De-Revolution

It was a simple concept for a show.  What if it all went away:  Internet, television, radio, central air, electricity?   What if something happened and all society returned to the age before Tesla and Edison?  What if societal breakdown led to the United States being splintered into militias, no more centralized Government, no more regulation?  If you want something in this life, you take by force or other means.   Pretty interesting premise for a show, right?  The world goes away and we are left to watch it feast upon itself. 

That was Revolution, the latest in a long line of shows trying to take the place of the vacancy left by LOST years ago.   When appointment TV shows like LOST end its run, everyone tried to capitalize on some kind of event that led to isolation or reversal in social norms.  Shows like The Event and Flash Forward couldn’t replicate the logic bending appeal involved in a simple premise.     The Walking Dead survived and thrived, but it already had a built up fan base in its comic book (Graphic Novel if you prefer) run.   

Another show attempted to do what Revolution suggests, Jericho.   Though a different catalyst than Revolution, Jericho, like its 80s Cold War telefilm counterpart, The Day After, focuses on a nuclear missile attack.  It had a cult following and was revived before being finally cancelled after its second season. 

But Revolution should have been simple.   Turn out the lights.   Cause panic.   Destroy society.   Establish your heroes and villains.  Introduce your arcs, whether they be, “Why did the lights go out?”, “Who turned them out?”, and “How do we turn them back on?” and go with it.  But within the first few episodes, Revolution went for broke.  The power isn’t gone.  It’s just being suppressed.  Then, to make it worse, it’s being suppressed by cancer fighting nanotechnology that the government leveraged to fight terrorism on the other side of the globe. 

The series boasted some great ideas.  Billy Burke as a Han Solo-esque antihero, complete with a saber to take on militia baddies.  What is the nature of patriotism?  How ingrained is technology into our world and how do we react when it gets taken away?  OK, well, that last one sort of got skipped because the pilot skips fifteen years ahead.   Still, the nature of the LOST style of flashback lends itself to being able to bake in that concept into the series mythology as time moves forward.  Except, it never does move forward, it just stays still like the hands on an electric clock. 

Revolution either blew its wad or jumped the shark within the first few episodes and that’s where it struggled to keep my initial attention.  One of The Walking Dead’s major unanswered questions is what caused the virus that has infected the populous.  We just know that everyone is infected, everyone who dies with their brain intact will reanimate.  Whether or not the eventually come to explain the event is up in the air and that’s what keeps the show going.  The zombies are a part of the life, now, but humans are the real monsters.  We see how everyone deals with post-apocalyptic life.  They start a community and shutter the outside world.  They forage.  They mobilize and militarize.   But the problems that exist in a pre-apocalypse world don’t go away.  They just localize and intensify.  Revolution should have focused on that instead of whiz-bang gadgetry and lofty mathematical equations come Oppenheimer weapons of mass destruction.  Deal with a world that is tech addicted. Deal with civilization crumbling without its infrastructure.  Deal with the struggle between the bad guys that have taken over in the absence and the good guys who want to restore the world.  And, while you’re at it, deal with the struggle between wanting to restore the power and knowing how we dealt when it was removed.  That was hinted at, but never really explored in its entirety.

Granted, maybe comparing Walking Dead to Revolution is an apples to oranges argument and I’m favoring one over the other but I learned to accept Revolution and come back to watching it.  But the endgame of the series and its Nano-can’t-decide- if-it’s-the-machine-of-The-Matrix-or-I, Robot personality just went a little sideways. 

How would I have fixed it?

Drop the nano but keep the philosophy. 

If you are going to start 15 years after the blackout, introduce something that sparks the debate on whether or not the blackout was an act of terrorism or government screw up.  Maybe delve into an inside plot to disrupt the government and return it to the people.   Don’t turn the power back on during the first season.  Hint at it.  Theorize its possibility.  Just don’t even go there until you get to the last moments of the first season and have something small lead you into a cliffhanger.  Second Season, you have the possibility and the threat of electricity on the table and the struggle to take control like Monroe did to establish military supremacy.  Also, delve into the decision of whether or not it would be better to just go without it.  Are we better off with it back?   Are we just going to make the same mistakes all over again with it back?    Beyond evolve the backstory.  Keep the math, but not the science fiction.  If you’re not going to use nanotechnology, have some device in a mountain somewhere that is suppressing electricity.  Or, have the scientists start from scratch and reinvent the light bulb.    Makes you wonder if static electricity was also suppressed by the nano?  What about Faraday coils?   

Adopt a steampunk/Fallout motif somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong.  The one pure stroke of genius this show had, which brought me back was having Brett Michaels play himself.  The acoustic hillbilly rock soundtrack was a nice touch, but why not expand on it?   This is a brave new world.  You have so many survivalists in the real world, why not introduce that into the mix?  Remember LOST’s John Locke?  People who role play, LARP, do reenactments of battles, invent things from junk could be factions, or at least serve as humor.  We have are reduced to simple weaponry and tactics.  They nailed that, but with the nano in play, they handcuff themselves to not moving in other directions.

Keep people on one side. 
The constant flip flopping of allegiances and morality just annoys us.  Yes, there can be qualms, gray area, justifiable acts, but even Game of Thrones doesn’t have this many changes in colors.   The characters don’t change their values, the situations dictate their approach.  As much as I love Giancarlo Esposito, I just can’t figure out what the hell is motivation is.

Pittsburgh Geography By Bruce Willis

I am a self proclaimed excellent navigator. My wife will argue that, yet she’s the one that sent us up and over the mountains of West Virginia on our way to the beach. However, there are times when I will get turned around, believing I am in an area I recognize.

Now, when I was a kid, there was the great rescue mission in Prince Gallitzin. Not really a rescue, more like a search party for one of the kids in our group who had taken a walk and gotten lost in the campground. I took the remaining kids and fanned out into the various loops and managed to find our missing friend. After dark, we found ourselves on the other side of the campground with no sense of direction. Somehow, I managed to lead us to back to our site before anyone noticed we were gone.

However, last week, driving back from work, I realized I would never make it home with the amount of gas I had in the car and the Pirate game just starting. Traffic was pretty screwed up. I knew there was one gas station, just before the tunnels, off of 51 South. From there, I could catch a bridge back over by Duquesne and drop down onto the parkway before the Oakland exit.

I got the gas and managed to screw up and take the Wabash tunnel exit, following a car who seemed to know where I was going. I made a right, then another right, then a climb up a hill and I was lost. I could see the Steel Building and the rest of downtown, but could not figure out how to get down there. So, I just kept driving parallel, believing that I would magically end up on the Parkway East via Striking Distance movie logic. Unfortunately, I didn’t have Bruce Willis in the car with me. I managed to see two places I’d always about but never had been to. I never even knew how to get there; Mount Oliver and Carrick. I did a major detour and managed to come down into the South Side by Primanti Bros. I was home free… or so I thought.

I misread the directions on the bridge signs which said, “Oakland, next left”. I didn’t want to go to Oakland, I wanted back on the Parkway. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t an exit for Oakland but an exit for a road that led to Oakland, namely the Parkway. So, I stayed straight and was forced to turn left because I wasn’t a bus. Now, I was headed back downtown and managed to get turned around and head back the right way. What could have been a 45 minute drive turned into an hour and a half thanks to my sightseeing tour of South Pittsburgh.

Let’s just say, I’m glad I got gas.

Mega Loser

I didn’t win. None of us won. We had 44 people play $4 each to the tune of $176 worth of numbers and we cleared maybe $15-$17 in winnings. Roughly $0.33 each.

But man, the hype. The Mega Millions made the rounds of two awards shows as joke fodder. The Kids Choice awards and the American Country Awards both had mentions of the big jackpot.

As for myself, I played $20 and even played the numbers from LOST.

Guess what? I lost.

But now that Mega hype has died down the real issues arise. The scandals.

When will people learn? If you are the coordinator of your work’s lottery pool, you need a little CYA quality assurance.

For me, I took the ridiculous task of coordinating efforts, collecting money, buying tickets, and giving out bad news.

But I was smart about it. I collected all the money ahead of time, giving people a Wednesday through Friday window of opportunity. I made sure to offer inclusion to anyone in the office. And then I went to buy the tickets somewhere that I could do without the lines and madness, to ensure that everything was right.

I walked into the local beer distributor near my building and had complete attention of the cashier. She took all my cash, we counted it twice and then we counted the tickets twice to make sure we had the exact number. Then, I scanned all of the tickets into pdfs and emailed them to all of the participants. That way, if we did win, and I stress “IF”, I had no chance to have that awkward, “Well, I bought the winning ticket separately” moment. In fact, I did buy mine separately, later at a completely different location.

