the JoshMeister's LOST Blog and Podcast

Two LOST Books on Kindle for Free

2012-01-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

LOST fans who enjoy reading should check out two books by Pearson Moore, both of which are currently free for Kindle owners with Amazon Prime subscriptions:

The first book is LOST Humanity: The Mythology and Themes of LOST, and the second book is LOST Identity: The Characters of LOST. The titles are pretty self-explanatory.

Each book has an average review rating of of 5 out of 5 stars on Amazon.

As of when I'm writing this, both books can be borrowed "for free, with no due dates, if you are an Amazon Kindle owner and Prime member." This offer may only be available for a limited time, so if you're eligible, borrow them now if you think you might want to read them in the future.

If you don't have both a Kindle device and an Amazon Prime subscription, don't fret—you can buy copies of the e-books for just $4.99 or $3.99 respectively for viewing on any device for which a Kindle reader app is available (which includes Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, and Android). Or if you'd rather own a physical copy of the books, paperback editions are also available for $12.95 and $9.95, respectively.

Thanks to DarkUFO for the tip!

Over 1 Million Podcasts Downloaded!

2011-01-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

This week I reached a significant milestone as a podcaster:

My podcasts have been downloaded over 1 million times!

I'm most well known for the JoshMeister's LOST Podcast, which accounted for the largest share of episode downloads. The podcast I currently produce is MacTech Live, the official podcast of MacTech Magazine. You can find links to all my shows, past and present, at http://podcasts.thejoshmeister.com

Some people who deserve special thanks include:

Ryan Ozawa, founder of the Lost Podcasting Network, without whom my LOST podcast probably never would have become as popular as it was
Orien Colmer (Big-O), who became a good friend of mine through LOST podcasting, was later a host on my short-lived Tech Pulse podcast, and cohosted MacMod:LIVE (the precursor to MacTech Live) with me
Anthony King, cofounder of MacMod, who was a regular host on Tech Pulse and invited Orien and me to start MacMod:LIVE
Neil Ticktin, editor-in-chief and publisher of MacTech Magazine, who kept the podcast alive after acquiring MacMod
Alex Castex-Porter (congested), Jack and Jay Glatfelter from The Lost Podcast with Jay & Jack, Andy Page (DarkUFO), Josh Spivack (Spivvy) and Amanda Hafer from The Lost Flashbacks Podcast, Cliff Ravenscraft from GSPN's Weekly Lost Podcast, Matt and Steve from The Smoke Hatch, Curt Yanko from the Black Rock LOST Podcast, Jon Lachonis (DocArzt), Sam McPherson from Lostpedia, Master Nak, diesel929, baileybear, KateJack, kane, MsAmaris, shelley5, James721, PsychoBabblinMom, Robin C., Aerc, Matthew K., Bob Naidus, Judy L., Mark Hunter from Podcast User Magazine, Mister Payne, Jeff Roney from RoneyZone Radio, Code 42, Audioengine, LogMeIn, and the many others who have participated in, promoted, donated to, or sponsored any of my shows

To everyone who has downloaded my podcasts, thanks a million!

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

News and Announcements

2010-10-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

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

Hey, LOST fans! Just wanted to give you a brief update about the status of the podcast and a few other things.

First, I haven't forgotten to edit and post the series finale podcast episode. I've just been really busy since May and haven't had time yet. In September I just began working on a Ph.D. in Business Administration specializing in Computer and Information Security, and between work, school, family, and church obligations my time is stretched extremely thin these days. Eventually I'll get around to posting the edited finale podcast, but for now, here's a direct download link to the unedited version for those who can't wait any longer. To save the MP3 rather than listen directly in your browser, right-click on the link (or on a Mac hold the Control key and click on it) to get a menu that will let you save the linked file.

Second, I wanted to let you guys know that I'll be attending MacTech Conference next week, November 3rd through 5th, 2010, in Los Angeles. It's a technology conference for both IT professionals and developers with a focus on Apple's Mac OS X and iPhone/iPad platforms. If you're into Macs or other Apple technologies, you should definitely check out the details that I've posted on my personal blog, along with a link that will get you a free Apple certification or $100 off the conference registration price. All that is at http://bit.ly/MacTechConf — If you're interested in Apple technology and can make it to the conference, I'd love to meet you there!

That's it for now! Stay subscribed to the podcast, and check out my other podcasts at http://podcasts.thejoshmeister.com

You can also follow me on Twitter @theJoshMeister, and I'm on several other social networks as well.

Until next time, stay LOST, and namaste!

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

Meet me at MacTech Conference!

2010-09-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

For any LOST fans out there who might also be IT professionals or developers, I just wanted to spread the word that I'll be at MacTech Conference from November 3-5, 2010 in Los Angeles if you want to meet me there!

For more details and a link that will save you $100 on conference registration, see my post about MacTech Conference on my security blog.

As Jack would say, "See you in Los Angeles!"

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

LOST Season 6 Finale: Initial Reactions

2010-05-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT read this until after you've watched the series finale episode of LOST!

So this is it. LOST is over. "The End."

I'm going to post more detailed notes about the finale soon, but I needed to spend some time to get some of my thoughts written down.

First I need to discuss the flash-sideways. We find out in the finale that this entire season the so-called "flash-sideways" have been nothing more than a fictional universe concocted by the collective minds of the Oceanic Flight 815 passengers (plus a handful of other people like Desmond, Penny, and Juliet, apparently) as a way for them to have a "class reunion" of sorts before passing on into the afterlife. (I'm sure there will be different interpretations, but that's what I got out of it.) The flash-sideways didn't really take place in 2004; it was only meant to look like it did. This, of course, fooled the viewers into thinking that when Juliet detonated the hydrogen bomb in 1977, this event created a rift in the space-time continuum that created a parallel universe, including a new 2004 where the Island had sunk long before Oceanic Flight 815 took to the skies. It turns out there was no rift, no sunken Island, and no parallel or alternate 2004. In fact, as evidenced by Hurley and Ben's conversation outside the church, the flash-sideways actually took place sometime in the future—probably a long time in the future, since Hurley and Ben had clearly spent some time working together on the Island, and presumably Hurley would have lived as the protector of the Island for a long time before ultimately dying, like Jacob. What really bothered me was the fact that the writers completely ripped off the flash-sideways storyline from a terrible 2008 movie that was in itself a ripoff of LOST in many respects. Or perhaps, as conspiracy theorists might suggest, the writers of Passengers somehow heard about the ending of LOST and stole the flash-sideways concepts for their awful movie. Either way, now that I know what the flash-sideways really was and how it concluded, I would rather have skipped the entire flash-sideways plot altogether and had a much shorter season and a much more enjoyable final episode of LOST. If you haven't seen Passengers and you have a masochistic desire to subject yourself to watching it to compare it to the flash-sideways, you can watch the movie instantly online if you have a Netflix account: http://netflix.com/Movie/Passengers/70104310

Thankfully, in spite of the flash-sideways the whole series didn't crash and burn in the final episode. Setting aside the bizarre "class reunion" post-death ending that takes place sometime in the future, there was also the "present-day" (technically 2007) ending that shows Kate, Claire, Sawyer, Miles, Richard, and Frank leaving the Island for (hopefully) the last time. We also get to see Jack's ultimate heroic sacrifice (or stupid, totally avoidable sacrifice, depending on your perspective), giving his life to save the Island along with Hurley, Ben, Desmond, Rose, Bernard, Vincent, and anyone else who may have been living somewhere on the Island. Hurley becomes the new Jacob when Jack dies, and Ben finally gets his wish of being someone important to the Island, a true right-hand man rather than just a pawn in someone else's game.

It's a bit odd, though, that there's no more Man in Black, no more smoke monster—no more evil force to oppose the forces of good on the Island. So what's Hurley going to do? Maybe the cycle of people coming to the Island, fighting, etc. described by the Fake Mother and the Man in Black will continue. Maybe Hurley will help everyone who arrives on the Island to get back home; Ben said that taking care of people is what Hurley does best. In any case, it just doesn't seem like the Island would be as interesting without a smoke monster.

...Or maybe when Jack brought back the light, the Man in Black was resurrected again as the smoke monster. More theories, mysteries, and observations about the finale will be posted here soon.

All in all, I've thoroughly enjoyed LOST and I'm glad that I've taken this journey. To everyone who contributed in any way to the making of LOST, thank you!

Be sure to tune in to my (potentially) last-ever live LOST podcast, Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 10 PM Pacific (1 AM Eastern). Listen live, participate in the chat, or call in to discuss the finale. Details are here: http://talkshoe.com/tc/16338

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

"What They Died For" Discussion

2010-05-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 16, "What They Died For".

News
I will be recording my live podcast about the series finale episode on Tuesday, May 25th at my usual time, 10 PM Pacific (1 AM Eastern). There will NOT be a podcast on Sunday night. If you would like to call into the (potentially) final live episode of the podcast, mark your calendars for Tuesday!

In other news, Alex Castex-Porter (aka Congested, a regular caller on the podcast) has relaunched his site AudiblyLost.com in anticipation of his upcoming documentary on the LOST podcasting phenomenon. He just released a video trailer for the movie, which you can watch at http://vimeo.com/11838904 — please share with your friends!

Additional insights into "Across the Sea" from Geronimo Jack's Beard (not spoilers):

The script confirms that Claudia and the Fake Mother spoke to each other in Latin, not Latin and English (the English spoken in the episode was for the viewer's convenience, not meant to be interpreted as the characters speaking English to each other).
According to Jorge Garcia, the script says that the game that Boy in Black (BIB) found is called Senate, "which may be essentially a precursor to Backgammon, which was introduced [by John Locke to Walt] in the Pilot."
Beth Shady points out that BIB said "everyone will have to play by your rules," not "I will have to." At that time BIB and Jacob knew about the other natives on the Island, but BIB's wording is interesting because they only associated with each other and their Fake Mother.
The script says that the knife that the Man in Black threw at the magnetic well is the same knife that Dogen gave to Sayid.

Season 6 Episode 16 "What They Died For":
2004, Flash-sideways:

Jack wakes up, looks in the mirror, and his neck is bleeding

Why?! He hadn't even shaved yet!
"maybe he sleepshaves" -diesel929

David asks Jack if he's coming to the concert, and Jack asks David if his mother is coming (we still don't know who she is yet - should be revealed in finale!)

"mom is julliet, there's no one else left,lol" -kane

"david's blue eyes are a give away" -kane
"speaking of eyes, did you see Jack's eyes, they were brown when he was talking to locke in his office." -kane

Maybe he met Juliet in medical school!

Or it could be Sarah, Jack's wife from the original timeline
"it's annie" -diesel929

In all seriousness, it won't be. The executive producers have said that Annie was a minor character and they're done with her story

Claire comes out to eat breakfast with them; she's living there too
Oceanic Airlines calls Jack to tell him that they found the coffin and it will arrive later that day... but it's not Oceanic, it's Desmond

But wait, later in the episode we find out that Desmond is going to David's concert... so what's the purpose of Desmond's phone call?!

2007 on the Island:

Jack stitches up the bullet wound in Kate's chest
Kate says they have to kill "Locke" (MIB) because he killed Sun and Jin, who had never gotten to meet his daughter

Jack agrees that they need to kill Locke

Jack tells the rest of the survivors (Hurley, Sawyer, and Kate) that they're going to go save Desmond because obviously Locke doesn't want Desmond alive

2004, Flash-sideways:

Desmond beats up Ben and Ben has flashes of Desmond punching him in the original timeline

How did Des know that Ben was part of original timeline? Did Des have flashes that made him remember Ben?

2007 on the Island:

At New Otherton, Miles hears a dead person's thoughts
Richard explains that he buried Alex after Ben left New Otherton, and Ben thanks Richard
Ben goes back to his house to get C4 from his secret room
Ben: "It's where I was told I could summon the monster. That was before I realized it was the one summoning me."
Richard says they're looking to blow the plane to hell
They hear Zoe in the kitchen, they don't recognize her, and Charles Widmore walks in and Ben is surprised to see him
Charles Widmore says he already rigged the plane with explosives, and that Jacob personally invited him back to the Island
Zoe sees Locke docking a boat

2004, Flash-sideways:

Ben gets cleaned up and Locke rolls by in wheelchair
Where did this take place? In a hospital? At the school nurse's office?
Locke: "A fight? With who?"

This line is funny because the use of "who" instead of "whom" has been brought up on The Official LOST Podcast

Ben says he thinks he "saw... something."
Ben tells Locke that Desmond said he was trying to get Locke to "let go"
Miles says he's going to a fundraising event at his dad's (Dr. Pierre Chang's) museum that night, and Charlotte will be there so James says he's not going
Desmond turns himself in to James for hit and run and for beating up teacher
Desmond gets put in the same cell as Sayid and right next to Kate's cell, and Desmond acts as though it's all according to plan

This is ridiculous! How could Des know that he would get placed right next to Sayid and Kate in jail?

"mrs hawking [Eloise Widmore] told him" -diesel929
"maybe it was farradork [Daniel Widmore, aka Dan Faraday] then" -diesel929
"the informant has to be the chauffer [George Minkowski]" -kane

2007 on the Island:

Sawyer feels bad because of pulling the wires on the bomb in the sub - he didn't trust Jack so he feels responsible for Jin and Sun's deaths
Young Jacob steals the ashes and other things that had been in Ilana's pocket away from Hurley, claiming "they're mine"

Why is Young Jacob appearing? Why not normal age Jacob? It doesn't make any sense.

"sawyer saw him too" -kane
"richard did not" -mibmadedonkeywheel
"so young jacob was real??" -kane

Yeah, apparently -- he stole the ashes from Hurley and took them to (or morphed into?) older Jacob

"maybe he liked his younger self cause he didnt have a chidhood. plus hurly didnt even know who he was" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Hurley not recognizing him gave him a chance to steal the ashes

"oh what about this he was his kid self because he knew he was going to die so he gave his kid body one last huzzah" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Hurley chases after him and sees the older Jacob sitting next to a fire
Jacob: "My ashes are right there in that fire. When it burns out you'll never see me again."

Why? Jacob's ashes had already stopped burning by the time Ilana found them. Why does re-burning his already burnt ashes make him disappear forever?
And seriously? That's what the ashes were saved for all this time? I was kinda hoping someone would throw them at MIB or make him eat them or something to defeat him, but oh well.

Ben says to Charles that he's not interested in hiding from MIB
Widmore warns that MIB is going to kill him
Richard says he knows MIB and all he wants is for Richard to join him, and maybe if they leave together it will give the rest of them a chance to get away safely
The smoke monster shoves Richard out of the way like a train

Will Richard be okay? Is he still immortal?

I think Richard will show up at some point and surprise us out of the blue and save the day

"i think richard will kill ben" -diesel929

MIB comes to Ben and says "Just the man I was looking for"
MIB: "I need you to kill some people for me, Ben. ... Because once I leave this Island you can have it all to yourself."
"All right."
"Good. Now whose outrigger is that out there on the dock?"
"Charles Widmore's."
"And do you know where I can find him?"
"He's hiding in my closet."

"do you think smokey knew about the secret closet? and if ben didnt snitch would it have known they where there" -mibmadedonkeywheel

2004, Flash-sideways:

Alex Rousseau notices that Dr. Linus is beaten up
Danielle Rousseau introduces herself to Ben as she offers to take him home with them for dinner

"oh yeah, you coming with us or i'll have to kidnap you,lol" -kane
"yes, i caught the kidnapping line" -diesel929

Danielle: "He died when Alex was 2."
Danielle: "You're the closest thing to a father she's ever had." (Same as original timeline)

2007 on the Island:

MIB slashes Zoe's neck

"dont forget the line smokey gave widmore after he killed zoe: you told her not to talk to me so she was no use anymore" -mibmadedonkeywheel

MIB says he'll kill Penny Widmore when he leaves the Island unless Charles tells MIB why he came back to the Island
Charles says something about Desmond's resistance to electromagnetism, and wants to tell the rest to MIB in private (without Ben hearing)
Charles whispers to MIB, and Ben shoots Charles multiple times, presumably killing him, explaining "He doesnt get to save his daughter."

Ben gets revenge for Alex's death

MIB says "No harm done" because he got the information he wanted from Charles
Ben asks if there was anyone else MIB wanted him to kill, and MIB smiles evilly

Does MIB want Ben to kill the candidates? Would Ben kill Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley? Just to supposedly get the Island to himself?

MIB doesn't keep his promises; he promised Sayid his woman back, then sent Sayid to his doom on the sub with a bomb
The only reason MIB would need Ben to kill anyone is if he needed someone to kill the candidates; MIB can't kill them, but MIB can kill anyone else he wants to. That's why he's using Ben

"smoke monster needs ben to be his assassin but ben will double cross him" -diesel929

"where is miles?" -diesel929

"miles is out in the jungle somewhere with a walkie talkie. miles does have a walkie talkie, ben gave it to him" -kane

Jacob appears to Kate, Sawyer, Jack -- Hurley is surprised they can all see him
Kate: "I want to know that Sun and Jin and Sayid didn't die for nothing."
Jacob: "I'll tell you why I chose them and why I chose you. And then I'll tell you everything you need to know about protecting this Island because by the time that fire burns out one of you is going to have to start doing it."

2004, Flash-sideways:

John Locke visits Jack and talks to him about the airplane and the apparent coincidences that brought him back to Jack, leading up to Desmond telling Dr. Linus that he wanted to help Locke "let go" -- the same words Jack said to him
Jack: "Mr. Locke, I want to fix you, but I think you're mistaking coincidence for fate." (an oft-repeated line on the show)
Locke asks Jack to fix him

2007 on the Island:

Jacob: "I brought all of you here because I made a mistake. ... You call him the monster. But I'm responsible for what happened to him. I made him that way. And ever since then he's been trying to kill me."
Jacob: "I didn't pluck any of you out of a happy existence. You were all flawed... alone... you needed this place as much as it needed you."
Kate: "Why did you cross my name off the wall?"
Jacob: "Because you became a mother. It's just a line of chalk on a wall. The job is still yours if you want it, Kate."
Jacob: "You have to protect it from him."
Sawyer: "You want us to kill him? Is that even possible?"
Jacob: "I certainly hope so because he is going to try to kill you. ... I'm not going to pick, Hugo. I want you to have the one thing I was never given. A choice."
Kate: "What if none of us chooses it?"
Jacob: "Then all this ends very badly."
Jack: "I'll do it. This is why I'm here. This is what I'm supposed to do."
"Is that a question, Jack?"
"No."
"Good. Then it's time."

Is Jack going to go see the light?

"You remember that bamboo field you woke up in" -- near where the light is
"Do you have a cup?"
Jacob whispers something in Latin and then instructs Jack in English, "Drink this."
Jacob: "Now you're like me."

2004, Flash-sideways:

James says he's shipping Jarrah, Hume, and Austen off to the county jail
Kate tries to talk James out of it but he says "Nice knowing you"
Des in car to Kate and Sayid: "I think it's time to leave."
Ana Lucia Cortez is the cop driving the van and she asks where Desmond's friend is with all the money - it's Hugo
Hugo gives Ana Lucia $125,000 and she drives off
Des says that Ana Lucia isn't ready yet
Des told Sayid to go with Hugo
Des tells Kate she's going to a concert with him, and he hands her a dress

2007 on the Island:

Ben: "Why do you bother walking?"
MIB: "I like the feel of my feet on the ground. Reminds me I was human."
MIB looks for Desmond in the well
MIB: "He said Desmond was a failsafe. One final way to make sure that I never leave this place. ... I'm going to find him. And when I do, he's going to help me do the one thing I could never do myself. Destroy the island."

So MIB would be okay with the destruction of the Island?

Foreshadowed by MIB smashing the bottle with the cork, perhaps

Does this mean MIB got his wish in the flash-sideways timeline? Did he get free in the flash-sideways timeline?

Other questions, comments, and theories discussed in the chat:

"do you think penny is going to show up in the finale?" -diesel929

Maybe in the flash-sideways

"flock left Claire on the other island. didn't he? everyone leaves her on the island" -baileybear

Unless he killed her... but I don't think they'd do that without showing us. I think we'll see Claire again in the finale. It would only be right.
"so what is claire doing?" -diesel929
"[MIB to Claire:] 'claire they ditched you again. please kill hurley' 'ok'" -diesel929

CrapCastBilly's theory is that it's not the Jughead bomb that caused the rift, it was the sinking of the Island -- and when the Island sinks in the original timeline, the two timelines will merge.
He also thinks it's possible that the Island from the original timeline may be the one we saw sunk in the flash-sideways (I disagree with that theory; I think it was pretty clear in the show that the sunken Island was in the flash-sideways)
"desmond will connect them" -diesel929

Yeah, otherwise why waste our time with all Desmond's actions in the flash-sideways?

CrapCastBilly points out the electromagnetism reference and how Desmond must be the savior? He's taking care of things on both sides
CrapCastBilly's theory: maybe the concert is the benefit for the museum - Des will call Sawyer say I'm here come arrest me, (or Sawyer shows up with Miles after all) runs into Jack's (wife / ex-wife) who is Juliet(!) and she says to Sawyer "Let's go dutch."

Maybe Charlie and Claire will meet up at the concert!
Sawyer meets up with Juliet, Daniel sees Charlotte there, Jack is going to see Kate, Hurley took Libby there on a date? but Hurley is with Sayid -- maybe to pick up Nadia, and then they'll pick up Libby on the way. ;o)

"piano recital/geronimo jackson/drive shaft concert" -diesel929

"now that Jack is Jacob is MIB stuck?" -baileybear

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Screenshots: http://gallery.lost-media.com/thumbnails-1558.htmls

Preview for the final episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhCeGBwHHs4

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

"Across the Sea" Discussion

2010-05-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister, Alex aka Congested, and other fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 15, "Across the Sea".

Season 6 Episode 15 "Across the Sea":
Flashback:

A woman (Claudia) comes out of water gasping - she's pregnant and wounded
Another woman says in Latin, "You hurt? Let me help you."
Claudia and the other woman both speak Latin and English
Woman: "If there are other people on the Island, I will find them."
Claudia gives birth - "His name is Jacob."
She didn't pick a name for the twin - Esau?

In the Bible, Jacob and Esau were twins, but Esau was born first (not the other way around as in the LOST story of Jacob and his brother)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esau
I called him Esau in my notes since the young boy was never named in the show and I needed something to call him other than Man in Black since he wasn't a man. In the script he's called "Boy in Black" according to Kenton Duty, the actor who played young Jacob (see interview link in spoiler section; some of the interview may contain spoilers)

Woman kills Claudia with a rock

How does she expect to feed the babies without their mother's milk?

"boar milk" -kane

This must be the mother that the Man in Black was telling Kate about
Her name is apparently just "Mother" in the script; we never get her name in the episode, either

Esau teaches Jacob how to play a game - it has light and dark pieces like Backgammon, the game Locke taught Walt
This young Jacob, by the way, is the boy that the MIB saw in the jungle in previous episodes

Why did the MIB see young Jacob, rather than seeing Jacob at the age when he died?

Woman: "Do you love me, Jacob? Then tell me what happened."
Woman to Esau: "Jacob doesn't know how to lie. You're... special."
She says she left the game for Esau, refuting his belief that it came from "across the sea" (the episode title)
Woman: "There is nowhere else. The Island is all there is."
Esau: "What's dead?"
Fake Mother: "Something you will never have to worry about."

Why do Jacob and the MIB seem to be (mostly) immortal?
Was Mother lying, or wrong? MIB looked like he died when he became the smoke monster; his body was left behind, and Jacob buried him. Is he supposed to not be dead, even though he no longer has a body?

