Cabin Hopskotch - my brain just melted

(Note - re-posted after this post went missing)

“Game-changer,” “mind-blower,” “brain melter” – all of these designations have been used to describe various episodes of LOST. Last night’s “Cabin Fever” was all of ‘em rolled together: a hit of crack with a human growth hormone chaser!

Claire knocks back some lemonade with Christian, Locke gets locke(d) in a locke(r), Richard Alpert continues recruiting for the island’s new quarterback, Ben got chocolate in Hurley’s peanut butter, Hurley got peanut butter in Ben’s chocolate, Horace Goodspeed from DHARMA is stuck in a time loop for his impact on the environment, Keamy becomes even less likable, the freighter doctor catches up with time, Sayid takes a dinghy ride on the open seas, and Frank Lapidus sends a special delivery to the beach. Let’s drill down a bit.

Lost 4x11: Cabin Fever

OK, so let me start with my here’s my big theory. Locke and Ben are brothers. Both had mothers named Emily. Both were recruited by Alpert (Ben as a young boy in the jungle, Locke starting when he was the miracle baby in the maternity ward.) Both were born prematurely. Granted, we learn that Ben’s mother died in childbirth, though perhaps it is possible that she was whisked off and revived? Locke was abandoned at a young age and brought up by foster families. Alpert visited young John to test him, knowing that Emily’s son was special. Though when John picked the knife, Alpert believed he’d been recruiting the wrong son. So Alpert’s attention later focused on young Ben. Realizing well after the purge that Ben was actually the wrong choice, he/they helped arrange to get Locke to the island.

A big question: who is Locke’s dad, the man twice Emily’s age? Could it be someone we know? Alvar Hanso? Jacob? This scenario reminds me of “Rosemary’s Baby” or even “The Boys From Brazil.”

Flashback:
We are introduced to 15-year old Emily Locke in the late 1950s. She is fighting with her mother about meeting a man twice her age as she’s dancing to a Buddy Holly record. (Geek alert: Buddy Holly died in a plane crash.) After running from her house, she’s hit by a car. In the hospital, she reveals she’s six months pregnant and she goes into premature labor. Her baby, who she names John, was taken away in an incubator where he began a miraculous recovery to health from the youngest preemie ever at the hospital. Emily visits him a while later, but runs from the hospital.

Emily’s mother is talking to the nurse about adoption when she sees a man looking in on the nursery – Richard “Mothafarking” Alpert. (Dude!)

Geek Alert: Her mother was about to light up a cigarette. The nurse said, “You can’t smoke in here.” Is this another reference to the smoke monster, right as Alpert shows up?

Years later, Alpert visits a young John who’s playing backgammon with a foster sister. Alpert takes note of the picture Locke had drawn of a plume of smoke and a person laying down. He presents John with a test to see if he qualifies for a special school, laying out several items: a baseball mitt, a book titled “Book of Laws”, a vial of sand, a compass, a comic and a knife. All the items are laid next to each other, however he very deliberately places the knife upon the comic. Alpert tells him to choose the items that belong to him. Locke chooses the vial of sand and the compass which Alpert clearly approves of, and then reaches for the knife. Alpert storms off annoyed.

Check out the comic book. The floating city/island in the sky on the cover of this comic seems to be a nod to the idea that the island can be moved.

Geek Alert: When a new Dalai Lama is to be chosen, children who have miracles attributed to them are presented with a series of objects. If one chooses the items that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, he is the Chosen One and the next Dalai Lama. Preemie Locke’s miraculous recovery seems to qualify here.

Later we see a teenage Locke being freed from a locker by a teacher at Cowin Heights High School. (Go Knights!) The teacher tells Locke that he got a call from Mittelos Laboratories in Portland about John to participate in a summer science program. John wants nothing to do with this. He wants to be cool. The teacher replies, “That’s who you are, John…you’ll never be a superhero.” John replies with his now-famous, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

Geek Alert 1: In Locke’s locker is a poster of Geronimo Jackson, the fictional 70s band who’ve been referenced several times in the series, as well as a picture. It appears the picture is of Sir Richard Burton.

Geek Alert 2: Mittelos Laboratories is the same name as the company Alpert was recruiting Juliet for (though it was then called Mittelos Bioscience). Mittelos is an anagram for “Lost time”.

