"Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Will you walk with me out on the wire
`Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider..."
- Bruce Springsteen
Lost Episode Title: "Born to Run"
Character Involved: Kate (the hypnotically hot Evangeline Lilly, Part III)
TV Guide Description: Jack suspects foul play when Michael becomes violently ill while building the raft. Meanwhile a secret from Kate's past is revealed, the mysterious hatch is shown to a few of the survivors, and Walt gives Locke a warning.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Baby we were born to run! Without going into the finer points of the social undertones in the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name, the song is basically about a couple breaking the chains of oppressive society together to avoid the sure-to-come death both physically and mentally that would result from staying in that society.
The phrase "Born to Run" clearly refers to our fair Kate, and her lifestyle that is seemingly always on the run from everything we've seen (robbing banks in America, working on a farm in Australia).
What happened in her past that made her "born" to do this running? It makes it sound like something from her childhood caused this wanderlust, or put her down this path of crime. So what do we really know about Kate's past? She learned climbing / reading tracks in the woods from her dad, she moved around a lot as a kid, she has been married, and she has a toy plane that belonged to a man she loved - a man she killed. Yeah, nothing there that would cause someone to move around a lot! To quote the Sayid episode last week, people who move around a lot "Either are running from something or looking for something" - in Kate's case, I think it's both.
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Michael becoming violently ill? Could this be Walt intentionally poisoning his dad? We all know that Walt wants to stay on the island, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to see Walt either physically poisoning him, or mentally harming him by thinking evil thoughts. This could prevent the Raft from being completed, and allow Walt to stay on the island with Locke. But... this storyline would be far too close to Walt burning down the Raft a few weeks back. What about Kate slipping him something in hopes of stealing his place on the Raft?
The previews seem to show an argument between Kate and Sawyer for a spot on the Raft, maybe Kate takes the easy way out and decides to take out Michael? Eh... everything we've seen about Kate on the island is that she's generally good despite her past - so this seems out of character. How about Locke? If you remember last week, he warned against the Rafters leaving the island (more on that later). This one has a fighting chance. But my favorite theory - Sun poisoning Michael. She has the tumultuous past with him, she's very into the herbs / plants on the island (so she would know what was poisonous and what wasn't), and it fits nicely into the Michael / Jin / Sun storyline. I still say that killing off Michael makes the most sense to the storylines on the island, and would add Sun to the "People on the island who have killed someone else" list.
A secret from Kate’s past? This has to be the toy plane explanation! Sure, this show has a giant mysterious monster, the kid who has the power to control things with his mind, and a paralyzed man who can now walk - but the one mystery on the show that I have absolutely NO IDEA about is this tiny plane. I've thought this thing back frontwards and backwards, and cannot come up with a single plausible theory that isn't absolutely absurd. I need answers! I suppose it would also be nice to find out the whole "reason for the criminal background" part of Kate explained, but I have decent theories on this already that allow me to get sleep at night. I totally see Freckles as some sort of Environmental Crusader / White Collar Criminal / Person Avenging a Past Wrong who is wanted by the government for their actions but really has a heart of gold. See, one of those is fine. The little plane? Nada. Also, remember, the show's creator promised us the following questions would be answered this season:
1. How Locke can walk.
2. The importance of Kate's toy plane.
3. The background on CFL.
This week sounds like a great time to answer Question #2...
The mysterious hatch looks to be shown to Sayid and Jack (also maybe Kate?). I like the odds of the crafty Iraqi and the brainy Doctor to figure out how to bust this thing open. But I don't like the odds of this happening before the season finale. More interesting is that Walt is giving Locke a warning about "not opening something", clearly referring to the Hatch, but Walt has never seen or heard of the Hatch. What could be the danger inside the Hatch? Up until this point, my theories for the Hatch were as follows:
1. A room filled with computers, where we find that someone has been monitoring everyone on the island all along.
2. An entry way to an underground system of tunnels that connect various parts of the island.
3. A fallout shelter to protect people from the monster / crazy stuff on the island.
But none of those are dangerous enough that Walt would warn against opening the hatch. Which leads me to these new theories:
1. There's some sort of radiation / poison (the sickness?!) that is somehow contained inside that Hatch. Opening it, releases it.
2. The information that is inside the Hatch would cause serious trauma to the people on the island (they're all dead, they're all connected, they're all dreaming?)
3. It's full of the dead people from the CFL's crew.
Again, I don't expect answers on this one until May 25, so don't get your hopes up too high for this week.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: I'm not going to lie. Last week was pretty "Eh". Sayid's backstory was very intriguing and well done, but there wasn't anything too exciting happening on the island. But what really upset me were that there were very few "mysteries", or "hints", or "things for Brian to over-analyze in Email form". So we'll make this short but sweet for certain on the few discussion points that the episode raised:
JC. There have been countless comparisons of Locke to Jesus this season, and last week added another. While washing his bloody shirt, Sayid approaches and notices a large gash in Locke's side - a la Jesus's scar from being stabbed in the side after being hung on the cross. But what was the wound really? A "battle scar" as Locke put it, from the kidney transplant with his father.
WARNING. Did anyone else find it odd that in Locke's explanation of why he knocked out Sayid during his attempted radio broadcast, he said something along the lines of "You don't understand - it would be a bad idea to find the source of the radio signal, just like it's a bad idea to build the raft"? Does Locke know something about what surrounds the island that we don't? Are the survivors safe in the portion of the island that they are on right now, but would be in much more danger out at sea? Should be interesting once that raft sets sail...
ROMANCE. It looks like the short-lived romance of Sayid and Shannon is over. Here's what I don't get - why was Sayid into her anyways? Isn't this the guy that spent the better part of the past few years of his life looking for his past girlfriend Nadia? And now he's going to throw that dedication and potential true love away for a roll in the sand with the shallow, vacuous Shannon? I don't get it.
Was Sayid using her somehow? Are we going to see another flashback of Sayid where he becomes big pimpin' the day the plane crashes and gives up looking for Nadia? I doubt it. Bad storytelling? I hope not, but that's what it looks like to me.
KEYS. How did Shannon know about the briefcase, the keys around Jack's neck, and the guns? I don't remember her being involved in any of the past episodes surrounding the guns, and I thought that Jack was pretty cautious about keeping those guns a secret. I may be missing something, or it may be more sloppy work in storytelling!
NUMBERS. There were a bunch of numbers used in last week's episode. Except for 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Why pass up the opportunity to add to the "number theme" that's been used throughout the course of the season? Missed opportunities? I'm actually not so sure about the one. If you think about it, the numbers so far have tied CFL, Hurley, Locke, Kate, etc. together. Maybe they don't tie EVERYONE together. Maybe they just keep popping up in people's lives who are "touched" by the curse of the numbers. Since Sayid was on the other side of the world in Iraq, maybe he wasn't touched by them?
FINS. Remember when Walt said "What if there are sharks out there?" when Michael was talking about leaving on the raft? Well, Walt has a nasty way of his thoughts and fears coming true (fire, polar bears, knife throwing). If he and Michael end up on that raft out at sea, watch out. It could be Jaws out there. Foreshadowing!
...and that's it. See what I mean? Very discussion light last week. Why are you trying to foil the Lost Email, writers of the show!?
BONUS. There was a great writeup of Lost in this weekend's USA Weekend feature of the newspaper. The part I liked the best? This part:
So far, the focus has been on only 14 of the 48 crazy survivors, but that'll soon change. "The population of the island will be shaken up," Abrams says, revealing he's now casting new second-season regulars. "Not everyone will be coming back, and other people will be stepping up. Also, the survivors have explored almost none of the island, so next year becomes more mission-driven.
And the inevitable fractious aspects of society-building begin to arise."As for the current season ender, a two-hour finales airing May 25, brace yourself: "We've managed to pull off a cliffhanger that is emotionally satisfying but that demands that people talk about it ALL summer," Lidelof says. "It's a 'Who shot J.R.?' moment.""The end of the season is unabashedly, mind-bendingly shocking," Abrams adds.
UNABASHEDLY, MIND-BENDINGLY SHOCKING. I like the sound of that!
(I'm just hoping he wasn't speaking too literally when he said a "Who shot JR moment" - if you recall, the whole "Who shot JR" thing ended up being a dream - aka - the biggest copout from storytelling ever.)
That's all I got. See, I'm embarrassed at how short this is! I could make up stuff to talk about, or give you a full review of DMB's new CD, "Stand Up" (the band’s best official studio effort since 1998’s "Before These Crowded Streets"), but you've taken up enough of your company's valuable time reading this. Get back to work! Raise shareholder value!
Until next week,
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
LostLostLostLost
May = Best Month of Lost Ever. Four weeks and five hours of new Losty goodness. Ja bitte! In your face June through April!
Lost Episode Title: "The Greater Good"
Character Involved: Sayid (the loveable Iraqi Part II)
TV Guide Description: After burying one of their own, tempers flare as the castaways' suspicions of each other grow -- and an unlikely survivor vows revenge. Meanwhile, Claire and Charlie struggle to calm her newborn.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I hear the phrase "The Greater Good", I think of one thing - sacrificing someone or something "for the greater good", meaning that their loss or death ends up being for the benefit of others to the point where it’s better off that the tragedy happened. In the case of Lost, we must be referring to one of two things:
1. Boone’s death as being for the greater good. But how? What good is going to come from the death of fair Boone with the freaky blue eyes? Well, if his death somehow opened the hatch / led Locke to a greater understanding of the island, it could be that his death leads to the remaining survivors getting off the island / being able to better survive on the island. Remember, it almost seemed like Boone’s death was a necessary part of opening the hatch, and Locke willingly made the trade. Is Locke so blinded by the "magic of the island" that he is willing to kill his friend? Or is Locke truly looking at everything logically, and seeing that a death was needed to open the hatch, realized that opening the hatch was more important than Boone’s life. But that would have to mean that whatever is inside that hatch is a BIG DEAL. What is in that hatch?!?!
2. Going after Locke for the greater good. The rationale from Jack / Sayid / the other survivors at this point is: "Locke is dangerous. We need to kill him to prevent him from hurting anyone else. We need to kill him for the greater good." The commercials show Shannon coaxing Sayid into killing Locke, and last episode ended with Jack saying "I’m going to find John Locke." Both Jack and Sayid have demonstrated how much they DO NOT LIKE killing people and do not want violence to be the answer. However, if they are both convinced that Locke murdered Boone, killing him would protect the rest of the people on the island. It would be for the greater good.
I should point out that this episode was originally titled "Sides". When I first read the episode title a few months back, I figured it had to be the characters choosing whose side they would be on - Jack or Locke seemingly being the two ring leaders. Although back then, I figured it would have something to do with either living in the caves vs. the beach, or choosing to take up arms against "The Others" vs. playing pacifist, it now looks like the "Sides" in question might be whether or not to kill Locke. This is a very polarizing event on the island. Will Locke be able to convince everyone that Boone’s death was an accident or that it was a necessary occurrence, or will Jack / Sayid convince people that Locke must pay for his crime? It should be very interesting…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Well, the first sentence pretty well puts the nail in Boone’s coffin (literally). He really is dead. Granted, he will likely be back due to flashbacks of Shannon, etc - but that’s it. Tempers flaring due to suspicion are documented fairly well in the previews - showing a lot of shouting, pushing, fighting (and shooting?) between Jack, Sayid, and Locke. The unlikely survivor to go for revenge? I’d say Jack, simply because his character has been so anti-guns, anti-violence, save everyone all along (hey, he must be a democrat!). You could also argue that Sayid is the unlikely revenge-seeker, since he is pretty much doing it at Shannon’s request, even though this is the exact frame of mind that drove him to leave the rest of the survivors so many weeks ago.
His torture of Sawyer quickly brought him back to his Iraqi National Guard past, a past he doesn’t want to remember, a person he doesn’t want to be. If he goes after Locke, guns blazing, he must really want to impress Shannon. Hello, Sayid? Kate is way hotter! What are you thinking buddy?
The deep thinker in me hopes that the last sentence about Claire and Charlie trying to calm the newborn anti-Christ are related to the fact that the baby is pure, unadulterated evil - but I think this is going to be like the time that the TV Guide Preview said "a survivor has mysterious headaches" and then it just turned out that Sawyer needed glasses. Those tricky writers with their obvious and mundane storylines!
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Remember this episode? Jack almost chopped off Boone’s leg, Locke was suspiciously absent, and Sayid tried to hook up with Shannon. Oh yeah, and Boone died. It was a decent episode. It was well made - but it really wasn’t shocking, didn’t really reveal anything else about the island, and we all saw it coming a mile away. Jack’s backstory was interesting, but not good enough to overcome a fairly weak episode. But there are a few points to ponder:
MARRIAGE. First and foremost - did Jack get married or what? The last flashback scene was setup for either he or his wife to walk away from the altar. But then they kissed. So, does that mean they’re married? This would explain why Jack has been resisting Kate thus far on the island, but doesn’t explain why Jack is ring free on all noticeable fingers. I guess my official stance is that Jack and hot blonde girl got married (she will from this point forth be known as HBG, in the same way that Rousseau is known as CFL) but then something happened to break them up. Divorce? Boring. Death? More likely.
WORDS. The biggest and most important thing Boone did in his dying moments was mention to Jack the Hatch, and the fact that Locke is hiding it from them. This should effectively focus the attention on that hatch for the remainder of the season… and the numbers ingrained on it. Also, how fitting that Boone’s last words were "Tell Shannon, tell Shannon…" Doesn’t that pretty much sum up their relationship? Feelings that he couldn’t put into words, or wouldn’t put into words due to the guilt that surrounded their relationship. Oh Boone, such a tortured soul. There’s a lesson here kids: Don’t get romantically involved with your sister in law or you will end up dead.
LOCKE. So Locke is back - is he different? Has he been inside the hatch? Has he had another epiphany on the island? Since Jack now knows about the Hatch, there’s no way Locke can hide it any longer. He has to let everyone in on the secret. The real question becomes "Why has Locke kept it hidden from everyone for so long?" There’s some believable rationale in not telling them about a giant monster, polar bear, or freaky French radio signal, because it would scare people and incite panic. This was a metal hatch in the ground. You have to think that, while Locke is smart, 44 (I believe that is our official number of survivors at this point) heads trying to figure out how to open it would be better than two. Also, it looks as though Locke has regained full use of his legs in the commercial. Were his legs failing him a direct result of his loss of faith in the island? Or was that just adding to the island "testing him" for his worth before revealing the Hatch’s mystery?
WE. Ah, the fun with audio! Remember in the original airing of "Deus Ex Machina", where the audio of the radio voice in the plane was up for debate? If you remember, closed captioning told us the radio said "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", but those of us who re-listened to the clip for hours on our computers that night (whatever, don’t judge me - what did you do that night that was so important?) heard "WE are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!" Adding fuel to the controversy was the new commercial that aired the following weeks, with a new voice-over for the radio, that CLEARLY said "WE ARE", not "There were no". This makes me think that someone realized that this HUGE revelation went unnoticed by the majority of the viewing audience, so they tried to trick us in the previews to think that we just weren’t paying close enough attention the first time. The funny thing is, in the clip show last week, they showed the scene with the original debatable audio again.
Why? Here’s what I think happened. Some crazy marketing people who have no appreciation for surprise and are just trying to make money were like "Wait, no one caught that!" after the original airing. So they messed with the audio in the commercials to BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD with the message (effectively ruining the surprise and giving the audience no credit for having an imagination). The shows creators were like "Whoa whoa whoa - what’s in Cleveland?" and had them change it back. I’ve read more than one account of Lost producers expressing their disdain for the commercials that are shown for either being misleading or for giving away too much. Damon Lindlhoff’s official stance is "Do not believe anything that airs outside of the 42 minute episode. Commercials are the devil!"
CLIPS. Speaking of which, while many people would fail to look for deeper meaning in the clips episode, "Lost: the Journey", that aired last week - these people are not me. They likely have wives and / or kids, and can’t dedicate large chunks of their evenings to over analysis of TV. Losers! I was watching intently, thinking "What are they focusing on?" The point of the episode was to refresh people of what’s going on in the show and allow them to enjoy the remaining four episodes - therefore, you’d want to focus on the "main storylines" so far, and "set up" upcoming ones. What did they focus on? CLF and The Others.
CFL. Remember CFL? Remember Alex? Remember the Black Rock, the Others, the Voices, and the Sickness? Yeah, me neither. All these storylines have taken a backseat lately with the Hatch, Raft, and Baby taking the driver’s seat. Something tells me that CFL is coming back. Especially with the birth of Claire’s baby (speaking of which, when are we gonna get a name for it? I vote for Alex - wouldn’t that be interesting and feed into the whole "time loop" theory on the island?), CLF can come back either in the capacity to steal the baby and pretend it’s her own, or to "protect the baby" from the evils of the island. This should also lead to Claire showing a distrust for everyone else on the island to have any hand in raising her baby. Remember, raised by anyone other than Claire, this baby is going to be Mr. 666. Expect Claire to take this to the extreme, not letting anyone else hold her baby or help her with the child-rearing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself and stealing thoughts from an upcoming bullet point.
OTHERS. This was the storyline that I would have placed money on back in March. The Survivors vs. the Others in a big battle at the Black Rock. After the Hatch showed up, I went the other route, and you all know I’m now firmly in the "Tail of the Plane" camp. But… that clips show was awfully "Others" heavy. The voices that Sayid heard, the entire CFL speech about her compadres becoming "sick" once they came back from the Black Rock, etc. What if the Others in question are actually the survivors from the tail of the plane? What if the hatch somehow leads to the Others hideout? I’ve given up on this storyline much to easy! Are we lucky enough to get all these storylines tying together at season end? I was just banking on one or two of them being revealed… but now I think we might get all of them!
BABY. What is the over / under for this child surviving? Are we really going to have a newborn baby on this island? With the slow pace of the show (each episode taking up about two days on the island), they’ll have to recast this role every month! Or will we have a Hoby-like growing of the child (sorry about the obscure Baywatch reference - for you Star Wars nerds out there, what about how Anniken is all the sudden the same age as Natalie Portman in Episode II, when he’s like 15 years younger than her in Episode I - poor story telling Mr. Lucas!) where he’s all the sudden six or seven years old and is playing with Walt? This could easily setup the great Mr. 666 vs. Walt battle of good vs. evil, but is unlikely.
Best bets on the baby:
1. Getting kidnapped by the Others.
2. Getting kidnapped by CFL.
3. Getting sacrificed by the Others.
4. Dying by natural / cosmic causes.
5. Being eaten by a hungry Hurley.
Sorry for the crass - I just can’t imagine how that baby is going to survive on the island!
