I missed the Vincent bit- can someone recap that part?
Completely different hatch. You’re thinking of the Swan. The hatch Paolo found was The Pearl.
Okay. I knew I had to be miles off on something.
After they laid Paolo and Nikki side-by-side on the beach and covered them with a blanket, Vincent came along, sniffed at them, then pulled the blanket away.
Clearly Vincent knew they weren’t really dead. It was a nice, subtle hint by the writers. Much more subtle than the fact that took a very long time to have someone close their eyes – they kept filming Paolo and Nikki laying there with their eyes open.
I liked it, but I wish they hadn’t done the cheesy “x many days earlier.” They did that when the Tailies got their first episode, but it made sense because we didn’t have any way to tie what happened to them with what happened to the Losties on the main section. I didn’t think they were needed in this episode, because you could infer the timing based on who was still alive or events that were happening around Paolo and Nikki.
Wouldn’t their eyes have dried out terribly after being open for that long?
I think you have to throw realism to the wind on this one… neuromuscular paralyzing agents that target muscular tissue would also paralyze the heart and lungs… if this were not the case, they would be breathing and it would be very easy to see their chests rise and fall…
of course, it would have been pleasing on the eyes had they zoomed close on Nikki’s chest…
He asked several people for pens, most of them off-screen. That’s why he came back to Jack with a handful, saying “I didn’t know which kind you needed.”
Maggie Grace and Ian Somerhalder must not be very busy these days. I wonder how much they were paid to come back and shoot alternate versions of scenes and dialogue they did three years ago? I have to think that for an actor that has to be the equivalent of doing data entry as an office temp.
On a beach. In Hawaii.
Best. Temp job. Ever.
Once I realized they were still alive I got to thinking that they both would be blinded by the overhead sun by the time they got un-paralyzed. That is until Sawyer threw a shovelful of sand on them.
When did Sawyer get the diamonds? Paolo was paralyzed, Nicki ran, stopped briefly to bury the bag of diamonds and then collapsed in front of Sawyer and Hurley. How did he know where they were?
And I can’t understand why Nicki and Paolo would be so obsessed with the diamonds after surviving an airplane crash on an island where all sorts of weird things have been happening. You’d think there would be more important things to worry about, and as even Sawyer pointed out, they are useless on the island.
I’m sure they green-screened new scenes on top of any scenes with a major crash background. They had one wide-angle shot of Nikki against the background of a large chunk of the crash debris, and she definitely looked like she’d been superimposed on top of it, to me – the quality of her image and the crash background didn’t quite match.
But yes, it was interesting seeing them insert Nikki and Paolo into the original like that, complete with little touches like having some early scenes of Arzt!
I think it was clear by the end of the episode that what she really said was “paralyzed”. But even so, I thought that when they were trying to figure out what she said, Hurley came up with “Paolo lies” (not “Paolo lives”). And if that’s the case, then it doesn’t count as one of Nikki’s redeeming qualities (of which I count two – both clearly displayed in that bikini. ;))
One of the bits I found most amusing was Nikki’s line at the airport, about Shannon and Boone. “Promise me we’ll never end up like them!” On the surface, a reference to their bickering. But underneath, I think it was an intentional reference to them being… dead.
Odds are good Nikki and Paolo are coming back, or at least the writers left a loophole for them to do so if they discover a need to.
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When Zuckerman was pleading with Nikki to sign on for another season, he said they could always bring her back to life later, despite the fact that her character was shot three or four times with visible bloodstains. That seems just as irreversibly dead as being buried alive.
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During the flashback when Locke encounters Paolo trying to dig a hole for the diamonds, he says (paraphrased) “Nothing on this island stays buried. Ever.” Seems as strong a hint as any.
When he left to do his “perimeter sweep.” I think by that time they’d already found Paolo, so Sawyer probably just hunted around that area for a patch of loose dirt.
Well, Sawyer did make the comment about dirt under her nails, so he must have known she was digging (perhaps to hide something) – although how he knew where to dig…? Sawyer’s not exactly a tracker.
Then again, maybe Nikki decided in her budding-paralysis state, not to bury the diamonds after all, but to put them into her… erm… decolletage instead. I’m thinking that’s a likely place for Sawyer to have checked, when the other Losties weren’t looking.
Sawyer even said as much.
I think the series finale will have everyone ending up dead. Then we will see Vincent the dog wandering off into the woods. Then he will turn his head back toward the camera, his eyes will be glowing, they’ll do a freeze shot and you’ll hear the dubbed in creepy laughing of Vincent Price from the end of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
Then it will all be clear. Vincent the dog is actually Vincent Price :eek:
After they found Paolo’s body, Sawyer was looking around and caught sight of something through the trees; when Hurley et al questioned him about it, he claimed to have seen nothing. Later, though, he admitted to having seen a small pile of dirt. I figure that when he went to “check the perimeter,” where he really went was to dig up whatever the hell Nikki had buried.
