life, and a little more

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham Recap

Feb 26

metalman777Lost Lost, recap No Comments

“The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” will be the seventh episode of Season 5 of Lost, and is scheduled to be broadcast on February 25, 2009. (from Lostpedia.com’s recap)

1. “…there’s a war coming, John. And if you’re not back on the island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win.”

   The War: Widmore vs. Ben?
   So who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy? Are there clear sides? Are they both bad?
   By the end of the episode, I couldn’t help but worry that poor Locke is just a pawn – no, maybe a knight – in the game of chess that Ben and Widmore are playing. Widmore says he sent his freighter to the island to wipe out Ben so that Locke could lead. Ben says he moved the island so that Widmore couldn’t find the island so that Locke could lead. They’re both saying the very things that Locke wants to hear. They both give him just enough hints to get him on-side, and confuse the hell out of him. Locke has no idea who to be loyal to… who would? (from Nik at Nite)

2. Locke tells Ben about his promise to Jin, and knowledge of Jin’s survival activates the overdeveloped manipulation node in Ben’s brain. It’s as though the rules have changed, and Ben sees a way to reclaim the island throne. Locke then tells Ben that Mrs. Hawking can help them return to the island. Again, the buggy brain behind Ben’s buggy eyes activates … and that’s when he loops the extension chord around Locke’s neck and chokes him to death! Ben then methodically arranges Locke’s room (and body) to make it look like a suicide.
3. I think Ben’s motivation switched during that conversation with Locke. Previously, his focus seemed to be on saving the island — hence the importance of Locke’s life; and perhaps Ben really was “protecting” the Oceanic Six. But Jin’s miraculous survival and/or mention of Mrs. Hawking flipped Ben’s megalomania switch, and suddenly Locke and the Oceanic Six became means toward his desired end. (2-3 from The Lost Blog)
4. When Caesar is in the rec room in New Otherton, there’s a skull on the desk that looks like a miniature verison of the polar bear skull that Charlotte found in Tunisia. There’s also a Life Magazine on the desk with the cover story, “Color Pictures of the Hydrogen Test.” (from Nik at Nite)
5. Searching through the Hydra, Caesar comes across some old magazines. An Issue of LIFE dated April 19, 1954 catches his eye. The cover features an image of a Hydrogen Bomb exploding during a test.
6. That issue also featured an article called “Julia in Jeopardy”. Julia is Julia Adams (I believe), an actress in The Creature from the Black Lagoon – which the article reviewed, and of which we also see a pic of. The Black Lagoon being a “paradise that no one has ever returned from” could be seen as another thematic LOST reference.
7. the actress from The Creature from the Black Lagoon, was on LOST! She played one of the Others in the 3rd season premiere- the one that came to Juliet’s door after Juliet burned her hand on the muffins if I’m not mistaken. (5-7 from Sledgeweb’s Lost…Stuff)
8. The Bonneville of Death is back!!! Well, OK, I couldn’t see if it was the Bonneville, but it was definitely a tan car that LOOKED like a Bonneville that hits Locke the second time. (This is the car that hit Kate, hit Michael, hit Locke in the parking lot, and has been involved in most accidents on the show.)
9. Westerfield Hotel can be anagrammed to “Die Where Felt Lost.”
10. Locke bought his suicide cord from “Angels Hardware.”
11. the ABC site is confirming that the plane, in fact, landed on the Hydra island, so they’re looking at the bigger island from the beach. Duh. I can’t believe I didn’t figure that one out. So Caesar’s not rifling through the rec room in New Otherton, but the office on the island where Kate, Jack, and Sawyer were held captive.
12. Why did Caesar hide the gun from Ilana? How do they know each other? Ilana refers to someone named Roxanne like she’s also someone they’ve known for a long time (the survivors weren’t really on a first-name basis for the first couple of days).
13. Ilana says “the pilot and some woman” took one of the boats in the middle of the night. Since Kate is with the others, the other woman must have been Sun. Where were they going? To the other side of the island? Why does Sun trust Lapidus after he’s the one who flew away in the helicopter?
    • What happened to the plane? It’s just sitting on the beach, doesn’t look like it crashed or anything. It’s not smouldering, it’s not in pieces, it’s just sitting there like it set itself down gently. Were Kate, Jack, and Hurley sent to another era? Or are they all in the 1970s or whatever time that was when Jin came bombing along in the new and shiny VW van? If they’re in an earlier incarnation of the island, does Ben run the risk of meeting his younger self?
    • Was Penny born on the island? I would hazard a guess that she’s probably about 30, and if Widmore was on the island until he was about 47, he can’t possibly be 77 now. So that would suggest that she’s been on the island before. (8-13 from Nik at Nite)
14. Caesar locates some files in The Hydra station that includes Dan Faraday’s map and one of his journal pages concerning time travel. Also included is Rousseau’s map. We’ve seen that Dan will eventually go to the Orchid station during Dharma’s final days. Now, we also know he makes a trip to the Hydra (or someone takes his papers there, anyways). Those papers are still there 30 years later when Ajira 316 crashes on the island (if we assume the crash occurs in 2007). Now, let this blow your mind. Before Rousseau even begins drawing her map, before she even conceives of it, there is already a finished version of that map laying in the Hydra Station. Therefore, once she does draw her map, there are then two identical copies of it on the island. The same applies to Dan’s map and his journal page. (from Sledgeweb’s Lost….Stuff. follow the link to see screencaps!)
15. Tonight we saw John Locke talking with Caesar, and the other survivors of Ajira flight 316. We saw from the wreckage of the plane that they crashed on the small island that houses the Hydra Station. The station appears to be abandoned, and if Locke and company are indeed in the same time as Jack, Kate, and Hurley, during Dharma’s heyday, then why would the Hydra be abandoned. The answer, John Locke and company (including Frank and Sun) crashed on the present day island, while Jack, Kate, and Hurley “flashed” to the island’s past. (from Sledgeweb’s Lost….Stuff)
16. Damnit, Widmore is so good at making me think twice about whether he’s evil or not.
17. Widmore didn’t seem to respectful towards Richard.  when he heard that Widmore told Locke that he had to die, he brushed it off and told Locke that he would prevent that.  Not too clever.
18. Abaddon died for a few reasons.  His mystery was unnecessary.  The writers didn’t need that kind of intriguing character running around off the island.  By killing him they solved his mystery (kinda).  Also the actor has a full time job on Fringe so they couldn’t keep bringing him back to do guest spots.
19. Walt’s been having dreams eh?  So it wasn’t just the island that made him special.  He can actually see the future.  This could potentially go along with my Walt’s Powers theory.  I believe that Walt can manipulate the past to shape the present and the future, not unlike Desmond’s specialness.
20. Why does Widmore think that Locke is “Special”?  He doesn’t say why in this episode.  I thought that Richard saw something in him as a baby, that’s why.  But it turns out that that was nothing more that circular logic.  Locke told Richard to go there because he was special so Richard did, the Special part of the equation cancels out.  Now I’m afraid that Widmore thinks he’s special because Locke met him when he was 17.  And we know that that indicated nothing.  As usual Locke “special”-ness is unprovable. (16-20 from Not Confused Just Lost)
21. Locke accepted Widmore’s financing, plus his suggestion for an off-Island alias: Jeremy Bentham, another philosopher name, just like John Locke. Widmore: ”Your parents had a sense of humor when they named you. Why can’t I?” Why does ”Jeremy Bentham” amuse Widmore so?: And might the name hold a clue to Widmore’s sincerity? Consider:

    A. The real Bentham and Locke were ideological opposites. Bentham considered Locke’s belief in natural law ”nonsense on stilts.” Is that how Widmore views Locke? As silly nonsense? A fool? If so, then Widmore is a jerk.
    B. Bentham pioneered a school of thought call Utilitarianism, which evaluates the morality of an action based on the amount of good that said action generates for the most amount of people. Ergo, Widmore is using Locke — but to facilitate a greater good. If so, then Widmore is a good guy.
    C. After he died, Bentham’s corpse — per his instructions — was (get this) entombed inside a cabinet called an Auto Icon. Whenever his followers gathered, they were supposed to wheel him out so he could hang with them. Creepy? Oh, yeah. Application to Locke? Widmore was lying when he told Locke he didn’t want him to die. He wanted Locke to wind up in a box. Meaning: The Coffin. Or maybe… Jacob’s cabin! After all, isn’t that ghost shack basically a rustic extrapolation of Bentham’s Auto-Icon, a vehicle that allows this ”Jacob” — i.e., Locke — haunt the Island? Maybe this is the ”destiny” Locke is being set up for: An eternity of ”Help me” flickering. If so, then…Huh? (from Doc Jensen at ew.com)

Next weeks episode:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utXrFTsDfp4&eurl=http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2009/02/lost-507-life-and-death-of-jeremy.html&feature=player_embedded]

316 Recap

Feb 19

metalman777Lost Lost, recap No Comments

“316” is the sixth episode of Season 5 of Lost and the 89th overall. It was originally broadcast on February 18, 2009. The way back to the Island is revealed to members of the Oceanic 6, but there’s trouble ahead when not all of them wish to return.” (Lostpedia.com’s recap)

1. Kate shows up babyless at Jack’s place, and once again we play the all-too familiar game of “Where’s Aaron?”. I think the answer here is simple, with complex roots. Most likely, Kate’s given the baby to Claire’s mother, Carole. Aaron’s grandmother sure would seem the most logical choice to raise him at this point. Then again, Kate’s never been all that logical. So this also leaves the possibility that she sought out and hooked up with Cassidy, as Sawyer requested. She could’ve passed Aaron off to either of them for safekeeping before deciding to go back to the island. Whichever way it happened, giving up the baby is catastrophic for her – Kate loves Aaron and has fully been a mother to him.

   Not so surprisingly, the reason behind the hand-off is once again Benjamin Linus. After pointedly telling Kate “You’re not his mother” last week, those seeds must really have grown fast. Those words seem pretty hypocritical of Ben, considering the whole Alex debacle. Ben was never really Alex’s father, and the whole situation ended badly because of his selfishness in wanting to raise her. I think in his own tactless and pretty harsh way, Ben was imparting this lesson upon Kate last episode. He was not-so-subtly letting her know that she shouldn’t make the same mistake he did. No matter how much she loved him, no matter what she did, the island wasn’t going to let her be his mother. A quick drive and some heavy thinking later, Kate resignedly admitted to herself that the island would never let go of her. Placing Aaron out of harm’s way was the type of sacrifice only a true mother could make. And now without him, there’s nothing to keep her from going back to the island. She’s not even doing it for the island, she’s doing to keep Aaron safe… Kate knows she couldn’t exist in the real world without wanting Aaron back.

2. It’s not enough to just want to go back to the island – I think the island has to want you back as well. Jack’s trans-Pacific flights always failed because he never had faith that they’d work in the first place. Hawking asks him to take this leap of faith, and for Jack that leap is to put his father’s shoes on Locke’s feet. For Hurley it was listening to those inner voices/visions, realizing that he’s NOT crazy, and denying the big lie. For Sun it was believing that Jin is alive. For Kate it was giving up Aaron. And maybe for Ben, it’s *not* knowing everything and letting someone else take the reins for once. He all but asks Jack what Eloise said to him in the church, but later on he leaves Jack in peace to read Locke’s suicide note. Ben’s always been omniscient, manipulative, controlling… but now he must let go and let things play out the way they’re supposed to. That’s his penance for returning to the island.
3. And speaking of Locke, his own act of faith was dying so that he could return to the island. Back in S2, Locke explains to Eko that Boone was “the sacrifice that the island demanded”. Now he himself is this very sacrifice, acting as “proxy” (Hawking’s word) in parallel to Christian Shephard’s corpse from flight 815. What happens when Locke returns to the island is going to be very big and probably just as weird.
4. Sayid is now Kate – Shackled, sullen, and accompanied by some type of law enforcement official. The male/female roles are reversed here, with Sayid’s captor even looking somewhat like Ana Lucia. We don’t know who has Sayid or why, if he’s truly captured or just acting that way. But why the hell would anyone be shipping him to Guam, and with only a single woman to guard someone as dangerous as Sayid is? It’s a straight-up recipe for a classic headbutt/escape.

   Hurley is now Charlie – Based upon the real-life holes in our existing judicial system, it’s (sadly) not too far of a stretch to say that Hurley got out with Ben’s kickass lawyer and some sick bail money. I’m just glad we didn’t have to watch a Hurley prison-break episode. As he shows up with the guitar case, it seems pretty obvious that Hugo probably had another sit-down with ghost Charlie. I’d even bet that the guitar actually belonged at one point to his late friend. Maybe Hurley met up with Liam, or maybe he bought it on Ebay. Either way, the guitar got beamed down to the river along with him… the island seems to be trying to put a band together.

   Ben is now Hurley – Or at least he arrives that way. Ben is last to board the plane at the very last second, having just made the flight. It had me bemusedly wondering if Ben experienced the same S1 antics that Hurley ran into in his journey from the ticket counter to the gate. Remember that Hurley “wasn’t supposed to” make the original flight. A few seasons later there was even more evidence of this, as Hurley stands on the beach, looks to the ocean and claims “I’m not supposed to be here”. The actual context of that scene has Hurley ‘secretly’ talking to Sawyer, but I always suspected it had double meaning. Perhaps Ben is now the person who’s not supposed to make the flight – after all, he’s not one of the O6. Hurley even uses the words “He’s not supposed to be here!” Ben’s words to Hurley are interesting also: “Who told you to be here Hugo?” A knowing nod toward his probable brush with Charlie’s ghost, but also something more.

