LOST Fan

Here are the clips of the scenes from last night’s Whatever Happened, Happened where Hurley and Miles argue about time travel, in case you’d like to see them again.

There’s some wonderful dialogue here, as Hurley and Miles act out the thoughts of every LOST fan who has ever passionately defended a favorite theory about the show — or who has ever gotten a headache from trying to figure it all out and running into too many paradoxes:

Jorge Garcia and Ken Leung are such talented comic actors. We’re lucky to have them on the show!

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

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??

Blogging during commercials …

9:05 Father tells boy to kill chicken, but he can’t. He’s too kind-hearted. His younger brother enters the pen, snaps the chicken’s neck. Which child is little Sayid? I’m thinking it’s the kind-hearted one. Oops! I was wrong about that!

Dharma guy: “Whatever.” Hey, writers, that seems anachronistic! People didn’t say “whatever” like that back then.

But they did read “A Separate Reality” by Carlos Castenada. Oooh! Nostalgia attack.

Little Ben was creepy and Ben-like, even back then. “I think I can help you.” Oh, I bet you can, Creepy Little Ben.

9:16 Long-haired Sayid. Russia. Bang bang! Now what does he do with himself?

Horace, opening and shutting pliers. Menacing. “Put out your hands.” What is this, “24″? No — ha — fake out!

“I’ll have to take this to the next level.” Hmm, maybe they are imitating “24″ after all. But why are the hippies into torture anyway?

Sawyer! And Juliet! In the cute house! Awww.

Sawyer and Sayid! Sayid: “Then I guess I’m on my own.”

9:28 Hurley, Kate, and Jack in the cafeteria. Kate didn’t know about Suliet? Really?

Wow, Ben’s father is a nasty piece of work. This is one for the bad fathers file.

Ben and Sayid in Santo Domingo. Great scene. Ben: “You’re a killer, Sayid. It’s in your nature.”

Sawyer tasers Sayid. Oh, Sawyer, shame on you!

“He’s our you.” There’s the title!

Creepy guy puts Sayid in restraints — his arms out, as if crucified.

9:42 Sayid in bar. Is that the woman from the plane? Not sure.

Sayid talks. The drug wasn’t painful after all! Whew! One “24″ is more than enough.

“I’m from the future.” “Maybe I should have used half a dose.” Ha ha ha!

Kate has engine duty with Juliet! I like the idea of them becoming friends but, hey writers, giving them both mechanics jobs seems like another anachronism. Few women worked on cars in the 70s. Could this be a Dharma experiment in redefining gender roles? I doubt it — they don’t seem that progressive in general.

But thank you, writers, for not staging a cat fight between Kate and Juliet. I was half expecting it, and I’m glad you took the high road here, and steered clear of the looming cliche.

Voting to kill Sayid. Sawyer raises his hand. Shame on you, Sawyer!

9:52 The woman kicks Sayid! “I am a professional.”

Sawyer didn’t betray Sayid after all! Whew! I really didn’t want to have to hate Sawyer!

Van rolling through Dharmaville, like it did in last week’s “Lost Untangled”! Except this time, it’s on fire.

Cloaked figure. It’s not Ms. Hawking again, is it? Ha. Nope, it’s Little Ben.

Little Ben: Will you take me to your people? Sayid: That’s why I’m here.

10:02 Sayid, at gate of Flight 315: “Can we get the next plane?” Ha ha. Sorry, Sayid. This is your destiny!

Sayid shoots Little Ben! OMG! It’s a time travel paradox!!! I was sure they weren’t going to have any of those!! Very, very interesting. Could it be that Little Ben is not really dead? And if he is dead … then what? What does that mean, if the Losties are able to alter the past?

Wow. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

I liked the episode. Lots of action, good set-up of the tension between Sayid and Ben, and a kicker of an ending.

Graphic by Ms Terri, using a smoldering hot picture of Naveen Andrews from the abc.com website (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

The clip is 1:09 minutes long, very slightly spoiler-ish, and features Faraday:

This podcast focuses on Jeremy Davies and his character Daniel Faraday, with a few additional comments from Jorge Garcia (Hurley) and Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet). They all talk about time travel, and the podcast also shows short clips from earlier in this season, and from last season’s The Constant, that give a quick review of what’s been said in the show about time travel so far.

These official podcasts are essentially promos for the upcoming episodes, so “316,” the next episode, will almost certainly be about time travel. Maybe the episode will even give us some hints as to how time travel works. They can’t tell us everything though. It’s too early for that — there’s still more than a season and a half left to go, and I’m sure they want to keep us mystified for as long as possible.

On the podcast, Davies talks about “rogue physicists” who go beyond Newtonian physics. He says,

You get into areas that demand a language that is closer to the territories of emotion and spirituality and God.

Clear as mud?

As fuzzy as that statement may be, I still have a feeling that it’s pointing to something that is central to what the show is about. After all, one of the show’s major themes is the conflict between faith and science (usually personified by Locke and Jack, respectively). Will the show’s overall resolution hinge on resolving that conflict by bringing faith and science together?

If you want to see any of the previous podcasts, go to the archive on ABC.com, which has video podcasts (and also audio podcasts, which have different material) going back to February 2008.

Screenshot, from the podcast, of Faraday in the past with long hair (but still wearing a tie!), is from The Constant, Episode 4×05 (c) ABC

That’s what Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) said in an interview with the AP.

I thought the actors didn’t know what was going to happen?

But apparently he does, this time, and he says (here comes the slight spolier) that the monster is as old as the Island.

In another interview, this one on video from EW.com, he talks about how it feels to know that Jin is alive (”given this economy” he says, “it feels really good”) and what he thinks about all the time travel in the show this season:

My favorite part of this video interview is when Evangeline Lilly tells those of us who love the character stories that we just have to be patient. She promises that the show will get there. They have to do a lot of set-up during the first half of Season 5, she says, but then they’ll get back into the stories of the people.

And for those of you who do love the time travel element, Matthew Fox is on your side, and he hastens to assure you that the science-fiction aspects will continue to be a very necessary part of the whole world that is LOST.

I like trying to figure out the puzzles that the show presents, and I like the time-travel stuff, but only up to a point. Most of the season so far, except for the wonderfully Hurley-centric episode The Lie, has been too much, for my taste, about the vertigo-inducing time jumps, and not enough about the characters, and their connections, interactions, and struggles to redeem themselves from whatever haunts them from the past.

I had been worried that the show might be permanently spinning off in a direction that was less interesting to me than what they had done in previous seasons. So I was relieved to hear Lilly say that the stuff I like the most will be coming back!

What’s your favorite part of the show? The character development? The science-fiction aspects? Or do you like them both equally?

Screenshot and video (c) Entertainment Weekly

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

Blogging my random thoughts during commercials.

9:11 That was exciting! Dharma knowing about the donkey wheel. Faraday showing up back in Dharma time. Sawyer without his shirt! Rose and Bernard.

Who was the father in the opening scene who we saw only from the back?

9:21 Plane crashing. Ethan shooting. That was weird.

9:31 Death by dishwasher. Don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.

Hurley: “Maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.” Great line.

9:41 All this whipping back and forth in time is giving me vertigo.

9:53. Sawyer: “The ghost of Christmas future.” Ha. Miles: “That chick really digs me.” Ha again.