Is This Enough Reason To Take This Job?












Why on earth would Juliet agree to work for a company after her ex-husband was hit by a bus after she told the recruiter that's what it would take to "free" her? What's more they visit her at the morgue. And they know her sister is pregnant. And she can't bring her sister with her because they have what she needs to do her "cutting edge science," but not to treat cancer? It must be the lure of the eyliner.













Re-watching Not in Portland I also wondered how the heck can Jack ever trust Juliet when she so easily ordered Sawyer and Kate's deaths just because Ben's been keeping her on the Island? He must somehow know intuitively that she's the type of woman who'll allow her ex-husband to keep her as his emergency contact.













That's something Jack seems to value.

Have a fun New Year's Eve and Day! I'll be back the 2nd.

What Is The Deal With This Intercom?













Juliet tells Jack that the intercom hasn't worked in a very long time, but that's clearly false. Jack hears his father (hallucination? probably), but then he hears Sawyer, shouting Others, and finally Alex. Did Juliet not know that the intercom did indeed work? Was Jack supposed to hear all those things?

What Happened To "We're Next?"













Eko tells Locke "we're next" after Smokey has smashed him a breath from his death. So what happened to that? I guess you could make an argument that Smokey did get Nikki and Paolo. He appeared to be around at the time at least. Should Sayid be worried? Locke?

Why Do The Others Need To Be Good Conmen?













Ben tells Sawyer,

We did all this because the only way to gain a con man's respect is to con him. And you're pretty good...Sawyer. We're a lot better.

What is the Others mission and why does it require seabilly costumes, canvas tents, pacemaker cons, women that look like your ex-wife? This question drives me nuts. If you're engaged in some sort of scientific mission or spiritual mission why all the deception? Deception muddies both of those fields of inquiry. What is up Ben?

Merry Christmas!



This is a year old, but still good. I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful Christmas. And don't forget it's only a little over a month until I get what I want for Christmas (and my birthday, and the new year, and my wedding anniversary) --

NEW LOST!!!!!!

Who's Coercing You Now John?













In one of my least favorite LOST episodes ever, young cop Eddie tells Locke that he was targeted to take down the pot farm because Locke would be "amenable for coercion." I'm still wondering if this is why the Island/Jacob has chosen Locke as well. Is Locke going to turn out to be the mere puppet as he feared in "?" or will he ever be the master of his fate, the captain of his soul?

Similarly, is this why Jacob/Ben should not have chosen Walt? Mobisode 6 shows Walt isn't very amenable at least to the Others' methods.

Finally, would a guy who lived on a pot farm be on your "good" list if you were Jacob? I guess the answer is yes if good means amenable for coercion. Was young Ben similarly amenable? How about Rose who was also healed?

Does Ben Even Know The Truth Anymore?













What is with this "I've lived on this island all my life" crap Ben peddles over and over in Season 3? I think Ben may have lost his grip on the truth. He plays so many games with so many people, he's doesn't know what is and isn't true anymore. Seriously Ben, you show Jack the World Series and say :

That's home, Jack. Right there, on the other side of that glass. And if you listen to me, if you trust me, if you do what I tell you when the time comes, I'll take you there. I will take you home.

Yes, you can argue that home is where Ben's house is, but this is more truthiness* than truth. I guess Ben watches the Colbert Report as well as baseball.

* Truthiness - The quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.

Where's The Elizabeth Now?













I guess it could show up in S4, or it may just disappear.

And while we're on the subject of questions from The Glass Ballerina, do you think Jin will ever find out about Sun and Jae. I hope not for his sake.

And were the Others really building a runway? That's what Pickett says in a S3 deleted scene. Why a runway? Aliens? Doubt it. So is there a plane on the Hydra Island or will one land? Or will this go the way of Vincent on the dock in Season 2's DVD extras?

Were The Dossiers on the LOSTies
Compiled by













This Guy?
















Seems to me that the information the Others seem to have about those on Flight 815 is more than you can get just by surfing the internet. Did they hire a private investigator to help them get Christian Shephard's autopsy report, or are they just that good?

Why Didn't The Island Shake Before
Desmond Turned the Key?













So if this is what happened when Desmond failed to enter the numbers and Flight 815 crashed, why didn't this happen at the end of Season 2? Or did it, but in the absence of people acting like they were in an earthquake drill it was hard to tell?

Season 3 Didn't Answer A Lot of
Season 2 Finale Questions













As full as Season 3 was, it left a lot of questions raised in the Season 2 finale unanswered. For example:

1. What's up with the 4-toed statue?
2. Where does heading 325 from the Pala pier go?
3. How did Penny know to look for electromagnetic anomolies?
4. Why couldn't Desmond leave the Island's sphere and is that still the case post-key turning?
5. And most of all for me -- what the heck did Ben mean when he said to Michael that they are "the good guys?"

There are other things too, but these stand out to me. Hopefully the first 8 episodes of Season 4 will start to provide some of these answers.

Lost in The Waste Lands -- Final Thoughts

There are lots of other things in The Waste Lands that evoke LOST as well. I'll run some of them down for you in no particular order.

Eddie Dean, a character much like Charlie Pace thinks to himself, "Beating heroine was child's play compared to beating your childhood." What LOSTie couldn't say that as well? Later Roland tells Eddie, "What we don't need is a man who can't let go of the useless baggage of his memories." No wallowing in your flashbacks, please.

