US: 2X12 - "Fire + Water" [**SPOILERS WITHIN**]

Basq

- WARNING: THIS THREAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET SEEN "FIRE + WATER" -

Episode Title: "Fire + Water"
Airdate: January 25th 2006

Synopsis (from TV.Com):

When Charlie's vividly surreal dreams lead him to believe Claire's baby, Aaron, is in danger, Locke suspects Charlie may be using again. Meanwhile, Sawyer encourages Hurley to act on his attraction to Libby.

Next New Episode: 2X13 - "The Long Con" - February 8th 2006

steveland?

Thread locked until tomorrow morning when it'll be re-opened for your comments

monomaniac

I don't like to read the summaries of the show after they air but I always look on this thread thurs morn to get the general opinions of the early-birds who've seen the ep.

I think this ep doesn't sound as good as the previous 2 but I'm hoping it might contain a few surprises.

Anyone seen it yet?

Chong

5

I am not looking forward to this one at all.

monomaniac

Have you seen the AOL clips - there looks to be an interesting conversation between Eko and Charlie. I'm hoping for a big cliffhanger in relation to this.

Chong

5

Worst of all is that next week is a bleeding repeat.

Chevano Riley

7

was a lovely self contained episode, which has laid to rest (for now at least) charlie's heroin story. poor fella. even hurley was an asshole to him.

i enjoyed hurleys attempts at wooing the blondie one.

8/10

Chong

5

I have just given my worse rating to a lost show yet .

plonk

3

Its getting worse and worse every week.
4/10

riddik

ah here, pure rubbish. unfortunately everyone is still addicted and the ratings are still high so they can continue to throw out crap every week as ppl still tune in in the hope of something good. bit of a vicious circle really

Chong

5

Thats where your wrong ratings are dropping in the US and they are going to drop more after because of mext weeks repeat. The show is moving at such a slow pace its actually becoming annoying now. This all comes from me a die hard Lost fan.

Gone West

4

very very mediocre.

hardCopy

1

Could Locke maybe have been spiking Charlie with the drug he used on Boone, so as to make him go crazy and move him away from Claire?

I'm just hoping there was some kind of sinister sub-plot to the episode because otherwise it didn't seem to serve much purpose at all.

Rollo Tamasi

7

it was an ok episode. I enjoyed Charlies back story. His dialouge is always good. He had a nice tan for a lad living in England, i wonder where did he get that? :rolleyes:

I think Charlies holusinations are giving more weight to the theory that the island was behind Mike communicating with Walt thru the PC.

Locke gave him some Slaps on the beach. Tough guy!

8/10

Berns

7

:eek: @ Locke punchin Charlie. Hope Charlie gets him back :mad:

Anima

8

This episode reminded me a lot of season 1. Was a great episode I thought. Backstory was decent and you feel bad for how Charlie's life went. It was good to see everyone in the episode aswell, thats probably what made it for me. A good bit going on every scene. I thought what Libby said about the washing machine being newer than everything else was interesting, I wonder what it means.

Rollo Tamasi

7

oh yeah, i forgot about Libby in this. Do you think Hurley knows her from his days in the nut asylum, he seemed damn sure that he knew her before and the "you steped on my foot" thing didn't cut it for me.

And Berns, do you realise how annoying your sig is?

Anima

8

Yeah theres something going on there with Libby and Hurley alright. Only time will tell I guess.

stag39

8

Locke is one evil son of gun/bit#h... and since when is he in total control of the weapon store..especially since there is a cop and a former iraqi solider...i think he knew bout the island before boarding the plane! he was so so desparate to get on it...hope they see him for what he is..

lostexpectation

6

just cos there was no action doesn't make it a bad ep, lost is slow shocker!

*locke close up*

and all those questions we were asking in last week thread aswell, "so when you going to tell me what happen jack"

i thought it was v.good,

*locke close up*

to me it seemed that eko realise it more important for claire to get baptised then the baby, were those ekos trees that burnt (to create the ASH)

wonders who the next character to croke?

