Lighthouse
Black Rock LOST Podcast: Season 6 episode 5 of ABC's TV show, LOST. Curt, Dan, Nancy Drew, Lost Lindsey and Special Guest Eve take a second pass at this episode and incorporate fan feedback.
MP3
We'll start with questions and thoughts from our fans and then see if the Black Rock crew has any additional thoughts or theories of their own.
Links:
James Theory
http://lostreview.blogspot.com
Another 'loopy' diagram
http://silverlaketosoho.com/blog/entertainment/lost-so-far-thoughts-up-to-6-06-2/#loopimage
The Star Wars comparison to midiclorians
http://io9.com/5478314/the-real-problem-with-midichlorians
25 comments:
FIRST POST!!!
Dogen's Miraculous Mysterious Pill!
WARNING: If you still experience resurrection after four hours, immediately consult your island doctor. :)
Listening to the pod cast: y'all are talking about how no matter what, LOST has value because of all the references that it provoked us to research. This, I agree, is a great and interesting part of LOST, but I am concerned about how shallow these references have been. John Locke, Bakunin, Russo, Hume, all the science stuff, all the religious stuff... It feels a little like they are just loading the show with references that the viewers will cling to while not having much content or reason. The most viewers for the least amount of work(work=actually well defined and thought out ideas and directions). It seems a little disrespectful to me: using all history and cultures as source material for stylistic effect without giving those names and references the respect they deserve (without giving some sort of "why" they are used in the story). I know this is a pessimistic way to look at LOST but I'm getting frustrated as we are nearing the end. I've really enjoyed the LOST phenomenon but I'm worried that it's falling short. I really hope it doesn't overshadow future projects that want to do similar things with references and audience participation.
How can Dan be a "crusher of dreams" AND fall asleep during a podcast?
manuelnoah, good feedback. Especialy at a time when we are uder fire for being too critical of the show. All of which makes me reflect on a point I heard on 'On the Media' (one of my favorite podcast btw). The segment was about a piece of 'conceptual art' that I wont go into here ( http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/02/26/07) but suffice it say that the topic touched on the idea of: a work of art is not necessarily the property of its creator nor is the meaning of the work of art necessarily determined solely by the creator. Now, I for one, see LOST a work of art where, we the viewers, get to determine it's value and whether or not it is good. We do it everyday, all of the time but in our case we talk about it in detail and revisit it periodically.
Personally, I try to enjoy the show but it still has to entertain me and keep my attention. I remain 'open' to whatever but am also concerned at times that this thing is going to let me down too. Either way, they it will have been a great trip if only for all the friends we met along the way and, it's been a fun ride thus far.
I think people who gripe about not getting answers and are worried about this other timeline are the same people who watch the show with this mental checklist of questions. Rather than enjoy the story of Lost, they are distracted by this list of questions and are totally worried that we're not getting answers.
They are so worried about getting answers they completely forget that Lost is a STORY. Yes, a STORY. This other timeline is a part of this story whether you like it or not. This timeline is going to answer questions...this timeline wasnt put in because the producers wanted to give us "what if." Damon and Carlton have said BOTH TIMELINES ARE HAPPENING. So it's not just a what if.
I also believe that these same people seem to forget there were previous seasons. They forget to go back to earlier episodes and they don't make any effort to connect the dots. They seem to expect some character on Lost to stop, turn to the camera and say, "Pay attention, this is answer to question 152: Who is the smoke monster."
Im sorry, I dont want a story that is just a checklist of answers. I want everything to MAKE SENSE.
If you go back, think about the whispers and people appearing out of thin air...and ask yourself, "What if this timeline has been involved since season 1?" You might answers a lot of your own questions.
Seriously guys, if you were patient enough to get this far, I don't see why you aren't patient enough to see how this other timeline fits into the STORY.
So you're saying that's us??
In my opinion, the 'making sense' part is pretty much the same as getting questions answered, no? Don't they help us understand how things are connected? I don't think we ever treated teh AT as a what if, but have asked how it is related and why is it important? And that's not us but listeners. I'm pretty sure we've already wondered if the whispers weren't our losties or from the time travel.
I guess I misunderstood what you were saying in your last Podcast. Someone said it was "too late" to be introducing this new element when there are so many questions to be answered.
hey guys,
thanks curt for using my point as launching off point.
the views of the Black rock podcast that are presented still create much discussion i see, even among the blackrock crew and listeners. i came aboard cos i knew this show looked deeper at the hardcore mysteries of the island.
as i'm listening to other podcasts, heath (solo) brought up a point re narrative structure. this way of looking at it has helped me refocus and maybe wait a little longer for the writers.
as each story has an arc and even each season, we can apply the 3 act approach to S6. i do not know whether it has been explicitly said by Darlton that S6 will be broken up into a three act structure per se. we have 16 eps i think but two hrs for season opener and two hrs for finale. if we break it up into 6 hrs each ( total of 18 hrs), we would have gone thru the first act, with all its setup and exposition. i'm expecting some more exposition to come however, as they're kinda trickling it out.
