LOST Fan

9:05 Jin’s ok. Little Ben is alive. I figured he would be (for the sake of not entangling the show in time-travel paradoxes), but how does someone survive being shot in the chest?

Flashback. Cassidy: “What are you doing here?” Kate: “Sawyer sent me.”

9:17 Cassidy, about Sawyer: “What a coward.”

Hurley checks to see if he’s disappearing! Which he would be if the show had become entangled in a time-travel paradox. I love this. Miles says, no. He’s a believer in the Faraday line of thinking that you can’t change the future.

And then, in the middle of the time-travel discussion, Hurley, standing in for us, the viewers, as he so often does, says “This is really confusing!” Ha ha ha!

Jack refuses to help Ben. Kate says Ben will die. Jacks says, “Then he dies.”

9:29 Jack is tired of being the guy who always fixes things. “Maybe the Island just wants to fix things itself.”

Kate: “I don’t like the new you. I liked the old you.”

Jack: “You didn’t like the old me, Kate.”

Interesting.

Roger is remorseful. Who would’ve thunk it?

Hurley and Miles continue their discussion of time travel. This is cracking me up. They’re pursuing threads that are becoming more and more convoluted and incomprehensible, just like two LOST fans arguing about their favorite theories.

Hurley, again standing in for us: “Say that again?”

Juliet says they have to go to the Others for Ben. I don’t really understand this. Do the others have more advanced medical skills than the Dharma folk?

9:37 Flashback to scene on pier. Kate loses Aaron in supermarket. Finds him with a woman who looks like Claire, from the back, but it isn’t Claire.

Meeting of Kate and Sawyer (and the cute blue VW vans) in the meadow.

9:49 Kate and Cassidy have become friends. Kate: “Aaron needed me.” Cassidy to Kate: “You needed Aaron.”

Sawyer: “I’m dong it for Juliet.”

Juliet to Jack (echoing Cassidy to Kate): “You came back here for you.”

New Jack (channeling Locke): “I came back because I was supposed to.”

Kate and Sawyer have The Talk, then are interrupted by armed Others.

10:02 Kate, confirming Cassidy’s point, tells Claire’s mother that she lied because she needed Aaron.

Back on the Island, Kate and Sawyer give Little Ben to Alpert, who says “If I take him, he’ll never be the same again.”

Hey, maybe Alpert really IS a vampire! Hah.

Alpert carries Little Ben through the jungle, towards a cabin. It’s Jacob’s cabin, I think. Is Christian Shephard inside? I bet that’s it. How many other surgeons are there hanging out in the jungle?

Big Ben wakes up and sees Locke. Big Ben looks shocked, and I don’t think he’s faking. Locke just smiles and says, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

I’d say this was a good, though not a great episode. What kept it from being great, for me, was that Kate didn’t really engage me emotionally. When she was crying about giving Aaron up, I wasn’t feeling it. Same thing when she reunited with Sawyer. I’m not sure if it’s the character or the actress, but Kate usually seems remote to me.

On the plus side, we got answers to several questions: what Sawyer had whispered to Kate in the helicopter, what happened to Aaron, and how Ben ended up with the Others. The dialogue between New Jack and Kate was interesting. And I loved the scenes with Hurley and Miles, acting as stand-ins for all of us theory-spouting LOST fans.

Evangeline Lilly promo photo (c) ABC

I just rewrote my Grand Theory of Everything over on my other blog (if this blog is the living room, that blog might be the basement — or maybe the attic where the crazy aunt lives).

I’ve been trying to make it more coherent, and I don’t think it’s totally there yet. But at least it’s not as incoherent as it was before.

A few warnings:

1. It’s long.

2. It might contain spoilers. If the theory is true, then it could be giving away a lot. It’s very unlikely that the theory is actually true, but unlikely things do happen once in a while.

If you’re still with me: My Grand Theory of Everything

Thirty-one seconds. On your mark. Get set. Go …

Did you catch that? –>

“DESTINY CALLS”

Again!

That Destiny sure is persistent. Always calling, in all of the promos, even though no one wants to pick up the phone.

I bet Destiny calls while people are trying to eat dinner with their familes. I bet Destiny calls when people are just getting out of the shower. I bet Destiny calls even when people are on the federal Do Not Call list.

“Press 1 to speak to a live representative who will tell you how Destiny will give you a vacation on a tropical island, all expenses paid.”

Maybe Destiny just wants them to buy some timeshares.

Or would that be time-space-continuum shares?

[ / silliness ]

Here you go. One minute of LOST promo goodness …

Wow, this one moves fast!

It’s got the “Destiny Calls” line again!

And Locke — alive, and on what appears to be the Island. Has he come unstuck in time? Is his corpse still in the funeral parlor?

And an ancient computer with a green-on-black screen, like the one in the original hatch.

And people running through the woods and falling out of trees — that takes me back.

Who is that popping out of the water at 0:24? Is that Locke?

You know, there was a time when I said that I wasn’t the kind of obsessive fan who would analyze every frame. Now I have to take that back! It looks like I am exactly that kind of obsessive fan! Uh oh.

What hooked me most on the show during the first season was the way that characters kept on showing up in each other’s flashbacks. Here was a seemingly random collection of people and, bit by bit, we were shown that their all being on the same doomed flight couldn’t have been as random as it seemed.

What was it these people had in common? How many had crossed paths in the past? Why were they all on the island? Those were the questions that kept me coming back from the start, and that still have me hooked, more than four years later.

Of all the characters from Flight 815, Locke seems to be closest to knowing the answers. Here, in a significant moment in the Season 1 finale, he lectures a skeptical Jack:

LOCKE: … Do you really think all this is an accident? That we, a group of strangers, survived, many of us with just superficial injuries? You think we crashed on this place by coincidence? Especially this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason — all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason.

JACK: Brought here. And who brought us here, John?

LOCKE: The island. The island brought us here. (Jack is having a difficult
time listening to this.) This is no ordinary place. You’ve seen that. I know
you have. The island chose you, too, Jack. It’s destiny.

Now, as we are approach the start of Season 5, the show’s producers are teasing us with references to destiny. The first Season 5 promo used the word “destiny” twice, once spoken (a short bit clipped from the dialogue above) and once written. Now, there is a new mini-promo, only 15 seconds long, where “destiny” is featured even more prominently:

So (fingers crossed) the show will, in the end, reveal the mystery of the characters’ destiny – and once we know that, we should know who they really are and what brought them all together to walk through Sydney Airport’s Gate 23.

Here’s the official promo:

LOST Season Five Official Trailer #1 - video powered by Metacafe

(In case ABC removes the video, you can watch it here instead.)

The word “destiny” occurs twice — first, spoken by Locke, and later, written on the screen. I think (hope) this is significant. The question of the character’s destiny is the major theme of the show, and I’m hoping we get some resolution, in the end, and find out what the characters’ destiny was that had pulled them all to the island.

There was also the chilling shot, from last season’s finale, of Locke in his coffin. I’m going to assume that either Locke is not really dead, or that by some time-space-whatever warp-bend-fold-etc., he will manage to be present in most, if not all, of the episodes. It’s hard to imagine the final season without him!

It was interesting to see that Aaron in the promo was old enough to walk. Does that mean more vertigo-inducing time leaps ahead?

Here’s an unofficial promo, nicely made by fan MarKisLosT: