Lost: Season 6 - Episode 5 "Lighthouse" Airdate: 2/23/10

I always have a hard time trying to figure out where to start these things. Let's see, uh, Episode 6... "Lighthouse..." hmmmmmm...

(singing)

"cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do nothing to lose
and it's you and me and all of the people...(what? The band's called LIFEhouse?...oh... nevermind)


Ah! Lighthouse:



It's a really tall structure which would probably be visible from many places on the island where the "Candidates" have been, but they "haven't been looking for it," and it's mysterious mirror which can peer into the lives of whomever Jacob chooses it seems. We'll discuss this more in depth in a few minutes. First I want to talk about David.




Jiggawho? Jiggawha? I know the flash sideways have some minor discreps that are intentional, but this is a biggie. So Jack has a son now (at least in the flash sideways). David's mom is not yet identified, but I wonder if it's Sarah, the woman that Jack saved after she had a car accident seen in the flashbacks of season's 1 and 2? She left Jack because he worked too much. She also shows up pregnant when the Oceanic Six are rescued because she is still listed as an emergency contact for Jack. If it is Sarah, does this mean that Julie Bowen is coming back? I love her new show "Modern Family."

Anyway, back to David. He's an accomplished pianist; his relationship with Jack is that of what Jack's relationship was to his father, Christian because according to Christian, Jack "didn't have what it takes." Jack, however, seems to be finding himself faster in the flash sideways and realizing what he must do. Jack has a breakthrough with his son, but still makes him ride his bike back to his condo...




Haha!... Sorry. Couldn't resist. The more I think about it though, I don't think that David could be Sarah's child because she was pregnant in 2004, and David is about 13 or 14 maybe. Unless through fate, Jack and Sarah met years earlier and there never was an accident where he had to fix her. Something to ponder.

So who's the man in Episode 5? Hugo's the man!




"I'm a candidate and I can do whatever I want!"... and if I want to drop some funny lines in the episode I will!!! If I want to throw in a little Indian Jones reference while looking at the hieroglyphics in the temple while trying to find a secret passage way, I'll do it by golly!




I assume this means "doorway" or "passage?" Anyone know? If it's an amulet it means "protection." Anyone want to take a shot at translating this one:




I just gave myself a headache trying to decipher the glyphs, but I think it says something about God making an offering to the darkness?!?! Am I anywhere close? Or maybe it means, "Please God by making an offering to the darkness". Dogen does say he has to make hard decisions sometimes. Perhaps they have to sacrifice their own to keep Smokey at bay. Oh! I just remembered that Dogen was in Jack's flash sideways.




He's at David's audition with his own child talking about the fact that the children shouldn't have to experience pressure like that which they are experiencing. Hang on... why would Dogen be in Jack's flash sideways? I assume he lived a long time ago, so why would he end up in 2004 if they do find away to destroy the island? Things just aren't adding up yet, but then again this is LOST. Unless Hugo's other funny statement about going back to the time of dinosaurs and, "maybe these are our bodies," in the cave was foreshadowing.




Adam and Eve where given their name by Locke when Jack & Kate discovered them in season one. It is possible that they could have been Flight 815 survivors. Maybe they are Rose and Bernard? Remember that there was a bag on their body which contained a black rock and white rock. If someone was able to time travel back far enough and destroy the island, then nothing would have ever happened, right? It still doesn't explain why Dogen would be hanging out in 2004 as part of Jack's flash sideways unless if current time is effected, the people living in that time plane of existence stay there and live out there lives in America or where ever... or, it could be a mad dash to get Aaron. Maybe Aaron is who lies in the shadow of the statue and will save them all. Ugh, my hieroglyphics headache just came back.


Let's talk a little lighthouse now, shall we?... or big, mysterious, ancient lighthouse rather.




One with mirrors that could peer into the lives of those named on the degree marks.




So we now know that the sequence of the numbers is not that special (4,8,15,16,23,42) because it could have been any sequence of numbers 0 - 360 right? Each number on the lighthouse dial was a degree that corresponded with a "candidate" to replace Jacob. Kate's number of 51 doesn't fit into the current sequence (not sure where she fits in to all of this just yet) which adds to 108, the degree that Jacob instructs Hugo to turn the lighthouse dial to.






