For the first time, we have a dog who loves to play. Tug of war and fetch are favorites. On her own, she loves to Chew, Rend, and Tear. Though she loves soft plushies, she’s able to quickly locate their weak spots and riiip! Everything must SQUEAK. Here she is with a plushie who seemed tough except for its thin feet which went by the wayside pretty quickly.
2. The latest garden pests are SPIDERS. They are webbing their way around everything. Eek they had the water faucet webbed in. Anywhere you look in the garden you can see a thin strand in the air. Blah, blah, yes they are snaring OTHER THINGS that I don’t want to see or know about. The webs in pots didn’t photograph well so here you are, a couple of innocent objects encased.
3. On a nicer garden note, here are pictures from the garden this evening.
4. Lost Rewatch
A night or so ago I was restless and combing Netflix for something to watch. For some reason watching the pilot episode appealed. I’m on about episode 8 now and it’s just fantastic to watch again, as I remember so little of the plot and characters. It was almost like the first time all over again. Great acting, thrilling plotting, mysteries galore.
Mr DOA remembered much more about the story and characters when I talked with him about it. Perfect summer evening fare.
5. Zoomy Trikes
For some reason a couple of different motorized trikes popped up for me this week. They’re really cute, super pricey, and where the heck do you put your feet?
Finally an episode in the sixth season that I liked without reservations.
The cycle of ageless island guardians has gone on for millenia, perhaps? Who knows what drama played out with "Mother" and her predecessor? Mother seemed neither good nor evil, but she did find the dark side more personally appealing, I thought.
Jacob, who I have thought was an ambiguous character, was throughout a good and innocent character. Tossing MIB into the cave, not really knowing what would happen, was done in a fury over his mother's death. Understandable.
I felt bad for the Man in Black (still not named!) because he was an appealing character, and I felt for him in his struggle to leave and find out what was out across the sea.
So Smokey is not really MIB, but some awakened monster who stole his form, as he steals human forms over time. It makes sense that Smokey is an island guardian, but if he is not really the Man in Black, then he does not really have a desire to leave and "go home". All of his pleas for release are stolen from Jacob's brother's memories and hopes.
In the cave are lightness and dark (though the mom only talked about keeping the light safe.)
So....the mom gives Jacob a drink of wine from the famous wine bottle which represents evil being "corked"
"Take this cup and drink" a familiar ritual the mom echoes.
The knife that sticks to the chimney of unusual properties is the Man in Black's own knife, and it is also the knife the dogen gave to Sayid to give Flocke with? Whose knife killed Jacob then? How does this tie into Locke's long obsession with knives?
Jacob chooses the spiritual existence and MIB chooses the human, scientific existence. Both clearly chose for themselves.
A variable is a value that can change, depending on conditions or on information passed to the program. (Daniel)
The opposite of a variable is a constant. Constants are values that never change. Because of their inflexibility, constants are used less often than variables in programming. (Desmond)
Here is another episode that is full of revelations and questions. Although Daniel states "we are the variables" meaning all of the Losties, it appears given his mother's lifelong manipulation of him and his life and fate that he is at least the Key Variable. And his father! Ha! I knew Widmore was his father, I just knew it!
Questions:
1. Is Daniel really dead or going to die? Jack is a few feet away. Daniel has the book in his shirt, but since he was shot from behind by his furry blue mommy (Sesame Street reference) that probably won't save him like the old book under the shirt does in the movies. Also, Richard who just saved Ben at the Temple can take Daniel there, right?
2. If he is dead, did Widmore send Miles to the Island specifically to talk to Daniel as a dead man and get the information about the bomb and how to blow things up and thus change time, thwarting Eloise?
3. Since future Daniel spent three years at Dharma headquarters, did he sort of infiltrate them and plant the seeds for the Ilanna-led group to go to the island and blow things up in case he was unsuccessful himself?
I've watched the episode a second time attempting glean some fascinating meaning from the title of the episode. I got nothing. So let's dig deep into the BS-Vault and try this:
Some like it Hot "The all-time outrageous, satirical, comedy farce favorite, Some Like It Hot (1959) is one of the most hilarious, raucous films ever made. The ribald film is a clever combination of many elements: a spoof of 1920-30's gangster films with period costumes and speakeasies, and romance in a quasi-screwball comedy with one central joke - entangled and deceptive identities, reversed sex roles and cross-dressing. In fact, one of the film's major themes is disguise and masquerade" (wikipedia)
We can surmise that the Losties who have been living a life in the 1970's Dharma Initiative "in disguise" are part of the title inspiration. Their disguise is about to be blown thanks to Kate and her schmoozing Roger the Rabid dad of Ben (the Rat). Also (Kate the guilty is everywhere) the tape of the escape has been brought to Sawyer by that bug eyed little guy and let's face it, the lid is off the pot.
So far so so good.
Let's talk about Hoth. Temporary home to the Rebellion in the Empire Strikes Back (hmm theme city Dharma is temporary refuge to some of the Losties) before the Empire locates them and they have to flee. Run Losties run!
I loved the dialogue between Hurley and Miles about the Empire Strikes Back. Both the first time and the second time I watched the episode I was struck by Hurley and his determination to awkwardly rewrite and improve the Empire Strikes Back, and to get rid of the Ewoks, in particular.
Anyone who has followed the films over time knows that the very vocal fan base for the Star Wars films has fought George Lucas every inch of the way on his own story and vision. They know better how it should play out, and they always did.
Take a look at the Lost fan base, who have also taken a distinct interest in knowing and saying how the storyline should play out. They think they know the last episode in fact already.
So, I posit that in this episode the Lost writers poke fun at their own knowing fans who would write and rewrite the Lost story their own way. The message is, you are as silly and not up to the task as Hurley is not up to the task of writing Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back better than George.
BS Meter set to Stun, see ya after tonight's episode.
The title is another of those wry Lost jokes. Dead is certainly not dead when it comes to the Island. Dead people pop out of the foliage every two feet. Its just silly to believe Ben of all people when he says "Dead is Dead". Doh.
I was of course wrong about Kate being the one to have pounded Ben on the docks in L.A. I don't know why I didn't think of Desmond. I knew Penny wasn't up to that sort of stuff, even if she were defending her child. Who knows who her mom is, but somehow Charles hooked up with a sweetie pie lady at some point in his carousing career.
I don't believe Ben at all that he returned to the Island to be "judged". That's just not in his makeup. It was...a SMOKESCREEN! hahahaha! For whatever he was really up to. When he pulled the plug on Smokey's drain and said "I'll be outside" he was not meek but speaking to a companion/cohort/maybe even tool. Nothing humble in him there at all. What a silly show he put on for Sun "I don't know what will come out of the jungle". Yeah right. He did not expect John to come out, he was let down by the fact that he did not control "the monster" after all. I think that shook him up a little bit.
Added to that confusion, John Locke claimed to know just where to go. Clearly this was not in the Ben Plan. Ben was a bit excited to see he was going to the Temple, obviously something there made him think he would be in control, but nope, down into the dark pit beneath.
There, separated from John by a small cave-in he meets "Smokey". Smokey rises from a grill beneath a group of hieroglyphs featuring the ever popular Egyptian God Anubis, guide and friend to the dead. Although we were promised we would know more about Smokey this episode, I think that all we know now is he is a messenger or servant of Anubis, perhaps, and that he can take on the appearance of someone close to the "victim". (Or in Christian's case, an actor they just like having around). Ben wasn't "judged" at all by Alex's manifestation, he was told to shape up and do what Locke told him to do.
I think Ben was so shocked by this. I think he expected a different message and mission from the smoke monster. When he said "it let me live" to Locke in such an awed tone, I think it was because he was still so surprised that he was not welcomed back, but that he was just ordered around, and by Alex's specter no less. I give him a small bit of humanity here and say Alex was as important to him as a person could be to an oily dude.
This whole interlude makes me think again of Charlotte saying, just before she died "this Island is Death". There must be more to that.
The episode ends with Ilana popping Lapidos, our heroic pilot, over the head when he doesn't know the answer to the musical question "what lies in the shadow of the statue?" Obviously Ilana is more than a run of the mill bounty hunter. It appears she managed to come to the island with a nice arsenal of guns in her shiny silver box.
Speaking of guns, a Ben observation. Look at how easily he popped Caesar off with the shotgun. Just a firm no nonsense BOOM! However, when he goes on his mission to kill Danielle, and when he is going to kill Penny, look at the sideways, silly way he holds his gun, like a child or a Don Knotts look alike. Certainly no cold killer confidence there. Ben aka Mr. Conumdrum, eh?
The title of last week's episode and the title of this week's episode of Lost show that the writer's are having a fine time playing with the audience, I think.
"Whatever happened, happened" come on, now, consider the source. Daniel Faraday utters this in a world weary (his usual tone) manner. Because he is a physicist, people take it seriously. I am going to say that he is full of beans and he knows it. Faraday is smart enough to know all about time and paradox so he would know time can be changed by time travellers. It is in the Time Travel Manual on page 101. I believe his frustration comes from the fact that he himself has tried on numerous occasions to alter time (warning the child Charlotte, experimenting with a Rat with his mother's name, experimentation gone terribly awry with Theresa). Because he can't succeed, he puts a damper and a misdirection on the other castaways.
This week's episode is "Dead is Dead". Give me a break. Who stays dead on Lost? Nobody really.
That aside, from the Whatever Happened Happened Episode I see that Kate, who I've assumed was working for Charles or Eloise is more likely working on behalf of Ben. Somehow he got to her (and she beat him up in Los Angeles, not sweet Penny) and just before she potentially killed him off he told her something that must have had to do with Aaron that would make her do anything to save him, even act as Ben's agent on the island to make sure that events occured that would leave Ben as the evil twerp he is.
Ya ya, Jack refused to operate. Kate is the one who comes up with the idea (planted in advance by Ben? hmmm?) to take Ben to the Others---correction it is Juliette, but Kate still is the villain! Kate does not hesitate to give the okay to the supposedly innocent child Ben to be altered forever into the slime bucket we know and kinda appreciate. It seems as you're watching it that she is compassionate for a child but nah, she is really as cold and calculating as ever.
I loved Jack in this episode, coming into his own as a person for probably the first time in his life. He made his own decisions and did not cave in to pressure or manipulation from anyone. Go Jack go!
The transformations of Sawyer and Jack in Dharmaville say much about the rarified air there before the Purge and its gas and all that. Fun stuff. I love this show.
Small spoiler thought: Lots of speculation about who and what is in the Temple. I think this week's show will blow all that out of the water. Hope so anywho.
I thought there was a possibility, but I didn't think he'd shoot the kid. Yikes. No question Ben was at his most vulnerable and he could have been redeemed, but whammo.
Maybe Sayid missed or the Smoke Monster will scoop Ben up and take him to the Others, then the Purge rolls out.
I feel for Sawyer fighting to keep the nice life he has, for the first time in his life.
Ah, how I still love this song. Hugs to the little Michael Jackson that I grew up with *sniff* Never mind the song is about a Rat. Soooo touching.
In any case, I also love Doc Jensen's episode recaps and analysis of Lost and in this weeks "Totally Lost" clip he talks about the importance of little Ben in the Namaste episode. I didn't think much of Ben except he is Mr. Creepy Kid of the Universe.
The more I thought about it, the more I thought that once Ben identifies Sayid as an "Other" he will likely help him escape, and I'm assuming Ben has already made his deals with the Others to help in the Purge, so he would rescue Sayid.
This gives the storytellers an opportunity to see what is going on in the "Other" camp, including what our charmers Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking are up to. Too finky if Daniel is their son, and that's where Daniel has gone off too. nah, that can't be..hmpf. But Penny can be their daughter.
Another thought on present time Ben and how he got so beat up and still unconscious...ha ha Smoke Monster might have given him a little shake or two. Sun's clobber wasn't enough to account for his injuries when John saw him.
Just a few hours till the episode. In the meantime, let the song play through your head. la la la la la la la la la....
I love these episodes that shed more light on the Dharma Initiative.
I can't see how they recruited people at all, let alone got them to agree to be knocked out for a sub trip, then they get mostly menial jobs on the island, as far as we can see. Yet everyone seems happy. Very cultish behavior.
I hate seeing Sawyer mooning over Kate again, and in Jack's presence he is reverting to bad boy behavior instead of being the leader he obviously has been. Yes, he has effectively "hidden them in plain sight" but he is unraveling, I think.
Creepiest scene in the series, the child Ben lies his way in to Sayid's cell to give him a "sandwich"---sheesh guard, at least check the bag! I can't believe there is a sandwich in there and if there is its probably drugged or poisoned. So we have our Torturer, in a cell, hands bound, and Little Mr. Psycho-I'm Going-to Kill-My-Dad-Soon slinking in and I am afraid for Sayid. Yikes.
Random thoughts from what we've seen so far:
The Undamaged Plane will take off at some point with some of the 815-ers, and I think it will travel through time.
Related to this, the Dharma Initiative "Care Package" that was dropped off in an earlier season will be dropped off by our travellers, most likely at the suggestion of Hurley. :)
I think Daniel is off in 1977 Los Angeles or Oxford working on some Time Travel experiments, but he will come back to get Charlotte off the Island.
I think Christian and the Smoke Monster are manifestations of the same entity, but I'm not sure what entity they represent, unless it is the "soul" of the Island.
I don't want the statue to be John Locke. More likely it is Richard Alpert who is a displaced Egyptian Pharoah or God.
I've been puzzling over why Sun didn't go back in time. My theory is it has to do with Jin's wedding ring, which she has with her. I predict it will act in a future episode as a "constant" that will allow an aircraft in flight in the Dharma time (flown by Lapidos) and the flight 316 craft (flown by...Caesar?) to merge and become one, allowing our 815 folks to return to the present day.
Additional thought: Christian's Shoes, which Ben so nattily suggested Jack place on John's body are a "constant" that kept Locke in the present. Ben brought his own "constant", we don't know what. Maybe the book he was reading on the plane. He couldn't perhaps be in the same time as his young creepy self. Further proof of my theory Ben and Eloise Hawking sent people not just back to the Island but back to specific times for their own purposes.
This is my least favorite episode ever I think, aside from the one featuring the hideous actor types who ended up getting buried alive (Nikki and Paulo).
I'm not a fan of the John Locke character, he is so weak willed and easily influenced. And yet...you can't help feeling sorry for him sometimes, and there are times when he is just so nice and so decent that you want to like him. All of that is in this episode as he tries to convince the Oceanic Six to return to the Island.
The question on everyone's mind the day after the episode aired was...who is the good guy? We all really would like there to be a good guy and bad guy here twisting these people's lives and hopes constantly (not to mention the audiences hopes).
After watching the episode a second time, I don't think there is a good guy involved at all. Charles Widmore and Ben seemed equally determined to use John to try to get the Six back if it could be done. Neither was really going to let him live once he had done this work, or failed in it. Having Widmore and Ben know that Richard Alpert had said John must die sealed his fate.
Widmore assigned Abbadon to him, and had Abbadon browbeating and demeaning John at every step, browbeating and demeaning being Charles' stock in trade...remember his techniques with Desmond. Despite how earnest he sounded, he hit John right up front with Abbadon himself, and with the dreaded and hated wheelchair. I'm sure Widmore expected John to kill himself all along with a bit of nudging.
Ben of course put on one of his slimiest shows of sympathy ever before killing John himself. I thought the first time around watching the show it was a combination of hearing Jin was alive and the mention of Mrs. Hawking that snapped Ben to the deed. But if you watch he is speculative but still cajoling until Mrs Hawking is mentioned, then his voice gets all tight and he goes for the ol' cord.
That aside, I think John, his old buddy Ben and the other people from the flight 316 plane are on the other island "Hydra".
I think Caesar is there looking for something very specific in the Dharma Initiative files and he is an agent on the island for either Charles Widmore or Eloise Hawking. I thought he seemed particularly interested in a set of drawings with equation type stuff, so my guess for him would be Eloise.
Illana (the other new regular) I'll guess is also an agent-in-place for one or the other of those characters. We'll temporarily assign her to Charles Widmore.
I think they are all in the time of the Dharma Initiative in the seventies, and that something key to the Island happened then that needs to be fixed or repeated. (Aha, could it be that his is when Eloise and Charles were tricked into exile and they think to change that?) I think Hawking might have been able to calculate not just an entrance for return to the island, but she hoped to be able to send them to a particular time period.
I wouldn't be surprised to find both Mrs. Hawking and Charles Widmore on the Island, younger, as this plays out. There's the battle Charles spoke of, in part, with Caesar helping one side and Illana working to help the other. Most interesting if that is correct.
All speculation, but in under the deadline before this week's episode airs!
Side note: The illustration for this post is a picture of the real philosopher Jeremy Bentham who had himself sort of mummified and put in this case. Kind of gross.
I definitely have to watch this episode a second time. It was a mostly straightforward episode time-switching wise. Almost a relief!
Jack, with his "messiah complex" (From wikipedia: Messiah complex is a state in which the individual believes themselves to be, or destined to become, the saviour of the particular field, a group, an event, a time period, or in an extreme scenario, the world) is sooo easily led by the nose by Mrs Hawking and Ben. Here is a smart talented man who has no clue, but thinks it is always his job to save the day and "fix things". Couldn't he use those smarts to see that Mrs. Hawking and Ben and the Island aren't fixable? Noooooo. And there he is, in direct competition with John Locke who also believes he is destined to be "special" and save the Island. Criminy.
Kate is such a little psycho. How she manages to appear small and vulnerable while being up to no good 24/7 I just can't see. "You must promise never to ask me about Aaron"...yeah right. Lucky for you Jack always wears his leash so you can just give him a little shake now and then and he rolls on over to have his belly rubbed (dog reference).
What happened to Aaron we ask? My coworker JR (not the one from "Dallas") had a great theory that Charles Widmore has both Kate and Sun working on his behalf. We have seen Sun offering to work with him, but wily Kate?
He might easily be involved though...how did those two women, Sun and Kate leave their children behind and trudge off to the Island? He could have promised them something, and it would have to be something that would eventually allow them to be re-united with the kids. I can see that he could convince them to carry out some set of orders.
I think Sun is sufficiently obsessed with being back with Jin so that she would go no matter what. But not Kate. The other possiblity for Kate is that she had another visit from Claire, who told her in a previous episode not to bring Aaron back to the Island.
But...what about the whole "nobody must raise Aaron but Claire" thing? Hmmpf. Kate could have left Aaron with Claire's mom, but why? And why do that and go back to the island? Does she think she can switch places with Claire somehow? She would do that for Aaron I think.
The Dharma Initiative and its membership raises its intriguing head as the inventor of the pendulum that detects the Island. How they guessed there was an island like this in the first place is a puzzle. I need to go back and watch the very first Dharma Initiative training film. In it, briefly, the founders of the Dharma Initiative, a man and wife are briefly seen and named. I don't recall that they have been referred to since, but they have remained in my mind. Woman with blond hair, hairy bearded guy...could be anyone. I keep thinking they are Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore under bogus names but that would be too easy.
The whole 316 thing...over my non-theological head. Clearly John is the sacrifice and Jack the unbeliever (Doubting Thomas) who must be convinced. I will say I do not feel Mrs Hawking or Ben are remotely holy, reverent, or using the church, it's teachings or anything else as more than a tool and a screen. Ben can light candles till doomsday but he is a bad bad man.
Mrs. Hawking, though there is speculation she is a protector of the island and the timestream or some such...also seems bad to the bone. Did you see her face all hard and cold and ugly when Desmond told her he was there on Daniel's behalf to ask for help? Not exactly snuggly mama. Although it did occur to me as I pondered this that she is angry at him, perhaps for trying to alter time and events to save Charlotte. Ack and how could I forget, Daniel had funding for his time travel research for 10 years from Charles Widmore. So mama doesn't like her mumbly voiced son sleeping with the enemy. Aha.
Lastly, at the end we have Hurley, Jack and Kate back on the island, greeted by Jin with a brand new Dharma Initiative uniform and the blue van from previous episodes all sparkly and new. So they are on the island but in the early days of the Dharma Initiative. Maybe they'll meet those founders I find so intriguing.
We're missing Sun, who will be going BONKERS that Jin is not on the island as promised, though he's in another time frame, I speculate. How is Ben going to explain all that? With a full helping of slime, no doubt. I will be surprised if all of them are in the past and just in different locations on the island.
We're missing Sayid and his lovely police escort.
Of course John-in-a-box is missing. Too interesting to see in what corporeal form he shows up next.
And too cute! A whole back-of-the-plane-load of new shiny disposable Red Shirts! All of those people ready to be ground up in the Island Munch Machine.
Good stuff.
Note: here is the orientation film. I can't make out the names of the Dharma Founders, (DeGroots?) but I did see something I didn't pay attention to the first time around: Charles Widmore up in his office, seen through an outside window and said to be the financial backer of the Dharma Initiative. (Ah this answers my question above...how did the Dharma Initiative know to look for the island...Charles Widmore got them involved, since he funded them.) These two don't look like Widmore and Hawking at all so forget that wild theory. There we have it...
We interrupt this non-serious blog with a note on last night's episode of Lost.
This was the most straightforward episode in a long while. It actually drove the plot forward in a fairly linear manner (despite the Time Jumps).
The questions that arise from it are:
Everyone is on the dock except Hurley (who will arrive via RottenLawyerMobile shortly we can assume) and John's body, correct?
How much time of the "70 hours" that they had to work with has elapsed?
Why are they at "slip 23"? And will Penny's Ship "The Searcher" land in that particular dock shortly as well? This would bring Desmond who is a "key" of some sort right into the "return-to-the island-fray".
Will Charles Widmore and the cloaked woman who we assume is Daniel Faraday's mom also show up? If they both get back to the island, what happens then? Would they actually want to get back?
If Daniel and crew make it to the Orchid and someone (I'm guessing Daniel or John) turns the wheel to move the island just as all of the other players are gathered in one place on the dock, will this bring all of the people on the dock to the island?
If the wheel turner is Daniel and Desmond his "Constant" is among the dock group, then will Daniel hold his place and stay on the island rather than being moved back to regular land?
If the wheel turner is John, can he convince everyone on the dock to come back to save the remaining people from the plane--the fact that they know he is "dead" could have a huge impact on their judgement. Perhaps the dead body of John is a place holder that keeps the "live" John from moving back to normal space or in fact it allows him to return to normal space and still return to the island.
Note the episode title "The Little Prince". Does this refer to Aaron, and is there a tie to the book The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery's novel?
Final notes: I love the Rousseau character and it was both lovely and sad to see her young, sweet caring self and to know what would happen to her shortly.
I KNEW Jin was alive! He and Sun are two of the best characters on the show and unlike some of the cast, their characters have changed and grown so much. I know Sun would go back to the island for him in a heartbeat, but..her little baby is in Japan. What am I thinking? I'm sure Ben is having her transported to the dock as we speak.
