Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

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".

^^^ basically my opinion; the fact that he was taking orders doesn't negate the fact that he chose to take orders and felt like he was gaining agency and control with that decision

Def. plays into the choice/destiny themes of the initial Jacob/MIB convo

Kinda paradoxical, yeah - feeling like you're taking control by taking orders

I guess I'm overthinking this - Locke's main topic for seasons was 'this is what I/we/Jack are meant to do', of course

Yeah, Locke's character arc is defined by his ongoing struggle to figure out how where he belonged and what he was supposed to be doing. He finally thought he found that in Jacob and the island, only to have Ben take it away from him.

Ben's got a similar thing going on here, too; you could look at his character arc as basically being the guy who consistently makes exactly the wrong decision and slowly becomes a bitter, twisted man because of it.

I like Arntz's Frank Grimesean character arc.

is christian also mib/smokey? because we saw christian off island once, in season four, when jack briefly returned to being a successful normal doctor. though maybe jack was hallucinating ala hurley, which would fit neatly with his subsequent drug abuse.

re the absence of christian's body in the new timeline, there's still the fact that jack scheduled the funeral services two hours after his flight was scheduled to land, which suggests a guy who's desperate to get something off his back. though maybe in the alt timeline jack's less addled with daddy issues and more just struggling with plain ol grief.

has anyone given thought to the significance of john's successful completion of his walkabout? for a guy who thought the walkabout was going to completely turn his life around, john seemed pretty... ordinary. i don't mean ordinary by john locke standards, i mean he behaved like someone who had just had a rather pleasant vacation. that + the absence of knives suggests that maybe john doesn't struggle with self identity and destiny in this universe? hell, the island's underwater, presumably he doesn't have any business there.

has anyone given thought to the significance of john's successful completion of his walkabout?

He was lying about going on the walkabout. Remember that if he's gone, he never would have been back at the airport to get on that flight.

touche

dude seems pretty mellow for a guy who got kicked off a walkabout. not liking the idea of new locke who lies about his vacations.

Ben's got a similar thing going on here, too; you could look at his character arc as basically being the guy who consistently makes exactly the wrong decision and slowly becomes a bitter, twisted man because of it.

I love the fact that despite his world and reason to live crumbling around him he still feels compelled to lie constantly

I wonder what the limits are to MIB's acquisition of memories. He knows what the person he's imitating thought, and the scene with Eko makes me think he can 'scan' people, but what prevents him from knowing, say, what Dogen knows?

Speaking of Dogen (from Lostpedia): 'Dogen is a very important Zen Buddhism master from the 1200s who is often quoted in Soto Zen works today. He has a preference for Japanese even though most of his contemporaries used Chinese. He built a temple. Like other Zen monks, he's received 'Dharma transmission.' This Dogan/Dogen is the same guy from 1250 Japan and has been on the island since then.'

jack scheduled the funeral services two hours after his flight was scheduled to land

probably the dumbest thing any character has done in the show ever. well done jack didn't think random kate decision could be topped.

the absence of knives suggests that maybe john doesn't struggle with self identity and destiny in this universe?

I thought the alt-timeline Locke seemed much less like angry, flashback Locke and more like SSN 1 island mystic Locke. Perhaps he found peace in some way (and found a handicapped walkabout to go on that started a couple weeks earlier.)

Wheelabout

yeah interested to know how Locke was actually able to do the walkabout

also re Smokey coming into the statue room presumably via the front door...surely Richard and co. outside would've seen this?

yeah interested to know how Locke was actually able to do the walkabout

http://blog.wasteindustrysite.com/the_heap/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/large_atv.jpg

I thought that "nothing is irreversible" line, while telling us something contrasting about alt-Jack, was also a meaningful line about the episode as a whole and everything we had seen in the last two hours. Interesting that immediately afterward, Sayid seemed to rise from the dead. But it's also a strangely apt thing for his character to be saying after landing in LAX, instead of, you know, crashing.

I thought Locke's "they didn't lose your dad They only lost his body" was another significant line. Four major characters have recently died, including the guy speaking the line. Maybe it only foreshadows this sayid business. Maybe something more.

re Smokey coming into the statue room presumably via the front door...surely Richard and co. outside would've seen this?

