Sunday, January 31, 2010

Season 6 Preview - A Look Back On Season Five; Part One

I think I might have gone and burned myself out on LOST. Well, probably not, but watching five seasons worth in a couple of months and then typing out summary/theory about what you just witnessed can be laborious. But, it is the last time, the final offseason until retirement, and we are going to have a definite conclusion. Your hear me, Brett Farve? Retirement. I’m not typically an angry man. I don’t advocate going out into the world with a hammer, running into a nursery, and beating babies to death. Of course it’s less expensive than therapy, but you need to have some limits. Sure, these completely unnecessary series of rants have taken countless hours and countless liquor bottles. Jack, Kate, and Sun suck. They suck. It is probably not a coincidence that they were part of the Oceanic 6. Look at these characters that Season 5 spent so much time concentrating on, and how little their personalities changed from the day the plane crashed to the day each person decided to return to the island. Kate was selfish and manipulative, on and off the island. I suspect she is the reason for John Edwards getting a divorce. Jack was a man of stubborn principle and lack of commons sense. Sayid, a mercenary soldier and mercenary Romeo. Hurley is the cheerful comic relief who thinks he is cursed. Aaron has a big head. None of these people changed because of their island experience, and some only after 3 years passed off island and they decided to return, willingly or not. Sun was the only one who changed, from meek, cheating, manipulative house wife to brash, cheating, manipulative corporate monster. Sun only half returned, but I was struck by Jin making Locke promise that he will not bring Sun back, and it looks like The Nemesis held to Locke’s promise. It’s remarkable to see transformation in other characters like Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Locke, Michael, to name a few. Not always for the good. But the island seemed to inspire characters to dig deep down and really become someone more honorable, a chance at redemption. Some excelled. Some failed. These Losties and Tailies are a bunch of murderers, for the most part. Geez, you can count on one hand the flashbacks don’t involve someone dying. Many people changed fundamentally. Not the Oceanic Boring 6. Time travel is a hell of a thing to comprehend. You can effect minor changes here and there. But it takes a super effort to get a game changing effect, something that affects the future forever. At first, I bought into the Whatever Happened, Happened, which was beaten into our heads for most of Season 5. Which I am feeling foolish about. Desmond tells Charlie that he has to die for Claire to board a helicopter and leave the island. Isn’t it strange that this NEVER HAPPENED. Well, in this loop anyway. Enough evidence is piling up to show up that Whatever happened, Happened was wrong. I became a heretic, and pointed out enough key changes in the future that WHH just was not possible. Without rereading any of my past write-ups from Season 3 to 5, and in between, I’m trying to see the show arc from a fresh perspective, and I will again plow through a whole season in this write-up. I would like to point out, I was right about a number of things during this 5th season, so I’m going to pat myself on the back just this once and not mention it again. The Loop Theory is for all the marbles. Season 6 is just days away. I plan on dropping anchor and spending a bit of time explaining in full detail a few examples of different loops scenes that occur, and you will have evidence of such shenanigans by pure dialogue, with some physical examples tossed in too. It’s going to be exciting. A “bingo”, as Christophe Waltz might say. Another thing I’m looking forward to is the finality. Last season. Anything can happen. Anyone can die. At any time. The writers haven’t been shy in killing off what looked like main characters throughout the episodes, and they were particularly rude to the background Losties and Tailies, so I suspect they get really blood thirsty this year. After all, we’ve had Ben and Widmore mention a war is coming, and war has casualties. We’ve seen the dynamic of Jacob vs the Man In Black, we’ve had the philosophical differences between Jack and Locke. Everything, absolutely everything is leading down a path of death and destruction I my incredibly non humble opinion, which makes you wonder why we needed for Jacob to find the loophole, because it’s going to get ugly. Of course, I should point out, you cannot have a loophole without a LOOP. Got it? And I certainly want to see more of my favorite character on the show, the Smoke Monster. I’ve been disappointed that Smokie hasn’t been a one man gang of bent steel and sex appeal, you don’t have to like him, but you sure better learn to love him, all the women want to be with him and all the men want to be him, well, if it is male, and I don’t particularly want to check it’s junk, especially after watching it get mad squish Mr Eko, but since then, it has only slightly injured one of Keamy’s men and done little else. Sightings have been few and far in between. Need. More. Smoke. Sure, Smokie wiped out the French, but how hard is that? The cast of Glee could invade France and be in charge within 2 days. OK. I think I’m ready to start. I do recall that I really enjoyed the time travelling scenes, Dharma was OK in parts, and that the Oceanic 6 sucked. Oh, one more thought. I’m finally convinced that the bomb was essential for the re-set that we get, sure it was obvious, but I wanted to be sure and explore other possibilities. Ill fated and sympathetic, and I note you can’t spell sympathetic without “pathetic”, Locke was crucial for the Man in Black to possess, and Ben had to stab Jacob. But let’s also consider what if the reverse of everything is true. What if the loophole, the game changer, the deal breaker is still the bomb. However, what if Daniel and Jack were wrong, and the bomb ended the world, and instead we get a reset on the island, with all the characters remembering the previous loop, knowing they have to work together to stop the bomb from going off in 1977, but they are trapped in 2004 or 2007. Yeah, this Season 6 is a complete mystery to me, since I don’t read spoilers at all. But I do stand by Multiple Loop Theory, and Season 6 is a re-set of some sort, with a bloody war upcoming. Can I be any more nonspecific?

Dr Chang wakes up and feeds Miles. Everybody knew it was going to be Miles. A skipping record is a precursor of things to come this season. As Chang is filming the orientation film for the useless Arrow hatch, he is interrupted. Might be why the films started and stopped so often, and some splicing to put it all together. Chang is a bit of a diva. There are problems at the Orchid. The engineering X ray showed a clear picture of the frozen donkey wheel. Behind that wall is “limitless energy that we can harness to manipulate time”. But there are some kind of rules that cannot be broken. They stop drilling as the bodies are piling up. Daniel shows up in Dharma time. Time travel, how silly. At the funeral of Locke, Jack has hit rock bottom of self pity, pills, and personal grooming. Ben continues to lie to Jack, and Jack doesn’t seem to have any useful information to share about what happened on the island after they left, other than bad stuff, as explained by Jeremy Bentham during his visit to Jack. You get the feeling that Locke could have said more by way of explanation, but you have to consider the audience. I don’t believe Jack could have grasped the meaning of the donkey wheel, moving the island, time travel, and other high concepts. Jack, bad stuff happened. Oh, OK. Ben claims he isn’t really sure what happened on the island either. Back on the island, the sky turns whitish purple, and John is all alone, the Others have disappeared. Daniel proclaims that the zodiac boat was inside the perimeter, which is how they time jumped with the Islanders. Juliet and Sawyer don’t see the boat smoke anymore. Rose and Bernard can’t find the camp. Daniel explains that they need to find the Swan hatch; the camp isn’t gone, it just hasn’t been built yet. I found it a bit odd that Sawyer and Daniel hadn’t met until this moment, but I guess Locke hasn’t either. Kate calls Aaron “Goober”, a fitting title considering her boyfriend Dr “Gomer” Shepherd. Have I mentioned that Aaron pisses me off. That kid is so worthless. What, are you 3 years old? Do something with your life?. By the age of three, I already had an IRA and putting in 60 hours a day at the old plastics factory. A lawyer shows up at Kate’s house, and claims he has a court order to get a blood sample to disprove custody. At the time, we were all curious who was behind all this nonsense. I correctly pegged Ben, especially after Sun had no knowledge of this threat. Realistically, it has to be Sun, Widmore, or Ben. And Ben it was. Did I mention I wouldn’t be patting myself on the back? Bullocks. Kate does the only thing that her maternal instincts will allow her to do, pack up a suitcase for herself, grab cash, a gun, and her kid’s hand as they go on “vacation” That is nice and all that jazz. But our favorite ditzy dame didn’t pack a single thing for Aaron. No clothes, no toys, not anything. She packed for herself only. Can you blame her? She’s been selfish all her life. Other people just don’t exist when she gets panicky. Sawyer demands answers and gives Daniel a smack. Ben dislodged us in time and the record is skipping. Ah, time travel, what a glorious concept. Locke watches Yemi’s Nigerian drug plane fly onto the island and crash. Creepy and well shot scene. Locke hustles and starts to climb up, but not good enough as Ethan comes out of the jungle and puts a bullet into his leg. Ethan had zero recollection of Locke, odd since Locke visited the Others in the past and Ethan had zero knowledge of “John Locke”. Sun is detained at the airport, as Widmore is miffed that she pulled a power move in public and demands respect. But they reach an understanding as Sun wants to kill Ben because Jin died, instead of blaming Kate, Jack, Keamy, herself, the island, or Widmore. Ben just didn’t have a good day during that Wheel of Fortune spin. Now, why does Sun blame Ben? She never talked to Locke off island, as Locke kept his word to Jin. Ben first met Sun off island on the marina. How on earth does Sun possess knowledge that Ben stabbed Keamy and blew up the freighter? The answer is she cannot, without loop knowledge and had remembered from a previous loop. She bought out her father’s company and declared two people were responsible for Jin’s death. What helped shape her decision? Hurley is a murder suspect on the run with the real murderer Sayid, going back to Sayid’s hotel. Just do the opposite of what Ben tells you. Um, that is a bit too broad of a strategy there, buddy. A terrific fight breaks out, Sayid tosses some no name off a balcony, gets shot with needles, and is the first person in Hollywood history to kill someone with a dishwasher. Daniel insists that you cannot change anything, which is surely bad news for Jacob, as that is EXACTLY what he is trying to do. Daniel with more philosophy. Time is like a street; you can move forward, you can move back, but you cannot create a new street. Whatever happened, happened. I suppose that means you cannot create an alternate reality, but surely you can change things, as we will see as we progress. And, again, this is Jacob’s objective. Daniel has spent his entire adult life studying space-time, learning about Dharma, putting his findings in his journal. John is visited by Richard.
J: When am I? R: It’s all relative. Richard gives the compass to John. The compass is one of those unexplainable objects on this show. Different people have it at different times, yet you can’t connect the dots of when it transferred hands. It’s best to avoid the headache of the compass and just assume that it changes in loops. You need them to come back, You’re going to have to die John. Sawyer is trying to get inside the Swan hatch. Again, we are hit with “If it didn’t happen, it can’t happen.” Again, I protest. This philosophy was hammered at us early and often in this season, so that the time travel concept didn’t get too involved and convoluted for viewers. But mistakes in the concept keep popping up. Daniel himself quickly works against his own words by actually talking to Desmond, telling him that he is uniquely and miraculously special, the “rules” don’t apply to you. The rules? Time travel rules, or loop rules? Desmond wakes up years later on Penny’s boat with a brand new memory of Daniel. Both are interconnected, but are never able to remember meeting each other in the past.

