Thursday, February 08, 2007

"Not In Portland" Analysis!

Wow. One episode back and there’s already so much to say (anyone seen the bridge?). I’ll spare you the normal witty banter of my intros and dive right into the over-analysis of 42 minutes of television…

Others. As I mentioned, this wasn’t quite the full-fledged reveal of the Others I was thinking this episode would provide (silly me, assuming that the Juliet flashback episode would be told from her perspective!). But we did learn some very interesting things about the Others that we can draw three major conclusions from…

  1. The Others can come and go as they please… at least they used to (much more on this later). We saw Ethan Rom in Miami recruiting Juliet, and clearly Juliet got to the Island somehow (3 years, 2 months, and 28 days ago) – so they must have some transportation system in place to get to and from the rest of the world. Boats, planes, choppers – something. The Others haven’t necessarily lived on the Island since time began as some sort of “indigenous people” – and are likely the remnants of the Hanso Foundation / Dharma Initiative. This open channel of transportation helps explain the very “normal” lifestyle they are able to maintain on the Island with book clubs, cheeseburgers, and Red Sox world series videotapes.
  2. The Others have some type of incredible data repository at their fingertips. We’ve seen how much they know about each of our Survivors, and some assumed it had something to do with a master plan to bring each of them to the Island. But as we saw with Juliet last night, they have the ability to quickly gather a lot of information about almost anyone. Chalk this up to Hanso / Dharma money and power, telepathic experiments on the Island, or effective use of a Google Search Engine – but these guys seem to know everything about everyone.
  3. The Others are willing to do anything to accomplish their goals. In this episode alone we saw them (presumably) kill Edmund Burke, Juliet’s ex-husband, in order to get her to join them on Lost Island, torture / brainwash Crazy Carl with a trippy Clockwork Orangish video (much more on this later) to get him to “conform” to their way of thinking, and Juliet not think twice about busting some caps in Danny Pickett… shortly after giving an order to kill Kate and Sawyer if necessary. Again, this doesn’t necessarily make their disposition “evil”, but it does mean that they are so blinded by their ultimate “goals”, that things that normal people would see as major moral dilemmas are quickly brushed aside and accepted so long as they are in the best interests of their goals. But this does make them very dangerous (see: religious zealots, cult members, Tonya Harding), especially if you don’t see eye to eye with them.

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Oh, and one more thing…

Babies. Apparently the Others can’t successful get it on. One has to assume that the slides that Richard Alpert (Juliet’s recruiter) showed, featuring a womb that looked like it belonged to a woman much older than she really was, belonged to an Other. It all just ties too nicely together with the reason that the Others wanted Juliet so badly. Juliet had demonstrated that she could impregnate male mice and her cancer-ridden sister. She’s able to make babies where babies shouldn’t be – and this is precisely what the Others need.

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The question here becomes – why can’t the Others reproduce? As we’ve seen, there are plenty of potential reasons out there – but the most likely seems to be the strange magnetic force that may or may not be messing with time (more on this later). As Alpert mentioned, the person’s body (at least their insides) were either aging far faster than they should be or were being worn down prematurely by some force on the Island.

But why do the Others care? Clearly they’re concerned with making sure their mission on the Island continues even after they die, but if they can easily bring new people to the Island, couldn’t they just focus on recruiting rather than reproducing? Well, if you’re in a crazy cult, it’s always preferred to breed your own offspring to carry on your mission, rather than recruiting new people – since children that grow up in that environment generally don’t need the same sort of “brainwashing” to become assimilated in the culture that new recruits would need. Also, without children, who are the Others going to get to mow their lawns, take out their trash, and feed their hogs? For all these reasons and more, Juliet was a very important person to them – she offered them hope.


Juliet. The only problem was, Juliet seems to have failed. We don’t see mini-Others running around the Island; rather the youngest Others we see appear to be the children of former survivors of crashes into the Island. Whatever is causing the Others to be infertile is clearly stronger than the science that Juliet brought with her to the Island. Therefore, what was initially offered as a six-month pseudo-vacation has turned into a 3 year, 2 month and 28 day imprisonment. Suddenly, the sadness that she has always seemed to have just beneath the surface becomes understandable. She just wants to go home, but she’s trapped. It seems that only certain individuals have access to the transportation that accesses the Island, and she’s not one of them.

While I’m sure Juliet was put through some amount of “training” when she arrived on the Island (read: brainwashing), with the amount of anger and hatred brewing inside her (remember the book she was reading in the season premiere – Carrie – about a girl who rages against society?), it’s somewhat surprising how much she has seemed to go along with the Others’ mission with Jack. I would be that the Others are dangling the carrot of a return to the rest of the world in front of her, enticing her to play nice and do what she’s told.

Based on this, Juliet was dead serious when she told Jack to kill Ben. She hates him and everything he represents. But when he offered up the chance to leave the Island, she didn’t think twice about doing whatever it took to fulfill her end of the bargain – even when it meant killing Pickett.