   Kate is now Claire – Broken, confused, and torn over a decision she just made regarding her child. It’s not too far of a stretch here to assume Kate might even be pregnant, too. The plane needs a pregnant chick, and I’m pretty sure Sun hasn’t had any hookups. Dunno about coach.

   Jack is now Locke (or maybe Ben?) – Suddenly Jack is somewhat of a believer. When Hurley’s outburst threatens to derail his position on the flight, Jack reins him in and keeps him calm. Jack’s taken some measure of authority here. Okay, maybe I’m stretching it.

   Sun is now Vincent – Hehehe… alright, I totally couldn’t think of a parallel for Sun. Maybe she’s Rose, who after the crash somehow ‘knew’ her husband to be alive. You guys come up with something. And hey, where the hell is Vincent anyway?

5. I think Ben went back to the dock for an entirely different reason: to convince Desmond that he needed to go back to the island. I’m pretty sure Ben knows at this point that Desmond is the game-changer; in the grand scheme of things, getting him back to the island would be like having his own secret weapon. So either Ben tried talking Desmond into returning, or Ben showed Desmond what would happen to him or his family if he didn’t go back. And then Desmond proceeded to beat the living piss out of him.

   Before you wonder why Ben and Hawking didn’t chase Desmond out of the church and try to convince him to stay, keep this in mind: Desmond never arrived on the island by plane crash. Desmond came by boat. And handily enough, Desmond has a boat. And Ben just came out of a whole basement chock full of longitudes and latitudes and projected plot-points as to where they island will be in the future. If Desmond is to return to the island, his own leap of faith will be leaving his family behind. Ben went to sow more seeds, and to leave Desmond with the means to return to the island himself… the way he did the first time. (1-5 from Dark UFO)

6. Hurley’s reading Y: The Last Man.  Great shout out to Brian K. Vaughan, my favorite Lost writer.  If you haven’t yer, I encourage you to read that series, it’s grrreat.  And I believe it would make a great TV series (but it won’t happen).  Not a very encouraging issue though.  SPOILER , it’s the one where the space station crash lands and two of the astronauts die, it kinda made me worried about this crash.  Bu the more I think about it, there weren’t any encouraging issues of Y: The Last Man.
7. Sayid also had quite the reaction to Ben.  Here’s a hypothetical situation.  Ben goes to kill Penny, but guess who’s there to protect him, Sayid.  Sayid beats him up.  Ben finds some way to punish Sayid by blackmailing him to come on the plane.  Ben realizes that he’s running out of time so he has to get to the plane before he can kill Penny.
8. So Jin joined Dharma, $10 says he can speak fluent English.  It seems like a pretty obvious, if surprising, series of events that led to the Dharma-ized Jin.  Locke fixed the Wheel during the Dharma era.  Everyone was stuck in that time period.  The Hostiles wouldn’t accept them so they were forced to go undercover in the Dharma Initiative.  Tadah! (6-8 from Not Confused Just Lost)
9. Thematic literary references related to LOST often pop up in the show. In “316″, we get a long glimpse of Hurley reading a spanish version of “Y: The Last Man”. The story is about “the only man to survive the mysterious simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth. ” Find more HERE. We also see Ben reading James Joyce’s Ulysses on the plane. “Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism. ” More on that one, HERE. (from Sledgeweb’s Lost Stuff)

next weeks episode:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol7jMGBOSYQ]

This Place Is Death Recap

Feb 12

metalman777Lost Lost, recap, This Place Is Death 1 Comment

“This Place is Death” is the fifth episode of Season 5 of Lost, originally broadcast on February 11, 2009. Locke takes on the burden to stop the island’s increasingly violent shifts through time. Meanwhile, Ben hits a roadblock in his attempt to reunite the Oceanic 6 and bring them back to the island. (Lostpedia.com’s synopsis of the episode. Definitely click here to read it!)

