Builder Bob

Sayid at the habitat for humanity where he was working when Locke went to see him

Where Sayid is working when Widmore had his spy take pictures of Sayid

Did he make any progress? Sayid - Worst Construction Worker Evah!

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

Sawed Off Shotguns Look A Lot Like Flashlights

This episode starts with Caesar snooping through what at first looked to be some sort of office. The date on the Life magazine was April 19, 1954 a reference to the meeting of Locke and Alpert from the Jughead episode. Caesar finds maps and a sawed off shotgun. Illana comes in and this group of crash survivors start the pattern of lies all over again. She tells him about a man in a suit. We realize we are on the island where the Hydra station is and it almost looked like the plane was fine. Even though they talk about “the crash” maybe it was the runway that actually saved them from crashing. A quick note about the scene between Caesar and Illana - this originally was to be the first scene we saw in the first episode of the season. In a quick last minute decision, Damon and Carlton decided to not put the two new characters on the Nikki and Paolo course and saved their introduction for later. Good decision!

Locke is added to the “Mystical Character That Introduces Themselves After a Dramatic Removal of an Oversized Hoody” (i.e. Obi Wan, Gandalf, and Spock) list. The shot of Locke standing on the beach looking out at the other island (“his island”) was gorgeous. It almost evoked a feeling that Locke knew he wasn’t back on his island, yet. Locke begins his second trip to the island much the same way he did the last time; he eats a mango and then tells his “Big Secret” to a complete stranger.

I Have A Bone (sticking out of my leg) To Pick With You

Illana tells Locke that the pilot and some woman took off in one of the pontoon boats. Frank is alive and I believe the woman will turn out to be Sun. Not only is Locke alive on the island again but it seems his leg is healed as well. Also it seems that Locke is really alive and not the creepy alive that we see with Christian. Then we begin the episode flashbacks to show what happened on Locke’s "get everyone back to the island reunion tour". Locke turns the wheel and ends up in the Tunisian desert. The wormhole magic churned his tummy and made him puke. Yes, now that you mention it, the moment did remind me of when Dr. Manhattan teleports Silk Specter to the arid wastes of Mars and she tosses up her lunch. And yes, that was a Watchmen reference, wanna make something of it? Locke sees the camera and knows he is being watched, but by whom? It takes a while for the truck to go get him so whoever was watching knew he was going to be there but didn’t know exactly when. They take Locke to a makeshift hospital and he has a piece of wood shoved into his mouth (reminded me of Boone’s leg being reset as well as Sawyer getting the shot). I attempted to translate what Locke said while he was muffled by the piece of wood and it sounded something like: “Hey, wait a minute, is there a real doctor here? Where am I, what are you doing? Ouch this hurts. Oh, tastes like Sanskrit.” All the while I kept thinking “just pass out already” this was much worse than watching Boone get his leg reset by Jack. Funny that Boone was a sacrifice that the island demanded it ends up so was Locke, and they both needed to have their leg reset, painfully. As Locke lost consciousness he sees Abbadon standing behind a sheer curtain watching the events.

How Long Has It Been Since I We Last Met?

When Locke woke up with a cast on his leg I counted real quick and I came up with four toes! Widmore is at Locke’s bedside and he reintroduces himself to John. Widmore is now 71 if you do the math. In a few short minutes he explains a few things to John. Tunisia is the exit spot for the frozen donkey wheel (guess becausecause it is the exact opposite side of the Earth where the island is), Ben pulled a Jacob on his Esau and tricked him into leaving (that’s Biblical dude!), and took control of the island. Apparently Widmore was the leader and according to him he led his people peacefully protecting the island for over thirty years. Locke offers the most feeblest attempt at a lie that I have seen from him yet when he tried to tell Charles that he is not trying to bring the O6 back. Charles tells Locke he is going to help Locke bring them back. There is a war coming and Widmore wants to be sure that the right side wins. I wonder if he is talking about the purge or the incident or something else. Locke doesn’t ask questions about the war that is coming but then he has always been a sucker for the “father figure batting his eyelashes while calling John special trick” and it worked for Widmore here as well.



It was a nice touch the TPTB slipped in with Charles giving John his Jeremy Bentham identification. Might the name change indicate Charles’ motives? . The real Bentham and Locke were ideological opposites. Bentham considered Locke's belief in natural law “nonsense“. Is that how Widmore views Locke? As silly nonsense? A fool? If so, then Widmore is a jerk. OR… Bentham pioneered a school of thought call Utilitarianism, which evaluates the morality of an action based on the amount of good that said action generates for the most amount of people. Ergo, Widmore is using Locke but to facilitate a greater good. If so, then Widmore is a good guy. OR… After he died, Bentham's corpse, per his instructions, was entombed inside a cabinet called an Auto Icon. Whenever his followers gathered, they were supposed to wheel him out so he could hang with them. Creepy? Oh, yeah. Application to Locke? Widmore was lying when he told Locke he didn't want him to die. He wanted Locke to wind up in a box. Meaning: The Coffin. Or maybe Jacob's cabin! After all, isn't that ghost shack basically a rustic extrapolation of Bentham's Auto-Icon, a vehicle that allows this ''Jacob'' i.e., Locke to haunt the Island? Maybe this is the ''destiny'' Locke is being set up for: An eternity of ''Help me'' flickering. If so, … I don’t know what the hell that means. Charles tells John that the phone has a direct connect to him by just pushing 2-3. Charles also offers and explanation for the freighter (did you believe him?) and tells John one last time that the island needs him. One last thing to notice about this scene was how unhappy Locke is to see yet another wheelchair.

Do You Know The Way To San Jose … Err, Santa Domingo?

Sayid is doing his part with habitat for humanity and he knows Spanish. Silly Iraqi, who do you think you are, Jin? Give Locke credit for not going the old John Locke route of being all crazy and demanding to Sayid, which wouldn’t have worked either so this scene could have been summed up in three lines:
John-”Sayid, we have to go back to the island.”
Sayid-”No.”
John-”Okay, well go wash your hair or something, bye.”

