LOST

[shipperx]

:
Is it wrong of me that I want Jack to be proven wrong?

About everything.

Always.

Comments

[msclawdia.livejournal.com]

If despising Jack is wrong, I don't want to be right.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[laurashalo.livejournal.com]

Absolutely not. Jack is evil.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

I'll keep you in my prayers that you see the light about Jack one day and realize how wonderful he really is.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I can't! I can't even say why. And it's not a resentment of Matt Fox, who I think does a good job.

But Jack?

Jack drives me nuts. It's his controlling tendencies that press some inner hot button for me that dredges up the irresistible "I want to see him smacked down. HARD!" urge.

Hee!

[rahirah]

Jack is SUCH a dickhead. Why in ghod's name does Kate moon after him when he constantly dismisses her?

[damsels-fly.livejournal.com]

I know I am supposed to like Jack, but I just really don't.
At least he is alone, drunk and hairy in the future.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I know! He's the world's biggest "I know better than EVERYONE."

It didn't even hit me until tonight that... Jack killed Charlie! It was Jack's plan that they had to do this and so Charlie took the suicide mission and died... so that Jack could have his hero moment.

And, no, he didn't listen to Kate when she had a perfectly valid (and right) point.

And why didn't he have any bigger reaction to Charlie dying telling Jack he was wrong but Jack doesn't even seem to think that, I don't know, being cautious about these people might possibly be a good idea.

I just want to see Jack kicked in the nuts by life (and have some consolation that at least for some brief period, he will be.)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I take far too much pleasure in the foreknowledge that he will eventually come to believe he's wrong and be weepy basketcase sporting a unabomber-chic wardrobe.

I'm evil.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to think of him as evil so much as a controlling, self-righteous jackass who has a savior complex and is narcissistic enough that he'll keep feeding his own ego no matter what (until he crashes, burns and becomes suicidal. Err, perhaps I enjoy the schadenfreude a bit too much. Heh.)

[rahirah]

I was saying to Kathy as we watched that they would have nothing to lose by going with Locke, because if the boat people ARE good guys, then they'll stick around and prove it, and if they're bad guys, then it's a good idea to scope them out first.

The vast annoyingness of Jack sometimes makes me wince, because he always reminds me of an old post of JennyO's where she was bitching about how she was sick of shows that focused on whiny white guys with daddy issues. And I kinda hate agreeing with JennyO about anything, but that description fits Jack to a T.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Jack's still claiming everything is honkey-dorey and they don't need to go back at that point, and we know from Jack's flashfoward last season that he, himself, comes to believe he's so very, very wrong.

(And Hurley also told him it wasn't right what they did. So I'm thinking that Hurley wishes he'd been with Jack, not so much because Jack was right, but because he wishes he'd been there when whatever shit happens went down. Solidarity in the face of doom.)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't have problems with the writing of Jack so much as I really hope that someone in charge really realizes that Jack is a jackass. I mean, I know they get it on some level because they have other characters point it out. But then they have those recap things where he's called 'noble' and I'm thinking "It's not nobility, it's narcissism!"

[brunettepet.livejournal.com]

Not wrong, I think the writers have done a great job setting him up to fail.

Wouldn't you need to be assured and arrogant as a spinal surgeon? You need to sell iffy procedures to frightened patients. He's been doing the same thing on the island.

The flashbacks are giving us the worst case scenario the surgeon dismisses.

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

No, not really. But Jack IS proven wrong, several times (if not right at the moment, although I'm sure it's coming!); it's just I don't think the lessons sink in! It was obvious a lot of the gilt has left the lily for a lot of the survivors, as well, considering how many go with Locke...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'm with Barb though. It's sort of a silly question for the Losties. They're making it a question of Locke or Jack instead of just looking at the situation which is basically a choice between rushing out to face strangers you have reason to suspect or hanging back and being reeeeeeallly cautious. From that perspective it looks like the drawbacks are greater with Option I rather than Option II (which is why I was somewhat confused as to why Sayid in particular stayed with Jack. Sayid is usually pretty logical about stuff).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

My brother-in-law is an anesthesiologist and he always claims that all surgeons are obsessive assholes. Heh.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Nope.

[shapinglight]

Ooh, no! I long since gave up on Lost - was going to even if Sky hadn't swiped it - and I remember wanting Jack always to be wrong too.

