“That’s why it’s called a leap of faith, Jack.”So... you’re about to get on a plane that you KNOW is going to crash. Would anyone else run screaming from it at the last minute because they couldn't go through that trauma again? Or have a full-scale anxiety attack in the air, forcing the flight attendants to sedate you heavily? Anyone? Just me?
Liars.
Here’s my one-word review of this week’s episode:
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE. Love love love love love.
Sigh. Love.
Hm. I guess this is why newspapers haven’t hired me to review yet.
Everything has happened before, and will happen again
How much did I love that opening, with Jack waking up in the bamboo, the same eerie music, the same wind, the same calls for help. I had no idea it was going to turn out to be anything other than a re-creation of the pilot episode, until he got to the cliff. I thought, “Huh. The pilot episode always made it look like he came out of the trees and right onto the beach. And hey... wasn’t Hurley on the beach?” AWESOME. I know some people don’t like to be manipulated by their TV, but I LOVE it.
Eloise
So is Eloise part of the DI? It stands to reason the DI would have a station off the island. She gives her little lecture (even chastising Jack for not listening, ha!) and it was fantastic, and explained so much. So THAT is why the plane happened to go down. THAT is how these people were chosen and they knew it would crash on that island. How the DI got all of them on the plane in the first place is still up in the air, but we’ll probably find out.
Sun
UPDATE: Just realized I missed talking about one thing: Sun. Last week my brother (who I think watches the show just so he can email me the next day to pick it apart and talk about how stupid it is) emailed me to say, "Oh come ON! Why is Sun going to the island because Ben the Liar told her Jin was there? She's seriously going to abandon her kid to do this?!" and I said, oh ye of little faith... she hasn't said she's going anywhere, she's simply accompanying Ben to the church to see the person with the proof. But she hasn't agreed to go anywhere. A mother isn't going to abandon her kid that quickly, not even for her husband-who-was-dead-and-is-maybe-now-alive-according-to-a-lying-liar.
Well... I was wrong. She just dropped everything and is on that plane. I found that very odd. I know she's madly in love with Jin, but dumping Ji Yeon and possibly never seeing her again, allowing that child to be raised by the PAIKS?! Uh...
Highlights:
• Jack asking Eloise if Ben is telling the truth, and her response: “Probably not.”
• Jack changing Locke’s shoes and talking to him. Even in death, John is still getting to him.
• Hurley reading the comic, Y: The Last Man... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (The comic is written by Brian K. Vaughan, one of the writers on Lost.)
• Hurley buying 78 seats. I love him.
• FRANK LAPIDUS!!!! I SO did not see that coming. I was screaming and laughing all at once.
• Jack: “How can you read?” Ben: “Because my mother taught me.” LOL!!! (Also, I love that even his jokes are complete lies, since his mother didn’t teach him.)
• Jack’s reaction to Locke’s note. The words are so simple, yet so true, and Jack reacts to them like he’s been punched in the gut.
• Jin Workman!
Hurley’s Numbers:
After the opening, it goes back to 46 hours earlier. That’s 23 times 2. When we see the latitude/longitude numbers on the wall of the Lamppost Station, every number is there but 8.
Did You Notice?:
• The episode was called 316 because of the flight number, but interestingly, episode 3.16 is “One of Us,” which might be important for the title.
• Eloise holds out a picture of the island, dated September 23, 1954, which is one day less than 50 years exactly before Oceanic 815 crashed on September 22, 2004. Could the date on the photo be an indication of WHEN they landed on the island?
• Was anyone else waiting for that pendulum to clock Desmond in the stomach and send him sailing across the station? Man, that guy could move around that area with deftness. With grace like that, I’d like to see him on the dance floor.
• Jack wouldn’t believe in the existence of a rock if Locke was the one who had pointed it out to him, and now the guy is hanging on every one of Eloise’s words.
• Eloise barely registers anything on her face when Desmond tells her he was sent by Daniel. Either she already knew or she didn’t care. I can’t wait to find out which it is.
• Desmond announces to the room that he’d already met Eloise and she’d sent him to the island, and yet no one says, “What? Tell me more.” They just assume he’s a lunatic.
• When Desmond is all wide-eyed and crazy and telling everyone he’s done with the island, one of his eyes looked bigger than the other.
• In Eloise’s office, one of Charlie’s Virgin Mary heroin statues was standing on her desk (the arms seemed spread open a little wider, so maybe it’s not an exact copy).
• And... now we know why Christian Shephard was wearing those stupid tennis shoes all this time.
• Eloise tells Jack he needs to give Locke something of Christian’s whether he believes in it or not, and says, “That’s why it’s called a leap of faith, Jack.” In the season 2 episode, “Orientation,” Locke keeps sitting outside his father’s house in a car. Helen comes to the car when she follows him and says he must stop following his father and he has to choose between Cooper and her. Locke says he doesn’t know how to do it. Helen says we never know what’s going to happen, but we do things anyway, and says, “That’s why it’s called a leap of faith.” At the end of that episode, Locke convinces Jack they need to keep pushing the button, and says it’s a leap of faith.
• Ben makes a connection between Doubting Thomas and Jack, that Jack needs to be convinced of things and can’t go on faith. Interesting that “Thomas” and its diminutives is probably the most common name used on the show:
-Thomas was the name of Claire’s deadbeat boyfriend, and he’s the father of Aaron
-Tom was one of the Others
-Tommy was Charlie’s drug dealer
-Tom was Kate’s childhood sweetheart who owned the toy plane
-Tom Sawyer was one of Anthony Cooper’s aliases
-When Ana Lucia and Christian are in Australia, he calls her Sarah and she calls him Tom
• When the magician in the nursing home pulled the towel off the rabbit, was anyone else checking to see if it had a number on it?
• Jack’s grandfather is very much like Kate: always on the run and never wanting to stay in one place.
• On the one hand, the Jaters will be going nuts after this episode, but I think the Skaters will have a good case in this one, too. Notice how distant Kate is the day after she sleeps with Jack. She acts like she’d rather be anywhere but there. The gal is nothing if not consistent in her inconstancy. (I subscribe to neither ship, by the way.)
• When Ben is on the payphone you can see stickers for “Long Beach” and “Big Oyster.” CLUES?! Bah. Probably not. (Though the anagram of Big Oyster is Gibe Story... but with that face could Ben have been lying?)
• Even in death... Locke has five o’clock shadow.
• Clearly the man who offers his condolences to Jack and the woman escorting Sayid will be on the island, or the camera wouldn’t have spent so much time focusing on the two of them.
• By the look on Hurley’s face when he first sees Jack at the airport, he can’t trust Jack further than he can throw him.
• Hurley won’t say how he knew about the flight, and he’s carrying a guitar. I think it’s safe to say Charlie was the one who told him, and he’s bringing a guitar to the island in the faint hope that Charlie might be there, still alive.
• Jack and Kate have a conversation on the plane where Jack talks about how he thinks they’re fated to all be on the plane together, and she tells him that this happened because it happened. He’s officially become Locke, and she’s Jack.
• I love that Jeff Fahey looked more like his usual clean-shaven self. Every time I showed people a picture of what he really looks like, they couldn’t believe it was him. I wanted a pic of him looking like that in my season 4 book, but my editor thought it was too creepy. LOL!
• I was praying that Darlton were kidding about Ulysses, so I’ve only read a few pages of it. DAMMIT.
• When Ben says he didn’t know that Locke had committed suicide, you can tell he’s totally lying.
So Many Questions...
• After the opening, we zip back 46 hours. Then Eloise says the window closes in 36 hours. Since we know they didn’t stand at the opening of the church for 10 hours, why the discrepancy? (And if you’re going to say that maybe Jack was unconscious for 10 hours on the island, I doubt Hurley could have been unconscious in the lagoon that long.)
• The island isn’t done with Desmond yet. (The island and I officially have something in common!) So what is his purpose in all of this?
• Is Ben a religious person at all, or is he just playing the part while he’s in the church?
• Ben says he’s meeting with an old friend and he just has some loose ends that need tying up. Who the hell was the old friend, and what happened to him? Could this have anything to do with Widmore? Was it Sayid?
• Why does Jack have an old tape-to-tape deck in his bedroom? (Did anyone else think it looked like a face when he walked in?)
• It’s strange that we see Ray all of a sudden when we’d never seen him before. He seems a little creepy himself. If Christian is some sort of mystical prophet, could Ray be someone special, too? Is he a catalyst to help get Jack to the island this time?
• If Kate is with Jack, where is Aaron? What happened to her after she left the marina? You’d think after the night she’d had, she would have held onto Aaron and never let him go again. The fact she avoids the question completely and tells Jack never to ask her that again suggests something really weird happened. Did Claire visit her again? With Christian? Who has him?
• Why is Sayid handcuffed to an agent?
• Frank is flying the plane, and he said in “Confirmed Dead” that he was supposed to have been flying Flight 815. Is his presence some sort of karma, and by going back to the island the “right” way, they can right all the wrongs that happened the first time?
• What exactly happens to the plane? Could they have been sucked off the plane somehow and it didn’t really crash, or did all of them go down in that? They’ve clearly gone back in time (see: Jin).
• Does Jin know who they are, or did they land somewhere in the 50s and Jin’s always been on the island? Was that a time-travelling Jin, or has he always been on the island, but doesn’t remember it?
Next week: Locke is alive (duh) and we see Bentham and what happened to Locke between leaving the island with one broken leg and returning in a pine box. I guess Ben’s little analogy about Doubting Thomas could become literal if Jack sticks his fingers in Locke’s stigmata. (Whoa. That sounded dirtier than I meant it to.)
UPDATE: If you don't yet read Jorge Garcia's blog, you should. It's SO funny, and occasionally he actually talks about Lost. A couple of months ago he posted something saying he'd gotten a memo from production saying he'd be "starting wet" and knew he'd be in the water most of the day. Turns out, "316" was the episode he was referring to. So in today's post, he's put up photos of him in the water filming the scene.
UPDATE #2: My DocArzt column just went live here.
130 comments:
Doesn't anyone think it's even the least bit odd that everyone is going on and on about re-creating the plane crash and no one even mentions Walt? I mean, what is the deal with him; have they written him off the show? That is one loose end I so need to see again and the fact that he hasn't been thought about all season really bothers me.
I don't think Jin could have been there the whole time. His nose hasn't even started bleeding. I hate we will probably have to wait two weeks to clue in about what was going on there.
Nice blog. Love it.
Laurie - Yeah, Walt not being part of it does bother me, however it's quite possible that he's not ready to be on the Island again. He could be "special", with his destiny being going back to the Island years from now. This may even include Aaron and possibly Ji Yeon. I personally think the writers got stuck in a corner with Walt b/c the actor aged so quickly and with the time on the Island going by days per each episode they needed to get rid of him. I don't think his story is completely finished though.
As for the plane "crashing", my theory is that when the moment before Locke fixed the wheel, the Island was in 2008 and then jumped to the 70's Dharma era where the Oceanic 6 landed. However, it doesn't explain why Jin is in a Dharma jumpsuit, b/c that means some time has passed for the Left Behinders.
So what happened with Ben? Did he kill Penny? Desmond? Charlie? Or is it something else. Killing Penny or Charlie (on purpose or by accident) could give Desmond a reason to go back to the Island, to get revenge on Ben. But how will Desmond get back?
Nice recap Nikki, now let's open the discussions and show our theories.
Definitely loved it. Totally flashes of the pilot episode!
I totally liked the idea of an 'Island crash course', by Ms Hawking
I think that the guitar/shoes/coffin/cuffs are all for the re-enactment of the 815 crash. As for Hurley we still don't know how he found out.
Let me come out and say it here right now
I DO NOT think that Jin will be Pierre Chang.
Here are some of my suggestions:
Everyone who was on the plane, but not on the island when Ben moved, it have crashed in the ocean or died in mid air (or the plane recovered somehow). Only those who saw the original flash of light and were somewhat affected by it made it to the island.
And here's a concept I came up with after Eloise crash course:
The island is normally moving constantly and gradually through different times, but Ben turning the wheel caused it to skip and carry travelers with it. This can suggest Hurley recording the numbers (anyone else heard him last week?) in the future while Sam Toomey heard them in the past. It would also explain the Black Rock being landlocked. But what about Richard/Ethan/Tom being able to leave at will, the bearing? It's just an overview and not a full detail of the island's mechanics but hey! When Locke turned the wheel, everyone was stuck in the 70's and this is why we saw Daniel and now Jin. And yes I DO think Jin realized who they were.
I think that some of the probable plotlines from this episode suggest the beginning of the end for the Time Loop Theory. I must admit I never liked it in the first place.
Nikki:
I think the guitar is more to recreate the circumstances of the crash, like Lock in a coffin with an item of Christian's rather than hoping to find Charlie again.
There is something odd with the time discrepancy. Maybe it's a typo and it should have read 36 hours earlier.
I would suggest that Sayid beat Ben up and is being deported via Guam with a federal agent (recreating the circumstances of the original crash)
Laurie:
Good point on Walt. It seems he would be a significant part of the crash. Eloise does say "as best you can", or things are unpredictable. Maybe some other things didn't quite get recreated. As for Jin's nose, read my theory for what I believe. But yes, we're all waiting for answers indeed!
Also, I'm halfway through Ulysses. As soon as I heard, I got me a copy and started reading. But being an on-call substitute doesn't help with a reading schedule.
***SPOILER***
QUICK INFO FROM ENHANCED EPISODE "THIS PLACE IS DEATH"
After the well flash: "This is a time earlier, before the well was dug"
Regarding Jin's ring: "Inscription of the ring reads: We will never be apart"
***
• When Desmond is all wide-eyed and crazy and telling everyone he’s done with the island, one of his eyes looked bigger than the other.
I notice this too, so many Desmond has a glass eye? And we'll call him Patchy.
• Jack and Kate have a conversation on the plane where Jack talks about how he thinks they’re fated to all be on the plane together, and she tells him that this happened because it happened. He’s officially become Locke, and she’s Jack
Yes, everyone playing musical chairs. However, I think Kate is now Claire, pregnant (too convenient last minute love scene), Jake/Locke, Hurley/Charlie (I think Hurley has been taking lessons from Charlie), Sayid/Kate, Unidentified law officer/Fed. officer?, Dude-you-need-your-seat-belt/?maybe he's a doctor or religious man? Frank/Pilot, which leaves Sun as Hurley? LOL There was similarities in the French team as well. So we must conclude that the island is looking for some combination of people that will be instrumental in its plan.
I did notice the reel to reel eerie face. Reminded me of the opening of the airforce plane that brought O6 home.
Ben went after Penny. And I think he was instrumental in having Sayid deported.
Edgeshat:
But the O6 left in 2008, three years after we last saw Walt. I would think that this could explain why Walt had grown. Unlike when we saw Michaels story last season.
As for Jin in Dharma, remember that the skipping started in 2005 (and stopped as well). I suggest that the timeline perspective of Jin&co is identical to that of the O6, so 3 years have passed since Locke has (potentially) locked the island in circa 1970. So if he locked them in 1970, the 316 crash happened in 1973 and Jin found them in the lagoon.
I don't know if I explained my thoughts clearly but hopefully it makes some sense.
And you know what. Now that we're all reunited, I think we might see some flashback from those who remained on the island and that could explain what has happened since they got stuck.
I'm surprised how much I loved the episode even though it was mainly off the island. The opening was FANTASTIC and I really hadn't expected things to move on so quickly. I can't wait for the Sun/Jin, Kate/Sawyer, Sawyer/Hurley reunions.
When Ben said 'I made a promise to an old friend of mine' I immediately thought of Widmore and then thought...Oh no, he;s going to kill Penny!
Loved it when Jack said 'This is ridiculous' when Ms Hawking told him to give something of his father's to Locke. Is that any more ridiculous than anything else that's happened in the previous 4 seasons? (Dead Dads appearing? Polar bears? Button pushing? The Others? Islands disappearing?)
I agree that there must be something significant about Ray. Something to do with Jacob. I always thought that the Sheperd family were all 'special' in some way.
Loved it when Lapidus said 'We're not going to Guam are we?' And he looks cute all scrubbed up.
Also a good line from Kate 'Why hold onto something that makes you feel sad?' Says a lot about her.
Claire did tell her not to bring Aaron back to the island, though why she decided to return I don't know.
Good call about Charlie telling Hurley, Nikki. I was wondering why Hurley had a guitar with him and that explains it.
This season has been fantastic from the start, so satisfying.
Hey all! great episode. Loved it
Hey Nikki! Just finished your season 4 guide. Fantastic! As always, you have a way of clearing up the murky waters of our favorite show! We would be "Lost" without you.
A few things that stand out in my mind after the first viewing:
Without Aaron, I would assume that the "unpredictable" results that Hawking referred to may occur.
Does anyone have any theories as to what Kate may have done with Aaron?
I assume that Sun and maybe Kate too were probably not aware that this may be a one way ticket . Maybe that explains why Sun would leave without thought of Ji Yeon and Kate would leave Aaron.
I think these kids are gonna have some real mommy issues!
I think we are going to see Jack turn a real corner here regarding his lack of faith. Add a little faith to Jack's reason and he may well become the man he always needed to be.
@Laurie: I think if they show Locke's/Bentham's meeting with Walt, we may find out what role if any Walt still has left to play.
A thought on where Aaron has been placed - Mrs. Littleton. Kate simply took him to his grandmother. This will put Aaron in Australia for possible season 6 tie-in "Australia is the key to the whole game"
How come the Oceanic 6 (minus Aaron) all managed to get on a plane without anyone batting an eyelid? Surely they are really famous? Even if they used false names (which Jack didn't) everyone would recognise their faces. They are a distinctive lot.
Oh well, I guess this is one of those occassions that calls for suspension of disbelief.
Benny - No, I'm saying that the actor who plays Walt was growing up too fast to logically keep him in the story so that's why he left after Season 2. The way Walt looks now in 2008 off Island is totally believable. Maybe my previous post was confusing.
Liked Ben's line about not caring about the tail section people. Other than Benard, all the original tail section people are dead. Wonder if the two new characters are filling in for Boone and Libby and the guitar for Charlie. A coincidence that goes along with the lie the O6 told everyone.
So the Island was just moving the entire time? Not moving in time, just moving? And turning the wheel makes it move unpredictably through time as it normally moves in space. Am I making any sense? Would explain why Ben said not even God can find this place.
@LotteryTicket
and that's why they had Mrs Littleton appear in LA in a previous episode - I always thought that was a bit odd.
"Maybe that explains why Sun would leave without thought of Ji Yeon and Kate would leave Aaron."
Sun maybe...but Kate? Her comment to Jack was far too ominous for me to think she left him with a babysitter and planned on returning in a week.
I think Jin clearly recognized Jack, Kate and Hurley.
Interesting to note that the agent appears to have survived whatever happens, as we see her talking to Locke in the preview.
Nikki, I was re-reading your blog (yes, I do that too).
Just a thought here. You were saying DHARMA put everyone on that plane. Possibly, but if we are to subscribe to the theory that Widmore owns Oceanic 815, could that explain why there is a flight path going right over where the island could eventually be?
I love this season.
Can I say how nice it was to like Jack again tonight? That great moment when he stands up in the bamboo, raises his smiling face, and takes that first deep breath of island air will be one of my favorites of the series.
I am guessing that Kate went back to see Carole Littleton and made sense of Jack's visit for her. But wouldn't Ben have anticipated that decision? And Wouldn't Carole have to go through her lawyer in order to legally transport Aaron back to Australia, anyway? I think we'll be hearing about this one again sooner than later.
"We're not goin' to Guam, are we?" So awesome.
Ben surely went after Penny, and the mere idea of it is so awful that I almost don't want to know what happened.
But this is LOST, so I'm taking comfort in the likelihood we won't find out until late next season, anyway.
@edgeshat, alright then. well we agree that Walt could come back, it would be fun if he did.
as for your explanation of the island moving i get it and it's believable. I say we'll have to wait for more explanation.
@AliBags/LotteryTicket: you may find the casting call for a future episode interesting.
@thomwade: and with Locke's comment to her it's even more interesting. I was thinking there's a possibility he's in on trying to get Sayid deported. Although by my own admission this is not likely.
Benny: I like the idea of 1973 being the island year - nice tie-in with "Life on Mars." lol
I hope Frank also got "zapped" to the island. He is one of my favorites.
As with many of you, I absolutely loved the tease of the opening recreation of the first scene of the premiere episode. I was delighted that we see them (some of the O6 anyway) back on the island so soon. I was afraid it wouldn't happen until the season finale.
I wonder if Hurley was able to get access to one of Charlie's own guitar cases/guitars. Would that, and Christian Shepard's shoes, be like "talismans" that are necessary for bringing the dead back to life? Was I the only one who thought Locke would sit up suddenly in the coffin the instant Jack put the shoes on his feet?
I think it's safe to say that yes, Ben was going after Penny. When he called Jack, he was at a marina, so he was probably paying her visit, but Desmond probably kicked his ass.
@ Mark
No you weren't the only one - I thought he was going to sit up too. Whenever his corpse appears I am expecting him to start talking and scare the crap out of Jack. I am sure we're being manipulated but I love it!
I think that the other people on the plane did survive and they end up being the people who stole the boat from the beach and end up shooting at Sawyer, Juliet, etc. The one guy who talked to Jack in the airport was creepy and seems like he'll end up being an enemy, not a friend.
Love the theory that Kate is pregnant now but it makes me worried for her future with the whole pregnant lady survival rate on the island...
I have no theories from this episode, I still don't think there's enough information to go on, especially with a series that throws up as many curveballs as Lost does. Loved Lapidus, loved Said just turning up (and being extradited to Guam? How? Why? Which?), and LOVED that Hurley was reading Y: The Last Man! Glad you mentioned it in the post, Nik, are you a fan, have you read it? I urge everyone to go out and buy it now. It's the greatest comic of the last ten years. Brian K Vaughan is a FREAKING GENIUS. It was my SQUEEEEEEE moment of this episode. Every time I see his name under 'written by' in the credits I giggle like a schoolgirl. Nik, did you know he wrote the 'Faith arc' of the Buffy season 8 comics? He's SO COOL!!! .... sorry. Off topic there, a little. I'll go now. :)
I was so excited to see Zuleika Robinson's name in the credits (she was the marshall escorting Sayid). I love her. She was in The Lone Gunmen (Yves) and in the movie The Namesake (highly recommended). I assumed that they'd found out Sayid had been assassinating people. Though why send him from LA to Guam? Did he take out someone from Ben's list there?
Maybe Ben went to kill Penny and she kicked his ass. One can hope.
The Aaron thing was very strange. My first assumption was that Ben had him kidnapped to force Kate on the plane. Perhaps since he was first on the Island in utero, he didn't have to go back as part of the group.
I have my suspicions on whether Locke or Christian were ever really dead. We know Christian wasn't embalmed and Locke was being kept in refrigeration at the butcher's, implying he wasn't embalmed either. Though he had been at the funeral parlour, so perhaps he was.
BTW, that's one problem I always had with Buffy - that people could be vampires after they'd been embalmed. She's staked people at funeral parlours.
I didn't recognize Lapidus, because he had a beard in Grindhouse too. Did I think he was born with one? Silly me.
Nikki- Kate would be fine on the island if she was pg- just can't get pg on the island, ie Claire.
Benny - Also, although I didn't care for him much, it would be nice to see Michael come back in some form to have him have closer with Walt. And then Walt can turn into the Monster and eat him ;)
It's quite possible Widmore arranged for them all to be there at that moment.
So if Kate is pregnant, then she's taken the place of Claire and her baby takes the place of Aaron. It was cool seeing events being repeated. Sayid was in handcuffs, like Kate was originally. Hurley is reading a comic book. Ben arrives late, like Hurley did originally.
One last thought, I think the show is going to bring back the flashbacks, or technically flash forwards. We'll see them on the Island circa 1970's, and then it'll flash back/forward to what happened to all of them after they left the island and the circumstances that bring them back.
Loved the episode (as usual!)
I for one am so glad they didn't diddle daddle (is that a term?) with the Oceanic 6 getting back to the island. I was worried that they would spend all of season 5 getting them all back.
That said, I do have a bit of a problem understanding the logistics of how convenient everyone "happened" to end up at the airport. I know this was alluded to last week but Hurley not only getting out of the mental asylum but being freed from his association with the killing at the motel with someone taking a picture of him with a gun in his hand are a bit much to expect us to believe. And Sayid's FBI agent "happening" to bring him on this flight as well? LOL I do have faith though in the writers, I am sure they will tie up these loose ends :)
As well, as mentioned earlier, these people are incredibly famous, would the crew and other passengers not totally recognize them being together? I mean heck, if the actors PLAYING the Oceanic 6 were all on my flight, I'd be paranoid! LOL
That said, the action will progress quite fast now that the getting back to the island right away.
Loved:
- Ben's sarcastic quips at Jack in the airplane
- Jack starting to believe...
- the opening scene, I was like WTF? and then the ending with DJ (Dharma Jin)
- I too was wondering if Desmond would be pummeled by that pendulum, it looked as if he kept walking in front of it.
- Frank Lapidus and his wit about not going to Guam
Questions of mine and everyone here:
- Aaron: Kate could have been so upset because she knew she HAD to give Aaron up and possibly never see him again, I don't think she did anything bad with him as she loves him too much. But what is with this constant secrecy between Jack and Kate? And the old Jack would have harassed her for an answer dammit!
- Ben: Who beat him up? My guess would be it has something to do with Sayid being captured and being brought on that plane. Ben probably ratted Sayid out and got beaten up for it. But how did he get Sayid onto the plane?
- Hurley: Yes, the guitar and Charlie, I totally missed the symbolism of that one Nikki! Thanks, that's why they pay you the big bucks! :)
- Kate: What happened to change her mind from "you guys are nuts" to "Jack I want to come with you to the island and give up being mommy?"
- Jin and Sun: Its old Dharma time looks like. I have a feeling it won't be quite that simple of a reunion. My guess is that different factions of the plane were "flashed" back to different periods of time, and hence Jin and Sun are looking for each other but in different time zones. No plane crash, but that white light was to me a total flash through time! What happened to the other people on the plane?
- Locke: Any bets his "suicide" was a plan and he knew that he would be resurrected?
- Eloise and Daniel: No mommy love for Daniel? Or that she KNOWS that he will go back in time, because his is "supposed to"?
- New people: I have mixed feelings about this sudden introduction...how did this guy get into the first class section when Hurley took care of all that with his purchase of 78 seats? Hope this isn't another Nikki and Paolo situation! I'd rather have Charlotte back!
My theory about Ben's comment when he left the church about "tying up loose ends" is something to do with Penny. He promised Widmore he would kill his daughter just as Widmore killed his. The tough part is I don't know what I want to have happen. I DO NOT want Pen to die, but it does give a reason for Desmond to get back to the island and get revenge. If Ben didn't kill Pen, then who broke his arm and left him bloody?
@ Ali and @ Joshua: I agree with you both that Lapidus' line was one of the best: "We're not going to Guam are we?"
Ben says he’s meeting with an old friend and he just has some loose ends that need tying up. Who the hell was the old friend, and what happened to him? Could this have anything to do with Widmore? Was it Sayid?
My initial thought was "crap...he's going after Penny." Perhaps the beatdown he suffered was at the hands of Desmond? There's a flashback I can't wait to see!
Why does Jack have an old tape-to-tape deck in his bedroom? (Did anyone else think it looked like a face when he walked in?)
I too saw a face, and specifically remembered the scene in the Return to Oz movie when some crazy electro-shock brain machine thing is shown to have a face on it.
More later...
I have to say that I thought this was one weird episode. There were times where I felt like this was some kind of strange 'crossover' where all the characters were appearing on a different kind of show. Enjoyable, fascinating ... and as always, full of things to ponder over.
And so it goes ... some things that jumped out at me:
1) Great opening sequence! It was immediately clear that this was not a repeat of the series pilot but a new beginning for Jack on the Island. There was no suspicious black object lying by him on the ground, nor was there a white tennis shoe hanging on a tree nearby.
2) For 5 seasons I've been waiting for someone to explain the Island's special character in place (and time). Through demands, threats and torture, we've been kept in the dark - until now. So, why did Mrs. Hawking's speech come off as a bit stilted and flat to me? I was waiting for her to say "you've got me MONOLOGUING!"
3) Interestingly, Mrs. Hawking makes no claim of membership in the Dharma Initiative. "This is how THEY found the Island". Whoever is behind the shaping of our Lostaway's destiny, I don't think the DI is responsible. I think we will see that these efforts have been driven by a splinter group forced to leave the island by cataclysmic events and working to thwart fate with their efforts.
4)The time difference of 46 hours vs. 36 was significant. Just as we've seen before, there is always a time disconnect between the island and the outside world. Before, it was 30 minutes ... now, it seems to be 10 hours.
5) Desmond's 'bugged out' eyes recall to me the quick glimpse through the broken window Hurley had of a face within Jacob's cabin. I'm more convinced than ever that that eyeball belongs to Desmond.
6) Where does Sun go when she leaves the church? Somehow I feel that she is behind Kate's change of heart about going to the Island and leaving Aaron behind. Sun could have leaned hard on the guilt that Kate feels for having pulled her away from the freighter without Jin ... and Kate could have told Sun that Claire had appeared to her with a warning not to bring Aaron back.
7) I know this isn't canon but the two additional passengers on our Ajira flight (man who talks to Jack and Sayid's 'agent') were revealed in the ARG that played out during the hiatus. Visiting the Ajira site and purchasing a ticket using the credit card numbers pictured on the site allowed you to choose seats on flight 316 from L.A. to Guam. Their faces flashed briefly when you attempted to select unavailable seats. Once you had found a seat, you saw a clip of the gate lounge (without any recognizable faces) as the attendant called for standby seating. These newbies are undoubtedly Ben's people, getting stragglers on the flight.
8) I've said it before ... I'll say it again. Frank Lapidus is the MAN. Glad to see him back and I can't wait to see what role he is "destined" to play in our story.
9) The white flash that the passengers see on the plane after the turbulence starts is similar to our Island timeshifts. I think that the returnees simply vanished from the plane, much to the astonishment of the crew. And, if Frank is with them ... who's flying the plane now?
10) Despite what I thought were some uneven moments in this episode, they completely sucked me in again with the closing scene. Dharma Jin! The Dharmamobile!! Anyone catch the song playing on the ol' 8 track as Jin drove up?
Benny - great idea that Ben's injuries may have been caused by Sayid. Whether this was sufficient to prevent Ben from keeping his "promise to an old friend" by killing Penny, we will see.
Lottery Ticket - LOVED the idea that Kate may now be pregnant with Jack's baby after their Reunited Romance! (wonder if they had Peaches & Herb on the reel-to-reel ....)
Time to go BACK ... and rewatch the episode!
YES! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Kate is now pregnant!
I think Kate left Aaron with Claire's mom at the hotel. She probably gave her the keys to her house and the whole nine yards so she could get Aaron's stuff and take him back to Australia with her.
The guitar of Hurley's, yup ... definitely think it's for Charlie. Yay! I want Charlie to come back so bad. I miss that little Hobbit.
Ok ... so ... now that they're back on the island and we've seen "Jin Workman" they MUST be in the 70s -- what happens with Ben now? Are there two Bens? A young and an old? Did Old Ben go back into the body of young Ben? Arghhhhhh I'm just so confused! But you know what? I really like it! :-)
Hey Nikki,
Ok 2 things. First last nights episode. The station underneath the church was called "the lamp post". I think that is in refrence to Narnia. In "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe", when the pevensie kids go through the wardrobe and first come into Narnia, the see a....Lamp post.
The second thing is, I was watching the enhanced episode before the new one. When Roussou and her team are on the beach, Montand is listening to the numbers on the radio. I about 99.99% sure that the voice was that of Hurley. Go back and listen to it and let me know what you think.
How come the Oceanic 6 (minus Aaron) all managed to get on a plane without anyone batting an eyelid? Surely they are really famous? Even if they used false names (which Jack didn't) everyone would recognise their faces. They are a distinctive lot.
Haven't three years gone by? Maybe their celebrity has worn off . . . "what have you done for us lately" kind of thing.
Loved the episode, especially the opening. Can't wait until next week!
So it's the next day, and guess what... I love the episode even more just THINKING about it. :) (Squee!)
And I realized there were a bunch of things I meant to add to the top of my post, but forgot to. Luckily, at least one of them hasn't been mentioned yet.
Sun was the main one (I just added her in as an update: go to the top of the review to see it). Her behaviour is very baffling to me.
Laurie: Thanks! We were discussing nosebleeds last week in the comments for the last episode, and noticed that Locke, the Others, and Jin seem to not be bleeding, as if they're special in some way. Maybe they've always been on the island and will never leave it.
The Walt thing is weird, to be sure. But I wonder if we'll see what happened to him next week? It's a Bentham episode, and we know from the finale last year that Jeremy Bentham visited Walt. Will we see his explanation for why Walt can't return? I hope so.
edgeshat: Eek, I don't know why I never thought of Ben killing Penny and getting the snot kicked out of him by Desmond (oh please please please let them show us the scene of Desmond being the wild man...). I wonder if he succeeded?
Benny: I definitely think the guitar is for the reenactment, but I also think Charlie is the one who told him to take it.
Do you all remember The Moth? Where Charlie can't find his guitar and Locke tells him if he stops using the heroin, he'll help him find it? He takes him out to the jungle and points up to a cliff, and there's the guitar in the case on the side of the hill. I wonder if Hurley will be carrying it and will drop it on the side of the hill?
LotteryTicket: Ooh, Kate pregnant. I never thought of that! Maybe her taking Aaron for 3 years was to prepare her for biological motherhood?
Benny: Love the 1973 idea, not just for the Life on Mars link (Haha, Mark!!) but because it was the year I was born. There was a temporal shift in the world, something monumental had to happen to save it, and I was the result. I KNEW it.
Ali Bags: How come the Oceanic 6 (minus Aaron) all managed to get on a plane without anyone batting an eyelid?
I thought a similar thing, but I wonder if three years later they are SO 2005. ;) The tabloid press is so fickle, and maybe by 2008 the Oceanic 6 has about as much resonance as that baby who fell down the well in the mid-80s.
Gary: Thanks! I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. :) Wow, you're a fast reader.
I assume that Sun and maybe Kate too were probably not aware that this may be a one way ticket . Maybe that explains why Sun would leave without thought of Ji Yeon and Kate would leave Aaron.
I think these kids are gonna have some real mommy issues!
LOL! Maybe that's the ultimate goal of the Oceanic 6. Take a generation of people with severe daddy issues and flip the angst to the maternal side. :)
So here's my thought...Ben went to kill Penny (which he promised Widmore he would do). During his escape, he got all bloody (jumping through a window, getting half-throttled by Desmond) and did you notice he was by water (say, for sailboats) when he called Jack. I hate to say it, but Desmond's beloved is D.E.A.D.
Lottery: A thought on where Aaron has been placed - Mrs. Littleton.
And an excellent thought, too. I never thought of that. Wow, Kate would be shattered, because it means she's never getting Aaron back. It would put him in a relatively safe place, return him to family, and allow Mrs. Littleton to have a bit of Claire back. And it would explain why she was in LA. But poor Aaron... he'll be uprooted from everyone and everything he knows, and will move to a new country. Eek.
edgeshat: Liked Ben's line about not caring about the tail section people. Other than Benard, all the original tail section people are dead.
I laughed out loud at Ben's cold, "Who cares?!" You're right... he had the same lack of sympathy the last time, too. Poor economy seat people. I guess it truly DOES pay to fly first class.
Random thought: last night we met Ray, Jack's granddad. This is the man who gave the watch to Christian on his wedding day, even though he disapproved of Christian's marriage to Jack's mother, Margo. Christian then gave the watch to Jack on HIS wedding day, telling him to be a "better father than I've been". I'm not sure about the significance of this but ANYTHING relating to parental issues on this show may prove to be important later!
Mark RY: Was I the only one who thought Locke would sit up suddenly in the coffin the instant Jack put the shoes on his feet?
No you were not. I was surprised when Jack managed to get the thing shut again without Locke saying something. :) What I loved about that scene is the fact that Jack has dealt with several dead bodies (as a doctor) but he talks to Locke as if it's not a body, but a person. Why? Because this is the only time he'll be able to get the last word.
And then, on the plane, LOCKE gets the last word. Again. Ha!
Nikki: I think that the other people on the plane did survive and they end up being the people who stole the boat from the beach and end up shooting at Sawyer, Juliet, etc.
Good catch! That would be another of the things that flashed through my mind that I didn't write down (especially given the Ajira water bottles on the boat).
Love the theory that Kate is pregnant now but it makes me worried for her future with the whole pregnant lady survival rate on the island...
Actually, she's only in peril if she gets pregnant on the island. If she's off the island, she'll survive (see Claire, Rousseau). That's why Sun had that Catch-22: if she got pregnant by Jae Lee, she'll live, but the baby won't be Jin's. If she got pregnant by Jin, then she'll die.
...and first come into Narnia, the see a....Lamp post.
Also, in The Magician's Nephew (the sixth or first Narnia book, depending on how you want to order them) it's revealed that the lamp post was transported from Victorian London to Narnia, making it a small bit of reality in the fantastical Narnia. The Lamp Post station is more or less the inverse of that (a bit of the fantastical island in the real world).
Another possible slip-up I thought of while watching last night: Jack is surprised to learn that Locke committed suicide, and Ms. Hawking even mentions that obits don't usually mention that.
But didn't the obit that we saw Jack obsessing over in the season three finale mention suicide by hanging? I'm fairly certain that was one of the things discovered as we all pored over that clipping during the season three and four break.
This was probably the most narratively straight-forward episode since "Flashes Before Your Eyes", but man alive, they managed to setup a season's worth of flashbacks/forwards in just a 36 hour period of time.
I'm also curious, with the Six back on the island if we've now seen the extent of the terrible things that happened to everyone left behind as a result of the Oceanic Six leaving, because, frankly, what happened wasn't that terrible.
Charlotte died, but Locke didn't know that for sure when he left. And everyone was starting to suffer from time-travel sickness, which could have led to terrible things happening to them, but when Locke left, everyone was still relatively okay. Maybe next week's episode will elaborate on just what Locke told everyone, especially Jack, about what was going on back on the island.
