submitted on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 6:20:07 AM

When I switched up how my blog post URLs show up, I didn't realize this affected everyone's ability to comment on the posts. The functionality has been restored, so feel free to comment it up. Unless you're a bot. In which case you suck, and I'd ask that you go elsewhere.

  submitted on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 at 7:22:41 PM

If you missed Part 1, you can find it here.

A couple things that I left off before I get into the flash sideways...

-I got excited of the prospect of Richard Alpert heading off into the civilized world and adjusting to life there a la Crocodile Dundee. Now, obviously Richard is somewhat acclimated with modern day society as evidenced by his recruitment of Juliet when he brought her to the island, but I still find the idea of a guy from the 1860s having to start a new life in the city of Los Angeles quite sitcom-worthy. We've got that, and we've got Sawyer and Miles in their buddy cop show, let's get on it ABC.

-Not to criticize the writers, but holy crap did they drop the ball. In a show that is filled with Star Wars references, when Kate told Jack she loved him, how can you not have Jack respond with "I know." I mean, c'mon, it's not like this show takes itself too seriously to pull that off, they just had Hurley bust out a "I've got a bad feeling about this" earlier in the episode! It would have been beyond greatness. For shame, LOST writers, for shame.

The Flash Sideways. Okay, well, turns out there's nothing sideways about it, but we've been calling it that all season, no need to stop now. I find my brain to be a jumbled mess of thoughts when it comes to the flash sideways that we've been witness to all season. First off, I loved it. All season, I really enjoyed everything they showed us (Well, maybe not Kate's episode. Sorry Kate, old habits). You had this world in which all of the characters we've watched since the beginning of the show were in a completely different place. Well, the same place, but with a completely different destination, and with different lives to lead. And yet, despite all those differences, my favorite parts about the flash sideways were the moments that were reminiscent of the rest of the show. Everything that we remembered, and loved about the show, we were able to relive it, only in a different way. We saw classic scenes between Jack and Locke, Nadia and Sayid, Sawyer and Miles, Desmond and Jack, Hurley and Libby, Charlie and Desmond, Locke and Ben, Jin and Sun, Kate and Sawyer, and on and on it goes. All of these relationships that we had been able to see before, some that we hadn't seen in years, rekindled right in front of us. Ignoring what it meant to the LOST story, it was just plain fun to watch. Much like the on island storyline, with Hurley and Jack finding the caves, or seeing Shannon's inhaler, or Sawyer reflecting by the cages, it was a slice of nostalgia pie, given to the fans to consume. An homage to the thing that made LOST great, the characters, and their relationships with each other.

And yet, it was even more than that. What we got on LOST was a group of troubled, flawed, characters. What we saw in the flash sideways was an insight into what they could be like if they were able to overcome their inner demons (Except for Kate. Again, sorry). Jack, still very much a doctor's son, but this time with the opportunity to change things, to move on past how his father treated him, and build a relationship that he could never have had with his father with the son he never had. Sawyer, perhaps still haunted by the death of his parents as a child, but instead of being consumed by the man that he hated and ultimately becoming him, he becomes a cop, someone who tries to do what's right in the world. Desmond, a man that was always very much afraid, and unable to commit to anything, and was willing to do whatever he could to win the approval of Charles Widmore, the father of the woman that he loves. Now, a man who is in control and has his life together, and very much has the approval of Widmore. Locke, a man who couldn't escape the misfortune of being Anthony Cooper's son, with that misfortune ultimately manifesting itself in the form of a wheelchair, a daily reminder to Locke of what had been done to him. Instead, Locke is still in his wheelchair, but it's for a different reason, and he's still able to live his life, and be with the woman he loves, Helen. Hurley, once was a cursed man, now is the luckiest man in the world. Jin & Sun, before in a troubled marriage because of Sun's father, now in a much happier (and dangerous) secret relationship that does not require such a burden.

Early on in the season I talked about the idea of the flash sideways being an epilogue of sorts. With a show like LOST, how do you just say goodbye to your characters at the end without dragging it out? You want to see them one last time, just to see them. And not just the handful that manage to escape the show alive. I don't know if I compared it to this or not, but it made me think of the final Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King. Yes, the ending of the movie was longer than the rest of the movie itself, but it was because we had experienced such a journey with all of these characters, it seemed only fitting that we see what happens to them. But how do you do that with LOST? You can't just have the last four episodes be an epilogue, it's beyond anti-climactic. But if you spread it out over the course of the season, giving bits and pieces here and there, so that people don't know it's an epilogue until the end, that could work. It's like introducing us to the concept of the flash forward, only instead of revealing it at the end of the episode, you keep the wool over our eyes all season.

Now, the major flaw with this idea was that if this flash sideways truly was an epilogue, then it would imply that the past 5 years were effectively rendered meaningless, since the plane landed, nothing we saw actually happened, and that's just not good for anybody. You can't give us an ending that negates the entire series and expect fans to be okay with that. And, as we saw, that's not what they did. In the end, they did give us what basically amounts to an epilogue, only it really had nothing to do with the rest of the show.

