Want some fish?

Let's go, kiddo.

2010-05-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

Did you see that? Yes, I did. But I didn't see it coming. I was never a friend of any purgatory theories, believing somehow in a Jughead-created alternate timeline like in JJs Star Trek, for me everything in Lost was aways 'real'. I settled for the The End with a nice bottle of Shiraz from Australia, after 16 weeks without any drink, and boy, I needed it. Let me go back to my beginnings of Lost for a moment. I watched the pilot on german TV, and while I mistook the Monster for a jungle-roving T-Rex, I got hooked by the mystery of Rousseaus message. My thought then was… this is going to take forever. I did not follow season one on TV, but when it came out on DVD I ripped it down to test the then first video-capable iPod. As I reached the numbers, I was totally trapped. Then it ended, with the open hatch. Lucky me, season 2 was already available, so I did not suffer the one-year-gap before finding Desmond in The Swan. What really rocked my boat was that I had something like a hatch, too. My old darkroom was located in a bunker, and in it were as well an Apple II like the one used for entering the numbers, as an unread copy of The Third Policeman, as in the Swan library. From the moment I glimpsed the book in Lost, I was a believer. I grew up as a scifi/movie buff with a history with Douglas Adams (being a photojournalist helps getting close to people you want to meet), so I embraced all of Losts promises and riddles with an open heart. After sason two ended, I watched it in one go, like the first one, I reached out to the web to find answers. For the forst time I engaged in forums and dicussion boards. I spent the hiatus and season 3 on the ABC board, and witnessed how the line 'like the hatch blew off your underware' was written there and ended up in Hurleys mouth. Later I was on Lostargs, following the clues dropped by DCAAPB at the final comicon panel, fighting with our very own tribe of Others, the foulmouthed print-flippers of Expressobeans. I met friends worldwide via Lost, some I expect to stay in contact with long after the end. I tried again and again to get a question into Damons and Carltons podcast, haha. On may 23, 2009, one year before The End, something strange happened. I got caught with my left leg between a subway car and the platform, but managed to escape in a split second before the train left. As near death experiences go, it changed my life. Sometimes during the seasons I came to the conclusion the Lost was a trick of the universe to tell me something I did not want to know. So I promised to follow the advice the finale was supposed to deliver. I am a pretty stubborn person, often too smart for my own good, unable to let go, but I played along. So the message for me was clearly, forgive your father and move on. Which I did, but the realisation hit me like a hammer. Like the train, one year ago. I embraced both events, and moved on. Lost is over. Of course I have lot's of thoughts on the mythological impact of The End, but this is up for interpretation, and everybody will come to their own conclusions. Some love it, some hate it. From the moment Jack checked out that skull x-ray I was sure he will die.

Which was okay for me. I totally loved the end, with him closing the eye that opened the world of Lost for us all these awesome six years ago.

All the Best Cowboys Have Mommy Issues

2010-03-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Elisabeth Sarnoff and Jim Galasso know their pop culture.
Nice to see how cop Jim gets from Indy to Bullit to Little House…
I would have expected to find some Deadwood DVD boxes in his condo somewhere, next to Watership Down. I will not repeat myself about LOST B, but with only 8 weeks to go I am still convinced that what we see is the happy ending and the result of the actions happening in LOST PRIME right now. And I hope I'm wrong. (The only question I have about LOST B this week is… why did we have to see Charlies brother?) And very Sawyer, to smash the Mirror of the Week™

So after 5 seasons of heros with daddy issues, here comes the kicker: Smokeys mother was crazy! Now all we have to do is look up the list of greek deitys with mother issues, and we know the name of our favorite ManInBlack. And maybe we throw in a couple of Pharaohs, for good measure. So maybe Jacob was Imhotep, and Smokey was Djoser. But that is just a wild guess. But it was touching to see Locke opening up to Kate, and how honest he was about Sawyers mission to Hydra, and manipulating Claire. Of course he is the main suspect for killing all these Ajira 316 passengers. Which leads us to sweet innocent Zoe. Widmore never stops to amaze me with his hand for henchgirls in sexy eyeware. Must be a british thing. Her guys with guns strangely reminded me of Bram and his folks. Good to see that they thought of bringing a sonic fence with them, maybe that works better than rings of ash. And the secret weapon, stashed away in that U-Boot locker. Maybe some cases of McCutcheon, or our laddy Desmond Hume. I still wonder who will get shot by Juliet from that outrigger race… right now my guess is poor Zoe.

