Thoughts on Doctor Who Series 5 Finale The Big Bang

by Amy Yen

Spoiler Alert: This review includes spoilers for the US/Canada airing of “The Pandorica Opens” & “The Big Bang,” the 2-part finale of Doctor Who series 5. These episodes will (presumably) air on BBC America on July 10 & July 17.

“Big and little, at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the Bluest. Blue. Ever.” This Doctor likes to talk, doesn’t he? He likes to works things out, out loud, to himself, to his companions, to us. He likes to muse, he likes to wax nostalgic & he likes to tells bedtime stories to little girls with red hair. He likes the fairy tale — the girl who waited for the raggedy doctor, the boy who waited for the girl, the daft old man who stole a magic box.

It’s poetic that the Doctor chooses to skip the rest of the tour down memory lane (“I hate repeats,” he says) & limits his attempts to save his memory to Amy & Amy alone. It’s like he wants to pretend his past started that night, with that body, when he met little Amelia Pond. It’s a little meta, with Matt Smith finishing off his first series, firmly solidified as The Doctor, with as brilliant a performance as we’ve come to expect of him, & best of all, Steven Moffat topping off what has at times been an unevenly written series with the type of finale that, in the RTD era, we would have expected to get blown out of proportion. But Moffat shows terrific restraint & produces a finale that is large enough in scale to be a real threat (the universe is literally collapsing) but at the same time still feels tight & focused on the characters that matter to us. The Doctor & his companions & really, no one else. There’s no huge fleets of enemies — just a lone Dalek, awesomely dealt with by River Song — & a mess that the Doctor must figure out how to clean up.

Better still, with the exploding TARDIS mystery & the cracks in space & time, Moffat’s major arc this season feels wonderfully personal to both the Doctor & Amy. It’s very neat that the mystery is not over, that there will be some carry-through to series 6. The actual resolution of the problem, the Doctor creating Big Bang 2 to bring back the universe, but being trapped behind the crack & erased by history in the process, and needing Amy to remember him to bring him back, seemed to come about too easily, but I found that I didn’t really care. I didn’t even mind how easily & quickly the Doctor escaped the cliffhanger from the end of “The Pandorica Opens,” when he is trapped by all his enemies in the inescapable box. To be honest, I watch Doctor Who for the Doctor, to see him have adventures & save the world. Nobody wants to see him taken out of the game for too long. I actually thought the time travel aspects of the episode were all really fun & clever. I particularly liked seeing the logistics play out of him going to see Rory to tell him how to get past-him out of the Pandorica (with the cue from Rory involving the ridiculous fez & mop & the Doctor realizing he’s missing his sonic screwdriver now because he gave it to Rory 2000 years ago & thus going back to give the instruction to put it in Amy’s pocket so it’d be there in the future).

I was also hugely relieved that the story resolved with Rory alive & human & back on the TARDIS again, although it conflicts with reports that he wouldn’t be returning with Amy in the next series. Right now I’m choosing to believe the reports were wrong, because Rory is awesome. I loved the idea of the Roman centurion guarding the Pandorica for 2000 years to protect Amy. “Why do you have to be so…human?” the Doctor wonders, because, at that moment, he’s not, & the Doctor loves him for it. Rory is a hero; he is Mickey Smith, much sooner than Mickey Smith became Mickey Smith. In the end, maybe he realizes, he can have the girl and the adventure too. Because in the end, Rory also loves the Doctor.

There’s also River Song in this story, although she turns out to be much less pivotal than originally thought. The most interesting part of her remains what she will be. “You always dance at weddings, don’t you,” she teases. The Doctor remains largely baffled by her, but he’s getting better at hiding it. He hands her back her vortex manipulator with the casualness you’d never see him show with Captain Jack. He trusts her. But even she, in a roundabout way, is warning him that he maybe shouldn’t yet.

Anyway, going back to Amy, because that’s what this entire series was really about. The Doctor asks her if it was worth it. “Shut up, of course it was,” she tells him. He tells her he lied. He didn’t take her along with him because he was lonely (although that can’t be a complete lie). He chose her because her life was all wrong. Her house was too big, there are holes in her story. “Amy Pond. All alone. The girl who didn’t make sense. How could I resist?”

Amy’s story is one of the most interesting companion stories we’ve seen because the Doctor has been entwined in her entire life. He’s been actually responsible for very real emotional issues with her character. “Twelve years & four therapists,” she tells him when he first finds her again. It’s a much more grown-up, serious backstory than we’re used to for a companion. But Amy is tenacious. She doesn’t forget & when she figures it out, she interrupts her own wedding. “I remember you and you are late for my wedding!” she shouts at the Doctor who she’s always waiting for. She is messed up & complex & brilliant. How could the Doctor resist?

