Hi guys,

The latest edition of Key Points is now available here:

Key Points from "Confidence Man"

I enjoyed Sawyer's backstory -- it had a twist I didn't see coming and I think it adds a dimension to a character that was starting to wear thin.

I'm also interested to see where they go with Sayid -- will we have breakaway shots of him walking around the island, or will he be gone for an extended period of time? Also, what will the ramifications be of the torture session? How will Jack and Sawyer interact?

[This message has been edited by trustno1 (edited 11-11-2004).]

Hey, I'm new here, but I've been following Lost since the beginning. I thought Sawyer's backstory was interesting, though I don't necessarily believe he "grew a heart" upon just seeing the woman's son. But that kiss between him and Kate was hot!

I can't wait to see who Sayid runs into next time. I'm betting it's the French woman....though she had the same curly brown hair as Kate. But maybe that was on purpose to throw us off. Can't wait to finally find out about Kate's backstory.

*Finally*! Something about Sawyer. I'd been wondering if 'Sawyer' was his first or last name, and now I guess, technically, it's neither. I knew that letter would come into play somehow but I was totally thrown by what it revealed. It at least provided a glimpse at why he is the way is and wants to be hated, as Kate pointed out. He's become the man he was after. The torture scene was rough to watch but I did enjoy the scenes between Sawyer and Kate. (I think she obviously relates to him more now.) Very hot kiss. No complaints there. We still don't know what exactly he was doing in Australia though.

I'm also really curious why Locke seemed bent on trying to convince Sayid it was Sawyer who knocked him out, even going so far as to give Sayid a knife to use against Sawyer "in case there's a next time". Right now, I'm going on the assumption that Locke was setting something into motion that he 'knew' had to happen. Who can ever tell with that guy??

And it was good to finally see Claire again. That peanut butter scene with Charlie was awfully cute. I agree, she should be the in cave anyway.

And as much as Shannon bugs me, I really felt for her, seeing her gasping for air. Thank God for Sun and her eucaplytus leaves! Man, she's good.

Overall, another pleasing episode. I, for one, was satisfied.

ORION: Interesting that Sayid said (almost too obviously) that he'll do whatever he has to in order to "find the man" who attacked him when, based on the previews, it does appear to be a woman. There's got to be catch.

Orion: Welcome! Great to have you here.

I think the teaser for next week could be misleading (what? a misleading teaser? surely I jest). Sayid's capture may be part of a backstory, in which case the curly-haired person we catch a glimpse of could be part of his past.

Or not. Who knows with this show?

Interesting episode. It looks like the days of beach dwelling may be coming to an end. With Michael in the valley and Sayid off climbing every mountain and forging every stream, the beach dwellers are running a bit thin.

Locke is starting to give me the major willies. His explanation for how Sawyer could have hit Sayid made no sense. It doesn't matter that you can use a cigarette to light a fuse on time delay. Sawyer had to shoot the rocket *after* Sayid shot his, and he had no way of knowing when this would happen, and almost certainly would be unable to time it to go off within ten seconds of Sayid's. But Locke sounds so convincing, it's easy to make yourself believe him. Is he trying to get people to fight? Other than trying to direct attention away from himself, what motive could he have?

I must be the only person in the world who thinks Sawyer's backstory was "eh". So, he became the man he was looking for...he feels sorry for himself, and wants no pity, so he can have his very own for-one pity-party...

Someone on another forum told me Sawyer is a classic anti-hero. His story just doesn't Wow me, I guess, and to me, it revealed some, but not a whole lot, about who or what he is. He feels he needs to be punished (for his own reasons) -- but I would have liked to have seen MORE. Did he really not give a crap about what happened to the family he left the gangster's money with? He has to atone for that?

To me, there's something still missing for me to feel interested in him or care about why he is the way he is.

The New York Times did a write-up recently on "Lost" which really made me wonder whether the folks who put this show together are going to be able to pull it off in the long term. The NYT story paints a picture of a show that was slapped together at the last minute.

Among other things, the show was greenlighted very late in the production cycle, on the strength of an outline alone, with no scripts having been written or actors cast. Characters were written, or rewritten, to accomodate the available actors--one example used was that hiring Monaghan meant that the character was changed from a middle-aged businessman to a youthful rocker. They started shooting the pilot with less than half the season's scripts finished, etc.