Wanna try another stick?

2010-03-10T01:39:00.000-08:00

Taking a history lesson from Napoleon, Dr. Linus settled for getting rid of detention, having the history club back for the 5 kids who care, and making Alex happy. Roger Linus decided to leave all that Dharma beer behind, getting off the island before the Incident could drown it for good. LOST B, the sideverse, shows us a reality in which the Swan outburst was unchecked by Jughead's core. If this timeline, that shows the best outcome for all our protagonists, should converge with LOST PRIME in the next couple of weeks, pigs are flying. It is the happy ending. The Kitsis/Horowitz outing from last night proved that again.

Jacob is a good guy, and he has a plan. Poor Richard was just not able to wrap his mind around it, because like us, he had not enough intel. The question is, what was Jacob's job anyway, and was he the first the to keep watch over evil incarnate over the ages, or was he a replacement already? After the kickass performance with Richard, who lost his faith, in the belly of the Black Rock it would really surprise me if Jack would not end up as Jacobs replacement in the finale. His life saved in the last moment by Ben Linus, maybe. All that manipulating of Ben will fly straight back into Locke's face in the end, now that Ilana saved Linus soul. And then Shepard will accept his duty and keep us all safe from Evil Incarnate™, for the next couple of centuries.

Kitsis/Horowitz episodes are usually my favorites, and they did not disappoint last night, with Miles ignoring Bens offer and going after Nikkis and Paolos diamonds. Which are, as we know, forever. Very sweet writing to pin LOST B Arzt against dynamite in the Black Rock again.

And when I thought the 42 minutes of Dr. Linus were over… cut to water and a sub. For seconds I thought Locke found another Dharma U-Boot. But no, it's Chuck from London.

But if Locke and his arrmy travel by outrigger to the Hydra, maybe we finally see who got shot by Juliet in 'The Little Prince'…

Have Knife, Will Travel

2010-03-04T01:48:00.000-08:00

In Sunddown we learned that Locke 2.0 has no problem being stabbed with knifes in the chest, which makes sense because even old John Locke was pretty good handling them. And all the ash circles couldn't stop him from entering the temple in his smoke form, after Sayid got rid of Dogen. I wonder if we will see Ilana using Jacobs ash later in the season with more success. I wonder if Smokey and Jacob were influenced by the TV show Have Gun - Will Travel, which had it's own six season run on CBS from 1957 through 1963. Paladin, the otherwise nameless protagonist, lived as a smart man for hire in San Francisco. The gentleman gunfighter for hire was dressed in black and sported a thorough knowledge of ancient history and classical literature. Directors as Andrew McLaglen and Sam Peckinpah worked on the show, which featured Star Treks Gene Roddenberry as a writer.

The first episode of season 6 revealed Paladins backstory, not typical for 60s TV shows. In it Paladin was forced to hunt down and kill a mysterious gunman named Smoke, played by Boone himself without his trademark mustache and with grey-white hair. Smoke gave the Paladin character his nickname, facetiously calling him "a noble paladin." The question turned out to be doubly ironic, as Smoke revealed in his death scene that he was not evil incarnate, but the protector of a nearby town (from the man who had sent Paladin in the first place. Classical con) Paladin adopted Smoke's black costume and killed the real bad guy.

Now I don't say that Smokey and Jacob are beased on this in any way, but Have Gun - Will Travel was part of the american pop culture for six seasons, like Lost is today.

European History 101

2010-02-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

So Ben is a teacher in timeline B. And like Jean-Luc Picard he likes Earl Gray. Or he likes Locke for liking that flavor of tea. Ben teaches European History, I like that, being european and all. But what does it mean? Did his mother never die giving borth to him, and his father never spiralled down that road of drunk and violence, and they never met the Goodspeeds and went to the Island?

Matthew Fox said about season six that about a third of the way through the season both time lines will be "solidified into one time" and there will be one linear time throughout the story on the island with no more flashbacks. With the speed timeline Lost B evolves I start to wonder if that will really happen. We see a lot of crossings in B, now that John met Hurley, and even Rose. I wonder if the flashsideways show us the happy ending that will be the product of everything that will happen from now on till may 23 in Lost Prime. Time moves slow in Lost B, John has a new job and will not call Jack anytime soon, Claire will have Aaron. Looks not like collapsing timelines to me.

Really awesome moment in Lost Prime: Ben at the grave. Followed by another priceless comment of Mr. Lapidus. The climbing down to the cave was nice, and Sawyers encounter with poor frightened Richard was proof enough that candidate Ford was not ready to switch to the dark side yet. The cave with the scales and the candidates names on the ceiling reminded me of Myst, the Miller brothers game from 1994. The episodes name was genious again, covering Lockes new job as well as Jacobs efforts of finding a replacement.

Aly Et Alia Vident

2010-02-04T11:22:00.000-08:00

Others see it yet otherwise, and we still don't know who these Hostiles are in the first place. But there seem to be factions. Maybe they are from different times, brought on the Island and stayed because of the healthy climate. Now that we had our first glimpses at the temple dwelling Others with their Fountain of Youth and their turbans I wonder why Tom bothered with his fake beard in the first place… and if Bea Klugh was part of their tribe. Dogen makes a pretty good mysterious leader for them, and his translator Lennon reminded me of another temple in another jungle.

In Coppolas Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now Ben Willard and his crew venture into the heart of darkness and meet a manic war photographer (Dennis Hopper), who is a translator of some sort for Marlons Brandos Colonel Kurtz.

Interesting is that both temple tribes have a knack for building stuff from bamboo…

Somewhere beyond the sea

2010-02-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

We'll kiss just as before
Happy we'll be, beyond the sea
And never again I'll go sailin'

The sailin' is not over for us, yet. Everybody happy on Oceanic 815, as planned. Jack has a new haircut, plus he cut himself shaving or something, and the airline dispatched a different plane. The seats are rather gray than blue. Desmond is aboard, reading Salman Rushdie for a change. And then… the dramatic Pre-Title-Climax: The Island is drowned, including sonic fence, Dharmaville and Tawaret. BOOM.

What happened?

A couple of years ago Damon stated in the Lost Audio Podcast that the Hatch may have moved sideways after Desmond turned the failsafe key. Now we have a whole sideways (which I will call Lost B) universe to explore. A universe in which Kate did not kill her father, but his apprentice, and in which Hurley is the luckiest dude on the planet. (Really sweet that he is flying coach). Christian is still dead, but missing, and Locke is still paralysed… but Jack tells him that nothing is irreversible, with him performing neurological spinal surgery at St. Sebastian and all. So we will witness the totally awesome moment were Jack cures Locke in Lost B this season. What a payback for their relationship in Lost Prime. Talking about Lost Prime, the main timeline we followed the last 5 years, in which the crew jumped 30 years into the future after Juliet banged long enough on Jughead's core. Too late for Hurley to save 'The Phantom Menace', but he will rise to the occasion anyway, later in the Temple. Kate finds herself in a tree, but unlike Desmond with her underware in place! They are at the post-failsafe Hatch, and amazingly Juliet travelled with them. Sawyer blames Jack for her useless death, but she tells him post mortem via Miles that the plan worked…

which is hard to see right now, from the Lost Prime perspective. For them, nothing changed, except the jump from 1977 to 2007, but still in their timeline. Bear with me here for a moment. Faradays plan was to counter the incident with Jughead's fission core, to negate the catastrophic results of Radzinsky's drilling into the exotic energy pocket. And that plan worked. Lost Prime is the result.