Additional notes on “The Pandorica Opens” & “The Big Bang”:

• I have found Murray Gold’s score inconsistent & at times distracting throughout the series, which is odd because I used to find him very solid in the Tennant years (“Martha’s Theme” remains one of my favorite scored pieces from a TV series). But I thought the music was used very well in “Big Bang” & especially loved the Eleventh Doctor’s Theme at the very end when Amy & Rory rejoined him on the TARDIS & they left for their next adventure.
• “I found you. I found you with words, just like you knew I would.” Did he, I wonder? It seemed very much like, in Amelia’s bedroom, that the Doctor was resigned to the fact that he couldn’t make Amy remember. But then, she’s right, why tell her the story? And he did show up in his tux.
• Looking back on it, I wish there were one or two more plants where the Doctor tried to talk to Amy during his rewind. We don’t see her on the TARDIS (amusingly on the way to Space Florida) or dropping off the card during “The Lodger,” so it’s just the scene during “Flesh & Stone” that was our clue.
• “Something old. Something new. Something borrowed. Something blue.” I especially loved all the references to the blue blue of the TARDIS. When they re-painted the TARDIS back in “The Eleventh Hour,” I found it to be almost too blue, like it looked like a toy. But it all went with the fairy tale atmosphere of the entire season. “The Bluest. Blue. Ever.” Sometimes I feel like Moffat likes to write exactly the way I like to think.

Ad Post: Dasani PlantBottle Plantable Print Ad

by Amy Yen

I loved this print insert from Dasani, advertising their new sustainable PlantBottle, which is “made from up to 30% plant-based materials derived of sugar cane and still a 100% recyclable bottle.” Maybe the single coolest print ad I’ve ever seen, the simple, vivid image of the bottle enveloped in leaves also includes a removable leaf made of seeded paper, which can be soaked in water & put in soil to grow real wildflowers! Awesome.

The ad, which Dasani & parent company Coca-Cola also point out is made of 100% recycled paper, is part of the launch of PlantBottle in the western US, which is in turn a pilot program for Coca-Cola, who will now start adapting PlantBottle for its other brands. The program is being watched closely, as the bottled water industry has long been criticized for its environmental impact, highlighted by tap water awareness campaigns such as UNICEF’s Tap Project & What’s Tappening? Using plant-based materials for the bottle will reportedly reduce PlantBottle’s carbon emissions by 25 percent.

Dasani also partnered with eco-fashion designer Erica Domesek of PSIMadeThis.com, who made limited edition green caps (mirroring PlantBottle’s green caps) from reused & recycled materials, benefiting Ocean Conservancy. Launched in late 2009, Coca-Cola is aiming to produce 2 billion PlantBottles by the end of this year.

How I’m Spending My Summer TV Vacation: The Tudors Final Season

-by Amy Yen

Yes, Lost is gone for good, finale season is over & the TV landscape, with few exceptions, is looking bleak. I thought I’d take a closer look at a couple of the shows I’m filling my time with.

The Tudors

Season 4 (final season) – Showtime, Sundays at 9pm ET

The Tudors has been losing more & more of its buzz, ever since Anne Boleyn, wife #2, lost her  head. But I’ve always still found it to be a great guilty pleasure to watch Henry VIII throw temper tantrums & run through two wives a season. Here, toward the end of its final year, he’s already beheaded wife #5, the criminally stupid Katherine Howard, who not only allowed herself to be blackmailed into hiring people into her household in order to keep her less-than-squeaky-clean past a secret, but also proceeded to cheat on Henry with his personal groom! Scandalous! It’s as if she didn’t know what happened to wives 1 through 4 (in case you need a refresher: Catherine of Aragon was stripped of her totally legit title & dismissed to go die alone & away from her daughter because of her failure to produce a son, Anne Boleyn was beheaded on bogus charges of adultery because of her failure to produce a son, Jane Seymour did manage to be produce a son & then promptly died & poor Anne of Cleves was called a horse & was basically paid the 1500s version of a big ol’ divorce settlement to go away & pretend like the marriage never happened even though later on Henry realized he had actually been married to totally hot international pop star Joss Stone…whoops).

Killing poor, stupid Catherine Howard (who, with her head on the chopping block, was still all “I die a queen but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper”…I mean, seriously? That chick was queen?) did seem to snap Henry out of his mid-life crisis a little, so he’s moved on to his last wife, Catherine Parr, who makes up for what she lacks in personality with unrelenting agreeableness. There’s still a lingering “She’s a Heretic!” storyline floating around, but it’s really the least interesting wife-related storyline The Tudors has ever managed, so much so that it’s remarkable that I, as the viewer, still like Catherine & am interested in her at all. I think it says something about the way Jonathan Rhys Meyers & Joely Richardson play them that I find Catherine & Henry’s relationship, which is more polite than passionate, still kind of sweet.

In the last few episodes though, it’s really Henry’s final try at a war with France that’s been the dominant storyline. I’ve never found The Tudors’ attempts at war plots in the past to be that interesting, but the siege at Boulogne was great drama & I was actually glad Henry got his big victory, even though it only really lasted a moment. Henry is always the guy who tries too hard & has not been a very sympathetic character as a result, but I was kind of impressed that he chose to walk away from sacrificing even more men to go march on Paris.

I also greatly enjoyed two other subplots in this latest episode. Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, has always been my favorite character (& the only one beside Henry that has been a mainstay in the cast since the beginning of the series), but his storyline last season, which involved being forced into killing a whole lot of English countrymen, including kids, in order to stay on Henry’s good side, has left him depressed &, let’s face it, kind of boring this year. The subplot with Brandon’s affair with the French prisoner of war was actually rather lovely & Henry Cavill has really sold it. “I was dead but now I am alive again,” he says this week & smiles that familiar smile from season 1, back when he & Henry were just boys.

