already & not yet

And it’s probably not the reason you think.

We’ve been watching American Idol for a couple of seasons now. And after a while, you realize how the game is played. We have these performances we’re supposed to rate and vote for, but the producers deliberately try to sway our vote. Not that I blame them; their job is to produce quality TV. And while not even I would want to see an Anoop / Scott finals, the producers had to be kicking themselves last week when the predestined Adam / Danny finale showdown didn’t come to fruition, thanks to a little-engine-that-could performance by Kris Allen. For weeks, it seems, no matter how grating or infuriating their performances (“Dream On”, anyone?), Danny and Adam have been given passes by the powers that be, simply because they were the hand-picked “chosen ones”. How many times this season were these two given the cushy closing spot on the show’s telecasts? How many times has Adam received the blue light treatment during his performances, with the heavenly blue light cascading down upon him to go with the tight, panoramic camera angles? Last night he even had an industrial strength smoke machine pumping enough smoke that, for a moment there, I thought I was watching the final scene of Casablanca or something.

Meanwhile, Kris Allen has demonstrated genuine artistry in the end game. Two weeks in a row, he’s displayed his range as both a singer and a player, showcasing his skills on both piano and guitar. Has anything been made of this? Of course not. While Adam gets to look all sultry and pouty on his mugshots, Kris is lucky if he gets more than two or three closeups the entire show, (although part of that may have been to hide his whole awkward sing-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth thing that he does). Anyway, point being, the whole thing is an exercise in the power of suggestion. You can see the judges with their not-so-subtle mind tricks: “You should vote for Adam. He’s great. He’s an original artist. He’s iconic. He’s singing about mountaintops and frolicking through fields of dandelions. He’s wearing a really, really long coat.” Kris, on the other hand, receives backhanded compliments like, “Uh…you, uh…totally deserve to be here tonight.” The implication is, sorry kid, you DON’T deserve to be our winner.

Now that I think about it, how much screen time did Kris in Hollywood week or in the weeks that led up to the Top 36? None that I could remember. Conversely, by week two, I’d already heard Gokey’s story about a half dozen times; Lambert was already crowned one of the best in the competition; we all knew about Scott, the first blind contestant on AI; we’d even seen copious shots of Matt Sarver & Lil Rounds & Tattoo Girl with their kids. But nothing from Kris. He’s a true “darkhorse” in every sense of the word. The producers never expected him to make it this far. And until he sang his way into the Top 12, I think they thought he would be nothing more than one more pretty face in a sea of forgettable performers.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m rooting for Kris Allen tonight. Not because I think he’s the best, but because I think if he wins, he beats the system. And that’s just the kind of thing I’d like to see.

LOST fans, if you’re not reading Doc Jensen’s column over at EW.com, you don’t know what you’re missing. Click here to read his latest column; there’s six pages, but it’s well worth the read. I’d love to hear what you think about what he has to say here. Is Sawyer really the show’s Oedipus? (I think so.) Will the Jacob-touched castaways retain their memories at the point of their timeline reboots? (Again, I think so.) And if that’s true, will we see a painful moment when off-Island Sawyer finds Juliet, only to discover that she has no memory of him and their on-Island relationship? (That would automatically rank up there among the best scenes in series history.)

Like I said, read Jensen’s column. And let me know what you think.

Well, LOSTies, what do we make of this?

Is Juliet dead? Or is it possible that she somehow survived Jughead? If her experience is meant to parallel Desmond’s turning of the failsafe key in Season 2 (as I think it is), then perhaps she survived but now the rules “don’t apply” to her, just as they don’t apply to Desmond. What does that mean? Who knows. But it could be that Sawyer and Juliet’s tearful farewell in the Season 5 finale isn’t the final chapter in this love affair.

With 2 hours to rehash, we’ll get right to it: our last LOST recap of 2009. (tear wells up in corner of eye)

The opening sequence was worth the price of admission for me. We finally got to see Jacob; we discovered what the rest of the statue looked like (a crocodile head? Taweret?); we see what I believe to be the arrival of the Black Rock to the Island circa 1845 (I’m willing to bet our boy Richard Alpert is on board); and I believe we were introduced to the ultimate villain in the show, the man in black, Jacob’s Adversary. The dialogue between Jacob and Adversary hearkened back to the pilot episode. Remember when Locke was teaching Walt how to play backgammon? “Two sides. One light, one dark.” Now we see these two beings, two forces, pitted against one another with the Island as the playing ground in some sort of cosmic game of destiny vs. free will. Once again, this is why I love this show.

From Doc Jensen’s column (bold emphasis mine):

“The dialogue between these two rivals dripped with tension and subtext. Nameless accused Jacob of bringing the boat to the Island. Jacob didn’t deny it. The man in black sighed deeply and oozed a deeply cynical perspective on the drama that the ship was about to trigger on the Island:

NAMELESS: You’re trying to prove me wrong.
JACOB: You are wrong.
NAMELESS: They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It can only end once. Everything before that is progress.

That exchange blew my mind. The conversational shorthand between these two familiars made for much interpretive obliqueness. Nameless seemed to see history — or at least, history on the Island — as an endless cycle of darkness and despair. You also got the sense he was weary of playing whatever role it is he plays in this drama. Jacob, on the other hand, seemed to see history/just Island history as a forward moving saga marked by incremental progress. These castaway dramas he stages on the Island are building upon each other and leading toward something that he desires very, very much. Nameless, on the other hand, expressed homicidal contempt for Jacob and his ambitions. ”Do you have any idea how much I want to kill you?” The line reading chilled me to the bone. So did Jacob’s response: ”Yes.”

