'Lost' theory debunked: Richard Alpert NOT into eyeliner

Jan 30, 2009, 02:44 PM by Annie Barrett

Lost's Nestor Carbonell told Sci-Fi Wire he understands why everyone thinks he's into "guyliner," but that it's simply a myth. "I could see why some people would think I have eyeliner on because [my eyelashes] are dark. Especially the bottom row, they're pretty dark. I've been dealing with it since I was a little kid, and so to me it's very funny when it comes up," explained Carbonell while batting his lashes without even meaning to. "My brother told me to look online and sort of Google something about that, and my name came up as a couple things. One of them was Maybelline Man. I've been dubbed by some people as Guyliner. It's very amusing."
Certainly.

And so is a Lostpedia forum I just found, entitled "The importance of Alpert's eyeliner" -- which contains this speculative gem: "Aside from the theory that Richard Alpert is a vain metrosexual stuck on a permanent vacation, I think that Alpert's eyeliner relates to his immortality...like a pharoah or something...I've been researching all day, but can't find a conclusive connection to the ancient world, immortality and the wearing of eyeliner."

Thanks to Carbonell's brave speaking out on this important topic, we can stop all this wondering/researching and instead just be insanely jealous of the actor's natural gifts. So, moving on: What is the connection between Richard Alpert's occasional shadow-produced "smoky eye" (pictured) and Smokey the monster? WHOA.
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/01/richard-alpert.html

Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse On The Secrets of 'Lost'

Thursday, 29 January 2009
By Christina Radish


Lost Executive Producer Carlton Cuse

After Oceanic Air flight 815 tore apart in mid-air and crashed on a Pacific island, its survivors were forced to find inner strength they never knew they had, in order to survive. But, they discovered that the island holds many secrets, including a mysterious smoke monster, polar bears, housing and hatches with electricity and hot & cold running water, a group of island residents known as “The Others,” and a mysterious man named Jacob. The survivors have also found signs of those who came to the island before them, including a 19th century sailing ship, called The Black Rock, a downed Beechcraft plane from a failed drug run, the remains of an ancient statue, as well as bunkers belonging to the Dharma Initiative -- a group of scientific researchers who inhabited the island in the recent past. They also encountered a freighter, stationed off the island, that some thought would lead to their rescue, but ultimately almost caused their extinction.

With only about 30 original hours left, until the final episode of the ABC television sensation Lost airs in 2010, Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Claire’s son, Aaron -- otherwise known as the Oceanic 6 -- have been rescued and continue to try to pick up the pieces of the lives they knew before the crash, and perpetuate the lie concocted to hide the truth of what really happened. Now, Jack and Ben (Michael Emerson) must convince all of them to return to the island, in order to save those left behind. Adding to their worries is the fact that they also have to take the body of Jeremy Bentham, aka Locke (Terry O’Quinn), with them in order to make things right with the island. Butm locating the island may prove even more difficult since Ben moved it. It’s not just a question of where the island went, but when. Back in the world and on the island, the band of friends, family, enemies and strangers must continue to work together against all odds if they want to stay alive. But, as they have discovered during their journey, nothing is what it seems, and danger and mystery loom behind every corner, with even those they thought could be trusted turning against them.

Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about the advantages of making a show, for which you already know when the ending will come.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Should viewers assume that the finale of Season 3 was the first flash-forward, or is it possible that some things before that were in the future?

Carlton Cuse> It’s all relativistic. What you will really learn from the season is that, if you look at Lost in its totality, where various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle go in, they all go in relative to each other. So, that was the first one we saw on the show, but in a timeline sense, you may see other flash-forwards that would start earlier than that.

Damon Lindelof> That’s the first event that happened after the Oceanic Six were rescued. Nothing else you’ve seen happened after that.

MediaBlvd> Will viewers be seeing a lot more of Nestor Carbonell?

Carlton> They will.

MediaBlvd> How much does the availability of the actors who play secondary characters on the show impact your storytelling? If Cane had been a hit and Nestor wasn’t available, what would that have done?


Lost Executive Producer Damon Lindelof

Damon> The good news is that, since we’ve gotten the end-date of the show, that allowed us a tremendous amount of pre-planning time. So, in the case of Nestor, he was on the show Cane last year, and we found ourselves in a position where, if that show had been successful and had been picked up beyond the 13 episodes, and he was a series regular on the show, Lost probably never would have seen Richard Alpert again. So, we had to have a Plan B, which would have been catastrophic for us, as we had weaved Richard Alpert into the show in such a significant way. So, once Cane did not get picked up, we did a deal with Nestor, which basically secured his services should we choose to pull the trigger on them until the end of Season 6, so we would have him until the end. When we have secondary characters who are essential to the plot, like Charles Widmore or Richard Alpert, the benefit of knowing the story ahead of time is that we can try to lock those actors down, and not find ourselves in a situation where we’re waiting around for them to be available. The other good news is because the show didn’t premiere until January, we had latitude. Someone might not be available for the episode that we want them for, but because we start filming in July, and go all the way through March, maybe they’re available a little later, and we can slot them into an episode at a later date.

MediaBlvd> Getting really heavy into the time travel or time hopping can be pretty fraught with perils. How are you staying away from some of those pitfalls?

Carlton> It is a variable mine field to do time travel, yet it also is incredibly exciting. What we didn’t want to do is have Season 5, the penultimate year of the show, just be a stall. We really decided that, if we were going to take risks and take some chances, as we always have in Lost, and if we make some missteps, that’s okay. As far as we’re concerned, we would rather take the risk to continue to try to do what we consider to be exciting storytelling, and the consequences are that there’s a greater degree of difficulty in that. It’s been really hard for us. We’ve worked really, really hard to try to resolve a lot of those conundrums, and we feel we’ve done a pretty good job so far. We are real excited about the episodes of this season. They are all the better for utilizing this island-skipping, time-travel element.

Damon> We’ve also become fairly masochistic in our writing, in terms of you it being fraught with peril. That’s not a bad thing. We sit around and go, “Is it fraught with peril? Yes! Let’s do it!” That’s part of the thing that keeps the show existing. The show walks this line between flirting with complete and utter catastrophe and disaster. We feel part of the reason that the audience watches the show is to see when they are totally going to reach that point of no return, where they’ve just messed things up so badly. And, you can’t get to that point unless you’re taking risks. So, the show’s been a time-travel show for the last four years. We’re just making it more apparent in the storytelling now. Hopefully, as Season 5 unfolds, you will realize that time travel has been in the DNA of the show for quite some time, but we think the audience is now prepared to go on that journey with us.

MediaBlvd> If you guys didn’t have your end-date, and that was still open, do you think you would be telling this same story?

Carlton> No. Our gratitude to Steve McPherson and Mark Pedowitz, for negotiating the end-date, knows no bounds. That completely liberated us. We didn’t know whether the mythology we had had to last two seasons or nine seasons, and that was utterly paralyzing. Now that we know exactly how many episodes we have left, it has really allowed us to plan and do this stuff with the confidence that we know exactly how much of a journey is left, and that’s been enormously liberating and really the key to the whole show for us, as storytellers.

MediaBlvd> Did you already know that you wanted to do time travel, and then set an end-point, or did setting the end-point make you go, “Okay, let’s time travel”?

Damon> We got to a point in Season 3, after we had seen the first seven episodes, and we all knew it was treading into an area of complete and utter suckiness. And, at that point, we all had a decision to make which was, are we going to have an end-date or is the show going to be cancelled in a year, or a year and a half? It simply couldn’t go on the way that it was. The story that Carlton and I would be telling, if we didn’t have an end-date, is that we wouldn’t be telling the story at all. Someone else would be up here talking about Lost because we didn’t know how to continue to do the show anymore, which is why we lobbied for the show. Basically, all these ideas, the flash-forwards being the first one that we were able to pull the trigger on, and then entering into the end-game of the story, which involved a significant amount of nonlinear time-travel storytelling, was all part of what our plan was, but we couldn’t start to do any of that stuff until we realized we were working towards an end-point.

Carlton> Because this time travel reflects a plunge towards the ending, which is irreversible, once we committed to doing that, there was only a certain amount of distance between that and where the story, in our opinion, had to end.

MediaBlvd> Do you feel like this is the season of Sawyer?

Carlton> Sawyer has a lot to do this year, and we made sure that, for people who might not be huge fans of time travel, Sawyer had his shirt off for the first episode. That was a very calculated balance act there.

Damon> It was also important that Sawyer was not a huge fan of the time travel. You will find him, over the course of the year, constantly bemoaning the fact that this is the situation that he’s in. We feel that last year, because of the Oceanic 6 storytelling, that a lot of the focus was on Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sun, Aaron and Sayid. And Sawyer, as a result of not getting off the island, did not have as much focus on him. So this year, we’ve tried to make up for lost time, as it were, and Josh Holloway has just been doing amazing work. We’re close to the end of the season now, and we’ve seen a lot of Josh’s work, and we really feel that he’s done an amazing job this year. There’s a lot to play with.

MediaBlvd> Certainly the mission of any TV show is to draw in as many new eyes as possible. Was there a point with this show where you realized that it’s so complicated and there’s so much history to it that you just have to lean more towards the loyal fans?
Damon> We’re writing the only version of the show we know how to write, which is the same version that we’ve written all along. The network and studio have been enormously gracious. Normally, you would expect a tremendous amount of pressure to do a lot of re-capping in every episode, so characters are standing around, talking about what happened last week. But, they all accept that Lost is a serialized adventure, and the audience that we have is the audience that we have. That being said, we love to hear stories of, “Oh, my God, I told my friend about Lost, and they thought that it was too weird and too impenetrable to get into, but I gave them the Season 1 DVD and they started watching, and now they’re caught up to where we are and can start watching the show.” I remember hearing about the Harry Potter series, right around the time the third book was coming out. So, as a result of kind of getting caught up in the buzz around The Prisoner of Azkaban, I went back and bought the first Harry Potter books. By the time J.K. Rowling released the seventh book, it picked up a lot of people along the way.

