Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Season 6 Preview - A Look Back On Season Two

I cannot emphasize enough the significance that the first episode of Season 6 will debut on Groundhog’s Day, February 2nd. Oh, the Groundhog Day Theory is still alive and kicking. I just need to revisit the theory and flesh it out during the end of the preview articles I’m putting together over the next few weeks.

This season was all over the place. The most common theme that I was seeing was the transitional nature of the characters. Characters undergoing changes from the time they landed on the island. As Locke told Shannon, everybody has a chance to start over on the island. I took a lot of notes, and rather than trying to muddle through chronologically or logically, I just started typing and came up with this disorganized mess. But I can assure you, as always, I will be more bitter than a lime, and more bristly than a cactus. Onward.

Shannon. A character I really didn’t have a lot of sympathy for or cared much about one way or another, so I’m somewhat happy she was killed off but also oddly indifferent. Sure, I’m very hard in my critiques of many of the main female characters on the show. Maybe I don’t date much. Stop analyzing me. I always treat women with respect and kindness. So anyway, I believe I called Shannon a learning disabled chimp last week. The thing is, I never got the impression that she passed any kind of test that the island presented to her. She wasn’t visited by Jacob off island (Season 5), so ultimately she was a minor character. She started off with a snobby, self important attitude. She slept with Boone and used him to scam money a number of times. Yeah, her father died in the same car accident that brought Jack’s future wife to the hospital. Her mother cut off her money. It was a pathetic try by the writers to humanize her after spending most of Season 1 demonizing her; however, she never became sympathetic to me, even in that last ditch effort before she got shot in the gut by Ana-Lucia. She started to see ghost Walt in the jungle, and nobody believed her. Nope, still don’t care about her. I had a better connection to a Dharma can of peaches than Shannon. The odd thing is Walt may or may not have been a Smoke Monster image or he was projecting himself, but there were certainly whispers present. That seems to be an inconsistency with the show. The whispers: the Others, or Jacob or X. What causes them? I have yet to detect a definitive pattern. Why was Walt covered in water when he appeared? Anyway, among the last things Shannon said “They think I’m some kind of joke, I’m worthless.” I couldn’t help but think Get her off my screen already. She is the bathroom break on the show. Oh, it’s a Shannon scene? Time to take a tinkle. I know I won’t miss anything important Sayid tells her that he loves her. Again, the writers made a mistake with this dead end story line. Why talk about Nadia but have Sayid fooling around with Shannon? Just illogical and somewhat cheapens Nadia down the road. Hell, Nadia was a bigger character in Sayid’s one flashback episode than at any other point in the whole show. Here is a tip for everybody. Don’t let Sayid fall in love with you, because you will die. Anyway, she’s dead. Cindy gets captured right before the shooting, and again, the whispers, but seems like the Others were the source of them in this case, or was it Sayid and Shannon’s voices carrying through the jungle. I’m not going to obsess over jungle acoustics. At least not this week.

OK. Let’s talk about the hatch, and the first few episodes that pivoted upon the exploration of this mysterious object which so consumed the characters during the end of Season 1. Sure seems anticlimactic considering how many hatches have been found on the island since the Swan. What, about a dozen so far? Giving credit where credit is due, probably the most significant and in my eyes the most favorable thing that Kate did was agreeing to be lowered into the hatch first. It was as creepy as watching a horror movie, the first time I ever watched the scene. But, of course, this also conjured up the image of Juliet lying at the bottom of this shaft, dying, pounding on a bomb with a rock. Comparing those two activities, well, let’s not waste a bashing of Kate here. She done good. While this episode is in full swing, we see Jack’s marriage fall apart. The woman he saved and married has decided that she is leaving Jack and has been seeing someone else. The writers tried to make Sarah look less of a monster by having Jack kiss the woman in the hospital parking lot. Sorry. Sarah is a horrible person who I really hope is driving quickly down a highway, her brakes fail, and drives right into an abutment with her car immediately bursting into flames. “I’ve been seeing someone else, and he is a famous golfer. Thanks for saving my life, but I gotta scram.” But as this ungrateful barrel of toxic waste oozes out the door and out of Simple Jack’s life, we are introduced to Desmond. And he makes a reference that becomes his slug line. No, not slug as in Sarah. But his catch phrase. See you in another life, brother. So, how about that Groundhog Day? For those that have never seen this excellent comedy, Bill Murray is trapped in Punxsutawney, PA for the Groundhog festival. But the next day, he wakes up and it’s Feb 2nd all over again. He needs to figure out what he has to do so that when he wakes up, it will be Feb 3rd. It takes a long time to get it right. He eventually breaks the cycle. A cycle that Jacob and X are waging a battle over. All it takes is one time to break the cycle. See you in another life, brother. Anyway, clearly it was a fascinating moment of Jack recognizing Desmond in the hatch. We are introduced to the riddle “What did one snowman say to the other snowman?” (Smells like carrots) and the first of many Orientation films with the Dr Chang with more aliases than Ron Mexico. We also learn that Desmond was responsible for the light coming out of the hatch in Season 1 which seemed so significant to Locke. Actually, in a way it was, as it kept Desmond from eating a bullet.

We get an earful of Michael screaming for Walt ad nauseum while floating in the water. Contrast Sawyer removing a bullet from his arm with his fingers, but Michael is sobbing for Walt. Michael is a character that I liked at the beginning of the show, and just loathed by the start of Season 2 and beyond, well before his murderous activities and constantly running off into the jungle willy nilly. They took my son. They took my son. Walt. Whaaaaaaaa. Oh, shut up. Go give up your son in the custody battle again. It’s amazing. Michael arrives at the island an unselfish person. He leaves the island the most selfish character in the cast. He just got more evil as the show went along. And a much worse actor. Just the over the top desperation to get his son was…have you ever stuck your tongue into an electrical outlet. Yeah, me neither. But I’m sure that jolt would be the same feeling as hearing Michael open his mouth in Season 2. Since my britches burning, let’s get right to it, and tell you my big issue with Season 2. How stupid were the Losties in not realizing that it was Michael who freed Ben, shot Ana Lucia, Libby and himself? These are walking, breathing Pez dispensers, with heads empty except for candy. Follow my logic. Nobody knows that AnaLucia untied Ben in his armory cell. Everybody was rushing back thinking that AnaLucia stole Sawyer’s gun to shoot Ben. Initially, Locke was the only one that knew Ben tried to strangle AnaLucia, and he eventually shared that information. So when the gun was taken, everybody thought AnaLucia would enter the armory and shoot Ben as retaliation. But everybody, and I mean everybody including Locke, knew that Ben was tied up. Except for AnaLucia, who untied him, and chose not to shoot him. So, follow the events. Let this sink in. Michael shoots Ana Lucia on the couch, which is facing away from the hatch. Libby is shot all the way across the room. Michael shoots himself in the shoulder after he enters the armory and tells Ben that he is free to go. Then Michael shoots himself in the shoulder. So, the Losties rush back, and see Michael stumbling out of the hatch with his bleeding shoulder. Let’s look at all the logic that was completely overlooked. The blood splatters in the armory, on the wall, could only have come from Michael. Therefore, Michael must have been the first shot, not last like he claimed, by proximity evidence. Who untied Ben? Was it AnaLucia, who logically and assumed by everybody would have been holding the gun? But Michael’s fabricated story would have you believe that she had her back to the armory, sitting down, unaware that the armory was open and Ben was escaping with the gun he stole from her? She was shot in the front of her torso, so basically Ben untied himself, broke out of the armory, stole AnaLucia’s gun, told her to sit still, shoot her, turned to fire and kill Libby, then grabbed Michael, marched him into the armory, passed by him to get on his other side, and then shoot him from the back of the armory where he was originally tied up. Does this seem like the most ridiculous thing in the history of history? And what about the powder burns on Michael’s hands? Which is run of the mill for anytime somebody shoots any gun. Jack didn’t notice them while fixing Michael’s arm? Are you kidding me? Did these assh0les, any of them, ever watch a cop show? Look at the evidence, man. You don’t even have the gumption to question the only witness, who should automatically be considered a suspect. Nobody, NOBODY doubted Michael’s stupid story. Further, the only thing Michael keeps talking about in the hatch is asking if Libby is awake and if she said anything. Again, this is seriously suspicious and selfish behavior. Michael is remorseless and is very concerned about being caught. But, again, nobody stops to think that Michael might be worried about Libby blabbing. Oh, but we are just getting warmed up. Michael talks about tracking the Others to their camp. Oh, but they eat dried fish, live in huts and teepees, old, dirty, mostly women, and are worse off than us. We can take them. Uh, Michael, look at the Losties beach. Are they really worse off than the castaways. Then Michael claims he only ever saw two guns. Two guns? Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Locke just turned over 5 guns to the Others. Have these troglodytes completely turned their brains to the “off” setting. They have your guns. That they took from you days ago. Their heads are full of pudding. Next, Michael says he is making all the decisions on who to bring along to fight these 23 people. He wants to bring 5 people, FIVE?, you need more than five to overrun a Girl scout troop bake sale. Five people including Michael with a badly injured shoulder and Hurley who doesn’t know how to use a gun. They couldn’t capture a lemonade stand with that kind of plan. And Sayid is the only person, ONLY person, who figures out Michael is compromised. And you don’t want Sayid, the “only soldier in camp” to go along? Five vs Twenty Three? Michael is the worst military strategist ever or obviously trying to get them killed. Can it be more obvious. The Iraqi Information Minister was more believable as he claimed that the U.S. army was nowhere near Baghdad as you could see U.S. army tanks a block away rolling through town. I find Jesse Ventura’s conspiracy garbage more believable than Michael. Might as well give Michael a Nobel prize while we are at it. Jumping Jehosophat. This is just sloppy. I lost my mind over this shocking, glaring, blatant jackassery. Sure, Michael shooting the ladies and releasing Ben was a bit stunning, one of the most shocking moments of the series, but that single scene glossed over a whole world of stupidity. This Michael crap….my teeth ache. if I had 103 cavities in my mouth right now, my teeth would hurt less than thinking about these plot developments. I hate…..that’s it. I just hate. Just to let you know, I have returned from a 5 minute break of breathing into a brown paper bag. It took 4 minutes to realize that it was full of garbage. For the sake of all things holy, the cast of Jersey Shore are freaking geniuses as compared to these lunkheads. And for the love of God, somebody punch Snoo-Kate in the face.

Locke’s outside life. I thought it was notable that Helen, John’s girlfriend Peg Bundy, was the one that instilled a sense of taking a leap of faith in John’s psyche. Though it was short lived as it turns out, Locke’s lesson of being a man of faith took root here, when Helen talked him out of hanging around outside of his father’s house. Of course, when Locke is turned down proposing to Helen when Locke is caught helping his father, why oh why doesn’t Locke go back to the hotel room and grab his share for helping, 200 grand. I mean, why not? His father said he was just going to leave it for the maid if John didn’t take it. I can’t quite remember, but I hope Locke went back for it. I get the feeling he was too dumb to do so.

Let’s go back to the Swan hatch, where everybody is taking turns pushing a button that they believe does absolutely nothing. Sayid and Jack explore the hatch, it’s strong magnetic pull, geothermal power source, and the 8-10 foot thick cement walls which Sayid compared to Chernobyl, which also had an incident..

The Tailies story was really the first time we saw a story told from a completely different vantage point, and I liked it. In fact, the Tailies were a group of characters that I for the most part enjoyed. Mr Eko was pure “scary” personified with a gentle speaking voice and evil smile. No matter how much the writers tried to make AnaLucia unsympathetic, it just didn’t work for me. I thought she was a great. Libby was fine, no complaints. From the beginning, I like Bernard. Then his Garrison Keiller crap got annoying after a few seasons and I’d love to repeatedly punch him in the neck. The unexplained plot point that has nagged me for years: why did the Other take 3 people the first night? Clearly, in Season 3, Ben tells Goodwin to make a list and subsequently we find out that the Others will figure out who to take from the lists that Goodwin and Ethan make. Which is what happened during the second abduction of the Tailies. But why the rogue abduction on day one. It makes no sense. I always put forth and Other Other theory of several groups of natives on the island, possibly living underground, but that didn’t materialize. We eventually learned of the caves and the Temple, so I got that part right at least. Still, this is an issue we may never get resolved. The Tailies find the Arrow Hatch, a hatch remarkable for not being useful or having any discernable purpose, 23 survived the crash, 5 make the trek to the Losties camp. AnaLucia kills Goodwin in a memorably tense scene when she calmly tells him that she knows he is an Other, and they end up in a death dance. Goodwin told AnaLucia that Nathan, the guy whose neck Goodwin broke, was not a good person and therefore not on the list. After seeing AnaLucia and MrEko’s back stories, we can see how they would not be on the lists because they were not “good” people off the island. However, you are telling me Libby and Bernard weren’t good people either. It doesn’t add up. However, we see Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer on the Michael list later in the season. Does this make them good people? Really? What about the other good people, like Locke for instance? Something doesn’t smell right about the lists. Just before Michael runs off after Walt like the selfish d!ck that he is, he tells AnaLucia in his own inimitable style “They took my son!!”. AnaLucia returns with they took a lot of things. FACE. With a quick smack, AnaLucia spikes that can of corn right back at Michael. He is whining about his missing son to the leader of a group that has lost 18 members, including more children than just one dopey kid. Mr Eko explains to Jin how the Others do not leave tracks, which reminded me of an Easter Egg, a bonus scene from the Season 2 DVD. I believe it was Disc 2. As the disk is at the menu portion, they reshow the scene of Mr Eko and Jin hiding in the bushes, watching the Others walk by in barefeet and dragging a teddy bear. What they add is that the last Other is carrying a palm leaf, and is brushing the footprints out of the path. They do not leave tracks. It’s a shame the Tailies turned out to be mere footnotes in this series, as Jacob did not visit them off island, they didn’t last very long on the island, and even more unfortunately is that the sharp as a bag of mothballs Bernard is the only one left. Other than anyone that was kidnapped and is still alive somewhere.

We got full exposure to some horrible episodes, featuring missing wedding rings and a need to baptize a baby. Honestly, that baptism episode stunk really bad. Charlie keeps taking the baby, gets beaten up by Locke. And if Charlie is talking about a dream, why is Locke all of the sudden a skeptic, that renowned man of faith. It’s bullsh!t. Charlie has gone out of his way to help Claire, nearly lost his life for her, but he goes for a walk with the kid, and he is the most hated man in camp. Further, how stupid is his drug habit. He beats the addiction, and is a good guy. He gets tempted, bad guy. He overcomes temptation, good guy. He gets tempted again, bad guy. Just make up your mind already. You’re wasting our time. Focking just drown already. It’s not that I didn’t like Charlie, it’s just his story line was pointless after a while, including the flashbacks. Just the same old sh!t. So the island tempts Charlie, he passes the test, and the island kills him soon after anyway. Pointless and ponderous.

After Mr Eko returns an injured Sawyer to the hatch, the con man makes a bad decision to say about Kate “I love her”. Oh, bad move, Romeo. Kate meanwhile is sleep deprived from watching Sawyer, and sees a manifestation of a black horse which helped her escape from the marshal off-island. Again, sleep deprived increases chances of such visions. Turns out, Kate murders her mother’s boyfriend with a gas explosion, much to her mother’s disapproval. And never shows any remorse for it. Kate gets spooked by a possessed Sawyer, leaves him to die, and 10 minutes later is playing tonsil hockey with Dr Jack. Wow, that was a quick change in direction by Kate. Only to be repeated another thousand times over the next few seasons. Can somebody just kill her already? Please. So why did Kate kill her father? “I hated that you were a part of me.” Excuse me? That is a reason to kill somebody? I hate that you are my father, that your sperm led to my very existence, and since I hate myself so much, I will not kill myself but instead now I will kill you and not take responsibility for it but run. Hello? Is there anybody listening? I am stunned. You would think the guy would have at least molested her or hit Kate or something. Nope. She killed him because Kate had low self esteem. This warped logic just made my nose bleed. Please, somebody tell me this giant sack of suck is not supposed to be a likable character. “Every time I look at Sawyer, I see you.” Get up, Sawyer, and run. This crazy b!tch is going to blow you up too.

When Michael starts to use the Swan computer to talk to Walt, it’s fairly obvious it’s Ben or a minion typing back from the Pearl station, watching Michael.

The Mr Eko flashbacks were terrific. All of them. When Charlie leads Eko to the drug plane, the Smoke monster is following. Eventually, Eko and the dark Smoke Monster have a staring contest, and the monster blinks first. Nice scene. We could see in slow motion how the monster pulls memories out of a person’s head, which it then uses for it’s advantage and schemes and manifestations later. And that is the confusing thing. Last week, I proclaimed that the Christian manifestation was dark smoke monster and led Jack to the caves. But Jacob also scanned the Losties off island by touching them, so he could have led Jack to the caves as a white smoke monster manifestation, and since Christian has said that he speaks for Jacob, it makes more sense. Let’s face it, it’s confusing to know right this second who is doing what course correcting and for what purpose when it comes to Jacob vs X. I’d just speculating that two different smoke monsters exist without any definite proof. Mr Eko sees a recently departed AnaLucia in a dream, and Yemi too. Before, he was told to build a church. His new mission is to help John. Mr Eko is picking up John’s slack in the faith department, and is starting to be tested by island. The button needed to be pushed. I’m not sure if Jacob or X is pushing Eko along. We saw Eko scanned by the dark smoke monster, but does X want Locke helped so that later on he could take over his dead body. Certainly, there is a lot to think about in instances like this. Who is behind which manifestation and for what ultimate purpose. Not on a micro level, but a macro long term investment purpose. Eko needs John to take him to the question mark, which we discover is the Pearl hatch, which very much resembles the TV aisle in a Best Buy. Eko, in a flashback, investigates a miracle of a girl coming to life during an autopsy. Her father is Mr Malkin, the psychic that got Claire her plane tickets. Malkin goes on and on to Eko about how he is a fraud, he gathers intelligence, and exploits people. So, what was his motivation to get Claire on that plane and that she must raise the child herself, but then sets her up to give up her baby in Los Angeles. Course correcting? Sure. But what is the motivation, or who is behind the course correction in this case?

After Michael goes rogue, locking Locke and Jack in the armory and goes after Walt, we get a face to face meeting by campfire with the Others. Tom tells Jack that Walt is a very special boy. Why? We may never know. In order to save Kate, who was told to stay behind but she doesn’t listen like usual, the Losties give up a third of the guns that they have. What kind of decision is that. I’d have kept the guns and let them have Kate. Rubes, every last one of them. Rubes. Later, AnaLucia comes up with the line of the Season. She asks Jack, as they are talking about Kate, “You hitting that?” Yeah, I’d hit that. With a piano dropped from a significant height.

Sawyer runs a simply brilliant long con with Charlie’s help in kidnapping Sun leading to getting his hands on all the guns. “There is a new sheriff in town, boys.” That was one of the high points of the series. The con he pulled with Cassidy was pretty slick too.

Sayid fixes a radio, catches a transmission of the Glenn Mille Orchestra. Hurley says the music could be coming from anywhere, or anytime. Nice foreshadowing.

When Michael was held prisoner, we were introduced to a character of Mrs. Klugh. After she got off to a promising start, she never mattered in the show again other than asking Mikhail to shoot her outside the Flame station rather than being captured in Season 3. Which of course gave me the impression that she knew her death would be temporary, as in loop. Or maybe she thought she was dying for a worthy cause. I’m sure I’ll dwell on this during next season’s review.

Danielle captures Henry Gale, brings Sayid along, and states matter of factly that he is one of them, the Others. She should know. Ben/Henry stole Alex from her during Season 5. Rousseau shoots Henry with an arrow, signifying the beginning of the suffering of Ben, where it seems he is constantly battered and bruised, looking like a ragamuffin. We get the brief back story of Inman, the man who got Sayid to torture for him, and the man who was to become Desmond’s partner pushing a button. Ben starts his own long con from the armory, having Mr Eko apologize to him for killing a few Others, getting Jack and Locke to fight, driving Locke crazy about not pushing the button, drawing a map to the balloon then joking that is would be a trap. There was a food drop and the blast doors trapped John underneath. But he got a fluorescent look at where some of the other hatches on the island would be located. The blast door fractured Locke’s leg. This led to the reveal that Rose also knew that Locke was in a wheelchair on the plane, so she knew the miracles the island could perform, like curing her cancer. Once it was determined that Henry Gale was dead, I had to wonder how he died. He left a goodbye note, walked toward the beach, and had his neck snapped. Then he was buried under his balloon. Did the Others kill the real Henry Gale? Kind of callous. Ben tells Locke that he was coming for him, and I believe him in this case. Locke was certainly mentioned in the Faraday journal, and the Others such as Widmore and Faraday’s mother and Richard saw Locke in the past, time traveling. Ben wanted to meet the man who would be such a key figure in the past and future of the island.

We find our third hatch – the Medical hatch with Rousseau, Claire, and Kate.

There was a memorable line by Sun upon announcing her pregnancy “I swear to you Jin, I have never been with another man, and that is the truth.” I’m too exhausted to get into it again with the evil that is Sun, so moving on…

Hurley sees his imaginary buddy Dave running around the island. Hurley kicks Sawyer’s ass in a fight, a genuinely humorous moment. Speaking of which, the Dave situation reminded me a lot of Fight Club, a glorious movie. I though a very key moment came when Dave dove off the cliff and told Hurley “See you in another life”. Yet another reference to Groundhog Day or Alternate Universe/Time Line. We find Libby in the mental hospital watching Hurley. Another plot line that doesn’t look like it will ever get resolved. Then again, realistically it’s hard to expect every detail to be explained to us, no matter how often I demand the answers.

AnaLucia takes a trip with Christian to Sydney. Hey, that’s another connection to JJAbrams. The main character in Alias was named Sydney. I didn’t notice that before. Anyway, Christian goes on a bender and decides to visit his daughter at 4:00AM, which is never a good idea. However, this is where we get the first clue, and only clue needed to be honest, that Jack and Claire are related. However, Christian points out very drunkenly that he is paying the mortgage on the house and has the right to see his daughter. See, this is why I don’t understand certain aspects of the law. Why wouldn’t he have the right to see his daughter? Just wake her ass up. ‘Ole Money Bags is here for a visit.

Desmond’s flashback introduces the character of Charles Widmore, who seemed so sinister and important for several seasons. Going into Season 6, does he matter all that much anymore? We realize that he is working on course correcting, and is not being cruel to Desmond just to be a d!ck by trying to bribe him and not allowing his letters to reach Penny or calling him a coward, but because he needs to steer Desmond in the right direction. Piss him off enough to get him to participate in some boat race and end up on the island pushing the button. Faraday’s journal chronicled the importance of Desmond, the constant, and Widmore along with Eloise Hawking had the journal. When Desmond returns to the Losties on the island, he makes a reference that they are all trapped in a snow globe on the island. Which was an excellent analogy considering the time fluxes surrounding it. We also see the mysterious Libby giving Desmond the sailboat for the race. Apparently, Libby’s husband David (imaginary Dave?) had just recently passed away and she didn’t need the boat anymore. Course correcting by Widmore? We will never know the story of Libby, I would suspect. A loose end..

When the Losties are marching into Michael’s trap, there was a some kind of bird that swooped down and said “Hurley”. Rewatching that scene was significant in that it was clearly a manifestation, and was undeniable proof that the writers on this show smoke weed. When Sawyer kills one of the Others, Jack finally decides to confront Michael on his lies. I was shocked to see Michael confess his crimes, and nobody punch him or shoot him. “It’s my son.” Really? I would have never guessed from the million times you’ve stated it this season. You know, there are some things you wouldn’t do for a child. Sayid, Jin and Sun see the 4 toed statue for the first time. It seemed like such a quick scene, but stirred so much debate over the years, and Season 5 showed how incredibly significant this structure was. Sayid explores the fake camp that was built to fool Michael. Seems like a lot of effort for a prank, but it was effective for it’s purpose. We find out where the journals go from the pneumatic tubes in the Pearl hatch – the middle of nowhere in the jungle. Some tasering happens, and Michael leaves with his boat. Ben assures Michael that the Others are the good guys. Well, I might not go that far; I don’t think we are any closer to resolving that statement today than the day Ben said that.

As John and Desmond push Eko out of his button pushing duty, Locke declares that the button is meaningless. “I’ve more sure of this than anything in my entire life.” Good think he said this a few minutes before declaring “I was wrong”. We see some of the hatch history explained by Inman, such as Radzinsky’s suicide, Inman painted on the blast doors. Pushing the button releases a built up discharge, but there is also a key for a failsafe. I suppose Radzinsky survived the Others gas attack because he was in the hatch, but how long was it until he realized he was the last Dharma left on the island. Also, he knew the true history of the Swan hatch, so who exactly was the Orientation film for? The Pearl orientation film might make some sense, in that it was a hoax, but why the Swan? Anyway, Desmond thinks that he was responsible for the Oceanic plane crash on the day he accidently killed a fleeing Inman and was late returning to the button. Desmond and Locke argue about the button until Locke breaks the computer and we get the expected system failure. Desmond turns the key, leading to future shenanigans in upcoming seasons. I didn’t like how Charlie ran away from the hatch, went to the beach, didn’t tell anyone what had happened, and then start making out with Claire. What about your buddies, dipsh!t? They might be dead.

We end with the Portuguese men in the Arctic who work for Penny, playing chess. Of course, much like the backgammon game from Season 1, chess is a battle of white vs black, a battle of wits, and a shining metaphor of Jacob vs X.

Oh, how I dread watching the upcoming Hydra island episodes and the cages and stupid Jack, Kate, and Sawyer triangle and worthless episodes about tattoos. What is salvageable is that we are introduced to Juliet, so it will be decent watching her character develop. See you in another week, brother. It will feel more like a lifetime. Stupid Hydra island.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Season 6 Preview - A Look Back On Season One

As we approach the start of the last season of LOST just weeks away, I am racing through my DVDs to rewatch every season, from the very beginning, hoping to pick up additional insight of the journey that we are all experiencing in our own way. As for me, I ramble on in these self indulgent reviews of a show I find so fantastic and so enraging. A combination of emotions so perfect, it’s like gumbo and rice.

The first season captured all of our imaginations right from the first second of Jack waking up in the jungle. Or else, you would not be reading my crap and about to watch the new season. It was well written, competently acted, and had enough mystery to keeping you full of suspense. The pace wasn’t as hectic as the show has now become, but it didn’t exactly drag along like the middle of Season 2 and a chunck of Season 3. Those Hydra Island episodes….I’m trying to make them a repressed memory, but I just haven’t succeeded. I keep hitting myself in the head with a hammer, but I keep waking up mumbling about fish biscuits. So, let’s get started.

I’ve been pushing a Groundhog Day theory very strongly since Season 3, and Jacob and X seem to confirm a cyclical nature to the island or at least the visitors to the island. Possibly reliving their lives on the island after a certain amount of time goes by, a flipping of the numbers after 108 minutes type of deal, or Jack re-awakening in the jungle right after the plane crashes again. Another possibility is alternate realities, as JJ Abrams new show Fringe seems to be involved in (I’ve fallen behind watching that show), and the plane lands in Los Angeles, never crashes on the island, and the characters are all alive. But as they live their lives, they start to remember and reconnect again, which is probably the direction this show is headed in. It’s probably one of the two, loop or alternate universe. Because Juliet did set off the bomb. No doubt in my mind. And she is longer a cast member on the show. As Faraday said, the bomb would change everything and Faraday did also say that the plane would land in Los Angeles after the detonation. Who is going to doubt him now, as he was the smartest guy on the island? And planted that thought in our heads at the end of last season. The writers love to give us foreshadowing.

Right off the bat, you start to get clues to a deep seated, unexplainable familiarity of these Losties to the island. After first hearing the crashing in the jungle of the Smoke Monster on their first night on the beach, the next day Claire said that the monster “it sounded very familiar”, a very odd comment for all intents and purposes. Not scary or creepy, but familiar? Again, leading to some kind of fleeting memory of something that happened previously. Next, we have Charlie and Kate introducing themselves as they head off to find the cockpit to recover a transmitter from the plane. Kate, “You look familiar, but I just can’t place it.” You could chalk this up to a subconscious awareness of Kate knowing the band Drive Shaft, for which Charlie was a part of, but working against this is that Kate doesn’t know the band, it’s a one hit wonder type of band which makes a 15 minutes of fame type of celebrity, and the band has been broken up for years. On top of that, how many bands do you know where you recognize the bass player? 5 or 6? Lead singer? Sure. A bass guitarist is as famous as the guy that carries the speakers from gig to gig. Do you remember what Balloon Boy looks like, and it’s been just a couple of weeks. So, let’s chalk this up to another clue to memory of past events.

