POST 13 - STAY THE COURSE

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN, THANKS TO BEN

In “Further Instructions,” Desmond apparently knows what’s going to happen next, as though he’d already been there, done that. Hurley calls it déjà vu, but we wonder if he’s really a time traveler or if something else is going on.

For instance, by the time you read this, you’ll have already viewed episode four, “Every Man for Himself,” so you know what’s happened next, even though as we write this we don’t. In fact, everyone who is privy to a Lost script knows what happens on the show before it happens on our TV screens, but we think it’s safe to say that we’re all living in the same space-time continuum.

Although, it could be that we at the AC have special time travel skills: In our last post we suggested that the Losties’ experiences were actually scripts borrowed from the plots of novels by The Others. As an example, we said Kate and Sawyer’s rock-breaking scene might have come from a book found on the bookshelf in Jack’s flashback office. We wrote:

This synopsis of the Pale Horse Coming plot gives us an idea of how they relate: “it is the story of a prison in the deep-south run by an aging madman with insane theories of racial purity and administered by a brutally efficient Stalin of a guard sergeant.”

We don’t know that Mr. Friendly could be described as a “Stalin of a guard sergeant,” but the upshot in the book is that “a multi-talented group of adventurers is assembled to assail an unassailable target or to perform an impossible feat” to free the prisoners. Could it be that Hurley has been sent back to rally the troops?

Okay, so it turned out that Locke was the one who rallied the troops in his stirring beach speech (the very thing Desmond told Hurley was going to happen), but maybe we got it slightly wrong because unlike Desmond we haven’t seen the actual script, we’re just reading between the lines.

xxx

And now that we’ve watched “Every Man for Himself” ourselves, and heard Ben quote from Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” as though he were starring in a Broadway version of the play, we’re not only confident in our theory, we’re downright giddy because we think that this provided the key clue to decipher what’s happening to the castaway crew.

It is all a script but the Losties don’t know they’re acting. That doesn’t mean the big reveal will be a stupid “it’s all a dream,” cheat. We believe that they are unconscious and most likely each is connected to some sort of mind control machine. Are these machines on the island? We don’t think so. We think that they really are “Lost” at sea in the sick bay of the Helgus Antonius, the mystery ship Middelwerk and his Hanso co-conspirators sailed to Sri Lanka during The Lost Experience.

Why? We’re convinced that The Powers That Be -- and we don’t know if they’re aliens or a group of risen Atlanteans or Mu-ans or simply Hanso/Widmore/Paik Heavys -- have tracked down and subdued this group because they are the only people who either 1) know where the floating island is and/or 2) know the whereabouts of Geronimo Jackson, who we believe is a very special child.

How can the Losties find an island invisible to everyone else on the planet (and beyond)? They were there as children, which is an idea that we’ve been kicking around for quite awhile, but that came into focus when the guys on the podcast The Lost Lowdown ridiculed the scene in “Further Instructions,” when Locke picks up the ancient Tonka truck. They sneered, “Why is it that every time they see a toy they’ve got to pick it up? It would have served Locke right to get caught in one of Rousseau’s traps.” (Not an exact quote, but words to that effect.) Then on the Jay and Jack podcast one commenter remembered a flashback scene where a young Locke had exactly the same kind of truck. Then it just made sense that everything they’ve been going through has been a form of mental coercion to remind them of their childhood experiences and cull this vital information from their subconscious.

Gazing into our crystal ball (or are we surfing a glitch on the space-time wave, we forget), we’re convinced that the Losties will awaken from their unnatural slumber in episode six of this first pod or in the J.J. Abrams-directed February opener for the 17-episode pod-a-duex. Even though we “know” it’s going to happen, we can’t wait. We think it will be mind-blowing.

Possibly, not everyone will like having his or her mind imploded. It is probably going to be quite a leap for viewers still debating the fine points of island geography and the future of Charlie and Claire (and her Great! Big! Baby! The kid couldn’t’ be more than a month old by island time, but, boy, oh, boy, how he’s grown.) Anyway, we don’t think this change of mind, so to speak, will constitute a jumping of the shark, we just hope it happens before too many viewers jump ship.

xxx

We recently had an opportunity to speak with a PWAL (Person With A Life), someone who watches Lost, and that’s it. No slo-mo, frame-by-frame repeat viewing. No deciphering the whispers. No fiddling with the images. No blogging, no message boarding, no The Lost Experience theorizing, no podcast networking. Consequently, this PWAL is finding season three pretty inscrutable, and unlike most PWOAL (you know who you are), she finds all this unknown to be, well, unwatchable. In fact, like Stephen Colbert’s bears, she’s put Lost on notice. Actually, she called it probation: If the show doesn’t make some kind of sense to her by the end of these first six episodes, she’s canceling her TiVo season pass.

