Lost Rewatch on VHS: Some Like it Hoth

 

 

VHS Notes: More previews for many of the films I’ve discussed before. The most interesting new one is Ghosts of Girlfriends Past a Matthew McConaughey-Jennifer Garner vehicle that I had forgotten starred Emma Stone just one year before she officially broke out. We also get a brief preview of J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek, which I’ll go into in more detail in the next episode. We also see previews for the return of Desperate Housewives in which Edie Britt would die.

 

In one of my earlier writings on Lost I wrote that after delivering the freighter folk with great fanfare during Season 4 never fully realized their potential in the second half. I’ve recently seen some of the DVD extras for Season 4 and I learned that may have been by design. Each of the characters was to me as much a representation of the kind of themes that would be dealt with in the second half of the series. Charlotte was supposed to deal with the themes of ancient cultures that would play out among the relics we began to increasingly see in the second half as well as a preview of the fact we were going to deal with the Dharma Initiative. Frank was supposed to be a representation of conspiracy theories and learn that the truth was far more bizarre than the hoax. Dan was supposed to be the representation of the themes of time travel that were critical to the show going forward. And Miles was to deal with the fact that the dead were going to have a major role in the second half. As we saw all of these stories played out.

It's also clear as Season 5 played out that the characters were also supposed to represent that, along with everyone on Oceanic 815, their fates had been entwined with the island long before that. Frank’s connection was made clear the quickest but after this episode, it’s now very clear that in the case of the other three, their fates were tied to the island perhaps before they were born. We know that Charlotte’s connection to Dharma has led her to study anthropology which brought her here – and killed her. Dan is clearly linked to the island through Eloise Hawking, who we already knew had links to the island even before she showed up again. Miles has been the outlier – until Some Like It Hot.

Among the many interesting things about the episode  - apart from learning how Miles’ ghost whispering power works – is that we get insight into the kind of person Miles was before he came to the island. Having heard the commentary we have now received verification that Miles sarcasm and darkness is due to his power – because the dead have been screaming out to him since his childhood, he has little use for the living and it’s turned him into a snide, sarcastic man. What Some Like it Hoth makes clear is that Miles has put up that wall for much the same reason Sawyer did – in addition to the understandable problem of having dead people talk to him, he has to deal with the fact that his father has never been in his life and his mother, even on her deathbed, refuses to tell him anything about him. In retrospect I feel there’s a certain selfishness about Lara in that fact that even though she’s dying, she won’t give her son any answers about the question that have plagued him all his life.  He’s clearly gone through a rebellious phase (Punk Miles) but there’s still something emotional about him when he goes to see his mother. When the next flash happens not long before he gets on the boat, he’s basically the emotionally dead man we met in Season Four.

But it’s worth noting he’s even colder than we thought. His last act before he goes on his journey to the island is to visit the man who last hired him (Dean Norris!) and tell him he cheated him out of his money. But it’s not because he feels guilty; it’s because he’s taking out his issues with his father on a grieving man. Miles is completely mercenary and it’s possible he doesn’t care that much about dying, considering he’s willing to sell his life for $1.6 million that he may very well never get a chance to spend. (I’ll get to the part between, believe me.) Throughout Season 4 he didn’t really seem to give a damn about how weird things were on the island, or even care that much about anyone else- until Keamy and his men raided the Barracks. He spent most of the time flashes being snarky at anyone who tried to give a clear picture of what to do. In the three years that he’s been in a part of Dharma, he seems to have become a team player in the sense that he’s willing to listen to Sawyer and help him on the job. But as we see, he’s also spent a remarkable amount of time not asking any questions about anything else – or dealing with the biggest elephant of all.

When Horace invites him into ‘the circle of trust’, he goes along with it, picking up a body and putting it in his van. He ‘asks’ Alvarez what happened to him but doesn’t seem to care that much about what caused it. When Hurley tags along for the ride  he figures out Miles’ power and then tries to bond with him about the experiences he’s gone through in Season 4. Not only does Miles not want to bond, he tells Hurley that ‘it doesn’t work that way’. But as much as he’s trying to maintain his cold front, it’s clear that there’s a part of him that wants to connect. When they get to the Swan and Hurley finds himself in the presence of the man from the Dharma videos, Miles tells him something he probably hasn’t told anyone else – that Pierre Chang is his father.

Even then Miles remains incurious about what’s happening. Chang drives him to what is clearly the foundation for the Swan and Hurley’s more curious than he is – with good reason. Even when Hurley tells him what is going to happen if they keep drilling, he doesn’t seem to give a damn. It’s only when Hurley tries his hardest to really make the point clear about that he snaps – and even then Hurley has to tell him what should be perfectly obvious.\

It’s not a shock that Miles has the same parent issues as everyone else on the island: what’s different is that for the first time we get to see just how foolish it can be from the child’s perspective. Miles has had the chance for three years to get the answers about his parent he never could. He might not have to warn them about the Purge or tell them about the future, but he could have gotten a beer with them. But he’s so mentally scarred by it that he’d rather talk to corpses then his very much alive father. Ken Leung has been very good since he debuted in Season 4, but he’s a revelation here. There’s so much emotion in the flashbacks, including a level of open scorn in the last one. He gets angry at Hurley in a way we don’t see Miles get angry. And in the moments when he looks at his father’s house and sees what an engaged parent he was, the tears on his face and the pain in his eyes are genuinely heartbreaking.

