Floored.

Wow. I don't know WHAT fricking end is up after that episode, which I thought was amazing, btw. We're getting close to the end now, and I'll say that I still think Jack and John are going to have to duke it out (DID YOU LOVE SMOKEY LOCKE'S "HELLO JACK!" AS MUCH AS I DID?), and while Jack might get the most press out of being the show's savior, I'm not entirely discounting Hugo. He's good, pure, and honest, and he's remained that way all along. He would see the good in people, were he required to somehow prove it, right?

Jack is the fixer. He can't NOT be the fixer! He wants to fix things. Matt thinks Sawyer and Kate are going to die. I think Kate's knocked up. Poor Illana, gone the way of Ernst. Just for the record though (and NOT in the flash-sideways), Sawyer has Clementine waiting for him "back home," Jin and Sun have their daughter. Kate has no one anymore, unless you count her old bitch-face rabbit mother who sold out her own daughter. Aaron = with the Grandmama. Jack has nothing but his mother. Hurley has nothing but his religious mother and Cheech. Ben and Lapidus probably don't even care.

Ding, dong, bell, Desmond's in the well. . . that was unpleasant. I hope he's okay.

My brain hurts. Here are some images.

The Life and Times of Richard Alpert

HAPPY RICHARD ALPERT DAY, EVERYONE!

Tonight, at long last, we get something we've been waiting YEARS for! How exciting! I want to know everything about Richaardus, EVERYTHING!

A few items, just for the hell of it.

1. What is it about the island that makes people want to destroy it? Did the armed forces bring JUGHEAD to the island, and if so, for what purpose? How is it that it was never detonated (before Juliet)? How would anyone be able to find the island and then get a nuke onto it? Was that the work of The Smokey Man? (It's an island, it doesn't need protecting.) I think he was telling a big lie with that one.

Is the island the only place that can **contain** The Smokey Man? Is that why he wants to leave it and then have it destroyed? If this really is like The Howling Man, then he can only be contained by the staff of truth, maybe the island is a bigger, more special staff, that can contain the devil, and that's why he wants to go? He can't leave as long as his opposing figure (Jacob) is keeping him there, but now that Jacob is gone, he's free to bolt?

The Island is under water during the beginning of the flash sideways. If LOST=Howling Man, someone let the Devil out, and if the island (staff of truth) is underwater, the only thing that could contain him is gone, leaving him free to unleash his evil all over the world.

2. What is up with the Statue and what is up with the loss of fertility? How did that statue get reduced to just a foot? Does that symbolize The Smokey Man having more power over what happens on the island than Jacob? (Bad is more powerful than good, by the time Jack and Locke get there?) They COULD have successful reproduction before, what changed that? Wikipedia says that the Sobek Statue symbolized The River, Warfare, and Fertility. Sobek = God of Creation, often paired with Ra, God of Sun. Sobek was also said to be a repairer of evil. If the statue got hashed, chances are good that 1. the evil cannot get repaired and 2. the evil did it.

More later, I have a feast to prepare and some heavy black kohl to apply.

Let's not forget about Rose. . .

I have been watching Season One again in between Tuesdays to review.

I still think these shows are very much like the Twilight Zone. The subject matter is mysterious and sometimes creepy, the accompanying score is almost like a 50s horror film (think Bernard Hermann of "Psycho" fame), and there is just something fantastic about all of this.

Knowing what I know now, things are popping out left and right during the pilot and first two episodes ("Tabula Rasa" and "Walkabout")
1. When John Locke is in his box-distributing office, he is adding figures on an adding machine. The sound is subtle, but THE FRICKING SMOKE MONSTER is edited in at the same time just as the scene ends! SMOKE MONSTER SOUNDS! Like a premonition?
Very cool.

2. John Locke obviously meets the Smoke Monster in the jungle when they go out for their first boar-hunt. He looks RIGHT at it. Kate and Michael are off tending to Michael's leg; John is alone. When he surprises everyone by returning to the beach, alive, Michael asks if he got a good look at "it." "NO," he lies. Why does he lie? And why did it just leave him? It totally bitched up the pilot and snatched him from the plane. . .

