Thursday, January 22, 2009

Lost: Find me a shirt!

Finally got to see Lost (no thanks to Fisher Communications,) and noticed that the two audience proxies, Sawyer and Hurley, each get their own episode, with the premiere ("Because You Left") for the former and the second ("The Lie") for the latter. The first episode brought in more sci-fi/fantasy than you could swallow, but that was offset by things like Sawyer slapping Daniel into giving him an explanation for the time irregularities ("think of it like a record skipping"). And then Lostie fave Neil Frogurt got a flaming arrow through his chest, a further comment on the dichotomy of the show. The ultimate 'red shirt character' finally gets it (not long after giving one of his red shirts to Sawyer).

Back to the skipping record, though. What a great opening, featuring the poly-named Dharma Doc putting on Willie Nelson's Shotgun Willie LP to start the day feeding baby Chang (could this baby be Miles?). The title track plays but eventually begins to skip, repeating the lyric "you can't make a record" over and over. The rest of that line goes You can't make a record if you ain't got nothin' to say / You can't play music if you don't know nothin' to play, which I take to be Cuse and Lindelof reiterating that they have a plan and we're playing it to the end now. One of the only two 'whoah' moments comes shortly after that, when we find Farraday present in 70's Dharma world. The second comes at the end of the second episode, with the return of Ms Hawking, who just might very well be Farraday's mother (double whoah).

It's rare when Lost employs the use of songs in the plot, and it's always with purpose, so it's worth pointing out Cheap Trick's "Dream Police" playing in the gas station, which was perfect following the vision of Dream Police Officer Anna Lucia. And while we're at it, with regards to the 'I (HEART) My Shih Tzu' t-shirt, that dog is the oldest (and smallest) of the Tibetan holy dogs, which I'm sure has some meaning here. But really, I think it's writer's chuckling about Hurley's lion face, since the Shih Tzu is the 'lion faced' dog.

1. "Shotgun Willie" - Willie Nelson - Dr. Chan (AKA, Marvin Candle)
2. "Dream Police" - Cheap Trick - Hurley buys 'I (HEART) My Shih Tzu' t-shirt

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