Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. A Sayid episode that moved the story forward quite a bit ! Sayid tried to kill man in locke, and because he let mil speak he failed to do so. Apparently even a simple Hi Sayid can do the trick of turning to the ‘evil side’ though you have to be susceptible to it I assume. Having been dead for 2hrs probably helped.

Sayid then kills Dogan and the smoke monster can go into a rampage inside the temple. Some of the temple people are now following Man In Locke, the sides are now being established. Hurley and Jack will be on the other side with the help of Dead Jacob, it’ll be interesting to see who will follow them.

Some more thoughts:

• Dogan’s baseball somehow seemed of importance. Did it tip the scale of good and evil ?
• Is Man In Locke really evil incarnate ? The killing spree in the temple didn’t help to prove he isn’t, but I don’t like Jacob’s manipulative ways either.
• We’re supposed to believe that MIL is free now that Jacob is dead. Why does he still want to kill everyone on the island ? Does he want to destroy it, because after having spend so long on the island he hates it that much ?
• What are the people who hid in the temple, Ben and Lapidus going to do ?
• Still not sure what the flash sideways mean. Sayid’s brother has married the love of his life, and he wants to cleanse himself of all the bad things he has done in the Iraqi army. Killing those gangsters didn’t quite help, although maybe killing bad people doesn’t count .

The transmission has some great thoughts as usual !

A nice Jack – Hurley & Claire centric episode this week ! Weirdest thing of this episode was the sideflash in which Jack now has a son David, who can play the piano very well. I am not quite sure how this fits or is relevant to the whole story to be honest, but it was intriguing. Also Jack not remembering when his appendix was taken out, was odd.

Jack broke your lighthouse dude, mission unaccomplished !

- Hurley

Hurley was great ! Apparently he is now the one Jacob is focusing on. He might also be the most susceptible, as he is used to seeing dead people. He leads Jack to the lighthouse, which Jack subsequently smashes up… We did learn that the numbers seem to correspond with degrees from the wheel in the lighthouse ? Which still doesn’t make a lot of sense. Hurley’s conversation with Jacob after that was funny and interesting. Jack is on the island to do something, but he has to find it himself !

Jacob tells Hurley that man in locke is now gathering forces and he’ll be going to the other’s camp, and it’s too late to do something about it now.

Claire indeed has a very weird evil streak about her. Very well played by Emilie de Ravin by the way. Her friend turns out to be the man in Locke. We still don’t know what exactly happened to her, the night she disappeared. It seems like she doesn’t either as she has no clue as to what happened to her baby. I liked it how Jin is now playing her to try to get back to Sun at the other other’s camp where he thinks she is staying.

All in all a fine episode with some clues and more questions !

Now this is why we watch Lost ! A very intriguing episode that even provided us with some answers and it’s becoming clear a big clash is coming. Jacob is the protector of the island and he recruits people that he thinks has potential. He then assigns them a number (he likes numbers apparently) and brings them over to the island. All man in locke wants to do, is escape from the island and finally be free.

Man in locke emphasizes free will, that Jacob manipulated people into making choices that weren’t actually choices at all. Pushing them towards the island, because they are nominated, as a protector of the island.

This is all a bit ironic since Man in locke also seems to be a bit manipulative. I assume he rigged the ladder Sawyer was on, so he could gain his trust.

Come with me, and I’ll promise, I’ll tell you everything

- Man in Locke to Richard Alpert.

Drunk Sawyer listening to Iggy Pop was funny. Well I guess I better put some pants on ! was very amusing ! Since he didn’t have anything to loose and he’d like to get some answers to his questions Sawyer now seems to be on Mil’s side.

Lapinus got the best one liner this time though: “Weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to !”.

The blonde kid was interesting. There is already a lot of speculations who it is (Aaron ?). M.i.l. seems to be a afraid of him ? We’ll see how that pans out and what role the kid plays.

Not that much to say about Locke’s flashsideways. Locke’s life seems to be rather bland. His encounters with the other losties were interesting indeed. Especially Ben as a whiny teacher was a nice touch !

I hope the Lost writers can keep it up ! We need more episodes like this to conclude the series on a high .

A Kate centric episode this time. Ironically enough, the parts without her were the most interesting ones. I really liked the scenes with Jack and the Japanese dude.

The scene with Sawyer on the docks lamenting the loss of Juliet was nice. Other than that the scenes with Kate only had me wishing they’d show Locke, Jacob or some of the other more interesting mysterious characters. Ethan as delivery doctor for Claire’s baby was interesting though. He even knew the boy’s name already .

