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Saturday, July 04, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E17 "...In Translation"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episode 17 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 17 - "...In Translation"

The episode begins on Jin's eye, and it focuses on his perspective as he deals with the frustration of not being able to communicate with any survivors other than his wife (hence the episode title, LOST "...In Translation").

We find out in a flashback how Jin became such an unpleasant person: the deal he made to work for Sun's father, Mr. Paik, turned out to be not at all what Jin expected. Mr. Paik "promotes" Jin to be his new special assistant to personally deliver messages of Mr. Paik's displeasure. When Jin simply delivers a verbal message to the man at his home, apparently the recipient doesn't take the hint, and Mr. Paik later tells Jin that another associate will show Jin how to deliver a message. As Jin drives back to the house, the associate puts on gloves and pulls out a gun with a silencer on it. Upon arriving, Jin rushes past the associate into the house, violently beating the man with whom Mr. Paik is displeased—right in front of the man's wife and children. Jin says quietly to the man, "I just saved your life." Thus Jin begins "saving people's lives" from assassination by Sun's father's thugs.

Incidentally, the first time Jin went to the man's home, Hurley was on the television in the background, so this evidently took place sometime after Hurley won the lottery.

On the beach, Jin sees Sun wearing a bikini and rushes over to cover her with a blanket. They get into a small scuffle, and Michael runs up to stop Jin from mistreating Sun. When Michael pushes Jin, Sun slaps Michael's face, and Sun and Jin walk away. Shortly thereafter, Jin asks Sun, "What's going on between you and him?" Sun denies that there is any connection between her and Michael. She later explains privately to Michael that slapping him was her way of protecting him from Jin, saying, "You don't know what he's capable of."

Michael's raft gets set on fire during the night and everyone wonders who did it and why. Michael and some of the other survivors blame Jin. When Sun sees that Jin's hands are burned, she accuses him, and Jin leaves angrily.

Sawyer, who was one of the 4 people who would have been on the raft, finds Jin, attacks him, and ties him up. He tells Jin, "Folks down on the beach might have been doctors and accountants a month ago, but it's Lord of the Flies time now."

I hadn't given it much thought previously, but the book Lord of the Flies (Wikipedia, Amazon) has a number of striking parallels with LOST. In the book, a plane crashes on a deserted island with no adult survivors, leaving a group of boys completely on their own. Two factions arise, one of which is led by Ralph, whose group is concerned with keeping the signal fire lit, and the other group is led by Jack, whose group is concerned with hunting pigs and protecting each other from a monster that they believe to be on the island. Eventually only Jack's group remains, and Jack becomes a true savage, setting the entire island on fire—at the risk of destroying their only sources of food—just to murder the evasive Ralph. An adult navy officer sees the blazing island and comes to rescue the boys. In spite of being rescued, Ralph is deeply troubled, having witnessed the darkness that can come to possess a human soul. The transition from civilized to barbaric behavior is precisely what Sawyer was referencing when talking to Jin. Sawyer's remark leads us to perhaps the most stunning connection between the two tales: Ralph's discovery of man's potential for darkness is a direct correlation with Jacob's enemy's views about the wickedness of human nature. In the opening scene of the Season 5 finale, Jacob and his enemy watch as a ship (presumably the Black Rock) approaches the Island. Jacob's enemy says, "You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?" Jacob replies, "You are wrong," and his enemy comes back with "Am I? They come, fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same." Jacob's enemy (who badly wants to kill Jacob) seems to think that man will always degenerate to a savage state because it's their nature, while Jacob seems to be trying to prove that human nature is not inherently evil.

After Sawyer brings Jin back to the camp, Michael begins beating Jin, and Jin keeps standing up and voluntarily taking punches without fighting back. To prevent her husband from getting badly injured, Sun blurts out in English, "Stop it! Leave him alone!" Everyone, including Jin, stares at her in shock. Only Michael and Kate knew her secret, and now everyone knew it. Obviously, Jin would be upset that Sun had lied to him so many times on the Island about not knowing what was going on, and for never telling him that she spoke English. Sun defends her husband, explaining that "Your raft was already on fire when he arrived. He burned his hands trying to put it out." After Locke steps in and reminds everyone that there are others on the Island who have attacked them before, everyone walks away, leaving Sun and Jin standing there. Sun approaches Jin, and feeling betrayed because she had lied to him about not understanding English, he walks away from her, and later he refuses to speak to her at all.

Jin's treatment of Sun may have been a bit harsh since she wasn't the only one who had lied in their relationship. Ashamed of his heritage, Jin had tried to make Sun believe that his father was dead, as early as before they were married. In this episode's final flashback, Jin goes to visit his father, who is still very much alive. Jin tells his father that he's married, and that he doesn't speak to Sun anymore because he doesn't want her to know about the horrible things her father does. Jin's father encourages him to do the one last job that Mr. Paik asked of him—deliver watches to his associates in Sydney and Los Angeles—and then to run away and live together in the United States. Jin was planning to follow his father's advice to try to save his marriage, but the crash interrupted his plans.

Michael tells Walt that he's going to rebuild the raft and make it even better, and Walt offers to help. Later, Walt is sitting in front of a backgammon board, and he tells Locke that Hurley now owes him $83,000—a lot more than the $20,000 he owed him just six episodes earlier. Walt asks if Locke's dad is cool, and John says, "No. No, he's not." We'll learn a bit about why Anthony Cooper isn't "cool" two episodes later in "Deus Ex Machina". Locke asks Walt why he burned the raft, which indicates that Locke's earlier speech about there being other people on the Island was purely out of a desire to support Sun's statements and protect Jin from being attacked when Walt was the secret arsonist. Walt confesses to the crime, saying that he doesn't want to move anymore and "I like it here." John confesses, "I like it here, too."

After telling Sun that "it's too late" to start their relationship over again, he brings Michael some bamboo and says "boat" in English, indicating that he brought the bamboo to help Michael rebuild his raft.

Hurley's CD player finally dies on the 34th day on the Island.

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Thursday, July 02, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E15 "Homecoming" and S1E16 "Outlaws"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 15 and 16 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 15 - "Homecoming"

After Claire comes back, she can't remember anything that has happened since she was on the plane. The entire past month is gone from her memory. Jin asks Sun if Claire is all right, and then he asks about the baby. Sun says in Korean "I'm sure the baby is fine." Sun and Jin exchange awkward looks, which in retrospect was a small hint about their inability to conceive a child of their own prior to the Island.

Ethan seems to have been a very mentally disturbed person. He tells Charlie in this episode that he'll kill someone every day until he gets Claire back and that he'll kill Charlie last. On the first night, Ethan not only murders Steve (presumably by breaking his neck) but he also breaks "his arms [and] all the bones in his fingers" according to Kate. Later when Ethan sees Claire, he has an angry, sinister look on his face before he begins chasing her through the jungle. This is a very different perspective from what we later see of him in flashbacks. He seemed to have been very kind to Juliet, and surprisingly he even seemed to care for Claire after having captured her (aside from keeping her drugged and injecting her abdomen, of course).

How did Ethan sneak past the Flight 815 survivors' guards and traps to kill Scott? Locke suspects that Ethan came by water, and although this was never verified we do know that The Others had a submarine, at least two boats, and canoes at that time. It's also possible that Ethan sneaked past Boone, who fell asleep during his shift.

Ahh, the Numbers again. In Charlie's flashback, the copier machine he was trying to sell was a "Heatherton C815 Copy Center."

In spite of the horrified look Claire gave Charlie after he shot and killed Ethan in front of her, she seemed to have completely forgotten about it by that night when she walked up to him and asked him why she remembered peanut butter. Perhaps after some introspection she became attracted to Charlie because she knew how vigilantly he would protect her. Either that or her sudden leap from horror to love was a bit of an oversight by the writers, directors, or producers.

Season 1 Episode 16 - "Outlaws"

The episode starts on the eye of a young Sawyer, and we witness his perspective from under his bed of what happened the night that his father killed his mother and then himself.

Sawyer wakes up from this nightmare flashback and sees a boar rummaging through his things. He chases the boar into the jungle, and after it gets away, Sawyer hears whispers much like the ones Sayid heard in "Solitary", but he also hears one that says clearly, "It'll come back around."

In a flashback, Sawyer's former partner Hibbs is missing a finger, which is another instance of a missing body part. Hibbs tells Sawyer that he found the original Sawyer—the man who conned his mother, leading to the deaths of his parents. We find out later in the episode that the man whom Hibbs identified, Frank Duckett, was not really the original Sawyer; Hibbs conned Sawyer into killing someone who owed him money.

Why is Charlie being a creep to Claire all of a sudden? At the end of the last episode they were becoming friends again, and now suddenly Charlie's conscience is catching up with him for killing Ethan? Again, it almost seems like the last Claire and Charlie scene from "Homecoming" doesn't fit well with the rest of the plot.

Sawyer and Kate's "I never" drinking game is the first time we hear about Kate's brief marriage. We don't find out the details of her marriage to police officer Kevin Callis until the Season 3 episode "I Do".

Locke tells Sawyer a really strange story about how his foster mother believed that her daughter, who died in a tragic accident for which the mom blamed herself, was reincarnated as a golden retriever. The dog showed up out of nowhere about six months after the daughter's funeral, and after the mother died five years later the dog "disappeared back to wherever it was she came from in the first place." Sawyer later seems to relate this story to Frank Duckett and the boar who has been causing him trouble.

When Sawyer meets Frank Duckett at his shrimp truck, they introduce each other casually, and we learn that Sawyer's first name is actually "James." In the first part of the season finale, "Exodus, Part 1", we learn from an officer at an Australian police station that Sawyer's full name is James Ford.

In a flashback, Sawyer runs into Christian Shephard at the bar. Christian admits that he loves his son and that he's proud of him and grateful for "what he did to me. What he did for me."

I came across an interesting theory on Lostpedia that Sawyer may have unknowingly and unintentionally contributed to Christian Shephard's death. The coroner told Jack that Christian died of a heart attack caused by excessive alcohol consumption, and Sawyer paid for Christian's liquor because Christian claimed he had misplaced his wallet (he apparently left it in his hotel room according on Jack's flashback in "White Rabbit"). Christian's death is ironic because of his remark to Sawyer that Australians "think Americans can't hold their liquor."

There are an awful lot of Flight 815 survivors who have killed someone. In this episode, Kate and Sawyer reveal to each other through their drinking game that they've both "killed a man." In an attempt to help Charlie work past his feelings of remorse for having killed Ethan, Sayid tells Charlie about the nightmares he had after voluntarily being on a firing squad that killed a terrorist.

After Sawyer shoots Frank Duckett, Frank says "You didn't have to— tell Hibbs I would've paid." He realizes that Sawyer was conned into being Hibbs' hitman. Just before he dies, Frank says "I was going to pay. It'll come back around." The last sentence is what Sawyer heard amidst the whispers more than once in this episode.

When Sawyer finally tracks down the boar, it just watches him calmly. Sawyer, presumably thinking about Frank Duckett and perhaps about the story Locke told him, has compassion on the boar and decides not to shoot it. This is a redemptive moment for Sawyer, which is very interesting because death often follows redemption on the Island. Two of the most notable examples of this phenomenon are when Ana Lucia, in spite of having murdered Jason prior to the Island, was unable to bring herself to murder Ben, and then right afterward she was killed by Michael, and later Michael redeemed himself for the murders he committed by sacrificing his own life to save the lives of several people including fellow Flight 815 survivors on the freighter. In spite of Sawyer's notable moment of redemption in this episode, he's still alive as of the Season 5 finale (unless, of course, the explosion of the bomb in the last few seconds of the finale killed him).

By the end of the episode, Charlie has apparently let go of his remorse for killing Ethan, and he finds Claire on the beach and offers to take her for the walk that she asked for earlier in the episode.

Sawyer recognizes Jack's line "That's why the Red Sox will never win the Series" and figures out that the man he talked to in the bar was Jack's father. Rather than tell Jack that his father loved him and thought very highly of him, Sawyer chooses not to say anything at all. In the first part of the season finale before Jack goes off to get dynamite from the Black Rock and as Sawyer prepares to leave on Michael's raft, Sawyer realizes that they might not see each other again and he tells Jack about his conversation with Christian.

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Saturday, June 27, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E13 "Hearts and Minds" and S1E14 "Special"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 13 and 14 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Stay tuned for my commentaries on episodes 15 and 16, "Homecoming" and "Outlaws", coming soon!

Season 1 Episode 13 - "Hearts and Minds"

This episode starts out on Boone's eye as he jealously watches Sayid flirt with Shannon.

We find out that Shannon has been pulling a long con on Boone: she consistently feigns involvement in an abusive relationship to get Boone to pay substantial amounts of money to her boyfriends to get them to leave her, and then the faux boyfriends split the money with her. Shannon sees it as her way of getting what Boone's mother owes her after treating her unfairly after Shannon's father died.

Sayid discovers a magnetic anomaly on the Island after Locke gives him a compass. Sayid notices that the reading on the compass is dramatically incorrect based on where the sun rises and sets. He tells Jack, "A minor magnetic anomaly might explain a variance of two or three degrees, but not this." Sayid presumes the compass to be defective, but of course this episode takes place before anyone knew about the powerful magnetic anomaly at the Swan Station.

In the past I've heard rumors that in Boone's dream sequence, Shannon was missing an arm after the monster killed her. However, after watching this scene again, I can confirm that this rumor is not true. Each of Shannon's arms is clearly visible in a couple of shots as Boone approaches and picks up her body.

Jack asks Charlie about his opinion of Locke, to which Charlie replies, "Trust him? No offense, mate, but if there's one person on this island I would put my absolute faith in to save us all, it would be John Locke." Charlie's assertion may have been partially true, but sadly Locke didn't save Charlie.

Locke told Boone, "I gave you an experience that I believe was vital to your survival on this island." As shamanistic as Locke may seem, he was rather incorrect about this one. Boone didn't even survive until the end of the season.

Season 1 Episode 14 - "Special"

We begin the episode on Michael's eye. Through the flashbacks in this episode, we learn how Michael ended up being separated from Walt very early in Walt's life, and we learn that this was quite a struggle for Michael.

Locke teaches Walt how to throw a knife. When Walt visualizes throwing the knife into the tree, he can do it perfectly. Walt excitedly says, "It was weird. I actually saw it, in my mind or something, like it was real," to which Locke responds, "Who's to say it wasn't?" Here we have yet another hint about Walt's apparent psychic powers, and we get more hints later in the episode. Locke tells Michael, "Maybe you haven't spent enough time with him to see it, but he's different. ... And we're not back home, Michael. As long as we're here, I think Walt should be allowed to realize his potential."

Shannon decides to help Michael build a raft and asks Boone to help her, but he just says "No thanks." Boone apparently has so much faith in Locke that he thinks the hatch is more important than trying to find a way off the Island.

In a flashback, Walt's adoptive father Brian Porter ignores Walt when Walt is trying to talk to him. When Walt got angry at Brian, a bird suddenly hit the glass window and died. Walt had been reading a book about birds when he became angry. Brian seems very disturbed by this.

In one of the LOST: Missing Pieces mobisodes (which are officially part of the LOST canon), we learn that Walt was held in Room 23 after being captured by The Others—the same place where Alex's boyfriend Karl was later brainwashed. When Walt was in that room, several birds of all shapes and sizes crashed into the window and their bodies piled up outside.

In another flashback we learn that after Walt's mother Susan died, Brian came to Michael to convince him to take custody of Walt because "Sometimes when he's around things happen. He's different somehow."

When Walt wanders off with Vincent, he is chased by a polar bear. Earlier in the episode, Michael burned the comic book that Walt was looking at, and the pages Walt had been reading showed a polar bear attack. Obviously, Walt was angry about his father throwing his comic book into the fire. Was this polar bear a manifestation of Walt's anger, or summoned by his anger or his visualization of a polar bear?

The comic book that Michael burned was Hurley's Spanish edition of Green Lantern and Flash: Faster Friends Part One, the same one that Walt was reading in "Pilot, Part 2" (see my rewatch commentary for that episode). I was curious about the words that Walt was trying to read aloud, which didn't sound much like Spanish except for "oso polar" (polar bear) at the end. (I happen to speak Spanish, by the way.) I took a screen capture of the comic book so I could find out what it really said. In Spanish, the sentence is "Wally se pondrá muy feliz cuando sepa que me comió un oso polar," which in English means "Wally will be very happy to know that I was eaten by a polar bear." Wally and Walt are both nicknames derived from the name Walter (Walt's full name is Walter Lloyd).

In a flashback, a nurse suggests a silly joke for Michael to write in his birthday card to Walt, and says "Trust me. Mother of 4 talking here." This is another appearance of one of the Numbers.

After fighting the urge to read Claire's diary in her absence, Charlie ultimately succumbs to the temptation. He reads in her diary that she dreamed about a black rock: "I had that weird dream again, the one with the black rock I can't get away from. I try to leave it but it won't let me." Charlie wonders if it was the same black rock that Danielle referred to. Of course, we know that there's a slave ship on the Island called the Black Rock, but there have also been other black rocks including the large black rock at The Line. Refer to Lostpedia's article on the Island's various black rocks.

At the very end of the episode, Locke and Boone are looking for Vincent, and they come across Claire walking through the jungle all by herself, perhaps still delusional; as we find out in the next episode, she doesn't remember anything beyond being on the plane, and yet she went with strangers back to their camp prior to revealing that she has amnesia.

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

LOST Rewatch: S1E11 "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" and S1E12 "Whatever the Case May Be"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 11 and 12 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 11 - "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues"

At the end of the previous episode, Ethan was staring creepily at Claire and Charlie, and meanwhile Hurley began telling Jack that Ethan wasn't on the flight manifest. This episode begins with Jack and Locke trying to find them. Locke finds footprints and evidence of two people having been dragged off. Jack says, "This doesn't make any sense. How could one man drag two people, one pregnant?" For a while, many fans assumed that The Others had superhuman strength because of hints like this about Ethan. Oddly, this never seems to have been fully explained on the show, and we now know that at least some of The Others—including Ethan—are normal humans who have been recruited by The Others. We know that Ethan and Ben were originally DHARMA Initiative members' children, Juliet grew up off the Island and was recruited for her medical expertise, Cindy, Zach and Emma were tail section survivors who were assimilated, John Locke was chosen as the next leader of The Others before Ben's departure from the Island, etc. Richard Alpert and Jacob comprise a different class of Others who never seem to age, but we haven't seen any indication of them having unnatural strength.

So, since Ethan was apparently born to normal human parents under normal circumstances, did he have some help from other Others that we never found out about? Presumably if Ethan had assistants, they could have walked in each others' footsteps when dragging away Charlie and Claire, or perhaps they dragged the bodies in such a way as to cover their tracks. However, based on the conversation that Tom had with Ethan (as seen in a flashback in the Season 2 episode "Maternity Leave"), it sounded like Ethan acted on his own, even before making the list that Ben ordered him to make. The mystery of Ethan Rom's apparent superhuman strength remains unsolved.

Walt does exceedingly well against Hurley at Backgammon, rolling exactly what he wants twice in a row (4 and 3, then double sixes). Hurley contends "No one is that lucky," to which Walt responds that his step-dad Brian Porter "said I was the luckiest person he ever knew." Yet again we have subtle hints that Walt may be able to subconsciously make things happen with his mind.

When Walt beats Hurley and Hurley walks away, Walt says "You owe me 20,000 dollars!" Hurley replies seriously, "You'll get it." I wonder whether Hurley ended up giving Walt his $20,000 after they both made it off the Island.

Shannon is concerned about Boone not being back yet after Jack and Kate bring back Charlie. Kate tells Shannon reassuringly, "If there's anyone on this island that your brother's safe with, it's Locke." Considering that Boone ended up dying because of his later adventures with Locke, I guess Kate was wrong about that after all. Earlier in the episode, as Boone carries a torn red shirt for making markers of where they've been, he comments to Locke about red shirts on Star Trek indicating the characters who "always got killed," a foreshadowing of his own fate. Locke remarks, "Sounds like a piss-poor captain." I suppose this turned out to be a self-referential comment considering that Locke was partially to blame for Boone's death, having sent him into the perilous situation that got him killed.