Literary references include Oz, Lord of the Flies, Catch-22, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Watership Down

The book explores the concept of ka-tets. Ka is a word that sort of means fate. But despite the existence of ka there is still free will. A ka-tet is "a group of people with the same interests and goals." It's also "the place where many lives are joined by fate." These characters, Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy form a ka-tet. "Each member of a ka-tet is like a piece in a puzzle. Taken by itself, each piece is a mystery, but when they are put together, they make a picture . . . or a part of a picture. It may take a great many ka-tets to finish one picture. You mustn't be surprised to discover your lives have been touching in ways you haven't seen until now." And in fact, Eddie and Jake discover they did "cross" back in the 70s.

There's a bear with a cave and a Tonka truck.

Time and distance are both messed up. According to Blaine, the temporal synapses are breaking down. Jake's watch measures odd times like "62 minutes past 40 on a Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday in both December and March." Roland claims that distance grows with each passing day so that what was 5 miles away is now farther away. What's more there's magnetism and other forces at work. "Physics in the nuthouse," one character remarks.

Roland makes a compass much like the one Sayid made in Season 1.

Parent issues and father issues in particular exist. Jake, like Jack, despite doing everything his father wants him to do still can't please him. Jake's own strengths and interests are of no interest to his father. What's more, when acting as a gunslinger each character must remember his father's face. This is true even if that literal father was a bad or even absent father. This memory of ancestory is what allows the gunslinger to focus and act with certainty and accuracy. Perhaps the LOSTies need to remember their fathers' faces.

Dreams are powerful and important in guiding the characters' paths.

There are portals between our world and Roland's and between Roland's and the path to the Tower. There are also crossovers between the worlds like music, literary references and even airplanes like a 1930s Nazi plane that appears outside Lud. There's speculation that the Bermuda Triangle might be such a portal that is more or less always open while other portals need keys to be opened such as the way Jake enters Mid-World in this story.

The Grays have an underground room with a watertight hatchway with a big valve wheel and an intercom inside and outside it.

Blaine gasses the remaining inhabitants of Lud like the Hostile's gassed the Dharma Initiative. Did Smokey come up with that idea? It helps my theory in the last post.

So there you have it. I'll keep reading the Dark Tower and post when I find something interesting. It may take me until 2010, but hey, it looks like we've got the time. Season 3 centric posts will be coming up next, well after one last Season 2 post.

Lost in The Waste Lands -- Part 2

Certainly there had been an intelligence left in the ancient computers below the city, a single living organism which had long ago ceased to exist sanely under conditions that, within its merciless dipolar circuits, could only be absolute reality. It had held its increasingly alien logic within its banks of memory for eight hundred years and might have held them so for eight hundred more, if not for the arrival of Roland and his friends; yet this mens non corpus had brooded and grown ever more insane with each passing year; even in its increasing periods of sleep it could be said to dream, and these dreams grew steadily more abnormal as the world moved on. Now, although the unthinkable machinery which maintained the Beams had weakened, this insane and inhuman intelligence had awakened in the rooms of ruin and had begun once more, although as bodiless as any ghost, to stumble through the halls of the dead.
-----The Waste Lands by Stephen King

In the second half of The Waste Lands our travelers, Roland, Eddie, Susannah and Jake along with Jake's billy bumbler Oy arrive at the decaying city of Lud. It looks physically much like New York City of our present day, but with even a few more modern touches such as a sound-barrier breaking monorail running into and out of the city. The city has been decaying for approximately 800 years due to some cataclysmic event that wiped out most of its inhabitants. It's current population is made up of the Grays and the Pubes. Both groups barely subsist in the city's decaying infrastructure and the Pubes regularly "worship" and make sacrifices to the ghosts that run the machinery of the city.

That "ghost" is the computer Blaine which runs all the mechanical aspects of Lud. He speaks to the group of travelers and they note, "[t]hat voice belonged to a machine, an incredibly smart machine, a playful machine, but there was something very wrong with it, all the same."

Blaine himself describes to Roland and his group what's been happening in Lud.

[I suffer from] a degenerative disease which humans call going insane. . . . Repeated diagnostic checks have failed to reveal the source of the problem. I can only conclude that this is a spiritual malaise beyond my ability to repair.

I have felt my mind growing steadily stranger over the years. Serving the people of Mid-World became pointless centuries ago. Serving those few people of Lud who wished to venture abroad became equally silly not long after. Yet I carried on until the arrival of David Quick, a short while ago. I don’t remember exactly when that was. Do you believe, Roland of Gilead, that machines may grow senile?

At some point they [the people of Lud and Mid-World] forgot that the voice of the mono was also the voice of the computer. Not long after that they forgot I was a servant and they began believing I was a god. Since I was built to serve, I fulfilled their requirements and became what they wanted—a god dispensing both favor and punishment according to whim . . . or random-access memory, if you prefer.

What's more, Blaine reads people. He can see them through cameras around the city and he analyzes their voices to understand them and their motivations. Sound familiar?

So my new Smokey theory is that Smokey is a computer created by a now-defunct Island civilization that was more advanced or differently advanced than ours. Out of boredom, he uses his powers to dispense favor and punishment on whim. For example, he kills Eko because Eko won't play his game by confessing. He kills the pilot just because he's mad. I think Smokey is suffering from spiritual malaise that he cannot fix, and like Blaine, he should be avoided if at all possible.

But wait, there's more. Before Eddie and Susannah wake up Blaine, or I should say Big Blaine, they hear a small voice, Little Blaine, who warns them not to wake Big Blaine. The Whisperers?

Tomorrow -- more odds and ends.

