5.10: He's Our You

WOW, WOW, WOW, my jaw about hit the floor at the end of last night's episode, I can't believe that actually happened!! This is the first episode this season that hearkens back to showing flashbacks of a character's past. It was interesting seeing Sayid as a kid, his nature seems much as it is today: he's a killer, but with the best intentions.

I really couldn't tell where this episode was heading until the end. When Sayid told James he had "found his purpose" in coming back to the island, I thought he meant getting killed in a shooting line would be a relief for him. But we saw throughout the episode the different ways Ben manipulated Sayid and others to his will and realizing the murders Ben had Sayid commit were only for the purpose of later forcing him to go back to the Island. It was funny that he asked the bounty hunter if they could catch the next plane after realizing all the Foundies were there.

I love that I didn't figure out who sent the burning bus until seeing young Ben creep out from the shadows. It just shows that even at the age of 12 he didn't care how many people he hurt or killed as long as he got his way. I had no idea what Sayid was up to when he knocked out Jin, only when he picked up the gun and admitted Ben was right about him being a killer did I start thinking "OMG he's gonna shoot the kid!" And he did, though you could tell it broke his heart to do it.

So what you think?? Does this change EVERYTHING that we know happens in the future? What will happen to current-Ben? Will the Dharmaites live or be wiped out by another traitor/Hostile?

5.09: Namaste

Wow, so many questions from this episode… Why wasn’t Sun sent back in time w/ the other Losties from the plane? Is she too jaded/semi-bad now for the Island to “want” her? Not that Ben didn’t deserve the conk over the head she gave him… How is it possible for her and Frank, Ben and the others to be on the same island in a different time period? How can the Island exist in two time periods at once??

I don’t know about y’all but it’s so odd seeing Sawyer/James/Jim/LaFleur as the leader, the go-to guy who figures things out. I liked that he called Jack out on the book thing toward the end, but that definitely shows that he still has quite a bit of hostility built up toward Jack. The awkwardness now between Sawyer and Juliet is hard to watch, sad considering how happy they seemed in the last episode.

How great was the end with Ben bringing Sayid his sandwich?! It took a second for me to realize it was young-Ben after hearing his pre-pubescent voice saying he was dropping off the sandwich. Poor Sayid, he has no freakin’ clue what’s going on, but he must have figured out he was back in time w/ the Dharma Initiative, and put two-and-two together when the kid said his name.

So now we have some perspective on the amount of time the Dharma folks have left. Ben was an adult when he gassed them all to death, so they prob still have a good 5-8 years left. I was wondering about the Dharma facilities Sun and Frank found and why they were so trashed since we saw the Others living in them comfortably. My friend suggested maybe the folks in Dharma-time change something in the future, or, she also reminded me about the freighter soldiers who were blowing houses up, maybe that’s how they left it…does anyone remember?

5.08: LaFleur

I thought this was a great episode and VERY interesting for many reasons. One of the biggest tidbits we learned blew my assumption I've been going on since last season that the people back on the Island did not experience the same three year absence that the Losties back in civilization did. It seems now that the only person who skipped the three-year difference is Locke.

Not only did the Islanders live those 3 years, they lived them around 1974 as members of the Dharma Initiative. In the previous post's comments, Robetron made some excellent observations of timing and events we've already seen (I'll copy his post into this comment section). First off THANK YOU for remembering that Horace was the dead guy in the woods Locke met. I KNEW I recognized him but couldn't place from where. Robetron also notes Robert's scraggly appearance when he meets Ben as a child as compared to looking like he stepped out of a J. Crew catalog when he confronts Horace, meaning that Ben is probably already on the Island and somehow working w/ the Others. I too remember noticing how clean cut Robert looked in this episode and wondered where the Others were living since they weren't yet in the Dharma facilities. Also interesting to see Amy successfully give birth (w/ Juliette's help) to a son...something the Others never were able to do. What happened between then and now that makes all the babies and moms die?

I think we all had guessed Sawyer and Juliette would hook up, but it was interesting to see the changes in his character. He really seems to care about these people, Amy, Horace, and his love for Juliette has brought out a sweet side of him we've never seen before. They truely seem happy together, I'm honestly a little sad to know that will be screwed with by the "Foundies" return (hehe I like that name). It will be strange for Juliette too given her past feelings for Jack.

As for past references to LaFleur, googling "Lost Lafleur" obviously gets us nowhere since that was the title of this episode, so that's all that comes up. Does anyone remember a past reference?

Just one final note, I was irritated we never learned why the Others shot Paul and were going to shoot Amy. Supposedly Sawyer and Juliette killing the shooters broke the "truce" between Dharma and the Others, but doesn't shooting an innocent couple who looked to be out for a pinic also break that truce? Why did no one bring that up??

5.07: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

Well this is an interesting twist...so is Widmore actually a "good" guy??

It took me a bit to remember who the woman was questioning Locke on the beach, she was the cop who had Sayid in custody on the plane. So now we know that the 316 plane did in fact crash (because there are wounded survivors) and the Losties actually disappeared off of the jet when the white light occurred. Interesting that Ben is among the injured survivors and did not disappear with them...I guess that the Island only took peacefully the ones it really wanted. Like many of you guessed it would, the Island brought John back to life. It seems he is definitely meant to be there.

In the flashbacks we see Locke rescued by Widmore, who's now being portrayed much more friendly and pleasant than in the past. When Locke can't decide if he should trust him, Charles puts it plainly that he's never tried to kill John, something he can't say about Ben. Locke's interaction w/ Walt was the most interesting to me. Walt forsees in his dreams Locke on a beach in a suit surrounded by people who want to hurt him. I wonder what people those are? I wouldn't think the other crash survivors have anything against him. I'm assuming when he confronts Ben he'll just be like "oh I knew the Island would bring you back to life" or some crap like that.

Anyway, the driver getting shot was definitely a surprise, I figured it was Ben who pulled the trigger. As the scene in the motel room developed I guessed Ben would end up killing Locke, but it doesn't make sense to me why he tried to save him in the first place. And why did John fall for it?? Did he forget how Ben shot and left him for dead in the pit of Dharma corpses? It was an interesting twist though since last week it seemed he went through with the suicide with the note for Jack and everything.

What I'm still trying to figure out, though, is if Ben and Widmore are at war with each other, why did they both have the agenda of getting the Losties back to the island? Why did Ben pick up where Locke gave up and left off?

5.06: 316

Ya know what's funny, I didn't get to see Lost yesterday (recorded it) and was just saying to my coworker today how I enjoy TV episodes and movies that start out in the present/future with a scene and you have no idea what's going on (a la Alias - Truth Be Told), then they take you back and build up to that scene for the rest of the episode. We were chatting about Pulp Fiction which is what prompted that thought...and here again we have another example of this, beginning with the Lost trademark eye-opening closeup shot of Jack. The camera zooms out and we see that yes he is, again, on The Island. I went through that whole scene thinking it was Jack dreaming up until Kate asked "did it work? are we back?" or something like that.

One of the many things that interests me about the scene at the Dharma's Lightpost was that the gray-haired lady never actually admitted to being Dan's mom. She reacted when Des mentioned Daniel Faraday but she never referred to him as her son, she only said that she is "helping" as Dan asked. Might be nothing, just something that struck me...

Funny how both times Jack was tempted by the drink he had some sort of distraction to take him away from it. First was a never-before-mentioned granddad (nice for us Alias fans to see Lauren Reed's dad again ;-)), second was a distraught (but evidently horny) Kate on his bed. So here are the major questions raised from this eppy:

1. What happened to Aaron to make Kate want to go back to the island?
2. What chewed up Ben and broke his arm (did it have to do w/ Kate)?
3. What brought Sayid (who looked to be in custody) and Hurley to the airport and how did they know about flight 316 to Guam (and did it have to do w/ Ben...I'm sure it did...)
4. What happened to the plane and the rest of the non-Lostie passengers?
5. Last but certainly not least, what the hell was Jin doing in the new Dharma van in Dharma clothes?? I'm guessing this means they're back in the Dharma time of The Island...

5.05: This Place is Death

At long last, we see the return of the Smoke Monster! Well sort of...technically it happened in the past...but you know what I mean. I don't remember the last time we saw the SM, do you? Poor Danielle, man did she draw the short end of the stick. Friends being killed and dismembered by SM, then the ones left alive become brainwashed or "sick" as she called them. We definitely know for sure now that she wasn't making that up, since we witnessed w/ Jin her partner declaring his love for her, then trying to put a bullet between her eyes.

The reunion of Jin and Sawyer was cute, that was quite the genuine joy man-hug. :) So we finally got some answers about Charlotte's past, which should have been the tip-off that she was going to die. We never seem to learn any juicy details about anyone until the episode the character dies (remember Shannon?) Anyway, so Charlotte was raised as a child on the island, then ordered to leave and made to think she was crazy and had made up the island by her mom...nice mom. She said there was a "scary man" who told her to never come back or she'd die, and that man evidently was Dan. We know he goes back to Dharma time, we saw that briefly in the season opener. I'm guessing the next time flash will take them back to the Dharma period, and he'll see her as a child and scare the crap out of her then.

The interaction between Locke and Christian was...weird...not sure what else to say about that. Locke obviously doesn't keep his word to Jin by telling Ben that he's still alive and giving him Jin's ring. That was an interesting outburst from Ben in the van, he always remains so calm. I wonder if we'll ever find out "what he's done" to keep our Losties safe...from whom, Widmore? Thoughts?

5.04: The Little Prince

Huh...I totally don't get why this episode was called that, do you? Anyway, I'm in a time crunch and wish I had more time to blog because this was an awesome episode!! Quick comments/questions:
- What do you think is causing the nosebleeds among only some of the Island Losties? We know length of time on the island doesn't cause it cuz the newbies are affected and so is Juliette...
- who is sending people to kill Sayid from Kate's address?
- how awesome was Sawyer, it totally tore at my heartstrings to see the way he looked at past-Kate...
- Was it Robby who knew it was Ben trying to get Aaron from Kate? Awesome foresight there!!
- I/WE TOTALLY CALLED IT THAT JIN'S ALIVE!!! THAT WAS FREAKIN AWESOME!!
- I knew it was Danielle's boat when we saw the writing in French (yeah, dead giveaway)

Ok folks I'm out of town this weekend, have at it!!

5.03: Jughead

This was a great episode...granted I'm a little biased as a fan of Des, but there were many *gasp!* moments and little nuggets of info spread throughout. It was fun to find out Des and Pen have a son together (in prob the quickest birth ever documented), and there's the "aww" factor at him being named Charlie. :) It's odd Dan told him to find his mom at Oxford, I know Robetron suggested the theory that the woman from the jewelry store/church is Dan's mom and I think that's looking more probable now that we know she's in L.A. What do you suppose happened to the woman Des visited? Interesting to find out Widmore was funding Dan's research, and we knew he was testing it on mice/rats, but do you think he tried to send that woman through time and it screwed up her brain? Kudos to Des for having the balls to walk in on Widmore and confront him about it, though it seems out of character for Wid to just hand over that woman's address...there must be a catch...

Cute that Dan professed his love for Charlotte...not so cute that she ended the show w/ her brain hemorrhaging. I wonder why she's been affected by the time travel and none of the others have? With Locke we now have the chicken-and-the-egg scenario with Richard visiting him as a child, and seeing John tell him to do that two years before he was born. I don't really remember what happened when he visited other than showing him some objects and then abruptly leaving, anyone else remember something significant? I love that the edgy little brit-Other turned out to be Widmore, that dude is everywhere! But now we know he WAS on the island at some point...

One sidenote to end on, I didn't even notice that we didn't see Jack or Kate during this episode until I saw the preview for next week. It's definitely a credit to the writers to have created so much interest in SO many characters that you don't even notice when you don't see some of the main ones.

Season 5 Premiere

ABC has announced that Lost Season 5 will premiere on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 8/7c. Hope to see you all here then for all the fun discussion and speculation!

**UPDATE** we've started chatting about the premiere in this thread so beware of spoilers in the comments if you haven't seen it yet!

