Sometime in Season 1, LOST fans who cared about the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle split themselves up into two camps:
THE JATERS who wanted Jack and Kate to be together and THE SKATERS who wanted Sawyer and Kate to be together. Well, Kate made her choice last night and while I had believed myself to be too invested in other parts of the show to care, I couldn't help but react way more strongly to that choice than I expected.
I guess I'm a JATER.
I got PISSED that Kate chose Sawyer... not even because of the choice itself but how she revealed it. She basically told Jack when she told him that saving Sawyer was more important than Jack being his own man. It reminds me of that classic moment in The Simpsons when Lisa and Ralph go to the Krusty Special together and Lisa screams at the camera that she is most definitely NOT Ralph's girlfriend. Bart replays a tape of it to Lisa and points out that you can see the exact second Ralph's heart breaks. "Rrrright.... THERE!"
Same thing with last night. You could see Jack's heart breaking RRRIGHT... THERE!
I felt for the guy way more than I thought I would. Why? Because once again the nice guy loses to the outlaw. OUCH.
More later....
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Friday, November 3, 2006
3x05, The Cost of Living
On vacation me and B. have been ripping through Lost Season 1 again. It's very weird watching the show and seeing things seeded then blooming NOW in Season 3.
Anyways...
This was a very moving episode for me. I'd spent twelve years in catholic school. At some point during that time I essentially lost my faith in the traditional Judeo-Christian god for reasons related to what was taught to me, complicated further by what my mother expected me to believe. It's taken a long time to redevelop the sort of Zen Agnostic spirituality I now subscribe to. In between was a wilderness that often left me depressed and angry at myself for never being as "good" as I knew I should be. I didn't find peace until I realized I shouldn't ask myself how "good" I should be -- but how "good" I COULD ACTUALLY be.
And that's where Mr. Eko's fateful decision last Wednesday really hit home. As he so eloquently put it:
"I did not ask for the life I was given but it was given to me nonetheless - and with it I did my best."
Confronting the Monster, he was asked to repent. And he refused. And he paid with his life.
Was this a character who turned to the dark side? Or did he instead accept his limitations, that he could never be as good as his brother Yemi -- that he would always be, as he was on the steps of the church, a priest with blood on his hands? It was this contradiction that wracked Eko with guilt all his life. He sought forgiveness for something that could never be forgiven, not as long as he was trying to be his brother, one who believed in absolute morality. Instead he could only be himself -- not a contradiction, but something else... a happy medium where he could accept murdering a man to spare his brother from doing so himself.
It's a shades of grey morality, yes, but not a relativistic one. It's one that brought peace, one I tried my "best" to develop and ended up being even harder to accept. But that's what Eko's death was about in my mind: acceptance of who you were, the smoke and the light.
*Was Yemi the Monster? I'm pretty sure he was. As I may have pointed out earlier, the Monster downloaded scenes from Eko's life in last season's "The 23rd Psalm". So it could have manifested itself to him as scenes from his past, including his brother. I'm pretty sure this explains Jack seeing Christian alive in "White Rabbit" from Season 1 and Hurley seeing his imaginary friend Dave in "Dave" from Season 2.
*Why did the Monster kill Eko? I guess it comes down to something this season is revealing itself to be about: free will. What's the use of Eko repenting for the sake of repenting when he knows in his heart it does no good. But to the monster, who may indeed have an absolute moral code, this was unacceptable: Eko killed -- he must feel sorry or he must be punished.
BTW, apparently AAA wanted off the show and the producers, tired of him being a nuisance on set, let him go.
*What's the connection to Ben? Ben reveals his plan: to make Jack want to operate on him instead of forcing him to. In Ben's mind he'd rather not have the operation at all than have Jack do it against his free will, or at least Ben's conception of it. Juliet has been making sarcastic comments about free will still existing on the Island. Perhaps Ben has transformed the remnants of the DHARMA Initiative into a Cult of Others (explains the white robes). So what's better: the illusion of free will or seeking a genuine freedom of will that may be impossible to find? Which side is Ben and which is Juliet?