Jack. As for Jack, Juliet read him correctly right from the start – he would never let someone die on the Operating Table, no matter how much it might strike a blow to his potential “enemies” on the Island. However, what she didn’t count on was Jack immediately calling her out on the secret plan to “accidentally” kill Ben during the surgery – which has put Juliet in a seriously bad position with the Others. It’s pretty clear that she’s the only one who wanted Ben to die (there was no grander conspiracy), shown by the reverence and concern the rest of the Others displayed when hearing Ben’s life was in danger.


With Kate and Sawyer now halfway home (and by the looks of the previews, Sawyer talks Kate out of her idea to go back and rescue Jack), Jack’s only ally left on Alcatraz is Juliet. Fundamentally, both want the same thing – to get the hell off the Island – and both seem to share the same hatred for the Others. Plus, they’re both doctors and their names start with J. This has “Island Romance” written all over it, doesn’t it? I wonder if they’ll be held in the same cages as Kate and Sawyer, or be put to task bashing rocks as replacements. The show’s creators have told us we’ll be done with Alcatraz by the end of the third episode of the Spring Season, so whatever Jack and Juliet’s punishment ends up being – it’s clearly short-lived.


Carl. Speaking of punishment, how trippy was Room 23, where Crazy Carl was being held? While we never found out exactly what Carl did to deserve his encagement next to Sawyer, based on the fact that he’s being subjected to this mind-bending, sensory overloading, rave-fest, smart money is Carl being a bit of a rebel that needed to be broken.

As I mentioned above, the curious thing about Carl is that we have no explanation of where he came from. Alex, sure – it’s CFL’s daughter who was kidnapped and raised by the Others. But as for Carl? It seems that Alex is the only person in his life. Contrast this with Pickett, who was so distraught by the death of his girl Colleen that he almost killed Sawyer for no reason. Or compare it to Ben, who has asked about Alex numerous times. Where is the Other who is asking where Carl has been for the past few weeks? Only Alex seems to care. The Others may be a messed up cult, but they’re a messed up cult who believes in family and relationships.

I would bet that Crazy Carl has a similar past to Alex – either stolen as a child and adoptively raised by the Others, or crashed on the Island in his teens, and has lived as a “rebel” on the Island ever since… thus the need for him to be locked up and brainwashed. He clearly isn’t a card carrying member of the Others’ cultish ways. Which brings us to…


Rave. One of the more trippy sequences in Lost history, this brainwashing video contained a lot of funked out imagery… but it really isn’t as complicated as you might think. Check it out:

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It displays the following:

  • The phrase “Plant a Good Seed and You Will Joyfully Gather Fruit” with a picture of a flower. The phrase is from the Dhammapada – which, by the way means “the path of Dharma” – the Buddhist scripture containing 423 verses in 26 categories. Here’s the full quote:

    "The kind of seed sown
    will produce that kind of fruit.
    Those who do good will reap good results.
    Those who do evil will reap evil results.
    If you carefully plant a good seed,
    You will joyfully gather good fruit."

Plant a good seed… double entendre for making babies, anyone?

  • The phrase “Everything Changes” with pictures of various (old looking) coins, CDs, a stove of some kind, and a compass.
  • Prism-effect images of light, flowers blooming, and flames.
  • Numerous doll faces ranging from Asian to Anglo.
  • Buddha
  • The Moon
  • The phrase “We are the Causes of Our Own Suffering” showing bees and dead fish, once again a Buddhist / Dharma expression.
  • A bird’s nest of twine.
  • And eyeball looking thing on a string (another glass eye reference perhaps?).
  • A cracked speedometer.
  • A close up view of some gears.
  • The phrase “God Loves You As He Loved Jacob” – a dual reference here to Jacob in the Bible and “Jacob”, the mysterious leader of the Others.
  • Some pipes.
  • Some metal contraption that is beyond my realm of knowledge.
  • A picture of Alvar Hanso.
  • The phrase “Think About Your Life” with the prism-effect of Easter Island statue faces.
  • A picture of scientists performing experiments – the same scene we saw in the original Orientation Video!

So what does it all mean? Well, like so many things Dharma-related, it’s pretty heavy on Buddhist teachings about realizing one’s own faults and finding true peace by accepting overcoming them – kinda similar to our of our Survivors, huh? The images are all very iconic and creepy – a combination of things signifying changes, new beginnings, and starting over. Yet, interspersed within are subliminal images of Alvar Hanso, and Dharma Scientists – the perfect brainwashing video that blends an overall message with a bit of homage to the cult-leaders. Clearly this is being shown to subjects to make them repent the error of their rebellious ways, and emerge a faithful follower of the mission of the Others. (I’m not going to lie, rewatching that thing a few times kinda starts to creep you out. Glad this section is over…)


Ben. Speaking of creeping you out – how in the world did Ben suddenly start talking mid-surgery? I understand that it’s possible that the anesthesia was wearing off, but it seemed a little ridiculous to me. Are we to believe that he faked going under the anesthetic in the first place? Or that Juliet is a poor doctor who didn’t administer the proper dosage? Either way, it adds to Ben’s image of being this all-powerful Other who is running the show. Even when he his life was on the line, he’s still manipulating Jack and Juliet to do his bidding. Wow.


