Lost: Season 5 (2 Viewers)

[Steve Y]

I don't think we've seen the last of the remaining Oceanic survivors. The flaming arrows may have "thinned" them a bit (poor Frogurt). The real reason, apart from not hefting up the plot with three different groups, is that the actors playing Rose / Bernard / etc. simply are not always available to work on the show. I guarantee they will come into play if not this season, then next.

As for the "point" of the show, it never really was "will they get off the island?" The essential question of the show was stated by Charlie at the end of the pilot: "Guys... where ARE we?" We are slowly learning the answer to that question, so we must now contend with: "WHY are we here?"

It seems the O6 (or most of them, anyway) were brought to the 70s because it is safely out of the way of Ben and the 1991 "purge". Brought by the writers, that is. Here they can safely flesh out the mythology without running into too many major characters. I'm hoping we get to see more of the Marvin Candle / Edgar Halliwax / Mark Wickmund training videos, too - as they are filmed?

Maybe the O6, with Faraday's help, will set in motion the very events which eventually bring them to the island. I mean, we KNOW what brought the plane down, but not the exact mechanism, or the purpose of that mechanism, or its actual interaction with the island's power source, which seems to be somewhere behind that wheel...?

Let's hope the show doesn't get too bogged down in the love quadrangle... err, square.

I'm all for human drama, but "will they or won't they" is not one of the most compelling questions this show has posed.

 

[Kevin Hewell]

Pretty interesting theory, Steve.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I hope this hasn't been posted, but the thread moves too fast for me:

The Argyle Sweater - Scott Hilburn

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Greg: Love the cartoon. I don't recall ever having seen it before - which may or may not mean anything.

1)
Right, and the two words are completely unrelated. Horace is the English name given the Roman poet Qunitus Horatius Flaccus, and is a variation of his family name Horatius (gens Horatia), which he shared with several other Romans whose fame has lasted down to modern times. (See the hero Horatius Colces, the lengendary "Horatius at the bridge" mentioned by a reporter or news producer in Blue Thunder and the Horatii, whose oath to defend Rome inspired one of Jacques-Louis David's most famous paintings.) Another form of Horatius in English is "Horatio", as in Admiral Horatio Nelson and his fictional namesake, Horatio Hornblower.

The actual orgins of "Horatius" are lost in the mysts of time, but the name seems to be related to the Latin word for "hour" (which entered English via Norman French "heure", and which exists unchanged in the Spanish & Portuguese "hora", which are pronounced the same way as the Italian "ora".) The name has been translated as "keeper of the hours". It is certainly not derived from the name of the Egyptian god, although that doesn't mean the producers wouldn't make use of the accident of pronunciation to make a literary connection within the show.

2) Re: The rest of the 815 survivors. I also suspect that Rose, Bernard and the others are still in the present, and not with Sawyer and Company. I think the timeflashes only affected those originally 'targetted" by the island, whereas I've always had the feeling that the rest of the survivors were simply "collateral damage", just like the ones killed aboard the flight. They were not the people being brought to the island, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Ben, whoever or whatever is behind these events "doesn't care" what happens to the other people on these flights.

3) Amy's baby. It has been suggested that Amy gave birth before whatever it is that causes mothers who conceive on the island to die in childbirth happened, and this certainly possible. The whole situation with that is ambiguous anyway. We know that two women who conceived off island were able to carry their pregnacies to term: Charlotte and Danielle Rousseau. We know that one woman who conceived on the island and delivered off it was able to survive the pregnancy - Sun. We're told the all the women who both conceived and delivered on the island died along with their children - except, now, Amy.

But there is another way of sifting that data. All the women who died and lost their children were "Others". All the women who lived to produce healthy babies were not. They were from off-island. (And Sun was only able to conceive because the island healed Jin. The island's healing power also seems to be curiously selective - Jin's sterility, Locke's paralysis, Rose's cancer, Christian and Locke's being dead [it would seem]. All cured by the island. Yet Ben's cancer would have killed him without Jack's intervention, and various people manage to die and stay dead.)

Now watch the scene with Amy and Paul and Richard's two men again. Paul is dead*, apparently shot in the chest without hestitation or benefit of blindfold/burlap bag. Amy is still alive. There are two guys with guns there. How long does it take to shoot two people if you want them dead. It looks like Amy is being blindfolded and made to kneel down for an execution-styling shooting, but is that what's really happening?

What if the Others are trying to kidnap Amy - kidnap any woman from Dharma - because they believe she'll prove fertile. Consider - Paul and Amy wander off too far from the safety of the compound. Richard's men catch them in the open, immediately kill Paul, then make Amy kneel down and blindfold her so that they can bind her hands and then lead her back to their camp. There is a reason cops make suspects kneel down or lie down before handcuffing them - to prevent said suspects from running away or kicking 'em in the shins (or worse.)

4) I'm not sure the Losties are there for the purpose of bring themselves to the island, although that is certainly possible. It would create the kind of closed time-loop that I think is one of the few really workable time-travel stories. But whatever the original purpose, it may be that that is what is going to end up happening because it is the only way to undo the damage already caused by the war between Widmore and Ben. (I think each of them, in his own twisted way, is trying to protect the island - or at least his vision of it. But by now each thinks the only way to "protect" the place is to "control" it, and they are both willing to do anything necessary to acheive that control - blackmail, kidnapping, torture, murder - to acheived that control. The irony is that both are now working contrary to the "wishes" of the island itself, so it has now turned to a group of outsiders to fix the mess they have made.)

I do look forward to seeing how the island came to be the place they first discovered in S1, what "the incident" was, etc. How many of the clues that they find in the future did they themselves plant? Who drew the Dharma map in the first Hatch? Did Hurley put it there while the place was still under construction, knowing Locke would one day find it? Will they plant other things now on the chance that there are future survisors of 316? (No one knows that Locke is alive again - although Jack may begin to suspect it if he accepts that both he and Locke saw Christian on the island, and confronts Richard Alpert's apparent immortality.) Still, they probably believe the plane itself crashed in 2009 or whenever "the present" is, and that there may be people on the island who need to know some of the things they know.

I can't wait for the rest of this story.

Joe

 

[NeilO]

We already saw that it was the people who were there before Desmond. Lostpedia has the information
Blast door map - Lostpedia
that we learned about it during Live Together Die Alone
Live Together, Die Alone - Lostpedia

 

[TravisR]

^ Yeah, I'm hoping to see a pre-suicide Radzinsky at some point this season.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I'm sorry, but I have now officially lost the ability to keep all the details of this show straight in my head. Apparently my brain is full.

Joe

 

[Joe_H]

Ah, but do we know for sure it wasn't someone we know taking on the last name Radzinsky? Lostpedia suggests that maybe the initials are SR. Maybe it could be Sayid?

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that, but it's possible.

 

[Ray H]

I hope not. Radzinsky blew his brains out.

 

[Arild]

Well, if we're going by those initials, then Sayid's out. His are SJ.

 

[Joe_H]

Yeah, but Sawyer's last name isn't really LaFleur either was my point.

 

[WillG]

Lapidus: The boat I came in on was full of mercinaries sent just to take out this man

Ben: And how did that work out for everybody?!

Gotta be line of the night.

 

[TravisR]

The opening with the Ajira crash was pretty exciting. It was nice to see the runway (that Sawyer and Kate were forced to work on in S3) be used in that scene too.

I assume Sawyer got a minor dig in at Jack by getting him a job as a janitor.

And I liked that the baby is Ethan. Although it does raise the question of how eventually defects to The Others. Not to mention that he looks older than 27 in S1.

 

[Joe_H]

Looks to me like this answered a lot of the things we were speculating about... like the appearance of Radzinsky or however it's spelled, Ben on the island (though my question is, is that the sub he came in on and it's the first he arrived there?).

And I loved how Sawyer 'pulled some strings' ... to get Jack a janitor job.

 

[TravisR]

I think Ben's been there for a while if he's getting sandwiches for hostiles. Plus, the actor looks somewhat older than when he first appeared.

 

[JohnS]

Good episode. I like how the tables were turned and Sayid was the one put in the storage closet as a prisoner. Then put in jail with a young Ben on the other side. Sayid looked like he wanted to maybe kill Ben.

Kind of like that Question if you went back in time, could you kill a baby or young child that was going to be a future dictator or killer(Hitler or Saddam)

 

[NeilO]

Yes, Sayid definitely is going to have Ben on his mind in the near future. Things are going to be interesting.

I was surprised that Sun didn't flash off the plane. I thought they'd be consistent that way, but as others pointed out the line about the pilot going off with a woman in a boat appeared to also point to Sun. Now we know for certain that the plane landed in 2007 while O4/O6 flashed to 1977. I had been wondering during the episode how Ben was going end up injured lying in bed and was glad to see that Sun was the answer there. Christian's showing up was a surprise. It appears that he means to have her travel back to 1977.

Those former Dharma barracks looked pretty desolate. I guess there another mystery somewhere as to what has been going on the island from 2005 until the Ajira plane crashes in 2007.

I didn't think that they would meet up with young Ben. What memories does Ben have of these days? Did any of them make an impression on him? You would think not, unless time is more fluid than we were led to believe.

What was Sawyer's line about Faraday? It seemed that he had gone somewhere mysterious.

 

[TravisR]

I think Sawyer said that Faraday wasn't there anymore. Is 'there' the island or did he defect to the hostiles or something else?

 

[pitchman]

I don't recall the line, but my knee-jerk reaction to it was that it was more a reference to time travel rather than a specific physical location.

 

[Jeremiah]

I think Sawyer was refering to Faraday losing his mind, from the loss of his girlfriend/friend.