The hatching of the lie of the Oceanic 6, and Hurley is very reluctant to go along with the plan. As Hurley is driving along with 3 sheets to the wind Sayid, he is pulled over by Ana Lucia who is kind enough to give Hugo some survival tips and a quick hello from Libby. Hurley buys horrible clothes, Kate talks to Sun, the Boring 6 are inevitably moving together, like water circling in a toilet, about to flush. Cheech is making a rather disgusting sandwich topped with caviar, ready to settle in and watch Nikki on Expose. Kate goes to see Sun in her hotel. Ben goes to the butcher shop. “Is it what I think it is?” The butcher Jill seems to know a lot, which if you are in the course correcting business, it probably helps. Loop knowledge? Ben: keep him (Locke) safe, or everything we are about to do won’t matter at all.” Fore knowledge. Loop? Charlotte is getting headaches, and Daniel thinks “Oh, that old gag.” Miles find a boar for the group, but probably led the Others to the beach at the same time, and a flaming arrow attack commences. Sun explains to Kate that someone is running a con on her, and “wouldn’t you do anything you could to keep Aaron? Kate responds with “what kind of person do you think I am?” Hahahahaha. Sun: You did what you had to do on the freighter. What? Kate promised to bring Jin to the chopper. Epic Fayle. Sun poo poos that. I don’t blame you; how’s Jack? Well, at least Sun was able to dig that knife into Kate’s back with the Jack comment. What we have here in Kate and Sun is a collision of volatile evil so enormous; Desmond would need to push a button every 3 minutes to save the world. Cheech hands Sayid off to Jack. Hurley, at the urging of his mother, decides to tell her of his adventures. Much like I suspected, it sounded like the rambling of a mental patient. Hurley’s mother actually says: I believe you. That’s crazy. Until you realize that we are all the same crazy, as we are watching this crap, with one more season left. Word of note: don’t ever let Hurley keep a secret. He can’t help himself from spilling every bean possible. For fock’s sake, Kate got the location of Miles from Hurley at Dharmaville with one single question. Sawyer and Juliet are captured by a ruthless young Widmore as the Losties were trying to reach the creek. Jack wakes Sayid up in hospital, a hospital where he is no longer welcome. Hurley gallantly spins to face Ben and throws a hot pocket in his somewhat general direction. See, Ben looked positively presidential here, as he was able to dodge a silly object being thrown at him much like the world’s best dodgeball players, Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and George W Bush. For the record, Bush might have been a retard, but he was our retard, and only we can mess with our retards. I think that was from a Winston Churchill dissertation. Or maybe the movie Animal House. I don’t feel like making the effort to look it up. Hurley turns himself in to the police and confesses to 3 murders, because nothing could possibly go wrong with that strategy. As the Others try to cut off both of Juliet’s hands, which would have made bomb crushing much more difficult. Sadly, I could see Juliet trying to smash the bomb with a rock in her mouth or maybe even using her skull, as Kate would freak out over a chipped nail. Locke arrives to lend a helping….hand. Get it? Booooo! Eloise Hawking is in a church, she is working with Ben, to get the Losties to come back to the island.

Penny has a difficult childbirth. That’s enough of that. Why does every show on TV have to have a gratuitous child birth, mother in distress scene. Hell, we get to see it practically every season on this show. Back to Quantum Leap LOST. While Sawyer and Juliet fled from the arrows at night, were captured at night, escaped capture at night, Charlotte, Miles, and Daniel arrive at the creek in broad daylight. Do you really think the creek was so far away, that it took 12 hours to get there? And while some Others captured Sawyer and Juliet, the same grouping of Others capture the Chopperies 12 hours later? Bullsh!t. Two similar scenes from different loops, with a half day time difference. A trip wire takes care of some disposable Losties, and the Others are wearing their military gear. Penny is nagging Desmond on the boat, specifically asking why did Desmond not remember his conversation with Daniel until 2 days ago? Let’s look at this more closely. It’s a freshly created memory, supposedly. But, Desmond is off the island 3 years now. Daniel is currently in a timeline where Desmond is in the hatch, pushing the button by himself, anywhere from 3 to 6 years in the past from this very moment for Desmond. And, it’s been, what, a couple of days in real time for the time jumpers, which would still put them 3 years behind Desmond’s memory flash. So, why now? Why, right at this exact moment. Why not a few days after Desmond fled the island? Penny: Promise me you will never go back to that island. First of all, this is selfish. Desmond already said those people need his help. Secondly, Penny has been overly familiar with this island since the start of this show. It’s like she is as puppet for her father, who wants her and Desmond to stay hidden. Hell, Widmore tells Desmond later to disappear. Desmond is a game changer, that Widmore is not looking to use. Penny is Jim Carey’s wife from the Truman show, marrying him, having his child, all for an acting role; Widmore is Christophe, the architect of a great lie. Why not? Oh, that would mean the love story between Penny and Desmond is fake. Well…yeah. The prisoners of Juliet and Sawyer are speaking Latin, no surprise to Juliet. She convinces one of the prisoners to take them to Richard, but Widmore kills the fool and takes off. Locke can’t pull the trigger to shoot him, since he is apparently one of Locke’s people. Ugh. Douchie. Miles is able to detect fresh graves of soldiers killed, including one from radiation poisoning. Ageless Richard is still constantly a figurehead for the Others, and inquires if the Chopperies are back for their bomb. Daniel deduces that the bomb is leaking, and then spills his guts about wanting to stalk Charlotte more right now than any other person in his lifetime. And something about love. I wasn’t listening. Charlotte was, however. Because after Daniel tells her he meant it, he leaves, and Charlotte has a look on her face like someone had just fished a corpse out of a lake after a month of rotting. Or seen Nancy Pelosi naked. Utter disgust and revulsion. She eventually figures out that Daniel is the creepy guy at Dharma that warned her to get off the island and never come back. Daniel was looking at her back then like a pedo sitting down for some lemonade and cookies, about to be filmed for national TV. It’s just wrong, people. Unless you want to club young Charlotte with a hammer. Not that I approve of such activities. Desmond encounters the ticket taker of Oceanic 815 who is now a secretary at Oxford. Yeah, that’s a coincidence. But it is the same character, or they are recycling actors. Desmond breaks into Daniel’s old lab. A janitor gives him some info on the cover up of Daniels work at the university. Yeah, the janitor is another coincidence. Desmond visits Theresa Spencer, who is Daniel’s former assistant and is in a long term mental time travel loop, hopelessly stuck in time, but oddly this condition has been ongoing for years instead of days and a quick and painful death. Widmore has been funding Daniel’s research and paying for Theresa’s care. So Widmore is helping Eloise’ son, but Eloise is working with Ben. That makes no sense, but that is exactly what is happening. Desmond barges into Widmore’s office and demands the address of Faraday’s mother. Desmond returns to the boat, and doesn’t want to go any further. Penny sensed Desmond was lying about the dead end, or she just remembered it from another Loop. Desmond is being selfish now. After Widmore cockily says some sodding old man doesn’t know the jungle all that well, Locke is looking over the Other’s camp and wants to go talk to Richard. Daniel tells Elli that she looks very familiar, mostly because this is his mother. Daniel examines Jughead, sees the leak, and says that they have to make it inert by burying it. He says he is from the past, much to Sawyer’s chagrin when he shows up for the rescue. Locke strolls into camp and proclaims that “Jacob sent me”. Well, maybe, maybe not. You told her? Richard is not impressed. “We have a very specific process in selecting our leader, which starts at a very young age.” This refers to Ben in the upcoming episodes. It’s 1954, visit my birth in the hospital in two years. Charlotte collapses after another flash.

Charlotte is still passed out. I’m reading over my preliminary notes, and I’ve notice that I jotted down “I hate Aaron” about 6 times so far. Sure, we haven’t seen Claire all that much this season, and we won’t. But with so many seemingly religious themes in this show, and the kidnapping, and miracle birth on island, and how the island tells Kate not to bring him back, I wonder if this Aaron is some kind of a super baby, and Claire is going to take on some kind of Virgin Mary role. Don’t forget the imagery of the heroin statues, and how Charlie was the closest person on the island to Claire. Charlotte is still passed out. Jack and Kate are on Penny’s boat, looking to make some shady deals to skew the voting in their favor. I guess you could call it a Congressional health care debate. Jack wants Kate’s support, Kate wants to abduct a baby. Kate comes through with an out of place line of “Once, Aaron is asleep, he’s asleep”. Of course , Aaron is awake and squirming around in the very next camera shot. Different shots from different loops. Kate: Jack, I have always been with you. That would be 100% correct xcept for when you were having sex with Sawyer. Come to think of it, Kate never had sex with Jack on the island. And she said she loved Sawyer at the polar bear cages. And kissed Sawyer to get Shannon’s medicine. Other than that, she has always been with him. Morton Downey Jr coming out of a bathroom had more credibility. Charlotte is still passed out. Sun receives a package which includes surveillance on Ben and a gun. Kate whines to a lawyer, who is doing this to men?. The lawyer zings her with you did this to yourself. Charlotte is still passed out. Locke wants to go to the Orchid to try to fix the time jumps and make the escapees come back. Jack gets yelled at in hospital, Sayid is attacked, they find Kate’s address in the assassin’s pocket. Are the people attacking Sayid with Widmore, or with Ilana’s group? After all, Sayid killed just about all of Widmore’s men, so I’m not really sure of their motivation. Jack calls Kate. Here’s my address. Hi, Jack. Glad you came. But I don’t want you here. So you can leave. Jumping Jehosophat, I tend to see less drama in a College of Creative and Performing Arts. They follow the lawyer. In the jungle, the group walks past a bright light beam going into the sky. Locke recognizes it immediately, as the time he was banging on that hatch as Boone was dying back at the caves. He leads the group around that location. But Sawyer goes to investigate a noise up ahead. Let’s drop an anchor here for a bit. This is the scene where Claire gives birth from Season 1. The scene is different. As Sawyer approaches, his vantage point is similar to the camera angles we had in Season 1. So, I went back and re-watched the scene from Season 1. Focus on the torch. Jin should have been next to the torch, and Charlie should have been across to the right of him pacing. They should absolutely be visible to Sawyer peaking through the vegetation in Season 5, and are not. Kate’s close up shots in Season 1 show Jin & Charlie in the background. Season 5, you can’t find them anywhere. Please take note of the words that I capitalized then compare to the other version.
Season One: Kate is on her feet.
"Do you want this baby NOW"
"Do you want it to be HEALTHY AND SAFE"
"THE BABY KNOWS THAT TOO"
"You are not alone in all of this we are all here for you"
"This baby is all of us"
"But I need you to push, ok ok"
“OK ON THE COUNT OF 3, READY 123 Push, GOOD GOOD GOOD Push”
"THAT’S GOOD Push, Push"
“RELAX RELAX RELAX, BREATHE, COME ON BREATHE”
“BREATHE, OK OK READY, I CAN SEE IT, IT’S CLOSE GO GO PUSH”
(Camera shot of Charlie)
“THAT’S REALLY GOOD, IT’S CLOSE COME ON, YES THAT’S IT
“OK GOOD GOOD GOOD I CAN SEE IT"
PUSH PUSH PUSH…
*Out pops baby*.
Season Five: Kate adjusts from her knees to her feet
"Do you want this baby"
"Do you want it to be Safe and Healthy"
"LISTEN you’re not alone in this, we are all here for you"
"This baby is all of us"
"But I need you to push, ok ok"
"1 2 3 Push, Push, come on Claire Push"
"Push push push"
"Push push push"
*Out pops the baby*.
Do you see the source of my obsession with Loops? This is simply one of many examples I’ve run across. Even if you edited down the Season 5 birth scene, take a really close look at the dialogue. Words are in the wrong order, characters are missing, Kate’s whole dialogue is way off. Ladies and gentlemen, this particular scene has happened more than one time in the LOST universe, at least 2 times, and I simply cannot blame this on shoddy directing and writing. For as much detail these people put into their product, and knowing how much idiots like nit pick over all the details, this is no accident. These happen much more often than you think. LOOP. Now, let’s pick up the anchor, for the time being, and keep sailing. I will point out a few more samples soon enough. Sawyer asks John why he didn’t go talk to himself, to spare himself the pain that he has gone through on the island. Locke responds with I needed the pain. Indeed, the reason these folks are going through this Looping is that they can learn from their missteps and mistakes, so they can learn from them, and maybe not repeat them in their next opportunity. Jacob probably is too. The boats are found on the beach, and I’ll just call them canoes for simplicity sake. They have Ajira water bottles, so the Quantum Leapers are now in 2007, the time of the Ajira crash, as the Leftovers have crossed over from the Hydra island. During the paddling, a gun fight breaks out with another canoe that is chasing. You can assume it’s the Leftovers, but I’m sure we will find out at some point during Season 6. Flash. Sawyer discussed with Juliet that he saw Kate. This scene was symbolic of Sawyer finally putting to rest his infatuation with Kate, and that he was going to move on. What’s done is done. The Leapers find French ship wreckage, signifying the arrival of Danielle Rousseau and her ill fated crew onto the island. That crew fishes Jin out of the water. Jin has been floating for days, but is alive. Meh, I’m not going to challenge the believability factor of that one; after all, we are watching a show with a homicidal cloud of smoke. Jack and Kate follow the lawyer to the hotel, and discover that Claire’s mother is the host for the visit. They both spring into action and do what they do best. Kate wants to run away. Jack wants to fix it by going to Mrs. Littleton and blathering on incomprehensibly about Aaron with all the subtlety of Shaquille O’Neal competing in the Midget Olympics. Who’s Aaron? Ouch. The lawyer is revealed to be working for Ben, and he is going to set Hurley free. Dropping anchor, at the marina. How fitting. The dialogue in the marina scene changes several times as we see it several times from several different vantage points over the next couple of episodes. I copied some transcripts and pasted. Kate’s sentence goes from version 1 to version 2 and back to version 1. Sayid’s dialogue is simply different.
Version 1 (note Kate and Sayid’s lines):
KATE: [To Jack] Is that what this is about? You knew about this?
JACK: No, no, I was...
KATE: And that is why you're pretending to care about Aaron, to convince me to go back there?
JACK: I wasn't pretending anything...
KATE: This is insane, you guys are crazy.
JACK: Kate...
KATE: Jack, don't! [Kate leaves]
BEN: Sayid, where are you going?
SAYID: I don't want any part of this. And if I see you, or him again, it will be extremely unpleasant for all of us. [Sayid leaves]
BEN: 30 minutes, Sun. We can be there in 30 minutes. And you’ll have proof--proof that he's alive. Or you can shoot me and never know.
SUN: Let's go.”

