UConn James

Wow. That was ballsy. And it worked. We weren't given the names of Allison Janney's character, nor of MIB. We also were not told here, but it's in the air everywhere that the time of Claudia's arrival to the island was 23 AD. Let's start out with the parameters of the game. The food Claudia ate was a careful mixture from... what do we call her? Island Woman?... her mortar and pestal. Seemed to trigger the births, and it also seems to be the tincture by which Jacob and MIB couldn't kill each other. Likewise, drinking the wine was a mechanism for Jacob to be the next protector of the island. Light and dark imagery was heavy in this ep., so I'm not sure identifying each instance is going to be necessary. You saw it. The swaddling cloths. The game and its pieces. The light at the end of the tunnel and the black smoke that came out of it.... So, some of the biggest mysteries have some answers. "Adam & Eve" are the Island Woman and MIB (at least, his corporeal body). The Smoke Monster form came as a result of getting too close to the light. I'm going to have to re-watch that part especially. Can anyone explain what happened right there? MIB got sucked under a kind of lintel stone. All told, yes, this presents quite a different side of the story. But we're left with even more questions, following as Island woman herself explained, that each answer she gave would only prompt more questions. Where did she come from? How long had she been on the island? Did she go down toward the light (seems so. How could she know what it is?)? Could the tunnel light be what Locke saw that he described as a beautiful bright light? How could MIB show up as MIB in 1867 if that body was dead? As we saw it, the Donkey Wheel hadn't been installed yet. The wells were dug, they'd found electromagnetic properties at several points. After the village was burned (by Island Woman, most like) and its inhabitants killed, the well was filled up. Apparently, it was re-dug? Only, its properties didn't work for MIB? So, what does MIB mean when he's said that he wants to go "home"? Does this mean, back in time? These are my initial thoughts, sorry if they're scrambled. Kristin from E! was hella right when she wrote you're going to have to re-watch this ep.

Just a couple of thoughts after re-watching "The Candidate." 1) In the sideways flash, Claire said that she had never met Christian Shephard. So, might that mean that there wasn't a car crash and her mother wasn't in a coma? Could it mean a different father for Aaron? It's also interesting that Christian left her... a wooden box in his will. A body in "a wooden box" is what MIB required to assume an identity. 2) Seeing the auction site with Jin's wedding ring, the engraving on the inside says "We will never be apart" their deaths --- namely, Jin's refusal to leave Sun --- feels a little more cosmically right than it did last week.

No, that was a new chapter. Just, in your book, there was a not-so-great character included in those pages. Don't think that you haven't grown or haven't learned anything... I'm not a bible-thumper but I do believe there's a reason for everything that happens. There will be subsequent chapters where lessons learned in this chapter help you.

Not chiding too hard, dude. It weren't much. But, there are those here who prefer to stay 100% LOST-pure going into episodes.... Lord knows I'm not one of them . On the whole, all of the LOST threads have been very good in this regard.

duey gave a bit away this week, so it won't be a total surprise.... This ep will be heavy on island mythology. Special guest star is Allison Janney, best known for her role as C.J. Cregg on "The West Wing."

Here's a hint of advice to you and everyone else. Don't ever do that again. People who get it all handed to them (and do nothing in return for what they get (and no, ladies, having a vagina does not account for this)) only expect more and more.

Link Principal Madison could also take away the white kids' books. That would be sweet! If this were the other way around, this dude would be lucky to be drawn and quartered. Al Sharpton would be up in his grizzle with a microphone. As it stands, he might get a slap on the wrist, and there's ~ a 15 percent chance he'll be invited to a White House beer summit.

I vote for this. I really don't know why people get married anymore. The current way of things is serial monogamy, at best. We knock the old days and call it politically incorrect, but the medieval mindset --- that women are either stupid, batsh-- crazy, or will sleep with anything that moves (and thence, many a man's sister's children were treated better than that man's own children; b/c they are guaranteed to be some at least percentage of blood relation) --- hit it on the nose w/o all the dancing around. The current 'Me! Me! Me!' social order has just taken it even more full-bore, only we have Maury Povich and his DNA tests to save the day(!). Just by the tone and what was written, I'm 95 percent sure what drove the split.

There will apparently be an auction of LOST props this summer, to be held in Los Angeles (I would hope there's an online feature for bidding among the plebians...). Linked from ABC's LOST site, so it's legit. Wonder where the proceeds will be going, or is this a way for ABC to recoup some of the $ they spent producing the show (it cost $12M to film the pilot ep)? Link What item do you have your eye on?

From Lostpedia's precis of the ep:

HB, Fez!

Ehhh.... I read that awhile back and danced around it. I'm pretty sure some people consider those things spoilers, but... the cat is out of the bag. Pretty ballsy for a show as popular as this to do an ep so near the finale with almost none of its main characters. But the thirst for island mythology isn't easily sated, and I'm guessing that by the end of "Across the Sea" no one will complain too much about the hour's devotion.

Week 1 Buffalo vs. Miami - W Week 2 Buffalo @ Green Bay - L Week 3 Buffalo @ New England Patriots* - L Week 4 Buffalo vs. NY Jets - L Week 5 Buffalo vs. Jacksonville Jaguars - W Week 6 BYE Week 7 Buffalo @ Baltimore Ravens - L Week 8 Buffalo @ Kansas City Chiefs - W Week 9 Buffalo vs. Chicago Bears (in Toronto) - W Week 10 Buffalo vs. Detroit Lions - L Week 11 Buffalo @ Cincinnati Bengals - L Week 12 Buffalo vs. Pittsburgh Steelers - L Week 13 Buffalo @ Minnesota Vikings - L Week 14 Buffalo vs. Cleveland Browns - W Week 15 Buffalo @ Miami Dolphins - W Week 16 Buffalo vs. New England Patriots* - L Week 17 Buffalo @ NY Jets - L

Doc Jensen's LOST recap: Sunk And some pertinent notes on the Sayid side of things.... Doc mentions that Lapidus is a 'maybe death.'

And yet, being together is a large part of what this show's been about since the start. Adam & Eve, Bernard and Rose, etc. Even Nikki and Paulo, to a degree. Live together, die alone...? Or maybe die together, live alone?

That conversation with Desmond really brought Sayid back from his stupor. And yes, it was very subtle, which is the way Sayid was trying to get an upper hand on an unsuspecting FLocke. In the paradigm of Jacob's and MIB's power to turn over to their side whoever lets these demi-gods talk to them, does that signify anything about Desmond? Or does it owe to his role as the Constant in the equation? Earlier this season, with the Temple pool going dirty, I thought that bit where Ben drained the mudhole actually caused that. I don't know.... in the timeline, tho separated by seasons, it wasn't that far apart. So, yes, it appears that the mudhole was a sort of containment system, and we learned something about the powers of Smokey re: ability to transform. I hadn't connected that while watching, but then again, yesterday was a loooong day. But aside from that, we also learned that FLocke has a kind of innate sense re: the candidates' status... or he just knows something that is supposed to happen when all the candidates are dead, hadn't happened yet. Either way, he had one chance to play it all coyly and pretend to be the good guy. Now, everyone knows his intentions. At the opposite side of the coin, Jack seems to be the only one keyed into (some of) the candidates' powers.... well, maybe Hurley, who learned from dead Jacob that "[He's] a candidate and I can do what I want." Yet, Jack's faith and experience with the immunity to anything but another candidate causing his/their death does seem unique to him. And he wouldn't have gotten to this faith w/o the help of Locke. So, yes, maybe Jacob, in his 20-moves-ahead chess game, knew as he touched Locke on the ground that it would end in his own sacrifice, but still, he needed Locke to drive Jack into being the next protector of the island. Following from that, I also didn't realize that Lapidus died there. I guess you just develop a whole "It's just a flesh wound!" mentality.... Widmore is on the side of Widmore. Staying with him may well have been a slightly safer alternative. But it also appears that he's a little over-matched, what with timetables being pushed around willy-nilly, losing his assets, trying to provoke fear through explosions that FLocke knows can't hurt him, etc. Agreed on your Jin-Sun points. But also consider that in this timeline, iirc, Jin was declared unequivocally dead by the O6. If he showed up in Korea to reclaim his daughter, what happens? I guess we had to be satisfied that he had seen his daughter on a digital camera and knew that she was safe.... Well, I've always looked at this show as very near to reading a serialized Dickens novel. If you're a fast reader, you can catch up quick right near the end. But, as I pointed out in your thread, you've missed all the small conversation bits along the journey. It would take some dedication to the task for future viewers to even replicate the original ep-by-ep watching experience.

"LOST" finale expanding to 2 1/2 hours

Welcome to our world for the past 6 years, aj!

It's late, so I think I'll just address the meat of the episode, so to speak. From the start with Jack and Sawyer, it's been a debate about who was right, who was wrong. And when one f---ed the goose, the other stepped up and said, "I'm in charge now!" until he f---ed the goose, rinse, wash and repeat. Last season had Sawyer in control at Dharmaville, read books at night and drinking Dharma beer, until the O6 arrived and the plan fell to pieces. Then came Jack, acting out Daniel Faraday's Jughead detonation, where picking up in "LA X", Sawyer blamed Jack's independent actions for Juliet's apparent pointless death. Now, it's Sawyer's turn to foul up. He's not buying Jack's assertion that FLocke's actions can't kill the candidates --- the candidates can only die by each others' actions. I wonder why Jack didn't intone, "Two days ago, I was in the Black Rock with Richard Alpert..." but, maybe he didn't quite have time. But Sawyer's actions are maybe so vexing b/c he saw the Mysterious Boy say that Flocke couldn't "harm them." Sayid seems to have found some measure of redemption by sacrificing himself after telling Jack about Desmond... whom, as we all suspected, he didn't kill. He flat-out tells Jack that he's the candidate that must save them. I have to say that I was at the edge of a comfy sofa with my hands peaked together over my mouth for the last half hour of the ep. Kate was shot in the arm, and as she is no longer a candidate she is not invincible. In fact, as I wrote upthread, she seems to be a marked woman, in a Charlie kind of way. We got more of the reunion we longed for b/w Sun and Jin.... only to have them drown in the sub. After 3 years of being apart, Jin was not about to let go ever again, at least while he was alive. I don't know, there was a sense of sadness, but it's not like I came close to crying. I'm just very confident that the (still-forming/changing, or at least, you hope so for Sayid's part) Sideways world is going to provide some salvation for these characters, with their island memories intact. The sideways world is where our hope now lies. I'm very confident of this... but leave it to this show to take my confidence and beat it to a bloody pulp. Something about the crying on the beach... Jack got up and walked into the shore tide before he started bawling. As if he didn't want Hurley or Kate to see how much the losses affected him. Is this a little reflective of Jacob and the distance he maintained from the people he brought to the island? As much as he said that he wanted the people and candidates to make the choices for themselves w/o being told what to do, perhaps as much as wanting the trappings of free will (but hey, how much free will did Jacob allow these people to have in the first place? It was he who directed their course to the island! FLocke did have a point in what he said to Sawyer in the candidate cave), the reason for Jacob's detachment is guilt over something he did previous to Richard's arrival. Perhaps similar to how a great number of decisions that Jack/ Sawyer has made have been wrong on some end of the extreme. In the Sideways flashes, the story deepens b/w Jack and Locke. Jack finding a new fix-it obsession, and Locke seeming to reprise his "it's this way for a reason. I'm not going to change it" attitude. Most critical was the dialogue about letting go... a key phraseology in Jack's life (in the original timeline) from the start of the show. And, there was a hint of remembrance when Jack said, "I wish you would believe me" drawing language from Locke's suicide note. Wonder what he's going to take from his flashes....

All right.... Gird your loins, everyone! People in the know tell us to have Kleenexes handy for tonight's episode.... I wonder, in what sense? / or ? Got a new laptop yesterday, so I'm now able to watch past eps online. I think I'll wait until before the finale and re-watch all of S6 in one go. It's just awesome to be in/on the cusp of Web 3.0, upgraded from a computer yesterday that wasn't good enough to handle Web 1.0. I know they said the Dharma Initiative wouldn't really be re-visited this season, but we still haven't really mined its purpose. Along these lines, I think it just goes back to what Locke said in S2... "All roads lead here." It goes in with the Numbers, the seeming abutment of DI/Others (e.g. how I wrote upthread about the basement blocks in Ben's house being so close to the Others' tunnels). Dharma was created only as a means to get these Candidates to where they need to go. Let me explain a bit in terms of a puzzle I do almost daily in the newspaper --- Sudoku. In this game, for those who haven't ever heard of it, the object is, that given a certain amount of various already-filled-in numbers, you need to put the numbers 1-9 in horizontal and vertical lines in a 9x9 template, and you also have to make sure that 1-9 appear in sub-templates within that larger template... Oh, hell. Here's the wikipedia page if you don't know what it is. But, you get to situations where you have to guess and do trial-and-error. he '4' can only possibly go in 2 remaining spots. You pick one and draw it out to its conclusion until you either run into a conflict --- at which point you need to erase erase erase, and then you now know for certain where the '4' goes, and you must then work from there --- or you solve the puzzle. It can get more complicated than that on harder puzzles, where sometimes you need to do two or three layers of guessing and filling in based on that guess. "What's your point, Vanessa?" you're all asking right now. Well, there comes the observation that sometimes, whatever combination of guesswork you sometimes need to try --- whether you get it on the first guess or you're on your fourth --- some numbers go in certain spots no matter what. All roads lead there. And, my thought (and I could be totally out of my gourd here and if so, tell me) is that perhaps the DI experience was like a guess in sudoku, only a guess that had physical repercussions. Perhaps the time-travel was like erasing, only you've still gained a bit of knowledge to move forward from. There comes a point where all the 2s, 5s and 9s are filled in. And you've only got a few wild cards left who have yet to find their proper place. I dunno. Probably, I have too much time on my hands to think about ---- like this.

I think most people would be upset if anything happened to the dog... moreso than anything happening to the human characters on the show. Outside of whispy dog-buddy movies like "Marley & Me," a dog dying just isn't very good drama. It can have the power of stopping cold any involvement / emotional attachment the viewer has. Also, Jack Bender, who has directed a majority of eps on the show (and isn't he an assoc. producer?) explained toward the end of S1 that he is a total softie for dogs. I join him in that regard. It wasn't scripted for Vincent to follow the raft, yelping after Walt, but Mr. Bender wanted it. And... it was a great touch. Tgreg, that's interesting to hear about JJ's involvement. All word I'd seen said he'd been very hands-off basically since the pilot. Nice that he's now a part of the conclusion as well, tho DL and CC have done most of the heavy lifting.

What with it being the series finale and all.... have they done extra shooting to deflect even the actors from knowing for sure what's going to happen? E.g. They filmed Sawyer, Hurley(?), Desmond and Locke in Jeremy Bentham's casket at the end of S4.

It's back on track this week. Evidently, they needed a little catch-up time and filled it with a refresher of the big island mythology episode (well, the biggest one so far).

Sad that it's not only on fan boards one sees stuff like this.... FakeAPStylebook says, "To save money, outsource your fact-checking [and proofreading] to countries without access to encyclopedias or the Internet." Not far from the truth of the matter.

... The My Twinkie Defense.