Photo courtesy of ABC
It’s been a few days since my last Lost rant, and I have a few more nitpicky gripes about this season that I needed to get off my chest. These don’t fall under the “dumbed-down” umbrella of last week’s post, but they still bug me.
- The Return of Michael Dawson
Michael Dawson is Ben’s man on the boat. Honestly, who did not see this one coming? And how could it have been missed? Harold Perrineau, the actor who plays Michael, has been in the credits all season long, even though he didn’t appear on screen until the tail end of episode 7. So let’s get this straight - there is a character that we know will be returning this season who has not yet been seen, and there is a character that is working for Ben on the freighter, but we don’t know who it is. Putting two and two together was not much of a stretch for fans to anticipate this reveal long before it was explicitly shown.But given that so many details about this show have been kept under wraps; why not this one? Why didn’t the writers, producers, and Perrineau himself keep this under quiet? They even announced Perrineau’s return last July. Yes, we live in an age where information is easily leaked and details discovered, but I have to believe that this show, that is so shrouded in secrecy, could have gotten away with keeping this bit of casting news a secret.Sure, Perrineau gets a bigger paycheck as a series regular than if he were a special guest, so maybe it all had to do with clever negotiations on his part. Or maybe the folks behind the scenes wanted to drum up even more excitement for Season Four, so they decided to announce the return on a character we last saw leaving the island at the end of Season Two.
Either way, can you imagine what a big surprise we would have been in for if we HADN’T known that we would be seeing Michael pop up any episode now? Or the fun watercooler speculation that could have been had about who was Ben’s mystery man on the boat? I can’t help but feel we were robbed from a truly great mystery.
- Is Kate Still a Fugitive?
In “The Economist,” Kate, who had stayed with Jack, and Sawyer, who went with Locke, meet up at the Barracks, and Sawyer poses to Kate a very good question: Why does she want to leave the island? All that’s waiting for Kate, after all, is a prison sentence - let’s not forget that Kate was aboard Flight 815 in federal custody. We know this, and Sawyer knows this, but apparently Kate is a little hazy on the details, because in “Eggtown,” she cons her way into Miles’ holding cell and demands to know if he and the freighter people know who she is and what she’s done.Of course they know who she is and what she’s done.Kate was there when Frank realized that Juliet Burke was not on the flight manifest and was therefore a native. It isn’t a big stretch for Kate to then assume that the guys on the freighter know all about the Losties, just as the Others did.
But even if you suspend that logic for a moment and assume that the people on the Kahana don’t have detailed dossiers on the 815 survivors, would that matter once Kate returns to the mainland? Of course not! No matter how heroic the tales of her survival, she would most certainly be taken into custody as she is a wanted woman. We see that this is precisely how things play out in her flash-forward, but come on, Kate’s a smart woman. Why on earth would she need this level of confirmation about the fate that would await her back home if she is rescued?
From a narrative point of view, I understand the use of irony here - as soon as Kate gets confirmation that she should stay on the island, Locke banishes her from his camp because of her tactics at breaking Miles out. Her experiences with Sawyer in the barracks also played out brilliantly, but it doesn’t change the fact that her motivation for bringing Miles to Ben just doesn’t make any sense.
- Why are the Losties not that concerned about the lack of rescue?
Let’s just say that you’ve been stranded on an island for over three months, and all kinds of weird crazy stuff has happened to you and around you in that time. Then one day, it seems like your rescue is imminent, as a guy from your group makes contact with a boat just off-shore. You’d probably be pretty jazzed, right? But what would happen if after a few days, no rescue came? Wouldn’t you, you know, sort of freak out? The fourth season of Lost has taken place over seven days according to Lostpedia. Only on the sixth day after making contact with the freighter does anyone (Sun) question whether a rescue is, in fact imminent.Really? No one else has wondered about what’s been going on the past few days? How long does it take for a freighter to send a few rescue boats over and pick up everyone? I understand that there are only so many minutes to tell a lot of complicated stories, and that Sun’s worrying and the Bernard/Jin conversation we got in “Ji Yeon” could be the most we should expect, but it just seems to me like more people on the beach would be more concerned about the lack of rescue. Just as Locke is facing dissension in his ranks because he apparently doesn’t have his next move planned out, Jack seems to have put a lot of his faith in people who grow sketchier by the moment. Where is the revolt on Jack’s side of the island? - Why has no one pressed Juliet/Ben for answers?
