Pabulum

Lost Season 2 Premiere: Where were we?

Oh, that's right, nowhere.

In preparation for the second episode of the season tonight, here are a few quick thoughts of mine on last week's season premiere of Lost, the show I love to watch just so I know enough to ruin it for everyone else. (I also admit to occasionally enjoying myself while watching it. But it's becoming increasingly more frustrating than anything else, and so now I'm fully committing myself to taking the fun out of it for everyone else. I just can't take another Damon Lindelof interview where he prepares the audience to be disappointed. The guy's got more excuses than Abu Ghraib. Really, I wanted to like the show at the beginning. But starting with the betrayal of what they presented as the concept before the first episode (really, where were the hints at the mystical hokum? the polar bears? any of it? I was looking forward to a good character drama in a confined space with a limited cast), they've consistently disappointed me with cliche after cliche after cheap storytelling device after dumb plot twist. Well, that's it.) Okay, onward.

The first problem is the writers don't seem to have grasped that it's no fun if everything is connected. When everyone is in everyone else's backstory and it's all intertwined and inevitable, then the connections lose all of their power. No individual connection or revelation has any meaning or appeal when everything is that way. It also makes the viewing experience tedious and unrewarding, when the question is no longer what is connected and what isn't, and why, but merely how they're going to connect this with that, because they have to.

Example: The Numbers, of course. They're everywhere. On jerseys in airports. On hatches. And now on some guy's medicine in the hatch. Now think about it. What possible satisfying explanation could there be for these numbers and their appearance all over the map? There is no way to tie all those things together without a pat "they're mystical numbers with a power beyond our comprehension" explanation. (And I'll be the first to admit it if they manage to tie it all together with something other than a disappointing explanation of that nature. Really, I'll be shocked, and I'll perform my justly dealt penance.) Either that, or we just won't get an explanation for most of their occurences. We'll learn some sort of origin and explanation for The Numbers, but most of their appearances will just be chalked up to their simple power and importance. Which, as should be pretty obvious, makes those occurences meaningless except as an easter egg hunt designed to distract from the complete absence of anything resembling a coherent story.

As for what we learned in this episode, I have to give them credit. They covered far more ground than I anticipated. But then there were those sure-to-be-meaningless connections again: Jack's future wife's car accident killed an older man who shared his last name with Shannon, whose father is dead. Coincidence? Probably not. But along with every other connection, at this point explicable only at the hands of some ultimate mystical power that has no relation to the real world or any viewer. Gee, can't wait.

But what I really can't wait to discover is: What's the story with Desmond? I can't imagine what they have planned for Desmond. They're too subtle, too insidious. I want to know what's in store for Desmond. Don't you?

Million Dollar Baby: She's not the only one who takes a beating.

The devil and her minions.

Being my first review, I'd really like to take my time and go through all the angles and perspectives and show you what I'm capable of here, but I just can't. I can't, because I'm reviewing Million Dollar Baby, and this is a movie with basically one problem that ruins the proceedings time and time again. Million Dollar Baby is the hammer, and you are the nail. Pop this Baby in the DVD player, and prepare to be beaten over the head.

I've heard it said that Clint Eastwood can do no wrong, and it must be true, because it's the only explanation for why he gets away with stuff that gets "lesser" movies laughed out of the theaters. Why does Clint not only get away with these cliches, but get handed little gold statues for them? The foremost of these is the worst kind of juvenile storytelling: There are the main characters, and then there is everybody else. Only the main characters are people; everybody else are caricatures.

"How should I play this scene, Clint?"
"Just think of the worst priest ever. Then kill his dog and kick him in the nuts. That'll do."

Million Dollar Baby, however, not content to be just any other movie, takes this a step further. Not only are everybody else caricatures, but everyone about whom we're not supposed to particularly care and whose performances are not slated for Nomination are THE WORST IN THE WORLD. Every one of them, they're all the worst in the world at something. Her mother is the worst mother in the world. Her family is the worst family in the world. Danger, the aspiring boxer at Frankie's club, is the worst boxer in the world. The bully, who picks on him, is the worst bully in the world. Frankie's priest is the worst priest in the world. Maggie's key opponent in the film is the worst sport in the world. (Don't read the rest of this paragraph if you haven't seen the movie and don't want it SPOILED for you.) Her doctors are the worst doctors in the world. How long did it take her to get bedsores and lose a leg? Don't they shift you around to avoid that kind of stuff? I know it happens, but this seemed ridiculous. Her nurses are the worst nurses in the world. Did no one hear the beeping when he disconnected her machinery? All the way, straight up and down the cast, everyone but the three main characters is nothing but the personification of or trigger for some terribleness that must affront our heroes. This is the best movie of the year?

"I'm here to drag the bar down and make her mom seem like an actual person."

That's not all, of course, but I really don't have the energy to detail all the tedious ways in which this movie just beats you over the head relentlessly. It was bad enough while watching, I don't want to relive it again. So, I'll make the rest of these points the easy way: With screenshots.

"What about my welfare?"

I'd worry about your third dimension before I started worrying about your welfare, honey.

"What's that say?"
"It says, 'Chant like you're in Rocky IV.'"

She takes leftover food home from work and saves all her tips in a big change jar, which she then uses to buy things, still as loose change and big rolls of coins. No explanation is given for why the bank won't let her exchange her coins, or how much shipping she pays on all those coins when she sends money to her mother.

"Why do I do what I do? What has caused me to be a bully? What lurks deep inside my heart that makes me want to belittle others in order to make myself feel better? From what pain do I suffer?"

"Stop asking so many questions. You're here to complete Morgan's character arc. Now shut up and take the punch like a girl who's never been in a boxing ring before so we can all go home and work on our speeches."

He has a daughter he writes letters to who just won't write back. He also has just one week until retirement, a loose-cannon partner, a captain who doesn't appreciate his methods, and he doesn't need this shit.

Really, that's it. I can't go on any further. Million Dollar Baby is just one continuous assault on your intelligence. It's a heavy-handed pounding that beats you into submission until you can't protest the beating anymore. (Have I worked the "this movie pounds on you and pounds on you until you can't take it anymore" angle enough? I'm just trying to give a taste of what watching the movie is like.) There is one way, however, in which it is smart. It constructed for itself a complete non sequitur of a "controversial" ending, so it has a ready-made rationalization for why anyone could possibly not appreciate it.