f13.net

Yeah, I'm starting a "Lost" thread. I started watching it on DVD a couple of weeks ago. I just started season 3. I dig it. However, I can see how this show would be extremely frustrating if you're attempting to actually tune in each week.

You're given very little when it comes to actually answering what the hell is going on and when they do, they give you more questions. However, watching them all back to back to back, it's just like a really long movie and the "no answers" issue isn't really an issue at all. :oh_i_see:

Yes, this.  When I watched the first season it was on DVD so I got to see it all in one go and it was amazing.  I still like the show but it is harder to enjoy when you only get one hour a week to advance a plot.

I gave up on it, just like Heroes. Too many damn plot changes.

I think it was either the first part of season 2 or 3 where the show got really bad.  I almost gave up on it then, but it righted the ship somewhat. Still, you kind of get the feeling that they're making this shit up as they go along. 

I enjoyed the hell out of the first two seasons and the first couple of season three have been pretty good too. I see that season 4 is really short. I guess the writer's strike screwed it up?

I love Lost. One of the better shows ever done.  I've never understood the "waaaah, no answers" nonsense. If you are reading a great book, are you wishing that it answers every mystery and ends? No.  Things got a tad muddled in the middle of Season 3 because they weren't sure how long the show was going to be on. Once they got the full order for the entire run and knew how many episodes they needed to spread the entire arc over, the show really picked up and Season 3 ended with one of the more amazing episodes (Through the Looking Glass). Season 4, despite being jerked around by the writers strike, was damn god (with "The Constant," despite being an admitted homage to STNG's "All Good Things..." being one of the best eps of TV ever).

Is this back on?  I haven't seen it in ages.  I remember the story that they were going to sort out the loose ends, have less episodes and would have an ending for it in 2010 or something but that was the last thing I heard.

Starts back up in 2009, not sure when.

January 21st, with a clip show at 8 EST, followed by back-to-back new shows at 9 and 10. The rest of the season will run on Wednesdays at 9 EST.

Watching back-to-back on DVD is definitely the best way to enjoy this show- without a doubt.

Erm, I"m the opposite.  Now granted I first saw Lost season 3 first, then 1 and 2 (roommates bought season 3 and I watched them) but I think that Season 3 and most of season 4 are a hell of a lot better than seasons 1 and the first half of 2.  I just did not find the whole "everyone needs to work together and be friends so we survive" arc to be that interesting.  I enjoyed the mystery of the island much more than the personalities of the main survivors.

I think the first season would have been more interesting from the perspective of the tail survivors, as it seemed like their troubles were more of surviving the harsh environment and circumstances rather than just trying to survive the retarded drama. 

For me, that's the case with some of the characters. However, for a character like Locke, I really enjoy his backstory. His life was very interesting/depressing. There are a couple of other characters who I enjoy seeing some flashbacks with. Others, I can take or leave and there are also those that I just take a deep breath because I know what's coming and I'm going to be agitated everytime they flash back on them. Jack is one of those. His daddy issues are kinda old.

See, I still like Jack, though the writers seem to keep taking great pains to show how flawed a character he is. By now, we've gotten that they are all flawed characters. I think the flashbacks are going to really have to be rethought for the next season, because there shouldn't be much more interesting things to mine in those veins. Kate and Jack can't have much more soul-crushing drama to obsess over.

I'm still waiting for them to start actually showcasing Jack's supposed leadership ability, instead of his angst and anger issues.  I still like his character, but seriously, he needs to grow up a little.  I think it was HaemishM who mentioned at one point, "The dude can't seem to get over shit.  At all."

Meh

I wish Jack's character was cut after the pilot like he was supposed to be.

Agreed, but once you know there's a new episode out and you could be watching it RIGHT NOW rather than having to try to avoid spoilers for the next year while you wait for it to come out on DVD... well, they have you by the balls.

Just finished season 4 and am caught up. Instead of waiting for season 4 to come out on DVD, I watched the episodes on http://www.abc.com which was actually kinda cool. Good quality, very little commercial interruption, and no waiting.  :grin:

Season 4 = win.

For you WoW players, there is a big time Lost reference in Sholazar Basin.

Hint:  It's on an island.

I'm in the middle of season 2 now for the first time.   Amazing show.

It really is. The best segment of episodes, to me, was the season finale of 3 through season 4. So, it gets better.

I just finished the series over the weekend.  Wow.  I'm glad I watched it all at once rather than over time.  That shit would of pissed me off having to wait each week and deal with commercials.

Great series.

Indeed. I'm really looking forward to the beginning of season 5. It's too bad I'll have to do the weekly wait thing. I guess I could wait until the series has completely run its course and come out on DVD, but I sure as hell don't have the willpower for that.  :heartbreak:

It's coming down the pipeline soon for the new stuff. I personally never watch it live, but always pick it up on the abc site when they do the video feed. As for predictions, I think this season will move the show into a even more fantasy direction. The island is gone, and there's very few places to go beyond magic. Perhaps some wacky version of sci-fi bullshit, but oh well. It's a morality play with no real direction.

This upcoming season is supposed to be the 2nd to last right?

Yeah, I thought it was they try to get back on the Island and then the last season they all try to get off.

Tonight, ABC is showing an "enhanced" season 4 finale. It's like a pop-up video thing that gives little explanations and points out things you might have missed the first time watching it. I guess they're getting geared up for next week.  :grin:

I've really enjoyed the show.  It's a bit rough in spots, particularly the first chunk of season three which really seemed to flounder a bit, but it's just chock full of great characters and a lot of fun bits.  Looking forward to more Lost soon.  I should rewatch the last 4-5 episodes of last season before this next one starts up.

It looks like it's on the primetime broadcast On Demand, too, which helps a bit.  I would use the DVR bit that says to record the series and not just the episodes but it seems to record every episode including the repeated ones even when I tell it not to.  I'm tired of screaming at the tv set.  On Demand is a good thing.  Especially for Righ who watches very little tv but doesn't have to use his concerned look so much when I get frustrated with all the little buttons which allegedly make everything work. 

I'm so confused now.  :uhrr:

 :awesome_for_real:

It was a great couple of episodes. I'm pretty sure I have a decent grasp on what's going on at the moment.

I thought they explained the island didn't really move but is just out of phase with time now.

Yes.

I loved this episode.

Well...

I have to say at this point I kinda wish one of the survivors would get a clue and a gun and kill both linus and penny's dad. Seriously has anything good come to anybody following what either of those guys has said? If you cannot figure out which your enemy is kill both its safer.

Why are we using spoilers?

Guys with guns in the end are not Dharma folks in my opinion.

Here's what I'm hoping *isn't* going to happen.

By being "Lost in Time" (haha, that's clever) the survivors and their actions create the whole "society" of Others/Dharma and for all the mysterious leftovers on the island (the old dead couple from Season 1 for example). Because that would make me want to choke a bitch.

Who was with the lady at the end? Wasn't she the weird old lady from Desmond's time-travelling episodes where she tells him he can't fuck with time?

Yes, that's her.

prediction: she's Daniel's Mom

Yogurt got hit with a flaming arrow!

I'm pretty sure that's exactly where they're going with it.  I took it as a forgone conclusion that Bernard and Rose will be the dead couple in the cave once the time jumping started happening.

Oooo good one.  Hadn't thought of that.

Yep it's all going to be about time travel, sadly. It still doesn't explain a freaky ass smoke monster.

Remember when "what's that roar" was the biggest question on this show?

No.  But I do remember when it was 'when's Kate going to get her tits out.'

I did not watch much of a couple seasons did they every really explain what the hell the deal with the polar bears was?

Zoological experiments being done on the island. They bought some bears over.

Every non-watcher I talk to always asks about the polar bears. I can't understand why that's such a sticking point with so many people, neither the mystery nor the answer really seemed important to me.

The creators have said they're going to explain the smoke monster.

The polar bears were there to turn the donkey wheel that Ben turned to move the island as evidenced by the skeleton w/ the Dharma collar found in Tunisia (where Ben popped out after he turned the wheel in the ICY cave).

I love this freaking show. These guys have managed to get 7 seasons of the most geeky sci-fi on network television without large swaths of the viewing public realizing it.


Oh, and that would be Frogurt, not this guy:

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/yogurt.jpg)

Yeah, the thing that got me, even though I have seen the actor before, I dont recall him on this show...he just..appeared somewhere in the jumping.

Then got shot.

Frogurt has been around. He tried to help Bernard build the SOS sign and (in one of the webisodes) had a tussle with Hurley over Libby. He was in the Zodiac with Faraday when the island jumped.  Definitely a minor character.

So can we call the red-shirts on LOST "Frogurts" now?

He's a little higher in profile than a Sock, which is what the producers call the actors whose sole purpose is to be background and die. They've killed most of those off by now anyways.

The creators say a lot of things.

I really liked the first series of "Lost". But somewhere in the heaping mystery upon mystery, everything of note happening in the last five minute of each show, every series introducing a new group of people (so we could go through their stories too) and major characters acting like retards just to keep the plot moving (see: Why Isn't Linus Dead?), I gave up.

I'm waiting for the end so someone can distil everything into one pithy line that explains things (e.g. "It was Laura Palmer's dad").

Didn't the creators also say the island had nothing to do with time travel?

I watched two episodes of Lost and realized that there was no big plan. Television exists to sell advertising, so the point is to keep folks tuning in all the way through a commercial break and, ideally, all the way through the week until the next episode. A continuing plot provides this sort of continuity by promising that questions asked in one episode will be answered in another. It's why soap operas have such cultic followings. The "genius" of Lost is in removing the plot in order to streamline the posing and answering of questions. Characters do not grow and develop because that might actually make things resolve... which would stop the money.

Lost made me feel used rather than entertained. I get my amusement listening in on discussions at work... and they summarize entire story arcs in less than a minute. Plus there are no commercials.

I don't remember that, but I do remember them saying "No, they're not dead and it's not Purgatory," which was a prevalent theory the first year and a half.



This was certainly the case in season 3 and I nearly stopped watching myself.  When ratings were plummeting and the show looked like it was going to be canceled the creators wrangled out a 2 year contract in which to wrap things up.  Since that point the show's gotten better, questions have been resolved and things have gotten considerably better because there WILL be an ending point.

I only got into Lost when I could watch every episode immediately.  I can see the rage that would happen having to wait a week for the next.

Didn't the series get renewed for an other 2 years?  Although I think it's great, I was kind of disappointed to hear that...  Should leave on a high note.

I watched my first episode since 1st season the other night and I was entertained.  They had a show that caught folks like me up in the plot beforehand, a good move.  The show format was much better (i.e. linear narrative more or less) instead of the old 5min setup, 40min flashback, 5min shocking ending.

So kudos to them for turning the show around, but I am not sure I am going to get back on the bandwagon. 

I'm confused about something.

If the whole island and everyone on it is NOT jumping in time and space, but only the 815 survivors...

Why did the island appear to disappear from the helo's view?    Wouldn't have just the 815's on the the island vanished?

If the island did move in space, but the Others did not move in time/space, are they now treading water?

That's what I was bitching about. It doesn't make sense.  Richard isn't threading water so I guess the rest of the Others aren't either.  I guess they have protection as natives.  Of course that doesn't explain Juliet who has been stuck on the island 3+ years.

They said they were outside of the bubble. They were to far, and outside "the shield" to be taken with the island and the others.

I believe it was explaned as that the island did move but that the people are "skipping" along the time continuum.  So the island is like the record and the people are the needle.

I thought the first two episodes were great, and this one was even better.  Removing the flash forwards and flash backs was a good move.  Charlotte, Miles and Faraday are turning out to be interesting characters, which I didn't think they would. 




http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f118/TheBossLambada/ladyericstoltz.jpg

The file name is :awesome_for_real:

Tonight's episode was greatness. It explained a couple of things I was curious about in the whole Locke/Alpert relationship.

Indeed.

Ya pretty good episode.

Fucking-a awesome episode.

Awesome Episodes so far.  God I love this show.

With his kind of weird rivalry/standoff with Ben, and the lines of dialogue he had ("You think he knows the Island better than me?") it feels like they're setting it up for him to have a kind of deluded sense of entitlement that he's being groomed or chosen to be the new leader, then that gets yanked away from him and he's all pissy to get back and take back what is rightfully his from those know-nothing idiots.

Oh FuckShit Jin!

Kate cleans up nice.

Thank you Lord!

I TAKE THAT BACK!

Haha, was just about to post that myself.

Decent episode, not to much plot or secret exposure, just mainly set up.  Though the end was great (I knew Jin was still alive!!). 

My theory is that the boat they took belonged to Ben/Jack/Sayed and group from when they finally get back on the island.  Jack probably is the one who gets shot  :why_so_serious:.

And yes, fuck it, no more spoiler tags.  This is a god damn lost discussion thread.  If anybody was afraid of spoilers, they wouldn't be in here.

Good episode. Season 5 has been pretty fast paced thus far. My biggest question is who the hell was shooting at them while they were in the boat? I guess it could be "the Others", but I figure we'll probably never know for sure since it doesn't seem as though they have repeat visits to the same time.

Here's my guess- it was themselves shooting at them because they're about to go shit the space/time bed.

Also: The lawyer for Oceanic works for Ben? Perhaps Ben/Others are members or owners of the Oceanic plane? Perhaps, they bought it only after the crash? I imagine that those with the power of The Island can use it to build quite a stash for themselves as they flit backwards and forwards through time.

I'm going to guess that Charles Widmore used it to amass quite a bit of personal wealth and was kicked off The Island for his greed. Perhaps "what's done is done" only applies to some things and not others. Anyways, now that Widmore has a good chunk of the Philosopher's Legacy or whatever you want to call his time travel fortune, he's trying to use it to get back to The Island and reassume control. Control that maybe is "rightfully" his.

Since he's already sitting on a boatload of cash, I'll guess that he doesn't just want it to make more of it. There has to be something greater at stake that Island control will give him. Immortality, by way of constantly going to the past? Some greater function that we haven't really been clued in on yet? Maybe it is simply to be able to go back and steer the course of humanity.

Are The Others interested in the same thing, or just in keeping Widmore's hands off of it?

That wasn't Oceanic's lawyer, that was Claire's mom's lawyer who was suing Oceanic and also Ben's lawyer.

Ben remains my absolute favorite character on the show.  I feel certain that, in the end, I'm not going to get a satisfying explanation as to exactly why he does what he does, but goddamn I enjoy the hell out of his neverending scheming bastardry.  Every now and again he skates the edge of being a sympathetic character, which just adds to the fun.

"I always have a plan, John."

I just cannot understand why somebody has not capped ben yet. There comes a point when all the characters have to realize that nothing good has ever come from listening to a word he says no matter how good it may have looked in the short term it always turns to poop.

They seem to have a common goal with him now though. Some of them might not know it yet, but they do. So, it's in their best interest to listen to what he has to say until they actually get back to the island.

I somehow believed that Ben was being redeemed for the good of the island with his removal from it and being the wetwork man along with Saeed. Then to help get the others back onto the island to continue his redemption

Another excellent episode last night. I knew something had to be up with Charlotte and her growing up on the island makes some sense. The fact that she remembers Farraday warning her not to come back is interesting as well.

As I've said before, Locke's story and his character are by far my favorite. Well, the next episode is entitled "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham". I can't wait to see exactly what happens when he exits the island. Not only is his leg broken, but if I had to guess, I would think he'd be back in a wheelchair. Another curious thing about what we see of him turning the wheel is that the wheel was off its axis a little. I wonder if that's why the island was jumping?

Lots of good in this episode. We finally got an explanation for what the black smoke is - it just isn't the explanation we wanted. "A security system for that temple" really just makes me even more interested in the damn thing. I keep wondering if they are going to jump in time back to the pirate ship landing. That would be awesome, but probably won't happen.

Looks like Ben is really going to try going back with or without the full compliment. The season just keeps getting better.

I'm pretty sure we've been told the security system bit a few seasons ago, what was new to me was that the temple and smokey had a hand in making Danielle and company go crazy.

Does that peek at the wall with the hieroglyphics also mark our first view of the temple?

I don't remember ever seeing the temple before, and based on Jin's reactions, I don't think he'd seen it either.

It's been referred to a "security system" since the first season when Rousseau called it that. I believe it was again called that in third season when both Mikhail Bakunin and Juliet called it that when they were dealing with the sonic barrier.  This is the first time it has been referred to as a security system for "the temple" that I can recall.

Jin being alive rules. Also, the blond chick with the gun in Richard's camp was a little naughty hottie. If these people would stop shooting at each other long enough, they could open a modelling agency on that island.

A little too :pedobear: for my tastes.

Yeah, she was past her prime but that's alright enough for me.

Any possibility of her being Mrs. Hawking or any other character known to us?

In my mind, it's a guarantee that miss blonde hottie is Faraday's mother. In that flashback they called her "Ellie". Faraday's mother is Eloise Hawking. Which brings up so much more comedy that she was holding a gun to her own future son's head.

I was fucking floored that they actually, FINALLY went back and tried to give an explanation of the "sickness" that Rousseau talked about.  I thought it was an idea they had in the 1st/2nd season that just never came to be and they abandoned.   Pretty cool explanation for what she was talking about, actually, and now I want to know WTF is in that temple.  Also, Why does Jakes father appear to be Jacob?  Yesh.

The season has been great so far.  Ever since they hammered down a set time for when the series needs to be completed by (and shorted the number of episodes in the season) the quality has flown up exponetially.  God I wish we could get more single season or 'mini-series' in the US.  At least HBO seems to be making good ones.

Is it sad that I'm somewhat depressed that I'll miss tomorrows episode, because I'll be out drinking/clubbing in SF with a very hot red heading bi-sexual French Chick?

Don't answer that.

I'm liking where Lost is taking us.

One thing that strikes me is that they either have rather neat writers, or they knew roughly where they were going for a while.

They knew where they were going for exactly 3 episodes. After that it was darts thrown at a Jump to Conclusions mat. They probably just watched all the old episodes and are closing things up because they ran out of squares.

I'm still impressed with it.  I would get into an argument with you, but I think I'd have to be Reg.

I've really traumatized you over in the Star Trek thread haven't I? Good.  :awesome_for_real:

Not so much.  You're just a reference point.  Like, if I was going to cut Schild's post into stupid chunks, it'd be Sirbrucing.  Or if I was going to make what appears to be a really sweet comment that's actually a total removal of your manhood that you wouldn't understand for weeks, it'd be Signeing.  Or making it all about Republican awesomeness, as a Triforcing.

 :awesome_for_real:

Ah cool. We all have our little internet routines and as they go mine isn't so bad. I can live with it anyway.

So would calling everyone cunts in one-line be termed an Ironwoody?

While calling a specific person a cunt for several lines would be a Haemishmash?

Edit: wrong name

You just know that letter says something like, "If you're reading this, Ben killed me.  Don't listen to that motherfucker!'

Edit: guess not :/

The entire time, I was like "so what about all the other assholes in coach?" and then Ben gave his line and I  :awesome_for_real:'d

You know, they've had the definite end of the series known for what? A year and a half now? I like to think they've got the barebones of a plot fleshed out already.

And if not? I realize that I don't give a shit. The ride is well worth it, even if it doesn't end in some life-changing loopdaloop.

They always had a full arc of where they were going, they just didn't know how much filler they would have to put into it (which makes it difficult). Once they had a defined number of episodes they could really focus down and get where they wanted to go.

We want to do a story about people crashing on an island that has time travel technology.

Now stretch it out for 6 years.

"We aren't going to Guam are we?"

It was kinda corny, but I lol'd.

At least Hurley bought all the seats he could so that some people would be spared. Not every one of them is an asshole.  :awesome_for_real:

This show just keeps bring the win. We're back to the first season's form of awesome - you know the feeling you get when you know this week's episode is over and goddamnit you have to wait a whole week to see what's next. I love that they threw all the characters onto the plane without explaining why everyone is going - that just leaves me with more questions and a desire to see more of the show.

