Lost 4.04 - The Economist

[pocket1_pita]

I was on the flight from SF to DC on Thursday night on my way to a Ladies Weekend so when I got home from Shabbat dinner on Friday night I curled up with my laptop at midnight and watched the Economist. Lost just keeps getting faster and denser and I really can’t believe how much they packed into this single episode. 

 

 

 It turns out that Sayid gets off the Island and becomes an international assassin working for none other than Ben himself. And Ben is not the leader of a rag-tag band of Island hermits with an invisible pirate for a boss. It seems that he is actually the leader of some kind of international conspiracy to protect the Island.

 

First and foremost, let’s talk about how hot Sayid is. Be still my beating heart, but Naveen Andrews cleans up well. I appreciate how gorgeous he is in a tank top with curls, but he is absolutely delicious in a tuxedo with a blowout. On the Island, Sayid notices that Naomi is wearing a bracelet inscribed on the inside with “N, I’ll always be with you. RC”. He negotiates a trip to the freighter for himself and Des in exchange for the release for Charlotte. Because Jack is too emotional to deal with Locke without it blowing up, Sayid, Miles and Kate head off to Othersville. There they have some strange adventures. They get conned by Hurley of all people. Sayid finds a secret room hidden behind Ben’s bookcase containing passports of all kinds, currency from all over, suits and suitcases. Then he trades Miles for Charlotte and we see him and Des leaving the Island in the helicopter with Frank. Daniel tells Frank to follow the bearing exactly. I wonder what happens when you don't follow the bearing exactly. I guess in a boat you just go around in a snowglobe, but in a helicopter.....what?

 

Some strange things happen with the Freighties. They seem to have heard of Penny. I have a sad suspicion that Des might not be who he thinks he is. Or that, like Locke, he might be a tool with no idea who is wielding him. I mean, when you get right down to it, Des made the Island visible, he rescued Naomi from the tree when Mikhail would have found her and he turned off the signal blocker hiding the Island. There are a lot of fishy things about his background that he doesn’t understand himself. Maybe it is fate when a random woman you meet in a café gives you her dead husband’s boat. But maybe you are being used.

 

According to the pop-up-video version of Confirmed Dead, the woman that we see in Daniel’s first scene is not his wife, she is his caretaker. So I think that he is somewhere on the autism spectrum. Frank and Charlotte both seem sort of tender towards him, and he asks Frank’s permission to run his experiment. Frank tells him that he can only talk to Regina and has to hang up right away if Minkowski comes on the phone. Frank also refers to Naomi as Senior Management and Miles confirms that he met Charlotte on the boat. So now we’re starting to see some of the real dynamic between the Freighties. Naomi works for Abbadon, and they recruited this team of a psychic, an anthropologist and an autistic physicist to be led by Naomi on and off the Island. So on the Island we have 1) ghosts 2) really old shit 3) electromagnetic shit. Now we also know exactly the time discrepancy on and off the Island. It's 31 minutes. Not that big a discrepancy, but what could cause such a thing? I really think that the DHARMA Initiative made a time machine using the natural wormholes and the Casimir effect and that there were disasterous consequences.

 

Poor Kate. Jack may have feelings for her, but he just doesn’t get her. She flirts with him, and he either brushes her off or says the wrong thing. She seems like she is starting to have an agenda of her own, instead of just reacting to Jack’s agenda. She is seeing his clay feet very clearly now. Sawyer asks the questions I’ve been asking all along – what is Kate so eager to go back to? Now that they are in Othersville, which really looks quite comfortable, why not just stay and play house with Sawyer? That did make me swoon.

 

Off the Island, Sayid seduces the assistant of his mark to get close to her and ends up falling for her. Then it turns out she has seduced him to try and get information about his employer. Ah, the beautiful double-cross. After he shoots her, he sees her bracelet, the same one that Naomi was wearing. Whoever the Economist is, Naomi worked for him too or for his organization. Elsa was wearing that bracelet when they went to the opera, so he didn’t just see it then. He knew it all along.

 

One of the things that makes Lost such an amazing show is the way in which it taps our fear in a very modern way. The Others used terrorism against the Losties, Sayid was in the Republican Guard, he worked for the CIA to infiltrate a radical Islamist group, and now he is an international assassin. Is he good or is he bad? How do we even tell? I think that almost all of them end up converted to Ben’s mission whatever that may be. So I think that whatever Ben’s mission is, we will root for it too. I don’t think that Sayid works for Ben against his will. I think getting Sayid off the Island was part of a plan and that Ben is the one who makes the arrangements. In fact, Ben has always been able to get them off the Island. He just couldn’t take the risk before now. This is bigger than someone’s grudge against Ben, and it’s bigger than a bunch of people stranded on an Island. I think that the O6 all are part of a larger conspiracy to protect the Island and whatever is on it. They are all living with a terrible secret and they are very afraid.

