Wow. What an episode!!!
I have to re-watch it a few more times before I even venture a blog posting about it, so until then (probably by Saturday or Sunday) here is EW's column from Doc Jensen on the new episode. Enjoy.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Worth a peek
Here's a link that will take you to lostblog.net where this specific entry discusses some interesting theories on Ben, Miles, and Aaron from last week's episode.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Scrambled Eggtown
Lostaways-
Locke makes Ben breakfast, Sawyer's shacking up with Hurley, and Jin wants to move to Albuquerque.....and those weren't even the good parts of this week's LOST??? Hmm, must have been a good one.
First matter of business, the meaning of the episode's title: "Eggtown...Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering, during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that is also highly perishable. Nobody wants to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they have their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would use the term like "If I were you I would stay away from Bogart. That's an egg-town." Of course, the lack of trust among salesman was also high, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town's customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman ventures into Bogart only to find it is truly an egg-town. He is either persuaded to not visit a town that has good customers or is tricked into visiting a town that can only offer eggs. The term "egg-town" represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case."
"creepy", Benry Gale-Linus. I found it ironic that Locke slept in Ben's house, in his bed, etc. (since both men have had their issues with each other, and with walking, since Flight 815 crashed). Locke has reversed the literal roles since being in Othersville last (when he was locked up in the same basement for blowing up the submarine...allegedly), but still has no real good grasp on what to do. Also noteworthy is the fact that Locke has Ben locked up in the same room where Ben was keeping "the man from Tallahassee" (Anthony Cooper, Locke's dad). It seems that Ben has replaced Locke's dad as the "father who doesn't want/love me, has tried to kill me, and mocks me for my weaknesses that he (Ben and/or Cooper) helped to create" role in Locke's life. Just what he needed, right? Ben comments to John that he is "more LOST than ever" which is just the kind of thing that would potentially cause Locke to do something like, uh, I dont know, through a plate with eggs and honeydew melon against a brick wall maybe?
Ben seems to always be in control, even when locked up in his own basement. Locke does seem LOST, having not been able to find Jacob or his cabin (something even Hurley could do). The entire episode Locke seems desperate and angry and cranky. This is a common theme on the show during the past 3-plus seasons. Locke gets motivated/excited when things go well (i.e. he can walk after three years in a wheel chair, the light shines out of the hatch when Boone is dying and Locke is asking for a sign, his faith is restored in the hatch when it is too late at the end of season two when he looks at Eko and says "I was wrong"), but then becomes irritable and desperate any time things go wrong. For a "man of faith", he certainly loses his (and his temper) very quickly. One would almost say he's human.
One other quick note about Locke.....last season after he got back from rescuing Eko from the polar bear, he was motivated and in high spirits. He told the beach dwellers that he would do what he could to get their friends (Jack, KAte, Sawyer) back from the Others. He led a group to the Pearl station to hopefully find clues as to how they could find the Others' camp and when Nikki said to him "Jack would never let us come with", Locke responds "This is a democracy and I dont run things like Jack". Then in tonight's episode, Locke says almost the exact opposite. Locke is obsessed with comparing himself to Jack and part of his own tragic flaw is the inability to feel confident in, and good about, himself. To be fair to my favorite character, he had a pretty "tough" life leading up to the crash.
But the big news (sorry I'm jumping around in the story here, but thoughts come to me and I'm a slave to them, like the Britney Spears song, when she had a little talent before getting "Federline-ed").....Aaron is being raised by Kate in the future with no Claire in sight. Kate obviously did not want her mom seeing her "son", and told her lawyer not to use her "son" on
the witness stand, because she doesnt want anyone to find out the truth: something happened to Claire, and she, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, and probably whoever else is part of the Oceanic Six are lying about what went on on the island. Claire, I'll graciously wager, either got left behind or will end up being killed.
Thinking back to season one, the psychic who told Claire originally to go, Richard Malkin, said that only Claire should raise her baby because evil would surround him (Aaron). There is a deleted scene from Season Two that I wrote about last year when those dvd's came out where in the episode when Eko goes to investigate the girl who drowned and came back to life, we discover that the girl's father is Richard Malkin, the psychic. In this deleted scene I'm talking about, he tells Mr Eko that someone gave him $16,000 to make a pregnant girl get on a plane to L.A. So the psychic who originally told her not to give the baby away because evil surrounded it (something I believe he really meant) sold her out and sent her to LA with $6000 of that $16000. I use to think that the psychic was a part of the same group of time-traveling "guides" who have been directing many of the people on the island to the island in their past lives (i.e. the old woman who told Desmond he couldnt marry Penny), but now I think he was simply used by whoever those people are (Others, or the Boat People and Matthew Abbadon) to get Claire to get on the plane. So this would mean that his original prediction that Aaron was special, but needed to be raised by his mom or else evil would surround him, is going to help explain what it is that went so wrong on the island before the Oceanic Six got off it (and why Claire is not there raising her boy).
Speaking of the "boy", Aaron: Jack was not wanting anything to do with coming to see him with Kate and her house at the end of the episode. Perhaps just the sight of the boy is too painful because it reminds him of the island and whatever it is that went wrong (i.e. Jack had to make a tough decision to leave people behind). Or perhaps Jack thinks its Sawyer's kid and can't look at Aaron for that reason. But more likely than not, Jack doesn't want to see Aaron because whatever it is that went wrong and caused the Oceanic Six to lie about how many survived and all that must have involved Jack finally finding out that Claire is his sister, and when things went bad and Claire either got killed or left behind, Jack cannot forgive himself for it, nor look at his own flesh and blood, his nephew, Aaron Littleton. This might be a key to unlocking the mystery of why Jack wants to go back so bad. He left Claire, his own sister, and for someone like Jack who has to "fix" everything, the idea of abandoning his sister and separating her from her son, is too much to bear. (see: bearded Jack listening to Nirvana songs while boozing in the AM)
Jack, the honest doctor, is forced to lie not only about the happenings on the island, but about his true love for Kate. He said that eight survived, but only six got off, to the jury. Kate later said that she has heard Jack tell that same story (of how she saved everyone; a probably concocted as a means to help Kate when she got back get sympathy from the legal system who were waiting for her) that she thinks he's almost started to believe it. Why would they have to lie so bad? Did the people who helped them get off make them lie, or did the Oceanic Six decide to do this on their own? Can we extrapolate from Sayid's hunting down of what probably is the Boat People's bosses (or boss, the "he" Miles references when talking with Ben later) that the Boat People don't actually help the Oceanic Six get off, but that there is some other means by which they escape (like a submarine that someone didnt actually blow up last season)???
Back to Ben and Miles's conversation that Kate arranged: Miles said "Don't treat me like one of 'them'...Don't act like I dont know who you are and what you can do!" Miles also said that "He" has been looking for Ben for a long time. The "He" might just be Matthew Abbadon, but it also might be someone higher up who knows all about Ben and the island. Someone from the past, someone with possible DHARMA connections. Someone like Alvar Hanso, financier of the original DHARMA Initiative. Just a thought. Miles extorts Ben for money, and I am guessing that the way Ben gets cash (and enough of it that Miles and the people he works for know about it) is time travel. He can go back in time or to any country (hence, the money and various suits and clothes he has) and steal cash or possibly go back in time and invest money in the right stocks,
business deals, etc. The front company that hired Juliet was called Mittelos Bioscience. Or, LOST Time Bioscience. So however it is the Others travel back and forth to the "real world", whether by submarine or by time travel, Ben needs a week to get "that kind of money" together for Miles. I'm not sure why Ben would trust Miles that he would never tell his "boss" where BEn was even after getting the cash, but something tells me Ben has more surprises in store for our Asian ghost-busting friend.
Random thoughts and theories:
-Hurley is watching the movie Xanadu (the name of a famed Mongolian city that was supposed to be Eden-like) at one point, which is a movie where people cross over from other dimensions into our world, but what I found that was more interesting regarding this pop-culture reference was this: Xanadu is the home of a famous comic book character, Mandrake the Magician, who "was an illusionist whose work was based on an impossibly fast hypnotic technique. As the narrator informed us: "Mandrake gestured hypnotically" and the subject or subjects of this hypnosis would suddenly see the illusions he wanted. Mandrake fought criminals and other villains in his spare time. This would include common gangsters, mad scientists, and aliens from outer space or other dimensions." Sounds island-esque, doesnt it?
- Hurley also asks Kate if she "Scooby-dooed" him. Besides being my favorite cartoon character to have on my underwear growing up, Scooby doo is a show about mysterious spirits and ghosts who generally end up being a "man behind the curtain" (think:Ben/Jacob). Scooby is also easily fooled by the most modest of tricks and mind games. (think: Hurley)
-CS Lewis (Charolette's namesake) and his Chronicles of Narnia are said by the co-creators of the show to be huge influences on the writing team on LOST. Last week, it came to my attention, that when I briefly mentioned the Narnia series I might have misrepresented the EXACT circumstances in which the children travel to the world of Narnia. I said they were "called", but in the first book "Lion,Witch,Wardrobe" the youngest girl Lucy finds it in the wardrobe. But, going forward in the series of books, like the very next one Prince Caspian, a horn is sounded in Narnia that the children hear while sitting on a train station platform and they are brought back to Narnia to help fight an evil tyrant. Throughout the series of books, not everyone who wants to come to Narnia is allowed, and we discover that the ones who are brought there are each brought there for a purpose. So, in short, these themes I alluded to last week are correct, but just were not fully explained. If you really want to know more, and are one of the 15 people on the planet who haven't read these books, go take care of that ASAP.
-I am feeling more time travel in the very near future by Desmond. If you caught it last night, in the preview for next week, he goes in one shot from being bearded with longer hair to being beard-less with a buzzed haircut. He is yelling at Daniel Faraday in some room, and Faraday appeared to have much longer hair/beard than he did when we saw him guessing at cards with Charolette on the beach.
Anyway, thats just my two cents...have a great week and please post any thoughts or theories of your own on the "Comments" section below.
Good day to you,
Sawyer's Feminine Reading Glasses
Locke makes Ben breakfast, Sawyer's shacking up with Hurley, and Jin wants to move to Albuquerque.....and those weren't even the good parts of this week's LOST??? Hmm, must have been a good one.
First matter of business, the meaning of the episode's title: "Eggtown...Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering, during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that is also highly perishable. Nobody wants to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they have their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would use the term like "If I were you I would stay away from Bogart. That's an egg-town." Of course, the lack of trust among salesman was also high, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town's customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman ventures into Bogart only to find it is truly an egg-town. He is either persuaded to not visit a town that has good customers or is tricked into visiting a town that can only offer eggs. The term "egg-town" represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case."
That, of course, is from Lostpedia's posting about this episode. I love all the new allusions to economics and trade theory this show has implemented. Locke is struggling to make deals with his own people, let alone Ben and Miles. Kate is making deals with Sawyer (then ditching him), Miles, and the District Attorney and her own mother when she gets off the island. Miles has a side deal brewing with Ben for a seemingly arbitrary dollar amount. (Or is it?)
Taking this economic line of thinking further than it needs to go, one of the key ingredients to a free market is voluntary participation, but something that economists like Adam Smith and John Locke (the real one) believed was also critical to the system of economy would be moral individuals who, despite working in their self-interest, were following a "standard" or commonly accepted "set of rules". Locke, in this episode, eventually even makes the comment that no one is following the rules voluntarily, so he'll put limits on how "free" this island market can get.
Is this the island or Oliver Stone's 1987 classic Wall Street starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen?
This Kate-centric opens with my boy Locke preparing the "last two eggs in town" for the man who corners the market on"creepy", Benry Gale-Linus. I found it ironic that Locke slept in Ben's house, in his bed, etc. (since both men have had their issues with each other, and with walking, since Flight 815 crashed). Locke has reversed the literal roles since being in Othersville last (when he was locked up in the same basement for blowing up the submarine...allegedly), but still has no real good grasp on what to do. Also noteworthy is the fact that Locke has Ben locked up in the same room where Ben was keeping "the man from Tallahassee" (Anthony Cooper, Locke's dad). It seems that Ben has replaced Locke's dad as the "father who doesn't want/love me, has tried to kill me, and mocks me for my weaknesses that he (Ben and/or Cooper) helped to create" role in Locke's life. Just what he needed, right? Ben comments to John that he is "more LOST than ever" which is just the kind of thing that would potentially cause Locke to do something like, uh, I dont know, through a plate with eggs and honeydew melon against a brick wall maybe?Ben seems to always be in control, even when locked up in his own basement. Locke does seem LOST, having not been able to find Jacob or his cabin (something even Hurley could do). The entire episode Locke seems desperate and angry and cranky. This is a common theme on the show during the past 3-plus seasons. Locke gets motivated/excited when things go well (i.e. he can walk after three years in a wheel chair, the light shines out of the hatch when Boone is dying and Locke is asking for a sign, his faith is restored in the hatch when it is too late at the end of season two when he looks at Eko and says "I was wrong"), but then becomes irritable and desperate any time things go wrong. For a "man of faith", he certainly loses his (and his temper) very quickly. One would almost say he's human.
One other quick note about Locke.....last season after he got back from rescuing Eko from the polar bear, he was motivated and in high spirits. He told the beach dwellers that he would do what he could to get their friends (Jack, KAte, Sawyer) back from the Others. He led a group to the Pearl station to hopefully find clues as to how they could find the Others' camp and when Nikki said to him "Jack would never let us come with", Locke responds "This is a democracy and I dont run things like Jack". Then in tonight's episode, Locke says almost the exact opposite. Locke is obsessed with comparing himself to Jack and part of his own tragic flaw is the inability to feel confident in, and good about, himself. To be fair to my favorite character, he had a pretty "tough" life leading up to the crash.
