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Sep. 19th, 2014 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionLost thoughts turning into Mulholland Drive thoughts:
The diminishing returns with Ethan should have been obvious from the first. His initial uncloseting was amazing - him at the jungle edge was certainly one of the most memorable shots in all of television, but that was context dependent. He could never be that again, which was one reason they immediately killed him in the first place. Presumably ABC's fault rather than the writers? "Ethan worked best, do more Ethan." Genuinely dispiriting, as television has mostly always been. I wonder if in ten years we'll see even Breaking Bad as tarnished by habits from the dark ages? Even the not so great stretches in season 1, the middle of 2 and some sprinklings in 3 tended to fail more in the direction of low energy than comfortable cliche, I'd say; there was plenty of tv cliche toward the beginning, which gradually got replaced by cinema cliche, but it was usually used well - a backdrop from which more interesting things could emerge one by one for controlled consideration. Nevertheless it was amazing to feel the booster rockets fall away.
Lost. The Jacob and bro. scenes are what are keeping interest alive in the beginning of 6, and mostly just those - and soon that element too will be ruined. I like the kevinformatics graphs a lot because of their ridiculous degree of accuracy, at least for comparing series episodes against one another (imdb voters love House and Supernatural to eyebrow raising degrees), at which they're certainly near-flawless where Lost is concerned. I disagree about the Eko episode (anger that he'd died outshouted consideration of how well he was killed). I disagree even more, though, about the upcoming Richard episode, which I remember being the first crippling blow to the show's final area of fascination. Not even Richard, who saw the whole history, proves interesting, and not [..............] does it. Ruining Richard was not something the show could survive.
Because the mystery juice had pooled in him, angry irony intended, and that mystery had to have something interesting surviving its being drained away. The creation myth episode later on you came into assuming it would just extend that disillusionment - which it did, but even if it hadn't it would have been seen that way. The last chance of this meaning something living was lost.
But here he's still got some - his haplessness making him if anything more interesting, as though even his knowledge was being disturbed by the present revelations. Good, we want the present to finally matter in a story. And Ben's confrontation with Jacob was just great: "What about you?" You sympathize with both their points of view, which is fantastic for any murder scene: Jacob, who's essentially planned this, or at least predicted it and worked it into those plans, nevertheless is honest in his contempt. Ben is everything the monster thinks people essentially are.
(Massive text loss just occurred - the iOS update has led to a lot of crashing. I may reconstruct some of it when less irritated.)
The diminishing returns with Ethan should have been obvious from the first. His initial uncloseting was amazing - him at the jungle edge was certainly one of the most memorable shots in all of television, but that was context dependent. He could never be that again, which was one reason they immediately killed him in the first place. Presumably ABC's fault rather than the writers? "Ethan worked best, do more Ethan." Genuinely dispiriting, as television has mostly always been. I wonder if in ten years we'll see even Breaking Bad as tarnished by habits from the dark ages? Even the not so great stretches in season 1, the middle of 2 and some sprinklings in 3 tended to fail more in the direction of low energy than comfortable cliche, I'd say; there was plenty of tv cliche toward the beginning, which gradually got replaced by cinema cliche, but it was usually used well - a backdrop from which more interesting things could emerge one by one for controlled consideration. Nevertheless it was amazing to feel the booster rockets fall away.
Lost. The Jacob and bro. scenes are what are keeping interest alive in the beginning of 6, and mostly just those - and soon that element too will be ruined. I like the kevinformatics graphs a lot because of their ridiculous degree of accuracy, at least for comparing series episodes against one another (imdb voters love House and Supernatural to eyebrow raising degrees), at which they're certainly near-flawless where Lost is concerned. I disagree about the Eko episode (anger that he'd died outshouted consideration of how well he was killed). I disagree even more, though, about the upcoming Richard episode, which I remember being the first crippling blow to the show's final area of fascination. Not even Richard, who saw the whole history, proves interesting, and not [..............] does it. Ruining Richard was not something the show could survive.
Because the mystery juice had pooled in him, angry irony intended, and that mystery had to have something interesting surviving its being drained away. The creation myth episode later on you came into assuming it would just extend that disillusionment - which it did, but even if it hadn't it would have been seen that way. The last chance of this meaning something living was lost.
But here he's still got some - his haplessness making him if anything more interesting, as though even his knowledge was being disturbed by the present revelations. Good, we want the present to finally matter in a story. And Ben's confrontation with Jacob was just great: "What about you?" You sympathize with both their points of view, which is fantastic for any murder scene: Jacob, who's essentially planned this, or at least predicted it and worked it into those plans, nevertheless is honest in his contempt. Ben is everything the monster thinks people essentially are.
(Massive text loss just occurred - the iOS update has led to a lot of crashing. I may reconstruct some of it when less irritated.)