The episode ends with Locke and Boone accidentally discovering the hatch; John throws Boone a flashlight, Boone fails to catch it, and it lands with a metallic clank on the steel hatch door.

Season 1 Episode 12 - "Whatever the Case May Be"

Sayid comments that "Everything is getting washed out to sea. This can't be normal. The tide shifting so suddenly, rising in so short a time." Does this sudden shift of tide have anything to do with the Island constantly moving? Another theory is that the sudden tide shift may be evidence of time dilation, the phenomenon observed by Dan Faraday that time moves more slowly on the Island than off the Island.

Shannon says that Boone "and Locke have been leaving before sunrise and coming back after dark for the last 4 days." Of course, 4 is one of the Numbers. Later, Kate tells Jack that the Marshal had 4 guns in the case.

Later in the season we find out that Kate's toy airplane had belonged to her childhood sweetheart, Tom Brennan. When Tom died, the Marshal retrieved the toy airplane and put it in a safety deposit box (number 815, the Oceanic flight number and also two of the Numbers, 8 and 15, put together).

Kate pulled a long con on Jason the bank robber; she made him think that her name was Maggie, and she developed a relationship with him apparently for the sole purpose of getting him to orchestrate the bank robbery that would get her to the safe deposit box. Clearly, Sawyer is not the only person on the Island with a history of pulling long cons.

Why is Jack so concerned about getting Kate to tell the truth about her past? Jack has challenged her in three different episodes since initially stopping her from voluntarily revealing her past in "Tabula Rasa", telling her "We should all be able to start over." So much for that idea; now Jack wants to get Kate to confess everything to him.

After being pressured by Jack to tell the truth about the toy airplane, Kate tells Jack, "It belonged to the man I killed!" We find out later this season in the episode "Born To Run" that Kate didn't actually kill Tom Brennan, although he died because of his involvement with Kate's plan to speak to her mother in the hospital. We don't find out what really caused Kate to begin her life on the run—murdering her biological father, Wayne Janssen—until the Season 2 episode "What Kate Did".

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Saturday, June 20, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E09 "Solitary" and S1E10 "Raised By Another"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 9 and 10 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

For those who are strictly following the Rewatch schedule, you'll notice that I didn't get a chance to watch all four episodes this week. I found so much to research and write about these two episodes that I spent several hours on them, so I've had to put off episodes 11 and 12 for now. You can subscribe to this blog (see the links in the sidebar) and/or follow me on Twitter to be notified about my LOST articles as soon as I publish them.

Season 1 Episode 9 - "Solitary"

The episode begins with Sayid sitting on the beach looking at a picture of Nadia with a note written on the back. He later tells Danielle that the writing says "You'll find me in the next life if not in this one" and we find out in a flashback that Nadia wrote this.

The episode title has reference to both Sayid, who has been traveling by himself around the Island, and more particularly to Danielle, who has been all alone for 16 years (16, of course, is one of the Numbers which we find out about in a future episode).

Sayid notices a cable partially buried in the sand. He digs it up and sees that one end goes into the ocean, and he decides to follow the other end into the jungle. Kate tells Jack that Sayid has been gone for two days, so apparently it's a pretty long walk to get to the cable when following the shoreline. We now know that the cable goes to the underwater DHARMA station known as The Looking Glass. According to Mikhail Bakunin in the Season 3 episode "Enter 77", the cable's main purpose is for communication, and that the other end goes to the Flame Station.

While following the cable, Sayid triggers one of Danielle's snare traps. He wakes up in Danielle's lair and hears voices repeating over and over again in French, Spanish, and English the words "Where is Alex?" It is well known that Danielle speaks French and English, but apparently she also speaks Spanish, or at least knows some basic phrases.

Regarding her science team's crash on the Island, Danielle says that "Our vessel was three days out of Tahiti when our instruments malfunctioned." She doesn't specify which direction their vessel had been heading, or whether she was going to or coming from Tahiti, but assuming a similar rate of speed to the 9 knots Desmond was traveling when trying to escape the Island, the Island was definitely in a different place when Danielle arrived than when Desmond arrived (refer to my Google Earth file and search the globe for Tahiti to see its location in relation to where Desmond thought the Island was).

Danielle claims that she and her science team "made camp" and "Dug out this temporary shelter" in which she is now living. Her story seems to conflict with what we later see in the Season 5 episode "This Place Is Death," in which (as far as I can recall) it appears as though Danielle and her team never left their initial camp on the beach. Danielle tells Sayid that two months after their vessel crashed on the Island, they were coming back from the Black Rock when something happened (implying that that's when her team got infected), and she says that "The Others" were "the carriers" of the sickness. From what we later see in "This Place Is Death" it is implied that going into the Cerberus Vent—the hole in the ground next to the wall surrounding the temple—caused Danielle's colleagues to become infected, so it doesn't look like they ever went to the Black Rock with her unless it happened sometime after that event. Another discrepancy is that Danielle tells Sayid that she hasn't seen other people on the Island, although she's heard them whispering in the jungle; however, we know that she saw Ben when he took Alex from her. There are a number of inconsistencies in Danielle's story, many of which are detailed in the Lostpedia article about her.

Danielle explains that the sickness "took" her team members "one after the other," which is why she killed them. "I had no choice. They were already lost." Her use of the word "lost" is interesting, and may hint at some sort of connection with the title of the show. Does being changed by the Island make someone lost?

Danielle finally explains who Alex is, saying only that "Alex was my child." Danielle doesn't correct Sayid's repeated assumption that Alex is male, and hence for a long time most viewers probably assumed that Alex was Danielle's son until eventually a teenage female named Alex is seen on the show.

We hear whispers for the first time on the show when Sayid makes his way through the jungle as it's getting dark. By the time he makes it back to the caves, he tells Jack that they're not alone on the Island, and his franticness implies that he's referring to the source of the whispers, not just to Danielle.

Another notable event in the episode (or should I say "an Other event") is when Ethan Rom shows up at the caves with Locke, and Locke introduces him to Hurley as his hunting partner. This is the first time we've seen Ethan on the show. We see him later in the episode among other spectators at Hurley's golf course.

Season 1 Episode 10 - "Raised By Another"

The episode starts on Claire's eye as she begins to have a frightening dream about her baby. Among other occurrences in the nightmare, Claire sees a scary version of John Locke who tells her "You know what's happening. He was your responsibility but you gave him away, Claire. Everyone pays the price now." Assuming there's some significance to Nightmare Locke's words, what does he mean by "everyone pays the price now"? How would "everyone" (perhaps meaning the other Flight 815 survivors) be harmed by Claire's choice to fly to Los Angeles to give up Aaron? Perhaps the meaning is that if Claire hadn't been on the plane, Ethan would not kidnap her and try to take her baby, Charlie might not get hanged nearly to death by Ethan, Ethan would not get shot and killed by Charlie, etc. Certainly a lot of things were set in motion because of Claire being on Flight 815.

When Nightmare Locke looks up at Claire, we see very clearly that his left eye is white and his right eye is black. This gets back to the theme of black and white, light and dark, but perhaps more significantly it may have been a hint about who Locke would ultimately become—or rather, that Jacob's enemy would ultimately take on the persona and appearance of Locke. The real John Locke was loyal to the Island and to Jacob, hence the all-white eye. In contrast, Jacob's enemy (who would pose as Locke on the Island throughout Season 5) wore black when Jacob wore white in the beginning of the Season 5 finale, indicating that he's not one of the "good guys"; hence, Locke's all-black eye in Claire's dream may represent Jacob's enemy.

Also interesting is what Nightmare Locke had on the table in front of him: crystals (possibly quartz) and a deck of cards (perhaps tarot cards), which are tools of the fortune telling trade. This may be an indication that the things Locke said to Claire were wise and based on knowledge of future events, or perhaps they may have just been a concoction of Claire's mind because of her interest in psychics, astrology, and the like.

I also find it interesting that Claire would later become friends with Locke after having seen him in such a frightening nightmare.

After Claire wakes up screaming a second time, she claims that someone held her down and then just ran away. Ethan is one of the people who comes running up to see what the commotion is about, and Jack asks Ethan to bring some water for Claire.

In a flashback, Claire's boyfriend Thomas says during their breakup fight when discussing the baby, "Perfect. Now I get all your daddy abandonment crap." We didn't realize it at the time, but it sounds like Thomas was referring to Claire having previously mentioned that her dad had abandoned her. We now know that Jack's dad Christian Shephard is also Claire's father, and that Christian chose to live with his wife and son in the United States rather than staying in Sydney with his mistress and his daughter. Later in the episode, Claire says that her dad used to sing "Catch a Falling Star" to her when she was little, so perhaps Christian made frequent visits for some time after Claire was born.

Hurley begins taking a census to find out about all the survivors, presuming that one of them may be responsible for attacking Claire the previous night. One of the people he talks to is Ethan, who reveals that his last name is Rom. Ethan Rom is an anagram for "Other Man." Later in the episode, Hurley gets the flight manifest from Sawyer and discovers that Ethan's name was not on the manifest.

Richard Malkin, Claire's psychic, says "It is crucial that you yourself raise this child. ... This child parented by anyone else, anyone other than you— danger surrounds this baby. ... There is no happy life—not for this child, not without you. ... It can't be another. You mustn't allow another to raise your baby." Many fans have pointed out that the line "You mustn't allow another to raise your baby" could also be interpreted as "you mustn't allow an Other to raise your baby."

Richard Malkin later tells Mr. Eko in the Season 2 episode "?" that "...I'm a fraud. ...I make my living as a psychic. You see, that's what I do. I gather intelligence on people and I exploit it. Every day I meet people looking for a miracle, desperate to find one. But there are none to be had." Why, then, did he give Claire her money back after both readings, and why was he so persistent for four months trying to convince Claire not to give up the baby for adoption?

Perhaps Richard Malkin really does have some psychic ability after all. My theory is that someone either paid or threatened Richard Malkin to get him to tell Claire about the supposed couple in Los Angeles, offer her money with the promise of more in L.A., and give her the ticket for Oceanic Flight 815. It may even be that his daughter Charlotte Malkin was nearly drowned by whomever was trying to get him to convince Claire to take that flight. Perhaps Jacob (or someone on his side like Richard Alpert) used Richard Malkin to make sure that Claire would come to the Island. It could be that Richard Malkin told Mr. Eko that he was a fraud because of the guilt he felt about having just deceived Claire.

In a conversation with Claire in the jungle, Charlie shares a different theory about the psychic. He speculates that Richard Malkin was a real psychic and that he knew that Flight 815 would crash on the Island, that Claire would survive, and that this would force her to raise the baby herself. Now that we've seen more of the story, however, Charlie's theory is less plausible. If Richard Malkin really sent Claire to the Island on purpose to force her to raise her baby, he should also have foreknown about Claire's unexplained disappearance in the middle of the night to go with her dead father and that Aaron would afterward be raised by Kate, not Claire.

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Sunday, June 14, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E05 "White Rabbit" through S1E08 "Confidence Man"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes five through eight of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 5 - "White Rabbit"

The episode again starts with a closeup of Jack's eye, but this time it's a flashback of Jack as a boy. This is the first time we've seen a flashback that doesn't deal directly with how a character ended up on the Island.

Someone is drowning, and Charlie yells for Jack and claims "I don't swim." That's a bit strange considering that Charlie didn't seem to have any problem with swimming when he volunteered to go to The Looking Glass, the underwater DHARMA station, in the Season 3 episode "Greatest Hits."

Jack saves Boone from drowning, but fails to save Joanna, whom Boone had been trying to rescue.

Kate tells Claire she's "sorting the practical clothes from the impractical." One of the next items she sorts through is camouflage. Why wasn't anyone wearing that when they were at war with The Others?

In a continuation of the flashback, Jack's father (whose name we now know is Christian Shephard) tells young Jack not to try to be a hero, and to not try to save everyone because "You just don't have what it takes."

Jack finally sees his father up close on the Island and gets panicked. We find out later that part of the reason why he's so shaken up by this experience is that his father died in Australia prior to Flight 815.

In a flashback, Jack's mother says that Jack can't refuse to go save his father, "Not after what you did." We now know what she was accusing him of: turning his father in for drinking on the job, leading to Christian getting fired and running off to Australia. We also now know why Christian chose Australia; he had a mistress and a daughter there (Carole Littleton and Claire Littleton, respectively).

Locke volunteers to go into the jungle to look for water because someone stole the last of the bottles (we later discover that the thief was Boone). Locke eventually catches up with Jack and saves him from falling off a cliff. Locke saved Jack's life! You'd think Jack would have been a lot nicer to Locke after that.

When Charlie is talking to Claire, the tattoo on his shoulder is very prominent. It says "Living is easy with eyes closed." This is a quote from the Beatles song "Strawberry Fields Forever" written by John Lennon (preview/download a cover version on Amazon MP3).

John Locke gives his famous line to Jack, "But I've looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw... was beautiful." Locke also talks about how he generally doesn't believe in magic, but the Island is different.

Jack has a flashback to Australia, specifically to when he identified his father's corpse. Christian died of a massive heart attack caused by overdrinking.

Back on the Island, Jack thinks he hears his father walking behind him. He tries to find his dad, and ends up discovering the caves and freshwater falls instead. He discovers Christian's casket nearby and finds it empty! This is very similar to the Season 3 episode "The Cost of Living" in which an apparition of Yemi appeared in Mr. Eko's tent, and when Eko went to the drug smugglers' plane (which Eko had previously burned in the Season 2 episode "The 23rd Psalm"), he discovered that Yemi's remains were missing. In both cases, the bodies were missing, and the apparitions led the main characters into a deadly trap; Jack nearly fell off a cliff to his death, and Eko was violently beaten to death by the smoke monster.

In Jack's speech, he tells them that "'every man for himself' is not gonna work" and "if we can't live together, we're gonna die alone." This is the origin of the oft-repeated phrase on LOST, "Live together, die alone."

Season 1 Episode 6 - "House of the Rising Sun"

The episode starts on Sun's eye. In this episode we find out about how Jin went from being an innocent and loving man to being so full of anger. Jin asked Sun's dad (Mr. Paik) for his permission to marry her, and Jin was granted permission only under the condition that he work for Mr. Paik for two years. During this time, Jin was forced to deliver "messages" from Mr. Paik, which basically meant that Jin's job was to brutally beat people to get them to comply with Mr. Paik's demands.

This is the episode where we learn about the so-called "Adam and Eve" skeletons at the caves. There have been many fan theories about Adam and Eve ever since this episode first aired, including that they might be Amelia Earhart and her flying companion Fred Noonan, and there seemed to be hints to this effect in the Find 815 ARG. Out of all the theories I've heard, the one that seems the most plausible to me based on what we've seen up through Season 5 is that it's Rose and Bernard, who after being taken back in time to 1974 decided to avoid the rest of the Island's inhabitants and live on their own in peace. The clues we get from this episode are Jack's analysis that "there doesn't seem to be any major trauma to the bones," that "someone laid them to rest here," that "It takes 40 or 50 years for clothing to degrade like this," (which I find a little bit unreliable since Jack is a spinal surgeon, not an archaeologist) and that "one of them is female." Jack also speculated that "they must have lived here." One of them carried a pouch with two smooth stones, one white and one black. Locke coined the pair's nickname: "Our very own Adam and Eve."

This episode begins the feud between those who refuse to leave the beach in case of possible rescue and those who want to move to the caves to be near the fresh water and natural shelter. Eventually it seems that everyone ends up living on the beach, which never seemed to be fully explained on the show. After Claire was attacked during the night, Shannon swore off the idea of moving to "the rape caves," and this feeling of insecurity at the caves was probably shared by other survivors. However, Jack mentions how much work it is to haul fresh water from the caves to the beach, and to the best of my recollection we never hear about that particular challenge again once everyone ends up on the beach.

We find out in a Sun flashback that she can speak English, and that she learned it so she could escape from Jin at the Sydney airport. Sun finally reveals privately to Michael that she can speak English so that he'll give the watch back to Jin so that he can be set free.

For the first time, Locke speaks about sacrificing something to the Island to get something in return. He tells Charlie that he must sacrifice his drugs so that he can get his guitar back, and after Charlie agrees, Locke points up to where Charlie's guitar is. Later in the season, Locke believes that Boone's death was a sacrifice that the Island demanded.

Michael uses an axe to break Jin's handcuffs. Where in the world did he get an axe?

Season 1 Episode 7 - "The Moth"

Charlie starts to go through withdrawals from not taking his drugs, and with a lot of help from Locke he overcomes his addiction (at least for now). The episode title comes from an object lesson that Locke teaches to Charlie. He says that if he was to help a moth escape from its cocoon, it would be too weak to survive; the struggle to get out is nature's way of strengthening the moth. Locke implies that Charlie is like the moth, struggling through a difficult situation, and that he can be strengthened by voluntarily overcoming his addiction to heroin.

Sayid points out to Kate that it doesn't make any sense that they survived the plane crash with just a few scrapes, and he says that there's no way it could have been just "blind, dumb luck" as Kate suggests. (Again, this goes back to my theory that somehow Jacob made it possible for them to survive as part of his social experiment, to see if people would ultimately live in peace on the Island.)

Jack gets trapped in a cave-in. When Charlie goes in to help Jack get out, he says "I'm here to rescue you." In the season 4 episode "Confirmed Dead," Daniel Faraday introduces himself to Jack saying, "I'm Daniel Faraday. I'm here to rescue you." These lines seem to be an homage to Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) in which Luke introduces himself to Leia saying, "I'm Luke Skywalker. I'm here to rescue you." Earlier in the episode, Sawyer says the line "Well, that's the real trick, isn't it?" in reference to moving to the caves, which is also a line from Han Solo in the same Star Wars movie. There have been a number of other references to Star Wars on LOST.

We find out in this episode that prior to Drive Shaft becoming popular, Charlie had been a religious person of the Catholic faith. He gave that up for the band because his brother talked him into believing he was a "rock god." While trapped in the cave, Jack says to Charlie, "I wouldn't have taken you for a religious man," to which Charlie replies "I used to be." Jack's remark is similar to something Claire says in the Season 2 episode "Adrift" when she discovers Charlie's Virgin Mary statue (she being unaware of the fact that it's filled with heroin); Claire says to Charlie, "I didn't realize you were so religious," and Charlie replies that he isn't, but that the statue "might come in handy."

As Sayid tries to triangulate the signal coming from the radio tower, someone knocks him unconscious with a stick. We don't find out until a later episode that it was Locke who knocked out Sayid.

Season 1 Episode 8 - "Confidence Man"

Sawyer is reading Watership Down (Wikipedia, Amazon), a novel by Richard Adams. Sawyer later reads the book again in the Season 3 episode "Left Behind". Lostpedia lists a number of similarities and shared themes between Watership Down and the LOST story.

The book originally belonged to Boone, and when Boone saw Sawyer reading it, he assumed that Sawyer must be in possession of his bag. Shannon ran out of medicine in her asthma inhaler, and Boone accused Sawyer of having his bag, which contained the inhaler refills that he had packed. Throughout the episode, Sawyer endures the ire of the other survivors as they seek to help Shannon and assume the worst of Sawyer.

Sawyer makes Kate read the letter that he carries around with him. Since it's addressed to "Mr. Sawyer," when watching the episode for the first time the viewer (like Kate) assumes that a child wrote the letter to him and that he was responsible for the death of the child's parents. Thus he knowingly cons Kate by making her read the letter.

In keeping with the con theme of the episode, Locke cons Sayid into thinking it was Sawyer who knocked him out in the jungle, even going so far as to suggest a somewhat credible theory that Sawyer could have created a slow fuse to set off his rocket by using one of his cigarettes, which would have given Sawyer an alibi. Locke even hands Sayid one of his knives to use if he's ever confronted by Sawyer again.

Sayid says that when he spent five years as a Communications Officer in the Republican Guard, "part of my training entailed getting the enemy to communicate." We find out later that this "training" was actually given to him by the United States military (specifically Kelvin Inman) when Sayid was captured and coerced into torturing his own superior. Kelvin would later become Desmond's hatch mate.