Flash sideways to Lost B…

Oceanic 815 passes the Island on the way to LA. Everything is under water, but we see that Dharma was there, even the shark is still roaming the area. Radzinsky and his folks in the cool black jumpsuits drill into the pocket… and the catastrophe insues. Our time travellers were not there to stop this. Miles could not tell his father to start the evacuation, so he dies as a baby. Faraday was not in Ann Arbor, hurrying to the island with his plan to use the fission core to counter the Incident. Jughead was never hidden in the tunnels, because Faraday did not timejump to 1954. The Incident hits the Island, the Dharma Initiative and the Hostiles, totall unprepared. No one survives, and the Island drowns 1977. Rousseau and her team never set foot on the Island. Charles Widmore never becomes a business magnate in the UK. There is no Hatch, and no Desmond pushing the button. No crash. The lifes of Jack, Kate and everybody else are influenced by this. I don't know what the destruction of the Island in 1977 means for the game between Jacob and Esau, but I am sure that he visited our friends in Lost B. It is the only way for Locke to survive that fatherly push…

What John did

2009-09-20T09:27:00.001-07:00

One of the biggest secrets of the Swan disappeared with it, after Desmond turned the failsafe key and the hatch went sideways. Let's go back to the final, fateful moments of the Swan.

2|23 Live Together, Die Alone. Desmond realised that he was responsible for crashing 815, via the System Failure in the printouts from the Pearl, while Charlie and Eko were locked out behind the closed blast doors. With the end of the countdown approaching, Locke lost his cool. He grabbed the display of the Apple II and smashed it on the ground. Desmond panicked and shouted :"You've killed us. You've killed us all". The rest is history. But what did Locke actually do? He just crashed the display. The Apple II was no Macintosh, or an iMac, where the CPU, RAM and everything are built into a single case with the monitor. The computer remained on the desk, together with its two ancient Floppy drives. It would have been no problem to enter the numbers, and everything would have been fine.

Ἰακώβ

2009-09-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of The Incident, we see Jacob working on a tapestry. He headlined his work with ΘΕΟΙ ΤΟΣΑ ΔΟΙΕΝ ΟΣΑ ΦΡΕΣΙ ΣΗΣΙ ΜΕΝΟΙΝΑΣ, (may the gods grant thee all that thy heart desires) quoted from Homers Odissey. The work showed the arrival of Egytian seafarers on the Island. What is Jacobs greco-egyptian influence? Homer lived around 850 BC. The biblical Jacob was the ancestor of the 12 tribes of Israel. He fathered 12 children, with his wives, Leah and Rachel, and their two maids. While the family was hit by a severe famine, Jacob moved them to Egypt, and settled at a place called Goshen. The Istraelites lived there till the Exodus, which happened during the time of Ramesses II, also known as Ozymandias. This would place the Exodus roughly around the year 1242 BC.

Timejump to 300 BC… woosh.

Alexander the Great became ruler of Egypt in 323 BC. He founded Alexandria, but died soon afterwards, still busy with his enormous campaign to conquer the world. But he left his close friend, the macedon general Ptolemy Soter as satrap of Egypt. After some warring with the Diadochi and Syria, and saving Rhodes, he called himself Pharaoh in 304. He founded, among other things, the famous library of Alexandria, and started the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Egypt was ruled by a caste of greeks now. Alexandria was the capital of an hellenistic empire that reached from Syria to Nubia. The Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, till it ended with sweet Cleopatra. Kings called themselves Ptolemy, queens were always named Cleopatra and Berenice. In the beginning the Ptolemys allowed the Egyptians to follow their gods, and they dressed like the Pharaohs of the older dynasties themselves. But more and more Greeks settled in Egypt, and had a string cultural influence. Egypt was the ruled by a Greek minority, under Greek law, education and culture. But, as always, empires crumble, and this happened with the Greek rulers of Egypt, too. Ptolemy IV was weak and corrupt, and killed his mother. From there it went southwards. Meanwhile the Roman empire was on the rise in Italy. The more or less useless Ptolemys became puppets of Rome, because the senate feared to give rich Egypt as a province to a proconsul. It was easier to control Alexandria from the outside, than to empower a Roman King (Rome was still a pretty democratic republic by then).

This all changed by smart Cleopatra VII getting involved with Julius Caesar, and after his death with Marc Anthony. After Octavians (who later became Augustus and ended the Roman republic for good) victory over Anthony, Cleopatra killed herself and ended the greek reign over Egypt, which finally became a Roman province.

Maybe Jacob arrived with the Egyptian sailors on the Island, maybe they were the first group of candidates for the game. If he is the Jacob depicted in the bible he is as ageless as he made Richard Alpert, later. But his cultural background is clearly influenced by the greek rule of Egypt, between 300 and 30 BC. Why did his cultural taste not change during the ages, so that he still sticks to his greco-egyptian ways in the 1800s, at the arrival of the Black Rock. He is capable of leaving the Island, so he should be able to pick up the pop-culture of the 19th century. Maybe Jacob and Esau time-jump across the ages during their game, after all this is just progress.

The Value of MacCutcheon

2009-09-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

…This is a 60 year MacCutcheon, named after Anderson MacCutcheon, esteemed Admiral from the Royal Navy. He retired with more medals than any man before or since – moved to the highlands to see out his remaining years. Admiral MacCutcheon was a great man, Hume. This was his crowning achievement. This swallow is worth more than you could make in a month. To share it with you would be a waste, and a disgrace to the great man who made it. Because you, Hume, will never be a great man.…

Charles Widmore to Desmond Hume, 3|08 Flashes Before Your Eyes

What makes Widmore tick? If we follow the idea that Desmond is the Observer, and the outcome of the game depends on him pushing the button, bringing 815 down and turning the key, Pennys father played a long con to get the Scot where he belonged… on the Island, and into the Swan. What do we know of Charles Widmore? He was on the Island 1954, learning Latin and hanging out in the jungle in army surplus gear. It appears that earlier on he and his buddies, under the guidance of Richard Alpert, killed the US-Army personnel that was supposed to install Jughead and prepare the test. He was 17, so he is born 1937. After the war was ober he was only 8 years old. Maybe Richard recruited him out of his school in the british countryside, offering to lead a cricket team in the southern part of the commonwealth. However, he ended up as the leader of the the happy tent-dwellers we know thanks to Rousseau as the Others™. He was later exiled by Ben for breaking the rules and haven a child with an outsider, his daughter Penny. His other kid is Daniel Faraday. Maybe his parents left him the patent to Velcro, because he built himself a little empire with Widmore Industries. When Desmonds visits him to ask for Pennys hand, Widmore ridicules him, as seen above. Desmond is a theatrical set designer, and had no balls to finish his higher education. He is neither worth the Whiskey, nor the girl. This can be a rich selfmade man who does not want to give his daughter to some loser. But this is LOST. No. Widmore and his former sweetheart, and mother of his son, Ellie Hawking, are Desmonds guides to destiny.

Don' forget how Desmond met Penny, even this was not left to coincidence. It was arranged by Brother Campbell of the Eddington Monastery, and related to another expensive beverage. The Moriah sells for 100 quid a bottle, and just 108 cases a year are made. Widmore sent Penny to pick up his wine in Scotland, and Hawking made sure via Brother Campbell, that they would meet.

The Quantum Mechanics of LOST

2009-09-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

Update: Yale scientists observed entaglement in the Macroworld…
Quantum mechanics, and to a certain point LOST, suggests the existence of a world independent of the observer. It is a theory which is excellent in telling us everything about what we observe, but it meets with serious difficulties in telling us what really is going on (and Jack and Kate and John and Ben seldom talk to each other in plain text about their adventures). This is called the measurement problem. It lead to the developement of Collapse Theories. Because measurements have outcomes… Collapse Theories were needed to close the circle in the precise sense defined by Abner Shimony. Shimony developed the CHSH inequality, in reaction to Bell's theorem, to distinguish between the entanglement hypothesis of quantum mechanics and local hidden variable theories. [I came up with the idea that the time difference between the launch and arrival of Daniels payload rocket resulted from the reason that the Island is located in it's own bubble universe, which could be pierced from certain directions. The freighter satphones could only talk to each other, which led to my assumption that they were quantum-entangled. So they were able to talk from one universe to the next. Just wild guesses]. Bell's Theorem is a Local Realistic Theoriy, and as such incompatible with QM. Dozens of experiments performed so far have favored Quantum Mechanics, but not decisively because of the detection loophole or the communication loophole. That is one loophole too many to be a more coincidence.

So what happened after Desmond turned the failsafe key, where did the Swan disappear to (another universe?), and why did it blew off his underwear? My guess is that Desmond is special, as stated by Faraday, because he turned himself into the Observer. That is the reason for his dreamlike encounter with Faradays mother. The whole outcome of the final season can hinge on Desmond, because his brain is collapsing the timelines and fuse it to the final one, with which LOST will end. The question remaining is, what force snatched Jack and company out of Ajira 316 and hurled them back to 1977? The universe, course correcting itself, by providing the means to collapse into the most propable timeline?

Macs and Numbers

2009-09-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

Wired has the story about Gene Roddenberrys Mac Plus from 1986, which sported 1 Megabyte of RAM. Those were the days. I bought my first Mac years later, a Quadra 700 in 1992. Apple gave the Mac as gift to Gene. The moment in Star Trek IV, in which Scotty tried to tell the secret of transparent aluminum to a mouse is a timeless classic now. And of course Apple plays a big role role in LOST, too. It was an Apple II, down there in the Swan. And J.J. Abrams is a big Apple fan, too. So it comes as no surprise that Genes Mac had the number F4200NUM0001.

Brainwashed

2009-09-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's September 16, and part 3 of Mysteries of the Universe is out. The documentation covers brainwashing techniques applied by the Dharma-Initiative, and the reporters talk to a behavioral psychologist who was interviewed by Dharma.

He mentions a coworker, a chemist named Oldham at 2:30 in the video. Oldham ended up on the Island, where he interrogated Sayid in 5|10 He's Our You. The film refers then to the Ludovico brainwashing technique, as known from A Clockwork Orange. Later the topic of Dharma submarines is raised because they aquire submarine fuel. "The only time a sub is used for clandestine purposes is to sneak in and out of contested waters, under the cover of liquid night". Then the speaker explains that subs were used in WW2 to deliver goods into non-industrial areas of the South Pacific, not suitable for larger ships. Then the question is raised if Dharma got their subs from the black market, or if they were stolen.

LOST - Mysteries of the Universe Part 3

Smoke and Mirrors

2009-09-15T23:21:00.001-07:00

So what is Smokey, and where does he come from?

Since the very beginning, when he disturbs the beach camp by ripping out trees in the jungle, while hooting, huffing and puffing along, Smokey behaves more as a smart dog, then a man with a plan and a long conned loophole. Last summer a cab started printing a receipt right next to me on 15th Street, and I stopped in my tracks because I thought Judgement Time came for me.

We see Smokey scan people on the Island, most impressive with Eko, and later Ben. He is obviously a mind reader, and he is looking for sins and other human failure in the tortured souls of 815s survivors. He is a manifestation of the flashbacks we see, woosh…

From the mural in the Temple we know he goes back to the time the Egyptians were on the Island, and that he will squeeze out of that grid dispenser, if summoned. Can you imagine 'Esau' behaving like that? I don't.

Titus Welliver, of New Haven, Connecticut, did a great job delivering us with the ultimate Bad Guy on Lost, leaving the impression that he will follow only his own call. We know from The Incident that Esau is a shapeshifter. Maybe it is just an illusion, like a Jedi mind trick, maybe he copied John Lockes body down to the last cell, but I don't believe that Master and Servant share the same ability. Smokey is Esaus big bad dog, but he is not smart or self-motivated enough to appear as Walt, Christian, or even a horse.

