Friday, May 2, 2008

LOST: Something Nice Back Home

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
-Washington Irving

I am so emotionally attached to these characters! I watched the majority of this episode with my hand over my mouth and my eyebrows lowered in either worry and concern or else because I was so moved by the scene. Damn you LOST writers for snaring me so completely! these last couple of episodes really have been satisfying in that they have filled in of some of the future blanks. They've done a great job of showing enough to let us know how things came to be while still being vague and not losing the speed of the storyline. Jack and Kate. Sigh. I think they were cleverly ambiguous with the way they had Jack say, 'you're not even related to him' - couldn't quite tell by his inflection whether he knew that HE was related to Aaron or not. I think he did. I'm so torn! I love Kate when she's with Jack and I love Kate when she's with Sawyer. I know its likely to be Jack and Kate in the long run, and the proposal was sweet. Sawyer, like Juliette, is just kind of a tragic character that I can't really see ending up with a real and happy future. Poor Juliette. Poor Sawyer. Well, poor Jack to - can't be easy to feel like you are competing with a memory, and poor Kate for being trapped in the middle. Kate! Who was on the phone, and what are you doing for Sawyer and why does the whole thing break my heart a little bit when I don't even really understand what is going on?

Most interesting single phrase of the night to me was near the end when Jack and Kate were fighting about Sawyer and Jack said that Sawyer chose to stay. So there will be an option, eh? Hmmm. but not an option for everyone perhaps? Jin: "I will get you and our baby off this island." Oh Jin, but not yourself?

Well these freighter folks are sure full of surprises. Charlotte is fluent in Korean (so maybe finding the polar bear in Tunisia isn't the only reason they chose her?) and Miles really does hear dead people. Looks like they are starting to realise that this little 'mission' isn't exactly what they were led to believe it would be. Miles seemed sincerely shook up, as much as that guy can portray emotion. So I guess Rousseau really is gone! Not that she couldn't turn up in spirit, I suppose. It would have been an interesting Fast Forward to see her trying to survive back in the real world when she's so crazy - holding knives to peoples throats and freaking people out.

"People get sick, Rose." "Not here. Here they get better." I'm glad they had the characters bring this up. Jimmy Kimmel recently interviewed the writers and they said this:
Kimmel: The island heals some people and doesn't heal others. For instance, Ben needed an operation from Jack to beat cancer, but it seems like Sawyer gets injured every sixth episode and by the next, he's fine. Is that just a TV thing?Carlton Cuse: Wow. [Laughs] Where are the softball questions, Jimmy? What about the warm-up?Damon Lindelof: The short answer is, it's not arbitrary. Yes, there is a certain degree of compressing story. The idea that everything you've seen has really happened in 110 days of real time feels fantastical, but that's the convention of the show. However, who gets sick and how fast they heal is something we talk about. In the second episode back [airing May 1], that becomes a major issue in the story. One character gets sick and another who has had experience being healed voices exactly that question: Is there any rhyme or reason to it?Cuse: The healing is related to the degree to which you are in communion with the island at any given moment. Perhaps Ben getting sick and needing surgery had to do with the fact that he had fallen out of favor, that his connection with the island was maybe not what it had been in the past. To go along with that, there was a really good article with Michael Emerson and he said:

Let's say that Ben was able to manipulate the smoke monster, but on the show everything is a binary system, everything is in balance, morally balanced or economically balanced, so for Ben to make a thing happen like that, there is also a price, I think, that he had to pay. We don't know what Ben paid yet to make the smoke monster come. We don't know that he… "Is he allowed to do that?" and everyone who has power also pays a price. John Locke is going to pay a price. Ben has paid a price… Nothing is for free in terms of power or morality on the island and I'm beginning to see that the writers are more interested in that pattern, too, of this living ledger book system.

So perhaps there is something to Bernard's joke about Jack angering the island Gods.

Aha! I had been awaiting the return of Christian Shepherd. Reaching out to his offspring. Creepy. Is Claire now dead? Brainwashed? In limbo? Given a lobotomy and being set up on a thrown at the Others' Temple to be worshipped as a beautiful, mindless island Goddess? Being sacrificed to the Black Rock? Curious that Claire was so blase when she said 'Dad?' and went with him so easily when she didn't even want to know his name when she met him before. Also curious that he took Claire but left the baby, and what did he do to Claire that she would leave him! Stupid Miles, why didn't you speak up?! So I guess Kate maybe takes the baby because they all presume Claire is dead but maybe she's not - looked like she was in the preview for next week though. Only as a spirit? If she's not dead, and they all eventually go back to the island in the final season, that could be some painful baby mama drama between Claire and Kate and Aaron. So Charlie is haunting Hurley in behalf of Jack now, eh? All comes back to the psychic telling Claire that she needed to be the one to raise Aaron. Why are only Jack and Hurley being haunted? I guess Michael is too, by Libby. Maybe there will be a flash forward where Kate sees her horse standing in her front lawn :)

Some other wiser and more amusing thoughts:

You're not supposed to raise him? Charlie is sending Jack on a guilt trip for leaving Claire behind.

Jack Shepard is the anti-Norris. Jack Shepard doesn't sleep, he cries! Underneath his stubble, there isn't a chin, just more tear ducts. (Ha ha)

Aaron has a Millennium Falcon. This could mean something. (Did you all know right away what the Millennium Falcon is? Did I just show my nerdiness a little bit because I know the name of Han Solo's ship?)

I don't think Jack had appendicitis. I think Juliet did something to him to make him think that, then wouldn't allow him to watch the surgery so she could plant some sort of tracking device or something inside him. It's like Rose said: people just don't get sick on that island. . . More evidence that Juliet wasn't really doing an appendectomy - Jack pointed out that she was shaving two inches too high where the incision should be.(Interesting theory. Unlike some, I really, really like Juliette and think that if she IS deceiving it is because she has to be but that she really is a good person. If we discover she is actually deceitful then I still like her for being so clever and believable! "I know you're awake." Sad! I love how honest she was with Kate though - she's not vindictive and going to try to be manipulative about emotions. But maybe this will make her 'stop pining over Jack and get back to work for Ben.' When Juliette was first introduced I secretly had hopes for her and Sayid, but I'm pretty sure that's out)

Hurley (playing Risk) in last episode: "We're all going to die."Hurly (talking to Jack) in this episode: "We're all dead."
(I have to say, for the writers being so adamant that purgatory is not what is going on here, since that has always been a favorite LOST theory, the idea certainly comes up rather frequently)

Jin rocks! I love the way he's kind of been flying under the radar all this time because of the language barrier, but in reality, he's been observing everything all this time. He totally has Charlotte's number and called her out. He's my hero!I found the conversation between Rose and Bernard interesting. Did Jack do something to make the island angry? Maybe since he's trying so hard to get everyone off of the island, the island sees that as a betrayal, therefore Jack has to pay a price.So Miles, in addition to Claire, Jack, and Hurley, can see Christian. What does the island need Claire for? She said she had a headache and was seeing things when they were walking. I wonder what she saw.Creepy Hurley was almost too much to bear. "You're not supposed to raise him Jack." Jack seems to be turning into his late father, drinking and abusing prescription drugs. Seems that he's just as crazy as Hurley. Effects of the island? (Jack is in a worse spot than Hurley, if you ask me.)


Was that a new tat on Jack's back or has that been there? What was it of?? (I remember wondering that as well. We have heard the story about the big That tat on his shoulder, but it seems like they sort of purposely made sure we saw that little tat on his back as well)
Jack is turning into his father. With the pills and drinking that he succumbs to off the island. not that Christian popped pills, but i have said for a while now that the reason Christian drank so much and was so messed up before he dies was because he had some connection to the island. As in, perhaps he had been there before and couldn't get back!

Thoughts as to what Kate was doing for Sawyer? Maybe visiting his daughter?? Now that Kate's a mommy perhaps she's more sensitive and would do something like that for Sawyer. (Could be why Sawyer has been so overly protective of Claire lately - maybe all this 'Kate might be pregnant' business has him thinking about his own kid, Clementine)

Claire still has to fulfill Desmond's vision in the helicopter. But it WAS a vision. She could be dead and was "seen" on the helicopter.

The only ones that we've seen get sick on the island are now Ben and Jack. I think there is some connection there.
With the appearance of Christian both on and off the island to his offspring, I'm thinking there's an element of the Hero's Journey that is coming into play now. The Hero's Journey – ala Joseph Campbell, fleshed out in the Star Wars sagas and other mythologies (even Harry Potter) – always CULMINATES in some sort of RECONCILIATION WITH THE FATHER. That may be the story here, and the reason behind all the daddy issues. I'm guessing we have yet to encounter the mother of all daddy issues (pun intended), but there were certainly some hints in that direction tonight.
Another reference to "Alice in Wonderland" tonight. Jack was reading it to Aaron, just as his Dad read it to him as a kid.

Here is my new theory on why some people on the island are cured of their sicknesses while other are not: The ones who have not been cured by the island like Ben and Jack are the ones who are alive. The ones who have been healed by the island like John and Rose are actually dead. But you can't tell the difference by looking at them so really anyone could be dead.

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