RAFT. Things are coming along nicely. My official picks for people who will sail away on the raft: Michael, Walt, Saywer, and Sayid. The hot theory on the internet is that the raft will set sail for the set of three smaller islands CFL had drawn on her map. I’m not sold on this… yet. I don’t think the raft will set sail before the finale, so that it can play into the "Exodus" title, so we can discuss this in future weeks.
DEATH. Remember my official stance on island deaths? That Boone would die, but so would someone else? I still stand by that. In fact, I’ll give you my top 3 most likely deaths before season end:
1. Michael
2. Jin
3. Sawyer
And the three least likely deaths:
1. Locke
2. Kate
3. Sayid
SHOT. Lastly, I’ll make another wager about the "shooting of Locke" seen in this week’s commercials. Refer back to my last point. There is NO WAY Locke is dying. No way. Even in my wildest, "What would really shock people and be crazy" dreams, Locke is staying alive on this island. He’s too integral to everything, and has been developed the most of any character, while still having tons of mystery about him. He’s a writer’s dream. So what do we see in the commercial? We see smoke and "hear" a gunshot. Like we "heard" the new voice over on the plane radio? I’m not buying. If Locke truly gets shot, he’s living through it and will somehow have been made invincible by the island. If not, someone is shooting a blank, or smoke is rising from something else and Locke is falling down for another reason.
MUSIC. Isn’t it ironic how the last two episodes of the season are famous song titles? Pretty cool if you ask me - also, they’re both about "fleeing" and "escaping".
May 11. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Yes, May is a very good month.
PS - Alias is really good again, you guys can start watching again if you’ve fallen off the wagon. It is once again an officially sanctioned TV show of the Lost Email. What are the other officially sanctioned shows of the Lost Email, you ask?
Monday - 24
Tuesday - Scrubs, the Office
Wednesday - Lost, Alias
Thursday - the OC
Sunday - Desperate Housewives, Family Guy
Delta House is where it’s at! Two turn tables and a microphone!: "The Greater Good"
Character Involved: Sayid (the loveable Iraqi Part II)
TV Guide Description: After burying one of their own, tempers flare as the castaways' suspicions of each other grow -- and an unlikely survivor vows revenge. Meanwhile, Claire and Charlie struggle to calm her newborn.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I hear the phrase "The Greater Good", I think of one thing - sacrificing someone or something "for the greater good", meaning that their loss or death ends up being for the benefit of others to the point where it’s better off that the tragedy happened. In the case of Lost, we must be referring to one of two things:
1. Boone’s death as being for the greater good. But how? What good is going to come from the death of fair Boone with the freaky blue eyes? Well, if his death somehow opened the hatch / led Locke to a greater understanding of the island, it could be that his death leads to the remaining survivors getting off the island / being able to better survive on the island. Remember, it almost seemed like Boone’s death was a necessary part of opening the hatch, and Locke willingly made the trade. Is Locke so blinded by the "magic of the island" that he is willing to kill his friend? Or is Locke truly looking at everything logically, and seeing that a death was needed to open the hatch, realized that opening the hatch was more important than Boone’s life. But that would have to mean that whatever is inside that hatch is a BIG DEAL. What is in that hatch?!?!
2. Going after Locke for the greater good. The rationale from Jack / Sayid / the other survivors at this point is: "Locke is dangerous. We need to kill him to prevent him from hurting anyone else. We need to kill him for the greater good." The commercials show Shannon coaxing Sayid into killing Locke, and last episode ended with Jack saying "I’m going to find John Locke." Both Jack and Sayid have demonstrated how much they DO NOT LIKE killing people and do not want violence to be the answer. However, if they are both convinced that Locke murdered Boone, killing him would protect the rest of the people on the island. It would be for the greater good.
I should point out that this episode was originally titled "Sides". When I first read the episode title a few months back, I figured it had to be the characters choosing whose side they would be on - Jack or Locke seemingly being the two ring leaders. Although back then, I figured it would have something to do with either living in the caves vs. the beach, or choosing to take up arms against "The Others" vs. playing pacifist, it now looks like the "Sides" in question might be whether or not to kill Locke. This is a very polarizing event on the island. Will Locke be able to convince everyone that Boone’s death was an accident or that it was a necessary occurrence, or will Jack / Sayid convince people that Locke must pay for his crime? It should be very interesting…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Well, the first sentence pretty well puts the nail in Boone’s coffin (literally). He really is dead. Granted, he will likely be back due to flashbacks of Shannon, etc - but that’s it. Tempers flaring due to suspicion are documented fairly well in the previews - showing a lot of shouting, pushing, fighting (and shooting?) between Jack, Sayid, and Locke. The unlikely survivor to go for revenge? I’d say Jack, simply because his character has been so anti-guns, anti-violence, save everyone all along (hey, he must be a democrat!). You could also argue that Sayid is the unlikely revenge-seeker, since he is pretty much doing it at Shannon’s request, even though this is the exact frame of mind that drove him to leave the rest of the survivors so many weeks ago. His torture of Sawyer quickly brought him back to his Iraqi National Guard past, a past he doesn’t want to remember, a person he doesn’t want to be. If he goes after Locke, guns blazing, he must really want to impress Shannon. Hello, Sayid? Kate is way hotter! What are you thinking buddy?
The deep thinker in me hopes that the last sentence about Claire and Charlie trying to calm the newborn anti-Christ are related to the fact that the baby is pure, unadulterated evil - but I think this is going to be like the time that the TV Guide Preview said "a survivor has mysterious headaches" and then it just turned out that Sawyer needed glasses. Those tricky writers with their obvious and mundane storylines!
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Remember this episode? Jack almost chopped off Boone’s leg, Locke was suspiciously absent, and Sayid tried to hook up with Shannon. Oh yeah, and Boone died. It was a decent episode. It was well made - but it really wasn’t shocking, didn’t really reveal anything else about the island, and we all saw it coming a mile away. Jack’s backstory was interesting, but not good enough to overcome a fairly weak episode. But there are a few points to ponder:
MARRIAGE. First and foremost - did Jack get married or what? The last flashback scene was setup for either he or his wife to walk away from the altar. But then they kissed. So, does that mean they’re married? This would explain why Jack has been resisting Kate thus far on the island, but doesn’t explain why Jack is ring free on all noticeable fingers. I guess my official stance is that Jack and hot blonde girl got married (she will from this point forth be known as HBG, in the same way that Rousseau is known as CFL) but then something happened to break them up. Divorce? Boring. Death? More likely.
WORDS. The biggest and most important thing Boone did in his dying moments was mention to Jack the Hatch, and the fact that Locke is hiding it from them. This should effectively focus the attention on that hatch for the remainder of the season… and the numbers ingrained on it. Also, how fitting that Boone’s last words were "Tell Shannon, tell Shannon…" Doesn’t that pretty much sum up their relationship? Feelings that he couldn’t put into words, or wouldn’t put into words due to the guilt that surrounded their relationship. Oh Boone, such a tortured soul. There’s a lesson here kids: Don’t get romantically involved with your sister in law or you will end up dead.
LOCKE. So Locke is back - is he different? Has he been inside the hatch? Has he had another epiphany on the island? Since Jack now knows about the Hatch, there’s no way Locke can hide it any longer. He has to let everyone in on the secret. The real question becomes "Why has Locke kept it hidden from everyone for so long?" There’s some believable rationale in not telling them about a giant monster, polar bear, or freaky French radio signal, because it would scare people and incite panic. This was a metal hatch in the ground. You have to think that, while Locke is smart, 44 (I believe that is our official number of survivors at this point) heads trying to figure out how to open it would be better than two. Also, it looks as though Locke has regained full use of his legs in the commercial. Were his legs failing him a direct result of his loss of faith in the island? Or was that just adding to the island "testing him" for his worth before revealing the Hatch’s mystery?
WE. Ah, the fun with audio! Remember in the original airing of "Deus Ex Machina", where the audio of the radio voice in the plane was up for debate? If you remember, closed captioning told us the radio said "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", but those of us who re-listened to the clip for hours on our computers that night (whatever, don’t judge me - what did you do that night that was so important?) heard "WE are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!" Adding fuel to the controversy was the new commercial that aired the following weeks, with a new voice-over for the radio, that CLEARLY said "WE ARE", not "There were no". This makes me think that someone realized that this HUGE revelation went unnoticed by the majority of the viewing audience, so they tried to trick us in the previews to think that we just weren’t paying close enough attention the first time. The funny thing is, in the clip show last week, they showed the scene with the original debatable audio again.
Why? Here’s what I think happened. Some crazy marketing people who have no appreciation for surprise and are just trying to make money were like "Wait, no one caught that!" after the original airing. So they messed with the audio in the commercials to BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD with the message (effectively ruining the surprise and giving the audience no credit for having an imagination). The shows creators were like "Whoa whoa whoa - what’s in Cleveland?" and had them change it back. I’ve read more than one account of Lost producers expressing their disdain for the commercials that are shown for either being misleading or for giving away too much. Damon Lindlhoff’s official stance is "Do not believe anything that airs outside of the 42 minute episode. Commercials are the devil!"
CLIPS. Speaking of which, while many people would fail to look for deeper meaning in the clips episode, "Lost: the Journey", that aired last week - these people are not me. They likely have wives and / or kids, and can’t dedicate large chunks of their evenings to over analysis of TV. Losers! I was watching intently, thinking "What are they focusing on?" The point of the episode was to refresh people of what’s going on in the show and allow them to enjoy the remaining four episodes - therefore, you’d want to focus on the "main storylines" so far, and "set up" upcoming ones. What did they focus on? CLF and The Others.
CFL. Remember CFL? Remember Alex? Remember the Black Rock, the Others, the Voices, and the Sickness? Yeah, me neither. All these storylines have taken a backseat lately with the Hatch, Raft, and Baby taking the driver’s seat. Something tells me that CFL is coming back. Especially with the birth of Claire’s baby (speaking of which, when are we gonna get a name for it? I vote for Alex - wouldn’t that be interesting and feed into the whole "time loop" theory on the island?), CLF can come back either in the capacity to steal the baby and pretend it’s her own, or to "protect the baby" from the evils of the island. This should also lead to Claire showing a distrust for everyone else on the island to have any hand in raising her baby. Remember, raised by anyone other than Claire, this baby is going to be Mr. 666. Expect Claire to take this to the extreme, not letting anyone else hold her baby or help her with the child-rearing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself and stealing thoughts from an upcoming bullet point.
OTHERS. This was the storyline that I would have placed money on back in March. The Survivors vs. the Others in a big battle at the Black Rock. After the Hatch showed up, I went the other route, and you all know I’m now firmly in the "Tail of the Plane" camp. But… that clips show was awfully "Others" heavy. The voices that Sayid heard, the entire CFL speech about her compadres becoming "sick" once they came back from the Black Rock, etc. What if the Others in question are actually the survivors from the tail of the plane? What if the hatch somehow leads to the Others hideout? I’ve given up on this storyline much to easy! Are we lucky enough to get all these storylines tying together at season end? I was just banking on one or two of them being revealed… but now I think we might get all of them!
BABY. What is the over / under for this child surviving? Are we really going to have a newborn baby on this island? With the slow pace of the show (each episode taking up about two days on the island), they’ll have to recast this role every month! Or will we have a Hoby-like growing of the child (sorry about the obscure Baywatch reference - for you Star Wars nerds out there, what about how Anniken is all the sudden the same age as Natalie Portman in Episode II, when he’s like 15 years younger than her in Episode I - poor story telling Mr. Lucas!) where he’s all the sudden six or seven years old and is playing with Walt? This could easily setup the great Mr. 666 vs. Walt battle of good vs. evil, but is unlikely.
Best bets on the baby:
1. Getting kidnapped by the Others.
2. Getting kidnapped by CFL.
3. Getting sacrificed by the Others.
4. Dying by natural / cosmic causes.
5. Being eaten by a hungry Hurley.
Sorry for the crass - I just can’t imagine how that baby is going to survive on the island!
RAFT. Things are coming along nicely. My official picks for people who will sail away on the raft: Michael, Walt, Saywer, and Sayid. The hot theory on the internet is that the raft will set sail for the set of three smaller islands CFL had drawn on her map. I’m not sold on this… yet. I don’t think the raft will set sail before the finale, so that it can play into the "Exodus" title, so we can discuss this in future weeks.
DEATH. Remember my official stance on island deaths? That Boone would die, but so would someone else? I still stand by that. In fact, I’ll give you my top 3 most likely deaths before season end:
1. Michael
2. Jin
3. Sawyer
And the three least likely deaths:
1. Locke
2. Kate
3. Sayid
SHOT. Lastly, I’ll make another wager about the "shooting of Locke" seen in this week’s commercials. Refer back to my last point. There is NO WAY Locke is dying. No way. Even in my wildest, "What would really shock people and be crazy" dreams, Locke is staying alive on this island. He’s too integral to everything, and has been developed the most of any character, while still having tons of mystery about him. He’s a writer’s dream. So what do we see in the commercial? We see smoke and "hear" a gunshot. Like we "heard" the new voice over on the plane radio? I’m not buying. If Locke truly gets shot, he’s living through it and will somehow have been made invincible by the island. If not, someone is shooting a blank, or smoke is rising from something else and Locke is falling down for another reason.
MUSIC. Isn’t it ironic how the last two episodes of the season are famous song titles? Pretty cool if you ask me - also, they’re both about "fleeing" and "escaping".
May 11. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Yes, May is a very good month.
PS - Alias is really good again, you guys can start watching again if you’ve fallen off the wagon. It is once again an officially sanctioned TV show of the Lost Email. What are the other officially sanctioned shows of the Lost Email, you ask?
Monday - 24
Tuesday - Scrubs, the Office
Wednesday - Lost, Alias
Thursday - the OC
Sunday - Desperate Housewives, Family Guy
Delta House is where it’s at! Two turn tables and a microphone!
Lost Episode Title: "The Greater Good"
Character Involved: Sayid (the loveable Iraqi Part II)
TV Guide Description: After burying one of their own, tempers flare as the castaways' suspicions of each other grow -- and an unlikely survivor vows revenge. Meanwhile, Claire and Charlie struggle to calm her newborn.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I hear the phrase "The Greater Good", I think of one thing - sacrificing someone or something "for the greater good", meaning that their loss or death ends up being for the benefit of others to the point where it’s better off that the tragedy happened. In the case of Lost, we must be referring to one of two things:
1. Boone’s death as being for the greater good. But how? What good is going to come from the death of fair Boone with the freaky blue eyes? Well, if his death somehow opened the hatch / led Locke to a greater understanding of the island, it could be that his death leads to the remaining survivors getting off the island / being able to better survive on the island. Remember, it almost seemed like Boone’s death was a necessary part of opening the hatch, and Locke willingly made the trade. Is Locke so blinded by the "magic of the island" that he is willing to kill his friend? Or is Locke truly looking at everything logically, and seeing that a death was needed to open the hatch, realized that opening the hatch was more important than Boone’s life. But that would have to mean that whatever is inside that hatch is a BIG DEAL. What is in that hatch?!?!
2. Going after Locke for the greater good. The rationale from Jack / Sayid / the other survivors at this point is: "Locke is dangerous. We need to kill him to prevent him from hurting anyone else. We need to kill him for the greater good." The commercials show Shannon coaxing Sayid into killing Locke, and last episode ended with Jack saying "I’m going to find John Locke." Both Jack and Sayid have demonstrated how much they DO NOT LIKE killing people and do not want violence to be the answer. However, if they are both convinced that Locke murdered Boone, killing him would protect the rest of the people on the island. It would be for the greater good.
I should point out that this episode was originally titled "Sides". When I first read the episode title a few months back, I figured it had to be the characters choosing whose side they would be on - Jack or Locke seemingly being the two ring leaders. Although back then, I figured it would have something to do with either living in the caves vs. the beach, or choosing to take up arms against "The Others" vs. playing pacifist, it now looks like the "Sides" in question might be whether or not to kill Locke. This is a very polarizing event on the island. Will Locke be able to convince everyone that Boone’s death was an accident or that it was a necessary occurrence, or will Jack / Sayid convince people that Locke must pay for his crime? It should be very interesting…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Well, the first sentence pretty well puts the nail in Boone’s coffin (literally). He really is dead. Granted, he will likely be back due to flashbacks of Shannon, etc - but that’s it. Tempers flaring due to suspicion are documented fairly well in the previews - showing a lot of shouting, pushing, fighting (and shooting?) between Jack, Sayid, and Locke. The unlikely survivor to go for revenge? I’d say Jack, simply because his character has been so anti-guns, anti-violence, save everyone all along (hey, he must be a democrat!). You could also argue that Sayid is the unlikely revenge-seeker, since he is pretty much doing it at Shannon’s request, even though this is the exact frame of mind that drove him to leave the rest of the survivors so many weeks ago.
His torture of Sawyer quickly brought him back to his Iraqi National Guard past, a past he doesn’t want to remember, a person he doesn’t want to be. If he goes after Locke, guns blazing, he must really want to impress Shannon. Hello, Sayid? Kate is way hotter! What are you thinking buddy?
The deep thinker in me hopes that the last sentence about Claire and Charlie trying to calm the newborn anti-Christ are related to the fact that the baby is pure, unadulterated evil - but I think this is going to be like the time that the TV Guide Preview said "a survivor has mysterious headaches" and then it just turned out that Sawyer needed glasses. Those tricky writers with their obvious and mundane storylines!
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Remember this episode? Jack almost chopped off Boone’s leg, Locke was suspiciously absent, and Sayid tried to hook up with Shannon. Oh yeah, and Boone died. It was a decent episode. It was well made - but it really wasn’t shocking, didn’t really reveal anything else about the island, and we all saw it coming a mile away. Jack’s backstory was interesting, but not good enough to overcome a fairly weak episode. But there are a few points to ponder:
MARRIAGE. First and foremost - did Jack get married or what? The last flashback scene was setup for either he or his wife to walk away from the altar. But then they kissed. So, does that mean they’re married? This would explain why Jack has been resisting Kate thus far on the island, but doesn’t explain why Jack is ring free on all noticeable fingers. I guess my official stance is that Jack and hot blonde girl got married (she will from this point forth be known as HBG, in the same way that Rousseau is known as CFL) but then something happened to break them up. Divorce? Boring. Death? More likely.
