Lost DVD Extra Released!!

Thanks to humanebean for pointing me in the direction of this. They've released a one-minute clip from the "New Man in Charge" extra on the season 6 Lost DVD... and seriously, you'll A) miss Lost so much you'll be back in that ball of goo in the corner that you inhabited the week after the finale (no, no, don't even think of telling me I was the only person doing that) and B) you'll want MORE. NOW!!!

But you'll have to wait a couple more weeks. Until then, check out the advance clip.

Lost 6.17/18 "The End"

WOW. I... wow.

Well, just when you thought a finale wouldn’t polarize audiences more than The Sopranos did, along comes Lost!! For the record, I LOVED it. I loved it because I didn’t want everything answered, and not only did they not answer everything, they even left some REALLY big things unanswered. Upsetting? Now that I’ve thought about it, no. I talked earlier today about how the great thing about the fandom of Lost was that it attracted demographics from so many diverse communities. But as a result, when you’re looking to create Big Answers in your themes, you have to leave things open to interpretation, so that someone with a Christian background might interpret a faith-based show one way, while a Muslim would look at it a different way, and an atheist an even different way. And with faith being such a huge component of the show and that finale, they left it open for interpretation for all of us.

So... what exactly happened in the final 15 minutes, you might be asking? Well, I had the unenviable position of having to jump directly into a live chat when I was still reeling from it (quite literally... at 11:30 I was sitting on the couch with paper and pen both having dropped to the floor, my face in my hands and sobbing... sobbing and sobbing, shoulders shaking and possibly even screaming at times). I was shattered (in a good way) by that finale, it was so beautiful, so moving, so uplifting. And then I had to stand up, wipe my tears, and move over to my computer to start talking to people in a live chat, where, rather than the questions I was used to in the Globe chat, I face a bunch of “WTF WAS THAT???” questions being thrown so fast and furious they were just scrolling up the screen faster than you could read it (the hosts were actually commenting at one point that the chat was becoming useless because we couldn’t actually read any questions). I hope I was able to answer some of the stuff you guys asked if you were there.

But anyway, here is what I think happened in the end: It all hinges on that scene with Jack and his father. So first, let’s look at what they say to each other:

Christian: Hello Jack.
Jack: I don’t understand. You died.
C: Yeah. Yes I did.
J: Then how are you here right now?
C: How are YOU here?
J: [realization hits] I died, too.
C: That’s OK. It’s OK, son [hugs]. I love you son
J: I love you, too, Dad. Are you real?
C: I sure hope so. Yeah, I’m real. You’re real, everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church. They’re all real, too.
J: They’re all dead?
C: Everyone dies some time, kiddo. Some have been before you, some long after you.
J: Why are they all here now?
C: There is no now, here.
J: Where are we, Dad?
C: This is a place that you’ve all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here. Nobody dies alone, Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you.
J: For what?
C: To remember, and to... let go.
J: Kate... she said we were leaving.
C: Not leaving, no. Moving on.
J: Where are we going?
C: Let’s go find out.

I believe that the sideways world was purgatory, seen through Jack's lens, and that all of those people needed to come together in some way in that world for Jack to “move on.” I think that the key line that Christian says is “There is no now, here.” There is no time in the sideways world. The island was very much in time, even when it was jumping it was jumping through real time, but that was simply shown to us in the past seasons to prepare us for this place, this purgatory-type sideways world, that was not located in time. Ben and Hurley refer to each other as Number 1 and Number 2, positions they may have held for centuries, for all we know, but here they are in this moment of death, all coming together. This world, this place they’re stopping over in before moving on, this is a place that exists outside of time, and that’s why some of those people will die long after Jack does, and some, as we know, die before that. They’re all here now to move over.

So while that ending was shown through Jack’s lens, it was still a collective experience. Each one of them had to come to a realization. Each one of those people was remembering his own existence and that was the only way he or she could break on through to the other side, so to speak. Locke had to remember his own death, and so did Charlie, Jin, Sun, and Juliet. They had to find the people they belonged to. They had to be with them once again (that’s why, as you’ll see below, my ONLY major regret was that Sayid ended up with Shannon... he was Nadia’s soulmate, and, well... ugh, but anyway). Christian says to Jack that these people existed in the most important period of his life. The things that happened on the island, that was all real. The sideways world was the purgatory that Jack had to go through, and he is the last one to finally SEE.

So why were certain people missing? Eko wasn’t in the church, or Ana Lucia. Ben didn’t go in, Michael wasn’t there. No Richard Alpert. Perhaps the suggestion is that the people in the church are all going to Heaven, and those who aren’t there are doomed to go to Hell. Richard isn’t going to get the absolution he so badly wanted. Ben knows that he doesn’t belong with that group for all the things he’s done. Interesting that Sayid does get to go, though.

(UPDATE: I wrote these comments very early in the morning after having the finale still fresh like a gaping wound in my heart, and I've changed my mind on this last part. I'll be putting up a new post on it soon...)

And the big unanswered question: What was the island? By not answering this one, they leave it up to us to determine. I think that was a pretty big thing to leave out, but then again, they’ve given us the tools to work with all season – the mythology, key components of it, the light/dark metaphors, the wars breaking out all over it. The island was the place of redemption, the chessboard where the characters had to become self-conscious chess pieces, moving themselves around the board (and in many cases along the way in the game, being moved by larger forces playing the game). This was the place where they came to be redeemed or to be damned for eternity. The light in the cave represented both the capacity for good AND evil within each one of us. When the people approached the light with greed, it did harm. When they approached it with goodness, it did good. This is still the major thing up in the air for me, the thing that I think will require the most discussion among all of you and me to help me through this one. So I think I’ll leave it to further discussion below in the comments and in my further posts tomorrow. (Which, looking at the time, is today.)

I have a lot more to say, but it’s 1:30 and I have to start doing interviews at 9 tomorrow morning. And I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight after that. I’ll be online posting all day tomorrow. (I apologize that I didn’t do a video podcast after all. I didn’t have any time between the finale and the live chat, and honestly, I was sobbing through the first 5 minutes of the chat while I was typing, and there’s no way I could have been able to speak at all in a video podcast. You would have just seen me breaking down like Hurley on the beach after Jin and Sun died.) I really can’t wait to see what you guys have to say about it. So... here we go:

Most important quotations:
Usually I list in bold at the top of every ep guide the most thematically relevant quotes, but I figured there’d be so many for this one you’d never make it to this part, so I’ll list them here:
• “No one can tell you why you’re here, Kate.”
• “Nothing is irreversible.”
• “We’re all going to the same place... then it ends.”
• “If I can fix you, Mr. Locke, that’s all the peace I’ll need.”
• “You’re not John Locke. You disrespect his memory by wearing his face but you’re nothing like him. Turns out he was right about most everything. I just wish I could have told him that while he was alive.” GO JACK!!!!
• “I want you to know, Jack... you died for nothing.”
• “Did you see that?”
• “I hope that somebody does for you what you just did for me.”
• “It needs to be you, Hugo.”

Highlights:
• Sawyer referring to Jack becoming Jacob as his “inauguration.” Ha!
• “He’s worse than Yoda.” “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” TWO Star Wars references in the opening!!
• Sawyer calling Desmond The Magic Leprechaun!!! BEST NICKNAME EVER. (Especially because he’s Scottish, not Irish!)
• Hurley staring at Charlie at the motel and just grinning.
• VINCENT!!! ROSE!!! GRIZZLY BERNARD!!!
• Richard Alpert!! I believed! I believed! I KNEW he wasn’t dead! :)
• JULIET!!!!!!! (I originally jotted down, “So I guess this means she isn’t Jack’s wife!”)
• “For the record, you two speak English just fine.” Ha!
• Lapidus!! Now HE was one I was wrong about (I was convinced he was dead despite everyone saying we didn’t SEE him die). But a giant iron door flying with all the force of the ocean at his head and not killing him? O...kay.
• “That’s a hell of a long con, Doc.” Ha!
• Loved Hurley saying, “I believe in you, dude,” and you could hear Jorge’s voice catch because it was probably one of the last scenes he filmed with Matthew Fox.
• Jack saying there are no shortcuts, no do-overs, whatever happened, happened, and all of this matters. I loved that line.
• Jack and Locke looking down into the cave of light the same way they looked into the hatch at the end of season 2. What a perfect end to the first hour!!
• “I was shot by a fat man.” HAHA!!!
• Daniel looking at Charlotte. ♥♥♥
• The entire scene of Desmond removing that rock from the light. That was epic.
• Kate shooting Locke!! Holy crap.
• Jack saying, “Just find me some thread and I can count to 5.” HAHA!!
• Frank: “DON’T BOTHER ME!!” Ben: “Sounds like they’re making progress.”
• Miles: “I don’t believe in a lot of things but I do believe in duct tape.” HAHA! He’d get along well with my Grandpa.
• LOVED that Kate didn’t even hesitate and just jumped into the water.
• “Kiss me, James.” “You got it, Blondie.” WAAAAAH....
• “You were right, Jack.” “There’s a first time for everything.”
• Ben and Locke knowing each other at the church (notice Ben isn’t wearing his glasses anymore, and seems to know that wearing his hair up like he does on the island is less dweebie) and Ben apologizing to John.
• Ben to Hurley: “You do what you do best: take care of people.”
• PENNY!!!!

The Tears
• My first tears came when Sun, and then Jin, saw their lives on the island. I was crying because we were seeing a montage of their lives, the first we’d seen since they died... and then cried harder because they actually saw their own deaths. What was THAT like?
• Charlie’s memories of Claire. Oh MAN I was a mess at that point... It made me wonder if he saw his death...
• “Tell me I’m gonna see you again.” WAAAAAAH...
• Juliet and Sawyer... the moment she said, “We could go Dutch” and he said, “I got you” I was shaking with sobs. SHAKING.
• Kate saying to Jack, “I’ve missed you so much.”
• Jack to Desmond: “I’ll see you in another life, brother.” TEARS.
• “Goodbye, Ben.” When Locke said that, I just LOST it... it was like it was finally coming to an end, I knew that’s the last time we’d see Ben and Locke together.
• “I’d be honoured.” “Cool.” SOB. (OK, at this point I think the tears just flowed and there weren’t any real start and stop points anymore).
• The entire last five minutes of everyone hugging in the church. It felt less like the characters and more like peeking in on the wrap party of the cast. I was wracked with sobs.
• Vincent lying down next to Jack. If you were able to hold back the tears for everything else, I'll bet you lost it here. Jack didn't die alone.

