Here is the transcript from last night’s WFTB (Watch From The Beginning) tweetup. Click more to see all the tweets. Enjoyed getting this final season underway. h/t to @batchout for collecting all the tweets.
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Daily Archives: December 15, 2009
What about Rose and Bernard?
I got asked this question:
Do you think Rose & Bernnie’s actions in “The Incident” have anything to do with Jacob’s theory that “there is only one end, everything else is just progress?”
If there is anyone who gets a raw deal from a Reset, it’s Rose and Bernard, but before I continue with my answer, I think we need to put Jacob’s comments in the proper context, the below is from Lostpedia:
BLOND MAN: I take it you’re here ’cause of the ship.
GRAY-HAIRED MAN: I am. How did they find the Island?
BLOND MAN: You’ll have to ask ’em when they get here.
GRAY-HAIRED MAN: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
BLOND MAN: You are wrong.
GRAY-HAIRED MAN: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
BLOND MAN: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
I think within that conversation lies the key to LOST, or at least the battle between Jacob (blond man) and MiB (Grey-haired man). The MiB has a rather nihilistic view of the world, where the players that get brought to the island always devolve into a struggle, that ends up destructive. I think Jacob takes a longer view, and that while they struggle and fight, in the end there is something worth all the pain. I think the picture we are treated to with Rose and Bernard in the incident show two people that have given up struggling and end up living peacefully. I think it’s somewhat relevant that Vincent (that some see as a sort of avatar for Jacob) settled in with R&B while the Dharma people and the natives continue struggling against each other.
In Rose and Bernard we see two people that have finally found peace in their circumstances. They may have their own little squabbles over the day to day activities, but they’re not raging against the machine, or Mib or Jacob, or fate. They’re happy.
Then the bomb goes BOOM and they get put back on that plane and Rose’s cancer returns. A reset would be totally unfair. Though they did get to live three years of bliss on the island before getting reset. I can see why many people see Rose and Bernard as perhaps the Adam and Eve skeletons, where Jack grabs the black and white rock from, and I think is still in his possession. If anyone has a chance at a ‘only ends once, everything else is just progress’ I suppose the glimpse we have of Rose and Bernard could be the archetype of what ‘progress’ looks like instead of the constant warring that goes on around them.
Did I answer the question?
LOST Game Changers – Man of Science Man of Faith
The rest of Season 1 of LOST was made of excellent, but the arc moved fairly predictably as I learned more about each character. There were some surprises, like the discovery of the mysterious hatch, the sabotaging of the raft, the mystery man Ethan Rom, the appearance of Danielle Rousseau, which kept the story moving, but nothing that stands out to me now as head turning, and game changing. The pace of Season 1 was relaxed as I was introduced to each character via their backstories, we found out some surprises, Locke was a dupe, Kate a fugitive, Boone and Shannon were secret lovers, but nothing game changing.
Then in the season finale all sorts of things happened, the raft launched, then a boat full of others kidnapped Walt (aka Waaaaaaalt) Danielle tried to kidnap Aaron, and Jack, Kate, Hurley and Locke blew up the door of the hatch. (Oh yeah, Doc Artz blew up too, that was all kinds of amazing)
Which leads to the first classic LOST mind blowing season opener. Man of Science Man of Faith, the title didn’t give much away, other than stress the building confrontation between Jack and John. The opening scene lured me into thinking, here’s another flashback, but the curiousness of the modern washer and dryer along with an old record player, then a really old exercise bike, and suddenly I’m captivated, this isn’t a flashback, this is someone new… Why does he enter Hurley’s number’s into that old computer? Why is he giving himself an injection? What was that on his coveralls. A *BOOM*, dust settling out of the ceiling from the unexpected explosion, an amory full of guns, a fancy mirror system that leads us down a dim hall, then up a shaft, then suddenly staring at the faces of Jack and John peering down out of the torch illuminated darkness.
Oh LOST how much I missed you…
This also setup the tradition of taking a few episodes to wind down from the previous seasons finale, at the end of the episode we didn’t learn anything about what happened on the raft, or to Michael, Jin and Sawyer. This was all about Jack, who we all knew as the Man of Science, and his healing of a pretty young lady that he saved from being in a car crash (the other victim, the driver, was Shannon’s father… oh LOST! you and your 6 degrees of separation) His late night run in the stadium with a mysterious Scotsman, that encourages him to hope, to have faith (Maybe Jack is also the Man of Faith?) in his abilities, then goes back to running the stadium tour with a hearty, “See you in another Life, brutha!”
The episode flew by so quickly, that I almost felt cheated… Until the final reveal of the man inhabiting the hatch, was… The man from the stadium tour! Um, guys… Where ARE we? And why do I have to wait another week to find out more!