"I'm a complex kinda guy, Sweetheart!"

Yeah, so I'm running out of episode titles to use as post titles but we still have Sawyer-isms and nicknames we can use. Besides it gives me a chance to put that picture up. Yes, I have a man crush, I'm forty frigging years old I can admit that now! Being forty makes it cute! Least that's what they tell me. Which brings me to this post. Thought I would try my hand at this whole "5 Songs" thing. Here's 5 songs that have helped me along the way to dealing with turning the big 4 oh.



Like A Rock by Bob Seger has always been a favorite song of mine and no, not because I drive a truck, cause I do NOT. Thank the man Jeezus, no. It's a song about a man looking back on his life and remembering a time when he was "Like A Rock". Meaning, to me at least, I might not be as good as I once was but I can still be as good as I was, once. If I have to.



Another Seger song, Rock and Roll Never Forgets, has helped prep me for many years. The opening line So you're a little bit older and a lot less bolder/Than you used to be may be true, except for the less bolder part, I think I'm getting bolder, at least with my mouth I know I am. I don't hold back as much as I used to. Could be a good thing or not. Depends on which side of my mouth you stand on I reckon. So now sweet sixteens turned thirty-one/You get to feelin weary when the work days done I've felt like that for a while now, so yeah this one helps me make it through. Guess you can tell from the pictures, I ain't the only one that has gotten older. Sheesh, is that really the same guy in both pictures? Time is a fickle bitch!



100 Years by Five for Fighting is a microcosm of life. I feel like so many things that have happened in my life "just" happened but the calendar says otherwise. How long has it been since I drove a black Mustang and was called Ooter? Over twenty years. Damn...



Changes by Bowie is another one of those songs to keep in the arsenal. Pretty soon you're gonna get a little older/Time may change me/But I can't trace time the good thing about getting older is it's sort of like a fraternity or a club. You get to 40 and you have younger people making lite of it and using you as the brunt of the joke but it's called Karma buddy. We all do it unless you "River Phoenix" it out of life and if you do, well, that's a shame you didn't get to join the club. Even if I'm not around when they turn 40 I have the confidence that there will be some young whipper snapper waiting in the wings to make them feel "over the hill". Where is this goddamn hill anyway? Besides if I'm at the top of the hill and just went over and am starting to go down the other side, isn't this the best view I'm gonna get? Ha ha blow me 20 somethings!



All These Things That I've Done has been in heavy rotation for the last few years in my CD player. Another of those songs that has helped me brace for the collision with "Father Time". Another head aches, another heart breaks/I am so much older than I can take/And my affection, well it comes and goes/I need direction to perfection, no no no no gives a sort of desperation to aging. Gracefully? I think not. These changes ain't changing me/The cold-hearted boy I used to be . But we do end with a positive thought: Time cures hearts



Landslide by Fleetwood Mac has shown me that hopefully, I still have some mountain to go. I can fight the landslide or I can sail on life's tides. Also makes me grateful for the people in my life. Even for some of those not in my life anymore as much as they used to be that have helped me along the way. Thanks for letting me use you. Also it makes me miss those that have left the world. And yes I can see their reflection in the snow covered hills. This song also reminds me of my Doddy's Mommy who is a huge Stevie Nicks fan. She always used to dress like her, kinda think she probably still does sometimes, and she likes to dance too.



Yeah, I know it's more than five songs, shove off, it's my list and it's my birthday, so hook me up with a quick rusty trombone, will ya! Last song on the list is Puff The Magic Dragon. I was Jackie Paper, at least for a little while. Thankfully I still frolic. Not as often as I used to or would like to. But somewhere I know the ability is still there. I think I need to do that soon now that I think about it.

That's it, now I gotta go drink some prune juice and take a nap. I's tired!

Cabin Fever Part 3

Sayid’s gonna save the Island with a 4-man rubber dingy! Not sure how many trips he plans on making, but at this point maybe Desmond could mention something about owning a boat? Desmond provided some very compelling reasons for not wanting to return to LOST island, and I don’t think anyone could blame him. Unfortunately it looks like he gets to stay behind with Michael and his possible redemption involves self-sacrifice and a giant suitcase of explosives. Not the best place to be during an upcoming season finale, but then again Desmond made it through the Swan hatch implosion so maybe he’ll be okay.





Also let me say that Kevin Durand, the actor who plays Keamy, (and is underused in the recent western remake 3:10 To Yuma in my opinion but puts on a show there as well) is emerging as a real find this season; he plays that mercenary part with a scene-stealing mix of menace and damaged vulnerability. Profoundly angry and profoundly spooked by his ill-fated Island excursion to extract Ben, Keamy rallied his merc squad with a "torch the Island" mandate. To that end, he pulled out a secret Dharma file that revealed to him where Ben will probably go next (what was that the script for the season finale? Ben's destination is probably the Orchid station), then he shot the captain and slit the freighter doc's throat to motivate Lapidus to fly him back to the Island. Keamy's sarcastic line after dumping the doc overboard was interesting: "Did that change anything?" It changed more than Keamy could imagine. As we saw in "The Shape of Things to Come", the doc's corpse traveled through the offshore anomaly and washed up on the beach in the past. As a result, Jack and company confronted Faraday and Charlotte and finally confirmed that the freighter folk aren't there to save them. We know that Frank Lapidus, one of the good guys, has dropped a phone letting the beach gang know where the plane is headed - probably to make sure they stay as far away from it as possible.





It looks like Dr. Dumbo is still just as stupid after his appendectomy as he was before it, and is going to gallop with his gullible flock of sheep right into their trap. But it won't matter what Jack and his magical disappearing appendix end up doing. He isn't in charge of anything any more, if in fact he ever was. The only Force that matters any longer is The Island. The Island has chosen who it wants. Who it needs to protect it. The Island decides who can die and who can't.





Hurley passing Ben half of his Apollo bar severed the last "Other" thread between Ben and the 815’Er's. It was Hugo’s way of saying “Hey, you’re one of us now”. It also marked Ben’s apparent demotion from evil island warlord to just another one of the cool kids. The lack of dialogue made the scene.
Finally, where was Jacob? When Locke went into Jacob's shack, he found the grumpy old specter was still out to lunch. Christian Shephard played his representative. This time Christian is dressed differently, and with no white tennis shoes. This time, he actually looks like a corpse. His face is sunken, his color pallid, he looks embalmed. His hair looks as if it’s been neatly trimmed, then tussled around as if his body had cart-wheeled through the jungle during a plane crash. This isn’t Jack Shephard’s vision of his father, as he saw him on the beach so many episodes ago. Nor is it Locke’s vision of a man he’s never seen before. This is the island’s vision. And thinking along those lines, the only vision the island would have of Christian Shephard would be of his coffin-flung corpse. A lot of LOST’s imagery is perception-based. Had Jack entered the cabin I think his father would’ve looked differently, tainted by his own real-life memories of him.





