Sam 0:07 Welcome to Tessa watches lost the podcast within a podcast that is now a spin off podcast where I asked Tessa questions about the episodes of lost that we watched this week. I'm your host, Sam, and with me is the Claire to my Charlie. Tessa, Tessa 0:24 what if you're the Charlie to my Claire? Sam 0:27 This week, we're talking about the first four episodes of season two, man of science, man of faith, adrift orientation, and everybody hates Hugo. But before we get into season two, let's go back to the first season for a few minutes. You've already talked about your first impressions on monkey off my backlog, you know, a few weeks ago, but just for review very quickly, what did you think about the setup the premise of the show based on the first season, Tessa 0:58 I mentioned this on monkey off my backlog. I literally don't know anything about last except for the ending. So if anybody's worried about spoiling the ending for me, I already know we'll get to that later. I really wasn't aware of how the show was going to be based on I guess I didn't have any preconceptions on what the show is going to be. I mean, I knew it was about a plane full of passengers who were stranded on a deserted island. I knew that there was weird mystery stuff, although I wasn't really sure about the weird mystery stuff, what it entailed. Exactly. And the first season of the show really surprised me. And I know that other people have told me that this is not what the show really is about. It's not a survival show. But that's kind of what the first season is about is these people figuring out how to survive on this island. It's establishing characters like jack and Kate and Saeed and Jin and sun up, and in Hurley and Charlie and Claire, and they're all these really, really great characters. I did have some problems at the first season with some of the stereotypes of some of the characters. But as I was saying to a friend of mine recently, these characters are great and they shine through even when they're given storylines that maybe aren't the best. Did you mention Sawyer? No, I didn't mention Sawyer who I'm just gonna say is it soul, but he's are. Sam 2:23 You heard it here first. All right. So you mentioned a bunch of characters just there. There's also of course, Charlie and clear. Boone. Shannon, have all of those characters. We talked about this a little bit on monkey, so I won't do the top three. But just Who are your favorites? Who are your least favorites? Oh, this Tessa 2:44 is hard. So my favorite characters, obviously. Hurley? I mean, I don't if your favorite character isn't Hurley, what is wrong with you, Hurley, Hugo is such a great character he's played so well. And one of the best scenes in the first season of loss, which I guess we're doing spoilers on this show. Since it's about last we're going to talk about the second season. So one of my favorite scenes, and I didn't talk about this on monkey because we weren't doing spoilers is the Hugo centric episode in season one, where we find out that he won the lottery using numbers that are important to the show somehow. And these numbers are bad luck. And so he just goes to the string of bad luck in his in the flashbacks about him. And I loved this episode so much, not only because Hurley is such a great character, everybody loves Hurley, despite the episode we're going to talk about later called everybody hates you ago. And I just I loved it, because it just gave us insight into the fact that he had been in a mental institution and had won the lottery had gone through this real string of just really horrific, like incidence of people dying in a house catching on fire, and all of those things he finds out about these numbers, but he's scared to tell anybody about it, because he's afraid of being institutionalized. Again, he's afraid of the stigma that comes with mental illness. And there's just this great scene where he meets we're so in the middle of the woods, and like, he says something about the numbers and he's like, I'm not crazy. And she's like, of course, you're not crazy, even though Rousseau has been presented to us as like, perhaps the most unstable character of all of them. And it's just this great cathartic scene where they hug each other in the woods. And it's like All he wanted was someone to tell him he wasn't crazy. And it just it made me cry. It was such a great scene. It was such a great catharsis and I think that's what I really like about this show so far is that even though with all of the the mysteries and the polar bear and the smoke monster and all of the the twists and turns, these characters are such solid characters, so Hurley definitely my favorite. I love Kate. I love the mystery associated with her. I can't wait to see what her backstory is. She's such a more really complex character, even jack, even though he's like the most basic character still is really compelling. Like you still really want to know about him a lot. Siete is just up for anything like he's ready for any side mission that you could possibly imagine he's ready to go. Son is really great. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm hard pressed to find a character that I dislike maybe john Locke. And that doesn't mean he's a bad character. It just means I dislike him. So I know I just covered a lot of ground because I'm trying to like summarize my thoughts about season one before we talk about season two. And I don't think there's a character that I actively dislike. I think I disliked gin for the first half of season one. But that's because they were playing him as kind of a stereotypical, controlling Asian husband, which I disliked. But they've definitely gone by giving us his backstory by telling us that he was trying to protect son even though it was any really controlling way. That kind of redeemed him as a character a bit. And I think they've allowed him to actually grow and have other motivations, especially going into season two. So I guess first half season one gin, I disliked, I'm starting to really dislike john Locke. And it's not because he's a bad character. I actually think he's a really well written character, but I just really dislike his I don't care about anybody except for my destiny attitude going into season two, like he has gotten very focused on himself and his own heroic narrative at the expense of everybody else. I think that was really triggered by the death of boon again, a spoiler near the end of season one. I think he's just sort of doubled down on this idea that he's a heroic character, and I really like the way that they're deconstructing the hero's journey in last through this character, but it also means that I really dislike him. Sam 7:01 Alright, so you mentioned the the Hurley flashback episode in season one. Is that the best flashback from season one? And if not, what would be Tessa 7:14 yes, the Hurley flashback episode from season one is the best flashback episode. However top contenders I would say are also Kate any flashback episode with Kate just because the flashback episodes with Kate tend to bring up more questions than they answer which I think is great. Like I think a lot of the flashback episodes for any character is supposed to answer questions about why this character is like this, but Kate's just like how did she learn all this stuff? Is she an international spy? Like what? Like every time I watch a flashback with Kate, I end up walking away with more questions. Sam 7:54 Okay, least favorite flashback of season one. Tessa 7:58 You know, honestly, I'm gonna say the side episode where and I love siete as a character, but again, I think they were playing a little bit with stereotypes when they did the US the CIA pressuring him into leading on his friend into committing like a terrorist act so that way they could arrest him. To me that just felt like very out of character with the show. I didn't really care. I don't really care about side's backstory. I love him as a character, but I don't I feel like his backstory follows a very specific and very stereotypical arc of like this middle eastern army dude who like is sort of involved with terrorism but isn't involved with terrorism and I just didn't like that. So that that would probably be my least favorite of the flashbacks. Sam 8:51 Okay. One more set of favorite and least favorite. This one. What is your favorite event that occurred on the island in season one. Tessa 9:03 I think my favorite thing that happened on the island in season one is when a really makes the golf course that was great. It was just such a break from just the grueling survivalism of the rest of the show. For Hurley to just be like, Look, there's more to life than trying to figure out where our water is coming from trying to figure out what food we're gonna have. And he like really reminds jack that if you're just trying to focus on the basics, you're going to stress yourself out to the point where life is no longer worth living. I love that when he makes the golf course. And he convinces I think it's just jack and Sawyer to play at jack Sawyer and john Locke to play that everybody else gets involved that they all start taking that like it's a really great community building moment. And I loved that that was the scene when I was like this show is something different. The show I was doing something with these characters that isn't just action and mystery. Sam 10:05 So you know what's next? The most annoying thing. The thing that you hated the most that happened on the island in season one. Tessa 10:16 I really like Sawyer. But I think the most annoying thing that happened the most annoying things that happen on the island tend to be Sawyer centric, which is weird because a runner up for best moment on the island is when Sawyer gets his glasses. But I think that some of the ways in which he and Kate interact are not my favorite because it really feels like he's just messing with her to mess with her. And it's just not my favorite relationship on the show. I hate if I'm like offending all you Kate and Sawyer fans out there. But there's like a moment where they there like that, like all of the physical stuff I just don't like where they're like wrestling over like the guns or you know, anything like that. It's just not my favorite. Sam 11:04 Alright, so now that we have recap, season one just a little bit, you can go back and listen to our discussion about last and its first season on monkey off my backlog a few episodes back. But for now. All right, now it's time to start talking about the episodes that we watched this week, rather than talk about them one by one. Let's start by talking about the developments on the island over these four episodes. So of course, the big thing is the hatch, jack, lock and Kate explore the hatch and discover Desmond, who has been tasked with entering the magic numbers into a computer every 108 minutes or else something bad will happen question mark site comes in clutch fixing the computer after some unfortunate gunplay lock takes over for Desmond. JACK investigates, and is generally grumpy Kate takes a shower, and Hurley has trust issues. We'll get more into the Dharma initiative of it all in a moment. But what's your take on what's been going on in this one station, Tessa 12:15 I just feel like they double down on all of the issues of the characters that we've seen so far. So the first episode is really about jack trying to make the decision whether or not he's going to align himself more with Locke, or if he's going to align himself more with the values that he showed at the end of season one, which is like survival first, protect everybody. Whereas Locke is really doubling down on this, like, I'm a special person, I have to have a destiny, that destiny is clearly to make sure that this countdown clock does not count all the way down and the bad thing happens. So it's interesting to see the struggle here with jack, we get to see more of his relationship