But the big news (sorry I'm jumping around in the story here, but thoughts come to me and I'm a slave to them, like the Britney Spears song, when she had a little talent before getting "Federline-ed").....Aaron is being raised by Kate in the future with no Claire in sight. Kate obviously did not want her mom seeing her "son", and told her lawyer not to use her "son" on
the witness stand, because she doesnt want anyone to find out the truth: something happened to Claire, and she, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, and probably whoever else is part of the Oceanic Six are lying about what went on on the island. Claire, I'll graciously wager, either got left behind or will end up being killed.Thinking back to season one, the psychic who told Claire originally to go, Richard Malkin, said that only Claire should raise her baby because evil would surround him (Aaron). There is a deleted scene from Season Two that I wrote about last year when those dvd's came out where in the episode when Eko goes to investigate the girl who drowned and came back to life, we discover that the girl's father is Richard Malkin, the psychic. In this deleted scene I'm talking about, he tells Mr Eko that someone gave him $16,000 to make a pregnant girl get on a plane to L.A. So the psychic who originally told her not to give the baby away because evil surrounded it (something I believe he really meant) sold her out and sent her to LA with $6000 of that $16000. I use to think that the psychic was a part of the same group of time-traveling "guides" who have been directing many of the people on the island to the island in their past lives (i.e. the old woman who told Desmond he couldnt marry Penny), but now I think he was simply used by whoever those people are (Others, or the Boat People and Matthew Abbadon) to get Claire to get on the plane. So this would mean that his original prediction that Aaron was special, but needed to be raised by his mom or else evil would surround him, is going to help explain what it is that went so wrong on the island before the Oceanic Six got off it (and why Claire is not there raising her boy).
Speaking of the "boy", Aaron: Jack was not wanting anything to do with coming to see him with Kate and her house at the end of the episode. Perhaps just the sight of the boy is too painful because it reminds him of the island and whatever it is that went wrong (i.e. Jack had to make a tough decision to leave people behind). Or perhaps Jack thinks its Sawyer's kid and can't look at Aaron for that reason. But more likely than not, Jack doesn't want to see Aaron because whatever it is that went wrong and caused the Oceanic Six to lie about how many survived and all that must have involved Jack finally finding out that Claire is his sister, and when things went bad and Claire either got killed or left behind, Jack cannot forgive himself for it, nor look at his own flesh and blood, his nephew, Aaron Littleton. This might be a key to unlocking the mystery of why Jack wants to go back so bad. He left Claire, his own sister, and for someone like Jack who has to "fix" everything, the idea of abandoning his sister and separating her from her son, is too much to bear. (see: bearded Jack listening to Nirvana songs while boozing in the AM)
Jack, the honest doctor, is forced to lie not only about the happenings on the island, but about his true love for Kate. He said that eight survived, but only six got off, to the jury. Kate later said that she has heard Jack tell that same story (of how she saved everyone; a probably concocted as a means to help Kate when she got back get sympathy from the legal system who were waiting for her) that she thinks he's almost started to believe it. Why would they have to lie so bad? Did the people who helped them get off make them lie, or did the Oceanic Six decide to do this on their own? Can we extrapolate from Sayid's hunting down of what probably is the Boat People's bosses (or boss, the "he" Miles references when talking with Ben later) that the Boat People don't actually help the Oceanic Six get off, but that there is some other means by which they escape (like a submarine that someone didnt actually blow up last season)???
Back to Ben and Miles's conversation that Kate arranged: Miles said "Don't treat me like one of 'them'...Don't act like I dont know who you are and what you can do!" Miles also said that "He" has been looking for Ben for a long time. The "He" might just be Matthew Abbadon, but it also might be someone higher up who knows all about Ben and the island. Someone from the past, someone with possible DHARMA connections. Someone like Alvar Hanso, financier of the original DHARMA Initiative. Just a thought. Miles extorts Ben for money, and I am guessing that the way Ben gets cash (and enough of it that Miles and the people he works for know about it) is time travel. He can go back in time or to any country (hence, the money and various suits and clothes he has) and steal cash or possibly go back in time and invest money in the right stocks,
business deals, etc. The front company that hired Juliet was called Mittelos Bioscience. Or, LOST Time Bioscience. So however it is the Others travel back and forth to the "real world", whether by submarine or by time travel, Ben needs a week to get "that kind of money" together for Miles. I'm not sure why Ben would trust Miles that he would never tell his "boss" where BEn was even after getting the cash, but something tells me Ben has more surprises in store for our Asian ghost-busting friend.Random thoughts and theories:
-Hurley is watching the movie Xanadu (the name of a famed Mongolian city that was supposed to be Eden-like) at one point, which is a movie where people cross over from other dimensions into our world, but what I found that was more interesting regarding this pop-culture reference was this: Xanadu is the home of a famous comic book character, Mandrake the Magician, who "was an illusionist whose work was based on an impossibly fast hypnotic technique. As the narrator informed us: "Mandrake gestured hypnotically" and the subject or subjects of this hypnosis would suddenly see the illusions he wanted. Mandrake fought criminals and other villains in his spare time. This would include common gangsters, mad scientists, and aliens from outer space or other dimensions." Sounds island-esque, doesnt it?
- Hurley also asks Kate if she "Scooby-dooed" him. Besides being my favorite cartoon character to have on my underwear growing up, Scooby doo is a show about mysterious spirits and ghosts who generally end up being a "man behind the curtain" (think:Ben/Jacob). Scooby is also easily fooled by the most modest of tricks and mind games. (think: Hurley)
-CS Lewis (Charolette's namesake) and his Chronicles of Narnia are said by the co-creators of the show to be huge influences on the writing team on LOST. Last week, it came to my attention, that when I briefly mentioned the Narnia series I might have misrepresented the EXACT circumstances in which the children travel to the world of Narnia. I said they were "called", but in the first book "Lion,Witch,Wardrobe" the youngest girl Lucy finds it in the wardrobe. But, going forward in the series of books, like the very next one Prince Caspian, a horn is sounded in Narnia that the children hear while sitting on a train station platform and they are brought back to Narnia to help fight an evil tyrant. Throughout the series of books, not everyone who wants to come to Narnia is allowed, and we discover that the ones who are brought there are each brought there for a purpose. So, in short, these themes I alluded to last week are correct, but just were not fully explained. If you really want to know more, and are one of the 15 people on the planet who haven't read these books, go take care of that ASAP.
-I am feeling more time travel in the very near future by Desmond. If you caught it last night, in the preview for next week, he goes in one shot from being bearded with longer hair to being beard-less with a buzzed haircut. He is yelling at Daniel Faraday in some room, and Faraday appeared to have much longer hair/beard than he did when we saw him guessing at cards with Charolette on the beach.
Anyway, thats just my two cents...have a great week and please post any thoughts or theories of your own on the "Comments" section below.
