Thursday, April 9, 2009

I SAID CRUEL IS THE RULE, BUT SOMETIMES DEAD IS DEAD: When I post about Lost, I try not to read what anybody else has written about it. I'm guessing, though, that I'm going to be in the minority on "Dead is Dead."

I liked the last two episodes, which returned to the original flashback format, but I think that's at least in part because there had been enough variation in the time structure to make Original Recipe seem fresh. Now, three episodes in, it's starting to show some wear again. I didn't think there was anything particularly surprising last night, either. So basically, how one felt about this episode depended mainly on how much one loves to watch Michael Emerson be Ben Linus.

Me, I didn't love it. I thought that Emerson, or maybe the writers, really underplayed the dread that Ben should have felt throughout the episode (the cheeseball special effects didn't help; nor did the notion that one's age is sufficiently conveyed by the vivacity of one's wig), and I fundamentally disagreed with the direction they decided to take the character. It felt a little like Horn-Rimmed Glasses guy midway through Heroes Season 1, if that makes any sense. And I feel like we've spent enough time with Ben already, so it will be nice next week to get a look inside the one regular for whom we have almost no backstory at all.

Anybody care to enlighten me on the hieroglyphs? And any thoughts on what Locke's plan is?

ETA: I almost forgot -- an episode about Ben, who almost died, and Locke, whose death didn't take, with several vignettes and references involving people who should be dead, were supposed to be dead, or are dead, makes for a good excuse to link to Fienberg's fine -- but extremely spoilery -- rumination on the state of death on television. Read it, but only if you're caught up on all of your shows in which death is an option.

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