In the mid-’90s, my then-girlfriend watched “Melrose Place” religiously. I wasn’t opposed to the show itself – any show with Heather Locklear is worth at least a look with the sound off, right? – but every time Marcia Cross came onscreen, I would repeat my mantra: “Would someone please KILL HER?” They would even tease us with promos saying, “One of these characters will die,” then show shots of all the leads and one blatant Red Shirt character. It made me crazy that these people would knock on Death’s door and ask him to punch them in the face, but they survived everything, like a bunch of bed-hopping cockroaches. For years, I would think that TV shows didn’t have the balls to kill their characters. It would be too risky, too polarizing.
Man, karma’s a bitch. This week alone, Daphne bites it on “Heroes,” and now Charlotte succumbs to Time Jumping Syndrome. TV finally gave me everything I ever wanted. It wasn’t what I wanted. Come on, they couldn’t have killed the cheerleader and Juliet instead?
Ben Linus might be the most conniving bag of douche on God’s green earth, but you have to admire how unflappable he is. He never loses his cool or panics even when someone has a gun to his head, and that happens a lot. This time it was Sun that was looking for a little payback, though one thing about her arc bugs me: she gets the gun through covert means, and is flipping through a file with shots of Jack and Ben before meeting them at the pier. At first, it looked as though she was on assignment, and Ben was the target. Is she a contract killer, or did she merely pull a few of Daddy’s strings to acquire some heat and settle a score?
“You go ahead, Sawyer. I’m going to watch the love of my life regress to her childhood self and die, but not before scaring the living shit out of me.”
The bits between Rousseau and Jin were interesting, though much like everything else about “Lost,” they ask more questions than they answer. Her entire group goes to save their leader after the smoke monster drags him below (though not before he loses an arm, yikes). Then Jin jumps forward a little bit, and the rest of her group is now “infected,” though with what we’re not sure. She even thinks Jin is infected too, and since the father of Rousseau’s baby just tried to shoot her, I can’t say I blame her for being a little paranoid. Still, I hope they shed more light on what happened to them in the “temple.” I’d also love to know how Ben came to be Alexandra’s “father.”
And while we’re talking about graphic violence, did anyone else wince at the sight of Locke’s leg after he fell down the well? Compound fractures are right up there with severed Achilles tendons on the list of things that make me go “Aieeeeeeeee!” I thought it was amusing that Jack’s father is now Jacob’s official spokesperson. I’m sure there’s some cosmic significance to that – though my first thought when I saw him was “Help Locke, dude, you’re a doctor!” – but we’re probably a year away from any explanation.
And let us not forget the episode’s Big Reveal, when Charlotte told Daniel that she used to live on the island as a little girl, and that a scary old man once told her that she would die here…and that the old man was Daniel, dunt dunt duuuuuuunh. Daniel didn’t know this, which means it hasn’t happened to him yet. Does it happen soon, or years from now? How much time do Sawyer, Juliet and Miles have before they die, too? And how heartbreaking was it to watch Charlotte’s mind come undone? Also, is it just me, or does Jeremy Davies have the most expressive eyebrows of any actor working today?
Jason will be back to blog next week, so thanks for allowing me to sub in for him this week, and I hope I didn’t completely screw the pooch.
