The Origin of Batmanuel

LOST

Fooled you! Sorry if you were genuinely looking for a post about the origin of the character that Nestor Carbonell played on the short-lived live-action TV adaptation of The Tick. However, I'll do the next best thing and talk about the much-anticipated origin of Richard Alpert in "Ab Aeterno," as well as "Recon" and "The Package." So enough fooling around, and on to Lost.

"Recon," our first Sawyer-centric episode of the season, gives us a glimpse, in its flash-sideways, of perhaps the greatest cop-show-that-will-never-be of all time, Ford and Straume. It also shows us some interesting aspects of Sawyer's character and nature. As far as we know, everything about the lives/life of the original timeline's Sawyer and alterna-Sawyer was the same up to and including their/his parents' deaths. In the original timeline, this drives him into a life of, essentially, following in the footsteps of the man who destroyed his childhood as a con man; in the new timeline, it compels him to join the LAPD in order to take down con men (and women) and eventually to get to Anthony Cooper. Instead of being a born criminal, Sawyer—both of them—is teetering on the line between the law and crime, with some small event early on—apparently his writing the letter to "Mr. Sawyer," using Jacob's pen—nudging him toward channeling his feelings of hate and revenge one way or the other. During his date with the smoking-hot alterna-Charlotte, he even says that he realized this early on—"I got to a point in my life where I was either going to become a criminal or a cop."—and chose the law. No doubt that's why he can play a con man in his sting operations so well. (That opening scene was a terrific little play on our expectations. Also, did you notice that the woman alterna-Sawyer was stinging called him "dimples"? I guess Sawyer isn't the only one quick with the nicknames.) It also reflects original Sawyer's fifth-season role as "LaFleur," head of DHARMA security (ironically, conning his way into a position of authority and trust). In both timelines, Sawyer walks a fine line between the right and wrong sides of the law, jumping back and forth as the situation requires, giving yet another example on Lost of moral ambiguity, of a blurring of the line between detective work and conning, law and crime, good and evil.

As for the original-timeline scenes of "Recon," we get our first real look at the returned Charles Widmore and his armed Geek Squad (I wish I could claim credit for having thought of that) of Liz Lemon, that nerdy data guy on Jason Statham's crew in Paul W.S. Anderson's Death Race, and what I can only assume will prove to be a bunch of red shirts. Widmore seems to be anti-Loophole, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean he's pro-Jacob. (For one thing, there's an obvious contrast between science-oriented Widmore and the low-tech Others, e.g., keeping Loophole out through sonar pylons vs. lines of ash. Speaking of the pylons, does this mean that Widmore's joined forces with the Hanso Foundation, the folks in Ann Arbor behind the DHARMA Initiative?) I wouldn't put the murder of the Ajira survivors on Hydra Island past either Widmore or Loophole; both can be pretty ruthless when it comes to getting what the want, or even to merely tying up loose ends. Meanwhile, Sawyer seems to have reverted back to his looking-out-for-number-one con man mode from the first season, telling both Widmore and Loophole what they want to hear in order to get what he wants, i.e., off the Island. The plot thickens . . .

In the next episode, "Ab Aeterno," we take a break for the most part from both the Island goings-on and the flash-sideways timeline to delve into one of the great mysteries of the series, Richard Alpert, a.k.a. Ricardus, a.k.a. Ricardo. This episode both gives us a heaping pile of answers to long-standing questions, and a lot of great character and background material showing us what makes the Island's three most mysterious inhabitants tick. Richard doesn't age thanks to Jacob, because he was refused absolution from a crooked priest and was afraid of dying and going to Hell. He arrived on the Black Rock, which was cast inland in a huge storm, crashing into and breaking the Taweret statue. The Island (via its "unique energy," perhaps) keeps Loophole trapped there, preventing him from wrecking havoc upon the rest of the world. Jacob brings people (the Black Rock, the Others, Oceanic 815, maybe DHARMA and Desmond) to the Island to prove to Loophole mankind's essential worth (perhaps in order to "defuse" his evil should he ever escape the Island). But far from being a mere info-dump, "Ab Aeterno" gave us a real sense of the rivalry between Jacob and Loophole—they've been trying that knife trick for centuries!—and showed us that Richard's story is really a tragic one: a simple man lost in a strange new world, willing to kill to get back the woman he loves, a pawn in a game beyond his comprehension, cursed with eternal life and what seems like a doomed mission, spending lifetimes in service to a being only to find his master murdered and his life and effort rendered apparently meaningless. But Hurley's ghost-whispering at the end infuses the distraught Richard with new purpose, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with it.

In "The Package," we pick up both the original timeline and the new timeline after our hour with the immortal Canarian: Widmore and Loophole are parrying and thrusting back and forth, and we find out what led alterna-Jin to be in that freezer and what happened after Sayid found him in "Sundown." As was speculated earlier, Jin and Sun aren't married in the new timeline; and far from her leaving him, the trip to LA is their opportunity to run away together, beyond (so they think) her father and his boss's malevolent reach. Unfortunately, three of the characters we love to hate from the original timeline—Keamy, Omar, and Mikhail—are waiting at the other end to complete the set-up that Mr. Paik has arranged by sending Jin with payment for his own hit, which Sun couldn't replace (having closed her account). Sayid's Gun Kata ends up resolving most of this, but the episode ends with two elements which may be more examples of the original timeline influencing the new: alterna-Mikhail loses an eye, and Sun is pregnant. In the original timeline, she and Jin were only able to conceive on the Island (perhaps related to its healing properties), so that may explain why they don't have off-Island fertility problems in the new timeline, i.e., Jin and Sun's on-Island fertility "bled over" into the new timeline, where off-Island Jin and Sun should be infertile. Alas, their story ended on a hell of a cliffhanger, so we'll have to wait and see if they finally get the happiness in the new timeline that has evaded them in the original.