Purple Haze. Which brings us to the single most puzzling part of the episode for me. Mid-surgery, Jack asks Tom, “If you can really leave this Island, why didn’t you just take him to a facility?” To which Tom replies, “Because, ever since the sky went purple, we…” and is cutoff by Ben’s spurting artery (come on! It’s like Ben knew that Tom was about to spill the secret and so he intentionally had his artery erupt! This guy is ridiculous!)

What was Tom going to say? My interpretation (that I’ve told you all countless times) is that the Hatch Implosion and Purple Sky actually broke the seal around the Island, and would allow others to now find and travel to it (Penny). But Tom’s comment seems to indicate the exact opposite – that since the Hatch Implosion, they can’t leave the Island. There’s a few problems with this, though:

  1. Michael and Walt seemingly left the Island on a boat after the Hatch Implosion.
  2. Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were kidnapped before the Hatch Implosion, when the Others could theoretically come and go as they pleased.

So what gives? This puzzled me. So I turned to the one place that I knew I could find answers… my own Blog (I’m being hilarious, not conceited here, I swear). I looked back at one of my earlier posts from this season – this passage in particular:

One of the big lines of the episode was something of a throwaway line between Tom and Ben when Sawyer was waking up on the operating table, where Tom mentions somewhat frantically that “the sky went purple, we’ve lost communications, and Colleen is dying…”

Why is this so important? For one, it demonstrates that the Others have no idea what happened when Desmond blew up the Hatch any more than our Survivors do. The curious thing is that Ben’s capture and toying with Locke seemed to be for the purpose of getting them to stop pushing the button – why would he have done so if they were unaware of the consequences of such action?

This also leads me to the question – if the Others don’t know what happened when the sky went purple, who will? Are we ever going to get a firm answer of the repercussions of this action, or are we going to have to piece it together as we go along, chalking up new occurrences on the Island as resulting from the Hatch implosion?Also huge in this conversation is that the Others have lost their communication with the outside world.

When the magnetic force “released”, it clearly knocked out whatever sort of communication equipment they were using – leaving them as stranded on the Island as the Survivors are.

Will this possibly lead to the two sides working together? Not likely – the Others seem quite content to stay on the Island, which is the exact opposite of how our Survivors feel. What this might do, though, is give our Survivors a bit of an upper hand in some sort of “battle” between the two groups. With their communications down, maybe their ability to remotely monitor the Island is lessened as well.

Lost had been gone so long I had forgotten things I already figured out in my head last fall. That’s sad. But now it all makes sense, with some additional rationalizations…

The Others don’t have an Island airport full of planes, or a fleet of cruise ships docked around back that can leave whenever they want. They must need to contact someone in the outside world (Hanso Foundation?) to come and get them. It’s been made pretty clear that they are for the most part anti-outside world, and would prefer to stay on the Island if at all possible – only leaving when absolutely necessary. Ben, who had never left the Island in his life, knew that he had a spinal tumor, but when Jack fell from the sky, he took it as a sign that the Island was providing for him – giving him a chance to get healed without having to re-enter the scary / contaminated outside world.

Little did Ben know the severity of his tumor. He originally planned to take the time to break Jack, turn him into an Other perhaps, and have him willingly perform the surgery. Once Jack told him he needed to have surgery immediately in order to live, the timeline sped up. At this point, I think Ben would have considered going to the outside world for surgery… except he couldn’t anymore. Jack was his only option.

So in the end, I think both theories can co-exist. The Island is now visible – but ironically, now the Others are trapped there, since the act that made the Island visible also disconnected them from their outside compadres.


Time. One last thing – the company that was courting Juliet wasn’t Hanso or Dharma – it was “Mittelos Bioscience”. Damon Lindelof mentioned that this episode contained an anagram that would prove important for the rest of the series. As many astute readers have already put together, “Mittelos” is an anagram for “Lost Time”. Factor in the potential that the Others age more quickly than they should on the Island and Charlie from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" was reading "A Brief History of Time" and we have even more evidence that there is something strange going on with time on this Island.

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Of all the scenes that they could have shown during the one hour recap before this week’s episode, which basically summed up two and a half years worth of Lost – they included the scene of Sayid and Hurley on the beach, listening to the radio, with Sayid saying “It could be coming from anywhere”, followed by Hurley saying “…or any time.”

