Lost Season 6 - RE: LA X

what about when ben "activates" the smoke monster (or was that what you were talking about)? and referring to it as the temple's security system?

This would probably even be cheaper than the episode where Sun had her baby and they were showing Jin flashbacks which they were implying were contemporaneous. Worse because it would be more consequential.

― Mister Jim, Saturday, February 13, 2010 3:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that was an awesome episode

I still think the scene where Ben activates the Smoke monster indicates that he did not know that it was Jacob's enemy (he knew next to nothing about Jacob) and Smokey was exploiting Richard's keeping-of-stuff from Ben to turn him to its side--though the writers ended up taking a slightly different path.

This would probably even be cheaper than the episode where Sun had her baby and they were showing Jin flashbacks which they were implying were contemporaneous. Worse because it would be more consequential.

― Mister Jim, Saturday, February 13, 2010 3:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that was an awesome episode

If that was an awesome episode (can't remember what else happened), it wasn't cause of anything that happened in the scenes involving Jin and Sun. The Jin flashbacks are completely pointless, but to for the fact that they play with people's expectations. They really don't accomplish anything else but kill time. And even the Sun scenes are kind of boring, especially on rewatch. Sun having a baby isn't really that compelling, at least not to me.

Also, President Keyes, I guess I agree that it's not necessarily inconsistent if Smokey is trying to manipulate Ben by exploiting his ignorance, but it makes you wonder how Ben knew how to summon the smoke monster in the first place and why he thought it was the temple security system, which after the last episode seems completely crazy.

I think Jacob had Smokey under control somehow ("do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?"), hence Ben being able to summon it earlier. But now that Jacob bit it, Smokey is no longer controlled, so the Temple dudes are running scared.

if you can't stand bait and switch moves that deliberately play with your expectations, or emotionally manipulative stories that don't contribute much to the big picture, i don't know you lasted into season 4 to even see that episode.

If that was an awesome episode (can't remember what else happened), it wasn't cause of anything that happened in the scenes involving Jin and Sun.

I dunno, it did a nice job of contrasting between two periods of Sun and Jin being apart from each other: one because of his work, and the other because she thought he was dead. To me, that basic story contrast was really nice, but like every other character on the show, they've driven it into the ground.

Hopefully the next time Sun and Jin are reunited will be the last -- although we may be headed for Jin and Sun getting separated in the flash-sideways considering how cold they were to each other.

i had a thought that when richard told sun that jin 'died in the fire' maybe it was the explosion and not something else... so maybe they are gonna drag out the reuniting for a long time, esp since jin may end up back under temple lock and key.

if you can't stand bait and switch moves that deliberately play with your expectations, or emotionally manipulative stories that don't contribute much to the big picture, i don't know you lasted into season 4 to even see that episode.

No the thing is though that 4 seasons of flashbacks involving the originals is more than enough. There's a reason we haven't seen any flash-backs involving the original cast since season 3, except for those Jin ones. They bring nothing to the table. Nothing new about the character. Nothing new about the plot. Just, a little, "Hey, ya got me again Carlton. Good for you." moment. I mean, such little pay-off really. Also, once the series started moving with a purpose, this kind of stuff became harder to take.

I think Jacob had Smokey under control somehow ("do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?"), hence Ben being able to summon it earlier. But now that Jacob bit it, Smokey is no longer controlled, so the Temple dudes are running scared.

This is a good thought. I gotta think about it.

But then it turns out that the smoke monster and jacob are opponents in this war. Also, it turns out that the others are aware of this, and are afraid of him.

Thanks for summarizing something that's always bugged me, that every time you think Widmore's on Jacob's side, you're thrown by a piece of contradictory information. I'm hoping they give us some info on what Widmore actually knows about Jacob and MIB, since at this point I have to assume he knows more than Ben. The whole 'there's a war coming' foreshadowing makes no sense when you follow everyone's actions.

One thing that might save it, and I still think they might do this, is establish that at some point MIB was mistaken for Jacob or vice-versa (Ilana's 'Jacob hasn't been in the cabin for a long time'). Widmore could have been fooled into thinking that Jacob wanted Locke back on the island whereas MIB wanted him back but only as a corpse.

see to me it feels more and more likely that Widmore will just be whitewashed out of the big picture as a kind of incidental party that came & went on the island w/o having much interaction with or knowledge of Jacob/MIB and only having direct conflict with Ben/Dharma

that would be too bad. i'm hoping his links with farraday and his mom and dharma and desmond and penny will bring him back around.

i'm still hoping for more hanso though, so...

