to quote Mary Poppins...

... as Juliet did... "practically perfect in every way."

That's what I thought about the episode. Sure, it didn't give us many answers, but kudos to them for focusing instead on giving us a sense of closure and completion to these characters.

What did other people think? I didn't really mind the religious overtones to the fold-in of the flash-sideways to the main timeline. It felt very nice and full, and was something i didn't see coming. In a good way.

Walead! you were right about Hurley.

And *I* was right about what the last shot of the series was gonna be.

Yay us!

50 Questions LOST Needs to Answer...

Interesting stuff, although I don't see Juancy's NUMBER ONE question...

WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE HURLEY BIRD?

http://io9.com/5540279/50-questions-lost-really-does-need-to-answer

Question!

Let's start a discussion! With a question!

The question: What does the Island want?

Some thoughts: Keep in mind that, in my opinion, the Island, Jacob, and the MIB are distinct. Jacob trained Ilana and wanted her to lead the Islanders. She blew up, so I guess Jacob and the Island weren't on the same page on that one. Who was responsible for Michael's death? The Island? Or the MIB? It appeared that the Island kept Michael alive until it was "done with him," but it was the MIB who appeared before Michael and told him he "could go" before the boat blew up. And who wanted to move the Island? Again, it was the MIB who told Locke to move it -- not Jacob. It was also the MIB who told Locke to retrieve the Oceanic 6. That makes sense because the MIB needs all the candidates to die in order to leave the Island, but Ben thought he was doing Jacob's/the Island's work by trying to get them to all come back. So maybe a better question is -- what do the Island, Jacob, and the MIB want? Consider what they've all done and what their motives might be. What do they each want?

Thoughts

Hey! So I've been meaning to post some thoughts on the last few episodes. Real quick:

1. I really liked the Richard episode, although based on the conversations between Richard, Jacob, and the MIB, I felt like there was a definite Jesus-God-Satan relationship thing going on. Even the way Richard was dressed and that beard and everything. And Jacob asking Richard to be his "representative" on the island, and the MIB trying to tempt Richard, etc. I am hoping, however, that this has more to do with Lost's continued theme of straddling faith and science rather than a more literal representation of who these people are.

2. I grow more and more frustrated with the fact that we're not getting any answers! There are only a few episodes left and they're giving us what I feel are time-killing episodes with very little apparent relevance (e.g., the Sun/Jin episode. I liked the episode on some level, but on another level it felt like they were trying just to get to everyone or check off a list. It didn't feel like it moved anything further). This leads me to believe that we will NOT be getting answers to hundreds of questions we all have because they're simply isn't time enough to! They'll hit the big few questions and maybe those answers will allow us to think, "oh, that must have happened just because it was Jacob's will," or "the island is where your imagination can control things, so that's why that happened" (i.e., like the book/movie "Sphere"), etc.

3. On to theories. I think this last Desmond episode was good in that it DID appear to relate to the answers we're seeking. So what's going on? My brother's big theory now is that the island is sitting on top a blackhole and it's the "cork" that is preventing the blackhole from swallowing up the earth. The island, then, is a sort of "event horizon" where time and space don't function normally. It's an interesting idea, but it doesn't completely work for me for several reasons. But this all comes from two things -- the convo between Jacob and Richard about the wine bottle and holding back "evil," and then the convo between Desmond and Daniel (and, specifically, the shot of Daniel's drawing in his diary). The suggestion from the diary is that time doesn't function normally on the island (which we've seen hints of throughout), or that maybe the flash-sideways function in "imaginary time" and "imaginary space" and isn't real. I will say that the Lost creators have been really good about making it all very messy so we're not sure what's going on! all we can do is keep watching... unless someone else has a good theory?

Richard's Got Back (story)

Couple things.

1. Yeah, awesome - Richard's mysterious past!

2. But wait - what did we learn in the course of this backstory? How old he is? That he had a wife? More details on his job description?

3. To me, it was nice... but no revelations. The blanks that got filled in were all pretty small.

4. You've got seven episodes left, and the ENTIRE episode is about this dude's backstory? This dude whose backstory gives us... what? Did anybody spot anything game-changing or revelatory here? We knew he was immortal; that he served Jacob but was recently downsized;

5. Jacob is nice to look at.

6. The island's not hell. Oh wait, we knew that from season one, when the producers kept saying:

7. "The Island's not hell."

8. But wait! The island might be hell. Because there's a lot of words for hell. That's what Jacob says, and he's handsome, so it's probably true.

9. The man in black is evil. Why is that, Saffie?

10. So... the show really boils down to "good vs. evil," and the island is just this place where the Devil (but don't call him that, he's just a black man - i mean a man in black - who embodies evil) is trapped, because if he gets out, the world will be full of evil.

11. But wait! The rest of the world is WAY full of evil. The man in black was trapped on the island during the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust, and those two things got along fine without him. So the idea that human society is basically good, unless this dude gets off the island, doesn't do anything for me, because I know it's a lie.

12. Good-versus-evil is really boring. Great art - including Lost, for most of its run - is about complex people working through complex problems. Maybe Sawyer has his reasons for screwing people over. Maybe a professional torturer might not be such a bad guy. Maybe murdering your mother's husband is an act of love. Maybe even Ben got a raw deal in life. Cylons can be good, people can be bad. Tony Soprano's a big softie at heart.

13. Example: it's possible to read "The Iliad" without knowing that its author was Greek. The "bad guys" - the Trojans - are neither worse nor crueler nor stupider than the Greeks - just differently flawed.

14. I would love there to be an inversion, and find out that Smokey/Not-Locke/Man-in-Black is really good, and Jacob is bad, but i find that extremely unlikely.

15. Here's an interesting thingie about the episode:

http://io9.com/5500687/

16. It was a great episode. But the rest of the season has a lot of heavy lifting to do.

Umm... What just happened on Lost?

:O

Hello is this thing on?

Anyone, Anyone?

Mirror on the wall...

Ok, so I think that I agree with Walead in that the parallel reality is what is going to happen, if and when the characters do something on the island.

I think that latest episode is really playing with the multi-verse theory... And suspect that if the characters on the island can find resolutions to their issues, their consciousness might be catapulted to the other reality. It's like all those theories that say that time isn't linear, that any possibility that could happen, may one day happen, or is happening all exist in one moment, and that what we focus on becomes our linear experience because our minds need to process things linearly.

So the characters are living one linear experience, BUT SOMEHOW are also tapped into a different universe or linear experience. Parallel Jack was once island jack and this is why he keeps seeing scars that seem unfamiliar. All he needs to do to become Parallel Jack is get over his daddy issues. Once he decides to get over it, he will be catapulted to a reality where his issues are resolved and his life if better. (HA! Talk of the the law of attraction. The lost writers ♥ the secret) Maybe it was Jacobs touch that allows his mind to straddle 2 universes at the same time. Which why the keep showing us mirrors, in the airplane bathroom, in Jack's apt and finally in the lighthouse... Hmm...

Jack has a son!!! I think he needed a son, in order to really get over his daddy issues, to truly understand that although his father inflicted damage on him, he came from a place of good intention. I think Jack doesn't really believe that his father loved him. Just think that when Jack finds out that his wife if cheating on him, his first suspect is his father. I don't think Jack put down his son, the way Christian Shepard did him (You don't have what it takes) but his convo with his son did illustrate something important for him about the father/son relationship. Jack was really into his son's music, and because of it his son hid it, because he didn't want to disappoint. Jack always felt like a disappointment to his father, and Christian's "you don't have what it takes", was less of a put down and more of him saying "don't try that, because I don't want you to get hurt". For the first time Jack got how a father could make his son feel like a disappointment (unintentionally) , but still have the up most love and respect for him. It's really another mirror image...
I think he never expressed anything about the son because island Jack doesn't have a son, only parallel Jack does... I wonder who the BM is! I think they purposely didn't show her, so it won't be as simple as the ex-wife. Things are really different in the parallel world, I mean Locke has a relationship with his Anthony Cooper, since Helen, mentioned inviting him to the wedding. I don't care how forgiving you are, someone throws you out a 20 story window, they don't get a wedding invite. Ain't enough I'm sorry in the world! Locke got paralyzed some other way.

They brought back the Adam and eve skeletons? I forgot about those... What are they about?

I have more to say but...

if guy that never ages seems horribly frightened, you too should be scared... More to come...

Flash Sideways... just a Flash Forward?

What do you guys think about the theory that whenever the Losties do whatever it is they're supposed to do, they're all just sent back to their plane in 2004, and where the "flash sideways" start is where they return to? In other words, they're on the island to do something (which apparently results in the island sinking), and that causes them to go back to 2004, like the last three years or whatever never happened (in "real time" anyway). Jacob brought them there to do what he needed them to do, and when they've done it, he just thanks them and puts them back?

Overall, I didn't love the second episode. The flash-sideways are consistently weak, I think, because we don't really understand their relevance or importance, and we feel like they may not be important at all.

As far "claiming" Sayid, it looks like Jacob and the Man in Black are claiming people for their sides in this epic war between them? Jacob seeks "good" people (i.e., the Others and the people he touches) and the MIB seeks not good people (i.e., as the smoke monster, he scans people to find out if they're good or bad, and if he thinks he can infect them, then he does, like Rousseau's "sick" people). This means, though, that ironically, Jack (the scientist) is good and Locke (the faithful) is bad. Jacob touched Jack, and the smoke monster tried to infect Locke way back when (when he tried to drag him into a hole). Locke, ultimately -- and sadly -- may just be a tool for evil, whether he knows it or not. He wanted so badly to be accepted and to be important, and it looks like he may only be important as a mechanism for the MIB.

Thoughts?