Knowing that now, and looking back at it all, they really went out of their way to mess with us. And it's not the first time they've done this, either. With the initial flash forward, they didn't screw with us too much aside from Jack drunkenly talking about his father despite the fact he was really dead. But I'm also reminded of an episode in Season 4, a Jin & Sun episode. Up to that point in the season, every episode had been flash forwards only, no flashbacks. So we get to see Sun's flashforwards, and she's pregnant, going into labor, and is a little delirious from everything that's going on and asks for her husband. Then, in a separate set of scenes, we see Jin running to the store to buy a stuffed animal as a gift, and he's in a rush to get to the hospital. The scenes are interwoven to make us believe Jin is taking the stuffed bear to the hospital to give to Ji Yeon, but instead it turns out Jin was in a flashback, and in the flashforward he was actually dead. I remember really disliking the episode, as I felt the swerve was cheap, and made me feel like they were pulling that on us for the sake of doing it. The introduction of the flashback into Season 4 wasn't done as a storytelling device, merely as something to enhance the con they were pulling on all of us.

But with this season, I feel different about it. Deception and concealment of the flash sideways world's true purpose was necessary, because its secret just isn't something they could have told us until the very end. I find myself looking back and thinking how crazy everything was that we were meant to look at in a completely different way from what it actually was. Take the Incident, for example. The ultimate red herring. At the end of Season 5, a bomb went off directly over the pocket of electromagnetic energy where the hatch was being built. Jack & Co. believed that the bomb going off would prevent the Incident, that it would lead to the hatch not being built, which meant Desmond wouldn't push the button, which meant their plane wouldn't crash, and everything would start over, with the plane landing in LAX. On the flip side, though, perhaps the bomb going off was the Incident, and by detonating the bomb, they were simply doing their part in the history of the island. And so we were left with that ambiguity at the end of Season 5, did the bomb going off work, or didn't it? How do we start off Season 6? With two storylines, one in which Oceanic Flight 815 lands at LAX in 2004, and one in which Jack & Co. wake up in 2007, wearing their Dharma jumpsuits, standing by the imploded hatch. So immediately we label the flash sideways as somehow being related to the Incident. The ambiguity continues! Did it work, or didn't it? But now that we can look back, we can see that clearly the Incident was the bomb going off. They prevented nothing, and instead everything played out just the way it was supposed to. Whatever happened, happened. The Incident had absolutely nothing to do with the flash sideways world. But of course we didn't know that at the time. And it didn't stop there. Damon & Carlton basically alluded to the idea of the flash sideways world being somehow related to the Incident in their interviews and podcasts. Or one of my favorite moments now looking back, Juliet's "final words" to Sawyer as told by Miles (the guy that can hear dead people's thoughts, appropriately), "it worked". A very vague and confusing comment at the time, since it clearly didn't seem to work given the fact Sawyer and everyone else was still on the island. But we all believed it to mean that in the flash sideways, it did work, and her comments before she died about getting coffee, etc., meant that we would see that happen in the flash sideways world. Instead, we learn that "it worked" was simply referring to Sawyer getting his Apollo candy bar out of the vending machine by unplugging it! Love it.

Okay, but let's bring it all back around. What is the flash sideways world? It's a place where (most) everyone we knew went to when they died. Everyone died at different times, but eventually they all did, and went to this place, to see one another one last time before they moved on to whatever awaited them in the afterlife. Could it be purgatory? I suppose, although I feel like it's a place that is similar to purgatory, but without the requirement of purification or punishment, or anything like that. I look at it more as how Christian put it, a place for everyone to find each other, to remember, one last time. As much as it was a place for awareness and reflection on what their lives were with each other, I think that's what it was for us as viewers, as well. I don't think about it too much in terms of the rest of the LOST story, because the flash sideways is really it's own entity. You could remove it from the show, and the story still plays out the same. The value of the flash sideways is not the story, but the characters. If you are watching LOST because you are invested in the characters, then the flash sideways world was made for you, so that you could enjoy and appreciate everything that they are one last time. I've seen discussions on whether this place is supposed to be for everyone, or if it's only Jack that is truly experiencing this, which is a fair point since there are hints that that is the case (Jack being the last to remember, his final conversation with his father), but I guess for me, that stuff isn't all that important. Watching everyone suddenly wake up, and remember their lives, and remember the people they spent their lives with, and even fitting in one last sappy LOST reunion inside the church, that's what was important to me. Ultimately, that's what I got out of the flash sideways. And that's why I loved it. It was really everything I could have asked for from an epilogue.

LOST. When it comes to television shows, for me LOST is in its own category. I don't claim to be a TV guru, despite the massive amounts of TV I may watch. There are many "great" shows that I have never seen, The Wire (I know, I'm working on it), MASH, Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad, etc. But based on what I have seen, nothing is better than LOST. It was compelling, complex television, with interesting characters, great relationships, lots of mysteries, plenty of suspense, just enough science fiction to whet my appetite, and a well thought out universe for the story to take place in. It's not a show without flaws, of course, but in the end, I think the positives far outweighed the negatives. I loved the experience, especially the sense of community and discussion that was created as a result of it all. The show has really changed how I look at TV, for better or worse. I think I'm going to have to lower the bar going forward, because I just think it will be pretty hard to top what LOST has meant to me.

Anyways, it's been a fun ride, I really enjoyed being able to share in the discussion of the show with everyone, and I'm glad you all liked what I had to say enough to read my blog every week. This will probably be my last LOST-related post, at least for the foreseeable future. Don't forget about Chronologically LOST, where you can see the whole show in chronological order. I expect to start releasing episodes in the next few days, which you can feel free to watch and enjoy at your convenience. That's all for me, thanks for reading.

  submitted on Monday, May 24, 2010 at 11:19:40 PM

Emotionally drained.