Ya, but the plane didn't crash anyway.  They "skipped" just like the people left on the island. 

It was like an earlier episode in that it raised far more questions than it answered.

They even went back to the old school close-up of the eye opening to start the ep. which was a nice touch.  Lindeman and Cruse wrote it and next week's so this is pure Lost goodness.

I don't think I want Ironwood to give me an Ironwoody. I'd be left... confused.

Fucking awesome episode. They are really keeping up the pace. I think the switch to focusing on smaller amounts of the cast each episode has helped a lot, not to mention the time flips that have given them the ability to fill in pieces of already elapsed time. I knew that Ben would end up killing Locke, and making Widmore the sympathetic benefactor for an episode really helps show both sides of the war. I don't think either side gives one shit about Locke except for the fact that he can get them back to the island.

Season 5 continues to be great, but not quite as good as season 4.  I think we are in for quite a number of flash backs as we still don't know why Kate,Hurley, and Sayid were on the plane. Or why Ben couldn't take Locke's body to the airport.  Lots of interesting twists.  I like were this is going.  But still disgruntled that they have gone with Mysticism than SciFi.

Pika?

Because he was busy trying to kill Penny (since he saw Desmond at the church), just like he promised Widmore he would.

That's exactly what I'm thinking as well. I guess we'll find out soon if he was successful.

I'm going to firebomb the writers houses if he was successful, or kills Desmond in the attempt (one of my favorite characters).  I can only hope he attempted and Desmond kicked the ever loving shit out of him.

And yes, every episode has been great so far.  Why did Ben kill Locke though?  I mean, he stopped him from killing himself, then kills him.  Was it just so that he could keep him alive long enough to tell him Eloise Hawkings name?  Which seems kind of odd because Ben seemed like he already knew the name.

But in any event, dear god do they just keep going back and forth on making Ben seem good/evil.  Every time I'm convinced he's a complete fucker, they slowly lead me to believe he really has best intentions at heart and is working to help, before making him a complete fucker again.  I've never seen any show/book do a character like that this well.  I keep falling for it.

Though now I pretty much believe they are all fuckers, and the only 'other' type character that seems like he might not be a complete evil asshole is the Richard Alpert guy, who has his own agenda.  God I wish they would start to reveal more about him.

Eloise's name was his leverage to get Locke to take Ben back to the island?

Ben is a megalomaniac.  Any good he does is to ingratiate himself with others.  Obviously he thinks that the Island is extremely important.  So being the Island's chief "protector" is what needs to make himself important.

Ben Linus is entirely my favorite character on the show.

His success in murdering Penny would give Desmond a pretty strong motivation to come back to the Island for revenge. After she dies in his arms, of course. Wow... I just capitalized "island" without realizing it.

Here's a longshot that hit me today, after watching the latest episode a second time. Jacob is really John Locke after all his travels and trials, and the war that everyone is referring to is the original conflict between the Others and Dharma. Everyone needs John there so as to become Jacob.

I've always assumed Ben was the bad guy.  He's a bald faced liar, he's tried to kill Locke twice now, he ain't down with Jacob (I think he's trapped Jacob in that cabin), he doesn't care about the lives of anyone else, etc.  

But you're right, they do a decent job of obfuscating his true motive.  He seems to have known that John would be resurrected, so why kill him to begin with?  Was it Mrs. Hawking who told him he'd come back to life, and he just had to role with it to get back on the island?  Now that he's becoming a more overt bastard, I'm wondering if they're not setting him up for some redemption arc down the line.  I think I'd prefer him being a cold-hearted, manipulative prick out for his own, over someone willing to sacrifice anyone for a hidden, righteous purpose.

Anyone notice that Hurley was painting the Sphinx?  Maybe we'll get more info on the hieroglyphs soon.

I am fairly certain that Ben will (or did) kill Penny.  And that Desmond will kill Ben in the last episode of the show or thereabouts.

Yeah, I'd actually prefer he just remain the villian.  He's an interesting villian to watch though.  We've seen the occasional glimpses of some of what makes him tick, but not the whole picture.  We've seen that he's not always as in control as he likes to believe he is and seen him snap a couple times (both times he tried to kill John in what I read as a jealous rage, his reaction to Keamy shooting Alex, who I believe he did care about a lot, in his special, psychotic way... etc).

I love that he just never stops manipulating everyone around him, and that he really does seem very sincere at times even when you know he's a total bastard.  Just a fascinating character to watch.  I love the way the actor portrays him.

I don't think there will be a redemption arc for Ben. He has always  been written as a Sociopath, likeable if he wants to, but devoid of any real empathy for other people (not entirely sure he isn't just pissed about Alex because she was "His", not because he loved her so dearly. Replace Alex with The Island and you get basically the same reaction).

And I love him that way. That magnificent bastard makes the series fun and the actor does hell of a job with him.

My favorite thing about Ben is that the character was supposed to be in 2 episodes and Emmerson was so damn good at the delivery of one line "Got any milk?" that the character has evolved into the central pivot-point of the entire series.

Perhaps Ben had a plan behind killing Locke. Maybe Locke's death couldn't be a suicide (a bit far-fetched, but stick with me). He knows that Locke needs to die to get back on the island, so he does it himself. However, he doesn't do it before finding out exactly what needs to be done next from Locke himself. He then hauls Locke's corpse around knowing that he'll be brought back to the island and resurrected and will serve as a proxy for Christian Shepherd to get them back on the island.

Ben always has a plan.

He seemed genuinely disturbed though when Locke mentioned Eloise Hawking.  He didn't have the demeanor of someone who was simply waiting to ferret out required info before offing the guy.  The look on his face wasn't "Oh, so it's her?  Got it.  Don't need your ass anymore."  It was more like "Oh Shit!!  Her?!?  I'm fucked unless I choke this bitch right here!"

Short version: He was more  :ye_gods: than  :oh_i_see:.

Nothing I love more than an avatar bandwagon.   :drill:

If Desmond or Penny dies I will fly into a rage.  I actually cried when they were reunited - one of the most touching moments I have EVER seen on an entertainment medium. 

Fucking masterpiece of a series.

I missed series 3 and the first half of 4, kinda gave up on this.  Back into it now, I know Ben pretended to be that crashed Balloon guy, was it ever explained where he came from and how he got on the island?  Also what's the war about between him and Whitmore, is it just for control of the island?

From wikipedia.

EDIT: Reminds me how so many of the characters have daddy issues.

Thanks, sounds interesting.

edit, Heh, I actually caught the end of that episode before, I remember the Jacob in the shack part and the gas attack.  It was worth watching the whole thing just to see the evil Harry Potter.  Think I'll try to catch up with the other episodes I've missed.

The first half of season three was kinda slow moving and clunky, but they made up for it in the second half and season four and five have been just fantastic fun.  Having a known end date has done wonders for them tightening up the pacing and getting things moving at a good clip.

If only it worked the same for BSG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBuuT6x4IL4

That link lead me to this.

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

That reminds me of one of my favorite scenes: Ben scaring the rabbit to death (http://abc.go.com/player/index?pn=index&show=93372&season=96319&episode=73512&timestamp=835)  :why_so_serious:

To be honest, that last episode bored the crap out me until people started dying. It basically told you nothing you didn't already know. What did we learn exactly from all this crap except the fact that Locke is alive on the island in the future with all the future people? Whitmoore and Ben are still dicking everybody over because they had a powerplay on the island? That's a small revelation at best that we inferred from seeing Whitmoore as a kid on the island. That Ben offed Locke? Like we didn't see that one coming a mile away.

I didn't really like it because it went nowhere. We knew what Locke was doing, we knew why, we knew he got back, we knew he was dead, and we knew the people got back on the island. If we have to suffer through more of the POV-of-the-same-timespan crap, I'm just going to stop watching until it all comes out on video and I can fast forward.

Sweet mother. Tonight's episode rocked.

The statue had very long hair. It almost looked womanly from the back, but it also had pointy ears.  :uhrr:

Conjecture is that it was of the Egyptian god Anubis, part man, part jackal.

Juliet deserves better than to be everyone's fallback romance option.  Please, Sawyer, don't be an asshole like Jack and leave her twisting at the first sight of Kate's smile.

Yeah this was a lot of fun.  I hope we get to spend a couple episodes back in Dharma time.  I wonder whenabouts Young Ben Linus shows up in this timeline.... ^^

The only negative thing about this episode is my rising dread that there will be another goddamn love triangle involving Kate. Enough of those already!

Agreed about the love triangle, and the awesomeness of the episode.

Trying to figure out the timelines - they are in 1974. Most likely Ben and his dad are already on the island, which means there is probably about 15 years before Ben ganks all the Dharma folks (didn't he do it on his 21st birthday). Horace has appeared before, building Jacob's shack, and appeared to be in a time loop then.

All the time travel might end up ironing out some of the inexplicable stuff that's been getting chalked up as fantasy.  If all the main characters are back in the Dharma days they're in a very good position to set up just about anything weird that happened in the first few seasons.

Juliet is awesome.  A great, great character:  cool, calm, massively competent, very attractive in a mature and unselfconscious manner.  

She and Ben are the best characters on the show....  though new, improved Sawyer is close behind.

1974 is when they first encounter the dharma people. I believe currently they are in 1977. Horace in a time loop was a dream, or a actual time loop who knows  :uhrr:

Ban gassed dharma in the early 90's . so the time adds up I spose.

Everyone is terribly broken on this show, and somehow they all fit "logically" according to the authors. I don't believe any of that personally. I like where the show has gone so far with this season, but I'm hoping they stop showing us what we already know. It's getting old. If I can boil an entire one hour show into 2 sentences, and nobody loses a step, that's a failure in my book.

It's going to be interesting to see who from the cast end up being the corpses in the caves with the backgammon game. If my memory isn't too fuzzy, they found male and female skeletons in the caves with what I assume was the backgammon set Locke and Michael were playing with in season 1. I had an inkling that time travel was going to be a factor at that point. Seemed like too much of a coincidence that right after Locke is playing backgammon that they also find backgammon pieces on the corpses.

Probably Bernard and Rose.

This season has just blown me away. I was to the point of about dropping the show 2 seasons ago. Last season really picked it up, and this season has been awesome. I am glad they ditched the "focus on one character's past or future thing", as I think that has allowed them to really get more done in an episode.

I like the New and Improved Sawyer.  Particularly when he dropped the well-deserved hammer on Jack.

I think someone said earlier that the Producers never had any plan to keep Jack as a character -- so I guess Sawyer as the man was always in the cards.

Still not as good as season 4 but I expect that to change once the shit hits the fan.

Sawyer and Kate batting eyelids at each other is going to get old fast, but I'm enjoying the whole time line thing.

This.

It was about time someone did a good job of smacking him around a little bit.

I can't wait for Juliet to put Kate in her place next episode.

I'm looking forward to that as well.

Speaking of next week, from the preview, it seems as though all hell breaks loose.

WTF does Jack care, he's glad someone (who isn't insane) is stepping up.  Sawyer isn't going to have much time bask in the glory of tell Jack to STFU.

Time travel as a mysterious force operating in the background is one thing.

Actually pulling off a time travel tale on a television series...

...in an era where the writers read their own fan sites and change the stories to confound the viewers?

I'm not so sure.

I fully expect that by the end of the series, we will have discovered Rambaldi's remains on the Slaver shipwreck and a secret crypto device that is continuously broadcasting (via 15th century technology) a repeating series of numbers... 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 ... that are the key to activating another Rambaldi device that the Russians built on 1954 and which looks suspiciously like an A-bomb, but is really an H2O molecule exciter that will boil the ocean if it is activated at the Orchid.  In the final episode, Sidney will parachute into the Dharma compound (wearing only a cocktail dress) to kill Kate, who is really her grandmother and working for the Russians.  The only one left standing will be Jack Bristoe (aka Jacob) the evil genius.

fade to black.

I was amused when Juliet left Kate off the passenger list only to swoop in at the last second and "save" her.  That was a serious "don't fuck with me" right there.

There are some nice indications that the story has been adequately planned out from fairly early on.... 

The latest:
- Sawyer and Kate are building a runway at the beginning of season 3,  which is what the plane lands on in season 5.
- Juliet lives at Dharma in the past, where a young Ben Linus also lives.  In one of the Juliet centric episodes from 3/4, someone comments on Ben having a crush on Juliet by saying "She looks just like her" and nothing else.  Is an adolescent crush on time-traveller Juliet the reason why he has the Season 3/4 Juliet fixation?
- The dude in the communications center this past episode is the guy that killed himself in the hatch, right before Desmond shows up.

This was clever, and very ambiguous.  When Juliet picks up the list,  she's told that only two people had refused to take the sedatives.

That means that it could have been that Juliet had to do far more paperwork to fake Kate onto the sub.  Or it could just be Juliet firing a warning shot, to stop Kate from fucking up another of her romances.

Juliet is canny enough, and devious enough, to pull off the later.  She's been portrayed as pretty goddamn ruthless though (she might have the highest body count of killed in cold blood, next to Ben), so if the scheme occured to her why didn't she just fuck it up to the point where Kate is screwed?

Hmm.  I think I just implied Juliet screws Kate....  I'll be in my bunk.

So the Island isn't killing pregnant woman and their babies.  Probably whatever was released from the Tempest is doing it.

Fucking awesome.

I have a bad feeling Sawyer is the start of the downfall for the Dharma folk. 

Sawyer's cool, Kate's back, and Juliet's gonna go horribly nuts.

Still, this episode is completely forgettable. Oceanic three get into Dharma through Sawyer's lies, and Sayid gets tossed in jail. That was it. Fade to fucking black. Absolutely nothing happened yet again. For basically the 3rd time in a row.

There were quite a lot of reveals and character movements in this ep actually (Ethan, what happened to the plane, Sun/Ben/Christian, Radzinsky, the Swan, Sawyer/Jack showdown, Jack/Juliet showdown, Kate/Juliet showdown).

Hurley's "uh, wut?" made the ep worth it just by itself.

I hope so, since I enjoy the show.

My point is that Time Travel (more so than, say, your average lusty-action-soap) requires razor sharp writing and editing to keep us all from turning into heaps'o'Hurley - uh, wut?

I'm simply not convinced that the current TV milieu will ignore the interwebs and deliver a coherent story.  The temptation is too great, and past habits already indicate a weakness.

I'm getting worn out by character movements though. That's all well and good but you actually have to have an advancing story involved. This entire episode could be described as buildup to some future event. That's shitty. We've done that before in the second season as they went through backstory after backstory while the plot went absolutely nowhere. It's happening again in my book. The actual revelations/actions/deaths are few and far between.

EDIT: I'll say this as well, it's not just me who is getting tired of lack of momentum in the middle. They dropped ~4M viewers over the last 3 episodes. People are getting bored of character interplay. "Namaste" was the lowest number of viewers they've ever had at 9M.

Yeah, I have to say that while a Juliet vs Kate showdown has been building up for a while I'm completely bored with the whole love triangle square with Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet.  Kate went from a somewhat interesting character to just being plain irritating to me.

I want Jack and Kate dead. They both irritate the shit out of me. Jack is a moron, and I'm shocked anybody would actually pay attention to anything he says. Also, writers should look to House on how to create a character that's a doctor with a substance abuse issue and a haunted past. Kate just won't go away. Her character has run it's course beyond just being an obstacle for the more interesting characters of Sawyer and Juliet.

I wouldn't mind Jack so much if they made him way more angsty and dark.   As they un-dark Sawyer, why not dark the shit out of Jack?  He's even got a decent face for it when he's gone all scruffy.   Not totally in love with the new Sawyer, either, but I reckon he's in transition and maybe it'll work out ok.  Kate can go any time.  Now or even sooner.  I start to yawn when it even looks as if it's going to be a Kate moment.  This show is addicting even when I don't know what the hell is going on.

Eh, I still like most all the Characters who are left.  They've killed off everybody I didn't like at this point (except Bernard and Rose, but they've disappeared thankfully).  Only Character I don't really like is Juliet.  Character is just... boring/shallow to me.  Don't like all the screen time they're giving her.

Having said all that, this season still kicks ass and I've enjoyed every episode so far.  Love all the information they're giving away.  Though I'm a bit aggravated that nobody is asking WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DHARMA INITIATIVE UP TO.  Sawyer and all of them seem to be aware of everything that's going on, with all the crazy ass science experiments they built, yet none of the new people back seem to be asking them ANYTHING.

I think Jack would have eventually gotten to the question of just what is the DI doing on the island if Sawyer wouldn't have chewed him and spit him out.  :awesome_for_real:

On the topic of characters. I think the guy playing Ben is amazing. The writers couldnt have pulled off a lot of the wacky shit they did with out the actor of Ben being completely believable in his bullshit. He does creepy so well, and yet can still seem like your friend.

I like Juliet a lot.

Jack from season 1 and 2 wasnt bad, but then they kind of turned him in to a steriotype of himself. Same with Kate, both of them are just annoying now.

I will echo the awesomeness of Hurley's "ummm wut" comment.

One thing I liked about that whole exchange was at the end.  Jack with his "Hey, yeah, your right, it DOES feel good to not to be the one under pressure to save everybody's ass yet again" comment and smile, and Sawyer looking on at his retreating form with the "Well shit" look.

I also liked how somebody finally just said fuck it and smashed Ben over the head instead of listening to him.

the writer's seem to often use Hurley as the explanation vehicle for the audience.  I like the way they do it; namely, he's not dumb -- he asks questions exactly in the manner the audience would ask.

Ok thank god, something finally happened tonight. Good episode!  :grin:

I enjoyed it. It appears they're going to start doing flashbacks to explain how some of them came to be on the plane. I believe next week is going to explain the Kate and Aaron thing and why she decided to go back to the island.

Good try sayid but unfortunately as ben found out if the island does not want something to happen it probably will fix itself.

I thought that too.  But is this the first real instance of the 6 explicitly doing something that has ramifications on the future?  First time the show is going to try and explain the whole time paradox thing?

Farraday and Desmond.  Desmond didn't remember until later.  Farraday tried to warn Charlotte (whose full name was Charlotte S Lewis) not to return to the island,  which didn't take either.

Farraday, and his mother, have pretty explicitly stated that you can't change the past.  Most probably, Sayid is going to find out his actions are entirely futile to serve as more fuel for him moping around.

Great, now the show has to start over from the beginning to show what things would be like without Ben.  :drillf:

Sayid can't kill Ben until Locke comes to the Island.  If anything Sayid helped Ben cement his position with the others.

Either:

A. Young Ben survives,  and it's Sayid's shooting him that turns him into the full blown sociopath we know and love.
B. The island brings him back, and sociopath etc etc.
C. Old Ben Linus has no relation to young Ben Linus....  Ben Linus is just an identity he adopted to weasel into Dharma.  Which would mean Sayid killed an innocent kid.

Spoiler from popular media on this season and finale, do not read if you want to maintain your sanity and enjoyment, etc:



Also:

How many people loved seeing Larry (from Larry, Darryl and Darryl in Newhart;  otherwise known as the innkeeper guy from Deadwood; or the Joker's right hand man in the original Batman movie) as the Dharma interrogator? 

Gah, thank you. I wondered why the hell he looked so familiar.

EB Farnum.  Gah, had to look it up.

So that really was Sanderson? Those glasses threw me off, but the voice was quite familiar.

Superb episode. Though I didn't get why Sawyer didn't say Sayid was one of his crew from the shipwreck, you know the people they supposedy stayed on the Island for.


Edit: That =/= Those

He might have done that if Sayid had shown up a few years earlier but explaining where he's been for the last three years would be pretty tough.

