Wednesday, May 13, 2009

lost-blogging: the incident (now with more SPOILERS!!!!)

Welcome back to my dad's least favorite running gimmick here at The Party, "Lost-blogging," where the editor of this blog tries in vain to comprehend all the meanings of ABC's "Lost." Tonight is the season finale, tentatively titled "The Incident." Preview is located here. As always, STAY AWAY ... SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERS.

Before we begin tonight's episode, I should note that I missed Monday's "24" because I was at a ridiculous council meeting that lasted until 9 p.m. (I'll just guess: Tony took his plot one step further, Jack yelled a lot and pretended to convulse. The president made a lot of scared-looking faces. But nothing really happened otherwise.) I also missed Derek Lowe beating Johan Santana and Lebron finishing off Atlanta. I'm thinking of investing in TiVo. Is that the best option for DVR or can you do better?
Some other questions for tonight ...
-- Who's the winner: fate or free will?
-- Who exactly is Jacob?
-- What's the meaning of the term "pusshead?" (Whoops -- that's about something else entirely.)
-- And finally, what exactly lies in the shadow of the statue?
To sum it all up ...



(All times CDT, as always)
-- 8:00: A man using what appears to be a very old loom opens the show, and then goes and plays in the ocean, presumably on the Island. He's grilling fish on a rock. Fantastic.
-- 8:01: What's apparently about to happen is the crash of the ship on Black Rock, which is where our friends were when poor Arzt blew into smithereens.
-- 8:02: "It only ends once." What does that mean, exactly?
-- 8:03: So we know the fisherman is Jacob. Not sure about the other guy ... And there's the statue! W00t!
(break)
(Commercial note: Dig Kenny Smith's jacket tonight on TNT during the next commercial.)

-- 8:06: Young Kate appears to be shoplifting. An NKoTB lunchbox, too. Hilarious.
-- 8:07: Is that Jacob? It IS Jacob! Hot damn!
-- 8:08: There's absolutely no chance this sub's actually leaving the Island, is there? Also note the creepy tension between Kate, Sawyer, Jack and Juliet. Awesome.
-- 8:09: How does Sayid know about Faraday's time table?
-- 8:11: Anytime a scientist in a movie or TV show compares himself to a scientist in real life, you know he's lost his mind. And he's probably going to die.
(Flash forward 30 years)
-- 8:12: Either Ben is lying or he just revealed something kind of kooky. Also note the similarities between just-crashed Locke (Season 1) and Resurrected Locke.
-- 8:13: Locke just lied to Richard.
-- 8:13: I have no idea what Locke means.
-- 8:14: Hey, it's the Ajira folk! Haven't seen them in several weeks.
-- 8:15: In the word of Brad Pitt, what's in the box?
-- 8:15: Is this the same as the briefcase from "Pulp Fiction?"
(break)

-- 8:19: Apparently Jacob is a benevolent, time-traveling god.
-- 8:20: "What's done is done." Apparently this guy falls on the side of fate. Worth noting: the kid in this flashback don't know a thing in the world about how Southern kids actually talk. Bad grammar quite purposeful.
-- 8:22: A classic Sawyer moment there. "You ain't home." Fantastic.
-- 8:24: It seems Jack's opinion of Locke has changed a good bit.
(Flash forward)
-- 8:25: Locke has flipped the script on Ben: assigning him the task of killing Jacob, just as Ben forced Locke to kill his own father back in Season 3.
(break)
(Commercial note: "We're all scared!")

-- 8:29: Wait a minute ... did Jacob kill Nadia? How uncool is that? Does this entire Island conspire to ruin Sayid's life? Sheesh.
-- 8:31: A guess: the steps lead to Ben's old house, and the place where they're currently standing is where Ben went to summon the Monster last season.
-- 8:33: Wait ... no one recognizes the Iraqi who shot Ben Linus? Really? I can see not recognizing Jack, but c'mon.
-- 8:34: Jack just killed at least two people. Cripes.
(break)

