>: 44 TWO FOR THE ROAD

well, the two words that i have heard bandied about most often to sum
that last bit there up are 'holy' and 'shit'. it derailed a serious
portion of my evening, tell you what, i was stupid up until about
midnight. my God.

TWO FOR THE ROAD

after the second flashback, i was sure the title referred to some epic
last toast ana and christian would share at the end of their journey.
strike one for me. it's still so hard to believe what they did.

(since i'm not at work, and it's unfolding before me, we're on
impression-based realtime-presenttense)(mostly)
(also:between content and shockending, this will probably be very very
long; feel free to take a break and come back. it will still be 2004
when you get here)

dr jack's more concerned about nobody in the jungle than the state of
returned michael, eye still on the prize.

first shot of ana and the armory door-->her parking her squad car in
flashback. catherine spotted a 23 on the roof of the closest one and
looks like 16 15 and why not 08 behind it? a widescreen cap i saw
online has the 04 on the chopped-off left side of the screen. the
duration of the shot might even be eight seconds long. i dig the stuff
with ana and her mom, nice continuance of the dysfunctional/troubled
relationship angle everyone seems to have with the dominant parent.
'yeah ana, YOU did.' is good delivery.

then henry goes for it! thought she might off him right there! the
look on his face when she's walking up is priceless, as usual. and he
lurches up like a zombie killer, coming with the strangulation. for a
second ana looks cooked. then locke shows up to work in his usual
jovial zinger, 'guess he decided to start talking, huh?' solid
opening.

amazing to see christian shepherd, that most powerful of recurring
back-characters, in the bar dropping the serious alcoholic charm. 'how
does one get into wanding?' good stuff. was having a hard time keeping
it together at this point last night. shocking that he brought her to
sydney. course, i thought they were going to be bonnie&clyde-style
lovers, that would've been twisted. tom & sara. weird he chose the
name of his son's ex-wife for ana.

ana confessing to libby 'the guy in the hatch tried to kill me' hits a
bit differently second time around.

do we believe henry's latest? backing up goodwin's 'good ones' bit,
locke being one of them, henry's supposed real mission. great man,
brilliant man in charge, who's that, A Hanso? G DeGroot? ominous
tidings.

'getcha hands off my damn mangoes.
'i didn't figure you for the fruit pickin-type.'
sawyer and ana can always be counted on for a wonderful exchange and
they deliver once again.

'fate's calling, sara.'
tom and sara were listening to walkin after midnight, the patsy cline
i think kate had cued on the record player when she was tending sawyer
in the swan earlier this season (if not then, it was the patsy she was
listening to in the truck with ray, hehadahellofamortgage back in
episode 3) so. looks like christian had an australian lovechild, i'm
able to discern 'i pay the mortgage on this house and i want to see my
son!' which surely makes the chick the mistress/mom, probably maybe?
thank God there's no doubt who knocked claire up, right? crazy times,
jack's got a little brother who runs with dingoes.
'she is a very long story, sara.'

'they didn't have SAY ANYTHING in baghdad?' killer bit with hurley.
sayid really should check that one out sometime, cusack was boss.

sawyer and ana, next round. wow. you know she's going to fight, but
when she switches gears, look out. 'i ain't gonna gimme you nothing'
is an early favorite for best line followed right up with 'what you
gonna do now, muchacha?'

the first pre-airport tri-connection! sawyer stumbles into christian's
door in the middle of his second flashback when he(sawyer) is on his
way to go not kill that frank fella, episode 16, it might've been. so,
we know christian's got to bail on ana and start drinking the
afternoon away in the bar where he will await sawyer's return that
night, so he can pep talk him into going to kill the aforementioned
frank. but we still don't know what the cops grabbed him for, right?
from boone's flashback? head hurts.

dad puts 'guess that takes cuddling off the table!' down for best
line. i might take the don't you want my phone number line but enough
with the sawyer quotes, oi!

seems implausible sawyer would take so long post-coitus to think of
the gun. five minutes after she's gone, tops. the writers chopped
sheriff sawyer off at the knees as soon as they elected him.

and, wow, locke decides to cover for henry and sets the whole horrible
wheel turning. ana backs his play, dooms herself. michael wakes up to
tell what i thought was a misconception about new tribal other others
but must now surely be an outright fabrication. we should believe that
they're where he said, though, i think. because the plan does seem to
be to lead everybody there. one day's walk along the shoreline due
north from the arrow. michael said he counted 22 of them, you could
read that as him being the 23rd, subtle clue if you believe in the
numbers. the way he looks right at locke when he says they have a
hatch, yeah, pretty calculated.

jack apologizing to locke, what a big boy. locke just wants to be
included, this once-principal feud took a weird turn. ana sends sawyer
her best, class.

'there's jin' is pretty funny. the fisherman puts as much weight into
his seconds as possible, what a guy. hurley's reaction to the mention
of wine is awesome. why couldn't he have BROUGHT SOME DAMN BLANKETS TO
HIS PICNIC? sad.

sawyer's onto BAD TWIN, cool. i wish he would've made a guess whodunit
before the good doc commited his act of barbarism against the
manuscript. 'and you, brutus?' of course, sawyer's delayed reaction
to weapons-theft lends everything its maximum dramatic impact.
locke needs to tell jack something and in typical fashion we get a
prelim cliffhanger around 8:42, the rest of the episode we're waiting
for that principal quartet to storm in. not this week.

goodwin thought he could reform ana, huh? only the good ones can get
the vaccine, there isn't enough. figured henry would've put up more of
a last pre-execution verbal feint. the break before she pulls the
trigger feels like a gyp but of course it can't go any other way,
lends so much tension to the top of her and michael's conversation.

everybody catch the hanso foundation commercial? we get da vinci and
his vitruvian man followed by a rocket liftoff and double-helix
accompanied by a voice-over paraphrase of that old chestnut from '67:
'since the dawn of time, man has been curious, imagining all that is
possible. the hanso foundation, reaching out to a better tomorrow'.
the toll-free number's been locked up since last night (1-877-HANSORG,
a 42 and 4 in there, yah)

great back to the future II moment on the flashback with ana and jin
hearing jack's 'need it to be done' speech from the end of episode 5.
glad ana at least called her madre and ended things well. could she
know that jack was toting christian? cool how he spun his regret over
jack into impacting ana to reconcile with her mother. 'i'm on oceanic
flight 815' are some chilly words in this here language. 'i'll be
there when you land, miha,' makes me realize how many great off-island
moments, like ana's mom at the airport, we know about and won't get to
see. well, maybe, i keep thinking we've seen the last of christian
shepherd.

so, what a great episode. then the gutpunch.

michael is very convincing, 'finds out' about henry very convincingly.
sounds like ana-lucia's ready to hang up her gunbelt and start
focusing on fishing. so she gives her gun to michael. who calls them
animals for taking his son away from him. which took some small amount
of internal logic rerouting.

combination is 18 right 1 left 31 right. this is a nifty mirror of ana
telling michael there was one bullet left in her gun bcak in episode
30 right before she unexpectedly shot shannon at the end of the
episode (for the friday the 13th crime of copulation, right? shannon
hooked up with sayid on her -centric episode, got popped by ana, same
hooked up with sawyer on her -centric, rinse repeat..)

even seeing the way he looked at the gun, could never predict he was
going to just END her like that. thought she might get locked up,
but...jeez. we couldn't stand her for episodes. i warmed up to her
during THE OTHER 48 DAYS, thought she did a fine job on COLLISION and
this episode..and gone. but then when we're stunned, he caps libby!
twice! second shot on purpose, even. now, she might get a pass. i
mean, MAYbe if jack runs in before the title next week and lays his
healing hands on her, there's a chance, but she was definitely hit
twice, low center and left. but i think the episode title must refer
to the two ladies (unless you sub christian for libby).

then, michael opens the door, no one thinks he's shooting henry at
this point but it's sure a surprise he shot himself.

only way this makes any sense: the others flipped michael, told him he
could have walt back but basically has to be a mole and hand them the
entire group of survivors. his willingness to commit murder means he's
writing off any chance for peaceful co-existence with his group.
locke, sawyer, charlie.....looks like michael has passed them all in
the villain department, at least from the point of view of our
castaways. has he met with the Great Man who controls the island? is
the Great Man's plan to recapture henry or smite them out utterly or
what? michael is supposed to exterminate bad ones?

it's going to be a long week. here at 4:08 i've finally punched
through to the hanso foundation. says press 2 to talk to alvar. these
are exciting times, even though i doubt he'll pick up. what if he
does?

stay true, island faithful. i'm afraid the worst is yet to come.

>: 45 ?

?

got to love the title. great episode, i thought. of course eko's my #1
guy and lindelof wrote it so i'm locked in.

nice little coda for ana-lucia, showing up as island rep to point the
way out to eko. enjoyed the picosecond dreamflashes bridging him on
the beach with her and in the swan with yimi, showed him and charlie
burning the plane, his crucifix on the nigerian dirt, the others, that
creepy teddy bear. did anyone hear an irish inflection in yimi's voice
when he said something like 'there are many distractions in this
place, brother', channeling a little desmond? i know i heard it, but
it could certainly just be me. omnes sum uno.

(and, man, those rumblings in the swan before he woke up, ominous stuff)

cut to the four principals hiking through the jungle, locke is on fire
with those crutches in this one, keeps pace with everyone all episode
long. michael's of course let henry go, since we didn't see some lone
gunman speech out of him, i guess we'll have to assume he's had
contact with the others and been flipped, blackmailed, or otherwise
brainwashed. what a bastard. libby puking up blood scared the hell out
of me. moreso michael, i guess.

australian accent in the confessional made me think it was charlie for
a second, that would've been a nice touch. of course eko's fake
passport is rife with #s, he's born on 8/23 and it was issued 4/16/04
and expires eleven yrs later on 4/15. he's got to go confirm a
miracle. i dig the faith-based stuff on this show the most because it
really ties into us, our viewing experience, we (well, some) have ups
and downs with regard to how well at any given time the show is
delivering on the question/answer ratio and it's interesting to see
the characters undergo similar crises of expectation/delivery with
regard to the island.

i think sometime in october i wrote how much fun it would be to get
eko and locke tearing through the jungle with their respective
counterparts. great times. eko has more than enough faith to
compensate for the island's prodigal son.

michael didn't look nearly uncomfortable worrying about libby all
episode long. oh, bastard.

jack rocking the transparent powerplay with sawyer and the guns. the
survivors've just been messing around with each other so much, seems
like they could have gotten much further with the big questions by now
(which, admittedly, few are even asking) if they weren't falling into
these bickering arcs. human nature, baby.

loved eko following the dream, not even questioning an element,
bunking down and waiting for further instruction. so what, this was
2.21. deus ex machina, in which locke and boone first found the
nigerian plane, was 1.20. nice throughline from there to here by way
of Psalm 23 in january. locke had the theresa falls up the stairs
dream that showed him the plane in the first place. but was the island
trying to show him the pearl even then? every time we come back, we
know a bit more, this was the first mention we got of nigeria which
led us of course to eko. who finds the ?, we get great dreams from
both of them this time out.

but here's the, yahaha, question. i thought they were looking for that
big you know ? there in the middle of the map. right? and then it was
so great how they found a hatch, i could almost hear the millions
rising up, threatening to walk if the evening's offering shut down
with another hatch, unearthed but locked. but eko brought his ax.
nice, we've been there and done that, no time to go get more dynamite
from the black rock (or wherever hurley stashed it, i guess, after
rose talked him off the ledge of swan obliteration). but back to my
question. before the new orientation tape, i thought the duo had
located the supposed #7 hatch, yes? one to monitor the other stations.
but the tape clearly states it's station 5, the pearl. the mapmaker
puts that one to the southeast, the hatch to the right of the swan, on
the opposite side of the beachcamp. so, just incorrect surveying? i
mean, the pearl is supposed to be the ? in the middle of the map,
right? but why would that be station 5 of 6? is there not a station
where the map indicates the pearl should be? or is that where locke
and eko wound up? what does anyone else think?

(there are ten ?s in that paragraph, eight used correctly)

so, the pearl. wonder what was on that table locke looked at. there
was a magnifying glass off to the left of a desk containing maybe a
dozen fragments of what appeared to be smashed rocks, also a white
tube or straw. that will certainly mean something later. yes, print
the log, locke!!! it had the following sequence on it:

41602052:17 accepted 41602054:05 accepted 41602055:53 accepted
41602057:41 accepted 41602059:29 accepted etc

check the first two number clusters. if 52 is an hour and 17 is
minutes, followed by 54 in the hours place and 05 for minutes, that's
a difference of, no guess, 108 minutes. meaning this is a log of swan
executions. or something else with a 108-minute interval, could
certainly be something else. got to love the 416 intro.

then that bank of screens. another watchmen reference, wonderful for
the comic-bookers among us. so the only functioning camera is in the
swan? that was what it looked like. initially thought, though, watch
out, we're about to get others onscreen, zeke, bearded or not, maybe
even a great man preaching to his army. instead, static.

(interruption for LOST EXPERIENCE: and for the game, two weird
connections: i already hit that sublymonal site from the hanso
commerical yesterday afternoon and there are six TV screens there with
static, not unlike those found in the pearl [commercial also aired
immediately after they found the screens]. when you hit them all the
specified amount of times [like 4,8,15...] it gives you a password and
link back to the hansofoundation website, when you type it in, it
shows a young girl in a hospital standing with her back to you;
slowly, she turns...really creepy lynch vibe. girl looked very much
like the psychic's miracle daughter, weird to see her in the episode
same day she shows up on the internet)

also, noticed the 1-6 designation didn't match the stations as one
might presume, the swan would've shown up on 3 instead of 4 were that
the case.

marvin! boy, this episode just ran right down the road, gave us a new
hatch, opened the hatch, and jumped right to the freakin orientation
tape! i believe that journey took seventeen episodes the first time. a
wise decision. so, dr candle returns. this time he gives his name as
mark whitman, (or was it wickman? more candle fun?) has a left hand,
and looks considerably younger, even though the copyright date is
given as 1980, same as the swan's tape. that pnuematic tube was sweet.
biggest dangler to me of this week might be, who's on the other end to
receive and (mis)interpret locke's blacklight map sketch? loved
locke's face when marvin/mark said that the materials would come right
to them. o, where do the tubes lead? you would think the ? at the
middle of the island. was that where they were, or not? i think the
alleged pearl had a question mark on it too. gah, moving on...

so, marvin says it's all an experiment. bf skinner-style. the other
members of the dharma team don't know they're being monitored and that
their tasks are bogus, even though they believe their work is of the
'utmost importance' (direct quote from the swan tape, even). man,
they're messing with us so much. does the fact that he's coming out
and saying it mean that it can't be true? or IS true? why should we
trust him NOW? what evidence is there that he's on the level this
time? like his name's really mark. the overall thrust of this one
seems to steer the button back toward important/critical, between the
tape and eko's reaction. we push the button because we believe that we
are meant to. good stuff.

so much to touch on this episode...cool eko flashback. the
"undertaker" he interviewed had a memo on his desk pertaining to an
emaciated patient who's weak and dizzy, quoted as saying "I'd get sick
if I didn't eat more". might mean nothing, but weird little
incongruity. the notepad it appeared on was from a medical center in
honolulu so the gopher was probably just on crack that day. the
miracle girl's psychic daddy was the dude who sent claire on oceanic
815 and made such a big deal about her having to be the one to raise
aaron. this not only appears to debunk that, his whole bit about
gathering information on people, i don't really see how that jibes at
all with what he was saying, unless he was just bullshitting her. he
went from saying she had to raise the kid to supposedly setting her up
with the couple in LA. if he was full of it and trying to get her to
dish the kid, why ever say that she has to raise it? and why make such
a deal about oceanic 815 "it's GOT to be that flight"? doesn't quite
lock up, to me, fact that lindelof wrote this in here is odd. will be
interesting to see how it comes out in the wash.

libby got out the name of her killer for a last word, apparently for
naught. don't think jack or hurley will backtrace that in their heads
in time to get hip to michael. nice orchestral swells at the end. but,
uh, was anyone going to push that button? i thought they were going to
do something crazy at the end, timer was going off, less than a minute
left, right, and no one was moving to push it, not jack or kate or
sawyer or judas. more inconclusive than i'd prefer, not a pretty sort
of ambiguous.

rich rich episode, killer character beats and massive mythology
extension. we're down to next week, what will surely be a huge
cliffhanger and a two-hr beast to take us out on the 24th. can't wait.
but what a long summer it's going to be, especially if they wait until
november (though i wish they would, eight less wks of reruns that
way).

namaste, island faithful, i bow to you. and good luck.

>: 46 THREE MINUTES

another great episode, they really ratcheted things up a bit, yas.
everyone got a nice beat or two, the entire cast except for rose and
bernard. feels like a while since we've seen claire or the koreans.

so...13 DAYS AGO. that freaked me out. first ..ago caption we've been
given and don't think there hasn't been reason to before now. so,
we're right back in The Hunting Party. nice to see the other half of
some of what already went down.

"when they take me out, there's huge rocks with a big HOLE in the
middle by the beach. you'll know when you see."

yes, walt, but what's UP with those ruins? put it on the list of questions.

kick off TODAY with michael burning a piece of paper. what's on it,
d'ya think? the names of the people who just happen to be in the swan
waiting for the, ah, postmortem. again probability stretches past the
bounds of coincidence. i really hope the BIG ANSWER has something to
do with probability manipulation because otherwise having hurley in
there with the other three, the four michael happens to need..well, i
said it's a stretch.

only 11 rifles and pistols total? no, the others took five away from
them. ah, sweet 16.

(we didn't need to see 13 DAYS AGO every time, michael without the
sling on his arm was enough for me)

great takedown of michael by zeke. were these the shots that jack and
locke heard and started running toward in the hunting party? i think
so, zeke says they're right behind them. that's going to be an
interesting episode on the rewatch.

eko's parable about the young english boy and the dead dog in hell was
excellent, love that shot of those hands wiping the blood of the
floor, wringing out the rag.

charlie found some of the vaccine in the palette! man, that is
probably going to be real important in a season or two. lasts 9 days,
216 hrs.

sad how happy everyone is to see michael back, what a coward.

kate digging ana-lucia's grave. didn't see that coming. that little
square she had with jack and sawyer sure took an odd turn.

michael was gagged in the clearing the entire time! that's nuts, of
course, i just believed zeke when he said he had no idea where michael
was. and alex is still worried about claire. that was the one snafu,
zeke was supposed to call out to alex by name to bring out kate and he
did not (we never saw her face, of course, because she didn't wind up
bringing her out, but he definitely called her name)

everybody have an irish drink for ana and libby. 'we got caught in a
net'. classic.

i didn't fully process this line from sawyer last night (after being
referred to as 'him') re: sayid coming along. 'yeah, well HIM says
even though pippi longstocking and the damn grape ape'd make ideal
candidates for the dirty dozen, we might wanna bring the red beret.'
so. many nicknames.

thought eko was about to have an electromagnetic revelation but that
damn button went off. man, he just completely switched gears, down
with the church, up with the button. and charlie with no purpose.

finally, we get to see the others' camp. or at least their fake camp.
new dharma logo with a square in the bagua. that one dude who took
michael's blood freaked me out, his parting line 'see you in the funny
pages' is the salutation used by joe quesada, EIC of marvel comics
(who has tapped both lindelof and grillo-marxiuch [sic] to write
projects).

her name is miss clue? did i hear that right? what's the story here?
zeke seems deferential to her, like she outranks him. 'did walt ever
appear in a place he wasn't supposed to be?' well, ask the dead
blonde, she'll tell you all about it.

(i really didn't need all the TODAY/AGO titling, the shifts were obvious enough)

great how sayid read michael, even michael seems to sense it. we know
the torturer can see through anything.

did the island send vincent to charlie with the statues? great scene,
him hurling the virgins mary into the ocean. and THERE'S locke, took
him a while to crutch his way back home. two appearances and not a
word said.

'i screwed her.' james ford wins again! him realizing that jack was
the closest thing he has to a friend puts a lump in your throat before
the lock and load 'at least we get to kill somebody' for the break.
live, sawyer.

miss clue has big, freaky eyes. why can't THEY go get fake henry back?
why can't they grab the four? i don't think our people have upgraded
anything to the point that they pose a challenge to the others. is it
the swan? is it location? ethan seems to have been the only person to
deal directly with them and he was a mole. is the fact that they're
over by the swan in the middle of all that cerberus activity an issue
for the northern others, who were camped much closer to where the tail
landed?

walt! you look a year older! wait, you are. this brings up an
interesting point, something's going to have to happen with him, we
can't have him around in a couple years with hair on his chest and
what not unless we get a time jump forward, everybody else still looks
like they could've crashed three months ago, but the kid is about to
hit puberty. they make him take tests, no surprise there. 'do you want
me to put you in the room again?' is disturbing in its vagueness.

how can michael be so stupid to believe them and betray his fellow
survivors? loved the 'who's james ford?', was already wondering if the
list said that or sawyer. she spells jack's name shephard, it's
usually shepherd, yes? go, minutiae.

and everyone gathers for the funeral. they really should have shown
rose and bernard here, they were fellow tailenders and then every
character would've been shown, a rarity. locke takes out the big knife
and gets up, healed by the island. heading where? i didn't get the
vibe that it was anywhere close. is he pulling a sayid and heading up
the beach? strange development. he looked out on the ocean first,
didn't look like he saw what was coming. but looked like he was
leaving the group.

'and here we are again.'

so, sayid wants to use michael to create an advantage. tense tense.

you knew hurley was going to change his mind to go with michael
mid-eulogy. and everything falls into place. i was sure ready for the
strings to swell for the last shot of michael, throw in some ominous
low-register over that lone cello and out. but...

'BOAT!'

adrenaline surge. who's this? smart money is on our favorite wild-eyed
irishman, we know he had something docked on the island and that
vessel looks like the kind of thing one might use to race around the
world. did it slip loose, is he even on it? below decks? is it even
desmond or anything to do with the dharma initiative/others at all? or
an entirely new wrinkle?

well, a great deal will undoubtedly take place next wednesday. it
certainly looked like everything was a lock for some sayid army
shadowing michael's gang of four, now who even knows if that
expedition will take place? it was crazy enough to drop those two
ladies from the cast, but there's no reason to assume that everyone
isn't fair game again next week. remember, last year they: blew up
artz before the title, left us with raft burning, walt abducted out of
nowhere, sawyer shot into the ocean and jin diving after him, and
finally blew up the hatch with desmond staying in shape and quietly
making his own kind of music below. people were furious.

i can't wait to see what will happen next.

namaste, island faithful. and good luck.

>: 47 LIVE TOGETHER, DIE ALONE

(written upon second viewing on the early morning of may 25th, distributed at 4:23 AM)

hyperbole fails me.

open with pandemonium, the raft's arrived. the three hosses swim out.
'maybe it's a trap,' says hurley off-camera. the camera's on
michael.desmond's listening to opera, bombed. hilarious opening,
desmond breaks down laughing when he sees jack, realizes where, of
course, he's drifted.

(in a sailboat named libby)

in torchlight, desmond tells jack this is all that's left. ('we're
stuck in a bloody snow-globe' is a direct reference to the series
finale of st elsewhere, in which the entire show turns out to be the
brilliant imaginative construct of an autistic patient in a different
hospital who, in the final scene of the final episode, is considering
a snow-globe the camera pans out of at the end, the stage for the
entire drama. lindelof has explicitly stated that LOST will not
resolve with a similar manuever, coining the 'snow-globe' phrase at
the time)

seeing clancy brown in the credits is better than great news.

desmond:'you still pushing it?'
jack:'yeah, we're still pushing it.'

and widmore picks desmond up. charles, not arthur, presumably the
magnate behind the corporation of the same name (sign in london, sun's
pregnancy test, logo on henry gale's balloon, family in BADTWIN)
desmond is in love with penny widmore. which appears to be the biggest
deal of all.

sayid wants to make more black smoke, it's finale time again. ominous.

eko's so happy to see john. now it's don't push the button. and eko
replies with the locke catchphrase do not tell me what to do and worst
of all LOCKE DOESN'T CATCH IT, obvious beatdown ensues, grim tidings
this is happening right now, how the hell did we already get here?

and michael sets off with the listed four.jack gives him a look, a
tradition he upholds all episode. quite a bit before the title.

was so shocked to see libby, hard to pick up
her: it's just four bucks
him: don't suppose you have forty-two thousand more of those, do you?
so she gives it to him 'i thank you, elizabeth, and i shall win this
race for love.'

(libby continues to be very interesting, wife of david, are they going
to keep integrating her or was that it?)

the backend of 'caught in a net' was good.

bird? what was up with that? upon review, it does sound like the bird
says hurley, but you have to have the suggestion to hear it. one
wonders about crapped gold off-screen. michael's not really pulling
off the poker face with the unloaded clip there.

locke, crying like a bitch. it has to be said. bad thinking
throughout, wasted potential.

choice desmond interaction with aaron and claire.

can't believe they went and tucked something behind the first
flashback of the season, our old friend the tour de stade. i guess
this might be the most important exchange of the episode, as it turns
out:

desmond:how'd you find me?
pen widmore:i have a lot of money, desmond. enough money and
determination, you can find anyone.

she asks him about his cherished dickens our mutual friend(which,
incidentally, appears to closely resemble the plot threads of BADTWIN
and brothah hume's pickle with the widmore clan, inheritances and
betrayal and romance etc, except it's dickens's last, the lines are
blurred, the good guys aren't so pure and the villains are
sympathetic) (and also typed that into amazon and notlying the fourth
hit was an excerpt from page 108 of the correct text, weird stuff, i
say) but he hasn't even read the note, has to win the race.

you have to laugh at 'ah have to get mah honor back' followed by
desmond chugging a bottle of dharma wine in the torchlight. only
response to john locke saying 'let's see what happens if the button
doesn't get pushed.' is not printable.

gathering firewood with michael, jack quotes himself from his big
speech from the pilot, big episode title. i might've gone with 'failsafe'.

sayid's 'i don't know what is more disquieting, the fact that the rest
of the statue is missing or the fact that it only has four toes.' with
accompanying image is just one of the greatest things ever. i was
thinking of those statues from lord of the rings but then applying the
numbers...

they start messing with eko with 101 minutes left. fools. so, desmond
is hotwiring lockdowns. already, we're thinking about the map. locke
saying he's more sure about this than anything in his entire life is
obviously the kiss of death on the whole fiasco and man eko what are
you doing there? i did not want things to go this way, by any stretch
of the imagination. waited forever for desmond and now it's him and
locke vs. eko, awful.

and clancy brown returns! with the same question, are you him? what
desmond asks locke later, is him the great man? argh. unbelieveable
that he turns out to be kelvin. brother justin in a DI uniform is not
easy for me to take. so, rezinsky, kelvin's old partner, made the
orientation tape edits (and squirreled them away in other hatches?)
the whole vaccine question is killing me, fake or not? what did you
think about the button?

sawyer's DI as aliens theory, goodtimes.

tense times with michael, though. was sure hurley was going to just
turn him red or sawyer was going to cap him.

nice how the big elizabeth ambush plan falls apart as simple as kate
spotting a tail and firing miles away from sayid and the fake village
trap. and then all i care about for most of the back half of the
episode is not that huge potential conflict but the battle for the
swan, eko bringing back the dynamite (catherine and i drank blackstone
red wine in honor of the pirate ship from the last finale).

the sight of kelvin feeling out that invisible map...so his partner is
the principal force behind the map? how deep the rabbit hole goes.
here's to a rezinsky flashback in season six.

if you weren't already feeling a luthor vs. superman vibe between eko
and locke (i was), eko pulling that trick with charlie's belt and the
electromagnetism sealed the deal. actually, it was more batman, but
why split hairs? it is good vs. evil, though, and we have no doubt
that eko is on the side of good.

'open the door and i will forgive you'

so kelvin has a failsafe. that's more than a new wrinkle. to me, at
this point, engaging the failsafe means alerting the hanso
foundation/dharma initiative and deactivating the entire swan
situation. the incident was an electromagnetic leak and the
button-pushing tells the reactor how to dispense the charge for the
next 70stech duration, a measly 108 minutes. that's one answer for the
numbers. certainly not the only one.

if locke doesn't call eko a friend, i don't know how i can call him one.

i can't take the levels of this. locke, locked up with desmond,
preaching about what a fool he was how he killed boone because boone
was foolish enough to believe locke knew what he was talking about.
yes, let's not push the button. and we finally get the return pulse
from locke banging on the hatch door and getting that light at the end
of deus ex machina. i remember at the time, i hoped he'd brokered a
deal with the aliens, just after the episode ended.

fake village, fake hatch. few can match sayid for one-man scene tension.

and the hunting party finds all the pneumatic tubes, all but
guaranteeing that the pearl orienatation tape is as bogus it claims
the swan's is. (but 'of the utmost importance' was a cruel trick,
marvin)

at the 21-minute mark, desmond gets the first glimmer that locke's an idiot.

nice sand dunes, desmond and kelvin. island's got everything. for
being a spook, kelvin went down real easy. and that was apparently
sept 22 04. desmond crashed the plane. i have to say here that i
called buttoncrash the moment jack crept into the buckminster geodesic
dome in episode 3 this season. it must drive lindelof bananas that 04
had to be a leap year. it sure bothers me.

you know, best flashback ever, desmond's system failure into his
gleaning 922044:16 off the log locke printed up from the pearl. 'i
think i crashed your plane.' wonderful.

how are eko and charlie? i wonder. it's been a while now, two
commercial breaks, even. lots of fire.

so, the people on the dock with the gagged four seem to be basically
the crew that waltknapped us about this time last year. i definitely
recognize the older chick who threw the dynamite on the raft,
everybody thought she was alex at the time. so zeke is really tom. and
miss clue, sounds like tom says 'thanks for telling her my first name,
P' but it's hard to tell, thought it was B live.

and fake henry showed up and definitely appeared to be the leader of
this faction. (can't decide now if he was speaking of himself in the
third person, about the Great Man) or at least the highest up we've
seen. henry bowed to jack, little implied namaste with his hello
again.

oh, here's charlie, well he's going deaf from the explosion, or at
least damaged. finding eko right as the timer hits the four-minute
mark and brings back our old friend, the buzzer.

with 3:11 left, locke smashes the computer and ends the debate between
himself and desmond. his opponent responds with 'you killed us, you
killed us all.' this concludes with the crumpling of the
much-cheriched timer and locke admitting that he was wrong to the holy
man.

eko saved charlie. nothing ambiguous about that.

desmond turning that dharma key in the failsafe. man, i have to
confess i thought it was over here, kids. they were really just going
to drop the matrix fake reality, this isn't an island trick right
here, now see where you are for the next four seasons! but no. even
better, that would've been an established trick.

bernard seeing the hatch door swirling down and saving claire is a
direct parallel to jack doing same with her and hurley and the turbine
scant minutes into this mindsuck. that quaratine door. eko. locke and
desmond. i can't even bear to speculate.

the leader (henry gale) saying 'we got more than we bargained for when
walt joined us, so i suppose this is what's best' is the other
most-ominous line in this darkest of nights.

and then the last looks. jack to michael, walt unable to stop turning
around, kate with the one-blink to jack, noted by sawyer, can't
believe we're about to go with the others through the love triangle's
POV.

and then claire and charlie's romance somehow survives the season and
we cut to some italian guys (?) in some (ant)arctic waste. they missed
the oceanic 815 anamoly but they call penny widmore over the result of
this battle between eko and locke. she's found desmond.

i love that we're going to get to see the inner workings of the others
via the triangle while at the same time that as the Big Question has
been pre-empted by What's going on with these Widmores and Hansos and
Degroots?

i'm horrified about eko and locke. i guess i shouldn't eulogize
anybody before we've seen the body but the displaced quarantine door
is quite a bad sign, i think it's supposed to be a 45-minute walk from
the beach. if those two went down in that one swoop and the show's
just going to keep barreling forward, well, i guess i'll still keep
saying it's the best show. but it hurts more.

goodnight, sweet island faithful.

8/15 rewatch update: caught two things at the tail end this time, with the dudes monitoring in the blizzard station.

1) they're playing chess then the alarm goes off and they say O hell we missed it again. the screen displays ELECTROMAGNETIC ANOMALY 7418880. well, sure there're a 4 and three 8s in there, but what else? factor it, boys and girls. i'll give you a hint, start with 4....

(so, yeah, they're monitoring the EM pulses the swan was controlling)(or not controlling)

2) they're listening to some instrumental music, almost musak really. i had to crank it up to place it but it's.....mama cass! desmond's favorite from the first two minutes of the season. brilliant closure and arcing and looping back and all those things, i tell you between

-bernard saving claire from the falling quarantine hatchdoor, the other side of which drove america mad in season 1 --> jack saving same and hurley from the turbine in the series premiere

-the return of the black smoke and walt getting back on the boat that took him away in the 1st season finale, along with the return of a giant bird attacking hurley, just like it did in the same episode, along with the disastrous return of the black rock's dynamite.

-cass's 'make your own kind of musak' at the tail end --> to desmond's workout montage in the 2nd season premiere, along with the crucial desmond/pen meeting embedded right before jack's tour de stade

if plotstreams were coordinate-points in fractal art this would be the most beautiful shape i've ever seen. just the construction of it. i've never encountered a work of art that did a better job of rewarding scrutiny. i mean, i watched ep29 this wkend, when jin and eko see the others' feet and the soscary teddy bear? fourth person that walks by, i recognize his brown pants, chinos i wanna call em, freaking (not) henry gale. walking by. nine episodes before we meet him. i tell you, this thing if poetry of the highest order.

but i could go on all night.

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a repository for reviews of LOST, television show aired on ABC that is arguably a work of fiction. spoilers will fly.