Cowboys May Have Daddy Issues,
But Most Of The Other Issues Have
Been Resolved
















Yes, that's our first view of THE Hatch. Guess what? There's a
Scottish guy who's been living in it for three years. He has to push
a button every 108 minutes. When he fails to push it Flight 815
crashes. Had you guessed that by Christmas 2004?

All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues is arguably the first
transition episode in LOST. People move around -- a lot.
New ideas and story arcs are introduced and set in motion. Thing
is most of them have come full circle now.

For example, we know what happened to Claire. We know who
Ethan was. And while we don't know for sure, I'm guessing Ethan was
able to subdue and move both Charlie and Claire because he'd
been supplied with sedatives and even with other Others to help
him move the pair to the Staff Hatch. After all we know he had a
drop point (see Ben's dialogue at the end of One of Us) and he
probably had a walkie too.

We now understand clearly that Locke and Jack operate
differently when it comes to approaching, defining and solving
problems. This is the first time that conflict rears its head,
and frankly, after rewatching the episode, I blame Jack. He treats
Locke atrociously driven purely by his (Jack's) own guilt and by
setting impossibly high expectations for everyone as his dad had
set for him. At least that's my read on why Jack acts like such a
jerk with Kate taunting her about her fugitive status when she's
trying to help him.

We get a little more exposition about the Whispers setting up
Sawyer's next back story and Shannon's death. Think we'll ever
get anything more about them? Any whisper theories?

We see Walt manifesting his magical Island powers as he takes
down Hurley in backgammon. We also get the first bit of our
Hurley is a millionaire story when he tells Walt he'll get the
$20,000 Hurley lost to him in the game.

We get the beginning of the end for Boone as he walks around
the Island with the red shirt. And to make sure we didn't miss it,
Kate tells Shannon Boone is safe with Locke. Just one of many
times Kate is wrong.

We also start getting more information that will eventually
allow us to find the crosses in the survivors pasts. We learn
Locke worked at a box company. Just a few days earlier Hurley had
his chance to ask Locke what he did as he conducted his census,
but he failed to find out Locke was his employee. We learn Boone
ran a bridal business. I wish that had tied into Kate's wedding.
Maybe it did and I missed it the first time around.

And finally we get Charlie's third death avoidance (plane, cave in,
now hanging). This scene tore me up the first time I watched it,
and even now, it's very emotional to rewatch. The scene mirrors
the first part of Jack's flashback where he's unable to get back
the patient on the table. I noticed his father is able to call Jack
off where Kate is not, luckily for Charlie.

All in all, a very good transition episode moving LOST from a mere
survival tale filled with cookie cutter characters to a much more
complex story.

Questions Raised by
"Raised by Another"
























Unlike some Season 1 episodes, a lot of mysteries introduced
in Raised by Another still remain. The biggest, the one about
the psychic is discussed below, but here are some others.

1. Does anyone know what the symbol on Claire's necklace
means? I couldn't find it on LOSTpedia.

2. What is the deal with Thomas, Aaron's biological father?
He's the one with the bright idea that he and Claire can be a
family for this unplanned baby and then he bolts. Just cold
feet and enroaching responsibility or something more? Ironic
how two of our artists manage to knock up their girlfriends, but
never get around to marrying them. (Michael's the other with
the pregnant girlfriend; best I can tell Desmond hasn't
accomplished this feat.)

3. How did Hugo Reyes get the nickname Hurley?

4. The psychic tells Claire that her "goodness" is needed to protect
the baby, but she's not on Jacob's list (we think.) Why?

5. How did Catch a Falling Star end up on that Oceanic mobile
in the Staff Hatch? And does Claire actually remember her dad
singing it, or was she told that he did? I'll take option B on that one.

6. Finally, the failing pens -- coincidence or fate?

Real or Fake?















So what is the deal with Richard Malkin, especially when it comes
to his relationship with Claire Littleton? Crazily enough, when we
first met Mr. Malkin and saw his encounters with Claire unfold
I never doubted that he was a real psychic and that he set Claire
up to be on Flight 815. It wasn't until his encounter with Eko in
? that I ever doubted him.

