The Lost Discussion

OK, so now I'll talk about Lost season 2 - as requested by Weezie in the comments thread here. Before I dive into the spoilers let me say to anyone catching up on DVD - they were pretty good about avoiding spoilers in the season 1 commentaries - not so the season 2 discs. They spoil several major plot points in the commentaries. I even put my hands over my ears during one discussion. And the season 2 commentaries were pretty vanilla - some interesting stuff, but not much and none of the way-cool season 1 "stop the film" tricks I mentioned in the above post.OK, enough of that - onto to the spoiler-rific discussion. If you haven't watched the first two seasons and you care about spoilers move along now.Overall, I liked season 2, and there were aspects I liked even better than season 1. The "how do we survive on the island" plot was wearing thin before season 1 ended. The "oooh, a possibly evil/crazy organization doing crazy experiments" plot of season 2 was much more up my personal alley.There were certainly a few things I didn't care for - I didn't really buy some of Locke's transformation. One of the commentaries talked about how they were building up a conflict between Eko and Locke where Locke was the "man of science" and Eko was the "man of faith" and how that contrasted with the Jack/Locke debates from season one. A neat idea but I never bought into Locke as a "man of science". A "man of faith" that's lost his way certainly, but I don't think I would have even realized they were attempting a parallel if I hadn't heard it on a commentary track. The things they don't bother to investigate bug me. Locke has a theoretical map that shows all the hatches right? Nobody is even really bothered by the monster from season 1, even after Eko encounters it in season 2. Claire dumps Charlie for being a psycho (rightfully so) but then takes him back because his ears are ringing? WTF was that? Michael was basically a stupid rube all season and it wasn't plausible that nobody but Sayyid was suspicious. There were at least two episodes that consisted almost entirely of "Look how incredibly stupid Michael is being" that I found mostly tedious.I seriously didn't see the whole twist coming where Desmond failed to push the button and caused the plane to wreck - I realized it only a few minutes before he told us. I thought that was very cool. I liked how the hatch let them move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Weird bonus note - the washer and dryer they find in the hatch are the same model as what we bought when we moved into this house - except we got the white model. I laughed when I saw them though. From a character standpoint I seriously dug the way they started to turn on each other as they settle into the island and make new roles for themselves.So, would I say it was better or worse than season 1? That's a hard call to make. While I didn't care for some of the character development in 2, some was quite good. And I enjoy the DHARMA Initiative plotline more than I do the "survivors vs. nature" plotlines of season 1. I probably enjoyed most of the season 2 episodes more, but they also had the luxury of building on season 1's foundation. I'd call it a draw.

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