So, Juliet is on the shore “staring” goodbye, and then she is on the boat next to Jack… was Jack simply on the first tender/ferry from shore to ship? what up wit dat?
Also, Bai Ling Boobage Girl gave Jack a one-row tattoo, but he also has a large circle/symbol above that, so ABC did not really reveal the secret or meaning behind his tattos.
I think the one above it says, in some pictogrammic language, “Please don’t beat me for the marks below”.
-Joe
I see what you’re saying here and I totally agree with the Stephen King story comparison. With mysteries or monsters it really is the journey and not the destination that matters because you fill in the best parts with your imagination. King certainly tried to drill this point home with the ending of the Dark Tower series, and although many said the ending was a bit of a cop-out, I don’t really think it could have ended much better.
With Lost, they really set the mystery/imagination bar high with the hatch in the first season. The episode in which they finally got it open had to be one of the most thrilling hours of TV I’ve ever watched. Of course there was a lingering sense of disappointment when it wasn’t quite what I imagined but of course that’s to be expected.
I do think that they need to start revealing some motivations though. It just seems ridiculous that they’ve had so much interaction with the others and still have no clue what’s really going on. It’s almost like Jack, Kate and Sawyer are trying their hardest to remain ignorant. And I am a bit irritated about the network’s notion of “mysteries revealed,” and how for the most part they’re just starting new mysteries (Ana Lucia? Taking the children to give them a better life? Why exactly did Jack get his ass kicked over a tattoo?) while they only hint at explanations for old ones. Is there really one big secret that’s going to explain everything? They can’t give us something?
At least Damon Lindelof has said he wants to wrap things up in 4 or 5 seasons, if they let him. Hopefully next week’s episode will be better. The show needs more Hurley anyway.
Anybody else think the kidnappees have been getting sessions on the old E-meter?
Maybe it was Xenu that blew up flight 815… 
Does anyone else feel (as I’m starting to) that Kate, Jack, and Sawyer are probably the least interesting characters on the show?
-Joe
And wouldn’t you know it – the thugs didn’t roll his sleeve far up enough to read that one!
The impression I’ve gotten is that Jack has been trying to find out what’s going on. He is constantly yelling, “What’s going on?” and “Tell me!” and “I’m not going to stitch up Ben’s latest wound until you tell me what I want to know!” The problem is that nobody ever gives him an answer more detailed than “It’s complicated”.
Kate and Sawyer? Yep, they’re just too busy brooding over each other to care about the motivations of the Others.
I actually liked this week’s Jack centric show. I think separately each character (Jack, Kate, and Sawyer) can be quite interesting. We just seen to much of them together, in a Dawson’s Creek-y sort of way…
My little question on the tatoo (besides the whole necessity of the beat down), is… why is the tatoo of Chinese characters when Jack was in Thailand. I know the actress isn’t Thai, but I sort of assumed she was supposed to be playing a local. Is there a sizable population of Chinese immigrants in Phuket? Is it a little lapse in story logic, or one of those minor details that will EXPLAIN THE WHOLE DAMN THING?!
Blah.
That whole backstory was stupid. What was the point?
At first I thought it had a Claire-with-the-psychic vibe to it. Okay, you can see people’s true spirit or whatever and maybe you’ll reveal something interesting. Fine, whatever, just do something interesting with it. Okay… vague comments… tattoo… ass kicking… what?
What the hell was the point of that? It didn’t tell us anything about Jack (except, apparently, for the convenience of the plot, he becomes a creepy abusive guy towards people who have done him no harm for no apparent reason), it didn’t advance the story at all, it did nothing. At least Claire with the psychic was somewhat interesting and mysterious. This? “You’re a great man, a leader (ha), and it isolates you blah blah”… really? that’s all we get out of the backstory?
Blah. The character behaviors made no sense, didn’t advance the plot, didn’t give us any background, just pointless.