Did You Notice?:
• Charlie’s staying at the Flightline Motel. This is the motel where Kate is staying when she dyes her hair and gets the letter from the desk clerk; where Anthony Cooper was staying when Locke went to him and then Helen followed and he tried to propose to her; and where the safehouse was where Sayid and Hurley went.
• Sawyer walks away from Locke and says, “I’ll be seeing ya.” Prisoner reference!!
• Rose and Bernard have rules, too. They DO belong on the island.
• When Locke said calmly, “I’ll make it hurt,” I actually groaned. How horrible. It’s one thing to quickly slit their throats, but to promise pain and torture... och.
• Richard says he needs to finish what he started: Those are the same words Smokey used right after the sub blew up.
• Sawyer refers to Miles as Enos (a Dukes of Hazzard reference) which is what he called him when they were in the DI together in 1977.
• There’s the expedition music! With a cool rumba flair added in.
• Jack tells Locke that he’s very confident that it will be just fine... that’s what he said to Boone, and Sun on the beach earlier this season... and when he dropped the bomb...
• Jack says to Locke, “I’ll see you on the other side” and it’s never had more resonance than right now.
• I LOVED Locke saying to Jack, “You’re sort of the obvious choice.” Fan service!! Hahaha...
• Sawyer passes Juliet getting off the elevator like he doesn’t even know her. Sadness...
• Really. Do they HAVE to keep commenting on what a big storm is coming? Kind of obvious.
• There are the red flowers around the cave!
• Desmond and Hurley are following rules similar to what Jacob has made on the island, needing people to come to their own realizations and not actually directing them.
• I’m sure many of you saw my reaction coming, but I was NOT happy with Sayid’s flash happening through Shannon. Nothing against Shannon, but I thought his love of Nadia was epic, and that Shannon was just something on the island because Nadia wasn’t there, but making it look like Shan was his one true love TOTALLY waters down the thing with Nadia. I really disliked that reveal of the other world. REALLY. I literally sat there wincing on the couch as he and Shannon were kissing. Ew. Boone said, “Should we stop them?” And I was yelling, YES!
• Maybe it’s because I’m reading Paradise Lost right now, but when the light went out and then the red light suddenly swirled up, it was like the fires of hell were coming up out of that pit.
• Despite everything, I really was moved by Eloise not wanting Desmond to take her son from her. It makes me wonder if her move to have him fulfill his destiny in S5 really was the most painful thing she’d ever done.
• The birth scene was almost exactly the same as the one in S1, right down to Charlie getting the blankets. Only thing missing was Jin standing there.
• Jack flying through the air at Locke when they were on the flat elicited my first “HOLY SHIT!!” of the night... oh my GOD it was like Island Mortal Kombat!! I swore the bird that flew over them at that moment said, “FINISH HIM!” in a deep voice.
• So... after what we know to be true about the Man in Black, did anyone else kind of feel bad as his dead body lay on the flats? All he ever wanted was to leave the island and destroy the place that made his life a living hell (literally) and the moment he becomes corporeal again he dies.
• Locke moves the same foot as he did on the island for the first time. Jack throws the sheet back and looks at it with the same shock as he did when he saw Sarah move her foot for the first time.
• The moment Locke and Jack caught a glimpse of the other world, they immediately started bickering. Haha!! Nice touch!
• When Sawyer walks into Jin and Sun’s room, he walks into the room of the two people who he feels responsible for killing.
• Jack didn’t say the incantation when he passed the legacy over to Hugo.
• Jack re-corks the bottle.... and then looks like he’s gonna melt like Vader.
• They played the music from “Exodus” (where the raft left) as the flight goes... beautiful. I kept thinking, “Poor Richard Alpert! He’s never been in an autogyro before!” Heehee...
• Ben is separated from everyone in both worlds.
• I loved the line when Ben said that Jacob ran things so you couldn’t leave... the rules were specific to the person protecting the island, so if Hurley changes them, things change!
• Ben becoming Hurley’s Number 2 and Hurley being Number 1 (Prisoner reference!!) It’s like Ben’s going to be his Richard Alpert.
• The church had several stone angels as they were walking up to it, signifying what was waiting inside.
• All of the flashes that make Jack see the other side are scenes where he was a hero.

Hurley’s Numbers:
SW Miles says Sayid killed 4 people; Desmond’s group is sitting at table 23 at the benefit; on the hatch under the Ajira plane you can see 840; the Apollo bar is selection G23 in the vending machine;

Teeny Questions!
• What was Charlie drinking? Did anyone see the label? It looked Gaelic.
• How exactly did Ben walk away from a freakin’ TREE landing on him? I’m assuming it was mostly braced by the rock? But he was pretty stuck, which means a lot of the tree’s weight had to have been on him...

More:
My season 6 book is now available for preorder!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1550229516?tag=nikatnite-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1550229516&adid=0TG587A7YYP59KR607DD&

I’m on Facebook! Come join me to commiserate:
http://www.facebook.com/nikkistafford108

I’m also on Twitter. I’m bad at tweeting, though. I twit infrequently. ;)
http://twitter.com/nikki_stafford

Tomorrow listen in to Marshall and Forbes on The Ocean 98.5 in Victoria, BC at 7:10 a.m. local time, 10:10 a.m. EST. Go here and click on the Listen Now button if you’re out of the listening area. http://www.ocean985.com/

And WEDNESDAY 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!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

And finally, listen to KEX 1190 at 6:20 p.m. PST, 9:20 p.m. EST where I’ll be on the Mark & Dave show (and they’re big Lost fans so it’s always fun). Go here and click the Listen Now button:
http://www.1190kex.com/main.html

Next week:
There... is no next week. :(

Letterman's Top 10: The Lost Edition!

I've been waiting all week to see this (I missed it when they did it). Letterman's quick synopsis of the series is pretty funny, and the top 10 gets funnier and funnier as it goes.

Darlton Live!!

OK, I’m going to try to make this quick because I was supposed to get writing done today and I STILL haven’t seemed to crack it. It hasn’t been a good week for writing (I took the week off to work on Finding Lost: Season 6) and see, I’m used to taking a week off work and returning having written somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 words (I type quickly). This week... not so much. I won’t say HOW pathetic (my editor might be reading and it’ll give her heart failure) but trust me, it’s pathetic. Every time I finally get deeply involved in something, the phone rings. Argh. But this book will happen, I promise.

SO. Last night (instead of writing) I was out at the LOST Live Talk with the NYT that was broadcast into movie theatres everywhere. (And I ran into redeem147, SenexMacDonald, and Question Mark!! It was totally awesome.) I sat with Mark Askwith at Space, and at one point we both whipped out notebooks at the same time, looked at each other and said, “GEEK.” I might ultimately post the full transcript (how do I have a full transcript? You might ask... good question. Ahem.) but for now, I’ll just post highlights (DL is Damon, CC is Carlton)...

• When asked how they come up with new ideas, Carlton said they just roll the dice. Damon added, “A TWENTY-SIDED DICE!!” and when the audience laughed he nodded approvingly, saying these were definitely his people.
• When working on the ending they said, if we were fans of the show, what would we want to see... and then they also decided they wouldn’t shy away from big emotion, and those two things were what helped form the finale.
• They said they needed to acknowledge just how BIG the finale was for the fans, that this was almost a spiritual thing, with anticipation and excitement and jitters, and treat the finale like the holy thing the fans think it is.
• Damon said the #1 question they get is, “Am I going to be really disappointed in the finale?” And he said, “Talk about performance anxiety!!” Haha!! He said they came up with an ending that satisfied THEM. One that also made the 425 people working on the show happy, and they knew if they could make them happy, they’d make the audience happy, too.
• Darlton went down to Hawaii for the shooting of the final scene, and said to the actors, “If you want any illumination of the final pages of the script, we’ll be right here to explain it to you,” and the actors were like, “Um... why would we start NOW?” They said for years the actors just get the scripts piecemeal, and just as in life, they don’t know what’s coming next, and they just go with it and never ask questions.
• CC said that the finale became real to them when they went and saw Giacchino recording the live music over the scenes for the score, and Damon got kicked out of the room because he was crying so hard. :::sniff:::
• They said the community that’s formed around Lost has become so important to them (yay!).
• They showed the clip from “Orientation” where Locke is about to push the Execute button for the first time, but doesn’t, telling Jack he needs to do it. There’s the whole, “Why is it so hard for you to believe?” “Why is it so easy for you?!” debate, followed by Locke appealing to Jack that this is a two-person job and he can’t do it alone. This made me really think a LOT about the finale, thinking that maybe Jack WON’T be the lone candidate, and that they’ll all realize he was right when he said if they don’t live together, they’ll die alone. I don’t think anyone is going to be doing that job alone.
• CC said one of the ideas going into the series was to explore the costs and consequences of faith, and that’s something they’ve explored throughout the 6 seasons.
• There was a question about the mirroring of the seasons, and they said that was deliberate (obvs) and that in this last season it’s about getting to know the character again but in a slightly different way, it’s like going back to S1 but we’re getting slightly different backstories for them.
• DL said the scenes of the mirrors are to give a sense of displacement. This idea of fans not liking new characters because they’re different is an attempt to make audiences have that who am I, how am I, where am I displacement that you sometimes get when looking in the mirror.
• At the end of season 1/beginning of season 2 they really knew where the show was going to go and they constructed the series’ overall mythology. Then before every season they would put together the detailed architecture of that particular season. CC said “We’re not JK Rowling; we collaborated with 425 people so it was obviously going to evolve as we went.”
• DL said they look at the show like it’s an organic entity, and they often let the show tell them what it wants it to be. (I loved here that they were talking about the show like it was the island!)
• DL said sometimes we make mistakes, and Nikki and Paulo was one of them (HAHAHAHAHA!!!!) They went on about N&P for a long time, and I loved EVERY MINUTE OF IT. They said Exposé was a polarizing episode because the fans who didn’t realize they were even there in the first place hated that they brought them to the fore for no reason, whereas the haters (like me!!) loved this episode because they just enjoyed the horrible death they gave them. They wanted Sawyer to be the voice of those haters, the “who the hell is Nikki?” line echoing what we were saying. Haha! They introduced N&P at a time when they didn’t have the end date, so they were sort of biding their time bringing things forward. He said, “We packed our fridge with food, some of which we never want to eat.” HAHAHA!!! DL said it’s obvious they’re going to make these mistakes, and he compared it to things like going to see a tightrope walker, where sometimes we enjoy the mistakes and seeing it happen... he said you sit in the audience at the circus going, “Wow, it would be HORRIBLE if he fell... but I’d still kinda like to see it!”
• Damon then made some sports joke about how even if you don’t know where the ball is going to go, you’ll swing the bat. Then he said, “At least I think that’s what you do in sports... I know nothing. Is that true, Carlton?” Carlton said, “Yes. In baseball you swing a bat.” Damon said, “Sorry, that metaphor just wouldn’t work with Orcs.” HAHAHA!!! Oh Damon I ♥ you!!
• DL said there will be a prominent Star Wars reference in the first 7 minutes of the finale. CC threw his hands up in the air like he’d just given a huge spoiler and then they bickered about what a spoiler was. ;)
• Question: What TV show made you go, “I want to do that.” CC said he watched tons of reruns when he came home from school, sitcoms and westerns mostly like Gunsmoke and Petticoat Junction. DL said it was watching Twin Peaks with his dad, where, when it was over they’d sit and talk about it for 2 hours and he said his dad said we should go rent David Lynch films, and he realized there was a creator hiding behind this show making it week after week and he wanted to be that person. He loved that there was a creator making this stuff that you’d want to discuss beyond the hour it was on.
• They talked about Eddie Kitsis being the guy who brought background characters to the fore, like Frogurt and Lapidus (getting the flaming arrow in Frogurt was Eddie’s favourite moment). He said Kitsis and Horowitz are the soul of Hurley. They have a very collaborative writing environment in the writers’ room. He said they never argue; it’s more like jury deliberation. You know the guy is guilty, you just have to convince everyone in the room to be on the same page.
• CC said “The greatest blessing of this show has been our partnership,” referring to Damon. Awwwwww....
• They said usually an ep takes a week and a half to break, and The Constant took 5 weeks. They showed the phone call from that episode, and when they came back DL looked really choked up. They said this was this mindbending episode that really challenged people and they realized the only way to keep the audience on board with the whole thing was to turn it into a love story at the end.
• They talked about how the premise of the show was that the characters were all solo acts and they needed each other to get over their stuff. AGAIN, it was reinforcing this idea of living together so you don’t die alone, which made me think differently about what is coming in the finale.
• What was your hardest plot choice? Killing Charlie. They said they tried to justify it (they even joked that they were like, “Um... Desmond’s actually been telling you that you were going to die for a LONG time, like, weren’t you listening??” but then they watched the episode and were absolutely in tears and realized that was a jerk thing to have done. ;)
• When asked about how fans seem to glom onto certain questions, they said they thought they’d explained or debunked certain things along the way but the fans don’t accept the explanation. For example, Aaron = special. The only person who ever said he was special was Richard Malkin, the psychic, and in the Eko episode they debunked him as a hoax, thereby removing the possibility that Aaron was special. He said the fans don’t accept that, and continue to think Aaron is special and that Malkin really meant it when he wanted Claire on that plane even though they’ve shown him up. This one really resonated with me, actually, because I’m sorry, but I’m in that fan camp simply because... what did Malkin have to gain by getting her on that plane? HE BOUGHT THE TICKET, for goodness’ sake. Why did he want her on that plane? Why did he give her money back? Why keep calling her in the middle of the night? There’s a difference between a hoax and a crazy person, and if he didn’t actually mean any of that then he’s a complete loon. Or it’s just really bad storytelling to deflect it, and I don’t think they’re bad storytellers. SO that was a little odd to me.
• They get asked “So... what’s up with Walt?” DL said, “Malcolm David Kelly is now 39 years old and six foot five!! By the end of the season you could hear that Peter Brady twitch of puberty in his voice and we were saying, ‘We gotta get that kid on a raft STAT!’” LOL!!!! As to whether or not Walt will appear in the finale? CC did give the answer. If you want to see it, just highlight the next line and you’ll see it, and otherwise you can move to the next question.
• YES. To which DL said, “Oh come ON, I say we’ll make a joke about Star Wars and it’s a spoiler, and you think THAT wasn’t?! Oh it is ON.”
• They showed the clip of the Miles/Hurley time travel argument, and said it was a re-enactment of the discussion they had in the writer’s room.
• When asked if they cast the parts for particular actors ever, DL said when writing the part of Ben, they said, “Who do we know who could convincingly play someone who was deceitful, untruthful...” and then a scream went up from the NYT audience because Michael Emerson walked onto the stage.
• Emerson was asked who his favourite person to act scenes with was, and he said recently he’s really enjoyed being paired with Jorge Garcia, because they’re polar opposites and it’s really interesting to have that... and this one delicious scene was... and then Jorge walked in. He joked, “I was standing backstage saying, ‘Do I go now? How about now?’ and the girl was shrugging and I was worried if I didn’t move soon Michael would start talking about working with someone else and I’d miss my window of opportunity.” HA!
• The next question was from a fan from Guelph, Ontario, and CC laughed and looked into the camera and said, “Hello all you fans out in Guelph! I hope there wasn’t too long a line!” Oh you JEST, CC, but I bet there was just as long a line in Guelph as anywhere else! GO GUELPH!!
• Now it moved to open mike questions (which always worry me... they should have been vetted.) They were asked, is a rule breakable? In S1 it looked like Smokey was going to kill John Locke by pulling him into the hole but Jack saved him. DL said he might not have killed him, and they talked around it and got past that one.
• They were asked a long-winded question about faith, and CC said the show has allowed them to illuminate their thoughts on faith, and the whole live together, die alone thing is where they went with it, that people form a community and find strength in that sense of common spirituality. On the show they lifted each other up (ooh, Desmond reference!!) To them that’s what’s important... finding the people to lift you up in this world.
• Re: Widmore: Coming on the freight he was going to do bad things because he felt remorse and anger at having to lose his son, but this past week he explained that Jacob visited him and he saw the error of his ways. DL said the way they wrote that was for the audience: We’ve given you all these clues over the years that Widmore is not to be trusted. Now we’re going to put this line in his mouth: Do you believe him? How are you going to use the stuff that you know to be true in this scene? So they’re leaving that up to us to see if we believe it or not. (Interestingly, I took it to be true because they played the Jacob music in the background, but now they’re suggesting maybe I shouldn’t have followed that musical cue; and also, DL referred to this as the scene of Widmore’s “demise,” where I was starting to wonder if the guy had been wearing a bullet-proof vest and wasn’t actually dead. Hm.)
• A fan asked specifically, “During the Tour de Stade scene (he’s referring to the scene where Desmond and Jack first met in the stadium) Desmond said, “You’ve got to lift it up, bruthah,” and he was hoping that would be a line that comes back in the finale. Again, for spoilerphobes, you have to highlight the next point to see Damon’s response.
• DL simply said, “You will not walk away from the finale disappointed.”
• Someone asked why they give away big surprises of guest stars in the opening credits (I’ll admit I was disappointed this week to see “Mira Furlan” in the credits because I would have LOVED the surprise of seeing Rousseau jump out of the car). He simply said, “If I were you guys, I’d hold up your hand to the bottom of the screen during the finale because it’s ALL going to be given away...” They said the obvious, that they’re contractually bound to put the actors’ names at the beginning, and they can’t tell an agent, “Oh, and by the way, we won’t be crediting your client in the show because we don’t want to ruin the surprise.” ;)
• Emerson said the best part of season 6 was getting to play two entirely different characters.
• Someone asked, “Why must there be a human presence on the island?” Damon said, “Wow. A softball.” Ha!! He said “Because the non-human presence would be boring.” He said in the Garden of Eden everything was lovely until humans screwed it up and they’re going with that. Jorge joked that there’s only one bird on the entire island, and then added, “He was special and killed off all the other birds.” HAHAHA!!!
• DL looked at Jorge and said, “You’re not just an actor on the show, but you’re a fan of the show. Why didn’t you want to ask us any questions after getting the full script?” Jorge thought about it for a second and said, “As a fan... I think I got it.” Big applause in the room.
• Jorge added, “Next fall, when you find that show you love, and you watch it, go into work the next day... and talk about Lost.” HAHAHAHA!!!
• I was annoyed by some of the questions, I’ll admit. Someone asked CC what his faith leanings were, and frankly I found that too personal and it had no bearing on the show. He handled it with grace. Someone else posited a theory about how the two timelines would come together and sort of put everyone on the spot, because if they say yes you NAILED it, then, um. Well. But if it’s wrong, they’ve eliminated a possible theory. I just thought these questions were STUPID.
• Someone asked what will ultimately be the significance of Eloise (like SERIOUSLY you can’t wait 3 more friggin’ days??) and they said when a character is inserted in the scene to catch people up really quickly on something, they call that the “Johnny the Explainer” character, and Eloise has been that for a few episodes.

And those for me were the main highlights. There was a lot more (best parts were all of DL’s geeky references, and them talking about how the two of them just sit and chat together in CC’s office over breakfast every morning) and it was SO much fun. You know, one of the things I’ll miss the most about Lost is these two. They’ve said that after the finale they will not be out there talking about it and doing interviews, and they want the audience to come to those conclusions. They’re not going to do the explaining for them. It was a great night. Thank you, Darlton!!

UPDATE: OMG, I can't believe I completely forgot to mention they showed us a clip from the FINALE!!!! For spoilerphobes, once again it's in white:

So Sawyer's hiding behind these bushes looking at Smokey by the well, and Ben comes up behind him and basically says, "Don't lurk, if you're here to join us, then join us." Sawyer rolls his eyes and wanders over with his hands up, and Smokey is his usual aloof self and asks Sawyer what he's doing. Sawyer said he heard Des was in the well so he was here to help him out. He leans over and says, "Looks like someone beat me to the punch. Oh well." Nice pun! So then Ben makes some caustic comment and Sawyer clocks him in the mouth with his elbow and it looks like Ben might have lost a few teeth or something, and then Locke says, "Do you know what I wanted with Desmond?" Sawyer says, "Sure, you probably wanted him to help you destroy the island." Smokey stands there, pause... as if, "Um... actually that was EXACTLY why. You totally ruined my Dum dum DUM!!! moment)" and then he says, "Exactly." And Sawyer says he's not that interested, and steps back, and Smokey looks at the shocked Ben, who's all, "Wait, WHAT? I didn't think you literally meant destroy the island, I thought that was figurative" and Smokey's all, "Oh, sorry... you mean because I promised to give you the island? Yeah... I forgot to mention it would be at the bottom of the ocean when you presumed ownership over it." and Ben looks pissed, and then someone (can't remember who) looks down at the base of the well in the dirt and says, "Hey, are those dog pawprints?" and they ARE and the whole audience just freaked out. I yelled out, "VINCENT!!!!" YAY!!! And that's where it ended.

Lost 6.16 What They Died For

“That was where I was told I could summon the monster. That’s before I realized that it was the one summoning me.”

“We’re very close to the end, Hugo.” (Lost fans at home: "WAAAAAAH!!")

“Did you say there were some OTHER people to kill?”

“Maybe this is happening for a reason. Maybe you’re supposed to fix me.”

“I’ll do it. This is why I’m here. This is what I’m supposed to do.”

“I like to feel my feet on the ground. It reminds me that... I was human.”

Wow... the penultimate episode. SO close to the end... going into this episode, I’ve been doing a lot of media interviews this week and many of the interviewers are saying, “They have a LOT of ground to cover off in that finale, don’t you think??” But after this week’s episode, where many of the sideways people are coming together, where Jack has become Jacob’s official successor, where Ben has stepped up his game, where we now know what Smokey is up to... I think they’ve set the stage PERFECTLY for that finale. Wow... less than a week away and it’s all over. Thank god they made it count. I am now even more psyched for that finale than I was before. I didn’t think that was possible!!

Answers:
• Widmore works on Jacob’s side. Jacob recruited him off-island the same way he recruited Ilana.
• Jacob: “You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me. You were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.”
• Kate’s name was crossed off because she was a mother.
• The cave names WERE Jacob’s, and he was the one crossing them off, even though we thought it was Smokey.
• Widmore brought Desmond to the island because he was immune to the electromagnetism. Still not clear why he needed that.
• Smokey wants to destroy the island.

Highlights:
• Manipulative, bad American accent Desmond!!!
• “We have to kill him Jack.” “I know.” Both my husband and I went, “OOOOH!!” loudly. Finally! ACTION!!
• Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and Jack all standing on the beach looking out at the wreckage. There was something so melancholy about that scene, like you could see on all their faces the looks of what they’ve gone through over the past three years.
• Desmond beating the crap out of Ben and Ben seeing the other world. Holy CRAP, Desmond!!! I didn’t know he had it in him.
• Miles: “Well I lived in these houses 30 years before you did... otherwise known as last week.” LOL!
• Richard buried Alex. :::sniffle:::
• Miles, seeing the ancient door in Ben’s back room, “And what is that, a secreter room?”
• Ben and Widmore!! IN THE SAME ROOM!!
• The look on Desmond’s face when he ends up in the jail cell with Sayid, next to Kate.
• I was so excited when morose Sawyer referred to Locke as “Flocke,” but upon rewatch I think he said, “If Locke wanted...” and it just sounded like “Flocke.” False alarm.
• Petit Jacob!
• “Give me your walkie-talkies.” “Why?” “Because I asked.” HA!! (Actually, that would have been even better if Widmore had said, “Um... technically you DIDN’T ask. You demanded.”
• Holy Richard Alpert Smokey tackle!!! WTF was that?! Is he OK??
• Alex: “Why would someone want to hurt you? You’re like the nicest guy ever!” I LOVE how different Ben is in this world!!
• Rousseau!!! And she cleans up well! :)
• “Zoe... my name is Zoe, I’m...” SLICE!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!! Earlier in this episode when Richard and Ben had their guns pointed at her, I was yelling, “SHOOT. HER. WHAT are you WAITING for???” But this scene was so much better. I now find myself on Team Man in Black!!!
• Ben turning away in mock “I’m not listening” when Widmore says he doesn’t want him in the room.
• Ben shooting Widmore!!! “He doesn’t get to save his daughter.” Ben is BACK!!
• “Ben... you never cease to amaze me.”
• Jacob saying he crossed Kate off because she was a mother. I actually welled up when he said that, as if to suggest that motherhood is as important a job as protecting that island. Quite a thing to say, considering his mother. That was like the perfect Mother’s Day card from Darlton.
• “I thought that guy had a God Complex before.” Ha! Poor Sawyer, trying to make light of a difficult situation.
• I loved Jack agreeing to the job, bringing his character full circle from Christian telling Vincent, “My son has work to do” in the thirteenth mobisode. This moment had a real finality to it.
• Sayid referring to Desmond as the crazy person in the van. “I ran over a guy in a wheelchair.” “See what I mean?” LOL!
• Ana Lucia!!! She’s even more hardass in this world than the other one!!

Did You Notice?:
• OK, first of all, that previously on bit? PAINFUL. Did they really need to show me everything that broke my heart two weeks ago? Like I was going to forget it or something. Wah. Pain.
• Did anyone else notice that at breakfast they were all eating a cereal called “Super Bran”? Did anyone else laugh as hard as I did at that revelation? It’s weird, because this is the first season where I didn’t think Jack had something up his butt. :::snicker:::
• Claire’s pregnancy belly is SO fake. The season 1 belly looked real. This one does NOT.
• Jack stitching up Kate is reminiscent of Kate stitching up Jack in the pilot episode.
• Sawyer stares out at the water the way Locke and the Man in Black always did.
• That high school seriously needs 24-hour surveillance. (One nitpick: I doubt the students would be welcoming back a substitute teacher like he was some long-term prof who has shaped them for years.)
• Ben’s safe has a fridge light in it that comes on when he opens the door! ;)
• Widmore must have run that water a LONG time before taking a sip. Who exactly has been on the island to keep the plumbing working and the water clean??
• When Widmore talks about Jacob, you can hear the Jacob music playing in the background, as if to suggest Widmore is telling the truth.
• Ben’s injuries, from his facial lacerations right down to the broken left arm, are almost identical to the ones Desmond inflicted on the dock.
• When Ben looks in the mirror (mirror!) he has this weird sneer on his face and looks like some bully in a Norman Rockwell painting.
• I said in “Everybody Loves Hugo” that I wondered if the museum would end up being the place they’d all end up gathering at, and I was right!! It’s where the concert is being held. Jack and his kiddo, now Hurley, Sayid, Kate, Desmond... Miles and Charlotte, Pierre Chang (they’re going to get Sawyer’s butt there somehow... probably following Kate’s butt), and I can hope Eloise and Daniel and Penneh are among the guests. And... Jack’s wife. Watch... after all this speculation it’ll probably end up being Sarah. Ha!! Cannot WAIT!!!! Maybe the dinosaur bones will all come to life and will eat them all. And Hank Azaria will get into a battle of wits with Steve Coogan.
• Des asks Kate how she’s doing, and she mutters, “Terrific.” That was a word Charlie used in the pilot episode, and Frank Lapidus said it again when he realized the plane wasn’t going to Guam.
• Sawyer accepting responsibility for the deaths, and Jack telling him it wasn’t his fault. That was a lovely bromance scene.
• Jacob is sitting next to the fire, and those red flowers are next to him (they usually appear in a scene that’s particularly foreboding and often ends in death).
• “You’ve got one hand. You look like Napoleon.” That line would have been funny if they hadn’t already beaten home the BEN IS NAPOLEON idea in “Dr. Linus,” where he had the entire classroom lecture on how Napoleon got the island but he didn’t have any power and so it was useless, yadda yadda.
• “We insist!! Even if we have to kidnap you.” LOL sideways world role reversal!!
• OMG could you imagine Rousseau and Ben hooking up???
• Ben has always felt close to Alex, but the fact he tears up when Rousseau talks about him being a father figure suggests that maybe the emotions from the other world are shifting over into that one, even if the actual circumstances surrounding them haven’t broken through yet. He definitely looks at Rousseau differently when she’s up close, like he knows her somehow.
• “You don’t need to see this.” “I wanna see this.”
• Smokey to Widmore on Zoe: “You told her not to talk to me. That made her pointless.” Sorry to break it to you Smokey, but she was pointless LONG before you cut her throat.
• Jacob says he only has until the fire burns out, and I turned to my husband and said, “It would really suck if there was suddenly a flash rainshower right now!!” ;)
• The cuts on Locke’s face when he goes to see Jack are in the same spots as the ones he had in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” when he was hit by the car.
• Locke says he was hit by a car, and “of all of the doctors in Los Angeles I ended up with you.” This is what he says to Jack in “Bentham,” but Jack, who’s strung out and high and hates Locke, freaks out and says that’s crazy talk and refuses to listen to him. In this scene you can tell Jack’s not completely on board, but he tolerates what Locke says. Then Locke keeps on talking, and when he says, “Maybe this is happening for a reason,” a line he said over and over in the other world, the line that made Jack go NUTS, Jack simply says here, “Maybe you’re mistaking coincidence for fate.” In “What Kate Did,” Locke marvels at the fact that Eko brought the missing piece of orientation film, and Eko says, “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate.” In “The Cost of Living,” Desmond remarks that a plane crashing on the top of the Pearl station was quite a coincidence, and Locke, whose faith was shaken when the hatch exploded, responds, “Don’t mistake coincidence for fate.” Jack saying it to Locke in this world doesn’t actually make Locke rise to the fight... he simply says, “Call it what you will” and they continue to have their conversation. It’s interesting that they’re not at each other’s throats in this world.
• I loved Jacob’s blunt, “No you weren’t” when Sawyer said he was just fine before Jacob bugged him.
• Jacob says he wants to give all of them the choice, because he didn’t have one. Kate says but what if none of us chooses it. He says it’ll end badly. So... it’s not really a choice, is it? SOMEONE has to do it, and all four can’t walk away.
• I ♥ Jack.
• “Now you’re like me.” This is what Mommie Dearest said to Jacob last week.
• You know what? If the only world I had to go on was the sideways world, I’d be a Skater all the way. LOVE the flirtation between them in this world!!
• Smokey refers to Desmond as Widmore’s “failsafe”... the reason Desmond is the way he is, is because he turned the failsafe key in the Swan station.