3. When Kate and Jack are on the beach after she tells him that she wants to tell him what she did, Jack says that he doesn't want to know. Then he says, "We all DIED. I think everyone deserves to start over." Hmmmm. This after Jack (in the pilot) wakes up quite a distance away from everyone else (He walks among them but is not one of them).

4. Rose. When she's sitting on the beach fondling her wedding ring, Jack talks with her a bit. She says, "You have a nice way about you. A good SOUL. I guess that's why you became a doctor." Jack says NO, he was born into it. In a few later episodes comments are made about Jack's **unpleasant** bedside manner. By Hurley, and someone else, I think. As in, he has a nice way about him when he's NOT being a doctor (You don't have what it takes, Jack).

Rose KNOWS things. That her husband is not dead. That her cancer is gone. Not to follow John (I'm not going anywhere with that man!) Then later, she and Bernard seem to know that Juliet is going to croak. I thought at first they were regarding her with tenderness (are you sure you don't want some tea?) because she was pregnant or something; no, she was just a few minutes away from getting sucked into the swan pocket. It's like she isn't influenced by the things that are going on around her, she just makes her decisions and sticks with them and to hell with the rest of you!

There are a few things that I want to know.

1. Explain Horace, Mathematician. What the hell was his deal? Did he build the cabin?

2. Give me some closure on that child, Annie, that was Ben's friend.

3. Lapidus and Miles are the only two from the freighter that have survived. The pilot and the corpse-whisperer. Miles has proven useful by telling Sawyer that Juliet wanted to tell him that IT WORKED. We know that Lapidus is not a candidate. We know that he can fly both helicopters and "big birds" in less than ideal circumstances. We know that they were making a runway over on Hydra Island. Is Yemi's beechcraft still around or did Eko burn it? The Ajira plane must still be there, but I think there were trees in it. . .

4. Why was Dogan the only thing keeping Smokey out? Did Dogan CATCH it? Serling used the staff of truth to keep the devil inside his cage; was Dogan using some sort of holy ash or something? Was there something INSIDE Dogan? A sacrifice to never see his son again?

More, more, more.

There's Still Time.

Not for me, says Sayid.
I can't even write about this last episode, it was one of the few things in life that has left me speechless. I watched it, sat there dumbfounded, reloaded it on the DVR and watched it over again. The flash sideways in this one was a little ho-hum, I mean a lot happened, but not even Abrams could follow up what was going on on-Island with equal action; the stuff that happened there was pretty much the coolest and most exciting series of events to ever happen, if you ask me. I did however appreciate that horrible Martin Keamy getting creamed again, THAT I'll watch as many times as it needs to happen because I don't think I've ever been as grossed out by anyone.

Wow. Just ONE. BIG. WOW.

And the image above is taken from The Twilight Zone, the episode is titled, "Mirror Image." The uncomfortable leering glance back is to the man's other self, or twin. I thought it was fitting, given Sayid's similar grin to Ben as he tries to get him to come along with the good guys. And the last word that my scanner unfortunately cut off on the bottom is "ALTER-EGO."

Sometimes I think the shows are one and the same.

Daddy Issues.

Oh boy did I bawl. Jack comes back in the alternate reality to tell his son what EVERY SON NEEDS TO HEAR FROM HIS FATHER?

1. I will always love you.
2. In my eyes, you can never fail.
3. I want to be part of your life.

wow, Bob, wow. Good parallels with the appendix and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Also the piano-playing. We know that Jack himself played because he started belting out a slow-ish tune when he was in one of the New Otherton houses waiting for the sub to take him off the island (before Kate did what Kate always does: barges in and ruins everything.) The young Master Faraday also played the piano, quite well, but was forced to explore other career paths after a somber Eloise explained to him that boys who are able to mentally keep track of metronome clicks while practicing do not grow up to be pianists. . .

Not to mention DOGAN-san being the other pianist's father? Nice. (There are some cool videos of pretty complete translations of his lines in these episodes on Dark UFO that are really interesting, check it out).

And also, HUGO? The lines lately are killer!
"He just shows up whenever he wants, like Obi Wan Kenobi."
"Thanks for the seven years of bad luck, by the way."
"I'm a candidate, and I can do what I want."

Does JJ have kids? I need to research this more. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Three Things.

