24: Comments

In some ways, this season is interesting not in spite of duplicating earlier plotlines but because of duplicating earlier plotlines. The similarity of the 'Morris' brother' business to the one two years back with Edgar's mom was striking enough to call attention to itself, and, of course, played out quite differently. One has similar expectations for the repeat of the 'Cabinet Coup/25th Amendment invoked' subplot from season 2. And since they're talking War in the previews, one wonders if it'll be with "Three Middle-Eastern countries" again...

24: Predictions

1. In keeping with this season's "boneheaded policies turn out to be right" mini-theme, Nadia is almost certainly a Mole.

2. Graem's last words will include the phrase "your dead wife".

3. Unless I'm mistaken, they just namechecked Nina for the second time this season. I'm getting more and more of a feeling that we are going to learn that she miraculously survived Season 3, has been in US custody and comatose since then, and was what was traded to the Chinese for Jack, setting her up as the Season 7 Big Bad...

24: Rocket Romano Versus Chopper, Round Two

Seriously; the falling helicopter has to be an ER shout-out, doesn't it?

Early season thoughts: it's starting to look like "What did the government give the Chinese to get Jack Back?" is going to be this year's Chekovian Gun. But how do you pay that one off? Pretty much every vililan 24 has ends up dead or pardoned-and-exiled, so there's not many people that the US could be trading. I don't think they'd be able to convince us that Nina Myers miraculously survived Season 3 and has been in a secret prison since then (although if she did, the 'don't tell anyone who even knows Jack' part is easy to credit.) in a handful of snippets and side references during a fairly busy main plot, so who?

Motif-watch. (I think we'll have to go with the pedestrian 'Death' as Season 5's motif, by the way). So far, we may be working on "the dangers of making deals with terrorists" or "profoundly stupid decisions that, through dumb luck, turn out to be correct", both of which are a little complex. Surely they'll refine down a bit later.

Update

Still around, with posting to be fairly intermittent for the time being. Posted my nanowrimo2006 postmortem over at fiveyearsafter. May or may not do weekly 24blogging this year around, although probably not until next week if at all.

Wish there was a decent new Lexicon Game around to join. Or that I had access to a large enough potential player base to start one on my own with a reasonable expectation of getting a good batch of players. Set up a wiki indexing all of the ones that I've seen on the intertubes.

And writing regularly at 100wordstories as well.

Lost, Season 2

Hey, I'm still alive!

Anyhow, having finished season 2 of Lost, I thought I'd revisit my questions post from season 1, and see how we're doing on resolving things.

• The Island

1. What's inside the hatch? resolved
   
2. What is the monster? unresolved
   
3. Why are there Polar Bears in the Tropics? [maybe under Walt rather than The Island] unresolved
   
4. Where is it on a map? unresolved
   
5. Why is it undiscovered? unresolved
   
6. What is the power source for the transmission? resolved
   
7. Who are the Others, and what is their agenda? unresolved
   
8. Why is the tide coming in so high and fast? unresolved
   

• The Plane

1. Why did it crash? resolved
   
2. How did so many survive? unresolved
   
3. Where are the other survivors Boone contacted on the radio? resolved
   

• Jack

1. How did his marriage end? resolved
   
2. How does he keep a constant level of stubble without ever being either clean-shaven or developing a full beard? unresolved
   
3. What's up with the tattoo? unresolved
   
4. Where did his dad's body go? unresolved
   

• Kate

1. What was her initial crime all about? resolved
   
2. What was the reason she ran away from home in the first place? resolved
   
3. To whom was she married? unresolved
   
4. How did that turn out? unresolved
   
5. Why was she calling the Marshall at home? unresolved
   

• Locke

1. How did he become crippled? unresolved
   
2. How was he cured? quasi-resolved
   
3. When did he acquire his mad skillz at hunting and survival? quasi-resolved
   
4. Ditto his encyclopedic knowledge of trivia such as instantly identifying Nigerian Currency? unresolved
   
5. What happened after he stared at the beast? unresolved
   
6. What happened after the vault light turned on? resolved
   

• Sawyer

1. What was the fiasco in Miami? quasi-resolved? (possibly the flashbacks in 'the long con'?)
   
2. Why isn't he having nicotine withdrawl problems? unresolved
   
3. Why didn't anyone blame his headaches on above? unresolved
   

• Sayid

1. When and why did he leave Iraq? (Probably trailing Nadia, but how did he get that trail?) unresolved
   

• Charlie (No current mysteries with Charlie I can recall.)
  
