Lost (spoilers)

[Gamblour.]

i've decided that not only do i like watching this show with commercials, i need the commercial breaks to come down, gather thoughts, discuss/yell, and get my heart rate to resume a somewhat normal pace.

That's really funny, I was saying the exact same thing last night. My friend has a DVR so he would skip the commercials, but at one point I just had too much and said, dude I need the commercial breaks or else my head will explode!

[Chest Rockwell]

Interesting thought: could Michael be the man on their boat?

Even more interesting thought: I listened to the official podcast about last night's episode and Lindelof mentions the importance of the old lady in Flashes Before Your Eyes, and how they are averse to paradoxes, and she outlines this by discussing course correcting. And he said, "It's as if the fabric of time swirls around you and course corrects." Or something to that effect. Could THE MONSTER, the black smoke, be the island's course corrector? It's a swirling, amorphous entity that kills, ie course corrects. I think that would be an interesting revelation.

As for The Constant...at first I was a little upset that suddenly our man has no recollection of Charlie, the hatch, or anything leading up to this point in time. It made the phone call to Penny have almost no emotional involvement because if only he understood that it's been 8 years. I kind of got over it, however, when I thought about Faraday's comment about his condition being exponential. He was gone for 75 minutes, and experienced 5 minutes in the future. Next time it might be 2 hours, then 4, and eventually, Desmond will experience one year, two years in the past and finally catch up with the future. I think that seems like the inevitable conclusion.

hack, why re-read Slaughterhouse-Five? does it deal with time travel?

EDIT: if it's December 24th 2004 on the ship in the South Pacific, that doesn't mean that it's Christmas Eve in London if they're across the international dateline, right? I guess that's a part of dramatic license. Also, according to Lostpedia, on the island, it's actually day 96, Christmas Eve would be day 94. So it might actually be 26th or the 27th in London, depending on what time of day Desmond calls Penny.

Well first of all: AMAZING EPISODE. This and the finale of season 3 are probably vying for the top seat right now. I'm a little surprised they made the time travel explicit so soon. I thought that it wouldn't come to light until the end of the season but I guess now we figure how/why.

Second, I think I brought up earlier (after the episode where Ben first says he "has a man on their boat") the possibility of Michael having to work for Ben. It's still what I think will happen.

Third, I think the time loop theorist hypothesized the monster being the island's course correction. Seems to make sense. For the time being there isn't much anyone can say about it.

Fourth, Slaughterhouse Five is all about time travel. Not so much time travel but being "unstuck" in time. The lead character Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck and then the rest of the book he's shifting in and out of different parts of his life randomly and not of his volition. I noticed Faraday use that word ("stuck" in time) specifically during the experiment, so it would seem the writers are indeed referencing Vonnegut.

In conclusion: AMAZING EPISODE.

EDIT: Did a little search and it looks I didn't bring up Michael. Oh well. In any case, I thought about the same possibility Gamblour.

[modage]

yep, i cried. 

[Kal]

Every episode I think its impossible for me to be more confused and excited about the next episode, and then shit keeps hitting the fan... every episode is pure gold... I get the same feeling I got after last season finale when I knew I could not wait to get more.

I'm sure Michael is on that boat. Can't wait until next week. I did not see the previews because I downloaded the episode. What was the preview for next week???

[Kal]

GREAT READ!!! CHECK IT OUT!!

From Zap2it: 'Lost': Doing the unstuck

Before delving too deeply into the implications of tonight's episode, "The Constant," let us first take a moment to marvel at the euphoric catharsis that was the conversation between Penelope and Desmond near the end of this mind-blowing episode. That, gentle readers, is why I love Lost. The show has its mythology, and that's great. It's got its mysteries, and that's great. It had to good sense to quickly kill off Nikki and Paolo, and that's particularly great. But in the end, without strong relationships between its characters, Lost would simply be another genre show, one of many. The impact and emotion of that phone call shows why Lost stands so far and above just about anything else currently on air.

There's more to be said on matters of the heart, but for the time being, let us turn to time itself. As Boy George once pontificated, "Time is precious, I know." And that man knew from once he spoke. Our favorite brutha Desmond found himself unstuck in time, just like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five. (In case you didn't get the connection, the show went and called Desmond's army buddy Billy for good measure.) This episode shed a lot of light on the actions in "Flashes Before Your Eyes," in that Desmond himself doesn't physically time-travel: only his consciousness does.