Kate: “Hey, Jack just risked his life to let us escape! Let’s go get captured again!”… at least Sawyer was smart enough to smack down that attempt. Of course, then he wasn’t smart enough later to try to keep the only guy who might actually explain to them WTF is going on. “Go, go be with your girlfriend”? What the hell was that? Hello? Your own little answer-box, not to mention the guy you just yanked from a creepy ass brainwashing session, who’s not all there, and you want to give him the boot so he can go to his girlfriend?
At least we’ve gone from “Let’s do this stupid plan!” “Okay!” to “Let’s do this stupid plan!” “No, let’s do THIS stupid plan”
Huh…I had a totally different take on why the Others took those passengers and the kids. I figured it was because those were the ones they had marked as being least able to ‘survive’ the island expirience. So they kidnapped them and they’ve been held in comfort in the village thing we saw. I didn’t catch anything that lead me to think they’d been brainwashed…they just cannot concieve of what the other original passengers have been going through. Like a control group…the other guys being put through all the hell are the experiment.
Yes, I agree.
No, that was a sailboat. The boat in this episode was a fairly large power boat.
I thought that Isabel vaguely resembled Ms. Hawking, the jeweler from last week’s episode. I’ll spoiler box the remaining speculation, since it draws on information not presented in the show.
[SPOILER]Some of the theories and some of the hints from the Lost Experience suggest that time travel is part of the mystery. So what if she is the same woman, but elsewhere in time and place?
And the information from the Lost Experience suggested that someone (perhaps not the Others, who appear relatively ignorant to me) is attempting to prevent a world-ending catastrophe. That might possibly explain why the Others claim that they’re not the bad guys, despite whatever they’ve done.[/SPOILER]
Oh, and I thought Sawyer let the kid go so they could follow him back to the Other’s home. I was a bit surprised that didn’t turn out to be the case. Figured it was more Sawyer-ish that way.
Sorry my last post being redundant. I cleaned it up with an edit, which wouldn’t submit until past the deadline.
Sawyer’s a softie now because he’s falling for Kate, and Kate’s trying to block the whole sexy cage encounter out of her head because she’s embarrassed by it (and probably in love with our dear doctor). That pretty much explains both of their actions through the episode.
The boat was a bigger one than we’d seen before. They have a whole lot of boats, don’t they?
So the tattoo reveal wasn’t necessarily a huge one, but it did show that there’s something weird about Jack. She was scared and didn’t want to tell him what she saw inside him. I think she made up the powerful leader crap, and the “He walks among us but is not one of us” is the key to the truth. It’s the same sort of reaction the psychic gave to Claire when he first met her - something weird going on and they didn’t want to be a part of it.
Dewey Finn, I thought the same thing when I saw her. If the Others can see back and forth through time, can they move through it as well? Not likely, though - I think it’s just another case of casting similar-looking people in all the roles to confuse us.
I don’t think they looked much alike. Nor did they speak with the same accent.
Me neither Fionulla Flanagan played Mrs Hawking, a 66 year old actress from Ireland. I remember her best from Waking Ned Devine. The Sheriff was played by Diana Scarwid a 52 year old actress from Georgia that I remember her most from *Mommie Dearest * and playing opposite Gary Sinese in Truman. I would never confuse the two of them.
Was this the first time Sawyer actually called someone by the real name? He actually called Carl “Carl”, after refering to him as Bobby.
After last week’s good story on Desmond, we’re back on the threadmill again. Jack’s always been the least interesting character and this week just reinforced that opinion for me.
More recently Diana Scarwid (Isabel) played the horny milf Jeanette Owens on three episodes of Prison Break this season. She owned the house built where a silo with buried money used to stand.
I hate to be one of THOSE people, but this episode was so bad I think it nearly gave me cancer.
Cancer?! HAH!!! Oh, man, you’re a crackup! Cancer - HILARIOUS!! Funny stuff!! Hoo!! Give me a minute…
::Wipes eyes::
Here’s a thought - wanna swap lives? I don’t think you’ll think Cancer is as funny as you seem to think it is if you do.