I’m not sure if this is just some long running joke, intended to make us think that there is some time warp effect happening on the Island, or if it’s legit – but it’s worth noting that the evidence just keeps piling up. We’re constantly being reminded about how only a few months have passed on the Island, even though the show has been on for years. If the series ended with us finding out that either a) only days had passed since Flight 815 crashed – with the rescue crew showing up or b) many years had passed and grown-up Walt and Grandpa Michael showing up to rescue everyone – I would not be in the least bit surprised, and we would all look back and think “Hey, they were hinting at it all along.”

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Lastly – there seems to be an influx of fake websites that popped up after this episode. As a general rule, if you can’t find the ABC copyright associated with the page, it’s probably a well-designed fake. If any new real websites show up, I’ll let you guys know.

64 comments:

Anonymous said...

my question is, did juliets sister really get pregnant or did someone from mettelos force her to say she was as a way to get Juliet to go. Because it was her sister and her exhusband that were in one way or another preventing her from going. All of a sudden both were out the way.

Anonymous said...

great post B...lots of the stuff makes sense like the hatch implosion theory...The Clockwork Orange video read "God Loves You Like He Loved Jacob" its in past tense so is Jacob dead or gone or did he become an outcast just like Jules has apparently become?...Also whats Patchy's role now?

Anonymous said...

Juliet's sister THOUGHT she was pregnant because the pregnancy test indicated so. Haven't we seen enough Widmore pregnancy tests to be wary of them?

Anonymous said...

Firstly, no way Juliet's sister was faking regarding her pregnancy or forced to say she was pregnant. There was no doubt that she believed she was pregnant.

Secondly, Ben indicated he has been on the island forever. Do we believe this to be true? Can anything he says be trusted?

Great post B -

Unknown said...

I don't think Mittelos was the company that recruited her - it's more like it Edmund Burke's company.

Anonymous said...

Great post Bri, really good episode with lots to try to take in! I have one theory... Why did ben let himself get captured? (if it was intentional (why else would he be wandering around this island though?)). Maybe this was his original plan to get the tumor removed... pretend to be trapped on the island followin a baloon crash, gain some trust of the losties, than "suddenly" has a tumor that needs treating and a beleaving Jack operates (where im not sure... maybe the medical hatch clare was taken to)... so much stuff flying round my head at the mo!!

God its good to have lost back!! :D

Anonymous said...

I still think a really BIG question is why does Ben have a tumour & Rose does not? What is the differance between this 2 that has had this effect? We know the island can heal (Locke) so its safe to assume this is what has happened to Rose as well... But why not Ben, what is it that him being there his whole life makes him differant? Maybe this ties into the "Lost Time" effect, Roses tumour has gone back in time to before it existed?... also if we are assuming other cant have kids on the island, how is it possible Ben has lived there his whole life?? Was it differant in the past and people could still get pregnant and what has changed that now (the incident maybe?) Or is ben lying about being there all this time.

Like i said lots flying round my head... i my post again soon!!

:D

Anonymous said...

What I can't understand is why the others, and Walt appear to age quickly, but Alex and Karl do not.

Anonymous said...

Im sure that vaccine must do something, maybe preventing them from age fast? Just a guess.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, i think the "vacine" is the same as the medicine Juliette was injecting her sister with! But why would desmond be given it to inject himself with... hmmm.

Anonymous said...

Great recap. Here are a few of my thoughts/questions-

1. Loved the cameo by Bat-Manuel. Hopefully we'll get more of him as a looming creepy island recruitment coordinator in flashbacks. It would be really cool to have a Joe/Kelvin Inman flashback.

2. So Pickett is dead, and Carl is now with the Losties, and Juliet is probably going to be ostracized... and I'm left to wonder, are the Others running out of people? I mean, they've suffered a ton of casualties/defections since the plane crash and this has really got to be taking a toll. It looks like they get attacked next episode too.

3. The Carl scene definitely was creepy, but I still haven't figured out what it means exactly. Hopefully this makes more sense as the storyline continues.

4. The whole "Ben is Alex's father" thing came across to me as a little bit forced. It makes sense that a kidnapped kid would be made to believe something like this, but I don't know. It just further leads me to believe that there was an interesting exchange that took place between Ben and Rousseau before Ben was turned over to Sayid.

Again, great blog.

Anonymous said...

Whoa, need to amend something. I made a huge jump in logic in my comment 4.

What I meant was that if true that Alex was essentially raised by Ben, then Ben would know Alex more intimately than anyone on any island. Rousseau is smart and knows how to get information, and warned Sayid that Ben would lie and lie. I think the situation went like this - Ben was heading over to the Losties, fake identity in place. Rousseau's sneaky traps nailed him. Being Ben, he turns it to his advantage, offering Rousseau the chance to learn about Alex in exchange for handing him over to the Losties in a credible way.

Anonymous said...

Stu,

I doubt that the 'numbers' serum is the same as Juliet's fertility drug.