Comments

[fatsella.livejournal.com]

Yay - I've been waiting forever for your thoughts on the show!!

I don't know - I didn't think Sayid was a willing participant. I thought he was working for Ben in order to protect (from Ben) whoever is still on the island. You seem to have a better handle on all of this though, so I like reading your ideas.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Hmm..you may be right. I definitely was of the mind that Sayid was working for Ben because he wanted to, but maybe not.

[allez-cuisine.livejournal.com]

I think Ben will end up being the lesser of two evils (the bigger evil being Abbadon/Widmore/Hanso), which is why Sayid will end up working for him. I don't think we could ever have Ben be 100% good, and actually it's the amibiguities in this show that I both love and am driven insane over.

What do you think of the absence of the cabin? At first I thought, well maybe Hurley wished it away. But, maybe Jacob is hiding from smartass Ghostbuster dude. That guy is shady, but he does seem to really be able to commune w/spirits.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way regarding bad and good. All of the people on this show are deeply flawed and all of them are transcendantly heroic. Like everyone.

I think you are right on about Jacob hiding from the ghostbuster.

[foos6la.livejournal.com]

I sent this analysis to my husband and he wrote a big long response chock full o' theories and ideas. Do you want me to post it here? I don't want to clog up your journal but he was very intrigued by your post.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Yes! Post it!

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Also, it is public so he can post if himself if he wants.

[polarama.livejournal.com]

It was so nice meeting you in person on Friday!

What is your take on the chronology of the flash forwards? One of my friends thinks that the golf course scene takes place *after* he kills Elsa--when he tells Ben "They know we're after them." The guy he shot on the golf course seemed really scared of him.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

It was great to meet you in person too!

It's possible that the first scene took place after the Elsa Affair, but I don't really think it matters all that much. Maybe the Baddies just know that Oceanic is what stands between them and the Island.

[foos6la.livejournal.com]

Alright, here you go. I'll also send him the link so you two can talk amongst yourselves. :) It's not that I don't enjoy LOST, really, I do! I like it a lot. However, I'm not into figuring it all out and coming up with theories. (I left the first sentence in for reference to what he's responding to)

> It turns out that Sayid gets off the Island and
> becomes an international assassin working for none
> other than Ben himself...

I agree with this--the creators of LOST are self-avowed big Star Wars fans, and the comparison between Ben and Darth Vader is pretty clear. He's the bad guy with bad ways of doing what he truly feels are good things. For him, the ends always justify the means, and until we know what the island really
signifies for the rest of the world, who are we to say he's wrong? I suspect he'll go out like Darth Vader in the end of the series--nobly sacrificing himself in a redemptive act that will ultimately protect the island, if not help/save our heroes.

> First and foremost, let's talk about how hot Sayid
> is... I guess in a boat you just go around in a
> snowglobe, but in a helicopter.....what?

I believe this implies some sort of wormhole, as you suggest. Daniel's comment that Frank must follow the exact bearing they came in on echoes Ben's advice to Michael when Michael and Walt left the island by boat.

Seems that anyone going in any other direction is screwed. There have been many hints of this--Hurley and (someone...maybe Charlie?) sitting on the beach at night playing with the radio and tuning in some random broadcast of 1940s dance music; the still-unexplained pirate ship; the two skeletal bodies found locked in an embrace in the Eden-like cave in the first season,
which the creators promised would pay off at the end of the series, etc. There is much to indicate that time travel is involved. Check out the orientation video they put out over the summer, if you haven't already. It seems Dharma was very much aware of the time travel/time-space game.

> Some strange things happen with the Freighties... But maybe you are being used.