I couldn't think of a better way to describe my experience of watching the series finale of LOST. It's not like the end was a surprise to me, I've known about it for three and a half years. And I felt like I had a pretty good idea going into the finale what was going to happen. Jack and the Nemesis would have a confrontation. I had a feeling one if not both would die. I thought Hurley might end up taking over. And yet, at the same time, I really had no idea what would happen. What could happen. And then there's the flash-sideways world, a place I found interesting to the extent that I felt like there were a lot of great character moments, great parallels and call backs to scenes from the entire history of the show. I knew there was something more to it than just that, but I didn't know what it was, and really, how could I? So I found myself quite taken with the whole episode. It wasn't a perfect episode, but the things it did well, it did really, really well. And it completely sucked me in, so much so that two and a half hours felt much shorter than that. In the end, the combination of Jack walking to his death, Jack's final conversation with his father, and the last LOST reunion we'll ever see was just too overwhelming for me, and I had myself a little cry. I'm one of those people that doesn't really cry. My eyes might get a little glassy at times, but me being the male that I am, it's certainly a natural instinct for me to make sure it never goes further than that. Couldn't do it this time. It caught me off guard, it really did. It was all just so, beautiful, the way everything ended, I couldn't help but be swept up in it all.

I feel like there's a lot that I want to discuss, but I also feel like it's all still swirling around in my head, and I'm not sure I can make complete sense of it all quite yet. But writing's therapeutic for me, so let's see if putting it all onto paper helps.

The Real World. Our final confrontation. Jack vs. Locke. Good vs. Evil. All of that good stuff. The on island storyline was somewhat formulaic to finish things out, but I guess I was a little comforted by that, because it's the end of the show, don't we need a little normalcy to close things out? I ended up feeling like this was the weaker of the two realities in the finale, but there were some positives to take away as well.

-I really liked all the little moments that the writers still managed to put into the show, even though they were focused on finishing the story. Hurley had a lot of great moments, commenting on how sweet Kate & Jack's moment was together if they weren't all about to die, busting out the infamous Star Wars quote "I've got a bad feeling about this", and his final scene with Jack was as good as it gets. We also got to see Rose & Bernard one last time, which could be looked at as a pointless scene, but from a character standpoint, it was nice to see them again, although they're clearly justified in keeping themselves isolated from everyone else on the island.

-I thought Julius Goat made a very poignant prediction (for once) when he proclaimed that either all of the remaining candidates would die on the finale, or none of them would. It felt right to me at the time, but not just for the candidates. I went in thinking that this could go one of two ways, either pretty much everyone was going to die, and we were only going to be left with two or three characters still alive, or we got our deaths out of the way in "What They Died For", and whomever survived that episode was going to make it out alive. It turned out to be the latter, with only Jack and the Nemesis dying, and everyone else either finding their way off the island, or remaining there to live out their lives. As usual, I did a terrible job of following my own advice when I talked about how a LOST character generally isn't dead until you actually see them die. And then there I go talking about how Frank's probably dead even though we didn't actually see him die, because he's not relevant enough to get a true character death. Relevant enough? What was I talking about? Hello, he's part of the main cast! Hell, if Frogurt and Karl can get official death scenes, why wouldn't Frank? Idiot. At least I was right about Richard. Certainly if Richard was going to die he needed a better death than flying through the air at the hands of the smoke monster. And ultimately, neither one of them died. Neither did red-shirt Miles. It was certainly a surprise seeing them survive, but a welcome one. (For the record, I do believe that everyone on that Ajira plane survived and made it to, wherever Lapidus took them. While we don't know for sure, I think we have some evidence and can infer that this is the case. In the flash-sideways, Kate told Jack that she had missed him for a long time, implying she lived on for a while after Jack died. If she had died on the plane, their deaths would have only been minutes, or hours apart.)

-I've said it before, but Jack's transformation into something more Locke than Jack has been extremely gratifying as a viewer. He was a flawed, broken man when he arrived on the island, but he just wasn't broken enough to truly achieve the greatness that lay within him. It wasn't until he left the island, and lost everything that he had, that he was able to find the faith that had eluded him for so long, the faith that was passed on to him, in a way, when John Locke died. Instead of trying to live his life by fixing everything and everyone that he could, he placed his life in the destiny of the island, and that gave us the best Jack Shephard we could have hoped for. Gone was the stubborn Jack that only did things his way, and instead in his place was a calmer, more open Jack, willing to take lead if he has to, but also to defer and take a wait and see approach if that's what the situation calls for. The character transformation was really effective, and made people like me, who have been Jack haters since before it was cool, emotionally invested in his character once again. That way, when he died, I was sad. Not just because it represented the end of the show, but because Jack had become someone I had grown to care about. Jack's transformation also provided some peace for all of the Locke supporters out there who felt Locke died for nothing, that he wouldn't get any redemption. Jack picked up Locke's flag, and carried it proudly onto the battlefield against the Nemesis. "You're not John Locke, you disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you are nothing like him". Tremendous line, and carries with it so much depth and history given Jack's relationship with Locke on the island.