Geek Alert 3: John’s high school team was called the Cowin Heights Knights. Dr. Gowin Knight invented process to magnetize steel in 1745 which they used in compass needles.

Much later in John’s life, we visit John post-fall from the building in the Delerue Center for Rehabilitation. An orderly tells him that he should do a walkabout in the Australian Outback. The orderly is Matthew Abaddon (!) – the same creepy man who was assembling the science team with Naomi, and the man who paid a visit to Hurley in the mental institution. Abaddon says to him, “Oh I’m a lot more than just an orderly, John…When you and me run into each other again, you’ll owe me one.”

On The Island:

Locke, Ben and Hurley are wandering through the jungle. Locke asks Ben where the cabin is and Ben says he was following Hurley. This is almost a Three Stooges moment. They set up camp for the night.

Tight close up on Locke’s eye. He awakes to the sound of wood being chopped. He follows the noise and comes across Horace Goodspeed. (Geek alert: Horace and his wife Olivia were the couple who helped Ben’s parents in Oregon when his mother had gone into premature labor hiking in the woods.) Horace appears stuck in a time loop. He tells John he’s building a cabin for him and his wife and that he’s been dead for 12 years, and that in order to find the cabin, John needs to find him. Horace’s nose was sporadically bleeding. This is probably a clue that he had “the sickness”, like Desmond and George Minkowski, though he appears to be locked in time even further.

Is Horace stuck like Sisyphus from the Greek mythology who had to push a boulder up the hill for eternity only for it to roll back down before he reached the top? Could his constant building of the cabin(s) explain how Hurley saw the cabin in numerous locations? And is Horace going to buy carbon offsets for all the trees he’s cut down?

Geek Alert: Horace Goodspeed appears to be the man that Locke saw in the cabin rocking chair in season 3’s “The Man Behind the Curtain”. Though at the time, I swore it was Locke with hair in the chair.

Locke awakes. Ben says that he used to have dreams. He’s jealous. They set off to find Horace’s corpse in the DHARMA pit. John finds a map in Horace’s worksuit and they’re off again. As Locke and Ben bicker in the woods, Hurley stumbles upon the cabin. Ben tells John that it’s his destiny to enter it alone. Actually, he utters one of the best lines of the series yet, “Destiny is a fickle bitch.” While waiting outside, Hurley and Ben share an Apollo chocolate bar in a dialog-free moment that was, honestly, cute.

Actually, weren’t all the scenes of them trying to find the cabin all kind of light hearted…a little like the Cowardly Lion, Tinman and Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz?

Inside the cabin, John meets Christian who asks John why he’s there. John replies, “because I was chosen to be here”. Christian agrees. This was a freaky enough scene, but then John turns around to see a smiling Claire (!) behind him. She says she’s with Christian. Christian explains that Aaron is exactly where he needs to be and…oh, by the way, maybe you don’t want to tell anyone you saw Claire here. (Why should he voluntarily share relevant information? This is LOST.) Locke the asks Christian the right question: “How can I save the island?”

Question: So with Claire seemingly content without Aaron, does this mean she’s been dead since the house explosion? This could explain why she was barely bruised after the house came down around her.

Locke tells Ben that Christian told him what he needs to do: They need to move the island. Huh? But this theory that the island can move has been out there for a while. Given the comic book reference, too, it seems this was reality.

On the Freighter:

Keamy tries to kill Michael but can’t. The gun locks. One of the crew members gets the Morse code message from the island about the doctor, who’s still very much alive. Keamy takes care of that later, though, when Frank Lapidus says he won’t fly to the island when they appear to be loading up the chopper with military ammo.

Keamy had gotten a “secondary protocol” for taking over the island from Widmore. It had a DHARMA Orchid Station logo on it, so that seems to clinch it that Widmore works for or is related to DHARMA.

The captain helps Sayid get a rescue raft so he can get to the island and help save everyone there. Sayid sets off alone when Desmond says he cannot go back to that island.

The captain tries to stop them from taking off, and Keamy shoots him. Frank wraps a phone in a bag and as they fly over the island, he drops the bag to the beach for the Losties to find.

“Cabin Fever” had the most solid storytelling of the season. Absolutely killer episode. What did you think? Is your head still spinning like mine is? Help me out with this one with some comments.

