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Rewind: Lost - "What Kate Does"
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 5:36pm

The "Lost" season six rewind posts are not intended as a thorough analysis of the episodes, but are a fresh look at each in light of what later events would do to shed new light on them.

It goes without saying, but HERE BE "LOST" SPOILERS. If you haven't watched the entire final season of the show yet, please spit out the poison pill and give it to your infected friend.

One of the challenges in writing these rewind posts is to not cover too much territory in the earlier episodes. If I write too broadly, I might not have much left to discuss as a narrative thread is expanded in subsequent hours. For example, I wrote at length last week about what I saw as the thematic purpose served by the Temple Others: corruption. The Man in Black's control of Benjamin Linus didn't just affect the leader of the Others, but spread throughout the entire group. Thus, now three years removed from Ben's departure, the Others remain ruined as a functional unit of good. Once corrupted, always corrupted. This links in to MiB's words to Jacob as the Black Rock approached the island in the season five finale: "They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same." The Others were a long-term project by Jacob, but in the end they fought, destroyed and corrupted like all their predecessors. Just like the Dharma Initiative, whose fighting, destruction and corruption we watched throughout season five.

So having covered all that last week, what's left to talk about with several more episodes featuring the Temple Others? Well, I guess not much, but "What Kate Does" does offer further evidence of this aspect of the Others' corruption. The first of these is the presence of Aldo. For fans of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," his return was little more than a "Holy crap, it's Mac" moment. For the rest of us, it was just another whiny, secretive, abusive member of the Temple Others to annoy us for an hour.

Aldo was the guard Kate attacked to escape her caged captivity back in season three. Given how awful the polar bear cages arc was, any tie-in to the almost-as-excruciating Temple Others arc is like mixing mustard and raisins: two nasty things that become even worse when combined. (Those are just two things I dislike. Feel free to substitute in whatever you need to complete the effect.) Here, Aldo tells Kate that he still holds a grudge over being hit in the head, and proceeds to treat her and Jin pretty poorly. Aldo is also this week's device of pointless plot stalling, as he repeatedly shushes his fellow Other whenever he starts to reveal anything that might progress the story or our understanding of the island's secrets.

But I have found a redeeming purpose to Aldo's purposelessness: he is a direct connection to the corrupted tribe of Ben Linus's Others. This makes his abusive and secretive behavior toward Kate make sense. That's how Ben ran things because that's how MiB taught him to run things. The bad habits of Ben Linus continue through Aldo and through everyone else at the Temple. Despite whatever suspicions or explanations we had for Ben being an evil leader, at this point in the story we've only recently learned that Smokey had been corrupting him and the Others for years, taking them far off Jacob's track. And at this point in the story, we also aren't yet 100% sure that Jacob is good and MiB is evil (or even who they are). In hindsight, knowing which side is which, we can better appreciate that Ben derailed the Others off the path of good during his tenure thanks to some serious manipulation from Smokey. So folks like Aldo behave badly because it's how they were told to behave. Even with Ben gone and the Temple Others trying to do what the real Jacob wants, they just don't quite know how to do it because they were never taught by anyone how to do it.

I can even tie this theme into another annoying season six gimmick: Sideways World cameos. In "What Kate Does," the token cameo is Dr. Ethan Goodspeed. Ethan, such a menacing presence as Claire's season one kidnapper and castaway infiltrator, shows up here as a kind obstetrician who takes care of Claire when she goes into early labor. Believe it or not, his "I don't want to stick you with a bunch of needles if I don't have to" schtick serves a purpose beyond mere groan-inducing irony. The point is that Ethan is a good person here. Minus the corrupting influence of MiB and Ben, he's a kind, gentle doctor whose bedside manner puts Claire at ease. The Others, including Ben, weren't inherently evil people. They were corrupted, as so many on the island are.

This angle on the Temple Others is something I find infinitely intriguing, and to some extent redeeming for the storyline, but it doesn't change the fact that the action itself is often poorly written and executed. This is something that recurs throughout the show's final season: interesting ideas executed in annoying ways. (More on this when we get to "Across the Sea.")