Version 2 (again, take note of Kate and Sayid):
[A familiar scene at the Long Beach Marina. Sun is holding Ben at gun point.]
BEN: [To Sun] There's somebody--somebody here in Los Angeles. Let me take you to them.
SUN: Who?
BEN: The same person that's gonna show us how to get back to the island.
KATE: Is that what this is about? This is insane. You are all crazy.
BEN: Sayid, where are you going?
[Kate retreats to her car and drives away. Sayid turns away.]
(car door closes, engine starts)
SAYID: I don't want any part of this.
(tires sqealing)
SAYID: [Pointing at Ben] And if I see you again, it'll be extremely unpleasant for us both.
[Sayid walks away.]

Version 3 (This time, just take note of Kate):
[The marina. Kate is putting Aaron in her car. Sun has Ben at gunpoint. Sayid and Jack are standing nearby.]
BEN: There's someone...someone here in Los Angeles. Let me take you to them.
SUN: Who?
BEN: The same person that's gonna show us how to get back to the island.
KATE: [Walking back to the group] Is that what this is about? [Looks at Jack] You knew about this.
JACK: No. No, I was o--
KATE: And that is why you were pretending to care about Aaron, to convince me to go back there?!
JACK: I wasn't pretending anything.
KATE: This is insane. You guys are crazy.
JACK: Kate--
KATE: Jack, don't!
Believe it or not, and I highly recommend that you believe, the writers have actually acknowledged the changes in the script and called them intentional. What wonderful news. Get it? Loops. Different scenes from different loops. On to the next episode.

Sun talks to her child on the phone, then grabs her gun, ready for some senseless killing. And, we get Version 2 of the marina this episode. Ben can prove to Sun that Jin is still alive. How does Ben constantly get himself into these perilous predicaments, and continually gets himself out again? Prior knowledge? Course correction? Evil genius? Dumb opponents? Jin is leading the French to the radio tower, crossing the Dark Territory. A member of the group, Nadine, disappears for a brief while, until she drops from the sky and goes thud and splat. This is no food drop. Jin yells “monster” as if he suddenly sees Sun. “Run”. Smokie is a bad ass this time, as he must have scanned Nadine, didn’t like what he saw, and started to drag some French guy underground a Temple wall. A human chain is formed to prevent him from being pulled under. Smokie turns into some kind of serpent like vapor, wraps itself around the poor guy, and drags him down, sans arm. The French castaways come up with a brilliant plan. Let’s go after that terrifying monster that he have no idea how to fight and go into somewhere we have never gone because we don’t leave anybody behind. This is like the children in IT deciding to chase the clown into the sewer, but instead of a spider, they find an actual clown with lots of hammers and he knows how to use them. Bravo. Jin prevents Rousseau from joining the schmucks, as even Jin realizes on some level that Rousseau needs to survive. I might speculate about what might have happened if Rousseau did go, but she obviously didn’t in the past, and didn’t when Jin time jumped, so it never happened. Unless it happened in another unsuccessful time loop. Jin flashes, finds dead bodies on the beach, and Rousseau is having a standoff with Robert. D: The monster made you sick. R: It’s a security system guarding the Temple. Yes, that is what we heard in Season 1 from Rousseau, but it makes even less sense today after we have seen what we have seen. Rousseau kills Robert after his gun jams. The real question is why did he pull the trigger? The island kept Michael from killing himself, I’m forced to assume. So then the island must have been protecting Rousseau from death. But if that’s the case, why is either Smokie or brain washed Robert who is doing Smokie’s bidding trying to kill Rousseau when it doesn’t want her to die. She needs to live and serve a future purpose, like Michael did. Do you see the contradiction? Doesn’t mean that is wasn’t a cool scene. Jin flashes, and runs into Sawyer. Jin can’t quite grasp what the fock is going on with the time jumps. Sun is in the van with Jack and Ben. Jack and Sun have a conversation about blame for the freighter and that if Ben is lying about Jin being alive, they will kill him. Other than pissing off Ben, this conversation pissed me off too. Ben just cleaned up Jack, clean and sober, and is trying to get him back to the island as Jack is obsessed with doing. Ben just told Sun that her husband is alive. And you ungrateful bastages are talking about killing him? Ben was right. They should never stop thanking him for all that he has done. And they probably never have in any loop up to now either. So that’s ungrateful many times over. Charlotte is mostly passed out. Big surprise. I can’t remember all the ways I described her character over the years. Ice Princess, a lizard, the snake, the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia, a space alien, etc. She seems to be transmitting random stuff out of her mouth, including “Don’t let them bring her back, this place is death” and “look for the well”. Well, the Leapers find the well, but how did Charlotte know? A message from the island/ Jacob/ Christian/ Man In Black? Knowledge of past events in a loop? Because she was on island before, growing up as Dharma. A man on the island warned her not to return to island and that was Daniel, and even though it hasn’t happened yet, Charlotte remembers it right now. This makes no sense whatsoever. Why now? Just like Desmond’s random recollection. Locke promises Jin that he won’t bring Sun back, and takes his ring as proof of death. A ring, in itself is a loop. Just thought I’d mention it. Locke climbs down rope, flash, and Locke falls. Let’s take another time out and take in the reactions of the Leapers as Locke is gone, as is the well.
Version One
“SAWYER: No... no no, no no!
[He falls to his knees and claws at the ground with his hands.]
JULIET: [Gently] James, stop.
SAWYER: No, no!
JULIET: James, stop.
SAWYER: [Frantically] C'mon and help me!
JULIET: [Calmly] James--we can't help him.”

Version Two
“SAWYER: No. No! No!
[Sawyer pulls down the length of the rope.]
SAWYER: No! No! No!
JULIET: James, don't.
SAWYER: Come on! Help me! [Panting]
[Juliet kneels down beside Sawyer as he claws at the earth around the rope.]
JULIET: James... [Whispers] Stop.”

Charlotte dies, and I am as emotional about this as Jin catching and gutting a fish. Daniel cries. You loved her, and didn’t even kiss her. I’m not saying he should have touched her boobs while she was lying there mental time traveling, but come on. This was the worst romance in history, which includes Roman Polanski and a teenage girl, and a stripper in Tijuana with a donkey. Locke is lying at the bottom of a shaft, whining more than Juliet did later on. So you have a bone sticking out of your leg. Be a man. What’s the matter with you. Rub some dirt on it and walk it off. Christian shows up, outside of his cabin. C: What has listening to Ben ever gotten you? You can see an almost perceptible sneer on Christian’s face. Ben is not a favorite child of his, that’s for sure. Locke was supposed to move the island. Now, he needs to gather everybody, find Eloise Hawking. L: Richard said I was going to die. C: I guess that’s why they call it a sacrifice. So, Locke is the sacrifice the island demands, like Boone did at one time. So, dying for the island allows X to possess you? Probably not, as Christian didn’t sacrifice himself for the island. Oh, what a mess. C: Say hello to my son. Turns out this was an important tidbit, as it seems to be what finally pushed Jack into returning. Ben gives the ring to Sun, Desmond shows up. D: You’re looking for Faraday’s mother too? Ben did not see this coming. The end of this episode and close to the beginning of the next one feature this scene. Different dialogue, different inflection, different delivery, different body language.
Version 1:
BEN: This is all I could get on short notice.
ELOISE: Well, I suppose it will have to do for now. All right! Let's get started.”

Version 2:
BEN: This is all I could get on short notice.
ELOISE: Guess it'll have to do….. For Now. All right. Let's get started.

Jack wakes up in the jungle, a seeming loop to Season One’s opening scene. Hurley is yelling that he can’t swim. Wait, didn’t he do a cannonball early in Season 4 after they defeat the Others on the beach. He was in fairly deep water, over his head water. But now he can’t swim? Maybe he learned to swim in later loops. Speaking of cannonball, that scene bothered me forever, now I got it. When Hurley and Bernard are standing there, the horizon is empty. Then cannonball. Hurley comes up for air, and Desmond’s boat is less than 20 feet away. You’re telling me that Desmond managed to sneak up to the shore without Bernard and Hurley seeing him as they stared out at the water. Different scenes from different loops. Jack saves Hurley by telling him he was drowning in shallow water and to stand up, stupid. Kate is bashed on some rocks, but from the opening scene of this episode, to when they reshow the same scene at the end of this episode, Kate’s hair is different, two very large strands hang over her face vs no strands in the other version. Two versions. Are you seeing my point? Eloise Hawking is a school teacher and is lecturing her students about the Dhama station called the Lamppost, which I assume is an homage to the Lamppost in Narnia, signaling the entrance and exit of that magical land. Jack admires some military maps which probably helped Dharma’s search for the island, as the U.S. military got there before them, before getting whacked by the Others. This station allowed Dharma to find the island; it is built over a large pocket of energy (most likely the same exotic negative matter as on the island). This pocket connects with similar pockets all over the world (Tunisian desert, that psychic ranch in Australia, etc.) The island is always moving, so a brilliant man calculated where the island was going to be (most likely Daniel when he was with Dharma). There are windows to get to the island, to go back. Desmond freaks out about the going back part, blames Eloise for wasting many years of his life. But Desmond said something very profound. “These people are using us, they’re playing some kind of game, and we’re just the pieces.” Why Desmond, that’s absolutely correct. E: you need to recreate the circumstances that brought you here; “if not all, the result will be unpredictable”. Jack receives special instructions. John is to be the proxy for Christian, and needs some of his belongings. Loophole for X? Does this allow Locke to be possessed because has the belongings of Christian, who is also possessed? Jack takes a beating on his lack of faith by everybody in sight. Jack gets his father’s shoes from his grandfather. An intruder at Jack’s house turns out to be Kate, which after learning her identity, I would have shot Kate and then called the police about a break in. K: I’ll go with you, but don’t ever ask me about Aaron. Well, that’s certainly a healthy relationship built on honesty and trust. And since Kate is crying, it’s time for sex. Daddy issues. Sheesh. In the morning Kate talks about shoes and then. “Why hold onto something that makes you feel sad? Kate must die. Season 6, episode 1, 1 minute into the show. Kill her. Die. Die. Die. Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. Ben calls Jack from a pay phone after what looks like a 5 round competition with Brock Lesnar. Jack goes to pick up the Locke cold cuts, and the butcher knows exactly who Dr Shepherd is. Prior knowledge or current knowledge? Locke gets a new pair of shoes. At the airport terminal, we see the arrival of the Boring Six, Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid in handcuffs, Hurley buying a bunch of tickets and a guitar, and Ben scrambles to make it at the last minute. Frank Lapidus is the pilot. Jack asks Ben a simple question? How can you read? Ben can’t help himself but lie: My mother taught me. (she died in childbirth) B: it wasn’t your fault Jack. No sh!t. Ben killed Locke. Jack reads the “suicide” note. I wish you had believed me, JL. Turbulance, flash, Jack wakes up in jungle, and version 2 where Kate’s hair is wrong as I previously mentioned.