Summatimmme

Well I don't know about you all but I'm going through a bit of Lost withdrawl... We haven't had a lot of action lately since the show is on summer break, but this last season was quite a doozy and I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas about what happened. We've been posting some guest written articles on our sister blog, Let's Talk Alias, which has spawned some great discussions, so if you'd like to be a guest writer please let me know! Click on my profile to see my contact info, hope you all are having a great summer!
-SRG

4.13 There's No Place Like Home (Part 2)

Sorry I missed posting about the last episode guys, but honestly I don't think it matters much considering the whopper of a finale we got last night. Again huge props to the writers...starting this episode 1 second after the ending of last season's finale flashfoward was genius. I remember coming to the conclusion that they didn't reveal who had died because it wasn't important, boy was I wrong.

There are so many questions I don't even know where to start, so I guess I'll begin with what we DID learn from the finale. We now know that Dharma knew about the "special properties" the island possesses and was experimenting with time travel in The Orchid station. Ben is still a heartless bastard, no matter how much sympathy was gleaned from the murder of Alex. He got his revenge on her killer knowing full well that would mean the deaths of everyone on the freighter. It broke my heart to see the boat explode with Jin running on the platform toward the helicopter and Sun practically jumping out to grab his hand, IMO those were some Emmy-earning screams she was belting out. I'm still in denial Jin's dead, but I guess that's how I felt about Charlie in last year's finale... As for Sun, I have no idea why she would ever want to partner w/ Widmore in the future knowing he was ultimately responsible for Jin's death. She's obviously become quite shrewd with time and must have something up her sleeve.

So when Jacob/Christian told Locke to "move the island," he really wasn't kidding. It was interesting seeing Ben lead up to the flashforward we saw a few episodes ago; him appearing out of no where in the desert with a bloody arm, now we know how and why he got there. It was also interesting to see how all the events played out to end w/ the Oceanic 6, because all season in my head I couldn't imagine how those specific people were the only ones who got off... Speaking of which, did anyone hear anything that Sawyer whispered to Kate before jumping?

The one moment of relief we got in those 2 hours was seeing Penny lean over the rescue boat's railing as Desmond looked up. Watching by myself I exclaimed out loud "it's Penny!!" and shed a few happy tears seeing them reunited. Of course I lost that feeling with Desmond's foreboding claim that as long as he's got Penny he'll be fine, knowing Ben is seeking to kill her.

One major thing I'm not clear on...why did the O6 have to lie?? In addition to protecting the island and it's people, which I get, did they think Widmore would kill them if they didn't? And why were they making up a name for Locke (which Hurley voiced on the boat) when they thought he was staying on the island? Ben's claim that Jack has to get all the survivors to go back to the island clears up Kate's dream where Claire tells her she shouldn't ever bring Aaron "back", which I think means back to the island. Why do they all have to go back, do you think they can go back in time and reverse all the horrible things that happened from the finale and on? I have a hard time believing this horrible future we've seen glimpses of all season is unchangeable for our beloved Losties...

Out of office...

Hey all,
I'm out of town at a conference most of this week so no time to do a recap of the last eppy. Please post all comments in this thread and I'll read through 'em before doing the delayed post later this week. Thanks!
-SRG

4.11: Cabin Fever

Wow this was a bizarre episode. We got to see more flashbacks of John's past, and two main themes came across from them:
1. John is a miracle baby/man who has defied death on multiple occasions
2. The Island has been recruiting him since birth

We got to see the man who never ages looking in on him right after his birth mother ran out, and visit him years later to give some weird test that John didn't pass at that time (what the crap was all that about??)

On the freighter it seems the captain and the pilot are actually good people. The captain helps Sayid escape on a dingy after realizing the soldiers have a nasty second protocol, only to be shot by the their leader who then convinces the pilot to take them back to the island only by slitting the doctor's throat (um, does that mean now the island is in future time??)

In I think the weirdest ending ever, John finds Jacob's cabin and ends up talking to Jack and Claire's dad...guess she wasn't hallucinating after all. Her relaxed and almost amused demeanor was unsettling though, it was like she was brainwashed all over again. We've definitely noticed that Christian seems to be the tying factor to all of the Losties in some way, this seems to confirm that theory. Locke evidently finds out how to "save the island" from him and from the looks of next week's trailer our Oceanic 6 begin their journey home...along with their ill-fated destinies we've had glimpses of all season. Can their futures be changed somehow or is everything up to fate??