While he was already detaching from everyone in "LA X," this episode saw the first real manifestations of Sawyer's return to moral free agency. Here he ditches the Temple, heading off for the Dharma barracks to retrieve the ring he intended to give Juliet. Though Kate follows him there, he eventually sends her on her way to pursue his own path alone. Like much of season six, this is a direct parallel to the show's first season, when Sawyer was an angry con man who used and abused his fellow castaways for personal gain. As the final season develops, Sawyer tries to find a way out of both Jacob and MiB's plans, eschewing both good and evil. I'll save most of this discussion for later episodes, but while there was a lot of online discussion about whether this path would be the right one for Sawyer, his resemblance to the early asshole version of the character seemed to indicate it wouldn't. And it wasn't, arguably costing Sayid, Sun and Jin their lives.

What about the Sideways World? Summary: Kate hijacks a cab with Claire inside, ditches Claire, ditches her handcuffs, and picks Claire up again. When "What Kate Does" first aired, a big viewer complaint was Claire's inexplicable decision to let Kate, who had just kidnapped her at gun point then abandoned her in the middle of Los Angeles, drive her around the city, accompanying her to both Aaron's adoptive parents' house and to the hospital where Claire helped Kate elude police pursuit. In real life, one would hope Claire would've told Kate to get the hell away from her when she showed back up and offered a ride. Well, lucky "Lost." This isn't the real world. It's an afterlife where the rules of common sense don't have to apply. The real point here is that these characters are drawn to one another in the Sideways World against all logic. Despite her better judgment, Claire accepts a ride from Kate because of their real connection to one another. Alas, it doesn't play out believably, even on a second viewing. And as future episodes illustrate, the bendable rules of the Sideways World allow writers to take shortcuts whenever necessary to connect characters, logic (and medical privacy laws -- more on that when we get to "Everybody Loves Hugo") be damned.

A few random thoughts...

  • Dogen's bizarre "test" to see if Sayid is infected makes no more sense on second viewing than it did the first time around. Perhaps that's the point, since I don't think there is an infection. Maybe when you test for something that doesn't exist, the results always come back positive.
  • As Kate's hijacked taxi leaves LAX, she and Jack lock eyes in a moment of puzzling connection. As we learn in the finale, Kate's love for Jack has the power to wake him, though he resists her.
  • In the hospital, Claire calls her unborn baby Aaron despite having never chosen that name. On first viewing this was commonly interpreted as some sign of destiny for the characters but now we know it's because she'd already given birth to Aaron in the real world and is simply reliving an alternative version of his birth in the afterlife.
  • I've fallen behind with my "Lost" rewind posts the past two weeks due to the Los Angeles Film Festival and a day-job-related conference in Philadelphia, but I'm bound and determined to keep up, so hopefully in the next couple of days I'll be able to watch and write about "The Substitute."
Lost, Recap, Rewind
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Hulu Plus: TV networks still don't get the internet
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 2:36pm

Today Hulu announced plans for its long anticipated paid subscription service, Hulu Plus. As suspected, the $10 monthly fee will provide subscribers with iPhone and iPad access, as well as the ability (eventually) to watch on TV via devices like the PS3 and XBox 360, as well as certain TVs and Blu-ray players. In addition, subscribers will have access to the entire current season of popular first-run shows plus the back library of other series. Yet, despite the $10 price tag, subscribers will still have to sit through ads, just like with Hulu's free content.

The ads aren't the only problem, though. The premium service's approach to archive content illustrates that content providers (i.e., TV networks) still don't have the first clue how to approach online television.

Think of it this way, assuming that most Hulu users have televisions, why is online content so popular? I can think of two primary reasons: mobile access (be it on a mobile device or on a desktop/laptop in a location without a TV) and the ability for viewers to catch up on missed episodes. Hulu Plus expands it offerings in both of these categories, but in the latter case it still misses the boat, providing access to most current shows only for episodes from the current season. Essentially, with the exception of series that are in their first season, Hulu Plus only helps viewers who already watch a particular show, not new viewers who want to catch up. And this is the problem.

