And I think the cameras in the losties hatch only went to that central station and no one was reading the reports. The Others cameras look like they’re only for that compound.
Which goes back to one of those big mysteries from season two that really needs some explanation: how much does Ben know about the button. He clearly pushed it so he must have thought it was important, but why plant doubt in Locke if he knew it was important that the button be pushed? Okay, Locke and Ben really have to get together again before this comes up but still…
Annie’s post has more clearly illustrated for me the potential problems. Essentially, the overaching mystery has become a game for the audience–no surprise there–but are the elements of the mystery providing a way for the characters to respond in interesting ways?
I’d say this season so far is a mixed bag at best. The flashbacks, for example, are obviously intended not just to tell us about the character they feature, but to indicate how we should expect that character to react to some challenge faced in the episode. Sometimes the characters overcome their past (e.g. Locke last week proved he could “be a hunter” when the situation demanded it, contrary to his experience in the pot commune), sometimes they don’t (Sawyer’s weakness as a conman–despite his proclaimed indifference to people he cares about–was exposed by the Others just as it was exposed by the warden and the female visitor in his flashback). The problem is, if the Others are just there to screw with the characters–i.e. if they don’t have specific motives of their own–then this past/present comparison of character motivation rings false. This was exactly the problem with the season premiere, and to some extent with last night’s episode.
By now, the producers should be aware that investing so much time in the mystery was a mistake; it can never be solved satisfactorily, and stringing the audience along causes current viewers to abandon the unending series of revealations and discourages new viewers from signing up to follow the arcana. TV shows remain popular because we learn and care about characters; a puzzle can never be as fascinating as a person (not all people, just ones we like :)). The only solution is to close out some of the longstanding questions (don’t worry about the moans from fastidious keyboard kritics–hmm, am I one of those? :)), setup some rules for the conflict (What are the Others up to? Enough at least so we can understand the things they do), and focus more on the characters dealing with conflicts. After all, the show already has a built-in mystery–who will get off the island?–so why trump up so many more in the process?
He didn’t necessarily know it was important that the button be pushed. For all he knows, it’s just a bunch of special effects going off as they approach DefCon Penquin, and then everything resets itself (like he said happened). He wanted to see what Locke would do if he thought there was no reason to push the button. Maybe he also just wants to see what Sawyer will do now that he has no reason not to fight back? Maybe he wants to see what Jack will do now that he knows there’s a cancer patient to operate on?
I don’t care how much someone likes screwing with people’s heads, most people draw the line at potentially vaporizing everything within a hundred mile radius. (“Come on Kim Jung Il, I launched a nuclear missile at China and nothing happened! Try it once, it’s fun!”).
If not pushing the button and failing to perminantly shut down the hatch is a very bad thing (and I think that’s a safe assumption), then it comes back to what does Ben know. If he knows it’s bad then why screw with Locke’s head and run a rather serious risk of killing himself and everyone else? And if he doesn’t know it’s bad, why push the button?
I’m curious as to why everyone acts as though the second island is a surprise, or that it hadn’t been spotted?
As already pointed out, Rousseau’s maps showed several other smaller islands, so it can’t be news to the tailies, or the original losties. It’s just that, until they got hold of Desmond’s boat, they had no way at all to access these islands (save for the raft, but they were trying to escape the island, not explore).
The “surprise” was not that other smaller islands existed out of the main one, but that Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were on it—thus rendering futile any plans of escape by “running really fast” they might have entertained. Sawyer was taken up the mountian to break his spirit.
Now, as to how they got there without their knowledge, do we know for a fact that they were conscious for the trip from the dock to the “prison?” Jack “woke up” in his cage during the premier, so for continuities sake, we might assume that he wasn’t conscious for the trip there. Not only that, but, we know there is an underwater facility. Could that facility be a connection between the two islands? That’s not too far fetched at all, considering the crazy things we have accepted of the rest of the island.
Even better maybe Kate, Jack and Sawyer are really still on the same island as everybody else and the island they took Sawyer up to view is deserted and doesn’t have anything to do with anything.
agreed… the only map that you can infer another island from is the one you linked to… as about the only way to get that perspective of “the island” would be to sit on another one!!
Am I the only one who noticed “something” in the lower-right corner in the very last seconds of the episode? The water there was a lot lighter in color, and it almost looked like something went in to it. Hard to describe, but I watched it a few times and it looks like it’s more than just waves, but I could be wrong.
Anyone else read Stephen King’s “On Writing”? That bunny with the 8 painted on it sure brought back the memory of SK’s exercise in demonstrating how the author and the reader are connected despite distance over time and space. Gave me a bit of a chill… (both when I read it, and last night when I saw that bunny).
That bunny thing didn’t make sense. If you want to tag an animal for research or lab stuff, you don’t paint it! :rolleyes: You tattoo its ears with an ID number. Sheesh, these Others really are dumb…
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