*locke close up*

has any of our predictions from S1 about the mystery come true in S2?

going off to start a washmachine thread... :!

Basq

7

I for one think people are being very very hard on the episode!

I was telling Smurfpiss and steveland last night that i was far from optimistic about this episode knowing it was a Charlie-centric episode and also having a particularly far-from-thrilling promo. But it really suprised me how much i liked the episode.

Charlie's backstory was pretty poor really. But the episode had a lot of excellent moments:

- finally giving us an insight into how much Charlie cares for Claire and Aaron ultimately thinking of them as his family
- Locke beginning to get very close to Claire and Aaron
- felt quite un-easy, but in a good way, numerous times in the episode (Charlie taking Aaron, Locke finding Charlie with the heroin, Locke punching Charlie, Charlie's sheer madness screaming at Locke on the beach, Charlie awakening from a dream holding Aaron only to have Claire scream for her son). A hell of a lot more exciting scenes in this than some of the previous episodes.
- have always quite liked Charlie and Claire's friendship / pending romance and to see them being torn further and further apart is uncomfortable but quite compulsive viewing.
- really made me feel sorry for Charlie as everyone seems to be against him and in his eyes, he's doing nothing wrong and only wants to help Aaron and Claire!

But particular kudos to Jack Bender's direction in the episode - some of the opening shots were excellent. Such as the cutaways in Charlie's first flashback scene while playing the piano and also him stepping back into the jungle and fading into darkness before the opening credits. And loved the camera 360 around Locke as Kate was pushing Charlie away from Claire and Aaron.

I think i may know where Hurley knows Libby due to a reading of a future episode synopsis on TV.com a week or two back - beware of TV.com! :eek: Not a huge spoiler if my suspicions are true but definantly won't reveal it here.

Again.. in my opinion (and judging by the amount i'm wrote) i really did like this episode. Suprised i did as i was not looking forward to it in the least.

Still amazed at the negativity towards it - it was immensensly better than the weaker episodes of the season like 'Adrift', 'Abandoned' and '...And Found'.

PS - next week does look excellent!

PPS - gotta love the way they can get away with using the term "bald wanker" in the US providing the character who says the dialogue is British!

Smurfpiss

3

Yeah it had some good moments but overall fairly poor tbh.
I gave it a 4.
ahem.
I just felt charlie was acting a muppet, and yes he was in a desperate situation but his behaviour didn't get him anywhere.
His backstory was ok...but may i just say WTF is with the huggies ad. I was sure that was another dream. I mean, jesus that's pathetically desperate.
bah it bugged me anyway.
I still don't trust locke. That guy seems a bit funny and for sure knows more than he's letting on. Maybe we'll see in future episodes how pivotal charlies actions were....but right now it was very mediocre.

cregser

3

What a load of meh. The writers are getting complacent. If they think that last weeks episode was so good that they can start giving us filler episodes then they're sadly mistaken.

Why the **** did Jack walk away last week? They probably won't ever tell us. But we have to wait another two weeks to find out if we'll find out. And I'm still waiting for Hurley to tell people about the numbers. And Jack to say "Oh I met Desmond before, and Sawyer met my dad". And Eko to say "Really? Well my brother was on that other plane." And Locke to say "Oh yeah, Boone had a dream about that, and did I mention I was paralysed?". And anybody to say "You know that cloud that follows us around and goes down a hole, whats that all about? And remember that big magnetic wall in the hatch? And that handy power line coming from the sea? "...

I mean, wtf else do they have to occupy themselves with on an island with nothing to do for 50 days? All the while people sit on these important pieces of the puzzel, Charlie goes insane within 3 days of Claire telling him to feck off.

Mr E

4

I'm a big fan of the show, but that was a bit of a snoozefest, to be honest.

Are the writers going to be so clichéd to

let Charlie go down a dark path and redeem himself by sarcrificing his life to save Aaron some time late in the season?