I think it has to do with the sort of overarching theme of the show, which they nicely reiterated by having another rendition of Jack’s “Live together, die alone” speech. Nikki, in particular, was a bad person. Obscenely hot, but a bad person. She was utterly self-absorbed; she cared only about her own situation and had no sense of herself as part of a community. I think one of the things about the lead characters is that while all of them are flawed - some dramatically - all of them are aware of other people, and aware of their own role as a part of a larger group: the hunter, the doctor, the outcast, the mediator, whatever. Nikki (and to a lesser extent Paolo) had no such perspective. She didn’t care about anyone but herself and her own petty concerns, so when the time came that she needed the community, they didn’t know enough about her to help her in any way. Paolo, too. He knew about the Others plans, could have helped his community. Had he done that, Jack never would have been kidnapped. Had Jack never been kidnapped, he would have been around, and able to examine Nikki and Paolo in a way that might have revealed that they were still alive.
Someone above mentioned that they thought the island was punishing Nikki and Paolo for being bad people, but I don’t think that’s it. I mean, really, everything that happened to Nikki and Paolo was a direct result of choices that they made. They free-willed themselves right into those holes, and it sucks, but the island didn’t “punish” them in any proactive way; they doomed themselves.
Where did they get the gun? Didn’t Sawyer say he got the gun from"one of them"?
-Joe
On the Misfit’s site he/she has a picture that points out that Shannon’s hair grew quite a bit from the first crash scene shoot and this one, so they may have re-shot the scene.
Excellent analysis. Good job.
Actually, wasn’t the smuggler’s plane sitting on top of it? Didn’t Locke and Eko have to move the plane to get to it in “?”? Or was Paolo there before the plane fell?
I think they were aware of what was happening around them the whole time. At the end of the episode we see Nikki arrive at the beach from her POV and it looks like she is seeing what is happening (starting with her faceplant into the beach). Yes, they were both pretty much evil characters but, man, that has got to be a horrible way to go.
And I heard her last words as “Paulo Lies” too but “paralyzed” is obviously what she was trying to say.
And while it looked like a standalone, I think we did get a few important bits of info this time around. It is now confirmed that Ben and Juliet were working together to manipulate Jack and we don’t know how much of their later interaction is continued manipulation.
Also, I think the “Expose” plot is significant and not just a show-within-a-show gimmick. Based on what we saw and on what Hurley says on seeing the script, it looks like “Mr. LaShay”, instead of being their benefactor, is really their evil nemesis “Cobra” (the identity of whom fans of Expose have been speculating about for years).
Beyond the obvious nod to the Lost fans out there, could this mean something? This point is made twice in the show; once when we see the filming of the episode and later when Hurley mentions it. Are they somehow trying to tell us something? Like, maybe, one of the characters we know are not who we think they are?
OK, random speculation on my part brought on by too much caffeine and too little sleep.
We know that the Others are not DHARMA and that, in fact, they fought with each other and DHARMA was defeated. There are no DHARMA personnel still on the island.
Or is there?
Suppose one of the survivors from 815 was a member of or at least is familiar with DHARMA. We know they still exist off the Island (someone made that supply drop after all). This person may not have heard of the Island before but does know what DHARMA is and what they do.
Suppose this person is Locke. (He may have run into them or their sponsor, the Hanso Foundation, while trying to somehow regain the use of his legs. Both DHARMA and Hanso have done medical research so it is possible. Plus, some of his mysticism seems to match some of DHARMA’s philosophy.) Reanalyze all of his behavior using this assumption.
We know he encountered Smokey the Monster and survived. In fact, he thought it was beautiful. If the Monster was part of the DHARMA security system and he is somehow affiliated with DHARMA then it makes sense that it would leave him alone; he’s one of the “good guys” after all.
He finds the Hatch and keeps it a secret. Maybe he knows it is a DHARMA facility, maybe he doesn’t. But he has an idea, so he keeps it to himself.
When he gets inside he finds that it is indeed a DHARMA facility and almost immediately starts pushing the button. Why the obsession? Well, DHARMA says it is important for him to do so, so he does.
He then encounters the Pearl Station and gets the idea that pushing the button in the Swan Station was just a psychological experiment. (Something both DHARMA and Hanso do.) He feels betrayed by DHARMA, his latest “father figure”. So, he lashes out against it, stops pushing the button and even prevents anyone else from pushing it.
After the Swan Station is destroyed he suddenly regains his “faith” as it were and sets out to find out what is going on. When he gets to the Flame Station he starts using its computer. Maybe he is familiar enough with how DHARMA does things to guess that there is a message there. He learns that the Others have defeated the DHARMA personnel but that there is (of course) a DHARMA protocol to follow. Being once-again loyal to DHARMA, he follows the protocol and destroys the Flame.
But he isn’t done. He now carries the battle on to the Others themselves, destroying their only means of reaching the Island and thus preventing them from bringing in reinforcements.
Looked at this way, Locke’s behavior seems (to me anyway) to be a lot more consistent. Yes, I’m sure there are other things he has done that don’t make sense this way too, but it does make a certain internal amount of sense.
Or, maybe it’s just caffeine and a lack of sleep.
The plane landed on the hatch door in the accident that killed Boone. And Paolo foresaw that too–he said it would fall if he climbed up there.
Indeed, we know why they weren’t on Jacob’s list: Ben made his own.