First post and "The Incident"

So, here is how this is going to work. Following each week’s episode this will serve as sort of an open conversation about what we just saw. In the past this was accomplished via email, but in an attempt to join the social media revolution, we thought this would be better accomplished in the form of a blog. It will be easier to share with others and a format that lends itself to adding new voices down the road without having to read endless emails to catch up. So without further ado, I figured I would start this off with some thoughts on last night’s reshowing of “The Incident.”

This won’t be a full rehash, because we already did that at the end of last season, but rather some new questions/thoughts that I had upon my third viewing of the season 5 finale. So I think I will just list them as bullet points. Feel free to respond to any an all.

- My thoughts on “the loophole.” In retrospect this is a little too simplistic, but the rules (whatever they may be) prohibit them from killing each other (similar to Ben not being able to kill Widmore in “The Shape of Things To Come”). I think part of the deal also requires that everyone have free will. Jacob stresses a few times about having a choice (both to Hurley in the cab and to Ben before he is killed) so they must have to manipulate the people on the island while at the same time leaving them with a choice. Nobody sees Jacob unless Jacob asks to see them or in the case of Flocke, if you demand that Richard take you. Apparently Richard is the only one who knows where Jacob is (technically Flocke knows where Jacob lives, but he can’t very well just lead Ben there or he’ll blow his cover). Only the leader gets to see Jacob, and presumably they have picked their leader well, so it would be difficult to imagine a leader killing Jacob. Which is why Flocke comments that “you have no idea what I’ve had to go through to be here.” Here is a rough shot look at how Flocke came to be in the position he was. The only reason Richard paid any attention to the idea of Locke being their leader is because Locke marched into their camp in 1954 with the compass that Richard gave him in 2007. And Richard only gave him that compass because Flocke told him to. He visits John off the island three times and finds him to be unremarkable. His belief in John seems strengthened by Jack’s ringing endorsement in 1977. Jack begins to have his sudden change of heart about Locke after Locke mentions that his father said hello. I think that Christian is a form taken by the smoke monster who is also the Man in Black, but that theory is for another post. If that is correct, the Man in Black is responsible for Jack beginning to believe which is in turn responsible for making Richard believe in Locke. Now, for some reason Locke can’t be killed on the island so to kill him and then take his form, the Man in Black needs to get Locke off the island, make sure he is killed off island, and then have his body transported back. Richard tells John that he must go back and bring all of his friends back to the island and that he is going to have to die (this was on direct orders from Flocke). His death is confirmed by Christian down by the frozen donkey wheel (“That’s why it’s called a sacrifice”). After all of this is accomplished, all he has done is take the form of the leader and ensured himself access to Jacob. But he still can’t kill Jacob. Luckily for Flocke, Ben will do whatever he says because Alex (again, I think the smoke monster/MIB in the form of Alex) told him he had to. This doesn’t really seem like a loophole though. The loophole is having someone else kill each other? Seems too simple to me. I think it may be a little more complicated than this, but this is what I have now.

- Ilana. What is her deal? She comes up with the cover story about bringing Sayid back to face justice for his murder in the Seychelles, but really her and her clan are trying to get to the island, presumably because the war is coming, and Jacob has asked for help. Presumably the only way to get back to the island is with as many of the original passengers on board, and since Sayid was out at this point, this was the only way to make sure he was coming back. But this goes against the “you have a choice.” I won’t lose sleep over it though. I take it that her riddle (“What lies in the shadow of the statue?”) is meant to distinguish friend from foe. If they knew that Jacob resides in the shadow of the statue, wouldn’t they have gone there first before going to the cabin? Also, what’s the deal with the cabin? She was really upset to find out that he hadn’t been there in a while and that “someone else has been using it.” She then orders that it be burned to the ground. It clearly has some special purpose or else there wouldn’t be a need to burn it.

- We probably could have guessed this was it for Juliet. Hers is the only flashback where Jacob doesn’t feature (granted, he wouldn’t because he didn’t bring her to the island, but the Others did). It gives us a quick excuse for why she wants to end things with Sawyer even though she loves him. I thought the ending was heartbreaking, but we’ll see what happens this season with Kate.

- Speaking of, this episode just confirmed how much I dislike Kate. Sure she’s hot and everything, but I don’t know if she has any redeeming qualities about her.

KATE: “Jack is on his way to blow up a hydrogen bomb.”

SAWYER: “Why the hell would he do that?”

KATE: “Does it matter!? We have to stop him.”

Just that kind of attitude really grinds my gears. She has the same attitude with Rose later when she mentions the bomb and Rose says, “So what?” Kate acts all incredulous and responds, “Excuse me?” Like her cause is the most important thing in the world. I hope she ends up alone. I’m currently watching season 4 and she is no more likeable in that season either.

EDIT: I meant to include this in my Kate rant. I saw an interview with Evangeline Lilly and her Canadian accent is so thick, I can't take her seriously. It completely detracts from her attractiveness. I'm actually pretty impressed with how she is able to completely mask it on the show.

-I thought the Bernard and Rose scene was stupid. I know that people wanted some closure on them after the flaming arrow attack but can we just agree that they are Adam and Eve and leave it at that?

-Finally, I’m of the thought that Miles was right. The hydrogen bomb is the incident. Whatever happened, happened. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense. Daniel Faraday was always going to try to detonate the bomb to save Charlotte. This caused him to storm the camp to find his mother, who was always going to shoot him. This would cause her to take up his cause to change things with the bomb. They always went to the temple to get the bomb and they always blew up the swan. It’s not the full Jughead bomb, and it was detonated deep underground, so it makes sense that it wasn’t a catastrophic event that wiped out the island. I mean Chang always loses his hand, so everything up until that point has always happened. It doesn’t make sense that all of a sudden they could change things. Now, how this plays into the proposed new narrative device that has been leaked I don’t know. There have been a lot of pictures leaked from sets which include many of our heroes going about their lives as though the crash didn’t happen. The first episode is called LA X (with the interesting space between the A and the X) so I think it will have something to do with flight 815 landing safely. But it can’t be that simple. It is too much of a cop out and would nullify 5 years of story as well as leave us with lots of hanging questions (like what’s going to happen with Jacob now dead). I’m not sure how they’ll work this device into the show, but it should be interesting. With that, I’ll sign off.

Thoughts, questions, comments?