Finally, Lady Mary’s speech this week to Chapuys (who makes presumably his final appearance as the familiar Imperial ambassador) was fascinating. She declares how, if she ever becomes queen, she will make England faithful, Catholic, again, by any means necessary, shedding as much blood as she needs to. And thus, Bloody Mary is born. But if there’s one thing The Tudors as a show has done for the perception of its characters in history, it’s that it has made Mary an immensely sympathetic character. In watching her maintain almost unnatural grace & dignity while her father basically takes away every chance at real happiness she has in her life, it makes you understand why she had to cling to her faith the way she did in order to survive. (There’s a scene in season 3 where she eavesdrops on a potential suitor talking to Then-Queen Anne of Cleves & she’s so hopeful & smitten that it’s crushing when Henry sends the man away…Mary is, in the end, just a girl who wanted a boy to like her.)

I am definitely looking forward to the return of all of Henry’s wives past in the final two episodes of the series & to see how they close out Henry’s famous era of history. Check back to see my reviews of other summer shows, including Burn Notice & Leverage.

Live-Blogging the Lost Series Finale: The End

-by Amy Yen

This is it, folks. End of the line, everybody off. These are my live thoughts as I’m watching & I’ll possibly a wrap-up post later if I can see through my tears later.

8:59 – Previously on Lost…yeah, right. Nice try. And seriously, if you really want to know, you should have watched ABC’s 45-hour Lost weekend retrospective event thing. I know I did. (Yeah, cause I really needed to see Sun’s anguished scream when the freighter blew up one more time to get me in the crying mood.)

9:00 – We open on a plane. All of our beloved characters, on the Island where we knew them & in the sideways universe that we still don’t understand. Desmond signs for Christian Shephard’s remains. “No one can tell you why you’re here, Kate. My name is Desmond Hume. And even though you don’t realize it, I’m your friend. And as to what I want? I want to leave.”

9:06 – On the Island, Jack says he doesn’t feel any different, but he is. “It’s called the heart of the Island. It’s a light.” It still sounds kind of ridiculous. The rest of the Candidates note Jacob kind of sucks at leaving final instructions. He’s no Daniel Faraday, is he? “It’s kind of true, dude, he’s worse than Yoda.” Oh, LOL, Hurley. I’m going to miss you & your Star Wars references SO MUCH.

9:07 – Sawyer splits off from the group to go find Desmond, which is obviously a terrible idea. So, let’s review the groups. Jack’s group (the Jacob-ites) is Jack, Kate & Hurley. The Man in Black has Ben in tow. Sawyer is on his own. Richard is presumably dead, although I demand to see a body. Desmond, Miles & Claire are unaccounted for. Wow, is that all that’s left? That’s depressing.

Thoughts on Fringe Season 2 Finale Over There Part 2

-by Amy Yen

With the big finale coming on Sunday, there’s been a lot of talk at the upfronts this year about networks looking for the next Lost. It wasn’t Flashforward & it wasn’t V, that’s for sure. I have to think it’ll be a while before we ever see anything quite as revolutionary as Lost again. In my opinion, the only show that’s already on the air that comes anywhere close is Fringe.

Fringe is quintessential JJ Abrams, it almost can’t help but become more & more mythology-based as it goes along. But the smartest thing Fringe did was let us in on the key underlying mythology of the show—the idea of the alternate universe—very early on…and then show us that our three main characters are all closely intertwined with this mythology. Fringe is a fun show: it’s weirdness & gross-outs & there’s a cow & the best character is, essentially, a crazy person. But for all its week-to-week monster chasing, Fringe has always excelled in telling very human stories about its characters within the frame of its sci-fi universe.

In that way, it’s a lot like Lost. Obviously, it’s a completely different show—I’m still not convinced it was ever a good idea, or even a realistic one, to try to make Fringe more accessible to a larger audience by making the majority of the episodes, particularly in season 1, mostly self-contained stories less dependent on myth-arc. I think that the audience that would watch Fringe is always looking for myth-arc, that’s why we’re there. Monster-of-the-week is great, it’s fun & Fringe does it well. There’s something incredibly entertaining about Fringe’s enthusiasm for general weirdness. But especially as it moves into season 3, I don’t see how they can possibly keep it up. The audience that will tune into Fringe now wants the story to keep going every week.

It is because of the great job that the show has done to grow its characters & to make us care so much about these three people & what they mean to each other that “Over There,” the two-part season 2 finale left me shaken. I wouldn’t say it topped “There’s More Than One of Everything,” the season 1 finale, which had two of the greatest reveals you will ever see on television. But the idea that the Olivia that came back over to our universe with Peter & Walter is not our Olivia at all, but the Olivia of the alternate universe, there to infiltrate our world as part of the Secretary of State Walternate’s ultimate plan to destroy our universe as revenge for Walter taking his son, all those years ago…that’s still a hell of a reveal.

I came out of it with a feeling of dread because the producers certainly weren’t kidding when they said this would be a game-changer. The thing is, a big part of why I like Fringe is the interaction between our three main characters—the “family unit” Peter talked about, before things went south on his & Walter’s relationship. So the idea that that aspect of the show won’t be there, or will certainly be drastically changed, is a scary one. But I applaud them for taking the risk. I have absolutely no idea where they’re going to go next season, but I will definitely be tuning in.

A few final thoughts on “Over There, Part 2″:

• What a chilling final scene with Walternate looking in on Olivia—our Olivia, imprisoned & terrified in complete darkness on the other side. It’s unsettling to realize how long she might be stuck there…there’s no way for our Fringe team to get back “over there” now that the other Cortexiphan kids are all dead, as is William Bell.
• I was very pleased that Bell turned out to be not evil after all. This was a fine send-off for Leonard Nimoy into his retirement. Especially loved his reunion with Walter (“I see you’ve aged.” “It appears I’m not the only one.”) & his arsenal of gadgets of awesomeness that he both geeked out to AltOlivia & AltCharlie to & then used on the AltFringe team.
• I really don’t see how AltOlivia can possibly maintain her cover for long. For one thing, her interactions with Peter after our Olivia went from like a 3 to a 10 on the shipper scale with him in one episode are going to be interesting. Great to see the typewriter communications device to the other side again (who’s receiving those messages? Walternate?), although how did AltOlivia know the procedure to get in touch that way for orders? Didn’t she just learn about our universe like a day ago? And she definitely didn’t know she’d be going there until right before she went.
• How creepy was the alternate universe quarantine procedure? Loved that it turned out to be the amber from “The Ghost Network,” all the way back in episode 3 of season 1. Remember, it was used to trap everyone on a city bus, like mosquitoes in amber. It was creepy then, but is about 45 million times more disturbing when you think about it being used on Madison Square Garden or the entire city of Boston. Especially horrible that they just leave it there, with all those people trapped inside.
• All the performances were excellent. Joshua Jackson has been really impressive with his emotional deliveries in both parts of the finale. Going from his relief & sadness at seeing his real mother to how hurt he was over Walternate’s betrayal of him…he’s just a really good actor. Anna Torv has been criticized a lot for Olivia’s coldness & general lack of relatability, but Olivia & AltOlivia are clearly two separate people & you have to admire how hard that is to play. Plus, come on, that fight scene was awesome. And I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again: John Noble. Emmy nomination. Make it happen. I don’t care if you don’t like genre shows. Watch that scene with him & Bell at the Harvard lab. Just brilliant.
• PS: The video I included at the top is a summer blockbuster-style trailer put together by Fox “for all audiences in THIS UNIVERSE.” Good stuff.

Thoughts on Lost Season 6 Episode 16 What They Died For

-by Amy Yen

It was interesting to see the amount of general disdain for last week’s Jacob/Man in Black origin story. I think what the problem was that it just came too late in the season. This close to the end, the last thing we want is to be introduced to new characters, especially new characters that we are told are vitally important to series mythology. More importantly, especially with a show that is, at the end of the day, built on its characters, the last thing we want is to be taken away from those characters so close to the end of their story. I do think it’s important to tell Jacob & MiB’s story, particularly because it’s central to Jacob’s fireplace-of-death exposition theater this week, but it could have easily been done six episodes ago &, in fact, probably would have been a better payoff.

I also think that, looking back on it, Happily Ever After, the Desmond episode, should have been much earlier in the season than it was as well. That would have made the sideways story much more meaningful much earlier. Desmond’s meddling in all the sideways stories since have been really intriguing, but unfortunately it feels rushed. I think that the producers were a little too in love with the idea of mirroring season 1’s narrative order, putting the character-centric stories in the same order, & failed to recognize that at this point in their overall character arcs, Desmond & Jacob are both more vitally important to the story & more interesting to us as the viewer than Kate or even Jack.

All this being said, this week’s episode was really fantastic &, even though I’ve found it maybe a little uneven, I’ve still enjoyed watching Lost every week this season. It’s more that I want it to be perfect so badly. That’s just unrealistic. For the most part, I think that I’m able to just enjoy the ride. I still a lot of faith in Team Darlton that they’re going to deliver a satisfactory ending, or as much as one is possible in a show like Lost. Butterflies, y’all. Seriously, Sunday cannot come fast enough.

Assorted thoughts on “What They Died For”:

