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?

I was reminded yesterday that my whole family LOVES the show Glee.  We’re kinda going through minor withdrawl symptoms since the finale last week, but that should subside slightly with the onset of AI 2010, where my girls, all three of them (@sweetbippy, @Funfizzer and @TotalRenji13) will be rooting for their favorite singer in the batch while we wait for Glee’s return.

At least this year, LOST is on Tuesday nights, and won’t interfere with the American Idol results party we host every Wednesday after choir practice.

We all enjoy the songs on Glee and sing them compulsively over the next few days after an episode airs, a trend that will continue after @TotalRenji’s birthday coup of a copy of the Glee 2 soundtrack album.  This is what happens when you have a family that just loves music, like all the gleeks do in that show.

Beyond the music I also love the humor, from Sue’s biting disdain for anything that isn’t her cheerios, to Brittany’s awesome non-sequiturs.  I also love that the show doesn’t take itself too seriously.  One of the moments that gets lost in every other moment of awesome in this show is the behind closed doors Judges meeting at Sectionals.  The recurring theme of the show has been Mr. Shuester’s constant gaming of his selections by finding out and explaining what the judges will like in the performances of the show choirs.  It’s hilariously funny to find out that none of the judges have any real business judging a choir competition, nor any other singing competition.

I also think they poke fun at themselves for after all the build up of the sectionals competition, we don’t get to see an over the top awards presentation ala the ending of Sister Act.  I’m sure it’s to keep their powder dry for the Finals, but in the end the Sectionals should always have been won by the wonderful Gleeks of Wiliam McKinley High.

Before this episode, some changes happened in the Oceanic 815 survivor camp, with Sawyer claiming some power in the camp by capturing all the guns, and becoming the new “sheriff in town”.  They’ve been joined by the “Tailies” and have discovered the Swan station.  Sayid was called on by Rousseau to capture a man wandering the jungle by the name of Henry Gale, whom Rousseau thought was “one of them”.  I thought the others were a ramshackle bunch of jungle survivors, and the well dressed Mr. Gale didn’t really mesh with that perception.

Backstory wise, I knew about John’s relationship with his father, and with Helen, but hadn’t really nailed down some of the core parts of John’s willingness to be used as a dupe by people he thought he should trust.

This episode was a game changer, both in my perception of Locke, but also of the character of the island.  The world we were discovering had just gotten bigger.

The last quarter of this episode dropped bombshell after bombshell on us after the Lockdown warning blared, and the blast door crushed John Locke’s legs.  It was one of the first “water cooler” episodes where the next day everything revolved around the ‘blastdoor map’.  Yet, the map was only the first of three major game changers.

The second was the supply drop, which was the reason for the Swan Station lockdown, which Jack and Kate discovered as they wondered back from the beach poker game, where Jack won back his medical supplies in a match against Sawyer.  The beach scenes served as the lighter moments as Jack demonstrated his influence over the now cocky Sawyer.

The last show stopper was in the final moments, as Sayid and his partners Ana Lucia and Charlie join Jack and Kate in confronting Henry Gale, with proof that while he was right about the grave, and the hot air balloon, the real Henry Gale was an african american male from Minnesota.  Henry Gale was a liar.

The acting of Michael Emerson always impressed me, his wonderfully delivered “Got Milk” soliloquy in the previous episode, had us on our toes for an ambush on Sayid’s group.  Locke’s wariness after that revelation, soon led to reluctant trust, as he had to enlist his prisoner’s help in trying to get free from the main room of the Swan station after the blastdoors came down.  The ticking of the clock, and the alarms blaring as the timer expired and Henry disappeared to push the button, was suddenly and jaw-droppingly forgotten as the room went dark, and neon fluorescent illuminated the laundry soap smearing of the blast door map.

This was the ultimate “we’d better watch that again” moment as so many secrets and hints were embedded in that six short seconds of screen time.