Why don’t people get that? We’ve already seen two cases recently in the news where the winner claimed to have bought the ticket separate from the group they bought tickets for and the first one ended up being decided in court, in favor of the coworkers. How does this lady from a Maryland McDonald’s think she’s going to get away with this? Unless she made two separate purchases with different amounts of money and they can place the winning number into the second pool that was her own purchase, she’ll have to share the winnings.

Sometimes lotteries bring out the worst in humanity. You can imagine a tight knit group of people turning on each other like it’s a bad movie. Even with the prospect of the most evil aspects of human nature taking over, I’d still want to win. I mean, duh!

I’d just be smart. Immediately sign the back of the ticket. That’s tops overall. The last thing you want to do is misplace it where someone else can find it. Next, contact a lawyer and get a financial person involved to set up a trust or some kind of shelter so that you can’t take advantage of your urge to go Brewster’s Millions with the winnings… especially, since you may not even have them yet. Then plan the exit strategy.

I say exit strategy because as soon as you go public with the news that you’ve won, you will be inundated with all sorts of ridiculousness. I do think that I would at least treat my family to a week or two long vacation on me at a nice beach house to plan what to do. I’d want to include them somehow, but for everything else, I’ll probably go off the grid.

The fact that the at least one of the winners, scandal or not, has been identified is probably a bad sign. That kind of thing you want to drag out as long as you can. I want enough time to get all my ducks in a row before the world comes crashing into my life.

So, I guess not winning is kind of a blessing. Then again, they keep saying that money can’t buy happiness. Fine, challenge accepted.

Hollywood Hits New Low in Greed

Imagine you are watching your favorite television show on reruns. You loved it when it was originally aired and now, while channel surfing you catch one of your favorite episodes. Somewhere, in the background of one of the scenes, a magazine display shows an advertisement for a movie. The episode is about four years old but the ad for the movie is one that opens this week. If you’re watching digital cable or have a DVR service enabled, you have the ability to rewind the scene and there to the horror of your suspension of disbelief is the cold dark truth; Hollywood will stop at nothing to make money.


This article from the Consumerist compares the same image from the original airing of an episode of How I Met Your Mother from 2007 to a recent rerun with an ad for Zookeeper digitally inserted.

Now, it might seem trivial to be upset over this but consider that How I Met Your Mother is a show, whose premise is built upon the fact that it’s the past, even though it’s the present. OK, before you get out your tops and start spinning them or checking for time skipping nose bleeds, let me explain. The show is told from the point of view of Ted, who is explaining to his kids how he met their mother. The time frame is affixed to the years it takes place during. By inserting this ad, that advances the time frame by four years, you disrupt the dramatic flow. I know. I’m a dork and I need help. Truth is, I don’t watch the show, but this latest attempt at Hollywood product placement within shows is another reason why I think the system is inherently broken beyond repair.

Imagine if this were a rerun of LOST and a poster for an ad for The Hangover 3 appeared on the cover of a magazine on Oceanic Flight 815? It’s jarring. It’s disruptive. And ultimately, it insults the intelligence of the viewer by insisting that we are brainless beings that can be duped by 'Pretty Mediocre photographic fakery', to quote Doc Emmet Brown.

Soon, DVDs will be edited to contain ads for products not available at the time of the movie’s filming. That classic film that you’ve always loved since you were a child could be next. You’ve waited years for it to come out on Blu-Ray only to have it sullied by the Mad Men of Madison Avenue and MGM.

Hollywood. STOP IT! You’ll give Spielberg and Lucas new ideas for re-releasing their movies.

What Is Left When There Is No LOST

The series finale of LOST took place one year ago, today. It seems a bit silly to eulogize a show, let alone one that has been off the air for a year, but it is important to note that there really hasn’t been a particular show to pick up the baton that LOST dangled out there.

Love it or hate it, the last episode of LOSTis one that stirred a lot of debate and conversation, some frustrating, some enlightening. An indelible impression was left when the passengers of Ajira 316 left the island, passing over a dying Jack Shephard. Left behind was a dead Locke/Smokey, a newly appointed island keeper in Hurley and a reformed right hand man in Benjamin Linus.

As the embers of those feelings about the show started to cool, LOST fans desperately searched for another show to fill the void. The hopes for another show, like LOST, seemed in peril. Some fled to the land of Fringe, some to V and little went to the Event.

Yet, I don’t think there has been another show out there that can compare with LOST. Now, I don’t think LOST was the greatest show ever but in terms of the mythology and intricate story lines of redemption and good vs. evil, I don’t think you can find another that was so good at it.

I still have a ton of questions about the show. Some that will never be answered. Maybe that’s the allure. Maybe that’s the hold the island has on its audience. Because we never really got closure, we’ll never really be free from wanting more of our fated castaways.

Among the big head scratchers for me, still, are the decision to kill off Jin and Sun after spending a huge portion of the preceding season keeping them apart with Sun desperately searching for her husband while trusting the Man in Black wearing a Locke suit. How about the Lighthouse? What the hell was the point of all that? Was it just some special contraption used to bring Jack’s belief to the island to join the rest of him? The others, the true Others claimed that it was there island. Yet, we knew that they were most likely brought there just like everyone else. Why kidnap the children, do experiments on Claire and Sun, hold Jack, Kate and Sawyer prisoner? Why did they spend so much time on Walt and why wasn’t he kept around? What the hell was the point of the blast door map or the lockdowns or any of it?

I could go on for days wondering, and sometimes remembering, about what made the show so damned interesting and head-into-the-desk slamming all at the same time. In the end, none of it mattered. It truly was, as they said, a giant Rube Goldberg device. It was a overly complex machine designed to perform a simple function, find a replacement for Jacob. Yet, throughout its six seasons the show created such an addiction among fans, they were willing to overlook a lot of the flaws in the execution of some of the seasons.

Looking over the sheet of new shows for Fall 2011, there is a noticeable lack of enthusiasm on my part, much to the relief of my DVR, I’m sure. There is a J.J. Abrams show with Jorge Garcia for those looking to recapture some of the nostalgia of Hurley being on an island. Of course, this time it’s Alcatraz. There are also a couple of other shows that piqued my interest, but nothing with the same caliber of LOST. Of course, I said the same thing about LOST when the previews for the pilot episode started airing.

Season One Summer Promo

Not much to make of what’s going to happen from that promo. We see a spectacular plane crash, a lot of Michael Bay explosions and chaos. Then we see a man shooting a big fluffy pillow as it hurtles itself towards him in the brush. We get the final question which defined the show to a ‘T’.

“Guys, where are we?”

It was a whim, an afterthought, a slip of scheduling that I actually saw the pilot episode of LOST and that was all it took. Like a junkie, looking for a new drug to take, I was hooked. I was searching through my couch cushions for change in order to score my next high. “The first one is free. After that, you gotta pay to play.” It was so simple a premise. Take 48 people, crash them on an island, add unknown scary monster sound, and leave on a low heat. After that, it became so much more complicated and erratic of storytelling to even try to explain to someone who had never sat down with it from the beginning. Fortunately, here is an excellent explanation in three minutes.

LOST in Three Minutes

So, as another season in television comes to a close and we see a bunch of new shows get plugged and a bunch of existing one get bled like a stuck pig. Remember, we’ll always be LOST, together.

LOST The Complete Collection Coming To DVD - BluRay August 24th,2010

Squeee!

Ok, so last week a few blogs and websites managed to jailbreak the 12 minute epilogue.  I managed to see two parts of it before they shut it down.  Those who have seen it have told me that it totally makes up for any pangs of hunger we may still have for Island Jack and the Losties.   [sigh]  I'm still a bit on the fence about the ending.   I want to love it with all the faith of a man pushing the button every 108 minutes yet I still feel cheated, in a way. 

That being said, August 24th is the release date for the DVD and BluRay collections of the complete series as well as the sixth season.  I have been holding out for the end of the series to get the whole collection.  I'm still kicking myself over the whole Buffy debacle where I managed to get seasons 1, 2, and 4 but didn't pick up anything else.  Then they had the entire series in a box set.  Damn you, impulses!   But, I digress.   Looks like a lot of cool stuff is going into the complete series collection including extra content, bloopers, an ankh, an island replica (is it in a snow globe?), a black light (is that to inspect the Hydra polar bear cages for... um ew.), and a Senet game for you and your immortal enemy to pass the time with in case you find yourself stuck on an island.

Honnnnneeeyyyy?   I lovvee you.  Merry Christmas early please?