Is Mother currently immortal because she's the current "Jacob" (Island protector)?

Mother doesn't seem to be immortal because she was impaled by MIB
Jacob was immortal but was impaled by Ben because MIB found a loophole; if Mother was immortal like Jacob, what was the loophole MIB used to kill her?

Jacob and Esau chase a boar - a scene straight out of the book "Lord of the Flies" which Sawyer has mentioned before
Natives kill the boar
Mother: "We are here for a reason."
"What reason?"
Mother: "It's not time yet. [She gives into pressure from Esau.] Come with me"
Mother: "They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, it always ends the same."

Same line as MIB used in Season 5 finale

Mother: "I've made it so you can never hurt each other."

How?
Was this a lie? Jacob was able to bloody his face, and threw him into the light which seems to have (apparently, sort of) killed MIB

Glowing tunnel in the stream
Mother: "This is the reason we're here. Don't go in there."
Mother: "A light. The warmest, brightest light you've ever seen or felt. And we must make sure that no one ever finds it."
Mother: "A little bit of this light is inside every man. And they always want more."
Mother: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."

"there's a theory, that's it's the garden of eden down there,lol" -kane

She says "It will have to be one of you" who protects the light forever
Playing game
Esau: "You can't do that Jacob. It's against the rules. One day you can make up a new game and everyone else will have to follow your rules."
Esau sees a manifestation of his real mother, Claudia, but Jacob can't see her

Hurley can do this too
Esau is "special" -- and Jacob is not? Esau has communion with the Island and can see dead people --congested

Claudia leads Esau across the Island to the natives' village
"They came here 13 years ago. The day before you were born."
Claudia tells Esau the truth that he comes from "across the sea" (the episode title again)
Fake Mother tells Esau "You will never be able to leave this Island."

Esau vows to prove it one day, and goes off to be with the other people

"i wonder how mib introduced himself to that camp. hey hows it going i been wondering around in the jungle for 13 years and taught myself english" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Fake Mother tells Jacob she couldn't let him go with Claudia and her people because "I needed you to stay good."
Jacob: "Then why do you love him more than me?"
Woman asks Jacob to stay with her, and he says "Yes. For a while."

At the time I wondered: Does he plan to go with the other people when he leaves her?

Older Jacob building a tapestry on a loom, still with his fake mother
Jacob watches MIB with the other people and plays the game with him away from the others
Jacob frequently watches and visits MIB
MIB says he found a way off the Island and throws a dagger at a magnetic well
Jacob doesn't want to leave the Island because it's his home, and MIB says "Well it's not mine"
MIB is a blacksmith, making weapons
Fake Mother visits him
MIB says he's searched for the light for 30 years, and figured out another way to reach it
Esau pulls a stone out of the wall and the light shines through onto a wheel
The wheel (apparently the frozen donkey wheel) is part of "a system that channels the water and the light. I'm going to turn it and when I do I'm finally going to leave this place."

"the light went out so it got cold" hence the freezing of the wheel -mibmadedonkeywheel

"the light can't go out" -kane

Mother said earlier: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."

Fake Mother bashes MIB's head against the wall near the light opening

Was she trying to kill him to stop him from leaving the Island?

Fake Mother wakes up Jacob and said "It's time."
Mother: "You're going to protect it now."
Jacob: "What's down there?"
Mother: "Life, death, rebirth, its the source, the heart of the Island. Just promise me, no matter what you do, you won't ever go down there."

"before jacob and his brother there was no balance. she said it herself the light is life, death and rebirth all in one. i think now the light is only life and rebirth" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Jacob: "Would I die?"
Mother: "It would be worse than dying, Jacob. Much worse."

How does she know? Were there already smoke monsters prior to the MIB?

She pulls out a bottle, says something in Latin, and gives it to Jacob to drink
She says he'll protect this place as long as he can
Mother: "Please, take the cup and drink" - Biblical reference?

Taking the cup is a metaphor for committing to a task or duty, especially a difficult one
Jacob was uneasy about taking the cup, similar to Jesus:

Luke 22:42 "Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done."

Mother: "Now you and I are the same"

Both protectors of the Island
This may also be another scriptural reference/metaphor. See this passage in which Jesus prays to the Father that the disciples may become "one" ("the same" in Mother's terms) "even as we are one" (being perfectly united in purpose; in the case of Jacob and Mother, their purpose is to be protectors of the light):
John 17:21-23 "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one..."

MIB wakes up above ground, back of head has blood on it
The well has been covered up with dirt and rocks, and there's a fire elsewhere on the Island - all his people are dead and their structures are burning

How did Fake Mother kill all those Other People?! Is she a smoke monster?

"i think she was a smoke monster" -kane
Does being a smoke monster explain how she knows what entering the light will do to you?

She can't be a smoke monster because MIB killed her by impaling her - MIB can't be killed that way as we know from when Sayid tried - no blood

"sayid was a candidate. maybe he [Sayid] couldn't kill him [MIB]" -kane

However, Bram shot MIB and he didn't bleed then either, and Bram was not a candidate

Maybe there's another smoke monster on the Island, and that's how she knew what going into the light would do, and also how the other people died

MIB recovers his game board and gets very angry
Mother finds her camp, loom, etc. destroyed and Esau's game is there
She opens it and finds a white and black stone. She examines the black one and is impaled from behind by MIB

Is she Eve from the caves? Then who's Adam? (We find out later)

Jacob throws the MIB into the light and he comes out as a blast of black smoke - the Smoke Monster
Jacob later sees MIB's dead body at the stream and brings it to the caves next to his fake mother's body - Esau is "Adam" from the caves

So he no longer has a body - this must explain what the MIB meant when he said Jacob had taken away his humanity
This may also explain why the MIB can't be shot/stabbed… although he does still seem to have some physicality because he can hold guns, he carried Richard and later Sun, etc.

Flash to when Jack and Kate found the bodies and the stones in the bag

They didn't show that Jack guessed they had been decomposing for something like 50 years

"the episode was supposed to be named 23 A.D." -mibmadedonkeywheel -- if that was the original title of the episode that would mean it's been nearly 2000 years but Damon Lindelof said in an interview (linked in the spoiler section because the interview may contain spoilers) "it's several thousand" years

Other questions, comments, and theories discussed in the chat:

Did the smoke monster exist prior to MIB being thrown into the light?

Looked to me like the MIB became the smoke monster immediately after entering the light

"like it took his mind maybe" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Very interesting theory! This makes sense because we know the smoke monster has John Locke's memories. Perhaps the smoke monster already existed before, but it just took the MIB's memories

Alex (congested) thinks that the MIB/smoke monster wants to get into the alternate timeline where there is no cork because the Island is sunk
What happened to the light in the alternate timeline? It's under the ocean with the Island, or was it extinguished?

Mother: "A little bit of this light is inside every man. And they always want more."
Mother: "If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."

So if the light goes out, what happens? Everybody dies? Becomes corrupt?
Did the light go out in the flash-sideways timeline when the Island sunk?

"now the question is who found out the pylons would keep smokey out" -mibmadedonkeywheel
"i just wish I knew half the stuff she knew. seems like there was a lot she didn't share with Jacob when turning over the job." -cliftongibbons
"i bet locke will come from the sideways and battle mib to see the light" -mibmadedonkeywheel
"oh one more thing when mib went to live with the camp he learned greed,mistrust and all the other bad things from them. and it was like their mother knew that he had to take in all that bad energy. jacob stayed pure" -mibmadedonkeywheel

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Congested's alternate version of the scene where Jacob buried Mother and Man in Black (with Jack, Kate, and Locke clips cut out): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn0wo5P4x30

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

Various clips of Jack, Ben, Sun and Jin, the temple, clips from the flash-sideways (James punching the mirror), MIB breaking the bottle, Locke (both in casket and alive)
The Doors song "The End" plays

"The End" is the title of the final episode of the series finale according to The Official LOST Podcast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTMGCvPeY18

Geronimo Jack's Beard:

After Sayid tells Jack that Desmond is in the well, he also says "It's going to be you, Jack." According to GJB, "you" is underlined in the script. When I watching this scene, I assumed that Sayid meant that Jack would be the one to save Desmond. However, Beth Shady (aka Sidekick22) from GJB points out that in the script, the stage direction just after this line says "And Jack's just as confused by that as we are." Jorge Garcia and Beth Shady both believe that Sayid meant that Jack was the candidate who would replace Jacob. This theory would seem to fit with the episode title ("The Candidate") as well as the centricity of the episode (Jack-centric), even though Jack called Locke "a candidate" for reconstructive spinal surgery in the flash-sideways. Perhaps the remark about Locke being "a candidate" was a red herring, and the candidate is Jack. On the other hand, how would Sayid have known that Jack would be the candidate to replace Jacob? Sayid was infected and on the MIB's side.

Alex (congested) doesn't think Jack replacing Jacob is going to be the main ending of the show

The Official LOST Podcast:

Carlton Cuse said the issue of Kate apparently not being a candidate will be addressed in the show.
Not all people who are dead on the show are manifestations of the Man in Black. Hurley sees dead people on a regular basis because he has a special ability, so he can see genuine dead people such as Isabella.
Not all of the "rules" (e.g. Ben and Widmore's rules) will be revealed. Carlton Cuse: "Some of them will become clear. Others you as an audience member are gonna get to speculate about after the show is over."

Maybe this has to do with the rules that Esau said in this episode that Jacob would get to make up

Carlton made a casual comment about the Egyptians building the Taweret (four-toed foot) statue, but Damon seemed surprised so this may or may not have actually been decided by the writers
Next week's episode is titled "What They Died For" and Damon said that after watching "The Candidate": "Now you understand, perhaps, what that title means."

Interviews:

HitFix interview with executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse:

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/exclusive-interview-lost-producers-damon-lindelof-and-carlton-cuse-talk-across-the-sea

Comic News Insider interview with Michael Emerson ("Ben"):

http://www.comicnewsinsider.com/2010/05/episode-258-michael-emerson-returns-part-1.html

Ben has scenes with Widmore this season

Flash-sideways? Flashback? Or just on the Island?

Alex (congested) speculates that Ben and Widmore see each other on the Island - maybe that's where Ben and Richard have been

Michael Emerson also said that he filmed a 14-minute epilogue that's apparently going to be on the Season 6 DVD

Lost Causes interview with Kenton Duty ("young Jacob"):

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lostcauses/2010/05/13/lost-causes-ab-aeterno
The actor said he will be back on the show in at least one scene with a number of the main actors

Based on Congested's recollection of the interview, it sounds like Ben's group may reunite with Jack's group... but how does the young Jacob character tie in with them?

Show off your LOST fanaticism with one of several cool designs on shirts, stickers, and other items! Visit http://bit.ly/loststore and support this site!

"The Candidate" Discussion

2010-05-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 14, "The Candidate".

Season 6 Episode 14 "The Candidate":
2004 "flash-sideways":

Locke wakes up from surgery and sees Jack
Jack asks what caused Locke's original spinal injury that put him in a wheelchair
Jack: "Because I think you're a candidate"
Jack offers to fix Locke, but Locke refuses

2007 on the Island:

Sayid to Jack: "Welcome to Hydra Island"
Sawyer and Kate get put back in the cages
Charles Widmore reveals that Kate isn't on his list, but Ford, Reyes, and the Kwons are

Interesting... then why was Austen not crossed out in the lighthouse, as confirmed on an Official LOST Podcast?

"i stopped taking damon and carlton seriously in season 3" -diesel929

Widmore asks if the fence is live yet, and they say in about an hour
Widmore says they haven't got an hour because "he's coming"

2004 "flash-sideways":

Jack introduces himself to Bernard Nadler and asks about Locke's original injury
Bernard gives Jack the name of the man who was with Locke: Anthony Cooper
They realize that they were both on Flight 815

2007:

Sayid to Jack: "Locke saved you."
Sayid says "It's just the three of us now" because the rest of them scattered when the bomb was dropped
The Man in Black asks Jack to help him convince his friends to trust him
Sun puts Jin's wedding ring back on him
The power goes out and the pylons stop working, and then the smoke monster appears and kills one of Widmore's men
Jack shows up and takes the dead Widmore guy's keys and sets his friends free, explaining "I'm with him"
Jack says that Sayid turned off the generators

2004 "flash-sideways":

Anthony Cooper is in a nursing home

Sawyer had been looking for Anthony Cooper

"the james ford con may have been the last of his cons. he had been redeemed." -diesel929's theory

Or perhaps Anthony Cooper was still in the middle of his long con of John Locke when the accident happened

2007:

MIB finds a strange wire in the plane; is it rigged with explosives?
MIB explains to the candidates that the plane was rigged with C4
MIB says they need to take the submarine instead
Sawyer pretends to be on the MIB's side, saying "Maybe I was wrong about you"
Claire apologizes to MIB and he says it's all right
Sawyer tells Jack to not let the MIB in the sub because he doesn't trust it

2004 "flash-sideways":

Locke mutters in his sleep, "Push the button" and "I wish you had believed me"

Lines from original timeline! Explanation?

Claire shows up and asks if she can talk with Jack
Jack gets an Apollo bar from the machine

Jack figures out that Claire was also on Flight 815; he's starting to figure out that something is weird

Claire said she'd never even met "this man" presumably meaning her father

In the original timeline, Claire remembered that Christian Shephard used to sing "Catch a Falling Star" to her when she was little. Apparently in this timeline Christian didn't visit her and sing to her, or at least he stopped visiting her earlier in her life prior to the time she can remember

Claire asks how Christian died; Jack gives the same cause of death as the original timeline
Claire has a music box that Christian left for her that plays "Catch a Falling Star" and she doesn't know why
Jack offers to let Claire stay with him instead of her hotel

2007:

Sawyer and Frank Lapidus enter the sub and take control
MIB tries again to convince Jack to board the sub, and says whoever told him he should stay didn't know what he was talking about
Jack says that John Locke told him that, and Jack pushes the MIB into the water

Jack made the point that he can't kill them, so the MIB couldn't directly get revenge on Jack

Kate is shot
MIB gets out of the water and begins taking out Widmore's men with gunfire along with Claire
Sawyer chooses to leave Claire behind on the dock because the MIB begins to approach the sub
Jack discovers that the MIB gave him a backpack with a bomb in it; it has less than 4 minutes left
Sayid tries to defuse the bomb
Jack says "Locke can't kill us" and tries to convince Sawyer not to pull the wires because they'll be killing themselves
Sawyer pulls it anyway and it ticks down rapidly

"when did Sawyer work for the bomb squad?" -baileybear
Sawyer inadvertently killed Jin, Sun, and Sayid (and Frank?) if Jack is correct

Sayid tells Jack about Desmond and then runs with the bomb to get it away from them, and sacrifices himself

"Sayid was redeemed" -baileybear
Here's confirmation that Desmond really is still alive; Sayid didn't kill him

Jack, Jin, and Sawyer try to rescue Sun, who's trapped, but it's not enough to save her
Sawyer gets knocked unconscious and Jack takes him to the surface
Jin stays with Sun and they die together underwater

Who will raise Ji-Yeon? Why did neither of them think of their child?
It's frustrating that Jin wouldn't save himself; this is similar to Charlie deciding to shut himself in rather than shut himself out with Desmond

2004 "flash-sideways":

Locke explains how he got injured: "I was in a plane crash" and his father was his first passenger, and the accident was his fault, and now his father will never walk or talk again
Jack: "What happened, happened. And you can let it go."
Jack: "I *can* help you, John. I wish you believed me."

2007:

Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, and Kate are all alive on the beach
MIB: "It sunk."
Claire: "What, they're all dead?"
MIB: "Not all of them"

Somehow he seems to have a connection with the candidates where he knows if they die

MIB tells Claire he's going to go finish what he started

Other questions, comments, and theories from the chat:

Question in chat: "do we think ajira plane isnt done yet?"

I never thought it had a chance of working to leave the Island anyway

"im telling you i could swear that wndshield busted. didnt a stick impale the copiloot? a stick that crashed through on impact of the olanding... lostpedia: The co-pilot died when a tree branch came through the window and harpooned his chest, spraying blood over Frank Lapidus." -diesel929

"Maybe MIB just used the excuse of the plane to get all the lostees together" -baileybear

"that is the only thing that makes sense" -diesel929

"interesting tidbit from lostpedia: As of the end of this episode, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, and Walt are the only main cast members from Season 1 who are still alive in the original timeline." -diesel929
"the only candidates left are Jack, Sawyer and Hurley" -baileybear

...unless Ji-Yeon is the Kwon candidate!
Maybe Widmore does know that Kate is still a candidate, but he was tricking Sawyer

Theories: Will Kate die?

"she can' die. she has to resolve something with Claire first" -baileybear
"someone needs to tell claire that her mom is out of the coma. i thnk kate should be that person. and that aaron is with his grandma" -diesel929

"weird thing is Claire never asked where her son is" -baileybear

...unless that conversation happened off-camera, or was filmed but didn't make the cut to the show

"the lost lowdown went into deep discussion about this on their podcast. the last recruit" -diesel929

"what is desmond there for?" -baileybear

Has he already fulfilled his purpose? Widmore got him to consciousness-travel to the alternate timeline, and now in the alternate timeline Des is bringing together the Flight 815 people and getting them to have memories of the original timeline. Perhaps that was Widmore's whole purpose in bringing Desmond back to the Island

When Des ran into Locke he may have wanted to get Locke to have a near-death experience so he would remember the original timeline; we didn't get confirmation that Locke remembers it in this episode, other than his mutterings while asleep in the hospital being from the original timeline

LOST News:

The series finale episode has been extended from 2 hours to 2.5 hours, as reported here and later confirmed on The Official LOST Podcast (thanks to KateJack for the tip)

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

There were once again reflections in the flash-sideways: a reflection of Jack and Claire was seen in the music box's mirror (screenshot)

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

Locke from Season 1: "Two players, two sides. One is light, one is dark."
Shots of the Man in Black and Jacob

Looks like it may be a MIB/Jacob-centric episode about their origins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyulYb5wUVA

Geronimo Jack's Beard: (spoiler about characters in the finale)

Hurley, Kate, and Ben are all in the series finale episode (listen here)

Do you have a product or service that you'd like to market to thousands of LOST fans? Find out how you can become a sponsor of this blog and podcast! Send an e-mail to thelostmeister+marketing at gmail dot com.

Season 6 Donation Goal Reached!

2010-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

As of this morning, I've reached my donation goal! Thanks to everyone who made a contribution. You can still donate if you wish, but I no longer need any more donations to help pay for getting LOST on my TV this season.

Don't forget to join me for the live episode tonight at about 10:05 PM Pacific! You can join the live show by going here on TalkShoe during the recording time. If you have a TalkShoe account, you can choose to Follow the podcast on TalkShoe to receive notifications of new live shows. To subscribe to the MP3 podcast, please use this iTunes link, or if you don't use iTunes you can this RSS link. (Please avoid using the TalkShoe podcast subscription buttons because you'll get unedited shows.)

"The Last Recruit" Discussion

2010-05-03T23:40:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 13, "The Last Recruit".

Season 6 Episode 13 "The Last Recruit":
2007 on the Island:

Man in Black to Jack: "I think we have some catching up to do."
Jack to MIB: "Who else have you looked like?"
Jack asks whether the apparitions of Christian Shephard were the MIB
MIB: "Yes, that was me."
Jack: "Why?"
MIB: "You needed to find water. ... All I've ever been interested in is to help you. Leave. ... Now Jacob's dead. We don't have to be trapped here. ... Because it has to be all of us."

"MIB to jack 'because Jacob choose you, you were trapped on this island, before you even got here'. there must be a pull to the island from Jacobs' touch" -RedWalrus

2004 "flash-sideways":

Locke says he was going to marry Helen Norwood
Sun and John Locke get to the emergency room at the same time
Sun recognized Locke: "What is he doing here?"

Did she recognize him from the plane, or from the original timeline on the Island?

2007:

Claire to Jack: "Did he tell you that he was the one pretending to be our father? ... You decided the moment you let him talk to you, just like the rest of us. Whether you like it or not, you're with him now."

According to Jorge Garcia on Geronimo Jack's Beard, Claire's line "You decided the moment you let him talk to you, just like the rest of us" was not in his version of the script

Sawyer tells Jack, and Kate tells Sun, their secret plan to steal the submarine

2004 "flash-sideways":

James Ford talks to Kate about her record

"did Sawyer call Kate freckles in the squad room or did i hear wrong?" -baileybear

Yep, he did

Miles fills in Sawyer on the multiple homicide at the restaurant, and they plan to go after Sayid because he was caught on camera leaving the scene

2007:

Zoe: "You took something from us, and we want it back."
Zoe calls someone on her walkie-talkie and says "Do you have a fix on my position? Show them what we're capable of," and a bomb is dropped and explodes nearby
Zoe: "You have until nightfall ... or next time we won't miss. Call me when you're ready for us to pick him up."

They actually did miss the next time, later in the episode ;o)

Zoe leaves the walkie-talkie with the Man in Black
As the members of the Man in Black's camp watch, he smashes the walkie-talkie and says "Well, here we go."

2004 "flash-sideways":

Desmond tracks down Claire and offers to get her a lawyer to represent her with the adoption process for free
Des and Claire go to floor 15
Ilana Verdansky says she's been looking for Claire and asks Desmond to speak with her alone for a few minutes

"speaking of ilana, how did des know she was looking for claire?" -kane
We finally get her last name now that she's dead
Her last name does not appear to be on the list of candidates in the cave or in the lighthouse

2007:

Sawyer asks Jack to help them escape
Meanwhile, MIB orders Sayid to kill Desmond and MIB asks Sayid if he still wants to be with Nadia again

Is the MIB lying? Or being deceptive? Or will Nadia come back as a "zombie" like Sayid?

"sayid will have to die to be with nadia. mib can't bring back the dead just like jacob couldn't bring back isabella." -kane

"MIB can't kill Sayid right now though because he's on the list of candidates" -kane

Desmond tries to reason with Sayid
Sayid: "I died and he brought me back."
Des: "So what will you tell her? This woman, when she asks what you did so you could be with her again, what will you tell her?"
Sayid shoots, but did he kill Desmond?

Later when the MIB confronts Sayid about whether he went through with it, Sayid says he did but smiles to himself shortly after the MIB seems to have believed him
kane and baileybear agree with me that Des is still alive
"why didn't Zoey just take her crew and retrieve Desmond?" -baileybear

I don't think Widmore's people knew where Desmond was

"another one is why didn't flocke and the gang take zoey hostage,lol" -kane

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sayid: "Nadia, I'm leaving, and I'm never going to be able to come back again."
Miles knocks on the front door
James arrests Sayid as Sayid tries to escape out the back

2007:

Kate is upset that Sawyer didn't tell Jack to bring Claire because Kate promised to bring her back
Sawyer asks Kate if she really thinks it's a good idea for Claire to be around Aaron, and Kate doesn't argue
They swim with the guns. Wouldn't that wet the gunpowder and possibly prevent it from firing until it dried out?
Claire watches Jack, Hurley, Sun, and Frank run off
They get to the boat (the Elizabeth, Desmond's old boat which the MIB has claimed as his own) and Claire approaches with her rifle drawn
Kate convinces Claire to come with them
Claire: "He finds out we're gone, he's gonna be mad."

2004 "flash-sideways":

Jack is walking with David and talking to David's mom on the phone
Jack and David came to see Ilana
Ilana introduces Jack to Claire
Jack: "You were in my father's will. Do you mind if I ask you how you knew him?"
Claire: "He was my father, too."
Jack gets a call; there's an emergency at the hospital and he says he has to reschedule

2007:

Jack says that leaving the Island "doesn't feel right"
Jack: "We were brought here because we're supposed to do something." He says that maybe they need to stay on the Island, not leave, in order to thwart the Man in Black's plan
Jack: "The Island is not done with us yet."
Sawyer makes Jack leave the boat, and Jack apologizes for Juliet's death
Kate watches as Jack swims back to shore and they exchange looks

I think Jack wants Kate to feel guilty and come back for him, which she always does
Theory: Jack's going to stay on the Island and become the next Jacob

Or maybe Kate will; her name was crossed off in the cave but not in the lighthouse. Perhaps Jacob did this intentionally to trick the MIB into thinking she's no longer a candidate

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sun is at the hospital in recovery, and Jin tells Sun that their baby is going to be fine
Jack was called in to work on Locke, and Jack recognizes him

Jack had talked with Locke at LAX when Locke lost his knives and Jack lost his father's body, and Jack offered to give Locke a free consultation about his spinal injury
Theory: Jack is going to not only repair Locke's car crash injuries, but he's going to make him walk again

"i agree. makes sense. lots of people have been expecting it to happen this season" -diesel929

"unless he pulls a "ben" on him,lol, (when jack had to do surgery on ben)" -kane

The dural sac was also mentioned in the Pilot episode of Season 1: "It was when Jack counted to five when he was operating on a girl and he cut her and her nerves spilled out like angel hair pasta" -RedWalrus

2007:

MIB to Jack (after Jack swims to the beach): "Nice day for a swim"
MIB: "Sawyer took my boat, didn't he?"
The sonic fences are turned off so Sawyer and his friends can get through
Sun and Jin are finally reunited
Sun can speak English again

"funny they don't talk korean" -RedWalrus

Zoe makes them all kneel, and Jin does too
Zoe tells someone via her walkie-talkie to bomb Locke
The first bomb explosion lifts Jack through the air

"great explosion, Jack really flew, liked the sound effects ...just like Kates' lost of hearing in LA X" -RedWalrus

MIB carries Jack away from the beach and tells Jack he's okay, and "You're with me now."

"kate and jack are adam and eve, i think. maybe it was another time loop" -kane

"think its' rose and bernard" -RedWalrus

Maybe, but wouldn't they have jumped back to 2007 with Kate, Jack, Sawyer, etc.?
"even if it's rose and bernard, it would have to be another time loop" -kane
"Now that the stones are more significant to us now maybe they aren't adam and eve. rose and bernard that is" -RedWalrus

"yeah, i thought jack still had the rocks" -kane
"Probably in that backpack he's been hauling around for ever" -RedWalrus

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

HIS SOUL HAD GONE MAD... BEING ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
MIB: "[If I could?] kill you..."
MIB: "I'm going to kill every single one of your friends."
MIB: "There's not a [?] that you can do to stop me."
MIB shoots someone on team Widmore
Someone says something like "men were dead"
Kate with clenched teeth and eyes closed
Flash of Claire and then of the MIB's eyes and then Sawyer
Charles Widmore: "He's coming"
Flash of blurry Jack
Ring being put on someone's finger - looks like a woman's hand putting a plain gold band on a man's finger

Probably Sun returning Jin's ring

Sawyer saying "He doesn't need you, Kate"
Kate in the dark, apparently behind bars, with eyes wide open looking frightened
THE HORROR
Flash of Sun with eyes wide open
A hand (MIB's?) grabbing a wire (perhaps in the sub?)
Sayid in foreground, with Hurley, Sun, Jin, and the Ajira plane in the background
MIB grabbing Claire from behind
Sawyer holding a handgun in the jungle with Sun behind him
Jack and Claire looking into a mirror together
Sun turning her face toward the camera
The MIB's angry face, with Claire's hair at the bottom of the frame
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0faS0REHPE

The next episode is titled "The Candidate"

Does the title refer to Jack again, or perhaps Kate? Who will be the candidate to replace Jacob?

"kate really has nothing to go back to" -kane

"Everybody Loves Hugo" Discussion

2010-04-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister, Spivvy from The Lost Flashbacks, and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 12, "Everybody Loves Hugo".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it! I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Season 6 Episode 12 "Everybody Loves Hugo":

The episode title is a reference to Season 2 Episode 4, "Everybody Hates Hurley".

2004 "flash-sideways":

Dr. Pierre Chang narrates a presentation about Hugo Reyes, the museum's Man of the Year
Hugo's mother Carmen tells him that she set him up with a blind date with Rosalita

2007 on the Island:

Puts fresh flowers on Libby's grave
Tells Libby it would be nice if she could visit him like others who have died
Ilana says they're going to get dynamite to destroy the plane
Whispers
Michael: "I'm here to stop you from getting everyone killed."

What do the whispers mean? (Note: We find out later in the episode.) A dead person is nearby? We used to think it was associated with The Others or perhaps the smoke monster, but now it's really unclear; Michael can't be the smoke monster because he's stuck in the form of Locke, and it can't be The Others either

Hurley: "Why should I trust you? You murdered Libby and Ana Lucia"

2004 "flash-sideways":

Libby sits down at Hugo's table at a restaurant and introduces herself
"Hugo, do you believe that two people can be connected, like soulmates? ... You don't remember me, do you?"
Dr. Brooks: "What are you doing, Elizabeth?"
Libby: "He's an old friend"
Hugo watches Libby enter a van with "Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute" on the side

2007:

Ilana accidentally detonates the dynamite and blows herself up, à la Arzt
Man in Black: "You were only able to come back to this Island because you all did it together. ... We're waiting for your friends to get back, Kate. Hugo, Sun, Jack."

"they still can't leave yet, they dont have jin" -kane

"trade off desmond for jin" -kane

Charles probably wouldn't trade Jin back to the MIB, unless perhaps Charles thinks getting Desmond back will be critical to winning the war

Sayid returns and takes the MIB to see what was on the sub—it's Desmond, who is tied to a tree
MIB tilts his head to the side and smiles oddly

What does he think was the purpose of bringing Desmond back to the Island? Is he smiling out of amusement? Or was he already hatching a plan (e.g. an exchange so he could get Jin back)?

Hurley looks though Ilana's stuff, including a book in Russian and her bag of Jacob ash

What does he plan to do with the ash?
Ilana's book (if you can read Russian, please post an English translation of the book title in the comments): http://gallery.lost-media.com/displayimage-1544-167.html

2004 "flash-sideways":

Desmond tells Hurley to give Libby a chance to explain how she thinks she knew him
Desmond's order is number 42

2007:

MIB frees Desmond
Desmond responds, "Of course. You're John Locke" when the Man in Black asks Desmond if he knows who he is

Does Desmond really think it's Locke, or has Charles Widmore told him the truth?

Ben comments on Ilana's death and wonders aloud about what will happen to the rest of them when the Island is done with them

Meanwhile, Jack is holding a shotgun over his shoulder that's almost directly pointed at Sun's head

Hurley detonates the Black Rock: "I'm protecting us."

He's lucky the shrapnel didn't kill all of them

2004 "flash-sideways":

Doctor: "She has issues with reality."
Hurley offers a donation of $100,000 to see her
No Leonard Simms; he was only there in the original timeline because the Island existed beyond 1977
Libby talks about her memories of the original timeline on the Island and in the mental hospital
Libby is there voluntarily

2007:

MIB and Desmond see the boy in the jungle
MIB tells Desmond to ignore him
He really looks a lot like Jacob!

"it's definitely jacob" -kane
"someone point out previously it's like the island is a genesis, so jacob is being reborn. spockish" -kane

Hurley tries to convince the others to go talk to Locke, and pretends that Jacob instructed him to do that

What is Hurley's plan? Why is he lying?

Does he plan to use the Jacob dust somehow against the Man in Black?

Richard calls him out on it, and tries to convince the others that they still need to destroy the plane
Ben and Miles go with Richard
Frank Lapidus shakes his head at Richard, and Jack says that he's going to go with Hurley to talk to Locke
Sun doesn't respond; she understands English but presumably still can't speak it, but she obviously didn't choose to go with Richard
Sun writes "Did we make a mistake?" to Lapidus, who says "Probably."
Whispers
Hurley: "Wait. It's cool. I think I know what these things are."
Hurley to Michael: "You're stuck on the Island, arent you?"
Michael: "Because of what I did. ... We're the ones who can't move on."

"not sure about the whispers, i remember sayid being in the jungle by himself and he was surrounded by the whispers. so are the whispers (the ghosts) trying to warn whoever at that specific time?" -kane

Hurley: "Do you know where Locke is? [Michael tells him.] Thanks. Is, is there anything I can do to help you?"
Michael: "Don't get yourself killed. And Hurley? If you ever do see Libby again, tell her I'm very sorry."
Hurley: "I'll be sure and do that, dude."

2004 "flash-sideways":

Picnic on a beach with Libby
Libby kisses Hurley and he suddenly has flashes of remembrance of her
Desmond watches them from a distance in his car, smiles, and drives off

What does he think this is going to accomplish?

2007:

MIB takes Desmond to a well
MIB says people dug many such wells on the Island to try to find out why compass needles spun
MIB: "Charles Widmore is not interested in answers. He's only interested in power."
MIB asks why Des isn't afraid
Des to MIB: "What is the point in being afraid?"
MIB throws Desmond in the well
A little while later, Hurley shows up at the camp
MIB gives his word that he and his people won't do any harm to Hurley's people

2004 "flash-sideways":

Locke in wheelchair, Desmond watching him
Ben knocks on Desmond's window and Desmond says he's looking for a school for his son Charlie

Desmond and Ben met in the school parking lot, but Ben was not on Oceanic Flight 815, and neither showed any clear signs of recognizing one another

Do only 815 survivors have flashes?
Was Libby on 815 in the flash-sideways, or only in the original timeline?

After Ben walks away Desmond steps on the gas and runs into Locke, who flips over the top of the car and lands on the pavement, and Desmond keeps driving

Is Desmond absolutely insane? Doesn't he realize there are witnesses who saw him do it, and that the damage to his car is also evidence of his guilt? How can Desmond think he'll get away with this?
Was Desmond trying to give Locke a near-death experience to try to get him to have flashes of the original timeline?
"Locke is already with his true love so he may be trying to kill him" -KateJack

Or perhaps since Locke already has his true love, Desmond was trying an alternative method to get him to remember the original timeline instead of trying to reunite lost lovers
"do u think locke loves the island more? same thing for ben, ben loved the island more than anything. but des is just getting the survivors together" -kane

"Locke did just push him down a well" -KateJack

Sort of. The Man in Black in the guise of Locke pushed Desmond into a well. We know that Desmond can see flashes from the original timeline that took place in the future from his current existence in 2004; for example, the flash of Charlie with "Not Penny's Boat" written on his hand occurred nearly three months after the plane crash (see Lostpedia's December 2004 timeline), and only "about a week" has elapsed since the plane landed safely in the flash-sideways timeline according to Desmond (see this episode's transcript). Bringing this back to Locke, perhaps Desmond had a flash of "Locke" throwing him into a well, and Desmond was getting revenge on Locke (not knowing that the MIB disguised as John Locke was actually the one who threw him into the well)

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Ilana's book (if you can read Russian, please post an English translation of the book title in the comments): http://gallery.lost-media.com/displayimage-1544-167.html

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

Weird Willy Wonka music throughout
Shots of Jack, Claire, Sayid
Locke from the flash-sideways, all bandaged up
Kate looking back with a backpack on
Perspective from above Desmond as he looks up out of the well
People running through the jungle
Jack turns around toward the camera
Alternating half of Locke's face on the left side and the other half of Claire's face on the right side

"setting up the sides. light dark good evil. sane insane,lol" -kane

Hurley turning toward the camera, with Jack, Sun, and Frank walking behind him
A woman (probably Zoe) stands in front of the MIB holding what looks like a walkie-talkie, and a giant fireball explosion happens in the background; MIB is unfazed
Jack running
Sawyer coming out of the jungle
Panning down Sayid's chest to his hands holding a handgun
People run by with guns, followed by a close-up on Claire
Close-up of Desmond, turns toward the camera looking up
Sayid shooting a gun downward (down into the well at Desmond?)
THE TIME IS NOW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki2IeVW8fds

The episode title is "The Last Recruit" which makes me think the Man in Black may try to trade Desmond for Jin now that he has all the other candidates. I've also heard the suggestion that "the last recruit" might be Jack, who may be the least willing to follow the Man in Black.

"Happily Ever After" Discussion

2010-04-13T01:29:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister, Alex "Congested" from Audibly Lost and DarkUFOlogy, Josh "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks, and other fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 11, "Happily Ever After".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it! I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

First, a couple of quick notes.

An additional note about Season 6 Episode 10, "The Package": Since Charles Widmore has Jin, the Man in Black can't get Jin to leave the Island. This may foil the MIB's plan, because he commented to Claire that he needed to get all the candidates to go with him in order to leave the Island.

Big-O's LOST Answers trivia game and LOST Quotes app are now available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad:

And now without any further ado...

Season 6 Episode 11 "Happily Ever After":

2007 on the Island:

Desmond wakes up
Zoe says he's been unconscious for 3 days
Charles Widmore tells Des that he was shot by Benjamin Linus
Widmore to Des: "The island isn't done with you yet."
One of Widmore's henchmen spoke about solenoids. Definition, please?

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

"I'm going to ask you to make a sacrifice.

2004 "flash-sideways":

Des talks to Claire after Flight 815 and offers to give her a ride
Des guesses that Claire is having a boy
George Minkowski picks up Des and offers to take him to his hotel, and Des asks him to go to the office
Des was in Australia to seal a deal for his boss -- he's the boss's right-hand man
Des doesn't have a wedding ring and he says he's not interested in companionship

This is odd because he did wear a wedding ring on the plane; was this a production error? The actor who plays Desmond—Henry Ian Cusick—is married, which could perhaps explain this mistake

Des walks into the boss's office and it's Charles Widmore! They greet each other by first name and with big smiles and a hug
Charles says his son (Daniel Faraday?) is a musician
Charles asks Des to babysit Charlie Pace for "Mrs. Widmore"

Charles is still married to Eloise, apparently

Charles offers his 60-year-old Scotch to Des, and says "Nothing's too good for you."
Charlie tried to swallow his heroin to hide the evidence from the Marshal, not commit suicide
Charlie says when he saw Claire on the plane, and just as he was about to die he felt like they had always been together, in love
Charlie: "I've seen the truth"
Charlie jerks steering wheel, car goes into water
Des has flashes of "Not Penny's Boat" just before he saves Charlie's life
Des at hospital, goes in MRI machine, has flashes of Charlie Pace, Penny, his son Charlie
Charlie: "None of this matters. All that matters is that we felt it. ... Start looking for Penny."
Eloise Widmore: "What happened, happened."
Desmond thinks he hears the name Penny on the guest list, and Eloise forbids him from seeing it

Oddly, it sounded like Penny's last name isn't Widmore; is she previously married? Would Charles have some reason to conceal that he was her father?

Eloise pulls Desmond aside and talks very much like Eloise Hawking, as though she knows what's happening to Desmond

"well what gets me, and we discussed this on big-o, is how does she know so much about desmond specifically. less in this one and more in FBYE. obviously she knows about the alt-split because she knew an alt dan came and blew the bomb up" -congested
"and could she know about Desmond from what she was told by the Losties?" -Spivvy

She knows it from the journal! "Desmond Hume will be my constant."
Rewatch Season 3 Episode 8, "Flashes Before Your Eyes" for a refresher on Eloise (watch on Netflix)

Daniel Widmore (aka Daniel Faraday in the original timeline) catches Desmond before he leaves and says he needs to talk to him
Dan tells Desmond about his first experience seeing Charlotte
He pulls out his journal and sketches out quantium mechanics even though he's just a musician
Daniel says the only way to stop it is to set off a nuclear bomb, but he says "I think I already did"
"Why did you ask my mother about a woman named Penny? It happened to you, too, didn't it?
You felt it? ... Yes, you do. You felt love."
"She's an idea."
"No, Mr. Hume. She's my half-sister. And I can tell you exactly where and when you can find her."

Who is Penny's mother?

Margo Shephard -congested's crackpot theory

Penny is running on the stairs in the stadium
"Hello, I'm Desmond."
He shakes hands with Penny and immediately wakes up on the Island

2007:

Desmond volunteers to help
Sayid kills two Widmore men
Desmond calmly walks off with Sayid - did Charles Widmore instruct Desmond to do that?

2004 "flash-sideways":

Des fainted when Penny shook his hand

Desmond's consciousness travels through time again, à la Season 3?

Penny: "Have we met before?"
Des invites Penny to go for a coffee
Des asks George Minkowski for the flight manifest and says "I just need to show them something"

This totally reminds me of the plot of a weak movie that's a partial ripoff of LOST: Passengers starring Anne Hathaway: (watch on Netflix; or learn more on IMDb)
Cindy could get the flight manifest; perhaps she has ties with Widmore in this timeline
"also my new [joke] theory. desmond is going to get the manifest because he figured out that all their names form a massive anagram explaining the sideways universe" -congested

"jack, kate, sun: mirror [in their flash-sideways]. sawyer: broken mirror. jin, sayid, and desmond: reflection. ben reflection also. john i cant remember i think mirror." -jennielyn

Theory: In the flash-sideways the cork doesn't exist; it got blown up, so the smoke monster has freedom. He wants there to be just one timeline, and not the one they're in now. That explains why Widmore says they won't exist if the smoke monster gets his way. -congested

Theory: The "normal" timeline may be Jacob's timeline, and the flash-sideways is the Man in Black's timeline. In the alternate timeline, the MIB is free from Jacob because Jacob is presumably dead and all the candidates are not able to be on the Island. -congested

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Dan's journal: (screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3)

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

Michael to Hurley: "People are going to die and it's going to be your fault."
Hurley: "I know what we need to do. Trust me, Jack."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQrjq1X5zKI

The episode title is "Everybody Loves Hugo" (a reference to Season 2 Episode 4, "Everybody Hates Hurley").

"The Package" Discussion

2010-04-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister, Spivvy from The Lost Flashbacks, and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 10, "The Package".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Geronimo Jack's Beard (Jorge Garcia's podcast) had especially good podcast about Season 6 Episode 9, "Ab Aeterno". Nestor Carbonell, who plays Richard Alpert, was a guest co-host:

http://geronimojacksbeard.blogspot.com/2010/03/episode-609-ab-aeterno.html

Big-O's LOST Answers trivia game is now available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lost-answers/id359273036?mt=8

And now without any further ado...

Season 6 Episode 10 "The Package":

2007 on the Island:

Someone is watching Sawyer, Kate, Claire, and the MIB with night vision - they can hear what Sawyer is saying to Kate

Will Widmore know about Sawyer's plan to double-cross him? Sawyer revealed his whole plan out loud to Kate

The Man in Black (in the guise of Locke) tells Jin that he isn't sure whether Jin or Sun is the Kwon whose name is in the cave
MIB says that all names that aren't crossed off need to leave the Island together
- Why?

2004 "flash-sideways":

Jin was supposed to deliver the money that was confiscated at the airport along with the watch
Jin and Sun are not married and have two different rooms reserved

2007:

MIB asks Sayid to watch camp until morning
Sayid says he doesn't feel anything: anger, happiness, or pain
MIB: "Maybe that's best, Sayid. It'll help you get through what's coming."
Jin prepares to sneak away when he sees the MIB leave. He tells Sawyer he's going to go look for Sun at the temple
Immediately after this, Widmore's people shoot Jin, Sawyer, Claire, and the other MIB followers with tranquilizers, and Zoe identifies Jin
Sun is upset, presumably because she wants to find Jin
Jack tries to tell Sun about the lighthouse, but she won't listen

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sun apparently came to Los Angeles with Jin because she was on a shopping trip
Sun strips for Jin and stays the night in his hotel room; apparently they have a preexisting relationship

2007:

MIB approaches Sun and says he found her husband
Sun says she doesn't trust him because he killed the people at the temple. He sais they could have chosen to follow him but didn't, and that he didn't want to kill them. Then he gives Sun the choice to go with him

Um, yeah, sounds like a great plan. So her choices were to either go with the murderer, or refuse and presumably get killed by him

MIB says Jin is waiting, and stretches out his hand, but Sun runs away and is chased by him
Sun runs into a tree and is knocked unconscious. Meanwhile he returns to his camp

Why didn't he kill Sun if she's a candidate? Apparently he can't kill candidates according to the boy in the jungle several episodes back
Why didn't he at least pick her up and take her back?

He fought with and picked up Richard Alpert several episodes ago, so we know he's physically capable of doing so
"because it wouldn't be her free will - she has to go with him freely" -kane

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sun suggests to Jin that they run away together
Sun looks in the mirror (yet another instance of seeing a main character's reflection in the flash-sideways)
Keamy is at the door and he invites himself in

2007:

Zoe has taken Jin to Room 23 on the Hydra island

It's implied that it's the same one but looks different
See the link to screenshots below in the Screenshots and Easter Eggs section

Claire asks MIB if her name was on the wall, and he says "No."
She's concerned that Locke doesn't need her anymore, and she's concerned that Aaron won't recognize her as his mother
MIB tells Claire that he's "three people shy of getting off this Island and Kate can help me get these people on this plane. But when she does, whatever happens happens."

Who are the three? Jack, Hurley, and Sun? He has Sawyer and Jin. He thinks Kate is no longer a candidate. Does he think that Sayid is still a candidate, or does he think there are only 5 candidates instead of the 6 that Ilana knows about?
Theory: Kate is going to replace Jacob, or at least she's very important to Jacob's plan; Jacob seems to be keeping her candidacy a secret. Again, the MIB's plan may be foiled if he leaves Kate behind on the Island

2004 "flash-sideways":

Omar shows up, checks the bathroom and finds Jin there
Keamy asks Omar to get Danny's friend Mikhail, the Russian guy who speaks like 9 different languages

Yep, it's the same Mikhail who was "Patchy" on the Island—only he has both of his eyes in the flash-sideways

2007:

Sun can only speak Korean after bumping her head, but she can still understand English

Theory: Is she merging in some small way with her flash-sideways self?

Richard Alpert comes back with Hurley, and Richard is wearing his cross necklace. Ilana is happy to see that she was right; Jacob hasn't let her down
MIB sees pylons on the beach

"i wont lie. I forgot about Sayid in this scene. I also really hoped the Canoe shoot out would happen" -Spivvy

MIB to Widmore: "A wise man once said that war was coming to this Island. I think he just got here." -MIB, recalling Locke's memory of Widmore's own statement from Season 5 Episode 7, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham": "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."

It's interesting that MIB calls Widmore a wise man (is he just mocking him?)
MIB seems to be implying that Widmore is the cause of the war

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sun finds out that her father, Mr. Paik, closed her bank account and stole her money
Keamy and Omar lock up Jin in the kitchen
Keamy says that the $25,000 was his fee for killing Jin

2007:

Zoe: "Maybe you should have put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist."
Widmore shows Jin photos of Ji Yeon on Sun's camera
Widmore claims that if the MIB leaves the Island, "everyone we know and love would simply cease to be."

Widmore's statements are very similar to Jacob's statements to Richard; it would seem that Widmore is indeed on Jacob's side
"what does that mean [that everyone would simply cease to be]?" -baileybear

Will the MIB kill everyone? Would it cause some sort of time paradox? Perhaps that would resolve the two timelines

Widmore: "Come with me. I think it's time for you to see the package."
Jin: "What package?"
Widmore: "It's not a what. It's a who."

