brianhoppe.com

by John Book

After rewatching the opening scene and
thinking through some things, I liked last night’s premiere. I know some didn’t, so I thought I’d present the case:

1. It basically did the same thing last year’s premiere did–a) showed us a
bunch of new stuff that we don’t quite understand–and then explained much
of it within the next handful of episodes and b) set a tone/motif/theme for
the season. I think we got this last night–we don’t know what the Others
are up to, but we see a glimpse of their real world that we don’t
understand.

2. The conversation in the book club at the beginning contributed to that
theme-setting, and I thought it was clever. They’re arguing about whether
the book they’ve read has any artistic merit or depth or whether it’s just a
bunch of pointless sci-fi hooey. Kind of like the show itself. One
question: why was Juliet crying at the very beginning–while looking in the
mirror, playing the CD, and burning herself on the muffin pan?

3. Someone said, “This should have answered questions instead of posing new
ones.” Well, actually, I can’t think of any major questions left from the
finale that I had. I mean, we know what the Hatch does and that’s all done
with. The main questions (aside from the need for more info about Dharma) I
would have would be “What’s up with the Others and how they work and what
are their goals, etc.” and this show felt like the beginning of the
answering of those questions. Yeah, there are a lot of mysterious things
still going one, but some of the answers you can intuit–remember the five
research fields of Dharma? Psychology, parapsychology, zoology, meterology,
and electromagnetism? We’ve seen most of these areas multiple times–and
many of them last night. Juliet uses psychology on Jack, and then he
imagines his dad’s voice coming from the speaker–but was that a
hallucination or something psychic–and we’ve seen the animal cages and in
the past two seasons plenty to do with unusual weather and electromagnetism.
So…I don’t know, it’s all there.

4. What was up with that boy, and why was he forced to apologize? Just
wondering.

Anyway, it wasn’t perfect, in some ways it was frustrating, but I’ve gone
this far, and I trust that the writers weren’t going, “Hmmm…let’s make her
cry for no reason, and Kate’s wrist be all messed up for no reason, and
Sawyer’s short escape for no reason…” I bet there are reasons. And so I
liked it. So there.