Lost in The Waste Lands, Part 1



I want to go back and that is the truth.
I have to go back and that is the truth.
I'll go crazy if I don't go back and that is the truth.
-----Essay by Jake Chambers in The Waste Lands by Stephen King

So after two months I finally finished part 3 of Stephen King's Dark Tower Series, The Waste Lands, and this next series of posts will reveal how it answers every question on LOST. Just kidding, but there are some interesting items to dicuss. Spoilers for The Waste Lands as well as The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three will follow. Spoilers for Season 4 of LOST are not included because I don't know any and would like to keep it that way.

In book one of the Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, Roland, the title character meets a boy, Jake, who has appeared in Roland's world from our world. Jake was killed in New York City in the 1970s by being pushed in front of a car and arrived in Roland's world. Roland and Jake travel for a time together, but by the end of Book 1, they are no longer together.

In book two, The Drawing of the Three Roland enters our world by going through three magic doors which he finds on the shore of a sea in his world. The third door takes him into New York in the 1970s into the head of the man who is going to push Jake in front of the car BEFORE he has actually pushes him. While Roland is inhabiting his body, he causes the man to be killed. Roland then goes back to his world.

As The Waste Lands opens, Roland is going insane. The reason for this insanity is that his mind knows that there are two competing truths in his memory. In the first truth, as played out in The Gunslinger he meets Jake in his world. In the second truth, he didn't meet Jake in his world because Jake never died because the man who was going to kill Jake died before he could kill him. In other words, Roland travelled in time and changed his past. But his brain still remembers the unchanged past.

Similarly, Jake knows something is wrong. In fact he lives the moments leading up to his death knowing that it is coming. He "remembers forward" each step in this trek before it occurs. But then it doesn't happen because the pusher is no longer there. This causes Jake to feel as if he has split and become two boys.

So how does this relate to LOST? When I was first reading this it made me think of despondent Future Jack on the bridge and later with Kate desperate to get back to the Island. In some sense the way our LOSTies got to the Island, to this alternate world of the Island, is that they died. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, everyone on Flight 815 is dead. This is similar to Jake arriving in Roland's world. He died in ours and arrived in Roland's. In fact I was expecting Jake to try to kill himself to return to Roland's world, since that was his portal the first time, and I thought perhaps that was what Jack was trying to accomplish on the bridge as well. But a portal that works one time won't necessarily work again as Jack's flying over the Pacific repeatedly should have demonstrated to him by now.

I think when Jack leaves the Island, by whatever means, he's going to find that his mind has split and he will be unable to reconcile the one past with the other. From that last scene with Kate it sounds like Jack's been lying about what happened to the two of them when they were missing, so at a minimum there's the reality of what did occur and the reality of what he has said occurred. Like in Roland and Jake's case, this is literally tearing Future Jack to pieces. I'm also guessing it is going to take Jack's second removal from our world and return to the Island world to mend that spilt.

In fact Jack needs to reach an internal place like the one Eddie and Susannah reach in The Waste Lands. They too have come from our world to Roland's, but they reach the place where they no longer want to go back to their world. Instead they want to move forward, even through this crazy, dangerous world. Jack, and arguably the rest of our LOSTies, all seem to need to reach a similar conclusion that they are ready to go forward with their lives, even if that means staying on the Island, rather than going back to where they came from metaphorically, if not physically.

Tomorrow--I know what Smokey is.

Why Were There Whispers Before
The Others Sprung Their Trap?













This is the most unusual occurrence of the whispers. They are loud and words are clearly audible just before the Others loose their spasm-causing darts. If they are aligned with the Others aren't they blowing the element of surprise? And if they aren't, couldn't they have warned the group back in the jungle when they had a better chance of escape?

Happy LOST S3 DVD Day! And be sure to check out Missing Moment #6. It answers some Walt questions.

Kelvin Questions













Why did Kelvin paint the map without the aid of the blacklight? I guess so Desmond couldn't see it and want to leave the Swan even more. But that doesn't really make sense either. Why would he paint on it at all in those circumstances? Does anyone know if painting with liquid detergent would should up under black light?

And here's the bigger question in regards to Kelvin -- are you him?













Why didn't anyone come to the Swan after Kelvin arrived? I assume it was because they couldn't find the Island. Is that because Ben's group did something after Kelvin's arrival to mask the Island or because the only person who knew how to get there defected or died or was killed? Hopefully we'll find this one out soon.

On a personal note, I think I'd have turned that key long before reaching Kelvin's level of crazy.

Was David Really Dead?













I'll concede this is a serious conspiracy theorist post. But I wonder if perhaps someone promised to heal a sick David for Libby if she delivered a boat to Desmond. In other words the same deal Ben promised Juliet with respect to Rachel and her alleged cancer recurrence. Just something to think about.

Why Haven't The Others Been Able To Turn Walt?













Walt breaks away from Pickett and pleads with Michael Dad, don't leave us. Help me, please! Don't leave me! This stands in stark contrast to the behavior of Cindy and the Tailie kids, Emma and Zack who seem to have no interest in leaving the Others. So what's the difference?

Is This













The Reason Desmond Flashes Only On Charlie?

Desmond spent three years vaccinating himself with Dharma's shot gun. Charlie tested it on his own leg. They are the only two we know for certain were injected with this substance from the Swan. Is this the reason Desmond only had flashes about Charlie?