With very few exceptions, Locke, Jack, and their respective camps have shied away from pressing their resident Others for real, important answers. The most obvious example would be for Jack to inquire as to the location of the kids that were abducted. If he’s planning on getting off the island, wouldn’t he want to rescue them as well? Or at the very least wouldn’t he want to know why they were taken, and what the true motives of the Others are? It could be that he already has the answers to all of these questions based on his time in Othersville during Season Three (remember his football catch with Tom?), but even still, why would he not want Juliet to share some Island secrets with his friends from 815?The same can also be said of Locke and his crew. They’ve found out that Charles Widmore sent the freighter and that Michael is Ben’s man on board, but why hasn’t Claire wanted to find out about the tests Ethan was doing on her? Why hasn’t Hurley inquired about the Dharma food drops? Why hasn’t Sawyer questioned how the original Sawyer ended up on The Island?Maybe these characters can’t ask these questions, because then the mystery would be gone, but isn’t it weird that with everything that has happened to our heroes, for some reason now they’re doing a lot of sitting around and waiting when either rescue or a war is right on the horizon?
All right, enough gripes, next time I’ll write about the things that I’ve really liked this season on Lost, promise.
5 users commented in " More Nitpicky Lost Season Four Gripes "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhy is it so hard to believe that Kate didn’t know whether or not the freighter people knew who she was? It makes perfect sense for Kate to ask whether or not they know her…even if she thought there was a 99% chance that they did. If she could get on the boat and get back to the world…she could run again. It doesn’t hurt to ask, right? I don’t think it’s as absurd as you think.
Your Michael gripe is a little more understandable…but not much. You reeaallly think that if we wouldn’t have heard from the producers and seen in the credits that Harold P. was returning we wouldn’t have figured out he was on the freighter? We’ve been waiting for Michael’s return since he left us in season 2. I guarantee everyone’s speculation about Ben’s “man on the boat” would have been exactly the same as it was… So why would the writers waste time building the element of surprise?
Why aren’t the Losties concerned about being rescued? Because really…they never have been. It’s something that’s been going on the entire series. Remember what happened when Bernard tried to make the giant SOS? The losties could have cared less. They’ve been busy building high rises and stocking the kitchen shelves with Dharma canned peaches to care about being rescued. Didn’t care then…so why should they care now? I’m not saying that it makes sense…I’m just saying it’s nothing new.
I agree with everything you just said.
Here, though, is an intriguing Lost time travel theory. It’s very long and I think a lot of it is bonkers but some of it is QUITE interesting. :
http://www.timelooptheory.com/the_timeline.htm
@Mark - “It doesn’t hurt to ask, right?” Actually, it DID hurt to ask, because her actions leading to get her confirmation (busting out Miles to talk to Ben) got her kicked out of Locke’s camp. If she was 99% sure that they would know, then it wasn’t worth that much risk. And if her plan was to go on the lam again after being rescued, it doesn’t matter if the freighter people know her past - either way she’s going to have to pull a disappearing act on them.
In terms of Michael, if we didn’t have confirmation that Perrineau was returning, some people still may have speculated that Michael was the man on the boat. But it would have been just that - speculation - not a virtual guarantee, which is what it was with the knowledge of the actor’s re-signing.
And I sort of understand your last point, but in Season One, the first thing I wondered was how come nobody wanted to build a raft, and then they decided to build a raft. The S.O.S. seemed silly only because the Losties never saw any aircraft fly overhead. I think they have been more concerned with surviving than escaping, what with the smoke monster, the Others, etc. But now the monster seems to be M.I.A., the Others are on the retreat, and rescue SHOULD be right around the corner. I think that would make the rest of the Losties far more concerned about Faraday and Charlotte, and that Jack would be questioned about their true motives more.
@B.E. - That guy’s theory is WAY too confusing and far too contradictory to be true. If you go back in time, your injuries will reverse, but you don’t de-age, or have your tattoos, scars, etc. disappear? Either your body would revert to its older self, or it wouldn’t. I don’t buy it.
