I kind of simulated the US watching experience by wathcing the first (pre-break) episodes a couple of months ago and then waiting for the season finale before I got into the rest of the season, and devulged it in one piece. I read criticism that people were unsatisfied with the story moving over to the "others"’ place early in the season. I don’t share that feeling – I was actually glad to get at last some less mysterious background on them, some factual knowledge about who they are, what they are up to and where their soft spots are. That was provided, through the backstories on Ben and Juliet, and through that, the whole direction of the show was pushed into a more rational one. While through the previous two seasons, it seemd embarassingly apparent to me that the authors had no idea of where they would lead the show when they drfated the beginning, and that they would need some serious force majeur to get some of the less explainable story elements reapired at some point between now and the show’s end, I now think that the dissatisfaction of many viewers with the show’s occasional arbitrariness has yielded some good results: the total length of the show has been defined (with three more 16-episode seasons to go), and it appears to me that they have also outlined the show’s ending and some ways to get there. That’s good, and the show became more coherent through it. I only hope that they have signatures under all the actors’ contracts they need until the end.
** Now spoilers follow, beware
I wrote the last because an exit as ridiculous as Mister Eko’s is not necessary again, if you want my opinion. Was about as useless as last season’s shooting of the two girls who got into police trouble and needed to get removed from the show (forgot her names: Hurley’s love interest and Sawyer’s sex interest).
Overall findings: I still don’t like the character Kate (Mother Theresa, as I like to call her), and her screwing around with Sawyer is nothing I would appreciate (I am sure she will give him a pillowtalk lecture on philanthropy now and again, the useless bitch). I still think Jack is in general a bit boring, but pretty interesting when under pressure, or drunk, or drugged, or all of this, while doing surgery. Sawyer is getting better and better every day (especially with the edge now that he’s a full-fledged murderer, yessirsonfabitch!), and if he ever gets removed from that show it will be then end of it, sonofabitch. John Locke recovered well from a dull first half-season (maybe also due to the authors’ work on the show’s future story threads and ending?) and has gone from creepy to threatening. Charly’s untimely death is nothing to cry about, the only downside is that he did not take Claire with him, that bore (somebody on a blog wrote that there may be case for Charly coming back into the show through flashbacks, and threatened to kill somebody if it will lead to more replays of the offensively bad hit-single his band had. I already plead for that man’s pardoning). For some reason Sahyd kept a low profile, and I am a bit worried as for the reasons. Is that an exit strategy? Or will he come back with a vengeance, and lead the endfight against a group of "Others" lead by John Locke, after having tortured Jack to death in an effort to retrieve information on the whereabouts of Jack’s father’s body? Just speculating, sorry…
The finale of the season was fun, and for a change I surprised myself by very soon figuring out what all this "flashback" was about. My personal interpretation: one of Desmond’s flashes, nothing more, because there is no way anybody will seriously get off that island before sesaon 6. But let’s be patient and eat a lot of veggies and fruit so we stay healthy and live to see the next season. Sonofabitch!
thomas4cinema 