Rethinking where Aaron might be. I can't remember where Cassidy and Clementine are living . . . but if they are near LA, then Kate might trust Aaron to her.
I agree with the whole Lamp-Post business. I was thinking about that too when watching the episode. When Lucy and Edmund go into the wardrobe, they come into this in-between space, between Narnia and England, where there's the lamp post. That's where the Snow Queen picks up Edmund (if I remember my fifth grade reading correctly). I have the entire compendium of the Chronicles on my shelf right here -- should probably read it again! Anyway, if the lamp post in C.S. Lewis's work was the marker between There and Here, it appears that it's the same analogy in Lost. Could there be other similarities? In the Magician's Nephew, Polly and Digory land up in this quiet pond in Narnia when they are forced to wear Digory's evil uncle's magic rings and travel through worlds. Like Hurley landed in a pond! And Sun has Jin's ring!
Did it annoy anyone else that Jack wouldn't open that bloody letter? Arrgh! I was like, open it already!
Does anyone think Ben had something to do with the disappearance of Aaron when he goes away? That scene where Kate is lying on the bed, totally destroyed, and asks Jack not to to ask about Aaron, that was both wrenching and a little weird. I mean, I know she's strong and everything, but she's given the baby away! And then she has feel-better sex! And then she wakes up in the morning and drinks coffee!
Nikki, I'm a Skater. ALL THE WAY! loved how the grandfather Ray asks about Kate, describing her as the one with all the freckles. I did le sigh.
Did it annoy anyone else that Jack wouldn't open that bloody letter? Arrgh! I was like, open it already!
Me too, absolutely.
I expected, once he opened it on the plane, for it to say something like "under no circumstances whatsoever allow Ben to come back to the island." Then Jack looks up as Ben returns to his seat, just as the plane starts to crash.
But in the end, it was just Locke sticking it to Jack from beyond the grave :)
Although there is sense to it, I don't know about Penny yet. He was at a marina but would Des and Penny have sailed from England to LA in their boat, this would be a long road and would suggest the Desmond episode we saw was a few days/weeks before these events. Which is possible, but I would have seen them on a flight rater.
@edgeshat: although Walt turning into the monster is unlikely, I LIKE IT!!
@Nikki: I agree that it makes sense Charlie told Hurley about the flight and all.
batcabbage: You're right; being extradited to Guam makes no sense. Remember when we saw Sayid play the long con in season 3 in Germany? Maybe he did another one in Guam and that's why he's going there? Ben could have been planning this one from the start.
And (oh man, please don't hate me) "Y: The Last Man" is on my reading list, but I haven't read it yet. But I adore Vaughan's writing, so I can't wait. And now that it's been referenced on the show, I have to read it for the next Finding Lost book! YAY!!!!
Amazing episode...as usual! Insightful comments from Nikki...as usual :)
So many things to figure out and so many missing puzzle pieces.
But that's the fun of Lost :)
Did anyone notice that when Mrs. Hawking told Jack "It must be that flight," she sounded an awful lot like the psychic talking to Claire?
Although, by this point we realize that Eloise is Daniel's mother, I think it is significant that it is something that has not been explicitly confirmed. Eloise accepts the message, but she doesn't have any reaction to Des when he delivers it. She is one creepy woman!
Maybe I've been watching too many crime shows, but did anyone else have a problem with the whole "Locke hung himself" thing? His body did not in any way look like someone who had died from hanging.
I definitely think that Ray Shepard has some sort of part to play in the future. Why else would they go to the trouble of bringing him in now? The shoes are just not enough of a reason. For a moment I was thinking that maybe he was going to end up coming with Jack on the plane, but that obviously didn't pan out.
@ Roland: But what is with this constant secrecy between Jack and Kate? And the old Jack would have harassed her for an answer
Seriously! I want to know why he was just ok and let it go. I mean, come on! Aaron is gone and Kate looks like death warmed over! What on earth happened!?
@AliBags: Also a good line from Kate 'Why hold onto something that makes you feel sad?' Says a lot about her.
I found this line highly ironic considering all of the trouble she went through to hang onto Tom's airplane, when it was an item that made her very sad.
Oh, I caught another Hurley number. He bought 78 seats on the plane and 7+8=15 :)
I was super surprised to see Ben on the plane because I thought that he said he could never go back. I mean, he seemed pretty adamant about it and then he just casually strolls onto the plane?
I definitely am thinking that Ben went after Penny and I REALLY want to see a flashback with Desmond finally kicking his butt. :)
Loved the appearance of Lapidus. So unexpected, but then my immediate thought was, "Oh no! The pilot died!"
Maybe I just was confused, but was the flight attendant on the phone, or just talking to Lapidus over an intercom thing. It kind of looked like she was on a cell phone and was trying to hide the conversation from Jack and then she knocked on the cockpit door and that was when Lapidus came out. Also, was it just me, or did the flight attendant look really familiar? She kind of looks like the attendant from 815 who was taken by the Others, but I don't know if that was all it was.
A favorite moment of mine:
Hurley leaning over to the guy and saying, "Dude, you might want to fasten your seatbelt." and then pulling down his eyeshade. HA!
Yeah for Jin! When the van pulled up I was expecting young Ben, Ben's dad or even Daniel, but not Jin.
One major point that my sister brought up - Why did Eloise have Locke's suicide note? Ben was the one that had Locke's body, Ben was the one that seems to have made all of those arrangements. So how on earth did Eloise Hawking get the envelope?
Did Locke go see her? When Desmond visits Oxford trying to track down Daniel's mother, they say that someone else was looking for Daniel too. Was that someone else Locke? And by following similar clues as Desmond, was he also led to LA and Eloise?
Or, and this is going out a bit on a limb, we still don't know where Locke ended up when he moved off the island. Is it possible that the island dropped him off in the Lamppost hatch? It is where he needed to gather everybody to get them back on the island, so it might be possible.
And one final thought....Is Jin the reason that Charlotte knows Korean? Did she know him on the island before she left or...and this is probably the craziest idea, but I'm throwing it out there anyway...Is Jin her father? Like he got involved with someone, but Charlotte takes after her mother and that's why they look nothing alike? Okay, it's crazy I know, but Lost makes my brain do strange things :)
Just a few notes on the meeting in the Lamppost. The equations on the board and diagrams are similar to some of the writing in Daniel's book.
As well, anyone else catch the pocket of energy line? This is a nice tie-in to what Isaac of Uluru said to rose and possibly explain the North African mysteries (plane, bears, Ben).
John 3:16 (another idea for why the title of the episode was 316)
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Awesome, awesome episode - great mid-season episode leading into a plethora of questions that need to be answered!
What changed the minds of Hurley, Kate, even Sun (to leave her daughter!!!) - it was actually scary watching them, they were all acting as if possessed. For once, Sayid actually looked... scared.
From a previous episode, the Ajira airways water bottles were sometime in the future (the remains of the old tent-city were there as well) - it seems like some of them crashed in the (off-island) present and some flashed (white light) to the past - where they were supposed to be had they not left? - WHERE IS SUN?
This storyline is starting to help tie together the reasons why they were all on fated flight 815 - I think we all know how they came to be on the flight.
Great column Nikki, love reading it every week!
@SonshineMusic: Christian tells Locke to find Eloise Hawking in Los Angeles. I also doubt that Locke would try to find Daniel when he knows he is still on the island.
The preview for next week shows a hint of where Locke ends up.
@Benny: As well, anyone else catch the pocket of energy line?
Yes, I did. I was thinking, like in Australia, where Bernard took Rose... just like you :)
I haven't watched the episode yet, but skimming through your post, I must say that your brother sounds like an amazing person and he was right on the money. It's like he saw into the future and knew that Sun would be a terrible mom. Man, he's my kinda dude.
So I jumped right on here after the episode and it was blank...so perhaps Nikki, you were writing your little heart out. After a while I went to bed but had dreams about the episode and have so many thoughts...of course my fellow bloggers have shared mine but I still want to chime in because there's ONE I haven't seen yet. :)
First off, I did love this episode. In some ways however, it seemed like the pieces fell together rather easily, even the ones that had to do with vague comments (like Ben at the church). But perhaps it's because the last few have been so damn confusing we needed a break! LOL
Here's my take on all points:
Eloise - can't figure her out. No, I don't think she DI. And yes, how weird she didn't react to the news about Daniel. I had been waiting for Desmond to chime in and say something and FINALLY he did. And yes, I thought he'd get clocked by that pendulum! I'm still a bit confused about the location stuff with the island. So, it keeps jumping in space and time? And if so, the wheel knocked it off course so it kept jumping randomly. Wouldn't that really mess up the mathematical calculations of its location? How did the DI know to look for it in the first place?
Sun - Yes, it is weird she would leave Ji Yeon. I thought that last week. Perhaps she's thinking she can get Jin and leave the island again and go home? Someone mentioned that perhaps she pressured Kate into coming along? I think that's feasible.
Kate - Immediately I thought that she gave Aaron to Mrs. Littleton. She's upset because, well, it's upsetting. It's only right that Claire's mom knows about her grandchild. And by doing this, she's following Claire's instructions not to bring him back.
Ben - when he said he had a promise to pay to an old friend, yes, I immediately said "Penny! Oh no!" When he seemed surprised to see Desmond last week, you could feel the wheels turning in his head. Poor Desmond. And when he made the call from the marina it confirmed it for me. I REALLY hope Penny isn't dead. However, my boyfriend made a casual comment about it. He said "now Desmond has a reason to go back...to find Ben....and he'll bring Charlie who will essentially take the place of the other Charlie." I just stared at him. LOL This from a non-obsessed Lost fan.
Here are my thoughts about how the plane "crashed". Oceanic 815 actually CRASHED (unexpectedly by Ben, et. al) because it fell into the bubble that was surrounding the island and keeping it in the past (1996 I believe). The bubble opened for a minute because Desmond didn't push the button. The sealing of the bubble caused the plane to tear apart and crash.
This time, there's no bubble. The plane flies over the island as it is shifting and therefore gets caught in the jump. The people are zapped to the island. This completely leaves physics and logic behind but it's the best I can come up with. LOL
When Jack awoke, I got this weird feeling that it WILL go back to episode 1 in the end. That for some reason, they'll be stuck in a loop of having to re-live events over and over. Jack will zap back and find the crash. THe inconsistency with my thoughts is that he WAS actually on the Oceanic plane. I dunno. I can't figure it out but I just got this weird feeling we'll go back to that episode.
As for Hurely and Sayid being on the plane. Here's what I think:
I think perhaps Hurley was contacted by Charlie. The only way he could get out of jail was to turn in the person responsible for the deaths he's being charged with. And that would be Sayid. That's why Sayid is in custody. Now why on THAT flight, I'm not sure. But perhaps Hurley spins some story that Sayid is wanted there for murders. Or maybe Ben does have something to do with it too. I don't know. But that's how I think Hurley got out of jail.
I do think Jin recognizes them at the end. Perhaps the ones left behind had no choice but to survive and they found DI supplies and have been living like that, sort of like how they did in the hatch.
Oh, and Lapidus...it was a GASP moment but at the same time, I was like DUH, how could I not see THAT coming??? Of course!!
And yes, I read Jorge Garcia's blog and it's funny. I am going to read today's post right now. Can't wait to see that Ace of Cakes episode where they make the cake!!
What a great episode. I love reading what everyone wrote, this time particularly what the man who offers his condolences to Jack said - we lost sound transmission at this point and no matter how many time we re-wound and re-watched it, neither of us are lip readers! Haven't we seen this guy before? (someone may have already brought this up but I have not had time to read all the comments before I start my day)
Anonymous: My gosh, you sound an awful lot like my brother!! And, speaking of which, I thought you hadn't watched the ep yet... what are you doing reading my column?!
Frank: Great catch on the Gospel. I remember back in the fall when we found out there would be an ep called 316 that that was the very first thing I thought of, and we discussed it. And then getting mired in all the other stuff, I'd forgotten it. I think that is essential, and thank you for reminding us!
Teebore: Yes yes yes!! That's ANOTHER thing I forgot to type (cripes, I need to stop this new thing of watching the ep first with no laptop... I used to make rough notes the first time through, and now I just sit and watch with no computer) but the obit ABSOLUTELY said that the person was found hanging from a beam in his loft. Considering all the other stuff in the obit was crap (he had a teenage son, he was from NY) I'm surprised they kept this.
Or... wait... could we discover that he comes back and claims to be Walt's father? If he'd been seen with Walt and claiming to be his father and being from NY, that could answer where that came from. Or... whoever wrote the obit could have been trying to throw people off with those other bits.
Sonshine: Re: Why Ms. Hawking had the suicide note. I think Ben was with Locke when Locke hanged himself. I think he got him to write the note (or Ben wrote it himself, but I'd love to think that really was Locke sticking it to Jack) and he handed it off to Hawking. Trust Ben to be there when someone's trying to off themselves, and be the one cheering them on to do it.
