Category Archives: TUIW Conversation

Each week, after taking a couple days to digest the episode and read what the blogs are says, we’re going to have a TUIW Conversation about Lost to try and unpack the episode, bounce theories off each other, and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with our favorite group of TV castaways (sorry Gilligan!)

Jonah: Tuesday’s episode was ridiculously hyped by both its writers and Lost fans who were starting to notice how few hours of the show were left. And even with those lofty expectations I think “Happily Ever After” surpassed them. I was blown away by it but I think what’s really amazing about the episode is how it was simultaneously satisfying and confounding. We know something momentous has happened and that the parallel worlds are bleeding together but the whats, hows, and whys of that remain unclear. So, Michael, do you have any complaints with “Happily Ever After” or were you as satisfied by it was I was? And, to pick an arbitrary starting point, how much do you think island Desmond knows about what’s going on and what he needs to do next?

Michael: Well I too was blown away by it all. Darlton outdid themselves this past week for sure. I’m not sure what exactly island Desmond knows, but I think it’s very clear that he was conscious of what happened in the AlternaWorld when he crossed over, and I think, at the very least, he knows what the endgame is here. I’m wondering how exactly Desmond was the lucky one that could go between both, and I think the answer lies in the explosion of the hatch. Then, Desmond was exposed to a huge amount of electromagnetic energy, much as he was in “Happily Ever After.” So here’s what I’m supposing: electromagnetism is unifier between the two worlds. Charlie was zapped by it when the hatch exploded too, so he had visions of Claire before he died. Daniel Faraday had such extreme exposure to it that he lost his memory before Poppa Widmore took him back to the Island, and he had a connection of Charlotte upon seeing her. Also, I think the Time Flashes from last season were also electromagnetic, which ended up effecting Juliet and Charlotte. That’s why both were bouncing between time and dimensions as they died. So there’s my big theory of this week. Does it make sense? Shifting the conversation, what are your thoughts on Desmond’s interaction with Eloise at the party? Does it tie in at all to their meeting in “Flashes Before Your Eyes?” How much does she know?

J: That’s a really solid theory regarding the electromagnetic energy and its definitely looking more like that’s one of the keys to this whole thing (and its kind of funny that two weeks ago we were talking about corks and evil wine and now we’re talking about electromagnets and string theory…oh Lost). As far as Eloise, I think her conversation with Desmond was the biggest insight we’ve gotten yet into what the Sideways universe is. Frankly the things she was saying and the fact that she’s even aware of it seemed to indicate that this universe was constructed by someone or something and not simply the result of the nuke. But maybe she’s gone through something similar to what happened to Desmond so she just happens to know more about where the sideways universe is going. I, like everyone else I think, was most intrigued by what she said about Desmond getting exactly what he wanted. Does that mean this was supposed to be some kind of reward to the Losties for doing something? Is it some kind of Matrix-esque prison to keep them happy and unaware? Or does that simply not mean what we all think it means?

M: That was perhaps the most intriguing line of the whole episode. There’s a theory making it’s rounds on the web that somehow, Eloise made a deal with Smokey to bring Daniel back, much like the one he proposed to Sayid and Richard. It would also help explain why she and Widmore oppose each other, with Widmore trying to fight Smokey. It’s a somewhat sound theory, but I actually think that Eloise long ago figured out how to go between universes like Desmond is figuring out. She however has chosen to stay in the other world where Daniel is alive, and she fears that Desmond figuring things out will possibly ruin that for her. It’s hard to say though. For as much as we learned, I still feel like we’re not quite there yet to figuring it all out. I’m wondering what you thought of Sayid’s commando moves and Desmond’s nonchalance about it all. Is Desmond’s brain fried? Does he see this as part of a plan? Does he know it doesn’t matter because he can go to the other world? And what did Widmore mean when he repeated Eloise, that the Island isn’t done with Desmond yet?

J: I’m beginning to think that when people say to Desmond that “the island’s not done with you,” what they really mean is that “we’re not done with you.” Like the candidates, it seems like Desmond is just trapped as part of a game that’s way beyond his understanding. But, like with the candidates, the question these last weeks will turn on is whether Desmond can become the master of his own fate. As far as the ending goes, I think that Desmond didn’t just experience the flash sideways; he understood it. One some level he now knows what that world is, what this world is, what the relationship between the two is, and what he needs to do. But what does he need to do? Is he going to try to unify the two worlds into one? Destroy the sideways world and bring those guys over to the island to fight Smokey? Create the sideways world? Does he know how this whole thing is going to turn out? And, to get even nuttier, is it possible that island Desmond is the new Jacob or somehow
gained his consciousness in the transfer?

M: That’s an interesting proposition, but I think that Penny is the only thing stopping that. I don’t know where we’ll go next week in regards to the FlashSideways, but it’s looks like it’s going to be a Hurley episode where (based on the preview after this week, not a major spoiler), he’ll be visited by some Losties of the past. I think the important thing to see will be the dynamic between Hurley and Jack. They’re now the only two candidates that don’t want to get the hell off the Island, so I’m interested to see that play out come Tuesday night.

Each week, after taking a couple days to digest the episode and read what the blogs are says, we’re going to have a TUIW Conversation about Lost to try and unpack the episode, bounce theories off each other, and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with our favorite group of TV castaways (sorry Gilligan!)

Jonah: So, not much happened this week, huh? You know, except for the major chunks of mythology, massive reveals, and moving emotional beats. We’ll get into all the corks, bottles, and evil wine in a bit, but first let’s just take a moment and appreciate this episode as an hour of television. The writing, directing, and especially acting were all spot-on and, more than anything else, Nestor Carbonell really just knocked it out of the park. There was obviously a lot of pressure to get something this highly anticipated by Lost fans right and I think everyone stepped up their game (can you think of any other Lost episodes not written by Cuse and Lindelof or directed by Jack Bender that are this good?) and came through. What did you think, Michael? Was Ab Aeterno everything you were picturing from that first time Richard Alpert stepped out of the 1970s jungle looking exactly the same age he is in the 2000s?

Michael: I think it was. It was an incredibly significant episode, and I really don’t think it could have been done much better. What more could you want? It became even more clear that Smokey’s best ploy is using someone’s loved ones against them, here with Isabella. He promised Richard his departed wife in the same way he promised Sayid his, and it took a major beat down from Jacob to change his mind (more on that in a second). On the other hand, there’s Hurley, who communicates for the dead. It seems like while Smokey promises the person back, though in sinister form, Jacob gives the person a voice (in Hurley) that is true, another parallel to wrap your mind around. The mythology was so rich, and we got more of Jacob in this episode than I think we may ever have. But before “Ab Aeterno,” we saw him incredibly calm and stoic. Yet when Richard comes to him, he goes crazy on him. At first, I thought it was a defense mechanism, but it evolved from that as Jacob dunked him in the water three times “baptizing” him and proving he wasn’t dead. What do you make of this? Was it a baptism? Why was Jacob so crazy and then calm again? Do we have a better idea of who Jacob and Smokey are?

J: I think Jacob’s more aggressive response may have been due to the fact that this was the first time Smokey actually tried something like that. It makes me wonder what changed between then and now to make his reaction to Ben so much calmer and measured (maybe, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, he knew it was time to step aside for his new apprentice/candidate). I almost wonder if this was as big a moment for Jacob as it was for Richard. Up until that point, it sounded like he had kept the people on the island at arms length, so maybe it meant something to him to make a connection with a person who was not a homicidal pillar of smoke. As for the baptism, what I liked about this episode was how it seemed as intent to undermine the religious imagery as use it. To put it another way, is Jacob asking people to put aside their selfishness and embrace their inner decency, or is he forcing people to an island against their will and rewarding them by allowing them to be his servant for eternity? Meanwhile, we got a lot more insight into Smokey (or as much as we can from a character who seems to lie about everything). He, once again, showed a keen sense of how to manipulate people (appealing, not just to Richard’s love of Isabella, but his belief that they’re in Hell). What do you make of the fact that he described Jacob exactly the same way Dogen described Smokey? And of the fact that he actually acted pretty decently towards Richard (even after Richard joined Team Jacob)?

M: I think the “don’t let them talk” thing is more a defense mechanism to keep the other from persuading that person. Remember, Jacob and Ben actually talked to one another before Ben stabbed him, so I don’t think it’s the same as when Sayid stabbed Flocke. My current theory is that the sides are determined based on an inherent good or evil within each character that is also seen in the FlashSideways. Ben did the right thing in AlternaLA, so he’s on Team Smokey on the Island. On the other hand, Sayid is inherently evil in AlternaLA, so naturally, he’d join up with Team Smokey. Meanwhile, you also have characters like Eko, who refused to repent for his sins, and was killed by Smokey, yet there was Locke, who stood toe to toe with him, and was saved. What the hell am I talking about? Remember that kid that told Flocke he couldn’t kill Sawyer? Perhaps who/whatever he was was alluding to a rule that Smokey can’t kill anyone that is “good” in the same way that Jacob can’t directly influence anyone to reform. But both can get someone else to do it for them. That’s why Ben could kill Locke and Jacob needs Richard to be his right hand man. That’s also why Smokey wasn’t so mad at Richard; he couldn’t really do anything about it because it was against the rules. Is that absolutely crazy? And to pose a question back, what do you make of the small parts with Jacob visiting Illana? Did he know he’d die?

J: If we’re sharing AlternaTheories, how about this one: getting Richard to interfere with the candidates didn’t go the way Jacob hoped it would so he’s decided to put forth one final test to the remaining candidates: would they do the right thing in a world where there is no island? The Sideways, then, are just Jacob’s final test (although I’m kind of partial to the idea that they’re what the world is like if Smokey gets off the island). I’m also operating off the theory that Jacob knew he’d die: remember he gave Hurley the ankh too (although Miles said he didn’t think Ben would stab him). But I can’t believe we’ve gone this far without talking about the cork! Finally, someone who knows something sat down and explained what the island is. And yet, I somehow think that Smokey wouldn’t describe it the same way. Someone pointed out to me that corking wine isn’t just meant to keep it from spilling out; it protects the wine from impurities. Maybe the island isn’t protecting the world from Smokey; maybe its protecting Smokey from the world (perhaps Crazy Mom made it for that purpose and tasked her other son, Jacob, with making sure Smokey stays put). What do you make of the first real explanation of what’s going on we’ve gotten on Lost. And if we carry the metaphor through to the episode’s ending, what would smashing the bottle entail?

M: That was certainly something else. I like that idea about keeping Smokey away from the impurities of the world, but it seems like he’s killed all the impurities of the world (Freighter Folk, Eko, Russeau’s jerky pal), so I don’t know. As for breaking the bottle, maybe the destruction of the Island is Smokey’s goal. Perhaps he wants to leave the Island and then destroy it, so as never to trap anyone there again. I wish that I could tie it in a little better to the FlashSideways, but unfortunately, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure what I make of the concept of the Island being a stopper for letting evil into the world. I actually think we got further from figuring out the nature of the Island than we ever had. I really think that a lot boils down to who exactly Jacob and Smokey really are. That mystery, more than any left, is the one I want to know the most about, and hopefully we will soon.

Each week, after taking a couple days to digest the episode and read what the blogs are says, we’re going to have a TUIW Conversation about Lost to try and unpack the episode, bounce theories off each other, and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with our favorite group of TV castaways (sorry Gilligan!)

