Did they use some sort of visual cue in the last scene that made it obvious that someone was going to die? Perhaps it was like a previous scene or something.
I ask because within 5 or 10 seconds of that shot starting, I was positive one of them was going to be shot (or pierced or impaled). Something about the scene just screamed “you’re gonna die”.
I don’t think it was that the episode was supposed to feature someone dying and it was nearing the end - the thought wasn’t on my mind - but that may have been it.
So what did Michael mean exactly that he came on the boat to die? That he’d finally be able to kill himself after he completed his mission? That he knew everyone on the boat would die?
That’s gotta be the longest flashback sequence we’ve seen yet.
Just a quick point: I have no idea what game show was on his Michael’s house when he “tested” shooting himself, but I’d be willing to bet the farm that the answer to the question (“As a bonus, what was the book by Vonnegut?” or something) was Slaughter-House 5.
Well, Karl did say, “I have a bad feeling about this.” And Alex immediately came back with, “Don’t be silly! Daddy’s been trapped and injured and beaten up by my new mom, and he utterly despises and distrusts you, but he’d never let me get hurt!”
In all seriousness: this was hyped as ‘the episode WHERE SOMEONE DIES’ (dramatic music). When Alex, Karl, and Rousseau were walking through the jungle I looked over at the clock, saw that it was 9:56, and thought, “Well, geez, there’s four minutes left, somebody better die.”
Yes, the sound bite starts out with “…Slaughterhouse 5” - the game show host mentions its by Kurt Vonnegut and then says she can get the bonus points if she names the protagonist. I’m sure that’s one of their literary references - having not read the book, though, I’m not sure what’s special about the protagonist.
Yeah, I had that feeling well before that happened though.
That may be it - but I do my best to avoid the network promos (they’re made by the marketing team, not the writers, so they do nothing but ruin your potential enjoyment), but I think I may have read about the death thing on last week’s thread.
When Michael woke up in the hospital, he looked around the room and observed the patient to his left in the next bed. The patient was intubated and had the tube taped to his right cheek. He had bushy white hair.
Then, Libby comes in to deliver blankets, Michael screams and Libby disappears.
Okay.
Libby has disappeared and Michael looks around the room again. He observes the patient to his left in the next bed. Now, the patient is not intubated and he has a mask attached to his nose with elastic and the mask has a rebreather bag.
What does this signify?
Does Libby (and the intubated patient) exist in a parallel timeline? Does Michael move freely, if uncontrolled, among these parallel timelines?
No way. I cannot buy that being a continuity error. This show has to be much too careful with stuff like that. Plus, they made a point of looking at the other patient twice – once before Libby and once after. That has to be significant.
I know it’s bad form to answer your own post but…you ask what is special about the protagonist and I only gave you the name. The character was “unstuck in time”. Just like Desmond was. In fact I heard that brought up a few times here and there after the Desmond episode.
The other interesting thing about Billy Pilgram. He is a WWII soldier who is brought out to the front as a raw replacement, just in time for the Battle of the Bulge. He is never even issued any equipment and is quickly captured. He is held as a captive in an old slaughterhouse outside of Dresden just in time for the firebombing. The interesting part is that it is autobiographical. That is exactly what happened to Vonnegut.
Eh. Too much flashback. So, we learned what happened to Michael. But you know what… I don’t give a shit what happened to Michael. This episode just didn’t do it for me. Oh, we heard from the Mama’s and the Papa’s again-- whatever the hell that means.
Nope. They made a point of showing different sets of monitoring equipment for Michael too. The first han was the typte that draws a line for the heart rythm, the secend only had LED numbers. I don’t think it signifies anything though, it was just there to make it really clear that firt it was a dream sequence, second the real thing.
Well, it had a runtime of about 30 minutes out of ~41.30, but it was pretty straight forward storytelling and we got a lot of information, even if we had to suffer through some Michael melodramtics.
Since we don’t know where on the timeline Ben has the radio conversation with Michael, only that it’s some time after he left, I have a nagging suspicion that Ben wasn’t calling him from the island, he was in the penthouse.
I think this show has us all conditioned to think about things like parallel timelines and supernatural happenings that we jump to those explanations even when they’re not warranted. My take is that Libby wasn’t there at all, in any way other than in Michael’s conscience and imagination. He was in an accident. While unconscious, he had a vision of Libby, and during that vision, he saw the other patient in one condition.
Then he woke up for real. Libby was gone, having never been there in the first place other than in his dream. Michael’s neighbor patient being in a different condition was just a signal to us that Libby’s appearance was not “real” - in the “real” world, the other patient was not intubated; in Michael’s dream, he was. I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than that.
I’m wondering about that too. And I’ve developed a new theory about the whole thing. Unfortunately it’s completely crazy and requires references to “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” - with the island being part of the Archipelago of Last Years - and Doctor Who’s Blinivotich Limitation Effect.
I’ll spare you the details. Because it’s crazy and stupid and totally wrong. Not to mention that it’s based on a Rankin and Bass holiday special. But with regard to Michael, I’m gonna say “probability field manipulation”. So I guess there’s some Scarlet Witch in there too.
Anyway, I want to give a shout out to whoever picked “It’s Getting Better” to be on the radio durring Michael’s suicide attempt. That was great.
Sawyer shoots him at the end of season 3, but this was obviously a flashback to before that.
If you think about it, everything from around the last third of season 3 through now has only covered about a week or so for the people in the show.
Yeah, I’m wondering if this is what Ben was talking about in Sayid’s flash-forward episode when he said “Remember what happened the last time you thought with your heart instead of your head.”
I think it has something to do with what Mrs. Hawking was telling Desmond in his first time-travel episode and what Desmond kept telling Charlie. The universe has a way of “course correcting” to make sure time works out the way it was supposed to. Desmond was flipping back and forth in time for a while there, and that depended on the freighter being off the Island in a sabotaged but not blown-up state. That required Michael to be there and not dead. So the universe (or whatever) “corrected” by keeping Michael from killing himself.
Since Desmond’s time-travel future has come to pass the universe can now let him die. That’s how he came onto the boat to die.
So, just to be sure I have this straight (heh). Mr. Friendly leaves the island long enough to shadow Michael and recruit him for his mission, and then comes back to the island in time to get shot by Sawyer? I guess we now know how Sawyer dies. Rudolf ( or Andre, or Cesar, or whatever Mr. Friendly’s gentleman friend’s name was ) glocks him in the head.
I was a bit disappointed at how easily Rosseu and Alex agreed to do what Ben told them.
Ben kidnapped Alex as a child from her mother and then claimed to be her Dad!
It was a bit far fetched then to see them trust him and follow his orders without question.
A far as the “who’s good guy / bad guy” thing between Ben and Widmore I’d say they are both bad guys. Both greedy get what they want types who are willing to manipulate people for their own use. No confussion there.
