Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Lost 6.01/6.02 "LA X, Parts 1 & 2"

Lost: 6.01 “LA X, Parts 1&2”

“It worked.”

Well, Darlton said they’d come up with a new method of storytelling for S6, and they did. No more flashbacks, no more flashforwards, just two different possible worlds running simultaneously. Fringe and Flashforward are both running with Hugh Everett’s “Parallel Worlds” theory right now, which is where Lost had been heading all along. (Cliff Claven factoid: Hugh Everett is the father of E, the lead singer of the Eels.) So will the two timelines continue for the full season, eventually coming together in some epic way? Because so far I’m REALLY intrigued by the possibility of watching the lives of these people and how they would have unfurled if the plane hadn’t crashed. I thought all along the do-over would be something they’d show us for the first episode or so and then continue on the island, but keeping two storylines? AMAZING.

“You did this.”
Did anyone else feel terrible for Jack throughout the episode? Like Locke, he thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was helping people. But Sawyer glares at Jack (who’s as broken as anyone else in the episode when his bomb idea doesn’t work) in one timeline, while Charlie glares at him in another. It’s like, if destiny exists, poor Jack is destined to piss people off wherever he goes even when he thinks he’s trying to help. I thought he looked particularly haggard in this episode, and maybe that’s what raised my sympathy so much. Is there no timeline where Jack can just be happy?!

Free Will vs. Destiny
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.

Highlights:
• DESMOND!!!! Reading Salman Rushdie. Thanks, writers, for handing me a book in the first 5 minutes of the season. :/ Thankfully, Rushdie is one of my favourite authors. I wasn’t able to see the title, but it really looked like the cover of Haroun and the Sea of Stories (a book I read about 15 years ago and adored...). If that’s what he’s holding, I can already think of the possibilities of what would link that book to Lost!
• The underwater island!! It really IS Atlantis! Loved as we rushed past the school of fish, and did you see the Dharma symbol on the tail of the shark? HAHA!
• Hurley: “I’ve got a gun!! And I know how to shoot it!!” as he desperately tries to load a bullet into the chamber. LOL!
• Boone! Frogurt! I thought Maggie Grace was coming back but I guess no?
• Ben to Ilana: “I’m sorry, who are you?!”
• “Asking me who’s in the shadow of the damn statue doesn’t mean you’re in charge.” HA!! You GO Richard!! Anyone notice we actually see Richard more unravelled in this episode than ever before? He gets angry, almost violent, and up until now he usually steps back holding his coffee cup and looking like he’s on Prozac.
• CHAH-LIE!! I literally jumped up and hopped up and down around the living room. Like a bunny with a number 8 on my butt.
• The Temple! It actually reminded me a lot of the temple where Jin and Sun were married... minus the colour.
• Sawyer after being told a 341 is confidential: “Well if it’s confidential how the hell am I supposed to know if I see one?”
• When Sayid is carried out of the water, he’s in a Christ pose.
• Claire!
• Ben: “You’re the monster.” Not-Locke: “Let’s not resort to name-calling!”
• Not-Locke says the last thing Locke was thinking was, “I don’t understand.” Then says, “Isn’t that just about the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?” Yes... it is. It made my chest hurt when he said that. :(
• Followed by Hurley leaning in and saying to Sayid, “Hey dude... if you ever want to talk, I’m around.” You’re KILLIN’ me here, people!!
• The Man in Black and Alpert coming face to face. WOW.

Answers:
• I thought I’d add a new subhead in this year to catalogue all of the answers we actually get.
• Shadow Seekers are Jacob’s bodyguards. The Man in Black should know, I would think, so for now I’ll take his word that that’s who they are. It still leaves the questions about how they know about the island and where their allegiances come, etc.
• “I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” Smokey = Man in Black. Not a surprise.

Did You Notice?:
• As soon as Jack takes the bottle from Cindy and says, “It’ll be our secret,” I knew things were going to be different. In “Pilot, Part 1,” Jack says to her that she’s breaking several FAA regulations, and then Charlie comes running by. Jack also seems a little drunker the first time around.
• Throughout the episode, when it moves between timelines you don’t hear the familiar “whoosh” sound, but instead you hear that screechy sound that happens right before a time jump.
• Rose says, “It’s OK, you can let go.” Which is exactly why Jack created this timeline in the first place: to let go of everything that’s caused him pain in the last 3 years.
• I loved when Jack looked in the mirror and at first I thought, “OMG, does he have a memory of being on the island and now he’s realizing he looks 3 years older?” but then he leans in and it’s just a razor cut on his neck.
• I mean this only as an observation, not showing a preference for one side over the other, but the writers were NOT doing the Skaters any favours with this episode. Kate looks at Sawyer, then Jack, and runs to Jack.
• Hurley doing the “commercial” for Mr. Cluck’s is referring to the Mr. Cluck’s commercial that they showed at Comic-Con.



• Death gave Jacob a haircut!
• You know, I’ve always found the Jin/Sun thing in the early days to be inconsistent with what we later know about them. His whole, “do up your top button” thing seemed to be somewhere they were going with the couple and then switched gears. Since then we’ve seen him flash the little flower at the airport to her and then we find out that he’s reassured her he’ll get rid of the watches and then they’ll run away together... But then again, all of that happened right before he ran into Hawaiian shirt man in the airport, who told him that no matter where he goes, Paik will be right there. That’ll put anyone on edge.
Damon Boone says to Locke, “If this plane goes down, I’m sticking with you.” Sadly, in the other timeline the Beechcraft goes down and he’s with Locke at the time. And... it doesn’t do him any good.
• Did anyone else think for a second that maybe, in this timeline, Locke could actually walk and he really wasn’t pulling Boone’s leg?? I half-expected Locke to stand up at the end.
• Ben just looked like a shell of himself as he stood there staring at the fire... what a great moment. Though I’ll admit for a moment I thought Ben was so broken we’d never see the old manipulator again... but I know he’ll be back. 
• Poor Sayid. First, in the finale when Sawyer says he needs 5 minutes of Jack’s time, Jack wanders away without letting on that Sayid is bleeding out in the truck. In this one, Jin goes racing over to Jack to tell him that Sayid’s getting worse, and ends up down in the hole helping him move debris off Juliet before running back to the van, hurling Sayid inside and racing back over to Juliet.
• Jack is trying to revive Charlie and says he needs a pen. He actually needs one for real, yet in the other timeline where he landed on the island, Boone asks him if he needs a pen and Jack says, “Yes. Please go find me many pens” just to get rid of Boone. Now he actually needs one for reals.
• Jack to Charlie: “Yeah, you’re alive.” I almost cried at that line. Charlie’s alive. :::sniffle:::
• Juliet’s dead. :::sniffle::: Wah.
• Frogurt was wearing a red shirt. Hahaha!
• They seemed to pull the wheelchair out of a compartment, and yet in Sydney Locke was told they didn’t have any such thing and they had to carry him onto the plane (which, again, I ask... really? He didn’t have to go pee once in a 16-hour flight?!)
• Hurley’s also wearing a red shirt. Which has me REALLY REALLY worried. Please change shirts, Hurley. Soon.
• Was anyone else yelling at Kate, “Grab the case!!!” when she was running out of the bathroom after knocking out the marshall?
• The John Lennon circa 1968–looking dude played Sol Star on Deadwood. Think he knows Oldham and the Man in Black? And is he the walrus?
• As the Japanese guy is reading off Jacob’s latest list, there’s a guy standing behind him who looks familiar... is that an Other we’ve seen in previous seasons? He looks a little bit like Aldo... with a big red hat.
• Jack trying to revive Sayid with Kate sitting by him saying, “Jack, what are you doing, he’s dead” was reminiscent of the scene where Charlie appeared to be dead in the jungle and she begged him to stop and he refused... and revived Charlie. But here, he gives up. Jack has learned to let it go – is that always a good thing?
• Man, I’ve been watching too much Fringe. When Doc Arzt was retrieving his baggage from the carousel, I jumped for a minute because I thought I saw the Observer standing next to him! Then I thought it was Dave... and then realized nah, it’s just a bald guy.
• I couldn’t believe it when Kate didn’t just take Frogurt’s cab. She’s on the run from the law... I’ve been standing in those taxi lines at airports before and watched people cut in and jump in cabs and no matter how much yelling everyone else does, they just drive off.
• Wow, Zack and Emma have gotten old! But unlike with Walt, three years have passed so they can continue to use the same actors. It made me sad that these little kids who just wanted to see their parents have not only been denied a happy childhood with their family, they’re being treated like servants by the Others.
• Notice how disconcerted Miles looks as he’s sitting next to Sayid... he knows he’s not dead dead, because he can’t seem to communicate with him at all.
• I loved seeing Jack and Locke meet for the first time and Locke actually being a comfort to Jack. Remember back in “White Rabbit” in S1, Locke talks to Jack about how we chase things and Jack really listens to him, the way he listens to him here. I gasped when he mentioned he was a spinal surgeon... imagine if he could fix Locke and become Locke’s saviour?!
• Alpert starts shouting, “Don’t shoot him! Don’t shoot him!” because he knows if they do, the smoke monster will come back.

So Many Questions...
• So... if the Swan never existed, then Desmond wouldn’t have been there pushing a button every 3 minutes. But, how did he end up on the plane? Does this mean that his boat crashed on the island in the first place because of the electromagnetism and without the island there, he was able to complete the race? Or does it mean that Widmore never had the race in the first place, confirming the long-held belief that Des was just his guinea pig all along? Is he with Penny or no? So many questions about Desmond being on that plane!!
• Jack wonders if he knows Des from somewhere. Is it the island or the stadium in LA? Because interestingly, when Des first sees him in the hatch, he INSTANTLY remembers Jack from the stadium. And yet here, he doesn’t have a clue who Jack is.
• Would a hydrogen bomb have simply thrown everyone back into the trees? And not obliterated them? I’m with Sawyer on that one... I think the island flashed them ahead 30 years just as it was about to go off, but it left the bomb behind. That would explain why everything that was on the construction site has been completely blown away.
• Why can’t the Man in Black cross the line of ash?
• Do the people outside the statue see the smoke monster? Wouldn’t that have tipped Richard off as to what was going on in there? Why don’t they rush inside?
• It was weird to see Ben cowering behind a stone during the Statue Massacre, simply because he’s always looked this sort of thing straight in the face without blinking. It’s like he’s a changed person... could the death of Jacob changed Ben back to the person he was before he was “changed” in the Temple? Could some of that little boy Ben be back?
• Juliet says, “We could get coffee some time... we could go Dutch.” Was that a line from early in their relationship? Or was she actually getting a glimpse of the other timeline for a moment and she could see herself talking to someone else?
• So... were the people at the Temple just the other Others that Richard sent on ahead back in season 3? Or are they always at the Temple? Why are they dressed so differently than they were in New Otherton? Cindy just had her regular clothes on in season 3, and now she’s looking like the rest of them. It’s like they only just got the newsflash that peace signs, round glasses, and fringe vests are in style... 40 years too late.
• Who is the Japanese guy in charge at the Temple? Why haven’t we seen him before now?
• I can’t help but wonder: Did Jacob deliver his lists to Ben in ankhs, too?
• Is this the same procedure that Ben went through when he was taken to the Temple? Was he drowned and came back to life?
• The Man in Black says he wants to go home. But where is home? More importantly, WHEN is it?!
• The Man in Black says to Richard that it’s nice to see him when he’s not in chains. Could he have been a slave on the Black Rock when Jacob brought it to the island? And if so, why would the Man in Black hate him so much? Was it because Jacob made him immortal and not the Man in Black?

Next week:

415 comments:

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Deb O'Keeffe said...

THE BLANKET the Others lay Sayid on after they took him out of the water...anyone else think it was significant that they laid him out on a woven blanket that looked shockingly similar to the one hanging in Jacob's statue condo...you know, the one with all the Greek quotes about the gods granting you your heart's desire and happiness??? I know that since the Temple folks didn't know our Losties were coming, it's unlikely they had all the guest towels clean and ready, but still, that blanket seemed significant to me.

Anonymous said...

Do we know he was living in the statue?

Why would Jacob move around? He was living there during the 1800s, and he was living there in 2007.
And why would the ash ring be there, when Jacob can't be killed by MiB, before Locke came to the island?
As long as the writers didn't plan something bigger with this story, I think there are big inconsistencies.

Austin Gorton said...

And why would the ash ring be there, when Jacob can't be killed by MiB, before Locke came to the island?

That's a fair point. Perhaps something/someone else was in the cabin that did need protection from Smokey, and that's who asked Locke for help in "Man Behind the Curtain"?

Jason and Alicia Halm said...

I think there is a plot hole regarding Jacob/MiB and the cabin. It couldn't have been Jacob in there, because he was living under the statue.

That's if you really believe that it was Jacob in the cabin. Remember, the cabin was surrounded with ash - which was something the man in black could not cross. Perhaps the man in the cabin was really the man in black - keep in mind that it's Christian that ushers in fake-Locke/man in black - and it was also Christian that was in the cabin (with Claire).

Jason and Alicia Halm said...

That's a fair point. Perhaps something/someone else was in the cabin that did need protection from Smokey, and that's who asked Locke for help in "Man Behind the Curtain"?

Either that or they were trying to trap something inside the ash. I believe that smokey is but a vehicle for the men in black - not necessarily simply the man in black.

Anonymous said...