Even some of us PWOAL-types are feeling a bit waylaid. We hear reports of what’s happening on the Lost fan frontlines, and it worries us—a lot. From The Dharmalars to the Lost Community, there is simmering dissent among the troops. At the Black Rock podcast they speak of the 600,000 viewers who’ve gone AWOL since last week, and they predict channel switching in the millions by the end of the first six episodes if the show doesn’t start making some kind of sense. “It’s a good thing the Big-O is giving up the name Lost Sucks. Maybe we can use it,” the Black Rock podcasters joked with the grim humor of the gallows.

We vote no; Lost does not suck. Indeed, the least-sucky part is about to start. So, in this instance (only), we discourage the change of tactics or strategy or the channel. “Stay the course” may have fallen out of favor at the White House, but for Lost fans it’s still a valid talking point. The alternative (cancellation!) is simply unthinkable. If this show ends before we find out what comes next (the island, it’s up in the air! Lift up your eyes!) would make us crazy insane. We simply must know: did we get it right? And we know you want to know, too? Yes, even those of you who claim to be PWALs.

Oh, and one last thing, in case the guys from The Lost Community podcast ever see this, we have a friendly warning: Bozo? Oh, he’s coming soon to an island near you. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

xxx

POST 12 - OUT OF THE BOOK CLUB

In the season premier, the Others sentenced Kate and Sawyer to hard labor “breakin’ rock in the hot sun” and many viewers have commented that it looked just like a scene out of the movie “Cool Hand Luke.” Yeah, it looked like that to us, too, but couldn’t it also be a scene out of Pale Horse Coming by Stephen Hunter, which is one of the books on the bookshelf in Jack’s office in A Tale of Two Cities?

This synopsis of the Pale Horse Coming plot gives us an idea of how they relate: “it is the story of a prison in the deep-south run by an aging madman with insane theories of racial purity and administered by a brutally efficient Stalin of a guard sergeant.”

We don’t know that Mr. Friendly could be described as a “Stalin of a guard sergeant,” but the upshot in the book is that “a multi-talented group of adventurers is assembled to assail an unassailable target or to perform an impossible feat” to free the prisoners. Could it be that Hurley has been sent back to rally the troops?

We think it’s an intriguing idea that what’s happening to the Losties are scripted scenarios hatched from the plotlines of books. We checked out a few of the novels on Jack’s shelf to confirm our theory.

In Clive Cussler’s Valhalla Rising a brilliant scientist who’s invented frictionless oil as well as a magnetohydrodynamic propulsion system is murdered by the all-powerful Cerberus Corporation, whose company logo is the three-headed dog with the snakehead tail. Cerberus sounds a lot like The Hanso Foundation, doesn’t it? And Cerberus is a confirmed security entity on the island.

Anyway, as the scientist’s daughter searches for her father’s killer we learn that dad had two extracurricular passions: studying the Vikings and their exploration of North America and Jules Verne’s character Captain Nemo and the “Mysterious Island” where he died.

If you followed The Lost Experience this summer, there should be some other bells rung by what follows.

The Viking part of the story (Rachel Blake had quite a lot to say about her fondness for Vikings) describes a pair of brothers, the younger of whom is named Magnus (Hanso). The scientist travels all over the country researching Viking runes (glyphs). It turns out the scientists’ house is built above a river-accessible cave (hatch) where the Vikings left their ships and treasure (technology). It’s also where, incredibly, the real proto-type of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus is discovered.

Cussler’s book also helpfully offers a synopsis of Mysterious Island: “…a group of castaways settle on a deserted island and are harassed by pirates. A mysterious unseen benefactor leaves food and supplies for the settlers. He also kills the crew of pirates who attack the settlement. Near the end, the settlers are led to a tunnel leading to a flooded cavern inside the heart of the island’s volcano. They find the Nautilus and Captain Nemo, who is dying. He warns them the volcano is about to erupt. They escape in time, as the island destroys itself, burying Captain Nemo and his fabulous creation.”

Nemo = Alvar?

In Catherine Coulter’s Eleventh Hour a priest who is part of a set of mirror twins is murdered by a man who is copying the scripts from a television show. The surviving twin is an FBI agent and in searching out his brother’s killer he meets Linus Wolfinger a TV wunderkind who runs the network. Linus is described this way: “…the Little Shit is really good when it comes to picking story concepts, and god knows there are zillions pitched each season. He’s good at picking actors, at picking the right time slots for the shows to air. Sometimes he’s wrong, but not that often. It’s all very depressing, particularly since he has the habit of telling everyone how great he is. Everyone hates his guts.”