More on Michael's Deal

1. Why Hurley? If you need Jack it makes sense to bring Kate because she would go looking for him in the first place. It makes sense to bring Sawyer because she would talk Sawyer into coming with her or he'd follow her later. But why Hurley? Because he's easily scared? Why not Sayid? Isn't he just as likely as Kate to form a rescue party? I guess Locke and Eko aren't on the list because the Island is distracting them with the issue of the Swan.

2. Who came up with this plan to free Ben? Did one of the remaining Others talk to Jacob? If Ethan could infiltrate the camp, why couldn't they send someone in to get Ben, not that freeing him from the Swan would have been easy?

3. This has nothing to do with the deal, but it's bothering me. If you're Ben and you need Jack to do surgery on you, why do you spend half a week lying to him about your identity and then another three days antagonizing him with your hunger strike and silence not to mention attack on Ana Lucia? I think it would have taken longer than 2 weeks to get Jack to want to operate on Ben.

Ben's Long Con?

















In Three Minutes Tom, Pickett and Alex pick up Michael a few hours from the Swan. They're dressed in their seabilly rags and they take Michael to a place where they can engage in their stage craft--trick shooting and magic torches. The reason for the stagecraft is explained by Alex. He's just delivering a message. He has to scare your friends to do it.

Until this most recent viewing of this episode I thought the point of all this was that the Others needed Michael because something had come up with Walt. In fact I've posted on this blog and other places that leaving Michael for dead with the raft was a mistake by the Others since it turned out they needed him and his blood after all.

But I was wrong. They didn't need Michael to help with Walt. They needed Michael to bring Jack, Kate and Sawyer to Ben. Ben tells us this in Expose.

Juliet: So, what, we just grab all 3 of them...Ford and Austen too.
Ben: No, they need to come to us.
Juliet: And how do we make that happen?
Ben: Michael of course.

All this stagecraft from mysterious instant messaging in the Swan to the seabilly rags to Yurt Village to wearing Michael down for a week in Yurt Village and allowing him to see Walt was all done only to get Jack to Ben. Ben getting caught threw a monkey wrench in the plan, but still, they managed to work around it. Questioning Michael about Walt was a total red herring. They didn't need Michael's blood. They didn't need answers only Walt's father would have. They only needed an out of his mind father freeing the Other to anger Jack enough to come after him.

Is this even why they took Walt in the first place? That doesn't seem quite right because how was Jack supposed to know he should trek across the Island to rescue Walt? It still seems to me they left Michael, Sawyer and Jin for dead. But maybe it was part of the con. Maybe that's why what Walt evidenced in his testing was more than they had bargained for since they were only bargaining for surgery? Bilocation and Island communion -- they were just a bonus.

Pearl Questions













The episode ? raises lots of questions about Dharma's Pearl Station.

1. Who salted a circle above the entrance to the Pearl? If you'll notice in the picture above, the circle doesn't ring the entrance to the Pearl because that entrance is underneath the plane. So who made this mark, when and why?

2. Given what the entrance of the Pearl looks like with its handles and locks, etc. it makes me wonder what was the purpose of the Hatch our LOSTies blew open at the Swan. Was it an emergency escape route? There was one of those in the Staff. Is there also one here at the Pearl?

3. Who was filming The Pearl? Locke looks up and sees a camera in the Pearl station. It wasn't hidden (or maybe wasn't hidden any longer) unlike those at the Swan. Was Mikhail watching from the Flame? Was someone watching from The Hydra? Is there another viewing station?

4. The procedure for manning The Pearl seems complicated. Teams of two are assigned to the Pearl for three week tours of duty. But they work only 8 hour shifts at a time and then go from the Pearl to the Pala Ferry to return to the barracks after each of those shifts. That seems to imply 6 people man The Pearl every 3 weeks. Why so many people? Why so brief a tour? What happpened after your 3 weeks? Were you reassigned or sent home?

Will Kate Ever Learn About Sawyer and Ana Lucia?

No picture on this one. I just couldn't bear to look at it. So any bets on if/when/where Kate might learn that Sawyer lost his gun to Ana Lucia in a roll, roll, roll in the hay? It's hard to see how she could get upset about a one afternoon stand with a now dead girl, but Kate and her romances are not the most logical things in the world. Add raging pregnancy hormones on top (mere speculation, not spoil-ed) and this could explain how Kate would end up leaving the Island with Jack.

Why Does Eko Need A Fake Passport?


















The name on the fake passport is not Eko Tunde, the name the Monsignor calls him and the name he gives to the passengers of Flight 815. This reminds me of Kate. In every flashback she uses an alias, yet she tells Jack her real name when they first meet. Of course, the Marshal was still alive to bust her had she lied to Jack. I guess when you're in an air crash, you feel compelled to use your real name.

But back to Eko. I assume Eko must have some identification to prove to the church who he is and was both in England and then Austrailia. So why the fake passport for a trip his superior knew he was taking?

Who Sent Eko's Dream?













So what/who used the "not good" Ana Lucia to speak to the unrepentant Eko to ensure that the button in the Swan was still pushed? Is it Mrs. Hawking style course correction until Desmond returns? In fact is there a two-pronged attack by the course correcting forces to stop Locke from pushing the button, but keeping it pushed until Desmond can turn the key? Or could there be two competing forces on the Island itself, one who wanted the button pushed and the other who wanted the key turned?

Sarah and Tom?













The fake name choices made by Ana Lucia and Christian were hotly debated at the time Two for the Road first aired, but what with the first Lost Missing Piece about Jack, Christian and the watch I think it's time to revisit Christian's decision to call Ana Lucia Sarah. Does Christian merely lack imagination? Now thankfully Christian did not put the moves on Sarah/Ana Lucia, so hopefully that means that using the name Sarah did not indicate anything more than Christian missing the daughter-in-law he had developed a supportive friendship with. Any other ideas?