Sayid tortures Sawyer, and Sawyer says he'll only talk to Kate. He uses the situation to take advantage of her and get a kiss from her, and then admits that he never had the inhaler refills in the first place.

Kate figures out that Sawyer was actually the one who wrote the letter when he was a boy, and he comes clean: "How's that for a tragedy? I became the man I was hunting. Became Sawyer." We learn from the flashbacks in this episode that he became a con man who did many of the same despicable things that the original Mr. Sawyer had done. However, there was a significant difference between him and the original Sawyer: he had compassion on a couple whom he had been planning to con out of $160,000 when he found out that they had a child. Seeing the boy reminded him of his own childhood and what Mr. Sawyer had done to him. He walked out on the con because he didn't want to become the same person whom he hated and blamed for his parents' deaths. (Incidentally, $160,000 contains "16" which is one of the numbers.)

Sayid, feeling ashamed because of having stooped to using torture, losing his temper, and badly injuring Sawyer's arm with Locke's knife, takes a backpack and goes for a walk along the coastline, telling Kate that he's going to map the Island. This trek will lead to Sayid's discovery of a cable going between the jungle and the ocean (which presumably goes to the underwater station, The Looking Glass) as well as his discovery of Danielle Rousseau's makeshift home on the Island.

Charlie woos Claire with a jar filled with imaginary peanut butter and convinces her to move to the caves.

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Saturday, June 06, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E01 "Pilot, Part 1" through S1E04 "Walkabout"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching the first four episodes of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch. Later I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 1 - "Pilot, Part 1"

The episode starts with a closeup of Jack's eye. This started a theme where if the episode starts on someone's eye, that person ends up being the main character in that episode.

Jack saved the lives of Rose, Claire (who nobody knew at the time was his sister), and Hurley on the beach. He also saved Charlie's life by going back to help him get up when they were running from the monster.

There are lots of main characters in the first episode who later died: Shannon Rutherford, Boone Carlyle, Charlie Pace, Michael Dawson, John Locke, and possibly Claire Littleton (although her status has not yet been confirmed, it seems likely that she died somehow; why else would she completely abandon her baby and later be seen in Jacob's cabin with her dead father?).

When we first see Kate, she's walking out of the jungle holding her wrists, which appear to have been bleeding. We didn't know it at the time, but she had just gotten out of her handcuffs.

Characters who changed dramatically over the series: Sawyer, Locke, and especially Jin; he was initially very self-centered and controlling of his wife.

After Jack told Kate the story about his first residency surgery, she said "If that had been me, I think I would've run for the door," to which Jack replied, "No, I don't think that's true. You're not running now." Kate was, however, running from the law again; she had escaped from her handcuffs and didn't disclose to anyone that she was a fugitive. Another note about that scene is that Jack left out the part of the story that we learned in the Season 5 finale about his father being the one who told him to count to five.

Charlie writes FATE on his fingers; fate is one of the themes of the show.

Hurley is kind-hearted as always. He checks up on pregnant Claire and her "baby stuff" and after giving her a meal he walks back to hand her a second one.

Jack says he blacked out on the plane, but Kate says "I didn't. I saw the whole thing." If she truly did not black out at all, she might have some insight into how people survived the fall. How could Jack fall all the way from the plane and land on his back with only a scratch? And since he had been in his seatbelt, how did he end up landing far away from his seat and in the middle of the jungle? Perhaps the miraculous survival of so many people was part of Jacob's plan; he allowed them to survive so they could be part of his social experiment. Jacob brought Oceanic Flight 815 to the Island just like he brought the Black Rock and other groups in an attempt to prove his enemy wrong.

In the first few episodes of the series, almost every time the monster is nearby it knocks over trees. If the monster had been on the Island for a long time (and we now know that it has), there wouldn't be many trees left standing. Later in the series the monster doesn't seem to knock down trees quite as often.

Why did the monster kill Seth Norris, the pilot? Did he have sins for which he was unwilling to repent, as perhaps may have been the case with Mr. Eko?

Season 1 Episode 2 - "Pilot, Part 2"

Walt finds handcuffs in the jungle and shows them to Michael (of course, we know they must have been Kate's, or more accurately the Marshal's).

Sawyer assumes that Sayid was the one in cuffs, and he accuses Sayid of being responsible for the plane crash, which resulted in a fist fight.

The first time that Sawyer really gave someone a nickname on the series is when he calls Hurley "Lardo." (One could argue that he called Sayid "buddy" before that, but it's a common term and in my opinion doesn't really quality as one of Sawyer's nicknames, which usually have some reference to the person's character, attributes, or the situation.) Sawyer calls Jack "Doc" for the first time right after that.

Sayid offers to try to fix the transceiver. As he does so, Hurley introduces himself to Sayid and then finds out that Sayid was in the Gulf War in the Republican Guard. Hurley had expected Sayid to say that he fought in the United States military, and was speechless he found out that Sayid had been on the side of Iraq.

Jin slaps Sun's hand when she tries to take some food that he's prepared, but he offers it to Hurley first, who laughs and says he's hungry but there's "no way" he'd eat that.

The first literature sighting of the series (at least, the first one I noticed) was Hurley's Green Lantern comic in Spanish with the polar bear in it, which Walt looks at on the beach.

We get a hint that Michael doesn't know Walt very well when he asks Walt whether he reads Spanish. Later Jack asks Michael how old Walt is, and Michael responds, "Nine," and then immediately corrects himself, "Ten. Ten."

Sawyer reads the letter he wrote to the real "Mr. Sawyer," probably thinking in part about the man he just murdered in Australia and the fact that the real Sawyer is still out there; perhaps this is part of what motivates him to go on the expedition to higher ground to try to use the transceiver.

Walt talks to Locke, the first full conversation that anyone's had with Locke since the crash. Locke teaches Walt about Backgammon, introducing one of the themes of the show: black and white, light and dark. "Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark." This seems to be a direct parallel to Jacob and his enemy in the Season 5 finale; Jacob wears white while his enemy wears black. It's interesting that the writers seem to have been setting up for the Season 5 finale (and presumably much of the plot of Season 6) with this seemingly insignificant conversation between Locke and Walt in the very first episode.

Locke tells Walt a secret, presumably about how he got the use of his legs back after the crash.

Sawyer shoots a polar bear in the jungle. We now know that the polar bear was part of a DHARMA Initiative experiment, and that the bears were previously kept in cages at the Hydra Station on the smaller island. Sawyer later reveals that he got the gun from the U.S. Marshal (Edward Mars), and Sayid gets his chance to accuse Sawyer of being a criminal. Kate takes the gun away and pretends to not know how to use it (later in the series we find out that she does indeed know how to use a gun), so Sayid instructs her how to dismantle it. She gives the bullets to Sayid and the handgun back to Sawyer, who tells Kate that he knows her type.

We find out in a flashback to the plane how Kate got the cuffs off. When the oxygen masks came down in the plane, she couldn't reach her mask, so she took the keys from the unconscious Marshal and uncuffed herself. After putting an oxygen mask on herself, she put one on the Marshal, which presumably saved his life (if only temporarily).

Shannon translates Danielle's message being transmitted from the radio tower. According to Shannon, Danielle says that she's all alone, and "It killed them. It killed them all." We now know that Danielle was referring to the sickness, not the monster like everyone assumed at the time. Sayid estimates that the message has been playing on a loop for 16 years and 5 months (16 is one of the Numbers, which we don't find out about until a later episode).

Season 1 Episode 3 - "Tabula Rasa"

This episode has a lot of firsts, including the first "Previously on LOST," the first time Sawyer called Kate "Freckles," and the first pre-flight flashback (Kate in Australia).

The Australian farmer has a false right arm, perhaps the first missing body part on the show, which became a theme (Marvin Candle's prosthetic arm in The Swan's orientation film, Danielle's comment about Montand losing his arm, the glass eyeball in The Arrow, Mikhail's missing eye, etc.) In the first part of the Pilot episode, there was a man whose leg was badly injured and Jack tied his necktie around the man's leg to slow the bleeding, but it was not entirely clear from the shots whether part of the leg was actually missing or whether it was just severely wounded.

Speaking of missing arms, in the Season 5 finale we found that Dr. Pierre Chang lost his arm when something fell on it during the Incident. His arm was later missing when he played the role of Dr. Marvin Candle in The Swan's orientation film. Does this mean that all or at least some of those who were present will somehow survive the explosion of the hydrogen bomb? Richard Alpert also said to Sun in 2007 that "I watched them all die" referring to Jin, Sawyer, Juliet, Dan, and Miles, who were in the 1974 DHARMA new recruits photograph. Perhaps he only meant this figuratively, as in he assumed they would all be dead, but somehow they all survived.

We get the first hint that Walt may have the power to make things happen with his mind; Michael says he'll look for Vincent as soon as it stops raining, and immediately it stops raining.

How does Locke know how to make a whistle that Vincent would hear? Did he learn how to do that as a Webelo, or as part of his four-year preparation for the Walkabout (which we find out about in the next episode)?

Locke finds Vincent and then lets Michael take the credit. Why was Michael so against Walt hanging out with Locke after that? Because of the Locke's case of knives in the next episode?

The episode title "Tabula Rasa" has reference to Jack's line to Kate after she told Jack she wanted to tell him what she did. Jack said to her, "I don't want to know. It doesn't matter, Kate, who we were, what we did before this, before the crash. It doesn't really— Three days ago, we all died. We should all be able to start over." "Tabula Rasa" means "blank slate" in Latin.

Charlie changes the tape on his fingers to read "LATE" instead of "FATE". What is the significance of the word LATE? Did he write that because the hypothetical rescue party was late in coming to save them?

Why did they end the episode giving us such a creepy view of Locke with strange music?

Season 1 Episode 4 - "Walkabout"

The episode starts on Locke's eye on the beach. He wiggles his toes and moves his legs.

Jack decides they need to burn all the dead bodies in the fuselage to prevent the boars from coming back to scavenge their remains. Sayid points out that it isn't right for Jack to do this without regard to their wishes or their religions, and Jack doesn't care; at this point he's very much the man of science, not a man of faith. We later find out that Sayid practices Islam.

Michael sees Locke opening his case. We find out later in the episode that Locke has had a case full of knives this whole time. Where was he when Jack was looking for a blade in Pilot, Part 2?

Jack called the jungle "the heart of darkness." Heart of Darkness (Wikipedia, Amazon) is the name of a book by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1899. Some of the themes of the story parallel themes in LOST.

Kate tells Jack she's a vegetarian, but she just ate bacon and eggs in her Australia flashback in the previous episode.

Claire asks Jack to lead the funeral, but Jack refuses, saying it isn't his thing. Perhaps the reason he's so opposed to the idea (aside from not being very religious) is that he was thinking of his own father whose body was on the plane, and for whose funeral he was flying back to Los Angeles. Later in the episode, Jack begins seeing his father walking around on the Island.

One of the "log carrying guys" was using Locke's wheelchair to haul logs. Later in the episode, they burned the wheelchair. Why in the world would they have done that? Granted, it's difficult to roll a wheelchair on anything but paved ground, and they couldn't find the person to whom it had belonged so they probably assumed that the owner died in the crash, but at the very least they could have kept it to use as a chair.

Claire finds an envelope with Sayid's name on it and gives it to him. It contains photographs of Nadia. This is the first time we see her face, but we don't yet learn her name or the reason why Sayid was flying to L.A.

Locke calls Kate "Helen." In a flashback we see Locke talking to a woman on the phone and calling her Helen, but it turns out that John is a customer and that he's paying $89.95 an hour to speak with her. At this point in the show, we don't know about the real Helen, and many viewers (myself included) assumed at the time that this was the only Helen to whom he was referring.

Locke is confronted by the monster and lives! Why did it let him live? Did it know about his destiny to become a future leader of the Island? If the monster is Jacob's enemy or associated with him, did it somehow know that Locke would be instrumental in Jacob's death?

Rose tells Jack that her husband Bernard isn't dead, and Jack argues that he was in the tail section; Jack presumes that everyone in the tail section died. Rose says that the people in the tail section are probably thinking the same thing about them. This is the first time we've been given any hint that there might be survivors from the tail section of the plane.

Just after his conversation with Rose, Jack sees his father Christian Shephard on the Island for the first time, and he's wearing his signature suit and white tennis shoes. We don't know yet that this apparition is his father or the significance of the white tennis shoes.

Locke emerges from the jungle with blood on his face and dragging a boar. Did Locke kill the boar by himself, or did the monster kill it? Just before Locke heard the monster, he had been hunting a boar. When Michael congratulates Locke, Locke seems confused, and doesn't actually admit to having killed the boar. Whether he killed it or not, Locke does end up becoming the main provider of food through his hunting.

Why does Locke lie to Michael and say he didn't get a look at the monster?

We find out at the end of the episode that Locke was in a wheelchair before the plane crash! His miraculous healing was apparently the secret that Locke had told Walt about.

Locke was in Australia to go on a walkabout (hence the episode title), for which he had been preparing for four years (4 is one of the Numbers).

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Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, rewatch, theories

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The LOST Rewatch: Seasons 1-5 in Review

Recently I was invited to participate in The LOST Rewatch, masterminded by DocArzt & Friends and Lostpedia. It's going to be a hiatus-long event where fans rewatch the first five seasons of LOST in anticipation of the sixth and final season.

The rewatch starts June 1st, and a tentative episode schedule is here (I say tentative because the Season 5 portion may be postponed until after the DVD and Blu-ray editions become available on December 8th if there isn't an official means of watching Season 5 online by then).

I plan to blog and podcast during the rewatch, sharing insights and commentary on each week's set of episodes with a particular emphasis on making connections we didn't make the first time around, since we now have much more context for the series. As usual, I intend to mainly focus on the mysteries and most plot-relevant points. I'll probably blog once a week and podcast a bit less often (although my rewatch blog commentaries should all make it to the podcast).

If you're into social networking, you can:

Join the LOST Rewatch official Facebook group
Follow the LOST Rewatch official Twitter profile
Follow the JoshMeister on Twitter if you haven't already

Subscribe to this blog and podcast, and stay tuned for the rewatch!

Labels: hiatus, rewatch, site news

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Simeon Hobbes & Epithet Alpha: Real LOST ARG or Hoax?

There's a lot of buzz today about a supposed new LOST alternate reality game (ARG) revolving around a couple of new Twitter accounts and an old YouTube account that just posted a video after being stagnant for three years. A lot of people are excited about it, but so far there's little evidence that this is an official LOST ARG.

Let's take a look at the chronology of events. Late Thursday night (depending on your time zone), one day after the Season 5 finale aired in the U.S. and Canada, a new Twitter account was created (@simeonhobbes), which has posted a lot of cryptic messages, many of which refer to someone named Jacob in a reverent manner as if speaking of a deity.

On Friday, May 15, a new video was posted on the YouTube page of a user named "thelostexperience". The video is titled "Who is Simeon Hobbes?" and is technically just a photograph with an audio track. The photograph is of a starry sky, and the audio has been identified as Morse code spelling out "I AM THE BENNU BIRD, THE HEART-SOUL OF RA, THE GUIDE OF THE GODS TO THE TUAT". According to Lostpedia, this video was later referenced by the @simeonhobbes account (the tweet said simply "KLbOw2XTWg8", which is the YouTube video's ID), but the tweet has since been deleted. Earlier today, Twitter user @DEBauslaugh deciphered a riddle posted by @simeonhobbes and determined that @epithetalpha is also part of the game, which @simeonhobbes confirmed.

But is this an official LOST ARG, or just a fan-made game? As of right now, there doesn't seem to be any solid evidence that it's official, and the evidence that exists seems to point to it being unofficial (that is, a non-canon, fan-created ARG). For one thing, the YouTube account and Twitter accounts only make reference to each other, and none of them seem to be referenced on any official ABC sites as far as I'm aware. There's no mention of anything related to the game at http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/ which is ABC's official LOST homepage. I asked fellow LOST blogger and podcaster DocArzt about it since he often has inside information about LOST (he also owns the domain thelostexperience.com, incidentally), and he agreed with my suspicions that it's not official. And as if that wasn't enough, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse gave a small hint on the most recent episode of The Official LOST Podcast (May 11th) that there may be a new ARG beginning at Comic-Con San Diego 2009 (July 23-26). This doesn't necessarily mean that an official ARG won't start before that, but they didn't give any hints about anything coming sooner. Here's what they said:

Carlton Cuse: "So this is it. This is the last time we're going to be chatting until Comic-Con, but we hope that you guys will come to Comic-Con as that will also be our final Comic-Con appearance."
Damon Lindelof: "Yes. We've got some treats in store, I think."
Carlton Cuse: "Yes. We are already talking about what we're doing for Comic-Con and it should be really fun."
Damon Lindelof: "That is very exciting."

In spite of the evidence cited above, I sent a message to the YouTube video account holder asking for evidence that the game is authentic, and I haven't gotten a response yet. I also was followed back by @epithetalpha when I followed the account, so I sent the user a direct message asking the same thing. I'll be sure to tweet and blog about whatever response I get, if any. So far I've gotten no response.

Even if this ARG is fan-made, it may turn out to be fun if you're willing to invest your time in it. To keep up with the latest tidbits and watch the plot unfold, keep your eyes on these places:

Twitter: @simeonhobbes and @epithetalpha

also @DEBauslaugh and @lostpedia who are playing and keeping track of the ARG

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/thelostexperience
Lostpedia is also currently tracking the ARG at the article Simeon Hobbes
If it turns out to be official, you can be sure that I'll tweet about it @theJoshMeister and blog and podcast about it as well (so please subscribe!)

If you have any further information about this ARG, please free to leave a comment on this blog post.

Labels: comic-con, hiatus, lost experience

Friday, May 15, 2009

Translation of Greek Words on Jacob's Tapestry [Updated]

Last night on the live post-Season 5 finale podcast, Congested sought to be the first to discover the meaning of the words written on the tapestry in Jacob's dwelling place beneath the statue. Congested knew that the writing was in Greek letters, so he tracked down some folks who could read Greek and ultimately came up with the following translation:

"May heaven grant you in all things your heart's desire"

An alternate translation from Lostpedia reads:

"May the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires"

This is a line from Homer's Odyssey (Lostpedia) (Wikipedia) (Amazon).

So, now that we know what the tapestry says, what is its significance or meaning? Richard Alpert told John Locke (er, "John Locke") that Jacob had given him the power of immortality. We don't really know whether Richard can be killed, but at least we know that he seems to be able to live forever without showing any signs of aging. Either way, this was a gift or blessing that Jacob gave to Richard. Jacob himself seems to have the same ability since, like Richard, he never seems to age. When Richard was speaking to "Locke" about coming back from the dead—something Richard had never seen happen before—he assumed that it must have been a gift from Jacob as well. Thus, it seems that Richard is convinced that Jacob can grant "whatever one's heart desires."

Richard Alpert is not the only person whom Jacob has blessed. At Sun and Jin's wedding, Jacob offered them "his blessing" for their marriage, and because of Sun and Jin's experiences on the Island their marriage and love for one another were restored. Hurley is another person who has apparently been blessed by Jacob. While they were riding in the cab together, Jacob said to Hurley, "What if you were blessed? You get to talk to the people you've lost." Although this isn't a direct revelation that Jacob is responsible for blessing Hurley with his ability, it is implied by the conversation, especially when viewed in context of the other things we learned about Jacob in the episode.

Is the writing on this tapestry a reflection of Jacob's power to make dreams come true? Or does the tapestry magically give Jacob power to grant wishes? My guess is the former: that Jacob already had this power. After all, Jacob himself created the tapestry:

Here's yet another puzzler to ponder: Why did Jacob create a tapestry with Greek writing when virtually everything else that's manmade on the Island (pre-DHARMA Initiative, that is) seems to be of ancient Egyptian origin? While it makes sense for a quote from The Odyssey to be written in its original language, a tapestry with Greek words on it seems rather out of place inside the base of a giant Egyptian statue.

Thanks again to Congested from Audibly Lost for passing along the Greek translation.

UPDATE: This high-quality image from DarkUFO shows more writing than has been translated so far, including hieroglyphics (see below). Lostpedia now has a translation of the Greek text in the middle of the tapestry: "May the gods grant thee happiness."

