Since both of these episodes are in season five, I decided to stick ’em together! “Namaste” is for Deanna, who was one of the tragic victims of Thursday’s devastating Vimeo deletion. (Sorry, gonna be facetiously dramatic about that forever.) Initially, I’d watched “Cabin Fever,” as it’s one of my favorite episodes of the show, but I’m actually glad that ~fate~ had me talking about this one instead!
Well, wait, before I get into this, here are the videos!
And here is the public folder where you can always access any Mark Watches video!
So, I’ve said many, many, many times that I love season five of LOST. I’ll say it again: I LOVE SEASON FIVE OF LOST. After a lot of confusion and terror during season four (which I also enjoyed, but was frustrated by the nadir of ambiguous plots and motivations), the writers decided to do a few things that were everything I could have ever wanted from this show:
1) Dive head first into time-travel
2) Revisit the Dharma Initiative
3) Deconstruct and re-assign the roles we assumed for all these characters.
And goddamn, both of these episodes do this extremely well.
“Namaste” is all about how Jack must accept that he is not in charge anymore. (Which is ironic, given that a lot of his emotional baggage is related to this, and season five goes to great strides to finally get him to accept this, only for the end of season six to put him in charge of the WHOLE island. Which he cedes over to Hurley.) Sawyer, who used to be the main antagonistic force for all that dudely heroism that Jack exhibited in the early seasons, is now the only person who can truly help these people blend into their lives as members of the Dharma Initiative. He has knowledge, too! And I think that’s an important dynamic to acknowledge here. Jack came back to the island and brought his friends because he was drawn back there. Well, and told over and over again that he needed to come back. But once he got there… well, he had no idea what it was he was supposed to do anyway. AND WE ALL SAW HOW WELL THAT TURNED OUT oh my god. (Note: I have been commissioned to watch “The Incident” already, and it goes up the first weekend in March!)
Contrast this with how quickly Sawyer knows what to do, how he delegates assignments out to Miles, Jin, and Juliet, and how he manages to save all their asses with little hesitation at all. I never saw the scene at the end of “Namaste” as an attempt by the writers to pit Sawyer and Jack against one another. It was a necessary moment for Jack’s growth as a character. He had to be told that his impulsive behavior got people killed.
Ugh, SO MUCH DHARMA FUN. I love it. I love that this show revisited so much of the older mythology and revealed all these secrets so casually. The Swan, the hatch, the reason for the pylons, etc. IT’S GREAT.
It’s also common knowledge that I adore Miles, so Megan had me watch “Some Like It Hoth” so I could squeal at Baby!Miles and PunkRock!Miles. I genuinely enjoyed the whole freighter crew – Naomi, Miles, Faraday, Lapidus, Charlotte – and appreciated that the writers actually gave us stories for most of those very people. (I believe Naomi only appeared in flashbacks, unfortunately, and never got much development, WHICH SUCKS. She’s awesome!) Out of all of them, it was Miles and Charlotte who had the most bizarre and mysterious connections to the island, and I wanted to know EVERYTHING. Miles could talk with dead bodies, and Charlotte clearly once lived on the island. GIVE ME MORE.
While Charlotte’s characterization kind of evaporated with her death in this season, Miles finally got his own episode with “Some Like It Hoth,” which was also about Hurley’s brilliantly misguided attempt to re-write The Empire Strikes Back. But let’s just talk about how daddy issues pop up on this show A MILLION TIMES and somehow, Miles’s story is the most depressing one of them all? I mean, I know that Jack/Christian is a driving force of the narrative, but Miles developed an anger within him for being fatherless his whole life. It’s where his sarcasm and fury comes from; it’s why he’s so willing to be selfish. So when he’s given the chance to spend time with his father, he rejects it. It’s absurd to him. There’s no reason for him to get to know someone who will never be a part of his life.
It’s Hurley’s outlook on this bizarre situation that changes Miles’s mind. God, I love Hurley in this episode. I know that he exists a lot of the time for comic relief, but I also think the writers never really strayed from understanding that his character would be just like this: cracking jokes, stating the obvious, unable to understand social situations. So his whole attempt to get Miles and his father to talk is fantastic because… well, Hurley is the kind of guy who’ll take what he can get. Plus, as he explains at the end of this episode, he had daddy issues as well. (Who on this show hasn’t?) But life gave him a chance to see his father again, despite that he thought he never would.
God, I love this show.
Mark Links Stuff
– I am going on tour in 2013! There are 27 tour dates spread across the eastern half of North America. Please help suggest venues, offer up a place to crash, and RSVP for dates near you!
- I have begun writing posts in advance to compensate for tour. All commissions are open, and I have listed all upcoming Mark Watches posts that are missing commissions.
- You can also commission me to read bad fic/fiction on ANY Mark Does Stuff Tour date. You can claim a specific date to have a live reading right here.
