Lost was great!

POSTED BY: Litwolf689
UPDATED: Friday, October 1, 2004 15:13
VIEWED: 8664
PAGE 2 of 4

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Quicksand:
I wouldn't call the 1-hour pilot "great," but for TV, it was pretty good. B-, B tops.

Odds are in favor there's a huge quality drop for episode #2. It happens with every good pilot I've ever seen. It even happened with Firefly... Train Job was so/so and it took a few episodes to get back. For J.J. Abrams, I'm not sure I have the patience.

---

Actually, it wasn't a "1-hour pilot". It's a two hour pilot, the second hour of which is being shown this coming Wednesday. And, as mentioned by others above, the second half is where the interesting twists are supposed to be. So rather than comparing it to "The Train Job", you should be thinking of it more in terms of the second half of "Serenity".

EDIT: Interesting thing. Out of curiosity, I looked ahead on the schedule to the second episode, which airs on Wed. 10/6. Oddly (coincidentally?), it is titled "Tabula Rasa". Sound familiar?

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Doesn't anyone else find it interesting, perplexing, curious, plagiaristic, coincidental, odd, weird, comical, or whatever that the second episode of "Lost" (to air on Wed., 10/6) is going to be titled "Tabula Rasa"? I thought that tabula rasa was just a phrase that they made up on "Buffy" for Willow to use in a spell. However, it must mean something in some language. Does anyone know what language and the meaning?

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

It's in the dictionary, and although not commonly used, it is not unique to Buffy.

Tabula Rasa
Etymology: Latin, smoothed or erased tablet
1 : the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions
2 : something existing in its original pristine state



Oh, and play Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. http://digital-eel.com/sais

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Maybe I don't watch enough TV to know better, but I think LOST is not just adequate or okay, but it IS GREAT TV. I watched without preconception, and have never seen much of Alias or anything else JJ Abrams has done.

I was sucked in during the first ten minutes. It was an absolutely surreal scene at the crash site on the beach, perfectly capturing the chaos and fear that such a scene should illicit. The plane's wing pointing skyward like a monument! One of the engines STILL RUNNING as it lay in the sand. The sound was what really made that scene for me. The special effects were seamless. Anyone who saw LOST from the beginning and thinks it was just OK probably wasn't paying attention. I've never seen or heard anything like it.

The next ten minutes was also astounding to me. When the wounded doctor asked a prefect stranger to stitch him up... the look on her face, the way the scene played out... I felt different emotions mixing together in me that no other show has managed to do. Anyone who watched this scene and thought it was ordinary - tell me what else you're watching on TV, because I must be missing something good.

Okay, so the "invisible dinosaur" later in the show seemed strangely familiar, and a bit overdone, but I am pretty sure that was to mislead you into thinking down the wrong path. No dino was ever seen, nor heard, really - the sound that it made might have been prehistoric, but it sounded just as much like a machine. Again, excellent sound design in this show. Very mysterious. I think it will prove itself this Wednesday.





Oh, and play Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. http://digital-eel.com/sais

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by wydraz:
It's in the dictionary, and although not commonly used, it is not unique to Buffy.

---

Oh, now, I wouldn't say it's 'not commonly used'. I learned the term in high school, and it's come up again and again in various courses since then. I think whether you've heard it or not probably depends on where your interests or areas of study lie.

If you've got a focus on the humanities and liberal arts, I'd be very surprised if you don't come across it. It's a notion started by John Locke (humans are a blank slate, written on by experience). Locke is immensely influential to a lot of people (he's the guy who developed the 'social contract' theory of government, in which we give up certain rights in order to be guarenteed safety and some other things), which means that tabula rasa shows up in a lot of philosophy, history, and literature.

If you're interested at all, this seems to be a rather neat site on the quick basics of Locke - including tabula rasa.

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Locke.htm

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by wydraz:
It's in the dictionary, and although not commonly used, it is not unique to Buffy.

Tabula Rasa
Etymology: Latin, smoothed or erased tablet
1 : the mind in its hypothetical primary blank or empty state before receiving outside impressions
2 : something existing in its original pristine state



Oh, and play Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. http://digital-eel.com/sais

---

Thanks so much! That explains a lot. One of the things I always liked about Joss's shows was that they gave you the opportunity to learn new things - new to me anyway.

Now that I know what it means, it's obvious why that was the title of the "Buffy" episode. Now it will be interesting to find out why "Lost" has an episode by that name.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

I think they're on the same island Treat Williams, et al, landed on at the end of Deep Rising.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by wydraz:
Anyone who saw LOST from the beginning and thinks it was just OK probably wasn't paying attention. I've never seen or heard anything like it.

...the sound that it made might have been prehistoric, but it sounded just as much like a machine. Again, excellent sound design in this show.

---

I have to agree with both of those points that you made.

I went back and rewatched the opening 10 minutes on my TiVo box a couple of days ago to see if they were just as striking the second time around... and they were. The surreality of the experience seemed (to me) to be a perfect attempt at capturing the emotional shock of such a situation in images and sound. It impressed me.

Also, upon rewatching the first night scene, I to was struck by some of the "mechanical" elements of the sound the thing behind the trees made. It was both organic and machinelike. I tend to suspec that they deliberately blended both types of sound to prevent the listeners from guessing what they eventually reveal the source to be.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by danfan:

Quote:

---

Also, upon rewatching the first night scene, I to was struck by some of the "mechanical" elements of the sound the thing behind the trees made. It was both organic and machinelike. I tend to suspec that they deliberately blended both types of sound to prevent the listeners from guessing what they eventually reveal the source to be.

---

Well, they've gone and gotten me all curious. I guess I'm hooked already.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME