Best Buy Is Stupid

Feb 24

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I got an email today from Best Buy.

It said “Congratulations on requalifying for Premier Silver status. We greatly appreciate your continued loyalty to Best Buy^®, and we’d like to say “thanks.” Your Reward Zone^® program Premier Silver status is good through February 28, 2011.”

It listed my points as below:

I thought to myself!  Sweet!  $660 in rewards is the equivalent to electronics heaven!!  I could buy so many things – FOR FREE!!  Man, I could really save up and get that super big HDTV!

So I go about my work and kinda forget about it.  As I sit at my computer relaxing after a long 11 hour day, I get another email from Best Buy.

It says: “A PREVIOUS EMAIL INCORRECTLY LISTED YOUR POINTS AND REWARD CERTIFICATES; CORRECTION BELOW.”

It listed my points as below:

Talk about a buzz kill!!  Going from $660 in free electronic goodies to a measly $5? How could this be?  I’ve dropped more than a few hundred dollars at Best Buy over the last 6 months and surely I’ve acquired more than $5 in rewards!

What’s the saying?  Easy come, easy go?  That is a stupid saying!

Lighthouse Recap

Feb 24

metalman777Lost recap, season 6 No Comments

“Lighthouse” is the 5th episode of Season 6 of Lost and the 108th produced hour of the series as a whole. It was first broadcast on February 23, 2010.  (Lostpedia.com)

1. In the Sideways world, Doc Shephard spotted his appendix scar in the mirror and struggled to recall the forgotten/suppressed memory of when the ruptured organ was removed. Again, he wondered: How did that get there? Again we wondered: What does it mean? This story ended with Jack looking into the episode’s most unusual and most miraculous of mirrors — the eyes of his son, David. What he saw in them was the very thing his Island self should have recognized in the Lighthouse: an invitation to let go of the past and move into the future.
2. You don’t have what it takes, Christian told Young Jack during a boozy stupor. That one left a mark. Father Shephard was actually trying to teach his son a lesson — that being a hero isn’t something you choose to be, but rather something that you just are, and that when you try to be a hero, and you fail, then what you become is a failure, at least in your own eyes, and that’s a mighty hard thing to live with, if you can live with it at all. If you’ve watched all of Lost, then you know the great irony of Christian’s harsh wisdom: Jack has pretty much proven his father correct. But did Christian correctly identify Jack’s fundamentally flawed nature — or did he nurture it with his problematic brand of parenting?
3. Anyway, this is all to say that the Sideways Jack that we got to know in ”Lighthouse” was a lot like the Castaway Jack we’ve come to know over the past five season, but also very different, in ways both obvious and not so obvious. (Has there ever been a less helpful sentence ever written than that last one?) We met him as he was washing a hard day’s work off himself and talking with his mother about the mystery of Christian’s missing coffin. Yep: still missing. Probably in Berlin, according to the airline, but nobody knew for sure. The Widow Shephard was flummoxed. How could someone possibly lose a dead body? The lack of resolution had left her proverbially paralyzed; she needed Jack’s help in settling Christian’s affairs. (In more ways than one.) It would be wrong to say Jack was unfazed by his father’s Lost-in-the-system corpse (he certainly seemed moved by his mother’s need), but at the same time I didn’t get the sense he was haunted by it, either.
4. But I wonder if the perplexing puzzle of Jack’s appendix scar told the real story of Jack’s seemingly mature serenity. Eyeballing the blemish, Jack suddenly realized he couldn’t recall when the damn thing has been cut out of him. His mother reminded him that it had happened when he was 7 or 8 years old, that he had collapsed at school and his father had wanted to perform the surgery himself but was denied. Now, we all know that the castaway version of Jack had his appendix removed on the Island back in season 4 (more on that episode in a sec), and I think Lost wanted us to once again wonder if these Sideways characters are psychically linked to their Island counterparts or possess their memories somewhere the backs of their fogged-up minds. Consider this: If we assume that Jack is about as old as Sawyer, then that means it’s very likely that Sideways Jack had his school collapse/appendix episode the very same year that a certain group of time traveling castaways were blowing up Jughead on the Island. What if Young Jack’s collapse was caused by Castaway Jack’s mind/soul getting blown into him? What if Young Jack’s appendicitis was reflexive a psychosomatic response to the appendix-free Castaway Jack’s sudden psychic migration into his mind? What if Castaway Jack’s mind/soul has lain dormant within Sideways Jack ever since, but now is starting to stir and take hold? What if Sideways’ Jack’s appendix confusion and other instances of spotty memory manifested in this episode are symptoms of an identity crisis caused by this trippy-tricky of mental operating systems?
5. For now, I’m going to say that the answer to every single one of those preceding ”What if…?” questions is a big fat NO. Instead, I’m going to say that Sideways Jack is a man who’s dangerously out of touch with his emotions and with others, because he’s a self-absorbed jerk, or because of pain he’s been spending most of his life trying to avoid, or both. As ”Lighthouse” progressed, we learned that Sideways Jack’s relationship with his father was also marked by fear and hurt; and so I wonder if a simple explanation for his fuzzy recall of the appendix drama was that he had suppressed the memory. The only psychic entity lurking within Sideway Jack is his own wounded child, and for his entire life, he’s kept him heavily tranquilized. His story in ”Lighthouse” was about choosing to recall and feel childhood pain, about rousing that sleeping, hurting kid… and then letting him go.
6. BURNING QUESTION: Who’s David’s Mom? Who’s the female participant in the creation of this inexplicably conceived Sideways child? Who’s this phantom woman that Sideways Jack was once with and now isn’t? Wouldn’t if be totally ironic and fitting if she was the Sideways iteration of Lost‘s resident fertility doc/Jack dumpette, better known to us as Juliet? And you wanna know why she wasn’t home last night? That’s right, kids: Going dutch on coffee with new boyfriend Sawyer. (Your goosebumps? That’s right, I did that.)
7. Christian Shephard left something for Claire. My thought: Well, that answered that question. Sideways Dad was an intercontinental horndog, too
8. Jack arrived at the audition. He followed the sign directing ”the candidates” to the auditorium. Inside, Father Jack bore witness to his piano prodigy son exercising his awesome gift. It took his breath away. It was all very end-of-Billy Elliot. Jack swelled with pride, with joy, with selfless happiness for his son — with life. The piece: ”Fantasia Impromptu in C-sharp minor” by Chopin. Last season on Lost, another child prodigy played the same number for us. I am referring to Master Daniel Faraday in ”The Variable.” We remember his fate: how his mother cut him off his from art; how she redirected his brilliance toward physics in a doomed bid to save him from her future bullet; how she drove him and rode him and smothered him. He died, anyway. A failure, anyway. I felt Lost was offering a belated toast to the late Faraday in Sideways Jack’s surprising cross with Sideways Dogen, whose son was also auditioning for Williams. ”They are too young to have this kind of pressure,” Dogen said. ”It’s hard to watch and be unable to help.” Rest In Peace, Daniel. Sorry your Mom sucked. (I look forward to getting Island Dogen’s backstory and seeing how much of it ironically synchs with this small peek into his Sideways world.)
9. There was more to the statement, but let’s just begin with that phrase, an extraordinary admission of humility from a once-proud man of science who spent years arguing for the strength and supremacy of his own agency. But Jack’s full statement was: ”I came back here because I was broken, and I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.” Jacob would later suggest to Hurley that Jack couldn’t be more wrong, but the good news was that Jack had grown enough in his journey to summon a magical beacon, one that could to light the way to the his journey’s homestretch. Literally.
10. Hurley thought — or hoped — that he could summon Jacob by cranking on a chain and turning the dial to its 108 setting. (Though I didn’t see it, the Web consensus seems to be that the name attached to this number was ”Wallace.”) But before the contraption could reach 108, Jack saw something in the mirrors — images of buildings that shouldn’t be there. He then got a scary thought: What would he see if he turned the dial to his number, 23. He pushed Hurley out of the way and changed the ”channel” and there on the ”screen” was a live shot of his childhood home. Jack then came to some conclusions. He concluded that the Lighthouse was a mystical surveillance device. He concluded that Jacob had used it to spy on him all his life. He concluded that Jacob wanted something from him, and he angrily demanded that Hurley summon Jacob ASAP to explain himself. Hurley explained that it didn’t work that way, that Jacob was a ghost — a sometimes there, sometimes not non-entity.
11. Meanwhile, Hurley and Jacob debriefed. Jacob seemed to suggest that contrary to Hurley’s panic (and armful of inky instructions), everything had gone according to plan. Jack was supposed to look in the magic mirrors. Jack was supposed to see what he saw. And maybe most importantly, Jack was supposed to have the response that he had, even at the expense of his magical mirror, mirrors on the Lighthouse walls. The purpose, I think, was to correct Jack of one misconception: He was not stupid to believe that the Island holds redemptive purpose for him. It does. Jack just needs to keep his eyes open and look for it. He also needs to do one thing more, and I think it’s the thing that Lighthouse mirrors were designed to show him. Hurley and Jack got it wrong. The Lighthouse doesn’t cast light outward. It casts light inward, and reveals the state of your heart. For Jack Shephard, his heart is still locked up in his childhood home, his father’s house, his past, and he won’t be free and realized until he leaves all of it behind.  (1-11 from Doc Jensen at EW.com)
    ===================
12. But at least somebody at the Temple is making productive use of time. Hurley and Miles are playing X’s and O’s! There’s no ambiguity in X’s and O’s. Two sides: one is X, one is O. And their game plays out in a similar manner as the one being played between the Man in Black and Jacob – endless ties, one always blocking the other’s “three in a row”. Of course, if you play X’s and O’s enough times, someone wins a game, often out of sheer carelessness on the part of the other player. Is this what’s happened between Jacob and MIB?
13. Speaking of which, what was Jacob doing? I’ve rewatched it a dozen times, and he appears to be swirling a piece of string or a thin stick in the waters of the Spring. Honestly, it looks like he’s fishing. I’m not sure what to make of that, although if I was pressed to make some comparison, the first thing that comes to my mind mind is Jesus Christ, not just a fisherman but a “fisher of men”, who recruits his followers and gives them tasks that they often don’t understand and end up failing at.
14. From Justin and Claire we’re given two slightly different accounts of what’s happened to Claire over the last three years. I think it’s fair to say at this point that Claire didn’t do any time-traveling during the season 5 flashes, as the group from Dharma times only arrived in 2007 a day or so ago, which wouldn’t have been enough time for Claire and the Temple Others to establish their current relationship (nor would Claire have had ample time to build a shelter and set traps if she had only recently flashed to 2007). I can only assume that Claire wasn’t subject to the time traveling because of some sort of interference from the Christian Shephard apparition, which I’m 99% sure was actually the Man in Black.
15. So for the last three years, Claire has lived from 2004 to 2007, running from the Others and was at one point captured by them. She tells Jin that they tortured her, even showing him the scars. Based on this and what Dogen said about Claire being infected, it seems that she underwent a similar test as Sayid. I have no doubt that she failed, too, but I’m less sure that that means either of them are actually infected, as I have yet to see them become corrupted by the Smoke Monster the way that the French Team was (though it’s certainly possible that this did happen to Claire – we now know who she’s been buddy-buddy with lately.
16. For the record, I don’t think Claire recalls it happening that way. Remember her emotionless, zombie-like appearance with Christian in “Cabin Fever”? Christian must have brainwashed her or altered her memory somehow (which could very well be a side effect of becoming infected – Sayid doesn’t really understand what’s going on, either). If apparitions of Christian are indeed the Man in Black, it makes sense what he was doing. By brainwashing Claire into thinking that the Others had her baby, he turned her against them permanently, thwarting any future attempts on the part of Dogen to gather all the Losties at the Temple for the forces of good. This is why he continued to appear to her as her “friend”, deliberately feeding her lies, recruiting her in his efforts against Jacob and the Temple.
17. Last but not least in this story thread, Flocke shows up at Claire’s camp and is heralded as a friend of hers. A quick tally: Sawyer is with Flocke, Claire is with Flocke, Kate is heading to her doom, the Temple is probably about to be destroyed and Sayid is infected. Whoever Jacob wants Hurley to guide to the island better be pretty vital for the forces of good.
18. Anyway, Wallace could turn out to be no one. Last week I made a huge fuss about Kate not being a candidate and this week, there she is – not crossed off, no important number, just kind of there. My point is that there might be less rhyme and reason to these names and numbers than we suspect. Then again, Damon and Carlton know we’d be on the lookout for 108, so I have a hard time believing it says “Wallace” for no reason  (12-18 by Robz888 on DarkUFO.com)
19. I’m starting to think that all the candidates are pieces of a Jacob-constructed Rube Goldberg machine, one where if everyone is placed in the correct spot at the correct time Smokey will be defeated and a new Jacob will take the Island’s helm. The side-effect of all this is that all the candidates’ lives will have been made miserable up to that point because of Jacob’s machinations in getting them there; Jacob essentially sacrificing the good of the few or the one for the sake of the world. That’s why, without Jacob’s influence, everyone’s lives are better in the Alt universe (except for Kate, perhaps).
20. So let’s say that’s true – that Jacob essentially made everyone’s lives miserable because it was necessary to defeat Smokey. In that case, I can see Jacob being responsible for Jack fixing Sarah, Locke having issues with his Dad, Hurley thinking he’s cursed, etc… all these awful things that Jacob was actually responsible for in order to get them to the Island. Now with Jacob’s influence gone in the Alt, everyone is actually a lot happier, but the Island is destroyed. What the ramifications of that are for the world we just don’t know yet
21. Another nice nugget of info this provides, though, is that if totally all of the candidates were written on the lighthouse turntable, then there are only 360 total. Lostpedia has an updated list of all the candidate numbers from Jacob (or Smokey’s) Wall. Looking it over, there’s only one number above 360: Daniel Faraday. And even that could be wrong, given how illegible some parts of the wall were. Also note: Kate’s name is in the lighthouse at #51 and is NOT crossed out. Interesting, eh?
22. I really, really liked Claire this episode and props to Emilie de Raven for playing crazy as well as anyone on the show. The sickness has turned out to be one of the most interesting things about this season. Smokey’s appearance and the fact Infected Claire knew that he wasn’t the real Locke certainly suggests the sickness is something caused by Smokey.But what exactly does it do? In Sayid’s case, he definitely died and came back to life infected. In Claire’s case, we’re really not sure. It certainly seemed she died from wounds inflicted in the attacks on the Barracks, after all, the Claire Locke saw with Smokey in Jacob’s cabin seemed eerily calm – much different from this Claire. And Sayid certainly seems normal so far as well. Whatever is does there’s a definite progression. But are they really dead, zombie-like creatures or merely corrupted souls (something like a Ringwraith perhaps, an evil servant of Smokey)? (19-22 from Mistaking Confidence for Fate)
    =======================
23. The first time I watched this episode I was pretty sure that Claire revealed that Christian and “Locke” are the same people.  But when I watched it again she clearly says that first Christian told her that The Others took Aaron and then her friend told her.  Her friend was revealed to be “Locke” so if we’re going to believe Claire then they are still separate people.  I don’t know what to think.  If there was ever a time to reveal that Christian was “Locke” then that was it.
24. Jacob was watching Jack’s old house.  It was a white house so it was a light house.  Get it?   HA HA HA… anyways.  Jack was enraged when he found out Jacob was watching him.  But the truth is that he might not have been watching Jack.  Doesn’t it seem more likely that he was watching Christian?  Jack only lived there as a kid.  For Jack’s sake I hope I’m wrong about that.  (23-24 from Not Confused Just Lost)
    =================
25. The Annotated Alice: Jack says he read it to David, and we saw him reading it to Aaron when he was living with Kate.
26. Claire isn’t just kinda crazy… she’s totally batshit bonkers creepy-skeleton-head-baby-lovin’ super crazy
27. Jack found the key under the rabbit, just like Miles reached under a rabbit in “Some Like It Hoth” to get into that apartment with the dead man when he was a kid.
28. Jacob says that Jack is here because he has to do something, and that he needs to look at the ocean for a while… Locke looked at the ocean for a long time before he sensed his destiny on the island. We also saw the Man in Black staring at the ocean when he returned looking like Locke.  (25-28 from Nik at Nite)
    ====================
29. There was an amazing number of black and white references this episode, and most of them were in LAX_Jack’s world. All throughout his home we saw black and white, especially amongst the paintings, photos, frames, and wall hangings. Ditto for Jack’s black and white office. And the icing on the cake? All those various shots of piano keys.
30. Figuring out Jack’s color is tough right now. Like Sawyer, he’s walked both sides of the fence. He’s been a man of science and a man of faith, and he’s also someone who walks “among us but is not one of us”. I suppose all of these references could be pointing out that Jack’s final role has yet to be determined, or that maybe he’s being played by both sides of LOST’s game.
31. We’re seeing a very distinct pattern in the LAX timeline, and here it is in a nutshell: the circle can be broken. People can change. Mistakes don’t need to be repeated, over and over again. Some examples so far:

    * Kate Austin is a fugitive on the run, only looking out for herself. She glances into a garage mirror and… BANG! Kate heads back to bring pregnant Claire her stuff, help her through false labor, and befriend her during a major crisis… all at great risk to her personal safety. Cue Claire’s credit cards and a makeover shopping spree.

    * John Locke is the same angry and defiant cripple he’s always been. Still struggling against his paralysis he calls Jack’s number, looks into a mirror and… BANG! Locke suddenly hangs up the phone and embraces his condition. Helen loves and accepts him for who he is, there’s a nice tearful hug, and everything is unicorns and rainbows.

    * Jack Shephard is a workaholic surgeon neglecting a son he only sees once a month. He looks in the mirror and… well, you get the picture. With some help from his mother Jack realizes the error of his ways, eases up on young David, and opens his loving arms to his son. Time for ice cream and some hair-rumpling.

    This is some exciting news, actually. It may be proof that Jacob is right. People don’t always have to fight, corrupt, and destroy. By stopping to take a good look at what they’ve become, people can actually reverse bad behavior and start making positive changes to their lives. Maybe broken people can be fixed after all.

32. Here’s a phrase you’ve heard me say before: “placed into being by requirement”. Charlie’s guitar, Locke’s knives, Jack’s sewing kit, Rose’s husband, Yemi’s crashed plane, the black rock’s dynamite, a shitload of heroin, the Swan’s washer/dryer, Christian’s coffin, the food drop, Sun’s pregnancy test, the marshal’s Haliburton case, Anthony Cooper, Jacob’s cabin, IM chats with Walt, batteries, radios, guns, canoes, explosives, medicine, a spinal surgeon, Aaron himself… and now, a giant stone lighthouse.

    The end of LOST is near. Answers are bigger, and they’re right in front of our eyes. The reason we never saw the lighthouse until now is because our characters never needed the lighthouse until now. So was it always there? Shoot me, but I say NO.

33. Listen to Dogen talk to Jack about his son David, and how it’s unfair that he’s under such a tremendous amount of pressure. “It’s hard to watch, and not be able to help”. This simple statement is one of the fundamental principals of LOST. It’s almost as if Jacob is speaking through Dogen here, looking on helplessly but hopefully. Jack and the other candidates are like his children: he can only sit back and watch as they walk their paths in life, unable to do much of anything to help. He can only push or nudge them in the right direction, but he cannot directly interfere.

    Dogen’s final statement, “How long has he been playing?”, is much more than an innocent throwaway line of dialogue. It’s a direct reference to just how long LOST’s game has gone on, and how many times Jack himself has been through the loop. Iteration after iteration, Jack has been playing damned near forever. Yet perhaps this time through, maybe he’s come further than ever before. As the dark man told Sawyer last episode, “it would be a shame to turn back now after coming so far”.

    David is Jack’s direct reflection. To say what’s real or unreal is getting irrelevant at this late stage in the game. Suffice it to say that the Jack of this timeline – much like Kate and Locke – is finally learning. My guess is he’s gaining the important knowledge needed to go back to the island, where he’ll eventually win the war against Flocke and his recruits.

34. It was interesting to note Kate’s name on the wheel, at number 51. Even more interesting, her name was not crossed out. This reinforces my opinion from last recap: that although she’s not assigned one of the big six numbers, Kate is still a candidate. In fact, she’s a secret candidate, because the dark man knows only about Locke, Reyes, Jarrah, Shephard, Ford, and Kwon.

    So who’s coming to the island? Who’s number 108? The name on the wheel reads Wallace. Before I’d even seen the name, my money was on Desmond. Even afterward, I still like the idea that Desmond is on his way. He’ll arrive by boat, just as he did the last time he came to the island, just as the Oceanic six had to return by way of an airplane.  (29-34 by Vozzek69 at DarkUFO.com)
    ==================

35. In 6×05, The Lighthouse, we got to see… a lighthouse. The numbers corresponding in degrees to the heading of the lighthouse were affiliated with names… many familiar, some not. This seems to be a match with the numbers seen in the cave in the last episode. Of course, we also see that a person’s number can be dialed into and be observed from the lighthouse. Does it make any sense at all? Hmmmm…. no.  Click here to see close up pictures of the dial at Sledgeweb’s Lost Stuff

Searching For New Podcasts, Part 2

Feb 24

metalman777podcasts Armstrong & Getty, talk radio No Comments

Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty form a fantastic comedic duo who report on news and current events on one of my local AM radio stations (650AM, KSTE)

I found them on iTunes quite by accident!  The podcast is the previous day’s radio show, so you are not listening in real time, but this podcast is a keeper.

These guys are hilarious.  Straight laced and no-nonsense, they tend to have a middle of the road view on politics and world events.  That’s what I like – they don’t lean either way and pump you full of left wing or right wing propaganda.

You can download all 4 hours of the show, or break up which parts you’d like to listen to.  I’d heartily recommend all four hours.  It’ll make you laugh out loud and think real hard!

Searching For New Podcasts, Part 1

Feb 23

metalman777podcasts skeptics guide to the universe No Comments

I’ve worked about a bazillion and two hours this winter.  I mostly listen to music, but do listen to a few podcasts as well.

I have about 4 that I listen to regularly, but I’ve had a hard time finding others I like.  Last night I spent about an hour on the iTunes story looking for something new to listen to.  I thought it would be fun to post a few entries about the new podcasts I’ve found.

The first one I ran across was The Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe.

The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe is a weekly Podcast talkshow discussing the latest news and topics from the world of the paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims from a scientific point of view.

Sounds interesting!  It isn’t a theological podcast, but one about science and medicine and topics like that.

I wasn’t immediately drawn into the conversation upon first listen.   This one will have to grow on me.  The commentators sound like they know what they are talking about, but the topics discussed just didn’t hold my attention

Shutter Island Review

Feb 21

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The first preview I saw of Shutter Island was before last summer’s crappy blockbuster, Transformers 2.  I was excited to see what I thought was an upcoming scare-the-crap-out-of-me movie.

I love scary movies, but not the bloody gory torture porn that are so popular now-a-days.   Mess with my mind, make me jump, put me on the edge of my seat.  Shutter Island is marketed as exactly this type of film.

So it was with great anticipation I went to see Shutter Island last night.   I left the movie feeling a little bit confused.

I’ll try to say as much as I can, with no spoilers.   Shutter Island IS NOT a scary thriller.  It is a drama, and a very good one at that.   Leonardo DeCaprio was very convincing in his role.   Everything about the movie felt like it was authentically set in the 50′s.

If you are looking for a review, here is mine:  now that I look back, it was a very good drama.  I went in looking for a scary thriller and was disappointed that I didn’t get it.

The Substitute Recap

Feb 17

metalman777Lost recap, season 6 No Comments

“The Substitute” is the 4th episode of Season 6 of Lost and the 107th produced hour of the series as a whole. It was originally broadcast on Feb 16, 2010. Locke goes in search of help to further his cause.  (lostpedia.com)

1. Officially, there was John Locke the Island adventurer, now a ripe, sun-bleached corpse buried six feet under on Boone Hill after Captain Frank Lapidus declared the impromptu graveside service ”the weirdest damn funeral” he’d ever been to. There was ”John Locke,” aka the Locke-ness Monster, the fearsome Island entity now wearing the Ben-murdered castaway’s visage, who oozed sincerity as he/it/whatever downloaded oodles of noodle-expanding mythology… although can we really trust him/it/whatever? And there was Sideways John Locke, a tough and tender man, so superior to his dead Island doppelganger in many ways, save possibly one. We met him as he fell flat on his face, yet another humiliation for a soul who seems to be destined to suffer a daily diet of humiliations no matter which ”island universe” he happens to reside upon. But this John Locke can laugh when the fates make fun of him. This John Locke has the self-awareness and strength to grow and change. And this John Locke is loved, and better, he knows it, and we were reminded last night how much we need that kind of love, both to flourish and survive.
2. Sideways John Locke had self-confidence, self-awareness, and a genuine self. He also enjoyed the security of knowing he was loved by his soulmate, Helen. But I wonder if that’s part of the important point of these parallel world stories. Lost is creating the means for us to see these too-familiar people with fresh eyes. By presenting them as something profoundly different, as profoundly ”Other,” the castaways are revealed anew, or perhaps even for the first time, by the comparison.
3. We were told nothing about how this Locke and Helen met. But we were told they have an October wedding date, and given that it’s late September in the Sideways world, I’m predicting that their Big Day will serve as a key moment for the entire Sideways arc — perhaps the time and place when all the disparate story lines will converge. Does Sideways Locke have a better relationship with his father than Island Locke had? It’s possible. When Helen suggested they elope after a frustrating phone call with a caterer, she pitched him on the idea of bringing Papa Locke along for the ride. John didn’t respond to the mere mention of his existence by involuntarily punching her in the face, so I’m guessing Sideways Anthony Cooper had nothing to do with crippling his son. ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I’M THINKING? We know from season 1 that Boone Carlyle’s mother, Sabrina Carlyle, owned a massively successful wedding business, and that Boone served as the company’s chief operating officer. Methinks the Carlyle family biz will play a role in solving Helen’s catering crisis…
4. But this was a clearly a Locke who didn’t believe in higher power-directed fate like his dead Island world counterpart. I thought it was interesting the way he described the walkabout later in the episode. He called it ”an adventure” about ”man versus nature.” By contrast, when Island Locke described the Walkabout in the classic season 1 episode of the same name, he called it ”a journey of spiritual renewal, where one derives strength from the earth and becomes inseparable from it.” Island Locke wanted to be feel connected to the world, to something bigger than himself; Sideways Locke wanted to feel his own strength, to feel whole again — to feel like a man.
5. How to account for the discrepancies between the two Lockes? There were a couple moments when I wondered if Sideways Locke had learned a thing or two from the experiences of his Island doppelganger via… quantum entanglement? Psychic connection? Past-life memories? (”When we’re puzzled we have all the stories that have been handed down from people who had the same problems.” — A Serious Man) Still, this matter of cross-universe connection was hard to say this week. For the third straight episode, the episode’s lead character was given a conspicuous moment in the bathroom, looking long and hard in the mirror. Where Jack saw an explicable (continuity) flaw on his skin and Kate watched herself flutter through the déjà vu blinky-blinkies, Locke struck a more conventional, contemplative pose, absent of any hint that he might be aware of his Island self. Which makes sense, given that Island Locke is, like, dead.
6. he curious thing about both photos: Locke appeared to be standing. When and how did Locke become dependent on a wheelchair for pedestrian perambulation? TBD. Island Locke didn’t get thrown out of that eighth-floor window by Bad Dad leaving him below-the-belt paralyzed until after Helen dumped his father-fixated ass. So it appears that Locke’s loss of lower legs was a trauma that he and his soul mate experienced together.
7. Was it just me, or did you get a Jacobesque vibe from Hurley, all empathetic benevolence as he responded to his ex-employee’s prickly anger with patience and grace and supreme knowingness and the hooked him up with a new job via his temp agency, another division of Hurley’s financial empire? Watching this scene, I couldn’t help but think about Helen’s earlier line about destiny. And I found myself flashing back to this scene later in the episode, when Helen challenged Locke’s incredulity about miracles. Was the Locke-Hurley crossing total coincidence, quantum synchronicity, or divinely orchestrated appointment? An elemental faith/reason debate worthy of old school Lost.
8. Yep, he lied to Boone on the plane. Like his Island counterpart, Sideways Locke was denied his outback adventure. And like his Island counterpart, Sideways Locke raged in response: ”Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” But this John Locke is capable of reflecting upon moments and realizing: My god, I must have sounded like… a big douche! Interesting that in an episode that saw the Locke-ness Monster spout Locke’s famous catchphrase, Sideways Locke came to the same conclusion about his situation that Smokey articulated in the premiere. They were right to deny me the walkabout, because it’s true — there are things I simply can’t do. He told Helen he was sick of daydreaming about life outside his chair, tired of imagining himself walking her down the aisle on their wedding day. He wanted to move into the liberating grace of brutal truth about himself and move on with his life. He asked Helen to do the same: ”I don’t want you to spend your life waiting for miracles, Helen, because there is no such thing.”
9. For now, though, John Locke is a man of science. Literally. You caught that, right? He accepted a job as substitute teacher. Subject: Biology. First lesson: the human reproductive system. It also looked like he was either teaching physical education or coaching basketball. There were some deeply embedded ironies here. FLASHBACK WHOOSH TO… the season 4 episode ”Cabin Fever,” in which Teenage Locke was encouraged by a teacher to cultivate his natural talent for science by attending a summer camp run by Mittelos Biosciences, the Others’ company that recruited miracle-grow fertility doc Juliet Burke to The Island. But Locke didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to drive fast cars and play sports. When he was told his dreams were unrealistic, Young Locke bellowed, ”Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” What a difference a (Jughead-spawned?) parallel reality makes. Here in the Sideways world, Locke is teaching science, teaching sports, and looking very much like a man who just found his niche. Of course, there’s still ample time for his born again life to go horribly wrong. After all, he’s now working with Benjamin Linus….
10. I thought this was an interesting newsflash from Ilana: Smokey is losing his shapeshifting mojo. By choosing Locke has his avatar, he’s becoming stuck with it, and you really got the sense that this god-like entity was settling into his new skin, his new home. But I also wondered what else Smokey might lose as he becomes more human. Will he lose the ability to turn to smoke and snake and coil through the jungle? Too bad, because that effect was pretty damn neat. But did you wonder as I did if perhaps some vestige of John Locke that got absorbed by Smokey along the way might be ”infecting” him to ironically appropriate some Island parlance? I got that latter vibe from the moment when we heard Un-Locke bellow, ”Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”
11. Sawyer became a dark knight of faith, a sinister ”substitute” for the deceased Locke. Or so I think the show made it seem….
12. UnLocke is old
    He told Sawyer that he was a reader — but that Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, published in 1937, was after his time.
13. UnLocke used to be a man
    ”What I am is trapped,” Fake Locke told Sawyer at one point when James grew frustrated and pulled a gun on the Monster. (I was like, SHOOT HIM! Just see what happens!) ”I’ve been trapped for so long I don’t even remember what it feels like to be free. Maybe you understand that. But before I was trapped I was a man just like you. I know what its like to feel joy to feel pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love….” My gut is that hardcore Lost theorists will be pulling these lines apart, looking for clues they can research in hopes of ascertaining the Monster’s true identity. My guess is that we won’t find it in a book… but if we could, I’m betting that Un-Locke is either… Cain or Abel. I’ll explain why next week in my Doc Jensen column.
14. UnLocke and Richard have a special relationship
    The Monster stated again that he wants to leave the Island and go home. He told Richard that he wanted him to come along. Richard adamantly refused. More than that, Richard was pretty damn confused by almost everything FLocke was telling him, most importantly the whole concept of ”candidates,” Jacob’s picks for replacing him as Island protector (again, provided we can trust Un-Locke).
15. UnLocke is haunted by a ghost
    Smokey saw and was deeply ruffled by a vision of a sandy-haired boy with bloody hands wearing Others garb. He was also deeply bothered by the fact that Sawyer could see him, too. (If the boy is dead and appearing in spectral form, does that man that Sawyer has developed Hurley-like see dead people powers?) The boy later ventured close to Un-Locke, this time with no blood in his hands, and warned him that he could not kill him. THEORY: The boy functions as a referee in the Jacob-Man In Black skirmish. He got that honor because the boy represents the first person the Man In Black ever killed
16. The White and Black Rocks
    What Smokey Said: Upon arriving in Jacob’s cave, Un-Locke spotted two large stones, one white and one black, sitting on a scale. He grabbed the white rock and threw it out into the sea. Sawyer asked: Huh? Un-Locke replied, ”Inside joke.”
    Percentage Chance I Believe Smokey: 100% Or maybe 0%, because I got the sense from Smokey’s angry toss that this so-called ”inside joke” wasn’t all that funny for him. My guess is — obviously — that the white rock represented Jacob, and that tossing that rock was symbolic of Fake Locke’s (apparent) victory, and, perhaps, his rejection of the white/black categorization of his morality and his relationship with Jacob. My guess is also that whenever and whatever was decided between Jacob and his nemesis — the nature of their conflict/game; the roles they would play; the rules they would play by — it was all hashed out and settled in the cave, and the deal was sealed with some ceremonial putting-rocks-on-a-scale thing.
17. The Numbers
    What Smokey Said: Lost fans, prepare to rethink your Valenzetti Equations. With a dramatic reveal of the cave’s ceiling, we learned that Jacob assigned each of his potential replacements a number. He wrote their digits next to their last names on the ceiling of his cave with chalk. Locke: 4; [Hurley] Reyes: 8; [James ''Sawyer''] Ford: 15; [Sayid] Jarrah: 16; [Jack] Shephard: 23; [Jin or Sun?] Kwon: 42. Why? Un-Locke shrugged. ”Jacob had a thing for numbers,” he said.
    PCIBS: 49% It’s not that I think Jacob doesn’t have a thing for numbers — I just think that Jacob has good reason for assigning numbers to his candidates, and more, that Un-Locke knows what that reason is and isn’t telling Sawyer. DEBATE! Where’s Kate? (1-17 from Doc Jensen at ew.com)
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18. I haven’t had a chance to totally go over The Wall frame-by-frame (but Dark UFO has screencaps if you’re interested), but it seems nearly everyone on Flight 815 (or at least everyone who survived) was a candidate to replace Jacob (which seems very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to me – who’s going to give up theirEverlasting Gobstopper, eh)? The Numbers represent six of our favorites:4 – Locke
    8 – Hurley
    15 – Sawyer
    16 – Sayid
    23 – Jack
    42 – Sun or Jin

