Need I say more?

Two Timestreams

Interesting bits from EW's Feb 2 interview with Lindelof and Cuse:

when asked how long has the flash sideways been planned:

Lindelof -

" It’s been in play for at least a couple of years. We knew that the ending of the time travel season was going to be an attempt to reboot. And as a result, we [knew] the audience was going to come out of the “do-over moment” thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story."

Cuse - "You can just watch the flash sideways — they stand alone all by themselves."

Lindelof - " What we’re trying to do there is basically say to you, “God bless the survivors of Oceanic 815, because they’re so self-centered, they thought the only effect [of detonating the bomb] was going to be that their plane never crashes.” But they don’t stop to think, “If we do this in 1977, what else is going to affected by this?” So that their entire lives can be changed radically. "

So this stuff has already been well established -- The LAX Bizzaro world version of things is a thought experiment of "WHAT IF."

But the next thing that caught my eye was this:

Cuse - " The archetypes of the characters are the same and that’s the most significant thing."

He's saying that there are aspects of the characters that are the same, but it is not the same person. This is a really minute distinction, but it denotes an important way of thinking about the characters on the part of the writers. Kate in Bizzaro world is not the same Kate on Craphole Island. You could have said that is the same Kate -- just in different circumstances, but this is not what Cuse is saying. Cuse is endorsing the idea that a person is the sum of the choices that they have made and the experiences that they have had. That sum has created an entirely different person -- they share certain "archtypal" characteristics, but they are not clones. They have different thoughts and personalities. They would probably have quite different responses to identical problems. They might not even like one another if they met.

and finally

Lindelof - "we don’t use the phrase “alternate reality,” because to call one of them an “alternate reality” is to infer that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real."

CUSE - "But the questions you’re asking are exactly the right questions. What are we to make of the fact that they’re showing us two different timelines? Are they going to resolve? Are they going to connect? Are they going to co-exist in parallel fashion? Are they going to cross? Do they intersect? Does one prove to be viable and the other one not? I think those are all the kind of speculations that are the right speculations to be having at this point in the season."

LINDELOF - "These questions will be dealt with on the show. Should you infer that the detonation of Jughead is what sunk the island? Who knows? But there’s the Foot. What do you get when you see that shot? It looks like New Otherton got built. These little clues [might help you] extrapolate when the Island may have sunk."


So
They are drawing attention to the idea that there is a sunken island in Bizarro World, but not in the other timeline. Lindelof at the end there is drawing explicit attention to the fact that the Island in Flocke's World is pretty much the same.

If I had to guess, I'd say he's hinting that the bomb going off sunk the Island, and therefore if the Island is not sunk in Flocke's World, maybe the detonation didn't happen in that world. Juliet said "it worked." This probably indicates an awareness on her part that the detonation did happen, in 1977, and Bizarro World is the aftermath of that event.

The mystery (according to Cuse) is how do the two timestreams intersect. It did not appear that the Bizarro World Locke and Shephard knew each other at the airport, so it's probably also safe to assume that Jack doesn't remember Locke dying, probably because that Locke didn't.

Apparently, "our" Sawyer and Juliet blew up Jughead in the 1977 of Bizarro World.

EW columnist proves he didn't sleep through Philosophy 101

This guy on EW calls himself "Doc" Jensen, he references Leibniz and posits some interesting questions while simultaneously and deliberately lowering the quality of his discourse by peppering his introduction to these ideas with dood speak. He comes off like an undergraduate who smoked too much dope on a Saturday morning and is trying to impress his friends by haltingly recalling something from a lecture:

"Once upon a time in Germany, a very smart and spiritual man tried to answer a very tricky and troubling question. In a world created by an allegedly benevolent and omnipotent God, why the heck is there suffering and evil? In the world of philosophy, this field of inquiry is called Theodicy, generally defined as an attempt to understand and justify the behavior of God. The genius German dude thought long and hard about this “problem of evil” question and came up with an answer that was unusually heady for the time. He said that despite the existence of evil, this world is actually “the best of all possible worlds,” as if our universe is the least offensive of countless alternatives, or even a pastiche comprised of pieces from the best parts of all. Wild."

The dood was "unusually heady for the time" -- the enlightenment? -- yah dos doods waz kinda slow. Heady like in head shop maybe?

"Over the next 300 years, physicists, philosophers, and science fiction writers have blown out Gottfried Leibniz’s “possible worlds” concept in many different radical, challenging directions to serve all sorts of scientific and intellectual purposes, their various nuanced permutations producing a slough of different, seemingly synonymous yet not necessarily equal terms. Parallel worlds. Many worlds. Alternate realities. Mirror realities. Modal realities. Pocket universes. Bubble universes. And my favorite, “Island universes,” because it reminds me of a TV show I’m supposedly writing about, one that has referenced perhaps the foremost philosopher in this field, David Lewis."

an abrupt change of diction -- wonder which one is closer to the "Doc's" true voice? He seems to have taken a quick tour of Wikipedia.

"Today, there are eggheads who believe that these “island universes” or whatnot are real — that they exist somewhere, as real and concrete as “our world,” inhabited by variations of ourselves. Naturally, this assertion has invited intense debate. Where are these worlds? Can we find them? If so, can we access them? Communicate with them? Visit them? Is there one “official world” and all the others of deviations? Did all these worlds pop into being at the same time, or do we continually create new worlds with every choice and non-choice? If so, do the other versions of you that exist across the multiverse of worlds create new worlds with their choices and non-choices, too? And who are these other “yous,” anyway? Are you separate, unique individuals? Do you share consciousness and/or a soul? Are you and your other yous destined to reach similar fates, played out through different events or circumstances? Are you and your other yous unique entities with unique destinies? Yes? No? Who knows? What does any of this Fringe-sounding s— have anything to do with Lost?!?!"

maybe this the real Doc? a little dood speak, a little of the erudite voice from the second paragraph -- still trying to distance himself from the deplorable "eggheads" while at the same time trip'n on their "egghead" ideas he skimmed out of Wikipedia.

He does deserve credit for injecting this stuff into EW, but I have no idea how much of it is merely shiny bits of glitter from the echo chamber. I'll read some more of his stuff.

Caught in the Maze?

Hey Nobody!

How ya been? Can't tell you how disheartening it is to write for an audience of zero, but here we go anyway. Movie Blogs are the thing right now, but seeing as how movies are ten bucks and television is free -- what cha going to do?

Lets go retro. I'm going to do a little looking back at the beginning of the last season of the television show Lost. The show seems to be limping out to the whimper -- rather than galloping towards the bang -- and I don't see people excited about it out there in the world the way they used to be (back when it was the water cooler show).

Maybe all that's left is to look for the place where they jumped the shark. I don't think the flash sideways is that place. I think the flash sideways is the dregs of what's left after they crashed and burned through that place. The flash sideways is just the tail end of beating the dead horse. A desperate move from desperate people.

Let's look at what Heather Havrilesky (one of my favorite television commentators) wrote at the beginning of the season:

"How did a character-driven drama with metaphysical undertones and a sociopolitical allegory at its core slowly devolve into a maze of dead ends and lingering questions? And how is it that every question posed on "Lost" is answered with another question?"

and also

"So even as the questions fly about, we're just biding time, because all of the various folds that made this show intriguing – character studies, well-scripted flashbacks, unpredictable power struggles, retro eeriness that conjured up the Milgram obedience experiment – all of these things are flattened out into Good vs. Evil. In fact, everything about the current course of events feels like a retread of a really bad Indiana Jones movie ("Indy, cover your heart!")."

So, she begins by discussing what she sees as the collapse of the show. She doesn't use the word "collapse," but I'd say it's safe to use it in place of slow devolution. Havrilesky seems to be basically reading things in the same way that Nussbaum did. What was once exciting because of it's complexity and subtlety, is becoming increasingly, for Harilesky, simplistic -- a bad Indiana Jones movie (so any of the sequels then?).

Perhaps the show is collapsing because of its own modus operandi. Initially founded in subtle characterization and complex relationships between the characters, the show is turning back to two-dimensional stereo-types and genre place-holders -- especially in the flash sideways universe. Maybe now, there just too many characters, too much back story. Many critics complain the show in this final season is demonstrating an over-fondness for exposition and even repetition of previous exposition, but these are artifacts of the commercial nature of television. The show must remain accessible to the casual viewer who has not obsessively watched and re-watched each episode and poured over each little tidbit. And because it must maintain this accessibility, the show also seems to be polishing the finer details out of its formerly complex and nuanced characters. The writers could have included a great deal more detail and subtly, if not for the (possibly disastrous) decision to devote half of their remaining hours to the unexplained flash sideways mirror universe.

The U.S. is stuck in the Cold War?

from: Salon


"Thus began the Grand Bargain at the heart of U.S. Cold War strategy toward West Germany and Japan, the "markets-for-bases" swap. In return for giving up an independent foreign policy to their protector, the United States, the West Germans and Japanese would be granted access to American markets (and, in the case of the Germans, access to Western European markets).

"By the 1970s, it was clear that the markets-for-bases swap was a better deal for West Germany and Japan than for the U.S."

. . . .

"A version of the markets-for-bases deal was extended to China, which, it was hoped, would acquiesce in U.S. military hegemony in its own neighborhood, in return for unlimited access to American consumers."

. . . .

"Like postwar Japan and Germany, China has accepted the terms of the bargain America's elites offered, focusing on economic growth while the U.S. wasted blood and treasure on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

. . . .

" . . . for half a century, America's foreign-policy elite tolerated the targeted deindustrialization of America by Asian mercantilist states, as long as those countries did not challenge America's global military hegemony"

. . . .

Lost: a fan worries she’s lost her faith

.
in response to Emily Nussbaum from NYMag.com

" . . . last week’s premiere filled me with dread. What was this wild goose that I had been chasing so loyally for five seasons? Lost is almost finished, with sixteen episodes to go, and I, like any fan, was relieved when ABC set an end date: Now the writers could hammer out a true conclusion, without any more episodes analyzing Jack’s tattoos. They could do a conclusive shake-up on their highly original mix of genres. . . "

I also have my doubts.