After the monster attacks the still living pilot, Jack, Kate and Charlie take off into the jungle. Charlie falls, and Jack stops to help him out. Jack falls behind as Kate and Charlie escape. The duo go back to find Jack, and he seems to appear out of nowhere. Jack, what happened, did you see it? Mysteriously, Jack says I didn’t see it, it was right behind me, I dove into the bushes. Bullsh!t. The monster, who it certainly seems is working with X, is trying to find out who Jacob has brought to the island. Are you telling me Smokie doesn’t want to scan Jack’s memory. Bullsh!t again, as a few episodes later, Christian is stomping around the jungle. Oh, Jack was certainly scanned and saw the monster, but didn’t say anything.

Speaking of X and Jacob, very early on Walt approaches Locke as he is setting up a game of backgammon. Locke explains that it is an ancient game, artifacts of the game were found in ancient Mesopotamia maybe 5,000 years ago. Locke further states that you have two sides: one is light and one is dark. Wow, what a brilliant metaphor as you fast forward to the conclusion of Season 5. Whoever is saying they didn’t plan out this show is just kidding themselves. I was somewhat speechless watching the scene again. Powerful stuff. Of course, googling was in order. Mesopotamia is regarded as the cradle of civilization. Keeping it brief, early philosophy, among other advancements in civilization can be traced back to Mesopotamian roots. I have a feeling that the philosophy has the most impact on our two mysterious beings and this may very well be the background of Jacob and X.

The evolution of the Jin and Sun relationship is certainly bizarre. I know that I’m hard on Sun’s character most of the time. To be fair, Jin was really giving Sun a hard time early on the island, being very controlling and protective. But as time went on, Sun proved to be a snake. For all the things I blame her for in ruining Jin’s life, I forgot that Sun also poisoned Jin. Sure, it was somewhat of an accident as she meant to poison Michael to keep the crew from leaving the island on the raft, but holy smokes is Sun evil. She selfishly wanted to keep Jin on the island instead of allowing them to leave and possibly find a way to be rescued. While the raft wouldn’t have gotten far, as Desmond’s sailboat in Season 2 proved, Sun didn’t know that. They brought up several times in Season 1 how Sun wanted to leave Jin because he wasn’t spending enough time with her. Poor baby. He is paying off his service to your father for marrying you, stupid. And this is all before we find out about the cheating too. Sun stinks and I don’t like her.

Aside from the Others, Widmore, etc, did anybody on the Oceanic 815 flight ever know about Locke’s paralysis and his miracle cure. His “secret’. Well, evidence is that Locke did tell Walt, as early on Locke asked Walt if he wanted to know a secret. Since later on Walt confided in Locke that he burned the first raft, it stands to reason that they swapped secrets. Watching the episode where he is told he can’t go on the walkabout and then flash to him crashing on the island and moving his legs and standing, really emotional material there. Early on, Locke confirmed that he had confronted the monster. "I've looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful." I can’t recall if Locke said that Season 1 or Season 2, but the confrontation was certainly in the first couple of episodes. What did Locke see? Because, when Locke was bringing back the dynamite later in Season 1, he stood and waited for the monster, but when he saw it again, he turned and fled. Why? The speculation would be that Locke saw a different smoke monster early in Season 1, and the dark Smoke Monster later when he was being pulled into the ground, much like the Frenchman who was part of Rousseau’s crew in Season 5, and close to the same spot. And we know that monster was evil, turning the French into people that tried to kill Rousseau. So, is there a white smoke monster, that only Locke saw? Maybe.

Jack sees his father, just as he is desperately tired. This seems to be a pattern. Most of the time, an image, an illusion, Smoke monster in disguise, happens when a character is tired, on drugs, or asleep. When their concentration is most cracked, and is more susceptible to accept the notion that your death father is talking to you or leading you around the island. Just like it is often raining when the Smoke Monster appears, or at least this is how it seemed in Season One. You can definitely hear the subtle clanking of the Smoke Monster during Christian’s appearances. Jacob is not responsible for Christian, but X and Dark Smokie are. So, here is the problem. Why would Smokie lead Jack and the Losties to water so they could survive. They were in dire straights. I can only come up with X wanted Jack in charge, and finding the water cemented his leadership, especially when he did his Live Together, Die Alone speech stuff. X is a more practical entity, while Jacob was more optimistic in human nature. So they choose sides. Jacob had Locke, and X chose Jack. The two kings in their game of chess.

Discovering the two skeletons and the rocks, one white and one black, would have been perfect to connect to Jacob and X, but one of the skeletons was female. So unless X’s name is Chaz, this whole Adam and Eve thing just doesn’t interest me. But the black stone, the backgammon reference, and the Black Rock ship all seem to be tied together in some color scheme sense. Next.

Everything that Rousseau told in Season 1 matched her Season 5 flashback. The firing pin of Robert’s gun didn’t work. This is where Montand lost his arm. The sickness came. I killed them all. The Dark Territory (Temple). The Others took her baby. The whispers. Still, why did she not recognize Jin as he time traveled to her time and here he was on the island. Although, I didn’t clearly see a scene with both Rousseau and Jin both in it. Is it possible that she just never saw him in the Losties camp? The next few seasons will bear this out. It was a bit creepy how she mentioned a “pillar of black smoke” just before they took her child. She certainly has seen Smokie.


Boone started talking about Star Trek red shirts, and how they would get killed off in episodes because they were expendable, just a few episodes before he died himself. And so now we come to our Jack Sucks Moment of Season One: Jack blames Locke for Boone’s death. Why? Boone fell from distance in the plane and received multiple injuries, especially internally. Locke told Jack fell off a cliff. Boone fell out of a tree inside the plane. What the fock kind of difference does this make? His leg is going to be smashed no matter what. What if Boone fell off the cliff and a rock fell on his leg. Same difference. Just treat the injury, Doctor Stupid. Either way, the leg is going to swell up. If I sprain my ankle, it’s going to swell up. You know his leg is going to fill up with blood either way. But I guess it’s just easier to blame Locke than to blame yourself Dr DumDum. Sure, Boone was probably going to die anyway. But why blame Locke? For the love of all things holy, you got Boone’s learning impaired chimp of a step sister so riled up that she tried to shoot the most important man to your survival chances. And dopey Shannon couldn’t even muster up much tears over Boone’s dead body. Well, I’m not surprised she can’t act; just watch Taken and her horrific acting in that horrific movie. But you just possibly committed incest with Boone a few weeks prior, and you can’t even get weepy eyed for the guy? You sick freak. And then Jack makes his grand speech at Boone’s funeral. Or actually not. He says nothing. Sayid did. Until Locke shows up to apologize. Then mute Simple Jack opens his yap. “Where were you?”. Nice. There is a time and place for everything. A school yard fight at a funeral is perfect. And my hate of Jack beings anew. He had more flashbacks in Season 1 than a Family Guy episode, and they all stunk. This was the star of the show? When you pitched the network? “Let’s get this really stupid doctor Jack, who doesn’t want to be a leader but wants to play house with a murdering mannequin called Kate, and build a show around them on an island.” Brilliant. And that’s just Season 1.

Charlie was a decent enough character early on, comedic relief-wise. I thought the best line of the season was Kate taking off her shirt after a bee attack and talking about bees, and Charlie saying “I would have thought those were C’s”. But he really should have died when he was hung by Ethan. That would have been such a powerful image, blind folded and left for dead. Instead, Jack pounds on Charlie’s ribs like a a deranged chimp attacking a turtle, no doubt breaking all of Charlie’s ribs, a full 10 minutes of Charlie not showing any signs of life, and then Charlie is alive. Bull-sh!t. That was such a phony scene. I got douchechills and felt embarrassed for the writers. And then the Claire “my baybeeee” stuff starts up. And of course next season “Walt, Walt, Walt, they took my boy.” Kill me. Speaking of which, I was pretty happy that Walt’s mom died. It’s tragic that it wasn’t a slow death, but I sure hope it was painful. Walt’s mom was a monster. What an unfeeling…well, I’m trying to cut back on my cursing in these to make it more family friendly. Oh, fock it. She was a cunt. And we all know it. She put her career first, child second, and Michael was on the list somewhere after a well cooked piece of fish and a satisfying martini. Sure, Michael was naïve and a dummy, but he seemed to care about his kid. She took full advantage of the laws that, well, I won’t editorialize about the court and custody and divorce, I bet you know where I would go with this. So, she died. Brian was terrified of the kid. And that truly is disappointing about Walt’s story arc. What is his power exactly? We know he told Locke to not open the hatch, but why not? I don’t see what harm came from that. Walt also told Locke’s that he was standing in water, surrounded by people that want to hurt him in Season 5, so I’m curious if he knew that X would be using Locke’s dead body for that. But Walt didn’t tell Locke not to go back to the island. Just that he was in danger. Walt told Michael that we now have to leave the island on the raft. Again, why? Because he knew Locke would open the hatch? The Others were coming? Why would the Other go to all the trouble of kidnapping Walt and do experiments on him, just to let him get away eventually? What did they find out about Walt? These are questions that linger with no realistic hope on my part of a resolution.

Sayid goes on and on about Nadia, the love of his life. He carries her picture with him, he talks about her, he risked his life for her. So does Desmond, with Penny. The difference is that Desmond isn’t trying to get in the pants of the island’s snarky blond in a matter of weeks after a plane crash. Nadia who? Wow, he really knows how to move on. And fast. So while Desmond can pine away for his love of his life, Sayid is searching the island for condoms. Shannon is the like the wrestling heel, who has an knack for getting the audience riled up and hate you no matter what she says. And Sayid is so preoccupied with Shannon, that she asks him to kill Locke. Wouldn’t you think twice about the motivation of the the person you are romantically linked to if the main reason to be with you is to kill someone else or do something illegal?

Which is something the men in Kate’s life don’t seem to understand either. Help escape from the law in a hospital, rob a bank, etc. Sure, why not? Let’s dig up the marshal but do a sleight of hand to hide the key from Jack. Kate’s true love died to help her. Kate is easily my least favorite character on the show. She had more terrible flashbacks in Season 1 than a Vietnam vet coming off 3 tours. Just horrible stuff. Easily the most selfish character on the show. And they really pushed the Jack, Sawyer, and Kate triangle far too aggressively. Jack has more chemistry with Vincent than with Kate. Sawyer smirks, Kate bats eyes, and Jack looks perpetually confused. What a season of smoldering indifference. I can find better acting on a skit on Saturday Night Live featuring the musical guest and the sports athlete host of the show. And another thing, why does every kiss on this show come from the left. I mean, don’t most people tilt their head to the right when they go in for a lip lock. On this show, every tilts to the left, which is very odd. The episode where Sawyer revealed Kate was the criminal, Tom gets shot, and then Sawyer wraps it up with a revealing statement to Kate “There ain’t anything on this island worth staying for.” just before the raft launch, I smiled. It was a just an episode dedicated to beating down Kate. Good. We need more of that. And of course, the first person to start talking to Kate again was the equally treacherous Sun. Snakes of a feather flock together.

Random tidbit. Locke gives Sayid the compass as they launch the raft. When did Locke get the compass back, which figures prominently later on?
As I wrap up Season One, and fittingly with the proper topic, how exactly did the Others know about Walt’s abilities and that he would be on the raft? Unless Faraday wrote about them in his journal, and that’s doubtful, the Others could not have know this information. Ethan was no longer spying, and they aren’t watching them secretly in the Pearl hatch on monitors. How did the Others just so happen to be on a boat to capture Walt? Why target Walt? Was this information that could have been researched by Mikhail when the plane went down. It’s not like his parents would have been bragging about how weird Walt is to the world. Seems way too coincidental, other than Jacob told Richard to go get Walt, to set up the trade at the end of Season 2 where Michael and Walt left.

Well, I’m currently making my way through Season 2. I’ll see you in another week or two, brutha.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

5.17 The Incident, Part II

Well, it’s back to work. I hope to avoid being repetitive and covering again some of the material of the first part of this 3 part saga, but we shall see. Work was kicking my ass this week, so I barely had time to do much on this until Sunday, which is now today. Oh, and I failed to mention how much X looks like that gay naked guy on Survivor from Season 1, Richard Hatch. Holy hell, I thought it was a cameo at first.

The Others arrive at the statue, and as Richard identifies it as where Jacob lives, Xlocke basically goes D’oh why didn’t I figure that out. Sawyer demands 5 minutes with Jack alone, while the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Must be nice to put everybody in jeopardy like that without a care in the world about, well, the world. Jack flashback, where we see the origin of his surgery story that he told Kate way back at the beginning of the series. Jack apparently accidently sliced open a woman in surgery, and her nerves were falling out of their sack like a leaky plastic bag full of soup. Or when Jack tilts his head, oatmeal *bloops* out of his ears. Either way. Count to 5. I was surprised as anyone that Jack didn’t go One, Two, Elventeen, Zebra, Kumquat, Five, Ollie, Ollie, Oxycotin. But, at least Jack screwed up getting a candy bar. Yes, it was our favorite brand of Apollo. Jack is mad that his father called a timeout on him in front of his staff. This marks the first time in the history of modern discipline that a timeout actually worked. Personally, I think Christian should have taken off his belt and chased Jack around the surgery table. Like Homer Simpson chasing Bart down the street with a medieval mace, swinging it around and around, yelling “I’ll mace you good.”
Jack: I need my team to believe in me.
Oh, what else can I say here. A bit selfish, but fine. Jack has bigger things to screw up. Jacob hands over the candy to Jack and touches Jack’s fingers for about 5 seconds. If I wasn’t suspicious of all the touching by now, I surely would not have missed it in this scene, the way the camera stayed on the hands for an excruciatingly long time. Can you be more obvious? Well, at least it was the second time I watched. Sawyer and Jack have a pow wow, and as Sawyer told Jack about Christian drinking himself to death in an Australian bar back in Season 1, this time Sawyer explains his own parent’s gruesome death much to Jack’s boredom. Sawyer is still clinging to WHH, as he could have tried to prevent the death of his parents by leaving the island in the last 3 years, but chose not to.
Sawyer: What did you screw up so bad that you need a second chance?
Exactly. Holy hell, did Sawyer read my mind or what. All this hydrogen bomb stuff is about Kate. It’s not about saving hundreds of lives, ending misery. No, it’s about a woman that is rotten to the core but pretty to look at. These are two alpha male gorillas beating each other over the head with sacks full of bananas over a broad that is one day away from boiling Dharma bunnies in a kettle of Dharma box wine. Jack puts out the weak argument of Locke wanting us to come back, and it’s destiny. Yeah, nobody is buying it. Much to the show’s credit, they come clean rather quickly since Sawyer stumbled onto the truth.
Jack: I had her. I lost her.
Sawyer is incredulous, as am I, as is 99% of the people watching this show. Hey, she is right over there. Go talk to her.
Jack: It’s too late for that. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
Jack Sucks Moment of the Week. Have I handed this award out yet so far? Well, even if it’s the first one…you lose a girl, and instead of talking to her, you decide detonating a hydrogen bomb is a better option? Are you kidding? Hell, don’t get me wrong. I’d try to slam my skull into Jughead repeatedly until it went off or I knocked myself out before getting trapped by Kate’s wily ways. Well, we are talking Jack here, who still is in the mode of going up to a girl in his class and pulling her hair to get her attention. Except, this time it’s a BOMB. So, all your destiny stuff is bullsh!t. It’s the equivalent of Obama seeing Michelle making googly eyes at whoever is running Canada. I assume it’s either Doug or Bob McKenzie. How‘s it going, eh? Hoser. Take off. Next thing you know, missiles level Saskatchewan, and Moosehead beer ceases to exist. And I can’t begin to fathom the fallout from such a selfish action. The horror. Does anybody realize how great Moosehead tastes. It’s the best beer EVAH. The nectar of the gods. A fight a long time coming breaks out and of course you have to be rooting for Sawyer out of principle. Imagine this happening in Season 1.Who are you rooting for? Exactly. Things change.
Sawyer: I had a life here.
Indeed, you did. But it was on borrowed time. Jacob and Xlocke had other plans, and it wasn’t forever. Sorry buddy. As the slugfest starting to slow down a bit, Sawyer kicks Jack in the balls, much to my amusement. I was reminded of the scene in zombie flick Grindhouse: Planet Terror, when Quentin Tarantino was determined to sexually assault Rose McGowan and took off his pants. His junk started to melt and like a chilled bottle of pancake syrup, started to glub, glub, glub, pull away from his sensitive groinal region and ever so slowly in a gelatinous sticky mess streeeeeeeeeeeeetch towards the floor. I hope somebody reading this is eating their breakfast right now, sincerely. I think this writeup just got a “R” rating if not worse. Anyway, Jack takes the nut shot. For Sawyer, it’s clobbering time. He gets on top of Jack and starts to wail away on him, like Tawny Kitaen on that poor baseball player husband of hers. Oh, stop with your accusations. I think women are lovely and do not spend my whole writeup bashing women. Consider the women on this show that I dislike:. Kate, Sun, Charlotte, Kaite, Jack’s ex-wife, Kayte, Shannon, Qate, Rose, K8, Claire the first 3 seasons, Khate, Amy, Cate, Jack, Nikki, Ate-kay…well, that’s not the entire female cast, so stick that up you ass and smoke it. Juliet comes along and tells Sawyer you know, I’ve changed my mind. Arrgh.

Juliet flashback, and a huge red herring. You have to notice that this flashback did not contain Jacob. It was merely a vehicle to explain her impending break up with Sawyer. Apparently Juliet’s and Rachel’s folks split up. But since there was no Jacob, this was the end of the line for Juliet, and as I’ve been harping on it all season long. Even if you love one another, you aren’t always supposed to be together. I call bullsh!t. I love a bottle of rum, and you better believe me and her are together every weekend. So why, Juliet?
Juliet: I saw the way you look at her.
Welcome to the party, pal. Hans Gruber Austin has been running amok on the island for a while, and you just noticed the dead body land on your windshield. Ay caramba! And they breakup. Well, at least it’s more civil than say Paul McCartney and ’ole Stumpy Mills. At the Swan, Radzinsky and Chang are fighting as only nerds know how. Phil tips them off about the bomb. But let’s keep drilling. Geez. Radzinsky has never heard of taking a deep breath and counting to 5 apparently. Hell, at least you get a candy bar out of it. Kate takes a look at Jack’s beaten and bloody face.
Kate: Does it hurt?
Kate is a Stupid Wh0re Moment of the Week. Actually, no Kate, it doesn’t hurt. No, Kate, it doesn’t hurt. I found some wild strawberries; since I have an eating disorder, I couldn’t manage to find my mouth so I smeared them on my face. Or, no Kate, it doesn’t hurt. A polar bear just gave birth to me, and I’m wearing it’s afterbirth as a skin moisturizer. Or, no Kate, it doesn’t hurt. But Sawyer just kicked a field goal with my bean bag, and let me tell you, I’ll probably feel the pain from them once these stupid cuckoo birds stop circling my head. After a question about Aaron, Kate gets fiesty by declaring that she was mad that Jack made her come back. Well, last thing I remember at the dock is that Kate yelled at Jack and drove off with Aaron. Next thing Jack sees is Kate laying in his bed, ripping off her clothes. Um, Jack must have persuasive powers greater than that guy that could bend spoons with his mind. Which is fascinating since Jack has the brain size comparable to a milk soaked Cheerio. Kate is still sticking to her fraud Claire excuse of coming back.
Jack: Nothing in my life has ever felt so right.
Run away. Run far, far away. OK. Let me pose this question. Has Jack been right about anything, ANYTHING, on Lost island. Name one thing. Just one. Fine. Name one thing Jack has been right about anywhere on the planet Earth. I felt incredibly more comfortable when ole Jack was busying making bologna sandwiches for everybody back at the Barracks while Little Ben was dying. I’m sure not more than 2 or 3 of those sandwiches exploded. Jack wants Kate to rub his aching nuts…um, to believe in him. Kate agrees. This author groans. Stop with the I believe in you stuff. You have a bomb. Kill yourselves, and make it snappy. Radzinsky keeps drilling. There Will Be Blood. By the way, fantastic movie. I wish Daniel Day Lewis wasn’t quite so picky with what he does. Geez, Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York and now an oil baron maniac. A treasure for sure. “I drink your milkshake. I drink it up.” I get goosebumps. Then I see him pick up the bowling pin, and I get the giggles for the next 5 minutes.

Hurley reluctantly uses his Get Out of Jail Card, and catches a cab with Jacob. Jacob spends an awful long time talking with Hurley. This makes me wonder if this is because Hurley needs extra convincing and positive reinforcement, or because Hurley is extra special. Of all the people on the island, for me and for nearly everybody else, Hurley remains some kind of pure character, never doing horrible things like nearly every other main character, a real life Scooby Doo. A pure soul. Jacob corrects Hugo’s I’m cursed rant and calls him blessed. Jacob also touches Hugo’s chest, not unlike Mr Anderson doing so to Neo in the 3rd Matrix movie and the final battle in the Matrix. Hugo ends up with the mysterious guitar case, containing God knows what. Unless it’s the Ark of the Covenant, which in that case would be God. I’d love to see Jack open it and have his face melt. While Jack is being told to get the bomb as close to the source as possible, I am left mystified by how quickly Kate changed her mind about the bomb being evil. I think she was excited to see Jack and Sawyer fighting, and thought it must be over her, so she needs to continue to feed her ego by agreeing to whatever is necessary to keep her the center of attention. Meanwhile, the Others at the foot wait at the foot until night falls, rather than doing something right as they arrive in the middle of the afternoon. OK. But, note. It’s night time 30 years late, and day time in 1977. If there is a time jump by the Losties to the right time, it won’t be an exact jump to meet with the other group.
Richard: Jacob would have come to you.
Locke: I’m tired of waiting
Well, it’s not like Locke was waiting all that long. What, a day? No, Xlocke needs to act right now, to take advantage of the loophole he has exploited. Xlocke has been on the island for quite some time, so I’m sure he is tired of waiting in general too. Ben tells Sun that the statue was like that when he got here, but Sun doesn’t buy it, and I am not so sure that I do either. I wonder if Ben and Richard and the Others knocked down most of the statue to chase Jacob out. Jacob sought refuge, and chose the cabin. Then, Ben and Richard trapped him in there with the ash. Since Xlocke was been using the cabin, Jacob escaped elsewhere, but what none of them realized was that Jacob fled back to the ruins of the statue. During this time, as punishment for damaging the Tawaret statue, goddess childbirth, children on the island became a huge issue. Richard protests Ben going in to see Jacob, as only the leader can do it. Strange that a former leader is not afforded the same privileges. Richard moves the wall, Ben get a knife, and Xlocke claims all will be different once Jacob is dead. Indeed.

Miles questions Jack’s mission of the bomb, as he is the only one in the group who was not used to seeing Jack come up with a half-assed plan, and everybody falling in line behind them, full of dread knowing that it won’t work. What if the bomb causes the incident, which if a normal question, one that myself and characters on the show have been speculating about. As the group sees Phil go bouncing by in his jeep, Juliet mutters the overused “Live together, die alone.” Can the writers throw anymore clues to the viewer that Juliet is about to die? Holy smokes. Just throwing a subtitle on the bottom of the screen “Juliet is about to die.” would be a bit less subtle. We get it. Sawyer calls Juliet “blondie”, yet another attempt to distance Sawyer from Juliet to lessen the blow for the audience. Jack’s gun accuracy continues to impress me, blasting away at the Dharma folks. Then again, I’m sure Dharma wasn’t trained to be commandos, so it’s possible they are leaving themselves wide open as targets; therefore, I will quickly take back my compliment to Jack and pretend it never happened. Jack takes cover behind a mound of dry dirt, since obviously a bullet can’t possibly pierce that obstacle. Tell you what, faithful reader at home, go get your gun and a bag of sugar. Try to shoot a bullet through the sugar. And what did you learn? Exactly, don’t listen to me. You can trust me, but don‘t listen to me when I give you instructions. Now go get your broom and dustpan. I’ll wait. Trust me. Oh, don’t be ridiculous, I’m not waiting. And what did you learn now? Never trust me. So while Jack continues to play Neo from the Matrix and breaking rules of physics with his Kevlar dirt, Hurley pulls up in his superhero van yet again, saving the day…he’s like a free safety, showing up at the last second, exactly when he has to. Hey, Dharma sees the faux Hostiles have a bomb. Let’s keep shooting at them. Brilliant. Looks like everybody forgot their logic pills today. Instead they all took Cialis and are a hell of a time trying to lay face down in a foxhole. Sawyer clobbers Radzinsky, captures Phil, and gets Dharma to throw down the weapons. Game over. Let’s all go home. But that would be disappointing, with so much time left in this episode, and with many, many more commercials that need to air, so let’s instead say that the drill can’t be stopped as the electromagnetic pocket is sucking it down into the earth. That sounded vaguely erotic. Uh, oh. Jack looks at Kate, Sawyer looks at Juliet, Hugo looks at a jar of ranch dressing, Phil looks into a mirror and wonders why he never plucked his eyebrows, and Jack drops the bomb into the hole. Nothing happens. Jack Sucks Moment of the Week, #14 or whatever hell number we are up to. Did anybody out there, anybody at all think it would go kaboom? This was JACK. Everything he does turns to sh!t. However, the magnetism kicks in, the same that was pulling objects in the Season 2 finale just before the Swan hatch blew up. Remember, that explosion had a profound effect on Desmond, and a somewhat lesser effect on Locke and Mr Eko, who were in close proximity. Right now, there are a bunch of people hanging around, so you have to wonder what effect, if any, a possible upcoming explosion will have on them. Random metallic objects are being pulled down the drill hole, Dr Chang’s arm becomes pinned, which will lead to an eventual amputation, so that when we see him in future, or at the very least we saw him in the Losties past on orientation films with a fake arm. Now we know why. Phil corners Sawyer, and is going to get his revenge for Sawyer punching him. But this is Hollywood, and it doesn’t work that way. Instead, Phil is impaled. Just goes to show, if you hit a woman (Juliet), bad things are bound to happen to you in the end.

5.15 Follow The Leader
Then Phil comes on down the aisle and slugs Juliet in the face. Well, I was a bit surprised at that punch, sort of the reaction I had when Mongo in Blazing Saddles punched out a horse. Not from Juliet taking a punch, which was funny in an absurd kind of way. But you know windshield wiper eyebrows Phil will die in the season finale. Hell, Sawyer just said “I will kill you”. So, even though we won’t have Phil to kick around anymore, at least he brought a comedy element to his upcoming death


But if she happens to bring you a warm beer and makes you a terrible sandwich while you are watching the big game, hell, all bets are off.
5.14 The Variable
The more troubling sight is seeing Juliet in a red shirt for the second straight episode. JJ Abrams is directing this upcoming Star Trek movie, and as all Trekkers know, red shirts get killed all the time. Uh, oh. I predicted at the beginning of the season that Juliet would not survive much longer. I was wrong about how quickly it will happen. But it’s about to happen nevertheless, much to my disappointment.


Juliet manages to get more chains wrapped around her, preventing escape than David Blaine, Criss Angel, or a dominatrix role playing. She has more chain links around her than a suburban property trying to keep the awful neighborhood kids from doing a dip and dash in their underground pool. She has more chains wrapped around her than Regina, a worker on the freighter during Season 4 who walked off the ship and straight into Davey Jones’ Locker. As Juliet is hanging on for dear life on the edge of the drill hole. Sawyer and Kate spring into action to save her. Sawyer is desperately holding on, knowing that if Juliet dies, he will have Kate stalking him forever. Meanwhile, Kate is doing her part by stretching out her arm about 6 inches, maybe a foot, like she was offering a hand shake to somebody, and proclaims “I can’t reach her.” Kate Is A Wh0re Moment of the Week, # 1700. What kind of effort is that? You sticking out a baby arm , a Tyrannosaurus teeny tiny arm barely into that hole to help the girlfriend of the man you want to idolize you…oh, right. While Juliet is screaming, about to fall, you call hear Kate whispering “So, Sawyer, now that you are about to become single..” I heard it. I swear I did. Trust me.
Sawyer: I got you.
Juliet: I love you, Jamesssssssssssss.
Sawyer starts to cry. Fantastic, touching death scene, really giving the Juliet character a dignified ending. I admit that I choked up too, and shed a couple of tears. Why, oh why, oh why, couldn’t that have been Kate falling down the hole? Oh, so sad, my friend. Sniff.