Part Two will be distributed most likely Sunday, or at latest, Monday.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Season 6 Preview - A Look Back On Season Four

I thought I’d have finished this summary about a week ago. But I started and stopped so often, it was like I was driving a car under the influence of narcolepsy. So, what shall we talk about? Maybe it should be the close call of seeing our 3 hour Season premier of Lost Feb 2nd being delayed for a week due to a State of the Union address. Obama cancelled it. Good for him, I can respect Obama being concerned by the wrath of the fans that root for the man that perfected telling the truth while lying simultaneously, the man that stabbed God, the man that I don’t think ever had sex. Yes, Ben. Michael Emerson was nominated for a Golden Globe, but inexplicably lost. Are you kidding? I demand a Loop for the Golden Globes, and lets give that gaudy award to a man that deserves so much credit. Hey, we need to find something to celebrate. Most of the people on my block are unemployed. Mostly construction and trades people, but you also have to mix in car salespeople and my upstairs neighbor used to work in Accounts Payable in a bank. Things are tough. So that’s why I want to say Dappy Dew Dear’s Day. Yeah, great countdown, D!ck. 15,14,12,10,11,9,something something. Geez Louise. The man can’t even count anymore. Somebody take him out back and shoot him. When D!ck says something, the Closed Captioning feature on my TV puts up a row of 15 question marks, and my TV finds a way to shrug it’s shoulders. Yes, it has shoulders. And then Satan Seacrest says “Heh, heh, right you are D!ck.” Oh, really? How do you translate what Mumbles said, you talentless golem with a head full of molasses. But let’s not lose focus on the worst characters on earth, Jack and Kate. Yes, that lets Hitler, Stalin, and Jennifer Lopez off the hook. What? Jack and Kate aren’t real. Shut your mouth. They are real to me, dammit. But I will allow you, the faithful reader, a window into my soul as I rampage through this season like Wendy Williams at a Chinese buffet. Let’s not forget that the stupid Olympics are going to preempt LOST at some point. Fock. Sure, watching Michael Phelps try to win a medal doing a Triple Lindy into a solidly frozen lake might give us some blood and guts. Don’t fock with my LOST. In actuality, I’ve been pleased in re-watching LOST since I recently purchased a new TV. My old TV in the living room had seen better days, as I bought it used about 12 years ago, and the color tube seemed to have died a couple of months ago. Technology is certainly impressive, as even though I am not foolish enough to spend money on HDTV, to me LCD is as impressive as 3D. Got all that? Basically, the picture makes re-watching the show amazing.

Let me share an Easter egg, a discovery I stumbled over recently. Going all the way back to Season 1’s DVD. Disk 2. Go to main menu, then go to the Episodes screen. Move the arrow up and down until you reach the bottom and then press the “Go to right” arrow.. Then hit enter. This takes you to a secret screen. You see a picture of a Walkie Talkie and Rousseau’s distress signal repeating in French. The subtitles didn’t work. But no matter. You don’t have to know French to discover that every time the message repeated, the message was different. What does this mean? The Loop. Yes, I still have NO reason to abandon my theory after finishing Season 4. Again, my premise of the show is a series of repeating events, done many times, re-setting to a beginning point and the events are redone, until finally something happens where the Loop is broken, and a brand new event/loop/future occurs. We are viewing a cut and paste of various loops put together, giving us a mostly cohesive view of this current loop that Jacob and X are playing with. A previous loop was extremely likely the Black Rock and its crew. Another loop could very well have been the Dharma Initiative, and possible the military vs the Others during the Widmore /Hawking heyday. Maybe the reset happens every 108 days, and flips like the numbers in the Swan hatch did. And Juliet pressed the failsafe with the bomb. Season 6 will no doubt start with the plane not crashing. Season 6 it the Mucho Grande re-set. The beginning of the end of the show. But back to the French message. Since the message kept changing, to me this meant we were hearing the various messages the Rousseau recorded during the multiple loops and many times she recorded the message. The message conveyed the same main theme, but there were minute differences in the details. Much like a lot of background shenanigans during the show, clocks with time jumps, characters with different color shirts from scene to scene, painting changing walls, different pictures, it’s wild stuff when you look for it. This season gave us flashforwards and flashbacks, so let’s get started, episode by episode on my journey of madness.

So, Jack is making an early morning screwdriver made of 1 part vodka and 28 parts orange juice. I’d get a bigger buzz from smelling a Listerine bottle. Mind you, smelling it, not drinking it, because they it would be a stronger cocktail. No wonder Jack went crazy on pills. Later in the season, he is drunk out of his mind and has about 5 beers lying near him. He is an embarrassment to addicts everywhere. When he drinks a beer, I bet he extends out his pinkie. Great, I’m on page two into my write-up, and I’m still on line 1 of page 1 of my outline. This is going to be tedious. Strap on your helmets, hopefully laughing helmets, I don’t care if it’s pity laughter because you feel forced to read this mess, ‘cause this one is going to be a doozy. Hurley is leading a high speed chase in his rebuilt sports car through LA traffic. A wonder of advice. Don’t Fock With LA Cops. Holy frijoles. He dumps out and proclaims “I’m one of the Oceanic 6”. OK, sure this is mysterious and supposedly a plot twist and blah, blah, vomit. Honestly, if some dumbass castaways are found from a plane crash, are you going to be a worldwide celebrity? No. Was Tom Hanks a celebrity after being rescued in Castaway? Maybe for a day. Hey, Hurley, this isn’t some Friend of a Cop card to get out of jail. God, I remember how much I hated the Oceanic 6 during this season and next season when I first watched the episodes. Nothing, absolutely nothing changed for me. I hated these people. They were the premium collection of lack of personality, selfish, cavalcade of awfulness that the island sh!t out and let them leave, only to have them come back like some unforgiving STD attack. I wanted more island, the writers said We’ll show you more Sun and Kate and Jack. Jumping Jehosophat!!! Ana-Lucia was my partner. I can’t decide if Hurley has a poker face or is incapable of displaying more than one emotion this whole fugly series. Like a wax figure in a museum, like somebody frozen in ice, or Harrison Ford. On the island, Jack pledges to kill Locke the next time he sees him. We still have a full season of full of bravado Jack, before he becomes a beaten and humble, yet still a very stupid man. “Yeah, we are really going home.” The famous tag line of promos for Season 4. Wow, that didn’t work out too well. Hurley does a cannonball in the water, and thousands of people in Indonesia had to flee their shanties. Naomi manages to elude Jack and 40 other people as she sneaks away barely alive. Here’s a tip. This island is weird. Mikhail got better. Even Naomi get better after the parachute crashed. Maybe, just maybe, you assign one dabgum person to keep an eye on her. I want to stab myself in the eye as I watch this stupidity continually unfold in front of me. If I was a Lostie, I would have suffocated Jack in his sleep a very long time ago. But I would not have tossed a sink through a window and escaped. I would have stuck around just to see the look on Nurse Kate Ratchet’s face as I threw the pillow in her face. Mr Abbadon visits Hurley in the nut hut. Couple of noteworthy background items here. Abbadon is sitting in front of a chess board, yet another scene with this game in this series, the ultimate board game of strategy. Monopoly can go to hell. The chalkboard in the background contains a beautiful drawing of an ocean, island, palm tree, and a huge shark. “Are they still alive?” Yes, the man working for Widmore asks the proper question, as Widmore himself knows that you can leave the island and still have people left behind, as Charles went through this very experience as chronicled in Season 5. On the island, Hurley’s group is walking towards Jack’s group. They start while it is broad daylight on the beach, yet it is the middle of the night when we see them next, and they are about halfway there. Now, a group of 40 or so people grabbed their stuff and lugged it to the radio tower in less than a day. In fact, Karl warned the Losties that the Others were coming that night, giving them hours to get there. So why does it take Hurley’s fast moving group by comparison into the middle of the night to not reach them? Because this is yet another inconsistent day/night scene, where in a previous loop, Hurley and Desmond and Sawyer left early, but in another loop, they left late in the day, and we see the scene cobbled together from two loops. So, we still have not reached the point of no return, we are still in a part of the loop where things have occurred at least several times. We need to note these scenes from time to time until we can get a handle on where things went past the loop, which the broad assumption is the bomb detonation. I’m not ready to concede that fact yet, so I’ll note where the looping is obvious, like this scene, which to me seemed obvious. So, as the midnight stroll continues, Hurley falls behind, hears whispers, and Jacob’s cabin appears. I have finally tossed in the towel. The mysterious whispers happened when the Others appear, a Smokie in disguise appears, with no discernable pattern or difference. The whispers are not consistent to one party, so I just have to conclude the whispers are simply a device the writers employ to build up a creep factor just before something weird happens. The whispers have beaten my analysis attempts due to randomness. Unless randomness is the pattern. I think I’ll go chase my tail for a while. Hurley sees Christian in a rocking chair and then a second person with a chilling black eye looks back at Hurley through the window. Hurley runs off into the jungle, being chased by a house. I have money on the house winning a footrace. He runs into Locke, who peers down at Hurley with the same exact eye that looked at him in the cabin. I rewound 7 times. Same eye. Locke asks Hurley about what Desmond said, it being Not Penny’s Boat. How did Locke know? Sure, it was later revealed that tall ghost Walt got John to race across the island to stop Naomi. But at no point could Locke have known it was not Penny’s boat without having future knowledge, knowledge retained from remembering past loop life. John had a heightened consciousness and memory. Not good enough where he did need Jacob’s instruction, but good enough to know certain things. Ben mocks Jack with “you don’t know what you’re doing” as Dr DumDum loses Naomi, the phone, and follows a dummy trail to get her back. A mortally wounded Naomi kicks Kate’s ass, and warns her ship of her being in trouble with a secret distress call. Reunion of the Losties at the cockpit in the jungle, and do you remember the cockpit being that far from the beach during the pilot episode when Jack, Kate, and Charlie ran from the monster. Me neither. Again, why is it midnight when it was high noon when Naomi escaped and Hurley’s group left the beach? Different loops. I know, I’m a skipping record with this stuff, but I’m just trying to show some of the fragments that helped me make sense of the show’s overall arc. If I’m wrong, I’ll be spectacularly wrong. But I’ll have fun beating myself up during Season 6 write-ups. Come on, you know I have no self esteem. Hurley’s friend at the nut hut actually sees Charlie, signifying that the island images are not just images, but real and very visible manifestations. Charlie’s ghost seems like a part of Jacob going off island, and rather than merely touching someone, he talks to people. Jacob had a significant conversion with Hurley Season 5, so he seems very important to the island. Charlie tells Hurley that they need you (to return to the island). Jack sees Locke, sucker punches him, and cowardly tries to put a bullet in his brain. Yeah, I think that would have reset everything right there. Probably did in the past. Locke was smart or preconscious enough to make sure the gun wasn’t loaded. See how much fun the loop theory can be? Preconsciousness. I like the word. I might use it to annoying levels in the future. JL – Everything I have ever done is in the best interests of all of us. Jack – “Are you insane?” When you look back on this, you can see that Locke was correct, and Jack was the insane one all along. Hell, how insane is Jack? The guy decides to set off a hydrogen bomb on an island to change time next year. Why? Come on, that’s obvious. He is consumed with rage about the thought of Sawyer sleeping with Kate, he will risk the life of everybody on the island so that sex never happened. Now who’s insane? But I digress. Kate – Naomi covered for you, John. JL – She didn’t cover for anyone. Again, Locke is absolutely right. Hurley gives a speech about Charlie and the camp splits up. When Jack visits Hurley in the mental circus, Hurley tells him that he should have gone with Jack, not Locke; we did the wrong thing; we have to go back. Now, I turned this over in my head. There is no possible advantage of going with Jack rather than Locke in that situation. Locke was right about everything, Jack was wrong about everything. Hurley helped John and Ben find the cabin as he spotted it first. Sure, background characters died at Dharmaville by Keamy’s men. But background characters died after being ferried to the freighter on the Zodiac raft. There was no reason to go with Jack unless you personally like Jack. And it still was a mistake, because Jack is stupid and Locke is a jungle madman in tune with the island. Screw Rose for saying Locke is a murderer. Naomi deserved to die.

