A Tale Of Two Cities [LOST - S3:E1]
Once again - the eye opens the show...I haven't really caught onto the significance of that yet, but there must be something to it. Something along the lines of "the eyes are the windows to the soul". Although it was interesting - the first season begins with Jack opening his eye and the focus of the episodes were on the survivors from their perspective. The second season begins with Desmond opening his eye and the focus is from the perspective of the hatch - most everything revolved around that central theme. Now, we have the third season beginning with the opening of Juliette's eye - so I'm guessing that the perspective will be focused more on the perspective of the Others.
Anyway, I don't think Season 3 disappointed in it's opener. They psychological games that they are playing the Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are very interesting. They have totally left Sawyer to his own wits so far and they tricked him into a false escape (I think the person (Carl?) in the other cell was an Other) to show that there was no getting away. I think the entire thing was a ploy to play a mind game with Sawyer. With Kate (and Davina pointed this out to me) the dress they gave her isn't very "jungle" friendly, therefore less chance that she would try to get away in it. Also, they have already started with the Good-Other/Bad-Other routine with her, with "Zeke" being the Good-Other - tending to her wounds, getting her new clothes to wear, getting her a shower, etc. I'm guessing at some point she is going to bond with him on some level and then he is going to hammer her and break the bond. Jack - they've got him totally isolated from everyone else - that is definitely going to take a toll on him mentally. I think also he is going to fall into some sort of a psychological bond with Juliette and when he is vulnerable, they are going to break him down - he might take the hardest fall out of all three of them by the time this is all said and done.
Some interesting observances from last night were (I'll put the person who made the observation next to it, if it was other than me):
1. When the Others ran outside after the "earthquake", they immediately looked up to the sky (Laure, me)
2. The book club is reading Carrie by Stephen King (if you pause and step frames, there is a shot of Juliette's book where you can read the title. A couple of the other copies appear to be very old, possibly first edition because I don't recognize the cover art.) (Laura)
3. Juliette and Ben are married or "co-habit" their bungalow because when Adam and Juliette are arguing about how much he hates the book, Adam says "Now I know why Ben isn't here..." "The host picks the book, but he wouldn't read this in the bathroom." Then Juliette says, "Adam, I am the host and I love this book." implying that she and Ben live in the house together. (Laura)
4. Then, just before the 'earthquake' (which was the first time Desmond didn't push the button) Juliette says, "Silly of me to select something Ben wouldn't like, here I am thinking free will still exists on this... (insert earthquake here)". I think she was going to say "on this island" but she stopped in the middle of the sentence to run for cover. (Laura)
5. That Juliette and Benry are in a relationship (Laura, Davina)
6. The dossier that they had on Jack, the Others must have on the rest of the passengers as well - Benry wanted a list of everyone from the crash within three days (he ordered Ethan to get it for him). There must be a link between who they decided to take from the crash based on what background information they uncovered. So I wonder what common thread is linking those taken in that way.
Shawn
Anyway, I don't think Season 3 disappointed in it's opener. They psychological games that they are playing the Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are very interesting. They have totally left Sawyer to his own wits so far and they tricked him into a false escape (I think the person (Carl?) in the other cell was an Other) to show that there was no getting away. I think the entire thing was a ploy to play a mind game with Sawyer. With Kate (and Davina pointed this out to me) the dress they gave her isn't very "jungle" friendly, therefore less chance that she would try to get away in it. Also, they have already started with the Good-Other/Bad-Other routine with her, with "Zeke" being the Good-Other - tending to her wounds, getting her new clothes to wear, getting her a shower, etc. I'm guessing at some point she is going to bond with him on some level and then he is going to hammer her and break the bond. Jack - they've got him totally isolated from everyone else - that is definitely going to take a toll on him mentally. I think also he is going to fall into some sort of a psychological bond with Juliette and when he is vulnerable, they are going to break him down - he might take the hardest fall out of all three of them by the time this is all said and done.
Some interesting observances from last night were (I'll put the person who made the observation next to it, if it was other than me):
1. When the Others ran outside after the "earthquake", they immediately looked up to the sky (Laure, me)
2. The book club is reading Carrie by Stephen King (if you pause and step frames, there is a shot of Juliette's book where you can read the title. A couple of the other copies appear to be very old, possibly first edition because I don't recognize the cover art.) (Laura)
3. Juliette and Ben are married or "co-habit" their bungalow because when Adam and Juliette are arguing about how much he hates the book, Adam says "Now I know why Ben isn't here..." "The host picks the book, but he wouldn't read this in the bathroom." Then Juliette says, "Adam, I am the host and I love this book." implying that she and Ben live in the house together. (Laura)
4. Then, just before the 'earthquake' (which was the first time Desmond didn't push the button) Juliette says, "Silly of me to select something Ben wouldn't like, here I am thinking free will still exists on this... (insert earthquake here)". I think she was going to say "on this island" but she stopped in the middle of the sentence to run for cover. (Laura)
5. That Juliette and Benry are in a relationship (Laura, Davina)
6. The dossier that they had on Jack, the Others must have on the rest of the passengers as well - Benry wanted a list of everyone from the crash within three days (he ordered Ethan to get it for him). There must be a link between who they decided to take from the crash based on what background information they uncovered. So I wonder what common thread is linking those taken in that way.