At the statue, Sun is in search of booze. Hell, who isn’t? It’s 7:30 AM on a Sunday morning, and I’m drinking a warm beer. Hey, it’s 10:00 AM somewhere in the world. Probably Alabama. Illana’s group appears and they are looking for Ricardo. “It’s Richard.” Makes you wonder. If Star Trek and Fringe can reintroduce Leonard Nimoy, why can’t Lost bring back Ricardo Montalban. He’s dead? So what? That hasn’t stopped this show before. Next year, we will find Charles Widmore feuding with Heath Ledger and Bea Arthur off the island.
Illana: What lies in the shadow of the statue?
Richard: (Latin, translated) He who will save us all.
So, is Illana’s group part of the off island Others, which Ben has shown to us over the years exist, and Jacob, to whom the Othes swear their allegiance, has meet with Illana off island, does this indeed make Illana and Richard allies? Xlocke said that the Others must deal with the Ajira survivors, most likely kill them. So what will happen next if Xlocke shows Jacob dead, declares himself ruler of the island, and obey my orders. Now, Richard, kill Illana. Illana has something to reveal from the cargo on the plane, and it turns out to be Lock’s dead body. Inside the foot, Ben and Locke are moving into a room we saw at the very beginning of this episode, apparently Jacob’s home. Looking up, you can see the sky through the open ceiling. Which bothers me to no end, since there seems to be a perpetual fire burning in a pit. Does it never give off smoke? How could nobody have seen that smoke drift out of the foot and realized somebody was living inside of it? Was if because Jacob was trapped in his cabon with the circle of ash, and only very recently set up shop here, not allowing enough time to be discovered. Still, it is taking an awful big chance, as smoke can rise quite high, or can be blown inland quite far with wind from the ocean. Ben admires the tapestry that Jacob has created. It’s a Greek phrase, from Homer’s Odyssey, “May heaven grant you in all thing’s your heart’s desire” Seems like a witty foreshadowing, as Locke has spend all day, hell, a few days goading Ben into wanting to kill Jacob. He is borderline consumed by the thrill of the task.
Jacob: Well, you found your loophole.
Xlocke: You have no idea what I’ve gone through to get here.
Let’s step back for a second. First of all, let’s mourn the loss of Locke. We spent 5 seasons heavily invested in this lovable character, a guy that had a trying existence, a meek, kindly soul willing to believe in people even when they constantly let him down. Up until the end, he kept doing what he thought the island wanted him to do. But as we have mentioned many, many times, for a couple of years now, the island is not equal to Jacob is not equal to Smoke monster is not equal to Christian. Turns our there are at least two competing entities here and that thinking they were all one and the same would have been a mistake. Since the there is a Book of Laws, as seen by objects put in front of young Locke off the island by Richard, this book is likely the reason Jacob and X can’t kill each other. Jacob is probably either above being judged or simply a pure soul himself. When Locke told Richard to tell time traveling Locke and he needed to kill himself to get back to the island, it was actually Xlocke telling him that. Locke was not going to be resurrected into Super Locke, but rather Smokey Locke. Right now, the man in black, Smoke Monster, and Locke are all wrapped up into one neat little package. It will still be nice to see Locke in his new possessed role, as I enjoyed evil Terry O’Quinn in TV shows like Millennium and Harsh Realm. When Ben was being judged, it was all a big setup. Don’t forget, when Ben summoned the Smoke Monster when Sun and Frank were around, Smokey never showed up. Because he was already there, as Xlocke. When Smoke Monster went to attack Keamy’s men, it didn’t do much damage, like it did to Mr Eko or the pilot from Oceanic 815. At the time, I expressed by disappointment and confusion over it. Now, it’s clear that Smokey needed Keamy to stay alive long enough to blow up the freighter. X has been doing one giant long con job. Smoke would have killed Ben in the Temple unless it needed him for manipulation down the road. Notice, that Locke and Smokey/Alex never appeared in the same scene while Ben was in the Temple. Ben was told to do everything Locke told him to do, and don’t even think about killing him. Alex is the only one that could have delivered that powerful message to Ben and have Ben listen. Which meant Alex had to die for Smokey to take her form. Which meant Keamey needed to be on the island to kill her. Which meant…you get the idea, and how much thinking ahead Xlocke had to do. Jacob is looking for the loophole where he can prove a pure soul can stop the event loop that he and X are battling through with chess pieces in the form of humans. He needs to prove his point to break his cycle. And the only candidate like that which springs to mind is Hurley. I don’t feel comfortable knowing Hurley can save the world, but I’m not the head writer. Can you imagine the storylines with me in charge? Lost: starring Nikki, Paulo, Ethan, and Artz. Kate dies in the pilot episode. X believes that all humans are corrupt, and his loophole is to have the only person that can gain an audience with Jacob, the leader of his followers The Others, to kill him willing. Xlocke managed to go to Ben at an early age when Sayid was manipulated into shooting Ben, triggering a visit to the Temple to save him yet strip his innocence. X most likely lives in that Temple. Ben grows up to be the leader after “tricking” Widmore into leaving the island, maybe Ben pretends that’s what Jacob wants. Jacob never talks to Ben, so Ben over the years grows resentful. Now, Alex is dead, the rules were broken, and Ben is pissed. And image the subtleness of X to have Ben move the island and not Locke. It causes the island to time skip which may have changed events in the future by way of the past, Ben and several others return, and now the moment of truth for Xlocke. A Judas Iscariot in Ben is about to betray his Master. The manipulation of the characters goes much deeper, as I will no doubt see when I rewatch the first 5 seasons of Lost over the next few months.
Xlocke: Do it, Ben
Jacob: Ben, you have a choice. You can go.
Ben: All I ever heard was Jacob, blah, blah, blah. I did as I was told. Why did I wait? But Locke didn’t? Why him? What about me?
At this point, we may have to accept that maybe Locke was special, and by killing him and assuming his form, Xlocke becomes more powerful than ever. The other point is maybe Locke is nothing special. He was simply used to get Ben pissed off.
Jacob: What about you?
A very defiant statement, one made by someone that knows what comes next. Jacob knows that he can calm Ben down with some reassurance. Ben is throwing a total hissy fit right now, and needs Jacob’s approval, approval he never got from his father. And the coincidence that so many characters on this show have daddy issues leads me to believe it‘s not a coincidence, but a means for Xlocke to find one that will ascend to leader of the Others and eventually kill Jacob, the father figure. But instead Jacob wants to die, have Ben kill him, giving a seeming victory to Xlocke. But like many of these good vs. evil stories go, there is usually some deeper magic/rules/action in play, and this fits with Jacob’s master plan. Jacob is sacrificing himself for the greater good of the island/world. However, this means the Losties take on a bigger role for the island’s fate next season. Ben takes the knife and in an extremely effeminate way, stabs Jacob several times. I swear, it looked like an old lady trying to stop a mugger by swinging her purse. It looked like Clay Aiken throwing a punch at Mike Tyson. It looked like a squirrel trying to scrap with a pit bull. His arms were as fully extended as Kate trying to reach Juliet in the drill hole. Ben stabbed him in less than a manly fashion. What a pussie. Yet, the stabs hit their mark.
Jacob: They’re coming.
Just before he died, he announced that someone is coming. Since Xlocke seems to be in tune with what is going on on the island, logically this must mean to me that the Dharma Losties are going to return to their correct time. And have to deal with Zombie Xlocke. Oh, we’ve often wondering what Season 7 of Lost would look like, after the current story is done and over with. Zombies was always a tongue in cheek response. Well, we have zombies right now. What irony. Juliet is laying at the bottom of the drill hole, busted up pretty badly, but still alive. From one scene to another, she seems to be bleeding more or less, depending on the camera shot. Continuity error? Or a mindfock like when the bullet hole of Ben’s kept moving around his body like some type of fly moving around the top of some fresh dung or rotting fish or Kate. She sees the bomb, picks up the rock, and beats on it with some rage. White light. Does this signify the bomb detonated? Time travel? Both? We’ve seen the white light when the Swan blew up, and when the time jumping was happening. Unfortunately, Juliet’s injury would move with her if it was a time jump. She is very very likely dead. If the bomb went off, and it didn’t in the past when the incident first happened the first time around, did this have a ripple effect on future events. Does the Oceanic 815 land in Los Angeles, meaning the last 5 seasons of TV watching was…meaningless. Do the Losties jump 30 years into the future, and a fight over control of the island manifests itself? This might be the second best fight ever waged on TV, following close behind the saga of Vince McMahon and the idiot owner of the Denver Nuggets from this past week, The basketball guy took a beating in the media. Nothing made me happier. Looks like I’ll be watching wrestling Monday night for the theatrics.

I think next week, it‘s time to do a character by character thumbnail review and where they fit into the Lost universe going forward. I also want to take some time and possibly put together some long term theories that cover what exactly is going on with this show, beginning to end. This finale was much more confusing that past season finales, but I think we broke it down enough to get the idea of what happened. We just need to look at the big picture. One more article to go, should have it done in about a week.

Monday, May 18, 2009

5.16 The Incident, Part I

Where to begin, where to begin? Well, let’s start with some tangents. I popped in the DVD movie Taken last night to distract me from a long Sunday of LOST themed activity of dissecting video and typing until my fingers ache. Taken features Maggie Grace, who played Shannon on Lost during the first two seasons. She was playing a 17 year old girl in this flick, even though I sure she is over 30. Liam Neeson on the other hand is 90 years old, but dyed his hair in black shoe polish and is trying to pass himself off as a bad ass superhero even though he looks like Bruce Willis’ great, great grandfather. Horrible dialogue and awful acting ensued for about an hour and a half. It was like watching a Kate flashback episode. See, that didn’t take long, to get my first shot in. I highly recommend that you avoid this pile of pig sh!t. Now, on the other hand, the Kevin Smith directed comedy movie Dogma is highly underrated. The film follows two fallen angels, Loki and Bartleby (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), who, through a loophole in Catholic Dogma find a way to get back into Heaven after being cast out by God—however, as God is infallible their success in doing so would prove Him/Her wrong and thus undo all creation. The last scion and two bumbling prophets are sent by the Voice of God to stop them. Dogma was a stark comparison point to this two part season finale. The ultimate cliché battle and the never ending search for “the” loophole.

The opening segment was most likely the explanation of the whole series. Jacob in a white shirt, an unnamed adversary in a black shirt. Good vs. Evil perhaps. God vs. Satan perhaps. A man we come to know as Jacob is making thread to create a tapestry. Later, as he is having a bit of lunch and watching the Black Rock arrive at the island, he is joined by another man. He accuses Jacob of bringing them to the island just so that he can prove X wrong. Yes, what else can I call him, and save myself some typing. X declares they came to fight, destroy, corrupt. Jacob says it only has to end once, and all other events prior to that are progress. So, it’s a time loop with the same characters over and over again, something I’ve been pushing for a long time. Rather, it seems that the events loop, but with different characters. The whole story line replays, as the Black Rock is sure to be looking forward to as they drop anchor in a coconut tree. We have two ancient foes, reconstructing a story line, looking for weak spots, a chance to get the best of the other. Like Randolph and Mortimer Duke from Trading Places betting a single dollar on a social experiment. Although, I think the stakes may be higher, when you have characters running around an island willy nilly with a hydrogen bomb strapped to their backs. JJ Abrams, Carlton Cuse, and Damon Lindenlof, the past and present brains behind Lost, are said to be getting ready to start working on making movies on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, which is 7 novel collection centered around a gunslinger, a man on a quest to reach the Dark Tower, and his adversary is The Man in Black, Randall Flagg. RF has appeared in several King books, and his goals typically center on bringing down civilizations, usually through spreading destruction and sowing conflict. Sound familiar to the profile of the X character as we come to see throughout these two episodes? X wants very badly want to kill Jacob and find a loophole. Well, as we’ve seen in history and movies, you can kill the character in white, but you don’t necessarily win. Jesus Christ is killed, yet is resurrected in 3 days. Aslan, the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia is killed by the White Witch, but doesn’t stay dead either. In both scenarios, the villains, whether Satan or a woman that looks like Andre the Giant got a false temporary victory. So it would hardly seem like the competition would be over even if Jacob was killed. But ultimately, these two scruffy gentlemen are looking for the loophole, which is not made clear as to what it is, but it sure looks like X found it by the end of the second episode, so more on that later. He get a better view of the statue, and I am absolutely convinced that we have confirmation, the ‘ole hippo head goddess.
5.8 LaFleur
So…..let’s take a look at the Egyptian goddess Taweret, protector of motherhood, fertility, and childbirth. Google it and read Wiki or something similar. Pregnant women wore amulets with her name or likeness to protect their pregnancies. Her image was often shown as a pregnant woman, but we did not see the belly of the statue in this episode. She has four toes. Also, her likeness would often be seen holding an ankh, the symbol of life, the symbol on the necklace around Paul’s neck which Amy kept as the dead Paul was taken away by the others, something our statue was indeed holding. It just fits all too nicely and neatly for this statue to be Taweret


Flashback time, and we see a young Kate Austin near the beginning her career criminal life by trying to steal a lunchbox from a Mom and Pop drugstore. She gets caught, and Jacob comes out of nowhere to pay for it. At first, I just assumed that Jacob was simply doing some course correction, much like the folks associated with Eloise Hawking do from time to time. However, there are much deeper implications here. I’m sure that everybody saw Jacob playfully touch Kate on the nose, something you don’t want to do nowadays without being questioned by police about kid touching. But when he made that contact with his nose, I saw some really weird yet subtle light in Jacob’s right eye when the camera panned back to him. And that got me suspicious. So, every time Jacob showed up in an Losties life, it was the exact same thing. Jacob physically touched everybody. Why? Two reasons. One, he is marking everybody with his touch, so that they will eventually arrive at the island, a homing device in a way. After all, Jacob brought the Black Rock to the island. What if he is doing this by going out into the world, and actually contacting people. Next, you know how the Smoke Monster can scan a person’s mind, and get all sorts of images out of their heads. Well, at this point, let’s just say I think Smokey is X, or at least uses X as a human form, or is using X’s corpse/image as a vehicle for appearance. Why couldn’t Jacob have a similar power, where if he touches somebody, he knows their life story too. After all, what kind of competition is Jacob and X having if they don’t have similar abilities/powers? Back at the sub, Kate is explaining how she came back to get some help and to ruin any happiness Sawyer may have without Frecklestein in his life. Oh, and Jack has a bomb. Sawyer tells her no, much like Jack deciding not to go to surgery to help Ben when he got shot. Sawyer wants a chance at a good life and screw the island. Following Daniel’s notes, Sayid removes the rich fluffy center out of the radiation leaking Twinkie. Richard confirms that Eloise is pregnant.
5.15 Follow The Leader
Widmore takes her aside to argue with her, and if you didn’t notice, he placed his hand over her stomach, as a man might do to a pregnant woman. Yep, seems like Eloise is pregnant right now, with Daniel or possibly Penny