I'm pretty certain Widmore's back if only to pay off the 'I'll get you boy' stuff. And I do think that he has more knowledge about Jacob/MIB, because he had a plan to get people to the island, get people off it, assemble a team, pay some mercenaries, collect Locke, etc etc etc. Ben has mostly been a lone actor with no plan other than just thwarting Widmore becoming island king. He spent his time off-island just having people associated with Widmore whacked. Widmore seems to know that there are forces at work larger than himself or Ben's disputes about who should be in charge of the Others.

Agreed... I don't know if we're ever going to get any more real backstory on Widmore, it just doesn't feel like we're going to have time, but he definitely seems more clued in than Ben did. Or at least, more ambitious about using the power of the island for more purposes than just running The Others, since he did somehow amass a fortune and power outside of the island for decades.

Happy Valentimes, Lost Thread-ers:
http://www.sl-lost.com/2010/02/14/happy-lost-valentines-day/

Agreed... I don't know if we're ever going to get any more real backstory on Widmore, it just doesn't feel like we're going to have time, but he definitely seems more clued in than Ben did. Or at least, more ambitious about using the power of the island for more purposes than just running The Others, since he did somehow amass a fortune and power outside of the island for decades.

Yeah, seems to me that Ben is too emotionally overdetermined and tortured to have much of an agenda beyond maintaining power and obsessing over his mother's death (Alpert's disdain for Ben using the Others as a fertility research group). At some point they're going to have to bring Widmore back to show what the heck motivates him, and what he knows about the island's history (he did go after the Black Rock journal at auction). We may never get backstory beyond that but that would be plenty for me.

If MIB is imitating the dead Jacob, that would mean that he has access to all of Jacob's memories, which means that MIB knows Jacob's whole plan and can stop it (maybe by explaining Jacob's plan to people in a way that makes Jacob look like a manipulative dictator). If MIB had centuries to plan out a way to get close to Jacob and have him killed, Jacob's also had the same amount of time to plan for that eventuality and assemble people to contain MIB in the event of Jacob's death.

Thinking about it more--While Jacob was alive, Smokey must have been enslaved to him, and to the Others as well(to an extent), which is why Ben was able to use him to take out Widmore's men. If Smokey had no choice in the matter, then he could still be in league with Widmore (or at least not hostile to him.) Ben may or may not have known that Smokey was Jacob's enemy--probably thought of it as a dangerous force not to be used lightly. But Richard & Dogen must know that Jacob's death means that Smokey has been freed of its chains--thus all the freaking out at the Temple when they found out Jacob was dead.

It's very possible that Ben has been totally played and manipulated by Smokey Dude from the off.

Almost certainly. Up until Ben and Locke visited the cabin in S3, it was clear that Ben had never spoken to Jacob ever - so really, he never even met him until the S5 finale. The dude in the chair screaming "Help me!" was probably Smokey/Esau, right? Seems like all of the cabin appearance were in fact the nemesis and not Jacob, since every time Jacob appeared (as we saw in the flashbacks in the S5 finale) he appeared as himself.

no, the cabin was surrounded by that protective dust

btw dudes i started watching season 1 again (i'd only seen bits and pieces when it first aired) and it is RAD... every episode seems bigger and more widescreen and more momentous. still dig what the show's been up to lately but wow, it's never been that good since.

Who was it who broke the protective dust? Do we even know yet?

yeah it does seem to have lost that widescreen-ness about it - the only time you ever see them do that kind of cinematography now is in season finales. also i think it's because the show used to pose a lot of "big" questions - "where are we?" "who are we?" "fate or coincidence" etc. - and now they're bogged down with smaller questions like "what's richard's deal?", "is sayid jacob or the MIB?", "what's smokey?". xpost

You're probably right s1ocki, I thought Season 4 (Freighter/Widmore/Oceanic 6/Miles, Faraday, Frank, Charlotte/The Constant, The Economist, The Shape of Things to Come) came pretty close. Also S2 is a bit underrated, I think.