****
Additional Notes on "Every Man for Himself"
*The Bunny Rabbit with the 8 painted on it was a Stephen King reference. Here's the quote from On Writing:
From the chapter entitled:
WHAT WRITING IS
"Telepathy, of course... Look - here's a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.... Do we see the same thing? ...I think we do... The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not a nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room... except we are together. We're close.
We're having a meeting of the minds.
I sent you... a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain *beep* real telepathy... there is a point to be made."
So the writers just linked writing with conning and telepathy BRILLIANT!!!
Anyways...
This was a very moving episode for me. I'd spent twelve years in catholic school. At some point during that time I essentially lost my faith in the traditional Judeo-Christian god for reasons related to what was taught to me, complicated further by what my mother expected me to believe. It's taken a long time to redevelop the sort of Zen Agnostic spirituality I now subscribe to. In between was a wilderness that often left me depressed and angry at myself for never being as "good" as I knew I should be. I didn't find peace until I realized I shouldn't ask myself how "good" I should be -- but how "good" I COULD ACTUALLY be.
And that's where Mr. Eko's fateful decision last Wednesday really hit home. As he so eloquently put it:
"I did not ask for the life I was given but it was given to me nonetheless - and with it I did my best."
Confronting the Monster, he was asked to repent. And he refused. And he paid with his life.
Was this a character who turned to the dark side? Or did he instead accept his limitations, that he could never be as good as his brother Yemi -- that he would always be, as he was on the steps of the church, a priest with blood on his hands? It was this contradiction that wracked Eko with guilt all his life. He sought forgiveness for something that could never be forgiven, not as long as he was trying to be his brother, one who believed in absolute morality. Instead he could only be himself -- not a contradiction, but something else... a happy medium where he could accept murdering a man to spare his brother from doing so himself.
It's a shades of grey morality, yes, but not a relativistic one. It's one that brought peace, one I tried my "best" to develop and ended up being even harder to accept. But that's what Eko's death was about in my mind: acceptance of who you were, the smoke and the light.
*Was Yemi the Monster? I'm pretty sure he was. As I may have pointed out earlier, the Monster downloaded scenes from Eko's life in last season's "The 23rd Psalm". So it could have manifested itself to him as scenes from his past, including his brother. I'm pretty sure this explains Jack seeing Christian alive in "White Rabbit" from Season 1 and Hurley seeing his imaginary friend Dave in "Dave" from Season 2.
*Why did the Monster kill Eko? I guess it comes down to something this season is revealing itself to be about: free will. What's the use of Eko repenting for the sake of repenting when he knows in his heart it does no good. But to the monster, who may indeed have an absolute moral code, this was unacceptable: Eko killed -- he must feel sorry or he must be punished.
BTW, apparently AAA wanted off the show and the producers, tired of him being a nuisance on set, let him go.
*What's the connection to Ben? Ben reveals his plan: to make Jack want to operate on him instead of forcing him to. In Ben's mind he'd rather not have the operation at all than have Jack do it against his free will, or at least Ben's conception of it. Juliet has been making sarcastic comments about free will still existing on the Island. Perhaps Ben has transformed the remnants of the DHARMA Initiative into a Cult of Others (explains the white robes). So what's better: the illusion of free will or seeking a genuine freedom of will that may be impossible to find? Which side is Ben and which is Juliet?
****
Additional Notes on "Every Man for Himself"
*The Bunny Rabbit with the 8 painted on it was a Stephen King reference. Here's the quote from On Writing:
From the chapter entitled:
WHAT WRITING IS
"Telepathy, of course... Look - here's a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.... Do we see the same thing? ...I think we do... The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not a nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room... except we are together. We're close.
We're having a meeting of the minds.
I sent you... a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain *beep* real telepathy... there is a point to be made."
So the writers just linked writing with conning and telepathy BRILLIANT!!!
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