with his ex wife who's played by Julie Bowen. It's really, really weird that they use Julie Bowen for such a small role. But it is interesting to me that we get more of that internal struggle with Jacques with Locke, again, he's just doubling down. Like I feel like I liked luck a lot more at the beginning of season one than I do now because he has tunnel vision like severe tunnel vision on what is happening on the island himself is the center of the story that involves a lot more people than him and I don't know it just really felt like he was willing to endanger everyone including Hurley in order to open the hatch. And I'm sorry if you go after my man Hurley I don't like you anymore. Hurley is amazing. Protect Hurley Sam 13:43 Okay, so Meanwhile, on the remains of the raft. After not being eaten by a shark, Michael and Sawyer make it back to the island and are reunited with Jin, all three, you're promptly taken prisoner by a mysterious new character. Eventually, we discovered that this man was also on flight 815 and is part of a group of survivors known by fans as the talese this group includes Jack's friend from the airport, I lucea. A new face Libby and roses husband, Bernard, there were several mortalities originally, but they all died. These four episodes ended with the major reveal that Bernard is still alive. How did you feel about that, as well as the journey that Michael Sawyer and Jen have been on? Tessa 14:29 So let me start with your first question, which is actually at the end of the four episode arc, I teared up a little bit. What I found up in art was still alive, like rose had been insisting that he was alive for the entirety of season one. Everybody thought that she was just delusional or she was holding on to whatever little hope she could, and he is still alive, and he seems like a cool person. So I'm actually very invested in the arc of whether rose and Bernard get back together, or find each other I guess is what I should say. But to move back to the beginning of the episode arc with the four of them. I would like to point out that as soon as Sawyer was shot and fell into the water, I said, Man, I hope there isn't a jaws situation about to happen. And guess what? There was a shark, there was totally a shark in the water. And there's just this really tense. Well, I mean, I guess it's an episode long thing, where Michael and Sawyer are like trying to keep the blood out of the water because the shark keeps, like hitting the bottom of the tenuous bit of pieces of wood that are still stuck together from the raft. So I found that to be really effective. I did really want an episode from Jen's perspective, I don't know if we're gonna get that because we just sort of next time we see Jen, he's running away from the talese right, because we still think that they're part of the others. I really wanted an episode that's like what happened to gin, especially because the first four episodes show us the same scene from the swan station from like five different perspectives. So why isn't Jin's perspective in here, that's a whole other thing. Sam 16:05 We spend most of our time during these four episodes, in this one station, or with the three characters and the talese that you just talked about. We don't see much of the beach or the caves, you want to say anything about what we did see. Tessa 16:23 So of course, she had an immediately lost fincen. Like that should surprise no one. Although she does find him again. She does hear the voices out in the woods, the whispers as both sides and Russo have called them. And of course, because she said Shannon, she immediately freaks everybody out at the camp instead of keeping it to herself. Like Syed did. So I that that was like a big thing is that I was like, Oh my god, Shannon read the room, you are freaking everybody out. As much as I love Shannon, I did have a moment of frustration with her when it comes to that. I'm more interested to know if Charlie's gonna do drugs, or if he's already started doing the heroin that they found in the crashed plane out in the woods. I really loved Charlie's arc. In Season One, I didn't get to talk about it too much, because it's just it's such an interesting arc in terms of he's trying to be a better person. Like he was brought down by the drugs and rock and roll. And then he was trying to be a better person on the island and he was being a better person for clear and for himself. I loved that they made that distinction. But of course, he is a drug addict. He has a disease and so having access to the heroin I feel like it's really difficult for him and I'm very curious to know if he's going to relapse or if there's something else going on because as far as I can tell, he hasn't actually done heroin yet. He just has it there in the in the Virgin Mary statues. So yeah, I don't know. I really want to know what's up with clear to you. We haven't gotten one of those Rosemary's babies episodes since the one we got in season one, and so I'm ready for it. I'm also very concerned about Walt we haven't seen any Walt, except for the weird shining moment in the woods with Shannon. Sam 18:12 Right, the others are still out there, of course. So these four episodes did a lot to reintroduce us to the characters that you talked about, move the plot forward a bit, set the table for all the good stuff that's gonna happen in season two, and maybe some of the not so good stuff. This was in the first season, we had the magic numbers, we had the polar bear, which you mentioned, there was also the smoke monster. But other than introducing these elements, Season One doesn't do much in terms of the show's mythology. Season Two, dive straight in with the orientation video that introduces us to the Dharma initiative, the thing that drove bands crazy, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, it was something that a lot of us spent a lot of time on. So this is the first big information dump that occurs. And I'm going to quote from the