Remember the 'Lost Experience' over the summer? The whole deal with the disease and the numbers? Why would you want to have Desmond inject himself with that? Other than being a vial, it's two different things.

Anonymous said...

But Rousseau shot him! that cant have planned surely? :s but that was another thing that seemed strange to me, if ben was one of others who turned up and took alex in the first place, wouldnt Rousseau have recognised him or asked about Alex?

Anonymous said...

Good point Stephanie, i just saw the vial and assumed straight away it was the same stuff, but it doesnt make much sense.

Chachi said...

I'm sure that all signs point to cloning.

1. why is it so "unethical" to impregnate her sister. That is because Juliet is impregnating her sister with an embryo of herself. Who better to test this on then someone who is dying, as a way of prolonging their legacy/life.

2. If you looked on the hanso foundation website it implies it is a "life extending program". What extends ones life longer than continually cloning themself.

3. I believe Lockes ability to walk sumhow ties in.

4. When Crazy Carl was watching the video it said "Planting a seed for a better you". Well impregnating yourself with you is certainly planting a seed, and you can see that Locke can now walk making a "better you".

So they are clones who have had their minds controlled and implanted memories of other "survivors". Which once again can relate to the rapid aging process

I'm not sure how this plays into the overall series, but I believe that it will be important at least to this season

Anonymous said...

What if the "disease" is what causes the infertility (from the lost experience it had something to with reducing the population??) then the vacine could be Juillettes medicine? Just a thought, but we dont know that its doesnt have a similar infertile effect on men as it does on women??

I SO cant wait for next week!! :D

Anonymous said...

What if the "disease" is what causes the infertility (from the lost experience it had something to with reducing the population??) then the vacine could be Juillettes medicine? Just a thought, but we dont know that its doesnt have a similar infertile effect on men as it does on women??

I SO cant wait for next week!! :D

Anonymous said...

It seems evident, given Juliette's back-story, that she likely underwent treatment in 'room 23' once abducted or recruited to the island. In Miami, she was kind and a good sister. On the island, she appears to have ruthless potential. Let us not forget Sawyer's comment to Kate, many episodes ago, that he believed Juliette would kill him in a second. Sawyer has proven himself to be an excellent, insightful judge of character. After learning a bit about Juliette's life on the mainland, she is now more, not less, of an enigma than before!!

Anonymous said...

I really think that the comment that Ben would rather die than release Kate and Sawyer is significant. He would rather die!!! So this seems to indicate that they are important on their own not just because of Jack. Maybe the whole breeding program that others suggested. Was there something in those fish crackers? to encourage them to be intimate.:)

Juliet killing Pickett is also huge. Did she have so much confidence in Ben's word that she thought she wouldn't be around to face in any consequences for that? He seemed really obsessed and wacky too, beyond what grief would do. He was obsessed with Sawyer and Sawyer had nothing to do with Colleen's death. Didn't Rousseu say that she killed her staff when they started to go wacky?

Anonymous said...

The funny thing about CLF(Crazy French Lady) is that in season one, when Sayid asked if she'd seen anyone else on the island, she responded "No, but i HEAR them". I would think that she would have seen someone in 16 years. She seemed so certain that HGI was one of 'them'.

Good point on the disease. Is it possible that those who contract it and don't die, age quickly? I would say that a 27 year old woman with a 70 year old womb would be inferile.
But, could this also be a side effect of the life extension project? (Remember the 100 year old ourangatang on the 'lost experience'). I'm still confused why Walt aged and Alex hasn't. The writing on this show is too good for a goof like that.

Lets not forget about the foot on the island. This island has a history before Dharma. Is it possible that some of these others(or something or someone else) may have been on the island before Dharma arrived. There is something strange about this island outside of the the whole Dharma thing. I guess we'll have to wait to find out.

Anonymous said...

Hope,

I agree with you, I'm not sure that Ben gave the order to let them escape, but with this show, you can never be too certain about anything. It does make sense that he brought them for a reason, and if Juliet had him figured for not being able to let Ben die, you know Ben had it figured out.

I noticed in the scenes from next week, that Juliet appears to be a prisoner. I hope this isn't considered a spoiler, because we all know these previews can be deceptive!

Anonymous said...

Regarding the Dhammapada text associated with the brainwashing line. It's actually an analogy that is used by the Chinese Buddhist Meng-Zi (Mencius) regarding a kind of nature vs. nurture debate.

As the analogy goes, Mencius says that a seed when placed in fertile soil will grow strong, but if the same seed is put in poor soil it will not be able to flourish.

Mencius uses this example to support is argument that human nature is intrinsically good, but its corrupted by the outside world.

Eric said...

The time warp is a perfect mechanism to deal with Walt. Next time they show him, the actor will have grown immensely. How will they bring Walt back and explain his huge growth spurt? Time must be passing more slowly on the island.

OR, time passes more quickly, and Walt and Michael never actually escape, meaning that the island made Walt grow.

Anonymous said...

Eric(justbigboned)'

CFL is Crazy Frend Lady. HGI is Henry Gail Impostor or Ben.

Dan,

"As the analogy goes, Mencius says that a seed when placed in fertile soil will grow strong, but if the same seed is put in poor soil it will not be able to flourish."

This sounds like the Christian parable of the sowing of the seeds.

Pickle said...
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Pickle said...

That was actually Mack from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." What up Jesse!

Anonymous said...

Did the others capture the young chilrden from the crash becuase they could not have new babies of their own? Were they then putting through room 23 and making them one of their own?

stormko said...

Stu has a good point about Ben having a tumor but Rose's cancer is gone.

As a side note, Ben said that he has lived on the island his whole life. That doesn't mean he has never left it. Someone can live in New York their whole life, but still visit another city. Maybe the writers are insinuating he has never left, but not necessarily.

I think the injections Desmond was taking was only to ensure that he believed that there was something deadly in the air outside of the hatch. That, along with the hatch door saying "quarantine" was a way to keep Desmond in check so he wouldn't try to leave.

Chachi : perhaps if they ARE cloning, it for stem cells. That would explain Locke walking again. Although, how it would take affect so quickly?

I think everyone is looking too deep into Walt aging. It's just that those scenes were shot a year later and the actor just grew in that time. However, I agree with Eric: I do think the writers will work his aging into the story when he returns at a later date. This is the biggest reason for a theory that time in the outside world moves faster than on the island. If they bring Walt back in the last season (for example), then the actor would look much older because kids shoot up fast at that age.

As for Danielle (CFL) knowing the Others or not, who knows? But one thing sticks out to me: in the first season, Danielle said that when you see the black smoke, the Others come. What if she meant Smokie the monster? It is black smoke. I find it too much of a coincidence for these things not to be related somehow.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the quarantine and suit were to keep Desmond in the hatch, but

The 'Lost Experience' had a detailed explenation of the virus. Didn't the French Lady's crew get the disease? OK, so she killed them, but she also said they were sick. Didn't Ethan administered the vacine to Aaron while still in the womb.
Didn't the markings on the blast door say "The disease worsens with the treatment," "The remedy makes the disease worse,"

We might now have seen it, but people sure believe it exists.


The producers of the program said that Walt aging was part of the story and would be explained later. I agree it that this is the reason we don't see children on the show, but it looks as though they've fit this into the storyline.

Anonymous said...

brian, awesome post. please keep it coming. i look forward to reading them...

Anonymous said...

Great blog! All this talk of time warping makes my head spin. If their insides are older than their outsides (uterus photos), then doesn't that mean they actually are NOT aging, rather than aging faster? As if they have discovered some sort of fountain of youth?

Also, since Glenn Miller was playing on the radio and there have been other hints to the WWII timeframe -- is it possible that it isn't an aging issue, but instead that they crashed into the past? I know we've seen modern technology on the island (washer/dryer, VCR), but could it not have been brought into the past?

heliopath said...

what of the pirate ship!
what of the Nigerian airplane!
what of the 4 toed foot!!

ahhhhhh!


decent episode though. im on the upswing again

Anonymous said...

Great blog!

"And eyeball looking thing on a string (another glass eye reference perhaps?)"

That eye-shaped thing is a
Turkish pendant which, according to common belief, protects you from evil eyes/bad luck. But I'm sure it's just another glass eye reference.

Anonymous said...

is the actor that play Ethan really Tom Cruises' brother?

Anonymous said...

As far as Ben's vs Rose's tumor, that's easily explained - when Rose went to Australia, the healer told her that "this place cannot heal you". Obviously, the Island cannot heal Ben, but perhaps somewhere else could?

Also, did anyone notice the similatiry between Mittelos and Mittelwork (from the Lost Experience)?

Anonymous said...

That actor that plays Ethan is Tom Cruise's COUSIN. Tom's real last name is Mapother, same as the Ethan actor.

Seventoes said...

Hey brian, you might wanna check this out:

http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/2007/02/only-fools-are-enslaved-by-time-and.html

In my mind, that confirms the time shift theory...

Pete said...

Check it:
http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/2007/02/only-fools-are-enslaved-by-time-and.html

from the "room 23" bit with crazy carl, someone reversed the audio and you can hear a woman repeat several times, "Only fools are enslaved by time and space"!

Anonymous said...

This is a little old, but significant I think. 'Carrie" was the book Juliet picked for the book club. Well the school is run by Principal HENRY GRAYLE, a name which bears a striking similarity to HENRY GALE, Bens pseudo-identity. In the book, carrie strikes out against everyone in the school because she becomes an outsider and ends up killing a lot of the students. Sounds a lot like our story with Juliet, who has now become an outsider of the others and is not hesitating to kill them.

Unknown said...

Carlton Cuse: And that was sort of… that, that was a signpost that the history of the island may be a lot of um… more extensive than we’ve already dealt with on the show… so I think, by the time the show is done, we’ll have covered a lot of time. And um… in terms of how many days on the island specifically, I dunno? 117?

Damon Lindelof: It’s interesting that you should ask about time because… you know… you’re making a basic assumption that they’ve been there, y’know, as long as they think they’ve been there. [Crowd murmurs, someone says “Oh, no.”] I would say by the end of Season 3… that very different idea…

http://lostpedia.com/wiki/Time

Anonymous said...

I think the brainwashing room might explain "the list". They only took those who would be most susceptible to these brainwashing type techniques.

Brian said...

seventoes - Great find. God bless those wacky Internet nerds with their fancy audio and visual tools!

"Only fools are enslaved by time and space" is actually also part of another Buddhist teaching. So while it could hold double meaning, and strengthen the funky time-warp potential of the Island, it definitely serves to re-enforce the overall Buddhist / Dharma teachings we've seen from the Others.

Anonymous said...

The recruiter guy is named Richard Alpert. That is the real name of the now self-proclaimed spirtual leader Ram Dass. Richard Alpert was a harvard professor who got heavily into lcd & psylocybin & then found "enlightment. He traveled to India & studied Buddism, & wrote the sucessful pop spirtual book "Be Here Now"!! Interesting... mind altering drugs, hallucinations & time standing still references! Everything has meaning it seems.

Anonymous said...

In episode that Danny left the operating room he told Tom that "Jack wasn't even on Jonas's List". Well I just came from the Mittelos Bioscience web-site and Jonas Mittelos is the founder. Could this be "the" Jonas?
JP

Brian said...

I believe the quote was actually "...wasn't even on Jacob's list". Jacob seems to be the overall "leader" of the Others - or at least the one running the show. As for who he actually is, I did kick around the idea that he could have been Alpert - but that's probably just me hoping any new Other we see ends up being Jacob. Most likely nothing more than wishful thinking.

stormko said...

Check this out

Cuse and Linelof commented on things you've pointed out:

What is the meaning or significance of the two skeletons that Jack and Kate found in the cave of season 1?

CUSE: The answer to that question goes to the nature of the timeline of the island. We don't want to say too much about it, but there are a couple Easter eggs embedded in [the Feb. 7 episode], one of which is an anagram that actually sheds some light on the skeletons and hints at a larger mythological mystery that will start to unfold later in the season.

LINDELOF: There were certain things we knew from the very beginning. Independent of ever knowing when the end was going to be, we knew what it was going to be, and we wanted to start setting it up as early as season 1, or else people would think that we were making it up as we were going along. So the skeletons are the living — or, I guess, slowly decomposing — proof of that. When all is said and done, people are going to point to the skeletons and say, ''That is proof that from the very beginning, they always knew that they were going to do this.''

stormko said...

I just remembered something:

When they found Adam & Eve in season 1, Jack took the black & white stones they found on the skeletons. The camera purposely shows him putting the stones in his shirt pocket. They have yet to explain the meaning of this.

Anonymous said...

It's the others!!! They're both alive and dead. They are not bound by time and space! I may be half joking, but they've obviously got something up their sleeves. Remember the toy truck?
Maybe they're all decended from the black rock. who knows.

Pedro dos Santos said...

Go to http://www.mittelosbioscience.org/

Then Projects section.

And:
user - jburke
password - rachel

;)

Brian said...

pedro - Unfortunately, that website has been confirmed as being fake. It's not the start of another ARG... at least not yet.

Anonymous said...

"When they found Adam & Eve in season 1, Jack took the black & white stones they found on the skeletons. The camera purposely shows him putting the stones in his shirt pocket. They have yet to explain the meaning of this"

Ye gods - I may have just realised something which could be the biggest spolier ever - and I just hope I'm wrong.

Anonymous said...

What about Smokey btw and Mr. Ekko's ominous last words that "you're next"?

Anonymous said...

why is this show only on 1 hour a week...it needs to be on 3 hours a week at least...

Anonymous said...

Feesh,

I believe we have come to the same conclusion:

Jack and Kate = the skeletons.

See Lindelof's quote posted earlier.

The island is some kind of hotel california. You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave?

Anonymous said...

"God Loves You As He Loved Jacob"

Past tense. So is Jacob dead or no longer around? Can he really be the leader? Or at the very least was he (like Desmond) able to see the future; from which he made a list of people that could be used to change the variables of the Valenzetti Equation?

Which brings me back to what really this is all about. I still think this is Ben's primary concern; to save humanity at any cost. So if this goal is his true or ultimate purpose in life and everything the Others are doing revolves around that. Then Danny's comment "he would rather die..." could support the total belief and dedication to that goal. Come on? What's more important then staving off the extinction of the human species? Making sure you can have your Big Mac and drive your SUV? I don't think so.

