Did anyone else think that Desmond’s routine was creepy? I know his isolation could explain the fastidiousness, but it seemed more sinister almost like one of those fussy serial killers. It would explain why he is washing his dishes before washing them in the dishwasher.
And FWIW that bowl he was washing was certainly from the past two years as I have a similar set and they are all over Target and Pottery Barn. Also the washer dryer were the new-fangled types from Whirlpool. I covet them.
I agree – my first thought upon seeing the symbol was that it meant that the contents were made in Korea (see flag) where Sun and Jin are from.
However, the eight-sided I Ching surrounding a Yin Yang is different from the four symbols you get with a Korean flag. This symbol, the Ba Gua, is more likely what they were trying to show. It’s featured prominently in feng shui.
I guess the room that’s down the hatch would have to be pretty harmoniously aligned, what with all the magnetic fields and monsters stomping around topside. I’d definitely need some inner peace and harmony.
Given the name of the episode I was sure the guy during the faux flashback was Locke. But when we saw Desmond I suddenly knew it was him. As for why the guy is stuck in the 70s, he isn’t - maybe he just likes the music.
Now the question becomes, did he know they were digging the entrance up? Did he know and not do anything? Did he not know? But the entrance isn’t far from his main room, why didn’t he know?
I was drawn to the computer. I want to know what he does there. Is it a missile silo? A research center? Does he control the monster? If not, who?
Sooooooooo many questions. I love a show which keeps me asking questions.
We intentionally didn’t get involved with watching Lost last season because we felt we were already watching too much television and didn’t want to add yet another new show. I guess that was a mistake. So first I watched a 30-minute recap I’d TIVO’d from the Soap network a few days ago, which turned out to be an edited down version of the 1-hour recap shown right before the season premier. There were twenty-five episodes last season?!! I have a LOT of catching up to do! Ugh.
I won’t irritate anyone with questions until I’ve read all the old threads (if I can manage to slog through them), but one thing I noticed that I hope was specific only to this one episode, is that the men seem to dominate this program and the women seem like loony backdrops and/or eye candy. The roles they’ve all assumed on the island just struck me as rather sexist. I hope I’m wrong about that, otherwise I’ll end up just as annoyed with following this show as I became with Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
So is it “No, button’s bad” or “No button’s bad”? Big, big difference does a tiny comma make.
Ok, I just had a thought. I think Desmond met Jack in the stadium on purpose and that he is the one who cured Jack’s wife. (And possibly Locke, although I don’t know how he could have done that so fast). He seemed very sure that she was going to get better when he was talking to Jack. Maybe he is some kind of medical researcher (he said he was ‘almost’ a doctor, right?) and he made the virus that killed French woman’s team too.
The idea of that has occurred to me, but I don’t know how it’s possible. Sure, he probably could have found out who Jack’s patient was and slipped her some miracle spine-healing drug–but how did he get it to Locke?
And what about the giant magnet? Could that have some effect on Locke’s legs? Of course, it’s hard to judge the extent of his paralysis without knowing how he became paralyzed, but my brother’s a chiropractor, and he’s always giving me magnets when something hurts. (But take that with a grain of salt–he also used to drag me around by my hair and once stuck my finger in a car cigarette lighter “to see if it was hot.”)
Also, I was thinking some more about the reverse-chronological flashbacks. Jack, Kate, and Locke’s flashbacks have all been in the increasingly distant past. But Sayid’s and Sawyer’s weren’t. They went forward.
Actually, the writers have said they are making it up as they go along… they might have some big, overarching plan, but the details are just getting jammed in as they see fit…
I can see why you would think this after last night’s episode, but this is incorrect. There are very strong women’s roles on this show and wonderful actresses playing them.
Okay, here’s my current working theory:
The Island is the scene of a secret military experiment, dating back from the 1970’s. They’ve developed a drug (possibly in an airborne or viral vector) that boosts the nervous system, but it has unpredictable psychological side effects, including hallucinations and psychotic behavior. Merely being on the island exposes you to it. Most of our heroes haven’t yet recieved a large enough dose to experience this, except when otherwise weakened. This explains Locke’s healing, Ethan’s apparent superb physical performance, the whispers, Jack’s sightings of his father, Boone’s vision (Locke prepared a larger dose in the head wound gunk), and Shannon’s vision this episode.
The Others are those that have been on the island a long time, and totally succumbed to the drug. They are possibly the original experimenters/test subjects and their offspring. They need children, Walt and Claire’s baby, to continue the experiments, and possibly make a cure.
The Hatch contains the old control room for the experiment, as well as a “safe” space for the scientists (the island was quarantined, not the area below the hatch). The controls for the Tree-Crushing Monster (a way to manipulate the experiment, a security system for the tunnel system, and a way to test the super-soldiers made by the drug). Desmond is injecting himself with the antidote. Rousseau, who knows far more than she pretends (I think she’s from teh same group as the Others, but has split from them), injected Claire’s baby with it in utero. The polar bears are also part of the test (accounting for the polar bears is the weakest link in this, I admit).