Jack has a fit when he learns that Jacob is voyeur...




... and has to sit in "time out" to find himself.




Meanwhile at Camp Claire, we discover she has a "friend," and she is well aware that said friend is NOT John Locke.




Does this mean that Sawyer was not Flocke's first recruit, that Claire was? Or is there something far more sinister within her, that darkness that that Dogen spoke of, that would make her not be able to control her actions? Just more things to ponder.

I think that is just about all the main points from this episode. Here are a few bonus items:




Jack's son, David, is reading The Annotated Alice which according to wikipedia.org, is "a work by Martin Gardner incorporating the text of Lewis Carroll's major tales: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as well as the original illustrations by John Tenniel. It has extensive annotations explaining the contemporary references (including the Victorian poems that Carroll parodies), mathematical concepts, wordplay, and Victorian traditions (such as the snap-dragons) featured in the two books."





Jack and Hugo find Shannon's inhaler near the caves. Does this represent a return for Maggie Grace? Or is it just something threw in to mess with us?

According to TVGuide.com, tomorrow's night's episode is called "Sundown," and in it, Sayid must make a difficult decision, while Claire has a warning for the temple inhabitants. Can't wait!

Lost: Season 6 - Episode 4 "The Substitute" Airdate 2/16/10

"At some point in your life, probably when you were young, when you were miserable, vulnerable, he came to you, manipulated you, pulled your strings like you were a puppet; and as a result, choices that you thought you made were never really choices at all. He was pushing you, pushing you to the island."
- John Flocke


Oh, by the way, blackie the smoke monster is being called "Flocke" in almost all of the forums so I will adopt the name as well. The above quote is what Flocke tells Sawyer in Jacob's cave.



To access this cave, they had to first go down "Jacob's Ladder."



Jacob's Ladder... hmmmmm? I wonder if this is subtle reference to the Book of Genesis (28:11-19) in the bible? If we come to find out that Flocke's real name is Esau, then it very well could be. Jacob's ladder was a "ladder to Heaven" that appeared to Jacob in a dream as he was fleeing from Esau. In his dream, God speaks to Jacob and says:


"I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you."


And when Jacob woke up, he proclaimed the land the house of God and the gate of Heaven. Of course I may be digging way to deep as I sometimes do, but I chuckled when they had to go down Jacob's ladder to get to his abode.



Flocke picks up the white rock off the scale and tosses it out into the ocean leaving the black rock to tip the scale and says it's an "inside joke." I'm not sure what the joke is, unless he is saying that the white rock represented Jacob and since he "died" (I say that with quotes because if Flocke found a loop hole, perhaps Jacob knows of one as well and is not dead... but then again, what is death in this place?) he is no longer in his way.

Before we explore Jacob's cave and his "thing for numbers," let's back up a little and see if we can out the creepy kid.



Here the kid appears to either have a reeeeeeaaaaalllllyyyy bad case of poison ivy or he is bleeding from his arms. Is this supposed to represent the stigmata, or wounds of Christ?



He doesn't appear to be bleeding here...




... or here. The promos for the show keep saying, "The time for questions is over," but WHO THE HELL IS THIS KID? Is it Jacob reincarnated? Could it be Aaron who has aged at a fast pace because of the island? I think I'll name him Jaron for now. DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO!!!!... oh, sorry... gotta a little caught up. Maybe we WILL see Ethan take Aaron in a future flash sideways. It could happen. And what's with "the rules?" Flocke can't kill Sawyer? I wonder if he'll try to talk him into killing himself... but then again, if that were the case, why would he have saved him when he was falling down Jacob's ladder? There's a great read on The Rules on Lostpedia.org.

Moving to the Flash Sideways since I mentioned it, Helen is alive and well and busy planning her wedding to John.



They are planning on getting married in October of 2004, but as we learned in Season 5, or will learn, she dies of a brain aneurysm in 2006. She is the one who believes in destiny and miracles whereas John doesn't in the flash sideways.

Even though Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed on the island, the real John Locke still manages to bump into Hugo...




Mr. Reyes owns the box company where Locke works, or worked. Locke is fired when his boss, Randy Nations finds out that he did not attend the conference in Sydney, but instead went on a walkabout.




Randy also fired Hugo from Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack in season 2, but Hurley ends up buying Mr. Clucks when he wins the lottery. I found a video that was shown at Comic Con last year. It's a commercial for Mr. Cluck's featuring Hugo:



Hugo also owns a temp agency where he sends Locke upon finding out that the "douche" Randy has fired him. There he crosses path's with Rose.



In the flash sideways, Rose still has terminal cancer since she never came to the island, but she "got past the denial and got on with living." She helps Locke find a job as a substitute teacher at a junior high school. It's there that he runs into "an old friend."



Benjamin Linus teaches European History, and looks different. Is it the hair?

Back on the island, that Ben Linus lies to Ilana when she asks if the pillar of smoke killed Jacob? I'm guessing he feared she would kill him if she knew that it was him that did it.

Flocke makes his way across the island as only a smoke monster can do and cuts Richard out of the, uh, what would you call that? A hammock trap?



Flocke apologizes for hitting him and carrying him into the jungle, but Richard looks extremely scared.



Some things are said by Flocke here that perked my ears:

1. "I would have never have done that to you. I would have never have kept you in the dark. I would have treated you with respect."

2. "Come with me and I promise I'll tell you everything."

3. When Richard tells him NO, Flocke's response is, "are you sure about that because people seldom get a second chance?"

4. "I'll be seeing you Richard, sooner than you think."

He was obviously trying to recruit Richard (as Ilana says he is doing), but why is Richard so scared of him? Is it just that Richard is enjoying the fountain of youth and doesn't want to die?



When Flocke enters Sawyers house (or the place where he lived for a little while), The Stooges "Search & Destroy" is playing very loudly on the record player. This is from the 1973 album titled "Raw Power." Not that it has any bearing, but Iggy Pop and the Stooges are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2010.

Flocke doesn't drink Sawyers whiskey; Sawyer doesn't "give a damn if your dead, or time traveling, or the ghost of Christmas past." Sawyer also knows that Flocke isn't Locke because "Locke was scared even when he was pretending he wasn't." And off they go to Jacob's cave so Flocke can answer the most important question in the world, "why are you on this island?" Well, first they have to get by Richard who tries to get Sawyer away from Flocke while he is chasing the creepy kid. Then comes a Steinbeck "Of Mice and Men" refrence; a trip down Jacob's ladder and we are just about where I was when I started this blog entry: the numbers (4,8,15,16,23,42).



So the numbers coincide with a person, or a candidate, huh?

4 - John Locke (Crossed off because he is dead)
8 - Hugo Reyes
15 - Ford, James (Sawyer)
16 - Sayid Jarrah
23 - Shephard, Jack
42 - Kwon (He doesn't know if it's Sun or Jin)

So where does Kate fit in to all of this? There seems to be a plan for everyone, and now James is left with 3 choices:

1. Do Nothing. See how it plays out.
2. Accept the job, become the new Jacob and protect the island from nothing.
3. We (Flocke and Sawyer) just go... Together.

Are you ready to go home? Hell yes I am. Let's end this show! How many episodes are left? 14? Let's get it on!

I think I touched on just about everything except maybe Ilana knowing about Jin. Sorry I am dragging with my blog. This is the week I get caught up as my work schedule gets back to normal tomorrow. I better run get ready for Episode 5 "Lighthouse." Thanks for reading and taking part.

Lost: Season 6 - Episode Three "What Kate Does" Airdate: 2/9/10

So sorry I am late with this entry. It's been crazy at work and I now have no free time whatsoever. Things should get back to some sense of normalcy next week... I hope. Anyway, I have two weeks to cover so I better get crack-a-lackin'.

"What Kate Does" could easily have been titled, "It's Always Sunny... On The Temple Side of The Island."



Hey! It's Mac! When we last saw Aldo, I had not yet seen "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia," but it's now one of my favorite shows. I have to watch it on Hulu though because I lost FX when I downgraded Dish. Anyway, I'm way off track and I haven't even started yet. Where should I jump into this thing? Oh yeah...

Claire's back on the island!



Of course she probably never really left, only disappeared with Christian, who may or may not have been Jacob or Smokey manifesting themselves through Christians image - you never really know with this show.




Claire has certainly changed. I immediately thought of Danielle Rousseau when I saw her. And thanks to a subtle hint uttered in an exchange between Justin and Aldo about the trap in the jungle possibly belonging to Rousseau, I'm now sure that the trap belonged to Claire, who has taken Rousseau's place in this island game.