In the original timeline, Widmore's people nab Jin (keeping him in good old Room 23), apparently to get information about the Island's various energy pockets that Jin studied during his stint with DHARMA in the '70s (again, pointing to the energy being tied to keeping Loophole prisoner on the Island). Widmore gives us more vague references to what would happen if Loophole escaped—"Everyone we know and love would simply cease to be."—but it remains frustratingly unclear (assuming he's telling the truth in the first place). Loophole takes a trip back to Hydra Island for a parlay with Widmore. (When they were getting the outrigger ready, I was hoping this would be our explanation for the event last season, when Locke, Sawyer, and the other time-skippers were followed and fired upon while rowing from the old beach camp to the Orchid station ("The Little Prince"). Guess not. On second thought, it couldn't have been, since when the time-skippers found their outrigger at the beach camp the camp was abandoned, whereas at the moment Jack, Ben, Ilana, et alii are there.) Speaking of the beach camp dwellers, there was some nice character interactions in those scenes, and I like that they have a new sense of purpose thanks to Richard's return, but the whole thing with Sun's hitting her head while running from Loophole and losing the ability to speak (but not write) English seemed straight out of Gilligan's Island; they might as well have had a coconut fall on her head. Granted, it led to a nice scene of her and Jack talking on the beach, and perhaps there's a genuine medical explanation for it, but the whole scenario struck me as a real narm moment.

Meanwhile, on the submarine dock on Hydra Island, we get the dramatic return of Desmond David Hume (and with him, Mr. Motorboat himself, Henry Ian Cusick). This was great because it not only creates a nice parallel between the new timeline, where Jin's supposed delivery to Keamy is the "package," and the original, where Desmond himself is the "package" Widmore's brought to the Island (foreshadowed during Sawyer's visit to the sub in "Recon"), but also is long overdue, both for the character himself and for the great importance that he's supposed to have for how the rest of the series plays out.

P.S. — Just in case you needed a little more awesome in your life, this guy delivers the goods with a series of classy, minimalist posters for each episode of the first three seasons. I especially liked the ones for "Two for the Road" and "Flashes before Your Eyes."

Damn I wish we had HBO

So aside from currently airing The Pacific, a followup to the fantastic Band of Brothers, HBO is premiering next month a new show from David Simon, the creator of The Wire and it is called Treme. I am embedding the trailer below. It. Looks. Awesome.

Trailer

"What if I said you can have anything in the entire world?"

LOST

I just thought I'd catch up with the three most recent episodes, "Lighthouse," "Sundown," and "Dr. Linus," and share my thoughts, ideas, and questions. I thought all three were terrific episodes, very entertaining and enjoyable, though in different ways.

(As a very cool sidenote, the director of "Dr. Linus" was none other than Mario Van Peebles, of Heartbreak Ridge, New Jack City, Ali, and the biopic of his groundbreaking father Melvin, BAADASSSSS!)

"Lighthouse" and "Sundown" demonstrate what seem to be Jacob's and Loophole's respective M.O.'s in getting people to do what they want. In the former, Jacob (or his ghost, or whatever) has Hurley lead Jack out of the Temple to the previously unseen and unmentioned lighthouse, where he sees his childhood home in the mirrors; despite Jack's immediate reaction of anger and confusion, it leads him to believe in his importance to Jacob and to the Island's destiny, as seen in his later conversation with Richard inside the Black Rock. Jacob—much like Lost itself—often doesn't give people the whole truth but only what he thinks they need to know at the time, to the point of manipulating them, but ultimately leaves them to reach their own conclusions and make their own decisions. In "Sundown," on the other hand, Loophole promises people whatever they want to hear—that Sawyer will leave the Island, that Claire will get Aaron back, that Sayid will have Nadia, that Ben will rule the Island—and kills those who don't accept his devil's bargain. (Sure, he let Richard live, but perhaps he could tell that he'd try to kill himself within a few episodes anyway. Moreover, given that he killed at least a couple dozen Others at the Temple, the fact that he let one person live doesn't really change the equation that much.)

In "Lighthouse," Jacob told Hurley that he was sending him to the lighthouse—aside from getting him and Jack away from the Temple and letting Jack know he's his special little guy—in order to help someone find the Island. Then, at the end of "Dr. Linus," we see Charles Widmore (whom we haven't seen since last season) in a submarine offshore. Is he the one Jacob was talking about? My first instinct is no, that Jacob (who, while not perfect, seems better at least than Loophole) would never want Widmore (who sent Keamy's mercenaries in the fourth season and told Ben to kill Rousseau and Alex in the fifth) on the Island. But, on second thought, Widmore hasn't really been any more ruthless, devious, or "evil" than the rest of Jacob's followers; his beef seems primarily to be with Ben, who overthrew him and may not have been ruling the Others according to Jacob's wishes (their easy DHARMA-style living during his tenure contrasts with their simple ways before and since); and, most significantly, Widmore helped Locke to bring the Oceanic Six back to the Island, which, given their status as candidates, accords with Jacob's plans. At this point, despite my instinct to see Widmore as the "bad guy" (a dangerously simplistic concept on this show), I think that he's on Jacob's side; whether that'll end up being the "good" side, however, remains to be seen.

So Sayid has given in to the dark side. This is really tragic, given that his arc over the course of the series has been trying to overcome his past, his demons, and his fear that he's a "bad man" and undeserving of redemption or anything good in life. I read somewhere someone comparing him to an alcoholic who struggles for years to overcome his addiction, but finally gives in and embraces the bottle. Similarly, Claire has forsaken all else—friendship, morality, even sanity—in her quest to get Aaron back, turning into a latter-day Rousseau. Though Dogen said that Claire was "claimed" as Sayid was, how this happened remains unclear to me, since he apparently had to die first. Maybe she died in the mercenaries' assault on Dharmaville in the fourth season when a rocket blew up the house she was in, but she seemed fine when Sawyer found her seconds later; reader-of-the-dead Miles seemed weird around her after that, so it's possible that she died and returned to life claimed, but everything about her abandonment of Aaron and her appearance in Jacob's cabin with Christian still seems bizarre to me, so I hope we'll get some answers in that regard.