Rejected theories mentioned by Spivvy: Flash-sideways Jin? Walt? 25-year-old Ji Yeon?
Was Desmond behind the padlocked door?
"how can Desmond be used? don't they use 'package' in the military?" -baileybear

Is Desmond a compass because the Island wants him to come back?

Miles and Charlotte returned
Desmond returned

"right, how did widmore find the island?" -kane

Maybe from Eloise Hawking?
"Widmore came from the time when Locke was dead. so where is the Alt timeline?" -baileybear

"i think he means that Eloise would help Widmore get to the Island to stop MIB and in doing so change history so that Daniel lives" -Spivvy

"if there is an alt time off the island wouldn't Widmore have come from that time back to the island?" -bailebear

"that's a theory. that this Widmore is from the alt. but I don't think it's right" -Spivvy

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sayid gives Jin a small knife to cut himself loose
Keamy didn't die after all when Sayid shot him

"Keamy again doesn't die right away. Mirror" -baileybear

Mikhail returns with Sun
Jin and Mikhail fight, Jin shoots Mikhail through the eye (so long, Patchy!), Sun gets hit by a stray bullet or two during the fight

Sun tells Jin that she's pregnant

2007:

Jack tries to get Sun to write in English, and she can
Jack promises to help Sun find Jin and get them on the plane and as far away from the Island as possible

How the heck does he think they're going to get the plane working? You need a pilot (maybe Frank) and fuel (although perhaps there's still some fuel left), but how would they turn it around without heavy machinery or a bigger runway? How would they be able to repair the damage caused by the crash landing?

Sayid sees them taking Desmond off the sub

"do you think Sayid will report to Flocke about Desmond?" -baileybear
What would the fact that Desmond is there mean to the MIB?

"there still has to be [another flashback] (adam and eve in the cave)" -kane

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Screenshots of Room 23

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

Widmore: "...make a sacrifice."
Widmore: "The Island isn't done with you yet" (presumably said to Desmond)
6 episodes left until the series finale
"i thought i saw something torn apart in the middle of he ocean. like a raft." -baileybear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-h5Wt0dYTY

Notes from The Official LOST Podcast:

We're going to see Libby again this season
The title of the series finale episode is "The End"

Perhaps this is meant to imply finality; no spin-off TV shows, no movies, etc.; LOST is really, truly done

"In one week, the conversation is going to change." -@DamonLindelof

"Ab Aeterno" Discussion

2010-03-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 9, "Ab Aeterno".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Season 6 Episode 9 "Ab Aeterno":
Unknown date, Ilana flashback:

Jacob: "Will you help me, Ilana?"
Jacob says he has 6 names of "people I need you to protect"

So Jacob gave her the exact 6 names, but she doesn't know if Sun or Jin is the Kwon?

Jacob: "They're the remaining candidates."

2007 on the Island:

Sun: "She said I was one of them. One is you [Jack] and one is Hurley."

Unknown date, Ilana flashback:

Ilana: "After I have brought them to the temple, what do I do?"
Jacob: "Ask Ricardus. He'll know what to do."

2007:

Richard: (laughs) "I have no idea what we do next. ... Because everything he ever said is a lie. You want to know a secret, Jack? Something I've known for a long, long time? We're dead. ... We're in hell."

Oh, great. This scene was in the preview last week and we thought we were going to get a major revelation in this scene, but it turns out to just be Richard's own speculation—and something the executive producers have repeatedly shot down

Richard: "Maybe it's time we stop listening to him and start listening to someone else. And that's exactly what I'm going to do." (he walks off)
Hurley speaking Spanish to someone on the beach, and Jack wants to know what Jacob said
Hurley: "It's not Jacob, man. Sorry, Jack, but this has nothing to do with you."
Frank to Ben: "So you're saying this guy doesn't age?"

1867, Canary Islands:

Richard (Ricardo) speaks Spanish!
Isabella: "Siempre estaremos juntos." ("We will always be together.")

Was Hurley talking to his deceased wife Isabella? (We find out later that he was!)

Richard: "Te voy a salvar." ("I'm going to save you.")
Richard accidentally kills the doctor — the same way Desmond accidentally killed Kelvin in the Season 2 finale, "Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1" (see the Lostpedia article Kelvin Inman; for a blast from the past, see also my original blog post about the episode)
Richard is reading an English Bible in prison

Prop error: the text in this Bible was far too modern for an 1867 edition (screenshot)
Very interesting: the passage he's reading is Luke chapter 4, which is about when the devil tempted Jesus; I mentioned this passage recently on the blog and podcast, and I thought about it again during this episode because of the things the MIB promised Richard later

"i really like when you talk about this stuff Josh, cause I know NOTHING about it. I learn so much about the show." -Spivvy

The Catholic priest told Richard that he didn't have enough time to repent for murder because he was being hanged in the morning, and that the devil awaited him in hell
A man (named Jonas Whitfield according to the casting call) purchases Richard on behalf of Magnus Hanso and is taken as a slave aboard the Black Rock

1867, the Island:

The Black Rock crashes into the statue, presumably breaking it and leaving only the foot behind

"wasnt the diary of the first mate of the black rock what widmore bid on at the auction? the auction where desmond confronted him?" -diesel929 (see the Lostpedia article Black Rock ledger; this scene was in Season 4 Episode 5, "The Constant")

"at that auction though, they said that the Black Rock set sail in 1845, and the journal was found in 1852" -Spivvy
"but someone told me that the MAIN issue was that Dynamite wasn't invented until 1866 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite" -Spivvy
"BR left England in 1852, hijacted by slave traders, then took Richard in 1867" -nnnn803er

"Sir, Captain Hanso's dead."
Smoke monster saves Richard's life by interrupting Whitfield's killing spree
The smoke monster analyses Richard and chooses to spare his life

Why did it choose to save him?

Perhaps part of the agreement between Jacob and the Man in Black is for the MIB to allow certain people to live whenever a new group comes to the Island — people who have the potential of living righteously and not choosing war and destruction, so that Jacob can have a chance of winning the debate between the two of them

Not so; see later in the episode

"didnt we see Richard flashing?" -MsFlipper

As far as we can tell, Richard seems to have been the only survivor of The Black Rock
He tries to free himself but is unable to
Isabella visits him (or so it seems) and says they're in hell and she looked into the devil's eyes and saw only evil
The monster apparently kills Isabella, which is weird because she was already dead

Anthony Cooper also thought he was in hell when he was on the Island, and yet he died (again?) when Sawyer killed him

The Man in Black visits Richard and gives him water
Richard: "I am in hell?"
MIB: "Yes, I'm afraid you are. ... I was here long before your ship. ... I want to be free, too. As luck would have it, I found these [keys] on one of the officers outside. ... You'll do anything I ask?"
Richard: "Yes, promise."
MIB: "Then we're agreed."
MIB: "It's good to see you out of those chains."

This is the same line as when he (as Locke) spoke to Richard after Ben killed Jacob

MIB: "I'm afraid there's only one way to get out of hell. You're going to have to kill the devil."

The Man in Black tried to get Richard to kill Jacob, much in the same way as when he (as Locke) tried to get Ben to kill Jacob

This line also seemed very similar to Dogen trying to get Sayid to kill the Man in Black — it's almost as though there aren't good or bad sides, but just two players in a game

MIB gives Richard the same exact instructions (and perhaps the same dagger?) that Dogen gave Sayid when instructing him to kill the MIB, only this time the instructions are given by the MIB for killing Jacob

"If one is in Hell, can you kill the Devil, and thus escape it? yeah it was the reverse, and I think it's the same dagger" -Spivvy
"jacob wasnt dead after he was stabbed by ben, he was alve when mib kicked him into the fire. so really mib killed him, finished him off anyway" -didntbelievehim

MIB claims that Jacob took Isabella, even though we heard smoke monster sounds when she was taken or killed

Was Isabella an illusion, nothing more than a form of the smoke monster? This is the same way the MIB tricked Ben; using his deceased loved one (Alex, in that case) to play on his emotions to trick him into killing Jacob

MIB: "The devil betrayed me. He took my body. My humanity."

"I think what happened is Jacob stole his physical form from him and he is now always the smoke. But he can assume human form as his old self(MIB)" -Spivvy
"he's manipulating a religious man and is using the devil thing to convince him Jacob is the bad one" -nnnn803er
"Why did he take his body? Do you think he has trapped MIB on the Island cause he's dangerous?" -Spivvy
"if mib wasnt evil then why wouldnt jacob just send himback to the real world and out of his way, much easier he let others leave like widmore&walt etc" -didntbelievehim

"Well I do think the Island needs both of them" -Spivvy

"i don't think the island needs either one of them. i think the island is special on it's own" -kane

Personally, I think it's somewhat like Pandora's box; Jacob is making sure that the Man in Black stays trapped on the Island because of the terrible destruction that the smoke monster would cause if let loose in the rest of the world

MIB makes the same promise to Richard that he made to Sayid: you'll get your deceased woman back if you do what I say

"during this whole episode i was thinking of the usual suspects...when they say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didnt exist. its not the same...but its like one guy is saying the other is the devil...but maybe he really is! :) maybe HE really is..the one who's saying it i meant" -thelostgringa
"i am say smoke and mirrors this season" -jennielyn

smoke monster and mirrors in the flash-sideways

Richard tries to kill Jacob, but Jacob fights Richard and proves to him that he's still alive by dunking him repeatedly in the ocean until Richard says he wants to live

"when richard was being dunked into the ocean by jacob did it remind anyone else of baptism?" -diesel929

I actually didn't think of that, but the executive producers specifically pointed out the similarity to baptism on The Official LOST Podcast

Richard: "Are you the devil?"
Jacob: "No."
Richard: "Then who are you?"
Jacob: "My name is Jacob. I'm the one who brought your ship to this island."
Richard: "Why?"
Jacob: "Think of this wine as what yo're calling hell.... malevolence... if it did [get out] it would spread. The cork is this Island and it's the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs. That man believes every man is corruptible because it's his nature to sin. I believe he's wrong. .. It's all meaningless if I have to force them to do anything."

Ugh... "that man"? We still don't get his real name! Stop torturing me, LOST writers! How can his name be so important or special that you have to keep it secret so long??

Richard: "If you don't, he will." (meaning, "if you don't force them to do something")

According to some Christian philosophies, taking away freedom and forcing people to act a certain way is Satan's plan

Jacob says he can't give Richard his wife back, or absolve him of his sins so he can't go to hell

Clearly, Jacob is not supposed to be God or Jesus. In the Bible, Jesus openly forgave people of their sins
"so jacob isn't god. but he could be an angel" -kane

Richard: "Then I want to live forever."
Jacob: "Now that I can do." He touches Richard on the shoulder.

"Jacob seems to want people to make the choice not make a trade" -jennielyn
"then again they had Sawyer and Ben say God has nothing to do with this, Just sayin. they wrote that in twice for a reason , maybe. many themes are referenced, but only up to a point, then it's TV" -nnnn803er

"I'm not very familiar with the bible but could Jacob somehow me evil?" -baileybear

Based on what we've seen, I kind of doubt it. Aside from the Man in Black's statements, almost all the evidence on the show so far points to Jacob being the good guy and the Man in Black being the bad guy

"idk, but jacob leaves the island all the time,lol" -kane

The Man in Black can't leave the Island but Jacob can; is Jacob more powerful than the MIB?

MIB: "I want you to know that if you ever change your mind, and I mean ever, my offer still stands."

Aha! That must be where Richard is going in the 2007 storyline

MIB gives Richard his cross necklace

Oh, the irony; the Man in Black giving Richard a cross necklace is akin to the devil quoting scripture in Luke chapter 4. Evil has no qualms about pretending to be good.

2007 on the Island:

Richard digs up his wife's necklace and says aloud "I've changed my mind. ... Does the offer still stand?"
Hurley: "Your wife sent me. Isabella. She wants to know why you buried your cross. Isabella saw you dig it up, man. She's standing right next to you."
Hurley passes along messages from Isabella, and then (it seems) Richard can communicate with her directly for a few moments
Richard puts on the cross necklace
After she leaves, Hurley tells Richard that she said something else: "She said you have to stop the Man in Black. You have to stop him from leaving the Island. Because if you don't, todos nos vamos al infierno." ("...we all go to hell.")

Flashback, presumably to 1867:

MIB says if someone else takes Jacob's place, he'll kill them too

"MIB gonna need a lot of loopholes!" -nnnn803er

MIB smashes the wine bottle

perhaps symbolic of the end of the world

"Do you think MIB is stronger because he is now in the body of one of the candidates?" -Lostgeek108

As a reminder, the Man in Black is not in Locke's body. Locke's body was seen lying on the beach when the Man in Black (with the appearance of Locke) walked by. At present, Locke's body is buried on the Island.

Theory: "He cant kill candidates, he is trying to manipulate them into killing each other" -nnnn803er

Why, then, did he not just let Claire kill Kate?

"he was using Claire. MIB saves Kate from Claire to gain her trust. he's recruiting her" -nnnn803er

Someone in the chat had the theory that maybe he gains power by bringing people to his side, building up an army to defend him

Theory: "kate will join illana and the others" -kane

I don't think so because she'll want to stick with Sawyer. Also, she doesn't know the whole picture regarding the MIB, etc.

"I think MIB lies to everyone. he told Sawyer the island didn't need anyone, then he told Ben he could be the leader, which is it?" -nnnn803er
"do you think that MIB and Jacob are one? I heard it from Jay and Jack" -baileybear

"lol that's Jack's Crackpot theory. Jay makes fun of him often for it lol" -Spivvy
"i don't so either after seeing this episode" -baileybear
"maybe Jay and Jack are the same person ;)" -Spivvy

"Can we assume it was a FlashBack not Flashside Ways" -Jeremy_Bentham

Yes; all of the flash-sideways have been in 2004 and based on changes that took place in 1977 (specifically, it seems, Juliet's detonation of the hydrogen bomb)

"People are saying that Juliet's Flash Back with her parents divorcing that was actually flash sideways. i think it's interesting" -Jeremy_Bentham

Interesting, perhaps, but not significant to the overall plot

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

The episode title, "Ab Aeterno", is a Latin phrase meaning "from eternity" or "since the beginning of time"
Ricardo's English Bible was open to Luke 4 (screenshot; read the full passage and see above for commentary)

SPOILERS:

Preview for next week's episode:

MIB as Locke: "I come in peace."
MIB to Sun: "I found your husband. I can take you to him. Jin is waiting."
Sun lying on the ground

Does the Man in Black hurt her?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVSlFj40qlA

Mother Jones Magazine "Recon" Chat, and Jay & Jack's Autism Speaks Charity Podcast

2010-03-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I was invited to participate in Mother Jones Magazine's weekly LOST chat, and we discussed Season 6 Episode 8, "Recon." Several interesting observations and theories about the episode were discussed. You can read the chat transcript here.

Over the weekend I was also privileged to participate in Jay & Jack's 30-hour charity podcast. Normally their marathon podcasts are live-only (meaning they don't post the whole 30 hours afterward) but if I can somehow get an audio copy of the segment I was on, I'll post it here on the blog and in the podcast feed. You can donate to Jay & Jack's charity of choice, Autism Speaks, here.

As a reminder, I record my live podcast right after each episode of LOST ends in the Pacific time zone. Fans from all over the world are welcome to participate in the chat and listen live. Just go to TalkShoe at the designated time and join in! If you miss the live show, stay tuned to this blog or subscribe via iTunes or RSS, and I'll post the edited version of the podcast sometime during the week.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter for tweets about LOST and my other interests!

"Recon" Discussion and lots more!

2010-03-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 8, "Recon" and briefly review points from two Season 4 episodes, and discuss at length the revelations from this week's Official LOST Podcast.

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

We'll get into "Recon" in just a moment. First, I had the opportunity to rewatch Season 4 Episodes 9 and 10 this past week. I chose those episodes because I was looking for any indication about when Claire became infected before she went off into the jungle with (who she thought was) her father, Christian Shephard. Although I didn't notice any obvious indications of whether Claire was already infected before she walked off in the middle of the night, I ended up making some interesting observations about the smoke monster, who we now know is the Man in Black. Here are some of my thoughts:

Season 4 Episode 9 - "The Shape of Things to Come"

How is it that Ben can summon the smoke monster to do his bidding? How did Ben know it would only attack Martin Keamy's goons and not himself? At the time, Ben (and the viewing audience) had no idea that the smoke monster was another form of the Man in Black, Jacob's nemesis. So unbeknownst to Ben, he called on Jacob's nemesis for help—right before going to try to get help from Jacob to know what to do next.

Season 4 Episode 10 - "Something Nice Back Home"

Hurley said Charlie said that someone would visit Jack (referring to the apparition that looked like Jack's father, Christian Shephard). Jack had already seen "Christian" in a crowd at the hospital before that, and the second time he saw his father was after hearing the smoke alarm's low-battery warning beep at the hospital. The smoke alarm led a lot of fans to believe that Christian was a manifestation of the smoke monster. Christian being the smoke monster is corroborated by Damon Lindelof's remark in the March 11, 2010 Official LOST Podcast about the smoke monster no longer being able to take on any human form other than Locke; the form of Christian was specifically mentioned by both Damon and Carlton as a form that the smoke monster could have been able to take prior to Jacob's death. Additionally, in "Something Nice Back Home" we also saw Christian luring Claire into the jungle, after which she left her baby behind and eventally degenerated into an infected Rousseau-esque version of herself who considered the Man in Black to be her friend. It would make sense that she came to be the Man in Black's friend because she originally got to know him when he had taken the form of her father. At this point I think it's safe to assume that the manifestations of Christian Shephard have been the smoke monster taking Christian's form. But if that's the case, how in the world did Charlie know that the smoke monster was coming to visit Jack? Hurley's ability to see and speak with dead people is supposedly a gift from Jacob. So did Jacob tell Charlie to tell Hurley to warn Jack about the smoke monster apparition of Jack's father?

"charlie was smokey visiting hurley maybe" -jennielyn

And now without any further ado...

Season 6 Episode 8 "Recon":

2007 on the Island:

Sawyer at Claire's hovel with Jin

Jin wakes up and says they need to leave before the man who looks like Locke gets back, and

Sawyer says he's with "Locke"
Sawyer agrees to not leave the Island unless Sun can go with them

I wonder if this deal will come back to haunt him later

Sayid, Claire, and the rest come to the hovel, and Kate says hi to Sawyer, who replies "Hi yourself"

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sawyer seems to be pulling a typical con, but it turns out he's actually a cop—and working with Miles!

2007:

Claire checks on her "squirrel baby" and Kate asks about it

Claire seems agitated and angry about this. Does Claire still want to kill Kate?

The Man in Black tells the surviving Others—including Cindy, Emma and Zach from the Oceanic Flight 815 tail section—that "the black smoke" killed those who stayed behind at the temple, but he promises to take care of them

2004:

Detective Ford is trying to track down Anthony Cooper

2007:

The Man in Black tells Sawyer the truth, that he's "the smoke thing"
Man in Black: "It's either kill or be killed, and I don't want to be killed."

If he's concerned about being killed, he's either lying or else he must have a weakness. If he has a weakness, what is it?

Can sawyer kill him since he's following orders from the Man in Black, similar to how Ben who followed Jacob's orders was able to kill Jacob?
"he is trying to con sawyer by telling half truths" -jennielyn

"Sawyer is a better conman then Smokey" -baileybear

The Man in Black sends Sawyer to the Hydra island to do some recon at the Ajira plane

2004:

The date Miles hooked James up with is Charlotte Lewis, who is still an archaeologist

Before seeing Charlotte's face, I thought that James would connect with Juliet and Juliet would give the same line about "going dutch" that she said on the Island before she died

An alternate theory about Juliet: "i am saying juliette will be on a date with jack" [when she gives the line about going dutch] -jennielyn

A theory from diesel929 (admittedly unfounded) about Charlotte: "she is jack's ex wife, David's mom"

Jim says he got to the point in his life where he was either going to become a criminal or a cop, so he chose to become a cop
Books on the dresser: Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, Lancelot (screenshot)

All of these are books that Sawyer read on the Island

Charlotte finds a photo of Jim with his parents and a newspaper clipping about it, and Jim yells at her and makes her leave
In a later flash-sideways scene, Jim is watching Little House on the Prairie (which he told Kate in Season 3 Episode 10, "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" that he watched as a child)

Michael Landon's character tells a little girl that when someone dies, they're not really gone; you still have your memories of them that you can hold onto until you see them again someday
Jim seems to be touched by this insight and seems to relate it personally to his own loss of his parents
Afterward, Jim goes to Charlotte's to apologize, but she turns him away and says he blew his chance

2007:

Sawyer finds the dress that Kate wore at the polar bear cage when they were together
Kate talks to Sayid, asks "Are you all right?"
Sayid says No, and then Claire attacks and tries to stab Kate
The Man in Black pulls Claire off, smacks her in the face, and tells her what she did was inappropriate, almost treating her like a child (with the exception of smacking her of course)
Sawyer finds the Ajira plane wreckage, then a pile of dead bodies, and a woman runs by
Sawyer catches the woman and she says she's the only one left

2004:

Charlie's brother Liam is trying to find Charlie, who has apparently gotten in trouble with the law because of his drug use
Miles questions what Jim was doing in Australia instead of Palm Springs like he claimed
Miles says he's no longer Jim's partner, and Sawyer puts his fist through a mirror

"the mirror in this ep sawyer broke what do you make of that" -jennielyn

"he doens't like his image in this world?" -baileybear
There have been a lot of mirrors and reflections in the flash-sideways: "ben in microwave, kate in mirror" and Sayid's reflection as noted in the script — they all seem to be seeing relections of themselves; what is the significance of this?

Perhaps this is a reflection (pun intended) of the way in which the two realities coexist, à la Through The Looking Glass

"i think that the breaking of the mirror/glass is probably important." -baileybear

2007:

The woman Sawyer caught says her name is Zoe, and in explanation of the dead bodies, she says she heard screams and when she got back everyone was dead (seemingly implying that the smoke monster killed them)
Sawyer offers to take her back with the other group
MIB apologizes to Kate and explains that he told Claire that The Others had her baby; he gave her something to hate
Kate asks where Sawyer went, and MIB says "I'll show you"
It turns out that Zoe isn't alone; a bunch of other people pop up out from behind bushes with big guns and make Sawyer surrender his weapon
Sawyer: "Take me to your leader."
The Man in Black says to Kate on the beach: "I know what you're going through because my mother was crazy. ... She was a very disturbed woman and as a result of that I had some growing pains, problems that I'm still trying to work my way through, problems that could have been avoided had things been different."
Kate: "Why are you telling me this?"
MIB: "Because now Aaron has a crazy mother, too."

Does he want Kate to take care of Aaron?
Or does this mean Aaron is going to become the next MIB?

Sawyer is led to a sub; Zoe is part of Widmore's team (and it seems Zoe is her real name)
"again I think our losties' friendships are really going to define the end of this show - the line at the end of season 5 "they come they destroy" — MIB is going to be wrong and their friendships run deeper then he thinks and it will start all over - new game" -jennielyn
Very insightful theory: "Remember when Claire came to Kate and said don't bring him back to the island? Do you think she was smokey? if you think that Smokey wants a normal Aaron that would make sense." -baileybear
Sawyer asks what's locked up behind a door in the sub (screenshot) and doesn't get an answer
Charles Widmore introduces himself to Sawyer
Widmore claims he didn't murder all the Ajira people

Who really killed them? Widmore's people or Smokey?

Sawyer makes a deal with Widmore to bring the Man in Black to Widmore so Widmore can kill him, and in return Sawyer get to take his friends unharmed off the Island; they shake on

So who will Sawyer ultimately decide to follow? He has two ways off the Island, potentially:

Widmore's way seems more certain since we actually know he has a working sub and knows how to get to the Island from the outside world, but as Saywer points out Widmore may not be trustworthy because he sent the freighter with mercenaries to the Island
On the other hand, the MIB's plan seems pretty weak if he really expects to fix and refuel the Ajira plane. How on earth could they do that? Maybe Sawyer will go with the more logical exit

Claire hugs Kate and apologizes sincerely, saying she knows Kate just cares about Claire and Aaron
Sawyer tells MIB that they're setting up pylons "like the ones at New Otherton" that "can keep out that smoke thing"

Sawyer gives MIB a lot of information; it seems at this point in the episode like he really is sticking with MIB's deal

2004:

Jim hands Miles a book that says Sawyer on it, and Miles asks "Who's Sawyer?"
He explains what happened to his parents
Jim was in Australia (and on Flight 815) to find the man responsible, and that's where he heard the name Anthony Cooper
He says he's going to kill Anthon Cooper when he finds him
Someone slams into their car. It's Kate! Jim seems pleased to see her again

Now we know how Sawyer knew that the code on the walkie-talkie in the airport meant that Kate was an escapee

Someone in the chat pointed out that perhaps the reason why he didn't turn in Kate at the airport was that he might blow his cover and Miles might have found out that he had been in Australia

2007:

Sawyer tells Kate about Widmore and that they're here for Locke
Sawyer says he's going to "let them fight it out, and while they've got their hands full of each other, you and me are going to get the hell off this Island"
Kate asks about the plane, and Sawyer says he intends to take the sub

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

SPOILERS:

Following is a detailed discussion about several points from the latest Official LOST Podcast, some of which may be considered by some fans to be spoilers. If you're very spoiler-sensitive, you may want to stop reading now.

Notes from The Official LOST Audio Podcast, May 11, 2010:

Carlton Cuse: "The big question that's hanging over the season is how are these two timelines going to reconcile and what are we to make of what's going on in the sideways. But...there's more information about those things coming as the season progresses."

Damon Lindelof: "Do you think that Charles Widmore is perhaps the person that Jacob was referring to back in 'Lighthouse' when he said someone is coming to the Island?"
Carlton: "Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good chance he could be referring to Charles Widmore. ... That would be my educated guess."

Carlton: "What does 'Recon' mean?"
Damon: "Technically, it means that reconnaissance, which is basically sort of sending someone behind enemy lines to figure out what's going on. But it could mean 'to con again.' Like 're-con.' And he is a conman."

Carlton (reading a fan question): "In the episode 'Lockdown' who was responsible or behind the dropping of the palette of DHARMA food that lands on the Island?"
Damon: "The answer to the question is, we have every intention of answering where the palette came from. However, it might not happen in the actual show itself. That's all we're willing to say at this point."

This makes me wonder whether the writers and producers are planning to make some sort of special podcast, book, or documentary that resolves a lot of the loose ends and mysteries that don't get answered by the end of Season 6.

Carlton indicated that Annie is not an important character. She was only meant to be in that one episode in Ben's flashback, and her character has no "vast mythological significance." (Thus, I think we can assume that all the theories about Annie are probably moot.) They did say that Annie probably left the Island before 1977 because we didn't see her or even hear any mention of her in that timeframe.

Carlton said that we're going to learn more about the volcanic and/or seismic activity of the Island "before all is said and done."

Regarding Kate's name not being crossed out in the lighthouse but being crossed out in the cave, "the show speaks for itself." When the Man in Black brings Sawyer into the cave, is he telling the truth? Damon feels that there's strong evidence on the show that Jacob wrote the names in the cave. So why write in both the caves and the lighthouse? "Is it possible, Carlton, that maybe he wanted his nemesis to find the cave, and that there's a little bit of misdirection going on here? That maybe he crossed off Kate's name in the cave to throw the monster off his scent?" Carlton: "I'm going to say that theory could live. I think that is a possibility. I think this kind of speculation is actually good speculation."

Based on this, it sounds like Jacob might have secret plans for Kate to be the one who will ultimately replace him, and he doesn't want anyone—especially his nemesis—to know that.
But does Smokey somehow know she's a candidate anyway? He seems very protective of her and friendly with her in this episode. Perhaps he's trying to get her to become a candidate to replace himself.

Ilana's comment about the Man in Black now being stuck in Locke's form has created confusion. "It seems that if Locke—if he were stuck in this form, that would sort of rule out the possibility that the monster had been appearing as perhaps other dead figures on the Island: Yemi, Christian Shephard, etc. So is there something that happened between the end of last season, you know, when Alex appeared to Ben, what happened, Carlton?" Carlton: "Yes. I think that the critical event was Jacob's death. The Man in Black may have had the ability to take multiple forms, but after Jacob died, I think it's a very likely explanation that he was stuck in the form that he was in when Jacob died, which happened to be John Locke."

Since Christian Shephard was specifically mentioned (first by Carlton and then repeated by Damon), I think it's fair to assume that the post-mortem Christian Shephard sightings have been the smoke monster in disguise, if there was still any doubt in anyone's mind about this.

Preview for next week's episode:

Richard: "You want to know a secret? Something I've known a long time? All this? It's not what you think it is."
Narrator: Now his incredible story will be revealed.
8 episodes left until the series finale
Richard: "I've seen things on this island that you'd never imagine."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_DoGTxgHj4

"Dr. Linus" Discussion

2010-03-10T23:38:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister, Josh "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks, Steve from The Smoke Hatch, and other fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 7, "Dr. Linus".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

On the podcast we first discussed some additional items about the previous episode:

Notes about S6E06 "Sundown" from Geronimo Jack's Beard:

Script says "something's off" about Sayid's reflection in the opening scene
Dogen's book (according to the script, but not clearly seen on the show):

Deep River (Wikipedia, Amazon) by Shusaku Endo, a Japanese author (Dogen speaks Japanese)
a novel which "traces the journey of four Japanese tourists on a tour to India. Each of these tourists goes to India for different purposes and with different expectations"

Many religions are referenced in the book, and likewise many religions have been referenced on LOST
Most of the people on Oceanic Flight 815 had traveled to Australia for different purposes (many of them were tourists), and virtually all of the people on the flight were traveling to Los Angeles for different purposes and with different expectations

Jack is one of the doctors in the hospital where Sayid's brother Omer went (see this screencap)

Season 6 Episode 7 "Dr. Linus":

2007 on the Island:

Ben runs from the temple, catches up with Ilana, Frank Lapidus, Sun, and Miles
Ilana gives Miles the bag of ash, and Miles reads Jacob's last thoughts, revealing that Ben was in fact the one who killed Jacob
Ilana tells Ben that Jacob was the closest thing she had to a father, and they all walk away from Ben

2004 "flash-sideways":

Dr. Ben Linus: "[The island of] Elba is where Napoleon faced his greatest test." (refer to the Wikipedia article on Napoleon Bonaparte)
Dr. Leslie Arzt works at the same school as Dr. Linus
John Locke the substitute tells Linus that he should become the principal
Ben takes care of his father Roger, who lives with him

"he seemed to get along with his dad. up to that time on the island he hated his dad didn't he" -baileybear
"i wonder why they left Dharma" -baileybear
"this was a HUGE confirmation to me. confirms that the split did occur at the bomb" -Spivvy

I don't think it's clear whether this confirms anything or not; technically, the rift should probably have begun in 1974 when the Ajira Flight 316 passengers integrated into The DHARMA Initiative

Alex is one of Ben's students in history club

Alex was never on the Island in this timeline; in the original timeline Danielle and her team didn't come to the Island until many, many years after the Incident

2007:

Ilana says to Sun that she doesn't know whether Sun or Jin is the candidate to replace Jacob
Ilana says there are only 6 left
- We can safely assume that the first 5 are Reyes (Hugo, "Hurley"), Shephard (Jack), Austen (could possibly be Kate's father Sam, but it seems much more likely to be Kate), Kwon (Sun or Jin), Ford (James, "Sawyer")... so who's the 6th?
Ilana takes Ben at gunpoint and makes him dig his own grave

2004:

Ben tutors Alex

"My mom works two jobs just to pay for rent." Danielle Rousseau is apparently alive and well

Alex reveals (and makes Dr. Linus promise not to reveal) that the principal had inappropriate relations with the nurse at school on campus

2007:

Ben tries to bribe Miles with $3.2 million, and Miles says that if he wanted to he could dig up Nikki and Paulo's graves and get 8 million dollars' worth of diamonds

When Nikki and Paulo were buried, nobody else knew this; Miles must have read their dying thoughts
If Ben can get off the Island, why wouldn't he already have done so? Was he lying about that? Or could he leave the Island (say, via the donkey wheel) but nevertheless has chosen to stay because he feels obligated to make restitution to the Island for killing Jacob?

Miles says that Jacob didn't think Ben would actually kill him until the moment Ben plunged in the knife
Richard says of his non-aging that "Jacob gave me a gift."
Richard tells Hurley not to believe whatever Jacob told him
Richard says "There's something I need to do. Die."

2004:

After hearing Dr. Linus' plan to take the principal's position through blackmail, Dr. Arzt says "Linus, you're a real killer." Ben gets an odd look, and then the scene cuts to original-timeline Ben on the Island digging his own grave

Ben's strange look seemed reminiscent of the moments Jack has had, and the moment Kate had, where they seemed to be confused or disturbed, almost as if trying to recall something that never happened in their own timeline but did happen in the original timeline
On the podcast, Spivvy pointed out that Ben had been shot and taken by The Others to be healed; maybe he was reflecting on those moments
This is the first flash-sideways that's centric to someone who has been to the Island in the flash-sideways timeline; Kate, Locke, Jack, and Sayid have never been to the Island in this timeline, but Ben has

2007:

Richard leads Jack and Hurley to the Black Rock

"i still hope they tell us or show us how the ship got in the middle of the island" -baileybear

Richard says "this is the first time I've ever come back"
Richard says "Jacob touched me" and he can't kill himself, and someone else has to do it for him
Dr. Jack readily agrees to euthanize Richard Alpert (so much for Jack's Hippocratic Oath)!
As the fuse begins to burn, Jack challenges Richard

Jack tells Richard what he saw in the mirrors at the lighthouse and says that Jacob wanted him to see that; this is apparently a new revelation to Richard
Jack says he's confident that the dynamite will not explode. He closes his eyes, smiles, and the fuse fizzles out just in time
This was quite a bold risk, much riskier than Jack probably realized. We know that most of the candidates have already died, and Jack seems to think that he's invincible

"Jack seemed to turn into season one Locke" -baileybear
Theory: "candidates can't die UNTIL their names are crossed out" -Spivvy

However, the Man in Black crossed off John Locke's name after John died

So why did the fuse fizzle out? Did Jacob somehow stop it? Was it coincidence/fate?
"how come dogen could be killed but Richard could not be killed. Was it only because Jack was sitting with him?" -baileybear

"I think Dogen let himself be killed" -jwatari
"the situation with Richard, reminds me of the situation with Michael. The Island wouldn't let him die until he completed a task." -Spivvy

Or perhaps Jack is the person who the Island saved because his destiny was not yet fulfilled

The Man in Black visits Ben
"Once we're gone, someone's going to need to be in charge of the Island"

On the podcast, Spivvy commented that it seems like the Man in Black is trying to set up Ben to be "like the next Jacob," except that he would be in league with the MIB
Put another way, Ben seems to be a potential replacement ("candidate") for the MIB rather than for Jacob, so the MIB can leave the Island and leave someone in charge who's on his side

"a sucker to keep pressing the button, so to speak" -diesel929

"Maybe there needs to be new candidates for both sides" -Steve from The Smoke Hatch

Here's a chicken and egg theory: perhaps there always was a "Jacob" and a "Man in Black," though perhaps not always by those names, and history keeps repeating itself through new Jacobs and Men in Black. Or perhaps, at least, both Jacob and the Man in Black feel they need to be replaced so that their legacy and their "game" can continue on the Island. If so, the MIB seems to be trying to set up Ben as the new MIB, not just to replace him but to become the new him. This seems to be in the realm of possibility because we already know that Jacob has for a long time intended for one of his candidates to replace him (to become the "new Jacob")

Ben's shackles open automatically

Apparently, the Man in Black has the power to control inanimate objects with his own mind/will

Perhaps this is evidence that Jacob may have had the power to cause the fuse on the dynamite stick to burn out

2004:

Ben blackmails the principal and demands his job
The principal blackmails Ben, saying he won't write Alexandra Rousseau a letter of recommendation to Yale (from which the principal is a graduate) unless Ben drops his blackmail threat

2007:

Ilana chases Ben through the jungle
Ben finds a gun the in the jungle and makes Ilana drop her gun, and explains why he killed Jacob: Ben sacrified everything, most of all his own daughter Alex, to the Island in the name of Jacob, and Ben had essentially blamed Jacob for Alex's death
Ilana asks where Ben will go, and he says "to Locke ... because he's the only one who'll have me"
Ilana says "I'll have you." She picks up her gun and walks off, and Ben is stunned, and after staring in disbelief a few moments, slowly begins following Ilana

This seems to be somewhat of a redeptive moment for Ben; he could have chosen to become a powerful leader of the Island on the Man in Black's side, but instead he chose to help make restitution for having been tricked by the Man in Black into killing Jacob

Unfortunately, redemption often seems to be followed by death on the Island...

2004:

Ben didn't go ahead with his blackmail plan; it was more important to him for Alex to get her letter of recommendation

Why the heck not just play along and wait until after she got her letter and got into Yale, and then blackmail the principal again?

2007:

Ben comes back to the beach and helps Sun put up the tarp for her shelter
Miles dug up the diamonds!
Ilana cries (presumably about losing Jacob, and possibly about her acceptance of Ben)
Hurley and Jack reunite with Sun and give hugs and shake hands with their friends on the beach, very reminiscent of seasons long past
This time instead of Juliet being the odd one out, it's Ben
A submarine's periscope comes up out of the water

Man in sub: "Sir, there are people on the beach. Should we stop?"
Charles Widmore: "No. Proceed as planned."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Widmore."
Charles Widmore is coming back to save the Island!

Will Charles and Ben get along? The submarine crewman's question may imply that Charles intends to destroy whomever he finds on the beach, and we know that Charles and Ben have a history of being at odds with each other
Maybe Charles will back whichever side will give him control of the Island again -Spivvy

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Book next to Ben on the beach (screenshot):

The Chosen by Chaim Potok (Wikipedia, Amazon)
a novel "about two teenage Jewish boys who form a friendship, though they come from different worlds"

Once again, religion plays a key role in this novel, much like the novel Dogen was reading in the previous episode

SPOILERS:

Preview:

Kate, Jack, and Sawyer are seen
Kate cries
Sawyer: "You and me are getting the hell off this Island."

"Sundown" Discussion

2010-03-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister, Congested from DarkUFOlogy and Audibly Lost, Josh "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks, and other fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 6, "Sundown".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Season 6 Episode 6 "Sundown":

2004 "flash-sideways":

Sayid in taxi, going to see Nadia

Nadia is married

Sayid is a world traveler and a professional translator
Nadia's kids already know him and call him Uncle Sayid, and Nadia's husband calls Sayid "brother" (later in the episode it's confirmed that Sayid is in fact his literal brother)

2007 on the Island:

Sayid demands answers from Dogen

Asks about torture machine

Dogen: "For every man there is a scale. On one side is good, the other side, evil."

They fight until Dogen's baseball falls off the table, and then Dogen stops the fight, telling Sayid, "Go. Leave this place. Never come back," as he walks over and picks up the baseball

What is the significance of this baseball? (We find out later in the episode)

2004:

Sayid was still an interrogator for the Republican Guard in the war

Nadia's husband Omer asks Sayid to "do something" about his unfair creditor and Sayid says "I'm sorry. I am not that man anymore."

2007:

Miles to Sayid: "You were dead, man. For two hours. ... So whatever brought you back, it wasn't them."
Claire wants Dogen to leave the temple, but Dogen refuses because he knows that the Man in Black would kill him if he left
Dogen asks for Shephard and Reyes but "Lennon" (the bespectacled translator) says they can't find them

What was Dogen's purpose in asking for Jack and Hurley? Was he planning to send them out to speak to the Man in Black? Was sending Sayid to the MIB merely Dogen's backup plan?
Did this conversation take place just to remind audience they weren't there?

Dogen to Sayid: "This man will not stop until he has destroyed every living thing on this island. He is evil incarnate... No, I want you to destroy him. He will come to you as someone you know, someone who has died. Once you see him, plunge this into his chest. If you allow him to speak it is too late."

The line "This man will not stop until he has destroyed every living thing on this island" is very reminiscent of Ben's claims about Charles Widmore

2004:

Omer is attacked, but Nadia wants Sayid to protect the kids and not retaliate

2007:

Kate comes back, hears from Miles that Claire came to the temple and was acting "weird"
Sayid encounters the Man in Black in the guise of John Locke, and the MIB says "Hello, Sayid," after which Sayid stabs him

The Man in Black calmly pulls out the knife and it has no blood on it, and he asks Sayid why he did that

Was Dogen wrong? Or did it not work because Sayid waited until after the Man in Black spoke before stabbing him? Or did Dogen just lie? (From a later conversation in the episode, it seems Dogen may have just been lying to Sayid to try to get him killed)

Man in Black tells Sayid he can give him anything he wants, even Nadia back

Are the Man in Black's claims a deliberate reference to Satan in the Bible?

"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Matthew 4:8-10 (King James Version; view passage in other Bible versions/languages)
"And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Luke 4:5-8 (King James Version; view passage in other Bible versions/languages)

"i was thinking of the 'magic box.' the magic box which will never be addressed again i presume" -diesel929

In Season 3 Episode 19, "The Brig", Ben told John Locke that the "magic box" was just a metaphor

2004:

Nadia: "Why didn't you want to be with me? ... Why did you push me towards your brother?"

Sayid: "I can't be with you because I don't deserve you."

2007:

Sayid delivers the message from the Man in Black, that Jacob is dead and that all of The Others at the temple (including Cindy, Zach, and Emma) are free now. He says that they can choose to leave the Island with "the man" and they have until sundown to choose whether to go with the man or die
Claire is being held in a pit inside the temple, and she is singing Catch a Falling Star as Kate approaches
Kate tells Claire that she raised Aaron and that she came back to the Island to rescue Claire so they could be together again, which clearly makes Claire upset

Claire says that she isn't the one who needs to be rescued: "He's coming, Kate. And they can't stop him."
Kate neglected to mention Claire's mother, who is no longer in a coma and who is raising Aaron while Kate is back on the Island trying to rescue Claire

The translator tries to get everyone to stay, but nobody listens to him
Sayid says to Miles, pulling out the knife, "I have to return this."

2004:

Martin Keamy is one of the badguys, and he offers to make some eggs for Sayid

Sayid kills Keamy

Sayid hears someone banging around in another room, so he opens the door and Jin is tied up and has obviously been beaten, and he speaks only Korean

Did Martin Keamy work for Sun's father, Mr. Paik?
Or does Keamy work for Widmore in this timeline? Or is Widmore tied to Paik?

Congested thinks there were some connections between Paik and Widmore in a non-canon viral campaign a long time ago
Is Charles Widmore even alive in this timeline?

Ben got off the Island, somehow—we saw him as a substitute teacher in a recent episode. Did Ben leave the Island in the original timeline? Miles and Dr. Chang's wife left and stayed off the Island in the original timeline, so did Ben leave with the other children and women but then come back?

2007:

Sayid doesn't kill Dogen
Dogen says he was a bank employee in Osaka and was very successful, and says he would go drinking with his coworkers

Dogen: "Every Friday, I picked my son up from baseball. He was 12. The accident was very bad. I survived, but my son-- and then in the hospital a man came to me, a man I had never met. He told that he could save my son's life, but I would have to come here to this island where I would have a new job, and I could never see my boy again."
Sayid: "Who was this man?"
Dogen: "His name was Jacob. ... The man outside, I take it he offered you a similar bargain."

Is Jacob also a badguy?

Dogen: "It is sundown. Will you choose to stay or go?"
Sayid: "I'd like to stay." Sayid then drowns Dogen

Sayid got his revenge for Dogen's group having killed him (and for losing the fight earlier in the episode)
The water had been bubbling. Will Dogen come back to life for real? Or as a "zombie" like Sayid?

"was the water clear?" -bwoood

not colorless, but somewhat see-through; Congested thinks it doesn't constitute "clear" water

"Lennon"/Translator: "Do you realize what you just did? He was the only thing keeping it out! You just let it in!"

Sayid: "I know." (He kills the translator with the knife)
Immediately the smoke monster enters the temple and begins killing people

So what the heck is the ash for?!? Why does it no longer seem to keep the smoke monster out? And why the heck did Lennon allow Sayid (the evil, infected guy who just talked to the smoke monster!) to hang out with Dogen alone?!

The ash still worked after Jacob died, but it stopped working after Dogen died?! What the heck!?

Was Dogen a candidate?

Kate goes to rescue Claire
Ilana: "Where are Shephard and Reyes and Ford? What about Jarrah? Is he here?"
Ben goes after Sayid

Ben: "There's still time."
Sayid (with blood dripping from his knife and an evil smile): "Not for me."
Sun is there, too, and hears from Miles that Jin is still alive

Ilana opens a secret passageway and they escape from the temple just before the smoke monster comes by

"i love how ilana didnt wait for ben before shutting the door. reminded me of when ben shut the door on juliet in the hydra. so now ben is in the temple alone?" -diesel929

Kate follows Claire out into the courtyard and sees all the dead bodies. She picks up a gun and goes with Claire and Sayid outside

Will Claire kill Kate?

Is Jin or Sawyer there in the group with the Man in Black at the end?
Who is this young boy in the group? He's been in previous episodes this season. Where did he come from? Dogen tells Jack that they all came to the Island the same way, implying that they all were born off the Island and were all summoned by Jacob

Pictures of the boy, courtesy of Congested:

"do you think claire got infected by the water?" -baileybear

Some people think that she was infected back in Season 4 Episode 9, "The Shape of Things to Come" (Lostpedia, my blog post), when the barracks was blown up

SPOILERS:
Preview for the next episode (potentially major spoiler):

The preview for next week implied that it's a very Ben-centric episode and that Ben might die

"so he is going to be judged.... again?" -diesel929

"Lighthouse" Discussion

2010-02-24T03:33:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 5, "Lighthouse".

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Notes from The Official LOST Podcast:

The date on the Ultrasound in the episode "What Kate Does" was a prop error (or else the date on the Ultrasound machine was wrong... whichever you prefer to believe). Oceanic Flight 815 departed on the same date, September 22, 2004, in both the original timeline and the flash-sideways.

Season 6 Episode 5 "Lighthouse":

2004 "flash-sideways":

Jack doesn't really remember having his appendix removed as a child

In the original timeline, Juliet removed it on the Island (Season 4 Episode 10, "Something Nice Back Home").

Theory: "this is not a parallel timeline so much as it is a time displaced continuation of their subjective timelines" -from "Republibot 2.0"

Jack has a son?! David

Ha! David Shephard. David from the Bible was a shepherd
Who is David's mother? Sarah? Or perhaps it's someone else; I didn't see any hints about the identity of Jack's (presumaby ex) wife in the episode, which might mean they're intentionally keeping it a surprise for a future episode

2007 on the Island:

Jacob to Hurley: "I'm here because I need you. ... Someone is coming to the Island. I need you to help them find it."

Is that really true? If so, who is coming? Desmond? Charles Widmore?

2004:

Jack's son apparently doesn't get along very well with him, says he only sees Jack once a month

2007:

Jin: "How long have you been out here?"
Claire: "Since you all left."