The sight of Christian looking so mischievous also served as a reminder of how often this dude has been spotted at the scene of the crime. He's had an influence on more than a few of the people who ended up on Flight 815. There's Jack, of course, who went to Australia to haul his dad's drunk ass home one last time. Christian also steered Ana Lucia to her fatal destiny by hiring her as bodyguard for his Australian drinking tour. And Sawyer might never have found his destiny in murder if not for Christian's well lubricated encouragement. All this time we thought Christian was a hopeless alcoholic, when maybe it was all an occupational hazard of his job as mystical recruiter. Now he's trying to make up for lost time with his neglected little girl Claire, by bringing her over to the dark side for some tea and crumpets. It's not entirely clear whether Claire's being "with him" means she died when her house exploded though the sight of another one of her symbolic "houses" being destroyed was not a good omen.





His daughter/sidekick/death friend (?) Claire sat nearby flashing an array of coy smiles, implying some kind of enlightenment or some kind of evil. Her creepy smirk seemed almost as if she were possessed. Theories point to her being dead, killed in the rocket attack and Jacob coming in the form of Christian to claim her makes some sense, I guess. It would make sense that Aaron would be left behind because the island must know rescue is coming. We’ve always known that Aaron was important, so maybe the island separated him from his mother for this reason. But the fact that Claire "needs" to raise him signifies, that Claire will ultimately end up alive, well, and mothering her child. Along those lines, maybe Claire still is alive and Jacob brought her to the cabin to protect her. One last thing on the topic Aaron... when Christian and Claire told Locke that he's "where he's supposed to be" he was with Sawyer in the jungle. Their words could be interpreted many ways:

1) He's supposed to remain with Sawyer on the Island.
2) He's supposed to remain with Sawyer OFF of the Island, and Sawyer was supposed to leave and end up raising him with Kate, but for some reason didn't.
3) He's supposed to be with Sawyer in order for Sawyer to go back to the beach and hand him over to Kate.





Since we know that future Hurley and dead Charlie told Jack that he was "not supposed to raise him," and since we know that future Hurley and future Jack will both try to get back to the Island, what are we to make of Aaron remaining with Kate? From what we've seen, Kate isn't feeling any guilt whatsoever for having Aaron, nor is she being haunted by visions urging her to return. I guess that's why "What's Up With Aaron?" is one of the biggest mysteries on the show. Lots to speculate about there. But where the frig' did Jacob go? Are you thinking that Locke spent more time inside Jacob's shack than we saw? Do you think there was more to his meeting than just "Move the Island"? And what's up with that? "Move the island." I think I see another purple sky on the horizon.

So the hero's task is simple: Move the Island. Maybe the Island wants to jump through space. Or maybe it's looking to hop into a wormhole and travel through time instead. Either way, The Chosen One has to start earning his keep. There's no time to lose, Hero. Godspeed.

Cabin Fever part 2

The test involved Alpert setting six objects in front of John. They were a baseball mitt; an old tome titled Book of Laws; a corked vial containing a granular substance(sand? volcanic ash?); a compass; a Mystery Tales comic book ("What was the secret of the mysterious 'Hidden Land'?" asked the cover; other stories in the issue were "The Travelers" and "Crossroads of Destiny"); and a knife. "I want you to look at these things, and think about them," said Alpert. "Now...which of these belong to you...already?" There will surely be a great debate on how to interpret that "already". It seemed that Alpert was asking Locke to look forward into his life for these objects — as if for people like Alpert and perhaps Locke, past, present, and future happen all at once. But Locke seemed to fail the test. He slid the vial toward him and off to the side. Then he picked up the compass and set it down. Both of these actions seemed to please Alpert. But then Locke chose the knife and held on to it. Alpert was not only crestfallen but vaguely pissed. "I'm afraid John isn't ready for our school", he said as he left in a huff, and raced out to...catch the next time machine back to the Island?

This is where LOST nut jobs lose their minds, or at least sleep; deconstructing scenes like these. As it turns out, these six objects are portals that, if opened, can flood your mind with possibilities on how to "read" the show. Taken individually and separately they are further reinforced by other winks and nods throughout the episode. These embedded clues can link provocatively to Jewish and Mormon history; Egyptian mythology; Freemason conspiracy theory; and, yes, even that From Hell business. The underlying connection: "special people" and "chosen people", tapped by fate, biology, or higher powers to execute great work in the world, often in secret. In a word: "Others".




The Book of Law reference is worth focusing on for a few sentences, because it's proof positive that the writers of LOST not only are keenly aware of how its cultists scrutinize their work but mischievously play to this crowd too. After all, Book of Law evokes a cult text — or occult text? The Book of the Law, written in 1904 by "the wickedest man on the planet", Aleister Crowley. The book extols the philosophy of Thelema, which is summed up thusly: "Do what thou wilt". Or, in the words of Mama Cass, "Make your own kind of music/Make your own special song". Or, as 16-year-old John Locke raged in the flashback scene, "Don't tell me what I can't do!", which we've heard before. This came after a bunch of bullies locked Locke in a locker, a locker, by the way, that had a Geronimo Jackson poster and a picture of Sir Richard Burton, ("who's no longer burping"; inside joke -ed.) in it, continuing a recurring theme of a boxed-in confinement throughout the episode. A kindly teacher encouraged John to attend a summer science camp run by Mittelos, which we know is the off-Island outfit run by the Others. But the brainy Locke refused. He didn't want to be a man of science he wanted to be a boy of action. Play sports. Go on adventures. Play with knives and maybe hunt some boar. His teacher responded, "You can't be the prom king. You can't be the quarterback. You can't be a superhero." We've also heard this before. Just ask Jack.



That's some pretty good advice to get from a teacher, though a very sharp point was being made by keeping the name of the school's athletic teams in constant view during the whole scene: the Knights. Locke might be a geek by nature, but he lives in a culture that idolizes the stud. Toss in the female issues in his life; abandoned by his mother, only conditionally loved by his foster mother and sister, and factor in the daddy anger and desperate-for-purpose disposition, and you have the portrait of a conflicted, impotent man yearning for clarity and empowerment. Such men are known to make very stupid choices and sometimes, deadly ones. But don't take my word for it, just ask Benjamin Linus.

But back to the test, when the Dalai Lama dies, a ritual is performed wherein one of his possessions is presented along with other objects to the child suspected of being his reincarnation. The child is found to be the reincarnation of the lama if he chooses the correct item out of the selection he's presented with. Was this episodes a clever interpretation of this ritual?



Which brings us to the provocative "Big Idea" that "Cabin Fever" may have been jerking its head toward, hoping that we would "get it" without spelling it out. There was a moment when Ben accused Locke of manipulating Hurley into going with them to Jacob's cabin by using Ben-patented reverse psychology. Locke denied doing so, saying, "I'm not you.". Ben jumped on this, saying, "You're certainly not." Now, do the timeline math. Locke is born three months early. At age 5, he takes a test that most likely would have taken him to the Island if he had passed. He didn't. That same year, Benjamin Linus is born. At age 16, Locke is invited to go to a science camp that again would have taken him to the Island. He refused. About that same time, Benjamin Linus and his father joined the Dharma Initiative. The implication, it seems, is that Ben has been walking the path that was originally meant for Locke. Ben was the contingency plan, the course correction, for Locke's altered destiny. But Ben is his own person and he has done things differently from what Locke would have done, and this has created further changes in the original order of things. Changes that a certain ticked-off, Island-deprived billionaire named Charles Widmore is trying to reverse. The scene at the rehab center between paralyzed adult Locke and his wheelchair pusher, the creepy Matthew Abbaddon, who accepted the description of "orderly" with knowing irony was meant to suggest one way Widmore is scheming to restore the original order: by getting Locke on that Island and taking back the birthright that was supposed to be his. It seems that people have a way of showing up in John Locke’s life when he needs the most encouragement. This time it’s Abbaddon who takes watch, coaching Locke back from the brink of self-pity and inspiring him to seek out his infamous walkabout. Abbaddon’s actions are all about restoring Locke’s faith, getting him "back in the game" as the poster behind them reads. Abbaddon eerily assures Locke they will meet again later on, and when they do he will owe him one. There is one theory out there that I'm not really buying into that suggests that Abbaddon is a future version of Walt. Abbaddon refers to John as “Mr. Locke” in hauntingly the same way that Walt always did. He picks Locke up off the floor of despair and gives him guidance, just as Walt did when Locke was left for dead in the body pit.




Here's the twist that could turn Locke into a mass murderer of sorts. As we saw at the end of the episode, Locke's plan for saving the Island is moving the Island. No idea how he intends to do that. But track the weird science LOST has been laying down this season correctly, and where we might be headed is a catastrophic gambit in which Locke will move the Island not only in space but also in time, which will cause some kind of massive retroactive course correction or, rather, already has enacted a course correction. In fact, if the secret to many of the metaphysical mysteries of LOST is that all of the shows drama is playing out against the backdrop of a timeline that's in flux, where old history is giving way to new history as the consequences of Locke's future Island-saving actions trickle down through time. So that wreckage of Oceanic 815 at the bottom of the ocean? That isn't a hoax, at least not in the new timeline taking hold. That's real. And it will be John the Quantum Ripper's fault.



OTHER THINGS

During Locke's dreamy encounter with dead Dharma dude Horace Goodspeed we learned that Jacob's cabin was actually built by the Dharma mathematician as a getaway pad for himself and his wife, Olivia. But other than tip Locke off to the whereabouts of the map that could help him find his now on-the-loose lodge, Goodspeed didn't give up any more factual info. Other details may be symbolic or foreshadowing of events to come. Did the nosebleed mean that Horace was a Dharma time traveler? Was the looping nature of the dream a clue that the castaways are caught in a time loop? And where was Olivia? Full-blown log cabin blueprints? Even for a mathematician that was kinda stretching it. But Horace’s appearance this episode was extremely telling in the grand scheme of how the island works. Locke’s island-induced vision, which once again happens while he’s unconscious, differs historically from most of LOST’s visions in that he sees someone he’s never met. Hurley seeing Dave, Eko seeing Yemi… these are images that could’ve been taken from their own consciousness. But with the appearance of Horace, now we’re seeing the island’s consciousness. What we’re seeing is a small loop of past time – an event that actually happened. Horace felled that tree a dozen or more years ago, and the island was there to see it. Therefore the island can replay that scene for Locke, over and over again, by memory. It uses Horace as a vehicle to speak to Locke, the way it used Yemi to speak to Eko, and it chose Horace because the blueprints were in his pocket. Incidentally, this isn’t exactly the first time we’ve been given this revelation. Hurley had no way of knowing what Christian Shephard looked like, but he still saw him in the cabin a few episodes back. I guess the writers are probably just ready to reveal more at this point. Still, I think the island’s ability to conjure up visions is limited to that which it, or its inhabitants, has experienced. Which may be why so many names, numbers, places, people, and things are constantly recycled.




Now it looks like Ben has lost his faith. Still grieving Alex, he looks forlorn and lost. He seems almost sorry for the purge, but refuses to accept responsibility himself. Ben also revealed that he hasn't always been the leader of the Others and that he didn't order the Purge. So who preceded him in leadership? And who ordered the gassing of the Dharma barracks? Michael Emerson's line reading as always, perfectly intoned to suggest a multiplicity of possibilities and seemed to hint that it might be someone we know. So maybe Charles Widmore? Time-looped John Locke? Who? Shrugging, he follows Locke and Hurley through the jungle with no real purpose, no plan, no underlying secret plan, and little care about what happens next. “I used to have dreams”, he tells Locke, as if knowing his days of receiving instruction from the island are over. Watch Ben’s face as Locke finds the blueprints. He bitterly seems to accept this as a sign that Locke is now the favored one. Later he challenges Locke: “Are you sure John? I was told a lot of things. Then I ended up with a tumor on my spine and my daughter’s blood on my hand”. Sardonically, Ben is now doubting everything the island has ever guided him to do. Where once he thought he had some semblance of control over events, now he realizes he was simply a pawn himself and not the king he thought he was. “These things HAD to happen to me. They were my destiny, and destiny John, is a fickle bitch!”. Cool line. But are you buying it? Cause I sure ain't. Once again I think Ben is farting under the covers and trying to pull them over our heads. At least partially. Ben needs Locke to believe in what he’s doing – without faith nothing works - which is why he’s taken this subdued role. Don’t forget: we already know that future Ben has once again taken up the reins. He’s jumping into the desert, kicking ass, and guiding Sayid on assassination missions. These are not exactly the actions of someone who couldn’t give a crap. So either Ben gets his groove back, or he’s never really lost it. Ben’s allowing Locke to believe he’s in charge right now. Ben’s running the show. He’s just taken a back seat, and he’s telling Locke where to make the turns. Ben came to the calm realization that the Island was never going to let him kill Locke. It didn't let Jack murder him in a pique of temper either. The Island will protect the hero it needs. Now it's up to The Chosen One to face his first Challenge. There is a disturbance in the Force.

Cabin Fever Part 1

"You may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for."- Billy Joel



Take lots of Ben and Locke, the welcome return of Richard, the ever-awesome Christian, spooky Claire, the reappearance of Jacob’s cabin, and then pepper it with threats, beatings, shootings, throat-slitting, and the best candy-bar eating scene in all of television history. Comic-book references. Biblical allusions. Mythological connections. Double meanings to scores of lines. Hurley's ''theory'' that he, Ben, and Locke were chosen for this vision quest because they were the craziest ones on the Island was one of my favorite parts of the episode. Now jam it all into one episode. This is what the writer’s strike did to us, and we should be thankful for it.

John Locke always knew he was special. It's just that it didn't seem like being special was such a good thing to be. He was "specially" misunderstood. "Specially" unpopular. And "specially" unwanted. He was even "specially" rejected. Our culture can be hard on boys. There's not a lot of slack for those who fall short in the manly rituals of initiation. So it was easy to sympathize with young John's stubborn refusal to embrace his preordained status as a nerd. John resisted the destiny he was born to fulfill . But maybe that was because the advertising was so uninspired. Someone should have sat him down and told him a story to get him fired up. They should have told him the oldest story in the mythos of mankind...The Birth of the Hero.



In Western mythology, it always comes back to the same thing. The hero. First he must be born. Preferably to a young, sweet maiden. In many myths, the hero has no earthly father. Jesus was one and not to be sacrilegious in our cultural associations, but Anakin Skywalker was another. That prick Anthony Cooper was a genetic match for purposes of organ donation, but are we absolutely certain that he was the older man who fathered Emily Locke's child?

For sure, some sort of divine intervention played a hand. From the start, the very special baby thrived despite impossible odds. The man who found resurrection by crashing in an airplane started life as the youngest preemie his 1950s hospital had ever seen survive. Which is not to say he lived any kind of charmed life. Like so many heroes, the earthly father Locke eventually came to know was a dirty rotten bastard. Who tried to kill him. And who John arranged, with mythic deviousness, to have murdered by another fatherless son. Ever since Zeus stopped his father Chronus from cannibalizing his own children the age old competition of father and son has shaped the story of men.

Like Moses or Oedipus or Luke Skywalker, the mythic baby is often sent away immediately after birth to protect him from the wrath of the evil father figure. Even if the father himself is not a villain, the hero may still need to be sent away in order to survive. Like Kal El being sent off into space in his intergalactic incubator, little John Locke was set adrift at birth to fend for himself and find his destiny. Once set orphaned, the hero child is raised by surrogates. It seems to be a critical ingredient for heroic stature that one not be raised by one's own ma and pa. You can run down the list from Oedipus to Moses to Clark Kent all the way through Peter Parker and Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter, and the one thing many of the great superheroes have in common is that, like little Johnny Locke ...they were all raised by another.



Who looks outside, dreams
Who looks inside, awakens. - Carl Jung

Locke, as we know, is prone to interesting dreams. Jung thought that, in dreams, each person creates their own personal mythology. Using the archetypes of our own unconscious dreams tell us the stories of ourselves. But where do the characters come from? How does Locke, for instance, dream of Horace Goodspeed - a man he had never met? Horace returned through time to guide Locke to his destination or more to the point; to Jacob, who has been waiting such a long time for the Chosen One to arrive. In the logic of dreams, Horace seemed trapped in a broken loop of time. He cut down a tree, only to find the tree still standing. His nose bleed reminded us of the way he and Ben's other victims died in his genocidal coup but also reminds us of the sickness that infests the freighter and of the way Desmond's nose reacted to his recent tangle with the wrinkle in time. The nosebleed in the dream was an example of the way our own unique dream motifs are larger than our own unique consciousness. The archetypes of dreams share a commonality that spills across our individual experience and break through the limits of our individual knowledge. They are evidence of the collective unconscious we share with all humanity, where the shadow world beyond this waking dream has messages to tell us, if only we can be made to listen.





Horace the Ghost came to push Locke with "goodspeed" on his way to Jacob. In the collective unconscious, as described by Jung, dreams have been known to predict future events. How can that be possible? How can the sleeping mind know of things that haven't happened yet? How did little Locke know about the smoke monster on the Island he wouldn't visit for another forty years? This is the kind of myth where "Time" is a magical power. With the logic of a dream, a man can be killed long after he has already washed up dead on shore.

''Can history then be said to have an architecture? The notion is most glorious and most horrible.'' — From Hell

Should John Locke be lucky enough to see the year 2008, he would be 50. That would make him as old as the central figure in the aforementioned text, one Sir William Gull, a 19Th-century English physician. There are some interesting overlaps between these characters. In From Hell, Gull is a middle-aged man uncertain of his purpose, but he is convinced he is special and senses that the architecture of his life is building to a point. Or, in the sweet phrasing of Buddy Holly that was quoted by LOST, ''Every day its a getting closer/Rolling faster than a roller coaster/A love like yours will surely come my way.'' At 50, though, Gull suddenly finds his calling in the form of a mystical mission to defend his country — an island, don't you know — from an insidious conspiracy. You know, just like Locke. Gull is also, probably, totally crackers; he's Alan Moore's speculative pick for being Jack the Ripper in the story. My comparisons of Locke and Gull will end there.



''Cabin Fever'' began by showing us a foundation of life: Locke's birth. We've previously been given reason to believe Locke was born in May of 1956. But in the opening scene, we saw his mother, a rebellious 16-year-old Emily, secretly six months pregnant with John, dancing to that Buddy Holly song and primping for a date with an older man — presumably, John's con-man biological pop, Anthony Cooper. ''Everyday'' was released on vinyl in July 1957. This sounds picky, but timing is crucial in light of future events. Or at least it should be so I don't think it was a goof up by the produces. Emily, John Locke's mother, is struck down by...well, we never saw who was behind the wheel, did we? Maybe that's important, maybe not, or maybe not yet, but anyway, Emily was rushed to the hospital, and with that, John Locke entered the world three months ahead of time. Pedestrians have it pretty hard in LOST. We watched Juliet’s ex-husband eat a bus, and then Hurley rolls right over Pryce. This episode it’s Emily who chews on a fender and although she doesn’t die, it leaves us wondering who the mystery driver is. Is it Cooper? Is this Richard’s second road kill? Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that fate, or the island’s will acting as a executor of fate, bends the path of these people’s lives in the direction it needs them to go.

As preemie John was wheeled away in a toasty incubator, Emily cried out her wish that the boy be named John. We’ve seen this show already, and we know that it ends with a bitter, motherless existence and a sprinkling of patricide. Ben and Locke are brothers, if not fraternally at least metaphorically, as they both walk the same paths through a very tough life. In Cain and Able fashion, one even kills the other, or at least tries to, until mom (in this case the Island) intervenes.

Flashback one year ago in which LOST gave us another cheery Mother's Day edition, "The Man Behind the Curtain". That episode told the origin story of Benjamin Linus, who, if you recall, was also born prematurely, and also born to a woman named Emily who cried out his name, although she did so as she died. Some points of difference: Ben was raised by his biological father, while Locke was given up for adoption and raised in foster care. Ben was born about five years after Locke; call it 1963. Locke's fifth year was a key marker in his fate-whipped trajectory, for it brought Richard Alpert into his life.

We had seen the forever young Other earlier in the episode, checking in on preemie Locke and beaming like some admiring Magus from the east. Or west. Or wherever in Christendom the Island is/was/will be positioned in the space-time continuum. Richard showing up at Locke’s foster parent’s home was an amazing scene, and Nestor Carbonell did an incredible job of creeping us right the hell out. It’s raining again, and Locke is playing backgammon when he arrives, only this time with red and white pieces – no black. He’s drawn pictures of the smoke monster on the wall, indicating exactly what Richard is hoping: that young John Locke is an incarnation (reincarnation?) of a future leader of the island. As such, Locke will inherently know the right decisions to make, the artifacts he’s entitled to, and ultimately will lead them down the correct paths when someday he arrives on the island. Returning five years later, Alpert claimed to be with a school that catered to ''extremely special'' children. He said that Locke could be a candidate for his institution and wanted to assess his aptitude. And then Alpert gave Locke a test, and with that, Lost gave us a scene so dense with (potential) subtext it just might take all of the forthcoming eight-month hiatus to unravel it.

Stay Puft

This is to just alert all of those interested, a little while back a fellow blogger who just happens to be a very good friend of mine for a very long time made a post about a Bollywood movie. Well, it would seem that the Bollywood bug has bitten me. Click the link here and enjoy the "Nipple Song"! http://www.madville.com/link.php?id=189647&t=15 or copy and paste if the link doesn't have a clicky link working which I think it didn't link right. Sonuvabitch!

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Well, as we steam our way toward the three part season finally, yes, that's right I said three part season finally, we have an episode I have been eagerly awaiting since the end of the writers strike. Like I said before, some of my intel has been way off, some of it very vague and a few things have been right on. I can say a little about this weeks episode, Cabin Fever, as you can probably tell from the title, the group making their way to Jacob's cabin finally arrives at their destination. From what I'm told, they have someone join them quite unexpectedly and I'm not talking about Horace Goodspeed as we have seen in the preview. Think about someone who mysteriously disappeared into the jungle last episode and you are getting very warm. This is looking to be a Locke flash back episode and we may be surprised at who turns up in it. Someone we have not seen in a very long time is supposed to be making their return this episode in Locke's flashback. How far does the flashback go? Possibly all the way back to the birth of Mr. John Locke.



Now on to some other things I can let you in on; after the writers strike was settled one of the big rumors going around was there was supposed to be this huge kiss happening. After last weeks episode many think it was the Kate/Jack shower kiss but guess what, it wasn't. I have confirmation that it may still be between Kate and some other male character that some of us all know and love as Kate makes her exodus from the island. I also have it on rather good authority that both Sawyer and Locke are both alive and well (relatively speaking anyway) back on the island at the end of the season.



Ahhh, another hot Sawyer pic to end the post, but hold the phone I have one last huge item to tell you about. It has to do with the LOST season finale cliff hanger. Last year the season finale twist or "game changer" was the Kate and Jack flash forward and TPTB called it "the snake in the mailbox". This year it is interestingly titled "The Frozen Donkey Wheel" make of that whatever you can. Matthew Fox and Evie Lilly filmed their scenes secretly and none of the rest of the cast or crew even saw the script pages for those scenes. This season we have more of the same, only this time the big twist ending "game changer" for the season finale (titled "There's No Place Like Home") will feature none other that our favorite conman turned "good guy", Sawyer. May is going to be one heck of a good time for all LOST fans for sure!

Something Nice Back Home Part 2

While elsewhere on the island …



After “The Shape of Things to Come,” it was increasingly clear that Sawyer is becoming the De facto guardian of Claire and Aaron. Something protective has been triggered in Sawyer. Sawyer may have some reason to feel a bit parental; seeing Claire with Aaron may have sparked some latent fatherly drive he left behind for Clementine, whom his former partner Cassidy claims is his daughter. Let's break this down a bit: Clementine is of course the subject of the famous folk song, where the daughter of a gold miner is lost. One of the best films by famous Western director John Ford is a morality play about anarchy vs. civilization called My Darling Clementine (named for the song). The film was about Wyatt Earp (played by Henry Fonda) and leads up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but rather than stuff the film with impending meaning, Ford tends to focus his film around domestic concerns—and Sawyer's real name is Ford. When Sawyer awoke and found Claire missing, Ghost hustler Miles reported that she took off with Christian in the middle of the night. Sawyer subsequently found Aaron abandoned in the bushes. Where did Claire go? As I tried to make sense of Miles' fixation with Claire a thought came to mind: What if she actually didn't survive the obliteration of her home in last week's episode? What if she died? What if the Claire we've seen since then is some kind of spectral but physically tangible manifestation of Claire generated by Island magic, just like Eko's brother Yemi, Kate's horse, and now, apparently, Christian? Could that be why Miles is so intrigued by her — because he can sense that she's no longer human? The view of Sawyer calling for Claire in the jungle was dark and shadowed in a way we've never really seen before. We could have easily been looking through the smoke monster's eyes here, or even Jacob's. It reminded me a little of when Eko was killed, and the whole scene was shot with vibrant greens and darker blacks. The smoke monster was present then, too.



With Jack out of commission, Dr. Juliet Burke steps in as the leader of the beach camp. Not long ago, she was still working to earn the trust of people like Kate and Sun, but her assertiveness under pressure gains her their full cooperation. Her decision making in this situation is both capable and efficient. Not only does she handle the crisis like a natural, but she becomes equally decisive when the time comes to resolve her involvement with Jack. In past episodes, Juliet always felt like something of a loner, both while she was working as an Other and after she joined the crash survivors. Here, she separates herself even further from personal attachments, and defines herself through actions rather than relationships. Juliet’s future status remains one of the unknowns. Three main possibilities exist for her: she could leave, she could stay alive on the island, or she could die. If she remains on the island, would she once again work for Ben, or would she join the downsized group of castaways? If she stays put, then Dr. Burke might replace Dr. Shephard permanently as the camp’s lead decision maker.



After discovering that the freighter lady can speak Korean — and intuiting a possible romantic rapport between her and Faraday — Jin threatened her, strongly intimating that if she didn't make sure Sun was on the first chopper off the Island, he was going to mess up her buddy Faraday. It was a little shocking to see Jin's underworld heavy past reasserting itself, and it made me wonder what additional lengths he'd be willing to go to save his wife. As for Charlotte's Korean, the crazy thought occurred to me that perhaps this Dharma hunting anthropologist uses it to converse with one of her secret masters, someone I suspect has more to do with the larger Lost mythology than we've been led to believe — Sun's father, Mr. Paik.




Anyway, back to Jack, I know we're supposed to all feel really sorry for Jack because he had a drunk dad. Jack learned from his dad that the best way to cope with babysitting is to drink....a LOT. It was a bit odd to see Jack, the great hero of LOST Island, reduced to a whiny, bullying drunk here on the other side of the looking glass, while back on the Island, the man who isn't there, never looked more the chivalrous knight. But, for now Jack has his own method of keeping himself on top of that pedestal he's built for himself. Self righteous bullying still works for him. As he told Kate, "I'm the one who SAVED YOU!" Possessiveness is another coping strategy. He deserves to know where Kate has been...but he doesn't have to tell her about his night runs to the insane asylum. In the great grand tradition of addicts the world over, Mr. Live Together Die Alone still prizes himself as "Exceptional". It may look like he's going bananas with zippers on them, but he still knows he's better than Kate. As he told her in no uncertain terms, she's a fraud pretending to be Aaron's mother. He may only be the nasty drunk uncle, but he's still related to Aaron. Neener neener. It was an ugly scene. But it did have a certain air of familiarity about it. Jack raging. Kate crying. Ahhh, it seemed like old times. That's the Jack and Kate we all know and love. It turns out that the invisible man Jack is most afraid of is Sawyer. Because it seems Kate didn't leave Sawyer behind on that island the way we thought she did. There's something she's doing for him, that she didn't let Jack bully out of her. She's keeping a promise and she's keeping a secret between her and Sawyer.



Kate isn't the only one carrying promises. Promises were important in this episode. Brave Juliet promised to save Jack's life, and she did. Noble Jin promised to get Sun off the Island, and we know that he did. Sawyer, the newly minted White Knight, promised to get Claire and Aaron back to the beach, and damn he was trying. Jack also promised, before collapsing with the appendicitis we already knew he'd survive, that he'd get everyone off the island - "All of us." And that was the promise, as we know, that was not kept. A promise distills down to trust. Kate is honoring Sawyer's trust by fulfilling a promise even though he'll probably never know she did. And Kate was trusting Jack to somehow become Aaron's good dad even though he's a domestic nightmare. But Jack doesn't trust. He didn't trust Juliet, who knew she'd always be second best in Jack's heart. He doesn't trust Kate, who he knows will never let him be first in hers. At the end of the episode, Kate decided she wasn't going to hold up any more mirrors for Jack's self indulgent inner journeys. It was a good thing too. The last thing Aaron needs is to have the sins of the Family Shephard revisited on his little blond head. Of course, there's still that inconvenient glitch that apparently being "raised by another" will bring about great cosmic catastrophe of some kind. Aaron is important in the mythology in ways none of us know yet. He is The Ring in this story. The Precious. It was important to note which two characters were shown protecting The Precious in the final moments of the story. In the future, Aaron is safe with a woman who finally loves someone more than she loves herself.



But the only reason he's there at all is because on the island there was a man who was learning that same lesson. There's one thing I do love about Lost and it's clues and with those clues, there's no such thing as coincidence.



How did I get here?
This is not my beautiful house.
This is not my beautiful wife. - Talking Heads

Something Nice Back Home

As I was going on the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish to God he'd go away. - Anonymous

It's hard to tell what invisible man Jack was more afraid of in this episode. The shadow of "Han" Sawyer, the father who won't let go, even from beyond the grave, or the little voice inside his head that won't stop reminding him what a fraud he is.



At least this season we're getting steak and potatoes when all we had before was fish-biscuits and water. The voices calling Jack back to consciousness in the opening scene definitely seemed to belong to both Juliet and Kate. This type of duality saturated the whole episode, as did the circular feelings of everything having been done before. Operating on the beach. Going to the medical hatch. Aaron is taken, again, and someone even gets busted for secretly knowing a language. Kate mentions she's going to be Jack's nurse, to which he points out "it wouldn't be the first time". This type of circulature has got to be intentional and yes, I just made up the word circulature.

You'd think LOST was trying to tell us something the way it keeps pointing toward Lewis Carroll on its bookshelf. In ''Something Nice Back Home,'' flash-forward Jack enjoying domestic bliss with flash-forward Kate read a passage from the children’s classic as he put flash-forward Aaron to bed.

''Alice took up the fan...and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: 'Dear, dear, how queer everything is today. And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: Was I the same when I got up this morning?...If I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?”



''The Pool of Tears'' is a transitional chapter in Alice's adventure. She's just fallen out of her world but finds herself stuck in a stuffy corridor on the other side of a door leading into Wonderland proper. As she ponders the riddle of herself and the problem of opening the door (a problem because the door is rather tiny and she has grown very large thanks to a piece of magic cake) she cools herself with a fan left behind by the White Rabbit, oblivious of the fact that the very act of fanning is magically making her smaller. The dilemma is making her weep: Poor Alice can't figure out how she fits literally in her new world. Similarly, ''Something Nice Back Home'' was a transitional passage in the LOST saga, a busywork episode designed to put all the characters in position for the year's big finale.




And so it went that ''Something Nice Back Home'' began with Jack's iconic eyeball fluttering awake, an ironic wink at the first scene of LOST's very first episode, in which the good doctor, having just fallen from the sky, pops awake and springs into life-saving "Hero of the Beach" mode. He staggered out of his tent and into a squabble between his castaway friends and Faraday and Charlotte; then he fell flat on his face. We learned that shortly after Kate's trial, Jack got over his aversion to Aaron (though it wasn't explained how or why he was so anti-Aaron to begin with) and shacked up with the former fugitive. Rumpled sheets and red panties, a sexy post-shower smooch, and even a marriage proposal. But the omens of relationship collapse caused by Jack's backslide into old, self-destructive patterns (jealousy, paranoia, insecurity) were planted early. There was Jack stepping on a toy Millennium Falcon and grumbling ''son of a bitch!'' (Not a fatherly thing to say, and certainly not a nice way to talk about your half sister, but also, that's usually a “Sawyerism“) There was also the sports news of the day: Jack's beloved Red Sox had just been swept by those damn Yankees. So much for reversing the curse and so much for Jack reversing the destructive influence of his accursed father issues. Initially, he appeared to have made peace with his past. He actually spoke nice of Christian, warmly recalling to Kate that he had been a great storyteller. But he was also nagged by doubts that he could ever be a decent dad himself, much in the same way that he was nagged by doubts that he could be a good husband to Sarah. Alas, he was given reason to indulge these anxieties after being summoned to the Santa Rosa Mental Health Facility for an emergency meeting with Hurley. Finally, we were shown Jack's post-island turning point this episode. The catalyst to his downfall had nothing to do with Kate, or Jack's misguided assumptions that he was once again being two-timed. Instead, it was Hurley.



Everything is perfect for Jack until Hurley pees in his soup. Kate's been acquitted, work is going well, and Aaron hasn't been kidnapped in years. He's clean shaven. Adorable panties litter his bedroom floor. Things are looking up until Hurley's tales of speaking with dead Charlie sharply remind Jack as to who he is and where he's come from. Mentally and perhaps even physically, the island looms over everything and will not go away. One by one it shatters the illusion of heaven that Hurley refers to. It happened to him, it happened to Sayid, and it happens to Jack now too, as we know the only future that exists for him is a downward spiral of jealousy, drugs, and alcohol.

Talk about Alice in Wonderland links: We learned Hurley had become as mad as the Hatter — a character, intriguingly enough, who believed he had literally murdered time. More to the point of the episode's cited passage, Hurley had become like Alice: despairing over how he fits into the post-Island world, puzzling over the man he was or wasn't.

“We’re dead. All of us. All of the Oceanic Six – we’re dead. We never got off that island. […] Living with Kate, taking care of Aaron, it all seems so perfect. Just like heaven. […] I was happy too, Jack. For a while anyway. Then I saw Charlie.”



Interestingly, Hurley’s current perspective now reverses his delusions from the Season Two episode Dave. Before, Hurley believed that the island was a fantasy and that Santa Rosa was reality, but now he has come to believe the exact opposite. Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud argued that our dreams are largely the manifestations of the unconscious. Unconscious fears and desires can manifest themselves in many other ways in life, and not only while a person is asleep. In Hugo’s case, an overwhelming case of survivor guilt causes him to lose his tenuous grip on reality. Previously, his guilt over his involvement in the catastrophic deck collapse triggered his first mental breakdown. It might be easy to chalk up Hurley’s interactions with his two imaginary friends (Dave and Charlie) only to the power of the island, but there are deeper psychological forces in effect here. The island does not need Hurley as much as Hurley needs the island: in order to repair his self-image, he needs to return to the friends that he abandoned.

Off his meds, Hurley had come to believe that he was dead, that his after-Island life was actually the afterlife, that his doctor wasn't real, and that Ghost Charlie was visiting him and imparting important Intel intended for Jack. The messages: (1) that Jack ''wasn't meant to raise him'' (presumably, '' him'' means Aaron) and (2) that Jack himself was about to get haunted. Jack, not courageous enough to engage in Hurley's kind of self-reflection (and all the worse for it), tersely told his friend to get back on his meds and left, trying hard not be spooked. But he was. And so was I.



There was more to Jack's appendectomy than meets the eye. Much, much more. Because if you thought it was all simple episode filler, you missed Rose's words to Bernard completely. Rose doesn't get much dialogue, but when she does speak it's usually pretty important. This episode she questions why the island would make Jack sick, especially now, when in the past it's made people better. Keep in mind that Rose has always been attuned to the island in a Locke/Walt sort of way; certain in her assumption that Bernard was alive, and somehow knowing her cancer was gone. Often unconsciousness seems to play a role in visions, flashbacks, and even appearances of the smoke monster. To speak with the island, Locked ingested his home-brewed trip paste, and even gave it to Boone in season one to invoke visions. Eko's Yemi-sightings came while sleeping at night, and Charlie's visions came during dreams. It seems to me that the more withdrawn from consciousness the mind gets, the more it can communicate with (or be influenced by?) the island. Now take Jack, who for some reason is adamant about staying awake during the procedure even though Juliet's performed dozens of appendectomies. The last thing he screams before Bernard chloroforms him: "I don't want to be unconscious!" Jack goes out, and then… white light (Hurley's heaven?) Suddenly, Jack's in his flash-forward and at a very crucial point in his flash-forward too, because this is exactly when his father not only appears but actually calls to him.



The episode carefully lays the groundwork for a meaningful exchange between Jack and Christian, but the conversation never materializes. Instead, Christian interacts with his daughter Claire rather than his son. Jack’s life does not fall apart simply because Christian appears to him. Instead, his dream life deteriorates because he desperately wants to talk to Christian, but he cannot. If Jack had the ability to sit down on a bench and chat with Christian, the experience would not only be ‘kinda cool’ as Hurley says, but it would be a life-changing event for him. The white-shod manifestations of Christian Shephard have always served as Jack’s own personal white rabbit, but he still has not caught up to him even after four seasons. In order to achieve any lasting happiness, Jack still needs to complete his initial task: to bury his father and bring closure to those unresolved issues at the heart of his suffering. Unfortunately for him, the island might be the only place where he could achieve this result.



And so it went that during a late night at the hospital, Jack was lured by the bleating of a malfunctioning fire alarm to the lobby, where his father was waiting. ''Jack,'' he said sharply, causing his son to almost jump out of his tattooed skin. Actually, it played more like the instinctive flinch of a battered dog, reacting to his master's raised hand. Christian quickly vanished after that, but it was enough to make an impact on Jack. He asked a colleague for some anti-anxiety meds, then went home and washed the pills down with a beer. Jack's transformation into a pill-popping, booze-guzzling, airplane-crash-yearning, bridge-jumping-wannabe grizzly bear had begun. Sealing the deal was his mounting paranoia that Kate was pulling a Sarah and stepping out on him. And as it turned out, Kate did have another man on her mind: Apparently, she had been secretly fulfilling a promise she made to Sawyer before leaving the Island. (My guess: The shaggy con man asked her to look in on Clementine, the daughter he had with con gal Cassidy.) Furious over learning he was still competing with Sawyer for Kate's mind, heart, and time, Jack raged: ''I'm the one who saved you!'' Does he actually love this woman, or does he view her as some reward for being a good boy? Connecting that back to Jack's statements to his fellow castaways earlier in this episode (''I've gotten us this far. I said I was gonna get us off the Island, all of us. I promised that I would '') and even further to the hurtful, defining comments of his father in ''White Rabbit'' (''Don't play the hero, Jack. You don't have what it takes''), and what you have is one really complicated guy whose savior complex not only is an expression of his damage but gets in the way of his own redemption. Jack might be a good man, but he's a control freak (see: insisting on observing and guiding his own surgery) who hates himself and will sabotage any chance at happiness that he gets (see: driving Kate away). For Jack, there will never be ''something nice back home'' both literally and spiritually until he gets over himself.

So the big question becomes why would the island want to put Jack under? And the only answer to that (I think) is because it needed to communicate with him in a way it normally couldn't. Sleep wouldn't do it, the island needed Jack under under… perhaps to get to him on a future level. It's no coincidence that the smoke detector goes off right before Jack sees his father. The island IS influencing the flash-forwards, just as I've always suspected it's been influencing the flash-backs. Bernard described the experience would be pleasant, just like “dreaming of something nice back home”. This phrase, from which this episode takes its title, transforms into a cruelly ironic reversal. It's as if Jack knows exactly what the future has in store for him and doesn't need it to be revealed to him while he is unconscious. By this point in the story, Jack’s idyllic dream world has transformed into a nightmare. Jack's clothing even offers a visual cue for the impending doom: a white shirt, a light blue shirt, and a dark gray shirt. In the later flash-forward scenes, all of his deepest fears become reality. Christian flees before Jack can communicate with him, Kate begins to lie to him about a secret life just as Sarah did, and Jack himself becomes the same type of out-of-control, substance-abusing parent that he once hated.

The Shape of Things to Come part 3 (a different view)

Games aren't just for kids. Grown men play them too. Even powerful men. Lost doesn't seem to be shaping up to be about a bunch of plane crash survivors after all. Doesn't that all seem like a million years ago? It also seems more and more that those original themes of loss and redemption are less and less significant. Mathematicians have tried to formalize games - how we play them, how we win them - into theories, where choices are analyzed according to models that predict outcome. They've even tried to use game theories to predict how economics and genetics and politics will operate. But it remains a very unreliable field of study. Mainly because the theory relies on determinism, on effect following cause. And it's that very thing that is so often violated. Things don't always go according to plan. What ultimately destroys game theory is irrationality. Including the most irrational behavior of all:



Altruism.
Courage.
Heroism.
Pure heroism, when a man acts against his own self interest for the good of others. Indeed, this is the ultimate fly in the ointment of game theory. Much of game theory is predicated on the belief that organisms will behave in their own self interest. But heroism is the kind of variable that blows those game theories all to hell. It's commonly accepted that the ultimate hero of Lost must be Jack. In fact, even raising any doubts on this topic can create quite a bit of...tension. Yet Jack has been nothing but a chump this season. It took Mr. Med School Genius a whole week to process what dainty Daniel told him the very first day they met! The freighter was never coming to Lost Island in order to rescue these mooks. I know I heard Daniel tell this to Jack in the second episode. Didn't you? Why was Jack listening to his "gut" instead of to the words that came out of the guy's mouth? Was he distracted by his menstrual cramps? Or did he start dipping into the meds a lot earlier than we'd previously suspected? (If you watched some of the previews you should know he has appendicitis.)



So, Jack hasn't been much of a hero this season. But others have. Bernard pulled out some of those mad secret skilz he has. First sharpshooting. Now Morse Code. Hurley's Cowardly Lion has been growing ever less cowardly and more lion. He's taking care of the Chosen One. In the Bible, Aaron is the brother of Moses - whose life was saved from a baby killing monarch when his mom set him afloat in the Nile in a reed basket. Hard to ignore a foreshadow like that one. Hurley's defying the evil alliance of Locke and Ben, who would have hung Sawyer and Claire out to dry. And he's acting against his own self interest when he offers to guide that evil alliance to Jacob's cabin, in order that his friends can get safe. Apparently, the serenity of a week at Othertown Spa has washed away all the Cooper killing anger in Sayer's tortured soul and filled him with the pure spirit of a Knight. When danger strikes, he thinks first of saving poor, doomed Frenchie and her kids.



Then he runs instinctively to scoop up the sleeping Claire. Even the swing sets were watching over Sawyer. The island needs him alive as well and that makes him untouchable (for the moment at least). Sawyer and Hurley obviously never learned about game theory, because the whole self interest thing never reared its ugly head with either of them. Refusing to behave in one's own self interest is the primary fubar of all game theories. So that makes Sawyer and Hurley the irrational forces here, the wild cards. Nothing messes up a formula worse than an irrational force like friendship. There is one group on Lost that can generally be excluded from heroics. "Gentlemen's Clubs" may not have much gentleness in them, but they are full of dicks. Literally.



Women don't get to play The Hero on Lost. They get to be dear little Moms. They get to be helpless victims. And they get to wash their boobies in public and grin madly about how excited they are to go home and face those eight felony counts. But don't be sad. It's not as if women have no important role to play in the world of Lost. They do get to die quite often. In this episode, in the darkest moment they've ever filmed, it was a teenage girl who got to suffer the consequences of the gentlemen's game. Not only did she get a bullet in the head, but she got to hear the only father she's ever known disown her before she took it. Alex joined the long line of shocking female murder victims.



And like most of the others, her death wasn't about her at all. Like Ana's and Libby's deaths were about Michael, and Shannon's and Nadia's deaths are about Sayid, Alex's death was all about Ben, and the ways this tragic rule change affects his primary objective. Which, for all his tears, is not and has never been loving the child he "stole from an insane woman." When children play games, they aren't so much into the objectives. They're more about the fun. Like getting to play Pretend.