LOST: Ji Yeon

Daniel Dae Kim

Spoilers ahead:

Before we start in on tonight’s episode, a quick thought:

It’s really interesting that Lost’s signature flashbacks and flashforwards mimic Desmond’s (and presumably Faraday’s) jumping back and forth through time. I’m not sure if this was really intentional from the beginning, but it really stands out since I’ve thought of this.

OK… One more thing: There sure is a lot of kissing going on in this show for a bunch of people that haven’t had a lot of ready access to toothpaste.

Anyway… On to thoughts about tonight’s show:

I’m beginning to think I’m going to need to live blog this show. About half way through I called a friend to tell him what I noticed was going on, but he hadn’t started watching yet. My wife was my only witness to this…. you’d believe her, right?

About midway through the show, I realized that Jin was running around like a crazy man because he was on an errand for Mr. Paik, not hurrying to get to Sun and he was likely in a different timeline. The phone calls were too frequent, Sun was in a hotel room when she started having contractions – there were other signs too. I will fess up and say that after a bit, I switched to thinking that it wasn’t a different timeline, but that Sun and Jin had split up and Jin still worked for Paik. Should have gone with my first instinct.

I don’t think Regina’s behavior had anything to do with the island. I think my theory about Naomi and Regina was right, and Regina just completely lost it and committed suicide over it.

Walt is no where to be seen and Michael is working for Ben as I said in another theory. Ben must be threatening Walt in some way if Michael has gone on that boat to help Ben.

Despite what the captain said, and the theory I wrote about Ben and the crash site, I admit I was surprised to hear him blame it on Ben. Whatever Ben’s “powers” are, or what kind of clout he has – well, that’s some pretty big mojo. How in the heck did he do that? I’m beginning to think that Ben actually does have some kind of powers, or at least some kind of control over space/time. How else could have have gotten a plane out into the middle of the ocean without anyone noticing? Questions, questions.

One thing I’m relatively sure about though – I don’t think Jin is dead, and he’s still on the island. I think that’s just his empty grave site, which would be there whether he was really dead or not. Sun wouldn’t have been able to explain NOT wanting a grave site, and people around her would want to do it. I think she was talking to the gravestone as a way of just talking to Jin. The counter argument to this is: Why would Hurley suggest they go visit that gravesite? Why would he say “good” when Sun told him no one else was coming. And by “no one else”, I took that to mean Jack or Kate. I guess that could have meant that he just didn’t want to go with anyone else but Sun. If he is alive, that would be the reason Sun would go back. (And I am assuming all the survivors will end up going back to the island).

That makes the Oceanic Five So Far: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Aaron and Sun. (Edit Rich P rightly points out that Sayid is #6). The more this goes on, I think the last person to round out the Six is John Locke, and that’s who’s going to end up being in that coffin. I’m sure that Ben still considers Locke a threat, and, just like Goodwin, will get him “out of the way”, as soon as possible. If Ben ends up killing someone so in tune with the island… what would that mean?

Anyway, that’s it for now. What did you think of the show?

LOST Theories: Ben’s Illness

Ben Linus

I think last week’s episode, “The Other Woman”, sent Ben’s creepy meter up a couple of extra notches. I did get me thinking about what’s going on with him. How could a guy who said he could cure Juliet’s sister’s cancer, a guy who lives on an island where people who were crippled can now walk… how does a guy like that get sick? How could he contract that tumor?

There’s a lot of talk about “people on the list” and “good” people. What if Ben’s behavior towards Juliet and his intention of keeping her on the island prevented the island’s healing characteristics not work on him? What if the whole reason he’s sick is his own fault?

LOST: The Other Woman

Lost Logo

Spoilers ahead!

Thoughts on tonight’s show:

Nice diversion at the beginning of the show; it appeared that Juliet was another Oceanic 6 member, but it was just her first interaction with Harper. Harper, who, I believe is dead. Why do I say that? Because we heard those mysterious voices before she appeared.

New station! The Tempest. It appears to be the biggest station so far. Nice twist on what Charlotte and Faraday were trying to do. Ben knew they were headed to The Tempest, and what they were trying to do. The station being set up the way it was, attempting the manual override causes the toxic gas to be released. Why would Faraday know anything about that? He’s a physicist, not a chemical engineer.

