6.1 LA X: Part One

Well, what can I possibly say? LOST had about 9 months to figure out a way to deliver up to our expectations, and I think they did a hell of a job in doing jut that. From what I understand, they increased their audience maybe 50% for this season opener from last year. Yes, lots of folks have been busy on hulu or DVDs to get caught up before Season 6. And I can’t blame them. Early on, I have to say that if Terry O’Quinn doesn’t win an Emmy for his multiple character portrayal on this show, the system is broken. Sure, we can give awards to sh!!t like Two and a Half Men or Glee or and most anything else network TV airs, but I’ve loved everything I’ve seen from Terry O’Quinn. He’s been a staple in the X Files universe, the second best drama ever made. He was a major player in Millennium, a vastly underrated spinoff from X Files, the godfather to any profiler series on the air since, and still the best of its kind. Millennium is just about as good as X Files, but much darker. He was a star in Harsh Realm, only 9 episodes deep, which if you were to chop that show off at the knees, episode 8 would have been a good place to stop. ‘ole Ter was also on 3 episodes of X Files and in the X Files first movie. He’s been around. And between him and Michael Emerson as Ben, this show boasts the two finest drama actors on TV today. Holy sh!!t, these guys are fantastic. Locke and MIB were acting their asses off, and they are the same guy. Focking amazing. So, where to begin? Most of you have been pushing your theories. My turn. As always, I avoid spoilers, and try to stay away from other people’s write-ups until I get my stuff posted.

The LOST co-executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have gone on record saying that there will be no alternate time lines in this series. So, this week must have been confusing for the literalists out there. Seems like these guys may have been honest after all. What we have here are dual timelines. I don’t think they would go to so much trouble to show us what would have happened if the plane never crashed and still continue the complicated story line of Jacob and MIB without a proper resolution, so I have to accept at this time dual realities. If you have narrow stream flowing, literally a stream in the woods, then drop a huge rock in the middle of it, a rock bigger than the stream itself, there is a possibility that the stream will split in two separate forks, and go in two entirely different directions around the boulder. Doesn’t mean that one stream is present reality and the other is the alternate time line. It just means that both forks exist, and both are as equally real. It also doesn’t mean that at some point both forks can’t merge to become one stream again, on the other side of the boulder. Does this end my multiple loop theory. Not at all. This was an explanation for Seasons 1-5. I was expecting Season 6 to be anything goes. As the LAX fork continues, we see many, many differences in details from Season One’s Oceanic 815. Changes have certainly happened, and this time they are blatantly obvious. But a reset has happened, as expected. The Losties land in Los Angeles. What we didn’t anticipate was that the bomb most likely triggered a split in the time stream, and we have that reset, but we also have the Losties in 2007, because Jacob still needs them, and they cannot leave. Nothing is that simple, is it? If Michael can’t kill himself, and certain other events have to happen, the Losties need to remain on the island as well. I might speculate at this point, and it’s just speculation, that the Loop is a 3 year time period. Sept 2004, add in 3 years of Dharma time that Sawyer and company spent on the island and the Oceanic 6 spent off the island, and the bomb goes off, knocking everybody alive back to 2004. But now we have 2004 and 2007, the time of Oceanic 815’s crash and the time of Jacob’s death. A three year loop. But I’m just speculating. Let’s try to deal in facts. If I remember to stick to this plan.