I'd use "Being a prisoner of the Hostiles and finally being able to escape. Thats why his hands are bound together".

William Sanderson.  I remember him from Blade Runner.  Got the voice right away.

Why did Jin bring him in as a hostile then, if Jin was on the boat with Sayid?  It also exposes Juliet, Sawyer, and Jin to danger if something goes wrong with that cover story.

Look at the way Sawyer added Jack, Hurley, and Kate to the submarine list:  If one gets exposed, it's difficult to trace it back to the three that have been in Dharma for the last three years, unless the exposed person rolls.

A big part of this is Sawyer has taken over being the boss from Jack, and he's going to fuck up.  He's going to drop the ball, make quick decisions that backfire, and get people pissed at the way he's handling things.  Just like Jack.

I've got to say that the Lost showrunners do an amazing job of getting actors for supporting roles.  More times than with any other TV series I've had to go find out where I know a guest star from. 

Every time I see Charles Whitmore I'm convinced the showrunners wanted Malcolm Mcdowell but couldn't land him for some reason.

Alan Dale (Charles Widmore) is really a superb actor, the best of the show along with Michael Emerson; both have quite a long experience in theatre, and you can notice it when they cast a spell out their lines. Actually, every time Alan Dale speaks, it sounds like he's playing a role on a theatre stage more than in front of a TV camera, but I love it, it is not overly exaggerated (and the directors are probably encouraging him to continue acting that way).

Really good episode tonight. A couple of thoughts:

I'm not a huge Kate fan, but I thought her having to leave Aaron was pretty damn emotional.

Adult Ben waking up to see John Locke sitting right next to him was just priceless.  :grin:

Hurley asking all the time travel questions that we all wanna know and the expressions he gives when he gets the explanations from Miles? Good stuff.

Next week's episode looks :drill:

This season continues to be made of pure awesome.

Hurly and Miles arguing about time travel was great.

"Hello, Ben.  Welcome back to the land of the living."

I loved Miles's "...huh.  I never thought of that."  Also his subsequent "hey, ask me more questions about time travel!"

So Ben is a twisted fucker because Sayid shot him because he'd grow up to be a twisted fucker and so Richard saves his life while somehow turning him into a twisted fucker?  That sounds about right.

Well, its very interesting to see that there is some sort of transformation process involved in becoming an actual other.  Explaining why they all have freaky jungle super powers and are completely committed to the cause (what ever the fuck that may be).  Probably should have guessed it after what happened to the French.

Now, I'm happy that they have an explanation for Ben not remembering Sayid (that was bugging me as well).  However, that still doesn't explain why he wouldn't remember any of the other Oceanic people he lived with for 3 freak'in years.  Particularly Sawyer, who was a major figure in the Dharma initiative. 

Good episode overall though.  Next weeks does look awesome.

Maybe that's what the whole "get their names" thing was from when they crashed.
If there is an Other transformation process why didn't they do it to Locke?
I don't like the "Ben won't remember" bit.  It seems much, much cooler that Ben remembers and instead of being upset, he ambitious enough to use a person like Sayid to his advantage.

A whole lot of the "wtf" shit that happened in the first couple of seasons can be explained pretty readily by the Others having met these people in the past but being cagey enough not to admit to it.  I think the writers are doing a pretty good job here of sewing up loose ends.

Locke had to murder his own father (or at least be responsible for it indirectly) to be accepted by the Others.  Perhaps Ben wasn't officially accepted until he wiped out the Dharma Initiative.  There's probably more to it than that, but those were my first thoughts.

Which just happened to include his own father.   :ye_gods:

The Others: We have daddy issues!

Hmm, come to think of it...who on the show does NOT have daddy issues?  Almost everyone on the show has this in common if you think about it.

Yeah, this would have been the much cooler move, IMO, not to mention completely in character for Ben.  That he HAD known and not said anything would have been much, much more Machiavellian and calculated.

so where's Faraday?  we saw him in the pilot helping to build the Orchid.  He's kind of important to the whole time travel thingy...

yeah, the Hurley/Miles dialogue is great -- "let's now take questions from the viewers!".  And then they explain some of it via Richard same episode.

Faraday hitched a sub back to the mainland to start experimenting with time travel on rats.

I'm watching the episode right now and I just thought about how awesome and funny it'd be if Young Ben dies and Kate+Roger have a child and name it Ben, who then grows up to be big Ben.

I think my giggity muscle flexed when baby Aaron asked for milk

Who says Ben DOESN'T remember these Dharma people in the future? He's never said he does, but he never said he doesn't. I wouldn't put it past Ben to have known who was going to return to the '70's the whole time, which may have explained why he's done some of the things he's done to particular people. It may also explain why he took those 3 characters and held them prisoner at the beginning of season 2.

maybe.  but I thought it was the mysterious Jacob who asked for that list.

Who or what is Jacob, where and what is Christian and where is Clair all will be fun to discover.

Remember, when Jack found Christian's coffin, the body was gone...

I found it helpful to remember that the smoke monster can take the shape of people, a lot more things make sense then.  :awesome_for_real:

You know, for an hardened assassin like Sayid standing over a fallen body where you shot the guy in the chest, he would put one in the head. Would you ever walk away from a person that integral that you wanted dead without making absofuckinglutely sure if you're standing over their body holding a gun? These things bother me. Also Ben took the shot right in the damn heart in the middle of the fucking jungle. He's toast.

ANYway, the best part of the episode to me was Jack finally getting it right. The rest of the characters seem to go on some moral crusade about saving a man who is basically responsible for mass genocide and their little 70s shantylife. THEN, after Richard warns them that by giving Ben to him that it's basically going to turn him into the fun-loving pyscho that they remember, they still do it?!?! Nobody even seems to bring up the fact that Ben is going to kill them all in any of this. The line of the show was Kate saying to Jack, "I don't like the new you. I like the old you who tried to help people instead of waiting for stuff to happen."

Jack: "You didn't like the old me, Kate."

I DO love how everyone is indicating that they've all taken loads of, and are entirely done with, Kate's shit.

Maybe she offs herself and makes everyone really happy in a later episode. Smoke Monster sacrifices!

I need a refresher.  When did this happen?

When some fanboi interviewed the writers.  Apparently it's implied.

I always assume Ben knows a hell of a lot more than he lets on.  If he doesn't he fakes it.  In both cases he will lie about it.  If we know anything about Ben, it's that he's a compulsive liar, manipulative to the last, and he never, ever gives anyone any information for free.

"Ben lies.  That's what he does."  - Juliet

The last episode almost makes me think we'll be spared from yet another round of the kate/jack/sawyer relationship triangle crap, which would be an added bonus.

Didn't the smoke talk to Eko (in the shape of his brother) at some point?  I stopped watching two years ago but seem to remember that. 

He could not because he had not. Got to love time travel. Everything they do in the past they had already done in the past so nothing really can be changed all they can do is what they were already going to do but do not know they did.

My awesome meter just broke.

Yeah, I don't know how they're going to top that episode.

Yes.  Ben seeing Alex pretty much nails this down.

Also, "smoke monster!  Form of...." best explains things like Kate's horse and some of the other bits where people see folks that aren't on the island. 

I love how they reveal something now and you get to see it within the same episode.  If this was season three going to the houses, summoning the smoke monster, and then actually going to where he comes from would have been 5 episodes.

Wow, awesome episode.  Smoke monster form of his daughter bitching him out at the end was awesome.  Also, it again confirms what a bastard he is after it read his future plans from his head.  Even after I said I would NEVER AGAIN fall for Ben being decent in the slightest, they spent the whole damn episode building him up for redemption and sympathy, right up until the very end.  And I AGAIN started to fall for it.  God damn this show.

Also, the casual way they just sort of ended the Ceasar character was pretty awesome.  Has to be one of the shortest lived characters ever introduced, heh.

Also:
Totally called it  :why_so_serious:.

Indeed.  Every single goddamn time.

Wow, season four, you do not disappoint me.


Soooo.... any bets until how long before Ben goes ahead and tries to kill Locke again anyway? ^^


Also, crazy theory time, I think we're due for a visit to "The Incident" at the Swan station, with a special guest visit from Daniel and our other 1970s time travelers.  My money is on that being their path Back To The Future (Hurley waving his hand waiting for it to vanish just killed me...)

Calling it now - (not read from spoiler) - we will never 'really know' exactly who/what/where/how the Smoke Monster is even when Lost ends.

Just some ancient thing on the island.   The Others/Hostiles don't even have a name for it (according to Ben...), but they use it/follow it.

I think last night's episode was the best of the season and one of the best of the series. That episode was just full of greatness. A couple of things I found particularly amusing/interesting:

John Locke. He seems very at-ease with everything going on. When Ben tells Sun to look out the window after she talks about him being dead, I expected him to be swinging on one of the swingsets. He just sorta wanders around kicking at the dirt, looking at the grass, and just knows things all of the sudden. He was already my favorite character, but right now, he's just so full of win.

I saw Anubis on the wall in the temple as I'm sure everyone else did. I guess that basically confirms what the statue is.

Speaking of the statue, what in the world are the other survivors of the flight doing with the "What lies in the shadow of the statute?" bullshit? I'm assuming they work for Whidmore? I can't see them just crashing on the island and then start quizzing people about the statue or having secret codes with each other. It's a little weird.

Either that, another sect, or they went batshit insane.

Well, the chick was obviously working for somebody, as she's the one who captured Sayid.  I'd say most likely Whidmore, but they sort of hinted she was working for somebody else.  In any event, she was obviously in on all this before they even got on the plane, and I guess it would make sense she would have some partners on the same plane to go with her.

Don't really care who they are.  Odds are there are other people looking for the Island.  But my guess is that they are Dharma 2.0.  That will get sorted out later.  Love how Lapidus decides not to follow Locke and ends up in deep shit.

I thought it was pretty obvious at the time that the chick that captured Sayid was hired (indirectly) by Ben under false pretenses to ensure Sayid would be on the airplane.  She told Sayid that she was hired by the family of one of the guys Sayid assassinated (the one he shot on the golf course).  Ben of course directed Sayid to assassinate said individual and would be able to fabricate the plausible story that she was being hired by said family to bring Sayid to justice.

That was the obvious conclusion until right at the end when she came at Lapidus with "What lies in the shadow of the statue?"  It could still be the case though, if what's happening to her and her buddies is the same thing that happened to Rousseau's shipmates.

I'm curious about Ben's statement to Rousseau when he took her baby.  "If you ever hear whispers, you run the other way."  I've been looking forward to finding out more about those whispers for a long time.  Has anyone else read the transcriptions of them that have been decoded online?  Fascinating stuff.

Whispers = Others nearby, I think.

I bet time travel will explain everything in the end, the smoke is going to be skynet from the future or aliens landing in the past, they could tie it into BSG at this point.  I'm enjoying it though.

I do hope we get a flashback to the distant past and the building of the temple at some point.

God did it!

whispers are the approaching smoke monster

smoke monster is an alien.  Which explains time travelzor.

How awesome would verbal dueling between Ben and Adama be?  Tigh can come along to play the straight man.

That's what I thought at first, but i doubt it now.

From the very beginning of the episode, they were trying to move a giant crate off the plane, which obviously has something important in it.  They're all part of a group that knew they'd end up on the island.  So, they're either part of Widmore's group, or Dharma.  Dharma people are known to use riddles ("what does one snowman say to the other"), so I'm going with them.

I don't think the apparitions of dead people are being created by the smoke monster, though.  You distinctly see the smoke monster go back into the grate before Ben's daughter shows up.  I think whatever's responsible for the whispers is also what's capable of this.  If the smoke monster is Cerebus, then the whispers/ghosts are Anubis?

Giant crate holding a Nuke?

I'd like to know where Faraday has ran off too.  I liked him.

I'm still pissed at him for fucking up the end of Saving Private Ryan with his shitty sideplot.

Next ep has some stuff about him I think. 

I think that, as we have seen in the very first scene of this season, he is closely watching the ongoing construction of the Orchid station.

Oh, and Samwise wrote:


Well, not really about the temple, but... (small spoiler about the Statue, not the identity, of course)

The smoke monster taking the form of things is pretty crazy, but it adds to a lot of good drama like it did in the last episode. I do hope they go into detail what the deal is with the monster, because it was THE first question everyone had about the island. Not resolving that effectively would be shitty in my book.

Didn't see that reveal coming. Loved it. Also, "Ewoks suck, dude."

Ewoks Suck should have been the title, that was funny. Still, they are getting really heavy-handed with "Daddy Issue Island" here. Is there a single character who had a decent father who stuck around and/or didn't abuse them?

Being a die hard Star Wars fan, that was my favorite line of last night's show too.

But a close second was Miles "That Douche is my dad."    Cracked me up.

Well, we don't actually know what happened to Dr Candle.  I do know that the only time we've ever seen him smile was when he was spending time with his son near the end of this episode.  In all other cases he's been a cranky bastard.

So basically everyone so far who came on the chopper was born on the Island, or grew up there. So the odds of Daniel being a child on the island are pretty good. Odds of him being born as an Other even better! :D Maybe he is making friends with recovering bullet wound Ben right now.

His mother Eloise appears to have been an Other, if she is (as I suspect) the blonde chick named "Elly" who had him at gunpoint while he was supposed to be defusing the bomb.

I believe she is.

Also, I hope everyone noticed that the guy in the van who kidnapped Miles and tried to stop him from going to the island is the same guy that was with the chick on the other plane (the one that asked "what lies in the shadow of the statue").

I was just thinking to myself, this show doesn't have enough factions warring over the island. ENTER: Shadow of the Statue folks.

They gotta be Dharma Strikes Back.

Thought this was interesting.  I don't follow lost that closely so not sure if this is a spoiler or not.

Yeah, I'm thinking that too.  Introducing a new faction would seem a bit weird.  Strange code-phrases (see "What did one snowman say to the other.") smell of Dharma as well.

I'm really curious to see what the big twist will be at the end of this season.

"The Incident" would be the event that led to the installation of the "release valve", if I'm not mistaken.   :drill:

Useful reference from Lost Past:

Full Orientation Video for The Swan Station:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYJf5rZQgb0

Interesting Dharma video from ComicCon 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdWLYVRiin8

Yes. The incident is the reason they needed "the button" if I'm remembering things correctly. My guess is the incident is caused by those in the 70s switching back to present time. Maybe something that Locke does? He seems to know exactly what the hell is going on and how he's going to fix it.

I'm wondering how Faraday went back in time? Did I miss something there?

He came with everyone else, when they were skipping around randomly.

He came back with Sawyer and the others when they were first teleported back in time, and hooked up with the Dharma folk.  He just sort of disappeared though, and they haven't said where he went.  Apparently he went to Ann Arbor.

He was described as some dude out of Ann Arbor by a Dharma guy. It seemed like they didn't know him by name. If he was back there earlier with them, how did he get off the Island to Ann Arbor if he didn't meet with the Dharma folks and take their sub?

If memory serves the guy said that the sub was there with "people from Ann Arbor" or "scientists from Ann Arbor" so he was referring to them collectively.  I think it is clear that Faraday became part of Dharma just like the others and has become part of the secret team, part of which included going back to Ann Arbor to talk to the Dharma initiators.

Yeah, rewatched this one last night.  Dr Chang told Miles that the sub was bringing scientists from Ann Arbor.

I don't think Jughead will have anything to do with The Swan, though I do think we'll hear about it again -- either in the final episode this season or sometime next season.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe the final episode might be named deceptively... I mean I assume "The Incident" is the one at The Swan, but perhaps that's misdirection...

They are going to blow up the island at the end. You know it's coming.

Michael Emerson is entertaining:
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/clips/michael-emerson-part-1-41609/1087731/
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/clips/michael-emerson-part-2-41609/1087762/

He's outstanding. I can see why they just picked him up and ran with it.

Moar Michael Emerson plz.  Christ he is good.  He needs film work.

Meh, WTB real episode plz.  I was looking forward to Faraday coming back loaded with new found knowledge about The Island.

Motherfucks fooled me with a clip show. Ruined my Wednesday night plans. They need to legally start labeling clip shows in BOLD BRIGHT LETTERS on the previous week's previews.

Viewership is tanking lately. They had 13.5M viewers at the beginning of this season, and they were down to as few as 8.5M at episode 12. They have fallen way outside of the Top 10 shows on broadcast TV as well. American Idol and Dancing with the Stars had more viewers in one week than LOST has had total in it's last 6 episodes.

In short, the show is getting murdered because people are tired of their bullshit. Tossing a clip show out there is putting holes in an already sinking ship. I can't believe they pulled that nonsense. I mean Wheel of Fortune puts up better numbers than 8.5M. That's no joke, either.

I concur, I was sitting down excitedly in front of the TV, beer in hand, and then was suddenly all  :heartbreak:

ya'll surprise -- I knew this was happening this week.  It's to help the less interested catch up.

The taint lickers shoulda ran it in the 8-9 timeslot right before a new episode.

Wife just told me this is supposedly getting a spinoff called "Flash Forward" or something like that. Look for it to be tied in with next week's Faraday episode and clips/ hints to be shown during the commercial break.

Not a Lost spinoff.

Story here (http://www.airlockalpha.com/news426284.html)

I noticed the readership numbers too when I was on wikipedia the other day (looking to see how many more episodes there will be in this season) and it kind of disappointed me and reminded me why the quality of TV sucks.  I actually think that this season has been great so far, and yet with viewer numbers tanking this season I guess I am far from the majority in what makes a tv show good.

This.

This has been a great season and probably my favorite season of the whole series. I guess I'm in the minority when it comes to my television viewing habits.

The average viewer isn't terribly intrigued with character interplay on a show about various mysteries. What they want is answers, and then more questions, with eventually more answers, some deaths, explosions, big events, etc. What they don't want is hour long segments of the show to drag in the middle while they learn about character minutia.

In this season we have:

Season Opener - Time is shifting all over the place, bloody noses, Jack and Ben working together, Sayid and Hurley killing potential assassins, and Kate bailing out after the lawyers come a knocking. All in all it was a great opener.

Episodes 2-4 - Crazy flaming arrows in the middle of the night, Hurley tries to get Sayid back to health, then turns himself over to the cops when Ben wants him to come back to the island. The timejumpers meet young Widmore, while Faraday's group gets captured and finds a nuke. Kate rambles around trying to find out who's behind the lawyers wanting "her" child. However, it's not Claire's mother, it's actually Ben. Shocker. Everyone meets on a dock. Sun is pissed. Charlotte continues to bleed out with timegroup. That was 3 episodes.

Episode 5 - This is the first redeemer episode of the season. After this the numbers jump back up to over 13M viewers. The Smoke Monster is finally back, young Rousseau gets some killer background story, Charlotte finally dies off with an eerie confession, Locke meets Christian and cranks the wheel after busting his leg. This, imo, is one of the best episodes.

Episode 6-9 - "aka the boring episodes that killed the viewership" - Jack puts his Dad's shoes on Locke, everyone gets on Flight 316. Locke is revived on the island. Flashback to Locke arriving from the wheel in Tunisia and working for Whitmore, but failing miserably to collect anyone. His driver (creepy Black Dude) gets iced. Ben talks Locke out of killing himself only to kill him anyway. Locke's move has saved the timewandering group, who ends up getting buddy-buddy with Dharma. The 316 wash up 3 years after the wandering group has entrenched their postions with Dharma. Sawyer finagles the returning group into Dharma, except Sayid who gets captured. That was four hours worth of mostly crap you already knew and flashbacks to those points. Outside of Ben killing Locke, it was a total YAWN.

Episode 10 - Redeemer episode #2 - We get to see the young Ben Linus interacting with Sayid. We get to see what a jackass Ben's father is. In an ironic twist, Sayid is the one getting tortured, but when he tells the actual truth, it's so outlandish nobody believes it. Dharma actually votes to kill Sayid (and I thought they were hippies). We get the flaming Dharma van crashing into houses. Ben escapes with Sayid, and Sayid actually shoots the little fucker in the chest. All in all, it was really good and probably the second best of the season. Numbers jump up again next week.