On to play “Where’s Walt-o?”. Walt tells Locke that he had a dream of him on the island wearing a suit. He was surrounded by people who were trying to hurt him. This was a little bit of what we had already seen at the beginning of the episode. What about the part where people are trying to hurt him? We still don’t know how good Walt’s powers are or their extent and I certainly hope this isn’t the final goodbye from Walt. The rest of his story could be explained by a third party and we could never see Walt again but I hope we see Walt once again and maybe on the island. Locke couldn’t bring himself to tell Walt about his father and he felt the boy had been through enough and didn’t try to recruit him. Notice that Abbadon comments “Boy gotten big .”. Abbadon has seen Walt before but not for a while. The scene ends with Ben watching all of this go down and he don’t look like a happy camper.

Something Sphinx At Santa Rosa

Hurley has a watercolor painting of the Sphinx in front of him when Locke goes to see him. What does that mean? A Sphinx was the threshold guardian/protector you know, like The Others, charged with protecting the Island or Smokey protecting the Temple. The word ''sphinx'' means ''to strangle.'' What could that foreshadow? Hurley would have been fine if it turned out Locke was dead and he was a ghost visiting him. Hurley freaks when he realizes Locke is alive and he is even more jumpy when he sees Abbadon watching them. Once again Hurley would rather choose insanity instead of leaving his comfort zone. After the two meet, Abbadon tells Locke exactly what he does for Charles. “helps people get to where they need to get to.” Anybody else see the ferryman on the river Styx when Abbadon tells Locke all of this? Next stop Kate who feels some anguish when Locke asks her if she cares about the people left back on the island. She responds by asking John if he has ever been in love. She thinks about Sawyer and the next thing she does is ask Locke about being in love. Locke said he had been in love, once, but it ended because he was angry and obsessed. Kate puts another nail in her coffin with me when she stabs at Locke with “Look how far you’ve come.” Bitch, when are they killing her off?

Interlude: A Cemetery, A Death, A Car Accident, A Set Up?

Locke is told that Helen had died of a brain aneurysm. Notice her day of death was 4/8. Or so Abbadon said. Do you believe him? Consider: What if Team Widmore faked that grave and fabricated that story to keep Locke on task and make sure he had no possible motivation for wanting to back out and not go back to the Island?

Then, Abbadon got gunned down and we quickly discover Locke can’t drive for shit with a cast on his leg. He wound up in Jack's hospital, and he awoke under Jack's woozy-boozy-hateful gaze. How many hospitals have we seen Locke in? Locke pulls out the old crazy demanding John Locke on Jack and we get another Man of Science/Man of Faith debate for the thousandth time! Jack plays the age card (snap!) Locke plays the dead father says hello card (Oh SNAP!!)

It Was Ben Linus … In The Hotel Room … With An Extension Chord

Back at John’s seedy motel room, he writes his Dear Jack suicide letter and prepares to hang himself. Locke had been totally destroyed by going 0 for 6 on his back-to-the-Island recruitment drive. Each encounter had chipped away at his faith and self-esteem, so much so that by the end, you got the sense that Locke saw himself the way everyone else saw him. A failure, which is exactly what happens in Don Quixote. For a moment he thinks about calling Charles but decides to throw the phone in the trash. I will use my powers of premonition and see in a future episode that phone rings and isn’t answered. Widmore calls Eloise Hawking and she goes over and finds John and the suicide note that she ends up giving to Jack. Anyway, Ben gets there and tells John he is trying to protect him. I don’t know how to feel about this scene. Do I believe what Ben says about Widmore or not? The great snake of LOST rose to the occasion as he coaxed Locke off the ledge. ''You have no idea how important you are,'' he said. ''You've got too much work to do.'' Ben knows he cannot allow John to die without his faith intact. Our rooting interest here was pretty complicated, in a marvelously ironic way. We knew that Locke actually needed to die to fulfill his Island-saving destiny, but Ben succeeded, and managed to talk Locke off his cross...and then he went and made good on Hurley's subliminal foreshadowing and sphinx ed him to death with the extension cord. But why? Why save him, then brutally kill him? Does the Island's resurrection power not work on suicides? Was Ben actually doing Locke a favor by murdering him, i.e., helping him fulfill the requirement of dying in such a way that wouldn't deny him a shot at living again in paradise?

Ben is surprised to hear that Jin is alive. He’s even more surprised to hear Locke mention Eloise Hawking. The words ''Eloise Hawking'' seemed to function almost like a psychotic trigger, and Ben seemed to snap, either out of reflex or some quick realization that he had no choice: He had to kill Locke; he could not allow him to meet Ms. Hawking. Then Ben does a quick crime scene cleanup, tells John’s corpse he will miss him, takes Jin’s ring, and leaves. So we know Ben was lying when he told Jack he didn’t know Locke’s death was a suicide. We also know why Ben was so eager to know what the note said because Ben didn’t know it existed. He was interested because he wanted to know if it said anything about Widmore or Ben. Ben’s power lies in knowing exactly what everyone else knows and knowing what it all means. It is interesting to note that the episode is titled The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, a person created by Widmore and perhaps it points to the fact that Locke was not Locke off of the island. On the island Locke is the destiny driven boar hunting man of purpose. Off the island he is a doofus, always has always will be. Jeremy Bentham died when Locke stepped off of the table edge. John Locke died when Ben strangled him. In short, Locke needed to die - but not by his own hand. There are rules that need to be followed, and Ben is fully versed in them. Benjamin Linus knows the way it works. So does Charles Widmore, which may be why he didn't want Locke back on the island despite all the things he said about helping him get there. Ben knew that if Locke had died faithless, or by suicide, he might not have been resurrected. That's the single most important part of his visit to the hotel room.

Meanwhile, Back In The Jungle…

Locke tells Caesar a little bit about the DI and that he had been on the island before for over 100 days. Caesar tells Locke about the really big guy with curly hair who disappeared when the plane started to shake. He also mentions the white light and says they saw other people disappear as well. Caesar then takes Locke to an area where they are keeping the people that were injured. The big ending reveal is Locke sees Ben who also made his way back to the island.

Another Thought On Ben Killing Locke

Don't fall into the trap - don't think for one minute that the mention of Ms. Hawkings name suddenly 'changed Ben's mind' or gave him stranglerrific ideas. Ben didn't just happen to have a spray-bottle of bleach and some green latex gloves on him, nor did he stop at the 24-hr Quick mart to pick them up afterward. You can bet your ass that everything he does is coldly calculated, and Ben already had that stuff when he showed up. He knew he'd have to kill Locke just as certainly as he knew he had to make it look like a suicide. Do you think Ben wiped his fingerprints from the extension cord and bleached the room to avoid being caught by the cops? No, he needed the newspapers to reflect that Jeremy Bentham had taken his own life. This got Jack to the funeral, but more importantly it served to let Charles Widmore think he'd succeeded in driving Locke to suicide. Sneaky shit? Yup. That's Benjamin Linus.

Finally, I also think Ben was telling the truth when he told Locke that Widmore was using him. His words here were frantic and strained, his whole demeanor was a lot different than the rest of his conversation with John. Of course, Ben needs to stop telling people that Widmore is 'extremely dangerous' and start telling them WHY he is. That might kind of, like, help him gain some credibility or something. But doing that would give us the same information by default, and the writers probably don't want to spring that one on us just yet. I still keep putting myself in Ben's shoes though, imagining how frustrating it must be to have to do all this seemingly evil shit in order to 'get people where they need to be', all for the good of a cause we have yet to finally see. Ben is the ultimate Abbadon.

Another Theory About The People On Flight 815 We Didn’t See

Ben realized that Locke's death was necessary, the fact that Locke knew about Hawking may or may not have triggered this realization. Ms. Hawking is the one who tells people how to get back to the island. Ben figured that in order for Locke to know who Ms. Hawking was, Jacob/Richard/Christian must have talked to him. This is not the first time that Ms. Hawking has helped to organize a flight that was supposed to emulate an earlier one. 815 was NOT the original flight, but simply one of several that have crashed or landed on the island throughout history. It would be interesting to see the passenger list or to see who was on the flight that they didn’t show us. Or even the ones that suddenly disappeared in a flash of white light. On flight 815, Christian Shepard had to go back in a coffin, (I wouldn’t be surprised to see an episode where we see someone sell Jack the white pair of tennis shoes that he puts on Christian, I wonder who they belonged to?) and was resurrected on the island. Ben must have known this, or known that it had happened to someone before (Jacob? Richard? Ben himself?), and realized that if the island wanted Locke to see Eloise, he must be playing the role of the dead leader on this particular instance of the flight. Widmore probably knew this too, and wanted Locke to live because he doesn't really want Locke to be the leader; he just wants Locke to help him become leader again by gathering up all the ones who left for him, which also explains why Abbadon was only concerned about getting everyone together, and didn't really seem to care about Locke's personal life. Ben knows that Locke could not know about Ms. Hawking unless Jacob/the island told him, and that if Ms. Hawking is involved, someone special has to be dead because they will be returning on one of the flights that is determined by Ms. Hawking at the Lamp Post station. Obviously, this person is John Locke. Ben wasn't trying to get rid of Locke completely, as he is sure to bring Locke on the plane and seems to know that he will come to life on the island.

Polls

A nice picture from season 1

Another from season 1 from a deleted scene

One last pic from a deleted scene from season 1

Just a quick post to let everyone know that on the side over there >>> I have put a weekly LOST poll. Make sure you vote and we will have a new poll after this weeks episode. Thanks to Dark UFO for the pics.

One Week Hiatus

According to ABC.com LOST will take a 1 week hiatus after next weeks episode "LaFleur". They will repeat the "LaFleur" episode in the week they are off and apparently they will only sir one episode that week. "LaFleur" by the way is supposed to be a huge Sawyer episode. Yeah man crush!

Lost The Musical

Make Your Own Kind Of Music by Mamma Cass Elliot may be my second favorite LOST song. My own version of time travelling all the way back to season 2 premier episode whe we didn't know who Desmond was. Yet.

Dead or Alive?

I have to give The Finkmaster some credit on this one. Take a look at John Locke in the coffin at Hoffs-Drawler:



And now look at him in the coffin in the meat cooler at Simon's Butcher Shop:



Do dead bodies grow 5 O'clock shadows? Something else I noticed but just wrote off as "well, they just couldn't that's why" was wouldn't rigor mortis have set in by now on Locke's body and if so how was Jack so easily able to bend Locke's legs to get the shoes on? Apparently rigor mortis also wears off after a while so maybe that explains it something called resolution of mortis. This is either a continuity mistake or Locke isn't dead in that coffin.

The most convincing evidence is still to come!

New Dharma Logo

Perusing the boards out there (and there are a lot of them, believe me!) there are many folks wondering about Jin's Dharma suit specifically which symbol is on it. Take anther look:


Seems to be the same one Sawyer is seen in here:


Since Sawyer's says LeFleur I wonder what Jin's says?

427 (316 after inflation)

Jack’s statement “We have to go back!” carried some weight in this episode in a sort of tongue and cheek kind of way. We did go back, all the way back to the first episode. Once again Jack wakes up on the island wearing similar clothes that he had on in the pilot episode. We have the same scene of his eye opening looking up at the sky. The first thing I noticed was the difference in the reaction of the island to Jack being there. Remember how still the trees were when he woke up the first time on the island? Almost how people would be upon finding a stranger lying in their backyard, just standing over the body staring down at the new interloper. This time the trees are moving in the wind, almost dancing, (perhaps with joy) that at long last, Jack has returned. This time Jack is uninjured when he wakes up on the island and he doesn’t have any little bottles of vodka with him either. What he does have is a torn piece of paper with the words “I wish” written on it. He quickly drops the piece of paper when he hears Hurley calling for help off in the distance. Why does Hurley have a guitar case with him in the lagoon? Hurley continues to flail away as Jack tells him “We can stand.”. The two of them then see Kate lying on some rocks.



We are then taken back 46 hours earlier to the meeting at the church. They are lead underneath the church and there is yet another wheel to turn to open a huge blast type Dharma hatch door. We even get the squeaking hinge noise. How many times have we heard that sound? Inside there is a large Jerry Lewis telethon tote board of numbers turning like the numbers did inside the Swan hatch. The look on Ben’s face seems to say he hasn’t seen this place before. When Jack asks him if he knew about this place Ben says that he didn’t. Jack asks Ms. Hawking if he is telling the truth to which she responds “Probably not.”. She is trying to get the point across to Ben that this isn’t about him anymore. He even gets a look on his face as if to say “Damn, she just went and blew up my spot with the quickness and shit.” Eloise tells the group that this station was called the Lamp Post. I have more to say on that later. Jack sees a picture on the chalkboard taken by the U.S. Army dated September 23, 1954. Probably the same group of soldiers that Alpert tells Locke he tried to get to leave and then had to kill. But how did the picture get there? The blond girl Daniel explains what to do with the Jughead bomb may have been Eloise Hawkins and she took it with her when she made her way off of the island.