The Resurrection of Christian Shephard

(Note - this is a re-post of an old entry - somehow went missing)

Like the black smoke monster in last week's episode, this season of LOST has mostly moved along like a freight train. Last night's episode, "Something Nice Back Home", was more like a leisurely double-decker bus tour of a city with the fanny-packed masses. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with straightforward storytelling and revisiting of the beach crew. It was kind of nice…quaint, even. But with a shorter than normal season, followed by a further truncated number of post-strike episodes, a storytelling episode is not what I was expecting.

Half-siblings Jack and Claire both got visits from Daddy, Jin pwned Charlotte, Kate scampered around in her skivvies, Claire leaves Aaron safely in a tree (huh?), Karl and Danielle were unequivocally taking dirt naps, Hurley plays the telephone game with Jack, Saywer's heart grew three sizes and Miles was still a douche.

On the beach:

Tight close up on Jack's eye, just like the season 1 pilot episode. Could this indicate that a new Jack woke up? (See Alice idea below…) Jack's got appendicitis and needs emergency surgery. Juliet sends Sun and Faraday to the medical station to retrieve supplies. Charlotte and Jin tag along.

When they return, Jin pulls Charlotte aside and says to her, in Korean, that he knows she speaks Korean and that she understood what he and Sun had been talking about. After some denial, Jin threatens to break Daniel's fingers one by one until she tells the truth. She answers him in Korean. While not out of the realm of possibility for an anthropologist to speak Korean, could this be a clue that she has some connection to Mr. Paik, Sun's father?

Jack's surgery was a success, despite less than sterile conditions and no anesthesia, and a surgical staff consisting of a fertility doctor, a dentist and a fugitive.

In the jungle:

Sawyer, Claire, Aaron and Miles continue their journey back to the beach. Sawyer gives Miles a restraining order against Claire. (Sawyer's become very protective of her and has evolved pretty dramatically from his "every man for himself" days.)

Frank Lapidus comes barreling through the jungle and convinces them to hide because Keamy and his team right behind him. (Why weren't they killed by the smoke monster?) Frank convinces Keamy to keep going to the helicopter, despite Aaron's whimper almost giving them up.

In a clearing, Miles has a ghostbuster moment and can hear the last moments of Rousseau and Karl. He uncovers their bodies, which are barely buried.

After continuing their journey, they set up camp and Claire gets awoken by an unexpected visitor: Christian Shephard, who's holding Aaron. (Dun dun dun…)

When Sawyer wakes in the morning, Miles calmly says that she went off with someone she called "Dad", and Sawyer follows Aaron's cries to find him safely in a tree. Claire is nowhere to be found.

Will we see Claire again in the episodes ahead? Or will she be gone for much of the rest of the season, like when Ethan kidnapped her in season one?

Flash forward:

Jack and Kate are playing house, raising Aaron together. Jack reads a newspaper article about the Yankees sweeping the Red Sox in a 3-game series with a 5-0 win. Based on actual events, that puts the paper's date as August 31, 2007.

(pic credit: Losteastereggs.blogspot.com)

Geek alert: Jack tripped on a Millennium Falcon, another ode to Star Wars.

Later, Jack is reading to Aaron from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" – "How queer everything is

today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!" The passage is not unlike Jack's transformation. We see the close up of his eye at the beginning of the episode. (Is this a new Jack?)

At the hospital, Jack is doing a consultation on a patient when he sees his father walking through the lobby. His colleague, Dr. Erika Stevens, snaps him out of it and Christian's gone. She asks him to review a patient's x-rays. It's an L-4 tumor – the same vertebra where Ben had his tumor. He gets a call from the administrator at Santa Rosa Hospital to come see Hurley.

When he visits, Hurley is despondent. He's claims that the Oceanic 6 are all dead and reveals that he's been seeing Charlie. (Seems this is a regular occurrence now.) Charlie's left a message for Jack: "You're not supposed to raise him." Hurley tells Jack that he'll be visited by someone soon. (Is this a reference to Dickens and A Christmas Carol with Scrooge getting visits from the 3 ghosts? Is the hope that he will change back to that pre-appendectomy Jack?)

Jack goes home and proposes to Kate, who accepts. Jaters rejoiced. Skaters booed.