Both DVD and on-demand content provide a means for those who "missed the boat" on a show to catch up and eventually become regular viewers of older shows. (This is what I did a couple of months ago with "Breaking Bad.") They also allow viewers who lost track of a series at some point to get back up to speed if they hear a show has gotten good again. (Earlier this year I did exactly that with the last two seasons of "Rescue Me.") The problem with DVD, however, is that it is a pricey option if a viewer chooses to purchase the discs, or requires waiting impatiently for new discs to arrive in the mail if he or she uses Netflix to rent them. On-demand, on the other hand, provides instant gratification and the ability to run extended marathons of episodes.

With Hulu Plus, one can only catch up on the current season, requiring reliance on DVD for any viewing lapse beyond that. This means the service provides no avenue whatsoever to attract new viewers to a show or bring back old ones. Those viewers, if they watch at all, will continue to do so via DVD, which they will probably rent, bringing no revenue to the network at all. Worse still, they may resort to more illicit means, like Bitorrent, to catch up free of charge on their computers when they would happily have paid $10 per month for a legal option.

I suspect Hulu Plus's current season only for most first-run programming is intended as protection of DVD sales revenue, as the market for "Modern Family" or "Glee" on DVD will be higher than older shows like "Arrested Development" and "Miami Vice." But just as Paramount realized last week that Redbox DVD rentals have zero impact on DVD sales, eventually maybe one of these networks will realize that on-demand availability doesn't affect DVD sales either, and that it could actually lead to increases in on-air viewership once new and lapsed viewers catch up.

Something else to be aware of with regard to Hulu's shift to a paid service option is that for all its prior assurances that nothing free would become paid content, "Arrested Development" is a show that was long available in its entirety for free on the site. Based on the company's press release about "Hulu Plus," that show seems to be headed behind a paywall.

In fairness to the networks, Hulu Plus is still an expansion of both content and viewing options for the site's users, and for those happy with the site's current structure, that will remain largely unchanged for now. And all flavors of Hulu remain preferable to HBO's totalitarian approach to its series, in which only old series/seasons are available on-demand at inflated prices (e.g., HBO offers old shows on Amazon VOD only as 24-hour rentals -- at the same price every other network SELLS its episodes).

Those ads are still a big disappointment, though.

Hulu, Internet Video, TV, Video On Demand
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30 for 30 - "The Two Escobars"
Saturday, June 19, 2010 - 2:25am

Reviewed at the Los Angeles Film Festival. This review was originally published at Words About Film.

"The Two Escobars" plays as a nice companion piece to another ESPN "30 for 30" documentary, "The 16th Man." That film told the story of South Africa's post-Apartheid Rugby World Cup run and how President Nelson Mandela used it to bring his country together. "The Two Escobars," on the other hand, focuses on how the rise and fall of both the Medellin drug cartel and the Colombian national soccer team were intertwined and how they reflected a country in tatters.

The film, co-directed by brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, follows two parallel stories. The first is that of Andres Escobar, a star in the early 1990s on the Colombian national soccer team. During his time on the team, Colombia came out of nowhere to become the best soccer team in South America and one of the favorites to win the 1994 World Cup. The team had an unprecented level of talent and an unprecedented flow of cash to support it.

That's where the film's second story comes in, that of Pablo Escobar (no relation to Andres), the violent and powerful leader of the Medellin drug cartel. In addition to supplying the world with cocaine and declaring an all-out war on the Colombian government, Pablo was also a huge fan and financial booster of Colombian soccer. This led to friendships with the players and coaches that continued even after the drug lord went to prison.

In crafting a set of parallel stories about the two Escobars, the filmmakers could've opted to exaggerate the connections between the two worlds. Such exaggerations would've been unnecessary given the remarkable ties the drug lord had with the team (at one point the national team even snuck into Pablo's prison to play a game with him). Instead, the film almost underplays these jaw-dropping moments, which benefits the film both by maintaining a non-sensational tone and by keeping sports in the proper context of the larger Colombian political scene.