I think I disagree with you here. I don't think Desmond is a dupe (at least not one who is currently being used effectively). He's thwarted the Freight peoples' agenda as often as he's inadvertently helped it, and everything he did to help their ultimate objective (finding the island) was done with only the noblest intentions. He's a good guy--I have no doubts about that. Penny is a bit of an unknown, but I suspect that the reason for Daniel/Frank's knowing look to one another at the mention of her name is because she's extraordinarily wealthy and therefore likely famous in certain circles, and if her agenda is truly to comb the Earth in search of Desmond, no
matter the cost, then her interests are at once running parallel and running counter to those of the Freighter people. So yeah, they'd know Penny, but whether they know her as a rival, an enemy or--as you seem to suggest, a friend--is a big unknown right now.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

1. I love the Ben as Vader idea and TPTB have referred to Jacob as the Emperor more than once. What do you think of the idea that there were in fact dangerous people on flight 815? I would love it if Scott/Steve and the guy with diarrhea that Goodwin killed did turn out to be secret baddies out to end the world.

2. Jeff Jensen of EW has a great interview with TPTB today where they get pretty specific about time travel and how they will use it on the show. I know some people don't like to know, but I am not one of those people. I don't want to know what happens in an episode before I watch it, but I love to know what the creaters of Lost are thinking about their own work. Also, I love to gloat over people who think that there are alternate universes and time loops. Check it out.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20179125,00.html

3. You are probably right about Desmond. It's a pretty compelling story to just throw away like that. And he is a great character.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh and I hadn't heard that idea about there having been bad guys on the actual flight. Tell us more...

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Oh that is just a little pet theory of mine. I think that the Others greeted the Lostaways as a threat because they WERE a threat. There were people on the plane who were planted there by the Baddies and they were actually a threat to the Island. I think we will see that the Others actually are the good guys and we will end up very sympathetic to their cause. So if Ethan and Goodwin were good guys, we will find out that the two random deaths they caused were bad people.

[(Anonymous)]

I've come to the same conclusion re: the Others. They're good guys who have been placed at the mercy of Ben because Jacob has demanded it. The only one we've seen to be TRULY bad is Ben (though as discussed, this seems to be a matter of nurture more than nature, and he might still change course before the end). I'm not sure about the notion that there were bad guys on the flight unless they just happened to be there--not that they somehow intended to crash on the island. The reason the plane crashed was because Desmond didn't get the numbers entered in time, which created a magnetic pulse that brought the plane down as it was flying over. Of course, the plane was already hundreds of miles off course when that happened according to the pilot, so it is possible that there was some sort of sinister plot that brought the plane over the island in the first place...?

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

We have already seen that at least two people (Des and Mrs. Hawking the Antique lady) on this show can see the future in flashes. If someone knew that the plane would crash on the Island, they could put someone on the plane. Furthermore, the person who was responsible for the plane crashing, Desmond, was specifically influenced by another person with future-seeing, Mrs. Hawking, to get his ass to the Island.

[(Anonymous)]

All of this is true, but also seems to contradict the creators' comments to EW about it being impossible to alter the timestream. Whatever is happening in the flash-forwards WILL happen, no matter what. They can't change the past, which means that they can't put someone on the plane who wasn't ALWAYS on the plane, just because they are able to predict that it will crash. I guess everything starts to fall apart under that kind of scrutiny though.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

we know that some things can't be changed. if redshoesguy is going to die, he will die. you can push out of the path of a load of bricks, but he will slip in the shower and die the next day. You can put up a lightning rod, but charlie will still be pierced in the neck by an arrow, or die in the looking glass. you can't stop some events from happening. But clearly that doesn't apply to all events or it wouldn't be possible to change any of these things. so the implication is that some things can't be changed, but some things can be changed.

[(Anonymous)]

And that's a bit of a problem, really. If the rules are going to be that fluid, then nothing is cast in stone and the creators can do whatever they need to do to tell the story they want to tell. I'm a big fan of establishing narrative rules and sticking to them. I always use the example of the Terminator movies. The first movie says you can't change the past. The robot comes back to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to the savior of humanity. He is pursued by a human solider. Human soldier ends up fathering the savior and the defeated robot ends up becoming the first building blocks of the evil computers that will ultimately destroy humanity. Time is a closed loop, nothing can be changed--in effect, everything that will ever happen has already happened. Then all of a sudden Terminator 2 comes out and by the end of the movie, they've rewritten history, stopped Judgment Day and prevented the future from happening. So the rules so clearly established in the first movie are totally invalidated in the second.

I would hate to see that happen with Lost. If they don't do a VERY good job of tying everything together in one cohesive and credible Grand Unified Solution, the show will ever after be plagued by nitpickers who will point out every inconsistency, broken or contradictory rule, etc. There are so many balls in the air at this point, it's ridiculous: psychic Walt, polar bears on tropical islands, smoke monsters, Desmond's visions, lucky/unlucky lottery numbers, a million bizarrely coincidental relationships, Eko's brother's plane, the pirate ship, Jack's dad, Kate's horse, Dharma food airlifts, four-toed statue feet, etc etc etc. If they are able to tie it all together in a way that makes narrative sense, I will be TRULY amazed.