Good day to you,
Sawyer's Feminine Reading Glasses
Re-Watch this again
If you haven't seen the "Orchid" station orientation video that LOST's producers released last August, watch it right here. Co-creator Damon Lindelof promises that this video is key to answering why the polar bear CS Lewis found in episode one of this season was in Tunisia.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Re-cap of "The Economist"
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Here is the Lostpedia.com re-cap of the latest episode of Lost
http://lostpedia.com/wiki/The_Economist
Hey Jack, be more ambiguous, okay?
The Economist is Me
Castaways-
Who’s your favorite economist? Mine is/was none other than Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago who passed away last year. All this monetarist did was change the intellectual landscape of 20th century economics, win the Nobel Prize in 1976, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988. He was a champion of the “radical” idea that perhaps Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had found a pretty remarkable link between political and economic freedom. I personally just want more free stuff from my government, and Friedman’s theories are missing an awful lot of words like “change” and “hope” for my liking.
But I digress…
Actually, I don’t: Barack Obama is the most unqualified person to ever run for the office of President.
So, LOST??? Good show.
Sayid is still under Ben’s control, even off the island and as a member of the famed Oceanic Six. In that conversation at the end of the episode, the two of them allude to some prior situation with a girl whose death Ben used to blackmail Sayid into working for him. I thought it was interesting that Ben was a doggie doctor and one of the dogs in the crates we saw looked like the one from the portrait of a pooch in Jacob’s cabin from last season’s episode where Locke heard Jacob say “help me.” Also, the smokey monster is called Cerberus (guard-dog of Hade in Greek mythology). Vincent is obviously a special canine too. There’s something up with dogs on LOST and I intend by next week to have a real, substantive theory about that. If you have any before then, post-a-way!
Okay, so this post is a hurried and scatter-brained one, but I have random thoughts about the episode (which was another home-run in my opinion). First off, The Economist was said to be “old fashioned” by Elsa (the skirt Sayid was chasing). Ben last season described Jacob much the same way to Locke, and even commented that Locke felt the same way about technology as Jacob did. This, in my mind at least, possibly points to either Jacob being the Economist, or to a person similar to Jacob, maybe even from the same ship-wrecked slave ship, being the Economist. What do I mean?
I am still going with my theory that there is a group of Others within the Others who have been there for quite some time. My guesstimate is that they are survivors of the crash of the slave ship The Black Rock. Some or all of them found the secrets of the island which lengthen or eternalize life (hence, Richard appearing to be the same age in Ben’s back story and in present “island” time). Perhaps some of those survivors got off the island, while Jacob (who may be Magnus Hanso) stayed behind (or was left behind). Maybe the bigger picture struggle going on isn’t between Ben and Matthew Abbadon, but between Jacob and whoever is running that group of people who come to hunt Ben down and then Ben uses Sayid to hunt them down.
Moving on…the matching bracelets that Naomi and Elsa had were obviously an indicator that they worked for the same person/organization. Ben reminds Sayid that whoever these people are, they don’t deserve “our sympathy.” Sounds pretty bad, but when coming from the most manipulative person this side of me when I was 11 with my younger siblings and their allowance money, it means very little right now. Sayid is obviously an emotional wreck and has some lingering guilt that causes him to work for such a creepy guy, killing people none the less. The guy Sayid shot first thing at the golf course was on an island chain east of Africa in the Indian Ocean. He was obviously wealthy and probably a higher-up in whatever secret organization this is Sayid’s tracking down members of. Perhaps this is further evidence of a link to Windimore and Paik Industries.
Speaking of which, our boy Desmond was back in the Scottish mix with a full-court press of the helicopter pilot and Faraday the neurotic physicist regarding their knowledge of Penny. I mean, come on, their looks gave it away that something was up, but we didn’t even need that much information to realize there’s a connection. They’ve got a frickin’ picture of Penny and Dez that only Desmond had a copy of. Again, my theory here is that they know Penny found at least the vicinity of the island at the end of season two when those guys in the snow-clad mountains honed in on the electromagnetic activity and phoned her. Since then, whoever these boat people are have been tracking her movements and coordinates and beat her to the punch of finding the island.
Also pertaining to Desmond, I believe his vision he told Charlie he saw was not of Aaron and Claire getting on that helicopter, but of himself getting off the island back to Penny. I think that’s why he felt so badly about Charlie going down to the Looking Glass station and was even willing at the last second to trade places with Drive Shaft himself. I have little other evidence to go on but that…
There was also the fascinating scene of the rocket launched from the ship landing 31 minutes late on the island. Faraday said that it was “beyond weird” that this occurred, and then insisted that the pilot follow the exact same bearing going out that they’d used going in. Obviously the pilot, Frank, will be back, and it would appear that there are two slots left open for members of the Oceanic Six. Desmond and Ben will get off the island, but neither were on the plane and Ben’s escape is likely not one he wants publicized anyway.
Final thought/theory…I really think its shaping up that Locke did not blow up the submarine and still has it stashed away somewhere near the dock. I’ve gone over why I think this many times before, but basically I don’t think its gone and he’s saving it for a rainy day, and it will ultimately be how Ben (possibly others) get off the island in the end.
Sayid is still the man, despite his head-hunting ways. He was an economist in this episode himself as he carefully orchestrated deals, prisoner exchange rates, hedged his bets, and merged as partners (or so it seems) with Locke to go and spy on the ship and see what’s what. Great episode and next week’s will hopefully continue this season’s current trend of brilliance. Decent show.
Love,
Sayid’s Mane of Hair
Who’s your favorite economist? Mine is/was none other than Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago who passed away last year. All this monetarist did was change the intellectual landscape of 20th century economics, win the Nobel Prize in 1976, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988. He was a champion of the “radical” idea that perhaps Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson had found a pretty remarkable link between political and economic freedom. I personally just want more free stuff from my government, and Friedman’s theories are missing an awful lot of words like “change” and “hope” for my liking.
But I digress…
Actually, I don’t: Barack Obama is the most unqualified person to ever run for the office of President.
So, LOST??? Good show.
Sayid is still under Ben’s control, even off the island and as a member of the famed Oceanic Six. In that conversation at the end of the episode, the two of them allude to some prior situation with a girl whose death Ben used to blackmail Sayid into working for him. I thought it was interesting that Ben was a doggie doctor and one of the dogs in the crates we saw looked like the one from the portrait of a pooch in Jacob’s cabin from last season’s episode where Locke heard Jacob say “help me.” Also, the smokey monster is called Cerberus (guard-dog of Hade in Greek mythology). Vincent is obviously a special canine too. There’s something up with dogs on LOST and I intend by next week to have a real, substantive theory about that. If you have any before then, post-a-way!
Okay, so this post is a hurried and scatter-brained one, but I have random thoughts about the episode (which was another home-run in my opinion). First off, The Economist was said to be “old fashioned” by Elsa (the skirt Sayid was chasing). Ben last season described Jacob much the same way to Locke, and even commented that Locke felt the same way about technology as Jacob did. This, in my mind at least, possibly points to either Jacob being the Economist, or to a person similar to Jacob, maybe even from the same ship-wrecked slave ship, being the Economist. What do I mean?
I am still going with my theory that there is a group of Others within the Others who have been there for quite some time. My guesstimate is that they are survivors of the crash of the slave ship The Black Rock. Some or all of them found the secrets of the island which lengthen or eternalize life (hence, Richard appearing to be the same age in Ben’s back story and in present “island” time). Perhaps some of those survivors got off the island, while Jacob (who may be Magnus Hanso) stayed behind (or was left behind). Maybe the bigger picture struggle going on isn’t between Ben and Matthew Abbadon, but between Jacob and whoever is running that group of people who come to hunt Ben down and then Ben uses Sayid to hunt them down.
Moving on…the matching bracelets that Naomi and Elsa had were obviously an indicator that they worked for the same person/organization. Ben reminds Sayid that whoever these people are, they don’t deserve “our sympathy.” Sounds pretty bad, but when coming from the most manipulative person this side of me when I was 11 with my younger siblings and their allowance money, it means very little right now. Sayid is obviously an emotional wreck and has some lingering guilt that causes him to work for such a creepy guy, killing people none the less. The guy Sayid shot first thing at the golf course was on an island chain east of Africa in the Indian Ocean. He was obviously wealthy and probably a higher-up in whatever secret organization this is Sayid’s tracking down members of. Perhaps this is further evidence of a link to Windimore and Paik Industries.
Speaking of which, our boy Desmond was back in the Scottish mix with a full-court press of the helicopter pilot and Faraday the neurotic physicist regarding their knowledge of Penny. I mean, come on, their looks gave it away that something was up, but we didn’t even need that much information to realize there’s a connection. They’ve got a frickin’ picture of Penny and Dez that only Desmond had a copy of. Again, my theory here is that they know Penny found at least the vicinity of the island at the end of season two when those guys in the snow-clad mountains honed in on the electromagnetic activity and phoned her. Since then, whoever these boat people are have been tracking her movements and coordinates and beat her to the punch of finding the island.
Also pertaining to Desmond, I believe his vision he told Charlie he saw was not of Aaron and Claire getting on that helicopter, but of himself getting off the island back to Penny. I think that’s why he felt so badly about Charlie going down to the Looking Glass station and was even willing at the last second to trade places with Drive Shaft himself. I have little other evidence to go on but that…
There was also the fascinating scene of the rocket launched from the ship landing 31 minutes late on the island. Faraday said that it was “beyond weird” that this occurred, and then insisted that the pilot follow the exact same bearing going out that they’d used going in. Obviously the pilot, Frank, will be back, and it would appear that there are two slots left open for members of the Oceanic Six. Desmond and Ben will get off the island, but neither were on the plane and Ben’s escape is likely not one he wants publicized anyway.
Final thought/theory…I really think its shaping up that Locke did not blow up the submarine and still has it stashed away somewhere near the dock. I’ve gone over why I think this many times before, but basically I don’t think its gone and he’s saving it for a rainy day, and it will ultimately be how Ben (possibly others) get off the island in the end.
Sayid is still the man, despite his head-hunting ways. He was an economist in this episode himself as he carefully orchestrated deals, prisoner exchange rates, hedged his bets, and merged as partners (or so it seems) with Locke to go and spy on the ship and see what’s what. Great episode and next week’s will hopefully continue this season’s current trend of brilliance. Decent show.
Love,
Sayid’s Mane of Hair
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Episode III Preview
Check out Doc Jensen of EWonline's preview for this week's episode. Blog to come (this time tomorrow).
Included in the Doc's predictions is this little tidbit:
The Sub--I bet you 20 bucks that Locke not only didn't blow it up, but he's keeping it in his back pocket for a rainy day (i.e., submerged off the coast of the Island) — like, say, an end-of-season rescue mission to bust his friends out of the freighter.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Confirmed Fan
Castaways-
Before anything else is said here today....Charlotte Staples Lewis??? CS Lewis is to me what Locke was to Boone (before the whole "dying" thing): a mentor and a hero. Wow. Of all the helicopter near-crashes, on all the islands, on all the television shows that deal with philosophy/theology more than any other, in all the world...she had to fall up-side down in to a muddy river in mine. I think I'm in love.
Confirmed Dead was the name of this episode, and revealing more information than any other since the pilot seemed to be its game. Sure there are wheel-barrels full of questions that these four new characters brought with them, but we've got two more seasons to go still and I for one am willing to drag things out a little if it means I never have to see Hurley joy-riding a VW bus to fill an episode again. Gosh, that was so lame. (Let it go, big guy.)
Then we meet (again) Daniel Faraday from Essex, MA who is openly weeping for what he claims is a mystery even to himself. Not likely. The dude obviously has issues, but I like the theory that he knew someone on Flight 815 better. (And perhaps he didnt want his wife to know that he had a love interest on that flight.) On the island, he is socially awkward and very nervous when questioned about the gas masks and haz-mat suits that Jack and Kate find in his trunk. This is likely because whoever sent him and his crew believed that the "sickness" we've heard about (ever since Rosseau's creepy story to Sayid in season one about why exactly it was she shot her entire crew) is still in play on the island. This points to someone behind the four new arrivals who knew the island before the "purge", which in my mind points to a probable DHARMA relation to Abbadon and his group of five that he sends.
We're introduced to three other new characters, and the fact that there are four of them made me think of a few random things. For starters, we know that the writers put direct and indirect refernces to classic and modern pieces of literature. One of the writers' favorite authors is Dostoevsky and the book that Ben is given by Locke in season two when Ben is locked up in the hatch is "The Brothers Karamazov" (which I'm currently in the middle of reading) in which there are four brothers of the same demented, evil, sadistic father. Each brother for Dostoevsky represented different aspects of humanity: spirituality, science (knowledge), faith, carnality. The eldest brother was a drunk and passionate hedonist (just like the oldest one of the bunch : the pilot). You get the idea. The numbers, we all know, are important, as are literary techniques "borrowed" from classic writers from the past. Matthew Abbadon tells Naomi in this week's episode that each person in the group is there for a reason. Could part of that reason be to represent something similiar to the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse"....at least in terms of the "end times" for people on the island???
More literally, we can ascertain from the fact that a scientist (Daniel) named after a famous physicist (Faraday) who dealt with theories of electromagnetism is there because of the electromagnetic forces on the island (and possibly time travel, see: the Stephen Hawkins books we saw last season being read by an Other). The "Ghost Buster" (Miles) is there for Jacob (or at least they are aware of the spiritual components on the island. The pilot is there to fly but to also be someone who can relate to the castaways and put them ease because of his intimate understanding of carnal human nature (see: Of the four-man team he was the one to study the names and people on the manifest, How nice he is with Juliet, and how he's the most calm out of the bunch by far in dealing with the castaways that the others in his team are obviously uneasy about). CS Lewis (Charlotte) is there as an anthropologist searching for answers, for truth, and for an explanation of things she wants to understand with just pure science, and I predict that she becomes a true believer in the island when all is said in done (similar to a certain British atheist who converted to Christianity after setting out to prove that God and religious explanations for the world were wrong).