Kudos to ESPN for allowing the Zimbalists to keep their feature length cut intact. This allows far more nuance into the story than one expects from a sports documentary for television. Rather than take short cuts in the narrative, the film presents interview subjects who provide conflicting opinions about the same events, allowing the viewer to better appreciate the complexity of Colombia's problems. And when each of the Escobars becomes a victim of violence, the connections between the two deaths is easily illustrated with any need for heavy-handedness.

***

"The Two Escobars" is scheduled to air Tuesday night at 9pm on ESPN. I spoke to co-director Michael Zimbalist after the film, and he told me that ESPN is airing the entire 100 minute feature on Tuesday night (albeit with commercial breaks that will extend its length to two hours).

30 for 30, Andres Escobar, Columbia, Documentary, ESPN, Movies, Pablo Escobar, Soccer
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The "Breaking Bad" Palette: The shades of Gale
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 11:55pm

I only started watching "Breaking Bad" a few weeks ago, and having raced through the first two and a half seasons in a week then watched the remainder of the third season at the usual weekly pace, I'm only now experiencing my first withdrawal from the show. To take the edge off, I thought I'd write a series of posts about the show's use of color. The creative use of meaningful shades in the series' production design, costumes and cinematography add an extra layer of depth to the show's already great writing and performances.

To start with, let's take a look at Sunday night's season finale, "Full Measure." Specifically, I'm interested in how the show presented the character of Gale, Walt's new lab assistant. (SPOILER WARNING: If you haven't seen Sunday's episode, stop reading now.) I covered some of these moments in my episode review already, but this time I'm adding a few visual aids to illustrate the moments in question.

As Walt pulls into the laundromat after his powwow with Gus, he notices the car parked next to his, complete with a recumbent bike strapped to the roof. Gus told Walt he was choosing Jesse's replacement himself, and the safe bet here is Gale. Walt fired Gale earlier in the season, presumably out of fear that Gale was planted there by Gus to learn Walt's meth formula. Given Gale's earlier quirkiness, the visual of the car and bike (with some help from the episode's "previously on" segment) suggests Gale's return. Cinematographer Michael Slovis adds a bit of symbolism to the shot of Walt noticing the car: A sign reading "SIGNS" in all red letters looming directly over Gale's car:

Once Walt and Gale chat inside the lab, Gale zips up his hazmat suit, enveloping his entire body in yellow. Yellow, of course, is Gus's signature color, and the show has used the hazmat suits all season to make the point that when Walt and Jesse are in the lab, they belong to Gus. The shot of Gale in this scene builds on that same concept, only this time he is the only person in the lab covered in the color. He's "Gus's man," a point that will be solidified later in the episode.

Despite his workplace role as a company man, at home Gale is carefree and immersed in his own life. In the memorable scene where he sings along with the Italian song, "Crapa Pelada," while watering plants, Gale wears a green T-shirt. The show has long used green as a symbol of life. Walt dresses in green more than any other character on the show. Throughout the first season, as Walt got a series of thrills from his entry into the criminal world, he was always wearing green. This season, Jesse wore green while in rehab, as he emerged from years of drug abuse. Skyler, too, has been seen wearing green this year, particularly as she's given in to the temptation of Walt's money and proposed her own entry into his lawbreaking. Here, Gale wears it after getting his old job back, enjoying a night at home with his plants (ahem, green) and music:

But he is visited that night by Gus, dressed in yellow (of course), enticing him to take over the lab for Walt. Gus uses Walt's cancer as the excuse for the conversation, but as he presses Gale to reduce the amount of time he needs to learn Walt's formula, emphasizing a not so subtle subtext, Gale soon complies with a touch of eagerness:

Finally, when Jesse shows up at Gale's door to shoot him, Gale has switched over to a yellow shirt, even at home. Both because he agreed to become Gus's inside man and because Walt and Jesse are targeting him because of his connection to Gus.