We know things are different right off the bat when he see Jack on the Oceanic plane, different haircut, and Cindy only give the Doc ONE liquor bottle, not two. As you might recall, in Season One, Jack poured one bottle into his drink, and saved a bottle for Kate to wash his wound before sewing him back up, when Jack gave his lame count to 5 speech. Tables are turned, as Rose is now spending time comforting Jack during the turbulence. Actually, Rose and Bernard spent the whole LAX flight being a bit too snarky, smirky, and generally too suspicious for my taste. They know something, their memories may be stronger than Doctor Doofus. I missed you Schmoopie. No, I missed you more, Schmoopie. Rose and Bernard are maggots. Jack walks into a bathroom, looks into a mirror, and says "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”, at which point I throw my sofa out my living room window. But he also has a cut on this neck. I guess some vampire tried to bite him, but must have been allergic to stupid. Desmond is on the plane, which is very unexpected. The mention of the word “brother” triggers a recollection in Jack, who queries Desmond if they have met before. Another notable thing about this scene is that Desmond is flashing what appears to be a wedding ring. There is zero way of knowing who he might be married to. Maybe Penny, maybe the girl he was engaged to before running off and joining the monastery, or somebody else. The plane is flying over the ocean, and going beneath the waves, we encounter schools of fish, sunken houses that look like Dharma houses, a swing set, a shark with the Dharma logo, and the statue foot. So, the island did exist, Dharma on the island existed, the statue existed, yet the island is under water and the Losties are on Oceanic 815. Do we assume that the bomb did this? No necessarily. A bomb generally is not powerful enough to sink an island. Sure, this island was chock full of negatively charged exotic energy. But sinking that much mass? If you have that much force, why are the houses intact and not just a pile of wood? No, I’m not ready to say the bomb did it. After all, you blow up the island, then how do you build the Swan to get the Losties to crash on the island so that they can time jump to blow up the island. It’s a paradox. It does not make sense. For all we know, this island under the sea might be the last scene of the last episode of LOST. We saw that the Daniel Faraday scene in the Season 5 opener actually took place near the end of Season 5. But the island did exist. That is about the only solid takeaway.

Kate revives while in a tree, and much to my dismay, did not fall and break her neck. This is reminiscent of Bernard landing in a tree during the Tailies original crash. She is temporarily deaf, instantly clueing us in that a bomb did indeed explode. The problem is that Kate and Miles are the first ones that wake up, so the others are not necessarily clued into the bomb aftershock. We all realize at the same time that they have been tossed into a time after Desmond, Locke, and Eko blew up the Swan hatch. It is 2007, the precise same time that Ajira landed and MIB orchestrated the stabbing of Jacob. So it’s the future for Sawyer, Jin, and Miles, and the present for Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sayid, Ben, Locke, Sun, Frank. Yes, indeed, the Swan hatch was built, even after a hydrogen bomb detonation. Need more info on this one, as it makes my head hurt. Kate sees both Jack and Sawyer passed out, and goes to Jack first. Well, her pea brain finally chose between the two, probably after she saw Sawyer screaming NO!!!! when Juliet got sucked down the shaft. Sawyer kicks Jack in the head and knocks him into the Swan hole. I laughed. S: You were wrong!!! Well, technically, Daniel is the one to blame. Jack simply took the baton from him and kept running with it, right into that painting on the side of the mountain like Wile E Coyote. And also the fact that the plane did not crash in one of the dual realities. S: you blew us back to where we started. This is true, other than a lot, a hell of a lot of people are dead now, including the object of Sawyer’s madness, Juliet. Back on the plane, Kate steals Jack’s pen when exiting the bathroom. Come on, we’ve seen enough slight of hand to pick up on that one right away. Doc Arts is back, and peppering Colonel Hurley with questions about his fried chicken empire. Hurley tells Sawyer that he won the lottery, is the luckiest person in the world and that nothing bad ever happens to him. Sawyer licks his lips, and already has decided which con to pull on Hurley. On the island, Hurley is lamenting how the day turned to night in a second. Um, dude, have you been seeing what the TV viewer has been watching for 5 seasons? This happens to you all the time. Oh, yeah. You don’t see those loops, do you? Sayid is still bleeding out faster than a Dexter victim, and Juliet makes some indication that she is still alive. Sayid is feeling repentant, a lesson not learned by Mr Eko. Sayid is giving a deathbed confession, concerned that wherever he goes upon death, it won’t be pleasant. Yes, he’s going to inner city Detroit. The horror. Jacob shows up to talk to Hurley.

The familiar bossy Jin and meek Sun from Season One are back, or at least that is the way we perceived them back then. This will not end well. The Locke and Boone scene was a nice touch. It was as if they were back on the island again, in a familiar rhythm of dialogue. Shannon didn’t appear, staying back in Australia with her abusive boyfriend instead of sleeping with her step brother and being on the plane. Well, those are certainly changes. Her seat was empty, as Boone, empty, Neil “Frogurt”, and Locke were in the same row. Locke lies about going on a walkabout. Please, don’t tell me anybody believed his bullsh!t. I’ve seen Survivorman and Man vs Wild. Bear Grylls had to resort to extremes in Australia, as I think he drank his own piss there due to lack of water. And that guy is a professional. Locke couldn’t survive in the airport terminal for 10 days with his dead legs. Of course he is paralyzed. At the foot, Ben is in state of shock. Man In Black orders him to go fetch Richard. Richard is scolding the new guys as he explains that Jacob has to invite you in for an audience. Ben carries out MIB lies and tells Richard that John/MIB wants to talk to him. Richard drags Ben over and shows him Locke’s dead body.