Shawn
posted by Shawn White | 10/05/2006 10:46:00 AM
9 Comments:
Another interesting thing to consider is that we now have a potential explanation for things such as the polar bears and other miscellaneous animals that you wouldn't expect on a tropical island. The holding locations they had Sawer, Kate, and Jack are obviously quite advanced and probably held multiple different types of animals at one point. It does kind of bum me out that it probably wasn't Walt that was manifesting the polar bears though (based on the comic book). Although, if they go into that area further and we discover that they never had polar bears there and he did indeed manifest them, that'd be very interesting too.
To me, the very opening scene in the episode was one of the most profound scenes in the entire series thus far. The idea that suddenly, the others' living area was revealed and we got to see the plane crash and earthquake from their perspective was quite amazing! Wow, very exciting!
One last thing I want to say is that there were a ridiculous amount of commercial breaks last night. Next week, I'll be starting it 30 minutes into it so that the commercials can be skipped over. Watching this show in High Definition is a must!
Thanks Dustin!
Yeah - HD is a must. We don't have it, but we know who does. :)
Thanks again to Dan and Laura for hosting the get together last night - it was fun.
Well, we now can probably infer where the shark with the Dharma logo came from. Do you think it's a real shark or some sort of Blade Runneresque type of deal where you had a difficult time distinguishing between humans and replicants?
It could be where the Polar Bears come from - I thought that last night, but then I also thought, if that is the case - then did Walt "know" about them via whatever power he has? Not that he manifested them, but that he picked up on them mentally and was sort of like a beacon for them.
By the way, here are the first two paragraphs from the opening of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:
"IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever."
Interesting...
Shawn
I thought of the polar bears too, when Tom-fake-beard told Sawyer the bears figured out the food reward in two hours. Another observation from the Others compound is there seems to be a dog house on a porch, but no dogs in the opening scene. I wonder, was Vincent being fed and cared for by one of the Others after the crash and that's why he kept disappearing?
Whoa - i totally missed the doghouse. Good thing it was tivo'd.
Shawn
Here's some more...
1. When Jack is spying on his wife and her boyfriend, Moonlight Serenade is playing on his car radio, which is the song Sayid and Hurley get on the short wave radio on the beach.
2. In one promo abc ran of Sawyer and the other "prisoner" in their cells, Sawyer calls Carl by name before the escape, which he doesn't learn until Tom-no-beard says his name. Then, Carl isn't put back in the cell after his escape attempt... why was he there? Was Sawyer calling him Carl too early a mistake that was corrected in editing, or did they rewrite something and decided to leave Carl more of a mystery?
More to come when I have time to watch...
Sorry, that last post was mine. Somehow the Anonymous button was pushed by accident.
So, can you make out the logo on the shark? I'm just wondering if it's a Pearl, Hydra, or Swan? - not sure if it's swan....
Dan
I am not very good at figuring out Lost things, but here is what I came up with: I noticed that the Other's have CD players, but with "OLD" CD's where as Desmond only had the record player from the 80's in the hatch. Does this mean the others came to the island after the Pearl Hatch experiement started? If that is the case, the Other's may have been on the island for 20 years or so, but were not replaced like the Pearl Hatch dwellers were. Most of the Other's are about 30 years old, so that would mean they have been on the island since they were 10 years old? Or do they have a line to the outside world? How did they get all that information about the survivors, like you see when Juliette has a "file" on Jack's life if they didn't have a like to the ouside world?
Also, I got the impression that Ben and Juliette have a relationship together, but that it is on the "rocks" right now. I don't know if they were married, live together or what though.
Kathleen - good catches. I'm so used to seeing CD's that I didn't really even think about that. I was paying more attention to the era of the music than the media the music was on. that's very interesting.
as far as having a link to the outside world - i think they must because of the file they had on jack, because of how they were living and also because the gave directions to Michael on how to leave. and remember, when Benry first shows up he is coming in the boat from somewhere - presumably off the island.
shawn
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