Labels: episode commentary, hiatus, theories

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Season 5 Finale "The Incident" Discussion

[Audio podcast not edited yet—subscribe!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss the Season 5 finale, Episodes 16 and 17, "The Incident" Parts 1 and 2.

We'll get to that in a moment, but first here are some revelations from the executive producers and some additional notes and commentary regarding previous episodes.

The Official LOST Podcast notes from recent episodes:

Why did Ben have to move the Island if the Island is always moving?

The executive producers indicated that what Ben created a "bigger jump"

Why were Amy and Paul having picnic in Hostile territory? (Some fans had speculated that one or both of them might have secretly been colluding with the Hostiles)

The executive producers said that Amy and Paul were unknowingly just outside the DHARMA territory; it was an accident that they had their picnic in Hostile territory

The executive producers also pointed out that The Swan is actually in Hostile territory, too (hence all the secrecy with the hidden fence during construction, etc.), which was a big risk for DHARMA to take
We'll see an ankh again this season (we did see one in the finale—on the statue)

The writers said that the compass that has been passed between John Locke and Richard Alpert through time in an endless loop was intentional, and is supposed to be a mystery
A couple episodes ago on the JoshMeister's LOST Podcast, we discussed whether it was Daniel Faraday (voiced by Jeremy Davies) who was speaking to Dr. Pierre Chang in the Comic-Con 2008 video. The executive producers explained that it was Dan's voice, but the video is not canon and the show didn't end up going in that direction.

Carlton Cuse said that "We don't consider what goes on in Comic-Con canon. I mean, we try to make it tied to the show, but the only thing that really is canon is the show for us."
The story didn't go in the exact direction that they had intended at the time the video was made (before the worldwide financial crisis that forced the ARG to end early)
Damon Lindelof: "We just rejiggered that because we lost all the storytelling that would have happened in the ARG that got essentially canceled, and then as the teaser of the season premiere, we basically—we sold this idea that Faraday was going to be in DHARMA times, but this was the new idea."

Regarding who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, Carlton Cuse said:

"Hurley's a good guy"
"Kate's a good guy to me, too"
Richard Alpert: "Haven't decided"
Frank Lapidus: "Frank's good."
Sayid: "Depends on the day. I like Sayid, but he's done some bad things."

A fan asked at what point we'll have "enough information to adequately theorize about how the show ends." Damon's response:

"I think, personally speaking, by the end of this finale, and by the end of the season premiere of season six, you will have pretty much all the fundamental building blocks you need to put together a hell of a theory as to what it all means and where the show might potentially end... You're going to get a substantial piece of information in this finale that will help you get a sense of where we might be going."

Start putting on your theory hats during the hiatus, LOST fans!

Other notes:

Last week, natalie_in_seattle asked: "how old is daniel? because it seems like he should be born already, well in 1977 anyway"

Daniel was supposed to have been born in 1978. (Recall the comment from Charles Widmore to Eloise last week implying that she's pregnant.) Interestingly, Daniel died in 1977, meaning in chronological time, he died before he was born, and yet lived to be an adult. =)
The actor who plays Dan Faraday is Jeremy Davies, who was born in October 1969. So the actor is almost 40 years old, and the role he's playing is that of a 30-year-old. That's why Daniel looks older than his character is supposed to be.

StefanyMac e-mailed and said:

"Hey Josh,

I noticed a couple of things I wanted to share from 'The Variable'.

1) The D.I. Worker down in the Orchid work site stopped Dan to make him wear a hard hat. He is the exact same actor that played an Other in 'Through the Looking Glass'. I'm certain of it. I couldn't find a screen cap from Variable but here's a link to one from 'Looking Glass'. It he man holding a gun to Sayid's head.

http://gallery.lost-media.com/displayimage-1300-315.html

2) When Ms. Hawking was visiting with Penney at the hospital she stated that Charlie 'had his father's hair.' Charlie has blond hair and Des has dark brown hair. If she had said he had his father's wavy hair that would have been accurate. That's not what she said. It's true that some people's hair turns from fair to dark as they age. However if that's in fact what happened, how would Ms. Hawking know that?

I believe that Ms. Hawking has some sort of Time travel/temporal abilities. The popular theory is that her future knowledge comes from Dan's journal. I don't think that is the complete answer. Dharton has said that "The Variable" is the companion episode to the constant. We have learned that Desmond is special. The rules don't apply to him. This ep featured Des recovering and Dan dying. I think these two men are both special. Perhaps the rules don't apply to Dan either. Dan believed that 'whatever happened, happened.' Maybe that's because his mother taught him that. She seems to be a mathematician in her own right. She knew that the man in the red shoes would die. How? Not from the journal. Dharlton have described her as a Temporal Policeman in the past. She described raising Dan as her 'job'. Perhaps she knew that both Dan and Des had the ability to change the path of events in time, and therefore it was her 'job' to guide them both and make sure they did not deviate from the assigned path. I believe she has been watching Desmond his whole life. She placed Father Campbell in his life to get him to that monestary. She was there at the ring shop when he came in. She has a general 'read' on events in time. That's how she placed herself in the shop at that time. It's how she knew about the man in the red shoes. It is also possible that she knew that Dan was able to change events in history so catastrophically that it was best to have him die back in the past, rather than let him live to rip time apart."

I did some research and found out that the DHARMA Initiative worker who told Dan to wear a hard hat is indeed played by the same actor (Ariston Green) who played Jason the Other whose neck was snapped by Sayid's legs in the Season 3 finale, and who also played a different Other in the Season 4 finale (see Lostpedia's article on Ariston Green and also this interview with the actor).

Could they be clones of each other, or zombies perhaps? (Kidding! I couldn't resist. ;o)

As a reminder, I'm planning to do a special blog post and podcast episode at some point connecting the dots between actors who have played multiple roles (e.g. Others as well as Flight 815 survivors) on the show. Hopefully I can get to that during the hiatus.

Season 5 Episodes 16 and 17 "The Incident" Parts 1 and 2 notes:

Flashback: Unknown point in history

Man with spinning wheel, a loom, and fire (this turns out to be Jacob in his home)
He spins a tapestry with Greek writing on it:

Screenshot
Can anyone translate this?

Congested went to a Greek chat room and they said it's ancient Greek

the link is irc://irc.freenode.net/debian.gr the site is www.debian.gr

Congested's gaming community friend in Greece translates the first part as: "The gods give as much as..." The fifth word could mean "the ones who have their head right," which means they're not crazy
Someone else told Congested that it's an uncommon dialect of ancient Greek

We cut to a scene of Jacob and another man on the beach looking at an old sailing ship

Is this the Black Rock?

Jacob to the second man (we'll call him the rival): "I take it you're here because of the ship."
Rival: "I am. How'd they find the Island?"
Jacob: "You'll have to ask them when they get here."
Rival: "I don't have to ask. We brought them here."

Several people think the line is "You brought them here." This seems to make more sense.

Jacob smiles
Rival: "You're still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?"
Jacob: "You are wrong."
Rival: "Am I? They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same."

Rose and Bernard in 1977 are happy; does this prove Jacob right?

Jacob: "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that, it's just progress."
Rival: "Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?"
Jacob: "Yes."
Rival: "One of these days, sooner or later, I'm going to find a loophole, my friend."
Jacob: "Well, when you do, I'll be right here."
Rival: "Always nice talking to you, Jacob."
Jacob: "Nice talking to you, too."

diesel929: "so mystery man needed a loophole to kill jacob... loophole around the rules. sounds familiar, eh? ben and widmore..."

It seems as though the loophole might be that the rival can't kill Jacob by his own hand; he has to get someone else to do it (Ben)
congested thinks that the loophole might be (at least in part) taking the identity of John Locke

Ultimately, it seems, Ben was used as a pawn by Jacob's rival to kill Jacob

Jacob is wearing white, the rival is wearing black

jennielynn pointed this out and said: "bad and good maybe"

So Jacob is good and the rival is bad?

They're sitting beneath the statue

Jacob lies in the shadow of the statue?

It's not Anubis—it has a crocodile mouth
The latest theories are that it could be Sobek or Taweret

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobek

Evidence for:

Damon reportedly referred to the statue as being male in an interview, which Sobek is, while Taweret is identified as being female, typically pregnant
The shape of the front of the face and the teeth look much more like a crocodile than a hippopotamus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taweret

Evidence for:

The hat on the statue looks much more like Taweret's than Sobek's

Michael Emerson recently speculated that it's Taweret

Who is the second man?

baileybear: "so can we guess who this man was at the beginning of the show. the locke bodysnatcher?"

Perhaps it will turn out to be the rival who took the form of Christian Shephard; we know Jacob hadn't lived in his cabin for a while, and Ilana said someone else had been living there. We've seen Christian in the cabin, and it might make sense for Jacob's rival to have lived in Jacob's old house

On the other hand, Christian said to Locke when Locke was leaving the Island "Say hello to my son," which wouldn't necessarily make sense unless it was really Christian and not an impostor
On the other other hand, Christian and John both came to the Island dead and wound up (apparently) alive again in some form. It appears that "resurrected John" was actually Jacob's rival, so maybe alive-again Christian was also Jacob's rival

jennielynn: "so the guy in the black is he smokey?"

According to Robert (and later Danielle), supposedly the smoke monster is a "security system" for the Island (see http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Monster), and it apparently resides near or underneath the temple

Congested thinks he could be like a pre-Benjamin Linus, someone who's not on the same level as Jacob
jennielynn: "didnt jacob have a evil brother" (Yes: Esau)

Maybe Jacob and this guy are brothers, perhaps even fraternal twins like Jacob and Esau (although I don't think they look much alike)

diesel929: "i just read a theory that the guy in black is an egyptian god named Seth and that Jacob is Sobek: http://www.lost.com/forum/showthread.php?p=222381"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(mythology)

From Lostpedia (http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Jacob%27s_enemy): The casting call described him as "Samuel. Any ethnicity, 40s-60s. A corporate raider looking to take over his next company. Powerful, devious and obtuse. He has a cunning intellect and a strong sense of danger. May lead to recurring. Looking for someone very interesting and very special for this role..."

Could this be a description of Jacob instead?

jennielynn: "he aready has control so it seems" — so it doesn't necessarily fit with the "looking to take over his next company"

Congested's crackpot theory (but he doesn't believe it): Was Locke always the same person as Jacob's enemy somehow? — Jacob's enemy has really always been the same person as Locke

Flashback: Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s

Boy and girl walk into store, girl steals a New Kids on the Block lunchbox — it's Kate ("Katie")

Jacob pays for the lunchbox!
Jacob: "You're not going to steal anymore, are you? Be good, Katie."
Jacob doesn't age, just like Richard Alpert doesn't

1977

Sayid tells Jack that they only have two hours to detonate the hydrogen bomb according to Daniel Faraday, who left detailed instructions in his notebook how to remove the bomb's core
Richard confirms that Eloise is pregnant

2007

Richard comes to talk to Locke
Sun: "Who's Jacob?"
Ben: "He's in charge of this Island... [Locke is the leader] and the leader answers to Jacob."
Richard: "I'm this way because of Jacob" referring to his inability to age. He tells Locke that Jacob must have brought Locke back to life.
Locke: "That's why I'm doing this. To thank him."

He wants to kill Jacob as a way of thanking him? This must have to do with the voice John heard, "Help me."

Congested suggested that maybe when Locke heard "Help me," it wasn't Jacob at all! After all, Ilana said someone else had been living in the cabin for "a long time"
Some have speculated that the smoke monster is Christian, which was especially a popular theory after the smoke alarm went off in Jack's hospital before we saw Christian... so smokey = Christian = possibly Jacob's rival?

Congested points out that the smoke monster is kind of dumb, and Josh agrees, thinking of smokey not being smart enough to jump the sonic fence

Was it really Jacob's enemy who told Richard to help John Locke during the time-jump thing?

Maybe Jacob's enemy was setting it up for John to die because his body needed to come back to the Island so Jacob's enemy could pose as him
Congested points out that he seems to really have John Locke's memory

More evidence that smokey might be Jacob's enemy: (presumably) Smokey in the form of Alex told Ben to do whatever Locke said, even though it was not in fact Locke! Also, we didn't see Locke at all while Alex was talking to Ben, so it's possible that the smoke monster remanifested itself as Locke after appearing to Ben in the form of Alex

Or it's possible that the Alex manifestation wasn't the smoke monster at all; it could have been someone/something else, or perhaps it really was Alex

Bram to Ilana: "You think he's a candidate?" referring to Frank Lapidus

A candidate for being in Jacob's group? To be a sacrifice to the Island à la Boone?

Frank: "Who are you people?"
Ilana: "We're friends."
They take the large box off the canoe, Frank asks what's inside, Ilana demands they open it
Lapidus sees what's inside and says "Terrific."

How did Ilana know that she needed to take this body to Jacob?

Obviously the reason for her bringing the body is so Jacob would know that the other Locke on the Island is not really Locke

Congested: Why did they need this big metal case to carry Locke's body? Why not a casket or just the body?

Flashback: 1976

A young James Ford begins to write his note to Sawyer after his parents' funeral

Jacob shows up and gives him a pen so he can write his note

1977

Juliet decides they can't just let the people on the Island die
Richard asks Jack about Locke and says he's visited him three times and didn't see anything special about him
Jack says "If I were you, I wouldn't give up on him."

This shows he's put his faith in Locke - become a man of faith

2007

John asks Ben why he's kept his plans to kill Jacob a secret from Richard
Ben tells Locke that Alex told him to do whatever John says
John: "I'm not going to kill Jacob, Ben. You are."

Flashback: October(?) 2005, on Sayid and Nadia's anniversary (maybe not a marriage year anniversary; it could be a month anniversary or the anniversary from when they first met or escaped, etc.)

Jacob walks up to Sayid and asks for directions and at that moment Nadia is hit by a car
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline:2005_and_beyond

1977

Richard uses a sledgehammer to break through a wall into one of the DHARMA houses

Congested pointed out that whoever built the house would have had to know about the tunnel!

Richard knocks out Eloise to protect her because she's his leader and she was putting herself in danger by wanting to go first into the DHARMA house

Richard is normally more of an advisor, and in this case he was very aggressive and took matters into his own hands to protect Eloise and her unborn child

Announcement: "If you come into contact with the Hostiles, you are authorized to use deadly force."
Roger Linus recognizes Sayid and shoots him in the stomach
Hurley and Jin show up in a DHARMA van and rescue Jack and Sayid

Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet return to the Island on a raft
They see Vincent, Rose, Bernard at the beach
Rose: "Oh, no. Bernard! They found us."

Jack orders Hurley to take Sayid to The Swan and tells Jin he thinks he found a way to get him back with his wife

Jack didn't know about Jin and Sun's marital problems before the flight

Bernard and Rose have turned into hippies who don't care if they die, but they tell the group the way to the DHARMA barracks anyway so they can go stop Jack from detonating the bomb

2007

Bram says they're going to show what's in the box to somebody
Bram repeats that "We're the good guys" and Frank says in his experience, the people who go out of their way to say that they're good guys turn out to be bad guys

This is the same line that Ben gave to Michael, when Ben was still on Jacob's side
Is everyone on the same side except for Jacob's enemy? Does Jacob's enemy have any allies? Is this the war that Widmore mentioned to Locke?

Bram: "Look at the ash!"

What was significant about it? Looked darker, for one thing.
Congested points out that there was a gap in it
What's the purpose of the ash? To keep other people out or to keep Jacob in?

Ilana: "Wait here." She walks forward with a gun in hand

Flashback to an unknown date

Jacob goes to Ilana, who is extremely bandaged up, and asks her to help him; she says yes

2007

Ilana walks into Jacob's cabin, comes out and says "He isn't there. Hasn't been in a long time. Someone else has been using it."

Who has been using it? Christian Shephard and Claire?

She orders them to burn the cabin

Frank asks, won't it burn down the whole forest? They don't answer him, and they walk away leaving the cabin blazing

Ilana shows Bram a drawing of the statue that she pulled out of the cabin

Screenshot

Flashback to when Locke fell 8 stories

John Locke fell out of the window as Jacob is reading Flannery O'Connor "Everything that Rises Must Converge" (Amazon) (Wikipedia)

Screenshot

Jacob says to John: "Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right. I'm sorry this happened to you."

Did Jacob bring him back to life?

2007

John points out the "QUARANTINE" door to the hatch where they first met
Ben reveals that he was pretending when he was talking to the empty chair
John asks why he would go to all the trouble to make something up
Ben says he was embarassed and didn't want Locke to know that he had never seen Jacob, so he lied
Ben asks why Locke wants to kill Jacob

John points out all the bad things that have happened to Ben in the name of Jacob and the Island (Alex's death, etc.), and asks Ben why he wouldn't want to kill Jacob

Sun finds Charlie's DS ring at their old camp site on the beach

Flashback to Sun and Jin's wedding day at their ceremony

In Jin's vow he promised that they would never be apart
Jacob is there, and says to them in Korean he'd like to offer his blessing. "Never take it for granted."

Neither Sun nor Jin knows who he is, but Jin remarks that his Korean is excellent

Someone asked in the chat, "How does Jacob know Korean?"

1977

Hurley stops the van when he sees Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate blocking their path with guns

2007

Locke and the Others reach the four-toed foot statue
Richard says "That's where he lives"

They apparently beat Ilana's group there

Flashback: Jack is performing a surgery, and his dad is there

Christian instructs Jack to close his eyes, "count to five, and then fix her, Jack"
Jack tries to get an Apollo bar from a vending machine, it doesn't come out
Christian tells Jack that the girl won't be paralyzed, and Jack tells his dad "You embarassed me... You put me in a time out" during his first major surgery
Jacob asks Jack is one of the Apollo bars is his

1977

Sawyer tells Jack about his parents' death when he was 8 years old—"that was a year ago"
Jack: "What's meant to be is meant to be."
They get in a fist fight, Juliet breaks it up, and tells James they she changed her mind and that Jack is right

Flashback: Juliet and Rachel when they were children

Their parents say they're getting a divorce
This was the one flashback that didn't involve Jacob — because she was about to die, as Congested points out

1977

Juliet: "I changed my mind when I saw you look at her."
Juliet: "If I never meet you, then I never have to leave you."

Daddy issues!
jennielynn thinks the line was "so I never have to lose you"

Radzinsky is drilling, hears on the walkie that Sayid was at the barracks
Jack is watching from a distance, Kate comes to talk to him
Jack: "Kate, why did you make me promise to never ask you about Aaron?"
Kate tells Jack her motive for coming back to the Island: to bring Claire back home so she can raise her baby
Jack says he's never felt so right about anything in his life
The alarm blares at The Swan—did they drill too close, as Dr. Chang warned Radzinsky about?
Jack asks Kate if he's with her on this, and she says yes

It's funny that Juliet and Kate both changed their minds and traded sides

2007

Hurley got discharge papers at the prison somehow and was let out of the prison
Jacob gives Hurley a ride in a cab
Jacob: "I'm definitely not dead."
Hurley tells Jacob that he's cursed, he made the plane crash and his friends die
Jacob: "What if you were blessed? You get to talk to the people you've lost."

Did Jacob give Hurley this gift?

Jacob: "You're just going to have to take my word on this. You are not crazy."
Jacob tells Hurley the Ajira flight number and says "It's your choice, Hugo."
Hurley: "Wait, you forgot your guitar."
Jacob: "It's not my guitar."

This is the guitar that Hurley brought with him on Ajira Flight 316

1977

Jack walks past Sawyer, says "I'll see you in Los Angeles."

2007

Sun: "What happened to the rest of the statue?"

Ben claims it was like that "when I got here"

Locke goes in to see Jacob and takes Ben along with him, despite Richard's protests
Locke: "Will you be able to do this Ben? I know this won't be easy, but things will change once he's gone. I promise."

Locke hands Ben a knife

1977

Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, Miles (and Hurley? or did he stay with Sayid?) go to help Jack to be able to drop the bomb down the hole
Jack looks to Kate for her approval before dropping the bomb
The bomb doesn't go off, and instead the electromagnetism starts to become extremely powerful

Jack is knocked unconscious
Pierre Chang's hand or arm is seriously injured (reminds us of The Swan's Orientation film)

This implies that Pierre Chang survives the hydrogen bomb explosion

Sawyer and Kate try to save Juliet from falling into the hole, but she ends up falling, presumably to her death

2007

Ilana's group shows up on the beach with the box
Ilana asks "Which one of you is Ricardus?"
Richard answers in Latin the question of what lies in the shadow of the statue

According to Lostpedia, Richard said "Ile qui nos omnes servabit," which is Latin for "He who will save us all"

Does this refer to Jacob?