Back at the hospital the next evening, Jack's reviewing the chart again when he hears a beeping outside his office. Turns out it's a smoke detector's low battery beep. He removes the battery from the detector and sees his dad again. Christian calls out Jack's name. He's startled. But his colleague, Erika, walks in and when Jack turns back, his father is gone. He asks her to write him a prescription because he's overworked and stressed.

Geek alert: Was the fact that the smoke detector was beeping some sort of wink from the writers that Christian is a manifestation of the black smoke monster? (Though it also vaguely sounded like the button timer beeping from the now-imploded hatch.)

Geek alert 2: Why is it that Erika shows up both times Jack sees his father? Is she somehow related? Or is she protecting Jack from him? And was the connection to her patient with the L-4 tumor a coincidence, or is she connected to Ben?

Geek alert 3: On the wall behind Jack are the names of the other doctors in the practice there. Directly behind him, are the names "Gardez" and "Evenson". Gardez is French for "keep". Was this a clue that Jack should stay with or keep Aaron?

(pic credit: losteastereggs.blogspot.com)

Jack arrives home to find Kate on the phone. He's suspicious and asks her who it was. Kate gets some water from the fridge, which is covered with kids' art. However, closer inspection also shows a monster-type cutout (black smoke monster?) on the freezer door and a shark, perhaps, on the top of the fridge door.

Geek alert: The flowers, ladybugs and butterflies on the fridge were the same as those on the wall in Hurley's hospital when Matthew Abaddon visited him in the first episode of the season.

(pic credit: getlostpodcast.com)

Let's discuss:

• Why does Jack only marry people he saves? First, Sarah. Then Kate. And why does he turn on them when there's nothing left to save?
• Rose posed the question, and it was a valid one: Why did Jack get sick on the island that heals people? Is he doing something he's not supposed to be doing? Is the island trying to keep him from getting people rescued?
• Why didn't Smokey kill Keamy's crew?
• Why would Keamy and his crew have buried Rousseau and Karl at all? If they didn't, who did? And why were they buried in such shallow graves?
• Faraday asks Charlotte where all this electrical power is coming from. She says to add it to the list. Is this merely a list of the island's unanswered questions?

While I enjoy a break from the frenetic pace the show can take, I wasn't expecting a slower-moving episode just the second week after the strike-induced hiatus. Though at the end of the day, a mediocre episode of LOST is better than anything else on TV. What did you think? Were you disappointed? Or did you think the episode was killer? Comment below with your thoughts.

They changed the rules on us

LOST returned from hiatus last night with an all-killer/no-filler, story-based episode titled “The Shape of Things to Come”. If this type of intensity is the shape of things to, I might need some adult diapers. Ben showed us some of his ninja moves, Charles Widmore upped the ante, the Black Smoke Monster took the bullet train to Othersville, we say goodbye to an innocent pawn, we learned Claire is made of Teflon, Bernard gets to practice the Morse Code skills he learned in dental school, and Ben took in the sights in some beautiful parts of the world.

LOST 4x09: The Shape of Things to Come

“The Shape of Things to Come” will likely be seen as one of those “game changer” episodes. They’ve changed the rules of how they will tell the story of these characters and this island moving forward. Sure, the episode relied heavily on a flash forward – Ben’s. But the storytelling was so intense that the mythology of the island almost played second fiddle to the plot.


On the island:

Alex hits the panic button when her captors – the motley crew from the freighter led by Keamy – try to get to Ben. Locke answers the phone and hears the emergency message, “Code 14 J.” Ben tries to barricade himself in the house, but Keamy bargains with Alex’s life to get Ben to surrender. Ben, in both a selfless and callous move, says that he doesn’t care about her, figuring they’ll let her go. Keamy proves himself the ruthless mercenary that he is and actually carries out the execution.

Ben was stunned, as were we all. As if Alex’s short life wasn’t sad enough, she died thinking Ben didn’t love her. This is the most sympathetic moment we have for Ben since being introduced to him, trapped in that net a couple of seasons ago. Ben announces “he changed the rules” and goes into action mode.

