It's that time... LOST Season 5 Thread!

Seriously? No one else felt a need to post about that episode?

2:30am, just finished watching it. As expected, a pretty straight forward narrative, though I really liked them opening with Cesar and Ilana. They answered some questions, such as where the plane landed/crashed and what happened to Lapidus and Ben. I wonder who Lapidus went with in the boat... And why hasnt Locke returned to the main Island by now? What is he chilling about? Though I am glad that he will be getting some face time with Ben...

However, boring narrative style aside, I thought it was a pretty amazing episode. I thought the acting was pretty stellar in this episode as well, at least on the part of Terry O'Quinn. The further unfolding/complexifying of the Widmore/Benjamin epic was pretty great. Good guys and bad guys are not quite so easy to decipher. However, from previous interactions between Widmore and Benjamin I am still going to side on the idea of Ben actually caring about the island and Widmore wanting it for personal reasons. Obviously the big question is why Ben killed Locke after hearing him say Eloise Hawking, and I am guessing it has to do with the fact that she is somehow related to Widmore, as others have suspected.

My one big frustration is, why didn't Locke tell them about exactly what had been happening? Like the fact that for him it has only been a number of days since they left, and how there are these crazy flashes through time and how people are dying of brain aneurysms? I feel like that might be a bit more convincing than, "You need to come back." Granted we dont know what he told Kate, but we saw almost all of his other conversations, and he never really got into some of the more important details... I guess, the argument is, that it would not have mattered... they would not have come upon those first meetings no matter what he said, and he did, in fact, have to die in order for them to ever be convinced. Ben, however, did not know this, so I wonder we are left to wonder what he was thinking and how quickly he learned about what was up. We are also left to still wonder how Hurley and Sayid were convinced to return.

It seems there are enough questions from off-Island left unanswered that we might get some more, old school flashbacks in episodes to come, which would be exciting.

Also, it seems Cesar and Ilana did not know anything beforehand, which some have been hypothesizing... though they did fall into the role of leaders pretty quickly, so who knows what game they are playing. If they were Others though they wouldnt have been searching the station in the way they did, I dont think...

Other thoughts? It is remarkably late and I need to sleep on it, but I will probably have other thoughts tomorrow...

My initial thought on why Ben talked Locke down and then killed him has to do with Catholicism, how people who commit suicide can't go to heaven. It made sense with them going to see Eloise in a church. I side with you with Widmore--his intention with the island is greed and whatnot, but if he's working with her, it is interesting that Eloise keeps talking about fate and things being in their proper place, and whatever that black dude's name was, the guy Ben killed, saying his job is to take people from where they are to where they are going, and obviously he works for Widmore, which makes me wonder about Widmore's purpose. I actually hope the big reveal is that Widmore isn't necessarily the bad guy, and that his purposes, although personally greedy, are beneficial, and Ben is misguided--he thinks his mission is true and right, but in reality he's either completely off track or he's being led astray. And although overall I wasn't blown away by this episode, I did think it was a good segue way into the next sequence, whatever that maybe. I do have one big question though: Why did Locke land with everyone on the plane when the rest of the survivors were transported back in time? I suspect it has something to do with the wheel, which allows him to be dislodged from the time continuum (which now that I write this explains why Ben is with him)? And how is he going to link up with the rest of the survivors who are (apparently) stuck in the 1950s? And why was Jack's beard so short? I believe at the end of Season 3, which takes place only days after tonight's episode, Jack's beard is ridiculous. Also, wouldn't it be great that when all is said and done, they release a super special DVD with the entire show shown in chronological order, from the very very earliest we've seen (thus far: Locke's birth) to the final moment? Kind of like the Memento special edition.

I didnt even think of the whole "you need to die but it cant be at your own hands" angle, which is a good one. The reason it didnt come to my mind right away is because it really seemed that Ben's decision to murder him really came at his mention of Hawking, and when Ben left he seemed genuinely remorseful, and at that point if he knew it was all part of a larger plan he would not have continued "pretending" one way or another (unless he knew it was part of a larger plan and didnt expect Locke's reincarnation).

I just realized that one of the enormous questions, one that I didnt even ask but it is central to the show, even though we all expected it, is HOW did Locke come back to life???

And you make a good point, why didnt he disappear in the flash the same as everyone else, but my guess is that you're right, it had to do with him turning the wheel. My guess is that the flashes line up, which is to say he turned the wheel to catalyze the flash that took down the plane, so his dead corpse and living body were for a brief moment both in the radius of the Island. That would make it difficult to explain Jin, because if that were true then Jin, Sawyer and Juliette should all be hanging out near the Orchid and not wearing Dharma uniforms, and that occurred, temporally, immediately after the wheel-flash. So I dont know about that. But I wouldnt be surprised if the reincarnation had to do with the double-John, one living one dead, existent at once.

