POLL: 'Further Instructions'

[Murgatroyd]

Originally Posted by KoR-evo,December 02, 2006 12:17 pm

I think that if we found out the reason behind Locke's paralisis then it would look out of place. The producers obviously have a timeline and a plan for when they want everything to fit in..and if they just flung in his paralisis for the sake of it, then i would be disappointed. I think we should have faith in their vision. I suppose im different though..i could wait another 2 years before finding out why Locke lost his leg usage..i dont know why, but ive got so much more mystery to plough through in the meantime..like why Kate hasnt been axed yet, for instance

Personally, I'm still fairly agog that the 'Lockdown' flashback didn't reveal the reason for the paralysis - when he's trapped under a door with a broken leg and incapable of moving, surely that's a really fitting moment at which to explore his reasons for being in a wheelchair and how he felt about that (rather than more boring nonsense about Helen). They'll have to come up with a similarly apt island plot when they do finally choose to reveal this info in order to make 'Lockdown' anything other than a sadly missed opportunity.

[St. Anger]

I loved this episode, but I sort of agree with the negative comments somewhat. It was a very weird episode.....but enjoyable. I liked how it was different from other episodes. I didn't appreciate Charlie's reaction to Locke by mocking his muteness.

But regardless, it was very entertaining. But the adverts for it were much better than the actual episode. Even so, I am puzzled as to how one could hate this episode.

The reaction of the Losties toward the hatch being blown up is annoying me....do they not care?? And Charlie,.....what's wrong with him!? The Sickness or bad writing? Both?

I think Locke's flashback about his legs will be very good because they are making us wait for it. I reckon it could be the best flashback ever..... The producers must know we are craving it, and so they are going to go all out possibly to satisfy us.... It's like one of the biggest Lost mysteries, albeit, non-island mystery,..but nonetheless a mystery we all want to find the answer to.

utd tonight and Richard Ashcroft tomorrow

Who's a busy girl? Hope you had fun!

Utd as in Man Utd?*  

Just out of interest..does anyone know what the music was that was playing in the car when Locke picked up eddie?*

I'll watch it again and get back to you

Whatever the Case May Be

Which eppy was that? Sorry for being lazy,...I suppose I should go and find out for myself lol....

Kate will never be axed.

Woo hoo!!!

They'll have to come up with a similarly apt island plot when they do finally choose to reveal this info in order to make 'Lockdown' anything other than a sadly missed opportunity.

I'm sure that there will be a huge island event involving Locke which will coincide with his injury flashback. Lost has very big things in store for Locke, you just know, and thus imo, I reckon something very big shall happen as regards to Locke. It will be the perfect opportunity to finally detail us about his legs.

Just my opinion, don't worry that wasn't a spoiler.

[R]

Originally Posted by Murgatroyd,December 02, 2006 12:29 pm

Personally, I'm still fairly agog that the 'Lockdown' flashback didn't reveal the reason for the paralysis - when he's trapped under a door with a broken leg and incapable of moving, surely that's a really fitting moment at which to explore his reasons for being in a wheelchair and how he felt about that (rather than more boring nonsense about Helen). They'll have to come up with a similarly apt island plot when they do finally choose to reveal this info in order to make 'Lockdown' anything other than a sadly missed opportunity.

But obviously the creators didnt plan to reveal it at this stage. I think we have to remember that they have an overall plan..yes they do change things as they go along, but they do have an overall plan of what they want to reveal and when. Perhaps it wouldnt have best suited the lockdown episode..afterall, whose to say that Locke lost the use of his legs in a violent or horrifc way? We just dont know how he lost his legs and so perhaps they are waiting to reveal it at another juncture..one that is better suited to illustrate and/or parallel with current island events. I appreciate that you really want to find out this particular aspect of Lost but then if they havent shown it yet, then perhaps it's for a reason.. perhaps we should entrust them with a little faith..? they'll get the job done..im sure of it..and when it's revealed im sure that none of us will be left disapointed.

[R]

Originally Posted by St. Anger (o'_'o),December 02, 2006 08:51 pm

Which eppy was that? Sorry for being lazy,...I suppose I should go and find out for myself lol....

It was a Kate centric from back in S1 (1x12)..the one with the hooha about the toy airplane and Tom and the swim in the pond with Sawyer etc..

[Murgatroyd]

Originally Posted by KoR-evo,December 03, 2006 11:11 am

But obviously the creators didnt plan to reveal it at this stage. I think we have to remember that they have an overall plan..yes they do change things as they go along, but they do have an overall plan of what they want to reveal and when. Perhaps it wouldnt have best suited the lockdown episode..afterall, whose to say that Locke lost the use of his legs in a violent or horrifc way? We just dont know how he lost his legs and so perhaps they are waiting to reveal it at another juncture..one that is better suited to illustrate and/or parallel with current island events. I appreciate that you really want to find out this particular aspect of Lost but then if they havent shown it yet, then perhaps it's for a reason.. perhaps we should entrust them with a little faith..? they'll get the job done..im sure of it..and when it's revealed im sure that none of us will be left disapointed.

It didn't have to be violent for a paralysis related flashback to be triggered by the character's being unable to use his legs. Maybe the writers will come up something similarly apt when they finally come to reveal this mystery (though your faith in their ability not to disappoint is greater than mine: they've disappointed me several times) - that won't change the fact that the flashback they did choose to show us during Lockdown was dull, samey and frankly had bog all to do with the island plot. Lockdown was only half a great episode as a result, and I reckon if they'd produced a fitting flashback, as the paralysis revelation would've been, it would've been up to the standards of Walkabout and Deus Ex Machina.

[R]

Originally Posted by Murgatroyd,December 03, 2006 11:23 am

It didn't have to be violent for a paralysis related flashback to be triggered by the character's being unable to use his legs. Maybe the writers will come up something similarly apt when they finally come to reveal this mystery (though your faith in their ability not to disappoint is greater than mine: they've disappointed me several times) - that won't change the fact that the flashback they did choose to show us during Lockdown was dull, samey and frankly had bog all to do with the island plot. Lockdown was only half a great episode as a result, and I reckon if they'd produced a fitting flashback, as the paralysis revelation would've been, it would've been up to the standards of Walkabout and Deus Ex Machina.

Yes, Locke's paralysis doesnt have to have been violent or horrific to have made it fit in with the 'Lockdown' plot..however, perhaps whatever they have planned for Locke's paralysis wouldnt 'best suit' that episode.. Perhaps Locke lost the use of his legs in a way which will suprise us all and as a result perhaps this would need a more 'subtle' episode and episode title.. Lets be honest, to reveal the reason behind Locke's paralysis in an episode called 'Lockdown' and an episode of that nature would have been..well..easy. The creators never serve stuff up to us on a plate nor do they spoon feed or water stuff down for us. And personally i thank them for that..im quite capable of feeding myself and diluting my own ribena..i dont need them to do it for me and the fact that they have avoided the obvious gives me alot of satisfaction. As St. Anger said, when they do reveal his paralysis you can bet it wil be a killer flashback (and one which parallels with island events yet isnt as painfully blantent as having the episode title 'Lockdown').

Yes, I have faith in the creators..afterall i watch their show everyweek. They have not disappointed me at all..afterall i remind myself that we as Lost fans have far to high an expectation. Those poor sods in the Lost creative department just cannont win..the fans demand 'island Locke' - and thats what they give us, yet all we do is complain..not necessarily critique..but complain (just a general S3 observation). Im sorry that they have disappointed you on several occasions but you know..i bet if you were to really look back at what delights you been served up, you'd perhaps change that opinion? Personally i cannot see how the flashback that they chose for 'Lockdown' was dull, samey and unrelated..it was necessary..this is a marathon and not a sprint - they need to establish trends and themes in characters backstories and they simply cannot do this with just one or two references of it - trust me that wouldnt work otherwise..you need to context..you need the details..and personally i saw nothing majorly wrong with the Lockdown flashie - if anything it solidified the idea that Locke is a sucker to a father figure and those who dont desert him - this parallel directly with Fenry Gale's antics in the hatch did it not?

