Jack and Kate Plus Eight

LOL! Is it just me, or does the Charlie head totally fit? Thanks to Jeremy for the link.

"Lighthouse": Parti Deux

What, you somehow missed part 2 of the episode? It aired tonight... OK, kidding. I just got home from Mexico and I rewatched it on high def and caught a LOT of things I didn't see the first time around. Some things have been mentioned in the comments, others weren't, so I'll run down some new things I saw. (Oh, and I forgot to mention this earlier, but I managed to get a DocArzt post up while I was away. You can read it here.)

First, let's just take a closer look at this.



All together now!

They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky
They're all together ooky, the Littleton Family
Their house is a museum, where people come to see em
They really are a scre-um, the Littleton Family!
Dadadadum! Neat!
Dadadadum! Sweet!
Dadadadum, dadadadum, dadadadum! Petite!

Good cripes, that's the stuff of nightmares, people. I'm kind of thankful that my screen was as pixelated as it was last Tuesday night... Ack. As to what kind of animal it was, my initial instinct was that it was a baby polar bear (and Claire caught it in one of her bear traps) but someone else suggested it was a wild boar and she's hacked the tusks off, and that's a definite possibility, as well. As for those who have said it was Vincent (gah!) I don't think that looks like a dog's skull to me.

Anyway, here are a couple of other things that jumped out at me:

• Jack tells his mom the coffin was last checked through Berlin. I wonder if there's any significance to Christian's coffin being spotted (or not) in Germany?
• David goes to St. Mary's school. St. Mary is how Christians refer to Mary, the mother of Christ.
• Jin's leg: GACK. I definitely didn't see what that looked like. Blech.
• The explosives in Claire's tent looked new. They didn't look like the gunky ones from the Black Rock that Rousseau had been using.
• As someone mentioned in the comments on my original post, it would appear that Claire didn't time jump, and instead seemed to be part of the island. Otherwise, how would all of her stuff had stayed with her when they jumped back?
• I mentioned during the Globe chat that the reason they had to remind us of Adam and Eve was for the millions of viewers who don't obsess over every little detail, who haven't thought of Adam and Eve for 5 years, and who will need a quick reminder for when they have the big reveal later in the season. And then tonight, as Hurley said, "Dude, I'd forgotten about them" my husband says to me, "Who the hell are they?" I laughed out loud and wrote down, "MY HUSBAND IS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE." Heehee...
• Jack tells Hurley about Christian dying and losing the coffin... is the AU affecting the people on the island, because suddenly people are opening up to each other in a way they NEVER did before.
• People pointed out that in the AU Jack was on the straight and narrow and not drinking anything, but that's not completely true; he comes home with a pizza for him and David and a 6-pack of tall beer cans... and I'm presuming the latter wasn't for David.
• I mentioned that the key is under the stone rabbit, but it's actually a white rabbit... again, a more direct reference to episode 1.05 (that and the Alice reference clinched it).
• There's a Meat Coat poster on David's wall; in the episode where Drive Shaft is in the "Butties" commercial, that's the band the director says he really wanted in the commercial instead.
• Does David not pick up his messages? His answering machine was flashing, and the second message was Jack telling him that something had happened and he wanted to hear his voice. If he'd picked up the message, it wouldn't have still been flashing. Has David not heard it yet?
• Jack's comment that he was broken and he thought the island could fix him was a really poignant line, I thought. This is a guy who always tries to fix everything, and now he's putting himself in the hands of something else to fix him... and it didn't work.
• Claire's "branding" looks a lot like the scar that the hot poker made on Sayid... did Dogen burn her in the same way to see if she was infected?
• David is at the "Williams" conservatory. I don't know if there's any significance to that name, but I wonder if it'll become significant the way "Widmore" did after we saw it written on everything.
• I totally didn't see the Temple where Jin and Sun were married and the church where little Sawyer buried his parents on the Lighthouse mirrors until now. Presumably the dial was moving past their numbers, but Jin and Sun are 42 and Ford is 15, so it would have had to pass through 23 and 16 first. Why did they flash at the higher numbers? Interesting that both of those places are where Jacob touched them. Does this mean he actually touched Jack earlier, when Jack was a boy at that house?
• I thought it was significant that it's a telescope that Jack uses to destroy the mirrors. It's like he used something used for seeing things far away that he uses to ruin something he saw close up.
• Many people emailed me to tell me what happened in the final 2 minutes of the episode (and thank you!) but what I found most significant was that Jin moved into a manipulation mode in a big way. That's huge for him, I thought (I mentioned this in the comments, but I don't know how many people are still reading those). Have we ever seen him manipulate anyone like that? Even when he worked for Paik he was just following orders and never used it back.
• How did Jin know there was a secret way back into the Temple?
• On the dial I saw Faraday, Linus, and Austen (Austen wasn't crossed out). Also Lewis, and Wallace was #108 as many had pointed out. Last week we saw Mattingly, this week I saw Rodriguez. Did Jacob have a thing for the Yankees? I also saw "Stanhope" on there. Harper Stanhope was Goodwin's wife, the psychiatrist who threatened Juliet.

And those are the extra things I noticed on a second watch! Wow, I wish this is one I'd seen in high def the first time around, but I'm really grateful I was able to watch it at all! :)

Haiku Catch-Up: "What Kate Does"

I posted haikus for "LA X" and "The Substitute" but I didn't have one up for "What Kate Does," and then Batcabbage posted some particularly hilarious ones for that episode. So I realized I really should open up the floor and if anyone has any good Claire/Kate/Arzt ones to add here, add away! First, the night of "What Kate Does" some other people posted haikus on that ep while it was still airing, so I took them down just in case they might be deemed spoilery by anyone else, so here are those ones:

AliBags:
Disappointed with
this episode. What was wrong?
No Richard Alpert.

JS:
All through six-oh-three
I bet you all were thinking
WHERE IS Man in Locke???

Sonshine Music:
Add Ethan Goodspeed
To my growing creepy list
Of palatable ;)

(Me: HAHAHA!)

In lieu of writing my own on this ep, I'm just going to re-post Batcabbage's instead because there's no WAY I could match them. :)

Hey, I’m walking here!
Don’t run me over , strangely
Terrified Cab Man!

Held me at gunpoint,
Abandoned on the roadside.
…Wanna be my friend?

What is in the pill?
Herbs, roots, all natural things.
…and COUGH! poison COUGH!

That pill’s for Sayid.
Don’t make me use the Heim- WHACK!
What did I just say?!

I’m outta here, Kate!
Don’t you … She’s following me,
Isn’t she? Dammit!

What’s the plan, Sawyer?
I’m in! Wait, where are you…? I’m
Coming anyway!!!

Hey, you! Mechanic!
Use your tools to take off my…
Were you in Buffy?

Hurley’s our leader
Now that he sees dead folks and…
Hey, wait a minute!

Lost 6.05 "Lighthouse"

Well, after much ado, I’ve finally seen the episode (well, almost.... it cut out about 2 minutes before the end... if anyone could email me off the list and tell me what happens after Jacob tells Hurley that it’s too late to save the people at the Temple, that would be awesome). But it’s really late now, so let me just make this a quick one, since I’m sure many of you have already posted some great stuff on it.

I do have to ask, though... are there any Japanese readers out there who could help me out with the translation of what Dogen says that’s not subtitled?

Highlights:
• Hurley facing off against Dogen: “I’m a big fan of temples... and history. Indiana Jones stuff.”
• “I just lied to a Samurai.” LOL!
• Hurley saying that Jacob just turns up whenever he wants, like Obi Wan Kenobi.
• Dude from Degrassi isn’t dead!! Oh... wait. Never mind.
• Adam and Eve!!!!!!!! I literally stopped breathing for a second when they came on the screen. I thought this... is... it... and then it wasn’t. I loved Hurley asking if the skeletons are them. Which probably means they’re not.
• I’m using my husband’s laptop and I just noticed he has this screen set at 108% zoom. WHOA.
• Hurley recalling season 1: “You and me... trekking through the jungle searching for something we don’t understand. Good times.”
• “Doesn’t say anything on your arm about the door being jammed?” HAHA!
• “Mission unaccomplished!”

Did You Notice?
• Jack suddenly seems interested in that appendix, like he’s had another flash of the other reality where it came out more recently.
• His son’s name is David, like King David in the Bible, who wrote the Psalms.
• Miles and Hurley have gone from Risk to Tic Tac Toe. Hahaha!
• David loves the Red Sox as much as his grandpa didn’t believe in them. Maybe he does it just to piss off Dad.
• The Annotated Alice: Jack says he read it to David, and we saw him reading it to Aaron when he was living with Kate.
• Claire isn’t just kinda crazy... she’s totally batshit bonkers creepy-skeleton-head-baby-lovin’ super crazy.
• Did anyone else hear Bono start singing when Kate told Jack that she hopes he finds what he’s looking for?
• Just like last week’s episode referenced 1.04 (Walkabout), this one references 1.05 (White Rabbit), the episode where Jack found the caves and smashed the coffin.
• Jack found the key under the rabbit, just like Miles reached under a rabbit in “Some Like It Hoth” to get into that apartment with the dead man when he was a kid.
• I noticed the house was #21, and it made me wonder if the numbers are NOT in this reality? Has anyone seen any of the numbers in this one? They seem to be always off by one or two.
• So... maybe that reunion between Claire and Kate WON’T be a happy one?
• David plays Chopin, which is what young Daniel was playing when his mom told him about his destiny.
• The screen I was watching on was heavily pixelated (hence I’m not pointing out a lot of minute details, like those names on the dial that I would LOVE to see) but that kid who asked Jack if David was his son looked a lot like young Daniel... but presumably he wasn’t if Dogen is his father.
• The mirror in the lighthouse is a reference to Alice, once again.
• Hurley says Jack’s going to have 7 years of bad luck, but he smashed 4 mirrors, so that’s more like 28 years.
• Jack wanted David to play piano, and if you recall in New Otherton he was playing piano, too, as if he never got that good and wanted the best for his son.
• Jack rights the wrongs of his son in a way that his father never did with him.
• It’s interesting that in the AU we see a lot of happy endings. Claire will keep Aaron after all, Locke has his happy ending, and now Jack gets his.
• Jacob says that Jack is here because he has to do something, and that he needs to look at the ocean for a while... Locke looked at the ocean for a long time before he sensed his destiny on the island. We also saw the Man in Black staring at the ocean when he returned looking like Locke.

Any Questions?
• Who’s coming to the island?
• Why didn’t Jin speak up earlier when Claire was freaking out about BLT having her baby? He knew Aaron had him, so why not say something right away?
• Who is Claire’s other friend in the jungle?
• What’s Dogen doing in this other reality? If the island went boom in 1977 does that mean he never went there? Or is he the island’s backup system to get people to it? It’s interesting that he says, “It’s hard to watch and be unable to help” like that’s a comment on the show.
• Who do you think is David's mom? Is it Sarah and she just was too busy with Modern Family to appear? Or could it be someone else?

I found these when I was looking for a pic to post with this:






My original post:
So, as some of you know, I'm at a resort in Mexico. We made sure they had satellite TV in the rooms (even called, and they assured us it was) and when we got here, they just had cable in the rooms. So we spent a couple of days asking around, especially since they were broadcasting the Olympics in the games room so they must have cable somewhere. Finally someone told us they had satellite in the main lobby, but just cable in the rooms. So we asked if it was possible to get a TV somewhere in the main building for 8pm on Tuesday night to watch Lost. They didn't seem to understand my urgency ("You WRITE about TV? What do you mean?") and every time we started to get somewhere with one person ("Oh yes, you could use the manager's office for an hour") we'd lose it with the next ("I suggest you bribe the DJ in the games room, but if other people are watching sports you probably won't get anywhere").

So I posted an urgent request, and Barry, the guy who designed my new cover, gave me access to his Slingbox. We tested it out, it worked perfectly. At 8pm (it's an hour earlier here) I was watching my daughter on stage with her new little friends hitting at a pinata they'd made that day, while the program was paused back at the hotel room. I got back there a few minutes later and sat down with pen and paper (my husband had taken the kids somewhere else) and the first five minutes were great... and then the internet conked out. Everything saved was gone, and it went back up for about 3 minutes after that and then went out completely. Repeated calls to the front desk told me that someone was coming up to fix it... and then he wasn't... and then he was... and then he was gone for the night. I went down to the concierge at our building and asked her if she had the internet and she said no (her colleague's computer was there and you could see the ethernet cord running right into it) but that I could go to the business center. So I ran back up to the room, grabbed everything, and ran to the business center, put the computer in, and checked my email. There was one from Barry saying he was going to bed at 11 and he could run the episode again, no problem, if I contacted him before then. It was 2 minutes to 11. ACK! I sent him a quick email and didn't hear back, so he definitely went to bed right on time! :)

I've never worked so hard to watch an episode. Another friend assured me the other day he'd upload it for me, but I've emailed him and haven't heard back and it doesn't seem to have been uploaded, so no matter what I've done, I can't get this episode. So... no post after all. :( And I've emailed the Globe and Mail to say I probably can't do the chat tomorrow since nothing is working for me.

But, I don't want to stop the rest of you from discussing it, so the floor is open. Discuss away! I look forward to coming back on Thursday and actually watching the episode and posting something and then reading everything you guys have to say. Sorry about this... I've tried absolutely everything, but unfortunately at this resort, things work when they want to, and just poop out every other time. I hope the ep was a good one!

While You Wait for Lost...

Tonight I just have one thing for you, and it's something I'm very excited about. After watching the first episode, Barry Johnson (the man who designed my S5 cover that I love so much AND the guy letting me use his slingbox to watch the episode tonight) emailed me with a suggested cover, which was his rendering of the Temple surrounded by hieroglyphs. This was completely unbidden; he'd just gone ahead and done it. I told him I liked it a lot, but my idea for a S6 cover had been a chess board with two kings -- one black, one white -- standing in the middle, either fallen on the board, or maybe just one of them fallen. I was looking for a cover that was predominantly black and white, but maybe had another colour on it. I suggested red.

He emailed back that he liked that idea and could do it, and would incorporate the hieroglyphs from his Temple cover, and he'd created his own Dharma symbol that represented the do-over idea that we're seeing in S6. He thought the kings might be better standing, looking like they're facing off, and he also wanted to try adding the beam of light on there from the hatch (since so much of S6 is reminiscent of S1). He then send me a rendering, and after some back and forth, we have what I think is the cover that was in my head all along, and he somehow pulled it out of there and put it on the page.

So, without any further ado, this will be my season 6 cover for Finding Lost!! I hope you love it as much as I do. :)

"The Substitute" Haiku: Cave Ceiling Edition!

I apologize for not getting last week's haiku up, but here's something to allow you to waste your time today waiting for tonight's episode, "Lighthouse." (And I'm calling it the cave ceiling edition, but you can post haikus on any aspect of "The Substitute.")

One quick note: Please don't post any haikus on tonight's episode on this post; when I posted the haiku for "LA X" people started posting on "What Kate Does" while they were watching the ep, and spoiled a few things for people who hadn't watched it yet. So let's just stick to The Substitute this time just for the sake of people in other time zones. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with! The haiku portion of this blog is always one of my faves. :)

AU is Locke’s hell
Because in this world he’s a
Substitute teacher.

Ceiling: Look closely
Nikki and Paulo crossed out
“WHAT WAS I THINKING?!”

Twenty-three: Shephard.
Does it mean Christian or Jack?
“Not the only one.”

Four: Locke. Forty-two:
Kwon. Sixteen: Jarrah. Fifteen:
Sawyer. Eight: Reyes.
(I know it said “Ford” but I needed the extra syllable!)

Success!

One of my readers, Barry, has offered me access to his TV via slingbox, and we downloaded it last night and it works just fine, so I'll be watching Lost with the rest of you folks thanks to him, and posting pretty quickly afterwards (I might not have time to watch it through twice, so it might be a shorter post). Thank you, Barry!

Watch this space around 5pm for the unveiling of my new Season 6 book cover!!

Help Needed...

So, one of the reasons we chose the hotel we did was because they promised satellite TV in the rooms. Well, turns out by "satellite TV" that meant that they only have cable (i.e. all Spanish) in the 2000+ rooms that sprawl all over this place, and the satellite is only in the main lobby building that has a games room in the bottom floor. I'm being told that if I want to watch Lost tomorrow night, I have to go there and ask the DJ to change the channel at 8, although "if other people are in the room wanting to watch sports, it's not likely the other people in the room will let you watch it." I have a friend helping me out and he's going to try to upload it for me immediately following, but it took about a minute to download a 3MB file this morning, so I can only imagine how long a 350MB file will take.

So... does anyone out there live in Mexico? Do you get Lost on a cable local channel? Is it possible for me to actually watch this in the room or will I be attempting to watch it in a room with 100 other people throwing things at me for an hour? (or watching it really late at night after it's finally downloaded?)

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Overheard...

... this afternoon at the swim-up pool bar at the resort in Mexico where we're staying.

Drunk guy: SO WHERE ARE YOU FROM?!

Not-as-drunk guy: Germany.

Drunk guy: WHERE ARE YOU FROM IN GERMANY?

German guy: Dusseldorf.

Drunk guy: DUSSELDORF? ISN'T THAT WHERE HARRY POTTER IS FROM?!

[beat]

Drunk guy's drunk friend: Dude, you're thinking of Dumbledore.

Not-Locke = Jacob?

What if... what if... Jacob and the Man in Black are one and the same? What if his self split off into two parts, and he USED to look like Jacob, but then his body was taken over by some evil island spirit, and like Ariel in The Tempest, he’s trapped on the island as a supernatural entity and just wants his body back?

If that’s the case, then he can’t kill Jacob simply because Jacob is him, and he can’t kill himself and still have his soul live on. Perhaps he’s trying to kill the body hoping it’ll take out the evil spirit inside, but instead, because the body was so old, it just disintegrated into ashes and now he can’t jump into any other body because his real one is gone, and the evil spirit that was inside Jacob is now roaming the island.

Following this, could the little boy he saw in the wilderness have actually been him? Maybe he came to the island as a young boy and grew up and looked like Jacob before the island’s evil (the thing that needs protecting against) took him over and separated him out. Now he’s trapped on the island and can’t live until he can get back “home,” home being his body. But now that he’s destroyed it, is there any returning to it? He jumps from body to body trying to find the right one (probably the Man in Black on the beach wasn’t what he really looked like, and was just another body he was borrowing).

Of course, if he’d just killed Jacob, then how would this theory work? I know I’m missing key pieces here... can anyone help me out?

Someone suggested during the Globe chat today (it might have been humanebean) that the Man in Black lost a lady love and it’s what drove him to the angry person he is now. If that’s the case, could his original body actually be the Adam of the Adam and Eve skeletons, with Eve being his lady? In which case, it’s not clear why he’s been separated out of that body and can’t return.

Oh, and by the way, I'm aware I've just made a sharp left onto Crazytown Alley with these speculations, so please bear with me. ;)

UPDATE
And as soon as I posted that, humanebean posted a great theory onto my original blog post for "The Substitute," so I wanted to pull it out here:

I've been giving this some thought and it occurs to me that the young boy that UnLocke saw last night might be .... his own son. We've seen characters from our LOSTaways' past appear to them before, to remind them of their past transgressions or evoke in them remorse and regret. Now, a lot of these times we've later assumed that this apparitions were just Smokey (and perhaps they were) but I'm not sure.

Jack obviously sees his late father. Kate sees the horse. (interestingly, so did Sawyer) Hurley sees his imaginary friend, Dave. Eko sees Yemi. Juliet sees Harper Stanhope. Locke sees Taller Ghost Walt. Then last night, UnLocke sees ... a little boy, his arms held out from his sides, smeared with blood.

When he sees him again, he chases after him through the jungle. When he returns to Sawyer, he talks about how he was once a man, who knew what it was to lose someone he loved and to be betrayed. I'm starting to wonder if MIB had a son on the Island who was gravely wounded ... and grew angry and embittered when he couldn't save him, perhaps after a trip to the Temple of his own.

At some point, he aligned with the dark energy of the Island and became one with Smokey. Thereafter, he lurked on the fringes of the Temple, wreaking havoc on those Jacob brought to the Island time and again. Finally, his rage became all-consuming and Jacob's followers had him imprisoned at the Cabin, keeping him surrounded by ash ... until that was disturbed one day and he leapt free to seek his loophole and thereby have his revenge.

OUT there? Absolutely. But surely the vision of his lost son would haunt him in this moment, reminding him (as other apparitions have done for their charges) that repentance is the only escape from damnation.

Of course, someone might have tabbed my iced tea, too. That's always a possibility. ; ]

Lost 6.04 "The Substitute"

“I don’t want you to spend your life waiting for a miracle, Helen, because there’s no such thing.”
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED this episode. There isn’t enough space on this blog to express my love for this episode (if I were doing a video podcast, I’d be squeaking right now!). In this reality, Locke is happily with Helen, and while he has short bursts of anger, they’re nothing out of the ordinary (who among us would keep their cool if they’d just been fired and then some idiot had parked his Hummer right next to the only access we had to our vehicle?). But he doesn’t believe in miracles or destiny. He’s no longer a man of faith. He accepts what has happened to him and helps those around accept it, too. While his new lifestyle is one that gives him more contentment, and will definitely make him a happier person where better things will no doubt happen to him, I felt a little empty at this idea of a faithless Locke. He’s accepted what has happened to him, but... if Jack could perform a miracle, and make Locke walk, would it make him a happier man? When he looked at Helen and said there’s no such thing as miracles, I actually moaned out loud, “Oh, say it ain’t so, Locke!”

“You know the rules...”
Rules! They were first mentioned by Ben when Alex was killed and he muttered that Widmore had changed the rules. There’s always been a link between the Widmore/Ben war and the Jacob/MiB one, and in “The Shape of Things to Come,” Ben tells Widmore that he knows Ben can’t kill Widmore, and in “The Incident,” the MiB can’t kill Jacob. Here the mini-Jacob tells Not-Locke that he knows he can’t kill him. Does this mean that Jacob is only merely dead, and is NOT most sincerely dead?

Highlights:
• HELEN!!! When I was doing interviews for the lead-up to the premiere, an interviewer asked me what I would love to happen most if there was a do-over. I said, “I wish Helen would be alive and she and Locke would be together and happy.” Wish = granted!!!
• Smokey cam! That trip through the jungle was wicked. Imagine how quickly you could get from place to place if you could just turn yourself into a pillar of smoke and move around like that.
• “People seldom get a second chance.” I loved that line. It was a toss-up between that and the miracle one about which I'd put at the top of this blog post.
• “Well, I guess I’d better put some pants on.” Haha!
• “Randy Nations? Yeah... that guy is a huge douche.” LOLZ!!!!! I had just finished saying to my husband that “A Dick in Every Reality: The Randy Nations Story” could be his memoir title.
• I don’t know why, but I just got the weirdest kick out of crazed panicky Richard being the unhinged loser trying to lure Sawyer, who just stands there and tells him to get lost before Richard scurries back into the jungle.
• Not-Locke’s amazing soliloquy: “I know what it’s like to feel joy, to feel pain, anger, fear, to experience betrayal. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. If you want to shoot me, shoot me, but you are so close, James. It would be such a shame to turn back now.”
• Ben gives the best eulogy ever: “John Locke was a... a believer. He was a man of faith. He was... a much better man than I will ever be. And I’m very sorry I murdered him.”
• Frank’s response: “This is the weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to.” HA!!
• Not-Locke throwing the rock and explaining it as an “inside joke.” Hahaha!!
• Ben as that guy in the teacher’s lounge. High-larious.

Answers:
• The numbers correspond to 6 of the 7 people that Jacob touched. We don’t know why he chose those numbers (but you kinda hope there’s a little more to the numbers than THAT).
• Jacob was touching people to push their lives in a direction that would get them to the island, where they could be a candidate.
• By “candidate” they mean a new leader who will protect the island.

Did You Notice?:
• Locke’s neighbourhood looked like the same one Nadia was in when he was doing her home inspection.
• The moment the sprinklers came on and Locke started smiling, I knew his alternate life was WAY different than the one we know.
• When Locke looks at the furniture swatches, he at first chooses the one that’s hunter green.
• There were a lot of parallels between this episode and “Walkabout,” the original Locke episode from season 1. We see him at the office with Randy being a huge dick, we see him with a “Helen” (though the one in “Walkabout” wasn’t exactly the same thing), we see a version of Locke yelling that you can’t tell him what he can’t do...
• Someone pointed this out in the comments: have you noticed, by the way, that the flashbacks are following the same sequence as S1? First ep a two-parter that covered off many of the survivors, ep 3 a Kate-centric one, ep 4 a Locke-centric one... does this mean next week is Jack-centric and the following week will focus on Sun? Presumably ep 7 won’t be about Chah-lie...
• When Locke is sitting in his cubicle, you can see a photograph of him and Cooper hunting on the day that Cooper told him about needing a new kidney.
• I love that one of the first times we know Ben is actually telling the truth, it sounds completely preposterous.
• Sawyer’s listening to Iggy Pop and The Stooges’ “Search and Destroy,” from the Bowie-produced version of the Raw Power record. Oddly, the song plays when Smokey peeks in the window, and then it’s still playing when he shows up later. Maybe James was stumbling out to keep repeating the song. The lyrics are eerily appropriate (bolds are mine):

I'm a street walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys
Honey gotta help me please
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby detonates for me
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology !
Ain't got time to make no apology
Soul radiation in the dead of night
Love in the middle of a fire fight
Honey gotta strike me blind
Somebody gotta save my soul
Baby penetrates my mind
And I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy
And honey I'm the world's forgotten boy
The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy
Forgotten boy, forgotten boy
Forgotten boy said
hey forgotten boy

• How much do I love that everyone else was duped by Not-Locke, but Sawyer immediately sees through the veil. “Locke was scared, even when he was pretending he wasn’t. But you... you ain’t scared.”
• I know the actors are paid well on this show, but I don't think you could pay me enough to have that sandcrab or tarantula or whatever the HELL that thing was that scuttled over dead Locke's head. :::SHUDDER::: Seriously, I screamed louder at that sight than I did when Sawyer's ladder broke.
• Locke’s platform stops before hitting Hurley’s Hummer because Hurley’s the luckiest guy in the world. Perhaps the cosmos prevented it from actually hitting it.
• Love the new dapper Hurley (though I’m still partial to the old one!)
• The loopy career counsellor who asks Locke what animal he would describe himself as was the fake fortune-teller that Papa Reyes hired to try to trick Hurley in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead.”
• Rose is the same no-nonsense person in this reality as she is in the other one.
• The last time Sawyer recounted the final scene in Of Mice and Men, Ben was walking him up the hill to show him the other island. Sawyer put himself in Lenny’s place and was calling Ben “George.” But in this instance, he sees himself as George, and Not-Locke is the Lenny he’s out in the jungle to execute.
• Jack’s cell number is the same in both realities! (And someone should have proofread that business card: the last number is missing the dash in the number. Sloppy!)
• Helen is wearing a shirt that says “Peace & Karma, Joy and Tranquility.”
• Inside the cave is a scale with one white rock, one black one. Bigger versions of the small rocks inside Adam and Eve’s pouch. Also, the Egyptian god Anubis would weigh the hearts of the dead on a scale as they were preparing for the afterlife.
• How perfect is it that Ben is the REALLY annoying, petty, anal guy in the teacher’s lounge? (And by the way, he looks EXACTLY like the European History prof I had in university, except the guy had snow-white hair. But otherwise, down to the glasses and annoyingness, he’s THAT GUY.)

The Numbers:
Locke gets up at 6:15. St. Sebastian Hospital is located at 8444 Wilshire Blvd. Locke asks the class to open their books to Chapter 4. Many of the people Jacob touched all correspond to a number: 15: Ford; 16: Jarrah; 8: Reyes; 42: Kwon; 23: Shephard; 4:Locke.

So Many Questions...
• I’m thinking Locke didn’t end up in the wheelchair because his father threw him out a window this time. Perhaps Cooper was still behind it somehow, but why else would Helen say they should invite his dad and her parents to a shotgun wedding? (Unless of course she meant that the shotgun was aimed at Cooper.)
• Have we ever seen Richard this unhinged? His eyes are wild as Not-Locke is talking.
• Who is the little boy? Is it a little Jacob? Does this mean that the dead people on the island aren’t actually the Man in Black’s doing? Could Yemi and Christian be powered by something else?
• What will Ilana do with Jacob’s ashes?
• Why can Sawyer see the kid, but Richard couldn’t? Does that make him THE candidate?
• If Not-Locke uses the same catchphrase as Locke, is it possible there’s any of Locke’s personality in that body?
• Why didn’t Rose talk to Hurley at all when she was on the plane with him?
• If Rose still has cancer in this reality, was she at Isaac’s place in Australia? Was Bernard so happy on the plane because he believed she’d been healed? Or has she convinced him to just allow her to enjoy the time she has left and they were just having a fun vacation?
• Who WAS Not-Locke when he was a real man? He was a man pre-1930s. We’ve seen the Man in Black in the 19th century, but it’s not clear if THAT was actually him as a man. Perhaps he was just wearing a man-suit back then, too.
• Why is Not-Locke stuck this way, as Ilana says?
• Was anyone else scared there’d be a dug-up empty grave on the beach with some diamonds scattered in it?!
• By “Kwon,” was Jacob referring to both of them? (Are they the island’s Adam and Eve?)
• Why wasn’t Kate one of the numbers?
• Why were the very people that Jacob thought were candidates the same ones who actually left the island? (With the exception of Sawyer?) Is the fact that Sawyer is the only one who stayed behind significant?
• When Eloise sent them all back to the island, was she in cahoots with Jacob somehow?
• When Sawyer said “yes,” is there a possibility that Not-Locke will try to kill him to use his body, or was Ilana right and he’s stuck in Locke’s?

Reminder: I now do a quick recap of the week’s episode on a radio show every Wednesday morning at 9. Tomorrow listen in to Marshall and Forbes on The Ocean 98.5 in Victoria, BC at 6 a.m. local time, 9 a.m. EST. Go here and click on the Listen Now button if you’re out of the listening area.

And tomorrow at noon I will once again be participating in the Globe and Mail Lost chat from noon to 1pm EST. Go here to ask questions and comment. See you there!

And finally: Stay tuned to this space, because later this week, I will be unveiling something that is very exciting to me: the Finding Lost: Season 6 cover!! I can't wait to show all of you!

Next week:

While You Wait for Lost...

Before there was Monty Python, there was Beyond the Fringe. Made up of the incredibly talented and brilliant Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett, they were the subversive sketch comedy troupe that spawned a generation of British humour. When I was a kid, my dad would play a Beyond the Fringe album for my brother and I all the time. There were a couple of tracks that appealed to us as kids, like the coal miner who would have been a judge (but he didn't have the lesson for the judgin'), who kept dropping the great lump of coal on his foot and going, "Oh-oh-oh." My brother and I were in hysterics.

One of the pieces that I always loved (and now as an adult I can hum the thing in my sleep) is Dudley Moore's absolutely magnificent parody of a pianist who runs through various types of music -- Classical, Baroque, Romantic -- before realizing he simply doesn't remember how to end the damn thing. Moore had given up a career as a pianist to become a comedian, but he found a way to show the world that he was a brilliant musician. Here's the video clip:



There are so many I'd love to post here, like the one-legged man who shows up for the audition, or one of THE funniest Shakespeare parodies I've ever seen ("So That's the Way You Like It"), but I think I'll play this one, which is the whole group (and it's just audio, not video, but it's the exact audio I listened to as a kid, so you'll know how I felt while I was listening to it). And... it's rather Lost appropriate, I think. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



UPDATE: I just heard that one of the clips that I filmed a while ago for Space (talking about Fringe) will be airing tonight at 11 EST, so if you're a Canuck, check it out! Apparently the Lost clips have run, and I somehow missed them!

Congratulations!

A big happy 35th anniversary to Mary and Larry, or, as we know and love them, Marebabe and MiraklMax! Kudos, guys, and big hugs from all of us. :)

I Love You More than Nikki and Paulo

Happy Valentine's Day Tomorrow!

Celebrate with some Lost fun. One fan has created a bunch of Valentine's cards you can send to your honey (or not). This is probably my fave:



Although the Jack one is pretty awesome, too. Go see all of them here. Thanks to Crissy for pointing me in their direction!

Stuff for a Friday

I wish I'd found these before the premiere... I think we should totally print these off and use them when watching. This is from Sci-Fi Wire (where you can find more cards), but I saw it first at Crissy's Tumblr page.

My fave? The square where "Someone is cryptic when they should be direct." We'd have all had that one marked off this past week!

My DocArzt column went up late yesterday. I try to make a case for why we should be a little easier on "What Kate Does" (while deep down I know this will be one of those episodes I'll have to "get through" on a rewatch... but don't tell anyone I said that).

While I try to keep things light on the blog, I sometimes move into the realm of sappy... and that's usually when I'm talking about my kids. Like this time, for instance. But I was thrilled yesterday to find out that my husband can be just as sappy as I can. While I usually don't use his name (nor do I post pics of my kids) I can't resist sending you over to his golf blog today to hear him tell a story about our favourite teddy bear. And you'll get a glimpse of my sweet little 2-year-old man that I talk about on here.

And speaking of kids, I must share what my daughter said the other day: as we were pulling away from my son's daycare, she commented on the cutouts on the window: "Mommy, if Valentine's Day is all about love, why do people keep putting up pictures of fairies holding weapons?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, the wisdom of the young.

And finally, I have good and bad news for Lost fans who follow my posts. On March 9 I will be in the UK, and won't be able to see the new episode (and I'll be busy on the 10th so I can't actually download it and post late). So there won't be any post that day. BUT... so as not to disappoint, I'll be watching your comments in the coming weeks and I'm going to choose a couple of people to guest blog in my absence. So keep those Lost comments coming week after week, and I'll contact a few people to see if you're interested in being Nikki for a day. Because, as we all know, it takes three people to do my job.

(OK, seriously, I'm only saying 3 people so that you guys get some different perspectives on everything and that no one person is pressured to write a REALLY LONG post.)

And while I'm at it, I'll mention that I'm heading off to sunny (I hope) Mexico next week from February 18-25, but we've actually chosen a resort with wireless in the rooms and satellite TV so I'll still be able to post. Yep. THAT is how much I care about you guys. I promise to be thinking about all of you as I'm swimming in the ocean and sipping Mai Tais on the beach, because that is just the kind of considerate person I am. ;)

The Mystery Package Unveiled!!

Last week I posted that a mysterious package arrived in my office. I opened it up, and what I found inside was... wow. So I mentioned on here that I'd reveal what was inside, but then my webcam wouldn't work, and then the microphone wouldn't work (someone out there is saying that it's because I use a PC... ahem...) but I finally got everything to work. I know I promised I'd never do a video podcast again, but this demanded it. You have to see this to believe it. I've held parts of it up and if you pause that scene you should be able to see it a little better... I hope. Maybe YouTube fuzzed it all up or something. But there are many subtle things I haven't talked about that are there if you look closely. (However, I changed locations this time so you're not distracted trying to see the books on one of my bookshelves!) ;)

I've received many gifts from my readers, and I can't tell you how amazing that makes me feel. I've loved all of them, but this... well. This rendered me speechless. For about 3 seconds, and now you can watch me yammer about it for 10 minutes. Who sent the package? Just watch and find out...

Yep, He's Evil

So during last night's episode my brother emailed me to ask why the dude from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was on Lost. I said that's Aldo, and he was also in S3. Then he emailed and said he knew the guy playing Justin from somewhere, but couldn't place it:



I said he definitely looked familiar to me, too, but I couldn't place him. Then Jim, a fellow Canuck, emailed me today and said, "So... that guy Justin from last night. That wasn't BLT from Degrassi Jr. High, was it?"

OMG. It totally was. I can't find a better picture than this one, but if you were ever a fan of this show (and I was a super-fan back in the day when it was first on... please stop doing the math) this would make you very happy. So there you have it, Justin is Canadian. Which means he is evil and was meant to die.

Oh, poor sweet BLT. He was always such a sweet guy trapped in that eternally 80s hairdo.

Reminder: Globe Chat at Noon!

Just a quick reminder I'll once again be doing the Globe chat at noon, discussing last night's episode. Hope to see you there! And watch this space for a further link in about half an hour. Go here to ask questions or just read along! (I'll try to type faster this week so we can get through more questions...)

UPDATE: You can check out part of a chat I was involved in at the Ampersand blog on Canada's OTHER national newspaper, the National Post.

Today's Globe chat has been archived at the above Globe link.

6.03 What Kate Does

“We believe he has been... claimed.”
I wasn’t so sure this episode had much going for it in the first part, but by the end it had really picked up steam, and I enjoyed a lot of what happened with it. But I will admit... in a final season where they have SO much to wrap up, I’m a little nervous about an episode that just seemed to raise a billion more questions without answering any of them. And yet... intrigued.

For me the most important line is the one above, spoken by Dogen. “Claimed” suggests that Sayid’s body has been taken over by someone (or something) else. We all assumed last week it was Jacob, and maybe the Temple dwellers assume it’s the Man in Black, and that he’s the bad dude. Watching Sayid hooked up to the electrocution device and seeing him getting stabbed with a hot poker made me think, “Wow... karma’s a bitch.” But they were using these torture instruments diagnostically. How? Could they have been seeing if the thing that Sayid’s body is hosting would jump out? Did they think he’d start talking in tongues? Or was it something more physical and less supernatural than that?

More importantly was Dogen’s comment about the darkness getting to Sayid’s heart and how it would change him utterly and turn him into a dark thing. We saw sweet little Ben Linus get shot by Sayid and taken to the Temple. The next we saw of him he was in Alpert’s tent and Widmore came to see him, and, like Sayid, Ben just looked at him and said, “What happened?” And that’s the last we see of Ben. By the looks of that scene, the Temple hadn’t changed Ben that much. But what if it did... and the darkness just hadn’t gotten to his heart yet? What if a few days later he was already the sociopath that we love to hate? If Sayid really has turned himself into the very same dark entity that Ben Linus is... well then, karma really IS a bitch.

I’ve been saying for a few months now that we should look at that scene on the beach from the end of S5 as if Jacob were the bad guy, and the Man in Black the good. What if Dogen actually knows that, and the “thing” that he’s trying to keep out now that Jacob is gone isn’t actually Smokey at all (despite Aldo thinking that) but the spirit of Jacob himself? Could Jacob be the evil that’s infecting these people?

And what about Claire? Is Aldo right about her being claimed (in which case, did she really die in the house explosion in “The Shape of Things to Come” like many of us wondered at the time?) or is he wrong, and she’s just turned into Claireseau?

That Ultrasound!
So... is this a production error or a suggestion that in the new timeline, Flight 815 actually left a month later? Claire’s ultrasound readout clearly says the date is 10/22/2004, which puts the flight in October, NOT September. (It also says it’s 9:29 in the morning, and considering it’s probably been a few hours of Kate and Claire running around and it’s been broad daylight the entire time... this is probably yet ANOTHER prop error.) So... prop error or hint that even the date is different?

Highlights:
• Arzt: “Hey, I’m walkin’ here, I’M WALKIN’ HERE!” HAHA! Oh, how I love seeing Arzt again. Can we lobby to make him a member of the cast?!
• Miles: “As you can see, Hugo here has assumed the leadership position, so... that’s pretty great.” HAHA! Miles is high-larious in this episode.
• Aldo: “Is this a press conference?” Aldo was a complete dick, but there’s something about that line that made me laugh. It also made me think that Kate’s actually been in a REAL press conference as part of the Oceanic 6.
• Miles: “We’ll be in the food court if you need us.”
• Ethan!! And he’s a Goodspeed the way he was supposed to be, not a Rom! He never became an Other because Amy was probably evacuated right before the island sank.
• Did anyone else absolutely ♥ the adorable ring that Sawyer was going to give to Juliet? I would have loved that ring. From Desmond.
• Claire!!

Answers:
• So much for answers every week!

Did You Notice?:
• Poor Claire... welcome to the US of A, darlin. She must have been thinking, “Holy CRAP I thought all of those people who warned me about the dangers of America were bananas, but they were RIGHT!!”
• I was totally expecting Claire to jump out of the cab and not be pregnant, but I was so relieved when she was.
• There go all our Thelma and Louise fantasies about Claire and Kate.
• The insanely cold way Kate acted in the car (especially scaring the bejeezus out of Claire) made me think that in this reality, she lacked the heart that always seemed to be her fatal flaw (going to see her mom, wanting that little plane because of Tom). But when she opened the bag and found Claire’s stuff, the look on her face told me that no, this is the same Kate we’ve loved since season 1. Maybe being on the run in this reality just made her a little harder in that scene than she usually is.
• The car mechanic that gets rid of Kate’s cuffs played Rack, the evil magicks dealer to Willow on Buffy. Interestingly, he tells Willow that she tastes like strawberries, which is what Sawyer told Kate she tasted like.
• The killer whale doll! Do you remember that? It’s from “Something Nice Back Home.” As Jack’s going completely ballistic on Kate because of some phone call that he thought might have something to do with Sawyer and he’s about to leave them, just as he says, “You’re not even RELATED to him!” Aaron comes walking out into the kitchen and he’s standing there holding the whale doll. Kate would have bought that for him, and in this reality Claire’s the one who got it for him. (It’s a clear reminder of the black and white theme on the show.)
• This is the first time Jin’s weighed in on the Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet quadrangle, asking Kate point blank what exactly she plans to do when she catches up with Sawyer. I feel kinda bad for Kate... earlier she thought she was “saving” Jack by going to New Otherton, only to find out he’d planned to leave the island with Juliet. Now she’s off to save Sawyer, only to find out that he’d planned to marry Juliet. Looks like Kate’s the Other Woman this time... not Juliet.
• You know how in The Fly the guy steps into the machine with a fly and their DNA get crossed? I think that happened with Sawyer and Jack when they time-jumped together... some of Jack’s Jears rubbed off on the new Emo Sawyer.
• Ethan: “I don’t want to stick you with needles if I don’t have to.” Ha!! I loved that reference to season 1.
• The moment Claire said “Aaron,” there was a moment of recognition with Kate. It’s like that name was something that cut across timelines with her, and she knew how important he was supposed to be to her.
• Emo Sawyer becomes Emo Desmond!! I actually said out loud, “Throw it! Throw it like Desmond!” And then he did... You know, I’ve decided I need to take up deep-sea diving. I figure there’s a freakin’ wealth of engagement rings from romances gone wrong at the bottoms of various bodies of water. I’ll start with the Thames and then go to the island.
• Dogen is playing with a baseball when Jack walked in the room, a reminder of his dad’s comment, “That’s why the Red Sox will never win the World Series.” Which begs the question: in the other timeline, will the Red Sox win the World Series?
• Dogen says to Jack that he needs to remain separate from his people, because it makes it easier when he makes decisions they don’t like. As much as I loathe having to remind anyone of the events of “Stranger in a Strange Land,” this reminded me of the Jack tattoo that “Woman From the Others Who We Never Saw Again and Seemed to Have Been A Mistake At the Time Before the Writers Had Truly Worked Things Out” said meant, “He walks among us, but he is not one of us.”
• Dogen’s name comes from Dōgen Zenji, who was a Zen Buddhist master of one of the three sects of Japanese Buddhism. He lived in the thirteenth century.
• Ethan said the baby moved a lot, but he moves WAY too much for a baby that’s 36 weeks along. First, he shouldn’t be lying on his side like that; at 36 weeks they’re so big they’re either head-down (the way they’re supposed to be) or head up (the way mine was when my ob started screaming for a c-section). It’s not impossible for a baby to be lying like that, but that’s more what you’d see at the 20-week ultrasound, not at the end. But more importantly, on the ultrasound monitor the baby’s head was on the left side of the screen; on the printout, it was on the right. That is one athletic baby. ;)
• The detective who comes into the room is Detective Rasmussen. I did a quick check on that name and it said it’s a Danish name that translates to “Erasmus’s son.” Erasmus was the leader of the German humanist movement, which promoted scholarship of the ancients (now called Humanities). He was a Catholic priest and a brilliant, albeit vain, man. Could this be some indication of Aaron’s possible future?
• Kate’s used the name “Joan Hart” before. I think it was in the flashback where she dyes her blonde hair back to the original brown and then asks the guy at the hotel front desk for any letters to Joan Hart.
• Apparently the “darkness” affects your eyes... despite wandering the jungle for years, Claire has eyeliner on. Gasp!! Has Richard Alpert been infected by the darkness, too?!

The Numbers:
On my first rewatch of the episode, my son woke up crying when there were 42 minutes left. The license plate on the taxicab that Kate steals is 4DQS554. (There are two 4s in that, and D is the 4th letter of the alphabet.) The time of the ultrasound is 9:24:42.

So Many Questions...
• So, last week Lennon and his thugs insisted that Jack HAD to come with them immediately, and he had to come alone. And yet this week that urgency is gone and they’re no longer asking him to come. Why did they need him so badly last week? I assumed Christian was waiting in a back room to talk to him, and yet this week it’s like they no longer care about him.
• Who changes their mind about an adoption and totally DOESN’T TELL THE SURROGATE MOM?! Especially when she was going to take a 16-hour flight to ge to them? I was hoping Kate would pistol-whip that woman.
• In the original timeline that we saw before, many of us speculated that there was no adopting family on the other side, and Richard Malkin simply knew that flight was going to crash and he put Claire on it, forcing her to have to raise Aaron on her own. Does the adopting mom on the other side suggest that Malkin really was telling the truth, or did this change as a result of the different timeline?
• Wouldn’t there have been a more convenient place to hide an engagement ring than under floorboards Sawyer would have to rip up with a crowbar?
• I know this will be completely insane, but did anyone else think Sawyer looked a little paunchy? Or is it just the unflattering sweatshirt that he’s wearing?

Next week:

While You Wait for Lost...

UPDATE: I totally got a shout-out on today's EW PopWatch Lost update blog! A "top-notch Lost blogger," me is. Woohoo!!

In this week's edition, the Ack Attack is back, and she hasn't lost her bite one bit. Be sure to check out Rachel's hilarious recap this week, where you can find awesomeness like this:

Airline Employee #1: OCEANIC PASSENGER JACK SHEPHARD. ATTENTION OCEANIC PASSENGER JACK SHEPHARD. YOU ARE A DOUCHE. THAT IS ALL.
Airline Employee #2: Give me that microphone you little – Oceanic Passenger Jack Shephard, please report to the Baggage Area immediately.
Airline Employee #1: I THINK HE ALREADY HAS ENOUGH BAGGAGE, TO BE HONEST.
Airline Employee #2: Will you give me that *clicks off intercom*

And because All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Corpse Issues, the airline informs Dr. Shephard that not only did they lose Christian’s coffin, they don’t even remember where they put the damn thing!

“It’s always in the last place you look, isn’t it? lulz!”

***

Or this, the imagined note that the Japanese guy reads when he breaks the ankh:



Go here to read the entire recap.


After you've read that, go check out Matt Roeser's blog on his finale party. This guy's finale parties are the parties to end all parties... I wouldn't dare hold one just because I know he'd totally out-party me any day. First, a reminder of his costume for the S4 finale party:



Why? Because I will take ANY opportunity to post this photo again and again... Matt is the dead pilot on the right, and his friend is dressed as the sonic fence... with the keypad on his crotch. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Seriously, I think this is THE single funniest Lost-related image I've seen. Every time I see it I burst into laughter. It never gets old.

Anyway, on Matt's blog, he's posted links to a very complicated, eerie, and professionally shot movie he's made... wait for it... as the INVITATION to the S6 party. It's insanely good. (And I'm assuming we're ALL invited, right Matt?!) ;) But if you go, you have to be REALLY thoughtful about those costumes. Matt was the Frozen Donkey Wheel last year (you have to go and see the photos to believe it) and here are some examples of other costumes. Here's Montand minus one arm:



LOLZ!! And the heavily eyelinered Richard (natch) as he displays the objects on the table. Haaaaaaahahaha!



I LOVE THESE. I can't wait to see the pics for the S6 party. Matt, you are insane. Insanely AWESOME. Go here to see Matt's blog and watch his movie.

Finding Jeff Heimbuch!

I've had this photo sitting here FOREVER and decided it would be most appropriate to post it on a Lost day. This is Jeff Heimbuch, one of my earliest visitors and posters on the blog. Waaaay back in season 3, when I first started blogging on Lost, he filmed an independent movie called, "LOST: Off the Island" about a guy who was obsessed with Flight 815 going down and was trying to piece together the reasons it had, because his brother had been on the flight. Then, post-season 3, the Lost summer ARG was a game following a guy who was obsessed with Flight 815 because his girlfriend had been on it. Hm. Jeff did it first!! He sent me the movie, and it was a lot of fun. You can read more about this and other productions he's working on at his site, here. And now, the adorable Jeff!

"LA X" Haiku Time!!

It's time to jumpstart that tradition from last year: Haiku that followed each episode! I'll start things, but I always find the ones you guys come up with to be far more entertaining. :)

He just looks SO sad
Isn't there a universe
Where Jack is happy?

Rose comforting Jack;
Desmond there; Shannon is not;
What is going ON?!

Richard was in chains?
Metaphorical or real?
WITHOUT MAYBELLINE?!

Thought the guitar case
Would contain something wondrous?
I think we've been ankhed.

I've seen John Locke brave,
Enlightened, and sad. But now?
He's effing SCARY.

Smokey's in a rage
Kills everyone, even Bram
While Ben pees his pants.

Lost Meets Avatar

As if we needed more evidence of James Cameron's lack of originality, check out one fan's take on the lost baggage scene at the airport (click on the image to enlarge). Thanks to the many people who pointed it out to me. I saw it here first.

Richard in Chains

Wow... until now that title only belonged to some illicit fan fiction I'd written...

Not-Locke says to Alpert that he almost didn’t recognize him in the chains. We could take this literally – Alpert was a slave on the Black Rock, and the Man in Black was the slavemaster… or another slave… or Alpert was the slavemaster and the Man in Black was the slave and he overpowered Alpert, etc. – or it could be metaphorical. Maybe he’s been enslaved to Jacob all this time, and that’s why he’s so passive and laid-back. The moment Jacob was dead, Richard went all badass on everyone, grabbing Ben by the nape of the neck and shoving his face down into the sand, or showing major emotion on the beach when he realized what had happened? Is it possible Jacob made Alpert “this way,” meaning the passive, quiet servant that he’s always been on the island? And now that he’s breaking out of that, he can finally be, well, AWESOME?!

(And seriously, I saw this screen-cap of Alpert looking at Not-Locke and all I could think of was, “Don’t it make my brown eyes blue…” What is Crystal Gayle doing infiltrating my thoughts?!)

Sayid as Jacob?

Jacob was very concerned about Sayid in the jungle when he was talking to Hurley, and said it was very, very important that Hurley save him. Is it because he needed that body to enter?

If that’s the case, and Jacob now looks like Sayid, there’s a VERY huge difference between Jacob and the Man in Black right now: Jacob is in Sayid’s actual body, whereas the Man in Black simply looks like Locke, but isn’t actually inhabiting his body (that body is lying on the beach). Similarly he wasn’t actually inhabiting Yemi’s body, he just looked like him. But there’s only one body with Sayid, and it just rose up and said, “What happened?” Could it be that Sayid is now Jacob?

If so… then Sayid is really dead. As Locke said to Jack, if you lose a body you haven’t lost the person, because they were already gone. Now I’m sad… :(

And finally, did anyone think he looked more clean-shaven when he was resurrected than when he was shot? Did Death give Jacob a haircut and Sayid a shave? Death works in very mysterious ways on the island…

Desmond in "LA X"

On the first day of comments, Sonshine Music suggested that maybe Desmond wasn’t actually there, and as soon as she said that, it made perfect sense to me. Now I’m convinced that’s the case. That seat was empty on the original flight. He suddenly shows up in the seat where he hadn’t been before (on a long flight from Sydney you’d think Jack would have noticed the guy at some point… and why exactly is he just randomly changing seats?) He exchanges a few words with Jack, and then he disappears, and Jack never sees him again.

He’s wearing a wedding band, too, which is a key point. My original thought if Widmore had been killed in the blast was that Penny wouldn’t exist. But then I think she was probably born in the early 70s, not the late, so that means she would be living off-island with her mother, and only Widmore would have died. If Desmond still met up with her, he could marry her without her horrible father hanging over the two of them. Or is he with someone else?

And if he’s consciousness-travelling onto the plane, how did he figure out he had that power? Is it possible he’ll be the Constant for all of the main characters throughout the last season? He’s not a major cast member, so maybe he’ll only be Jack’s Constant. Or, as someone pointed out in the comments, he could be the Variable, the one thing changing the 815 flight immensely.

Does he really not remember Jack? Or is he just saying that? If his life had changed drastically and he hadn’t been running through a stadium in L.A. trying to get his “hon-uh back!” then maybe he never met Jack. But why would he seem familiar to Jack? Will we find out Jack retains some memories of the alternate timeline?

Spot the Differences!

Many people have pointed out even more differences between the original Flight 815 scene in “Pilot” and the one in “LA X.” I was pointing out some small ones (and as usual, left out the bigger ones so the next morning I could look at comments and go, “DUH…” to myself… seriously, sometimes I miss the forest for the trees, I swear). But let’s see if we can catalogue all of the differences. I think the best way to do this is colour-coding. Let’s put the Pilot in green, and LA X in red; it will be like Christmas!:

Cindy offers Jack two liquor bottles, and he responds that this goes against all FAA regulations
Cindy offers Jack one liquor bottle, and he tells her it’ll be their little secret

The seat beside Jack is empty
Desmond’s in the seat… and he’s wearing a wedding band!

Rose is wearing Bernard’s ring on her necklace, he’s in the bathroom, and Jack calms her down while the plane experiences turbulence
Rose isn’t wearing his ring, she ends up calming Jack during the turbulence, and Bernard returns from the bathroom

Charlie snorts heroin, is thrown up into the air and the plane crashes
Charlie goes into the bathroom, may or may not have snorted the heroin, and swallows the bag, either to hide it or to attempt suicide

Walt and Michael are sitting in the seats across from Hurley
Walt and Michael aren’t there

Hurley believes that he’s cursed by the numbers
Hurley believes he’s the luckiest guy in the world, and he’s famous because of his Mr. Cluck’s chicken commercials that he’s been running

Sawyer’s sitting further back in the plane
Sawyer’s only one row behind Hurley

Claire was sitting across from Jack and up a couple of rows
Claire isn’t in the vicinity

Shannon and Boone were traveling together in first class
Shannon doesn’t get on the plane, and Boone is sitting in the same row as John Locke

John Locke didn’t go on the walkabout and is carried onto the plane, humiliated
They have a wheelchair for John, and I believe he makes up a story about going on the walkabout. Others think in the alternate timeline he still went on it, but I don’t think so. First, he wouldn’t have been on that flight; he would have been on one two weeks later… Unless the date of the flight is different? I just think he makes it up because… maybe in the new timeline Ben Linus is in his body. Har har…

Jin and Sun are married, he’s hopeful that after he delivers the two watches they’ll be able to take off on a life together.
Jin and Sun aren’t married – he’s not wearing a wedding band at customs, and they refer to her as “Ms Paik,” which is her maiden name. He’s only got one watch with him, not two. She’s wearing a small ring, so it’s not clear if it’s an engagement ring or just a ring. It’s also not clear if she can speak English (she DOES seem to understand the guards, but is still afraid to tell Jin, if that’s the case).

Sayid is sitting closer to Shannon and Boone near the front of the plane, and keeps to himself
Sayid is sitting further back in the plane, and helps out Jack with Charlie

Kate and the marshal are on the plane and he treats her like dirt
Kate and the marshal are on the plane and he treats her like dirt. Although, I noticed where before he seemed to loathe her, there seems to be the tiniest bit of tenderness for her this time around. He gives in to her a little too easily, more easily than he did before, where he wouldn’t budge at all with her before.

The Island Go Boom?

Well, that original post of mine is up to nearly 400 comments already (?!) and even I’m finding it hard to keep up, but I’m so glad I did because you guys are amazing. I’ve watched the episode one more time since then and found a bunch of new things, but by the time I catch up on comments you guys have them, too.

I’ve written up a long post and was going to post it all at once, but people are exhausted trying to make it through all the comments on the original post, so I’ve decided to break it up into sections. That way it’ll be a little more focused and you can comment on each post rather than having to slog through comments on various aspects of the same post. I'll time them to go live about an hour apart. If you wanted to discuss a certain aspect of the premiere that I've missed, let me know and I'll put a post for it, too.

So let’s start:

The key scene of the opening of the episode is the island underwater. I think what we’re to make of this is that on the new 2004 flight, the bomb really went off in 1977, and it caused the island to sink. What does that mean? Well… not only is the island gone, but any influence that island had on everyone’s life is gone. That suggests the island – or people ON the island like Ben, or Richard, or Jacob, or Widmore – really has been controlling their lives for, well, most of their lives.

Locke is still paralyzed, but maybe he wasn’t paralyzed by his father; it could have been another way. He doesn’t actually say when Jack asks him. Hurley hasn’t been cursed by the numbers, because they were never broadcast off the island, meaning Sam Toomey couldn’t hear them, meaning he couldn’t give them to Leonard, who never would have repeated them to Hurley. YET Hurley still won the lottery. Did he use those numbers or different ones?

But let’s think of the island itself for a second. Juliet hits the bomb, and when it goes off, she, Jack, Hurley, Miles, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, and their VW van are suddenly sent to 2007. But did anyone else come with them? If not, then when the island sank, think of who it took with it: Richard Alpert, Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawking (and the unborn Daniel Faraday!), BEN LINUS, all of the Others, the Dharma Iniatiative, EVERYONE. Did Alpert know this was going to happen? Did he conk Eloise over the head at the end of last season and immediately take her off the island somehow to keep her safe?

What are the implications of the island sinking in 1977?

Jorge's New Podcast!

I've directed all of you several times over to Jorge Garcia's funny and sweet blog, Dispatches from the Island, where he sometimes talks about Lost, but more often talks about his little dog Nunu and his adorable girlfriend Beth. Well, now Jorge and Beth have their own podcast, hilariously called Geronimo Jack's Beard, and you can listen to it here. They recorded the installments after Jorge had finished filming the episodes, and then sat on them until it was safe to publish. That way they don't reveal any spoilers of upcoming episodes because he hadn't yet seen the scripts. BRILLIANT. I will always push a spoiler-free site, so go on over and check out their first podcast. I'll be listening in tonight, but I'm sure it'll be hilarious!

Meanwhile, Blam is getting antsy about what was in that package. To which I answer, Jacob-like... "Hmmm... what WAS in that package?" Tune in later this week for the reveal!!

Why I Love Lost's New Timeline

Did you all see this, posted by Benny? (Thanks, Benny!):



(click on the image to enlarge): Desmond is wearing a wedding band!! That's right... in the alternate reality, he is actually happily married to ME!! Thank you, writers! Just let me know when you need me to come down to Hawaii to film my scenes.

Coupla Quick Things

I'm going to be on Jack FM at 11:45 today (that's in 5 minutes!) in Vancouver (8:45 local time). You can listen in live here.

Afterwards, from noon until 1pm, please join me at the Globe and Mail live chat with TV critic Andrew Ryan!! We'll be discussing all the finer points of last night's episode and you can make comments and lob questions at either one of us. See you there!

UPDATE: I just posted my DocArzt column here.

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

Lost: 6.01 “LA X, Parts 1&2”

“It worked.”

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

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

Free Will vs. Destiny
Again the show’s overarching theme was there in a big way. Charlie says he was supposed to die, and in the original timeline, that’s exactly what happened. When they find Montand’s body, he had on him one of Kierkegaard’s books. Kierkegaard believed in choice and free will and believed in experience over theory. Perhaps Smokey attacked Rousseau’s crew for those beliefs? (Interestingly, he also studied the personal and psychological reactions people had when faced with certain circumstances, as if he were the real father of the Dharma Initiative, who ran many psychological experiments that covered similar material.) There’s an idea in the episode that no matter which path you choose, the outcome will be the same. Jack will always be the guy rushing to someone’s side, and will be hated for it. Locke will continue to believe in his greatness, even if no one else does. Boone says he’d be by Locke’s side, just as he was on the island. When Kate knocks the marshall out, he incurs the exact same wound on the same side of his forehead that he got when the case whacked him in the head. When Kate runs into Jack as she’s stepping out of the airplane bathroom, she looks at Jack like she’s immediately taken by him, just like she did on the island. When Sawyer sees Kate’s handcuffs in the elevator, he’s immediately attracted by her bad-girl nature and helps her out.

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

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

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



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

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

Next week: