Author Archives: jstueve

Lost in LOST

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If you’ve read my blog at all in the last week, you’ll know I’m embarked on the ambitious project of re-watching all of the LOST episodes to date before the beginning of Season 6.  So, please excuse me if I get a little (my daughter would say more than a little) obsessed with the topic of LOST.

The show itself is masterfully produced, the themes a seemingly endless maze of twisty little passages all the same. Going back to the beginning and re-watching it my thoughts return to what might be the best starting point for a potential möbius strip through time:

BLACKIE: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?

JACOB: You are wrong.

BLACKIE: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.

JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

This is the struggle where our beloved Oceanic survivors were plunged.  I view this series through my series of lenses, part geek, part pop-culturist, part husband, part father… However, the over arching filter is that of my faith, and the more I watch the early episodes, the more I’m reminded of a passage from the bible:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. – Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)

We have been viewing the continuing drama from the eyes of men, and have allowed the hidden battle of two mystical opponents to be obscured by the characters we’ve grown to love.  A struggle summed up by John Locke while explaining a game of backgammon to Walt in the series pilot.

LOCKE: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That’s older than Jesus Christ.

WALT: Did they have dice and stuff?

LOCKE: [nods] Mhhm. But theirs weren’t made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.

WALT: Cool.

LOCKE: Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.

Seeing the characters from the beginning with that perspective shines new light on everything. Our characters, are they nothing more than pawns played against each other in an unseen game, where chance, choices are played along with strategy and foresight on behalf of higher powers?  Is Locke’s guru like wisdom, as we observe early in the first season could colored by influences of one side versus the other?  Do the manipulations of the various factions in the struggle effect the different passengers on the flight, and start to ripple outwards as we’re introduced to more of the inhabitants of the island?

Those questions along with others are worthy of inspection as we’re introduced again to Rousseau and Ethan, the mysterious, nameless whispers in the jungle, the shrouded others that plot against those plopped on the island by the coincidental fluke in the crash of Oceanic flight 815.

I’ll use this space to ramble more as I worry these thoughts in the back of my mind.

Namaste.

WFTB – Week one puzzle

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We all had a good time watching the first 5 episodes over this past week.  This morning I was inspired by a fellow tweeter to mix it up a bit and add some fun to this challenge of our to watch the whole thing.  It’s supposed to be fun.  So here is a simple little puzzle for you.

The following six screencaps (label them A-F left to right top to bottom) are from S1E4 – Walkabout.  The challenge is to put them in the correct order.

This is a two part question:

  1. Label them in the order they appeared in the episode (HINT: screen cap D was the first to appear so that would be D1)
  2. Label them in the order they occured in the larger time line (HINT in this case D3)

Send me your answers in a twitter DM (d LOST_WFTB).

Locke156 Locke467Locke971
Locke722 Locke276 Locke231

Also in the comments or tweet anything special you see in the screen caps.  For instance Screen cap E has something hiding in plain site that gives away Locke’s condition before the final scene in the sequence shown below the fold.

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WFTB – S1E5 – White Rabbit – Twee-cap

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Reprinted with permission from LOSTblog.com

White Rabbit is a Jack centric episode, that tell two stories.  The first is about his relationship with his father and the second it about his relationship with his father. Bah! Well kinda.  The flashbacks flip back to Jack as a kid, and continue to his getting on the plane in Sydney with his father in a coffin.  On Island Jack is feeling the pressure of being the leader, and not sleeping very well, and still haunted by the death of his father.  The survivors are caught up in the quest for drinking water, and it all starts going Lord of the Flies until the ending scene.

Last night’s Live Tweet was well attended, but we had some technical difficulties.  Twitter search went down about an hour before our viewing started, then didn’t come back up until after the viewing ended.  This pretty much left us using the All Friend Feed to follow the conversation, rather than being able to rely on the #s1e5 hash tag in search to filter out non-live watchers.  I made a PDF of mine to use as a transcript of the live tweet.  You can read the whole thing here. S1E5 WhiteRabbit LiveTweet Transcript

One WFTBer, MollyFaraday escaped the curse of the broken search by live tweeting the episode early, so you can see her thoughts here.

The rest of the Live Tweeters were: @LOST_WFTB, @ccollinsmith, @batchout, @DieCer, @KatGirl44, @ASHATL, @kristin_madeja, @justinkeyes, @bejaedblost

This time I asked for some summary tweets in #LOST140 format, but I didn’t get a lot of those.  So I’m gonna write a re-cap, then add some of the tweets at the end.  Read the transcripts.

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SO, What’s the POINT of LOST_WFTB?

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lost_wftb Good question! Thanks, for asking it.

The point of LOST_WFTB is, of course to watch all of ABC’s stellar drama LOST from the very beginning. However, I’ve come to see a few more points that this group is fulfilling.

The next best thing to watching LOST, is talking about LOST.  I won’t go into how much productivity gets lost on the morning after a show, because I think the relationships formed between fans is pretty important.  All the blogs, message board, wikis, podcasts, and vlogs both by major media outlets (Doc Jensen’s Weekly EW column for instance) and by blogging hobbiest (me. and many many others in the long tail), testify there is something more to the experience of LOST than simply watching.

So that’s was the genus of the group, the beginning of the live tweets, (and oh, btw, did I mention the facebook group?) was to find ways to connect re-watching with fans, the normal people that watch the show.

Now, I need to walk down another point.  Providing an opportunity for potential LOSTians to get connected. You know, those poor people that either haven’t watched, or got distracted along the way (I’m looking at YOU Season 3.) and want to get re-engaged in the LOST experience. 

So, here I’m gonna put it in your hands.  I’m re-watching (emphasis on the RE) all of LOST, and I’ve seen every episode, so my Live Tweets are gonna be a minefield for first time viewers.  The challenge is to have one of you (looking at you @DieCer) to step up and have some kind of event to re-hash episode with first time watchers, or those distracted along the way.  I’ll provide whatever help I can, and I promise to behave if I attend one of your events and not spoil everything. 

As always the comments are open for you to tell me where I got it wrong.

Namaste.

WFTB – S1E4 – Walkabout – tweecap

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lost004.png

Walkabout is the fourth hour of LOST’s opening season. For myself and many this episode was the hook that caught us up in the unfolding mystery of the island (or trapped us in Jacob’s net).  The plot focuses on John Locke both on an island quest for wild boar (need to keep Hurley fed) and his pre-island life and what led up to him being on Oceanic flight 815.

We started the Live Tweet a little late, but it was well attended and had some great conversations.

In attendance: @LOST_WFTB @batchout @ASHATL @justinkeyes @Model_Melissa @Molly_Faraday @DieCer @ccollinsmith

I’m going to break this up by scenes, as I started watching the show at the beginning.  Some people watched it first then joined the live tweet, so I’ll try and combine the threads into a true twee-cap along with the context of the show. Click more to continue.

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The Statue

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thestatue

Taweret or Sobek or combination of many? (I vote many/composite)

UPDATE: Aha! moment.

(disclaimer: probably too much analysis of this easter egg.)

Okay so what IF the statue is Taweret.  I can live with that, with her linkage to fertility and the current lack thereof on the Island (and her current state of being… well she’s only a foot now)

What is Jacob embodies Sobek? From the wiki:

On occasion, later, rather than having a crocodile back, she was seen as having a separate, small crocodile resting on her back, which was thus interpreted as Sobek, the crocodile-god, and said to be her consort.

Why the quibble? Well because I really like this description of Sobek, vis-a-vis my pet theories of Jacob and his qualities (which admittedly could be all wrong).

Sobek’s ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself, for example, going to Duat to restore damage done to the dead as a result of their form of death. He was also said to call on suitable gods and goddesses required for protecting people in situation, effectively having a more distant role, nudging things along, rather than taking an active part

bolding mine?

UPDATE teh second:

So presuming Taweret as statue and Jacob as Sobek analog, where does that put our friend black shirt.  If he is the embodiment of Smokey (perhaps black shirt was actually a manifestation of Smokey, hmmm…) then where does his fit in this egyptian mythical love triangle.  Back to the wiki entry for Taweret we read:

When paired with another deity, she became the demon-wife of Apep, the original god of evil. Since Apep was viewed as residing below the horizon, and only present at night, evil during the day then was envisaged as being a result of Taweret’s malfeasance

…

As the hippopotamus was associated with the Nile, these more positive ideas of Taweret allowed her to be seen as a goddess of the annual flooding of the Nile and the bountiful harvest that it brought. Ultimately, although only a household deity, since she was still considered the consort of Apep, Taweret was seen as one who protected against evil by restraining it.

Okay, so who is Apep?

In Egyptian mythology, Apep (also spelled Apepi, and Aapep, or Apophis in Greek) was an evil demon, the deification of darkness and chaos (isfet in Egyptian), and thus opponent of light and Ma’at (order/truth), whose existence was believed from the Middle Kingdom onwards.

…

As the personification of all that was evil, Apep was seen as a giant snake, crocodile, serpent, or in later years, in a few cases, as a dragon, leading to titles such as Serpent from the Nile, and Evil lizard.

As they say in the blogs, read the whole thing…  So White/Jacob/Sobek vs. Black/Smokey/Apep vying for the affections of The Island/Taweret.

So what do you think, a grand unification theory of LOSTiness proportions or epic FAIL?

LOST – Watching from the Beginning

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Okay, the final installment of season 5 Lost was awesome.  I LOVED the opening scene with the dialog between Jacob and HeWhoShallNotBeNamed (Esau/Smokey/Blackshirt/Man #2).

I loved the final words between Ben and Jacob:

Ben, “What about me?”

Jacob, “What about you?”

The white flash can mean anything (like every other season finale we know nothing)

So instead of troubling myself on predictions and such.  I’m going to review the whole series.

I did the math, 101 episodes roughly 260 days before season six kicks off.  That’s an episode about every other day. 

If you’ve been following me (@jstueve) on twitter, like @ccollinsmith, @ASHATL and others, this is old news.  But if you’re just picking this up, or want to pitch in, I’ll keep this place as a holder.

We’ve loosely decided to to watch an episode every 48 hours.  That might change as we go, but it does allow for wriggle room along the way.  So for now here is the initial few episodes to watch.

This past weekend watch the pilot (S1E01-E02) not too late to catch up, its just two hours long, and still a wonderful two hours of television.

The schedule for the next couple of episodes are as follows:

  • Today: S1E03 – Tabula Rasa
  • Wednesday (May 29th) – Walkabout

I’ll post more blog posts about the schedule as we go along.  Feel free to register and follow along, post theories, thoughts observations.  Join us on Twitter with the hashtag #WFTB. 

UPDATE:  I hear that SciFi channel is re-airing season 1 episodes this week in the evening (@Yelwrose) so that might be a good place to get some episodes re-DVRd.  Grab the box sets, or other alternative ways of getting the episodes and watch with us.

Lost – Crackpot Theories

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We’re in la-la land in lost theorizing here.  I think its important to separate two entities: Jacob and Island.  Similar to the hieroglyph when Ben was being judged, there was a figure (Jacob) and the Smoke Monster (Island) always intertwined with each other. 

The Island == Smokey boils down to this, the island can manifest itself as a projection after initial scan by cerebus/smokey.  Locke was scanned, as was Eko and Ben.  Eko’s projection was his brother Yemi, and Ben’s was his daughter Alex.  Locke’s projection has been hidden from the viewers, but could be Christian.  Weak point in this theory is Christian has been projected to other people besides Jack/Locke (also Sun and Frank).  But I think the idea that Cerebus/Smokey is tied to an ancient manifestation of ‘The Island’ holds up through all episodes.

Jacob seems to be separate entity from the Island, and in my mind boils down to three possiblities: Jack, Locke, or no one.

