LOST: crazy talk

Talked a bit of LOST w Larry yesterday and re-watched the season premiere w my sister and Row earlier this eve.

Larry hit me with the idea that when Keamy kills Alex in front of Ben, and Ben sorta cracks with shock and says, "He changed the rules," Ben is referring to more than just a code of conduct between honorable(?) foes, but to the rules as in physical laws. I was kind of skeptical of the idea at the meta level, y'know, of the writers choosing to go that way with a TV audience, but I had to agree that it really works, internally, story-wise.

Larry had the idea that Ben had some foreknowledge of Alex's life. That he KNEW that Alex would live to be an adult, and so, was confident that Keamy wouldn't, and couldn't, kill her (altho, of course, he could hurt her, and he would want to minimize that). It's a mean thing to say that Ben's reaction was out of proportion with the event, the death of his daughter, but y'know, so much of the best parts of LOST work on multiple levels.

After re-watching the premiere, and hearing the phrase "the rules" more than a couple times, I'm officially signing on to the theory that Widmore has, or at least Ben believes Widmore has, changed fate. He may not have done it with direction and a plan, but he's created and introduced an x-factor that makes it possible for time and destiny to be mucked with.

What x-factor, you ask?

Desmond, of course. =)

Faraday sort of confirms this when he talks to button-pushing Desmond during the time-skips, and apparently calculates/proves Desmond to be "special" in his notes.

And we've seen Desmond push fate. I mean, he managed to push off Charlie's final destination until he "came to" a death whose circumstances would lead to Widmore finding the Island. The pawn shop Watcher would say that the universe would get Charlie eventually, and the three attempts that death made that we saw, well, they would've taken Charlie out in pointless, tragic ways. But the fourth way that Desmond manages to get Charlie to, drowning in the Looking Glass, it lets the universe catch up to Charlie, but it also has Charlie DO Something Important.

The theory is likely gonna need some fine tuning, but assuming that Widmore is behind a change in the rules, and Desmond is the agent of that change, don't all the Widmore connections and meddling in Desmond's life paint a picture of manipulation that lands Desmond in the position of being the guy who blows the hatch?

Buying into this, it's not that Widmore somehow decided that Alex would die and thusly, it happened. Rather, Desmond's special spacetime status creates ripples that result in opportunities for fate to be changed, in unpredictable ways. These ripples would also ultimately allow for Desmond, the Oceanic Six, 815 survivors, and even the Others, to change something in the past that would result in their living on the Island for the rest of their lives, but also insuring that incidents like the Blackrock, Rousseau's ship, Desmond's boat, and flight 815 crashing on the Island never happen(ed) in the first place.

Hey, I warned you in the title—crazy talk.

Some other LOST droppings...

The Faraday we see at the beginning of the premiere is DEFinitely not of the time. I mean, that's the 70s, 80s at the latest, right? Faraday's got the facial fuzz he's sporting in present day. So, he must've taken advantage of a time-skip that we have yet to see, to infiltrate the DI construction crew for a closer look at the Orchid when it was being built.

I had a thought that the worker who gets bumped out of time by drilling into that wall might have been young Faraday, but I guess I take it back. Maybe it's someone else that we'll see or hear from bouncing thru time, tho?

Who the heck chops off a hand as the first order of business when taking a prisoner? In the past? Think Widmore might be with those soldiers on the Island in the past?

Jumping back to earlier episodes goings-on... Larry refreshed my memory about some episodes I might have actually missed or missed pieces of due to crapped-out DVR power or programming last year.

Mr. Abbaddon(sp?), remember him? I called him Mr. X in some earlier entries. He's the almost alienly proportioned African-American man who visits Hurley at Santa Rosa, passing himself off as a lawyer representing Oceanic. He's also the guy who assembles the Fantastic Four for Widmore's freighter. He's ALSO the orderly who plants in Locke's mind the seed of the idea to go on a walkabout, despite his disability. When he did that, was Abbaddon working for Widmore or Ben?

When Kate can't explain to Jack where she's been I'm pretty sure she's hanging out w Cassidy, Sawyer's con-girl ex (and Kate's one-time partner), and their daughter, Clementine. Guess that means that they've moved from New Mexico to somewhere in or near LA.

Why is Jack so spooked by Aaron? Just the realization that he's his nephew, and that Aaron mom, Jack's half-sister, died on his watch? A kind of haunted? Or is there something spookier? Does Jack's dad live inside of Aaron? Why doesn't Ben seem to care about Aaron? Maybe Aaron's got nothing to do w the Island? But why claim Claire if Aaron doesn't figure. And, if Claire was Claire, she would know better than to let anyone else raise Aaron. There was some point, when she was hysterical, where she cries that out, accepting her fate as given to her by the fortune teller. Something like, "I have to raise him!?"

I was certain that Claire died in the rocket-exploded bungalow in New Otherton. And that the Claire who shows up in the Cabin w her dad is an Island-animated Claire. Larry explained that she definitely traveled with Sawyer and Miles for a while before disappearing. I'd totally forgotten that, but it reminded me that Miles looks at her funny the whole time. Miles, Mr. Talks-to-the-Dead, y'know? There's something already odd about Claire before she disappears in to the woods w her dad, something like death.

We've seen the Island use people and bodies in dreams and waking visions/interaction (including Christian Shephard, Boone, Yemi, Eko, Anna Lucia), and we've seen the smoke monster do it (only once, with Yemi, Eko's brother). I don't quite know where the Walt visions fit in. I feel like those have actually been Walt, or an aspect of Walt, seeking to help his friends.

A correction to an earlier thought of mine... The Hostiles were visiting civilization in a regular way before Ben and Dharma. We've seen that Richard Alpert shows up at John Locke's birth, and then in his childhood, representing a school for gifted kids. The agents that Ben seems to have on tap around the world could have been part of the pre-Dharma Hostiles network in the real world.

That visit Alpert makes to young Locke, that's when he administers the Dalai Lama reincarnation-like identity test, apparently seeking the Hostiles' next leader. Locke is offered an adventure comic book, a knife, a vial of a soil sample, a compass, a baseball mitt, and a (maybe religious) book of laws. Alpert seems pleased when Locke chooses the vial and the compass, but when Locke chooses the knife, he believes Locke has failed and cuts the interview short.

Little John DREW the smoke monster as a kid. Richard recognizes it in the drawing. Did Locke inadvertently CREATE it?

Special abilities/gifts...

1. Hurley. Interacts with his dead friends in his waking life. They give him advice and help. He once told Locke that he believed that he and Locke were the only ones who could see the cabin cuz they were the craziest. When Charlie shows up at Santa Rosa, one of the other patients points him out. Communion w the Island does seem to involve or resemble a kind of craziness. In the institution, he was befriended by a snarky guy named Dave. This is the same hospital where Libby was for some time. Her husband, the man who bought her the boat that she ends up giving to Desmond, the Elizabeth, his name is David. Could Hurley have somehow "tuned in" to Libby's proximate madness and brought David/Dave to imaginary life?

2. Ben. He's a kind of manipulating social Karnak the Eternal. He can quickly suss out the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in others and turn almost any situation to his advantage. Also, as a child, he demonstrated the ability to interact with the dead (his mother) while on the Island. When Alpert encounters him as a child, he's impressed first that he's heard from his dead mother, but even more impressed when he finds out that his mother never set foot on the Island.

That's all I've got for now. Stupid show.

=)

Keep on keepin on~