I'm My Me

LOSTaways-

Greetings, salutations, and namaste! I forced myself to churn this week's Pants re-cap out quicker because if I let it slide for a few days I loose my creative edge. So here goes...

Are you kidding me with the ending of this week's episode? Adolescent Ben gets capped in his clavicle by disgruntled and embittered Sayid? Really? He's Our You, the 10th of 17 episodes in Season Five, was one of the most climatic finishes to a LOST ep since the Flash-forward surprise of Season Three's finale. We'll get to that epic ending soon enough, but first things first:

The show began where all good tv shows should...Tikrit, Iraq and we got to see the early makings of Killer Sayid when his older brother couldn't pull the trigger on off-ing a chicken in the family's front yard/desert. Eerily familiar to the scene in Mr. Eko's first back-story that revealed he had been willing to shoot a man his younger brother Yemi was supposed to shoot to spare his brother the painful and jarring experience of taking a life. The continuing theme of purpose and fate can be seen in characters like Sayid and Jack and Locke who all have had to struggle throughout their lives with what they wish they were, and what they actually are.

Sayid is for the most part a nice and honorable man, but he is also very good at and torturing people. He thought that maybe by joining the military, where such things are condoned and often necessary, that his guilt would be asuaged...but it hasn't. And what is worse, since losing his wife after escaping the island, he gives back in to that killer instinct by agreeing to be Ben's personal whack-a-guy specialist.

After we witness Sayid ending chickens, we're wisked away to Mother Russia where, according to Ben, the "last of Widmore's people" that needed to be taken care of is executed by our favorite Iraqi. Sayid couldn't even be bribed by the Russkie. This shows a deeper pathological need to kill than even just "protection for his friends back on the island". Sayid is a troubled dude.

So Ben leaves Sayid in Red Square with no direction or purpose left. We know Sayid then eventually finds his way to a group called Build Our World in the Dominican Republic. This is his attempt to make amends and literally/figuratively rebuild his emotional/spiritual life. But even here, eventually Ben finds him and has a new assignment: go kill a guy. So not really that new. We saw last season that the man parked in front of Hurley's mental institution is eventually shot in the dome by Sayid, who then rudely interrupts a magical game of chess between Hurley and invisible Mr. Eko.

Ben is obviously using Sayid, but I don't really get the whole "all Widmore's people are " line from Linus back in Russia. There's tons of people involved and we know that Widmore keeps pursuing the matter and has other people at his disposal. And what about "the rules" Ben and Widmore talked about last season? I feel like he knew that he couldn't keep pushing Sayid forever, that every person would have their breaking point of not being able to just keep nameless people around the globe. So Ben says, "Take a breather, big guy...we'll get back to this soon" and lets Sayid go do his best Jimmy Carter impression in the Caribbean.

Sayid, after ing the guy in the parked car, and after having it out with Jack and Ben and the rest on the marina, goes for a drink of MacCutcheon Whiskey at a local watering hole. Now this is like the 5th time that brand of booze has been referenced on the show. Widmore had it in his office when Desmond was told to never see Penny again. Charlie used it to get Desmond drunk on the beach. Etc. Etc. There's something important about it, and I think eventually we'll learn that some character we know already will end up being the guy/gal who makes the stuff. There's too many references to ignore its importance/significance.

At that same bar, he bumps in to Ilana, the chick from the second plane crash who brought Sayid eventually to that plane in hand-cuffs. She is a bounty hunter, hired by the family of the guy on the golf course Sayid capped last season. But what gets me is why the family requested Sayid be brought to Guam? That dude Sayid shot, Peter was his name, is Italian and was playing golf in the chain of islands known as Seychelles which is a Republic just north of Madagascar. Guam is on the other side of the world practically, part of the chain of the Mariana Islands (also the general location the fake Oceanic 815 was found). Either Ben or Widmore had hired Ilana, not the family of the victim.

If Ben hired her, or had someone hire her for him, it would make sense because it would be a great way to "convince" Sayid to come on the Ajira Flight 316 with the rest of the gang. If Widmore hired her, that would also make sense because he wants Sayid also to be back on that plane with Locke's body because, if you'll recall with me, Widmore told Locke that if he and the others aren't back on the island when "the war comes, the wrong side will win." Wrong side = presumably Ben and crew. So Ilana is there for a reason, not just returning a killer to the victim's relatives. Which would be weird anyway.

So Sayid is put on the plane with Ilana and ends up being one of the four that makes it off the island and sent back in time. But he is separated from the pack and ends up caught and in Dharma jail awaiting his fate.

So back in 1977, Sayid is questioned by Horace and Radzinsky in his cell but basically refuses to divulge anything worthwhile. Young Ben keeps bringing him sandwiches and even explains why he is helping who he thinks to be a "hostile." We see Ben's dad, Roger, abusing his son physically and emotionally and even Sayid seems to express some concern for the young boy who would grow up to ruin everyone's life. After refusing to talk though, Sayid is brought to some old dude's tee-pee in the jungle. Oldham (not Chad) the r has some secret potion that acts as a truth serum. The title for the episode comes in this scene when Sayid asks who Oldham is and Sawyer says, "He's Our You."

I was shocked at how much Sayid gave up and how little the group seemed to care. I mean, these guys have been threatening that Oldham would make Sayid talk, Sayid talked, and they all dismissed what he said. They're just mad he knew where/what the Pearl and Swan stations were. You'd think the whole "I'm from the future and you will be off-ed by your enemies in the near future cause I've seen your dried up bones in a pit-o-death 30 years from now" thing would have gotten their attention. Either way, the result is a community vote to execute the er Sayid. Like Sawyer says, "Even the moms want you ."

But when Sayid is informed of his fateful fate, he refuses to let Sawyer allow him to escape, insisting he has found his purpose for coming back. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense at first because chances are, at the current rate, he'll be ski before that purpose is realized. But that was before we found out Baby Ben was in cahoots with Sayid to spring him from the Dharama jailhouse. Here we seen Ben's first con: flaming Dharma bus distracts people while he frees "hostile" prisoner Sayid.

Off to the jungle the pair flees, where they run in to Jin-bo out on security detail. See now here I felt that Sayid should just explain to Jin what is going on and ask for his help. For that matter, Sayid really ought to have just talked things out with Sawyer back in the cage and come up with a plan together. Everyone is weird and awkward now back in 1977. Not that this group of castaways has ever been fully able to communicate with each other, but you'd think now would be a good time to start. But Jin gets his wallet handed to him by cut-throat Sayid, and then Young Ben gets a bullet to the chest. Sayid prances off in to the jungle, and the audience is left with mouths agape at the fact that Benjamin Linus, the bug-eyed creepster who has been so central and key to the LOST saga thus far, is likely ....or is he?

There was some other stuff with Kate and Sawyer and Jack and Juliet and Hurley making waffles with weird dipping sauces...but who really cares in light of what happened in this episode, right? All of that Gossip drama will sort itself out and Sawyer and Kate will kiss with either Jack or Juliet walking in on it and by the end Ross and Rachel will get back together anyway. The Love Rhombus will be a site to behold in future episodes, I'm sure.

So let's get to some thoughts/theories:

-Ben hired Ilana to get Sayid on that plane. Since typing about this earlier, I've decided I think it was for sure Ben.

-As Sayid is leaving the Russian's house at the beginning of the episode, the sign on the building he exits is translated to say in English: "Oldham Pharmaceuticals." This is the name of the torturing dude from 1977 Dharma time. Is this just random LOST fun-facts placed to drive people like me insane...or does it have a deeper meaning? All I know is that the dude was listening to a phonograph and that's odd enough for me.

-Juliet mentions that she and Sawyer have been "playing house". Kate said the same thing to Sawyer three years earlier before the Oceanic Six left and the island moved. Juliet actually did stay and play house (even though she has had the chance to leave on a submarine). THIS is what is going to make the Sawyer-Juliet-Kate-Jack connection so complicated. Sawyer finally found a woman who, to quote Blessed Union of Souls, "like's me for me" and hasn't abandoned him.

-Always wanting to get interesting and classic pieces of literature referenced in the show, LOST referenced a book called A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda written in 1971. It is supposed to be a work of non-fiction, but that point is contested by many. It is the self-accounted story of Castaneda's time as something of an apprentice to a self-proclaimed sorcerer named Don Juan Matus. This sorcerer claimed that by taking mind-altering he could see realities that no one else knew about. By ingesting "plants" (drugs), Matus was shown a perspective on things few had experienced. Think: Alice in Wonderland. Or, think: Oldham's truth serum he gave Sayid. Take a look at the wikipedia link I have above and see if you can find any more LOST connections to share.

