The Package

Wait, Sun can still write in English? What is she writing? That's weird... She says that V returns in 3 minutes and 43 seconds.

Ab Aeterno ("From Eternity")

Well, I know from Facebook and Twitter that Shaun and Pat were fans of the long-awaited Richard-centric episode, and I'm happy to add myself to that list.

And who knew that we'd get Black Rock & statue loose ends tied up all in one!?

There was plenty of fodder tonight for a lot of different factions -- those who say the island is purgatory, that they're all dead, that it's hell, whatever... and for the part of Mr. Camp that thinks Jacob may be the bad guy after all. :) But, while it was looking shaky for a while there, I'm sticking with Jacob as Good Guy (if there is such a thing).

It was a lovely, pretty well self-contained episode... almost poetic. (A little reminiscent of "The Other 48 Days" or "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" or... I feel like there have been others.) It elevated itself to another plane.

I am reminded of Dante's three-faced Satan chained at the center of the Earth (which I know only from Wikipedia):



I loved the priest's line about Richard not having time to do anything. If only he knew. :)

Ah, penance.

Alpert's epoch-spanning romance (reinforced by the name of his beloved (Isabelle), some of the dialogue, and some of the tree imagery) reminded me of The Fountain, one of my favorite films. (Please see it.)

Lost has so many romantic couples. Heck, Adam & Eve could be Richard & Isabelle! How? Who knows!!!

(Do we know one's a female? Could it be Jacob and the Monster? No, because Jacob was cremated. Ben and Widmore? The Monster and his mother? Jacob and his lover? Will we never find out? It now seems like Season 5 would've been the time to settle that.... or else it'll be the series finale....)

We got a nice explanation of why Jacob was drawing people to the island, and a nice metaphor for his role, and the role of the island -- the cork to stop the darkness' spread. (Is it going too far to suggest the possibility of the inference from the cork metaphor that wine is maybe a wee bit evil? Haha OK never mind. Also, could I have added more qualifiers to that sentence?)

There are some very interesting parallels that have emerged... the Swan was built to cork the pent-up electromagnetic energy. And the Incident sort of released evil into the world and, by eventually bringing down Flight 815, sent the Losties to "hell," which is what Jacob said would happen to everyone if the Monster were to escape.

Is that something happening in parallel, or are they one and the same? The Incident led to the crash of 815, which eventually led to Ben killing Jacob, which now looks like it could lead to the Monster's escape.

In the alternate universe, what became of Jacob and the Monster? Is there a connection between the tidal wave that brought the Black Rock inland and the alternate universe flooding of the island?

Also, how exactly is Jacob bringing people to the Island? He didn't pull 815 out of the sky, he just made sure the right people were on it.

And Jacob & the Monster and Ben & Widmore are our two dueling pairs, and for some reason none of them are able to kill their nemesis. But now Jacob's dead and Ben seems to have given up or run out of steam or something, so it's Widmore vs. the Monster. Weird. And the Monster is trapped on the island, and Widmore was trapped off the island....

Also! I'm trying to think of other instances of an evil character luring others with the appearance of loved ones. Argh, it's on the tip of my tongue! There are so many examples, but they feel just out of reach....

Now, run along and don't get into mischief -- if only to prove the Devil wrong. :)

Recon

Better late than never. Since it's no longer fresh in my mind, the thoughts won't flow freely, but I figured we may as well have a post if only as a placeholder, in case folks have things to say.

I guess the big thing is the Monster's mother. I don't have a lot to say on that matter.

Nice to see Widmore. Interesting how honest Sawyer was, both with Widmore (admitting the Monster sent him) and then with the Monster (admitting he told Widmore that the Monster had sent him). The Monster mentioned that Sawyer was the best liar he'd ever met (or something like that), but Sawyer did very little lying (except about future intentions). And his honestly kind of caught folks a little off-guard.

By the way, I understand that the Monster doesn't have a good name, and that makes things difficult. But I don't like calling him "Fake Locke" or, as I've somehow been hearing more often these past couple weeks, "Flocke" (which, while nice and monosyllabic, feels like a pretty silly portmanteau anyway).

"Fake Locke" was a reasonable term from the moment we saw Locke's body in the coffin up until the time it came clear that that man was the man in black and the monster. But it is no longer a reasonable term!

I'll quote this again:

JACK: Coffin was supposed to go on the plane in Sydney, but it didn't. Apparently he's somewhere in transit which is their way of saying, they have no idea where the hell he is.

LOCKE: Well, how could they know.

JACK: They're the one's that checked him in, I mean they've gotta have some kind of tracking system.

LOCKE: No I'm not talking about the coffin, I mean how could they know where he is. They didn't lose your father, they just lost his body.

David Hawkes' introduction in the B&N Classics edition of Paradise Lost talks a lot about the sin of confusing signs and referents. That's what Jack was doing by saying the airline had lost "his father," and that's what "Flocke" fans are doing by fixating so heavily on this man's incidental appearance.

Is "the Man in Black" any better? Is it even worse? He's not always wearing black, after all! And it's also out-of-date, because it predates the revelation that the smoke monster, fake Locke, and the man in black are all different avatars of the same man. But at least it's not associating him with *another* man.

So for now I'm using "the Monster," as it seems to refer to something closer to his essence. Post-"Ab Aeterno", "the Devil" or "el Diablo" would also work. Of course, those terms are problematic, too -- they may be contested. The Monster may not think himself monsterous or devilish. But it at least encourages us to think about "the man" as something distinct from his incidental body, as the writers are encouraging us to do.

Dr. Linus

Finally, a Ben-centric episode.

This is not my favorite episode, as I thought some of what transpired was too contrived and melodramatic.

But, I do think that what they're doing with Ben is simply trying to show that people can, in fact, change.

I don't really like the change--I truly wanted him to go with the smoke monster and to usurp the principal, but, alas, maybe that's why this episode works: that they are showing that even though someone like me desires Ben to stay evil that, in fact, maybe at his core, he has some good in him (little Ben WAS a nice kid whose father essentially psychologically modified him) and can do something that most of us cannot: change.

Cool that Ben and his father DID go to the island and with Dharma in the alternate universe. The alternate universe continues to remain relevant, intriguing, fascinating, and mysterious.

Sundown

You're still my friend, aren't you, Lostcampia?

Shed a tear for Dogen and Lennon.

"Obi-Wan... there... is good in him. I know there is... still...."

"Twisted by the dark side, young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained, gone he is... consumed by Darth Vader."

"There's still good in him."

"He is more machine now than man. Twisted and evil."

"I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn't driven it from you fully. That is
why you couldn't destroy me."

"Now... go, my son. Leave me."

"No. You're coming with me. I can't leave you here. I've got to save
you."

"You already have, Luke. You were right about me. Tell your sister... you
were right about me."

Lighthouse

I thought this one was fantastic. Heartwarming family moments, a very number-filled lighthouse, and Claire brutally murdering someone (who I'm now referring to as "Axey"). A little something for everyone.

The Substitute

This final season feels a bit like The Matrix Revolutions. Somber and profoundly significant. Not a lot of fun, but meaningful. And almost... inevitable.

What Kate Does

Hmmmm. Not my favorite episode, so need to think.

A Proposition

Liz made the fantastic point to me the other day that Google Wave would be a fantastic platform for Lost discussion, and I wholeheartedly agree. For those who don't know it, it's like a combination of email, instant messaging, a message board, a chat room, Google Docs, and a wiki, with a healthy dose of The Future.

Like the Matrix, though, you really have to see it to understand it.

Wave is currently available by invitation only (akin to Gmail in the early days). I only have 2 invitations left, but Liz and/or Willy may have invitations of their own. If you'd like to give this a shot, let me know by emailing tophtucker@gmail from your Gmail account.

L.A. X

That's the shortest posting in the history of Toph's existence.

So, I think clearly that the episode is going to begin with Oceanic 815 landing at LAX having not crashed. That will be very cool to see the characters reacting to each other NOT knowing each other, OR having little weird moments of recognition in the consciousness because the alternate universe did, in fact, exist, whether they are conscious of it or not.

Yet, because the title is L.A. X, not LAX, I think that we will only be there momentarily and then go back to the island to see what actually transpired when Juliet whacked the bomb.

Jughead's Yield

Thanks to Wikipedia and Wolfram|Alpha, we can make a few quick calculations about what exactly happened when Jughead detonated.

Yikes.

The Orchid Insignia and Dynamical Systems

In light of the Season 5 finale, let's take a moment to re-examine the Orchid insignia. There was some discussion of this when it first appeared, but quite a bit has happened since then....

Sure, it's sort of flowery; maybe it's just supposed to throw people off the scent (so to speak). But one can read a lot more into it, if one chooses to.

Essentially, the logo consists of concentric black and white circles--closed loops. But the central curve is open, and it branches at one end. Are we looking at the graph of a dynamical system? Beginning and end? But what's the beginning, and what's the end?

Is time cyclical? Does it inevitably converge on a single point (or attractor, Mr. MacDonald)? Does it diverge? Are there stable orbits and unstable orbits? It seems like it. And it seems like detonating Jughead destabilized the island's orbit.

Faraday tells us that the explosion stops the Swan from being built and 815 from ever crashing. But maybe it does more than that. Ms. Hawking tells us that the universe has a way of course-correcting. In Seasons 1-5, that has seemed to be true. But maybe she is referring less to fate, higher purpose, and seeming Acts of God than to the highly deterministic, disturbance-dampening nature of the universe in which Lost has been taking place. And maybe this new world they have created is not like that.

It makes you think.