    Locke’s name is now crossed out and I imagine Sayid’s name will be too now that he’s infected. And if Sawyer goes along with Smokey and doesn’t double cross him (which is a distinct possibility, don’t forget), Sawyer will also be out. This leaves Hurley, Jack and Sun or Jin. As for the latter two, I’m thinking it’s Jin since Sun wasn’t transported back in time on Flight 316. Of course, neither was Frank and he’s a candidate according to Ilana, but perhaps she hasn’t seen an updated list yet. Another possibility: Jacob did touch both Sun and Jin – maybe they can only be a candidate together.

19. And moreover, why is Smokey stuck as Locke now? I guess he won’t be impersonating Christian again anytime soon. So what do we know about the rules so far:1) Smokey isn’t allowed to kill Jacob unless he finds a loophole
    2) Smokey isn’t allowed to leave the Island
    3) Smokey isn’t allowed to kill the candidates (at least certain ones)

    We can probably also add that Smokey has to protect the Island when summoned (as Ben did in the Barracks) and he needs help in order to leave the Island (which seems why he’s trying to “recruit” Sawyer and Richard).

20. So is the Island simply a giant prison for Smokey with Jacob as the warden?Seems like it right now. And this also explains Smokey’s snarky comment to Richard in LA X where he comments that it’s good to see him “out of those chains,” with the chains being his servitude to Jacob.
21. are the Numbers just related to the candidates or are they really part of the Valenzetti Equation as well?You can click the link above for the full lowdown on Valenzetti, but the short of it is:
    

    According to the 1975 orientation film in the Sri Lanka Video, the Valenzetti Equation “predicts the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself.” During the video, Alvar Hanso also states that the radio transmitter on the Island, will “broadcast the core numerical values of the Valenzetti Equation.” The numbers,4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, are explained in the Sri Lanka Video, as the numerical values to the core environmental and human factors of the Valenzetti Equation. Alvar Hanso also states in the video that the purpose of the DHARMA Initiative is to change the numerical values of any one of the core factors in the equation in order to give humanity a chance to survive by, effectively, changing doomsday.

    Now these explanations are not mutually exclusive. I could easily see Jacob’s six candidates as being the variables that could prevent Doomsday (Smokey) from destroying the world. The interesting thing to me is that you need to change one of the variables to prevent destruction. Is this what Jacob is trying to do, get the candidates to change, possibly through redemption on the Island? I think that’s a really, really neat concept, don’t you?  (18-21 from Mistaking Confidence With Fate)

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22. “You know the rules…”
    Rules! They were first mentioned by Ben when Alex was killed and he muttered that Widmore had changed the rules. There’s always been a link between the Widmore/Ben war and the Jacob/MiB one, and in “The Shape of Things to Come,” Ben tells Widmore that he knows Ben can’t kill Widmore, and in “The Incident,” the MiB can’t kill Jacob. Here the mini-Jacob tells Not-Locke that he knows he can’t kill him. Does this mean that Jacob is only merely dead, and is NOT most sincerely dead?
23. Someone pointed this out in the comments: have you noticed, by the way, that the flashbacks are following the same sequence as S1? First ep a two-parter that covered off many of the survivors, ep 3 a Kate-centric one, ep 4 a Locke-centric one… does this mean next week is Jack-centric and the following week will focus on Sun? Presumably ep 7 won’t be about Chah-lie…
24. The loopy career counsellor who asks Locke what animal he would describe himself as was the fake fortune-teller that Papa Reyes hired to try to trick Hurley in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead.”
25. I’m thinking Locke didn’t end up in the wheelchair because his father threw him out a window this time. Perhaps Cooper was still behind it somehow, but why else would Helen say they should invite his dad and her parents to a shotgun wedding? (Unless of course she meant that the shotgun was aimed at Cooper.)  (22-25 from Nik at Nite)
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to see some great screen caps about the mystery ghost boy, click here.

to see more screen caps of Jacob’s master list in the cave, click here.

Episode 5 trailer:

Against All Things Ending

Feb 15

metalman777books chronicles of thomas covenant, good read, stephen r donaldson 2 Comments

But now he could not contain such illimitable vistas. Linden had made him mortal again.  His mere flesh and bone refused to hold his power and knowledge, his span of comprehension.  With every beat of his forgotten heart, intimations of eternity were expelled. They oozed from his new skin like sweat, and were lost.

Still he held more than he could endure. The burden of too much time was as profound as orogeny: it subjected his ordinary mind to pressures akin to those which caused earthquakes; tectonic shifts. His compelled transubstantiation left him frangible.

As the structure of what he had known and understood and thought and desired failed, moment after unaccustomed moment, the sentience that had sustained him across uncounted ages became riddled with fault-lines and potential slippage.

That’s exactly why I love the Thomas Covenant books.  You literally have to read them with a dictionary.

What Kate Does Recap

Feb 10

metalman777Lost recap, season 6 No Comments

"What Kate Does" is the 3rd episode of Season 6 of Lost and the 106th produced hour of the series as a whole. It was first broadcast on Feb 9, 2010.