I think I agree. It seems that Jacob’s whole thing has been to bring people to the Island. This is implied in the opening exchange when the Adversary says he doesn’t need to ask how the Black Rock came to the Island. “You brought them here,” he scowls. And the flashbacks give us insight into how Jacob has been at work to shape the destiny of these characters. Did you notice how he touched each character? Go back and watch it, but the common denominator is that each of our flashbacks (excepting Juliet, who wasn’t on Oceanic 815 anyway) depict Jacob interacting with, and physically touching, each of our castaways. With that touch, it seems that Jacob was exerting his own magnetism, drawing these individuals to a shared destiny on the Island. And I’m pretty sure we even witnessed Jacob resurrecting John Locke immediately following his eight story fall. Awesome.

As for why Adversary wants to kill Jacob, I suspect they’re simply playing out the age old metaphorical roles of God and Satan. But it seems that something is keeping Adversary from slaying Jacob himself. He has to find a “loophole”, a proxy, someone willing to commit the crime for him. By playing on Ben’s insecurities, Adversary accomplishes exactly what he wanted to do.

Nameless Adversary of Jacob = The Monster. Put it down now. The Monster “judged” Ben, convincing him (via an appearance of Alex) that he had to do anything Locke told him to do. But what Smokey / Alex didn’t tell Ben was that Locke wasn’t really Locke. Instead, Locke 2.0 is really Nameless Adversary of Jacob.

What lies in the shadow of the statue? Jacob’s crib, apparently. When asked this cryptic question, Richard Alpert responds in Latin. Translated, he said “He who will save us all” or “He who will protect us.” I think this is another obvious reference to Jacob as some sort of benevolent being. His death should spell very bad things for Season 6.

Rose and Bernard! And Vincent! Finally! Glad to know they’re alive. I still think they’re the best candidates for Adam and Eve, at least to date.

As for that ending, as cool as it was, I was a bit upset. The whole season has hinged on the question of whether you can or cannot change the past to alter the future. With Juliet detonating the bomb and the screen going to white (a nice touch, I thought), we finally witnessed the much discussed incident, but where’s the payoff? After a season of trippy time-traveling and questions at the meta-level, I guess I expected at least some hint of resolution to our season long question. But the producers warned us to expect a reaction similar to the one we experienced at the end of Season 1, where we waited with bated breath to see what exactly was down in the bottom of that hatch only to find…Boom. LOST. So, the debate rages: Did the castaways change the course of history or not? I’m inclined to say yes, but I’d like some empirical proof to back that claim up. Call me a man of science, I guess.

Best moment of the episode: Juliet’s tearful goodbye to Sawyer. I mean, how could that not top the list. But an equally cool moment for me was Miles leaping into action to save his father, Dr. Chang. Did you catch that heartfelt, “Dad!” that Miles belted out as he raced to save the good doctor? Too bad he’ll have to go all Montand from this point forward. But hey, it beats being dead, right?

Worst moment? Jack’s lame-o line of reasoning for blowing up the Island and resetting the giant timeline in the sky. What? Because your relationship with Kate is in the crapper? Come on, man! Given all we’ve seen this year, I refuse to think this is Jack’s sole motivation. Last episode, he seemed concerned about all the castaways they’d lost and the prospect of resurrecting them in a non-Island timeline seemed heroic to me. Why not go with that as Jack’s motivation? To his credit, Sawyer was asking him what he wanted most, to which he answered, more or less, “Kate”. Will the two of them end up together? The more I think about it, I think yes.

So….if Locke 2.0 really isn’t Locke but rather he’s Alterna-Locke, the bodily host to the spirit of Nameless Adversary Guy, then why did he need Richard Alpert to lead him to Jacob? That whole thing made sense if Locke was really Locke. But are we to believe that Nameless Adversary really doesn’t know where Jacob lives? They’ve been warring all this time and he never thought to look in the foot of that statue?

Whatever the case, I’m thinking Christian is aligned with our Nameless Adversary in the big picture battle of good guys and bad guys. Think about it: Christian is the one who tells Locke to move the Island last year. Christian is the one who helps Locke get off the Island this year. Dead Locke serves as Christian’s proxy on the Ajira flight, which allows Nameless Adversary to somehow become Locke 2.0. I don’t know how all this adds up, but it seems clear to me that Christian is a bad guy here. Am I right?

What did Jacob mean when he said to Adversary, “They’re coming”? I think he has to be referring to our 1977 castaways. As much as Jack thinks his destiny was to detonate the bomb, I don’t buy it. Remember, though, Alpert told Sun that he watched all the ’77ers die. I’m predicting the Others knew all along that the Swan was being built and they had surveillance of the whole project. I’m also predicting that the blast didn’t kill our castaways but either transported them back to 2004 or to the Island present of 2007 (thus Jacob’s cryptic “They’re coming.”). I’ve been wondering this all season: How is it that the Others don’t know anything about the Swan project (which has a massive crew at work with all manner of loud equipment and bells going off and people dying when their fillings go ripping through their brains) but when Ethan’s Mom and her former lover try to slip off to have a quiet picnic on Other-property, they’re nearly killed? Alpert must’ve been watching the bomb detonate and since the castaways were gone after the blast, he assumed they all died when in actuality, they were transported to fulfill their destiny in the present. Or something like that.

Well, this puppy is getting pretty long. I’ll make a season review post tomorrow that I’m sure will have more finale reaction. Chime in here and let me know what you think.