Monday, March 16, 2009

LaFleur Revisited

So maybe you haven't had a chance to wade through the 227 comments that accompanied my blog post for "LaFleur." It's getting to the point where I am having difficulty keeping up! But I do read all of the comments, even if I don't respond (I usually make a mental note to do it... and these days mental notes live in my head for about 10 seconds before they disappear). But if you didn't make it through all of the comments, here are some observations I found particularly interesting.

Here's one of my favourites. mgkoeln posted this pic that a fan spotted. When Sawyer rushes out to find his favourite car mechanic, he asks a man bent over a car, who points in Juliet's direction. If you look closely, the man's nametag says, "Tom."



Does this mean our favourite Other was also in the Dharma Initiative? If this really is the Tom that Sawyer will eventually blow away on the beach in 2004, well... that's gotta make for some awkward moments between Mr. Friendly and LaFleur during the DI softball tournaments.

***

Possibilities for who Amy's baby could be, according to my commentators:
Hurley: A lot of fans pointed out that her curly hair could be a clue to Hurley being born on the island. Whoa, dude.
Ethan: We saw Amelia, the elderly woman in Juliet's book club, chastize him for not fixing the plumbing yet, talking to him like a son. Amelia could be Amy. (Personally, I think he's too old, but this is the island...)
Charlie: He was born on the island, grew up on the island, maybe even time-traveled and has no recollection of it. One thing that still hangs in the air for me about Charlie is the fact that he stared at that console at the end of season 3 and somehow knew EXACTLY what notes to play for Good Vibrations, and the woman who gave him the key to the security code said, "It was programmed by a musician." Part of me has always wondered if that musician was Charlie, in another time.
Sawyer: Awesome just for the creepiness of it.
Jacob: He was never meant to be born originally, which is why he's invisible to most people, and can be seen only by people who time traveled on the island. Interesting. Though, Richard knows who he is in 1954, but maybe that's because Tricky Dick was already time traveling.
Just a baby, and the significance is that it was conceived and born on the island, which is a huge feat in itself. (Unless, as one reader pointed out, Horace and Amy took out the sub for a weekend delight off the island...)

***

DocArzt posted the following information: That if you rewatch the most recent ComicCon video (and at this stage in the season, it's definitely worth a revisit), just as the man who sounds like Daniel is telling Pierre that his message is useless (Pierre is begging the people of the future to come back and save the DI, and change the past so the Purge doesn't happen), Pierre stands up and you can hear him say, "LaFleur, what are you doing?" I listened to it, and it really does sound like him. If you want to jump right to the spot, come in around 3:20, and he says it around 3:35.



Since it's pretty clear it's Daniel working the camera, could Sawyer be coming in behind Daniel to do something? Is he referring to Daniel as LaFleur?

***

Re: The little girl Charlotte, who looks about 3 in 1974, but shouldn't have been born until 1979. One reader said that just because Daniel saw a little redheaded girl skipping by and assumed it was Charlotte doesn't mean it was actually her. True enough. He had Charlotte on the brain, and maybe a chipmunk could have flitted by and he would have looked at it and said in his wavering voice, "Charlotte?!"

Another reader pointed out that if Charlotte and her mother exited the island via FDW, they could have been sent into the future. If they'd landed in a time like 1982, then three-year-old Charlotte would have been assumed to have been born in 1979.

***

And now, some random comments I enjoyed:

When I saw Horace blowing trees up, my first thought was that this action looked and sounded exactly like the “tree-exploder” aspect of Smokey. Did Future Smokey incorporate Exploding Trees into its repertoire because of Horace’s actions that night? Does Smokey dislike members of the DI (including Juliet in “Left Behind”) because of Horace’s tree-destruction? Is Smokey a relative of Tolkien’s Ents?


According to Lostpedia, the assumption that Olivia was related to or married to Horace was made by ABC's Lost website b/c they said her last name was Goodspeed. But yes, in the episode Man Behind The Curtain there was never any real mention that they are married, so most likely they were brother/sister.


In "Jughead," Cunningham said to Sawyer and his group that the rest of the Left Behinders were either killed or captured. Perhaps Rose and Bernard were among those who were captured, and maybe "recruited" by the Hostiles? Are they going to become Others?


Does everyone here know that if you hold down the alt key and type Hurley's numbers that upon releasing the alt key, the character µ will show up? MU, the lost continent?


I love that little tidbit about the numbers being ASCII code for the character µ (mu) and Mu being the Pacific equivalent of Atlantis, with all sorts of interesting cultural ties (to Lovecraft, Heinlein, Robert E. Howard and...Mega Man Star Force 2 and the video game for Duck Tales 2).
Aside from wondering if Locke turns out to be Mega Man, I'm reminded of the band The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu, which later became the KLF, although one of its other alter-egos was...THE TIMELORDS! Which means that Richard is really Dr. Who and the Island is his TARDIS.
It's all starting to make sense now...

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great service, Nikki, giving us the roundup on the most important comments. I'm flattered being your number one - in the post and, just for once, in the comments section ;-)

By the way: Did you hear that the date for the two-hour-finale is supposed to be May 13th?! I already invited my Lost buddies over!

Wordburglar said...

Wow...great stuff!

I've actually got a question about the Finale though - do you know the exact Canadian airdate for the final episode? I'm trying to plan a finale party :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for reminding me of all these points Nikki

Re: Tom being in the DI in 1973 - I was rewatching the beginning of season 3 when Danny has a slightly irrational dislike of Sawyer - maybe Sawyer antagonised the young Danny in some way? Did the writer know they were going to send Sawyer back to 1973 when they wrote season 3?

Anonymous said...

ENENRA MACCUTCHEON SAID. . .

I rewatched LaFleur last night and noticed something I missed the first time around. When Juliet approaches Daniel in the jungle and asks him where Charlotte is, I didn't pay much attention to Daniel's actual response. I just thought he was grief stricken and babbling.

But upon rewatching I heard him say, "She's not. . . " (pause, inhale) "dead." The word "not" is clipped and said quickly. She's not dead?!?

I rewound and listened to everything Daniel tells Juliet about Charlotte. He says she "is gone." She "moved on." She's "not here." This reminded me of when Desmond went to visit Theresa Spencer and her sister tells him that Theresa "is away right now," even though her body is clearly present. And Theresa's sister said that sometimes Theresa speaks as if she were a child, just like Charlotte was doing right before she "died."

What if Charlotte isn't dead, but her consciousness left her body like Theresa's does. And Daniel would be devastated by this since he had previously seen it happen to Theresa. Maybe Daniel even knows that Theresa sometimes spoke as if she were a little girl, and he recognized that the same thing was happening to Charlotte.

When Daniel was mumbling to Juliet, "I won't tell her." I originally thought he was referring to telling little girl Charlotte not to come back. But maybe what he was saying was that he won't tell Juliet what really happened to Charlotte. He'll just imply that she's dead.

--Enenra MacCutcheon

Nikki Stafford said...

Enenra: First, is MacCutcheon really your last name? Because if it is, I'm totally jealous. ;)

This is a GREAT observation. I always took Daniel to be stuttering, starting to say "she's not here" and "she's dead" but instead not finishing the sentence and combining the two thoughts, saying, "She's not... dead." But you're right, who knows what he's saying? He's talking to himself, he's talking to them, he's talking to Charlotte. I think she is dead, which is why he's so torn up, but the question is, where did she go? That could be another reason why he's babbling.

MJCarp said...

Good catch on "Tom Sawyer"

Also, chess game without light/white king (from Fuseage threadboard). Must be a Shephard playing! Maybe Ray.

Benny said...

Nice summary of the most interesting bits!

I wanted to add to two points. The first one being that if you follow the rings on Horace and Olivia's fingers (HD required), there is a pattern. This does not sugggest anything but just an observation.

The other being that if the rest of those left behind (Rose & Bernard and the others) were recruited, wouldn't they have also flashed constantly as Sawyer's group? Now, they should have ended up in the 70s and maybe then they have been recruited!

Anonymous said...

oh wow love the way you tied Mu Hurley and the KLF u rock girl!
it made my day - thank you

djscovery said...

ASCII code - forgot to include this in my comments. Put that together Mu, Hurley, the KLF and yes, spring is near if not here. Your blog is a must for lost fans.
I might suggest the Klaxons as well.

djscovery said...

ASCII code - forgot to include this in my comments. Put that together Mu, Hurley, the KLF and yes, spring is near if not here. Your blog is a must for lost fans.
I might suggest the Klaxons as well.

Robbie said...

"He was never meant to be born originally"

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with this statement. It's clear (to me at least) that nothing has been changed when it comes to history. Daniel said you can't change the past, and whatever happened happened. That means, Sawyer ALWAYS saved whats her face. There was never a time when he didn't. It's not like the other time travel scenario where there was the original time, and the changed time. In the LOSTverse there's only one time, so what's her face never died and was always alive. For all we know if she died EVERYTHING would have been different, the truce would have been broken by The Hostiles and maybe they would have lost in a retaliation by DHARMA? It's hard to say, but it's too dangerous to give the main characters the ability to change time, so the writer's made it so what we are currently seeing always happened in the past, we're just seeing it as it actually occurs to people from the future.

Hope that made sense >_>

Anonymous said...

His name isn't Dr. Who, it's The Doctor.

Who? Geek? Me?

Benny said...

@Robbie: but you can't take Daniel's word at face value. He's experiences with time have been limited to sending minds back and forth (as far as we know). Now, the actual happenings are that physical entities are being transposed form one time to another, through the use of an all-powerful island. This may alter history without actually creating different timelines. Simply that some acts may be inconsequential for self correction to happen.

Now I'm actually of the camp who believes the whole of things cannot be changed (i.e. you cannot prevent WWII) but that minor adjustments can be made, such as someone convinces you to study history instead of psychology. My point is strictly that I don't think we can accept Daniel's comments at face value.

A.G.Wooding said...

I can't wait to find out what the incident is. Does anyone else think it could be the losties changing an event of the past. Maybe they finally succeed in trying to make a difference...but then wouldn't it have already happened if the incident has happened?
My head hurts im gonna lie down for a while.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know how Daniel's theory relates to Desmond's prescience regarding Charlie's death. If everything in history is set, then we are in fact part of future's history, and cannot change the outcome of any situation (fate, if you would). Therefore, there was only one way in which Charlie could die, because that's the way he has already died.

Benny said...

@Redeem, Here's how I see it.

Daniel and Mrs Hawking share similar points in their representation of time.

That "whatever happened, happened" is true. But in a sense it is not set in hard stone, but more like clay in that HOW it happened can change, which would be "the universe course correcting".

In the case of Charlie, he had to die on the island before the quote-unquote rescue. The method was changed by Desmond. Eventually Desmond would not have been able to do anything about it, or rather Desmond was the element that COULD HAVE CHANGED ALL OF IT. Maybe he can still change it, which may be his future role on the show.


To summarize, major events won't change, circumstances surrounding those events may. I think it makes sense within what we know so far. So it's possible no one can change anything in the 70s, but Desmond may.

Blam said...

I was just musing on some stuff in an attempt to finally put up a substantial Lost post on my blog, and came up with this.

The statue may be Egyptian. I'm not coming down hard on that side or guessing which god it might be, because (A) I was more a Greek/Roman myth kid, and what I did read of Egypt was years ago, so it'd involve research, and (2) we could try to pinpoint what it could or couldn't be and why only to find that the producers and/or prop department got details wrong or that differences were explained away by the statue-builders being some offshoot sect.

Even if ol' Four Toes isn't strictly Egyptian we have the hieroglyphics seen at Cerberus' hidey-hole. So viewers have pointed towards the island having possibly been settled by Egyptians or similar folk. Some even think that Richard Alpert has been around since ancient Egypt, maybe a pharaoh, maybe an incarnation of RA=Ra.

We know that the Egyptians buried their pharaohs with not only things they might need in the afterlife but items that would animate into servants for them. I think I recall reading that the very powerful might even have been buried with actual servants from their terrestrial life.

So rather than some kind of Egyptian settlement in the mundane sense, it could be a virtual pyramid, an echo or intersection of the afterlife with the terrestrial world. Perhaps Richard and the other natives woke up there after being buried, either in tombs in Egypt or on the island itself by settlers. The statue could have been built by those settlers or by the awakened reanimated Richard Alpert and brethren. Christian Shepard and John Locke weren't buried in pyramids, of course, but their coffins, their modern sarcophagi, were delivered to it, and they may have some as-yet-unrevealed link with an Egyptian or pseudo-Egyptian ancestry. The gods traveled across the sky and between worlds in boats, which were also used in funeral practices. Perhaps when you fly an aircraft, the modern form of a funary vessel or the solar boat of Ra, in a path intersecting the misty afterlife nexus or virtual crypt that is the island, those people with some kind of resonance to the island's native culture are claimed by it.

I don't really think this is the way things are headed, certainly not exactly, but it's another one of those tangents that thinking if not overthinking about the show takes you down, and just when you realize your train of thought is a cat chasing its own tail it hits you that its so crazy it just might work.

Anonymous said...

I still think the statue kind of looks like Jar-Jar Binks from the back.