It is explained, rather quickly, that the Lamp Post was built by the Dharma initiative over a unique pocket of electromagnetic energy. It is connected to similar pockets all over the world. This is evidence that their could be other Dharma stations throughout the globe. Who is the “very clever fellow” that built the pendulum? Will we ever know? My early prediction is Marvin Candle or whatever name you want to know him as or possibly Alvar Hanso himself. The island is always moving, and that is why the survivors were never rescued. So the island wasn’t really cloaked or is that considered to be the cloaking? The equations tell where the island will be at a certain point in time. I need some clarification on this one; a point in time meaning it will be here at 1:30 tomorrow or it will be there March 18, 1982? My head is starting to hurt again. Desmond has had enough and berates Jack and the others for trying to go back willingly. He delivers his message from Daniel to Hawking. She tells Desmond that the island is not done with him yet. I heard a bit truth in Desmond’s words when he told Jack that they are all being used as pieces in a game being played. Desmond says he is done with the island and leaves. The episode title is explained as Hawking tells Jack that Ajira airlines flight 316 is the flight they will have to be on in order to go back to the island. That also connects us to the water bottle we saw in the pontoon boat a few episodes ago. Anybody now think Juliette was shooting at the people that are there to rescue them? They are told that they have to recreate the events that brought them to the island originally as best they can or the outcome could be unpredictable. Ms. Hawking then tells Jack after he asks her if that is all; “No Jack, that’s not all, at least not for you.”.

S gives Jack a letter that turns out to be Locke’s suicide note. Locke is going to be a proxy for Christian in order to help them get back to the island. Jack has to give something to John that belonged to his father. As Jack wavers, she tells him; “That is why it’s called a leap of faith.”, which recalls something Locke told Jack when he tried to convince him to push the button. Something Locke got from Helen outside of Cooper’s house. I have to give some credit to Sparky since he brought to my attention that you can spot a Virgin Mary statue, similar to the ones that Charlie had on the island filled with heroin, inside Hawking's office.

Meanwhile back in the church Ben is saying his prayers and lighting another candle. Ben tells Jack about Thomas the Apostle. “Doubting Thomas” as he was to be called was a direct comparison to Jack and his need to be convinced. Ben tells Jack that “We’re all convinced sooner or later.”. Ben leaves to go make good on a promise he made to an old friend. “A loose end that needs to be tied up.” he describes it.

Jack goes to a bar to have a drink and gets a phone call. At the bar Jack's face is split in half by blue and yellow light symbolizing his internal struggle to believe what Eloise has told him. The phone call is from an assisted living home where Jack is told “this is the fourth time he has tried to leave”. Jack goes to see his grandfather Ray, who likes to wonder away. Here is a scene that is used as a bridge in two ways. It is used to further convince Jack that nothing is a coincidence as he finds a pair of his father’s shoes in the suitcase his grandfather had packed. This will fill in as the item Jack needs to give to Locke. Jack tells his grandfather he is going to a place better than this. After Jack gets daddy a new pair of shoes, he goes home, grabs himself a bottle of something and hears a suspicious noise. Notice that Jack made two attempts to drink but neither time was he “allowed” to have the drink.

The noise turns out to be Kate. A very weird scene plays out between them as she tells Jack she is going with him back to the island. Jack asks where Aaron is and Kate warns him that he is never to ask her about Aaron again if he wants her to go with him. I’m hoping that she gave Aaron to Claire’s mum. I don’t want to think about any other theory especially the one that entails her killing him. She didn’t kill him, Kate’s not that horrible so stop it, jeez! Afterwards, a very uncomfortable make out session ensues. In the morning Jack and Kate make nice over some coffee and some orange juice. How does Kate like her coffee? With Sawyer, of course. Jack explains the pair of shoes to Kate and it gives us the second bridge that the shoes create. We know why Christian has on a pair of white tennis shoes when we see him on the island and later in Jack’s office off of the island. The phone rings and Kate leaves and tells Jack she will see him at the airport. Ben calls Jack and tells him he got a little sidetracked but fails to leave out the part where he got all messed up. Ben appears to be at a marina and why would he be there? Why, to kill Penny of course. If he did or not will surely be shown later but I got money on yes, he did kill Penny. That would be the inspiration Desmond would need to go back to the island. Do we see Desmond banging on Hawking’s church door in a future episode to get the bearings he will need to follow to get back to the island? Of course he will have to sail there in his boat if he is to recreate the set of circumstances that brought him to the island in the first place.

Back to the phone call, Ben tells Jack he will have to go to Simon’s Butcher Shop and get Locke’s body. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of John Locke. John almost looks like he is smiling when Jack is putting Christian’s shoes on his feet. Jack tells Locke’s corpse that what he is doing is even crazier than he ever was. He gives John his suicide note back and tells him that he has heard everything he has to say. As he closes the coffin lid he tells Locke to "rest in peace", which I don't think Locke is ready to do, just yet.

A quick question, how long do you think all of this would have taken if we didn’t have an end date for the show? A lot longer than it has taken this season, that's for sure. At the airport Kate shows up very incognito. Remember she is not supposed to be leave the country as per her plea agreement. A new character, Caesar, gives Jack his condolences after Jack checks in at the airport. Jack says he is a friend of John Locke, remember he told the funeral director he was neither when asked if he was friend or family back at Hoffs-Drawler. Sun arrives next and together she and Jack see Sayid being escorted by a US Marshall. Hurley is reading a comic “Y: The Last Man” written by Brian K. Vaughan, a regular writer of LOST, the most recent episode being The Little Prince. Hurley has bought all of the remaining 78 seats on the plane in an attempt to not get any other people involved in the plan to go back to the island.