John Locke's body is in the box!

What was he wearing? Not the coffin clothing, but that makes sense since the fake Locke was wearing that clothing after the Ajira crash

Sun: "I don't understand. If this is Locke, who's in there?"

John is the man from the beginning of the episode! (Jacob's enemy)

Jacob: "Well, you've found your loophole."
Ben: "35 years I've lived on this Island... What was it that was so wrong with me? What about me?"
Jacob: "What about you?"
Ben stabs Jacob
Jacob, bleeding from the mouth, tells fake Locke that "They're coming"
"Locke" kicks Jacob into the flames

Is Jacob really dead? If Jacob can give the power of immortality to Richard, why wouldn't he have that power himself?

1977

Jack regains consciousness
We see Juliet at the bottom of the pit—she didn't die!

But she's wearing a red shirt, and she got a new flashback! So wasn't she meant to die?

She hits the bomb with a rock repeatedly

The bomb goes off!!! And that's how Season 5 ends

jennielynn: "so are widmore and bed on the same side kind of they both were on jacobs side"

Well, they both tried to get the Oceanic Six back to the Island, so it seems Ben and Widmore are on the same side, but are they on Jacob's? Well, Ben isn't anymore...

Predictions and theories about next season

jennielynn: "at least we now know they were chosen bye jacob predesetion to end up there"

This leads me to believe that Dan Faraday and Jack's theory was correct, and that by detonating the hydrogen bomb they caused time to reset, and Flight 815 never would have crashed, meaning Locke never would have been brought back to the Island and Jacob would not have been killed; Jacob orchestrated all this to save his life

Richard said he watched them die — was he referring to the hydrogen bomb explosion? And if so, that was 2007 Richard in the same timeline (presumably)

Are they really in 2007? Did they end up in a parallel universe based on what Jack did in the past?

No, can't be, or at least not one that's substantially different; Sun saw Charlie's ring, and if Jack had succeeded, Charlie never would have come to the Island

Possible Easter eggs:

Jacob touches people in the flashbacks — does he touch or give something to everyone? If so, what's the purpose of doing this, if any?

He touched Kate on the nose and gave her the chance to get out of trouble for her crime
He touched Locke on the shoulder (and gave him his life back, possibly?)
He shook hands with Sun and Jin and gave them his blessing
He gave a pen to James
He gave an Apollo bar to Jack
Does he touch or give something to Ilana in her flashback? Maybe he heals her
jennielynn: "he said something to all of them they needed to hear" — well, some of them anyway; he only talked to Jack about the Apollo bar

Spoiler (sort of):

According to the non-preview, 2010's tagline is "Destiny Found"

Labels: chat, comic-con, episode commentary, hiatus, official lost podcast, theories

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"Follow The Leader" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 15, "Follow The Leader" and take a look at what we might see in the Season 5 finale.

Season 5 Episode 15 "Follow The Leader" notes:

1977

Eloise figures out that Daniel is really her son from the future
Charles Widmore captures Jack and Kate
Eloise orders to have them put in her tent, and tells Charles that they're not from the DHARMA Initiative

2007

Ben explains Richard Alpert to Sun: "He's a kind of advisor. And he has had that job for a very, very long time."
Sun shows Richard the photograph of the DHARMA recruits from when Jin, Sawyer, Juliet, Dan, and Miles went back in time

Richard says to Sun that he remembers them because "I watched them all die."

Did Richard survive the explosion of the hydrogen bomb even though he was there to see it?
Will they get stuck in 1977 and die in the Purge?
Will they get killed in a battle between Hostiles and DHARMA before the Purge?
Will we see them all die in the Season 5 finale?

1977

Kate doesn't like the idea of rewriting history so Flight 815 never crashed, saying "It was not all misery." Jack says "Enough of it was." Kate starts crying.

Kate is probably thinking about her temp marriage to Jack, being a mom to Aaron
Kate would have been jail

Eloise believes Jack and says she'll take him to the hydrogen bomb, but she says it's buried underneath where the DHARMA Initiative has built their city
Radzinsky threatens to kill Sawyer if he doesn't reveal where Kate is
Charles to Richard: "Tell me why this man [Daniel] looks familiar to me."
Richard says that Charles and Eloise have a complicated relationship

2007

John wants Richard to take him to see Jacob after their errand — to see the beechcraft plane (Yemi's)
John instructs Richard what to say to time-skipping John Locke during the time jumps

How does John know at what precise moment his past self would be walking out of the jungle?! Ben asks him, and John says "The Island told me. Hasn't it ever told you things?"

Richard seems kind of angry at Ben when Locke says that he died and hints at Ben

1977

Pierre Chang tries to get them off the Island
Radzinsky makes Sawyer draw a map to "exactly where the Hostiles are" in exchange for Sawyer and Juliet being put on the sub with the women and children to get taken off the Island

Will Sawyer give an accurate map?

Probably not — what reason would he have to help Radzinsky after the beatings and death threats?
XsavagistX: "purposely wrong, or most of DHARMA's artillery will be gone when the Hostiles enter DHARMAville"

Kate tries to walk away because she thinks that Jack is going to get them killed, an Other prepares to shoot Kate in the back, and Sayid pops up out of the jungle and shoots the Other

Finally, Sayid returns!

Kate leaves to find the rest of their people to get them to help stop Jack
Sawyer: "We'll buy Microsoft. And we'll bet Cowboys in the '78 Superbowl. We're gonna be rich."
Richard and Jack go swimming under a waterfall — the Hostiles know of an opening on the other side — Eloise and Sayid follow
They wind up in "the tunnels" — secret passageways with hieroglyphs all over the place

Guest 8: "same place that black cloud lives"

2007

John: "Is this everyone?"
Richard: "Well, there's another group at the temple."
John addresses the group that's there and tells them that they're all going to go see Jacob

Why would he do this?

Richard to Ben: "I'm starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble."
Ben to Richard: "Why do you think I tried to kill him?"

1977

Kate got caught and is getting sent off the Island on the same sub as Sawyer and Juliet — neither of them seem very pleased because they planned to run off together
The sub leaves the Island
Eloise: "Well, now what?"

2007

Ben tells John Locke that "This pilgrimage makes [Richard] uncomfortable"
Ben: "Then why are we going to Jacob?"
John: "So I can kill him."

Mormegil: "Maybe Jacob isn't part of the Island"
XsavagistX: "hes imprisoned. theres a comic by Warren Ellis like 2 years ago that has a similar 'ash' circle enclosing a spirit in. the Warren Ellis comic is 'Fell' that goes over the ash/imprisonment circle. i think Ellis says it was a southeast asian ritual in the comic. its worth checking out for a possible idea"
baileybear: "Josh do you think Jacob wants to be killed? Because he asked John to Help Him"
Guest 8: "jacob could be during when the big island explosion happen and in some interdimensional limbo. can't die."
Mormegil: "Maybe Jacob is sort of a father figure, since father killing seems to be important"

baileybear: "Father of the island?"

jennielynn: "miles is going to work ghostbusting"
danzam: "Locke had Sawyer kill his father,he cheated so now he has to kill him again himself so Jacob is............" [the real Sawyer?]
jennielynn: "i realy feeling if ben cant see or hear jacob it is because the outhers are a threat"
Guest 8: "jacob could be what they called the entity. it could be anybody. they see his actions but not his words. richard & ben may be worried john might uncover their lies."
Mormegil: "My guess is Ben can't see Jacob, and is just making it up. Jacob can't leave the Cabin, and since nobody can hear/see him, he's effectively trapped. If Jacob has nobody hearing/listening to him, he needs help."
icebird: "what I want to know is why Locke even told Ben. That was such a TV moment. Why would you really tell Ben that when Ben could easily go and tell Richard"

Guest 8: "doesn't mean john will kill jacob. he could be lying to ben. we'll find out next episode."
The last time John revealed something major to Ben, Ben killed him! Locke really ought to know Ben better than to trust him with secrets

jennielynn: "james and jack are name's that come from jacob i beleave so maybe it is one of them if i had to pick one now it would be james"
icebird: "Or there is no Jacob. I've always thought Jacob was just an idea to make people believe there was a divine intervention going on"

What about the voice Locke heard? Or the flash of a human form that we the viewers saw?

jennielynn: "john is testing richard"
natalie_in_seattle: "I think John is manipulating Ben....getting him to react the way the island needs him to" and also said "I think John is Jacob"
diesel929: "maybe aaron is jacob sent back in time"
Mormegil: "Oooh, that's why Ben has to kill Jacob. He has to kill the original Jacob, and his ghost becomes The Jacob..."
Guest 8: "jacob may be tied plot-wise somehow for the group to go back in time to save the rest of the group. the two events are linked someway across time."
Mormegil: "I just shared my theory on Jacob being dead to my wife. She suggests Locke=Jacob, so he's going to kill himself to become Jacob."

XsavagistX: "he wants to scare Hurley really bad putting his eyeball up to the window"

Funny theory, but Jorge Garcia (Hurley) confirmed in an interview that it was NOT Terry O'Quinn (Locke) whose eyeball we saw in the cabin scene

jennielynn: "he already dead in theroy. so he is ready to take is his spot (already)"

Theories from AstroJones at Sledgeweb: http://lost.cubit.net/archives/2009/05/5x15-going-to-kill-jacob.php

icebird: "Do you guys think the 'war' Widmoore was referring to now is going to be the people in the future saving the island vs. the past trying to destroy it?"

diesel929: "how do ilana and bram play into all this? is taht box empty and they are going to take something from the island or did they bring something to the island?"
Guest 8: "the war may also be trying to change what ever happened versus keeping things as they were. could be the same thing."

natalie_in_seattle: "Well clearly what Jack and Sayid are attempting to do did not work"

I agree because it would create a major paradox and nullify everything in the first 5 out of 6 seasons of the show!

diesel929: "i dont think anything is clear"

jennielynn: "i think it will be funny if jack is the reason everything goes wrong. course correcting"

If Jack *had* saved Ben's life it would have altered the course of the future, so Jack's attempts to far to change the future have been futile

Mormegil: "I think [the hydrogen bomb will] be the cause of the incident."
natalie_in_seattle: "the H-bomb detonation attempt is so wacky.....how could it work.....but then again Sayid might know"

icebird: "ohh, you're right natalie, that's probably exactly why they put Sayid in that cave. He probably would understand how to use the H-bomb"

Guest 8: "they could bring daniel back to life like they did ben & ask him. or at least check the journal. jack did hint there are answers in it."
Someone said (sorry, I didn't write down the name): "maybe she has her own journal that lets her know no matter what she does things turn out the same so maybe she gets the course correcting form herself"
natalie_in_seattle: "how old is daniel? because it seems like he should be born already, well in 1977 anyway"
jennielynn: "maybe she has her own journal that lets her know no matter what she does things turn out the same so maybe she gets the course correcting form herself"

XsavagistX: "yeah, wouldnt she have his Journal? and thats why she doesnt know what will happen now (last episode) that he 'died' in his present?"

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Is Eloise currently pregnant?

AstroJones from Sledgeweb's site says that Charles said to Ellie: "not in your condition" while touching her abdomen (here's a YouTube video to prove it)

icebird: "ah, so she named her son Daniel... because she killed a guy named Daniel"

Guest 8: "eloise all this time could have been preparing her son to be smarter in order to change what happened indirectly. also explains why she didn't want anybody involved with him. as in no girlfriends."

On the other hand, Eloise knows all about course correcting — refer to her conversation with Desmond when his consciousness time-traveled

Hieroglyphics in the tunnels:

Screen caps from Get Lost Podcast: Shot 1, Shot 2, Shot 3

SPOILERS:

Preview for the season finale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPb2rt8w0ng
"Jack has a bomb. He could kill everyone on the Island"
Sayid has the bomb dismantled
Jack to Sawyer: "Being here is our destiny."
Sawyer to Jack: "I don't speak destiny."
Sun: "We have to stop him."
Jack: "What the hell are you doing?"
Frank Lapidus: "What's in the box?"
Ilana's box is opened (we can't see what's inside)
Juliet to Sawyer: "I saw you look at her."
Sawyer to Juliet: "I'm with you."
Jack shoots a gun into DHARMA village
Richard: "There can only be one leader on the Island."
Ben: "This is it!"
Jack to Kate: "Are you with me on this?"

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

Episodes 16 and 17 (Season Finale): "The Incident"

Possible meaning of the title from Mormegil: "Anybody suggest the incident is simply the H-bomb going off? So once again trying to stop something happening causes it?"

Labels: chat, episode commentary, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

"The Variable" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 14, "The Variable" and take a look at what we might see in episode 15, "Follow The Leader".

A thought from Congested:

"They talk about how Nadia died. They say she she was murdered by being run down by a car. While we saw her killer fleeing the crime scene in a car, a photo apparently taken by a traffic camera, Ben never explicitly said she died that way."

A thought from Steve from The Smoke Hatch:

Ben would have had to raise Alex for 4 years while still with DHARMA if he took Alex in 1988 since the Purge took place in 1992

Alex was age 16 after Flight 85 crashed in September 2004, meaning she was born in 1988 (or possibly late 1987)
When Ben and teenage Ethan took Alex from Danielle Rousseau, Alex was still a small baby, no more than several months old; this dates the kidnapping at around 1988
Horace told Locke in a dream in the episode Cabin Fever that he's been dead for 12 years, and we saw him dead after the Purge; 12 years before 2004 would be 1992
This leaves a discrepancy of about 4 years when Ben would have had to secretly raise Alex while he (and possibly Ethan) lived among both DHARMA and the Others, which doesn't make much sense; this seems to be a continuity error on the part of the writers

Season 5 Episode 14 "The Variable" (Daniel Faraday-centric) notes:

2007

Desmond (who was shot by Benjamin Linus) is taken to the hospital
Eloise Hawking shows up, tells Penny that Charlie has his father's hair, and confirms that Daniel Faraday is her son

1977

Faraday came back to Island because he saw the photo of new DHARMA recruits including the Flight 815/316 passengers
Jack tells Dan that Eloise told Jack it was his destiny to go back; Dan says "Well, I've got some bad news for you, Jack. She was wrong."

Flashback

Daniel as a young boy playing the piano
Eloise: "If one has a special gift then it must be nurtured."
When asked, Daniel says the metronome has kept "864" beats
Eloise: "It is my... *job* to keep you on your path."

1977

Sawyer shows Jack that Phil is locked up in a closet
Faraday goes into the Orchid, says to Miles that he'll be back in 10 minutes
This is the first scene from the first episode this season
Daniel tells Pierre Chang: "I need you to order the evacuation of every man, woman, and child on the island"
Daniel describes a massive electromagnetic phenomenon at The Swan that will happen in 6 hours (could this be "the Incident"?)
Dan tells Dr. Chang that he's from the future
Dan tells Chang that Miles is his son, which Miles denies

Flashback

Dan's mom is very controlling, turns away Dan's girlfriend Theresa and tells Dan he should be focusing on his work rather than wasting his gift on a woman - girlfriend/research assistant
Daniel got a multimillion dollar grant from Charles Widmore to continue his research
Eloise gives Daniel his journal as a graduation present (screenshot)

1977

Sawyer is having a meeting with all the Flight 815 survivors and Juliet to decide what to do; soon enough the DHARMA folks will realize that Phil is missing

Jin and Hurley vote to start from "square one" and stay on the Island and go into hiding rather than leave the Island

Daniel: "Does anyone know where we can find the Hostiles? Because one of them is my mother, and she's the only one who can get us back to where we belong."

Flashback

Dan cries when he sees the Christiane I (we've seen this flashback before, last season, and now the flashback continues)

We don't know the exact timeline, but the issue of Wired is from August 2003, and we know this must be at least September 2004 because that's when Flight 815 crashed

Charles Widmore shows up at Daniel's house
Dan: "Didn't Caroline [Daniel's caregiver] tell you? I have a condition that affects my memory."
Widmore says they've never met before, and introduces himself
Dan: "I tested it on myself first. I never meant to hurt Theresa."
Widmore: "Daniel, what if I told you they're not dead? What if I told you the plane was a fake? An elaborate, expensive fake? Because I put it there."
"It will heal you, Daniel. Your mind, your memory."

Lostgeek108: "And getting Desmond as his constant heal him? because his memory did improve after that." -- maybe this in addition to the healing properties of the Island helped

Charles says that he and Dan's mother are "old friends"

1977

Daniel knew that Ellie was his mother
Juliet tells Daniel, Kate, and Jack that the code for the fence is 1-4-1-7-1-7 and Miles gives Daniel the car keys
Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Hurley prepare to go to the beach
Daniel talks to young Charlotte
Shootout between Jack, Kate, Dan and Radzinsky and friends

2007

Desmond recovers from his surgery
"I promised you, Penny. I promised you I'd never leave you again."
Widmore asks Ellie "Is he all right?"
"Yes, Charles, he's fine."
Eloise asks Charles about his daughter Penny
Chalres says that he had he to sacrifice his relationship with Penny
"I had to send my son back to the Island, knowing full well that--"
"He's my son, too, Eloise." She slaps him

Did Charles leave the Island before or after Dan was born? Was Dan born on or off the Island?

Why did Ellie eventually leave the island? To raise Daniel?

Lostgeek108: "She probably left because she couldn't live there after killing Daniel maybe she thought by leaving she thought she could change things by leaving the" [the comment seems to have been cut off]

1977

Daniel says the same thing to Jack that we've discussed previously, and that Miles and Hurley discussed, about how any one of them can die because "this is our present"
Radzinsky catches Sawyer with Phil locked up, knows he's involved in the infiltration, forces him to surrender
Daniel explains that it's not necessarily true that "whatever happened, happened"—he spent so much time worrying about the constant that he didn't think about the variables—he says we have free will, we can change our destiny

He wants to prevent the electromagnetic anomaly, which will prevent the need to build the button which Desmond will eventually fail to push, which will mean no Flight 815 crash, no freighter, etc.

However, Daniel is wrong because this would create a paradox =)
jennielynn: "if i were kate i would not want things to back she is heading to JAIL"
He plans to do this by detonating the hydrogen bomb ("Jughead")

Daniel walks into the Hostiles' camp with a gun in his hand and demands to speak to Ellie

Why didn't Richard Alpert and Ellie recognize Dan? They both saw him in 1954! Richard even had a whole conversation with Dan about what to do with the hydrogen bomb
Irvine_Cattle_Ranch: "I think Richard was stalling"

However, neither he nor Ellie recognized Daniel, so Ellie can't claim she was stalling

Ellie shoots Daniel in the back, and then Dan (as he's dying) explains to Ellie that he's her son

Lostgeek108: "Can Richard heal Daniel?" -- he took Ben into the temple to be healed, after all
jennielynn: "ellie leaves after she shoots him and does not know dan is still alive"

baileybear: "why was dan running into the hostiles waving a gun?"

XsavagistX: "yeah i didnt understand why they needed guns. Alpert seemed pretty reasonable"
XsavagistX: "KATE: These people are not gonna be happy to see us. It might be a good idea to bring some guns. There's a gun safe in the motor pool, but it's locked"

danzam: "If the variable is free will does that imply that Desmond, who was featured in "The Constant" does not possess free will?"
jennielynn: "i dont think richard and jacob are on the same side just had to put it out there"
baileybear: "i have a question. if locke didn't want the oceanic 6 to leave then how would they have changed the dharma time if they didn't go back there?"

jennielynn: "john was not so inlightened back then"

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

WIRED magazine: time travel issue and article

Screenshot
Article: "A User's Guide to Time Travel"

Was it Dan Faraday talking in the background in the Comic-Con 2008 video? (Josh doesn't think so)

XsavagistX: "the 'credible source' has to be Faraday. hes the only one to reveal himself as a time traveler so far."

