Continuity Errors?

This week I want to discuss a few continuity errors that were very obvious in this past weeks episode. First look at the screen cap from when Sayid shot Ben:

Now check out the screen cap from when Jin found Ben lying in the jungle:

The wound is in a completely different/wrong side of the chest. And one more that may or may not be a different position but it does look to be a little low to me:

Now I have pointed out some other continuity errors in the past. I won't post pictures but if you have the DVDs go check it out for yourself. First of all let me direct your attention to the Swan hatch. When we see it in the first episode of season two, things change positions and appearance. Another instance is during Miles' flashback to when he is playing Ghostbuster in the old woman's house. When he goes upstairs there are pictures hanging on the wall. We see these pictures again when he comes back down the stairs and the frames have changed.

I know things happen and sometimes, although it appears to be only mere minutes between one moment and the next, truth be told, it could be days or even weeks between scenes when they are filming the show. So things happen right?

I for one don't buy it, not for a moment. For the longest time I couldn't figure out exactly what it was that bothered me about these obvious errors. Finally, after I posted my April Fools Joke, the one about Shaymalan being the director of the finale, I was able to put my finger on it. Or at least get it a little closer to the target.

How did that fake story help me clear up my misgivings about some errors on LOST? Well, think back to when you first saw the Sixth Sense. The movie where Bruce Willis is dead 99% of the time and we don't know it until the final minutes. Don't yell at me for spoiling it for you, it's been long enough since the movie was released, you should know the surprise ending by now! When the camera pulls back (something LOST has been doing the past few seasons as well and will continue to do more of this season and next) we see more of the picture. We see where the clues were the entire time. We were shown hints and red herrings and led down dead ends so often we didn't know when we saw the answers to the questions we didn't even know we were supposed to be asking. That's the same with LOST. For almost the entire movie we saw things from Bruce Willis' characters point of view, a character who either didn't know he was dead or couldn't come to grips with the fact.

That's what we have here, especially with Ben's gunshot wound. When Sayid shoots Ben, he truly wants to kill the 12 year old boy. Sayid is a killer. We've seen him do it enough times, it's beaten into us so hard that we take it on face value that Sayid shot him right through the heart. Sayid wanted Ben to die so badly he "saw" the bullet hit Ben directly in the chest and go through his heart. But it didn't. A few minutes later, Jin rolls Ben over and the bullet wound is on the right side of his chest. Nowhere near where it was a few minutes ago. Sure he was shot, but Jin didn't see the wound in the same pace because it wasn't in the same place. Sayid saw the bullet hit Ben in the chest near his heart because the island wanted Sayid to see it there. Remember when Ben shot Locke? The wound seemed to be right through the chest as well. Later the wound in much lower allowing for the missing kidney story to fill in the blanks of why Locke wasn't dead. Ben wanted Locke to be dead and a bullet through the heart would have done the trick. The same can be said for Sayid.

Jin, since he has no real interest in weather the boy lives or dies, sees the wound exactly where it is. Later, after Juliette operates on him the wound is a little lower. Why? Because that's where Juliette needs to see it on order to think she can save his life. Same for Kate and Sawyer. When Sawyer is carrying Ben the wound seems to move down even further. Because that's where they need it to be to believe they can save Ben's life.

The Swan hatch items being moved or changed can be summed up by saying the items looked one way when we saw Desmond in the hatch because that's how he saw the hatch. When Locke and Jack are in the hatch it looks different because to them, it is different. The pictures on the wall change because in one scene we see them through Miles' eyes and then we see them a second time through the dead boys grand mother's eyes.

Something else that occurred and was pointed out by Vozzek69 is during "Whatever Happened, Happened" when Kate is in the grocery store. She asks the stock person where the juice boxes are and he directs her to them. Not once did he look at Aaron or even acknowledge his presence in any way. A few seconds later, Kate goes back to the same employee in the grocery store to ask if he saw where her little boy went. At which point he seems to be oblivious to the fact that she even had anyone with her. Let's go one step further. When Kate goes to see Cassidy a second time, Clementine answers the door. She smiles and says "Hello Auntie Kate.", again, she never acknowledges Aaron. And he's standing right there next to Kate holding her hand. Isn't he?

It seems it's all a matter of perspective. I predict that the final episode of LOST will be very similar to the final minutes of The Sixth Sense. We will be offered up all of the missed clues we were supposed to see and missed. Or did see but didn't understand them well enough to give us hints to the end game that we were heading to. For the entire series we have been the victims of well played out misdirections by TPTB and writers alike. Victims that went along just as happily as we could knowing full well the entire time we were the marks of the real Long Con.