Watch the look of horror when Sayid sees Jack make his way onto the plane. Then watch him when he sees Ben getting on the plane. Sayid knows the deal. Hurley balks his displeasure when he sees Ben, who asks Hurley how he knew about the flight which is a good question. Since Hurley has a guitar case with him I am assuming that there is a guitar in it. I believe Hurley received a jail house visit from ghost Charlie who told Hurley that he has to go back to the island and it has to be on flight 316. The flight attendant gives Locke’s suicide letter back to Jack, I guess reading it is something Jack is supposed to do. Ben is still a cold hearted bastard when he asks Jack “Who care?” when Jack asks about the rest of the passengers on the flight. Jack makes his way up to Kate after the captain turns off the fasten seat belts sign. Kate makes us all believe that she is in fact going back for Sawyer when she tells Jack that just because they are all on the plane it doesn’t mean they are together. Guess Jack has made his last visit to Kate's playground.

"This is your Captain, Frank Lapidus." Wholly crap! Did you see that one coming? Nice detail the produces put in there because they didn‘t have to get Jeff Fahey to reprise his role but they went the extra mile and there he is. Frank gives us the episodes best line after he sees the rest of the group on the plane. “We’re not going to Guam, are we?” he asks Jack. Lapidus cleaned up his act and has been back to flying for 8 months.

Ben is seen reading Ulysses which has a hidden Easter egg for us. If you know anything about the book you know that the book is divided up into episodes. Episode 18 of the book is titled Penelope. Ben then delivers the episodes second and third best lines of the night. “My mother taught me.” he answers when Jack asks him how he can read. Which we know is a lie because his mother died giving birth. Of course I am not taking Ben at his word, he was saying just to be sarcastic so don’t go thinking that maybe Ben’s ghost mother taught him to read or maybe she did. The next line that got a chuckle out of me was “You tell me Jack, you’re the one that got to stay after school with Ms. Hawking.” One of the things Ben has been forced to do is give up his power. Once all knowing Ben is now forced to do whatever he is supposed to do without knowing beforehand. This is what he needs to do in order to be able to go back to the island. Ben tells Jack that he didn’t know Locke had killed himself. I think this is going to be shown as another lie. Ben does ease Jack’s mind however, by telling Jack that Locke’s suicide was not Jack’s fault. Ben gives Jack a moment to read the letter and it is one sentence long; “I wish you had believed me.”. Hmmm, I wonder if it was Jack’s fault after all.

OK, someone cue the turbulence. Right after Jack reads the letter, the plane starts to shake, another reason I won’t be flying again any time soon. I immediately thought “here comes another crash” then I thought that maybe Frank was going to find the partial runway the others had begun to build. Neither seems to be the case as they are suddenly hit with the white light and the sound of them being ripped through a hole in time like the group on the island have been experiencing. We are back to the beginning of the episode. Kate wonders where Sun, Sayid, and Ben are. Jack suggests they go look for them but they then hear an engine approaching. The engine turns out to be a new looking Dharma mini van and the driver exits the van armed with a gun. The driver is revealed to be Jin in a Dharma suit.

Let’s theorize a little bit shall we? The Lamp Post is yet another reference to The Chronic (what?) cles of Narnia. In the series, the siblings find a lamp post that guides them back to the fabled land. It is always lit and it lights their way back which is similar to how the station takes the O6 back to the island. The opening scene of the episode is a reference to the first chapter of Prince Caspian, the second book in the Narnia series. In the chapter, entitled The Island, the children in the book return to Narnia via a mysterious island with ancient ruins. The first thing they do is play in the water. It’s all in the details baby! The island wouldn’t accept them back until Jack read the letter. Why? Because Jack had to be released of his guilt. Or maybe because Sawyer was reading the letter he had wrote to the original Sawyer when 815 crashed? Ben, like Charlie went to the bathroom right before the plane crashed. Where are Ben, Sayid, and Sun? Quite possibly they were taken to the island but in a different time period.

We don’t know how much time has gone by since the left be-hinders last flashed but apparently it has been enough time for them to infiltrate the DI as evidenced by Jin wearing a jumpsuit. How awesome would it be to hear Jin speaking English very well the next time we hear him speak? He could have been spending time with a young Charlotte all the while teaching her Korean while she teaches him English. Aside from the obvious title connection to flight 316, in the bible, John 3:16 speaks about those that believe, something Jack needed to do. The guitar case Hurley takes onto the plane with him could be a proxy as well, taking the place of Charlie who brought his guitar case onto flight 815 with him. It was also the guitar case that helped save Hurley’s life as he is using it to help him stay afloat long enough for Jack to get to him. Sayid is handcuffed and being led onto the place by a federal Marshall (who along with Caesar are going to be new recurring character so I guess we can also ask where the two of them are) recreates Kate and the US Marshall that accompanied her onto 815. Ben probably played a part in Sayid being caught and arrested, but why are they going Guam?

Hurley brings a comic onto the flight to recreate the original comic he brought on 815 with him. Ben getting to the plane late recreates Hurley almost missing the original flight. Sun is seen nervously fidgeting with Jin’s wedding band like Rose was with Bernard’s on 815. There were 324 people on board flight 815 subtract the O6 and Walt and Michael who also made it off of the island and you get 316. Yeah, I'm probably reaching there. Jack is in row 8 on flight 316 which departed from gate 15. In regards to Christian's shoes, Kate asks Jack why he would hold on to something that made him feel sad. Oddly enough Kate held on to her toy airplane for years, even though it reminded her of Tom Brennan's death. One other note about Kate, seeing as how the O6 had to recreate the events of the first crash, where’s the pregnant girl? I’m wondering if Kate is pregnant with her and Jack’s baby. So in essence that would make her Claire. Think about Kate and Claire for a moment, Claire was going to LA from Australia to give away her baby. Kate is going back to the island after giving Aaron, Claire’s baby, away. Although she is definitely not six months pregnant like Claire was, perhaps she is six hours pregnant.

This season is proving to be the coolest, most fast-paced season yet. Maybe not the best season, but still excellent. This season has had me asking “What?”, yelling “Yes!”, and giving hi fives to anyone in the room. I look forward to the remaining episodes of the series with a smirk on my face, like the one on Jin’s face when he saw his three friends back on the island in the lagoon.

LOST: The Music

Going to start a new little posting trend this week. Aside from the writing, the acting, the special effects, something else that has come to be expected from LOST is the use of music throughout the series. Here then is one of the first songs to be featured on the show. It's from way back in the first season when everything was new. We sure had a long way to go back then and we didn't even know it yet. Enjoy~

Lostcatraz

There has been some discussion about the other island that we saw a couple seasons ago where the Hydra station was located. Mostly about why none of the survivors saw the island before and why we haven't seen it since. In Every Man For Himself Ben tells Sawyer that the island they are currently being held hostage on isn't the island they have been on since the crash. There's another island and Ben says it is roughly the same size as Alcatraz which is about a quarter mile by a quarter mile. Not that big in comparison. When we saw Rousseau's maps back in season 1 there are notations and drawings about a smaller island. In fact she notates Les Trois meaning The Three in French or three smaller islands. The produces have said one of those smaller islands was supposed to be The Hydra island. So how come we never saw it before or since? I argue that we did see it before, albeit in passing, and I offer this picture as proof of it's existence:

Top right corner there is what appears to be a small island off in the distance. Ana and Eko didn't notice it and quite frankly neither did any of us at the time. But that's all the evidence I have that it was always there. Since the time jumping began TPTB have said that the smaller Hydra island is also jumping along with the larger island. Now I know in the helicopter scene when the island disappeared we didn't see the smaller island. I argue that it was possible that from the perspective of the people on the helicopter (the same view we are treated to) there was no way they could have seen the smaller island from their point of view. Here is a reference map that has been put together and agreed upon by many LOST addicts to be the best representation of the island and many of it's focal points:

The freighter was parked out in the ocean somewhere off to the left and on the map you can see where the fuselage and the beach camp is located. The helicopter would have been approaching the island prior to it disappearing from the lower left quarter of the map and as you can see the Hydra is located on the opposite side of the map. So with that knowledge, would it have been possible for you to see the Hydra island from that point? I don't think so.

Juliette jokingly told Sawyer that the others were building a runway on the smaller island for the aliens to land. Maybe not for aliens but how about for the O6 when they return in an Ajira Airlines plane? Take a swig of this theory, swish it around and tell me how it goes down: Ben, knowing what would happen in the future, or possibly Jacob, had the others begin building the runway knowing that it was the way that the O6 would need to get back to the island? I guess we will find out soon enough.

Some Of Your Yin Got On My Yang

Smoke monster, the Temple, the “incident“, statues with four toes, etc, you get the idea. We have many mysteries yet to be solved and one of the mysteries that is at the top of the list for many viewers of LOST, including myself, is those two skeletons inside of the caves. In the episode “House of the Rising Sun” way back in season 1, we all remember Jack and Kate finding the skeletal remains of two long dead island inhabitants who were later given the monikers “Adam and Eve’ by John Locke. On the bodies Jack found one black rock and one white rock. As far as we know those two rocks are still in Jack’s possession. The answer to the question “Who were (are) Adam and Eve?” can be answered simply by saying we will know when we know (if we are to know that is) and since I believe Jack is still in possession of the two stones or rocks that he has something to do with the bodies. Some speculate that he will hold onto the stones and he and Kate will be the last of the survivors alive on the island. Upon Kate’s death he will put one of the stones with her and when he dies (both bodies look to have died around the same time) he will have the other stone. I have never been a big believer in Adam and Eve being Kate and Jack.




I said in a past post that I believe at some point Aaron and Ji Yeon will make it to the island. Sun even foreshadows that a few episodes ago when she said to Kate something like it would be nice to see the two children playing together someday. Upon making it to the island they will have a bond formed from their pasts and everything their island families have gone through. They will be the last of the 815 survivors legacy and they will die together. Due to the island time jumps they will die long before 815 crashed. All of this is dependant on them going to the island eventually. Now I am in the camp of those that think the island has stopped jumping and where the island stopped the survivors are in the islands past. Quite possibly at the very beginning of the Dharma initiative days. This doesn't entirely fit in that Aaron and Ji Yeon would therefore be about 3 or 4 when they come back to the island in the early 1970’s. 815 crashes some thirty years later and the bodies are already very decomposed. Jack even says that the bodies appear to have been there for about 40 or 50 years. So what does all of that mean? Well it means I’m hedging my bets. I’m back on the fence. I’m not really sure who Adam and Eve are. Or am I?

I did some digging and discovered that TPTB stated that in the episode “Not In Portland” there is an anagram in the Room 23 video. The speculation is the anagram is the “only fools are enslaved by time and space” line spoken in reversed speech in the video Karl is being forced to watch. I’ll get back to that later. The sticking point is let’s take Jack at his word and the bodies have been there for 40 to 50 years. Given the year of the crash is 2004 we go back 40 to 50 years to about the mid 50’s. For the sake of arguing lets say the year is 1954. Where the hell did I pull that date from? Well, I pulled it from the Jughead episode. I only have what is said by the time jumpers to go on here so we know that somewhere during their island skipping they made a stop off in 1954. What else do we know? We know that Jin is and has been skipping along with the rest of the left behinds. Not with them on the island but they are together on the island in what ever time they jump to. We see that when Montand looses his arm from the smoke monster everything moves on the island in tune with the passing of time and when Jin jumps a few months into the future the arm has begun to decay as it would be expected to. Although the island is jumping whatever happened at any given point in island history is kept faithfully attuned to the exact moment it happened. Now here comes the rest of my theory and for that we have to move on but keep the Jughead episode in the back of you mind.

We have only seen one person in the group of left behinds die, and that’s Charlotte. We don’t really know when the island is when she dies we also don’t know if the island has stopped jumping now that Locke has reset the islands parking break but I’m going with that it has. When they are when it stops we still don’t know but like I said I’m guessing somewhere in the beginning of the Dharma day. So somewhere, Charlotte is dead and buried, I would assume, sometime in the 1970’s. Even though technically Charlotte, who we know has been on the island before and her parents were members of Dharma, may or may not have even been born yet when the island stops jumping but none of that matters here. The end of Charlotte’s life has nothing to do with the beginning of her life. Nothing has occurred (yet) that would change her life path to it's conclusion. She is born, and with her parents is on the island sometime during the Dharma days. I don’t know how old Charlotte is so I won’t guess which years she was on the island and when her mother took her off of the island. None of that matters only that her life ends on the island in what I am speculating here to be sometime in the early 70’s. Therefore she will decompose as any body would have decomposed if it had been born, lived however many years she lived, then died in the seventies, and was buried. If, in 2004 the survivors were to have found her grave it would look like any other grave would look from the 1970’s.