We've seen more evidence of the original timeline "informing" the new one. We haven't seen the cut on alterna-Jack's neck again, but we got some much clearer evidence in "Lighthouse" in his appendectomy scar; though his mother offers an explanation, the fact that he doesn't seem to recognize it indicates that it doesn't really belong in the new timeline, but is from the appendectomy Juliet gave him in the fourth season ("Something Nice Back Home"). And in "Dr. Linus," the fact that alterna-Ben teaches at Alex's high school, that he acts as her friend and mentor, and that he would sacrifice his own ambition for her sake, seems to show that the hard-learnt realizations of the original timeline—that power, and even the opportunity to do what he thinks is right, aren't worth sacrificing her—are nudging that Ben in a different direction, keeping him from repeating the original Ben's mistakes.

(Speaking of alterna-Alex, as much as I enjoyed Ben's flash-sideways, I had to suspend a lot of disbelief that she would be in LA, given that both her parents are French. I thought that, since her parents were scientists, maybe they held positions at universities in LA, but then I remembered that Alex said her mother had to work two jobs to pay the rent; I know academia can be rough, but not like that. I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to the Rule of Drama.)

I think that these episodes are three among the strongest in recent memory; in fact, these, in addition to "LA X" and "The Substitute," are giving me a lot of confidence about how the writers, directors, and actors will bring Lost to a close. In "Lighthouse," the two Jacks' parallel feelings of being in over their head and out of their element, their frustration and self-doubt, are finally overcome with a new-found sense of meaning, centeredness, and purpose. (Not only that, but it was pretty awesome seeing Jack as a father; it should be very interesting if we get to see more of David, given that daddy issues have defined Jack as a character. I do wonder, though, who his mother is; Jack met Sarah only a few years before taking Oceanic 815, but given how coincidence-prone the new timeline is, I wouldn't rule her out.) "Sundown" managed the rare feat of moving the plot forward briskly, delving into the mythology, giving us great character development and interactions, as well as awesome action and suspense, and having a tense and touching flash-sideways; it was the total package of Lost episodes. Though not much happened plot- or mythology-wise in "Dr. Linus," it was a powerhouse of character development and acting, thanks above all to Michael Emerson's complex and shattering performance. (Seriously, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, just give him and Terry O'Quinn their Emmys now.) Ben's conversation with Ilana after he runs for the rifle ("Because he's the only one that'll have me.") was one of the half-dozen or so most moving scenes in the entire series, up there with Boone's death, Michael's killing Ana Lucia and Libby, the end of the third-season finale ("We have to go back!"), and Alex's death. "Dr. Linus" may be the best episode of the season thus far; I'd expect nothing less from Mr. Van Peebles.

P.S. — As much as I enjoyed "Dr. Linus," I was a little disappointed, at the end with all the happy reunions on the beach, everyone hugging and laughing in slow motion as the score swells, that we didn't see the reunited Ben and Richard slo-mo running across the beach into each other's arms, laughing and crying like a couple of girls. Would've been the perfect cap to a great episode. Oh well, can't have it all.

P.P.S. — Watching Ben and Alex's study session made me want to look up the Charter Act of 1813. That's how much of a history nerd I am. Turns out the answer was "the Punjab, Sindh, and Nepal."

You gotta keep the Devil way down in the hole

THE WHITE RIBBON

THE WIRE

One is a beautiful, yet difficult and disturbing, black-and-white foreign film about strange events in a German village in the early twentieth century. The other is a gritty HBO series about crime, corruption, and culture in Baltimore in the early twenty-first century. They couldn't have less in common, right? (Other than the fact that I saw the former recently, and am watching the latter on DVD (currently beginning the fourth season).) Nevertheless, while watching The White Ribbon I couldn't help but be reminded of The Wire, noticing their shared thematic and structural elements.

(This post should lay to rest, gentle reader, any fears—or hopes—that this blog is going to be renamed "Owen and Matt Talk Lost," despite what recent posting activity might indicate.)

The White Ribbon (trailer), directed by Austrian filmmaker Michale Haneke (Funny Games (both the 1997 Austrian original and the 2008 American shot-for-shot remake), The Piano Teacher, Caché) and winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, depicts life in a quiet German village in 1913 and 1914, on the eve of the First World War. Despite the narration—from his perspective decades later in old age—by the young school teacher (Christian Friedel), the perspective is almost clinically observational (though its supposed objectivity is naturally problematic); he describes events simply and matter-of-factly, as if in a journal. Starting with the village doctor's being hurt when his horse trips over a wire tied between two trees near his house, strange and unexplained acts of violence and destruction begin occurring. However, these events, and the investigation into their causes, very much take a back seat to a depiction of the seemingly mundane lives of the villagers: farm work; religious services; children going to school, playing with one another, and interacting with their families; harvesttime festivities; the budding relationship between the school teacher and Eva (Leonie Benesch), the local landowner's young nanny. But once we get beneath the tranquil surface, we begin to see the hidden, darker side of this community, full of violence, fear, pettiness, cruelty, and selfishness, and the cause of the destructive acts becomes much more evident. It may occasionally not be very pleasurable to watch, but it is very fascinating and rewarding throughout.

The five seasons of The Wire, which ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008, are based on the experiences of former crime reporter David Simon and former policeman Ed Burns, who then fictionalized those experiences in creating a series that explores, from a variety of perspectives, the life, culture, and institutions of contemporary Baltimore. Though it primarily follows a group of city police officers, it's far, far more than just a police procedural: The cast comes to include the drug dealers and traffickers they're investigating, local politicians, junkies, union leaders, journalists, and public school administrators, teachers, and students. What's most refreshing about The Wire is that it doesn't seem to over-dramatize or "sex up" its subject matter. For example, when a special police detail is formed to investigate a local drug organization, far from being the elite squad you'd expect on other shows, at least half of its members are dead weight, officers merely looking to punch out at the end of the day, start collecting a pension in a few years, and maybe bust a few heads for kicks along the way. At every turn, the detail has to struggle against indifference, interference, and outright hostility from their superiors and colleagues; police politics is at least as great a challenge as the investigation itself.

What emerges through the cases the detail works on, the various people they deal with, and the lives they themselves lead, is a portrait of a community, one that in many ways is profoundly sick beneath its surface. While decay and despair in The White Ribbon's village are much less obvious than in The Wire's Baltimore, that really makes it all the more startling and disturbing once Haneke scratches the peaceful, well mannered, pious surface. While watching The White Ribbon, I couldn't help but think that Haneke was doing for that German village what Simon and Burns did for Baltimore: using a variety of characters, settings, and situations to dig into a community and see what makes it tick, and getting some pretty unsettling answers. Simon's community slowly decays from corruption, apathy, and failed institutions; Haneke's community is suddenly, seemingly inexplicably shaken as generations of repression, cruelty, and hypocrisy lash out.