So much for the hope that someone wrote a roadmap for this show. They're making it up as they go along. Cross your fingers, folks, as that approach has proved problematical in the past.

Which leads me to Sawyer's backstory: I felt it was a good idea, poorly executed. Unlike Charlie's flashbacks last week, Sawyer's at least provide us with new information. And the new information is interesting, as it reveals that Sawyer is a walking Greek tragedy. /1/ But the new information lacks the impact it could have had, because the flashbacks focused way too much on the mechanics of the grift, and didn't give us insight into Sawyer's internal demons.

Contrast Sawyer's flashbacks with the extremely well-handled Korean couple flashbacks. The Korean scenes were written in such a way as to maximize emotional nuance, character content, etc. Sawyer's scenes, by contrast, all showed him on the grift, wearing the same facade we know from the island. That was done in service of the payoff tist at the end, but it made his flashbacks a one note exercise.

How much better it would have been if Sawyer's flashbacks focused more on his emotional self-conflict and his need to make the world punish him. You could write them so that the twist slowly reveals, instead of jumping out at you all at once. That's the way the Korean couple flashback was written, and it was much more dramatically successful.

/1/ Although I was reminded of the final scene in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" where a conversation takes place about the best way to end a story about a character who commits murder and gets away with it. Martin Landau, the man with whom Allen is conversing, asserts that the best story ending is that the man eventually gets over his guilt and remorse and lives out a long, happy life (which is what happens to Landau). Woody Allen asserts that the best ending is that the person becomes so wracked with guilt that he can no longer go on living his life, and turns himself in, even though he'd have never been caught, otherwise. In the absence of God, or a universal justice, the man is forced to adopt the role of being his own judge. "That's tragedy", Woody asserts. "No son", the Landau replies, "That's Hollywood. You've been watching too many Hollywood movies."

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Originally posted by trustno1:
I think the teaser for next week could be misleading (what? a misleading teaser? surely I jest). Sayid's capture may be part of a backstory, in which case the curly-haired person we catch a glimpse of could be part of his past.

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You're right on with this one, methinks. I'm also betting that the teaser is material from Sayid's backstory, not his journey on the island.

I'm totally hooked on this show and just signed up for this forum. You all have some interesting observations and theories. How do you feel about this one - that the plane crashed and these people are actually dead? But they all have unfinished business and are spending time on this island until it's sorted. Look at all the baggage the characters have.

And as for all the freaky creatures, etc., they could be the worst fears of some of the passengers.

Whaddya think?

Thank you, DC! I think you've pinpointed to me what I think was lacking. Especially the part about the Woody Allen/Martin Landau conversation in Crime and Misdemeanors. I think the majority of killers/murders get over it. I think they end up NOT feeling deep guilt over what they do. Time heals everything (except death)

I didn't see anything in Sawyer to indicate that he'd ever feel remorse about anything he'd done. Maybe he mourned the vengeful, young kid he once was, but he's long past that now. I really can't see him giving a flying donut hole about the aftereffects he may have caused with that family the flashbacks showed.

His backstory was singularly unsuccessful for me, and I'm STILL not interested in him. As far as I can see for the purpose of his character, it's to supply the other characters with a convenient scapegoat and punching bag. And that's boring.

I would really prefer to see the other side of Jin and Sun's story - Jin's story. I'm sure it's gotta be more interesting than Sawyer's. And what about Hurley? We haven't had ANY indication of why he was in Australia, or why he would be in Australasia in the FIRST place. What gives? I think the TOTB of the show haven't come up with anything for him at all. He doesn't seem to have any conflicts.

I'm starting to wish they'd show the main core cast interacting with some of the secondary/tertiary characters once in a while, for a few lines, so that I get a feel of the other people there.

And Kate is just turning me off, bigtime.

Oh, and welcome, SheDevil! Welcome to the forum!

I was disappointed that the island mystery seems to have taken a back seat in the last two episodes or three. There should still be a feeling of imminent threat, IMO, and it's not there so much anymore. Sayid went off on his walkabout around the island, and lip service was given to the threat in the trees by Kate, but that's been it.

[This message has been edited by Ittot (edited 11-12-2004).]

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Originally posted by SheDevil:
I'm totally hooked on this show and just signed up for this forum. You all have some interesting observations and theories. How do you feel about this one - that the plane crashed and these people are actually dead? But they all have unfinished business and are spending time on this island until it's sorted. Look at all the baggage the characters have.

And as for all the freaky creatures, etc., they could be the worst fears of some of the passengers.

Whaddya think?

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Welcome!

Both of these theories have had substantial discussion devoted to them. You might want to go back and click on some of the earlist threads to read them.

The idea that the 'monsters' are actually manifestations of the suvivors' fears is my own pet theory, which I've dubbed the 'monster of the Id' theory. Even though we've not seen a treetop shake for a couple of episodes now (which Ittot rightly finds grievous) we've seen plenty of people come face to face with their worst fears, including Jin being handcuffed as a criminal, Charlie having to face life without drugs, Shannon's asthma attack and Sayid being pressed into service as a torturer. In each case, the conflict is resolved when someone overcomes fear: Charlie finds resolve after rescuing Jack; Jack talks Shannon down from her attack by stressing her need to control her panic; Jin is freed after Sun overcomes her fear of revealing her secret; Sayid assigns himself to island-mapping duty as pennance for his ethical lapse.

This fits the pattern seen in prior encounters with island monsters. They are always resolved when someone in the dynamic rallies to overcome fear. The single unifying theme so far is that fear is the real enemy to be conquered (and Locke has said as much explicitly).

Ittot, since the next episode is apparently Sayid-centered, and Sayid has walked off into the jungle alone, I expect we'll get back to island-monster mode next week.

Given how uneven the writing is, I'm beginning to wonder how many writers this show has and how the writing assignments are handled. In other prime time dramas with large casts, characters have their own writers or writer teams assigned to them. The quality of the show can become pretty uneven when the characters start to wander off into their own little pods. That's happened on ER (I mention, because I watch it) over the last several seasons.

I also think its true that the producers knew which ideas were great and which weren't. They deliberately put their best foot forward, IMO. The first few eps were amazing stuff (by TV standards). The last few eps are dominated by material more typical of standard TV hack fare. They're leaning on stylistic crutches, in some cases heavily (the flashback and the montage). The remainder of this season might reflect the pressure to simply get the season in the can, if the NYT story is accurate.

But they still have the core of a really great show, and they'd have to drop the ball pretty badly to blow it altogether. I look forward to a more even level of higher quality in a season two, and not a slide to low quality.

Heck, even as badly as the Sawyer character ball was dropped, they could still salvage a sense of intrigue about him. Think about the character arc of Fast Eddie in "The Hustler" (I'm talking the original now, not that POS with Tom Cruise). Fast Eddie looks like a character on the traditional Hollywood path to redemption, but he overreaches. At the end, his emotional craving for validation proves as self-destructive as his prior self-loathing. Real, character-driven tragedy, and a future not foreclosed to Sawyer.

The Sawyer character still has a lot of possibilities. Maybe the people who write for Locke, or the people who write for Sun/Jin will shoot the Sawyer people a memo outlining some of them. They might also shoot the Jack and Kate people some dialogue that didn't come from the high school cafeteria.

Hi guys!

I wandered over here upon your recommendations ... I've only seen the last two episodes, and haven't really had a chance to develp a feel for either the plot or the characters. I must say though, based on those two episodes only, I'd stop watching now. I'm only holding on because I liked what you wrote about the first couple of episodes, and will wait a bit for something intriguing to come along.

So far, that just hasn't happened for me. I have a hard time caring about any of the characters or their history - it is all fairly stereotypical. The only thing I found interesting was the side plot involving the Korean couple. Maybe there's more out there. I'll wait for now.

[This message has been edited by JM115 (edited 11-12-2004).]

Hi JM! Good to see you here!

I'm a little perplexed by the other forum and the uniformly wonderful accolades Lost is getting over there...but when there's not a whole lot of intriguing character driven shows out there, I can understand why.

The writing IS uneven. There ARE good ideas for characters. Some episodes are better than others, tho in a wild arc of ups and downs that leaves me variously on a high, or wanting to get off the rollercoaster cart. I'm with DC on this (see his opinion above: it helps to have a logical lawyer type with great analytical abilities posting here)

Charlie's story was okay. It was a typical sounding rocker's story, nothing extrodinary about him *or* his story, though. Not too many possibilities for debate on motivations on either him OR Sawyer. They're characters seem cut and dried.