4.10: Something Nice Back Home

Dang, this season just keeps getting better and better! For once we see flash forwards of a happy time, after Kate's trial, to her and Jack living together, getting engaged, and raising Aaron. This goes back and forth with the present time on the island and Jack suffering through an appendectomy (which we obviously know he survives since the flashes are about him, so that drama was kinda pointless IMO). Of course you know with the episode starting out happy it won't end that way...

We progressively see Jack's downfall, which is sadly driven by Hurley's insanity and claims Jack shouldn't be raising Aaron and will get a visitor. Jack starts hallucinating that he sees his dad which spawns his drug and alcohol use along with mistrust of Kate, who he finds out has been doing some kind of "favor" for Sawyer. What we learn from this is the rest of the Losties "chose" to stay behind, as Jack put it, so does that mean none of them (including Jin and Claire) are actually dead? Something does seem to be wrong with Claire though, who throughout the episode is dizzy, woozy and at the end sees her (and Jack's remember) father and goes off into the woods w/ him, leaving baby Aaron on a tree root. I mean the girl's house was blown up, seems crazy to think she'd walk away unharmed, so I'm thinking there might be some kind of internal head wound or something... :-\

Other interesting events in this eppy:

• The helicopter pilot saving Sawyer, Claire, Aaron and the ghost dude from the crazy freighter soldiers
• Jin talking some serious smack to Charlotte in Korean
• Juliette seeming like a total beeatch by telling Kate Jack kissed her, then redeeming herself by stating she knew it was to prove he was actually in love with Kate
• Kate adamantly calling Aaron her son, which I also noticed in the episode w/ her trial...I mean she says it like she really gave birth to him, just seems odd...

4.9: The Shape of Things to Come

Whoa! That was my reaction to this episode, very mind blowing. I'm not going to do a "recap" really since they can be rather lengthy (not to mention boring at times), so I'm just going to point out the events I thought were most interesting and my reactions, so I'd love to hear yours!

Kate being Ms. Flirtypants w/ Jack again doesn't surprise me, but was does is Jack's inability to diagnose his own health problem, which according to the next eppy's trailer, is appendicitis. There's some definite weirdness with them finding the freighter's doctor w/ his throat cut but back on the boat they claim "the doctor is fine", huh? We finally see what they're capable of though, bombing Claire's, shooting random people, but I never ever thought they'd actually kill Alex. I had the same reaction as Ben, jaw dropped, wide eyed, complete shock. That poor girl! Turns out we were all wrong thinking Ben planned the murder of Carl and Danielle, it really was the crazy freighter people, and they are just as dangerous as Ben claimed they were. Oh, and I give some major hero props to Sawyer, who rescued Claire and stood up for Hurley and his curly head, bravo!

Getting to the flash forwards, we don't see how Ben ends up in the middle of the Sahara desert, but it sure looked to me a lot like when Des has his time traveling spells. He seemed to just appear out of no where w/ an arm injury and waring a Darma jacket, but he's definitely resourceful and seems to be able to get around no matter where in the world he is. We finally get the picture of how Sayid comes to work w/ Ben, wonder why the Widmore crew decided to murder his wife though. The thought just occurred to me that maybe Ben set all that up, just to get Sayid to be his assassin, what do you think? The episode ends with Ben confronting Widmore and declaring he's going to murder his daughter the way Widmore murdered his...bad news for Des and Penny. :(

So what did we learn in this eppy?
- Ben knows how to control and call the smoke monster
- The freighter people never intended to rescue the 815 survivors and are cold hearted murderers

What else gang?

Yay and yawn

Lost returns this Thurs. Apr. 24 (yay!) at a new time, 10/9 central (ugg). I don't know about y'all, but frankly that keeps me up past my bedtime, so probably watch the episode on Fri. evening. Please visit after that for a recap and discussion!

Season 5 rewind

I'm posting these observations on behalf of our loyal blogger Robetron. Some very interesting points to muse over in our Lost hiatus! -SRG
-------
I just went back to watch this seasons first and second episodes. I noticed some things that I didn't catch before.

