Memphish is LOST

2009-05-30T09:30:00.018-05:00

Questioning LOST

So here's the things I'd like to know. Some of these will likely be answered in Season 6 but most probably won't unless Damon and Carlton publish some compendium of LOST trivia after the show ends. Nevertheless, as I rewatch the entire series to date over this hiatus, I'm going to collect these questions. After the series ends, we'll see where we stand.

I've decided to color code my questions. Red is for really, really important. Orange is less important, but I'd really like to know. The rest I'll settle for no answer, but still inquiring minds want to know.

1. Are Amelia and Amy the same person?
2. How did Ethan become an Other?
3. Where did Karl come from?
4. Why couldn't Desmond sail out of the influence of the Island?
5. What happened to the Elizabeth?
6. Why the Viking funeral for Colleen?
7. What force (good/bad/Jacob/Smokey/etc) was manipulating Locke's dreams and Smoke Lodge visions and also keeping him from walking and talking?
8. What was the Pearl's original purpose since it seems to predate the Swan and the Incident at the Swan?
9. Was Jacob communicating with Ben as Leader of the Others and if so, how?
10. How many polar bears were there?
11. Was Tom part of the original DI? Of Widmore's Others?
12. What is the deal with the Island pregnancy problem? When did it start?
13. Why did Mittelos go after Juliet? What is Ben's obsession with her including an explanation of the painting?
14. Who created the Room 23 video and to what end exactly? Who has undergone it's application?
15. Flashes Before Your Eyes established the existence of a time loop. When does it start and end and who is aware of reliving it? Does Ellie's statement to Penny at the hospital establish that the loop has ended once 316 returns to the Island?
16. Why mark Juliet in a place no one can see?
17. Cindy and the kids and the other Tailies taken -- what's the deal?
18. When did the Purge occur?
19. Why exactly do the Others have such a superiority complex like Mikhail when talking to Kate and Pickett's attitude to Sawyer?
20. Are things like Kate's horse and the cat named Nadia on the Island because of Jacob? The Man in Black? Are these coincidental occurrences how Jacob and MIB interact with the "players" on the Island?
21. When and how did Carol Littleton's coma end? (I hope it was Jacob.)
22. What the heck makes the Others (like Mikhail) have such faith in their magnificent leader (presumably Jacob) despite never having seen him?
23. How did Tom get off and back on Island post-purpling? And was he the one who brought Cooper to the Island? If not, who did and when?
24. What's the story behind the blond woman with the guinea pig painting in Ben's house.
25. Were Desmond's visions during his flashing period true or lies, especially the flashes when Naomi lied given that he saw both Charlie die and Charlie holding the parachute?
26. Why do Locke's legs stop working at times on the Island?
27. Who told Ben to have the Others build a runway?
28. Who/what was Taller Ghost Walt?
29. Who besides Christian Shephard was in the cabin when Hurley saw it in episode 4.1, and why did the cabin move?
30. What is the deal with the changing photo frames in the house Miles first ghostbusts?
31. What is the deal with The Whispers?
32. What caused the horse to intervene in Kate's escape and why is the same horse on the Island?
33. Was Kate hallucinating or did something inhabit Sawyer to make him seem like Wayne?
34. Did Ben get caught in Rousseau's trap on purpose? If not, where was he going?
35. What is the deal with the injections -- those given to Claire; those in the Swan?
36. Why did the Others want Aaron, but not Claire?
37. How do the food drops at the Swan work?
38. How do the people that Ben had Sayid execute, like Peter Avellino fit into the story? Same with Abaddon. How did he come to work for Widmore?
39. Why did Kelvin and possibly Radzinsky pull the whole quarantine charade in the Hatch?
40. How does Penny's encounter with Desmond at the LA track jive with their encounter in The Constant?

2009-05-17T13:04:00.004-05:00

Why The Bomb Going Off Does Not Negate Five Years Of My Viewing Pleasure

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

This is the normal story. At every point in our lives we make choices and based on those choices we end up with one continuous timeline. We're born, to these parents, with these siblings, we go to this school, then this college, then marry this person, and have these children. We live here and then here and eventually we die.

But most of us have wondered what if? What if I'd gone to a different college? Chosen a different major? Gotten that other job? And those are the choices we control. What about the ones we don't like what if I'd been born on a different continent? Had different parents?

But what's the point in playing the what it game? We don't get do-overs. We make the best of what we have and press onward, perhaps with regrets and the capacity to make up for them or move past them, but not the ability to undo time.

But that's the beauty of fiction. I think we're going to get to see what happened had we chosen the road not taken. Well, not us, but Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, etc. But it's not going to take 5 years to tell that story because most of the choices they've made, and we've watched, aren't the ones they want to do over. Most of the choices will be the same.

But there's one thing or a few things that might make all the difference in the world and I think those are the things we'll get to see a second time in Season 6. We may even get to see them the exact same way we did in Season 1 with a crash on the Island and flashbacks to show us who these people are. I don't think it'll go quite that way. I think the more likely way is to show us the new choices and then crash to end it all. But either way, it won't result in unrecognizable versions of Jack and the rest of the 815ers, but they will be altered or at least have the opportunity to be altered. The question will be do they always do the same thing or will they take the road less traveled and chose as Jacob encouraged them.

2009-05-17T07:49:00.003-05:00

Kate's Timeline Changed Too?

In "The Incident" when Kate is caught by the shopkeeper for shoplifting she is approximately 12. According to Lostpedia Kate was born in 1977, and according to Tom and Kate's recording in their time capsule it was then 1989. In "What Kate Did" we learn that Kate's parents divorced when she was 5. And at some point after that Diane marries Wayne Janssen becoming Diane Janssen.

But in "The Incident" the shopkeeper refers to Kate as Diane Austen's kid. Not Diane Janssen's. Now, I know this doesn't prove that things have changed for Kate because maybe it took old Wayne a while to pop the question. Nevertheless maybe it has changed. Maybe Wayne doesn't marry Diane leading to his death and Kate's perpetual fugitive status. Maybe Kate is able to do what Jacob told her to, that is "to be good."

2009-05-16T10:57:00.007-05:00

So What Happened In "The Incident?"

Update: Thanks to Gitsie Girl for this screencap! Boy what a great finale. I really enjoyed watching it. I really enjoyed re-watching it. And I even like the idea that I have no idea what could possibly happen next.

One thing though seemed to be clear. Jack failed to prevent "the Incident." Before the bomb could go off the Incident occurred. The pocket of magnetism was breached and was uncontrollable resulting in a catastrophic injury to Chang's arm and the need to create the button pushing protocol. Fitting that Radzinsky, the one that created the Incident was subjected to years of button pushing monotony to the point of insanity and ultimately suicide. Well, that's how it would have worked if the fall had killed Juliet.

Because the second thing that seems clear is that Juliet blew the dike. I think what Juliet did was the equivalent of what Desmond did at the end of Season 2 when he turned the failsafe key. But I don't think the result will be the same. I don't think we'll see a naked Juliet running around the jungle. Sorry guys, but you can rent Gia if you feel the need to see that.

Instead I think what will happen is what did happen in part in Flashes Before Your Eyes in that those close enough to the dike being blown will have memories of their futures as they live their lives from some point in the past. In Desmond's case his 1995/6 body post fall off a ladder contained memories of the Island. While it's not clear if the cricket bat to the head stopped that for Desmond, I'm not convinced that it did. I think the reason Desmond training for the Race Around the World knew that Jack fixed Sarah because he remembered that on Island Jack told him he'd fixed Sarah. This deja vu is imperfect, but I think it is nevertheless present as this scene demonstrates.

So what does this mean going forward into 2010 and Season 6 where Destiny will be Found? I think Flight 815 will crash on the Island. It won't be because of the Swan, it will be for some other reason, but the universe will course correct and bring 815 down on the Island. I also think that the people we find on the plane will not be the same sad lot we first found on September 22, 2004. I think at least part of the flashbacks we saw in The Incident demonstrate that the 815ers have made different choices. The most obvious is Jin and Sun.

In Season 1, Episode 17 In Translation we saw Sun and Jin on their wedding day.

Sun was changing out of her wedding dress into her reception dress. You'll notice both of these are dresses with straps. You can also see that Jin was in morning dress.

Now here's what we see in "The Incident."

Strapless wedding dress and different suit. And different reception dress.

It also looked like during the ceremony that Jin had relatives there. Is this Mr. Kwon?

Finally all I want to know is if it's 2010 yet? While I have lots of fun things to do between now and then, I can't wait for it to get here. Until then, I'll get out my Flannery O'Conner and try to stay lost.

2009-04-30T14:47:00.006-05:00

Season 6 Prediction

So following The Variable and the preview after it I have come up with this idea for how Season 5 ends and what happens in Season 6. I think Season 5 ends with the Losties managing to blow up the Swan in time. The Island is destroyed and they all die in 1977.

Then Season 6 is 17 episodes consisting of character episodes where we see what happened to each original Lostie on Flight 815 plus Desmond plus Ben and possibly Juliet from the time Flight 815 lands on time in Los Angeles until they each die sometime before 2008 because by 2008 they will all be dead due to the explosion in 1977.

Given that most of predictions never ever happen, this probably won't either, but I want to be on record just in case.

2009-02-04T22:01:00.007-06:00

Island Timeline

I hope this will help me figure out what's going on when and what side people are on. Please contribute and make corrections. The dates come from Lostpedia which is not canon, but is pretty close.

100 BC? - Days of the 4-Toed statue; Locke puts the Donkey Wheel back on its axis and turns it

1845 - Black Rock disappears. Magnus Hanso was captain of the Black Rock.

1954 - Richard Alpert and a band of Latin speaking Others including young Charles Widmore and Ellie are on Island and view it as THEIR Island
- US Army arrives on Island with 18 men and Jughead. 18 Army people die on orders from Alpert's superior.
- The Left Behinders (LBs) jump to 1954 and Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Daniel and Charlotte plus 2 redshirts interact with Alpert's Others. Both Alpert and Ellie are told about the time skipping.

1970s - The Dharma Initiative (DI) funded by Alvar Hanso begins building stations on the Island. They create a station, The Arrow to deal with the hostile indigenous population presumably Alpert's Others.

1970 - Charlotte Staples Lewis born

1973 - Young Ben Linus joins the DI and arrives on Island with his dad.
- The Hostiles, presumably led by Alpert, attack DI facilities
- Young Ben sees his mom and in an effort to find her encounters Richard Alpert

1974 - Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Miles, Daniel and presumably Rose, Bernard, Vincent and any other remaining 815ers end up here after Locke turns the wheel
Hostiles kill DI member Paul
Sawyer and Juliet kill 2 Hostiles and rescue DI Amy
Sawyer tells DI his name is LaFleur and he and his crew integrate into the Dharma Initiative after also informing Alpert what, that is who, they're waiting for
The Dharma submarine travels approximately every 2 weeks to and from the Island

- Daniel (not sure if it's 2005 or other aged Daniel) travels to the time they are building the Orchid. I'm thinking now this is definitely 2005 Daniel, but the exact date of this scene is unknown.

Somewhere in the 1970s, probably between '74 and '77 - a young Charlotte Lewis lives on Island; a crazy Daniel visits her and tells her to leave and never come back; Charlotte leaves with her mother, her father stays behind

1977 - Sawyer, Miles and Jin work for Dharma security
Juliet works as a Dharma mechanic and only reveals herself to be a doctor in order to deliver Amy's baby
A baby is born to Amy and Horace; no word on where it was conceived.
Kate, Hurley and Jack are flashed into this time from Flight 316 and are found by Jin
Motor Pool Kate, Chef Hurley and Workman Jack are part of the DI
Sayid in DI custody as a presumed Hostile; visited by young Ben
Young Ben springs Sayid; Sayid shoots him in the jungle and flees

1980s - Alpert's Hostiles and Ben purge the DI with poison gas. Possibly 1984/5 if you take Miles statement that Widmore has been looking for the Island for 20 years as accurate. This date does not agree with Horace's dream statement to Locke though. At this point Island is left with just Alpert's Others plus Ben plus possibly other DI that become Others or are left to die at the hands of polar bears. We do not know of any DI escaping the Island post-purge, but somehow Daniel knew about the purge as evidenced by Daniel and Charlotte's trip to the Tempest. I suspect Widmore knew about it too, but I don't know chicken and egg style if he told Daniel or Daniel told him.

November 18, 1988 - Rousseau's team crashes on Island

- Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte and Daniel find wreckage of French ship

- Rousseau's team finds Jin

- Smokey kills Nadine and rips off Montand's arm; Frenchies minus Danielle go after Montand and Smokey

Between Nov. 18 and Alex's birth

-French team discovers Black Rock on Island

Late 1988/Early 1989 - Rousseau shoots LaCombe, Brennan and Robert
- Rousseau goes to radio tower and changes message

- Rousseau gives birth to Alex
- Ben takes Alex. Alex becomes an Other.

Post-Gulf War maybe 1991/2 - Kelvin Inman arrives at the Swan
- Mikhail arrives on Island about then too.

1995 - Desmond meets Penny

1995/6 - Desmond meets with Charles Widmore to ask about marrying Penny
Desmond sees Charlie Pace performing on a street in London

1996 - Desmond meets Daniel in Oxford
Charles Widmore buys Black Rock ledger from the Hanso family

1997/8 - Daniel sends Teresa time-tripping, leaves for America, Widmore pays for Teresa's care

Late 1990s? - Nigerian drug plane crashes on the Island
- Ethan checks out plane crash and shoots a 2005 Locke
- 2005 Locke sees crash and is shot by Ethan

2001 - Desmond meets Jack at stadium in LA

2001-2004 - Desmond lives in Swan Hatch

- Juliet becomes an Other

Sept. 22, 2004 - 815 crashes and Kelvin dies

Sept/Oct 2004 - The Others take members of the Tail Section to become Others including Cindy, Zack and Emma

Nov. 1, 2004 - Aaron born, delivered by Kate
- Time skipping LBs jump here from 1954 and see Swan lit up as Locke pounds on it and Aaron's birth

Nov. 2004 - Desmond meets Locke, Jack and Kate

Mid-Nov. 2004 - Desmond meets other 815ers

Dec. 31, 2004 - O6, Ben, Desmond and Frank leave the Island
LBs start skipping through time

2007 - Ajira 316 crashes on Hydra Island
Sun and Lapidus take outrigger to abandoned Dharmaville and meet Christian Shephard

2007 Crash date + 2/3 days - resurrected Locke found on Hydra Island; Ben in Ajira infirmary

2007 Crash date + at least 3 days - 2 Outriggers appear on beach; beach camp emptied; Zodiac gone

- People in Outrigger chase and shoot at LBs

And now for the Time Skips

Episodes 1 and 2
2005 LBers go to date of Nigerian plane crash
Then to post-Swan implosion time
Then to somewhere between 2001-2004 when Desmond is in Swan Hatch

Episode 3
Then to 1954

Episode 4
Then to Nov. 1, 2004 where they come across a lit up Swan Hatch and Aaron's birth
Then to some future date where the beach camp exists, but has been raided by people in two outrigger canoes and the Zodiac is missing
Then to the day Rousseau's people crash on the Island

Episode 5

Opens on November 18, 1988

Jumps ahead about 2 months

Multiple unknown jumps

Locke puts Donkey Wheel back on its axis and turns it again

Episodes 5, 7, 8

The flash when Locke falls down the well takes them to 4-toed statue days
Locke turning the wheel takes the remaining LBs to 1974

Episode 9
Sayid is in 1977; Sun, Ben, Locke, Lapidus in 2007

Episode 10 - 1977

2009-02-02T08:13:00.004-06:00

Circular Locke

I have to credit You All Everybody from The Transmission episode about Jughead for starting me off down this path. Here goes.

In 1954 Widmore meets John Locke and witnesses him having a big tete-a-tete with Alpert, consigliere of the Others. Clearly this level of access makes Locke important. In fact young Widmore may have discussed the meeting with Alpert and learned exactly what John claimed namely that he is the leader of the Others in 2005.

In 2003/4 Abaddon intercepts wheelchair-bound Locke in rehab and encourages him to go on a walkabout, said walkabout that will result in John being on Flight 815 on September 22, 2004.

The encounter between Locke and Abaddon and Abaddon's relationship to Widmore has always puzzled me. But now that I know Widmore has known about time traveling Locke since the 50s, it's starting to make a bit more sense. Widmore sends Abaddon to Locke to make sure he's in place for that plane trip because Locke must crash on the Island. What's more, he must crash on the Island in order to replace Widmore's nemesis, Benjamin Linus.

It makes me wonder, will we see some time cop, an Other, Mrs. Hawking, Abaddon, etc. making sure that Kate's Australian farmer knows about her fugitive status and the much-needed reward about a week or so before 9/22/04? I've always suspected that someone got to Claire's psychic after all he gives her the ticket for Flight 815. Does that mean someone killed Christian Shephard? Did Paik set the timing for the watch delivery trip at Widmore's behest?

And were there wildcards? We've seen almost step by step how Hurley went to Australia after his father tried the fake psychic bit and how he almost missed the plane. And what about Sayid? Same sort of thing. But for Islamic burial traditions he would have left a day earlier. And what about Michael and Walt? Did someone send Walt's stepfather at just the right time? In fact did someone insure Walt's mom's death at just the right time?

But back to Locke. We've already seen him send Richard to his birth? Does he also have Widmore send Abaddon? And is Locke in fact Jacob? And old theory, but a goodie, sending not only others to help him along the way, but telling Locke himself to "Help Me." I can certainly picture Locke screwing things up in such a way that would allow Ben to manipulate him for those years he ruled the Island, getting trapped by an ash ring or what have you. Still doesn't explain the Others reverence for Jacob as we saw in various Juliet flashbacks or the Room 23 film. But hey, we've got most of two seasons left after all.

Anyways (ding) I just wanted to get this down early in case it pans out.

2009-01-29T07:28:00.003-06:00

Widmore Knows Where Faraday's Mom Is?

Unlike many Jughead was not favorite episode. It was because so many people had speculated correctly about the identity of Jones and the preview pictures of Penny giving birth.

But here's the big thing I want to know. How does Widmore know where in LA Faraday's mom is? Does he know Ben's there? Is Mrs. Hawking on Ben's side? Widmore's? Are they actually on the same side?

2009-01-28T11:11:00.003-06:00

What I Want To Know NOW!

LOST is back and Season 5 is causing brain bleed in more than just Charlotte and random drilling DI guy. But I'm tired of trying to understand the time rules. Instead I have so more basic questions.

1. Why is Juilet jumping but none of Alpert's Others are? And I especially want to know about the 815ers taken by the Others, Cindy, Zack, Emma the other 8 or so tailies. What is preventing them from jumping through time with Locke? And why doesn't it apply to Juliet? My pet theory is that Juliet's marking is allowing her to jump undoing whatever Other Kool-aid the rest have been taking. Yep, I'm still looking for something redeeming from Strangers in a Strange Land.

2. What about the O6 returning to the Island will undo or fix the effects of Ben turning the Donkey Wheel? This one really has me stumped. In fact the only way the O6's return makes sense to me is if they return to the Island at a time before the wheel was turned. But that would undo Carlton Cuse's repeated statements that the Beardy Jack future really exists. I also really don't get why the O6 have to return after 3 years. I don't see how the on-Island 815ers can survive 3 years of what we saw last week. They lost at least 3 of their number in that escapade.

3. Why is Daniel focused on Desmond, but Ben is focused on the O6? This could also be entitled who has to go back. As of now Ben is focused on the O6 plus Locke. Alpert also focused on that group of people. But time expert Daniel is focusing his efforts on Desmond though he hasn't said, yet, that Desmond needs to come back. Can Desmond do something off Island? Do the O6 need to be on Island before he does it?

4. What about Waaaalllllttttt? And Ji Yeon? And Frank? And do other people like Charlotte, Miles and Daniel actually need to be off the Island?

Well that's enough for now. I hope Episode 5.3 answers at least one of these. Otherwise I better make sure my Constant is on hand.

2008-12-19T09:23:00.004-06:00

Did Christian Tell Locke To Keep Jack On The Island?

In There's No Place Like Home (pt. 2) Locke and Jack talk leader stuff at the Orchid. Locke tries to talk Jack out of leaving giving him the whole destiny spiel once again. But he fails to mention that a guy named Christian has told him to move the Island. Which makes me wonder, did Christian instruct Locke to keep Jack on the Island or is Locke freelancing? I still can't decide if Christian wants Jack and Aaron on or off the Island.

2008-12-12T21:10:00.004-06:00

Who Ordered This?

I'm up to Cabin Fever in my re-watch and this exchange occurs at the Dharma open grave.

HURLEY: What's he doing down there?
(Ben shrugs)
HURLEY: So... This is where you shot Locke and left him for dead, huh?
BEN: Yes, Hugo, I was standing right where you are now when I pulled the trigger. Should have realized at the time that it was pointless, but... I really wasn't thinking clearly.
(Hurley steps back a little)
HURLEY: Is that why you killed all these people, too?
BEN: I didn't kill them.
HURLEY: Well, if the Others didn't wipe out the DHARMA Initiative--
BEN: They did wipe them out, Hugo, but it wasn't my decision.
HURLEY: Then whose was it?
BEN: Their leader's.
HURLEY:But I thought you were their leader.
BEN: Not always.

So who was the leader when the Purge was ordered? Was it Widmore? Was it not the case that Ben stole from Widmore when the DI was purged, but rather that Widmore purged the DI and Ben took over later? Oooh. Interesting.

2008-12-09T07:17:00.004-06:00

Now The Countdown Really Begins!

I'm heading off this morning, after carpool, to get my Season 4 DVDs and intend to spend the next week, the week before school gets out for Christmas, to devour them in peace and quiet.

I have not re-watched any of Season 4 since it finished airing. I started to re-watch 4.1 a few weeks ago, but it was depressing. Half the people in the episode are now dead. I also fear the re-watch may fall a little flat because S4's big question was "they're off the Island?" and S4 answered that question. Moreover Locke being in the coffin has not been the "What's in the hatch?" "What do the Others want?" "WTF?" finale moment that's kept me speculating all off season.

But now it's only 42 days, 8 hours until Season 5, so my Season 4 re-watch must begin. Hopefully it will in fact raise questions that I can post here on my mostly dormant blog. But even if it doesn't, it should get the juices flowing for that January 21st kickoff date that's got me more excited than Florida/Oklahoma.

2008-10-30T16:33:00.001-05:00

Song of Claire?

I finished Book 6 of the Dark Tower series, Song of Susannah and I can't even answer my own question given the cliffhanger ending of the book. Song of Susannah was that episode before the season finale. You know Born to Run, Three Minutes, Greatest Hits, and There's No Place Like Home, Pt. 1; that episode which is good, but in all honesty just resembles the five moves on the chessboard that precede the final three checkmate death blows. People who eventually have to end up together are scattered and you don't know how they'll get back together. And then with three minutes left, something starts to happen and then you have to wait to find out what. I'm somewhat fearful all of Season 5 may resemble that episode.

But there were a couple of ideas in Song of Susannah that I'm interested to see if they play out on LOST. The most interesting has to do with do-overs. Time travel has been very present in The Dark Tower series. From the very beginning we've known that there are other worlds than these. But here we are introduced to the idea of the true world, the "only one where, when things were finished, they stayed finished.” p. 176 What's more in this world you can never come back to an earlier time and get a do over. You have to get it right the first time. pp. 217-18

The new Season 5 promo and it's use of props that we've seen in the past have many speculating that some form of do-over may be where we're heading. Heck, that's been an idea ever since beardy Jack first started raving about going back. How could going back undo or make up for the bad things that happened after the O6 left, unless the O6 get some sort of do-over? I'm not a huge fan of alternate universes, but I'm willing to give TPTB one go at it. Just one though. We'll see. Will Jack and crew get on last chance to get everything right?

Another very LOST-ian idea is the role of magic/faith vs. science/rationality. Mia explains to Susannah that the world was formed by magic but then the magic receded and was replaced with machines. Now the machines are failing. Mia claims the same is true for Susannah herself. "You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism." p. 147 And to top it off Mia claims the only thing that can save the world is the return of magic.

Now this is the kind of explanation I'd like to see for the Island and what's going on with it. The Island is a magic place, then Dharma arrives and tries to harness that magic mechanically. As a result the magic departs. Then those maintaining the machines are purged, and now the machines are failing to control the Island resulting in rogue Smokey, moving Jacob and the inability of women to carry a pregnancy to term. And the only thing that will save it is the return of the magic. Well, a girl can hope at least. Or it could be an attempt to merge the science and the magic. That was something that happened in the Dark Tower world as well, but it failed in all but one remaining place, and the health of that place is pretty questionable too.

Finally, there's the repeated notion of twins. It arises in two key places in Song of Susannah. The first is in this duality of science and magic. Susannah calls them Tweedledee and Tweedledum in addition to rational and irrational, sane and insane. In the second instance Eddie is called the twin of Roland's childhood friend Cuthbert. But the idea isn't really so much that they are twins, but in fact the same reincarnated soul turning on the wheel of Ka. I'm still looking for that bad twin.

I've only got one book to go in MY quest for the Dark Tower. I'm not sure when I'll get there, but I'm certain ka willing that it will be before the start of Season 6, my goal.

2008-10-20T09:12:00.002-05:00

Is John Locke As Naive As John Locke?

In reading Madeline L'engle's An Acceptable Tiime I came across this description of philosopher John Locke and his view of Native Americans.

"Locke's impressions [were] idyllic and . . . a little naive. . . . The [natives] seemed to Locke to live a life as innocent as Adam and Eve in the Garden. They lived without external laws, did not buy or sell or pile up wealth. They were, Locke implied, without shame, not burdened by the guilts of the past." p. 76

This view seems to me to mirror our John Locke's view of the Island and Alpert's crew of true believers. Of course, we've seen more of the Others than Locke has, so I wonder if part of the "bad things" will merely be Locke's eyes opening to the reality of human nature and its depravity even on the Island. Maybe the real reason Locke leaves the Island is that his idyllic picture of the Island is shattered by reality. How Jack returning could help that I could not say, but Locke often looks for the easy, buck-passing solution (Sawyer and the real Sawyer), so perhaps Locke's plan to return the O6 is more mere naivete on Locke's part.

And while we're on Locke, I can't remember asking this before -- do you think off Island Bentham/Locke can walk or does he have to return to a wheelchair?

2008-10-18T08:26:00.003-05:00

So What Did Dharma Want?

Now that the ARG seems to be on hold for over 2 months! I've got some questions.

I'd guess given the Comic Con imprimatur that the new Dharma Initiative's formation is official LOST canon. If you show up on a stage with Damon and Carlton that makes you canon to me. What's more the cause that has led to the effect of the re-formation of DI seems to be the receipt of the Chang video. So here's what I want to know:

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Feel free to discuss any other aspect of the ARG in the comments as well. I personally do not regret dropping out early on, but I'm interested to see what those of you who persevered think about how the ARG will affect the LOST-iverse.

2008-09-30T06:08:00.001-05:00

Did The Others Use Time Travel To Compile Their Dossiers?

From another listener on Lost Unlocked: The listener theorizes that the Others use time travel to travel to the time and places of the LOSTies pre-flight 815 in order to compile their files on them. This explains how they know that Sawyer killed a man before leaving Australia, something the Australian authorities did not know at the time of the flight. It also explains how they know that Sawyer's "Sawyer" is actually Anthony Cooper. The theory also led to a real chicken and egg conundrum as they further theorized that the Others or perhaps someone else like Widmore manipulated the 815ers onto that plane on that date, an interesting variation on a theory that's been out there from the beginning.

I kind of like the idea of time travel being used to determine who the 815ers really are. There are certainly those who believe that explains Richard Alpert's appearance in young Locke's life. It could also explain the speed with which they compiled the information if you can leave time x on the Island and return to it with no time passing. I like that it restores some of the mystical and mysterious nature of the Others. But I suppose it could equally be a network of PIs Off Island.

2008-09-29T05:59:00.002-05:00

Does Life On Island Keep You Alive Off?

I heard this theory from a listener on Lost Unlocked. He theorized that the Island exists in the future and for that reason you can't die in the past off Island. And this explains why Michael, Jack and possibly Widmore can't die off Island because of the paradox it would create given that they were already alive in the future on Island.

I would guess at some point your timelines would cross and you could die off Island which makes Widmore's case particularly interesting. And it also raises the question about the Freighter's timeline with Michael on it. Is it now back on Island time thus he can die? It's an interesting theory, but I think all in all, it's not so much an avoidance of paradox but the Island's need of you that protects you.

2008-09-19T04:51:00.001-05:00

Do You Have To Create A Tornado In A Bottle To Get To The Island?

I know this is grasping at straws, but it still really bugs me how Desmond couldn't leave the Island on The Elizabeth and Juliet said that others on The Elizabeth couldn't either, but all of a sudden in Season 4 (well from Naomi's arrival in Season 3) the Island is reachable. The idea of Daniel going blithely back and forth in the Zodiac just about sends me over the edge.

So how's this for an explanation. My son created a tornado in a bottle.

With all the water in one bottle if you merely turn the bottles over very little water escapes from the top bottle to the bottom one. But if you swirl the bottle you create a vortex pushing the water to the sides of the bottle leaving an air pocket in the middle for the water to escape through into the bottom bottle. It also produces a visible tornado in the bottle.

As you recall at least when Frank's helicopter comes and goes from the Island in the first instance and taking Sayid and Desmond to the freighter, they passed through a storm. Now no cows or witches on broomsticks flew by, but it was stormy. So my theory is roughly that there needs to be a storm to create a vortex to pass from the bottle of the Island to the bottle of the rest of the world. Furthermore the discreet headings, 325 and 305 either a) take you through what is creating that vortex or b) is that place where just the little bit of water passes through.

This is probably bunk and I'm not sure we'll ever get an explanation for this question, but playing with my son's tornado in a bottle at least made me think of LOST -- surprise, surprise.

2008-09-18T05:50:00.001-05:00

What Kind of "Timers" Inhabit The Island?

More from Insomnia. Normal living human beings are known as Short-Timers. They (we) can only perceive our world with our five senses. There are 3 Long-Timers in the book who can perceive much more in the same physical space for example our auras which give a sense of our health and emotions and also when our end is near. Long-Timers experience time differently than we do. They live much, much longer and age differently. Then there are All-Timers who are immortal.

Additionally those who live longer have the ability to manipulate those who live shorter. The three main Long-Timers end the lives of Short-Timers and are also said to manipulate 3 Short-Timers in particular as if they were chess pieces on a board. Sound familiar? Additionally these Long-Timers are sent to perform these manipulations by others more higher ranking than they.

So I wonder -- Is Richard a Long-Timer? Ben? Widmore? In Insomnia these Long-Timers can't lie though they don't always answer questions and try to answer only what and to the extent that they desire. They also have to keep promises. This sounds a bit like Ben's ethos. They also can't interfere with each other directly, but need to use Short-Timer agents. Again this sounds like Richard, Ben and Widmore who seem to keep their hands technically clean. (Okay, not so much Ben, but the other 2.)

It also makes me wonder about Christian and Jacob and their manipulations of Short-Timers on the Island. Are they trying to get in on the chess game as well?

2008-09-17T06:27:00.000-05:00

Does Time Move Faster On the Island
When Its Inhabitants Go Up?

On my road to the Dark Tower I've detoured once again to Derry, Maine where Stephen King's novels It and now Insomnia take place. Characters in Insomnia are moving between levels of the Dark Tower, a building that somehow controls time and worlds and how time moves in worlds. When these humans move up the levels of the Tower allowing them to perceive more than is normally available to our five senses time begins to move at a significantly faster rate.

So I wonder if what's going on in terms of Island time and its failure to quite add up is movement by the Island or those on it through levels of time resulting in the rate at which time passes failing to be constant. I especially wonder this with Daniel's experiment. The rocket literally went up (and so do characters in Insomnia at least once) and then had a different time from Daniel's watch. Ben went somewhere when he turned the wheel and 10 months passed. Did he go up?

2008-09-16T05:36:00.001-05:00

Can Alpert Time Travel?

There are theories out there that Alpert and his appearances in Locke's young life are attributable to time travel. His lack of aging plays into that theory. But here's what I can't understand. How does Alpert control his time travel? The only physical time travel that we know we've seen so far is Ben post-donkey wheel turning. And I think it was pretty clear that Ben didn't know where or when he was going when that happened.

Has Alpert perfected the pinhole opening we see in the latest Marvin Candle video? And if so, why aren't others (like Ben) using it on Island as well? Or are they?

So what do you think?

2008-09-15T05:45:00.002-05:00

Can Richard Alpert Talk to Jacob?

We've been told that Richard is not the Island leader, he's the Island's No. 2

but how does he know that he's supposed to be looking for a new Number 1? Who sends Alpert after the baby Locke and the young Locke? Who tells him to co-opt Ben? And to get rid of Ben?

2008-09-12T10:39:00.001-05:00

Love Lives of The Others

I was thinking about how Juliet was recruited to the Island by Richard and Ethan and I wonder do The Others recruit only single people or do they recruit married couples? In other words

2008-09-02T06:02:00.002-05:00

How Was Alex's Death Ben's Fault?

I was listening to the showdown between Ben and Widmore in Widmore's bedroom and Widmore claimed Alex's death was Ben's fault.

WIDMORE: Don't stand there, looking at me with those horrible eyes of yours and lay the blame for the death of that poor girl on me, when we both know very well I didn't murder her at all, Benjamin. You did.

How's that? One argument is Ben's disavowal of Alex led to Keamy killing her, but how would Widmore know about that given the death of everyone who witnessed that?

Here's my new argument. I think Ben taking Alex from Rousseau was his attempt to course correct. Ben had been pulling a Desmond thwarting Alex's death right and left for 16 years. And the universe finally caught up with him. Alex's death at age 16 is Ben's fault because she was supposed to die as an infant when Rousseau went nuts again. I further predict we'll see this during Rousseau's story in Season 5.

2008-08-28T11:31:00.001-05:00

Will The Shoeless Others and 815ers Merge?

Boy it really is starting to feel like Survivor isn't it. At this point lots of people have been voted off via death and now a new set of people, the O6 + Ben and Desmond and Lapidus have been voted off as well. So is it time for the tribes to merge?

On the one hand we have the Locke "led" Richard Others which should also include Cindy, Zach, Emma and a handful of other Tailies plus some of those who purged Dharma and any newer recruits to the cause that weren't taken out since 815 arrived. And then we've got I'd guess roughly 20 815ers most notably Sawyer, Rose, Bernard and Frogurt plus Juliet and Miles and Charlotte and possibly Faraday and 3 or 4 others. And we've got the ultimate Island wildcard in Claire.

So what sort of interaction do you predict we'll see in Season 5. Presumably those left in the 815 camp are not list-worthy, but is there even anyone at Richard's camp (I refuse to put Locke as the leader of that group) who can even communicated with Jacob? Is the really bad thing that happens that Richard or Jacob tells Locke that they have to purge those not on the list? But then where will Sawyer and Vincent hide? Those are really the only 2 I care deeply about, especially Vincent. I'm a big yellow lab fan.

Any ideas?

2008-08-27T12:37:00.001-05:00

Sawyer -- Leader or Con Man?

I listened to The Transmission's recent Long Con podcast and they got into a discussion of Sawyer and his evolution. It led to speculation about what we can expect from Island-stranded Season 5 Sawyer and so I ask:

Online Surveys & Market Research

This is one of the things I'm really interested to see. Will Sawyer step up and assume the role Hurley created for him or will he remain an Every Man for Himself and allow Juliet to take charge? Who else might assume leadership? Rose?

2008-08-22T04:04:00.001-05:00

Did The Island Jump Up In The Air?

I'm reading a novel, The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt that centers around Nikola Tesla. Tesla proposes an idea that he could build a ring around the equator that is not subject to Earth's gravity so that a person could stand on the ring and the rest of the world was pass by in the course of a day as it turned on its axis. This made me wonder if the Island is moved similarly. It "jumps" for some period of time and stays stationary as the Earth turns under it and then ends up somewhere else when it lands. Just a crazy idea I thought I'd share.

2008-08-19T14:27:00.005-05:00

Why I'm Giving Up on the LOST ARG

Well, I had high hopes that the new LOST ARG announced during the Season 4 finale was going to be the thing that would keep LOST fans, and especially me, going until February 2009. So I waited the two months until Comic Con. Then I waited until the Monday after Comic Con. And I've waited and waited and despite saying it's coming today I'm still waiting and --

NOW I'M DONE!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like I've been waiting for the cable guy. This is worse than Bell South which gives you an 8am-5pm appointment. And after reflecting on what I learned from Find815 I now deem the frustration which this game is causing me in no way worth the amount of information I could possibly learn from the game. After all, Episode 4.2 gave us in 2 minutes what a month of playing Find815 gave us.

So I'm out. Good luck if you're going to keep playing. I'll still know when something happens given my current RSS feed subscriptions, but other than giving it a cursory glance that's it for me. Come end of January I'll check Lostpedia for the summary, but that's it. Later.

2008-08-17T17:03:00.002-05:00

Wolves of The Island

"[The] story has left me in a strangely disturbed frame of mind. I can't tell if it answers more questions than it raises, or the other way around." Wolves of the Calla p. 612

Book 5 of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Wolves of the Calla was probably the least LOST-like book so far in the series. It's a way station of sorts on the way to the Tower. A pregnancy project if you will. As Eddie realizes:

Even though their main goal is the Tower, they aren't exempt from participation in other "quests." . . . and had Eddie really thought there was no work left for the line of Arthur Eld in this mostly empty and husked-out world? That they would simply be allowed to toddle along the Path of the Beam until they got to Roland's Dark Tower and fixed whatever was wrong there? p. 144

But there are some large thematic things happening in Wolves that remind me of LOST and make me wonder if they are clues as to what's going on on our favorite Island.

The Nature of Time

The very nature of time itself, a commodity that has been slipping throughout the Dark Tower saga is very present in this book.

Time is a face on the water. . . . The saying might have been true when Roland had been a boy not much older than Jake Chambers, but Eddie thought it was even truer now, as the world wound down like the mainspring in an ancient watch. Roland had told them that even such basic things as the points of the compass could no longer be trusted in Mid-World; what was dead west today might be southwest tomorrow, crazy as that might seem. And time had likewise begun to soften. There were days Eddie could have sworn were forty hours long, some of them followed by nights (like the one on which Roland had taken them to Mejis) that seemed even longer. Then there would come an afternoon when it seemed you could almost see darkness bloom as night rushed over the horizon to meet you. Eddie wondered if time had gotten lost. pp. 45-46

It reminds me of the crazy way time seemed to act in Season 2 and also in Season 4 with Daniel Faraday's arrival. It was inconsistent. All of a sudden it was dark. It seemed like days on the Island before Sayid tried to call from the boat. The doc arrived before he was killed. Maybe time is running down on the Island too. Or it runs at different rates depending on external events as Eddie thinks. "When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when everything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether." p. 48

And time is not the only thing that's blurry. Eddie remarks, "The people are real. . . . But the way stuff from my world keeps showing up over here, that's not real. It's not sensible or logical, either, but that's not what I mean. It's just not real. p. 215 It makes me think of the Nigerian drug plane in particular. I still can't wait to find out how that got on the Island.

Even another character the main ka-tet meets along the way has experienced this time problem. Callahan says "For months--sometimes even years, as I tried to explain to you--time hardly seems to exist. Then everything comes in a gasp." p. 403 This reminds me of what's happened on Island since 815 crashed. Since the Purge the Others carried on in their day to day Land's End life in New Otherton and now "bam" the last 100 days have been insane. Same for Desmond. For 3 years all he did was push a button and now everything is coming in a gasp.

And we finally get a hint at what's going on with time when Roland, Eddie and Jake visit the Rose in New York. Eddie . . . saw the Tower itself in the burning folds of the rose and for a moment understood its purpose: how it distributed its lines of force to all the worlds that were and held them steady in time's great helix. . . . for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower. And the quiet, singing voice of the rose. "There are two hubs of existence," [Roland said] The Tower . . . and the rose." pp. 250-51 Is the Island also one of these hubs?

Travel Through Time and Space

Another big component of Wolves is the traveling the ka-tet does away from the Calla to 1977 New York. They manage this travel in two different ways. This first is by going "todash" which is a kind of very real dream. When it occurs, they pass between two worlds, the World they were sleeping in and the world of 1977 New York. And as they were "todashed" to New York only the barest bit of them remained in the other world. Could this explain Jacob? While Jake and Eddie were todash they flickerd on and off.

What's more we meet a group of people, the Manni-folk who regularly engage in this sort of travel. The "elder Manni seek the other worlds[.] Not for treasure but for enlightenment[.] [Roland] also knew that some had come back from their travels insane. Others never come back at all. These hills are magnetic, and riddled with many ways into many worlds." p. 533 I want to know if this is the sort of task that Richard wants to get his people back to.

There's even more time travel through alternate worlds in Callahan's story. While living in "our" world he often encountered "highways in hiding" that led to alternate Americas with different Presidents, different currencies and different town names.

And then there's a final form of travel and that's through a door, a door like those in Book 2 The Drawing of the Three, but to get through these doors you need a glass, Black 13 which was first introduced in Wizard and Glass. Using Black 13, the ka-tet and Callahan are able to direct their travels back to 1977 though there does seem to be rules.

Eddie believes that they can't go back in time via the door or todash to a point in 1977 New York they've already visited. If they were right about the rules, he couldn't go back to that day, not todash, not in the flesh either. If they were right, time over there was somehow hooked to time over here, only running a little faster. If they were right about the rules . . . if there were rules . . . p. 664

And as far as we can tell those rules do indeed hold, though they never really attempt to break them by going back to a day in New York they think has already past.

Can You Affect Time

But despite these forms of time travel, there are problems. For example, Black 13 tries to mess with you. It tempts you to in fact go back and do things differently.

Black 13 tempts you into going back and change things making you believe you will make them all better. Callahan says "I believe it lures people on to acts of terrible evil by whispering to them that they will do good. That they'll make things not just a little better but all better." p. 608

And these ideas continue to play out in the concept of ka and when you should meddle with it. For example, Roland tells Jake this advice from Roland's dad. "[W]hen you are unsure, you must let ka alone to work itself out." p. 508 Jake says this sounds like passing the buck. Roland emphasized again the "when one isn't sure about ka, it's best to let ka work itself out. If one medles, one almost always does the wrong thing." pp. 509-10 Sounds a lot like a Locke/Jack confrontation, though Locke is much more passive than Roland.

This is something I worry about with the O6 going back to the Island. The ka-tet discusses going back to prevent the Kennedy assassination and the fact that might have led to a worse person or people than Lee Harvey Oswald working to course correct. It makes me wonder if Desmond saving Charlie made things worse. And will Jack and the O6's return in the face of the "bad things" that happened when they left result in good things or just another form of bad things?

General References

Finally, a list of basic similarities.

There are magic numbers in the book. Nineteen appears over and over in the tree branches, in the clouds, in the number of petals of the rose and the number of letters in peoples' names. Also 99 and combinations like 1999. They also add other numbers up to 19 like the most rabid of LOST fans.

Susannah compares their experience with crossovers between worlds as a Dickens novel.

There's a reference to the Red Sox winning the Series. They had not at the time.

There are several businesses that show up in all worlds, LeMark Industries, Sombra Corp., North Central Positronics. It reminds me of the everpresent Widmore.

There's a message on a loop.

There's a reference to George and Lennie from Of Mice and Men.

When the Low Men finally catch Callahan, they do it at an office building. Callahan remarks that most of the people there seem to be "extras," "stage-dressing," "a set-up . . . as elaborate as a Hollywood movie."

Callahan dies by falling out a window -- 32, not 8 stories.

Callahan crossed with Roland and Jake all the way back in Book 1 much like Jack crossed with Shannon at her father's death.

Susannah sneaks off from the group at night. This reminds me of Claire getting up and wandering off with Christian in the middle of the night.

The Jafford's special child is named Aaron.

Twins are the focus of the Calla story. And I'm still waiting for Bad Twin to be relevant.

In the Cave of the Voices/Doorway Cave you hear voices of people from your past. "The voices are coming from your own head. The cave finds them and amplifies them somehow. Sends them on. It's a little upsetting, I know, but it's meaningless." p. 662 This is a lot like Sawyer's encounter with the boar in particular and sometimes the Whispers.

Eddie refers to himself as being exiled from New York, yet he can return through todash and the door. Will that be true for Ben too?

The technology left behind by the "Old People" is technology of our world, of 20th century America. Reminds me of DIs left behind tech and that left behind by the 4-toes.

Jake finds a monitoring station full of TV screens fed by hidden cameras a la The Pearl, The Flame and The Hydra.

Andy the robot is tired of being dissed. Reminds me of Roger Workman and later Ben Workman.

And finally, we are briefly introduced to the Breakers who are telepaths and psychokinetics, i.e. "special."

So my quest for the Tower continues on. I'm going to have to add Salem's Lot to the reading list now. The general plan is to read Book 6 before the start of Season 5. Then read Insomnia and Book 7 before the start of Season 6. Until then, remember the face of your father.

2008-08-11T09:00:00.001-05:00

How Does Locke Know the O6 Are Alive?

It dawned on me as I speculated about the O6's return to the Island, how did Locke know he could leave the Island and go look for them? Last those on the Island knew was this:

which drove Juliet to drink and I'm begging you writers, not into the arms of Sawyer. Why would anyone on the Island have any reason to believe 6 people survived?

The couldn't watch the O6s return from the Flame:

This guy's not around to rig up something:

Nor this one:

So were they able to communicate from this location?

Or did these folks see the helicopter escape?

What's your best guess?

2008-07-30T05:51:00.006-05:00

A Couple of Season 5 Ideas From Comic Con . . . And Plans

I'm going to try to put this in a dark font so that you have to highlight it to read, but CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED that I intend to talk about ideas I've come up with as a result of information released about Season 5 during Comic Con. There are some broad spoilers in that material and I'll be talking about them. If you don't want to know STOP NOW! No, I mean it.

Okay, you were warned. Here goes:

So I think Jin is definitely dead. The reason I think this is that they said the redshirts ferried to the Freighter are dead. It would take a Heroes level of incredulity to believe that everyone near the boat but Jin died. So while I love Jin, and frankly can't figure out how he's going to continue to be in the story if he's dead, something else they confirmed, I hope for the sake of the story he's dead.

I think we won't see Locke's death until the final 1 or 2 hours of Season 5. Why show it any sooner? You've got at least 2 1/2 years of storytelling to do in 17 hours, so of course they are going to drag out Locke's return to the real world and his death.

And finally -- the thing I'm most looking forward to in Season 5 is Rousseau's story! There's no way they'll manage to answer all the questions I have about her I'm sure, but I'm ready, willing and able to take anything they'll give me, and I can't wait.

My one regret about Comic Con, other than my absence from it, is that no one asked the questions I wanted answers to. Oh yeah, and that I didn't get to get up close and personal with Matthew Fox like this fan. And be forewarned, it looks like from that photo that he got another new tattoo on his inner right arm. Yes I looked that closely. But thankfully with only 34 hours left there is no time for another Jack tattoo story. There isn't! You hear me Damon and Carlton?

Now for the near future . . . School starts in 3 weeks (from this past Monday), so my plan is to take a blogging break until that kicks in. Then I think I may start rewatching, maybe 1 episode from Season 4 a week. We'll see. And of course, I'm following the OGR ARG. And you can too starting over at Lost ARGs. Hopefully that will keep us entertained for the remainder of the hiatus. And keep me from being tempted to look at the spoilers which will start trickling out in the next few weeks.

2008-07-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

More Sharing

If you like LOST Funnies, and who doesn't, be sure to check out After LOST.

One of my favorites is the one after the Season 4 finale. You can see it here.

2008-07-28T06:04:00.000-05:00

Sharing From The Blog-O-Sphere

I am so far behind in reading LOST related stuff you would not believe it. I still haven't read all of Doc Jensen's finale review! And if TLE II really kicks off in the next few days I may never get there, but . . .

With 6 more months to go until Season 5 (and frankly 6 sounds so much better than 8) I have no fear that by the time Episode 5.1 gets here I'll be ready.

In the meantime, here's a fun thing to discuss: The Top 30 WFT?! Moments In LOST History. This blogger has even included clips. I'll just hit my personal highlights.

#29 -- I was spoiled by Entertainment Weekly, but Kate's look in discovering Jack playing football in Othersville was priceless.

A lot of Jess, the blogger's, later WTF moments come from Seasons 1 and 2. Those would rank higher for me. For example, the first time I found out Ethan wasn't on the manifest for example was a total shocker for me and would rank in my personal Top 10.

Jess's #11, the world finding 815 does not rate as a WTF moment for me, at least not when it occurred in Season 4. Now when Naomi first mentioned it in Season 3--that rated a WTF, though I'd put it in the 20s.

#10 -- Michael shooting Ana Lucia and Libby. This was one of the giant ones for me. I could not sleep the night after that aired. And I couldn't make myself re-watch the episode for a while knowing it was coming. In an episode where I felt certain that Ana Lucia would die, the execution (literally) of this story left me speechless and completely unsettled.

#9 -- The end of Walkabout. This is where it all started for me. When it turned out Locke was in a wheelchair I could not get the next disc of Season 1 fast enough (yeah, I didn't watch Season 1 live.) I tell people who want to jump on the LOST bandwagon now to watch Disc 1 of Season 1, and if you aren't hooked by the end of Walkabout, this show is not for you.

#4-#8 don't really qualify as the big WTF moments for me. For some reason Locke being in the coffin just has not ignited me the way other things have. I'm sure it's probably my wanting it to be Michael as I had thought most of the past year has something to do with that. But still the prospect of a Season 6 with no Locke or zombie Locke leaves me making a face. And not a good face.

Finally, I can buy Jess's Top 3. I can't wait to find out WTF happened when Ben turned that wheel. I can't make myself re-watch Tom Friendly say "we're gonna have to take the boy." As the mother of a boy that gives me too many chills, and even though I grew to like Tom, I don't regret Sawyer killing him for that reason. And finally, the S3 finale. I loved, loved, loved that moment. I bit hook, line and sinker and I hope TPTB will get me again and again in the remaining 34 hours.

2008-07-25T06:03:00.001-05:00

Why the Lie?

I'm not the only one wondering about the ridiculously convoluted lie Jack concocts for the O6 to tell upon their return. At the recent ABC TCA (Television Critics Association) event, Alan Sepinwall asked the same thing. Here it is in case you missed it.

I thought about [what question to ask] for a while, looked back over the reactions to each episode, and eventually decided to ask a question about why, in retrospect, Jack came up with the Oceanic Six plan, which was far more convoluted than necessary considering it was voluntary. (I had been assuming for much of the season that they were forced into leaving the island and following the lie by some outside force.)

So I gave it a shot, but Lindelof, sneaky bastard, was ready for me.

He not only nodded and smiled at the sound of my voice, but in response to my question, explained, "It's actually a funny story. We were sitting halfway through the season, and we had come up with this simple, streamlined, non-convoluted excuse, and I turned to Carlton and said, 'Alan Sepinwall might actually like this, so what we ought to do is come up with something incredibly convoluted so he can bust our balls at press tour.' And he said, 'Let's do that! He'll never fall for it.' Lo and behold, here we are."

At that point, the only thing I could say was "Touche."

I'm looking forward to bootleg copies of the Doc Jensen hosted panel at Comic Con on Friday.

1:45-2:45 Entertainment Weekly’s The Visionaries: Showrunners— Carlton Cuse (Lost), Damon Lindelof (Lost), Josh Schwartz (Chuck, Gossip Girl), Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies), and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) are the television producers who are changing the face of television with deeply immersive entertainments marked by distinctive, cutting edge storytelling. They have also been at the forefront of bringing "genre programming" or "cult TV" to the mainstream. Prepare for a candid conversation about creative integrity in a commercial medium and the future of broadcast TV in an increasingly digital world. Spoiler Alert! Upcoming plot developments may be teased. Moderated by Entertainment Weekly senior writer Jeff Jensen. Room 6CDEF

Maybe we'll get some more from that.

2008-07-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Why Does Hurley Wish He'd Stayed With Jack?

Is it because if he'd hung on the beach odds are Hurley like Rose, Bernard, Juliet and a handful of log-carrying guys would still be on the Island instead of lying to the world? That would be an interesting twist to that declaration.

2008-07-23T06:00:00.002-05:00

Why Doesn't Locke Just Tell Jack About The Wheelchair?

So I'm sloooowwwwwllly winding my way through Doc Jensen's finale recap, and here's the question I have after the how many is it now Man of Science/Man of Faith leadership stuff showdowns. When Jack says to Locke "There's no such thing as miracles," why doesn't Locke tell him about his squiggly, squiggly legs which didn't work for 4 years and now work?

2008-07-22T06:00:00.003-05:00

Ben's Motivation

Do you think Ben is motivated more by the Island and it's long-term goals or his own?

At the end of Season 3 Ben insists to Alex that he can't let anyone leave the Island. I guess in large part this is so no one will tell the rest of the world about the Island. By the end of Season 4 he seems completely fine with letting Kate and Sayid leave given their role in freeing him from Keamy and the rest of the Freighter Merc Crew. What's changed? Once he realizes he has to leave is he not concerned with who else leaves? Is he confident that no one on the Freighter will survive? His "So?," one of the most chilling lines of the entire series, brings his entire no one leaves plan to fruition. Another case of the Island taking care of its own.

As we enter Season 5 and the quest for the return to the Island, I still wonder what motivates Ben. Revenge? Power? Mere self-preservation? Or is it whatever is motivating The Island?

And what the heck does The Island want?

2008-07-21T06:00:00.001-05:00

Bentham's Mission

Time for back to basics. I'm looking at some S4 finale things and notice that apparently Locke's mission when he came back to "our world" was to convince Jack and Kate if not the rest of the O6 to come back to the Island. So here's some questions:

I guess this means that I think Locke did NOT turn the donkey wheel. I'd guess in his attempts to get Jack, Kate and Aaron to return to the Island Locke thought he himself could return to the Island.

I also wonder why someone would kill Locke, but not Jack, Kate and Aaron which doesn't seem like it would be that difficult. Jack tells Kate he wants to go back to keep Aaron and Kate safe. Safe from whom? Safe from the people who just killed Locke? Who killed Nadia? More Kate on the run. Gee. Can't wait for that. (Read with great sarcasm.)

2008-07-18T06:00:00.001-05:00

Watch Kate's Husband Sing and Save The World!

This doesn't really have anything to do with LOST, but I really enjoy it, and you might too. And it does feature Nathan Fillion who played the schmuck who married the truthful "Monica" also known to us as Kate Austen.

BTW a quick Google search suggests that Kevin did not need to divorce Monica/Kate because her use of a fake name would make the original marriage invalid. So that necklace is up for grab ladies.

2008-07-17T06:05:00.003-05:00

What Question Would You Ask At ComicCon?

Anyone whose read my posts over at The Lost Community could probably guess that my number 1 question for Damon and Carlton is:

What the heck is the wreckage of 815 doing in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia when it was flying from Sydney to LA, a northeast route, and why the heck aren't the families of the almost 320 non-6 raising a giant stink about this?

And another thing I want to know is: What's happened to the cloaking device/storm around the Island that is evident when Naomi arrives, when the Freighties first come to the Island and in The Constant, but does not seem to be present after that as the Zodiac goes back and forth (and don't give me the heading crap; you try steering a 305 course in a Zodiac on the ocean and see how easy it is), the helicopter goes back and forth and the freighter is visible from the Island?

And finally, what's up with Horace's dream ghost telling Locke he'd been dead 12 years and Alex being 16? Was a) Horace wrong on the dates, as ghosts are wont to be; or b) did Danielle survive the purge?

So if you got to go to ComicCon and you got to ask a question what would it be?

2008-07-16T06:00:00.001-05:00

Who Decided Alex Could Die?

Another idea from Lost Unlocked -- did Widmore specifically tell Keamy that he could kill Alex (or any child of Ben's) or was it Keamy's brilliant idea to kill Alex as leverage? In other words, was it Widmore who really changed the rules, or Keamy?

2008-07-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

Does Hurley See Dead People?

I heard this on Lost Unlocked. First one listener posited the idea that Hurley is like Miles and sees dead people. That explains how he sees Charlie, Mr. Eko and on Island Christian Shephard. The listener further posited that Dave is dead and that's why Hurley sees him too. He's not seeing an imaginary friend, just a dead guy.

Feedback on the idea took it even further speculating that Dave was Libby's husband and the reason that Hurley sees him both on the Island and at Santa Rosa is that Dave is haunting Libby, but Hurley sees dead people, so he sees him at Santa Rosa and on the Island. Dave might also have driven Hurley to try to kill himself on Island to keep him away from his wife Libby.

So what do you think?

2008-07-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

Can You Get To The Island On Purpose?

I've been thinking about how Damon and Carlton have referred to the Island as being a land like Narnia or Wonderland or Oz, and that makes me wonder if Jack and Ben's scheming to return to the Island has any chance for success.

The Pevensie children could not get to Narnia unless Narnia wanted them get there. For example, the wardrobe itself wasn't always open. Lucy got through, then later when she showed her siblings she just found a back wall, and later again they were able to get to Narnia through the Wardrobe. But by the end of that episode the Wardrobe is no longer a viable portal to Narnia.

In later trips they get to Narnia from a subway platform, a train coach, looking at a painting in a bedroom and hiding in the woods. The one key was that until Narnia wanted them they weren't able to get there no matter how much they wanted to go.

The same is true with Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. She gets there once through a rabbit hole and once through a looking glass, but she never seems to be able to recreate her visits to Wonderland.

And of course there's arrival here:

Again, unplanned and unreproducable, much like this:

Now that I think about Jack's idea of flying around the Pacific is probably a pretty good one, because much like the fictional lands of Narnia, Wonderland and Oz, getting to the Island may be more something that it decides than someplace you decide to travel to.

2008-07-11T06:00:00.002-05:00

Another Thought About Claire

So I really hate the idea that Claire died in the rocket blast on her house and has been a walking zombie ever since. So I have another idea. What if the shots given to Claire first by Ethan and then Juliet have heightened Claire's "specialness" which allows her to see Christian? I'd also argue that in the cabin Claire has been given more Ethan style happy juice, possibly as an additional accompaniment to more of these shots.

Now who else do we know has had similar shots? Well, a young Dharma Initiative child named Ben who just happens to see his dead mother on the Island. I'd argue that whatever is in these shots heightened Ben's specialness as well. Did the Dharma Initiative know what it was up to with these shots? Much as in the case of time traveling bunnies perhaps they had a rudimentary understanding, but were incapable of conceiving of such grand results in a certain chosen few.

And who else had those shots? Desmond -- a guy who kept seeing a dead Charlie before he was dead. Maybe in Desmond's case the combined effect of the shots and turning the failsafe key crossed his wires so that he also saw dead people only future, not current dead people.

2008-07-10T06:00:00.002-05:00

Were The Four-Toed People Time Travellers?

I read H.G. Wells The Time Machine back in April of course looking for clues about LOST. I have to say from a literary standpoint I did not enjoy this book. Like Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad it's essentially a 100 page recitation of what happens to one completely undeveloped character. In fact, the character doesn't even have a name, he is merely The Time Traveller.

The Time Traveller builds a time machine in his home that allows him to move in time though not in the other three dimensions of space. The Time Traveller looks forward to what he can learn from the future. He expects great innovation and peace. Instead he finds technology-less imbeciles who cower in the darkness as buildings crumble around them coupled with carnivorous tunnel-dwellers. Once he manages to escape a cannibalized fate he can't get back to his own time fast enough.

Having now seen the hieroglyph surrounded donkey wheel, my question is did the 4-toed people make a similar trip into our time? Like the Time Traveller, were the ancient Island people so repulsed by the backwardness of society in our day that they gave up on time travel? And what's more did they give up on attempting to survive as a race given this horrible future abandoning the Island to Dharma and its likes, or will we still meet a 4-toed person?

One final note -- when the Time Traveller time travelled he and his device disappeared from his house and it returned to the same physical space once he got back to our time. This is similar to what many think happened to the Island when Ben turned the wheel. The big question then is how will the Island get back to our time and will it require someone (Locke?) to operate the device again to accomplish that feat? [And if this is indeed the case it still makes me wonder why Widmore doesn't just stake out that ocean location until it reappears.]

2008-07-09T06:00:00.002-05:00

Who Else Does Widmore Know Got Off The Island?

SUN: Are you really going to pretend that you don't know who I am?
WIDMORE: I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Ms. Kwon.
SUN: Yes, you do know, Mr. Widmore... just like you know we've been lying all this time about where we were and what happened to us there. You and I have common interests. When you're ready to discuss them...
(Sun hands Widmore her Paik Industries business card from her pocket.)
SUN: Call me. As you know, we're not the only ones who left the island.
(Sun turns and begins to walk away. Widmore calls after her.)
WIDMORE: Ms. Kwon? Why would you want to help me?

So what's your take on Sun? Who is it that Widmore knows left the Island?

And why does Sun want to work with Widmore?

2008-07-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

Basic Question -- Who Killed Locke?

Earlier I asked if Locke died. As with all LOST characters, even the infamous Nikki and Paolo there are those out there who believe Locke is not dead. But I think he is as did the majority of people who voted in my previous poll. So for arguments sake let's say Occam's razor applies and Locke is dead -- who killed him?

2008-07-07T06:00:00.002-05:00

This Better Not Be The End of LOST

There are so many people dying on that Island these days, I'm starting to get worried that the end is the O6 returning to the Island, some more of them dying, Jack and Kate becoming Adam and Eve and all the other dead ones gathered around them at the caves. What's more, all the dead people will be forced to wear the LOST Wigs of Doom in order to look like they did when they died on the Island.

I'm calling it now -- I will NOT be happy if I am right.

2008-07-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

Happy 4th of July

Enjoy the day and my favorite scene from Season 4 of LOST.

2008-07-03T06:00:00.004-05:00

What Explains The 2 Photos?

Any new ideas about how we end up with 2 Desmond/Penny photos?

2008-07-02T06:00:00.001-05:00

Why Isn't Widmore Satisfied?

At the end of Season 4 Widmore has everything he wanted right? Ben is alive and off the Island. That was the stated goal. Now clearly Widmore is NOT satisfied, or he wouldn't be sleeping with his MacCutcheon.

So what's wrong Chuck? What was your real game? Was it also your mission to kill Alpert and all the natives? Is that what's got you up at night? Were you supposed to regain control over the Island? To what end? Are you working on solving the Valenzetti Equation problem or something else?

2008-07-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

Is Ben Using The O6 To Kill Penny?

I guess Ben wouldn't really need all the O6 per se to find Penny, but could Ben's game plan be merely using the O6 to get his Widmore revenge and even possibly eliminate the O6 themselves in the process? After all none of them were on "the list." If you turn the wheel, you can't go back (and why would Ben have lied to Locke at that point?), does Ben have a different plan altogether?

2008-06-30T06:00:00.001-05:00

Are There 2 Bens Like There Are 2 Bunnies?

Another Jay and Jack caller theory. This caller speculated that Ben can't return to the Island because turning the wheel produced two of him, one on and one off Island. Ben off Island can't return because of the possibility of colliding with Ben on Island. I personally am not a great fan of this theory, but what does everyone else think?

2008-06-27T06:00:00.002-05:00

How Does Daniel Know About The Secondary Protocol?

There's something really squirrelly about Daniel Faraday in the finale. It seems clear he knows that Ben is going to move the Island. But it also seems clear he doesn't know the freighter is going to blow up because he's intent on reaching it with as many people as possible. Any ideas how Daniel knows this?

My first idea is that Daniel has been trusted by Widmore with documentation from the Dharma Initiative about The Orchid. Daniel has information in his notebook about that station. And he knows what the phrase secondary protocol means. Before this the only people who had access to this secondary protocol were Keamy and Captain Gault and they both needed to be present to access it.

Or could it be the case that Daniel is time traveling? That he's seen the Island move before? And if that's the case, why doesn't he stay with Charlotte? Surely any log-carrying guy could drive the Zodiac at a 305 heading. Why does Daniel feel he must do it especially after all the radiation he's been exposed to?

2008-06-26T06:01:00.000-05:00

Who Has To Go Back?

Vote for all the people you think must go back to the Island.

And why would all of them need to go back? Locke never told anyone but Jack that they didn't need to leave. He never made the case to Kate, Sun, Hurley, etc. And he had lots of opportunity with Hurley this season. And he knows what Kate did and that the Others don't want her for that reason. So why do they all need to go back now?

2008-06-25T06:01:00.000-05:00

I'm Not A Fan of Popular Mechanics

That's a broad generalization. While I'm not very mechanical, my husband is the scientist in the family; I'm the linguist and historian -- we make a deadly Trivial Pursuit team, it's actual Popular Mechanics Theory of Island Movement that I'm not a fan of. The analogy they draw is that the Island is in location x and that turning the frozen donkey wheel was equivalent of building a bypass around it. Staying on the bypass you never run into town, but the town (the Island) is still in the same location.

But I'm not buying it. The helicopter crashed within 5 km or miles of the Island. They did not seem to drift for long before Penny's boat picked them up. Surely, they used Penny's boat to go back and forth over the site they believed the Island to exist. Surely they looked for some evidence that Jin or others survived the freighter blast. Or are they so self-centered (Seinfeldian in that self-centeredness) that they immediately began motoring for the Indian Ocean? I just don't see how in an ocean without roads they can't find that Island if it is still there, bypass or no bypass.

Now I can understand the idea that the Island is somewhat like Narnia in that it is not in fact in our world and that turning the wheel forever reinserted the back panel of the wardrobe. But if that's the case, I feel like they played fast and loose in the latter half of Season 4 what with Doctor Ray and his fresh wound. By the end of Season 4 it felt like you could come and go from the Island in any direction and you'd get there, though there might be consequences you didn't prefer. What's more you could clearly see the freighter from the Island and vice versa and you could see it all from the helicopter. No interference.

This also really makes me wonder how the Dharma Initiative ever figured out how to safely come and go from the Island. Did Alpert teach them? Did he teach a Hanso?

As for what idea I do like, I think the Island literally got sucked into the ocean and will pop back up somewhere else. That could lead to very bad things. I also love the idea that this explains how the Black Rock got to the center of the Island. The Island popped up under it. I also like the idea that the Nigerian drug plane could have gotten there similarly or that it could have been sucked in from the Tunisian desert as a polar bear was spit out. After all Ben moved both physically and in time, so why shouldn't that also be the case with the Island?

2008-06-24T06:00:00.001-05:00

Whoever moves the island can never come back.

Why? My favorite theory, and I've heard this a couple of places is that turning the wheel has exposed Ben to such a high level of radiation/magnetism/other that trying to return to the Island would lead to death a la Minkowski and Eloise, constant or no constant. Why do you think Ben can't return to the Island? Or do you think he can?

And here's a corollary to the question. There are those who speculate that Widmore turned the wheel in the past. Do you think he did? And if he did, why was he looking for the Island again if Island movers can't come back. And what about Christian Shephard and Locke? Did they move the Island too?

2008-06-23T19:47:00.004-05:00

How Cool Is This?

Check out Wordle.

2008-06-23T06:00:00.001-05:00

Mummy Penny?

I heard this one on Jay and Jack too. Why didn't they leave Aaron with Penny and avoid the whole Kate was 6 months pregnant when the Marshall picked her up lie?

2008-06-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Were Charlotte and Daniel on the Up and Up?

I heard this on Jay and Jack. A caller speculated that Daniel and Charlotte lied about what they were up to in The Tempest. Lying?!? On LOST?!? The caller thinks rather than rendering poison that Ben could use inert, Daniel shut off a barrier that existed between the Island and the Freighter. I like that idea. After than episode it did seem like people went back and forth between the two much more easily than they had before that event. What do you think?

2008-06-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

Lost IT

I just finished all 1090 pages of Stephen King's IT. I decided to read IT because it was recommended by another person on a LOST board. While not the most overtly LOST-connected book in the Stephen King pantheon, there are some similarities between the two.

One clear connection has to do with the method of story-telling. There's real time stories, flashbacks and differing points of view constantly in the book. Part 5 in particular changes back and forth from main characters in the past to main characters in the present to subordinate characters in the story. And there's often a blending of past and present. As one character reflects: Is something really stapling the past and present together here, or am I only imagining it? A regular mobius strip.

There's also a circularity or repeating of patterns that take place throughout the story. But rather than literally having things repeat, patterns repeat but with the circumstances varying every 25 or so years. What's more the main characters who realize they need to repeat this pattern can't remember what they had done before. Their memories are blank when it comes to key items, and part of the story is them regaining their memory in order to accomplish the task they need to accomplish.

This repetition notion intrigues me looking forward to the O6s return to the Island. Will they have to try to re-do something? Will they have all their memories of the Island or have they successfully repressed them? And of course Ben's incredible ability to outplay everyone still makes me wonder if he's somehow repeating a pattern.

Another huge thing similarity between IT and LOST is the nature of the bad guy. IT's bad guy can appear to you as whatever your personal worst nightmare is. That's clearly reminiscent of what the Island or Smokey is up to when it appears as things from your personal experience. And in IT others can see your nightmare just like Sawyer saw Kate's horse.

According to the book this type of creature exists in many cultures -- a Glamour in Gaelic, a Manitou by the Plains Indians, a Tallus or Taelus in the Himalayas, an Eylak in Central Europe and Le Loup-Garou in France. While I think Smokey is manmade (and out of control), it's interesting to think of a culture creating a machine that would duplicate this sort of monster.

Also looking forward to the return of the O6 to the Island, the children in IT found that 7 was a magic number that gave them power. I guess if you count Locke and Ben, but not Aaron and Ji Yeon you could get to 7 Island returnees in LOST. Of course you could also get 7 by adding Ji Yeon to the O6. While 7 is not one of THE Numbers, I think we're about in need of some magic numbers. Maybe 7 will be one.

Place is key in IT as it is in LOST. The pull and power and magic doesn't exist outside of Derry, Maine. The Island on the other hand seems to have much more influence outside of its physical sphere. How much of that is real, how much is psychological remains to be seen.

As a side note for those who've read Watership Down as well, Derry, Maine reminds me of Cowslip's Warren. Derry has made an unacknowledged deal with IT same as those rabbits. Every so often loved ones will be lost, but in general there will be prosperity as long as those losses continue.

And finally -- there's a love triangle. ;-p (and reproduction problems.)

2008-06-18T06:00:00.002-05:00

Locke, Leader or Ultimate Scapegoat?

Jeremy Bentham shows up in the real world and tells Jack that "after I left the island, some very bad things happened. And he told me that it was my [Jack's] fault for leaving. And he said that I had to come back. But I'm thinking the bad things may come from Locke's presence more than Jack's absence or possibly even from Ben's absence. After all who did Christian Shephard and Claire tell to move the Island -- Locke. But Locke didn't move the Island, Ben did.

It reminds me of how Locke was supposed to take care of Sheriff's Deputy Eddie, but didn't. How little Locke was supposed to pick the things that belonged to him, but didn't. How he was supposed to kill his dad, but didn't. How Locke was supposed to push the button, but didn't. Once again, Locke is given a task, and he can't even find the flowers.

Now arguably, Locke didn't have the know how had he gotten into the Orchid to move the Island, but maybe the Island would have given him further instructions. But if Locke had been able to get into the Orchid in a timely manner and moved the Island (never to return) he would have trapped Jack on it. So whose fault is it John?

2008-06-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

Charlotte Speculation

Credit this post to a comment made by Twinkle over at The Lost Community, and her curiosity about Charlotte. There's No Place Like Home gives us two clues to Charlotte's story. First Miles says she worked a long time to get back to the Island. Then she tells Daniel she's looking for where she was born.

The idea that Charlotte was born on the Island is the most intriguing idea to me. Does this mean she was conceived off the Island, say on a DI Senior trip to Cancun? Or is it the case that at some point in the DI's history women could safely conceive and give birth on the Island? And if it's B, what changed things? I suppose it could also be option C, conceived on Island, born off like Ji Yeon.

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I'm not a giant fan of the various theories linking Charlotte to Annie primarily because it's going to require me to suspend disbelief about time once again. Charlotte being Annie is the least likely to me since in that case she should be as old as Ben absent some giant time issue which has yet to materialize despite incessant internet theorizing. I'm more inclined to accept Charlotte is Ben and Annie's daughter although that makes the Senior Trip theory most likely. And as Twinkle pointed out it makes the idea that Ben was so gung ho to raise Alex more explicable. The fact that Ben would shoot Charlotte doesn't bother me. Ben's recitation of Charlotte's CV sounded like her googled up life story, not one Ben knew himself. But I think I'd prefer her to be a Goodspeed or some other child of the DI. Maybe Annie's little sister. Timewise that theory works best for me.

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2008-06-16T06:00:00.001-05:00

We Have To Go Back . . .

The more I think about it, the more I think it's not the case that the O6 have to go back to the Island, but that they have to go back to the Island by going back in time. The reason for going back so far has been held out as "bad things" happened when they left and therefore they have to go back. And the thing I can't figure out if why going back after the bad things have happened helps.

The other thing that makes me think that going back in time is necessary is Ben's idea that he can go and they need Locke's body. Ben tells Locke that a person who moves the Island can't return. So does Ben think he can take the O6 and dead Locke back in time before he turned the donkey wheel and beat the universe at its own game? Can you go back to that place in 4-dimensional space-time before you turned the wheel?

And what point in space-time would you go back to? I guess they are looking at a point after 815 crashed if you need the O6, but does that mean you need Desmond too? And what about the kids -- Aaron, Ji Yeon, and Walt? Can you take a 3-year-old Aaron back to when he was 2 months old? A born Ji Yeon to when she was in utero or even earlier? Or do Aaron and Ji Yeon get a pass which might explain Kate needing to go back, but not taking Aaron.

Talk about your alternate universes and time lines! But I'm willing to buy that sort of thing at least in a final season. I just still can't figure out why go back after the cat's been let out of the bag, and how Ben's involvement would work.

2008-06-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

So What The Heck Is Up With Claire?

Here's the big problem I have with Claire being killed in the rocket attack. What makes her an instant zombie when we've seen tons of other people on the Island die without the same effect? Boone died and it took a while to get him in the ground. Ana Lucia especially took a long time to bury. She laid there in the Swan Hatch while Libby bled out. But if Claire isn't dead, what is the deal? Any ideas? (And would a zombie need a band aid?)

2008-06-12T06:00:00.004-05:00

Wishing I had a Wizard and Glass To Figure Out LOST

Just like LOST, I'm now more than halfway through Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and I still don't know what's going on. Though I do think I have a better handle on Roland's quest than the quest of Ben or any of the 815ers. Things from book 4 Wizard and Glass that remind of LOST follow.

Guys, Where Are We?

First a brief summary of where we are in our quest for the Dark Tower. Roland, a gunslinger from Gilead has put together a posse of sorts to search for the Dark Tower. That group or ka-tet consists of Eddie, former heroine junkie from 1980s New York, Susannah, a woman who can't walk because she has no legs from 1960s New York, Jake, an 11-year-old boy from 1970s New York, and Oy, a billy-bumbler, a sort of dog from Mid-World. The group is currently riding on a monorail train named Blaine and they are engaged in a riddle contest. If the group wins the contest by stumping Blaine, Blaine will deliver them to Topeka without killing them. If Blaine wins by having all the answers he will kill them all by driving at rapid speed into a wall. Now, on to the interesting, at least to me, things.

Each One of Us . . .

One of the main themes of all these books is the concept of ka, a word that means most simply fate but also includes a notion of sovereignty and inevitability. But that doesn't mean who we are and how we act doesn't matter as Eddie points out to Roland when he tells the dour gunslinger "[y]ou can't help your nature." p. 60

"The gunslinger considered this carefully, and discovered something that was wonderful and awful at the same time: that idea had never occurred to him. Not once in his whole life. That he was a captive of ka--this he had known since earliest childhood. But his nature...his very nature..." p. 60

This concept of both fate and nature surround our LOSTies. Locke feels it is his fate to be on the Island, to protect and serve it, but he can't get past his giant patsy nature. Jack has known since childhood that he has to learn to let it go, but he can't.

This passage and Roland's view of ka particularly reminds me of Season 1 "a sacrifice the Island demanded" Locke:

"So [Roland] had done [made a choice], believing in his youthful arrogance that everything would turn out all right for no other reason--yes, at bottom he had believed this--than that he was he, and ka must serve his love." p. 429

Guys, When Are We?

Time and its unreliability, alternate worlds with both alternate wheres and whens, and doors to those worlds play a huge role in The Dark Tower series, but the LOST PTB have ruled out alternate worlds as an explanation for the show, so I won't dwell on that too much. But I will mention that this book includes Bermuda Triangle like places called thinnies which are implied to be doors between worlds. Ones appearance is attributed to an earthquake. Some similar opening could exist on the Island due to the volcano we've heard briefly about.

When Did You Ever Tell The Complete Truth?

The bulk of Wizard and Glass is a flashback like the one we in Meet Kevin Johnson. That is it is a flashback narrated by the character himself, so the question of the reliability of the narrator is certainly at issue. Interestingly parts of the flashback that Roland himself could not have participated in were shown to him in the crystal-ball-like glass, but the reliability of the glass's narration should be looked at skeptically as well.

Repeatedly the ball showed Roland and others only what it wanted to them to know in order to get them to act in a certain way, a different way than they might have acted had they had all the facts. Ironically it doesn't lie to them, but it misdirects by omitting key facts and revealing others.

This selective revelation reminds me of Smokey's encounters with Locke and the dreams on the Island. The LOSTies have been shown some things and they take them to mean they should do one thing, when in fact if they'd had more information they might have done something else entirely. Think Charlie's kidnapping of Aaron.

Ben's refusal to reveal to the LOSTies all he knows acts similarly. As we've debated since the end of Season 3, given what he knows, of course Jack called the boat. No one has told him or shown him anything that would logically make him do otherwise. But as happens with Roland, selective revelation leads to certain actions and later to regret once all the facts are revealed, eh bearded future Jack?

Reliability of memory is also explicitly called out in the book in essentially the notion that it is the winners who write history. Roland and his friends are framed for a crime they didn't commit and Deputy Dave knows it. But as Roland remarks to himself: "It was just part of the frame, and none of these men believed much of it, Dave likely included. Although, Roland supposed, they would come to believe it in later years and tell it to their children and grandchildren as gospel." p. 498 It sounds a lot like Jack telling his O6 story so much that Kate thinks he actually believes it.

Flashes Before Your Eyes

The ability to see the future has been present explicitly in LOST since Season 3 and I believe that Ben has some ability in this as well. In Wizard and Glass we're given a supernatural explanation for a similar ability. It comes in the form of a "glass" which can show you other worlds. There were 13 of these glasses in all, and this particular glass, the pink one, could show you two things, other peoples' secrets as well as some parts of the future.

I know most people don't want to see Ben gazing into a crystal ball, but there is something interesting about using these balls which could come into play in LOST. You can't keep and use these balls all the time because they are alive and hungry. "One begins using em; one ends being used by em." p. 457 Instead of the glass serving you, you serve the glass. The ends and means become tangled.

I could certainly see something like that happening on LOST. In fact it might explain the true nature of Ben and Jacob's relationship which could have begun by Ben serving Jacob, but clearly seems to be Jacob serving Ben at least until 815 crashed. Maybe something along these lines will lead to Locke's Island downfall as well.

Some Final Minor Similarities:

In the flashback, 14-year-old Roland and his friends are sent to a backwater community to keep them out of a harm's way. But they describe this time as being sent by their fathers to "meditat[e] in Purgatory." p. 159

Cuthbert is a slingshot specialist.

There are remnants of the past civilization present in Roland's time, and his enemy, Farson is attempting to harness that civilization's weapons to his advantage. There are similar theories out there about Smokey, namely, that he is an older technology that we don't know how to control anymore.

The "wizard" of the book can appear to you as people from your past.

There's a reference to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in particular to how much could work could occur in a single night.

The entire last section of the book is a retelling of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's ka-tet encounters the Wizard in the Emerald City. The glass itself and what people see in it are very Wizard of Oz as well.

Roland has very Jack-like father issues. "[His father's voice] was the hardest voice, the one he so often heard in his troubled dreams, the one he so wanted to please and so seldom could." p. 675

And so I'm over halfway to the Tower! Hopefully before LOST ends I'll get there. With 2 incredibly lengthy hiatuses due before that occurs, I have all confidence that I will, but if not "there are always other worlds."

2008-06-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

Did The Zodiac Move With The Island?

2008-06-10T06:00:00.001-05:00

The Donkey Wheel Has Turned . . .

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And where do you think it went? In time? In space? And how the heck are they going to find it again? And why can't they just go back to the coordinates that Penny's boat obviously knows and Widmore himself should obviously know? Do you just set up your own listening station a la Penny? Or do you need to find Mrs. Hawking? Or should Jack and crew apply with Octagon Global Recruiting?

2008-06-09T06:00:00.003-05:00

Locke Is In The Coffin, But . . .

Frankly, I never considered that Locke had not in fact died in Los Angeles, but listening to Jay & Jack I heard both Jay and Jack agree that they think Locke is faking his death. Handsome Jack even added that he used Doc Arzt's spider venom to perpetrate the con. So what do you think?

2008-06-08T08:08:00.004-05:00

A Few Thoughts From Prince Caspian

I went to see the 2nd Narnia movie, Prince Caspian yesterday. It's the story of the Pevensie children's return to Narnia a year after their adventures in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. And of course it left me wondering if I could apply any lessons from it to LOST. Here's a few.

The children have been gone from Narnia where they ruled as Kings and Queens for one year, and they are having a hard time re-adjusting to life back in our world.

In order to return to Narnia (this time) the four of them are together and holding hands.

There's a clear man of science (or at least self-help), woman of faith theme that underlies the story. Spoiler alert -- faith wins.

The main battle of the story takes place between invading Hostiles that in truth belong to a different world from Narnia and the native Narnians.

And there's 2 other key points. First, it takes children to accomplish what needs to be accomplished in Narnia. In the book it says bluntly that Susan and Peter are too old to return again, but the movie nicely rounds it off that they've learned all they can learn in Narnia and now must use it in their own world.

We've often wondered if the keys in LOST are really the kids, first Walt, then Aaron, Zach and Emma and now Ji Yeon. I'm still interested to see if it's Aaron and Ji Yeon and Walt that really need to return and not so much Jack and the grown up O6. After all, Alpert started attempting to recruit Locke at a very young age, and Ben too for that matter.

Finally, twice during the movie Lucy asks Aslan why he can't just show up and save the day as he'd done before. Aslan tells her "nothing can happen the same way twice." What's more you aren't permitted to know what might have happened had you made different choices.

The idea of time recycling has been strongly present in LOST. But I wonder if these rules are the ones that apply. Perhaps in the past Keamy's confrontation of Ben with Alex happened one way and Ben thought it would repeat, but things don't can't happen the same way twice and she died. Or perhaps Ben approached it differently disowning Alex instead of claiming her in hopes Keamy would not kill her, but despite the difference the result was the same.

Regardless, I'm still anxious to see what Jack and the O6 think their return to the Island will accomplish, and if it will indeed be the case that things cannot happen the same way twice, or that might have beens cannot be undone.

2008-06-07T09:44:00.000-05:00

It's Been A Long Time . . .

Well, LOST has been off the air for over 1 week -- only approximately 32 weeks to go. :-p

And I've been "away" even longer than that. I was out of town the week of the finale, and as a result, I'm waaaaayyyyy behind on reading and listening to all the goodies I usually read and listen to post LOST episodes. Of course, with the hiatus staring us in the face, I've got time.

My plan for the off season is to keep posting some fun polls and discussion questions. It probably won't be a question a day, but we'll see how many things we can come up with. I'm also reading LOST books and books that remind me of LOST, so I'll have some of those posts as well starting with Book 4 of the Dark Tower series which I finished back in April, but have not posted about yet. And hopefully, we will indeed get a new ARG to kill some time judging from the Octagon Global Recruiting ad.

And now, with no further delay, here's my first question about the finale:

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And be sure to add your comments (spoiler-free please) as to what you think about whether or not we'll see Jin dead or alive in the future.

Peace and Namaste!

2008-05-10T10:30:00.002-05:00

Questions from Cabin Fever

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And here's some extra credit discussion questions:

1. Who is working with whom and to what end? Be sure to discuss Widmore, Abaddon, Alpert, Ben, Jacob, The Island, Locke, Keamy, the rest of the Freighter 4, and Christian Shephard.

2. What happened to Claire?

2008-05-02T12:10:00.004-05:00

Questions From Something Nice Back Home

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In this poll you can make multiple selections.

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2008-04-26T12:12:00.003-05:00

Questions About The Shape of Things to Come

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2008-04-08T06:27:00.001-05:00

That Hideous Strength

Book 3 of C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy That Hideous Strength is the least Sci Fi of the the 3 books. Instead it's more of a Tolkien-like fantasy complete with references to Tolkien's Numinor. This was my favorite of the three books which is essentially the showdown between good and evil on planet Earth.

The side of good is headed by series protagonist Ransom. Since returning from Venus he has failed to visibly age (a la Richard Alpert) and he is gathering a small group of people about him including Jane who dreams the future, MacPhee, the skeptical man of science and Mr. and Mrs. Dimble, people with strong Christian faiths plus a couple of others.

These people form a sort of ka-tet, to borrow from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. [You can check out a full definition of ka-tet in this post.] Ransom describes this collective in this way:

"I am the Director," said Ransom, smiling. "Do you think I would claim the authority I do if the relation between us depended either on your choice or mine? You never chose me. I never chose you. Even the great Oyeresu whom I serve never chose me. I came into their worlds by what seemed, at first, a chance; as you came to me--as the very animals in this house first came to it. You and I have not started or devised this: it has descended on us--sucked us into itself, if you like. It is, no doubt, an organisation: but we are not the organisers. And that is why I have no authority to give any one of you permission to leave my household."

p. 196

So a very LOST-like combination of people. They come from different walks of life, different classes, different educational backgrounds, etc. and are drawn together in a way they themselves would never have organized themselves by a higher power or powers to accomplish a world-saving feat.

Much of the main action of the book is driven by the attempt to reclaim the body of Merlin, Arthur's magician who is supposedly buried under a well in the woods owned by a small college in a small English town. There are several things in this storyline that are also alluded to in LOST. For example, it is believed that Merlin is a practitioner of Atlantean magic, that is, from the lost city of Atlantis. A lot of people have tried to link the LOST Island to Atlantis or other lost city mythologies.

There is also an emphasis on place as relates to this burial. "There is an old and wide-spread belief that locality itself is of importance in such matters." p. 198. The locality of the Island and whatever properties it possesses seems to be of supreme importance on LOST though recent developments in terms of the Island's reach may make this less important.

You should be asking at this point, but isn't Merlin dead? In fact both antagonists and protagonists in the book think that though Merlin has been buried for 1500 years, he is not in fact dead, just waiting to be released.

"That a body should lie uncorrupted for fifteen hundred years, did not seem strange to them; they knew worlds where there was no corruption at all. That its individual life should remain latent in it all that time, was to them no more strange: they had seen innumerable different modes in which soul and matter could be combined and separated, separated without loss of reciprocal influence, combined without true incarnation, fused so utterly as to be a third thing, or periodically brought together in a union as short, and as momentous, as the nuptial embrace. It was not as a marvel in natural philosophy, but as an information in time of war, that they brought the Director their tidings. Merlin had not died. His life had been hidden, sidetracked, moved out of our one-dimensioned time, for fifteen centuries. But under certain conditions it would return to his body."

p. 199

So a type of eternal life is at play here, but also messing with the idea of time and the combining and re-combining of consciousness with one's physical body. Sounds a little like an invisible, silent man in a cabin in a jungle and a certain tennis shoe wearing doctor not to mention a dead rock star.

There's more messing with consciousness and the physical body with the character Wither. Wither is true leader of the antagonistic group in the book, a group named N.I.C.E., the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, a kind of Dharma Initiative which combines many academic disciplines for the "good" of mankind. Wither is a character who at first appears to be an absent-minded professor of sorts, but one that seems often to be everywhere at once as a character Mark describes here.

"It may have been that Mark, both then and on the previous day, being overwrought, saw a hallucination of Wither where Wither was not. It may be that the continual appearance of Wither which at almost all hours haunted so many rooms and corridors of Belbury was (in one well verified sense of the world) a ghost--one of those sensory impressions which a strong personality in its last decay can imprint, most commonly after death but sometimes before it, on the very structure of a building, and which are removed not by exorcism buy by architectural alterations. Or it may, after all, be that souls who have lost the intellectual good do indeed receive in return, and for a short period, the vain privilege of thus reproducing themselves in many places as wraiths. At any rate the thing, whatever it was, vanished."

p. 210

Later Wither himself tells us why he is the way he is. "[Wither] hardly ever slept. When it became absolutely necessary for him to do so, he took a drug, but the necessity was rare, for the mode of consciousness he experienced at most hours of day or night had long ceased to be exactly like what other men call waking. He had learned to withdraw most of his consciousness from the task of living, to conduct business, even, with only a quarter of his mind." p. 247 "[H]is inmost self was free to pursue its own life. That detachment of the spirit, not only from the senses, but even from the reason, which has been the goal of some mystics, was now his." p. 248

So Wither while maintaining his body also managed to detach his mind in a mystic way. I'm still waiting to see if Walt, Hurley, Jacob, Ben are doing something similar.

Another main character in the book is Mark, Jane's husband. Mark has been recruited by N.I.C.E., but unknown to him, not for his own contributions, but instead so he'll bring Jane who dreams the future to them. A case of using one family member to get to another. Something that might be happening with Walt and Michael and may even have happened with Ben and his dad.

At the opening of the story, Mark's main motivation in life is to assure his place in the Inner Circle of power in any group to which he belongs at the expense of any other values including the truth. But like many of our characters on LOST, Mark reaches a turning point in his life. He has a time of true soul searching and recognizes the bad choices he's made in his life. He's not sure what to do to redeem it at this point, but he does make at least that step toward redemption. Mark muses:

"What a fool--a blasted, babyish, gullible fool--he had been! . . . [H]ere was the world of plot within plot, crossing and double-crossing, of lies and graft and stabbing in the back, of murder and a contemptuous guffaw for the fool who lost the game[.]" p. 242 It takes him a while, but Mark is ultimately redeemed when he realizes: "For he now thought that with all his life-long eagerness to reach an inner circle he had chosen the wrong circle." p. 358

Some other odds and ends.

Merlin becomes a sort of prophet kind of like Season 3 Desmond. "[Merlin] said that before Christmas this bear would do the best deed that any bear had done in Britain except some other bear that none of us had ever heard of. He keeps on saying things like that. They just pop out when we're talking about something else, and in a rather different voice. As if he couldn't help it. He doesn't seem to know any more than the bit he tells you at the moment, if you see what I mean. As if something like a camera shutter opened at the back of his mind and closed again immediately and just one little item came through." pp. 279-80.

There's a Room 23 style conditioning room.

At one point Jane has a weird vision and discusses it with Ransom. Timewise the vision seemed like something out of the Renaissance. Ransom tells Jane, "And I daresay that the presence of Merlinus brings out certain things. We are not living exactly in the Twentieth Century as long as he's here. We overlap a bit; the focus is blurred." p. 311

Part of what prompted the antagonists to act at this time was their understanding that forces from beyond Earth were not permitted to act on Earth. Ironically, Weston and Devine's trip to Mars back in Book 1 is considered breaking that deal and therefore forces from the Universe are allowed to penetrate and act on Earth.

I wonder if this is some of what's happening on the Island. Has Ben broken a deal that is permitting Widmore to find the Island? Or was Ben's actions what allowed 815 to penetrate the Island? Is that the first invasion of sorts?

One final note, once Wither realizes he and his side have lost he reflects:

"It is incredible how little his knowledge moved him. It could not, because he had long ceased to believe in knowledge itself. What had been in his far-off youth a merely aesthetic repugnance to realities that were crude or vulgar, had deepened and darkened, year after year, into a fixed refusal of everything that was in any degree other than himself. He had passed from Hegel into Hume, then through Pragmatism, and then through Logical Positivism, and out a last into the complete void." p. 350

This is what I hope will not be LOST's ultimate outcome. After almost 4 years we still have yet to see what it is that Ben is fighting for in terms of the importance of the Island. Early on there were all the doomsday theories that the Island was a place to restart society when the rest of it destroys itself. There's the idea that something has to happen on the Island to prevent a doomsday. But as Season 4 progresses it seems that more and more Ben and his Others seem to be defending nothing more than Ben himself which leads us ultimately to the void.

2008-03-31T16:39:00.001-05:00

Each One of Us Was Brought Here For a Reason . . .

Bet you thought I just felt like quoting Locke from back when he was cool, but no, this is my attempts to link LOST to the second book in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, Perelandra.

Perelandra picks up after Ransom, Weston and Devine return to Earth from Malacandra, or as we call it, Mars. Interestingly, Lewis himself is a character in the book. He participates in sending Ransom at the behest of the Mars chief Oyarsa to Perelandra, or as we know it Venus. Issues of fate, free will, determinism and relative morality all play major parts in this re-imagining of the Eden story. Many of those things remind me (okay, everything reminds me) of LOST.

At first it seems that who we are, why we are chosen for something is not important. Ransom explains to Lewis:

"Don't imagine I've been selected to go to Perelandra because I'm anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications."

p. 22

But once Ransom arrived on Perelandra, that feeling seems to change. "It was strange that the utter loneliness through all these hours had not troubled him so much as one night of it on Malacandra. He thought the difference lay in this, that mere chance, or what he took for chance, had turned him adrift in Mars, but here he knew that he was part of a plan. He was no longer unattached, no longer on the outside." p. 44 Sounds very Season 1 Locke.

Finally, Ransom's fate becomes vitally important. But first a little explanation. At this point in the story, Ransom realizes he has been brought to Perelandra to prevent the Venutian Eve from falling prey to the temptation of the Devil-possessed Weston. Ransom finds that he must step in the void left by the absence of the Venutian Adam even if it means attempting the impossible which could very likely lead to his death far from home.

Ransom argues with himself.

"The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of early experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings. He had been forced out of the frame, caught up into the larger pattern. He knew now why the old philosophers had said that there is no such thing as chance or fortune beyond the Moon. Before his Mother had born him, before his ancestors had been called Ransoms, before ransom had been the name for a payment that delivers, before the world was made, all these things had so stood together in eternity that the very significance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion. And he bowed his head and groaned and repined against his fate . . ."

p. 125

As you may be able to gather, Ransom the man finds himself in a position to serve as a ransom payment for the entire planet Venus. Quirky naming coincidence?

Nevertheless Ransom still has free will to reject this fate, but in doing so he recognizes: "If he now failed, this world also would hereafter be redeemed. If he were not the ransom, Another would be." p. 126 In other words, the Universe would course correct or Ransom could embrace his fate and if he succeeded it wouldn't need to. [This makes me conclude that Desmond could propose to Penny in 1996 without the world ending. I think the universe would have found another button-pushing patsy. Is that Mrs. Hawking working for Widmore? For Ben?]

Ransom goes on to reason:

"[T]here had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible.' . . . His fear, his shame, his love, all his arguments [regarding accepting and acting on his fate], were not altered in the least. The thing was neither more nor less dreadful than it had been before. The only difference was that he knew--almost as a historical proposition--that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel--might curse or adore--sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unaltered as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical."

pp. 126-27

How's that for blending free will and determinism and even in a way that steps out of all boundaries of what we consider the normal flow of time?

There are a couple of other themes to note as well. First there's this odd way of viewing experiences and whether or not we should want to repeat them.

Ransom was hesitant to over-indulge in any extraordinary experiences (and there were many) on Perelandra. "This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards . . . was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself--perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film." p. 43

It makes me wonder if this is somehow at play on the Island. Does the Island allows you to control time and how fast and in what direction it rolls, unrolls, and rolls backwards? Is that why Widmore wants it and Ben is determined to keep it? And is their greed in desiring this ability to repeat experiences or extend them what will ultimately undo them both?

Finally, both Ben and Widmore could be like the demon-possessed Weston in Perelandra. Weston claims for himself an ultimate imprimatur on his desires and his methods to achieve his desires for universal domination by the human race. He explains to Ransom:

"The world leaps forward through great men and greatness always transcends mere moralism. When the leap has been made our 'diabolism' as you call it becomes the morality of the next stage, but while we are making it, we are called criminals, heretics, blasphemers. . . ."

Which prompts Ransom to query: "How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?"

"Yes."

"Or to sell England to the Germans?"

"Yes."

"Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?"

"Yes. . . . Can you not even conceive a total commitment--a commitment to something which utterly overrides all our petty ethical pigeon-holes? . . . I am the Universe. I, Weston, am your God and your Devil." p. 82

At times we get glimpses that this may be the way Ben feels about the Island. In fact I've often hoped we'd see that Ben acts the way he does, finds justification for his actions and the lives he's sacrificed in some greater good scenario such as saving humanity. But more and more it looks like Ben is merely protecting his corner of the sandbox. Oh well, we'll see.

Perelandra was a tough, but interesting read. And to go out on another Locke quote, it even provides Venus with it's very own Adam and Eve.

2008-03-21T09:20:00.002-05:00

Questions from "Meet Kevin Johnson"

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2008-03-17T10:42:00.002-05:00

Questions From Ji Yeon

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2008-03-04T17:23:00.004-06:00

Are The Whisperers Eldila?

In addition to the more famous Chronicles of Narnia Clive Staples Lewis, i.e. C.S. Lewis, wrote The Space Trilogy. In the first of these novels Out of the Silent Planet the protagonist, a man named Ransom is taken from Earth to another planet in our solar system known to its inhabitants as Malacandra. Malacandra is inhabited by three human equivalent, though physically not very human-like, people groups. They are ruled by a being named Oyarsa who is the greatest of another group of beings, the eldila.

Below are descriptions of these eldil put into terms that Ransom, the mere human, will hopefully understand. Ransom has heard an eldil, but he's never seen one.

"[Ransom begins:] 'But what are eldila, and why can I not see them? Have they no bodies?'

[The being he's talking to, a sorn, replies:] 'Of course they have bodies. There are a great many bodies you cannot see. Every animal's eyes see some things but not others. Do you know of many kinds of body in Thulcandra [Earth]?'

Ransom tried to give the sorn some idea of the terrestrial terminology of solids, liquids and gases. It listened with great attention.

'That is not the way to say it,' it replied. 'Body is movement. If it is at one speed, you smell something; if at another, you hear a sound; if at another you see a sight; if at another, you neither see nor hear nor smell, nor know the body in any way. But mark this, Small ONe, that the two ends meet.'

'How do you mean?'

'If movement is faster, then that which moves is more nearly in two places at once.'

'That is true.'

'But if the movement were faster still--it is difficult, for you do not know many words--you see that if you made it faster and faster, in the end the moving things would be in all places at once, Small One.'

'I think I see that.'

'Well, then, that is the thing at the top of all bodies--so fast that it is at rest, so truly body that it has ceased being body at all. But we will not talk of that. Start from where we are, Small One. The swiftest thing that touches our senses is light. We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge--the last thing we know before things become too swift for us. But the body of an eldid is a movement swift as light; you may say its body is made of light, but not of that which is light for the eldil. His "light" is a swifter movement which for us is nothing at all; and what we call light is for him a thing like water, a visible thing, a thing he can touch and bathe in--even a dark thing when not illumined by the swifter. And what we call firm things--flesh and earth--seem to him thinner, and harder to see, than our light, and more like clouds, and nearly nothing. To us the eldil is a thin, half-real body that can go through walls and rocks: to himself he goes through them because he is solid and firm and they are like cloud. And what is true light to him and fills the heaven, so that he will plunge into the rays of the sun to refresh himself from it, is to us the black nothing in the sky at night. These things are not strange, Small One, though they are beyond our senses.'

pp. 94-95

Later Ransom finds that he can sense the eldila when he comes to an Island filled with them.

"[Ransom] said to himself that he was having a look at the island, but his feeling was rather that the island was having a look at him. This was greatly increased by a discovery he made after he had been walking for about an hour, and which he ever afterwards found great difficulty in describing. In the most abstract terms it might be summed up by saying that the surface of the island was subject to tiny variations of light and shade which no change in the sky accounted for. If the air had not been calm and the groundweed too short and firm to move in the wind, he would have said that a faint breeze was playing with it, and working such slight alterations in the shading as it does in a corn-field on the Earth. Like the silvery noises in the air, these footsteps of light were shy of observation. Where he looked hardest they were least to be seen: on the edges of his field of vision they came crowding as though a complex arrangement of them were there in progress. To attend to any one of theme was to make it invisible, and the minute brightness seemed often to have just left the spot where his eyes fell. He had no doubt that he was "seeing"--as much as he ever would see--the eldila. The sensation it produced in him was curious. It was not exactly uncanny, not as if he were surrounded by ghosts. It was not even as if he were being spied upon; he had rather the sense of being looked at by things that had a right to look. His feeling was less than fear; it had in it something of embarrassment, something of shyness, something of submission, and it was profoundly uneasy."

pp. 108-09

Finally, when Ransom first encounters the greatest eldila, Oyarsa he describes Oyarsa as "the merest whisper of light--no, less than that, the smallest diminution of shadow." p. 118

I don't want to give away directly what type of being known to us humans the eldil are apparently intended to represent, but I did want to share these descriptions of these beings that are heard and not seen though are sensed in the way light moves around them since they reminded me of some of the stranger goings-on occurring on a certain Island we're all familiar with.

***All citations are to the Scribner edition of the paperback published in 2003.

2008-03-01T21:07:00.002-06:00

LOST in Slaughterhouse Five

After watching Desmond unstuck in time in The Constant I decided to re-read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five which features a similarly unstuck protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. I'm going to list out things from the book that remind me of themes in LOST roughly in the order they occur in the book. Feel free to comment and theorize away.

The author of the book majored in Anthropology. Charlotte Lewis did too.
Aliens abduct Billy, take him to their planet and keep him in a zoo cage where he mates with another abducted Earth female. The cage is furnished much like the Swan with appliances and furniture from Sears and a working record player. Billy exercises each day to stay in shape; makes his meals; cleans his dishes. I don't know if he does it to "Make Your Own Kind Of Music."
Billy got to the alien planet through a time warp allowing him to spend years on the alien planet but only be gone from Earth a microsecond.
The aliens taught Billy that when a person dies he only appears to die because he's still alive in the past. The aliens view time, past, present and future, as always existing and permanent. They can focus in on a particular moment like we would focus in on one part of the Rocky Mountains. Time does not pass one moment to the next with moments disappearing forever once they are past. You can be dead in this moment, but fine in plenty of others, so they don't fret about death.
Billy first becomes unstuck in time while serving in the US Army in World War II.
Billy describes his death as a violet light and a hum.
As a child Billy's father tries to teach him to swim by throwing him in the pool leaving him to sink or swim. Kind of reminds me of Charlie.
At one point Billy shifts from WWII to the 195os where he's about to give a speech. He worries that he will sound like his WWII young kid self, but in fact he delivers his confident Toastmasters-type speech. So unlike Desmond Billy seems to act appropriately wherever he is and can adapt. He seems to have all his consciousnesses at all times.
But when Billy is moving around he does have to rely on visual cues such as his car to figure out when exactly he is. He does not instinctively know.
Every so often, for no apparent reason, Billy would find himself weeping.
Christmas 1944 passes unremarked for Billy and the author who find themselves as POWs in a railroad car at the time.
There's an Alice in Wonderland "Drink Me" bottle reference.
Billy's movements in time aren't always consistent. For example, being slightly unstuck in time he watches a movie backwards . He also knows in advance what time the aliens are coming for him, and willingly goes out to meet them. As the novel progresses he can clearly "remember" all the moments of his life from birth to death rather than being surprised that he's now in X year or Y place.
In the POW camp, Billy begins shrieking uncontrollably and is taking to the hospital, strapped down and given morphine. The shrieking was not time travel related, but it reminded me of Minkowski and his description of Brandon.
Within 4 years of starting this time traveling, Billy voluntarily commits himself to a mental hospital because he believes he is going crazy.
Billy begins to look for meaning by reading science fiction. No mention of Philip K. Dick though.
A fellow mental ward patient tells Billy that everything there is to know about life is in The Brothers Karamazov.
A fake book is referenced about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the 4th dimension and doctors didn't know couldn't see or even imagine them.
According to the aliens in order to get Earthling babies you need not only the normal mom and dad but you need homosexual males, women over 65, and babies who lived an hour or less after birth, plus 2 other types of people. Maybe that's what's wrong on the Island.
Even though the aliens know what will happen at all moments in time, including the end of the universe, they do nothing to change any of those moments. Those moments are the way they are structured.
The woman that Billy Pilgrim makes pregnant on the alien planet stays on the alien planet to raise the baby instead of going back to Earth.

Desmond and Billy Pilgrim are both unstuck in time, but there are stark differences in Billy and Desmond's time travel in The Constant. Billy never truly gets lost in time as Desmond seemed to and as seemed to lead to Minkowski and Eloise's deaths. Instead Slaughterhouse Five takes the position that moments in time are discreet events that your lifetime collective consciousness can move between. Billy doesn't need a constant to move seamlessly through time, though that may be in large part attributable to the lessons the aliens teach him about time and his subsequent nonchalant attitude.

In Slaughterhouse Five you cannot change these moments in time that you move through repeatedly. Billy knows when others are going to die, but does nothing to warn those people or stop them. Similarly the aliens know when and how the universe will be destroyed, but do nothing to prevent it. Death is therefore meaningless to Billy and the aliens and is summed up over and over with the phrase, "So it goes." Your moment of death is structured that way; you don't mess with it. A philosophy I'm sure would be Mrs. Hawking approved.

There is no traumatic event that triggers Billy's unstuckness in time. He wasn't exposed to radiation or electro-magnetism and thrust through some barrier. Instead he just started coming unstuck at a point in his life when he was tired, cold and frankly willing to die. Both Billy and Desmond were serving in their respective militaries when their unstuckness began. Other than that we're given no clue as to why Billy is unstuck or if there are others who are unstuck.

Another key difference is that Billy develops the ability to access every moment of his life from beginning to end as he's time-shifting. This ability seems to become stronger as the novel and presumably Billy's life progresses. Early on Billy seems nervous and uncertain as this happens, but later in the novel Billy can for the most part tell quickly and accurately where he is and what's going to happen next. And in the case of the alien abduction he even anticipates and plans for it. Desmond clearly hasn't developed this skill, but I wonder if Ben has.

Slaughterhouse Five is a unique blend of an anti-war book that examines critically the fate of child soldiers at the hands of removed commanders and the glamorization of war mixed with a unique form of the science fiction of time travel and aliens. Is this what's happening on the Island? To Ben? To Desmond? Definitely not in a one to one translation as is the case with every other reference the show makes to things literary, pop culture, and scientific. But is it worth taking a look at to figure out what might be going on in LOST? Absolutely.

2008-02-25T08:50:00.002-06:00

Questions From Eggtown

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2008-02-20T06:59:00.003-06:00

Questions From The Economist

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2008-02-11T10:00:00.000-06:00

Monday Morning Rewatch --
Confirmed Dead

More question and notes from episode 4.2, Confirmed Dead.

1. Where do you think Dan's egg-cooking lady friend thinks he is now? He seems to be the only one of the Freighter Four (FF) with a close, personal friend. Will any of them missed if they don't return?

2. Why don't all the FF think they need to have kevlar vests on? If I was heading to the island after Naomi's signal, I would have had my vest on and my gas mask handy. And do you think Dan really knows how to use that gun?

3. Sawyer's finally learned some tracking skills. He realizes Locke is heading in the wrong direction.

4. Did Ben shoot Locke in the missing kidney to test Locke and the Island or is he just getting sloppy? And why is Ben trying to talk Sawyer into staying on the Island? Will anyone do in this pinch?

5. What do you think Mrs. Gardner had been hearing or seeing in her Inglewood home to make her call Miles in the first place?

6. What does Charlotte know about The Dharma Initiative and how does she know it? I want to think she's a DI offspring, but Ben's details of her life, mom and dad, birthplace, etc. make me much less confident in that hope. BTW, her dad's name is David Lewis. The name David has been used repeatedly on the show.

7. Why didn't Charlotte try to sell the "we're here for Desmond" story to Locke's group?

8. One of my favorite scenes in the episode is when Jack, Kate, Sayid and Juliet first see the helicopter. The hope on their faces is both heart-warming and heart-breaking given our Flash Forward info.

9. So if Ben is the FF's objective why send anyone other than Naomi? How many other objectives do they have? And why does Abaddon trust the FF to be able to leave the Island after each has fulfilled their specific purpose? Won't they talk? Especially about the existence of 815 survivors? Frank at least seems to think his only purpose on the Island is to run a ferry service from it to the freighter.

10. Can Smokey/Jacob/the Island make Christian Shephard and Yemi appear because they're "just meat?" If so, they better get Naomi off the Island quickly before her body disappears and shows up in Jacob's cabin.

11. Does Ben know what the monster is, but he's still unwilling to tell Locke? To tell Charlotte?

2008-02-09T08:44:00.000-06:00

Whose Side Is The Island On?

After watching Episode 4.2, Confirmed Dead and seeing what may or may not be Matthew Abaddon's nefarious plan to infiltrate the Island and acquire the primary objective Ben Linus I got to wondering why the Island would permit these people at least the opportunity to carry out their plans. Naomi who it seems has been lying since Day 1 with her hired by Penny, looking for Desmond story has the clouds part for her, isn't killed in her crash landing and what's more is healed by the Island. Desmond is given a flash which sets in motion the things necessary for Naomi to be able to contact the rest of the Freighter 4, plus at least 2 on the boat. The Freighter 4 land on Island with only minor injuries. The helicopter is even workable. Smokey is no where to be found in any of this.

So here's the question -- does the Island want to get rid of Ben? Does it want these 4 people? Does it want to get rid of the Oceanic 6? Why is the Island being so accommodating at the moment?

2008-02-04T10:04:00.000-06:00

Monday Morning Rewatch -
The Beginning of the End

Just a few ideas and questions from rewatching Episode 4.1, The Beginning of the End.

1. Who was Penny calling and why was The Looking Glass set to her frequency? Did Ben have Bonnie and Greta monitoring Penny or Charles Widmore? Is that how he knows that Naomi's people are up to no good? And how does Locke know? 8-foot Walt?

2. I have a theory about why Hurley denies knowing Ana Lucia. What if it is Michael under the pseudonym J. Lantham who rescues the Oceanic 6, and the deal is they can tell no one about the Island and what happened on it as Michael's condition for rescue since he murdered two people?

3. The emphasis on insanity especially when it comes to Locke (see his music video set to Patsy Cline's "Crazy"), is it because it's Hurley's episode and a large theme in his backstory is sanity, or are we really supposed to think that Locke is crazy? Don't forget that Locke's mom was in Santa Rosa and Locke himself was getting disability for depression.

4. What was the deal with needing to change the frequency on the sat phone? Minkowski says something about interference, I think he says RF interference. What is that? Also, I don't think the helicopter was in trouble as many have suggested. I think it was maneuvering to allow the parachuter to jump.

5. Another scientific-ish question. Could exposure to the unique electromagnetic properties of the Island make a person more receptive to other dimensions? In other words, because Hurley has been on the Island can he now see Christian Shephard and even Charlie back in the real world? Charlie says he's dead and he's here. I'd like to think that Hurley can perceive that because of his electromagnetic exposure. It's still controllable though as we saw when Hurley focused his energy to make both Jacob's shack and Charlie disappear.

6. At the end, why are Jack and Kate waiting at the cockpit instead of the beach presumably with the rest of the "I'm with Jack" group? It just seems odd since it was Jack's big idea to make themselves as easy as possible to find.

7. I wonder if the reason we continue to see Christian Shephard, Yemi and now Charlie is because their bodies were never buried. And given that, in the future will we see the unburied Naomi and Mikhail?

8. And finally, who are THEY? Creepy lawyer impersonating dude asks are "they" still alive and Charlie repeats over and over to Hurley that "they" need you. We've gone from "him" to "they." And there may be more than one "they." I can't wait until Thursday to find out more!

2008-02-03T09:30:00.000-06:00

Mystery Eye

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2008-01-31T07:25:00.000-06:00

THE WAIT IS OVER!

Can you believe it? It's been 8 (ha ha) long months, but we made it. In just over 12 hours we will have a new LOST episode to dissect.

2008-01-26T08:15:00.000-06:00

Blog Holiday Fun

There's only a few days left until the Season 4 premier. The Find815 ARG has heated things up for the past month. And that has slowed traffic on this and I think most LOST theory blogs. So in preparation for the Season 4 kickoff, I'm taking a few days off from posting here.

I feel confident I'll have plenty of opportunity to post questions I have about the end of Season 3 during our next hiatus which hopefully won't begin until late May. Please settle the strike, please!

In the meantime, if you haven't played along with the Find815 ARG, start at Fly Oceanic Air and proceed to Find815.com and you can catch up on the entire game in a couple of hours in preparation for the start of Season 4. Or if you aren't into games check out the summary on Lostpedia. I think you'll find it worth your while.

Also check out a new blog I'm contributing to The Lost Elders. And don't forget to set your VCRs, DVRs or alarms for the premier of Season 4 -- Thursday January 31st at 9pm Eastern and Pacific, 8 pm Central.

Recording Note!!!!!! On my TV it says the episode is running until 2 past the hour! So be sure and adjust accordingly.

2008-01-25T06:48:00.000-06:00

Why Does The Staff Have A Secret Room?

Not only is there a secret room, but it's protected by blast door like we saw in The Swan. Was this a safe room for hiding from Hostiles? Did DI members in fact hide there during the Purge? Is it part of a food drop protocol for The Staff?

And why would the Others use it for dying mothers? So that the other women wouldn't see the horror of it and fail to volunteer?

2008-01-24T06:30:00.000-06:00

Dezzed and Confused

Desmond's episodes in Season 3 leave me with a similarly confused look on my face and Catch 22 is no exception. Desmond sees a long drawn out flash of Charlie getting killed by an arrow, then shorter flashes of Hurley and the cable, a beacon, LOSTies including Charlie holding a parachute, someone in a flight suit, the picture of Des and Penny, and Penny herself (for about 1 frame). Now what gives?

Desmond tries to explain it to Hurley as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with no box. But he's also afraid that changing one of the pictures on the pieces (i.e. saving Charlie) changes the rest of the pieces. But his flashes themselves are contradictory. First Charlie is dead, then he's alive all in the same series of flashes.

Desmond also struggles over the course of the episode with how much he should reveal to Hurley, Charlie and Jin to prevent them from changing things, but it seems to me that once Desmond starts taking positive steps toward enacting the things in his flashes he's already messing things up. Would it not be the case that things have to flow naturally for the puzzle pieces not to change? In fact was it getting the first aid kit from Jack that changed the pieces? Or was it the fact that Desmond was lying repeatedly that constituted some failure in his test and resulted in Naomi, not Penny, arriving on the Island?

I personally don't believe that Penny was ever going to land on the Island no matter what Desmond did or didn't do, but that his last "flash" of talking to Penny was no more than wishful thinking, not a true flash. It should be noted that they find the book with Desmond and Penny's photo before Desmond chooses to save Charlie and that the book is a Brazilian copy of Catch-22. Didn't Desmond wonder why Penny would have a book written in Brazilian Portugese? It also didn't seem to have an "If found, contact Penny" note in the front either.

A big theme in the episode was being tested and being willing to make sacrifices. I'm unsure whether or not Desmond passed the test by letting Charlie live or not. I think he feels he failed it, but I'm not so sure. Seems like sacrificing his own happiness for Charlie is passing rather than failing the test. Was this a case of the universe lying to Desmond in his flashes so that it could be done with course correcting on Charlie and relying incorrectly on Desmond's selfish desires to outweigh the cost of sacrifice?

2008-01-24T06:20:00.000-06:00

Who Shrunk Jack's Tent?

This is a clear case of trying to figure out what's canon and what's not. In the S3 deleted scene where Claire finds Nikki and Paolo in flagrante delicto Jack's tent is at least a 2 person wide tent with sides and a front flap for full privacy. Now that Jack's back on the beach, it seems to be a much, much smaller and less private. I guess it shrank from the rain?

2008-01-23T06:31:00.000-06:00

Is This The Face of Rousseau's Sickness?

Did the Others somehow implant Rousseau's team perhaps with a plan to create a crisis they could solve as a way to integrate those intruders into Island culture only to lead to the unintended consequence of Rousseau wigging out and killing the team before the Others could get to them? Claire was lucky Rousseau wasn't lurking around the Beach Camp the night Jack returned. After all in the case of infection, "you know what must be done."

2008-01-23T06:30:00.000-06:00

Boy I Wish Sayid Had Gotten A Crack At Questioning Juliet!

What a great episode One of Us is! Elizabeth Mitchell does a fantastic job of going from "mousy" Juliet to "kick ass out-bluff Sawyer and Sayid" Juliet and on to "totally play that dumb sap Jack" Juliet. But man oh man I wish Sayid had a chance to ask her at least a few questions. I want answers! And some bamboo under her fingernails wouldn't bother me either.

2008-01-22T07:46:00.000-06:00

Kate, Juliet and Smokey

So what is up with Smokey and the ladies? Did they do something to trigger his presence as they trekked back to Othersville? You can hear a CV (Cerberus Vent) open during that first encounter. Did Ben or Jacob send Smokey out to bolster Juliet's con on Kate that they are in it together? Or can Ben's group really not control Smokey?

The second time around, is Smokey coming for Juliet or for Kate? And can he see through mud?

2008-01-21T08:15:00.000-06:00

Third, Third, Third Post of the Day

It's a holiday and only 10 days until LOST. Life is good.

Here at my blog I've got two new posts below. Heading into the home stretch of Season 3 my questions are pretty tongue in cheek or downright shallow. The back part of Season 3 did a great job of answering questions. They didn't leave me with a lot of material. And get this straight; this is not a complaint.

But I'm also here to let you know about a new blog I'm posting on. It's called The LOST Elders. It was started by Cool Freeze of the Icebox blog. And plans are that a number of us LOST bloggers will contribute to it over the course of Season 4. So come check it out.

2008-01-21T08:07:00.000-06:00

Will Clementine Grow Up To Blow Up Sawyer?

Is this bit of dialogue foreshadowing of Sawyer's possible post-Island future?

Cassidy: What makes a girl that went to Sunday School scared of the cops?
Kate: A few months ago I killed my stepfather and I escaped from the marshal who arrested me for it.
Cassidy: Why?
Kate: Because he was a bad guy.
. . .
Kate: What, you want to help me?
Cassidy: Absolutely.
Kate: Why?
Cassidy: I fell in love with the wrong guy. And then I gave him my life savings. He conned me, and embarrassed me. He was a bad guy.

On a more serious note, I wonder if Cassidy will see Kate's "rescue" from the Island and contact her? That could lead to some interesting girl talk.

2008-01-21T08:06:00.000-06:00

Best Con Ever!

Hurley's banishment scam is my favorite con in the history of LOST. Hurley is the man!

2008-01-18T06:28:00.000-06:00

Did Locke Make a Case for Jack? For Sayid?

I don't want to go home, Kate. I want you to know I made a strong case for you. I told them you are a good person. Reliable. Smart. Honest. And then they told me who you were and what you had done. Let's just say forgiveness isn't one of their strong suits. -- John Locke, Episode 3.15, Left Behind

So Locke thought Kate had communion with the Island? Or did he just have needs as Sawyer once suggested? But the real thing I want to know is what they told him about Jack. How is Jack not a good person? I still haven't seen anything other than poor judgment in his pre-Island flashbacks; no murder of fathers for example. And what about Sayid? Well hopefully we'll find out soon about Basra and know along with Juliet the full scope of Sayid's unforgivable crimes.

2008-01-17T12:48:00.000-06:00

What Was Plan A?

As we head into the hiatus homestretch OM IT'S ONLY 2 WEEEKS! there will probably be days I have multiple posts in my effort to blog my way through Seasons 1-3. So if you aren't subscribed to the feed, you may want to check and make sure you haven't missed a post. Now with no more further ado, What Was Plan A?

Watching the commentary to Expose I heard something interesting. During the scene with Juliet, Ben and Paolo in the Pearl the writers say that we get to see the way Ben's mind works when he explains to Juliet that he can convince Jack to operate on him:

Same way I get anybody to do anything. I find out what he's emotionally invested in...and I exploit it.

Further Ben rejects the notion of grabbing Shephard, Austen and Ford as The Others call them and says that they need to come to them, and that Michael is how that will happen. The writers go on to say that the timing of this is concurrent with Ep. 2.09, What Kate Did. I guess this explains in part why The Others didn't take Jack, Kate and Sawyer at the line in Episode 2.10, The Hunting Party because it violates Ben's notion of them coming to him.

But the writers also go on to point out that this is before Ben's Henry Gale ruse. After Ben gets caught as we've seen both on the show and in the Missing Moments other Others, namely Klugh and Juliet have to implement a Plan B. Plan B required Michael to bring Austen, Shephard and Ford as Ben still needed the surgery, but also required freeing Ben as well.

I can't wait to see what Ben was up to when Danielle caught him. You'd have to assume it was important given how close Ben came to dying either by Sayid's hand or someone else's. I also wish we'd gotten to see Ben's Plan A for manipulating Jack, both in terms of getting him to the Others and the two week "you want to operate on me" plan that was also foiled. Oh well. Despite all the intervening circumstances the universe course corrected and Ben got healed.

I also wonder if in hindsight Ben doesn't wish that on September 23, 2004 he'd taken the large boat the Others used to leave Falcatraz, loaded all the 815ers on it and pointed them to heading 325. A completely different show I know, but given the losses he and his people have sustained after 815 crashed, he might have been better off.

2008-01-17T06:24:00.000-06:00

If We Got All of Season 4 Would We Learn The Identity of The Cobra?

If you had followed the show Expose in Season 4 you would have learned Mr. LaShade played by Billy Dee Williams was discovered by Corvette to be The Cobra just before he killed her. Hurley tells everyone and no one in particular that:

Dude, the Cobra's this big bad guy. His identity's been shrouded in mystery for 4 seasons.

LOST has played for 3 seasons with this entire concept of who's good and who's bad. So far no true "big bad guy" has emerged other than arguably Ben. So if we were to get all of Season 4 would we like Expose fans (though not the characters in the show) discover the true identity of LOST's own Cobra?