Chapati: Awesome stuff on Narnia. Wow, does that mean I have to read (in the case of Narnia, re-read) THREE books for this episode? Yikes. Ulysses alone will take me until next November. Sigh.
And I TOTALLY thought of Sawyer when Ray mentioned her freckles! Did you see Jack bristle?? Heehee...
Jazzygirl: OK, fine. Confession time.
I HIRED BEN.
Listen, if Desmond is meant to be with ME, I can't have Penny in there, can I? I gave him their whereabouts. Now Des is mine. ALL MINE.
Now if I could just get this homemade pendulum to work and find that bloody island...
RE: Nikki: I think Ben was with Locke when Locke hanged himself. I think he got him to write the note (or Ben wrote it himself, but I'd love to think that really was Locke sticking it to Jack) and he handed it off to Hawking.
Maybe, but 1. Why would he pass it off to Eloise and 2. Ben seemed too interested in what was in the note and the fact that Jack had it for me to believe that he already knew about it.
I have a theory. Mrs. Hawking is Nikki flash forwarded! Explains her disinterest when Desmond conveyed the message from Faraday. Its because Mrs. Hawking/Nikki had a passionate affair with Desmond, and had her heart broken when she left her for Penny!
Nikki - I love your blog.
One thing - to whomever thought nothing too bad had happened since the 6 left - don't forget half of the group got flaming arrowed. That was pretty bad.
don't forget half of the group got flaming arrowed. That was pretty bad.
I HAD forgotten, and that's a good point. Plus, a couple got mined at the stream back in the '50s.
I guess I didn't think of it because we don't really care all that much about the nameless background Redshirts ;)
I have to get here and post sooner - I was going to say "Kate is pregnant! Your minds are now blown!"
edgeshat:
That's not true about everyone in the tail section being dead. Only the characters that had significant roles from the tail section (minus Bernard) are dead. Remember, the Others abducted a whole bunch of the tail section people from the beach early in Season 2. I think it's safe to say the joined in with The Others.
Another thought I had in regards to my loop idea. What if they keep re-living these events and Jack & Co. become The Others?? LOL!
Haha, glad to know I'm not the only one who squeed when Frank reappeared! I was going to be disappointed if he turned out to be the only Freightie not to play a role this season. After all, he was supposed to be on that plane ;-)
Just a quick trivia note: just like Fionnula Flanagan was in a movie called The Others (SIC!), the guy who offers his condolences to Jack is Saïd Taghmaoui, a French actor of Moroccan origins who was in Vantage Point together with Matthew Fox (although I like to associate him with a much better film - La haine). My two cents are that he's going to be Sayid 2.0 ...
Jazzygirl:
I have been saying that every now and then on this blog for about 18 months now - but I think it's a little more complicated than that.
I think they will end up in a time in which they have offspring with the Black Rock crew or past island dwellers. The reason that children can not be born on the island to Others after the 1960s or 1970s is because this is the point when the Losties (now forefathers and foremothers of the Others) can start having children of their own - and that causes a paradox...
I would guess that Walt doesn't have to go back because the Island is done with him. He was tested and let go.
ASIDE:
Do we know what happened to the pouch with the black and white stones that Jack found on the corpses in the caves in season 1?
poggy: Good to see you here! I actually was emailing a friend this morning and said Ms. Hawking reminded me of an evil Mary Poppins, and I was telling her that she'd been in The Others. I love that trivia tidbit. :)
myselfixion: Do we know what happened to the pouch with the black and white stones that Jack found on the corpses in the caves in season 1?
I think Locke stole them and used them as backgammon pieces. ;) Seriously, I'm not sure, but I bet they'll play a role soon. We'll probably see them somewhere and it could be a clue as to who Adam and Eve are.
Hello everyone; I am new to the group although I have been reading all of the posts since Season 4.
A few questions and comments:
Skaters and Jaters? Can someone enlighten me?
Ben is going to kill Widmore's daughter...When Ben told this to Widmore he did not use Penny's name. Could it be that there is another daughter?
With all of the talk of resurrection and John 3:16, could Locke be Jesus Christ? And the obvious reference to Narnia with the lamp post having religious connotations...C.S. Lewis said that the stories were not an allegory for Christianity but they so obviously were. And the fact that Ben said that even God could not find the island...is that why he is sending his son (Locke/Jesus) to find the island and save humanity?
Nikki, I've read your first three seasons and they were great along with your posts (I was really bummed out last night when I looked an hour after the episode aired and it wasn't there yet!)
I also really enjoy everyone's take on all of this; I would never have picked up on all of the clues!
Oh yeah, I was also waiting for the pendulum to hit Des. And about what Ben had to take care of. Since he was near the sea he could have gone after Penny and Desmond could have given that sucker more punches. Maybe Ben had forgotten his little black baton. I'm still unsure if that'll work, cause we don't know if Desmond and Penny arrived to LA with their boat or by plane.
Some quick notes on a second viewing of "316":
1) We hear an unusual (and unique, I think) audio cue when the episode opens on Jack's eye - almost like a radio station being tuned in suddenly from static.
2) That is SOME swan dive Jack makes from the top of that waterfall - HAS to be 25'. Heroic Jack is BACK!
3) As Mrs. Hawking leads the way into the 'Lamppost', we see yet another 'Caution' sign - "High Voltage - Do Not Enter This Enclosure". Ben glances at it curiously.
4) As near as I can make out, the map on the floor appears to show only about half of the world - focused on the Pacific, of course.
5) The writing on the blackboard mentions "silent intervals". When the Island is 'invisible'?
6) Nice transition from Jack sitting in the church, head bowed, to the same posture at the bar. The glass in front of him even looks vaguely chalice-like. I was reminded of Jesus' "let this cup pass from my lips" as he contemplates his fate in the garden of Gesthemane after the Last Supper.
7) The artwork visible beyond the table in Jack's apartment is appropriately solemn for the scene between he and Kate. A solitary figure, face obscured, turned towards a wall.
8) Jack to Locke's body while changing his shoes: "this is even crazier than you were". He feels the leap of faith he is taking is even greater than Locke's was.
9) The lyrics (as I could make them out) from the song BLASTING from the Dharmamobile as Jin pulls up: "yeah your kisses/feel so right/but you had another man holed up last night". The voice sounds familiar but I can't identify the artist. Anyone?
10) There seems to be an unreasonable delay from when Jin gets out of the van and draws a bead on Jack, Kate and Hurley to when he recognizes them. I mean, you see THIS group from 20' away and you don't recognize them right away? Hurley? C'mon!
Careful with that homemade pendulum, Nikki ... you're liable to wind up on Gilligan's Island by mistake... ; ]
Last thought, I promise! (for now) I've been thinking more about Lottery Ticket's notion that Kate may now be pregnant. This makes more and more sense to me - and helps explain Kate's melancholy and regretful state as she prepares to board the plane. Having given up Aaron and realizing that she is likely returning to the Island for good, she HAS to get pregnant by Jack before they go if she is ever to have her own child. Even if she knows in her heart that Jack is not the man she would prefer to father that child .... she wants Sawyer. But, returning to him on the Island and attempting to make a baby there could never happen.
"We're on the same plane, Jack ... that doesn't make us together."
(sorry for the deleted post, I wanted to edit a typo.)
Nikki: o hai :-) I always read your posts, but I generally drop by here when it's too late to add anything relevant/smart/not boring, tee hee. Real life, getting between me and my LOST! *shakes fist*
Anon: "Skaters" and "Jaters" are, respectively, supporters of the Sawyer/Kate and Jack/Kate relationships. Usually there's a bit of a war between the two factions :-) Depends on which corner of the Lost fandom you stop by. (You also might want to know that Jacket=Jack/Juliet, and Suliet=Sawyer/Juliet and... that's it for the wacky pairing names?)
I have been lurking on this board since season 4 and I really love coming here after each episode. It has definitely gotten me hooked on LOST again. Everyone has such great insights and questions and Nikki is amazing. I definitely have to get your season guides. I missed the Dharma season, so I get "lost" frequently with their references.
Humanbean - you picked up on the line that stuck out to me the most last night: Kate "Just because we're on the same plane, doesn't make us together." I definitely think she is referring to she and Jack, but I think it is a foreshadowing statement about the whole group. Everyone has their agenda and they are not going to end up on the same side.
When Jack walked into his apartment and saw Kate in his room, I thought he was going to see Christian in there. Did anyone else have that feeling?
I definitely think that the Shepards are prominent players in regards to the island though I am not sure exactly how special they are just yet.
I also kept thinking that Locke was going to "wake up" and start talking to Jack. It made me want there to be a crossover moment from my canceled favorite show, Pushing Daisies. It would have been nice to "wake him up" for a minute to get some information from him. If only they would resurrect that show like Locke is going to be resurrected.
Where is Aaron? I thought it was something more ominous than just Kate leaving him with someone she trusted. I wonder if Claire appeared to her and took him.
Does anyone think that Daniel is the person that built the pendulum/lamp post station? He is the only one that we know of that has the ability to determine complex equations relating to time travel. If he is, when did he build it?
Any guesses on who Faraday's father is supposed to be?
Ben in the church was very interesting to me. I almost wonder if he was trying to prepare himself to take Penny's life? I think he is conflicted about killing someone that was not supposed to be killed, much like Alex was not supposed to be killed.
I think this season is turning out to be fantastic! Thanks for providing such a great blog Nikki!
Hi All-another lurker who's never posted before.
Couple of things I noticed that am wondering what others think...
When Jack & Kate start kissing, the screen changes to a camera position from behind them from where the weird tape thing was and it looks as if they're being filmed...or watched...Anyone else notice that? That tape thing (don't know what it's for) did catch my attention and then that scene?
The other thing is about Jin's reaction when he sees Jack, Kate & Hurley. It looked to me like he was seeing someone he hadn't seen in ages and had practically forgotten about...Like when you see someone you haven't seen in 50 years and in your day to day living you hadn't even thought of them in a while. Obviously you'd think he'd think about them everyday, even IF 50 years have passed...Which brings me to my thought that when Locke turned the wheel the group that was time jumping got stuck at some point which could have been 100 years earlier...notice when Sawyer is pulling on the rope after the flash, the well isn't there...as if it hadn't been built yet. I know there might have been another flash (should have been) after Locke turned the wheel...but maybe?
I think my mind is going to become unstuck and explode from trying to figure out what to even think...as I come up with one thought another thing occurs to me and it starts cascading and before you know it, I can't remember any of what I came up with because of the overload...I think I may be complicating things too much...
Oh yeah-one more thought-Regarding Aaron-I thought Kate's expression and tone indicated something scary...such as that Aaron did something that scared her away...remember the Psychic's initial reaction with Claire and wanting nothing to do with her...as if she (or her unborn baby) scared him...But maybe it was more like that Claire showed up looking for him...that would have scared her as well...
Ok...back to work...or this will take over my life...:-)
Jason - somehow I must have missed you saying that. I am not sure about the idea of them having children with people from the past but we'll see. LOL
Another reason I had those thoughts was because of Cindy, the flight attendant. Remember how it was SO odd to us that she accepted by "kidnapped"? Well, perhaps Oceanic 815 was HER time going back to the island, therefore she knew she'd be joining a group of people already there. Now it's the Losties turn.
I dunno...everytime I get a thought that seems to be such a good fit to the puzzle, I take a step back and it doesn't seem to fit after all. Too many holes.
And I forgot to say before that I TOTALLY thought Locke was going to sit up in that coffin or open his eyes and say something to Jack!
I need to watch it again to pick up on things people have mentioned.
Oh, and I too noticed Ben pausing at that Caution High Voltage sign. There must have been a reason.
And I'm glad someone else caught Kate's comment "we're on the same plane...doesn't mean we're TOGETHER." I do think she's trying to get back to Sawyer. I am a fan of Skater personally. :)
Anonymous: Welcome to the blog! :)
tsavonglah: Maybe Ben hid the baton in Locke's coffin for safe keeping. :) Or maybe Des overpowered him and knocked him silly with it. (Okay, seriously writers, GIVE ME THIS SCENE.)
humanebean: Brilliant connection with Jack, you're right. I loved the church scene switching to the bar scene, and it scared me a little. We all know what happens to Jack when he gets too close to liquor (I kept thinking that blonde in the background was going to play some role, too).
As for the song on Jin's radio, I don't know it and when I typed the lyrics that I heard (which were the same as yours) into a search, nothing came up... and that makes me think it's Geronimo Jackson.
poggy: Well, your insights are missed, so it's great to have you back. :)
Thanks for responding to the ship question. You forgot one: The Jawyers. (Jack and Sawyer.) Yup. That's why the Suliets had to have that name. ;)
Missing Georgia: Welcome to the board! It's great to have you here.
I TOTALLY thought Christian was going to be in Jack's house. I was watching the ep alone and said out loud, "Say hello to Daddy!!" and was surprised to see Kate instead. :)
I've wondered if Widmore could be Faraday's father, but considering the time loops, it could be Aaron, for all we know. :)
Argh I keep remembering more comments after I post! LOL!
Yes, I totally thought that blonde at the bar was going to talk to him, just like Anna Lucia did. I thought, well, that's certainly close to what happened before. I suspect she was drinking Tequila and tonic. ;)
...but considering the time loops, it could be Aaron, for all we know. :)
Now Nikki, don't start that again. Remember what happened the last time you joked about Charlie Hume's possible role in all this? :)
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if it has been mentioned or not, but who do you guys think the man is that Hawking was talking about in the beginning. My first that is Faraday, but Widmore also makes sense.
Pendulum numbers in Lamp Post
27 24 21 15 12 9 6
I have image but didn't know has to attach.
I posted it on doc's website but i wanted to post here too for you 'cause i love your review :) and i never said it ^^
I don't think kate wants to be pregnant, why ? 'cause kate hates herself and aaron wasn't of her blood so she could be her mum, she don't want another baby she wants HIM and she knows she has to let's him go :( i love your reviewers but uh stop talking about pregnancy, they already explored it with sawyer and kate for 2 seasons, no more talk please it's still hurt me :(
i think too you said the island didn't finished with desmond that's why i think he's on the plane maybe drugged
Missing Georgia: Great reference to "Pushing Daisies"! lol. Gad, I miss that show.
I just wanted to make a slightly OT comment about The Chronicles of Narnia. I really dislike the way the 7 books are packaged now with "The Magician's Nephew" as volume 1. It works much better as the penultimate book in the original order. Placing it as the first is akin to putting the chapter of a mystery/detective which explains whodunnit and whydunnit etc. at the beginning! The original published order of Narnia works quite well: The first four books are all about adventures of regular kids going to Narnia. Then we leave behind the core group (Peter, Lucy, Jill, Eustace, etc.) for a couple of books - first with an adventure taking place wholly in the fantasy lands ("The Horse and His Boy") and then the "origin" story ("The Magician's Nephew") before returning to the finale ("The Last Battle") which reunites everyone. With "Horse" and "Magician" found earlier in the new order, one loses that crucial gap between Books 4 and 7.
OK, I'll climb off my soapbox now. :)
@Jason: the paradox you state is the same as the losties trying themselves to have children at a point when their own parents can now give birth to the losties as well. Paradoxy, my friend, is a harsh mistress. Which would make your theory unfeasable based on your pregnancy-death component.
@Annonymous: Ben does use Penelope's name. He says: "I will kill your daughter Charles. Penelope is it?"
@DK: I thought Daniel too, with all the science behind it. But if Widmore had been outcast, and he could certainly have a photo of 1954, he could try and determine how to find it.
@LotteryTicket: add an 18 there and you have a sequence of multiples of 3s
Regarding Jin; I noticed that he actually had a smirk on his face just before the 'LOST' cut. Really suggestive. Also (someone mentioned it earlier) I agree that his reaction is akin to not having seem them in a long time.
@Nikki: Remember all the talk about nosebleeds? Did anyone mention Daniel not having them also?
-Since they are physically jumping in time, I personally don't think that a constant is possible in this case; you only have one simultaneous time for each consciousness, unlike Desmond where he had one mind jumping through two simultaneous alternating times. I think there's a mathematical proof in there.
Also... WHERE IS BLAM?
Nik: Re: Extraditing Sayid to Guam (I spelt his name Said in my other post because I've been watching Oz again, doh): You're totally right about Ben maybe having it planned all along. I, like most of the characters on the show, always underestimate Ben and his ability to manipulate, well, everything.
And re: Y: The Last Man, I couldn't hate you for not reading it yet, you're so lucky! You have 60 issues of one of the best written stories EVER ahead of you! I totally envy you. You'll absolutely love it. Check out Vaughans' 'Pride of Baghdad' also, absolutely incredible.
I think that Laurie has a point. Where the hell is Walt?
Anyway I love your recaps Nikki - it keeps me awake at night ^_^
I kind of think that the people who crashed on the island on the Ajira airlines flight are the ones who became part of Ben's team of The Others. Seeing as they must be under a different way of time than the Oceanic, but they crashed in the pocket of time and space which was the Island in that time.
When Ben said "who cares" I think it is more generally so that attention wouldn't be on them.
I also have a nagging feeling that Ben shouldn't of been on that flight. :/
I have a quick question:
When Mrs. Hawking tells Jack that Locke is going as a placeholder for someone, who is supposed to be "filling in for" on the flight? Himself, just now he is dead? Or is he taking over the leader role, one that Christian had at some point?
Is Locke, literally and figuratively, filling Christian's shoes? Maybe they have similar purposes in different time periods.
@Missing Georgia: since she says he is acting as a proxy, she certainly does not mean himself. And given that she asks him to bring an item of Christian's to put on Locke, plus the fact that he is in a coffin as Christian was, I definitely think he's a proxy for Christian.
WOW, what an episode!
Did anyone else notice that the girl sitting at the bar while Jack got wasted was one of the nurses in Jack's hospital in "Abandoned"... (the one where Shannon dies)
Weird...
I haven't read all 91 comments (yet!) so maybe someone already said it... by 46 hours because there was 10 hours on the plane. Their window (the 06'er's window that is) closed in 36 hours because they had to get on the plane by then.
Then fly for 10 before it'd crash or pass over the island. (How long does it take to fly from LA to Guam?)
@theothers108: it's the same actress but I think it's just a casting call repeat. Just like the librarian in Jughead was the same actress who played that attendant in a season 1 ep.
@Margosita: It hasn't been said but I also thought of that as a possibility. I think that outside a typo, it's a strong possibility.
@ Benny: I can understand a prop error, or something like that, but do you really believe that the producers would cast an actor/actress that had played a different character previously? Especially on a show like Lost that the producers know is analysed to death by people like us. I think it's much more likely that the flight attendant and the librarian are one and the same character, just in a different career at a different time in her life.
'I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if it has been mentioned or not, but who do you guys think the man is that Hawking was talking about in the beginning. My first that is Faraday, but Widmore also makes sense.'
I think this comment from DK is worth repeating as I made a note of it while I was watching and then promptly forgot about it. Hawking refers to 'a very clever man' and then later to 'they' so could this be Daniel time travelling and was he maybe the leader of the Others at some point (or DI)? Will have to watch again when I get home to write down exactly what she said, unless someone can beat me to it.
@off topic Narnia rant...
I agree 100%.
@Batcabbage: from the showrunners' mouths, it's a re-cast. It's happened before on Lost. Since they oftentimes can't get appropriate actors on short notice on location, they'll re-use actors who've only a minor appearance (a few seconds).
It's often used in television production where recurrent actors will play various extras.
@Benny: Wow. I apologise for doubting you, Benny, I completely thought it would be the same character. I'm really disappointed, though. I mean, look at Lost, everything is interconnected, we notice absolutely EVERYTHING, and they go and recast someone as a different character?! Completely mental...
@bacabbage: I know that in a show like this is poses as confusion. There actually was an article that came out to tone down the relation because the producers know the extent of the show's analysis. And even then many viewers actually discredited the article as diversion. But given that these tow roles (for both actresses) were their first and second or third, this is a no-brainer.
But don't be fooled, things like this can happen, Anna-Lucia was introduced subtly, and Malkin made a reappearance, though more obvious.
This is lost, and until something is proven, anything can is possible!
Isn't it time for Faraday to loosen his tie?
I know he wasn't in this week's episode but I can't help but think if I went through what he went through over the last two weeks I think I would have lost the tie.
I just went back to watch the beginning of Season 4 and saw again the bracelet worn by Naomi with the initials R.G. Were those initials ever identified by anyone?
@redwingfan: not yet, though some have speculated Regina George. It's possible we'll find out, or it may be one of those mysteries that the writers didn't think was that important.
It might have been put there just to show that Naomi did have a life outside of the whole leading the science team to the island and carrying Abbadon's orders.
Hey Nikki! Awesome post as always!
I was watching the episode again and noticed that right before the plane goes down, Ben walks off camera to who knows where (bathroom?), Leaving the rest of the cabin to themselves. Does anyone think there's some sort of significance to this? Did Ben do some weird thing off camera to help transport our characters back to the island?
Also, does anyone else think that the person that told Hurley to get on the plane was Ghost/Imaginary friend Charlie? Maybe Charlie also told Hurley that Ben couldn't come and to bring the guitar as a proxy for the dead rock star.
Lastly, LOVE your new t-shirt!
Sorry for such a late (and long) post but i have a 6 month old, so i gotta write when i can. on with the show,
ok, whooo! GREAT EPISODE!!! had to get that out. First my personal theories, then some responses to others.
1. Aaron/Ji Yeon (how do you pronouce that? lol) I believe the reason they were left behind is technically neither were on the flight, aaron was but as a internal part of claire. i think kate took ghost claire to her word and left Aaron with Ms. Hawking to be brought to Mrs. Littleton, but she would have to be pregnant in return (hence the mauling of Jack). Ji Yeon could not go back, she wasn't on the orginal flight. I know thats kinda weak but its my theory so HA! lol
2. Ben went after Penny. The fact they were at the marina should prove that alone. Des of course tried to defend her, but i bet Ben got him with a dart gun or knocked him out and now Des has a reason to go back to the island.
3. This maybe a long shot, but i have a sinking suspicion that Walt is on that plane, in coach. After all, Locke went to him as well. I am sure Walt was needed to make the jump happen. Hes more "special" than anyone else. i am sure hes a needed element.
4. Did the picture of Thomas look like Widmore to anyone else????
5. As for the shooters on the beach, i say its the others and they are PISSED someone stole their canoe. they probably already rounded up anyone who did flash to the island, not knowing WTF was going on. i'd shoot someone too if they stole my canoe!! lol
@ Nikki
"How much did I love that opening, with Jack waking up in the bamboo, the same eerie music, the same wind, the same calls for help."
I seriously had to rewind my dvr, i thought they messed up and aired the pilot by mistake!!!
"So is Eloise part of the DI? It stands to reason the DI would have a station off the island."
I still say she is Ellie who was on the island with Widmore, which explains why she has an army survallince photo from the 50's. Also, why Widmore knew who she was and where to find her. more on that below but i believe she left not to long before dharma showed up or right after.
"“That’s why it’s called a leap of faith.” At the end of that episode, Locke convinces Jack they need to keep pushing the button, and says it’s a leap of faith."
GREAT catch, i thought i was the only one. and somehow i think she knows how profound of an effect it would have on Jack.
"What exactly happens to the plane?" frank the new 6 + 3 (yes 3...see above" flashed to the island, the rest of the plane went through the turbulance without any other problems...except they may think the rapture happened!! hopefully theres a co-captain lol
"Ms. Hawking reminded me of an evil Mary Poppins"
YES!!! SAME EXACT THOUGHT!!
@ Roland
"- Locke: Any bets his "suicide" was a plan and he knew that he would be resurrected?"
i think locke really thought he dying for the island and its inhabitations, and took christians place on the plane, just to help them go back. i think the resurrection is the islands thank you for willingly giving his own life. had he known it would not have been a sacrifice. also, he had to of died within 2 or 3 days of the jater "we have to go back to the island" scene. the timing is just too perfect. he didnt just kill himself, thats for sure.
@ Benny
The 1973 idea doesn't really work for me. the passage of time off island and on island are totally different. on island, its seems as if its been barely a few days, maybe a week. we know that when you turn the wheel you end up in the future so perhaps it threw locke 3 years forward. he wasn't around very long, thats for sure. at most, a few months. long enough to talk to everyone and kill himself. he knew it was urgent and the O6 had to get back ASAP.
@ SonshineMusic
"was super surprised to see Ben on the plane because I thought that he said he could never go back"
Ben, the ultimate mastermind, knew if he just turned the wheel he wasn't coming back. That is why he let kate and co. leave, he knew they would have to come back and he knew he could weasel his way in. i would hate to play him in chess, he thinks about 10 moves ahead!!
@ Missing Georgia
"Does anyone think that Daniel is the person that built the pendulum/lamp post station"
i am thinking its Brother Campbell(?), the monk who was with Desmond @ the monastery and with Ms Hawkings in the picture.
"Any guesses on who Faraday's father is supposed to be?"
i have read some comments on Doc's site thinking its Widmore...honestly i could see it. they were on the island together, maybe he got her preggers with Daniel and thats why they left the island. and why widmore has been looking ever since, their relationship fell apart due to her faith ideals and his merc/power control issues. why else would he know where she is but not be aware of the fact she works with Ben. They keep in contact but are on opposite teams. After all, she could have told him how to get back 1000x's over!
@ MiaBella
"Jin's reaction when he sees Jack, Kate & Hurley."
i think it has more to do with its only been a few days for him since the boat blew and he wasn't expecting them back so soon....boy did i think Jin was gonna be Michael though. lol silly me!
ok thats enough for now. Nikki, once again, I LOVE your blog and am so happy to read your posts on Doc's site. BTW, I went back and read your Buffy stuff as well...sigh lol
Just watched the episode, and it's totally one of my favorites. (Anyone catch the edit with Eloise when she says "let's get started"? I thought it was funny... she didn't give that creepy glare haha) <- Just an observation LOL And I was totally waiting for Desmond to get taken out by the pendulum.
So... everything I caught has pretty much been addressed.
Does Ajira stand for anything? I'm probably missing something because I didn't read every post here. It's kind of funny the logo is a Sun. (..Sun.. Sun? Coincidence? Maybe not... although Sun seems to be a hot topic because she left her kid.) There has to be a reason behind it.. Eh. I would have personally used Southwest to "crash" because they SUCK.
Danny - Ajira is Hindi for Island, so I think it is pretty fitting that is the airline that is going to get them back to "the island."
I have to admit, my first thought then they got on the plane was to wonder if the in-flight movie featured Shahrukh Khan. :)
How long is a flight to Guam?
Another night's sleep ... another LOST fever dream! I take back my initial reservations about this episode - it is much more rewarding upon review and reflection. I've been thinking about Ben's scene with Jack in the church, relating the story of Doubting Thomas. Most of the posts or blogs that I have read have (naturally) interpreted this as referring to Jack - his endless doubts and refusal to believe anything other than what his eyes can see and he can prove, empirically.
I think there is at least a dual meaning here: this speech could also be about Ben himself. He mentions that despite his bravery in sticking by Jesus even as danger/fate approaches, Thomas' 'claim to fame' is his doubt/refusal to believe. Ben certainly sees himself as the brave defender of the Island and the O6 (and on-Island Lostaways). Yet, he feels that even after all he has done for the Island, he has been been punished for his doubt/ because he refused to accept certain things: the inability of women to bear children on the Island, Locke's ascension to leadership and his own fall from favor with Jacob.
"I used to have dreams...". "Destiny is a fickle bitch". "If you had any idea what I've had to do to keep you safe - to keep your friends safe - then you'd never stop thanking me". And yet now, Ben is accepting to a degree that he is also responsible for his punishment. "We're all convinced sooner or later".
Thoughts?
humanbean - I think that is an excellent analysis. I wonder what Ben's "aha" belief moment could have been to make him willing to all that he has done for the island?
Great question, Ms. G.! I think that eventually, we are going to see that moment - now that we are Back In The Day for the Dharma Initiative.
Perhaps Ben, himself, will try to change the past ... even though he, of all people, should know the consequences.
Brian's (sort of) Unification Theory:
Okay, first a brief recap of events in chronological order.
1) The DI find the moving island using the Lamppost to find the proper window.
2) The "Incident" occurs. The Swan station is rededicated to entering numbers every 108 minutes.
3) Danielle arrives on the island.
4) Desmond arrives on the island.
5) Eko's plane arrives on the island (according to Lostpedia, this happened after Desmond arrived).
6) Desmond fails to enter the numbers on time. Oceanic 815 crashes on the island.
7) Ben puts a seed of doubt in Locke about the Swan station.
8) Locke stops putting in the numbers, and Desmond turns the failsafe key. Michael leaves the island by following bearing 325. The island is detected from the outside.
9) Widmore's freighter arrives on the island using bearing 315.
10) Ben turns the FDW starting the time jumps.
11) Locke turns the FDW.
Now, while the Swan was running, the DI and later the Others seemed to come and go as they pleased using the submarine. Desmond wasn't able to leave via boat. The DI was able to drop supplies from somewhere above for the Swan station. Were they able to create there own "window" by going above/around a bubble surrounding the island?
Danielle, Desmond, and the freighter people all put the island physical location somewhere near Figi. Did the DI anchor the island in one place so they could come an go? Perhaps the "Incident" did this. Perhaps this is what stopped the FDW from turning, and why Ben and Locke needed to get it moving again.
If the island was fixed in place near Figi, how did Eko's plane get there then? If was moving, then why did Danielle, Desmond, and the freighter folk all give locations at approximately the same spot when they arived over a period of 15 years, yet Eko's plane, which clearly falls into this time frame, couldn't possible have been near Figi. Did he take a "shortcut" through Tunsia?
Also, if the island was fixed in place, then why does the bearing change from Michael to the freighter folk in only about one month time?
One more thing to point out: the DI and the Others needed a beacon at the Looking Glass to guide the submarine.
Did the Swan station keep the window closed while it was running? After it was destroyed, Widmore was able to find the island and send his people there pretty easily.
Ben seemed to want Locke to destroy the Swan station. We know he's good at getting others to do what he wants them to do, and he was the one the gave Locke his first little push that lead to destroying the Swan. Was his plan to eventually get the island moving again to better protect the island in the longterm?
Did someone fail to enter the numbers for Danielle to arrive? For Desmond? For Eko's plane? For the real Henry Gale?
Okay, I better stop now and take some Advil. This is starting to make my head hurt.
You've got to admit, that opening shot for the episode sold it to me instantly. The second I saw the eye, I knew this episode was going to be absolutely hands down, one of the best of the season. And apart from the blithering Eloise Hawking, it was stellar.
Nice observations Niki-
Here are just a few perceptions about a couple things you mentioned:
1- Ben's "loose ends" were I thought pretty clear -- to kill Penny Widmore. One of the creepiest, disturbing things in the whole series was seeing Ben call from the payphone all messed up. Unfortunately I dread what has become of Penny and Charlie. Perhaps Desmond won't be done with the island after all once he's discovers what Ben did (and Charles will tell him.)
2- Ray IMO IS in on whatever is going on -- FATE or DESTINY -- to bring the chosen ones back. He completely had an air of expectation about Jack's visit and watched ever so carefully as Jack discovered Christian's shoes.
In other words -- UN-freakin-believeable!
I have a question. When Jack was boarding 815 and arguing to get Christian's coffin transported, did any of the losties give their condolences like new guy did in this episode?
Also I think this whole John 3:16 is significant. If Jack is now John, and John is now Christian (and Jack is his only begotten son) is there some trinity thing going on here? The verse also says whoever believes will have everlasting life. Is this Johns reward for his belief? Will jack have it now since he believes?
Regarding Ben killing Penny as a reason for Desmond to come back to the island:
Desmond would also go back if Penny was missing. Maybe there was a fight/struggle but instead of killing her, Ben kidnapps her and she is now on her way to the island or maybe Mrs. Hawking has her for now and will be sending her later. She may not be sent to the island at all but Desmond is told that is where he will find her and Charlie and of he goes. (Please let it be that.)
To some who mentioned Ben being on the plane and how he said he could never go back. Maybe he couldn't go back to the last time period he was in but could go back to a different time period. Then again he could be lying (again). LOL
@NurseBrian
Maybe Ben was reenacting Charlie. Remember he was in the bathroom I believe doing drugs when the plane crash started. Just a thought. :o)
I really enjoyed this last episode. It was so full of lots of goodness and questions.
Many people have expressed my thoughts and ideas and a few even surprised me.
So I will jump in with what I still have:
Hurley - Ben's lawyer said something about being able to get Hurley off for a lesser charge. I am going to assume that he went and did that and therefore Hurley was then out of jail. Because he needed to be there and because he could help in the "recreation" of the initial event from Oceanic 815 - I like the idea that Charlie convinced him to go and to take the guitar case so as to represent Charlie. Also loved the part with the sleep mask. LOL
Ben - I also believed that he was beaten by Sayid. To me, it was not so important where Ben was when he made the call... just that he was injured. Again I could be wrong and he could have gone after Penny - although Ben's encounter with Desmond gave no apparent indication that Penny was to be found with Desmond in MHO. Loved that Ben filled in for Hurley on the flight... although I am ticked that I fell for Ben's (possible) lie that he could not return to the island.
Agent/Officer with Sayid - who's to say after everything we have seen in the last few episodes that she is not working for Ben also? We have seen enough people who have been. Someone had to fill the seat after all.
Unknown guy in airport/plane: He represents Sayid. 'Nuff said.
Frank: What a YES moment when he appeared. Best line of the entire show.
Opening: Captured that first episode so well. Nice touch.
Jack/Kate: Hmmm. Not sure but am glad that Kate put Jack in line re. their relationship. whispers "Go, Sawyer!"
Aaron: Agree Kate took him to his grandmother. Might be an upheaval for him but he deserves to be with his real family.
Walt: never thought about him - good ideas, everyone.
I agree that the weakest part of the show was Mrs. Hawking, which is unfortunate as Ms. Flannigan is a great actress. Not sure what happened there.
Can't wait for next week. This train is just picking up steam! LOL
I'm sorry I couldn't be here sooner. Thanks for checking on me, Nik! Lots to say and I haven't even got halfway down the comments, so forgive any redundancies...
My favorite lines (same as most folks):
Lapidus: "We're not going to Guam, are we?"
The exchange between Jack and Mrs. Hawking about Ben: "Is he telling the truth?" "Probably not."
Ben when Jack mentions that all the non-returnees aft of the curtain are probably going to die: "Who cares?" (Not that I'm a sicko, just that it's vintage Ben.)
This was a good, strong episode, I think in large part because of its focus. And next week's looks to be even juicier. Even though the trade-off is that some parts of the storyline aren't furthered for a week (or more) -- and the toggling back and forth between the beach and the Others' camp frustrated a lot of folks back in Season 3 -- I welcome these discrete chapters. Sure, this season has been exciting from the start, but structure is something that to a degree has been lacking, with the breaks between episodes feeling arbitrary; the loss of flashbacks that center on a particular character or mix of characters definitely heightened the feeling that this was not just a serial but one trying to hit certain beats on its race towards a conclusion that's still over a year away.
(Heidi MacDonald, a longtime comics-biz journalist who now writes the blog The Beat for Publisher's Weekly, years ago coined the phrase "satisfying chunk" as what each issue [or, in this case, episode] of a series needs to provide, even if it's part of an epic storyline, for the reader [or viewer] to come back and invest money [or time and even psychic energy] for the next installment.)
Another favorite line of mine, actually, was Ben's response to Jack's "How can you read?" Like Nikki, I immediately thought, "but Ben's mother didn't teach him how to read; she was dead," although I didn't take it one step further to her brilliant conclusion, "I love that even his jokes are complete lies".
Then there was Jack to John's corpse: "You must be laughin' your ass off, because this... this is even crazier than you are." Which brings me to an actual disagreement with Ms. S!
Nikki: "Jack wouldn’t believe in the existence of a rock if Locke was the one who had pointed it out to him, and now the guy is hanging on every one of Eloise’s words."
I didn't see it that way. He replied, "This is ridiculous!" -- to my consternation. As Ali Bags said in an early post, it's not like the ridiculous is anything new, and in fact it breaks the fourth wall for me ever so slightly when someone offers up such an exclamation, especially Jack when he's been hip-deep in mysterious shinola for awhile now. Lost invites us to cogitate up on the meta level to a certain degree, and it needs to be careful in having sympathetic characters question a fantastical premise when the show doesn't give us anything beyond what the characters know to back it up. Of course, we the viewers need to take the ballyhooed leap of faith, and yes we've seen conclusively fantastic things that Jack hasn't which give us a more open mind (plus, of course, we actually know that this is fiction), but like Jack we don't have anything more than Mrs. Hawking's word on this particular weirdness of arranging the new flight to mimic the old one via people or totems or whatever, and I will absolutely cop to fearing that certain questions raised in the show won't be satisfactorily explained when it's all over.
At the same time, I'm with Humanebean on Mrs. Hawking's revelation about the island being underwhelming. It did feel a bit too much like exposition, yet at the same time it didn't go beyond what we long suspected to actually clear anything up. I still have a huge problem with how time works or doesn't work on the island, although some thoughts offered last week by Jeff Jensen may have helped a bit.
I don't want to spoil the movie, by the way, but I've never been able to see Fionnula Flanagan since her appearance in The Others and not think of that film (2001, starring Nicole Kidman, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, had that shot in the trailer of an old lady in a bridal veil saying, "What do you mean, mummy? I am your daughter"). That the actual name of the film ties into Lost was only an afterthought for me, because there's a certain group of characters in a touching predicament that may be paralleled by Locke.
Calvin: "The station underneath the church was called "the lamp post". I think that is in refrence to Narnia."
Jeff Jensen mentioned this in his analysis at the Entertainment Weekly website. He does a great job with both substantive and goofy speculation; it's the only place I visit to supplement my Lost musings besides this banquet of discussion hosted by Nikki.
The award for this week in great unintentional puns goes to...
Nikki: "How the DI got all of them on the plane in the first place is still up in the air..."
Benny is the runner-up, with, "I totally liked the idea of an 'Island crash course'". I'm sure nobody wanted Mrs. Hawking's crash course to be so literal -- although, to be fair, we don't know if the Ajira flight actually crashed or not.