What the hell am I talking about? A grave belonging to Charlotte from the 1970’s does not have anything to do with Adam and Eve, does it? No, Charlotte is not Eve. So what am I trying to do here? All I am trying to get across is that for the sake of future prosperity, it would appear that Charlotte died in the mid 1970’s if her body was ever to be found in present day island time. If we can all agree on that and I know I’m asking you to take a small leap of faith in believing all of my suppositions in this theory but if you can’t take a leap of faith at this point in the show, well, to quote John Locke; “Where would the fun be in that?”.

So all of this takes us back to the time jump when they are on the island during the Jughead episode. We know it is 1954, two years before John Locke is born in 1956. 48 years before the crash of flight 815. Fits perfectly in with the theory Jack has that the bodies of Adam and Eve have been there for 40 to 50 years.

Let's have a place for everyone and find everyone in their place for a moment. While Daniel is checking out the Jughead bomb and telling Elle they have to bury it in the ground surrounded by cement, Locke is trying to convince Richard he is from the future and he tells Richard to go find him two years from now when he is born in 1956. Sawyer? He’s with them trying to save Daniel and then later trying to figure out what to do next. Sawyer is not Adam. Juliette is there too trying to calm the situation when Sawyer has his gun on Elle. Juliette is not Eve. Daniel and Miles are fine so neither one of them is Adam. And speaking of Miles, why the hell don't they take him into the cave so he can communicate with Adam and Eve and find out who they are? But I digress. Locke isn’t either, we know when he dies and it ain’t in a cave on the island. We know it can’t be Charlotte either, I’ve already cleared that up. Well as best as we can clear up anything in all of this that is! I would imagine there is still a few red shirts running around out there somewhere but we know it’s not going to be just anybody that ends up being Adam and Eve, the mythology of the island is to big for it to be no name characters. We only have two people left and oddly enough they haven’t been heard from since we saw the flaming arrows on the beach.

Let’s assume that Rose and Bernard ran for cover after the flaming arrows incident and let’s say they took cover in a place where they felt safe. The caves. I won’t speculate on how they die but let’s just say they are scared, maybe already feeling the effects of the time jumping sickness and one thing leads to another and they die. Somehow. Right then in 1954. In the caves. One man and one woman. A white man and a black woman.

Now let’s time skip ourselves and go back into Room 23, specifically back to the anagram that is rumored to be in the video. “Only fools are enslaved by time and space.” is what I am targeting as where the anagram lies. The anagram is worked out to be: “bones of nadlers may lay lost deep in cave.”. Rose and Bernard’s last name is Nadler. Assuming that the O6 are going back to the island and the island is stuck in the 1970’s it is quite possible that Jack will eventually go looking for Rose and Bernard and he will find them dead in the caves and will give them the white and black stones that he has, for some reason, carried back with him to the island for himself to find nearly 30 years later.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Rose and Bernard = Adam and Eve. Comments?

This Place Is Death

Oh, where do I start? The reason I ask that is because my usual way of recapping an episode is from beginning to end. Chronologically, if you will. Seeing as how LOST has been anything but chronological this season, or perhaps any season, (ouch, just got a little pain in my head) I figure I can shit-can that pattern. For at least one episode anyway.




“This Place is Death” saw the end of Charlotte’s bloody time sickness as she died in the jungle with her island boy friend faithfully looking over her. I turn to Charlotte’s namesake C.S. Lewis for help putting this episode together. The writer of the famous Narnia books also wrote some other things. Namely, for our purposes of this episode, I want to look at the novel The Great Divorce. Not that it has anything to do with the episode other than the title itself for the story is about people that take a bus ride to get out of “the grey town” (which could be a representation of hell) and end up at the gates of heaven. As the story goes on, the people on the bus realize they are ghosts and that their trip has all been for their own redemption in order to get into heaven. See that doesn’t have anything to do with LOST. (Damn, there’s that pain again, a white hot searing pain in my head that causes everything to go white for a moment.)

For simplicity sake, divorce is described as “ the dissolution of a marriage”. A marriage, of course, is a union of two people in holy matrimony. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”, indeed. This Place is Death had it’s share of “divorce” happening all over the place. Let’s look a little close at these dissolutions, and I don't even know if that is a word.

Rousseau and her crew plus Jin are trying to figure out their next move. Of course Jin’s plans don’t jive with Danielle and her crew. They want to find a radio tower to put out their distress signal and we know how that works out; while Jin wants to find his camp so he can find his wife. They all take off for the radio tower and are attacked by Smokey. Can we call this the “first” time we see Smokey in action? Either way, it was the one that gave us the most answers. Aside from Smokey pissing me off by killing the hot blond French chick first (maybe Smokey is a girl?), we have the same type of attack we have seen before. Those other two times I am referring to is when it killed Eko and when it tried to pull Locke down into the hole. Now we know what the hole was, sort of. Rousseau’s boyfriend or husband (it was never made clear what their relationship was, at least I don’t think it was) called it a temple. Or maybe it’s THE Temple that Richard and Ben spoke about before. Apparently Smokey is the guardian of the temple or even the island itself like Danielle described. Of course this could also be another example of the untrustworthy narrative that LOST likes to use as well.

Montand is pulled through the jungle and down into the hole and then … well, his arm was ripped off! Of his body! Entirely off! Wow! So even Montand had a disagreeable divorce with his own arm. At least it wasn’t a trial separation! Jin flashes but not too far forward. The only members of Rousseau’s group left are her and Robert. We still don’t know all of the story about what happened to them to cause Danielle to kill them but we know she did. I’m still not sure if she was right and they were sick or if it was the other way around but she was the only one who didn’t go into the temple after Smokey. I also think that there was something wrong with Robert as he quickly changed his tune and tried to shoot Danielle when her guard was down. He tried to shoot her with the same gun she had removed the firing pin from that Sayid tried to use on her back in season 1. Nice parallel in story telling there and it is because of those simple details that anything and everything can be brought into the time traveling story and actually mean something more than we thought. Rousseau violently “divorces” herself from Robert but right before we are shown her music box (the one Sayid fixed for her) with a bride and groom dancing together. Another cruel and ironic LOST moment.

