pocket1_pita | Lost 4.13 There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3

So the O6 are flying towards the Island when suddenly it disappears in a big whoomp and they run out of gas and dump in the ocean. They throw out the life raft and all make it on board. Des almost dies and Jack resuscitates him and it is so much like the Pilot and the S1 Finale combined that when Searcher’s light come upon them I almost freaked out. But OMG! It’s Penny! I couldn’t believe that Penny really came for him – she is so smart! She just at some point decided he really was going to call her in December 2004 and she set up a listening station so that she would catch his call. Of course now I have to be worried. Because Claire and Aaron never got on a helicopter. So what was Des’ vision? It benefited Desmond most of all, and while I would hate to think that he deceived Charlie into his death, it’s hard to see how Charlie’s sacrifice was any good for the Losties. He turned off the transmission blocker that Ben was using to hide the Island from the people who were searching for it – the Freighter and Penny.

The Lie was born because Jack thinks that whoever sank a plane to the bottom of the Sunda Trench and sent a Freighter to the Island would also want to kill anyone left on the Island. So I guess if they lie this mysterious party who clearly already know that the plane is fake will think that everyone else is dead? The motivation for this lie doesn’t make sense to me. There are a lot of things about the future that make no sense to me at all.

Sayid comes to see Hurley, kills the guy who is watching him and they leave for somewhere safe, but not the Island. Hurley beats imaginary Eko at chess before they leave. Sayid doesn’t let Hurley say Locke’s name – why? Is it like a Voldemort thing?

Sun goes to see Widmore in London and tells him they have common interests and that the O6 are not the only ones to have left the Island. I think she is talking about Ben here and that she blames Ben for killing Jin. Because even thougth Jin isn’t dead, Ben is technically the one who killed him by killing Keamy. And John Locke/Jeremy Bentham is the only person who knows that. I think she might have blamed Jack at first, but after some reflection, even Sun must see that Jack saved her life at the expense of Jin’s. Jack is just feeling sorry for himself. They couldn’t have gone back to get him or they would all have died in the explosion. They could have circled and hovered, but they were trying to make it back to the Island. I think that Bentham came to see her and told her that Ben killed Keamy and now she is after Ben.

Bentham came to see Kate too, but Kate thought he was crazy. Kate freaks out at Jack after he says that he is trying to protect her and Aaron. I have this theory about what Kate heard Claire say to her – Claire said “Don’t you dare bring him back” – and I think we are meant to think she is talking about Aaron but really she is talking about Locke. Same with Charlie’s message for Jack that Hurley passed along – “You’re not supposed to raise him” We are meant to think it is Aaron, but I think it’s Locke. I wonder what it is that convinces Kate to go back to the Island. I bet Ben kidnaps Aaron. I don’t’ understand why Aaron came home with Kate or why Kate came home at all. Why didn’t she stay with Penny? Or leave Aaron with Penny? Jack plays a drunk and high person really well. I am pretty impressed with Matthew Fox’s acting skillz. I am excited to see Ben and Jack together in more scenes, and I am sure that Ben’s real agenda is getting to Penny.

I can’t deal with doing pics for my recaps, but here are two great reviews including pics.

http://fishbiscuitlandblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.theackattack.com/

And if you are interested in the literary and philosophical discussion of Lost, check out J. Wood:

http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=3350#more-3350

"There's no place like home, but you can't go home again. That was already laid out in the monomyth structuring much of Lost's subtext, Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The quickest way to show this might be:

A person leaves home to take care of some business. The person eventually crosses a threshold that divides the homeland from some other land.
There's a whole bunch of trials, temptations and dangers to be faced. If the person can successfully navigate those trials, the person's consciousness is changed. If the person doesn't successfully navigate the trials, well... (see Ben not being allowed back on the island)
After finally taking care of said business, the person eventually gets back home, but the person really isn't the same person as before because of the change in consciousness — the person is more like person²; same memories, same general identity, but a changed outlook that makes person^aexperience home in a different way. Person² may even have a hard time relating to the homefolk because person² can't express what it is she or he experienced out beyond the threshold.

If this sounds vaguely like Dorothy's journey in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, that's no coincidence. According to Campbell, this model was the basic DNA for all mythic narratives; Dorothy, Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Yossarian, a person's basic experience from birth through old age, a spiritual seeker's exploration of consciousness, going away to school or the military, you name it.

But stories are more interesting when they can manipulate the mode, break into new territory and redefine previously understood ideas. The Oceanic 6 have certainly returned home, but they're not quite the O6. They're more like the O6², and they couldn't tell the homefolk what they've been through even if they wanted to. (Who would believe them, and how would they explain the lack of an island?) In most monomythic stories, the person returns somewhat more than she or he was before leaving; the O6² are both more and less, in some ways exaggerations of their strengths and weaknesses. What's more, those strengths and weaknesses seem to be the reverse of what they were on the island: Sayid, the man who walked away from torture, is now Ben's hired assassin. Jack, the social leader and healer, is verging on a heavy case of delirium tremens and can barely manage himself, let alone a scalpel. Hurley (with the help of Libby) went from finding an inner strength and confidence in his own mental stability to playing chess with dead Nigerian warlords in the Santa Rosa mental hospital. Sun has gone from a near-shrinking violet who was looking for a back door out of her marriage to a corporate titan living for the memory of her husband. Kate, always on the run and making just the wrong choice at the right time, has become a pillar of stability in her role as surrogate mother. Ben has gone from a kind of island shaman-king to a permanent state of exile, stuck in a cycle of vengeance and samsara out in his own private Land of Nod. We don't yet know about Desmond or Lapidus, but we do know something about another islander, Locke. The news isn't good.

Locke ended up being the one in the coffin (although he was one of three options; if any leaks escaped, two other endings were ready in the wings, one with Sawyer in the coffin, and one with Desmond). Locke is now confirmed to be Jeremy Bentham, another in the Lost list of Enlightenment philosophers. And he's an interesting choice: When forging his ideas of utilitarianism and legal positivism, Bentham forcefully broke from the theories natural rights and social contracts put forth by the philosopher John Locke. Island Locke's name change introduces a narrative and metaphysical break that gives rise to all kinds of fun new complications, particularly when it comes to island Locke's uncertainty between faith and reason. "

I’m not as upset about the hiatus as I was last year. I feel happier with where the story is going and that they wrapped the season up to a place where I can leave it for a while.