Nikki: "So THAT is why the plane happened to go down. THAT is how these people were chosen and they knew it would crash on that island."
I'm not sure about this. (A) I don't think Dharma (the group) got all of them on the plane, although dharma (the principle of cosmic order) might have. (2) Even if some of the castaways were desired by the island, it may be that the plane wouldn't have crashed without the EM spike. Wouldn't it be interesting to find out if the returning castaways appeared on the island in a formation that matched where they were sitting on the aircraft (taking into account that Hurley probably drifted in the water and so forth)? This would lend credence to the idea that they simply vanished off the plane when it was within the island's sphere of influence and, having previous ties to the island, were transported via time jump, leaving the plane behind in normal spacetime. However, as others have mentioned, Jin has apparently spent some time in the past, meaning that the time jumps experienced by those left behind have probably stopped. So did the island merely snatch up the returnees when they got close? And if so, who if anyone on the original Oceanic flight might have been taken by the island if the entire plane hadn't been physically brought down by the EM spike when Desmond didn't hit the numbers in time? Maybe anyone who didn't die and was in fact miraculously nearly unharmed at all, like Jack and Kate and Locke, were snatched by the island during the original crash just as the returnees were this time, and anyone who died instantly or soon after of their injuries simply had their "Is the island finished with me?" meter set to zero (similarly, Boone fulfilled his purpose early on and lost protection, whereas it took Michael until the freighter explosion).
Very nice job making the "musical chairs" correlations, by the way, LotteryTicket... The idea that Jack and Kate have a bun in the oven is compelling.
Nikki: I subscribe to neither ship, by the way.
Do you mean you don't care either way, or that you don't find either relationship believable and/or desirable? Just curious!
Nikki: "When Ben is on the payphone you can see stickers for “Long Beach” and “Big Oyster.” CLUES?!"
Nope, only in-jokes: They're both Geronimo Jackson songs.
Nikki: "Was anyone else waiting for that pendulum to clock Desmond in the stomach and send him sailing across the station?
Yeah, that was distracting. (I'm surprised you could take your eyes off Desmond enough to notice where he was standing.)
Nikki: "Is Ben a religious person at all, or is he just playing the part while he’s in the church?"
I think the latter, but the former would be kinda fascinating. What do you think people who grow up on the island as "Others" even think of organized religion? How much do you think they learn about the outside world, the ones who've been there even longer than Ben, like Charlotte's peers? Mr. Friendly had a grand old time in the Michael between-island-visits flashback, but we don't know how long he'd lived on the island or how often he got off. He was probably indulging in what he missed of back home that you couldn't get on the island, but do you think that if lifelong Others are allowed to leave the island, besides Richard, they go Rumspringa when they get to visit the outside world?
Redeem147: "The Aaron thing was very strange. My first assumption was that Ben had him kidnapped to force Kate on the plane. Perhaps since he was first on the Island in utero, he didn't have to go back as part of the group."
Or perhaps, to turn that statement on its head, he had to not go back. What if regardless of time-jumping the island is dangerous to those who've been born there, and what if instead of a fixed amount of time the sickness develops after a ratio of time spent there to your lifetime-to-date. I don't actually think this, but each week I have to bring up at least one theory that the producers never even meant to introduce, which brings us to the following.
Nikki: "Do you all remember The Moth? Where Charlie can't find his guitar and Locke tells him if he stops using the heroin, he'll help him find it? He takes him out to the jungle and points up to a cliff, and there's the guitar in the case on the side of the hill. I wonder if Hurley will be carrying it and will drop it on the side of the hill?"
At first I thought that this would put the guitar in an endless loop, as may be the case with Locke's compass, and so leave another version of the guitar -- which was on the original Oceanic flight with Charlie -- destroyed in the crash or still undiscovered on the island. But I don't think the guitar found in the tree ever left the island, certainly not via the chopper and raft, so this guitar brought by Hurley would have to be identical to the one brought originally by Charlie for him to take it out of the tree and not say, hey, this is a different guitar. I'd chalk this up to a case of us being conditioned to overthink things sometimes.
The thing about Aaron's absence being due to another visitation on Kate by Claire or even Christian, as some have speculated, is that on the Ajira flight it's made clear that Kate finds the reunion coincidental until Lapidus is announced as the captain. She's more skeptical than Jack is at that point. I'm afraid that whatever Aaron's fate, the show introduced it too melodramatically in having Kate ask Jack to promise that he would never bring up the subject again, the way the returnees were only referring to Locke as Bentham before it was revealed to us that Bentham was Locke, leading us to rationalize that they must never speak his name to preserve the secret behind the Oceanic Six, only for them to call him Locke when this season started up because it wasn't a plot point anymore.
Nikki: "Does Jin know who they are, or did they land somewhere in the 50s and Jin’s always been on the island? Was that a time-travelling Jin, or has he always been on the island, but doesn’t remember it?
You can definitely see him start to crack a smile before the screen goes black.
I wonder if we'll stay in the past long enough to reach the point of the Dharma massacre and lose Jin after all. Paging Elton John: "Goodbye Dharma Jin / Though I never really knew you at all / You have a daughter now / Well, you will in twenty years ..."
Batcabbage: "I can understand a prop error, or something like that, but do you really believe that the producers would cast an actor/actress that had played a different character previously?"
This happens a lot with shows on location, for instance (besides Hawaii) those shooting in Vancouver. The X-Files had much more egregious examples, including Krycek appearing before he was Krycek, but you're right that with the way Lost is analyzed it's not only jarring but narratively confusing.
I think I know what's responsible for sorry-ass-looking Ben: Alpha. 8^)
Why is Sayid headed to Guam? Maybe he's being extradited to someplace in the East, or even Australia, and there's a layover in the Pacific.
How could Faraday have been responsible for The Lamp-Post? Obviously he's back in time right "now" on the show, but for him to have overseen construction off-island he'd have to leave either on whatever secret bearing might be applicable in this time and place, or by turning the wheel, thus exiling himself in the past. Using the wheel shunts you forward somewhat in time, or maybe it varies each instance and you could go backward too, in either direction to a larger degree than we saw Ben travel, or maybe you just get shunted out where and when the island wants you, as some have speculated. Faraday could end up in the 1960s and have a French daughter who's named for him. 8^)
What happened to the rest of the passengers on the plane if the returnees were spirited off and it didn't actually crash? As Angel said, "they may think the rapture happened"; hopefully, if Lapidus disappeared, God is still their co-pilot. Then again the other passengers could have the same utter lack of awareness that people on Heroes and Smallville do when Daphne and Clark super-speed around town and just not have noticed anyone's missing.
Sonshine: "I definitely think that Ray Shepard has some sort of part to play in the future."
As do I. Not much introduced at this point will be throwaway, and like you I thought that with his wanderlust -- or at least a desire to get out of the seniors' home -- he'd end up on the plane, perhaps after dropping some enigmatic information about the island or destinies or whatever. In fact, I kinda thought it anticlimactic when that didn't happen. But I also thought that guy was gonna be Jack's uncle, not his grandfather.
Sonshine: "And one final thought....Is Jin the reason that Charlotte knows Korean?"
I like this, but her mother would have a really hard time explaining that one. "That island is just in your imagination, darling. And what is this strange language you've made up?"
Whoa, great episode. Great write up and great comments.
Wendy here, with a couple things - don't you just love it that NO ONE seems to notice, or at least no one comments on the sorry state of Ben's appearance when he boards the plane? No one asks "WTF happened to you?" or seems the slightest bit concerned?
A litany of Ben's lies: He's lying about knowing anything about Locke's "suicide", about knowing anything about The Lampost, and of course about the true nature of his "tying up a loose end". I think he's also lying about doing anything to keep the O6 "safe" or "your friends (back on the Island) safe". Even if what he means is "safe from Widmore" he didn't do it - Sayid did. What have we seen him do that deserves their thanks? And even if he did manage to be truthful about pre-empting Widmore's bad guys, he still vowed to kill Penny and perhaps has already accomplished it. He's a lying liar (and a brilliantly conceived and played character) and I am horrified to think what mayhem he will cause next.
And what about Eloise Hawking? Is she really deliberately aiding Ben or her own interests? Is Desmond right, that Widmore, Linus and now (perhaps always) Hawking are simply
"playing" them all in a huge game? Ohhh poor Desmond.
Third time through I noticed two things
1. a "clever man" figured out that it would be good to predict where the island was going to, but "his team" created the equations that found the windows.
2. Flight 316 is going to
"Honolulu and Guam" so maybe Sayid is being extradited to Hawaii, not Guam. Which also suggests the Island is somewhere between LA and Hawaii, not further into the Pacific.
And finally, a tiny correction, FYI, it's Fiji - not Figi. No offense meant!
Can't wait till next ep and the return of Locke!
Great post & comments!
Just a brief note about Desmond and the pendulum: I think that was a very cool way to highlight the fact that Des is somehow "out of time" and not affected by the rules of the island...
I think we all have to accept that 99% of the time Ben is lying, it is weird that nobody bother to ask him why he was looking slightly ruffled but just maybe they have realised he'll only lie about the answer!
Some excellent writing yet again..with one hand the writers give you some answers and then with the other they give you more puzzles...'who convinced Hurley to be on the flight ?'...'who's got Aaron ?'..Aaaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhh so frustrating !! ;-0
The time discrepancy between 46 hours and 36 hours may accounted for in the time between the plane's scheduled take off and the time the plane crossed the special area.
Great episode I thought. Especially the scene where we see Jack in the jungle directly after the crash taking us straight back to the pilot episode in the very first scene of Lost. But it wasn't Jack from 815 but 316. A re-enactment of the original crash to get them all back to the island. Well, not all of them in this episode...Where was Michael and Walt etc and more importantly where was Vincent? I can only presume (hope) that he is in the hold!
Talking of flight numbers, as soon as I learned the title of this episode the first thing to come into my mind was not a flight number but the famous verse from the Bible that is John 3:16. I must admit to not knowing much of anything at all about this verse or in fact any of the bible, but thought it was too much of a coincidence. Maybe someone may find some interesting connections between Lost and John 3:16 apart from the obvious (John). After a quick look on Wikipedia I noticed such phrases as 'born again' and 'eternal life'...both having a lot of meaning in Lost's mythology.
Great blog Nikki! I can't wait each week to read your posts to see if I can make any sense of this truly wonderful TV series:)
Jason - I always knew in my heart that Jin survived the explosion on the ship. There is NO WAY Michael could have though. And didn't Christian come to him right before the big bang and say The Island was done with him? DSadly, I don't think we will be seeing him again. I hope we see Walt and Vincent though.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
Jason - I think Vincent was one of the Left-Behinders although we haven't seen him for a while - he's probably hanging with Rose and Bernard.
No one asks "WTF happened to you?"
I've always felt that, for the most part, the characters on Lost are chronically unable to ask questions designed to penetrate another character's mysteries, basically because it means those inquisition could be turned back on the asker and EVERYONE on this show has secrets they're determined to keep.
It's sort of like Lost's version of don't ask/don't tell: for example, Kate won't ask Sayid why he's in custody so long as Sayid doesn't ask her where Aaron is, and vice versa.
Desmond, who always somehow seems more rational and willing to say "WTF?" to the crazy going-ons, is the exception to this rule.
It may not be all that realistic, in terms of how people would react in the "real world" but it is consistent with the reality the show has created, and certainly fits with the show's themes of secrets, personal identity and the determination thereof.
Posting for the first time, after reading for a month or so. Amazing, amazing ideas and creativity by everyone here.
A few thoughts:
--I'm wondering if the reel-to-reel tape recorder in Jack's bedroom could be a relic of his family's history as physicians. Doctors dictate reports into tape recorders, over the phone, or onto a computer nowadays, but I'm guessing that a recorder like this may have been used when Christian became a doctor. (This dictation is typed up by Medical Transcriptionist, my wife's occupation.)
--I believe we've seen evidence that the wheel doesn't always send the turner forward in time. Since Charlotte found the excavated polar bear remains with the DHARMA collar in current time, doesn't that suggest that the polar bear was sent back in time? I would think that more would be left than just the skeleton if it had jumped into the future at all, since DHARMA was initiated in the 1970s.
--Between Jack's "daddy issues" and Kate's "mommy issues", it would be poetic justice for them to have a child together.
Can't wait for tonight's episode to see how Locke pulled it off, and next week to see what's happening back on The Island.
And Nikki, keep up the great work.
JACK: Kate... what happened? Where's Aaron? Where--
KATE: [Getting up and facing Jack] No, don't ask questions. If you want me to go with you... you'll never ask me that question again. You will never ask me about Aaron. Do you understand, Jack?
I understand that Kate was upset over handing Aaron over to Carole Littleton, but what a bitch! Really! She brought this whole mess upon her head by manipulating Jack into supporting her lie about Aaron and when she's finally forced to give him up, she projects this attitude that it was Jack's fault that she lost Aaron in the end.
What a bitch!
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