He exposes his hidden office and shuts a security door behind him. But not before we get a glimpse of what’s behind a wall of suits in there – some sort of cave or tunnel door. It’s covered with hieroglyphs and other symbols. Want to take a shot at deciphering them? Feel free. Seems to me this is something left behind by the original island inhabitants – the ones who built that four-toed statue we have yet to get the scoop on.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)



Right before they were attacked, Hurley put Aaron on a pillow in a laundry basket. Is this an allusion to Moses in the basket being sent down the river? Will Aaron be the key to the Oceanic 6’s freedom or safety? Or perhaps Future Aaron will play a key role in leading the Losties back home.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


The crew blows up Claire’s house with her in it. But somehow, she emerges with just a scratch on her face. Good luck explaining that one.

Back on the beach, the freighter’s doctor washes onto the shore with a slit throat and a stitching job across his cheek that looked like shoelaces. I guess the poor guy probably had to stitch himself up, though. Bernard suggests Faraday try to fix the radio to send Morse Code since the microphone is broken. They manage to make it work and Daniel sends a message asking about Sayid, Desmond and the doctor. Faraday says the reply is “friends are fine – helicopters coming in the morning.” But Bernard utilizes that dental school training in Morse Code (huh?) to translate the real message, “What are you talking about? The doctor is fine.” Yet another time glitch perhaps – the island time is actually ahead of the freighter and the real world by some amount of time.

Ben emerges from the room and tells them they need to run for the treeline. The house begins to shake and the Black Smoke Monster comes racing at the freighter crew like a bullet train. Ben clearly called in the island’s backup defense system, and it does a number on them.

Sawyer’s takes Claire and Aaron back to the beach. Hurley, however, has work to do with Locke and Ben, and they set off to find Jacob’s cabin for further instructions.


Off the island:

Ben appears out of breath in the Sahara Desert wearing a parka with the name Halliwax on it. Why he’s wearing a parka, we’re not sure. Perhaps there are no non-stop routes from the island, and he had a stopover in Antartica. He also had a gash in his arm. Maybe he encountered one of the polar bears on his trip. Two men on horses question him and Ben takes them both down with some kickass Rambo style moves.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


Geek alert: Edgar Halliwax was the name given by the narrator in the Orchid Station orientation film. He called himself Dr. Marvin Candle in the video for the Swan Station and Dr. Mark Wickmund in the Pearl Station film.

Back from commercials, we see Ben in Tunisia checking into a hotel as a preferred guest using his Dean Moriarty passport from “The Economist” episode. The hotel employee seems alarmed. He asks what day it is, and she replies “October 24th.” “2005?” he asks. Ben sees a TV report of news crews hounding Sayid as he begs, “Please, I just want to bury my wife in peace.” Ben high tails it to Tikrit, Iraq, and although in the middle of a war zone, he manages to use press credentials to get to the top of a building where he photographs a bald man. Sayid catches a glimpse of Ben on the roof and then ambushes him. He didn’t realize it was Ben (is there paparazzi in a war zone?), but Ben convinces him the bald man is working for Widmore and was responsible for Nadia’s death.

Later, we see Ben chasing after the bald man again, but Sayid takes him down and empties out his handgun into the guy. Sayid volunteers to work with Ben, who walks away with a smirk. Was this Ben’s plan all along?

Next we see Ben in London. He enters a posh building and tells the doorman he’s visiting the Kendricks in 4E. However, he uses his key to access the penthouse and walks into Widmore’s bedroom. This ain’t no late-night booty call, and he’s not there to kill Widmore either. He’s there to confront him on having changed the game by killing Alex and to let him know that now he’s going to kill Penny. The rules appear to have been that no family would be killed, but Ben’s going tit for tat.

Ben cannot kill Widmore. Will the island not let him or is Ben still following some rules despite them having been changed by Widmore?

Did you take note of how stunningly this scene was filmed, with shadows and both Ben and Widmore only half-lit. It seems to play off the whole idea of light/dark, black/white, good/evil.

There are some fans that are drawing connections to theories of dark matter coming into play. Feel free to check the link for a detailed description, but be prepared for a serious headache.

(Photos from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


For discussion: Hurley, Locke and Sawyer are playing the game Risk at the beginning of the episode. Hurley gets frustrated at Sawyer and says that “Australia is the key to the whole game.” Is this a clue that the writers view this all as a big power struggle – perhaps with the armies of Widmore (and Paik) advancing on the island? Perhaps Australia actually is the key to understanding what is going on here.


The shape of things to come on LOST is good since the writers keep raising the bar. What did you think? Leave me some comments in Morse Code below.