Not since the movie Armageddon have two people cared so much about drilling as Radzinsky and Chang. And what are the odds I would have not one, but two Ben Affleck references in the same writeup. Besides, our Ben Linus is a pretty interesting actor, while I do believe Ben Affleck sucks ass. Or Eric Cartmans’ hand as it sings about tacos and burritos. Radzinsky is completely obsessed, calling himself Edison, complaining about 6 years worth of work on the Swan, and never having sex with another person. Again, I can’t stress enough the importance of cantaloupes in the life of a bachelor. Ben is painstakingly explaining to Sun that Jacob is in charge of the island, Locke is the leader and answers to Jacob. Apparently Jacob ignored all of Ben’s phone calls, never responded to the pajama gram gifts, and even put a restraining order out on all men on the island that have bulging eyes like somebody just hit his foot with an oversized mallet. Richard is giving Locke a hard time over his resurrection and his disbelief in it. Locke counters with the never aging phenomenon or Richard. Locke wants to thank Jacob personally, then announces that they will have to deal with the Ajira people next. I think it was around this point I started taking notes about the loophole, and since the leader of the Others is such a key job in relation to Jacob, communication must lead to having an audience with him, it stands to reason that if you become a leader of the Others, you have the ability to kill Jacob, or at the very least, order a follower to kill Jacob. Maybe that is what it boils down really. Getting one of your disciples, and Ben certainly was, to denounce you and kill you. X was certainly spending a lot of time egging on Ben the last few days, ttaking jabs at him, setting him up for future action, from the moment Ben woke up after being clobbered by Sun with the paddle. Illana and her crew arrive at Lost island with Frank. They discuss “candidates” which seems to me indicates folks that might be able to be possessed by a power on the island, like X, the smoke monster. He’s been Christian, Yemi, and Alex, for example, and all of them are dead and their corpses are out there on the island. Or is it a different type of candidate, someone special that is able to leave the island and come back. Then again, we know Ben was able to leave and come back quite a bit when he was an Other. Tom said he could do it. Nevermind. Corpse it is. They are lugging a huge Ajira container and you have to wonder if there might be an easier way to move whatever is inside through an overgrown jungle.

Sawyer flashback, and his parents are newly dead. He starts to write the famous Dear Mr Sawyer letter from Season 1, but his pen dies. So Jacob is on the scene to give him a writing instrument and touch his fingers on the exchange. Even if I wasn’t looking for it, it would have made me uncomfortable. So, it seems that Jacob’s list is most likely composed of people he touched in the outside world, handpicked to come to the island. And every person ended up time traveling, other than Sun and Illana, but both survived the plane crash, which was a bit of a miracle. As Sawyer is baffled by the Jack will reset everything by the bomb, the unspoken distress Sawyer may be feeling isn’t for Juliet or Kate, but he finally got his revenge on original Sawyer on the island, killing the man who ruined his life. Since that time, he was been a changed man. Now, he would be giving all that up to go back to being a bum tossed out of Australia and headed back to a life of con jobs. Juliet decides to free them, and the gang forces the captain to surface, shoot out the communications, and then have a couple of Scooby Snacks. Groovy. I’m still not all that clear why sedatives are needed for the passengers. If you are worried about revealing the location of the island, well, a submarine does not have windows. We’ve seen people travel in and out of the island bubble for a couple of seasons now. As Sayid pulls the hydrogen mussel from its shell, Richard tells Jack that he’s met Locke 3 times off the island, and he didn’t seem all that special to him. Jack says not to give up on him. Sound advice at the time, I’m sure. But Richard, for the love of God, do not EVER take Jack’s advice on anything including what to order from a menu, how to get back to the highway, or “is this a rash“? It’s just wrong. Locke continues to needle Ben, giving a load of grief about life, the universe, and everything. After confirming that Ben has to do whatever Simon Says, Locke tells Ben that he is the one that is going to kill Jacob.

Sayid flashback, and Jacob is asking for directions. We end up seeing Nadia’s death scene and the set up to Ben using Sayid to go on a killing spree. Actually, if you think about it, Sayid was Ben’s puppet, and was manipulated into shooting Ben on the island in 1977. But in actuality, Ben was manipulated by Jacob to manipulate Sayid, as we will discuss later on in Part 2. Jacob touches Sayid’s shoulder and goes away. In the tunnels, Richard breaks through solid concrete and cinder blocks with a hammer in a matter of seconds, which is bigger unexplained phenomenon than Richard not aging. I bet if the Dharma folks in that house were trying to put up a dartboard in their basement, they would have found the tunnels years ago. Richard decides to pistol whip Eloise and drag her away. He needs to protect their leader. Interesting, how Eloise has been acting like she was in charge at camp, and now is called THE leader by Richard. What about Widmore, and his claim that he was leader for 30 years. Is this total bullsh!t, and he was merely the First Lady? Co-leader. This has been bothering me for half the season now. Sayid and Jack hide in plain sight, until drunky Roger recognizes Sayid gets mad at Jack for stealing his gal Kate away, and also the thing about what’s his name my son. You can’t reason with a drunk who can shoot like Annie Oakley. I have a bomb…direct hit into the stomach. Jack goes Rambo and actually hits a few targets as Hurley and the other minor characters pull up in the superhero van and whisks Jack and Sayid to semi-safety.

Paddling back to the island, Juliet glances at the disappearing sub, knowing that her last chance of escape from the island is gone. As they land, Vincent, Rose, and Bernard appear from the jungle in order of intelligence. And only Vincent is excited. Instead of asking where everybody else is, or why the time jumps stopped, or how Kate got back to the island, they just look annoyed. As the van is getting closer to the Swan, Jack’s mouth is writing checks his ass may not be able to cash. Sure, Jin, we will reunite you with Sun. Of course, Hurley, Sayid will be OK. Sayid, we will get you a new, more improved stomach. Miles, well, Jack don’t like you Miles, so piss off. And then we will all go out for chocolate milkshakes. Rose and Bernard are supposed to be the comic relief I guess, and they point out they know all about what it going on on the island, Dharma and the searching and blah blah. They have retired. “It’s always something with you people.” I couldn’t help but think, what if Bernard said that to Mr Eko, Michael, and Walt. Or to Sun, Jin, Chang, and Miles. Or Jack, a rock, and a rock.
Bernard: We just want to be together. That’s all that matters in the end.
Sure. And the world is going to end in 5 minutes. But you want to throw some down home old fashioned spun advice at us. Did you not hear the world “bomb”? I got tired of Life According to Bernard the second time he opened his mouth. You can go ahead and call him likeable. Well, you can. I won’t. Juliet catches Sawyer looking at Kate while Bernard prattles on about love and stuff. Well, as they leave to continue with their intercept mission, the camera lingers on Juliet, and you just know the way they are setting this up, she is going to die in a couple of minutes. Illana’s group is tromping through the jungle. They explain to Frank, a convenient hostage who allows the writers to tell us exactly what they are up to, that they need to show somebody what it inside the case big enough for a family of 16 illegal aliens to live in comfortably. And by aliens, I mean from space. That somebody needs to know what they are up against. “We’re the good guys’. This marks the 675th time this phrase has been uttered on Lost, and we still don’t know who the good guys truly are. And by uttered, I mean the dingle dangles hanging off a cow. Well, we know later on that Illana is working for Jacob, supposedly. She is trying to warn Jacob Somebody of what possible form X/Smokie can take on, since there is a body inside the cargo holder, which happens to be Locke, as we find out later on. As they find Jacob’s cabin, they see the ash is disturbed around it. Now, in seasons past, I’ve talked how salt/ash is an artifact that can be used to keep spirits inside a circle or keep outside spirits from entering the circle.
5.15 Follow The Leader
OR if Jacob does exist, he was trapped for some time by that volcanic ash and/or salt ring around the cabin, but has been released. But I think the Jacob is a hoax is more fun, so I will go with that for now.

Sigh. Well, if I didn’t try to edit last week’s writeup and try to keep it shorter, I would have had this scenario covered. But I got lazy. Jacob escaped. Who trapped him? We get an Illana flash back where she is in an infirmary and her face is bandaged up. Oh, how I wish someone would run up to Kate and throw acid in her face. Jacob visits and asks for Illana’s help. Which then leads me to conclude that Ben is not the one who tipped off Illana on where to find Sayid. Jacob did. He knew what flight was going to land on Hydra Island. I suppose he is the one who told Richard to tell Ben to build the runway too. The cabin is deserted and looks a lot like what I imagine Roger Linus’ cabin at the Barracks looks like.
Illana: Someone else has been using it.
Well, that would be X, who has been impersonating Christian. Explains why he was smirking when Locke asked if he was Jacob. It also means he convinced Locke/Ben to turn the donkey wheel to move the island, he led Jack to the caves in Season 1, he told Sun that she needed to follow John Locke to find Jin…almost any character that was a manifestation, Christian, tall ghost Walt, Libby, Yemi, Dave, etc. was a way for X to play towards the end game. That’s why rewatching Season 1-5 will be so interesting before Season 6 kicks in. Well, the group heads towards the Taweret statue.

Jacob is sitting on a park bench, reading Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor. In the story, human weaknesses are exposed and important moral questions are explored through everyday situations. The title ''Everything That Rises Must Converge'' refers to an underlying religious message central to her work: aiming to expose the sinful nature of humanity that often goes unrecognized in the modern, secular world. The book seems to connect to the struggle between Jacob and X, the ancient battle that Eloise, Charles, and Ben have referred to in the past. Locke thumps on the ground, another vantage point to when his father pushed him out a hotel window. Jacob comes up, touches him on the shoulder, and says “I’m sorry this happened to you.” This may go beyond this immediate scene. This could be a reference to everything Locke will go through in the future as well, up to and including his death. Jacob was very purposeful in touching Locke for more than a casual second, possibly trying to get a sense of his mind for future confrontations with XLocke. The Others reach the old Losties camp and stop to rest. Locke gets more Ben confessions, how he pretended to be able to talk to Jacob when it was just an empty chair, until stuff started to fly round the room.

Locke explains to Ben that he got cancer, his daughter died, and for those loyal years of service to a man you never met, you were banished from the island. Why wouldn’t you want to kill Jacob? Um, I don’t think those reasons are good enough to get me personally to go egg Jacob’s house. Ben got cancer, but he got better. His daughter died, who he kidnapped from the real mother. I mean, exactly what is Ben so pissed about? What, that his innocence was taken away by a gun shot wound and being healed at the Temple. That saved his life. Hell, Ben was lured away from the Barracks as a child when he thought he saw his mother outside. It was SmokeX. Even way back then, he was starting to manipulate Ben for his final masterpiece, the loophole. Sun finds a ring with DS on it, a tribute to dead Charlie and his band Drive Shaft, a ring Charlie owned. Jacob appears at Sun and Jin’s wedding, and touches both of them on the shoulder. How much ecstasy can this guy consume. Touchy feely fellow, isn’t he?
Jacob: Never take your love for granted. It is very special.
Except of course when Sun cheats on Jin. Other than that, it’s very special. Well, Sun was trying to leave Jin and run away at the airport. Ok, other than that, it is very special. Can you blame the island for keeping Sun away from Jin. Jin had important stuff to do. Sayid modifies the bomb to explode on impact. Hurley stops the van because Sawyer, Juliet, and something that resembles Taweret but with freckles are blocking the road.

I don’t think I have the energy to start and finish Part 2 today. Since Fringe and Lost are over for this season, I have extra time on the weekdays, and I will try to have Part 2 done in the next few days. I started some theory, but didn’t finish all my thoughts, saving it for the next writeup. Should be more discussion on events from the past in a new light, and I don’t want to rush through it. But I think you know which directions I’m heading in, based on what you just read.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

5.15 Follow The Leader

Sorry for the sheer length this week, the longest writeup of the year to date for an individual episode, but I had a lot to say. Next week is the season finale two- parter. This week is the prime moment to theorize about many things, while the next week or two will probably be more reactive summary and speculation to next season. If you are brave enough, read on.

Well, the title of this week’s episode recalls the famous tug of war between Jack and Locke throughout the first 4 Seasons of Man of Science vs. Man of Faith. Both were constantly vying for the overall leadership role, many choosing to follow Jack, and eventually ended up with two factions. So, we have arrived at this point in Season 5, with Jack leading the Hostiles along with a couple of Oceanics in the bomb plan, and 30 years later Locke leading the Others by the necessity of his found purpose since being reborn. Some things never seem to change: Jack still is a fock up. Some things actually do: Locke is supremely confident and talks with a demeanor of someone that knows what the answers are to every single question he asks. Locke is getting a bit cocky. But can you really resent that at all, considering his life pre-plane crash and now he has been treated by Ben since? Nope, no resentment from me.

As I’m watching the “Previously on Lost” segment, I was reminded of the scene where Daniel explains that they can prevent the Swan from being built, the Oceanic 815 plane lands in Los Angeles, and none of this (the Lost TV show, basically) ever happens. Logically, why is this necessarily a good thing? Couldn’t detonating the bomb cause MORE damage to events on this planet. Maybe the Swan was meant to be built. I know I’ve conversed about Groundhog Day, and the concept of that movie where a certain amount of time is repeated over and over again in an infinite loop until the desired effect is attained. And it’s not just to get into Andie McDowell’s pants. Maybe starting from this very day, a day where the incident happened in 1977, that Faraday even says starts off a chain of events leading up to and beyond the Oceanic plane crash, maybe this day is the beginning of the loop. And it ends….well…we don’t really know. But something happens and we get cycled back to 30 years ago to correct it, much like the numbers cycling back to zero when the button was pushed every 108 minutes. Like the universe imploding from a time-space cataclysmic event on the island. Maybe, this time, the events have changed based on the variables in Dharma 30 years ago. Maybe, the Whatever Happened Happened mantra is the ultimate reference that events of this loop cannot change, yet Daniel was eventually conceding that they can. And here we are with a loop that I suspect is very different. A loop that has the course correcting Eloise Hawking nervous and babbling about instability and unpredictability and not knowing what happens next, despite reading Daniel‘s journal which I‘m sure is at least partially responsible for the Others being as aware of what is really going on and how they stay one step ahead of visitors to their island like the Oceanic folks for example. Ben is baffled by current events, or at least is trying to look baffled. Nobody seems sure of the future anymore. With one important exception. Locke. If the island is ready to correct the loop, get it right once and for all, this is the best opportunity it has ever had.