Were not going to get a DEM or Walkabout every episode..and if we did im pretty sure the lost population would soon be claiming those episode to be boring etc.

[Murgatroyd]

Originally Posted by KoR-evo,December 03, 2006 11:44 am

As St. Anger said, when they do reveal his paralysis you can bet it wil be a killer flashback (and one which parallels with island events yet isnt as painfully blantent as having the episode title 'Lockdown').

Well, I hope it'll be a great episode, but I'd be deluding myself if I said it was a dead cert - while many of the revelations, plot points and backstories have been great (Desmond in the hatch, both of Locke's first season flashbacks), others have been mind bogglingly lame (Kate's crime was widely considered a let-down, for example), excrutiatingly dull (how many more times do we want to sit through Jack's being too gosh-darned perfect to exist with his fixing people trip?) or just plain baffling (Locke, cannibis farm - why? Charlie, not checking to see if his fellows have blown up - why? Rousseau, French accent - where? Shannon, managing to plug in her hair straighteners on a desert island - HOW?). It's not perfect... that's fine. Really. I'm not going to ditch it or anything just because some of it's less than magnificent....

Yes, I have faith in the creators..afterall i watch their show everyweek. They have not disappointed me at all..afterall i remind myself that we as Lost fans have far to high an expectation. Those poor sods in the Lost creative department just cannont win..the fans demand 'island Locke' - and thats what they give us, yet all we do is complain..not necessarily critique..but complain (just a general S3 observation). Im sorry that they have disappointed you on several occasions but you know..i bet if you were to really look back at what delights you been served up, you'd perhaps change that opinion?

I'm happy with the opinion I've formed, really - that Lost is riotous fun, has produced one of my favourite characters in modern fiction but is undeniably a little bit rubbish on occasion... like most things. I don't really get the idea that anyone who criticises the way a show is going is somehow expecting too much of its creators. We're not contracted to love it unconditionally... I'm grateful to those who brought it to their screens, but like every piece of writing put into the public domain, it's out there to be criticised if that's what people want to do with it. And I've no objection at all to the return of 'island Locke', but his reappearance doesn't mean that everything else that was wrong with that episode is magically fixed.

Of course I think Lost is a wildly entertaining programme and I do love watching it very much, but I can think of very few television programme's so flawless I don't feel the need to raise one single criticism or observe that such and such an episode could've been rewritten to better effect and can just happily sit in front of the TV nodding and hero-worshipping everyone involved - there are a very few, but Lost, for all it's great moments, ain't one of them. And that's fine, because I'm quite happy to sit through the laughable, Neighbours-esque bits because it's great fun and it has some truly fantastic moments, some incredibly engaging ongoing plots, magnificent standalone episodes (back in the day anyway) and awesome potential that I doubt is going to be quite fulfilled. It's not, on balance, great literature and it's not the best written TV drama out there by a long shot, but it has to get a prize for being one of the most watchable and downright hypnotic (as in, basically, I'll keep watching it even when it's more pain than pleasure... not many shows can do that) programmes around. I don't watch much these days, and Lost's probably the one I look forward to most. I don't feel I owe it any extra love or anything beyond what I give it - I fancy it'll get by.

* Personally i cannot see how the flashback that they chose for 'Lockdown' was dull, samey and unrelated..it was necessary..this is a marathon and not a sprint - they need to establish trends and themes in characters backstories and they simply cannot do this with just one or two references of it - trust me that wouldnt work otherwise..you need to context..you need the details..and personally i saw nothing majorly wrong with the Lockdown flashie - if anything it solidified the idea that Locke is a sucker to a father figure and those who dont desert him - this parallel directly with Fenry Gale's antics in the hatch did it not?