Jesse, of course, is dressed in red, a color that was once his signature. Since his relationship with Jane and his stint in rehab, he hasn't worn the color as much as he used to, but as he sinks into a very bad place, the red shirt is back.

Off the top of my head I can think of two specific sequences from the season I'd like to write about in a similar manner: Walt receiving payment from Gus while stopped at a traffic light and Hank leaving his office after being suspended from the DEA. If you can think of other inventive uses of color on the show, please discuss them in the comments.

Breaking Bad, Color, Symbolism, TV
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Breaking Bad - "Full Measure"
Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 10:40pm

Tonight's pre-credit sequence flashed back to a young househunting Walt and Skyler looking at the house they'd soon buy. The season's recurring theme of Walt as a man of caution is turned on its head, with Walt scoffing at the three bedroom house as too small. When Skyler suggests it's as high as they can go in their price range, he asks her, "Why be cautious?"

Young Walt and the new "no half-measues" version have a lot in common, it seems, but on very different sides of morality and the law. As Mike points out during the remote summit between Walt and Gus, the same words can be open to a wide range of interpretations. But one of the points made by "Breaking Bad" over and over is that Walt's criminal schemes make him feel more alive than he has in years. And that's the problem.

In the few glimpses of Walt as a younger man we've seen, he's a far more vibrant man than the teacher and father we saw in season one. In tonight's opening scene, the carefree father-to-be is wearing a green shirt, the same color clothing the present day Walt wears when his meth cooking results in some kind of excitement (often the dangerous kind). When he first entered the business in season one, he wore green all the time, and we saw time and again the rush he got from breaking the law. This brought back a youthful vibrancy, including a renewed sexual vigor with Skyler (which eventually got too vigorous). Walter White, chemistry teacher and father, was a beaten down man. Walter White, meth dealer, on the other hand, chases highs the same way junkies do, just not the chemical variety. This season, as his criminal activity became little more than another job, however, Walt has favored much cooler shades of blue.

Through it all, Walt's car has always had a faded paint job, to the point of being a non-descript beige. Mike tells Walt he needs to get the damage from last week's incident repaired. In the very next scene, Walt arrives at the lab with a dent-free car, complete with a fresh paint job. Turns out the factory color was a pale green, and its been restored. Walt may still wear a blue shirt to work for Gus's sake, but the car he used to mow down Gus's men betrays the excitement Walt feels in such unpredictable moments.

First thing tonight, Walt meets with Gus to explain why he killed those two dealers. He frames the situation in a pragmatic manner. The best option, Walt says, is to consider this a hiccup in their relationship. Jesse is gone and forgotten, and Walt will keep cooking meth for Gus. And Gus agrees to the deal. Though no one -- not Walt, not Gus, not the viewing audience -- is calmed by the arrangement.

The first sign of trouble with the arrangement is Gus's choice to replace Jesse as Walt's assistant. It's Gale, the professional chemist Walt fired after just a few days. His arrival is announced in humorous fashion, with Walt noticing Gale's car parked outside the lab -- complete with a billboard that reads "SIGNS" looming directly over the vehicle. Gus soon pays Gale a home visit, asking how soon he'd be ready to take over the lab if Walt were to, say, succumb to his cancer. And at this point we know Gus plans to kill Walt.

Walt seems oblivious to the danger, answering Gale's questions about the cooking process, but we soon learn he knows the real situation. Meeting with Jesse, who hasn't left town after all, Walt devises a plan to for them to murder Gale so Gus won't have anyone else to make his product, thus keeping Walt alive a little longer.

Gale has always been a charming character in his appearances on the show, from his lab setup for brewing coffee to his penchant for singing Italian songs while watering his plants. So the plan to kill him, despite Gale's unwitting (perhaps) betrayal of Walt, is a wholly unsympathetic one. If Walt's coldblooded murder of Gus's dealers last week was a major step into darkness for the character, at least the victims were two men who had killed an 11-year-old boy. Murdering Gale would be a freefall into darkness by comparison, and Jesse (our moral compass for this season) says as much, refusing to pull the trigger himself.