The Losties act impulsively and start to dig out Juliet while ignoring Sayid’s death plight. Sayid gets no respect. Jacob comes out of the jungle to talk to Hurley. He doesn’t act cryptically at all. Jin won’t see him because Jacob is dead. In the past, it might taken us 10 episodes to find out a fact like that. Nope, the writers have to be more direct as often as they can. Since Hurley can talk to the dead, for real, he is going to be the interpreter for Jacob, and it’s a good thing he doesn’t just speak Japanese. Take Sayid to the Temple. Very goofy that the place of death for the French is the way to life for Iraqis. Bring the guitar case. In the Swan ditch, Sawyer is wild eyed, foaming at the mouth, and tossing out death threats. And yet, I still feel he is still more rational than Chef Gordon Ramsey after you serve him a bad risotto. Charlie is unresponsive on the plane in the bathroom. Must have taken a dump that made him pass out from the strain. Fiber, dude, fiber. And Jamie Lee Curtis is pushing some kind of chic yogurt that I think makes men pregnant, but I wasn’t paying attention. When did her hair turn so gray?

Charlie isn’t breathing, and Jack needs something sharp. Well, since Kate stole his pen, this gets tricky. Um, not really. You just served the plane a bunch of meals with actual silverware. Can somebody grab a fork or a knife? Instead Jack jams his fist into Charlie’s mouth. Ew. Jack first saved Charlie’s life when he and Kate cut him down from a noose that Ethan put him into, another situation where Charlie could not breathe. Jack pulls a bag of heroin the size of a Tic Tac out of Charlie’s throat. Charlie: Am I alive? And he sounds upset that he is. Sure, if his back story remains the same, his musical comeback seems to be over, he is a junkie, and has no future to speak of. His life sucks. But even if he has a death wish, or even if he has a recollection of having a death wish on the island, how does he end up with heroin in his throat. In the original pilot, he did a little on his gums, then hid the rest in his shoe. He couldn’t do it again? He decided to swallow it? Not even flush it? But swallow it? Or did it get in his throat some other way? It’s a change from the previous plane version that we saw, but it’s a really dumb Charlie version. Sawyer reaches a dying Juliet. She is upset. J: It didn’t work; we are still on the island; I hit the bomb; I wanted you to go home. The problem with Juliet’s plan is that even if the bomb thing worked, she would have been in the Dharma barracks in 2004, being sexually harassed by Ben, still having an affair with Goodwin, and still trying to get off the island. But she would be on the island nonetheless. Her plan was either completely selfless to allow Sawyer a fresh start off island, or completely selfish because she couldn’t bare the thought of Sawyer hooking up with Kate again. Although, that would be just fine and dandy with Kate, as she would most likely have sex with Sawyer on top of Juliet’s grave. Hurley hatches the Temple plan, and I’m just amazed that after so many years, Jack has the audacity to ask “Who’s Jacob/”. Jumping Jehosophat, what do you people talk about when you get together? Who your favorite Oceanic 6 is? Bram decides that it’s better to have a bad plan than to have no plan at all. He is on the fast track to be in charge of NBC late night programming. He and a couple of buddies grab Ben and go inside the foot. MIB confronts the Bram Team as Jacob’s bodyguards, and that since Jacob is dead, they were free to get on with their lives and leave. They were free. Here is an instance where the concept of free will/choice rears its ugly head, a major point of contention with Jacob/MIB. Also, it seemed like MIB couldn’t really do any harm to these dopes unless he was provoked. Once they shot at him, all hell broke loose. MIB seemingly disappears, and some kind of small object is left behind in the sand, and that object I have yet to identify. Then you hear the familiar rattling and whooting and cranking as Smokie enters the chamber. He proceeds to clobber Bram and his stooges with a righteous clobbering. Smokie rules. Bram surrounds himself with an ash circle, which stops MIB for about 2 seconds, but after getting some rocks to knock him out of his circle like some silly pool ball, Bram gets a clobbering too. Ben walks around like a confused tourist in Harlem, and eventually sees MIB again. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” On face value, I suppose most people will simply accept that MIB is the Smoke Monster. I’m not so ready to accept it. First of all, last season, Smokie was Christian in the Processing cabin when Sun and Frank paddled to the island. But at the same time, Locke/MIB was on the Hydra island, entertaining Ben and Caesar and Ilana. So, are we to blindly accept that MIB can be in two places at once? When Ben went to be judged by Smokie, Locke/MIB went to find some rope after Ben fell to the lower chamber. But after MIB disappeared, Smokie appeared seconds later from a lower, lower chamber through a vent. That was awfully fast to get from one spot to another, but barely possible. I will admit that it’s hard to see how Smokie got inside the foot unless he was MIB, but that two places at once thing really, really bothers me. Plus, does MIB need to tell Ben the truth? He could be further manipulating Ben, as he has been doing for a while now. There is no need to tell the truth. Do we simply accept this? MIB seemed genuinely surprised when Ben told him that Ben had to do everything John Locke told him to do. Pretending to be surprised, or genuinely surprised? Sigh. I’m a stickler for details. Such as Ben was able to summon the Smoke monster from the Barracks. Really? The Others can summon Smokie, at their whim, and the MIB is at their beck and call?

