Lost (Possible Spoilers)

It's true that "How the hell did a polar bear get on a tropical island?" will always be the more interesting question. BUT, the way they answered THAT question, a season or two later, was much more integral to the ongoing plot than some of the weirdness we're seeing now. They just very subtly moved the plot to the second island, and voila! We're in a spot where the Dharma Initiative had brought polar bears in order to do experiments. It was the perfect way to answer a question like that -- not just the actual answer itself, but the manner in which it was revealed.

This season's answers aren't feeling like that so much.

And, to tack on one more thing about this that's irking me: I feel as if the "rules" and properties of the Smoke Monster/Flocke are rather undefined (in general, compared to other weird phenomena) and this is allowing the writers to add and change its properties to suit their end-story. It's small, subtle things, but it's vexing just the same. I don't feel I have a handle on how this thing operates ... and I guess I'm just annoyed enough to not want to figure it out on my own. I want Smokey to be revealed as something integral to what we already know about the island -- something that will make some odd sort of sense in this world we've been willing to accept at face value.

Okay, now I'm just whining. I'll shut up.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

Re-watching Season 5 picking up on couple things, mainly from 316.

Re: the dead bodies on Hydra Island, we assumed were Ajira survivors; Hurley bought all the extra seats- could there have been that many passengers? It's possible, can't remember scenes of crash atm.

The Christian Sheppard apparition seen before Locke turns the FDW states he needs to bring back all the Candidates, as does Eloise. Cahoots? Also, it goes against MiB's complaints of people coming to the Island....

I'm thinking atm, MiB's home he wants to go to is in fact The Island but he can't be 'free' and home whilst Candidates with Jacob's touch exist hence needing them to come to the Island. Or something

__________________

Pyro, there weren't THAT many dead bodies in that pile. Remember, Hurley bought all the seats ONCE HE GOT THERE (to the airport). There were already a handful of people (Ilana being one of 'em) who had bought their tickets before Hurley snagged up whatever remained.

I do wonder whether and how they'll deal with the idea that they did NOT bring back all the Oceanic Six. I wasn't quite sure if the only consequence was that the landing and subsequent chronology didn't go as planned. For instance, did their not obeying that rule help cause the time travel flashes or something?

I think a lot of what MiB means by wanting to go "home" depends on who/what he is. We may not get the answer to the first part until we get the answer to the second part.

Except for the misspelling of "sneak" i copied your punctuation to a tee. Just the changed the wording.

Anyway did anyone else notice in the latest episode that James Ford's life has changed? Originally at age 19, James needed $6000 to pay off some people he was in trouble with, so he did the very thing he hated most; he found a woman and convinced her to give him her husband’s money. James had become everything he despised, and so, he renamed himself "Sawyer”. This was all before he even went on flight 815. So how come he isn't known as Sawyer when we see him in this episode. He's still James Ford. Plus, he turned crooked turning as a con-man before he went on the island as well. What made him go from con-man to cop?
Any thoughts?

Perhaps you did, but there is a quote within a quote there, so the "Sneak Peek" should have been in single quotation marks. And you have two periods at the end and the word "on" twice.

But I digress....

As for Sawyer and changes after flight 815: I think we are supposed to see that it was the Jughead explosion in 1977 that changed everything from that point on (1977, not 2004). At least, that seems to be the general understanding. And so, when we see the Losties on the plane in the flash sideways, they've already changed from the ones who were on the original flight 815 in season 1.

Yeah, i've got a thought- are you even WATCHING the show?? It's pretty much already established that this timeline is a lot more different than just 815 NOT crashing. Like Jack having an errm CHILD

Yeah, it's pretty well established that the alternate timeline is different in plenty of ways. We'll only know why when we're told exactly what it is, but whatever the difference is, it obviously has many ripple effects and predates flight 815.

Uhhhh yeah. I was just confused. People do get confused when watching Lost. Let alone any other program that can get misinterpreted. By the way that's not a thought, it's a question.

Anyway, I thought these pictures were kind of cool. The lost numbers were found in New York City (first 2 pics) and also in Madrid (last pic).

I just figured there were enough basic points in FS to make that the abundant twist of it's being.

And my thought was that question back at ya!

Yeah, really. A question can be a thought, jrs. Please leave the zingers to the professionals. You might sprain something if you keep trying to one-up us.

Ok, let me know when you find them.

Ok more wrong thoughts.

When Locke and Widmore meet in Tunisia, Widmore's goal was to remove Ben so Locke could be the Others Leader. Ben isn't meant to lead, Locke is. So with Locke dead, The Others have no leader and that's why Widmore has returned, possibly be Jacob's instruction or his own intuition. If he is Jacob's 'they', he's a) a threat to MiB and b) someone Jacob wanted to come (based on Lighthouse).

In honor of the upcoming Richard-centric episode here's a clip you people might enjoy. This scene between Matthew Fox and Nestor Carbonell is from the movie Smokin’ Aces. Check it out

One of the best episodes of the year so far I have to say. Now we know what the island is.

