One thing I'm liking about Mad Men is that it isn't obvious. Some series and movies can't help but to state its theme like the audience is made of five year old boys and constantly preach both in dialogue and action while thinking it's delivering a honest message. Mad Men is literature in the small screen, the audiovisual equivalent of a good slow burner novel. This episode main motiff is secrets. There is a pitch to a bank about the idea of men opening up discretionary accounts that their families won't know about, and after that Don goes visit his mistress, and after that Don goes see his half brother that even his family doesn't know about his existence, while he calls Don by another name - Dick. The scenes between Don and Adam are the spotlight of the episode. I'm liking Mad Man more each episode I watch. It's good that it forces me to think and pay attention to what it happens. As I said, there's too much obvious movies and series out there, so cheers to you, Mad Men. You can tell stories that doesn't appeal to exposition and it is all about reading between the lines,
Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich.
The plane clears frame, finally free of the Island. Jack Shephard has done what he came to this place to do. He has found his purpose. He has found love, and been loved. He has finally found a way to love himself. The bamboo sways across the blue sky, and Jack Shephard's eye closes one final time. He is gone. The end.
Those are the heavenly poetic last words Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse wrote for Lost. The parting words for the script of the final episode. And it was beautifully translated into images with Bender's direction, Fox's acting, the work done by everyone in the series.
Thank you Lost.
I don't remember being this emotional during a movie, tv series, or any piece of art for that matter. I cried my eyes out, they took six seasons to make you love all of the characters so in the end you feel a punch in the stomach seeing them finally being happy.
I would die for Desmond
Love when established series try fresh and new things, as opposed to the ones that always play safe. This episode is one of Lost's most unique and interesting ones, and made me like Richard even more. It's great that Lost cares about its secondary characters to give them really well-made episodes centered entirely about them.
Oh man the feels. It's impossible not to feel sorry and sympathize with Linus, even after all he's done.
Sawyer is one of the most developed and carefully written characters on the show. Still a con man with a big heart, but now unapologetically and finally moving on after becoming a better person, which only happened when he let go of the original Sawyer's shadow in his life.
Lost's endgame is now nearer than ever. You can feel that there's a path being made that leades to the series' ending. The long three-part season four finale is a quase-action movie, divided by various parallel segments, one as insteresting and engaging as the other. Be the flashforwards, the battle between the Others and Keamy's mercenary team, the incredible duo of John and Ben (I love them interacting) or the Oceanic Six's journey to the outside world. The finale is meticulously made to grab your attention with its fast pace, blockbuster set pieces and beautiful scenes. There's no place like home and Lost is my home. I'm mixed with the feelings of sadness as the series' ending is near and happy that this rewatch of mine reaffirms my love to this series. Now it's season five time, and the feels are coming already...
You know it's gonna be good when you're already crying in the first five minutes.
So wild to compare this episode to the other seasons. The danger progression, higher scope and the stakes, and everything getting riskier by the time, with the risk being the writers don't delivering a good conclusion to that behemoth of a story. More twists, surprises and tragic storytelling that find ways to renovate itself when things appear to be already answered to us. Flashbacks now make way to flashforwards that must be insteresting and engaging while also don't revealing everything that's going to happen in the present, where the plot is focused on. This episode is a example of how the stakes are constantly changing and more risks are being taken.
If I were to watch an episode of Lost without binging or rewatching the whole series (which I'm doing now and will certainly do more and more times in the future), The Constant would be that episode. It work as an isolated work of art, it is its own thing even being a part of a whole. Yeah, there's a cliffhanger in the ending, but all 42 minutes of that episodes are used to the main and only storyline, focused on Desmond. It's an unquestionably important episode in the context of the season, but it manages to deliver a story that starts and ends here.
But The Constant's autonomy it's just one of the various reasons I love this episode. It gives us more insight about Desmond's character, and gives him more layers, making him even more relatable than before, it that is possible. The screenplay is just genius, not a scene is wasted, every moment is used to move the story forwards and develop the central characters. Exposition dialogue here is also done brilliantly and in an effective way, dramatizing every new piece of information they give us, and this also helps to increase the tension, as you're looking forward for more pieces to complete the puzzle that is the plot. The high-concept plot, making the sci-fi part of Lost really interesting, is one of the main reasons fans love this episode. Here, the "flashbacks" are diegetic to Desmond, who now experience time differently. He is unstuck on time, going back and forth on past and present, which the editing translates very well with the incredible transitions between the two periods. It's just perfectly designed from beginning to end, and making Penny the constant is just proof that the writers of Lost cares about their characters while thinking up a new story idea. I don't remember if I cried when I saw it the first time, but I cried this time, and every "I love you" said to Penny or Desmond is a punch in the gut as you are already invested in their story together, waiting for them to see each other again. It's Lost at its best: smart, interesting, full of questions and thrilling mysteries, thematically brilliant and character-driven.
Does a pretty good job of taking of where last season's finale ended and planting the seeds of what's to come next.
WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!!
This is Lost's Avengers: Infinity War. Ambitious in its design and epic in scope, this grandiose season finale gives us a tragic death and an ending so startling, subverting our expectations and giving to us something we needed, even if we didn't knew that we did. It was genius and it changed television for better. The stakes were higher, the resolution of all the conflicts were gloriously done and in the end you can't help but hype yourself for what comes next, because you know Lost will get wilder and wilder episode by episode and season by season.
I love you Charlie <3
Michael Giacchino adds a lot to the dramatic/emotional weight of a scene with his genius soundtrack. 'Dharmacide', the melancholic seven-note melody, is so touching and fits perfectly in the scene where Ben kills his father and the Others enters the barracks after killing all of Dharma residents. And that shot of the face of Ben with the gas mask, focusing on his eyes, just beautiful and so revealing of Linus' twisted mind. What an episode, well directed and written, giving us a hell of a character study of the fascinating Ben Linus, with the bravura perfomance of Michael Emerson.
The last episodes of this season of Lost are simply unbeliavable. The writers clearly knew from the get-go the way everything was headed, and they planned a resolution of arcs that are satisfying and smartly done. Sawyer's resolution has to be one of the best, and Locke's beginning of his new era is just as good. Lost let its characters evolve and change, and it also doesn't forget what was established. This is peak television.
Desmond wasn't my favorite character in my first watch of Lost, but now rewatching the character has grown on me. He first began as a plot device in season two, only there to do the exposition and explain the button to our losties. But in the end of season two the writers gave him characterization, a compelling backstory and a charming personality. Now in season three, he is the bearer of a concept that's so cool, and it's good to see a character this great being the center of a sci-fi story, one of the many things that I love in Lost.
Lost going full on Twilight Zone
Once again Lost show us why it was so beloved and had a vast fanbase. This episodes unites the best of the two worlds that makes this series special: the plot full of surprises with thoughtfully wrote and mind-blowing twists and the unique characters. At the end, we are left with the jaw at the ground because of its twist, and the episode build that up gloriously with foreshadowing, and in the end that same build up did not only helped us be amazed with the surprise, it revelead more about the characters, their backstory, their motivations and expanded their arcs. It's the perfect union of plot and character, one affecting and helping each other in this narrative Möbius trip.
The highlight goes to John Locke, the protagonist of this episode, that have its flashbacks centered on him. Locke undergoes a major change in this one. In the first season, we learned to love Locke, the old and wise badass hunter that have a mysterious connection and faith to the Island. In the second season, the character begins to doubt his faith and fate itself, which he believed was the reason he was in the Island in the first place. It's awesome to see how Locke changes in each season. They established him in the first season as a different kind of hero so in the second season they could show us a dead beat, reluctant and skeptic Locke.
The course to trace now in the third season is to give us a redemption arc to Locke, right? No, and the writers knows that and gives us a "third" Locke, the synthesis of the first two. The spiritual warrior/guru that communicates with the Island now is as egoistical, dangerous and cold as he was when he was skeptical, when he put the lives of everyone in the Island in great risk when he decided to put his faith to test and stop pushing the button in the Swan station. Locke now becomes an anti-hero, not the hero of the first season nor the antagonistic character of the last half of the second season.
And, of course, Ben Linus also shows us why he is such a great "villain", with Michael Emerson's perfomance and the writing going hand in hand to build such an interesting and fascinating character.
Such an underrated episode. I know that people mainly love Lost because of its grasping narrative full of intriguing mysteries and the rich lore, and I like that too, but the characters are what make us care about everything that happens in the show. This episode doesn't introduce a new mystery nor resolves a existing one, but it develops characters, gives layers to their arcs and highlights some of their feelings. It give us funny and witty dialogues and such good interactions that makes the relationships between those characters feel so real, wih the chemistry given by the actors and their superb perfomances helping it out.
And here we have a simple plot, it's just Hurley, Charlie, Jin and Sawyer drinking beers, talking and trying to make a god-knows-how-old van work, but the happy moments, specially in the end, is what we will remember in the epic episodes where everything is at stake, when characters can and will lose their lives. We will care because the writers made us care, and that's why we will fear in the mid-season finales and in the season finales that a favorite characters of ours might go away. It's because of Tricia Tanaka Is Dead and its brilliant simplicity of a character-driven plot.
Fantastic episode. Mr. Eko and Charlie are characters I love so much, and seeing them interacting is just great, with the writing helping as it is beautifuly done and layed; Eko's flashbacks resonates with the main plot on the Island and gives us so much insight about Eko and show us why he is such a brilliant, complex and appealing character, much like the majority of Lost's characters to be true, but still, Eko has a uniqueness and a charm that remembers me of Locke, but still being its own thing. I just love Eko and this episode.
That's when Lost hooked me. Binging the series for the second time, this episode still holds even knowing the twist. And when it comes, the feels... John Locke is one of the best characters ever.