I do understand appreciate how storytelling functions re. pacing and context and all that, and that Lockdown's flashback was interesting is your perfectly valid opinion; mine is that the Helen subplot, however adequately plotted, is a boring and unimaginative one. I'm frankly not likely to change my belief that Locke had a more interesting backstory when I assumed it never included romance, and that introducing a conventional boyfriend/girlfriend is seldom the most imaginative option, especially with a character like Locke. I'd have been more interested, for example, to see him relate to his mother, in more detail to his father or to a platonic love interest or even a one-sided romance that only really existed in his mind rather than shoehorn in another conventionally-attractive-conventionally-everything love interest in a programme that's already overburned in that respect.

Were not going to get a DEM or Walkabout every episode..and if we did im pretty sure the lost population would soon be claiming those episode to be boring etc.

What, really well-written episodes with excellent revelations and beautiful character development? Wouldn't bore me!

[St. Anger]

Originally Posted by KoR-evo,December 03, 2006 10:15 am

It was a Kate centric from back in S1 (1x12)..the one with the hooha about the toy airplane and Tom and the swim in the pond with Sawyer etc..

See, for me that episode was fairly good, ....it's strange how we all have different tastes as far as episodes being the best or worst is concerned....

I hated F&W yet you grew to like it.....I suppose if I gave it a 3rd viewing, I may like it a little more...however I doubt it....

Once again, I'm sure Locke's paralysis flashback will live up to the hype and he'll get special treatment as far as flashbacks go.... He's just got the most interesting past-life imo......however not to discredit other characters' past-lives.

I loved Walkabout and Locke's wheelchair revelation [which I watched again recently for the first time since it aired on C4],....it was so shocking that this man was in a wheel-chair. I'm sure the producers will set to out-do themselves and that flashback with his paralysis flashback. I reckon it could even be until S4 till we see this flashback.

I'm trying to think back to whether or not I caught on or not. I'm pretty sure I didn't and thus was completely in shock he couldn't walk. It was a very moving episode, especially bieng told he couldn't go on the walkabout trip.

[Verix]

Originally Posted by KoR-evo,November 29, 2006 02:34 pm

Yeah, the Charlie/Claire relationship thing does annoy me..but I think we might be building up to the sickness plot device..so not everything is clear in that aspect yet.

But this is good, no..because it illustrates that there are hidden depths within us all. As Charlie was happy to point out. For me this made Locke even more endearing because not only didnt he kill Eddie (imo), but he was also willing to clean up his own mess. He didnt hide the fact that he had contracdicted himself and made mistakes..he just asked for help, received it and went about puttin right his wrongs. I found this great viewing personally.

It gave more depth and shade to Lcke's story. People complain when we see nothing new in flashies..well here we have it and were still not happy, lol i guess we all take value form different things..

Yeah, Hurleys initial reaction was a little off-beat..i put that down to Hugo still aclimatising to working on lost again after a long break..remember, for him this was the first episode. Though his reactions later on to Desmond were fantastic imo..some of Hugo's best scenes..his reaction at the end was brill!

If you dont get that but then it's difficult to explain..but for me it had alot of meaning and was a supremly clever plot device. It would take too long to explain it really..

Yeah, the airport scene was fantastic, i agree with you there!

Ah well, i guess it's a game of opinions..i do think that when folks rewatch this episode they will come away loving it to bits..

I do apologise for bringing this up again but i was amazed to see how many people slated 3c04 and remembered how everyone loved 3x03 which i was dissapointed with. So i thought i'd come look here and noticing KoR-evo's post i felt compelled to respond.

I think mainly my problem with this episode was that it seemed to forget so much from S2. I know a lot of people weren't as thrilled with S2 as they were S1 and felt they wanted a 'return to form' but i think many if not most of this episodes plot was flawed.

Charlie and for that matter NO ONE seeming to care about the fate of Locke, Eko and Desmond, annoyed me mightlily. It seemed like such a huge plot hole. Whatever it was for (if there was a reason) it just played on my mind for the first quater of the show just shouting at the TV 'why don't you care !?!?!'