Dogan, Japanese dude, was brought to the island. What exactly that means is not further explained as ‘we know what he means’. The medicine for Sayid turns out to be poison. Sayid is apparently possessed as a lot of Lost followers already thought. Once ‘the darkness’ (which made me think of the Smoke Monster) reaches his heart, he won’t be the same person again. I assume this is the disease that Rousseau was talking about, when we saw how she got onto the island. And we now know more about what happened to Claire. She got ‘claimed’ as well. She makes a surprise reappearance at the end !

All in all a not so engaging episode. Especially regarding the fact that there is only about 14 left ? Would have loved to see more Locke who really shined in the premiere…

This blog post contains just some thoughts and questions after the first viewing. So many things happened in this long first episode of the final season, it’ll take a second viewing to get a better grasp on what’s going on !

LAX timeline

As it now seems, the a-bomb did explode ? Juliette claimed it did. It did something, we now have an alternative, or a what if the plane didn’t crash timeline. I wasn’t too keen on this at first to be honest. But it seems to be very well done. Also at first glance nothing weird appears to be going on, but Desmond was a weird appearance and he also vanished into thin air ? Charlie swallowing his drugs was odd. In his flashback way back, he seemed to flush his drugs ? And Jack’s fathers body disappearing is of course quite weird too. I really liked the Locke / Jack scene. Locke seemed to be more at peace, did he, or did he not go on the walkabout ? And there is now a link to Jack in this reality. Will Jack operate on Locke ?

The Monster

A lot of weird stuff happens on the beach, with dead Locke’s body on the beach. I really liked the little scene with Ben and the Monster (no need to start calling names !).

He was weak, and pathetic and irreparably broken. But despite all that there was something admirable about him. He was the only one of them who didn’t want to leave. The only one who realized how pitiful the life he’d leave behind actually was.

- The Monster on John Locke

I want to go home ! is the monster’s theme. He apparently did have some unresolved issues with Richard (Oh it’s you), as he promptly knocks him out when they meet again. Then drags him on his shoulders and they depart the beach. Why was he very disappointed though ? Because they choose Jacob’s side ?

The Others

Sawyer is very angry (and understandably so) as Juliette dies. We finally get to see the group that had the children we saw in season 2 or thereabouts ? A Japanese person and a hippie like guy are running the show here. They seem to be very interested in Hurley. At least we finally know what is in the guitar case.

Resurrecting Sayid was really odd. For some reason the ritual has to run as long as the hourglass dictates. He appears to be dead but then wakes up later. I immediately thought, is that Jacob somehow coming back to life ?

The others are getting ready for the attack by ‘them’ as Richard and the other people at the beach notice the flare in the sky…

Conclusion

As usual a lot of questions . I am sure not all will be answered, they’ll leave us hanging on some issues. But somehow the timelines will merge at a certain point and some sort of epic finale will come. Or maybe not ! A very enjoyable start of season six though.

One final thing: Terry O’Quinn did a wonderful job, playing angry guy in Locke’s body and the Locke guy on the plane.

Links:

Ryan and Jen Review

Jay and Jack – More goodies on their site, like an interview with Jorge Garcia !

What’s Alan Watching ?

We got a very intriguing and engaging finale for the excellent season 5. Although some aspects of this season closer didn’t sit well with me, it was excellent anyway. When a tv show has you thinking even a few days after you saw it, the producers must have done something right . I am sure I’ll spend some more blogposts on this one !

Let me get out of the way what I thought was a bit cheap. Introducing Jacob as a ‘real’ character at this point felt wrong, so late in the series. Now all of a sudden, we learn that he has been manipulating people’s lifes all this time and somehow lure them on the island, this also explains a lot of the ‘coincidences’ where the losties had already some ties to each other before coming to the island. Deus ex machine comes to mind : literally "god from the machine") is a plot device in which a person or thing appears "out of the blue" to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty. I really wonder when they came up with this. But anyway it’s here and we got to deal with it. The casting of Jacob could have been a bit better, he didn’t look at all like I would have pictured Jacob.

Basically the very first scene of Jacob weaving some tapestry and meeting with Esau on the beach, was the most important scene on Lost so far. We finally get to know what is going on. It seems that two ‘demi-gods’ are playing some sort of game. Jacob is trying to proof a point, where as Esau desperately is trying to find a loophole in order to kill Jacob. Jacob keeps bringing people to the island, and Esau claims they will only corrupt and eventually kill themselves.

Some people claim it’s a battle of good and evil (hence the black and white shirts), but I am in the other camp that says it’s freewill vs. fate. Jacob does some horrible things as well (distracting Sayid as they cross the street wasn’t very nice). All in all very intriguing ! And it seems the Widmore vs Ben is sort of a mirror of their game. On the other hand in the greater scheme of things, that one is somewhat minor than the Jacob vs Esau game. The Locke / Ben situation was apparently the loophole, that Jacob helped set up as well. Was Juliet the variable though ? As she was the only one not getting a Jacob’s touch in the flashbacks.

The other thing that was just plain dumb was the whole Sayid, Jack, Kate etc story line. In less than 2 hrs (as Sayid claimed), they crossed over to the other island, ran to the drill site after meeting Rose and Bernard (which was a great moment btw!). Oh yeah they also had 2 gunfights where Jack was dropping Dharma guys like flies while not getting shot himself, and a fistfight with Sawyer.

Juliet dropping down the hole was sad, the scene with Sawyer grabbing her hand was very moving. But how did she ever survive that fall ? And a nuke that’s set to blow up (by McGyver Sayid) on impact, didn’t blow up, but we’re supposed to believe that it did after Juliet slaps it with a rock ? My guess is that it never did blow up and the Dharma folks build the swan station on top of it. The flash we say at the end was another time travel thing, and the losties in 1977 are back on their way to 2007 (imho of course ).

That sounded overly critical, but overall it did make for some very nice and exciting television ! Of course I was sitting on the edge of my seat during that all. Also Ben in his current mode is very fun (I was enjoying some quiet time Joooohn). And then the big surprise of Locke’s body in the box. We already noticed that Locke was being different, and especially this episode he was starting to act ‘out of character’. Still a nice surprise though . And very well acted by Terry O’Quinn. Kinda sad Locke now is really dead .

What exactly is the whole purpose of that Ilana gang ? Besides carrying a box with a dead guy for an entire episode ? And indeed, for what is Lapidus a good candidate ? The flashback with Jacob and Ilana didn’t seem to serve any purpose. We don’t even know her, much less why she was in a cast in some foreign hospital. And I don’t believe they’re the Good Guys. I don’t believe in good and bad at all anymore on this show.

So many more thoughts on this episode, but at least I’ll have something to blog about while we wait for season 6 !

Links:

Buddy TV

What’s Alan Watching ?

The transmission

Wow, a very different episode from last week. The story is moving on on all fronts (or moving back to our time it seems) as we get closer to this Season’s Closing Episode ! Bit hard to express all the thoughts that come up after watching this one, but I’ll give it a try .

"I’m starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble." -Richard Alpert
"Why do you think I tried to kill him?" -Ben

Locke really is different from the person who died, some episodes ago. Eve Richard notices ! He seems to be even more in touch with the island, or at least thinks he is, which becomes evident when he gets the timing to have Richard help himself in the past, exactly right. Ben is very surprised and so is Richard. Apparently Richard doesn’t know everything either, he was very surprised to see Locke again after three years, and even more surprised to hear he actually died and came back.

Richard telling Locke to get everyone back on the island and having to die, was very weird. A time travel paradox, circle kind of thing, and those are very hard to wrap your mind around. Then Locke proceeds to arrange a march on Jacob in order to kill him. Can Jacob even be killed ? I thought he only showed himself when he wanted himself to be shown. I guess we’ll see how that ends in the final episode of this season.

Read more…

We got an amazing Faraday centric episode this week ! The flow was a bit better than Sayid’s episode. Though a few less flashbacks/forwards would have been fine as well.

Everything fell into place in this episode. The scene from the season 5 opener, with Chang at the drill site. An emotional wreck Dan, watching the plane crash. Dan telling Charlotte to get on the sub etc.. So I thought that was it, tieing everything together and moving on with the story.

I tried to avoid telling you this. I didn’t think I could change things. But maybe I can.

But the whole point of this episode was Dan desperately trying to change the future. And in the end he found out that ‘Whatever happens happens’. Was this really Dan’s destiny, to be shot by his mother in 1977 ? You would think his mother had bigger plans for him, but she now even had to send him back to the island. ‘Don’t talk to me about sacrifices !’ Eloise tells Dan’s father Widmore.

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