Danielle Rousseau was "brought" to the island just like everyone else and was obviously a player in whatever game is being waged between Jacob and "The Man In Black." She is killed by an outside team controlled by Charles Widmore, and because of this, does her part have to be replaced by another player?

Moving on to the "Flash Sideways" portion, as they are called on Lostpedia and on the enhanced episodes. As a matter of fact, if you were watching the enhanced ep last night (Feb 16) it said that what you were seeing is what would happen had Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed. I think that's hogwash. There's too many irregularities, some subtle, some major. I think they should say that the "Flash Sideways" is what would happen had the island never existed, or was destroyed sometime before Dharma. Here's why I think this:




Ethan Goodspeed is the doctor who is attending Claire. If the plane didn't crash on the island, but yet the island was there for everything else, then Ethan would still be on the island... or would he? He has been seen off the Island before in Miami when they recruited Juliette through Mittelos Bioscience (Mittelos being an anagram "LOST TIME"). It was a front company used to recruit people from the outside. Ethan was born on the island to Horace and Amy. When he joined The Others he changed his last name to ROM. Maybe I'm trying to dig too deep, but I'm thinking Ethan may be after Aaron. Thoughts? Unless of course the island never existed, then he wouldn't have been born there, and this would just be a coincidence, right?






Back on the island, Sawyer makes a break for the Dharma camp.





Kate catches him digging a shoebox out of the floor which had technically been buried for over 30 years and contained the ring he was going to give to Juliet when he asked her to marry him.






We now know the names a few new mysterious characters. This is Lennon:




Not too much is known about him except that he is Dogen's translator. And this would be Dogen:




Dogen is the Temple Master and according to Lostpedia.org, Dogen was the name of a prominent Japanese Buddhist philosopher, who founded the Sōtō Zen tradition. He was, for much of his life, the head of a monastery, Eihei-ji (which roughly translates to "the temple of eternal peace").

...peace my @$$. He tortured the $&@! out of Sayid.

(More to come. Gotta drive home).

"LA X" - tras 2/4/10

Found this on Buzzfeed. It is a side by side comparison of the Oceanic Flight 815 scenes from the very first epsiode, "Pilot" from season one and last week's episode "LA X" from season six.




Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof were on Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday Night and cleared up a few things without giving much away of course. Jimmy did a great job with "Coincidence or Significant?" So is Jacob inhabiting Sayid's body? Something is. Watch the second video for that short and not-so-productive discussion.

Jimmy Kimmel Part One:


Jimmy Kimmel Part Two


At the end of the second video, they make the official end date for LOST which will be May 23... a Sunday Night nonetheless. I suggest we all go to church that day. We may need some extra religion to understand it all.

My friend Paul sent me this video:



I remember this from the Pilot episode, but I have never played Backgammon so it is hard for me to understand, even while reading the rules of the game. I do find it interesting that there is a "Jacoby Rule."

Lost: Season 6 - Episode One & Two "LA X" Airdate: 2/2/10

It's been a while since I have done this. I feel like I'm a little rusty, but I'm sure it's just like riding a bike and it will all come back to me before I run my ass into the bushes.

Here we are at the final season of LOST. It's been a long time coming, but we will finally get the answers we seek... after we are good and thoroughly confused of course. Had I not been completely confused by the end of this episode, something would have been wrong.

Before I really get going, I just wanted to make sure that every one is clear on the fact that John Locke's body is now inhabited by this guy:



He is known right now as just "the man in black," and he was the one who was sitting on the beach with Jacob at the beginning of last season's finale. This is the reason that we see the evil eyes when he is looking at Richard (who looks confused and extremely scared).



We also now know that this "man in black" is the smoke monster, but we'll get to that later. Let's go back to the beginning of "LAX."

I'm really not sure what we are seeing. On the surface it's a flashback to September 22, 2004 when Oceanic flight 815 was in route from Sydney to Los Angeles, but things are not quite right. Could it be we are seeing glimpse of a parallel existence? Or maybe it's just a dream that would fit into an "It's A (not so) Wonderful Life" scenaro; a "what would happen if Jack's plan worked and the plane never crashed on the island." All the Losties would go back to the life they knew before the island; a pitiful existence in which they hated themselves and wrestled with personal daemons because of the bad life decisions they made. This show, however, is about redemption... or at least being presented the opportunity to change yourself and life, with the choice lying within you.

As we have learned from many movies that explore the "what if's" about time travel, when you try to change what has already happen, there are always consequences. Here are a few that I picked up on during the flight 815 scenes:


Jack's neck is bleeding.


Desmond is on the plane. Why would Desmond be on the plane? Even if they never crashed on the island, Desmond's solo boating race around the world would have happened in 2001, three years before Flight 815 took off from Sydney (according to the lostpedia.org timeline).


Hugo doesn't think he is cursed. As a matter of fact he says "I'm the luckiest guy alive."



Very cool to see Boone again, but where was Shannon, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, etc. etc.? I'm sure they are saving those peeps for future episodes as we explore the alternate reality that is Oceanic Flight 815... or as I may start referring to it, Flight 815-B.


Charlie sure was being a prick. "You should have let that happen man. I was supposed to die." Then again, that is how Charlie was before and when he first got to the island. If the plane "never crashed," then he would not have been able to see the error of his ways and correct himself.

I thought the Tim Burton-esque "Beetlejuice" opening with the island underwater was a hokey.


Don't get me wrong, I like Tim Burton's work, but I thought this sequence was a little out of place for the show.




Jumping back to present island time, which I assume is now 2007... but I am not really sure yet. Juliet dies before she can tell Sawyer something important, but Miles, who can talk to the dead, reads Juliet and tells Sawyer that Juliet said, "It worked." What worked? Jack's plan? Or are we going to find out that Juliet had secretly been working on a fertility treatment for herself and that she was pregnant? Thoughts?



Back at the four-toed statue (or what's left of it) where they are arguing over "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" (The answer was "he who will save us all" btw) we discover that the "man in black" is also the smoke monster.



Bram tries to protect himself by drawing a ring around him in the same "ash" (I assume)that was around Jacob's cabin.



But the smoke monster out smarts the protector of Jacob and self-proclaimed "good guy" and throws him through Jacob's tapestry. And impales him on a piece of wood killing Bram, as well as everyone else who was with him, minus Ben. All of this happening under the Statue of Taweret... or what remained of the statue. Taweret was the Egyptian goddess of birth, re-birth, and the northern sky.



Notice that the statue carries an Ankh in both hands. This is an Egyptian hieroglyphic that means "eternal life." (Guess who's been doing a little research?) Jacob gives Hugo an Ankh in the guitar case before he goes back to the island.



This is what saves their butts when they go to the temple... wait... temple?



Holy crap, I remember hearing about a temple, and I thought we saw the temple last season, but what we were seeing was just the entrance to another Other civilization. Before the Losties could get into where the temple was, they had to get by Chester Copperpot...


"Chester Copperpot, Chester Copperpot, Chester Copperpot. Don't you guys see, don't you realize? He was a pro. He never made it this far. Look how far we've come. We've got a chance..." (Sorry... where was I?) Oh yes, The Temple!



... and the note inside the Ankh that saved Jack, Kate, Hugo, Sawyer, Miles, and Sayid's ass. Is it safe to assume the note was Jacob's list with their full names? The question here is why are they all in a lot of trouble if one of the names on the list dies?



Sayid was saved, but it appeared as if the spring water (or water of life) had turned to blood, as did the rivers of Egypt during the 10 plagues of Egypt in which God sends 10 plagues through Moses and Aaron to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go in Exodus. Sayid coming back to life was not a big shocker as I figured he would when Miles could not communicate with him.

***Update*** The big question being posed by many right now: is Jacob inhabiting Sayid's body just as "the man in black" has taken on the form of John Locke? The writers say that "something" is inhabiting Sayid's body and that will evolve in the coming episodes. Watch the video I posted from Jimmy Kimmel Live!

I think that covers just about everything, except for Kate's delinquent behavior. There wasn't much to discuss there, except for the fact that she jumps into the cab with Claire at the end.



I will watch it again to make sure I didn't miss anything else of importance. Please feel free to comment and add as always. Just try not to post spoilers.

The next episode airs next Tuesday, February 9th and is titled "What Kate Does."