Why does Claire think that they left her? She's the one who left them in the middle of the night to follow "her father"

"smokey probably told her that" -baileybear
"'brainwashed' by Christian" -james721
"brainwashed by locke. locke meaning man in black" -Guest 16
"or they are friends" -bwoood

Jacob tells Hurley to tell Dogen that he's a candidate
Dogen says something in Japanese that Jacob refuses to translate, saying instead "You don't want to know."

Anyone have a translation?

Jacob tells Hurley that he needs to take Jack with him, but Hurley says that Jack will refuse
Jacob tells Hurley to tell Jack, "You have what it takes." This seems to work
Claire: "If there's one thing that will kill you around here, it's infection."

How ironic; Claire's apparently the infected one

Jin: "Claire, have you been out here all this time by yourself?"
Claire: "Oh, no, I'm not by myself."
Justin tells Jin that Claire will kill both of them

"does claire know she was infected?" -Guest 16

Probably not; look at Rousseau thinking her teammates were infected when apparently Rousseau was the one who was infected

"i knew as soon as Jin said Kate has your baby ..Kate was a goner. But Jin saved Kate" -baileybear
"rousseau tortured sayid the same way dogen did" -bwoood

I don't recall that, but Claire did say in this episode that The Others "branded" her and she showed a burn scar on her arm or shoulder to prove it

"the man in black wants to recruit her, so he lies to her to turn her against the temple" -Guest 16

Jack sees Kate at a river and invites her to come along, but Kate says she's going to find Claire

2004:

Jack's mom finds Christian's will and asks Jack if he recognizes the name Claire Littleton, which Jack doesn't seem to (little does Jack know that she was on the plane with him)

Christian apparently never told his wife about his daughter in Australia

2007:

Jack finds Shannon's asthma inhaler at the caves
Hurley finds the skeletons and asks, "What if these skeletons are us?"

Obviously, the two skeletons are not Jack and Hurley because one of them is female, as Jack pointed out in Season 1
I think the fact that they brought up the "Adam and Eve" skeletons in this episode indicates that we're going to get a definitive answer as to who they really are by the series finale

Jack tells Hurley the story of how he really found the caves and finding the empty coffin

2004:

Jack can't find his son David, goes over to David's mother's house to look for him
There's a message on the answering machine indicating that David is probably at a conservatory

2007:

Hurley asks Jack why he came back to the Island
Jack: "I came back here because I was broken and I was stupid enough to think that this place could fix me."
Lighthouse on the beach

Jack wonders why they've never seen it before

Jin tells Claire that Kate took Aaron and has been raising her for 3 years
Claire kills Justin the Other anyway
Jack kicks down the door to the lighthouse
"there is a light house in jacobs tapestry at the bottom" -bwoood

2004:

Jack sees David playing piano at the conservatory
Dogen's son tells Jack that David is really good, then Dogen talks to Jack!

2007:

Hurley says the fire pit mirrors need to be turned to 108 degrees in order to light the fire
Their names are degrees!
Jack turns it to 23 for his name and sees the house he grew up in in the mirror
Jack realizes Jacob's been watching them this whole time
Jack: "I want to know why he was watching me. I want to know right now."
In a fit of rage, Jack smashes all the mirrors with a pipe

Was this Jacob's plan?

2004:

David tells Jack he didn't want Jack to see him fail
Jack tells David about his own father
Jack: "In my eyes, you can never fail."

2007:

Jacob's plan was for Jack to see what was in the mirror so he could see how important he is
Jacob: "I had to get you and Jack as far away from that temple as I could because someone's coming there. Someone bad. You can't warn them, Hugo. I'm sorry, it's too late."
Jin lies to Claire, tells her what she wants to hear, that Aaron is at the temple and he'll help her get in
Claire says that if what Jin said was true she'd kill Kate
Fake Locke shows up
Jin: "John?"
Claire: "That's not John. This is my friend."

This is further evidence that the infection is closely associated with the smoke monster/"Man in Black"

bwoood shared a theory that the cave writings may have actually been made by the Man in Black rather than Jacob, either as a con or as his own version of the information at the lighthouse.

RatFace wondered, "All I want to know is, where on the island is that dog VINCENT?" Presumably he would be back in 2007 along with Rose and Bernard; where have they been since the detonation of the hydrogen bomb?

"I wonder if Jacob and MIB are the same person... why else are they not naming him? Maybe he's just the 'dark side' of Jacob. it's just weird that they would go through so much trouble to keep his name hidden... they've given us names of so many unimportant people. unless he's someone we know or something... there doesn't seem to be a reason to do that" -icebird

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

As with the cave in the previous episode, there are tons of names in the lighthouse. See screenshots on DarkUFO and Sledgeweb. Lostpedia has a list of names seen in the cave and lighthouse. Some observations from the lighthouse screenshots:

"oh wow the numbers for Burke dont match. 58 in the Lighthouse 55 in the Cave" and "Faraday doesnt match either 101 in the lighthouse 761 in the cave" -Josh "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks Podcast

"i bet the hand drawn number from the cave was misinterpreted" -Amanda from Lost Flashbacks
"yeah. maybe in the Cave was harder to see" -Josh "Spivvy"
An alternate theory, at least in the case of Burke, is that one number could refer to Juliet and the other could refer to her deceased husband Edmund. However, this doesn't explain the apparently two Faradays

51 is Austen (Kate?)
"109 is Mr Friendly!!" -james721
"apparently no one from the tail section is a candidate" -Josh "Spivvy"
Some names in the lighthouse are darker than others

theory: "it looks like Shephard was written in later" -icebird

SPOILERS:

Preview for upcoming episodes:

Claire: "You're going to hurt them"
Man in Black: "Only the ones who won't listen"

"The Substitute" Discussion

2010-02-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister, Congested from Audibly Lost, and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 4, "The Subsitute".

Announcements:

Reminder: Please donate if you can afford it. I don't intend to make a profit from donations, but I'm asking for donations to help pay for getting LOST on TV so I can continue doing the live show this season.

Jorge Garcia (the actor who plays Hugo "Hurley" Reyes) has his own LOST podcast called Geronimo Jack's Beard where he and his friend recorded their initial reactions to the script for each episode, offering a different perspective on each LOST episode.

Season 6 Episode 4 "The Substitute":

2004:

Locke gets out of car in wheelchair

Who was driving the car and why didn't they help John get out?

He lives with Helen!?! They're planning to get married.
John apparently told Helen he was going to a conference, not a walkabout

2007:

Fake Locke: "John's a candidate, or at least he was a candidate"

Richard: "What do you mean a candidate?"
I would never have treated you like that, kept you in the dark. I would have treated you with respect.
Fake Locke wants Richard to go with him, and Richard refuses

Fake Locke sees a boy in the jungle and seems surprised

I thought the Smoke Monster was the only one who was the source of apparitions on the Island!

The boy has blood on his arms when Locke first sees him: http://lost.cubit.net/assets_c/2010/02/young_jacob_2-2826.php
"I thought the young boy was Aaron" -Jack from The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack

Ilana cries in Jacob's home
Ben enters and tells Ilana that Locke kicked Jacob's body into the fire, and she picks up some of the ashes and puts them in a bag

Are these the same ashes they're using to defend against the Man in Black? Did they take Jacob's ashes back in time somehow?

Ilana tells Ben the reason why Fake Locke carried Richard out into the jungle: "He's recruiting"
Fake Locke shows up at the barracks and greets Sawyer
Sawyer: "I thought you were dead."
Fake Locke: "I am."
Sawyer: "You sure as hell ain't John Locke. Cause Locke was scared. ... But you, you ain't scared."
Fake Locke: "What if I told you that I was the person who could answer the most important question in the world? Why are you on this Island?"
Fake Locke: "That's not why you're here and if you come with me I can prove it."

2004:

Locke tries to scratch a yellow Hummer who parked next to him -- it's Hurley's

Hurley, of course, has good luck in this timeline, so the Hummer doesn't get scratched

Hugo Reyes introduces himself to John Locke
Locke says he was just fired by Randy Nations, and Hugo says Randy is a douche
Hurley says "I own a temp agency too. ... Tell them Hugo sent you and to hook you up with a new job pronto. And chin up. It'll work out."
"But the flashsideways is derived from the fact that the Island is not there anymore, it's at the bottom of the ocean. Hurley is understandable. No crazy numbers, no crazy numbers to play, no terrible luck. The numbers as in the numbers on Jacob's list?" -flyboypatrick

Perhaps Hurley played the same numbers but it actually gave him good luck with the Island being sunk. Or maybe not... where would he have gotten the numbers? According to Lostpedia, Sam Toomey and Leonard Simms heard the Numbers transmission in 1988, just before Danielle changed the transmission. Thus, if the Island was sunk in 1977, Hurley never could have gotten the Numbers from Lenny in the hospital.

"maybe the Island is Atlantis, and the whole show has been in an alternate timeline" -Josh "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks

2007:

Ilana tells Sun that if Jin's alive, he'll be at the temple
Sun: "What about John? We need to bury him."
Fake Locke sees the young boy again. He looks like a young Jacob. Sawyer sees him too. Fake Locke chases the boy and falls down.
Boy: "You know the rules. You can't kill him."

Jacob?
Sawyer? -Kylene

"He wants them all gone so there's no replacement for Jacob" -Congested
"Maybe Not-Locke isn't allowed to kill the candidates? Therefore, Eko wouldn't be on the list." -flyboypatrick

Smokey has to follow the rules?

Same rules as Ben and Widmore follow? SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME.

Fake Locke uses one of the real John Locke's oft-repeated lines: "Don't tell me what I can't do. Don't tell me what I can't do!"
Richard quietly approaches Sawyer and asks where the man went
"Don't be naive. He's going to kill you. He wants everyone dead. Everyone you care about. All of them. And he won't stop--" He runs off as Fake Locke approaches.

2004:

Rose Nadler is the office supervisor
She says she has terminal cancer

2007:

Sawyer asks Fake Locke if he's read Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, and Fake Locke says it's after his time

"John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men)was Published in 1937, so that would make Fake Lock near 70+ years old." -RatFace
Actually, he was also there much earlier during the Black Rock time
In the temple there are images of the Smoke Monster -Congested

Sawyer: "What are you?"
Fake Locke: "What I am is trapped. And I've been trapped for so long that I don't remember what it feels like to be free... but before I was trapped I was a man just like you. I know what it's like to feel joy, pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it's like to lose someone you love. If you want to shoot me, shoot me. But you're so close, James, it would be such a shame to turn back now."

Maybe even the MIB was brought to the Island by Jacob -courthaven

Ilana says that the Man in Black can't change his face, "not anymore. He's stuck this way."

How does she know so much about these things? How is it that Richard knows so little compared to her even though he worked with Jacob on the Island?

Ben eulogizes John Locke: "John Locke was a believer, a man of faith, a much better man than I will ever be, and I'm very sorry I murdered him."

2004:

John calls Jack's office but hangs up
John tells Helen that he got fired, and John's lost luggage is delivered right then, so John has her open it
John says there are no miracles
Helen: "There are miracles, John. And the only thing I was ever waiting for was you."
Helen's shirt says "Peace & Karma"

2007:

Fake Locke invites Sawyer to go with him down the side of a cliff on the water's edge
Sawyer falls but Fake Locke saves him
They go into a cave on the side of the cliff
"What is this place?"
black and white rocks on a scale

Fake Locke throws the white rock into the ocean
Sawyer: "What was that all about?"
Fake Locke: "Inside joke."

"That's why you're here. That, James, is why you're all here." The 815 survivors' names are written on the ceiling in this room and some of the names are scratched out.

2004:

Locke teaches high school gym and anatomy - he's a substitute (like the episode title)
Ben teaches there too! European History

2007:

"Who wrote all this?"
"His name was Jacob. He died yesterday."
"Why are all the names crossed out?"
"They're not all crossed out."
23 - Jack Shephard. "That'd be Jack Shephard?"
8 - Hugo Reyes
16 - Jarrah
42 - Kwon "I don't know if it's Sun or Jin"

"maybe it is ji yeon kwon" -Paul R "diesel929"

4 - Locke
15 - Ford
"He was pushing you, James. Pushing you to the Island. Because you're a candidate. He thought he was the protector of this place. And you, James, have been nominated to take over his job. You have three choices: do nothing and see how all this plays out. And possibly your name will get crossed out. [He crosses out Locke's name.] Second option: you can accept the job, become the new Jacob, and protect the Island.

(This is apparently the other reason for the name of the episode; Jacob was apparently looking for a "candidate," or substitute, to replace him)

"From what?
"From nothing, James. That's the joke. ..."
"You said there were three choices."
"The third choice, James, is that we just go. We just get the hell off this Island and we never look back."
"And how do we do that?"
"Together. So what do you say, James? Are you ready to go home?"
"Hell yes."

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

There are tons of names on the cave other than those specifically pointed out by the Man in Black. See screenshots on DarkUFO and Sledgeweb. Lostpedia has a list of names seen in the cave, which interestingly includes names such as:

Littleton (Claire or Aaron? although the name is crossed out, which may be a reference to Claire's infection or Aaron having left the Island and not coming back on Ajira 316)
Faraday (Daniel?)
Burke (Juliet?)
Carlyle (Boone?)
Rutherford (Shannon?)
Linus (Ben or Roger?)
Straume (Miles? although the name is crossed out and Miles is still alive, so it may refer to someone else)
Fernandez (Nikki?)
Brennan (from Rousseau's team?)
Lacombe (from Rousseau's team?)
Pickett (Danny?)
Chang (Pierre?)
Goodspeed (Horace or Ethan?)
Mars (Edward, the marshal?)
Henderson (Rose? her maiden name)
Troup (Gary, author of Bad Twin and the guy who was sucked into the jet engine in the pilot episode?)
...and a number of others.

SPOILERS:

Jimmy Kimmel Live - Damon and Carlton interview:

When asked whether it was a coincidence that Michael and Walt were not on the plane in the new timeline, Carlton replied simply that it was "Fate."
Carlton: "We hope to see Shannon this year."
Sunday, May 23rd - final episode of LOST
Watch clips of the interview on Hulu: Part 1, Part 2

Preview for upcoming episodes:

"Someone is coming to the Island"
clips of Clairousseau
Kate is sitting down by a stream and she points gun at someone behind her

Regarding the boy with the bloody arms in The Substitute:

"His casting was very interesting... He's dealt with a horrible family accident. Even at a young age, he has been put in charge of something very important... and it weighs heavily on his shoulders." -flyboypatrick

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Teenage_boy

"What Kate Does" Discussion

2010-02-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister, Congested from Audibly Lost, Dan Ramos from Black Rock LOST Podcast, and fellow LOST fans discuss Season 6 Episode 3, "What Kate Does".

Thoughts inspired by LOSTCasts' podcast about the Season 6 Premiere:

http://www.lostcasts.com/2010/02/lostcasts-80-la-x-parts-1-2.html

Questions regarding the "flash sideways" timeline (some from the LOSTcasts podcast, some inspired by their questions):

Did Sawyer kill Frank Duckett just prior to boarding Flight 815? He didn't seem to be the least bit distraught or depressed if he just murdered the wrong man in Australia

"Yeah, I couldn't help but wonder if Sawyer was a cop, or something in that field. He seemed to know what a 341 was." -StefanyMac

"if he was in australia to bust the guy who set him up" -Congested

Desmond has a wedding ring on his finger! Who did he marry? Was Penny Widmore ever born in this timeline? We don't know whether Charles got off the Island.
Speaking of which, we find out in Season 4 that Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore are Penelope Widmore's parents. We find out in Season 5 that Eloise Hawking was pregnant with Daniel Faraday in 1977 and that she was in a relationship with Charles Widmore at the time, implying that Charles is the father. That would make Dan and Penny brother and sister.

Did Eloise Hawking get off the Island? If not, then Daniel Faraday doesn't exist in the flashsideways timeline.
Miles Straume (Pierre Chang's son) presumably got off the Island safely, along with his mother. Prior to the Incident, Dr. Chang ordered the evacuation of the DHARMA women and children from the Island.
Will the Red Sox lose the series in this timeline, either for comic effect or to show how different things turned out?
The LOST writers' answer to the "grandfather paradox" is answered by the Season 6 premiere. The paradox is that one can't go back in time and kill his own grandfather before his father was born, because then he never would have existed to be able to travel back in time and kill the grandfather! The LOST writers have chosen to answer this by making it so they created an alternate timeline
Will old DHARMA people recognize them?

Christian told John he had to die; does that mean Christian is (or works for) the Man in Black?
Jacob touched Locke, presumably saving his life after his father pushed him from the 8th story of a building (apparently in both timelines). Jacob can apparently see into the future, because he gave Hurley the ankh in the guitar case which contained the names of the people who he would later send to the temple after his death, and Jacob even gave the detail that Sayid needed to live. Why would Jacob save Locke's life when Locke would eventually kill him? Is it the same reason why Jacob let Ben kill him, even though he clearly knew Ben's intentions (and even provoked him)? It seems that perhaps Jacob was deliberately trying to die, perhaps for a purpose à la Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Before Juliet died, she remarked to Sawyer that they should get coffee and "go dutch." This comment seemed to indicate (to me, anyway) that she was losing her mind as she was dying, perhaps as a side effect of all the jumps through time like Charlotte, Minkowsky, etc. (see the Lostpedia article "temporal displacement"). On LOSTcasts, they talked about a very interesting theory that Juliet's comment was some sort of collision between the two timelines. This could fit with what Juliet was about to say next (according to Miles), that "it worked" (presumably meaning their plan to derail the original course of history by detonating the hydrogen bomb).

Season 6 Episode 3 "What Kate Does":

2007, Island:

Translator to Japanese man: "He's alive" (about Sayid)
Sayid says he feels light-headed
Sawyer's ticked off because Sayid, a former Iraqi torturer, was brought back to life and not Juliet

He should have brought Juliet with him! If they were going to save Sayid's life, maybe they could have saved (but of course, how was he to know?)

2004 alternate timeline:

Kate hijacks cab, won't let Claire out
Arzt gets in the way of the cab
Kate sees Jack in the mirror and seems to recognize him
Cab driver runs off, Kate takes Claire's purse and lets her out of the car
Claire is pregnant

2007, Island:

Hurley to Sayid: "The Others captured us... again."
Jack observes that Sayid's wound is almost completely closed, even though it's only minutes later

Water is closely tied to healing properties of the Island, perhaps? -Congested

Japanese" and translator want Sayid to go with them alone, Jack puts up a fuss
Sawyer tells Kate don't come after me
Translator says they need Sawyer back
Kate volunteers to track him, Jin volunteers to go with her

2004 alternate timeline:

Kate offers $200 to a mechanic to get her out of the cuffs
Kate opens Claire's bag and sees photo of her pregnant and Shamu whale doll

2007, Island:

Kate to Jack: I'll take care of James. You take care of Sayid
Japanese man has Sayid strapped down, blows dust on him, hooks wires into his skin and electrocutes him

"the ash should have protected sayid from pain, if he was not infected." -Guest 21

Translator says it was a "test to be sure" -- "don't worry, you passed"

Translator to Japanese man: "I just lied to him, didn't I?"
Japanese man: "Yes"

2004 alternate timeline:

Kate drives back to Claire to give her her bags back
Claire says that the family who was supposed to pick her up from the airport never showed up, so she's going to their house

2007, Island:

Aldo, an Other we haven't seen in a while, is giving Kate a hard time
There's a trap, another Other, Justin, says Rousseau died years ago
Japanese man says Sayid is "infected" and give him medicine to give to Sayid
Jack asks what will happen if he doesn't give Sayid the medicine, and the Japanese man says "the infection will spread"
Miles questions Sayid about death - no white light or anything, he just remembers being shot

"I read it as a no read as well, I thought the look was because he had no reading, like he should've if he were dead. I think it was the same reason he was so drawn to Claire in season 4. Claire also had no read, and then turned bad." -StefanyMac

Hurley: "You're not a zombie right?"
Sayid: "No. I am not a zombie."
Sayid tells Jack he'll take the pill if Jack asks him to
Jin wants to find Ajira plane so he can find Sun

2004 alternate timeline:

Claire asks Kate to come in with her to the adoptive parents' house because she doesn't want to go in alone
The woman who answers the door says "My husband... he left me. And believe me, I wanted the baby so much but I can't do it alone. I'm sorry. Look, I know I should have called you."
Claire suddenly screams that she thinks the baby is coming as they're standing at the doorstep

2007, Island:

Kate goes to DHARMA barracks to look for James
He plies up the floorboards in the room where he used to live with Juliet, pulls out a shoe box with something of Juliet's in it and smells it - ring bag?
Sawyer sees Kate, and Kate tells him that she was worried about him, and he just walks past her

2004 alternate timeline:

Kate takes Claire to hospital
A police car pulls
Ethan introdces himself as Dr. Goodspeed - Horace's last name

Apparently Ethan got off the Island safely and never joined The Others, and never renamed himself Rom

He says to stop the baby from coming she would need to take drugs via needle injection
Claire: "Is my baby okay? Is Aaron okay?"

She already picked the name?
Ultrasound date - close to when Claire gave birth on island Lostpedia says born Nov 1 2004

Congested's video showing November 1, 2004 events on LOST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JdKMIRHWS4

2007, Island:

Sawyer blames himself for Juliet's death because he convinced her to stay
Sawyer says he guesses some people are meant to be alone, and says, "I was going to ask her to marry me." He throws a wedding ring into the water and says Kate can make it back by nightfall. Kate cries.
Jack asks the Japanese man why he has a translator, and he has one to differentiate himself from those he leads, and that it makes it easier to keep people from being mad directly at him
Says his name is Dogen
Jack starts to take the pill, Dogen makes him spit it out and Jack demands to know what's in it
Dogen admits it's poison

Jacob said Sayid needed to live. Did he mean uninfected Sayid needs to live, or zombie Sayid?

"I think it meant it would be bad if he died and then was taken over, not bad because he died. Because they didn't care when he originally died." -StefanyMac

2004 alternate timeline:

Detective Rasmussen asks for Joan Hart - one of Kate's aliases
Claire tells them she left already
Claire asks what Kate did, and Kate says "Would you believe me if I told you I didn't do it?"

Did she kill Wayne Janssen in this timeline?
"In the alt timeline did her mom set the bomb?" [and frame Kate] -Guest 21

Kate suggests that Claire should keep the baby
Kate: "Aaron's a great name."
Claire: "I don't know why I said it. It's like I just knew it, or something."
They wish each other luck

2007, Island:

Jack asks, "Why would you people want to kill Sayid?"
Dogen says Sayid is sick, which Jack disputes based on his medical knowledge
Dogen: "We believe he has been claimed. ... There is a darkness growing in him, and once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was will be gone."
Jack: "How can you be sure of that?"
Dogen: "Because it happened to your sister." Jack looks confused. He must mean Claire!
Jin steps on bear trap
Aldo tries to shoot him
Claire walks out of jungle looking like Rousseau! she shoots Aldo and Justin

So Rousseau had the sickness? NOT her shipmates?
"Clair was hanging with Christian, so ther is the opportunity for her to get infected" -RatFace

I think she was already infected before we saw her in the cabin

Christian is on the smoke monster's side? (or is him?)

"In the season 5 episode 'Dead Is Dead' Christian Shepard told Sun, & Frank Lapidus to follow the Fake John Lock if she wants to Jin again." -RatFace

When did Claire get infected? Possible at barracks?

"yes... some people said after the explosion she should have been dead" -Jason Heilman
"Claire - "I'll be fine." / Miles "I'm not too sure abt that." From Shape of things" -LiamKapranos
"Maybe Miles sensed something and wanted to protect Aaron... she said I'll live" -StefanyMac
"but... claire never got in that water soo...." -Jason Heilman
"sayid and ben water... claire no" -Jason Heilman

So could Ben also have the sickness?
"I don't think being infected has to do with the water directly. though the two are sort of bundled together with sayid, i think two seperate things are." -Congested

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Claire's Ultrasound says "10-22-2004" even though in the original timeline Flight 815 departed on 9-22-2004. Why is there a discrepancy of an entire month? Just to bring Claire closer to her due date? Thanks to Jack Glatfelter from The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack for passing this along:

SPOILERS:

Notes from The Official LOST Podcast, February 4th, 2010

Preview for upcoming episodes:

Fake Locke: "Hello, James."
Sawyer: "I thought you were dead."
Fake Locke: "I am."
Richard: "He wants everyone -- everyone you care about, all of them"
"What is this place?"
Fake Locke: "I promise I'll tell you everything"

Season 6 Premiere "LA X" Discussion

2010-02-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

the JoshMeister, Master Nak, Congested, and fellow LOST fans discuss the premiere episode of the final season of LOST, "LA X" Parts 1 and 2.

Season 6 Episodes 1 and 2 "LA X" Parts 1 and 2 notes:

2004 alternate timeline ("flash sideways" in the executive producers' terminology), Oceanic Flight 815:

Jack on airplane?
it worked??! Rose and Bernard
Desmond on plane! He never got stuck on Island because Jack and Juliet sunk it?
island under water

jennielynn has a different theory: Desmond was in Jack's head

2007, Island:

Kate in tree
can't hear
Island didn't sink yet?? what caused it to sink?

"you can sink one, but the houses and foot would be G O N E" -Josh aka "Spivvy" from The Lost Flashbacks Podcast

runs into Miles
Swan hatch is imploded - they're in 2007
Jack is in dirt
Sawyer is mad at Jack because Juliet is dead

[On the live podcast, the JoshMeister, Congested from Audibly Lost, and Master Nak discuss their understanding of what's going on with relation to the timelines, time travel theory, etc. Master Nak compares the way time travel works in the Back to the Future movies compared to how it seems to work on LOST.]

2004 alternate timeline, Oceanic Flight 815:

Sawyer sees Kate in handcuffs
Artz gets Hurley to do his Mr. Cluck's commercial Australian accent
Arzt asks Hurley
Hurley: lottery
Hurley: nothing bad ever happens to me

2007, Island:

Juliet is alive under rubble!!
Sayid is dying, is afraid of where he'll end up because of torturing people etc.
Jacob: "Hello, Hugo. Got a minute?"

2004 alternate timeline, Oceanic Flight 815:

Boone talking to Locke, Neil Frogurt sleeping in the seat between them

2007, Island:

Fake Locke: "You can stop staring at the fire. Jacob's gone. He's gone."

Where was Jacob's body? Shouldn't there have been some charred remains in the fire pit?

Ben: "Why didnt he fight back? Why did he let me just kill him?"
Fake Locke: "I guess he knew he was beaten."

Or maybe Jacob did it on purpose, à la Obi-Wan Kenobi: "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine." After Obi-Wan's death he communicates to Luke through the Force, somewhat similar to how Jacob can now communicate his will through Hurley's gift of being able to see and speak with dead people

"There will be white smoke. I believe that is what John saw in Season 1" -jennielynn

Richard shows Ben the dead body of the real John Locke
Jacob tells Hurley that Jin won't be able to see him because he died an hour ago by an "old friend"

Who was the old friend to whom he was referring, Ben or the nemesis/Man in Black?
Jacob tells Hurley to get Jin to take Sayid and the rest to the temple, where they'll be safe, and bring the guitar case

Jin had been there with the French team

2004 alternate timeline, Oceanic Flight 815:

Cindy asks for a doctor
Charlie is near dead in the airplane lavatory - a negative side effect of this alternate version of 2004
Jack saves him, Charlie says "terrific" -- tried to kill himself by blocking his airway with a bag of heroin

2007, Island:

Bram and his friends battle with Jacob and get killed
Shoot at Fake Locke, disappears and leaves bullet behind
Bram tried putting an ash ring around himself and the monster doesn't cross it, but shakes the room and knocks Bram out of the circle so he can kill him

There was an ash circle around "Jacob's cabin" -- it turns out that it wasn't Jacob's after all -- it was meant to keep Jacob's nemesis (AKA the smoke monster) trapped

Does Christian work for Jacob, and if so, did he reclaim the cabin? Or did Christian work for the Man in Black?

In the Season 5 finale, Bram and Ilana's team discovered that the ash circle around the cabin had been disturbed and nobody had been there for a long time

Were they talking about Jacob or the Man in Black not having been there?

Was it Jacob or the Man in Black's voice that John Locke heard say "Help me" in the episode Cabin Fever?

Fake Locke appears again and says to Ben, "I'm sorry you had to see my like that."
Sawyer rescues Juliet but she's dying
Julet: "I have to tell you something that's really really important." (then she dies)
Sawyer and Kate glare at Jack as Sawyer holds her lifeless body. Sawyer: "You did this."

2004 alternate timeline, Oceanic Flight 815:

Charlie is mad at Jack for saving his life
plane lands safely
men come on board to arrest Charlie
Locke wheeled off plane

The plane timeline can't fit with Island timeline because Richard Alpert told Sun in Season 5 that he watched Jin etc. die, but then Richard is alive on the Island in 2007, and yet in 2004 the island is sunk and Desmond was never in the hatch. Even in 2007 that statement from Richard doesn't seem to make much sense, so I wonder if it was a mistake by the writers.

2007, Island:

Sawyer is going to bury Juliet with Miles

"Dead is dead" according to Richard and Ben

Under temple dead people, packs, one has book, Montand has arm missing (Jin knows arm was ripped off when attacked by black smoke)
Hole in floor, where Ben fell in?
Kate hears noises, wanders off, disappears suddenly and Jack tries to find her, then Hurley and Jin are suddenly missing
Someone knocks out Jack
Men take them all at gunpoint - Jacob's people?
Hurley: "I guess this is the temple."

2004 alternate timeline, after landing:

Kate undoes handcuffs, escapes from Edward Mars
Sawyer knows she was in cuffs on plane
there's a "341" - they're looking for her

2007, Island:

Sawyer asks Miles to tell him what Juliet was about to say (Miles talks to dead people)
"It worked. That's what she wanted to tell you. It worked."

So where are they trapped?

Man speaks Japanese, Cindy answers in English that they were on the first plane, Oceanic 815, with me
They were going to shoot them, but Hurley says Jacob sent us, and shows guitar case as proof - giant ankh inside, Japanese man breaks open and reads note inside. He asks their names. He starts to walk away, and Hurley asks what the note says. Japanese man's translator tells Hurley that the paper said that if Sayid dies, "we're all in a lot of trouble"

2004 alternate timeline, after landing:

Jin apprehended for taking too much undeclared money, Sun claims she can't speak English

2007, Island:

Translator: "The water isn't clear -- it happened"

What happened? They were surprised later to find out about Jacob's death, so that's not what they thought happened

Japanese man cuts hand, puts in water
"If we do this there are risks" (referring to attempting to heal Sayid)

like "consequences" of healing Ben as a boy?

they hold Sayid under water until hourglass runs out, he dies
Jack gives chest compressions like he did to Charlie, Kate tells him to stop like she did after Charlie had been hung by Ethan

Why would Kate say this when Jack saved Charlie's life in spite of her protests? Shouldn't she have learned her lesson and let the doctor do his thing?
But stupidly, Jack listens to her this time and stops giving chest compressions

2004 alternate timeline, after landing:

Sayid looks at Nadia's photograph
Kate tries to escape the airport without being identified, but guards are looking at a paper, presumably her photo
Kate gets in cab with Claire Littleton(!) and her driver is the actor who plays the puppetmaster guy from Heroes (who's also connected with a blonde main character named Claire) -- David H. Lawrence XVII is the actor's name

Is Claire pregnant, and in Los Angeles to give up her baby as in the original timeline?

"i'll wager $5 that kate holds Claire hostage and then she gives birth, and Kate helps" - Josh "Spivvy" from Lost Flashbacks
"kate adopts him! in the cab" - Congested

2007, Island:

Hurley tells them Jacob is dead, they put ash around the complex and fire a warning rocket
Translator explains to Hurley they're not trying to keep them in, they're trying to keep "him" out.
Hurley asks who, and they cut to a scene with Fake Locke (we don't get the guy's name!)
Fake: "John Locke was very confused when you killed him"
Fake Locke says last thought in John's head when Ben killed him: "I don't understand"
Fake Locke: "John was the only one who didn't want to leave, only one who realized how pitiful the life he left behind actually was"
Ben: "What do you want?"
Fake Locke: "Well that's the great irony ben because I want the thing John Locke didn't. I want to go home."

Is his home off the Island? If so, is there ash surrounding the Island, preventing him from leaving? (For that matter, why is he so afraid of ash?)
Is his home the temple? They're keeping him out?

Hurley to Sayid: "Goodbye, Dude. If you ever want to talk, I'm around." Miles shakes head, Hurley says "What?" Miles says "Nothing."

Can Miles hear Sayid's thoughts or not? Was Sayid really dead?

2004 alternate timeline, after landing:

Jack's father's casket was never on the plane!

Was his coffin on the plane on the Island then? Or did something different happen?
"Christian" (who is most likely the smoke monster/nemesis) encouraged Locke to leave the Island - because he knew that Locke would die and would provide a loophole so he could kill Jacob?

"Jacks dad is a bad guy because he told Sun to wait & go with the Fake Lock aKa MIB" -RatFace

Locke: how could they know where your father is? they didn't lose your father. they just lost his body.
Locke says the bag they lost was his knives
Locke says his condition is irreversible, Jack says nothing is irreversible - if you ever want a consult, just give me a call. It's on the house.

2007, Island:

Richard sees rocket, Nemesis comes out, they point guns at him, Richard tells them not to shoot
Fake Locke: "Hello, Richard. It's good to see you out of those chains"

Pirate slave from The Black Rock ship?

Richard says in recognition, "You?"

Fake Locke: "Me." [knocks Richard out]

Fake Locke to The Others: "I am very disappointed in all of you."

What does this mean???

That they didn't figure out who he was?
That they took the wrong side? They should have been on the Man in Black's side, not Jacob's?

Fake Locke picks up Richard and walks off
Translator: "You're Shephard? We need to speak to you privately."
Sayid wakes up and says "What happened?"

"Is he Jacob in Sayid's body?" -Congested

In Season 5 Episode 15, "Follow the Leader", Richard tells Sun that he watched Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Jin die 30 years ago. How could this be? We didn't see him anywhere near The Swan's construction site. Was Richard hiding in the bushes somewhere? Was he watching on a hidden security camera? Probably not the latter; as far as we know, only The DHARMA Initiative has hidden cameras, and it was only after the Purge that The Others took over the use of their cameras. Richard from 2007 said he watched them die in 1977, yet the only time we've seen them die (or what might have been assumed to have killed them from the perspective of someone living in 1977) was the detonation of the hydrogen bomb. However, after seeing the Season 6 premiere, if we're to believe that the detonation of the bomb is what sunk the Island, then there's no way that that Richard from 2007 could have witnessed the explosion in 1977! If Richard from the new timeline in 2004 had somehow survived, he could have claimed to witness their deaths because every mortal person on the Island would probably have been killed by the blast or by the Island sinking. But Richard from the 2007 timeline could not have witnessed their deaths in 1977 because their detonation of the bomb (the only thing that could be described as causing their deaths) created a new parallel timeline, separate from the one that 2007 Richard is living in!

Could the explosion of a hydrogen bomb that size really cause an entire island to sink? Are we making a false assumption by presuming that the explosion sunk the Island somehow? It may be possible that some later event sunk the Island.

"Notice they did not show Michael or Walt, or Vincent the dog during the whole flight. Not even when the plane landed there was no sign of that family" -RatFace

Screenshots and Easter Eggs:

Desmond's book:

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, 1990 children's book by Salman Rushdie
http://getlostpodcast.iimmgg.com/image/214aefb84007b12ecef0c30acde3d6e5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haroun_and_the_Sea_of_Stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

Book found underground:

Crainte et Tremblement - French edition of Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, theologian, and psychologist
http://lost.cubit.net/assets_c/2010/02/6x01_book_temple-2682.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Trembling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

Rose's magazine:

Weekly Woodsman magazine
"The truth is out there..." UFO / Morley cigarette ad - total double X-Files reference!
http://lost.cubit.net/archives/2010/02/6x01-the-truth-is-out-there.php

SPOILERS:

Preview:

YouTube: http://lost.cubit.net/archives/2010/02/preview-trailer-for-6x02-what-.php
Shots are fired
Sawyer points a gun, appears to be leaving the temple, and says "Don't come after me" (to Kate, presumably)
Sun and Frank walk past a series of graves (at the Oceanic 815 camp site?)
Fake Locke picks up a knife
Kate: "I can bring him back" (referring to Sawyer?)
Jack grabs Kate's arm and says: "Be careful"
Kate sits next to Sawyer on a beach
Sawyer cries
Jack: (to the people at the temple) "Who are you?"
Kate: "He doesn't care about any of us" (who?)
Jin: (to Kate?) "Who do you care about?"
Kate punches a man in the face

Episode title: "What Kate Does" (a reference to Season 2 Episode 9, "What Kate Did")

Notes from The Official LOST Podcast, February 4th, 2010

2010-02-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

Following are my notes from the February 4th episode of The Official LOST Audio Podcast.

(Note that the executive producers' comments contain spoilers.)

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse won't reveal their intentions for the space between LA and X in the Season 6 premiere episode title. "It could mean LA X as though the X means it's been negated," said Carlton.

In explanation of the "flash sideways," Carlton said, "We have two distinct timelines that we are showing you on the show. One timeline seems to be derived from a theory that when the bomb went off, exactly what Faraday was postulating occurred. There was a reset, and basically 815 flew over what was once the Island, landed in LA, and these people never experienced the crash, never met each other by crashing on the plane, and there's a timeline going forward. The other timeline is obviously on the Island Juliet hit the bomb, it basically jumped them, you know, forward in time but they're still stuck on the Island and they're dealing with the consequences of the fact that they're still marooned there."

Damon said regarding the flashsideways, "Just one clarification: I think a lot of people are referring to these things as an alternate timeline, and we want to go out of our way to basically not use that word. We're not interested in alternate anything, alternate realities, alternate timelines. ... To basically imply that one of these timelines, either the Island or off the Island, is less than real is just borderline offensive to me, Carlton. They are both equally real, and hopefully will reconcile in some way." Carlton Cuse responded, "I hope they reconcile! I mean, I would be very disappointed to go through the end of this season and not understand what the interrelation between these two timelines is." Damon: "I wouldn't blame you."

Damon: "Would Desmond have been at the stadium if he wasn't training for a race around the world? ... Would he have been training for a race around the world if the Island had never existed? What happened to Charles Widmore in 197- so, all these great issues are being raised, but more importantly, how does it affect our characters? ... You think that not that many things have changed, but a lot more things have changed than you probably think, and that's going to be the exploration of the season."

"What Kate Does" (the title of the upcoming episode) ties in with the episode title "What Kate Did".

Regarding Sayid, Carlton said, "The question is, was he dead, and I think the second question is what does it mean that he's up and walking around? What are the consequences of the fact that they threw him in the murky water. Clearly it would have been better if that water was clear."

Carlton Cuse said that Neil Frogurt will get justice for having been killed by a flaming arrow in the original timeline: "You'll see more of Frogurt. If you like Frogurt, Frogurt's run is not done."

Damon indicated that the identities of Adam and Eve might possibly be addressed in the last couple episodes of the series.

Carlton said that Hurley never paid Walt for his $83,000 in Backgammon winnings because "I think the debt was forgiven in the spirit of having left the Island."

For more LOST-y goodness, follow me on Twitter. And don't forget, you can literally help make the live podcasts possible by making a small donation of whatever amount you can afford. Thank you!

LOST Rewatch Podcast

2010-02-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

I've posted an MP3 in the podcast feed containing all of my insights and observations from the LOST Rewatch. (98 minutes)

If you prefer to read the episode commentaries on the blog, click here to read all the blog posts, and start from the bottom of the page to read them in order.

LOST Rewatch: Season 5 Locke Episodes and More

2010-02-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

In between the Season 5 finale and Season 6 premiere, I participated in The LOST Rewatch. During the hiatus, I wrote detailed commentaries with fresh insights into the first 21 episodes of Season 1 (see all of my previous posts; start reading from the bottom of the page). Following are my notes from the rest of the LOST episodes I had time to rewatch, including all of the Season 5 episodes involving John Locke (or rather, in most cases the fake John Locke, aka Jacob's nemesis). Enjoy!

Season 1 Episode 22 - "Born To Run"

Kate, as a blonde, has at least 9 different license plates from various states in the trunk of her car, and she swaps her Nebraska plate for an Ohio plate. She dyes her hair brown and picks up a letter from a motel lobby for a guest named "Joan Hart." (Incidentally, the most prominent person named "Joan Hart" is Melissa Joan Hart, the actress who played the starring roles on the TV shows "Clarissa Explains It All" and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch".) The envelope contains some 20-dollar bills and a letter which Kate reads tearfully. The letter is difficult to read from the viewer's perspective, but here's what I was able to make out:

"...have to tell you... have gotten... and the doctors... and there's nothing else they can do. She's still as stubborn as ever and refuses to stay at the hospital,... but I can see she's growing weaker and fear that before long there may be no other choice. I can only imagine how hard all of this may be for you. I wish more than anything that things were different. I don't know when this letter will reach you, but I am hoping it's soon because she may not have much time left. I am so sorry Katherine. You will be... and prayers. Love, ..."

Based on the context of the episode, it seems that someone sent a letter to Kate to let her know that her mother was sick and may soon be in the hospital. Who sent this letter? Was it perhaps her (non-biological) father, Sam Austen? This could explain the cash; sending money seems like a parental thing to do. There probably wouldn't be too many people in Kate's life who would both know her mother well and would also sign a letter to Kate with "Love" at the end. The letter writer clearly wasn't Tom Brennan because we find out later in the episode that he obviously hadn't been expecting her.

On the Island, Charlie approaches Kate while she plays with the toy airplane on the beach. Charlie thinks Michael's raft will be a success, and he tells Kate that when the Oceanic survivors are rescued they'll be "ridiculously and eternally famous. What's the matter? Don't you want to be famous?" Kate, of course, doesn't want to be rescued; she knows that if that happens, she will be taken back into custody and probably spend the rest of her life in jail for murdering her biological father and her later crimes including orchestrating an armed robbery of a bank. We now know that Charlie didn't get his wish of coming back alive to enjoy eternal stardom, but the Oceanic Six did indeed become celebrities as he suspected.

Dr. Arzt says that they need to leave "yesterday" to avoid monsoon season, during which the winds would take the raft south to Antarctica. Michael prepares to leave the following day. Kate tries to convince Michael to let her on the raft, but he says "the raft's full."

In a flashback, Kate pretends to be a flower delivery person taking flowers to her mother, Diane Janssen. Kate sees a police officer in the hallway and walks past, deciding that it's too risky to approach her mother. Instead, she hides in Tom Brennan's car, miraculously without triggering his alarm (or, at least, if she did trigger it, she reset it before Tom came to his car). Kate enlists Tom's help to get to her mother.

Kate and Tom's time capsule is a New Kids on the Block lunch box, presumably the same one that young Katie tried to steal in her Season 5 finale flashback, which Jacob ended up buying for her.

Season 3 Episode 1 - "A Tale of Two Cities"

Perhaps Ben knew or suspected that Ethan might have had feelings for Juliet, which could explain why he selected Goodwin and then Ethan to go to the crash sites as spies.

Season 4 Episode 2 - "Confirmed Dead"

After Ben attempted to assassinate Charlotte, Locke took Sawyer's gun and had the chance to kill Ben, but ultimately Locke decided to let Ben live. If Locke had killed Ben at that time, then Ben would never have had the chance to kill Locke after they left the Island. For that matter, if John had killed Ben, then Ben never would have killed Jacob either.

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

Charles Widmore tells John Locke that a war is coming and says that if Locke's not back on the Island the wrong side is going to win. We now know that John never really came back, unless you count his corpse; does that mean Jacob has lost? Personally, I suspect Jacob still has a trick or two up his sleeve.

John can dial 2-3 to reach Charles (23 is one of the Numbers).

Season 5 Episode 12 - "Dead Is Dead"

Ben says to Cesar, trying to turn Cesar against "John": "What if he [the person claiming to be John Locke] was already here before the crash?" As it turns out, he actually was!

In a flashback, Ben said to Danielle as he stole Alex from her: "If you want your child to live, every time you hear whispers, you run the other way." What exactly do the whispers mean? The Others are nearby? The monster is near?

Fake Locke remarks to Ben that his decision to move The Others into the DHARMA barracks "just doesn't seem like something the Island would want."
Ben: "You don't have the first idea about what this island wants."
Fake Locke: "Are you sure about that?"

Christian told Sun that if she ever wanted to see her husband again, she'd wait in Ben's old house for John Locke. Sun and Frank Lapidus knew that Locke was dead, and yet there he apparently was, standing outside. Given that Christian told Sun to wait for Locke, does this mean that Christian is actually in league with Jacob's nemesis rather than Jacob?

Fake John left when Ben went into the hidden cave to summon the monster, and the monster didn't come when summoned... or did he? Fake John came back shortly after Ben walked outside. Is Fake John (aka Jacob's enemy) the same as the monster? Ben says he doesn't know where the monster is, but Fake John says he knows.

As soon as Ben fell down the hole underground and Fake John supposedly went to find something to help Ben get out, Ben saw the smoke monster, and then Alex (or rather, Fake Alex) appeared and told him not to kill John again and said she'd hunt him down and kill him if he didn't follow everything "John" told him to do. After "Alex" was gone, "John" came back. "John" and "Alex" weren't there at the same time because they're the same person: Jacob's nemesis. The nemesis was playing with Ben's emotions and deceiving him in every conceivable way in order to trick him into killing Jacob.

Season 5 Episode 15 - "Follow the Leader"

Richard sensed "there's something different about you" which Fake John dismisses, saying "I have purpose now."

Richard tells Sun that he watched Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Jin die 30 years ago.

During one of the brief time travel flashes when Real John flashes to their place and time, Fake John instructs Richard to tell Real John to tell him that he needs to die. (All of that was part of Jacob's enemy's plot to create a loophole so he could kill Jacob.)

Fake Locke points out to The Others that they all take orders from Jacob, whom none of them have ever seen. He says he wants to take all of them with him on his trek to go see Jacob.

Fake Locke privately tells Ben that the real reason he's going to see Jacob is not to be reunited with his people, but that he's going to kill Jacob.

Season 5 Episodes 16 and 17 - "The Incident," Parts 1 & 2

The real John Locke's Season 1 monologue to Walt about light and dark was a direct foreshadowing of Jacob and his enemy; Jacob wears a light-colored shirt while his enemy weaks a dark shirt. This whole time there have been two sides determining to some degree the outcome of events on the Island.

Richard is still puzzled how John could have come back to life; he's never seen that happen in all his years on the Island. Fake Locke quips that he's never met someone who can't age, and Richard reveals that Jacob made him that way, and says he'd guess that Jacob is why John came back to life. Fake Locke says that after he visit Jacob "to thank him," they'll "take care of" the rest of the people from the Ajira flight, implying that he wants them dead. This should have sent up red flags for Richard since presumably he knows that every group that comes to the Island is brougt there by Jacob as an attempt to prove himself right to his enemy; by killing the Ajira survivors, Fake Locke would be going against Jacob's plan.