But as is the case with Walter White, his own criminal schemes always drag other people into the darkness with him. Jesse was content to cook mediocre methamphetamine in a low level operation before Walt recruited him. But since they're paths crossed, Jesse has found himself in constant danger and involved in several deaths. Skyler, too, now seems headed down the path of corruption as Walt's money launderer. Saul was already in criminal activity up to his eyeballs before meeting Walt, but now he's being threatened by Gus's enforcer, thanks to Walt.

Alas, Gus's men move on Walt before he can kill Gale. To save his own life, though, he offers to give up Jesse. Calling him to set up a meet where Mike will ambush him, instead he tells Jesse he has to kill Gale himself. And we end on a cliffhanger, something "Breaking Bad" hasn't really done before. Seasons one and two both had unresolved storylines at their conclusions but never cut off mid-crisis like this. As the show goes to black tonight, Walt is being held by Mike and Jesse has just pulled the trigger on Gale (though we don't know for sure if he actually shot him).

Given the abrupt ending, it's too soon to properly reflect here about what tonight adds to the season's themes and character arcs, other than to repeat the theme of caution discussed above. Walt's post-plane crash caution put him in much the same rut he was in before being diagnosed with cancer, even after taking up the meth trade again in a very controlled, professional environment. It's no coincidence that Heisenberg's pork pie hat made a return here, as it represents a more exciting, less cautious time in Walt's criminal career.

Jesse's seasonal arc has also been discussed at length online prior to tonight. He began the season fresh from rehab, resigned to being a bad man. But time and again he proved to be the least evil person in most situations he found himself in. He couldn't sell meth to a mother. He couldn't kill the dealers who shot Combo himself, and tonight he refused to kill Gale. But the sad conclusion to this storyline seems to be that he gets dragged into doing very bad things anyway because of his association with Walt.

So that's where we stand until next year. As things sink in, I may follow up with another season spanning post, but I make no promises. An analysis of how the show uses color so effectively might be more likely.

A few random thoughts...

  • Someone at AMC is on my shit list tonight for slating "Breaking Bad" for a running time of 1:47 in the TV listings despite it only being the usual one hour length. When the credits popped up, I wasn't prepared for it. From the previews I've seen, "Rubicon" looks like a good show, but don't trick people into watching it by sneaking it into the "Breaking Bad" slot unannounced. With no expectation that the episode was wrapping up, I now feel like I left a Wagner opera 3 hours in.
  • Some nice color work with Gale's clothing tonight. When we first see him at the lab, he's wearing the yellow hazmat suit, pulling the hood over his head and tightening the drawstring, enveloping him in Gus's signature color (foreshadowing his role as Gus's inside man). Following his first day on the job with Walt, however, we see him at home wearing green, signifying the rejuvenation of his return to the lab as Walt's assistant. He's watering plants (green) and offers Gus a creme de menthe (green) when he arrives to chat. Next time we see him at home, however, after he's begun preparing to take over for Walt, Gale is now even wearing yellow at home. (I could talk about this stuff all day.)
  • No appearances from Hank and Marie tonight, so his home recovery will have to wait for next season. The same with Skyler's money laundering plans, as she only makes a couple of cursory appearances.
  • From what little I can make of "Crapa Pelada," the Italian song Gale sings along with, it seems to be about a man who is in such a state of despair that his hair falls out, but then sings a song about cooking to forget these worries." I could be way off on this, but if not it's a clever choice. Maybe someone who actually speaks Italian can clarify. [UPDATE: Josh Gajewski at the L.A. Times Show Tracker blog received an email from a reader that provided an explanation of the song. "It's called Crapa Pelada, which literally means 'bald head' in Italian. It's basically about a bald guy that cooks omelets and won't share his cooking with his brother."]
  • "Look, I saved your life, Jesse. Are you gonna save mine?" Such a manipulative plea on Walt's part.
  • Mike's great scene breaking into the chemical plant was a bit out of place, clearly setting up a cartel storyline for next season.

 

Breaking Bad, Recap, Review, TV
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