I said about how i was irritated by (what i felt) was a plot hole for Locke's character with him working on a drug farm. If he had seen the damage that drugs does in that flashback i could understand his hard stance on drugs. But as it stands atm, not pressuming something else happend to him, this flashback only added a plot hole to the show. Eddy's appearance did nothing for me, just showed how Locke is flawed by not knowing that he was a cop. But we've seen in past episodes that the man can make mistakes so we didn't need this shoved in our face. I didn't see this as depth and i don't see how you could. It didn't improve our understanding of the plot or the characters, it didn't even make it clear as to when this period in Locke's life was!

I understood Locke's muteness, only i felt it achieved nothing as it went after just 10 minutes. Yes it told him to look at himself and not to just be saying things, but to be looking ot clean up his mess. It just seemed to not be used to full effect and should of gone on for most of the episode allowing Charlie and Hurley to continue with their quips and allowing Locke to achieve his goal.

So there it is, why i felt this wasn't really up to scartch. Basically plot holes and slopping writing imo.

[R]

Originally Posted by Murgatroyd,December 03, 2006 01:51 pm

I don't really get the idea that anyone who criticises the way a show is going is somehow expecting too much of its creators. We're not contracted to love it unconditionally... I'm grateful to those who brought it to their screens, but like every piece of writing put into the public domain, it's out there to be criticised if that's what people want to do with it. And I've no objection at all to the return of 'island Locke', but his reappearance doesn't mean that everything else that was wrong with that episode is magically fixed.

Oh no doubt. It's just interesting see how other people form their views on the episodes and the relative values and merits of each episode. The great thing about Lost is that it spawns so much debate and speculation.

I just think that at times we, the fans, are a bit hard on the show - thats not to say that we should stop being hard..it's just an observation..and at any rate it's these polarisation of views that form such a great platform for debate. It's healthy so long as different views are considered and taken on board. Personally i think that Lost fans are some of the brightest around and although we are impatient at times (imo )..it's all good because we truely do drive the show (oh and Damon and Carlton contribute too )

[Magnovey Phoenix]

7/10
Very good episode! I love when he enters the cave and sees the toy truck. What do you think it means? How did it get there? Natives? Something more complicated or just polar bear ate the kid ?

[TimeTravellingBunny]

Originally Posted by Verix

I said about how i was irritated by (what i felt) was a plot hole for Locke's character with him working on a drug farm. If he had seen the damage that drugs does in that flashback i could understand his hard stance on drugs. But as it stands atm, not pressuming something else happend to him, this flashback only added a plot hole to the show. Eddy's appearance did nothing for me, just showed how Locke is flawed by not knowing that he was a cop. But we've seen in past episodes that the man can make mistakes so we didn't need this shoved in our face. I didn't see this as depth and i don't see how you could. It didn't improve our understanding of the plot or the characters, it didn't even make it clear as to when this period in Locke's life was!

It's totally ridiculous to compare weed to heroin. They're both illegal, and that's the extent of similarity. Other than that, you might as well wonder why Locke used to smoke, or why he didn't try to stop Desmond from drinking (actually, that would make more sense, since alchoholism is certainly more similar to heroin addiction that smoking weed). Locke took a "hard line" against heroin because, duh, it can kill you, and often does, after making you so physically dependant that you can't function without it and you'd do anything - steal, prostitute yourself, or kill - to get it. I find it incredible that nobody ever mentions that simple fact, and everyone keeps going on "oh, Charlie was right" when he acted as if a hallucinogen Locke used to get a vision is the same thing as Charlie's heroin addiction. Charlie was being a moron, pure and simple, and it was especially stupid coming from a recovering heroin addict, who should have been fully aware of its effects.

[freckles08]

Its not like locke Smoked the weed That we know of.

[TimeTravellingBunny]

Originally Posted by freckles08

Its not like locke Smoked the weed That we know of.

Even if he had, I'm sure that there are plenty of people who smoke weed but wouldn't touch heroin, for all the reasons stated above.