Too Big to Fail

Those of you who subscribe to HBO will have undoubtedly seen "Too Big to Fail" by now if you ever channel surf like I do. I watched it last week on the main HBO -- not HBO2, HBO3, HBO Comedy, HBO Thriller, or HBO Financial Meltdown Documentaries. The movie was done with most of the style and flair that HBO has become so well known for by now over the years -- excellent writing, good character development, a very strong cast, and of course the best pre-written plot money could buy -- and the end result was really quite an enjoyable watch for me. I ended up staying up past midnight watching -- kind of shades from back in the day when I used to be permitted to stay up all night playing online no-limit holdem mtt's -- and believe me, nowadays for me to be up past midnight is almost unheard-of, post April 15.

But the thing that struck me the most about my watching of Too Big to Fail last night is how much it still moves me. It's going on roughly three years since I left Lehman Brothers out of fear for the company's future and for my job, and yet I still could not peel my eyes away from the tv screen. As I sat and watched a pretty true to life portrayal of brash former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld by James Woods, John Heard's Joe Gregory and even a small portrayal of Lehman CFO Erin Callahan, the emotions of it all just came pouring back. They really did. The hatred I felt for Fuld there at the end. The despair showing in his eyes as he begged first his competitor investment banks, then other larger commercial banks, and eventually even the Japanese and the Koreans for a lifeline to keep his company afloat, and especially the anger and disappointment while Fuld watched Paulson, Bernanke and co. bail out AIG for over $150 billion just days later. Watching Woods' portrayal of Fuld screw up the investment deals that would have saved the company at the last minute as is commonly told really happened by those on the inside back in 2008 just makes my jaw drop, true today just as much as it was three years ago. It really was an amazing, incredible time in this country's history, and in a lot of ways -- strange as this is to say -- it was almost a privilege in some ways for me to be able to be a direct part of it as much as I was.

The other thing that I think a lot of people will take away from Too Big to Fail is the portrayal of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in the movie. While I think most of us will always think of a bulldog, ramming idea after idea down the throat of Congress and the American people, and the guy who presented the bill for a $750 billion bailout of Wall Street without any controls whatsoever on how Paulson could dole the money out, to whom and for what purposes, this film portrays a different side to the man who spearheaded the movement to avoid the second Great Depression in the United States. While Too Big to Fail seems to me to paint a picture of Tim Geithner as a desperate, gym-addicted, almost whimsical inputter into the country's handling of the financial crisis, the movie tells the story of a hopeful, incredibly solid, formal and almost compassionate Hank Paulson, worrying almost singularly about how to protect the country and solve the worst financial crisis in several generations. While Paulson always seemed calculated and cold-hearted to me in real life while the whole mess was hitting the fan a few years back-- perhaps that is my green Lehman blood still flowing -- HBO portrays him as a deeply concerned and caring man, literally unable to sleep at night due to the constant worry about how to fix things for his country. One of the most moving scenes of the film to me is almost a throwaway, when Tim Geithner calls after another session at the gym and tells Paulson that the financial bailout bill looks like it's not going to pass Congress, and Paulson gets this look on his face like he is literally sick, puts the phone down, and then runs into the bathroom and retches. That's just not the image I ever had of the former head of Goldman Sachs, and I think the distinction between what most of us likely think of Paulson and what the makers of Too Big to Fail obviously want you to think may be one of the highlights as well for any of you out there who choose to watch.

Yeah, it's been well over two and a half years since the events of September 2008 changed Wall Street, and America, overall forever, but to me for very personal reasons the events still feel like they were just yesterday. Watching Too Big to Fail on HBO this past week was like a blast from the past, and even though reliving much of what I lived through that year is not exactly what I would call enjoyable in the strict sense, I have to say that, with a little bit of time under the bridge at this point, I thoroughly enjoyed HBO's take on things. If you find yourself with a couple of hours to kill and you are anyone with an interest in such things, I bet you'll be glad you took the time to watch.

Dixter

I've made no bones here about the fact that Showtime's Dexter is pretty much hands-down the best show on television today, and in fact has been for several years. Once The Sopranos was nearing the end of its run, and Lost turned into Heroes for Seasons 5 and 6, I'm not sure anything else has even put up a fight. Dexter is the most suspenseful, well-executed and just downright exciting thing to watch on what is otherwise a badly slumping selection of programs available on tv today.

But this past Sunday, Dexter made a major faux pas. Basically, it "pulled a Lost". And I don't mean that in a Seasons 1 through 3 of Lost kind of way.

I railed against Season 6 of Lost hardcore at the end of the show, because I am nothing if not objective at all times, and the way the writers ended that show was perhaps the most extreme example of a total lack of narrative integrity of any television show in history. What I mean by that is, the guys who write the show have full, 100% and sole control over what they present to us, the viewers, and the way they go about it. As a former fan of Lost, I don't have any possible power to affect what they do with the plot, nor can I affect the order in which it is presented to us, how much they use narrative devices like flashbacks / flash-forwards, etc. All of this is by definition completely and solely up to the writers of the show, and we viewers are simply at those writers' whim in watching the program the way they have chosen to present the facts to us.

In Season 6 of Lost, the writers chose to spend about 15 out of 18 hours of the final season describing what they willingly called "Sideways World" in interviews and columns outside of the show itself. They showed us all the characters from the rest of the five seasons of Lost that had come and gone, and they spent considerable time detailing those people's stories in Sideways World, their relationships -- with their spouses, ex-lovers, the children we never knew they had in the universe we had come to know for five years on Lost. They spent something like 80% of the total airtime of the final season presenting this detailed and painstakingly-constructed new world of interpersonal relationships and plot lines to us, in a way that made it more or less obvious that this world was "real" in some traditional sense. No, they didn't come right out and tell us that, but they didn't have to. The writers of course are in 100% control of the way things are presented to the viewers, and they went out of their way to make it clear that this world -- while we were never told what its exact nature was -- was "real". I mean, why else take multiple episodes detailing Kate's new and different problems with the law, delving into Jack's burgeoning relationship with his formerly estranged son, Miles and Sawyer's trials and tribulations as police officers, yadda yadda yadda. The writers even had the temerity to sprinkle in some direct dialogue from Daniel Faraday around the middle of the season espousing his theory -- this, from the scientist who was basically right about everything else he posited about the island for the past couple of years he was on the show -- that Sideways World was, in fact, exactly what all of us viewers thought it was -- an alternative reality created somehow by the simultaneous creation and avoidance of "the event" at the Swan station on the island back in the 1970s Dharma days. Short of straight-out coming out and saying that's what it was, there was literally nothing more that the Lost writers could have done to tell us that's what we were looking at in Sideways World.

And then, in the final minutes of the final episode of the series, they sprung on us that it was all a lie. Not that we were wrong, mind you, because we were all but told this by the writers -- again, the only people with any control whatsoever over what information is presented to the audience and in what way -- but rather, that they had been lying all along. Deliberately abusing the power that they controlled 100% all by themselves to tell us one thing, wasting 80% of the final season of what had formerly been one of the great suspense / sci fi serials in television history, and then telling us it all meant nothing all along. Nothing at all.

Although with a little time to absorb how badly those writers fucked their loyal audience, it is difficult nowadays to find anyone anymore who still argues that Lost ended well, I still have to laugh whenever I do read or hear someone try to make that argument nowadays, clearly trying to hold on to something that was already long ago taken away from them whether they like it or wish it or not. Because what the writers of Lost did -- factually speaking, now -- does not take any talent. It doesn't take intelligence. And it certainly doesn't take any foresight whatsoever. Any monkey in charge of writing a plot-driven show could tell us a lie, continue telling the lie, refining it, making it seem more and more and more true over five months of episodes, and then at the end spring on us that they were lying all along. A bunch of children could get together and pull that off -- in fact, it's pretty much the easiest, least skilled, and just generally cheapest and lowest-quality move any plot-driven show could ever do, which pretty much explains why almost nobody else ever tries to get away with such silliness in their shows, and why the ones who do (Dallas, for example), are roundly villified for it for literally generations into the future. Trying to give a show's writers credit for outright lying to you and then exposing their lie, that's like rewarding a child for telling you a good lie and then later admitting it. Try as I might, I just can't play that game.

OK enough rehashing of the past, sad and disappointing though it may be. Dexter this past Sunday pulled a trick straight out of Lost's playbook, and I am still really disappointed about it here three full days after the fact, because, like I had thought about Lost up until Season 4, I used to think Dexter's writers were above this sort of puerile shenanigans. But I guess everyone runs out of ways to make their show interesting without some sort of chicanery and serious misleading of the audience eventually if its run lasts long enough.

I'm not really looking to spoil things for anyone who hasn't watched the episode yet but plans to, so I'm not planning to go into extreme detail about the entire episode here, but I think it's fair to say that if you are one of those people still waiting to watch this past weekend's episode, you will want to click away from this page.






Right.






Now.






OK, now that those clowns who are actually able to wait this long to watch the latest episode of this kind of a show are gone, I'll explain what has me so beefed about this weekend's episode. In the scenes from this week that they showed us a week ago, the writers clearly teased that Jordan Chase (the main bad guy this season has ended up focusing on) sets up Dexter, calling and alerting Dexter's police officer sister right when Jordan knows Dexter is about to commit a murder that Jordan Chase has set up all along.

This plot line actually played itself out in this week's episode, and here's how. First they show Dexter and his partner in crime breaking into the house of the guy they plan to kill, scoping the place out, and choosing an exercise room in the back of his house to be their "kill room" where they are going to actually waste this guy later that day. Then they come back that night as soon as the intended victim comes to his house, sneak in, and needle him in the neck as is Dexter's typical MO. Then they show them in the kill room, with the victim all strapped down as per usual, and long story short, they proceed to kill his sick, twisted, rapey ass. Meanwhile, as soon as they sneak in to the guy's house, we in fact see Jordan Chase watch Dexter enter the victim's house to make his kill, and then Jordan calls Dexter's cop sister and gives her information that he knows will lead to her immediately rushing out to the victim's house. We see Dexter's policewoman sister Deb get the call from Jordan Chase, and just as planned, she immediately jumps into the car and speeds out to the house with her partner. We see her and her partner arrive right away at the victim's house, and all the while we're seeing interspersed the scenes of Dexter and his partner killing this guy in their kill room in the back of the very same house where Dexter's cop sister and her partner are now inside and searching for anything out of the ordinary.

I should take a minute and mention that Dexter's sister catching him being a killer is basically the ultimate denouement that this show could ever do, the thing that, frankly, they've been setting up for since the show first began five seasons ago. I mean, this is the single biggest thing that could ever possibly happen on this show. Dexter getting caught in general is always a looming possibility that could happen and that he is always fighting against, but his own sister being the one to catch him in the act, that's the single most ultimate mindfucky thing that could ever possibly happen, given the way they've set this show up for five years. I have long since assumed that that is eventually where they're going to take the show when they're ready to officially jump the shark or just end the series for good, but to have it suddenly be actually happening here near the end of Season 5, take it from me if you don't watch the show -- it was just mind-boggling. And there was no way Dexter was realistically going to get out of this one -- they way he kills his victims, there is always some good screaming, and it takes a long time to clean up the mess, as it's not meant or designed to be a quiet or neat process, and it never is. His sister and another cop are searching in the very house where Dexter is behind a closed door in the back, committing the ultimate crime in cold blood with no provocation and with the very definition of malice aforethought. He can't possibly get out of it no matter what this time, and believe me when I say that every single Dexter viewer in the world's heart was absolutely racing as Deb moved from room to room in the victim's house, eventually came to the very door where Dexter and his partner were inside committing cold-blooded murder, and they can see the light shining out from under the door -- someone is inside.

Holy shit.

Deb gets her partner for backup, and she leans out and opens the door...

And it's just an exercise room. An empty, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary exercise room.

The next scene, we see Dexter and his partner return to his apartment for a little romp between the sheets, talking about how great the kill was. No mention of almost getting caught, no mention of clearing out of there faster than usual, and, glaringly, no mention whatsoever of apparently having decided to move the kill room to some other place at the last minute. I mean, they didn't even give us the courtesy (as ghey as this would have still been) of having Dexter remark to his partner something like how glad he is that they decided not to kill the guy right in his own house after all because the cops could be watching, etc. Something. Anything. But, nope. Nothing at all, no explanation, nothing. Leaving us viewers -- I suppose -- to just intuit that Dexter changed his mind somewhere between the scene five minutes earlier where they showed him choosing the exercise room at the back of the victim's house to make the kill, and the time that they actually made the kill (and we were deliberately not shown him leaving or dragging the body anywhere, nor could we have any clue where this kill actually took place, since he cannot for obvious reasons if you watch the show use either of his apartments and he no longer has his storage unit where he's killed so many of his past victims).

Look, it's one thing to present a few suggestive scenes and allow the viewer to make his or her own inferences from among a number of possible choices or jump to conclusions about what's going to happen, making the viewer work for it a bit, and then showing us later that our conclusions -- our guesses, ultimately -- were wrong. Frankly, that is generally a formula for great tv, and it's something that many of the great suspense and mystery stories of all time have in spades. But it's a whole other thing to straight-up tell us -- from the position where the writers have 100% total and complete control over what we see and how we see it -- that one thing is the case, and then at the end of it all just tell us "whoops, we lied to you! Muhahahahahahah isn't this a great show or what?"

No. It's not a great show. As mostly everyone realizes by now about Lost as well, any moron can show us Dexter going to the victim's house, choosing the guy's exercise room to be the kill room, then show him going back to the house and needling the victim, and then in the next scene show him in the kill room doing the actual kill, and then show Dexter's cop sister going to the same house at the same time Dexter is in there committing cold-blooded serial killer murder, show her opening the door to the very room where they've told you and shown you he is doing a kill right then. And then have the room be empty. Any monkey with a camera and some film could do that. The thing is, it's only something a monkey, or a child, would actually do. Any child could do that, when they're the one who writes the show. It's just misleading in a deliberate and ultimately stupid way. Anyone with half a brain can just lie to us directly, showing us one thing and then later surprising us by telling us that they lied. But shows don't do that in general, because it's stupid, it's unfair, it's a weakass move to do to your loyal fans, and ultimately it just shows a total lack of narrative integrity when you can't even trust the things that the narration of the show all but tells you are true.

For my money, that scene in this week's episode of Dexter pretty much represents the low point over five years of the entire series so far. When the writers of a successful show feel the need to resort to outright lying to the viewers in order to manufacture a suspenseful situation at the end of a season where there is in fact none at all, it is just about the cheapest, most lame and ultimately most disrespectful-to-the-viewers television move imaginable. It is just sinking to the level of Lost, which believe you me is not where you want to be.

Lost n Vegas

So, so much going on right now.

Have I mentioned that it is less than a week until I leave for Las Vegas? Things are so crazy at the office right now that it seems completely surreal at this point. But only three more work days....Three more work days....Three more. I just keep telling myself that in the hopes that sometime soon I will finally wake up to the bright sunrise of Saturday morning.

And speaking of my office, how many effing times am I going to try to open my office door with my home key? Why would the key to my home ever fit my office door? And more importantly, why do I keep doing the same thing -- pretty much 4 out of 5 days every single week -- and never, ever seem to learn? Is it because it's so early in the morning, and I haven't really woken up yet or something? Or is it because of the fact that the PDAs and web-based email access and emailing me .wav files of my voicemails and the cell phones and everything else, there really is very little line anymore between home and work, so I am making a purposeful metaphor by trying to use the key to one place to enter the other.

So the Lost stuff is quickly fading away, as I knew it would. When something this bad gets on to the airwaves in a big spot, it's all the rage for a couple of days, and there's always going to be the contrarians out there beating the bushes about how great it was. As I wrote about here recently, I accepted a long time ago that you just can't do anything about the contrarians. The more prominent and the more obvious the situation is, the more guaranteed you are to have those people out there claiming the opposite of the obvious. With most people as I have mentioned previously, it is some unstated (and sometimes, unconscious) desire to feel smarter than others. Other people will come right out and state it in fact, as we have seen on my blog comments over the past couple of days -- that they "get" the story in a way that nobody else does, because they are smarter, and they really understood it while nobody else on the planet did. It's part of what makes the world go round I guess. But in any event, it's fading now which I think is good. That big of a copout just should not be talked about publicly for very long, and ultimately with so precious little actual content to discuss, there just isn't a lot there to captivate the public.

One other item -- I finally went and read Doc Jensen's two-part column about the Lost finale yesterday on ew.com -- he managed to keep this one to a mere 16 pages so I guess we should be happy it wasn't longer. Jensen is basically the only person I've ever met who aboslutely puts me to shame as far as the amount he writes, most of the time about seemingly nothing when it comes to his ridiculous overanalysis of this show. But strangely, Jensen's 16-page opus on the finale made just a very passing mention of the closing montage, which showed a bunch of plane wreckage strewn across the beach, and no shots of the Losties. Some have speculated that this somehow is the remains of the original Oceanic Flight 815, except that there were no survivors at all, which would somehow suggest that perhaps all that we saw in six years of Lost was just a dream of some kind much like Sideways World ended up being. Others have said this is the remains of the Ajira plane that Lapidus tried to pilot off the island at the end of the finale, which means that it crashed and all those aboard were killed off. My answer? Who cares? Once you've gone and made Sideways World just a purgatory for whenever everyone finally dies to come together again to get ready to "move on" to the afterlife or whateveritis, who cares whether Lapidus, Sawyer, Kate, Miles, et al ended up getting off the island and escaping, went on to live another 50 years back in their "real" lives, or whether they just plummeted to the ground minutes after Jack saw them fly overhead as he himself died in the same bamboo field where he originally found himself in the pilot of this series. The only thing that matter is, we saw Sawyer and Kate there in the church at the end, so eventually they died, and it really doesn't matter how. Don't get me wrong -- it is so quintessentially Lost to end the entire series with an ambiguous scene that deliberately leads some to question whether or not the entire plot of the entire series ever even happened. In an unintentionally comedic way, that is about the best possible way Lost could have ended its run, and the most symptomatic of how they addressed the rest of the plot points on the show in the end. Maybe the whole damn thing never even happened!