We learned this thanks to the 1996 version of Daniel Faraday, residing at Oxford with experiments inspired by his namesake and a haircut inspired by a Joshua Tree-era Bono. Desmond visited him after 2004 Faraday instructed Des to visit him in Oxford, equipped with numbers and names to convince 1996 Faraday of Desmond's situation. And if that sentence was hard to read, you can only imagine how hard it was for me to type. (Least this sheds light on why Desmond ended up in military prison as seen at the end of Season 2: dude went AWOL to find Faraday. Awesome.)

Turns out, as widely suspected, that when the Swan went kablooey, Desmond's mind was bombarded with enough electromagnetism to cause his consciousness to move back and forth in time. And Des is far from the only one. Turns out the barely seen Minkowski decided to go for a joyride from the freighter along with another crew-member and got caught a case of cottage cheese brain for his troubles. And Faraday himself: well, we know now the reason for Charlotte's memory test last week. Kudos to all of you who saw it for what it was while I went to the top of Boston's highest peak (elevation: 14 feet) and shouted, "It's ESP! ESP!" until a cop in Southie threatened to make me gone, baby, gone.

And Faraday. What can you say about him? Is it too early to call "Rookie of the Year" quite yet? Because he's got my vote. His own brain is addled thanks to years of experiments more than likely spurned on by his encounter with Desmond. And what a masterstroke of the show avoid the inherent "How did Faraday not remember meeting Desmond before seeing him on the Island?" by using the constant exposure to radiation throughout the years as a way to explain his memory loss. Absolutely fantastic.

And let's look for a moment, if we can, at the numbers involved in Faraday's successful experiment with Eloise: 2.342, running at 11 hertz. We've got two of The Numbers right there, with 23 and 42, and the "11" derives from subtracting two other Numbers from each other (15 and 4). Yes, the show tends to drop the Numbers in scenes as Easter eggs, meant to do nothing more than make fans or, say, people who write Lost recaps, to stand up and say, "Egads, perchance I espy one of the Numbers! Gertrude, more pie, if you please!" So I understand why you might be rolling my eyes at my attempt to derive some significance here.

But in this case, I think the fact that these numbers worked in sending Eloise's mind into the future not only suggests why Faraday is crying upon seeing the wreckage of Oceanic 815, but is the very reason Abaddon (or Abaddon's boss) chose him to travel to the Island. In the first case, his radiation-addled mind can't make a direct connection to the crash, but his subconscious still can. And in the second case, word of his research could have reached Abaddon's ears, and the commonality of numbers could have piqued his interest.

(In any event, the main takeaway lesson here? If you're going to repeatedly attempt to send a field mouse into the future, wear a helmet. Just good common sense for all you kids out there.)

Speaking of Abaddon's boss, hi, Charles Widmore! Nice to see ya, paying a hefty sum in 1996 for the only extant journal from the long-lost Black Rock. And no, in case you're wondering if you've missed something, the Widmore-Abaddon connection is purely theoretical at this point, although it's far from a horrible guess. This little auction scene went a long way in shoring up my theory that the freighter is in fact working under the guise of the Widmore Corporation, built by Paik Heavy Industries (owned by Sun's father), in cooperation with the remnants of the Hanso Foundation. (For more on this, be sure to follow this link and read my initial formulation, made before Season 4 started.)

Widmore's buying of the journal signals a deep interest in the Black Rock: more importantly, any clues as to its navigational records. What we see in this auction, exhibited by the exorbitant price paid for the journal, is a man keen on finding the Island. He would have undoubtedly preferred to locate it on his own, but easily has the means with which to purchase the journal at auction. (I do wonder if anyone else in that auction house will have ramifications in the world of Lost.) Having obtained that journal, Widmore could finally achieve what until then had been the impossible: locating the Island. The Freighter itself is the result of the work jump started the day in which Widmore purchased that journal.

Now that we're back to the Freighter, let's talk about that calendar, shall we?

According to the calendar in the communications room, it's December 24, 2004. That doesn't surprise Sayid in the slightest, except for him remarking that he didn't realize it was so close to Christmas. The fact that the background of the calendar featured a tropical setting made me think, "OK, this is just a calendar to show what time the people on the Island think it is." I thought it either might be a cheat sheet or a way to screw with the heads of anybody from the Island who got off.

But that's not quite right, is it? It seems clear the majority of the people on the freighter are COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT that Oceanic 815ers have landed on the Freighter. So, having a calendar in a room not intended for outside observers seems a bit weird. More to the point, Desmond calls Penelope on the exact day as he promised: Christmas Eve, 2004. We know this to be true because there she was, all decked out in holiday gear, in front of a Christmas Tree, and saying nothing like, "Why are you calling me in the year 2012, Desmond?" Then again, she might have said that: my sobs were drowning out the dialogue somewhat.

Then there's the problem of Faraday's rocket and Lapidus' helicopter. Faraday's rocket, if you remember, arrived roughly 31 minutes later (31 being, of course, 15+16...OK, OK, I'll stop bringing up the Numbers) than it should have. From Island perspective, the helicopter than should have taken 20 minutes to land took more than a day. From helicopter perspective, the trip DID take roughly that long, but they left at sunset and arrived seemingly mid-day. I quickly looked at the diagram listed in Faraday's journal for advice and/or answers, but at some point blood started to come out of MY nose, and decided to leave the heavy physics to those more equipped to explain to inference of all these events.

Then again, all of these discrepancies could be what freaks Faraday out so much. Remember: as a scientist, he would be looking to design and conduct experiments in which he could consistently achieve the same results. And yet, his life's work yielded nothing but differing results, driving him batty (both literally and figuratively). Perhaps such inconsistencies mark the danger not only of traveling to and from the Island, but perhaps also with the Orchid Station itself, a station that looks to make its grand appearance in the show next week.

The Orchid Station, for those of who that haven't heard of it, is a new station introduced by the producers of Lost at Comi-Con last year, and seems to involve not only the mental, but physical act of time travel. This physical act, however, it not without peril, and not without surprise.

In the orientation video, the scientist formerly known as Marvin Candle shows up, holding a white rabbit with the number 15 written on its side. (Much like Ben's White Rabbit #8, suggesting Ben's well acquainted with the Orchid.) Halfway through the Orchid orientation video, a second White Rabbit #15 appears, and the whole scene breaks down into the type of chaos normally reserved for opening night of a Hannah Montana tour. See for yourself.



In this video, Candle (or Edgar Halowax, as he calls himself) refers to something called the Casimir effect. I won't purport to understand 10% of that link, but the bit about wormholes and faster than light travel sure caught my eye. What about the Orchid's research is so unstable? Was it created based on theoretical applications of the Island's unique properties? Is Ben using the Orchid for his worldly travels? So many questions, and in Faraday, we potentially have a source for answers. And I like answers. I'm a fan of them, you could say.

But as stated at the beginning, none of this Casimir effect mumbo jumbo would mean a thing if we didn't give a damn about Desmond and Penelope, and I give as much of a damn as Rhett Butler doesn't. I was frankly shocked to see them make any type of "real world" connection this early in the show (I had that pegged as a Season 6 activity), but in that they still have a long way to go before truly meeting again, I marveled at this conversation as a way for these two to steel themselves up for the last, and most difficult, part of their journey back towards each other. I've said it before, and having this episode, I feel it more strongly than ever: these two are the romantic heart of the show. Sorry, but for having had such little screen time together, it's nothing short of a miracle on behalf of both the actors and writers to construct a relationship that anchors the actions of everyone else in the Lost universe. And it puts the squabbles over time travel, wormholes, and electromagnetic anomalies into their proper context.

Five things that I noticed, couldn't jam into the recap, but wanted to note:

The doctor on board the freighter? Named Ray. Could this be the "RG" listed on Naomi's bracelet?
Notice all those security cameras on board the freighter? Remind anyone of similar cameras already seen on the show, say, in New Otherton?
Did they really hire Fischer Stevens for essentially two voice-overs and a few scenes in this episode? That's it? Is this karmic payback for going ahead and doing the sequel to Short Circuit without the involvement of the legendary Steve Gutenberg? (There better be a flashback involving Minkowksi, and soon.)
The friend on the boat that opened the door? Probably the one that also destroyed all the equipment. And probably Ben's man on the boat. (After all, we know Ben's a fan of jamming communication to the outside world.) I think we all know this person's identity at this point, correct?
Desmond is Faraday's constant? Damn. I was all out of Kleenex after the phone call. Unfair, Lost. Unfair.

[MacGuffin]

Lost: The Cast's Burning Questions Answered!
Source: TV Guide

"It's no shock to say that Season 4 ends with the Oceanic 6 getting off the island," Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof shares with TV Guide. "The real mystery is how, and what they have to sacrifice, and what happens to the people who didn't leave. You get all that this year." Sounds good, we'll take it. But what other intel are producers willing to spill? To find out, we turned to no, not viewers but to Lost cast members themselves for their own burning questions. Warning! The producers' answers could cause a major head rush, if not a full-on Desmond-style time jump.

Jorge Garcia (Hurley): "Is Ben in the coffin?"
Carlton Cuse: Come on, Jorge!
Damon Lindelof: Seriously! [To Cuse] He's just trying to make sure it's not him. It's process of elimination. The next question is, "Is it Michael?" [Laughs]
Cuse: Before the end of the year, you will know who's in the coffin.
Lindelof: And Jorge will definitely know before anyone else.

Yunjin Kim (Sun): "Is Aaron actually one of the Oceanic 6?"
Cuse: We're not officially saying yet. We want the audience to engage in an active debate about who the Oceanic 6 are.
Lindelof: Following [Sayid's] episode, we got several inquiries we weren't anticipating about, 'Is Ben a member of the Oceanic 6?' He could've assumed the identity of somebody on the plane [with] no surviving family members. Who the actual six are is very much in play through the end of the [March 13th] episode. We'll confirm or deny after that.

Josh Holloway (Sawyer): "Is it Jack's turn with Kate?"
Cuse: [Laughs] That doesn't sound very romantic, but I guess we get the underlying meaning. The Jack-Kate situation remains unresolved and probably will be for a while.
Lindelof: We will say we haven't seen the last of Sawyer and Kate this season. Not by a long shot.

Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond): "It's 2004 on the boat. What year is it in Penny's world? What year is it when the Oceanic 6 get home?"
Lindelof: What's fundamentally interesting about all the time-jumping is that we want it to make sense when people watch the show 10 years from now. We don't want it to seem dated. So it's not really about what year it is in the outside world, it's about how many years have elapsed between the time that we're watching on the island and the flash-forwards. That's one of the fun games the audience is playing: "Gee, Aaron looks like he's about 18 months old. What does that mean, and how old was he when they got off the island?"
Cuse: There are some growth issues when you go on or off the island. But I can't say more about that.
Lindelof: You've already said enough.

Evangeline Lilly (Kate): "Did Michael reach the mainland? Go home? Come back to rescue us?"
Cuse: The good news is that Evie will get all of her answers in [the March 20th] episode.
Lindelof: Well, most of them.
Cuse: Those questions form the basis for that episode. Evie should be somewhat happy.

Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet): "Why did Juliet become such a badass? Who trained her — the Others?"
Cuse: I think there was probably some martial arts in New Otherton.
Lindelof: She probably went out shooting with Friendly back in the day, which is why she can handle a firearm so well. But the real inspiration for Juliet being a badass was Elizabeth herself. When she read for the part, she had this huge cast on her arm and was talking about her days of kickboxing....
Cuse: And then she beat Damon up.

Holloway: "Sawyer needs a freakin' haircut! Since I'm living with Hurley, can he cut my hair?"
Lindelof: [Laughs] That episode's a casualty of the strike.
Cuse: But yeah, Josh can have a haircut.
Lindelof: Josh might've forgotten, but this is a recurring request from him. He's like, 'My hair's getting long, can't Kate cut it?' So we did an episode [in Season 2] where Kate cuts his hair. I love how Josh chooses who's going to be his barber at any given time!

Cusick: "Did Jack's flash-forward in the third-season finale take place after the events of Sayid's most-recent episode?"
Cuse and Lindelof: Yes.

Naveen Andrews (Sayid): "Damon spoke once about going back into Sayid's childhood. It didn't sound like bulls--t at the time. Has he abandoned that?"
Lindelof: I love how he phrases it — "It didn't sound like bulls--t at the time" — [implying], "But it certainly seems like bulls--t now." [Laughs] It's certainly something we still want to do. It wouldn't necessarily be an entire flashback based in his childhood, but there may be significant things that happened when Sayid was a kid that we need to reveal.

[jtm]

this is slightly interesting...

[diggler]

this is slightly interesting...

very nicely edited! love ben's voiceover mixed with the shot of the tail section crash. one of the better fan made vids i've seen.

[Sleepless]

That episode wasn't too bad, wasn't a great one, but far from a bad episode. Looking forward to seeing some more of Jin and Sun next week (more Rose & Bernard too please!), although the preview didn't look that great. And is no-one at ABC or Bad Robot keeping up online? "You'll never guess who Ben's man on the boat is!" Please. Apart from the fact we've been prophecising since Ben revealed that, to show us a preview that makes it clear Sun and Jin are going to be separated so she can go to the boat... where Michael is. Way too obvious. Hopefully next week's ep will be a hell of a lot better than the preview suggested. Especially since we've got a couple weeks Lost-free after it. And finally, the whole Whitmore theory confirmed. Love the fact the Red Sox are a running joke now.

[Chest Rockwell]

Yea, wasn't quite up to the standards last weeks set, but had some good moments in it. "Because you're mine!" will be a defining moment for Ben's development from here on. That moment was so eerie.

EDIT: Also, Gainesville, Florida, yeaah.

[SiliasRuby]

Solid episode. My Favorite Line: This Rabbit didn't happen to have a number on it?

[polkablues]

"I taped over the game."

[MacGuffin]

If anything goes wrong, xixax will be my constant.

[Gamblour.]

Yea, wasn't quite up to the standards last weeks set, but had some good moments in it. "Because you're mine!" will be a defining moment for Ben's development from here on. That moment was so eerie.

That line was incredibly creepy, however, its impact was almost ruined by Juliet's completely redundant line to Jack, "He thinks I'm his." Wow, great job writers. I think she could've suggested this to Jack in other more subtle ways.

I really did not like this episode. Yeah, Ben has some good one-liners, but the flashback was pretty blegh. Great, we have a new one dimensional character, Harper (or should it be Harpee?). She was so stone-faced. And we retread soooo much old territory with Juliet's back story. So Ben intentionally sent Goodwin to be killed? Well, who was Ethan fucking then? Also, normally when they recreate moments cut-in with past episodes, it works, like with Nikki and Paulo, but with Goodwin and Juliet and Harper, they did not sell me on that. It looked completely different.

And the whole Charles Whidmore bit. I think it's cool that we had this confirmed, but they thwacked us with a sledgehammer about it. Did we need to see video of Whidmore? Not really. It shows him being mobster like, but the audience is privy to this, we knew this was coming when he bought the Black Rock diary in the last episode.

I know these are a lot of complaints, but I feel like the show had really stepped up its game this season, after the "game-changer" finale. They've been consistently awesome, and they've been able to do so because of the condensed seasons. But the writing in this episode was very sub par, I thought, and was a lot of fluff. They've been guilty of it in previous seasons, but the way its going now, they've set the bar really high in the first five episodes, they don't need to go backwards. They rehashed sooo much in this one. Even Valis! They show Ben reading Valis again, and when they did, I just said, "We get it, he's reading Valis!" They normally don't shove too much down one's throat, but yeeesh.

I wonder if I will feel this way when Michael is obviously the man on the boat. Maybe it's Walt. I think seeing Michael again would be great, but it's been so blunt. "Next week, see someone you never expected to see again!" I said to my friends, "Well it must not be Michael because I completely expected to see him again!" Shit, Harold Perrineau has been in the credits for weeks.

[grand theft sparrow]

The pattern continues of following a legendary episode with a lackluster one. 

They didn't explain why Juliet didn't like Ben BEFORE the plane crash.  In her first episode (season 3 premiere, I think) with the book club, she was already annoyed at Ben.  "I guess I'm out of the book club."  This episode showed us her reasons for hating Ben AFTER the crash. 

In general, the timelines all seemed out of whack.  Juliet was supposed to be there for 6 months but hasn't she been there for 3 years or so at the time of the crash?  So she'd be pissed at Ben by then.  But in this episode, she's politely refusing his schoolboy advances until he drops the bomb on her and says, "I own you, bitch!"  Something doesn't add up. 

And Harper... really?  Have they learned NOTHING from Nikki and Paulo?  I imagine that she's gonna get whacked real soon (if, in fact, she hasn't been already) because there's A) no reason to like her; and B) there's no reason for the character to exist.  Did Goodwin need to be married?  Furthermore, did he need to be married to a frigid shrewish "see you Next Tuesday"?  They could have just sent Cindy the flight attendant to tell Juliet what's up and then shown us an uncomplicated love story between Juliet and Goodwin, with jealous Ben planning Goodwin's death.  It would have served the same function and saved us from a shitty new character who's "always been there" and who is probably going to just die soon anyway.

Interesting episode in general but they need some course correction.