-- 8:39: Poor Juliet. Even the Nixon administration wasn't this doomed.
-- 8:40: There's a good chance they traveled through time on the sub. Either that or they just found Rose and Bernard. Awesome.
-- 8:42: Is that Jacob's cabin? Bernard and Rose are living in Jacob's cabin?
-- 8:42: "We traveled back 30 years in time and you're still trying to find ways to shoot each other?" That's fantastic. It's awesome that Rose and Bernard got to be the voices of reason on this show. Totally didn't see that coming. Also, do you think those two got paid for this appearance? Maybe $40? $50?
(Flash forward)
-- 8:44: "We're the good guys," again? Frank Lapidus appears to be as confused as the rest of us.
-- 8:44: Tell me this isn't the same cabin we just saw.
(Flash ... I dunno. To somewhere else.)
-- 8:45: Is that French?
-- 8:45: And there's Jacob again! Visiting ... the bounty hunter, I guess. Ilyana, sure. Still no word on whether he's actually a good guy. And why does he look like one of the Baldwins?
-- 8:47: That parchment is a drawing of the statue, of course. We still don't know a) who these people are; b) why they're here; c) what they're carrying.
(break)

-- 8:52: Jacob was apparently present when Locke got paralyzed. Is he responsible, though?
-- 8:54: Is it worth wondering whether Ben is still lying? Is he being truthful at all right now?
-- 8:55: Methinks Ben may have met Jacob when he was young. Maybe in one of these benevolent flashbacks.
(Flashback to Jin & Sun's wedding)
-- 8:57: "Like the sky being apart from the earth." Is that what's happening now? Are these two really the key to the whole thing? They're really the only two who are true in this deal, and they're the ones who are split up.
-- 8:58: Of course Jacob is there. Sheesh. How many languages does the dude speak?
-- 8:59: "You can't stop the bleeding." Of course you can't.
(break)
(Commercial note: I can't tell you how many times in my life I've thought to myself, "You know what my life is missing? People knocking themselves silly on giant rubber balls. If I could see that, I'd be set for life.")

-- 9:03: So what lies in the shadow of the statue, apparently, is Jacob.
-- 9:04: Are Jack and Sawyer about to fight?
(Flash ... I dunno. Again. To an operating room somewhere.)
-- 9:05: A daunting challenge laid down by Christian: fix her, or I'll have to fix her for you. Wild guess: the girl in the surgery is Jack's eventual wife -- "he fixed me!"
-- 9:07: Jack needs his people to believe in him, just like he needs the survivors to believe in him.
-- 9:07: Jacob shows up again. "The machine stuck." ... "I guess it just needed a little push." Fantastic.
-- 9:08: Is this conversation going like Jack's and Sawyer's at the end of Season 1? The one where Sawyer admits he met Jack's dad?
-- 9:09: Sawyer is now pretty sanguine about fate. Jack is now speaking destiny. We've come a long way here.
-- 9:10: Is now the time to bring up "The Butterfly Effect," starring Ashton Kutcher? Also about time travel, also about a guy trying to control his relationship with a girl (Amy Smart, in this case, or Jonathan Moxon's girlfriend in "Varsity Blues"). In the end (SPOILER) Ashton decides it's better for them to have never met. And so he arranges it that way.
-- 9:11: Of course, Juliet is now on Jack's side. That's the way it had to be.
(break)

-- 9:15: The girls in this scene look disturbingly like Kate and Juliet. "What if you ARE supposed to be together?"
-- 9:16: "Would that have stopped you?"
-- 9:17: Is it possible Jacob is changing things in people's history as all this is happening? Like a change in their genetic programming that makes them respond differently to different situations?
-- 9:18: Someone start playing "The Dance" by Garth Brooks.
-- 9:19: Dammit. Kate stole my symmetrical observation. Kate is probably about try to seduce Jack into not detonating the bomb.
-- 9:21: Of course, now Kate wants to help, too. Of course she does.
(break)
(Commercial note: Is it worth insulting our intelligence with that Kelly Ripa ad where she cooks breakfast for her 25 children? Does anybody really believe Kelly Ripa has ever even seen a kitchen appliance? Ever?)
(Promo note: Apparently they're solving the 2012 mystery tonight on the ABC 33/40 news. That's good to know.)

-- 9:26: Now we know who got Hurley to go back to the Island. And also where he got Charlie's guitar.
-- 9:27: Hurley freak-out coming in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
-- 9:28: "It's your choice, Hugo. You don't have to do anything you don't want to."
-- 9:29: Sayid may have the saddest life of any character on this show. "Nothing can save me."
-- 9:30: Could Juliet and Kate possibly solve their dispute with a Jello fight? No?
-- 9:31: I have no idea what's about to happen here. No idea.
(Flash forward)
-- 9:32: Ben and Richard are about to do something nefarious. To his credit, Locke is a man of his own rules. I guess when you've already died once, you're not really afraid of much.
-- 9:33: Now Locke is the man promising things will change. Freaky.
(break)

-- 9:38: Miles addresses the elephant in the room -- the one about Jack being the one who causes the Incident, not not preventing it.
-- 9:39: "Live together, die alone." Or die together.
-- 9:40: Jack can kind of go for broke here, right? I mean, it's basically a kamikaze mission.
-- 9:41: It's like a scene from A-Team! Awesome. Except people actually get shot here. Nobody ever got shot in A-Team.
-- 9:41: Dollars to pesos either Kate or Juliet shoots Jack.
-- 9:42: Too late.
-- 9:42: Are we absolutely sure the bomb will detonate? Because that would totally suck if we went through all this and nothing happens.
-- 9:44: Have we officially hit 88 mph again?
-- 9:45: This is the wrong time to say anything about this, but ... I mean do you know how hard it is to hold somebody with one arm like that? A full-grown person? It's really hard. Like, really hard.
-- 9:46: Will Juliet set off the bomb from down there?
(break)

-- 9:50: Hey, we're back at The Foot! And the Ajira folk are here! Maybe they have some alcohol.
-- 9:51: What the hell was that? French? Egyptian? Korean? What?
-- 9:52: Wait ... so Locke's body was in the box the whole time? Kind of a disappointment, no?
-- 9:53: Now we know what the point of the loom at the beginning of this was.
-- 9:54: So wait ... was Locke the guy from the opening scene?
-- 9:54: It seems Jacob is a big believer in choice.
-- 9:55: It seems Ben isn't a huge fan of Jacob's, either.
-- 9:56: Interesting Moses comparison. We'll talk of that later.
(Flash back to '77)
-- 9:57: Jack comes to consciousness, kind of like he did at the outset of Season 1.
-- 9:58: Juliet is alive, after all. And she is going to detonate the big boom. Way to go, Blondie.
-- 10:00: The season goes white. A temporal shift? A nuclear holocaust? A flashback? Flash forward? Is your head aching? Nose bleeding? Do you see dead people? Are you carrying one?
(end of episode)

As always, I'm very confused. Please discuss.

3 comments:

Smedlin said...

May be premature since there's still 20 minutes left, but I'm starting to think that when Ben said Locke's body would be a proxy when they returned, he was a proxy for the dark-haired guy on the beach at the beginning who wants to find a way to kill Jacob.

Anonymous said...

My hypotheses (b/c they're not really theories yet):

-The other man at the start on the beach with Jacob is the monster and the imposter Locke. Also referencing all the way back to the first season and Locke's talk with Walt about Black & White: Jacob stands as white, the other man (monster/imposter Locke) is black; they've been lock in a struggle for centuries, but somehow leaving and coming back as an imposter of someone who is already dead is a loophole to allow black to kill Jacob/white.

- Jacob has a loop hole as well. Two possibilities:
1. Jack et al setting off the nuke at the Swan sight in the past resets the whole thing, thus Ben never gets to stab Jacob, or
2. Setting off the nuke corrects whatever left them in 1977, and now Jack, Hurly, Kate, Juliet (if she survives), Miles, Jin, and Sawyer will be returned to 2007 (maybe Farraday, too?)

One thing that seems quite evident is that he apparitions of people that have been appearing on the island are in fact the monster's doing.

These are just my initial thoughts, will probably come up with more or better ones after rewatching the season on the DVR or DVD (when it comes out).

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, also forgot to include that the ship Jacob and black see from the beach is the black rock and that Richard Alpert is on board. No hard evidence, just seems too convenient of a set up to ignore.

Also, the iron that Ben the manipulator Linus is manipulated by the impostor Locke/the monster. Although, the whole thing appears to be a setup by Jacob, which means Jacob either wanted to die or has some big plan.

In closing, the black/the monster/impostor Locke is in fact also Alvar Hanso, financier of the DHARMA initiative.