So What Missing Moment Do You Want To See?

The internet is full of grousing about the mobisodes. So I'll open the floor. What 2-3 minute missing scene do you want to see? Be creative because this is my last post of this Thanksgiving week.

I think we'd all agree we want to see something that tells us something we don't already know. Arguably we got a little of that in Jack's missing moment. We learn that daddy issues go back at least another generation in the Shephard family, but the thing I'd rather have seen in that moment is where is Jack's mom? Why wasn't she at Jack's wedding?

The Hurley scene -- did this one tell us anything other than Rose and Bernard have a nice tent and Frogurt is a jerk? Maybe if something happens to Sawyer, Frogurt could become the guy you love to hate.

Here's a missing scene I'd like to see -- the scene where the pilot informs Cindy that the radio's gone out and that they are changing course. But the truth is, I only want to see this scene if there's something MORE to it. Something like knowing looks, winks and a nod, or better yet, the co-pilot saying to the pilot, "Why did you lie to her? We're headed to Indonesia not Fiji." And then the pilot takes out the co-pilot and keeps on flying with an evil grin on his face.

Yeah, mythology changing or at least clarifying missing moments. That's what I want!

Have a great Thanksgiving. Hope that something we'll be able to give thanks for soon is a settled writer's strike. And check back Monday for more LOST thoughts, questions and ravings.

P.S. I just saw modisode #3 and it was much more satisfying than numbers 1 or 2. Hope you all will enjoy it too.

Benry Confuses the H*&# Out Of Me!













I shouldn't believe anything he says right? In the last few episodes "Henry Gale" is being kept in the Swan this man in his torn orange shirt confuses Locke and me too.

In SOS he tells Jack that "they'll never give you Walt." But at the same time Mrs. Klugh is making that exact deal for Walt with Michael. Granted they get Kate, Sawyer and Jack in the deal as well, so I guess they did indeed get the better deal. Nevertheless they did give up Walt, even if they didn't give him to Jack.

This line continues in Two For the Road when the fake Henry Gale tells Locke after he's tried to kill Ana Lucia for killing two Others who were "leaving her alone" (huh?) that:

I'm dead anyway. Doctor's gone to make a trade and we both know hell come back empty handed and then I've lost my value. So either Jack comes back and kills me or my people find out where I'm being held and they do it. . . . Because the man in charge... he's a great man, John... a brilliant man... but he is not a forgiving man. He'll kill me because I failed, John. I failed my mission.

Now first off, Ben is clearly delusional (like Tom in Season 3) if he thinks Ana was unjustified in killing 2 Others who raided and infiltrated their ranks in order to kidnap people. Then again this is a man who managed to justify in his own mind personally gassing his father.

But what about this "I'm already dead" talk? He said something similar to Ana before he drew her the map to the balloon. Is this a true reflection of The Others justice system which seems to have little leeway for failure? I guess not because it seems clear that Ben's mission, whatever it was, did indeed fail and he wasn't killed by any "great man."

So why is he painting this picture of his society for Locke? I can't figure out why he would both try to keep Locke from pushing the button and sell his society as being insanely unreasonable and place where failure is punished with death if he was "coming for him." Knowing what we know now about Locke's threat to Ben's position why wouldn't Ben try to convince Locke to keep pushing the button in the Swan for the rest of his life? Because The Others were clearly monitoring The Swan and would have heard him doing that to the man whose legs were restored?

Sorry for all the rambling, but trying to put together what we know about the Others given the evil mastermind that is Ben drives me in circles.

Locke + Jack =

















Yep, that's right. The guy who needs to do something, but who is willing to resort to a faith healer. It's the blending of Man of Science with Man of Faith and the solution is
BERNARD!

Dave? Smokey? Jacob?













What caused Hurley to see Dave on the Island? I guess
it could merely be the desire not to change his eating
habits like in Santa Rosa, but is that all it is? If
it's Island driven, was the Island/Jacob/Smokey/whoever
trying to cause Hurley's death? Unlike the case
with Jack's dad, Locke's dreams, Eko's dreams, Kate's
horse there didn't really seem to be any sort of upside
to the vision. So I guess it was all in Hurley's head.

And speaking of all in Hurley's head, Dave made a
pretty persuasive argument that the show is all in Hurley's
head. Just a prank by the writers? Yeah.

One little detail I noticed. When we first meet Dave
in Santa Rosa it's Taco Night. Just like newleywed
Kate.

Libby Redeemed?






















Libby's death when it came seemed to break the LOST
mold of a character finding peace or redemption only
to then lose their life (and no sex either.) But I
think Libby might have found that redemption though
a couple of episodes before her death which makes
her death more like Boone's (who also didn't get to
have sex on Island--that we know of.)

Libby's redemption came in Dave first where
she helped Hurley free himself of his slavery to his
food stash and again when she saved him from going
over the cliff. Now of course we don't know Libby's
backstory, but I'm guessing that being able to
validate Hurley and help him face down his demons is
going to prove to be her salvation. And thus on LOST
she must die.

Sayid Rocks!


I think this is my favorite LOST scene of all time.

"But still I did not believe it to be true."

I'm looking for an opportunity to use this line. I'm
betting my son's teenage years will give me just that
chance.

