Big Daddy Gouda

No LOST post last week for perhaps the first time ever. Sorry about that. Blame the weather.  (see previous story below)

While a great episode in terms of character interaction, “Lighthouse” may have seemed a little dim in its revelations ( Jacob is watching, yeah we knew that and NOTLocke is Claire’s friend, yeah we suspected that), but this week’s  LOST promises to blow the lid off on this whole answers thing. And this time, they mean it.

“Sundown” is a Sayid-centric episode and we’ll be getting into this whole ‘darkside’ thing that the awesome new Other, Dogen warned us about. Is Sayid truly going to go evil on us? How will his sturggles on the Island ‘reflect’ in his flash-sideways.

Reportedly, NOTJohn Locke will show up at the Temple with an ultimatum for everyone inside: leave by sundown or die. Apparently, his mission will involve Sayid. Could it be that Locke is claiming Sayid for himself?

Looking beyond “Sundown,” the purpose of the Island will be revealed. Supposedly it is a four letter word. The answer is obviously: LOST. The island exists so that LOST can exist. yuk yuk yuk

Seriously, expect to learn the real reason the Island exists around midseason, according to the E network.

From the looks of the preview clips for “Sundown,” it would appear that this is not the first time Sayid has visited Nadia in Los Angeles. So how advanced is their relationship and if Sayid is not globe trotting in search of his lost love then just what the heck is he up to?

And where the hell is Faraday?

btw, anyone else predict that Jack’s wife in the sideways timeline is Juliet? It has to be right? Her or…gulp…Ana Lucia.

What did the exploding bomb from last year’s finale do exactly?

 It appeared to split time in half with one time line showing the passengers of 815 lading safely in LAX, while the other half were transported forward, from 1977 to present day on the island, pissed off that Jack and Faraday’s experiment didn’t work.

 But, as Juliette knows, and us viewers know, it did work right? The plane did land safely in LA, but not before flying over the island, albeit submerged under water. Creepy huh?

It’s painfully obvious that the survivors of 815 who landed safely all know somewhere in their minds that things are off. Jack kind of recognized Desmond didn’t he? And Jack also had that blood stain on his neck. Are we to assume there are traces of the LOSTIES island adventures buried deep within their minds? I sure as hell think there are.

 I’m also fairly certain that at some point this season, somehow, the two alternate timelines will converge. As in the survivors of flight 815 that landed safely in LAX will catch up to the 2007 survivors who are on the island, trapped, and seemingly preparing for battle against Jon Locke, I mean the man in black, I mean the smoke monster.

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 If you have five minutes click the link below. It’s a pretty extensive recap of last weeks two-hour season premiere that makes some interesting points and may clear up some confusion one is sure to have after all that was last week’s premiere.

 http://blog.zap2it.com/ithappenedlastnight/2010/02/lost-faces-a-new-reality-in-the-final-season-premiere.html

I can’t believe tonight at 9 p.m. will be the final LOST season premiere ever. Has it really been 6 years?

Where did we leave off in May?

We apparently met The Puppetmasters: Jacob and  The Man In Black.

A man in white creates thread on a spinning wheel, then tends to it on a loom. He’s in a dark, ancient room, light by flames and marked with Egyptian symbols. He goes to the shore, catches a fish, and cooks it upon a stone. As he eats the fish, a man in black comes from behind. They both gaze at the Black Rock, a few miles off shore.

The man in black accuses the other of bringing them to the Island, saying the man in white is trying to prove him wrong. “You ARE wrong,” says the man in white. The man in black notes that the cycle is always the same: they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. The man in white notes that anything up until his ideal outcome is merely “progress.” After a pause, the man in black says, “Have any idea how badly I wanna kill you?” He speaks of trying to find a loophole to accomplish his goal, and leaves by speaking the man in white’s name: Jacob. We never learn the man in black’s name. Instead, we see the camera rise up on a full intact statue, standing right behind them both.

So the MIB apparently found his loophole by inhabiting Locke’s dead body and manipulating Ben into killing Jacob.

And what were Jacob’s last words, “They’re coming”.  Who is coming? The original survivors of 815? What has become of them?

Did setting off the bomb actually reset time and prevent the crash or did setting off the bomb actually cause everything to happen? Will any of that be answered tonight?

I’ve heard that a lot will be resolved in the first hour of tonight’s episode. I’m also told that the show will feature a new story telling technique this year, not a flashforward or a flashback but something else.

And apparently everyone is coming back. Charlie, Claire, Michael, Libby, and Boone, just to name a few.

The end of things loved is always bittersweet but I’d be a lying scumbag if I told you I haven’t been lusting for tonight’s LOST for the past 9 months.

