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Twitter'Lost': Yep, that's a cliffhanger
I'm feeling a little bit used right now.
The producers of Lost promised us a cliffhanger before the show went on its three-month-long hiatus, and to be fair, they gave us a cliffhanger, in a pretty pure sense of the word.
Here's the thing, though. If this was a cliffhanger until, say, next week, I think I'd be all right with it. But if you're going to leave us for 13 weeks, Lost, we need a little bit more. Or a lot more. But a little bit would help.
Onto the specifics, which you might not want to read if you're trying to shorten the period between episodes:
I think the primary issue I'm having with the episode is the decision by Lindelof and Cuse, who wrote tonight's episode, to leave us right in the middle of something, that something being, basically, a game of chicken. Jack is holding Ben's life in his hands, having purposely messed up Ben's surgery in an attempt to gain leverage. Meanwhile, Pickett has transferred his rage over Colleen's death onto Sawyer and has a gun to his head, which Kate didn't think to verbalize in her walkie-talkie chat with the doctor.
Granted, Jack didn't have a lot of options if he wanted to try to gain an advantage, and he doesn't know that Kate and Sawyer are on Alcatraz. I just don't quite know how much good he thought it would do to have his friends take off, with only an hour's head start. Maybe he figured they could get back to camp? But given the Others' apparently superior knowledge of the local geography, even that doesn't seem like much.
Certainly not enough to keep me on the edge of my seat until February, anyway.
Away from the not-very-jaw-dropping cliffhanger, there were a few things in the episode that could give us Losties things to chew on over the next three months. To wit ...
- The Kate flashback was one of her better ones, not least because of the presence of Mal Reynolds as Kate's Miami-cop husband (anyone else think his character, Kevin, looked kinda like Sawyer's cleaned-up brother?). Obviously it was intended to show us that Kate does in fact have the ability to form a real emotional relationship, and on those terms it worked all right for me.
- "Lift up your eyes and look north." Those were words Locke saw on Eko's Jesus stick as they buried him, and -- just a hunch here -- I'm guessing Locke will spend a lot of time staring skyward come February.
- Pickett's remark to his crony that "Shephard wasn't even on Jacob's list." First of all, who's Jacob? And secondly, if Ben did know about Jack's profession before he got himself captured, how did he know?
- Juliet and Pickett's background conversation at the work site. Juliet said the timetable has been moved up, with Pickett protesting he was supposed to have two weeks. Any thoughts on what this little project is about?
Those things don't really outweigh my underwhelmed reaction to the cliffhanger, though. Part of me wonders now if ABC's decision to schedule Lost the way it did this season really makes sense. Certainly the network would have sacrificed some ratings if it held the show back until January, a la 24. But an equally big concern now has to be the potential loss of momentum over the next three months, even with teasers during every episode of Day Break.
I've said enough. What were your thoughts on Wednesday's cliffhanger? Are you counting the days till Feb. 7, or what?
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Zap2it Twitter Talk 
If ABC is going to call this episode the "fall season finale," shouldn't the episode have a little...finality? Nothing got resolved, and very few meaningful questions were raised. I can't believe we've seen six episodes and STILL have no idea what the Others are really up to.
But come February I'll be watching!!
Has anyone else noticed that there is running theme with children on the show. After tonight's episode almost all the female characters have been pregnant. Claire, Ana Lucia, Sun, and now Kate. Plus Julia is a fertility doctor and the others seem to have a thing with taking the children on the island. Does anyone else think this is significant or just coincidence.
I agree that they should have held back the show like 24 and then ran it straight through. Or they could have done a better job of splitting the season, like Prision Break and Jericho.
I thought the creators said that the 6 episode mini-season would be self-contained. Seems like every episode has been disjointed so far.
Lost is what it is --- a bundle of questions and contradictions. Unfortunately, what used to be fresh and interesting has grown stale.
I am growing increasingly tired of the lack of resolution to major questions.
I would love the story to be told in real time more often with less flashbacks. Perhaps then we can end this inertia.
Where's Rousseau? Sun? Jin? The NEW island p***engers, i.e. Rodrigo Santoro, have not been established.
There are enough interesting characters to tell a story of the tangled personalities on the island and rid us of some of the Island mysteries.
First Can anyone tell me who the "tallies" refers to? What person or person's.
Second I thought last night's episode had a bit more content or "character than any others since the start of the season.
But I am also getting tired of so many unanswered questions ????
Qbpie, the Tallies are the persons on the flight who were in the tail section that broke off from the rest of the plane. The ones we are most familiar with are Mr. Eko, Ana Lucia, Libby, and Bernard.
I thought this episode was crummy and not the "best episode of the year" as it was touted by ABC. The miniscule preview for next year was more exciting! I can't wait for February, though. Perhaps season three will truly start then.
"Mal Reynolds"? Nathan Fillion will always be Joey Buchannan ("One Life to Live") to me!
An answer to number 3: Jacob is probably Ethan's real name. He was the Other who made the list from the fuselage section.
It was a bit much -- but the burning question I'm wondering is what happened to all the kids they abducted from the tailies? Where are they?
But I do like how the prisoners (Kate and Sawyer) were somewhat policing themselves toward the end -- both had the chance to escape and didn't. They chose to stay and possibly die, why?
The fans want a new show every week. That is tough to do. But I think the producers are overestimating the patience of the audience.
Just remember two months: May and November. The 'fall' season will end now(sweeps month) and the 'spring' season of shows will end in May(sweeps month).
Played like a violin, slightly out of tune.
I agree that wasn't much of a cliffhanger, but as for the question about how did Ben know that Jack is a doctor: Ethan Rom.
I hear will learn about the kids in February or March so at least some answers are coming, but I don't know if that will be enough. For a cliffhanger, I sure did miss Claire, Charlie and Hurley.
I read the producers describe this cliffhanger as equivalant to Jack Bauer going on a ship to China. UM, sorry, but no. That situation found Jack in a new situation that leaves us wondering how he'll get out of it. This cliffhanger is the same situation, just being dragged out. It actually reminds me of all those "almost" escapes that "Prison Break" had in season one, and weren't usually all that good.