orientation video. The Dharma initiative was created in 1970. It is the brainchild of Gerald and Karen degroot, two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan. Following in the footsteps of visionaries such as BF Skinner, they imagined a large scale comino research compound where scientists and free thinkers from around the globe could pursue research and meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, Xu, ology electromagnetism, and utopian social, something, something, the video cuts out there. We also learned that unfortunately, there was an incident and the code had to be entered in every 108 minutes to prevent another incident. Okay, so were you as confused by all of that as the rest of us were back in 2005. Tessa 19:52 So I was really struck. First of all, here, here are some of my first impressions about the Dharma initiative based on the story One station and on the orientation video This to me is Marvel This is comic books right this is roxxon This is like the evil corporation that is just doing like testing and playing mind games with everybody like this to me this is Lex core in a lot of ways so this is what this all read to me especially as we got into the orientation video. I am fascinated by the countdown clock when I soon as I saw the orientation video and you said it when you were quoting from it and I heard them say bf Skinner's name I immediately thought this is like a behaviorist social experiment gone wrong like there's nothing at the end of that countdown they just put that countdown there to see if people would if they could train people to press a button basically every 108 seconds sorry 108 minutes I don't know if they're still watching this if they're being observed or if this is just an experiment that has gone on without any kind of oversight at all because they have managed to set it up so well. However, I was also very concerned by the magnetism the the fact that what is it Desmond says like every time I walk past that wall my feelings hurt. like is this is this a nuclear power plant? Like there you know, I I'm leaning more towards Jack's side of it that this there's actually nothing at the end of this countdown clock that this is just social science gone wrong. But as but as Desmond said, What What if you're wrong? Like what if, what if something does happen? And you don't because you didn't push the button, so I find it very compelling. Like, what? What do you do in this situation? What is the ethics of not pressing the button just to see if you're right, Sam 21:53 feel like you're invoking the good place in the trolley problem here. Finally, we cannot end without talking about the flashbacks. This week. We had flashbacks about jack Michael lock in Hurley, you've already talked a little bit about jack. His flashbacks with his soon to be wife slash ex wife, Julie Bowen. What else did these flashbacks tell us about these characters, Tessa 22:19 I will never be cease to amaze be amazed at how many of these characters have met each other before finding each other on the island. So the Desmond twist where he had met Desmond on the on the bleachers and then running on the bleachers, and then he sees him later on the island. That was a really well done twist. I also feel like we really I've mentioned this before, we really double down on Locke and his whole hero's arc. And so that's basically what this flashback told us is that he really needs to see himself as somebody who's special he needs to see himself as someone who's needed as a hero. And that stems obviously from his father's rejection and the fact that he can't even hold down like a real relationship with anybody because of that. He sees himself as someone who just needs that narrative. He needs a narrative to ground him because otherwise, what was the whole point? So that that was really what that flashback was? In terms of this this episode? Michael's flashback was interesting, because I didn't First of all, his ex wife is a terrible person. She really was just trying to replace him when in her son's life, and that really messed with both Michael and his son. And that really bothered me like there was a lot about Michael that I feel like I understood after seeing that flashback, this idea that he really feels like he needs to be there for Walt and he can't be like he can't be a good parent right now because Walt has been kidnapped and it's just reminding him of all this trauma with his ex wife. I thought that was good. And of course Harold Perrineau is just you know, a great actor so watching him do anything is is amazing. The her Hurley, flashbacks are always going to be my favorite just because Hurley is my favorite. I really liked how we explored the idea that money like that amount of money that he won really strained all his relationships that it suddenly became, well, how did why did you have Why do you have so much, you know, why don't we have that much and the idea that it really alienated a lot of his friends, and he's sort of reliving that in terms of the food that they find in the bunker. I also think he made the right decision. I think Hurley is the emotional center of this group. I think that he knows what's best for making life worth living in a really terrible situation. And so the idea that he just immediately shares all the food amongst everybody. He doesn't try to hoard it the way that jack thinks that they should. I think that was a great decision. I think it came naturally out of the character. I also really liked that we got to see more interactions between him and rose in that episode. Sam 25:07 Okay, that's it for this week's exercise and dramatic irony. Join us next week for more Tessa watches lost. You can find me on Twitter at Sam underscore Morris nine and you can find Tessa at suela Tessa and it wouldn't be a monkey podcast if Tessa didn't spell suela Unknown Speaker 25:26 sw e HLA. Until next time, Sam 25:30 see you in another life, brother. Transcribed by https://otter.ai