Ben confirmed my theory about Widmore wanting to exploit the island. If Ben taped over the Red Sox game, and it’s the same tape he showed Jack, that video of Widmore is fairly recent. Did Ben take that himself, or did one of his operatives?

Extra creepy points for the scene where Ben showed Juliet Goodwin’s body, and said “You’re mine”. Turns out my idea about Ben and Juliet was off. We know Jack got off the island. I think chances are pretty good Juliet doesn’t leave, purely based on what we saw tonight. I wonder if Juliet ends up making a deal with Ben to spare Jack, if she’ll stay? Is she the reason he wants to go back? To save her from Ben?

I’m betting that my theory about who the person Ben has on the boat is right too.

The book Ben was reading is Valis, by Philip K. Dick. Amazon describes it as “It is a fool’s search for God, who turns out to be a virus, a joke, and a mental hologram transmitted from an orbiting satellite.”

Overall, not my favorite episode so far this season. It would have been hard to top last week.

What did you think?

LOST: Ben and Juliet

Tonight’s show is titled “The Other Woman”, and (I think) centers around Juliet.

I re-watched Season 3 and the webisodes recently, and between that and the name of tonight’s episode: Is it possible that Juliet and Ben had a “fling” at some point? Yeah, yeah…creepy, I know, but I really got the impression of that when I saw the webisode.

Did Danielle Play Naomi’s Role?

Danielle Rousseau
Interesting potential parallel:

Naomi was supposed to be the “leader” of the four people trying to get on the island. What if Danielle, 16 years ago, played a similar role?

Consider that Naomi had para-military training; Danielle is well versed in explosives. Naomi was leading a scientific team to the island. Danielle was part of a scientific team. When Minkowski started flipping out on the boat after getting to close to the island on the boat, the guy he was with died. Minkowski started acting strangely too.

What would Danielle’s reaction be if she saw this happening to her team? She’d probably think it was some kind of tropical disease, and think that if her people got off the island, it might spread. Her original warning to Sayid was to watch for people acting strangely.

I’m not saying Danielle was specifically after Ben, but the parallels are something to consider.

LOST Theory: Why Ben Might Really Be A Good Guy

In April 2007, I wrote a theory about LOST: Why The Others Are Desperate To Get Women Pregnant.

Here’s a revised version of the theory. (This might be a repost, but I can’t find the original, so I’m posting this anyway).

The island has powers that The Others don’t want the outside world to exploit. The problem they have is that they can’t get pregnant, and therefore have to go “off island” and recruit people to the island to replenish their numbers. The big problem with this is that every time the recruit, they risk exposing the island to the outside world. The Dharma Initiative, whatever their original intentions, did expose the island to the outside world. Ben helped The Other purge the island of The Dharma Initiative.

Since then he’s been on two missions. One, get rid of anyone in the “real world” who knows anything about the island. Two, figure out a way to get women on the island pregnant so that no one every has to leave the island.

As for what Ben and The Others are protecting…. No idea. But it’s something they don’t want people like Widmore exploiting, so it must be pretty important.

Unlikely as it might seem, Ben might actually be one of the good guys.

Update – What are they protecting? Duh! I should remember my own theories – They’re protecting their knowledge of time travel. I should know better than post when I’m not feeling well…

LOST: The Constant

I’m going to make this brief, since I’m still not feeling well:

Excellent episode! Probably my favorite of the season so far.

Finally an explanation for what Desmond’s time traveling is! The entire interplay with Desmond and Daniel is likely why Daniel was with a caretaker, and why he was crying when they found flight 815.

This also probably means that Charlie isn’t traveling back and forth in time, since Desmond’s conscience is the thing that’s traveling back and forth in time. Charlie was either Hurley’s hallucination or maybe a manifestation of whatever is on the island that causes those embodiments of Jack’s father/Walt/The Horse/etc to appear. Right now I’m think it must be a hallucination.

Probably the next biggest bomb to drop was the Charles Widmore really does have a connection to the island that I’ve suspected for so long. The book Widmore bought was likely one of the key things that he needed to find the island.

Remember the episode when Michael left the island with Walt? Ben told Michael to leave on heading 325 (I’ll have to double check that). The heading written down on the paper was 305. What will that difference mean to Michael and Walt?