Another flash later and Jin is reunited with Sawyer and the rest of the left behinds. Notice the joy of their reunion quickly turns as Jin asks Sawyer where Sun is. The mood was hectic while Jin is getting the news about the time flashes and Sun being alive but it was lightened a little by Miles when he tells Sawyer “He’s Korean, I’m from Encino.”. In a season where it’s difficult to say who the episode is centric to, this a Sun and Jin episode. Sun is show off the island to be just as concerned about her husband as Jin is about her.

Ben sees the O6 reunion dissolve as quickly as it was put together. Kate “divorces” herself from the group and Sayid does the same. Sun, Jack, and Ben leave together to get the proof that Jin is alive. Jack apologizes to Sun for not saving Jin and Sun asks Jack if he is saying this to keep her from killing Ben. Jack tells her that if she doesn’t do it he will himself for what Ben did to Kate. Ben literally slams on the breaks and throws a patented Ben hissy.

Charlotte is down and Daniel won’t leave her behind. As the rest of the group go off she tells them to “Look for the well” and we already know that Charlotte has been on the island before, we don‘t need TPTB to hit us over the heads anymore, hell some of this writes itself now. Charlotte says in her delusional mumblings; “Why can’t Daddy come with us?” and then goes on to say “You know what my Mum would say about marring an American.”, both a marriage and separation reference. Locke sees the well Charlotte spoke of and he prepares to “divorce” himself from the island.

Charlotte tells Daniel what we already knew, that she had been there before. Another quick reference to C.S Lewis is made when she tells Daniel that after she left the island with her mother that whenever Charlotte asked about the island, her mother would tell her that it was a fantasy world that she had created in her head. Something the children are told in the Narnia story. A short sidebar here, the story that Charlotte tells Daniel is something that was supposed to happen during the strike shortened season 4 and the writers had to scramble to scrap that episode but still keep the same points of the story for some later episode. This was that point in time. Charlotte goes on to tell Daniel that there was a man on the island when she was a little girl that told her to never come back and if she did she would die. She says that man was Daniel! Anyone see a version of Charlotte when she was a little girl on the island making an appearance in a later episode?

Locke says to Sawyer “Goodbye James.“, but he says "See you when I get back." to Miles. I won't dive deeply into that one but does Locke know about Miles’ ability to speak to the dead? And if Locke does make it back to the island but dead, Miles will be the only one who Locke can communicate with? Jin gives Locke his wedding ring (a symbolic divorce of sorts) and tells him to give it to Sun and to tell her that he is dead. You have to give some kudos to Locke for his blind faith, something that often causes him and those around him trouble and pain but to say the man has some courage is an understatement. Him going down that well and into the dark was as heroic if not more so than Sawyer jumping out of the helicopter last season. Sawyer asks Locke if he wants them to lower him down into the well, you have to just love the little laugh and the grin on Locke's face when he answers “Where would be the fun in that?”. The grin was even better this time than when he saw a young Widmore on the island. In another storytelling trademark of LOST, Juliette thanks Locke for doing what he is about to do even though she has no idea what it is he is going to do or if it will even work. Previously in this episode we see Ben telling Jack and Sun that if they knew what he had to do to keep them all safe they would never stop thanking him. Quite a different set of circumstances. All Ben wants is to be appreciated but gets none.

Another flash later and Locke falls like Icarus down the well and Sawyer is left holding the rope, notice the rest of the well is gone too. Sawyer, in his desperation to not allow another person leave him forever (like his parents and Kate did) begins to dig. Notice that they are putting a darker focus on Sawyer when they film him to show his many feelings of guilt, pain, abandonment, and sorrow all the while putting more light on Juliette, even to cast her in an almost angelic light. None of that means anything it's just an observation.

Charlotte’s last words before she dies are “I’m not allowed to have chocolate before dinner.”, is another nod at C.S. Lewis' Narnia. One of the boys is bribed by the evil witch to tell her where the rest of his siblings are. The item she uses to bribe him? A piece of chocolate called a “Turkish Delight”. I had a “Turkish Delight” before but it had nothing to do with chocolate and it also cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. Ouch, there’s that pain again and I just noticed there is a little blood on the keyboard. Where did that come from?

Back in the well, Christian Sheppard makes his season 5 premier and tells Locke that he was supposed to move the island and not Ben. He tells Locke to find Eloise Hawking and she will be able to tell him how to save the island. Christian is as always, the cold hand of God, or as close to it as we have on the island, as he tells Locke “I suppose that’s why they call it sacrifice.”; when John tells him that Richard told him he was going to die. Christian goes on to tell him that the wheel has slipped off of it’s axis and it needs him to give it a little push. Leave it up to Ben to forget to set the parking break on a whole goddamn island! Christian adds to the painful path Locke has to travel alone by not helping John get up. The man had a bone sticking through his leg! As Locke fades away, Christian tells Locke to say hello to his son. Locke doesn’t get the answer when he asks Christian who his son is. I don't think Christian could have told him even if he had the time. There’s just some things in this show that people are not allowed to do or know.

Back at the church, Ben tells Sun about Locke giving him Jin’s wedding ring. Just when I thought Ben was starting to come clean and be trustworthy we find out that he had seen Locke before he died. Seems it’s all about semantics with this guy. Then Desmond shows up. They all go into the church and meet Ms. Hawkins (or however you spell her name), who, as it turns out, is Faraday’s mother. Who saw that coming? We will wait to see if Desmond recognizes her as the time jumping antique dealer lady or not. She asks Ben where the rest of them are he tells her that this is the best he could do on short notice. She says it will have to do, for now. So do they need all six or not? What the hell? One other thing I wonder about after this episode is; if Ben wasn’t supposed to be the one to turn the wheel and Locke was, will the island allow Ben to come back seeing as how it looks like he wasn‘t supposed to leave in the first place? Maybe that is where we are headed with Ben's story. It also points to the fact that maybe Locke is just a pawn being used by the island. Or maybe since we know Locke has to die, maybe Ben is going to be allowed to go back since he was never suppose to leave and since Locke is “special” to the island maybe he will be able to be resurrected back on the island like Christian Sheppard is, sort of.

I better go the nosebleeds and the headaches are getting worse. Now, would someone come up here and serve these two Rustlers rare? Someone find Tara and tell her to take them out to their table, please. What am I doing at this computer? Leslie, can I go on break? Leslie?