LOST Fan

There will be a new episode this week at 9:00 pm to 10:02 (an hour earlier in Central Time.) The title of the new episode is “Some Like it Hoth,” clearly a play on words on the Marilyn Monroe classic movie “Some Like it Hot” — but what is “Hoth”?

According to Wikipedia, which knows a lot more than I do:

In the fictional universe of Star Wars, Hoth is the sixth planet of a remote system of the same name. It is a world covered in snow and ice, with numerous moons, and pelted by meteorites from a nearby asteroid belt. Native creatures include the wampa and the tauntaun.

Is the reference to “Hoth” in the episode title actually a Star Wars reference, or could it be something else? The first Star Wars movie opened in May, 1977, and the last time we saw the Dharma Initiative Losties, they were living in 1977. But apparently “Hoth” was not mentioned in a Star Wars movie until the Empire Strikes Back which came out in 1980.

In LaFleur, the storyline of the Dharma Losties was moving forward and back in 3-year leaps. Will we see a leap forward in this episode to 1980?

Or will Hoth turn out to be something else entirely — a name of a character or perhaps even a mispronunciation of something else?

On the 4/9 Official Audio Podcast, Darlton say that they are particularly proud of this episode. The show needed a bit of fun, they say. After the seriousness of Ben almost being strangled by his dead daughter, and before we start heading into the intensity of the lead-up to the finale, they thought we could use a breather.

Schedule — April 15, 2009

9:00 pm - 10:02 pm — New episode “Some Like it Hoth”

(an hour earlier Central Time)

Note: On April 22, there won’t be a new episode. Instead, there will be a clip show. After that, though, it should be smooth sailing all the way to the finale.

I was looking in my stats, and I saw some searches for “damon lindelof quits lost.” What? I thought. What? I googled the phrase, and sure enough, a whole bunch of articles popped up.

I almost had a heart attack.

And then I realized (and I’m sure Dear Reader, that you came to this realization long before I did) that it must be an April Fool’s joke.

Whew.

The story, which I was able to read once I calmed down, is actually pretty funny. It claims that Lindelof went into a rage after the Conficker worm infected his laptop. The story quotes a “non-union seamstress” on the set, who said, “At first, I thought it was Carlton and Damon arguing about another continuity error, but then I realized there was none of Carlton’s usual high-pitched crying.”

And this:

Lindelof made a brief statement … “I just don’t need that kind of stress in my life. And, to be honest, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I mean, Charlotte’s on the island five years before she is born. The runway was built for the plane to land on, but they didn’t know to build it until someone from the plane went back in time and told them. It’s all chicken and egg. We were just making it up as we went along, and I have no clue how we were going to reach a logical, rational ending next year. I think this whole Conficker thing just helped me realize I don’t need all this. Someone else can figure it out. I really just need to simplify my life right now.” When asked if he would be returning to LOST, Lindelof replied, “Never. Never, never, never. I left the island, and I’m never going back!”

Funny stuff!

Damon Lindelof, still with us

(Photo via Lostpedia)

Once again, there will be only one hour of LOST on Wednesday.

The new episode is called Whatever Happened, Happened. According to Darlton on the March 26 official audio podcast, this will be a Kate-centric episode, complete with flashbacks! I know that some of you are cheering now at the thought of a Kate-centric episode, while others (you know who you are!) are groaning, throwing things, and tearing out your hair.

The episode title appears to refer to the question of time travel paradoxes. Was Faraday correct when he said that what happened in the past couldn’t alter the future — or was Sayid successful in his attempt to change the future by killing little Ben?

At first glance, the title — whatever happened, happened — seems to suggest that Faraday was correct. But perhaps the title was meant to be ironic! So I guess we’ll just have to watch to find out.

Schedule April 1, 2009

9:00 new episode Whatever Happened, Happened

(an hour earlier in Central time)

At the time I wrote this, last week’s episode, He’s Our You, was available on abc.com, but just in the regular version, not the pop-up hint enhanced one. Maybe they’ll post that one later??

ABC is changing the schedule around again, which is always confusing.

This week, there will be a new episode at 9:00 to 10:02 pm, as usual, but instead of showing a pop-up enhanced rerun at 8:00 the way they’ve been doing all season (except for last week), ABC will be showing non-LOST material in that hour instead. At 8:00 they’ll be showing Scrubs, and at 8:30, the new show Better Off Ted.

Last week, I turned on the TV a few minutes before LOST was about to start and saw the very end of Better Off Ted. From the little I saw, it looked good! The one person I recognized was Portia de Rossi, who was in the late great Arrested Development. Better Off Ted seemed to have some of Arrested Development’s sense of off-beat humor as well, although maybe not as quickly paced. It looked promising enough that I’m to going to try to catch it tomorrow.

LOST’s new episode is called “He’s Our You,” which is a strange title. When I first saw it, I couldn’t parse the phrase at all no matter how I tried, and thought that “You” might be some kind of acronym — something like “He’s Our Yucky Onepiece Underwear.” Well, not that exactly. But I was saved from coming up with even worse acronyms when I listened to the March 19 Official Audio Podcast.

On the podcast, our friends Darlton (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof) reveal that the episode will be about Sayid (yay!). Where the title comes in is that Sayid will be introduced to someone in the Dharma Initiative with the line “He’s our you” — presumably meaning that this other character is the Dharma Initiative’s torturer (or else the Dharma Initiative’s lover, Darlton joke — at least I think they are joking).

Schedule — March 25, 2009

9:00 to 10:02 pm — new episode He’s Our You

(an hour earlier in Central Time)

If you want to see the pop-up enhanced rerun of “Namaste,” which will not be shown on TV this week, you can watch it on the abc.com website.

“Best seat I’ve ever had on an airplane! There’s more room in here than in Coach!”

Here we are half-way through the week, with a new episode coming up soon!

As usual, the “enhanced” version (the one with the pop-up hints) of the previous week’s episode will be rerun at 8:00, and the new episode will start at 9:00 and will run a few minutes long.

The new episode is called “LaFleur.” Darlton, on their February 26 audio podcast, give some deliberately vague hints about the significance of the episode name. Maybe it’s the name, they say, of someone we are going to meet.

They do promise that we will find out more, in “LaFleur,” about what time period Locke’s group on Hydra Island is in, compared to the time period of Jack’s group in the lagoon.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

8:00 Rerun of 5×07 The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham
9:00 New Episode 5×08 LaFleur (runs until 10:02)

Everything runs an hour earlier in Central Time. All episodes are available to watch for free at ABC.com.

Picture of Locke enjoying Flight 316 (c) ABC

Damon and Carlton give five little hints about tonight’s episode in this video from EW.

Technically, I guess these teasers are spoilers (that’s what it says in the video’s title!), but I think they are too vague to give anything important away.

On this video podcast from TV Guide, Michael Emerson said Ben has not forgotten what Widmore did to him. He said Ben was going to try (and he seemed to emphasize the word “try”) to take care of that at the same time that he took care of his “larger mission.”

This video was made before “316″ aired, and I wonder if that makes a difference. If (knock on wood) Ben did kill, or try to kill Penny, before he got on Flight 316, could that be the revenge Emerson was referring to? Or is Ben’s planned revenge still off in the future?

Also on this video, the ubiquitous “Darlton” appear to tell us that this season has something for everyone.

And then — this is exciting! — next up is Harold Perrineau, who plays Michael. Remember Michael? It’s been a while since we’ve seen him. The interviewer asked him if Michael was dead or alive and … well, I’ll let you watch it yourself.

I enjoyed the video, which packed a lot of good stuff into a mere 3:14 minutes:

“How come no one’s asking me why my face is a mess?”

On Wednesday, 316 will be rerun, followed by the new episode, The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.

I listened to last week’s official audio podcast by producer/writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (aka “Darlton” in LOST geek-speak), and they said that originally, the Jeremy Bentham episode was supposed to come first. It was after the episodes were written that they decided to reverse the order. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out why, after we’ve seen them both.

Schedule

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

8:00 PM Rerun of episode 5×06 316, with pop-up hints
9:00 PM New episode 5×07 The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham, probably running a minute or two past 10:00

Everything runs an hour earlier in Central time.

316 will be up for free online viewing on ABC.com starting sometime today. There should be versions available with and without the pop-up hints.

Picture of Jack, Hurley, a bloody-faced Ben, and a flight attendant from 5×06 (c) ABC

Here he is again, featured in the official ABC podcast of the week, along with our old friends Damon and Carlton (or, as some call them, “Darlton”).

Darlton also mention the smoke monster, so I’m going to assume that it’s coming back into the story very soon, most likely tonight.

(I didn’t even know these podcasts existed, until I happened to stumble over one today. It’s good! I’m going to look for them from now on.)

That’s what the interviewer in this video from TV Guide thinks. He puts the question to producers/writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and they answer, noncommittally, “That’s an interesting theory.”

I think it’s far-fetched.

Carlton does promise that the show will answer the question of who Ellie is and what role she plays.

I think we already know the first part, who she is. And it’s not Rousseau.

In an earlier video interview from this TV Guide series, Carlton says they are approaching time travel a little differently than the way it’s been done on other shows.

Also, when asked if the Oceanic 6 are going to be using a donkey wheel to get back to the Island, Carlton says “That would be crazy. That would be saying, what kind of show is this? That would be nuts.”

So there are actually ideas that the LOST writers think are too crazy to put in the show. That’s oddly reassuring.

Unless Carlton is just pulling our legs. It wouldn’t surprise me. I think these writers might be as fond of the long con as Sawyer was, though with far more benign intentions, of course — all for the sake of entertainment and surprise.

If the Losties do return through a kind of reverse donkey wheel, then we’ll know.

In a video interview with Entertainment Weekly, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the ubiquitous writer/producer pair, talk about time travel on the show. They say that as we watch this season unfold, we will become aware that they have been doing things in past seasons that have been leading up to this season’s events.

They say that Season 3’s Flashes Before Your Eyes (which we’ve been talking about here earlier), along with Season 4’s The Constant, were seeds that they had planted to put ideas of time travel into the show, and that this season is about implementing those ideas.

They talk about Sawyer as being someone the audience can relate to. All he cares about, in the premiere, is getting a shirt and something to eat! That keeps the show more grounded than it would be if all the characters were completely comfortable with the idea that they were traveling through time.

In that same premiere episode, Faraday says that you can’t change the past. But the writers say this is only Faraday’s theory. It may or may not be correct. So was Faraday right? We’ll just have to watch the rest of the season to find out.

Video interview.

Screenshot of Daniel Faraday (c) ABC, via Lostpedia

In this video shot earlier this month, Carlton and Damon talk about the top 6 episodes of all time, as selected in a poll of viewers attending a recent LOST event. You will not be shocked to learn that the episode where Jack got his tattoo was not one of the favorites!

Screenshot from “Through the Looking Glass” (c) ABC, via Lostpedia

Did you ever get confused about some plot detail in LOST, and then start to wonder if everyone else knew exactly what was going on? Did you ever worry that maybe it was just you that wasn’t getting it?

Well, you don’t need to worry about that!

In an article printed in today’s New York Times, Gregg Nations — who is not only a co-producer and the script coordinator of LOST, but is also the person in charge of keeping track of all the show’s details in order to ensure continuity — revealed that he, too, got confused:

… Mr. Nations admits that without his database he would have trouble remembering everything about the series.

That was evident when a reporter asked him a question that had been suggested by a colleague: What became of the body of Naomi, who in Season 4 was one of the rescuers from the freighter sent to search for the island? She died after Locke threw a knife into her back.

“She died in the jungle,” Mr. Nations said. “So she must still be on the island.”

But wait — didn’t Sayid insist on taking Naomi’s body back to the ship?

“You know, you’re right,” Mr. Nations said. “She was on the ship and the ship exploded. I guess she’s fish food. You found something that I wasn’t tracking. Now I guess I had better.”

That is so funny. If even the people who create the show can’t keep track of everything — if even the continuity guy doesn’t know — then surely there is no way that we mere viewers could possibly follow it all.

Producers/writers Damon and Carlton sent another email today to the Dharma Special Access Group list. They write,

In less than a week, LOST season 5 premieres! You’re hopefully excited. We’re heavily medicating ourselves to overcome our anxiety.

On premiere night there will be a clip show, followed by the first two episodes. These were written as separate episodes, Damon and Carlton say, not as a two-hour long single episode, that just happen to have been scheduled to be shown together on the same night.

