What, exactly, were they trying to accomplish? In the first ~3 seasons, they were a global international science group who clearly had A Mission (“change the numbers so humanity doesn’t go extinct”?)-it wasn’t until like last season that they became a bunch of dumb hippies who were just screwing around with FORCES THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND.
One other point that dovetails nicely: who was broadcasting The Numbers that Hurley’s buddy heard? Was that a Dharma radio tower? If so, why broadcast the numbers? If it was an Army tower, then really, why The Numbers?
We don’t know. However, we do know that they were playing around with time displacement (rabbits). They hadn’t mastered it, so I have no problem believing they had some accidental transport happening while they were still learning.
Besides, my memory is a little fuzzy, but I imagine they stocked parkas because they knew it was cold in the FDW room. Ben get in there extremely easily and I don’t see why Dharma couldn’t have been there at some point.
Probably random weirdness. Definitely unimportant. This was Dharma - maybe it was to see if an obviously Asian guy named Chang had a better or worse response from inductees than a guy named Candle?
The Swan was still up and running because The Others’ mission in life is to protect the island. Having it blown up by what was under the swan was probably going to be counterproductive.
This one is kind of silly, but if I had to guess, I’d say that he wouldn’t want to give the people he’d been torturing a WMD to wipe out his people and his precious island. If he didn’t push the button, the button becomes a “Who gives a shit?”, but if he DID press the button, then it becomes something that he is afraid of, and it becomes a weapon against him.
Radinsky was insane and, seeing as how he was trying to learn about things that he should have already known, it doesn’t exactly take a giant leap of logic to arrive at “because he was having memory problems”. I’m going to bet being near the world’s biggest ever EM event had something to do with it.
Inman got recruited late, and we don’t know why. Ben wanted a replacement, and somehow he ended up there. Had to be someone.
Radinsky was insane, so who knows? Maybe he split it up so nobody would ever figure out the whole story. I’d say he wanted to be the only one to know, but since his brain was melted, maybe it was more he was such a dick that he didn’t want anyone to know since he didn’t.
The Pearl was a surveillance station, with the added benefit that the people in there were also lab rats for a psychological experiment. I kind of thought this was one of the most blatantly clear explanations we ever got.
Jacob probably meant for them to be there, if for no other reason than I don’t think anyone gets there without him wanting them to. That, and there was a LONG list of candidates, and a lighthouse that probably goes 360 degrees. I think it’d be tough hitting those big numbers without Dharma folks being on some list somewhere.
Are the food drops continuing? Have they continued since Mikail’s place got blown up?
Don’t remember Ben’s map, so I’ll have to take a pass on that one.
Presumably, the stations are located where they are because that was the best place for them. If they were all together the next question to be asked would be, “With this whole island to build on why are they all right next to each other?”
Quarantine? That quarantine consisted of two guys, at least one of whom knew it was a lie from early on. It was some kind of psychological test on Desmond, it seems. If I had to guess, I’d say that Inman was doing it because someone convinced him to do it to keep Desmond penned up. Someone rich, powerful, and who wanted Desmond out of the way indefinitely.
Why wasn’t the number pushing automated? Good question. If it had turned out to actually be a big load of nothing, then it’s clearly another Dharma psych experiment. Since it turned out to be Very Important…good question.
Salt, like ash, is something traditionally used to form a protective or entrapping circle. It was to keep smokey out of there, presumably.
-Joe
Lots of organizations are pretty impressive until you get a view from the inside and find out how they (don’t) work.
Besides pushing the button, which might have blown up the world if Desmond hadn’t hit the fail safe, I never once had the impression that Dharma was out to save the world. I was under the impression that they were simply a bunch of researchers in the seventies who picked exactly the wrong island to setup shop on.
All the saving the world and Evil Equations was stuff that I strictly learned of from this very message board. Not on the show. Hanso is barely mentioned on the show.
-Joe
I think even that’s overthinking it a bit.
HORACE: Hey, Phil, go out to the Pearl Station and tell Markowitz to stop watching porn on the security cameras.
PHIL: Sure thing, Horace. Where is the Pearl Station again?
HORACE: You know, it’s in the grass.
PHIL: Where in the grass now?
HORACE: You know, in the grass, in the big fucking clearing.
PHIL: With all due respect, Horace, this is a big island, and there are a lot of big fucking clearings.
HORACE: It’s the one with the… the… fuck. You know what, take Radzinsky with you, he’ll show you where it is, and you know what? Bring some salt along, and after you get done with Markowitz, make a big fucking circle around the entrance.