Update: It also showed what fictional scientists do, sometimes with bad results: Daniel Faraday experimented on himself to achieve the time traveling ability. Why else would he have written that Desmond was his “constant”? I think this is also supported by the fact that Daniel has a caretaker. Why would he need that? Maybe if he went catatonic ever so often, the way George did and Desmond does?

What did you think of the episode?

More On LOST: Eggtown

Lost Logo
A couple of thoughts on last week’s show before tonight’s show:

The “R.C.” on Naomi’s bracelet might refer to Regina on the boat. If that’s true, she’s going to be REALLY mad that Naomi’s dead.

If there really is a time differential between the “real world” and the island (as shown by the payload that Daniel did the experiment with), and they don’t get off on the right baring (Remember Daniel warned about keeping the helicopter’s path on the right heading?) Jack, Sayid, Hurley, Kate and Aaron could end up in a different time than they expect. If that happens, they’ll all age, which could explain Aaron’s apparent rapid aging.

LOST: Eggtown

Kate

Spoilers ahead!

Another solid episode! Season 4 is really shaping up!

What a bomb drop at the end of the show, eh? Early on, we find out that Kate has a son, which was who she was probably referring to when she said she had to “get back to him” in the Season 3 finale. Then at the end we find out it’s Aaron! So what about that extreme growth he went through?

On the face of it, whatever happened to Aaron must have been the same thing that happened to Walt. Remember the “tall Walt” mention in a previous episode? I knew they’d have to explain how Walt grew so quickly eventually. They still haven’t done that yet, but I knew it was coming. The real kicker that I didn’t see was that it happened to Aaron too.

It’s going to be interesting to see how they explain Aaron being Kate’s kid. At first I thought that Jack, Hurley, Sayid and Kate probably came up with the idea that Aaron’s real mother was one of the eight survivors of the crash (Jack mentioned eight survivors in his testimony in the court case), but she died. If that were true, I doubt the authorities would have let Kate keep the baby once they figured out who she was. That is unless she made a plea that “it was Aaron’s mother’s dying wish!” My guess is that they’ll just end up saying he was an un-ticketed passenger, since he was less than three.

Hmmm….. I just realized that Aaron is Jack’s nephew. Half-nephew, maybe? Anyway…

The bigger question right now is, what were the circumstances that lead to Aaron going with the other Ocean people? Is Claire still alive, but give up Aaron to make sure he made it to safety? If that’s the case then something must have happened on the island to make them get out of there in a big hurry.

The other possibility is that Claire’s going to die, and Kate took over as Aaron’s guardian when she did.

On to other topics…

Whatever you want to say about Locke before, he’s sure embraced the dark side. It sure is a bit disturbing that he embraced it so much. Very creepy how he was so nonchalant about putting that grenade in Miles’ mouth. I expected a BOOM during that entire scene with Sawyer and Kate.

Here I was waiting for Miles to do some kind of psychic voodoo on Ben, and he asks Ben for 3.2 million dollars! Plus we find out that not only is Ben known off the island, the people that are looking for him consider him pretty powerful (and probably rightly so). Pretty interesting. If you’re someone who’s really powerful, what better place to hide than an island? Can’t wait to find out what happened to change Ben from the guy who wiped out the Dharma Initiative to someone who’s known to people off the island as someone so powerful that they think getting 3.2 million dollars would be no problem.

Nice touch having Ben point out that asking for “3.2” million was pretty specific.

Miles didn’t seem like he thought he’d have a problem with Charlotte; Maybe she’s in on that part of the plan too?

I have to wonder what’s going to happen to them when the person that sent them to the island finds out what deal they worked out with Ben.

Any idea what Charlotte and Daniel were trying to do? Were they seeing if being on the island would help them get in touch with their inner psychic?

Did you notice in the very final glimpse of next week’s episode, Desmond didn’t have his beard? Looks like he’s going to be taking another trip through time, this time to meet Daniel.

Oh, and Kate’s probation? She’s definitely going to break that.

I can see it now: The Oceanic 6 came back, and then they all disappeared, never to be heard from again.

So far the Oceanic 6 are: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid and Aaron. Wonder who the last one is?

All in all, I liked the episode. What did you think?