Carlton> We’re hoping that, as the show wraps up, people are going to want to join the journey for the last couple of seasons of the show. We’re really much more in answer mode now. As we go deeper into the season, you’re going to learn a lot about the island’s history, so we really hope that people will watch. ABC.com provides the episodes, and DVD is a great way to watch them. We really hope that, as we go into the last season of the show, a lot of viewers, who may have fallen by the wayside, will come along for the end of the ride.

Damon> It’s a perspective that’s very difficult to speak to because we don’t have it. The Academy voting now is that you have to submit a single episode of the show to get an Emmy nomination, so Carlton and I are basically like, “We’re never ever going to get nominated for an Emmy again, for exactly that reason.” But, we submitted what we thought was our strongest episode last year, which was “The Constant.” It had all the things that an Emmy episode shouldn’t have, like non-linear storytelling, time travel, and none of the characters, like Jack, Kate and Sawyer, instead focusing on Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and Penny (Sonya Walger), but it had this huge emotional core at the end. Even though the basic conceit of the episode is a man is calling a woman, 20 years in the future, his conscious has traveled 15 years into the past, so how is that going to make sense to anyone? And, lo and behold, people who had never seen Lost before somehow understood the episode. Our guess is that maybe many of them will never watch another episode of Lost again because it’s not their cup of tea, but perhaps some of them thought it was such a cool episode, even though they didn’t get it all, that it made them curious enough about the series that they went back and explored the earlier seasons. That’s all we can hope for, at this point. If the first episode that you ever see is the premiere of Season 5, you will probably not understand a good majority of it. But, hopefully, it’s engaging enough and cool enough for you to say, “All right, let me go back and start at the beginning because I want to get on the ride.”

MediaBlvd> You meticulously orchestrate the reveals and the twists in these storylines. What is your take on the situation, when spoilers are released before the show is aired?

Carlton> We don’t like it, obviously. For instance, people who went to spoiler sites and learned that the end of Season 3 was a flash-forward were gravely disappointed in the journey of that episode. It wrecked it for them. What we really are trying to do is to respect the journey that the fans have in watching the show, and the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen when you watch a Lost episode is a big part of what we try to do. We try to fill them with a lot of unexpected incidents. Certain sites are out there just try to use the spoilers of Lost to make money for themselves. It’s hard to have any respect for that. We know some people want to get that information, but we really honestly believe most people don’t.

MediaBlvd> How much do you think spoilers actually affect the ratings, or is it more of a concern of protecting the diehard Lost fans from knowing what’s going to happen?

Carlton> I don’t think we really think about it, in terms of ratings. We think about it in
terms of protecting our show for fans, so that the experience of the show is not solely knowing what happens. That’s our concern about spoilers.

MediaBlvd> Would you agree that the best way to watch the show is to not try to figure out what’s going to happen, since that can drive you crazy?

Carlton> The show is, ultimately, a mystery show, so we hope the viewers are engaged by the mysteries of the show. But, I do think you can drive yourself crazy. At the beginning, people tried to theorize about the show. There are two things that become more apparent, the more you watch. One is that you can’t reduce the show down to one simple thesis statement. The other is that you don’t really know enough to be able to effectively theorize about where it’s going to conclude. If you were to just go back to Season 2 and say, “What is Lost about?,” without any knowledge of the fact that we’re going to be doing flash-forwards, or time-travel this season, you just don’t have enough information. The people who like Lost the most are the people who appreciate the journey, as opposed to the destination, and that’s how we hope that viewers will approach the show.

MediaBlvd> In the first few episodes, you’ve got flaming-arrow attack, and you’ve got Sayid having this very elaborate fight scene involving a dishwasher. The production values are still on the screen, even in these tough economic times. Have you had to make any adjustments to the way you do the show now?

Damon> We obviously have had a series of meetings about the show’s budget, which is par for the course, and the studio has been enormously understanding of the show, from the word go. We all sat there, five years ago, and said, “Okay, we made an 11 million-dollar pilot. How are we going to do that, week to week?” And, the answer was that ABC Studios, Mark Pedowitz, Barry Jossen and Stephen McPherson, all acknowledged that this show was going to be more expensive than the average bear. There weren’t sets. We were shooting it in Hawaii. There were 14 series regulars. We had to do our job as responsible producers, and not get too crazy. Obviously, towards the end of every season, we like to do big, crazy finales, where we introduce new sets. Maybe we are thinking a little more viscerally, and on a character level, so that we can save the big, crazy stuff for Season 6. But, it’s a testament to the partnership that we have with the studio.

Carlton> They’ve been nothing but supportive. Honestly, they want us to make the best show that we can make, and we are given the resources necessary to do that. No one has come to us and said, “Okay, we’re in a tough economic time. You can’t make the show that you guys want to make.” And, we are incredibly grateful for that.

MediaBlvd> The big shock for a lot of people is that Episode 3 introduces audiences to Widmore, as a young man. Are we going to see more of the history of Widmore, in that era? Going back that 50 years, how much are you going to keep returning to that period of the island’s history, and the characters when they were younger?

Carlton> You will see more of Widmore. Part of what we hope to give the audience this year is some greater sense of the island’s history. People have a lot of questions, starting and stopping with, “What the hell is that four-toed statue?” But, when we introduced the four-toed statue, our idea for doing it, at that point, was really to show that the history of the island was a long one. That statue was probably built a long time ago, and people have been on that island for a long time. Part of what this season will explore, as they’re skipping through time, is that we’ll learn a lot more about what exactly has happened on the island, in the past.

MediaBlvd> Do you plan on revealing who Ben works for, or maybe revisiting Ms. Hawking?

Damon> Who Ben works for is probably Ben. But , he is obviously involved with other people and had some sort of relationship with Ms. Hawking. We don’t know how long it goes back, or what exactly the nature of that relationship is. But again, characters’ alliances, certainly those who have been on the island for a while, like Ben or Richard Alpert, is stuff that we’re going to start to cover fairly intensively, towards the latter half of this season, and much more so in the final season of the show.

MediaBlvd> Will viewers see Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Claire (Emilie de Ravin) in some form again, whether they’re dead or alive?

Carlton> You’ll definitely see Jin this season. He’s a series regular. Claire is not a series regular this year, but her story is by no means over. So, you will see her, but probably not until Season 6. We’re not saying that Jin is currently alive, after the explosion of the freighter. But, since we are telling the stories in both the past, the present and the future, you will definitely be seeing Jin’s stories. We’re just not telling you when those are occurring.

MediaBlvd> Since you’re going to do 48 episodes over three years, what are the challenges or obstacles that prevent you from delivering 22 episodes?

Damon> The big thing for us was, when we announced an end-date of the show, it became inherent that we would no longer be giving the audience any stall episodes. It wasn’t that we can’t make 22 or 25 episodes a year because we did, for the first three seasons of the show. The fact of the matter was that it was because Lost is what it is, and works the way that it does, our storytelling could be much tighter, much more efficient, and we wouldn’t have to introduce extraneous characters, or take the focus off of the parts of the story that we really cared about, as writers. We felt that it would be more centered, if we did less. We were looking at a cable model, primarily. We were looking at what The Sopranos was doing, or what Mad Men and Damages are able to do. When you’re doing less episodes, you can just be much tighter and more specific in your storytelling. That’s how we came to that negotiation.

Carlton> We agreed to do 48 hours, but they gave us the choice about how to do that. We could have done that over two seasons, and we could be finishing those now. We chose to divide it over three seasons because we wanted to be thoughtful about writing the scripts and figuring out how to tell the stories. Figuring out these time-travel stories has been enormously complicated. It’s one thing to have a big picture, but there’s still a lot of conundrums, in solving things, episode-to-episode. We calculated exactly how many episodes we thought we could do, and still tell the story well to get to an ending, and that’s what it was. And then, we said, “Give us three scenes to do that because that will allow us to keep the quality bar high,” and they agreed to that. That was really how it came about.

MediaBlvd> What is it about Lost that you think makes it so popular, and such a big hit?

Carlton> It’s different than other shows. It’s not the 10th iteration of a law show or a medical show. The thing that’s most gratifying to us is that we can make the show complicated and challenging, and still have a lot of people who watch it. There’s this knee-jerk assumption that television needs to have a lowest-common-denominator appeal, and we reject that. We couldn’t be more appreciative of the fact that people like the fact that the storytelling is complicated and that you have to sit forward to watch Lost. There aren’t a lot of shows that are in that category, and that may be part of the reason.
http://www.mediablvd.com/magazine/the_news/celebrity/damon_lindelof_&_carlton_cuse_on_the_secrets_of_%27lost%27_200901291542.html

Various Spoilers

Man this just better & better! The last ones the best.

What's up next with this whole time-jumping business? "We are going to get to see all these people we love, and we're not allowed to interact with them," says Elizabeth Mitchell. [UGO]

Fans scanned all of the pictures of that luggage and crap on a beach from the recent filming, and noticed a life preserver. So maybe it's from a boat crash, not a plane crash? And there's a box with the word "Besixdouze" on it, which is the name of Danielle Rousseau's boat. [Hawaii Weblog]

Rebecca Mader answers fans' questions, and it sounds like Charlotte may not be going anywhere after all. Also, her solution to the time-travel sickness may have to do with the fact that she's been on the island before, and it's part of her "birthright." [E! Online]

In episode 5x14, we'll meet a prim aristocrat named Sophie, who's resourceful and does what it takes to protect her family. [SpoilersLost]

Some leaks from an alleged inside source: Two new characters will accompany the O6 back to the island. We'll see another crash. We'll see Ms. Hawking inside the Lamppost station. Sawyer has to lie, and everyone's safety depends on it, especially his own. Someone we've met will turn out to be Ethan's mother. [SpoilersLost]

Rebecca Mader Interview

Lost's Charlotte: She's Aliiive!
Thu., Jan. 29, 2009 1:40 PM PST by Kristin Dos Santos


ABC/MARIO PEREZ

"I'm not dead, yet!"

This is the good news that Lost's fire-haired vixen Rebecca Mader (Charlotte) has to share with fans, the morning after we saw her face-plant into her own blood on the increasingly trippy time-tripping series.

"So far, I'm good," Mader told me today over a cup of coffee in Los Angeles (she's on a break from filming the show in Hawaii). "The fans have been so cool. Everyone's like, 'Nooo, find your constant!' "

Speaking of that "constant," who could very well save Charlotte's life, could Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) be the one? Could Charles Widmore be Charlotte's father? And what request does Rebecca have for the producers regarding one Mr. Josh Holloway?

Read on for Rebecca's answers to your burning questions...


ABC
Girlfriend, you need to find a constant, stat! Do you think Mr. Faraday could be Charlotte's constant and save her life?
Maybe not. Maybe it's something more interesting. Maybe it's something more like...considering she's been to the Island before, it might be something you never thought of, you know?

From Margaret: Why do you think the time travel is affecting Charlotte and not anyone else?
I don't know. I really don't. But it's true that it is definitely affecting Charlotte more than everybody else at this point.

Right. Has she tried a humidifier? I was having terrible nosebleeds, and let me tell you, the humidifier, you sleep with that thing, and it clears it right up.
I need to get one of those for my bedroom! I'm going to tell Charlotte that—that's genius. I'll buy her one!

From Jill: Does Charlotte return Dan's feelings? Will the fact that he loves her be important in upcoming episodes?
I think Charlotte does have feelings for Daniel, but after he tells her that he loves her, and she gets emotional, I think she does that because it's all incredibly overwhelming. Yeah she's tough, yeah she jumped out of a helicopter, yeah she's a badass, but at the end of the day, she's a woman. I think she came to the Island for a specific mission, and all of a sudden she's tied up and time traveling, and it's like, this is not what I signed up for.

From David: What is Charlotte's skill set? The group of people who came to the Island were chosen for their particular skills.
It hasn't been revealed to me at this point, and I don't think she has any special skills or powers. I think [her reason for coming to the Island] is more about her birthright than anything else. Though it would be cool to have a superpower. I'd like to be invisible! I could watch other people and then take information to Faraday.

From Indie1008: Could Charlotte be Charles Widmore's secret daughter?
I think there's a possibility that her parents could be interesting. I don't know that yet, but I hope so. I'd like to find out that I have really interesting parents. One of the producers joked at work, when we were shooting the season finale of season four, he was like, "Hey, Mader, next season we find out that your parents are actually Irish leprechauns." I was holding a bottle of water, and I just poured it on him, and we had a water fight. First of all, I'm not Irish. Just because I have red hair doesn't mean I'm a lucky charm, you know? It was really funny.

Are you hoping for any other romantic connections on the show? Jack? Sawyer?
[Laughs] I think she could handle all of them! Seriously, she could be like one of those 7-Elevens, open all hours. 24/7 yo! I need to send Damon and Carlton an email about that: "Pretty cute what you've done with Jeremy, but Josh Holloway, anyone?"
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b81423_Losts_Charlotte_Shes_Aliiive.html

LOST Holds Firm

The good news for LOST is that the people who watched the premiere stuck around. It averaged 11.067 million. FOX’s new Lie to Me in the same time slot averaged 12.113 million, but LOST had the better 18-49 demo - 4.8/11 for LOST vs. 4.4/10 for Lie to Me.
Source - http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/01/29/wednesday-ratings-cbs-news-with-katie-couriclost/11710

"Jughead" Synopsis by Lostpedia

Synopsis

On the Island (1954)

Ellie and the Others surround Miles, Charlotte and Daniel

Miles, Charlotte, Daniel and two survivors of the fire arrow attack are travelling to the creek to meet up with the remaining survivors. When they get there they find no one. The two survivors wander slightly away just as Miles notices trip wires connected to explosives. He shouts a warning, but not before the bombs are triggered, killing the two redshirts and dazing the remaining three. Before they can recover, a group of people dressed in Army fatigues emerges from the jungle armed with bows and guns and takes them prisoner. A blond woman, Ellie, states that there were twenty in the group at the beach but only five at the creek. She then asks them where the rest of their group is. Miles replies that perhaps the rest of his people were blown up by some more of the other's landmines. Ellie says that they did not place the mines; it was Miles's people who in fact set the tripwires. Ellie asks who is in charge, Miles points to Daniel. The woman again asks Daniel where the rest of his people are and Daniel tells Ellie that he does not know. Ellie and her group then take the three to their camp.

Juliet converses with the prisoner in Latin

Meanwhile, Locke, Sawyer, and Juliet debate what to do with the two assailants they have captured. Locke identifies the gun that Jones' group was carrying as an M1 Garand that looks new, despite dating back from the 1940s. Sawyer notices Locke's leg and asks him who shot him, but just before John can answer, Juliet reminds them both that there are more important issues to decide. When the assailants speak to each other in a foreign language, Juliet reveals that she understands Latin, the language they were speaking. Based on their knowledge of Latin, Juliet identifies them as Others: all Others must speak Latin because it is the "enlightened language". Upon learning that their captives are Others, Locke decides to have them take him to their camp. Juliet convinces Cunningham to take them there, but before anything can happen Jones breaks his companion's neck and flees into the jungle. Locke refuses to shoot the escaping man, explaining to Sawyer that the prisoner is "one of my people."

The three survivors taken hostage by Alpert

As Charlotte, Miles, and Faraday are taken to the Others' camp, Daniel notices that one of his captors is wearing bandages that he believes cover burns from radiation exposure. Miles begins to behave erratically and tells Daniel that they are walking over top of a fresh grave that is less than a month old. He says that the grave contains the bodies of four U.S. soldiers, three of whom were shot and a fourth who died from radiation exposure. Daniel asks if Miles was able to ascertain what year the soldiers might have said it was, but he doesn't get an answer as they have arrived at the Others' camp: a set of military tents on what appears to be the Mesa. There they are introduced to Richard Alpert, who appears to be, as usual, the same age. The Others believe them to be members of the United States military who have come for "the bomb." Faraday decides to play along with their misconception, and says that they are scientists attached to the American military. Upon noticing radiation burns on one of the Others, he concludes that the bomb is a hydrogen bomb and that its casing is cracked. He offers to deactivate the bomb but Richard wonders if they are not here for a suicide mission, detonating the bomb and destroying the Island with it. Daniel convinces Richard that he will not detonate it by admitting that he loves Charlotte and would not want any harm to come to her. Richard details Ellie to take Faraday to the bomb. Meanwhile, Jones, fresh from his escape from Locke, arrives in camp confident that he was not followed as it would be impossible for "an old man" to track him.

Ellie aiming at Faraday

Faraday attending Jughead

As Faraday is being taken to inspect the bomb, Locke, Sawyer, and Juliet arrive on the outskirts of a camp. When asked how she knew Richard would be among the group, Juliet responds because "Richard is always there." Locke then asks Juliet just how old Richard is, to which she replies simply, "old." Seeing Faraday being marched towards the woods at gunpoint, Sawyer misinterprets this as an execution and determines to rescue him. However, Locke is determined to head into camp and meet Richard. Locke states that he will give Juliet and Sawyer a ten minute head start to rescue Faraday and then proceeds into camp. Striding into camp and demanding to see Richard, Locke causes a commotion, particularly angering the man whom he had kept prisoner. Locke expects to continue where he left off with Richard in his conversation, but is taken aback when Richard does not recognize him or know his name. As Jones holds a gun up to him and the camp turns hostile, Locke declares that he was sent by Jacob. Stunned, Richard tells the young man to lower his gun but when he refuses Richard angrily aims the man's gun away from Locke, snapping, "I said, 'Put it down', Widmore." Locke instantly identifies the former prisoner as a young Charles Widmore.

John discovers the true identity of Jones

Daniel and Ellie inspect the bomb, which is named Jughead. Upon seeing some sort of accretion (expansion or swelling) on the side of the bomb, Faraday recoils in horror and confirms to Ellie that the casing of the bomb is cracked. He tells her that they must seal the crack with lead and then bury the bomb in a concrete bunker. He explains that this will work because he is from the future and that the Island has not experienced a nuclear blast. As he is explaining this, Sawyer comes up behind Ellie with a rifle and demands that she drop her weapon.

Richard and John meet

We then go back to a meeting taking place between John and Richard, now holding the compass that Locke gave him. Richard asks how Locke got the compass. Locke says that Richard will give him the compass in the future and that Richard will also refer to Locke as their leader. Richard explains that their leaders are chosen at a much younger age. Locke asks the year and is told 1954. Locke says that he will be born in two years (1956) and invites Richard to come meet him. Locke then senses that the time is about to shift and asks Richard how to get off the island. But before anything can happen there is another time shift.

The group finds themselves at an indeterminate point in time at which the camp does not exist. Daniel, upon seeing Charlotte, rushes over to comfort her, but soon after they are reunited, she begins bleeding profusely from her nose and collapses.

Flashback (Late 2005)

Desmond helps a pregnant Penny in labor

In a certain coastal town in the Philippines, greeted by a banner that reads "Mabuhay" (meaning "Welcome!" or "Long Live!" in the Filipino language), Desmond is rushing through the beach, looking for a doctor named Efren Salonga. Desmond finally reaches a hut, finding the doctor playing cards. The two then rush to Desmond's boat, and find Penny in active labor. After instructing her to push, Penny successfully gives birth to a baby boy, which leads the couple to kiss and profess their love to each other.

Off-Island (2007)

Desmond and his son

Desmond and his son, Charlie are sitting on their sailboat, and Desmond begins to tell him of a special island he used to live on, a place he hasn't visited for many years. He reveals that the island he is speaking of is in fact Great Britain. He tells Charlie that he is from Scotland, the most beautiful part of Britain, and also where his parents fell in love. Soon after, Penny joins them on deck and tells Charlie that this was the place where his father broke his mother's heart, and Desmond replies that he had left that bit out.

Desmond tells Penelope that he must find Daniel's mother and tell her that Daniel is still on the island and then Desmond will be done with this for good. But if Daniel told Desmond all this on the island three years ago, Penelope wonders, then why did Desmond just remember it two days ago? Desmond does not have an explanation, but he has a clear memory of Daniel knocking on the hatch door and telling Desmond to go to Oxford because everyone is in danger and Desmond is the only one who can save them. Penny then asks him to promise her he will never go back to the island, to which Desmond replies "Why in God's name would I ever want to go back there?"