Also, what would have happened if John had turned the wheel in the first place, and not Ben, since Christian said that it was never supposed to have been Ben in the first place? The helicopter was still in the air, outside of the Island's radius, wouldnt the O6 have left the Island anyway, and Locke would have left with them, landing in Tunisia, and not known what he was supposed to do there....

haha. oberon, I thought you weren't gonna watch that episode?

It's funny that you didn't like the straight-forward storytelling, because so far I've thought the jumbled telling was more or less just nonsense to avoid trying to tell any kind of real story. The time flashes were cool.. for about two episodes and they just became a lame gimmick.

This has been my favorite episode so far this season, because we got confusion, we even got some action, but most of all we got drama, and not just, as I said, hocus-pocus designed to awe the dumb audience into forgetting that nothing is happening. Which the exception of a couple plot-twists omitted, I could have been happy with this being the first episode of the season and the lead in.

think about that one. suddenly dead john locke is now alive, and off the island trying to get people to come back, we don't know how he got off or what is happening to the people still there, culminating in ben killing him. that would have been great. but I understand why they did the great job of misdirecting us between ben and widmore up to this point, so we still have no idea which one to trust (if either).

Two things ticked me off though. I really don't want to see a whole new group of red-shirts on the island. more distraction. couldn't we have just please killed off these people in a fiery explosion and spared us all the tired "what the hell is going on here? what is this island?" that we've heard a million times before? get to the point.

secondly, I really didn't like the way that they keep subtitling all the destinations that John traveled to every 3 minutes. just a personal thing, it felt tacky and unnecessary, but I mean it did't really effect the storyline at all (which I guess is why I would have liked to do without it.)

It's not that I dont like the narrative technique of straight-forward, chronological storytelling. But the show has made a name for itself by not doing that, and while it was, on occasion, cheesy and/or gimmicky, the best episodes were ones that used the non-linear structure well, to conceal and reveal something in ways that would be otherwise lost due to chronological narrative.

This episode is actually a good case in point. After last week's episode, a lot of people were curious about Cesar and Ilana, as both of them were featured on the "Ajira Air" website that launched over the summer. There was speculation about them being Others, working for Widmore, etc. The episode opened with Cesar rummaging through an office, and looking at Dharma stuff and Ilana walked in, and maybe it was just me because it was 2:30am, but my first thought was not that this was a post-crash rummaging, but rather that it was pre-flight in some capacity, proving there is a link between these two and the Island... and then 45 seconds later we get the reveal that they are at the Hydra, their plane having crashed, and to top it off, Locke is alive. The way those opening 45 seconds were setup and then how they worked in this episode, presenting a host of implied interpretations, seemingly playing into people's assumptions, and then by realigning the viewers' expectations of the timeline it allowed a reveal and a "Ahh!" moment.

I don't know, man, i just don't know. It was a great episode sure but it just seemed sloppy or something. Killing abaddon just seemed like they had to get him off the show so he could go do Fringe full time and then they don't even bother showing helen dying just plop oh yeah she's been dead for a while now.

And then the whole Locke fiasco. Other than Sayid he didn't even mention going under the name of jeremy bentham to anyone or- hey!_ why not mention everyone's dying of brain hemmorages on the island instead of the rote "You have to go back!" nonsense. And yeah, i can see him being broken up about helen being dead but it just didn't feel like enough time had passed for him to get to a suicidal level. Not to mention jack's magical growing beard.
Unless they end up showing him going to everyone twice or something before he died, that's a gaping sloppy plothole.
It's great getting all these answers fast and furious now but they set up all the questions so greatly that they just seem to be answering them now like blap, blap blap! Answers!
At this rate the finale will just be damon and carlton sitting in chairs and reading about what all ended up happening and why.

Let's also keep in mind that I watched this episode at, like, 2:30am, after having studied for a few hours... so my initial reaction might have been slightly skewed...

Listening to the podcast for this episode, the producers pointed out, and I agree, the scene with Ben and Locke was pretty amazing.

They also raised the question which I failed to think of, for some absurd reason, WHEN is the Ajira plane? Is the plane in the same time as Jack, Kate Hurley (and Jin) as they appear to maybe be back in the day...

Also, Kate did NOT kill Aaron, and we will find out more details in the 11th episode of the season, "What Happened Happened."

where are these podcasts at? the abc website? I think I listened to one once, but I don't remember.

I am sure they are at the ABC website, but I access them via lostpedia:

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Official_Lost_Podcast

Haha, speaking of bloopers, check out the Lostpedia contribution for this week:

Bloopers and continuity errors

* In the Season 4 finale "There's No Place Like Home," Jack told Ben that Jeremy Bentham visited him and said that Ben was off the island. Jack also said Bentham told him that after the Oceanic Six left the island, "some very bad things happened. And he told me that it was my fault for leaving." Also in the finale, Jack told Kate that Bentham said that returning to the island was "the only way that I could keep you safe - you and Aaron." In "Because You Left," Jack further told Ben, "Sawyer, Juliet, everyone from the boat... and everyone we left behind - John said that they'd die, too, if I didn't come back." Locke (Bentham) said none of these things when he visited Jack in this episode. However, this may not be a blooper if it is revealed that this was not the only conversation Jack and "Bentham" had before Locke was killed.

