Update: 20:00 GMT I've just been informed that we did in fact see an Oceanic Logo in this episode. I've updated the points and tables accordingly. Congrats to maskdmirag for being the early leader. Update: 17:30 GMT Please note this is NOT the same as the Fantasy League which will be posted later in the week :) Update: 08:00 GMT The updated table and points have been posted. That will teach me to post before checking ;) Update: 07:30 GMT There is a slight problem with some scores and points. I'll be revising the totals and table shortly.
I hope you all enjoyed the premiere and coupled with the news that the strike is as good as over I present the first update of the prediction league.
Click the link below to see the full table. It is sorted by the first part of the email address that you signed up with. To the left are the current Table toppers.
How did you fare this week? Did you score well? Sound off in the comments :) With 15 episodes to go there is plenty of time for the leader board to change drastically.
Below are the points were scored this weeks episode, The Begining of the End.
100 Points What will be the first word spoken in the Season 4 Premiere? Dammit This was said by Jack whilst watching the TV Coverage of the chase. I know that there was some speaking on the TV Coverage but the start was so inaudible that I discounted this. No one got this correct.
40 Points How many letters will the Season 4 Premiere title have? 20 The Beginning of the End 26 of you got this correct.
What will be the first letter of the Season 4 Premiere title? T The Beginning of the End 416 of you got this correct
30 Points In what Episode will we first see Rose and Bernard together? Episode 1 433 of you guessed this correctly
In what episode will the next character will die? Episode 1 In Episode 1 Naomi finally died 268 guess this correctly
In what episode will Hurley first say "dude"? Episode 1 Hurley said Dude whilst talking to Jack on the Radio 762 of you guessed this correctly
In what episode will we first see Vincent? Episode 1 We saw vincent in Episode 1 524 people guessed correctly
In what episode will we first see Jacob? Episode 1 In Episode 1 Hurley met up with Jacob again 41 guessed this correctly
In what episode will we see an Oceanic Logo? Episode 1 We saw the logo on the cockpit of the plane.
20 Points Which person will Sawyer give the first nickname to? DESMOND Sawyer called Desmond "Scotty" on the beach 30 People guessed this correctly
Who will be the first person we see in Season 4 HURLEY We saw Hurley in the car being chased. 18 People Guessed this correctly
Who will the first episode focus on for Flashbacks? HURLEY Episode 1 was Hurley Centric 16 people gueseds this correctly.
Who will be the next character to die? NAOMI Naomi died in Episode 1 16 people guessed this correctly
10 Points Will we see the Dharma Van again? YES We saw the Dharma van in episode 1 894 Guessed this correctly
Will we see Jacob again? YES 940 Guessed this correctly
Hurley's bitchin' Camaro car chase is a nice metaphor for how season four premiered compared to past seasons. The first three seasons always began with the focus on a new group of islanders, and it would take an episode or two to really pick up steam. This season's premiere blew past all that and began where season three left off — in a weird, disorienting place. We're starting in a flashforward, but it's prior to the flash-forwards seen in "Through the Looking Glass." Future Jack's proclamations to Future Kate that they need to go back are at odds with what pre-beard Future Jack says to Future Hurley, "We're never going back," which suggests we're in store for a slew of Future character developments. The standard eyeball shot didn't even come until half-way through, when Hurley peered into Jacob's shack and someone else peered back. Christian's not the only walking dead anymore, and it seems Hurley will be a more pivotal figure in events to come, while Ben's role is diminished to something of a punching bag. But amidst all the disorientation, the fierce symmetry of the narrative remains. I don't think too many in the audience were displeased.
The episode did more to raise questions and set the playing field for upcoming episodes than it did to answer any questions. We still don't know what Naomi and the freighter folk are about, or what work Walt thinks Locke has to do. So let's get some of the questions out in the open:
Why was Christian Shephard in Jacob's rocking chair?
If Charlie is a figment of Hurley's imagination, why did the other mental institute patient see him?
Corollary: Why is Charlie appearing in the first place? When he appears against the two-way mirror in the interrogation room, did the writing on his hand — "they need you" — refer to the rest of the Oceanic Six, or someone else?
Corollary to the corollary: A two-way mirror seems like a suggestive symbol.
After Jack, Kate and Hurley, who are the other three of the Oceanic Six, and what are they hiding? Is the man in the coffin from "Through the Looking Glass" one of the six?
What does Ben know about the people on the freighter?
Corollary: Is that the same ship that Sam Thomas from the Find 815 game is on? The Oceanic commercial that aired after Lost suggests the auxiliary game that usually occurs outside of the regular season will be continuing during the season, making that ghost limb of the narrative much more real. (With Thomas, we also have Tom and twin again, and the auxiliary games have become a kind of twin to the standard narrative.)
Yet another corollary: Just how much damage can Ben take? Is the island giving him a healing hand?
What do the freighter folk want with the island, and who is Naomi's sister? Is she on the boat? Does she really have a sister?
Subtle literary reference corollary: Naomi's trick of back-tracking on her blood trail is what Danny Torrance used to fake out his mad dad at the end of Stanley Kubrick's film version of Stephen King's The Shining. Danny realizes he's leaving a trail of tracks in the snow while rushing through the hedge maze, and carefully goes back over them, stepping into his previous tracks, to make his trail look like it just comes to a dead end. Jack Torrance follows the wrong trail, as does island Jack, and in both cases it's the woman who finds the trailblazer; Danny's mom Wendy finds Danny at the mouth of the maze, and Kate finds Naomi out in the jungle — or Naomi lands on Kate. But from Naomi's doubling back to the Oceanic Six's hiding something from the public, covering tracks is becoming somewhat of a theme. This isn't the first time we've seen a Kubrick nod, either.
Might the fact that Charlie is appearing again, and that Christian Shephard is seen all over the island, have something to do with the leaked DHARMA Initiative orientation video for the Orchid Station?
Corollary: Dr. Edgar Halowax (i.e. Marvin Candle/Mark Wickmund from the previous orientation videos) is seen holding a white rabbit with the number 15 painted on it. He mentions how the island's unique properties creates a kind of Casimir effect that allows them to — and that's when another version of that rabbit falls into the room behind Halowax, and the good doctor has a minor fit, yelling to keep the two rabbits away from each other. It's two rabbits, but they're the same rabbit. We don't find out what the Casimir effect allows them to do (yet).
Corollary to that corollary: The Casimir effect, laid out by physicists Handrik Casimir and Dirk Polder in 1948, basically postulates the possibility of vacuums existing at the quantum level. This creates a subtle physical force between all matter that can only be measured at the sub-micrometer scale. The Casimir effect was proved in 1996 by Steven Lamoreaux at Los Alamos Labs. Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne have suggested that if you could get your hands on something they called exotic material (aka virtual particles) and employ the Casimir effect, you could theoretically create a wormhole, those hallways in time. We already know about Hawking, black holes, wormholes, electromagnetism, and how they're subtly being worked into the Lost narrative. So are we really dealing with ghosts, or are we dealing with the same Charlie and the same Christian, but from some other spacetime, like the same rabbit appeared from some other spacetime? And is the use of the name Thomas (meaning twin) a subtle hint in that direction?
Yet another corollary to that corollary: If the above corollary holds, perhaps Drs. Marvin Candle, Mark Wickmund, and Edmund Halowax are not the same person as we think of it, but three versions of the same person from different spacetimes. Interestingly, there has been a surge in academic work this past year, particularly by Oxford physicist David Deutsch, mathematically showing that yes indeedy, there most likely are parallel universes to our own existing right along side ours, and we just can't access them.
How did Hurley come across Jacob's magic shack? In what was the episode's central scene (thematically and temporally, it's in the center), Hurley's encounter with the shack is very suggestive. First, there were the whispers again. Does Jacob have something to do with those whispers (and has anyone gotten an amped up audio of those whispers)? Second, when Hurley peers into the shack in that very carefully framed shot and sees Christian Shephard, an eye appears on the other side of the broken window, an eye that looks suspiciously like the eye seen in "The Man Behind the Curtain" after Jacob called out "Help me" to Locke. If that eye is Jacob's, that means there's at least a third person on this island who has seen/heard the man himself. And third, Hurley runs away and when he looks up, there's the shack in front of him again; maybe that circle of ash in "The Man Behind the Curtain" was meant to hold the shack in place.
Corollary: This means someone brushed away the ash from around the shack. Given that Locke is the one who found Hurley out in the jungle, I think we have a good candidate.
Yet another corollary: The shot of Hurley peering into the shack is very carefully framed. The window is broken in just such a way as to make a circle around his eye and leave a small square space for his face, framing just his eye, nose and mouth. It's that kind of careful attention to structure that hints to the audience the writers/producers are not winging anything — the smallest detail is carefully crafted.
Even when the narrative seems to be getting off in a dizzying number of directions, there's still the visual and narrative symmetric echoes to offer a sense of shape and direction. For instance, in season two the Tailies joined up with the Lostaways, so all the survivors were together again; here, however, we have the survivors splitting apart again, some going to the barracks with Locke, some going to the beach with Jack — it's the opposite of what the first half of the narrative was about. Future Hurley finds himself at rest in the same sanitarium he once stayed in; Past Hurley had conversations with a (seemingly) imaginary Dave, and Future Hurley once again has a conversation with a (seemingly) imaginary Charlie. The flashbacks of the previous three seasons will be counterbalanced by the flashforwards of the other side of the narrative. And whereas the action hero types took central leadership roles in the first three seasons — Jack, Locke, Sawyer — happy, hurting Hurley is now grabbing some initiative and making determinations for the group (like throwing Sawyer's radio into the ocean). He's doing what he can to honor Charlie's memory and what Charlie died for.
There will be plenty of speculation about what's going on in the coming weeks, but the auxiliary material may help somewhat. Take the mobisodes, the miniature unseen scenes released for mobile phones before they were made public on the web. In the twelfth mobisode, a flashback of Juliet making muffins in the barracks, she has an envelope that contains some damning information about Ben. Let's see if that has anything to do with the freighter folk. Maybe the most intriguing of the (admittedly uneven) mobisodes was the thirteenth and last one; it takes place just after the initial crash of Oceanic 815, and starts from Vincent's point of view as he romps through the jungle. Someone is calling him; he has white shoes; he's wearing a suit; it's Christian Shephard, and he tells Vincent to go wake up his son because he has work to do, just as Walt tells Locke he has work to do This all takes place just a minute before we first see Jack's open eye in the pilot episode. One thing to keep a watch on, then, is how each upcoming episode is structured in comparison to previous episodes — recall how Locke's waking up in the jungle after the Swan Station implosion mirrored the opening Jack sequence in the pilot episode. Now that we've reached the crux of the narrative and the flashes have switched from flashbacks to flashforwards, and given the show's intense attention to detail and mirror symmetry, we may see scenes which recall parallel episodes from the first three seasons in that mirror-twinned fashion, equal yet opposite.
(Did you notice all the close-ups of Kate's face? Those once prominent freckles are still just not there...)
Update: 2nd Feb It looks like we are over the worst of the issues we had yesterday. One of the servers that houses the Media players, Site Graphic and videos decided to kick out it's internet cable :) If you have any problems still they the following.
1) Hit Refresh on the page you are having problems with 2) Clear out your browser cache and try the page again 3) If that fails please email me and let me know the page and section that you are having problems with.
Due to the increased traffic there have been a number of issues with the site. It's slowly coming back up but you may notice a few graphics missing. If the site is not loading properly for your, press pressing F5 to refresh and most of the site should be back up. Buttons in the main banner are still missing. We are working on this as we speak.
Thanks to Xannie for the following ratings info. It looks like Lost live viewers is around 16.1 Million which is a little lower than my 16.8 predication :) It looks like DarkUFO reader jimmyeatworld23 was the closest with 16.23 million.
"LOST" ratings are in! Check them out and see how the new ABC drama "Eli Stone" and a 2-hour "Celebrity Apprentice" did, after the jump. Plus, did "LOST" hurt "Supernatural"?
The fourth-season premiere of ABC’s "LOST" delivered the best numbers in more than a year for the hit mystery drama last night, scoring 16.07 million viewers and lifting the network to an easy first-place finish on the first night of sweeps.
"LOST" also averaged a very strong 6.7 rating among adults 18-49, its best since its November 2006 fall finale. "LOST" also made a 2-hour "Celebrity Apprentice" hit season low and it gave "Eli Stone" a strong push helping it win its timeslot.
Overall, "LOST" helped ABC win the first night of sweeps, a rare treat - it happened for the second time since 1991. The third season finale of "LOST" in May 2007 pulled in a much weaker 13.65 million viewers.
ABC: 8:00pm Lost: Past, Present & Future (13.1 million) 9:00pm Lost (16.07 million) 10:02pm Eli Stone (11.62 million)
CBS: 8:00pm CSI: NY (R) (8.8 million) 9:00pm CSI: (R) (11.9 million) 10:00pm Without a Trace (R) (10.4 million)
NBC: 8:00pm My Name Is Earl (R) (5.3 million) 8:30pm The Office (R) (4.5 million) 9:00pm Celebrity Apprentice (7.8 million)
Fox: 8:00pm Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (10.6 million) 9:00pm Don't Forget the Lyrics! (10 million)
Here is Jeff Jensen's recap of the Season 4 Premiere - The Beginning of the End.
Watching ''The Beginning of the End,'' the season premiere of Lost, made me sick — sick in ways that my wife, my friends, and my court-appointed psychiatrist insist are bad for me and harmful to others. But with each passing minute of the episode, the old sickness that had lain dormant within me began to reawaken like a polar bear roused from hibernation by the advent of spring or a bald man with a torch and a can of hairspray. (Please tell me you got that.) Christian Shephard rocking in Jacob's chair gave me the chills. The vaguely sinister corporate suit named Abbaddon (''abaddon'' being a Hebrew ''place of destruction,'' or hell, according to Wikipedia) got me all sweaty. And when Charlie-grieving flash-forward Hurley started raging at not-yet-bearded flash-forward Jack about some ominous ''it'' (''I don't think we did the right thing, Jack! I think it wants us to come back! And it's going to do everything it can...''), I felt the searing fever consume me, and my mind was blown. Again. At freakin' last! After eight months of waiting, our mutual friend (and bad influence on my mental health) is back. Sickness, I am yours!
We usually get a premiere that begins with one of Lost's most frequent recurring motifs: an eyeball popping open. But that was old Lost, the Lost of flashbacks and Island despair and castaways waking up and orientating themselves to a new reality, one marked by sandy beaches, whispering jungles, and buried laboratories stocked with books, records, and candy bars. (Man, I want my own Hatch!) This is the new Lost, the Lost of flash-forwards and Island hope and six castaways in particular grappling with the disorientation of old lives that don't feel quite right and old ghosts that won't let them go. So, appropriately, we began with a discombobulating fake-out: an image of fruits set against an ocean-blue sky, the sound of seagulls cawing in the distance. We must have been on the beach, right? Nope! We were in the freight yard of a produce-shipping company in...where? And when? What the hell? Exactly. Exactly! (Huh?)
But quickly, we got our bearings. The city: Los Angeles. The time: the flash-forward off-Island future (or present, if you're now prone to think of Lost's on-Island action as happening in the past). (Tricky stuff, these time-toggling dramatics, ain't they?) The star of the show: lotto-winning, mentally shaky, food-challenged Hugo ''Hurley'' Reyes. As the episode opened, Hurley was leading the coppers on a high-speed chase in his daddy's old Camaro, blowing through that stack of fruit and crashing into the parking lot of a store in the midst of an everything-must-go fire sale. (Some winky subtext here? Remember, the producers of Lost successfully negotiated an end date — 2010 — for the series during the off-season.) Hurley tried to run, but the big man has no stride. As the policemen carted him off, he yelled, ''Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic 6!'' And with that, the premiere gave us Season 4 Burning Question No. 1: If the Oceanic 6 are six survivors of Oceanic 815 who made it off the Island (and became famous for doing so), and we know that three of the six are Jack, Kate, and Hurley, then who are the other three? (This is why God invented message boards. Post your bets below.)
The car-chase teaser sequence was altogether fitting for a brisk overture episode that cut to the chase in a number of ways. In addition to providing an immediate answer to the ''How many people made it off the Island?'' question posed by the season 3 finale, the episode picked up right where we left off on the Island, with the castaways awaiting rescue from the folks on Naomi's freighter. The last two seasons gave us premieres that focused on small groupings of castaways (Jack in the Hatch; Jack, Kate, and Sawyer at the Hydra Station), which made for rich stories but also got their years off to slow starts because it took about two more episodes to wrap up all the other cliff-hanger loose ends. But ''The Beginning of the End'' peeked in on everyone, and was almost all the better for it. I really liked the check-ins with Sawyer (bitterly loading his gun; trying to engage Hurley about Charlie's death) and all things Ben-on-a-leash. But Jin and Sun seemed to get short shrift. And that Rose and Claire moment, in which Bernard's wife told Aaron's mommy that she'd better reward Hero Charlie with some beach-blanket action — umm, yuck?
To be fair, it makes sense for the castaways to be gripped by intense emotions, and I blame the show's long layoff for dulling my sensitivity. And for the record, I appreciate very, very much the whole concept of getting some somethin'somethin' from the ladies ifyouknowwhatI'msayin'. If I had one significant quibble with the premiere, it was Jack's self-righteous homicidal rage toward Locke for throwing the knife into Naomi's back. Doc Messiah Complex just found out he was going to get rescued. His primary emotional state should be off-his-rocker euphoria. Would there really be any available bandwidth on his grid for the kind of eye-for-an-eye rancor it takes to want to shoot someone in the face? I could understand if Jack wanted to pass the downtime waiting for the choppers by tracking Locke down and hauling him back to civilization to stand trial for murder and general rescue-jeopardizing nutbaggery. But that moment when Jack got his chance and attempted a point-blank execution with Locke's unloaded gun? Sure, it was hardcore cool, and kudos to Matthew Fox for selling it, but talk about overkill.
Like I said, just a quibble. And anyway, the episode wasn't really about Jack; it was about Hurley. And so, while Jack and Kate separately searched the jungle for a she-ain't-dead-yet Naomi (Wake up, Naomi — there's plot-contrivance work to be done...), and the French Lady dragged a hilariously snarky Ben around the jungle, Hurley got the news from Desmond that Charlie had died in the Looking Glass, effectively killing his happy, cannonball-splashing buzz. The despair that quietly drooped off his grizzled face was heartbreaking. With the spotlight of a premiere shining intensely upon him, Jorge Garcia totally delivered.
Through Hurley's L.A. and Island story arcs, ''The Beginning of the End'' delivered its most watercooler-worthy moments. Perhaps none was more momentous than his discovery of Jacob's cabin during his wayward trek through the jungle. (Or did Jacob's cabin find him? Apparently, the ghost shack is mobile.) Peeking inside a cracked window, our frazzle-haired hero saw a freaky sight: a shadowy figure kicking it in a rocking chair. I asked the instant-replay officials in my head to analyze the sequence, and they are convinced that the spectral entity was none other than Christian Shephard, Jack's corpse-MIA father, doing his best Whistler's Mother impression. And who am I to argue with the voices in my head? Season 4 Burning Question No. 2: Is Christian Shephard actually Jacob, or was Ghost Dad just keeping the chair warm while the Ben-directing Ghost Other was taking a wicked ghost whiz?
A perplexing poltergeist of a different stripe — and accent — haunted Hurley's flash-forward. One day while buying some snacks at a convenience store, Hurley spotted Charlie's spirit by the Ho Hos — the terrifying catalyst for his Camaro cannonball run. Of course, he kept this info from the detective assigned to his case, none other than Big Mike Walton, Ana Lucia's old patrol partner, who wins my award for Flashback Character Least Likely to Be Ever Seen Again. Admit it: When he called her ''gorgeous,'' you chuckled, right? Because I know how all of you just loooooooved old Dirty Harriet. But he was affecting — and an effective reminder of the provocatively wired interconnectedness of the larger Lost world. Might Big Mike become some kind of season 4 Sherlock Holmes, obsessed with cracking the secrets of the Oceanic Six? Season 4 Burning Question No. 3: Why can't the Oceanic Six tell the truth about their Island past?
Someone else desperate to know more about Hurley's Twilight Zone daze: the immediately arresting, sharply attired, cryptically named Matthew Abbaddon, played with quiet relish by The Wire's Lance Reddick. He tracked down Hurley at a sanitarium — dude thought he'd be safer if he just dismissed the Charlie visitations as crazy visions — and offered him an upgrade to a first-class loony bin with better views and more leg room. He presented himself as an employee of Oceanic Airlines, but when Hurley grew suspicious, Mr. Creepy cut to the chase: ''Are they still alive?'' Hurley freaked; Abbaddon walked out. Season 4 Burning Question No. 4: Who is Matthew Abbaddon really? And what are to make of that name? Matthew means ''gift of the Lord.'' By contrast, there's the hellish allusion of ''Abbaddon.'' My trusty TV Watch editor, Tom Conroy, pointed out to me that in the book of Revelation, Abaddon is ''the angel of the abyss'' and even the personification of death. I have theories — but they are best saved for next week, when we will encounter Matthew Abbaddon once again in an equally provocative scene.
Still, if I were to apply any Bible story to the premiere, it would be Jonah and the whale. Why? Because of the episode's curious fixation with fish, of course! Did you catch the chalkboard in background of that Hurley-Abbaddon scene? Sketched on it was a picture of a desert island and a big, toothy fish. There were also fish in Hurley's watercolor painting of an Eskimo. And there was another finny creature (partially obscured) printed on Charlie's T-shirt when the dead hobbit rocker — played by Dominic Monaghan, looking ethereally clean, like an airbrushed model — dropped in on Hurley for a (ghostly? hallucinatory?) visit. The self-sacrificing castaway had come to egg his old friend out of his hideaway hole and, more, to cajole him to do the right thing, which was to...what? Go back to the Island and save those left behind? It was unclear. ''They need you, Hugo,'' Charlie said. Of course, this is also the story of Jonah and the whale, which is never actually referred to as a whale but as a fish. Some scholars even suggest it was actually a shark. Jonah was given a calling to save damned souls from God's divine wrath. But instead of heeding the call, Jonah ran away. Bad Jonah! He got swallowed up by a fish, repented, and then, after being spit up (''hurled'' in some translations), finally fulfilled God's request. Season 4 Burning Question No. 5: Will the Oceanic Six answer Charlie's call and save the remaining castaways left behind on Hell Island?
Of course they will. But not yet. As he did with Jacob's haunted house, Hurley wished Charlie away — shades of ''Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,'' when Hurley used the power of positive thinking (and Island magic?) to restart the dead Dharma bus. In Hurley's final flash-forward scene, Jack (not yet sporting the beard; not yet screaming, ''We have to go back!'') stopped by the funny farm to shoot some hoops. Hurley told him that business about not doing the right thing, about being convinced that ''it'' wants them to go back — but Jack was having none of ''it,'' whatever ''it'' is. Season 4 Burning Question No. 6: What the hell do you think they were talking about?
These were the ideas and mysteries that captured my imagination. I would be remiss if I didn't add that I was moved by Hurley's attempts, both on the Island and in the future, to grieve and make sense of Charlie's death, and more, to honor his sacrifice by trusting his warning that the freighter isn't Penny's boat, that it might be really, really bad news. Which leads me to Season 4 Burning Question No. 7: Why does flash-forward Hurley now regret trusting Charlie and wish he had stuck with Jack instead of siding with freighter fraidy cat Locke? But enough of my questions — I want to hear your answers, plus your takes on all the stuff we didn't cover here, including the tribal split over the freighter-people issue and the arrival in the episode's last scene of Daniel Faraday, a fellow who brings with him to the Island even more burning questions — and a few truly curious friends, too.
Eight Months! First I’d like to apologize for my absence over the summer. I’d promised you all I’d do some recaps, but that obviously never happened. I could make a thousand excuses but the plain truth is things just got crazy busy for me. Still, it looks like Dark UFO did a great job keeping everyone happy and tiding us over until the season finally started again. He deserves every bit of the praise I keep seeing everyone give him for the work he puts into this site.
But LOST is back!!! Just watched the episode twice in a row, and here are the Things I Noticed…
Pretty Sneaky Sis Hurley’s Dukes of Hazzard run through a stack of papayas didn’t island-fool us as much as last season’s opener did, but I was surprised LOST started right up with another fast forward. Fleeing from what we soon find out is the ghost of Charlie, Hugo’s happy to check himself into the mental ward to once again work on his Connect Four game. This time around there’s no internal conflict – he’s more than happy to pop his meds, sketch some sharks, and place himself back into the safe familiarity of a routine much more sane than the one he’d been rescued from. Why’s he drawing igloos? I guess that’s the furthest from tropical islands you can get. Shouting aloud that he was one of the “Oceanic Six” seemed strange at first, especially since he wasn’t doing it for celebrity treatment. I think Hurley might’ve been on the verge of revealing something – maybe even that one thing Jack showed up at the end of the episode to see if he was going “to tell’. This is likely the same secret Jack referred to in last season’s finale when he said he was ‘sick of lying’. Denying knowledge of Ana Lucia was Hurley’s way of trying to forget… but his eyes betrayed his sorrow when her name was mentioned.
She’s Not Your Daughter Rousseau’s back fist strike to Ben’s face was a nice way to open her season. It was also a stark reminder of how Ben’s not calling the shots anymore. Sure, he’ll still have some good, sarcastic one-liners (‘You’d better call them back and tell them she’s bringing a LOT of firewood’…) but now that the end game has been changed, he’s no longer in charge. Which is kind of good, because I think last season’s only real weakness was too much of an emphasis on the Others.
LOST Island Doesn’t Come out in the Wash The cannonball dialogue between Hurley and Bernard was Hugo’s way of trying to wash away all the horrible memories of the past few months. Getting ready for rescue, he was shedding the island, the curse, even his money – his cannonball was supposed to cleanse him of all that poison crap. Instead, that baptism was cut short. Seeing Desmond come back without Charlie, the only thing Hurley washed away was the last bit of his blissful ignorance.
One Radio, Two Frequencies? Listen closely to the satellite radio transmissions again, because something really didn’t jive for me. First, you have ‘George’ – he sounds like a Friday morning DJ on his 7th cup of coffee. The guy is just wayyyy too chipper. He asks for Naomi and Jack lies to him. The second transmission is answered by Kate. No morning DJ voice… this one is way more sinister and downright evil. “Who’s this?” and “Where’s Jack?” – it doesn’t sound anything like George and there’s no mention of Naomi. By the third call, chipper George is back and looking for Naomi again. He also mentions he needs a frequency change in order to find their position. Which leaves a couple of questions:
First, who was the evil voice in that second call? It came through more garbled than the other two, and in a much more ominous, rainy, whispery-type of otherworldly talk. Second, what happened to the radio that the frequency was changed? Jack didn’t change it, and I’m pretty sure Kate didn’t… although why she lifted the radio from Jack in the first place still seems 100% mystery to me. It wasn’t like she needed it for anything. I think this is a BIG question.
Even weirder, Naomi lies right before she expires in order to protect Kate and company. Perhaps Kate really did convince her that Locke acted alone. And who is her sister? In the end, I got the feeling Naomi’s intentions were good. If the rescuers really do turn out to be as bad as they’re currently being built up, I think maybe Naomi was kept out of the loop when it came to their true agenda. Or maybe Naomi’s people (1st and 3rd transmission?) aren’t exactly the same people who show up in helicopters next episode (2nd transmission?) Just a thought.
The Smoke Monster The smoke monster made a big appearance this episode, and I’m going to tell you where to look for it. Ready? Good: It floats out the door of the mental ward. Think you missed it? No way… because the smoke monster this episode was Matthew Abbadon.
That whole scene was a total creepfest. From start to finish, you knew the guy was totally OFF. Think back to the episode where Mr. Eko died - think back to his last visions of Yemi. Remember that moment? The moment where Eko realized he wasn’t really looking at his brother? Abbadon had that same look. That same startling, bug-eyed, blood-chilling ‘Yemi-stare’. “Are they still alive?” – he says it with the same toneless inflection as Yemi asking Eko to beg forgiveness. His look is just nuts.
If you don’t believe me, watch as he leaves through the door. You never see him exit, you only see a shadow. A shadow that dissipates from left to right, disappearing through the doorway in much the same way the smoke monster moves.
Good Lookin’ Out Sawyer I think it said a lot for Sawyer’s character the way he looked out for Hurley on that dark jungle path. Offering support for his grieving friend reflected the huge amount of character development he underwent last season. And when Hurley politely turned him away, Sawyer understood. Hugo needed to hold off on releasing that grief – he needed to keep it inside him until he could let it out with the one person he needed to: Claire. He owed that to her, Charlie, and himself.
Uncle Jacob’s Cabin I was probably not the only one excited to see Crazy Jacob’s haunted cabin pop up again this episode. This time Hurley stumbles across it, although of course he doesn’t stumble across it at all. “Jacob is not a man you go to see – you are summoned by him”. For some reason this episode, Jacob wants an audience with Hurley.
Now like everyone else I went back and freeze-framed the dude in the chair, and there’s no doubt that this time (at least for a second or two) it’s Jack’s dad. I say ‘this time’ because I tend to think the person stuck in that chair is many people all at once, or perhaps might only exist in the eye of the beholder. This makes absolutely no sense because as far as I know, Hurley has never seen Christian Shepard. His mind would have no reason to ‘see’ him that way. But then again this is LOST, and who the hell knows what’s going on. The eye in the window… I’m pretty sure it’s the same eye we saw from last season, which was a closeup of Jacob himself. It also looks (to me) like it could be Mikhail’s eye. The eye has pretty large tear ducts, which I think the actor who played Ben’s dad Roger Workman has. Those are my three guesses – feel free to agree or disagree with me - but I do not think it was Locke.
One last thing about the cabin itself: the lantern is definitely whole again, reinforcing the time-rewind theory from last season’s cabin visit. As Hurley runs from Jacob’s cabin, it appears (Identity-ishly) ahead of him again – only this time, the door swings open invitingly. This is reminiscent of Desmond’s description of how he tried to leave the island in his boat, only to be returned to shore again and again no matter which direction he sailed. What’s interesting here is how Hurley can break the island’s cycle of events by willing something his way. After repeating “There’s nothing here” a few times, the cabin is gone. Later on in the episode Hurley counts to five and gets rid of Charlie’s ghost exactly the same way. Perhaps his faith is growing, even if he doesn’t realize it just yet.
More importantly, why does Jacob seek an audience with Hurley? It could be because of the faith thing I just mentioned, but it could also be because Hurley is one of the few constants the island can’t touch. At least twice, Hurley has stated “I’m not supposed to be here”. In Locke’s sweat-tent dream vision Hurley is the only 815’er not making his way on board the plane. In season one he arrives at the gate and the stewardess says “I don’t think you’re supposed to make this flight, hon”. Without going into this too deeply, I’ll repeat my assertion that Hurley has always been untouchable – both on and off the island – because he was never part of the original equation. Maybe the island would rather just have him gone. Maybe this is why Hurley is later allowed to leave as one of the ‘Oceanic Six’. (Incidentally, I saw Cloverfield two weeks ago, and one of the characters says the same thing: “I’m not supposed to be here”).
When Hurley refuses Jacob’s invite, he does the next best thing: he sends Locke. Doing the island’s bidding, Locke takes a page out of Ben’s book, rationally explaining his position to Hurley and then planting a seed that would sprout later on in the episode. He tells him that if they can’t convince Jack that Naomi’s people are bad news, “Charlie will have died for nothing”. Devious, but effective.
I’m Dead but I’m Here Of huge importance this episode was Charlie’s visit to Hurley at the mental ward. Another season, another time… any one of us might chalk this up to Hurley’s imagination. After all, he is in a mental hospital. But this far into LOST’s plotline? Nah. Not anymore. Suddenly this type of thing isn’t so shocking anymore, and it’s far more believable. Just look at the nonchalant way Hurley’s ward-buddy can see Charlie as well. Hurley seeing Charlie was nothing like Hurley seeing Dave two seasons ago. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a different feel to it now. Charlie came forward very logically, placidly, hands raised as if to say “I know, I know, it’s kinda freaky but just hear me out”. Hurley was as rational as someone who just saw a ghost could be. The conversation they had seemed genuine and real.
Watching the scene, I was immediately reminded of the whispers. I could hear Boone’s voice saying “Dying sucks” all those seasons ago. Going along with my own beliefs on alternate timelines and all that other stuff people love to take a crap upon, it seems as if characters who are dead or gone still somehow have a vested interest in how the story of LOST turns out. They stick around. They whisper. They drop hints and rearrange things. And now, they hold informal meetings during mental hospital recess. They’re getting bolder.
So in short, it sure seems like the surviving ‘Oceanic Six’ are seeing their dead (or abandoned) comrades in all their flash forwards. They’re seeing them for a reason, because apparently they can still do something to rectify whatever it was that happened. “They need you” seems to refer to the people still on the island, because for some reason I don’t think everyone on the island ‘died’ the way Ben foretold they would.
Jack’s Totally Through With Diplomacy I thought he was done with it last season, but watching him flat out kill Locke by pulling the trigger of the gun this episode – WOW. And while Jack did just see Locke murder a seemingly innocent woman by knife-throw… shooting Locke in the face is a far, far cry from where Jack used to be. Ben’s extremely wise-ass comment rocks this scene, too. When Jack points out that Locke killed Naomi, Ben corrects him with “Well, technically he didn’t kill her YET…” - his use of the word ‘yet’ is almost as if he knows she’s going to die. Oh, to hell with ‘almost’! He KNOWS. Just as Ben knows everything that’s happened because he’s already lived through it (Ben to Richard last season: ‘Do you think this is the first time we’ve done this?’) Just more dropped hints here.
And then suddenly, we have the two main camps that should set the stage for the latter part of LOST: Jack’s and Locke’s. True to character, Locke is still only revealing 1/10th of everything he knows… yet people will invariably follow him anyway. The great migration of most of the 815er’s over from Jack’s to Locke’s camp is facilitated this time by Hurley. His fear of Charlie having died in vain (the seed Locke planted earlier) somehow overrides normal logic. I’m sorry, but if I were there I’d need more to go on than ‘NOT PENNY’S BOAT’. If I were on that island being shot at, chased by monsters, imprisoned, hunted, and God knows what else… I couldn’t care less WHO showed up to rescue me. I might get on the Titanic 2 if it pulled in.
Full Circle I really loved the fact that the set designers resurrected the nose section of the fuselage for this scene. After everyone wandered off, and we were left with just Jack and Kate staring into it… the whole thing was familiar yet different at the same time. The seats hanging in the darkness, the oxygen masks, the rain – it was such a spooky backdrop yet they were reminiscing against it. For the first time I felt like we could almost see the end of the story coming up. It DOES seem so long ago that the plane crashed, and we were meant to be given the same type of nostalgic feeling they were having. Really cool.
HO! HO! HO! Last but not least, I’ll leave you all with something I noticed but have no idea what it means. The word ‘HO’ shows up three times this episode, in three different forms. First, glance behind Hurley as he’s freaking out over Abbadon trying to take him away – there’s a small plastic(?) sculpture of the letters ‘HO’ on a shelf back there. Later on, he makes reference to Charlie’s ghost showing up in the convenience store right next to the “Ho Ho’s”. And finally, playing HORSE with Hurley, Jack misses two shots. Hurley’s response: “That’s HO”. I’m drawing a blank on this one.
I hope you all enjoyed the premiere and coupled with the news that the strike is as good as over I present the first update of the prediction league.