-Now, as much as I enjoyed Jack's character in this episode, I wasn't overly impressed with what he did in this episode. I am okay with a certain amount of ambiguity. I don't need to know everything about the island; heck, I'm not even sure I want to know everything about the island. But I guess I did want to know more about the island than what was given to us. The entire process of lowering Desmond down into the light, the removal of the stone, the draining of the light, the red light emanating from the bottom of the island, just the whole thing, it was done without any kind of explanation, or even without any kind of reason. Neither Jack or the Nemesis really knew what they were doing, they just seemed to be winging it. I don't have a problem with that idea, per say, but it's not like we can find out down the road what it was they were actually doing. It kind of reminded me of Ben moving the island. I don't think Ben knew exactly what he was doing, but he had a general idea, and we of course had absolutely no clue what he was doing, but over time we came to have an understanding of what was going on. I think ultimately I found myself not quite as invested in those scenes involving the light because I honestly didn't know what I was looking at. It was something mysterious, something important, but we just didn't know enough to really truly care one way or another how things played out.

-Oh Kate, you had me at "I saved you a bullet". As anyone who reads my blog knows, I have hatred for Kate like no one else on this show. She has always been one of the most selfish characters, constantly getting in the way of things, and even when she has good intentions they tend to be based on some underlying selfish motivation. If she didn't look so good in her underwear she would have been killed off in Season 2. And yet, in one episode, she completely turns it around, which I still find completely baffling. Her shooting the Nemesis was outstanding, and her line was totally bad ass. Even her moment with Jack before he left was touching and heartfelt. Instead of using Jack or Sawyer to best suit her needs, she just laid it out there, proclaimed her love for Jack, then let him leave. Bravo Kate, I salute you. She also talked Claire into getting on the plane, which is all well and good, but they sort of rushed that scene a bit, and we all knew Claire was getting on the plane, so I'm not going to give her a ton of credit for that one.

-Nothing I could say could possibly improve upon what's already there, so here you go.

-I'm really glad we got one more awesome Michael Emerson moment before the show ended. When Jack picked Hurley to become the new protector of the island, Ben was in the background, but was purposely kept on camera, so that you could see his sheer disappointment in him not being chosen. I really felt bad for the guy. To follow that up with Ben's pure elation at the idea of Hurley asking him, Benjamin Linus, for help in protecting the island, really great stuff, and was a fantastic conclusion to a guy who sacrificed pretty much everything he had for the good of the island, but was never able to be the chosen one, until now.

I do have a couple of various theories that I heard that I don't necessarily believe, but I thought they had some promise and were interesting ways of looking at the show, if nothing else.

First comes from Jimmy Kimmel, that he shared with Matthew Fox in his LOST show on Sunday night (I encourage you to check it out on Hulu if you haven't seen it yet). Jimmy didn't have a real in-depth theory about any specific aspect of the show, but rather a broad idea of what the show was, and the perspective it was shown to us in. I really liked how explained it, and it just sort of felt right the way he said it. Anyways, I've transcribed the theory below:

"In a lot of religions, Christianity being one of them, the idea is that life is a test, that you go through your life, and if you're good you go on to Heaven, or Nirvana, or whatever, and if you're bad you don't, you go to Hell or you don't go anywhere. My theory is that the whole show from beginning to end, we were watching Jack's test, his test, and his life on the island was I think his real life. And obviously Jack passed the test. And maybe the characters, maybe each of the characters has their own story and their own test, but this show, I think was Jack's test."

The other theory I heard on a podcast and read a couple of places, but the general idea is this. At the end of the show, Ben and Hurley are talking about Jack, Desmond, and the responsibility of protecting the island. Ben tells Hurley that he should do his job by doing what he does best, by taking care of people. Hurley wonders how they can help Desmond get home since people can't leave the island. Ben tells Hurley that was a Jacob thing, and says that maybe there is a better way. Now, in the flash-sideways, and I'll probably talk more about this later, but Christian tells Jack that the flash-sideways, it's a place they made to find each other, because the most important part of their lives was the time spent with those people. What if Hurley, as the protector of the island, was able to use his abilities to create that place? He wanted to get Desmond to Penny, and off the island, and so he made that place for them to find each other again.

I don't know that I subscribe to the idea, it seems a little far-fetched, plus I'm of the opinion that Ben suggesting there's a better way, what he really meant was looking to improve upon the way Jacob did things, "progress" if you will. Plus I think the creating of the flash-sideways goes beyond what any of us know about the universe, I don't know that Hurley could create something like that just because he's in charge of the island. Still, it's an intriguing idea to think about.

Alright, I wasn't sure if I was going to get this all into one post or not, but since I'm just now finishing talking about the real world, and haven't even touched the flash sideways world yet, I think we'll go ahead and make this Part 1, and you can look for Part 2 to go up tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

  submitted on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 8:11:11 AM

And then...there was one.

The realization that the show is actually coming to an end has been hitting me over the past week or so. With Damon and Carlton constantly on Twitter talking about how the show is wrapped, and then having their last ever Official LOST Podcast, those were really the first things that made me come to terms with it all. Then on Sunday I became aware that in one week it would all be over. Now, with the penultimate episode out of the way, there's nothing left but the finale. Two and a half hours, then nothing more. I couldn't help but get goosebumps during one of the commercial breaks when ABC played a promo for the finale event on Sunday. It's a weird feeling, trying to deal with the end of LOST, because on one hand I've been eagerly anticipating this season, and some closure to the story for a long time, but on the other hand, once it's over, that's it. There will be no more stories to learn, no more plot twists to debate. The entire story will be out there, and there will be no more additions to it. For me, I always have a hard time with the end of a TV show I like, because I really like to immerse myself in that show's universe, and I hate to think that we'll never learn any more about that universe ever again. A show ending places a stopping point on what we can know. Sure, the episodes are always there to be rewatched, and that's certainly a nice thing to be able to do, but it kind of sucks knowing that you can't get anything new the second time around.

At least LOST is going out with a bang. We've got the pilot being aired on Saturday, then a two-hour clip show beginning at (I believe) 6:00 CST, then the two and a half hour series finale, and then I think Jimmy Kimmel's got his LOST show coming on at around 11. So all in all you're looking at seven and a half hours of LOST programming this weekend, which should certainly be enough to immerse yourself with. And then after all of it's over, there is always my project over at Chronologically LOST, which is coming along nicely and I expect to post an update over there in the next few days.

I don't expect this to be a long post today, because the show is really at that point where it is what it is. As was expected, this week's episode was a catalyst for setting everything up for the finale. There was a lot going on, but not a lot of room left for speculation and theories. We seem to have a pretty good idea of where things are headed, and what to look forward to on Sunday. There are a few things I want to touch on, but other than that I thought I would just post some hopes and expectations I have for the finale, and take a look back at some of the major questions I had or talked about in my Season 6 Preview post way back earlier this year.

Looking back at that preview post, my big three questions were: What's the deal with John Locke? Is Jacob dead? And what's the deal with the Nemesis? Well, I guess we have a fairly complete answer regarding Locke. He's dead and buried, and his persona is being mimicked by the Nemesis. We may get some kind of redemption from Locke in the Sideways World, but real world John Locke? I think his story is finished. As far as Jacob goes, I wasn't really sure about the idea of him dying the same episode that we first finally see him, but it certainly makes a lot more sense now with all we've seen of him, and I'm okay with it. We know that he's dead, we know why he's dead, and we know what his purpose is. Finally, we have the Nemesis. Who is he? What's his relation to Jacob? What influence has he had on the show? We've had lots of information on this topic. We know that at one time he, or at least part of him, was Jacob's twin brother, and that now he is the smoke monster, trying to escape from the island, which according to numerous people would be very, very bad. His influence goes deep on the island, from a total manipulation of John Locke and Benjamin Linus, to...who knows how far. Perhaps he was responsible for the purge of the Dharma Initiative. Perhaps he was responsible for the death of the Army troops that came to the island in the 1950s. We'll never know definitively which cookie jars he had his hands in, but it is fun to look back at the island's history and think about when he might have influenced something that we've seen.

I asked what the smoke monster was, exactly, and I think we've had about as complete of an answer as we're going to get. Personally, I would still like to know why there was an ancient Egyptian picture of the god Anubis with what appears to be the Smoke Monster in the lower levels of the wall outside the Temple, and bigger picture would like a little insight into the Egyptian mythology that we see all over the island, but at this point I don't have high hopes of that being explained. As it is, we did get a good answer of who the smoke monster is, and why it was 'released' onto the island. We probably won't know everything about it or its origins, but the picture's much clearer than it was at the beginning of the season.

The numbers. Ah, the numbers. I wasn't ever expecting any kind of 'ultimate explanation' as to what the numbers are, and how they relate to everything that we've seen so far. It might have been nice to know why exactly they were recorded onto the radio tower on the island at some point in time, but it's not really that big of a deal. We saw the numbers in the cave, and learned that they were assigned to the six remaining Candidates to replace Jacob. That's about as big of a correlation as we're going to get, and I at least appreciate the fact that they tried to tie them to something island related. Good enough for me.

Adam & Eve? Check and check. I am a little disappointed they didn't make it Nikki & Paulo.

Some other things I wasn't expecting answers to: Walt. Maybe we'll get a quick cameo of him in the Sideways World (although that's doubtful since he's still all of 10 in 2004 and in real life he's pushing 35, so it might look awkward), but as I said before, he's done. Unfortunate that they never fully fleshed out his story. The survivors we saw the Others kidnap? Cindy & the kids? We surprisingly got an answer to this one. While their present whereabouts are currently unknown, we at least saw them again, knew that they were alive, so kudos on that one. And then there's the damn food drops. All I wanted was for Charles Widmore to reveal to Desmond that he was the reason Desmond ended up on the island. He set him up from the get go in his race around the world so that he would end up there, so that he would push the button. And that's why the food drops continued for the hatch; because he knew Desmond was in there and wanted to keep up the charade of having to push the button. This is what I wanted to happen, what should have happened. But it certainly doesn't look like I'm going to get that now. However, maybe if I keep talking about it happening enough, people will start to think that it really did take place. In that case, I'm sure glad we finally found out that Charles Widmore was behind all those food drops. What a surprise!

A few more. Claire? Obviously we've see her again, she doesn't appear to be dead, just hanging out with the Nemesis. But that's not to say she won't end up dead by the end of the show. Desmond & Penny's fate? Not fully decided yet, but I'm guessing whatever it is it's probably not good. Desmond was brought to the island to make a sacrifice, the Nemesis seems to want to use him as such, he may get his happy ending with Penny, but I wouldn't put money on it. Finally, we have the future time flash with Sawyer, Juliet & co. We saw them all in an outrigger, being shot at by a mysterious group of people in another outrigger, and ultimately Juliet shooting one of them right before they flashed to another time period. It's something I've been looking forward to all season, especially since I've been putting together LOST's master timeline. Sadly, we're not getting an answer on this. Long story short, Damon & Carlton said in an interview that at the time, they knew exactly who was in the boat, and who was shot, and how that was to play out. Unfortunately, when this season rolled around, they were unable to recreate the scene as they wanted it to happen without it being too contrived, so they ended up having to scrap the scene from playing out from the other boat's perspective. Brutal. Instead it will go into that vault of LOST mysteries that will never be answered. Also, if anyone has any bright ideas as to where I can put that time flash into the timeline, I'm still taking suggestions. Shoot me an e-mail.

So that's me looking back. Looking forward, there are only a few things I would really like to see resolved in the last two and a half hours.

-Character Resolution. I don't need some Lord of the Rings-type epilogue where we see how all of our characters ended up after the show's climax. All I want is for us to have some knowledge as to what their fates will be, so when the show ends I'm not stuck sitting there trying to figure out what's going to happen to everyone still on the island. I feel pretty confident in this happening, as Damon & Carlton have stated repeatedly in interviews over the past few months that one of their key goals is to give viewers a satisfying ending to the characters' stories.

-Sideways World Correlation. I don't expect we'll ever get the full details on the Sideways World, what it's supposed to be, exactly, how it works, etc. Which is fine. We can leave that world as an ambiguous place. The one thing I do want to be able to take away from it is its relationship with our present day world. We have been shown this world all season. Why? What does it have to do with anything? And I don't want to hear about how it's supposed to let us look at a world where the Incident worked the way Jack planned for it to work. Showing me some made up world based on a decision that didn't happen, that feels like a waste of time. But giving me some kind of correlation to what we're seeing now, giving it a purpose to justify why they've spent several hours of the final season on this other universe, that's what I want. I'm hoping we get something along those lines.

Hmm, actually I can't really think of anything else. I guess I must feel like things are mostly resolved. Fair enough. Let's touch on some quick hits from this week's show:

-Whether you've loved or hated this season's episodes, you can't deny the frequent and almost always effective throwbacks to past seasons. At the beginning of the episode, when there was wreckage washing up on the beach, I immediately recognized the music from Season 1, and maybe it was even from the Pilot. They've really been able to ride the nostalgia train throughout the season, especially in the flash sideways where they're able to rediscover certain relationships, and it's been some of my favorite stuff of the season.

-There was something interesting brought up on a podcast I listen to regarding Jacob. I went on a number of episodes ago about how Jacob may be the perceived "good" guy between he and the Nemesis, but he's not all good. Then I talked about how he brought people to the island against their will, etc. Well, so this week we were down to our final four candidates, Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and Kate. Jacob wanted to offer what he never had, and told them that they could choose who was to take over for him. An interesting aspect to all of this that I hadn't thought about was the fact that, while they were all initially brought to the island by Jacob, they either came back to the island, or chose to remain on the island by their own choice. Jack went back to the island because he was a broken man off of it. Kate went back to find Claire. Hurley went back because he felt like he was supposed to. Sawyer never left the island, but was supposed to, in 1974, with Juliet, and chose to stay. So you really can't fault Jacob for forcing them to become his replacement, because one way or another those four made the choice to be on that island, and ultimately they had the choice of deciding who would become the next Jacob.

-Clearly, even in the second-to-last episode, I can't stop looking for plot twists. From the time Jack volunteered to be Jacob's replacement to when Jack drank the water, I kept thinking that this was all playing out uneventfully, and that made me suspicious. I kept waiting for Jack to all of a sudden get shot in the chest by someone, or to somehow die right before he took over. Or for there to be a debate about who was going to take over, instead of Jack volunteering and everyone else just staying back and letting him (Although I did enjoy Sawyer's line about Jack's 'God complex'). I'll probably still be a little wary about all of this until the show is actually over, because I'm a little surprised that things played out that easily.

-I really liked the scene with Jacob and the remaining Candidates. He's sort of in his last moments on the island, so it's effectively his time to say what needs to be said. I liked his explanation of why they were Candidates, especially because it will forever leave the idea of whether it was Sun or Jin that was a Candidate ambiguous and up for debate, and I also really liked his explanation for why Kate was crossed off. I don't remember if I brought this up before after "The Candidate" or not, I don't think I did, but I read an astute observation about how the remaining four Candidates were also the same four people that Ben had Michael take from camp at the end of Season 2 and deliver to the Others. It's probably just a coincidence, but I still thought it was kind of neat.

-There's some debate going around if Richard is dead or not, and I can't help but be skeptical at the idea. Two big things that lead me to believe otherwise. First, Jacob made it so that he can't die. I don't know if that all of a sudden changed because Jacob's dead, but I don't believe it has, so I'm not sure why we're supposed to all of a sudden think that he can die. And second, I don't think the Nemesis can kill Richard. If he could, don't you think he would have already? General rule of thumb on LOST is that, if you didn't see someone die, chances are they're probably not dead. Now, this may not apply to people like Frank, or those that may have perished in the Great Flaming Arrow Attack of 1954, but for significant characters like Richard, we need to see some kind of lack of breathing, his head falling limply to the side, or preferably a death certificate. Otherwise, he's not dead.

-Okay, so here is the great Charles Widmore, former leader of the Others, rich and successful entrepreneur, very powerful man. And what is his last defense against the Nemesis? Go hide in the little room behind Ben's bookshelf and hope he doesn't find you? That's it? That's the best you could come up with? Where's Horace's house with the cool hidden entrance to the caves that we saw back in the 70s? Obviously you knew that those existed. But no, instead you go hide in the closet of the one guy on the island most likely to sell you out and/or get you killed. Way to go.

-You better find a better hiding place than Charles did, Miles, because with Tina Fey out of the picture, I think you're all that's left of the fringe characters unless we see Cindy and the kids pop up in the jungle somewhere. At least he had the right idea by taking off, if he had stuck around I have a feeling he might be laying there next to Tina Fey.

-So the Nemesis wants to destroy the island, and he needs Desmond to do it. Hmm. I can only assume this has something to do with the Light on the island, but I'm sure the Nemesis knows more about the details on that than he's telling us. But, since we know about the electromagnetic properties of the island, and we know that this energy is most likely related somehow to the Light given the well the Nemesis dug right by the Light, and we know that Desmond is capable of encountering large amounts of electromagnetic energy, I think it's safe to infer that the Nemesis' plans involve perhaps pushing Desmond into the Light, or having him do something to it that will result in the Light going out. He couldn't kill the remaining Candidates, and now Jack is the new Jacob, so since that line of thought is out, I guess it's time to take down the whole island.

-Kate was looking pretty pale there for a while, got my hopes up. Sadly Jack is actually a good doctor, so he didn't seem too concerned with the wound. Damn. On the bright side, I think we have more deaths yet to go, so there's still hope!

-Moving over to the Flash Sideways world, we still don't know what, exactly is going to happen, but it certainly appears that everything's going down at this concert at the museum. Miles, Charlotte, and Faraday will be there (perhaps we might get a Lapidus sighting as well to round out the group?), Sawyer declined an invite, but might make end up there anyways, Desmond and Kate are headed there, and of course Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore will be there, along with Penny. We don't know yet where Sayid and Hurley are headed, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them end up there as well, possibly with Libby. That leaves us with Jack & Locke as the two primary characters who currently have no motivation to end up at the concert, although Desmond has clearly been working on both Jack and Locke, so he's got something in mind for the both of them. I gotta say, I still have absolutely no clue where they're going with this, but whatever it is, it definitely has a sense of urgency to it (probably because there's only one episode left).

-Loved the Ana Lucia cameo, and Hurley's non-chalant "Oh I didn't know Ana Lucia would be here" reaction. Really well done stuff. I wonder if Ben will come into play with any of this, or if his job was just to get Locke to start to believe.

-Speaking of Ben, poor guy can't even avoid getting his ass kicked in the Sideways world.

Alright, that's all I've got. I should have known when I stated this would probably be a short post that it would end up running about 3,500 words instead. Oops.

I would like to thank everyone for reading all of my inane ramblings over the past few years, and for all the discussion many of you have partaken in with me. Possibly the best thing about this show is the weekly conversations it leads to with fellow LOST viewers, and I know that this blog has at least helped facilitate some of those conversations on my end. I hope everyone enjoys the series finale, it will certainly be a bittersweet moment, as I don't know that we'll ever see another show quite like LOST again. I don't know what my plans are regarding a post after the finale. Generally I do a lot of speculation on where the show is heading, and since the show is over that won't quite work, now will it? Still, I think I should try and put something together, so we'll see what materializes. I don't know that it will be up the morning after like my posts usually are, since I may need some time to let my thoughts marinate. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what transpires. And as I mentioned earlier, don't forget about Chronologically LOST. I'm excited to share it with everyone, and I hope you all are able to enjoy the experience. Until next time, thanks for reading.

  submitted on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 8:30:08 PM

Well, I made my LOST post this morning, and it's not that I was dissatisfied with it, but I guess it felt incomplete. After the episode aired, I found a lot of different thoughts racing threw my head, and I knew that this was a pretty deep episode, with implications that run deep through the show's history. But then when I wrote out my post this morning, I ended up using most of my energy focusing on the weaknesses of the episode, namely the timing of it and the ambitious goal of focusing 100% of the origins of Jacob and the Nemesis. And while that was a point I wanted to make, at the end of the day I still really enjoyed the episode, and I don't feel like my post reflected that, and I also think there were other things I wanted to talk about, but neglected to mention. So I guess that means you're getting a second post out of me today. I actually sat down and re-watched the episode, something I haven't done...well, I'm not sure if I've ever rewatched an episode the next day, so I guess that must mean something. Anyways, consider this sort of an extension of what I wrote about this morning, and I will try not to repeat myself too much.

Egyptian Mythology. I live at Lostpedia, frequenting the site many times a week. I ran across something I found a little interesting when reading about the wheel, which I think has since been edited out. Basically, someone had claimed that the hieroglyphics found in the cave where the wheel was were a major continuity error by the writers, almost implying that they had just been put there by accident, and decided later that they would drop the whole Egyptian theme from the show. An absurd notion for sure, but it did get me thinking a bit about the idea as a whole. The idea of their being some sort of Egyptian history to this island has been around since Season 2, when we saw in the hatch that after the timer reaches zero, the numbers are replaced with hieroglyphics. We have also seen the statue of Taweret, where Jacob lived, which is the Egyptian goddess of pregnancy/childbirth. There are also hieroglyphics found in the chamber where the wheel is, as well as in the Temple, which refer to resurrection of some kind. Also in the back of the Temple, where Ben went to face judgment from the Smoke Monster, we saw an engraving of the Egyptian God Anubis with what appeared to be the Smoke Monster.

Now, LOST has always given us references of other cultures, or other religions throughout the show. The term Dharma references Hinduism and Buddhism. We've seen a number of references to Christianity, from Eko's history as a 'priest', to imagery of Locke as a Christ-like figure, Charlie's life as a Catholic, the idea of the island being Hell. We've even seen hints of Roman culture, from the Latin spoken on the island, to the dagger that the Nemesis carries with him, which is a pugio, a dagger worn by Roman legionaries.