WORDS. The biggest and most important thing Boone did in his dying moments was mention to Jack the Hatch, and the fact that Locke is hiding it from them. This should effectively focus the attention on that hatch for the remainder of the season… and the numbers ingrained on it. Also, how fitting that Boone’s last words were "Tell Shannon, tell Shannon…" Doesn’t that pretty much sum up their relationship? Feelings that he couldn’t put into words, or wouldn’t put into words due to the guilt that surrounded their relationship. Oh Boone, such a tortured soul. There’s a lesson here kids: Don’t get romantically involved with your sister in law or you will end up dead.
LOCKE. So Locke is back - is he different? Has he been inside the hatch? Has he had another epiphany on the island? Since Jack now knows about the Hatch, there’s no way Locke can hide it any longer. He has to let everyone in on the secret. The real question becomes "Why has Locke kept it hidden from everyone for so long?" There’s some believable rationale in not telling them about a giant monster, polar bear, or freaky French radio signal, because it would scare people and incite panic. This was a metal hatch in the ground. You have to think that, while Locke is smart, 44 (I believe that is our official number of survivors at this point) heads trying to figure out how to open it would be better than two. Also, it looks as though Locke has regained full use of his legs in the commercial. Were his legs failing him a direct result of his loss of faith in the island? Or was that just adding to the island "testing him" for his worth before revealing the Hatch’s mystery?
WE. Ah, the fun with audio! Remember in the original airing of "Deus Ex Machina", where the audio of the radio voice in the plane was up for debate? If you remember, closed captioning told us the radio said "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", but those of us who re-listened to the clip for hours on our computers that night (whatever, don’t judge me - what did you do that night that was so important?) heard "WE are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!" Adding fuel to the controversy was the new commercial that aired the following weeks, with a new voice-over for the radio, that CLEARLY said "WE ARE", not "There were no". This makes me think that someone realized that this HUGE revelation went unnoticed by the majority of the viewing audience, so they tried to trick us in the previews to think that we just weren’t paying close enough attention the first time. The funny thing is, in the clip show last week, they showed the scene with the original debatable audio again.
Why? Here’s what I think happened. Some crazy marketing people who have no appreciation for surprise and are just trying to make money were like "Wait, no one caught that!" after the original airing. So they messed with the audio in the commercials to BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD with the message (effectively ruining the surprise and giving the audience no credit for having an imagination). The shows creators were like "Whoa whoa whoa - what’s in Cleveland?" and had them change it back. I’ve read more than one account of Lost producers expressing their disdain for the commercials that are shown for either being misleading or for giving away too much. Damon Lindlhoff’s official stance is "Do not believe anything that airs outside of the 42 minute episode. Commercials are the devil!"
CLIPS. Speaking of which, while many people would fail to look for deeper meaning in the clips episode, "Lost: the Journey", that aired last week - these people are not me. They likely have wives and / or kids, and can’t dedicate large chunks of their evenings to over analysis of TV. Losers! I was watching intently, thinking "What are they focusing on?" The point of the episode was to refresh people of what’s going on in the show and allow them to enjoy the remaining four episodes - therefore, you’d want to focus on the "main storylines" so far, and "set up" upcoming ones. What did they focus on? CLF and The Others.
CFL. Remember CFL? Remember Alex? Remember the Black Rock, the Others, the Voices, and the Sickness? Yeah, me neither. All these storylines have taken a backseat lately with the Hatch, Raft, and Baby taking the driver’s seat. Something tells me that CFL is coming back. Especially with the birth of Claire’s baby (speaking of which, when are we gonna get a name for it? I vote for Alex - wouldn’t that be interesting and feed into the whole "time loop" theory on the island?), CLF can come back either in the capacity to steal the baby and pretend it’s her own, or to "protect the baby" from the evils of the island. This should also lead to Claire showing a distrust for everyone else on the island to have any hand in raising her baby. Remember, raised by anyone other than Claire, this baby is going to be Mr. 666. Expect Claire to take this to the extreme, not letting anyone else hold her baby or help her with the child-rearing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself and stealing thoughts from an upcoming bullet point.
OTHERS. This was the storyline that I would have placed money on back in March. The Survivors vs. the Others in a big battle at the Black Rock. After the Hatch showed up, I went the other route, and you all know I’m now firmly in the "Tail of the Plane" camp. But… that clips show was awfully "Others" heavy. The voices that Sayid heard, the entire CFL speech about her compadres becoming "sick" once they came back from the Black Rock, etc. What if the Others in question are actually the survivors from the tail of the plane? What if the hatch somehow leads to the Others hideout? I’ve given up on this storyline much to easy! Are we lucky enough to get all these storylines tying together at season end? I was just banking on one or two of them being revealed… but now I think we might get all of them!
BABY. What is the over / under for this child surviving? Are we really going to have a newborn baby on this island? With the slow pace of the show (each episode taking up about two days on the island), they’ll have to recast this role every month! Or will we have a Hoby-like growing of the child (sorry about the obscure Baywatch reference - for you Star Wars nerds out there, what about how Anniken is all the sudden the same age as Natalie Portman in Episode II, when he’s like 15 years younger than her in Episode I - poor story telling Mr. Lucas!) where he’s all the sudden six or seven years old and is playing with Walt? This could easily setup the great Mr. 666 vs. Walt battle of good vs. evil, but is unlikely.
Best bets on the baby:
1. Getting kidnapped by the Others.
2. Getting kidnapped by CFL.
3. Getting sacrificed by the Others.
4. Dying by natural / cosmic causes.
5. Being eaten by a hungry Hurley.
Sorry for the crass - I just can’t imagine how that baby is going to survive on the island!
RAFT. Things are coming along nicely. My official picks for people who will sail away on the raft: Michael, Walt, Saywer, and Sayid. The hot theory on the internet is that the raft will set sail for the set of three smaller islands CFL had drawn on her map. I’m not sold on this… yet. I don’t think the raft will set sail before the finale, so that it can play into the "Exodus" title, so we can discuss this in future weeks.
DEATH. Remember my official stance on island deaths? That Boone would die, but so would someone else? I still stand by that. In fact, I’ll give you my top 3 most likely deaths before season end:
1. Michael
2. Jin
3. Sawyer
And the three least likely deaths:
1. Locke
2. Kate
3. Sayid
SHOT. Lastly, I’ll make another wager about the "shooting of Locke" seen in this week’s commercials. Refer back to my last point. There is NO WAY Locke is dying. No way. Even in my wildest, "What would really shock people and be crazy" dreams, Locke is staying alive on this island. He’s too integral to everything, and has been developed the most of any character, while still having tons of mystery about him. He’s a writer’s dream. So what do we see in the commercial? We see smoke and "hear" a gunshot. Like we "heard" the new voice over on the plane radio? I’m not buying. If Locke truly gets shot, he’s living through it and will somehow have been made invincible by the island. If not, someone is shooting a blank, or smoke is rising from something else and Locke is falling down for another reason.
MUSIC. Isn’t it ironic how the last two episodes of the season are famous song titles? Pretty cool if you ask me - also, they’re both about "fleeing" and "escaping".
May 11. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Yes, May is a very good month.
PS - Alias is really good again, you guys can start watching again if you’ve fallen off the wagon. It is once again an officially sanctioned TV show of the Lost Email. What are the other officially sanctioned shows of the Lost Email, you ask?
Monday - 24
Tuesday - Scrubs, the Office
Wednesday - Lost, Alias
Thursday - the OC
Sunday - Desperate Housewives, Family Guy
Delta House is where it’s at! Two turn tables and a microphone!: "The Greater Good"
Character Involved: Sayid (the loveable Iraqi Part II)
TV Guide Description: After burying one of their own, tempers flare as the castaways' suspicions of each other grow -- and an unlikely survivor vows revenge. Meanwhile, Claire and Charlie struggle to calm her newborn.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I hear the phrase "The Greater Good", I think of one thing - sacrificing someone or something "for the greater good", meaning that their loss or death ends up being for the benefit of others to the point where it’s better off that the tragedy happened. In the case of Lost, we must be referring to one of two things:
1. Boone’s death as being for the greater good. But how? What good is going to come from the death of fair Boone with the freaky blue eyes? Well, if his death somehow opened the hatch / led Locke to a greater understanding of the island, it could be that his death leads to the remaining survivors getting off the island / being able to better survive on the island. Remember, it almost seemed like Boone’s death was a necessary part of opening the hatch, and Locke willingly made the trade. Is Locke so blinded by the "magic of the island" that he is willing to kill his friend? Or is Locke truly looking at everything logically, and seeing that a death was needed to open the hatch, realized that opening the hatch was more important than Boone’s life. But that would have to mean that whatever is inside that hatch is a BIG DEAL. What is in that hatch?!?!
2. Going after Locke for the greater good. The rationale from Jack / Sayid / the other survivors at this point is: "Locke is dangerous. We need to kill him to prevent him from hurting anyone else. We need to kill him for the greater good." The commercials show Shannon coaxing Sayid into killing Locke, and last episode ended with Jack saying "I’m going to find John Locke." Both Jack and Sayid have demonstrated how much they DO NOT LIKE killing people and do not want violence to be the answer. However, if they are both convinced that Locke murdered Boone, killing him would protect the rest of the people on the island. It would be for the greater good.
I should point out that this episode was originally titled "Sides". When I first read the episode title a few months back, I figured it had to be the characters choosing whose side they would be on - Jack or Locke seemingly being the two ring leaders. Although back then, I figured it would have something to do with either living in the caves vs. the beach, or choosing to take up arms against "The Others" vs. playing pacifist, it now looks like the "Sides" in question might be whether or not to kill Locke. This is a very polarizing event on the island. Will Locke be able to convince everyone that Boone’s death was an accident or that it was a necessary occurrence, or will Jack / Sayid convince people that Locke must pay for his crime? It should be very interesting…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Well, the first sentence pretty well puts the nail in Boone’s coffin (literally). He really is dead. Granted, he will likely be back due to flashbacks of Shannon, etc - but that’s it. Tempers flaring due to suspicion are documented fairly well in the previews - showing a lot of shouting, pushing, fighting (and shooting?) between Jack, Sayid, and Locke. The unlikely survivor to go for revenge? I’d say Jack, simply because his character has been so anti-guns, anti-violence, save everyone all along (hey, he must be a democrat!). You could also argue that Sayid is the unlikely revenge-seeker, since he is pretty much doing it at Shannon’s request, even though this is the exact frame of mind that drove him to leave the rest of the survivors so many weeks ago. His torture of Sawyer quickly brought him back to his Iraqi National Guard past, a past he doesn’t want to remember, a person he doesn’t want to be. If he goes after Locke, guns blazing, he must really want to impress Shannon. Hello, Sayid? Kate is way hotter! What are you thinking buddy?
The deep thinker in me hopes that the last sentence about Claire and Charlie trying to calm the newborn anti-Christ are related to the fact that the baby is pure, unadulterated evil - but I think this is going to be like the time that the TV Guide Preview said "a survivor has mysterious headaches" and then it just turned out that Sawyer needed glasses. Those tricky writers with their obvious and mundane storylines!
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Remember this episode? Jack almost chopped off Boone’s leg, Locke was suspiciously absent, and Sayid tried to hook up with Shannon. Oh yeah, and Boone died. It was a decent episode. It was well made - but it really wasn’t shocking, didn’t really reveal anything else about the island, and we all saw it coming a mile away. Jack’s backstory was interesting, but not good enough to overcome a fairly weak episode. But there are a few points to ponder:
MARRIAGE. First and foremost - did Jack get married or what? The last flashback scene was setup for either he or his wife to walk away from the altar. But then they kissed. So, does that mean they’re married? This would explain why Jack has been resisting Kate thus far on the island, but doesn’t explain why Jack is ring free on all noticeable fingers. I guess my official stance is that Jack and hot blonde girl got married (she will from this point forth be known as HBG, in the same way that Rousseau is known as CFL) but then something happened to break them up. Divorce? Boring. Death? More likely.
WORDS. The biggest and most important thing Boone did in his dying moments was mention to Jack the Hatch, and the fact that Locke is hiding it from them. This should effectively focus the attention on that hatch for the remainder of the season… and the numbers ingrained on it. Also, how fitting that Boone’s last words were "Tell Shannon, tell Shannon…" Doesn’t that pretty much sum up their relationship? Feelings that he couldn’t put into words, or wouldn’t put into words due to the guilt that surrounded their relationship. Oh Boone, such a tortured soul. There’s a lesson here kids: Don’t get romantically involved with your sister in law or you will end up dead.
LOCKE. So Locke is back - is he different? Has he been inside the hatch? Has he had another epiphany on the island? Since Jack now knows about the Hatch, there’s no way Locke can hide it any longer. He has to let everyone in on the secret. The real question becomes "Why has Locke kept it hidden from everyone for so long?" There’s some believable rationale in not telling them about a giant monster, polar bear, or freaky French radio signal, because it would scare people and incite panic. This was a metal hatch in the ground. You have to think that, while Locke is smart, 44 (I believe that is our official number of survivors at this point) heads trying to figure out how to open it would be better than two. Also, it looks as though Locke has regained full use of his legs in the commercial. Were his legs failing him a direct result of his loss of faith in the island? Or was that just adding to the island "testing him" for his worth before revealing the Hatch’s mystery?
WE. Ah, the fun with audio! Remember in the original airing of "Deus Ex Machina", where the audio of the radio voice in the plane was up for debate? If you remember, closed captioning told us the radio said "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815", but those of us who re-listened to the clip for hours on our computers that night (whatever, don’t judge me - what did you do that night that was so important?) heard "WE are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!" Adding fuel to the controversy was the new commercial that aired the following weeks, with a new voice-over for the radio, that CLEARLY said "WE ARE", not "There were no". This makes me think that someone realized that this HUGE revelation went unnoticed by the majority of the viewing audience, so they tried to trick us in the previews to think that we just weren’t paying close enough attention the first time. The funny thing is, in the clip show last week, they showed the scene with the original debatable audio again.
Why? Here’s what I think happened. Some crazy marketing people who have no appreciation for surprise and are just trying to make money were like "Wait, no one caught that!" after the original airing. So they messed with the audio in the commercials to BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD with the message (effectively ruining the surprise and giving the audience no credit for having an imagination). The shows creators were like "Whoa whoa whoa - what’s in Cleveland?" and had them change it back. I’ve read more than one account of Lost producers expressing their disdain for the commercials that are shown for either being misleading or for giving away too much. Damon Lindlhoff’s official stance is "Do not believe anything that airs outside of the 42 minute episode. Commercials are the devil!"
CLIPS. Speaking of which, while many people would fail to look for deeper meaning in the clips episode, "Lost: the Journey", that aired last week - these people are not me. They likely have wives and / or kids, and can’t dedicate large chunks of their evenings to over analysis of TV. Losers! I was watching intently, thinking "What are they focusing on?" The point of the episode was to refresh people of what’s going on in the show and allow them to enjoy the remaining four episodes - therefore, you’d want to focus on the "main storylines" so far, and "set up" upcoming ones. What did they focus on? CLF and The Others.
CFL. Remember CFL? Remember Alex? Remember the Black Rock, the Others, the Voices, and the Sickness? Yeah, me neither. All these storylines have taken a backseat lately with the Hatch, Raft, and Baby taking the driver’s seat. Something tells me that CFL is coming back. Especially with the birth of Claire’s baby (speaking of which, when are we gonna get a name for it? I vote for Alex - wouldn’t that be interesting and feed into the whole "time loop" theory on the island?), CLF can come back either in the capacity to steal the baby and pretend it’s her own, or to "protect the baby" from the evils of the island. This should also lead to Claire showing a distrust for everyone else on the island to have any hand in raising her baby. Remember, raised by anyone other than Claire, this baby is going to be Mr. 666. Expect Claire to take this to the extreme, not letting anyone else hold her baby or help her with the child-rearing.
But I’m getting ahead of myself and stealing thoughts from an upcoming bullet point.
OTHERS. This was the storyline that I would have placed money on back in March. The Survivors vs. the Others in a big battle at the Black Rock. After the Hatch showed up, I went the other route, and you all know I’m now firmly in the "Tail of the Plane" camp. But… that clips show was awfully "Others" heavy. The voices that Sayid heard, the entire CFL speech about her compadres becoming "sick" once they came back from the Black Rock, etc. What if the Others in question are actually the survivors from the tail of the plane? What if the hatch somehow leads to the Others hideout? I’ve given up on this storyline much to easy! Are we lucky enough to get all these storylines tying together at season end? I was just banking on one or two of them being revealed… but now I think we might get all of them!
BABY. What is the over / under for this child surviving? Are we really going to have a newborn baby on this island? With the slow pace of the show (each episode taking up about two days on the island), they’ll have to recast this role every month! Or will we have a Hoby-like growing of the child (sorry about the obscure Baywatch reference - for you Star Wars nerds out there, what about how Anniken is all the sudden the same age as Natalie Portman in Episode II, when he’s like 15 years younger than her in Episode I - poor story telling Mr. Lucas!) where he’s all the sudden six or seven years old and is playing with Walt? This could easily setup the great Mr. 666 vs. Walt battle of good vs. evil, but is unlikely.
Best bets on the baby:
1. Getting kidnapped by the Others.
2. Getting kidnapped by CFL.
3. Getting sacrificed by the Others.
4. Dying by natural / cosmic causes.
5. Being eaten by a hungry Hurley.
Sorry for the crass - I just can’t imagine how that baby is going to survive on the island!
RAFT. Things are coming along nicely. My official picks for people who will sail away on the raft: Michael, Walt, Saywer, and Sayid. The hot theory on the internet is that the raft will set sail for the set of three smaller islands CFL had drawn on her map. I’m not sold on this… yet. I don’t think the raft will set sail before the finale, so that it can play into the "Exodus" title, so we can discuss this in future weeks.
DEATH. Remember my official stance on island deaths? That Boone would die, but so would someone else? I still stand by that. In fact, I’ll give you my top 3 most likely deaths before season end:
1. Michael
2. Jin
3. Sawyer
And the three least likely deaths:
1. Locke
2. Kate
3. Sayid
SHOT. Lastly, I’ll make another wager about the "shooting of Locke" seen in this week’s commercials. Refer back to my last point. There is NO WAY Locke is dying. No way. Even in my wildest, "What would really shock people and be crazy" dreams, Locke is staying alive on this island. He’s too integral to everything, and has been developed the most of any character, while still having tons of mystery about him. He’s a writer’s dream. So what do we see in the commercial? We see smoke and "hear" a gunshot. Like we "heard" the new voice over on the plane radio? I’m not buying. If Locke truly gets shot, he’s living through it and will somehow have been made invincible by the island. If not, someone is shooting a blank, or smoke is rising from something else and Locke is falling down for another reason.