Theresa is "away"

Desmond then goes to Oxford in search of Daniel Faraday's records, but the receptionist (the same actress played an Oceanic Airlines employee and was in charge of the boarding gate at the Sydney Airport) tells him that there are no records of anyone by the name of Faraday being employed at the University. Suggesting it may be a clerical error, she asks Desmond what year he visited, but he is unable to remember. After snooping around, Desmond finds Faraday's lab where he experimented on Eloise in "The Constant". The lab is now dilapidated and abandoned. His old attic laboratory, including his rat maze and chalkboard, is now covered in burlap tarps. A custodian arrives and notices Desmond. He tells him why Oxford is ashamed of Faraday: because he experimented on a live human subject, a young woman.

Desmond tracks down the woman, named Theresa, only to find out that she is in what appears to be a coma, but is in fact in a time trance similar to Minkowski's: her consciousness is travelling through time and cannot be stopped. Theresa's sister warns Desmond of Faraday's cowardice and how he abandoned Theresa, unlike Charles Widmore, who has graciously paid for her medical support. It is then revealed that Widmore subsidized Faraday's research at Oxford.

Charles hands Desmond the address

After his travel to Oxford, Desmond journeys to Widmore's office, barges in, and demands to know where he can find Daniel Faraday's mother. When Widmore dissembles, Desmond reveals that he knows Widmore has financed Faraday's research at Oxford, and paid for Theresa's medical support. Desmond then says that he will not answer any of Widmore's questions but that he only has one question for Widmore, and when he answers it, Desmond will leave him alone. Desmond then proceeds to ask about Mrs. Faraday's address. Widmore asks if Penny is safe, but Desmond insists on learning the address. Widmore eventually gives Desmond an address in Los Angeles, but tells him that Mrs. Faraday will not be happy to see him because she is "a very private person." Widmore ends the conversation with a warning that this business has been going on for "many, many years", and begs Desmond to keep himself and Penny out of it and safe by going back into hiding.

Desmond returns to Penny and tells her that Daniel's mother is dead. Penny asks Desmond why he is lying. Desmond reveals that Mrs. Faraday is in Los Angeles, to which Penny replies that she and Charlie will be going with him.

Source: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Jughead

More Jughead Thoughts

After rewatching Jughead there are a few things to mention.

No one has mentioned the paradox. Not the time paradox, but the fact that Locke has to get off the island so the O6 can go back. Locke who so desperately wanted to stay has to leave so others that wanted to leave can go back. That's funny.

Juliet is remarkably calm about all this. I wonder where that's leading.

Juliet also call Latin the language of the enlightened. Among the definitions to this I found were...

1. To give spiritual or intellectual insight to
2. rational and having beneficial effects
3. people who have been introduced to the mysteries of some field or activity

I still think enlightenment goes to the gods thing, but you have to see that the word was used deliberately.

The episode "The Long Con" has long seemed a metaphor for things in the show. Sawyer was a conman. Ben is the ultimate con artist. It's my contention that Jack is conning Ben to get back to the island and that Sun is conning Kate to get to Ben. Hell, even Hugo conned Sawyer into being nice. But I think we may have another con going on.

Penny.

I didn't see it until re-view, but she jumped on the "you're lying" bit pretty quickly and agreed to go to LA before she was even asked. And if you think back, early on she was ready to give up on Des. In fact she asked him to leave and said she had moved on. But then we find out she's searching for Des, has a listening post and ends up with a boat near the island.

So suppose, just suppose she was searching for Des all that time because of her father rather than for love. Not necessarily because she's working for dear ole dad, although that would work, but because she knows of and believes in the island and its properties - so she wants it or to be in control of it for her own benefit.

What a con job that would be.

LOST 5x04 The Little Prince NEW Promo

LOST 5x04 The Little Prince Sneak Peek #1 + GMA Evangeline Lilly Interview

TV Guide Chat with Damon and Carlton

MY REVIews!! Episode 5x02 - The PIE!!

MY REVIews!! Episode 5x02 - The PIE!!
This EPISODED was a little less confusing FOR me!!

It started WITH the OCeanic 7 having A meeting on FRANK lapdancers BOAT to discuss some STUFF about pies!! The volume ON my TV has hacked BY abc or NASA so I could not HEAR it very well BUT i've NOT idea why they WOULD dicuss pies!! I will PUT some TOmato KETCHUP in my ears later to see if that HELP me hear better!!

We THEN moved onto a flashback of HURLEYS with HIM and SAYID although I Was not AWARE that they knew each other before the CRASH.

I was SUPRISED at the SAYID who seemed to SLEPP thorugh most of this EPISODE!! I thought IT was unfair OF him to MAKE hurley do all the driving!! He iS stopped by THE police and IT is Hannah-LUCIA of ALL people!! SO that Explains how they KNOW each other in the ISLAND!! I was NOT aware that Hannah-lucia knew LIBBY but obviously they did.

It was ODD to see that KATE was following Hurley into the SHOP where he purchased A SHIRT that professed his LOVE of shit!! I thought this WAS very rude and nearly TURNED it off!!

I t WAS fun to SEE hurleys DAD cheech REYES watching NIKKI in Exposure!! It was GOOD to see that SHE made it off the ISLAND after being buried!! I think WE will get a flashback of THAT when the dig them selves out!!

The EVIL Bernard pretends THAT he cant light A fire BUT we all know that HE is Alfie Hanson!!

I LOVEd the SCENE when NEiIL Yoghurt GOT attacked with BURNING Twigs!! I was SuPRISED there were so MANY deaths!!

NOT sure WHY kate when to see SUN I assume this WAS a flashback!!

JACK then TRIES to kill sayid BUT sayid is too QUICK and starts to STRANGLE him!! Jack gives UP!!

HURLEY then throws SOME food at ben and THEN sits in the ROADS for some reasons!! Ben then GOES back into HURLES home and IN the BASEMENTS is MRS Squawkings WHO is playing MIssile COMMAND on Hurleys COMPUTER and only has 70 HRS left to complete the GAME!! Ben MEANWHILE is too busy Blowing out CANDLES for some REASONS!!

all in ALL these were VERY onfusuing EPISODES but I'll shalll watch them AGAIN with my NIGHT Vision Googles AND upside down to find more Eastern EGGS and maybe a few western EGGS as well!!

I AM looking FORWARD to episode 3 called plughead which I am ONLY think is about a PLug and SOMEones head!!
http://themisfitishere.blogspot.com/

My REVIews!! Episode 5x01 - Because YOUR left HANDED!!

My REVIews!! Episode 5x01 - Because YOUR left HANDED!!
HEllo people!! I am back with MY first REVIEW of SEason 5!! I still CANNOT believe that this is THE last season!!

Well!! The first HOUR of Becasue YOUR left HANDED WAS very disappointing As it APPEARED that LOST has suffered from THE credit crunchy!! Tey USED a lot of OLD footage and EVEN cartonn Cuse and Damien Lintoff MADE cameos APPEAREANCES. It also SEEMED like everything was on a LOOP as we had SEEN a lot of these EVENTS!!

The 2nd HOUR of 5x01 WAS much better and it seemed ABC had more money FOR this EPISODE!!

This EPISODE OPENED with a clock for some REASON and it WOKE baby Miles UP!! Marvin CANDLES had to GO a feed BABY miles!! I Was SHOCK ED to see SUN in bed with HIM!! So it LOOK like JIYeon is MILES!!

He THEN starts to MAKE a new FILM and then HAS to STOP because of a LAZY workman who has DRILLED 2 holes before HAVING a sleep!! The DOCTOR is not happy and WALKS past Daniel!! I was a bIT confused as I thought DANIEL was on the RAFT!! I will use my FORK again to examone this SEEN.

It seems ALSO that someone has BURIED a steering WHEEL in the ROCK!! CRazy STUFF!!

I LIKED some of the ISLAND stuff but IT was a surprise that THE OTHERS have the ABILITY to go invisible and THEN reappear!! It seems a BIT cruel to play these TRICKS on Locke!! It was ALSO not nice of ETHAN to PRETEND not to know LOCKE before he USED his Invisibility CLOAK to disaappear!!

Also THere were a LOT of Continutiy ERRORS!! The biggest one was that it kept TURNing from NIGHT to Day in a matter of minutues!! I think the CONTInuity person needs to BE replaced WITH someone less INsane!!

Also A massive PLOT hole! THey found the SWAN station but we know that HAD been destroyed IN season 1!!

It aslo ANNOYED me that the ABC prop people COULD not be bothred to rebuild the beach CAMP!! I was As annoyed as Bernard (AKA the EVIL Alfred Hanson)!!

Some MEN want KATES blood!! I don't like THIS vampire ANGLE!!

I was CONFUSED about why only YELLOW drug planes crash ont he ISLAND!! What are the CHANCES of that!!

NOT only is SUN sleeping with DR. Marcus CANDLE she is ALSO flirting WITH Charles Wideload!! She IS pure EVIL!!

I like THE scnes with HUGO and Sayid as they KILLED the 2 ROBBERS!! I thought it WAS very CLEVER of SAYID to use the DISHWASHER of Death to KILL him!!

ANOTHER thing that ANNOYED me was that the LIGHTING man seemed very INEXPERIENCED in that several TIMES the Actors had to shield THEIR eyes from the BRI|GHT lights!!THis IS totally UNaccaptable and HE should be FIRED!! It Is not DIFFICULT to turn a light on!!

It was NICE to Kelvin again in his HASMAT suite talking to CRAZY daniel!!

The ENDING really SHOCK me!! I DID not expect to SEE Penny on the Island with crazy Irish DESMOND on the BOAT!!

My review of EPISODe will be POSTED later!!