Episode 11 - aka "The Worst episode of the season" - Kate and Juliet work to give Ben to the others so he can be saved. That was it. The numbers TANKED after this epsiode dropping over 2.8M or 25% because of this bomb.

Episodes 12-13 - Imo, they were pretty good. Ben gets judged by the monster, we find out there's this "shadow of the statue" faction running around, Miles has daddy issues and actually gets to meet his father. There's lots of focus on Ben, which is always a good thing considering he's one of the more interesting characters. Also, Locke actually gets cooler as these go on. Oh and we get to see Desmond beat the everyloving shit out of Ben, and also Ben unloading a shotgun for no reason on Caesar.

There are a lot of classic moments here, but the fact remains that most of the numbers left the building after the show redeemed itself twice and then failed to deliver yet again the next week. The pacing is just really really shitty right now on LOST and it's hard to keep the audience consistently involved.

Other than the ratings numbers, I disagree with what you said.

Ditto

It's fine that yall believe the shows were good. That's totally subjective. What isn't subjective is that people obviously didn't respond to episodes where very little happened in terms of action or reveals. The middle episodes drove the numbers down slowly, they popped back up briefly, and then they totally tanked.

Which is why I made the specific exception for your numbers. I think those shows were very good, but most people wouldn't know good shit if it was Cleveland Steamered on their chests.

You can't force people to like something. To be frank, I thought the shows in the middle were slow. They weren't "bad" they were just slow. The problem is that when you are already at half your original viewership over 5 seasons, and the main complaint in the past was that the show was slow, well...

That Place is Death.

I stopped giving any care about viewership numbers in relation to quality a long time ago.  There are many many great things that get horrible ratings (and visa versa).  Its a complete non factor to me now.

It's especially a non-factor when this show is going to get another complete season regardless of what happens with the ratings this season and that is the season that is going to wrap everything up.

I honestly don't care about the ratings when it comes to this show because it has zero effect on me or the show itself.

My only concern would be if the ratings are so bad somehow the network could cancel it anyway.

I have to admit to being completely puzzled as to the poor ratings given that the whole season has been utterly fantastic, in my opinion.  I've enjoyed every episode.  Nothing anywhere near polar bear cage levels of suckitude ^^

That's true. That would be a concern, but considering the poor ratings for ABC shows in general, save Dancing with the Stars, I can't see them cancelling it unless it just goes completely in the toilet.

Oh and you are correct about the polar bear cage suckitude. I got some enjoyment out of Sawyer figuring out how to get a fish biscuit, but that was about it out of that whole few episodes.

I forgot about that.  The fish biscuit thing was actually funny.  But otherwise those early season three episodes represented the low point of the series for me.  Thankfully they redeemed themselves.

I'm still waiting for the worst case -- they get canceled early and need to solve everything double-time.  And finish with an ending like the final (goofball) episode of The Prisoner.  That I would not like (regardless of my enjoyment of the rest of that series).

Viewership numbers are important when compared to production costs, whether you care about popularity or not.  I roll my eyes every time a quirky high production genre show is launched.  It's got failure stamped on it, because it's only interesting to a minor subsection of the audience that will never provide the numbers to keep the show on the air.

The problem with Lost, as Paelos well illustrated, is it jumped straight into a weird time travel story arc, with little consistent episode to episode payoff, while paying short shrift to the drama and character interaction stuff that put the asses in the seats of people that normally wouldn't watch a scifi/fantasy program.  Drop in viewership plus high production costs means trouble.

Quality is mostly subjective, as well. 

Compare shows like House, Rescue Me, Firefly, and Seinfeld.  All of these have been lauded in general as having especially high quality (at least in their prime).  And more likely than not, as individuals, we find that we might not particularly like one or more of them.

That doesn't mean your taste sucks.  It just means you have different tastes.

I enjoy Rescue Me, but couldn't really get into Mad Men.  I just find that I like my flawed, self-centered characters (with some redeeming qualities) to self-destruct in a more quickly paced and entertaining manner.

Are you guys taking DVD sales into account? 

The only reason I bring up the numbers is that it won't stop them from doing a 6th season, but if the trend they are taking continues it could force them to abbreviate Season 6. That would suck, maybe. Or it could be awesome and make them actually move things forward quickly.

I believe they have contractually locked in the number of episodes left. If it truly tanks, ABC could choose not to air them, but I am fairly confident that all of the episodes have been funded and will be produced so they would be seen eventually.  I think Lost does well with a coveted demographic and DVD sales/rentals are good so I'm not all that worried about it.

Well that's something then. In the meantime, bring on more monster!

HOLY.

SHIT.
 :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

And damnit.

That was spectacular.  And sad.  Argh.  Also, it was all Kate's fault.

$@#@*!*#^$@!

Anyways, when all it's said and done, it looks like Daniel failed in his attempt to change the course of events: if Jack, Sawyer & Co. will try and eventually succeed in leaving 1977, they will leave the Dharma initiative behind, and whatever happened after 1977 (Purge etc.) will still happen.

Or maybe he was doing all of that to make sure the event happened. And by telling everyone the opposite, he ensures they go and do what they are supposed to do to make it happen.  :uhrr: Time travel logic always hurts.

I hope the Island gives him a rez  :heartbreak:

That was my thought as well. The island has shown an amazing ability to keep people alive for as long as it needs them to be alive, even when they aren't on the island.

It would make Eloise's sending him to the island much more palatable, that's for sure.  Because if she knew he was going to die and that the island wasn't going to rez him, that's just all kinds of fucked up.

Considering her talk with Charles, she seemed pretty damn certain he died.  So if he does get a res, its going to have to be without her knowledge.

I do however think, regardless of him living or not, they will change the future somehow.  They had Faraday setup the fact that it was possible for them to change things, and I think that was put in place to foreshadow/justify whats coming up.

On the other hand, her pushing Dan so hard on his research and sending the O6 back may be her attempt to change the past and somehow save him from his fate.  Of course, assuming she originally got his journal when he died in '77, she doesn't know what happens from here on -- if her attempt worked or if she doomed him to die at her hand again.  Perhaps Jack will save him.

Ben looked like he was damn unlikely to survive when Sayid shot him -- so you never know, maybe they didn't really kill Faraday... though this may just be wishful thinking on my part.

I don't buy Dan's explanation that the past can't be changed but the future can. From what the show has demonstrated so far, the past, present and future are all immutable and exist simultaneously. The future is simply the past that hasn't happened yet. The only way Dan's theory pans out is if a whole new branch in the timeline happens and then exists parallel to the original future. It'll be interesting to see how the writers work this one out.

He made his mother shoot him. There was absolutely no reason for him to demand a gun for a negotiation. He was always planning for it to happen.

Great call.  Makes perfect sense.

He got Dharma riled up by talking to the Asian doctor.  He got the time travellers riled up, and brought Jack and Kate to the Others.  He then got the Others riled up.

The only way it works is if Dan believes that the past can't be changed, but he knows that he has a part to play to set up the events.  If he honestly wanted to stop things, he wouldn't have half-assed the attempt to dissuade Miles father and he wouldn't have walked right into the Others camp and held their leader at gunpoint (especially considering that he never really used guns before, and he commented that he didn't like guns at the locker).

The mindscrew is that everyone will act as if the Incident could be prevented, and then find out that Dan set them up to make the incident happen.

Nor would he have used Kate and Sawyer to get into the Others camp, and then told them to remain behind while he goes wildly shooting into the middle of gun-toting outlaws. If you're going that route, you want obvious gun-toting backup in there with you as well.

Holy mother of moses, that was good TV!  :awesome_for_real:

My jaw hit the floor when Locke said his intention was to kill Jacob. I had always assumed up to this point that all the messages, the "purpose", and all that other island stuff was just Jacob communicating with him. I guess not? Unless Jacob wants to die? I think Ben's reaction basically summed mine up perfectly:

(http://i43.tinypic.com/289llkh.gif)

Oh and Locke just keeps reaffirming himself as my favorite character. The entire scene where he's telling Richard what to do when he sees a man with a bullet wound to his leg show up at the plane? Just...awesome.

I think for the first time we have now seen Ben really, seriously, completely at a loss for words.

Helluva episode.  Was hoping for a bit more Richard Alpert backstory, but still great stuff.  Locke sending Richard to meet him... Dr Chang interrogating Hurley ("Who's the president?" "Okay dude, we're from the future.")... all kinds of fun.

I'm still kinda hoping that Whatever Happened Happened and Jack and Co are being setup to ensure that everything remains in motion as before.  I don't think there's been a single instance of the past being successfully derailed and in a way will be disappointed if it turns out it can be.

Of course, if WHH, I'm not sure how it all fits back together.

Next week ought to be fun.  I'm sure it'll end with some insane twist that will setup some entirely new arc for season six and the endgame -- hopefully it'll be on par with the previous season finales.

Goddamn that was awesome.   

They said 'starting at 8' for next week, but I just checked the listings to see if it was a 2 hour episode.  The 8:00 show is another clip sum-up for those who have missed episodes, the finale is at 9:00 as usual. 

Yes. So, in total, there's going to be 3 hours of Lost. That's a good night of TV right there.  :awesome_for_real:

They can't change anything in the past, I thought Dan getting killed by mummy (shortly after saying they could) was a fairly major clue that he was wrong.

Edit - But I was wrong about something similar in TSCC so *shrug*

I'm going to go with the "nothing changes" theory.  Exploding the bomb seems much more likely to cause The Incident than to prevent it.

That scene was poorly staged.  Otherwise a good show.  This whole nuke thing seems half bake.  It's hard to image how they are going to pull this off in a reasonable manor.  I look forward to be proven wrong.

It's a total conceit where the writers set up coincidences and inside knowledge so that one character can be a badass as he pwns everyone else.  But the way Lost has built up, it works well here.  It's like Locke is a surrogate for the viewer and *we* are finally getting some payback after these characters jerked us around for so long.

Splendid episode. I look forward to Jack trying to set us up the bomb while EVERYBODY fucks with him.

Who wants to bet that the tremendous electromagnetic energy contained in the Hatch was a hydrogen bomb being exploded and captured in a temporal field (time warp) at the exact moment of explosion so that the bomb doesn't go off? Thus ensuring that if Jack succeeds in setting off the bomb, it dooms them to crash on the island in 30 years?

Good episode, and one that makes me hate Kate even more if that's possible. I wish Juliet would just punch her in the face already. Hurley admitting he doesn't know anything about the 70s was really funny, as was Locke's smirking ass the entire show while Ben is grasping at any sort of foothold on the situation.

As for the incident, I bet they fuck over Jack and try to get rid of the bomb by detonating it right as the island skips through time via the wheel. The explosion occurs in empty space left by the bomb, and everyone else gets shot off into a different time period. Here's the kicker: we know most of the Dharma folk live through the incident, only to be gassed later on by an older Ben. I think they island actually takes the Dharma folks into the future, and that's how they are going to try to unite all the Losties across time periods.

I bet Jacob is either the remains of the Set statue or the poltergeist-like thing we saw in Horace's cabin way back when.  Conjecture: Jacob is an evil spirit haunting the island (smoke?), and the "island" needs Locke to remove it.  And then all will be well. 

I'm throwing my lot in with the Whatever Happened, Happened crowd in that the past cannot be changed. I think the show is obviously setting up for that to be the case, with perhaps the small exception of Desmond.

Locke, for me, is currently bordering the fine line between unbelievable awesomeness and immeasurable smugness. He does that wide smile with the closed eyes and all I can think of is a Cheshire Cat

Jacob is what lies in the shadow of the statue.

Hurley's girlfriend gave Desmond the boat so he would end up on the island, and then watched over Hurley in the mental institution to keep an eye on him to ensure he made it to the island.  Eloise guided her son's life to make sure he did what he was needed to do.  It's not coincidence that they wound up on the island, and it's not simple fate.

Since stopping The Incident would work against all the effort put into bringing them to the island, it won't happen.  They were brought there for some purpose, but this ain't it.

I'm not sure what Jacob is, but if the writers have any sense of names (and given many of their choices, I believe they do) Jacob means "Supplanter". If they run with that meaning, Jacob is not supposed to be in charge of the island. Instead, he stole it and the other force on the island is seeking to regain control. The flip-side it could be JJ Abrams (middle J is Jacob) tossing it out there in the ultimate version of egotistic puppetmaster.

Personally, I think Jacob and Richard could both be gods, or the two different facets of the same god.

Oh well goddamnit.

Wow, what a gigantic fuck you that entire episode was. Outside of actually seeing Jacob which was pretty funny as he came off as the gigantic Darth Sidious puppetmaster.

EDIT: Also I totally knew what was in the box well before it came out.

oh

my

god

Equal parts  :awesome_for_real: and  :ye_gods:

Fuck that ending. Forever.

The funny part is the premiere will explain nothing, and they'll dick us over for another 8 episodes.

I figured out what was in the trunk a few minutes after they opened it the first time.

Aside from the cliffhanger, the biggest surprise was them finally revealing the bad guy.  5 seasons before they get back to things they hinted at in the first episode is a long time.

Yeah the box was predictable, but the ending.. goddamnit.

Y'know, this show is just about the silliest thing on network TV but I think I finally nailed why I like it: It's Myst in soap opera form. And I hated Myst so go figure why I love this show this much (well, there's less pointing and clicking at any rate). Tonight's episode fucked my brain hard and I need a cerebral cigarette now. Or at least a towel to clean my frontal lobe off.

From beginning to end, there is some reason why Jacob's enemy can't kill him, even though he says he wants to. This has an endgame in time that they are both fighting for, and Jacob was in control of that timeline. This speaks highly to the usurper title assumed by Jacob's name.

I'm confused as to whether Locke is actually any part Locke anymore or if that was all Jacob's counterpart.

And why would Jacob go through all the trouble of manipulating everyone at various points in their life (including bringing Locke back to life after he fell from a window) to get them to that time period? He obviously knows what's coming, but that means he wanted to die? Or maybe he just flat didn't see Ben in the equation?

Oh me. What an episode. My brain seriously fucking hurts though.

Jacob's obviously an even larger and crazier version of Ben.

Jacob is not a manipulator. He is the embodiment of free will.  They all made choices that put them on that island.  The loophole was that someone else had to choose to kill him of his own free will. The other dude will turn out to be the embodiment of determinism and the manipulator (how he set up Ben with the whole "you must obey Locke who just happens to be me").

The whole show is organized around fate/destiny vs. choice/free will.

That sort of breaks down when he rezzes Locke for no reason, pulls Kate's feet out of the fire when she's stealing, and essentially lets Sayid's wife get creamed by a car. Granted with Hurley and Ben it was about choice, but if wanted to save himself he wouldn't have given him the "What about you?" line. Even with Hurley, he would have walked away from the Island and hid if it wasn't for Jacob showing up. He's taking choices away from people in most instances I saw. He's forcing the future. From the early part I'm gathering that he's playing blocker to the other guy. I think it's these two Titans locked in a battle for the future of humanity, and there may not be a "good" guy in any of this.

I'm not so sure that was Jacob. As far as we know, Jacob has been trapped on the island and in the cabin up until Locke first broke the circle of ash.

On the other side, we have a shape-changing manipulator (currently) wearing the skin of Locke.

They are both manipulators. There's not going to be a white knight here.

I disagree on the no choices issue but it's a matter of interpretation.

They both seemed pretty scared at who was "coming" so I don't think they are the ultimate powers.  Whoever has been "using" the cabin, i.e. whoever is in Jack's Dad's body, and whoever the "who lies in the shadow" people represent have both yet to be revealed.

I assumed he meant that the people stuck 30 years in the past were coming. By all accounts, they very much are.

There could be a higher layer of bad guys, I agree. I just think Sawyer's lines about destiny are the authors filling us in. We don't speak destiny here, people do things because they want something, and that's what the two superpowers here are fighting for.

But then he let Jack do his thing anyways. It's a continuation of the rationality v. faith tension that has been at the heart of the series since the second episode or so that was more explicit in the first three seasons with Jack (rational) v. Locke (faith).

I'm not disagreeing with you about the theme. I think that's been the undertone of the series from the getgo as you've said.

What I am saying is that they are bad. Both of them. They are slaves to either side of thinking and that's gone too far.

Could be. The title of that O'Connor book Jacob was reading (in my favorite scene of the whole episode) is based upon a work of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin who was a Jesuit priest who tried to combine both faith and rationality and was a major proponent of directed evolution.

Yes, the book scene was pretty epic. The timing was without a doubt the best part of the show. I just know they are fucking with their audience at this point, and they keep adding layers to the battles of the destiny v. free will. First it was Jack and Locke, then it was Widmore and Ben, now it's Jacob and this dude.

Who's the last man behind the curtain?

I caught on pretty early on that 'Locke' wasn't Locke.  As soon as he told Ben that he would be the one to kill Jacob, it was very obvious that 'Locke' was the mystery antagonist.

What I'm most curious about is how much of the symbolism is calculated and how much is just thrown out there.  The statue was of Sobek, an Egyptian crocodile god, but as far as I remember he isn't the god of anything in particular other than crocodiles.  He is considered a 'righter of wrongs' and enemy of evil, which is why he depicted with the ankh, but he's not necessarily 'good'.  Jacob weaving at the beginning set off all kinds of warning bells as that's a classic depiction of the weaver at the loom of time, although that could make him a creator, caretaker or manipulator.  I wonder if the writers will take a page from Neil Gaiman and it turns out Jacob and the antagonist are what's left of two old gods.

On another note, was that supposed to be the Black Rock at the beginning of the episode?

I'm with Abagadro on this.  I also am curious about Claire and Christian at the end of s4.  Could be Jacob and other dude are both trapped and there is a third and evil wheel (smoke).  All this this Set /Osiris stuff is interesting (both gods of the dead).

I've been thinking even more about this episode and just how tragic it is that Locke wasn't actually special at all. His entire life has been one tragedy after another and the character was one that I was really pulling for to have some sort of greater role or meaning. It appears that he'll end up just like he always ended up in the past, a failure.

It's actually pretty damn  :heartbreak:

The writers are total bastards.  I enjoyed it a lot.  But they are still total bastards.

They actually managed to make me feel bad for Ben too.  Even though I've always been a bit sympathetic to that lying manipulative bastard ^^

Looking forward to see if they have some suitable epic way to tie this up now.  Hoping we get some Jacob backstory in S6.  Glad that they haven't killed Ben off yet.  Maybe he gets a redemption arc after all.  Or maybe they're just fucking with us.

Also, if Locke isn't Locke:
1. Did smokey and the ghost of Alex know?
2. Is Ben still bound to obey "Locke"?
3. Bloody hell!

Any bets as to if they'd go so far as to open up on flight 815 pre-crash in S6E1.... that'd really make my head hurt.

My favorite line of the evening?

"I'm a Pisces"

Not sure exactly why, but it made me laugh my ass off.

Ghost Alex - and every other dead person on the island, including Christian  - were all Jacob's enemy.

I thought that was pretty terrible, the pistol shoot out scene even had a guy fall onto sand, I had an A-Team flashback.  Jacob at the end can't say "Hey Ben, just a minor detail but that's not really Locke, it just looks like him", probably against the rules or something.

So everybody is a chess piece, Gods or Aliens, I'm going with Aliens.

I disagree that the loophole is Ben using Free Will to kill Jacob.  Ben is the determinism poster child.  Ruled by his insecurities, he doesn't have an enlightened bone in his body.  His motivation for killing Jacob was revenge and self-preservation.  Even when he finally committed the act it a lashing out because his feelings were hurt rather than deliberate act.  The loophole wasn't Ben's Free Will but Ben's Psychosis.  Jacob had little regard for Ben because Ben's nature is anti-antithetical to Jacob's.