One of the most annoying people on TV.

[typographer.livejournal.com]

Hehehehehe!

Yes, that description is perfect.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I still enjoy the show and I tend to believe the show will benefit from now having a set end date to aim towards. They've also seem to made a unilateral decision to embrace the supernatural elements in the show.

I think what actually bothered me was the ABC recap show prior to the airing of the episode. In last season's final arc and in the finale, it seemed as though the show was fully aware of what an obsessive jackass Jack can be and the show had people calling him on it (and resenting him for it). This makes me a-okay with Jack, because I can enjoy flawed characters as long as the writing is aware that they're deeply flawed (and ending it with Jack as a drug addicted suicidal mess made that intention seem clear).

Then ABC had the recap catch-up show last night with rather apalling 'explanations' of the story to now where they (I kid you not) called Jack a 'noble hero'! They totally overlooked all of Jack's b.s. and hyped to no end that he was this stalwart, heroic, darn near Christ-like figure and that Kate broke his poor wittle tender heart when she had sex with the bad boy (they litterally defined Sawyer as 'bad boy'! I mean, come on, Sawyer's way more screwed up than that. Why make him sound like he's some adolescent James Dean in 'Rebel without a Cause'? And why make Kate out as the bad girl in need of redemption by the nearly Christ-like Jack who can tell her what to think and do? It creates such cognitive dissonance when watching the show and seeing Jack literally pull the trigger intending to kill Locke to get his own way or utterly dismissing Kate's ideas... even though the show reveals that she was right.

I was quite gratified to read on TWOP that Lost's writers and producers had no input with the recap show and that they didn't write the script because, quite frankly, the simplistic descriptions of the characterizations were ticking me off.

The premiere itself was pretty good (it was Hurley-centric, not Jack-centric which was immensely helpful) as it set up the mystery nicely so that things could pick up speed again. I think it definitely helps the writers to now have a defined end-date. I think that's what's now allowing them to do flash-forwards instead of flashbacks, which is quite helpful in terms of storytelling. They really had run out of fuel with the flashbacks.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Just checking. :)

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Heh. You're funny. I have the exact same reaction to Locke!!!

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Nah, I think Locke somehow provokes some bad stuff. My guess is that part of what happens is the very act of deciding to treat the freighties as hostiles and then splitting up dooms them all.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except that Locke is the poster child for white dudes with daddy issues, isn't he?

[rahirah]

I am fair and equitable. I want BOTH of them smacked down.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think, however, that Locke is as big an issue as he's a few steps off the front burner. Jack and the Quad of DOOM have the lion's share of airtime. So Iwould say that Jack is more the center of the show as he does get far more flashback/flashforward episodes than anyone else (even one for his freaking tattoo!)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee! I think the difference for me is that clearly Locke has a big dose of crazy while Jack is... Jack.

[rahirah]

Overall Locke is just as wrong as Jack just as often, but Jack's the one whom I get the impression that the writers are, er, giving a tongue-bath, so that makes him more annoying to me. (Except when Locke is sacrificing people to the island; then he way more than annoying, he's a fricking nutcase.) In this case, I think Locke's into some scary-ass stuff with Jacob that they'll all come to regret, but on the other hand, I think Charlie's warning bears heeding, even if it eventually turns out to be misinformed. There are obviously several groups fighting over the island, and several of them are willing to commit mass murder - why take chances? Jack's just blowing the potential danger off because he wants to get back so badly.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm convinced they're all going to have to die in the end, but they won't really be dead, sort of like the end of Life on Mars.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

But the real question is does Mr. Fribble think it's perfect?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

That was the annoying thing. I mean, I totally get Jack not trusting Locke (trying to shoot Locke, I'm less okay with, but distrusting him? Sure he should!) But here were Hurley, Desmond, and Sayid coming to tell him that Charlie had DIED saying that these newbies are lying to him, and it's not like heard it at all (and it's also why I'm confused that Sayid didn't also go with Locke, not because he believed anything about Locke, but just because it's the logical thing to do and Sayid usually makes more sense than anyone.)

[rahirah]

True. Locke is full-goose bozo, and has been since he let Boone die.(I mean, even if it's all in his head, he still made the decision to let the island kill someone in exchange for healing him.)

[rahirah]

Yeah, that whole bit made no sense - it was too obviously the writers manipulating the characters to serve the plot.

[wildrider.livejournal.com]

Twenty years of "marriage" has often told me that Barb is usually right... *g*

[shapinglight]

Naveen Andrews was interviewed on a chat show here last night. He mentioned the definite end too - said it would be at the end of season 6, so still some time to go. He also said that he thought the writers were 'winging it' during seasons 3&4. Do you think that's right?

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

They set it at 48 remaining episodes to air (now 47). It was originally supposed to be 3 seasons w/ 16 episodes each, but because of the strike, it may not turn out exactly like that. They only shot 8 episodes before the writers strike and the strike may not end in time for them to ramp up production on final 8 episodes to air this season. Still, that leaves them with 40 episodes left to write as they came to a contractural agreement with ABC to end the series after a set number of episodes.

According to Lindelhoff (the writer/producer), they felt that having to string stuff out indefinitely left them with no way to accurately pace the story. There was also a problem last year with the way the show was presented with a big break mid season (like most US shows, but with a serial like Lost the big hiatus has increasingly proved problematic which is why a shows like 24 don't return until mid-season and play all their episodes straight through). Lost made the deal with ABC that they too wouldn't have to return to air until January and that they can run all their episodes consecutively without a hiatus. As a compromise between the writers (who wanted more time to prepare the episodes) and the network (which wanted more years of episodes) they came to the deal of 3 years of 16 episodes instead (instead of the usual season order of 22).

On the one hand, Lost's request to return late really helped them with the Writer's Strike because they are one of the only big name scripted programs with more than a couple episodes left to air, leaving them as one of the few scripted series running this ratings sweeps (which is a part of the explanation for its surge in ratings). On the other hand, the strike has messed up the deal for 3 seasons of 16 episodes as no one knows when they can film the last 8 episodes of this season.

Still, it's easy to see that with a set number of total episodes, it's given the writers a chance to nail down both story and pacing as they are now working with a definite 'the end' point. I think that's allowing them more confidence in figuring out the big scheme of things. It wouldn't surprise me if now somewhere out there was an outline for the rest of the series. Prior to this deal, I would be quite surprised if that sort of outline existed.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Do you think so? I have to admit to being totally baffled, but I'm starting to think that it is possible to communicate with the dead -- and that all the manifestations of the dead aren't simply the Island or Jacob or hallucinations at all. Some of them are actually the dead coming back (like Charlie). Possibly the Island's electromagnetism makes this possible?

I'm sort of leaning towards an ending where Jack and Kate end up founding a new group of 'natives' on the Island.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Tongue-bath. Hee! Oh, to be a writer.

I definitely think Jack is the central character, their hero (tragic or not) so that does give him a privileged position. I doubt he'll have to pay much in the way of consequences for having tried to kill Locke, for example.

Locke, I think, is headed down Ben's path to CrazyPsychoPathVille unless he manages to pull himself together, so I'm more likely to see him right now as the villain of piece in the sense that I think he triggers the bad. Jack is stubbornly wrong-headed but I can't totally blame him because after all, the 'normal' response is to want to get off the Island. Locke can pontificate all he wants about the beauty of the Island, but the reality is that he's got a personal reason to need to stay whereas Jack is acting more out of service to the group. Granted, Jack wants to get back, but so do Sun/Jin, Clare/Charlie (at least until Not Penny's boat), Juliet as well as quite a few of the others. I found Rose's comment that she wasn't going anywhere with that man (Locke) and Hurley's comment that he should have stayed were there to sort of clue us in not to just condemn Jack out of hand for all the badness that befalls them.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

I think that Jack is probably the character who is most likely to work through his daddy issues. He seemed to regret that he hadn't had the opportunity before Christian died.

Locke has clearly taken the easy route (killed his father instead of coming to terms with him).

Jack may still have the opportunity to someone confront Christian and reconcile with him in some fundamental way if he returns to the Island. If the Island or Jacob or whatever is showing a propensity to appear as Christian, it seems to me that eventually Jack will have to confront it in the form of his father.

[rowanswhimsy.livejournal.com]

Heh.

All of the lead characters are pretty flawed, which makes things fairly interesting to watch. I find most of them flawed but still lovable.

[shapinglight]

Interesting. It's all very convoluted, isn't it - not just the plot of Lost but the mess with the strike.