Sawyer digs out Juliet. Oh my God, they’ve killed Juliet!!! Those basterds!!! Yes, Juliet is the new Kenny from South Park. The show keeps bringing her back, and keeps killing her. Two shows in a row. That’s got to be some kind of record. And it’s not like people don’t get better on the island. Charlie survived dying from a hanging. Mikhail at the pylons. Naomi got better with that punctured lung. Rose beat cancer. I look forward to next episode, when zombie Juliet, Nikki, and Paulo storm the Temple. And Juliet dies again. Before Juliet died, she needed to tell Sawyer something. Probably along the lines of “Don’t bury me, because there is a wicked cool spring at the Temple that could cure me…” or “paralyzed” or something silly like that. Death Charlie informs us that he was supposed to die. Charlie can sense between both timelines very clearly that he is living on borrowed time. A universe course correction will most likely kill him soon enough. That’s probably the fate of any dead people we saw on the plane. Final Destination movie plot; you can’t keep cheating death, as the Grim Reaper will hunt you down like the focking college you graduated from looking for donations. I changed addresses 11 times in 8 years. Nobody could find me. A day after I moved in, my university called me to see if I’ve settled in OK. They shall never see a penny from me. Penny, I’ve missed ya, brother. Mother fockers could find probably Bin Laden in 4 days. No matter how many times I’ve wished death on their children, they won’t take me off their phone list. Desmond disappears from the plane. Now, I doubt Jack can all of the sudden can see or talk to the dead like Miles or Hurley. It’s not something that happens suddenly. But I would not be surprised if Desmond can now PHYSICALLY can bounce between time periods, such as the dual realities we are in right now. Remember, he is extraordinarily special in space time. Desmond might think he is done with the island, but the island is not through with him. I don’t believe a word coming out of Rose’s mouth. We didn’t see anyone, we were asleep. Fock that. You’re retired and don’t want to get involved anymore. You saw him disappear. Captain Norris, the pilot from the pilot episode (see how I did that?) announces they are about to land. Sayid looks over his passport, and I swear that it says that Sayid is from Iran. Geez, talk about loops. He is all of the sudden Iranian and not Iraqi. His nationality changed? They land. Locke is still wheelchair bound.

Let’s take a second to review the dead people we saw in LAX LOST, pending someone I can’t think of or someone I completely overlooked or don't care about. Doc Artz, Charlie, Neil “Frogurt”, Boone, John Locke.

We did not see anywhere on the island or plane any dead background Others, dead background Freighters, dead background French, Shannon, Daniel, Charlotte, Mr Eko, Nikki, Paulo, Michael, Libby, Ana Lucia, Alex, Rousseau, Karl, Christian. I guess Dead is Dead.