Lockdown Questions













1. Was the lockdown really related to the food drop?
2. If it was, why lockdown the Station to drop the food?
3. Why seal off the computer room from the living area
when it is so vital to enter the numbers every 108 minutes?
4. Why isn't there a food drop manual in the Swan like
there is in the Flame?
5. Why isn't this procedure mentioned in the Orientation
film?
6. Was the food drop automatic or initiated by someone
like drops at the Flame?
7. What is up with the blacklights? Where did they come
from? What made them turn on? (And why didn't Locke
pursue this line of questioning with Desmond?)
8. Where did the food come from? Who sent it? And
why can't those looking for the Island such as the
freighter people and Penny follow the food?

I can live with a "Missing Moment" or even discussion of
these issues on an official podcast, but I would like at
least some of these answers.

Watching Lockdown and Dave which followed it
I also wonder what Ben did when he went through the
vents to the computer.

Could it have been the case that in the event of a lockdown,
the computer enters the numbers itself meaning that Henry's
story that he did nothing to the computer is true? Or could
it be the case that Henry entered a different sequence of
numbers, numbers that reset the clock, but also turned on
the blacklights and possibly sent a signal back to
Mrs. Klugh?

We never saw our LOSTies enter the wrong numbers. I wonder
what would have happened in that event. Maybe that new
video game will let me try it.

What Is It About Jack And Babies?













I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop about Jack
and babies. All the way back in Season 1 where Jack
doesn't rat out his dad until he learns the dead patient
was pregnant to his worries pre-marriage about having
kids to his reaction to Sarah's negative pregnancy test
to his "whole truth" discussion with Sun and Kate
where he says:

Sun, my advice and... and it's just that because I'm
the last person to ask about this, but... you should
tell him. And when you do you should tell him everything...
the whole truth.

Why is Jack the last person to ask about telling the
truth when it comes to pregnancy? I was hoping Sarah
was going to be pregnant in Jack's first Season 3
flashback, A Tale of Two Cities, but if she was
she wasn't showing and I guess TPTB decided to use Sun
and Jin instead of Jack and Sarah as the "who's the baby
daddy?" couple.

Although I guess the very pregnant Sarah of the end of
Season 3 could be pregnant with Jack's baby. Is that
why it's a bad idea for Sarah to drive Jack home? It's
always been speculated that Jack's last flash occurred in
2007 because of his cell phone, but what if it's 9 months
after a "false negative" test just before Sarah leaves Jack?

I really hope that's not the case because I don't want to
see the LOST writers get as sloppy as those on a certain
other show that airs on Mondays, but there's always seemed
to be something about babies that strikes a chord with Jack,
and I want to know what it is.

And while we're on the subject of pregnancies, do you think
someone was actually flying with a pregnancy test or was the
Widmore kit in the Swan?

Oh Dear!



I've reached that part in Season 2 where the LOST writing team
felt the need to start making like these penguins, tap dancing
to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the story. The Whole Truth is one
of those episodes (along with SOS, Two For the Road and
arguably others) where the first 38 minutes sort of drug by only
to get a great whammy in the last 5 minutes.













Ben's musings in the breakfast nook of the Swan certainly
qualifies as one of those endings that saved an otherwise
less than scintillating episode. "Now if I were one of
them . . ." You know the rest. And he finishes it all
up with "You got any milk?"

I guess Ben was trying to bolster his Henry Gale story
with this game of "what if." Knowing that there was no
trap at the balloon that should have boosted "Henry's"
credibility upon Sayid's return. It also helps to build
the tension heading into the next episode as we were left
to worry about Charlie and Sayid (while rooting that the
Others would get Ana Lucia. You know you did.)

But The Whole Truth was not totally without merit
other than this scene. Re-watching the episode after
Season 3 gives it whole new meaning when it comes to Jin
and that lying liar he married. And this is why I love
LOST and love re-watching LOST. Each time there's something
different and something has changed. What's more the
thing that has changed is ME and how I now view the
situation and characters. BRAVO LOST!

Why Would You Put Your Medical
Facility Underground?













And why for that matter would you put it so far from
your housing complex? I'm betting the Staff had a
purpose far different from the one the Others are using
it for now. In fact I'm certain Dharma didn't use The
Staff for costume storage.

Does anyone remember anything from the old DI websites
or TLE that would fit with an underground medical
facility? I think its pretty clear that The Staff is
not a mere DI infirmary. In fact does anyone have any
theories about why the DI facilities in the LOSTies
sector of the Island--The Swan, The Staff, The Pearl--are
underground when DI Village, The Flame and The Hydra
are not?

Were Claire's Memories Real?













Throughout Episode 2.15, Maternity Leave, Claire has
flashes of memory about her time with Ethan and the Others
at the Medical Station. One of the most coincidental of the
memories is that in the nursery there is a mobile of Oceanic
airplanes just like the ones in Claire's dream before she was
taken by Ethan. Moreover the mobile plays "Catch a Falling
Star," the song she associates with her long-gone father and
which she asks the prospecitve adoptive parents to sing to her
bay-bee.

Now ever since the episode aired I've wondered, how could the
Others know about that mobile and that song? Did Smokey scan
Claire and inform them? Were they the ones trying to adopt
Aaron in Australia? Were they working with Malkin?

Well I think the answer may be much simpler than that, and it's
given to us in the episode. Libby tells Claire:

Claire, what you saw could be combining experiences of what
happened before the crash to the night you were having dreams
here on the island.

So while Claire was remembering things that did happen to her
in The Staff, I think she was also adding in pre-crash memories
and post-crash dreams.

