tattoos=stranger who walks among us = live together, die alone = be a leader. What did that exactly help us understand about Jack?
Also, the whole caged Jack/Cindy thing was revealed in the Lost-backs or whatever those bits were called during the mid-season hiatus.
Yeah, Jack has a tendency not to follow up on his questions. He asked Tom about sending Ben away for help, and Tom started to answer him. Yeah, Ben’s nicked artery didn’t help, but WHY NOT FOLLOW UP? Same for his interaction wiht Cindy, Juliet, Tom again this past episode… Idiot.
Wow! Thanks for the great comments, everyone. I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only person let down by this week’s Lost. Maybe if we’re lucky, next week will pick up the pace again.
Sigh…I remember saying that so many times about Alias.
Ok, that does it. I finally got around to watching the “Three Biggest Mysteries Revealed”. I am now done. Do you hear that producers of Lost? I quit. You can just stop making this load of crap. This is frustration talking. Plain and simply, I am sick of this. I don’t mind long term stories, but throw me a frickin bone here. Oh, thats right, even if you throw one finally, I won’t see it, because I am done with this show. Bah. Whoever is masochistic enough to stick around, please shut off the lights as you leave.
Dave