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
















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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions Raised by
"Raised by Another"
























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

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

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

3. How did Hugo Reyes get the nickname Hurley?

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

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

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

Real or Fake?















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

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

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

More LOST (Horizon?) Musings

Leading Two Lives



















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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, it is not this woman.















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

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

LOST (Horizon?)

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

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
























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

How Do You Build A Society To Repopulate The Earth?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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