MUSIC. Isn’t it ironic how the last two episodes of the season are famous song titles? Pretty cool if you ask me - also, they’re both about "fleeing" and "escaping".
May 11. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Yes, May is a very good month.
PS - Alias is really good again, you guys can start watching again if you’ve fallen off the wagon. It is once again an officially sanctioned TV show of the Lost Email. What are the other officially sanctioned shows of the Lost Email, you ask?
Monday - 24
Tuesday - Scrubs, the Office
Wednesday - Lost, Alias
Thursday - the OC
Sunday - Desperate Housewives, Family Guy
Delta House is where it’s at! Two turn tables and a microphone!
Monday, April 25, 2005
Mini Lost Email
(Again with the lack of pictures - I'll figure it out, don't worry!)
Why Mini? Well, this week doesn’t truly warrant a full fledged Lost Email. While there is a new "episode" this week, there isn’t going to be any new "footage". Plus, I don’t want to have to answer 100 questions about "Is Lost new this week?" from friends and co-workers…
Lost Episode Title: "Lost: The Journey"
Character Involved: Jack. Kate. Locke. Sawyer. Charlie. Sayid. More?
TV Guide Description: ABC invites new and avid "Lost" viewers to take a fresh look at one of this season's most talked about shows. "Lost: The Journey" promises to explore the series in a way that will bring new viewers up to date -- but which current viewers will also find illuminating. From the back stories of some of the most interesting characters on television to the mysteries of the island, "Lost: The Journey" will provide an insightful glimpse at the lives of some of the survivors of the doomed Oceanic Airlines flight 815. Narrated in a linear fashion and culminating from the pieces of the back stories told over multiple episodes in the series, "Lost: The Journey" focuses on the flashbacks of a core of characters, illustrating who they were and what they were doing before the crash. In addition, the island itself will be explored - culled from events that have taken place - which may reveal some of its secrets.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Really, there’s probably not much of a deeper meaning to this title. In fact, I’d wager the title came from some ABC suit, rather than an actual writer / creator of the show. Still, I’m not above reading deeper into something with no true deep meaning. "The Journey" obviously has two main points:
1. The physical journey that each of the characters was taking… on Flight 815, and then to the Island.
2. The spiritual / mental / emotional journey that each character is going through in life. Is the Island guiding them on this journey? Or would they be going on this journey regardless of where they were in the world? I think that the events of the island, along with Locke’s intervention make the journey heightened due to them being on the island.
There’s also the connection between this title and the season finale of "Exodus", but I won’t get into that here.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: I’ll save these for next week’s Email. In return, I’ll present you with some sweet teases culled from the various corners of the Internet:
TEASES.
Early on, Jack found some skeletons and a pouch containing black-and-white rocks.
Executive producer Damon Lindelof: "We know who those skeletons are, what their story was, and what they were doing with those stones. But that’s a question we won’t be answering this season."
Sawyer’s backstory intersects with the Jack and Shannon/Boone histories.
Lindelof: "We’ll see, before the end of the season, why he popped up in Boone’s flashback."
Earlier this season, someone knocked out Sayid while he was trying to operate the plane’s radio.
Lindelof: "You will find out who within the next three original episodes. They will find the person, and that person will confess to having done it."
Will Michael’s raft set sail by season’s end?
Lindelof: "All I can say is, how much would it suck if it didn’t set sail? Wouldn’t you feel ripped off? I sure would!"
Charlie was hooked on heroin. Recently, Locke and Boone found heroin on a plane.
Lindelof: "One of the things that has made Charlie’s ability to kick the habit so easy is that he hasn’t had any temptation. Reintroducing temptation is part of our intent."
Hurley and the lotto numbers.
Lindelof: "Trying to find greater meaning in the numbers is the direction we are going to continue in for the rest of the season. Hurley doesn’t know that the numbers are on the hatch- what happens when he finds out that the numbers are on the hatch should be interesting."
Jin worked for his brutish father-in-law; what exactly was his job title?
Lindelof: "People always ask, ‘What’s Jin’s problem?’ There are a few missing pieces that will make it even clearer by season’s end why he’s acted the way he’s acted."
What’s Locke’s motive for keeping the hatch secret from the other castaways?
Lindelof: "His motive is revealed soon. Everything Locke does he believes is in the best interest of everybody. That’s all I’ll say."
Lastly, the award for coolest hidden Marketing scheme ever goes to the folks at Entertainment Weekly. Did you catch last week’s cover?
Check the issue number. That’s right. 815. Insanity.
Plan your May!
May 4, 2005 - Episode 21: The Greater Good (Sayid)
May 11, 2005 - Episode 22: Born to Run (Kate)
May 18, 2005 - Episode 23: Exodus, Part 1 (Everybody)
May 25, 2005 - Episode 24: Exodus, Part 2 (Everybody)
May 25, 2005 - Episode 25: Exodus, Part 3 (Everybody)
Full Email next week!
Why Mini? Well, this week doesn’t truly warrant a full fledged Lost Email. While there is a new "episode" this week, there isn’t going to be any new "footage". Plus, I don’t want to have to answer 100 questions about "Is Lost new this week?" from friends and co-workers…
Lost Episode Title: "Lost: The Journey"
Character Involved: Jack. Kate. Locke. Sawyer. Charlie. Sayid. More?
TV Guide Description: ABC invites new and avid "Lost" viewers to take a fresh look at one of this season's most talked about shows. "Lost: The Journey" promises to explore the series in a way that will bring new viewers up to date -- but which current viewers will also find illuminating. From the back stories of some of the most interesting characters on television to the mysteries of the island, "Lost: The Journey" will provide an insightful glimpse at the lives of some of the survivors of the doomed Oceanic Airlines flight 815. Narrated in a linear fashion and culminating from the pieces of the back stories told over multiple episodes in the series, "Lost: The Journey" focuses on the flashbacks of a core of characters, illustrating who they were and what they were doing before the crash. In addition, the island itself will be explored - culled from events that have taken place - which may reveal some of its secrets.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Really, there’s probably not much of a deeper meaning to this title. In fact, I’d wager the title came from some ABC suit, rather than an actual writer / creator of the show. Still, I’m not above reading deeper into something with no true deep meaning. "The Journey" obviously has two main points:
1. The physical journey that each of the characters was taking… on Flight 815, and then to the Island.
2. The spiritual / mental / emotional journey that each character is going through in life. Is the Island guiding them on this journey? Or would they be going on this journey regardless of where they were in the world? I think that the events of the island, along with Locke’s intervention make the journey heightened due to them being on the island.
There’s also the connection between this title and the season finale of "Exodus", but I won’t get into that here.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: I’ll save these for next week’s Email. In return, I’ll present you with some sweet teases culled from the various corners of the Internet:
TEASES.
Early on, Jack found some skeletons and a pouch containing black-and-white rocks.
Executive producer Damon Lindelof: "We know who those skeletons are, what their story was, and what they were doing with those stones. But that’s a question we won’t be answering this season."
Sawyer’s backstory intersects with the Jack and Shannon/Boone histories.
Lindelof: "We’ll see, before the end of the season, why he popped up in Boone’s flashback."
Earlier this season, someone knocked out Sayid while he was trying to operate the plane’s radio.
Lindelof: "You will find out who within the next three original episodes. They will find the person, and that person will confess to having done it."
Will Michael’s raft set sail by season’s end?
Lindelof: "All I can say is, how much would it suck if it didn’t set sail? Wouldn’t you feel ripped off? I sure would!"
Charlie was hooked on heroin. Recently, Locke and Boone found heroin on a plane.
Lindelof: "One of the things that has made Charlie’s ability to kick the habit so easy is that he hasn’t had any temptation. Reintroducing temptation is part of our intent."
Hurley and the lotto numbers.
Lindelof: "Trying to find greater meaning in the numbers is the direction we are going to continue in for the rest of the season. Hurley doesn’t know that the numbers are on the hatch- what happens when he finds out that the numbers are on the hatch should be interesting."
Jin worked for his brutish father-in-law; what exactly was his job title?
Lindelof: "People always ask, ‘What’s Jin’s problem?’ There are a few missing pieces that will make it even clearer by season’s end why he’s acted the way he’s acted."
What’s Locke’s motive for keeping the hatch secret from the other castaways?
Lindelof: "His motive is revealed soon. Everything Locke does he believes is in the best interest of everybody. That’s all I’ll say."
Lastly, the award for coolest hidden Marketing scheme ever goes to the folks at Entertainment Weekly. Did you catch last week’s cover?
Check the issue number. That’s right. 815. Insanity.
Plan your May!
May 4, 2005 - Episode 21: The Greater Good (Sayid)
May 11, 2005 - Episode 22: Born to Run (Kate)
May 18, 2005 - Episode 23: Exodus, Part 1 (Everybody)
May 25, 2005 - Episode 24: Exodus, Part 2 (Everybody)
May 25, 2005 - Episode 25: Exodus, Part 3 (Everybody)
Full Email next week!
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
The Best Lost Email Ever (Because There Are Pictures!)
(Still working on uploading pictures, thus making this perhaps not "The Best Lost Email Ever" - yet...)
In honor of the beautiful day outside, and the fact that I spent two hours last night working on this puppy and am anxious to see the reaction, here is this week’s Lost Email, a whole day early! Joy!
Lost Episode Title: "Do No Harm"
Character Involved: Jack (Part III - yes, seems greedy to me as well, given that we haven’t gotten our Vincent back story yet, but I take it to mean that the back story isn’t really that important this episode, which means more emphasis on hot island action!)
TV Guide Description: Claire goes into labor while a helpless Charlie goes into panic mode. Meanwhile Locke is missing, Jack tends to a wounded survivor and Sayid presents Shannon with a romantic surprise.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I first read the title, I did a little Internet research (yes, they have the Internet on computers now). "Do No Harm" is the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. They basically have three objectives:
1. To advance the development of medical treatments and therapies that do not require the destruction of human life, including the human embryo.
2. To educate and inform public policy makers and the general public regarding these ethically acceptable and medically promising areas of research and treatment.
3. To support continuation of federal laws prohibiting the federal funding of research that requires the destruction of human life, including the human embryo.
One could read into this that maybe it has something to do with Claire’s baby - but I can’t imagine that the Others want to do research on Claire’s baby. Luckily, there’s a much better explanation to the episode title: our good friend Hippocrates.
It is a widely held misconception that the familiar dictum "First, do no harm" comes from the Hippocratic Oath, the oath many physicians take when they enter medical practice. However, the Hippocratic Oath does not and never did contain those words. The phrase comes from another Hippocratic work, The Epidemics :
"As to diseases,make a habit of two things-to help, or at least do no harm."
Based on where last week’s episode left us, and given this is a Jack episode - we must be talking about Jack and Boone here. Boone looked very cutup last episode, by far the worst injuries a survivor on the island has had that Jack has been able to treat. If he’s really on his death bed, as the commercials lead us to believe, Jack won’t be able to save him, but can do everything in his power to help him.
Still way too obvious. One step further - if you re-read that Hippocratic phrase, the thrust is that we should help people, but even if we can’t - we should at least not hurt people. Take Boone out of the equation. Locke is missing, Boone is dying, and Jack and the rest of the survivors are looking for answers. Do they take the logical assumption that Locke is responsible for Boone’s injuries and go out to capture Locke and kill him? Will the episode end with Jack vs. Locke, with Jack shooting / killing Locke for "what he did to Boone"? The episode title has to reference both sides of the quote - help people (Boone) and don’t hurt them (Locke). Jack will likely do one, and not the other…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Finally Claire goes into labor! She was allegedly nine months pregnant when she got on Flight 815, and now they’ve been on the island for over a month. Just another typical 10 month pregnancy I guess. We all knew it was going to come down to Charlie having to deliver the baby, didn’t we? The previews also show Kate being around, but no Jack. Jack’s going to be preoccupied back at camp with Boone and his wounds, leaving Charlie and Kate to deliver this baby. I always said that the "big character death" would occur at the same time this baby is born, completing the whole "circle of life" theme. Claire would be an easy death - her back story has been told, it would create great drama for Charlie vs. Jack (for not being there), and death during child birth seems reasonable given the circumstances on the island. EXCEPT, how would the baby be fed? I bet there wasn’t any formula on the plane, leaving one place for a mammal to get nourishment. I’ll leave it at that to keep it PG. Unless they’re killing both Claire and baby Anti-Christ, they’re both safe.
Will the baby come out with red eyes? How about one black eye and one white eye? Will it be totally normal? Remember, if Claire doesn’t raise this bad boy, he’s turning out to be evil of the highest order. Quotes from the Claire-centric "Raised by Another":
"This child parented by anyone else, anyone other than you. . . danger surrounds this baby. . ."
"Your nature, your spirit, your goodness, must be an influence in the development of this child"
"It can't be another. You mustn't allow another to raise your baby."
Very weird. Very religious. Isn’t it odd that another one of the "Others" hasn’t tried to kidnap Claire as well? Or was Ethan truly acting alone?
Locke is missing? Not surprising. I would bet that we don’t see Locke for this entire episode. Everyone is going to be looking to Locke for answers about Boone, and Locke is busy exploring the hatch / wherever it leads. There are enough other storylines going on right now that Locke can be on the backburner, and we can have him reappear in the next episode again changed, with new knowledge about the island, the others, etc. He’s the chosen one, people.
Jack tends to a wounded survivor. Boone. Got it.
Sayid and Shannon getting it on? Seems unnecessary this episode, given all the other excitement. I predict I curse at the TV when they’re showing this rather than the Boone / Claire / Locke storylines, except for this point. So Sayid likes Shannon. Shannon has a history of using guys for what she wants. Shannon also has a history of "liking" her brother. Boone comes back all bloodied up and dying. What will Shannon’s reaction to be? If I was writing, it would be her turning to Sayid and saying "Find Locke and make him pay for what he did to my brother." Interestingly, next week is Sayid’s episode, and he has training in torture. His episode was originally titled "Sides" (as in, the survivors take two sides on "Should we kill Locke or not"), but is now "The Greater Good" (as in, "Killing Locke is for the greater good and safety of us on this island"). Plus, it would give more purpose to the somewhat forced Shannon / Sayid storyline. Come on, if you want to put romance in the show, how about Kate and Jack? Or Kate and Sawyer? Or Charlie and Claire? Or Kate and Shannon? There must be a bigger reason for the Shannon / Sayid story.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Good stuff. A top five episode for sure. Locke is probably the most interesting character on TV today. He’s almost tragic in nature - raised an orphan, abandoned and then used by his parents, physical disability (which he got how?), working a crappy office job, etc. It’s almost Shakespearian. Is it any wonder he loves life on the island and doesn’t want to leave?
NUMBERS. Did everyone catch in the beginning, when Locke’s mom (Suzy Kurtz) asked where footballs were, he replied "Regulation in aisle EIGHT, nerf in aisle FIFTEEN". 815! More fun with numbers J At this point, I have to think the show’s producers are just messing with us so the nerds on the Internet (read: me) have something else to over-analyze.
FAMILY. Again we see drama with families, more specifically, fathers. People with obvious paternal issues: Jack, Sawyer, Locke, Sun, Jin, Walt. Kate has referenced her dad, but we know nothing about him. He may have been "the man she loved, the man she killed." Hurley, Shannon, and Boone were all lacking fathers. Who knows about Claire and Charlie? There’s obvious family issues there as well. Yet another way all the survivors are connected to each other, even prior to being on the island.
MOUSETRAP. Sully and I geeked out as the episode opened with the game of Mousetrap. One, we’re big fans of the game. Two, it reeks of symbolism. Are all our survivors being led into a trap on the island? Did Locke lead Boone into the trap of the plane? He knew that his visions were coming true - and a big freaky image was a bloody Boone. Was Locke so blinded by his need to get inside that hatch that Boone becomes expendable?
BOONE. Well, he’s the obvious "Big Character Death". But we all see this coming a mile away at this point. Weren’t we promised a "shocking death"? I’m not shocked by this. But like I said, I have a hard time believing Jack is going to be able to save him at this point. My best guess now is that there will be two deaths. Boone and someone else.
LEGS. So, how did Locke lose his ability to walk? This episode CONSTANTLY teased us with how it happened - showing a car hit him, out hunting, going into surgery, gingerly waking up and walking out, and parking his car in the middle of the road at the end. On that last scene in particular, the camera seemed to hang on Lost, waiting for that shocking BAM moment where a truck hits him causing his disability and making his father responsible. But they didn’t. You know what that means - Locke isn’t going anywhere. We’ve got at least another Locke backstory coming our way next year!
HATCH. So… what made the light turn on at the end? Was it due to the fact that blood touched it? Did the Island / Hatch require a human sacrifice to be opened, which Boone became? Was it due to the fact that the "non-believer" (Boone) had been removed, leaving only those "worthy" of entrance? (Locke). Or is it so simple that no one had ever simply knocked on the hatch at night, as Locke was doing at the end? Maybe that is when a "guard" is on watch inside that hatch. Wouldn’t that be the most ironic ever? How do you open a door with no handle? You knock :)
RELIGION. This episode was DRAPED in religious imagery left and right. From Locke’s mom saying he was immaculately conceived, to the "carrying of the cross" imagery with Boone carrying Locke, and then Locke carrying a bloody Boone, to having dead Nigerian priests toting Virgin Marys full of smack, to the final shot of a penitent Locke kneeling on the hatch, receiving a sign in the form of light, a la the Burning Bush in the Bible. So what does this mean? Locke is already the most sage-like character on the island. Is he really serving as their "Christ-figure", giving them guidance for how to live through their new life on the island? If you buy the whole "They’re in purgatory" theory, it could be that when Locke met the monster way back when, he was changed to become a guide of sorts to get everyone else’s souls to the same place he is. That’s why he’s working to get them to "release their inner demons" and "move on", even though everyone has a TON of past baggage in their lives. The Locke scene then becomes similar to someone banging on the gates of heaven, begging to be let in. Think about what Locke said "I did everything you asked of me - why won’t you open up?" Very religious.
AFRICA. Isn’t it weird that Locke and Boone found Nigerian drug smugglers in the Pacific Ocean? Isn’t it even weirder that they went to such great lengths to make us, as viewers know they were specifically from Nigeria? Who cares? Oh, that’s right - everything has meaning on Lost. So here’s a clue. What can be read into this? Well, I introduce Exhibit A (see attachment to this Email - that’s right, we’re getting fancier with the Lost Emails!).
There is a theory of "Limbo Triangles Areas " on Earth that were written about in the books "Limbo of the Lost" by John Wallace Spencer and "The Bermuda Triangle " by Adi Kent Thomas Jeffrey in the 1970s. These are alleged areas of weird magnetic anomalies, where a LOT of planes go down for no reason or just disappear off the face of the earth. The Bermuda Triangle is the most well known. But see where else triangles are? The Sahara Desert in Africa (as seen on the Nigerian’s map), and two locations in the South Pacific that could easily be "1000 miles off course", as Flight 815 was. Interestingly, the one in the South Pacific and the one in Africa are basically on the exact opposite sides of the planet. Did the plane enter one of these Super Mario Bros "Warp Zones" in Africa and end up on this island? Hmmm - magnetic anomalies - like the kind that would make a compass go wacky (see Locke’s compass to Sayid)?
Or, if you want to look at the Latitude and Longitude of the Cursed Numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42), where in the world does that put us?
Right in the Nigeria. See Exhibit B.
Oh, and while we’re playing "fun with numbers", wasn’t CFL writing these numbers over and over again too? How else could those numbers be written in Latitude / Longitude form? See Exhibit C.
Square in the middle of France. Home of lots of Crazy French Ladies, not just Rousseau.
Wow.
RADIO. Equally mind-blowing are the two theories on the Boone on the Radio part of the episode. If you watched the episode with Closed Captioning on, the conversation went like this:
Boone: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Radio Voice: "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Pretty mind blowing, and lends credence to the whole "Purgatory" theory about the show. But how would a random plane passing over the Pacific be so familiar with the Flight Number and if there were any survivors? Wouldn’t he answer "Jigga what?! Where are you?!" instead of "No, you’re not a survivor. You’re dead." That doesn’t make much sense. Also, we all know Closed Captioning often has gibberish / wrong words from time to time. Someone is basically transcribing it as they hear it (like a court reporter).
If you listen to it closely, and if you know people on the internet with fancy audio editing tools that can edit out the fuzz of the radio voice / Locke’s yelling, and raise some different audio levels, you hear this:
Boone: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Radio Voice: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!"
It should be noted that the radio voice says his sentence with excitement and surprise. What does that mean? Well, we’ve seen the nose of the plane buried in the jungle (where the transponder was). We’ve seen the body of the plane on the beach (where our fearless cast is). Where is the tail? On the island somewhere else? They might have a radio among their wreckage. They’d know Flight 815 pretty well. They’d be surprised to hear about other survivors. Wasn’t Rose so sure that her husband was alive? It fits together pretty well!
EXODUS. Movement of the people. We finally have a title for the 3 hour long Season Finale! Exodus, Parts 1-3. Here’s what we know: It will feature flashbacks of EVERYONE. It has to be a flashback to all of the survivors in the airport before Flight 815 took off, if you ask me. Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense. How about the deeper meaning of the word Exodus? I should save this for the Exodus Email that will come out at the end of May (otherwise what else will I put at the very top?) But think about this. In the Bible, Exodus refers to spending the 40 years in the desert to escape slavery. Is this island an "escape" for the survivors? Their past lives were all full of death, tragedy, and heartache. Maybe this island is their exodus away from that life…
April 13 - Special Episode! According to TV Guide, "the stories of the main characters on Lost will be told in chronological order." No new material, but retelling the backstories of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, etc. IN ORDER. Weird, but fun - beats a rerun!
April 20 1.21 Sayid-centric. "The Greater Good"
May 4. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 11 - ??? I’m assuming a repeat, but not sure what episode.
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Excitement.
In honor of the beautiful day outside, and the fact that I spent two hours last night working on this puppy and am anxious to see the reaction, here is this week’s Lost Email, a whole day early! Joy!
Lost Episode Title: "Do No Harm"
Character Involved: Jack (Part III - yes, seems greedy to me as well, given that we haven’t gotten our Vincent back story yet, but I take it to mean that the back story isn’t really that important this episode, which means more emphasis on hot island action!)
TV Guide Description: Claire goes into labor while a helpless Charlie goes into panic mode. Meanwhile Locke is missing, Jack tends to a wounded survivor and Sayid presents Shannon with a romantic surprise.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: When I first read the title, I did a little Internet research (yes, they have the Internet on computers now). "Do No Harm" is the Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics. They basically have three objectives:
1. To advance the development of medical treatments and therapies that do not require the destruction of human life, including the human embryo.
2. To educate and inform public policy makers and the general public regarding these ethically acceptable and medically promising areas of research and treatment.
3. To support continuation of federal laws prohibiting the federal funding of research that requires the destruction of human life, including the human embryo.
One could read into this that maybe it has something to do with Claire’s baby - but I can’t imagine that the Others want to do research on Claire’s baby. Luckily, there’s a much better explanation to the episode title: our good friend Hippocrates.
It is a widely held misconception that the familiar dictum "First, do no harm" comes from the Hippocratic Oath, the oath many physicians take when they enter medical practice. However, the Hippocratic Oath does not and never did contain those words. The phrase comes from another Hippocratic work, The Epidemics :
"As to diseases,make a habit of two things-to help, or at least do no harm."
Based on where last week’s episode left us, and given this is a Jack episode - we must be talking about Jack and Boone here. Boone looked very cutup last episode, by far the worst injuries a survivor on the island has had that Jack has been able to treat. If he’s really on his death bed, as the commercials lead us to believe, Jack won’t be able to save him, but can do everything in his power to help him.
Still way too obvious. One step further - if you re-read that Hippocratic phrase, the thrust is that we should help people, but even if we can’t - we should at least not hurt people. Take Boone out of the equation. Locke is missing, Boone is dying, and Jack and the rest of the survivors are looking for answers. Do they take the logical assumption that Locke is responsible for Boone’s injuries and go out to capture Locke and kill him? Will the episode end with Jack vs. Locke, with Jack shooting / killing Locke for "what he did to Boone"? The episode title has to reference both sides of the quote - help people (Boone) and don’t hurt them (Locke). Jack will likely do one, and not the other…
TV Guide Description Breakdown: Finally Claire goes into labor! She was allegedly nine months pregnant when she got on Flight 815, and now they’ve been on the island for over a month. Just another typical 10 month pregnancy I guess. We all knew it was going to come down to Charlie having to deliver the baby, didn’t we? The previews also show Kate being around, but no Jack. Jack’s going to be preoccupied back at camp with Boone and his wounds, leaving Charlie and Kate to deliver this baby. I always said that the "big character death" would occur at the same time this baby is born, completing the whole "circle of life" theme. Claire would be an easy death - her back story has been told, it would create great drama for Charlie vs. Jack (for not being there), and death during child birth seems reasonable given the circumstances on the island. EXCEPT, how would the baby be fed? I bet there wasn’t any formula on the plane, leaving one place for a mammal to get nourishment. I’ll leave it at that to keep it PG. Unless they’re killing both Claire and baby Anti-Christ, they’re both safe.
Will the baby come out with red eyes? How about one black eye and one white eye? Will it be totally normal? Remember, if Claire doesn’t raise this bad boy, he’s turning out to be evil of the highest order. Quotes from the Claire-centric "Raised by Another":
"This child parented by anyone else, anyone other than you. . . danger surrounds this baby. . ."
"Your nature, your spirit, your goodness, must be an influence in the development of this child"
"It can't be another. You mustn't allow another to raise your baby."
Very weird. Very religious. Isn’t it odd that another one of the "Others" hasn’t tried to kidnap Claire as well? Or was Ethan truly acting alone?
Locke is missing? Not surprising. I would bet that we don’t see Locke for this entire episode. Everyone is going to be looking to Locke for answers about Boone, and Locke is busy exploring the hatch / wherever it leads. There are enough other storylines going on right now that Locke can be on the backburner, and we can have him reappear in the next episode again changed, with new knowledge about the island, the others, etc. He’s the chosen one, people.
Jack tends to a wounded survivor. Boone. Got it.
Sayid and Shannon getting it on? Seems unnecessary this episode, given all the other excitement. I predict I curse at the TV when they’re showing this rather than the Boone / Claire / Locke storylines, except for this point. So Sayid likes Shannon. Shannon has a history of using guys for what she wants. Shannon also has a history of "liking" her brother. Boone comes back all bloodied up and dying. What will Shannon’s reaction to be? If I was writing, it would be her turning to Sayid and saying "Find Locke and make him pay for what he did to my brother." Interestingly, next week is Sayid’s episode, and he has training in torture. His episode was originally titled "Sides" (as in, the survivors take two sides on "Should we kill Locke or not"), but is now "The Greater Good" (as in, "Killing Locke is for the greater good and safety of us on this island"). Plus, it would give more purpose to the somewhat forced Shannon / Sayid storyline. Come on, if you want to put romance in the show, how about Kate and Jack? Or Kate and Sawyer? Or Charlie and Claire? Or Kate and Shannon? There must be a bigger reason for the Shannon / Sayid story.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points: Good stuff. A top five episode for sure. Locke is probably the most interesting character on TV today. He’s almost tragic in nature - raised an orphan, abandoned and then used by his parents, physical disability (which he got how?), working a crappy office job, etc. It’s almost Shakespearian. Is it any wonder he loves life on the island and doesn’t want to leave?
NUMBERS. Did everyone catch in the beginning, when Locke’s mom (Suzy Kurtz) asked where footballs were, he replied "Regulation in aisle EIGHT, nerf in aisle FIFTEEN". 815! More fun with numbers J At this point, I have to think the show’s producers are just messing with us so the nerds on the Internet (read: me) have something else to over-analyze.
FAMILY. Again we see drama with families, more specifically, fathers. People with obvious paternal issues: Jack, Sawyer, Locke, Sun, Jin, Walt. Kate has referenced her dad, but we know nothing about him. He may have been "the man she loved, the man she killed." Hurley, Shannon, and Boone were all lacking fathers. Who knows about Claire and Charlie? There’s obvious family issues there as well. Yet another way all the survivors are connected to each other, even prior to being on the island.
MOUSETRAP. Sully and I geeked out as the episode opened with the game of Mousetrap. One, we’re big fans of the game. Two, it reeks of symbolism. Are all our survivors being led into a trap on the island? Did Locke lead Boone into the trap of the plane? He knew that his visions were coming true - and a big freaky image was a bloody Boone. Was Locke so blinded by his need to get inside that hatch that Boone becomes expendable?
BOONE. Well, he’s the obvious "Big Character Death". But we all see this coming a mile away at this point. Weren’t we promised a "shocking death"? I’m not shocked by this. But like I said, I have a hard time believing Jack is going to be able to save him at this point. My best guess now is that there will be two deaths. Boone and someone else.
LEGS. So, how did Locke lose his ability to walk? This episode CONSTANTLY teased us with how it happened - showing a car hit him, out hunting, going into surgery, gingerly waking up and walking out, and parking his car in the middle of the road at the end. On that last scene in particular, the camera seemed to hang on Lost, waiting for that shocking BAM moment where a truck hits him causing his disability and making his father responsible. But they didn’t. You know what that means - Locke isn’t going anywhere. We’ve got at least another Locke backstory coming our way next year!
HATCH. So… what made the light turn on at the end? Was it due to the fact that blood touched it? Did the Island / Hatch require a human sacrifice to be opened, which Boone became? Was it due to the fact that the "non-believer" (Boone) had been removed, leaving only those "worthy" of entrance? (Locke). Or is it so simple that no one had ever simply knocked on the hatch at night, as Locke was doing at the end? Maybe that is when a "guard" is on watch inside that hatch. Wouldn’t that be the most ironic ever? How do you open a door with no handle? You knock :)
RELIGION. This episode was DRAPED in religious imagery left and right. From Locke’s mom saying he was immaculately conceived, to the "carrying of the cross" imagery with Boone carrying Locke, and then Locke carrying a bloody Boone, to having dead Nigerian priests toting Virgin Marys full of smack, to the final shot of a penitent Locke kneeling on the hatch, receiving a sign in the form of light, a la the Burning Bush in the Bible. So what does this mean? Locke is already the most sage-like character on the island. Is he really serving as their "Christ-figure", giving them guidance for how to live through their new life on the island? If you buy the whole "They’re in purgatory" theory, it could be that when Locke met the monster way back when, he was changed to become a guide of sorts to get everyone else’s souls to the same place he is. That’s why he’s working to get them to "release their inner demons" and "move on", even though everyone has a TON of past baggage in their lives. The Locke scene then becomes similar to someone banging on the gates of heaven, begging to be let in. Think about what Locke said "I did everything you asked of me - why won’t you open up?" Very religious.
AFRICA. Isn’t it weird that Locke and Boone found Nigerian drug smugglers in the Pacific Ocean? Isn’t it even weirder that they went to such great lengths to make us, as viewers know they were specifically from Nigeria? Who cares? Oh, that’s right - everything has meaning on Lost. So here’s a clue. What can be read into this? Well, I introduce Exhibit A (see attachment to this Email - that’s right, we’re getting fancier with the Lost Emails!).
There is a theory of "Limbo Triangles Areas " on Earth that were written about in the books "Limbo of the Lost" by John Wallace Spencer and "The Bermuda Triangle " by Adi Kent Thomas Jeffrey in the 1970s. These are alleged areas of weird magnetic anomalies, where a LOT of planes go down for no reason or just disappear off the face of the earth. The Bermuda Triangle is the most well known. But see where else triangles are? The Sahara Desert in Africa (as seen on the Nigerian’s map), and two locations in the South Pacific that could easily be "1000 miles off course", as Flight 815 was. Interestingly, the one in the South Pacific and the one in Africa are basically on the exact opposite sides of the planet. Did the plane enter one of these Super Mario Bros "Warp Zones" in Africa and end up on this island? Hmmm - magnetic anomalies - like the kind that would make a compass go wacky (see Locke’s compass to Sayid)?
Or, if you want to look at the Latitude and Longitude of the Cursed Numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42), where in the world does that put us?
Right in the Nigeria. See Exhibit B.
Oh, and while we’re playing "fun with numbers", wasn’t CFL writing these numbers over and over again too? How else could those numbers be written in Latitude / Longitude form? See Exhibit C.
Square in the middle of France. Home of lots of Crazy French Ladies, not just Rousseau.
Wow.
RADIO. Equally mind-blowing are the two theories on the Boone on the Radio part of the episode. If you watched the episode with Closed Captioning on, the conversation went like this:
Boone: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Radio Voice: "There were no survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Pretty mind blowing, and lends credence to the whole "Purgatory" theory about the show. But how would a random plane passing over the Pacific be so familiar with the Flight Number and if there were any survivors? Wouldn’t he answer "Jigga what?! Where are you?!" instead of "No, you’re not a survivor. You’re dead." That doesn’t make much sense. Also, we all know Closed Captioning often has gibberish / wrong words from time to time. Someone is basically transcribing it as they hear it (like a court reporter).
If you listen to it closely, and if you know people on the internet with fancy audio editing tools that can edit out the fuzz of the radio voice / Locke’s yelling, and raise some different audio levels, you hear this:
Boone: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815"
Radio Voice: "We are the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!"
It should be noted that the radio voice says his sentence with excitement and surprise. What does that mean? Well, we’ve seen the nose of the plane buried in the jungle (where the transponder was). We’ve seen the body of the plane on the beach (where our fearless cast is). Where is the tail? On the island somewhere else? They might have a radio among their wreckage. They’d know Flight 815 pretty well. They’d be surprised to hear about other survivors. Wasn’t Rose so sure that her husband was alive? It fits together pretty well!
EXODUS. Movement of the people. We finally have a title for the 3 hour long Season Finale! Exodus, Parts 1-3. Here’s what we know: It will feature flashbacks of EVERYONE. It has to be a flashback to all of the survivors in the airport before Flight 815 took off, if you ask me. Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense. How about the deeper meaning of the word Exodus? I should save this for the Exodus Email that will come out at the end of May (otherwise what else will I put at the very top?) But think about this. In the Bible, Exodus refers to spending the 40 years in the desert to escape slavery. Is this island an "escape" for the survivors? Their past lives were all full of death, tragedy, and heartache. Maybe this island is their exodus away from that life…
April 13 - Special Episode! According to TV Guide, "the stories of the main characters on Lost will be told in chronological order." No new material, but retelling the backstories of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, etc. IN ORDER. Weird, but fun - beats a rerun!
April 20 1.21 Sayid-centric. "The Greater Good"
May 4. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 11 - ??? I’m assuming a repeat, but not sure what episode.
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part One"
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. "Exodus, Part Two" and "Exodus, Part Three"
Excitement.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
L O S T I S B A C K
(A monsterous Email, but a lot of it was just copied from the Internet. Would later be trumped by my 18 page manifesto about the Season Finale...)
Lost Episode Title: "Deus Ex Machina"
Character Involved: Locke (Part II - if you recall, Locke Part I - "Walkabout" - was probably the best hour of scripted TV of 2004)
TV Guide Description: Locke begins to suffer physical difficulties as he and Boone try to find a way into the hatch; Jack is reluctant to offer assistance when Sawyer begins to experience excruciating headaches.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: In some ancient Greek drama, an apparently insoluble crisis was solved by the intervention of a god, often brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. This "god from the machine" was literally a deus ex machina. Few modern works feature deities suspended by wires from the ceiling, but the term deus ex machina is still used for cases where an author uses some improbable (and often clumsy) plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation. When the cavalry comes charging over the hill or when the impoverished hero is relieved by an unexpected inheritance, it's often called a deus ex machina.
So how does this apply to Lost? Well, the most obvious "god from machine" that I’ve seen from the commercials for this week would be the FREAKING PLANE THAT CRASHES ON THE ISLAND. With the plane comes radio equipment, and by the looks of the commercial, it’s working. This could easily "save" the people on the island with an improbably plot device no one saw coming.
However, prior to the commercials, I was sure this had something to do with the hatch. I thought we might get a peek inside that hatch this episode, and the reveal would be something like radio equipment that could offer salvation for the people. Lastly, it could be that Alex makes his appearance in this episode, "saving" the people from some sort of disastrous situation they find themselves in. As he is a character that has never been introduced, his entrance would come from left field and totally fit this title. But the plane looks to be the obvious answer here. I won’t overanalyze… for once.
So are our castaways safe? Nope. Here’s why: the main characters involved in both the hatch and the plane look to be Boone and Locke. Locke being one of the two people who wouldn’t want to leave the island even if he could. Would he sabotage the rest of the people for his own benefit? I think so.
TV Guide Description Breakdown: A two sentence description? Neither of which mention the plane? This has to mean the writers want to keep a tight lip on this episode. But there’s still some analysis here.