-I know there is a lot of questions surrounding the biggest moment of the episode (and perhaps season so far): Ben getting shot. Basically, we don't know enough yet to make any real predictions. Faraday has said that time cannot be altered, that whatever happened, happened. We saw this with Charlie's fate as Desmond tried to save him repeatedly. We also know that when the island wants someone to stay alive (i.e. Locke being shot, Michael trying to off himself), they cannot perish. But until we know for sure that things can't be altered, until we know if Faraday was right or just quirky...I'll leave the Ben theories alone. It was an awesome scene though.

-In last week's Namaste episode, Sun and Frank are told by Christian Shepard that they are in the future and that, "I'm sorry, but you have a bit of a journey ahead of you." Who wants to bet that they will have to "move the island" themselves and that by doing so it will cause time to skip like the record player analogy and the two groups separated by some 30 years will be brought back together? Just a thought.

-How long till we see Patchey the Russian again? I still think he's alive somewhere.


That's it for now, folks. Wednesday night's upcoming episode is entitled "Whatever Happened, Happened" and should be a real doozy. There will be 17 total episodes this year and the season five finale will air on May 13th, In The Year of Our Lord 2009 and has already been titled "The Incident." If you remember, there has been numerous references in previous seasons to an "incident" that occurred in the original hatch (The Swan). Sounds boring, right?



Love,

The Pants of Locke, John

I wanna stay where they say "Namaste"

LOSTaways-

Namaste! Not the greeting, but the title of the newest LOST episode. I realize I never posted my thoughts on "LaFleur", so I will incorporate some of the things I had prepared for that episode with this one. For further reading on LaFleur, read this Entertainment Weekly wrap-up by Doc Jensen.

I have to say that I actually liked having a week off from LOST. This season's been tremendous thus far and I appreciated the chance to collect my thoughts and prepare for the second-half push that began this past Wednesday night. Namaste was a very solid return for the show and both revealed some very important tidbits of information and foreshadowed what might be on the Dharma-dominated horizon for those who made it back to 1977-Island time.

I must pause here and note that this week's upcoming episode, He's Our You, will feature a character named "Oldham". Chad, I knew you had secrets, but this is too much.

----

Since we learned this week that the second batch of plane-crashers (Sun, Ben, Lapidus, etc.) have been separated both by the distance between the bigger and smaller island, but by at least 30 years (if not many more), I will separate my thoughts between 1977 time and PSI (Present Island Time).


1977-

We left of in LaFleur with Sawyer seeing Jack/Hurley/Kate on a grassy meadow, and this week we hear the first words and awkward glances exchanged between the reunited LOSTies. As Sawyer explains that those who were left behind have joined the Dharma Initiative, Jin, upon learning that Sun is on a plane potentially nearby, bolts for the Flame station (the place we last saw in flames thanks to Locke back in Season Three's episode "Enter 77"). As for Sawyer and the other three, James plans to (and eventually does) bring them in as supposed new Dharma recruits who have just arrived on the infamous submarine.

When Jin goes to the Flame, we meet a character named Radzinksky. Hopefully you recognized both that name and the of the Swan station that he was building when Jin busted in the door. Radzinsky was the name we heard in Season Two during the episode that filled us in on what Desmond had been doing for those three years he was on the island. If you remember, Desmond was hanging out in the hatch with a man named Kelvin (who also happened to be the CIA officer that forced Sayid to become a r back in the first Gulf War). Desmond saw a stain on the ceiling of the hatch and found a map on the blast door (the same one Locke eventually found and used to go on his island crusade in Season Three), and Kelvin filled him in that both the map and stain belonged to a man named Radzinsky who had blown his own brains out before Desmond crashed on the island.

I realize that is a lot to recall and take in, but for those LOST sickies out there, just hearing the name Radzinsky was the equivalent of receiving one of those "Taste Bailouts" that delicious Domino's Pizza is offering during every single stinking commercial break of the NCCA March Madness Tournament.

Radzinsky was building a of the Swan station that he would one day blow his brains out in. Talk about fate...

Getting back to Jin's purpose in coming to the Flame, he insists that Radzinsky find out if a plane has crashed recently. After no news came in about a plane, a motion sensor was triggered and Jin ran out to find not a "hostile", but Sayid in a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air-like purple shirt/blouse trouncing through the underbrush. Having to keep the charade up, Jin acted like he didn't know Sayid and put him in to a locked room until Sawyer could be located and brought in on the situation.

Sawyer has now officially emerged as the "leader" of those who got left behind in 1977. He has fully transformed from selfish con-man to a....well....not-as-selfish con-man? I mean he still is conning an entire island full of people abou this name and the reason he, Juliet, Jin, Faraday, and Miles are even there in the first place. He conned his way in to a high official position of security in the Dharma Initiative. The whole lot of them have been living just as big of a lie as the Oceanic Six were back in the real world. I love that dichotomy in the story-telling of this show. Both groups had to lie, while another group had to die. Or something like that.

Sawyer tells Jack that he was a bad leader because he reacted to instead of thought through situations as they arose. James references Winston Churchill, the legendary British leader during World War II, who became a great leader only after committing many blunders earlier in his life and career. Sawyer's story is somewhat similar. (So far.)

So Jack, Hurley, and Kate elude tough questions and get through the Processing Station and assigned to their new duties. Jack being given the task of "workman" due to his low scores on an aptitude test was priceless. But it is interesting to note that Jack does not really seem all too worried about his lot. I mean he did eventually go to Sawyer and they had their verbal jab-fest about who was the better leader, but Jack isn't his usual worried self since deciding to go back to the island. The tension will be building though between Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet and I can't wait for it.

Faraday is referenced, although not seen, in this episode. Jack asks if Daniel is still there, and Sawyer responds, "Not anymore." Now this obviously means that he is , which I don't think is the case, or that he has left the island on a submarine (perhaps to go back to the real world and figure out a way to "fix" things), or that he is insane and is not mentally "there." My money is on the third option. I bet Faraday has lot his marbles, what with all the things on his mind pertaining to Charlotte Staples, the woman back in England whose brain he fried, and the fashion stress of having to wear a tie that would be too skinny for Olive Oil to pull off.

The final important information from this week's episode was the scene where a creepy little kid brought a creepy little sandwich (with no mustard...what is that dope thinking with no mustard) to Sayid in his creepy little cell. Of course that creepy little kid would grow up one day to be a creepy little bug-eyed man known affectionately as Benry Gale Linus.

Prediction: Sayid tries to kill adolescent Ben.


Present Island Time-

Okay, so first of all, the scene with Lapidus putting the plane down on the Hydra Station island's runway was very cool and well done. I liked how they Incorporated the runway from Season Three that Sawyer and Kate were forced to work on back when they lived in Polar Bear cages and made whoopee like their ship was going down. One wonders whether the Others had Sawyer and Kate building that runway because they knew some day that second plane would crash there with Ben (their leader) on it....along with the fact that Ben knew right away where the outrigger canoes would be, it seems like it was all pre-planned that this would happen.

After the crash, Caesar decides to play the role of leader and dismisses Lapidus' suggestion that the survivors stay on the beach until they can figure out a plan. It was very reminiscent of Season One where different factions disagreed about where the LOSTaways should set up shop. Jack wanted to move inland and find water/shelter, while others, including Sayid, wanted to stay on the beach in hopes of attracting a rescue plane or ship. The people this time agreed with Caesar and decided to move towards what we know to be the Hydra station, scenes we have already seen in previous episodes (Life and of Jeremy Bentham).

Ben starts to creep away from the group as they have this argument, and Sun follows him (and Lapidus follows them both). Sun confronts Ben and they decide to head back to the mail island. Lapidus warns against this decision, and eventually Sun heeds this advice and whacks Ben upside the head something fierce. But before he got his bell rung, Ben said something interesting to Frank the Pilot: "A captain's first responsibility is to his passengers...but I also have people I am responsible for." He then started to give Frank directions as how to get to Othersville eventually, which seemed a nice gesture and very un-Ben-like. But Sun smacks his brains with a paddle and she and Lapidus get off to the main island.

Once there they discover that Othersville has been decimated. The town didn't look just over-grown and old, but destroyed, almost like a went off (or a Smokey Monster went "ape" on the occupants of Othersville). Speaking of Smokey, Sun and Frank heard some initial rumblings from him in the trees as they approached from the dock when their boat landed. It then went away and a minute later those infamous whispers could be heard and Christian Shepard emerged from the Processing Center that has been used many times throughout this show to house imprisoned characters. Was Christian Shepard really there or was it the Black Smoke manifesting itself (like it did as Yemi to Eko is Season Three)?

Jack's not-so-deceased dad helps Sun to learn that her husband is back in 1977 and that she and Frank (and perhaps the others back on the smaller island) have a "long journey" ahead of them.


Thoughts/Theories:

-Frank and his co-pilot on Aijira 316 hear "the numbers" being broadcasted as they are on their way to crashing the plane on the runway. The voice seems to be American. How bitter-sweet would it be if the voice heard was Hurley's?

-You might have noticed that when Frank/Sun/Christian are in the broken-down version of the Processing Center there is a woman standing in the background in one of the shots. No one has yet confirmed if that was an editing error or was supposed to be another spirit-like character that will later be revealed. Perhaps Claire, who was last seen chilling with Christian in Jacob's cabin?

-Two songs were heard in this episode. The first was one that I have had on my iPod for a long time and couldn't believe they used it. "Ride Captain Ride" by the band Blues Image is being played when Sawyer pulls up to have Jack-Kate-Hurley processed and it contains the lyrics "Ride captain ride upon your mystery ship/ Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip". I'm not sure how much parsing I need to do for you with those suggestive lyrics as to how they might pertain to this show. Island = Mystery Ship. Friends = LOSTaways (who amazingly are scattered throughout time and then re-discovered when you least expect it). The other song is an original number by the creators/writers of LOST called "Dharma Lady" which was playing during the bbq Dharma was hosting for its newly processed recruits when Sawyer pulled up with Sayid in his VW bus. I'll let you take a look at the lyrics and artwork for the album yourself, but please do note that this was all put together just for a show on ABC. Appreciate the work and thought put in to something like this and hold off on all the "I could never create something 1/100th as creative as this show, but I'll complain about how the only reason they put things like this song in it is to make money and drag the show on forever" comments. ;)

-Ben was once visited by Sayid in a cell when they thought his name was Henry Gale back in Season Two, and now Ben is visiting Sayid in a cell of his own. Nice symmetry.

-Why was Radzinsky so worried about a hostile seeing his of the Swan? Did they have some agreement as part of the truce that Dharma wouldn't build any more? Had the Dharma people found the nuke Jughead somehow and decided to harness its power for the benefit of their research and didn't want the Hostiles to know about this?

-If Ethan was born on the island to that chick from 24 that Horace Goodspeed is married to, how did he survive the Purge and why would he then work with Ben and the Hostiles who had killed his family and friends?


Okay kiddies...that's all I got for now. Next week I'm gonna share some insight on a famous movie that deals with the mythical city of Shangri-La that I recently saw on TCM at like 1am on a Tuesday night. I will dissect some parallels between it and the island. Look forward to that.

Thanks for reading and please post any comments or questions here on the blog.


Namaste,

JL's Pants

Life and Death and Bentham and Locke

LOSTaways-

Boy, am I just glad Ben didn’t “O.J.” Locke.

A strangling in a seedy L.A. hotel, a celery stalk-like bone-setting in a sleazy Tunisian infirmary, and a reincarnated bald-headed island hero. What more could a blogger ask for?

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham was the seventh episode of the tremendously exciting Fifth Season and offered a sneak-peak into the time between Locke’s donkey wheel turn in the well and his crash (and re-birth) on the smaller island where the Hydra station (think: bear cages from season three) is located. By the way, that mango did look like the best one Locke has ever tasted.

The episode opened ominously in what quickly became apparent was a Dharma office suite, but what might not have been so apparent was that the man searching through that office looked to know exactly what to be looking for. I think that he (Caesar) is an agent of Widmore’s, sent to crash with the plane on the island and report back to his superiors as to its location. Complicating this plan might be the fact that the island, at the time of this second crash, is back in the days of roughly late 1970’s Dharma when Widmore himself would likely have still been on the island as the leader of the others.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so to wrap up the opening sequence, Caesar finds a map, a flashlight, a gun, and lies to the woman (Ilana) who had brought Sayid on the plane in handcuffs about what all he found in the Hydra office. The maps he pulled out of the file cabinet included one that Rousseau eventually has in her possession in season one and another that Faraday brought with him to the island last season. In the episode “The Other Woman” Daniel and Charlotte used that same map to find The Tempest station and de-activate its chemical suicide machine. This means that Faraday, who was working for Widmore before coming to the island, must have received the map from Widmore who had received it from his agent on the island: Caesar. How’s that for detective work?

The crescendo of the opening of this week’s episode clearly was the unveiling of a not-dead Locke, sitting under a black hood on the beach minding his own reincarnated business. For those Star Wars or Star Trek fans out there, the allusions to the way in which they shot Locke’s unveiling need not be pointed out, but for the rest of you, in Star Trek: The Search For Spock the previously deceased Spock is brought back to life on a supernatural planet and when Captain Kirk and the gang finally find him he is unveiled from under a dark hood. In the original Star Wars trilogy there are countless instances of important characters under dark hoods.

The obvious question is this: Is Locke really alive or is this an island manifestation? Did the same thing happen to Christian Shepard after the first crash? In Season One Jack found his dad’s coffin empty, and obviously now Locke’s is as well. My money is on the fact that both are alive and well, but part of the deal with reincarnation on the island is that you can never leave. Locke had such a cool/chilling line before we entered the good old flash-back storytelling technique that most of the rest of the episode follows: “I remember dying.” I remember you dying too, Locke. It’s nice to have you back.

And with that we are brought back to the moment Locke left the island and found himself in the desert of Tunisia, with a camera on him. Tunisia we learn is the “exit” according to Charles Widmore. Widmore and his lackey Matthew Abbadon do their darndest to convince Locke that they, echoing what Ben said about The Others, are “the good guys.” The question as to whether it is Ben or Widmore who is the “bad guy” is becoming a front-and-center issue on the show. I’d have to say that after this episode, the advantage goes to Charles for who might end up being the good guy. Or neither are and they’re all crazy. Us too.

Widmore gives Locke a new name, Jeremy Bentham, and has to be convinced by Locke that Ben didn’t “exile” John as he apparently had done to Widmore at some point in the past. It seems that Widmore and Ben, while very well informed as compared to most other characters on this show, still are out of the loop on many big pieces of information. I’ve been saying for some time that there are competing forces on the island and I think my theory, although not entirely clear or fleshed out yet, is starting to come in to focus. More on this later when Ben “off’s” Locke.

Widmore was the one-time leader on the island, was swindled out of his claim to leadership by the conniving Ben Linus, and now has put all of his efforts in to tracking down his former home and current adversary. He tells Locke that John and the Oceanic Six must go back because “a war is coming, and if you aren’t on that island the wrong side will win.” Huh. Not a very cool set-up for future drama on the best show ever made by humans, right?

To prove how serious he is about being the “good guy”, Charles Widmore offers the services of the creepy Abbadon and access to his own personal fortune (including a private jet). One last thing about the interaction between Locke and Widmore: Charles brings up the fact that it has only been four days since Locke saw the then 17 year old Widmore in the Others camp (back in the Jughead episode). Widmore is blown away by this reality, and so was I because it should be obvious that Richard Alpert might no longer be the “never-ending dude in the jungle”, but simply someone who knows how to time travel. This would explain his showing up throughout the history of this show and always looking the same.

Moving right along, Locke’s first stop is to find the best thing out of Iraq since the term “Fertile Crescent”: Sayid Jarrah. My boy. The guy has gone all Jimmy Carter on us and started building homes in the Dominican Republic. He wants nothing to do with Locke’s plea to return to the island, and seems to be content in making up for past sins (i.e. murdering people for Ben) and time by helping out his fellow man. He must not be a liberal because he actually is doing something to help poor people instead of just talking about it with friends at Starbucks. Too soon?

Next is a detour to check in on Walt, the backgammon-playing wonder boy from seasons 1 and 2 who has now become lurchey and awkward. Walt says he’s been dreaming about Locke (take a number, kid) and he has seen John standing in a suit on a beach with angry people around him. Sounds like a Tuesday in the life of Jeremy Bentham-Locke. Locke leaves Walt alone and rightly points out that “the boy’s been through enough.”

“A lot”? You mean like being lied to even further by you just now about his dad possibly being alive when you know full well that man ended up as chum in the water surrounding the freighter, John?

The next two stops were at Hurley’s Nut House and Kate’s regular house. Hurley was not interested in talking to a live human being and freaked out when he saw Abbadon. For some reason Hurley is the one the island has chosen to send most of its deceased all-stars to. Probably because he is weak and stupid.

Kate pulls her usual ‘tude with Locke and even takes a few cheap shots at the obsessive qualities John continues to display. There are few more attractive women on this planet than Freckles, but she can be a real knob-job sometimes, this being one of them. Kate, umm, hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a lying should-be fugitive whose sole talent is looking cute and forlorn (and making horrible decisions based on emotions). Maybe you should just trust Locke here and avoid whatever sad thing happened when you will later go to Jack’s apartment in tears and demand the Good Doctor never ask you about Aaron? Just a thought, toots.

Getting back to Locke’s Blues Brothers-like attempt to reunite the island band…after a number of setbacks he is ready to see his old flame Helen. Oh, well she’s dead. Bummer. At her gravestone Locke laments leaving her and despite Abbadon’s attempt to remind John that every person’s course and path is the one they were supposed to take, Locke insists that things would have been different had he just listened to Helen and dropped the obsession with his dad and past pain/hurt. This story-line helps us understand even more why it is Locke knows what he speaks of when he pleads with Jack to not go down the same short-sighted paths of avoiding reality when its in front of your face.

And speaking of Jack, after Ben caps Abbadon and Locke fails at escaping, John wakes up in a hospital room with the Bearded Wonder leering at him from the shadows. Here we get another great Locke-Jack scene where Jack has had enough of John and crushes his spirit by ending their brief encounter with, “We were never special.” Ouch. That is the LAST thing Locke wants/needs to hear right now when his spirits are down, his quasi-buddy Abbandon is murdered, and he’s had absolutely no success in convincing anyone to come back to the island.

It is here, at wit and emotion’s end, where Locke decides to call the island’s bluff and end his own life in a lonely hotel room. I can’t say enough about this entire scene, from the time Locke begins to prepare the noose until Ben walks out after strangling him. Powerful. Disturbing. Sad. Masterfully acted. All of the above. You could feel Locke’s pain and disillusionment. He had come so far and it seems that every single time he gets back on the right path he is supposed to be walking (i.e. turning the wheel himself and being willing to give his life) he suffers set-backs. The Man of Faith has his tested constantly and in this scene in that hotel room we see a man at his own breaking point. Ben comes in at “just the right moment” and insists that Locke can’t die, that he has too much work to do, and admits to killing Abbadon because Widmore would have had Locke killed before long any way.

Really the toughest thing to watch in this scene was after Locke was convinced to come down off his death ledge and the reality of what he had been about to do to himself seeps in and he can’t help but cry. So sad.

But as Locke’s spirits began to rise as Ben talks and tells of Jack’s purchasing of an airline ticket, John mentions that he is supposed to find an Eloise Hawking. Something snaps in the bug-eyed former Others leader’s head and he strangles Locke to death. Then he sets up the room as if Locke had in fact committed suicide and takes Jin’s ring with him (to use as leverage to get Sun to come back eventually). As he leaves he says “I’ll miss you John…I really will” as if he really thought Locke was dead and that the two would never see each other again. But a week later (or less) he and Jack are in a funeral parlor and Ben is loading Locke in to the back of a van to take him back to the island with them.

Something happens in that interlude that caused Ben to get on board. Or was he on board all along? Maybe the “rules” that Ben and Widmore referenced last season involve prohibitions against suicide. Maybe Ben head Locke say something about Hawking, knew that she used to work with Widmore, assumed that Widmore had converted Locke to his side, and murdered Locke because he thought he was one of the bad guys now. Then Ben might have gone to Ms. Hawking and realized that she could actually help to get them all back and had to eat some crow and work with her.

In that same vein of hypothesizing, here are some thoughts/theories to wrap up this installment of Pants:

-Another option with Ben killing Locke is that he was told that he had to do that by either the island or Jacob. When Ben left the island last season he said, “I hope you are happy Jacob” and perhaps whatever it was that Jacob had told Ben to do (or that Ben knew Jacob would have him do) involved crazy things like murdering JL.

-In Season Three the Others are having Sawyer and Kate help build a runway, which includes the removal of stones and gravel. That is the same island where Locke’s plane crashed this past week on what appeared to be a gravel path. Then there is another plane to consider and that is the one that was still dropping Dharma food in Season Two. What gives?

-The pilot (Lapidus) and “some woman” took one of the outrigger canoes and bolted the first night. One could assume that the woman is either Sun and the two of them are bolting to go find Jin and whoever else they can…or maybe it was just one of the stewardesses that Lapidus had eyes for and they wanted to go start a Swiss Family Robinson-style brood on the main island. If it was Sun though, why did she not get put back on the island? Could the island be sending a signal to those who weren’t transported via bright white light to the lagoon that they aren’t needed or welcome back on the real island?

-Here is some interesting information about Jeremy Bentham (the real guy).

-Hurley is drawing/coloring a Sphinx when Locke visits him at the loony-bin..."sphinx" is Greek for "strangler". Sound familiar?

-Ben killed Locke in the same way that Sawyer killed John's own father in the Black Rock in season three. It even basically happened in the same surprising, spur of hte moment way. If you remember, Sawyer was gonna try and help Anthony Cooper until something Cooper said triggered a reaction in Sawyer that drove him to strangle the old kidney-stealing jerk.

-Why were those outriggers just sitting on the beach on the island where Locke crashed? Who did they belong to and where did those people go? My bet is that they belong to original Others, including Alpert.

I really have more to say overall about this episode and some theories but I have mid-terms this week and am exhausted and my dog (Rudy the Dog) is about to go to the bathroom on my floor. Please feel free to post any of your own here or email me with them. If you really want more, please also read this article from Doc Jensen at Entertainment Weekly. The guy's a genius.

God Bless,
Pants-o-Locke

Locke 3:16

LOSTaways-

316 was easily the best episode of the season thus far, and personally one of my favorite episodes ever. We see that Locke gets new pants (and shoes). Jack's "science" finally gives in to "faith." And Jin's driving that stupid Dharma VW Bus around the island.

The episode's title is both the flight number of the plane the Oceanic Six take to get back to the island and an allusion to the bible verse John 3:16 which is the foundational, core belief of the Christian faith. It's a verse that gets one back to the basics, much like this episode does for the themes/story of the show. The island. Science vs. Faith. Jack's eye being the first thing we see. Etc.

Charlotte Staples Lewis might be a dead character on the show, but Clive Staples Lewis and his theology and fantasy/fiction influence on the mythology and story of LOST is alive and well.

Exhibit A- The new Dharma station The Lamp Post. Also a landmark from Lewis's Lion, Witch, Wardrobe by which the children gauge their own relation to the area that exists between their world and the world of Narnia.

Exhibit B- The theme of "windows" of time/space that allow one to jump between worlds is straight out of the Narnia tales as well.

Exhibit C- Ben's explanation of the Doubting Thomas story to Jack (which was also CS Lewis's nickname among his close friends) hints at Lewis's own conversion story. He was a brilliant atheist and academic who for many years simply could not get his "mind around" the idea of a loving God, of a savior named Jesus, of miracles that couldn't be explained by science. Things changed for both Jack's.

But let's get to the story and more on this later.

Things open with a call-back to Season One and the close-up on Jack's eye as he awakens in a familiar looking jungle. He even hears Hurley calling for help like in the Pilot Episode. But there is no Vincent prancing through the underbrush, so that should have tipped the viewer off that something was different this time. Plus Jack had more gray hair in the opening shots last Wed. night than he did way back in Season One.

Hurley is found in the same lagoon where Kate found the Marshall's briefcase and Nikki/Paulo found their diamonds. He's clutching to a Charlie-inspired guitar case, something we will find out later was needed to help re-create as much of the original Flight 815 crash as possible. Kate is laying near-by looking like she got up (and out) on the wrong side of the plane, and we learn that they are "back" on our favorite island. Now some might say "But why did they tell us so quickly that at least 3 of them got back to the island?" To this I would respond with, "Have you ever watched LOST?" They love this style of story-telling and all it means is that we'll find out more and more exciting pieces of information about HOW and WHY the return happened as it did. The writers are simply letting us know that the fact they did make it back isn't as important as the story that surrounds the event itself.

Next we are led by Ms. Hawking to an under-church Dharma station called the Lamp Post that Ms. Hawking has revealed to be the place that Dharma originally located the island from. The island, she says, is always moving and a "very smart man" developed equations to locate where the island was "going to be" in time. We see pictures from the US Military that are labeled "top secret" so we can assume that either the US Military and Dharma (working together) knew about the island and was in fact involved with locating and going to it....or that Dharma took that info from the government when they started off on their own island plans. What a great line from Ms. Hawking and reaction from Ben when Jack asks her if Ben is lying about knowing about the Lamp Post prior to that day and she says "Probably."

Desmond Hume tells Jack and the others present not to listen to Eloise and despite being warned that the island "is not finished with you yet, Desmond", he bolts. Something tells me we'll see him again real soon, and he won't be happy. David Hume, the philosopher, was a big promoter of determinism and the idea that things are out of our control in this life. Our Hume seems to be breaking with his namesake somewhat and maybe taking some of Faraday's advice that Dez is "special" and that "the rules don't apply" to him.

Moving right along, Jack is told that Locke died to serve as a proxy for their return to the island and that Jack would need to get something of his father's to put on Locke to, again, re-create the original plan crash (with a Christian Shepard in-tow). Doubting Jack, for the first time in a long time, is ready to begin accepting some of the mysteries and miracles that have surrounded him all along. The Man of Science is being forced to see that the Man of Faith had some legitimate points all along. After being called to his grandpa's retirement home and finding a random pair of his dad's shoes before the flight, Jack settles it in his mind that he is ready to take that "leap of faith" Ms. Hawking talked about.