I feel like I want choose sides, but does look like battle of abstractions. When the number 3 goes to war against the color Orange, how can you choose sides.  

It does seem that island still independent of Jacob and Anti-jacob.  Although I am not sure Anti-jacob rule will be any worse than Jacob's.  One possibility is this resets board.  Ben would be back in charge of the Other's(although fragmented a bit).  Jacob's Chosen will battle them because ideology conflict will continue.  

Maybe it's island wishes to be free of the Demigods.  Or maybe Kate, Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Jin, Sun and Hurley represent a new paradigm to take their place.  Of course if they fail, Ben could be the new paradigm. :ye_gods:

Anyone else get the impression that Jacob was goading Ben on to kill him.  I mean, he could've said a lot of things that weren't "What about you? ::raised eyebrow::".

I can totally see Ben being the primary star of the last season.  He's already stolen the show.  Everyone else imo is secondary.

Gods, free will, determinism.  You all might be overthinking it.  It could be as simple as a group of ancient people managed someone to get to the island.  Noticed awesome properties.  Lived there.  Eventually died.  For thousands of years, the last 2 were at odds.  Eventually, you grow to hate the other guy.  They've been there long enough to maybe figure out a few things about the island, and time, and life, and Not-Jacob decided he's tired of sitting around and wants something, anything, to change, and went about doing it by killing Jacob.  And Jacob counter'd him with some grand plan about throwing some variables into Not-Jacob's plans (oceanic's).

Or something.

Dunno, I got a bit weepy when Juliet went crashing.

So who is "dead" now?

s5
Juliet
Daniel
Sayid (fuk)
Locke (fawk!)
Charlotte

s4
Charlie
Claire (I guess)
Michael
Walt (sort of)

fill in rest

yeah agreed

Also, did everyone notice that for every character Jacob met at whatever age he touched them?  Even handing Sawyer the pen?  Just sayin -- he didnt just engineer stuff, he had to mark who would be on the island, as it were.  Even bringing John back from the dead.

He got his immortal stank all over them, giving them time-changing variable powers.

At first, I thought, he was engaging in a small activity that would help them become who they were but that seems someone specious. Kate may not have been a bad-ass biddy all her life if she hadn't gotten bailed out just then. But Sawyer definitely would have written that note, just with another pen, and Sun & Jin would still love each other tenderly. But I really do think it was the touch. Either marking them, making them special, or who knows.

If I'm remembering the opening sequence correctly, if anything the antagonist is upset because of a loss of the status quo since it appears Jacob did something to allow that ship (which I still think is the Black Rock and who's crew is probably the original 'others') to approach the island.

Godamn, that was  :uhrr:. But in a good way.  Had a four hour marathon watching the two episodes leading up to the finale.  I missed the first 3-4 minutes I was confused about Jacob's enemy and the 'loophole'. Reading a synopsis its a little more clear.  I'll be going crazy waiting for s6.  

I have to assume history hasn't changed and "whatever happened..." but I can't put it past the writers to fuck with me even more.

The only thing that annoyed the ever living shit out of me in this one was how many times people changed their minds about Jack's plan. Just seemed like it was all there to drag it out to two hours.

In case you didn't look it up, according to Lostpedia: Richard Alpert responded to the question of "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" with "Ille qui nos omnes servabit" - “He who will protect/save us all.”

Locke is the guy who sat with Jacob at the end. He is the trickster, the devil, while Jacob is God.

The entire show is quite obviously a 6-season homage to the battle episodes between the Devil and Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island.

Also, my first words after the screen went white at the end? Motherfuckers.

2010 is SO LONG.

So the answer to "What lies in the shadow of the statue" was "He who will save us all" in Latin. The authors are trying to obviously set Jacob up as some kind of hero. In the beginning, he's wearing white, his rival wears black. His rival wants to kill him, and he seems indifferent. The scene is open to a lot of interpretations, but it breaks down like this:

Jacob's rival is there because of the ship, which Jacob arranged to show up. We assume it's the Black Rock.
Jacob's rival says Jacob is still trying to prove him wrong. "They come, they fight, they destroy, and they corrupt, and it always ends the same."
Jacob says, "It only ends once, anything else that happens before that is progress."

I assume Jacob's rival wants to get rid of humanity in this scene. It's obviously not the first time that humans have shown up on the island, and they both know how it's gone in the past because they are immortals. It also seems that Jacob is fighting against the time loop here. The rival seems to believe in the inevitable outcome, while Jacob is trying to shift it off that outcome.

I think the Biblical connections between Jacob and his brother Esau are being heavily used by the writers to create this rivalry. I also think that the statue is Sobek, who was a rather ambiguous god in terms of good/evil. This plays into my theory that there are no good guys here at the top.

Isn't there a whole thing about having real difficulty giving birth on the island?  If Esau (might as well call him that for now) doesn't want people on the island he might have something to do with that.  Also if Jacob has to be involved to get you to the island, does that mean Esau brought the army just to get the atom bomb?  Jacob's followers killed the army personnel but let Daniel guide them to bury the bomb, not Jacob.

In an interview with Terry O'Quinn:

Is the the 6th season going to be the last?  I watched it here and there at first, but I'm horribad at keeping up w/ tv shows, so I eventually gave up.  Once it's all said and done, though, I'd like to sit down, and watch it all on dvd when time permits.

6th is last season yes.

I kinda necro the thread because I just finished watching Seasons 1 to 5 back to back.

I am a bit lost for words actually. The whole experience has been really awesome and it is one of the most brilliant shows I have watched in years.

It had its share of misses and plotlines that fizzled out or simply didn't work. The best thing they have done however is reducing the episode orders from 24 to 17 and fixing an end date. The ratio of awesome to mediocre episodes really tipped towards better quality after that.

I start with the bad:
This whole Jack, Sawyer, Kate love triangle needs to stop asap. That alone is responsible for nearly all of the stupid and inane plots of the last 5 seasons. Ice Bear Cages. Depressed Emo Jack. Stubborn emo Jack. With the addition of Juliette to the cast it went on to a whole new dimension of stupid by adding her to the now quadrangle of bad plots and Jack being a stupid douche.

This ultimately led to the stupid plot of "I need to jump down into this hole full of electromagnetism because Sawyer looked funny at Kate" and the demise of Juliette which I am still totally furious about. Seriously Kate needs to go and somebody needs to write Jack's character in a different way because right now he is a totally irresponsible douche.

On second thought both need to go, they both serve no purpose at all any more.

Kate and Jack are by far my most hated characters on the show. They are solely used by the writers as devices for stupidly advancing the plot in certain directions. It's a bad case of plot driven development in which case the characters act all kinds of stupid because the story needs to move in a certain direction.

As Sawyer said in "Namaste". He thinks problems through because Jack's approach of just reacting usually leads to people dying

If they wanted to keep the angle of "Rationality" vs. "Faith" they should have stuck with Locke vs. Eko.

Also they have a lot of far better actors and better designed characters to choose from anyway.

The good:

For a network TV show the story is extremely well crafted. For a show where a lot of the plot each season is basically made up as they go along (Even if they have a plot outline they never know for certain if they aren't cancelled, if certain actors are or keep available etc.) it has only a few plot holes and unconnected threads.

The characters - with the exception of Jack and Kate - are usually well written and multi dimensional although they sometimes go a bit overboard with the back story and the coincidences. It also has a good ratio of drama and mystery and they keep resolving some things which is at least some payoff and helps them prevent the X-fileization of the plot.

I especially like that they don't hang on to cast members or keep adding new ones if they prove to be good. Adding Desmond, Miles, Ben, Richard and Juliette to the cast were good moves as were killing off a few of the more unnecessary ones. It keeps the story fresh.

However it is sometimes sad that really good characters get killed of too soon (at least in my opinion). Faraday for example.

I am really looking forward to Season 6 although they seem to divert from the "whatever happened happened". The comicon teasers - if they are any indication of season 6 - seem to suggest that they did change the future by creating the incident.

I was okay with the love story as a gimmick increase the the show's appeal to women until the end of s5.  The Juliet character went off the deep end.  Which is disappointing because I liked her more than Kate.  It also makes more sense to me that Juliet would ditch Sawyer with the return of Jack then become proactively jealous of Kate.

I found Jack to extremely douchey at points during the series, but I thought that once he was actually doing something other than being a douche, like attempting to advance the plot towards the end of season 5, I started liking him again.

Like Jerry Maguire, I like the man that Jack almost is.  One of my favorite episodes in the series is the one that reveals the origin and meaning of Jack's tattoo.  Turning to the smug, condescending Sheriff and saying, "That's what it says - not what it means" was a great :drill: moment. 

Unfortunately, that episode had me looking forward to the fulfillment of Jack's "destiny" as being a great leader who is saddened and angered by the separation being a leader causes.  Well, he's managed to nail the emo/angry bits alright.  Still waiting on the "great leader" part.

I like how Jack is ultimately flawed as a person, with very evident weaknesses. And I also liked him a lot during the first two season...Then, yeah, Carlton and Cuse focused too much on the triangle or whatever.  Both authors also hinted that they wanted to create a nice contraposition between Locke and Eko, to be further explored in season three and possibly beyond, but the actor portraying Mr. Eko simply couldn't stand staying in Hawaii for such long periods of time, and simply asked to be written off, or something like that.

Jack's character hasn't been cool in 3 seasons. Kate's character has completely stopped making any sense.

I want Claire back, I want Eko back, I want Daniel back, I want the real Locke back, hell I'd even like to see what Boone would be like at this stage on the Island. The funny part is that the writers believe they've written a great leadership character in Jack.

I don't think they think that at all.

What he said. Jack is in no way a great leadership character, nor is he portrayed to be. He's a reactionary - he just reacts, very rarely thinks and usually ends up fucking up. I mean, HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED (Kate in the real world) and he wasn't happy. He started boozing and pill-popping again, and totally fucked the whole relationship up. Didn't he even lose his medical license? He is a tragically self-destructive character whose only solace seems to be leading people on the island - but he fucks that up too, so he keeps trying to unfuck it.

God, I can't stand Jack and Kate.

That moment when Jack turned to Sawyer(?) and told him he needed to go back and the root cause of everything was his love for Kate took his character from irrational reactionary leader to pure stupid town.
All I could think of was "Her? What is she, funny or something?" She's been nothing but a weirdly neurotic somehow siren-like woman who's main response to most stimuli appears to be clamming up and running.  :uhrr: gahhh

Jack turning to her and saying "You didn't like the old me, Kate" was a triumph and a highpoint for his character. To the fellow who thought the tattoo episode was one of the best, I believe you to be nuts

In my defense, it wasn't because of all the weird shit with Bai Ling.  I meant more that it was a favorite in terms of the development of his character.  I stand by my declaration of the awesomeness of the burn he gave to the Sheriff.  "You didn't like the old me, Kate" was another excellent one, I agree.

After hearing about this show for years I finally sat down this past week and watched seasons 1-5 straight through. Excellent show for the most part.

Kate needed to be written off in season 1/2 or better yet not included as a character to begin with. The romance arcs with her do not work at all. There's no sense of emotional investment with the character that you get with Sun/Jin, Charlie/Claire, Sawyer/Juliet, or Desmond/Penelope. Even Sayid and Shannon (which I read was a joke idea pitched by the actor playing Sayid) was more believable than Kate with anyone.

Jack's character got mishandled and should have gone darker beyond season 2 which I thought was where the character was supposed to be heading by the whole "you should have listened and let us torture ben" ending. Again I'll put the blame for this on the love triangle fuckery.

Aside from that minor complaint the rest of the cast has been excellent. The story has had a few patched holes here and there but otherwise it's been really good. The foreshadowing at times is beautifully done such as how the chain of manipulation with Locke's father being killed by Sawyer leads to how Ben is manipulated into killing Jacob. I'm guessing season 6 will start off, or at least get into ealry on, the origin of Jacob.

Lost returns on tuesday, February 2 at 9 with a two hour season premiere, regular timeslot for lost will be tuesdays at 9.

I want to hump your leg like a dog.

You'd have to buy me dinner first

Well, thanks for that, Jeff Kelly.  I was actually just wondering if it was coming back or gone for good.  I still have questions!

Last season though!

I knew that it was ending soon but I was hoping they'd follow through and tie up some of the millions of loose ends.  I'm sure they'll just let some slide due to the sheer number of plots they left lying around.  Most would be nice, though.

I think focusing on tying everything up is the plan.  No more flash backs/forwards for this season too so they can just focus on the main stories.

So do you think they slowly answer all of our questions throughout the season, or just in the last episode?

I think they come up with so many more questions that the finale episode is just a Q & A with all the characters.

Well, they actually did a decent job last season of tying off plots or revisit old ones with new info.  They've set themselves up in a good position to answer most of the questions while still bringing up some new stuff for the last season.  Hopefully they don't do the Battlestar thing and just run towards the last episode without bothering to tie many things up, then try to (poorly) do it all in the series final.

http://www.hulu.com/lost

Hulu has all 5 seasons up and streaming in 480p.

Not enough time for Q&A, i predict just pure scrolling text... will revolutionize series finales.   :ye_gods:

Seriously though, I don't believe they can "tie-off" all the dangling loops because they aren't writing the same story in 2010 that they started with in 2004.

This is new TV... the plot is written in response to audience feedback via the internet; plot twists do not further the story towards a conclusion, they _are_ the story.

Me and the woman are rewatching the whole series (or as much as we can) until Lost comes back.  Halfway through Season 1 now and I like picking up a lot of the little things along the way.

I just started rewatching as well, since my girlfriend has never seen it and wouldn't watch it til there was an end in sight.

I'll probably just read some summaries before season 6 starts to refresh me on things.  Then I'll do the grand re-watch after I buy the entire series on BluRay once its out.

One thing we noticed is when Jack started seeing his father, 4-5 episodes , we thought we saw him not wearing any shoes.  I don't know if that was significant at all.  I do recall something about shoes last season, but wasn't it just jack taking something of his father's and put them on the plane to match the last time to get back to the island?

Heh, I just that this was released:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/Lost-last-supper.jpg)

Which of course reminded me of this:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41488/BSG-last-supper.jpg)

Guess all my favorite TV shows are destined to do a Last Supper promo for the final season.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1927408
That does a pretty good job.

That video actually sums it up really well.

Yeah it does.

Cool.

They really should market Darma beer, soda, chips. I would buy them if they tasted good.

Carlton Cuse today at the press tour: "to explain everything down to the last midichlorian would be a mistake."

Awesome.

I just finished watching the first five seasons. My synopsis. It's a great sci-fi/mystery/paranormal show that has horrid romance plots thrown in.

Bad CGI.

The one thing that bothered me is Libby.  She was in the crazy house with Hurley and they never explained that.  She died like 3-4 episodes after they showed her in that episode.

She had to leave the show for external reasons I think, so they had to just end her storyline.  Maybe they'll revisit it, but I think thats just a dead end plot line they had to stop.  Which is good, because I fucking hated that character and her attempted romance with Hurley (who IS an awesome character).

I don't think many of the romance plots are bad.  Actually, I think the only one thats gotten annoying is the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, but if they can resist bringing that back up again in the final season, should be fine.

Carlton Cuse has specifically said Libby is in this last season.

(http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y106/Seijuro_HikoXIII/Kujo_Jotaro/VB218.jpg)

God, I loved that episode.

I fear with Juliet dead, we are in for a final season of more miserable jack/kate/sawyer triangle.  I've got to watch the tail end of S5 again before S6 starts up, so I remember where exactly we are in all the craziness.

I keep wondering if that now they altered things with the bomb, if they don't actually land in LA instead of crashing on the island. But then I think, is there a story to develop there? Do they bring back all the characters that died? Do they all somehow remember each other and try to get back to the island again?

I don't think the bomb can't really reset anything as it was already built into the timeline. It is clearly the "incident" that has been referred to since Season 2.

I like the nuke to change things drasticaly just because that would be much more interesting than "It was meant to be."

I don't think that it's "it was meant to be" so much as "it needs to be".  People have a choice in it the matter, it's just that they choose/are manipulated into a course of events.

Ms. Hawking knew she was going to kill her son but sent him there anyway, because she thought it was important.

Abaddon was sent to Locke to motivate him to get on the airplane, because Widmore thought it was important.

Libby was seen in flashbacks for Michael, Hugo, and Desmond.  She even gave Desmond the boat that gets him to the island.  For whatever reason, she's manipulating events and watching over people to to ensure everyone gets to where they need to be.

If it was pre-destined - like Charlie dying - the universe would have just found a way to get them all there, and it wouldn't have let 7 of them escape off.  Who thinks they needs to be on the Island and why really seem like the questions.

I like this theory for the end of Lost...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY3QHjnn4SQ

That's actually pretty awesome. 

If this were Heroes I'd follow that by saying "...and therefore will not happen."   :awesome_for_real:

So, while watching the last few episodes of S5 (in the middle of Follow the Leader now), a thought crossed my mind.


(probably excessive to spoiler, but just in case)

Almost finished with Season 3 rewatching.  I really angry that I don't have much of season 5 fresh in my head.  Hopefully I'll be able to remember most of it...  I think I can.

The small details of the Locke/Jacob/Other Guy plot is fuzzy in my head.

I'm also doing a big rewatch, a few episodes into Season 4. Am I the only one who finds S4 the worst of the series?

4 > 5 > 3 > 2 > 1
Hopefully Lost learned from Sopranos and BSG, so no ambiguous or magic-wand ending. 

I thought season 4 was excellent.  I've enjoyed the show its whole run though.  I'd say season 3 was the weakest as they were throwing out tons of filler.  Once they got the ok to do exactly 3 more seasons though, the series has been top notch.

So we're spoilering things that happened at the end of season 5?

The first chunk of season three (with the polar bear cages, surgery on ben, etc) was the low point of the series for me (though some people seem to hate the middle of season 2 with the talies more).  Season four and five were a lot of fun.


Total agreement.  Having an end in sight seems to have resulted in things really tightening up.  S3 felt like they were floundering around and then they pulled shit together for the end and it's been steady sailing from then on.

I hated the flash forwards of the Oceanic 6.  So irritating.  Season 3 was pretty good I thought.

Well, the premier was good.

Best line of the episode, "I'm not a What, I'm a Who."

We're heading into something I had feared in the back of my mind. They are going to go to the epic showdown of good and evil. My guess is they twist which side is which.

It appears that's the way it's heading. It seems pretty black and white (ha) which is good and which is bad at this point, but it's almost too convenient at this point. We'll see.

Oh and we got a pretty big reveal and now know exactly what the smoke monster is.

Sayid is Jacob reincarnated.

The LAX timeline is different than "real life". Several characters are different including Desmond being there, Shannon NOT being there and Charlie trying to kill himself saying "he was supposed to die."

You will see Man in Black vs. Jacob all season long.

The Temple People are just other "others". You saw the stewardess and you saw the two kids that got nabbed in season 2 from the tail of the plain now grown up a little more.

I can't remember any of the other tidbits I picked up.

I like the recognition of the Man in Black in Locke's body to Richard.  "Oh you look good out of chains." and Richard replying with "it's you".

Interesting stuff.

Awesome episodes.  It was nice of them to confirm right off that Man in Black was the smoke monster, which the end of season 5 seemed to hint at.  I'm also thrilled that they showed there are in fact "other" others.  I had that theory ever since season two.  Vindicated!

I wouldn't really say though that it looks like a stark battle of good vs. evil.  Man in Black is obviously a manipulative dick, but he just wants off the island (god knows how long him and Jacob have been trapped there).  He has the power to kill all those people, but didn't.  He offered to let the other guys go before they shot him.  He wants what he wants, and will do all he can to get it, but I wouldn't really call him a straight on evil evil bad guy.  At least from what we've seen so far.