#1 - In the commercial, there is a scene with Locke and Boone, where Locke falls down and Boone says "What’s wrong with you?" Locke replies, "This island gave me a gift… and now it’s trying to take it away." The gift being the ability to walk, one wonders why the island would take it away from him. The best thing I can come up with is that the island is somehow protecting itself.
Whatever is inside that hatch is capable of giving the survivors the power to either take over the island or to get off the island, and whatever or whoever is controlling the island is trying to prevent Boone and Locke from getting inside.
Another theory could be that there is something less "magical" about all this. That there is some sort of magnetic force / electrical energy on the island that "jolted" Locke’s legs into use. The source of this power is inside that hatch, and getting close to it is "jolting" him back to the way he was. I’m not really smart enough with the science to take this any further or even hypothesize if this is really possible, but remember the compass that Sayid had in the one episode? That pointed in the wrong direction? Maybe the magnetism on the island is out of whack, causing the compass to point in the wrong direction. Just a thought.
(If you really wanted to get super fantasy on me, you could say that when Locke encountered "The Monster" in the third episode, he made a deal with him ("a deal with the devil"), and he’s due for a payment back to the monster - a sacrifice, perhaps, since it’s been a long time since anyone on the show was eaten or even saw the monster in a non-dream state.)
#2 - Excruciating headaches from Sawyer? Two thoughts here - if there is some sort of magnetic power / energy on the island, opening the hatch is upping the dosage of exposure for everyone on the island and Sawyer is the first to feel it. This would tie the two stories together. It could also be that Sawyer is having some sort of reaction to a drug / or maybe the lack of receiving some drug.
Maybe he was on medication back on the mainland to treat migraines, keep him from going crazy, etc. He’s got a troubled past - maybe he was on some sort of prozac medicine, and without it, he’s in pain. Or, what if Locke has somehow poisoned him a la Boone? Of all the people on the island that Locke has "helped" get over their past, Sawyer is the one remaining who could benefit the most, I think.
Also, if this is a Locke episode, what timeframe do you think we’re going to see in the flashbacks? Prior to his trip to Australia? Things that happened in Australia? I have to think that as the season gets closer to the end, the backstories are going to go to the backburner, with the action on the island coming to the forefront.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points:
Who even remembers when the last episode aired? Who remembers what happened? Here’s a brief refresher from the start… Deep Breath….
Episode 01: Pilot (Pt 1 of 2) - First episode, a plane crashes on an island. It’s like Survivor, but without Jeff Probst.
Out of the blackness the first thing Jack (Matthew Fox) senses is pain. Then burning sun. A Bamboo forest. Smoke. Screams. With a rush comes the horrible awareness that the plane he was on tore apart in mid-air and crashed on a Pacific island. From there it's a blur, as his doctor's instinct kicks in: people need his help. Stripped of everything, the 48 survivors scavenge what they can from the plane for their survival. Some panic. Some pin their hopes on rescue. A few find inner strength they never knew they had-like Kate (Evangeline Lilly) who, with no medical training, suddenly finds herself suturing the doctor's wounds. The band of friends, family, enemies and strangers must work together against the cruel weather and harsh terrain. But the intense howls of the mysterious creatures stalking the jungle fill them all with fear. Fortunately, thanks to the calm leadership of quick-thinking Jack and level-headed Kate, they have hope. But even heroes have secrets, as the survivors will come to learn.
Episode 02: Pilot (Pt 2 of 2) - Second episode, we find out the island is crazy! Brian becomes addicted to the show.
The discovery of a transceiver among the plane's wreckage and the thought that rescue could be imminent temporarily raises the castaways' spirits. And the island's mysteries continue to baffle with the discovery of handcuffs, a gun and an animal that shouldn't be able to survive in a tropical climate.
Episode 03: Tabula Rasa - Kate episode, Kate becomes the single hottest female to ever grace network prime time TV, Brian falls in love.
Jack and Hurley discover an alarming secret about Kate, as the marshal's life hangs in the balance. Meanwhile Kate, Charlie, Sawyer, Sayid, Boone and Shannon ponder the island's mysteries they've uncovered and worry that telling the other survivors will cause panic, and Locke's befriending of Walt disturbs Michael.
Episode 04: Walkabout - Locke episode, Locke becomes the second coolest character on TV next to Jack Bauer.
Survivors are jolted awake in the middle of the night when wild island beasts invade the beach encampment. Kate and Michael join the mysterious Locke on a hunt for food - and a shocking secret about Locke is revealed. Meanwhile, some survivors are horrified by Jack's plan for the dead bodies still scattered among the wreckage, and Jack sees someone in the jungle who might not have been on the plane. Also, Jack flashes back at 12 years old, to find himself on the playground in an altercation with a bully, who ultimately beats him up, and later learns a life lesson from his father.
Episode 05: White Rabbit - Jack episode, people continually call Jack "Charlie" due to their recessed memories of Party of Five.
Jack is near delirious from lack of sleep and struggles to overcome the haunting events that brought him to Australia and, subsequently, to the island. Meanwhile, Boone gets caught in a treacherous riptide, the pregnant Claire's health takes a bad turn, and a thief may have stolen the last bottles of water.
Episode 06: House of the Rising Sun - Sun episode, Brian realizes that the episode titles are pun-tastic, launching paragraph long analyses of them on a weekly basis.
Walt and the others are shocked when Michael is brutally beaten, but only the non-English-speaking Jin and Sun know the truth behind the attack. Meanwhile Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Sayid argue about where the survivors should camp -- on the beach, where they're more likely to be seen, or in a remote inland valley where fresh water abounds; and Locke discovers Charlie's secret.
Episode 07: The Moth - Charlie episode, someone knocks Sayid out when trying to send a distress signal, and we STILL DON’T KNOW WHO DID IT.
Charlie begins a painful journey of withdrawal from drugs, surprisingly aided by Locke, whose true motive for helping Charlie is a mystery. Meanwhile, survivors struggle to find and free Jack when he's buried alive in a cave collapse, and someone might be secretly thwarting Sayid, Kate, and Boone when they enact a plan to find the source of the French transmission.
Episode 08: Confidence Man - Sawyer episode, girls realize that Sawyer is dreamy in a "bad boy" sort of way since he is not clean shaven.
When Shannon suffers an asthma attack, Jack and Sayid realize brutality might be the only way to convince Sawyer to relinquish the life-saving medicine he's hoarding. Meanwhile, Sun struggles to decide if she'll obey husband Jin's orders to stay out of others' affairs, and Kate uncovers some shocking secrets about Sawyer.
Episode 09: Solitary - Sayid episode, Brian can’t spell "Rousseau", and so is born Crazy French Lady, or CFL.
Sayid's life is placed in grave danger after he stumbles upon the source of the mysterious French transmission. Meanwhile, Hurley has a ridiculous plan to make life on the island a little more civilized - and it just might work.
Episode 10: Raised by Another - Claire episode, Claire’s 14 month long pregnancy continues.
Jack, Kate and Charlie wonder if Claire's disturbing nightmares might be coming true to threaten her life and the life of her unborn child, and a missing castaway returns with frightening news about what lies just beyond the mountains.
Episode 11: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues - Jack Episode II, the "gasp heard ‘round the world" when we think Charlie has been hung and is dead.
Survivors wonder why Charlie and the pregnant Claire have been abducted - and by whom - and a search party ventures into the treacherous jungle to try to find and rescue the missing duo. Meanwhile, inner-demons about his father resurface for Jack, and Boone and Locke discover another island mystery.
Episode 12: Whatever the Case May Be - Kate Episode II, we learn Kate is a bad guy, but we love her anyways. Brian puts a toy plane on top of his computer to help ponder the mystery, but it does not help.
Jack, Kate and Sawyer fight over possession of a newly discovered locked metal briefcase which might contain insights into Kate's mysterious past. Meanwhile, Sayid asks a reluctant Shannon to translate notes he took from the French woman, a rising tide threatens to engulf the fuselage and the entire beach encampment, and Rose and a grieving Charlie tentatively bond over Claire's baffling disappearance.
Episode 13: Hearts and Minds - Boone Episode, "Incest is Best" proves to be an expression used outside the world of Delta Sigma Pi
When Locke learns that Boone wants to tell their "secret" to Shannon, Shannon's life is placed in sudden peril, and the shocking truth about her past with Boone is revealed. Meanwhile, Kate is puzzled by Sun's mysterious behavior, and a hungry Hurley must repay a debt to Jin.
Episode 14: Special - Walt Episode, Brian’s suspicions from day one about Walt prove to be true, teaching everyone to never doubt Brian ever again.
Violence ensues and a mysterious island beast makes a re-appearance when Michael and Locke clash over Walt's upbringing. Meanwhile, Charlie is tempted to read the missing Claire's diary, and Sayid enlists Shannon to help decipher the French woman's map.
Episode 15: Homecoming - Charlie Episode II, worst backstory ever, Charlie ruins everything by shooting Ethan. Stupid hobbit!
After the missing Claire returns with no recollection of what has happened since before the doomed flight of Oceanic 815, Jack and Locke formulate a plan of defense against her kidnapper, the mysterious Ethan, who threatens to kill off the other survivors unless Claire is returned to him.
Episode 16: Outlaws - Sawyer Episode II, we learn that Sweet Shrimp stands are located in the middle of the Australian Outback.
Kate and Sawyer divulge dark secrets to each other while tracking a renegade boar that Sawyer swears is purposely harassing him. Meanwhile, Hurley and Sayid worry that Charlie is losing it after his brush with death, and a shocking, prior connection between Sawyer and Jack is revealed.
Episode 17: ...In Translation - Jin Episode, Hurley appears in the background, Team 5/3 translates Korean text before 8:30 am the next morning because we are awesome.
When the raft the survivors have been building mysteriously burns down, Michael is convinced that Jin is responsible for the sabotage, which only further escalates their rivalry. Meanwhile, Sun stuns her fellow survivors with a surprising revelation, and Boone gives Sayid a warning about Shannon.
Episode 18: Numbers - Hurley Episode, Brian’s math skills get pushed to the max with no results - confirming once again, that knowledge of math has no application in the real world.
When Hurley becomes obsessed with the French woman and heads into the jungle to find her, Jack, Sayid and Charlie have no choice but to follow. Meanwhile, Locke asks Claire to help build a mysterious item.
Phew. Breathe.
Which bring us to Numbers. Probably one of the top three Lost episodes yet, and the best if you ask Sully. It was a great episode. We of course, have to start with this:
4 8 15 16 23 42
Before you spend all day trying to crack the code in there, don’t bother. There are internet sites where you can type in numbers and it will give you any sort of pattern or code that the numbers make, and these make none. There are also crazy people on the internet (yes, crazier than me) who have PhDs in mathematics that have posted some crazy hard equations that *almost* make the numbers fit into a pattern, but not quite.
The best theory I can come up with is that they are some sort of password or code to get into something (the Hatch?). The best theory other than that is that they are somehow coordinates for something on the island. The weird thing is that they were being broadcast by the radio tower by the Black Rock. (When will we get to see either of these structures?!?!?!) If you think about it in that light, it’s more of a "message" that’s being sent out. But what? Why play this over and over and over again with no other message?
The two numbers that jump out are 815 which have been seen EVERYWHERE on this show. But there’s still no good way to connect the rest of the numbers to it. One could imagine that there is some sentence that had some numbers in it. "I’m looking FOR flight 815 that will come on the 16th day of the 23rd month of the 42nd year." This takes on much more of a "prophecy" feel to it. Like, you picture this civilization on the island that has been waiting for this plane to crash there for all of time. But I don’t think this is right either. If you look at the Bible, guess what the fourth book is?
NUMBERS. We checked the 8th Chapter, 15th verse, 16 word, and so on - but it was all gibberish. Also, depending on the version of Bible, it would be different. So that’s probably just a weird coincidence - but one that kept Will and I very excited for most of a morning last month.
I’ll let these go for now. They’re even worse than Kate’s little plane. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA.
CRASH. So, now the big question is, did the plane crash because of Walt, or because of Hurley? Seems to me that bad things seem to follow Hurley, and injure those around him but not himself. Could it be that him being on the plane made it go down, and the fact that he himself couldn’t die kept him, and everyone else in his section of the plane alive? I think so. This suddenly seems much more plausible than Walt looking at a picture of a plane crash or something and wishing it to happen.
CONNECTIONS. Before Hurley’s episode, they mentioned something about how he was "directly tied to the hatch" and "responsible for everyone being on that island." Obviously the numbers are on the hatch, so that makes sense, but what about being responsible for everyone being there? If he’s the reason the plane went down, that makes sense - but did you hear that he "owned a Box company" when Hurley was meeting with his financial advisor? Is it a coincidence that Locke worked at a box factory? It sounded like he had his hands in a lot of other companies - what if he is actually directly responsible for putting everyone on that plane by his bad luck spreading? I’m fully expecting all the characters on the show to be much more connected in their lives before the island than any of them realize - this would be a good way to explain it.
ANSWERS. Lastly, remember how there were three answers we are supposed to get before season end?
1. The importance of Kate’s plane. Doesn’t the plane in the commercial that crashes look suspiciously like Kate’s toy plane? What if she is playing with the plane and Walt sees it, causing the plane to appear and crash. The plane also looks way too old to be flying in modern times, lending more credence to this theory. While it still doesn’t really explain the toy plane and why Kate robbed a bank to get it, it could bring the plane back into the forefront of discussion on the show.
2. How Locke can walk. I expect this answer in this episode. Check.
3. The background of CFL. Not sure about this one - I’m still counting on either CFL or Alex saving the survivors in some situation against the Others towards season end. Just seems to make sense.
TIME. Between the surroundings in the CFL’s "lair" and the looks of the plane that crashes this week - is the island some sort of Bermuda triangle time warp? When Boone is on the radio and asking for help, someone responds. What if the plane is actually from CFL’s time and they were actually looking for CFL’s boat, not Flight 815? There is something very odd about the way time works on the show. When Sayid mentioned to CFL about being there for 16 years, she mentioned, "has it been that long?" Her equipment and mannerisms seem much older than the 1980s. I’m not a big fan of the island being "The Land Time Lost" or something like that, but it’s been hinted at.
FUTURE. Variety reported this morning that the May 25 season finale of "Lost" will be two hours long (at the Paley fest a few weeks ago, producers said it’d be 90 minutes). This means the series’ first season is 25 hours, and it will conclude on the last night of May sweeps, and the last night of the entire television season.
How does the rest of the first season shake out?
April 6 1.20 Jack-centric. "Do No Harm"
April 20 1.21 Sayid-centric. "The Greater Good"
May 4. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. Season Finale Hour One.
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. Season Finale Hours Two & Three.
I feel like with each passing week, the season finale gets bigger and bigger. Perhaps next week, I’ll be writing to tell you about how it will be a four night, eight hour event.
Okay, that’s all I got. Partially due to the fact that I’m discussing an episode which aired so long ago, I can’t think of anything else that’s eating away at me. I will say that I have huge expectations for this episode. So here’s hoping it doesn’t disappoint!
Cool people, hot women, and cute puppies gather at the Delta House for Lost tonight at 8:00. All others need not apply.
(PS - Rich people also welcome, if willing to share)
Lost Episode Title: "Deus Ex Machina"
Character Involved: Locke (Part II - if you recall, Locke Part I - "Walkabout" - was probably the best hour of scripted TV of 2004)
TV Guide Description: Locke begins to suffer physical difficulties as he and Boone try to find a way into the hatch; Jack is reluctant to offer assistance when Sawyer begins to experience excruciating headaches.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: In some ancient Greek drama, an apparently insoluble crisis was solved by the intervention of a god, often brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. This "god from the machine" was literally a deus ex machina. Few modern works feature deities suspended by wires from the ceiling, but the term deus ex machina is still used for cases where an author uses some improbable (and often clumsy) plot device to work his or her way out of a difficult situation. When the cavalry comes charging over the hill or when the impoverished hero is relieved by an unexpected inheritance, it's often called a deus ex machina.
So how does this apply to Lost? Well, the most obvious "god from machine" that I’ve seen from the commercials for this week would be the FREAKING PLANE THAT CRASHES ON THE ISLAND. With the plane comes radio equipment, and by the looks of the commercial, it’s working. This could easily "save" the people on the island with an improbably plot device no one saw coming.
However, prior to the commercials, I was sure this had something to do with the hatch. I thought we might get a peek inside that hatch this episode, and the reveal would be something like radio equipment that could offer salvation for the people. Lastly, it could be that Alex makes his appearance in this episode, "saving" the people from some sort of disastrous situation they find themselves in. As he is a character that has never been introduced, his entrance would come from left field and totally fit this title. But the plane looks to be the obvious answer here. I won’t overanalyze… for once.
So are our castaways safe? Nope. Here’s why: the main characters involved in both the hatch and the plane look to be Boone and Locke. Locke being one of the two people who wouldn’t want to leave the island even if he could. Would he sabotage the rest of the people for his own benefit? I think so.
TV Guide Description Breakdown: A two sentence description? Neither of which mention the plane? This has to mean the writers want to keep a tight lip on this episode. But there’s still some analysis here.
#1 - In the commercial, there is a scene with Locke and Boone, where Locke falls down and Boone says "What’s wrong with you?" Locke replies, "This island gave me a gift… and now it’s trying to take it away." The gift being the ability to walk, one wonders why the island would take it away from him. The best thing I can come up with is that the island is somehow protecting itself.
Whatever is inside that hatch is capable of giving the survivors the power to either take over the island or to get off the island, and whatever or whoever is controlling the island is trying to prevent Boone and Locke from getting inside.
Another theory could be that there is something less "magical" about all this. That there is some sort of magnetic force / electrical energy on the island that "jolted" Locke’s legs into use. The source of this power is inside that hatch, and getting close to it is "jolting" him back to the way he was. I’m not really smart enough with the science to take this any further or even hypothesize if this is really possible, but remember the compass that Sayid had in the one episode? That pointed in the wrong direction? Maybe the magnetism on the island is out of whack, causing the compass to point in the wrong direction. Just a thought.
(If you really wanted to get super fantasy on me, you could say that when Locke encountered "The Monster" in the third episode, he made a deal with him ("a deal with the devil"), and he’s due for a payment back to the monster - a sacrifice, perhaps, since it’s been a long time since anyone on the show was eaten or even saw the monster in a non-dream state.)
#2 - Excruciating headaches from Sawyer? Two thoughts here - if there is some sort of magnetic power / energy on the island, opening the hatch is upping the dosage of exposure for everyone on the island and Sawyer is the first to feel it. This would tie the two stories together. It could also be that Sawyer is having some sort of reaction to a drug / or maybe the lack of receiving some drug.