Claire's time with the Others raises other questions as well
which I hope won't just be written off as faulty Claire memories.

First, what were they injecting in Claire? It was a liquid, not
an "implant" unless it's nanobots. :D

Next, why not keep Claire? Both Ethan and Alex state that they
were planning to keep the baby but not Claire. Does Claire's
willingness to give up the baby both pre- and post-crash make
her a "bad" person?

Finally, Alex's rescue of Claire -- Girl Scout goodness or
Ben's manipulation? I guess at a minimum it was Ben anticipated
therefore the implant.

Maternity Leave is one of my favorite episodes for its
on-Island flash and its paying off of things started many, many
episodes before. But there are still things I want to know.

What Is It About The Island That
Makes Language Skills A Must?













Kelvin is a perfect member of the post-Purge Dharma or the
post-Purge recruited Hostiles whichever it actually is
because of his language skills. He has at least English and
Arabic and I'd suspect more languages in his bag of tricks.
Mikhail clearly spoke multiple languages. Bea Klugh spoke
multiple languages. Why would language skills be important
on an isolated Island inhabited by less than 100 people?

I Can't Wait To Get The Rest Of
This Story!













Danielle returns and so do the questions. For example,
why doesn't she just tell Sayid I have a guy in a net instead
of the rifle trust exercise? Why doesn't she just question
Ben herself? She managed torture Sayid just fine. Granted
that torture pad is now Kablooey, but she's creative.
How does Danielle know Sayid is a torturer? I couldn't find
it, but I didn't look very hard.

And what about Ben? Why did he run when Sayid released
him from the net? Afraid Danielle would recognize him kind
of like Claire's flashes in the next episode?

More Ben -- his cover story is that he crashed 4 months ago.
Do you think the real Henry Gale crashed then, a mere
2 months before Flight 815? And then the story of his wife's
death--sick and 2 days later dead. I guess that wasn't based
on Danielle's team's "sickness" or she wouldn't have needed
to shoot them.

Can anyone remember whether or not they thought the man in
the orange polo was telling the truth or lying? Michael Emerson
was so good I'm pretty sure I changed my mind each and every
scene he was in. We've been promised more information on what
Ben was up to when he was trapped, accidentally. I hope
it's soon.

Why Haven't The LOSTies Been Able
To Pick Up The Others' Chatter?













Technical question. The Others seem intent on using Walkie
Talkies. We see Juliet leave one in The Pearl in Expose. They
use them both on Falcatraz and while on trek at the end of Season
3. Now I know that they aren't on them constantly like that
annoying Danielle transmission, but would Sayid have been able
to pick up The Others on his glorified walkie talkie had he tried?

And why didn't poopy pants Paolo or for that matter Sawyer use the
found walkie talkie during Season 3 either?

Enjoy Ange! It's Post #108.

Happy Halloween too. Anyone dressing like their favorite
LOST character? I'd be willing to slap some mud on my face
and be the random log-carrying blonde in the background.

Will We Ever Meet The Bad Twin?













Still waiting for the Bad Twin payoff. I'm glad I got
it from the library instead of buying. Will there ever be an
actual set of twins on LOST (other than the seabilly boat)?
I'm still hoping Libby will turn out to be a twin. Maybe Kate
is pregnant with twins.

Of course, all the twin stuff could be written off as we all
have our own bad twin inside of us. The whole time I read the
book I kept thinking of Jack and Sawyer and Sawyer's statement
way back in Episode 1.7, The Moth that "The difference
between [Sawyer and Jack] ain't that big, sweetheart." And here
at the end of Season 3 we could see some of that with
the BBQ-providing, baby-complimenting Sawyer who went back to
the beach and the so myopic, especially when it comes to Juliet,
he's dangerous to the group, Jack.

Worst Lie Ever?














You stepped on my foot getting on the plane. What a
dumb lie. So how did you end up in the tail section
you lying liar Libby? Fortunately for her she had
that all but topless thing going for her to distract
Hurley. I can't wait to see what else we might learn
this season about Libby No Last Name. Like her last
name.

What Is Up With Charlie's Freaky Dream?




















Charlie's dream or actually dreams in Fire + Water are
very similar to Claire's dream just before Ethan took her,
Locke's dream that led to Boone's death and Eko's dream that
led to the discovery of The Pearl. So any ideas what led
to these dreams? Was Aaron really in danger? And if he was
who was warning Charlie about it? The Island? Jacob? Heroin
withdrawl? And was baptism the answer or a misreading of the
message?

The Gunslinger in The Waste Lands told Eddie, a
character very much like Charlie, that "Dreams are powerful."
So in this case, true or false?

Who Was Sarah Seeing?













I know we'll probably never get this answer and I'm pretty
sure it's because amazingly for the LOST-iverse, the person
she's seeing has had no crosses with any of Flight 815's
passengers. This is one of those things I was really hoping
would be important because it was a cross, but the real
significance was that Jack had to let it go. So much for all
the fun theories about who Sarah's mystery man was.

Post-Game Analysis of Tom's Speech













Oooo, 50 days. That's what, almost 2 whole months, huh?
Tell me, you go over a man's house for the first time, do
you take off your shoes? Do you put your feet up on his
coffee table? Do you walk in the kitchen, eat food that
doesn't belong to you? Open the door to rooms you got no
business opening? You know, somebody a whole lot smarter than
anybody here once said Since the dawn of our species man's been
blessed with curiosity. You know the other one about curiosity
don't you, Jack? This is not your island. This is our island.
And the only reason you're living on it is because we let you
live on it.