However, the smoke monster does bring up some questions though.  Like why they were calling it a security system before, and why (going along with that) Ben was able to summon it to defend against the Mercs.  Seems odd that Ben could "summon" the man in black.  Perhaps theres an automated smoke monster, and then Man in Black can also take on a smoke monster form?

Looking forward to them explaining what happened to the French guys who went into the temple, and subsequently "got sick".  They went in because the guy who's arm got ripped off yelled he was OK and to come in.  But of course we just found his corpse sitting down there.

I have no idea where they will go with the flash to parallel time line thing.

Off to a good start.  I like the diverging timelines thing -- will be fun to see how these affect / interact / whatever with each other.

Notice that Desmond was on the plane until Jack revived Charlie... and then he was gone.  Guess their fates are intertwined there as well as in the original timeline. 

I suppose we have three major timelines now -- the original 2004 that we followed during the first four seasons (for the most part), the new 2004 where 815 doesn't crash on the island, and the 2007 timeline where Jacob dies and we see the temple.

Has unLocke (aka the MIB) always been the smoke monster?  Or is the smoke monster a form Jacob can take as well?  Or something else entirely?  unLocke seemed surprised to learn that unAlex threatened to destroy Ben if he didn't follow Locke at the end of Season 5.  Or maybe he was just being extra devious.  One wonders.

Did Locke actually go on his walkabout in the new timeline or did he lie to Boone?

In the new timeline things are going much better for everyone.  I believe what we're seeing is how their lives would have worked-out, had Jacob and MIB not interfered with them at key points in their lives.   Hurley still has his chicken franchise and is "the luckiest guy in the world" and Locke seemed genuine about his walkabout.

Was a bit of a trip seeing all these old cast members show up, though.

I'm not sure on that. Doesn't Jacob bring Locke back to life after he gets pushed out of the window and breaks his back? If he's not there to bring him back to life, wouldn't Locke die right there?

Edit: My wife says Jacob was just there. He didn't have anything to do with Locke waking up after the fall. So, hell if I know.

I agree with your spoiler.  That's how I took everything.


There are two timelines now.  The "it never happened" timeline and and the current day one (2008).  The 1977 guys were kicked back into the same timeline as the rest of the crew.  You know this because when the Temple Others set off the fireworks, Richard saw it at the beach.


Jacob knelt down and touched him or something when he hit the ground.  That was from Season 5.  I think with the island blowing up you are seeing the effects of people without the influence of "Fate" and "Free Will" in their lives.  I think we might find out that Locke hurt his back a different way, not by being pushed out the window.

--

Another thing I just read is that when the stewardess handed Jack more booze on the plane before the turbulance, this time it was only 1 bottle.  In season 1 it was two, one he drank and one he put in his pocket which he used as a disinfectant in the pilot episode when he stitched himself up.

IMDB is not helping me -- does anyone know the name of the actor that played the "translator"?  He looked really familiar and I think he might have been the guy who "translated" for Utah Johnny Montana the same way in that one Brisco County episode.  If so, that's fucking awesome.

The actor is John Hawkes, who played Sol Starr on Deadwood....   Bullock's partner in the general store and Trixie's love interest. 

Much awesome in that episode.

She said, "I have a new show. I am outta here, bitches."

Man in Black doesn't want off the island.  His home is the island, he doesn't want anyone else on it.  My guess his home is the temple that he's being kept out of?

My guess.

I think the two timelines are not going on at the same time so that the guy can jump between them.  I think you're seeing a timeline of what happens after this season is done.  Somewhere at the end of season 6 the Losties will do something to change the past.  What you're seeing now is that story, but at the same time as everything plays out.  It's this season's "flashback".

Thank you; it is indeed the same guy.  In the Brisco episode he was a mute gunslinger's sidekick and his job was to do all his talking.  Pretty awesome that he has the exact same role again.

One of the things Lost does better than any other show is casting fun and interesting actors in minor parts. 
- Lt. Daniels from the Wire as Abaddon
- Andrea Roth (Rescue Me) as an Other
- Mac from It's Always Sunny as an Other
- Wayne Pygram (Scorpius in Farscape, young Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars) as random faith healer guy
- The Dharma torturer is Larry from Newhart (WB Farnsworth in Deadwood, and Joker's henchman in the original Batman, etc)

The Whitmore character has always seemed to me to be a part they wrote for Malcolm McDowell.  There are just a ton of "hey, it's that guy!" moments that are really fun in Lost.

I expect lost, ultimately to turn out to be a waste of time but I do like the fact that Kimberley Joseph (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0430634/) appeared in the first few seconds of the pilot episode and then disappeared for ages .  I recognised her straight away from her major role in cold feet (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168596/) and was constantly thinking wtf was she doing in such a minor role.

Widmore :).

Anyways, that's probably because of the emphatic, slow way both Alan Dale and Admiral Tolwyn Malcom McDowell spell out their lines, heritage of their great theatre experience.

Infact, as far as pure acting goes, in my opinion, Michael Emerson (Ben, the actor himself worked a lot in theatres) and Alan Dale (Charles Widmore) are the two best actors in Lost together with Terry O'Quinn, hands down.

I wouldn't count Juliet out.  When she first saw Sawyer, she thought she was in a Coffee shop, and she new it worked.  So I think we are going to run into her in the alternate timeline, and she's going to flash back and forth like Desmond was.

Also, is it really necessary to spoiler anything?  Everybody is discussing the show here.  I'd assume anybody who doesn't want to be spoiler-ed about season 6 wouldn't come reading this.

Am I the only one who thought that Jack was conscious of the fact that he went from the island back to the plane?  It wasn't until he made it clear that he didn't previously know Locke that I realized he was just staring at everyone in confusion.  But everytime Jack looked at the black woman (my mind is going blank on her name sorry), Desmond, Kate, etc.. they made him look like he recognized them.  That threw me off for a while.

Her name is Rose.  To me it seemed like he was having more of a deja vu type "do I know that person?" thing rather than a conscious recollection.

It's the deja vu. I don't think he yet realizes that things aren't as they should be yet.

I might be wrong but didn't Jack meet Desmond before the island in a stadium somewhere during one of the old pre time travelling flashbacks, when Desmond called him brother, something to do with his wife.  I thought it was him part remembering that.

Yeah, Jack recognized him from the football stadium when they first met on the island (and he said brother).  I'm not sure if the fact that he doesn't recognize him on the plane means they never met like that in this timeline, or the writers got lazy and forgot that if Jack could recognize him in the hatch with a gun pointed at him, he'd probably easily be able to do so on the plane.

The only thing that threw me, Desmond was never on the plane, he was in the hatch at that point, well after his meeting with jack, and well before they even got to the island.

The island was underwater so Desmond could not have landed his boat there.

Yes, but all of his story, all of it, was invalidated, AND he was on the plane.

ALL of it, meeting Lilly, getting the boat, all the penny stuff, her father stuff, meeting jack in the amphitheater (He did not know him on the plane), years of back-story (pre/post hatch or otherwise).... And he is on the plane? I have a feeling that the entire plane thread, is not real. At all. Everyone else essentially picked up where they left off..... Desmond is rewritten, unstuck, out of time, paradox.

 :tinfoil:

At least, in my recollection of all past events.

You are correct. There is no way that Desmond could be on that plane at that time - except that he never went to the island and we know he was in Australia before Jack got on the plane. If the island doesn't exist, he doesn't crash Widmore's boat on the island, and maybe he doesn't meet Jack before they get on the plane. Remember what he said to Jack when they met in Australia - "See you in another life, brother."

This is that other life.  :oh_i_see:

Here's a good interview with the producers, kind of setting up Season 6 (http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/02/02/lost-premiere-damon-carlton/?ew_packageID=20313460)

I kinda thought Desmond disappeared on the plane.  Like he's skipping through timelines or something.

Just looked at a wonderful picture of Claire from next week's episode. Will put it in a spoiler, but really there is nothing spoily in it.


The blonde angel is finally back, she's always been my favorite female character of the series  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

What picture?

Here's one for you:

(http://media.fukung.net/images/24316/c7f79c60e75780b428b4ba8a919823bd.jpg)

Oh well, here is the link  :heartbreak:

Lovely Claire pic from 6x03: http://i.iimmgg.com/images/gr/d6175825d350ad83b7c9c82a75cb7628.jpg

Still not working.

Lies!

Posting a Claire pic, take three! And... Action!

(http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3499/lovelyclaire.jpg)

What a terrible picture.

She's cute in this one:

(http://www.lostfan.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/claire_littleton.jpg)

Not that it helps make her one of the interesting characters in the show. 

You guys... :heartbreak: :heartbreak: :heartbreak:

Yeah.....I was never really a Claire fan.  Not an annoying character, but not one I really cared about.  Thankfully, Lost has done an excellent job of killing every character I didn't like.

I'm assuming by 'favorite' character he means 'most attractive.'  It's not like she did all that much in the show other than have a baby and pretend to like Charlie for a while.

Even that accord belongs to Shannon.

Yes, Shannon could win an Oscar for sunbathing.   :oh_i_see:

I said she was hot, I didn't say she could act.

No, I agree.  They might all be hot and maybe they can even act.  I don't think the writers had acting ability in mind for their roles.

(http://z.about.com/d/lost/1/0/d/I/-/-/shannon-cry.jpg)

good one

that's how I remember her

That pretty much sums up her entire character arc.

I remember her as, "Oh look, here's a blond bitch I want to die."

To be fair though, Kate is the brunette bitch I wanted to die.  :heartbreak:

Kate still sucks and needs to die. She's basically the only character at this point that has annoyed me since almost the beginning that they haven't killed off.

I used to say the same about Jack, but over the last season's worth of episodes, he's come around a bit.

It's started to grate on me more and more, but does anybody notice how often nobody answers questions on the show and they just change topics? Very rarely early on in the show was anybody called on it. That shit just doesn't fly in my fantasy world of a desert island with no laws. It's like everyone has a short term memory problem.

Worthless episode tonight.  Nothing happened.  Nothing was answered.  Nothing changed.

You could of condensed that whole episode into 5 minutes.

Yep, it was truly terrible. We're back to the old ways of "Give them something in the first shows, then ramble on with filler in the entire middle."

Sayid might have something bad in him, and the Others want to contain that. (We knew this already, or at least could infer it very simply given he died)
Crazy other people on the island ask for private meetings all the time, and never tell anybody anything. (Been there, done that, beat the horse we rode in on)
Kate and Claire experience similar events to the island in the other reality (Yes, they're setting a stage here, but it's really too long)
Sawyer is sad about Juliet. Kate continues to waffle her fucking ass off.  (I don't even need to say it)

No Ben, no Richard, no Locke-thing, no Jacob, absolutely no reason to bother with this episode.

Usually, if there's no Ben or Locke, the show really suffers. Tonight was no exception.

Ya, but we got our mandatory Kate episode out of way.

I liked tonight! I was seriously creeped out seeing Ethan in the hospital with Kate and Claire. Also, yay seeing Rob (http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Rob_McElhenney) again! And pissed off. That's when he is at his best.

Maybe I was just hyped up on caffeine, but the scene with Sawyer being all pissy about proposing was... mildly touching?

Also, lol, Claire-Rousseau.

Viewed in a vacuum, I enjoyed this episode just fine, but we're in the final stretch.  I was hoping fluff like this would be absent.  It's giving me unpleasant BSG flashbacks.

Claire-Rousseau made me chuckle.

It's a setup episode. I liked it. We're going to have a few episodes like this that clear the table of baggage for other shit to happen. Hopefully, there won't be more table-clearing episodes than HOLY SHIT DO YOU BELIEVE THAT episodes this season.

This.  You have to move the characters and the story around to set up the next big plot event.  There was some decent story movement, though.

1.  Indirectly confirmed alot of stuff related to the black smoke.  The black smoke is the Big Bad Guy/Un-Locke, who is also responsible for the infection stuff from season 1/2.  Also confirms that Christian (and therefore everyone else who has shown up but is dead) is the Bad Guy/Smokey/Un-Locke, since Claire was with Christian the last few times we saw her and Claire is thought to be infected/"claimed".

2.  We had to have Sawyer mourning Juliet to set up whatever fucked up nonsense he would get up to later.  Otherwise it would come off as completely nonsensical when he showed up and did whatever awful thing he will definitely do. 

3.  Claire taking over Rousseau's role is an interesting callback, and sets up Jin's arc of trying to get back to Sun while dealing with crazy and/or infected Claire.  With any luck, Claire and Kate will kill each other!

4.  It did get a Kate-centric episode out of the way in a relatively painless manner, considering she sucks.

5.  The Jack/Other leader is setting up Jack for another crack at a leadership arc, hopefully after he learned his lessons in earlier seasons.


There was story/plot advancement here.  It wasn't a bullshit stand-alone filler episode that didn't do anything.  The weakest part about the episode is that it didn't deal with the most interesting characters, which are Locke (un-Locke), Ben, Desmond (does he even have a large role this season?), or Richard.

I don't care about Kate, Claire, Sawyer being emo tough guy at all.  I don't care about stupid, obvious circular allusions to Rousseau -- that's lazy.  They didn't do much to advance the plot, and this whole flash-present stuff is starting to feel like Touched-by-an-Angel.

If there's threat -- and there is with un-Locke -- they need to get on with that and then watch how everyone else falls into place around that conflict.  Including all the history.  Evil reveals itself.  Watch the drama unfold and understand all the previous conflicts and confusions.  But no.  More journey of discovery stuff with Kate.  Cripes.

Bringing back Claire was like as bad as getting into work and finding detergent stains all over your black jumper.  "Cripes, how did that not get washed out?"  Disappointing bridge episode.

Claire is back, and she's pissed off, you bitches.  :drill: :drill: :heart:

So these infected people are other others we have been expecting/fearing.  If Claire is one Smokey's minions, that would make her quite different the Rousseau.  Rousseau killed her husband after he became minion-fied.

I guess Jacob could be a smoke monster as well.

Back in season 2, Locke was talking to Eko about the monster, and said what he saw was beautiful and white.  So, yeah, probably.

Which means the show will end with an epic smoke monster on smoke monster fight!

Seen it.

(http://www.shallownation.com/images/snoop-dogg-willie-nelson2.jpg)

This is all just reinforcing my theory from session one, its all cyclic, the factions always stay the same, just the players progress.

Great episode. And we now know at least part of the significance of the numbers.

Not really.  Where are the number in between those?  Are they other people?

Also, I'm pretty sure that blond haired kid wasn't Jacob but some other "above the fray" guy.  Good ep though.

Very good episode. So Shadow Locke isn't a god, per se, but a man trapped on the island as a cosmic counterbalance - the yang to Jacob's yin (or vice versa). And he's damn tired of being on the island and wants off. To that end, he has to kill Jacob, which I assume triggers some sequence whereby both Jacob and anti-Locke gets replaced with some other sucker candidate, or at least lets him out of the contract so that he can find himself a replacement.

Lots of questions, most having to do with the sideways timeline. Is Ben Linus in Locke's school because he never went to the island (which would lead you to believe the island was sunk long before Ben would have gotten there, meaning the diverging of the timeline didn't happen in the '70's with the incident), or is it the scheming Ben from the island as part of some other plot? Both Locke and anti-Locke make the same statement when told they can't do something: "Don't tell me what I can't do." Or something to that effect. Does that mean anti-Locke escapes as real Locke and the sideways timeline is the way he does it? And why does the Latina Fun Bags on the beach know so much about the people on the island?

Locke's funeral was one of those great moments that can only happen on Lost.
Sawyer has become a pretty great character.  As a con man, he has to be expecting the con, he's basically good but very demoralized.  It's impossible to know what he is going to do.
Really curious what they are going with Ben, his request to be judged by the island was a sham.  So will he seek his redemption in other ways, or will he go back to his old ways?

EDIT:  Maybe Ben doesn't want redemption anymore if it was predicated on counterfeit resurrection.

yes great stuff.   Thank God we got through with Kate last week. 

I couldn't help laughing whenever the dramatic lost noises came on during the alternate timeline whenever two Losties would meet each other.

So funny.

nice touch when Locke and Ben meet.  Ben teaches European History and Locke is a "substitute", which is the name of the episode.  And thus the whole revelation of the Losties as possible candidates, maybe.  I love the idea of Sawyer playing the long con.

Of course, this all assumes Flocke is telling Sawyer the truth.  Remember that conversation he had with Jacob in the finale.  He seemed more pissed that Jacob kept bringing annoying strangers to his fun party, than because he was trapped there.


This has been bothering me somewhat about *ahem* Latina Fun Bags.  She knew what was in the box.  She knew why they were carting it across the island to show to the Others.  But she didn't recognize Locke right off the bat when he first appeared?  Even if, for whatever reason, she didn't immediately look in the box to confirm what Mr. Black looks like, shouldn't she have been at least a little suspicious of some mysterious dude who appeared out of nowhere?  Especially when he says shit like, "I remember dying"?

Did anyone notice the names that _weren't_ specifically pointed out on the wall?  Kate's, Claire's, and the other Kwon.  Did anyone catch them in the background, or were they completely absent?   

Notice that when they went through the names, the scene where Jacob met them was replayed, and he made an effort to physically touch each of them?  He touched both Kwons on the shoulder, so it can be theorized that they are considered the same 'number,' whatever that actually means.

As to your actual question, I don't remember seeing the other names you mentioned, but the scene seemed to be deliberately staged so that the viewer would have a hard time deciphering names on the wall other than the showcased ones.  I imagine having a Tivo would help some, though.

I suspect the ambiguity of this point is the sole reason that everyone is referenced by last name on the wall.  My guess is that the "important" Kwon is their child.

There isn't enough time in the show left for their child to be of any consequence unless they do some time traveling later on (which the producers said they weren't going to do).

And here is someone elses theory from another message board regarding the new character (blond kid) that MiB and Sawyer can see.


I thought it was interesting.

I'm starting to think it's more and more likely that the flash-sideways is actually the ending of the show, and the other timeline will show us how that reality came into existence.

There are some inconsistencies that need to be explained if that's true (why did Jack have blood on his neck/seemingly recognize Desmond, where is Christian's corpse, why did Juliet say it worked if The Incident didn't cause the divergence, etc), but I could see satisfactory explanations for those questions that still fit in with the theory.

At this point, even though they've said it isn't Atlantis, it just screams Atlantis.

It does?

Well the island IS underwater in the alternate reality...

Mystical island, moving around that nobody can find through time, with ancient protectors and a crumbling set of old ruins and temples, magical powers, and outside forces that are trying desperately to get at. There's also a fountain of youth aspect to the island as well. And the whole thing ends up underwater in the other reality, as stated before.

I'm really really afraid at this point that what we think of as the alternate reality turns out to be the true reality, and what we witnessed was a whole bunch of dream-related bullshit that never really took place.

Claire is  :ye_gods:

Why the hell did Jack have to bust the sweet lighthouse dealie? I would have spun that fucker around a few times.

Because every instinct Jack has is wrong.  He's George Costanza and he doesn't know it.

Jack is Jacob's replacement. The appearance of Dogan in the sideways timeline along with Jack's ability to get over his daddy issues for his own son (who didn't exist in the other timeline that I know of) tells me that the sideways timeline is a test to determine which candidate should replace which entity or something.

Oo, I like that.  But then why are we seeing so much of Locke, if he's dead in the "real" timeline?

He's the smoke monster who has escaped the island, only he did so in a new body without knowledge of his previous life on the island.  :grin:

The Man in Black took over Locke but I think there is a little piece of Locke still in there and he may come free one day...

Muahhah, I want a splatter spin-off with Claire ripping body parts with her trustworthy hatchet  :heart: :heart: :heart:

I would watch that show in a heartbeat.  Maybe she could team up with Sheri Moon Zombie as Baby Firefly.