Even in the real world we are just becoming aware of our own envirnmental mortality. An uncountable number of species have gone extinct throughout the history of the world (and continue to do so). And at the very least, removing self important idealogies, what is man but yet another species of animal on this planet? A scientist can readily understand this. But turn it into a cause and guaranteed you will have human rights violations on a scale never witnessed in the history of man.

This brings me to the focus of the episode, Juillete. What events happend within those first six months that she opted to stay (yes I think it was her choice to stay not Ben forcing her. "Free will still exists" - book club. And up and till the three minutes in the surgeory room she seemed poised for a coup). As well what could turn Juilette from being this meek, self-proclaimed "not a leader" who was barely able to keep her shit together for a job interview; granted she had alot of pressures. Into a cold and direct bi-atch that won't hesitate to take your life, and who gives a guy like Sawyer a reason to pause. She changed. But more importantly what made her important to the "cause" was her genius that could directly affect variables of the Equation. I think she was able to recognise that. Although her capicity to self destruct has given Ben pause on her effectiveness on the overall goal; ok she can leave now.

Who Watches the Watchmen? ... (well I think it's a good reference but I won't go into that. But enter stage right: Patchy).

Anonymous said...

Great blog yet again. I really enjoyed this episode, i think it was the best of the series so far.

just like to add my views. Remember in '3minutes':

'Walt inquired about Vincent's health and told Michael that the Others made him "take tests" and that "they're not who they say they are - they're pretending". Ms. Klugh became agitated and threatened to put Walt in "the Room" again. Walt instantly froze up at the mention of this, and Ms. Klugh told him to leave. Ms. Klugh then asked Michael, "Has Walt ever been somewhere he wasn't meant to be?" ' (lostpedia)

Could this be the same room they were keeping crazy carl in?

Anonymous said...

or at least a room showing the same brainwashing video, seeing as Walt was not on Alcatraz

Anonymous said...

Hi Brian, Fantastic analysis - one of your best yet.
This episode was packed. The big picture is developing like a black and white photo - each week it is slightly clearer but we aren't out of the darkroom yet... Can we finally say that the Others are really not nice people forced to do whacked things to help mankind from inevitable destruction? The Hanso experiments are benign compared to what we see these Others doing with Boyfriend CC being strapped to a chair and tortured with brainwashing images. Now we clearly see that a brilliant and caring scientist like Juliet does not support whatever the others are doing at all - she just wants the heck outta there. But they cannot let her go! If she has been doing fertility research then Juliet knows everything about these people -- if they are Time-Lords or ex-Pirates - she would know!

- Webuffy

Chris Benard said...

Brian, have you not heard the backwards subliminal message in the brainwashing scene yet? I've independently confirmed it. It's really creepy and I can't believe you haven't blogged about it yet!!! I expect all my LOST news to come from you. Here's a link if you care:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZmAz86uHq4

Anonymous said...

I think Hobbes raises good issues...all of which have been posted before...related to Juliette. It will be interesting to see how she has transformed from the women she was in Miami to the person she now is on the island. She showed no hesitancy in killing Picket confirming Sawyer's perception of her as having killer potential. As for this weeks' episode, it will be interesting to see what is revealed of Desmond (his backstory). Would be cool to see an island backstory and learn what happened immediatly in the aftermath of the hatch implosion and how Dez was found, unharmed, wondering naked in the woods and now possessing supernatural powers to know the future.

Anonymous said...

You keep mentioning time, but you didn't make the connection with the brainwashing. The gears, for examples, are actually the inside of a watch. The speedometer measures acceleration and speed, both time based. Time is a mental perception, and so part of Dharma's work is to change how people perceive time. We will learn that this plays a major role in upcoming discoveries.

Osazone said...

1)Ben is the leader of a cult and he is obsessed in living forever, here fits the cloning idea, and the so called tumor is not a real tumor but a clone in other words a failed experiment.and brainwashing thing or the voices heard inside of the head is part of the experiment that will provide a solution to importing/exporting memories. and the island has the power to catalize this experiment. It's said that Juliet was able to impregnate a "male" rat.. It gives further evidence I think.

2)Jacob is the former leader of the cult probably died in a cloning experiment like Ben's. He started the cult the research, and found an island (maybe he bought dharma, a failing company.

3) about walt saying others are not who they appear to be, it's true and we already saw it, they pretend to be simple islanders with beards etc. but they showed to be more than that.

4)The sky went purple twice on the island. first time is when Desmond did not enter the code and the plane crashed. I think the communication went off at that time. so they couldn't reach outer world to get Ben to operate, and they fell in the hands of Jake.

Anonymous said...

I read through the comments, and I don't think anyone else mentioned this.

When I saw the words "God Loves You As He Loved Jacob", I thought about the verse from the Bible:

"I have loved you," says the LORD. But you say, "How have You loved us?" "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness."

For more context, you can read the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25-27.