Time will tell.....

herobear

why does EVERY bloody character on the island have Daddy issues ??
:mad: :mad:

Sauron

6

7/10 for me, while I really enjoyed the drama and conflicts between the various characters, which was very well executed, I just though it was a little too devoid of that Lost spark we so often saw in season 1.

Some excellent moments, but most of them have already been listed.

That dream with Claire and Charlie's mother was pretty bizarre.

Backstory wasn't great.. if fact it's been a while since I've been really impressed with any backstories, at least on the level of season 1.

and this is the first episode since way back at the start of s1 that I've become suspicious of Locke.. He wasn't a very likeable character in this episode, I miss the old Locke... when he was all cool and mysterious

The whole episode had the essence of a filler imo.

Enjoyable, but not great methinks.

anotherlostie

6

This was a very different episode to the last few, in that almost exclusively it focussed on one story. Interesting comment re Locke and the hallucinogens, but again I'd be inclined to believe there is deeper meaning.

I liked Sawyer winding Kate up over Jack and Anna-Lucia. Perhaps A-L's popularity will rise from now on - she was quite likeable tonight.

Decent episode, but I like the sound of the next (new) one more.

Sleepy

Charlie's been my favourite character since episode 1 and I have to say I HATE what they're doing to his story arcs. So many of the characters have begun to act outside of what we've grown to expect of them over the first season that you have to wonder if they've begun using new writers who have no idea where the original writing team intended on bringing the characters.

For instance:

In season one, Locke was the outsider who found his place on the island and, one by one was having a positive impact on the survivors. There were times when his actions were questionable but most of them were in an "ends justifies the means" fashion, the last few episodes have been hinting at a dark ulterior motive that there wasn't even the slightest hint of before.

Charlie had kicked the habit and overcome his feelings of helplessness by saving first Jack and then Aaron only to go stark raving mad over the last two weeks. Think TmB could have hit the nail on the head tbh.

Sayid was the tour de force of the "adventurers" in season 1. Always the first to put himself forward for the treks into the jungle etc. Since Shannon's death we've scarcely seen him, why wasn't he involved in last weeks trip to meet the others?

Terrible episode imho. I really don't like where the writers are taking this, but the thing is, I'm starting to doubt that they know where that is themselves...

sephirosis

6

In terms of fitting into the whole lost storyline, this did nothing for me, though i hope some of the events will become significant later on.
However in terms of self contaned story as someone said, I quite liked it. The dream sequences were really good, and the piano scene on the beach was great. I also thought the scene after the fire when Charlie has Aaron on the beach was excellent. I, at least felt it was full of tension and I really thought Charlie was going to drop him or something awful, and when he was holding the heroin I was thinking "will he, wont he...etc"
Also the Hurley-Libby thing was amusing at least. Maybe she knows he's loaded (I ain't saying she a goldigga'.....sorry>_<), or the asylum connexion as has been mentioned alot already. So on the whole I'll give it a 7, some better development of recent themes would have pushed that up a lot.

duridian

6

Smurfpiss wrote:

...but may i just say WTF is with the huggies ad. I was sure that was another dream.

Ah! But did you notice what type of cuddly toy animals were in the oversized baby's cot when Driveshaft were trying to do the advert.

stag39

8

have i not read before that the storyboards for the full series not already been done??--from the start!

jester77

Meh, poorest eps so far.
Don't think it can really get any slower, it's being seriuosly dragged out now. The drama that was the first series has gone.
They are now 50ish days on the island, when was the last time you can remember anyone talking about getting off the island or being recused??
The only good thing from last night's episode was Locke... there seems to be a bit more to him, I hope. Wonder why he kept the statues and didn't destroy them?

spooky donkey

3

cregser wrote:

What a load of meh. The writers are getting complacent. If they think that last weeks episode was so good that they can start giving us filler episodes then they're sadly mistaken.

Why the **** did Jack walk away last week? They probably won't ever tell us. But we have to wait another two weeks to find out if we'll find out. And I'm still waiting for Hurley to tell people about the numbers. And Jack to say "Oh I met Desmond before, and Sawyer met my dad". And Eko to say "Really? Well my brother was on that other plane." And Locke to say "Oh yeah, Boone had a dream about that, and did I mention I was paralysed?". And anybody to say "You know that cloud that follows us around and goes down a hole, whats that all about? And remember that big magnetic wall in the hatch? And that handy power line coming from the sea? "...

I mean, wtf else do they have to occupy themselves with on an island with nothing to do for 50 days? All the while people sit on these important pieces of the puzzel, Charlie goes insane within 3 days of Claire telling him to feck off.

I dident think much of the epp at all. I have to agree with yer points there, no one seems to comunicate in the show or ask obious but important questions ever. They all have their peice of the puzzel and wont share its anoying.

madrab

5

i kinda enjoyed the episode on its own but in terms of lost it wasnt the best, especially after the last 2 weeks have some big revalations (sp), i was kinda shocked with loche's brutality & loved the rotating closeup of his face, but other than that not much going on. At least they have got rid of this arc for a while so we can concentrate more on better stuff

is it me or would this episode have suited better if it were shown before last weeks episode?

Sleepy

sephirosis wrote:

the piano scene on the beach was great.

Anyone else start hearing the music from 'The Piano' when they saw this scene?

Sleepy

stag39 wrote:

have i not read before that the storyboards for the full series not already been done??--from the start!

Nope, they know how the story will end but from the description of the writing process in the Lost companion book, a lot of it is being made up as they go along...

Sherifu

Sleepy wrote:

Nope, they know how the story will end but from the description of the writing process in the Lost companion book, a lot of it is being made up as they go along...

You'd never think it :v:

stag39

8

jester77 wrote:

Wonder why he kept the statues and didn't destroy them?

maybe the reason is since the drug plane crashed on the island for a reason maybe one of the "others"/locke needs the drug as a sort of ingrediant for something else

ninebeanrows

6

I gave it 7 considering i was expecting a really bad episode after the last one.

But generally i would of given it 5/6

Bit boring and i hate when it just goes off the point!

stevejazzx

8

Fire and Water, a great episode, bizzare reaction to it.
It was a like i bridging episode. It was of course higly allegorical, and perhaps a strict critic might say that its comparisons were obvious and unsophisticated but I really enjoyed the dramatic sequences which lead the baptising of Aaron.
Charlies dreams were failry well done with some great cut scenes (as otheres have said) particulary his dad chopping meat in the sitting room pointing the blade at him saying 'You need a trade' then this scene fading from his sitting room to the beach while he's playing piano.
These visoins were no doubt induced (not by heroin) and it will interesting to see how it unfolds.
I think the episode got poor reaction as it was moving away even further from expaectations. This doesn't bother me I as think Lost seems to have a frim direction of wheres its going and am not worried about its future and indeed anyone who fears for ratings is mad especially when juciest epps are still to come.

stevejazzx

8

spooky donkey wrote:

I dident think much of the epp at all. I have to agree with yer points there, no one seems to comunicate in the show or ask obious but important questions ever. They all have their peice of the puzzel and wont share its anoying.

Some people have expressed that they are fairly annoyed with the fact the noone in lost seems to communicate, which I would agree to an extent there is a decrepency between events and waht the community seems to know or discuss on screen, however, it does seem that people do talk 'outside of episodes' as last night for e.g anna Lucia and Jack Discuss that they had beentalking all about Zeke and Hurley talked to sawyer about the 'tailies'.
Actually quite a lot of dialogue 'snippets' have been thrown in by the writers to cover certain areas of the story in terms of communication(around the time of the hatch been opened is a good example) and they will frequently wait until two episodes later before characters discuss key events and introduce their findings to other characters, also one must bear in mind that they(the lost crew) are being 'crontrolled' in many ways which is having a huge impact on how they divulge information to one another.

lostexpectation

6

how many days was it being ep 12 and ep11?

perhaps locke could use the drugs to poison the others

doh.ie

I thought this was pretty decent, but primarily because it had strong character development. I'd give it a 7/10 (same as last week), but this time the marks are all for characterisation. The island plot suffered badly, though.

Last week, the show was (relatively) strong on island plot with the Others meeting, but it was very weak on Jack's flashback. This time, we got a decent flashback, but little in island terms.

The most interesting aspect of Charlie's past was his relationship with his mother, and the need to get his family out of their difficult circumstances. (You could tell Megan was named for his mother from the way Charlie responded in the hospital when Liam's wife told him what she'd been named.) Thought the 'waking dreams' were pretty special too - haven't seen that kind of thing since Jack's seeing his father or Locke's vision of the Nigerian plane and his mother. (By the way, speaking of Jack's father - we haven't mentioned him since season 1 - I'm putting money on Jack's dad being 'reincarnated' through cloning or some Dharma science at some point in the series, or maybe just through a projection, like Walt. Dramatically, having Jack and his dad meet again would be pretty intense stuff, and since that coffin was empty, it might well happen.)

The themes of the flashback, losing family, losing yourself and trying to save both, were pretty well handled, I thought. The drugs plot may actually have worked better had he actually taken some of the heroin. I couldn't help thinking this was more build-up and no climax. If Charlie had actually given in to temptation, this would have given his character somewhere to go. He'd need to ultimately seek help from the group he'd been ostracised from. As it stands now, he's just ostracised and for something he'd done when he wasn't even using drugs!

I don't know why the island (or was it Locke?) was trying to give off the impression Charlie was on drugs when he wasn't; it seems to contradict the island's usual motivation - redemption. I wonder why Locke was keeping the statues. For one, anyone who sees them in the armoury will suddenly wonder why they were kept. Is it a plan for the future battle with the Others? Get 'em so high they can fight properly?! But, of course, it's equally likely Charlie, Locke, Sayid, Claire (maybe Jack) and Eko are the only ones who know about the drugs because of what Cregser pointed out - the Lost characters' inability to talk to each other about vital discoveries! (I guarantee you when the heroin next comes up and Jack

If we thought Charlie had burnt his bridges with Claire before now, he certainly messed up for good with the attempted forced baptism (oddest element of the whole episode). Yet the fact she went through with it says something about what she thinks of him. I thought Eko's reply to Claire's question about what would happen if she and Aaron were killed, but only one was baptised, was a bit unkind. He basically suggested she'd never end up with the kid, unless he baptised them both! No wonder she thought it a good idea. Maybe that's the way baptism works, but it seems a tad unchristian!

And very briefly:

* The dreams were good (how freaky were the religious apparitions at first? His mother also descended into a wonky Irish accent at that point!), but the Charlie motivations were qutie poor (considering he *wasn't* on drugs).

* Did Charlie burn Eko's favourite trees in the fire? It certainly seemed like it. What was the significance of these trees?

* In Charlie's first flashback ("The Moth"), Liam tells him (in Sydney): "You were with me the night I missed Megan's birth. You were the one I was stumbling around Dresden with trying to find a sodding fix." This is quite neat, considering there was also a line last night about leaving Dresden, and obviously Charlie made it while Liam got his fix. I don't think the writers had planned a future flashback showing the aftermath of this back last year, but to go back and check their own material for upcoming flashbacks is very neat.
He also later tells Charlie "Sydney's got some really good [drug] programmes", which ties in with why he moved to Oz.

* The "bald wanker" line cracked me up - Locke really is becoming as much of an ass as Jack. If I was on that island, I'd be like Charlie too. Forget the soddin' lot of them. Not much compassion or understanding from Locke this time either - apparently with John Locke, you only get one chance. After that, it's all over. (Didn't Locke think it took incredible courage to have all those statues and *not* take the drugs? He may have suspected he'd already started, I suppose.) As for the punch, I hope there's decent retribution for that one.

* Liked the line: "I'm not trying to scare Aaron..." / "You're scaring me, Charlie."

* Future Charile flashbacks will probably delve into the mother/father issues some more. (No one on Lost has had a normal childhood, have they?!)

* Hurley and Libby - definitely from the hospital. Has to be. Like the way this is going.

* Also very much liked the throwaway line (Lost is great at doing this) about the washing machine being newer than most of the other equipment. This suggests Dharma's been visiting relatively recently and doing some delivering...

* When the doors of the soundstage where the 'Huggies'-type ad was being filmed were opened, did anyone else think the skyline in the background looked very American over British (even for London)? That said, it must have been London cos we got to see Brixton underground later on. (You have to hand it to set designers - throw in a few black cabs, a red phone box and a Underground logo and presto: London! I did have to laugh at the two guys warming their hands by a barrell though! Has anyone *ever* seen this in London? OK, so it's standard fare in American films where the homeless hang out under the bridges, but it seemed out of place in a representation of London. Were they trying to show how poor an area Charlie and Liam were living in?

* I agree with TMB - this is all heading towards a huge redemption for Charlie later in the season. I hope for once we're wrong on this, but it seems too clear that he will save Claire/Aaron/the entire group and be welcomed back with open arms. For that reason alone, I wish Locke hadn't found the drugs and after the failed baptism, the character had gone on a right fix bender.

Overall, this one was saved by its flashback - the rest was only so-so, with the island scenes saved by the weird dream elements and Hurley's scenes.

Completely separate note, but in Entertainment Weekly this week, there's a Lost theory (not likely to be true - takes the monster as a real 'creature'), but it did point out one thing that interested me. Now, we touched on the same item here, but not using the same words. He ended the piece with something like, "Essentially, this is a monster which is smog-based and reflective [of the soul]. Smoke and mirrors, basically." Thought the idea that it was literally and metaphorically that - smoke and mirrors - was too accurate to be anything but spot on. The monster is certainly a lot more than it appears, and its true appearance is something I think we've yet to see.

Sleepy

Keeping the Heroin? Well, it could be weaponised (a high enough dosage would be a pretty effective tranquilizer).

It could be used as a truth serum in order to get some info out of the others.

Depending on the purity and/or Jack's pharmaceutical skills it could be used as morphine in the event of another serious accident...

doh.ie

Sleepy wrote:

Depending on the purity and/or Jack's pharmaceutical skills it could be used as morphine in the event of another serious accident...

Medicinal purposes were the best I could come up with last night too - I'm sure Boone would've been delighted if it were around when he was in agony!
But this still needs Locke to actually TELL Jack it's there!

cregser

3

People seem to be forgetting that Locke whacked Saiyd over the head with a big stick just to delay finding something out about the island. Then he did the same to Boone, except he tied him down in a jungle with monsters and polar bears and threw a knife at him.

I was more suprised at Locke's change of heart with the heroin than actually hitting Charlie. If I was Charlie I would have either stayed with Locke after he took the drugs to help destroy them (to prove myself) or screamed "Locke took the drugs!" after he opened up my face.

tinkerbell

Hated this episode, what the hell are the writers thinking! This week's episode was totally useless, didn't like it at all. The plot has gone backwards, it did nothing constructive at all.

Uuuugh.

SandyVN

I must say i havent had a bad word to say about it yet but i really didnt enjoy that episode.!!:mad:

We found out a bit about charlie but..... so.

Very disappointing.

el rabitos

piss poor tbh. wasnt interesting in the slightest

robinph

4

The accent for Charlies mum was very dodgy and I couldn't quite place where she was supposed to be from, they must be short of actors with British accents in Hawaii at the moment. They over did it a bit on the flag painted in the apartment that they were living in as well, and with all the Union Jacks graffiti on the walls near the tube I was thinking that maybe it was actually Tower Hamlets where they were living and the BNP had a by-election coming up.

jor el

5

I didn't really like this episode, except for one or two points. Something very strange is going on with Locke recently. I actually started thinking at one point that maybe he was an 'other' but of course he can't be since he was definitely on the plane. However, maybe he's turning into one?

Also, the close up on Charlie's face at the end when he put his hood on, something very dark about that. Maybe he'll go postal one of these days and shoot up (bad pun) the place.

Baldie wanker, that was funny though, so I'll give it 6/10.