Thursday, November 08, 2007

Oh Dear!



I've reached that part in Season 2 where the LOST writing team
felt the need to start making like these penguins, tap dancing
to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the story. The Whole Truth is one
of those episodes (along with SOS, Two For the Road and
arguably others) where the first 38 minutes sort of drug by only
to get a great whammy in the last 5 minutes.













Ben's musings in the breakfast nook of the Swan certainly
qualifies as one of those endings that saved an otherwise
less than scintillating episode. "Now if I were one of
them . . ." You know the rest. And he finishes it all
up with "You got any milk?"

I guess Ben was trying to bolster his Henry Gale story
with this game of "what if." Knowing that there was no
trap at the balloon that should have boosted "Henry's"
credibility upon Sayid's return. It also helps to build
the tension heading into the next episode as we were left
to worry about Charlie and Sayid (while rooting that the
Others would get Ana Lucia. You know you did.)

But The Whole Truth was not totally without merit
other than this scene. Re-watching the episode after
Season 3 gives it whole new meaning when it comes to Jin
and that lying liar he married. And this is why I love
LOST and love re-watching LOST. Each time there's something
different and something has changed. What's more the
thing that has changed is ME and how I now view the
situation and characters. BRAVO LOST!

3 comments:

Capcom said...

Hey, I love that part of Mary Poppins! Well, it's not my favorite, but it's cool. Any scenes with Bert were great, IMO. :-)

The whole deal with Fenry's story was very weird to me. If I were one of the Losties, I would not have a clue what to think or believe, but I would lean towards believing Danielle's story about him. And I probably would not mind letting someone like Sayid and Ana try to get the truth if they could just in case. Ben's a tricky one tho, and could probably hold out pretty long.

As for Sun's tale-telling, hasn't everyone one except for Aaron told lies in this show??? :o)

Paula Abdul Alhazred said...

This episode does feel very different in retrospect, knowing what we now know. The Henry storyline especially is almost funny when taking into consideration who he would become.

While I do agree that both "The Whole Truth" and "S.O.S." slow the pace, I don't think they are necessarily just attempts for the writers to tap dance around advancing the story, though maybe I'm wrong. But I gotta ask, why is "Two for the Road" on that list? I thought it was a pretty rockin' episode!

memphish said...

Two For the Road is on my list (and I admittedly haven't rewatched it in a while, though I will soon) because I remember when it aired I was pretty much bored silly until the last 5 minutes and then after that I couldn't sleep.

From The Long Con until ? things were taking a long time to set up and get in place. It was the height of the LOSTies keeping secrets from each other. As Hurley admonishes Jack, "Loop Dude. Loop." And in hindsight that was the point, but it was still very frustrating for the viewers who were in on the secrets. Additionally, some of the B stories were down right ridiculous -- Sawyer and the Tree Frog for example.

At least, thankfully, these episodes did not suffer from Heroes Season 2 syndrome where the problem is not primarily one of tap dancing but rather of repetition of material from Season 1 and the scant material of Season 2. That and massive violations of the "rules" of logic both real and within the Heroes-verse.