1. I give the episode an admiring B, and if you ask me again in a few hours, I might add a + to it, because the more I think through this deeper-than-it-appears affair, the more I’m stimulated by it. Granted, it’s my job to think about Lost, like, a lot, but put the episode’s good stuff on a scale and I’ll wager it’ll outweigh the lame stuff.
2. Josh Holloway’s wrenching acting as he revealed the heartbreaking disclosure that he intended to propose to Juliet. The intrigue of “infected” and “claimed” Sayid. The hilarious irony of Dr. Ethan Goodspeed. Crazy-scary mother-gone-wild Claire. The notable camaraderie of the Temple castaways, determined to survive their latest ordeal with “live together, die alone” idealism and great, knowing humor. And don’t look now, kids, but is Jack Shephard actually getting likable again? I loved his sincere concern for Kate and Sayid, his willingness to accept Sawyer’s seething heartbreak, and his humbled self-awareness. I loved his smiles, his knowing laughter, his warmth. “You take care of Sawyer, I’ll take care of Sayid,” Jack told Kate, the castaway dad huddling with the castaway mom on how to handle their troubled castaway kids. When he told Dogen, “I don’t even trust myself,” Jack may have uttered the most heroic statement of his wannabe hero life, because it was so painfully honest. Superman of Science? No. Superman of Faith? No. Just Jack. And in the end, one wonders if that’s exactly what he needs to be to save the day for himself and his friends.
3. The Sideways world story line very clearly mirrored the Island world story line. Kate chases after Sawyer; Kate chases after Claire. Is there a physical, cosmic connection between the two realities? Still TBD, though we were again given a few moments that seemed to suggest the Sideways characters were either intuitively recalling their Island experience or perhaps even channeling it. We’ve been told not to view the Sideways stuff as an inconsequential ”What if…?” fairy tale about an uncrashed Oceanic 815. Yet most of ”What Kate Does” felt exactly like that… until the final act, when we got the great comic irony of Tom Cruise’s Evil Cousin serving as Claire’s perfectly decent OB. By the end of the episode, I accepted Lost‘s first regular episode Sideways tale as a simplified pitch of the entire conceit. Nonetheless, I wished we had gotten more. Specifically: a clarifying peek into Sideways Kate past. Did this Kate also have a childhood pal with a fondness for toy airplanes? Did this Kate also murder her father? Did this Kate also marry a cop that looks like the guy Castle? The episode decided not to dote on the past.
4. Now, all of this is neat. But is Lost doing this just to be all fancy-pants literary, or could it be that Lost is trying to tell us something? Could it be that the creative design of Lost‘s sixth season, embedded and suffused with past episode resonance, is a clue to resolving the mystery of its seemingly split reality? I am wondering — and perhaps you are, too — if these corresponding events across parallel realities are meaningful synchronicities. It’s almost as if no matter the world, these people are destined to intersect and to play out variations of the same essential drama. THEORY! It’s all about reincarnation. The Sideways world is basically the afterlife for the Island castaways. Their Sideways selves contain the experiences of their Island World identities within their genetic make-up/spiritual essence. Think I’m crazy? Then I refer you to last year’s anagram clue, the Canton-Rainier (aka ”reincarnation”) Carpet Cleaning Company. See? Totally settled!
5. Now here’s the crazy thought I had — an alternative to past-life/reincarnation theory. I submit that when Kate saw Jack at the airport, she established a psycho-spiritual circuit with her doppelganger self on he Island, and specifically the moment between Jack and Kate in Temple. This circuit facilitated a transference of psychic energy that flowed from Island Kate to Sideways Kate — or rather, from Redeemed Kate to one of her Fallen Kate selves in another world. That energy? Strength. Selflessness. A sense of sacrifice. A sense of ”You All Everybody” idealism. All qualities that Kate embodied in her Island story — and all qualities that Kate gained during her Sideways story.To put it more simply: Island Kate inspired Sideways Kate. Bottom line: The Sideways-Island relationship is a metaphor for our relationship to fiction. It’s about how fantasy redeems reality
6. Then she saw the plush killer whale. Stopped her really, really cold. Kate looked in the mirror. The ”déjà vu-or-guilt?” expression wrinkled across her face. It would totally make sense to me if that killer whale poked at her Island-past life memory, because after all, in the Island world… it was Kate who gave Aaron that killer whale, not Claire. FLASHBACK-WHOOSH TO… the season 4 episode ”Something Nice Back Home,” the episode in which Aaron’s killer whale made its most prominent (and I think its only) appearance. This was the story in which Claire disappeared into the jungle with Ghost Christian, setting in motion the events that would send Aaron off the Island with Kate. This was also the episode in which Sawyer began to step up as a selfless castaway leader, setting in motion the events that would lead him to his own kind of ”something nice back home,” domestic bliss with Juliet in the Dharma ‘70s. This was also the episode that Jack proposed marriage to Kate — and then drove her away with his suspicion that her heart still belonged to Sawyer. This was also the episode where a bleeping smoke detector led Jack out in the waiting area of his hospital suite, where he found Ghost Christian sitting there, waiting for him. This was also the episode in which Jin made arrangements with Charlotte to make sure Sun got a spot on the helicopter that would get her off the Island, setting in motion the chain of events that would separate them. In various ways, all of these plot points from ”Something Nice Back Home” were implicitly referenced in the Island-set portion of ”What Kate Does.” I’ll identify them as we go — just look for handy-dandy SHAMU ALERT!
7. Killer whales belong to a long line of fish references in Lost. In season 3, we learned that the Hydra Station experimented on dolphins and sharks in their aquarium. In the season 4 premiere, Hurley’s sanitarium was swimming in big fish imagery, from a drawing in the day room to the graphic on Ghost Charlie’s short. At the end of season 5, we saw Jacob eating fish for breakfast. And of course, now we have… the Locke-ness Monster. You laugh — but then, you forget Claire’s disturbing nightmare from her season 1 episode ”Raised By Another,” which was suffused with her Aaron anxiety and future foreboding, and in which she encountered a creepy looking John Locke, one eye black, one eye white. Killer whale colors. Interesting. Especially interesting given our cultural affection for killer whales. See: Shamu, Free Willy, and one of favorite movies from my youth, Orca, the Killer Whale!, in which this boy killer whale goes crazy psycho on evil whalers for killing his pregnant girlfriend killer-whale mate. So very damn sad. IMPLICATION: FLocke, the Locke-ness Monster, may look fearsome and scary, but really, he’s our protector and friend. Just like Willy. Just like Prometheus.
8. Many people suspect Sayid became imbued with Jacob’s spirit, like he became a vessel for some or all of Jacob’s soul — a living Harry Potter horcrux. Maybe Dogen was trying to jar Jacob loose, bring him to the surface of Sayid’s consciousness. Honestly, watching Sayid suffer last night, my first thought was that Sayid should have… well, died. It looked like Dogen was inflicting way too much punishment, and Sayid’s tolerance struck me as almost superhuman — and superhuman ain’t natural. And here’s this observation from my colleague and fellow Lost friend Adam B. Vary. He noted that for a guy who went into death convinced he was going to hell, Sayid sure didn’t act like he was being punished, be it fairly or unfairly. His only frame of reference for his experience was one he knew full well: torture. He told Dogen that he had no information to share, nothing that he was hiding. Was that the ”tell” Dogen was looking for? We must recall last season, when Richard indicated that one of the side effects of the holy hot tub process was forgetfulness. Maybe Sayid remembers too much; maybe if the spring had worked, he wouldn’t have processed his experience through the lens of his old, damned life. Regardless: Sayid said and did all the wrong things for Dogen. FAIL! Time will tell if his grading is correct.
9. Aldo got up in Kate’s grill and reminded her that he was the all-grown-up-now Stephen Hawking-reading Other-boy that she and Sawyer assaulted outside Room 23 back in season 3. In doing so, Lost was cleverly reminding us of a significant gap in the Island’s story. The Oceanic 6 left the Island on the same day that the LeftBehinders started time traveling. That was around January of 2005. The dating of the current Island drama: December 2007/January 2008. That’s about 36 months of Island history that we have not seen. During that time, Aldo grew up. What else changed during that window? Well, for starters, someone disturbed the circle of ash around Jacob’s cabin and ransacked the joint. Also: Richard’s tribe of Others set up camp on the beach. Perhaps season 6 will help fill in the blanks.
10. The last time we saw Claire in the Island narrative, she was hanging with her father, Christian Shephard, in Jacob’s shack. We suspected that like Christian, she, too, was dead, killed during Keamy’s mercenary raid on New Otherton. In light of the revelation that Fake Locke is Smokey, and knowing that Smokey can animate or take the form of the dead, we should be wondering if back then, Ghost Christian and Ghost Claire were Smokey manifestations, too. Then again, this frizzy-haired crazy Claire that we saw last night came off as human. We were told by Dogen that Claire had been ”claimed” by the same ”darkness” currently spreading within Sayid. So many pieces of info, desperately needing clarifying context. I’m still crunching it. In the meantime, I’m going to theorize that Scary-Pale Claire is the Solomon Grundy of the Island… or a golem. And I’m not going to tell you what the hell I mean by that either! (1-10 from Doc Jensen)
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11. For me the most important line is the one above, spoken by Dogen. “Claimed” suggests that Sayid’s body has been taken over by someone (or something) else. We all assumed last week it was Jacob, and maybe the Temple dwellers assume it’s the Man in Black, and that he’s the bad dude. Watching Sayid hooked up to the electrocution device and seeing him getting stabbed with a hot poker made me think, “Wow… karma’s a bitch.” But they were using these torture instruments diagnostically. How? Could they have been seeing if the thing that Sayid’s body is hosting would jump out? Did they think he’d start talking in tongues? Or was it something more physical and less supernatural than that?
12. So… is this a production error or a suggestion that in the new timeline, Flight 815 actually left a month later? Claire’s ultrasound readout clearly says the date is 10/22/2004, which puts the flight in October, NOT September. (It also says it’s 9:29 in the morning, and considering it’s probably been a few hours of Kate and Claire running around and it’s been broad daylight the entire time… this is probably yet ANOTHER prop error.) So… prop error or hint that even the date is different?
13. The killer whale doll! Do you remember that? It’s from “Something Nice Back Home.” As Jack’s going completely ballistic on Kate because of some phone call that he thought might have something to do with Sawyer and he’s about to leave them, just as he says, “You’re not even RELATED to him!” Aaron comes walking out into the kitchen and he’s standing there holding the whale doll. Kate would have bought that for him, and in this reality Claire’s the one who got it for him. (It’s a clear reminder of the black and white theme on the show.)
14. Dogen says to Jack that he needs to remain separate from his people, because it makes it easier when he makes decisions they don’t like. As much as I loathe having to remind anyone of the events of “Stranger in a Strange Land,” this reminded me of the Jack tattoo that “Woman From the Others Who We Never Saw Again and Seemed to Have Been A Mistake At the Time Before the Writers Had Truly Worked Things Out” said meant, “He walks among us, but he is not one of us.”
15. Dogen’s name comes from D?gen Zenji, who was a Zen Buddhist master of one of the three sects of Japanese Buddhism. He lived in the thirteenth century.
16. Kate’s used the name “Joan Hart” before. I think it was in the flashback where she dyes her blonde hair back to the original brown and then asks the guy at the hotel front desk for any letters to Joan Hart.
17. In the original timeline that we saw before, many of us speculated that there was no adopting family on the other side, and Richard Malkin simply knew that flight was going to crash and he put Claire on it, forcing her to have to raise Aaron on her own. Does the adopting mom on the other side suggest that Malkin really was telling the truth, or did this change as a result of the different timeline?  (11-17 from Nik at Nite)
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18. As Kate, Claire and the taxi driver make their break for it, Kate looks out her window and sees Jack. They share a lengthy glance that, in my humble opinion, tells us something important: she clearly remembers him. Now you might be thinking, “Of course she remembers him, she collided with him outside the 815 bathroom.” Yes, that’s true, but her expression is one of complete bewilderment, and that’s because she remembers him from somewhere else. Think about it – she’s desperately trying to make her escape, Arzt is blocking the taxi, all hell is breaking loose… in this situation, it would take something really out of the ordinary to make her forget all that for even a few seconds. When she sees Jack, she knows that she knows him from somewhere else.
19. Claire goes into labor and Kate, pulling a 180 from the desperate-to-escape convict we saw earlier, drives her to the hospital and even stays by her side. The doctor is none other than our good friend Ethan, which I thought was one of the episode’s more favorable developments. “I don’t want to stick you with needles if I don’t have to,” he says. I guess papa Horace got him on the sub in “The Incident” or else he wouldn’t actually be alive in this timeline.
20. Kate, Jin and two Others head out to recover Sawyer. And guess what – one of the Others is Aldo, vigilant guard of Room 23 (and I thought he was blown up at the beach raid in “Through the Looking Glass”!). I kind of liked Aldo showing up, mainly because he adds a degree of continuity to the Others, which is something the Others sorely lack most of the time. Apparently he’s been holding a grudge against Kate for knocking him unconscious three years ago, motivating him to spend the entire episode as an incompetent jerk. But he’s an Other, so I guess we shouldn’t expect anything other than constant, needless violence and threats from him.  (Ok, I just have to mention how weird it was to see Mac from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia pop up as a character on Lost!!  The two shows could not possibly be more opposite.  Lost is intelligent and insightful and full of mystery.  It’s Always Sunny is the most irreverent and funny show I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t seen It’s Always Sunny, give it a try.  Just make sure there are absolutely no kids around!)
21. Kate finds Sawyer at the Barracks continuing to mourn Juliet. He even digs an engagement ring out the floorboards of his old house and, like Desmond in “Flashes Before Your Eyes”, he chucks it into the ocean. He won’t go back to the Temple with Kate, though it’s not entirely clear that she’s headed back there, anyway. If the Others’ goal is really to unite the “Touched”, they’re sure doing a lousy job.
22. Check out that ashy smoke that Dogen sprays on Sayid. Related to the circle of ash that keeps away the Smoke Monster? Quite possibly.
23. Since Dogen used the same words as Rousseau – i.e., “infected” and “sick” – I’m going to venture that this sickness afflicting Sayid is the same one that claimed the lives of Rousseau’s team. But this creates some inconsistencies. We pretty much know how Rousseau’s team got sick: the Smoke Monster did something to them. It would then make sense that ash is used in both the sickness “test” and to protect oneself from Smokey. But how did Sayid catch the sickness? We’ve known his whereabouts almost the entire time he’s been back on the island, and he never encountered the Smoke Monster. I guess going into the Spring could have something to do with it (on account of the water being murky), but Dogen and a couple Others went in there, too, and I’m assuming they’re not sick.
24. But instead of telling Jack anything concrete or meaningful about the sickness, Dogen sidesteps questions by revealing that it “claimed” his sister – Claire. Does this mean Claire is going crazy and leaving traps because she’s infected? That’s a little strange, as Claire is acting like Rousseau, who is the one verifiable person that didn’t get infected. Personally, I have trouble taking the Others at their word. But if he’s telling the truth, we’ll need to be shown some sort of flashback involving Claire and Dogen. But shooting Aldo doesn’t make Claire an “infected” person in my book, yet.
25. Deciphering the Others’ hierarchy has been a goal of Lost fans ever since Benry Gale claimed that bearded Tom was not the leader. That was four seasons ago. One would think we’d stop running into people claiming to be in charge of the Others by now.Tom, Klugh and Isabel were possibilities a long, long time ago. Stronger contenders included Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawking, Benjamin Linus and John Locke, who have all claimed to be the leader. And when finally it’s looking like the guy with the real authority has been Richard Alpert (on Jacob’s behalf) all along, Dogen appears. Is Dogen above Richard? I hope not, as that would really mess with my conception of the Others. I’d like to believe Dogen is lower on the chain than the “official” leader bracket, but I can’t really picture him taking orders from the likes of Ben.  (18-25 by Robz888)
    =================
26. Aaron has identity even before his birth.  This is a disturbing and wonderful and deeply mysterious truth, made more profound by the chilling then comforting presence of Ethan Goodspeed at Claire’s bedside.   Apparently, whether Claire gives birth on-Island or off, Ethan must lead the prenatal preparations.  This revelation was one of several instances of relational inevitability dramatised over the last three hours.  The recurring theme of inevitability seems fresh with each occurrence, seems a necessary aspect of the narrative.
27. His name must be Aaron.  “I don’t know why I said it,” Claire says to Kate.  “It was like I knew it or something.”  He is Aaron because his own flesh-and-blood mother must raise him.  And somehow, we know, even before Claire knocks on the door of the adopting family’s house, there is no way they can adopt the baby.  Of course the woman’s husband left her–the world is course-correcting in such a way that Claire, whether she likes it or not, will have to raise the baby herself.  That is her destiny, but more importantly, this is Aaron’s destiny.
28. The most terrible and exciting aspect of this entire sequence of scenes is the fact that every facet of the strange inevitability around Aaron revolves around the truth that he must return to the Island.  Yet we know, in the spacetime inhabited by fugitive Kate and pregnant Claire and the pleasant Dr. Goodspeed, the Island is submerged under a thousand metres of water.  There is no Island to which Aaron can return, and in this spacetime, he was never even on the Island.  Yet the connection to the Island is undeniable.  Aaron is tethered to the Island by an umbilical stronger and more real than the one connecting him to his mother.
29. Sayid and Jack place greater value on their trust of each other than on their own lives.
30. This is not a show about good versus evil.  It is not about free will versus determinism.  It is not about time travel or electromagnetic anomalies or spacetime displacement.  It is about our very humanity.  It is about who we are at the very centre of our conscious selves.
31. The interaction between the two women is as rich in its own way as the higher-stakes scenes between Jack and Sayid.  Claire ought to be frightened by the reckless fugitive who thinks nothing of pointing loaded guns at anyone crossing her path.  Yet Claire feels endeared to the woman and her genuine desire to help.  When Claire asks Kate to accompany her to the door of the adoptive parents’ home, we know the connection is firm.  And when they dash to the hospital, Claire protects her new friend.
    