Sure, but this could have been from when Faraday spoke to Pierre trying to convince him that he was a time traveler, and then Daniel's prophecies do come true, Dr. Chang believes him and makes the video

icebird: "or... it could be Miles. that would explain why that guy is taking the camera away, because he doesn't believe it will work" "yeah, you're probably right Josh, that video is probably after the Swan problem Daniel warned him about. that makes a little more sense in the timelin"
natalie_in_seattle (jokingly): "on the hidden Dharma video Dr. Cheng gives Miles to Miles so he can rock himself to sleep. That part ended up on the cutting room floor during editing"

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDjdCLPYCs
Jack: "If we do what's written in that journal, Flight 815 never crashes."
Sawyer: "I love you." Juliet: "I love you back."
Jack: "If there's a way to save our people I'll find it."
"If you're wrong everyone dies."

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

Episode 15: Follow The Leader (Richard Alpert-centric)

Labels: chat, episode commentary, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

"Some Like It Hoth" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister, Congested, and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 13, "Some Like It Hoth", and take a look at what we might see in episode 14, "The Variable".

Rehashing with Congested:

Discussion about Bram and Ilana having their own faction

DHARMA reconstituted, per Pierre Chang in the Comic-Con 2008 video
Another faction of The Others? Or the same group?

Congested: In Empire Strikes Back, Luke talks to dead Obi-Wan (he notes a similarity with LOST)

Season 5 Episode 13 "Some Like It Hoth" (Miles-centric) notes:

Flashback

Miles had his ability to hear dead people's thoughts as a child

1977

They do have video surveillance tapes after all

Sawyer orders Miles to erase the security tapes
Yet again, they have this conversation over the radio, so anyone could be listening in

Horace tells Miles that Radzinsky is in Grid 3-3-4, which Miles says is Hostile territory
Horace orders Miles to go there and make an exchange with Radzinsky
The item turns out to be a body bag, and Radzinsky whistles and two men bring out a dead body and put it in the bag
Miles: "What happened to him?"
Radzinsky: "He had an accident... he fell into a ditch."
Miles notices a bullet hole in the dead man's head
After Radzinsky leaves, Miles asks the dead man, "Okay, so what really happened?"

Flashback

Miles goes to see his mom, who is dying
Miles asks him mom how he has his power
His mom tells him that his dad has been dead a long time
Miles asks where his body is, and she says "somewhere you can never go"

Dr. Pierre Chang must be Miles' father!

1977

In the very next scene, Horace orders Miles to take the body to Dr. Chang at The Orchid
Roger sees that Ben is gone and panics, saying he's going to security
Name's Alvarez
Digging hole, thinking about Andrea
The man was shot in head
Hurley finds out that Miles can talk to dead people
Hurley to Miles: "Don't worry, dude. Youre secret's safe with me. You wanna know why? Cause I can talk with them, too."

Flashback

Mr. Gray hires Miles to talk to his dead son, Miles says he can't do it given the circumstances (something about the body being scattered around a large area) but he fakes it anyway for the money
Naomi Doritt introduces herself to Miles

1977

Hurley: "You're just jealous my powers are better than yours."
Miles: "That douche is my dad."

How did he know that Pierre Chang is his father? (We find out later.)

Flashback

Naomi takes Miles to the body of Felix
Felix was on his way to deliver something to a guy named Widmore, papers, photos, pictures of empty graves, a purchase order for an old airplane

That's what Tom showed Michael!
This confirms that Widmore sent the plane to the bottom ocean with the dead bodies

Naomi: "My employer is willing to pay you $1.6 million"

This must be why Miles asked Ben for $3.2 million (as confirmed on the latest Official LOST Podcast)

1977

Miles says his third day in DHARMAville, his mother was in line behind him
Jack takes Roger's shift, Roger shows up and is mad at him
"I should go to Horace, report her [Kate]. What do you think?"
Pierre Chang pushes open a gate covered in foliage
Hurley and Miles see workers hammering the numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) into the Swan hatch lid, and one worker calls it a serial number

Hurley: "They're building our hatch. The one that crashed our plane."

Flashback

Bram kidnaps Miles

He's the same guy who's on Ilana's side after the Ajira crash

Bram: "He have to try our best to talk you out of working for Charles Widmore"
Bram: "Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue? Then you're not ready to go to the Island."
Bram: "You're playing for the wrong team."
Miles: "Oh yeah? What team are you on?"
Bram: "The one that's going to win."

Who does Bram work for? Ben? DHARMA? Someone else? He definitely doesn't work for Charles Widmore.

1977

Hurley is writing The Empire Strikes Back "with a couple improvements" to sell to George Lucas
Phil, a DHARMA security guy, pulls out a tape and tells Sawyer he knows that Jim is the one who took Ben
Sawyer punches him in the face and tells Juliet to get some rope

TheMissingToe: "bad move on Sawyer's part - he's a smarter con man than that"

Flashback

Miles returns money to Mr. Gray and tells him that he didn't talk to his son

1977

Miles sees Pierre Chang reading to his son

LeFransay: "so there's no danger in Old Miles approaching young Miles?"

Scientists from Ann Arbor are coming in on a sub

Could Gerald and Karen De Groot be on the sub?

Dan Faraday is on the sub!

How is that possible? He was on the Island when they first traveled back in time. When did he leave the Island?

Steve from The Smoke Hatch mentioned after we recorded the podcast that he left on the sub that Horace mentioned would be coming in 2 weeks

The scene from the first episode of the season must not have happened yet

Steve from The Smoke Hatch pointed out after the podcast that Ben would have had to raise Alex for 4 years if he took Alex in 1988 (the Purge took place in 1992):
http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pre-crash_timeline

The year of the Purge being 1992 is based on Horace's comment to Locke in a dream in the episode Cabin Fever that he's been dead for 12 years, and we saw him dead after the Purge: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Cabin_Fever

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Heiroglyphics and information about ancient Egypt on the chalk board at the DHARMA school where Jack and Roger were cleaning
Screenshots of Bram in this episode and on the beach

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

Announcer: "Sides will be chosen"
Hurley and Jin standing next to each other
Sawyer: "This is our home. Come with us, Freckles."
"Some will run for cover. Some will stay and fight."
Radzinsky
Jack firing a gun
Announcer: "explosive 100th episode"
Daniel Faraday: "Any one of us could die, Jack."

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

Episode 14: The Variable (Daniel Faraday-centric)

Congested thinks (and the latest Official LOST Podcast seems to confirm) that the title has reference to the episode The Constant
Josh points out that "the variable" could also have to do with the DHARMA Initiative's purpose of using the Numbers to predict and prevent the end of the world, as revealed in The LOST Experience, the first official LOST ARG, as I've mentioned previously (see Sri Lanka Video on Lostpedia)

Labels: chat, episode commentary, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

"Dead Is Dead" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 12, "Dead Is Dead", and take a look at what we might see in episode 13, "Some Like It Hoth".

The Official LOST Podcast - Non-spoiler notes:

The fan-named shocking season finale scene is officially being dubbed "The Fork in the Outlet" (not a spoiler since it was named and voted on by fans)

Season 5 Episode 12 "Dead Is Dead" notes:

1977

Charles Widmore: "You brought one of them to the temple."
Richard: "Jacob wanted it to be done. The Island chooses who it wants."
Charles to Ben: "You should be dead, Benjamin. But this island, it saved your life."

Present

Ben: "I knew it! I knew that this would happen."

TheMissingToe: "I don't thing Ben thought Locke would resurrect. He was using Locke to get everyone back and thought he could take his place again as leader and gain favor again with the island"

Ben: "I broke the rules, John. I came back to the island. I was going back to answer for what I'd done. I was going back to be judged."
John Locke: "By whom?"
Ben: "John, we don't even have a word for it. But I believe you call it the monster."

What the monster is: a judge

Ben tries to turn Caesar on John, says he didn't kill him and didn't see him on the plane, says maybe John was on the Island all the time and might be deranged

Flashback

"Shut up and stay here, Ethan"
Danielle Rousseau's tent on the beach
Ben steals Alex
Ben says he'll kill Danielle if she follows him
Ben: "If you want your child to live, every time you hear whispers, you run away."

Lostgeek108: "Why does he warn her about the whispers?"

Maybe just to get her to keep herself alive so he won't feel so bad about taking her daughter
TheMissingToe: "I think the whispers can hold a lot of answers to those on the island - if they follow them or something - and he wants her to stay completely away"
Guest 13: "always thought the whispers represented the monster and ben wants her to stay away from it to be safe"

Why did Ben steal Alex in the first place? Why not leave her with Danielle if he was going to let Danielle live?

TheMissingToe: "Perhaps this was Ben's big "test" with the hostiles and, like Locke was initially, he couldn't kill (at that point) - Plus the baby provides Ben with his first chance at undermining Charles in front of the hostiles - his long term plan being to become the leader"

Timeline hint: danno@large: "Danielle arrives on the Island before the purge: 1988. The purge occurs in 1992, according to lostpedia"

In or after 1992 because Ben is living amongst the Others - Ethan would have been about 15

How did Ethan become an Other?

Present

Locke and Ben prepare to take a boat, Caesar comes over and Ben indicated that it was Locke's idea, and Caesar reaches for his shotgun to try to threaten Locke with it
Ben, who apparently had stolen the gun from Caesar, shoots Caesar in the chest and gives the gun to Locke, saying "Consider that my apology."

James721: "Ben had to kill Ceasar because Ceasar might have told Locke about their earlier conversation"

Sun and Lapidus' boat were there
Ben: "No, someone else hurt my arm."

Desmond, presumably

The only place Ben can summon the monster is from his old house
Locke theorizes that Ben really wants to be judged for "killing his daughter"

Flashback

Charles Widmore is the boss on the Island among The Others
He had given Ben orders to kill Rousseau and didn't tell Ben about the baby
Charles orders Ben to kill baby Alex, but Ben refuses

Present

Ghostly image passes Alex's room
Ben enters house, Sun and Frank Lapidus are there
Ben pretends not to know about her friends having been in the DHARMA Initiative

Surely he remembered; he lived among them, and the photo would have been there at the barracks ever since the Others took over

Sun: Christian "said if I ever wanted to see my husband again, I'd wait here for John Locke"
Frank goes back to the plane to try to fix the radio
Sun stays and wants John to help her find Jin
To supposedly summon the monster, Ben goes in secret passageway, crawls through tunnel, puts hand in murky water, it drains

Flashback

Charles had a daughter with an outsider, so he has to leave the Island on a sub - we don't know who's Penny's mother
Ben takes over Charles' leadership role

Why was Ben next in line?

TheMissingToe: "Was Widmore branded after his banishment judgment?" (like Juliet)

Present

Ben to Sun: "Dead is dead. You don't get to come back. So the fact that John Locke is walking around this island scares the living hell out of me."
Ben: "The thing that's about to come out of that jungle, I can't control" and then Locke walks out =)
Ben: "I don't know where it actually is"
Locke: "I do."

Flashback to 2007

Ben called Charles to gloat: "I'm going back to the Island today" and says he's going to kill Penny first.
Boat: "Our Mutual Friend"

Name of the book Desmond was planning to read before he died

Present

Ben and Locke's roles are reversed - John knows where he's going, Ben doesn't
It's the wall around our temple - half mile away

icebird: "so that means we technically haven't seen the Temple yet then I guess..."

Locke: "We're not going in your temple, Ben. We're going under it."

Interestingly, Locke says "your temple," speaking as an outsider rather than as one of The Others, even though he's supposed to be their leader now

How does Locke know where to find the monster?

TheMissingToe: "I think the island is pulling Locke where he needs to go - like Walt pulling the birds into the window"
Locke was once pulled partway into a Cerberus vent, but not the one by the temple

Ben to Sun: "If you ever get off the Island again, find Desmond Hume and tell him I was sorry."
Sun: "Sorry for what?"
Ben: "He'll know."

Flashback to 2007:

Ben shoots Desmond through a grocery bag that Desmond was holding

Did the bullet actually hit Desmond? It didn't look like it.

Ben planned to shoot Penny, but her daughter Charlie came out of the boat and Ben lowered his gun -- just in time for Desmond to tackle Ben and beat the heck out of him

Desmond drops Ben into the water and he begins sinking face-down, and this is the last we see of Ben from this flashback
Did Ben go back and kill Penny? Perhaps not -- he didn't kill Danielle because she had a daughter, so maybe Ben didn't kill Penny out of compassion because she had a son

james721: "Ben CANT kill a mommy because he was denied his own mother's life since birth"
TheMissingToe: "although Ben helped kill many mommies presumably during The Purge"
diesel929: "well according to roger ben killed his own mommy"
David_Alpert: "think Amy died in Purge? or IS she an Other? (cuz no other mommies)" -- that would explain why Ethan ended up among the Others

Present:

Survivor: "Ilana and three of the others found guns. They're in charge now."
Ilana: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"
Frank doesn't know what she's talking about, so she knocks him out and tells another survivor: "Tie him up. He's coming with us."

Was Ilana referring to the four-toed statue? Does Ilana work for Widmore?
Lostgeek108: "To me Ben looked very surprised to see Sayid on the plane" -- Ben apparently didn't expect Sayid, but may have assumed the Island made it so Sayid would be there. Perhaps it was actually part of a plot by Widmore to get an agent on the Island. After all, Peter Avellino supposedly worked for Charles Widmore, so it would make sense that Ilana does, as well.
David_Alpert: "BEN LIES IN THE SHADOW OF THE STATUE. but its a slam from Widmore on his nemesis. Widmore basically saying Ben has the audacity to lie and claim he has a right to this island in the very shadow of the statue. "How dare you boy!""
XsavagistX (Karl): "Frank might know because maybe Alana or whatever is some plant and she didnt know who else were plants along with her"

TheMissingToe: "I'm guessing Ilana's mystery box holds equipment to contact Widmore or possibly eqiupment to help Widmore zero in on the island or a portal"

Screenshot of the box
TheMissingToe: "that big box on the beach they were moving"
diesel929: "the big silver one with bamboo shoots tied to it and latches on its side"
icebird: "oooh yeah. I completely forgot about that. She was being very protective of that huge metal box. Ben even asked if he could help with that Box before he told lies to Caeser"
TheMissingToe: "A great twist would be if the box contained some ancient items that Widmore collected from various auctions"
diesel929: "maybe it contains 3.2 million dollars" - the figure Miles asked Ben for
TheMissingToe: "ooh - how about some type of detanator for Jughead in the box?"

icebird: "I don't think Jughead is controlled by a detonator though. And even if it was, is he really going to detonate an island he wants to go back to?"

Ben to John: He had the choice to "either leave the Island or let my daughter die. All I had to do was walk out of the house and go with him. ... So you were right, John. I did kill Alex. And now I have to answer for that."

The "him" to which Ben was referring is Keamy

Ben falls down into a hole in the cave underneath the temple
Lots of hieroglyphics in the cave, one of Anubis talking to the smoke monster? Perhaps Anubis is consulting with the smoke monster to find out what kind of judgment the monster has made about someone

Screenshots of the hieroglyphics

Smoke comes up out of vents, comes after Ben, apparently judges him and then goes back into the vents
"Alex" appears and says "I know you're planning to kill John Locke. If you try, I will hunt you down and kill you." Then something like "You will obey his every command. Say it! Say you'll follow him!"
Ben: "Yes, I'll follow him. I swear."

diesel929: "Ben is already working out a plan around that promise"
TheMissingToe: "The master is now the servant - I love it"

Lostgeek108: "If Penny, Desmond and little Charlie are all fine Do you think that any of them or all of them will return to the Island?"

David_Alpert: "Lostgeek - Des is on the way imo. how? no idea."
Desmond will want to go back for revenge, and possibly Penny will want to go with him because she doesn't want to be separated from Des again
icebird: "I'm sure all of them are going to be involved in the Island. They all seem important. And we'll probably find out why at the end of this season"
David_Alpert: "Penny said she would go anywhere with him, right? on the boat in [a] previous episode" -- Lostgeek108: "It was the episode where Desmond was looking for Faraday's mom in Oxford"

TheMissingToe: "It would be interesting to see if Miles can read Locke's thoughts like a dead person now"
Ben got back to the Island when Charles didn't think it was possible to go back. Maybe Charles will attempt to go back since Ben was successful. He certainly knows how to get in touch with Eloise Hawking because he gave her contact info to Desmond
TheMissingToe has a theory that "Smokey could kill as judgment as well as for course correction"
TheMissingToe: "one other thing - in the temple on one of the pillars, it looks like hieroglyphs for the Exodus"
Other Screenshots / Easter Eggs:

Ben's Judgment posted by AstroJones on Sledgeweb: "Unlike Eko, who felt no shame for his sins, Ben weeps at his mistake in causing Alex's death. Makes one wonder just what the Pilot's sins were for the killin' he got."

diesel929: "he needed to repent for hitting on Claire in the airport" =)

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QUujxHlcoU
Hurley finds "a body bag back here with a body in it" in a DHARMA bus
Hurley says to Miles: "Just admit it. You can talk to dead people."
Announcer: "Everybody on the Island has a purpose and *his* purpose [Miles?] could hold the answers to all of their destinies."
Miles talks to the dead person
TheMissingToe: "I liked the foliage being pushed open into some secret hidden area"
Someone walks in front of a DHARMA vehicle pointing a gun at the driver and yelling "Stop right there!" - TheMissingToe and diesel929 think it's Radzinsky
TheMissingToe: "looks like some more Pierre Chang next week which always good"

From SpoilerFix:

The next episode's title is "Some Like It Hoth" and it will be Miles-centric
"Hoth" is an ice planet from the Star Wars universe:

TheMissingToe: "Since Hoth was the ice planet I wonder if this means opening up the freezing area around the Donkey Wheel"
David_Alpert: "Wiki says it was pelted with asteroids. Tricia Tanaka sequel? :)"

Labels: chat, episode commentary, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

"Whatever Happened, Happened" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 11, "Whatever Happened, Happened", and take a look at what we might see in episode 12, "Dead Is Dead".

The Official LOST Podcast - Non-spoiler notes:

Damon hinted that we should be wondering whether Ilana was really working for the family of Peter Avelino to bring Sayid to justice, and whether it was really just a coincidence that they ended up on Ajira Flight 316. About Ilana's story, Carlton said "I think there might be some measure of truth to it, but it might not be the full story," and Damon agreed, "Right."

Season 5 Episode 11 "Whatever Happened, Happened" notes:

1977

Kate meets Roger Linus
Jin takes Ben back to the Barracks for medical treatment
Sawyer finds out that Ben stole Roger's keys to let Sayid out

Flashback to 2004

Kate takes baby Aaron home and sings Catch a Falling Star to Him
She went to visit Cassidy and Clementine

1977

Jack refuses to perform surgery even though Juliet doesn't think she can save Ben
Kate goes to donate blood
Hurley and Miles have a whole conversation about time travel theory

The best part is when Hurley asks why Ben didn't remember Sayid as the man who shot him in the past when Sayid was torturing him in 2004, and Miles says "Huh. Hadn't thought of that."

Perhaps the producers hadn't though of that, either. ;o) Or else they were just throwing that out there, acknowledging that fans would ask that question sooner or later anyway

Juliet suggests to Kate that they get The Others involved to save Ben's life
Kate leaves in a DHARMA van with Ben

Flashback to 2007

Kates leaves the pier with Aaron and says Jack and Ben are crazy
Aaron says he's thirsty, so Kate takes him to the store
Kate got a call from Jack, and when she went to answer it, she hung up and immediately realized that Aaron was gone

A woman who looks a bit like Claire or Carole Littleton was walking to the front of the store with Aaron, and claimed that she found Aaron walking around by himself and was about to have the store make an annoucement

1977

Kate gets to the sonic fence, Sawyer shows up and says he's there to help
Ben: "Tell my dad I'm sorry"
Kate, not to stop her

What about the cameras near the sonic fence? Wouldn't someone see Sawyer helping Kate? Maybe Sawyer put Jin on camera duty

Flashback to 2007

Kate visits Cassidy again and tells what happened at the supermarket, and Cassidy says that Aaron didn't need Kate -- Kate needed Aaron because she lost Sawyer

baileybear: "Cassady seemed to have a bad attitude. Sawyer is stuck on a island after a plane crash & Cassady acts like he lives in another state & just ignored her"

1977

We didn't need saving! We've been fine for three years. You came back for you.
I came back because I was supposed to.
Supposed to do what?
I don't know yet.
Well, you better figure it out.