Not every character has to be mysterious and odd, like Locke, or Jack. Or have a melodramatic backstory like Jin's. But Jin's interesting, much more interesting than that wet drag Kate is. Who would have thought a gangster's daughter would know about asthma folk treatments, and HOW would she have known that? --just for the record, I DO have asthma, and contrary to what Jack would have the audience believe IT IS NOT IN THE SUFFERER'S MIND, DAMMIT!!!!

That drives me up a wall. People die from asthma, it's a serious disease, and a mentholated poultice isn't going to open up the airways! AUGH!

Comparing Jin to Kate: Jin is showing some depths that Kate can only dream of. Perhaps Jin is benefiting from already having a sexual/marriage partner, and isn't required to Be the Babe. All Kate has shown me so far is that she's good at finding low cut t-shirts to wear, has one or two good expressions, was willing to save a farmer who helped her out even tho that meant she'd lose her freedom...she's losing out bigtime as a good character (IMO) to Jin.

And I'm rambling here.

I really do hope that Sayid runs into the island's weirdness full-on. He IS an interesting character. I don't see how they could screw his backstory up. But they've already hinted bigtime at what he did - or was - before the flight.

Are they dead? Then what about those dead bodies left in the airplane? "Mannequins" of a sort? Those folks had their lives all sorted out? Hmm.

DEEPCOVER wrote: <>

Really?? I'd heard it'd been on the backburner for a long time. Based on how much the pilot cost to make, I can't imagine them just slapping it together last minute.

I agree about Sawyer's flashbacks too, now that you mention it. We didn't really get to see that much deeper into the character.

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Originally posted by Deep Cover:
But the new information lacks the impact it could have had, because the flashbacks focused way too much on the mechanics of the grift, and didn't give us insight into Sawyer's internal demons.

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Well we haven't gotten all that much insight into any of them yet, have we? We don't know what crime Kate committed, we don't know what Jack did to his father to send him packing to Australia, and Locke's been a question mark from day one. I suppose Charlie and the Korean couple are the only ones we've learned more from. I think we did get some insight into Sawyer's inner demons, just not directly in the flashbacks.

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Originally posted by Ittot:
The writing IS uneven. There ARE good ideas for characters. Some episodes are better than others, tho in a wild arc of ups and downs that leaves me variously on a high, or wanting to get off the rollercoaster cart. I'm with DC on this ...

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As for uneven writing - can I remind everyone that not every episode in any of the early seasons of TXF was top-notch. You have to take the good with the bad. It seems to be the nature of series TV. I'm just glad there's finally a show out there that is out of the ordinary and that just might fulfill its potential.

hey i was just wondering if anyone can tell me the artist and name of the song playing at the end of the episode? also what is the name of the willie nelson song at the end of ep 6? thx...

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Originally posted by illumine:
hey i was just wondering if anyone can tell me the artist and name of the song playing at the end of the episode? also what is the name of the willie nelson song at the end of ep 6? thx...

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If you go to the official website under the "Show Info" heading, they have a list of songs used in the episodes. http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/show.html

I'm late to this party.

I can say that I dozed off momentarily during the last two episodes. Don't know if I was just exhausted, or wasn't getting into the story. The musical montages have been a little annoying - like filler to cover up a few missing minutes of story.

I'm hoping this show has a plan, but like DC, I'm having some doubts.

More tomorrow.

hey azure thanks for the info...

I was thoroughly bored with Charlie's episode. I was bored with most of Sawyer's episode too. The twist with Sawyer had me go "hmmm..." but even that passed. I guess the problem is I held such big expectations from the first few episodes, that i felt disappointed that it doesn't seem to be living up to it.

I think lttot got the gist of the problem when he(or she, sorry i don't know ) pointed out that the island mystery has taken the back seat. Not necessarily to suggest that the island itself is a monster, but the first few episodes did such a great job of creating an aura of mystery that permeated the island that it felt as if the island itself was a character, and not just a setting. How that aura was intermingling with intriguing backstories, gave the show a sense of wholeness. The past two backstories, while it might have been interesting individually, somehow just didn't seem to tie in together. I don't know if I'm explaining this very well, but to borrow someone's word, the past two there was something lacking.

I hope this descending arc is just some sort of intended misdirection, to throw us off to something mindblowing. I hope my let down comes back later to bite me in the a$$.