In retrospect Some Like It Hoth also gives us insight into the other survivors and their presence in Dharma and makes you question their own actions. Sawyer orders Miles to destroy the tape and clearly has every intention of covering up his own actions, but he doesn’t explain to Miles why he did any of this. He clearly knew that Dharma was drilling in hostile territory and since he already knew about the details of the Swan, he knew how badly that would turn out. Yet he’s so committed to not being able to change anything that he’s just willing to go along with it. And then when Phil finds out the truth about what he’s done and actually seems willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, he knocks him out cold and hogties him. For a guy who said his leadership was based on thinking things through, he’s doing a lot of reacting now that everybody’s back.

So’s Juliet for that matter. When she decided to hand Young Ben to the Others, she might very well have had his best interest at heart but she clearly didn’t have Roger’s. Did she really think that having told him his boy was going to die and seeing his reaction, he would just be fine when she told him he disappeared when she wasn’t looking? Kate may have made things worse but I could see a scenario where Roger went to Jack and started asking questions whether Juliet could be trusted.

Jack, of all people, is the only one who doesn’t seem to be panicking yet. When Roger shows up and starts voicing his suspicions about Kate, he remains calm but doesn’t feel he has to follow through. He then goes to see Sawyer and Juliet, tells them of Roger’s suspicions and then just leaves without another word. Jack actually seems to have more faith in Sawyer than anyone else – including Sawyer.

But of course the biggest question about the episode is one that, sadly, is never answered at all. In the penultimate flashback Miles is abducted on the street by several people, including Bram. Bram was a passenger on Ajira 316 seemed to be Ilana’s righthand man in the last episode and asks the same question that Frank didn’t know the answer to. (To be fair even when we learn the answer, I’m not sure it makes much sense.) From their brief discussion three years ago Bram – and by extension some of the passengers on Ajira – knew about the island then, about Widmore and Miles. They were clearly making some plan to go to the island but they never followed through with it in 2004. Bram tells Miles that he’s playing for the wrong team and that his team is ‘the one that’s going to win.”

What’s interesting is that Bram, like everyone else associated with this damn island, always seems to know more than their telling, gives vague promises for answers and has the same brutal approach to anyone they find wanting. They will later claim to be ‘the good guys’ but their actions will belie that in Season Five. It eventually becomes clear that they also know less than they claim too – and in fact have never been to the island that they are talking about until they get to Ajira. Even when they get there, they take the same attitude we see the Others do, even though they clearly don’t regard them with the same respect, withhold information that everyone else clearly seems to need and have been acting on blind faith. It’s small wonder that Miles, who has never believed in the divine powers of the island, chooses to reject them when he first meets them: they don’t make a good impression and it’s clear that’s by design.

The ‘shadow seekers’ (not even Nikki Stafford likes this term but in fifteen years no one’s come up with a better one) are in retrospect the biggest weakness of Season 5. Like too many of the characters who come up in the last two seasons, they are given a big build up and then the writers clearly don’t know what to do with them so they just get rid of them very quickly. Unlike the Ben-Widmore battle which would be irrelevant  by the final season, it’s clear these characters are more relevant to the bigger battle that’s going on. Darlton spends the latter half of Season 5 making them seem significant – and at the start of Season Six, disposes of almost all of them without a second thought. Even at the time I would have preferred putting them front and center for the final season rather than many of the bigger problems with the final season which I’ll get to very soon.

It's worth noting that Hurley, as is almost always the case, has the clearest head about everything that’s going on. Hurley might not be able to understand time travel (he clearly doesn’t based on so many of the remarks he makes in the episode) but he’s the most empathetic person on the island. Even while writing ‘the Hugo Reyes cut’ of Empire Strikes Back he knows that’s less crazy then being unable to talk to your own father. The fact that he uses a Star Wars metaphor to describe the situation should come as a surprise to absolutely no one: even before he told us that he’s seen it 200 times, we’ve known Hugo’s the biggest trilogy fan in the universe. (And it turns out his boss will help  finish the series off!) But considering that the Star Wars series (as it turns out all nine movies) have to do with your parents’ baggage leaving scars that last generation after generation, it’s hard not to see the parallel with Miles.

Of course it’s looking like the possibility of Miles working things out with his dad are about as likely as Sawyer being able to hold things together in Dharmaville much longer. And perhaps the real reason is because of the final minute when Dan, who has been gone for half of the season has just shown up on the island. Why is he back? And what changes will the man who is convinced that they couldn’t change anything mean now?