The scene with Ben and Jack in the church was all I could ever hope for in a show like this (and more). I won't break down what they said too much because it was pretty clear from their words alone. But as a Man of Faith myself, it did my heart good to hear in such clear and honest dialogue the story of Thomas the Apostle told to a man (Jack) who has doubted himself (and the craziness surrounding the crash and their time on the island) the entire time. We all lose faith. We all struggle and doubt and worry and suffer. But, as Ben said, I believe we all too are faced from time to time with the reality that there IS something bigger out there. That our lives do have a purpose and that miracles do indeed occur. Now what we do with those profound realizations differs, and some choose to ignore it and to not "get on the plane" as it were. But Jack can't ignore what he's known for some time any longer.

The pieces of the puzzle begin to fall in to place after Jack is instructed by Ms. Hawking. Kate shows up looking like a mess at Jack's apartment and says she's in for an Island Reunion Tour, so long as Jack NEVER asks about Aaron. Someone got to Kate. Maybe she gave him up for adoption or put him in a basket made of reeds and floated him on the Nile for Pharaoh's daughter to find him. Whatever happened, Kate looks pretty shook up about it. She also looks like she's on , which if true, is perhaps in order to play the part of Charlie as the addict on the plane.

Ben calls Jack from the docks covered in and with a bum wing to ask him to pick up Locke's body at Simon's Butcher Shop. Before Ben left Jack at the church he said he was off to tie up a loose end regarding a "promise to an old friend." The safe bet is that this will be in reference to Ben's threat to his old "friend" Widmore, the one where he promised to kill Penny his daughter. This might make even more sense since he called Jack from the docks where Penny's boat would be. We aren't really given any more clues than these in this episode.

Jack picks up Locke's body, puts hid dad's shoes on him, and leaves Locke's in the casket with the smiling bald man. At the airport Jack has to admit to being a "friend" of John's, which was a call-back to the end of Season Three when at the funeral parlor Jack was asked if he was "friend or family" of Locke's. Sayid is brought in hand-cuffed while Jack is talking to the ticket agent of Aijira Airways and Sun, Kate and Hurley are both in the terminal as well. Jack is shocked by the fact that everyone showed up, and even starts to sound like a Man of Faith when he says to Kate on the plane something to the effect of, "Doesn't it mean something that all these people are here on this plane?" Heck, even good old Frank Lapidus is the pilot.

Locke's note finds its way back to Jack who, after given a pep talk by Ben, reads it. John says simply "I wish you had believed me." In the story of Doubting Thomas in the Bible, Christ tells those present after Thomas felt the wounds of Christ for himself that those who believe and did not have to see are "blessed." Jesus had just died and risen from the grave for the sins of mankind and many after that point would believe having never had to see the risen Lord in person. I felt like Locke was saying the same type of thing to Jack here: "I'm glad you are at this point of bringing us back to the island, but I wish I didn't have to die for you guys and that you had just believed from the start."

The white light eventually engulfs the plane and we see Jack/Kate/Hurley back in the lagoon from the opening sequence of the episode. This time, however, it is pointed out that the plane itself is nowhere to be found and that no other survivors are with them. But it is here, before the three of them go out searching for wreckage and survivors, that Big Daddy Jin rolls up in the VW bus and points his Dharma-wearing rifle at the soaked trio. Very interesting....

Thoughts/Theories:

-Jin, Sawyer, Faraday, Miles, and Juliet got stuck in the 1970's Dharma world after Locke turned the frozen donkey wheel last week. They waited for rescue but eventually decided to infiltrate the Dharma people to find a way to speed up the "getting help" process. That is why we saw Faraday down in the Orchid to start this season. He was trying to find out more about the wheel's time-traveling powers. Assuming his life would be lived on the island, Jin enlisted as a worker as well and was given a van and gun.

-The Island brought Jack and the Gang back to this specific time period for a reason, and I think that reason is to bring Dharma down. To "purge" them, or help set a chain of events in motion that would eventually bring Dharma down.

-This week's episode is entitled "The Life and of Jeremy Bentham". Sounds boring. I wish they'd do more about the dynamics of Hurley's relationship with his dad while they build an old sports car together.

-Kate found the family that Aaron was originally supposed to be adopted by when Claire was flying to Los Angeles. She gave them Aaron and is torn up by that decision after raising the kid for three years on her own and becoming understandably attached. The visions of Claire telling her not to "bring him back" were too much for our forlorn fugitive gal.

-Ben was covered in either because of the Penny theory I stated above, or because he was doing something to set Sayid up for a crime that would somehow warrant his being arrested and on the plane with what appears to be a Marshall (like Kate's situation in Season One).

-The book Ben was reading, Ulysses, is a famous novel by James Joyce that has many parallels to Homer's Odyssey. Here is a fantastic article by Doc Jensen over at Entertainment Weekly about the episode and specifically regarding the placement of this novel in the episode.

-Jack's dad was wearing White shoes when the plane crashed the first time. Locke is wearing black ones. (And NEW PANTS!!!) Backgammon, anyone?

-The "smart man" who developed the Lamp Post equipment might be Faraday in the past. I'm sure there are plenty of loopholes as to why this cannot be, so please tell me why I'm wrong. Seriously. Please do.

I have more to say about this episode, but I'm too busy and sweaty to fit it all in this week. Enjoy the new episode Wed night and feel free as always to post more questions/comments on the blog here below.


Namaste,

John Locke's Dress Pants

This Place is LOST

LOSTaways-

Jin's time spent floating in the ocean has somehow taught him proper English. The root of Rousseau's insanity/creepiness is explained. Locke (and his pants) take a turn at the frozen donkey wheel.

All-in-all, not a bad episode, if you ask me. This Place is Death was chalk-full of call-backs to season one and hints towards the future.

I'm gonna start by running through the off-island, present-day (relatively speaking, of course), activities of the Oceanic Six. Sun tailed Kate/Jack to Ben and pops out of her car to pop one in Ben's rear. Ben reveals that he knows Jin is still alive, and that Locke told him as much when Ben went to see John. Now maybe Locke was true to his word to Jin and told Ben that Jin was dead and now Ben is just using the ring to manipulate Sun...or he did tell Ben in order that Ben might help John manipulate Sun to come back....or...oh, who cares, right? The point is that Locke is dead, Jin is not, and now Sun knows.

Kate/Aaron and Sayid bolted as soon as things got weird with Sun and her gun, so Ben drove Jack and Sun in his "Reincarnation" van to see Ms. Hawking just in time to bump in to a shell-shocked Desmond. Hawking didn't care for the fact that 4 necessary parts of the Oceanic Six were not present, but says that they ought to "get started" all the same. It sounds like there is some sort of process to returning to the island that is more complicated than clicking your heels and repeating "There's no blog like 'Pants'...there's no blog like 'Pants'." But more on this next week.

Now to the happenings on the Island....

We learn that when Rousseau and her team arrive on the island that it is November of 1988. Jin is understandably confused and wants to go look for his camp. The Frenchies convince him to help lead them to the radio tower where a transmission was already playing on-loop with the numbers being said over and over again. En route, Blackey the Monster of Smoke decides to attack some chick named Nadine and then the leader of the group Montand. One ripped off arm later, and the three other French dudes in the expedition decide to go down the Temple's rabbit hole after Montand (who is doing his best Will Ferrell in Austin Powers impression). Jin stops Rousseau from going in, and good thing because we soon find out that the "sickness" Danielle told Sayid about in Season One was more like some supernatural experience that "changed" even her boy-toy Robert as soon as they went down in that hole.

The scene with Robert and Danielle on the beach, with Jin peeping from behind the bushes, was chilling. Whatever happened to those blokes down in the bowels of the Temple was jarring enough that it freaked Rousseau out to the point of murder and would push Robert to the point of being willing to kill his lover and unborn child. Two of call-backs to season one include the music box on the beach which Rousseau had in her cave-dwelling when Sayid was locked up and tortured by her. Danielle took the ammo out of the gun that Sayid tries to use against her like she did in this episode with Robert. (Girl's got trust issues.)

It seems that Robert and the others who went down in that hole were told what the Monster is ("a security system for that Temple"). Now whether it was the Monster who told them or if there were people down in there (i.e. The Others, Dharma people, Jacob, etc) is left to be seen, but we do know that Ben and the Others know about the Temple and even went to hide there at the end of Season Three and this was referenced again in Season Four. Perhaps Richard was down there, seeing as how he pops up everywhere else (and at seemingly any time). Before we could find out more Robert was capped and Jin was high-tailing it outta there.

When the time shifts Jin finds himself surrounded by Sawyer, Locke and the core time-traveling posse. They catch Jin up on what has transpired using sign language and loud pronouncination of words. They continue their journey to the Orchid, but along the way my girl CS Lewis collapses in a mind-fried stupor for the last time. Daniel stays behind with her and we learn one of my favorite secrets/twists of the entire series: Charlotte lived on the island as a little girl, left with her mother who did what she could to con her into thinking the island didn't exist, spent her life searching for it, and was warned as a little girl on the island by Faraday that she must never return to the island or she'll die....gulp. Wow.

She specifically told Faraday that she "didn't remember something until just now" and then dropped that bombshell on her not-so-secret-admirer. This might speak to the question we all have about time travel: Why don't people remember people they've seen in a flash back? It seems that however it is this time-shifting works, people don't remember events until they are supposed to remember. Not too deep a thought on my part I know, but it's something.

So CS Lewis is dead, but there is more I have to say about that final scene with her and Faraday. For those of you who don't know, I am obsessed with the British author Charlotte shares initials with, and he suffered a great pain/loss in his life. He was from England and his wife was an American who he met later in life and only got to spend a few years with because she died painfully and tragically of cancer. (Note: If you have never seen film Shadowlands starring Sir Anthony Hopkins on this part of CS Lewis's life, you aren't a good person. Go rent/buy it.) There is a heart-wrenching scene in the film depicting the final few moments of his wife's life that reminded me of the final scene between Faraday and Charolette. A Grief Observed is one of the best books by one of the best authors of the past 100 years and is Lewis's own account of the ordeal.

Moving right along, the rest of the group heads to the Orchid with the advice to "look for the well" if the island has shifted them to a time when the Orchid station has not been dug out by Dharma. They find the well and before John descends into its depths Jin makes him promise never to bring Sun and his baby back to the island. Looking as sincere as he can, Locke agrees and falls down and ends up with yet another sharp object through his ravaged legs. And who should appear? Why, none other than our favorite "dead" dad, Christian Shepard (looking like he just got back from a shopping spree at whatever stores middle aged dads in the UP of Michigan shop at).

Old Man Shepard tells Locke that he was wrong to disobey the orders for Locke to move the island and it seems that Ben either manipulated Locke again or made an honest mistake (probably the first in his life should this be the case). If Ben did lie to Locke and knew that he should have let our favorite bald-headed knife-man turn the frozen donkey wheel then this would suggest that Ben wanted to get off the island before things got worse, or that he wanted off the island to hunt down Widmore and Penny and he figured Jacob/the Island wouldn't be cool with that, or that there is still a bigger goal here with Ben who is still working for the good of the island (in some, yet-to-be-explained, way).

Locke is given another chance to get back on the straight and narrow path to Island enlightenment. He asks Christian for help up, and he is refused. Obviously there is some symbolism of Locke needing to do this on his own here, but I also think that Christian is really dead and therefore a spirit (or the Black Monster manifested like Yemi in Season Three) and was also meaning that he literally can't help Locke up.

Thoughts/theories:

-Before Charlotte dies she says "Turn it up...I love Geronimo Jackson!" It is a made-up band that the show has been referencing form time to time since Season Two. Check out that link to learn some more about it. She also says, "I'm not allowed to have chocolate before dinner." My prediction is that she will have remembered that specific line because she said it to Faraday who will travel back in time to when she is a child and attempt to talk to her by bribing her with chocolate. Kind of creepy in the real world, but this is LOST, so all bets are off. The big question is: will Faraday still warn her now that he knows he warned her before? Can he really not change things?

-You should REALLY read some of Doc Jensen's review of the episode here at Entertainment Weekly's website. It's a doozy.

-Eloise Hawking was burning a votive candle in the church at the end of the episode. Some of you may know more about them than I, but from what I understand they are used as part of a prayer offering to Jesus or Mary in the Catholic Church. You light one when you are asking a Higher Power for help/protection/etc. The kind of thing one would do before embarking on a very risky trip back to a magical island.

-Charlotte said that her and her mom lived on the island and when they left they never saw their father again. Before she died she blurted out "Why can't daddy come?" Now we know how hard it is for people to leave this island, so I am guessing her mom was "on the run", as it were, from someone. Her mom did what she could to make her daughter forget the place. So either the two of them were bolting because of someone on the island, or another thought that just came to me is that Faraday will go back in time and warn Charlotte's mom who will then do what she can to get her daughter far away. Either that or her dad is Ben and her mom was the little girl Annie that Ben was in love with as a child.

-The Temple and the black smoke, as a good friend and his brother reminded me, have many tie-in's with the Bible. Frequently in the Old Testament God appeared to the people of Israel as a black cloud of smoke. When the Holy Temple was built in the Holy City of Jerusalem God's presence dwelt in the sacred building, and without getting to deep in to all of this, you could say that the sacredness, the specialness, of the Temple was guarded by that cloud-like presence of Yahweh. Any who entered the Temple's inner chambers in an improper fashion or with un-atoned for sin would be struck dead. I could write a lot more here, but the parallels are fairly obvious from what I've said so far. If you are interested in more on this, let me know or read the Bible. I suggest the second option first. 2 Chronicles 5:13-6:2

-Back to Christian Shepard and the various dead people we've seen on and off the island...I still think there are multiple forces on this island. There is Jacob. There is the Smoke Monster. There is what people refer to as the power of "the island". There is the "magic box" that Ben tells Locke contains whatever people desire in it. I'm just trying to show that there might be more than one thing/entity competing on this island. Maybe the Island is different from Jacob. Or the Temple and the Security System for it are some other power. Charlotte screamed in Korean to Jin that he should "never bring her back", which spooked him and led to him making Locke promise. Claire appeared to Kate telling her not to bring Aaron back. But then the island is in need of those people what left to come back to "correct itself." Someone is lying here or there are competing forces sending mixed signals.


That's all for this episode. This week's adventure is going to be called "316" and we're going to see what happened to Locke when he went back and how he ended up deadski. Enjoy.



Sincerely,
Montand's Severed Limb

The Little Prince That Could (Time Travel)

LOSTaways-

I feel like I just did one of these, but I suppose that the show does air fairly regularly now. This week's episode, The Little Prince, is a direct allusion to the French children's book of the same name. In that story, a man is stranded in the Sahara desert with a little alien prince who has crash-landed on earth. There is a lot of interesting LOST-related themes and story-lines, but I don't like French things so although I've read through it, I'll allow you to click that link above and read the Wikipedia summary on your own. Freedom Fries!

I'm gonna keep this post shorter than most, and might end up being all over the place in my thoughts, so bear with me.

Right off the bat, I have to point out that the carpet cleaning van Ben is driving around Locke's dead body in had a name on the side of it that when you re-arrange the letters it spells "Reincarnation." I'm not saying, I'm just saying. I think that is pretty cool and yet another sign that that moron from the Daily Herald couldn't be more wrong about this show and how interesting it is.

Also, Aijira Airways, the airline corporation based out of India that Juliet identifies from their symbol on the water bottle found in the wittled-out canoe, has a website that is up and running now for you to peruse. Something interesting that yours truly found on Ajira's site while neglecting homework, friends, family, and bathing this week was here on the page that allows you to print out a fake boarding pass. If you were to investigate each of the four corners of the ticket you would find the same hieroglyphics that were revealed in the Hatch when the 108 minutes counted down during season two. Those have been translated to represent the concept of "Underworld" or "Hades". Along with that, the Smokey Monster has been called "Cerebus" which was the guard-dog of the Underworld, or Hades. 'Lot going on...

So the focus of the off-island, present-day action is on Kate and Aaron. Kate goes to confront the lawyer who represents Ben (we find out). Ben obviously was trying to make Kate uncomfortable and more susceptible to being talked in to bolting back to the island if she felt Aaron and her were being threatened. Ben knows how to manipulate people like I know how to spend unnecessary amounts of money on Cubs paraphernalia. We saw Kate and Jack sharing a moment on Penny's boat right after they were picked up from the helicopter crash. This is the moment when Kate decided (and Jack agreed) that she should claim to be the mother of Aaron. I loved how later in the episode we saw, of all moments, Kate helping Claire give birth in season one.

Kate even said to Claire something to the effect of "This will be all of ours' baby." I couldn't help but think back to another story-line from season one with the psychic that originally told Claire to never let anyone else raise the baby, but then arranged for Claire to travel to L.A. to give the baby up for adoption. Then there was the moment last year when Claire visited Kate and told her never to bring "him" back. I'm not really heading anywhere in particular here, but all these things flooded back in to my mind during this week's episode. It seems like the island is either sending mixed messages about Aaron (and who can raise him), or that there is more than one entity/group trying to confuse whoever has Aaron in their custody from knowing exactly what to do.

To wrap up present-day events, Sayind avoids another attack (from Widmore's people...I think), Jack and Kate reunite and follow Ben's lawyer to a hotel room where Claire's mom just "happens" to be in town using the same legal counsel as old creepy eyes himself, and Hurley uses his one phone call from jail to tell Jack less than nothing and hang up before he can be filled in how dumb his actions have been as of late. I doubt they let you eat ranch off of potentially poisonous leafs in prison, Hugo. Don't get too excited.

Sun's been hired to kill Ben by Widmore, but (and we'll see much more of this next week it looks like from the previews) she isn't aware of the big Rosseau's stomach-sized bombshell: Jin "Udders" Korean Last-name is alive and sort of well!!! Huzzah! I have to be honest and say that I had sort of hoped Jin was gone for good. It would make Sun so much more mysterious and angry and really make for some good drama later in the season. But oh well. I'll get the tissues for the tear-filled Jin-Sun reunion (with Hurley doing a behemoth cannon-ball in the background) ready now.

Alright, let's get to the interesting stuff back on the island...

Locke and the Gang decide to head for the Orchid so that he can push a wheel and go back to get Jack and his gang. Charlotte and Miles and eventually Juliet all start showing signs of morning island sickness. Faraday says it might have to do with exposure to the island. We're assuming Charlotte is from the island originally, and the fact that Daniel says this to Miles is foreshadowing to my theory that Miles was the Asian baby in the crib at the beginning of this season will come to glorious fruition. I'm actually starting to think that Charlotte might not be the daughter of Ben's GF Annie, but will be the daughter of Ellie, the sassy 1950's Brit from last week's episode. Or maybe Ms. Hawking? If Daniel's mom ends up not being Ms. Hawking, then for sure she is Charlotte's. Or both? Maybe a Princess Leia/Luke Skywalker twist?

The island skips a few times and by the time Locke and the Gang get to the beach, they find canoes with bottles of water from the Ajira Airways, but the Zodiac boat is gonzo. Locke, now in his single-minded element, suggests they "borrow" the canoe and get their move (the island) on. While they are paddling, some mysterious group in the other canoe opens up fire on the time-jumpers. Before they can find out who it is, time shifts again and now it's night and storming. They head for shore and find the wreckage from a ship...which ends up belonging to the crazy French skirt herself: Danielle Rousseau! My girl.

But before all that, let me quickly just say that I loved the scene where Locke and the Gang jump time to the night Boone died, Claire gave birth, and Locke sobbed like me at the Ronald Reagan museum in Simi Valley, CA this past summer. Locke doesn't want/need to go back to see himself in that desperate moment when he called out for the island to give him some hope (maybe even "change" too). He got to this point by suffering through the low moments. I appreciate his character and the personal development he's gone through on this island. He has, for better or worse, resigned himself to the fate the island has in store for him.

Okay, so Rousseau...Wow. I've been waiting since season one to get more info on this chick. I would HIGHLY recommend that you read the link I put on her name just now. There are maps and back-stories and tidbits that you likely have forgotten since Season One. Hers is a remarkably interesting and strange story. The LOST writers have confirmed that we are going to learn this season what made her team go nuts. Here is a page on some theories regarding her and her story.

All the time-jumping stuff can get confusing because the easily asked question should be: "If this was what is supposed to happen, why does Rousseau not remember Jin in the future when Oceanic 815 crashes?" Also, there is some confusion regarding how Jin can be time-jumping as well. It seems to me that he must have jumped off the boat as it was blowing up (or was thrown from it without dying) and that he was in the "radius" Faraday talked about in the Season Five opener. But then what happened to the Freighter? Both the Oceanic Six on the copter, and Sawyer/Juliet on the beach, saw the boat no more when the island moved. How could that be? The boat obviously had to have traveled with the island because Jin traveled with the island...but why couldn't Sawyer/Juliet see it from the beach?

Don't feel bad if you get this stuff muddled in your head, but also don't give up on it yet either. Answers are coming.

Thoughts/theories:

-Claire's mom is connected deeper than we know to Ben/Others/Widmore/Jacob/something. I also think it's safe to say now that Jack's dad, along with Claire's mom, is deeper connected. That might be the link for Christian Shepard to the Others or the Island: Carole Littleton. Hurley said "Australia is the key to the whole game" while playing Risk with Locke and Sawyer in Othersville last season. It seems that there is something more important about Australia than other places. So Christian Shepard's connection to the island likely came from Australia. His daughter. Her mother. That crabby aunt of Claire's who chewed the lush doctor out when he visited in Season Three.

-If you want a great LOST-related piece of popular culture to dig in to, check out the 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet. I caught it on TCM around Christmas time this year (and Netflix has it..I checked), and it is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. Both the movie and the famous play are cited by LOST writers as being heavily influential on their show. The movie version is slightly different and obviously updated to fit a science-fiction tale. Basically, a group of people go to live on a planet, they aren't heard from for many years, and a team is dispatched find out what happened. When the team arrives, they meet one of the scientists sent and his only daughter who are the sole inhabitants of the planet Altair. Long story short, the scientist (named Morbius) used a mind-bending machine that the planet's previous alien inhabitants had created and left behind and now with his mind-power increased, his sub-conscious is attacking anyone who gets near his daughter or the planet in general in the form of a nearly-invisible monster (Smokey?). He has unknowingly created a security system that is responsible for the deaths of people who he even thinks are bad or evil or have the wrong reasons for being on Altair. Rent it. Or buy it. And watch it.

-I think Locke is turning that wheel this next week and will be sent somewhere crazy in the world and will assume the fake identity of Jeremy Bentham to elude Widmore's goons en route to heading back to L.A. to convince Jack's Posse to make a reunion tour of the island. That might all be fairly obvious, but I figured I'd say it anyway.

-Sun will come back to the right side of the force fairly quickly and easily. I might be wrong, and I hope I am and she stays bad for a while longer, because this whole mini story-arc with her being "tough" and "mysterious" will have been the lamest thing since Nikki and Paulo getting spider-bites in the jungle.

-This week's episode felt like more of a build-up for next week's than anything, so I'll stop here, but as always, send your thought/theories to me or please post them under the comments section for all to share and partake in.

God's Speed,

Locke's Nurse Boone

Ain't That a Kick in the Jughead

LOSTaways-

Ahoy (not Chips)! Well, actually, maybe Chips Ahoy...but only if you were wondering what I just ate for a snack. For the rest of you, just Ahoy!

We’re 3 episodes deep and the story has taken us wide (world-wide, that is). The latest installment of LOST was entitled Jughead and I'd like to start off by throwing some information out at you regarding the name of the episode.

Most of you will recognize "Jughead" as a character in the Archie comics series. What you might not know is that that same character Jughead had his own spin off storyline from Archie called Jughead's Time Police in which our hero traveled in time to "correct disturbances" in the timeline of his friends/family. Hmmm. Not sure what that would have to do with this television show. Probably just a mistake. I heard that these writers of LOST just make stuff up as they go along anyway. At least that is what this loser from the Daily Herald told me in his asinine review of the first three episodes of Season Five.

Oh, by the way, the fullname of Jughead's character is Jughead Jones. Think about which character we met this week had the name "Jones" on his or her uniform...

Jughead was also the name given to the hydrogen bomb that the United States military allegedly placed on the island, presumably in an attempt to destroy it. Our government really did test nukes on island in the South Pacific, and really did name a nuclear device "Jughead" in Operation Castle.

(Do more browsing on Lostpedia or here at Entertainment Weekly's review if the name thing interests you beyond this.)


But on to the review of the episode and some thoughts/theories regarding it....

Let me stick with the Desmond/Penny/Baby storyline to begin with. We find the love-birds on their boat in the Phillipine Islands, with Penny in labor. Dez finds a local doctor (Efren Salonga) who comes to their yacht and delivers Charlie Hume. This apparently was to have taken place soon after the time when the Oceanic Six were found. So when we see Baby Charlie helping his dad steer their ship into the harbor in London, it has been roughly 3 years since that opening scene in the Phillipines.

Desmond sets out to find Faraday's mom at Oxford, but all records of the eccentric physicist has been erased for the school's records. We learn that this desire to white-wash the past stemmed from Faraday's testing not only on rats, but on humans. Specifically, a girl named named Theresa Spencer, has had her mind zapped into oblivion. Desmond tracks her and her sister down in London and discovers that Faraday messed up Theresa's mind and bolted for America. Also, Charles Widmore had been funding Faraday's work for a decade and then picked up the tab of Theresa's medical expenses. I love how the show throw things in like this apparent soft-spot Widmore has to keep us guessing as to who the "real bad guy" is between the two formidable adversaries of Widmore and Ben.