Jonah: This week on Lost, we got a bit of a gear shift, with all the jerkiness and forward progression that implies. Team Jacob is united (and back on the beach), Charles Widmore is back in play, and we got some tantalizing hints about key pieces of mythology (especially Richard Alpert, whose stuff I’m especially excited to unpack). But before we get into that, let’s talk a little about this week’s emotional core: Ben’s redemption. AlternaBen got the opportunity to make the right choice and save Alex, while regular Ben went further down the path of his own redemption. I’ve read a lot of criticism of how these scenes played out (too on-the-nose, that Ben could have just blackmailed the Principal into giving Alex the recommendation too) and I agree with some of it, but it all still worked really well for me, thanks in no small part to Michael Emerson’s typically strong work. What did you think of Ben and AlternaBen’s journeys? Did they work for you? And do you buy into Ben’s redemption?

Michael: I do buy into. Ben has already been a character that needs to be needed. When his power with the Others was usurped, he sought it from Jacob directly. When that didn’t work, he followed Smokey. If Team Jacob wants him, he’ll be about as loyal as anyone they can find. What interested me the most was his decision to go with Team Jacob rather than Team Smokey, who showed up in Locke’s flesh to court him. I kept thinking about the parallels between Ben and Sayid, two characters with evil pasts that both lost the person they loved the most, Nadia and Alex respectively. Both were faced with the choice of who to go with, Sayid choosing Smokey, and Ben to Jacob. In both episodes, the AlternaCharacters were faced with decisions to do good or evil, and at the same time they decided on the Island, they decided in AlternaLA. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Either way, we have our teams set up, with Jin and Kate the two wild cards (both seem to be with Smokey out of circumstance, not choice). Which one is stronger? Team Smokey is obviously bigger, but Team Jacob has some mystical protection around them. Who do you pick, at this point, to be the stronger team?

J: I wouldn’t bet against the team that is impervious to dynamite. All things considered, I think this part of the season has been about stacking the odds as much against Team Jacob as possible, which will make their triumph over evil that much more satisfying. Although that does get at one of my concerns with this episode: the moral simplification that seems to be going on. Never has Ben seemed as redeemed (I’d hesitant to say he’s full-on good, but he certainly does seem to have become a good guy) and Widmore as evil as those last few minutes (especially the dark music and Widmore’s far more sinister delivery and behavior). I guess it never occured to me that, as we neared the end, things would need to become more morally straightforward, but that seems to be what’s happening. One of my favorite things about Lost has been its moral ambiguity, and yet, within the span of a couple of episodes, we’ve gotten a lot of talk of “good and evil,” and the line seems to be a lot clearer between good (Jacob, Ben, Jack) and evil (Smokey, Widmore). Will Lost pull the rug out from under us again? Am I frittering over nothing? Or does clarifying the mythology necessarily mean clarifying the moral sides?

M: I think there’s still a little more ambiguity than there seems. Are characters like Claire or Sayid truly evil or are they just claimed by evil? What about Sawyer, who’s motivated by grief? Is Ben truly good or just happy to be somewhere that will have him? I think these questions will become more clear as the war starts to move on. I think it’s time to move into the territory you touched on at the top, what do we make of the events at the Black Rock? The inability to kill oneself went back to Season 4, when Michael and Jack struggled to do it off the Island. Locke was also interrupted out of nowhere by Ben just before killing himself in Season 5. So it’s not the Island preventing it, but Jacob. So…what does that mean? Finding out more about Richard Alpert could shed more light on that, but I’m just curious as to why Richard doesn’t age, yet Kate and Sawyer, touched by Jacob as kids, did. What exactly you get out of the whole Black Rock incident? I’m I the only one as flustered by the whole thing?