Roz, you're probably right too - I do miss those epic confrontations and larger questions. The funny thing is though the hardcore fans still demand a ton of these answers that we're never going to get (myself often included). Do we really need an exact explanation for what Smokey or the Numbers are, even? I think most of it can just be shuffled off like how Michael couldn't kill himself because the Island wouldn't let him... just gotta roll with it.

finally caught up btw. heck of a ride

Circle of ash could have been keeping smokey in the cabin rather than outside it

If it was Smokey Ben and Locke encountered when they first visited the cabin rather than Jacob, then yeah the ash would've been keeping him IN. But surely he was still able to roam the island in monster form during this time.

Either than or Jacob and blackshirt dude have been fighting for control of Smokey for some time. Jacob had the upper hand while he was imprisoned in the cabin but whoever broke the circle allowed him to escape.

Quite who Christian Shepherd is supposedly working for I have no idea.

the Christian shepherd thing is weird because it seems like he's either a) dead and smokey is faking him b) dead but like not dead and dislodged from time c) ?????

also WTF is happening with Claire

she's been hanging with Christian, has gone feral, is maybe "infected?"

I decided to rewatch every scene with Locke after the Ajira crash. Last night I rewatched "Dead Is Dead" from S5. This exchange of dialogue interests me:

Fake John Locke: "You don't like this, do you? Having to ask questions that you don't know the answers to. Blindly following someone in the hopes that they'll lead you to whatever it was that you were looking for."
Ben: "No John, I don't like it at all."
Fake John Locke: "Well, now you know what it was like to be me."

Is that John talking, or Smokey?

Watching these episodes, it seems pretty clear that Christian and Locke are both the same person to me. They're working to achieve the same goals. But it's interesting how much Smokey embodies Christian, Alex, Locke, etc. when he takes their form. When Christian asks Locke to say hello to his son, he really seems like he means it.

Also, if Christian can appear to Jack off-island, doesn't that mean that Smokey isn't bound by the island? Also, at what point did the ash ring around Jacob's cabin get compromised?

just Smokey maintaing the pretense i guess

It seems like Smokey has access to all the deceased person's memories and uses them to manipulate the living.

Also, if Christian can appear to Jack off-island, doesn't that mean that Smokey isn't bound by the island?

did Smokey really appear or was Jack just going through the same thing as Hurley? does Hurley really see dead people or is he actually crazy?

was jack seeing Christian the "same" as hurley seeing dead people all the time?

xp!

can't remember if this has already been pointed out upthread but it seems like "infection" seems to be different from FakeLocke, FakeAlex etc in that the former needs a body, while the latter just needs the body to be dead. so the infection's maybe not Smokey, but it could be Smokey's way of assembling an army. (an army of zombies?!)

the infection also seems to affect those who are near death like sayid and claire (seems like she might have died in the explosion at the barracks?). i remember miles acting weird around her then, the same way he acted weird around sayid - like he couldn't be sure whether they were dead or alive or something else.

hmmm

maybe hurleys q to sayid (r u a zombie) is ~foreshadowing~

i was only joking w/ the zombies comment. pretty sure that line wasn't serious either - the writers joke about season 7 being zombie season all the time.

Not to jinx it but is there any kind of resolution that wouldn't end up being unsatisfactory? I'm fine with alien smokey zombie army intergalactic chess game between egyptian gods, but I can't imagine this would placate the largely non-SF-y fan base.

simple answer, no.

I feel fairly certain that Jack and Kate will both live, which bums me out.

miles purpose on the island (and the show) has yet to be fully realized. that will be exciting.

what about lapedis? is he just Everyman proxy or will he eventually assume some mythic importance?

Why are Jack and Kate untouchable?

cause they are adam and eve

Oh then they will definitely die then!

everyone dies.

miles purpose on the island (and the show) has yet to be fully realized. that will be exciting.

I think his purpose is to talk to dead people, and thereby point the main cast in the right direction. I'll be surprised if it's much more than that, and totally expect him to die.

Why are Jack and Kate untouchable?

Because the showrunners are trying to please two masters -- nerds and rubes -- and the rubes will be totally pissed if the "stars" die at the end of the show.

Still think Rose and Bernard are Adam and Eve.