I stumbled into this review while wandering the webway, and was immediately intrigued by the title alone, as this echoes my own anxiety towards the conclusion of the series. I am still deeply scarred by the unsatisfactoriness of the BSG conclusion, and in light of the scandalous finalé for the Sopranos (even though I was never much of a fan of that show), I'm growing more and more certain that they will be unable to satisfy me with the conclusion of Lost. I think that there are too many threads running, too many questions hanging for Lindelof and Cuse to reach an actual dénouement. Ron Moore was (is) very good at the middle part of a series, but the things that make him good at that make him bad at finishing (return to that at a latter date). Lindelof and Cuse may demonstrate a similar problem.

Anyway, that's what attracted me to the article, but I was entranced as soon as I read the first paragraph:

"I first watched Lost in a binge, on DVD, shortly after my older son was born. I’d never recommend that anyone acquire a newborn in order to properly enjoy a television show, but this turns out to be an excellent technique, at least if you want to be imprinted on a series, like a duckling on a goose. Up at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and 6 a.m., with headphones on and the lights low, I experienced the show less as a story than as a loopy, unforgettable dream, the kind that alienates you from strangers when you try to explain the damn thing."

Deeply evocative and moody, Nussbaum conjures up a believable atmosphere with a minimum of sensory detail, the 2am, 4am, 6am repetition stitching into the narrative foreground the repetitiveness, the sleeplessness of caring for a newborn child (reinforced by the use of duckling), giving an immediate impression of the cycle of interrupted sleep, the exhausted bliss of a new parent. Headphones and low light flesh out the intimacy of her initiation into the series, emphasizing her consumption as a deeply personal experience, specifically at the threshold of sleep, one foot in the hallucinatory territory of dreams. Loopy means crazy and wild and pleasant, but it also means cyclical and reinforces the periodic repetition of her experience; it's almost like a brain-washing. She refers to the show as a dream that she had, a declaration of ownership, a profound internalization. She identifies her experience with the show as a thing that separates her from other people (strangers -- whose the strange one?). Almost a spiritual vision. And all of this in the briefest, most economic language possible. That's a good paragraph, equally intimidating and inspiring.

But more to the point, Nussbaum echoes my own apprehension towards the show. She writes that her investment in the show is based more upon the deep characterization then the flashy "structural experimentation." She writes:

"Maybe the writers themselves developed manipulative coping skills. A show can be held captive by its own success, as the audience, roaring for action, smashes at the narrative piñata. But what if what is on the inside is just some stale candy?"

Part of the show's success is based on its ability to generate a sense of amazement in the audience, a bombastic cognitive dissonance. I repeatedly encounter people whose main enjoyment of the show is the sense of pleasurable confusion it leaves them with -- for these people, resolution of the myriad mysteries of the show would be besides the point, even anti-climatic. They might even be more satisfied with a final cliffhanger, in the manner of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, than in any sort of traditional dénouement. Currently, we are three episodes into the final season, and the writers seem to be addicted to capping each show with a WTF moment. They almost seem convinced that answering questions instead of posing them will let the air out of their audience's enthusiasm and leave the series to dribble out indifferently. I think Nussbaum has found Lindelof and Cuse's weak spot. I think they also worry about the prize not being worth the journey.

Nussbaum sees the show undermined by its success. Whereas she originally hoped "that there was something more perverse, more adult, buried beneath, that the show had something to say about guilt, about the way society (and individuals) re-form after a crisis," she now fears that "those themes are gone for good, that the island is just a chess game played by Egyptian gods." She worries that the subtle characterization that initially brought her to the show has been traded for superheroes and stereo-types.

Her dissatisfaction with the show grows from her perception of a deviation from the original journey of the narrative arc. For example, she sees Juliet reduced, "shriveled from a fascinatingly ambiguous player into a beatific sacrificial sweetheart," a disappointing and unexpected shallowing of a admirably complex character, a weakening of a formidable female antagonist, "shriveled," wilted, disgraced even. Juliet, who was once a rare and interesting character, has been whittled down to a plot device, a motivation for Sawyer's heroics.

I have to agree with Nussbaum. I am also worried that the piñata is filled with stale candy. Maybe the flashy, colorful exterior was merely a rube goldberg machine that dissolves into nothing as soon as it stops chirring and spinning in place. Maybe all Lindelof and Cuse ever had was the ability to ask these strange questions, and create a sense of wonder at all of the confusion. They seem to rely on the audience's willingness to interpret the smallest gesture and invest every detail with significance. Perhaps when forced (by the impending terminus) to supply their own answers to the many riddles, there is no way for them to provide answers as wondrous and satisfying as our own speculation. Nussbaum has already seen them pull away from the destination she had hoped for, how many more of us will end up not where we had hoped?

.

Neil Jordon -- Ondine

Neil Jordan's Ondine:



from Rope of Silicone