You've GOT to be kidding me.
A white flash? That's all we get? That's what we're supposed to be hanging off a cliff with for 9 months?
Do I laugh or do I cry? Do I love it for completely leaving us hanging and making Season 6 a total mystery? Or do I hate it for the same reason? Somebody, anybody - please help me with this!
I think this will be one that I'll need some time to make peace with. Deep down, I know I love that they did this to us, just for the discussions that are going to go on about what the aftermath of the explosion will be alone. I loved everything else in the episode - the pace, the flashbacks, Jacob's involvement (more on that in a moment), the statue, and on and on - but the ending had me literally cursing at my TV. It was the exact same cliffhanger as the end of Season 1; they finally blew open the hatch, looked down into it, and saw........cut to black and "LOST." Tonight? The Jughead explodes, the screen goes white, and......"LOST." It is worth noting that this is the first time that the ending title screen was black letters on a white background. It could simply be for continuity with the white flash of the explosion. Or it could be a signal of what's to come next season. The idea of the duality of black and white has been a part of the show from the very first episode, as has the idea of mirror images (especially this season, with the Ajira 316ers acting as proxies for the Oceanic 815ers), so maybe we're going to see something opposite of what we've been seeing up until now. The explosion of the Swan has been described as a sort of "reset button," so I can only imagine what that might mean. I noticed another possible tiny clue to this which I will mention at the end of this post...
For the record, let me ask you: have you ever literally been on the edge of your seat? Because I was tonight for the entire second hour.
My heart is broken. Juliet joins Charlie as the most heroic characters in LOST history. I teared up when she fell down the shaft, and I teared up even more when she was pounding on the guts of the Jughead, screaming, "Work, you son of a bitch!" And I may have actually stopped breathing during that scene. I honestly feel sadness that she is dead. Maybe we'll see her again, though.
And Sawyer. Oh, Sawyer. That was the cry of utter devastation. After all he's been through, especially as we were reminded in his flashback. He's lost everyone he's ever cared about.
Okay, let's get down to a huge element of this episode: Jacob.
I was blown away by how they introduced him, and continue to be even more blown away about what they did with him. He was there at a pivotal moment in the lives of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Locke, Sun, and Jin (am I forgetting anyone?). The scene when he was on a park bench, reading that Flanery O'Connor (I think) book and just waiting for Locke to be thrown out the window by his father was incredible. Did you catch how Locke came to (...or came back to life...?) when Jacob touched his shoulder? If you watched carefully, and after he playfully poked Kate on the nose I was looking out for this, he touched all of them. The only one I didn't really get was when he was with Kate as a young, criminal-minded girl. Maybe her promise to never steal anything again was a clue to her future (she robbed a bank back in Season 1), but was this a pivotal moment? Anyways, this might all mean that he really did call all of them to the Island. But do we have any idea why? What's his motivation?
An even bigger question I have is why he let Ben stab him? Were fans who thought he wanted Locke's help to die correct? Is he dead? Is it even possible for him to die? Will he be a phoenix that will quite literally rise from the ashes of the fire that Locke (or whoever he is) threw him in? That would be yet another tie to ancient Egyptian beliefs.
And yeah, about Locke: there are two Lockes? Whaaaaa? I honestly have no idea what that's about, other than some time travel issue, or how it's possible that Locke........ohhhhh, wait a minute!!! How about this? Because the bomb did go off, Jack never went to see Locke in the casket, and never saw Ben, who never told him that he had to bring John back to the Island. But before the bomb exploded, he did bring Locke to the Island. Does that make sense? Probably not. Why would Locke have died, then? Why would Ilana bring his body back? I don't know. Forget it.
Remember this, though - the man in the opening scene, who asked Jacob, "Do you know how much I want to kill you" - could Locke really be him in reincarnated form? When Locke finally meets Jacob, Jacob says, "So, you found the loophole, huh?" Is being resurrected the loophole?
My mind is blown. (By the way, I took a peek at some of the message boards after the episode, and there are some amazing theories going around about just that first scene with Jacob and the other man on the beach.)
I didn't take any notes as I watched this one, and I'm sure I will be writing more extensively on this episode sometime soon, after I do a little research (which I'm going to start after I post this!), but those are my initial reactions. To be honest, I could go on forever about this episode. It was incredible, wasn't it?
I will leave you with three things - for now.
First, this one may go down as one of the best episodes of LOST of all time. It was so deep, so tragic, so dark, it answered some major questions, and opened up a whole new question: what happens next?
Second, since I know you're dying to find out, the answer to the question of what lies in the shadow of the statue was, courtesy of someone from TheFuselage.com, "Ille qui nos omnes servabit," which is Latin for "he who will protect us." To put it another way: Jacob.