So Many Questions...
• What does that red gash on the side of Jack’s neck signify? He saw it in the mirror on the airplane in “LA X,” and now he sees it again, like it’s fresh and gaping again. It doesn’t look like he cut himself shaving... could it be some indication of the two worlds opening to each other?
• The sideways world opens on Jack’s eye... is it possible that now that he’s the new Jacob, he actually creates this world somehow? Could this entire world be something that exists in his head? Or something he gave the world as a gift?
• Holy crap, was Desmond planning on running over Locke AGAIN?! How many times does he have to mow the guy down to make him see the light? Why is it so hard to get Locke to see the other side?
• Did Miles get any message or a feeling from Alex when he stepped over her? He says to Ben, “I don’t think...” but never finishes.
• Is Desmond’s hair darker in this world?
• Any police officers out there reading this? Would men and women be in cells where they could see each other in lockup? What if one had to go to the bathroom?
• Why does little Jacob appear to Hurley? Why not just appear as his older self? Is there a reason to use the child version?
• Does Ben really want the island all to himself? Or is he also working on ulterior motives aligning himself with Smokey?
• Does anyone know what the Latin incantation is that Jacob says?
• What happens when someone drinks the water? Does Jack end up having some longterm island memory, like he’s now aware of everything that’s ever happened?
• What is Desmond going to ask Sayid and Kate to do?
• Why is Ana Lucia not ready yet? Is this just a convenient device not to involve her?
• Why are there different degrees of visions? Ben has the vision of being hit but nothing else, yet Hurley totally knows Ana Lucia.
• How is Smokey going to use Desmond to destroy the island? And... doesn’t that kind of cancel off the promise he made to Ben that if Ben helps him he’ll let him have the island??

Me tomorrow:
I’m on Facebook! I will be doing a lot of media in the coming days, and I’ll be posting the updates here on my Facebook page, so tune in!

I’m also on Twitter. I’m bad at tweeting, though. I twit infrequently. ;)

Tomorrow listen in to Marshall and Forbes on The Ocean 98.5 in Victoria, BC at 7:10 a.m. local time, 10:10 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, listen to KEX 1190 at 6:20 p.m. PST, 9:20 p.m. EST where I’ll be on the Mark & Dave show (and they’re big Lost fans so it’s always fun). Go here and click the Listen Now button:


Next week:
My brother emailed me to say, “Why did they get E.T.’s mom to do the voiceover on the commercial at the end?” HAHAHAHA!!!!! I would post the YouTube clip, but the entire site appears to be down. I’ll try posting it tomorrow.

Lost 6.15 "Across the Sea"

“Every question I answer will lead to another.”

“What’s dead?” “Something you will never have to worry about.”

“We are here for a reason.”

“Life... death... rebirth... it’s the source. The heart of the island.”

Whoa... uh... whoa. Um. Hm. How do I find words for that episode??

My husband and I just had a brief chat following the ep about whether an episode like this one, that reveals a lot of answers, is something I write more about or less? Or is it something where I just state the answers and say, “Cool, speculation on THAT one is over” slap hands together “looking forward to next week!”

I really enjoyed this episode. I didn’t find it to be quite the epic story that “Ab Aeterno” was, and there were actually a couple of scenes I thought dragged a wee bit, but we saw SO much of the island origins in this one... this is the one where, if you were to show a non-Lost fan, you’d pretty much ruin the entire series for them. Let’s not make this one the one we try to recruit new fans with, OK?

I’ve said it since season 1: The dominant theme of this show is black and white. And when you mix the two, you get grey. I think this episode finally showed us sympathy for the Man in Black, but also for Jacob. Neither one is good, neither is evil.

Answers:
• Jacob and “Jacob’s Brother” are... brothers.
• Smokey wasn't lying when he told Kate his mom was crazy.
• The kids we saw in the jungle really were the two boys as kids (EVERYONE told me that second one was just an older Jacob when I said it was probably the Boy in Black).
• The Frozen Donkey Wheel was somehow constructed by Smokey (since he didn’t actually make it before Brother died) as a way of getting off the island, but he couldn’t use it for some reason.
• The source of immortality seems to be in the wine that Mom gives to Jacob, the same wine that he gives to Richard Alpert. The same wine bottle that Smokey smashed.
• Smokey was created when Jacob actually killed his brother and turned him into some sort of smokey essence, forever trapped on the island and having an existence worse than death.
• Adam and Eve are Brother and Mom.
• The Man in Black has actually been dead in every scene we’ve seen him in so far... didn’t see THAT coming.

Highlights:
• “Every question I answer will lead to another.” Anyone else feel like that was Damon and Carlton addressing us directly??
• I loved Brother referring to spots on the island where “metal behaves strangely.”
• The Frozen Thawed-Out, Newly Carved Donkey Wheel!!
• Mom pulling out the two stones!! I yelled out loud, “OH MY GOD, SHE’S EVE!!” Husband: “Who’s Eve?” Me: “Sigh.”
• The birth of Smokey was pretty frakkin’ awesome.
• Adam and Eve!!! Thankyouthankyouthankyou... though it wasn’t Adam and Eve after all... more Eve and Cain.

Did You Notice?:
• Seeing a pregnant woman crawling out of the ocean immediately brought to mind Rousseau, and made me wonder about any possible connections. Just as this woman comes to the island and gives birth, Rousseau comes to the island and does the same. Smokey kills the rest of her team, but she is preserved (though driven mad by the circumstances). The baby goes over to the Others, and is ultimately killed. You’d think Smokey would do anything he could to preserve the one baby who arrived on the island – from across the sea, like him.
• The woman was wearing a red dress. Is that some old-fashioned, female version of a red ensign shirt? Same end result.
• And then CJ from The West Wing comes running out!!! I half-expected her to hold a press conference about the ship crash, carefully averting questions that might hurt her reputation in important political circles.
• When Island CJ first shows up, you can hear the whispers.
• The mother’s name is “Claudia,” which actually means lame or disabled in Latin.
• The other brother (who remains UNNAMED, like Claudia only had one name and Island CJ didn’t know what “names” were so she went with “Jacob” as the one name and “your brother” as the other) was hairy, compared to Jacob. At that moment I was convinced they were going to say his name was Esau.
• There was a subtle nod to history repeating itself. Island CJ delivers Claudia’s babies, and then takes them from her. Kate delivers Claire’s baby, and then raises him. CJ uses herbs and plants a garden the same way Sun did.
• Right from the beginning, the distinction between the brothers seems to be that Jacob is content with his lot in life, where the Bruthah in Black is the guy who believes there’s something else out there and longs to see it. He’s the ambitious one.
• Anyone else think “Two players, two sides, one white, one black” when the boys began playing their game?? It also made me wonder if my season 6 cover should be a black stone and a white stone instead...
• The "So... do you want to play or don't you, Jacob?" certainly set up the idea of the island as a colossal game between two big players. Later, the "One day you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules" was pretty awesome, too. The number of times they showed these two playing a game certainly made our poor Oceanic survivors look like nothing more than pawns.
• The boy wants to know if there’s somewhere else across the sea. The term “Across the Sea” was repeated throughout (and not just to drive home the title) which immediately brought to mind that season 1 episode where Shannon sat on the beach and sang “La Mer,” the French version of the song “Beyond the Sea” that she always heard in Finding Nemo. The song has been referenced a couple of times, but that was the most obvious one. Did she become a target when she sang that?
• “You are special.” So the Bruthah in Black is referred to the same way as John Locke and Walt. Smokey originally looked like Bruthah, then John Locke, but Walt is also tied into both of them through Shannon (who sang “La Mer”) and appearing to John Locke.
• Anyone else have Xena flashbacks when they saw the getups of the men killing the boar?
• Island Mama says, “They come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt, and it always ends the same,” which is what the Man in Black said in “The Incident” when sitting on the beach with Jacob. Interesting that he would quote the woman who destroyed his life, in a sense.
• Brother can see dead people... which now links him to Hurley. Is Hurley special, too? Would Miles count in that category? (He doesn’t see them, but talks to them.)
• Brother leaves Mom and Jacob chooses to stay with her. Being on the island seems to always be about choosing sides, whether, in season 1, you stayed with Sayid on the beach or went to the caves with Jack, or followed Jack in season 4 or Locke, or choose to do Jacob’s bidding or the Man in Black’s in season 6... it’s always about sides. Alpert was torn between the two sides when he first came, too. Again, it pulls in the metaphor of this show of black and white, good and evil, and the choices we make on a daily basis to do good or succumb to temptations.
• Island CJ tells Jacob, “I needed you to stay good.” She convinces him in this scene that he’s the good guy... does that make him the good guy? Contrast this scene on a log on the beach with the previous one with the Brother in Black... in that scene she tells him how special he is. Allison Janney plays the role beautifully... you can really see the contrast in the way she looks at the two boys, and can tell that she really does have a preference for the Brother.
• I often heard the whispers whenever the camera would flash by the mother.
• The dagger that Brother throws is the same one Dogen had, and the same one he asked Alpert to kill Jacob with.
• Brother seems angry after spending 30 years with the people (who are distinguished from themselves as being greedy and manipulative and selfish, as if Jacob and Brother don’t possess those faults as well) and Jacob seems to inhabit goodness, but only in his naivety.
• When I saw Brother stoking the charcoal in the fire, I was a little worried there would be a Peter Parker-type of incident where he’d be thrown in the fire and emerge a... smoke monster. (Nope, that was to come a little later!!)
• When Mama and Jacob go to the light in the cave at night, it seems much dimmer than it had been in the day, as if the light is going out because of her becoming tired.
• Jacob had used the wine bottle as the metaphor of the island... in the scene where he drinks from it, she uncorks the wine bottle, giving us the insinuation she’s actually doing something bad here, and not good, in the context of Jacob’s speech in “Ab Aeterno.”
• Jacob wants to stay on the island, and Brother wants to leave. What a strange island that the smokey essence of Brother now looks like Locke, the one person who did not want to leave the island.
• “There’s a storm coming.” “Yes there is.” And the award for Line with Most Obvious Use of Foreshadowey Symbolism goes to...
• Did anyone else think, when Brother stood among the burning huts gritting his teeth, “And THAT, kids, is how Anakin became Darth Vader!”
• I thought the dying tilt of Mom’s head was a little forced. “Thank you...” YOINK to the immediate right. It seemed like a death scene I’d watch in a high school play.
• Seeing Brother lying in the water reminded me of when Boone found Shannon in the water in “Hearts and Minds.”
• So I remember back when Jack found the bodies in the cave, he said by the state of decomposition the bodies had been dead for 50 or 60 years. Um... either he TOTALLY sucked in autopsy class or the bodies decomposed at such a slow rate because of the healing properties of the island, or because she was ageless. But HE wasn’t ageless, so...
• I think I’m kind of in love with Titus Welliver.

So Many Questions...
• Jacob only calls him “Brother,” making him sound an awful lot like a certain Scot on the island. Could that be a link to Desmond?
• At this point I’m assuming this section won’t be answered if it’s minor... but what happened to Island CJ’s mother? She said, “She’s dead” and I wonder if she killed her somehow? Does the cycle just continue? Was she ageless like CJ and Jacob?
• How did the boys possibly not notice another tribe on the island for 13 years? Not sure I buy that one.
• So what exactly is the light in the cave? It looks beautiful, she says it’s the warmest, brightest light you’ve ever seen, but no one must ever find it. She says a little bit of that light is inside every man, but they always want more. So what is it? Goodness? Evil? Testosterone? It sounds like it’s good, but then look what it does at the end? And how would it be able to get them off the island via the Frozen Donkey Wheel Express? Mom says if the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere, and they have to preserve it, which would suggest it’s a good thing...? Will it be explained, or will it be like the glow in the briefcase that Vincent Vega opens in Pulp Fiction? Or in the trunk in Repo Man?
• How old is the mother? She doesn’t age physically, but I wonder how many years? -- decades? centuries? -- she was there before the boys arrived?
• OK, gaming experts: Is that a real game that Jacob and his brother are playing? Is it a primitive form of chess? Checkers? Go?
• If being near the light does something to you worse than death, then when Brother lets the beam of light into the room, why doesn’t anything happen? How did having that light travel through Ben and Locke change them in some way when they jumped off the island via FDW Express?
• How did the donkey wheel end up frozen?
• So... did Smokey then take the form of the dead Brother and that’s what we saw in “The Incident” talking to Jacob and “Ab Aeterno” talking to Richard? If he’s dead, why is he still longing to leave the island? In what form could he do that?
• The synopsis for this episode on my PVR was, “John Locke’s motives are finally revealed.” Really? That makes it sound obvious. So... his motives for killing all those people is to get off the island and... wait, we already knew that LAST week. How did this episode clarify any of that?


Me tomorrow:
I’m on Facebook! Come and find me. I am here. :)

Tomorrow listen in to Marshall and Forbes on The Ocean 98.5 in Victoria, BC at 7:10 a.m. local time, 10:10 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, listen to KEX 1190 at 6:20 p.m. PST, 9:20 p.m. EST where I’ll be on the Mark & Dave show (and they’re big Lost fans so it’s always fun). Go here and click the Listen Now button.

Next week:
I joked when they announced “The End” would be the title of the finale, “How long before they start using the Doors’ song in previews?” Apparently... right about now. ;)

6.14 The Candidate

“You saved John’s life. Why can’t that be enough?”
“Because it’s not.”

“Because it’s going to be you, Jack.”

“I won’t leave you. I will never leave you again.”

OK, a few weeks ago I wrote a blubbery and passionate response to “Ab Aeterno,” because it was one of the most epic hours of television I’d ever seen. A friend of mine emailed me right before tonight’s episode and said, “Make sure you have Kleenex handy” (he works at the TV station and gets to see the ep a few hours early) and I thought, “Uh oh...” But then it opened with John Locke in a hospital bed and Jack standing over him grinning and I thought, Oh! Maybe he meant tears of joy!!

NO. He most certainly did NOT mean tears of joy. The writers took out not one, not two, but FOUR major characters in one fell swoop. Sayid, like Titus in Edward Gorey’s “Gashlycrumb Tinies” poem, flew into bits. (WAAAAAH!!) And like a certain major character in the series finale of Buffy who’s sort of cut in half with a sword in the midst of battle and it happens so fast we have no time to mourn, it HAPPENED SO FAST WE HAD NO TIME TO MOURN!! There was no sad music, no montage of Sayidness, no characters saying, “Poor Sayid,” no tears, no tearful goodbyes, no body... NOTHING. Oh, Sayid. Let’s pause for a moment before dwelling on the major death scene and say goodbye to this character (and also lend our condolences to redeem147 and Joan...). This is a man who was a torturer, but he tortured himself more than he ever did anyone else. He loved with his whole being, and he hated what he did for a living. He died, and then came back an empty shell of his former self (perhaps THAT was his true death back then?) and only when Desmond talked to him did we see the tiniest shaft of light shine out of his eyes once again. He remembered who he used to be, he remembered that he loved, and he loved mightily, and he spared Desmond, and his final act is a heroic one, jumping on the grenade, so to speak, to save everyone else. Yes, the old Sayid was in there, knowing how a bomb worked, knowing he couldn’t do anything about it, and putting himself before the others. From the moment they arrived on that island, Sayid did everything in his power to get them off. And now, in his final act, he ensured that some of them would live to maybe see their way off the island some day.

And then, Lapidus was conked unconscious and we can probably presume he died, unless he washes up on shore next week. Don’t count him out yet, because he certainly didn’t get any final heroic scenes, but on the other hand, he was peripheral compared to everyone else on that sub, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he were dead.

But... that scene. Oh, that scene. For me, the most painful death has always been Charlie’s. We watched his final act, we saw the water pour in around him, we saw him cross himself and say goodbye to Desmond, and then float upwards in quiet death. The piano, the mournful violin, it all came together in a spectacular feat of sadness that I was gutted. But this? This topped it. OK, maybe, as I wrote in my notes (and then my brother immediately emailed me after) it was a little too Titanic, with Rose letting go of Jack’s hand. But I don’t care. It was beautiful. And YES I kept thinking, “Oh my GOD if you both die, then Ji Yeon will grow up an orphan and she will be raised by the Paiks. THE PAIKS!!!” But were they really ever going to get off that island anyway? Probably not. The beauty in that moment was how they died. I was really unhappy when they were reunited and spoke English (??!!) instead of their native Korean, a language that Jin would still be thinking in, and one that Sun has used almost exclusively for the past three years. So when it was clear she was trapped, I was alarmed, and then when they started speaking in Korean, I knew it was all over, and I started sobbing. SOBBING. I was whipping Kleenexes out of the box and really LOUDLY crying, with my husband chuckling on the couch (he has NO HEART. NONE. See, if a character on The Wire died, he’d have been in tears... but he’s never had that attachment to people on Lost. He said, and I quote, “Poor Nikki and her attachment to fictional characters.” Oh yeah, buddy? Let’s see how you handle it if anything ever happens to Coach Taylor on Friday Night Lights... you will be a ball of goo on the floor). Anyway... And then they vowed they’d never be apart, and then the camera pulled back on the sub... the piano music, and then... the hands. Oh my GOD they had to show the hands. What a beautiful, beautiful image, but when the hands pulled away from each other I cried and cried some more. I wanted them to somehow be entwined for eternity. So I cried even harder. And when I finally got my sobs under control, HURLEY started sobbing and I was a mess all over again. Oh, Lost... four major characters in one go.

Why was I crying so much? I was crying for Sayid, for Jin and Sun, for Ji Yeon, a tiny bit for Frank (love the character, but it wasn’t tear-inducing, really)... but also for the end. This show only has 4 hours left (well, as of tonight, don’t know if you hear this, the finale has been extended by a full half hour, so we have four and a half hours left!) and I don’t know if I can handle these goodbyes. I don’t want to say goodbye to the characters, to the story, to the fine writing week after week... I don’t want to see the island for one last time, and know there’s no more Lost. The speculation will be over... but I LOVE the speculation!! I have to say goodbye to the questions, the mysteries, the clues, the hints. To Damon and Carlton’s skilled crafting of this series, to the collection of writers, to everything that Lost is about. I’m so excited to see it end, yet I don’t want to say goodbye.

And tonight’s episode was a forced goodbye, as if a trial run for the finale. Oh god... can I make it there?!

Highlights:
• Jack saying to Locke, “I think you’re a candidate.”
• Sawyer grabbing the gun away from “Doughboy.” HAHA!!! That was AWESOME.
• Bernard again!! We may never see them on the island again, but I’m so happy to see them in the sideways world.
• “Memory serves you were flirting with my wife Rose when I was in the bathroom.” LOL!
• Sun putting the ring back on Jin’s finger. Aw...
• Hurley when he hears Smokey: “And we’re dead.”
• Jack unlocking the cages and saying, “I’m with him.” WICKED line.
• Smokey taking out the two guys by the plane without even batting an eyelash. Oh my god that was epic.
• Kate shot!! ZOMG!

The Numbers:
Did I mention 4 major people died in this episode?? Wah.

Did You Notice?:
• So in this episode Jack seems to be putting together that something odd is happening. He hasn’t been hit by true love or a near-death experience, but he’s just using his own powers of deduction and, methinks, a faith he has in this world that he doesn’t have in the original timeline. In that one he’d think it was coincidence, but in this world he’s starting to think maybe they were on the plane for a reason. The new Jack on the island seems to have faith and a belief that things happen for a reason, and that hard-fought idea is something that the SW Jack seems to already possess. Can he put it together without falling in love or getting mowed down by Desmond?
• Sawyer gets the upper hand, but gives it up for Kate, exactly the same way he did when they were breaking rocks and he gave it because Juliet threatened to hurt Kate.
• Bernie’s still a dentist in this reality!
• There’s something odd about the way Bernard remembers Anthony Cooper, writes down the name, and when Jack says, “It was three years ago... you remember that?” he says, “Of course I do, Jack.”
• “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Again, Bernard seems to know something more here. (OK, and I also really wanted Bono to jump out of one of those doors and start singing!)
• As Smokey is talking to Jack, you see the smoke from the campfire billowing behind him.
• Smokey is lying to Jack: We already know he can’t actually kill anyone, and he tells Jack that he spared them when he could have killed them.
• The scene of Jin and Sun chatting in the cages is so sweet. The reunion just didn’t get to me the way I wanted it to (mostly because I thought they were about to be zapped by that fence!!) and so this episode fulfilled the reunion fantasy I really wanted for so long.
• As soon as Chip is killed by Smokey, I started yelling, “Zoe!! RUN OUTSIDE!!! YOU ARE NEEDED BY THE CAGES.” ;)
• Jack being in the nursing home seemed to be him forcing Locke to be fixed... the other timeline Jack was coming through in this scene.
• When Helen went to get Anthony I said to my husband, “So is he going to be senile and drooling?” And then... he was. To which my husband replied, “Oh YEAH! In the sideways world, Anthony gets his!!” Only to find out he’s some sweet beloved man here.
• Ah, the old C4. You know, if I were Kate on the island, I’d take one look at that and say, “Oh for god’s sakes, if I see ONE more packet of that stuff, SERIOUSLY...”
• When Locke is explaining to everyone what could happen with the C4, he says, “Boom,” the same way Desmond says it while explaining the bomb in the freighter to Jin and Michael in S4.
• I’m sure it was obvious to most of us the moment Sawyer said, “I’m sorry for not trusting you” that he didn’t trust Smokey as far as he could throw him.
• OK, and right at this commercial break they had a CTV station ID with Josh Holloway looking into the camera and smirking that I’ve NEVER seen before and it made me melt. Holy freakin’ wow.
• Locke saying, “Push the button” and “I wish you had believed me” made me squeal. The first is obvious, the second was John Locke’s suicide note to Jack.
• Jack gets an Apollo bar out of the vending machine similar to the one Jacob got one from when he gave it to Jack.
• Christian died exactly the same way in both worlds. Significant?
• That rosewood box that Claire and Jack look at had a mirror in it, and notice at first it showed both of them, and then the camera turns so Claire disappeared and it was only Jack. A foreshadowing of something happening to Claire Bear?
• The first ones who run to the sub are the four Listies and Lapidus.
• The guy on the sub looked like Radzinsky! For a second I forgot we were in the same timeline and thought maybe it was him.
• Smokey said earlier that he couldn’t travel over water... I think he meant in his smoke monster form, but Jack and Sawyer seem to think he’s like the Wicked Witch of the West.
• Aw... my heart broke when they abandoned poor Claire AGAIN.
• OK, I know that technically, Jack was right and Sawyer was wrong and by Sawyer pulling the wires when he did, without consulting anyone, at least four people died. BUT... considering the last time Jack gave a big speech and was SO sure that he was right, Juliet died as a result, you can’t blame Sawyer for doing his own thing in this scene.
• “THERE IS NO SAYID!” Oh, SADNESS!!!
• John Locke is momentarily distracted as Jin walks by, as if he knows him.
• Like in the other world, Locke has an African-American male nurse.
• When Jack talks to Locke in the hallway, there’s a “Caution: Oxygen” sign behind them, right after the scene where everyone needed oxygen.
• When Jack tells Locke that he went to see his father, I just thought, “GOD, Jack, you have totally overstepped your bounds here...” I know he wants to fix him, but he has to understand that Locke has free will, and should be allowed to exercise it, even if he is punishing himself for what he did to his father.
• What was with Jack using all the catchphrases there? “What happened, happened. And... you can let it go. Come on, John, if we don’t live together, we’ll die alone. I mean, son of a BITCH! This is the beginning of the end for you. I’m a man of science, but also a man of faith... fine, if you’re leaving, fine. I’ll see you in another life, bruthah.”
• I am NOT choosing sides here, but simply pointing out that... did you notice when Hurley and Kate hit the shore, she immediately ran to Jack, grabbing him and upset that she couldn’t find him, but doesn’t seem to notice Sawyer bleeding out on the beach?

So Many Questions...
• Widmore’s list has Ford, the Kwons, and Reyes. What is his list? Considering two of the people on it are dead... does this mean bad news for Hurley and Sawyer?? NO NO NO NO!!!!
• “He’s coming.” Who is he? Is Widmore preparing for The Rapture or something? Is Jacob returning the same way Jesus returned?
• Seriously, WHY are Jin and Sun speaking English??!! It’s really bugging me. But I must admit, having them speak Korean was more powerful at the end because they spoke English up to that point, BUT then it comes off as contrived, since there’s no logical reason why they would speak in English when both of them are more at ease in that language.
• What is the significance of the rosewood box that Christian left to Claire?
• How is Claire staying at a motel if she gave Kate her credit card? (Assuming she had a second one?)
• How many people did Widmore bring with him? Every time you turn around there’s another dozen shooting at everyone.
• I don’t know anything about submarines, but why do they dive for only 30 seconds and it’ll take 5 minutes to go back up?
• “Because it’s going to be you, Jack.” What the WHAT?! Did Sayid just reveal who the candidate actually is? Because my money is on YES. I think most people have been torn between Jack and Desmond, and I’ve thought it would be Jack from the beginning of the season (though I’d be equally happy if it were a surprise).
• Locke says he’s off to finish what he started. What does that mean? He’s going to drive the rest of them to kill each other? He’s going to kill Desmond? (NOOOO!!!)


Me tomorrow:
I’m on Facebook! Come and find me. I am here. :)

Tomorrow listen in to Marshall and Forbes on The Ocean 98.5 in Victoria, BC at 7:10 a.m. local time, 10:10 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 NOT be participating in the Globe and Mail Lost chat from noon to 1pm EST (I will be on a plane to NYC... I’m also missing an opportunity to guest-host Innerspace, ARGH) but it will still be happening! Go here to ask questions and comment.

And finally, listen to KEX 1190 at 6:20 p.m. PST, 9:20 p.m. EST where I’ll be on the Mark & Dave show (and they’re big Lost fans so it’s always fun). Go here and click the Listen Now button.

Next week:
A preview that didn’t actually reveal a THING (all old material) but I know what it’s going to focus on. Let’s just say it might be THE episode we’ve been waiting for. (Please don’t kill off anyone, please don’t kill off anyone...)

Lost: Madness and Clarity

One of my favourite writers of all time is Timothy Findley. I was crazy about CanLit (Canadian literature) when I was a student, and I was forever changed the first time I discovered Findley’s work through his masterpiece, The Wars. A gorgeous, gorgeous piece of writing about a boy’s experience as a soldier in the First World War and the mental toll it took on people, this book led me to the many, many other books Findley wrote. Findley was a lion of CanLit, a popular fave but also a critical and literary success. I’ll never forget the morning of June 22, 2002, when I grabbed the paper, unrolled it, and saw the giant picture of Findley on the front cover with his birth... and death... dates written across the top, and I leapt back as if the paper had electrocuted me. I’ve never had such a visceral reaction to a newspaper headline before, but I began crying. He’d died in France the day before after a fall, and I was devastated.

One of my favourite novels of Findley’s was 1993’s Headhunter, set in the very real mental hospital on Queen Street West in Toronto. That same year I was privileged enough to interview the man, who is affectionately known as “Tiff” (after his full initials, Timothy Irving Frederick Findley), when he had written a play, The Stillborn Lover, to be performed for the first time at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, where I was then living and going to school. I remember being so excited, and since I’d written numerous papers on his work, I’d read most of the interviews he’d conducted over the years, knew what questions he avoided (and was still determined to ask them anyway), and I knew his work inside and out. I was prepared.

I called him up, his partner Bill answered the phone, we chatted for a minute, and then he passed the phone over to Tiff. And what followed was an incredible hour-long phone call that went from interview to conversation. We talked about the play, about Headhunter, about his books (and there was one question I’d been trying to find an answer to for two years of paper-writing but he refused it in every interview I’d read, and when I asked it at the very end of the interview, he answered it without hesitation), and... about madness. It’s an ongoing theme in Findley’s writing: his main characters are mad, or the world around them is mad, or their family has gone mad. And he revealed that he’d had an aunt who suffered from a mental illness and he’d spent a lot of time around her, and where others would avoid her, he would talk with her endlessly. Through those conversations he discovered that this woman seemed to “see” things that no one else did... she had a sense of clarity about the world around her that cut through all the bullshit and just saw right to its core. She’d been one of the biggest influences on his writing, and he found he was often trying to work that sense of clarity through madness into many of his books based on the experiences he’d had with her.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because in the past week I’ve been thinking more about that long conversation I had with him and wondering if there could be a link with his ideas and Lost.

In the sideways world on Lost, the characters seem to need a jolt of some kind to see the original timeline, whether it’s being shot or kissed or holding hands or some burst of electromagnetism. But Libby didn’t need a jolt. Her madness gave her the clarity to see to the other world. There were no holding hands or kisses or getting slammed by a car or almost drowned... she just saw it, no jolt needed. I suggested on Chris Kelly’s site the other day that I wondered if Libby in the original timeline was in the mental institution because she could actually see the sideways world and thought she was completely mad. Is it possible someone from the original timeline had a sense of the other timeline?

Hurley has spent time in the mental institution but is really sensitive about it – we’ve seen many instances where he’s become incensed when someone has suggested he’s crazy – and he can speak to dead people. Just like Libby seeing the original timeline from the sideways world, he can see across the line of the dead. No one else can see them, just like no one else can see the sideways world except for Libby, suggesting that once again those who are mad have a clarity that allows them to see things other people simply can’t see.

Think of how many of the books that have been mentioned on the show and how many of them deal with madness... just about every character in Wonderland and the Looking-Glass worlds is entirely mad, and Lewis Carroll’s books are the most referenced ones on the show. If you look back through the show and think about every time a character mentions that someone else is crazy, usually immediately following that moment, the character who’s been called crazy has a moment of clarity. It’s definitely worth thinking about.

Oh, and to bring this all back around to me (which, those on my Facebook page will tell you, is definitely my modus operandi), after interviewing Findley I wrote that piece in the student newspaper at UWO, and the night it ran I went down to the premiere performance at the Grand Theatre. I went over to the press table to grab my packet (I was going to be writing a review for the next day’s paper) and the press woman got my name and said, “Oh! I have a message from you from Tiff.” Me = froze. “He said that of all of the stories on the show that he read today from all of the various papers, including the national newspaper, he wanted me to tell you that you were the only one who truly GOT it, and that he got that sense from you even when he spoke to you. He said he really loved your piece, and wanted me to tell you to keep up with the writing, and you will be successful at it someday.”

I barely remember that night’s performance, because all I could do was sit there in the audience in a blind haze, enveloped by the surreal notion that my favourite writer in the universe had just complimented MY writing. Wow. It was a moment I’ll never forget.

Lost 6.13 "The Last Recruit"

“John Locke was not a believer, Jack. He was a sucker.”

“Whether you like it or not, you’re with him now.”

“Get off my damn boat.”

“Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay. You’re with me now.”

So, in a jokey haiku earlier today I suggested that the last recruit was going to be Jack. Who’d have thunk that haiku would have given me that moment of clarity?

As predicted last week, all of the storylines are coming together this week, with all of the SW stories merging into one (Hurley’s was the only one we didn’t see at all) and all of the island folk pretty much together. Richard/Ben/Miles were the only ones we didn’t see on the island this week. (Bummer, because seriously, aren’t they like a dream road trip trio?? I want to see a National Lampoon movie with these three in it...)

Another great episode that moved us closer and closer to that end, even if it was another bridge ep. Here’s hoping I didn’t miss too many things (as I mentioned earlier today, I’m not feeling well, so I did this rather quickly....)

Highlights:
• Hurley: “You can always bring people back from the Dark Side. Anakin?” Sawyer: “Who the hell’s Anakin?” HAHA!!
• Hurley: “Hey Claire. You look... great.”
• SW Sawyer to SW Kate: “It would never work, Sweetheart. I’m a cop, you’re a murderer...” LOL!!
• I loved the little Jack/Claire reunion, even if she’s nuts. I want to believe the old Claire is still in there somewhere...
• That scene between Desmond and Sayid in the well. Just heartbreaking. (And no, he totally didn’t shoot him. I don’t believe that for a second.)
• “... and that pilot who looks like he stepped off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie.” HAHAHA!!!!
• Sayid’s cold, dead-eyed response to Locke when he asks if he killed Desmond: “Of course I did. Go and check if you’d like.” :::shudder:::
• The look on Jack’s face when Claire tells him Christian was her father. “Uh... um-I-uh... wait, you... uh... WHAT?!”
• Sawyer and Jack disagreeing... will this be the last fight we see between the two of them? SADNESS.
• The Jin/Sun happy ending. In both worlds!!

Answers:
• Christian in “White Rabbit” was actually Smokey. However, we don’t have an explanation for who Christian was in the hospital, since Smokey can’t travel off the island. Was it the same guy? What about the other dead people? Ilana said that Smokey can only look like one person at a time so was he able to also be Yemi, or was he only able to be Christian? What allows him to slough off one body for the other?

The Numbers:
The adoption agency and lawyer are on the 15th floor.

Did You Notice?:
• Jack is asking Hurley’s permission? WHAT?!
• I found Smokey’s rundown of Locke being nothing but a pathetic waste to be really sad... I don’t like the idea that he was completely misguided. I believed in his faith, even when he effed up. I wonder how tough it was for Terry O’Quinn to deliver that line.
• Jack defends John Locke? WHAT?!
• Sun recognizes Smokey in the SW... how did she recognize him? Was the gunshot a jolt? If it was, why didn’t she see the life she had with Jin in the other world, too?
• I love that Ben is actually helpful and tries to save Locke’s life in the SW, whereas he’s constantly trying to kill him in the original timeline.
• Sawyer starts destiny talk with Kate in the SW, and notice how she immediately figures him out (and why he lied) just like she figured out his real name wasn’t Sawyer in the original timeline. (If Kate was a wanted murderer by the FBI, wouldn’t they be holding her in something other than... a chair? Without handcuffs? Constantly turning their backs on her?)
• Miles points to Sayid on the TV and says “That’s our bad guy.” It made me think back to the episode where Kate comes in to see Sam Austen and Sayid – the army’s bad guy – is on that TV, too.
• Kate points out to Jack that Sayid’s different now. He says, “We’re all different now.” “No, Jack, he’s REALLY REALLY different now.”
• “That’s Widmore’s Number Two.” Prisoner reference!!
• Interesting that Zoe gives Smokey until nightfall to turn over Des, just as he gave everyone in the Temple until nightfall to get out.
• Smokey smashes the walkie... he definitely seems to have a thing against technology.
• As soon as Desmond showed up again, I thought, “Ack! What is he going to do to Claire to make HER see??” “I’m gonna throo ya doon some stee-ahs and help ya have a vishun!”
• Desmond to Claire: “It won’t cost you a cent. Trust me... it’ll be my pleasure.” Funny, that was the same pick-up line he used on me...
• I was convinced the lawyer would be Ana Lucia. Didn’t see Ilana coming. She did look rather, ahem, dynamite, though, didn’t she? Ha. Ha. I mean, she really... blew them away with her, erm, explosive beauty? OK. I’ll stop now.
• Interesting that Ilana had an American accent in the SW. That’s what happened if Jacob hadn’t recruited her at a young age and made her go to Eastern Europe to learn how to take care of the candidates for a full 12 minutes before being blowed up real good.
• Jack takes instruction... WHAT?!
• OK, when Sawyer was saying everyone was going to get in the boat, did anyone else suddenly flash in their heads to the outrigger and think, “ZOMG, Sawyer’s going to be shot by Juliet?!” No? Just me? Hm. I just KNOW we’re going to see that outrigger scene at some point... but I’m hoping Widmore’s peeps are in it and Zoe takes one between the eyes. (Seriously, WHY do I dislike her so much? She hasn’t annoyed me the same way Douche and Douchier did in season 3 but there’s just something about her that rubs me the wrong way.)
• That well is like 15 feet deep and Des went head-first... there’s no way he wouldn’t be suffering from a severe spinal injury.
• “I died... and he brought ME back.” Oh, Sayid, do you really want an empty zombified version of Nadia back??
• Sawyer’s Claire logic is unfair... Aaron is STILL her son, and just because she’s “drinkin’ Locke’s Kool-Aid” doesn’t mean she deserves to be abandoned on an island while other people raise her child... none of this was her doing. Disappointed in you, Sawyer...
• Claire’s logic is equally skewed. “He’s the only one that didn’t abandon me.” No, he’s just the one who drew you away from everyone else so they wouldn’t know where you’d gotten to, and completely brainwashed you into thinking it was totally awesome that Aaron was with them and not her, and then they were forced to leave without her because they couldn’t find her. Of course, Claire presumably doesn’t remember any of this; I’m thinking it’s part of Smokey’s mindwipe of her. I felt terrible as she stood by the tree and watched them abandon her... again. Poor Claire.
• As Kate appeals to Claire, you can hear the quiet Claire music that used to play when you’d see her with Aaron on the beach, usually with Charlie. “I never should have raised him. It should have been you.” Go Kate!!!
• I loved David saying to Jack, “I’m sad for YOU, Dad.” I’m already awaiting the Jears-o-meter on the Ack Attack for that one. ;)
• Did you get a load of the look on David’s face? “Whoa... Dad... I have an AUNT. And a SUPER-HOT aunt at that!!! Oh happy happy day!! This is the best reading of a will EVER.”
• I love Jack’s, “Sorry, we have to reschedule.” Um... I’m pregnant and here for only a couple of days from AUSTRALIA. When the hell are we rescheduling to???
• There was a bit of déjà vu when they were all on the boat... remember in “The Lie,” Frank was the one to go under the ship and get refreshments then, too.
• “You wanna take a leap of faith, Jack? Take it.” Eloise told Jack that he had to take a leap of faith to put the shoes on John Locke, and Locke referred to leaps of faith when he was pushing the button.
• Jack jumps off the boat just like Sawyer jumped off the helicopter.
• Jack: “The island is not done with us yet.” Sawyer: “Yeah, well I’m done with this island.” This is the exact exchange that we heard in “316” between Eloise and Desmond, with her telling Des the island isn’t done with him yet, and Des saying he’s done with the island (d’oh).
• Jack to David: “Hey, you okay waiting here for me for a bit while I perform THIRTEEN HOURS OF SURGERY??!!”
• Nikki’s dream line of the entire season: Oh, how I wish Jack had moseyed into that O.R. and said, “Not only am I gonna save this dude’s life, but I’m gonna make him f*cking WALK again. Because I AM A GOD!!!”
• OK, seriously, as much as I was happy to see the Jin/Sun reunion, I thought it was TOTALLY RUINED by those fences!! My husband yelled, “OMG the fence is still on!” and then they were running together and I was screaming, “NO! NO! Stop... wait... don’t” and half-expected both of them to collapse onto the ground frothing at the mouth and bleeding from every orifice. Cripes almighty. I wish Zoe had walked through the fence first just so we knew they were off.
• When the explosion hits the beach, did you see that thing that landed right in front of Jack’s face? It made me think of the episode of Fawlty Towers when Basil is mocking the woman with the hearing aid and leans in and says, “Is this a piece of your brain?!”

So Many Questions...
• What is the significance of the Western Pacific Adoption Agency? Is Paik running it??
• Seriously, how did Miles and Sawyer trace Sayid to that house?? First, he’s a foreigner visiting, and they wouldn’t have him in a database. Secondly, he had a MAJOR head-start on them, and would have gotten there and been long gone by the time they made it to the house. One of the least believable things I’ve seen on the show. Did Sayid stop for one last snow-cone at the 7-11 or something on the way back??
• WHO IS DAVID’S MOM?! Possibles that are left: Sarah again. Juliet. Kate’s twin sister she never knew about (Skaters and Jaters are both happy in the end!). Cassidy. Ana Lucia.
• Seriously, how did he recognize the bloated, upside-down, lacerated face of John Locke from the nice man in the wheelchair at the airport. Ah well...stranger things...
• Wasn’t the deal with Widmore that Sawyer was going to bring Locke over to him and deliver him to everyone?


Me tomorrow:
I’ve joined Facebook! Come and find me. I am here. :)

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, listen to KEX 1190 at 6:20 p.m. PST, 9:20 p.m. EST where I’ll be on the Mark & Dave show (and they’re big Lost fans so it’s always fun). Go here and click the Listen Now button:

Next week:
As I mentioned earlier today, there will not be a new episode next week and instead they’re repeating “Ab Aeterno.” But the Globe and Mail chat will still be on as we talk about the season up to this point and sum up everything.