They write, in the email,

Episode one entitled “Because You Left” picks up where the finale left off, and the second episode “The Lie” is a Hurley-centric episode. Honestly, we’re very excited for you to see them.

Speaking of the Hurley episode, this week we’ve got a special sneak peak [sic] at a scene from that episode just for you.

Here it is:

You can also watch it at the Dharma Special Access site, where the password for this week is bharosa. (Bharosa is, in the words of a press release I found via google, the name of “a leading provider of fraud prevention and strong authentication security solutions.” Could that be a clue?)

Also at the Dharma Special Access site is another short video which displays the photos of the lead actors from a recent photo shoot, accompanied by wonderful music written by LOST’s resident composer, Michael Giacchino (the music was originally written for Carlton and Damon’s 2008 Comic-Con appearance.)

Enjoy!

Producer/writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse made another short video for the Dharma Special Access site. They take us behind the scenes to the writers’ offices.

There’s a wall where the writers have taped up photographs of the characters so they can keep them all straight. There are sections for the characters who are still living and for those who are dead – and a section for the characters who are “undead”!

The password to enter the Special Access site this week is holma. Whoever makes up the passwords likes to play games with them. They are changed weekly and often spell out something meaningful when read backwards. But this time, when I ran the backwards password – “amloh” — through Google, I didn’t see anything interesting.

I then tried “holma” — the password itself — and found that according to Wikipedia, “Holma (also known as Da Holmaci, Bali Holma) is an extinct Afro-Asiatic language formerly spoken in Nigeria in Adamawa State.”

Hmmm … that might fit. Mr Eko was from Nigeria. I wonder if this is a hint that his story line might be picked up again? Although the actor who played Mr. Eko presumably would not want to come back (having quit the show in the first place), Carlton mentions in passing on the “Writers’ Room” video that Eko’s brother is on the “Undead” wall. So the storyline of Mr. Eko’s family (if not of Mr. Eko himself) conceivably could be revived.

Cuse and Lindelof have done another video for Dharma Special Access. The password is EMAL which, of course, is “lame” spelled backwards — I didn’t need to consult Google for that one!

They answer viewer questions, and they promise that in Season 5 they will explain why Christian Shephard was wearing white shoes on the Island, and that we will be seeing the four-toed statue again in Season 5 and even more in Season 6. I think they meant it, although the two producers have such a deadpan style of humor that it’s sometimes hard to tell when they are giving us information and when they are pulling our legs — especially when one is nodding his head yes, and the other shaking his head no.

The video is followed by an ad for “Ajira Airways,” which has the slogan “Destiny Calls.” The ad gives the URL www.ajiraairways.com, so there’s a new internet toy to play with.

Carlton Cuse
Damon Lindelof

Writers/Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof do commentary for the finale of Season 4, There’s no Place Like Home Part 2, on Disc 4 of the DVD set. It’s the first time a commentary track has ever been made for any LOST season finale.

I recommend watching this if you get a chance. These guys are funny! And they get better as the episode goes on — toward the end, as they start getting punch-drunk from fatigue, they come up with increasingly goofy — and clever — comments.

They talk, tongue in cheek, about wanting to write a show that has flashbacks and flashforwards for Sawyer’s shirt (you know, the shirt that Sawyer is always taking off) — filling in the shirt’s backstory, revealing how it was made in the factory, then going into its time on the Island, and showing what the shirt realizes it has to do to redeem itself.

Another example — when commenting on the scene after the helicopter crashes into the ocean, when the characters are thrashing around in the water, the producer pair say they originally planned to have a shark rescue Desmond, but when they started filming they found they couldn’t afford to get the shark. They say they had also hoped to have the characters do synchronized swimming accompanied by a whale song.

By the end of the commentary, they’re promising to come do the laundry — and provide commentary on their doing of the laundry! — of any viewer who made it all the way through.

This is all very entertaining. Most of the commentary, though, is actually quite informative. In addition to providing background on how some of the scenes were filmed, the two discuss the characters and themes that will be important in the upcoming Season 5. I’ll talk about some of that in future posts.

In the “Course of the Future” bonus feature, Damon Lindelof, one of the producer/writers, describes the flash forwards. He says that they think of the flash fowards

“… as being flashbacks on crack. Jack used to be a doctor with sort of daddy issues before, now he’s a doctor again, but the daddy issues are on crack.”

In the flashbacks shown in the feature in chronological order, we see Jack speaking at his father’s funeral, meeting Claire’s mother, going to see Hurley, testifying at Kate’s trial, not wanting to see Aaron, then changing his mind and moving in with Kate and Aaron, going to see Hurley again … and then the story turns spooky (I mean spooky even by LOST standards):

Jack is in the hospital, climbing on a counter to shut off a beeping smoke alarm, when he hears a voice call his name. It’s his father, sitting on a couch at the end of the corridor! The vision, if that’s what it is, disappears when another doctor comes into the room. But Jack is shaken, and he asks the doctor to write him a prescription for something to help him sleep – and that’s the beginning of Jack’s slide down into decrepitude.

He drinks, he swallows pills, he fights with Kate, who is doing some unspecified favor for Sawyer. He moves out. Next time we see him, he’s got the big bushy beard — and this is where we came in, at the end of Season 3 — and he’s on an airplane, hoping it will crash. He learns Jeremy Bentham has died. He’s about to jump off a bridge when he hears the cries of car crash victims calling for help. He goes to “Bentham’s” funeral. And then there’s another spooky daddy-issues-on-crack scene:

Jack is in the hospital, being grilled by a fellow doctor, who asks him how much he had to drink. Jack replies,

“I tell you what. You do this. You get my father down here. Get him down here right now, and if I’m drunker than he is, you can fire me.”

What does this mean? When I first saw this scene, I was mystified. And this is the one scene where seeing it as part of a linear sequence didn’t help make things any clearer. I still have all the same questions. Is Jack being sarcastic? Or does he really think his father is upstairs? If so, IS his father upstairs? Is Christian now un-dead? Or is Jack deluded?

The flash forwards continue with Jack begging Kate to see him. They meet outside the airport fence. Then Jack returns to the funeral parlor, opens the coffin, and gets a surprise visit from Ben who tells him they all have to go back together. During this scene, the camera coyly stays away from the inside of the coffin, but it finally lets us have a peek – and that’s when we see Locke.

And that’s it. The last scene in the flash-forward bonus feature turns out to be the same as the last scene in the finale of Season 4. Now we know that’s the furthest point in the future we have seen so far.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, producer/writers on the show, made a short video spoof of “Course of the Future,” the Season 4 DVD bonus feature that I wrote about in the post below. In the spoof, which is posted online for one week only, the writers appear in the future to warn their present selves that they have ended the show badly.

It’s at Dharma Special Access. The password is yksnizdar. Again, it’s there for one week only (though I’m sure someone has posted it to YouTube by now. It’s just more fun to do the whole secret password thing.)

By the way, you’ve probably noticed that the password is “radzinsky” spelled backwards. Do you know who that is? (I had to google it to find out. It’s a very obscure reference!)

This weekend, I rented the bonus features portion of the Season 4 DVD set. There’s a lot of great material — two discs worth (discs 5 and 6, which rent, at least in the place I got them, as one unit).

My favorite was a feature called “Course of the Future: The Definitive Flashforwards.” It takes the flash forwards which we had seen in bits and pieces, and puts them all together in chronological order. The result is a linear narrative of what happens to the Oceanic 6 and Ben after they leave the Island. Watching this cleared up many things that had confused me before. It was also a great lead-in to Season 5. It refreshed my memory, and it made me anticipate the new season even more. Highly recommended!

The same feature has the actors talking about what they were thinking when they learned about the flash forwards. It’s fun to see that the actors enjoy trying to figure out the mysteries as much as we do. They do have a bit more at stake though – when they see there are scenes written with their characters appearing in flash forwards, they know that their characters have survived, and that they will still have jobs on the show for at least a while longer.

Also in the same feature, Carlton Cuse, executive producer and writer, has some interesting commentary:

“We had the present on the island, and we had the flashbacks. Now we have flash forwards, and that kind of completed the mosaic, because now we can tell stories in any of these three realms. We sort of view the mission from here to the end of the series as fitting the tiles into the mosaic, and they’ll go in all over the place.”

P.S. Did you know that in his normal speaking voice, Naveen Andrews (Sayid) has a British accent?