We've Got to Go Back!

My sleep schedule has gone a bit wonky, which leads me here at 3 in the morning, despite having a 9-5 job, and a conference tomorrow morning at 9:30. This meeting-type thing (I know relatively little about it) will take up almost the entire day and run until 3:00. I intend to take copious notes, as Boston is slated to expand quite dramatically in the industry and I intend to be a part of that. I see John taking a lot more initiative on this front than I did when I just got out of school. This makes me happy. He has a lot more confidence than I do and he's taking a little more time to find the right job instead of just any job. I could not do that last year, for pragmatic reasons, and quickly found myself in the most evil company I have ever associated with, a thing that shook me quite deeply, but, I think, ultimately pushed me in other directions politically and ideologically, which is a good thing. Since then, life has been a search for good.

LOST

Last Wednesday me and a few friends gathered in the livingroom to watch the season 5 premiere of Lost. Boy howdy! John and I have been holding our breaths for months.

There was nothing terribly mind-blowing about it, besides a few soft punches. Contrary to typical Lost-style, I think more questions were answered than created. I feel as though the episode was about establishing new ground rules, making solid some shared knowledge so that the questions can begin to build again on a new level.

When we were first introduced to Daniel Faraday, I was skeptical and a bit dismayed. Lost is my favorite show ever in the history of time, but it also has moments of transparency. Ok so, Faraday is a physicist who has devoted his life to understanding time travel. I wonder if he's going to be useful to the plot? Nah.

However, unlike almost every female character on Lost, they put a real person inside Faraday. He's got a funny, skittish way about him, with squinty eyes always carefully dissecting the thin papery layers of perceived truth and cosmic reality. (Miles: "something wrong with your neck?"). He never knows - I realized once - he never knows the world at face value like everyone else. For him, each moment requires conscious effort to understand the most basic assets of his environment. When is he? When does everyone else think they are? What should he tell them to make them understand? What should he say to avoid being lynched? It's quite obvious how intimidated he is by the other survivors, and not without reason. Very good character, and he's the first one in a while to challenge Ben's place as my favorite character ever.

One of my biggest problems with Lost is the lazy, two-dimensional way they've portrayed virtually every female on the show. You know the Madonna/Whore complex? They've got that, except it's the Tough Chick/Wallflower complex. There are two exceptions, Rose and Sun. Sun was definitely a Wallflower until recently, with hints of her outcoming scattered through former seasons (accidentally poisoning Michael, and what the hell was she burying when she lost her ring? I can't remember anymore). Rose started out cool, being the woman who lost her cancer and telepathically knew her husband was still alive, but since then she's disappointedly fizzled into a sassy-old-black-woman cliche.

Sun is my favorite female character because she alone plays her cards really close to her chest. She's totally sweet and nice until it counts. And you know what? I'm a little afraid of her now. I think the perpetual lesson of Lost is that people go a little crazy when they lose the ones they love. I don't know if Sun is going to turn into some kind of villain, but you know what? I think I'm going with her, either way.

Every other woman on this show is either innocuous/complacent/sweet/a little dumb or a constipated adrenaline junkie with a really bad attitude*. Is that their idea of a strong female? People like Juliet who can't manage their problems and thus traipse around with a self-righteous smirk which they intend to inflict on every underling who attempts at complexity? Okay. People like Charlotte Lewis? Who is she? Did she wander off the set of Indiana Jones? Get lost, Charlotte, with your stupid multilingualism.

Char, Faraday, and Juliet. *Note identical expressions on the females. Note squinty Faraday eyes.

Beyond this, um, I really like this show delving into time travel and paradoxes. I LOVE Desmond and his Billy Pilgrim syndrome. I wish Hurley and Sayid had been the odd couple for a little more than one episode. I like Ben's new slick look. I don't know how Sun came around to blaming Ben for Jin's "death" (still dubious). I still don't care about Kate. Ms. Hawking is back: OK.