But overall, Egyptian mythology seems to be the most prevalent on the island, and I find myself wondering where it came from. Perhaps we'll never get a straightforward answer on the subject, it almost seems more interesting to be able to speculate on whether or not Egyptians were the earliest inhabitants of the island, but I do feel like the topic carries a certain amount of weight when discussing the origins of the Smoke Monster. As I mentioned this morning, we're not entirely sure what happened when Jacob threw his brother into the pool of Light. He was sucked in, and then out comes the Smoke Monster, dropping his brother's body by the river. Some people think that we saw the creation of the Smoke Monster, but I'm less inclined to agree. I think the depiction of Anubis with the Smoke Monster in the lower level of the Temple would indicate that the Smoke Monster is much older than anyone we've seen on the island. Or maybe, the idea of a Smoke Monster is much older than anything we've seen on the island. Maybe being the Smoke Monster isn't a singular phenomenon, but rather a transformation, or an effect on someone when something happens to them. Could being pulled into the Light cause this? Maybe. But if that's the case, then maybe the Nemesis isn't the only person that has ever been able to turn into black smoke.

I mentioned before how Jacob's mother was apparently responsible for killing all of the villagers, carrying Jacob's brother out of the well, and filling it all in, and she did all of this in a relatively short amount of time. Clearly there is something special about her to be able to pull this off. The destruction in the village really reminded me a lot of the destruction in the Temple. And the more I think about it, the more I can't help but think that was done on purpose. My buddy Goat alluded to this in his post (Seriously, read his post this week, it's outstanding), but what if Jacob's mother had been in the Light? How else would she know what would happen to someone that went in there? And what if it allowed her to behave as the Smoke Monster does? Wouldn't that make her destruction of the village and the well a little more understandable?

Their real mother. One thing that really makes me think is the appearance of the Nemesis' real mother. Dead people appearing on the island is nothing new. We've seen Isabella, Michael, Yemi, Christian, Locke, Jacob, etc. What they mean, and what their purpose is, isn't always the same. So what does Claudia's appearance to the Nemesis mean? Because let's face it, when she showed up she really threw a wrench into everything. She told him that only he could see her because she was dead, she told him that the other people on the island are where he came from, she told him that there is more in the world away from the island, she told him that she was his real mother. Basically she went out of her way to disprove everything that his "mother" had taught him growing up. But why? Something that just occurred to me, going with Goat's Garden of Eden theory. I made a note of how innocent, ignorant, and pure Jacob and his brother were growing up. Their mother was very careful in controlling any and all knowledge that they obtained, and wanted them closed off from the rest of the world, to the point that they didn't even know that a world outside of the three of them existed. It worked for a while, until they saw the Others (see what I did there) killing their boar. Shortly thereafter, the Nemesis saw his real mother. Claudia deprived him of his innocence in a way, by opening his eyes to the truth of the island and the world around him. Reminds me a little of the serpent in the Garden in his dealings with Eve.

There's more to this tangled web that isn't quite clear to me yet aside from Claudia's intentions (and what exactly she is). I mentioned their mother anticipating her death, and didn't fight it when she knew that the Nemesis would kill her. But let's take that a step back. She passed the power and responsibility of guarding the light on to Jacob because she knew her time was coming to an end. And let's take a step back from that. She attacked the Nemesis in the well, filled the well, killed the villagers, knowing it would prevent him from leaving the island. She did this, essentially sacrificing herself so that the Nemesis couldn't leave the island. So ultimately I guess it goes back to his mother's desire to keep him on the island at all costs, even if it meant her losing her life. But she didn't kill the Nemesis. And she waited until absolutely necessary to kill the villagers. If the villagers were a threat to her plan to keep Jacob and his brother innocent, why not wipe them out years ago? Here's an "out there" theory. What if she wanted to create this conflict? What if she wanted the Nemesis to defect to the villagers? What if she appeared to him as his dead mother to convince him? What if she knew that her death would enrage Jacob into throwing the Nemesis into the Light? What if this was all a set up on her part, to make Jacob the guardian of the island, protecting the Light, and the Nemesis the guardian of evil, trapped on the island, unable to leave? I don't know what her motivation for this would be exactly, but I find the idea intriguing.

The Rules. Something I wanted to touch on, and Goat talked about this a little bit, was the always mysterious 'rules'. You can't do this, it's against the rules, you can't do that, it's against the rules, blah blah blah. But what are the rules? We don't really know, and we probably won't ever get specifics. But I thought one scene was poignant to the discussion, when Jacob and his brother were playing their game, and he told Jacob that something he did was against the rules, which Jacob found absurd since he made up the rules. So he told Jacob that one day you can make up your own game and everyone will have to follow your rules.

I think there's a lot of truth to that. Things played out on the island according to his mother's rules, because she was the guardian of the Light. Once that responsibility was passed on to Jacob, he began to make the rules, and the Nemesis is bound by those rules. What they are we don't know, but I do think that the rules can and do change depending on who is in charge.

Alright, I'm sure I could find more to talk about in regards to this episode because really, the more I think about it the more I feel like this episode really sets a foundation for the plot of the show (which sounds funny considering it's the third-to-last episode of the series), but instead I will implore you again to please go read Goat's latest post on this week's episode. The man is much better at mincing words than I could hope to be, and his analysis of what we saw this week is some fantastic, fantastic stuff. See you next week.