Jack turns to Kate “It feels like a hundred years ago we came out here together; how did this happen?” Can anyone say loop? Yeah, I bet that you would feel exhausted reliving the same days, weeks, months, over and over again, even if you don’t necessarily realize it. Faraday parachutes in, as the chopper is pulling the old Ajira strategy. On the chopper were Frank, Miles, Charlotte, and Daniel. As we subsequently find out, Frank was the originally scheduled pilot of 815, Miles is the son of Dr Chang and was born on the island, Charlotte was born on the island, Daniel is the son of Eloise Hawking, a former leader of the Others on the island. These misfits were drawn by the island because they belong on the island. The bigger mystery is why they are on the mission to begin with. Frank might be going for closure, Miles for money, Charlotte for curiosity about her past, Daniel because his journal told him to go? The Oceanic 815 plane is found on the bottom of the ocean, and this makes Daniel cry when watching the news. Certainly this was baffling at the time, and may still be unexplained. Daniel clearly had a connection to the island, and may have some residual preconsciousness of what is to come, such as Charlotte’s death, his death at the hands of his mother, etc. Sayid and Juliet get bad feeling about boat, as Sawyer and Hurley get bad feelings about Locke, as Jack and Kate get bad feelings about Daniel. I suppose it doesn’t help when someone says “Rescuing you is not our primary objective.” In that situation, I beat him to death. Jack and Kate decided to help him not rescue the Losties. Solid logic, people. Locke shows of his bullet hole, confirming what we deduced when he got shot, that missing his kidney kept him alive. During Miles’ flashback, the camera lingered on the photos on the wall near the front door when Miles went ghost hunting. After stealing the money, as he paused at the front door again, we were shown another lingering shot of the pictures on the wall. They were completely different. Except for the photo that looked a lot like a young Mr Eko. Except the second time you saw it, it was twice as big. The fine details changed from scene to scene. Are you getting it yet? Multiple loops of the same storyline. Miles goes on to talk to dead Naomi while Daniel creepily remarks that the light on the island doesn’t scatter quite right. What the fock is he talking about? I still don’t know the significance of that statement. Ben pushed Sawyer’s buttons and takes a beating, continuing the streak of days in a row Ben has taken a pounding. Somewhere, David Carradine is jealous. After Miles and Daniel get caught in a trap, Jack utters the most ironic line in LOST history, “I don’t know Miles, how stupid are you?” Out in Tunisia, Charlotte discovers the skeletal remains of a Dharma polar bear in a desert, complete with a Hydra station collar. At this point, I made a notation that the sarcasm coming from Miles is top notch and a welcome addition to the cast. While Charlotte gets captured by Locke’s regiment, you have to look back on that dynamic. Here is Charlotte hunting for Ben, and there he is, handcuffed, but you can’t do anything about it because these people don’t believe your back story and don’t want to be found. As the signal from Charlotte’s phone rapidly approaches Jack’s group, they realize she is running from something. You have to think monster. Right? It doesn’t stop 6 people from running straight in the direction of the monster. Solid logic. Sadly, it was only Vincent, so Jack and Kate are still alive. Ben goes ahead and steals a gun and shoots Charlotte while handcuffed. Good stuff. Why is it that after thousands of scenarios played out in TV and movie history, very few master criminals aim for the head, a place where you obviously are not concealing a bullet proof vest? Naomi is hired by Abbadon, a henchman of Widmore, but is not told of potential 815 survivors. Odd that she carried a picture of Desmond and Penny, never explained. Frank outs Juliet as a native. Frank is one of those Rain Men that can count names on manifestos and pilot aircraft on exact coordinates. And drinks a brewery on days of the week ending in “day”. As Ben is begging for his life, he offers “I have answers!!!” to John. “What is the monster?” “I don’t know” I remember the first time I watched this scene, and even I wanted to shoot Ben. Great question, no answer. Although, if Locke saw a monster as a white light, and then allowed himself to be almost pulled down a shaft by the being, why is it that important to get answers for this thing? John could have asked a hell of a lot of other questions. But at the time, admittedly, that was probably the most popular question among LOST diehards. Ben turns in an effective last second plea for his life: “Her name is Charlotte Lewis. IF you kill me, you will never know how big of a threat they were; I have a man on the boat.” As it turns out, these were mostly hollow words, as the man on the boat was a yawn of a storyline, and the threat died out. Let’s be serious. Keamy was a threat. But him and about 5 other mercenaries taking on the island? Hell, the others knocked out a military unit. The Losties killed a dozen Others on the beach. These Keamy guys were going to get a giant fly swatter upside the head by someone. If though I don’t have a HDTV, I swear, Naomi has more facial hair than Sayid, Sawyer, Hurley combined. She seems to have a bracelet that says “I’ll always be with you R.C.” but I am unclear what this means, unless it was explained in Season 5 and I am currently too drunk to remember.

Sayid is on a gold course, and assassinates a Widmore flunky. Psst. Tiger. This is how you make your marital problems disappear. Sayid bores us with meeting Elsa in a coffee shop. Yeah, she works for an economist. Bottom line in this boring episode, Sayid claims Nadia is the love of his life. Yet, in the short time that we have known him, Sayid has almost slept with as many women as Warren Beatty. There was a dynamic of Jack replacing Kate with Juliet in running errands and other stuff. A transfer of power. Jack then tells Kate that if she goes with Sayid to Locke’s camp, don’t worry, because Sawyer won’t let them hurt you. Ouch. Miles gets all emotional and informs us that Naomi was hot and he dug her accent. Daniel conducts an experiment with a rocket, and it eventually gets to the island 31 minutes later than anticipated. This was just one of many examples hitting us over the head that time moves differently on and near the island. Ben’s secret room is discovered, including many different currencies and passports. Kate and Sawyer discuss the benefits of staying vs. leaving the island. Come to think of it, it would be tempting to remain on the island, live in a Dharma house, and have the comforts of home in a tropical paradise while running for your life from a smoke monster. Well, it beats a Carnival Cruise. Sayid trades Miles for Charlotte. After Elsa tells Sayid that she loves him, she shoots him but inexplicably doesn’t shoot to kill. Sure, it’s a not as touching as a Vermont teddy bear, but what kind of assassin doesn’t shoot to kill? Unless Widmore told her not to kill Sayid for the sake of the events that must happen. Anyway, Sayid kills Elsa and then cries. Yuck. I bet John Wayne never did that. How can a guy capable of breaking the neck of an Other with his feet be such a wussie? We’ve seen Sayid cry more than anybody on the show, even Jack. Speaking of annoying, why can’t Sandra Bullock leave us alone already? We get it. You star in chick flicks. But you can’t act, you’re not particularly attractive, and have the sex appeal of a homeless person’s boot. Who’s watching your garbage movies? Then, you star in some football flick and become a star again for the first time in 20 years. Now, we have to deal with you all over again. Get hit by a bus already. Preferably, one that’s going about 55 MPH. Kate stays at the Barracks, Sayid and Desmond take a trip to the freighter, and Sayid is one of the Oceanic 6, working for Ben, a pretty decent surprise at the time.

Locke is keeping Ben in a basement. It’s just a matter of time before Ben is giving the orders again. Kate stayed behind, but not for Sawyer. Little Miss Selfish stayed for “Me, me, me”. Again. As Kate is put on trial and headed for the courtroom, he hear yet another backwards message from a person in the crowd. When played forward, the person said “We hate you Kate.” Amen and Hallelujah. Kate seems to be sporting a Steam Punk look, which is the new goth rage where kids are dressing up in Victorian age-like clothing. In this case, it’s more likely that Kate has the fashion sense of Larry The Cable Guy. Kate’s master plan is to have a talk with Miles and needs Sawyer’s help. Not really all that interesting, as we eventually discover that Miles wants to extort Ben for 3.2 million bucks and the freighter folks know that Kate is a horrible person and criminal. Kate acts offended by her mother, not showing remorse for killing her mother’s husband, but on top of that using Aaron as bait in getting her mother not to testify against her. Kate is actually yelling at her dying mother, lecturing her about morals, will not allow her to see Aaron, “I don’t trust you anywhere near him.” Wow, such blatant hypocrisy. For fock’s sake, Aaron is not your son, you delusional twat. Kate would make an excellent Congressman. Jack comes along and perjures himself by repeating the Oceanic 6 story in court, and Kate gets indignant telling him to shut up, but Kate is not thrown in jail for contempt. After Kate’s meeting with Miles is interrupted by Locke, John tells her she is no longer welcome there. Since Kate feels sorry for herself, or is angry at Locke, or some other kind of childish emotion I simply can’t comprehend, she sleeps with Sawyer. Probably while crying. I know what you’re thinking. The answer is that Sayid has definitely cried more than Kate. Charlotte is testing Daniel’s memory with cards on the beach, potentially trying to overcome some of the side effects of coming to the island. Or Daniel is simply a scatter brained genius. I’m looking at my notes, and I can’t decipher what I wrote next, so I’m going to skip it. Parents, please, teach your kids to never drink and write. Locke sticks a grenade in Miles’ mouth. That kid must have some strong jaw bones and face muscles since he didn’t blow up. I’d hate to think what kind of exercises he was doing to build up that strength. Anyway, Sawyer calls Kate out on the fact that she will eventually get mad at Jack and come back again. She hits him, but it’s refreshing to see the biggest villain on the show get criticized for once. Widmore, Ben, X, Smoke monster, Locke’s father, Radzinsky…all these people are boy scouts compared to Kate. Notice that I left out Sun? Not an accident. The Kate monster gets 10 years probation and agrees not to leave the state. A completely bizarre agreement. Not leave the state? What does that accomplish? Who doesn’t want Kate to return to the island? Ben, Widmore, Hawking, Jacob are all in favor of it. Who’s against it? X? Does X travel the world and recruit people to screw with Jacob’s chosen ones? Kate tells Jack they can’t be together until he accepts Aaron as her baby. I’m tired of Kate, and I’ll have to deal with her bullsh!t soon enough, so let’s move along, shall we?