Er, eh? Smokey = fakelocke. He didn't come in through the front door, he was already in there.

well it came into the room. perhaps it materialised in the corridor or perhaps it came from the temple where it was said to have 'lived' iirc.

or out of the ground sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-1qzelSWpE

watched e01 and e02 last night :D

on the audio podcast D & C said Man in Locke is definitely the Smoke Monster.

spoiler alert: this whole things about a time traveling Vanagon that speeds across the folds of the universe delivering refreshing beer, chains for pulling things out of bad places, and delivering suspiciously excellent traction in a muddy, leafy tropical environment.

Stuff I got out of the latest D&C podcast (haven't finished it):

The alt-reality isn't alternative to anything, or rather it's just as legit as the island reality. At some point the two lines will converge. Locke is lying about having gone on the walkabout. Due to the island being sunk/bomb resetting in the alt, many changes in the narrative occur but the archetypes of the characters haven't changed (D makes a 'nature vs nurture' argument).

UK peoples*: Come subscribe to the free Lost Initiative video podcast that I help produce for Sky1?

Auto-iTunes-opening link:

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Started listening to the D/C podcast - man they are just SO cheesy in their pretending to be hypotethical viewers. Does anyone just transcribe these things?

Lostpedia occasionally does podcast transcriptions here. I'd check back in a couple days.

thx dood

"That's what happens when you read Kierkegaard. You risk losing your arm."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGdJqaa3ag

SEX IN CAGES!

http://www.movieline.com/2010/02/lost-premiere-hows-that-flash-sideways-working-out-for-our-castaways.php?page=all

Okay just watched the first couple. Awesome. Now to read the entire thread before trying to crystallise thoughts.

I had figured Locke was lying about the walkabout until I read this thread and everyone assumed he had somehow done it. The implication to me was that although others had changed (Hurley lucky etc) Locke was still that old fantasist dreamer/loser. Who couldn't even use the power in his own legs for christ's sake, absolute waster.

Of course Locke was lying about the Walkabout! It's a pride thing with him. Boone didn't know he couldn't walk.

I don't think Sayid is any more "vitally important" than Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, Sun and anyone else that Jacob touched up in the last episode of S5. They've all got their parts to play, they were all on the list, it's just that Sayid was the only one whose life was in danger.

I reckon that's real Sayid there - it's possible that's exactly what the Temple Others thought was going to happen, apart from the water colour thing. Maybe it was Jacob's enemy that revived him, but it doesn't seem to be a Locke thing (mostly because Jacob's enemy is parading round as Locke/Smokey on the other side of the Island at exactly the same time.

Also lol @ Sayid being saved by the same thing that saved Ben after Sayid tried to kill him. When Richard took young Ben to the temple he warned that he'd never be the same, the same thing might be the case with Sayid. I really like the idea of Sayid and Ben somehow being THE SAME. They've been working up to a really bitter, angry face-off between those two characters for the last couple of seasons, I really hope we get to see it.

also Hurley is lucky instead of unlucky, so at least some of their lives before getting on the plane are different here.

If the alternate world island is underwater then there is nothing to transmit the numbers to that asylum dude, and no way for him to give them to Hurley. He won the lottery using just any numbers, presumably?

and i still haven't received an answer why desmond is on the plane?

Young Widmore would have been on the Island when the bomb blew/it sunk/whatever. So Desmond's life would have turned out completely differently - no Penny for one thing, and he'd never have ended up on the Island. He and Jack didn't recognise one another from the stadium either - not immediately in the way they did in the Hatch in S2. Don't think we'll find out what happened to Widmore etc until alternate timeline Faraday turns up, as he surely will do?

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.

This makes me think that in the alternate timeline the events where Jacob went round touching them up didn't actually happen. I'm wondering whether alternate Locke ever fell out of a building or something else happened altogether. Also where are Locke's knives? It's possible they all lost something on the plane?

Also, really hoping for an episode where Sawyer actually does con Hurley out of several million dollars.

As far as well-drawn characters go - Ben > Desmond > Hurley > Sawyer > Locke > Sayid > Jack > Kate > Jin >>>>>> Sun.

It really annoyed me that Sun just left her baby behind and doesn't appear to care.

If you put Jin forward a few notches a Ben back a few, that is basically my ranking of favorite characters on the show, too.