“Like many Season 3 flashbacks, this flashback seems to exist mostly because the formula insists there needs to be one.”
Maybe this is nitpicking because you’re obviously right, but how do you, as a critic, decide which parts of the show are Established Lore and which are just Commerce-Driven Wheel Spinning?
I ask because you made a point of ignoring Authorial Intent, but at the same time these recaps can’t help but acknowledge outside factors like the demands of the flashback format or the number of extra episodes required to due sudden network success.
I’m not trying to be a dick about it -- not just because you ARE obviously right -- but also because you know what you know, and so do your readers/Lost viewers, so I’m not sure if there is a simple answer. But I bet you do have a guiding principle.
Ultimately my guiding principal is my belief, mediated by careful observation. In the case of these Season 3 flashbacks, many of them don't really serve to illuminate new things about the characters, or to add much to the ongoing action in island time. If they didn't exist, the overall story and our understanding of the character involved would remain essentially unchanged.
In the case of Kate, very little of any of the flashbacks ever seem to track, either to the main story or to the character we come to know on the island. So either I'm missing some element of the story that would make sense of it, or I'm dealing with a element of the story that wasn't really given the same consideration as much of the rest—one where our island gods themselves didn't know and made something up to tell us. Given what we know about how the show was made, certain conclusions present themselves as more likely, so that's what I believe, but ultimately I don't know. It has to be a matter of belief.
“Like many Season 3 flashbacks, this flashback seems to exist mostly because the formula insists there needs to be one.”
Maybe this is nitpicking because you’re obviously right, but how do you, as a critic, decide which parts of the show are Established Lore and which are just Commerce-Driven Wheel Spinning?
I ask because you made a point of ignoring Authorial Intent, but at the same time these recaps can’t help but acknowledge outside factors like the demands of the flashback format or the number of extra episodes required to due sudden network success.
I’m not trying to be a dick about it -- not just because you ARE obviously right -- but also because you know what you know, and so do your readers/Lost viewers, so I’m not sure if there is a simple answer. But I bet you do have a guiding principle.
Ultimately my guiding principal is my belief, mediated by careful observation. In the case of these Season 3 flashbacks, many of them don't really serve to illuminate new things about the characters, or to add much to the ongoing action in island time. If they didn't exist, the overall story and our understanding of the character involved would remain essentially unchanged.
In the case of Kate, very little of any of the flashbacks ever seem to track, either to the main story or to the character we come to know on the island. So either I'm missing some element of the story that would make sense of it, or I'm dealing with a element of the story that wasn't really given the same consideration as much of the rest—one where our island gods themselves didn't know and made something up to tell us. Given what we know about how the show was made, certain conclusions present themselves as more likely, so that's what I believe, but ultimately I don't know. It has to be a matter of belief.