>: 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.