Maybe someone already posted this... I didn't quite make it through all the comments. But, I just realized: Farraday's preggers mom was on the island when they set off the H-Bomb... so, in the island-under-water-reality, Farrady would have never been born. Also wondering if young Mr. Whitmore was on the island at that time to... was Penny maybe never even born??

Jason and Alicia Halm said...

THE BLANKET the Others lay Sayid on after they took him out of the water...anyone else think it was significant that they laid him out on a woven blanket that looked shockingly similar to the one hanging in Jacob's statue condo...you know, the one with all the Greek quotes about the gods granting you your heart's desire and happiness??? I know that since the Temple folks didn't know our Losties were coming, it's unlikely they had all the guest towels clean and ready, but still, that blanket seemed significant to me.

Just like The Man in Black can take the form of others, perhaps Jacob has a similar attribute - except that he has to take on a shell - could that be Sayid? Maybe this was not a matter of Sayid being risen from the dead as much as it was Jacob taking on a new body.

Anonymous said...

I believe that smokey is but a vehicle for the men in black - not necessarily simply the man in black.

But then the dialogue between Ben and fake-Locke in the room under the statue (after Smokey killed Jacob's ... bodyguards) gets ad absurdum.

And, yeah, what Christian has to do with anything, I don't really know. If he spoke "on Jacob's behalf", he lied, and Claire would be one more nemesis Jacob has to deal with (THAT would actually be an awesome story). If he didn't lie, why was he in the cabin and had to be protected by the ash ring?

Or maybe we are thinking way too far and the ash was put there some time in 2004, after 815 crashed on the island???

Zari said...

@ Ober: I really apologize if im not making any sense! english is not my first language.

Welcome, you’re doing fine, and we understand you. I was born an English-speaker, but there are days when English is not my first language either! ;)

Virgina Katz said...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I cannot believe we have final made it! At first watching the catchup, and then the last time on, and then the beginning of the episode I was thinking "how many times do we have to watch Juliette die??" But then I got over it, quickly.

I have to say I did not feel bad for Jack, but I felt terrible for Sawyer. His rage and grief were so painful for me to watch. I agree that he shouldn't blame Jack, but that's what people do; they blame others (no not that kind).

I loved the way it stared with Kate in the tree not being able to hear. I find Kate so much more sympathetic when she is alone and taking care of herself. As soon as Jack or Sawyer enter the picture she changes, it's almost as if she turns into a teenager: making bad decisions, flirting to get what she wants, changing her mind incessantly, and just being all around less capable.

When the flashsideways started I felt a little heartsick. All the people and events we have spent so much time with over the years don't even exist?? It really felt wrong. But as the episode progressed I started to get really excited about all the possibilities this other time-lines holds.

Wouldn't Jin and Sun be flying in First Class?

I agree Nikki about John not having to pee. Every time they showed him sitting there in the airplane seat unmoving for 16 hours it made me have to pee!

Sayid got shot by Roger the same way he shot Young Ben and now he has been healed the same way (or presumably similarly) Ben was healed: by the others in the Temple. And I too wondered if Jacob would be reincarnated into Sayid.

Whats up with the people in the temple wearing turbans? I don't know, but that seemed so strange to me.

Benny said...

@Halm: That would be interesting as it would allow for the possibility of the two different Christian apparitions as both Jacob (suit-Christian) and his nemesis (cabin-Christian)...

THAT would be something!

Anonymous said...

Sayid got shot by Roger the same way he shot Young Ben and now he has been healed the same way (or presumably similarly) Ben was healed: by the others in the Temple. And I too wondered if Jacob would be reincarnated into Sayid.

That brings me to another point: Sayid got healed the same way as Ben - does that mean Sayid is one of the Others now, and lost his ... innocence (lol).
I was thinking about the following: Ben probably changed character, when he was healed in the temple, that's why he is a mastermind in manipulating, and can easily kill some people, when he wants to (btw: With the exception of Locke, I can't remember, when Locke killed a person). Basically, his character made a 180.

And now we have Sayid in the temple. Either he makes a 180 as well, and turns to one of the really good people (think about Sayid as a soldier, as a torturer and as a murderer) - wouldn't it be possible for him to GET innocence (like Tara in Buffy, after Glory put hands in her brain)?
That would be a way better storyline than Jacob trying to get into Sayid's body, so he can live again. But it would explain, why Jacob needed Sayid alive and healthy in the temple...

Benny said...

ASH<

Is it not possible that someone had been put inside to be protected, or be prevented from escaping long after Jacob had vacated the cabin and Ben only used the cabin for show?

Remember that he had never seen nor talked to Jacob personally, but did have access to his messages (that's where the bigger question lies I believe). Locke saw and heard someone in the cabin asking to help him, and Ben did not believe him.

I would posit that it's possible neither Jacob nor his nemesis had been in the cabin. But since Locke and possibly Ben believed it to be the case, his nemesis as Christian appeared there and suggested he spoke on his behalf.

The rest falls within the previously mentioned idea of body incarnation by the nemesis.

Now the big question would be what/who was in the cabin talking to Locke. We know that it was suit-Christian that Hurley saw sitting there.

Benny said...

...it still could have been Jacob though. Ilana said he hadn't lived there for a long time, but he could have been there during that specific period.

But would he need protection? Or was it preventing him from escaping? Has anyone hypothesized that Jacob might also be stopped by a circle of ash?

Just thinkin'

The Question Mark said...

@ Blam: I totally understand. Ma bad, dude.

Susan said...

ROFL at "summer home" and "guest towels".

Nikki F, Charles was on the island for the h-bomb, he was on a horse and found Jack and Kate hiding in the jungle just about the time Eloise shot Dan.

Benny said...

Since Eloise and Charles were on the island, they definitely died and Daniel as well (tear).

But this does not imply that Penny died as well. She could already exist off the island or her mother be pregnant off-island. Her mother was an outsider.

Since we don't know of her birthdate, we can speculate about her existence. She and Desmond may have met some other way, we can still hypothesize positively.

A question I have is: what about Rachel, Juliet's sister? Suposedly Jacob saved her, but what about now? What happens to her son if she did not survive?

word verif: tretr = syllabic palindrome tr-e-tr

Brandon Kotowski/ job: fan of LOST said...

I think Smokey used to live in the Temple ("This Place is Death"), but was somehow exiled or moved out by either Jacob (probably) or the Others (less likely, but possible). For seasons 1-2 and most of 3 Smokey is roaming around the Island, until he must've been captured by Jacob who then used his Cabin to house Smokey, trapping him with ash.Jacob set up camp in the Statue. When Locke and Ben visit the Cabin, Smokey says to Locke, "Help me." convincing Locke that it is Jacob speaking.

This was all fine and dandy until Hurley was scared by the Cabin (Jacob's eye, Christian's?) and stumbled to the ground, messing up the ash. This allowed Smokey to leave the Cabin whenever he felt like it (and perhaps to move the Cabin as well). Smokey needs to mimic the body of the man who can get closest to Jacob...Locke, so he convinces Richard (in the guise of Locke) to tell Locke that he must die.

Ajira 316 arrives, and Smokey promptly begins his infiltration of the survivors as Locke.

Smokey-Locke has Jacob killed, kidnaps Richard (the real 'leader' of the Others now, since Ben is so traumatized) so he can return home to the Temple.

Boom. L O S T.

paleoblues said...

I’m still having trouble understanding how a person can be in two timelines at once.
I understand how someone could go from point A in one space/time to point B in a different space/time, but how can they occupy both at once. I get how a river can be divided by a boulder into two streams (timelines), but each molecule of water (person) encountering that boulder has to go one way or the other. I also see how one could have a counterpart in a parallel universe/timeline, but aren’t they still two separate people. Can anyone help?

Brandon Kotowski/ job: fan of LOST said...

@paleoblues

Exactly, they ARE 2 separate people.
Let's take Sun for example. In our reality, she speaks English. Here, she does not.

Hurley has bad luck in our reality. Here, he has good luck.

I think the parallel time-lines and your reasoning hints at why there are differences. Jack Shephard looks the same (aside from the hair), has the same name, same family, etc. as OUR Jack, but he is inherently different.

This is what causes the slight differences in the alternate reality storyline. Faraday didn't anticipate this, since everyone thought they would forget all the Island stuff and just be flying on a plane the same as they were before. But, as we saw in the "LA X", it's NOT the same.

I hope this helps. It helps me :)

Anonymous said...

I think Smokey used to live in the Temple ("This Place is Death"), but was somehow exiled or moved out by either Jacob (probably) or the Others (less likely, but possible). For seasons 1-2 and most of 3 Smokey is roaming around the Island, until he must've been captured by Jacob who then used his Cabin to house Smokey, trapping him with ash.Jacob set up camp in the Statue. When Locke and Ben visit the Cabin, Smokey says to Locke, "Help me." convincing Locke that it is Jacob speaking.

I don't think so. That must have happened sometime between "The Cost of Living" (Smokey killed Eko) and "The Brig", when Locke wanted to go to visit Jacob with Ben.
Ben knew where to find the cabin, so he should have known about Jacob's nemesis (and he definitely didn't know about Jacob having a nemesis, clearly seen on his face, when Ben looked at the fire, and when he was thrown beneath Locke's dead body). I don't think Jacob would risk that somebody is breaking the ash circle, so Smokey can roam around the island again. He definitely would have hidden the cabin better (jumping around the island, so nobody would find it), but it was just "there" (and Horace built it ... so, something ain't right here), and how could Jacob tell Ben about that, when Ben never saw or speak to Jacob.
Another list would be appropriate, or Jacob could have told Richard (and I can't believe Richard didn't tell anything to Ben), but I don't think the writers planned that story out in the third season.

Michelle said...

One of many questions that jumped at me in the premiere was this: it seems as if Locke's ability to walk on the island is because of MIB's need to use him later. Same as to Ben being diagnosed with cancer.

Is there a reason as to why Rose is cured of her cancer once landing on the island??

Benny said...

@paleoblues They are two different individuals, with different (but strongly similar) histories.

1. There's Jack, who went on to get his father in Australia then crashed on the island, got off, went back in time tried to blow a bomb and now is in the temple.

2. There's also a Jack, in a different region (space/reality/universe) who went to Australia but only got one extra bottle of vodka from Cindy, did not crash and lost his dad coffin thanks to Oceanic. His history up to this point is similar.

Thinking in a physical way (molecules of water) is inaccurate. Using a water stream is just the simplest way to represent it.

Think of a night where you went to a party instead of studying. There could exist another you in a different layer of existence who studied instead of going to that party, and he may be wondering the exact same thing. But histories from that critical point would be different, and neither of you are aware of the other.

I hope this helps.

Benny said...

...and what brandon said!

Anonymous said...

@ Susan - thanks. I couldn't get the Whitmore timeline straight in my head.
@ Benny - a friend pointed out to me that she thinks Penny has already been born at that point. My concern was Whitmore never got to father her if he died.

Benny said...

@Nikki F.: Yes, that is correct. Her story would be different.

One would think that Desmond's story may not be too different up to the monastery (who knows - the Monk never would have met Ms Hawking). But Penny's would be altered, unless you believe that until Widmore had been exiled, he was not a big part of her childhood.

It would still alter her life in a big way, but one would think that she could eventually meet Desmond and perhaps Desmond would never feel the need to leave her, he'd never join the military. Perhaps they're even married?



HA! I just went and looked at Desmond's LEFT HAND and when Jack goes back to his seat you can clearly see a BAND on Des' RING FINGER, possibly suggesting he his currently married... could it be?


word verif: ringsha, ring-sha... it has ring in it, how fitting

Benny said...

here it is:

http://tinyurl.com/desmond-ring

EamonnToGetLost said...

Nikki...did you time the original post to be put up at exactly 1:08 AM, by any chance? ;)

Sam said...

I nearly died screaming when Charlie came on, and then nearly died laughing when he got busted.
His eye-roll when the cops come is epic. :D

Nikki Stafford said...

Whew... I can't keep up! I'm drowning like the island here! ;) My last comment was around 10am this morning and then I did a bunch of interviews and such and then I actually did, you know, my real job. And now here I am, with the kids tucked into bed, at the end of the day. When I left you there were 100 comments. Now there are 229. I can only imagine what more you guys have come up with in that time. And... here I go!!

paleoblues said...

@Benny and Brandon: Thanks. I actually did know what was going on, but the more I thought about it I somehow confused myself.

Verf: ingst=apprehension about ink

Benny said...

@paleoblues: coolio!

Nikki Stafford said...

paleoblues: I had anticipated being just a spectator during S6, but, alas, here I am.

No "alas"... after your great comments throughout the rewatch, I EXPECT you to be here and commenting! ;) Glad you gave in!

Not only did they have “nearly 80 feet of chain” in the van, but the bumper on that Vdub must have been super glued on.

LOL!!! Totally. As my husband was commenting on the chains, I actually mentioned the fender, and said, "Man, they're gonna rip that fender off!" My husband said, "There's no way those crappy vans could pull something like that!!" Thta scene had WAY too much commentary from my husband and I! Haha!

Rebecca T. said...

A couple thoughts in response to various things people have brought up.

1. I don't recall ever seeing for sure when the ash line was broken. We see it, we see Locke look at it, but if it surrounds the entire cabin, we may never have seen the ash being disturbed for the first time.

2. I don't think we have any proof that what happened to Sayid is the same thing that happened to Ben. I think we can guess that Ben was probably put into the water, but that's about it. Here the water was contaminated, which it seems is not normal or anything they've seen before. Also, they said Sayid was dead and left. It did not seem like they expected him to revive. I doubt the same thing happened with Ben, or they would have expected it with Sayid.

3. I don't think the pool can bring back the dead, only heal. Otherwise there wouldn't have been any concern about Sayid. I still think that they do something with the dead bodies. Why else do they insist on retaining the bodies or burying them deeply? I just don't think they can be brought back by the pool.

paleoblues said...

@Nikki: Bless you. I'll be here. Thanks.

Verf: demoo....remove the vocal cords from a cow

Justin Drummond said...

This may have been mentioned already, but did anyone else notice that the TSA agent at the airport refered to Sun as Ms. Paik? Is this cultural, or is there something else going on in the timeline?

Benny said...

@J&C: Yes, someone mentioned that recently. Not many people caught that (I hadn't).

It's interesting to think what it might mean.

There is belief that Paik had business associations with Widmore, perhaps that has affected Paik's status! Perhaps it's a cultural thing, or a passport things :S

Hopefully more will be revealed... for everyone's storylines!

Nikki Stafford said...

tiasabita: Primero, Nikki, amazing recap and extra amazing that you've done all this so quickly and all in your 'free' time, if that exists with a family!!

Thank you!! I don't know if anyone was reading the comments on the "While you Wait for Lost" post last night, but my husband left a comment on there posting as "RT" where he said, "The children don't even know what you look like anymore!" Smartass. ;)

Did yall notice Arzt was carrying a guidebook to insects?

I THOUGHT that's what he had! I kept backing it up and trying to see it, and I thought at first it was one of those bird-watching guides (for some reason BOTH sets of my grandparents had one of those things) but I kept saying to myself, 'It would make more sense if it were on insects.' I'm glad that's what it was!

What was the deal with the hourglass used by Genghis Otherton (kudos BatCabbage) in the Temple?

Speaking of smartass husbands, as Genghis turned the hourglass over, my husband went, "Like the sands of time, these are the days of our island..."

deviousviolence: Thank you for finally joining us! It's good to have you on the comments board. :)

Brianne: Hi Nikki! I've been a religious reader of your blog and Lost recaps since the start of season five when I found you, but I've been too shy to say hello!

You weren't by any chance on the Globe chat today, were you? There were several great questions by someone with the same name as you. If so, thanks for finally joining!! Your comments are welcome, and are no doubt going to add some great insights to our conversations. :)

AchingHope: LOVED your dream!!

Yeah. That is what happens inside my rain.

I'm so glad you made this typo, because it made me think of "Bowfinger" and the "chubby rain" idea in it. If you haven't seen that movie, do. It's HILARIOUS.

Anonymous said...

1. I don't recall ever seeing for sure when the ash line was broken. We see it, we see Locke look at it, but if it surrounds the entire cabin, we may never have seen the ash being disturbed for the first time.

We saw the broken ash circle during S5 (either Follow the Leader or The Incident, my memory part of the brain is confused atm), when Ilana and her men arrived at the cabin. She looked at the ash ring, and it was clearly broken.

paleoblues said...

Maybe this Jin is Paik's son, instead of Sun being his daughter.

Verf: gruciri...I need to go to the gruciri store.

Nikki Stafford said...

Fred: How is this alternate timeline any better than the one before? Sure they survive, and land at LAX, but their lives are just as wrecked as before. Charlie is going to jail for smuggling drugs. Kate is on the run. Sawyer is moving on to his next con. Jack still doesn't have his father, and is begining to drink more. Locke is still in a wheelchair and his life is pathetic. Rose has cancer and will die leaving Bernard berieved. Claire will still give her child up for adoption. We don't know yet about Sayid. The only one whose life is great is Hurley. You know that won't end well.

Actually, I'm not 100% sure about all of these things. We didn't see Claire's belly so it's not clear if she's pregnant (if I were a betting woman I'd say she was, though; otherwise why would she be in LA? and the thought of Aaron not existing is VERY upsetting to me!) We don't know if Rose still has cancer. Jack might be able to cure Locke. Boone's not tied down by that annoying sister of his. Frogurt and DocArzt get to live.

That said, I'm being more of a devil's advocate than anything here. I believe that ultimately no matter how they play out a storyline, it'll always end the same. Everything else is just... progress.

Rebecca T. said...

@Nikki: I wondered if RT was your husband. :D hahaha

Nikki Stafford said...

Rad: The only thing I can think of is when Jack was trying to save Charlie on the plane he was looking for the pen he had in his pocket "I had a pen in my pocket, but it's gone." Kate took the pen when they bumped into each other outside of the bathroom and she tried to use it to get out of the cuffs in the bathroom before beating on the Marshal with a bathroom counter.

NICE!!! I totally missed that, and you're absolutely right. Of COURSE she did that! Brilliant.

Rebecca T. said...

@mralphafreak: I know the ash line was broken, my point was that we don't know for sure WHEN the line was broken. It could have been broken by one of the Losties, or it could have happened before they crashed on the Island.

paleoblues said...

Didn't Hurley trip and break the ash line? I'll go back and check.

Anonymous said...

@SonshineMusic

Didn't somebody mentioned Hurley "tripping" over the ash ring in "The Beginning of the End" ^^

But when the ash ring was broken for quite a while now, why didn't Jacob or the Natives do anything against it?
I still believe Horace was building THAT cabin, so either the Others or Jacob/Richard could have fixed the circle and trapped Smokey in it again - they did it before...
I know, that is nitpicking, but it is an annoying plot hole, which lets me believe, Darlton didn't really have the super-über-mega-grande masterplan they claim to have... :(

Nikki Stafford said...

humanebean: Aboard the plane, Rose is reading "Weekly Woodsman" magazine. What, they were sold out of "Lumberjack Monthly"?

LOLZ!!! OK, so far you win the prize of having the comment that made me laugh out loud the hardest. Bravo!!

Anonymous: I haven't read through all the comments yet, but I was wondering if anyone noticed that the customs officer at LAX called Sun, Mrs Paik. I purposely watched it twice to check and she did.

You know what, you're right! I remember saying to my husband that she pronounced it "Paik" where up til now it's been pronounced like "Pike." And yet it never occurred to me that that's her maiden name and the customs agent should have called her Ms Kwon. Interesting!!

Rebecca T. said...

Hurley may have disturbed the ash. I'm not disputing that. I was simply trying to point out that we don't know that he or Locke or whoever was the FIRST to disturb it. Ilana said Jacob hadn't lived there for a long time. That's fairly vague. I don't even know what the ash means, if it was keeping someone in or out or what. (But if MiB = Smokey, then he wasn't trapped in the cabin because Smokey was in the jungle on the first night after the crash.) Just saying we don't know when the ash was disturbed the first time.

Just trying to clarify my thought, not beat a dead horse :)

Nikki Stafford said...

Deborah: THE BLANKET the Others lay Sayid on after they took him out of the water...anyone else think it was significant that they laid him out on a woven blanket that looked shockingly similar to the one hanging in Jacob's statue condo...you know, the one with all the Greek quotes about the gods granting you your heart's desire and happiness???

I thought the same thing. I kept noticing that looked a LOT like one of Jacob's pieces of tapestry.

mralphafreak: And why would the ash ring be there, when Jacob can't be killed by MiB, before Locke came to the island?

Do we know the line of ash was surrounding the cabin before 815 got there? We only saw it after they'd been there a few months. For all we know Richard Alpert put it around the cabin after the Oceanic crash because he knew what could happen.

Gerald Orr said...

Thanks Nikki.It instantly hit me that maybe he isn't really a bad guy and just wants to go home and leave the island for good.I'm sure the writers knowingly chose to keep MIB in Locke's form and also so they can use the greatness that is Terry O' Quinn."E.T. Phone Home"

Nikki Stafford said...

Teebore: The cabin as Jacob's summer home... HAHAHAHA!!!

Foxy Mulder said...

There's no way the H-bomb detonated in 1977 and left the Swan site in that condition. I'm sure you noticed the exercise bike (spinner). I doubt that would have been installed before it was finished being built.

So, the Swan was apparently finished at some point, and somebody turned a fail-safe key. And I'm pretty sure it was still Desmond. But I don't think it was a true H-bomb detonation, because the radiation would make it impossible for people to build there (or anywhere on the island) for years to come.

Now that I think of it, Faraday was only saying that the the H-bomb & the EM energy would be negated, which could have created some entirely unique experience in contrast to what we normally think of a nuclear detonation.

By the way, I loved the premiere, and it's going (so far) the way I had predicted to my sister...creating an alternate reality or parallel universe where they STILL encounter one another in some fashion. And yet, even though they've seemingly never met in the alternate reality, they also seemingly have some possibility of memories from the OTHER existence on the island. Completely intriguing!

Foxy Mulder said...

but I haven't predicted much of what I saw. My mouth was hangin' open for much of the episode!

And what was with all the commercials in the 2nd hour? I feel like if that ep was presented on DVD it would only be about 35 minutes. Did anyone else feel the same way?

Benny said...

@Foxy: the bomb did go off - in one of the 'timeline' being followed: the one where the island is unerwater and 815 lands at LAX.

But there is another 'timeline' where it did not and the island transported the survivors back to 2007, when the Swan had been imploded by Desmond.

1977 is a critical point where there is a fracture, allowing for two different histories to evolve, impacting the characters' lives differently.

Benny said...

As for the length of the eps. the total for the entire broadcast is 81 minutes, which would put it at 40.5 min each. Only slightly shorter than the standard 42-43 minutes.

There were a lot of commercials but I think they were also shorter.

Nikki Stafford said...

Eamonn: Nikki...did you time the original post to be put up at exactly 1:08 AM, by any chance? ;)

NO WAY. I thought you were kidding at first and then went and checked the time stamp. WICKED!! I honestly, sincerely, did not actually plan that at all. It's the island!!

Anonymous said...

Do we know the line of ash was surrounding the cabin before 815 got there? We only saw it after they'd been there a few months. For all we know Richard Alpert put it around the cabin after the Oceanic crash because he knew what could happen.

I want to believe (that) - lol, it's time for the X-Files now.
Because I can't just buy, that everything involving Jacob and MiB started to happen with 815 crashing on the island. If so, there had to happen lots of stuff during the 90 days of S1 'til S4. There has to be a bigger pre-story, not involving the survivors of the crash, beginning sometime in the 1800s, and definitely not beginning in 2004.

I can't think of somebody being put in the cabin after Sep 2004, so he can't get out, because it sounds illogical and awkward.
And according to a DVD commentary for "Man Behind the Curtain" (can be read on Lostpedia: search for "Jacob's cabin"), the writers want me to believe that Ben believes he has power over Jacob. And I don't think he got that power, after 815 crashed on the island.

L said...

Did Juliet coming back to life and then dying again sort of annoy anyone else? I mean, the scene was great, and that whole thing with "It worked" was pretty cool, but the scene in "The Incident" when she's dragged down the shaft was amazing, and it felt a little.... I don't know, untrue to that scene to have Sawyer lose her again.

Speaking of the infamous love triangle... or quadrangle.... or whatever.... My guess is that Kate's going to end up with one of them (Jack or Sawyer) in the island timeline, and the other one in the alternate reality. What do you think?

Actually, I think my favourite part of the episode was Sayid coming back from the dead... although I suspected he was going to when Miles couldn't hear him. I wonder if the water will change him in the same way it changed Ben, and if so, how awesome will Sayid be then?? I mean, if Little Ben turned into the guy he is now because of the water, just imagine what Sayid'll be.

Jack gave up on Sayid pretty quick there... it reminded me a lot of Charlie too. Maybe he should have learned a lesson from Juliet, and started screaming "Son of a b****" at Sayid.... you never know, it's worked before.

The one thing that really surprised me, believe it or not, was that Richard was a slave on the Black Rock. I thought he was on the ship, but I always assumed he was a captain or something.

And that line that Smokey says about how Locke's last thought was "I don't understand"... that broke my heart....

Jin, I think, is still my favourite character. I CANNOT wait until Sun finds him again, or he finds her... either way, I can't wait!!

paleoblues said...

If new timeline Jin is Paik's son, rather than Sun being his daughter, wouldn't she be Mrs Paik?

Joan Crawford said...

@Jo Thornley - "Jack gave up on Sayid pretty quick there... it reminded me a lot of Charlie too. Maybe he should have learned a lesson from Juliet, and started screaming "Son of a b****" at Sayid.... you never know, it's worked before."

I know, right!? He kept going on Charlie when Kate was all "Can we leave now, I'm bored of this" and yet this time! But I'm not bitter!

Nikki gets to marry Desmond and I get a dead Sayid! Though now that it's been revealed that I am an undead myself...I could (and would!) make it work.

Joan Crawford said...

Wasn't it cool to see Richard start dragging Ben around?

paleoblues said...

I just watched the scene of Jin and Sun at customs in the airport. Can someone with higher resolution than on my recording check and see if they have wedding rings on. They are flashing their hands around a lot in that scene and I couldn't detect any, If not, she is Ms Paik.

Rebecca T. said...

@Joan: yes, it was great to see Richard getting animated, but it was TERRIBLE to see FLocke beat him up and throw him over his shoulder. I think I screamed louder at that part than any other part of the episode.

Richard is very ... palatable to me ;P

Benny said...

I don't have the best resolution, but these are the two best capture I was able to take.

Sun: her ring was small, so it could just be unnoticeable.
http://tinyurl.com/ring-sun

Jin: the entire sequence is quite good, and it really seems he is not wearing a ring.
http://tinyurl.com/ring-jin

This may give credibility to the theory that they are not married at this point.

Deb O'Keeffe said...

My hubby just proposed the notion that the blanket the Others lay Sayid out on after he's taken out of the water might actually be part of the "healing process" itself.

Maybe it's not just the spring that brings people back to life, maybe there's something about the blanket (resurrection symbols? the fact that Jacob might have woven it?) that makes it an essential part of the process. Which may factor into why there was such a lag time between Sayid coming out of the water and finally waking up...maybe with Jacob dead, the blanket doesn't have as much "zing" as it did when he was alive???

Joan Crawford said...

@Sonshine - Oh, yes! After seeing Richard throw his weight around a bit, I realized just how palatable he is. Even though he has prettier girl-eyes than me.

JS said...

OI! - stupid work gets in the way of my Lost theorizing. By the time I get to the end of the comments, there are ten more comments!

I love the discussion here, and had a list of responses to various things, but looks like you all have it covered.

I do believe the timelines will converge (everything that rises must!) and that we will see the "end" whatever that is.

BUT I keep confusing myself trying to get the continous loops, e.g. did Jacob go back in time to touch the losties, or did he somehow find out what was going to happen, or was able to see across time, to affect change.

Hopefully we will get the answers on how Eloise/Ben/Widmore knew everything that was going to happen (no way Daniel's notebook had it all). Did they have their own resets, or converge with their "alternates?

Theories?

Benny said...

fyi

http://geronimojacksbeard.blogspot.com/

podcast by jorge garcia

paleoblues said...

@Benny: Thanks again, this time for the screen captures. I went at looked at Sun and Jin on the plane.
We see a close up of Jin's hands as he is looking at the watch and he doesn't have a ring. Sun's is unnoticeable if it's there.

Elle Dee said...

Nikki, are you going to be writing more haiku this season?

Check out mine here and here

paleoblues said...

Put a nice big wide brimmed black hat on "Lennon" and he could pass as Father Guido Sarducci.

Verf: splacrop....what a farmer who grows spla sells

Benny said...

HA! hadn't thought of looking at a plane scene! good catch.

Here it is for everyone else:
http://tinyurl.com/ring-jin2

Anonymous said...

@Orber "by blowing up the hydrogen bomb, the lives of the ppl on the island should have changed but not them..."

I'm thinking that, if the bomb exploded, killing Eloise, Widmore, The DHARMA Initiative, etc, and effectively destroying whatever is keeping the island afloat and a force to be reckoned with, it would immensely effect everyone else.

We all know how very connected everyone is to each other. One person met this person who also knew this person who once ran into this other person who once met the first person. Without the island to guide their lives, via Jacob's touch or just fortuitous meetings, they would lead completely different lives! Having not met this person, they could make a seriously life changing decision!

paleoblues said...

Looks like we're developing a new concept for the alternate timeline heretofore unknown to Physics. It's called "ring" theory (so far involving Rose, Desmond (and Nikki), Jin and Sun).

Sagacious Penguin said...

Maybe the ash circle was keeping MIB from uniting with Smokey to the extent that he has now? Maybe he's always been in communion with Smokey, but somehow his union in Locke's form seems more universally present than his appearances as Christian and Yemi (Locke is seen by all and can clearly physically interact with all whereas we have no proof that Christian and Yemi weren't just noncorporeal visions to individuals). So maybe the ash being broken allowed MIB to be free to join with Smokey and take an actual corporeal human form rather than just give visions and ramage in smoke form... ?

Just thoughts :)

Sagacious Penguin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sagacious Penguin said...

OK, after reading through everything here, I was left with more thoughts than would fit in a comment as well as the desire to pare down all the salient issues of 6.01 into a few core points.

So... I BLOGGED!

I've wanted to do it for 5 seasons now, but I finally up and done it!

I'm just like Nikki Stafford!!
Except... without a library of published books... and an epic amount of content... and I'm not as pretty... since, you know, I'm a dude and all.

BUT, a man can still aspire! If you can't get enough LOST analysis, check it out :)

http://sagaciouspenguin.blogspot.com/

Verification word: Rembi - Bambi's twin wolf brother.

Dazed and Confused and Lost said...

I only hope that Faraday's saying of "Whatever happened, happened." holds true in the end and that at that you can construct a valid timeline, or at least independent valid timelines I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Excellent summary / analysis.
Awesome Episode

The fashion of Japanese Guy ('Dagon'? ) looks vaguely piratical.. I wonder if he's one who's been time travelling, or if he's just been around for a really long time, like Richard and Jacob.

I'm also liking the Diverging Timelines - what if type of storytelling.. and how we'll probably see various characters from the Lost past pop up as the story unfolds.

Thanks for helping make sense of the show..
Really, though, I'm happy to just be along for the roller coaster ride..
( Muppet Arms and Wheeee!!!)

Dave Vachon said...

I left the season premiere on my PVR. As is usually the case, I'm gonna watch it again.
Not sure if it makes me a nerd in need of a life or just a normal person in need of a life.
Either way, I'm watching it again ... and, again, I applaud this blog. I'd kill for her ratings. :D

Anonymous said...

Just thought of this, and apologies if anyone else has brought it up (didn't read through the comments) ...

The MIB wants to go home .. he needs a body! He doesn't have one. RIght now, he is just smoke (and is embarrassed by it) or has to borrow a dead one.

Also, if he is the island's security system, wouldn't it make sense to kill Jacob? He is the guy who keeps inviting people who screw everything up. (And eventually blow up the place.)

crazyinlost said...

There are already 281 comments by the time I am writing this, so I am not going to take the pleasure of reading them first, so if I repeat anything, apologies to all.

Wow! and again I say Wow! My favorite shot was when they went out of Jack's plane window and down into the water, and over the sand/grass, to the Swan Station, and the delapilated Otherton/Dharmaville, and to the statue! That was SO COOL!

But what about Jin and Sun? They appear to be in the same timeline, but it looks like they will be playing for opposite teams! And is Sayid Jacob now?

@Nikki, what I noticed with the Jack/Cindy/vodka exchange was that she only gave him one bottle, not two (he doesn't need the 2nd one?). Also, I thought John could walk this time around when he was explaining the walk-about, but when I discovered he couldn't, I wondered, did he Really go on the Walkabout, or was he just telling Boone a good story?

So, where'd everyone on the island get real clothes? Were they really wearing T'shirts (I can believe) AND jeans (which I can't believe) underneath their Dharma jumpsuits? That just seems way too hot! (Temp wise, not awsome wise).

I loved the pen line!

@Nikki-concerning Des-I started to get concerned (after I got all excited to see Des) that they aren't going to go anywhere with Desmond and his massive connection to the island. I had read somewhere that he is not a season regular, so we will see less of him, but does that mean they are going to drop his storyline? To me that would be a HUGE disappointment!

Also, Nikki, I love your "Little Boy Ben Back" theory!

Now I can go and read all the overwhelming amounts of comments everyone else said!

n00bian said...

i think we should not take the words MIB says to Richard word for word - everybody suggests he was a slave

i think MIB was trying to free people from Jakob the whole time - he says so to the shadow seekers when they enter the foot: Jakob is dead - you are free now

they are no longer the slaves/servent of Jakob

and i also believe that is what he suggested to Richard in that moment - he is free of Jakobs chains, as is the MIB himself

crazyinlost said...

@Amsted-you bring up a good point about Locke's real body. Maybe it WILL get used, since it doesn't seem to be decaying yet, despite being days on a tropical island!

n00bian said...

oh - and i found it also very strange that when MIB attacks Richard he first goes to his throat as if he didnt want Richard to say something anymore

crazyinlost said...

"All I lost was my bag full of (400) knives!"

word verif-stter-a speach (and obviously writing) impediment

crazyinlost said...

@Brian Douglas-great observation with the Smokey wants to go 'home' and not just to the basement!

Concerning the comment "Man in Locke" (I love this, am I infringing on copyright laws by using it?) made to R.A., was he maybe referring to not being under the 'influence' of Jacob anymore (him being dead and all) as not being in chains anymore? Just a random thought I've been mulling over.

Marebabe said...

Holy cow! I’ve read through the first 200 (200!) comments, and I’ll leave a few thoughts here. I’ll read the rest later.

@asiancolossus: You’ve coined some new words that I like very much. “Smocke” and Nomad Others = “Nothers”. Keep it up, you’re doin’ fine! ;)

@Lisa (until further notice): Regarding Sun not admitting she speaks English. Maybe in the flash sideways, she really doesn’t. Yunjin Kim played it beautifully, and by that I mean very ambiguously. Her totally blank look could mean that she doesn’t understand a word of English, OR it could be a demonstration of what a cool liar she is. We just don’t know yet.

@AchingHope: Great catch about the tunnels all over the Island weakening it structurally. I can just hear someone saying, "Careful where you point that shotgun. That’s a load-bearing rock!"

crazyinlost said...

I've been plugging away at these comments all night, and I dont even think I've made it to 100 yet! This is a bit overwhelming for me who comes from the rewatch where 35-40 comments were good! I can't say I wasn't warned!

@asiancolossus-I've seen 'Sliding Doors' before-good movie, especially when he makes the reference to the Spanish Inquisition, and she doesn't know what he's talking about, and he says if you're British, you know who Monty Python is (or something like that-it's been awhile since I saw it). Someone else commented about it also, at the beginning of the blog, but I was just trying to find it and cant (getting overwhelmed again). But I also wondered what the 'cut' on Jack's neck was, and if it was significant. Jimmy Kimmel forgot to ask that one!

@Lisa(until further notice)-Wow! What an interesting theory about Sayid! If that's so, who will go into Locke's real body-Jacob? This Invasion of the Body Snatchers (or swappers) is already getting confusing-who's in which body???

Orber said...

• @Nikki:Do the people outside the statue see the smoke monster? Wouldn’t that have tipped Richard off as to what was going on in there? Why don’t they rush inside?

I don't think they saw the monster, because not -locke/flocke/MiB/Smokey tranformed into the monster inside the statue's feet.
Back in season 4 was it? where ben went face to face with the smoke monnster in the temple, i assumed he was living there?! so why are the temple ppl scared now? and trying to keep the smoke monster out?! unless its not smokey they want to keep out but someone else like ehem ehem.... christian?!


• @Nikki:So... were the people at the Temple just the other Others that Richard sent on ahead back in season 3? Or are they always at the Temple? Why are they dressed so differently than they were in New Otherton? Cindy just had her regular clothes on in season 3, and now she’s looking like the rest of them. It’s like they only just got the newsflash that peace signs, round glasses, and fringe vests are in style... 40 years too late.

Well the Others who infiltrated dharma seem to like being civilized, whereas cindy and the temple others, are more nature people and don't mess around with tv's electric devices etc.

• @Rad:One final question, this may be completely off-topic but if the ash keeps him out, how was he able to impersonate Christian in the Cabin when it is surrounded by ash at all times? Unless he was trapped in the cabin by the ashes the whole time, but then how would he get around as Smokey...never mind

well here's my theory. i don't think that smokey inhabited christian ever! because now when smokey is in locke he can take his shape but not inhabit his body, whereas christian's BODY was never found meaning he is a sort of a spiritual figure on the island.

•Question: another proof of christian being a seperate entity is, if he WAS smokey he would have continued his plan to manipulate locke and use his body to convince ben to kill jacob, then why kidnap or vanish with claire?! i think claire's is very important this season and we kinda have to relate everything and try to think what her role is.

crazyinlost said...

@Tim: "We will never again see a Season Premier. WWAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!"

But wasn't it AWSOME to get to see something NEVER seen before? I loved the rewatch, but something we didn't see coming again-jWAY COOL!

crazyinlost said...

@tiasabita-so funny, you called the Japanese guy 'GO', which is my sons favorite game and happens to be from Japan! (he likes anything japanese, so of course).

As for the the Dharma van bumper-chock it up to the superstrengh/healing powers of the island! haha

Ali Bags said...

@ Sonshine and Joan Crawford

I love you girls for sticking to what is REALLY important, the palatability (palatableness?) of Mr Richard Alpert. Masterful AND stylish. And I hate to say it I am liking the idea of him in chains.

Blam said...

A random thought as I slowly catch up on comments:
Do you think that when Nestor Carbonell types an emoticon he boldfaces the colon?

Rebecca T. said...

@Ali Bags: Palatability works ;)

@Blam: bwa hahahaha!

Gillian Whitfield said...

When Juliet says, "Let's get a coffee sometime. We can go Dutch", did anyone else think that she was becoming like Charlotte/Theresa?

I loved that line that Ben said after Smokey attacked Bram and Smokey turned back into Not-Locke: "You're the monster!" "Let's not resort to name-calling Ben!"

Did anyone else notice that during the Smokey attack, Bram kept staring at the monster, and he was fine. Then, when he broke eye contact, it was the end for his character? Maybe Smokey likes it when people look him in the . . . smoke. Makes him feel respected. But if the "eye contact" is lost, he feels insulted?

Ali Bags said...

@ Blam Do you think that when Nestor Carbonell types an emoticon he boldfaces the colon?

That's Genius ...and wonderfully silly.

Benny said...

@Blam: they are emboldened automatically :)

@Olber: RE: Christian.
I do believe we've seen two different Christian entities.

1. The Zombie one, which I call Suit-Christian who has appeared to Jack on- and off-island, and to Hurley inside the cabin. He wears white tennis shoes. This would be the body.

2. There's talkative Christian, which I call Cabin-Christian (from his attire). He has appeared to Claire, Locke, Sun & Frank. This may be a Locke2.0 type occurence of Christian.

In one of my earlier comments, I have posited a theory, with a small kink, as to the nature of Christian, Locke and Yemi.

Blam said...

I'm not even done reading the first page's worth of comments, but I want to share this (again, it may already have been suggested): One itch I had about seeing the "new" timeline's 815 was that a lot could happen between 1977 and 2004 -- the butterfly effect and all. Now, I know that the destruction of the Island might not necessarily have impacted Jack, Kate, et al.'s life all that much before the flight, and that if some kind of destiny is involved the universe might've brought them all together anyway. But it would have been the universe and not necessarily Jacob; certainly it wouldn't have been "the Island" if there is some such consciousness to it separate from Jacob, because the Island is resting in pieces. The earliest flashbacks showing Jacob with the castaways in the Season 5 finale were Kate's and James/Sawyer's. And the big boom certainly happened in that other timeline before Kate was stealing the lunchbox, although I'm not so sure when the Fords' funeral occured. So has anyone else wondered whether Jacob survived the blast, if it was big enough to sink the Island, and thus if he ever got to touch the castaways-to-be-except-now-not-to-be in the alternate timeline, and if he did what purpose that may even have served? I don't think that Jacob is purely dependent on his corporeal form, whatever he is, but this could be one huge difference between the parallel realities.

Benny said...

@Blam: well, according to the writers/producers, everyone of the characters in the newly observed storyline are different to some extent
-Kate killed her father's assistant;
-Hurley is lucky;
-Shannon is not on the plane;
But as to the Jacob part of it, that is a striking question. We know he touched Kate and James in their childhood (post-77?), Jack pre-815 and Hurley & Sayid post rescue. Not sure about Ilana - yes, let's not forget Jacob visited her, gloves or no gloves.

So this makes for great hypothesizing as to what happened with Jacob and his touch.


I'd like to point out that, one of the many things that certainly would have happened (or not happened) in between 1977 and 2004 due to a missing island: scientific expedition NOT unexpectedly finding themselves on the island. Are we going to see Rousseau and Alex (sans 'father' Ben)?

Just sayin'

Blam said...

Now a thought about Hurley that I've repeatedly forgotten to share:
The infamous Hot Pocket rocket was indeed hysterically funny and his false bravado while trying to cock the gun in the other night was another gem. When he's expecting calamity, however, or just puts his faith in the strange things that happen around him, he's good to go. Visitations from Charlie stopped spooking him; as the Ajira flight started to shake, he just pulled down his sleeping mask, sat back, and told his cabinmates to buckle up; after Jacob showed up in the season premiere, Hurley took his advice and followed through with an admirably measured, Zen-like conviction of purpose.

Unknown said...

So in the season 5 DVD extras, there is a deleted scene where Faraday talks about how the course of time is like a river.

And that if you just throw pebbles in the river you can't change the coarse of the river. But if you were to throw a big enough boulder you could damn up the river. AKA the nuke.

So they through this boulder in river (the nuke) thinking it would change the coarse of the river but what it really did was make a fork in the river, creating to two parallel flows of the same river. Our two reality's.

Blam said...

Benny: well, according to the writers/producers, everyone of the characters in the newly observed storyline are different to some extent
I'm not saying that there were no differences at all, and I admitted that for those who had no pre-815 experiences with the Island in the "original" timeline (as far as we know) there might not have been significant differences as there would be for Desmond, Juliet, Ben (presumably vaporized or drowned), and others.
Benny: as to the Jacob part of it, that is a striking question.
And this was my main point.

Blam said...

Ali Bags:That's Genius ...and wonderfully silly.
I'm known to be both, thank you very much.

Blam said...

Benny: Are we going to see Rousseau and Alex (sans 'father' Ben)?
It would be nice if we do, even as a throwaway, get some shot of this happy French family somewhere.
...
Verification word: ningic — Ninja magic. Duh.

Benny said...

@Blam: all that much before the flight Got it, missed it earlier.
So OK... then we don't need to discuss that part, and I agree with the interesting question of what happens with Jacob and his touch!

So... I guess the main point to take from my post was Rousseau and Alex

Rad said...

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but are we 100% sure that the ash keeps out only MiB?? What if it also kept out Jacob?

The Temple dwellers started spreading ash once word got out that Jacob had died. If they wanted to keep out MiB then wouldn't they just keep a ring of ash, covered of course or else it would get blown away, around the temple at all times?

If this is true, then the person in the cabin would be a 3rd party that we have yet to meet. Jacob and Flocke would have been locked out by the ring surrounding the cabin.

Gillian Whitfield said...

Did anyone else love Hurley's line when they were in the temple: "Who brings a book into a cave? And is that an arm?" I love Hurley.

I also love that the John Lennon look-alike Other is named Lennon. I love The Beatles references.

It was really strange seeing Alternate-Locke and Alternate-Jack being really friendly to each other in the airport. I'm just so used to them being enemies.

Austin Gorton said...

Hurley took his advice and followed through with an admirably measured, Zen-like conviction of purpose.

That was one of the things I really liked about the episode, the way Hurley calmly took charge in the wake of jack and Sawyer's breakdowns.

I especially loved how he realized that Genghis Otherton could understand him.

@Benny: I'm with you: I think there's two Christians in play.

On the subject of the Temple Others (Tothers?), I figure their attire and whatnot represents the "real" Others. The temple is "home". For some reason, a group of Others routinely live outside the temple (i.e the group with Ben living in Dharmaville). When doing so, they "dress up" to match their surroundings. In Dharmaville, they wear "normal", modern clothing, because that's the part they're playing, just like they might dress up as shabby nomads to freak out the Losties while kidnapping Walt.

Cindy was part of that "outside" group and when Ben sent her and the majority of the "outside" Others to the Temple at the end of season three, she simply started wearing what passes for regular Other attire in the temple, because she was no longer "outside".

That's my take, at least. There's still a host of questions: why do the Others maintain a presence outside the Temple? Do any just live in the Temple (Genghis strikes me as something of the Temple Master, someone who never leaves). Is the designated leader of the Others (Widemore, Ben, etc.) given leadership over ALL the Others, or is that person just the leader of the "outside" Others beyond the temple?

All the talk of Jacob

Batcabbage said...

@Benny and Blam: everyone of the characters in the newly observed storyline are different to some extent I think this is a detail to grab hold of. Where's Anna Lucia? Where's Libby? Where's Eko? That's the details that are pulling me in at the moment. So Bernard wouldn't be one of the tailies - so who would take his place in the newly minted time-line? So many questions waiting to be answered. I LOVE Season 6!!!

verification: zatat - what za tattooist gives me.

Blam said...


I'd better type up some quick comments now while I can, even though I haven't even finished the first page's worth o' comments.

Teebore: Suddenly Richard's comment about seeing the Losties die makes some sense: if Jughead fractured reality, causing these alternate realities to split off, it's possible that when Jack, Sawyer etc. were shunted back to 2007, they also left behind bodies that died in the aftermath of the incident.
I do think that he might've thought they died in the blast, mistaking their having vanished in the white flash that sent them to 2007 with their being vaporized, but then (if he remembered them) he would've been surprised to see them in 2004, long before telling Sun in 2007 that he saw them die.
Except...
Except that either the timelines bifurcated before Juliet detonated the H-bomb core, perhaps when significant decisions were made among the time-tossed crew that somehow overpowered "What Happened, Happened"-ness through sheer force of will, or the brunt of the blast was somehow shunted (maybe by the weird EM lode, which given what it did to Desmond must be more than just plain electromagnetism) into the alternate universe, because the Island sunk over there and not "here" in the timeline we're used to seeing. So the time-travelers did cause the familiar old Incident, making the lode just (more) unstable enough to necessitate the Swan button-pushing, and it blew a metaphorical wall through to the universe next door, which upset the apple cart over there much more than it did in the timeline where the blast originated, creating a parallel timeline in which 815 never crashed. This could even have been self-preservation on the part of the Island or an act of Jacob, because had a new timeline where the Island sank simply overwritten the old one major paradox would've ensued, and while it's up to the storytellers to decide how the rules of time travel work paradox is generally an inelegant thing.
...
Verification word: procut — What you long for after your mom decides she's just as good as a barber.

Anonymous said...

@ Kirathena: I'm with you about Penny. She must have been born before 1977. Widmore said he frequently went on and off the island. He didn't just leave once. Part of the reason he was "banished " was because he had fathered a child with an "off Island" partner.

Widmore would not have been around to prevent the marriage of his daughter to Des.

Tanyam

Blam said...

Teebore: That was one of the things I really liked about the episode, the way Hurley calmly took charge in the wake of jack and Sawyer's breakdowns.
He knew exactly what to say to Jack to convince him to take Sayid to the Temple with the basically rhetorical "Can you fix him?"
...
Verification word: ExTru — What Eliza Dushku was after she was ExFaith and before she was ExEcho.

Austin Gorton said...

@Blam: Yeah, the more I think about it, the more my original comment doesn't quite make sense. It's probably as simple as Richard thinking their shift to 2007 was their deaths, but yeah, he should have been somewhat shocked when they showed up in 2004. Then again, who says he wasn't and we just never saw it?

I like your image of Jughead blasting a hole into the wall of the other universe. It makes me wonder if perhaps Jacob or the island's consciousness (if the two are different) somehow facilitated that act.

I imagine Jacob thinking "Sigh. They're really going to try to change their futures. Morons." And then when the bomb goes off, he forces that energy through to an alternate reality so it destroys THAT island and not the one he's on, the one he needs to keep around (for reasons both obvious and mysterious).

Watching the episode, it seemed pretty clear to me that Jughead caused reality to fracture. Since then, I've read some vague suggestions from Darlton that perhaps it's not that cut and dried, and thinking Jughead was the cause of the alt reality remains an assumption on our part, not a fact.

Or they could just be messing with us. :)

Austin Gorton said...

@Blam: Also, in Jack's defense (which I don't say a lot) I liked that he accepted Hurley's argument with no fuss. Old Jack still would have argued with him. "It doesn't matter that I can't fix him! Better Sayid die than possibly be saved by a method I don't understand or believe in!"

Blam said...

I'm so happy to hear that so many folks here loved Sliding Doors. I really did, too, but lots of my friends roll their eyes at it. I suspect that it might be cause it's not a "sci-fi" alternate-reality movie but a romance that used a common gimmick from speculative fiction with which the wider audience was unfamiliar, purely and refreshingly in the service of the story; it's not that it didn't conjure up deep thoughts on fate, but that it used the alternate views as a narrative device without explaining how and why we were seeing both possibilities.

Blam said...

Come to think of it, Run Lola Run did something like this too. And then there's It's a Wonderful Life... 8^)

The Shout said...

300 odd posts already. Its good to be back!

I think the whole Man in Black being Smokie brings up a whole lot of interesting questions:

If it was him in Jacob's cabin , did he take on the form of Christian Shepherd too?

It would make sense for him to appear to Locke as Christian, as Locke mentioning his name to Jack is the catalyst for getting them back to the Island.

If Christian is Smokie how did he appear to Sun and Frank at the Dharma barracks when we was still on Hydra Island with Ben?

Can Jacob take on other forms too?

Missing Georgia said...

I not have posted in a long time due to losing my life to nursing school.

I love reading everyone's comments and it reminds me why this is my favorite LOST blog. Anyway...

I am not sure if this has been mentioned, but in regards to Jacob just standing there and letting Ben kill him, it really reflects the religious themes in the series in that Jesus knew he would be betrayed and waited in the Garden to be taken by the Roman soldiers. The disciples could not understand why he let them take him and why he let himself be killed. I think we have the same story of "why" with Jacob.

RE: the water in the Temple not being healing/clear anymore - I wondered if it had something to do with Jacob not being "alive" anymore. Just a thought.

RE: Smokey taking the form of the dead on the island - I think this why the Others always demanded to have the bodies of their dead returned to them as we saw in the interaction with Richard and Horace. It would be a safe guard for them because it would keep them from being fooled by the Smokey imposter.

RE: Juliet's comment to Sawyer - I wonder if it is a comment she makes to him when they meet and he has targeted her for a con.


I think everyone else has touched on most of the main issues/themes from the episode.

This is going to be an awesome season.

Blam said...

Teebore: Yeah, the more I think about it, the more my original comment doesn't quite make sense.
I'm so not trying to "correct" you, by the way. We have plenty to chew on without making things more difficult for ourselves, though, by forgetting that, say, Esau/Smokey isn't inhabiting dead Locke's body but mimicking it, so keeping the speculation on a worthwhile path is just, for me at least, conservation of energy. And of course everything could change based on explanations we get any given next Tuesday.

Blam said...

Teebore: I imagine Jacob thinking "Sigh. They're really going to try to change their futures. Morons." And then when the bomb goes off, he forces that energy through to an alternate reality so it destroys THAT island and not the one he's on, the one he needs to keep around (for reasons both obvious and mysterious).
Right... I'm talking about the other timeline as having been created by the blast since everyone else is, but an early point that I made to Nikki and one that I've had in my head since before the premiere is that the other timeline — and many more like (or increasingly unlike) it — may have always existed. You don't suppose all the hullabaloo will lead to some kind of... crisis...? (I love picturing that exasperated Jacob, by the way. "Y'know, I'm gonna die here soon, and things are tough enough as it is.")

Parables Today said...

Anyone have a theory as to why the X is so far from the LA?

my mouth dropped when jack was on the plane. then it dropped again when they were on the island in 2007

http://parablestoday.blogspot.com/2010/01/nooma.html

Blam said...

I hate this! I mean, I love this but I hate this: There are so many comments that I don't want to forget, so I copy 'em to a text file for commenting on later, but I'm still so far behind that I won't know if any of them have been addressed for quite some time. I have also entered a fractured timeline of my own, toggling back and forth between the end of the first page of comments and the end of the second page, where I'm now involved in active conversation. And it's time for me to close the laptop for awhile, with saved comments still awaiting replies, about 100 comments between the two places from which I'm simultaneously reading forward, while there'll only be more to plow through when I get back to it. To quote, with great affection, Sam the Eagle from The Great Muppet Caper, "You are all... weirdos."
...
Verification word: Naffula — Dracula's sister's son.

Austin Gorton said...

I'm so not trying to "correct" you, by the way

No worries, we're on the same page.

You don't suppose all the hullabaloo will lead to some kind of... crisis...?

As long as Pariah and his ability to cry a lot doesn't show up, I'm game (though Jack cries a lot. And Doc Jensen compared Flashsideways Desmond to Pariah...I don't like where this is going... :) ).

Blam said...

I just noticed, speaking of time paradoxes, that comments are showing up out of order on the RSS feed from here that goes to my E-mail address, so, kids, do like Uncle Blam always does and read the comments on the actual page!

Blam said...

Teebore: And Doc Jensen compared Flashsideways Desmond to Pariah...
Ha! I haven't even had time to get my Doc Jensen fix since the premiere, and he's the only other place I go besides here for Lost commentary (well, here and some of the contributors' own blogs, these days).
...
Verification word: nothi -- The last thing out of the mouths of everyone who was sure that whatever happened, happened, when asked "What do you think those guys trying to blow up the EM lode will accomplish?"

Blam said...

Stacy: Dead Locke is still in the sand.
Yes! Thank you! Brandon later mentioned this, too, apparently. I kept forgetting to bring it up, and it seems to be a common misconception, so hopefully the comments have backed off talking about the Man in Locke™ as actually being in Locke rather than merely being in a form identical to his, a trick that apparently can only be pulled with dead-but-unburied bodies on the Island.

paleoblues said...

Well, we've now had a Hootenanny and a Hullabaloo.
What's next? A Shindig?

Blam said...

One more for the road...
Joshua:Was Charlie attempting suicide by swallowing the baggie?
His disgust at being saves seems to indicate that, but — and I'm just guessing, as someone who's never so much as been drunk — you'd think that if he wanted to go out he'd try to OD rather than choke himself on the stuff.
Great questions and observations in general, dude!

Blam said...

paleoblues: The guitar case being used to simply deliver a note was kind of a let down for me.
But what a note! In fact, think about it: The note was presumably written in Jacob's own hand. It could have been dictated to somebody else, who also crafted the ankh and put it in the guitar case, but if not then it means that Jacob's visit to Hurley in the cab urging him to get on Ajira 316 was in the flesh or at least some kind of serious astral projection that could handle physical objects (although come to think of it, we could've been sure of this before, because it'd be one thing for the cab driver to see Hurley talking to empty air and another thing for him to see a guitar case float into the cab before Hurley got there).
...
Verification word: pringall — The nerve it takes to eat the very last potato crisp in the can.

Blam said...

Aching Hope: I just realized that in the alternate time-line Sun and Jin's baby doesn't exist :( I don't know why, but that was just so sad to think of that I almost started crying.
We've only seen the equivalent of the pilot episode back in 2004, though, so there's still time for Jin & Sun to make up, get it on, and become parents on schedule. 8^)

myselfixion said...

Where is Vincent? I can't believe he was not an integral part to the totality of the sreies. VINCENT!!!!!

Rebecca T. said...

@Blam:comments are showing up out of order on the RSS feed from here that goes to my E-mail address

For a minute there I thought you were consciousness traveling into the future, because you quoted and responded to Teebore before he posted. :D I was quite impressed.

Marshall said...

Who is 'needed' for the end game? Jack, Kate, Sun, Hurley, Sayid, Ben, Frank, Locke... all have been to the island TWICE (like Cindy said).

They're (now) back in LA in 2004, but could they still take Ajira 316 in 2007 and get back to the island, maybe this time all crashing instead of some of them disappearing in flight?

The island's underwater now in 2004, but we've seen it move before... could it 'resurface' so they can end up back there again (assuming that we're not seeing parallel timelines but two different parts of the same timeline)?

How would Juliet, Sawyer, and Jin play into this arrival? Is any of this related to Jacob's touch?

Miles is on the island but doesn't fit any of these categories. Maybe the pictures that changed on the wall when we were first introduced to him DOES point to the parallel timeline theory.

verification word: pyrofash: flammable clothing

paleoblues said...

Just a few things I’ve been thinking about today. I started wondering about how the explosion could sink the island. I mean, think about the volume of rock that would have to be destroyed underneath it. But then maybe it wasn’t resting on bedrock, but was actually “floating”, held up by the electromagnetic force and the explosion simply destroyed the force that was holding it up. After all, it was movable. But does that mean it had to be moved over another electromagnetic anomaly each time? But if it’s “floating” and is volcanic, where did the magma come from if it’s not “rooted” in the earth? I’m also trying to imagine the entire island simply sinking, intact, preserving Dharmaville, the temple and the remains of the statue. There must also have been some major tsunamis somewhere as well. Also, depending upon the depth of the ocean at that location, wouldn’t some of the highest mountain peaks be small islands above the surface?

verf: picar...someone who hates elite type

Benny said...

@Batcabbage: well, Bernard was a tailie because he was in the bathroom, so no one really took his place.
But some other differences:
-Desmond is married and on 815 (unless you go with reality-shifting);
-Jin and Sun are not married;
-Locke MAY have gone on his walkabout afterall.

@Teebore: Also a plus for Jack, he actually appologized to Sawyer, he says: "I'm sorry." Which I thought was a strong deviation from his usual "I'm sorry but I think you're wrong." version of it.

@TheShout: That's the only kink in my theory of impersonation, but I am working on trying to find a fix...

LoyallyLOST said...

Wow! What a premiere! A couple of questions were answered, to me~who the smoke monster is & why the line of ash! Ok, 2 down, a gazillion more to go!!! As always, Nikki~you have not disappointed in your critique! I TOLD my husband Jacob got a haircut!!!
Every time a commercial came on my husband would go 'coooool!'. I am really lucky that my husband gets to 'sneak out' of work! He went in a little early & snuck out to come over to my daughters' house & watch the premiere! MUCH better watching it together as it unfolds than on DVR later!
I saw a couple of theories on MSN. There was a huge article by a nonLOST fan, apparently, that had some not so fannish comments. But, the ones that ARE fans, came up with a couple I thought were interesting! Richard uses the spring. That is why he never ages. The spring could be why Widmore wants the island so badly. Desmond was only visible to Jack. Hmmm.
My husband caught something right from the gitgo~he said he thinks Jacob went into Sayid's body, & that is why Jacob came to Hurley, ala croaksville, & wanted him to take Sayid to the temple.
Amazing parallel universe! This is going to be one great last season!
So many great 'connections' that are too many to list!
Hello!Where is Jack's dad's body?!
So many things went on that I will have to rewatch it a couple of times to catch everything that Nikki has listed!
Such great comments from our little group!
CanNOT wait til next week!!!
Did anyone notice that FlashForward starts back up next month! Yippee Skippee!!!
Nikki, where do we send the wedding gifts? ;-)

Orber said...

@ Blam:so hopefully the comments have backed off talking about the Man in Locke™ as actually being in Locke rather than merely being in a form identical to his, a trick that apparently can only be pulled with dead-but-unburied bodies on the Island.

what about Alex? she was buried and yet smokey was able to show himself to ben in Alex's form!

@paleoblues:I’m also trying to imagine the entire island simply sinking, intact, preserving Dharmaville, the temple and the remains of the statue.

I was thinking the exact same thing! How can everything in dharmaville be intact? if it sunk down deep into the water, the waves crashing on to it should be catastrophic!

I don't know how this never occured to me back in season 4's finale, but if the island can move through space, then as the black rock was on its way to wherever it was heading to, the island was moved and reappearedon the spot where the black rock was, making it rest on the middle of the island.

paleoblues said...

@Orber: Excellent. If the Black Rock won't come to the island, the island will come to the Balck Rock!

Verf: forstr...one who cuts down trees

Missing Georgia said...

Re: Dead bodies on the Island

In my previous post, I stated that the Others have been aware of Smokey's ability to mimic the forms of the dead. This is why they demanded the bodies of their dead be returned to them. We see this in Richard's conversation with Horace in Dharmaville when he demands to have the bodies back of the Others that were killed by Sawyer. Alex is an Other, yet her body was not returned after being killed by the freighter mercenaries. There must be a ritual that is conducted to in order their bodies to not be inhabited by MIB/Smokey.

Orber said...

I don't know how many times i've watched the scene where the island is revealed to be submerged. The scene was played out so beautifully and the music played added just the right touch.

So after replaying that scene for maybe 20 times, i noticed something i didn't before.... on the statue's right (right next to the big toe) i noticed the ankh it was holding just laying there?!

Previously we have seen that only one foot can be seen in 2007 and its remains have disappeared! then where did the ankh come from? or have i imagined it being there.

Since we have been introduced to the statue being jacob's house and the existence of MiB... any theories on what caused the statue to disappear?

And why does jocob still live in the foot? maybe the other foot was home to something else? maybe the whole statue was an island hotel :P

Benny said...

@Orber: the ankh is there, no vision. But this is the new storyline being told. What we must understand is that, as far as we know, the statue may have been intact in 1977.

If that is the 'critical time' when the two histories diverge, one could think that the entire statue sunk with the island when the bomb detonated, hence the presence of the ankh on this submerged island.

As for why the statue is not there in our original storyline, one could hypothesize that the disruptions incurred from the incident caused the statue to lose integrity and crumble, leaving only a single left foot standing.

Orber said...

@missing georgia:Alex is an Other, yet her body was not returned after being killed by the freighter mercenaries. There must be a ritual that is conducted to in order their bodies to not be inhabited by MIB/Smokey.

Then that would mean smokey can take the form of anyone who has not been through the ritual, meaning he can take the form of all the dead losties buried on the beach.

Hmmmmmm, maybe weve been looking at it all wrong! what if smokey CAN'T inhabit dead bodies, but transforms himself to anything when he is in the vicinity of that specific character. Eg. he can appear as yemi because he can read eko's mind, he can appear as alex because he can read ben's mind, he can appear as christian (suit christian not cabin christian because i believe christian was seen in 2 diferent form) because he can read jack's mind ...

so smokey creates an ILLUSION of a dead person from the persons memory to able to communicate with them because he can't in his smoke form, so for example is jack walked in on eko talking to yemi he wouldnt see yemi becasue he doesnt know him.

And what better ILLUSION to appear as than locke! Who all the islanders (losties, others etc) know very well therefore making him appear to everyone because locke is in everyones memories!

Plus they wouldn't think they're crazy talking to a dead person because everyone can see him. and knowing lockes position on the island as the leader of the others gave him the perfect oppertunity to convince ben to kill jacob because he physically can't (remember he's an illusion)

I hope that's not too confusing... i have a feeling im right... plz oh plz let me be right!!!!

u might tell me thts impossible, or else how did illana etc can see him even though he's dead? well its bcause they did see lockes true form dead in the coffin.

or u might say.... but wait! how come locke saw christian eventhough he didn't know him?! again i stress the point in which christian is not smokey but something else entirely

Orber said...

@Benny: If that is the 'critical time' when the two histories diverge, one could think that the entire statue sunk with the island when the bomb detonated, hence the presence of the ankh on this submerged island.

I agree on this point, unless its proven later that the statue is not intact in 1977, then i would go back to being suspicious.

@Benny:As for why the statue is not there in our original storyline, one could hypothesize that the disruptions incurred from the incident caused the statue to lose integrity and crumble, leaving only a single left foot standing.

okaaaaaay..... but where are the remains if it crumbled down? why would jacob still be living in the foot after its broken?

Benny said...

@orber: it definitely hinges on the statue being intact in 1977.
If we go on the theory that the statues being destroyed having caused the birth issues on the island, then we can assume it is intact because Miles was born recently.

Just theorizing: the remains dropped in the water, or 'through' the island. Or disappeared when the island kinda moved (apparently it moves continously). Maybe Jacob returned there after being liberated (?) from the cabin? Definitely don't have an answer for that one. He may have felt safer there somehow! Maybe he never was in the cabin?

Joan Crawford said...

@Ali Bags - Thanks! Stuff's getting pretty heavy in here and yet people are skipping over crucial points like "Do we get to see Richard in said chains?" and "Will we see Zombie-Sayid and Flocke kick each others ass?" or the most important, in my opinion, "Will Zombie-Sayid punch Jack in the face just because it makes him feel good to see a grown man cry?"

Verification Word: Beflated

The state of the deflated ghost chicken before Sayid killed it.

Anonymous said...

I have been reading a lot of different theories about the two realities that we have been introduced to.

The way it seems on the surface, we all assume that the Island reality is now set in 2007 and the Flt-815/LA reality is once again set in 2004.

If that is so, then it would seem to me that the 815/LA reality would have to catch up to the Island reality, but my question is, do we really know for sure that the 815/LA reality is indeed once again in 2004?

Benny said...

with the exception that the writers mentioned in interviews the year 2004, I don't believe we've seen on-screen references to the year.

It's easy to assume so given that everyone is wearing the exact same clothes, so the circumstances and environment surrounding this flight are asymptotic to the original. If we look at it from a branching and even-probability scenario, it is sensible to infer it is 2004, even more so, that it is September 22, 2004.

JennM said...

@ Joan

"Will we get to see Richard in said chains?"

A girl can only hope? Haha.

If/When Zombie Sayid punches Jack in the face just twatch him cry, will he be requiring a torcha scrunchie? Yes, yes I think he will:)

Ali Bags said...

@ Jenn and Joan

I reckon Richard should be shirtless when in said chains. It would add credibility and depth to his character.

Rebecca T. said...

This is a complete aside, but I finally broke down and read the EW article and it mentioned something that made me think of something else.

Ummm... not that you needed to know any of that for me to pose this question.

When Ben banishes Widmore, does he ever explicitly say that Penny is the child he fathered off the Island? We all assumed that it was. But what if he had yet another child?

verification: ReconFL - research Nikki does when writing her books

Virgina Katz said...

I am having a hard time with the prospect that Jin and Sun are not married. I believe there have been comments in the past on here about different cultures having different customs and one of the difference is that in Korea women do not take the name of their husbands when they get married. I don't really think we have enough info to determine if Jin and Sun are married or not but I tend to lean toward them being married.

Also, I was thinking about when Juliette said: "It worked!" Someone mentioned that perhaps when she was talking about going dutch she was, like Charlotte, in another time and so perhaps what worked was not the bomb but her ability to make infertile women pregnant. I think her sister said something like "it worked" when she first told Juliette she was pregnant. Not as nice an idea as the one where the bomb worked and her and Sawyer end up happily ever after, but this is LOST and we haven't seen a lot of happily ever after.

Benny said...

@Virginia: but the issue of of Sun and Jin is that we know what was traditionally to happen:
-Sun takes the Kwon name, part of her family's culture;
-She is Mrs. Kwon;
-She wears a wedding ring, and Jin a band.

In the scenes we see:
-She has the Paik name;
-Is referred to as Ms. Paik (not Mrs.);
-They do not wear rings.

This would suggest that they are not (yet) married.


As for Juliet, we are obviously meant to believe she meant the plan worked. Whether that is the case remains to be seen. Since the writers have mentioned that there is no time jumping left, it's doubtful she was time jumping. BUT we'll just have to wait and see since we know we'll see her again.


@SonShine: we were obviously meant to take it Ben meant Penny, but the vagueness of it certainly brings forth more questions. We should still believe that Penny is alive, it's easily conceivable she was born before 1977 - who wouldn't want to see Desmond with Penny, really?

JennM said...

@Ali Bags

Agreed. Shirtlessness—on the right actor, of course—definitely adds depth and credibility.

I use shirtless Sawyer for my example. Always at his finest as an actor when shirtless for some reason!?

Verification word: exovidi. Latin for living on the outside:)

Joan Crawford said...

Wait, wait, wait. I just realized something. We* never see Sayid topless.

Why is this?


*And by "we" I mean "you", as I see him topless continually.

Ali Bags said...

@Joan

What? Not even when he was in bed with that German woman?

paleoblues said...

Maybe in our new timeline Paik said "no" when Jin asked to marry Sun. I originally thought it was a bit weird that a badass like Paik would go all gushy when a "lowly" fisherman asked to marry his daughter simply because "she is my dream".

Benny said...

That's true, Paik could have said no. This raises the question of how Jin came to be Paik's delivery boy.

It used to be one of the ways he would 'pay' for Sun's hand.

Jazzygirl said...

HOLY COW....so yesterday morning there were about 179 comments...I was thinking, okay, I'll comment later on tonight. Well, I was SO exhausted last night I went to be bed at 8pm. So I'm thinking today, I'll post. Now it's WAY over 300 posts! Yikes! I read the first 170 but I could only browse some of the rest. And, torwards the end, I saw some great stuff from Benny and Teebore (well I saw great stuff all the way, but I am referring to their theories on the river and boulder). Anyway, I've done a lot of thinking about this premiere and the one thing that keeps jumping out is all those differences Benny mentioned. That it wasn't that their lives were exactly the same up until the crash...there's some influence that's happened before that. And now the lack of that influence has caused a different path for each of them. And yes, part of me does think Locke went on that Walkabout...he was rather tan to me. Then again, the writers were freaking BRILLIANT in fooling us this whole time. We all thought Jack had faint memories because Matthew Fox played it that way...on purpose. Those sneaky bahsteds! LOL Overall, amazing writing and amazing acting I thought!! I still can't believe their giving us TWO storylines...how the hell is this going to end?? LOL

Unknown said...

WOW! 100+ more comments since I checked on yall 24 hours ago!!

Something about Jin and Sun possibly not being married yet - would it be culturally acceptable for them to travel together if not married? Or maybe they're brother and sister? Weird, I know!

Penny is definitely 30+ years old so Widmore would have already fathered her. We know he fathered someone off the island and we presume it was Penny since we never saw/haven't yet seen her on the island as a child. But as @Sonshine Music mentioned, maybe she wasn't the only 'off-island-oops'!

Someone else posted this way back and sorry I didn't make note of the author (no offense meant) but regarding the 'it worked' - it could definitely mean something we don't know about yet! I really hope it does!!

It definitely makes more sense that Richard was the first mate or the captain of the Black Rock instead of a slave in chains. (Look at him - he could be a love slave maybe!) I say this because it seems odd that a slave would be taking the time and patience to make a model in a bottle of the ship that probably didn't leave him with good memories. I really like the idea posited by another unknown author (sorry!) that there was some sort of mutiny or other incident that caused Richard to be captured and chained by whatever entity has taken the form of MIB/Locke.

@JoThornley - Yes! I was just thinking last nite that wouldn't it be interesting if Kate ended up with one guy in 2007 and the other in the new dimension! Go Kate!!

This may sound nutty - just a thought I'm trying to work through - I haven't noticed it here but if I missed it, so sorry - Jughead detonating caused the new dimension we're seeing on the plane but is it possible the flash that sent the group to 2007 on the island was caused by a simultaneous turn of the donkey wheel and the bomb exploding?

@Joan Crawford - HAHA! Thank you for finally asking the important questions regarding Richard in chains, Sayid kicking ass, etc!!

paleoblues said...

All we know is that Jin is carrying a watch. We can't assume he is Paik's delivery boy in this timeline.
We don't know who's watch it is or why he has it, yet.

I have a suspicion Jin and Sun are on the run (all that money) or eloping. I don't think they care about what's culturally appropriate now.

We just can't make assumptions about anyone in the new timeline based on our knowledge of what happened in the "original" one. It's all new to us.

Karyn said...

@Gillian: When Juliet says, "Let's get a coffee sometime. We can go Dutch", did anyone else think that she was becoming like Charlotte/Theresa?

I thought the same thing. With Charlotte's "I'm not allowed to eat chocolate before dinner...", and now Juliet's coffee mumblings, I'm beginning to wonder if the moment before dying we will all experience some food-related memory, specifically a food-addiction memory. I can just see the end of my life now, where I'll be incoherently mumbling about a glass of red wine and a piece of brie cheese.

Ali Bags said...

@Gillian: When Juliet says, "Let's get a coffee sometime. We can go Dutch", did anyone else think that she was becoming like Charlotte/Theresa?

I woke up today with this thought - what if Sawyer meets Juliet in the alternative universe and this is what she says to him?

crazyinlost said...

@Blam-" To quote, with great affection, Sam the Eagle from The Great Muppet Caper, "You are all... weirdos."
Thanks-I take that as a great complement!

@paleoblues-hey! We have a Shin(n)dig at least once if not twice a year, since my family name is Shinn! Also, I was letdown too when the contents of the guitar case were revealed too!

I'm with you, Blam, that I only made it to about 120 posts last night, and made a bunch of comments, so when I started looking today, I skipped to where my comments started and I'm going along there now. If I ever catch up, I will go back and do the other 150 I missed in the middle!
Plus, I'm a Doc Jensen fan too, so I keep wondering when I'll get to there! (I think it was you who said you were a fan, but I cant find it again, so for all I know it WASN'T you and you hate Doc J with a passion! If so, I apologize).

Marebabe said...

There! I’ve just finished reading every single comment #1-365, and I have only one thing to say. I found myself getting a little impatient with the whole (time-consuming) exercise, even though many of the thoughts and theories and guesses were, as usual, clever, brilliant, and entertaining. The impatient feelings came from the persistent sense of wheel-spinning, because I’ve read recent interviews with Damon and Carlton in which they’ve said that we can’t figure out the correct solutions yet because they haven’t given us enough information. We can’t say, in essence, “It was BEN under the STATUE with the CANDLESTICK!” because they haven’t even revealed that there is a candlestick. It’s comforting to know that, before long, all of the puzzle pieces will have been fitted into place. That’s a bizarre thought. A day is coming when Lost will no longer be confusing. Or am I being naïve?

Verification word: extessi - (I'm tired, it's late) ecstasy spelled wrong.

Phe11 said...

I just dont know what to say about those episodes, so much stuff going on so many new questions to be asked. We in Ireland just saw the show last night and what a great 95 mins of entertainment. There are just so many comments to read.
The scariest image of the night had to be FLockes face when he was angry, gave me the heebyjeebies.
The major problem with Lost is now we have to wait a week for more.
Fair play to you Niki for getting that review up so quick

crazyinlost said...

I finally got a chance to read Doc Jensen's Lost Recap, and seeing the picture of evil eyed FLocke, and was reminded of what I thought about Tues when I saw it the first time. It was a movie I saw when I was really young, probabally mid-'70's called "Sssssss". I don't remember much, but I do remember one of the characters at the end turned into a snake, and they showed him in a cage as a snake, but with blue eyes, like Locke has. I remember being just totally creeped out by it, and to this day, when I see snake eyes, I just think they look evil. So I am definitely in the camp that Smokey is the bad one.

Rufus said...

Benny: That comment that Daniel made was in episode one of season five:

DANIEL: Time, it is like a stream. Alright, we can move forward on that stream, we can move in reverse, but we cannot ever create a new stream. If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time. Whatever happened, happened.

Seems that they went and created that new stream but has that stream always existed? And Desmond just may be that special person who can interact between the streams and who knows what could happen next.

A few things I was wondering was has Jacob appeared as anyone else? Is how he appears more limited than the MIB? I was wondering because there's the corpse of Locke and MIB/Locke. So have we seen all of what Jacob can do. The MIB seemed very secure that Jacob knew he was beaten but I figure the MIB can't be the only one considering loopholes.

Gillian Whitfield said...

Did anyone else think that the image of Not-Locke after he said, "I just want to go home", was creepy? Man, I thought I was going to have nightmares after that shot.

Verification word: aptsurd. A misspell of Mr Chang's favourite word, absurd.

Anonymous said...

Do we know that Jin and Sun are a couple in the alternate reality? Could he be her bodyguard?

If you want to see shirtless Sayid, I suggest the Naveen movies Easy and Kama Sutra.

Anonymous said...

Do we know that Jin and Sun are a couple in the alternate reality? Could he be her bodyguard?

If you want to see shirtless Sayid, I suggest the Naveen movies Easy and Kama Sutra.

paleoblues said...

@Marebabe: You’ve hit upon what makes science and history so fascinating. We are all “spinning our wheels” based on the facts we think we know at any given time. As new data is discovered, we change our (mis)conceptions and spin off in other directions. Hopefully we will eventually get the answers we are looking for. For some of us, this quest “to know” is our obsession. Yes, we could wait until the end when all is revealed to us, but what’s the fun in that? Exactly like watching Lost!

Verf: rewine...refill my glass

Austin Gorton said...

Seems that they went and created that new stream but has that stream always existed? And Desmond just may be that special person who can interact between the streams and who knows what could happen next.

Hmm...so, assuming the flashsideways reality has ALWAYS existed, maybe the more apt analogy isn't that jughead was a giant boulder that split the river, but rather, a bulldozer that cleared out part of a strip of land that separated two rivers, so that we (the audience) could see that other river, and Desmond, for whatever reason, is the one person who can travel through that opening and sail on either river.

Benny said...

@Rufus: RE Jacob. At the end of last season, many fans wondered if Jacob had appeared as someone else. The writers came out and said a big definite NO (podcast I think). While it is not oficailly canon, it may be sensible to believe so, until shown otherwise (podcasts have been quite consistent with the show). -- This would put a dent in theories that Christian has been taken over by Jacob.

As for Daniel's stream interpretation. I'm working on elaborating on the 'relative state' interpretation of quantum mechanics described by Hugh Everett (not Alan) and developped further by David Deutsch which suggest multiple universes. Time travel in this environment is intriguing but I don't beleive it fits completely with the Lost story. But introducing a variation (thanks to Daniel's stream analogy), it may be possible to consolidate the 'relative state interpretation' with Lost.

If anyone is familiar with the work of Everett and Deutsch, this is how the variation would go:
- pebble = same universe;
- boulder = different universe.
In my environment, spacetime of a single universe is malleable but cannot be broken and rejoined.

Benny said...

...and by the way, I definitely DO NOT subscribe to the idea that Desmond was reality-shifting. Until we see him doing it on screen, I'm going ahead and saying he went back to his seat!

I'm nearly convinced the consciousness shifting, unstuck in time/space is over.

Nikki Stafford said...

hico: Thanks for helping make sense of the show..
Really, though, I'm happy to just be along for the roller coaster ride..
( Muppet Arms and Wheeee!!!)


hico!!! I'm so happy to see you here! To everyone else, hico was part of the Toronto-area Buffy fandom, and I met him through several meet-ups (our beloved redeem was part of those, too, as was SenexMacDonald, who posts on here). Sweetest guy ever.

I'm giggling at your Muppet arms! And I'm doing them, too!!

Nikki Stafford said...

Sorry I was away yesterday... 377 comments?! Wow, we were in that territory for the finale last year; maybe we'll get to 1000 by the finale this year! (kidding... there's no way I'll keep up!)

OK, here I go to catch up. I'm going to try to get a follow-up post up today. :)

paleoblues said...

Now that I can watch the premiere with higher resolution (thanks to iTunes) I was checking out what Dr Arzt has on the plane. He is holding a black bound book with slips of paper marking sections in the book. Behind it, toward the camera, he has a foldable key/identification chart showing poisonous insects. The second one down,above a scorpion, and to the left of his thumb is......you guessed it .....a spider. Can anyone read the title on that chart? Is it actually from Australia or did the prop dept. find it locally in Hawaii, where the Medusa is actually found?

Off on a tangent: I’ve wondered about the animal life on that island. We’ve seen boar, a tree frog, the Hurley bird (maybe not a true animal), Arzt’s 20 new species (making him the next Charlie Darwin) and not much else. Thanks to the sound effects people we’ve heard a lot of birds and even monkeys, which we’ve never seen. How did Claire’s banded sea gulls navigate to and from the island? Did they know the proper bearings or did their little bird brains get fried coming and going?

(Henry Ian Cusick played Charlie in “Darwin’s Darkest Hour)

Verf: terra...I stand firm

Joan Crawford said...

@Teeborea bulldozer that cleared out part of a strip of land that separated two rivers, so that we (the audience) could see that other river, and Desmond, for whatever reason, is the one person who can travel through that opening and sail on either river.

Woah. That's some heady shit for a Friday morning, Mr.Teebore! This analogy is great because even simpletons like me (who clapped her hands over her head when you started talking about bulldozers) can understand it.

From this analogy, I can extrapolate that you are forced to deal with a lot of morons through your work.

paleoblues said...

@Marebabe: Not to belabor the point, but your comment struck really close to home.
What you said is very similar to what Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda at the end of “A Separate Reality”. (Check out Nikki’s excellent analysis, Finding Lost S5, p 159-60, last paragraph). Nikki’s last comment: “Perhaps....we need to step back and take in the whole show and be entertained. The answers will come in time, if we just let them.”

In my first post I stated that I had anticipated avoiding the fray during S6 and just watch the show. And yet, here I am. Just wanted to let you now I feel your frustration.

Verf: crami...how I felt in college

Benny said...

It's just more fun to speculate when we don't have all the pieces. I also wanted to just sit back and enjoy the ride, but I just feel like I can't.

I've learned so much because of Lost just by reading books, papers and books and papers referenced in those previous books and papers... I think that is one great aspect of the show that's kept me in so intesenly!


On a lighter note, here's a picture my friend found floating on the web:http://tinyurl.com/lost-avatar.

Marshall said...

@paleoblues said: You’ve hit upon what makes science and history so fascinating. We are all “spinning our wheels” based on the facts we think we know at any given time. As new data is discovered, we change our (mis)conceptions and spin off in other directions. Hopefully we will eventually get the answers we are looking for.

i think you've hit on a major theme, not of our watching LOST but of the concept of LOST. The show explores, for example, what would have happened when you when left when you could have gone right. I say could and not should, because what if you'd still just course-correct back to the same place. Like a stream, even though you can't branch off into a new stream, you can still ebb and flow, and even make new turns, but would still end up in the same sea at the end.

i think that's what we're seeing here in season 6. after all the adventures which brought these characters to an opportunity to see what the outcome of a different choice would be, they'll eventually see that it brings them to the same end.

Parables Today said...

i felt the same way

http://parablestoday.blogspot.com/2010/02/lost-highlights.html

latelylost said...

I like the ideas (sorry, don't have attribution) that Sun and Jin are either 1) eloping or 2) Jin as Sun's bodyguard. Both of those might fit with the "button your sweater" attitude. Was Jin addressed by his last name? I remember him pointing at the letter with "Paik" prominent in the letterhead. Perhaps Papa Paik has adopted Jin and made him his heir? That sounds terribly medieval though and I would think Korean society is beyond primogeniture.

As far as Smokie, it would seem we've been given certain clues - practically hit over the head with the need for an unburied body. Even Amy wanted the dead Others buried - perhaps not just to hide the evidence.

But how do we reconcile that with the very much alive Walt appearing to both Locke and Shannon? Who or what was Walt?

Verification word: thena. How a person with a severe overbite addresses the Warrior Princess. (No offense to the overbiters out there. *g*)

paleoblues said...

@Benny: My feelings exactly. Once you start discovering that everything in life/literature/music/science/the universe is connected, the "quest" never ends. And Lost has shown me many new connections. My respect for, and faith in, Darlton and all of the writers of this show, continues to grow. I must extend my gratitude to our fearless leader, Nikki, as well.

Verf: whili....free him already!!!!

paleoblues said...

We're on the same page, brother.

Verf: dionoben..a drug that makes you appreciate the Belmonts

Susan said...

re the Jin and Sun question, when we rewatched the episode, my kids heard the woman address Sun as Miss Paik, not Mrs. Paik. If they're right, it clears up at least one mystery.

Marebabe said...

@paleoblues, Benny, & Marshall: I appreciate your responses. And I’ve figured something out, having gotten a good night’s sleep. I’m pretty sure that, last night, I was just pining for the (not so) old days of the rewatch, when the average post of Nikki’s would get something like 20-45 comments under it, TOPS! Keeping up with it was a very manageable task. Slogging through all the comments for this episode gave me the (not so) vague feeling that we’ve created a monster! I’ll get over it. :)

Nikki Stafford said...

Marebabe: We've created a monster? Can it do battle with Smokey? Will it vanquish the Evil Blam? (Actually, I wouldn't want it to vanquish Evil Blam... something tells me Evil Blam would actually be riding our monster into battle with Smokey!) ;)

This came up last year when we were all exhausted after slogging through the 150-200 comments and proclaiming it had already gotten out of hand. People were posting saying they wished I had a threaded board and should open up forums and a whole bunch of stuff that just makes my head spin, and unfortunately I'm just not tech-savvy enough to do it (nor do I want the added daily task of having to moderate a bigger, threaded board). I'd love to switch to WordPress, but, not to sound crass, the URL for this website is listed in my books, and I've spent years getting this location out there and to switch it, I'd probably lose people.

This week was out of the ordinary, I think, being the premiere and all. I don't expect this many comments on every episode (I could be wrong) but also, under usual circumstances I'd be posting a second post by now and many of the comments would have shifted over there. But between all the interviews that I'd done leading up to the premiere and the day after, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep Wednesday afternoon, then had to make up the work I'd missed that evening, and then the next day was still catching up (on both work and sleep). And last night I decided to stay offline altogether.

But normally I'll have a few posts up by now, pulling out the major comments people should really pay attention to.

As for the speculation, as Blam said, that's part of the fun. 90% of the time we're wrong, and 10% of the time we're right, and while on the one hand I'm not forming any sort of desired ending in my head, on the other I'm having a lot of fun trying to piece it together with everyone else.

But my advice would be, don't make it turn into a chore. Read what you can, or want, do a search for your own name in case people are replying to you, but unless you have the time or the desire, don't try to make it all the way through. Lots of people are reading the comments and enjoying doing so, and I wouldn't want anyone to be reading them as "work." Let's keep this blog fun, and the comments fun, too. :)

Don't worry, Marebabe. You're not alone. Yours is the first of many times we'll have people saying, "OMG I can't keep up!" all season long. :)

Just a quick note that I had the single biggest hit count this blog has EVER seen on Wednesday. Ever. So that would account for the hundreds of comments.

And maybe word has gotten out that the Nik at Niters are the smartest Lost fans ever? ;)

Evil Blam said...

Actually, I wouldn't want it to vanquish Evil Blam... something tells me Evil Blam would actually be riding our monster into battle with Smokey!
Yee-hah, eh.

Orber said...

Hi, i noticed lots of people think "The Blanket" the others lay sayid over was significant. To me it looked sort of like a prayer mat that muslims use.

And because arabic is my first language i wanted to comment on Sayids name. I don't know if this has been mentioned or if u guys know already, but Sayid means happy and Jarah means surgeon or one who inflicts pain, therefore he's a happy torturer :P

Word Verification: geoly....gy

Anonymous said...

I have been doing some reading about the first conversation that we saw, on S5 finale, between Jacob and MIB.

Thinking along the lines of souls and redemption reminds me very much about what the Kabbalah says about souls and their ability to reincarnate. According to the Kabbalah the basis of reincarnation is for a particular soul to grow through each incarnation and to become wiser and wiser until it can reach it's pinnacle of learning and then go on to whatever would be a souls equivalent of heaven or foreverness.

It seems to me that this battle between Jacob and MIB is about the journey of progress, as when Jacob says to MIB : "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress."

Perhaps this century old battle between this two entities has been a battle about the journey to enlightment.

Marebabe said...

Nikki, thanks for the words of encouragement! :) Confession time. I’m actually keeping company with the folks on here who currently post as “anonymous” because they haven’t figured out how to get any other name to actually show up. By that I mean that I have no more idea than a white rabbit how to do a search for my name to see if anyone has responded to something I said. What a concept! I’ll hafta see if I can find someone here locally who can hip me to how that’s done. (I also don’t know how to get italics to work when blogging. I don’t like to bother my more computer-savvy brethren and sistern, asking them for free tutoring.)

Benny said...

@Marebabe:

Quick lesson:

1. Bold comes inside tags as these < b > & < / b > - but without the spaces: bold.

2. Italics is the same as bold, but with an 'i', < i > & < / i >: italics.
2b. when you just put a word in italics, you need to put an extra space after it before starting your next work or line, unless you use a comma!

3. To find your name in the comments, do Ctrl+F (or go into Edit -> Find) and type in your name, this will go through every comment where your name has been referenced (with correct spelling).


I hope this helps! :)

Marebabe said...

@Benny: Muy Gracias! Let the experimenting begin! ;)

MarcG said...

Somebody asked in an earlier post about the shiny object Bram picked up before the smoke monster wiped them all out. I didn't see any responses. It seemed to be made out of gold. I paused it on TV, but couldn't make out much detail. It almost looked to be a serpent head (cobra).

Why would Jacob entrust such a large ankh with Hurley? Couldn't the same list have been enclosed in some smaller vessel? Anyway, interesting that we see an Ankh again (which the statue is also holding in its hands).

Everything about MIB feels evil and involves death: killing Jacob (assuming new Locke and MIB are one and the same), killing Ecko, killing Jacob's pathetic excuse for bodyguards, attacking the mercenaries, killing Oceanic pilot, etc... (assuming smoke monster is MIB). Also, anyone wonder if Locke provoking Sawyer to kill his father in the brig was MIB himself? Although I think this would break the theory that MIB can only take on the form of dead people. I do believe that any apparitions have been MIB and Jacob (when he chooses to show himself) doesn't try to mask his identity. Jacob, on the other hand, portrays goodness and life. He comforted Sawyer, helped out Jack with his bard, helped out Kate get out of trouble, healed Locke, etc...

I wonder if Adam & Eve skeletons could be of MIB and Jacob? I don't think we could actually tell the sex of the skeletons in the cave, unless one of the Losties noticed something...I would need to watch that ep again to be sure. So if they are male, then that would be an interesting possibility. Not sure it could be anyone else, since Others and Losties all chose to live in cabins or makeshift huts and not in caves (except for brief period when Losties were seeking protection and went inland).

I loved the start of season 6, but I feel it raised more issues than it answered. Number of remaining shows is quickly dwindling, writers better get going soon :-)

Susan said...

MarcG I think the shiny object you are referring to is a spent bullet from when Bram et al are shooting at "John" right before he turns to smoke.

MarcG said...

Susan - Good catch. I didn't think of that. I seem to recall at least one shot striking Locke. So if that was truly a bullet fragment, it was truly messed up because it was quite damaged when Bram picked it up.

scotminusT said...

@MarcG: The skeleton's were identified as male and female BUT who knows, when all is said and done who knows which bodies Jacob and the MIB will occupy!

Zari said...

@Marshall: i think that's what we're seeing here in season 6. after all the adventures which brought these characters to an opportunity to see what the outcome of a different choice would be, they'll eventually see that it brings them to the same end.

I agree. Jacob said to MiB: “It only ends once. Everything before that is progress.”

Word Verf: morpoy: Asking for seconds at the luau (but the polite Oliver says “Please sir”).

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