Hurley’s numbers have some signifigance to the drug. They are probably a serial number or chemical code of some kind. The Others, in their madness, have been using the secret transmitters to broadcast it for many years. Rousseau’s highjacked that same transmitter.
Now, here’s where things get a little weird. There’s two reasons (three, if you count misdirection on part of the show makers) that all of these people seem to be connected before the crash, and things like the numbers show up over and over again. The first is that the experiment is still ongoing, and it has agents outside of the island. At least six of our passengers (Sayid, Kate, Sawyer, Claire, and Sun and Jin) were put on that specific flight by powers outside of their control and by potentially shady persons or agencies. I think that the crash, with its implausibly high survival rate, was engineered, and that the survivors have been manipulate far back into their pre-island lives. I’d be surprised if Kate’s original crime doesn’t have something to do with the island, if only indirectly.
The second reason is that Locke is essentially right (at least on this show). Nothing happens by accident, and this is their destiny. Faith and hope are rewarded, and “miracles” (that is, extremely unlikely events that occur for some greater design) happen. Jack found that out himself with the unlikely recovery of Sarah, although he seems to have ignored or forgotten the lesson. There’s a High Power at work here, and while I doubt He’ll make his presence known in a direct fashion, He still shouldn’t be ignored.
Any glaring holes that I’ve missed?
Wow, this thread is moving fast!
There is a behind the scenes extra on the DVD where the creators say that they had 5-6 years of storyline planned before the pilot was filmed. They did say that characters were / are changed as they go along and some characters were created specifically for the actors who auditioned (Jin and Sun are examples.)
I am sure they are changing things as they go but I think they do have an outline of major plot points that they follow.
That’s good to hear. And I can at least attest to one of them, though she’ll be a new addition this season:
Cynthia Watros. She’s actually the reason I decided to tune in this season. I’ve been following her career since she first appeared on Guiding Light, where she was so incredible I knew she’d go on to have a great career in the business, whatever direction she decided to pursue. Loved her in Titus! Can’t wait to see how they bring her on in this show.
I thought it was Locke too, hit the quick rewind on the DVR and it resembled him as Jack walk by him after he was already pronounced dead.
Oh, and I just learned that our local library has the first season DVD available, so we will definitely be checking it out! It looks like there are 2 people ahead of me on the waiting list, so that’s not bad.
Thank you for the link. I believe that the comic on the show was in Spanish (originally Hurley’s), so I assume that this is the English language version?
We’ve already seen the polar bears from that comic. And now, seeing the geodesic dome from the inside, it brought this page to mind (the page that Walt was looking at right before Michael tossed the comic into the fire).
If we are coming up with initials this early in the season, I nominate DXM for Baldwin’s brilliant Desmond X. Machina. 
Now I’m thinking about Ethan–was he the occupant of the lower bunk? He was much less scruffy than the Others seemed to be. Desmond and Ethan want Aaron, but the Others wanted Walt. Or maybe not.
But if Ethan is a Hatcher, and he was present on the beach right after the crash, then Sarah and Locke’s reversal of paralysis could be related.
Or I could just be making shit up.
It’s about 25 or 26 TV-hours, IIRC. Can’t remember if the pilot counts as one epcisode or 2. But that’s with comercials. Figure about 40 minutes of real time for every 1 TV hour. Of course, you’ll be pausing and going back a lot, so add back in some time for that, too.
For anyone with the DVDs, I highly recommend watching the special feature concerning casting the show. It’s amazing how much the writers built the show around certain actors, rather than having characters in mind and then trying to force-fit it. For example, they made up the character of Sun (and Jin) after that actress auditioned for Kate’s role and they found out she could speak Korean. Sawyer was originally supposed to be a slick yuppie-type Wall Street guy.
Outstanding hypothesis! Bravo!
::stands up and cheers::
More on the symbol…
There’re definitely some weird anachronisms involved with the hatch/quarantine/survivalist refuge. Some of the equipment (not just the washing machines looked wrong for the period. While I won’t swear outright that the CRT display on the computer couldn’t have existed in 1969, you’d mostly likely have been using a tty (electronic typewriter with a paper feed) back then. (Anyone get a look at the computers to see if they were DEC or IBM machines?)
The injection guns also looked wrong for 1969. Too new, for one thing. And what kind of vaccine would keep for 40 years? And was the hatch actually big enough to get a washing machine or (big ass 1960’s era) computer down it? Is there another way in?
And of course, our boy Desmond is about 30, so he sure as heck hasn’t been down there California Dreaming for 35 years.
