"What The...?"

This shirt was spotted on the Cafepress Lost-TV merchandise page. I'm curious, who makes up the logos and such for the LOST products on this site, ABC? I'm just asking, because it's rather funny if I think of it in terms of how I feel about S6. I know about what the glyphs are suppose to mean, and this logo doesn't really fall in line with that and could mean something entirely else from a more negative perspective. I'm not trying to be mean or snarky, I'm just snickering to myself about it.
:-}

"Jack Says I'm Not A True Lost Fan?"

Well, the other night I landed on the Jimmy Kimmel show as I perused the TV channels, and Kimmel was interviewing Matt Fox. Of course they brought up the finale, and waxed on about who did and didn't like it, and why. Seeming to grope for the politest way to word it, Fox agreed with Kimmel that the casual viewers were probably the ones who didn't like the way the series ended, and that he felt that the regular viewers got it. He also mentioned something about how possibly the viewers who wanted answers were unsatisfied with 'The End', and then went into the lame squawk that Chris Carter gave us after the X-Files ended so badly, about how life doesn't give answers so neither did the show. Raspberries. I'm tired of hearing that excuse when TV writers seem to pen themselves into inescapable corners with their overly complicated stories, that they don't seem to be able to get out of smoothly. IMO, of course.

So Matt, sorry, but in my case you're talking out of yer butt. I was a hard core Lost fan, watched every episode many times, spent far too much money on Lost merchandise and way too much time writing two Lost blogs, and in no way can I be categorized as a casual viewer. Just the 9000 Lost related bookmarks on my computer alone would bear that out. I'm trying very hard not to get all sad and belligerent about my gut reaction to 'The End', but if I keep hearing comments like this one about fans who didn't feel completely comfortable with the finale, it's not going to be easy. I'm also tired of seeing viewers who are on the fence about the finale being categorized as mere answer-seekers only. So I'd like to make it clear...I would have liked to have seen some aspects of the deeper (and supposedly important) island mysteries get some completion, but even if those parts had been satisfied for me, I still might feel unfulfilled about the way the show ended, jumping across time into heaven. It's not an either/or deal with 'The Answers' here, so let's not categorize it that way. Lost was far too complicated of a story to lump its intelligent and dedicated fans' opinions into such a one-dimensional analysis.

I found the interview, let me know if I'm over-reacting (I'm sure that I am):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQtsRJZg9M

"I'm Letting Go Of Season 6"

Homer Simpson once said, "There's no moral to this story, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened!" That generally sums up how I feel about Lost (the TV show, not the entire experience) now that it is all over and done, and I've seen the finale. Unfortunately I have to place myself in the category, deemed by most fans who enjoyed the finale, of those who just don't get it. But that's OK. I'm happy for viewers who agreed with TPTB on how they ended the tale, I wish that I did.

Whether I got it or not, Season 6 and the finale just didn't seem to do anything for me, compared to the long strange trip that made up the first five seasons and hiatuses.The FS world didn't grab my interest at all for some reason, and the S6-present sort of felt almost like another show to me. Most of it just looked like people running to, and from, and back to again, MIB as he ran amok zigzagging through the jungle to get his holy revenge on. Revenge is best served cold? Not in his case apparently, and now we know how much 2000 years of hate can make you crazy and ruin the punchline for your resentment, haha. S6 also seemed really rushed to me as we were watching it unfold, but also at the same time felt like time was seriously a-wasting concerning the many interesting aspects that were open-ended at that point.

There were so many fascinating details in and about Lost that TPTB wrapped around our minds and hearts. We all know the unanswered questions, I won't go into them here, but the Lost storyline was like a huge octopus that branched off on vast arrays of subjects which spiraled into images in our minds like never ending fractal pictures! This was mostly due to the hiatus material that we got to play with, via the summer ARGs. What a glorious trip, I enjoyed it thoroughly. But now I almost wish that there hadn't been any ARGs and the side-stories of DHARMA, etc., because all that made me take the gory details very seriously and to expect much more than I got (IMHO) for a payoff in the end. Sort of how the pre-movie hype for Cloverfield all led to nothing in the actual movie. I know that the ARGs weren't meant to be a part of the show, but once your eyes and mind have been opened to the mysteries of the universe, there's no going back to stupid.

Even though the FS and the Limbo-verse doesn't jive with what I needed from the finale, of course I do understand all the purposeful parallels that TPTB forced, ahem, played on in the last season, and what they all are supposed to mean. Alas I fall into the minority who would have liked to see some closure in the real Universe too, and on the island (which TPTB insisted was a character of the show), not in the Afterlife universe where everything is apparently perfect and shiny and happy as long as Jack is happy. For the record, I didn't really like the end of Return Of The King with the long drawn out sappy scene of the Hobbits leaving with the Elves on the ship to Golden Land either. Man, I'm crabby, aren't I ?! :o)

But even in ROTK we got to go back to Hobbiton and see the real life that Sam had made for himself where real things happen to real people. I wanted to see people like Hurley, and yes even Kate, "work out their own salvation" as the apostle Paul put it, in the real world or on the island where their actions really mattered to me. Not in the Razzledazzle universe where amazing miracles happen only after we are tricked into thinking that it was another reality with real events, and the inhabitants finally realize that they're dead (with Des taking over for Jennifer Love Hewitt) and walking into the light. In the end the Limboverse did actually feel like the dreaded "snowglobe ending" to me. I'm really sorry.

Damon and Carlton insisted from the beginning of our guessing that purgatory had nothing to do with the show, so I guess that they made up their own kind of cross-over-ville. But did they give us a hint that we missed? The wise man Alvar Hanso, who was partially quoted by Tom in the jungle, was recorded in the TLE-ARG as saying, "The future need not be an undiscovered country". Lostpedia notes that the term comes from Hamlet and refers to the unknown that comes after death. Was that indeed a hint way back then, or just a coincidence? Well, I guess that I don't care too much now, I've let go. Namaste lost friends, I love ya all and I had a lot of fun watching and experiencing Lost with you! xo

"Deja Vu All Over The Place - S6.13"

Emilie de Raven should get an Emmy for having the cutest little devil-faced pout on TV. And other than that, I've got very few thoughts or words for this episode and Season 6 in general. Perhaps we're not supposed to, I've seen that other people are somewhat dulled in the senses like I am this time around with Lost so close to the end - flying across these spiraling, bumping, helixed universes, reliving skewed flashbacks when we were starving for some new developments. So I'm not alone I see but I'm not, um, happy for suddenly feeling bereft of any reaction to my favorite current TV series. After writing over 200 excited posts in a few years about this show, you'd think that I could come up with something better than lame jokes now, but it isn't so. Oh well. So here are a couple of the things that I thought were sure to happen, but didn't, in The Last Recruit.

************

The End. I'm scared, pinch me when I should wake up.

:-o

"Ilana Loses To The Curse"

Richard: Do you have the dynamite?

Ilana: (Nodding) Four sticks.

In the game of Universal Rochambeau (i.e. metaphysical rock, paper, scissors) it looks like the Curse of the Four Sticks (as my friend Wayne Allen Sallee calls it) must trump the will of the island. I didn't catch what Ilana replied to Richard on my initial watch, but the second time around it really stuck out. "Four sticks" is the phrase for any sighting of the numbers "1111", which presents itself in many forms, but usually as 11:11 on a digital clock, message machine, timer, etc. In numerology, repeated numbers like 1111 are considered a sign of synchronicitous portent -- that is, bad luck, good luck, omens, or whatever scares ya.

To tell you the truth, when Ilana was yanking that bag of unstable C3H5N3O9 around, I would have been disappointed if she hadn't blown up since we've been programmed to expect it now. And sure enough there she went into the ether! So the disappointment I'm left with is that she did die...without telling us the things that we needed to learn from her. This is getting to be a pattern here, Jacob the man with all the answers dies, Dogen who knew island secrets dies, Ilana who knew Jacob's secrets dies, dangitt everyone who knows the secrets of the island is dying!

I wonder what time it was when Ilana was jostling around that dynamite?!

Led Zeppelin wrote a song called "Four Sticks", where the story has it that John Bonham used two pairs of drum sticks to record the song. Just another brick in the wall of the legendary curses of Led Zeppelin?

Here's a Freaky Factoid about Nitroglycerin for ya: (Wiki)"Infrequent exposure to high doses of nitroglycerin can cause severe headaches known as "NG head". These headaches can be severe enough to incapacitate some people...for workers in nitroglycerin (NTG) manufacturing facilities, this can result in a "Monday morning headache" phenomenon for those who experience regular nitroglycerin exposure in the workplace...over the weekend the workers lose the tolerance to NTG and when they are re-exposed on Monday the prominent vasodilation produces tachycardia, dizziness, and a headache."

I think that Lost is giving me NG-Head! Kidding aside, I don't think that TPTB were using the Four Sticks curse on the show, but it is a weird coincidence. And I've run out of steam for analyzing or critiquing the show this week, so weird thoughts like this are all I've got for now.

"And The Emmy Goes To...Nunu!"

It must have been the "Awwww!" heard 'round the world, for Jorge Garcia fans. Now the only question is, does Nunu have her SAG card?

"Random Thoughts on S6.11"

OK, damn the migraine, full speed ahead. Because this episode ran all-stops-out too and blew me away, with my favorite elements in it, i.e. Desmond (and Penneh), Faraday, Mrs. H, and weird science. The Flash Sideways in this ep made more sense to me than any of the other FSs, and makes me a little more accepting of the concept. Desmond's FS scenes (or should we say his old-style mental time tripping?) created some connective tissue between the 815-time and the FS that make us believe that the weaving of the two time-threads has begun, with a little help from Dan the Piano Man.

I was surprised to realize that Des had been pulled straight from the hospital scene from last season onto the sub! TPTB still haven't told us yet why you have to be drugged to take the subway ride, and I'm wondering now if they ever will. And it would be nice if there was the opportunity for Widmore to wax poetic about how it feels to be back on the island again, but episodes and time are whizzing by, so no place for that either.

TPTB go all out as usual to give us some realistic DI science equipment and apparatus to play science with and it's much appreciated, I love lab gauges, gizmos and heavy equipment. Some events that occurred seemed kind of cheesy, like the typical lab doofus who trips the switch without following the check-list or seeing if everyone else is 'go' on the procedure, which produces the proverbial hapless worker turned into the crispy-critter. But that's not to say that there aren't any dummies like that in a real lab, in my lab someone once actually shook a bottle of nitric acid and glycerin and...well, he almost became Doc Arzt, so it does happen.

I also doubt if a rickety shack could withstand the heat that was apparently emitted from a giant red-hot electromagnetic coil like this, and it bothers me a bit on the realism scale that it's not in some kind of insulated chamber but what the heck, let's just pretend that the Professor made the giant coil out of coconuts and get on with the story. We are to believe that Des can take the heat as well in all his specialness, unlike the human roasted marshmallow before him.

We get another juicy artistic morsel in Widmore's office, and I do hope that they sell prints of this one too eventually like the others, I would really like to have one.

I half expected, if Des took Minkowksi up on his offer, that Kate or one of the other Lost ladies would be an escort babe and I'm glad that didn't happen. There's no more time for skin-games now anyway, let's cut to the meat of the answers and the story. So what was the point of wasting valuable seconds making Minkowski look like a pimpish jerk? To show that Des is far too busy to insert a little down-time into his life as Charlie warned him? I dunno, what do you think?

Did you hear it? It really was the shark music. X-D It felt like Charlie's revelations and explanations were a little rushed and too perfect of a fit, or maybe I'm just being too critical. But it seems like it might take a guy like Charlie a while to figure that out, unlike Dan for instance who is a super genius and can think abstractly. Though I suppose that a near-death experience could be impetus enough to enlighten Charlie's shallow bloody rock god conscience.

This little piggie....hhheheheh. Wait, did I say no more skin? And press a button to stop the magnetism? Oh really?

Will Des and Charlie team up to get the others together and convince them? Which leads me to another question...did the Losties "have to go back" before just to make a big mistake and change events, only so they'd have to go back again and undo the changes that they went back for the first time? It's beginning to look as though the Losties are going to be caught in an eternal loop of going back and messing it up, and going back and fixing it up, and going back and messing it up...like Mrs.Hawking's previous ouroboros pin.

I wonder if Eloise's new binary star pin stands for two the universes. Or maybe she's just a member of the Madeleine Albright giant funky pin club. At any rate, she's got me as confused as she has Desmond. She knows everything (almost) and she still cares about her garden party, where as Charlie (newly christened to the universal laws of chaos and love) sees it all as vanity, like King Solomon. And she's still telling Desmond what to do, why? Seriously, Eloise has a lot of explaining to do.

Obviously Dan's been doing as much existential cogitating as Charlie has, and also has some advice for Desmond. It's great to have Jeremy Davies back, and we finally get to see some more of Dan's logbook, which I'll try to do some investigating on for my Lost Science blog over the weekend.

Do we really have enough time left in the season to watch Desmond go through all the machinations and hoops that Jack had to go through before, to get everyone from the FS to act like lemmings and jump back over into the good old days? It makes me think that maybe some of this part of the story should have begun at the end of last season. I sure hope that we have enough time left, unless TPTB plan an epilogue feature film.

Oh those impish Powers That Be of Lost, leaving us with Desmond in his wormhole happy-place following Sayid off into the jungle to meet up with MIB. Has Desmond seen where Sayid is taking him, and to whom, in a time-jump? Why did Sayid let Zoe go? And is the whole point of the Lost universe just about love, like our religions and romantic philosophers try to tell us? The Bible says that we could have many great talents and gifts, "but the most important of these is love," and if we don't have that one, all the rest are wasted.

"Please Stand By..."

...and enjoy these promo shots of Des while we are having technical difficulties.

"Random Thoughts On S6.10"

* Wow, we sure got a submarine load of answers this week! Oh wait, that was the other J.J. Abrams show that gave us answers. Haha.

* I don't know what to think about the FS sequences still. They're weird, different, and still confuse me. But Greg and Wayne have talked about the possibility that the Losties might cross universes, which would be pretty neat and could explain some of the strange out-of-character behavior that the Losties have exhibited at times. Many times. And the deja vu moments as well.

* It was curious that MIB didn't have much to say to Sayid about the emptiness he feels. Something like, "Yeah, it's cuz you're dead and just a shell now," would have been useful. I get the feeling that although MIB has an overall goal, he might not have the best of strategic plans for escaping. He doesn't know too much about humans and human nature. We know that he assumes they're all idiots - and to him useful idiots - but perhaps he doesn't take into account the chaos factor and millions of variables in play when humans don't react the way that you expect them to. Enter Sawyer's plan to trip him up, perhaps?

* When Jin turned on the brainwashing program in Room23 I wonder if he had seen it before? Jin got more answers than we did this week, heheh.

* Finally Jin gets to see his daughter for the first time, how great was that. Someone at TLC or EyeMSick mentioned that it would be pretty neat if Jin is taking Sun to get treated by Juliet for the gunshot wound. OK, OK, I guess the Sideways world could be interesting sometimes.

* Thanks Lost Untangled for the cool picture of eeevil Mr. Paik. Harsh dude, making Jin pay the assassin for his own demise. I don't think even Mario Puzo thought of putting that twist in 'The Godfather'.

* Kudos to those who noticed that Keamy was wearing Paik's watch back in the Sayid episode.

* I wonder why MIB couldn't have just given those pylon stands a Jean Claude Van Damme sweep-kick to knock them down?

* Does MIB need to get the candidates off-island (or at least all in one place to kill them) to make sure that there is no new Jacob to keep him trapped? I don't think that he has plans to grant them any wishes.

* Should we derive anything from the fact that Widmore calls MIB a 'thing'?

* Aww, look at Jack being all responsible and leadery and stuff for Sun. Well I guess it's about time. It was a good scene.

* And last but not least, if Danny Faraday is married to Zoe Blowy in the FS, I'm going to puke like Muppet Dr.Chang. Blargh!!!!!

"Exodus Revisited"

Today nephew-Ian wanted to see Doc Arzt blow up again, so we watched Exodus-2. Later when we saw Locke getting pulled down the hole by Smokey, and his nonchalant attitude about it, we wondered if maybe MIB was trying to get Locke's body at that point for his Loophole scheme. After all, he scanned Locke previously, in White Rabbit I think, and would have been prepared to play pretender-Locke right then after learning his mannerisms and idiosyncrasies. Smokey had fooled Locke into thinking that he was a thing of beauty and a joy to behold, so if there was any free will involved, that was taken care of. Then one quick pull down the rabbit hole and he could have sauntered back to camp with no one the wiser. Until Jack and Kate showed up to rescue Locke. It's probably not going to happen that way, but it just really stuck out to us as a quirky possibility. Just think, then Lost would have only been about 3 seasons long if the Dynamite Duo hadn't come back to help him get away from Smokey. :o)

"Ab Inferno"

This week's story has as many mentions of Hell as last week's ep had attempted cons. One man's heaven on earth is another man's hell on earth, as MIB does his best to convince Richard that the island is nothing but a Hell-hole made to drive men crazy.

Richard's long desired episode was a surprisingly Gothic tale of how he too came to this island during his own "dark night of the soul," ripe for the tricks of MIB and Jacob after he survives his island arrival. I'd be tempted to say that he has a better chance of saving his soul with MIB, than with an 18th century Catholic priest, but I won't go there but to say thank the Lord for the Reformation. Overall this episode was one of the most artfully beautiful, with the backstory scenes looking very much like a painting by Caravaggio, who did a painting that we saw last season BTW.

Nitpick #1: should we call anachronism-shenanigans here? I don't think that there were modern study-bibles with the center column footnotes back in the 18th century.

Nitpick #2: throw rotten tomatoes at me if you will, but in my mind I imagined a much more science-y, or Scifi, mechanism that put the Black Rock in the center of the island, and broke up the statue. I'm just saying. That's just a product of giving us way too much time to think about what the source of those mysteries were I guess.

Nitpick #3: ducking tomatoes again, some of the Black Rock scenes dragged on a bit for my taste, I began to lose concentration here and there.

I am very confused as to what went on between the crew, Smokey, MIB, Fisabella, and all that MIB told Richard, but I hope that those things will become clear soon. It seems as if MIB has the keys to everyone's happiness or desires, except for his own. And BTW, if all of the crew was killed by the shipwreck or Smokey, who buried Magnus as noted in Radzinsky's Blast Door Map recordings? Hmm?

I wasn't very impressed by Jacob's cavalier attitude towards RA, or the way he seemingly left RA to starve and rot to be fodder for MIB's plans, but maybe that's all a part of The Rules. Can Jacob not approach them until MIB does? Or can he not help the humans until they come to him for help? And why doesn't Jacob seem to care about the fact that everyone else who he's brought to the island is dead? Maybe he just knows that they're in that "better place" or something. But now we know how RA chose the eternal island life, most likely with the echoes of the priest ludicrously refusing him absolution still ringing in his head. He surely would have chosen eternity with Isabella instead, if he hadn't have been scared into false thoughts of his own damnation.

All of MIB's talk about Hell probably didn't help Richard's psyche any either, as MIB knew exactly how to scare him into believing his stories and helping him. MIB told Sawyer that there wasn't anything special about this island, but for him the island is a living hell. It makes you wonder if the island is some kind of universal prison that he's been banished to like those prisoners in the Superman-2 movie who were imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. Come to think of it, MIB does act a lot like General Zod at times. Or it could be something much simpler, as a job that Jacob and MIB have been assigned to, and MIB just can't stand to be stuck in one place. "The mind is its own place, it can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven" ~ Milton.

Meanwhile back at the ranch-beach, the Losties try to cheer RA up, and get some answers out of Ilana to no avail. RA is inconsolable and returns to his mock grave for Isabella giving us another classic touching Lost scene to make the eyes tear up. Thankfully Hurley assists RA in finding some peace with his memories a-la Sawyer's Little House episode. And Isabella leaves me wondering what she meant by saying that she and RA are already together, as in, are we sure that it's just an island and not some way-station between Life and Death?