Desmond confronts Widmore in his office to get the last known residence of Faraday's mom, presumably the infamous Ms. Hawking from the end of last week's episode. Widmore gives the info to Dez and seems to genuinely ask him to take his daughter Penny back to wherever it was they were hiding and stay there. This of course is a call-back to the threat Ben levied against Widmore in his darkened apartment last season that Ben was going to kill his daughter to settle the score for Alex's death on the island. Widmore tells Dez that Faraday's mom does not like to be bothered, and that he should deliver his message and then stay out of things. "This has been going on for a very long time," are his exact words to Desmond. How long that exactly is remains to be seen.

And this brings us to the island time-jumpers still stuck on our favorite mystical land-mass....welcome to the 1950's. Eisenhower was president, men wore suits to baseball games, and the best show on TV was whatever your rabbit ears could pick up on one of the three channels in existence.

Faraday, Miles, and CS Lewis are captured by Others, who Juliet identifies as such elsewhere in the jungle by the fact that they can speak Latin (the "language of the enlightened). The three Freighter Folk are led to the Others camp and meet an unchanged Richard Alpert. There has been some skirmishes between the US Military and our favorite creepy island dwellers. The year is 1954 and our government sent teams of special forces (and a nuclear hydrogen bomb) to the island for what seems to be a mission of annihilation. Of course Alpert and the Others (also the name of my yet-to-be-created garage band) killed these highly trained soldiers with bow-and-arrows.

I think that the guns and army fatigues they are wearing all belonged to the soldiers they ended, and that they previously used only things like bow-and-arrows. Maybe this was the first time they had gotten a hold of serious weapons. Maybe that's because they don't otherwise need anything more than what Robin Hood and his Merry Men did to survive in an enchanted woodland of their own.


At any rate, and to make a long story short, Faraday keeps up the facade that they are from the US Army so that he can go and disarm the bomb. Led at gun-point by the British hottie Ellie, he takes a gander at old Jughead and decides that the best course of action is to bury the sucker. This is what will eventually be buried in the original Hatch that we found in season one and explored (and blew up) in season two. If you recall, Sayid and Jack explore under the hatch (called The Swan) and find that concrete and steel have been used to seal something behind a wall. That something I believe is Jughead. Faraday pointed out that if you bury the bomb, things are still alive and partly well 50 years in the future. Now this does open up some questions regarding the Hatch's implosion at the end of season two, but trust me, Jughead was buried there.

The big bombshell (pun intended) of the episode obviously was the revelation that Charles Widmore was in fact an Other at one point. Not to brag (much), but I did call this more than a season ago. As soon as Widmore came in to the picture as someone involved (like in the episode from season three where Ben shows Locke a video with Widmore kidnapping one of the Others back in the real-world), I theorized that the aging corporate Dick Cheney look-alike (always the bad guy, of course) had been an Other and then in season four I suggested he might have been the leader before Ben. Widmore young and old has a real attitude problem. He is very keen on being in charge and, like he said to Sun in the airport last week, he demands to "be respected." He's got all the makings of a wonderful bad guy...but if he is the bad guy, then who is Ben? Maybe they're both bad. Who knows?

We end the episode with one final time-skip for the island, and a bloody-nosed Charlotte passing out in a forlorn Faraday's arms. She is suffering from the same affliction that others on the Freighter died as a result of in The Constant last season. This implies maybe that she will need to find her constant...maybe that mother she forgot the maiden name of.

Let us move now to the thoughts/theories portion of your blog:

-Interesting choice of name for Penny and Desmond's firstborn. Charles, or Charlie, is both the name of a friend who brought the two together by sacrificing his life in the underwater Looking Glass station at the end of season three...and is also the name of the man who drove the lovers apart by messing with Desmond's head and sending him on his harrowing journey to the island via a "race around the world."

-Following that line of thinking...and hear me out here...what if Charlie the baby boy we saw this week is actually Charlie the Hero that one day sings in Driveshaft and crashes on a mystical island, on which he is saved a few times by his father (Dez) from death and then eventually sacrifices his own life in order to bring his mom and dad together. "Not Penny's Boat" might have read "Not Mom's Boat" had he known what I suggest. Now for this to be possible, some time-travel is going to have to take place. And the Charlie we know will have to somehow be separated, abandoned or orphaned by his parents. Maybe placed in the home we saw snippets of in his backstories by a guardian of the whole time-traveling saga, like Ms. Hawking or Charles Widmore himself possibly. If my theory that Adam and Eve from the caves in season one are Desmond and Penny, then Charlie being moved (for his protection) to another family until he was called to the island via Flight 815 would be feasible. Think about it.

-Adding more on to this...when Desmond walks away from Penny in the bedroom of their boat she says "Promise me you won't go back to that island" and after Dez reassures her that he would never do such a thing, he looks back just before walking out. That's a "tell". Trust me.

-I was wondering why it is exactly that the people stuck time-jumping on the island bring some of the things with them when time skips....like the Zodiac boat, but not their shelter on the beach...and the best I can come up with is simply that whoever is moving them in time (or whatever force is) wants them to have what they have with them for a purpose. Maybe the little dingy boat will play a role here soon, but the island or Jacob or whoever is pulling the strings wants them to have what they have, be where they be, for a purpose and specific reason. Sort of like the explanation Matthew Abbadon gives to Naomi when she asks why Faraday, CS Lewis, Miles, and Lapidus are picked for the trip to the island on the Freighter in the first place.

-I've recently spent some time re-reading the CS Lewis (the real one) Space Trilogy, and in particular, Out of the Silent Planet. I could not recommend these three books more. But as I'm always trying to piece together popular culture and litertary references from the clues this show leaves behind, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the comparisons in the storylines of LOST and Out of the Silent Planet.

Lewis's book is about a single man who seeks some adventure to his life and decides to go on what is tantamount to a "walk about" in the English countryside (some Locke connections here). Through a series of bizzare events he is abducted by two men and taken on a journey to another planet (which ends up being Mars) where the two nefarious characters hope to trade him for riches and glory to some of the aliens who live on that planet. The main character, Ransom, escapes his captors on the island and spends weeks on the run getting to know the land and meeting some of the different creatures that live there. He becomes a great hunter. He becomes a leader in many ways. Eventually he is brought to the leader/king of the planet, a spirit-like, nearly invisible entity called Oyarsa that isn't the supreme God of the universe, but something like an angel with great powers to give people what they want or take things away from those who are evil. Think: Jacob. This was all fresh on my mind and figured you guys might find it interesting and if I can prompt you to want to read a CS Lewis book, my work here is done. Read it.

-The fact that the US Military knows about the island could be big. I mean it also might just be a random coincidence that the Army picked that specific island to test out a nuclear bomb and didn't know what they were getting themselves in to with the Others they found. But like all things LOST, there likely is a deeper reason and story behind the military's incursion on to the island. I haven't decided what exactly I think about this, so if you have any good theories, lay 'em on me.

-The sassy (and very cute) Brit chick named Ellie that leads Faraday to the bomb intrigues me. Obviously when Faraday says she reminds him of someone he is referencing the girl Theresa whose brain he fried back at Oxford. But maybe she is someone else....maybe she is Ms. Hawking. I know I said last time that Ms. Hawking is likely Faraday's mom, and the fact that Widmore (in the future) gives Dez an address in Los Angeles to find Daniel's mommy (the same place we saw Ms. Hawking in the basement of a church tracking the course of the island and talking to Ben) points to her in fact being Faraday's mom (and therefore he would likely recognize her, even in the past)....but if LOST is setting us up for a surprise and Ms. Hawking isn't Faraday's mom, then maybe that Ellie broad is Ms. Hawking in the past. She had an attitude of distrust in the 1950's and in the future Widmore says that Hawking is a "very private person" who "won't be happy to see you."

-I thought all the Juliet-related stuff in this episode was great. The way she identified the retro-Others from the Vulgar Latin they spoke was great. The "language of the enlightened" she called it. This speaks to the theme from earlier seasons that the Others were there for more than just sneaking around the jungle. They had "Others 101" training in language and probably many other areas of study. They needed leaders, and this presupposes that a group of people are headed somewhere or have a mission/goal in mind. Also, I did find it interesting that just as Locke was about to tell Sawyer that Ethan shot him in the leg, she interrupted. Maybe there is still more to Juliet than meets the eye. Perhaps her last betrayal of the Oceanic survivors is yet to come. Maybe Ben still has her working for him.

-Best line/moment of the show other than the Widmore revelation was when young Widmore says to Richard that he has no need to worry about being tracked because it was just some "soddin' old man" following him and asks "Do you reall think he knows the island better than me?" Cut to Locke walking out of the jungle. Answer: Yes, I think he does.

Alright folks, that's all I got for now. If I forgot to touch on something you are wondering about, post a comment or feel free to email me and as soon as my Sweat Lodge gets too warm I'll re-emerge and respond to your query.

God's speed,

John Locke's Pants