I’m man enough to admit it’s basically all I’ve been thinking about today. That and a Big Mac.

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8pm- Review Show

9-11p.m- 2 hour season premiere!!!

While the Final Season of LOST is still six months away I was interested to read today that upon the shows finale the producers will put memorabilia from the set up for auction on EBAY.

After thinking about it for about 5 minutes here are the 10 items I’d be most interested in owning from LOST.

10: Eko’s Club

9. Locke’s Hunting Knife

8. Kate’s Toy Plane

7. Hurley’s Winning Lottery Ticket

6. Charlie’s Guitar

5. Charlie’s Mother Mary Statue

4. Locke’s Backgammon Board

3. Sawyer’s Letter

2. Faraday’s Journal

1. Kate’s Panties (used, of course)

A lot of people I talked to today loved the finale but are a bit confused. Lots of info for two hours. Below I’ve cut and pasted a recap from a LOST blogger in cyberspace who is typically right on the money. This painted the clearest picture yet for me.

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Mid-1800’s: A man in white creates thread on a spinning wheel, then tends to it on a loom. He’s in a dark, ancient room, light by flames and marked with Egyptian symbols. He goes to the shore, catches a fish, and cooks it upon a stone. As he eats the fish, a man in black comes from behind. They both gaze at the Black Rock, a few miles off shore.

The man in black accuses the other of bringing them to the Island, saying the man in white is trying to prove him wrong. “You ARE wrong,” says the man in white. The man in black notes that the cycle is always the same: they come, they fight, they destroy, they corrupt. The man in white notes that anything up until his ideal outcome is merely “progress.” After a pause, the man in black says, “Have any idea how badly I wanna kill you?” He speaks of trying to find a loophole to accomplish his goal, and leaves by speaking the man in white’s name: Jacob. We never learn the man in black’s name. Instead, we see the camera rise up on a full intact statue, standing right behind them both.

We finally met the puppet masters! Remember in “The Shape of Things to Come,” there were those few shots of Ben in the desert as the camera started close, then jump cut a few times ever futher back, revealing a bigger picture? Tonight’s episode was the narrative version of the last shot in this sequence, where at last, on a quiet beach in the 19th century, we met the two players responsible for the forces of light and dark on the Island.

Many might be tempted to assign the Man in Black’s name as Esau, given the Biblical references rife with the name Jacob itself. But me? I like “Man in Black,” as it harkens to a work that I think runs rampant throughout the show: Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower.” In that 7-volume series, “The Man in Black” goes by many names across variety planes of reality, but always serves the side of evil. So it’s only fitting to me that we take Jacob’s adversary as a nameless entity for now. In any case, the backgammon game between Locke and Walt came full circle tonight, with the sides fully set and the true leader of each side revealed.

Free will matters in the “Lost” universe! This to me was the most important takeaway of Jacob’s visits to various people currently on the Island. He didn’t give them explicit instructions, he gave them OPTIONS. He gave them CHOICE. And by doing so, he gave them the capacity to both do good and evil. All this gets back to what I’ve long thought was the most important exchange in “Lost” history, from the early part of Season 3. In the Hydra Station, Ben and Jack discuss Ben’s impending surgery:

JACK: All of this… you brought me here to operate on you. You… you want me to save your life?
BEN: No, I want you to WANT to save my life.

“Lost” inhabits a universe in which choice matters, in which free will matters, in which there are seemingly omnipotent beings who still need us to do us to things for them. The Man in Black cannot kill Jacob. But he can set things in motion that pray upon the frailty of man: their pettiness, greed, violence, insecurity, in order to position people where he wants them. But he can only lead them to a certain point. At that point, individual will still takes over.

This, to me, does not negate “whatever happened, happened.” The people in 1977 were not acting out some passion play for the gods in an endless loop. As frustrating as I found the seemingly incoherent actions of the characters (who made choices based on dramatic need versus consistent reasoning), they at least all eventually chose in some capacity to end up at the Swan at the time of the Incident. (I’d love to know how Richard claims he “saw” them all die there, but hey, that’s another tale altogether.)

The most powerful force in “Lost” is not electromagnetism, but Austenism! Seriously, when the show explains every major character decision in 1977 around Freckles, I have to make a crack about this. I kept waiting for Radzinsky to say he named the Swan after Kate’s beauty after a while. I don’t even blame Kate for this; I blame the writers who are clearly in love with the character more than they should be at this point.

Ilana and Company are Others! Or, sons/daughters of Others, as several of you theorized. Nice call, there. The fact that Richard knew the answer to the riddle indicates a connection to me that aligns the two forces together. And it looks like Jacob put them all on Ajira 316 to help him along.