J: What I loved about the Black Rock sequence is that it hinted at the big picture, without fully giving it away (kind of like a free sample for the rumored Richard Alpert episode coming in a couple weeks). I’m a little disappointed that, if people touched by Jacob can’t kill themselves, that kills my theory about Jack and Michael being unable to kill themselves because they had to be alive for Jack and Co. to travel back to the 1970s, but oh well. I do think, though, that Jacob’s touch may affect different people in different ways. He seems to have picked Richard for some kind of job, different from the one he has for the Candidates, and that job may give him the ability not to age, while Kate and Sawyer continued to. Or maybe it has to do with being on the island combining with Jacob’s touch. In fact, maybe everyone Jacob touches gains some kind of ability (Miles and Hurley can talk to the dead, Locke can walk again) and it just changes from person to person. Alternately, it could simply be that Jacob represents and controls the island’s powers (like healing people; remember, his touch seemed to bring Locke back to life in “The Incident”). Meanwhile, the other big stuff for me, from a theorizing point of view, was from Roger Linus’ cameo. There’s no way he and Ben could have made it off that island before the nuke went off so…what happened? Could it be that the bomb isn’t what separated the two timelines? Is something else going on? Can the writers find a way to make the flash-sideways even more confusing?

M: I think that’s one of the biggest questions that will ultimately play into the way this show is resolved in a lot of ways. My idea is that in Timeline X, 815 never crashed, so they never set off the bomb, so therefore whatever happened in Timeline X is only related to the Original Timeline because it created it. Meanwhile, the Original Timeline is proceeding in its own “real time” (whatever that means for Lost). That may sound super confusing, and it is. I do think there’s a connection between the two, but I think the past of Timeline X is completely split from the Original Timeline. I do still want to know why Jack, Kate, Sayid, and Hurley ended up in the 70s, which I’m thinking will be a big step towards figuring out Timeline X. My big theory on that is because they needed all the Candidates in the same time period. That would make Jin the “Kwon” on the wall and not Sun, and explain why only those four time traveled. We’ll see on that one. In the meantime, we’re a third of the way through the season, which is where we’ve heard from the cast things start to move forward. The lines are finally drawn, the stakes are there, it’s time to watch the war begin.

Each week, after taking a couple days to digest the episode and read what the blogs are says, we’re going to have a TUIW Conversation about Lost to try and unpack the episode, bounce theories off each other, and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with our favorite group of TV castaways (sorry Gilligan!)

Jonah: I came into work on Wednesday and my boss told me that “Sundown” single-handedly kept her from tuning out of Lost entirely, so pleased was she with the big action and Sayid-centric plot movement. Another friend of mine said more or less the same thing, but I’m honestly still not seeing it. “Sundown” had a couple killer action setpieces (the Sayid-Dogen fight was one of the most exciting in Lost history) and a dark, dark ending, but I just wasn’t as engaged by this episode, mainly because I found it lacking in any sort of an emotional spine (Sayid’s conflicted killer plotline was the same thing they’ve been doing with him forever). In a way, this kind of reminded me of “There’s No Place Like Home,” another straightforward plot and action episode that was a little rushed and overstuffed. Lost works a little better for me as a slower, more human show than “Sundown,” but it also feels weird to critique an episode that’s so necessary for moving the plot forward. Am I being too hard on what was a relatively enjoyable, if minor, episode? Or do you share some of my frustrations?

Michael: Well I think you raise a good point about it being an episode setting up what happens next, but I think there’s some bigger things going on outside of Smokey’s attack on the Temple. Most notably, we got our first flashsideways where there hasn’t been a redemption for a character. So far, Kate does good by helping Claire, Jack and his son reconcile, Hurley is lucky, and Locke has accepted his disability and is with Helen. So why was Sayid’s flashsideways so depressing? Does it have anything to do with his being claimed by Smokey? Could this be the direction we’re heading with these flashsideways? We also got to learn a bit more about the nature of Smokey and his power of persuasion and the fact that he can’t be killed once he talks. I think the most overlooked aspect of the episode though was Dogen. He revealed his backstory (he got in a drinking related accident and Jacob saved his son in return for him coming to the Island and never seeing that son again), and then he was killed, almost immediately after. Lennon too was killed, but not before revealing that Dogen was the only thing keeping Smokey out. But what about the ash line? What do you make of this? Based on what little we know, what will Dogen’s absence mean for the unclaimed Candidates?