NBC announces a spinoff of The Office

Lord help us! Let's hope they don't go mucking up and watering down one of the best-written, sharpest comedies ever on TV.

NBC is set to launch a spinoff of The Office in the Winter/Spring 2009.

News here.

Flash hopscotch

I need to take “expert multitasker” off my resumé, because the flash forward/flashback combo in last night’s episode of LOST, “Ji Yeon”, caught me off guard. The big shocker was supposed to be Ben’s man on the boat: Michael. Instead, we got a psych out by the writers with the reveal that while Sun was delivering her baby off-island in the future, Jin’s flash scenes were actually from 2000 while still working for Sun’s dad.

The mind scrambling effect was soon replaced by another disorienting sensation – mourning. Jin, it seems, is dead. Though I’m holding out hope that Jin’s still fishing with Bernard on a canoe somewhere off the coast of Lost Island.

Lost recap 4x07: Ji Yeon

In the flashes:

We start with a flash forward of Sun going into labor. She happily delivers a healthy baby girl. A well-dressed Hurley visits Sun and little baby Ji Yeon in Seoul and they pay a visit Jin’s grave. The date of death on the headstone was 9/22/04, the date of the crash – evidence that Jin may still be on the island.


Geek alert: In Sun’s first flash forward scene, Sun’s TV was showing Exposé dubbed in Korean, starring every Lost fan’s least-favorite character from last season, Nikki. Razzle Dazzle!



In Jin’s flash backs, he is delivering a stuffed panda bear to an associate of Sun’s father. The toy shop salesman said that it was the Year of the Dragon, apparently 2000. Another clue was Jin’s old cell phone.


On the island:

Juliet was trying to ensure Sun stayed on the beach for her best chance to get rescued and stay alive, but really pulled a bitchy move by telling Jin about Sun’s pre-crash affair. Regardless, it worked. After a chat with Bernard, Jin forgives her. Further evidence that he’s still alive in the future, Jin says to Sun, “You’ll never lose me.”


On the ship:

Desmond and Sayid were slipped a note warning them not to trust the captain. Later, they meet Captain Gault, who confirms that there was wreckage from flight 815 faked and that he believes Ben is responsible. The helicopter was no longer on the landing pad, and Gault explains that Lapidus is off on a quick mission, but doesn’t clarify where.

Geek alert: Captain Gault was a fictional sea captain in a series of stories written in 1917 by English author William Hodgson. Gault is a captain for hire who despite being a law-breaker, seems to follow a solid moral compass. He’s also revealed to be a member of a secret society and possesses knowledge about an unusual number of areas including the occult, religious artifacts and gemology. The stories also often include misinformation and misdirection by the captain . Sounds a little like a show we know.

We finally meet the mysterious Regina who is clearly confused as she’s reading a book upside down. When we see her again later she’s wrapped up in chains, looking like she’s just come from the freighter’s drama club performance of “A Christmas Carol” playing Jacob Marley. She jumps off the port side of the ship to her death. The captain orders the crew to ignore her, much to Sayid’s and Desmond’s dismay. Apparently the captain doesn’t want to lose more of his crew to “cabin fever”. We later see that Regina isn’t the only one to have killed herself, as the doctor shows Des and Sayid to their suite, and it’s primed with brain splatter on the wall.

Geek alert: The book that Regina was reading upside down was The Survivors of the Chancellor by Jules Verne, a story about a group of survivors from a shipwreck on a raft for weeks, several of whom commit suicide.


Let’s discuss:

We now know that the members of the Oceanic 6 are Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Aaron and Sun. Agreed?

Did it seem curious that Sun’s OB doctor wasn’t available? This does frequently happen, but he told her she’d need a cesarean section when the baby was already crowning. Was he even a doctor? Or was he working for Ben to report back whether the baby who was conceived on-island lived?

When Sun told Hurley no one else came to see her and the baby or to visit Jin’s grave, he said “Good”. Why?

The doctor said the room that he was showing them to was quiet. Sayid said that the ship was anchored so it shouldn't be noisy. The doctor replied, “If you say so.” Are they moving through the water? Time? Space?

Why is there an axe embedded in the hull of the ship? More “cabin fever” crazies? I'm betting we get a freighter flashback story at some point this season.

Although it seems we got the answer to who Ben’s man on the ship is, do we really know it’s Michael? How can Michael communicate with Ben with a sabotaged radio room? I’m thinking Walt might actually be Ben’s mole, using telepathy or teleportation to communicate with Ben. Also, the note not to trust the captain looked like it was written in a teenager’s block lettering to me.


What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts.

See you guys at dinner

They can’t all warp our brains, and I’m happy they don’t. Last night’s episode of LOST, The Other Woman, gave us answers to who sent Not-Penny’s-Boat, a return of the jungle whispers, a love triangle that didn’t include Kate, a love quadrangle that does include Kate, and Ben owning everyone he comes in contact with – especially Locke.

Got an appetite for rabbit…uh…answers? We can satisfy that hunger. What did you notice about last night’s episode? Add your catches in the comments section.

Lost 4x06 Recap: The Other Woman

On last night’s episode of LOST, Juliet is visiting her shrink and talking about feeling like a celebrity. We assume she’s been rescued, but the producers switched it up and re-introduced flashbacks. (How quaint!)

The shrink is Goodwin’s wife, Dr. Harper Stanhope. In her home office where she’s psychologizing on Juliet, there are framed diplomas and certificates on her wall. One is from the Experimental Social Psychology Society. Another is a Certificate of Recognition from the Hanso Foundation.

The episode title, The Other Woman, was a cool play on words. Juliet is the other woman in Goodwin’s marriage to Harper, the other woman in Jack and Kate’s relationship, and she was an Other who was a woman.

It would seem she had officially left behind her Team Ben loyalties, but when confronted with the spectral Harper in the jungle, she is convinced to follow Ben’s orders to stop Charlotte and Daniel. Was Harper really there, or was she another manifestation of the black smoke monster, like Tall Walt or Eko’s brother Yemi? I’m going with the latter. I’m not so sure that Harper was actually relaying orders from Ben, but rather from the island itself.

Charlotte and Daniel strayed from their class trip to take a detour to the Tempest station, the island power plant. DHARMA had some serious gas, man! The Tempest station had huge cooling tanks. Why were they using some sort of lethal gas to power the island? And how did Goodwin get a chemical burn from a gas? Granted, I haven’t taken a bio or chem class since 10th grade, so there could be an answer that some 15 year old could fill me in on.


Geek alert: The map Faraday and Charlotte used get to The Tempest has a DHARMA logo on it. There are also a few “Unknown” markings on them. Why would there have been sections marked “Unknown” if DHARMA built all the infrastructure on the island?


By the way, Charlotte is one bad ass! She cold cocks Kate in the jungle and then manages a little Sayid-worthy breakdance skills on Juliet in the Tempest station. Those are some pretty handy moves for a…cultural anthropologist?

Ben gives Locke the combo to his wall safe. Inside is a videotape marked Red Sox which he taped over (Yankee fans rejoice!) with a video of Charles Widmore, Penny’s dad. Widmore’s henchman is shoving a blindfolded man that looks like Ben Affleck into a car. (Maybe Jimmy Kimmel was the cameraman.) How convenient that Ben had exactly what he needed in that safe (box) to convince Locke that he was telling the truth. However, more than in any other episode, I felt like Ben’s words were somewhat more sincere this time. Then again, with the amount of detail Ben’s been able to gather on every other person on the island, it seemed odd that Ben would have a sketchy file on Widmore.

Although this was a Juliet-centric episode, I think we can all agree it was all about Ben Linus. Ben may rule all people, but after he left Juliet with Goodwin’s body, he hiked back over the hill like a little girl. Ben’s childlike declaration to Juliet – “You are mine” – was telling. We also see this with his trying-too-hard attempts at giving her the house and making dinner for her. Despite his evil mastermind capabilities, he seems pretty stunted with his personal relationships.
Even with his relationship issues and the impending attempt for an outside force to take over the island, Harper says to Juliet that Ben is exactly where he wants to be. (Miles told Kate the same thing in the boat house where he’s being held.)

Locke, apparently the island’s Century 21 real estate agent, helped Ben trade up from his dank, basement rental to a nice ranch on a quiet street in the ‘burbs. In typical, manipulative Ben fashion, he strolls across the courtyard all smiles at a stunned Hurley and Sawyer saying, “See you guys at dinner.”