Alan, I agree with you on some of your rants – but only to a certain extent. So I figure I’ll present some dissenting opinions on these topics. First, the Michael thing is where I really disagree with your take and I’ll prove it to you on three points.
1. You and many other Lost fanatics have been ranting and raving that having Michael be the man on the boat was so obvious it was unlike so many other surprising Lost reveals. But was it really so obvious to everyone? You are only looking at it from your point of view – a person who is very into the show and knows all the tidbits and possibly spoilers from future episodes and obviously knew about Harold P-matrix-boring-guy coming back to the show. I myself am like that and I knew that Michael was the dude on the boat because to me, it was obvious. But you are forgetting that the vast majority of people that watch Lost probably had NO IDEA that Harold P-whatever-his-name-is was coming back to the show and may not have known it from the credits or even noticed his name. Most people watch the show every week just for sheer enjoyment, may not even know the real actors names (especially that boring Harold P-god-what-an-annoying-character) and are not necessarily engrossed in it as much as you are, and to them the Michael thing WOULD have been a shock. Case in point – my mother in law watches the show – she had no idea he was coming back.
2. About keeping his status under wraps so it would have been a shock for everyone watching – do you really think that would have been possible? We are in an age where the ENTIRE SEASON FINALE was posted on the internet prior to telecast and that finale was supposedly super secret. Furthermore, if you go on several websites you can find out lots of spoilers from random spies about upcoming episodes. For example – on spoilerfix.com you can find out stuff on individual episodes and which character-centric it is going to be, usually about 3 to 4 weeks in advance. Do you really think that having Harold P-whatever the hell his name is would have been kept secret from the likes of you and I? Highly doubt it.
3. And lastly – and probably most important – the Michael thing was NOT THE MAIN REVEAL OF THE EPISODE. It was that in the future Sun gives birth and Jin is dead (or stuck back on the island). The producers very well knew that most of the core fans would figure out the Michael thing and they made it a secondary thing in the episode. Now tell me - did you see Jin being dead? Hell, no. That was the surprise/shocking reveal – not Harold boring-character-P-whatever-his-stupid-name is.
The revolt on Jack’s side – did you not notice that most of the main characters are in Locke’s camp? They are not going to show some random hitherto unseen characters complaining about the lack of rescue – Sun and Jin are really the only characters we know from this bunch and they HAVE complained.
The Kate thing may/may not have been necessary – still it did not deter from a splendid episode.
Pressing Ben and Juliet for answers – well, Ben’s not going to say anything. Remember – this is the same dude who was tortured by the “genuine Iraqi” in season 2 when we knew him as Henry Gale and said nothing and was willing to die without saying anything. So it’s safe to say he won’t talk, only unless he wants to and the producers won’t waste screen time showing what we already are aware of. The Juliet thing is a little more puzzling – Jack should have made her talk – but we don’t even know if she knows that much – the others may have kept her mostly in the dark since she wasn’t really one of them.
First of all, I laughed out loud at your Harold P-names, because I had to double check every time I typed his name to make sure I was spelling it right!
I understand your points about Michael, and I agree that a truly casual fan wouldn’t have seen it coming. But Harold Perrineau’s (damn that hard to spell name!) return wasn’t limited to spoiler sites - it was actually big news announced last summer. It was actually supposed to be announced at Comic-Con (nerd central, right?), but it was actually reported a day earlier - to the press. They ran with the story.
See, I knew that the season three finale was leaked online, but I avoided it. Easy enough. But a news story and Perrineau’s name in the credits week after week was a bit harder to ignore.
I do 100% agree with your point that it was nice that, given the obvious nature of that mystery, the writers/producers gave us another twist in that episode with Jin. Now THAT was a twist.
And decent point about Jack’s camp featuring minor players, but the issue could have been resolved with a line from Kate/Juliet/Sun/Bernard saying, “You know, Jack, a lot of the other guys are getting anxious blah blah blah.”
And Juliet probably doesn’t have as many answers as Ben, but Jack’s refusal to press her for ANY answers just rubs me the wrong way. He’s a Doctor - shouldn’t he always want to discover the whole truth? And he spent the first three seasons trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
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