We know that Ben Linus has been picking the books for the book club and most of the novels on that bookshelf are thrillers by bestselling authors. Now think of the flashback stories of the Losties. They’re all thrillers, too. Is there one that doesn’t include an intensely melodramatic plotline? We don’t know if they match the stories on the bookshelf, but we’ll wager that they at least mix and match. We also know that at least for Jack and Sun, the flashback characters they played last year scarcely resemble the ones in this year’s first two shows. They’re like different people; or maybe they’ve just been fed different scripts.

What kind of a world would it be where real life is cribbed from the bestseller list? We have no idea, except that it would be a very ‘hokum-pocum” kind of world where a person could survive a devastating plane crash only to rise from a wheelchair and walk, face off with a polar bear, or find a friend in an underground hatch. It’s the kind of world that when a plane falls from the sky, the guy in charge sends off his minions not to offer aid and assistance, but to make a list…kind of like a casting director. In other words, it’s the kind of thing that could only make sense in the otherworldly world of Lost.

Of course, this is just a theory. We won’t know for sure if the book club connection is correct until prom time…you know, when one of the characters starts exhibiting some rather alarming telekinetic powers…and Ben’s thriller gives way to Juliet’s horror.

POST 11 – THE ALTERNATIVE ISLAND

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you’re walking around your house and suddenly you discover a bunch of new rooms, a second storey that was never there before, an entire new wing? We love those dreams; talk about extreme makeover! Our point is, doesn’t the Lost island seem to exist in just such an ever expanding universe, growing from living on the beach to huts and hatches last year to now include a leafy suburb complete with a zoo and aquarium? Wal-mart and a certain construction company must be eyeing this burgeoning island with some interest.

But we digress; which is also something Lost is very good at doing. Last week’s opening scene flashed back to the day of the crash, and later Jack flashed back to the last days of his marriage. Interesting how characters from life on the island seem to intermix so freely with characters in the flashbacks. In fact, it is the hallmark of Lost that everyone is “interconnected” in mysterious ways.

The examples of crossovers “encounters” are so numerous that they defy the confines of a list. Or do they? Hmmm? Who’s been making a little list? Wasn’t that what Ben asked Ethan to do? Find the wreckage of the plane and “make a list”?

Who knows what any of it means? Which is not to say that there hasn’t been a ton of speculation on Lost blogs and podcasts regarding the island map; the Others’ village; Ben’s list; what’s in Jack’s dossier and how the Other’s came by it, and what’s the deal with Juliet and how come she looks so much like Penelope and even Sarah and also sort of like Libby?

With that last theory, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the women are all related. Perhaps they’re all members of the Widmore clan and it’s Juliet that Penelope is searching for and not Desmond. Could be, but we sure hope not.

What we have not heard much about is speculation that the island reality is entirely manufactured: the island may be an illusion while in fact the Lost survivors are trapped far underground with images of a tropical paradise piped into their brains like Musak. The “people” may all “interconnect” because they are all playing parts in both the flashbacks and the island scenario. The women may all look similar because that’s the template the captors have to work with or because the captors are trying to hone in on some specific information locked in their captives’ brains and triggered by the image of Pen-Juliet. (Hmmm, that sounds familiar somehow? Aren’t there some magicians…with names a lot like that?)

No, we don’t know who “they” are or what purpose this uber-alternative universe might serve, but from a story-telling point of view it sure seems that it would be a lot easier to explain mind control than a mysterious ever-enlarging island plopped down into a universe populated by a mere handful of people who are all somehow related. But the blogs and podcasts don’t seem to take much stock in this view. In fact, they barely consider the possibility that nothing is as it seems. We get the feeling that if that turned out to be the case, it would be viewed as a huge and unhappy surprise.
What we all agree on is that something has got to give sooner rather than later and that the payoff for our patience will not be the end of the story but the beginning of a rip-roaring tale.

Our hope is that if, for instance, it turns out they’re all, say, robots (I thought Juliet’s question about “free-will” might be a nod in Asimov’s direction and the three laws of robotics), that the fans who’ve invested so heavily in whether Kate ends up with Jack or Sawyer, or whether Sun’s baby is her husband’s, won’t feel like you do in those dreams where you search and search and search for something wonderful, but know not what. You’re excited and in hot pursuit and thrilled to lay hands on the precious box only to open it and find … whatever…something stupid that you instantly discard in disgust.

We hate those dreams and it does seem at times that Lost is on that nightmare road, not because the audience has grown tired of the treasure hunt, but because TPTB have buried the treasure chest deeper than the Swan Hatch and that by the time it’s unearthed the prize will seem like a cheat. Maybe it needs to be more like The Lost Experience where TPTB planted hints about clues and solutions to help the fans along. In the end, TLE didn’t amount to much, didn’t even really end but just faded away. Even the tried-and-true followers seemed satisfied: Okay, TLE was what it was. Unfortunately, so far, we can’t say we know as much about Lost.