Thursday, March 22, 2007

Father Issues

Let's see if I can remember all of the characters in Lost with father issues starting with the mildest.

  • Walt - Didn't know his father (Michael) until shortly before hey crashed on the island. Often thinks that his father is overbearing. Michael often acts overprotective and jealous of Walt spending time with anyone else.
  • Hurley - resents that his father disappeared for 17 years.
  • Alex - thinks that her father (Ben) is manipulative. Also, he sent her boyfriend to some sort of conditioning program.
  • Claire - She thought that her father died when she was a child until he appeared after her mother was in an accident. He wanted her to pull the plug. She told him to go away and didn't even find out his name.
  • Sun and Jin - issues with her father disapproving of her marrying someone beneath her.
  • Desmond and Penny - same problem as with Sun and Jin except Penny's father is not willing to make something of Desmond.
  • Jack - argued with his father a lot. Jack turned in his father for doing surgery while intoxicated.
  • Sawyer - his father killed his wife and himself while Sawyer was hiding nearby.
  • Kate - When she learned that he mother's second husband was her father she blew him up.
  • Locke - His father coned him out of a kidney. Later Locke's father faked his own death as part of a con. Locke's involvement in this lost him his lover. Finally, his fatehr tried to kill him by pushing him through an 8th floor window. Locke spent four years in a wheelchair because of this.
To cap this off:
  • Claire and Jack have the same father and don't know it. His body is still somewhere on the island.
  • Locke's father is being held by the Others. Want to bet that he turns out to be the guy that Sawyer has been looking for for 30 years?
And a few mother issues:
Boone and Shannon - didn't get along with Shannon's step-mother.
Anna-Lucia - lived in her mother's shadow in the police force.
Claire - she wished that her mother was dead and a moment later mom was in a coma.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Heroes Equivalents

The powers that the people in Heroes possess are not that unusual. I saw this questioned in a comic book forum and came up this list:

Claire - (healing) Wolverine before the claws
Sylar - (killing people and taking their power)
Peter Petrelli (duplicates powers) - Duplicate Boy (from LoSH - the Legion of Superheroes)
Nathan Petrelli (flight) - Angel
"Claude" (The invisble man)- Invisible Kid (LoSH)
Parkman (telepath, surface thoughts only) - Saturn Girl (LoSH)
Nikki Sanders (super strength/split personality) - Ms Marvel had a split personality for a while with only one personality having super powers
Issac Mendez (paints the future) - Dream Girl? (LoSH)
Ted (Radioactive Dude)- Radioactive Man (Thor villain)
D.L. Hawkins (phase through objects) - Shadowcat, Phantom Girl (LoSH)
Candice Wilmer (shape-shifter) - Chameleon Boy (LoSH)
The Haitian (steals memories, blocks telepaths) - Professor X
Eden McCain (command voice) - The Purple Man
Claire's biological mother (flames) - Fire Lad (LoSH)

Here are the people I can't place:
Hiro (manipulates time and space) -
Micah Sanders (cyber kninetic)-
Hanna Gittleman (Wireless Girl)-

Relatives:
Angela Petrelli (no known powers but may dream about the future) - Dream Girl (LoSH)
Kaito Nakamura - No known powers but related to a hero
Kimiko Nakamura - No known powers related to a hero

Others
Ando-No known powers
Horn Rims Glasses Guy- No known powers
Mohinder - No known powers
Mr.Linderman- No known powers


Notice how many have their closest equivalents in the LoSH. This group tended to have single powers. With a huge cast, they came up with lots of individual powers. Also, like Heroes, few of the LoSH member were very effective on their own. It was the combination of powers that made it interesting.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Flame Goes up in Flames

Lost blogging:

In the March 7th episode a small party set on rescuing Jack comes across a station. Officially it is the communications hub although it looks more like a farm.

We finally got one big question answered - where Kate's horse came from. We also found out that the Others have a submarine.

We also met eyepatch guy who might be named Mikhail Bakunin. He claimed to be the last member of the Dharma Initiative but he lied about that so he might have given a false name, also.

The Flame Station was tantalizing. There was a communications dish. It might not have worked, but we know that Sayid could have fixed it. There was also a basement full of tapes and manuals. Probably a lot of answers were there.

But Locke blew it up. He discovered that winning a computer chess game gave access to a set of options and codes. Most of them were broken but there was one to use if hostiles gained control of the station. No surprise - it blew up the station.

My daughter's reaction was "stupid Locke" but there is more to it. On the dramatic level, the producers aren't going to give us answers that easily. One the practical level, they couldn't have held the station. It was not defensible. It was surrounded by hills and tall vegetation grew right up to it. If they had stayed it would have turned into a trap. By blowing it up, Locke respected the wishes of the Initiative and denied the Others further use of the station. This may hurt them in the future.

Assuming that at least some of what Mikhail said was true, there was a war between the Initiative and the Others some time before. This still leaves several questions.

1) Who is dropping food and supplies?
2) Who recruited Juliet? The implication was that the Initiative was killed off longer ago than the three years that she was on the island.

Could it be that the Initiative still exists on the mainland and doesn't know that the Others have taken over completely?

Mikhail mentioned that the Others have been there a very long time. Do some of them date to the Black Rock (the slave ship they got the TNT from)?

The show is beginning to feel more like itself again.