Was Jack supposed to save Ben? Is that why he had to go back?

Sawyer asks Kate about Clementine
Sawyer says he's done a lot of growing up the last three years
The Others find Sawyer and Kate with Ben and say that they're violating the truce by having crossed the line, and Sawyer demands that they take him to Richard Alpert

Is Sayid with The Others? What would Sayid think if he knew they were going to help Ben?

Flashback to 2007

Kate goes alone to see Carole Littleton
She tells Carole the truth about Aaron, and says Claire is still alive on the Island but they couldn't find her

Uh-oh. Is Claire really still alive?

Kate says she's going back to the Island to find "your daughter" -- that is, Claire, Aaron's real mother

1977

Richard Alpert finds Sawyer
Richard: "If I take him, he's not ever going to be the same again. He'll forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us. You still want me to take him?"

So it's all Jack's fault that Ben became evil? But Richard was already grooming Ben
Frediemac: "I think it's just like going down the hole and coming back out from the Smoke Monster the French guy experienced"

After all, Richard went to the temple - where Robert and the other French folks went down the hole

natlie_in_seattle: "alpet healing ben is like adam and eve eating from the tree of knowledge...a lost of innocent the gaining of all aspect of knowledge (good and evil)"
danzam: "Anubis brings ben abck to life"

An Other to Richard: "We shouldn't do this without asking Ellie. And when Charles finds out..."

Could Daniel Faraday be Charles and Ellie's kid? Assuming that Ellie is Eloise Hawking, that would mean Dan Faraday is Penny's brother, Desmond's brother-in-law, and baby Charlie's uncle

Apparently Ben doesn't get fixed by Jack

Perhaps after Ben is brought back to the DHARMA barracks after being fixed by The Others, Sawyer and Kate will claim that Jack fixed Ben to avoid the consequences of having worked with the "Hostiles." As mentioned in last week's blog post, that could explain why Ben wanted Jack there when Flight 815 crashed. After all, Jack "wasn't even on Jacob's list" according to Danny Pickett in Season 3 Episode 6, "I Do".

Richard takes Young Ben to the temple

Present day, on the Island

Ben wakes up to see John Locke
John: "Hello, Ben. Welcome back to the land of the living."
Ben looks surprised
John looks unhappy with Ben

James721: "where are all the children ? from the tail section"

back at the temple?

What's the origin of the Anubis statue and the temple, and the heiroglyphics?

James721: Egyptian culture formed on Island, figured out how to leave, settled in what we now call Egypt, or the Egyptians found the Island

James721 shared a link to "ancient Egyptian submarine? http://www.catchpenny.org/abydos.html" — a site claiming that some hieroglyphics show strong resemblance to helicopters, submarines, spacecrafts, and other modern or futuristic technologies. If true (or at least "true" in the context of the show), where did the ancient Egyptians get that knowledge? From aliens? Time travelers?

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6PHAnVM5vE
Announcer: "From the moment he came into their lives..."
Ben: "I broke the rules, John"
Announcer: "Every survivor has prayed this time would come."
Ben: "I came back to the Island to be judged."
Ben holding a bottle on the beach
Announcer: "Next Wednesday"
Ben holding a gun while walking down stairs, says to someone "Not another word."
Locke holding a torch in the dark
Ben holding a torch
Ben crawling [in a cave?] with a lantern
Announcer: "For the most dangerous man on the Island..."
Submarine dock
Ben [to a young Danielle Rousseau?]: "Be grateful you're still alive"

My wife Kylene wondered whether they show how Ben got Alex?

Ilana hits someone with the butt of a shotgun
Announcer: "Judgment day is here."
Ben: "What's about to come out of that jungle is something I can't control."

POTENTIALLY MAJOR SPOILER:

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

The next episode's title is "Dead is Dead" and it will supposedly be Kate-centric
Supporting evidence that Kate might die:

Frediemac: "I feel Kate has got a little redemption tonight" — main characters often have some kind of redemption and often have a flashback episode when they're going to die
Miles and Hurley had a conversation in this episode about how it's possible for the time travelers to die while they're in the past
Rumors have recently circulated on TV news sites that Evangeline Lilly might be leaving the show

Evidence that she won't die:

On Jimmy Kimmel Live about month ago, Evangeline Lilly (the actress who plays Kate) denied rumors that she was auditioning for other roles and said that she was very happy about being on LOST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtUkP5Tu06g
On the April 6th Official LOST Podcast, the executive producers indicated that the storyline this week will have to do with Locke, Ben, and Penny Widmore, and they didn't hint at anything about Kate in this episode

Labels: chat, episode commentary, official lost podcast, spoilers, theories

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

"He's Our You" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 10, "He's Our You", and take a look at what we might see in episode 11, "What Happened, Happened".

The Official LOST Podcast - Non-spoiler notes:

Horace Goodspeed and Amy are Ethan's parents -- they confirmed that it's Ethan Rom, the same one who later became an Other, recruited Juliet, and abducted Claire
Geronimo Jackson song "Dharma Lady" from last week's episode "Namaste" is available on iTunes for free!
The popups are not canon. They are not regulated by the executive producers.
Sayid said on the show that there was an energy source behind the wall in the Swan Station. The concrete wall sealed off the station from that energy. Every 108 minutes, pushing the button "dispelled some release of energy that basically kept that thing at bay" like a dam.
Charlotte was not, in fact, born in 1979 as Ben says to her in "Confirmed Dead." She was really born in 1970 or 1971. The actress, Rebecca Mader, did not want to be viewed as being that much older, so she changed it on the set to 1979, but that change was not authorized by the writers or producers who knew about the time travel that would take place this season.

LOSTCasts notes:

How did The Others know to build a runway? Did someone (Jacob, Richard, Ben) predict/visit the future and know about Ajira Flight 316? Who specifically were they trying to save? Ben? Sun? Will Christian help Sun fix time so she can get back with Jin?
Did Ethan kill his dad (Horace Goodspeed) as part of the initiation into the Others? I looked up the date of the Purge, and it took place in 1992, so Ethan would have been about 15 at the time.

Season 5 Episode 10 "He's Our You" notes:

Flashback

As a young boy, Sayid killed a chicken when another boy (his older brother?) was afraid to
TheMissingToe: "Wasn't that young Sayid scene with the chicken similar to Yemi and Eko? (but with a chicken instead of a person?)"

1977

Young Ben claims he talked to Richard 4 years ago, which would be 1973, and Ben arrived on the Island in 1972 (see Lostpedia's pre-crash timeline)

Flashback (sometime between October 2005 and late 2007)

Sayid working as Ben's assassin shoots a man and doesn't take his money
Meets with Ben
Ben: "Nowhere. You're done. We're done. You've taken care of everyone who was a threat to your friends."
Ben says they're from Widmore's organization

1977

Sayid says Ben is a 12-year-old

Ben was born sometime in the 1960s. If Sayid is correct about Ben's age, this would put Ben's birth year at 1964 or 1965

Sayid chooses to be on his own rather than cooperate with Sawyer and become part of DHARMA
Hurley's assignment is in food preparation

His jumpsuit has a new DHARMA logo (representing food service; Kate and Juliet also have a mechanic DHARMA logo on their suits)

Kate finds out from Hurley that Sawyer and Juliet are together
Ben gets in trouble with his dad for bringing Sayid a sandwich; Ben admits that nobody asked him to make the sandwich

Flashback to 2007

Sayid is building a home in a yellow shirt
Ben comes to Sayid and says that John is dead and he thinks someone killed him
Ben says killing is in Sayid's nature

1977

They take Sayid to Oldham. Sayid asks who he is, and Sawyer says "He's our you."
They strap him to a tree so his arms are out to his sides in a crucifixion pose
Oldham to Sayid: "There are side effects to what I'm giving you."
Oldham to Sayid: "One thing's for sure, friend. You will tell us the truth."

Flashback to 2007

Sun holding a gun to Ben, says he doesn't want any part of this and says "it will be extremely unpleasant for us both" if he sees Ben again
Sayid goes to a bar to get MacCutcheon
Ilana - she orders a "ribeye - bloody"
Ilana: "I like sad men."
She asks what Sayid does for a living, and he says he's trying to change

1977

Sayid tells the truth to Oldham and the other DHARMA folks
"You're all going to die, you know. You're going to be killed."
Oldham: "Maybe I should use half a dropper. Oops."
Sayid: "You used exactly enough!" and he laughs insanely
James called Radzinsky "Stu"
Radzinsky: "Either we make a decision or I call Ann Arbor and they make a decision for us."

Ann Arbor, Michigan is the location of University of Michigan, where Karen and Gerald DeGroot founded the DHARMA Initiative with funding from the Hanso Foundation

Amy: "I can't sleep with one eye open."

Flashback to 2007

Sayid makes out with Ilana and they get in bed together
She kicks Sayid, points a gun at him, and promises to take Sayid back to Guam to pay for killing Peter Avellino

1977

Sayid tells Sawyer he know exactly why he's there, and Sawyer says "To get shot? Are you out of your mind?"
Sawyer asks Kate why she came back. She says she doesn't know why the rest came back, but she knows why she did.
Kate doesn't get to finish the conversation because a flaming DHARMA bus drives by!

Young Ben apparently did it so he could release Sayid

Sayid to Ben: "My father was a hard man as well."

Young Ben: "If I let you out, will you take me to your people?"
Sayid: "Yes, Ben. That's why I'm here."

Flashback to 2007

Sayid: "Are you sure we're going to Guam?"
He sees Kate and realizes he's going back to the Island
Sayid asks Ilana if she's working for Benjamin Linus. She asks who he is and says "Why would I work for someone like that?" — not explicitly denying it

1977

Sayid to Young Ben: "You were right about me. I am a killer."
Sayid shoots Ben once near the heart.

Did Ben really die?

irvine_cattle_ranch: "Is this when Ben finds that he can't die? The island won't let him?"

dannoatlarge wonders whether Jack could save Ben's life a second time (that is, Jack's second time saving Ben's life, but chronologically Ben's first time getting saved by Jack ;o)

That could explain why Ben wanted Jack there when Flight 815 crashed. After all, Jack "wasn't even on Jacob's list" according to Danny Pickett in Season 3 Episode 6, "I Do".

baileybear wonders whether Amy is a mole; she wanted to make sure Sayid got killed (although perhaps that was just a motherly concern and not an indication of undercover espionage)

TheMissingToe points out that this theory could explain how Ethan became an Other; his mom brought him in
diesel929 speculates that perhaps both Amy and Paul were moles, "hence the ankh"

The ankh could be a possible connection with the (Anubis?) statue which appeared to be holding an ankh, which could indicate that Paul and Amy were association with whomever built the statue on the beach, which could possibly be Island natives, who might be associated with the Hostiles/Others -- after all, if Richard Alpert never ages, he may have been on the Island when the statue was built

Personally, I don't know if there's sufficient evidence yet to come to that conclusion, but it's an interesting idea so I thought it was worth posting

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

The book that Ben gave to Sayid was A Separate Reality (Wikipedia link) — see also this Sledgeweb's LOST...Stuff article

Ben says he read it twice
It's about drug use
danzam: "it's all an illusion. Sayid tonight is given LSD to speak the truth. LSD was created by Timothy Leary and get this with a Dr Richard Alpert who later became Baba Ram Das and wrote 'Be Here Now' in the late 60's."

Photos of Young Ben getting shot also from Sledgeweb's site

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

Kate: "We caused this."
Jack: "I was trying to save you."
Juliet: "We didn't need saving."
Horace: "Somebody let him out of his cell. It was one of us."
Jack: "We're under house arrest."
Sawyer to Kate: "Keep your mouth shut and stop asking questions."

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

The next episode's title is "Whatever Happened, Happened"

The Official LOST Podcast (spoilery stuff):

A fan wrote in and asked about Walt's dream about John Locke, in which John was in a suit and surrounded by people who wanted to hurt him. Damon said that the people who wanted to hurt him could either be before the Island (e.g. the Oceanic Six) or the Ajira Flight 316 survivors. He hinted that it's the Ajira folks but doesn't confirm anything.
Damon confirmed that Jacob told someone to build the runway next to the Hydra station. Damon: "Jacob said to somebody 'build a runway.' So, you know, Ben was building a runway. He's always been a dutiful soldier. So were we planning on something landing on the runway?"
Carlton: "Well, no, but Jacob might have been."
Damon: "Jacob might have been. If you're building a runway, something's gonna land on it, right?"
We will see another scene with Ethan this season.
The season finale episode is called "The Incident". It will be two hours back-to-back on May 13, 2009.
The surprise in the season finale this year is something "you'd never see coming in a million years," there will be "some mythological elements to it"
We're going to find out more about the Swan station this season. Carlton hinted that the station has something to do with the Incident in the finale.

Labels: chat, episode commentary, official lost podcast, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

"Namaste" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 9, "Namaste" and take a look at what we might see in episode 10, "He's Our You".

Season 5 Episode 9 "Namaste" notes:

Present (2007)

We see how Ajira 316 crashed - Frank landed on the runway, but they were going too fast and crashed into trees, and the copilot was impaled by a branch
Sun was with Frank, not back in time with Jack, et al.
Ben wasn't among the injured yet!? Who injured him after the crash? Caesar? Sun? Ilana?

baileybear: "How did Illana see them leave on the boat? It seemed they traveled quite a bit to the boats."

Did Ilana drag Ben back to the hatch? Did Frank go back and tell the other survivors that he was going to the other island on a boat? The latter seems less likely because some of the other survivors would have probably wanted to go with them

30 years earlier (1977)

Jin going to the Flame to find out from Radzinsky if he's seen anyone else from the plane crash
Juliet says there's a sub coming in this afternoon. Is she jealous of Kate being back? Does she think James likes Kate better? Or was she just saying that because it was part of the con we find out about later to make it look like Jack, Kate, and Hurley were on the sub?

natalie_in_seattle: "Juliet made Kate a mechanic so that she can keep an eye on Kate....keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer"

Present

Frank says he can't make contact with the radio, but not to worry because once they realize
Caesar says there are building and cages, Ben walks off, Sun follows
Frank watches Sun walk off after Ben

30 years earlier

Juliet goes to Amy to get the incoming sub's manifest
Amy mentions Pierre (Chang?)
Amy says her son's name is Ethan! She delivered a future Other and friend?

His name was Ethan Rom, though, not Ethan Goodspeed; what's with the different last names if it's the same person?

Sawyer tells Jack, Kate, and Hurley to dress like recruits and pretend to have been on the sub; he says nobody on the sub will know because all the other recruits were unconscious
Radzinsky's computer senses activity in Grid 325 and thinks there's a hostile in their perimeter

Jin runs there and finds Sayid
Radzinsky catches up and Jin has to pretend to not know Sayid and treat him like a hostile

The Swan station hadn't been built yet

AstroJones from Sledgeweb's site points out that it's weird for Radzinsky to have spent so much time creating the blast door map when he already knew so much about DHARMA and the stations

TheMissingToe: "Maybe Razinsky was trapped in the hatch when the purge happened. He was trying to map everything from memory to form some type of plan."

Jin tells Sawyer over the walkie-talkie that he found Sayid

Anyone could have been listening in! What would DHARMA think if they knew that Jin and "LaFleur" knew a supposed hostile by name?

Present

Ben plans to take an outrigger to the main island
Sun wants to go to the main island with him in hopes that Jin is there

Sun says "I have to trust him"

Ben starts to explain to Frank that he can get supplies for the survivors from the barracks (aka New Otherton), and Sun knocks Ben out, and tells Frank "I lied" [about trusting Ben]

30 years earlier

Sawyer rescues Sayid but has to make Sayid admit to being a hostile

Present

Frank and Sun arrive at the other island
The pier is a mess, and something large rustles the branches

Sun and the viewers wonder if it might be the smoke monster

They go to New Otherton which is all run down
They hears whispers
A light comes on in a building that still has a DHARMA logo on it
Christian Shephard greets them, and Sun (not knowing who he is) asks if he knows where Jin is. Christian smiles and says 'Follow me."

The last person Christian asked to follow him was Claire, who many fans presume to now be dead (since she didn't seem at all bothered to have given up Aaron, etc.)
Christian shows Sun a photograph of Jin with her friends in the DHARMA Initiative in 1977 with the new recruits (see later for a possible Easter egg)

30 years earlier

Young Ben brings Sayid a sandwich — is this before or after Ben has started to meet with Richard Alpert and rebel against DHARMA? He looks older, but of course the actor is older than he was when the other scene was filmed

baileybear: "I have a question. Can the Oceanic 6 that are in Dharma now be killed in 1970's? They are alive in 2004. I'm confused"

TheMissingToe: "Yes they can be killed - they are on their own timeline even though they are time traveling. That's why Frogurt could be killed"
Josh further explains time travel and potential paradoxes on the podcast

baileybear: "Radzinsky wanted to kill Sayid because he was a hostile. Wouldn't that break the agreement?"

Yes, but only if Sayid had not identified himself as being a hostile, according to Sawyer. But of course, Sawyer made Sayid admit to being a "hostile" so Radzinsky wouldn't be able to kill Sayid without breaking the truce

baileybear: "why is Christian still in charge? Lockes on the island"

TheMissingToe: "Locke hasn't made his way to Jacob or Richard to claim his throne"

baileybear: "Where is Faraday?"

He's probably working with the team that's digging next to the frozen donkey wheel

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Is Claire in the background behind Sun?

Was the smoke monster in the room with Christian? (Or is Christian a manifestation of the monster?)

Josh doesn't think the wisp of white smoke was the smoke monster; we've never seen it white before
There has been some evidence of Christian being a manifestation of the monster: the smoke alarm going off in the Jack flashforward

DHARMA recruit photo — missing/extra person?

Josh thinks this is more likely a production error, not an Easter egg

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode:

Sayid looked like he was up against a tree with his arms stretched out in a T formation as thought he was being crucified
Sayid: "You're all going to die, you know" — he seems to be telling DHARMA folks about the Purge
Juliet tells Kate to stay away (presumably from Saywer)
Jack was looking at one of the barracks that's on fire
Sawyer tells Sayid he's on his own — and head-butts him?
Sayid: "Now I know exactly why I'm here"
Sayid fires a hand gun

Who was he shooting at? Young Ben? Would it even be possible?

On the podcast, Josh further explains the time travel paradox of killing Ben in the past

How did Sayid get out? Did Ben let him out?

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

The next episode's title is "He's Our You" and it will be Sayid-centric

Official LOST Podcast:

The title of Episode 11 is "What Happens Happens", and in that episode it will be revealed what happened to Aaron

Labels: chat, episode commentary, spoilers, theories

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Jay & Jack's LIVE Podcast Tonight!

Jay and Jack (from The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack, of course) are hosting a live 25-hour charity podcast for Autism Speaks. They've asked me to moderate the discussion from 9 PM to 10 PM Pacific tonight. Other planned guests for the hour are:

AnnaInIndiana from Jacob's Cabin
Heath and Wendy from LOST Revisited
Clay and Chris from Dharma Dummies
Mr. Bill from Behind the Cutting Edge

We're going to discuss LOST mysteries and theories. It should be a lot of fun! Join in on Ustream at 9 PM Pacific (midnight Eastern) to hear my segment, or any time after 2 PM Pacific which is when the 25-hour marathon begins. And don't forget to donate to Autism Speaks!

Labels: chat, site news

Saturday, March 14, 2009

"LaFleur" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 8, "LaFleur", review additional points from "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", and take a look at what we might see in episode 9, "Namaste".