The Constant, an episode that was nominated for an Emmy, unless I’m mistaken. A terrific episode full of course correcting, notable and important quotes and concepts, and a bit of a emotional reunion at the end. A nearly perfect TV episode. Plus, no Kate or Jack. Yes!!! As the helicopter hits turbulence, Desmond starts to jump back in time, 8 years back, when he was in the army. Oddly, he has lost all of his current memory. Daniel tries to explain the perspective of time to Jack, but judging from the look on Jack’s face, he might as well be talking to a bowl of oatmeal. Seems that the side effects can be triggered by prolonged exposure to electro magnetism, such as the Swan hatch. Daniel comes up with a clever plan for Desmond to visit Daniel in Oxford in the past. Why Desmond does not remember his visits to the future previously when he was in the Army PRIOR to arriving to the island and only now jumping in time is very odd. It’s creating new memories right now, even though it is happening in the past. Odd dynamic. I suppose that’s why Daniel doesn’t remember Jin from the time jumping episodes of Season 5 when she visits the Losties camp. Desmond is having some difficulty convincing Faraday of the time travel. “Time paradox; so uninspired.” This sentence packed some punch for me. The JJ Abrams movie Star Trek that was recently created re-imagined the properties of black holes. Seems like this show is re-imagining the time paradox difficulties of time travel, basically the inconsistencies in the story line by having people travel back and forth in time. Daniel is scoffing at uninspired time paradoxes. It’s a subtle way for the writers to tell us that the rules don’t have to be the way we assume they need to be. I mean, the loop theory is inspired, if that is really happening. Creating new memories. I mean, sure some other projects have explored these concepts, like Back to the Future, the Matrix movies, Groundhog Day, etc. Lost is putting their own stamp on concept. Of course, at this point it’s probably safe to assume that Daniel is the one who created the time travelling experiments with the rabbits for the Dharma Initiative, seeing as that was the same methodology Daniel used to make Eloise the rat time travel. Unsticking in time. Time travel is an interesting thing, moving in space to different points on the line. Daniel tells us that you need a constant, everything else is variable. Think about the last sentence. It’s almost like a theme to Season 5, possibly even the entire show. The Losties are the variables. They are the instruments of change, the ones that can break the Loop. What is the constant? The island? Jacob? The loop? That is something that I am not willing to decide yet. However, let me state a paradox. Eloise the rat gets zapped, and runs the maze. Daniel tells us that he is yet to train the rat to run it, and will have to start to train her later in the day. Yet, the rat dies less than 75 minutes later. So, how exactly did the rat know how to run the maze, because in the future, present, and past, the rat never learned how to do it? I’d say that maybe a loop, but it’s not on the island. I am unable to explain this, but it is really bothering me. Ok, let’s see what else is going on in this episode. George Minkowski is unstuck in time and is the precursor to what could happen to Desmond. George knows Desmond because Penny keeps calling the boat. So, Penny knows about the boat, but tells Charlie “What boat?”. Penny is full os sh!t. There is a friend on the boat, which we knew was Michael from the beginning of the season because Harold Perineaux was on the cast list for the season. The Black Rock set sail in 1845 for a trading mission to Siam; Widmore buys the journal of the first mate at an auction. The seller was Tovar Hanso, the founder of Dharma. Widmore gives Desmond Penny’s address, no doubt course correcting. Why else would he leave the water running in the sink but to wake up Desmond during the next time jump. Desmond gets the phone number from Penny and calls her 8 years later. Do not overlook Penny’s curious line during the phone call, “Yes, I know about the island; I’ve been researching it for years.” Really? Penny is just not trustworthy. Somebody, please explain all the freaking inconsistencies in all of Penny’s lies. Why? Why does she know about the island? Is she working with her father? Why does Naomi have their picture? Why does Desmond end up on the island of all places on earth, unless Penny knew he would end up there. There is some future treachery coming from Penny during Season 6. Mark my words. Yeah, a phone call full of tears. Yet, I focus on the lies. Also, Desmond is Daniel’s constant, according to the journal that is just overflowing with answers from the past and future.

Juliet is having a session with a therapist, Harper. A misdirection, as the scene is set up like Juliet was off the island, but she is in Dharmaville. Ben gives Juliet a house. I suspiciously look around for a bunch of construction workers and a chant of “Move That Bus!!” Juliet and Jack, among others, go after Daniel and Charlotte who have run off into the jungle. Jin pointed out to Jack that he thought they were friends with those two. Jack is exasperated. A whispering hits us, and Harper pops up in front of Juliet. As previously discussed, the whispering signifies either the presence of the Others, or Smokie in disguise. There just isn’t any discernable pattern. So is Harper a manifestation, or the real thing. Hard to say, since she disappeared so suddenly after Jack came by, and Harper looked like the undead. Either way, Harper says that Ben wants Juliet to the Tempest station. Ben is exactly where he wants to be. This is problematic, since the Others themselves are not taking care of this despite knowing all the particulars. They also were able to communicate with Ben even though he is secluded. Remember, Juliet was very recently scanned by Smokie. Could the shape shifting smoke have picked up on Harper’s connection to Juliet, was unable to stop Daniel and Charlotte, and recruited Juliet to help. Plus, Jacob/X would know that Ben is exactly where he wants to be. Problematic all around. We get some Juliet back story. It’s so odd to see women so willing to give up their lives for pregnancy, so willing to die like Mrs Klugh at the Flame station. Either these Others are passionate zealots very willing to die for a cause, or know they will live again due to a loop. Do we actually see any old Others? Their uterus might be 80, but their actual age is around 30. Juliet has an affair with Goodwin, who works at the “electrical station that powers the island”. Charlotte knocks out Kate with a gun. I laughed. A lot. Jack: “You had therapists?” Juliet: “It’s very stressful being an Other.” Especially when there is a megalomaniac trying to undress you with his bug eyes every time he sees you. Harper tells Juliet it’s no wonder Ben is obsessed with you. “You look just like her.” Who? Ben’s mother? Jack’s wife? Annie, the young girl on the island that gave Ben a birthday gift. Who is Harper referring to specifically? And if it’s Ben’s mom…..Ewwww. Harper knows about the affair and warns of consequences. We see a quick scene of Ben continuing to siphon off Locke’s confidence. “I always have a plan.” But that little guy can lie his ass off. He shows John the Widmore video tape. Locke: “How does Widmore know about the island?” Ben: “I don’t know.” When Juliet asks about letting Zack and Emma go home, the two kids from the Tailies, Ben claims that they are on Jacob’s list, and who are we to question it? Very effective manipulation when you know that Ben never spoke to Jacob. Besides, I’m tired of the lists that were complete fabrications and were never written by Jacob. Juliet confronts Daniel in the Tempest and then gets into a hell of a fight with Charlotte. While we see Kate get clobbered by Naomi and Charlotte, Juliet put up a hell of an effort and actually won. Juliet > Kate. So, why did “Harper” and the Others want Daniel and Charlotte killed? “We know Ben used the gas before.” Well, no we don’t. The purge was done with canisters. So, when exactly was gas released onto the island, and if it was, who died from it, since clearly it wasn’t Dharma. Or is this just a lie told by Widmore to get the dummies from the boat to do certain things? Ben brings Juliet to Goodwin’s body. Juliet: “You knew this would happen.” (Loop). Ben then delivers a commanding performance. “Why? You are asking me why? After everything that I did to get you here? Everything I’ve done to keep you here? How could you possibly not understand that you’re mine?” Awesome stuff, as you could see the spittle flying out of Ben’s mouth. Then he follows that up with a very unemotional “take as much time as you need” and then, and then incredibly he swiveled his hips like a runway model and sashayed up the hill. He sashayed. It was horrifying. It was the most terrifying scene in LOST history, watching Ben parade away with those child bearing hips. Holy moly. Juliet expresses her concerns about Ben to Jack, who then kisses Juliet in the most unsexy kiss in entertainment history. There was less chemistry in that lip lock than Zack Galifianakis French kissing a dog in The Hangover. Ben is carrying a bounty from Bed, Bath, Beyond as he tells Sawyer and Hurley “see you guys at dinner”. Ben always has a plan. Bottom line, the Tempest was a rather pointless story line, other than to explain why Daniel, Miles, and Charlotte brought gas masks to the island.

Frank sneaks some cans of beans to the Sayid and Desmond on the boat. Sure, that could provide hours of entertainment based on the ensuing farting. Sayid wants to meet the captain. Frank is yet another person on the boat that seems petrified of the captain. The problem is that they built up Capt Galt to be some kind of larger than life character, but he turned out to be a big nothing. A total fizzle out as a character. Felt like a Nikki/Paulo situation. Then again, Kate has been fizzling for how many seasons now? Sun is in a hotel room, watching Nikki on TV on Expose. Sun blankly turns it off, never even noticing that Hey, that’s a woman I saw buried on the island because Sun is too preoccupied with Me, Me, Me. To be fair, other characters do this same routine, like Ben for example. But Sun is just so blatant at it, she becomes very unlikable. We note that while Sun is in a flashforward, Jin is in a flashback. Another deception device, but it’s Sun that makes it off the island, and not with Jin. On the island, Kate explains to Sun the Tempest scenario, and how Juliet lied. Funny how it’s OK for Daniel and Charlotte to be lying since the first moment they arrived on the island, but when Juliet lies, there is hell to pay. “I don’t trust you, Juliet” Remarkable words from somebody that has just been caught ransacking Juliet’s tent for drugs. Jin is running around trying to buy a panda. He then allows a stuffed animal to escape from him. He goes back inside the store. Here, you have to notice that the cashier has an enormous panda right behind him when Jin reenters the store. But the first time, they had to dig around in the aisles to find an obscure panda. But there is another one, right there, where it wasn’t about 60 seconds ago. Different scenes from different loops. Juliet tries to prevent Sun from leaving to Locke’s camp. “Jin, your wife had an affair.” This was one of the most stunning scenes to me from the LOST series. Juliet just floored me. Sun comes back with a smack to the face. No matter. The cat is out of the bag, and now Jin can move on with his life, a much brighter world without the Sun thunderhead blocking out the literal sun. Sun is an eclipse. Sun pleads with Jin “It was a long time ago”. Yeah, about 3 months ago….unless she is referencing the loop, where it may have been a long time ago because of the iterations. Just for the record, iteration means the act of repeating a process usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target or result. There. I saved you some Googling. But either Sun is aware, or just a desperate liar. You decide. Bernard goes fishing with a devastated Jin. Rose has cancer, but going with Jack was the right thing to do. Sure, so Rose can get her cancer to return. “Locke is a murderer”. Locke is trying to save your peabrained life. You see that Jin, that’s karma. No, Bernard, that’s a fish, you moron. Back on the big boat, Regina wraps herself in chains and jumps into the water. I’d say that’s the most effective diver’s belt I’ve ever seen. Capt Galt explains the wreckage of Oceanic 815 staged in the ocean, and thinks Ben is responsible. Check, please. Captain Nimrod still doesn’t realize that Michael is the spy on the boat either. Jin goes back to Sun on the island and comes this close to actually apologizing for Sun cheating on him. Ouch, this guy is hopelessly stupid. “Before the island, I withheld my affection. Whatever you did, you did for that man.” Are you kidding? Who wrote this drivel? Who talks like that? Do you have any idea how evil your wife is? Sometimes that Sun, she looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about Sun... she's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When she comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until she bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', she comes in and she... rips you to pieces. Sun gives birth. Sun and Hurley go visit Jin’s grave site. I have to admit, it was a very emotional scene. I nearly cried when Sun didn’t die in child birth. Oh, yeah. Random note. Turns out that Michael was a supporting character in the Matrix sequels. I had no idea, but since I re-watched them recently, I thought I’d mention the connection to LOST.

Meeting in Locke’s living room, but no background characters are present. You only have about a dozen total people in your camp, but you only invite half of them for a sharing of information meeting? This is a really bad Condo association. Ben explains that once he is captured, the freighter people will kill everybody else on the island. Actually, that was mostly true. Remarkable. A truth from Ben. Ben asks Alex, Karl, and Rousseau to go to the Temple, the last safe place on the island. Hold on there, fussy britches. You want Rousseau to join up with the Others? Since when did Danielle become worthy of being an Other. And Karl, the kid you excommunicated? Sure, you may want to protect Alex and make some sacrifices. But it sure seems like Ben is sending them into a trap, a trap that Ben may have some prior loop knowledge of. Capt Galt does the only single noteworthy thing in his character’s history, and punches some random deckhands trying to flee the freighter. Sayid confronts Michael on the boat. We get a flashback of Michael zooming down the dock of Grand Theft Auto 4 and plowing into a ship’s container, one of the most ridiculous suicide attempts I’ve ever seen. It was so absurd, I almost laughed out loud, and I haven’t done that in 23 years. Michael has a vision in the hospital of Libby being his nurse and Alvar Hanso being in the bed next to him. Walt is staying at his grandmother’s house as he wants nothing to do with Michael. So, the solution to this is to give up on life and buy a gun. Walt never had a chance. Between his career focused mother, an adoptive father that was creeped out by him and couldn’t wait to get rid of him, and his murdering father, his only realistic role model in this lifetime was Locke. Even Tom admonished Michael in the alley. “You told him, didn’t you?” Michael couldn’t deal with the guilt of what he had done, so he shared the burden with his young son. That was cruel. Also, supposedly the island won’t let you kill yourself. I don’t know how the fock this is possible, but it just is. Unless, the man in the shop sold Michael a defective gun, as a course correcting type of act. And crashing into a steel box doesn’t necessarily have to kill you. Maybe Michael got conned. Tom is super gay, confirming what everybody knew, “Kate, you’re not my type.” Tom explains that Widmore staged the Oceanic wreckage and somehow found the island coordinates (journal from Black Rock). Michael accepts the suicide mission, which is akin to becoming Kate Gosselin’s gynecologist. Miles senses that Michael is hiding something. Sure, Miles is a social leper. But he can do…stuff. Michael tries to blow up the boat. “Not yet” flag pops up. I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t have to see Michael again, but alas, it’s not over yet. Ben talks to Michael. Ben doesn’t care that some of the people on the boat are innocent. Sayid turns in Michael to the captain. Karl and Danielle are killed, Alex surrenders. I remember that I’ve made this statement before, but Danielle Rousseau is arguably the most tragic character on the island. She washed ashore, gets terrorized by a monster, is almost killed by every member of her crew, including her fiancĂ©, so she has to kill them all. Then has her baby stolen. Is left to her own insanity for 16 years, meets the Losties, is reunited with her daughter, and than a few days later dies a needless death. If the Losties would have just left her alone, she would still be hiding in her bunker, talking to her collection of balls of lint. But, she’s dead.