My “Cabin Christian” theory is looking stronger than ever! I have stated in the past that “Cabin Fever” started a long con by which the artist we know now as The Man in Black” sought to take over the Island. Rewatch everything from Season 4 and 5 and I think you see that’s pretty darn accurate. It’s a ridonkulously overelaborate plan, but that’s what happens when you’ve got ageless creatures that might be human, might be gods, might be good/evil themselves forever measuring the worth of man using the Island as a testing ground in the name of “progress” towards some evolutionary end Jacob foresees and the Man in Black abhors. But rewatch the Christian Shephard in the brown shirt very, very closely your second time around. His interest in John Locke is purely to get the Man in Black on the Island. That’s his mission. And he succeeded quite brilliantly

Well, rather that wait till next year, let’s try and sort through some things while they are fresh in our minds.

GOOD VS EVIL. GOD VS THE DEVIL

- I’m thinking the guy at the beginning of the show who was talking to Jacob is evil. As in ULTIMATE evil.  He was dressed in Black. And Jacob, dressed in white, is Good.

- While the bad guy spent his entire existence looking for the “loophole”, Jacob spent his life making sure that the castaways did exactly what they were supposed to, to make it to the island. Jacob was acting as an insurance policy to make sure “Whatever happened-happened”.

-Or….What if what we saw when Jacob visited the Losties at key points in their life was actually a bizarro flash forward and Jacob was visiting them in the alternate timeline created after Ben stabbed him and the bomb went off. Hmm.

-If you translate Alpert’s Spanish, “He who will save us all” lies within the shadow of the statue.

-I’m thinking dead Locke in the Box, laying dead within the shadow of the statue is what Richard meant. Locke’s body was brought there by his faithful servant Elana. Remember, Jacob asked her for help.  So now that Jacob is dead, does that mean he can inhabit a body like his evil counterpart? Will dead Jacob now be reborn inside a dead Locke. Hmm.

-Speaking of Richard, or Ricardo as Elana called him, I believe he arrived on that ship at the beginning of the show. After all, he doesn’t age right? (a gift from Jacob? Eternal Youth?)

- The other LOCKE has to be the guy from the beginning, taking a human form, as we’ve seen him do many time over the years. As Ecko’s brother, Jack’s dad too maybe.

-I also think the evil guy’s true form is that of the smoke monster. Remember the painting on the wall, the one of the Statue (representing Jacob) battling with the smoke monster (representing the evil man).

-Whoever this evil guy is, it appears he used Locke to get what he wants, manipulate people, especially Ben, into killing Jacob. Is that how he found the Loophole?

-It appears Richard and Elana are truly “The Good Guys”, battling with Jacob against this man. It also appears the castaways, and even Ben Linus , got stuck in the middle.

-There will probably be a ton of Jacob flashbacks next year. How long has he been on the island? Why is he fighting this evil man?

-In closing, I don’t think Jack’s bomb prevented a thing. I think it actually caused all the events to happen.

- Next season will most likely begin right where it all began, with the plane crashing on that island, only instead of waiting six seasons for answers, we’ll only have to wait for one season.  Afterall didn’t Jacob tell Ben, in his dying breath, “They are coming.” Oceanic Flight 815, due to crashland on the island at any moment.

As I said yesterday, see you in January.

Is it just me or did Season 5 flyyyyy by?

Tonight’s two hour finale promises two things: A MAJOR death and, as is customary, a shocking ending that will once again leave Losties scratching their heads until Season 6 (the final season), starts up again in January.

As I’ve done every year, I will simply defer to the finale and stop speculating.  The time for talk is over. It’s time to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I’m not making any predictions as to who’s gonna bite the dust or what the shocker may be, though I do think the death will be a female and the shocker will have something to do with the temple.

We’ve got a ton of answers this season, more so than ever before. Below I’ve listed some of the major mysteries that still need to be tied up:

- Who is Jacob and what is his purpose?

- What is The Smoke Monster?

- What lies within the shadow of the statue?

- How and Why did the statue get destroyed?

- What happened to Claire?

- What happened during “The Incident”.

- Is Jack Shepperd from Lost a long LOST brother of Derek Shepperd from Greys Anatomy? Both Doctors, Same Last name. Hmm?

Here’s to hoping at least one of these mysteries is solved tonight.

I encourage all LOSTIES to avoid spoilers out there at all costs. Believe me, they are out there! Please, Don’t make me smack you!

Ashlie, KC, I’m looking yer way.

See you back on the island in January 2010!!

btw, at 8pm is a one hour season 5 clip show. The real deal starts at 9pm and goes till 11!