Season 5 Episode 7 "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" additional notes:

Popup: Caesar was in Ben's old office at the Hydra Station (makes sense to find a shotgun there, like the one in Ben's house in New Otherton)
Popup: "There was no camera when Ben arrived."
Popup: Matthew Abaddon "posed as" Locke's orderly -- was he already working for Charles Widmore then? The popup pointed out that it was Matthew Abaddon who inspired Locke to go on the walkabout which would ultimately lead him to be on Flight 815. Another popup reminded us that Abaddon recruited the science team for Widmore's freighter (Naomi, Daniel Faraday, Charlotte Staples Lewis, Miles Straume)
Popup: Reminder that Abaddon means means "guardian of the abyss" -- the meaning of his name seems to hint that Ben may be telling the truth about Abaddon and Widmore being bad guys
Popup: Reminder that after Ben left the Island three years ago, he convinced Sayid that it was Widmore whose people were responsible for Nadia's death; if Sayid knew that Locke was working with Widmore, he would be extremely upset (assuming he still believed what Ben told him)
Abaddon: After reminding Locke that he was the orderly who convinced him to go on the walkabout, he told Locke "I help people get to where they need to get to, John. That's what I do for Mr. Widmore."

Who is on "the wrong side"?

Ben and Widmore both want the Oceanic 6 to go back to the Island, so they both could be on "the right side" of the impending war, based on Charles Widmore's warning

From @mjparker75 on Twitter: "@theJoshMeister do you think Ben planned to kill Locke all along- knowing that suicide wouldn't allow a resurrection? Still think Ben=good"

I've heard this theory a couple times and it's interesting. I'm not sure whether that's the case because of Ben's comment when he left Locke's apartment that he was going to miss John; that comment seemed to imply that Ben didn't know that John would come back to life on the Island.

Season 5 Episode 8 "LaFleur" notes:

After Locke turns the wheel, there's a final flash and Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Daniel see a large statue off in the distance

Is this the future four-toed foot statue? (screenshots and theories later in this post!)

Miles: "That last flash was different... it was more like an earthquake"
No more headaches, nosebleeds all of a sudden
Three Years Later

Horace Goodspeed is drunk, throws dynamite
LaFleur = DHARMA Head of Security = Sawyer!
Sawyer calls Horace their "fearless leader"

Three Years Earlier

Sawyer chooses the con name "Jim LaFleur" and lies about how they got to the Island
Horace's wife Amy (played by Reiko Aylesworth -- "Michelle Dessler" from 24) is having a baby, which made me wonder whether she and the baby would die like all the Others that Juliet tried to save
Amy had been married to Paul until the Others killed him, and she later remarried Horace

baileybear asked in the chat: "Why did the others kill Paul and try to take Amy?" -- This seems to be an unresolved question

Three Years Earlier

Daniel says after Charlotte died, her body disappeared after a flash

Three Years Later

Sawyer tries to get Juliet to do the Caesarian section to deliver Amy's baby
Jin says he searched Grid 1-3-3, and there was no sign of their people. Sawyer says to search Grid 1-3-4 next

Do the DHARMA folks really believe that after 3 years they're still searching for other survivors from their crash?

Jin: "How long do we look, James?"

Sawyer: "As long as it takes."
Jin's English is much better now that he's had 3 years of practice

Juliet: "It's a boy." -- and she says the mom (Amy) is okay

Clearly this is before women and their babies died during child birth on the island
bsnone ("bassoon one") in the chat said: "loved that Juliet seemed to get some personal redemption by helping to successfully deliver a baby on the island"

Does this mean Juliet is likely to die soon? Several main characters who have overcome major life challenges on the Island have died soon thereafter (see the "Redeption and Death" section of the Life and death article on Lostpedia)

Kenwalt in the chat pointed out in the chat that "Not all babies die. Aaron was born on the island."

My response is that all of those we know of who died during child birth on the island also conceived on the island. Aaron was conceived off-island and was almost fully developed before arriving there and being born on-island, and Ji Yeon was conceived on the island but spent the majority of gestation off-island and was born off-island. Alex was also conceived before Danielle Rousseau and Robert came to the island, and Danielle and Alex survived Alex's birth. Amy and Horace would have been on the island when their baby was conceived, because Amy had previously been on the island when she was married to Paul and presumably she didn't leave the island after being married to Horace.

There was an advertisement for a movie called "Knowing" with Nicholas Cage -- numbers predict the future = LOST plot ripoff! (We found out in the first LOST ARG, The LOST Experience, that the main purpose of the DHARMA Initiative was to use the numbers to predict and prevent the end of the world.)
Three Years Earlier

Horace tells Sawyer ("Jim LaFleur") that he needs to leave the Island the next morning on a sub, and says that James isn't "DHARMA material"
Daniel sees Charlotte as a young girl living amongst the DHARMA folk
Richard Alpert shows up in the DHARMA village (the future "New Otherton") with a torch

Horace Goodspeed goes out to speak with him
The sonic fence doesn't keep The Others out
Horace mentions a "heavy ordinance" -- what was he referring to?
Sawyer goes outside and tells Richard Alpert the truth; Sawyer was one of the time travelers with Locke, and the Others' death was their fault, not DHARMA's
Horace says the deal is to send Paul's body back with Richard, and says if Amy doesn't want to, they will suffer the consequences
Amy says that Paul would want to sacrifice himself for the rest of them, and she takes Paul's ankh

Sawyer talks Juliet into staying instead of taking the next sub off the island -- they seem to be developing some kind of romantic relationship

Three Years Later

Sawyer and Juliet are living together
They say "I love you" to each other
Sawyer asks why Horace was too busy drinking and blowing up trees to be there for the birth of his son, and he says it was because he found Paul's ankh in Amy's sock drawer and he was worried that she might not have gotten over Paul yet
Sawyer tells Horace about Kate (or so we assume, although it's possible that he could have been talking about Cassidy)

He says he doesn't remember what she looks like anymore, and says that three years is "absolutely" long enough to get over someone

Sawyer drives his blue DHARMA Jeep to meet Jin with Hurley, Jack, and Kate in his DHARMA Volkswagen van

Kate smiles and Sawyer and he doesn't seem to know quite what to make of the whole situation

Mormegil: "What year does Ben come to the island as a child?"

According to Lostpedia's pre-crash timeline, probably 1976 or 1977
Ben wouldn't see himself because he stayed with the pilot, Locke, etc. in the present, but it's certainly possible that Sawyer etc. (who are currently stuck in 1977) could run into young Ben among the DHARMA folks

John_Carter: "Did Widmore leave the island before Ben arrived?"

TheMissingToe: "no - Widmore said Ben tricked him into turning the wheel"

baileybear: "i was watching the bonus features for season 4 and Locke told Jack that Ben was in town. so Jack met up with Ben b/4 Ben came to Locke's room to kill him. they didn't show that scene. ben said did locke tell you i was in town. jack says yes. so since locke is dead he had to have met with ben b/4 he died. and told jack this when he was in the hospital."
Is Horace and Amy's baby boy anyone we know?

James721: "baby Goodwin?"

TheMissingToe: "kind of creepy for Juliet though - she delivered her future lover"

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Girl's Geronimo Jackson shirt
Ankh:

From "Ankh" on Wikipedia: "The ankh was the Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life"... Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest. It is also known as the key of life, the key of the Nile, or as crux ansata, Latin for 'cross with a handle'."
TheMissingToe: "interesting Richard Alpert connection there with Ankh" - Richard seems to have some form of unending life since he never seems to age

Is the statue of Anubis?

Insightful article from Sledgeweb's LOST Stuff
"Anubis" on Wikipedia
Anubis is often depicted holding an ankh, and it looks like the statue on the Island may be holding an ankh in its right hand

SPOILERS:

Preview for the next episode (March 18, 2009):

Sawyer and the other DHARMA infiltrators try to figure out what to do about Jack, Hurley, and Kate so they won't be seen as Hostiles
A DHARMA member says to James (referring to Sayid, who they think is a Hostile): "We can end this right now. We shoot him."

Kenwalt in the chat had a good point: "James will have a tough time explaining why Sayid is in handcuffs"

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

The next episode's title is "Namaste"

Official LOST Podcast:

The title of Episode 11 is "What Happens Happens", and in that episode it will be revealed what happened to Aaron

Labels: chat, episode commentary, official lost podcast, spoilers, theories

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Time Paradox and the Space/Time Continuum

This post was written by Master Nak. Welcome back to the blog, Nak! ~tJM

Ok, I admit I am stealing this theory from Bob Zemeckis and the Back To The Future writers, but I have a hunch that the rule applies in Lost as well.

In BTTF Part 2, Doc Brown said that if the same person from two different time periods ran into his/herself, the meeting would cause a "time paradox," and could potentially rupture the entire space/time continuum. Earlier on in the season, Locke saw the light from the Hatch shining into the night sky, and knew that if he kept going in that direction, he would find his past self. However, something made him turn away and lead the others away with him. I know Locke later gave an explanation for shifting his course, but I think there was a deeper reason - he couldn't run into himself because it would cause a time paradox.

This would also explain why Ben is still on the island in the present day and did not jump back with Jack, Hurley and Kate. The possibility of old Ben running into young Ben (who was on the island with the Dharma Initiative) prevented him from jumping through time. And in the most recent episode, "LaFleur," Charlotte's corpse disappeared when everyone jumped to 1974. We know that Charlotte was on the island as a little girl during this time; she could not possibly simultaneously exist as both dead and alive.

The space/time continuum seems to be "course correcting" to prevent the occurrence of a time paradox.

Labels: episode commentary, master nak, theories

"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" Discussion

[Listen to this episode!] [Subscribe to the MP3 feed via iTunes]

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 5 Episode 7, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", review additional points from "316" and "This Place is Death", and take a look at what we might see in episode 8, "LaFleur".

Season 5 Episode 6 "316" additional notes:

Popup: Same lagoon as Season 1 episode "Whatever the Case May Be" where Kate and Sawyer went swimming
Popup: The name of The Lamp Post station was inspired by the lamp post in The Chronicles of Narnia
Popup: The DHARMA Initiative used old sailing journals like the one from the Black Rock -- the same one that Charles Widmore would later win in an auction
Popup confirmed that Ben was going to fulfill his promise to Charles Widmore to kill Penelope

Could Ben have gone after their Penny and Desmond's baby Charlie instead, as well?
If Ben hurt Penny (and/or Charlie), Des would go back to the Island to kill Ben

Popup: "Y: The Last Man" comic series is about a plague that killed all male mammals on the planet

LOSTCasts' notes for "This Place is Death":

Sickness is not nosebleeds
Locke interacted with Smokey - is he "sick"?
Is Charlotte's adoptive mother from the Island of Korean descent? Might explain why Charlotte spoke Korean

LOSTCasts shared another, more plausible theory in their discussion of "316" below

Don't bring her back - Ji Yeon? Because she was conceived on the Island she's special?
Adam and Eve = Aaron and Ji Yeon?

Josh doesn't think so, but it's interesting to note that Aaron was conceived off-island and born on-island, and the opposite is the case with Ji Yeon; she was conceived off-island and born off-island. This would make them a good Yin/Yang, Black/White-themed pair

The painting of the apostle Thomas = doubting/needing to have faith theme

I pointed out on the previous podcast that the painting also had to do with the resurrection theme

Is someone on the Island Dan's dad? With Ellie as the mother (assuming she's Eloise Hawking)? Could it be that Charles Widmore is Dan's father?

LOSTCasts' notes for "316":

Jin's new DHARMA logo

Jin is working in DHARMA security?

On Ajira Flight 316, Sun was a proxy for Rose - she was holding her husband's ring like Rose was
Perhaps Jin taught the Korean language to Charlotte after living among the DHARMA people on the Island

diesel929: "Maybe she is the daughter of a very high up DHARMA operative"

Season 5 Episode 7 "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" notes:

Island:

Caesar is in The Hydra DHARMA station looking at maps of the island

Caesar loads a shotgun, puts it in his bag (screenshot)

He and Ilana work together but don't trust each other

AlextheOther in the live chat: "He's the Jack of 316, keeping everything from everyone else"

Ilana said Roxanne was scouting, saw a man standing in the water, someone who (she thought) wasn't on the plane
Surprise, surprise: Locke is alive again on the island
Locke has taken off his shoes
Ilana: Pilot and some woman took a boat and took off during the night

Who is the woman?

Sun?
diesel929: "Maybe the ghost of Naomi came to Frank"

Are they the ones who shot at Sawyer etc. during the period after they found the Ajira bottle? If so, did they think they were someone else?

Locke: "Do you have a passenger list?"

Ilana: "You'll have to talk to Caesar"

Flashback:

Locke is in Tunisia
What's with the cameras? (We find out shortly)
Matthew Abaddon is there when they are performing surgery on John
Widmore is there when John wakes up: "I met you when I was 17."

Widmore says he placed those cameras there because "that's the exit"
Even though island is moving, the exit is always the same for some reason; the DHARMA polar bear Charlotte found was also in Tunisia

Widmore says he had been a leader of The Others: "We protected the island for decades, then he [Ben] exiled me"
Widmore is going to help Locke bring them back "Because there's a war coming john. And if you're not back on the island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win."
Widmore gives him the name Jeremy Bentham
Locke goes to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Locke visits Sayid there

New York, NY

Locke visits Walt here
Walt says to John that he saw him on the Island in suit, and everyone was angry with him

diesel929: "Josh, do you think Ben makes them all turn on John?"

I wouldn't be surprised. However, Caesar and Ilana seem to dislike and distrust Locke already, even without Ben's provocation

Locke doesn't try to talk Walt into going back - tells Matthew Abaddon that "the boy's been through enough" and "I only need to convince one."
Ben watches Locke get back in the car

Santa Rosa, CA

Hurley tells Locke that Matthew Abaddon claimed to have been employed by Oceanic Air

Matthew reminds Locke that he was the orderly who helped rehabilitate Locke
james721: "It seems Locke should have been more believing to Hurley's warning about Abaddon"

Interesting theory, but what if Abaddon was really a good guy, or at least a better person than Ben is?

Los Angeles, CA

Locke fails to convince Kate

Santa Monica, CA

Locke goes to visit Helen - she's buried in a graveyard - died of a brain aneurysm - "June 30, 1957 - April 08, 2006"

Someone shoots and murders Matthew (we later find out that Ben did it)
Locke gets in an accident, is taken to Jack's hospital

Locke fails to convince Jack, even after telling him about Christian having sent him

Locke writes the suicide note and starts to hang himself, then there's a knock at the door -- it's Ben!
Ben: "I'm trying to protect you."
Ben admits to killing Abaddon, claims that Abaddon would have killed Locke and said that Widmore is extremely dangerous
Ben tells Locke that Jack booked a round-trip flight from L.A. to Sydney -- he did get Jack to want to go back
Locke tells Ben that there's a woman named Eloise Hawking that they need to find

How did John know about Eloise Hawking?

Christian told John?

How did Ben know about her? He recognized her name, but apparently didn't know she was nearby.

Ben kills Locke!

Why did Ben kill John? Because he wants control of the island for himself? Does this mean that Widmore was telling the truth?
james721: "John is NOT allowed to kill himself"
Maybe Ben knew Locke had to die anyway and would be resurrected on the island?

Ben fixes up the apartment to make it look like a suicide, takes Jin's ring

"I'll miss you, John. I really will."

This comment sort of seems to hint that Ben didn't known John would be resurrected

Island:

Caesar says that Hurley and some of the others from the plane disappeared while they were watching them

They must have gone back in time, while the rest of the survivors (including Locke) are presumably in the present
Past/present observances with the plane etc. from Sledgeweb's LOST site

Ben is one of "the people who got hurt"
baileybear: "Where is Sayid?"

For that matter, where is Sun? Unless we're supposed to assume that she's the one who went with Frank, perhaps to try to find Jin

james721: "Ceasar is WIDMORE's SPY or a free agent"

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Caesar's findings:

"Caesar locates some files in The Hydra station that includes Dan Faraday's map and one of his journal pages concerning time travel. Also included is Rousseau's map." -from Sledgeweb's LOST Stuff

Life magazine (screenshot)

Hydrogen bomb on the cover -- reminds us of Faraday's suggestion to bury the bomb, etc.

Sayid's shirt (screenshot)

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week:

Sawyer and Juliet with guns
A blonde woman has a bag on her head, which is removed

diesel929: "Libby maybe?"

From SpoilerFix (WARNING: don't click this link unless you want to risk being majorly spoiled!)

The next episode's title is "LaFleur" (which they said on The Official LOST Podcast is a person's name)

Labels: chat, episode commentary, official lost podcast, spoilers, theories

Pendulum Window Locations Map

A couple weeks ago in the episode "316", we were briefly shown several latitude and longitude coordinates of places where the Island had been or would be going. Regular podcast caller/chat participant James721 posted a map on his LOST blog with each of the six locations marked on it:

Thanks for passing that along, James!

UPDATE: Curt Yanko from The Black Rock LOST Podcast has a different take on where the coordinates should be mapped. Check out Curt Yanko's map as well.

Labels: episode commentary

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Is John Locke Really Alive? - Thoughts About "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

In LOST Season 5 Episode 7, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", John Locke appears to be alive on the island. But is he really alive, or is he just a ghost like Christian Shephard? You may recall that Christian Shephard told Locke that he couldn't help him up after Locke broke his leg falling into the cave; I took this to mean that Christian was a ghost and did not have a physical body, which made him incapable of helping John stand up.

There have been a lot of hints about resurrection recently on the show and in The Official LOST Podcast, not the least of which is the executive producers' translation of the hieroglyphics from the frozen donkey wheel cave as referring to resurrection, which they revealed would be a theme on the show this season. There was also the painting in Eloise Hawking's church of the apostle Thomas feeling Jesus' wounds after his resurrection, which story Ben explained in detail to Jack.

Since the LOST writers point to a Biblical example of resurrection, it seems logical to use the same vantage point to look at hints from this week's episode to determine whether Locke is alive—that is, whether he's been resurrected, or brought back to life from the dead in a physical body. In "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", Ilana brings a mango to Locke, which he eats excitedly and says is the best mango he's ever tasted. Can a ghost—or someone who is dead—eat? Or can someone only eat if they have a physical body? Let's take a look at a Biblical passage about Jesus' appearance to his disciples after his resurrection, found in Luke 24:39-43 (King James Version quoted below; see other translations if you prefer):

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.
And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat?
And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb.
And he took it, and did eat before them.

In this passage, Jesus tells his disciples that a spirit does not have flesh and bones like he does, and he uses this to prove to them that he has risen from the dead. When the disciples were still unsure about it, Jesus asked them for some food and ate it in front of them as further proof that he had a fully functional physical body.

When Locke ate the mango in front of Ilana, I believe this was the LOST writers' way of telling us that Locke has indeed been resurrected, that he's truly alive again—a miracle of the Island much like the miraculous healing of his legs immediately after the Flight 815 crash.

Thanks to @LeBomba for asking me "So is Locke dead or alive?" on Twitter and inspiring this blog post. See my initial response here. Feel free to add me on Twitter (@theJoshMeister) and send me any questions you have about LOST.

Labels: episode commentary, official lost podcast, theories

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the JoshMeister's LOST Blog and Podcast

Saturday, July 04, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E17 "...In Translation"

Thursday, July 02, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E15 "Homecoming" and S1E16 "Outlaws"

Saturday, June 27, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E13 "Hearts and Minds" and S1E14 "Special"

LOST Rewatch: S1E11 "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" and S1E12 "Whatever the Case May Be"

Saturday, June 20, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E09 "Solitary" and S1E10 "Raised By Another"

Sunday, June 14, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E05 "White Rabbit" through S1E08 "Confidence Man"

Saturday, June 06, 2009

LOST Rewatch: S1E01 "Pilot, Part 1" through S1E04 "Walkabout"

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The LOST Rewatch: Seasons 1-5 in Review

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Simeon Hobbes & Epithet Alpha: Real LOST ARG or Hoax?

Friday, May 15, 2009

Translation of Greek Words on Jacob's Tapestry [Updated]

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Season 5 Finale "The Incident" Discussion

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"Follow The Leader" Discussion

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

"The Variable" Discussion

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

"Some Like It Hoth" Discussion

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

"Dead Is Dead" Discussion

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

"Whatever Happened, Happened" Discussion

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

"He's Our You" Discussion

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

"Namaste" Discussion

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Jay & Jack's LIVE Podcast Tonight!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

"LaFleur" Discussion

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Time Paradox and the Space/Time Continuum

"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" Discussion

Pendulum Window Locations Map

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Is John Locke Really Alive? - Thoughts About "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

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