And lastly, after the reversed black and white LOST end title and during the credits, they obviously couldn't give us a preview of Season 6 since they haven't written or filmed any of it yet, but they did give us one brief flash at the very end. It was of an eye opening, and it looked exactly like the opening shot of the Pilot episode of the show - the person the eye belonged to seemed to be lying on the jungle floor - except that it didn't look like Jack's eye. And I only saw it once, but I'm almost positive it was Kate's...
As I mentioned in my post last night, keep checking back here during the hiatus, because I will be posting periodically, including a breakdown of tonight's finale. I hope you enjoyed it!
So for now, Good Luck, and Namaste : )
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
"Time IS The Essence" - Season 5 Reflections
Hey Losties!
On the eve of the finale of Season 5, I thought I'd share some thoughts about this past season, and look ahead to the final season of LOST. (If I'm already starting to get depressed about next year, what am I going to do when the show is actually over?)
This was easily the craziest season of LOST, and I loved every insane second of it. Even though it got heavily into the sci-fi and mythology elements of the show, it also at times felt like a return to classic, Season 1 LOST. Some of the flashbacks, especially the more recent ones, had a definite old school, character-focused LOST feel to them.
The season began by answering some questions that we were left with at the end of Season 4. Where did the island go? Well, the question was more like when did the island go. How did Locke get in the casket? What happened to the Losties off the island? Well, they basically ended up working their way back to the island.
The biggest revelation of Season 5 was the role of time travel in the show. We spent the beginning of the season "flashing" through time with several of the characters. We visited "current-day" 2007, 1954, an undefined ancient time where we saw the complete four-toed statue for the briefest of moments, and of course, 1974 and 1977, where our time-traveling Losties finally settled in with the Dharma Initiative.
Much of the season was devoted to telling us much more about the Dharma Initiative, and how our Losties were carefully (at least for a while) brought into the group in 1974 and 1977. We saw the Swan and the Orchid being built, apparently simultaneously. We met new characters like Phil, Horace, Amy, and the legendary Radzinsky...and now we wish we hadn't, I suspect. We also met Dr. Pierre Chang "in person" for the first time, who it turns out is Miles's father. We also met a man by the name of Jim LaFleur, who of course is really James Ford, who is otherwise known to us as Sawyer. Sawyer became a mastermind of ingratiating himself into the DI, even taking the leadership role of head of security, before things came crashing down due to one bad decision to act and not think first. And while Sawyer was in control, Jack was anything but. For the first time on the show, he wasn't trying to fix things, or lead, or force the issue; he was content to just be. After all he saw this season, especially with Locke, he finally decided to let things happen without his involvement. He was finally convinced of what Locke had been telling him for four seasons: let the Island handle things.
Speaking of Locke, there was quite a story going on off the island, too. We mainly saw Locke attempting to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island, which seemed like such an impossible task, but he did it. Some of them may have ended up in the 1970s, but he did it. And just as Richard told him (because Locke told Richard, because Richard told Locke, because Locke told Richard...), he had to die to do it. (Did he really, though? Why exactly did he have to die? Maybe we haven't seen the reason yet, but his death really had nothing to do with convincing the O6 to return, except for maybe Jack, who it seems is going to have great importance going into tomorrow night's finale.) Of course, Locke's death at the hands of Ben, and his subsequent resurrection upon returning to the Island was a huge development in the story this season. Just more proof that he really seems to be special to the Island.
We were introduced to "Jughead" - a hydrogen bomb that was left by the U.S. military in 1954 and was then placed in the tunnels under what is now the Dharma barracks. Obviously, we know now the importance of the Jughead in tomorrow's finale. It is figuratively and literally a bomb waiting to explode.
Another major player in Season 5 was Eloise Hawking. We saw her as a gun-toting 17-year old Other in 1954, a young mother of - SHOCKER! - Daniel Faraday, and an older, modern-day Mrs. Hawking. She is noteable for
1) helping the O6, and especially Jack, go back to 1977 by getting on Ajira Flight 316,
2) maintaining the first off-island Dharma station, the Lamp Post, and
3) helping her son invent a method of time travel just so he could go to the past to be killed by...her. All because it was supposed to happen this way.
And when we mention Ellie, we must also mention Charles Widmore, who we saw much more of this season. He is an arrogant teenager in 1954, an arrogant young man with a love of horseback riding, an arrogant older man who gets kicked off the Island after the Purge (I think?), and an arrogant modern-day old man who almost loses his daughter Penelope to Ben's vengence.