Key Points from this episode (in no particular order):

1. There is a quick scene in 5×05, “This Place is Death” that features Montan listening to a transmission of The Numbers on a radio. They make a plan to head to the radio tower to see if they can make use of the antenna to call for help. Those with sharp ears, however, recognized something familiar in the voice repeating 4 8 15 16 23 42 on the radio. Could it really be Hurley? (from Sledgeweb’s Lost…Stuff. link has audio samples!)
2. We also got our first look at the mysterious Temple we’ve heard so much about in tonight’s episode. We learn that the temple (which is where Montaun lost his arm) has similar looking Glyphs on the side of it as what was used on the countdown timer in the Swan Station (the hatch). This seems a little odd when you consider that the Temple is supposedly an ancient building that predates the Dharma Initiative, and the Swan Station was built in the 70s/80s. It is also possible speculation at this point that the Temple may be Smokey’s home. I base this mostly on the connection with Ben, who seemed to be able to call Smokey to the slaughter last season, and also is the one who sent his people to the Temple for safety. Ben has referred to the Temple as “the last safe place on the island.” (from Sledgeweb’s Lost….Stuff)
3. Are there any inconsistencies with Charlotte’s backstory? She says she was on the island as a child, and then moved away. Last season we found out she was born in 1979. If she moved away when she was 7 or 8, it would have been in the late 1980s… around the same time Rousseau landed on the island. Ben killed his father in 1992, the date of the Purge. He came to the island in the early 1970s and lived there from that point on, so he would have had some memory of Charlotte, even if she’d just been a child. Why didn’t he say anything about that last season, and instead let on like he believed her backstory, that she’d been born in Essex, England? Season 5 opened with Pierre Chang putting on “Shotgun Willie” by Willie Nelson, a song from a 1973 album. So it couldn’t have been before that, but it could have been after that. The clothing he’s wearing suggests it’s still early 70s. We see them constructing the Orchid, because he goes down into it and passes by Daniel. SO… how did Charlotte know about the well? If she was born in 1979, but the Orchid had been built and the well destroyed in the early 70s, how could she have known about it? (from Nik at Nite)
4. Did You Notice?:As Sun approaches Ben and company at the marina, she walks by a boat called the Illusion…The Temple is covered in hieroglyphics, some of them the same as the red symbols that appeared in the Swan station when the countdown clock reached zero…Jin picks up the ballerina music box on the beach, the same one that Sayid will later fix for Rousseau when she’s holding him captive in “Solitary.”…The church where Hawking is looks exactly like the one they used for Christian’s memorial service….Desmond totally knows who Hawking is the moment he sees her…Just two episodes ago, Ms. Hawking suggests that if Ben doesn’t get EVERYONE to her immediately, “God help us all…” [Music swells, terror sets in....] And now she’s more like, “Jolly good, pip pip, let’s all to the batcaves!” Huh? (from Nik at Nite)
5. Now turning the attention to the old architecture featured in this episode. The temple itself – the house of the Monster? If the temple is in the Dark Territory, that would make sense. But the blast door map referencing a number of Cerberus Vent points – which I had always assumed were where the Monster came from… so either there are multiple temples or the blast door map CV points mean something else. Speaking of the temple though, much love to DocArzt and friends who have a translation screencap of those hieroglyphs here! Nothing stands out as amazingly revelationy though, I’m afraid. (from Lostpedia Blog)
6. Sympathy to Charlotte, who could be Annie? Her dying words are about chocolate… and when we first meet Annie in Ben’s flashback she’s offering him an Apollo bar. It’s a stretch of a theory, but one might think Charlotte’s mom would make her change her name after they left (though this theory doesn’t work when Charlotte is much younger than Ben).  (from Lostpedia Blog)
7. Digging deeper into the Charlotte/Lewis connection, we sinker deeper into an abyss of subtext. Along the way, we pass A Grief Observed, Lewis’ chronicle about the death of his companion, Joy, and how it tested his Christian faith. Then, there’s The Great Divorce, which actually isn’t about marital dissolution but a fantastical vision of the afterlife, à la Dante’s Inferno, although it was actually meant as a parable about living in the here and now. (The title is a riff on — and the book a response to — William Blake’s surreal manifesto, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.) These are stories about the underworld, the mythical place where souls hang after they’ve shed the mortal coil. And now recall the Egyptian hieroglyphics in “The Hatch,” which according to the producers of Lost translated into ”Underworld.” And Smokey’s scene-stealing, arm -ripping presence in this episode reminds us that the guy who made the Map in “The Hatch” called the Monster by a different name: ”Cerberus,” the three-headed demon dog that guarded the gates of Hades. And finally, know that Christian Shepherd, the dude with the Jesus pun name, played the part of ”psychopomp” in this episode — a ”psychopomp” being a mythic underworld figure who serves as a ”guide to souls,” escorting the dead between states of existence. Psychopomp?! Yes: Psychopomp! Psychopomp! Psychopomp! Psychopomp! You can’t just say it enough. PSYCHOPOMP! (from Doc Jensen)
8. Remember when Rousseau totally freaked out when she saw Jin again on the beach? ”I saw you disappear!” she exclaimed. In her shock, I saw a simple answer to the time travel noodle-cooker that many of you have been puzzling over since last week: Did the French Lady recognize Jin when she first met the castaways in Season 1? The answer could very well be: Does it matter? For Rousseau, Reappearing Jin was one more scary, inexplicable thing in a scary, inexplicable situation that was about to become a way of life. By the time their lives intersected once more in her future timeline, seeing Jin again (if she even recognized him), the significance probably just bounced off her. ”Oh. You again. Whatever.” (from Doc Jensen)
9. The implication of all these ”clues” is that there seems to be some kind of time loop in play, one in which some or all of the castaways are the Jinns in the aforementioned magical novel analogy; they are objects that must be returned to where they belong in order to avoid catastrophic paradox and preserve the established time-space continuum. Which, I think, is a pretty good explanation for what Ms. Hawking and her off-Island crew of quantum mechanics are attempting to do. (Too supernatural for you? Well, tough. The naturalists in the crowd got a big disclaimer from Faraday last night when he said: ”Bringing back to the people who left to stop these temporal shifts, that’s where we leave science behind.”)