The ship’s doctor washes up on the Losties shore, causing a minor ruckus. While the boys over at Locke’s camp are playing Risk, they make an interesting comment about Australia being the key to the whole game. Even more interesting is the “this is what he wants, he wants us to fight amongst ourselves”. Clearly, this is a foreshadowing to X’s comment at the end of season 5 when he talks about how they come, they fight, they get corrupted. The phone rings as Alex tries to warm them of an impending attack by Keamey’s men. Ben is seen in a flashforward, what we have come to learn is what happened to Ben after he turned the famous frozen donkey wheel at the end of Season 4. Ben uses his stick/baton/weapon and clobbers a couple of men in the Sahara. Ben makes a point of telling Locke, “it is very important that you survive, John”, most likely a loop development. A couple of “redshirts”, basically background Losties are slaughtered in a matter of seconds in cartoon like fashion. It was like watching Itchy and Scratchy. A missile hits Claire’s house. Ringing a doorbell sometimes works too, but who am I too question a guy with a missile? Ben enters a hotel in Tunisia, and the date is Oct 24, 2005. Which we know is in the future, since Desmond a few days ago was calling Penny on Dec 24, 2004. Ben moved forward in time and moved in space after turning the wheel. Sawyer rescues Claire, who really should be dead, but isn’t, and Miles joins the barricaded group with a walkie talkie. As Sayid is walking along with Nadia’s coffin in Iraq, he looks behind him and up, right at Ben. How did Sayid know where to look? Could it be a past memory from a loop? He simply turned around and looked exactly where Ben was. No hesitation. Ben blames Widmore for Nadia’s death and successfully recruits Sayid to become an assassin. Ben and Keamy are conversing about Keamy’s background and working for Widmore. Surrender or Alex dies. Ben with yet another amazing soliloquy. “She’s not my daughter. I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me. I’m not coming out of this house. So if you want to kill her, go ahead and…” *pop* Alex is dead. Ben is stunned. “HE CHANGED THE RULES”. Could this be the turning point of the loop, an event that never happened before? Ben uses a secret passage in his house. And here comes the Smoke Monster train. While it couldn’t get past the pylons before, they have been deactivated by Alex, and it comes roaring in like John Goodman at an all you can eat buffet. A man comes running out of the jungle, and Smokie drags him back in. Oh, I nearly had tears of joy in my eyes from finally seeing Smokie again, I believe for the first time since Juliet and Kate were handcuffed together in the middle of Season 3. Ben cries over Alex’s body. Guess things didn’t go as planned. Daniel sends a Morse cod message to the boat, and is caught lying by bumblefock Bernard. Jack: Were you ever going to take us off this island? Daniel: No. Great news everybody. Jack has been wrong about everything. No wonder his appendix blows up like a 10 year old that is allergic to peanut butter. Hey, it’s not the kid’s fault, but the teacher decides that nobody can bring in any baked goods for birthdays or any celebrations, just carrot sticks and celery stalks. Oh, how those other kids are pissed off. So they jump the kid after school and strip off all my clothes, rub peanut butter on my balls, leaving me in the woods, tied up, for two days, letting the wild animals have their way with me, I mean him. Him. Come to think of it, I can’t remember what peanut butter tastes like or being 10. The island is clearly punishing Jack like it did Ben. Sawyer, Claire, Miles, and Aaron head for the Losties camp; Hurley, John and Ben go to look for Jacob’s cabin. Ben walks into Widmore’s posh penthouse apartment. Widmore has started drinking, when the nightmares started. I’m curious as to the theme of these nightmares. CW: Are you going to do that? Ben: We both know I can’t do that? Is it because Widmore is/was an Other and it’s prohibited, the basis of Ben saying “he changed the rules” because Widmore by proxy killed Alex, an Other? Or maybe the rules of the Loop, and events must continue to happen, which include Widmore’s participation? CW: I know who you are, what you were; I’m the victim.” All pretty accurate statements, as we learn in Season 5. Ben tricked or convinced Charles to leave the island at some point. Ben was a Dharma nerd who schemed his way to the top of the Others. Widmore has sour grapes and cares little about the island. All he cares about is revenge vs Ben. Keamy could have killed Ben at some point, but Widmore wanted Ben brought to him, alive. Ben: I’m going to kill your daughter: you broke the rules. Again, which rules? And are these rules something that Ben manufactured, aka Jacob rules, when Ben never has talked to Jacob, until he killed him. CW: “That island is rightfully mine”. Again, a petty squabble that has become a bloodthirsty feud. In essence, a collapse of a prior Loop in that power corrupts, much like X believes.

As tensions mount, an angry mob is ready to torch and pitchfork Count Daniel and Charlotte Frankenstein. Jack gives a speech and collapses. The next scene is Jack spending a leisurely day in Kate’s home, and jumps her bones in a shower. This episode was not one of my favorites. Jack reads a story to Aaron then canoodles with Kate in the hallway. I check my DVD to see how much time is left in this episode. It’s curious that from the first couple of episodes of Season 1 to now, there hasn’t been much of Kate showing off her skin. Which is a relief. You might see a beautiful woman on the screen. I’m seeing an alien that just burst out of somebody’s stomach. And I don’t want to see it in a bra. Sawyer is yelling at Miles as they walk through the jungle. They are trying to out-sarcasm the other, as worlds are colliding. Even must-of-suffered-a—horrible-head-injury-at-some-point-in-her-life Rose is questioning why Jack got sick, on this island, where people get better. She knows that Locke can walk. She got better. Not Jack. Juliet is going to do the surgery. Jack visits Hurley in the nut hut. Hurley has been getting plenty of visits from dead people. I wonder if this is the island brainwashing Hurley, or Hurley has the Sixth Sense gift of seeing dead people, and since he can see them and communicate with them, they gravitate towards him. Or, he’s crazy. Either way, win win. “You’re not supposed to raise him, Jack”. Sure seems like the island doesn’t want Aaron to come back on the Ajira plane, when you consider Claire visiting Kate a few episodes later. Plus, the psychic from the previous episodes in Australia, Richard Malkin, said the same thing. Although, I wonder if Eloise Hawking set up Malkin to set up Claire to fly to Los Angeles, course correcting, as he directed Claire to the specific plane that crashed. Actually, Hawking was very likely responsible for getting most of the key characters on Oceanic 815, as she was able to accurately predict the Ajira crash, I wonder if she knew the Oceanic would crash too. Food for thought. Frank helps Sawyer and friends hide from Keamy’s men, who escaped from Smokie mostly unhurt. Disppointing. Jack proposes to Kate, who accepts. Too bad Frank wasn’t there to help Jack hide. And this will make Kate married more often than Elizabeth Taylor. Jin, Sun, Daniel, and Charlotte have an excursion to the Medical hatch. Afterwards, Jin threatens the life of Daniel to Charlotte. Frankly, I don’t see why Charlotte would care. Ultimately she did nothing to help Jin, so that storyline was worthless. Jack is disturbed in the hospital by the SMOKE alarm going off and how about that? An appearance by Christian/Smokie. Jack starts to take his pills, leading down a long rabbit hole. At least he didn’t marry Kate, as he got jealous of Kate doing favors for Sawyer. Where were you today/ Trust her? Kate? Am I in crazy land? I’d trust Bernie Madoff before I trusted Kate. Jack then yelled at Kate that Aaron was not her son. “Your son? You’re not even related.?” The best part was it all happened as Aaron was standing there, watching the plate of proverbial spaghetti was sliding down the dining room wall. I almost laughed. Almost. What a bunch of clowns. The look on that kid’s huge head was priceless. I’m not kidding about the size of that noggin on his neck. It’s like a grapefruit sitting on a toothpick. Juliet fixes Jack, then concedes to Kate that Jack is in love with Kate. Well, sucks to be Juliet, but she acted with some dignity at least. Claire wakes up in the jungle, as sees her father holding Aaron. I’d be mumbling What the Fock in the same situation. Claire disappears into the jungle, Miles watched her walk off. OK. Here is the money question. Miles can speak to dead people. He saw Claire follow some guy into the jungle whom she called Dad. So, does Miles think either Claire or that manifestation of Christian is a dead person. No, he didn’t. He could very well have been withholding info, but it would seem Clair is actually alive and not dead, satisfying my curiosity about that fact for the time being.

The birth of John Locke. Well, to begin with, Locke’s granny yells at Emily Locke about going out with a man twice her age. Let’s say Emily is about 15, to be conservative. And she is dating someone that is 30. Does Anthony Cooper really look 30 years older than John Locke. I don’t think there is more than a 10-15 year gap. So how can Anthony Cooper be John Locke’s real father. I’m sure I’m nitpicking like I always do, but come on. And who is the mystery driver than ran over Emily. A course correcting Other? Richard got off the island to around the same time frame, to visit baby Locke. Maybe it was Richard driving the car. Or Anthony Cooper trying to end an unwanted pregnancy. Keamy does some bashing of his own, kicking Michael’s ass, but was unable to get his gun to work in shooing him. Well, maybe the gun wasn’t purposely jamming like I thought, where the Others were tricking Michael, or maybe it was THEN. Now, close to the island, things will go as needed. Fock, I’m making this so complicated my head hurts. And I still have much more typing to do. After making camp after a day of sight seeing and pointless wandering, John has a dream. Horace Goodspeed, the guy who brought the Linuses to the island and the de facto leader of Dharma on the island is chopping down a tree. Now, pay attention, as Horace chops down the same exact tree and knocks it over 3 or 4 times. Horace says “hello there” several times. The same theme – repetition. A loop, if you will. Horace gets a nose bleed, like a time traveler might, but then again he says that he has been dead 12 years. It’s like the time travel of Season 5, but the opposite. Plus Horace is just a dream here. “Jacob – he’s been waiting a real long time for you, man.” This is a dream implanted by Jacob, calling to John to go to the cabin. I also want to touch on the 12 years part. So, the purge happened 12 years ago? But, Ben stole Alex from Danielle a week after she arrived on the island, 16 years ago. But Ben was part of the Others when he stole Alex. But Ben killed his father 12 years ago while wearing a Dharma jumpsuit in the van. Do you see these inconsistencies in the time line? I’m not sure I can even reconcile it with a standard Hey, blame it on the Loop. Nope, something is fundamentally wrong with this 12 years stuff. Richard visits a young child Locke at his foster home. We all see John has drawn a Smoke Monster drawing. How could he know, unless he lived through it as some point? Here is a far out idea. Maybe it’s not a collective loop that everybody is reliving at the same time. Maybe all these Lost variable characters are all experiencing an individual life Loop, as they relive their lives in the same way until collectively they force change and start a collective reset. I think I just blew my own mind. That’s a hell of a theory. I have to re-read my brilliance again. Could work. But I’ve dug in my heels on one theory, and I’m sticking to it. Richard takes out several objects. Which of these things belong to you already? John correctly chooses a bottle full of granules, the famous compass, and then stumbled by choosing a knife instead of The Book of Laws. Richard gets huffy and leaves. John keeps proving how unspecial he is off the island, but very special once he gets there. Keamy is bossing around Captain Galt like that broad with 8 kids and a reality show giving that Asian dude the business. I want to call her Sun, but that not quite right. They unfold the secondary protocol, complete with a title page with a Dharma symbol. Suffering succotash, Widmore has either become the leader of Dharma, or is trying to fake it somehow. Delusional. This new playbook says where Ben is headed, because Widmore is a smart man, and instructs the crew to torch the island. Well, that doesn’t seem like Widmore cares about the island at all, does it? Nope, it’s all about revenge on Ben. Frank frees Michael, and we get a glimpse of Omar strapping Keamy with an electronic device. It didn’t look anything like a heart monitor trigger device, but why waste a couple of extra bucks on props to get it right? Sayid takes off on the raft to bring more people aboard the powder keg, while Desmond decides that he will continue to do nothing. At the Dharma pit, Ben is lecturing. There are consequences to being chosen. These things had to happen to me. Abbadon gives Locke a hospital wheel chair tour, calling him a miracle, plants the seed of a walkabout in his head. Pushing events. Keamy shoots the captain, kills the doctor, and heads back to the island during a full blown mutiny. Frank plans a phone drop. Locke is the only one that will go inside the cabin that Hurley found. No, I’m not Jacob, but I can speak on his behalf; I’m Christian. JL: I’m here because I was chosen to be. You can just see the nearly pure joy on Christian’s face as Locke continues to answer every question perfectly and honestly. John notices Claire. Don’t worry, I’m fine, I’m here with him. They way they are just so casually comfortable together in this cabin, you get the distinct impression of one of two thing. Jacob is Christian and X is Claire, both hanging out, interacting with John for their competition. Otherwise, there are two separate entities together that are on the same side. Jacob with a smoke monster, or the one and only smoke monster, or someone we have never met. Or maybe it’s really Claire, being more special than John. Just totally bizarre. Christian: It’s probably best that you don’t tell anybody that you saw her. OK, tell me, why? Why is this important information to hide? JL: How do I save the island? “Christian” and “Claire” look at each other and smile. This was exactly what they wanted to hear and John is who they hoped he would be. We see just a brilliant silent scene of Hurley and Ben sitting on a log, sharing a candy bar. Good stuff. JL: he wants us to move the island.

