Lost season finale

Thanks to Vendar and his wife, Byzantine and I got to watch the Lost Season 3 finale last night despite our seriously flooded living room. I’m hoping to hear more about what the three of them thought about the show.

It’s hard to know what to say about the finale, except that it was really good. I’ll have to watch it another time or two to really know what ot make of it. But I do have a few speculations/predictions about what all is going on.

1. Jack’s beard: Jack’s beard on the island is clearly mostly gray (in fact has gone gray during the course of the show, I think, no doubt the pressures of leadership), but his beard in the flash-forwards is completely black. Byz thinks it was just a bad fake beard, but I think it’s a clue!

2. Likewise, there is much speculation about why Jack keeps referring to his father as being alive in the flash-forwards. Most people seem to think it’s because he’s drugged up, but the way they kept harping on it makes me think that he is actually still alive. Jack’s hang-up seems to be related to the island, not his father, so I don’t know why he’d be delusional about his dad and not anything else that we saw. So I think that the island really did bring his dad back to life, or something, and his dad is alive somehow in the flash-forward version of the future.

I think both of these points suggest some serious alternate timeline/alternate reality issues of an indeterminate nature.

3. This actually relates to Desmond and his first episode. I’ve seen some people expecting to see the Desmond/Charlie meeting in a Charlie flashback or something; or believing that the woman who sold him his engagement ring (the “Oracle”) is in fact some kind of Other or all-knowing individual. But I think that Desmond’s flashbacks were not entirely things that did happen, but they were his memories manipulated by the island. The ring saleswoman was no one special, just the image that the island chose to school Desmond with. There might be alternate timelines going on, but I would reject most time-travel explanations for things, (such as “Desmond went back in time and caused Charlie to learn to swim”), as being not that interesting.

4. It’s pretty clear by now, if it wasn’t before, that Desmond’s precognition isn’t entirely trustworthy. If there was some kind of collective memory shared by characters who are played by the same actors, Charlie ought to have guessed that.

5. I don’t think Naomi and the ship’s crew are evil. They might be employed by somebody evil, but I don’t think they know anything about it. My only guesses as to what’s going on there is that someone wants to use the island for military or commercial purposes and it’s the Others’ job to prevent that, though that seems rather prosaic. I think it’s significant that our unreliable narrator Jack implies that there is an island to go back to–it hasn’t been destroyed completely.

6. I read on Television Without Pity that if Charlie hadn’t closed that door to maintain air pressure, the whole moon pool would have flooded and drowned Desmond too. Which explains, perhaps, why he didn’t try to run and swim out when Eyepatch broke the window. But is this true? And did Charlie have this knowledge of physics and the ways of moon pools that I don’t have? I’ve even heard the phrase “moon pool” before last episode, but I like it. Moon pool.

Well, those are my thoughts! Guess we have plenty of time to contemplate all that before Season 4 starts in February 2008.

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*****
Angry Teti

By Angry Teti
May 24th, 2007

Great thoughts, Teti. I love your recaps and live-bloggings.

I thought last night’s episode was freakin’ awesome. I wish it had been five hours. Here’s my added comments:

1. Naomi has weird lips or something. Has anybody noticed this? Something looks weird with her and I can’t figure out what.

2. Ever drive down a steep ass road and see those sand strips that stop fully-loaded, out-of-control semis? Wouldn’t a beach kinda do the same thing to a Volkswagon? (if you could pop-start the damn thing again and then succesfully drive it through a jungle)

3. Locke is a bit of a dick for knifing Naomi, unless he knows something special. Couldn’t he have found a less drastic way of getting her to stop making her call? Shoot the gun? Tackle her? Summon the island’s black monster cloud?

4. It was awesome when Jack beat the tar out of Ben. I hope there are abundant Ben beatings next year.

5. Characters on this show seem to have unique gifts, such as precognition. It would seem that Jack has a few, beyond his masterful leadership and superior dramatics. Jack is one of the only characters who seems impervious to a powerful argument, threat, or jedi-mind trick. Even Locke, who seems to have a strong will, gets seduced by Ben.

6. Why didn’t Ben just talk to all the castaways instead of taking just Jack off for a private discussion, and why didn’t the castaways raise hell about it or at least inquire what happened while they were off.

7. That moon pool station is awesome, especially with two lonely hotties living down there. I bet Charlie quickly entertained the notion of bailing the mission and becoming a moon pool station love slave.

8. Is there a reason that Charlie couldn’t shut the control room door from the outside? And why shut it at all, why not just dive back into the moon pool and let the damn place flood? Also, I’m no genious in physics, but I’d wager that water would fill his control room until it reached the level of the top of the window, leaving Charlie room to breathe and write more hand notes to Desmond.

9. Desmond predicted that Charlie would drown, but he didn’t say he would die. You can drown and be revived. Will we see Charlie again next year? My money is on Desmond donning scuba gear, opening the door, and reviving him.

10. I’ve had several injuries that left me pretty much immobile but none of them were nowhere NEAR the ballpark of a spear through the chest. Ol’ eyepatch must have Lockeish healing powers to be tooling about all grinny. How cool would it have been if there had been bubbles coming out of his spearhole?

11. Who cuts Jack’s hair? They are damn talented if they are maintaining his perfect Caesar cut with a bowie knife.

Here’s my thoughts for what’s going to happen:

Jack brings about rescue. At some point Claire enters a chopper with her baby. Baddies come to foil the escape. Jack, Kate, and a few others manage to break free. Probably someone gets killed while escaping (Juliette?). Jack is torn apart b/c he abandoned group, and possibly b/c his escape call triggered something sinister. He also mourns the death of whoever died while escaping … someone in his group who is neither a friend or family. (I wager Juliette b/c their relationship, while more and more friendly, is still based way more in collaboration). I’m thinking next season we’ll have a busted up group of Others, a new baddie in town, a new adventure for the castaways, and the new fun of some castaways dealing with life outside the island.

New thought I just had:

Dharma is geared to bring dead back to life. The original hostiles are success stories and Jacob is a semi-success. The black smoke could be lost souls, partial recoveries, or a force tied to the “other-side” that is pushing people towards helping them, much like Jacob did to Locke.

Blah … I need to stop thinking about Lost.

Happy Simpleton on May 24th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

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