"Random Thoughts On S6.05"

Poor Jack is all over the place in this episode, but mostly he was pretty calm and zen until he had a tantrum, but later for that. Overall it looks as if Jack might be the one being prepped to be the new Point Man for the island, whatever island is left above water by the time the story is done. In Universe#2 he seems to be a fairly together man, although we don't really know what broke up his marriage to Mrs. Jack and separated him from his son.

OK, in the commentary version of the DVD for this ep, TPTB have to imitate Wayne and Garth here and go, "Doodely-doo, doodely-doo, doodely-doo." For Wayne's World fans only, heheh.

I thought that there might be more here in the confrontation between Dogen and Hurley. A little more Dogen is totally alright by me any time, he's my favorite new character. It felt to me as if he really knew why Hurley was there, but was just giving him a psychological security check or something, but I could be wrong.

All this talk about Kate finding Claire now has got to mean that there is going to be a big show-down between them when they finally meet up. And no one is better for the job than Kate I suppose, now that Claire has gone sour with infection and with the bad company she keeps. Kate will be up to the challenge, but she may get caught off guard by the new Claire. MIB may also have some interesting psy-ops planned for Kate as well, if he is there when the two women meet up in the jungle. If present, he's sure to throw some mental zingers at Kate in front of Claire to make her look bad, not to mention accusing Kate of botching the job of raising Aaron. That will surely be a sore spot for Claire and drag out the time it takes to convince Kate that Claire is lost to the dark side forever. I do wish that somehow Claire could be cured and that she and Aaron could be reunited. Something stuck out at me when Kate was telling Jack and Hurley her plans: why didn't Jack mention that Claire was his sister? Why doesn't he show any concern for her well-being? Why didn't he even just say, "Hey, she's my sister, please take good care of her and bring her back safely," or even, "Thanks for looking out for her, I sure don't care." I don't get it.

Hurley gives a lot of audience perspective tonight, as he has before. There must be a name for that in theater-speak. He waxes about the early days of tromping through the jungle with Jack, and wonders about Adam and Eve in the same way we have. Just one question...were TPTB giving us a hint about their origin, or putting the kabosh on one aspect of our speculation about them? And should Hurley have looked at the camera and said, "Spoiler alert!" before getting philosophical about them? Hmm.

Well, just when I was thinking that this was the first episode where I like Jack all the way through, he goes and breaks up my new favorite place on the island! And gives us a few more pages of classic Jackface in the process, be sure to check that out on the Lostemedia pages for the lighthouse scenes, heheh. Kudos to TPTB for thinking up such a fascinating concept as a lighthouse that can home in on, well, your home! A lighthouse mechanism that can reflect your life in it's mirrors all the way across the world is Jules Verne worthy. I've been out of the SciFi written fiction loop for a while so I don't know if this idea has been done recently, but it sure hasn't been on TV before. Similar virtual-vision concepts for sure (I guess even the Wicked Witch of the West used her crystal ball in a similar way), but wow, this was just a great idea for the island. Has anyone figured out where the lighthouse sits on our island fan-maps yet?

I do have one continuity question here...if Jack watched David practice his music for hours and hours when they were still a family, why did Jack tell Dogen#2 that he didn't know how long he had been playing? Huh?

Once again Hurley is the voice of the people, in expressing his weariness of secrets kept and words not spoken when needed. But Jacob assures him and us that everything went as planned. Whew.

One of the most gratifying aspects of this episode was finally finding out what Claire has been up to. Not exactly like Rose and Bernard, she's kept herself in the jungle apart from other humans and enjoys playing an axe version of whack-a-mole with the Others. In her defense though, that guy did admit that he would have killed her if he had the chance. I wonder what he meant saying that she "remembered it wrong" when she talked of her infection test? And if she was at the temple when the waters were pure, why wasn't she healed I wonder? The new Claire seems to fit that old Monty Python song:

Claire's a lumberjack and she's OK

She sleeps all night and she hunts all day

She has a boar's head baby

And a really creepy friend

Poor Claire, Charlie sure didn't give up his life so that she could become Mrs. MIB. Oh and one more thing, thanks a lot ABC for telling us last week that Jack was going to break the mirrors in the promo. Pfff.