Staying briefly with the CS Lewis theme, The Chronicles of Narnia (for the two people who dont know) is a series about an alternate world of magic, mystery, and intrigue that begins with 4 children being "called" to it. They aren't able to get there on their own and only specific people are welcome to come to Narnia. Sound familiar?
Moving on, Hurley lets the polar bear out of the cave when he comments to Locke that Jacob's cabin was the other direction from where they were heading. The look on Locke and Ben's face was the same Ben had when Locke told him he could hear Jacob last year. What does this mean for Hurley? He's obviously one of the "good" or "special" ones along with Walt, Locke, and Ben.
Ben at another point begins to say something to Alex along the lines of "I need to tell you something..." but before he can finished, Karl, then Sawyer, but in and interrupt whatever it was Ben was going to say. Most likely that would have been Ben's chance to say that no matter what happens, he did always love Alex, etc. but I also would've liked for him to finish that sentence because it might have been a Ben warning to her (like the one he gave Rousseau last week to get far away with his daughter) to bolt ASAP. If he is genuine in his concern for Alex and Danielle, this points to the possibility that these people sent by Abbadon really do mean harm and could be potentially dangerous to everyone on the island just like Ben and Locke firmly believe. But in light of Hurley's apology for siding with Locke in last week's flash-forward....something might end up being wrong or bad or evil about what Locke chooses to do.
Locke admits this week that he's taking his orders from "taller Walt". There's a lot more I want to say about Walt, but without sounding obvious, Walt is going to play a major role in the upcoming season for sure. Remember him touching Locke's arm in season one and screaming "Don't open it John! Don't open it!" in reference to the hatch? The kid knew that chain of events would be the demise of many, and we know only six get off the island, and that there is something worth apologizing for on behalf of Hurley, and there is something that Jack and Kate and whoever else got off swore to secrecy. That adds up for a lot let to explain and plenty of material for two more seasons.
Thoughts, theories:
-The way everyone knows so much about each other on the island (i.e. BEn's run-down of Charlotte's stats) is time-travel. People can move back and get the info and files they need on everyone. Perhaps thats even the only way to get on the island?
-Richard Alpert and some of the Others are a group of Others inside the Others who have been on the island since their ship, the Black Rock crashed more than century earlier. Jacob is the ship's captain, Magnus Hanso, and there is some sort of fountain of life that enables some of them to live forever (or at least have longer life) which is how Richard appered the same age in Ben's back story when he was like 12 and today some 30 years later. There's more I want to say about this, but I'd like to hear what people think.
- The "man on the boat" that Ben claims to have is Michael and/or Walt. Think about it.
-The polar bear being found in Tunisia was placed there by DHARMA people who took the genetically manipulated bears from the island around the world to try them out in different environments (after they succeeded in breeding them on a tropical island).
-Dan Faraday might be the "Danny" that Ana Lucia talked about in her 2nd season back-story. It was some guy we never saw, but whose name was brought up three times as the former boyfriend of Ana's. She was pregnant with his baby in fact when she was shot on the job by that thief she eventually murdered in the parking lot of a bar. If Daniel Faraday is the same Danny, that would mean he cried for Ana Lucia in that opening sequence of this week's episode when they showed the fake wreckage of Flight 815.
-Brad Bowe is convinced that the animal Locke saw coming out of his sweat lodge last season was a lion......click here my friend.
-How cool was that when Locke said he was saved from Ben's gun-shot wound because his dad stole his kidney???
That's all for now.
All Roads Lead Here,
Locke's "Other" Kidney
We're introduced to three other new characters, and the fact that there are four of them made me think of a few random things. For starters, we know that the writers put direct and indirect refernces to classic and modern pieces of literature. One of the writers' favorite authors is Dostoevsky and the book that Ben is given by Locke in season two when Ben is locked up in the hatch is "The Brothers Karamazov" (which I'm currently in the middle of reading) in which there are four brothers of the same demented, evil, sadistic father. Each brother for Dostoevsky represented different aspects of humanity: spirituality, science (knowledge), faith, carnality. The eldest brother was a drunk and passionate hedonist (just like the oldest one of the bunch : the pilot). You get the idea. The numbers, we all know, are important, as are literary techniques "borrowed" from classic writers from the past. Matthew Abbadon tells Naomi in this week's episode that each person in the group is there for a reason. Could part of that reason be to represent something similiar to the "Four Horseman of the Apocalypse"....at least in terms of the "end times" for people on the island???
More literally, we can ascertain from the fact that a scientist (Daniel) named after a famous physicist (Faraday) who dealt with theories of electromagnetism is there because of the electromagnetic forces on the island (and possibly time travel, see: the Stephen Hawkins books we saw last season being read by an Other). The "Ghost Buster" (Miles) is there for Jacob (or at least they are aware of the spiritual components on the island. The pilot is there to fly but to also be someone who can relate to the castaways and put them ease because of his intimate understanding of carnal human nature (see: Of the four-man team he was the one to study the names and people on the manifest, How nice he is with Juliet, and how he's the most calm out of the bunch by far in dealing with the castaways that the others in his team are obviously uneasy about). CS Lewis (Charlotte) is there as an anthropologist searching for answers, for truth, and for an explanation of things she wants to understand with just pure science, and I predict that she becomes a true believer in the island when all is said in done (similar to a certain British atheist who converted to Christianity after setting out to prove that God and religious explanations for the world were wrong).
Staying briefly with the CS Lewis theme, The Chronicles of Narnia (for the two people who dont know) is a series about an alternate world of magic, mystery, and intrigue that begins with 4 children being "called" to it. They aren't able to get there on their own and only specific people are welcome to come to Narnia. Sound familiar?
Moving on, Hurley lets the polar bear out of the cave when he comments to Locke that Jacob's cabin was the other direction from where they were heading. The look on Locke and Ben's face was the same Ben had when Locke told him he could hear Jacob last year. What does this mean for Hurley? He's obviously one of the "good" or "special" ones along with Walt, Locke, and Ben.
Ben at another point begins to say something to Alex along the lines of "I need to tell you something..." but before he can finished, Karl, then Sawyer, but in and interrupt whatever it was Ben was going to say. Most likely that would have been Ben's chance to say that no matter what happens, he did always love Alex, etc. but I also would've liked for him to finish that sentence because it might have been a Ben warning to her (like the one he gave Rousseau last week to get far away with his daughter) to bolt ASAP. If he is genuine in his concern for Alex and Danielle, this points to the possibility that these people sent by Abbadon really do mean harm and could be potentially dangerous to everyone on the island just like Ben and Locke firmly believe. But in light of Hurley's apology for siding with Locke in last week's flash-forward....something might end up being wrong or bad or evil about what Locke chooses to do.