Maybe he was on medication back on the mainland to treat migraines, keep him from going crazy, etc. He’s got a troubled past - maybe he was on some sort of prozac medicine, and without it, he’s in pain. Or, what if Locke has somehow poisoned him a la Boone? Of all the people on the island that Locke has "helped" get over their past, Sawyer is the one remaining who could benefit the most, I think.
Also, if this is a Locke episode, what timeframe do you think we’re going to see in the flashbacks? Prior to his trip to Australia? Things that happened in Australia? I have to think that as the season gets closer to the end, the backstories are going to go to the backburner, with the action on the island coming to the forefront.
Last Month’s Episode Discussion Points:
Who even remembers when the last episode aired? Who remembers what happened? Here’s a brief refresher from the start… Deep Breath….
Episode 01: Pilot (Pt 1 of 2) - First episode, a plane crashes on an island. It’s like Survivor, but without Jeff Probst.
Out of the blackness the first thing Jack (Matthew Fox) senses is pain. Then burning sun. A Bamboo forest. Smoke. Screams. With a rush comes the horrible awareness that the plane he was on tore apart in mid-air and crashed on a Pacific island. From there it's a blur, as his doctor's instinct kicks in: people need his help. Stripped of everything, the 48 survivors scavenge what they can from the plane for their survival. Some panic. Some pin their hopes on rescue. A few find inner strength they never knew they had-like Kate (Evangeline Lilly) who, with no medical training, suddenly finds herself suturing the doctor's wounds. The band of friends, family, enemies and strangers must work together against the cruel weather and harsh terrain. But the intense howls of the mysterious creatures stalking the jungle fill them all with fear. Fortunately, thanks to the calm leadership of quick-thinking Jack and level-headed Kate, they have hope. But even heroes have secrets, as the survivors will come to learn.
Episode 02: Pilot (Pt 2 of 2) - Second episode, we find out the island is crazy! Brian becomes addicted to the show.
The discovery of a transceiver among the plane's wreckage and the thought that rescue could be imminent temporarily raises the castaways' spirits. And the island's mysteries continue to baffle with the discovery of handcuffs, a gun and an animal that shouldn't be able to survive in a tropical climate.
Episode 03: Tabula Rasa - Kate episode, Kate becomes the single hottest female to ever grace network prime time TV, Brian falls in love.
Jack and Hurley discover an alarming secret about Kate, as the marshal's life hangs in the balance. Meanwhile Kate, Charlie, Sawyer, Sayid, Boone and Shannon ponder the island's mysteries they've uncovered and worry that telling the other survivors will cause panic, and Locke's befriending of Walt disturbs Michael.
Episode 04: Walkabout - Locke episode, Locke becomes the second coolest character on TV next to Jack Bauer.
Survivors are jolted awake in the middle of the night when wild island beasts invade the beach encampment. Kate and Michael join the mysterious Locke on a hunt for food - and a shocking secret about Locke is revealed. Meanwhile, some survivors are horrified by Jack's plan for the dead bodies still scattered among the wreckage, and Jack sees someone in the jungle who might not have been on the plane. Also, Jack flashes back at 12 years old, to find himself on the playground in an altercation with a bully, who ultimately beats him up, and later learns a life lesson from his father.
Episode 05: White Rabbit - Jack episode, people continually call Jack "Charlie" due to their recessed memories of Party of Five.
Jack is near delirious from lack of sleep and struggles to overcome the haunting events that brought him to Australia and, subsequently, to the island. Meanwhile, Boone gets caught in a treacherous riptide, the pregnant Claire's health takes a bad turn, and a thief may have stolen the last bottles of water.
Episode 06: House of the Rising Sun - Sun episode, Brian realizes that the episode titles are pun-tastic, launching paragraph long analyses of them on a weekly basis.
Walt and the others are shocked when Michael is brutally beaten, but only the non-English-speaking Jin and Sun know the truth behind the attack. Meanwhile Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Sayid argue about where the survivors should camp -- on the beach, where they're more likely to be seen, or in a remote inland valley where fresh water abounds; and Locke discovers Charlie's secret.
Episode 07: The Moth - Charlie episode, someone knocks Sayid out when trying to send a distress signal, and we STILL DON’T KNOW WHO DID IT.
Charlie begins a painful journey of withdrawal from drugs, surprisingly aided by Locke, whose true motive for helping Charlie is a mystery. Meanwhile, survivors struggle to find and free Jack when he's buried alive in a cave collapse, and someone might be secretly thwarting Sayid, Kate, and Boone when they enact a plan to find the source of the French transmission.
Episode 08: Confidence Man - Sawyer episode, girls realize that Sawyer is dreamy in a "bad boy" sort of way since he is not clean shaven.
When Shannon suffers an asthma attack, Jack and Sayid realize brutality might be the only way to convince Sawyer to relinquish the life-saving medicine he's hoarding. Meanwhile, Sun struggles to decide if she'll obey husband Jin's orders to stay out of others' affairs, and Kate uncovers some shocking secrets about Sawyer.
Episode 09: Solitary - Sayid episode, Brian can’t spell "Rousseau", and so is born Crazy French Lady, or CFL.
Sayid's life is placed in grave danger after he stumbles upon the source of the mysterious French transmission. Meanwhile, Hurley has a ridiculous plan to make life on the island a little more civilized - and it just might work.
Episode 10: Raised by Another - Claire episode, Claire’s 14 month long pregnancy continues.
Jack, Kate and Charlie wonder if Claire's disturbing nightmares might be coming true to threaten her life and the life of her unborn child, and a missing castaway returns with frightening news about what lies just beyond the mountains.
Episode 11: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues - Jack Episode II, the "gasp heard ‘round the world" when we think Charlie has been hung and is dead.
Survivors wonder why Charlie and the pregnant Claire have been abducted - and by whom - and a search party ventures into the treacherous jungle to try to find and rescue the missing duo. Meanwhile, inner-demons about his father resurface for Jack, and Boone and Locke discover another island mystery.
Episode 12: Whatever the Case May Be - Kate Episode II, we learn Kate is a bad guy, but we love her anyways. Brian puts a toy plane on top of his computer to help ponder the mystery, but it does not help.
Jack, Kate and Sawyer fight over possession of a newly discovered locked metal briefcase which might contain insights into Kate's mysterious past. Meanwhile, Sayid asks a reluctant Shannon to translate notes he took from the French woman, a rising tide threatens to engulf the fuselage and the entire beach encampment, and Rose and a grieving Charlie tentatively bond over Claire's baffling disappearance.
Episode 13: Hearts and Minds - Boone Episode, "Incest is Best" proves to be an expression used outside the world of Delta Sigma Pi
When Locke learns that Boone wants to tell their "secret" to Shannon, Shannon's life is placed in sudden peril, and the shocking truth about her past with Boone is revealed. Meanwhile, Kate is puzzled by Sun's mysterious behavior, and a hungry Hurley must repay a debt to Jin.
Episode 14: Special - Walt Episode, Brian’s suspicions from day one about Walt prove to be true, teaching everyone to never doubt Brian ever again.
Violence ensues and a mysterious island beast makes a re-appearance when Michael and Locke clash over Walt's upbringing. Meanwhile, Charlie is tempted to read the missing Claire's diary, and Sayid enlists Shannon to help decipher the French woman's map.
Episode 15: Homecoming - Charlie Episode II, worst backstory ever, Charlie ruins everything by shooting Ethan. Stupid hobbit!
After the missing Claire returns with no recollection of what has happened since before the doomed flight of Oceanic 815, Jack and Locke formulate a plan of defense against her kidnapper, the mysterious Ethan, who threatens to kill off the other survivors unless Claire is returned to him.
Episode 16: Outlaws - Sawyer Episode II, we learn that Sweet Shrimp stands are located in the middle of the Australian Outback.
Kate and Sawyer divulge dark secrets to each other while tracking a renegade boar that Sawyer swears is purposely harassing him. Meanwhile, Hurley and Sayid worry that Charlie is losing it after his brush with death, and a shocking, prior connection between Sawyer and Jack is revealed.
Episode 17: ...In Translation - Jin Episode, Hurley appears in the background, Team 5/3 translates Korean text before 8:30 am the next morning because we are awesome.
When the raft the survivors have been building mysteriously burns down, Michael is convinced that Jin is responsible for the sabotage, which only further escalates their rivalry. Meanwhile, Sun stuns her fellow survivors with a surprising revelation, and Boone gives Sayid a warning about Shannon.
Episode 18: Numbers - Hurley Episode, Brian’s math skills get pushed to the max with no results - confirming once again, that knowledge of math has no application in the real world.
When Hurley becomes obsessed with the French woman and heads into the jungle to find her, Jack, Sayid and Charlie have no choice but to follow. Meanwhile, Locke asks Claire to help build a mysterious item.
Phew. Breathe.
Which bring us to Numbers. Probably one of the top three Lost episodes yet, and the best if you ask Sully. It was a great episode. We of course, have to start with this:
4 8 15 16 23 42
Before you spend all day trying to crack the code in there, don’t bother. There are internet sites where you can type in numbers and it will give you any sort of pattern or code that the numbers make, and these make none. There are also crazy people on the internet (yes, crazier than me) who have PhDs in mathematics that have posted some crazy hard equations that *almost* make the numbers fit into a pattern, but not quite.
The best theory I can come up with is that they are some sort of password or code to get into something (the Hatch?). The best theory other than that is that they are somehow coordinates for something on the island. The weird thing is that they were being broadcast by the radio tower by the Black Rock. (When will we get to see either of these structures?!?!?!) If you think about it in that light, it’s more of a "message" that’s being sent out. But what? Why play this over and over and over again with no other message?
The two numbers that jump out are 815 which have been seen EVERYWHERE on this show. But there’s still no good way to connect the rest of the numbers to it. One could imagine that there is some sentence that had some numbers in it. "I’m looking FOR flight 815 that will come on the 16th day of the 23rd month of the 42nd year." This takes on much more of a "prophecy" feel to it. Like, you picture this civilization on the island that has been waiting for this plane to crash there for all of time. But I don’t think this is right either. If you look at the Bible, guess what the fourth book is?
NUMBERS. We checked the 8th Chapter, 15th verse, 16 word, and so on - but it was all gibberish. Also, depending on the version of Bible, it would be different. So that’s probably just a weird coincidence - but one that kept Will and I very excited for most of a morning last month.
I’ll let these go for now. They’re even worse than Kate’s little plane. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA.
CRASH. So, now the big question is, did the plane crash because of Walt, or because of Hurley? Seems to me that bad things seem to follow Hurley, and injure those around him but not himself. Could it be that him being on the plane made it go down, and the fact that he himself couldn’t die kept him, and everyone else in his section of the plane alive? I think so. This suddenly seems much more plausible than Walt looking at a picture of a plane crash or something and wishing it to happen.
CONNECTIONS. Before Hurley’s episode, they mentioned something about how he was "directly tied to the hatch" and "responsible for everyone being on that island." Obviously the numbers are on the hatch, so that makes sense, but what about being responsible for everyone being there? If he’s the reason the plane went down, that makes sense - but did you hear that he "owned a Box company" when Hurley was meeting with his financial advisor? Is it a coincidence that Locke worked at a box factory? It sounded like he had his hands in a lot of other companies - what if he is actually directly responsible for putting everyone on that plane by his bad luck spreading? I’m fully expecting all the characters on the show to be much more connected in their lives before the island than any of them realize - this would be a good way to explain it.
ANSWERS. Lastly, remember how there were three answers we are supposed to get before season end?
1. The importance of Kate’s plane. Doesn’t the plane in the commercial that crashes look suspiciously like Kate’s toy plane? What if she is playing with the plane and Walt sees it, causing the plane to appear and crash. The plane also looks way too old to be flying in modern times, lending more credence to this theory. While it still doesn’t really explain the toy plane and why Kate robbed a bank to get it, it could bring the plane back into the forefront of discussion on the show.
2. How Locke can walk. I expect this answer in this episode. Check.
3. The background of CFL. Not sure about this one - I’m still counting on either CFL or Alex saving the survivors in some situation against the Others towards season end. Just seems to make sense.
TIME. Between the surroundings in the CFL’s "lair" and the looks of the plane that crashes this week - is the island some sort of Bermuda triangle time warp? When Boone is on the radio and asking for help, someone responds. What if the plane is actually from CFL’s time and they were actually looking for CFL’s boat, not Flight 815? There is something very odd about the way time works on the show. When Sayid mentioned to CFL about being there for 16 years, she mentioned, "has it been that long?" Her equipment and mannerisms seem much older than the 1980s. I’m not a big fan of the island being "The Land Time Lost" or something like that, but it’s been hinted at.
FUTURE. Variety reported this morning that the May 25 season finale of "Lost" will be two hours long (at the Paley fest a few weeks ago, producers said it’d be 90 minutes). This means the series’ first season is 25 hours, and it will conclude on the last night of May sweeps, and the last night of the entire television season.
How does the rest of the first season shake out?
April 6 1.20 Jack-centric. "Do No Harm"
April 20 1.21 Sayid-centric. "The Greater Good"
May 4. 1.22 Kate-centric. "Born to Run"
May 18. 1.23 Everybody-centric. Season Finale Hour One.
May 25. 1.24 Everybody-centric. Season Finale Hours Two & Three.
I feel like with each passing week, the season finale gets bigger and bigger. Perhaps next week, I’ll be writing to tell you about how it will be a four night, eight hour event.
Okay, that’s all I got. Partially due to the fact that I’m discussing an episode which aired so long ago, I can’t think of anything else that’s eating away at me. I will say that I have huge expectations for this episode. So here’s hoping it doesn’t disappoint!
Cool people, hot women, and cute puppies gather at the Delta House for Lost tonight at 8:00. All others need not apply.
(PS - Rich people also welcome, if willing to share)
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Lost (The Beginning of the End)
Lost Episode Title: "Numbers"
Character Involved: Hurley (the last of the main 14 characters to receive an episode!)
TV Guide Description: When Hurley becomes obsessed with the French woman and heads into the jungle to find her, Jack, Sayid and Charlie have no choice but to follow. Meanwhile, Locke asks Claire to help build a mysterious item.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Back when this episode title was announced (about a month ago), the teaser I read said "Hurley accomplishes what most Americans dream of", and that the title was "Numbers". Enter the genius of Brian Joseph Sullivan and Brian Joseph Sullivan - the combined brain power of the Delta House together and came up with the theory that Hurley must win the lottery. After last week’s shot of Hurley on the TV in Korea (and special thanks to James Joo for the translation of "Lucky Winner - Los Angeles, CA"), I’m more sure than ever that this is what happened. Who wants to bet that the winning numbers somehow involve 815? We’ve also been told that all the characters on the show are somehow connected to each other, and we’ve seen that the number 815 seems to appear all over their pasts - could this episode finally bring the connection to the forefront? Or explain the importance of 815? Here’s hoping!
TV Guide Description Breakdown: This episode was written by David Fury, who so far this season has written "Walkabout" (Locke’s episode - the best hour of TV so far this season), "Solitary" (Sayid’s episode that introduced CFL), and "Special" (the Walt episode that showed he had special powers). Based on that, I think we’re all in for a very special treat.
I’m unsure why Hurley would suddenly become obsessed with CFL - seeing as he hasn’t shown much interest in her up until this point. Does he see her as the best bet to get off the island? Does something he learns about her connect with something in his own past? Is he Alex? (Maybe Sayid mentions that she has her own power source, and he sees this as a way to continue to jam to music, now that the batteries to his Walkman are dead!) It’s been far too long since CFL was around given how important she is. Perhaps Sayid will bring the maps with him and attempt to get some answers from her? Are the attacks seen in the preview coming from CFL as the they approach her camp? I think we’re all hoping those attacks are coming from "The Others". I know I am. Given we also saw a shot of the four of them crossing a man-made bridge we haven’t seen before, it looks like they’re going into a new part of the jungle, and perhaps closer to the Black Rock.
Locke asking Claire to build a mysterious item? It has to be something to do with the metal hatch in the woods, as this has been Locke and Boone’s obsession of late. But what could Claire build that they couldn’t build themselves? Does it have something to do with the fact that she is pregnant? Does her baby somehow have the power to open the hatch? We all know that Ethan wanted the baby - is this why?! Mystery abounds!
Last Week’s Episode Discussion Points:
Fantastic episode.
1. Jin never killed anyone. Our assumption from the Sun episode was that he was basically a goon for her dad, coming home bloody from murdering someone. In fact, he was the exact opposite. Her father wanted him to be a hit man, but he found a way to both please her father and not murder someone. Sure, he gave him a heck of a beating, but as he put it "I just saved your life" as the other goon with the gun stood in the doorway. I guess we don’t know if there were other "jobs" that we don’t see - but I have a feeling that Jin has never killed someone (unlike Kate, Charlie, Sawyer, Sayid, Walt?)
2. Does Jin understand English? I went into the episode thinking, "Oh, this is going to be ironic - Jin and Sun will both be able to speak English, but neither will know about the other!" After watching the episode, I’m not so sure. Here are the main points:
a. Jin stopped when Sun was explaining to him why she was going to leave him, even though she was speaking in English. His response was as if he understood what she just said… "It’s too late".
b. Jin was planning on going to America for a job - would he need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the language to do business there?
c. At the end of the episode, Jin referred to Michael by name. How could he have picked out Michael’s name from the rest of the English words everyone was saying? I guess it’s possible he’s put it together over the weeks on the island, but maybe he’s also putting together an understanding of the English language.
3. Why didn’t Jin go back with Sun? Based on his talks with his dad, he was all set to turn his life around. One last job for Sun’s dad, then turn over a new leaf and get a fresh start on life, getting back to lovin’ the hotties and hatin’ the crime. Sun explained her rationale for wanting to leave him, but then said "This is our chance to start over." Which seems precisely what Jin wanted too! Is her brief interaction with Michael enough for Jin to throw it all away? Very odd.
4. Putting Hurley in the background on the TV is the kind of attention to detail that I appreciate in a TV show. The creators know that we watch and dissect with a fine toothed comb, so touches like this is a direct nod to people like us, saying "Hey, we know you’re going to screen capture this and send it around at work the next day - have fun." I also love how the episode ended with the parallelism between Claire and Hurley sitting on the beach with their large stomachs, and then the camera held on Hurley, a foreshadowing that his episode was coming up next.
5. I think we all knew that Jin was not responsible for burning down the raft, but the fact that is was Walt that did so was a great twist. I also assume he used his mind to burn the raft, rather that setting it on fire manually. If you remember, when Michael yelled at Walt a few episodes back for reading the Spanish comic book, he threw it into the fire. Is this Walt’s way of getting back at dad? You burn my book, I burn your boat?
6. Locke was genius for using this as an opportunity to give a pep talk to his "troops". He put all the focus on The Others, making it seem like they have just made the first attack against the Flight 815 Survivors. When he comes back to them in a later episode, saying "We need to attack the Others", no one will have a reason, they’ll already have one.
7. The Locke and Walt scene at the end was great. It was almost the exact same scene as in the first episode where the two sat down at Backgammon. If you remember that episode, Locke introduced the game as "a game of two players, two sides, dark and light" and then said "do you want to know a secret?". The rest of their conversation is still unknown, but isn’t it ironic that now these two both like it on the island and want to stay?
LOCKE. This week, I was posed the following question: "Why are you surprised that Locke knew how to handle the gun in the episode two weeks ago? Didn’t they hint at his involvement with the military in his first flashback?" This got my mind racing - I definitely remembered the phone call that Locke received in that episode where he was talking in military time, and someone called him "Colonel". I went back and read the script for the episode (no, I didn’t transcribe it, it was on the Internet, home of anything in the world you could ever want to know!) and the phone conversation was concerning the risk-like game that he played at lunch. So there really has been no hint of Locke being anything special before coming to the island. Therefore, the real question is: why did Locke have a suitcase full of knives on the plane? These wouldn’t be needed on the Walkabout, would they? If he worked at a box factory and was in a wheelchair - what in the world did he need all the knives for? That’s the one piece of Locke’s past that doesn’t make much sense.
FAMILY. I also find it very interesting that we’ve heard about Locke’s family in recent episodes. His sister dying, his father leaving his family - it just contributes to the overall "family theme" that we’ve seen on this show for a bunch of characters. Jack, Kate, Charlie, Walt and Michael, Sun and Jin, Boone and Claire, Sawyer… all full of family issues! The only character who has no real connection to anyone else so far is Hurley… and I bet we get that this week!
HURLEY. Based on the TV shots, Hurley won the lottery. But when people win the lottery, they generally don’t put it on TV in a foreign country, do they? There must have been something very odd about the way he won, or it was like the world’s biggest lottery jackpot ever. I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up. I’ve really gone back and forth on the Hurley character from the start. He has always been very "happy" on the island. Listening to music, building the golf course, playing Backgammon - he’s going with the flow and doesn’t seem too worried about things. However, he was also the person that found the manifesto and was worried about doing a census.
After the whole census / Ethan issue - I was wagering that Hurley was actually the one who wasn’t on the plane. However, Ethan being crazy, and the flashback showing Hurley on TV seems to squash that idea. There have been other hints at Hurley’s past though - when losing at Backgammon to Walt, he owed like $50,000 to Walt and laughed about it. Then he made some reference to being a "warrior". Did Hurley maybe win his money through some contest - not a lottery win? Like a Backgammon contest? That would add all the more irony to the fact that he lost to Walt - it would also explain better why it would be on TV in Korea…
WALT. Walt is 100% on Locke’s side. The two have now shared the confidence that both want to stay on the island, and Locke definitely has more influence over him than Michael does. If Locke is building up his troops for a battle, this is easily the most powerful soldier he can have on his side. If Walt torched Michael’s boat with his mind, does he realize the power that he has? If he does, what’s stopping him from going crazy? Does he realize there’s a reason that he always wins at Backgammon? Can he truly control it without focusing on what he’s doing? If he dreams something in the middle of the night will it come true? Walt may be the most powerful, but I think he’s also the most dangerous. I could see him "accidentally" killing someone by thinking the wrong thoughts…
DEATH. Which brings me to this. It’s a well known fact on the internet that someone is going to die before the end of the season. As time goes on, a few more clues have been brought to light. Everything I’ve read leads me to believe it will be a MALE character who dies (there are only like 4 female characters on the show for one). I’m also betting that we get some "Circle of Life" action by having the death and Claire’s baby birth being in the same episode. If they’re going for true shock, I expect Jack, Locke, or Sayid to die. If they play it safe, I’ll bet on Boone, Jin, or Michael. We’ll see how much chutzpah the show’s writers have.
EXTRAS. Have you noticed that there is more screen time of extras on the show lately? You know, the other 30 or so characters who we don’t know by name but have seen walking around on the island in the background. Lately they’re actually showing these characters faces in focus. It makes you wonder - is that guy / girl going to be a main character next season? I wonder what their story is? Were they in the original episode? I’d be curious to see how many people are actually under contract on this show - people that appeared in the first episode just standing around that are going to be full fledged stars next season? How crazy would it be if you signed up to star on this hit TV show and no one knew you yet?
NUMBERS. 815 has been everywhere. Sawyer’s shirt, Charlie’s copier, Kate’s safe deposit box, etc. I have to assume these numbers play a role in Hurley’s "big win". But there are other numbers that this can refer to. The episode preview hints that Hurley is going after CFL - what about the numbers on CLF’s maps? What do those numbers mean? A latitude and longitude? Some math equation? Will Hurley somehow figure them out?
CFL. Just one quick thing - what side of the battle do you think CFL is going to come down on? I see her being a wild card, as I can’t imagine her siding with The Others who made her crew go crazy, stole her son, and likely tried to kill her. On the other hand, she’s CRAZY - she obviously was about to kill Sayid before he talked her out of it. I’m thinking that Hurley is unsuccessful in making contact with her, and she remains in the background until everyone comes under attack. Then she swoops in to save them (did someone say Deus Ex Machina?)
ALEX. Speaking of wild cards - is this guy even still alive? Is he even a "he"? Forget CFL, he could be the true Deus Ex Machina - a true warrior of the forest that comes crashing in from the trees when our heroes are surrounded by the Others. Whoa. When I wrote that I just got to thinking… if Alex isn’t a "he", if it’s a "thing" - how great would it be if our heroes (let’s say Locke, Jack, Kate, and Sayid) are trapped in the season finale, about to get killed by the Others and "the monster" which is actually "Alex" comes in and eats the bad guys and saves them? Talk about coming full circle! I know I would geek out like when Seth and Summer get together on the OC! Why aren’t I writing for this show again?
SAD NEWS. Why is it the beginning of the end? Well, from a story telling standpoint, this should be the episode that gets the wheels in motion that will lead to the season finale. The preview for this week showed explosions, guns, and our survivors coming under attack. This would serve by far as the biggest danger they’ve faced so far this season, and isn’t something they can "ignore" for the next few episodes (like they did with the Hatch / Ethan / Claire going missing). The bad news is that this is the last new episode until April 13th. That’s right, not March 13th, but APRIL - over a full month away. The good news is that it will be new episodes from April 13th through May 11th (when it is predicted the season’s two hour season finale will air). So breathe the sweet taste of new Lost episode goodness in deep this week! It’s going to be a long time before we get another taste.
Thank God for March Madness to help us keep our sanity for the next four weeks!
Delta House. 8:00 pm. It’ll be a Lost-astic time!
Character Involved: Hurley (the last of the main 14 characters to receive an episode!)
TV Guide Description: When Hurley becomes obsessed with the French woman and heads into the jungle to find her, Jack, Sayid and Charlie have no choice but to follow. Meanwhile, Locke asks Claire to help build a mysterious item.
Brian's Deeper Meaning Guess: Back when this episode title was announced (about a month ago), the teaser I read said "Hurley accomplishes what most Americans dream of", and that the title was "Numbers". Enter the genius of Brian Joseph Sullivan and Brian Joseph Sullivan - the combined brain power of the Delta House together and came up with the theory that Hurley must win the lottery. After last week’s shot of Hurley on the TV in Korea (and special thanks to James Joo for the translation of "Lucky Winner - Los Angeles, CA"), I’m more sure than ever that this is what happened. Who wants to bet that the winning numbers somehow involve 815? We’ve also been told that all the characters on the show are somehow connected to each other, and we’ve seen that the number 815 seems to appear all over their pasts - could this episode finally bring the connection to the forefront? Or explain the importance of 815? Here’s hoping!
TV Guide Description Breakdown: This episode was written by David Fury, who so far this season has written "Walkabout" (Locke’s episode - the best hour of TV so far this season), "Solitary" (Sayid’s episode that introduced CFL), and "Special" (the Walt episode that showed he had special powers). Based on that, I think we’re all in for a very special treat.
I’m unsure why Hurley would suddenly become obsessed with CFL - seeing as he hasn’t shown much interest in her up until this point. Does he see her as the best bet to get off the island? Does something he learns about her connect with something in his own past? Is he Alex? (Maybe Sayid mentions that she has her own power source, and he sees this as a way to continue to jam to music, now that the batteries to his Walkman are dead!) It’s been far too long since CFL was around given how important she is. Perhaps Sayid will bring the maps with him and attempt to get some answers from her? Are the attacks seen in the preview coming from CFL as the they approach her camp? I think we’re all hoping those attacks are coming from "The Others". I know I am. Given we also saw a shot of the four of them crossing a man-made bridge we haven’t seen before, it looks like they’re going into a new part of the jungle, and perhaps closer to the Black Rock.
Locke asking Claire to build a mysterious item? It has to be something to do with the metal hatch in the woods, as this has been Locke and Boone’s obsession of late. But what could Claire build that they couldn’t build themselves? Does it have something to do with the fact that she is pregnant? Does her baby somehow have the power to open the hatch? We all know that Ethan wanted the baby - is this why?! Mystery abounds!
Last Week’s Episode Discussion Points:
Fantastic episode.
1. Jin never killed anyone. Our assumption from the Sun episode was that he was basically a goon for her dad, coming home bloody from murdering someone. In fact, he was the exact opposite. Her father wanted him to be a hit man, but he found a way to both please her father and not murder someone. Sure, he gave him a heck of a beating, but as he put it "I just saved your life" as the other goon with the gun stood in the doorway. I guess we don’t know if there were other "jobs" that we don’t see - but I have a feeling that Jin has never killed someone (unlike Kate, Charlie, Sawyer, Sayid, Walt?)
2. Does Jin understand English? I went into the episode thinking, "Oh, this is going to be ironic - Jin and Sun will both be able to speak English, but neither will know about the other!" After watching the episode, I’m not so sure. Here are the main points:
a. Jin stopped when Sun was explaining to him why she was going to leave him, even though she was speaking in English. His response was as if he understood what she just said… "It’s too late".
b. Jin was planning on going to America for a job - would he need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the language to do business there?
c. At the end of the episode, Jin referred to Michael by name. How could he have picked out Michael’s name from the rest of the English words everyone was saying? I guess it’s possible he’s put it together over the weeks on the island, but maybe he’s also putting together an understanding of the English language.
3. Why didn’t Jin go back with Sun? Based on his talks with his dad, he was all set to turn his life around. One last job for Sun’s dad, then turn over a new leaf and get a fresh start on life, getting back to lovin’ the hotties and hatin’ the crime. Sun explained her rationale for wanting to leave him, but then said "This is our chance to start over." Which seems precisely what Jin wanted too! Is her brief interaction with Michael enough for Jin to throw it all away? Very odd.
4. Putting Hurley in the background on the TV is the kind of attention to detail that I appreciate in a TV show. The creators know that we watch and dissect with a fine toothed comb, so touches like this is a direct nod to people like us, saying "Hey, we know you’re going to screen capture this and send it around at work the next day - have fun." I also love how the episode ended with the parallelism between Claire and Hurley sitting on the beach with their large stomachs, and then the camera held on Hurley, a foreshadowing that his episode was coming up next.
5. I think we all knew that Jin was not responsible for burning down the raft, but the fact that is was Walt that did so was a great twist. I also assume he used his mind to burn the raft, rather that setting it on fire manually. If you remember, when Michael yelled at Walt a few episodes back for reading the Spanish comic book, he threw it into the fire. Is this Walt’s way of getting back at dad? You burn my book, I burn your boat?
6. Locke was genius for using this as an opportunity to give a pep talk to his "troops". He put all the focus on The Others, making it seem like they have just made the first attack against the Flight 815 Survivors. When he comes back to them in a later episode, saying "We need to attack the Others", no one will have a reason, they’ll already have one.
7. The Locke and Walt scene at the end was great. It was almost the exact same scene as in the first episode where the two sat down at Backgammon. If you remember that episode, Locke introduced the game as "a game of two players, two sides, dark and light" and then said "do you want to know a secret?". The rest of their conversation is still unknown, but isn’t it ironic that now these two both like it on the island and want to stay?
LOCKE. This week, I was posed the following question: "Why are you surprised that Locke knew how to handle the gun in the episode two weeks ago? Didn’t they hint at his involvement with the military in his first flashback?" This got my mind racing - I definitely remembered the phone call that Locke received in that episode where he was talking in military time, and someone called him "Colonel". I went back and read the script for the episode (no, I didn’t transcribe it, it was on the Internet, home of anything in the world you could ever want to know!) and the phone conversation was concerning the risk-like game that he played at lunch. So there really has been no hint of Locke being anything special before coming to the island. Therefore, the real question is: why did Locke have a suitcase full of knives on the plane? These wouldn’t be needed on the Walkabout, would they? If he worked at a box factory and was in a wheelchair - what in the world did he need all the knives for? That’s the one piece of Locke’s past that doesn’t make much sense.
FAMILY. I also find it very interesting that we’ve heard about Locke’s family in recent episodes. His sister dying, his father leaving his family - it just contributes to the overall "family theme" that we’ve seen on this show for a bunch of characters. Jack, Kate, Charlie, Walt and Michael, Sun and Jin, Boone and Claire, Sawyer… all full of family issues! The only character who has no real connection to anyone else so far is Hurley… and I bet we get that this week!
HURLEY. Based on the TV shots, Hurley won the lottery. But when people win the lottery, they generally don’t put it on TV in a foreign country, do they? There must have been something very odd about the way he won, or it was like the world’s biggest lottery jackpot ever. I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up. I’ve really gone back and forth on the Hurley character from the start. He has always been very "happy" on the island. Listening to music, building the golf course, playing Backgammon - he’s going with the flow and doesn’t seem too worried about things. However, he was also the person that found the manifesto and was worried about doing a census.
After the whole census / Ethan issue - I was wagering that Hurley was actually the one who wasn’t on the plane. However, Ethan being crazy, and the flashback showing Hurley on TV seems to squash that idea. There have been other hints at Hurley’s past though - when losing at Backgammon to Walt, he owed like $50,000 to Walt and laughed about it. Then he made some reference to being a "warrior". Did Hurley maybe win his money through some contest - not a lottery win? Like a Backgammon contest? That would add all the more irony to the fact that he lost to Walt - it would also explain better why it would be on TV in Korea…
WALT. Walt is 100% on Locke’s side. The two have now shared the confidence that both want to stay on the island, and Locke definitely has more influence over him than Michael does. If Locke is building up his troops for a battle, this is easily the most powerful soldier he can have on his side. If Walt torched Michael’s boat with his mind, does he realize the power that he has? If he does, what’s stopping him from going crazy? Does he realize there’s a reason that he always wins at Backgammon? Can he truly control it without focusing on what he’s doing? If he dreams something in the middle of the night will it come true? Walt may be the most powerful, but I think he’s also the most dangerous. I could see him "accidentally" killing someone by thinking the wrong thoughts…
DEATH. Which brings me to this. It’s a well known fact on the internet that someone is going to die before the end of the season. As time goes on, a few more clues have been brought to light. Everything I’ve read leads me to believe it will be a MALE character who dies (there are only like 4 female characters on the show for one). I’m also betting that we get some "Circle of Life" action by having the death and Claire’s baby birth being in the same episode. If they’re going for true shock, I expect Jack, Locke, or Sayid to die. If they play it safe, I’ll bet on Boone, Jin, or Michael. We’ll see how much chutzpah the show’s writers have.
EXTRAS. Have you noticed that there is more screen time of extras on the show lately? You know, the other 30 or so characters who we don’t know by name but have seen walking around on the island in the background. Lately they’re actually showing these characters faces in focus. It makes you wonder - is that guy / girl going to be a main character next season? I wonder what their story is? Were they in the original episode? I’d be curious to see how many people are actually under contract on this show - people that appeared in the first episode just standing around that are going to be full fledged stars next season? How crazy would it be if you signed up to star on this hit TV show and no one knew you yet?
NUMBERS. 815 has been everywhere. Sawyer’s shirt, Charlie’s copier, Kate’s safe deposit box, etc. I have to assume these numbers play a role in Hurley’s "big win". But there are other numbers that this can refer to. The episode preview hints that Hurley is going after CFL - what about the numbers on CLF’s maps? What do those numbers mean? A latitude and longitude? Some math equation? Will Hurley somehow figure them out?
CFL. Just one quick thing - what side of the battle do you think CFL is going to come down on? I see her being a wild card, as I can’t imagine her siding with The Others who made her crew go crazy, stole her son, and likely tried to kill her. On the other hand, she’s CRAZY - she obviously was about to kill Sayid before he talked her out of it. I’m thinking that Hurley is unsuccessful in making contact with her, and she remains in the background until everyone comes under attack. Then she swoops in to save them (did someone say Deus Ex Machina?)
ALEX. Speaking of wild cards - is this guy even still alive? Is he even a "he"? Forget CFL, he could be the true Deus Ex Machina - a true warrior of the forest that comes crashing in from the trees when our heroes are surrounded by the Others. Whoa. When I wrote that I just got to thinking… if Alex isn’t a "he", if it’s a "thing" - how great would it be if our heroes (let’s say Locke, Jack, Kate, and Sayid) are trapped in the season finale, about to get killed by the Others and "the monster" which is actually "Alex" comes in and eats the bad guys and saves them? Talk about coming full circle! I know I would geek out like when Seth and Summer get together on the OC! Why aren’t I writing for this show again?
SAD NEWS. Why is it the beginning of the end? Well, from a story telling standpoint, this should be the episode that gets the wheels in motion that will lead to the season finale. The preview for this week showed explosions, guns, and our survivors coming under attack. This would serve by far as the biggest danger they’ve faced so far this season, and isn’t something they can "ignore" for the next few episodes (like they did with the Hatch / Ethan / Claire going missing). The bad news is that this is the last new episode until April 13th. That’s right, not March 13th, but APRIL - over a full month away. The good news is that it will be new episodes from April 13th through May 11th (when it is predicted the season’s two hour season finale will air). So breathe the sweet taste of new Lost episode goodness in deep this week! It’s going to be a long time before we get another taste.
Thank God for March Madness to help us keep our sanity for the next four weeks!
Delta House. 8:00 pm. It’ll be a Lost-astic time!
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