• “What They Died For” was a great episode in its own right, but what it did really well was set up the finale perfectly. We know where both the Island storyline & the sideways storyline are headed: a showdown by the light & a confrontation at the concert, respectively. This reminds me a lot of why the season 4 finale was so great…it was built up to, in that case when we knew what the end is supposed to be (six specific castaways getting off the Island, but not the others), watching the chess pieces that were scattered all over the place to start the episode slowly coming together. With this kind of set up, things are looking really good for  Sunday.
• Jacob’s fireplace-of-death exposition theatre. Um. So, why did he burn his ashes & put a timer on his Candidate pitch again? Was burning the ashes the only way to make himself visible to the others besides Hurley? Bravo for getting all that into like 20 minutes though. Mark Pellegrino makes his presumable exit here, which marks his second departure in less than a week off a major genre show where he was playing a mythological giant of a character. He’s been great, I’ve really enjoyed him on both shows.
• “I didn’t pluck any of you out of a happy existence. You were all flawed. I chose you because you needed the Island as much as it needed you.” Can’t really argue with you there. Although, there’s a lot off about Jacob’s whole Team Free Will philosophy, the main thing being that none of them chose to be on the Island, in the position to be a Candidate in the first place. Jacob by his own admission chose them to come here.
• Regardless of the holes, there’s something admirable about Jacob’s insistence on giving them a choice, because he never got one. Because it’s not just that he’s fighting Mother & what she basically bullied him into doing all that time ago, it’s like he’s fighting the show itself, which has always been centered on the idea of destiny.
• I actually liked the explanation for why Kate’s name was crossed off. I also liked that the line of chalk through her name doesn’t mean anything really, it’s just that Jacob crossing her name off his own list of candidates because he thought she would never say yes. Why bother considering her further? I wonder how the same logic worked for the other people who were crossed out even though they’re still around, specifically, Miles.
• Jack is the one. The fact that he chooses it & that it happened in this episode instead of the finale tells me it can’t be that easy. However, if any of them were to be Jacob’s true replacement, wouldn’t it have to be Jack? Wouldn’t it always have had to be Jack? “Now, you’re like me.” I actually like that we can see it in Jack, I don’t know necessarily that we saw Jacob get it immediately last week.
• I hate the un-redemption of Ben. What the hell? I mean, yes, Ben has become a whole lot less interesting on the Island since he lost all his power, but I really liked where his character ended up at the end of “Dr Linus.” I guess I’m a little annoyed to see that undone, although that was an open storyline that hasn’t been tied up yet. Actually, Ben’s flashfoward in season 4, where he says to Widmore that he knows he can’t kill him & when he vows to kill Penny because Widmore killed Alex, was that the first reference to The Rules? Why did Ben & Widmore think the Rule about killing each other extended to them?
• Interesting that the initial thing Flocke promises Ben to get his help is the Island back, but at the end of the episode, he tells him he intends to destroy the Island. I suppose it doesn’t matter, since it’s pretty clear Ben’s motivation was to get his revenge on Widmore.
• I continue to love the lingering effects of Alex’s death on Ben. His quiet thank you to Richard for burying her body, how inexplicably much the idea that Alex, in the flashsideways, thinks of him as a father figure, means to him. (PS: How awesome was it to see Rousseau again?)
• Flashsideways! Ben has his flash to the other reality this episode. It’s to when Desmond is beating him senseless after he shot him too. Loved the quiet moment later, when he looks at himself in the mirror & doesn’t quite know who he’s looking at.
• So Jacob was the one who told Widmore to go back to the Island, “reinvited” him in fact, & told him Desmond was a “fail-safe.” Jacob’s last resort to stop the Man in Black from leaving. In season 2, Desmond turned the fail-safe when Locke, telling him he’d “saved them all,” instead almost caused a global catastrophe by destroying the computer & not pushing the button.
• Desmond turning the fail-safe caused everything to white-out, which was the same thing that happened when Juliet set off Jughead at the end of season 5. The Man in Black, wearing John Locke, knowing Desmond is the fail-safe this time, thinks he can destroy the Island with his help. This has all happened before.
• At the same time, in the flashsideways, Desmond is also the key. He’s getting a lot of our 815-ers in one place at one time. I’m betting even James Ford will be dragged along to this shindig. My prediction is that Jack’s ex-wife will be Juliet, who James Ford will ask to coffee. They can go dutch.
• Des purposely or indirectly pushes Locke to finally let Jack fix him. “I think you’re mistaking coincidence for fate,” Jack tells him, although even Jack has remember how many 815-ers he’s been running into lately.
• PS: What’s the deal with Jack’s recurring bleeding neck?
• Loved that Ana Lucia showed up as the corrupt (she did let Sayid & his multiple homicides go) cop in the sideways storyline & that Hurley recognized her. “She’s not coming with us?” “She’s not ready yet.” What’s “ready”? Seriously. Because Mrs Hawking thought Des wasn’t ready & he looks plenty ready to me.
• Finally, RIP Richard Alpert. I think. If that’s it, what a bleh ending for what was such a fascinating character for so long. It seems wrong. However, as soon as he said Flocke was just trying to get him to go with him, I totally called it. He still thought it was about him, when I don’t know that he was ever that important to the Man in Black once he let Jacob speak to him (look at what he did to Zoe as soon as Widmore told her not to talk to him). If someone like Richard Alpert can die, wouldn’t it be now?

Okay. You can go on & on with an episode like this. See you Sunday.

Thoughts on Lost Season 6 Episode 15 Across the Sea

-by Amy Yen

Let me just tell you how intimidating it is to be in the stretch run of the final season of probably the most complicated mythology-based show in the history of television & to read a bunch of previews for tonight’s episode going like “Allison Janney is guest starring” & “you better study & dissect every word that comes out of her mouth because it’s all absolutely critical to your understanding of the meaning of the series as a whole.”

…Wow. It’s because of stuff like this that I’m glad I’m no longer attempting to live-blog Lost, since you know this would be one of those episodes where I’d miss a crucial piece of information because I was typing furiously & then I’d get nasty, unnecessary comments about how I’m a fraud of a fan. Because, OMG they weren’t exaggerating! Basically for this episode, they pulled Allison Janney away from the recurring guest role on In Plain Sight that is completely beneath her, put her in a horrible-looking wig & ugly clothes & gave her one hour of exposition to explain the entire underlying basis of the mythology of the show. Seriously, I kind of felt bad for her.

