Jorge Garcia (Hurley) singing
He has a nice voice! Listen –>
The song is for the upcoming movie When We Were Pirates, starring Jorge Garcia himself!
You can watch an interview with Jorge tomorrow (Tuesday, April 21, 2009) on the daytime TV show the Bonnie Hunt show. Probably no singing, but he will be talking about LOST — and about his beloved tomato garden.
Kate demanding answers from Miles
We just saw, in Some Like it Hoth, that Naomi offered Miles $1.6 million to join Widmore’s expedition to kill Ben. Then Miles told Bram he wouldn’t go to the Island if Bram paid him $3.2 million, which Bram declined to do.
We’ve heard the number $3.2 million before. Remember? Back in Season 4? Miles told Ben that for $3.2 million, he would lie to Widmore and tell him that Ben was already dead.
The scene contains this classic exchange:
— Ben, in a shocked tone: “You’ve arranged this meeting so you could blackmail me?
— Miles: “It’s extortion, if you want to get technical.”
Ben goes on to ask, “3.2? Why not 3.3 or 3.4?”
Which is exactly the question that I have. What is the significance of 3.2?
We know that $3.2 million is double what Widmore was paying Miles, and we know that $1.6 million contains the number “16,” which is one of the numbers. But there has to be more to it than that.
Miles never answers Ben’s question about why it’s 3.2. Miles just looks at him. His not answering gives the question even more significance. So does the echo of the number, over a year later, in Some Like it Hoth. 3.2 means something — but what?
The scene where Miles confronts Ben starts at 4:12 in the video below. I’ll think you’ll enjoy seeing it again. I found it interesting to go back to the time when the Losties still thought of Miles as their enemy. And he does seem a bit menacing here, not yet the cuddly wise-cracker that we’ve come to know and love (even though he does get off a couple of very funny lines):
Editing to add 4/27/09: This mystery has now been solved!
In this clip from earlier this week (the evening before LOST Episode 5×13 aired), Jorge is funny, talking about time travel, buying toilet paper at the grocery store with coupons, not going surfing, and spotting a stranger in his back yard.
For more Jorge, check out his blog.
Screencap of Jorge Garcia from Jimmy Kimmel Live, April 14, 2009 (c) ABC
Planet Hoth from Star Wars
Writing my first impressions during the show’s commercials …
9:07 Starts with a powerful scene showing Miles, as a boy, already having the ability to communicate with the dead. Back in Dharma time, Horace sends Miles on an errand, welcoming him to “The Circle of Trust.” Miles picks up a dead body (Hostile?) from Radzinsky, then opens the body bag and asks the corpse, “So … what really happened?”
I’m liking this episode very much so far.
9:15 Multiply-pierced Miles, in flashback, visiting his dying mother. He wants to know why he is the way he is, and he wants to know about his father. His mother says that his father is dead, that he left them, and that he never cared about Miles. (Daddy issues!!) Miles wants to know where the body is. His mother says that it’s somewhere he could never go. (Like on a remote Island, perhaps?)
Miles has to take the body to the Orchid. Hurley comes along, with a funny line about how global warming hasn’t happened yet. Meanwhile, Roger, Ben’s dad, freaks out when he finds Ben is missing. He storms off. Juliet to Kate: “Well. Here we go.”
I am still really liking this episode!
9:28 Hurley finds the body. Says to Miles: “You can talk to dead people!” Says his secret his safe, cause he talks to dead people too.
Flashback: Miles conducts seances for hire. Tells a Dad that his son always knew he loved him. Is this a real message, or is he making it up for the money?
Naomi!!
Back in Dharma: Roger, drinking. Kate tries to comfort him. Roger senses that she knows what happened.
Hurley and Miles have a wonderful dialogue. Hurley tells how he talks to dead people. Miles says “That’s not how it works!” Hilarious. They are arguing about how communicating with the dead really works! Hurley: “You’re just jealous because my power is better than yours.” So funny!
Hurley says that Dr. Chang is a douche. Miles: “That douche is my Dad.”
Wow.
I am loving this episode!
9:40 Flashback to Miles and Naomi. Miles “reads” body, gets offered job for 1.6 million dollars. (This number came up in an earlier season. (Editing to add: Actually it was the 3.2 million dollars that came up before.)
Jack and Roger have an encounter. Then back to Hurley, Miles, and now also Chang in the WV. Chang’s 3-month old baby (the one we saw in the opening scene of the first episode of this season) is named Miles!! Wow.
Secret construction site — cool! They’re building the hatch! With the numbers on the cover!
I am totally loving this episode!
9:51 Flashback. Miles kidnapped by guys in a van. They say they want to talk him out of working for Widmore. One asks, “Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” Ooooh!
Who are these guys? They tell Miles that they can tell him about his powers and about his Dad — the things he had asked his mother about on her deathbed — but Miles says he no longer cares, he only cares about money. They toss him out, tell him he’s “playing for the wrong team.”
Back in the van in Dharmaville, Miles grabs Hurley’s notebook. He’s writing the sequel to Star Wars — ha ha! — which hasn’t come out yet, and which he hopes to sell to Lucas! (There’s the tie-in with the title.)
Underling Phil tells Sawyer he knows Sawyer took Little Ben. Sawyer punches him, tells Juliet to get the rope.
I’m still totally loving this episode!
10:01 Miles goes back to see his client, says he wants to give him his money back. So he was faking after all! I’m thinking it is his conscience prompting him to return the money because he didn’t do the job he was hired for but, instead, Miles says “If you needed your son to know you loved him, you should have told him when he was alive.”
More Daddy issues!
Back in Dharmaville, Hurley talks about how he gave his Dad a second chance. Then he makes an elaborate Star Wars analogy, which goes way over my head, as I’m not a big Star Wars geek, but the gist of it is that he is trying to tell Miles that he should talk to his Dad.
Big Miles watches his Dad and Baby Miles!
Then Chang and Big Miles go out to meet the sub. And Faraday gets out!! And says, “Long time no see.”
Love, love, love this episode. It has so many of my favorite things — flashbacks, humor, Hurley and Miles riffing off each other, Daddy issues, and even the Hatch and the numbers!
Screenshot from The Empire Strikes Back (c) Lucasfilm, via Wikipedia
Entertainment Weekly did a brief video interview with Ken Leung. He describes his character Miles as being hurt or “haunted by something,” and he says that being able to communicate with the dead “can’t be a happy skill to have.” He also says that he thinks Miles is “definitely hiding something.” Hmmm …
(I don’t see any embeddable copies of the video yet. I’ll add one later if I find one. Meanwhile, you can see the video at the link above.)
Posted in Interviews, Miles (Ken Leung)
Smokie shows Ben faces from the past
Ben, still wracked with guilt over Alex’s death, has come back to the Island to be judged by Smokie, who he calls “The Monster.”
That name could just as easily be applied to Ben himself. Ben is a cold-blooded killer, as we see in both the present storytime and the past via flashback. In the present, Ben shoots Caesar point blank, after manipulating him into attacking John. In the past, Ben tries to kill Penny, who he has never even met, just to get back at her father. He shoots Desmond because he is in the way. Surely Ben is the real monster of this story.
And yet, it’s a testament to Michael Emerson’s skill as an actor that we don’t simply hate Ben. When he tells Charles that baby Alex is not an “it,” Ben seems human, even endearing. When he sees the vision of Alex in Smokie’s lair, and he says her name, the love, and longing, and sorrow, and regret in his voice is heartbreaking.
The episode is almost as much about Locke as it is about Ben. Being dead for a while seems to have done Locke a world of good. It must have been like a little vacation, if we can judge by how refreshed he looks! He’s got his Season One macho swagger back, his confidence, his smile, his twinkling eyes, and his ability to do a magic mind-meld with the will of the Island.
There’s a lot of talk about the Island’s will. Not only John, but also Ben, Widmore, and Alpert all have lines referring to “what the Island wants.” At times, they seem to equate “what Jacob wants” with “what the Island wants.” Does that mean that Jacob is the Island, in some sense?
We see Ben in several stages of his life, and along the way, a few mysteries are cleared up. Charles, with a lot of hair, visits Little Ben and tells him the Island saved his life. Young-man Ben, with a teenaged Ethan, takes baby Alex. Several years later, Alex is in a swing, and Charles is banished from the Island.
In the present, Ben appears freaked out that John is alive, and says that knowing it would happen is different from actually seeing it. Ben and Locke then take the Island version of a buddy road trip. They run into Sun and Lapidus. The latter has had it with dead men walking, and wants to leave Crazy Island. But Sun wants to stay and find Jin. Locke tells her he has some ideas for how she can do that.
Ben lies to Sun, and tells her that “dead is dead” and that he had no idea that Locke would come back to life. Or is it Locke he had lied to, earlier, when Ben told him he knew he would come back — and Sun to whom he is now telling the truth?
In any case, it’s off to the temple, an encounter with Smokie, and the appearance of undead Alex. Strangely, when undead Alex suddenly grabs Ben by the throat, out of all the many topics she could have chosen to discuss with her father during this rare opportunity for communication, she chooses to speak about John Locke.
She says she knew Ben was planning to kill him again, and that if Ben so much as touched John, she would hunt him down and destroy him. She orders Ben to listen to every word that John Locke says and to follow his every order.
That’s quite a good deal for Locke!
Earlier, when Ben was on the porch of his old home with Sun, he heard a rustling in the jungle. He said to Sun, “You may want to go inside. What’s about to come out of that jungle is something I can’t control.” He meant Smokie, of course, but then when it was Locke who walked out of the jungle, Ben’s statement still applied – John Locke is someone Ben can no longer control.
Mysteries solved:
Ben killed John to bring everyone together so they would come back to the Island (or, at least, that’s what Ben said).
Ben took baby Alex to save her.
Ben’s injuries when he boarded Flight 315 were from Desmond beating him up after Ben tried to kill both Desmond and Penny.
Unsolved mysteries:
What’s in the crate on the beach?
How did Ethan come to be with the Others?
Who is Ilana, really? And why did she ask Lapidus “What lies in the shadow of the statue?” and why did she knock him out when he couldn’t answer?
And who was Caesar? Was he just the innocent victim of Ben’s manipulations that he appeared to be? Or did he have a secret role on the Island as well?
Ben and the Smoke Monster (lightened) from screencap by Lost-Media.com (c) ABC
Ken Leung in The Sopranos
About eight months ago, I was watching The Sopranos on DVD, and one of the guest stars looked really familiar. I was sure I had seen him in some other role, but couldn’t place him. And then it hit me — maybe it was the freighter guy from LOST, the one who could get in touch with ghosts.
And so it was.
In this episode of The Sopranos (Remember When, originally airing on April 22, 2007), Ken Leung plays a patient in a mental hospital. He latches onto a fellow patient who he greatly admires, the former mob boss Uncle Junior, who had been placed in the hospital after shooting his nephew Tony Soprano. Uncle Junior entertains himself in the hospital by organizing secret poker games for the patients, and Leung’s character, Carter Chong, eagerly assists him.
Chong at first appears quite normal, to the point where you wonder why he is in the hospital at all. And then, in the middle of an ordinary conversation, he suddenly snaps. Leung gives a very interesting performance in this role of a character whose whole demeanor can change on a dime.
After seeing this episode of The Sopranos, LOST producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were so impressed with Leung’s performance that they decided to offer him a role on LOST. Actually, it was even more than that — they created a new role especially for him.
On a lighter note, here is Ken Leung, seven years earlier, in a short and funny clip from the movie Keeping the Faith. Watch the clip past the 1:45 point to see a couple of twists at the end.
Screen cap of Ken Leung as Carter Chong, with Uncle Junior, played by Dominic Chianese, in the background. (c) HBO
Posted in Damon and Carlton, Funny, Miles (Ken Leung), Other roles
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