[foos6la.livejournal.com]

In my gut, I feel like they've been playing the 'true love finds a way' card with regard to Desmond's relationship with Penny--defying her father's wishes, him sailing around the world to prove himself to her, pining away for her for years on the island while she searches desperately for him instead of moving on, etc--and I just don't see them betraying all of that
with a cheap reveal that she's been an antagonist all along.

> According to the pop-up-video version of Confirmed
> Dead, the woman that we see in Daniel's first scene
> is not his wife, she is his caretaker... I really think that
> the DHARMA Initiative made a time machine using the
> natural wormholes and the Casimir effect and that
> there were disasterous consequences.

Ok, this I can speak to (time travel is sort of 'my thing') I don't believe that Dharma made a time machine. That's too pat, and frankly, too implausible. A machine that transports a person or a vehicle, ok. A whole island? That's a little too
Brigadoon for my tastes.

So, for the sake of argument, the island is a natural phenomenon. Dharma found it and realized what it was,but found that it was already inhabited. We know from Ben's VERY revealing flashback episode last season that there were 'Others' before there was Dharma, and they were antagonistic. The Others were natural island dwellers, who seem (on the surface anyway) to be content to live on the island's terms. Dharma, conversely, is the stereotypical well-funded,
well-intentioned but ultimately ineffectual 'do-gooder club', coming in to live like hippies, do experiments and change the world with their discovery. They're the Conquistators showing up in the West Indies ready to rape and pillage from the innocent native people.

But these native people have a secret--they know how their island works, and how to play by its rules. All they needed was an inside guy--somebody who knew how to play both sides to the advantage of the Others. So Ben was tapped by Jacob as his chosen one and given dominion over the Others if he would help eliminate the intruders. If anyone is a dupe here, it's Ben.
Jacob/the island is using him in its efforts to remain undetected, but he's only given power so long as he is useful to the island, and as long as he remains effective in his position. When John Locke showed up, the island seems to have concluded that Locke is the new Ben, and now Ben is cast aside--old news. I think that Locke is being corrupted by the island's influence. Just as Ben has been raised into a monster under the island's care, Locke is becoming maniacal and autocratic, just like Ben. It seems like the island's investment in an individual is a corrupting influence on par with the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. The question is whether or not Locke will be able to return to his better self and 'throw the ring into the fire' before Ben/Gollum makes a final, possibly fatal, play for it.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

I love this comparison between Locke and Ben! I completely agree - Ben as Gollum is such a good call, and Locke is certainly being corrupted by the Island. It plays on all of his weaknesses and desire to be Special.

[foos6la.livejournal.com]

Now, the time travel thing. Yes, the island seems to be 31 minutes behind the rest of the world. But that 31 minutes wouldn't be fixed--it would be relative to the speed of the rocket, the distance from the ship to the impact point on the island, etc. As more time goes by, that 31 minutes will compound as the island slips further and further behind the rest of the world. We know the Losties have been on the island
for about 100 days at this point. Well, all things being equal, if we assume that the rocket flight--which should have taken 3 minutes--actually took 31 minutes, then it's fair to say the island is moving forward in time at a rate of about 1/10 the rest of the world. So 100 days on the island is about
1000 days back in the world, or about 3 years. Did you notice Sayid's gray hairs in his flash-forward episodes? A few strands in his beard, a bit at the temples, nothing too dramatic but DEFINITELY intentional. You can really notice it at the golf course. My theory is that we're going to find that
the Oceanic 6 have been back in the world for a while--several years, I would guess--and that will be used to justify little continuity issues like Walt having rather obviously aged quite a bit more than 100 days over the 4 years of the show--that when our heroes inevitably make their way back to the island to
rescue the rest of the Losties, they'll find them unchanged, and that not much time has gone by, while they themselves have done quite a bit of living (and drunken pill-popping) since they left. That 31 minutes is pretty revealing...

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Yes the 1/10 ratio has to be right. I've heard some calculations of 8 years or so, but that is too long.

[yaya-mama.livejournal.com]

OMG. I loved that episode, and I love this discussion in your journal. I have nothing to contribute -- I'm just eating this all up.

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Wasn't that an awesome episode AND how about Elsa's incredible hair on the way to the opera?!