J: I was a little puzzled by the ash line/Dogen stuff too. We’ve seen ash stop Smokey before, and we saw them drawing an ashline around the Temple so…what happened? Does Dogen give it its power? Is there something else going on here? I too was moved by Dogen’s backstory (which I thought was better handled than a similar scene from around this time last year, when Charlotte told her whole backstory before dying), which was made all the more powerful by the brief glimpse of Dogen and his son in “Lighthouse.” I’ll come back to Dogen, but I’m pretty interested in your ideas about AlternaSayid’s lack of redemption tying into him being claimed. Its an interesting idea; I also liked Doc Jensen’s suggestion that we could be seeing the results of Sayid’s deal with the proverbial devil. He gets to see Nadia again, but he’s not the one who gets to be with her. It also seemed like the flashsideways had the most direct cliffhanger of any of them so far, which gives me hope that maybe we’re going to move past the repetitive structure of those so far and get into some actual storytelling. As for Dogen, I think his story calls into further question just how benevolent Jacob is, given the nature of the choice he offered Dogen. With him gone, it seems like things are looking pretty dire for Team Jacob; of the ones left, only Ilana and Richard seem to have any idea what’s going on. So, where do you think we’re going from here? Will what’s left of Team Jacob find Jack and Hurley? And is there any Candidate who doesn’t desperately want to join up with Smokey?

M: I think Jack and Hurley are going to eventually find the rest of Team Jacob, but I don’t know if I see that happening right away. Those two seemed perhaps destined for a different take on this war than Illana, Frank, or Sun. Sun and Jin came one step closer to reuniting which will be fantastic, the question is just under what circumstances? A lot of people noted that Sawyer was no where to be seen when Claire and Sayid joined Smokey at the end, but where was Jin? When we last saw him, he was telling Crazy Claire he’d take her to the Temple. Was he claimed by Smokey too? Will Sun and Jin be on opposite sides of the war? I think that’s an unanswerable question at the moment, so instead I’m going to ask you about Kate. She told Claire about Aaron (a mistake she had no way of knowing she was making), and was seen confusedly following Team Smokey out of the Temple. What confused me was that it didn’t bother her to see the Locke (or his body rather), when she still thought he was dead. Notice however that she was wearing lighter colors than anyone else out there. But what’s going to happen to Kate? Is she the next to be claimed or is she merely trying to enter phase two of her plan to reunite Claire and Aaron? Have we lost another candidate?

J: Well, my theory about claiming is that it has to do with people who recently died. Claire started acting weird after she was inside a building that blew up, she could well have died and then been claimed. Sayid was shot and killed (Miles confirmed that Sayid was totally dead for two hours) before coming back. Presumably that’s what happened to the French team, who started acting weird after disappearing into Smokey’s lair, and maybe that’s what Christian Shepard’s deal is (remember, Claire said she had been talking to both her dad and her friend). As for Kate, she did seem slightly puzzled to see Locke, but I imagine the show is having a hard time continually dramatizing people running into Locke after thinking he had died. She seems to be in a whole lot of danger, between being near Claire (this is the second time this season a character has vowed to kill one of our leads, shades of Smokey/Jacob?) and hanging with Smokey, but we’ll see. I know she doesn’t care much about protecting the island, but she doesn’t seem like she’d be that into Smokey’s kill-everything attitude. I don’t know where Sawyer and Jin are, but I imagine Smokey figured they wouldn’t be on board with his kill-a-lot-of-people plan, especially when that plan could have potentially included killing Miles, Kate, and Sun. Do you think this episode, more than any others, has drawn the battle lines and made the sides clear? And, if so, doesn’t it look like Team Jacob is dramatically outnumbered? And I didn’t get around to addressing this earlier, so what do you make of the initial Smokey/Sayid exchange? Does Smokey have some kind of persuasive power? Is he simply able yet another master manipulator/con artist? And why does he have to be stabbed before you hear him say anything for said stabbing to work?

