I’m really enjoying this second half run of season 3. For me enough of the big questions have been answered so I know it’s a real island with odd anomalies, there was a bunch of Dharma scientists doing weird experiments on the island, and now there is some weird cult living there. There rest now is filling in some explanations, surviving, and trying to get off the island.
I think some of the most disappointed people are the ones who were reading between the lines and making mysteries out of things where there were no mysteries. i.e. what’s the significance of the name of a candy bar? what’s the significance of the title of some books on a shelf? what’s the acronym for this or that character’s name?
I’ll be in it now for the duration just to hang out with characters I like on weird sci-fi island following their adventures. If they stumble across some answers on the way… well that’s just a bonus.
Not necessarily.
I’d say I’m in the “moderately disappointed” department. I read some of the theories posted around the SDMB (so Claire’s father wasn’t much of a surprising reveal), but I don’t go into the hard core net-nerd stuff.
That being said questions like…
- How the Black Rock got to the middle of the island
- Why children were stumbling through the jungle with tattered clothing and teddy bears
- What is the deal with the magic smoke monster
- How did anyone survive such an unsurvivable crash
- Why the Others alternately toy with or run in terror (Caduceus station) from the Losties
…are not hard-core silliness that only the really obsessive nerds are interested in. These are very much questions that are central to the show (except the Black Rock - which is one of those tangential mysteries that are introduced and then ignored). And they pretty much just get forgotten by the writers.
-Joe
What shark? I seem to vaguely remember a shark when they were on the raft at the end of season 1. I don’t remember finding out where it came from?
Regarding the polar bears: Are we sure that’s where they came from? How did they keep polar bears alive outdoors in the jungle heat? The more important question is why?
I’m pretty fed up with every episode being “THE ONE YOU. MUST. WATCH.™”
I’m dead sick of them introducing new mysteries when it’s so obvious that they have no intentions of solving the ones already introduced. Why am I supposed to keep caring about weird shit when you’re never going to tell me what it means? Nana nana boo boo.
I’m sick of the characters acting so stupid.
I think it was actually at the beginning of Season 2.
Anyways, simple deduction seems to indicate that the thing would have come from the aquarium that Jack was being held in.
-Joe
I’m squarely in the frustrated camp too. However, as to the polar bears, we do have a little info about what is going on. The Big Hatch Door Diagram suggests that a “stated goal” (presumably of Dharma) is “repatriation [and] accelerated de-territorialization of ursus maritus [polar bears] through gene therapy and extreme climate change.”
So the poor sweaty bears are or were part of an experiment. Possibly in anticipation of global warming? Trying to ensure the survival of species that would otherwise die off in the face of warming?
Granted, only Lost nerds would know that at this point in the series (ahem), but it is something.
Ah, I guess I didn’t realize Jack was being held in an aquarium. So they had one shark and they dumped it in the open ocean in hopes that it would attack the castaways should one fall off of the raft? Sounds like a shot Carlos Hathcock would be proud of.
Depends – was it African or European? And was it carrying a coconut?
Maybe the island is a huge Rube Goldberg device. Makes as much sense as anything else.
The shark bites the guy who lost his son who kills two girls who gets a boat who ditches his ‘friends’ who…
-Joe
I found that amusing, too. Just a short month ago (Lost time) – if that – he was Bluebeard and threatening Jack in a ring of torches… “Don’t cross this line, or else!”
Now he and Jack are tossing the pigskin around like old buddies.
Stole my line, dammit. Monstre, I just noticed we share the same birthday. GO VIRGOS! And I still think black-haire Claire was hotter than Clairol Claire any day. Maybe it was the boots.
Presumably it was black-haired Claire who was the Clairol user. Because if her hair was naturally dark, and they’ve been on the island for 80 days, she’d have dark roots nearly an inch and half long. :eek:
Is it possible that Claire’s accident was the same one that got Jack’s wife, or the one that crippled Locke?
The police officer that came to see her told her she was hit by a van, and the whole matter was under control. But he was an awfully strange cop. He asked her a lot of questions, and seemed surprised to find out that Mom was alive. And he gave her a really creepy little smile at that. It also looked like there was going to be a serious investigation, but we never heard from the cops again. I’m thinking the cop was an ‘other’. Those are the Whidmore industry folks, right? Desmond’s girlfriend is young Whidmore. The people who recruited the doctor (already forgot her name)… All the same bunch. Right? This is clearly a large, very powerful organization. And they’re convinced they are the ‘good guys’. The opposition is Dharma - a strange ‘initiative’ doing very strange experiments. What does that mean?
Also, there are strange things going on with space and time here. Desmond didn’t just flashback to the past, because he learned things there that let him predict the future. And he’s using that power to save Charlie repeatedly. That’s essentially messing with time. Maybe the cop was surprised that Mom was alive - because she wasn’t supposed to be. Someone meddled.
Might the Dharma (Hanso Foundation) boys and the Whidmore boys (for lack of a better word - maybe just ‘others’) rival corporations? Or time travelers? Or an organization fighting some government research run amok?
But I think it’s more than that. Don’t be annoyed with not finding out more about the Black Rock - it’s not a mystery to be solved, it’s a piece to a puzzle. It’s there to remind us that whatever strangeness is going on has been going on for a long time - same with the rag-tag kids with the teddy bear. I think there might be a third group of earlier-survivors-gone-native involved here somewhere.
Frankly, I’m half expecting to find out that there are aliens involved or something. That fence wasn’t anything out of the General Dynamics or Lockheed inventory. And everyone seems really terrified of ‘the big guy’. The reason I got an alien vibe was because of reading Have Space Suit - Will Travel as a kid. The ‘big guy’ is basically wormface, if you’ve read the book. So much more advanced and so threatening that just looking at him makes you feel like a paralyzed rabbit being stared at by a snake. EPG truly seemed to be grateful for having been killed - as did the woman he had to shoot. They really didn’t want to have to explain their ‘failure’ to someone.
Can someone explain the Black Rock to me? What season was it from? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all of 2 & 3 but I didn’t see season 1… I just don’t remember anything about a black rock. (But then, my memory for such things is iffy at best)
Can we settle the whole Claire thing right here and now?
Brunettes always have been, and always will be, hotter than blondes.
I believe that Claire’s accident was in Australia and the accident that crippled Jack’s wife-to-be was in the US.
Season 1. Danielle is the first to make a reference to it, I believe. In episode 8, when she captures Sayid (and when we first meet her). He’s talking about hearing her distress call, and asking her about it – and he’s surprised to learn there’s a radio tower on the island. She says it’s up by the Black Rock.
Later, in the season finale, she tells the group that’s where there’s some explosives. “Dynamite. At the Black Rock. Past the dark territory.” (Hurley: “Well, there’s three reasons to go right there…”)
In that episode, Jack, Locke, Kate, Hurley, Arzt – they journey with Danielle to the Black Rock. And they find out that it’s the name of an old ship, sitting in a clearing in the jungle. Perhaps an old slaver ship.
I expected the giant creepy Hurley Bird to burst out of the treetops and snatch the messenger bird out of the air.
Here’s another in a series of theories/conjectures/whatever. Desmond seems to have acquired precognitive abilities after “the sky turned purple.” Nobody else has, as far as we know. Desmond took those Dharma vaccines every day for three years. They clearly weren’t about “quarantine,” so what were they for? Was this the same stuff that was included in the food-drop? The same stuff Ethan injected into pregnant-Claire’s belly? I’m still of the opinion that the Losties (including Desmond) are unwilling/unwitting lab-rats. Maybe the Dharmites (or their successors, whoever they are) experimenting with the possibility of inducing precog in people by means of this “vaccine.” Maybe it didn’t manifest until it was “triggered” by the EMP.
Boy, that sounds weird now that I’ve written it out…
Yes, but what if she had been a redhead at any point? Where does that measure on the Clairol Hotness Continuum?