I mean, that "Are you still my friend Jin?"

Jin -----> :oh_i_see: :ye_gods: "Yes!"
 
:heart: :heart:

This whole "Candidate" business just seems to be an expanded version of what we had with the hatch. Crazy dude living in his own zone trying desperately to keep the world from ending, waiting forever for a worthy replacement to relieve him of his duties.

Hurley is the new "Jacob."  Assuming that is the ending you are predicting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The two timelines will coincide.  As with most dual timeline theories they are starting to bleed together "Hey mom when did I get my appendix out?"  Whats gonna happen is Jacob will be revived, the crashies will take on the various roles around the island, and we will end where we began.  Spaceship or some such shit.

Yep, Hurley is the guy. I'm not sure about the melding part.

Liking this season.  "That's not John.  That's my friend."  That's *creepy* is what that is. ^^

I really love this series right now. But I'm feeling a cognitive dissonance with the writers. I think I'm not supposed to cheer at the thought of Claire killing Kate. I think I should worry for poor Kate, but I say the sooner the better.

Whos name was at 160.

I thought Who was on first?

ya great stuff.  Need now the list of all names that were on the wheel.  Internet plz deliver....

Hawking and Widmore would be the two names to look for, methinks.

I missed a couple things in that episode.  Jacob asked Hurley to turn the lighthouse mirror to 108 (heh, like the hatch 108 minutes and the sum of 4,8,15,16,23,42) but did we actually see what 108 was?  I thought Jack stopped it around 120 or so.  I likely missed an important piece.  

What's the 160 reference from?  I feel like I need a :plane flies over head: emote.

Me being confused, I was asking whos name was on the mark jacob sent them to turn the mirror to.

Didn't he say it was a him? My guess is Desmond.

Oooh. I bet that's who it is. Nice.

Reports are that it names someone new.

Fucking...awesome.  :awesome_for_real:

Another terrible episode that really didn't do much to advance the story at all.  They are splitting up into a story for all the characters while progressing the plot and hour or two.

This is like one of the later Jordan novels that spend all it's time jerking around and you really don't give a shit going on but you you're hoping for an epic last chapter.

I bet Kate start tugging her hair next episode.

Lost reminds me of the Ravenloft campaign setting. 


Darklord ....check.
Darklord with fantastic powers.....check.
Land is the prison of the darklord......check.
Whispers in the shadows..... check.


My useless analysis for what its worth.  In any case, my guess was proven wrong already.  I thought they were in purgatory.  I can't wait to see how this ends.

Wow you really missed the point of this episode. Nothing happened in the story? They iced the whole temple!
 
Kate wandering about the town in alternate universe, that's nothing happening.

Not to mention that I still don't think that UnLocke's side is evil yet. They are really really setting the stage for Jacob being the evil force on the island. Notice that when confronted by Sayid, Drogan (if that's the Japanese leader's name) says that the machine is for checking the scales. They test good and evil, and here's the key... he says, "Yours came up on the wrong side."

He never says, you were evil. He just says it's the wrong side. Sayid then tries to justify that he's not evil, and gets attacked. I'll go even further with the point. Drogan only pulls off of him when he thinks back to something remotely decent in his life, and intimates that Jacob offers a hard line deal to get to the island. Nothing Jacob is doing so far is for the greater good. Nothing the smoke monster has done beyond smashing the ridiculous followers of Jacob, who answer no questions and kill for reasons beyond our pitiful understanding, has been evil. In fact, he's giving second chances out to most folks like they are candy, unless you side with Jacob.

The temple is gone?  The one we knew about for 4-5 episodes?  Oh I know we knew about it as some mysterious thing that no one knew what is what.  Great.  But I didn't have any connection with it.

I didn't see Kate wandering anywhere in this episode.  Where was she?

The whole good/evil thing is getting a little thin.  It's not progressing at all.  it's just more hints and gesturing.  Nothing is being resolved.  Though I don't expect it to until the end, so still nothing happened.

Still a bad episode.  They are focusing too much on a single character and not them all as a group.  I thought it was bad when they kept going back and forth with the '70s people and the rescued people in the other seasons.  This is just irritating.

It's that part of the book when your main group of character split up and have to go through a bunch of boring chapters to get back to the good part.  Just like Robert Jordan.

Dogen specifically says Fake Locke is pure evil.

Fake Locke can't kill Sayid, because he's a candidate.  It's got nothing to do with having a good nature.  The kid in the woods from a few eps ago was even saying how he can't just kill Sawyer.  He has to follow the rules (or he forfeits his prize of being able to return home if he wins?).

He's manipulated events just as much as Jacob has, all as a means to satisfy his own agenda.

I doubt they're setting him up to be the good guy.   If anything, they're just blurring the lines.  It's a game, and they're both playing to win.

In the alternate timeline, Dogen's son is alive.  Does that mean that Jacob engineered the accident that killed Dogen's son in the first place?

I thought it rocked. Lots of good action, a cool martial arts fight, some good one liners from Miles, and it's always fun seeing Keamy get wiped out.

Perfectly good episode. I'm content!

Everyone says their enemy is pure evil; it doesn't mean he actually is.

Well, let me just say:

Catch a falling star an’ put it in your pocket,
Never let it fade away...
Catch a falling star an’ put it in your pocket,
Save it for a rainy day...

Fantastic, chilling episode.

Great fucking episode. As for evil/not-evil Locke, I'm thinking he is the dark side of the equation. They aren't necessarily saying that he's evil (Dogan's comment aside) but that he's selfish. It isn't old school Mephistopheles evil, it's "I want what I want and fuck everyone else" evil. He wants off the island, but the Vanzetti equation, the keyboard at the computer, the giant electromagnetic thingie, I think it all points to the island being crucial to the universe. There has to be the balance between Jacob and Anti-Locke or whoever takes their place and if one or both are removed from the equation, shit starts to break down.

The sideways timeline is proving that all of these people are destined to come together somehow, some way. Sayeed's brother showing up in Jack's hospital, Ben Linus showing up at Locke's school, Keemo dealing with Sayeed and Jin, Jack and Dogan meeting up, Hurley and Locke meeting up, etc. Whatever cosmic force brings them to the island brings them together when the island is underwater.

So I'm rewatching it now on Hulu, and something is bugging me.  

Why did Dogan send Sayid out to meet Locke with a dagger in his hand?  

Locke said it was because Dogan wanted him to kill Sayid, but I think Dogan knew that wouldn't happen -- he sent Sayid after Claire suggested that he send someone Locke wouldn't kill, i.e. a candidate.  Did Dogan actually think Sayid would be able to kill Locke, the same way that Ben was able to kill Jacob?  I don't get the impression he'd make a mistake like that.

Maybe Sayid can only kill Locke after he's been recruited (i.e. Ben could only kill Jacob because Ben had been "recruited" by Jacob)?  And Sayid will end up redeeming himself by realizing this and killing Locke at a critical moment?

Maybe it'll make more sense once I get to the scene where Dogan is explaining things to Sayid.

so next week it's Ben's flash sidewise episode.  Who is left to profile before we can get on with it?

Ben
Jin/Song
Hurley
Sawyer

last episodes to go:

"Aeb Aeterno" should be THE Episode, since it's going to deal with

Betcha "Recon" is about Sawyer.   :awesome_for_real:

Because Dogan and his ilk are the evil on the island, or another evil on the island and there is no good. Jacob and all of his people are seriously into telling everyone lies in order to get what they need all the time for the "greater good." Of course Dogan knew it wouldn't work. That's why he told him to jam it into his chest before he even had the chance to talk. He was hoping BlackLocke would wipe out one of his own before he could turn, since he finally found his moral compass and let Sayid go. He still felt tied to his duty in the temple, but he couldn't pull the trigger himself.

Everything I know about Jacob makes him look like a giant manipulative dick. Do we have a lot of examples where Jacob has actually helped anyone when it wasn't directly associated with fucking them into a rock and a hard place later? Here's my guess on what he's up to. He's manipulating and looking hard for the right candidate because he's waiting around to steal their soul and body to feed his "godhood" for the next 1000 years. They aren't there to replace him at all.

The more and more it unfolds, I expect the Jacob camp to be the writers shot at organized religion and their duplicity.

That's the story Locke told, but I still don't buy it, specifically because of what Claire said about Dogan sending someone Locke wouldn't kill.  At which point Dogan turned to Sayid as being the obvious choice for that job.  And he didn't look at all surprised that Sayid came back alive.  I don't think he expected either of them to die at that meeting, which means he had some other agenda.

Re: Jacob and religion, remember "GOD LOVES YOU AS HE LOVED JACOB" from Ben's brainwashing film?  I'm hoping that will make sense at some point.

Dogan saw the baseball drop right before he killed Sayid, and remembered his promise to Jacob.  Killing the candidates is against the rules, even if he thinks its for the best.  Getting someone else to kill a candidate is just a loophole.

But I'm not sure he thought Flock would kill him.  He didn't just hand him any old knife, he was keeping one special.  Jacob probably gave it to him, and told Dogan to use it when he had the chance.

I also got the impression that Dogan knew he would die on the island; part of his bargain with Jacob.

The only agenda possible from that line of logic is leading the people out of the temple to follow nonLocke in order to save them. That's assuming you know in advance Sayid comes back and warns the people before he destroys the temple. And after all that Drogan still ends up dead. I'm not buying into Jacob as anything but wrong. The whole white and black imagery. Tossing the white stone into the ocean and calling it an inside joke. Nothing that Jacob says is real. He will lie and use more people than anybody.

Dogan did say: "He will come to you as someone you know.  Someone who has died.  As soon as you see him, plunge this deep into his chest.  If you allow him to speak, it is already too late."

Sayid encounters unlocke:  "Hello Sayid."  *stab*  "Now why'd you go and do that?"

Not, mind you, that I entirely trust Dogan.

Just going to leave that here.

*backs away slowly*
 :ye_gods:

Thats Batmanuel, and he was awesome!

Oh man, I totally forgot that was the same guy.

Just a word of warning: in the next couple of days, the Lost crew will start filming the Series Finale (yep, that's it).

Obviously, spoilers will start coming through, albeit slowly, but eventually more and more stuff will start to leak. If you don't want to be spoiled, be extremely careful from now on when surfing forums, blogs, even youtube videos. People are always ready to ruin teh fun, especially in this case, with the anticipation growing and all that.

I use to follow some of the other lost pages to catch up on easter egg's, hints, and theories I missed, but now I've stopped for the last season.  This thread is the only Lost related thing I view on the internet.  So don't fuck it up, OR THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

As to the Jacob = Evil thing, I'm not seeing it Paelos.  That would be the most fucked up "good" side in history if MIB was suppose to be good.  He's killed shitloads of people now.  He went to a man who's tried desperately to atone for his past and said, "Hey, you want to see your loved one again?  I need to to go murder some fucking people and fuck your morals and soul searching.  DO IT."  Which seems to have taken their toll on him mentally (the end of this last episode seems to show that Dogan's statement that once the darkness reached his heart, Sayid would be totally gone, has come true).  As smoke monster (if he was truly the only "smoke monster" on the island at least), he's been knocking off random people, and trying to kill others, since the beginning of the show.

Also, remember that Richard Alpert seems terrified of him, and he has some weird deep connection with the island that goes beyond all this.  Also, Flocke grabbed the white stone from the scale and threw it into the ocean after Jacob died (though that could easily be mis-direction if your theory is true).  Then there's also the fact that the others working for Jacob were concerned about finding the "good" people amongst the survivors and recruiting them.  These including children who are innocent.

No, I think Flocke is bad, and Jacob is good, but lines are a bit blurred.  Flocke is Lawful Evil.  Charismatic evil.  Manipulative evil.  He wants what he wants and will manipulate his way to get it, and will happily betray everybody as need be.  Jacob is the same way but good.  He needs a "good" replacement for the island.  It has to be specific, and he needs to manipulate events out of need to get that person, which fucks up lives, but it needs to be done.  He is sympathetic, but there is no help for it.  They are both manipulative gods playing chess against each other with Mortals as the pawns, but to achieve different ends.  In a way this sort of makes them both bastards, but overall once is working for a good cause while the other isn't.

Also, everybody, you guys did notice that both Dogan and hippy dude where killed and left in the magical fountain of life that cures all wounds and apparently death sometimes, right?  I wouldn't count them out of this yet, or that things aren't going according to plan.  Dogan did very specifically give him that dagger.  Maybe the fact that he was stabbed with it did something to him that will make him be defeated later on somehow.

Someone explain to me how Ben stabbed Jacob and killed him but Sayid stabbed FakeLocke and nothing happened.

I'm assuming it has something to do with the fact that Flocke (or unlocke or whatever) is a condensed smoke monster and I haven't seen any evidence that Jacob was a smoke monster too.

Again, my theory on this is that they can only be hurt by their own "recruits".  The only way for Flocke to kill Jacob was to trick one of his own people into doing the deed.  When Sayid stabbed Flocke he wasn't working for him yet.  I can't believe the writers would rob Sayid of his redemption, though, which means I think he's going to end up turning on Flocke in the end, like Vader and the Emperor.

For some reason, I didn't think about Dogan and hippy dude floating in the pool of resurrection. Only, if the pool is corrupted, it means they'll come out corrupted as well.

For some reason that scene struck me as Sayid deliberately "defiling" the pool, either to corrupt or neutralize it.

Awesome episode tonight.

I totally expected it all to go another way. 

That was some amazing acting. Ben continues to jerk at both the mind and the heart in ridiculously conflicting ways.

Even if we're headed toward a stupid series finale a la BSG, which I doubt, this season was worth it just to see Ben have a little moment of redemption.

They are so goddamn lucky they had him for a guest star back in season two and decided to keep him.

EDIT: s/start/star/

Yeah.

Yeah, Ben proves he can act like a motherfucker without saying a word... AGAIN. He is an actor that just keeps on giving.

So we now definitely know that the candidates are there to replace Jacob - but are they also there to replace the Smoke Monster? We don't exactly have confirmation of that, and I'm guessing Anti-Locke is not going to tell his candidates that they are meant to replace him. Also, the Sideways Locke dropping a little hint of corruption into the Sideways Ben Linus pool makes me continue to think I'm right about Sideways Locke - he IS the Smoke Monster escaped though he doesn't know it.

They are really going to have to fuck the series finale in the ass to tarnish this season.

When Anti-Locke helped Ben escape he mentioned that he needed someone to look after things when he left, so I'm definitely thinking someone has to replace Anti-Locke.  After seeing the submarine at the end of last night's episode I'm thinking Whidmore might be the front runner now that Ben has made his choice.

That or maybe MIB (I'm going to go with "Man in Black" because that's what the annotated Lost episodes call him) is trying to influence who will take Jacob's place, because he wants the new Jacob to be someone he can get favors out of?  If it was just a matter of finding his own replacement, I don't see why he needed to kill Jacob.

I was thinking more along the lines of:

Step 1:  Kill Jacob

Step 2:  Find replacement

Step 3:  Leave island and profit

We know they're playing by a set of rules.  We don't how or what is enforcing those rules, but we know they exist.  Perhaps in order for MIB to escape the island he had/has to complete steps 1 and 2.  Because dem da rules.

EDIT: Never mind, couldn't get link to work.

Here's another point I don't know about.

Ben went to the Smoke Monster to be "judged".  He wasn't aware of Jacobs vs. Man in Black?

However Other's knew who the smoke monster was and how to protect themselves from him.  Why did Ben go to the Smoke monster in the first place?  I don't get it. 

Maybe while Jacob was alive the MIB was bound by a stricter set of rules?  Or maybe they could both turn into smoke monsters?

Its a balance thing.

Ya, Ben's judgment scene doesn't make much sense in the current story.  I thought he went to the Temple to be judged by the Island. In past they referred to the smoke monster as a security system, so I guess Ben thought it was an emissary of the Island.

Ben's "judgment" was entirely a ploy by MIB.  He (as Locke) told Ben to go down into the temple and be judged.  The smoke monster appears (which is MIB) and takes the form of Alex in order to convince Ben to stop dickering around and just follow Locke (who is now MIB at that point).  It was all part of MIB's plan to start working on Ben and get him ready to blindly kill Jacob.

Hmm I thought it was Ben's idea to do that.

I couldn't remember either, but I found a clip that answers the question:

http://www.cinemablend.com/celebrity/Ben-Gets-Judged-This-Week-On-Lost-16737.html

It was Ben's idea, but I think MIB seized upon the opportunity to manipulate Ben.  You can almost see the gears turning in Locke's head when Ben says he was coming back to the Island to be judged.

I thought Ben didn't know that Lock wasn't really alive again until after killing Jacob.

*edit*  i.e. He thought the island reincarnated Locke and didn't know Locke's real body was in the box.

Why didn't Ben know it wasn't Jacob in the cabin?  The big ring of ash should have been a tip off  :oh_i_see:

It seems like someone trapped him in there.  Then, the first time Locke was taken there, MiB asks him to help him, presumable to break the ring so he could get out... which we see someone has done when Illana/Bram visited, but we still don't know by who.

And if MiB was trapped in the cabin by the ring of ash - and MiB is Smokie and the apparitions people have seen - how were they able to roam about?

Get it together, you guys.  I totally rely on you to make me feel as if I know what the fuck is going on.

Did anyone notice Ben's Dad's comment about how they should have never left the Island?  never left the Dharma Initiative?

I found that interesting because so far this season I had the impression that the sunken island indicated in the flash-sidewise-world was real.  It suggested that nothing on the Island had ever happened.  But with this one remark it seems clear that one timeline did happen, but ended before Flight 815.  Maybe up until when Ben was shot by Sayid?

Yes, I was wondering about that.  I figure that in the sideways timeline the island sunk sometime after the Dharma days, or maybe at the time the bomb went off.

yup but the bomb was in the "past"

Anyways, I forgot why this was interesting.... The flash-sidewise narrative I thought was originally being presented as an "as if" the events on the Island never took place.  Instead, it looks some of the narrative did happen.  But also, the choices and events that happen to the main characters in the flash-sidewise seem to reflect or anticipate what's happening on the Island in the present. 

So for instance, Ben choosing Alex in the flash-sideways over power, Sayid killing in cold blood in flash-sideways and then going dark with Flocke.  The events in the flash-sideways are revealing the true essence of the characters?  It seems more than a dramatic device is what I'm getting at, like flash-sideways is alternate but equal world?

In the first episode of the season, when they show the island underwater, the camera swims by the darmha houses.  So what ever happened, the divergent timeline started after the Darmha initiative.  My guess is the same as Samwise, that it diverged at the point the nuke went off.  In that timeline, Ben and his dad are one of the people evacuated off the island, along with Miles and his mom.

Anybody else get a kick out of seeing Jackie Treehorn's thug playing Jacob?
(http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h292/ahoythematey/BlondTreehornThug.jpg)

Miles comment to Ben about Jacob's last thoughts really bothers me. Miles says Jacob was hoping he was wrong about Ben, but Jacob went out of his way to antagonize him right before Ben puts a knife into his chest: "What about you?" There's not much more of dick move. ANYTHING else could have probably turned Ben away from his course of action, but Jacob chose not to say one of those other things.

He was pushing for Ben to kill him as much as BlackLocke was. For a very very manipulative being, I don't think Jacob just tossed the words out there to test him.

Or Rita's ex from 'Dexter'.

There's all kinds of weird things about the side timeline.  Such as the fact that the whole reason that Locke decided to go on walkabout was because Abbadon told him about them when he was Locke's PT/nurse during recovery from the fall from the high-rise.  It always made me wonder how he came up with the idea to walkabout if Abbadon hadn't have told him.... or if Abbadon was simply just a PT/nurse for his whole life in the side timeline. 