Aboard Ajira 316, we are introduced to two new characters: Cesar and Ilana. While Cesar didn't last (thanks, Ben), Ilana and another minor character, Bram, are certainly up to something. Ilana took Sayid into custody supposedly to bring him to Guam to face retribution for killing Peter Avellino, but we now suspect that it was just a ploy to get to the Island. She and Bram have a large metal crate that they have yet to open. Maybe tomorrow night... Many fans, including myself, are convinced that they are working for neither Ben nor Widmore, but are in fact the reconstituted Dharma Initiative.
Oh yes, Sayid. Yeah, uh, he tried to kill a kid.
In an effort to end the misery in his life that was Benjamin Linus, Sayid decided that if he killed Ben as a boy, he wouldn't grow up to become the monster that he is as an adult, and it would change everything. This, coupled with Jack's refusal to help save a dying boy Ben for the same reasons as Sayid had for shooting him, actually ended up making Ben who he is. His choice to let Ben die of his gunshot wound at the hands of Sayid forced Kate and Sawyer to bring Ben to the Others, where he was healed, but at the cost of his "innocence." Whatever that means...
To be healed, Ben was taken by Richard into an outer wall of a structure surrounding the Temple, and this place was one of several hieroglyphic-covered locations that we were shown this season. The others were the tunnels, the underground vent in the tunnels which Smokey emerges from, and the strange drainage pool that lies behind the secret door in the closet in Ben's house that he used to summon Smokey. And of course, we were also given a glimpse (finally!) of the pre-destruction four-toed statue, which fan-led internet research suspected was one of several possible Egyptian gods, especially because of the ankhs it is holding in each hand. We also saw that same ancient symbol on a necklace around Paul's neck after he was killed for having a picnic with Amy in Others' territory.
Speaking of dead people, we lost Cesar (we hardly knew ye) and Charlotte this season. Of course, Charlotte was far more noteable because we discovered that she was a child of Dharma, and because of her revelation that Dan had warned her as a child to leave the Island and never return. She came anyway. You could also say that Locke and Ben were both killed, but both managed to make a comeback in pretty dramatic ways.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, before we revel in the finale tomorrow night, I wanted to let you know that this blog will not end with the finale. Please keep checking the blog in the "off season." I will still be posting occasionally, whenever something interesting shows up on the internet, or if they have an online game this summer. I am also going to be doing "The Great LOST Rewatch" this summer; I will be watching every episode from the beginning, from Season 1 all the way through to tomorrow night's Season 5 finale, and I plan to blog about it. I am also toying with the idea of a podcast, but we'll see about that.
I also wanted to try to put things in perspective for a moment. As I mentioned at the start of this post, I am already saddened to think that we are this much closer to the end of this incredible television show. The writers and producers of LOST have managed to get me, a non-TV watcher, completely and utterly addicted to a television show. LOST is like no other, and there could never be another show like it. Keep this in mind: the next few months after tomorrow night will be long and difficult to sit through without new episodes, but this is the last-ever hiatus for LOST. The next break after a season of LOST will be the longest, because it will be forever. From now until then, I'm going to have to learn to just enjoy the last season, and not constantly pay attention to the countdown to the end.
I don't know if any of you are quite as taken with this show as I am. If you are, then you get what I'm talking about. Most people who are fans of the show will go on to other shows simply because there will be other shows on TV and they kind of look a little interesting. For me, though, this is THE SHOW; it don't get no better than this. Not since the original Twilight Zone, and the first season of Twin Peaks, have I enjoyed a TV show this much and this deeply, but those other shows pale in comparison to LOST. As I posted before the start of Season 5, this feels like a show that was created just for me. It's everything I could ever want to watch.
And I can't believe that at this time next year, it will all be over.
So, I hope you enjoy "The Incident," and I will leave you with these questions:
Will the bomb go off?
Will it not go off?
Is the bomb a red herring, and something completely out of left field will take place instead?
If it does go off, will they really erase the last three years? Will the show's creators really show them landing in LA in 2004, having never met each other, and walk off into the sunset...with an entire season left? I have to admit, I kind of like this idea - they could literally do anything in Season 6!
But what would they be going back to? Kate? Prison. Jack? The aftermath of his father's death and a divorce. Hurley? His self-described cursed money, and a possible return to Santa Rosa. Sayid? A search for Nadia. Sawyer? A likely fruitless search for "Tom Sawyer," the con man who caused his parents' death, and Locke's father. Sun? An unhappy marriage to a desperate, raging man. Jin? A dangerous, violent job pursued in an effort to please a father-in-law that will never be pleased. Desmond and Penny would never reunite. Charlie would still be strung out on heroin. Claire would give Aaron up for adoption and might regret it for the rest of her life. Michael would continue to struggle to connect with his son Walt and to make ends meet, and Walt? I'm really not sure. Maybe his powers would never be fully realized.
And then there's Locke. Locke would never find his purpose. He would remain in a wheelchair and work at a box company for the rest of his life. That may be the worst fate of all, especially for a man like Locke: to never realize your destiny.
Good Luck everyone, and Namaste!
On the eve of the finale of Season 5, I thought I'd share some thoughts about this past season, and look ahead to the final season of LOST. (If I'm already starting to get depressed about next year, what am I going to do when the show is actually over?)
This was easily the craziest season of LOST, and I loved every insane second of it. Even though it got heavily into the sci-fi and mythology elements of the show, it also at times felt like a return to classic, Season 1 LOST. Some of the flashbacks, especially the more recent ones, had a definite old school, character-focused LOST feel to them.
The season began by answering some questions that we were left with at the end of Season 4. Where did the island go? Well, the question was more like when did the island go. How did Locke get in the casket? What happened to the Losties off the island? Well, they basically ended up working their way back to the island.
The biggest revelation of Season 5 was the role of time travel in the show. We spent the beginning of the season "flashing" through time with several of the characters. We visited "current-day" 2007, 1954, an undefined ancient time where we saw the complete four-toed statue for the briefest of moments, and of course, 1974 and 1977, where our time-traveling Losties finally settled in with the Dharma Initiative.
Much of the season was devoted to telling us much more about the Dharma Initiative, and how our Losties were carefully (at least for a while) brought into the group in 1974 and 1977. We saw the Swan and the Orchid being built, apparently simultaneously. We met new characters like Phil, Horace, Amy, and the legendary Radzinsky...and now we wish we hadn't, I suspect. We also met Dr. Pierre Chang "in person" for the first time, who it turns out is Miles's father. We also met a man by the name of Jim LaFleur, who of course is really James Ford, who is otherwise known to us as Sawyer. Sawyer became a mastermind of ingratiating himself into the DI, even taking the leadership role of head of security, before things came crashing down due to one bad decision to act and not think first. And while Sawyer was in control, Jack was anything but. For the first time on the show, he wasn't trying to fix things, or lead, or force the issue; he was content to just be. After all he saw this season, especially with Locke, he finally decided to let things happen without his involvement. He was finally convinced of what Locke had been telling him for four seasons: let the Island handle things.
Speaking of Locke, there was quite a story going on off the island, too. We mainly saw Locke attempting to get the Oceanic 6 back to the island, which seemed like such an impossible task, but he did it. Some of them may have ended up in the 1970s, but he did it. And just as Richard told him (because Locke told Richard, because Richard told Locke, because Locke told Richard...), he had to die to do it. (Did he really, though? Why exactly did he have to die? Maybe we haven't seen the reason yet, but his death really had nothing to do with convincing the O6 to return, except for maybe Jack, who it seems is going to have great importance going into tomorrow night's finale.) Of course, Locke's death at the hands of Ben, and his subsequent resurrection upon returning to the Island was a huge development in the story this season. Just more proof that he really seems to be special to the Island.
We were introduced to "Jughead" - a hydrogen bomb that was left by the U.S. military in 1954 and was then placed in the tunnels under what is now the Dharma barracks. Obviously, we know now the importance of the Jughead in tomorrow's finale. It is figuratively and literally a bomb waiting to explode.
Another major player in Season 5 was Eloise Hawking. We saw her as a gun-toting 17-year old Other in 1954, a young mother of - SHOCKER! - Daniel Faraday, and an older, modern-day Mrs. Hawking. She is noteable for
1) helping the O6, and especially Jack, go back to 1977 by getting on Ajira Flight 316,
2) maintaining the first off-island Dharma station, the Lamp Post, and
3) helping her son invent a method of time travel just so he could go to the past to be killed by...her. All because it was supposed to happen this way.
And when we mention Ellie, we must also mention Charles Widmore, who we saw much more of this season. He is an arrogant teenager in 1954, an arrogant young man with a love of horseback riding, an arrogant older man who gets kicked off the Island after the Purge (I think?), and an arrogant modern-day old man who almost loses his daughter Penelope to Ben's vengence.
Aboard Ajira 316, we are introduced to two new characters: Cesar and Ilana. While Cesar didn't last (thanks, Ben), Ilana and another minor character, Bram, are certainly up to something. Ilana took Sayid into custody supposedly to bring him to Guam to face retribution for killing Peter Avellino, but we now suspect that it was just a ploy to get to the Island. She and Bram have a large metal crate that they have yet to open. Maybe tomorrow night... Many fans, including myself, are convinced that they are working for neither Ben nor Widmore, but are in fact the reconstituted Dharma Initiative.
Oh yes, Sayid. Yeah, uh, he tried to kill a kid.
In an effort to end the misery in his life that was Benjamin Linus, Sayid decided that if he killed Ben as a boy, he wouldn't grow up to become the monster that he is as an adult, and it would change everything. This, coupled with Jack's refusal to help save a dying boy Ben for the same reasons as Sayid had for shooting him, actually ended up making Ben who he is. His choice to let Ben die of his gunshot wound at the hands of Sayid forced Kate and Sawyer to bring Ben to the Others, where he was healed, but at the cost of his "innocence." Whatever that means...
To be healed, Ben was taken by Richard into an outer wall of a structure surrounding the Temple, and this place was one of several hieroglyphic-covered locations that we were shown this season. The others were the tunnels, the underground vent in the tunnels which Smokey emerges from, and the strange drainage pool that lies behind the secret door in the closet in Ben's house that he used to summon Smokey. And of course, we were also given a glimpse (finally!) of the pre-destruction four-toed statue, which fan-led internet research suspected was one of several possible Egyptian gods, especially because of the ankhs it is holding in each hand. We also saw that same ancient symbol on a necklace around Paul's neck after he was killed for having a picnic with Amy in Others' territory.
Speaking of dead people, we lost Cesar (we hardly knew ye) and Charlotte this season. Of course, Charlotte was far more noteable because we discovered that she was a child of Dharma, and because of her revelation that Dan had warned her as a child to leave the Island and never return. She came anyway. You could also say that Locke and Ben were both killed, but both managed to make a comeback in pretty dramatic ways.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, before we revel in the finale tomorrow night, I wanted to let you know that this blog will not end with the finale. Please keep checking the blog in the "off season." I will still be posting occasionally, whenever something interesting shows up on the internet, or if they have an online game this summer. I am also going to be doing "The Great LOST Rewatch" this summer; I will be watching every episode from the beginning, from Season 1 all the way through to tomorrow night's Season 5 finale, and I plan to blog about it. I am also toying with the idea of a podcast, but we'll see about that.
I also wanted to try to put things in perspective for a moment. As I mentioned at the start of this post, I am already saddened to think that we are this much closer to the end of this incredible television show. The writers and producers of LOST have managed to get me, a non-TV watcher, completely and utterly addicted to a television show. LOST is like no other, and there could never be another show like it. Keep this in mind: the next few months after tomorrow night will be long and difficult to sit through without new episodes, but this is the last-ever hiatus for LOST. The next break after a season of LOST will be the longest, because it will be forever. From now until then, I'm going to have to learn to just enjoy the last season, and not constantly pay attention to the countdown to the end.
I don't know if any of you are quite as taken with this show as I am. If you are, then you get what I'm talking about. Most people who are fans of the show will go on to other shows simply because there will be other shows on TV and they kind of look a little interesting. For me, though, this is THE SHOW; it don't get no better than this. Not since the original Twilight Zone, and the first season of Twin Peaks, have I enjoyed a TV show this much and this deeply, but those other shows pale in comparison to LOST. As I posted before the start of Season 5, this feels like a show that was created just for me. It's everything I could ever want to watch.
And I can't believe that at this time next year, it will all be over.
So, I hope you enjoy "The Incident," and I will leave you with these questions:
Will the bomb go off?
Will it not go off?
Is the bomb a red herring, and something completely out of left field will take place instead?
If it does go off, will they really erase the last three years? Will the show's creators really show them landing in LA in 2004, having never met each other, and walk off into the sunset...with an entire season left? I have to admit, I kind of like this idea - they could literally do anything in Season 6!
But what would they be going back to? Kate? Prison. Jack? The aftermath of his father's death and a divorce. Hurley? His self-described cursed money, and a possible return to Santa Rosa. Sayid? A search for Nadia. Sawyer? A likely fruitless search for "Tom Sawyer," the con man who caused his parents' death, and Locke's father. Sun? An unhappy marriage to a desperate, raging man. Jin? A dangerous, violent job pursued in an effort to please a father-in-law that will never be pleased. Desmond and Penny would never reunite. Charlie would still be strung out on heroin. Claire would give Aaron up for adoption and might regret it for the rest of her life. Michael would continue to struggle to connect with his son Walt and to make ends meet, and Walt? I'm really not sure. Maybe his powers would never be fully realized.
And then there's Locke. Locke would never find his purpose. He would remain in a wheelchair and work at a box company for the rest of his life. That may be the worst fate of all, especially for a man like Locke: to never realize your destiny.
Good Luck everyone, and Namaste!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
"The Island Told Me" - 5x15: Follow The Leader
I've had my big, fat drink. I watched the episode. I'm ready to share my reaction.
