Lost Reactions - The Little Prince

I don't watch the show at the time of broadcast, I catch it on iTunes or ABC.com these days.  We don't have regular cable or satellite programming at my place.  I've been getting my TV programming this way for a couple of years now actually.  And going back to watching shows with commercial interruptions just seems tedious at this point.  But I do want to post my reactions to last week's episode, The Little Prince.

The Title

I thought that the title could refer to Aaron Little(ton).  Kate's efforts to protect him are at the forefront of the O6 storyline.  I thought it could refer to Locke's group going back to ancient times and meeting a young or diminutive ruler of the Island. (that turned out to be wrong)  But I think it mainly had to do with the children's book of the same name.

The Sickness

Apparently the sickness has something to do with one's exposure to the Island, at least in part. Miles starts getting a nosebleed as the group tromps through the jungle to fetch the zodiac raft. He asks Daniel why he and Charlotte are getting the nosebleeds, and says that he has never been to the Island before.  Daniel asks him if he is sure of that.  And that sets Miles to thinking. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to think that Miles is the son of one Pierre Cheng, former lead scientist of the Dharma Initiative.  The baby was featured prominently in the Premiere and in the Comicon video this past summer.

Revenge Never Tasted So Sweet

I wonder if the ammo that came with Sun's gun is chocolate covered?  And it looked like she knew exactly what she was going to get from that box.  Much like she seems to know exactly what she wants from life these days.

The Client

I knew who sent the lawyer from the moment I saw the sneak peek before the season started. But the show almost through me for a loop when he went to the motel, and Claire's mom answered the door.  I hadn't thought that in a million years Carol Littleton would find out about 'the Lie'.  But apparently my instincts were on target after all.  Not only that, but the lawyer is also working to get Hurley's case dismissed.

'Do No Harm'

So I'm still fairly set on a theory that I had on my own, but that was articulated better on the forums on LOSTpedia.  It is referred to as 'Single History'.  Daniel says that, "if something didn't happen, it can't happen."  He uses this as a reason to stop Sawyer from talking to Desmond in 'Because You Left'.  Desmond didn't know Sawyer before he left the Swan station, so he can't meet Sawyer before they meet in the original timeline.  But at the same time, we see Locke interacting with Ethan, and later with the 50's Hostiles.  In fact, Locke plants the seed in Richard to make the visit to the hospital a few years later, as seen in 'Cabin Fever'.  To me this indicates that at the time the Beechcraft crashed on the Island, Ethan shot a man that babbled about being his leader, and then inexplicably vanished.  

Which brings me to this episode.  As the 'Lefties' are tromping through the jungle, they see this light beaming into the sky, and a pounding noise.  Locke knows that it is him pounding on the hatch the night that Boone died, and wants to take the group around so they don't see it.  A little bit down the path they hear some screaming.  Sawyer checks it out, and finds that it is Claire giving birth to Aaron, with Kate helping her.  After the flash, Sawyer asks Locke about the light, and suggests that he could have warned his past self about all the trouble he'd go through.  Locke said that he needed to go through the pain that he did to get where he was at that moment.  Later Sawyer tells Juliet about seeing Kate, and she asks why he didn't go to her. He says basically that it is in the past.

I think these events, or non-events, further prove the 'Single History' theory.  In 'Do No Harm,' Locke didn't talk to another version of himself, nor did Kate see Sawyer staring at her in the jungle.  It didn't happen, so it can't happen.  Some on the forum worry about a problem with predestination or predeterminism.  Basically, they worry that our time travelers are unable to exercise free will.  Going back to 'Because You Left,' Sawyer and Juliet want to go and warn Jack and Kate and the others from getting on the chopper.  Daniel says that no matter how hard they try, that they will be prevented from doing so.  Because it didn't happen.  What we see in this episode is that even though Sawyer and Locke had reason to insert themselves into their own past, they CHOSE not to.  It wasn't like some outside force swooped in to prevent them from changing the past.  They chose not to change anything.  They self-determined their actions.

I'm still not sure how Desmond works in all of this though.

The Future Camp

When the 'Lefties' arrive at the beach, it appears that the camp hasn't been inhabited for awhile. The zodiac raft is gone, but two outrigger canoes are pulled up on the shore.  There is an Ajira Airways bottle in one of the canoes.  Juliet remarks that they are based out of India, but fly all over the world.  Sawyer thinks they might be the Others', but Juliet seems not to know about that.  So they take one of the canoes to get to the Orchid station by water rather than hoofing it. While on the water, the other canoe is gaining on them, and whoever it is, doesn't seem happy that their other canoe has been commandeered.  They hit Sawyers oar, and Juliet seems to hit one of the pursuers with their own rifle.  And then another flash puts them in the middle of a nasty storm.  

Off season hints lead me to think that the canoes are the Oceanic 6's along with whoever else Ben brings of his people.

Bésix Douze

When they finally get ashore, they notice wreckage washed up on shore.  Upon inspection Locke asks if any one speaks French.

The scene then cuts to another set of castaways in an inflatable raft, all speaking French.  Then a man is spotted floating nearby.  They pull him aboard.  My first thought was that it was Sawyer, except we just saw him on the beach.  Maybe the scene with the Frenchies was a different point in time, not in line with what we see of the 'Lefties'?  But no, it is Jin!  He's been adrift since the freighter explosion, floating on wreckage for who knows how many days.  I want to know how many hours the 'Lefties' have experienced since the initial flash.

In the morning Jin and the Frenchies have made it ashore.  We hear the Numbers being broadcast on their radio.  We hear the name Montand, and one of the women turns out to be a very young looking Danielle Rousseau.

One thing that I've noticed about the show is they are fairly good about getting the look of their 'period' scenes right.  Danielle said she had been on the Island for about sixteen years.  The show started out in 2004, so that would put Danielle's team crashing around 1988.  But the hairstyles don't say 1980's to me.  I wonder if this is a mistake, or has something to do with the time shifting.  Maybe Rousseau and her team are from a different point in time than 1988, but somehow got stuck there?  Crazy theory, I know, and probably not the case.  But it would be interesting.

Just a couple of days now until 'This Place is Death'.  Until then...*cue LOST end titles*

Thoughts About Season 5, Thus Far...

The opening scene of Because You Left:

It's cool to have Dr. Cheng be more than just the orientation video guy for all the hatches.  It's fairly obvious he is THE lead scientist on the Island for the Dharma Initiative.  But wow!  Is he arrogant or what?  Gotta wonder what his home life is like, though his wife seems to look at him lovingly...

I don't think Dan being in the scene implies that he was once a member of the DI.  By the way he averts his face from Dr. Cheng, I'm guessing that Dr. Cheng would know that he wasn't supposed to be there.  The foreman on the other hand is more of a blue collar guy, he probably doesn't know half the guys on his crew.  I'm not saying that Cheng knows everyone on the Island, but he would certainly be enough aware of the personnel to know Dan didn't belong.

Neil 'Frogurt'

His name had been dropped since season 2, and he was introduced as a character in the mobisodes (where did that terminology come from?) before season 4.  He was plenty annoying in the mobisode, but way over-the-top in the first two episodes of season 5.  I would have thought he'd be one of the first to die on the Island.  Surely Ethan would have killed Frogurt rather than Scott, or was it Steve?  Maybe the time jumps were just a little too much for Frogurt, and he really snapped.

Background Characters

Speaking of background characters, I would have preferred having the characters of Scott/Steve elaborated on rather than introducing Nikki and Paolo.  In fact when we first met them, I thought Paolo was Scott/Steve and Nikki was the chick he'd been hanging out with since getting to the Island.  The audience would have been way more accepting of that I think.  They could have even kept the same storyline about the diamonds and all that.  And I think the extras on the show have worked long and hard enough to get a chance to have some character development, don't you?

The Blood Sample

I think that Ben is behind the lawyers getting the blood sample from Kate.  Jack is pretty despondent about the prospect of getting Kate to want to go back to the Island.  But Ben, "has a few ideas," about how to get her to come along.  The way Ben manipulates people is to have them think whatever they do is their own idea, when it is really his own.  The only way to break Kate out of her playing house with Aaron, is to threaten that status quo.  It gets her off balance enough to revert to her old ways of running, and what safer place to run from the authorities than the Island.  Not that she is thinking that just yet...

Hatch Era Desmond

I'm confused as to exactly what time period it is when the characters knock on the Hatch. Desmond comes out in full quarantine gear, but it is before the 815ers found the Hatch.  If Desmond doesn't yet realize the hazmat gear is useless, wouldn't it be Inman to come barreling out of the Swan?  He told Des that he was the only one that could go out.  But if it is after Inman's untimely demise, then Des would know that the hazmat suit had a bunch of tears in it. Unless it was just Inman's turn to sleep and Des didn't bother to wake him when someone started pounding on the door.  But that seems unlikely to me considering how unsure of things Des seemed at that point in his life.

The Safehouse

When Sayid fights those guys at the safehouse, I thought they were sent by Ben.  Sayid has obviously had a falling out with Ben since the events in The Economist.  Ben didn't look all that pleased when Jack told him Sayid showed up at his door.  Like Sayid would ruin the inroads Ben had made with Jack.  And the guys were using dart guns. They didn't want to kill Sayid, they wanted him alive.  If they were Widmore's men I'd think they'd want Sayid dead for all the killing he'd done for Ben.

The 1950's Others/Hostiles

I was pretty sure Jones would turn out to be Widmore.  Widmore has always seemed to be an arrogant, overly possessive man, and the way Jones asked what Sawyer and Juliet were doing on 'our island' just fit the bill.  And how could Widmore have been so possessive of the Island in the present if he hadn't been on the Island at some point in the past.

I didn't immediately think that the blonde Other/Hostile that took Dan, Charlotte, and Miles prisoner was anyone that we should have recognized.  On first viewing, I didn't pick-up on her being named Ellie.  And I don't know if I had heard about the enhanced version of The Lie indicating that Mrs. Hawkings' first name was Eloise.  But looking at things now, and the fact that Dan's mother is supposed to be in LA, I would say that Ellie is Eloise is Dan's mother.

The Other's Camp

My first impression of the location of the camp was that it would turn out to be the location of the barracks in the future.  But that all depends on what time they jumped to at the end of Jughead. Some have speculated that the clearing was the same place the '04 Others stopped at after leaving the barracks. The place where Anthony Cooper was chained to that pillar. The reasoning was that Dan told them to encase the bomb in concrete.  So obviously, the bomb is encased in the pillar...  Go back and watch The Brig from season 3, you'll see that the pillar stone, not concrete, and is aged much more than 50 years in my opinion.  I think that pillar is from the ancient civilization that built the four toed statue.

The Location of the Bomb

The pillar is only one of the locations for the buried H-bomb that people are speculating about. Some think it is buried at the Orchid.  Cheng does say there is an almost unlimited energy at that site.  Some think it was buried at the Swan.  There was a doorway sealed up by cement, and Sayid made a point of saying the only time he'd heard of things being covered by concrete like that was in the aftermath of the Nuclear accident at Chernobyl.  And there is a group that seems to think that the bomb is incased in the four toed statue out on the coast.  Go back and watch Live Together, Die Alone.  Take a close look at the statue when Sayid, Sun, and Jin look at it through the binoculars.  It is stone, perhaps even marble, but it is not concrete.  I think the bomb is in another yet to be shown location.  I think it has a further story surrounding it, but we haven't seen where it is located at yet.

Getting in Late

So I am starting my own LOST blog.  This is going to be a place for my own thoughts about the popular sci-fi drama from ABC.  I welcome comments and discussion.  I have been a fan of the show since midway through season 2.  I had always been intrigued by LOST before that, but my schedule didn't allow me to watch the show when it aired.  Thank goodness for the advent of TV shows being released on DVD!  I want to give a shout out to my friend Ben and then-co-worker Lonnie for letting me borrow their bootleg copies of LOST seasons 1 & 2.  (Not that they even know that I've started this blog!)  Since then I have made legitimate purchases of those first two seasons on DVD, and the third, most of the fourth, and the beginning of the current fifth seasons on iTunes.

It has only been recently that I have joined the fan community of LOST.  I generally have a hard time with fan communities; while there is this great group support element to fan communities, there is also this exclusionary element to them as well.  If you haven't been a part of the group for some time then you are seen as a newb (or n00b) and are not worth being taken seriously by the group at large.  And just like getting into any group, you have to show a great enough devotion to the cause before the newb label is dropped.  I don't particularly care to go to great lengths to be accepted by any group, since I have many interests and no one thing is so important to devote my entire life to it.  (And that is usually what it takes to be a card carrying member of a fan community.)

But this new season of LOST has got me fairly enthralled, so I broke down and joined the forums at LOSTpedia.  I had been a longtime peruser of the site, and wanted to throw my two cents into the ring.  But I don't have the time to read through an entire thread of fan speculations, arguments, and ill-conceived theories, etc.  One thread went on for more than 70 pages.  And a good portion of that was spent on points that had already been brought up in the thread, and then responses telling people to read the thread before posting so they didn't waste people's time.  (Which itself wastes people's time!)  So I'll be an sometimes poster there, but a frequent poster here.  This way I can get my two cents out into cyberspace, without having to slog through everyone else's first.  This may mean that my posts may look similar to other speculation you have found elsewhere.  If I do take my thoughts from elsewhere on the web, I'll be doing my best to give a link to my inspiration.  Otherwise it is purely coincidental that my thoughts mirror someone else's on the interweb.

My blog takes it's name from my LOSTpedia handle, which I hope makes sense to LOST fans. If any real Kenny Rogers fans stumble upon this bog, they should check out the season 4 finale of LOST to get the reference.  Let the speculation begin!