"Where They Ought To Be"

While watching this week's episode the old Shaker song "Simple Gifts" popped into my head:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

The lyrics seemed to really fit our 815 survivors in that they could use some simplicity in their lives. For another, the connecting multiversal paths that they are on, and their complicated pasts and futures, have them spinning and turning towards some kind of destiny that we and they don't understand yet. It's a gift to be simple: when have our intrepid survivors ever taken the simple path in their lives? Not often really. Tis a gift to be free: most of them search for freedom of a sort, even if it's just from their own pasts. And are they on the island due to their free will? Can they ever find peace in the simplicity of finding inner freedom? I hope so, they've been through such an awful lot.

It's as if they are on some kind of cosmic multi-helix and all of their actions in however many universes that they are living in, are twisting and turning around some axis of purpose. The way that Flocke explained to James his three choices on the island (and in life?), every choice gave the opportunity to spiral off into a separate reality. Buy maybe Flocke failed to tell James that no matter what he chose, eventually he would end up at the same endpoint, via course correction. Maybe the only thing we really choose, is how easy or painful it is to get to that last outcome that is our destiny. Our lives can get off-track and we miss out on opportunities, but can other blessings replace the ones that we lost in the past when we get back on the path? Are the substitute blessings equivalent in some purpose to the "originals"?

Even James seemed to be on a helix of two or three twisting ladders at the same time in this episode. And his two monikers and personalities even twist around the central core of whoever James really is.

When the 815 survivors are finished bending and turning and twisting on the helix of their complicated lives, will some magic door open to let them know that they are on the right path? TPTB keep telling us that they have a destiny. I'm guessing that their destiny is the core around which their parallel universes are spiraling, like the helix, and no matter how fast they may spin around it, their true paths will never veer off course, whether they live or die on the island. Maybe it's time to stop fighting life, to bend and bow with the choices, to finally find themselves in "the place just right." To go with the flow, as Flocke said to James.

"Bad Lazarus Twin"

The more we talk about Jacob and his Nemesis, the more it reminds me of the StarTrek:TOS episode, "The Alternative Factor". In that story two entities show up that present a conflicting dilemma for the Enterprise. To begin with, Spock discovers an energy anomaly: as the Star Trek website Memory-alpha.org puts it: "...Spock has discovered a source of radiation that is not there – a "rip" in the universe, where regular physical laws do not apply."

The Enterprise thereby gets involved in a multiversal enmity between two time traveling characters (Lazarus and Anti-Lazarus), who have duped them into coming to the planet for various reasons of their own purposes. The interesting point about these two fighting men, is that each says that the other is the one that needs to be stopped, and they both want Kirk's sympathies. And each man is disappointed in the crew for not being able to easily realize which one they should trust. Was that why MIB said he was disappointed in the people on the beach, because we silly humans can't figure out which entity to believe and follow?

Both Lazarus men seem to be lying and Kirk can't get to the bottom of it until he goes back down to the planet: "Once there, he meets the other Lazarus, the sane Lazarus, and learns the truth. Anti-Lazarus' people discovered how to pass through the negative magnetic corridor that both connects and protects the two universes. When this happened, Lazarus couldn't bear the knowledge that he had a duplicate, and resolved to destroy his other. He is mad and doesn't care if this causes the death of two universes. Anti-Lazarus and Kirk realize he must be stopped: if Kirk can force Lazarus into the corridor, Anti-Lazarus can hold him there, and Kirk can destroy his spaceship – which will also destroy Anti-Lazarus' spaceship. Access to the corridor will be sealed forever, and both universes will be safe. And two men named Lazarus will be at each others' throats for the remainder of eternity." It reminds of me of how Jacob said that he had an old friend who was tired of him. MIB seems to not be able to stand to exist in the same timespace as Jacob, and has wanted to kill him for a very long time we found out in S5 -- at the same time that we found out that there was an enemy of Jacob.

Now I'm not saying that our island pals are matter and antimatter and obviously our universe will not cease to exist if they are both in it, because we have seen them together. But we have one seemingly passive and one aggressive entity at odds with each other, and like Kirk we're not sure which one is the benign or malignant one. And MIB doesn't seem to care what will happen to us or our universe, if he kills Jacob. Is this why Widmore and Hawking seem pretty scared? In the end of The Alternative Factor the "good" Lazarus locks himself away in the multiverse corridor with Kirk's help, to save both universes from destruction, where they will fight each other forever. Jacob seems to have already sacrificed himself, will the Losties help Jacob trap MIB in a similar way to "...save us all" as we keep hearing?

A nice synopsis of the ep and screencaps can be found at these two sites:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Alternative_Factor

http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=53&page=23

"Sayid Gets Baptised?"

Our intrepid island MacGyver, always looking for redemption and forgiveness, lands in grotto water once again. We've seen Sayid lament the path that his life took before, and seeking a better life to make amends for his transgressions is not new to him. In what he believes are his final breaths he now asks Hurley, "When I die, what do you think will happen to me?" Little does he know, but Hurley finds out soon enough.

It looked to me like Jacob has some important plans for Sayid, as he intently ponders his near lifeless body on the ground. He looks deep in thought about something. If the water did 'turn' and lose it's power because Jacob died, then Jacob possibly knows something about the waters that the temple Others don't yet. But before they learn the fate of Jacob and the waters, they submerge Sayid in the pool face down on Jacob's relayed commands to save him.

I wonder, is it necessary for the dying person to inhale the water before they die to be healed, and to die in the water? That's a lot like Christian baptism, "dying" to sin and being washed by the waters of the Holy Spirit, becoming a "new man" in Christ as the Bible puts it. I follow the sprinkling method myself but theology aside, I can see the case for total immersion here. Sayid's body later revives, after an odd reaction by Miles over his seemingly lifeless body. Did Miles know that there was something different going on there in Sayid? Or that it wasn't Sayid? In typical Lost fashion, when questioned Miles replies with the usual, "Nothing." Grr-arg! It also looked like the shot hole in his shirt was gone, but that could have just been the camera angle.

We don't know why the unclear water worked anyway but perhaps it was because while not present physically anymore, Jacob is still around spiritually and his powers are weaker but still somewhat viable. And since now that the water was apparently less potent, did it just not heal Dogen because he only dipped his hand in briefly? Sayid asked the correct question, "What happened?"

"Happy Lost Birthday Ian"

My nephew Ian's 10th birthday fell on the night before Lost S-6 starts tonight, so he asked for a Lost themed birthday cake. Actually he's been asking for a Lost cake since before his last birthday. So he designed the cake which was a chocolate bundt cake to be the island, we coated it with shades of green icing, and he and his mom printed out pics of Lost icons to put on and around the cake including the Lost Lego-like figures, a sub, canoe, sailboat, rowboat, yellow prop plane, and of course Smokey and a polar bear. In the middle he wanted the Swan hatch and they poked a hole in it and put a tea light underneath to make the light from the Swan, with Locke at his position to bang on the hatch. All this was set on a blue plastic sheet on the tray for the ocean. He and his mom did a great job. We also decorated the living room table with island/tiki themed things, including a stuffed polar bear and a rubber eyeball (homage to Patchy of course).

Well, have fun tonight everyone! I'm in a gloomy mood today, so I hope that tonight's episode is filled with spooky and frightful things. How could it be otherwise after an entity took over a corpse and a bomb and/or energy pocket exploded?! I don't suppose that the island can be blown to bits like one of the bomb test islands in WW2, but who knows. I'll be thinking about you all as I'm watching in tandem with everyone around the world. Bon-Lost-voyage friends! See you on the flip-side of the premier. :-)