Fake Locke points out to Ben "the door to the hatch where you and I first met." Jacob's nemesis seems to have Locke's memories, perhaps similar to the smoke monster's ability to read and analyze the memories of a person.

Just before Jack drops the hydrogen bomb, Sawyer orders Dr. Chang to turn off the drill, but the drill fails to turn off because, as Radzinsky explains, they've "hit the pocket," which apparently means they've punched through to the point of no return and the electromagnetism is about to become too strong to control. Jack then drops the bomb and it doesn't detonate. A few moments later, after it's clear that the bomb hasn't exploded, everything metallic that's nearby begins to be pulled toward the hole. I'm convinced that the electromagnetic event is what Dr. Chang (as Dr. Marvin Candle) described as "an Incident" in The Swan's orientation film, and that this event would have taken place regardless of whether or not Jack had dropped the bomb down the hole. The exact consequences of the Incident seem to vary at least somewhat from what originally happened in 1977, as is seemingly evidenced by the fact that Dr. Chang's hand was impaled, whereas in some of the orientation films he has an entire prosthetic arm, not just a prosthetic hand.

Season 6 Live Post-Episode Podcasts

2010-02-02T03:57:00.000-08:00

NOTE: As of May 4, 2010, I've reached my donation goal! Thanks to everyone who made a contribution. You can still donate if you wish, but I no longer need any more donations to pay for getting LOST on my TV. Thanks again!

Many of you are probably aware of the DTV transition that took place in the U.S. on June 12, 2009. This was shortly after Season 5 of LOST ended. Although I have a television with a built-in digital tuner, I've been unable to get ABC on my TV. No matter what antennas I try or how I position them, I can't get any signal from the only station I want—the one that shows LOST! This, of course, is a major problem for someone who hosts a live podcast about every episode right after they air on TV.

This week I ordered the basic broadcast channels through my local cable television company, the cheapest plan that gives me access to ABC. However, "cheapest" doesn't exactly mean cheap. I don't currently have any companies sponsoring the blog or podcast, so blogging and podcasting about LOST is a (very time-consuming) hobby, not a side job. It's hard for me to justify spending much money on a hobby when I already spend hours upon hours of my time each week blogging and podcasting about it.

I'm not going to require anyone to pay for this podcast. That would be ridiculous; LOST fanaticism is a hobby for all of you as well, and if I demanded payments you'd stop listening to my show and instead listen to another of the dozens of other LOST podcasts out there. So, no paid subscription is required. However, if you enjoy participating in my live shows, or if you simply enjoy listening to the podcast and would like it to continue in the same format, I would greatly appreciate a donation of whatever amount you can afford to help cover the costs of me getting ABC for the next 4 months. You will find PayPal donation buttons at the top of this page (if you don't have a PayPal account, you can alternatively donate via credit card through PayPal's secure site).

Oh, and if you're new here, I record my podcast live on TalkShoe right after each new episode of LOST airs in the Pacific time zone. If you miss a live show, subscribe to the podcast (iTunes, RSS) to listen to the episode after I've had a chance to edit it. And of course stay tuned to this blog for my very detailed show notes and commentaries.

Thanks to all of you fellow LOST fanatics for supporting this blog and podcast! I appreciate your support and look forward to discussing and theorizing about LOST with you this final season.

Translation of Greek on Jacob's Tapestry, Revisited

2010-02-02T00:46:00.000-08:00

Back in May 2009, I posted translations of some of the Ancient Greek text on Jacob's tapestry (see the original blog post). At the time, the only portions that were clearly visible and had been translated were the text across the top and middle of the tapestry, which read:

"May heaven grant you in all things your heart's desire" (or "May the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires"; this is a line from The Odyssey)

"May the gods grant thee happiness" (a line repeated twice in The Odyssey)

Since the last time I updated that post, there has been an additional translation of the non-torn portion of the bottom of the tapestry. It appears to say:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"

This phrase makes me think of what Jacob said to his nemesis at the beginning of the Season 5 Finale about how he would eventually be proven correct, and that "Anything that happens before [he's proven correct] is just progress." Is the war over between Jacob and his nemesis, now that the nemesis seems to have found a loophole and killed Jacob by using Ben as an assassin? Has Jacob's nemesis won the war, and if so, is this the same war about which Charles Widmore warned John Locke?

Season 5 Finale Audio Podcast Now Available

2010-02-01T23:59:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to publishing the audio podcast that I recorded right after the first airing of the Season 5 Finale episode, "The Incident". The full show notes and links to download, listen, or subscribe can be found here.

LOST Rewatch: S1E20 "Do No Harm" and S1E21 "The Greater Good"

2009-07-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 20 and 21 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 20 - "Do No Harm"

Jack promises Boone, "You are not going to die. I'm going to fix this, okay? I am going to save you."

We find out through flashbacks that Jack was married to Sarah, who became his fianceé after he "fixed her" when a car crash left her with a broken back that other doctors said was irreparable.

Claire begins to go into labor while Jack is trying to save Boone. Jack can't deliver the baby because by the time he finds out about Claire, he's in the middle of giving a blood transfusion from himself to Boone using a rubber tube and sea urchin spines as needles.

In a flashback, Jack's father shows up the night before the wedding. Jack has been drinking, and he asks Christian, "What if I can't be the husband, or the father, that I want to be? What if I asked her because I saved her life? Should I marry her, dad?" Christian's response seems very insightful, especially in the context of Jack's attempt to save Boone's life: "Commitment is what makes you tick, Jack. The problem is, you're just not good at letting go."

Jack decides that Boone's leg needs to be amputated because the blood is pooling there. Sun discovers that Boone is coughing up blood, indicating that he's bleeding internally, and she tells Jack that he can't save Boone. Interestingly, Jack says to her one of Locke's oft-repeated lines, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" Boone regains consciousness before Jack can amputate, and Boone lets Jack "off the hook" for his promise to save him. Boone's last words are "Tell Shannon— tell Shannon I..."

Meanwhile, at about the same time that Boone dies, Claire's baby boy Aaron (as he will later be named) is born.

As Claire, her newborn, Kate, Charlie, and Jin return to the beach, the other survivors all gather around to see the new baby. While everyone adores Aaron, Sayid and Shannon return from an overnight excursion on another beach, and Jack approaches them and tells Shannon about Boone. Later when she sees his body, she mourns bitterly.

Jack sits alone on the beach. Kate walks up to him and asks if he wants to talk about Boone's death. Jack answers, "He didn't die. He was murdered." He begins to walk away while donning a backpack, and a confused Kate asks, "What? Jack, where are you going?" "To find John Locke." Rather than blaming himself for Boone's death or just letting it go, Jack seems to want to put the blame on someone else. In the next episode, Jack explains to Kate that the reason he blames Locke is that "Boone did not fall off any cliff. His leg was crushed, and I based my medical treatment on his lie."

Season 1 Episode 21 - "The Greater Good"

The episode begins with Sayid trying to comfort Shannon as she plays with her deceased step-brother's hair. Sayid asks if there's anything he can do for her, but she doesn't respond.

In a flashback, Sayid is escorted in handcuffs through Heathrow Airport in the UK. This wouldn't be the last time Sayid would wear handcuffs in an airport; in Season 5, Ilana escorts a handcuffed Sayid onto Ajira Flight 316. In the UK airport, Sayid is coerced by CIA and ASIS agents into helping them shut down a terror cell to which his former roommate Essam is connected, and in return the agents offer to give Sayid information on Nadia's whereabouts.

At Boone's funeral, Shannon doesn't want to say anything. Everyone is quiet until Sayid shares a few kind words. Then Locke shows up wearing a shirt drenched in Boone's blood, and he explains how Boone died. He says that Boone died while trying to call for help on the Beechcraft's radio, and that Boone was a hero. After Locke finishes his speech, Jack flips out and runs toward Locke, tackles him, and screams at him, demanding that Locke explain where he was and what he did to Boone, and accusing him of having lied the night before. Jack collapses, still weak and exhausted from the blood transfusion he gave Boone the night before.

A little later after Jack has had a chance to calm down a bit, Jack tells Sayid that Boone had mentioned a hatch and that Locke had told Boone not to tell anyone about it.

In a flashback, we see Sayid praying in the same mosque where Essam is praying. We would later see Sayid pray in this manner on Desmond's boat in the Season 2 finale, "Live Together, Die Alone". At Essam's apartment, Sayid finds a small microphone concealed in a non-working smoke detector and defuses it, and Essam explains to his leader Haddad that Sayid worked for the Republican Guard and "He knows things." This pleases Haddad, who says, "Perhaps it's not happenstance that you and Essam met at the mosque. Perhaps it is fate."

Charlie calls Claire's baby "Turnip-Head" for the first time, explaining to Claire that "It's just what I'm calling him until you give him a name because his head—it's like a turnip." Thankfully, Claire doesn't take long to decide on a name. She names him Aaron in the second half the season finale, "Exodus, Part 2".

Locke approaches Shannon while she's sitting alone on the beach and gives Boone's backpack to her. He sits down with Shannon and offers her a sincere and heartfelt apology. Locke asks for her forgiveness, and when she doesn't say anything else, he gets up and walks away. Shannon then goes to Sayid and says, "You asked if you could do anything for me. John Locke killed my brother. Will you do something about that?"

Sayid goes with Locke to the plane, interrogating him along the way. He tells John that he knows he's concealing a gun, and John gives it to Sayid explaining that he found it on the body of a drug smuggler, but this fails to bring Sayid to trust him. Locke then voluntarily reveals something that Sayid doesn't know: that Locke was the one who knocked out Sayid when he tried to triangulate the source of Danielle's radio transmission (as seen in the episode "The Moth"). Sayid is furious, and Locke explains his opinion that Sayid hadn't been thinking clearly and wouldn't have listened to him if he told Sayid it was a bad idea to go to "The source of a distress call that kept saying they're dead, it killed them all, over and over." Sayid asks John if he burned the raft, and John says no. He then asks "What is the hatch?" and Locke is visibly surprised, but quickly thinks up the response that there are "Two hatches on a plane, Sayid, could be forward or aft."

In flashbacks, the CIA agent orders Sayid to convince his friend Essam to go through with a suicide bombing, and the agent threatens to arrest Nadia if he doesn't, saying "Your girlfriend's an Iraqi living abroad with a record of insurgency. Wouldn't it be terrible if she got picked up as an enemy combatant, Sayid?" Sayid begrudgingly complies. Essam is concerned about taking the lives of innocent people because "The Imam preaches peace, Sayid. Every human life is sacred." Sayid convinces him by saying "It's true, innocent lives will be lost—in service of a greater good." This is where the episode title comes from.

Kate drugs Jack to force him to get some sleep. While Jack is sedated, Shannon steals the key to the gun case from him and goes to get a gun to kill John Locke. How in the world did Shannon know where the gun case was? Or even that Jack had the key to it around his neck? These mysteries were never explained on the show.

Shannon corners Locke in the jungle and Sayid finds her holding a gun and preparing to shoot. Jack and Kate show up, and Locke repeats to Shannon that "it was an accident," and Shannon says "Jack, you told me he was a liar." Shannon then shoots at Locke, but Sayid leaps at her just as she begins to fire the gun, and the bullet just grazes the side of John's head. Jack gives Locke a dirty look and walks away.

We find out through flashbacks that Sayid tries to convince Essam at the last minute not to kill himself and to run away instead, explaining that he has been working undercover for the CIA. Essam is distressed and angry at Sayid for lying to him, and he shoots himself in the head (yet another suicide by a gun to the head). When the agents show up, they give Sayid an Oceanic plane ticket, but Sayid asks "What happens to his body?" They explain that Essam will be cremated because there's nobody to claim the body. Sayid tells the agents that "A Muslim man is supposed to be buried," and he volunteers to stay in Sydney an extra day so he can ensure that his friend will be buried instead of cremated. Sayid was on Oceanic Flight 815 because he stayed the extra day in Sydney to ensure that his friend received a proper burial. If he had gone on the earlier flight, he never would have been on the Island, and he likely would have found Nadia and lived happily ever after. Back in the episode "Walkabout", Sayid was the first to object to Jack's plan to burn the fuselage and all the bodies inside because he felt it wasn't right to have no regard for the wishes or religions of the deceased passengers.

Sayid approaches Locke as he puts some ointment on his head wound. John thanks Sayid for saving his life, saying "I know what it cost you to do what you did," referring to losing Shannon as his girlfriend (although Sayid begins to woo her again by the season finale). Sayid demands that John take him to the hatch: "John, no more lies."

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

LOST Rewatch: S1E18 "Numbers" and S1E19 "Deus Ex Machina"

2009-07-10T01:01:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 18 and 19 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 18 - "Numbers"

Hurley notices the number sequence "4 8 15 16 23 42" written over and over again on Danielle Rousseau's papers. He has a flashback to winning the lottery with those numbers. Throughout the episode, there are lots of individual occurrences of these numbers, so I won't attempt to chronicle all of them here. There are lots of things that happen in Hurley's flashbacks that indicate to him that the Numbers are cursed. I like the juxtaposition of the very serious and grim episode "...In Translation" right before this very humorous Hurley-centric episode.

Hurley finds out from his accountant that he is "the majority shareholder for a box company in Tustin." Guess who worked at a box company in Tustin? John Locke. Hurley's former boss from Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack, Randy, would later work at the box company as John's insolent boss.

We find out that Hurley got the Numbers from Leonard Simms, a patient at Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute, where Hurley used to live. After Hurley begins to believe that the Numbers are cursed, he goes to tell Lenny that he used the Numbers to win the lottery, and Lenny freaks out. He tells Hurley, "You've opened the box. ... It doesn't stop. ... You've got to get away from it or it won't stop," and says that he got the numbers from Sam Toomey in Kalgoorlie, Australia. Hurley visits Sam Toomey's house (which is the reason why Hurley was in Australia prior to Flight 815). Sam's wife Martha explains that Sam and Leonard "were stationed at a listening post monitoring long wave transmissions out of the Pacific" and one night they heard "a voice repeating those numbers over and over again." Perhaps this was the same voice that Danielle and her team heard being transmitted from the radio tower on the Island. Sam used the numbers to win $50,000 at the local fair, and on the way home Sam and Martha got into a car accident that caused Martha to lose part of her leg. After that, "Anything terrible that happened to anyone around us, he believed it was all because he used those numbers." Martha tells Hurley that Sam committed suicide to get away from the Numbers. Interestingly, his chosen method of suicide ("He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger") is identical to that of Kelvin's hatch mate Stuart Radzinsky, who also had a connection with the Numbers, having to type them every 108 minutes into The Swan's computer. Perhaps Radzinsky also felt cursed by the Numbers, or perhaps he simply went crazy from being cooped up in the hatch for so long. Martha Toomey tells Hurley that the numbers aren't cursed, and that "You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes."

I wonder why Hurley takes so many life-threatening risks on the Island in this episode. Is it because he believes that the curse of the Numbers will keep him safe, or because he's testing Sam's wife's theory that you make your own luck?

John recruits Claire to help him build something out of wood, but he doesn't tell her what it is. I wondered in my commentary for "Raised By Another" why Claire would later become friends with Locke after having seen him in a frightening dream. At least part of the answer is that Claire lost her memory, and she's still getting it back "Bits and pieces here and there. Nothing that makes any real sense." She most likely doesn't remember her nightmare.

Danielle Rousseau rigged her lair with explosives in anticipation of the return of Sayid or another one of his fellow crash survivors. Beforehand she moved all of her belongings to some undisclosed location. When Hurley finally locates "the French chick," he demands that she explain the Numbers. Danielle responds, "Our ship picked up a transmission: a voice repeating those numbers. We changed course to investigate. After we shipwrecked, my team continued to search for the transmission source. It was weeks before we found the radio tower... up by the Black Rock. Some of us continued to search for the meaning of those numbers while we waited for rescue. But then the sickness came. When my team was gone, I went back up to the tower and changed the transmission." Hurley asks about the Numbers' power and says that they're cursed. She replies, "The numbers are what brought me here. As it appears, they brought you. Since that time, I've lost everything, everyone I cared about. So yes, I suppose you're right. They are cursed." Hurley is overjoyed that someone finally agrees with him, and embraces Danielle in a big hug. It's been over 16 years since anyone has hugged Danielle, so Hurley's hug must be quite a surprise to her. Shortly after that, Hurley comes back with a battery which presumably Danielle gave to him; earlier in the episode, Hurley had used the battery as an excuse to go find Danielle, since Michael had been looking for a power source for a distress call for the raft.

John Locke finally shows Claire what she has been helping him build. It's a crib for her baby. I find it a bit humorous that Claire didn't figure out what it was sooner considering that she was right there the whole time it was being built. Claire reveals to John that it's her birthday, and she hadn't told anyone because she didn't think it mattered, but John warmly says "Happy birthday, Claire" after showing her the cradle.

Charlie approaches Hurley on the beach and they have a conversation about Hurley's bad luck. Charlie doesn't think it was Hurley's luck that led to the plane crash, and he tells Hurley about his heroin addiction and rhetorically asks Hurley whether he thinks that was his fault, too. Charlie then asks Hurley to reciprocate and tell his biggest secret since Charlie has just revealed his own. Hurley says "Okay. Back home I'm worth 156 million dollars." Charlie doesn't believe him and storms off, shouting "I bare my soul, and all I get is bloody jokes"—a classic moment.

The episode ends on a mysterious note, as we see a shot of the partially unearthed hatch door, and the camera zooms in to reveal "4 8 15 16 23 42" engraved on the side. Hurley later sees these numbers on the hatch in the season finale, "Exodus, Part 2", and repeatedly shouts "The Numbers are bad!" while trying to prevent Locke from blowing open the hatch door. In the Season 5 episode "Some Like It Hoth", when Hurley is stuck in the 1970s, he sees a DHARMA Initiative worker engraving the Numbers into the hatch door as The Swan is being built. The worker refers to the Numbers as "the serial number that goes on the hatch lid." Hurley explains to Miles how he knows about The Swan: "...they're building our hatch. The one that crashed our plane."

Season 1 Episode 19 - "Deus Ex Machina"

The episode begins with a flashback to when John Locke has some hair and is working in a toy store. He shows a kid the game Mouse Trap, which he says he used to play with his brother. This game would later appear in the recreation room at The Others' barracks in the Season 3 episode "Left Behind". In the toy store, John sees a woman watching him. He walks over to her to ask if she needs help, and she says she's looking for footballs, so Locke tells her "Aisle 8 for regulation, aisle 15 for Nerf." We find out later in the episode that the woman is his biological mother, Emily Locke, whom John has apparently never met. She claims he doesn't have a father and that he was "immaculately conceived." As an aside, the Immaculate Conception is the Catholic doctrine that the Virgin Mary was conceived free from all sin, and is unrelated to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, which seems to be the doctrine that Emily Locke meant to reference.

Locke's plan to break the glass on the hatch door using a trebuchet fails. This makes him angry and he yells "This was supposed to work!" Boone notices that a large metal fragment of the trebuchet is embedded deep in Locke's leg, which doesn't cause Locke any pain. John discovers that he's lost the feeling in both of his legs. This may have been caused by his wavering faith in the Island.

In a flashback, a private investigator tells John that there's a 99% certainty that the woman claiming to be Emily Locke is really his mother, based on a hair sample DNA analysis. Before handing over the red folder containing information on John's father, Anthony Cooper, the private investigator warns John, "I've done this enough times to know this stuff isn't meant to be, even though it may feel that way. But this probably won't have a happy ending." John takes the folder anyway and meets Anthony Cooper for the first time, who invites him to go hunting.

On the Island, Locke has a lucid dream in which he sees a Beechcraft airplane crashing on the Island, a bloodied Boone repeating "Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs," and his own mother standing in the jungle. After awakening from his dream, Locke wakes up Boone and convinces him that the dream is a sign by mentioning Theresa. Boone later tells Locke that she was his nanny when he was six, and she broke her neck falling down the stairs in their house. Locke's vision of a bleeding Boone and the story about Theresa falling and receiving a (presumably) fatal injury foreshadow Boone's own demise.

On the way to where Locke saw the plane crash in his dream, Locke and Boone find the body of a Nigerian man with gold teeth dressed like a priest and toting a gun. We now know that this is Goldie, who had been a drug smuggler along with Mr. Eko. Goldie was directly responsible for Yemi being on the Beechcraft plane and Eko getting left behind in Nigeria, which saved Eko's life and led to him falsely assume the role of a priest in Yemi's stead.

John begins to have difficulty walking. Eventually they see the plane, a yellow Beechcraft just as John had envisioned it. It's up high on a cliff, lodged in some branches. Because of the condition of his legs, Locke tells Boone, "You're going to have to climb up there for us and find out [what's inside it]." Boone nods in compliance and takes off toward the cliff. Inside he finds Virgin Mary heroin statues and a two-way radio embedded in the console. He fires up the radio and it still works, so he sends out an SOS. He hears a man's voice reply, "We're the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!" In the Season 2 episode "The Other 48 Days" we find out that the person who responded to Boone was Bernard, although the actor who plays Bernard had not been cast yet when this episode was filmed, hence the voices don't match.

The plane begins creaking and suddenly falls with Boone still inside, leaving him badly injured. Locke somehow musters enough strength to carry Boone back to camp and bring him to Jack. As Jack prepares to operate, Locke sneaks away without any warning.

In a flashback, we find out that John's dad conned him into giving up his kidney. Emily Locke shows up in the hospital and apologizes to John, saying it was all Anthony's idea and that she went along with the plan for the money he promised to give her. It turns out that the private investigator was right; there wasn't a happy ending to Locke's reunion with his father. Little did the viewers know that there was more to this tragic story that would be revealed later in the series, including John being pushed out an 8th-story window by his father. Anthony Cooper didn't have much of a happy ending, either; he was strangled to death by Sawyer in the Season 3 episode "The Brig".

Interestingly, Anthony Cooper's driveway security guard is named Eddie, which is the same name as another character seen in Locke's flashbacks in the Season 3 episode "Further Instructions".

Locke pounds on the hatch in frustration, much like he pounded on the inside of his car after learning that his parents had conned him. Suddenly, the hatch light turns on, and that's the shocking end of the episode. John later related to Desmond in the Season 2 finale, "Live Together, Die Alone", that he originally thought that the light emanating from the hatch was a sign, "But it wasn't a sign. Probably just you going to the bathroom."

The title of this episode, "Deus Ex Machina", is a Latin phrase that literally means "god from the machine." The term is used to denote a sudden unexpected occurrence that saves the day. What was this episode's deus ex machina? The episode title seems to have reference to the light that came on in the hatch. Prior to that moment, nobody had any idea what was inside the hatch, so this event was a shock to both Locke and the viewer. Locke viewed it as a sign that he was on the right track, that he had pleased the Island and was fulfilling his destiny, thus turning John from his feelings of despair and intense frustration to feelings of wonder and elation.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

LOST Rewatch: S1E17 "...In Translation"

2009-07-04T01:10:00.000-07:00

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.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-07-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-06-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-06-27T23:33:00.000-07:00

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".

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-06-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-06-14T02:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

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

2009-06-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

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).

Subscribe to this blog and podcast and stay tuned for more rewatchy goodness!

The LOST Rewatch: Seasons 1-5 in Review

2009-05-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

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!

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

2009-05-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2009-05-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

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."

UPDATE 2: I've continued the discussion of Jacob's tapestry in this post.