Locke admits this week that he's taking his orders from "taller Walt". There's a lot more I want to say about Walt, but without sounding obvious, Walt is going to play a major role in the upcoming season for sure. Remember him touching Locke's arm in season one and screaming "Don't open it John! Don't open it!" in reference to the hatch? The kid knew that chain of events would be the demise of many, and we know only six get off the island, and that there is something worth apologizing for on behalf of Hurley, and there is something that Jack and Kate and whoever else got off swore to secrecy. That adds up for a lot let to explain and plenty of material for two more seasons.
Thoughts, theories:
-The way everyone knows so much about each other on the island (i.e. BEn's run-down of Charlotte's stats) is time-travel. People can move back and get the info and files they need on everyone. Perhaps thats even the only way to get on the island?
-Richard Alpert and some of the Others are a group of Others inside the Others who have been on the island since their ship, the Black Rock crashed more than century earlier. Jacob is the ship's captain, Magnus Hanso, and there is some sort of fountain of life that enables some of them to live forever (or at least have longer life) which is how Richard appered the same age in Ben's back story when he was like 12 and today some 30 years later. There's more I want to say about this, but I'd like to hear what people think.
- The "man on the boat" that Ben claims to have is Michael and/or Walt. Think about it.
-The polar bear being found in Tunisia was placed there by DHARMA people who took the genetically manipulated bears from the island around the world to try them out in different environments (after they succeeded in breeding them on a tropical island).
-Dan Faraday might be the "Danny" that Ana Lucia talked about in her 2nd season back-story. It was some guy we never saw, but whose name was brought up three times as the former boyfriend of Ana's. She was pregnant with his baby in fact when she was shot on the job by that thief she eventually murdered in the parking lot of a bar. If Daniel Faraday is the same Danny, that would mean he cried for Ana Lucia in that opening sequence of this week's episode when they showed the fake wreckage of Flight 815.
-Brad Bowe is convinced that the animal Locke saw coming out of his sweat lodge last season was a lion......click here my friend.
-How cool was that when Locke said he was saved from Ben's gun-shot wound because his dad stole his kidney???
That's all for now.
All Roads Lead Here,
Locke's "Other" Kidney
Something to hold you over
Now for those of you who are unaware, I seriously injured my back while shoveling last weekend, and have been unable to sit up and type much of anything. So until I gather my thoughts and analyze frame-by-frame last night's episode, here is one of the better re-cap websites out there from Entertainment Weekly.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Has the End "begun" yet?
Castaways and countrymen, lend me your satellite phones,
I've been reminding people that during the time period of LOST's painfully long hiatus, there were children concieved, carried to term, and now are a part of the living, breathing, human race. That chick from the Cheesy Gordita Cruch ads for Taco Bell probably popped her little bugger out by now too. We've missed our favorite island dwellers these past nine months like the ex-mistress of Senator Ted Kennedy misses her life....too soon?
Can I say just how disappointed I was at first when I realized Hurley would be the focus of the premiere's flash-forwarding tale? And then can I say how I completely underestimated the writers and Hurley himself for being able to pull off a story about Hugo that didn't make me want to run him over with a VW bus? In fact, last night's opener, and I'm not just saying this 'cause its been so long, was amazing and near-perfect.
Hurley is one of the Oceanic 6, as he screamed after that ridiculous attempt to waddle away from the po-po's chasing him on his magic-carpet joy ride in the car he and his daddy were supposed to build together. (P.s. How early is too early, Jack? Screwdrivers before The View is when you know there's a problem buddy.) This "Six" pack of people we know gets off the island already includes Jack, Kate, "he" (as in when Kate says in last season's finale: "He'll be waiting for me"), and Hurley. I believe the other three are Sawyer, Claire, and Aaron. Desmond said if Charlie died the way he was suppose to, as he did last season, then Claire and her baby (say it with that annoyingly fake Australian accent) would be in a helicopter off the island.
Hurley meets the cop who worked with the insufferable Anna Lucia back in LA, and the conversation he and Hugo have is important. I say that in light of a few things. First, last season Jack told Kate that he was sick of "living a lie". Second, last night Jack came to see Hurley later to make sure he wouldnt "tell anyone anything". Third, we know that people were left behind on the island and the creepy black dude (no, not Barack Obama on Thursday night's Democratic debate) named Matthew Abbaddon (''abaddon'' being a Hebrew ''place of destruction,'' or hell, according to Wikipedia) comes to Hurley to ask him if there were still people on the island. I think that Abbaddon is one of the "boat" people Naomi is with. The reason that Hurley's convo with the cop is important is because the cop makes a point to say "Maybe you met Anna Lucia, you know, before you got on the plan" which can easily be taken to infer that when the Oceanic Six got home, they told everyone that everyone else died, and died in the crash. For whatever reason, Jack and the other five who made it back did not want anyone to know what choice they had to make to get home.
Side note: In the parking lot where Hurley gets cuffed, the man filming the arrest on his camcorder was none other than his former boss at Cluck's Chicken, Randy. It also so happens that Randy was Locke's mean boss at the box company (which Hurley owned via his lottery winnings). This guy must be working either with the Others or the Boat People.
Back on the island, Hurley's cannon-ball running days are cut short at the news of Charlie's , and the group on the beach decides to go find the group at the radio tower to warn them that "Not Penny's Boat" means something bad. As they travel toward the Jack-led group, Hurley
gets separated from the pack and is led to Jacob's cabin. I dont know if anyone else got the same feeling I did, but it appeared that Hurley was intentionally led to the cabin, he didnt just stumble upon it. Inside the cabin sat none other than Christian Shepard (did I call that or what last year?) and suddenly a face and eyeball appears in the window Hurley was peering through. That face seemed to me to be Locke's, but with hair. The theory that it was Locke is then reaffirmed in my mind by the fact that he was suddenly standing over Hurley after the big guy took a tumble from all the Jacob's cabin fever.
The two of them set off resolute in their efforts to convince the rest of the castaways to not go with Jack to the boat. Meanwhile, Naomi misrepresents her trail and jumps from a tree on to Kate. It is hard to decipher if the reason Naomi lied to her boat mates about being stabbed in the back by her new island friends was because she really wanted to get these people resuced or because her mission (whatever that may be) is more important than even her life. These boat people are apparently not sent by Penny, but seem to know everything about her and Desmond and her search for him (including those dudes in the ice-capped mountains monitoring magnetic waves for Penny at the end of season 2).
So the group splits yet again between those in Locke's camp and those in Jack's (Man of Science, Man of Faith).
Hurley's visited in the loony bin by Charlie who knows that he is , but is also able to slap Hugo (which doesn't mean much because Hugo's old pal Dave from season two seemed very real as well). He reminds Hugo of the fact that he must go back to the island and that "they" need him. During their game of HORSE, Jack says they will never go back and Hurley apologizes for siding with Locke back on the island. For Jack, something changed between the time we saw him in that gym and when he and Kate met at the airport last season and Jack was the one saying they had to go back. Did Jack's conversion have something to do with the sparsely attended funeral service and small-sized casket from last season?
There's more to discuss, but if you are interested in further dissection of this week's episode, click here.
Few theories, thoughts, etc.:
-Locke and Jacob are now buddies and Jacob is communicating with Locke to keep people on the island and away from the Boat People. Locke still has good intentions, but is in it for himself and may even take over Ben's role of the leader who doesn't want anyone else to leave.
-Hurley is obviously more important than we thought previously. He was one of the four the Others took at the end of season 2, and the bird they saw in the jungle in that same episode yelled his name when it swooped down. I think Hurley may be "special" too and that is why Jacob "led" Hurley to his cabin last night. I feel more coming on the relationship between Hurley and Libby (who, if you care to remember, was in the same loony bin as Hurley back in his "dave" days).
I've got more to say, but would like to hear some of your thoughts and theories as well. The good thing about starting this LOST blog is now you can all participate and post your feeback by clicking "Comments" below here.
I'm glad its back and I'm glad so many new LOSTaways are in our midst this year.
All roads lead here,
John Locke's Pants
I've been reminding people that during the time period of LOST's painfully long hiatus, there were children concieved, carried to term, and now are a part of the living, breathing, human race. That chick from the Cheesy Gordita Cruch ads for Taco Bell probably popped her little bugger out by now too. We've missed our favorite island dwellers these past nine months like the ex-mistress of Senator Ted Kennedy misses her life....too soon?
Can I say just how disappointed I was at first when I realized Hurley would be the focus of the premiere's flash-forwarding tale? And then can I say how I completely underestimated the writers and Hurley himself for being able to pull off a story about Hugo that didn't make me want to run him over with a VW bus? In fact, last night's opener, and I'm not just saying this 'cause its been so long, was amazing and near-perfect.
Hurley is one of the Oceanic 6, as he screamed after that ridiculous attempt to waddle away from the po-po's chasing him on his magic-carpet joy ride in the car he and his daddy were supposed to build together. (P.s. How early is too early, Jack? Screwdrivers before The View is when you know there's a problem buddy.) This "Six" pack of people we know gets off the island already includes Jack, Kate, "he" (as in when Kate says in last season's finale: "He'll be waiting for me"), and Hurley. I believe the other three are Sawyer, Claire, and Aaron. Desmond said if Charlie died the way he was suppose to, as he did last season, then Claire and her baby (say it with that annoyingly fake Australian accent) would be in a helicopter off the island.
Hurley meets the cop who worked with the insufferable Anna Lucia back in LA, and the conversation he and Hugo have is important. I say that in light of a few things. First, last season Jack told Kate that he was sick of "living a lie". Second, last night Jack came to see Hurley later to make sure he wouldnt "tell anyone anything". Third, we know that people were left behind on the island and the creepy black dude (no, not Barack Obama on Thursday night's Democratic debate) named Matthew Abbaddon (''abaddon'' being a Hebrew ''place of destruction,'' or hell, according to Wikipedia) comes to Hurley to ask him if there were still people on the island. I think that Abbaddon is one of the "boat" people Naomi is with. The reason that Hurley's convo with the cop is important is because the cop makes a point to say "Maybe you met Anna Lucia, you know, before you got on the plan" which can easily be taken to infer that when the Oceanic Six got home, they told everyone that everyone else died, and died in the crash. For whatever reason, Jack and the other five who made it back did not want anyone to know what choice they had to make to get home.
Side note: In the parking lot where Hurley gets cuffed, the man filming the arrest on his camcorder was none other than his former boss at Cluck's Chicken, Randy. It also so happens that Randy was Locke's mean boss at the box company (which Hurley owned via his lottery winnings). This guy must be working either with the Others or the Boat People.
Back on the island, Hurley's cannon-ball running days are cut short at the news of Charlie's , and the group on the beach decides to go find the group at the radio tower to warn them that "Not Penny's Boat" means something bad. As they travel toward the Jack-led group, Hurley
gets separated from the pack and is led to Jacob's cabin. I dont know if anyone else got the same feeling I did, but it appeared that Hurley was intentionally led to the cabin, he didnt just stumble upon it. Inside the cabin sat none other than Christian Shepard (did I call that or what last year?) and suddenly a face and eyeball appears in the window Hurley was peering through. That face seemed to me to be Locke's, but with hair. The theory that it was Locke is then reaffirmed in my mind by the fact that he was suddenly standing over Hurley after the big guy took a tumble from all the Jacob's cabin fever.The two of them set off resolute in their efforts to convince the rest of the castaways to not go with Jack to the boat. Meanwhile, Naomi misrepresents her trail and jumps from a tree on to Kate. It is hard to decipher if the reason Naomi lied to her boat mates about being stabbed in the back by her new island friends was because she really wanted to get these people resuced or because her mission (whatever that may be) is more important than even her life. These boat people are apparently not sent by Penny, but seem to know everything about her and Desmond and her search for him (including those dudes in the ice-capped mountains monitoring magnetic waves for Penny at the end of season 2).
So the group splits yet again between those in Locke's camp and those in Jack's (Man of Science, Man of Faith).
Hurley's visited in the loony bin by Charlie who knows that he is , but is also able to slap Hugo (which doesn't mean much because Hugo's old pal Dave from season two seemed very real as well). He reminds Hugo of the fact that he must go back to the island and that "they" need him. During their game of HORSE, Jack says they will never go back and Hurley apologizes for siding with Locke back on the island. For Jack, something changed between the time we saw him in that gym and when he and Kate met at the airport last season and Jack was the one saying they had to go back. Did Jack's conversion have something to do with the sparsely attended funeral service and small-sized casket from last season?
There's more to discuss, but if you are interested in further dissection of this week's episode, click here.
Few theories, thoughts, etc.:
-Locke and Jacob are now buddies and Jacob is communicating with Locke to keep people on the island and away from the Boat People. Locke still has good intentions, but is in it for himself and may even take over Ben's role of the leader who doesn't want anyone else to leave.
-Hurley is obviously more important than we thought previously. He was one of the four the Others took at the end of season 2, and the bird they saw in the jungle in that same episode yelled his name when it swooped down. I think Hurley may be "special" too and that is why Jacob "led" Hurley to his cabin last night. I feel more coming on the relationship between Hurley and Libby (who, if you care to remember, was in the same loony bin as Hurley back in his "dave" days).
I've got more to say, but would like to hear some of your thoughts and theories as well. The good thing about starting this LOST blog is now you can all participate and post your feeback by clicking "Comments" below here.
I'm glad its back and I'm glad so many new LOSTaways are in our midst this year.
All roads lead here,
John Locke's Pants
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