In the second act we should technically see the problem or obstacle come into play and maybe a possible solution, with rising tension/drama etc. we still wanna know what the heck is going on. i thought we knew from the opening scene of The Incident - a struggle of titans settling two different philosophies(?), but now, we have yet to get something concrete. The past 5 seasons - in total 108 hrs of Lost so far - is like Hitchikers GuideTTG The answer is 42..... well i wanna what the heck is the question???? right? :)
i think we all sorta agree that we are all along for the ride, but maybe not quite sure that we've got on the correct ride, expectations i guess. Lost Season Six - The Final Season - The Scenic Route. so at this stage are we click, click, clicking up the plot rollercoaster, and the when we get to the top, will it be all plot mechanics as we hrutle towards the finale. and pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, have i said it enough :) pls i hope - since they have used the term before - i hope it will not all be a Deus Ex Machina - it really escalates until the finale, then somehow everything will be wrapped up neatly! Maybe a "God" will come out of the machine and say "Computer. End Program" *echo supplied by Dan* Deus Ex Machina... hope Nancy has time to practice by now :)
in tempering our argument, maybe some mysteries should remain mysteries. Darlton, i think, has cited the example of The Wardrobe in CS Lewis' The LW&W. a lot of us are happy that this wardrobe does what it does but we're more interested in what happens when they step thru. But like LIndsey has said, we dow ant some mysteries answered damit!
they have said that they will not be answering all, and i think some callbacks are done to tell us the audience that they too have not forgotten, like Adam and Eve, but i think they wont be answering it.
i can see what you are getting at Hanover, but as viewers this is what we do. we have a forum for sounding out our ideas, and even tho there are 12 hrs to go, our questions and feelings towards what's happening as they happen are real. that's kinda the whole point of initial reactions, just our raw ideas and then we process them and we sound them out to others later on and see what floats
I think the idea of the late introduction was an indirect proof that the AT has to be more connected then we realize yet. I even went so far as to say I think it may be the outcome of everything else, the result of the path of redemption. We also began to float James Mirror Universe theory, and that may have been something I felt was a bit late to introduce. A whole other universe that has already been there just seemed a bit much but who knows, a quick bit of narrative and our proverbial lights might go on with a collection Ahhh, I get it now...
Eddy, your point is well taken. What doesn't help any of this is that we've seen the story, out of order, while it may well be a perfectly linear narrative it was linear in time and space. I think what I'm trying to say is that it makes it hard to follow a plot arc when you're never very sure where on the arc you might be! I'm hopeful, as ever, that tonight we'll get a big juicy bit of info that will advance our overall understanding. So far, season 6 has been good for that. But credit to the writers for spinning this yarn in a way that has captivated us, me anyway, by the mystery of it all. So i'll be on the edge of my seat, like most everyone, tonight hanging on every word hoping this story will come together and make sense.
hey curt
yes, we have an accord. i wait with bated breath. will have to wait til i get home from work to watch. should be getting to bed now. its 3am.
its been said before, but maybe bears repeating. we do love Lost. we've devoted a large chunk of the last 6 years to it and not just watching, but rewatching and researching and discussing, and dissecting. maybe on some level we want to have meaning to that experience, that it was not for naught :)
but if nothing else, it has introduced many people to each other, created a community and some may disband and disperse after Lost, but those connections that have been made amongst some will last.. at least until the next RESET :)
you can count on me to be a loyal member of the Black Rock. you'll have to make me walk the plank to get off, and i'll take my chances with Ezra J.
Yeah, I was a wee bit too hasty as I hadnt listened to the whole podcast...just the first 30 minutes or so on the way to work.
I believe this other timeline is showing us a "Before" picture of our Losties before Jacob or the MIB decided to go back and muck up things up.
So in the universe of "Whatever Happened, Happened" this other timeline happened BEFORE season 1...yet the events we've been seeing in the original timeline for the last 5 years are what led to misery of all these people.
This is the loophole....
Think about 1954 and how in Jughead Locke told Alpert to go search him out on the day of his birth. There is a great example of Locke setting his own miserable life in motion.
I think the biggest wool they're pulling over our eyes is the implicit knowledge that the bomb "worked". They haven't explained how the jughead detonation crew ended up back in 2007, yet with the Hatch built.
The hatch was there because it was always built. The thing that Faraday forgot is Whatever Happened, Happened. There is no undoing something that has already happened.
This is why it ended up that there were two timelines. The only way the universe could adhere to this rule and to make it so that all these things happened as the result of the crash and all these things didn't happen as the result of the crash was to create a timeline to support each outcome.
We have no idea about the hatch in the new timeline because the island is under water.
...and I forgot to mention that since our Losties were flying around in time, some of the things that happened to them in their past was directly related to them crashing on the Island.
See the episode Jughead for a good example of that.
John Locke landed in 1954 and sent Alpert to his birth in 1956. This resulted in a lot of interference throughout his life as witnessed in the flashbacks in Cabin Fever.
In this other timeline, that couldnt have happened because Locke never sent Alpert to his birth since he never lands on the island to begin with.
Criticizing *US* on criticizing the show? But, did we ENTERTAIN you? :)
Hanover makes some pretty darn good observations, here. I'm starting to like them. Please keep it up.
So the ALT timeline pre-dates the 50's and doesn't just 'fork' in the 70's? How far back does it go? Black Rock?
I'd say 1954 and 1977 are the two major touch point during the time travel part of last season that we can identify now.
There is another touch point which is wherever they (Sawyer, Juliet, and co) shot at those people in the canoe...but we haven't seen that *yet*. My guess is that will be Claire and her "friend" paddling away from the temple. We saw an oar in Claire's camp and she claimed she was shot by the people from the temple.
But not the Hatch in 2004? I always took it for a potential flip in my mobius strip.
Hanover....
It hadn't even occured to me to piece together Claire's bullet wound and the shooting from the outrigger. It very well could have been what happened.
Also, I completely agree with the line of thinking regarding this new timeline that it is representing what would have been had they not had any influence from the island. I think I was trying to get that out in the podcast, but I didn't put it in terms as descriptive as you have here.
Last season we started to realize that John had influenced his own destiny by telling Richard that he was the chosen one for leading the Others and, in turn, became something prophesied to arrive. It's been something in the back of my mind ever since hearing Jacob say "They're coming".........is it someone who has been called or has another group now been prophesied because of the effects of time travel on the island?
It's probably Desmond. I think he's the only one who could possibly straighten out this dual timeline with his powers to change "what happens."
:)
I wouldn't consider The Hatch to be a touch point because they didn't time travel to it. I'm talking touch point in which their time travelling influenced the future from wherever they landed.
I just think that ultimately the loophole was the time travel. Our Losties were good folks to begin with, but these two entities have changed their lives as the result of this game...thus resulting in the misery we saw starting with season 1.
It seems as if the one of these entities tricked them into using time travel and thus is eroded their lives. It looks like the MIB did this. Unfortunately Jacob is the one who says it "Only Ends Once" which gives me the impression that he's been keeping the ball in the air by creating alternative timelines...and he's only going to let it end when he get's his result. This is why I still have no idea who is bad. I just know people have been branded (Juliet), brainwashed (Alex's boyfriend) and tricked in the name of Jacob...so I'm sort of siding with the MIB right now.
Curt- Thanks! i just subscribed to On the Media and listened to that eppisode. Interesting art project, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I love the idea: a box with a computer in it that the buyer just plug into the internet and then it does it's work. It would be cool if the buyer didn't know what the box did, and it did a little more than put itself on ebay.
Anyway, I have a random theory about the "timeline B" that I thought I'd throw out there:
The island is underwater with the Dharma stuff on it (swing set, houses...). This leads me to believe that Jughead going off (somehow) caused the island to be at the bottom of the ocean. This leads me to this timeline:
-Ben was shot by Saiid
-Ben was Saved
-the Bomb was set off
-some missing events (ha)
-we see the "timeline B losties" flying over the sunken island (that has the Dharma stuff on it)
-we ses Ben as a teacher in "timeline B"
So, I'm wondering: Is the Ben who was Shot by Saiid and "Saved" the Ben in "timeline B" and not the Ben that we have known and loved (ha ha). OK, now my Crackpot theory: Ben in "timeline B" is "sick." I don't know how he would have gotten off the island or what the significance of this would be, but I like the idea of the "sickness" being "out" in "timeline B," and I like the idea of Ben in "timeline B" being super evil with the "sickness".
...and Sun and Jin will not reunite in the original timeline because they were not meant to be together in Timeline B. Course correction caused Sun not to time travel to 1977 on purpose. :)
I bet $10 that in Timeline B, Jin is merely escorting Sun to Los Angeles as a job given to him by Mr Paik.
I'm still betting on Sawyer being some sort of lawman in Timeline B. Becoming head of security in time-line A is a big old fat hint of that.
Now here is a HUGE theory...a lot of the crap going on during the first 5 seasons was caused by a combination of course correction and many of our losties were actually being dragged back to their original fate. Hence, Sawyer becoming a security person. Sun and Jin being separated. Hurley's luck changing (remember the episode whe he found the dharma Van an shed his bad luck?). Jack actually becoming content (as long as it lasted). Any other examples you can think of?
t imagine Jin working for Paik without having married his daughter. I don't think he was working for Paik at all in that timeline. Probably over-thinking it.
If alt timeline is from the 50's how does it have the Dharma swingset, I felt like that 'dated' it for us to the 70's.
Then why is she called by her Maiden name at the airport? Why does it seem like her and Jin have no chemistry at all, and she was completely surprised by all the money he was carrying?
There were also not wearing wedding rings.
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