A. There may be a problem with the "different reality/ nightmare" scenario. In episode 1, we are shown on a TV screen that someone was in a high-speed chase in an old orange camaro (which, we eventually find out is Hurley because this is his flash-forward). What we only get a brief glimpse of is that the watcher of that TV is Jack, it is early in the morning, and Jack is making himself a Screwdriver with orange juice and Absolute Vodka. He begins to nurse the drink before noticing Hurley's antics on TV. This would damage the view that Jack was "just fine" in Hurley's flash-forward, as opposed to his own flash-forward where he was a raging drunk. I think Hurley's flash-forward was further back in time than Jack's, and that Jack was only in the process of his alcohol-induced problems.

Later, when Jack pays Hurley a visit in the mental institution, they discuss whether or not Hurley would "tell." I think they made it off the Island, but left everyone else alive on the Island and swore never to reveal it. This also is when the idea of "going back" was introduced to Jack. Hurley was way ahead of him, and suggested it. I don't know why, but it does seem to be the moment when Jack started to think about it, which of course, made him drink more, bringing him to the point of near lunacy and suicide.

B. Later, in Hurley's flash-forward, a thin black man claiming to be a lawyer for Oceanic Airlines paid Hurley a visit. We do not discover much about him, but we get the sense that he is lying throughout the interview, until he reveals himself to believe that the rest of the Losties are still alive on the island, and Hurley freaks out about it. Then he disappears. Weird and mysterious, but not enough information for us to really think about it.

Come forward into episode two where we get to know how the crew on the helicopter came to be a part of their "expedition." Naomi is protesting the selection of an untrained crew, and the guy who is convincing her is none other than --

--the guy who so disturbed Hurley in the mental hospital. He was working for (as we know now) the man who is funding the ship and the craziness of trying to capture Ben Linus as well as locate the island: Mr. Widmore. now there is an unexpected twist. Mr Widmore was having his lacky interrogate Hurley in the future to see if the other Losties were still alive. That means that somehow, the "Oceanic 6" got back to the real world without letting anyone on that ship know anything about the other Losties, or the location of the Island. Maybe they forcably took Mr Widmore's ship away from the captain? I dunno, but this is very revealing!

--

I will continue to watch the new season's episodes and make more observations if there are things I missed the first go-round.

-R.

And the verdict is...

Lost makes a pretty good showing in Empire's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, coming in at #5. Sadly all of us who are Alias fans can agree with the comment that "Only time will tell whether it's as clever as it seems," but it's nice to see the show so highly placed.

4.8: Meet Kevin Johnson

Yay I finally got to watch last week's episode! I'll tell ya, we have some very intuitive and smart bloggers on here. First Paul calls Michael out as the spy, then Robetron guesses that Widmore could be behind the 815 fake wreckage. Bravo! Katie posted that she's not completely convinced that is what REALLY happened instead of Ben staging the whole charade, and I agree, we can't trust any of the sources we've heard both tales from. Michael definitely went along w/ that story rather easily, but then again he had tried to shoot himself in the head only to have no bullet come out after Island-guy told him he couldn't die. Guess I'd be willing to believe that guy too...

So basically the entire episode showed that Michael's life has completely sucked since he got off the island. I agree w/ Robby that it was not great having the entire episode be a flashback, I'm a fan of the back and forth, but it was interesting to see why Michael ended up on the freighter working for Ben, the most manipulative SOB I've ever seen. Speaking of which, I agree that Ben set up Carl and mommy dearest to be taken out, poor Alex. She obviously thought it was the freighter people shooting at them, IDing herself as Ben's daughter in defense, but I'm pretty sure it was the Others doing Ben's orders.

I also like seeing old characters in the flashbacks, like Libby and Naomi, it's like a little surprise treat since our mindset is they're dead. Guess it will be another month before the next new episode, sigh. What shall we do till then folks?

Post here!

Hey all,
I'll be out of town Thurs-Sun (visiting my new baby nephew in NY!) so I won't be able to post a recap on this week's episode until early next week. For those who would still like to discuss what happens, please post here! I'll read through all the posts once I get to watch it and will post a recap including comments and questions in this thread. Thanks, and to all who celebrate it, Happy Easter! :)
-SRG