'Lost' Recap: Time After Time

Faraday does his best to keep everyone, especially Charlotte, safe from an H-bomb, Desmond's search for Mama Faraday leads him to Widmore, and we learn something big about the tycoon
By Adam B. Vary

This week's hella good episode of Lost revolved around a massive, dangling bombshell, and here's another: As that byline above implies, I am not Jeff Jensen, a.k.a. Doc Jensen, a.k.a. your regularly scheduled guide through the wormholes, rabbit-holes, and bottomless hatches of all that is Lost. And unfortunately, unlike all the misdirection and outright deception packed into "Jughead," I'm not kidding. I'm just Asst. Prof. Vary, filling in for Doc Jensen while he tumbles down another secret-for-now, Lost-related rabbit hole. Worry not: He'll be back next week with his regular Doc Jensen column and another episode of Totally Lost (which totally rocks, and you should totally check out), but for now, you're stuck with me, so be kind in the comments.
The deception in "Jughead" started early, with a triple audience fake out in less than three minutes: The opening shot made us think we're on the island, only to reveal it was some unnamed coastal city in the South Pacific, through which Desmond was racing to find a guy named Efren Salonga. (Asst. Prof. Vary extracurricular reference No. 1: Best I can tell, "Efren Salonga" means nothing, but there is a "Salonga monkey," or "Dryas monkey," that Wikipedia tells me is a critically endangered species that may number less that 200. Which probably means nothing, though it did make me think about the ever-diminishing number of nameless Flight 815 survivors on the island. By my count, based on the number of total 815 survivors presented last night— that'd be 20, minus Juliet — there's barely ten "Red Shirts" left alive. Stay safe guys!) Des needed Dr. Salonga, it seems, because Penny was in severe medical distress. "There's a lot of blood," Des told the doctor, and we wondered if she was somehow been struck with the time-travel sickness (or at least I did), until we discovered, nope, it was a wee Hume-Widmore bairn being born on their yacht. Then we jumped to what appears to be the "present" again, more on that in a second — as Des says to his son that out there, in the ocean, close to their vessel is a "very special island" that he left "a long time ago." What? They're back at the island already?! Nope. The island's name: "Great Britain." Yeesh.

It felt to me like the show was telling us "don't automatically take everything we're telling you, or what you think we're telling you, at face value." Like, for example, the notion that the Desmond-Penny story line is taking place at the same time as the Oceanic Six-Ben storyline. The timing would seem to work out — add nine months for Penny's pregnancy to what appears to be the two years their kid has aged and you get just about three years since the island disappeared. But, as Penny put it to Des, why didn't he remember Daniel Faraday until now? If, as we've been led to believe, Faraday confronted Past Desmond on the island pretty much the same day the island went poof, wouldn't Present Desmond's memory have changed when he and the Oceanic Six first arrived on Penny's yacht? And did that last question make any sense to you? (I'm beginning to understand why Doc Jensen's developed that eye twitch — but don't tell him I've noticed it.) I will say that, given all the time-twistiness this year, I am quite grateful the show slowed down this week rather than try to cram Jack, Kate, Ben et. al. into this already story-rich hour, and it bodes well for how Lost's new hop-scotching narrative structure will work this season.

Those fake outs, however, got a wee bit irksome after the fourth one hit us just as the opening act smash cut to its end. After Daniel, Charlotte, and Miles reached the creek with two other survivors, they were ambushed by trip-wire mines and arrow-wielding Others. When their scowling rifle-wielding female leader discovered that Daniel was "in charge," she leveled him with a cold scowl and this seemingly eyebrow-raising comment: "You just couldn't stay away, could you?" Aha, we think, the scowling Other knew Daniel, so he's been on the island, and in this time, before! Wrong again! It turns out that these hostile Others believe the Freighter Folk to be part of a U.S. army battalion that somehow made it to the island a month prior, with a hydrogen bomb in tow.

I had barely any time to get annoyed by the bait-and-switch, since my mind was already screaming "Wuzzah?! So...wait...so the U.S. Army knows about the island too!? And they brought a hydrogen bomb?!" Well, it would seem so. But then again, the Others are a wily bunch, what with the fact that they all can speak Latin, including prodigal daughter Juliet, so who knows how much of their story about the unseen American soldiers is true. Why do the Others speak Latin, you ask? Well, a certain Dr. J. managed to sneak an e-mail to me on this very question from his undisclosed location: "One idea — suggested to me by Joley Wood of powells.com — is that it's a link to the novel Utopia, which was written in Latin. The best bit: The leaders of the Island utopia in the novel were called... Bencheaters. (Ben-cheaters.)" Huh. Me, I just assumed it was because (A) Latin is very old and the island is very old; and (B) pretty much no one else on Earth outside the Vatican is going to understand it. Latin also has an extracurricular resonance for this episode that I'll touch on in a bit.

First, though, let's push through the rest of Desmond's story: Our Scottish hero made it to Oxford, where he was told that the university has no record of a Daniel Faraday. But Des discovers Faraday's old lab anyway, sealed due to "fumigation." (Asst. Prof. Vary extracurricular reference No. 2: The door to the Dept. of Physics that Desmond first entered is labeled "Claredon 142-08," which appears to be a typo, since according to the Oxford University website, the Physics department is housed in the "Clarendon" building. But that number seems to point to the Lost episode from last season that aired on Feb. 14, 2008, "The Economist," i.e. Ben Linus's still un-named target for his assassin Sayid. And a "don" is the common term for both a senior instructor at Oxford and a high ranking member of the Mafia. Perhaps Claire and The Economist are connected? Or maybe the EW L.A. bureau just has some really freaky water in its pipes?) In Faraday's lab, Des found the physicist's old rat maze, brain...ray thingie, and a framed photo of a younger Daniel with a bright, blonde woman. A maintenance man gives Des an ominous, dubious brush off, making Des promise to tell his "mates" that all he found was "rubbish left behind by a madman" before he'll throw Des the address of what turns out to be the woman in that framed photo, one Theresa Spencer. Daniel shot the brain ray thingie at poor Theresa, explains her sister Abigail; her mind's been hopping through time ever since, but that lout Daniel skipped to the States, never to be heard from again. Thank goodness for Charles Widmore, the benefactor of Daniel's research for ten years and the man paying for Theresa's round-the-clock care now. (Asst. Prof Vary extracurricular assignment: Do the names Theresa and Abigail Spencer have any resonance, either within the world of Lost or outside it? I'm drawing blanks.)

Des stormed into Widmore's office for what felt like at least the eleventh time, and demanded that his father-in-law tell him the whereabouts of Daniel Faraday's mama. I'm still parsing how much of what Widmore said next was actually true, and how much was a carefully crafted sham: He asked Desmond, calmly, if his daughter was safe, harkening back to Ben Linus' threat from last season to kill her. He said he hasn't seen Penny for three years. (And since I don't think we know if he'd seen his daughter before the Oceanic 815 crash, it could very well be that Des and Penny's story isn't quite in sync with Jack, Ben and Kate's. If Widmore's telling the truth.) When Widmore got no answer from Des, he gave his son-in-law the address for Faraday's mother anyway...in Los Angeles. She's a "very private person," Widmore told Des. She probably won't be happy to see him. And after Des delivers his message to her, he should just disappear again with Penny, never to involve himself in this matter again.

Hmm. This woman sounds like a certain L.A. church-dwelling, hooded cloak-wearing Ms. Hawking, doesn't it? Yet we know she already knows Desmond, and would probably welcome his arrival. And why would Widmore have her address, if she's working with his arch-nemesis Ben Linus? Also, there's no way Des and Penny are disappearing any time soon — they're in too deep now, and, besides, the show needs them. Who didn't get a bit misty when Des revealed his son's name is Charlie? Who wasn't filled with dread for Penny's future as she reluctantly agreed to go along with Desmond to L.A., because she knows her true love could never let this drop until he'd seen it through? It's this kind of emotional resonance that grounds all the temporal loop-de-hoop-de in something real and human, and the show needs all of it can get.

Another example: Daniel Faraday's spontaneous pronouncement of love for Charlotte as proof to the ageless Richard Alpert that he'll deffuse the H-bomb instead of detonate it. The physicist is clearly quite deep-dish for our fair C.S. Lewis, telling her at the outset of the episode that "Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing. I won't let it." If I were Sawyer, and I was standing next to Faraday at that moment, I would've slapped the guy upside the head and said "Now why would you say a boneheaded thing like that out loud on this island?!" Because here's my theory: Daniel Faraday's actions are causing Charlotte to disappear from existence, literally making her into nothing. Her head is ringing, and she's getting double-vision. She can't remember her mother's maiden name. Her brain is slipping out of joint with the world. (Asst. Prof. Vary extracurricular reference No. 3: The real C.S. Lewis, i.e. the British author of the Narnia chronicles, watched his American beloved slowly waste away from cancer.)

I'm not sure how, but when Faraday told that scowling Other — who's name we learn is Ellie (Asst. Prof. Vary extracurricular reference No. 4: Eleanor roughly translates to "the other" in Latin) — to bury, bury, bury the leaking H-bomb called Jughead in order to diffuse it, I think he actually did somehow change time. Like I said, not everything we're told should be taken at face value, and since we learned this week that Daniel Faraday's scientific certainty has led to pretty tragic results, his conviction that time cannot ever, ever be changed seems suspect too. Was it just me, or did Ellie bear more than a passing resemblance to Charlotte? Doc Jensen's pointed out more than once that it appears Charlotte's been on the island before; perhaps she is Ellie's daughter — or was Ellie's daughter, until Faraday showed up spouting off about concrete, lead, burying H-bombs, and the future. Pretty much the moment after our heroes all jumped time, Charlotte collapsed, her nose gushing blood, implying to me that something that happened while they were stuck in 1954 drastically altered the past, dangling Charlotte Lewis' fate on the thinnest of strands. Maybe Daniel should've just kept his big mouth shut.

Jeebus, I'm almost at 2000 words, and I haven't even gotten to the biggest news of the episode: Charles Widmore was an Other! And a ruthless, cocksure one at that, willing to snap a colleague's neck and pop off to Richard Alpert that no one knows the island better than he does. What this means for the show's mythos is still anyone's guess: When did Widmore leave the island? Was he born there? If he wasn't, how long had he been there? And if he did indeed spearhead the Dharma Initiative, doesn't that mean Dharma wasn't so much an outside intruder than a Great Schism within the Other population itself?

So many questions, and now only 29 more episodes left to answer them. But I think we may just have gotten ourselves a big honking answer last night to a question looming since the beginning of season two: What, exactly, was contained within that massive bunker buried underneath the hatch (i.e. the Swan station), a bunker seemingly made of concrete and lead? Well, it looks like it may have been good ole Jughead, a thermonuclear device capable of emitting a massive electromagnetic pulse; your guess is as good as mine as to how that energy would interact with the time-trippy qualities of the island. (Asst. Prof. Vary extracurricular reference No. 5: I confess to only the most basic knowledge of the Archie comics, but I do know the character of Jughead was always obsessed with food, needing it constantly...like, say, every 108 minutes.) If Juggy wasn't what was buried under the Swan, then, well, crap, it appears there's a rogue H-bomb tucked somewhere underneath the island. And as we learned from last season's finale, you don't show a bomb on a TV show like Lost unless you intend it to go boom.

This is all way, way long, so rather than mull over the kinda sorta first meeting between Richard Alpert and John Locke, I'll leave it to you, dear readers, to unpack it in the comments — save to point out that it seems the reason Alpert visited the hospital where John Locke was born (in last season's "Cabin Fever") was because Locke told him to two years earlier. (My noodle = Crispy.) I know Doc Jensen's going to be disappointed, meanwhile, that I never got a chance to air the elaborate "broken arrow" theory he downloaded to me on Tuesday when we were discussing "Jughead" (which we'd both seen in advance), but, frankly, I think it's best if he does it himself in his next column. He kinda lost me when he started talking about Carl Sagan and Jodie Foster.
So, Lost-ies, what did you feel about "Jughead"? Did you miss the Oceanic 6 at all? Is Penny and Desmond's love destined to be doomed? Did you notice that 1954 Richard Alpert appeared unaware of the island's time hopping qualities? Do you think we'll ever get see what it's like from the Others' point-of-view when Locke, Faraday et. al. just blip away from sight? What did Faraday mean when he said Ellie looks "so much like someone I used to know"? (My guess: He means Theresa Spencer.) Don't you think the writers should be giving Elizabeth Mitchell far more to do? (Her line readings last night — "Why don't we all put our guns down?" — were priceless.) And what was up with that quick first-person, video game-esque camera angle down Ellie the Other's gun-sight as she pointed it at Faraday? Are there some profound existential implications about the nature of audience viewpoint vis-à-vis a female character's point of view through a classically patriarchal gun? Or was the director just showing off?
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1550612_20245769_20255638,00.html?xid=email-alert-lost-20090129-item1

Lost Redux: Will Sawyer and Juliet Hook Up?

Wed., Jan. 28, 2009 8:00 PM PST by Kristin Dos Santos
ABC/Florian Schneider

"What the hell?" "Who the hell?" "When the hell?!"
If you found yourself asking these questions aloud while watching tonight's episode of Lost, you are not alone, my fellow lost friends.

The "WTF?" factor seems to be escalating with each new episode as the island skips through time...and according to Lost's big bosses, the romantic tension also will keep building between some of our favorite islanders (and Others) who just so happen to be pictured in all their hotness above.

So what's the word on the love quadrangle of Juliet, Sawyer, Jack and Kate? And what surprising little nuggets did we learn tonight? Read on...

Runnn, Penny, Runnnn! You gotta love Penny's undying devotion to Desmond--after all, she's his constant! (Swoon.) But girlfriend needs to draw the line when it comes to going with Dezzie-poo to Los Angeles to track down Daniel Faraday's mum, because in case anyone forgot, that just so happens to be the current (we think) location of one very vengeful guy: Mr. Benjamin "You killed my daughter, prepare for your daughter to die" Linus. Something tells me she's headed way too close to Ben, and it makes me nervous.

Is Charlotte Dead? Whether she is or isn't, that bloody, knee-bended, face plant is certainly gonna leave a mark. I'll be talking with Rebecca Mader herself in the morning, so please post any questions you have for her below and I will gladly ask as many as I can. First and foremost on my agenda: Are you still on the show? Is Charlotte alive? And did you ever try a humidifier for those nosebleeds? 'Cause mine works wonders. Just sayin'. Oh, and we also need to know Charlotte's history on the island, right? She can't die yet!

Charles Widmore Isn't Just Wicked...He's Wicked Hot! (And Wicked Old) We now know that Charles' evildoing goes back a good 50 years, as we saw him as a young, strapping soldier who deftly snapped the neck of a fellow Other who had started to spill info. But more importantly, given that he was at least 18 years old in 1954, that makes Penny's papa at least 72 in the flashforwards. And I dare say the man has truly discovered some kick-ass anti-aging cream and Oil of Olay should sign his ass pronto as a poster child. Oh, and speaking of the ageless...
Richard Alpert Is Everywhere. Bless you, CBS, for canceling Cane! 'Cause now Richard Alpert is popping up all over the place, and the eyeliner budget for Lost's makeup department is soaring! Anyone else love that Richard's creepy visit to Locke's hospital on the day he was born appears to be after Locke's invitation? Sorta great.

WHAT LIES AHEAD
Jin's coming back next week. (Or so I'm told.) Yay, Daniel Dae Kim! We've missed you.
Keep reading below for some thoughts on the love quadrangle (pictured above), courtesy of a chat with Lost chiefs Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse...

How would you describe the Kate/Sawyer/Jack love triangle storyline this season? Is it given much prominence or are you pulling away from that a little bit?Carlton Cuse: Not at all. I think we're always trying to find the balance between character-based stories and mythology-based stories, and I think it'd be better to categorize it as a quadrangle. Juliet is very much in the middle of that. In fact, Sawyer and Juliet were last seen together on the island, and Kate and Jack were off the island, so that's something which is interesting to us and we will explore. It very much is a quadrangle.

Damon Lindelof: What's cool about the show this year is that we're kind of picking up both stories exactly where we left off. On the island there's been this big flash of light, and Sawyer and Juliet are standing there on the beach having just seen the freighter explode. For those guys, Kate just left on the chopper five minutes ago and for Kate and Jack, they were engaged, they broke up, she went on trial, he got addicted to pills, he grew a horrible beard...

That was a bad beard.
Damon: (Laughs) Yes, but it's gone now so we'll never have to speak of it again. The fact of the matter is, it's all a matter of perspective; if you're watching the Oceanic Six show then the island scenes are flashback, if you're watching the island show then the Oceanic Six scenes are flashforward. But as far as the relationships are concerned, Sawyer and Juliet have kind of just started hanging out, and Kate and Jack have already gone through the wringer. If and when they all come together, there should be some interesting permutations in play.

(And in case you missed our latest round of "False, True or Hell, No, We Won't Tell You," Damon also says that there is most definitely romantic tension between Juliet and Sawyer. I know...duh. We also learn Daniel's mother is someone we may already know.)

How do you feel about the quadrangle? And tonight's episode?
http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b81005_Lost_Redux_Will_Sawyer_and_Juliet_Hook_Up.html

Destiny?

There are some that are asking the question - why didn’t Locke kill Widmore when he met him as a young soldier? The answer (so far) has been that he couldn’t kill him because he didn’t die then - because he’s alive now.

That got me thinking.

If that's the case then Michael couldn't kill himself in the car crash or in the alley because he didn't die in a car crash or pulling the trigger because that's not when he died. He also didn't die when he set off the suitcase bomb because he didn't die that way or then. He died WHEN the boat exploded and could not die any other way.

Many folks have been sick/near death and recovered fairly quickly. Could it be because that's not how or when they actually died?

The O6 have to go back to the island in 70 hours because that's when they actually went back.

In aboriginal folklore is it said there are special places that hold all memories of what happened, are happening or will happen at that place. Could this be the secret of the island - that it knows when something happens because it's already seen them happen?

That would seem to mean that everything in LOST is future tense. We know what happened when because we saw it in the future.

And for those that did die? Boone and Libby and Shannon and Eko and Ana L and Alex and others - if we look back from the future we see that's WHEN they died. So because it was seen in the future that it did happen they had to die then.

Unless...

Maybe Alex really wasn't supposed to die when she did....that if you look back from the future you don't see that event happening. Maybe that's what Ben meant by "he changed the rules." Alex wasn’t supposed to die then but she did. So Widmore changed the outcome of an event or caused an event to happen that the future did not know about. And Ben was shocked because this could not happen because if you look back from the future he or the island saw it did not happen.

Now Ben has threatened Penny's life. Is Ben also threatening to change an event? Ben also said the person turning the frozen donkey wheel could not return to the island, but he's trying to return. Does that change an event too? And is this possibly the same thing for Widmore - that he had moved the island and cannot return, but he's trying to return regardless of what the future saw happening?

In the 2 episodes last week there was something said when Ben took Locke to the meat locker and at the end of the 2 hours when Ben said 70 hours was not enough time. Things had to happen then and that way, and if they didn't then God help us all.

Considering all that, the future looks preety dim right now for our LOSTies.

'Lost': Doc Jensen's 'Jughead' take

Jan 29, 2009, 09:52 AM by Jeff Jensen

Many thanks to my colleague Adam B. Vary for taking on the Lost recap this week while I tend to other matters pertaining to our mutual obsession that will soon come to your attention. Adam mentioned I might have more to say about "Jughead" next week, but my utter enthusiasm for last night's episode prevents me from waiting that long. So some quick observations/theories.
"Jughead" rocked. Let me be clear and plain about this before cluttering your mind with my usual nonsense: I loved the episode. The pleasure it gave was visceral; it was a fun episode to feel your way through, from Desmond and his son beholding the London skyline at night to the in-passing revelation that Des and Pen had named their boy after the man who sacrificed his life so their relationship may live, Charlie. Killed me. The storytelling was strong and assured, and the story itself flowed in a surprising, unforced way. And has there been a funnier episode of Lost in recent memory? Not in a jokey way, but in an organic, character-derived sense—the kind of chuckles you get from clearly drawn characters and knowing them well. Faraday asking Miles if by chance the dead guys mentioned what year it was. Locke’s reaction to the Widmore reveal. Juliet and Alpert’s droll line readings. (Must be an Other thing, like Latin.) Sawyer to Faraday: “You told her?!” If you put a gun to my head and made me give you right here, right now, my top 10 list of all time fave Lost eps, I’m sure “Jughead” would be on it. Take the gun away, and I think it would still be there.

My “Arrow” Theory. Adam mentioned this in his recap. Have you noticed the recurring arrow symbolism this season? Episode 1: Pierre Chang produces the orientation film for a Dharma station called “The Arrow.” Episode 2: The Left Behinders are attacked by flaming arrows. And now, Episode 3: Arrows everywhere, in the text (see: the Others’ archery brigade) and the subtext. A leaking or missing hydrogen bomb is known as a “Broken Arrow” event in military parlance. In physics, the “Arrow of Time” is the name of a body of theories pertaining to the nature of time; the term “broken arrow” is used to characterize an idea like time loops. Google “broken arrow” and you’ll get any number of movies, TV shows and songs about Native Americans… and wouldn’t you know, “Jughead” was a peek into the past of the Island’s indigenous peeps, the Others. But the coolest arrow connection comes via the Other cutie with the shot gun, British accent, and terse line readings: Ellie. Short for Eleanor, which is French for “the Other.” (Or so wikipedia tells me; I don’t speak it. Me stupid American.) On a whim, I combined “Ellie” and “Eleanor” and “Arrow,” and came back with an awesome connection: Ellie Arroway, the heroine of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, which was adapted into the Jodie Foster film of the same name. I’m going to leave it to you to explore the significance, but Sagan’s story certainly resonates with Lost themes, and perhaps functions as a clue to wormhole theory.
The Others Don’t Like Geeks. So the Island’s “natives” tangled with military scientists testing hydrogen bombs during the 1950s. Then, 20 years later, they warred with the scientific enclave known as The Dharma Initiative. No theory here. Just an observation.

Is He A Lover Or A Liar? Daniel Faraday told Charlotte that he [hearts] her last night. But we also learned that Danny-boy gave an old girlfriend the time travel STD and left her to waste away while he skipped off to America. Faraday probably carries about 9 tons of guilt in that backpack of his, so it made me wonder: when he told Charlotte that he dug her red headed, nose-bleeding cheese, was he genuinely serious—or was he just trying to save from the time travel sickness by playing the part of her constant? If I’m correct that Doc Faraday doesn’t really love Charlotte, but he’s just trying to save her, then he reminds me of another romantically-challenged, messiah-complex MD prone to becoming emotionally enmeshed with his patients. All to say...

Daniel Faraday = Jack Shepherd. Both doctors. Both called upon to be castaway leaders/heroes. Both wear backpacks and grow bad beards. I wonder how much we should make of that? I really liked Adam’s theory that Daniel is a new variable in the Island's past, effectively altering the destinies of the people that will live there or be born there. If the Island was always destined to go skipping through time, but the Oceanic 6 were never supposed to leave, then I wonder: was Jack originally supposed to be doing all the things that Faraday is currently doing on Lost? That could be the reason why the Island brought Faraday here: to serve as Jack’s understudy in the grand drama of its history. But now that Jack has pulled a Jeremy Piven-in-Speed The Plow and flaked out on the production, the role has fallen permanently to Faraday—and he’s playing the part differently enough to render significant consequences.

“Jughead” = U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. My soundtrack choice for the episode. “Vertigo” = Charlotte. “City of Blinding Lights” = Desmond and Charlie beholding London. (Yes, yes, the song’s about NYC, but go with me.) “All Because of You” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”: all about “constant” thematics. “Miracle Drug”: the greatest Lost theme, the reconciliation of science and faith, head and heart.

More next week. Namaste!
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/01/lost-doc-jensen.html

The Swan has a new meaning

Many thank to turketron over at AINC for finding this on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon

U.S. Swan Device: 1956


The first device whose dimensions suggest employment of all these features (two-point, hollow-pit, fusion-boosted implosion) was the Swan device, tested June 22, 1956, as the Inca shot of Operation Redwing, at Eniwetok. Its yield was 15 kilotons, about the same as Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb. It weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg) and was cylindrical in shape, 11.6 inches (29.5 cm) in diameter and 22.9 inches (58 cm) long. The above schematic illustrates what were probably its essential features.

Eleven days later, July 3, 1956, the Swan was test-fired again at Eniwetok, as the Mohawk shot of Redwing. This time it served as the primary, or first stage, of a two-stage thermonuclear device, a role it played in a dozen such tests during the 1950s. Swan was the first off-the-shelf, multi-use primary, and the prototype for all that followed.


After the success of Swan, 11 or 12 inches (300 mm) seemed to become the standard diameter of boosted single-stage devices tested during the 1950s. Length was usually twice the diameter, but one such device, which became the W54 warhead, was closer to a sphere, only 15 inches (380 mm) long. It was tested two dozen times in the 1957-62 period before being deployed. No other design had such a long string of test failures. Since the longer devices tended to work correctly on the first try, there must have been some difficulty in flattening the two high explosive lenses enough to achieve the desired length-to-width ratio.

Just to tie things in, remember the Swan station was the original hatch. There was something encased in concrete below it which Sayid said was reminiscent of Chernobyl.

Thanks again turk.

Polls for Episodes 5.1 & 5.2

Who do you think is Daniel's Mother?

Mrs. Hawkings
25 (69%)

The Meat Lady that Ben left Lockes body with
0 (0%)

Someone that we haven't met yet
9 (25%)

A future version of Kate, Sun or Claire
2 (5%)

Votes so far: 36


What did you think of "Because You Left"?

This episode was my Constant
14 (28%)

Awsome!
29 (58%)

Good
7 (14%)

Horrible
0 (0%)

The Plot went around and around like the Donkey Wheel
0 (0%)

Votes so far: 50


What did you think of "The Lie"?

It moved me just like the island
4 (10%)

Awsome
15 (37%)

OK
20 (50%)

Horrible
0 (0%)

Worse then the Purge
1 (2%)

Votes so far: 40

E Online, Watch With Kristen: "Lost"

The Shape of things to come: Ben, Widmore & Sayid

Im currently designing Ben, Widmore & Sayid. These are the first roughs that I actually like, but I have a ways to go before I'll feel good about them and color them in Adobe Illustrator. Heres some of my other character designs http://paulburrows.carbonmade.com/projects/2196889

'Lost': What's In a Name? Maybe...Clues?

'Lost': Doc Jensen
Doc Jensen dives into a quest for the hidden meaning of Island-related monikers: Dan Norton, Jughead, C.S. (Charlotte Staples) Lewis, and John Wheeler. Plus, your names -- when you sign reader mail, which the Doc answers here

Editor's note: In this installment, Doc Jensen offers an invocation for the new season of Lost theorizing; suggests that the Greek god Pan, whose name means ''involving all members'' and whose two faun feet total four toes, might have something to with ''Live Together, Die Alone'' thematics and other arcana; and finds a possible Lost link for Dan Norton (played by Tom Irwin, a.k.a. Angela's dad on [sigh] My So-Called Life), the lawyer who demanded Aaron's blood from Kate.

In Lost, names mean something. So when the season premiere included a fleeting scene involving a new character who made a point of identifying himself, I began searching the Web for ''Dan Norton'' in hopes of unearthing a connection to Lost. But after a few weeks, the best I could do was find a comic artist named Dan Norton who has such a wide array of credits, one of them was bound to have something in common with a time-travel TV show with a blood-seeking lawyer. (Vampire By Night, perhaps?) I wasn't satisfied, so I kept digging, and just when I was about to quit, I stumbled upon a 1952 academic tome called Classical Myths in English Literature, co-authored by...Dan S. Norton. More than that, my Google search took me to one page in particular, and I was electrified by a sense of Eureka! discovery. It was like stumbling across a hidden hatch in the middle of the jungle and finding my purpose inside.
Now, to be clear, I don't quite understand all of the following passage, mostly because it involves poetry, and Doc Jensen doesn't do poetry that well. But the rest of it seems to make sense for a show that traffics in allusions and Easter egg clues both highbrow and lowbrow. So consider it my eye-rollingly pretentious, smarter-than-I-really-am, but passionate and well-intentioned invocation for a new season of earnest (yet not-so-serious) Lost decoding. And I dedicate this following excerpt from Norton's book to Joley ''Nick Fury'' Wood, who does this stuff better than anyone. Persevere, my friend.

''Many readers or students of poetry in this latter day undoubtedly consider the use of Greek myth by English poets merely an annoyance. A poet's references to unfamiliar and rather absurd tales and persons as if they were known to every reader may serve to exhibit his erudition, but they are a hindrance to the full enjoyment of his poetry. Either they interrupt the music until they can get themselves explained, or they are passed over and discounted as unintelligible. Or so it may seem.

''Earlier poets might have retorted — rather obviously — that when they sang, the myths were a matter of common knowledge, common to them and to their audiences. Present-day poets, however, cannot offer this retort because, for some unhappy reason, the knowledge has ceased to be common. The twilight of the gods has deepened into almost total darkness.
''In the sophisticated Roman days of the Emperor Tiberius there came an Egyptian sailor to Rome with a tale that on his voyage he had heard a strange voice off the islands of Paxi calling on him to proclaim: ''The great god Pan is dead!'' What if, in this our more sophisticated day, preoccupied as we are with science and material things, great Pan really is dead?
''Yet Pan was still alive to the poet Keats, who prays to him:

'Be thou the unimaginable lodgeFor solitary thinkings; such as dodgeConception to the very bourne of heaven,Then leave the naked brain: be still the leavenThat spreading in this dull and clodded earthGives it a touch ethereal — a new birth:Be still a symbol of immensity,A firmament reflected in a sea;An element filling the space between;

An unknown.''

THE TEASE!
Cryptic crumbs torn from the crust of tonight's episode — ''crumbs,'' because we know it doesn't take much to get you psyched for Lost. And because we are stingy. It's the recession, dude!

