Lost: Dead is Dead & Heroes: Turn and Face the Stranger. Two Reviews Shortchanged in One Brief Article!

Posted by ScuzzBuster

April 8, 2009

lostlog4 Since my life this past week has plunged into the twilight world of an intriguing bargain bin Nintendo Wii game, playing the XBOX Live Arcade download of Robotron 2084 until my eyes have started bleeding and pounding down some time with our Nintendo DSi I have had not much time to reflect on this week’s episodes of Heroes and Lost. This is actually a tragedy since between both of these programs provided some decent entertainment this week. If you watch both programs, hear me rant for a few paragraphs. If you watch one or the other you can skip the parts you don’t care about.

Heroes: Turn and Face the Stranger
While I’ve been taken aback the last two weeks with the stunning change in direction the program has taken, I still feel that the show is still quite a few steps away from being top shelf television drama. Turn and Face the Stranger however, is a fine example of moving in the right direction.

While my wife is accusing me of playing “Bryan Fuller Suck Up” only being up on the last couple of episodes because they have marked the most intrusive set pieces since his return to Heroes, I think I can defend myself from these fair, but unfounded accusations.

First, I have throughout the course of Season 3 given credit where credit is due and described ad nauseam my specific criticisms of where the show was failing and what I felt could correct the program. In my defense, I can offer that I have said the only way this program could be saved would be to pull back on the outrageous scenarios with out of control powers, omnipotent heroes and villains, and wildly inconsistent characterizations week to week.

noahdanko What we’ve seen in baby steps so far and in with sharp and sudden contrast the past two weeks is a simplification of the program, a narrowing of focus on a few select characters and more clear cut direction for the characters being featured. This week we had a very nice situation bringing Sylar back into focus as a real threat. Now, though, instead of being just a character that makes you fear for your life, he’s become a manipulating shape shifting creep. This week’s situation with Sylar trying to destroy Noah Bennet’s life and marriage was quite tasty, and delightfully cruel. Bringing everything down to a violent confrontation between Bennet and his wife was a truly uncomfortable moment in a good way.

I still feel the program is going to have take a few more major strides to get me to start to care about these characters again in any real way. I have spent so much time during seasons 2 and 3 drifting away from these characters in any kind of human, relatable manner I’m not sure I can just snap back into line and really get excited to flip the show on week to week.

I am admittedly skeptical of the “quest” and secret purpose that’s going to bring our cast back together to find out what secret Angela Petrelli has buried out in the desert. If it’s too wacked or far out in the way the entire “secret formula” plotline was so off the wall idiotic I may have a massive deconversion next week, but I’m going to remain positive. If the show can continue to remain strong into the finale I might actually get excited and upbeat late this year in anticipation for the Season 4 start.

Lost: Dead is Dead
At risk of opening up my hypocritical ways by writing my Lost and Heroes assessments side by side in the same article I will admit that with Dead is Dead this week, Lost continues to skyrocket into even more fantasy silliness. The difference between the shows at this point though is that Lost, unlike Heroes, has never lost site of the fact that show is about the people. The “water cooler” talk that happens about Lost episodes may touch upon some of the crazier fantasy aspects of the show relating to smoke monsters or time travel, but ultimately the meat of the conversation is usually going to turn what really keeps you tuning in week to week. And again this week we’re back to some of the same old, tired, but fun questions.

locklinus Is there any reason ever to trust Ben Linus for even the slightest moment?
This week I have to give the show credit for really enriching the character by showing us some aspects to Linus that we haven’t seen in the past. We know that he was destroyed by the murder of his daughter, even inasmuch as he was responsible for her death. Until tonight though we never broke the barrier down come this close to believing that Ben was actually still somehow a human being beneath the exterior.

While I give a ton of credit to Michael Emerson for his portrayal of Ben Linus since season 2 (where he was intended to only appear in a few episodes), his character hasn’t changed much. For the first time tonight saw a much more subtle performance from Emerson where he brought me as a member of the audience yet again to the brink of almost wanting to trust him for a moment.

In this sense, we got to see Linus at multiple extremes, murdering a man arguably in cold blood in the course of taking the boat with Locke to the Island, yet in showing us a younger, less flawed Ben Linus that stood up to authority to save the life an infant as well as being moved to tears by being forced to relive her death. While at no point did I ever feel that Ben had any intention of putting his life on the line to be judged for his moral shortcomings, we did get to finally glimpse that he the few shreds of humanity he may have left. In spite of shooting Desmond, we saw that he was moved enough to not being able to bring himself to kill Penny in cold blood in front of her son.

And as Lost so expertly tends to do, I was finally lulled into semi-trust for Ben just in time to have this wonderful vision of his dead daughter in a personification of the Island revealing that Ben all along had intended to murder John Locke yet a second time. So Mr. Linus is now officially back at square one. Will he heed the warning of the Island and follow Locke blindly or will he attempt to weasel himself back into the upper hand in the situation again? While it was quite satisfying to see Ben in desperation this week, do we even need to ask whether we can try to trust him again.

Ultimately, the most important question is WHAT THE HELL KIND OF GROCERIES DID DESMOND HAVE IN THAT BAG THAT COULD STOP A BULLET? Of course, there are the smaller pressing questions that we will continue to ask, such as is what we saw flashbacked to on the dock the final word with Desmond and Penny? Was it really necessary for him to ask Sun to apologize to him?

In the end will Ben heed the island’s warning to follow John Locke blindly or do we dare think that Ben will blatantly oppose the most authoritative and direct command he could receive on the matter yet? Don’t trust him. It is almost unfathomable that this character will ever be able to reach redemption by the end of this show’s run.

To close out my continued sucking up to how entertaining this show has been consistently been over it’s run, Dead is Dead is another testament to how good this show gets when Terry O’Quinn manages to take the character of John Locke into tense and fantastic chemistry with his fellow cast members. In this case, it is pure pleasure watch the interplay between Locke and Linus even more so than the early seasons wonderful interplay between Locke and Jack. Great performances, great character development and all around great writing keeps the show shining.

Next week, back to having to cover these two shows separately. But in the meantime, I have to lose some more sleep to some gaming so I can head into work dead tired again tomorrow morning.

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