The Oceanic 6 are Jack, Kate, Sun, Hurley, Sayid, and Aaron. Never mind that Aaron wasn’t on the plane’s manifest. Why are these people super star celebrities? I don’t know what Harry Reid looks like, and he is the head of some Congress thingy. Well, maybe I can recognize him, when he is wearing his white hood. Jack and Kate run off into the jungle, fully expecting to out run a helicopter. Daniel refers to his journal and realizes that they need to leave the island right now. Again, why? If Daniel is keeping a working journal of events with lots of notes, you would think that at some point he would write that the freighter blows up and NOT to leave the island for the boat. Yet he does the exact opposite. Does this mean that some loops the boat doesn’t blow up? Logically, you know that Eloise gave Daniel a journal when he was a college guy, but with all his time jumps, he never was able to…OK, let’s think this through. Daniel gets a blank journal from his mother next season. He didn’t note in his journal that the boat blows up. Therefore, Eloise still has the journal that Daniel time traveled with and was killed with. Eloise never gave that journal to Daniel, so that he couldn’t change history. I think that sounds right. Unless Daniel thinks he can’t change anything, so he is willingly following the past, and knows that the boat will blow up, so he needs to stay on course. But if that is true, why try to talk Charlotte into leaving, since she is a time jumper. But if Daniel is trying to save her, then he needs to get her off the island because the time jumping will kill her. And he knows the next raft never reaches the boat, but will return as the island jumps. Oh, that sounds very complicated, but so beautifully logical. Loopity loop loop, loop loop. Then Juliet denotes a bomb, and game over. Daniel has his own secondary protocol – his journal. If the Oceanic crash truly was a mistake, then to undue the loop, you have to break the loop, and at the end of Season 5, Daniel thinks he has the answer. Jack and Sawyer reunite in the jungles, and both argue over whose plan was worse, Jack’s or Locke’s. Well, theoretically, Locke was right. Jack was lucky that Ben wasn’t with the Losties, or it would have been ugly. Jack tells us in the press conference that Boone, Libby, and Charlie survived the plane crash, but died on the island. Why these three, I will never understand. Because they had innocent deaths? None came from the Tail section? The damn press conference was full of more lies than any White House press conference in my life time. Nadia reunites with Sayid. Gee, how swee….who cares? Really. You’ve completely bastardized this story line. Nobody cares. Sure, you keep trying to do your cutsies love stories, with Kate, Jack, Sawyer; Sayid and Shannon; Karl and Alex; Rose and Bernard; Charlie and Claire; Desmond and Penny; Juliet and Jack; Juliet and Sawyer; Nikki and Paulo; Sun and Jin; Dr Arts and spiders; I could go on and on. Look, these people are flawed, and I spend countless hours every week pointing it out. Just stop. Give me more monsters and time travel and science fiction stuff. I’m a simple man. You got a good thing going here. But if I see anymore Kate flashbacks about her love interests, I will stab myself in the stomach 9 times with no hesitation wounds. I’m not bluffing. And this knife is not particularly sharp. Sure, it might take a week or two before anybody discovers my body. My phone was cobwebs. But I’ll be damned if I care about Sayid and Nadia. You hear me Sayid? I’m glad she’s dead, motherfocker. And I killed her. Come and get me. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee…. Mmm-mmmm. That is a tasty burger.Geez, my mind is wandering. I guess it’s unstuck in stupidity and randomness. Ben explains that moving the island is a measure of last resort since it is so dangerous and unpredictable. The rafting is ongoing, while Kate and Sayid run off into the jungle. Sun buys her father’s company in an act of pure betrayal. “You ruined my husband’s life”. That is a very brave comment, considering how much Sun herself has destroyed Jin’s life, much, much, much more than Mr Paik. Sun keeps setting up Jin for failure, and Mr Paik has no choice but to knock down the pins. Sun: It is because of you we were on that plane. Um, wrong. Sun was on the plane because at the last second she decided to not leave Jin. Sun: I blame two people for his death. Well, he answer to this statement is Sun and Sun. Maybe Jack for refusing to go back for him. But nope. Sun blames her father and Ben. This is a person with a huge narcissistic personality disorder. Hurley gets a surprise party and a car with the numbers in the odometer. Ben, Locke, Hurley get to the Orchid, but not before Keamy. Jack and Sawyer find Frank at the chopper. At Christian’s funeral, Jack gives the most uninspiring eulogy in the history of history. Claire’s mom is out of the coma and tells Jack that Claire is his half sister, confirming a very obvious secret. Jack is Aaron’s half uncle, while Kate still isn’t related to planetoid head. C4 on boat, Kate and Sayid captured by Others, Ben surrenders at Orchid.

The continuation of the season finale scene of last year. Kate yells at Jack for his pills and being angry because she thought Jeremy Bentham (Locke) was crazy. Kate hits Jack. Don’t you say his name (Aaron). How dare you ask me to go back. I don’t want to think about the horrible things that happened on the day we left. A perfect example why Kate and Jack suck. I’m tired of rehashing their selfishness. Jack, Sawyer, and Hurley find Locke at Orchid. As Ben is being escorted to chopper, whispering, and the Others attack. Sayid and Keamy have a pretty good fight. Ben allows the chopper to leave the island. Walt visits Hurley, and complains that nobody visited him until Jeremy/Locke did. Oh, stop whining. Why are you lying? To protect those that didn’t come back. Like my father? You could see the hamster wheel turning in Hurley’s head, but his lips weren’t moving. JL to Jack during a colossal showdown, You’re not supposed to leave. You know you are here for a reason. It will eat away at you inside until you come back. You have to lie. It’s not an island; it’s a place where miracles happen. We’ll have to see which one of us were right….Locke simply beats up Jack, and that punching display is something that Jack has never recovered from. Locke was right all along, and Jack is left picking up the pieces of his wrong decisions. I mean, look, Jack isn’t necessarily a bad guy. He’s a good surgeon. But he is rather stupid, and stubborn, and lacks imagination, and did I mention stupid? He came around in Season 5, but overcompensated in his zealotry for destiny. I don’t like Jack because his character sucks. He is simply a screw-up, yet is the star of the show. That is frustrating for a viewer. Did I mention that I love this show? I really do. But I choose to criticize because I care so much about the show. It’s close to perfect, so I am trying to push it to be more perfect. Like Tiger Woods father did. What’s the worst that can happen? They go down the elevator. Ben explains that like all Dharma stations, this one is based on silly experiments. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Swan, the Flame, the Looking Glass, the Tempest, the Orchid, these places had great power and seemed pretty important. Another orientation video from Dr Chang, describing the Casimir effect, the presence of negatively charged exotic matter on the island, experiments in space and time, time traveling bunnies.. I wish he could have kept talking for another hour. Interesting stuff, clearly set up by Daniel’s journal and experiments. The reunion at the chopper, and Sawyer sees Kate with Jack. He knows it’s over, so his jump off the chopper later was not an accident. Michael is keeping the C4 inert with liquid nitrogen. Keamy limps into the Orchid. Ben loses his mind and stabs Keamy to death. JL: You just killed everybody on the boat!!! Ben: So? Classic Ben. Charlotte, Miles, Juliet remain on island, Daniel is getting a bad feeling about the whole thing. With fuel leaking, Sawyer asks Kate for a favor, which we speculated at the time was Cassidy and Clementine related, and jumps. Sayid breaks Hurley out of mental ward, but not before killing someone. Nice chess game, Mr Eko A quick refuel, and Jin for some stupid focking reason is still standing next to the the C4. Look, Desmond took bomb diffusing training, and couldn’t figure it out. Why in the world are you still looking at the wires. You can’t figure it out. You couldn’t find a cowbell if one was tied to your ass. And you stayed when the light turned red. I appreciate your subconscious hesitation of rejoining that monster wife of yours, but you really should have either stayed or left earlier. You came off wishy washy. Whispers, and I can assure you no Others were around. Christian tells Michael he can go now. Sun screams as Jin gets blown up. I must admit, those tears streaking down Sun’s face probably would have tasted delicious. Yes, I had a happy feeling in my pants. Scream, evil woman, scream. I felt like Eric Cartmen when he made Scott Tenorman ate his parents in a chili. I really need to get back to watching South Park again. Sun meets Widmore and tries to act all bossy. Pfft. Yeah, that’s going to work. Locke is mad about boat blowing up. Sawyer washes up on shore as Juliet is getting drunk. Whoever moves the island can never come back, but Ben did. This might be the Jacob angle at the end of Season 5. John joins the Others, and gets a warm welcome. Ben goes really deep inside the island, turns the frozen donkey wheel, bright light, island disappears, as does Ben, to the desert in the Sahara. The chopper get find the island and crashes. Kate has a dream in her home, Claire yells at Kate “Don’t you dare bring him back.” In the most absurd conversation in LOST history, Hurley can’t believe that Locke moved the island. Jack: No, he didn’t. Sigh. OK. This is the dumbest character since…Joey from Friends, Ralph from the Simpsons, Randy from My Name is Earl, Oprah from the Oprah Show. This is just ridiculous. Where is the island Jack? It’s not there. There is an eerie similarity in the boat rescue of the Oceanic with the kidnapping of Walt during the Season 1 finale. A very anticlimactic ending. Sure, Desmond reunites with questionable Penny who can’t keep her story straight. The lie is hatched to cover for the island folks. Jack goes back to Season 3 finale, and breaks back into the funeral home, distraught over the death of Jeremy Bentham/Locke. Ben surprises him. He told me, some very bad things happened. It’s Jack’s fault, they have to go back. All of you have to go back, including the body in the coffin, Locke. Trust me, we knew it was Locke. My novel comes to an end. Fock, I have to proof read this crap, don’t I? Fock it, I’m not going to proof read it. Deal with it.