Two sides:  One Jacob, one the Man in Black.  One says human beings are essentially good, that we seek perfection.  One says human beings are corrupt, that we can only be judged for our sins.

In the world of LOST–on the Island–they’re both wrong.  Human beings are good and bad.  But our humanity is only good.  It is our humanity–the fertile soil of our existence as complete human beings–that is worthy above all of our most reverent attention–even to the point of sacrificing health and life to secure for the common good  (26-31 from Pearson Moore)

============(I don’t know why my numbered list reset to 1.  Can’t fix it!!  aargh!)

1. The Others started freaking out about Sayid after he had mysteriously come back to life (yeah, I’d freak out too). But does the Sickness only infect dead bodies? And, more specifically, do they have to be unburied to infect them? Claire likely died somewhere in the jungle after the explosion at the Barracks. And remember that Christian’s body was unburied when the coffin crashed on the Island too. Boone, Shannon, Charlie, Eko, Ana-Lucia, Libby and Nikki & Paolo were all buried and we haven’t seen them walking around the Island ala Christian.But if Smokey is the one claiming them, can Smokey only assume the forms of unburied bodies? He’s appeared as Christian and Yemi to be sure (both unburied, Yemi’s body was burned and later disappeared). He’s also appeared as Alex, whose body I believe was left at the Barracks in the aftermath of the attack (Ben said goodbye, but I don’t think he buried her).I wonder if this has anything to do with the theory that Smokey really is one of the Egyptian Gods of the underworld. Of course, since we now know that the Nemesis = Smokey, Smokey’s got to be a more important god to rival Jacob. If Jacob is Horus, Osiris, orRa then Smokey is Anubis, Set, or Apep. Regardless, I think this is definitely worth keeping in mind.  (from Mistaking Confidence With Kate)

And here’s a promo for next weeks episode.  Is Sawyer going to team up with the Locke-ness Monster?

Three Days Grace = Jonah33?

Feb 05

metalman777audio, music jonah33, sounds like, three days grace No Comments

Ever have one of those dejavu moments?  I’m coming home from work and listening to the local rock station.  A song starts to play and I know for sure that is a band I have listened.  A not-so-well-known Christian rock band even!  Jonah33 () has a new album?  I thought they broke up in 2009!

No, what’s that the deejay just said?  A band called Three Days Grace ()?  Can’t be.  That music and vocalist sounds EXACTLY like Jonah33.  A quick wikipedia search shows that Three Days Grace is a modern band that formed in 1992, way before Jonah33 ever started.  And no, two different vocalists.  But holy moly, they sure sound a lot alike!  Take a listen to Jonah33 below:

LA X Recap

Feb 03

metalman777Lost recap, season 6 2 Comments

SEASON 6, EPISODE 1: LA X

What can you say?  After an almost year long hiatus, Lost is back, kickin’ butt and takin’ names!!!  I thoroughly enjoyed these first two episodes and loved the big reveals, and of course, was frustrated at all the new questions this episode created!