Foos6's husband here...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi everybody! I'm crashing the journal because I loves me some Lost and while there are many fans, there are precious few obsessives, so I have to latch on to them when I find them!

So--GREAT article from Entertainment Weekly! Very informative. Interesting to see how hard they slammed the door on the idea of alternate timelines--that seemed an obvious implication of the second flight 815 found at the bottom of the ocean. I'm also surprised because I was convinced that if, in fact, that IS Locke in the coffin, and if he DID kill himself according to the scenario I described earlier, that part of Jack's desire to go back to the island is to 'save' Locke by rewriting the future from the point of departure. I guess I kind of pictured the confrontation with Locke at the radio tower at the end of season 3 as the temporal ground zero, where future Jack and company would return to prevent present Jack from contacting the freighter in the first place, thus negating the 'dark future' we're seeing in the flash-forwards. If there is no alternate timeline, that means whoever is in the coffin is dead for real, and that's surprising. I still think it's Locke, but this puts a different spin on things. If he did kill himself because he was forcibly removed from the island, that might actually represent a huge turning point for the character of Jack, who has always been Locke's polar opposite/nemesis. It will be interesting if, in the absence of Locke's belief in destiny/magic/fate/whatever, if Jack will abandon his black and white realist view of the world and be forced to find the middle ground between his previous worldview and Locke's more fantastic sensibility. They seem sort of like a Mulder and Scully pairing of a believer and a skeptic, and the question is, will the skeptic step up and, in the absence of the believer, become the believer himself? Seems to me that based on his self-destructive behavior in the finale, Jack is definitely coming to terms with the idea of a world without Locke and the knowledge that Jack may have been wrong all along, and that Locke has died for Jack's mistakes.

And the comment in the article about the possibility that Ben might have passed himself off as a passenger from the plane, and his thus a member of the Oceanic 6, is pretty crazy. Did anyone else get the impression that Ben was patching Sayid up in a veterinary clinic? I'd have to go back and look at the episode again, but if I remember correctly, there was something about the room that made me think it was a vet examination room. Has anyone among the 815 passengers ever mentioned being a vet? Someone whose identity Ben could steal? I know Bernard is a dentist...could it have been a dentist's office, and Ben is masquerading as Bernard?

Sorry again for crashing--kick me out anytime :)

Re: Foos6's husband here...

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Well the other obvious implication of the sunken flight 815 is that it was planted there by someone with a lot of resources (like, say, a magic box) who wanted everyone to stop looking for the plane.

I have been very anti-time loop ideas for a while now. I have read them, but i don't buy them.

And the reason it seemed like a vet's office was the dogs in cages and vet type posters on the wall.

Re: Foos6's husband here...

[(Anonymous)]

Oh right! Duh! I forgot about the dogs in cages. That has to be a clue of some sort, right? Why not a regular doctor's office? What's the significance?

It seems that Abaddon's association did sink a fake plane (at least, that's going to be one of the two possibilities alluded to in the EW article). I sort of have a problem with monolithic, godlike organizations that can pull off stuff like this, though. That sort of omnipotence is a little cartoonish. It's like that David Fincher movie, The Game, where Michael Douglas is given a battery of psychological tests (all done in montage, of course, so we don't know exactly what they're doing to him) so that a complicated life-changing 'game' can be played on him. By virtue of these mysterious tests, the administrators of the game can accurately predict exactly how he will act in every situation, what he will do, what he'll say, etc. leading up to a big cathartic ending. Meanwhile, the people running the game ostensibly have total control over the TV media, the traffic in NYC, international flights, etc. I'm willing to suspend disbelief (Lost sort of demands it) but there are limits. I'm not sure why the doppleganger airplane is my limit of credibility, but it is.

Re: Foos6's husband here...

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Or Ben's association sank a fake plane....

[yaya-mama.livejournal.com]

Maybe it is fate when a random woman you meet in a café gives you her dead husband’s boat. But maybe you are being used.
---

WAIT A MINUTE! I just read on lostpedia that Random Woman is LIBBY! How did I miss that?? I didn't notice. You must have noticed.

Who was Libby connected to, and how might she have been playing Des???

[pocket1.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the freakiest thing? Libby was the one who gave Des his boat, The Elizabeth which she claimed was her dead husband David's boat. She was also in the mental hospital with Hurley. I have no idea who she was connected to. But it fits in with my idea that someone has foreknowledge of the plane crash and made efforts to place people on the plane who would crash on the Island. Like maybe Libby.