What I liked about the story of Jacob & the Man in Black is that the Man in Black’s motivation for his obsession for getting off the Island is deceivingly simple & believable. He’s brought up to believe there’s nothing beyond the Island & then one day finds out that there is & in fact, he’s from there. He wants to go home. Ironically, in his quest, he chooses to go live with people, which teaches him to look at people with disdain. To see them for who his Mother told him they were. Meanwhile, Jacob, who retains such blind faith in his mother throughout the first part of the story, wants to believes that men are innately good. “Easy for you to say. Looking down at us from above,” the Man in Black tells him.

Interestingly, in a show in which everyone has daddy issues, Jacob & the Man in Black have mommy issues. The Man in Black tells Kate his mother was insane…this is clear. But what I didn’t see coming was that the Man in Black was the favored son, the one who was always told he was special. Jacob was the second choice all along. Mark Pellegrino as Jacob has mostly been tremendously calm when we’ve seen him, but we see here that he is incredibly damaged. In the scene with Mother by the light, he is at once a grown man & a hurt little kid, so betrayed by the mother he loved so much, who he always defended & chose over the brother she always loved better.

“It was always supposed to be you. One day, you’ll see that too, but until then, you don’t really have a choice,” Mother tells him. Jacob said repeatedly, to everyone who will listen that they always have a choice. Fate versus free will & all that. But in that crucial moment, he didn’t, not really. I’m betting that when he finds his replacement, he’ll want it to be a choice too. But it probably won’t be.

Other thoughts on “Across the Sea”:

• Of course the one Big Question that got a Definitive Answer in this episode was who Adam & Eve are. I actually liked this explanation since they missed the opportunity to make them some of the Losties during the time flash season. The final scene is lovely, Jacob joining their hands in death. Much later (which we’re hit over the head with because the writers or producers or likely ABC believes their audience to be morons who can’t remember a huge piece of mythology introduced five years ago), Jack & Kate find the black & white stones in the cave & John Locke is the one that gives them their names.
• With all the explanations & answers in the episode, there are still some gaping holes. We now know how the Man in Black became the Smoke Monster, but we still don’t know why exactly getting sucked into the light does that. We know the Man in Black can’t leave the Island but we don’t know why Jacob can & how. We know how the frozen donkey wheel got into Charlotte’s well that eventually became the Orchid station, but we still don’t know why exactly the mechanism for getting off the Island with it apparently transports you across the globe to Tunisia. We now that Mother made it so Jacob and the Man in Black can’t hurt each other but we don’t know why it’s possible with that special dagger if you can get someone else to use it without letting the other guy speak.
• Thinking about it, it’s sad how similar Jacob & Ben are. It really makes me feel like Jacob had to have wanted Ben to kill him in The Incident, because he never would have been so cold to Ben otherwise. “What about ME?” Jacob knows exactly how Ben feels.
• How long ago did all this happen anyway? By the time we see Jacob & the Man in Black at the beginning of The Incident (presumably 1867 when the Black Rock crashed on the Island), Jacob seems like he’s totally accepted his role & is his usual, calm self. We still don’t know how long Jacob has been bringing people to the Island & looking for his replacement.
• Did we all enjoy how both Mother & Claudia conveniently spoke perfect American English?
• Allison Janney was as impressive as ever, if only because of the sheer amount of exposition her character was forced to spew in such a short amount of time. It really was exhausting listening to her.
• “I only picked one name.” I find it both sad & poetic that Mother didn’t seem to choose a name for the second child either. Also, it’s striking to the point where it kind of hits us over the head that Jacob always wears light (like Mother) and the Man in Black always wears black.
• Jacob drinks the wine & the Man in Black loses his human form at the ages we see them (aka as Mark Pellegrino & Titus Welliver), keeping them at this age indefinitely. Like Richard Alpert, frozen at the age he meets Jacob. We see that young Jacob is the kid that the Man in Black has seen in the jungle this season. Why do we first see this kid with blood on his arms? Also, he reminds the Man in Black of the “rules” (that he can’t kill Sawyer because he’s a Candidate). Are these rules ones Jacob makes up, like the Man in Black told him to do as a kid? (“One day you can make up your own game & everyone will have to follow your rules.”)
• Jacob & the Man in Black play Senet, a game whose actual rules are a matter of debate.

Thoughts on Lost Season 6 Episode 14 The Candidate

-by Amy Yen

Y’all. Things just got serious. Holy crap. The last half hour of this episode was exactly what I think I’ve been waiting for in this last block of episodes. There’s so little time left…things really have to start moving forward. People really need to start dying. In droves, it turns out. And yes, it sucks & I’m sad. I’m annoyed that Frank (presumably) died such a trivial death & no one even asked after him after the survivors make it back to the beach. Frank is awesome & I kept waiting for them to do something more with him (there’s still a chance he’ll resurface in the sideways-verse!) but in the end, he was too much a fringe character to still have around this late in the game. The way this season has been set up, I think it’s going to come down to the season 1 old school Oceanic 815 characters in the end. It’s the reason the writers conveniently separated out Richard Alpert’s group for the last few episodes, even though Miles, Ben & Alpert are three of the most compelling later season characters on the show. Even Desmond, arguably the most interesting & complex character left on the show, has been sidelined since his centric episode.

Sayid’s death was actually much more satisfying than I would have thought, considering his character—the Sayid we’ve known for five years—has been functionally dead for most of the season. “You can always bring someone back from the dark side,” said Hurley once. The Sayid on the sub, technical genius Sayid, felt like the Sayid we knew. So maybe Desmond did bring him back, just in time to give the group a chance. To tell Jack that crucial information. “Because it’s going to be you, Jack.”