* Last season Walt told Hurley he had been visited by Jeremy Bentham. Locke never referred to himself as Jeremy Bentham during his conversation with Walt in this episode.

* When Locke and Walt meet in New York City, they are standing on the corner of "W 67th St." and "8th Ave". The real W. 67th Street in Manhattan does not intersect with an "8th Ave.", but if it did, this location would be west of Central Park, not far from Lincoln Square. There is an 8th Ave. & 67th Street intersection to the south in Brooklyn, New York, but that intersection has park space on two quadrants, whereas the location shown on the show had buildings on all four corners.
o Also, the subway sign, at least in part, reads "Columbus", whereas the closest subway entrance in Manhattan would be the Lincoln Center subway on Broadway which is half a block away. The only entrance with "Columbus" on the sign is Columbus Circle, which is 8 blocks south on "W 59th St" (aka "Central Park West"), and the sign is very different.
o The crosswalks in NYC are not painted as they are depicted in this scene; however, downtown Honolulu has crosswalks exactly like the ones shown.

* When Walt asks Locke why he came to see him, shot changes from Locke's face, to Walt and then back to Locke's face before he responds. When camera changes to Walt, we can clearly see Locke turn his head. But when camera goes back to Locke's face, he is still facing exactly in same direction as he was before he turned his head.

* As Hurley is being led away by the two orderlies at Santa Rosa, they both instantly switch places on either side of him between subsequent shots.

* The license plate clearly visible on the car driven by Abbadon is an out of date New York plate. The Statue of Liberty plate was replaced in 2001 with a new, redesigned plate and virtually no current automobiles feature the old plate - therefore this was either in error, or possibly intentional.

* The Tunisian license plates have '342' and '207' as 'series numbers' which as of the end of February 2009 didn't exist and the highiest possible was 137.

* As Abaddon is driving Locke down the road to the airport in Tunisia, an American 45MPH speed limit sign can be seen briefly outside the passenger window.

* The Canadian passport Locke is given by Widmore was issued in 2007 and expires in 2017. However, Canadian passports must be renewed every 5 years, not 10.

* The handwriting in Locke's letter to Jack ("I wish you had believed me") is slightly different between the version we see Locke write, and the one Jack reads on the plane (the word "believed" is most notable).

* Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is portrayed in earlier episodes as a place Jack can stop by after work to visit Hurley. However in this episode, the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute is identified as being in Santa Rosa, CA which is over 400 miles from the hospital where Jack works in Santa Monica, CA.

WTF?

I thought that was a pretty sweet episode. It always helpes to have an experienced liar in your bunch...

It was pretty good. I really hope he doesn't do anything with Kate though. And speaking of Kate did she just look kinda meh in that last scene there? I swear there were huge bags under her eyes.

And Horus looked a lot fatter than i remember him being and sounded a bit more like a hippy for some reason. I don't recall that about him.

I'm waiting on a bit more explanation for Daniel Faraday and Miles Straume? When are they going to get into Miles back story some more?

It was a pretty good episode. But man, i hope this isn't going to become a habit with this straight forward storytelling. Even though it wasn't really just a straight through narrative, flashing back between three years and all. It was still pretty straight forward for what this show is used to.
Still though, that's, what, three episodes in a row now that have been like that? And now they have them all back together and meeting up. Unless they get back into showing character flashbacks/forwards I don't know how they'll be able to do the more complicated storytelling again.

The whole thing with Sawyer and kate will be interesting to see how they resolve. If you think about it, he really only knew her for a little over 3 months. He's been with juliet now for 3+ years. But enough of this! Where the hell are sun and sayid, dammit! Two week wait Ughhh!

interesting, again I seem to be in disagreement with the other Lost fans here.

I loved this episode, it was the only one that really had me captivated. It's very interesting that you seem to see these past two episodes as a decline in the show, whereas I thought that it has just now started to pick up. All of the stuff off-island has been totally boring and silly to me.

We already had an entire season of them off island, I didn't need to see another half season of them basically doing nothing. It took one episode for jack to convince them to come back, and it's only been 72 hours since the end of season 4 when the idea was first put forward. and I don't want to wait till the end of the season to find out what happened to them on the plane, which I think we won't see until then.

It was great when Juliette was trying to play dumb. "de-active this sonic-fence, or something...whatever it is." haha

I never suspected that they'd be stuck in the past and spend 3 years there, I just figured that when the 06 returned it would have seemed like no time had passed, as it did for Locke when he traveled off the Island.

and speaking of Locke, he's still in the present or at least some time in the future from everyone else, so looks like they have some more time traveling to do.

also, where the hell is Benjamin Linus? I guess it was before he got there. That would have made things awkward.

I liked this episode a lot, but goddamn them for bringing the whole Kate/Sawyer/Jack bullshit back into the fold. Having everyone back on the island is great, and I'm looking forward to how the story structure is going to shift.

I wouldn't say the show's been declining, just that I always loved the non-linear story-telling of it, I think that's what got everyone so invested in the characters right off the bat, and I hope they at least find some way to get back into that mode of telling the story.
The last three have definitely been good shows. You can tell there on a roll of answering more questions than they're posing now, which is great.

I'm okay with the show evolving from their old structure as long as it's engaging.

I liked the flashbacks/forwards, and we technically did have them in this episode. The only one where we didn't was last weeks, and really, the whole episode was a flashback, so it's not exactly linear. I just don't really like the two separate stories going on at the same time (or at different times). but it looks like we will be going back to that at least for a few more upcoming episodes.

One thing that someone just pointed out to me: Where the fuck are Rose and Bernard? What happened to them for the past 3 years?

Also I guess that means that for Locke 3 years have passed on the Island since it was moved. wonder what that will mean for the present.

oh yeah, how could i forget...

= Oh Shit!!

Don't get me wrong, I liked this episode. A lot. And I have liked the prior few as well. All I am saying is that I think the non-linear story-telling was a trademark of the show, and most of the time it was more than just a gimmick, but necessary for the means of unfolding and simultaneously re-confusing the story. Also, as noted above, it gave the audience the opportunity to really bond with and learn something about the major characters in a way more intimate than what these narrative styles are doing. The chance to see any character in isolation from the Island and from the other characters provides a different conceptualization of them than we are getting when the "flashes"/narrative disruptions occur in the same place with the same people but in multiple continuities... I would like to see them develop a technique to help mix it up a little more, and maybe the flashes of old are no longer going to be useful, I don't know, but I would like to see it evolve a bit from where it is now... However, if they do keep it in the same mode as it has been of late then the writign needs to stay at a top-notch level to maintain interest, in my opinion.

I have a lot of thoughts, so they might come out ina jumbled, not necessarily coherent order.

I agree, where the hell is Ben? However, I guess the math could work... we dont know exactly when he was born, but it was the early 1960s. Sawyer and his bunch lived with the Others from 1974 - 1977, which is when the other Losties show up, and who knows what happens then... We don't know when Ben moved to the Island, but he was young, probably around 12ish. So there is the chance that he was born in, say, 1964 or so, and didnt move to the Island until 1977... So he might be arriving shortly after the exit of Sawyer et al. Keep in mind, when Ben is living on the Island there is no longer any truce between the Hostiles and the Dharma folk. So maybe the event that ends the truce is the same event as that which gets the Losties out of there...

I want more Miles back story, for real. And Daniel's. And Mrs. Hawking's. And Widmore's. Damn supporting characters who have become important! Charles Widmore was originally intended to be a throw away character, in one episode only... and then it just kind of worked out differently... I am betting it was the same way with Mrs. Hawking...

I want to know more about Smokey. WTF? In the last podcast they mentioned that the building where the Frenchmen got sucked in, with the crack in the wall and the Hieroglyphs, was not necessarily Smokey's home but maybe more like a vestibule...

Also, Ben and Rose are still alive. The producers basically said that they were important enough characters that they wouldnt die off-camera, which means they are still alive... or we will see them die in a flashback ro something like that...

Also, it seems that the plane, which crashed on the Hydra Island, is in a different time then Jack, Kate and Hurley. Those three are in 1977, but the Hydra station was abandoned. IN 1977 the station would have been full of Dharma folk and active. Which means it is later, most likely closer to the real present, after the Others essentially abandoned it as well, meaning after the events of Season 3...

And what was that statue of? It looked like a chick, dont you think? Or at least it looked like it had long hair... And whenever they were in time, the statue was already falling apart... who knows when the hell they were in time...

Also, in that same opening scene, when we see Locke re-turn the donkey wheel... where the hell is Christian Shepard? Him getting up off of the ground and all looked different... obviously they condensed the scene, did they just cut Christian out of it? Or was it actually different? Him turning the wheel looked the same, but it was weird to see him get up without Christian standing there watching him...

Also, I never suspected these fools would live on the Island for three years. That blew my mind. I feel like Richard should have been more cognizant of this shit in the future, especially when they friggin' imprison Sawyer in the Hydra. What the hell?

The whole idea of being stuck in time fascinates me... The idea that a person can cease to exist but not die, or can die before they cease to exist... My assumption is that somehow everyone is going to get back to relatively their correct time. But lets say they dont. Lets say theyre stuck in 1977. They were all born by or around then, they live 30 years or so of their lives, the end up on an Island, move backwards through time, and now simultaneously exist as 30 year olds in 1977, making them exist in 2 appellations simultaneously. Then there 30 year old 1977 self dies chronologically before they ever even leave end up on the Island, where in time repeats itself... actually, the current situation of existing in multiple times reminds me of "Rant," the time travel of which also left me scratching my head in a similar fashion...

Reading the ridiculously large amount of theories on Lostpedia regarding this episode, I realize I missed that the statue is holding an Ankh, and that it is most likely either Egyptian or proto-Egyptian in nature, and consider it is wearing a kilt and not a full gown is most likely a male deity (or pharaoh) and not a chick...

good call. It occurs to me that Sawyer and the gang are on the second Island in 1977, so it could possibly be that Ben didn't arrive until after they had left the mainland and they are just not acquainted with Workman Linus, being that he's a lowly rank on the Dharma Initiative totem pole.

Where do you think they are in regards to the time that Horace(Horus??) builds Jacob's cabin? I get the impression that it is before, since it makes sense that if he built a cabin out in the woods away from the barracks that he was alone and living there, maybe as the last Dharma survivor after the purge.

no new lost tonight?

Yeah, wasn't the big spiel about them not starting the season till the end of January supposed to be so they could show all of the episodes straight through with no reruns and no interrupted weeks?

Last year that was the official line, so season 4. I think we all assumed it was identical with Season 5, though they never actually SAID they were going to go straight through all season... the jerks.

It's not like there was some presidential speech or something to pre-empt it. I dunno.

in other news, that guy can grow the longest hair in the world he wants, he's still going to always be Percy Whetmore to me.

Ha, I hadnt even realized it was the same guy. I have only seen the film once, in any case... I guess the long hair fooled me! The film has to have the pissing-his-pants scene from the book, yes?

This episode didnt do a whole lot for me. Again, boring narrative structure that did nothing for me. This entire episode could have been told as a flashback and it would have been fine, it didnt warrant its own 42 minutes of screen time.

Maybe the big "reveal" was that the plane crashed in a different time than those who were transported off of the plane... but we all knew that. I liked the way the reveal happened, but, really, meh. If they had done more back and forth between the two story lines, 1977 and present(?) it might have been better. They could have written it a bit better so as to give hints and insinuations that the two groups would meet each other, only to have the reveal, with Sun and Frank finding Christian Shepard and the 1977 folk finding, well, anything other than the expected plane folk.

Also, the reveal of the young Ben was nice, and well played. Though it was expected, because we all kind of did the math in our heads. But now that it has been revealed, WTF? If Farraday (who is missing? Also, WTF?) is right, then they cannot change anything. Which means that as Ben sat in the Swan Armory getting the living shit beat out of him by Sayid, he remembered bringing Sayid a sandwich thirty years prior...

meh, the tension between the characters was good and the building implication that shit will be going down to divide them is enticing. So I liked this episode and it entertained me, although it didn't fool me into thinking that the plot was advanced any.

I guess that solves the question of where Ben is in 1977. So it would seem that Sawyer has to be aware of that, but of course it makes sense that he wouldn't make light of it...although that was kind of weak for a "reveal" and really no need to withhold that information from the audience since it doesn't change anything. but whatever.

It would seem that "not being able to change the past" means not being able to change the memories of the people in the present/future. Since Danielle didn't remember Jin, I guess Ben won't remember Sayid or any of the others- despite the fact that there apparently is a photograph of all of them from 1977 hanging up on the wall (add another wtf?).

We still don't know precisely when Locke and the rest are. It was rather odd that the Barracks were all boarded up and dilapidated like that- could it be the "future" (after they left the Island)? But it looked like there was stuff left over from Dharma, which doesn't make much sense either; the place was abandoned after the purge, but later cleaned up and and reinhabited by the Others?

I don't know how I feel about all this business with Christian, but I'm leaning more towards not liking it. We had the episode that revealed "The man behind the curtain", so why is he still playing as Oz?

Maybe next week we will find out what the promise was Kate made to Sawyer before leaving the Island.

yeah, this one gets a big "meh" from me too. it was one of those episodes it felt like they had to go ahead and do though, so they could go one in future episodes without having to stop and explain things.
I think what hurt it the most though was the having to wait TWO weeks for this one and they deliver this turkey? meh. It cracked me the hell up with the Ben thing at the end. Like showing the kids face was supposed to be some HUGE moment before the >Bong< Lost logo thing. Seriously? Was anyone in the audience wondering who the kid bringing a sandwich to him was?
And is it just me or is Christian's sole purpose on the show anymore just to show up whenever needed to give exposition? I joked before about the final episode being just damon and carlton sitting in chairs and reading off what happened but now I'm seriously worried it will be Christian Shephard sitting in the rocking chair just telling the audience what happened.

I am hoping Christian is only around long enough to reveal something greater than himself, and he will be a non-entity by next season. We will see. I am still not a fan of him actually BEING Christian Shepherd. We will see.

And yeah, I think you're right, the two week wait didnt do this episode any favors.

It wasnt bad, but it was just kind of like 2 day old leftovers. Theyre still good, and you can reheat them and enjoy them and they will give you some sustenance, but they have lost their edge and appeal, and are kind of sad looking in their tupperware container in the fridge.