1. That last episode (The Substitute?) was pretty much **the** perfect episode. In it you get Richard Alpert, who was bloodied and beaten but still smokin' HOT, Lapidus, being all, well, Lapidus (I half-expected him to mutter something like, "this fucking place. . ." when Ben went off about being sorry for murdering John), Smokey Man TELLING US INFORMATION (even if it's all lies, I don't care), and the real John Locke together with his Peggy Bundy Helen. WHAT COULD BE BETTER? I had a great time.

2. Alana and Richard KNOW things. Alana knows to gather the ashes and save them for future use? Also that Smokey Man cannot change his face again. How does she know these things? What experience does she bring to all of this? She was all bitched up in a hospital when Jacob came to her (vulnerable) and he spoke Latin to her. . . and she knew Richard as "Riccardes." Richard knows that Smokey Man is trying to pull one over on Sawyer and that he originally wanted Richard on his side. Well, WHO DOESN'T? But Richard obviously knows more about this business. And what of the chains Smokey referred to last week? I want more. Much, much more.

3. Obviously whatever they did to the hatch in 1977 had a major impact on everyone's life from that point on, as the alternate (true?) reality is very different for many of them.
a. The Plane does NOT crash.
b. Charlie Pace is taken away in cuffs.
c. Jin and Sun are screwed in customs.
d. Hugo is the luckiest man alive.
e. Boone leaves Shannon to her own devices.
f. Kate meets Claire and lends her emotional support.
g. Jack meets John and offers him help.

h. Locke is still with Helen, which means they met, obviously, but the same way? In a support group for angry people? So does this mean that he still got conned out of his kidney by the old man but then later forgave him? Because Helen mentioned what seemed to be a relationship when she suggested eloping and getting Locke's dad. . . ? Where's that crazy red head that was his mother? Swoozie Kurtz? Mothers don't do well on this show. I'd like to see that change by the end, please.

Randy Nations is allowed to remain a dick, it seems. DON'T FUCK WITH JOHN LOCKE! Randy, I hope a meteor falls on you.
I am in absolute heaven with this goddamned show.

The Non-Utilitarian Dr. Shephard

The Jack vs. Sawyer bit is getting more solidified in my head. I used to really hate Jack but I seem to be coming around to his camp, slowly.

"He walks among them but He is not one of them."

Jack always came off as a crappy leader because his choices seemed to always be crappy. Obviously he's not a stupid man, but so much of the time I wondered why he always seemed to be betting on the wrong horse or putting his eggs in the wrong basket. I think he got the shaft all the time because of something his father told him in one of the earlier seasons during the flashback when Jack tried to save his friend from getting beat up. . . "YOU DON'T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES." and later, "YOU HAVE TO LET IT GO, JACK."

He doesn't, and he can't.

Back in a intro to ethics class, there were two major opponents in our text, Immanuel Kant (treat people as ends and not as means to an end) and the Utilitarians. The Utilitarians wanted their leaders to do what was best for the greatest number of people. This would involve something like sacrificing a child in order to save a village (you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs). The followers of Kant didn't go for it and wanted each person to be treated equally and equally valued. Many of the parents in the class were with Kant and not the Utilitarians. Jack seems unable or unwilling to act as a Utilitarian, even though he was technically a leader of people, as a doctor off island, and on the island with the survivors. Locke seemed a little more comfortable using a Utilitarian approach ("Boone was a sacrifice the island demanded," "This is not a democracy, Claire." etc.)

I find it interesting that Jack puts his own safety on the line (for Sayid) by almost swallowing that ash-pill, and the guy takes great care to get it out of him. Also, that those guards in front of the Apothocary office just willingly let him in when he demanded they stand aside. Why do they listen to him, and why do they need him to get Sayid to do anything? And where is Old Man Shephard during all of this?

When Hurley asks Sayid if he's a zombie, Sayid's eyes FLUTTER rapidly; it's weird. Sayid, a professional INTERROGATOR, has a little fidgety tic all of a sudden? My guess is then, YES, HE'S A ZOMBIE.

Claire = Rousseau (nouveau?) No more baby-stealing. Is Kate pregnant? There was too much pregnancy-sticking and allusions to Kate as a non-mother/mother/potential mother for me to let this drop.

If I could ask JJ one question right now, I'd ask him if the Twilight Zone has any bearing on how this will all end, and if yes, I would immediately put my money on SHADOW PLAY.