The deeper we get, the more I think he’s right. Lost has no main character, but if it did, it’d probably be Jack. It was nice to see Leader!Jack make his return—his real return, not his crazy desperate-Faraday-plan-following return. I think we maybe haven’t seen this Jack since the freighter arrived. “John Locke told me I needed to stay.” What a great reversal from season 1. Who would have thought it’s ever come to Jack being the only one left who wanted to stay?

I’m saving Sun & Jin for last again, because come on. That was a lovely death scene. I’m not particularly happy about the way both of these characters, but Sun in particular, have gotten so little to do the last few years. I still cared about them, but it says more about the quality of these two actors than their storyline. But I liked their death scene because it wasn’t logical, it was emotional. “I won’t leave you. I will never leave you again.” They waited for each other for so long, of course he wouldn’t. He could never go back to his life, whatever life it was, without her. They kiss, with their wedding rings on, & don’t separate until the water draws them apart.

Other thoughts on “The Candidate”:

• Previously on Lost…a hiatus? Really, ABC? Okay, so at first I thought this was totally a stupid move because Glee just came back & it just seemed like unnecessarily risking losing audience. But let’s be real, there are five hours left, people who are watching Lost are coming back to see this sucker through to the end. Therefore, I just think it was a stupid move for stupid move’s sake, which I don’t understand because remember how they were set on a premiere date so that the season could run straight through, in fact they were so set that Obama freaking moved his State of the Union address so it wouldn’t conflict?
• I liked how we saw Jin one last time, passing John Locke in the hospital hallways in the flash-sideways, taking flowers to his wife. It was a nice reminder that, in that reality at least, they got their happy ending.
• Okay, I’m sorry, but it totally SUCKS that Sun & Jin & Sayid & Lapidus are dead & somehow, Kate is still alive, despite being shot in the chest & not even freaking being a Candidate! LAME. OMG, Lost writers, please, oh please don’t try to conclude the stupid love triangle storyline before this sucker ends. It’s not worth anybody’s time, just let it go & kill her already!
• It’s kind of sad that this was kind of the end of Sawyer’s residual leadership on the Island. He was boss for three years in Dharmaville & for a lot of this season, he was still in control, playing everyone around him, issuing orders to Jack, of all people, two episodes in a row. “We’re going to be okay. You just have to trust me.” “Sorry, Doc, I don’t.” Sawyer plays his last hand & it’s the wrong call. When it gets to the thick of things, he’s knocked out of the game & Jack has to save him. It’s sad, because I liked Jim LaFleur, the confident leader. I hope Sawyer gets his happy ending in the sideways-verse too.
• The sideways story this week was mostly just depressing, but it did serve to clue Jack in that he’s meeting people from Oceanic 815 left & right…without Desmond’s help even (as far as we know). Locke’s dentist was Bernard! Who remembers Jack “flirting” with Rose on the plane, heh.
• “Because I think you’re a Candidate.” Oh, irony.
• Christian Shephard leaves Rousseau’s music box, or some version of it, to Claire. In the original timeline, it was broken by Ben when he stole Alex, leaving Rousseau alone. Claire is abandoned again in this episode (seriously, are they trying to break what little sanity she has left?) & she’s left following Flocke again, because there’s no one else.
• “Push the button,” says Sideways!Locke in his sleep.
• Did you notice Jack buy an Apollo bar from the same vending machine he was fighting with when he first met Jacob?
• After watching stuff like Flocke breaking Widmore’s men’s necks, it’s just really hard to see how they might turn this around & make Flocke the good one of him & Jacob. It might turn out that Jacob is also not exactly good, but I can’t see the Man in Black as anything but evil. There doesn’t seem to be anything ambiguous left about that. But that’s just me. And yes, I’m aware that’s too simple for Lost.
• Okay, so we know Jack’s group, which is down to three Candidates, needs to go retrieve Desmond from the well. Also, there’s no way Alpert’s group doesn’t come into play again. Also, Widmore & Zoe & whoever else on Widmore’s crew he didn’t send to their death are still out there somewhere (who knows where the hell they were when Flocke’s group was stealing their way off the Island). And of course there’s Claire & the Man in Black. Four hours left now.
• ABC has agreed to expand the two-hour finale another half hour, so the finale Lost ever will now be Sunday, May 23 from 9-11:30pm. It’s going to be glorious. Also, remember, next week is the highly anticipated Jacob/Man in Black-centric episode! CANNOT WAIT.

Bloomberg Businessweek Rebrand Goes Black and White

-by Amy Yen

Got my Businessweek in the mail today with the promised, somewhat unnecessary IMO rebrand to “Bloomberg Businessweek” in full effect:

There’s nothing really wrong with Bloomberg adding their name following their acquisition of Businessweek back in October. Both are perfectly respected business brands. The identity work is little bleh. I find the lack of the red color bar makes the cover a lot less instantly recognizable & makes the magazine seem a lot more of a financial trade rather than a mainstream news type publication. Which is interesting considering the goal of the rebrand was apparently to broaden the audience of the magazine.

From a communications standpoint, I know that BusinessWeek had been losing money lately, but I have really liked their presence online & am sad to see Steve Baker in particular moving on from their Blogspotting blog. It will be interesting to see how their content changes with their new look.

Thoughts on Lost Season 6 Episode 13 The Last Recruit

-Amy Yen

“You decided the moment you let him talk to you. Whether you like it or not, you’re with him now.”

It’s all kind of fuzzy now, because of all those stories in between, but way back when in season 1, didn’t it come down to Man of Science, Man of Faith? Jack Shephard & John Locke, whose original stances wavered & switched over the years. “John Locke was not a believer,” the thing wearing Locke’s meat suit tells him, “He was a sucker.”

Jack Shephard once followed the Man in Black to water. When he staggers out of the water again, it’s at the Man in Black’s feet. The truth is, I don’t think Jack knows what to think. “The Island isn’t done with us yet,” he parrots Mrs Hawking at Sawyer because he can’t shake that horrible feeling that he’s missing something here. Why go through all of this, everything they’ve been through, why come back, if there wasn’t something more to it? The Man of Science never wouldn’t have thought that. But then, the Man of Science never would have come back to the Island to begin with. Because it’s illogical & completely insane. The truth is, Jack Shephard hasn’t really been a Man of Science for a while now. And he & Locke were always more similar than they thought they were.

The thing is, I don’t know what he thinks he’s accomplishing by bailing on Sawyer’s group then. He’s not taking anyone with him & he’s going back to a group whose goal is also to get off the Island. I guess what I’m saying is, what the hell was your plan, Jack?

But enough about Jack, I can’t not talk about Sun & Jin any longer. Because yes, obviously I saw the trailers—nice try trying to ruin it, ABC promo department—so I knew it was coming, but I still totally jumped out of my seat & started yelling at the TV, “OMG! IT’S JIN!! IT’S JIN!! YES!! YES!!” Because it felt like a happy ending, even if it only lasted for a moment (stupid, back-stabbing Widmore!). It was poetic, because in the flashsideways, Sun lives & the baby is okay & Keamy’s dead & they don’t have anything, but they have each other. And in the Island reality, Sun tells him she never stopped looking for him & then, Jin, that idiot, tells her, “We’ll never be apart again. I promise you.” And OMG, he didn’t mean that! No! Take it back! Don’t listen to him, Lost gods! Because seriously, SHUT UP, JIN. Don’t you remember what happened to the last guy who said that on this show?

Other thoughts on “The Last Recruit”:

• Jack & Claire meet in both realities this episode. In the flashsideways-verse, Claire is assaulted by super-creepy-on-a-mission Desmond (seriously, can you not be on a mission in a subtler fashion, Des?) & eventually convinced to go see Des’s lawyer: Ilana. Who happens to be looking for her because she’s meeting with Jack to read Christian Shephard’s will! (“Do you believe in fate?”)
• In the Island reality, he hasn’t seen Claire since he found out off-Island that she was his sister. Their reunion is actually rather sweet. Of course, then three minutes after she tells him she trusts Locke because “he’s the only one who didn’t abandon me,” Jack abandons her again! Worst. Brother. Ever.
• I loved Flashsideways!Jack’s mended relationship with his son. They’re completely different than we saw them earlier in the season, they are on a completely different level of understanding. David’s “I’m sad for you” & “Good luck, Dad” lines were just so lovely, I almost wish he was in the original timeline so we could have seen more of them together.
• “I’m sorry I got Juliet killed.” Aw. Not that Sawyer’s rage will be comforted at all by it, but it’s sad that Jack has so, so many regrets. The show has basically chosen to ignore it, but it wasn’t that long ago that Jack & Juliet kissed in the light & stood together against Ben.
• With all of James Ford’s pseudo-flirting & talk about fate with Kate in the flashsideways, I’m extremely pleased he didn’t have a Daniel/Hurley/Charlie/Desmond-esque flash-of-realization-and-remembrance. I’m still holding tight to the idea that the producers should know by now that Sawyer’s great love is, must be, Juliet.
• I didn’t notice, but it’s been pointed out, the folks in the flashsideways-verse who remember the original reality first are the ones who are dead in the original reality. Interesting.
• Okay, so the Man in Black was Christian Shephard when we saw him in the Island. But what about when Jack saw him off the Island?
• This week’s previouslys covered almost every flashsideways story we’ve seen so far, with good reason. Detective James Ford cockily & possibly illegally interrogates the fugitive Kate Austen, who susses out that James let her go in the elevator at the airport because he went to Australia & didn’t want anyone to know. Touche, Kate. That makes perfect sense. James & Miles then go arrest Sayid for the whole triple homicide at Keamy’s restaurant.
• Meanwhile, in the Island reality, Sayid totally doesn’t kill Des. “I just shot an unarmed man. I needed a moment.” Flocke is of course suspicious because since when has Sayid ever needed a moment?
• “You, me, Jack, Hurley, Sun & the pilot who looks like he just stepped off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie.” HA!
• Wow, people move around a lot on this Island. In one week, the Man in Black gains essentially everyone he needs. Then he immediately loses almost all of them.
• “Looks like someone got her voice back.” Good point, Frank, I didn’t even notice! I wonder how that works. Pretty sure that’s not scientific.
• I somehow didn’t realize until they were sailing, the yacht was The Elizabeth.
• “You can always bring people back from the dark side! Look at Anakin.” HA! It all comes back to Star Wars, doesn’t it?