Geez, I’m this far in, and I haven’t even gotten to the beginning of the episode. This is probably going to be a long read, based on how many notes I took. Strap yourselves in; it’s going to get ugly.

As Daniel is facing down Richard with his gun, Jack and Kate have decided not to spring into action nor flee. Rather, they have put on a kettle to boil so they can have a spot of tea while they have a leisurely chat about this and that. The Undynamic Duo are arguing about destiny. Jack has latched onto the concept of blowing up the bomb being their destiny, like a pit bull latching onto a child’s leg. Jack, as we all suspect, has been tremendously incensed about Juliet’s outrageous behavior a few episodes ago when he stepped out of the shower and Juliet did not stare at his junk. How dare she not look, Jack brooded? Or maybe it was Juliet questioning why they came back, what was their purpose, and they better figure it out fast. Nah, it was the lack of staring at his crotch that did it. Finally, Jack has stumbled over something. Now, he is ultimate example of knowing how to respond to a good verbal beating hours and hours later. I should have said that and that. Hey, the jerk store called, and they are all out of you. Jack can now tell ‘ole Juliet, Hey we were meant to come here to blow you up to smithereens. How do you like them apples? While all this is going on, Daniel gets shot. Kate has her familiar running shoes on and is about to go anywhere else but here. She is just so identified with “there goes Kate running again” it’s scary. Jack is trying to keep Kate from fleeing and trying to desperately to have a thought at the same time, and you can see the veins bulging on his face from the effort of multitasking. That’s gotta hurt. And that was before Widmore comes by on horseback to smack him in the face like a polo player smacking one into the goal. Eloise is examining Daniel’s journal for the first time. Is it just me, or do the Others kick some ass in the past? They seem so aggressive, so angry, so vibrant. Now, go back and compare these ass kickers to the bunch of drugged up sheep that are looking at reborn Locke. Was is the brainwashing they endured at Hydra island like Karl was rescued from by Sawyer and Kate in Season 3 that sapped the life out of them? Is it that they know, consciously or subconsciously that they are chattel, meaningless bit players in a time loop, not afraid to die for the cause because they know they will be reborn. Think back to the confrontation at the Flame hatch in Season 3, the one John Locke blew up. As Mikhael held a gun, Mrs Clugh told him, in Russian, to shoot her. She obviously thought nothing of dying, willingly giving up her life for the greater good. But as we see the beating they give Jack early in this episode, as we recall them shooting all those flaming arrows at the time travelers early this year at the beach, as Widmore broke a comrades neck, hunting castaways in the jungle in order to kill them, getting rid of the military sent to the island, can we really believe their eventual clan years later is a bunch of haggard, sluggish fruit gatherers. How the mighty have fallen. Eloise is giving out orders concerning what to do with Jack and Kate, and you have to wonder, is she a co-leader of the Others. Charles certainly has said in the past that he was the leader of the Others, but was Eloise as powerful as him, or just carried herself that way because she was romantically involved with him? Seemed odd to me. Old Richard is building a ship in a bottle, namely the Black Rock, the ship aground the island that we saw back in Season 1. We have a very good comparison point in Season 4 in the Desmond mind time travel episode, when Charles Widmore was at an auction, and bought a journal of one of the crew member’s of the Black Rock. We saw a picture of the ship, and lo and behold, guess what is in the bottle? I know I’ve speculated in the past about Richard possibly being a member of that ship, maybe even captain. And one possible explanation put forth by another knowledgeable fan is that Richard does not age because he died, and the island brought him back to life, to serve a purpose, much like John Locke. Since you are/were dead, maybe you don’t age anymore. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this in the past, but I thought I’d bring it up just in case since this writeup obviously isn’t going to be a long one and I needed more filler material. Yes, that was sarcasm. Locke strolls up to the Others beach condo community and basks in the glory of his return. Oh, and he has some errands to run with Richard since he “has a purpose now”. John is apparently totally in sync with the island and it’s needs. While Richard does not seem excited about Locke’s return, and he doesn’t seem to have any emotion other than blank stare, he seems concerned about Ben returning as well. Ben explains to Sun that Richard is an “adviser” and that he has been around a “very, very long time”, which seems to be common knowledge with the show’s fans, but I think they needed to bring up some excuse for Sun to confront Richard with the Dharma 1977 photo. Have I mentioned how much this reminds me of the Desmond/Penny photo scenario earlier in Lost history? When you think back on Naomi parachuting onto the island back in Season 3 with that photo, we can safely assume it was because Widmore was her employer and Desmond was the man her daughter was in love with. Or maybe it was because Desmond was the “constant” to his son Daniel according to the journal that the Others now possess. Will we ever know for sure? I doubt it. Nevermind that Richard looks around 40 years old right now, and Sun without knowing that Richard is ageless confronts him with a photo despite the logic of math placing Richard around 10 years old when the photo was taken. But let’s not quibble over details as I never have done that. Richard sets up a riveting scenario for the Season finale. “I remember clearly, I watched them all die.” Well, as much as I despise Jack and Kate and wish death upon them and would salt the earth over the top of their graves so no flowers could ever grow there, ever, how could the show continue with most of the main characters dead? But, this still does not debunk WHH theory. As Daniel said, they might have traveled to the past, this is still their present, so they can die, and it doesn’t change their specific lives in the future. And this is just the first commercial break, and I just can’t stop typing. Just so much stuff happening in this episode. Just like last season, when they have like 8 different storylines going and kept jumping from place to place, a breathless pace. Well, they are doing it again. And every storyline right now is fantastic.

Sun is grieving on the beach, showing us how upset she is that she hasn’t had a chance to cheat on Jin in a while and obviously not even remembering that she has a newborn child back in Korea with a babysitter clearly working overtime hours. How’s that alliance with Widmore working out for you? She goes from the lead female villain in the show at the start of the season to a quivering mass of jello sitting on a beach shedding tears about so many hours of not ruining Jin’s life going to waste. Locke approaches Grendel’s mother none the less, and tells her that he doesn’t think they went to all this trouble of returning for nothing. And I very much agree with that statement, so let’s move on. Locke invites pouty, surly, throwing a tantrum Ben along for the mission. While Ben is acting defenseless and changed from the judgment of the Smoke Monster and the island, let’s not forget how he has said in the past “I always have a plan”. Ben has not given up. Let’s face it, he is a d!ck. He is seemingly setting Locke up for some kind of shenanigans when Locke’s guard is down. Yet again. Locke promises to help Sun reunite with Jin, most likely because he doesn’t like Jin. If you are looking for a mushy “Isn’t love great?” comment from me, beat it. You’ve come to the wrong place. Jack gets a beating in the tent, from someone other than me. As we saw at the end of Season 3, and Season 4, those that dish out the punishment at the end of seasons end up dead by the end of the season. People seem to die in droves in the cliffhangers, and if the writers are trying to soften the blows, what better way than to vilify the soon to be dead with their reckless actions against the fan favorites. While I acknowledge that Jack is a key character and a fan favorite, his character has the mental capacity of a dead bole weevil. But let’s not be too harsh on Simple Jack here. Kate is about to say some horrible stuff right here. She is about to say some legendary stuff.
K “Put things back, Jack?”
J “Our plane lands. Everybody we lost, will be alive.”
K “But what about us?”
Holy Focking Hell. What. About. Us. What about us? Are you focking serious? I’m sure Evangeline Lilly is nice enough person in real life, and can’t be happy about the lines the writers are giving her. But you have to put up a fight over a line as ludicrous as if she said Joseph Stalin was a nice guy, she was happy 9/11 happened, and that Indiana Jones can survive a nuclear bomb by hiding in a refrigerator. Hundreds of people have died, Kate. Hundreds. And all you think about is What about us? This is so selfish, my mind is having a hard time wrapping itself around the concept. The Kate is a Wh0re Moment of the Week. If the island is Little Egypt, Kate is a Babylonian Wh0re. Kate is some kind of muppet. She just says infantile platitudes, shows no range of emotion, and everybody seems to think she is adorable. She would have made more sense by simply saying “Frrrrrrunkis” than What about us. I’m checking in and out of a Law & Order: SVU marathon yesterday, and Mariska Hargitay is just acting her ass off in a great role. Then, I rewatch Lost last night, and Kate is giving me “What about us?” Uma Thurman is kicking ass in Kill Bill 1 and2. What about us? Tell you what, Kate. How about you tell Libby as she is bleeding to death in the Swan hatch “Sorry, kiddo, but I don’t want to lose the memory of sleeping with an idiotic alcoholic doctor and traumatizing an infant for life by kidnapping him, so you have to die missy.”
J “All the misery will be wiped clean.”
K “Not all of it was miserable, Jack”
J “Enough of it was”
FACE. Not only is losing friends to death miserable, so is Kate. Piss off. Since Kate is now being snubbed by Jack, I guess it’s time for her to put on her boogie shoes and run to Sawyer, never mind that he is in a committed relationship. You know what, maybe I am a romantic at heart. Hey, Kate, I hear Roger Linus is available Saturday night. And you have so much in common with him. He has a son named Ben. You stole his son from an infirmary. Should be loads of giggles. Back to the tent. Eloise wants answers about Daniel’s return visit and her handwriting in the journal. Jack says she can change all that. Of course, Kate shows yet again how she does not “have Jack’s back” and tells Eloise she is not going to agree with him. Eloise explains that Dharma built a village over the bomb. This is interesting in the sense that we saw Miles visiting his mother, dying of some kind of illness, possibly cancer. If Jughead is leaking, and she lived for any extended amount of time near the leaking bomb, she could very well have gotten a disease later in life from it. Since the purge happened, we haven’t really seen any other Dharmites get sick from it. Unless you count Ben and his back tumor. Hmmm. Charlotte was the first to die from time traveling, and she was on the island for a few years too. Anyway, Eloise says Jughead is fairly easy to reach from the Barracks. Really? To reach a bomb buried? Tunnels!!! Yes, since Season 1, when the Smoke Monster was pulling Locke into the ground, we have suspected an underground network of tunnels. We’ve seen the Temple underground a couple of episodes ago. But I think there is a wide tunnel system that we may or may not see by the series conclusion. We’ve seen Ben and his ancient toilet hidden in a closet that is used to summon Smokey. Are there more hidden tunnels around that Dharma hasn’t discovered? Obviously, they knew the toilet was there, since they built the house and the entrance was directly from the house. Did they know of any other ones, like the Others apparently do and think are easy to get to? Sawyer is handcuffed and being beaten by Dharma, while Juliet is still in her red shirt for the third straight episode. OK, we get it. She is going to die soon. Radzinsky usurps Horace’s power, a bit like Sawyer did 3 years earlier when Richard came to dinner. Horace is a total zilch. But why such an all encompassing obsession with the Swan, Radzinsky? Why in such a rush?

Where is your girlfriend? It’s bad enough Sawyer is stilling receiving punches to his face. But the nerve of Radzinsky calling Kate Sawyer’s “girlfriend”. I mean waterboarding is one thing, and it’s something I’ve done to my self with pitchers of beer, plastic tubes, and a crowd full of hooligans cheering me on when I was younger, but the idea of Kate being somebody’s girlfriend just makes me want to tell an interrogator my life story just so they would stop tossing that term around willy nilly. So, where did your girlfriend take the boy? Um, fellas, he has been missing a few days. Nobody went to visit him. But when he shows up on a video tape, oh, well, mountain out of mole hill. Stop it with it being about the boy. Juliet starts with her crap. “We are not bad people” Then Phil comes on down the aisle and slugs Juliet in the face. Well, I was a bit surprised at that punch, sort of the reaction I had when Mongo in Blazing Saddles punched out a horse. Not from Juliet taking a punch, which was funny in an absurd kind of way. But you know windshield wiper eyebrows Phil will die in the season finale. Hell, Sawyer just said “I will kill you”. So, even though we won’t have Phil to kick around anymore, at least he brought a comedy element to his upcoming death. Oh, and they’ve made the Hurley connection. When it rains, it pours. After swiping food, Hurley reunites with Jin and Miles and collectively, our three stooges have no plans other than run. Sigh, the Kate strategy. Since Hurley has size, camouflage skills, and movement of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon, Dr Chang confronts the non threatening gang of mush. Is Faraday telling the truth? What year were you born? Who is the president? OK, dude, we are from the future. That was fast. It’s a good thing Dr Chang isn’t interrogating Sawyer. Realizing the truth of their relationship, Miles and Chang have their moment of awkward staring at each other. What, no hug? Widmore stares at dead Daniel. “He looks familiar”. Well, you might have seen him about 25 years ago during time travel, or you just recognize his features as he is your son. I don’t know if the familiar thing will amount to anything, but it sure was an odd line. Eloise declares untie them and we will go to the bomb. Widmore takes her aside to argue with her, and if you didn’t notice, he placed his hand over her stomach, as a man might do to a pregnant woman. Yep, seems like Eloise is pregnant right now, with Daniel or possibly Penny. We’ve never met Penny’s mother, but we do know who her father is. Richard tells us that love can be complicated, which is probably a catalyst for whatever reason Widmore is ultimately exiled for. Locke is making his way through the jungle. After the errand, Locke wants to go to Jacob. Ben informs us that’s not how it works and Richard is of the opinion why rush it. Well, they’ve arrived at the plane. Ben utters “What plane?” which I think is a lie. If you recall, Paulo was in the Pearl hatch when he saw Ben and Juliet come in to take a look at the screens and see the activity in the Swan. Now, my timeline might be incorrect here, but at some point soon after the Oceanic plane crash, Boone was mortally wounded when the drug plane fell from the trees. That plane was covering up the Pearl hatch opening, and Locke and Mr Eko had to physically move the plane to enter that hatch. So, the question is whether Paulo hid the diamonds in the Pearl toilet before or after the plane fell. If it was after, Ben had to know about a plane, because he had to move it or walk within a couple feet of it to enter the hatch. Speaking of hatches, does anybody else find it really odd how many hatches were built by Dharma outside of the pylons. The Swan, the Arrow, the Looking Glass, the Hydra, the medical hatch, the Pearl, the Flame, the Tempest, etc. You didn’t have to cross the pylons to get to any of them, as the Oceanics kept showing us. So were the pylons the line of truce with the Hostiles, or simply guarding a much smaller area for the sleeping quarters. It’s not like Dharma could sneak in a hatch when no one was looking. Those things took time to build. In reality, I see Dharma as the true Hostiles grabbing land that didn‘t belong to them. Locke gives Richard some instructions, and sends him on his way, as time traveling Locke hops out of the jungle right after he was shot by Ethan.

We see Richard redo his bullet removing scene with Locke, but from a much different perspective this time.
R: You told me about the bullet, John.
J: No I didn’t.
R: You will.
See how much more sense that makes this time around. My thoughts on this scene, from the first episode of this season centered around the concept that Richard was talking some weird sh!t, and I can’t even begin to speculate about it. What a journey it has been.
B: You’re timing was impeccable John. How did you know to be here?
J: The island told me.

B: No, John, the island did not tell me things. Why do you need Richard to take you to Jacob?
J: You’ve never seen Jacob, have you? (while smirking)
OK, some very, very key dialogue here, but let’s start out with a couple of quotes from me….
5.9 Namaste
How, how, how did the Others know? Jacob? Well, if my supposition is right that Ben can’t really talk to Jacob, then the answer is no. Ability to see the future? Maybe based on Walt’s gift, they were able to get some things out of the kid while he was a prisoner. Ben remembering things during time loops? My simple conclusion is that Ben is able to have knowledge of future events. That is how he stays in power. How, I’m not sure yet

5.12 Dead Is Dead
The very usual power structure is referenced yet again, as Richard reminds Charles how the island and Jacob make decisions regardless of who the leader of the Others happens to be. Which makes me wonder if the leader of the Others can hear Jacob at all, and Richard is the only one that can interpret. This could very well be the reason Charles is so frustrated with Richard. I know I’ve speculated about this in the past, Ben only pretending to hear Jacob, but I would like proof somebody outside of Richard (who could also be faking) and some of the Oceanic 815 being able to see Christian. Now, Locke may have arguably seen the real Jacob, but he was still in semi-faith mode, so it’s hard to tell if “help me” came from Christian or Jacob, but I think it was the latter.

Well, how interesting. Locke is asking all the right questions right now. Again, he is in sync with the island. Ben never was, but claimed to be in sync with Jacob. Well, first of all, the island and Jacob are not necessarily one and the same. We know the island exists, Jacob, not so much. We know Christian is running around the island, but he could very well be a manifestation of the island itself, nothing to do with Jacob. When Ben first met Christian, he asked if he was Jacob. Christian smirked and said no, but he can speak for him. Like the island was laughing at an inside joke. So, why would all of the sudden Locke question Jacob’s existence. Well, remember when Ben was judged by Smoke Monster. We have seen in seasons past with Mr Eko, Juliet, and more recently with Ben, the monster seems to scan a person’s brain, grabbing images, and acts like a judge. Now that Ben was very recently scanned, and since Locke is in sync with the island, I put forth the theory that Locke now has unlocked Ben’s head and knows the answers to a lot of lies. What better way to convince your followers to do your bidding than to build up an image of a all powerful man who will get really pissed off if you disobey the orders. Like the Cuban government yelling at Cubans to keep doing what they are doing, or Castro will get you, even if he is in a sick bed behind the scenes. Jacob is the Wizard of Oz, pull back that curtain, and Ben and possibly Richard use this to their ultimate goals, whatever they may be. How about that. OR if Jacob does exist, he was trapped for some time by that volcanic ash and/or salt ring around the cabin, but has been released. But I think the Jacob is a hoax is more fun, so I will go with that for now. Richard told Locke how powerful the message of Locke needing to die was, and Locke informs Richard that he did die. Richard almost blinked for a second. Yes, Richard, besides your non aging, other miracles are happening. I suppose Ben and Richard might have had some sort of master plan in place after Ben lost his mind when the freighter invaded. Promote Locke to the leader of the Others, let him fail, and then Ben reascends to his rightful place. But that is not happening and Richard and Ben are starting to scramble a bit. In any case, be wary of when Locke smirks. He is just oozing with non poker face. You can tell right away how sure he is of something with that creepy grandpa smile of his. Ben was funny with his where did you go, John? Either he was mocking John, or Ben just never saw first hand the time travel up until know. I’m still weary of the hot potato game with the compass. I bet Locke has 23 compasses in his pockets right now, Richard has 27 plus a bunny rabbit. Enough about the compass. Chang hustles into the security station at Dharma and declares that this is a good time to evacuate. Radzinsky tells Chang that Horace is no longer in charge and that he came to kick ass and chew bubble gum and that he was all out of bubble gun. Then Radzinksy ripped off his shirt and did some Hulk Hogan poses before strutting around the ring and making obscene gestures to the crowd. Sawyer offers a trade of information for a submarine ride with Juliet. Sure, Sawyer is asked to draw a map of where the hostiles are, but what will he actually draw? A place for them to go right smack dab into a trap? The sketch that becomes the painted hatch mural at the Swan station when the blast doors dropped and trapped Locke’s leg underneath? Which Radzinksy painted. And I guess the reason we saw the weird murals on all the walls of the Swan hatch was because Radzinsky was trapped inside pushing a button, bored, and likely out of his mind. Maybe he didn’t put the shot gun in his mouth like Kevin Inman (Desmond’s hatch partner, the American torture guy with Sayid in Iraq) told us, but Inman shot him because Radzinsky was crazy or annoying or both. Think: Cameron Diaz. I mean, who doesn’t want to shoot her? Well, Eloise tells us they need to go for a swim to reach the tunnels. Like we mentioned before, I am pleased that the show is going a bit more underground, more mystery, more ancient. Kate, wants to run away. Again. Well, she can’t just walk away with all that new knowledge dying of loneliness in her cavernous empty skull, so the guy that was beating Jack in the tent pulls out a gun. And a gun shot goes off and for a brief moment, hoping, I peed a little. Nope, Sayid returns just in time to shoot the Other. Well, I guess he didn’t have to wait until the next episode to die. Another Other is expendable. Like Mrs. Klugh. But let’s not overlook the fact that Kate supposed came back to the island to find Claire. Here, she has a chance to undo all the misery of the past few years with Faraday’s plan. Remember her tear stained promise to Claire’s mother. But she throws all that out the window because she is mad at Jack. The Kate is a Wh0re Moment of the Week, the sequel. Seriously, am I the only one that sees how ridiculously retarded and selfish Kate is? Am I taking crazy pills? Jack doesn’t love me anymore. Whaaaaaa whaaaa whaaaaa. If I was the last man on earth, and she was the last woman on earth, I would not hesitate for a second before I started to choke the life out of her. Who’s going to send me to jail?

Eloise is fully committed to Team Jack, not paying any attention to the Other laying dead on the ground. Great, Eloise has turned into oblivious Rose. Sayid is bragging about how he killed Ben. Uh, no, you didn‘t. Kate brags back that she helped save him.
S: Why did you do that?
K: Since when did killing children and blowing up hydrogen bombs become OK?
Wow, Kate come on down, for your next Kate is a Stupid blah blah blah. Look, I don’t blame Sayid for shooting at Ben. He thought he was doing the right thing is trying to save innocent lives or at the very least lives in the future by getting rid of the evil genius of Benjamin Linus. Kate, if she had a chance to go back in time, would shake Jim Jones’ hand, wave to his followers, and tell them to enjoy the Kool Aid. You are on a magical island. The Swan hatch exploded, and everybody lived through it. Why not detonate the bomb if Faraday says it’s OK? He is a physicist. You are someone that will soon enough be dancing on a stripper pole in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon in a Hoboken dive bar, hoping to make a few bucks to buy your next vial of crack. Even Simple Jack has bought into it. What kind of life are you trying to protect? Oh, yeah. You are a fugitive in handcuffs if the plane lands. And I don’t think your mother is going to sabotage the case this time because she wants to see her grandson who is really not her grandson. Almost forgot. Selfish, selfish, selfish. I’m getting tired of beating up Kate today. I’m just glad she doesn’t do anything else selfish the rest of the episode. Right?
J: We can change things
K: Everybody will die
K: Do you know who you sound like?
J: Maybe I was wrong
K: Maybe you were right
Well, a lot of people did die after the plane crash and purge, so why not roll the dice Kate? Oh, yeah. The selfish thing. Also, Kate is just so damn smug to think Locke is a doddering old fool while in reality he has turned into a superhero in the future and has been right about just about everything all along. Jack is admitting to his mistakes, and I continue to give him credit for that humbleness. Kate decides that she needs to find people to stop Jack, so her bright idea is to go recruit help from the people that were just shooting, trying to kill her a few hours earlier. Oh, how many moments of the week do you want me to give her? Even I’m getting tired of it. The only flaw in my argument is that what if the incident wasn’t caused by Dharma, but by Team Jack. They caused the irregularity that became the Swan hatch by detonating the bomb. Then, Kate will have been right, but I certainly will not take back anything I’ve ranted about. The comic relief trio are spying on the submarine, and we see Charlotte getting aboard, and Chang yelling at his wife to make her leave and make her hate him for the rest of her life. Miles has closure on his family story, and basically his overall story. The only reason I can think of to keep him around is the talk to recently dead Faraday, to find out exactly what the bomb plan is. Other than that, well, to be the wiseass on the show. Personally, I’d like to see him stick around, but you know how it is in finales. People die. Well, Sawyer always has a plan, and right now he is Biff Tannen with a sports almanac from Back to the Future II about to go nuts in getting rich. Symbolically, Sawyer turns to the island before getting in the sub and says good riddance. I think this could have been Sawyer talking to Kate as much as the island, if not more. I smiled at the thought. Jack and company dive underwater and emerge in an ancient hieroglyphic encrypted tunnel, probably connecting to the Temple part at some point that we saw before as Ben was being judged. “That was a longer swim than I expected” Odd line from Jack, as if they passed through some kind of time/space rift. But then again, I take note of odd comments like that all the time, and file them away for future reference.
R: No Jack, we are not taking the bomb out through the pool.
Do I really need to bash Jack yet again for being as cunning as a bowl of oatmeal. Moving on….Sayid confirms that he still has a death wish and really doesn’t care if he dies. A nice wildcard character if I’ve even seen one. Who will detonate the bomb? I vote for Sayid, and he gets his wish to die too. As Locke, Richard, and Ben return from one mission, Locke is already giddy to leave for the next one.
J: Is this everyone?
R: There is another group at the Temple.
As we’ve known for quite a long time, there were Other Others on the island. Their affiliation to the Others was not truly clear, as somebody snatched Tailies the first night, despite Ben’s orders not to do so, and I was convinced there were multiple groups on the island. Plus, the children have to be somewhere, along with Cindy the Oceanic stewardess. Which makes me wonder why there are two groups of the same cult? A failsafe group just incase something happens to the first group that can continue to do what is necessary to keep the world from going *Poof* like pull of smoke? Locke gives the speech of his lifetime.
J: You’ve been accepting orders from Jacob, whose existence seems to be a secret kept from you, I want to know who he is, um yeah Sun he can help us find Jin now please sit down, (smirking) and Richard will take us there. We are going to have a party and you are all invited to come.
R: I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble
B : Why do you think I tried to kill him?
Richard and Ben the conspirators. Oh, you boys should be ashamed of yourselves. What secrets are you rascals hiding? Richard doesn’t quite seem so omnipotent anymore.

Sawyer and Juliet exchange got your backs and I love yas, just in time, as Kate beats the clock and comes on board the sub, much like Hurley in catching the Oceanic 815 flight and Ben catching the Ajira flight, all at the last second. Juliet just cannot catch a break. Meanwhile, Kate has completely abandoned her quest to find Claire, Claire? Claire who? is now stalking Sawyer. The sub starts to submerge. But, they can’t really leave, can they? I don’t want a Season 6 devoted to Sawyer as Jack Tripper, Juliet as Chrissy, Kate as Janet, Widmore as Mr Roper, Eloise as Mrs Roper, and all their shenanigans. Something goes screwy, maybe the island won’t allow them to leave, maybe Hurley, Jin and Miles do something, but they can’t leave. Right? But….young Charlotte and young Miles DO leave the island. Right? So, how can this be resolved. Scriptwriter Impossible, or the future has changed. Bingo. There is your answer. WHH, beat it. We aren’t listening to you anymore. So, Team Jack arrives at the bomb chamber.
E: Now what?
Jack looks at her with a completely blank expression on his face and I think I detected a little drool at the corner of his mouth. At such a critical time to save everybody, it so clear that Jack has not only not planned beyond this moment, he has absolutely nothing in his head right now. Crickets. The hamster is not running on the wheel. The light bulb is not lit. His head is full of warm banana pudding. Nada. Zip. That blank expression was infuriating and hilarious. Even saying “What’s on second“ would have better than such a empty stare. Good grief. Jack Sucks Moment of the Week Part Two. I mean, come on. I tired to giving out so many awards this week, but this was just ludicrous. If Kate and Jack had to sit down and fill out a survey to determine who was dumber, Kate would run away with the pencil and Jack would stick the pencil in his eye. Damn. I love this show. Really. I do. But these two. Infuriating and hilarious. The Others are marching along the beach.
B: Richard has concerns. Jacob is nervous about seeing a lot of people. Richard has reservations.
J: OK. Thanks.
B: But I’ll do whatever to help you. (classic weasel strategy of good cop, bad cop)
J: We are not going to reunite our people
J: I know what I told Sun
J: We are going to see Jacob so I can kill him.
Some powerful dialogue. Locke is not known for being dishonest, but he has lied. For example, when Boone fell in the plane, Locke did not tell Jack exactly how he got hurt. Sun has been less than truthful; well let’s face it, I’ve been calling her a cold hearted reptile for a couple of seasons now, and even more so after her Widmore aliance. So she can go screw. She will turn on Locke first chance she gets despite what Christian said about Locke being able to help with the Jin situation. More powerful is Locke’s final chilling words, going to kill Jacob. Or, rather, the myth of Jacob in it’s present form. Locke did hear somebody say “Help me” in the cabin in Season 3. Has Ben or Richard ever heard Jacob speak? I doubt it. Do they just use his reputation to lead the brainwashed Others? I can’t imagine a different scenario at this time.

This was long winded, repetitive in that I keep bashing the same characters. But they sooooo deserved it this week. Enjoy the next few days until the madness of the season finale unfolds. I’ll probably have to break out the writeups into 3 parts. First episode, second episode, and a wrapup/preview for Season 6 maybe a week later. So expect this War and Peace sized novel from me soon.