This little speech of Tom's raises so many questions for me.
First, why does Tom quote Alvar Hanso if he was involved in
the Purge or came to the Island post-Purge? Why do the Others
care that the LOSTies are in The Swan? Why do the Others let
them live on their Island if they aren't going to live peacably
with them?

Also, why did they want Walt? What makes Walt a very special
boy?

And why the old gun? All the guns in the Swan are modern as
we can see from what Locke, Jack and Sawyer lay down. Where
did this old one come from and why use it now?

And one question about Jack -- why don't you ask relevant and
meaningful questions or let Beard-o answer Locke's about knowing
their names? This scene always frustrates the stew out of me
when I watch how Jack acts.

Do They All Have Hidey Holes?













I'm betting Claire has a stash of makeup and hair care
products that explains her ethereal Season 2 appearance.
In Season 3 it seemed to begin to run low. What else
do you think might be stashed in the jungle?

How Did A Nigerian Drug Plane End
Up On A South Pacific Island?

A Catholic Relief plane takes off in Nigeria on the Western Coast
of Africa













and crashes on an island that should be in the Pacific Ocean
somewhere east of Fiji if the pilot is to be believed.













How does this happen? And when?

Gold Tooth parachuted out of the plane.













This would imply that he was alive when the plane began to crash,
and note it did not run out of fuel because Eko uses fuel from the
fuel line to burn the plane.

Locke tells Boone the corpses could have been there 2 years or 10
judging from the clothing. It's hard to say from Eko's flashbacks
how much time passed from Nigeria to Flight 815, but at least
enough time passed for him to get from Nigeria to England and then
to Australia.

So, magic box effect? Did the Island know 2 or more years before
September 2004 that Eko would land on it? Or Charlie? Or Boone?
Or Locke? Ben and Juliet don't seem surprised by its presence in
Expose, but they could be used to things appearing
on the Island and take such "strange" things for granted.

Whatever happened to bring this plane to the Island, it seems
to be qualitatively different from Cooper's appearance. We know
from Cooper himself that he did not arrive on Island until after
Flight 815 crashed. So any ideas?

Unbelievable! In honor of this being my 100th post
about LOST -- I admit it; I'm obsessed -- I'm taking
this opportunity to revisit IGN's Top 50 Lost Loose Ends.

For anyone who complains that LOST never gives us any
answers, a quick rundown of this list demonstrates the
falsity of that notion. For example, we now know who
the eye patch guy is, how to get to Falcatraz, what the
carving on Eko's stick was supposed to tell John, where
the cable on the beach went, where the radio tower is and
what it looks like, who Christian's daughter is, what
happened to the at least one person from The Pearl, that
Ben was lying when he said he'd always lived on The Island,
and how Locke ended up in the wheelchair.

But that still leaves a lot. #1 on my list is Ben's Others'
Master Plan and how their actions so far have contributed
to or distracted from that plan. Of course, about 10 of the
things on IGN's list could be combined into this such
as "What Hides the Island," and "Why do the Others Want The
Children" and "Aaron." I want to know what these
people are up to. Why can't Ben let anyone leave? What's
with this good and bad people distinction? What is the goal?
Explain it to me Ben! Pleeeaaasseee!

Of course, the end of Season 3 produced even more burning
questions both for the short-term, who's on the frieghter and
can it get to and from the Island, and long-term like what 815
survivors got off the Island and under what circumstances.

The good news is its less than 2 months until the Season 3 DVDs
hit your local retailer. I've already resolved to have all my
Christmas preparations done by December 10th so that I can
watch every little bit of the Season 3 DVDs starting at about
8:15 am on December 11th. Then after Christmas we'll only have
about 6 weeks until Season 4 starts. See, that's no so far away.

So until then keep the comments coming. I love to read them.
And thanks for checking out the ravings of this obsessed fan.

Coincidence or Fate?













Locke's going on about the odds two plane crash survivors
would find two parts of a film that had been seperated
and would bring them back together. And Mr. Eko replies:

Don't mistake coincidence for fate.

So Eko thinks this is fate, right? Not mere
coincidence. Strange for the man of fate, John Locke, to
be the mere man of coincidence in this instance. Eko is
so friggin' enigmatic I have a hard time understanding him.

And here's another question about this new piece of film.
In the excised portion of film our man who's both a doctor
and plays one on film, if not TV, says:

The isolation that attends the duties associated with
Station 3 may tempt you to try and utilize the computer
for communication with the outside world. This is strictly
forbidden. Attempting to use the computer in this manner
will compromise the integrity of the project and worse,
could lead to another incident.

So did contacting the outside world lead to the first incident?
Is Jack's contact with the outside world going to lead to
a new incident? Or like the quarantine warning is this just
Dharma smoke?

One final question for you IT types. Would it really be
possible for the Others in one of the other stations to
unlock the Swan computer's keyboard allowing Michael to
have his little chat?

Even Good Dads Lead To Daddy Issues













This one is strange to me. What on earth had Kate, a straight
A student with no prior arrests and just a couple of speeding
tickets done that the man who raised her as his child knew
she had murder in her heart? I guess its related to some
behavior he witnessed when he and young Kate were in the woods.
But still. If all Wayne had done was drink, waste her mom's
money and occasionally beat Diane up, why did Kate kill the
producer of half her DNA?

Unlike Locke's wheelchair story, What Kate Did has never set
well with me as an explanation for why Kate is the way she is.