Episode 3 of season 5 is entitled ''Jughead.'' Wikipedia tells us that the word ''Jughead'' can refer to many things. Jughead can refer to a search engine. So maybe ''Jughead'' means that the Island is zipping through the world wide web of time looking for something. (Free amateur porn, probably. Naughty Island!) Jughead also can refer to a progressive rock band founded by Ty Tabor, also the lead singer of the Christian prog-rock band King's X, whose first album, Out of the Silent Planet, was named after a science fiction book by Lost-linked author, C.S. Lewis. And Jughead can refer to the Canadian name for the Kool-Aid mascot, that half-man, half-pitcher creature that smashes through walls and growls ''Oh yeaah!'' Kinda like Smokey:

Of course, Jughead also refers to the Archie Comics character of the same name. Curious fellow, this Jughead. For quite a while, nobody knew his real first name. Kept it a secret. Ironically, in tonight's episode, you will meet two characters whose first names are deliberately withheld from us until late in the hour. One made me gasp; the other made me get all misty. Jughead also wore a sweatshirt with the letter ''S'' on the front, and I'm told that for many years, the comics kept the significance of this conspicuous detail as secret. I'm really no Archie fan, so I can't tell you what the 'S' stands for... but I'm going take a stab and say it's not Smokey.

But here are my favorite bits about Archie's beanie-wearing buddy. First, his last name is Jones. Keep your eyes peeled for that name in tonight's episode, too. Second: Jughead once starred in a spin-off comic called — and I'm not making this up — Jughead's Time Police. Check out the cover from the first issue and then peruse the synopsis. The story concerns a character whose family tree is being erased from history, thus negating the character's existence. Didn't Charlotte Lewis — who shares a surname with C.S. Lewis name and has red hair, just like the girl on the cover of that Jughead comic — didn't she complain in the last episode about forgetting her mother's maiden name?

But the best Jughead reference lies within this:

THE GREAT SMOKEY DRAGON OF LOST
Or, Meet the egghead who might be turning the sci-fi wheels of season 5.

His name is John Wheeler, a super-important physicist who used to hang with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. He died last year, at the age of 96, on April 11, 2008 — or 11 days before ''The Shape of Things To Come,'' if you keep track of time by seasons of Lost like I do. Wheeler was the man who coined the term ''black hole.'' He also coined ''wormhole.'' He also coined the phrase ''it from bit,'' the idea that, in his words, ''every item of the physical world has at bottom — a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation.'' You know, just like Lost. Right? RIGHT?!

Wheeler was opposed to pseudo-science — supernatural stuff like psychic phenomenon — and yet he championed a concept that to ordinary folks may sound very mind-over-matter weird. Wheeler suggested that we live in a ''participatory universe,'' a form of time loop theory. From a 2002 Discover Magazine article about Wheeler entitled ''Does the Universe Exist When We're Not Looking?'': ''Wheeler's hunch is that the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing [creation] of not just the present and the future but the past as well.'' (Wheeler's premise is linked to a theory called the anthropic principle; for a user-friendly articulation, check out John L. Casti's 1989 popular science book, entitled — get this — Paradigms Lost.)

Gonzo? Hell yeah. But remember the opening sequence of ''Because You Left:'' We saw Daniel Faraday present in — nay, participating in — the Dharma Initiative past. And didn't we see Dharma workers on the verge of excavating the ancient donkey wheel, the mechanism that presumably activates the Island's time jumps? Does that ''wheel'' = ''Wheeler''?

Wheeler's theory of a participatory universe leans heavily on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which contains the idea that the very act of observing impacts what is being observed. With this in mind, recall again that we now have two Dharma stations that were devoted to the act of surveillance: the Arrow, which was tasked with spying on the Island natives; and the Pearl, whose occupants monitored the action in Station 3, the Swan, and recorded every detail. If the observer can affect the observed via the act of observing, consider the implication for these stations: The people inside those hatches could have been manipulating the people and shaping the events they were watching. If this is accurate, we must wonder about the people who could have been in those hatches. If they end up being some or all of our time-traveling castaways, then you have an allegorical dramatization of Wheeler's ''participatory universe'' concept. The castaways would not only be contributing to the present and the future, but to the past as well. Fun fact: ''Pearl'' was the name of a character in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Starlight Express, a highly allegorical opus about an electric train set that comes to life. Each car of the train is personified by an actor. You know what part of the train Pearl is? Yep: the observation car.

But my favorite discovery about John Wheeler — the one that gave me chills — was the colorful, monstrous term he invented for Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Wheeler called it...''The Great Smokey Dragon.'' Wheeler came up with the phrase after the famous Copenhagen debate between Einstein and Bohr, in which the latter scientist argued that the uncertainty principle always allows for a glitch in a system, a fatal flaw in any well-ordered plan. You might say that The Great Smokey Dragon...changes the rules.

And...SWOOSH! We flashback to the Ben/Widmore ''He changed the rules'' episode ''The Shape of Things to Come,'' whose title now seems so many shades more ironic in retrospect:

Tonight, you will see a story that illustrates one of John Wheeler's concepts in a different way, one that I found both absorbing and emotional, and one that doesn't require any of this pocket protector hoo-ha to totally enjoy. But lest you wonder if I'm merely projecting Wheeler onto Lost, as opposed to identifying Wheeler within Lost, I offer this proof: John Wheeler's middle name.

It's Archibald.

Long for Archie, Jughead's best friend.

John Archibald Wheeler.

John. Archie. Bald. Wheeler.

Or in other words ...

John Locke.

READER MAIL!(And you think I don't read all the emails you send to me at JeffJensenEW@aol.com! I do! I do!)

Hey, Doc! What was that thing swinging in Ms. Hawking's science lab at the end of 'The Lie'?'' —Luke in Los Angeles

Luke, I'm pretty sure that was a Foucault's Pendulum, a tool that's used to map the Earth's rotation. Of course, Foucault's Pendulum is also the name of an Umberto Eco book with great Lost resonance. In fact, the Ms. Hawking sequence that concluded ''The Lie'' — in which we saw her slinking around a laboratory wearing monk robes, then lighting candles in a church, then clucking nervously about finding Time Travel Island — could be seen as an elaborate evocation of Eco's first three novels: The Name of the Rose (about a super-sleuth monk investigating a murder mystery that may or may not be linked to demonic possession and the second coming of Christ); Foucault's Pendulum; and perhaps best of all — and the title is so Lost season 5 — The Island of the Day Before, about a castaway trapped on a shipwreck in a harbor located on the international dateline. The book is comprised of more than three dozen brief chapters whose titles link to Lost arcana or theory, including: ''Mundus Subterraneus,'' ''An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell,'' and my favorite, ''Monologue on the Plurality of Worlds.''

''What's your theory as to why the Zodiac boat got to make the time leap with the castaways?'' —Kylie in New York

I was actually planning to lay a huge theory on you guys about this, but then got sidetrack by my Jughead/Wheeler discoveries. The short version: These time jumps aren't random, but rather guided/determined by an intelligence. The castaways are being moved to specific points in the Island's history like pieces on a chessboard. And the chess player in question isn't making it up as he goes along, but executing a strategic attack. Call this player ''God,'' or ''Fate,'' or ''Maxwell's Demon'' (look it up) — but for now, I'm just going to call it ''the Island.'' Yes, I think the Island is a sentient, living entity, and it is either carrying out some business that was always fated to happen, or executing some kind of repair job caused by whatever cosmic damage that was done by the departure of the Oceanic 6. Recall the great rule: ''Live together, die alone.'' The Island has a symbiotic relationship with these castaways — and they now depend on each other for their mutual survival. (You know, just like a TV show needs good characters/actors to stay and play in order to thrive — another permutation of ''The Lost Theory of Lost.'') These jumps in time could be in the service of creating events that facilitate the return of the O6 to the Island. This is all to say: The reason the castaways got to keep the Zodiac was simply because the Island needed them to keep it so they can do...whatever it is the Island needs them to do. Sure, kinda arbitrary — but also rooted in well-argued time travel theory. (See: the "course correction" argument of David Lewis' resolution to the grandfather paradox.) (Man, the nerd coils in this column are totally overheating, aren't they?) Fun fact: Did you know that the Marvel Comics character the Thing — also a sentient mound of rock — has a name? It's...Benjamin Jacob Grimm.

Hey, Jeff. Could the Numbers ''4 8 15 16 23 42'' correspond to the length of the castaways' shifts in time?'' —Howey in Holly Hill, Florida

Dude, I LOVE THIS. And it just might work. If the first shift sent the castaways from January 2005 to the day the drug plane crashed on the Island (presumed to be the late '90s or early '00s), that could be a four- or eight-year jump. If the second shift took them to a point in time after the Hatch imploded and drug plane crashed, that could be a 15- or 16-year jump into the future, and if the third shift took them to the Desmond era, then...uh...okay, I'm losing the math. But this is cool. I want it to be true! Someone make it work for me!

''Hey, Doc. Loved the recap of last week's premiere! One quick correction (to your assertion that Sun has no reason to want Ben dead): Sun has every reason to blame Ben for Jin's death, particularly if she's been visited by Jeremy Bentham. It was Ben who killed Keamy despite knowing about the deadman's switch — in flagrant disregard for the lives of everyone on the freighter. I'll bet Bentham told Sun all about it.'' —Bigmouth of Eye M Sick

Bigmouth of Eye M Sick, thank you for the kind words — and good point.

In the premiere, we saw that Dr. Pierre Chang was raising an infant child on the Island during the Dharma days. Do you think the baby was born on the Island? If so, how does that square with the others' baby-making problems? Do you think the baby is a clue that whatever caused the Island's conception dilemma was due to something Dharma did? Maybe ''the incident''? Maybe some time travel accident that won't allow new life to be born until it is corrected? Also, make sure you call your mother this week.'' —Dad

No joke, folks! This was an observation made by father, as paraphrased by me. He's a detective, and a pretty smart one, so he's good at noticing stuff like that. Or maybe being Totally Lost just runs in the family...

And with that totally organic and not-at-all forced segue, I am pleased to introduce the season premiere of our new weekly video series, Totally Lost. Hosted by yours truly and my colleague, pal, and fellow Lostophile Dan Snierson, Totally Lost will offer previews and teases of new episodes, and recap and analysis of previous episodes. It also features a huge dose of wacky humor which, for better or worse, pretty much sums up Dan and me. At the very least, it’s rich in Lost passion — and sprinkled with cool Lost teases. I can promise you at least five tidbits about ''Jughead'' in the video you’re about to watch ... should you choose to watch. And I hope you do.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid9259916001/bclid9203117001/bctid9298105001