So here's my reaction:
What the f***?!?!
Locke wants to kill Jacob?
Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate left the island?
Dan is really, truly dead?
Jughead has been sitting under the Dharma Barracks all this time?
Kate vs. Jack?
I really loved this one, though there's something about it...I just can't get a handle on what exactly the story was. Locke finally arrives at the Others' camp to tell Richard to tell time-traveling Locke that he needs to die to get everyone to come back to the island, because, well, that's what happened to get him to where he is now. And then he gathers all of the Others up on a little jaunt to Jacob's...where Locke is planning to kill him.
Jack and Kate are reeling from Daniel's death, and continue the argument they began last episode, even after the Others discover them hiding in the woods and Eloise puts them in her tent; Kate believes that whatever happened, happened, and Jack is a Faraday devotee and believes that they can erase the past three years if they just follow Dan's notebook. Jack finally admits that maybe he was wrong about Locke after Kate points out how he is full of crazy and very John-sounding. Kate questions why Jack wants to forget their last three years together, with the stress on together, but Jack tells her that there's been enough bad times to outweigh the good. Kate is none too pleased about his take on things, and proceeds to indignantly stare at him for a few scenes. Eloise asks them to tell the truth about what Dan told her - are they really from the future? Jack (if I remember correctly) spills it, and they go to a pool in the jungle with Ellie, Richard, and some unfortunate other Others. Kate refuses to go for a swim in the pool and starts to walk away to the consternation of the Others there, but before they can shoot her for walking away with their Others secrets, a shot rings out. For a split-second, we genuinely believe that Kate is shot, but it's just random Sayid shooting the two unimportant Others to save Kate. Kate does what she does best and runs away, while Jack, Sayid, Ellie, and Richard dive down into the pool, under which is a tunnel to....the Tunnels. In the Tunnels, which it turns out run directly under the Barracks and appear to be the area that Ben fell into when he encountered Smokey, Ellie uncovers the Jughead, which has been sitting there since 1954.
Radzinsky is smacking James around, trying to get him to say where Kate and the Hostiles have gone. He ain't talking. When Horace tries to get Radzinsky to ease up, he repeatedly says that he is now in charge...and Horace says nothing in response. Juliet begs Radzinsky to stop, which gives Phil an idea about how to get Sawyer to talk: he punches Juliet in the face. Sawyer gets his pissed face on. Marvin Candle, after finding Hurley and Miles in the jungle, where they admit to him that they are a) from the future, b) that Miles is indeed his son, and c) that Dan was right about needing to evacuate the island (this was a claaaaassic Hurley scene!), busts in on the fun to tell them that the island must be evacuated. Sawyer tells him that they need to get the women and children on the sub, and if he and Juliet can have a spot on it, too, he will tell them what they want to know. Radzinsky hands him a Dharma notebook and tells him to draw a map to the Others.
Juliet and James are led in handcuffs to the sub, where Miles and Hurley are watching all of the Dharma women and children getting on board, including young Miles and his mother. Miles sees that his father didn't really "leave" them at all; demanding that they leave was to save them. As Sawyer gets in behind Juliet, he stops, looks out at the island, mutters "Good riddance," and climbs down into the sub. He and Juliet are sharing an "I love you" moment when who should show up? Of course - everyone's favorite buzzkill this season - Kate! The sub takes off for Ann Arbor.
I think that's about it. It's not that there wasn't a story, but it just covered a very brief period. Though in that brief period, we were set up well for next week's big two-hour finale.
So for this episode, this is what I'm thinking:
Kate is LAME. What's her deal now? The only reason she doesn't want Jack to follow The Dan Plan and set off the Jughead is not because scores of people will be killed, but because it will erase her time with Jack, a man who she basically abandoned off the island and who really wants nothing to do with her. I'm sure she is at least one of the reasons why he wants to land in LA in 2004. When she gets into the sub with Juliet and Sawyer was just the icing on the lame cake.
I. Want. To. Kill. Radzinsky. With. My. Bare. Hands. Repeatedly, if possible. In fact, I'd kill him, carry his body to the Temple to resurrect him, and then kill him again.
Same goes for Phil. I'm content to have Sawyer and Juliet go to the "real world"...except that Sawyer won't be able to inflict lots and lots of pain on Phil before he kills him.
So Dan really is dead. They did the closing-of-the-eyes thing, so that's that. I can only hope he appears in flashbacks somehow. Otherwise, we've lost a really great character, played by a really great actor.
Ellie is pregnant with Dan when she kills him! If you listen carefully, when Jack and Kate are discovered spying on the Others and Ellie agrees to take them to the pool, Charles talks to her and mentions something about her "condition" while either he or she has a hand on her stomach.
I had no idea how Locke knew when his time-traveling self was going to appear by the drug plane...until he said, "the island told me." I get it, but I don't. Is the Island constantly talking to him? Did it "download" everything he needed to know all at once at some point? When? Or has Locke traveled more than we have been shown? Or has he known much more than he's let on all this time?
Tunnels! Underwater! Under the Barracks! This has been loooooong-theorized by fans - is this where the whispers are coming from? We've also seen this ancient underwater connection with the Smoke Monster - remember that to summon it, Ben needed to pull the plug on some sort of water pool.
Sayid returns from just aimlessly running around the jungle apparently. I have a feeling that he may not have much longer on the show...
How big IS that sub, anyway? I guess there probably aren't that many women and children in Dharma.
Why is every commercial during LOST about time travel? Tonight we had the consistently-annoying Mac commercials, specifically the one with a time machine, and a groovy Pepsi "Throwback" commercial.
And finally, my biggest "What the eff?" is why Locke is leading the Others to kill Jacob. Where did this come from? Why does he want to kill him (or it, or whatever Jacob is)? I have two theories on this, and neither one is all that good. One is that John wants to take total control of the Island because he feels that he is the chosen one. He feels that the Island has been calling him since childhood, and this is his time. The second theory, which I like a little better, is that Locke is being directed by the Island itself to kill Jacob. Maybe Jacob has been a bad element on the Island, and it needs Locke to get rid of Jacob. That's why it went as far as to raise him from the dead, something that even Ben was shocked by.
So there you have it, "Follow The Leader," the last episode before the finale. I've been thinking alot about how much I'm going to miss LOST at this time next year...but I'll save that for another time. For now, we are set up for next week. What will they do with the Jughead? Will Dan's plan work? If it does, will this season end with Oceanic 815 landing in LA on September 22, 2004, and our Losties getting off with no knowledge of each other? What will that mean for Season 6? Will Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate arrive in Ann Arbor, and will we see Dharma Headquarters? What will Marvin Candle, Hurley, Miles do? Will we finally see Jacob? So many things to think about.
That's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed the episode, and as always, I'd love to hear your comments here. Until next time, Good Luck, and Namaste!
Edit: Oh, and I forgot - Richard says in the opening scene that he saw all of the Dharma Losties die? As the kids like to say, WTF?!?!
So here's my reaction:
What the f***?!?!
Locke wants to kill Jacob?
Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate left the island?
Dan is really, truly dead?
Jughead has been sitting under the Dharma Barracks all this time?
Kate vs. Jack?
I really loved this one, though there's something about it...I just can't get a handle on what exactly the story was. Locke finally arrives at the Others' camp to tell Richard to tell time-traveling Locke that he needs to die to get everyone to come back to the island, because, well, that's what happened to get him to where he is now. And then he gathers all of the Others up on a little jaunt to Jacob's...where Locke is planning to kill him.
Jack and Kate are reeling from Daniel's death, and continue the argument they began last episode, even after the Others discover them hiding in the woods and Eloise puts them in her tent; Kate believes that whatever happened, happened, and Jack is a Faraday devotee and believes that they can erase the past three years if they just follow Dan's notebook. Jack finally admits that maybe he was wrong about Locke after Kate points out how he is full of crazy and very John-sounding. Kate questions why Jack wants to forget their last three years together, with the stress on together, but Jack tells her that there's been enough bad times to outweigh the good. Kate is none too pleased about his take on things, and proceeds to indignantly stare at him for a few scenes. Eloise asks them to tell the truth about what Dan told her - are they really from the future? Jack (if I remember correctly) spills it, and they go to a pool in the jungle with Ellie, Richard, and some unfortunate other Others. Kate refuses to go for a swim in the pool and starts to walk away to the consternation of the Others there, but before they can shoot her for walking away with their Others secrets, a shot rings out. For a split-second, we genuinely believe that Kate is shot, but it's just random Sayid shooting the two unimportant Others to save Kate. Kate does what she does best and runs away, while Jack, Sayid, Ellie, and Richard dive down into the pool, under which is a tunnel to....the Tunnels. In the Tunnels, which it turns out run directly under the Barracks and appear to be the area that Ben fell into when he encountered Smokey, Ellie uncovers the Jughead, which has been sitting there since 1954.
Radzinsky is smacking James around, trying to get him to say where Kate and the Hostiles have gone. He ain't talking. When Horace tries to get Radzinsky to ease up, he repeatedly says that he is now in charge...and Horace says nothing in response. Juliet begs Radzinsky to stop, which gives Phil an idea about how to get Sawyer to talk: he punches Juliet in the face. Sawyer gets his pissed face on. Marvin Candle, after finding Hurley and Miles in the jungle, where they admit to him that they are a) from the future, b) that Miles is indeed his son, and c) that Dan was right about needing to evacuate the island (this was a claaaaassic Hurley scene!), busts in on the fun to tell them that the island must be evacuated. Sawyer tells him that they need to get the women and children on the sub, and if he and Juliet can have a spot on it, too, he will tell them what they want to know. Radzinsky hands him a Dharma notebook and tells him to draw a map to the Others.
Juliet and James are led in handcuffs to the sub, where Miles and Hurley are watching all of the Dharma women and children getting on board, including young Miles and his mother. Miles sees that his father didn't really "leave" them at all; demanding that they leave was to save them. As Sawyer gets in behind Juliet, he stops, looks out at the island, mutters "Good riddance," and climbs down into the sub. He and Juliet are sharing an "I love you" moment when who should show up? Of course - everyone's favorite buzzkill this season - Kate! The sub takes off for Ann Arbor.
I think that's about it. It's not that there wasn't a story, but it just covered a very brief period. Though in that brief period, we were set up well for next week's big two-hour finale.
So for this episode, this is what I'm thinking:
Kate is LAME. What's her deal now? The only reason she doesn't want Jack to follow The Dan Plan and set off the Jughead is not because scores of people will be killed, but because it will erase her time with Jack, a man who she basically abandoned off the island and who really wants nothing to do with her. I'm sure she is at least one of the reasons why he wants to land in LA in 2004. When she gets into the sub with Juliet and Sawyer was just the icing on the lame cake.
I. Want. To. Kill. Radzinsky. With. My. Bare. Hands. Repeatedly, if possible. In fact, I'd kill him, carry his body to the Temple to resurrect him, and then kill him again.
Same goes for Phil. I'm content to have Sawyer and Juliet go to the "real world"...except that Sawyer won't be able to inflict lots and lots of pain on Phil before he kills him.
So Dan really is dead. They did the closing-of-the-eyes thing, so that's that. I can only hope he appears in flashbacks somehow. Otherwise, we've lost a really great character, played by a really great actor.
Ellie is pregnant with Dan when she kills him! If you listen carefully, when Jack and Kate are discovered spying on the Others and Ellie agrees to take them to the pool, Charles talks to her and mentions something about her "condition" while either he or she has a hand on her stomach.
I had no idea how Locke knew when his time-traveling self was going to appear by the drug plane...until he said, "the island told me." I get it, but I don't. Is the Island constantly talking to him? Did it "download" everything he needed to know all at once at some point? When? Or has Locke traveled more than we have been shown? Or has he known much more than he's let on all this time?
Tunnels! Underwater! Under the Barracks! This has been loooooong-theorized by fans - is this where the whispers are coming from? We've also seen this ancient underwater connection with the Smoke Monster - remember that to summon it, Ben needed to pull the plug on some sort of water pool.
Sayid returns from just aimlessly running around the jungle apparently. I have a feeling that he may not have much longer on the show...
How big IS that sub, anyway? I guess there probably aren't that many women and children in Dharma.
Why is every commercial during LOST about time travel? Tonight we had the consistently-annoying Mac commercials, specifically the one with a time machine, and a groovy Pepsi "Throwback" commercial.
And finally, my biggest "What the eff?" is why Locke is leading the Others to kill Jacob. Where did this come from? Why does he want to kill him (or it, or whatever Jacob is)? I have two theories on this, and neither one is all that good. One is that John wants to take total control of the Island because he feels that he is the chosen one. He feels that the Island has been calling him since childhood, and this is his time. The second theory, which I like a little better, is that Locke is being directed by the Island itself to kill Jacob. Maybe Jacob has been a bad element on the Island, and it needs Locke to get rid of Jacob. That's why it went as far as to raise him from the dead, something that even Ben was shocked by.
So there you have it, "Follow The Leader," the last episode before the finale. I've been thinking alot about how much I'm going to miss LOST at this time next year...but I'll save that for another time. For now, we are set up for next week. What will they do with the Jughead? Will Dan's plan work? If it does, will this season end with Oceanic 815 landing in LA on September 22, 2004, and our Losties getting off with no knowledge of each other? What will that mean for Season 6? Will Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate arrive in Ann Arbor, and will we see Dharma Headquarters? What will Marvin Candle, Hurley, Miles do? Will we finally see Jacob? So many things to think about.
That's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed the episode, and as always, I'd love to hear your comments here. Until next time, Good Luck, and Namaste!
Edit: Oh, and I forgot - Richard says in the opening scene that he saw all of the Dharma Losties die? As the kids like to say, WTF?!?!