   Crazy. Okay. But here’s where all of this gets really great. The mysterious author of The New Time Travelers? His name is David Toomey. Ring bells? It should. David = Dave, Hurley’s imaginary friend from the Loony Bin. Another Jinn. Toomey = Sam Toomey, another victim of The Numbers’ curse. Best friend to Leonard Simms, one of Hurley’s loony bin friends. In fact, the whole reason Hurley went to Australia was to find Toomey. Instead, he learned the dude had shot himself years earlier. (from Doc Jensen)

Next weeks episode:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp-dgjBvC1M&eurl=http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2009/02/lost-505-this-place-is-death.html&feature=player_embedded]

The Little Prince Recap

Feb 05

metalman777Lost Lost, recap 1 Comment

“The Little Prince” is the fourth episode of Season 5 of Lost, originally broadcast on February 4, 2009. Kate discovers that someone knows the secret of Aaron‘s true parental lineage. Meanwhile, the dramatic shifts through time place the lives of the remaining island survivors in extreme peril. (lostpedia.com)

Key points and things obsessed fans should note:

1. A water bottle featuring Ajira Airway’s logo was seen in a boat on the Island. Juliet seems to know about the Ajira company, describing it to the other survivors as an airline based out of India which has flights across the entire planet.
   Ajira Airways is a fictional airline company whose logo appeared briefly twice during a Lost Season 5 promotional music video on the ABC website, which featured future episode clips and the music video to the song “You Found Me” by the band The Fray.
   The website Ajiraairways.com sports their tagline “destiny calls”; the same as the promotional tagline being used to promote the fifth season of Lost. (lostpedia.com)
2. The name on the side of Ben’s van, “Canton Rainier” is an anagram of “reincarnation.” Does that bode well for John Locke’s dead body?
3. Sun‘s surveillance report is partly legible. It has since been discovered that the report is from a Lost unrelated online game; it is therefore doubtful that Lee Chin or Melissa will figure prominently in future episodes. Full Report.
4. Yes … we see Danielle Rousseau before she became Crazy Danielle Rousseau. But that’s not the juicy bit.In the midst of the raging storm, Rousseau (now being played by a younger actress) and her crewmates find an unconscious man floating on a piece of wreckage. They haul him to shore, and that’s when we see …JIN! JIN LIVES!Jin survived that massive freighter explosion (he was near the stern when that puppy blew), and now he’s been transported back 16 years to those halcyon days before Rousseau’s crew is beset by a horrific contagion and Rousseau’s baby (she’s pregnant at this point) has yet to be stolen by Ben. (from The Lost Blog)
5. Rousseau’s ship was named Bésixdouze, which translates to “B six twelve.” And B612 just happens to be the name of the home asteroid once inhabited by The Little Prince. (from The Lost Blog)(also see The Mirror Matter Theory)
6. So the nosebleeds happen in this order: Charlotte, Miles, Juliet. If they’re supposed to happen to people more quickly the longer they’ve been on the island, and Juliet’s been on there for 3 years (and notice hers happens after about the same number of flashes as Desmond’s did in The Constant, and he’s also been on the island for 3 years), then it stands to reason Miles was there slightly longer than Juliet, since his happens right before hers, and Charlotte much, much longer, since she starts bleeding about 4 jumps before the rest of them. Could this be a suggestion that the baby we saw in the first episode was Miles? Could Miles have been Dr. Chang’s son? When did Charlotte come to the island? Could the reason Miles doesn’t remember be because he was far too young? (from Nik at Nite)
7. When Rousseau and her crew are on the boat, they keep referring to Montand by name. Montand was the guy Rousseau mentions in the season 1 finale when they’re heading to the Black Rock, and she tells them Montand lost his arm. (from Nik at Nite)
8. (time jumping timeline) FLASH ONEDeparture Point: 1954, the Others vs. the H-bomb testers era of the Island. (As seen in last week’s episode, ”Jughead”)

   Arrival Point: November 2004 — the night Boone died and Claire gave birth and Locke made the Hatch throw a blazing bat signal into the sky.

   FLASH TWO

   Departure Point: November 2004

   Arrival Point: Hard to say. Clearly not a moment we’ve seen yet in the series — so I’m going to theorize that this moment has not yet happened: The castaways landed on a point in time after the departure of the Oceanic 6. That ”Ajira Airlines” water bottle? I’m thinking it came from the airplane that’s going to bring the Oceanic 6 back to the Island. Which means that it’s possible that the other party in the other outrigger — the ones that started firing on Locke and company — was Jack and company.

   FLASH THREE

   Departure Point: TBD. ”Thank you, Lord!” Sawyer bellowed as the screaming came across the sky to carry the castaways away from their attackers…

   Arrival Point: Only to drop them in the middle of a storm at sea sometime in 1988. (”I take that back!” Sawyer retorted to the skies.) According to most Lost sources, 1988 was the year that Danielle Rousseau, 16 and pregnant, washed up on the Island with a bunch of French scientists. More on them next week.

   BURNING TIME TRAVEL QUESTION NUMBER 1: How come the castaways got to keep the outrigger when they did the time warp shuffle? Shouldn’t that have been left behind in the previous time zone?

   Answer: The question was actually asked and answered two episodes ago in ”The Lie.” If you recall, Juliet theorized that time travelers get to keep the stuff they’re holding or sitting in when they jump. (Also see: the compass that Time Indeterminate Richard Alpert gave John Locke to give to his 1954 self.) In other words: How about we just roll with this?

   BURNING TIME TRAVEL QUESTION NUMBER 2: It appears that only the castaways are traveling through time. Which means that the Island isn’t traveling through time. Maybe. But we saw the Island disappear in the season finale. So…uh…huh?

   Answer: I know this issue baffles many of you. Let’s make an appointment to discuss all things time travel in next week’s Doc Jensen column, posting Wednesday morning. (from Doc Jensen)

9. The Ultimate Theory in Course Correction (a.k.a. “Oh Shutup Vozzek, That’s Just Preposterous!”)
   It was creepy, it was eerie, and it was my favorite part of the episode: Sawyer & crew arriving back at ‘their camp’. Someone’s been eating all the porridge, drinking all the Dharma beer, and breaking the all island’s leash laws. Locke pointedly asks “I wonder when all this happened?” From the very beginning of this scene, something seemed off. And from the minute Juliet found the Ajira Airways water bottle to the final seconds of the bullet-ridden canoe-chase, I realized we were looking at the future.

   For a moment, let’s imagine that the 815′ers failed at whatever the island needed them to do. Going with Hawking’s theory of course-correction, the island would still need to bring people to it. Jacob would still need some help. What we saw here was the next generation of LOST: one in which the plane that crashed came from India, one in which the crash survivors were just different people playing the same roles. Most things would occur along the same lines: they’d build a camp, they’d be terrorized by the smoke monster, there would be lots of fighting and gunfire. Eventually they’d find the remnants of the 815 camp and wonder what the hell it was, much the same way our characters found the Black Rock and the 4-toed statue. They’d also scrap with the Others – early and often.

   So now let’s pretend for a minute that the group in the other outrigger canoe was comprised of the flight “518″ survivors. They see our main characters and assume they’re the Others. They give chase, take some shots, and then suddenly Locke and Sawyer’s canoe is whisked away: conveniently time-skipped back to the past (pouring rain and everything).

   Desmond’s been saying it since season 2: “See you in another life”. Effectively this IS another life, just as the off-island world that the O6 now play conspiracy games in is another life as well. Another prophetic old statement by Jin to Hurley: “Everything is going to change”. Imagine that every time something changes we see another life… if the change is a minor one, all you’ll see are a few picture frames changing style. If the change is significant, and happens at the root level of LOST’s story, maybe another whole plane crash happened. I wouldn’t even be surprised to find out that Locke was leading his own group of Others in the first canoe, effectively chasing a version of his former, past self. Bananas? Definitely! But remember Frank Duckett’s words: “It’ll come back around”. Not to mention this would also make Sawyer’s sarcastic “Other Others” line ironically close to the truth

   What we saw this episode was a really cool, really dark mirror universe of our existing storyline. It happened very fast, and we weren’t meant to see much. Reality turns out to be a very thinly veiled curtain on LOST, and the writers are yanking on it. But their story is their story, and it totally rocks. (from Dark UFO)

Here’s the trailer for next week’s episode:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDyPtHga_rc&eurl=http://nikkistafford.blogspot.com/2009/02/lost-504-little-prince.html&feature=player_embedded]

Jughead recap

Jan 29

metalman777Lost Lost, recap, television No Comments

I’m so glad that Lost is back on!  What other show on tv to give you answers, only to make you ask twice as many questions.  Love it or hate it, Lost is at the top of its game as episode 3 of season 5 premeired last night.

Normally I would copy and paste the episode’s recap from Lostpedia.com (which you can still find here), but my wife thinks it is jut too much to read.  So instead, I have read dozens of blogs today and will bring to you all the juicy tidbits I found.

1. Remember Boone’s story about his nanny? That he was a snot of a kid whose nanny would come every time he rang a bell, so he rang it constantly, forcing her to run up and down the stairs, until she tripped, fell and broke her neck? Then we had Ana Lucia’s mother, whose name was Teresa Cortez. And now… Daniel Faraday apparently destroyed the life of a woman named Theresa by giving her the Eloise experiment and not telling her to grab a constant along the way. But why is she comatose and not bleeding from the nose? Somehow she’s jumping through time, but not to the extent others are.
2. Okay, “Jones” actually being Charles Widmore was the biggest squee moment of the episode for me….I loved that he refused to answer Widmore’s question about Penny, but I don’t know why Widmore wasn’t even more direct about her safety, and simply said, “Ben Linus has vowed to kill her if he finds her. Don’t let him find her.” Widmore doesn’t know that Ben is WITH Faraday’s mom right now, and he’s just walked Penny right into the trap. Something doesn’t feel right about this. I think Widmore is more omniscient than that. Hmm… (from Nik at Nite’s Lost Blog)
3. Richard has lived on the island forever.  For all intents and purposes (is that right?) Richard can and will live forever.
4. Richard talks about the US Army as if it’s Dharma, I wonder what the difference is.  Did the Army start Dharma, or were those military tests nothing more that bomb tests?
5. The first time I watched this show I suspected that Ellie was Penny’s mom, but as I rewatched parts of it to write this revlysis I began to suspect that she is Ms. Hawking (I got her name right this time).  If you watch again it really seems like the actress is doing her best Ms. Hawking impression.  And Daniel did say they he recognized her.
6. I think we were supposed to see the significance of Juliet choosing to go with Sawyer instead of Locke.  If she had chosen Locke then it would have proved that she was still an Other at heart.  It’s a pretty repetitive realization, but the writers continue to emphasize it in case we still doubt her devotions.  (from Not Confused Just Lost)
7. Note that Miles gets his vision of the four US soldiers when they walk over the ‘fresh grave’, meaning he can’t just commune with the dead haphazardly. It seems he needs to be in proximity to the corpses, which explains why he asked to be led to Naomi’s body. That doesn’t explain him being able to read the spirit of Mrs. Gardner’s grandson in his flashback though, although Miles did specifically call for his spirit that time. But even stranger, notice how Daniel doesn’t question Miles ability at all – he simply asks if the spirit told him what year it was. I’m thinking maybe Daniel had prior knowledge of Miles abilities, or maybe happenings on the island are so way far out there that no one really questions such unbelievable things much at this point. OR…… Maybe Daniel’s a bigger key to the time travel puzzle than we originally thought: accumulating past and future knowledge the same way Ben and Locke currently are. We already know he’s got a constant, which will keep his mind straight as he skips through time. We know for a fact that he eventually arrives at the Dharma era, and probably a whole lot of other time points. His brain is sharp, and the fact that he believes in and comprehends most of what’s going on can’t hurt either. And don’t forget that Daniel also arrived on the island with existing precogniscent knowledge, as evidenced by him trying to predict the cards from last season. The donkey wheel hadn’t even been turned yet.  (from Dark UFO)
8. Follow this link to see an article from Popular Mechanics and see if the writers and makers of Lost got close to reality concerning Jughead, the hydrogen bomb on the Island.