Jacob::Jack – similar names, an interesting destiny if Jack ends up being at the bottom of all the time manipulation.  If Jacob/Island have some mystical ties, then a manifestation of Christian makes a bit of sense, its Jacob using his significant person (i.e. Yemi, Alex) to project to important people to keep them on the past.  Loopy, but not off the map with regards to Lost. At some point we need to be Jack back far enough in time to fill this role. The upcoming incident could toss Jack back far enough in time to be there to influence Richard in 1954.  If the incident happens (and we know something happens pre-1980) tossing someone backwards could be the equal/opposite reaction to get people back in they’re correct time.  Also those around Jacob are also those close to Jack: Christian and Claire.  Could Rose and Bernard also be collected and protected by Jacob?  (okay putting on the breaks here)

Jacob::Locke – The age long mystical connection of Locke with the Island has always been because Locke is Jacob.  The moving of the pieces last episode could end up putting Locke in the same location as Jack’s emergent Hydrogen bomb, and the effects of the Incident could just as well pull Locke back in time distant enough to become Jacob in the past.  This would be so Lostian to have present day Locke confronting himself in this seasons finale, and mirroring the foreshadowing of Locke uncloaking next to the fire.  It’s a cliché  for certain, so it might be one big writer head fake to go down this rabbit hole.

Jacob::No one – This one is emergent in my mind after last night’s episode and the collusion between Richard and Ben.  Remember Richard was Ben’s first connection to the Others/Hostiles. Also Richard played the ‘Jacob’ card with Charles Widmore more than once in the past.  So this requires Richard to be back far enough in time (Black Rock Sailor) to tap into the island’s healing power and survive long enough to always have an influence over various power brokers on the island over time.  Which I could foresee as a couple of Richard-centric episodes that track this manipulation with Ben coming alongside Richard and playing ‘the Man Behind the Curtain’ (an old Ben centric episode that just BEGS to be rewatched now).

I find that its important to match theories against how the writers/producers have told the story up til now, the time-shifting has always been a part of the storytelling, so to have it cease at the end of this season would be uncharacteristic. So I think we’ll get even more intertwined into the time shifting story, and maybe this finale will break off some of the characters that are chaff to the main storyline.  I don’t think the ‘plane landing safely in Los Angeles’ angle is going to play out. 

LOST – The Variable preview

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Big 100th LOST episode tonight (if the big O doesn’t talk to much, and give the other talking heads time to repeat the words he utters and gush about what a great Pres we’s gots – so put a DVR buffer at the end of the hour, just incase)

The Variable will be a Daniel Faraday centric episode, which falls on the heels of the Miles centric Some Like it Hoth episode of two weeks ago.  Nice to see some love for the Freight-ies in the story telling, anything to not reincarnate Nikki and Paulo.

We’ve got some threads to tie up in these last few episodes of this season before we go into hibernation until January. (srsly, January?!)  Some of the things to remember going into tonight and then building to the finale called The Incident (anyone that digested the Hatch Map in the swan station during Lockdown will recall the importance of that phrase:

  • Danny’s been absent from the disco-era group since Jack et al made it back.
  • Danny had an out of time sequence feature in the opening scene for this season after Pierre Chang told the one worker not to dig any further near the Frozen Donkey Wheel.  Where does that fit into the timeline as we know it?  Already happened? Yet to come?
  • The Lockdown map has the time of the Incident as 1985 (will we have another time jump to get from ‘77 to ‘85.
  • CORRECTION: The Swan orientation was copyrighted 1980 and referred to the incident and need to press the button, so there was indeed an incident in this time frame the blastdoor map is referring to another incident in 85.
  • Faraday and time loops generally go together, some are hinting at some resolution between Faraday and his mother Eloise.
  • We still don’t know what prompted Hurley to get to the Ajira plane on time (that should be played out in the finale, unless we’ll be treated to a Hurley centric episode)
  • The ‘what lies beneath the shadow of the statue’ group’s identity needs to be firmed up, who are Illana and Bram aligned with?  Not Ben or Widmore, who else are players in the game?