Lost 3.13: "The Man from Tallahassee"

Cafe Society
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I thought this was a damned good episode. They’re really getting their groove back.

Unrelated, though, something that’s been gnawing at me. I recently finished Babylon 5 and was reading about the writing process. The creator/writer J. Straczynski had very clear goals about where he wanted the story to go, but there had to be short-term flexibility. He distinctly wrote trapdoors into the backstory of the show so that in the most dire case – an actor leaving the show – he could write them out with minimal effort and disruption. He used this a couple of times, and it was only as I was reading the examples that I realized those characters leaving wasn’t intended from the beginning, but was an unexpected shift in the storyline.

(Being intentionally vague for those who haven’t seen B5.)

Given that…I don’t think Mike and Walt are ever actually coming back. They may be referenced later on and not ignored as far as the storyline goes, but it’s possible that they’re just gone for the remainder of the series. I know Lost has different writers, but it’s pretty clearly the same kind of show, just with more network oversight.

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[QUOTE=Charlie Tan]

IMO, using cute nicknames is part of the fun. Or aren’t we allowed to refer to M’boy as Waaaaaaaalt anymore?
[/QUOTE]

The cute nicknames is part of why it took me a long time to get into these threads. It was just so irritating that I’d give up a page into them.

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[QUOTE=BayleDomon]
(Being intentionally vague for those who haven’t seen B5.)
[/QUOTE]

For those of us who have seen it and want more details? Have a link? :smiley:

[QUOTE=BayleDomon]
Given that…I don’t think Mike and Walt are ever actually coming back.
[/QUOTE]

I think they were trying to get them back for later in the season but Michael didn’t want to for whatever reason. That said, I’d be very surprised if they both never showed up again.

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[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
I think they were trying to get them back for later in the season but Michael didn’t want to for whatever reason. That said, I’d be very surprised if they both never showed up again.
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I think BayleDomon was trying to insinuate that they might have taped scenes before they left that could be shoehorned in in the future (correct me if I’m wrong, BD.) I think that is the most likely case, especially taking into account what someone posted earlier about how much the kid who played Walt has grown.

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
I think BayleDomon was trying to insinuate that they might have taped scenes before they left that could be shoehorned in in the future (correct me if I’m wrong, BD.) I think that is the most likely case, especially taking into account what someone posted earlier about how much the kid who played Walt has grown.
[/QUOTE]

The last time Walt was on, they had to shoot him in such a manner that you never got a real clear long look at him. I think he has already grown pretty much by then and they were just using camera tricks to try to keep his aging from looking too obvious.

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[QUOTE=Wile E]
The last time Walt was on, they had to shoot him in such a manner that you never got a real clear long look at him. I think he has already grown pretty much by then and they were just using camera tricks to try to keep his aging from looking too obvious.
[/QUOTE]

I wonder if that’s why they got rid of him in the first place? It was short-sighted to cast a kid entering puberty in a show that takes place in the course of a few months (or however long) but is filmed over the course of 5 or 6 years (or however many seasons they’re planning now.)

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[QUOTE=Monstre]
Or do you mean, why is Dharma still doing food drops when it appears that the Others/Hostiles have taken over everything? (Food drop evidenced by the one we saw when the Swan Hatch was still active).

Perhaps Dharma in the outside world hasn’t known that their people have been overrun on the island? Perhaps the only communication that Dharma Central Command gets is from the chess computer – and has automatic procedures in place to respond to transmissions from that system.
[/QUOTE]
I think they were still doing the food drops because the button had to be pushed. The film clips implied a much bigger disaster than what we have seen so far if the button doesn’t get pushed.

148

[QUOTE=rms996]
Does anybody else think that the contents of Ben’s “magic box,” and what appears to be Locke’s father, are both the smoke monster?

Think about it. In Eko’s death episode, he met his brother in the jungle. Only, at the end of their encounter, this being appearing as his brother implied it wasn’t really his brother. Then the smoke monster appeared and killed him.

Furthermore, many of us probably remember hearing about the podcast or interview where the producers said thatduring a stretch of time in which we hadn’t seen the monster for a while, we actually had seen it, we just didn’t know we were looking at it. This clearly implies that all those appearances of people who aren’t supposed to be on the island–Jack’s dad, Hurley’s Dave Eko’s brother, and maybe Kate’s horse too–were really the smoke monster.

So, it’s looking like the smoke monster can take on the appearance of different people. This also fits with Ben’s statement that what was inside the box can be whatever you imagine it to be. It would also seem from this that the Others can control the monster; for example, when Ben said “get me the man from Tallahassee” maybe he was in effect saying “go program the smoke monster to appear as Locke’s dad.”
[/QUOTE]

Dang! It took a guest poster to be the first to throw this theory out there? You Lostie dopers should be ashamed.
This is the first thing that occured to me when we saw Locke’s dad. “That’s not his dad. That’s the smoke monster shape shifting again.”
Seems pretty straight forward. No reading between the lines there.

Also, my favorite exchange of the show:

Sayid: You must be Alex.

Alex: How do you know my name?

Sayid: Because you look like your mother.

Alex: But my mother’s dead.

Sayid: Yeah. That’s what they want you to think.

That’s right Sayid! Get inside their heads! Turn them against eachother! Beat them at their own game!

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I thought of the smoke monster as soon as Ben said, “Anything you can imagine will come out of the box”. That’s exactly what the losties have been seeing in the jungle.

I’m not sure the ‘smoke monster’ isn’t more the same - your fears, your dark thoughts, whatever.

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See my thread on the magic box.

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[QUOTE=jackdavinci]
For those of us who have seen it and want more details? Have a link? :smiley:
[/QUOTE]
It’s just a section on the Wiki page. Summary:Neither Sinclair nor Talia Winters were supposed to actually have been written out as soon as they did, but the actors for whatever reason left the show. It was obvious Sinclair had been written out because of the abruptness of his exit, but until I read that section I had no idea Talia wasn’t supposed to leave the way she did. Same for Ivanova.
I didn’t mean to insinuate they have pretaped scenes of Michael and Walt. They may have actually rewritten the story in the short term in order to accomodate Michael and Walt leaving the show (or maybe just Michael, perhaps Walt will make a deus ex machina return). This is of course just musing speculation on my part based on another show, so I may be dead wrong for all I know. :slight_smile:

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Interestingly, in most cases only one person ever sees the “apparition”. I can think of only one case, Kate’s horse, where two people saw the same thing-- Sawyer also saw it. No one ever saw “Dave” or Jack’s dad or Yemi. So, if it’s the Black Smoke causing the apparitions, it seems to rarely do so to multiple people at the same time. I think we have to also consider that some type of psychic projection might be the cause. Perhaps “The Man from Tallahassee” is a code for the person who is capable of producing these psychic projections.

I can’t remember, but was there evidence that the Locke flashbacks this time took place in FL, or that dear ol’ dad is from Tallahassee? AFAICR, all of the Locke flashbacks took place in CA (except the part where he was trying to do the Walkabout in Australia). In fact, do we know for sure Cooper is really Locke’s dad? Was there a DNA test done prior to the kidney transplant?

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[QUOTE=Hampshire]
Dang! It took a guest poster to be the first to throw this theory out there? You Lostie dopers should be ashamed.
This is the first thing that occured to me when we saw Locke’s dad. “That’s not his dad. That’s the smoke monster shape shifting again.”
Seems pretty straight forward. No reading between the lines there.

Also, my favorite exchange of the show:

Sayid: You must be Alex.

Alex: How do you know my name?

Sayid: Because you look like your mother.

Alex: But my mother’s dead.

Sayid: Yeah. That’s what they want you to think.

That’s right Sayid! Get inside their heads! Turn them against eachother! Beat them at their own game!
[/QUOTE]

I don’t remember the “That’s what they want you to think” part. Was that in there?

-FrL-

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[QUOTE=Cisco]
I wonder if that’s why they got rid of him in the first place? It was short-sighted to cast a kid entering puberty in a show that takes place in the course of a few months (or however long) but is filmed over the course of 5 or 6 years (or however many seasons they’re planning now.)
[/QUOTE]

From the beginning I figured there’s some kind of “rapid aging” experiment going on on the Island (among other experiments) and that Walt would be one of the guinea pigs for it.

-FrL-

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[QUOTE=Frylock]
I don’t remember the “That’s what they want you to think” part. Was that in there?

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]
I think it was more like “I’m sure that’s what they told you”. Same idea though.

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What if Cooper was one of the tailies? Did any prior episode have him in Australia?

Seems unlikely Locke would have missed seeing him on the plane though.

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Well this was the best episode of the season to date, IMHO. Not just for the WTF moment of Locke’s fall, but for the revelations and clues it offered as well.

But it seems to me that people are really going off on wild tangents here. The speculation is half of the show’s fun, but I think in this case the following is most likely tue.

  1. There is nothing “magic” about the magic box. Ben was just playing with Locke. In all the con related flashback episodes (Sawyer’s, Locke’s dad, sometimes Kate) such as this one, somebody usually is “pulling a fast one” in the island storyline as well as in the flashback. In this case it was Ben. He knew that to Locke it would be baffling that his father was on the island, so Ben made a inside joke of it. Believe me, when he first mentioned the magic box, my mind went wild with the possibilities but I personally found it more satisfying to discover it was just a con.

  2. It is not the smoke monster in disguise as Locke’s dad. Granted, there is a lot we don’t know about the smoke monster and it has seemed to take the form of people at times. However, the monster so far has pretty consistantly been used as little more than a killing machine. Sure, there have been times where for some reason it decided not to attack, but that doesn’t mean it’s domesticated enough to just chill out while it is tied up in a chair. I for one, sincerely hope the smoke monster is not a trained pet that the Others can take off a lesh to perform errands. I think it works best as an unpredictable force of nature. That’s what makes it so scary and thrilling when it appears. Didn’t somebody once describe it as a “security system”?

Maybe somebody has already presented this possibility but my current smoke monster related pet theory is that the Others are afraid of it as well and that is what their nasty security fence is intended to keep out.

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[QUOTE=John Mace]
No one ever saw “Dave” or Jack’s dad or Yemi. So, if it’s the Black Smoke causing the apparitions, it seems to rarely do so to multiple people at the same time.
[/QUOTE]

I thought Locke saw Yemi, before he went to rescue Eko from the bear? Locke wouldn’t have known what Yemi looked like to be able to imagine him.

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[QUOTE=Thirty-Nine]
The talk of a magic box reminded me of the ‘eternity’ passage from the Third Policeman.

Don’t read this if you want to read the Third Policeman! I’ve condensed the relevant parts:
[/QUOTE]

Geez, you just ask for a large number of flawless diamonds, strip nearly naked, take a piss and a dump and walk out a filthy rich man.

I add my plea to many others- please no cutsey nicknames.

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c_goat:

Locke’s vision that told him about Eko needing rescue from the bear was of Boone. I believe he did see Yemi in season 2, in the episode where Locke and Eko discover the Pearl. But that was in a dream (as was the Boone vision, the dream state being drug-induced).