Anyways, yeah.  This is going to be a seriously interesting finale.

I think the finale is going to be a disappointment.

My guess is we're getting a glimpse of the finale every side-flash. Or maybe it will end with Hurley hosting a golf tournament, which would also be awesome.

Watching this program again convinces me that Hurley is one of the shows greatest inventions. He's not only consistently likeable, which is a feat since several of the show's heroes are pretty insufferable at times, he's a great tool for the writers.  Hurley is the audience and not just comedy relief.  He's the way the writers can speak directly to the audience in a way the show-don't-tell style of the program would otherwise avoid.  He allows the writers to explain things in a direct way.  It pushes the story along in a new way.  They put the audience's questions in his mouth and he gets to ask about things we want to know.  It's a great trick, particularly for a show that's all about obfuscation.  I think without Hurley the show would've been a little more irritating and disappointing as it progressed, like Twin Peaks or the X-Files.  

I mean, when they started time travelling he wanted to write the script for the Empire Strickes Back...  Not Star Wars mind you, but Empire, "because it was the best film."  Gold.   :awesome_for_real:

Hurley definitely had the best lines in the series, particularly regarding his questions about Richard's agelessness.  "So, are you, like, a terminator? A vampire?"

When Hurley breaks down and finally confesses to his mother what actually went on while he was on the island, it was possibly one of the best and funniest recaps of the show.

I'm pretty sure that's the same ep that had his mom saying "Jesus is not a weapon!"... that had me in stitches.  Likely the hardest I've laughed on this show ever.

my hope for the ending is Hurley is made God and left alone to golf and eat and stroll on the island in bliss with a handful of ghosts to talk with.  But I fully expect to be disappointed with Jack and Sawyer taking over for Jacob and MrBlack.

As long as Kate dies, I'm happy.

I agree with what you said.

Watch it end up being some wacky combination like Sayid and Sun.

I fully expect a Sun & Sun ending with happiness for all.

Well that was another setup episode while they wait for the OMG RICHARD!!!1 reveal.

Yeah, kind of a letdown after the last couple of episodes where things happened.  I did love Sawyer and Miles as cop buddies though.  That would be a great spinoff.

It was good.  Things moved forward.  The thing with Kate/Smokey/Clarie was a bit strange.

That was the best part, and got me thinking. If Sawyer becomes a cop instead of a criminal, it brings up a few questions:

Since we know Jacob visiting the Young Sawyer after his parent's death in the timeline where he becomes a criminal, does that mean Jacob's intervention made him a criminal? If so, does his life as a cop mean that Jacob DID NOT intervene? And if that's true, did he not intervene because the island was gone? Or did he intervene in a different way?

Miles mentioned his father being a professor at some museum, which leads me to believe that the doctor survived the nuclear explosion and got off the island (unless Miles meant a stepdad his mom told him was his real dad). Wasn't he right in the area where the blast occurred? If so, how did he make it off the island? And if he made it off, does that mean some of the main characters like Jack or Kate made it off as well, possibly leading to a second set of people living in the sideways timeline, like an Old Jack and a Young Jack?

It was a boring episode.  Nothing happened.  If next week's episode isn't brilliant and amazing, then there is no hope in saving it.

Because Jacob is an evil douchebag who ruins everyone's life that he touches.

Yeah, it is striking how by and large everyone is much better off in the flash sideways.  Although I don't know if I buy that it's because Jacob is gone and they're free to live their lives without interference, because they all keep conveniently running into each other.

We don't know that Jacob wasn't in their lives in the flash sideways - just that the island wasn't a part of their lives. They are still being drawn together in various ways.

Hell, nobody believes Jacob is righteous anymore after Richard's meltdown in the shack. Jacob sucks. He's not the white knight. At best he's trying to save the world at all costs. At worst, he's the devil of the show (which is what I believe).

Liked the episode, the flash sideways with the buddy cop routine was enjoyable, Charlotte was sufficiently hot, Kate was almost killed. Good times.

But how on earth does Sawyer think using a sub is easier than flying a plane? How many people would he have to force on gunpoint to do their job?

That's what I said to my fiance.  He thinks trying to submerge a sub is going to be easier than flying a large commercial plane?  I would think both are impossible.

Plus can just two people even operate a sub?

Its a priviate sub, not a millitary one.

Anyway, I am starting to long for the days where the dharma group was the mystery, I think the show peaked at the arch surrounding the hatch, and dharma.

Me too.

It was much more compelling then the current sessions tacked on feel. The show as a whole though, I still like.

I still dont think we know half of what we should about dharma.

Easy way to pilot sub: hold gun to sub pilot's head.

As I said earlier, how many people do you need for such a sub? How many of those will be fighting Lockes crew while Sawyer sneaks on the Sub during the fight (which is his stated plan).

Who says Sawyer didn't learn a little about piloting a sub when he was in the security department with the Dharma Initiative in the '70s?

To make it move? One most likely. To navigate, repair, maintain, troubleshoot, and monitor tolerances? More than one.

The point of seasons past was that you need an exact course to go to and from the island. So navigating would be a good idea if that still is true.

so here's where we are with the season:

9   "Ab Aeterno"  (“from the beginning of time”)  >> Richard, reveal show (more about island history, less flash sidewise drama)
10  "The Package"  >> Sun/Jin, transition show (like this week's with Sawyer, more sidewise drama)?
11  "Happily Ever After"  >> Claire? reveal show (Christian, Flocke history)
12  "Everybody Loves Hugo"  >> Hurley, transition show
13  "The Last Recruit"  >> reveal
14   TBD 
15  "Across the Sea"
16   TBD
17/18   TBD

That was pretty good history stuff. I loved seeing Jacob and the Man in Black actually interact with normal dialogue.

Good episode, only complaint is that they didn't spend more time with Richard being on the island.  It's a minor complaint though.

So the island is a cork for teh evil. Well, according to Jacob at least.

Great episode. Probably the 2nd best of the season.

Still not buying it that Jacob's stopping the evil. They both just seem like two total assholes caught in a cycle they don't really want.

I think that's actually the point. Jacob isn't so much stopping the evil as stopping the corrupting influence of the Man in Black, the part of people's psyche that chooses to do bad things to get what they want regardless of the cost to other people. Jacob isn't a white knight, he's just the unlucky SOB who got stuck with the job of keeping this bigger asshole locked in prison.

Prison guards can be real assholes until you compare them to the assholes they are guarding.

Cool episode.  The thing with the island being the cork in the wine bottle of evil, and needing two people to maintain it... remind anyone else of the hatch?

"Now *that*, I can do." - Jacob

Interesting that MIB's instructions for killing Jacob are the same as Dogan's instructions for killing the MIB.  The former ineffective due to Jacob beating the crap out of Richard, the latter (possibly) due to Sayid failing to stab him *before* he spoke (as instructed).

Still loving season six.

Ben stabbed Jacob after he spoke however. So maybe the dagger just doesn't work on MiB and Dogan didn't know that. Or did, and just wanted to get Sayid killed.

edit: I recall a theory somewhere about a candidate having to stab them to kill them. Guess if Sayid stabbed MiB with the dagger now he would die. Richard apparently was brought to the island by Jacob as a candidate of some sort.

So who noticed that during the episode before it went to commercial that the cut screen didn't say "Lost" it was just a blank screen?

Also, I just read that the Captain of the Black Rock was named Hanso who's great grand son (or however many greats) was none other than the Hanso that started the Dharma Initiative.  Apparently he had bought the Captains journal or something.

I'm getting a very Shadows/Vorlon from Babylon 5 feeling from the Jacob/MiB conflict. I like that.

Heh, Big Lebowski thug got to reprise his toilet dunking scene ;)

I like the theory that I heard that Jacob/MiB are both jerks, but MiB is worse. Or that Jacob is the stereotypical brutal asshole prison guard.

My only issue is how the Island has become a back drop.  All the interesting questions about the island don't seem to matter any more.  The Island is just setting for Jacob and Smokey's slap fight.

If Smokey restrained(metaphysically) Jacob while Ben killed him then Sayid and Richard's attempts were doomed because they didn't have help to restrain their target.  Smokey could never restrain and kill Jacob before because Jacob could always retreat to his statue.  Smokey didn't send Richard to kill Jacob, but to get Richard into Jacob's employ.  That way, Smokey could have an opportunity to trick Richard into giving Smokey and Ben an invite to the statue sometime later.

Saw a theory on the internets that the statue represents the Egyptian god Sobek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobek).


Sound like anyone we know?

all I know is Hurley once again saves the day.  Awwww yeah  :awesome_for_real:

The statue is of Taweret. But I wouldn't doubt that Jacob is Sobek or something like that. What with Eqyptian references already all over the place.

Was it confirmed in the show itself that the statue is of Tawaret?  It seems like that's the dominant theory based on the glimpses we've seen, but they don't actually look that different.

(edit) Okay, Abrams confirmed it in Wired (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taweret#In_popular_culture).

Not sure if it was explicitly confirmed in the show. Producers did confirm it a couple times outside it.
Sobek also apparently has ties to Tawaret in Egyptian mythology.

Random thoughts.  So if the island is the cork to keep back evil, almost sounds like it the island is basically the gate to hell (or something like it).  That could tie in with the hatch and the energy that it was covering.  When they bored into it, they inadvertently cracked the the seal over the evil/whatever.  The nuke did something, and then they needed to keep hitting the buttons to maintain the seal.  Thats why the world would end if they ever stopped hitting the buttons.  It'd open the gates to hell/whatever.

Of course thats very similar to the plot of the Wheel of Time, so....  :why_so_serious:

I think this episode just reaffirms that the flash sideways are the ending, or better put, the character resolutions after whatever happens in the finale to cause history to change.  The island being sunk at the season premier is symbolic of the cork being pushed all the way in.


Yes.  It's annoying to watch - time and time again - people who were supposed to have so many secrets end up not knowing shit.  It's past the point of just showing how they're pawns to the endgame.  143 years, and Richard hasn't divined out one damn nugget of information worth telling?  I don't know if they're just being tight-lipped because they think it might ruin the ending or what, but they need to start making with the answers post haste.

It's basically about faith vs. reason

You don't need to know the answers if you have faith, you want all the answers if you lean to reason.

People like real Locke, Ben, Richard and others never questioned Jacob because they had faith. Richard even thinks he is in Hell and knows a being that has granted him immortality so he doesn't need much to be faithful. Locke could walk again after crashing on the island so he didn't need much to be faithful.

Season six is essentially a giant crisis of faith for every one. Richard, Ben and others are frustrated because they sacrificed so much for their faith but never gotten any gratitude for it never got redeemed and never got to an end of their service for Jacob. Ben even sacrificed his daughter for Jacobs cause (something God did not let Abraham do)

They never needed answers because they had faith but now that their faith is waning they want them and are frustrated that they never got any.

The followers of reason have their own crisis of faith with people like Jack realizing that more of their lives were influenced by some sort of demigod and not by their own decisions than they'd like. The man in black is capitalizing on that by drawing those people closer to him.

The flash sideways in my opinion show some sort of "afterlife" with each life being better or worse depending on the person being more on the good or evil side of the equation as the end approaches.

I don't even think that Jacob is there to keep the man in black from escaping but that the balance of good and evil on the island is necessary to keep the energy contained.

If they were inspired by ancient mythology they would have acknowledged that for most of them good and evil needed to be in balance that either one couldn't exist without the other.

Its Vorlons vs Shadows, the Island Edition.

Actually, I think Ben sacrificed all he did in the name of Jacob, but since he never saw Jacob, he was actually working for the Man in Black the whole time. Jacob has been gone from the cabin for a long time, IIRC, since before the plane crashed.

Probably NSFW.

Ya, the Others seemed committed to a cause that they knew nothing about.  It's an gaping big plot hole given the extreme actions that the Others committed.

Ben said he never talked to Jacob, and Richard should have known Jacob was at the statue, not the cabin.  None of that make sense to me yet, and I'm not sure they really have an explanation for it.

However, MiB has definitely been playing Ben for a looooong time.  He was probably the one appearing as Ben's mother when he was a boy.  He's behind the losties being sent back in time so Sayid would shank him.  He's probably the reason why Ben got cancer.  He let Roussaue live, so Ben would adopt Alex.  He kept Michael from killing himself, helping bring Keamy to the island to off his daughter.

I think anytime we've seen a dead person on the island, it's been the Man in Black. Jacob seems to have no problem appearing as himself. Which leads one to ask if the visions Hurley saw of Dead Charlie were the Man in Black or Jacob, or something else entirely? He seems able to see dead people anywhere.

I think any dead people Hurley sees are actual dead people. Every other dead person the other people on the island have seen are likely the MiB. Last episode makes me think that. Unless it's really convoluted. Seemed to me that when Richard was talking with his dead wife through Hurley, the MiB was on his way to answer Richard, but got cockblocked due to Hurley and Richards dead wife.

The show is completely stalling at this point. I think they are showing all this alternate life crap because at some point the people will have to decide which life they really want. Locke gets off the island, and they get the alternate universe. Locke stays on the island and they have to guard him for all time.

Locke saying that all the people whose names are on the cave wall must leave reminds me of Farraday's mom saying that all the people who left must return. There's a balance to be maintained.

I thought it was interesting that the MIB said something about Jacob stealing his body.  I wonder if there's a chance that Jacob and MIB switched sides at one point.

I did like Whidmore's speech to Flocke, describing all the things he could be.

Phenomenal episode tonight.

Indeed.

They should have had this be the Desmond show for the last two seasons.

Agreed on both accounts.  This was a great episode, but all Desmond episodes are great.

What strikes me as odd is that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are quite lucky when it comes to casting guest roles. Michael Emerson (Ben), Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond), the guy playing Eko, Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet), Jeremy Davies (Daniel Faraday).

If only they were as lucky with the main cast.

I hate Faraday's character.  I hate how he talks.  It's so purposefully dramatic it irritates me.

(in a low and deep voice)  No (pause) I don't want to set off a nuke (serious look and pause) Desmond.

It's like he's channeling Shatner.

Well, I always got the impression he talked the way he did before because his brain had been fried in an experiment.  He kept forgetting tons of things.

Yeah, I always thought the Farraday thing was a character thing, not an actor thing, but I haven't seen him in much else.

Love the Desmond episode, but I've always loved that character anyway.

So if Eloise doesn't want Desmond to remember, and she was working with Ben Linus, who was mistakenly working for the Smoke Monster (though he thought he worked for Jacob), does that mean the sideways timeline is in fact the result of the Smoke Monster's machinations? That he not only needed to kill Jacob, but also destroy the island prison in order to escape?

I just think Eloise knows whats going on in both timelines.  That's the impression I got.

That's what I took away from it. Eloise in the other reality seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else (Jacob and MiB aside). Being that she's the one at the Lamp Post she may have a handle on both (or all) possible realities.

She looked genuinely scared when she saw Desmond for the first time. She definitely knows more than she lets on

To me it sounded like not only did she know about the alternate realities, she had a hand in setting this one up.  The pointed way she told Desmond that he had everything he'd ever wanted suggested that this was in fact very deliberate.

Maybe the flash-sideways is the Matrix?   :awesome_for_real:

I'm pretty sure they are hinting at that. It seems to be the life that went perfectly for everyone, but for the most part they are devoid of any real love. When they chase love, it fucks everything up.

The exception seems to be Locke's alternate reality, but I think that's by design.

The alternate reality gives them what they want the most not what they actually need to be happy.

Eloise even told this to Desmond. Desmond gets the approval of Charles Widmore although he shouldn't care because his Wife doesn't and is much more important to his life (being his constant and all).

Charlie got the Driveshaft reunion at Widmore's charity event but knew he'd need to be with Claire
Locke got his Wife and the approval of his father but sacrificed his "don't tell me what I can't do" attitude that made him a chosen one.
Sawyer got a life where he didn't kill the innocent man in Australia but never met Juliet.
Kate managed to escape the Marshal but is still on the run (and doesn't meet either Jack, Sawyer or gets to raise Aaron).
Nadia is still alive but has married Sayid's brother
Eloise didn't shoot her own son

Raising and loving Aaron gave Kate purpose
Being with Juliet gave Sawyer purpose
The love of Penny gave Desmond purpose
Meeting Claire gave Charlie purpose
etc.

It kind of makes sense. It's kind of like a twisted take on paradise. People got what they wanted but not what they needed.

I also assume that Eloise made a deal with the devil to get the life she always wanted because she definitely knows that this reality is not really real.

She could be MiB's crazy mother.    :awesome_for_real:

If what you're saying is true, JK, the sideways reality is hell.  But what about Jack and Hurley?  Seems like they've both got pretty good lives.

Except we've seen her age.

But, her younger. Rawr.

We don't know that really. Also, I think sideways reality might be hell. I think letting the MiB off the island is what makes all that shit actually turn out to be true.

Pretty mild hell.

Its going to get worse.

Kate's still alive... that should be hell enough for everyone.

Oh don't worry, it's been hinted that will be taken care of soon enough.

It's the best I can pull out of this half-cock-blocked writing. My real guess is the ending is going to be something blatantly stupid that was never remotely hinted at, but they can probably put together 30s montage of "OMG HOW DID YOU MISS IT..." amongst the 50 hours of character crap you mentally checked out of.

Then, when they ask the writers, they will tell us it wasn't about the destination, it was about the journey.

As long as Hugo and Desmond live I'll be happy.

Luckily this isn't a Joss Whedon show, so they'll probably be okay.

Found this little gem on YouTube last night. This and other related vids had me in stitches for about 20 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLyfgvByE7Q (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLyfgvByE7Q)

Kablooey   :awesome_for_real:

About time. Freaking know-it-all nag.

Man, Jacob really IS an asshole.

Anyways, great episode, especially the end.

I think tonight's episode pretty strongly validated the theory that Locke in the sideways timeline is the smoke monster.

Either that or Desmond was confused and has just made a somewhat tragic blunder.   :ye_gods:

Desmond just hates cripples.  :why_so_serious:

I'm loving the new, calm Jesus Desmond. Either Locke in the sideways timeline is the Smoke Monster and Desmond knows it, or Desmond is trying to get Locke to see the fallacy of the sideways timeline by the vehicular version of the zen slap.

Maybe Desmond can see between the realities at the same time now, and just wanted revenge.  Throw me down a well will you?  Eat my fender asshole!

OOH... or maybe he's trying to put Locke in the hospital so Jack will work on him?

If he'd wanted to kill him, hitting him with a sedan is far from the most surefire way.

Okay, I take back my smoke monster comment.

I don't know why, but this cracks me up

(http://cdn.videogum.com/files/2010/04/libby_kiss.jpg)

Oh my god, that's a brilliant summation of this episode.

Le awesome.

My initial response to Desmond running over Locke is that once Locke dies in the alt-timeline he will comeback to the island timeline and push out the smoke monster.

Desmond is fucking rich, though.  He can't hire a guy to just pop him?  Or buy a gun and do it himself?

My first thought was Desmond was putting things in the sideways timeline "the way they should be" when he hit Locke.

But then I remembered he didn't go murdering Libby. So lol, I dunno. The forcing him to see Jack thing seem the most likely at this point. Followed closely by him seeing both timelines and not knowing Locke is the smoke monster, but knowing Locke pushed him down a well. So fuck that guy. Run his ass over.

This. Because of the recent box of magnets encounter, I think he got a cross pollination update. We already knew Desmond seems to not be beholden to the laws of time and space.

Poor guy, got dragged right back to the dam island.


You just described the entire last season. There is close to nothing in this season that has jack all to do with the first. Its been like a bad Stephen king novel, but I'm still watching because I need closure.

My other fear is that it's something obvious we all guessed back in season 2, but the writers came out and vehemently said, "No it's not that."

"But wait yeah it really was, lulz."  :uhrr: