Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

lol is he really called ed mars? that's a character in 'the big sleep'.

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/lostpedia/images/thumb/7/73/6x01_SmokeyGoHome.jpg/180px-6x01_SmokeyGoHome.jpg

btw can I say how flat-out AWESOME it is to see Terry O'Quinn back in terrifying "Stepfather" mode again?

animated gif or it didnt happen

so are there 4 concurrent Lockes now?

MIB locke
smokey locke
corpse locke
wheelchair locke
?

that actually is animated.

don't think he's ever made that face in the show before. THE RANGE.

MIB locke

men in black locke?

There are 3 Lockes. There is the corpse on the beach, the smoke monster impersonating him and the dude in the parallel timeline who never went to the island.

altho wheelchair Locke is in 2004

if Smokey usually emanates from the temple, how does that square with UnLocke's ability to become it? 2 concurrent smokemonsters?

the kimmel interview suggests man in black and smokey are different dudes.

"i'm sorry you had to see me like that" tho

maybe smokey and MIB/Essau tag teamed?

What about the "the bomb went off = Hurley is the luckiest man alive" thing?

i can't really remember but could be something to do with the numbers??
weren't they transmitted over radio because they were written on the hatch because they are the equations to save the world because the horse said it would be so
maybe if the bomb went off somehow hurley didn't use those numbers to play the lottery? gah i can't remember any more... who cares?

loved the premiere tho. i'm along for the ride!

i'm slightly disappointed with the alternate universe plot. it always bugs me when these concepts are used on such a macroscopic scale.
if an alternate universe is created every time someone changes their mind then there are an infinity of universes created every second - somehow the idea that reality forks around some
central event just seems an over-simplification verging on complete misunderstanding.

still i have faith the writers will do something fun with it - i'm hoping that they are not in fact alternate realities and some crazy time jumping shit will explain it :D

loved the contrast between the new reality similar to the earlier seasons of the show (a set of characters with their lives overlapping) and the totally batshit insane indiana jones antics on the island. bravo

I think Hurley being unlucky is due to Widmore/Linus machinations to get him to the island perhaps? and with the bomb going off, no one's doing that anymore?

Hurley is somehow aligned with a certain string of events in both realities, with those events being chaotic/negative in the 815er one (lottery winner, insane, numbers line up with island numbers, horrible misfortune) and chaotic/positive in the "fixed" timeline (still wins lottery, luckiest guy, seems to have his shit together).

No matter what happens with Hurley, his love for fried chicken will always be.

"What did you do to become so successful?"

"I won the lottery"

Am looking forward to Hurley's epic legal battle with the Charles Widmore-owned Outback franchise.

good catch lostpedia, i missed this:

Flashsideways timeline: Sun & Jin are not married. Sun is called Ms. Paik, not Mrs. Kwon, by the customs officer at LAX. Neither Jin or Sun are wearing wedding rings.

― jergins, Wednesday, February 3, 2010 1:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Totally caught this, *kisses own bicep*

Traveling under different names cuz they're hiding from her father? So they can have a new life?
(Sorry if someone suggested that already--had to wait a day to see this and I read through the whole thread pretty quickly)

To confuse things further about whether Sun & Jin married in the alt-timeline. The producers admitted that they fucked up from the beginning by giving Sun Jin's last name, since Korean women do not adopt their husbands' last names. Maybe in the alt-time line Lost hired more culturally sensitive fact checkers.

― President Keyes, Thursday, February 4, 2010 6:32 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Haaaa

Those people at Newsweek go a long way towards explaining the state of journalism in America. Blue shirt dude was so punchable I almost broke my screen.

how many times did you punch the screen?

unlocke does say "sorry you had to see me like that" which kinda suggests him and smokey are the exact same dude. also not sure if smokey coming from the temple is in any way a fact as such. and even if it is who says he didn't come from there and travel to the statue, he did enter via the door!

Yeah what threw me off was that UnLocke disappeared and then smokey entered from outside and I'm kinda wondering what UnLocke's word is worth on that one--more manipulation or I dunno what. He seemed surprised in last season's finale when Ben told him what went down between him in his meeting w/ smokey under the temple.

I sort of assumed that was MIB just acting shocked to fool them as he was believed to be Locke. Just cos appearing as Alex seems to be his modus operandi. what is weird tho is how ben was able to summon smokey before too...

I think it was in his interest back then for Ben to think that he, as Island Leader, was a guy to follow, rather than some crazy smoke monster. Now the cat's out of the bag.

(Maybe part of what makes all these Locke-exits-smokey-enters scenes happen is that they're saving the expensive MIB-turns-into-smokey CGI shots for later in the season.)

Looks as if he's been trapped by some sort of Jacob mojo and has to come when the others call, hangs out in the basement of the Temple Others, etc. Now the only thing he has to worry about is circles of ash and how the heck to get off the island. Was MIB once a person, who became sort of a living electromagnetic field? Bullets dent when they hit him.

Loved Montand's copy of Kierkegaard

Long post alert...

I agree that it's pretty bullshit to describe Lost as primarily character-driven. OK, their stories were interesting in Seasons 1 and 2 but as mentioned above, on the whole they're pretty one-dimensional and/or impulsive. The better characters are those that kind of admit this - Hurley, Sawyer, etc.

As an example, much as I love Sayid he's mainly great because he's had a gruesome backstory and can do neckbreakdancing. The only thing I know about his character is that he loves Nadia, he's good with electronics and at one point cared about thinking strategically about their situation on the island, and that sometimes he's sorry for what he's done (although still might carry on doing it). So if I think about him in other situations, where these factors aren't relevant as motivations, I don't really know anything about him. Also him and Shannon was plain weird.

Jack basically has no character apart from being confused/conflicted quite a lot of the time, and only "develops" when he does a 180-degree change of heart about the island. I don't really care about his daddy issues. Same with Kate, she's never really shown any interest in finding out how they travelled through time or anything. I'm not saying they don't have touching moments in their backstories, or that their actions can't be explained, I just think there's a lack of proper self-examination with them. In some ways I guess I like that Jack's the lead male despite having no exciting characteristics, but everything he does just annoys me.

That said, I'm sure the writers aren't unaware of this, as they led us up the garden path a bit with Locke and then showed quite clearly that he was "nothing special". I hated him as a character around season 3, when he was just acting on blind faith, but now he's come the distance I like what they did with him. (Or maybe... he was Smokey all along!)

I don't mind that much about all this, as I care a lot more about the story than watching a character-study. I think the parallel time line thing was a pretty smart answer to the question of whether they were going to reset or not. And is kind of par for the course with any time-travel stuff. I'm actually wondering whether this season will end up with more parallel timelines, as the characters are driven to take desperate measures to reset everything in each one. (This would be pretty unsatisfying, though).

I can suspend my disbelief happily with time travel storylines, and to start off with I appreciated that they were taking a clear stance on "whatever happened, happened" as this simplifies an already overcomplicated plot quite significantly (as opposed to having multiple possible future changes with every tiny action they do in the past).
What I don't like is that it all kind of falls down with a few sub-Dr-Who deus ex machina crap pivotal moments, particularly the disappearing off the plane into different timelines thing. As mentioned upthread, the show suffers from trying to be all things to all people and ending up in a bit of a mess.

I think in the S5 finale, when Miles is all "ermm... you guys didn't consider that the bomb might be what causes your plane-crash timeline to happen?" is pretty significant - no-one does really consider that, although everything else so far that they've tinkered with has turned out to be "whatever happened, happened". The only different here is that you're throwing a bigger rock into the stream of time, to use Faraday's analogy. What counts as big enough?

Anyway... in conclusion, the above mentioned facts have led me to believe that I enjoyed the first eps of s6 and have high hopes for this season!

Jack basically has no character apart from being confused/conflicted quite a lot of the time, and only "develops" when he does a 180-degree change of heart about the island. I don't really care about his daddy issues

IOW, because you don't care about the biggest factor that drives Jack's character, he doesn't have much of one.

True, I guess, but I'm not sure that his daddy issues can be said to drive everything. And if they do, well, that's a great example of a one-dimensional character right there.

