TV News and Reviews

*SPOILER ALERT* Tonight’s Lost episode, “Some Like It Hoth”, gave us more of the inside scoop on Miles (Ken Leung). We finally got the explanation for those weird little things Miles seemed to know in past episodes, simply by walking over a patch of ground. Turns out he can hear people’s thoughts even after they’re gone. It’s almost like he hears the echo of the person and what remains of their life story and experiences.

It was fun to see him continue his hostile bantering with Hurley (Jorge Garcia)–hostile on his side only, of course. After inadvertently discovering Miles’ gift for communing with the dead, Hurley shares his own tale of conversations with those long gone. I’m still not entirely sure that Hurley’s conversations are all in his head or real communication, but the ghost of Ana-Lucia did definitely get him out of a jam once.

The big eye opener of the episode was discovering that Miles’ father is none other than Dr. Chang (François Chau), the man who appears in all of the Dharma videos the Lost gang discovered on their original landing on the island. I feel like I should have seen that one coming, but I never did. The thing is that from what Miles knows, his father kicked his wife and son out when Miles was just a baby. Miles never knew him, and Miles’ mother only spoke of him on her deathbed.

Believing he can’t change the past, and that his father is really long dead, Miles has no interest in getting to know his father on the island. It’s a nice dynamic as Hurley tries to get Miles to move on from all the hate and actually get to know his father. He gets Miles’ attention when he reveals how he gave his own father a second chance, and how much better his life was for it.

Miles goes along with Dr. Chang on another errand, to pick up new arrivals in the submarine. There’s a chance Miles may get to know his father better–and perhaps a chance that he may find a reason for his father’s actions that he didn’t expect. We all know things aren’t always as they seem.

The wonderful kicker of an ending is when Miles walks up to the sub and sees the long missing Daniel Faraday getting out. And when he says hello, Daniel *recognizes* him. For a moment I’d wondered if it was another time-traveling version of Daniel who wouldn’t know who Miles was yet. Perhaps in the next episode we’ll learn where Daniel’s been all this time.

Other items of note: the dead body Miles picks up from the construction site of the hatch looks like he has a bullet wound. But later Miles repeats what the dead man’s thoughts were, of his filling being pulled out of his head. What looked like foul play now looks to be an actual accident, perhaps from the powerful magnetic pull attracting the filling?

Kate, Kate, Kate. Not content to leave well enough alone, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) tries to console Ben’s father Roger (Jon Gries) and instead arouses his suspicion. Jack (Matthew Fox) possibly scares Roger into silence for the moment, but there’s no telling how this is going to go. Especially when Sawyer (Josh Holloway) has to knock out his security team buddy Phil (Patrick Fischler)–who has seen Sawyer and Kate on the security tapes. This can only get worse, because what are they going to do with him?

And a big LOL to Hurley for trying to rewrite The Empire Strikes Back to send to Lucas. There’s a good chance Hurley can write better dialogue!

Watch Lost on ABC Wednesdays at 9/8c. Looks like next week will be one of the Lost recap specials, and then a new episode the following week.

Read all of my previous Lost posts.

PHOTO: Ken Leung as Miles Straume in Lost, screencap c2009 ABC Studios.

*SPOILER ALERT* Ahh, Kate. Tonight’s episode of Lost, “Whatever Happened, Happened,” finally answered two big questions about Kate (Evangeline Lilly)–what did Sawyer whisper to her before he jumped from the helicopter, and why did Kate decide to return to the island after all?

I have to say, I really liked the answer. “What Happened, Happened” did some digging in some painful places for the characters and actually made a lot of Kate’s seemingly odd actions finally make sense. It turns out Kate is sent by Sawyer to look after his daughter–a daughter he didn’t want to have anything to do with before. Kate befriends the mother and a lot of Kate’s feelings for Sawyer get uncovered. The fact that Kate needed Aaron after the loss of Sawyer’s love makes a lot of sense–especially for Kate. What also makes sense is the eternal feeling of uneasiness and guilt she’s had, because Aaron isn’t rightfully hers.

I’m glad that she let Claire’s mother take care of her grandson. And I really like to believe that she was returning to the island to look for Claire–and not just to return to Sawyer. Perhaps it’s really both things–like the other survivors, she just couldn’t escape all of her unresolved issues from the island. She left Claire, she left Sawyer, and was left with all these loose ends rather than a real life. In a nutshell, Kate needs closure.

We also had some interesting moments with Sawyer (Josh Holloway). When Kate suggested that he’d jumped out of the helicopter to avoid what might have happened (with Kate) if he hadn’t, he didn’t really deny it. He felt he wasn’t boyfriend or father material. When Kate countered that he seemed to be doing fine with Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), he said he’d changed a lot in three years. And he has. What really threw me for a loop–and threw Kate–was his reasoning for helping her with the injured young Ben (Sterling Beaumon). Both Kate and Juliet were in agreement that no matter what Ben did as an adult, it wasn’t right to kill a kid. Sawyer told Kate that was why he was there, too–but it was because of Juliet’s feelings, not hers. The look in Kate’s eyes said it all–he’s definitely not the man he was three years ago.

But while I would enjoy and appreciate Sawyer’s sticking with Juliet, I couldn’t help but squee a little when he called Kate “Freckles” again.

And then there’s Jack (Matthew Fox). In a way, he and Sawyer have reversed positions, as Sawyer seems to be working for the good of everyone and taking charge, while Jack just sits around and looks after Number One. He was palpably bitter as he reminded Kate he’d already saved Ben’s life once at her bidding–to save Sawyer–and it hadn’t gotten anyone anywhere. When Kate said she liked the old Jack better than the new Jack, he replied cuttingly, “You didn’t like the old me.” Touché, Jack.

What the painful irony is, is if Jack had saved young Ben, things might have turned out differently. Ben’s father actually realized his love for his son when he got shot, and maybe they could have repaired the bad relationship that drove Ben to be the person that he was. But perhaps Jack and Miles were right–if it all already happened one way, there was no way to change it. Jack ended up in this jaded state because it was important to the rules of Time that he be that way and leave Ben in the hands of the Others.

Speaking of Miles (Ken Leung), the amusing argument he had with Hurley (Jorge Garcia) led to Hurley’s preceptive question that left Miles stumped–if Ben lived through this in order to fulfill everything that had already happened, how was it that he didn’t remember his attempted-murderer Sayid at their next meeting?

Turns out the ageless, dark-eyed Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) had the answer for Kate and Sawyer. Whatever he would do to bring Ben back to life would cause him to lose his memory of the traumatic event and also “lose his innocence”. Kate agreed to it anyway, and then we see Richard taking Ben into the strange building where Rousseau lost her husband and friends to an evil that possessed them. This explains a lot about Ben. But then I wonder about the Others–have they all been possessed this way? Is that why they so easily commit acts of violence against the Dharma group and crash victims? And what IS in that building, anyway?

Ahh, Lost. As always, you ask just as many questions as you answer.

Tune in for more Lost mysteries on ABC Wednesday nights, at 9/8c.

PHOTOS: Evangeline Lilly as Kate, Josh Holloway as Sawyer, and Matthew Fox as Jack, Lost “Whatever Happened, Happened” screencaps, c2009 ABC Studios.

Sayid contemplates his options from behind bars on Lost, episode “He’s Our You”.

*SPOILER ALERT* Tonight’s Lost episode “He’s Our You” was All About Sayid (Naveen Andrews). Once again I find parts of episodes like this to be a bit tedious, as we witness scenes we’ve seen before, but from a different angle, or with three lines of new information. Sure, this device can be effective, but when Lost has been doing it for this long…it can get a bit old.

We did at least learn a little bit more about why Sayid was on the plane, and that he hadn’t changed his mind at all about the island. He’d had no intention of going back. It was a bit morbidly funny when Sayid asked his captor if they could take another plane. Seeing all the survivors certainly told him something was up. And I’m not sure, but I thought Ben actually looked a little surprised to see him. So Sayid may have been wrong in assuming that Ben was behind his capture. Was she really a legitimate bounty hunter, or is there a deeper story behind it all? Maybe it’s just fate?

Sawyer (aka LaFleur) recoils from the blaze shooting up from the runaway flaming VW bus.

Sawyer (Josh Holloway) got caught between a rock and a hard place, or rather between Sayid’s stubborness and the Dharma people’s fearfulness. Sawyer actually went farther to help Sayid than I expected him to. Some might feel he could have let Sayid out earlier or attacked his torturers, but I could see his side. Number one, he did work really hard for three years to secure a life for himself, Juliet, Jin, and Miles. Number two, it wasn’t so long ago that Sayid had tortured him. I’m sure that Sawyer can’t have forgotten about that–certainly his explanation of who the mysterious Dharma man in the tent was by saying “He’s our you,” pointed to his clear memory of Sayid’s particular set of skills. (And I don’t think there could have been a more chilling response from Sayid’s point of view. He knew to be scared after that.) Given their past, the fact that Sawyer risked so much as it was to help Sayid says a lot about the man he’s become in these intervening three years.

From the moment Sayid first saw Ben in the last episode, I was wondering if things were going to end as they did in “He’s Our You.” I need Daniel to come in and explain timelines, however, because I’m not sure if killing young Ben would really alter the course of things or if it’s one of those instances where it’s all already happened and can’t be undone. It would just prevent some future loop from occurring maybe? It will be interesting to see what happens next–if we find that Ben is actually dead, of course. One never knows on this island.

I think another big thing about this episode was that Sayid was actually questioning his place in the world, and his destiny. The whole destiny idea has typically been Locke’s area of expertise, and Sayid was more of a survive-the-moment kind of person. I know he’s constantly questioned his actions as a soldier and whether they were justified, but I’m not sure he’s ever actually looked at a the large picture of the meaning of his existence.

As for smaller moments in the episode, we had Juliet trying to deal calmly and fairly with Kate’s return, and Kate trying to deal with Sawyer and Juliet being together. Sawyer finally had to ask Kate why she came back, but we never really got her answer–though I’m guessing she was hinting that Sawyer was the reason. That starts to open the Kate/Sawyer/Juliet can of worms we were expecting.

As an added note, it turns out Ethan’s charming sweet mother is extremely ruthless when it comes to any perceived threat. Guess we know why Ethan turned out the way he did.

Tune in for possible answers and certainly more questions on Lost, Wednesday nights on ABC at 9/8c.

PHOTOS: Naveen Andrews as Sayid and Josh Holloway as Sawyer screencaps from Lost, “He’s Our You”, c2009 ABC Studios.