I wish.

I'll leave you with this funny Lost link today (shit, forgot to check with Jordan again about whether or not it is ok to link to this), which I picked up from the comments to Goat's blog. Jordan of course will have no need to watch this link, and in fact he will I am sure be totally flabbergasted as to why the narrator is asking all of these obvious questions, but to the other 17 million of you out there, this is just a smattering of some of the interesting questions still remaining about the series, in a roughly chronological order of the time when they first arose and have never been addressed.

And with that, I think I shall end my Lost coverage for now. As I said, the show had a great run, it declined dramatically after the midpoint when the writers officially put an end date to the show and were thus forced to actually decide upon the ending, and then the execution of that ending was done about as poorly as a show could do it over the final two seasons, and in particular in the last episode. But at this point, sure the shock of having been anally lubed by the show's producers and writers is still there, but it's wearing off fast. We've been through this before as many people have commented, be it Dallas or St. Elsewhere or most recently, the Sopranos, and at this point already I am ready to let it go.

Six days till Vegas. Later in the week I should be back with some more reminiscence about past trips to the desert and to the World Series of Poker.

More on Lost

After being out-of-pocket busy basically all day on Monday, I have had a little bit of time to digest some of the things people are saying about the Lost finale this past weekend. To those I will offer a few comments:

For starters -- and this is an objectively true statement I am about to make here -- it does not make a show good simply because it "makes you think" or because people talk about it a lot or think about it a lot outside of the show. Obviously many people could write a show that makes the viewer "draw his own conclusions" or "fill in the dots" by simply not telling you anything. They could show a lot of crazy or thought-provoking images for an hour with no coherent way of tying them together, and people would be left to "draw their own conclusions", while the show could actually suck. Balls. Shit, that's basically exactly what Heroes was/is (is that show even still being made?) -- one of the worst, most thoughtless shows ever made, that was so unmitigatingly stupid that sure, it had very smart people spending hours every week thinking about it, trying to piece it together and make sense of it all. But does that make Heroes a good show? The answer to that is obvious. So, it is clear in an objective sense that simply because the writers told us nothing in the end about Lost and left us completely wondering ourselves and talking amongst our friends, this does not in itself have the slightest bit to do with making Lost a good show, or making the finale a good episode, or anything like that.

And while we are on the topic of the viewers having to draw their own conclusions, I wish wish wish the Lost defenders out there could see the things that they write objectively instead of through their own personal prism. Instead, what we have is an army of Lost devotees who are out doing the writers' dirty work for them, proclaiming the show to have been great and to have answered everything we needed to be answered, and that to me is the saddest part of all this.

After taking the time to trash me and my intellect in the comments to my blog, Jordan's post about the Lost finale has got to be the best out there among the people I actually know. This thing has more gold in it than a prospector's pan in 1849 (god I am so good with the similes):

"Interestingly, the one mystery not conclusively revealed was what exactly the island is and what was that light at the center that “had to be protected.”

Oh. My. God. When you're starting off your post like this, you just know it has got to be good. So this is the one mystery not conclusively revealed, huh? Pure, 32 karat gold right there. And this is written by a guy who just accused me (not him) of having never actually watched the show. Ugh that is so classic, farrr too classic to even respond to. Let us just move on.

To continue from Jordan's post, the pure gold continues like the eternal light springing up from deep within the heart of the island, that thanks to Jordan we now all know what it (obviously) was:

"My best guess, which to me is essentially obvious but also irrelevant, is that the island is essentially an Eden. Not the Eden, insofar as I do not think the show took a literal approach to the Bible comparisons. Rather, it is the well-spring of all life, both of this world and separate. The island itself has some odd properties, which incidentally would make sense in context. If the island is also the source of life (or maybe “souls” moreso than life), it may be the source of other things as well…like time, or perhaps electromagnetism."

Essentially obvious, huh? And irrelevant. So not only am I and 10 million other viewers totally wrong and we somehow missed this key and very obvious, overtly-stated explanation of the nature of the island (I'm just guessing here, but perhaps that is because Jordan's explanation was never given, is clearly not obvious, and in fact is almost certainly idiotically incorrect), but in fact it is obvious! And on top of that, it's also not relevant what the island is! Thank you for making that conclusion for us, which we deserve I suppose since we are all so motherfucking obtuse that we did not see when the writers made it obvious that the island = Eden. Of sorts. It is so clear now, thank you for "filling in the dots" for us. Hahahahahaha.

"The island is protected by some supernatural force. Specifically, throughout time, there was a guardian of the light. The first guardian we meet is Jacob’s “adopted mother” but there were likely those that came before her. That is one of the unexplained mysteries that fall under the banner of what is this island and how did it come to exist. We don’t know that answer, but how could we? Was the show supposed to show the big bang, the creation of the universe, and the formation of our planet and/or life, as coming from this hidden wellspring Eden?"

Wow. I mean, what do you say? So, so far we have explained away the fact (read that: F A C T) that the writers never told us what the island was, by claiming that they not only did tell us but that it was in fact "obvious". Now we've also explained away their not telling us about the origin of the island, because -- if I can follow the apparent "logic" used in the paragraph above -- there's no way we could possibly know the answer to this because to do so would require the writers to go back to the beginning of time and the Big Bang in order to do so. This is logic at its finest, ladies and gentlemen, please run to hire this guy to be your lawyer.

And the shit just keeps rolling downhill in this post:

"Jacob is forced to take over and takes vengeance on Smokey by throwing him into the wellspring/light, which kills his body but leaves him a bodyless sentience. WTF is that all about? I don’t know, but like the show tells you, its best just to accept it. Let it go. Why didn’t it affect Desmond the same way? Because Desmond had some sort of resistance to the island’s forces, which we learned when he survived the explosion of the hatch and was able to see the future, or when he lived through the time-travel sickness in the episode, The Constant. But in the end, you have to take that leap of faith. Smokey turned into Smokey, but Desmond lived because, well, that’s what happened."

Like the show tells you, it's best just to accept it. Let it go. Nothing to question here. The main villain (the only villain in the end) of the entire 6 seasons, the guy who was shrouded in mystery until the third to last episode of the series, we should just "let go" the minor issue of...you know...his very existence. His whatthefuck is he? Who is he? What happened when he went into the light? We should just let it all go of course! Why? Because the show told us to!

You can go ahead and read the rest of his Lost post to see all the other "maybe"s and the "probably"s and the "presumably"s peppered throughout the rest of Jordan's explanation of what happened on the island in the finale, just to get a flavor for what was so "obvious" in addition to not being relevant about that aspect of the finale.

And then of course there is the whole resolution of Sideways World, which Jordan again has the obvious (and I suppose also irrelevant?) explanation for:

"The last season, though, was the Sideways World, which was a mystery. Until now. Now we know that Sideways World us nothing like a flashback or flashforward. It’s something different. Its the place you go when you die, before you can move onto the afterlife (perhaps a return to the light…on the island!).

Admittedly, this last part was not clearly explained, but apparently, somehow, the Losties had bonded to the point that they were going to move onto the afterlife together. They “created” a place where they could meet before crossing over. This does not mean that they died at the same time. Time has no meaning in this afterworld, as we know from some direct statements to that effect by Christian Shephard. So whenever those characters died, be it before Jack (the incestuous step-siblings and Locke) or way after Jack (Hurley and Ben, who acknowledged that the story went on post-Jack by mentioning how well they did as the respective new #1 and 2). They all return to this sideways world.

How did the sideways world come to exist? My guess is that it always existed, in a sense that there is a waiting room for each of us, in the Lost world. The group may’ve been anchored together by Desmond, who said fairly clearly before unplugging the wellspring that he had already seen the afterlife and that he could maybe take everyone with him. So perhaps he was the bonding point that allowed all of them to meet up after the end.

That covers most of it. Any questions? Feel free to ask."

Now how could we have any questions after an obvious and complete explanation like that? Oh sure, Sideways World was a purgatory, hmmm? And how did the Losties create it (Christian Shepherd says at the end that the Losties created it for themselves to be together)? I am going to guess that on their flight out on the Ajira plane, maybe Kate and Lapidus whipped up Sideways World in the in-flight blender somewhere in the airspace over Fiji? Or maybe Sawyer formed Sideways world out of a dump he took mid-flight? Or maybe it was Miles and Claire who thought creating an entire fucking alternate reality would be a cool thing to pass the time out of their airline meal in the middle seat between them while they taxied down the runway at LAX?