• Claire

1. Why is Aaron's being raised by Claire so important? unresolved
   

• Hurley

1. What do the numbers mean? unresolved
   
2. Why was he in the mental institution? resolved
   
3. How did he get the nickname? unresolved
   

• Jin and Sun

1. How did Sun's father find out Jin was planning to flee? unresolved
   

• Shannon and Boone (Nothing much here, either.)
  

1. Michael and Walt
2. Does Walt have the ability to control random events [Backgammon vs Hurley scene]? unresolved
   
3. Does Walt control the weather? unresolved
   
4. Does Walt have the ability to summon wildlife? unresolved
   
5. If so, is he responsible for the Polar Bears? unresolved
   
6. If so, when Rouseau mentioned 'Bears', was she thinking of more normal tropic-friendly species? unresolved
   
7. If he can do all these things, as well as perfectly throw a knife with positive visualization, is there anything he can't do? Is Walt, in fact, some kind of demigod? unresolved
   
8. Why do the Others want him? unresolved
   

• Rousseau

1. Who was Alix's father? unresolved
   
2. What happened to Alix after he was taken? resolved
   
3. Is she crazy/how crazy is she, or were the rest of her crew actuall infected by something? unresolved
   
4. Why does she, living alone on a deserted island and coming from a culture comfortable with female body hair, shave her armpits smooth? unresolved

All right, and now for the new questions.

• The Island

1. Why did the shark have the Dharma logo on it?
2. Where'd the horse come from?
3. Why did the parrot know Hurley's name?
4. If the Island cured Jin, Locke, and Rose, why not Shannon?
5. Why are the castawas such an incurious bunch?
6. Is the food drugged? Why doesn't anyone consider that possibility?
7. Is space-time warped in a Snow-globe-like manner around the Island, or is Desmond just a bad navigator?
8. Who built the leg statue? Why?
   
9. Who broke it? Why?
10. Why four toes?
    

• Desmond and The Vault

1. Why require periodic human input at the terminal?
2. Who is the "Him" that Desmond was waiting for?
3. Where are the missing stations?
4. What exactly is behind the concrete?
5. What do the glyphs mean?
6. What is in the 'vaccine'?
7. What was written on the blast door map?

• Jack

1. Who is his sister?
   

• Kate
• Locke
• Sawyer

• Hurley

1. Can we really exclude the Dave theory of everything?
2. Why was Libby in the institution?
3. Why was Libby in Sydney/on that flights? (Hurley inherits Libby's questions.)
   

• Charlie

1. What caused his hallucinations?
   

• Claire
• Jin & Sun

1. Did the island cure Jin, did Sun sleep around, or was she implanted in some sinister manner?
   

• Sayid
• Michael&Walt
• Eko

1. Why did the smoke monster retreate from him?
   

• The Others

1. How does their indocrination work?
2. How do they choose who to take?
3. Who is their leader?
4. Where's the real hatch that goes with their fake entrance?

So, questions are multiplying, but with some progress. The ending of season two, though, makes any kind of resolution to any of the various issues surrounding Walt seem extremely difficult, which could be bad since they certainly seemed central in season one. Also, nice trick with the numbers--making them so central to the world of the vault throughout the season that one doesn't notice the utter lack of progress in explaining any of the mystery surrounding them. Well played, Lost producers...

Note

In case one hadn't already guessed, posting will be spotty-to-nonexistant here through the end of November...

Contra MacLeod

So, a couple of months ago, Ken MacLeod posted this on his blog, during the Israel/Lebanon hostilities.

Now, as I may have mentioned before, I have some sympathy for the viewpoint that the idea of 'civilized warfare', that there is any signficant state between 'peace' and 'total war', that that idea is illusory and false. But while I find it a useful illusion, he finds it a pernicious one.

The problem, though, is that while his views on jus in bellum are in my view quite wrong, his views on jus ad bellum are, frankly, outright evil: the idea that it is possible to simultaneously reject self-defense as a just reason for warfare and accept the genocidally racist arab irredentism as a perfectly fine casus belli is so profoundly wrong that one can hardly help but look for alternate, sinister personal motives. One does find traces of a particularly rabid anti-colonialism, but it is one that is premised on the bizarre unspoken contentions that Jewish culture is utterly alien to the Middle East, there were never any indigenous Jews anywhere in the region, and that Arabs are either historically incapable of imperialism and colonialism or that they must, uniquely, be forgiven for it.