The Little House in Dharmaville... and Other FAQs

Each week there's lots of discussion on the most recent Lost episode in the comments section for my initial write-up on it. And sometimes there's something in there that's so insightful it demands me pulling it out and putting it in its own post. Unfortunately, I rarely find the time these days between writing and working, and I've been letting certain things fall through the cracks, and then week after week people come on asking the same questions that have been discussed on previous posts.

This week I have to give kudos to one of my most avid readers (and commentators), Benny, who was responding to a thread of comments about Sawyer going to see Kate. To some viewers, it appeared as if Sawyer were heading to Jack's house to ask his advice on what to do with Sayid, and Sawyer was surprised to see Kate open the door. From there you could conclude that Kate could have been at Jack's house, and maybe they're living together and Sawyer's surprise is the same as Jack's when Juliet opens Sawyer's door, or his face could just be surprise that he made the mistake of going to the wrong house.

In the other corner, however, fans argue it was clear Sawyer was always headed to see Kate, and his surprise was just a momentary awkwardness, a wave of emotion for her he thought had gone, but had always been there. But he had always intended, in that moment, to confront Kate and ask her why she'd come back.

I finally responded and said to me, it was a combination of the two. I think the writers wanted us to believe Sawyer was going to Jack's house, and the way they always film Dharmaville makes it hard to figure out which house is where. Yes, in the previous episode Sawyer gave an awkward little wave at Kate as she stood on her porch in the house next to Sawyer's, but as I pointed out, in this episode, Juliet is looking out the window directly at the house next to Sawyer's, and we see Jack and Kate emerging from it. But in the end, after she opens the door, I believed that we were the ones who'd been tricked, and that Sawyer really had been going to see Kate the whole time.

And then Benny stepped up. He went back through screen caps of the previous two episodes and designed a photographic rundown of each house, its position, and the camera angles through which we've looked at them, and has charted the territory of Dharmaville, concluding that the house Sawyer went to was not Kate's, and was possibly Jack's. You can go and look at the whole document here, and then decide for yourself (and please, I ask in advance, no shipper arguments in the comments, please).

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A few people have mentioned this now, and I've been meaning to pull it out as its own post (especially after Pitchfork did a piece on it) but now that we're in 1977, Geronimo Jackson is taking on more than just a red herring role in the show. Sure, it still could amount to nothing more than Darlton having fun with their fans, but they've gone the distance and we actually can hear them now. Darlton have maintained that GJ were a real band that only recorded one album in 1970 (love you guys, but I don't buy that for an instant). ;) When Jin was driving his van around the island, the song we heard in the van (at the time I couldn't find anything about it and speculated it might be GJ) is a song called "Dharma Lady." Someone on DarkUFO said the words are almost exactly the same as a song called "Excelsior Lady" by a band called The Donkeys. Further digging revealed the Donkeys were a San Francisco retro-rock band on the label (wait for it) Dead Oceans.

When a Dead Oceans publicist was questioned about the band and whether they're the stand-ins for Geronimo Jackson, her response was, "It seems as though it's possible that the Donkeys also existed as Geronimo Jackson in 1977. It might be possible that they were part of a Dharma Initiative experiment on time travel."

LOL!! She added that "Geronimo Jackson is likely to appear on extras of the season five 'Lost' DVD, where they will feature the band recording 'Dharma Lady'."

Awesome. You can now download the song for free at iTunes, and you can read the whole article on Pitchfork here.

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And finally, the single most frequently asked question I get (on the comments board, on the DocArzt comments board, in my email inbox several times a week) is, where the heck are Rose and Bernard? Excellent question. They were with Sawyer and company on the beach during the first flash, and then Dan and everyone headed into the jungle without them. When they came back and were attacked with flaming arrows, Rose and Bernard disappeared. There have been many speculations:

-Rose and Bernard were shot with the flaming arrows: I don't think so. They're too integral to just kill off-screen.
-Rose and Bernard joined the rest of the straggling survivors that were left on the beach and went and joined the Others
-Rose and Bernard were the only survivors of the flaming arrow attack that didn't follow Sawyer and company, and they went off and lived the rest of their days alone on the island, much like Rousseau, keeping to themselves and possibly becoming the Adam and Eve skeletons we find in the cave.

There are tons of possibilities here, but needless to say, they are very missed, and I hope we see them again soon. I know the writers won't just leave them somewhere, and this will be resolved at some point.