And His Polar Bear Cries In The Ghettooooo
There have been a number of interviews on the internet with Harold Perrineau after the Lost finale about his feelings in regard to Michael being brought back on the show and then SPOILER ALERT blown up on a freighter. He feels just like the fans, he says, who were excited to see Michael come back and are disappointed to see him gone again so soon. Well, not exactly like the fans, Harold Perrineau. Unless I'm the only fan who's not getting his residuals check. But also, I just don't buy it. When Christian showed up right before the freighter exploded, it certainly opened up the possibility that the people on the freighter were going to time travel or something before it exploded. I'm not convinced that it's the end of Michael and Jin. Although I suppose you could make the argument that the island was using Michael, and Christian was sent to let him know that the island didn't need him anymore? But, no, I think this is all smoke monsters and mirrors. And if Harold Perrineau is lying to the press to cover up any potential future SPOILERS I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but if Harold Perrineau is taking this show at it's most facest of face values then he is a cry baby and he needs to take a long walk of a short Looking Glass.
But my favorite quote from any of the interviews is in Entertainment Weekly's talk with him about the racial implications of the finale.
Entertainment Weekly: You were quoted as saying that the loss of Michael meant that Walt "winds up being another fatherless child, [and] it plays into a really big, weird stereotype." Did you voice that concern to the producers?
Harold Perrineau: There's not been any conversation about that. That was just my point-of-view in an interview. This is nothing that I've ever talked to the writers about, or I think is necessarily anything I should talk to them about. Their job is to make the story work. My feelings about the social implications are my feelings. My feelings don't determine what the storyline is.
LOLZ. I don't want to be insensitive, and I make no claims on having the same ability as an American black male to pick up on the coded signifiers of racial stereotypes embedded deeply and thoroughly throughout the culture, but the idea that Walt is just another fatherless black kid is the best. I'm pretty sure that the parenting crisis in most black communities are due to young black men, faced with economic and societal pressures beyond their control, finding themselves forced to travel back to a paranormal island on a freighter owned by a dubiously motivated English businessman as an act of subterfuge to thwart the tycoon's unknowable plans and make amends for shooting those two people in the hatch which the young black males only did to free the leader of the Others and get their kidnapped sons back, only then to get blown up by a sloppy pile of C4 when the young black males run out of liquid nitrogen and the car battery is signaled by a radio frequency synchronized to the heartbeat of a special ops supersoldier who's been stabbed in the neck by a spooky bug-eyed nerd. That's the tragic story we're seeing endlessly repeated in the black community.
Posted by Gabe at 10:05 AM in Interviews
Tags: Harold Perrineau | Lost | Racism
Unless I'm mistaken, there wasn't a single shouting of WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT or THEY TOOK MAH BOY with his character's return. I'm pretty sure that's in his contract somewhere, so he has to come back at least once more to fill that quota.
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I think Michael says, "They took my son." at least four times an episode in S2.
Oh, I have 5 dollars that says Michael is dead and Jin is still alive. I think "You can go." means he was being released from his duty to the island and it also turns out Harold Perrineau is kind of a dick, so whatever, he's dead.
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hilarious...
yeah, sometimes i agree, there seems to be some hyper-sensitivity to racism in the black community. it's understandable, though.
i vote michael and jin are still alive.
a friend of mine said the writers were thinking to themselves one day: "how do we take out all the no-namer survivors in one fell swoop?"
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No way Michael's alive.
The fact that Christian Shephard showed up only confirms this.
Michael wasn't able to kill himself because the island still needed to use him, so Christian (aka Jacob) showed up to say that he was now able to die.
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Yeah, that seems reasonable, and I posited that as a possible theory in the post, but I still think that the show usually drives the mysterious resolutions home unless they're being held open for a reason, and the quick cutting at the end of that scene implied that the writers could still go either way with it. It's not like we saw bodies or anything. There was no burial on the beach, so to speak.
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