One more thought on "Lost"

LOST

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I don't think I've heard anyone else suggest it, so I thought I'd throw it out there. Who knows, if I end up being right about this and no one else has thought of it, I could get Lost bragging rights the likes of which mortal man has only dreamt of in his wildest imaginings. (Or maybe everyone else thought of it months ago, or I'm just completely wrong, or both.)

As I said, it seems ridiculously obvious now that it's occurred to me. What if the Incident had the same effect on Jack, Sawyer, Kate, et alii in 1977 as the destruction of the Swan station had on Desmond in 2004, i.e., it made it so that the rules of "whatever happened, happened" don't apply to them, making them the "variables" that Faraday mentioned last season and allowing their consciousnesses to jump around through space-time? After Desmond destroyed the Swan by activating the fail-safe at the end of the second season, he got visions of the future (regarding Charlie's eventual demise) and an extended vision of what seemed like the past but with Eloise Hawking explaining how he couldn't change anything ("Flashes before Your Eyes"); moreover, it apparently made him much more susceptible to the consciousness-jumping effects of traveling to and from the Island, effects that manifested themselves instantly in him but took hours or even days to begin showing in others ("The Constant"). I believe this is also what the time-traveling Faraday meant when he told Desmond that he was "special," and in fact is why Desmond answered Faraday's knocking on the Swan door, despite the fact that he didn't do so originally ("Because You Left"). (Perhaps the reason Desmond answered when Faraday knocked but not when Sawyer did is that the interaction of two people who had been (or eventually would be) exposed to large doses of electromagnetic energy (as Faraday had been due to his experiments) was necessary for the rules to be broken and the past altered.)

Like the destruction of the Swan, the Incident was a massive release of the Island's biggest pocket of electromagnetic energy, so it would make sense for it to have similar effects on those near it. While Desmond's "specialness," his "variability," manifested itself in his consciousness's traveling back and forth in the same timeline, it may be manifesting itself in Jack and crew in their consciousnesses' traveling between timelines, either as obviously as with Juliet right before she died, or as subtly as when alterna-Claire decided to name her child Aaron ("I don't know why I said it. . . . I knew it or something."). Indeed, I think this is why they had to return to the Island (and, ultimately, why Jacob brought them to the Island in the first place), so that they would travel back to 1977, cause the Incident, be exposed to the energy that was released, and thus not be bound by the otherwise inalterable past. Perhaps this is Jacob's loophole to Loophole's loophole, that even if Loophole succeeds in killing him indirectly, he will have a group of people ("candidates," if you will) who can change the past and prevent his being killed (or effect his will in some other way).

OK, that's my theory. If it's a brilliant moment of lucidity on my part, or if it'll be dashed to pieces in the first five minutes of this Tuesday's episode, only time will tell.

Substitute your lies for fact

LOST

Despite what the most recent episode's title would have you believe, there is neither a (direct, at least) reference to the Who, nor an appearance by Tom Berenger. Kind of a letdown.

Though this post covers the past two episodes, "What Kate Does" and "The Substitute," there was a lot more going on in the latter than in the former, so that's what most of this post is going to be about. However, "What Kate Does" did offer some relevant bits of information. First off, it added my "alterna-Claire might not be pregnant" theory to the extensive collection of Owen's Disproven Lost Theories. Not only is she pregnant, but she's traveling to the States for the very same reason in the new timeline as in the old, to give her unborn son up for adoption. Mythology-wise, the new-timeline parts of the episode were significant in two ways. One is the appearance of Ethan (going by "Goodspeed" instead of "Rom"); more on this below. The other is Claire's decision to name her son Aaron, for reasons she can't explain. This seems to be an example of the two timelines subtly, subconsciously interacting: Juliet, before dying, realized that "it worked"; alterna-Jack has an unexplained cut on his neck right where Sawyer kicked Jack in the original timeline; more generally, people in the new timeline with no greater connection than sharing a flight keep running into one another, often in very meaningful ways. Somehow, the fact that the original timeline's Claire named her son Aaron has subconsciously "informed" alterna-Claire's choice of name. I expect the interactions between the two timelines to become more numerous and pronounced over the course of the season.

The other significant aspect of "What Kate Did"—other than the revelation that Jacob must have stopped by Paddy's Pub at some point and touched Mac to recruit everyone's favorite sleeveless Philadelphian for the Hostiles (a name that really seems to fit his character), probably for his renowned martial-arts skills—was the Temple Others' treatment of the resurrected Sayid, i.e., torturing and then trying to poison him. The first round of their "tests," blowing ash over him, makes sense if they're afraid that he's been "claimed" (to use their word) by the ash-adverse Loophole, but the electricity and the hot poker don't. If he has been claimed, then does that mean that all the other dead people who've appreared on the Island—Christian Shephard, first and foremost—are also resurrected agents of Loophole? Sayid doesn't seem to be acting like they did, but rather is understandably confused and upset about the whole situation. We'll see where this leads.

The real meat from the last two weeks of Lost, however, was from "The Substitute." In it, we follow Loophole—indeed, a "substitute for another guy"—as he travels the Island trying to recruit his version of the Others (or something). First off, it was cool to see him traveling via Raimi-cam; I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd found Ash at Dharmaville instead of Sawyer. I'm at at loss, though, at how easily he gave up on recruiting Richard, seeing as how he'd knocked him out, carried him into the jungle, and kept him in a sack hanging from a tree; moreover, recruiting Richard would've been quite a coup, seeing as he seems to have been acting leader of the Others since the real Locke's time-traveling-related disappearance in 2004. However, he does succeed in putting the fear of God into the otherwise unflappable Richard, resulting in what some commenters have already started calling the sixth-season equivalent of Jackface: "Dickface."

Moving on to the next candidate (a word that's become very significant in this show in the past few episodes), Loophole finds Sawyer at a low, vulnerable point in his life (the very thing that Loophole later accuses Jacob of doing), but Sawyer, unlike the seemingly all-knowing Ben and Richard, isn't fooled for a second that this "substitute" is the real John Locke. He goes with him anyway, running into scaredy Richard and mystery lad (younger Jacob? older Aaron? someone else altogether?) along the way, until they reach the Numbers Cave. A lot of ground is covered in there in a few minutes, and a lot of it still doesn't entirely make sense, but here are a few of the things that struck me. First, the scale with the light and dark stones on the plates. Before Loophole throws away the light stone ("Inside joke."), the scale is evenly balanced, but honestly, that didn't really reflect Jacob and Loophole's situation prior to the former's death: After all, Loophole was imprisoned, while Jacob had an army of followers and could travel off-Island as he pleased. Far from their being "balanced," Jacob seems to have had a big advantage over Loophole for a long time.

As for the numbers and names written in the cave, Loophole implies that the numbers don't really mean anything, simply that "Jacob had a thing for numbers." I think this is just a case of Loophole's continuing the fine Lost tradition of dissimulating and opaque explanations, since I find it hard to believe that the show has abandoned the Valenzetti Equation as an explanation (i.e., the numbers represent the values that, according to the equation, determine the date of mankind's self-annihilation; the DHARMA Initiative was established to study and, if possible, change those numbers). If the numbers are in fact meaningful, then it ties back to what Faraday said last season, that "people are the variables" that can affect the otherwise inalterable flow of time; maybe he didn't mean just any people, but only certain people, namely our familiar band of castaways, whom Jacob clearly has thought important for some time.

Since all the "answers" we get in cave come from Loophole, we must ask ourselves how much we should trust or distrust what he says. The show more or less tells us that we're supposed to think he's the bad guy: He wears dark colors, in Monster form he's been killing people since the pilot in the pilot, last season he deceived everyone into thinking he was really Locke, and he manipulated Ben into fulfilling his long-harbored wish of killing Jacob. The problem is, why should we think that Jacob was (is?) any better, other than his milder demeanor? His followers, the Others, are pretty cold-blooded and ruthless (though we don't know to what extent they're really carrying out his wishes). Even in the best light he seems pretty manipulative, bringing all these people to his Island and "testing" them for his own purposes, many of them being killed along the way. And honestly, Loophole's side of things—that Jacob's really a puppet master whose supposedly willing followers are really just brainwashed and manipulated slaves in need of liberation—sounds at least plausible. But of course, Loophole has an agenda of his own, which undoubtedly is furthered by his telling Sawyer this, so we'll just need to wait and see who, if anyone, is right.

As for the "flash-sideways" to the new timeline, Locke's alternate life was a real hoot to see. I mean, we got Hurley as a savvy CEO, Rose as a wise, no-nonsense temp-agency supervisor, Ben as a prickly high-school history teacher, the return of Peggy—I mean, Leela—I mean, Helen, a lot of great, tender, funny character moments, and the human reproductive system as taught by John Locke. Could you ask for anything more? Not only that, but my theory that alterna-Locke didn't go on the walkabout was validated (balancing out my disproven one about Claire; you win some, you lose some). One question very subtly raised, however, concerns Locke's father, Anthony Cooper; not only does Helen suggest to Locke that they invite "your dad" to their Vegas elopement, but there's a picture in Locke's cubicle of him (standing, with hair) with Cooper, confirming that he's indeed the "dad" Helen mentioned and that they have a good relationship. How, then, did Locke become paralyzed, if his father didn't push him out of that window?

The appearance of alterna-Ben in "The Substitute," following that of alterna-Ethan in "What Kate Does," raises the question of what exactly happened to the Island in the Incident. We see it sunk beneath the Pacific in the alternate 2004, and I'd assumed that that was an immediate result of the Incident, i.e., that from the new timeline's creation in 1977 the alterna-Island was sunk, so Desmond never reached it, he never failed to push the button in 2004, etc. And yet we have two Others—or, more precisely, two DHARMA members who would've later defected to the Others—leading normal, mundane lives in the alternate 2004. Ethan could be explained by his being evacuated as an infant prior to the Incident, but young Ben, wounded by Sayid and taken to the Temple by Richard, was almost certainly still on the Island when the Incident occurred. If alterna-Ben wasn't sent to Davy Jones's locker with the rest of the Island in 1977 when the new timeline began, then when—and more importantly, how—was the alterna-Island sunk if the Incident didn't do it? Come on, Lost, you're supposed to be answering questions now, not raising new ones!

Is it just me, or at about 2:20 in this video does Roger Daltrey sing "substitute my Coke for Jin"? Or maybe I'm just suffering from Lost on the brain.

"LA X": Additional Thoughts and Reactions

LOST

First off, thanks for the Juliet picture.

Having read your last post and watched "LA X" a second time (thanks, abc.go.com!), I just thought I'd jot down a few random thoughts.

One thing from the episode that seems kind of mysterious is the cut on Jack's neck in the new timeline, especially since alterna-Jack himself seemed confused about it as well. Here's what I noticed watching it the second time: The cut was on the left side of his neck. In the old timeline, after they jumped forward to 2007 and saw the remains of the Swan station, Sawyer kicked Jack. Where? On the left side of his head, around the neck and jaw. Perhaps it wasn't just hair styles that carried over from the old timeline to the new.

Jack's cut doesn't seem to be the only example of possible connections between the two timelines. When we first see alterna-Jack on Oceanic 815, he seems a little disoriented, like he expected to be somewhere else. It wasn't full-blown "Who are you? What am I doing here?" panic à la Desmond in "The Constant," of course, but it also wasn't what you'd expect from a person who'd already been sitting on that very plane, in that very seat, for several hours. If anything, it was more like '90s Desmond in "The Constant," who was a little disoriented when his consciousness returned to the '90s but described his 2004 experiences merely as a vivid dream. I'm not suggesting that alterna-Jack is undergoing consciousness-jumping like Desmond did, but he certainly seemed unsettled, like he sensed something was wrong but didn't know what.

Something that I think we can chalk up to consciousness-jumping is Juliet's last words. Her apparently nonsensical talk right before she died sounded a lot like Charlotte's when she was dying from the time travel. While Charlotte thought that she was in the past, maybe Juliet thought she was in the new timeline; she realized this immediately before dying, that a new timeline had been created in which they never went to the Island, and thus realized that "it worked." I definitely think that we can look forward to interaction between the two timelines in the future—even physical interaction, if my theory about Jack's neck is correct.

I'm also strongly leaning toward the position that alterna-Locke didn't go on his walkabout. Not only does it make no more sense for the walkabout organizers in the new timeline to let a paraplegic man participate than it does in the old timeline, but the writers made the point of having Boone ask him, "You're not pulling my leg, are you?" when Locke tells him about it. If he did lie, that would definitely add an interesting wrinkle to an otherwise very sympathetic version of Locke. (Speaking of those two, I liked your link to the Lost version of the love that dare not speak its name, a.k.a. "When John Met Boone.")

Regarding what you said about the similarities between this season and the first, in an excellent series on CHUD, "Lost: The Rewatch Column," the writer notes a mirroring going on in the series's seasons, with a number of similarities between the first and sixth seasons, between the second and fifth, and between the third and fourth. For example, Sayid's and Ben's respective positions in the second season ("Henry Gale" locked up in the Swan station, Sayid subjects him to some "advanced interrogation methods," but he breaks out thanks to Michael's betrayal; also, Sayid is the first to suspect what "Henry" really is) and the fifth (Sayid locked up in the Dharmaville jail, interrogated by Oldham, but breaking out thanks to little Ben's betrayal of his people; Sayid finally shoots Ben in part because he suspects what the boy will become).

I'm not sure it's the case, but I'm intrigued by your idea that the two timelines could correspond to the two beings battling it out, one light and one dark, one voluntarist and one determinist.

I'm sorry, though, to hear that you didn't find "LA X" satisfying. As I've said before, I gave up watching Lost with a set of expectations that needed to be met a long time ago; at this point, I'm just along for the ride. As for why we should care about the two timelines, I guess we'll see as the season progresses, seeing as we're only one episode into the two-timeline scenario; we had as much reason to care about Desmond one episode into the second season. I, for one, had a blast and can't wait to see where the series goes now that they've upped the ante this way.

"Looks like we made it"

LOST: LA X.What I enjoyed most about the first episode of season 6 was, let's be clear, being able to see my old friends again. Sure we've rewatched all of season 5 and about 20 episodes from the previous seasons, but to see the Oceanic 815 survivors again on new episodes is so much better.

Well, before I say anything else, I should first say SPOILER ALERT. Do not read beyond here any who have not watched LA X yet.

OK so back to the story. It felt especially nostalgic getting to see Claire and Charlie alive again -- hell, we even got to see Arzt and Frogurt! I was actually glad to see Boone again, even if I never really liked him much. It was good to see the homoerotic tension between him and Locke hasn't changed. The one person I was not particularly happy to see, though, was Juliet. I like her character a lot, but I thought she seemed tacked on to this episode as if they wanted to bring her back again just to make people happy. Personally I thought her farewell to Sawyer in the season 5 finale was about as good as they come and having him say goodbye again diminished what I thought was one of the most emotional moments of the series.

So on to a more critical and exploratory aspects of the post. Thinking more about the episode, I was struck by how much it reminded me of season 1. Sure a lot has changed since our early days on the island, but both the 2007 and 2004 (more to come on that) timelines harken back to the beginning and that pivotal moment when the plane crashed that we have returned to multiple times already. Quite literally, the scenes on the airplane remind us of who these characters were at the beginning as we see them in their original clothing and mostly original roles, including those fulfilled by people who have since died or (in the case of Claire) disappeared. Back on the island there seemed to be more of a challenge directly related to the island with the rummaging through the hatch and the exploration of a new area in the Temple, which was itself full of Others as we originally new them -- not dressed in Eddie Bauer-esque apparel. Sawyer has of course grown more complex in the last 5 years, but there was a certain part of his demeanor with a chip on his shoulder that directly reminded me his first-year character. When Jack tries to save Sayid and Kate is trying to tell him to give up, it is almost a direct replica of when he does the same to Charlie.

We kind of discussed this, but I think it bears fleshing out that I think this episode was very much setting the stage for what is to come and, in that spirit, the premier took all of these reminders of season 1 and tweaked them. The airplane is obviously different in that it doesn't crash (note in the title of this post Jack sayd "looks like we made it"), but beyond that the interaction with Charlie, Hurley being lucky, and the decision to neglect making some of the characters -- namely Jack and especially Charlie -- match something as obvious as their earlier hair styles was quite noticeable. That last might not seem like much, but the show is quite diligent about changing the characters' hair lengths and styles at different times in their lives and it seems odd they would simply neglect to do the same for this scene, especially when they did so for Hurley and Sun, who have different lengths on the island scenes. Plus Jack and Locke friends? WTF? Big shocker I read onlin was that they refer to Sun by her maiden name and neither she nor Jin are wearing rings, leading us to believe they are not married. Back on the island Sawyer's attitude is gruff but it comes from grief over a mature relationship instead of his general anger at the world. With Sayid, unlike Charlie, Jack does end up giving up. My guess is what we are being set up for is to question the stability of what we know as the past and become unsure of that history -- as well as the future. The only thing we do know is right now. Except that we don't because we don't know which right now is real. Confused yet?

There are certainly a lot of possibilities as to what is happening with what I think I have heard referred to as the "sideways" timeline, which I guess is what a writing team does when they have already done the past and the future. What does this mean? I'm not sure yet. There is still the chance it could be that this is some sort of scenario that is going to happen but a different event must occur before the true reset happens which will land them on the plane. Although that thought did occur to me, I am already kind of discounting that. There's also the chance that there are two possibilities for the future already occurring and one of them is going to have to destroy or reset itself in order for the other to become the true future or there are serious consequences -- which could be what Juliet meant when she said that it worked. Perhaps whatever happened because of The Incident simply allows the future to progress that will truly eliminate the timeline they are in, leaving the true present and future to be that which is occurring on the plane. The universe as a way of course-correcting, as they say. This could make sense to me as it appears to be continuing with what we discussed last summer already as the emergence of a cosmic battle going on between Jacob and the entity I must continue to call Loophole and under the scenario I outlined above, the two timelines could coincide with each of the two of them. I would not be surprised if as the season progresses, one of the timelines starts to represent predetermination and the other free will -- the topic of the show's first argument between the two.

So on to those guys. The best plotline of the episode (and I imagine it will continue to be for the rest of the season) was the one involving Loophole-as-Locke and Ben. Terry O'Quinn is in top form right now playing this more devious character and watching Ben realize he was the one who got played this time was quite rewarding (side note: I think we are seeing the set up for Ben's ultimate redemption -- albeit only partial one). There's certainly a war brewing on the island between the two main forces and I'll be curious to see on whose side everyone shakes out. One element that did appear to become more clear in this episode was that in this fight, Loophole is not the good guy. Perhaps Jacob is not either, but the entity also known as Smokey (called it!) is certainly not someone we are positioned to see as a hero. My guess is that those subtle differences in the experience are related to this conflict in their own way and hint toward a possible conflict between the ideas of predetermination and free will. The question of how much the actions of the characters are within their control -- how large the fluctuation can be -- is something I think we will be returning to as the season progresses.

Which leads me to my parting shots. I think this episode certainly set a tone well, but much of it I did not find satisfying. Maybe had they given a little more of an indication of why I should care about the two timelines or even allowed me to have a name for Loophole I would be more happy. There's still a long way to go, though, and I've been watching this show way to long to start getting too upset by a lack of clarity or quick answers.

I do know that I have a lot to look forward to this season and there were pieces I found myself getting quite excited about, including the prospect of discovering how Richard Alpert is involved in the larger story and what the issue is with Loophole returning home, which we assume is likely The Temple. In general the latter made me think about the idea of going home as a constant (pun kind of intended) for the show be it wanting to get off the island or finding a way back to the island for Widmore and Charlotte (and Miles?). As I think of a desire to return home as being the ultimate pivot point for all of the conflicts, it begins to allow the divergent lines of the show start to come together.

The only unfortunate part about that last point is that it allows me to see that the show truly is coming together and we are finally heading toward the end. I'm not really looking forward to that.

"Nothing's irreversible."

LOST

After nine painfully long months, wracked with fears and uncertainty, yesterday evening the big day finally arrived, and the sixth season of Lost entered the world, full of hope and promise. Though its gestation hasn't exactly been a walk in the park, the real hard part is just beginning, as we have to figure out what we're supposed to do in this new, unfamiliar, and intimidating situation in which we find ourselves, namely, the wrapping up of one of the greatest television series of all time. (OK, I'm done with the pregnancy metaphor. Though you have to admit, it is apropos.)

— I DON'T LIKE THE WAY SPOILERS TASTE ON MY TONGUE. —

The other line from last night's episode that I was thinking of using for the post title was Locke's alleged last thought before death: "I don't understand." Although tragically poignant, and certainly fitting given what a sad, pathetic, gullible failure Locke turned out to be (maybe), I think it would have been much more applicable to my thoughts about the show at the end of the fifth season, as a new, previously unseen (or so we thought) being entered the scene, Ben murdered the apparently not-so-all-powerful Jacob, and "Locke" was revealed to be a vengeful, if very patient, imposter. "LA X," on the other hand, clarified and focused a lot of things for me amid all the continuing mystery: The lines seem pretty clearly drawn between Jacob's followers—the Others and the "shadow of the statue" people (that is, Ilana and whoever didn't go into the foot with Bram)—and (though they may not understand it yet) the 815 survivors on the one hand, and Loophole on the other.

Speaking of which, unfortunately we're stuck having to call Jacob's nemesis "Loophole" for at least a little longer. (I was so sure Richard was going to say his name last night!) One thing's for certain, we don't want to call him "the Monster." (If we did, I keep thinking of Michael Bluth suddenly showing up and saying, "Don't call him that." Now that's a crossover I'd pay good, hard cash to see.)

Both Jacob and Loophole seem to think of themselves—or at least describe themselves—as the "good guy." Jacob favors free will, and in "The Incident" tells Ben that he has a choice whether to kill him. Loophole speaks in terms of liberation; he seems to see Jacob's followers as his slaves, whom he sets free by having Ben kill their master. But even though Loophole, like Jacob, speaks of freedom, it seems to be a more determinist, less voluntarist, conception: Since Jacob's followers can't have freely chosen to follow him, then the only way to free them is to eliminate Jacob. Whether either position is more than just rhetoric remains to be seen. However, this raises age-old questions about freedom and will. Can one freely give up one's freedom? The voluntarist would say yes, that even giving obedience is an exercise of one's will. (This is similar to the Stoics' belief that no one was a slave who didn't allow himself to be a slave; even obedience requires the choice to obey.) The determinist would say no, that choice and will are illusions and that the only way to become free is for the circumstances that make one a slave to be removed; servitude is servitude, plain and simple, and the slave's supposed "assent" to his master's commands doesn't change that.

And speaking of slavery, could Loophole's comment to Richard—"It's good to see you out of those chains."—if taken literally, mean that Richard had been brought to the Island on the Black Rock, a slave ship? If the ship that we saw near the Island at the beginning of "The Incident" was the Black Rock, then Loophole certainly could've met Richard if he was on board.

So the idea—and Juliet's intended final words, "It worked," bear this out—is that the conjunction of Jughead's detonation and the electromagnetic energy at the Swan site caused a second timeline to come into being and branch off from the one we know, a timeline in which Desmond never mans the Swan station—because the explosion sank the Island in 1977, perhaps by "moving" it à la the Orchid, but downward?—and Oceanic 815 arrives in Los Angeles after a relatively uneventful flight. Juliet, meanwhile, is never recruited by the Others; she may still be working for her jerk of an ex-husband, but at least she doesn't have to worry about losing Sawyer, which was her whole purpose for helping to detonate Jughead. Of course, this isn't the flight 815 we're familiar with, and I thought I'd try to take account of the differences that I noticed (other than stuff like longer hair; I honestly don't remember Jack's hair being different during the first season):

- The big one, of course, is Desmond's being on the flight. Why was he in Australia, and why was he flying to LA?

- Boone couldn't convince Shannon to return to the States with him.

- Hurley believes that he as good luck, not bad.

- Charlie was in the bathroom coughing up a bag of heroin, not trying to take it.

- Though we don't actually know this, I seriously doubt that Jin was carrying all that money on the original flight 815, since it never came up.

- Christian Shephard's entire coffin is missing, not just his body.

- Locke actually went on his walkabout (assuming he wasn't lying to Boone).

- There may be a significance to items that passengers lost (cue portentous music) during the flight, not just Jack's father (or, as Locke pointed out, just his body), but also Locke's knives and Charlie's guitar (I doubt they let him take that with him when they arrested him).

There are also at least a couple potential differences that I spotted, but I can't say until we get a bit more information:

- Does the new timeline's Sun speak English? I know that the long pause after she was asked at customs suggests that she does but was keeping it hidden (for the same reason that the old timeline's Sun kept it hidden), but different circumstances in her and Jin's post-1977 lives could account for her never planning to leave him, and thus never learning English.

- Is the new timeline's Claire pregnant? We only see her briefly in the back seat of the cab when Kate hijacks it, from the neck or so up, so for all we know there's no Aaron on the way in the alternate 2004.

Something else I noticed was, in addition to Shannon, there's no sign of Michael, Walt, or the Tailies (Ana Lucia, Eko, and Libby). Unfortunately, these are probably all explained by the actors rather than the storyline, i.e., not being on good terms with the producers, being several years too old, getting homesick for foggy London town, and not being welcome on the public roads of the State of Hawaii. But of course, who knows what the future may have in store?

At this point I don't have a whole lot to say about the new timeline, since there doesn't seem to be such going on mythologically speaking (yet) other than the various little differences from the original timeline, but one thing that stood out clearly, and that I was very happy to see, was the little character interactions upon which, in the end, Lost is built, and which are allowed to take center stage a bit more with less wheel turning, Monster avoiding, and space-time continuum rupturing going on. In particular, I was just pleased as punch watching Jack and Locke's little conversation at LAX. I hope that we get a lot more little interludes like that over the upcoming months.

In addition to splintering off an alternate timeline involving missing luggage, arrested rock stars, and terrible CGI, the Incident tossed the 815 folk, Miles, and what was left of Juliet thirty years into the original timeline's future, to the night of Jacob's demise. (The fact that there was nothing left of them in 1977 after Jughead's detonation could explain why Richard says that he saw all of them die, i.e., he saw an explosion (or whatever the Incident looked like) and didn't see them walk away from it.) Obviously there's a lot going on here that will only be fleshed out as the season progresses, but as things stand right now battle lines are being drawn between Jacob's followers and Loophole, with the Temple apparently about to come under assault, Richard out of commission, and a lot of confused airline passengers caught in the middle. Meanwhile, Sayid dies, takes a dip in the nastiest-looking fountain of youth I think I've ever seen (really, they should call somebody about that), and returns to life—but is he the same Sayid we knew? Its healing—and perhaps immortality-granting in Richard's case—waters are undoubtedly what healed little Ben of his gunshot wound in 1977, but if the process "took away his innocence" and made him "one of them," then can we expect the same for Sayid? What's the significance of the fact that the water was murky instead of clear as usual?

Also, someone who wasn't shown or mentioned last night was Charles Widmore. What role, knowingly or ignorantly, is he playing in all this? Whose side, other than his own, is he on? Is he working with Loophole to overthrow Ben and Richard, and with them Jacob, in order to retake the Island? Is he hoping to play a similar role under Loophole as they played under Jacob? Or is he planning, like Saruman, to play along with Loophole only until he's strong enough to overthrow him as well and take total control? Here's what we know: He knew enough about the importance of Oceanic 815 to put a fake wreck at the bottom of the ocean. He sent a freighter to the Island with a band of utterly ruthless mercenaries to capture Ben and, if necessary, kill everyone else they found. He knows about the warp point (or whatever) between the wheel cave and a spot in the Tunisian desert, at least by 2007 when he set up a camera to monitor that spot. He was very eager to help Locke along his way, not only in 2007 when he had Abaddon shuttle him around to visit the Oceanic Six, but even before he got on Oceanic 815, when Abaddon disguised himself as an orderly and suggested to Locke that he go to Australia for the walkabout.

I haven't even really touched on the implications of the Monster's definitely being a manifestation of Loophole. ("I'm sorry you had to see me like that." "Let's not resort to name calling." Fantastic.) It seems that the circle of ash was keeping him prisoner in the cabin, at least until someone broke the circle (when? who?), but if that's the case, then how has Loophole, in Monster form, been rampaging around the Island since the pilot? Or maybe he was being kept out of the cabin (since the "shadow of the statue" folk expected to find Jacob there), until at some point the circle was broken and he took it over, perhaps impersonating Jacob in doing so. How is the sonar fence surrounding Dharmaville effective against him? How, and why, can Ben summon him, as he did in 2004 against Widmore's mercenaries (nota bene, the fence had been deactivated by Alex, and I don't remember its ever being reactivated) and again in 2007 when "Locke" showed up instead? Why does he—or at least his Monster form—seem to reside under the Temple wall, when the Temple seems to be a Jacob stronghold? How is he a "security system"? (We got that from Rousseau, Rousseau got it from Robert before she shot him, and he got it from . . . Loophole himself after he climbed down under the wall? Speaking of her, is the "sickness" that Rousseau claimed had overcome her team a result of a dip in the Temple pool?)

And now that we're dealing with not multiple points on the same timeline, but two different timelines branching off from the Incident, how will this end up resolving itself (as much as anything "resolves itself" on Lost)? Will consciousnesses begin to jump back and forth between timelines, as Desmond's did in "The Constant"? Will one timeline eventually cease, will they both continue on their merry ways, or will they "merge" into one somehow? Will there continue to be two of each of these characters, or will the universe "correct course" by eliminating the alter-egos until there's just one Jack, one Kate, etc.? What if that happens, and the two timelines continue, but, say, with Jack in the original timeline and Kate in the new one, dividing the cast between two parallel universes?

It's crazy to me, and really exciting, to think that there are still so many possibilities, so much room for speculation, on a series that has five seasons behind it and is supposed to be wrapping up. I love this show.