I could go on and on and on about Jordan's post, combined with his unbelievable comment on my blog yesterday, but alas I do only have the time for one more thought today, to all you Lost-defenders out there: You come off -- objectively here, now -- sounding like a goddam horse's ass if you equate what the writers didn't tell us about this show with "drawing one's own conclusions" or "filling in the dots". The fact is, only a complete assmuffin bottom-2%-intellect in the history of the Earth would even consider publicly attaching their name or identity to the notion that the viewers not even knowing (1) what the island is, (2) the identity or nature of either of the two main characters who the whole story ended up being about even were, or (3) how or what the alternate reality that comprised about 90% of Season 6 after never being mentioned previous even came from, constitute minor enough omissions to be described as "filling in the dots". A better comparison using that utterly inapt analogy would be not to failing to "fill in the dots" but rather to failing to give us the numbers to connect the dots to, the magazine with the connect-the-dots puzzles in it, in addition to failing to provide a writing implement, the invention of paper, even any usable language or form of communication to work with in the first place, or the creation of life on earth to want to complete the dots puzzle in the first place. This is not "draw your own conclusions" television, folks. Putting aside the unintentionally comedic attempts by Jordan and others at justification for Lost's unthinkable gaffes, which thinking people immediately dismiss as the rantings of a blind denialist, if you're going to be a defender of the show out there, and you care if people think you are dumber than fucking Fluxer, you need to at least make some attempt to stick to this reality, the one we all live in on the present-day Earth -- as opposed to the one "obviously" created by the Losties in their own private little purgatory that we all get to create whenever we want to in life (who knew?). This means you need to actually address the actual shortcomings of the actual show instead of just attempting to explain them away as not actually unclear, not relevant, or otherwise.

It's kind of like poker, in a strange way. Some people play poker over time by denying the truth and simply ignoring the problems they might have because they don't want to accept that they are beat in a given hand, that they have not broken even this year, that they are not a good player overall, etc. Others who are successful rise above this "obvious", self-serving denialism and learn to see things for what they actually are, rather than allowing themselves to get emotionally involved in things to the point that they lose all ability to be objective. Although I can conceive of a response to the Lost finale from someone who addresses the show's shortcomings in real, intelligent ways and still overall enjoyed the show (not that I have seen that yet), to simply state that the show is great because it leaves the viewers to fill in the minor details and in particular because they did explain all of the outstanding mysteries (save for one) is simply being the proverbial ostrich in the sand.

Worst Finale of All Time?

Or just of recent memory?

Not too much time today, but let me just say this about this weekend's Lost series finale:

First and foremost, those writers have got some mf'ing balls to not even attempt to explain what the island is in the finale. Or in the entire show, for that matter. To give us a show with this much mystery, have it basically all be about The Island, and then to end the show never even giving us a clue about what the island is? That shit is criminal. I'm sure these ahole pompass writers will tell everyone and their mother that they wanted to do it this way, that this is the beauty of the whole thing, but in reality, they're monkey turds. It is downright assholic to end the show like that, with not even a beginning of an explanation as to what the island actually is, where it is, when it is, anything. Nothing. To do that to your loyal fans for six years, who've stuck with you when the show was good years ago and even when it got horrible for the past couple, to do that to us just because you can is, well, assholic.

So no island explanations whatsoever in the finale. And how do they resolve Sideways World? With the equivalent of "it's all a dream"! It's unbelievable, really. This was the best plot idea the writers could come up with a couple of years ago? This plot? That Sideways World -- you know, that thing that you spent about 15 hours this season revealing to us piece by piece by piece -- was actually just a purgatory-type of place, where all the Losties went when they died in the real world. A place that does not exist in time or space, just a place that the Losties "created themselves, together" as Christian Shephard put it at the end, so they could all be together and then "move on" as a group. WTF. I repeat -- that was the best plot arc you fucknuts could come up with over the past two years?

I'll go you one further by the way -- the Lost writers were so discombobulated this year that they didn't even know this was how they were going to end it up. Because don't even tell me they would have had Juliette mumble to Sawyer just minutes before she died in the season premiere this year that "It worked", and then never even go on to explain wtf that means. And if Sideways World was not somehow created at all by the bomb going off, then Juliette was totally wrong that it worked, and the whole thing just makes no sense. But they just never explained it, did they? Just left it out there twisting in the wind.

And the last horrifyingly stupid thing the writers did in this finale was end up having Flocke killed by fucking shooting him. With a regular gun. In the back. That's it. Forget the black smoke -- shiat, the closed the black smoke got to making any appearance at all on Sunday night was one of those ghey promos during the breaks -- and forget all the week-long, season-long and really to some extent series-long wondering about how one can actually "kill" the body-less black smoke. No need. Instead they just have Desmond big special power mean that he can crawl into the light and remove the stopper -- quite anticlimactic in its own right -- which then I guess removed Flocke's powers (hence Jack drawing blood on his ass with a vicious right hook), and then they just kill him, the great evil baddie of the island, with a quick shot to the back, and that's it.

It's amazing, really, that the pomp of some people can swell so large that it leads them to try to pull one over on the very viewers who made them what they have become today. Cuse and Littleton (whatevertbefucktheirnamesare) are dead to me, and to millions of other people in this country and around the world from here on out, and I have zero doubt that those two f-heads won't ever amount to anything ever again in their pathetic little lives. It's hard for two people to step down harder in a big spot than those two asseaters did this weekend, this season, and really for the past coupe of years. Although in a way the finale was perfectly symbolic of all the problems Lost has had since the powerfully captivating "We have to go back!" scene between Jack and Kate a few years back, ultimately what galls me more than anything else is the fact that the writers literally created an entire construct just for this season that ended up being basically a meaningless, dreamlike "purgatory" where everyone's dead soul goes when they finally die. Very little effort was made in wrapping up this story for the past couple of years, and after making us invest so much over the years, it's a move that is as unthinkable as it is a great big "yuck fou" to all the audience over the years. I hope those two producer douchebags who made the first two hours on Sunday night all about themselves really savored the moment, because it'll be the last we hear from either of them in any positive way for some time.

Go ahead, I dare you to disagree in the comments.

Why Lost Sucks

Back for this week's version of Why Lost Sucks. The writers have now taken to explaining away significant questions or tying up significant loose ends in just about the most pat way imaginable, almost like they are running for the exits as the series winds down its six-year run with nary a whimper.

I mean, did you ever wonder what happened to Libby? Yes, you remember Libby, Tailie during season two who was shot and killed by Michael shortly after taking a liking to Hurley, and one show after we saw a flashback of Libby living in the same mental institution (and looking really effed up, at that) as Hurley had been shortly before coming to the island. And then, that was it. No more Libby, for four years later, the story all but forgotten.

Michael's son, Walt? Also gone since leaving the island in Season 2. But never fear, inquisitive Lost fan! Last season, we saw Locke inexplicably go to visit Walt, for no apparent reason, before Locke was killed by Ben off-island, where absolutely nothing of any significance whatsoever was done or said between the two. But hey, now the Walt story has been all finished up! They've explained everything, haven't they? Walt's strange visions, his ability to control the minds of animals, the telepathy, all of it, explained away because Locke went to see him last year and they shared a meaningless five-minute conversation about nothing.

And now, we finally know the story of Libby. In one fell swoop, the writers have now sewn up probably their most embarrassing gaffe of the entire series -- starting up a whole flashback with Libby and Hurley, but then literally dropping it on a dime and never picking it up again -- by simply showing Libby in Sideways world, also living voluntarily in the same mental institution, but this time she plays an integral part in Sideways Hurley realizing that he needs to go back to the island reality to make things right. So I guess now we know why Libby was in the mental institution with Hurley in the real world prior to Oceanic Flight 815 in her flashback, right? Once again, the writers have explained everything coherently and with integrity to the original story lines they presented to us years ago. Thanks so much for the respect, Lost.

And the worst example of all of this, also from this week's episode? For everyone who has spent the better part of six years wondering where the hell all these whispers on the island are coming from, now we know! Michael explained it very succinctly to Hurley in this week's show: "We're the ones who can't move on."

Of course! They're the ones who can't move on! Why didn't I think of that? It's so obvious now that Michael has explained it for us.

And for those of you who will spend countless hours this week pondering the meaning and significance of Michael's cryptic comment -- about whether it supports the theory of the island as a purgatory of some kind or even hell itself -- I have just one message for you as you wait with baited breath to figure out just what this all means:

Don't hold you breath.

I solemnly guarantee you, loyal, let-down Lost fans that Michael's final statement about the nature of the island whisperers will be the last thing you ever hear about them. Period. The writers of Heroes Lost now think they have sufficiently explained the existence of the weird whispers on the island. Why, they're the voices of the people who can't move on, of course! Now we know exactly what that means! Next week they'll probably move on to explaining away something else that's been at issue for years on Lost -- maybe the polar bears, maybe the identity of the skeletons in the central cave.

What will we learn next about the island's great mysteries? The little blond boy who keeps appearing to Flocke this season is actually just a kid from suburban Chicago who was left alone on the island after his family accidentally returned from a tropical vacation without him? Or no, that the ash ring around Jacob's cabin is really magical pixie dust that spewed from the tail of Mr. Eko's brother Yemey's plane when it crash landed on the island back in the 1970s.

Anything is poossible if you keep makin it up as you go along, guys. Clearly it's been working these past couple of seasons.

Lost Rant

I promised myself I was not going to do this on the blog. But after this week's Lost episode, I just can't contain myself anymore.

Lost sucks. It sucks. It's sucked for at least two full years now. Season 5 was just about the worst abomination of a cool story that could possibly have been done, with the characters randomly flashing through time thoroughly confusing the viewers and leading hundreds of thousands of viewers to just tune out. Now they are back with Desmond this week, with the random time flashing, with his "constant". My god that shit is so stupid I want to scream out in pain every time I see it. And now Season 6 is following right in its foosteps.

The Lost writers have clearly made a crucial miscalculation with respect to the public's interest in the ending of the show, which ABC is obviously counting on to market several new series to take the place of Lost starting next year. These writers actually think we care about the plot of the story anymore. They really think I care about Sawyer's plan to get the Losties off the island. They think I stay up at night wondering what will become of Claire's relationship with Kate. They think I honestly care whether Jack's son likes him in Sideways World. In fact, they actually think I care anything about Sideways World.

And that's where they're wrong. We don't care about Sawyer, or Kate, or Sideways World at all. Three years ago, now then I cared a lot about getting these people off the island. But now? They already got off the island, most of them anyways. And then they willingly chose to go back (most of them, anyways). They were home, and then they decided on their own to go back. And now Lost thinks I care how they get off? Again? Come on. The mystery of escaping the island is dead to all but the most plot-blind of viewers, and the writers should have figured this out a long time ago.

Similarly, and more problematic for this season, nobody actually cares about Sideways World. What the hell do I care if Kate is a fugitive or not, if Charlie died from his overdose or lives to sing at Eloise Widmore's party. So much of this season has been worthless drivel filler to add to the roughly 2 hours worth of the only thing anyone cares a whit about on Lost anymore -- the mythology.

The mythology. That's the only reason anyone watches anymore, isn't it? We want to know what is the island? Who is Jacob? What is MIB's name, and what is his relationship to Jacob? How did these people all get here, and who put them on the island in the first place? What are the "rules" of Jacob and MIB's battle? And who made those rules? Why?

Bottom line, this is all we care about anymore on Lost. The story the writers have come up with these past few seasons since bringing the Oceanic 6 off the island have forced them into this corner, and now they keep trying desperately to fill up 45 minutes out of every show (or, more accurately, 60 minutes on 3 straight shows, and then one show almost entirely about the mythology) with filler story that nobody actually cares about.

So what gimmick have the writers resorted to in this latest episode to try to make somebody give a crap about the Sideways story? They actually believe that they can just put something in a random episode with Desmond flashing randomly through time with absolutely no explanation whatsoever (other then merely stating as fact that Desmond is "special"), and that the fans will accept it. That we will like it. It's unthinkable, really. So in Sideways world, the Widmores are married, and Charles likes Desmond, who works for him. OMG!!! My heart is palpitating at the thought. And guess what else? Wait for it...wait for it....

Desmond is flashing through time! Again!!!!!!!

[Cue heart attack....Just...too...crazy}]

I haven't been this flat out bored by an episode of Lost since Hurley found the bus. Eff you, Lost. Like apprixmately 98% of the people who religiously watched your show four years ago now, I no longer give a shit. I'm just waiting for your little story to end so I can move on to other things.

L O S T

Wow. Sorry for the no post yesterday, but I have to admit then while I was watching this week's Lost episode on Tuesday night, my head popped right off of my neck and it took me an entire day to get it back on straight after all that new information. Well, some of the information was more confirmations of things we already more or less "knew" I suppose, but there was a lot of fodder in there as well, and I think the writers might be laying the groundwork for some more mindfvcks in the coming weeks.

For starters, I'll just mention that I thought the actor who plays Richard Alpert did a great job this week, pretty much for the first time all series long. He has come a long way from when he was seen running through the jungle all panicked and wearing those pirate clothes, hasn't he? While I could have done without the overdrama of the early scenes with Richard and Isabella from the 1850s, I thought the actor did a fine job near the end of the episode, in particular in the scene where Huge helped him to communicate with Isabella's ghost. I enjoyed it, and as a guy who has never understood the hub-bub about the guy who plays Sawyer (Josh Holloway), who I think is one of the most trite and boring actors on television today, I have truly enjoyed the acting jobs put in by both Richard and of course Terry O'Quinn this season as Flocke.

OK, putting past that, this was an episode where we learned a lot about the nature of the island, and a little more about the true nature of the Man In Black, whom we get to see in his "real body" (more on that later) for only the second time in the series, and this time for much longer than the first which was just briefly at the very beginning of last season's finale. One of the things that was "confirmed" in this week's episode -- and I use the quotes there because, with this show and all the mystery and the deception and really with how little we all still understand, nothing is every set-in-stone-decided I have determined -- is that, as explained by Jacob to Richard back in 1850, the MIB represents evil, entropy, darkness, chaos, whatever you want to call it, and that the island is like the cork that keeps the darkness bottled up, and ultimately what keeps it from spreading everywhere and destroying everything. This has been hinted at many many times during the arc of Lost so I do not think this was exactly earth-shattering to anyone who saw Jacob say it this week, but at the same time there is a certain satisfaction to having a fact like that "confirmed" by the deity Jacob in a context that makes it seem very believable and true.

Assuming Jacob can be believed -- again I think a dubious assumption given how manipulative and unforthcoming Jacob has been time and again about his true intentions -- he also confirmed another fact that has been widely speculated since that opening scene of last season's finale -- that MIB thinks human nature is essentially bad, and that Jacob repeatedly brings people to the island to prove that MIB is wrong that humans will always make the wrong choices due to our dark nature. Same thing really with Jacob's desire to have people make the right choices due to their own free will rather than Jacob getting involved directly and forcing it, which presumably would prove MIB's point more than his own. This explains why so much of what the characters on the island do comes down to free will, in particular Ben's decision in last season's finale to kill Jacob, with Jacob right up to the moment before Ben plunged the knife into Jacob's chest pleading with Ben that he did not have to do anything he did not want to do, anything he did not choose to do. For whatever reason, the rules (which rules still remain a complete and total mystery to Lost viewers -- What other rules are there? Who made the rules? Why?) forbid Jacob (and probably MIB as well, I would guess) to "force" the people drawn to the island to do bad or good, but rather the point is to allow the humans to show their true nature, with some (limited) influence from the island's all-powerful, all-knowing deities. Anyways, all this was nice to hear as I mentioned but something we had already pretty much put together given what we've seen over the last season or so, so nothing too earth-shattering in my view.

OK so then let's move on to some of the more interesting stuff -- the questions, the strange out-of-place things, and the other ideas I think these might be pointing towards.

For starters, I'm sure most of you Lost viewers out there were as curious as I was when MIB gave Richard the exact same speech about taking the knife and plunging it deep into Jacob's chest to kill him, and not to let him talk, that if he speaks at all it will be too late, Jacob has tremendous powers of persuasion, etc. I mean, it was like the exact same words that Dogen said to Sayid a couple of weeks ago about MIB before sending Sayid to "kill" Flocke. What is the significance of the fact that the exact same instructions were given to both of these people -- almost word for frigging word -- 150 years apart, and about the other guy (first with Richard it was said about how to kill Jacob, then with Dogen it was said about how to kill MIB/Flocke).

Another very strange fact that was specifically shown to the viewers just 30 seconds in to this week's episode was that Jacob was dressed head-to-toe in all black when he went to visit Ilana at the hospital when she was all bandaged up n stuff. I mean, I went and watched it again on abc.com yesterday just to verify, and there he is, clad in black boots, black pants, black shirt, black overcoat, even a black scarf and black gloves. I know that Ilana was seemingly in the real world, and in the real world Jacob has been seen wearing things other than white or off-white, but still are we really supposed to just dismiss this as pure randomness? The actor just happened to be clad head to foot in black that day when they shot this scene? Come on. At the least, it means nothing and the writers are throwing in a red herring just to get us thinking. It wouldn't be anywhere near the first time a show used such a device, but I just think this has more significance than that. Every single article of clothing was black, even the accessories, and what's more, the camera shot panned down first from his shoes, up his pants, and then showed the whole body, making sure it was very clear that he was all dressed in black. What are we supposed to make of the only time Jacob has ever been seen dressed in black like this?

The third item that really struck me most about this episode was something that MIB says to Richard just past the 30-minute mark of the episode, for those of you watching on abc.com. At one point MIB explains to Richard, "You're not the only one who's lost something, Richard. The Devil [talking about Jacob] betrayed me. He took my body, my humanity."

"He took my body"? Whaaaa? To me that was the strangest, least explainable and at the same time most interesting line of the entire episode, and something that I had to go back and confirm even was really said as I started to form my new Lost Theory of the Week here heading into the home stretch of the series. But he said it. MIB claimed to Richard that Jacob "stole his body" and betrayed him.

So here's what I'm looking at here. We've got instructions given on how to kill the MIB by Dogen to Sayid just a couple of weeks back, and those same instructions were given by MIB to Richard 150 years ago on how to kill Jacob. We've got Jacob showing up at Ilana's hospital room clad entirely in black from head to toe. And we've got MIB claiming that Jacob "stole his body" at some point in the past as well. I do not have all aspects of this theory crystallized at all in my mind right now, but something smells fishy about this whole setup to me after this week's episode. I am afraid that there is at least some chance that MIB at some point in the past was Jacob, or at least one or both of them occupied the other's body at some point in the past. I am maybe 10% concerned that it wasn't even Jacob who went to visit Ilana in the hospital to begin with, but rather was the MIB taking Jacob's form in some way or another. Perhaps this was related to MIB's claim that Jacob stole his body, I don't know, but it's entirely possible that maybe it was MIB who told Ilana to come to the island -- remember, it was Ilana who went and found Sayid and brought him against his will back to the island, the same Sayid who willfully killed Dogen and Weird Al Yankovic and who opened the Temple doors to allow MIB to enter and kill all the remaining Jacobians on the island, the same Sayid who is now set up to become the next MIB, and who "has the darkness growing in him". There could definitely be something there. Those three items I mentioned above I think combine together to suggest that there may still be much more than meets the eye to who these two deities are, and the evidence is growing that they were at least at some point in the past occupying different bodies -- even each other's bodies -- perhaps to the deception of others involved in the coming war on the island. And everything we've been led to believe about Ilana fighting for the "good" side this season could be turned right on its head -- either with or without her knowledge -- as more facts are uncovered in the coming weeks. But I say there was too much put out there for us to glom on to for this to just be dismissed without any further mention of the "body stealing" or the possibility that at some point, the MIB looked like Jacob, was Jacob, or something like that.

Also, one other question about something I watched again last night that I just simply do not get. Why can Jacob not bring Richard's wife back to life, at least on the island? They got real-life ghosts there, Hurley has seen several dead people appear on the island (that I do not think were supposed to be MIB, like many of the apparitions of dead people that we have seen), and we've seen a number of strange people appear magically on the island who were not dead at the time (Locke's father, for example, who Sawyer killed on the island). So why did Jacob say no to Richard's request to bring his wife back to life? Similarly, why can Jacob not absolve Richard of his sins? What would that even entail that would be so difficult? But then why is it that Jacob can grant Richard eternal life? Just what kind of a genie is this Jacob?

What an episode. Here's hoping for more of the same over the final two months of this millennium's best television series.

Lost Thoughts -- Episode 5

Tired of waiting for the Goat's writeup, it's time for me to get up my own thoughts on Episode 5 of Lost, another fun episode that had some interesting reveals, although as per usual for this show even the reveals still leave a lot of questions to be answered. Rather than summarize the episode and walk through everthing that happened -- which is available on various websites out there already -- I will once again keep my post limited to the few most interesting items or thoughts I noticed as I watched the show. Again I have waited until watching the episode for a second time amidst another major snowstorm in the New York area to formulate these thoughts, and again they are at best just guesses as to what is going on, but I think educated guesses if nothing else.

I will just start by mentioning once again how much of a manipulator Jacob is. Although there was about five seconds when I thought that Jacob might actually be the bad guy during this week's episode, that feeling quickly subsided and I was once again left thinking that this guy really could be Jacob, the Jacob from the Bible. Not only does he manipulate everyone for his own gain, but he really seems to enjoy doing the manipulating doesn't he? And more than that, just like the biblical Jacob, our Jacob really seems to have a knack for finding out people's vulnerabilities and then using those vulnerabilities for maximum bang for his buck in terms of the manipulation he is able to foist upon people. Using the "you have what it takes" line on Jack, playing upon his ultimate childhood insecurity in a very direct and overt way, was sheer genius and is not all that different from Bible Jacob waiting until Esau was desperately hungry after a long day in the hunt to get Esau to agree to give up his birthright in exchange for some soup. I still say it's more likely than anything else that we're looking at the real Jacob from the Bible here.

After manipulating Jack to make it up the lighthouse -- the structure they've never managed to see or hear about before, in a rare Heroes-like silliness of plot for Lost -- they have that cool scene with the magical mirror and the wheel with everyone's name on it. Much has been made of the fact that Jacob's instructions to Hurley were for Hurley to turn the wheel to the number 108, which lostpedia quickly posted in picture corresponded to the crossed-off name of "Wallace". Not only do we not know anything about anyone named Wallace, but the fact that this name was crossed off adds to my feeling that the identity of Wallace is not going to be germane to our story. Yes, I quickly realized that 108 also equals the sum of the Lost numbers -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 -- and that just adds to my feeling that Jacob merely picked the number 108 as a ruse, knowing only that a nice high number like that would require Hurley to make several pulls of the chain and several spins of the wheel. This I think was done by Jacob to ensure that Jack would have a good long while of staring at the mirror while it cycled by other names on the wheel, making sure that Jack would notice the abnormalities of the wheel and eventually flip out and destroy it all. So I'm not spending any time trying to theorize about this "Wallace" character, as I don't think he or she matters to the arc at this point in time. What might matter is that the wheel seems to be completely full of names, but almost all of them crossed off at this point except for our last four or five "candidates". Perhaps the fact that just about every spot on that wheel attached to the magical mirror has already been filled in and crossed out adds to the importance of our special group of Losties, and to the notion that some great, final battle is coming that will put an end to the need for magical mirrors pulled by mysterious wheels going forward.

The most interesting aspect to me of the whole magic mirror thing is not so much that Jacob was able to manipulate Jack into destroying it, but why Jacob would want to do such a thing. Let's posit some things about Jacob and his presence on the island, shall we? We saw this week in that scene between Dogen and Hurley deep within the Temple that Hurley can see Jacob, but Dogen (and seemingly just about everyone else) cannot. Just as we have assumed in the past about Christian Shepherd in his many appearances during the six seasons of Lost, I think it's a safe bet that Jacob is a "ghost", at least in the sense that he does not have a corporeal body here on the island. My guess is that he can't lift things, he can't open doors, and frankly if someone tried to bump into him right now you would walk right the hell through him. This seems to fit everything we've seen this year about Jacob -- pretty much everything we've seen about Jacob on the island all through the show -- and more than that is also helps to explain just why Hurley's presence is so crucial on the island. Hurley has always been the guy who can see ghosts, who can talk to the dead. Not only does not whole notion not freak him out because he's alreayd done it before, but perhaps it's also that Hurley's mind is "opened" such that he can accept the apparitions he sees for what they are. In a very real way on this island, Hurley can serve as Jacob's go-between, the way for ghost Jacob to appear and communicate with the Losties who need to work for him, and to get messages to the other Losties whose minds are not ready for whatever reason to see him.

So, my thinking is that having Jack destroy the mirrors is a little too grandiose and extreme of an action to just be done in order to "show Jack how important he is", as Jacob tried to explain to Hurley at the end of the episode. Jacob could have accomplished "wowing" Jack in any number of ways that did not involve destruction of the physical structure that seemingly enables Jacob to carry out his manipulations of the Losties' lives. No, I think there was likely more to it than that. My guess, given what we saw of the mirror contraption above in the lighthouse, is that the magical mirror is more than just a "window" for Jacob to observe the Losties in secret. I would venture to guess that the mirrors also enable Jacob to travel to the times and places he can see next to each candidate's name on the wheel. I would guess that he turned the wheel to Sawyer at his parents' funeral before being able to appear at the funeral to touch young Sawyer, and I would guess that the wheel is what Jacob used to be able to go back in time and place to each of the other Losties who he touched over time.

So to me, the mirror is more than a window. It's a time travel device. And now that Jacob has been killed on the island, he can only appear as a ghost on the island and is unable to use his time travel machine anymore since he has no corporeal body to use it with. But MIB, on the other hand, we have seen turning more and more into John Locke every week. Ileana revealed in last week's episode that MIB can no longer leave Locke's body, and my sense is that, for whatever reason, since Jacob's death the MIB is experiencing the exact opposite of what his counterpart Jacob is going through -- after years of living as an apparition of sorts on the island, MIB is finally starting to turn into a real man with a real body -- John Locke, of the "Don't tell me what I can't do!" sentiment. And in my theory, this means that, perhaps for the first time since the two have been on the island, MIB might actually be able to access the lighthouse and the mirror travel device. And that is something that Jacob cannot have, given his need to win the ultimate war of good vs. evil. So, my theory is that, once Jacob lost his ability to use the mirrors, he need them to be destroyed before Flocke could find his way there and use them to go back in time and affect other changes in history that could change the balance in advance of the ultimate fight that is coming this season. Not having a body of his own to use, Jacob could not destroy the mirrors himself, so he had to convince someone on the island who does have a body to do it, and they had to do it of their own free will as with so many of the things involving Jacob and MIB this year and last. So Jacob used his go-between in Hurley to give Jack the information he needed to ensure that Jack would see the strange properties of the mirrors and eventually choose to destroy them, thereby protecting the island from MIB being able to make nefarious use of the magical mirrors ever again.

The bigger question is what is Jack's big thing he has to figure out that he now has to do? Jacob told Hurley that's why Jack is here, but assuming it is true I really don't have much of an idea about what this is gonna be. Making Jack think Jacob is a manipulator, has been pulling Jack's strings ever since his young childhood, is designed to make Jack do something, but what would that be? Given what we (and Jacob) know about Jack, the only thing I can think of is that this knowledge about Jacob is going to make Jack want to check out, want to do whatever he can not to help this guy who Jack has just learned has been meddling in his life ever since he was born. That's what the Jack that I know would do upon learning he's been manipulated like this for year and had his life affected in some major way. He would do whatever he can do to remove himself from the entire situation and to fight against whatever it was that Jacob had planned for Jack's "destiny". How that plays itself out over the coming weeks is anybody's guess.

On an unrelated note, I found it very conspicuous that they never told us the identity or even the name of Jack's ex wife in the alternate reality timeline. Jack has this son, the whole story of which frankly I found forced and a little bit ridiculous, but they never told us who the kid's mother was, and I found the lack of detail on that point a little too conspicuous to have been an accident. My guess is that Jack was married to -- and had a kid with -- one of our females from among the Losties, and the smart money would have to be on either Kate or Juliet. Since Kate is currently still a fugitive from the law in that timeline, that would seem to vault Juliet to the forefront of the list, but I'm thinking there has got to be more to the story for the reason that they went so out of their way not to reveal even the name of David's mother. More on that to come I am sure.

My last big thought was inspired by Flocke's appearance at the end of the episode as Claire's "friend" who told her that the Others took Aaron from her. Basically, Dogen told Jack last week that Claire was infected by the same infection that is now growing within Sayid -- the same infection which Dogen planned to "treat" with his real-life poison pill, presumably to kill him off before the infection really took hold. And yet, the writers of Lost I think went out of their way not to present Claire as someone with a physical infection, don't you think? If anything, she was portrayed as someone who has been manipulated like so many others on the island, by MIB who apparently has appeared to her as both Christian (her father) and now as Locke to tell her the baldfaced lie that the Others stole her baby, when in reality Kate saved Aaron and took him off the island three years ago when the Oceanic Six first escaped from the island. But Claire does not seem "infected" to me, not by anything that can be fixed by a pill anyways. Emotionally infected by MIB's lies and deception, sure. But not with some disease. And all of this begs the question -- could Dogen and Weird Al Yankovic in the Temple be wrong about the nature of this "infection"? Could their idea to just administer poison and kill the "infected" patient in fact be some ancient Egyptian view of medicine without the benefit of modern-day technology and understanding of mental maladies? Could Dogen's attempt to kill Sayid with the poison green pill -- the pill that Jack straight-up saved Sayid from ever taking -- be a completely misguided attempt to cure a physical ailment that is not even a physical ailment at all? Could Jack really have saved Sayid from a certain, and yet totally needless, death?

There was a lot more in this episode but these are my main ideas after taking another view of the show. Love to know anyone's thoughts on the above or predictions for what is to come over the next several weeks on Lost.

Lost Thoughts and Predictions

So I watched that awesome fourth episode of Lost this season again this past weekend, and I think I have a clearer understanding of some of the issues presented by this show than much of what I am reading in the vast amounts of speculation and explanation available on the intertubes.

For starters, we have seen many times over that what qualifies as a fatal injury or lethal situation off the island out in the real world often does not really qualify as such when on the island. Such is I believe the case even with Jacob, whoever (or whatever) he may be. Because when Ben stabbed Jacob's ass repeatedly in the abdomen inside the statute in the finale of Season 5, at this point I don't think that Jacob actually died from those injuries. Sure, Jacob was incapacitated and on the ground, but again on this island, that is a farrrr cry from death.

Jacob might have died -- in the sense that he (or "it") can die on the island -- there in the statue, but I don't think it was Ben and his little stabby stabby that did it. I think what "killed" Jacob was when Flocke kicked his incapacitated body into the roaring fire in the middle of that room inside the statue. I have several reasons for this belief, not the least of which is that when Ben recounts to Ileana in this past week's episode what happened, when Ileana asks who killed Jacob, Ben responds that Flocke did by kicking his body into the fire. They even show us Flocke rolling Jacob's bloodied body into the fire as Ben describes what killed Jacob. Now, to be sure Ben is a lying liar who tells lies and may even believe that it was he (Ben) who did the actual killing of Jacob. But I think the producers are trying to give us a clue here with that recollection scene of Ben's, that it was in fact technically Flocke's burning of Jacob's body that "killed" him, not Ben's stabbings. I also think the very existence of that big fire in the middle of the room inside the statue -- when otherwise there would be no particular reason or need for such a fire, here on a tropical island in a room where some sort of deity is living -- suggests that there is some meaning to the fire being there, some purpose other than just looking hot and yellow. My guess is that the fire was put there specifically for Flocke to make use of to officially "kill" Jacob. So I don't think Ben is guilty of killing Jacob, I think it was Flocke who officially did the deed.

Why is this an important distinction? I think it may prove to be very important, possibly even the fatal flaw in Flocke's whole plan to eradicate Jacob on his way to getting himself out of his island prison that he's been stuck in for time immemorial. Which leads me to my second "prediction" as to the explanation of what we saw on last week's episode: the young boy who appeared to Flocke in the forest was probably a young version of the next protector of the island after Jacob(presumably one of our Losties "candidates"). Here's my thinking: in five seasons of Lost we've never seen this kid before, nor have we even been hinted at his existence, and yet he shows up for the first time within minutes / days of Jacob being killed. And as I mention above, I believe Jacob was killed officially by Flocke, not by Ben. So when the kid shows up for the first time and says to Flocke reproachingly "You can't kill him", I think he is making a direct reference to Flocke having killed Jacob by burning him in the fire inside the statue, perhaps the only true way to kill someone given the magic of the island. It is amusing as heck for me to read all the conjecture and hypothesizing in the intertubes about everything with this show, and in particular on this point it's people saying he is referring to Sawyer, or to Locke, or someone else on the show. While obviously anything is possible (with this show in particular), it just seems more likely than anything else to me that the kid is referring to the guy we just saw Flocke kill. I think this would be completely obvious if in fact it was made obvious that it was Flocke -- and not Ben -- who "killed" Jacob inside the statue, but since that was presented to us in a way that made us think Jacob wasn't killed by Flocke, the conjecturing is going full-on across the internets that the kid is referring to someone else. Also, people seem to have glommed on to the tense of the kid's admonition -- "You can't kill him" -- as if the kid must be referring to someone who hasn't been killed yet by Flocke. But think about it -- if the kid were referring to Flocke just having killed Jacob by burning his body in the fire, wouldn't he use that exact same phraseology, that exact same verb tense? Of course he would. He shakes his head reproachingly at Flocke and says "You can't kill him." As if Flocke just broke the rules by killing Jacob, which Flocke himself admitted in the Season Five finale he is not permitted to do but rather needs to find a loophole which obviously requires getting someone else on the island to use his or her own free will to kill Jacob, as Flocke attempted to do via manipulation of Ben Linus.

One of the big reasons I believe this interpretation of what happened with the appearance of the kid is the look on Locke's face when he sees the kid for the very first time. Flocke is surprised to see him, sure, but he's more than just surprised. He's concerned. He's borderline angry, from the look on Flocke's face. It's almost like he knows in some small way what the sudden appearance of the kid means -- and in my view, it means that Flocke broke the rules in killing Jacob. Flocke thought he had his loophole by getting Ben to use his own free will to kill Jacob -- that much I think is obvious at this point after the last four of five Lost episodes -- but seeing that kid seems almost to immediately have alerted Flocke to the fact that there might be some problem with his whole little loophole plan.

Incidentally, I would be convinced that the kid is a young Jacob -- and he still obviously could be, Jacob come back to life to start anew as the island's protector since Flocke could not succeed in killing him himself by kicking Jacob's body into the fire -- if not for the fact that the kid said "You can't kill him." Not "You can't kill me", but you can't kill him. That suggests to me, absent any further information to the contrary, that the child is not Jacob, but someone else. I still think the kid is probably someone playing the same role that Jacob serves on the island -- to protect it, most likely to protect it from Flocke escaping the island and wreaking the havoc he wants to wreak on the world and the people living in it -- but if I had to venture a guess I would say it is likely not Jacob himself as a boy due to the words they deliberately had him use when Flocke had the chance to speak with him during last week's episode. He could easily be the young version of whoever the next candidate for island protector is, but my guess is that it's not Jacob himself based solely on how they presented his appearance and his limited direct interaction with Flocke. That kid's face said it all though I think in episode 4, the way he shook his head and frowned disapprovingly at Flocke. I just can't shake the fact that Flocke went and broke the rules after all in killing Jacob by burning his body in the fire, I'm sure done out of greed and out of Flocke's insatiable desire to be freed of his island prison, and this kid knows it. And Flocke, by virtue of having seen the kid in the first place and now speaking with him as well, is starting to know it too. Flocke fucked up, he didn't get his loophole after all, but at this point it seems he has had enough and is going to go forward with his plan to get off the island anyways while he thinks he might have a window due to the death of Jacob in the statue and the next candidate is still being determined.

I also thought it was very curious the way that Flocke so readily walked right up and crossed off Locke's name from the Cave of Names near the end of the episode with Sawyer. If that cave was really Jacob's and Jacob's alone, the way that Flocke portrayed it to be in his conversation there with Sawyer, then I would not expect Flocke to just walk right up and cross any names off. In fact, although I do not yet understand how Locke could be reborn after having clearly been killed by Ben two seasons ago back off-island, my guess is either that (i) the cave is Jacob's alone, in which case Flocke's crossing off of Locke's name from the cave ceiling would not be effective, and Locke is therefore still a potential "candidate" to replace Jacob, or (ii) the cave is not Jacob's, or at least not only Jacob's, and that Flocke himself also has some role in the writing of the names, as well as their removal from the ceiling. Obviously everything that Flocke says to Sawyer about the cave (and everything else, for that matter) is suspect at best, but his claim that those names were written just by Jacob without any influence from or contribution by Flocke seems totally not believable to me. I mean, if this is really just Jacob's cave where he writes the names of potential candidates on the ceiling, why would Flocke walk right up and cross off Locke's name? He made that cross-out as if he were entitled to do it, and as if he had done plenty of other cross-outs of those names before. Why would Flocke even care about crossing out one of Jacob's names from the ceiling, if Flocke himself did not have something to do with the names being there (or being crossed out) in the first place? Obviously, everyone knows there is more to the story about that whole cave, but my feeling is that we have not been told at all the truth about the nature or genesis of those names in the first place. And here's hoping the numbers have some cool significance after all in the overall scheme of things -- I'm quite sure it is a lot more than the silly "Jacob had a thing for numbers" excuse that Flocke offered Sawyer when he asked.

The last thing I wanted to mention was an overarching prediction regarding the true identity of Flocke. Obviously there are any number of possibilities, and given the way this show has gone and how ludicrously off even the best-known pundits' (Doc Jensen, Darkufo and the other main Lost bloggers chief among them) predictions have been all the way through the entire arc, anybody who claims to know these answers is more or less completely full of crap, and no one prediction out there about Flocke's story has more than maybe a 1% chance of actually being correct, but I cannot escape the conclusion right now that the most likely scenario -- not more than or even close to 50% likely, mind you, but still the best fitting what I've seen so far -- is that Jacob's nemesis is actually Esau. As in, Jacob's evil twin brother Esau. Yes, from the Bible. First and foremost, look at the way the Lost writers have gone absolutely out of their way to conceal Flocke's true name. And of course, when I write about Flocke in this post, I am generally referring to the Man in Black from the Season 5 finale -- the Black Smoke -- who this season has clearly taken the shape of Locke's body after manipulating Ben into killing Locke and bringing the dead body to the island in Season 5 so that the Man in Black could assume the shape of Locke's body.

Anyways, we've been hearing about this mysterious man named Jacob since what, Season 3? Season 2 even maybe? Jacob has been referred to by name ever since the first time he was mentioned, and we've seen Jacob appear and refer to himself as Jacob on several occasions over the past couple of seasons as well. But the Man in Black ("MIB", for lack of a better term) never said his name when we saw him in the finale last season, and the writers went out of their way not to have Jacob refer to him by his name either during that crucial scene at the beginning of Season 5's last episode. This year as well, with MIB taking center stage in the form of Locke's body, still no reference whatsoever to an actual name, although he does claim to have once been a man, someone who loved and lost just like Sawyer and other regular people. Even when Sawyer asked him last week who he was, Flocke just smiled and did not reveal his name. Why would the writers do this? Getting into their heads a little bit, I think the most rational assumption is that revealing his actual name would tell us more about his character and his nature than they want to reveal at this point in time. I mean, think about this for a minute -- if Flocke were to have responded last week to Sawyer's question with something like "My name is Brian" or whatever, would that have mattered at all to anyone? Of course not. So then why wouldn't they have just told us his name, like they've told us with every other character on the show bar none over five-plus seasons? There is a logical leap involved here to be sure, but again living in the realm of the most rational explanations, I think it is more likely than anything else that revealing MIB's actual name would give away too much for right now. And if we accept that hypothesis as true, there's only a few people I can think of right now who would fit that bill and everything else we've seen so far about MIB in the show. The serpent from the garden of Eden? That could be. But Esau keeps coming to mind as well.

More than just the insistence on not revealing MIB's name lead me to this conclusion. For starters, for those familiar with the bible story of Jacob, Jacob was always someone who attempted to intervene and even deceive others in order to get what he wanted. In fact, his very name "Yaakov" is translated to mean "leg-puller" as his entire early life Jacob was out to manipulate others for his own purposes. You may be familiar with the story of his struggles with his twin brother Esau, which essentially amounted to using Esau's hunger and desire for bodily pleasures to trick Esau into giving Jacob the birthright that Esau was entitled to as the older of the two twins. Then Jacob and his mother Rebekah again conspired to trick Jacob's father Isaac into giving his blessing to Jacob instead of to Esau, with the latter having always been Isaac's favorite. Until later in his life when he was finally tamed and taught correct by God himself, Jacob's entire life was one subterfuge and ploy after another to get what he wanted. I just can't get away from how similar this is to the way our Lost character Jacob has acted, apparently appearing at various points in the Losties' lives -- when they were young, upset, and at their most vulnerable, according to Flocke last week, and influencing them at those points in time to do his bidding. Think of Sawyer, who Jacob appeared to in his moment of deepest grief, at his parents' funeral. Or Locke himself, to whom Jacob appeared only moments after Locke's own father had deliberately pushed him out of an 8th-floor window and possibly even killed until Jacob came along to seemingly resurrect him. To Kate, Jacob appeared when she was about to get prosecuted for shoplifting. To Jack, when he was in desperate need of sustenance -- both physical and emotional -- during his ordeal to save his future wife from lifetime paralysis. To Sayid, Jacob appeared just moments before the love of his life was killed by a car hurtling down the street. Clearly, our Jacob is someone who uses the vulnerabilities in others' lives to his own advantage, and that is pretty much the definition of the Jacob we read about in the Bible.

There is less in the Bible about Esau, but we do know that the biblical story has the two as fraternal twins. And as I think back to the repartee between the two in the Season 5 finale, don't they just seem like brothers? I may be reading into this a little bit, but that really seems to fit the bill to me. Esau is depicted in the Bible as fighting with Jacob for his entire life, even from when the two were in Rebeka's womb, where it was said that Jacob tried to come out every time Rebekah passed a house of worship, while Esau tried to get out every time she passed a house of idolatry. Esau is also depicted as a "man of the field", preferring the outdoor life, and a great hunter, as opposed to the quiet, introverted Jacob. This seems to fit all too well with Esau's presence on the island as the black smoke, the ultimate hunter and predator among all others on the island, and as someone who lives and travels regularly across all the land of the island, unlike Jacob who clearly plays the role of the kinder, gentler of the two characters. And lastly, the book of Genesis is full of accounts of Esau's promises to kill Jacob, in particular after Jacob's deception at Esau's expense, but even before the two were born to Rebekah she received a prophecy that the two would be fighting all their lives just as they were in the womb.

Obviously, all this sounds more than a little like interpretations of the two characters we have been presented with in the last couple seasons of Lost. As I said above, I'm not in any way trying to say that I actually know this to be correct, or even that it is more likely than not to be correct. But as I read all the crazy theories out there on the intertubes about who Jacob and MIB really are, I simply cannot escape the conclusion that the real Jacob and the real Esau is the most likely of all the various possibilities out there.

Lastly, I think there are two other interesting things to note about the Jacob - Esau connection. First, it should be noted that the story of Jacob and Esau in the Bible eventually ends with a reconciliation. Esau, who had been planning to attack and kill Jacob with an army of 400 men, is eventually appeased by the many lavish gifts that Jacob sends to Esau in advance of their meeting, and upon Jacob's arrival, Esau shows forgiveness and reconciliation. The two are said to have had an emotional reconciliation, and they lived on as friends afterwards according to the biblical story, burying their father together upon his death.

Which leads to my last point -- upon Jacob's death (at the age of 147, not all that old according to biblical standards), his son Joseph had Jacob's remains transported back to Canaan, with Jacob's twelve total sons carrying their father's coffin and many Egyptian officials accompanying them, and Jacob was buried in the cave of Machpelah, which Jacob's grandfather Abraham had bought, and in which Jacob's grandparents, parents, and Jacob's first wife Leah were buried. I don't see the parallels here to any of these other characters from the Bible story, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to immediately perking up at the mention of taking Jacob's remains to a cave to be buried. Ileana surprised I think many of us by immediately scooping up Jacob's white ashes from the fire pit inside the statue the moment that Ben told her that's where he had been burned by Flocke, and putting them into a bag to take with her somewhere. Having not only seen that but also being introduced to the Cave of Names last week, I just couldn't not see the connection. For all we know, those two "Adam and Eve" skeletons in the original cave the survivors found in Season 1 could include Jacob, or technically could even be Jacob and Esau.

Who know where all this will lead. But right now I will stand by my position that the above theory represents the most likely of all the many possible explanations for what we have seen over the past several episodes of Lost. For those of you who are rankled at the very thought of a biblical type of outcome for what has gone down on this show, you might want to start accepting the real possibility as I now am.