Also, I just want to be clear, that the following ideas and theories are collated from about 10-15 different other blogs and podcasts I follow on a daily basis.  I figure that I’ll summarize all the great ideas out there for those of you who choose to just follow one blog, that being mine.  (click here to see a list of all the Lost people I read or click here to see a list of Lost fanatics I follow on Twitter)  This post is rather long, but well worth the read.  Lots of great theories ahead!

I’m going to start off this blog post by highlighting a very telling interview Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost’s main producers) gave to Entertainment Weekly.  (click here for full link)  I encourage to read it fully, as there are lots of tidbits spread throughout the article.

EW: The whole idea of flash-sideways and the plan to use season 6 to show us a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed — how long has that been in the works? Why did you want to do it?
DAMON LINDELOF: It’s been in play for at least a couple of years. We knew that the ending of the time travel season was going to be an attempt to reboot. And as a result, we [knew] the audience was going to come out of the “do-over moment” thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story.
CARLTON CUSE: We thought just doing one [of those options] would inherently not be satisfying. Since the very beginning of the show, characters started crossing through each other’s stories. Part of our desire [in season 6] is to show that there’s still this kind of weave, that these characters still would have impacted each other’s lives even without the event of crashing on the Island. Obviously, the big question of the season is going to be: How do these [two timelines] reconcile? However, for the fans who have not watched the show closely, that’s an intact narrative. You can just watch the flash sideways — they stand alone all by themselves. For the fans who are more deeply embedded in the show, you can watch those flash sideways, compare them to what transpired in the flashbacks and go, “Oh, that’s an interesting difference.”
LINDELOF: Right out of the gate, in the first five minutes of the premiere, you get hit over the head with two things that you’re not expecting. The first is that Desmond is on the plane. The second thing that we do is we drop out of the plane and we go below the water and we see that the Island is submerged. What we’re trying to do there is basically say to you, “God bless the survivors of Oceanic 815, because they’re so self-centered, they thought the only effect [of detonating the bomb] was going to be that their plane never crashes.” But they don’t stop to think, “If we do this in 1977, what else is going to affected by this?” So that their entire lives can be changed radically. In fact, it would appear that they’ve sunken the Island. That’s our way of saying, “Keep your eyes peeled for the differences that you’re not expecting.” Some of these characters were still in Australia, but some weren’t. Shannon’s not there. Boone actually says that he tried to get her back. There are all sorts of other people that we don’t see. Where’s Libby? Where’s Ana Lucia? Where’s Eko? These are all the things that you’re supposed to be thinking about. When our characters posited the “What if?” scenario, they neglected to think about what the other effects of potentially changing time might be and we’re embracing those things.

That said, are you saying definitively that detonating Jughead was the event that created this new timeline? Or is that a mystery which the season 6 story will reveal?
LINDELOF: It’s a mystery. A big one.
CUSE: We did have some concern that it might be confusing kind of going into the season. To clear that up a little bit: The archetypes of the characters are the same and that’s the most significant thing. Kate is still a fugitive. If you were to look at the Comic-Con video, for instance, that now comes into play. There was a different scenario in that story. She basically blew up an apprentice plumber as opposed to killing her biological father/stepfather. Those kind of differences exist, but who the characters fundamentally are is the same. If it becomes too confusing for you, you can just follow the flash sideways for what they are. It’s not as though there’s narrative that hangs on the fact that you need to know that this event was different in that world, in the flashback world versus the sideways world. That’s not critical for being able to process the narrative this season.

Is there a relationship between Island reality and sideways reality? Will they run parallel for the remainder of the season? Will they fuse together? Might one fade away?
LINDELOF: For us, the big risk that we’re taking in the final season of the show is basically this very question. [Lindelof then explains the show has replaced the trademark “whoosh!” sound effect marking the segue between Island present story and flashbacks or flash-forwards, thus calling conspicuous attention to the relationship between the Island world and the Sideways world.] This is the critical mystery of the season, which is, “What is the relationship between these two shows?” And we don’t use the phrase “alternate reality,” because to call one of them an “alternate reality” is to infer that one of them isn’t real, or one of them is real and the other is the alternate to being real.
CUSE: But the questions you’re asking are exactly the right questions. What are we to make of the fact that they’re showing us two different timelines? Are they going to resolve? Are they going to connect? Are they going to co-exist in parallel fashion? Are they going to cross? Do they intersect? Does one prove to be viable and the other one not? I think those are all the kind of speculations that are the right speculations to be having at this point in the season.
LINDELOF: But it is going to require patience. We’ve taught the audience how to be patient thus far, so while they’re getting a lot of mythological answers on the island early in the season, this idea of what is the relationship between the two [worlds] is a little bit more of a slow burn.

Did Jughead really sink the Island? And is it possible that the Sideways characters are now caught in a time loop in which they might have to go back in time and fulfill the obligation to continuity by detonating the bomb?
LINDELOF: These questions will be dealt with on the show. Should you infer that the detonation of Jughead is what sunk the island? Who knows? But there’s the Foot. What do you get when you see that shot? It looks like New Otherton got built. These little clues [might help you] extrapolate when the Island may have sunk. Start to think about it. A couple of episodes down the road, some of the characters might even discuss it. We will say this: season 6 is not about time travel. It’s about the implications, the aftermath, and the causality of trying to change the past. But the idea of continuing to do paradoxical storytelling is not what we’re interested in this year.

Now, off to see what the blogosphere is saying about last night’s brand new Lost episodes.

1. Did Jacob want Ben to kill him?  I keep being reminded of Ob-Wan, “If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine”.  Of course we all know how that ended, Obi-Wan turned into a useless ghost.  But there do seem to be parallels.  Obi-wan/Jacob is killed way too easily by a lackey, Darth Vader/Ben, while the real Master, The Emporer/”Locke” sits on the sidelines.  Will Jacob be more useful?
2. Is it possible that Ben is feeling suicidal?  He’s back on the Island like he wanted, but Locke is there too, ready to snatch The Others away from him.  His own daughter accused him of her murder and now he’s killed his former boss.  I imagine that might be a little discouraging.
3. ”See you in another life” has new meaning now doesn’t it? (Desmond had told Jack that in Season 2 as they exercised at a local track)
   
4. Jacob says, “I was killed by an old friend who grew tired of my company”.  I’m definitely thinking a lot about the cave drawing of Smokey and Anubis. Beside that there is some slight significance to that line.  Apparently the Man in Black was annoyed with Jacob because they had to spend so much time together, presumably stuck on the Island.
   
5. Sayid was very concerned about what would happen to him after he died.  I think that raises the possibility of something interesting happening to everyone off the Island after these characters die.  Dying on the Island, in that timeline, might allow a character to pass into the other timeline.  I doubt the writers wanted to bring up heaven and hell at this point.
6. Charlie says “I was supposed to die”.  Really?  In the same way he was supposed to die at the end of Season 4?  Is Charlie aware of the past?  That would make him more interesting. (1-6 Not Confused Just Lost)
7. Free Will vs. Destiny
8. Again the show’s overarching theme was there in a big way. Charlie says he was supposed to die, and in the original timeline, that’s exactly what happened. When they find Montand’s body, he had on him one of Kierkegaard’s books. Kierkegaard believed in choice and free will and believed in experience over theory. Perhaps Smokey attacked Rousseau’s crew for those beliefs? (Interestingly, he also studied the personal and psychological reactions people had when faced with certain circumstances, as if he were the real father of the Dharma Initiative, who ran many psychological experiments that covered similar material.) There’s an idea in the episode that no matter which path you choose, the outcome will be the same. Jack will always be the guy rushing to someone’s side, and will be hated for it. Locke will continue to believe in his greatness, even if no one else does. Boone says he’d be by Locke’s side, just as he was on the island. When Kate knocks the marshall out, he incurs the exact same wound on the same side of his forehead that he got when the case whacked him in the head. When Kate runs into Jack as she’s stepping out of the airplane bathroom, she looks at Jack like she’s immediately taken by him, just like she did on the island. When Sawyer sees Kate’s handcuffs in the elevator, he’s immediately attracted by her bad-girl nature and helps her out.
   
9. So blowing up a Hydrogen bomb in the Swan caused the entire Island to sink.  Hmm, curious.  That kind of implies that they killed everyone on the Island.  I guess they considered that before they did it, but still, to see it makes a big difference.  All those people died to give Jack a second chance with Kate?  Of course this is all mostly just hypothetical, in reality those people only died in 50% of the show.  They lived in half of these episodes (well until the Purge)
   
10. Hurley’s also wearing a red shirt. Which has me REALLY REALLY worried. Please change shirts, Hurley. Soon! (3-5 Nik at Nite)
11. The questions you are asking are questions you should be asking. (2) You will get answers to these questions — but patience will be required. (3) The temptation will be to dismiss the sideways story as ”What if…?” trivia, but we should trust that we’re being shown this story for a reason, and so we should take the leap of investing in its reality. Interesting: Last night’s first of two conspicuous literary references was Salman Rushdie’s fantasy Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Its famous line? ”What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” The premiere’s second conspicuous reference? Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which challenges true believers to embrace the absurdity of faith. Combined, both books send this message to us: This absurd sideways thing has a purpose. It is ”useful.” Promise. Have faith. Just go with it..
12. o my eyes, the premiere, entitled ”LA X,” was filled with metaphors for afterlife possibilities, beginning with that bravura f/x shot taking us to the sunken Island — a figurative descent into the underworld, to a veritable city of the dead. The Sideways story line represented old, pagan ideas of reincarnation. The Island story line, with its deus ex machina plucked characters: the Christian rapture.
13. the episode continued to mirror the established Lostnarrative. Jack’s nicked neck RX was analog to pilot’s ”physician, heal thyself” moment when Jack excused himself to the jungle of Craphole Island to patch up the ugly gash on his side. One wonders if the entire season 6 side ways story line will model the general thematic thrust of the castaway story, but with different incidents and events — a gritty, more down-to-earth version of the mythic, larger-than-life Island epic, like how Dorothy’s adventure in Oz was a fantastical extrapolation of her life in Kansas.
14. But where did Desmond go? Later, when Jack returned to his seat from saving Charlie from a bag of heroin, Desmond had vanished. There’s probably a reasonable explanation for this, too. (That Jack was creepy. I’m going back to my other chair next to the snoring guy.) Still, I did have the thought that Desmond could be flickering in and out of this world, like Pariah in Crisis on Infinite Earths. And if that reference lost you, just pretend it didn’t. Maybe there’s something not quite ”set” about the Sideways reality, that it’s still in flux, and Desmond is an element moving in and out of the mix, like a supplementary story line to an epic film that may or may not make the final cut depending on the director’s vision.