Malkin tells Eko he's a fake. But if he's a fake, how did he know
that Claire was pregnant? There does not seem to be tell given
off by Claire or her friend before he asks directly how long she's
known about the baby. And then he refuses to go on because he sees
something blurry. Could this blurry thing have been Smokey? Or is
it more like the Dark Thing that covers part of the galaxy
in A Wrinkle in Time?

It seems to me that if Malkin's a fake he would not go to the
extremes he does to make sure Claire raises her baby. The
implication is even that he buys a plane ticket with his own
money to ensure Claire ends up on the doomed Flight 815. So is he
a real psychic so concerned about this young girl and child that
he harasses her and spends his own money? Or could he be a fake
working on someone else's behalf? Perhaps he's an agent
protecting time as suggested at Eye M Sick.

More LOST (Horizon?) Musings

Leading Two Lives



















Another interesting aspect of Lost Horizon is the dual nature
of the hero, Conway. Conway is an interesting combination of
LOST's Jack and Locke. Physically he resembles Jack, not yet 40,
in good health. And like Jack he's had an outwardly golden life,
school success, solid war record, respected in his work, in fact
viewed by his co-worker Mallinson as an outright hero. But
Conway has a much more Locke-like connection to Shangri-La.
He is the first of his group to meet the High Lama (a Jacob of sorts),
to have certain secrets revealed to him and to be told that his
group will not be permitted to leave. This is revealed to Conway
because his spirit connects with the place Shangri-La.

Conway must then lie, at least by omission, to his compatriots
about this fact. He muses:

He [Conway] needed equanimity, if only to accommodate himself
to the double life he was compelled to lead. Thenceforward, with
his fellow exiles, he lived in a world conditioned by the arrival of
porters and a return to India; at all other times the horizon lifted
like a curtain; time expanded and space contracted, and the name
Blue Moon [the mountain framing Shangri-La] took on a symbolic
meaning, as if the future, so delicately plausible, were of a kind
that might happen once in a blue moon only. Sometimes he
wondered which of his two lives were the more real, but the
problem was not pressing; and again he was reminded of the War,
for during heavy bombardments he had had the same
comforting sensation that he had many lives, only one of which
could be claimed by death.

Several things stand out in that passage. First there is the idea
that Conway must hide special knowledge he has been given.
Could Locke have received similar information during his first
"monster" encounter? We still don't know what he saw and how
he survived that, but only a few days later he destroyed the
transceiver and there's his explosion tour to account for as well.
Locke definitely doesn't share everything he knows or thinks
he knows with the rest of the LOSTies, nor does Ben, even with
his own people.

The next thing that hit me was the reference to the shifting of
time and space. I guess Conway is losing his foolishness as he
contemplates his Shangri-La life. Time is definitely extended in
Shangri-La. It seems that both in Shangri-La and on the Island the
inhabitants may no longer be enslaved to time, but what about
space? None of them can leave relatively small spaces. Conway got
it right when he said space contracted in Shangri-La. Is that true
of the Island as well?

Then there is the idea of having more than one life. Clearly the
castaways in both stories have pre- and post-crash lives, and
satisfaction with those lives is a theme that plays out in both stories.

Which leads to my final point. In the end as Conway is poised to
turn his back on his empty life in the "real world," no wife, no kids,
an indifferent career, and to inherit the fullness of life Shangri-La
has opened to him, but he rejects Shangra-La for a woman he loves.
And not only that, the woman has already chosen another man,
not Conway.

No, it is not this woman.















But, Conway shut off that part of his brain and emotions that heard
and understood what Shangri-La had to offer him and "was doomed,
like millions, to flee from wisdom and be a hero." At this point the
Jack in Conway clearly dominates, and as our vision of Future Jack
and Kate shows us the Jack in Jack dominated too.

And what happened to the true believers, the Lockes, the Bens?
Like at the end of Season 3, we don't know in Lost Horizon either.
But maybe Future Jack's desire to return to the Island which matches
Conway's will allow us to find out on the Island, if not in Shangri-La.

LOST (Horizon?)

So after months of Capcom's urging, I finally got around to reading
James Hilton's Lost Horizon. There is an entire blog,
Lost in Shangri-La created by a friend of Capcom's discussing
connections between LOST and the book. That blog has a lot of
information and discussion of those connections. This post is
just about a few things I noticed. I'm sorry Tommy if I duplicate
something you said earlier.

First, the story is largely narrated by Rutherford. No not
























this Rutherford. Still it's a nice name tie in.

How Do You Build A Society To Repopulate The Earth?

Through the course of Lost Horizon we learn that the leader of the monks at Shangri-La anticipates the destruction of the Earth's population, but believes that Shangri-La and its inhabitants and culture will survive this return to the Dark Ages. To that end, Shangri-La has "recruited" new inhabitants mainly from people lost in the mountain passes. The 4 (one of Hurley's numbers) castaways this time are flown in by a resident of Shangri-La, but much like the survivors of Flight 815 they are merely the four people who happen to be on this certain plane. They were not chosen for who they were or what they could contribute to Shangri-La.

There were two passages in Lost Horizon that struck me in regards to this notion of how you build a post-apocolypse society and whether or not something like this is happening on the LOST Island. When first arriving at Shangri-La Mallinson, the young "castaway" who most wants to get home tells his host, Chang he expects Chang to help them facilitate their departure at a fair price to which Chang replies:

I can only assure you, Mr. Mallinson, that you will be honorably treated and
that ultimately you will have no regrets.

Ultimately? Mallinson exclaimed . . . And so did I.

It seems to be Ben's/Jacob's/the Others' position that ultimately the people chosen to be on the Island will have no regrets even if in the short run they need the submarine to maintain the illusion that they can leave. Mrs. Klugh at least was willing to make an ultimate sacrifice to protect whatever it is the Others are up to. Most of Ben's statements and Michael Emerson's as well seem to imply that ultimately the LOSTies (and the audience) will approve of the Others end, if not means.

Which leads to the other thing that stands out to me in this interchange, the fact that the LH castaways are indeed treated honorably. In other words, people aren't sent into their camp as spies, castaways aren't dragged into the jungle by people in costumes, pregnant girls aren't stolen and rock stars hung with vines, kids aren't stolen off beaches or rafts. You see where I'm going with this.

The way the Others choose to interact with those stranded on the Island still baffles me. If all outsiders are enemies, then why not kill them all? Why not view all people trapped on the Island as potential new members of your community? You have Room 23 at your disposal to deal with the tough cases after all. Kidnapping just doesn't seem like an ideal way to add to your community, but maybe I'm old-fashioned in that respect.

This idea of how you build a society designed for weathering the end of the rest of the world is further explored by the High Lama. Conway, leader of the LH castaways, observes that there are doubtless many people in the world who would be glad enough to be in Shangri-La. The Lama replies:

Too many, my dear Conway. We are a single lifeboat riding the seas in a gale; we can take a few chance survivors, but if all the shipwrecked were to reach us and clamber aboard we should go down ourselves.

Back before we saw what Ben and the Hostiles did to the Dharma Initiative I might have guessed that Dharma was culling the Flight 815 survivors to fit in with their Valenzetti project in the same manner Shangri-La took on prospective apocolypse survivors. But having no real understanding of what Ben's Merry Band of Others are up to, I still don't understand their approach to the chance survivors of Flight 815. At a minimum, you would think they'd have taken all the women for Juliet's distracting fertility project, but in the tail section alone, they left more women of child-bearing age than they took. The vague references to Jacob's list and to being good obviously all play into this, but vague is all we've really got at this point. Can Jacob please have the first flashback?

More on Lost Horizon next post, and check out my Bonus Post below.

BONUS POST!

Sorry, no photos in the bonus post. I'm thinking about my
favorite mysterious French woman, and it finally dawns
on me, the Others took Alex to keep the crazy French chick
from killing her like she did everyone else she arrived on the
Island with. Duh! It's not like it was some devious plan or
Alex was the golden child, it was merely the only way the
baby could survive.

Now why the Others left Danielle to roam the Island for
16 years, you got me on that one. But it would make sense
to me that when Rousseau's team arrived, not long after the
Purge, that the Hostiles would have remained hidden watching,
evaluating only to watch Rousseau go nuts or her team get
sick or whatever happened, and be unable or unwilling to
interfere until there's no one left but Danielle and Alex.

At This Point Has Ethan Gone Rogue?














In A Tale of Two Cities Ben says:

Ethan, get up there to that fuselage. There may
actually be survivors... and you're one of them.
You're a passenger. You're in shock. Come up with
an adequate story if they ask. Stay quiet if they don't.
Listen, learn, and don't get involved. I want
lists in 3 days.

When we first see Ethan in Episode 1.9, Solitary,
it's been about 12 days after the crash and Ethan
is getting involved. He's hunting with Locke, giving
luggage to Hurley, he's told Nikki and Paolo he can
help them find clothing, and of course, he's injecting
and later taking Claire. Furthermore despite spending
almost 2 weeks with the Fusies, he hasn't completed
the list Ben ordered.

Is Ethan one of The Others looking for a change?
He was friendly enough with Juliet to fix her plumbing?
Were they conspiring to overthrow Ben as well?

Did Danielle Get The Batteries And
Jumper Cables To Make This Torture
Device














From Here?














Rewatching Solitary has left me with more Danielle
questions than ever. For example:

1. Where did Danielle get her booby trap knowledge?
2. How many languages does Danielle know? As many
as Naomi?
3. Can anyone translate or find a translation of what
Danielle says before she says to Sayid: 16 years.
Has it really been that long?
4. Where did Danielle get that sedative and needle,
and how does she know how to use it?
5. She's seen the bears and knows there's no monsters,
and has heard the whispers, but never sees the Others?
6. So did Alex disappear from her cradle while Danielle
slept?
7. How does she know the Others are the carriers
for the sickness, and that they gave it to her team
on her team's way back from the Black Rock?

Seriously, the French Chick has a lot of 'splainin to do.

And ironically there was a woman at the beach with me this
week who looked like Danielle. I considered snapping a photo,
but decided to respect her privacy. And no, it was NOT Mira
Furlan; this woman looked like Danielle, not the actress.

Theory-Free Post














Baby, I am tied to a tree in a jungle of mystery. I just got
tortured by a damn spinal surgeon and a gen-uine I-raqi.
Of course I'm serious.

Confidence Man is full of great lines from Jack's Jedi Moment
to Claire's "Thus my hat."

Use the comments to post some of your favorite lines from any
LOST episode. You can search the transcripts on Lost Hatch
if you need help to get the line just right.

You've got a week to come up with some great ones. My next post
will be 7/23/07, God willing and the creek don't rise (or computer
fry). And if you need more, go back through the post archives and
catch up on the comments. We've had some great ones. And try
the blogs linked to on the sidebar.

Here's the World According to Sawyer to spur your memory as well.

What I Thought About Him At This
Point Was Right, Wasn't It?



















Locke -- a savior of his "family" or just a creepy guy with
an orange smile? What's the orange smile a reference to?
I read it recently and can't remember. Help!

Back to the reason for the post -- in Confidence Man, we
get Locke's first deliberate lie (as opposed to deception
by omission; "BTW guys I haven't walked for 4 years").
Locke basically frames Sawyer as the guy
who knocked Sayid on the head at the end of "The Moth."
Thus begins Locke's Explosion Tour 2004 (thanks
to Engineer27) though without the explosion -- this time.

So what is Locke's deal? I'm sure everyone else would
be willing to leave him behind if that's what he wants
(well maybe Jack and Kate wouldn't; they have issues.)
But why can't Locke seem to let anyone else
leave the Island?

Wouldn't It Have Made Sense For
The LOSTies To Have Mapped The
Island?














As Sayid leaves at the end of Episode 1.8, Confidence Man,
he tells Kate:

Someone has to walk the shore and map the island,
see what else there is.

So whatever happened to that idea? In Jules Verne's
The Mysterious_Island the very first thing the survivors
of that crash did was investigate their Island, first to
ascertain that it was indeed an island, not part of a continent.
Then they mapped it. Granted, there wasn't something
knocking down trees and ripping their pilot from their
cockpit and leaving him in a bloody mess, but still Ben
managed to get a map.

Are Richard Alpert and Walt Lloyd
Time Travelers?













If fools are enslaved by time and space, get out a jester
hat and a stick with bells on it because when it comes to
trying to figure out what's going on with time on LOST,
I'm lost. But the book The Time Traveler's Wife has
a theory of time travel that I can get my head around, and
I wonder if it can be used to explain how Richard Alpert
looks the same both above and below this text.












The idea in the book is that Henry, the time traveler,
can move from the present day at his present age both
forward and backward in time. So, for example, when
it is 1994 and Henry is 30, he could time travel and his
30 year old self could go back to 1988, but he would still
be 30 or it could go to 1998, but he would still be 30.

So could that explain non-aging Richard Alpert? When
Ben is doing his best young Harry Potter impression at
age 10 or so Alpert is 35. Then when Ben is 40, Alpert's
35 year old self has time traveled to 2004. Could that
also explain why Ben is in charge because the rest of the
Others only think that Alpert is 35 and hasn't been there
as long as Ben? Could it also explain why Alpert is the only
one we've seen off the Island after we saw him on the Island
(in chronological time) because he time traveled to Miami
in order to recruit Juliet?

And is a similar thing going on with












Through the Looking Glass Walt?

But in Walt's case, instead of age 10 Walt in December 2004
and points forward, we've got some form of future Walt,
be it age 13, 15, however old the actor is now.

Let me know what you think. And don't ask me about Desmond.
I've got no way to explain his time traveling or flashes. Though
the hero in the book was naked every time he traveled, other than
that I've got no links to Desmond.

Should Juliet Read The Time Traveler's Wife?















I came across a possible reason why all the pregnant women on the
Island die while reading The Time Traveler's Wife.




















Henry, the time traveler in the book, has a genetic
mutation that results in his involuntary movement
through time. One minute he's in the present, and
the next he's naked and somewhere else in time. A
geneticist replicates this mutation in mice, but it took
a while because:

The hard part was getting the dams, the mother
mice, to carry the altered mice to term. They kept
dying, hemorrhaging to death. . . . The mothers died,
and the babies died. We couldn't figure it out, so we started
watching them around the clock, and then we saw what
was going on. The embryos were traveling out of their
dam's wombs, and then in again, and the mothers bled
to death internally. Or they would just abort the fetus
at the 10-day mark.

According to Wikipedia, 10 days would be about halfway
through a mouse pregnancy. Sound familiar?

Is there something about the super sperm of the Island or
some other Island property that makes babies conceived on
the Island time travelers, that is, not enslaved by time and
space? Do the embryos travel out of their mother's wombs
and back creating internal bleeding in the mother leading to
the death of both mother and child? Does the mother's body
abort it half-way through the pregnancy (though I wouldn't
think that would kill the mother too?)

Is "Guys Where Are We" The Right
Question To Be Asking?














Ever since the end of the Pilot, we and the LOSTies have
been wondering where they are. The Pilot says they are
1000 miles off course heading toward Fiji. Other location
information includes the fact "a" Flight 815 was found near
Bali according to Naomi. And there's a small plane that took
off from Nigeria on the Island.

As none of these things quite connect, I'd like to suggest that
Charlie was asking the wrong question. The question isn't
where the LOSTies are, but "Who are we?"

This question arose strongly in my mind as I rewatched
Charlie's first flashback episode, Episode 1.7, The Moth. How
Charlie defines his identity is a very strong theme in the episode.
It comes up over and over again.

First, Flashback Charlie tells Liam: I love the band. It's not who I am.
But as the flashback progresses we learn that a "bloody rock god"
is indeed the only thing Charlie thinks he is. He certainly tells
the LOSTies as often as he can about Drive Shaft. In fact my
favorite deleted scene is this one. Skip ahead to 1:30.
Without his music Charlie identifies himself as useless and a
junkie to boot.

But by the end of The Moth, Charlie has learned he has value
and strength that he hadn't been able to find in himself for a
long time. Perhaps Charlie should have died in "All the Best
Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" because by the time The Moth ends,
Charlie is starting to answer the real question each character
on LOST seems to need to answer and that is not
"Where am I," but "Who am I."

Use the comments to chime in on the progress you think each
LOSTie has made in answering this question and what you think
that may mean as to whether or not that person will ever leave
the Island.

How Did Locke Know How to Find Sayid?














Sayid, Kate and Boone come up with their plan to triangulate the
French transmission on the beach. Kate tells Jack what they're
up to, but to the best of our knowledge no one ever tells Locke who is
at the caves with Charlie and then out slaughtering his pig. So how
did Locke find Sayid to hit him over the head?

I guess I write it off to it being Season 1 "Super-Locke" -- tracker
of all Iraqi's; leader of all on-Island walkabouts; and chef of
all boar, as opposed to Season 2 "Button Pushing Locke" and the
precursor to Season 3 "If It Exits, I Must Blow It Up Locke."

And while you're thinking about this triangulation plan of Sayid's
why did he get such a strong signal when the radio tower is not
inside the triangle formed by Sayid, Kate and Boone?

Did The Magic Box Give Charlie His Guitar?














In Episode 1.6, "House of the Rising Sun" we get this
exchange between Locke and Charlie as they search the
wreckage in the caves.

Locke: I know who you are. And I know what you're
looking for. Driveshaft. You played bass.
Charlie: And guitar... on a couple of tracks. You really
heard of us?
Locke: Hey, just because I'm over 40 doesn't mean I'm deaf.
I have both your albums. Although, I thought that your
self-titled debut was a much stronger effort than Oil Change.
It's a shame what happened to the band. How long since you played?
Charlie: My guitar? Uh, 8 days, 11 hours, give or take.
Locke: You miss it? Well, a lot of wreckage. It might still turn up.
Charlie: Undamaged? Still playable? I don't think so. I mean,
I wish, but there was this bloke at the counter
made me check it in.
Locke: No.
Charlie: Yeah. There wasn't enough room in the cabin, fascist.
Locke: You'll see it again.
Charlie: Oh yeah? What makes you say that?
Locke: Because I have faith, Charlie.

Is this an example of the magic box properties of the Island?
Charlie wishes he could find his guitar more than anything
else he could think of, more than his drugs, and voila,
there's his guitar, undamaged, hanging on the cliff face.
Maybe this also explains why it doesn't seem to get damaged
by the rain.

Who Are Adam and Eve?
















Jack, Kate, Locke and Charlie find two bodies,
a man and a woman, in the caves in Episode 1.6
"House of the Rising Sun." Locke dubs them our
very own Adam and Eve, but if that's the case,
they are post-Fall Adam and Eve, because they have
clothes.

Damon and Carlton have said that we will return to
the question of who these mystery skeletons are, but
in the meantime, what's your best guess?

Me, I think Kate is Eve especially since she says
later in the episode that she doesn't want to be
Eve. And now, after the Flash Forward, I think Adam
is Jack.

And as more of this discussion, what's with the stones?

Where is Christian Shephard?














This is one of those mysteries I'm afraid I may never get
the answer to, but it's one I want to know. Where is Christian?
Did they never put him on the plane? Then why is there a coffin?
Did they put him on the wrong plane? Are baggage handlers in
Australia as bad as in the U.S.? Did Smokey/the Others/Jacob
take his body like Yemmi's? Vincent?

Would Smokey Wear White
Tennis Shoes With a Suit?














So what is with Jack seeing Christian Shephard
in Episode 1.5 "White Rabbit?" Is it Smokey?
Is it some other Island manifestation? Is Jack
merely hallucinating? And is whatever caused
this the same thing that led to Christian Shephard's
voice on the shark tank intercom?

Walkabout -- Locke's Destiny?















A Walkabout is a journey of spiritual renewal, where one
derives strength from the earth. And becomes inseparable
from it. John Locke to Randy in Ep. 1.4, Walkabout

INSEPARABLE? Is this the real reason for Locke's explosion tour?