Backpedalling a bit, maybe, but Jack does have some anti-hero characteristics which could be interesting in the situations he's put in. I think the show has given a lot of time to flashbacks etc that just add nothing to his character (tattoo episode as a classic eg) or have him make others act on impulse/ doesn't worry about thinking through the full implications of what he does, so I kind of get the impression that there's nothing there to "get".

I always saw Jack's character a being antiheroic in that his 'heroic' or 'saving' actions are unconsciously self-serving. Of course this isn't lost on us, the audience, or the characters - Sawyer beats him up in S5 finale because he sees Jack is willing to jeopardize everyone to avoid some painful emotions. This would have worked better as a character arc if Jack had had some sort of growth over time, but he's exactly the same at the end of S5 as he is in S1, he's just outwardly calmer and more resigned.

Agreed, and the S5 finale example is classic imo, because it's almost psychopathic - Jack didn't understand or really try to understand what he was doing when bombing the island even though it's probably the biggest jeopardy you can put people in! Just "oh Faraday seemed to think this would work, I'm the leader so let's give it a try". Yes sheer desperation was a motivator, or belief that the island would sort it all out, but I still don't really buy whether Jack believes that, or what he believes, really.

I hadn't thought of Jack as a psychopath, but you're right, he's really close! I was trying to get something out of his 'nothing's irreversible' comment to Locke in the alt, I'm not sure if the writers are telegraphing that he's exactly the same, or that he's changed somewhat in the alt. You could take that comment either way.

I have to say though that setting him up as the hero in the pilot, only to have the audience and characters realize that he may be insanely self-absorbed or deluded, is a pretty neat idea. I know they have to 'redeem' him in some way, but we're kinda running out of time here ...

This is why Kate and Jack belong together! They're both psychopaths with tunnel vision! Seriously. I think the endgame will have these ideas heavily in mind. Whether the characters will be effectively redeemed... not so sure about that. (Or if the writers even want to.)

The "Nothing's irreversible" line struck me as a geniunely hopeful, compassionate moment - as opposed to his constant need to be everybody's savior in the original timeline - I think Jack was supposed to be genuinely changed in that world.

Maybe the missing coffin telegraphs the absence of daddy issues/tormented selfloathing in the altJack.

Hmm, not a bad observation!

I don't think Kate is psycho. She is certainly sociopathic, though; it is very interesting contrasting her as escaped fugitive to her as island heroine; almost as if the island allowed her to finally integrate into a society.

I just think it gave her an opportunity to run away from something every half hour.

Hmm, not a bad observation!

Thanks! ... which makes me wonder what the missing knives signifies, if anything?

I just think it gave her an opportunity to run away from something every half hour.

Eh, not really; remember, she's the one who integrated back into society and had a normal life after they were rescued.

(also, when they got back Jack walked out on her, not her on him)

xpost I like the potential significance of the missing items!

Tbf also a lot of my dislike for Jack's character is due to the fact that he was the 'eyes of the viewer' to start off with yet seemed to stand in the way of us getting any answers, by not asking the right questions or whatever. Which is a dumb reason admittedly.

Kate's kind of a weird one, I'm not sure what to think about her. She couldn't settle down to taco tuesday or w/evs when she was on the run (pre-crash) yet seemed to take to being a mother and playing house with Jack and really didn't want to go back to the island - doing it for what appears to be a proper, moral reason (to find Claire iirc).

so maybe she has changed/grown up, is what I mean.

Jack's character arc is very similar to Locke's in that they both start out very convinced in what they know and the island then throws body blow after body blow after body blow at them to show them how absolutely, 100% wrong they are. Both are total control freaks who are attempting to sieze control of their own destinies, but the more they try to do so, the more the rug gets pulled out from underneath them and options get taken away, leading them both to decisions that are increasingly arbitrary and erratic. The apotheosis of this for Locke is his death; we'll see what is in store for Jack this season but starting off with accidentally killing your main rival's wife isn't a good harbinger.

Wouldn't you say that Locke was trying to cede control, though? As in, he wanted to be told what to do?

"Don't tell me what I can or can't do!" I'm not sure he wanted to be a puppet, though it was indeed his fate - up until the very end he did believe everything he was doing was his own choice, even if it was basically the orders of "Jacob", he believed in the "island".