LOST Thoughts For S6E17 The End May 23rd, 2010 Part Four

I promised to be done with the last post but I just wanted to pass along some final thoughts. I don’t want to come off like one of those fanboys that spend WAAYYY too much time analyzing something but I gotta put on the whole BIG DORK button and wear it proud for this show. LOST spoke to a need in the television landscape. It was one of those shows that redefined how a story could effectively be told with compelling characters and intricate plot lines. The fact that it bordered on Science Fiction, Drama, Comedy, and Fantasy all made for a nice blend of genres that could attract any number of fans. At times it was tedious and I know a few people who gave up along the way.

However, like the island, the show had a source, a bright warm light that represented life, death, redemption, corruption, pop culture, religious themes, mysticism, literature, science, mathematics, logic, and plain old pulp. It went beyond its 60s and 70s B Grade predecessors like Lost in Space, Gilligan’s Island, Land of the Lost and even The Prisoner. It also combined elements of shows from the 80s and 90s like The X-Files and Twin Peaks to give it that edge. It was as ground breaking as Star Trek for including characters from all walks of life on the show as well as the people who portrayed them. You had actors from England, Australia, Canada, Korea, Brazil, Croatia, Scotland, Venezuela, and of course The U.S. There were social and ethnic issues surrounding the castaways predicament. LOST encapsulated a lot of the world we know into a microcosm of isolation and constant threat to survival, doled out in 121 hours, over six seasons spanning over 2000 years of storytelling. That’s quite an accomplishment for a show that was worried about being picked up and even proposed killing off it’s man character in the pilot. How ironic would that have been?

When I first posted my thoughts about the finale I ran down the pilot and much of the first season in order to wax nostalgic. Here I thought I would speak to the finale, "The End", and pass along a few of my personal insights, because, as you know, I am the pinnacle of compelling bloggers… pffft!

On the island we have a final standoff. Jack believes that Desmond is the key to killing Locke (MiB) and MiB believes that Desmond is the key to destroying the island. Desmond thinks he is going to go down a rabbit hole and meet up with his sideways self. This is one of the big problems I had with the whole coming together of both timelines. Desmond admits to Jack that he’s going to go to a place where everything is peaceful and he’s with his loved ones. And you and I were sitting on Oceanic 815 and we had a conversation, and you were there, and you were there. But Desmond was wrong. He simply pulled the plug on the island. So, did Desmond have an out of body experience when he was subjected to Widmore’s experiment?

Soon, the island began a quaking as if the source of the island’s life blood was the waters themselves. Pulling the plug left the island and its inhabitants vulnerable. The ultimate question of bragging rights was about to unfold. MiB revels in his premature victory telling Jack he was wrong. Jack, pissed off as hell tackles MiB and punches him. Blood shows up. He’s human again. Without the island’s source he’s just a man. He quickly makes his escape where Jack and MiB fight until MiB delivers a knife to the ribs, another Christian image. Then, Kate shoots him in the back. Jack kicks MiB over the cliff just like MiB kicked Jacob into the fire. MiB’s… err Locke’s body falls, as if out a window, to the rocks below.  However, this time, no one is around to touch him, resurrecting him as it were. MiB is finally dead. Plans are changed, last minute escapes are made, people stay behind. Ben chooses to go down with the ship, as does Hugo. Jack decides that his reign as King of the Island is short lived and passes the torch to the rightful heir, Hugo. It was always meant to be Hugo. He said he didn’t want it, but it needed to be him. He just needed to be persuaded. Jack was dying and the island needed a protector. Jack and Hugo both let go. Jack took the baton from Desmond and plugged the whole. “You have to lift it up" would have been a great line from Desmond at this point or from Jack, even, trying to help Desmond get into the rope sling. In any case, Jack did what he had to do and was now free to die. So, he made his way back past his father’s shoe, still hanging in the tree three years later. He took his original spot on the ground with Vincent, again, by his side and with witnessing the plane with his friends leaving for good, he realized his death was not for nothing as MiB told him. He could die, he finally fixed everything.  Hugo, now King of the Island chose Ben as his number 2, a fitting redemption for a man who did everything he did, good and bad, for the island.  He finally got his shot to be special.  He was never meant to be a leader but someone willing to show from experience how things should be done.   If anything, I fully expect the Harlem Globetrotters to show up not that Hugo is in charge.

I said before that I really loved the finale as a standalone episode. The afterlife, flash forwards, sideways world, etc. was a great complimentary bookend to the pilot episode. But coupled with the action of the island coming apart and the final battle for the lives of the castaways and perhaps the world as MiB tries to escape was all caddywampus. Don’t bother looking up that word. It only exists in Colloquialville. The two halves did not make a symmetrical whole. The ending was like Chinese food. I liked it. It filled me up, and then I was pissed because I was still hungry and it was all gone.

Often times shows become self aware of their impact and their own existence. Sometimes they end up playing off of that vibe and become self referential or a parody of themselves as the go to lengths to break the fourth wall. To give an example, two of my favorite shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural make references to them ‘being’ a television show with nearly the same line. Buffy’s sixth season made the quip, “Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." Supernatural’s latest season dealt with Christian religion and the apocalypse and one of the characters said, “Another Horseman. Awesome. Must be Thursday.” Both shows aired on days listed in the quotes. It’s all rather Brechtian or Pirandelloesque, I suppose. Sometimes the breakdown of what is fiction and what is real becomes silly as such was the case with an episode of Charles in Charge where Scott Baio’s character walks off set in one direction only to reenter from outside the “house” in an admittance that the entire house is simply a set with a backstage area beyond every door and that this is indeed a television show. To another end with LOST's farewell tour, people speculated the “Christian” implications of the publicity stills showing the cast in a sort of Last Supper scene, having dinner and breaking bread. “Oh his leg is hidden” or “She’s giving a look downward.” "These things must mean something." Nope. It was just what it was, the last supper for the cast, a nod to their fate as well as the show.

But in this episode the characters all experience a moment of realization where their lives in the world of the island connect the dots back to their time in Purgatory. It then becomes a sort of nod to the show ending as characters kind of reminisce with each other in their new found ‘awakening.’ The characters seem to detach themselves from the action and wax nostalgic with each other as if they were the actors playing them instead. When Jack finally gets it, he joins the others in a gathering, a sort of farewell tableau in the church, which incidentally looked much like the seating on a plane. As Christian Shephard opens the doors at the back of the church, it sets the tone for the cast to be captured one last time on screen together, like a yearbook photo. The show was ending and we were seeing their lives play out as characters and actors in a show that had a huge cultural impact. It was a chance to let them accept their fate. The remembered connections which allowed the characters to move on could have just as well meant the actors remembering their greatest hits on the show. Sometimes, for an actor, it’s hard to let go of a show or project that you’ve worked on for a while. You become so intertwined with the characters, the fans, the media, and the impact that you find it hard to separate from the role and move on to a new life. For some, they feel as if they aren’t ready to move on and kind of linger in that nostalgic place that they created, kind of like Ben choosing to hang out a bit and work on some things. He probably meant atonement for Rousseau and Alex.

I fought long and hard to understand why certain people were in the church and others weren’t. I especially had a hard time realizing what Desmond and Eloise were speaking of in regards to his meddling and her son. I think she knew all too well what she was experiencing and was afraid that moving on would leave her and her son in a fixed state, still broken. After all, she shot him in the past and even sent him to his eventual death in the present. Maybe she just wanted some time to enjoy the reunion. As it was, Daniel and Charlotte didn’t have that moment like Sawyer and Juliet or Charlie and Claire. Maybe they weren’t ready to take that next step. They certainly weren’t ready in real life as they never got together before Charlotte died. And where were Miles and his father? They weren’t in the church and neither was Michael or Walt. Miles didn’t have his moment of enlightenment. Not sure when he would have had it since he already had a pretty decent relationship with his Dad. Perhaps that was by design. Michael was not in the church because he is still a whisper on the island, unresolved in his sins. Walt… who knows? There is supposedly going to be a 20 minute extra on the DVD that kind of wraps things up. Sounds like a patch or a hot fix to satiate fan ire.

So, this is it. Time to let go. I could speak forever about LOST and this episode; good and bad, but I think it’s time to move on. Thanks to the cast and crew for some of the best television I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Maybe, with it over, I can supplant LOST with something else that is worthy of the mysteries and theories and wasted hours of blogging.  Perhaps Flashforward… um, Happy Town… um never mind.



Namaste!

LOST Thoughts For S6E17 The End May 23rd, 2010 Part Three

So, how did I do in my predictions of what was going to happen this season? I’d give myself a C. I know that’s kind of vanilla but I was really way off on some of my theories. I could have never seen the big reveal with the Alterverse coming. That was a pretty nice touch.

Here’s the rundown of the remaining theories I had out there.

“Sundown”

1. The Flash Lefts are not reality and are just a metaphysical construct brought on by the MiB (Kind of like the Matrix) and Jack is becoming more aware of this in the Flash Lefts.

Result: DING! WRONG!
They were dead and the flash lefts, alterverse, etc. was a construct of their souls as a meeting place to find each other and make a spiritual connection in order to remember their lives so that they could move on to the afterlife. I don’t know if some accepted spiritual or religious doctrine speaks to this as a version of purgatory or the afterlife, but I connected with an 80s movie when I found out what the alternate timeline was. Made In Heaven was a movie with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis as people who meet and fall in love each other after they are dead. McGillis’ character has not yet earned her wings and must do a tour of duty on Earth in order to do so. Hutton convinces the powers that be to send him to Earth, too but they will have no recollection of each other. They now have 30 years to find each other on Earth and fall in love or be fated to an unhappy life. Not quite the same thing but it came to my mind seeing how the characters didn’t remember one another.

“Dr. Linus”

1. The island sank after the Dharma Initiative left due to:
   
   1. The Incident minus the Jughead. Most DI non essential personal were off the island prior (Amy, Horace, Roger, Ben)
   2. The building of The Swan by the DI which hit the pocket of energy and with no way to contain it (i.e. Jughead, button) the island sank but not before Dharma Initiative were able to escape.

Result: WRONG! WRONG!
The sunken island was not real. And had it sunk for realsies it would have been because that stone carrot was removed.

2. Roger and Ben left the Dharma Initiative because:
   
   1. Roger did not want to be a Workman anymore and Horace couldn’t convince him to stay or was not there due to the birth of Ethan off island.
   2. He was fired.

Result: WRONG! WRONG!
They were dead.

“Happily Ever After”

1. Desmond is going to:
   
   1. Be the package.
   2. Deliver the package.
2. And his sacrifice will be:
   
   1. Die in the process.
   2. Become the new Jacob.
   3. Keep the alterverse the way it is.

Result: WRONG! on both parts.
Well, except if you count “being the package.”

3. Sayid is:
   
   1. Evil.
   2. Pulling a Sonny Crockett and playing evil
   3. Just plain crackers

Result: WRONG!
Redeemed.

4. The experiment was meant to:
   
   1. Show Desmond the alterverse and allow his doppelganger to realize the truth.
   2. Simply show that he can withstand a C.E.E. so that he can interact with the “Hot Pocket.”

Result: Indirectly DING! DING!
I was right on both counts but his doppleganger did not realize the truth because of this, it was just because of Charlie making the connection to his death on the island.

5. Widmore is able to find the island because:
   
   1. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace.
   2. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
   3. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
   4. He went to the Lamp Post

Result: DING! DING!
Although I don’t know why, since we never found out what he planned to do with Desmond once he got to the island.  And I don't know that Wallace ever had anything to do with anything.  In fact, I don't really know what the purpose of the lighthouse really was or what is was showing since the Altervese was their purgatory after they all died.

“Everybody Loves Hugo”

1. Desmond plowed through Locke because:
   
   1. He loves Grand Theft Auto, brutha.
   2. He knows Locke is really MiB (The mirror to this is his response of “John Locke” when MiB asked if he knew who he was.)
   3. He wanted to show him something (Indirectly a nod to Charlie’s failed Lupe’s Escape move)

Result: DING! DING!

2. The pouch contains:
   
   1. Jacob’s ashes gathered by Ilana from the Foot.

Result: DING! DING!
That was an easy one.

3. MiB needs the others (no pun) because:
   
   1. He needs the conditions of the O6 leaving in order to be able to replicate it.
   2. He plans to just kill them in order to keep them from becoming the next Jacob.

Result: DING! DING!
He told the candidates that's why he needed them but it was really just to kill them.

The little boy is:

1. A rapidly growing Jacob getting ready to assume the persona of a candidate and that’s why his hair has changed color with every candidate that witnesses him in the presence of MiB. Blond for Sawyer, Brown for Desmond.

Result: DING! DING!
Although I was probably wrong about the hair color and that he was going to grow up to be the candidate. It was most likely a trick of the light or just casting.

“The Last Recruit”

1. Jack’s wife/ex-wife is Juliet. The age of David puts Jack’s age at the time of conception around 21. He could have conceivably met Juliet at medical school and fathered a child. Now that she is divorced or weary of men because of Jack she meets Sawyer and decides to get coffee but go Dutch. Perhaps Juliet will meet Sawyer at the hospital when he goes to talk with Sun about the shooting. Juliet will be the OB/GYN that helped save Sun’s baby.

Result: DING! DING! FULL OF WIN ON THAT ONE!
I made that prediction a month in advance.

“The Candidate”

1. The following are dead:
   
   1. Frank, Sayid, Jin and Sun
   2. Sayid, Jin and Sun (Frank is only mostly dead which means he’s slightly alive.)
   3. Sayid, Frank, and Sun (Jin is still a possible candidate and could not be killed, therefore he was able to swim away)
   4. THEY’RE ALL DEAD!?!?!?!?

Result: DING DING!
Yeah Frank!

2. The show will end with:
   
   1. Jack and Locke sitting on the beach having a conversation about killing each other.
   2. Locke and Locke sitting on the beach having the same conversation.

Result: WRONG!
Locke is lying in a broken bloodied mess over the cliff while Jack goes off to die in the bamboo where he woke up three years prior.

“What They Died For”

1. MiB will attempt to leave the island:
   
   1. Via the donkey wheel.
   2. Via Ajira 316 which will be disarmed.

Result: WRONG!
It was The Elizabeth.

2. The Alterverse Castaways are going to:
   
   1. Meet up on a boat to go to the spot where the island should be.
   2. Fly in another plane and somehow get back to the sunken island.

Result: WRONG!
They were dead.

3. MiB will attempt to destroy the island by:
   
   1. Throwing Desmond down the 100 watt cave.

Result: CLOSE! ½ credit.

4. MiB will be killed by:
   
   1. Blown up by the remainder of the C4 making Ben a suicide bomber who decides to kamikaze Smokey.
   2. Jack will go all Neo on him like he did Mr. Smith
   3. He won’t. Everything will simply go back to the way it was.

Result: ALMOST!
Jack, but Kate pulled a Schwarzenegger and one linered him after shooting him in the back.  But Jack did go kick ass on him.

5. The Survivors will leave the island by:


1. Ajira 316. Frank really isn’t dead and has been spending the last two episodes disarming the bomb. He’ll show up at the last minute like Bishop did in Aliens.
2. Penny will arrive on Penny’s Boat and rescue them but will lose Desmond
3. Each one will take a turn on the Donkey Wheel.

Result: DING DING!
Yeah Frank!

Ok, that was painful.   One mroe to go, I really promise this time.   Next I look at The End and after.

LOST Thoughts For S6E17 The End May 23rd, 2010 Part Two

When the decision was made to end LOST after six seasons, I felt it was a sad, but great move. The problem with a show like LOST is that you can find yourself hard pressed to figure out the ending when you keep getting renewed each season. A lot of things can happen in a year’s time. The continuity of your storytelling model can sometimes be left to the mercy of contract negotiations and puberty, as in the case of Walt growing up faster than the timeline of the island being shown each season. Not to mention, if you find yourselves dragging out mysteries, you need to pay attention to what has already been shown in previous seasons. You need to establish the continuity of something an actor did three years ago with how they finish a plot line next year, as in the case of the skeletal remains of Jacob’s family (a.k.a Adam and Eve) appearing to change positions from season one to season six. So, I applaud the creative team for picking a point in space and moving towards it. That gives them some framework in which to explore and tie up story lines and mysteries on the island. Where they did come up short was that there was no shortage of additional mysteries being added to the mix in season six.

So, now that the show is over, are you satisfied with the way it ended in terms of answering all your questions? I’m not. It’s not that I’m and jumping up and down mad that there was some ambiguity left out on the field but man, they knew where we were heading. Don’t you think they could have tied everything up this season?

There’s a great video from collegehumor.com that illustrates the many, many questions that some LOST fans might still be asking. I know I’ve had a few of my own.  First and foremost the one question I thought would be answered above all others was never solved. Those who have read my posts about LOST can probably answer this without any prompting.

WHO WAS SHOOTING AT SAWYER?
This had to occur in the present day (2007) Why? Because there was an Ajira bottle in one of the outriggers. So, how hard would it have been to just show a scene of red shirts from Widmore’s team patrolling the shore in the other outrigger this season? No big mystery. Problem solved.

WHO WAS ZOE?
There was a lot of speculation that she was really important. She was searching the island for something. It made her character overly annoying and I was glad MiB killed her. It was almost a nod to the fan base. Nobody liked her. She was equal parts Nikki and Paulo.

WHO’S SIDE WAS WIDMORE REALLY ON?
From day one of his introduction he was labeled the bad guy. Since we know that Ben was acting on orders from MiB and not Jacob that makes it seem like Widmore was really the good guy. But if that’s the case then why didn’t Richard already know that and say, “Hey, everybody. I’ve been on the island longer than anybody else alive, I can vouch for this guy?”

WHY DID THEY KIDNAP WALT ONLY TO LET HIM GO?
It seems to me if you are going to make a big deal about a kid being special then you better at least explain why you kidnapped him, subjected him to Room 23, made him jump through all sorts of hoops and then just let him go. Beyond that, how the hell did Walt show up on the island in different places like talking backwards just before Shannon got shot and standing above John Locke who was lying in the D.I. burial pit. We know that MiB could only take the form of someone dead so we know it wasn’t him impersonating Walt. We also know that John Locke saw Walt after he left the island and there wasn’t a clear acknowledgement of that little pep talk at the edge of the pit. What gives?



WHERE WAS CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD’S BODY?
MiB impersonated Jack’s Dad in "White Rabbit." He led Jack to the caves. But, the coffin was empty both in that episode and… oddly enough at the end of the series. Where the hell was it? My one and only theory was that the body never left Australia. Remember when Jack fought with someone at the airport in Sydney about lacking the proper documentation to store the coffin on Oceanic 815? Well, what if they removed the body but left the coffin? We get a similar sense of this in the afterlife flash forwards as Jack finds out that the airline lost his dad’s body. I think Christian Shephard became a lost piece of luggage in Australia and was probably buried in an unknown location.

WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THE STATUE AND PREGNANCY ISSUES ON THE ISLAND?
I’ve theorized that all the different people brought to the island over the last few millennia were done so in order to debate the bargument that Jacob and his brother had. “You say that humanity is inherently evil and will always chose the wrong way and I say that free will exists and allows people to chose to do the right thing with little encouragement.” So, in that case, while they are stranded on the island bickering and killing and being generally naughty they have explained their surroundings and experiences in the form of structures (i.e. The Statue and The Temple) that are native to their own culture back home… Across The Sea. But… What the hell did it all mean in terms of the statue being depicted as Taweret in regards to pregnancies on the island? Jacob and his brother were conceived elsewhere and born on the island. Aaron was conceived elsewhere and born on the island. Sun and Jin conceived Ji Yeon on the island but gave birth away from it. Miles, while not specifically shown being BORN on the island was obviously conceived there. So, why is it that Juliet was really brought to the island? Why do pregnant woman die if the child is conceived on the island? Was this all part of Jacob’s plan? Did he intend for women to not be able to give birth on the island? Did his brother? WTF?!?!?!?

THE SWAN
What the hell did the Blast Door map have to do with anything? It showed the LOSTIES some of the stuff on the island such as other hatches but who cared? Kelvin took over for Radzinsky when he died… supposedly from suicide… I think Kelvin shot him. He was a tool. But why was Radzinsky stuck in the swan? Punishment for the Incident? Why did nobody bother to relieve him from DI? Was it because he was stuck down there during the purge and no one bothered to come back and find out what happened? It’s obvious that there were still Supply Drops made by… someone. I think if I spent a hell of a lot of money on something like the Dharma Initiative I’d want to check up on it from time to time. Was it like Isla Sorna in The Lost World Jurrasic Park… left for dead? Was the quarantine on the hatch written to keep people in because of the purge or a sick psychological experiment perpetrated by DI? Why would Ben tell Locke that nothing would happen if he pushed the button. He was in the Dharma Initiative? He ended the Dharma Initiative. He saw exactly what happened when you didn’t push the button (Oceanic 815) And why didn’t someone just turn the fail safe earlier?

THE DHARMA INITIATIVE ITSELF
Was this all red herring? Did the DI serve only to be the newest players in Jacob and MiB’s game of free will? Instead of Egyptians or Romans there were scientists and hippies? The hatches and stations were simply the temple and the statue of the latter 20th century? Who built the Lamp Post and why was Eloise Hawing off island, anyway? If Eloise was an Other, then why was she involved at all? After spending an entire season with the characters in the damn thing (D.I. circa 1977), did it mean nothing in the end? Probably. Just another plot line being launched into an open field somewhere in the framework of the show.

THE RULES
Jacob and his brother were told by their mother that they could never kill each other and that there were rules. So, are we to believe that MiB was not killed by being thrown down the into source waterfall? His body was merely resting in the caves for 2000 years. He was mostly dead? And why did the rules apply to Ben and Charles? Were they the same rules? Obviously, not since Ben unloaded a clip into Charles during the finale. Also, if Charles broke the rules by having a life as well as a family, off island, then why wasn’t Tom reprimanded for his little off island escapades? Was Charles’ indiscretions more about Eloise than anything else? Was his sentence proposed by the same governing body of Others that branded Juliet? Why was Richard Alpert not more vocal about their dealings as an advisor to Jacob?

OFF ISLAND ADVENTURES
Why is it, or more to the point how is it that Jacob knew where the Candidates were and were able to contact them? What means of transportation did he use? If we are to believe that Christian Shephard was primarily being worn as a suit by MiB then how did he appear to Jack in "Something Nice Back Home?" Was his appearance off island a hallucination? If not, then why the hell was MiB trapped on the island?

PENNY
Why did she appear to be in front of an Olan Mills photography backdrop in video communication with Charlie? Did she ever reunite with Desmond and how?

BEN
Why was he a globe trotter? Was he working for MiB all along and never for Jacob? Why didn’t Richard make that distinction? Why did Richard go to the foot and say, “Jacob, you know that cabin out in the woods? Do you still use it? Is that you telling Ben what to do?” How did Ben acquire so much money?

LIBBY
Why was she mental and how did she get out?

THE FROZEN DONKEY WHEEL
Who finished the work MiB started? Why was the chamber frozen? How did the DI get a polar down there to turn the wheel? Why does the island move? How is water involved? Why are you never allowed to return if you spin the wheel? Ben did. Locke did. If the wheel was just a piece of a larger mechanism how did that get built and did all the workers turn into smoke before completing the machine?

THE SOURCE
Why did the water stop flowing when the plug was removed? The water did not flow backwards. It did not continue to simply flow down the drain when it was removed. Where did that drain go? Why did the MiB instantly turn into a smoke monster upon falling over the waterfall but Jack and Desmond had to walk a ways before reaching the plug? Who drew on the plug and how did they do so without dying? If being in the pool caused a fate worse than death, then why did Jack die and go to church with his friends?

I could go on but you get the idea here. There were more questions left open than answered by series end. Next up, a report card on my theories throughout S6. I promise this is the last one…

LOST Thoughts For S6E17 The End May 23rd, 2010 Part One

Notice the title change? That’s because there’s no need to post theories or think about how things will play out because it’s over. Well, what did you think? Me? I loved the finale. I thought it was a beautiful tale of moving on and letting go. I got choked up more in those two and a half hours then I had the entire series. As far as Series Finales go that was one of the best. The only problem is that I have no idea what series it wrapped up.

I have so many thoughts in my head and I don’t want to sound pedantic but the episode did nothing for me in terms of wrapping anything up on the island. It was like watching the opening five minutes of Evil Dead II, which asked me to completely forget about what happened in the first movie since they rewrote it all in that span of time. Again, do not jump on the pitchfork and torch bandwagon yet. Let me reiterate, I LOVED WHAT I SAW, but I just don’t get why I saw it.

You know I am going to bore you to death with my ramblings.  I attempted to swallow the pregnant Metis, also known as my ability to go to Erie to tell a story, but couldn’t.   If I don't, the Athena-like rant shall spring forth from my head. So, I will break it all up into a couple of posts because, quite frankly, I’ve been mailing it in lately with reposting CarTalk puzzlers and I really don’t have the time to get all pop culture geeky on you with new stuff. So, let’s start off with this past Saturday’s repeat of the pilot episode, OK?

SHOW OF SCIENCE, SHOW OF FAITH

When LOST was first announced on the fall schedule I thought it was going to be utter crap. Why? Because I didn’t think a show about people shipwrecked on a island was going to be able to hold my attention. I made an attempt to watch Alias and after I missed two episodes I was completely… LOST.   My wife was also not interested in watching the show, which kind of made it easier for me to just let it slip into the pile of missed shows. Still, I was willing to give the show a chance with the pilot. Why? Because I hate to miss things.

That opening scene was quite simply one of the best things I had ever seen. And remember, this was a season that boasted Rescue Me, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, albeit in March, CSI: NY, Deadwood, Veronica Mars, Boston Legal, and House. Unfortunately it also had Joey and The Apprentice. So for me to put LOST’s premiere ahead of these other really decent shows gives me a newfound appreciation for appointment television. Until now, I had only done that with Buffy, Angel, West Wing, and The Oscars.

Here was a show that defied convention. It was a piece about characters and people and it just so happened that they were stuck on a tropical island. Had that been it, it may have lasted two seasons and I probably would have been happy with it. Then that pesky noise in the jungle came about and things took a turn. Still, even with that noise, that mechanical roar accompanied by the swaying and cracking of trees, the show stayed rooted in the focus of the people who survived. We had little snippets of back story concerning each castaway. There was a doctor, a con man, a rocker, a fugitive, a sad sack, a couple isolated by social mores and language, a father and son, a broken man, the pretty young over privileged rich girl and her infatuated step brother, and a torturer. Talk about The Real World. This was almost a slap in the face of reality shows that pit opposing personalities and backgrounds against each other to see if they can coexist in a confined space. Then Greg Grunberg got sucked out of the cockpit. After a bit, we saw how the passengers were flawed. We saw the post 9/11 fears play out as Sawyer attacks Sayid. We saw Jin tell Sun to stay covered and keep a low profile. We saw one of the most terrifyingly real depictions of a plane crash I’ve seen since Alive. We saw a spoiled brat refuse to help out and face the facts that no one is coming. We saw the first steps of a group of strangers working together towards becoming a community by looking for help. Then Sawyer shot a polar bear. “Guys, where are we?”

THE REST OF SEASON ONE

Those two hours held the world on edge for something different. It strayed into the bleeding edge of drama and hovered around science fiction but it stayed firmly rooted in its storytelling about people and their problems. How they were lost in life and how their time on the island might help them. From then on it became a finely tuned instrument that delved into the nature of what happened, happened. But I am referring to what happened off the island. Here it didn’t matter. Daddy issues, mental issues, abandonment issues, and Spanish Graphic Novel issues aside, everyone on the island was given a blank slate with the chance to redeem themselves. It only took four seasons to change all that.

It started with that damn hatch. That pill bottle lid that just stuck out like a piece of the alien ship in Tommyknockers. Once the characters began digging in the dirt looking for answers the show became more about science than faith. With the end of the first season we had found that somehow people and things on the island were connected off the island. Soon, the show became more about spotting the connections, the numbers, the crossed paths, and less about people’s atonement and relationships. Sure that was still there, but the questions and mysteries took over. Some of the highlights of that first season include some of the best music I’ve heard in a series. I can’t help but love Michael Giacchino as a composer. For me, he ranks up there with Christophe Beck and Snuffy Walden. I still get weepy when I think of that church scene from the finale with the “LOST theme” playing over it just like I used to when Beck’s theme for Season 2 of Buffy played as Angel got skewered into oblivion.

In fact there were so many great scenes from Season One that were punctuated with that damn heartstring tugging tune. Boone’s death while Aaron is born was one. The launching of the raft was another. I was immediately struck with the imagery of Tom Hanks leaving his island captivity on a raft outfitted with a port a john. The same kind of weepy music accompanied Hanks as he looked back on four years of his life as a different man, island man. As the rafties made their way out to sea to look for rescue I felt that same twinge of longing for a place that had become home for several months, even though it had been like two weeks for them.

But nothing could have prepared an audience, so willing to accept the small quirks of the island like evil others and a faceless monster, for what was about to happen. The other pillar of black smoke came and they hid, the raft encountered salvation only to find it was taking something away, and a cork was pulled out of the bottle that unleashed the island’s mysteries upon the castaways when that damn hatch lid blew. Season One was full of everything that made LOST so engaging and intriguing. It beguiled us and bugged as for the next five seasons until it had to come to an end.

Next up, Did Season 6 answer all those pesky questions?

LOST Theories For S6E16 What They Died For May 18th, 2010

Responsibility. We all have responsibilities. I have ones to my work and my family. I also have a responsibility to act a certain way in accordance to rules established by society. For the island, responsibility plays a role in what the island is. There is someone responsible for protecting it and making sure that no one tries to destroy it. Desmond had a responsibility for pushing the button, like the castaways did for a season. Sawyer felt he was responsible for the deaths of Frank (maybe), Jin, Sun, and Sayid. Hurley feels he is responsible for making sure that Jacob’s wishes are carried out. It all comes back to having a stake in something. To that end. Jack feels it’s his responsibility to become the island protector. This is a huge ‘fix’ for him because he had been trying so hard to get off the island and now he’s going to stay there for a very long time.

DESMOND
Desmond still has some huge part to play and I feel that he will end up dying in the end. It’s his sacrifice that will allow Jack or whoever to kill MiB once and for all. But should he be killed? (More on that in a bit) So, who let him out? Did the Losties get there and rescue him ahead of MiB and Ben? Or did Sayid leave him a rope to help himself while he went off to play suicide savior?

In the Alterverse, Desmond tries to nail Locke again in the wheelchair, and I had to chuckle when he started up the car because I was so thinking that the same damn thing was going to happen. However, Ben, of all people, shows up to stop him and gets beat up by Desmond in two universes and that flicks on the Déjà vu switch that shows Ben his other self. How much does he know, though? It seems as if there is an ability to gain more memories than just what are shown in the flashes as evidenced by Hurley’s recognition of Ana Lucia. For that matter, Desmond knows more than he was originally shown because he has become a sort of shepherd, going after the rest of the castaways to show them the way.

MIB’S PLAN
All this time we’ve been wondering how Smokey, or whatever I choose to call him in this paragraph, plans to get off the island. I’ve been speculating that by simply turning the Donkey Wheel everyone could have been off the island in Season One but maybe that is not the case. Or it’s just a continuity error in the show. However, it seems as if this is Smokey’s only chance since all other means of escape are gone. But his plan had some snags along the way. First, Desmond was supposed to be killed by Sayid because he was a possible candidate, or so he thought. Turns out, Desmond is more. He is a failsafe. A key around the neck of Jacob that can make this all go away. I find it ironic that Desmond and Locke were both in the hatch when it blew in Season Two. Locke destroyed the computer controlling the button and Desmond had to use the failsafe key to release the built up electromagnetic energy. Here, it appears that once again, Locke, now Smokey, will try to destroy the island at its source and Desmond might be how he chooses to do it.

THE CHOOSEN ONE
First off, let me say that I have not been a fan of Kate since she started playing the middle of the road between Jack and Sawyer. Last night was a prime example of why I don’t like her. “What about me?” While Jacob gave her a more straightforward and kinder answer than he gave Ben back in the end of Season Five, I still felt as if she was whining. A friend pointed out that after all this trouble, she deserved to know why her name was crossed off the list. Frankly, I never thought she would have been the chosen one I am glad she’s not. She doesn’t exactly like to do what she’s told to do.

You have to love Hurley. He has been burdening such a load since the show began. He started the Island Golf League to help them blow off steam. He felt that he needed to destroy the food from the hatch pantry because it would have been gone quickly and people would have been mad at him. He feels unlucky at every turn and feels responsible for the bad things that have happened to those he cares about. The fact that he knows he has limits and doesn’t like to leave his comfort zone is evidenced ad he did not volunteer for the job of island janitor. But Hurley may be the best person of all in the world. It’s kind of like he has all the qualities that make an excellent leader except the desire to be one.

Sawyer is a candidate but still would never take the job of island protector, even though he’s been shown to serve and protect the Dharma Initiative and the people of Los Angeles in the job of law enforcement. But, he still wants off the island and he knows that taking this job saddles him on that rock for a long time.

Kwon was a name on the wall in the cave but we didn’t know which one it referred to. Was it Jin or Sun? Guess it doesn’t matter now because they both drowned in the sub. However, given that Kate was disqualified on account she was a “mom” leads me to believe that Sun would have been DQ’d as well. For that matter, Littleton was also a name but since she was a mother it was crossed out as well as Kates. So that leaves Jin, right? Why not say he’s disqualified for being a father? That leaves Ji Yeon and now that she’s an orphan, she could be a prime candidate, but Jack already stepped up.

In perhaps one of the biggest reveals of all, we finally get the low down on Jacob’s process. He chose people who were flawed yet had all the same qualities as him. They were unhappy where they were at and needed the island as much as the island needed them. Kate was on the run, Sawyer was filled with vengeance, Hurley was unlucky, Jack had father issues and a failed marriage. The Kwons were troubled by their families and their own problems. Sayid was haunted by his past and his search for Nadya made him melancholy. Michael had issues with his son and their relationship. Locke had a need to prove he was capable and was constantly put down. I could go on but there is your core castaways.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
“Dr. Linus”

1. Widmore is able to find the island because:


1. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace
2. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
3. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
4. He went to the Lamp Post

Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner. A: Jacob invited Widmore back. What that has to do with the name Wallace, I have no idea. Perhaps it means nothing. Perhaps by moving the dial to Wallace it was the only way to go past Shepherd giving Jack his much needed glimpse of responsibility.

“The Package”

2. Zoe is


1. A pain in the ass
2. The key to everything
3. A red herring
4. A geophysicist with a knack for finding pockets of electromagnetic energy.

Guess A: will have to be good enough as she is now dead. Yeah. I really hated her. She had no purpose. What the hell was she looking for anyway in Ben’s house? She said she was there looking for something and we never found out what that was. Oh well. She was the Nikki/Paulo of this season and the island demanded her disposal.

“The Candidate”

3. The next Jacob will be?


1. Jack (Sayid said it and he keeps saying he is not leaving the island.)
2. Locke (No not the Locke from the OT, Locke from The Alterverse. Somehow the two timelines will converge and Locke in the ALT will do battle with his doppelganger.)
3. Desmond (Jack must shepherd him from the well to a spot of concentrated electromagnetic energy in order to accept Jacob into his being.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the everyone on the list is not actually a list of candidates but a list of people who will be used to get the candidate into position? Once they fulfill their role, they are killed and removed like fallen pieces on a chessboard.

Yep. A: is the answer and my footnote was basically proven by Jacob’s revelations.

NEW THEORY TIME
Not much I haven’t already stated. I will throw out these little theories and hope that they come true.

1. MiB will attempt to leave the island:


1. Via the donkey wheel.
2. Via Ajira 316 which will be disarmed.


2. The Alterverse Castaways are going to:


1. Meet up on a boat to go to the spot where the island should be.
2. Fly in another plane and somehow get back to the sunken island.


3. MiB will attempt to destroy the island by:


1. Throwing Desmond down the 100 watt cave.


4. MiB will be killed by:


1. Blown up by the remainder of the C4 making Ben a suicide bomber who decides to kamikaze Smokey.
2. Jack will go all Neo on him like he did Mr. Smith
3. He won’t. Everything will simply go back to the way it was.


5. The Survivors will leave the island by:


1. Ajira 316. Frank really isn’t dead and has been spending the last two episodes disarming the bomb. He’ll show up at the last minute like Bishop did in Aliens.
2. Penny will arrive on Penny’s Boat and rescue them but will lose Desmond.
3. Each one will take a turn on the Donkey Wheel.

LOST Theories For S6E15 Across The Sea May 11th, 2010

Games. Across the sea was either the greatest gift to a baffled fan or the longest con of all. In it we get an answers to a few of the biggest head scratchers this side of the Tunisian bus stop on the Frozen Donkey Wheel line. But as C.J. Cregg, er Allison Janney tells Clauida, “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.” Such is the nature of LOST, for every answer there is another question.

Now, I’ve tried and tried to look at this episode as objectively as possible and not read too much into it. After all, there’s no sense in postulating a lot of theories about the history of the island since we will probably not see anything of a pre 21st century timeline in the last three episodes. All we can hope for is Michael Emerson to give us some exposition over the highlight reel during the obligatory recap episode we’ll get just before the finale. However, I want to draw some parallels that have been running through the history of this show since "Pilot".

IN THE BIG INNING
In the beginning there was a woman. She delivered two boys. The mother was killed and the boys were raised by another. The fair haired angelic son was named Jacob. The other, the bad twin (get it LOST fans?) was given no name. He was the favorite. He was loved above others. He was manipulated into being a means to an end. The good son doted, obeyed, protected, defended his giver of life while “He who shall not be named” was curious, questioning, willing to disobey and discover. Fate vs. Free Will. And for every beginning there is an ending. Perhaps it’s a snake eating its own tail. A wheel spinning around, marking the events on an island, ultimately returning to its starting position.

We get the glimpse of Claudia floating on wood towards the shore of the island. She is pregnant. Right away we know who she’s carrying and that leads us to my second biggest theory debunker of all.

4. Jacob and Locke Monster are actually brothers and the whole mother thing will play out a bit more in a final showdown. We already know that Alpert is the only character to have a flashback this season so it stands to reason that any explanations will be done through exposition between characters.


1. Jacob was loved more than MiB
2. MiB will be known as either Samuel or Esau

It actually turns out that this works in favor of my theory. We know that Jacob and MiB are brothers but whether or not Jacob was loved more than his brother remains to be seen. Their mother said they loved each of them in different ways. (more on that) And we did get more exposition about their back story like I said. I was off on the name but frankly I like it that way. I thought it was a cruel joke by Team Lost to not give him a name. We’ve all been speculating and when we finally get a real chance to hear the magic name, we get “I only picked one name.” HAHA LOST fans, we screwed you. In actuality he needs no name. Voldemort, The Devil, Keyser Soze, whatever you want to call him is evil. And evil does not need a name, it only needs an audience.

So, after the babies are born…which look to be 2 months prior to being birthed… they are wrapped in swaddling, opposite colored clothes and there is a moment of “ah ha!” in C.J.’s... err Allison Janney's eyes. She then says “I’m sorry” and bashes in Claudia’s head with a rock. What was that moment? A revelation, a means to an end. One side is light and the other is dark. One will protect the island. The other will provide me an escape… a loophole.

Still… LOST? What if Claudia had washed up on shore and met Allison Janney and Allison Janney had said, “What did one snowman say to the other?” Would that clear it up for you? (Ok, we’ll come back to that.)

MAN OF SCIENCE VS. MAN OF FAITH
The players change but the game is always the same. There are two players, one side is light and one side is dark. The man of faith accepts what is happening and plays his part. The man of science searches for more answers, rallying against the status quo. From the get go, Jacob is the man of faith and his brother is the man of science. Jacob never questioned his origins nor did he leave his faux ma to be with his people. He accepted his role. His brother got a glimpse of another life with “his” people, off the island, and wanted to leave. He wanted to use science to leave the island. Just as Locke became the man of faith and Jack became the man of science when it came down to everything, the island, the button, the freighter.

Now, the roles have been reversed. Jack is now the man of faith, taking the leap of faith off the starboard bow of the Elizabeth, a baptismal if you will into the role of “Man of Faith” while Locke, now possessed by the soul of Jacob’s brother, has become the man of science using technology, a plane, a sub, explosives to leave the island. Ultimately we will see the donkey wheel again because I have no doubt that he intended to use every other means of escape as a means of disposal for the candidates only to return to his original work as the way to leave.

THE GAME
Whether it be Senet, Backgammon, Chess, or Stratego… Does anyone want to play Stratego… I have Stratego… the game itself is an overly complex design to achieve a simple task. But the game that Jacob’s brother found was simply a metaphor for what is really going on here. Manipulation of pieces on a board. One side moves the pieces into place. Some are used for sacrifice to expose the opponent to more substantial attack. The player cannot directly get at the opponent but can use his pawns to win the game. Think of the island and everyone on it as a game board and a bunch of pieces. In every age the game is adapted to the time. For Jacob and his brother it was what looked like to be a Senet board. For the LOSTIES it was backgammon. Two sides, two colors, two players, multiple pieces.

Perhaps since the dawn of time, the island has been a game. Maybe what we believe to be the game masters, Jacob and his brother are merely the newest round of players. I get the feeling that their mother was forced to play the game as she was handed the role from the previous player. In any case, the game continues and continues much like a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. That is a game which, if played correctly, will never have a winner. It always ends in a tie, the balance of power stays the same.

JUMPING THE DHARMA SHARK
When The Other Mother showed the brothers to the cave of light I wanted to throw my fandom at the television. WTF?!?! (Mandatory Internet Slang Quota Per Post Reached) It’s a cave with a hundred watt bulb hanging inside of it. I think we need to change the name of the show to LAND OF THE LOST because that was straight outta Sid and Marty Kroft’s playbook. I half expected there to be Sleestak running about and claymation dinosaurs chasing the family back to the cave to grab the flyswatter. It also looked as if Jacob’s brother went over a waterfall into the light before smokey appeared, much like the Marshalls went over the waterfall in the opening to Land of the Lost.

We have been told that there is a very simple explanation for what’s going on and that it was rooted in reality but this was just too much. I should give up that theory because this whole season has pretty much blown the rules of science and reality out of the water. However, cheesy metaphors for the source of life aside, the cave did serve a purpose. It sets up the tasks to be performed by the protector and the prize for mere mortals to fight and plunder over for centuries.

You get the sense that Other Mother blindfolded her sons so that neither one could assume control of power until it was time. Keeping the cave a secret allowed for them to be captured and not be able to tell the location.

THE LONGEST CON OF ALL
I’m coming back to my comparison of Jacob’s mother and the button. I have said before that we should not read too much into the glyphs and structures on the island because they are inconsequential to the overall story. Every set of people that have come to the island have used their culture to interpret what the island is and the mysteries that reside within it. The more we fish for rationalizations of the importance of the temple or the statue the more red herrings we catch. Quite simply, if I arrived on the island and experienced these weird things, I would interpret them as being a product of whatever culture or civilization I came from and would document or deify them as such. The players change but the game stays the same. So disregard all you think you know about Greek or Egyptian mythology. Forget trying to figure out why the button had to be pushed every 108 minutes. It means nothing.

The simple fact of the matter is that there has been a lie perpetuated by centuries of misdirection and misinformation. Allison Janney came to the island “by accident” as she told Claudia. However, instead of being part of the game, she was made a player. She opened the ancient equivalent to a hatch and the equivalent of Desmond popped out fed her a line and gave her some wine. Then she probably killed or found a way to cause the death of whoever was guarding the Easy Smoke Oven. Then she became the ageless guardian and with the birth of twins she found a means to the end. “One of them will take my place as guardian of the island and the other one will kill me finally ending my Richard Alpert problem.” All she needed to do was figure out which one was going to be which. She planted the seeds of destruction with the game. Think about The Long Con in which Sawyer happened to drop open a briefcase full of money. “Oh my, don’t look at all that money that you were obviously never supposed to see. Damn these cheap briefcases. That’s the last time I go to Staples.” Except in this case, the Senet game established the sides. The one who is devoted to me will be the protector while the one who chooses to keep secrets and deceive me will be the one to kill me. In fact, are we really sure she wasn’t involved with the “appearance” of Claudia to Jacob’s brother? After all, most dead people on the island are a product of the smoke monster. And if we’re pretty sure that, prior to Jacob kicking his brother to the cave, Smokey never existed then how did Claudia show up? Moving pieces. Strategy. Money in a briefcase. The Mousetrap Game.

By revealing the truth of their origins to Jacob’s brother she set him down the path of rebellion. He wants to leave. He’ll work his whole life to find an escape and just as he’s about to do it, I’ll take it away. He’ll be so pissed that he’ll kill me, right after I secure his brother as the protector of the island. And to think that she gave Jacob the same wine that Jacob gave Alpert is telling. Whether the wine is actually sacred or magical is debatable. The incantation she gave could be window dressing. One may simply have to accept the responsibility to be a part of something and the wine is a contract. A covenant. A pact. A handshake. Communion.

Over the centuries the torch has been passed. The cons continue. MiB conned Ben into doing everything he wanted in order to push Ben into the mindset that he had done everything at the behest of Jacob and Jacob never cared. Jacob may have never had any dealings with Ben. Ben was a fanboy who saw too much into the imaginary relationship he had with his hero, the rock star, and it was all the machinations of MiB to push Ben into killing Jacob. And now he has conned the con, Sawyer, into believing he could get him off the island when in fact he meant to trap every candidate and blow them up, allowing him the chance to leave the island.

THE SOURCE, THE SMOKE, THE SCIENCE, THE SKELETONS
So, we got some answers. The Source is the cave of the 100 watt bulb. The donkey wheel was constructed by Jacob’s brother. The wheel when connected to the source moves the island and drops you in Tunisia and the skeletons of Adam and Eve were Jacob’s family. That’s a lot of stuff crammed into one episode. I still don’t know what exactly the Source is but I don’t think it will matter much. It’s a trope of television and movies. What’s inside the Lost Ark in Indiana Jones? What’s inside the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? It is merely alien space bats or a macguffin. Look them up. It’s something that is shiny and pure and needs protecting from those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers…

Does the source turn you to smoke? Or is it Pandora’s box and using a human to open it unleashes all the evils of the world in the form of the smoke monster, leaving only hope. And why did Jacob’s brother’s body end up like the pilot from "Pilot?" Simple, he was spat out, blown out by the rushing smoke. He was the mentos dropped into the cave of diet coke and got shot out. The smoke monster took his form because he was dead, assuming the identity and memories of his host. That’s why it is possible for him to be Adam and why none of us would have ever seen it coming. Why? The possibility of Eve being their mother was never suggested to us until we learned from Smokey/MiB that he had a mother in "Recon" and that he never really had a body after the events of "Across The Sea."

Every time they find a place like this they dig. It doesn’t matter what culture whether it be Jacob’s people or the Dharma Initiative, when they find a hotspot they dig. In fact you could probably call Jacob’s brother a part of the original Dharma Initiative. Then they were purged. Probably because they were coming to close to finding The Source. Makes you wonder if the Orchid, The Well, and The Swan are a triangulation around the Source. But how does the wheel, water, and the 100 watt bulb work? Once again, it does not matter in the scheme of things. What does matter is that now that the submarine is gone and the plane is rigged to blow, it may pan out that MiB was going back to his old ways all along and that these other means of transportation were just more red herrings. Ones that could get a candidate killed. MiB will probably go back to the donkey wheel to escape.

Adam and Eve have been a topic of debate since "House of the Rising Sun" in Season One. With every new wrinkle of possibility introduced each season the list of candidates who they are has expanded. I always figured it would be Rose and Bernard. Turns out, I was way off on all my theories, and the whole white stone / black stone. Another red herring that really represented pieces of the game that Jacob and his brother used to play. An inside joke. Two players. One side light and one side dark. But the rate of decomposition does not jive with Jack’s assumption that they were only 60 years dead. Maybe the nature of the island is responsible or maybe Jack is really bad at that kind of thing and figured as a doctor, no one would question him.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
"Sundown"

1. MiB, UnLocke, Flocke, Lockeness, Esau, Nemesis, Not Lock, whatever you call him is a fallen angel, perhaps the devil.

8. The reason why Jacob and MiB cannot kill each other directly is because they are the same entity and only through indirect contact can the scale of power be tipped towards one consciousness and eventually it will be revealed ala Tyler Durden.

Yeah, no fallen angels here. He was mortal. Also, I can scratch off number 8 because they are definitely two distinct people and their mother somehow made it impossible for them to directly hurt the other.

"The Package"

1. Adam and Eve are…


1. Rose and Bernard. 40% Most acceptable answer as we have not seen them yet in the OT
2. Jin and Sun 20% It would be the payoff of them finally being reunited.
3. Desmond and Penny. 10% Low score on this since if Desmond ends up being the new Jacob he wouldn’t have died and these skeletons died in the past.
4. Kate and Jack. 10% Unlikely since they would have to time travel again.
5. Kate and Sawyer 10% Unlikely in that Sawyer was married to Juliet, he’s done with Kate romantically.
6. Never explained. 9% I’d have a brain melt down.
7. Nikki and Paulo. 1% That would send me over the edge.

BUUURRRRRRR! Way wrong on all counts. Although, it begs the question of what happened to Rose, Bernard and Vincent after the time travel from the 70s to the present? I’ll accept the answer but it was really a softball one. I pretty much feel as if the producers said, “Everyone thinks they know who Adam and Eve are. Why not throw them the biggest curve ball ever?”

"The Last Recruit"

The biggest gamble of a theory I have is that at the end there will be a reveal that one or more of the remaining Losties aside from Locke will be MiB. Wouldn’t that be a trip if it all came down to Team MiB and Team Jacob standing on opposing sides only to have select members of Team Jacob turn and point their guns at Jack and Desmond. It’s a long shot theory because that would mean that Frank infected Hurley who was voted least likely to become a host for the smoke monster in his senior year.

Yeah, I think I can safely say that there is no need to go the route that one or more of the remaining cast is also part of the smoke monster. Whew!

"Everybody Loves Hugo"

1. The little boy is


1. A rapidly growing Jacob getting ready to assume the persona of a candidate and that’s why his hair has changed color with every candidate that witnesses him in the presence of MiB. Blond for Sawyer, Brown for Desmond.

Yay for me, sorta.

NEW THEORY TIME
Not much to theorize since we will never see this time on the island again.   I pretty much laid out my theory that MiB will attempt to use the donkey wheel to escape and probably Desmond will be involved with that.   Maybe Desmond is now the source and Jack is going to be the new Jacob.

Three and a half more hours to go.   Can you feel the tension or will you be glad to have it over?

P.S.
One more thing for your homework assignment.   Go watch Land of the Lost and a small obscure show called Children of the Stones.   Children of the Stones was on Nickelodeon when I was a kid.  It was a British Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Horror series about a Stonehenge like ring of stones in Britain that held mysterious paganistic powers that invloved astronomy and magic.   Very scary to a young kid but follows the same style of storytelling involving time looping and repeat actions toward an end that you get on LOST.   Go to YouTube and look it up.  I just watched the pilot epsiode last week.