After Eko met Smokey the first time, in the The 23rd Psalm, where he stoood his ground, I believe that the the dog did not kill him because his Master, Esau, had sent him to find a fitting sleeve for the loophole. Later, in 3|05 The Cost of Living, after Esau confronted Eko again as his dead brother Yemi, asking him to confess his sins, Eko stood his ground, again. "I ask for no forgiveness, Father, for I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive." Esau realised in that instant that he will never use Eko as his sleeve, proven by his angry reply "You speak to me as if I were your brother!". This marks the first time that Esaus mask of total manipulation slips. The same anger swings in "Do you have any idea how badly I wanna kill you?" on the beach with Jacob. Esau is done with Eko, and decides to go for John Locke. He leads Eko back into the jungle, where his dog finally kills the not longer needed Nigerian.

Another example that Smokey and Esau are two different entities appears in 3|15 Left Behind. Juliet and Kate hide behind the Sonic Fence, while Smokey crashed madly into that barrier. Ever tried to teach an very old dog a new trick? Especially a dog that is around since Cleopatra.

No, Smokey is stupid enough to be stopped by a fence that Dharma erected in the 1970s. Why should Esau do such a thing? But my main argument remains that Esau proved by incorporating John Locke that he is the only shapeshifter on the Island. It would make no sense, storytelling wise, to give Smokey and his Master the same abilities.

Update: Okay, I was wrong. Esau is Smokey. Sorry you had to see me like this!

Darkrooms and Policemen

2009-09-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

I had a friend in Dublin once, I used to call him Dr. Zorg.

He was in the irish film business, and a total movie buff.

He gave me The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien for christmas once.

I stored that book in my darkroom. That room was in the basement, and it was a former fallout shelter. It was like down in the Swan hatch.

And I had an Apple II in there, too. With monitor and two disk drives.

Imagine the impact Man of Science, Man of Faith had on me…

No accent

2009-09-13T04:31:00.000-07:00

Locke preparing Backgammon on the beach, and a blueshirt walking twice behind Walts back.

Sloppy editing, or two Timelines collapsing?

Link

Outriggers

2009-09-13T03:52:00.000-07:00

In The Little Prince, 504, the time-jumping Sawyer, Locke, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte, and Daniel, having lost their Zodiac, use on of the outriggers from the beach to go to the Orchid. They were chased and shot at by unknown people in the other outrigger. Juliet returned fire, apparently hitting one of the pursuers. Before second outrigger could get any closer, they time-flashed again.

I still wonder if we will revisit that moment in season 6, and who will catch Juliets bullet…

It only ends once

2009-09-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

Fellow blogger briguyx suggested over at jopinionated that I should blog about Lost, and I thought, why not. While shooting for the final season already started on Hawaii, and LA X a mere 130 days away, this is the perfect time to get going.

On Doc Arzt is a story about the Seattle Bumbershoot Panel of Carlton Cuse, Adam Horowitz, Eddy Kitsis, and Doc Jensen. Carlton told the story again how the gang travelled to Maine, visiting Stephen King, and how they watched Descent together. He compared the planned end of Lost next year with the way TV-Shows usually end like a Pony-Express horse, they drop out from underneath you. The interesting part is, they reused the Comicon films, and Cuse said definite clues were embedded in them. Which is good news for Kates father, he is a healthy plumber in this timeline. So LA X will really show Oceanic 815 landing safely in California, the day: September 22. 2004. Kate will be in custody, though, for killing her fathers apprentice. The question is, when will their knowledge kick in? If the explosion of Jugheads core was able to change The Incident, and the plane was not ripped apart in midair over the bookclub-meeting with burned muffins, did they receive their memories that moment when Jacob touched them in Timeline A? I don't think so. because then they would be totally asynchronus. My best guess is the moment when Desmond turned the failsafe key. But wait, no Swan, no 108 Minutes, no key. Hmm. There is this big spoiler at Darkufo, which I managed to avoid. So maybe the land safe in LA, and remember nothing at first. And then it comes to them as a flash, in the middle of the night. We'll see.

What about Ben?

Yep, what about him. What happened to young Ben in the Temple after Richard carried him in there? If the Temple works as a doorway between Timelines, okay, unlikely, was it possible that Richard replaced the wounded boy with a kid from a parallel universe, in which Sayid missed vital organs? In any case, Ben would grow up without knowledge from further stages of the loop. It seems that the only way to carry your memories with you is Jacobs touch.

Well, Ben touched Jacob.