It's not hell, and they aren't dead like Richard thought at first, but the island is sort of a Purgatory if you will. They are given a second chance at reclaiming their innocence because as Jacob states, "their past doesn't matter." What is the main purpose of the island? Well to prevent all Evil (the Man in Black specifically) from seeping out into the rest of the world, which would be a very bad thing. I always thought in the back of my mind I was thinking they were either in their own versions of hell, dead, or in between heaven and hell. I guess I was half right .

Well, the island isn't actually purgatory; the writers have stated quite emphatically that this isn't the case, because people were guessing it as early as season 2 (or earlier), I believe, given how much sense it made even then. The show is certainly a rough metaphor for purgatory, but I don't think it's explicitly so.

Also, the concept of purgatory isn't about starting fresh, or one's past not mattering. Quite the opposite: if you end up in purgatory, it's a form of punishment, just a temporary one.

As for Evil spreading throughout the world; Jacob was kind enough to confirm what most of us, I think, had suspected. We've known since the end of Season 5, if memory serves, that the MiB claimed he simply wanted to leave, and that Jacob clearly didn't want to let him. Assuming that he's also bad, there are two possibilities: either Jacob is afraid of what he'll do when he leaves, or he's like a prison guard who has to make sure a criminal has served out their sentence. Now, we simply have confirmation that it's the former. It kind of always had to be, however, as lowering the stakes below the level of "saving the world" would have been a huge step backwards in terms of drama and tension.

I'm guessing that the island doesn't have a name in our experience and is more like a microcosm-retelling of the original Eden story (with a few twists and some bad theology thrown in).

What is tugging at the back of my mind now, though, is the question of why Jacob just recently felt he needed candidates for a replacement. Did he sense he was going to die, that MiB was closing in on a loophole? Also, now I'm not sure "loophole" is the best word for it, since apparently MiB knew the trick was to get someone ELSE to kill Jacob for him (since he tried it in the 1860s with Ricardo). I can only assume then that the scene at the end of season 5 with Jacob and MiB on the beach (where we are meeting them for the first time) came *before* Ricardo landed. I can only also assume that it was indeed the Black Rock that they both saw and talked about that was coming in toward shore in that scene.

And yes, we were all right that the line about "Glad to see you out of those chains" meant that Richard was originally a slave on the Black Rock. One point for me/us.

I must say this about last night's episode: It was so thoroughly entrenched in good, important backstory with a character we've seen and wondered about for so long now that it did a LOT to heal my inner fears that the season 6 story was just a checklist. It was thorough; it was engaging; it was well-acted; and it made sense with storylines going back for several seasons now.

And it felt like we got some real answers. For the first time, I'm now curious about what and who Jacob and MiB really are, how they got to this island of weird properties (or does it have the properties because they are there?), and what/who is larger even than they are.

This episode couldn't have come at a better time for me in terms of some growing skepticism I had about the writing.

Oh, and I sure do wish the spoiler tags worked in email notifications.

It's Wednesday, so it must be Random Thoughts on Lost time (TM)!

First, though, I just want to say that I thought this was a very, very good episode, and I'm extremely pleased with Richard's story.

Random Facts and Theories:

• Lots of common theories confirmed. As predicted, Richard came over on the Black Rock as a slave and MiB is dangerous to the rest of the world if released.
  
• I'm sure a lot of people were freaking out when Richard said the Island was "Hell." Particularly when Hurley asked him if he was being figurative, and Richard said he wasn't. Still, I assume we're all in agreement that this was just something Richard thought based on everything that happened before (and just after) he got there, and that it's really just meant to be indicative of his crisis of faith.
  
• The "rules" are getting a little kooky. Three episodes ago Dogen told Sayid to kill unLocke/MiB, and said that he had to do it before he uttered a word. Initially I assumed that this was figurative: don't let him talk you out of it. Some people thought it might be literal, as odd as that sounds. Last night, we hear the same thing, except it's MiB telling Richard the same thing about Jacob. We still can't be sure if it's entirely literal, but that possibility looks more likely.
  
  There are, I think, three plausible explanations for this. 1) The most likely, I think, is that Jacob and MiB were both under the same rules. 2) They're both just very persuasive, and it's not a literal rule. 3) It's originally a rule governing Jacob, and it only applied to MiB when he had Jacob killed and was trapped in Locke's form. This could be incidental, or it could mean that MiB has actually assumed Jacob's "role" for the time being, until a Candidate is chosen.
  
• I think we're seeing some hints that Jacob and MiB may have been normal people at one time, and get their power not from being God, gods, or demi-gods, but from the position they hold; a cosmic office of sorts. This is pretty explicit in MiB's case; he talks about going "home," and he mentions his mother. Could all be lies, of course (and if he's meant to represent the Devil -- see below -- then lies are all he'd ever tell), but I think it's just as likely that he was once a man. With Jacob, it's harder to tell, because he doesn't say much, but if he can select a replacement, it indicates that it's his position that makes him what he is.
  
• We're right back where we started on Talking to Dead People. For a couple of seasons we were left wondering why dead people kept showing up. After Eko was killed, a lot of people correctly predicted that the Smoke Monster was impersonating them. But with Hurley talking to dead people who we know are not the Smoke Monster, both on the island and off it, we're right back at the same question: how is this possible?
  
  Sadly, I doubt we'll get much of an explanation here. I assume it'll be explained away as part of the Island's general specialness.
  

Intriguing Details and Themes:

• The Black Rock is said to have crashed in 1867 now, instead of 1845. Everyone is assuming (correctly, I think) that they deliberately created this continuity error to fix another one: the fact that dynamite hadn't yet been invented in 1845.
  
• I like that Jacob's role in all this mirrors Desmond: he's staying on the Island to ostensibly save the world. Desmond's situation was a microcosm of the larger conflict playing itself out around everyone.
  
• I found it interesting that Richard asked MiB the kind of question I wish more people would ask of him: aren't you bad? Dude, you totally killed a bunch of people right in front of me. MiB brushed this right off, basically saying "you've got bigger fish to fry." He didn't deny it, though, and I like that Richard asked him about this. It's a fact I keep coming back to everytime someone speculates that perhaps Jacob isn't the good guy (or, at least, that MiB isn't "bad" in the traditional sense). He's murdered a whole mess of people! This should come up more often from the people around him.
  
  By the by: once again, MiB approaches someone at their lowest point and offers them the thing they want most in the world. He tells Richard, on the verge of death, that he can have his wife back if he kills Jacob. This is his modus operandi. Jacob tells people what to do and asks people to trust him, and MiB tempts them.
  
• The show revealed itself as very, very explicitly Christian last night (though a reversal of some kind if always possible, of course). Jacob wasn't just showing Richard he wanted to live by thrusting him in the water: he was baptizing him.
  
  The show is dabbling in some fairly shallow Christian ideas overall, however. Notice that Jacob's side in his dispute with MiB is that mankind doesn't need to be told how to be good, and can figure it out for themselves. This could just as easily be Gnostic as Christian. He says that MiB, on the other hand, thinks man is always sinful in the end.
  
  This sounds suspiciously like how someone who only has a basic idea of what Christianity would describe it. The reality is a bit more nuanced: Christianity says that MiB is right, and that man is inherently sinful, but can be redeemed anyway, through Christ. I think the writers of the show are using a fairly simplistic Christian allegory here, though, wherein the Christ figure simply thinks people are good (rather than bad, but redeemable), and the Lucifer figure thinks they are not (as opposed to one that thinks the rules are simply stacked against them). Perhaps expecting a truly nuanced allegory is unrealistic, but I thought this worth mentioning.
  

Last point: the assumption for quite awhile was that Jacob represent Fate, and MiB Free Will, but that was pretty explicitly debunked last night, I think, in Jacob's conversation with Richard on the beach, and we've talked a bit about how there have been various exceptions to that alignment, anyway.

After last night's episode, I'm becoming more confident that the dichotomy is not really Free Will/Fate, but Good/Evil.

Yeah, I think there are two questions about all this: what are the writers writing, and what do they think they're writing? In other words, they can be trying to write a rough Christian allegory, even if their theology is off a bit (either intentionally or otherwise). That's kind of where I've ended up for the time being.

Yeah, I feel very safe assuming all those things about the timeline and the Black Rock. Those types of things are as close as to verified answers we usually get. Compared to the subtly and mystery of so many other things, those are almost like sledgehammers with the answers written on the handle.

Re: loophole. Well, it's the word they used! But I see what you're saying. However, Ben was a bit different. Jacob tried to talk him out of it a little, but couldn't. Whether the "don't let him say a word" thing is a literal rule (which means Ben circumvented it somehow), or just a warning not to be persuaded (which means Ben resisted it). Granted, it was half-hearted: Jacob just told Ben "you have a choice" and then was kinda cold to him. Testing his theory, I suppose, that Ben could choose to do the right thing.

"Dr. Linus" did that for me, but this reinforced it, for sure. I know that, if nothing else, they've got a compelling narrative and conclusion for most of the characters in mind. Whether or not the more Sci-Fi-ish stuff will be satisfying is a bit more up in the air.

I agree with you about Richard's back story being satisfying. It wasn't just "oh, here's the day Jacob made him ageless." It made sense; everything that we saw built towards how it happened. Richard thinks he's in Hell, then probably realizes he's not, but fears he's going to Hell for what he's done. So, he asks Jacob to stop it from happening. Jacob says he can't, so Richard asks for the next best thing: not dying. If he's going to go to Hell when he dies, and that can't be fixed, then his next best choice is not to die in the first place. It was a very elegant, logical way to show how he came to be that way, rather than just showing it merely taking place.