Random observations:

The word hostile was thrown around a couple of times tonight. First Juliet said to Goodwin that Harper “seemed kind of hostile.” Then Claire said to Locke that she rhetorically stated that the freighter people “think we’re hostile.” The Others had been the island hostiles, but now the Locke Flock are the hostiles to be dealt with and eliminated by a new crew.

Why didn’t Ben ask Locke for his house back? Was it a power play by Locke, or another way to help discredit Locke in front of his crew?

Geek alert: In the Tempest station, there’s an image of a fuse box-like door labeled “Box Maker.” Odd label. Does this have something to do with the magical box through which Ben brought Locke’s dad to the island?







Jack kissed Juliet in the woods, but it was pretty chemistry-free. Is he over Kate and really in love with her, or just trying to fix things again?

Juliet was fortifying a shelter on the beach. Sun asks her why she would bother since they were about to be rescued. But Julie knows she’s not going anywhere as long as Ben is alive.

This ain't no Love Boat

“Maybe if you talk real slow, we’ll be able to follow you.” – Juliet

Physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) could explain it as slowly as he wanted, and I’m still not sure I followed all of what transpired on last night’s episode of LOST. It’s not really going out on a limb to say that the episode, “The Constant,” is in the top 5 episodes of the series. Though once my brain stops melting, it might even move into the top episode position. Much like Desmond, I think I need “a constant” to help me figure this one out.

I’m not gonna lie. I’ve got mostly a list of questions. Drop us a comment with some of your thoughts. Might need some help with this one!

Lost 4x05: The Constant

Here's what we know:

• Charles Widmore, Penny’s father, is bidding at a 1996 auction on some items related to the Black Rock – the slave ship that’s somehow now in the middle of the island. The ship was lost in 1845, and one of the items he wins in his bid was the ship log of crew. Will some of the names in the log be remarkably similar to the names of some current-day inhabitants of the island? Perhaps we’ll learn that Richard Alpert, the eyeliner guy, ages even better than we’d realized.


• Geek alert: The auctioneer stated that the last-known owner of the Black Rock items was Tovar Hanso, an obvious relation to Alvar Hanso and the Hanso Foundation. Also, the captain of the Black Rock in 1845 was named Magnus Hanso.


• Widmore sends Desmond to see Penny at her new address – 423 Cheyne Walk. Four and 23 are two of the LOST numbers, but also significant is Cheyne Walk, a street in London with some famous past residents including Henry James, author of one of the books Desmond had in the hatch with him.


• Widmore used a towel to turn on the faucet and on the soap dispenser in the restroom at the auction house. But when Desmond touched the faucet, he flashed back to 2004 on the freighter.


• On the freighter, 4 dates in October weren’t X’d out - or were so in a different color - on the calendar in the sick bay. Could this have coincided with the dates that Desmond turned the failsafe key and “the sky went purple?”
  

Help a brotha out:

• Are the writers of LOST seriously trying to keep me awake all night?


• Were Gopher, Julie and Isaac on another deck waiting to welcome Sayid and Desmond on board?


• Is Daniel affected by the same time perception shift as Desmond? If Desmond is Daniel’s “constant”, did Daniel’s reminder note to his future self end his time shifting?


• Was the “sickness” that killed Rousseau’s scientist shipmates what killed George Minkowski (Fisher Stevens) and Eloise the rat?


• Was the crew on the freighter was a little more ragtag than expected? Hadn’t you expected a paramilitary operation led by the “evil” Minkowski?


• Was Juliet being protected from this effect when they drugged her before bringing her to the island?


• Since it’s Christmas Eve, will the Losties remember and do a Secret Santa?


• Is Jacob caught in this time loop? Remember his one and only line: “Help me.”


• Are people who enjoy the relationship angle of LOST now totally swooning over Desmond and Penny after their phone reunion? I’m man enough to admit I got a lump in my throat.


• Was the time shift on the freighter later or earlier than the island? Or was the crew so surprised to see the chopper back because it appeared to them as if they chopper had just left?


• Has Ben somehow mastered this time perception shifting? Is he using this ability to alter the future of the island?


• Will the real-world Asian tsunami that happened on Dec. 26, 2004 factor into the show’s plot?

There were certainly enough questions to keep my mind racing. Hit me up with your comments below with your answers to the questions from “The Constant.”