14. Question: What sunk the Island?

Possible Answer: Jughead.
Does That Make Sense? I’m not sure. If the bomb was powerful enough to sink the Island, wouldn’t it also have obliterated the Dharma Barracks, which we saw were still intact?

Question: So if not Jughead… what sunk the Island?
Possible Answer: The Island’s electromagnetic energy.
Huh? In all my theorizing about Jughead since last May, I have pretty much neglected this pretty huge plot point. The Dharma Initiative was dealing with another crisis that had nothing to do with the time travelers or Jughead. Radzinsky’s ”Black Swan” team has been drilling into the Island’s pocket of electromagnetic energy. Doing so risked cataclysmic consequences, according to Dr. Chang. What if in the Sideways world, Radzinsky continued drilling, hit the EM pocket, and triggered a cataclysm that sunk the Island. Where do the castaways fit into this theory? They don’t. Or won’t. I mean they don’t have to, because this scenario doesn’t need them. The sideways world could have branched off from Island world many years earlier. It may not even be a branch at all.

15.  The question remains: What did Juliet mean by ”It worked”? Clearly, Lost wanted us to think that Juliet was acknowledging the Sideways World. Here’s just one possibility. Perhaps the Sideways World is the afterlife for these characters. Perhaps when they die, their consciousness or essence zips into their sideways doppelgänger. Perhaps what Juliet really saw as she was slipping away from the Island World was the dawning of a new life with Sawyer in the Sideways World. The show has given us precedent. I refer to season 3, ”The High Cost Of Living” — the episode where Mr. Eko was killed by Smokey. As Eko lay dying, we were shown a sweet little bit of younger Eko walking into the sunset with his brother, Yemi. Was Eko merely flashing on a happy memory — or were we being shown Eko’s afterlife destiny, i.e. his soul transmigrating back to a pivotal point in his past? In light of what we saw in the premiere, I would amend ”point in the past” to ”the sideways world.”

16.  So just in case you stragglers weren’t sure of this before, the Whispers = the Others. But perhaps a certain classification of Others, i.e. the hard-core Island mystics that hang in the spiritual heart of the Island, anchored by a ziggurat, a step pyramid more Mesopotamian than Egyptian, even though there were Egyptian hieroglyphics everywhere. I am beginning to feel Island archaeology is tangential to what the Island really is. The Island: the original and purest expression of the God idea, of God power. These ruins? The remains of those zealots who’ve attempted to claim, name, and tame this place over the centuries — those people the Man In Black spoke of last year: ”They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”

17.  it seemed to me what needed to happen was that Sayid needed to not only be revived but stay alive for the entire course of the treatment in order for the full scope of its magic/effect to take. What is that magic/effect? And what were the ”risks” Dogen spoke of? We may look to Benjamin Linus for some illumination. Last year, after Sayid shot Young Ben, Richard Alpert brought the boy into the Temple for healing. We may now surmise that what happened to Sayid was what happened to Ben, albeit more successfully. But what did Alpert say? ”He’ll forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone.” The bottom line is that the spring’s affect on people may be more than physical — it could be spiritual, too.

18.  ”Hello, Richard. Nice to see you out of those chains.’‘ FLocke’s line to Richard after leaving the Four Toed Statue and Richard had finally figured out FLocke’s identity was a theory spawner. ”You?” Richard said. ”Me,” Flocked said, and then took him down hard. The popular theory is that FLocke was alluding to the Black Rock with his chains reference, as if Richard had come to the Island as a slave. What might be the reason for their bad blood? My hunch is that FLocke is bitter toward Alpert for conspiring successfully to keep FLocke locked up all these years. FLocke hoisted the unconscious Alpert on his shoulder and walked into the jungle, yelling before that: ”I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN ALL OF YOU. As he left, he passed the body of the real John Locke lying dead on the and. I yearned for this betrayed man of faith to take to his feet and walk again. That didn’t happen.  (10-18 Doc Jensen)

19.  This is also a good time to point out a strange line of dialogue from season one, during All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues. After Ethan drags Charlie off and Jack is chasing after him, he tells Kate “I’m not letting him do this. Not again.” Is Jack referring to Ethan taking Claire earlier in the season? Maybe. At the same time though, it also seems as if Jack knows what’s happened before, and this time around he’s looking to change the outcome. If you ask me, Charlie was supposed to die at that tree. Jack brought him back through sheer force of will… call it faith, belief, or whatever. From that moment on, death always surrounded Charlie. As Desmond proved over and over in season three, there was just no saving him. Even now, in this alternate timeline, Jack is still trying to prevent his friend from dying. It might not be long before destiny course corrects by killing Charlie in some other way.

Examine Charlie’s many deaths a little more closely, and they all have one thing in common: not breathing. Desmond saw him drown (once in a dream, once in reality), Ethan hangs him to asphyxiation, and we see a vision in which he gets shot in the throat with an arrow. Now, in this episode, Charlie’s choking on a big bag of heroin. Whatever happened to kill Charlie must apparently happen again and again, in the same basic way, no matter where, when or what universe he happens to be in.

20.  Traditionally, mirrors have played a huge part all throughout LOST. In almost every case, they’ve reflected back the raw truth. Maybe they’ve even given us a glimpse into the elusive ‘other side’. Whatever happened to cause the wound on Jack’s neck, perhaps it only happened in the one “true” universe. It’s possible the mirror is reflecting back something that happens to Jack later on, or maybe even at the end of the show. It’s important to realize that we never see this wound directly, but only in the mirror.

21.  It was extremely significant that Locke gave Bram’s team a choice before killing them. He explained that Jacob was dead, and presented their situation in a straightforward, logical way. They were basically free to go, at least up until Bram fired his gun. Once that happened, judgment could be passed. This is also why Richard is so adamant that no one on the beach shoot Locke, screaming for them to hold their fire when he finally emerges from the statue.

Going a bit further, this also explains why the smoke monster doesn’t just kill anyone and everyone it comes across. We already know that the dark man disapproves of Jacob bringing people to the island. In keeping with the rules however, he seems unable to touch anyone unless he’s judged them first, or unless they’ve wronged him in some way. Not sure how or why it killed Seth Norris or Nadine… but both of those characters had just arrived on the island so maybe there was a exception clause. Or maybe the smoke monster hadn’t eaten in a while, and he was just plain hungry.

Bram’s circle of ash is something the monster apparently can’t cross. Perhaps this solves the mystery of Jacob’s cabin: it wasn’t Jacob’s at all. If the cabin served as a type of prison, then the circle of ash there was used to keep the entity or monster in and not out. This may by why Illana’s team burned the cabin to the ground upon reaching the island – possibly on Jacob’s orders. In any case, Bram’s plan A sucked, and his plan B was non-existant.

22.  Jacob’s lists have always been critical to LOST’s story. He’s not very big on communication, so these lists are all his followers really have to go on. I’ve long theorized that the people listed by Jacob are the ones integral to the end game – without every single one of them, Jacob’s final ending cannot be realized. This could be why the hippy with the wire-rimmed glasses tells us that Sayid had better pull through, or there’s going to be BIG trouble. As they called out their names, I also realized that we were cycling through every single one of the characters that Jacob had already touched during The Incident. Sawyer shows up later on, and he’s been touched too. But Miles? Uh oh

23.  So what happens now? Is Sayid still Sayid, or is he now a ‘candidate’ for Jacob? As much as I hate to say it, we’ve probably seen the end of the asskicking Iraqi we all know and love. Hopefully I’m wrong, but it would make more sense for Jacob to somehow inhabit Sayid’s body here, especially since he was the one who sent that body to the temple. Go back and look at Jacob’s face while he’s talking to Hurley and examining Sayid’s wounds. Even he knows the guy is too far gone. It’s unfortunate, and he looks a little sorry to even do it, but I’m pretty sure Jacob’s going to somehow live through this new version of Sayid

24.  While I’m not sure Jacob and his nemesis are a pair of fallen angels, there’s certainly a higher power above them. Maybe they’ve been placed on the island for a specific purpose: to serve a penance all their own. Perhaps their game isn’t a game at all, but a lesson that needs to be learned before they can move on. If this is the case, the island becomes their own personal Purgatory…. and yes, I said Purgatory

25.  After the crash, Jack has no way of knowing that his dad’s coffin wasn’t on the plane. As far as he’s concerned, it was. So when he starts chasing ghost-Christian through the jungle and “finds” the coffin, is Jack only seeing what he expects to see? Did he bring his father’s coffin – and even his Christian himself – to the island via the magic box, much like Sawyer unknowingly brought The Man From Tallahassee? Kooky idea, but we’re in season six. Ghosts, time travel, alternate timelines… the whole magic box thing goes down a lot easier these days.

Similarly, Locke’s case of knives was found amongst the beach wreckage early in season one. I’ve long speculated that those knives were there simply because Locke wanted them to be there, but now we find out that he really did pack them. Yet if they never made the plane and they somehow still showed up on the beach… magic box? Could be. Early on we saw a lot of things brought into being by requirement, usually whenever a character needed them most.

26.  After beating Richard like a prison inmate trying to make a statement, the monster stands up to address everyone surrounding him. “I’m very disappointed in all of you!”, he shouts. Not sure what he means by this, but it struck me that maybe he’s going topretend to be Jacob. It was probably that half-smirk he made at the end. The only conscious person who’d know that he’s lying would be Ben… and the last time we saw Ben he was looking for a second pair of shorts. Whatever the dark man’s next move is, you can be sure it involves an asskicking.  (19-26 by Vozzek69)