the tindog coffeehouse

Once again, my semi-random thoughts on last night’s Lost:

• First, the biggest moment of the episode: Sun and Jin finally reunited! And it feels so good! And Sun got her voice back! And look, exclamation points!
• Thank you, Sawyer, for confirming that Sayid is in fact a zombie. Although apparently he’s a zombie with a heart. What, you don’t really believe he killed Desmond, do you?
• Speaking of Desmond, wasn’t that well a lot deeper and darker last week?
• So Lapidus was in all those Burt Reynolds movies. Makes so much sense now.

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A short (but lovingly sweet) list of semi-random (but probably connected to a similar list in an alternate universe) thoughts from last night’s Lost:

• Hurley and Libby finally got their date on the beach. No, I didn’t cry, but that was pretty cool.
• If Lost is ultimately a love story, then that point was certainly hammered home in this episode. Is there such thing as a true soul mate? Yes, absolutely (I’m married to mine).
• There’s probably a lot more that can be said about the importance of love within the context of the show, but just to repeat a point I made last week: the “man of science” would make the argument that love doesn’t really exist, that like any other emotion it’s a product of evolution to help further the survival of our species. But the “man of faith” would argue that love is the basis for our (and the universe’s) very existence, and as such, it drives (or should drive) everything we do. Faith — and love! — wins.
• I guess both the island and the writers were done with Ilana. That will go down as one of the greatest character deaths in TV history, mark my words.

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I’ve been doing these weekly recaps of Lost for several weeks now, and usually I do so from the “man of faith” perspective. But this week is a little different. Today is all about science.

It just so happens that while ABC was showing “Happily Ever After”, an episode in which the Island world and Sideways world intersected via electromagnetic pulse-surviving Desmond Hume, the Science Channel was showing a program about… wait for it… parallel universes. Crazy, right?

Now, I know nothing about quantum physics or advanced mathematics. I was a history major. But the whole concept of parallel universes (whether you agree with it or not) plays a pretty big role in Lost, so let me see if I can summarize it at an extremely basic level. (Bear with me.)

In the 1980s a mathematical model called string theory emerged as a way to explain how the universe is constructed. It presented the universe as a collection of infinitely small oscillating strings, and it proposed the idea that there were multiple dimensions, some of which we couldn’t see or experience. Over time, several string theories developed, all of which contradicted each other, and a new idea came along to take its place: M-theory.

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My weekly thoughts about last night’s Lost:

• Not as much mythology this episode, but we did get some. Seems my theory that Widmore and Smokey are on the same team may not be right. Apparently the only way Smokey can free himself of the island is to get the remaining candidates (Jack, Hurley, Sun, and Sawyer) off of it. But Widmore is trying to keep them on the island in order to keep Smokey contained. (At least if you take what Smokey and Widmore say at face value.)
• Interesting that all the candidates left the island previously. Except for one: Sawyer. I guess Sawyer’s decision to jump out of the helicopter was pretty critical. Of course, at that point Jacob was still alive, so maybe that wouldn’t have mattered as long as they all returned before Jacob’s death.
• Sawyer asks Smokey why he has to take a boat to Hydra island. Why not just turn into a pillar of smoke and fly over to it. Smokey replies that if he could do that, he would’ve already left by now. That raises a lot of questions about what exactly keeps Smokey imprisoned there. Again, it must have something to do with the fact that either Jacob or his successors are on the island. I mean, theoretically you could just line the perimeter of the island with those fancy pylon things and keep him penned in (as long as someone kept the power on). So why isn’t Widmore doing that?

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Ahoy! This here be ye olde ruminations of the Lost of yore. Shiver me timbers!

(You mean this isn’t Talk Like A Pirate Day? Darn. Oh well. On with the blog then…)

• I like how in addition to Richard’s backstory, we got a little bit more of Ilana’s. It was also confirmed that Sun is, in fact, the Kwon Jacob’s list referred to. (Sorry, Jin, you were this close. Maybe next time, buddy.)
• We also found out how the Taweret statue became the less-impressive-but-way-creepier four-toed statue and how the Black Rock ended up in the middle of the jungle. Personally, I thought that was a little hokey and pretty unbelievable, but this is a show about time travel, so I guess I can suspend my disbelief a little longer.
• The Black Rock came to the island in 1837. Too bad it wasn’t 1842, then we could’ve gotten another iteration of the numbers. Although if you add 3 and 7, you get 10, and then if you take the 0 from the 10 and put it between the 1 and the 8, you get 108. Whoa, I just blew your mind, didn’t I?

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Lots to talk about from last night’s Lost, so let’s get to it:

• The title of the episode was “Recon”. As the producers pointed out, that could mean “reconnaissance”, but it could also mean “re-con”, or “to con again”.
• Sawyer is getting played by Widmore and Smokey. Widmore doesn’t want to kill Smokey, they’re on the same side.
• Smokey says he just wants to leave the island. Just like a criminal wants to escape prison or a supervillain wants to escape Arkham Asylum. Smokey’s been trapped on the island, but once the loophole is found and Jacob is defeated, he’ll be free to unleash his smoke monster power on the rest of the world. Widmore knows this, and like any evil capitalist pig, he wants to use it to his advantage to take over the world. Widmore doesn’t want to bring people to the island like it’s Jurassic Park, he wants to get Smokey off of it.

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