LOST: Jack broke your lighthouse, dude.

6.05: "Lighthouse"

Gonna hit a couple of the big reveals/topics in LOST1 from tonight's episode... Here's the LOST2 ramble.

CLAIRE AND HER FRIEND.

Claire's infected, and she's been plenty busy taking over for Rousseau, trapping and picking off the Others, whom she holds responsible for the abduction of her child. IS this also what happened to Rousseau? Infection?

And it happened, or at least started, three years ago, after she got killed by the mercenary attack on New Otherton. After Sawyer found her in the rubble, she joined the gang for the rest of the day, until she left her baby behind and wandered off into the jungle with her father that night, with Miles as the only witness. Remember when we catch her sitting in the corner of the cabin with Christian (one of Locke's visits?)? Yeah, she was already good and gone right then.

So, Claire takes beartrapped Jin back to her... umm... hovelpile? She also brings only-wounded Justin back for some interrogatin. Jin isn't exactly sure how all-there Claire is, so he keeps his mouth shut at first when she goes on about the Others abducting Aaron. Jin asks how she can be sure, and she tells him that they took her and tortured her...

CLAIRE: They stuck me with needles, they branded me! And if I hadn't been able to escape the Temple, they would've killed me!
JUSTIN: No, you're not remembering things...

Justin tries to correct her apparently mistaken take on her experience at the Temple. Altho, claimed or not, there's not a lot of good ways to take Dogen's "testing" and "medication" as we've seen it administered to Sayid, right?

Anyhow, when it comes to Justin literally getting the axe, Jin reveals...

JIN: Kate took him. Kate took Aaron.

Alas, that information doesn't make quite the impression he might have hoped, and Justin gets axed anyhow. In light of her instability, Jin decides to "play along" until he can get to safety, and takes back what he said about Kate and Aaron. Later...

CLAIRE: If what you said was the truth... If Kate was raising Aaron.. I'd kill her.

I *so* wanted Jin to take back taking it back right then. =)

Alas, Jin barely had time to say anything before...

LOCKESAU: Am I interrupting?
JIN: John?
CLAIRE: That's not John! THIS... is my friend!

No big surprise there. Interesting how we hear about her friend earlier, about how he told her that the Others had Aaron...

CLAIRE: First, my father told me, and then my friend told me, so i'm pretty sure.

So, that fits right nice with the notion that Esau walked and talked around as Christian before putting on his Locke suit. In Christian's skin he ultimately led Locke to his final fate, no doubt very carefully influencing him to become a very particularly groomed vessel for himself to Monsteriffically clone and inhabit.

His palling around with infected Claire, as Christian and Lockesau, also shows how, at least as long as Jacob was alive, Esau had to work thru agents when it came to wacking the spring-baptized Others. The rules, donchaknow.

CLAIRE: If there's one thing that'll kill you around here, it's infection.

Does infection outwardly manifest itself in the hair style of the infected? Look at Claire, right? And I could swear Sayid's wearing his 'do differently, no?

Is Jin wearing black boxers with little red hearts?

If Lockesau's there, then Sawyer's likely there, too, right? Or closeby. I hope we get some Sawyer-Claire interaction soon. Is this the Monster's Temple assault team? Claire, Sawyer, hopping Jin? At the Lighthouse, Jacob tells Hurley that he had to get Hugo and Jack as far from the Temple as possible, because Someone Bad is going there...

JACK AND THE LIGHTHOUSE.

How awesome is the lighthouse? The stone walls, the mirrors, the gearworks, the degrees and candidate names! Like a good Vertigo comic meets Myst! So, the numbers do "mean" something, each one is a degree/heading relative to the Lighthouse. Does that REALLY mean anything...? Assuming one candidate per degree, that's 360 candidates for Jacob's job. Weirdly arbitrary, eh? I'll probably end up looking at some screencaps of the names on the circumference of the mirror dial in the next couple days.

In the mirror, before Jack had Hurley turn the mirrors to 23 degrees, did we see Sun's family's home in Korea? Or someone other candidate's home, maybe in Japan? I wonder if there's a gear to turn to adjust the time, so that Jacob could be observing his candidates at different moments in their lives... at any point in their lives.

Hrmm... Maybe the Lighthouse is "responsible" for the candidates, beaming some Island energy into the outside world at individuals (children?) who live along these 360 meridians. Or, the Lighthouse is divining rod for finding these candidates, and was built specifically at this nexus of ley-line like great circles, somewhat similar to how the Lamppost was built to predict the location of the Island.

It's a little annoying how predictable Jack is. Well, maybe that's not fair. That predictability, recognized by us, the viewer, as well as the other characters who inhabit LOST (Hurley and Jacob)...

HURLEY: You ever try to get Jack to do something? It's like impossible. I can just go myself.
JACOB: You have to bring him with you, Hugo.
HURLEY: It's bad enough you already made me write way too much stuff and I just lied to a samurai. Look, if you have any idea how to get jack to go on your little adventure, I'm listening, dude.

...is testimony to how much of Jack there is to know, how real he's become as a character. What's REALLY annoying is how his predictable behavior is expressed. This time it's Jack's frustration at the revelation that his life has apparently been manipulated since childhood, unfairly and violently taken out on the mirrors of the Lighthouse, a frickin wondrous spyglass directed at the outside world. *sigh* It *is* LOST, so of course, we would be denied its coolness.

But, y'know, we know that Jacob is right about approaching Jack...

HURLEY: Wait a minute. Did you want Jack to see what was in that mirror? Why?
JACOB: It was the only way for him to understand how important he is. Jack is here because he has to do something. He can't be told what that is. he's gotta find it himself. Sometimes you can just hop in the back of someone's cab and tell them what they're supposed to do. Other times, you hafta let them look out at the ocean for a while.

Love Hurley getting his STAR WARS on... In reference to Jacob's appearances...

HURLEY: He's dead. He turns up whenever he wants, like Obi Wan Kenobi.

LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND?

I had this idea a couple years back that the Island might have been part of the outside world in ancient times? This was inspired by Richard's long-lived and ageless presence as well as the remains of the four-toed statue. Specifically, I believed that the Island was part of the Egyptian civilization, and influenced or controlled somehow by Alexander the Great. I was even rooting for Richard to actually BE Alexander, unwittingly wandering onto the Island, either as island or mistaken desert oasis. Maybe even when it first pops out of the world and into its snowglobe pocket dimension. Anyhow, I did some clicking about the interwebz and I found a possible, well, candidate! An actual Island, I think it was located at the mouth of the Nile, and on it were several religious buildings, statues, and a massive lighthouse. I ended up dismissing the notion because of the dissimilarities between the Island and this Egyptian island and its fame. With the discovery of the LOST Lighthouse, tho, it's come back to me. I think that there might have been a smaller island or sometime-isthmus or peninsula that was home to a smaller lighthouse... I'm gonna hafta go on another clickfest sometime soon to try and re-discover my folly.

* 2/25/2010. For details on my folly, you want to be looking up the Pharos Lighthouse, aka The Lighthouse Of Alexandria. I do still like it for a connection to the Island. =)

More on this episode later...

Keep on keepin on~