I still think that almost the entire thing could have been revealed in flashbacks. We could have cut out a LOT of the interpersonal love quadrangle garbage. I suppose that for a flashback/non-linear narrative to have worked it would require an additional story to tell simultaneously that somehow was complimented by this one, but that wouldnt be too hard to whip up.

You're right that we dont know what time Frank and Sun and the rest are in, just that it is sometime after 1977. I think I referred to it as the present earlier but my real guess is that it is sometime after the purge but not too long after it.

The story got kind of locked into us believing that Danielle didnt remember Jin, and with her dead and all there is no work around. But Ben can still reveal that of course he remembered Sayid, but that was all part of his intimate relationship with the Island, blah blah blah. I mean, none of the Others are all too concerned about a giant smoke monster or about the fact that Alpert doesnt age. So believing that people travel through time does not seem like it would take that much difficulty for him to accept, even by the time he is captured by the Losties.

Also, anyone else think the whole "reality is spinning out of control" effect was tacky in the opening scene with the plane? I felt the same way in the last episode that the same effect was used, I think with the final spin of the donkey wheel... I dont know if it a director thing (though tonights episode was directed by Jack Bender, who has directed some of the better episodes, including the finales) but it was cheesy...

Anyone else think next week also doesnt look too promising? Maybe it was just the ABC promo guy... "Survivor vs. Survivor..." but I dunno... The sotry telling was so bland in this episode and the trailer for next week implied more of the same, just with some explosions and gun fights thrown into the mix...

yeah, next week's looked like "this week's same old same old Part 2." But it's just a promo so who knows.
They are going to HAVE to find some way to get back to the non-linear storytelling. Something else that has really been bugging me since they started using it this year is the title cards saying when the next scene is happening. Why bother with that now, after 4+ years on the air? Part of the fun of the show was putting together all the different time frames to figure out when they happened. And that was when everything was non-linear, and it was fun and wasn't very hard at all to still follow. Now they're just giving us straight forward stories and feel the need to point out exactly what time frame it is. it's almost kind of insulting as an audience member.

Something else, I noticed in the opening credits Brad William Henke, the guy that played Denny in Choke. I didn't notice him in the episode anywhere but if they put his name in the credits maybe he'll show up in an upcoming episode.

Wow, this was a fantastic episode--I'm kind of shocked to see so much poo-pooing going on here.

A few things:

We know when Sun's story is because the title screen said "Thirty Years Earlier". 1977 + 30 = 2007; which means if they left the island in late 2004 (right?) and they were off the island for 3 years, then it's 2007, which means their plane and all the people on it sans those sent back in time are in the current day.

The episode was good despite the love quadrangle, but one of the things I liked was that I forgot entirely that Jack and Blondie had a relationship for a while. So that's interesting. I didn't like how quickly Sawyer turned on Jack at the end, though, and I don't like the show dragging out the Jack/Kate/Sawyer thing, but again, the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Blondie thing is a bit interesting.

I can't explain why Rousseau didn't recognize Jin in the future, but it's easy to speculate that Ben recognized Sayid and the others when he's first captured, but we know for sure that Charlotte remembered Daniel Farraday, but this was as she was about to die from a hemorrhage and not before, so I guess there's a chance that her brain condition caused these repressed memories to come out.

So the black smoke monster appears, sort of, just before we're introduced to Christian. So, there's a lot of things going on here--is Christian is dead and being used by Jacob? Is Jacob Christian? Is the smoke monster on Jacob's side, or against him? Usually when the smoke monster assumed someone's identity, it was someone that people recognized, but in this case, neither Lapitus nor Sun would know Christian.

Also, Radzinsky being brought into the show is awesome. If you don't remember, he was one of the guys pushing the button inside the Swan before Desmond showed up. He was the one who started drawing the map on the blast door, and he eventually killed himself by a shotgun blast to the face, which is suspect since it was Kelvin Inman who told that to Desmond; there's probably a pretty decent chance that Kelvin killed him, and I'm kind of excited to see if we get to see how all that goes down.

Where's Farraday? My guess is he took off after telling Charlotte about the island and he's off somewhere doing experiments. Perhaps he's waiting for Christian to deliver Sun and Locke to him because...

My instant post-episode, non-too-thought-out-yet theory is that Christian, through Jacob, is getting all the survivors of the crash to go back into the past to try to stop the Purge from happening. This ties in with my long-standing theory that there are two groups of people trying to harness the island's properties; those known as The Others, the "original" inhabitants of the island, probably the 1st or 2nd generation of Black Rock crash survivors, and the Dharma group. The Others are attempting to keep the island out of the hands of Charles Widmore, who wants to use the island for personal gain (with a nifty side effort of helping humanity out--longevity, resurrection, all sorts of cool things). So, I think if the black smoke monster is in fact not working with Jacob and is instead keeping Jacob's powers (?) at bay, like has been suggested, then it makes sense that Charles is behind the black smoke monster, who in turn made itself into the form of Christian Shepard (I assume because it'll help motivate Jack) in order to get Sun and Locke back to the pre-Purge days in order to attempt to stop the Purge from happening, therefore helping Charles keep the Others from overrunning Dharma.

From what I've been reading in the TV Guide people keep sending in letters complaining that the show is too confusing. have these people never watched it before or are they just dumb? It's weird to me because it seems like the general consensus among us on here is that the show has been too straight-forward and pandering lately, am I right?

Maybe people just can't wrap their heads around the idea of time travel, and because it was done in a less obvious way last season, they just choose to ignore it and pretend it wasn't happening and now they can't do that. who knows.

I think one of the problems is that they haven't described what kind of time travel is going on. Is it "Slaughterhouse Five" time-travel, where time is linear and changing something in the past won't change the future? Or "Butterfly Effect" time travel (sorry, I couldn't think of a better example), where one change causes changes in everything? Or "Back to the Future" time travel, where people start fading away while they're still in the past?

Last night's episode was great, and hopefully whatever happens to Ben will explain their time-travel theory and clear up confusions. Also, if people don't realize by now that you can't jump in the middle of this show and fiure out what's going on, then they are just dumb.

Did anyone else notice that Juliet had one blue and one green eye last night? Seemed odd to me, so I googled it. It appears that all the characters have had their eyes change color going back to the first episode. I wonder what that's about.

not really a shocking ending, but I loved it anyway.

People were thinking that they were going to go ahead and shoot Sayid, which I would have seriously been depressed about.

It was kind of interesting/weird to see them jump back into the single character flashbacks. haven't seen those in a while- even though some of them we re-caps true.

Not much else to say. The other characters were pretty much just filler. I don't know if I like sawyer giving a shit about something, and I know I don't like it that that something is Dharma, which I honestly don't care about at all. The only thing they are good for is to die in the purge, as far as I'm concerned. The obligatory love-triangle was what it is, but the implied catiness between Kate and Juliet seemed forced. Jack was totally pointless just standing around and Hurley is supposed to be the voice of the audience, not the voice of the producers giving the actors their cues. Hey, it's been awhile since we've seen Jin, oh great here he is! bleh.

So, Drew brought up what I was going to say--basically we can expect one of two things to happen from this episode's outcome: either Faraday was right and nothing you do in the past can change the future (meaning, probably Richard will stumble onto Ben's body and keep him alive, or the island will heal him, or something such as), or Faraday was wrong and my theory is alive and well (meaning, things in the past can change, and that someone/something needs the Oceanic 6 to stop the Purge from happening). This would be awesome, if Ben died in the past, and yet he is living in the future.

Overall, not a great episode, but I did like that they went back to the old format, and I liked that Sawyer really likes being a part of DHARMA, and I loved Sayid shooting Ben and fighting with Jin and Sawyer. I really didn't like Sayid's flashback, though--it's getting pretty old, pretty quick, this whole he's a killer with a soul thing (although I think it worked for this episode in ways it hasn't in the past), and how easily he gets duped by sexy women spies.

The 3rd option is that he didn't get killed by the shot and it is the catalyst that sets up the health problems Ben will eventually have when we first meet him.

You mean Ben gets cancer because Sayid shot him in the heart 30 years ago?

I hear that gun shots do, in fact, cause cancer. For reals....

I really enjoyed last night's episode. First off, I really appreciated the return to the flashback format. What is more interesting is that it was a "flashback" in as much as it all happened previously for Sayid, but it was a FF in as much as none of it had happened yet according to the 1977 timeline... I liked that they told us why he was in handcuffs though and gave a bit of backstory on Ilana, and they also showed us why and where he stopped working for Ben. So I dug that, the attempt to show us that, especially after the death of his wife, there really was nothing for him and he had nothing to live for... This is assuaged when he starts working for Ben, thinking he is saving his friends, and then when that ends he tries to find meaning in a life of service to the less fortunate... A little hackneyed of a flashback, true, but I liked it. Back to form!

I am almost positive that the producers have stated that they do not subscribe to a "Butterfly Effect" theory of time travel (their words, too...) and that what happens, happens. (The title of next week's episode is actually "Whatever Happened Happened," so I bet this will be more decisively stated in-episode next week...) They have also said that the "theme" for this season, should there be one, is that of resurrection. We saw Locke come back to life, we are now a little more ready to believe that Christian Shepard is in fact alive, and Ben may very well come back to life. OR he didnt actually die, which is a possibility, though you would think that an assassin like Sayid would be able to make a kill-shot from 10 feet away, and if he thought he might have missed he would go back and shoot him again...

Wow, Ben being killed by Sayid adds a whole new complexion to his character (as an adult)... He thought Sayid was one of the Hostiles, who were going to be his salvation, and he saved this man's life, and then he shoots him for what could only seem to be no reason at all.

More thoughts later... especially as there are some podcasts I need to catch up on...

I actually didn't even think about her being on the island still, in the future. She's very much the same character as Kate's FBI agent, only she didn't die. It'd be great to see her go into full bounty hunter mode, rather than simple survivor mode.

Also, yeah, the character of Sayid--who I loved in the first place--got more interesting after the episode, but I wasn't blown away by the way it was done. Sayid being purposeless until Ben came along, and then when Ben was done with him he became purposeless again, until he landed on the island and saw that his goal, whether he likes it or not, is to kill Ben. But then what? Where will he go from here, since he can't go to the Hostiles and he can't go to DHARMA, what I'd like to see is he runs into Faraday out in the wilderness somewhere. But really, I don't see them being stuck in 1977 for much longer--a few more episodes, sure, but they've got to progress the story quite a bit in only a few episodes; we're building to the Purge, I think, but before that can happen the Swan needs to be built, and so on.

Notes from the last two podcasts, in random, bullet format:

*The two hour finale will be on May 13, preceded by a 1 hour clip show (at 8pm) and will be called "The Incident."

*You know how they always have a codename for the secret/final scene? (1:The Bagel, 2:Khallah, 3:Rattlesnake in a Mailbox, 4:Frozen Donkey Wheel). Well, for this season, since they are now done writing it and all that, they are letting the fans name the secret scene... which is kind of cool, I guess... except it denies our chance at guessing what it might mean... The semi-finalists are 1)The Joop 2)Baby-Diaper Covered in Barbecue Sauce 3)The Fifth Toe 4)The Exploding Pretzel Jar 5)The Twinkie 6)Jack Gets Pregnant 7)The Droids You're Looking For 8)The Hooded Leprachaun 9)The Zombie Bake Sale 10)The Zeigernik 11)Smokey's Dorm Room 12)The Spanish Inquisition 13)The Fork in the Outlet ...#8 is Damon's favorite, and #3 is the only one they both had on their lists. It is open for voting or something like that. I dont care too much.

*The Ethan borne to Horace and Amy is, in fact, the Ethan from Season 1, and we will see him again this year, as an adult. There was some doubt as to whether or not the timeline worked for it to be the season 1 Ethan.

*I was right, they again reference "paradox-free time travel" aka "non-butterfly effect time travel

*We will be learning more about the Swan... but this was easy for us to assume, given the fact that we have seen the plans for the design of the Swan, it has been discussed openly, and the finale is in fact called "The Incident"

*The "Charlotte" that Daniel sees in 1974 was in fact the real Charlotte... They had originally written the mythos for a 37 year old character, but cast Rebecca Mader because they really liked her, and their continuity guy decided to change the birth date reveal in the episode with Ben to 1979 as that is RM's real birthdate and is more believable, and the producers OK'ed the change without remembering the need for the 1970 birth year that comes later... An "acceptable error," according to the producers. So she was really born in 1970. Consider her reveal of her birth date a LIE.

*Conveniently, "Charlotte Staples Lewis" is an anagram for "Walt Steal Helicopters," but this means NOTHING.

*They talk about the shooting of Ben... What if the shooting of Ben is, in fact, what caused him to be the way he is in the future? They then open the possibility that the non-paradoxical nature of time travel will be challenged in next week's episode, as Sayid is the first person to really test Farraday's assertion of this by shooting Ben (non-paradoxical time travel necessitates the universe auto-correcting any discrepancies)... so while the producers have always said it was non-paradoxical, and the title of next week's ep implies that is the case, MAYBE it is ironic and there will, in fact, exist multiple timelines and parallel realities. But I doubt it.

*They will be continuing the "trend" of returning to character-centric episodes, with next week being Kate, and my guess is that over the next few weeks we will see "why" the other characters returned to the episode.

*We will see more of the statue, including what, in fact, it is a statue of.

*The show will, very shortly, explain why Ben chose to kill Locke.

*When talking about "Jughead," they say to read "The Stand" and draw your own conclusions. I havent read it, I have no idea what they're referencing.

*Miles's specific request for 3.2 million dollars last season wil be answered this season by Miles.

The Swan is built in response to "The Incident," and judging by the title of the finale, my guess is that They will not return to the present until the finale, which is when "the incident" does in fact happen, and necessitates the construction of the Swan... so we will never see the construction of it. The DI knows of the electromagnetix capability of the Island, and especially for where ever the Swan is located atop of, so my guess is they were preparing it anyway, and then the incidient that returns our heroes to the present necessitates the immediate construction of the Swan and the subsequent button pushing every 108 minutes...

Spoilers:

To summarize The Stand, as my memory serves (which is to say, I might be wrong): a super flu kills most of the people in the world, then two groups form--good guys in Colorado and bad guys in Las Vegas, lots more people get killed, and a few of the good guys have to go to Las Vegas in order to kill the bad guys, and someone sets off a nuke, killing them all, or most of them.

Hmmm. Not as useful as one might hope. Except potentially implying that "Jughead" will detonate and cause the Island to cease to be...