M: It sounds like Smokey’s persuasive powers of speech are tied to his inability to be killed. Smokey said hello to Sayid before he tried to stab him, so it seems like once he talks to you, you’re hooked. As far as Team Jacob is concerned, yes, they are vastly out numbered, but they seem to have more mystical power on their side than Team Smokey. Team Jacob has Hurley, who is talking to Dead Jacob, Miles, who can heard dead people, Richard, who will assuredly return and still can’t age, and Illana, who seems to have gotten a final set of instructions from Jacob. So while they’re smaller, they have some power. Next week, we were told in promos, would be about Ben meeting his possible demise, which intrigues me the most. Ben hasn’t been around too much past “LA X,” so I’ll be supremely interested to see what’s going on in the life of our most morally ambiguous character. Any parting thoughts for us?

J: That promo definitely made me worry for Ben’s safety (and my sanity) but I’m anxious to see more AlternaBen. Either way, it would certainly be ironic if Ben’s story ends with him dying as a manipulated pawn in a larger struggle too big for him too comprehend, not unlike his nemesis John Locke. Either way, it should be intense. Until next week!

Each week, after taking a couple days to digest the episode and read what the blogs are says, we’re going to have a TUIW Conversation about Lost to try and unpack the episode, bounce theories off each other, and see if we can’t figure out what’s going on with our favorite group of TV castaways (sorry Gilligan!)

Jonah: All right, Michael, we’re a couple days removed from “Lighthouse,” which has been surprisingly controversial within the Lost community. I’m sympathetic to the notion, especially following last week’s mindblowing episode, that not as much was going on this week, especially for a Cuse/Lindelof episode. But I think that those people are kind of missing the point. This is still a season of Lost, even if its the last one, and they still need to take their time and put the pieces into place (and then immediately smash those pieces with a stick). Unlike Battlestar, which kind of lost the plot towards the end, what’s happening with these early episodes of Lost doesn’t make me think the writers are stalling or have no idea where its going…rather they’re positioning the dominos so it will be all the more satisfying when they’re knocked down. This week we saw just how wide-reaching the effects of the alternate timeline are (from changing when and where Jack got appendicitis to bringing Dogen, of all people, to the same LA recital as Jack to ensuring that there would be another Shepard with daddy issues in the world), got some more insight into what Jacob’s deal is, and caught up with Claire; not to mention the fact that, as an hour of television, it was affecting and funny. Were you satisfied by “Lighthouse” or am I going too easy on it? Are people pulling the ripchord just when things are getting interesting?

Michael: I was pretty satisfied. I think the big issue fans are running into has to do with ABC promoting every episode as “the final episodes!” We still have 13 hours of Lost left to go, and “Lighthouse” moved us towards the end, but didn’t put us immediately there. I think this is an episode that will seem much more significant when you go back and watch the season as a whole. It was about Jack starting to believe that he was on that Island for a reason. He had to be broken down to the lowest possible state before he could go back to the Island, and it’s going to take something more than Hurley being messenger for the ghost of Jacob to convince him of what he’ll need to do. Noel Murray had a good suggestion that Jack smashing the mirrors in the Lighthouse had less to do with Jack turning into the Hulk, and more Jack resisting the truth that there is a bigger reason as to why he’s there other than coincidence. I’ve always found it strange that Jack just wanted to go home and forget about everything that has happened. Of the Oceanic Six, he’s the only one who went back and did exactly what he did before. He’s resisted that there is something bigger there, and Lighthouse was about him starting to realize that. Moving on, what do you make of crazy Claire? Is she Rousseau 2.0 or a completely different beast?

J: Another interesting point about Jack smashing the mirrors raised by the AV Club comments section: it signifies even more that Jacob’s endgame is at hand. If his plan was for Jack to smash the mirrors, he must not be planning on bringing any more candidates to the island, so this is it. An interesting thought, for sure. As for crazy Claire, I’m intrigued by these first insights into the Infection. Claire remembers who she was and has the same basic objective as old-Claire (her bayybee), but she’s obviously way more violent and nuts. I’m still curious what the relationship is between Smokey and the Sickness. Is it related to Smokey’s nature? Another manifestation of the light/dark duality? Or are the infected just easier for Smokey to manipulate? Either way, with her, Smokey, and Sawyer headed for the Temple (which Sayid is also inside), I’m a little worried for the people still inside. What I can’t figure out is whether or not the Rousseau allusions (crazy Jungle lady, looking for her child, convinced the Others have the kid) are simply another sly way of tying season 6 back with season 1 or if there’s greater significance to it. Is there something more to the Claire/Rousseau connection? And what did you think about AlternaJack, his AlternaSon, and the super-random Dogen cameo?

M: I think we need maybe one more episode with Claire to see if there’s a definite Rousseau connection past the craziness, so we’ll see. As for AlternaJack, I actually thought that was a great storyline. If that kid is 13-15 in 2004, that means he was born way before Jack married Claire Dunphy, so that means there was a past for Jack that is completely different than the one we know. I’m excited to see where that goes. I think the Dogen interaction was meant to be more than a random connection. All of the other meetings of the characters in the FlashSideways have been similar to the relationships on the Island, so I’m thinking it’s more than chance that Dogen and Jack were in the same place. I keep coming back to the thing with Jack’s appendicitis. He seemed completely confused by the scar, almost in the same way he thought he recognized Desmond on the plane. Do you think this is Jack starting to have vague recollections of the Island? Are we getting closer to a convergence of timelines? What else stood out for you in “Lighthouse.”

J: I think the convergence may be approaching, and I’d bet it’ll be Jack who is the first one to actually become aware of it. The appendicitis was a big clue (and how weird is it that the island can affect when he has his appendix taken out?) and remember that Jack and Kate shared a moment in the airport too (which didn’t really happen with Kate and Sawyer or Claire). What else stood out for me? Well, probably the Lighthouse itself. Upon further examination, it turns out that the mirrors also showed the place where Jin and Sun got married and the church where Sawyer’s parents’ funeral took place. Note that those are both where Jacob touched them, so why Jack’s childhood home and not a hospital vending machine? I’ll go out on a limb and say that’s where Jacob touches AlternaJack, hastening the combination of the two timelines! Then there’s the fact that we learned that the Kate has a number (51) and isn’t crossed off. Also that 108 is “Wallace” (and, let’s get this out of the way: WHERE’S WALLACE, STRING????) which could mean that the whole 108 thing is misdirection from Jacob, or that Wallace is someone important we haven’t met, or (my new favorite crazy theory) Wallace=Smokey. Either way, do you think Jacob was serious when he said he was bringing someone else to the island? Who could it be? And what else did you notice?

M: Well I think the leading contender is definitely Desmond. Not only did we get a glimpse of him in “LA X,” but we had Eloise Hawking’s cryptic “the Island’s not done with you yet” comment from last year. Is it also too crazy to suggest her or Widmore, or even Aaron? Those are the only three people that have actually be on the Island that are still on the mainland that we know of, and it seems strange to just drop them and move on. There’s also Ji Yeon, but she seems a little more distantly connected than the others. What about Sawyer’s daughter? That seems like another thread that is too significant to drop, but maybe it isn’t. Perhaps it’s also a ruse by Jacob to get Jack and Hurley to the Lighthouse, a scenario that wouldn’t surprise me either. As far as anything else, we haven’t even mentioned the fact that Claire has vowed to kill Kate, who is actively looking for Claire. We know Claire is on Smokey’s side, so I’m interested to see Sawyer’s reaction to Claire’s desire to kill ol’ Freckles. Thanks to a super lame promo from ABC, it’s hard to tell what we’re going to get next week, but it’s a Sayid episode, so expect something big. Until then though, avoid infection, because if there’s one thing that will kill you on that Island, it’s infection.