Tyler Anderson

So this post is really late, and those of you who really care have probably already read all the Lost posts on the latest episode that you need to. Still, writing all this stuff out helps me to figure out what’s going on, so I’m doing it anyway. This past week saw the 11th episode of the final season of Lost, entitled “Everybody Loves Hugo.” Now if you take away one thing from this post let it be this: the writers are currently pushing in the direction of Hurley taking over Jacob’s position, and by the gods I hope that’s what happens.

On The Island

This week saw pretty evenly split time between both Flocke’s camp and Hurley’s camp (yup, it’s his now). On the Flocke end, Sayid shows up with Desmond, but not before we get a brief conversation reconfirming what Flocke said a few episodes ago about needing to gather all of those who came to the Island. I however, don’t believe this to be Flocke’s plan though. At this point there is little reasonable chance that he will be able to convince everyone to leave the Island of their own free will. I believe that he’s attempting to bring them all together so he can trigger some event that gets them all killed. He can’t do this by his own hand, of course, but he could easily influence another, such as his lapdog Sayid, to help him.

Jumping over to Hurley’s camp, they’re preparing to go to Hydra island with some dynamite to blow up the plane. It starts off with Hurley saying goodbye to Libby’s grave one last time, but the scene quickly changes tone when Michael shows up to warn him of the consequences of going through with their plan. He tells Hurley that if they blow up that plane, “A lot of people are gonna die.” If my guesses of Flocke’s plans are correct, then this sort of warning makes sense. If all of the candidates were to get on the plane, somehow, before it blew up there would be no one left to stop him from leaving the Island, either by Widmore’s submarine or some other method we might not know of. Anyway, while discussing the plan to blow up the plane, Ilana forgets that she’s carrying around dangerous dynamite covered in nitroglycerine. Setting down her backpack a little too hard, she explodes, which I totally did not see coming.

Going back to Flocke’s camp, Sayid shows him that he has Widmore’s package, Desmond. Flocke asks him a few questions, like why he’s there and what Widmore did to him. He answers in the most carefree and truthful way possible, surprisingly, and Flocke lets him loose. Leaving Sayid behind to watch the rest of the camp, Flocke and Desmond take a walk. While they walk Desmond continues to calmly play innocent, fielding all of Flocke’s questions as if he has no clue what’s truly happening on the Island. Then, all of a sudden, the boy from earlier in the season shows up. His appearance is changed slightly, and he doesn’t speak a word. Desmond, looking truly confused for the first time, asks who the child is. Flocke just tells him to ignore it and walks on. Looking back, Desmond sees the child sporting a huge knowing grin. This is very different from earlier in the season, when we first saw the kid. Then he was angry at Flocke and the things that had transpired. This time he was grinning, perhaps because he saw that Desmond was there? as for the change in appearance, maybe it changes depending on who he’s showing up to? Earlier in the season when he showed up in front of Sawyer his hair was blonde, this time it was brown, like Desmond’s.

Richard is determined to continue with his plan to destroy the plane. We see Hurley looking through Ilana’s belongings while Richard argues with Jack. He picks up a small bag and looks inside. Upon seeing its contents he quickly closes it and puts it in a pocket. I’m interested to know what is in the bag, but if I were a betting man I’d say that it’s Jacob’s ashes. These ashes will be a central factor in taking down Flocke. Regardless, Hurley ends up appearing to agree with Richard that they need to return to the Black Rock to get more dynamite. He begs Jack to trust him. So they travel to the Black Rock, but upon arriving there Hurley is missing from the group. Suddenly they see him running from the ship as it explodes, taking all the dynamite with it. This is the first time in the series we’ve seen Hurley make major moves like this, and illustrates how much of a turning point this episode is for the character. However Richard is not discouraged and immediately wants to set out to Dharmaville to get explosives from there. Hurley tries to stop him by bluffing that Jacob is telling him they need to go talk to Flocke. Richard doesn’t buy it, and the group ends up splitting, with Ben and Miles following Richard to get explosives while Hurley, Jack, Lapidus, and Sun set off to talk to Flocke. While walking through the forest, Hurley has a conversation with Jack about how he was bluffing and then he runs into Michael again. Michael points him in the direction of Flocke’s camp and we get an answer to a Lost question that we’ve had floating around since season 1: what are the voices in the forest? It turns out they come from those who can’t leave the Island because of things that they did while they were there. Kind of like ghosts that are doomed to walk the earth for all time. I feel that this last meeting with Michael really gave some great closure to his character. He never really had to pay for his actions while he was alive on the show, other than being wracked with guilt. To know that he is now forced to spend eternity on the Island was the perfect way to round off his character, in my opinion.

Jumping back to Flocke’s walk with Desmond, they arrive at a clearing in the forest that has a well in the center of it. However from the setting this is not the same well as the one that holds the Frozen Donkey Wheel. We’re told that there are wells all over the Island, wells that people dug long ago to discover why their compasses would spin whenever they were over that spot. Flocke asks Desmond why he’s not afraid of being there alone with him when no one else knows he’s there. Desmond then utters another defining line of the episode, if not the series, stating “What’s the point of being afraid?” A lot of Lost has been about fear and the grip it can have on a person and the ways it can influence the way they act. Take Michael for example. He was constantly afraid of losing Walt or dying on the Island. So afraid, that he was willing to kill to get off. Now, we’ve seen change in character’s behavior once they become firmly dedicated to another side. Sayid is nothing but a husk of a man, bending to Flocke’s every whim. Who’s to say something similar hasn’t happened to Desmond, but instead of dedicated to the Man in Black he’s dedicated to Jacob? His attitude has changed drastically since he was doused in electromagnetic energy by Widmore. Upon waking up he’s eager to get started on what needs to be done. However, unlike Sayid, Desmond still has his free will. He’s in a very zen-like state right now, much like Dogen was before he was killed. It’s a definite possibility that he’s been claimed by the light much like Sayid’s been claimed by the dark. This would make sense of some of the scenes in the previews for tomorrow’s episode that depict a kind of face off between Desmond and Sayid. The first real battle between light and dark on the Island.

Anyway, after saying his line Flocke pushes Desmond into the well and returns to camp. Almost immediately after his return, Hurley walks in, saying that they want to talk, and he wants Flocke’s word (bad thing to ask for man. You’ll get it, but it means nothing.) that no one will attack them. Flocke gives him his word (of course) and the others in Hurley’s group walk into camp, making Kate all smiley and Sawyer all confused. When Jack walks out of the forest Flocke greets him. Now remember, Jack hasn’t really gotten a grasp on the fact that Locke’s still alive, even if it isn’t Locke. You can really see this in his face when Flocke greets him. This is going to do wonders for his daddy issues, I’m sure.

Off The Island

The majority of the sections of this week’s episode taking place in the flash-sideways made me go “awwww.” Libby and Hugo have always been my one of my favorite couples, right behind Charlie and Claire, despite the brevity of their time together. We got to see Hurley meet Libby when she runs away from her doctor on an outing from her home at a mental hospital. Later, after urging from Desmond, Hurley visits her there, and they set up a date on the beach. At this point Hurley still doesn’t recognize Libby, although she remembers him. When they kiss for the first time, everything comes rushing back to Hurley. This is a huge moment for the both of them, because it means that Libby isn’t as crazy as she thought she was.

Then came the other scene from the episode that came completely out of left field and confused the hell out of me: We see Desmond sitting in his car outside of the school where Locke works. Ben, probably thinking Desmond is a pedophile or something, asks him if he’s waiting for a student. He tells him no, that he just moved into the area and is looking for a good school for his son, Charlie (love that he knew the name). When Ben leaves, Desmond sees Locke leaving the school in his wheelchair. At this point you’re thinking, ‘oh, okay. Desmond is going to help Locke next. But wait, he still has Helen, so he’s still got his love, how could Desmond help him?’ While pondering this you see Desmond start up the car and drive straight into Locke at full speed. Uh… wait what? Sure, Flocke threw him down a well in the other timeline, but that’s not Locke anymore and Desmond knows that. What’s going on? First off, I will say that I don’t believe that Desmond’s attack on Locke had anything to do with Flocke throwing him down the well. Island Desmond knows that’s not Locke, so Flash-Sideways Desmond wouldn’t attack him because of that. What’s happening then? Allow me to discuss a couple of different explanations.

One theory is that he is attempting to the same thing to Locke as Charlie did to him. We’ve seen that traumatic events have been known to shake loose the memories in the survivors, so wouldn’t getting hit by a car do exactly the same thing? As for what he’s trying to show Locke, I’m not sure, but the most likely explanation is that he’s trying to get Locke to remember his time on the Island when he was able to walk, which is the one thing that Locke’s missing right now. Either that or he’s trying to remind him of the experiences he had on the Island, being able to be the explorer that he had always dreamed of being. You’ll remember Locke never wanted to leave the Island. He had always dreamed of being able to live a life like the one he had there, and he was not willing to give it up. Perhaps the life that he’s always wanted is what he’s missing. Another explanation could be that Desmond’s not trying to get Locke to remember anything at all, at least not yet. Getting hit by a car will put Locke in the hospital for sure, almost certainly the one where Jack currently works. Being there will give him the opportunity to have his back repaired by Jack, allowing him to walk again. The act of being able to get up and walk could potentially shake loose the memories of his other life that have been hidden from him. I could definitely see an interesting episode taking place between Jack and Locke. I always loved the way their characters interacted with each other in seasons 1 and 2. Going back and forth between scenes with Jack and Flocke on the Island and Jack and Locke in the hospital would be incredible.

Anamnesis

In this section I’m going to go all wikipedia on you readers and direct you to an article on anamnesis. Anamnesis is a term first used by Plato which deals with the relationship between learning and remembering. I believe the concepts that Plato discusses in his Meno and Phaedo dialogues apply very closely to what’s happening between the Island and the flash sideways segments. The castaway’s souls are rebirthed in the new flash-sideways timeline, but the shock of that rebirth causes them to forget the events that happened to them on the Island. Lost has always had yin yang themes intertwined throughout the show, and it’s no different in the flash-sideways. The survivors’ souls regain the knowledge lost on rebirth through another monumental stimulus, whether it be trauma (yin) or love (yang). This post is already long enough, so I wont go into it in too much detail here, but I urge you to read the Wikipedia pages that I’ve linked to and see how they apply to this season. Just for some clarification though, this doesn’t mean that Lost is about reincarnation. No one’s being reborn physically, it’s their souls and their knowledge that were reborn in the parallel universe. It’s more of a philosophical concept than a religious one.

It’s The Little Things

First I’d like to take a quick second to talk about Jack’s character, and the interesting scene in this week’s episode that somewhat clarified what’s going on with him currently. So far this season we haven’t really had a lot of character development on his part, and that’s fine with me. Apart from when he was the Man of Science to Locke’s (not Flocke’s) Man of Faith, Jack has always held pretty minimal interest to me. However I felt it important to point out the weight of his brief conversation with Hugo in this week’s episode. This is what he said:

Ever since Juliet died… ever since I got her killed… all I’ve wanted was to fix it. But I can’t. I can’t ever fix it. You have no idea how hard it is for me to sit back and listen to other people tell me what I should do. But, I think maybe that’s the point. Maybe… maybe I’m supposed to let go.

This is a fascinating look at how his character has changed this season, and I feel that the writers did an amazing job with the dialog. Since the beginning Jack has always been the fixer, whether it be related to his job as a surgeon or his time on the Island trying to lead the survivors. Even at the beginning of this season, while he was trapped in the Temple, he was still trying to fix things. Still trying to reason with Dogen and fix the situation. The Lighthouse episode really marked a change in his character. All that sitting and looking out at the ocean did Jack a world of good. He’s not taking the leading role any more. He’s letting go of his need to fix everything. It’s fascinating to see this huge, but very believable, change in his character in the space of a few episodes.

A few other things, Desmond’s number for his meal when he’s in Mr. Cluck’s is 42. The director for this episode, Daniel Attias, hasn’t directed a Lost episode since season 1, when he did the Hurley-centric episode “Numbers.” While looking through Ilana’s belongings he picks up a book entitled “Letters From The Underworld.” The book is a short novel written in 1864 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky that explores the conditions of existence of the individual and their actions, responsibilities, and emotions. It attempts to validate free will as compared to determinism, much like Jacob would never tell anyone what to do, because he wanted them to make the decisions for themselves. I also found it pretty funny that the episode started off with Pierre Chang narrating another video presentation, much like he did in the original timeline. Oh, and one last thing was that Michael convinced Hurley to blow up a boat, which is exactly the same way that he died on the freighter.

That’s all for this week, or at least until after tomorrow’s episode airs. Sorry for the lateness of the post. I hope I was able to make up for it with lots of theories and such! Until next time, readers.