PHIL: Thanks, Horace. That’ll work.
You think that scene would have made for compelling television? See, that’s the thing. Most of these questions, the problem is that the answers would have made for really, really boring TV. Imagine an episode dedicated to showing, in excruciating detail, how Ben infiltrated the Hanso organization, replaced the Food Drop Functionary with one of his guys, and made sure that Mikhail was accepted as the legitimate new communications guy so that no one at Hanso would get wind of what was happening. I love this show more than chocolate, and even I would have switched to the Food Network during such an episode.
Phrased perfectly! Sums up my feelings perfectly. (((Well, except I get why Sawyer earned his post as head of security. While I’m sure he earned his spot gradually, he saved Dharma from an early purge. )))
Dharma was set up as a HUGE part of the mystery, they had the opportunity to explain it all in season five in a very organic manner, and for some reason, did not. Either they are now bluffing and will give big Dharma answers in the last five episodes… or it as a very interesting red herring. A big miss if that’s the case.
Look, I am in the camp that feels they had some idea where they were going from the very beginning (supernatural good vs. evil battle). I don’t need Walt footage to believe that. But, to be honest, it really doesn’t matter to me whether they mapped it out from the start as long as it makes sense internally. It isn’t a retcon unless they contradict internally established storylines. If the show makes sense, I am satisfied. Why get mad over stuff that happens in the writer’s retreats and bullpens?
But I will feel that they will have jipped us diehards if they ignore some of the big mysteries that were central to the show for up to whole seasons at a time(Walt/Aaron, the fate of the DI, the serum, fertility issues, why people have special powers, and who called for the purge to take a few). I’ll still love the show, but I will feel slightly cheated.
Sure, I also have guesses for some of these, and come to many of the same conclusions as jackdavinic, but I don’t get paid to do their job! I want to see the real answers on the show.
Here is my ultimate standard of whether I will be frustrated if things are unresolved:
Anything that was a focus of episodes AFTER they learned Season Six could be the end of the show should be explained; at least marginally. I’m more forgiving for stuff that might have been “treadmill” filler. But once they knew date certain, the stuff was added for a reason. Why bring it up and then dump it in the trash?
But see, here’s where I feel a disconnect, because to me, most of those things are either pretty evident or don’t need specific answers. I mean, let’s take them one at a time.
-
Why do some people have special powers?
Because they just do. I really, really don’t think there’s going to be a better explanation than that, and I guess the thing is I don’t need one. In the LOST reality, some people have supernatural powers - can talk to the dead (Hurley, Miles), make their wishes manifest (Walt), or circumvent normal rules about time (Desmond). They could make up some kind of gobbledegook about electromagnewhatsit, but who cares? Some people have powers. Why can Jennifer Love Hewitt talk to ghosts? -
Walt
What do you still want to know about Walt? He had some kind of psychic ability to make his desires happen, a very powerful thing. His childhood records would have indicated this. When O815 crashed, the Others reviewed the passenger manifest and discovered that there was this boy there that could potentially wish them all into the cornfield. As guardians of the island, they needed to assess the degree of the threat, so they kidnapped him and studied him. Eventually, they shooed him off the island to ameliorate the danger he posed. What else? -
Aaron
Well, I still cling to the theory that the reason that the Man in Black’s name hasn’t been revealed is that they’re leading up to the big reveal that his name is Aaron. But even if it’s not, the only real mystery surrounding Aaron was the question of why that phony psychic told Claire not to let him be raised by another. And, I mean, not to put too simplistic a cap on the whole thing, but he was raised by another, and as a partial result of that, some bad shit is going down. Had Aaron stayed with Claire, Kate never would have agreed to return to Craphole, meaning that none of the Oceanic Seven could have made it back (according to the show’s mythology), meaning that most of what’s happened so far, including Jacob’s murder, would not have happened at all. -
The Fate of the Dharma Initiative
They were killed with poison gas by the Others, with the assistance of Ben. They showed this actually happen on screen, then they showed us the dead bodies. I can’t imagine any further explanation. -
The Serum
Was fake. It was a way to sell the pretend quarantine by having people inject it, thinking they were boosting their resistance to a disease that didn’t exist. -
Who Called for the Purge
The Others. I don’t know who specifically called for it, but does it matter? We don’t need to know the inner political workings. Was there a vote? Did the Leader - still Widmore at that point, I guess - make the call? I just don’t care. There was a group, they hated the Dharma Initiative, they had a weapon in Ben, they came to a decision to use him to kill their enemies. The end. -
The Fertility Thing
Is the one thing I really hope they’ll address in the next five episodes.
YMMV, but I’m not a big fanfic guy. Some things I can just dismiss, but the major plotpoints should be resolved.
Plus, my issues are not minutia (the airplane numeral jab somebody made was pretty funny!), but core tenets of whole seasons.
I’m ok with mystery, but these people have all commented on how odd it is to have such abilities when no one else does. This is a storytelling trick to get you wondering WHY they have them. I’m betting this question gets answered, and I suspect it will be Jacob and/or MIB. I’d be ok with a “Wizard Did It” answer here. But to say people “just do” is hokey. Plus, citing Jennifer Love Hewitt shows never scores any points!
Why he appeared at certain times? Why he was wet in one of those appearances (that one was intentionally odd)? Was he on the computer communicating with the Hatch? He seemed important at one time. I get that aging child stars complicate six year long dramas, but this plotline feels the most dropped of all storylines.
I agree Aaron = MIB, and think this one will be answered one way or the other. I haven’t thrown up my hands with the series as some have. I feel like there are still some big mahtza balls ready to be dropped in our laps. But, the raised by another warning was not just from the psychic. It was reitterated to Jack by Hurley and Ghost Christian. (I had to look that up…)
Your imagination demands less than mine. What happened to the Ann Arbor people? What happened to the DI after the purge? Why still the supply drops with the illusion that the DI is still in business? A special feature on a DVD, Mysteries of the Universe: The Dharma Initiative shed a little light, but still adds an extra layer of mystery. I can speculate as well as you, but it is still just fanfic.
Why did Ethan give it to Claire when he kidnapped her and she was so loopy she couldn’t have cared less about a quarantine?
I disagree and think this one will actually be answered; at least implicitly. I think it would be either Jacob or MIB fooling Ben into action. The show has teased us a few times about this one. Ben specifically says it wasn’t his call. They play the pronoun game when discussing it. But if it wasn’t answered, I’d probably be ok as well. This one might be crossing into minutia…
Why do you need this one answered? It is OBVIOUSLY a combination of electromagetism and the destruction of the fertility goddess’s statue! Come on! Now you are just nitpicking! 
[sub]Add, why the heck there is a giant statue of a fertility goddess to my list, please![/sub]
He wasn’t typing on the computer. Not even a little bit. Only the dimmest characters of all (Michael, Doubtful Locke) even suspected it a little bit.
It’s petty crap. Why was he wet? Are you serious? Maybe he was having a wet dream. Maybe he’d just had a dream where he was swimming. Maybe his astral self had to SWIM. All those times he appeared dry, WHY WAS HE DRY?!?!!
Wondering why there are polar bears running loose on a tropical island is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Obsessing about it after it’s been found that there is a zoo on the island and that it is decrepit and abandoned is just silly.
Just because people have obsessed about something for years does not make it significant.
We have had in this very season people flat out state reasons and explanations and we still have people saying, “But what did they REALLY mean when they said that?”
-Joe
Why and how did Original Sawyer/ Locke’s daddy appear on The Island? Was he really Smokey? What is Ben’s magic box?
I agree, but what was the point of it? Was it random weirdness? Should I just rent a David Lynch movie and join the “weird for the sake of weird club?”
This is an absurd statement. Some production guy went and got a bucket of water and dumped it on the kid for SOME specific reason. I was clearly supposed to want to know why. That’s why they did it. Now…I want to know why. If the writers/producers go out of their way to create a mystery, why is it irrational to respond accordingly? The marketing for the whole season is about answering questions. The podcasts indicate the producers WANT people asking questions. Why all of a sudden as the thing winds down, do people act surprised at the fan response to actually get some answers?
Plus, if he had a wet dream, was he a Kate or Juliet fan? THIS is the real question.
Agreed. Some people won’t take an obvious answer. I’m not that guy. I think it is pretty clear they had polar bears there for an experiment. I’m just not on board with the “Walt had a wet dream and had to Astral swim” club.
You’re not doing me any favors, Pete.:smack:
Because she has supernatural boobies.
Duh.
Oy. I think storyteller gave the correct answer, and I think your objection is simply more evidence that they made it up as they went along, happily throwing in conflicting retcons without spending too much effort thinking things through.
This particular example is unsettling because it happened so very early on in the run, both the original setup and the revealed answer that showed us the mystery was just random made up crap. Not like the entire Dharma Initiative, for example, which we didn’t learn was completely meaningless time-killing fluff until this final season. Of course, I maintain that we didn’t learn about the DI’s irrelevance until so late because it wasn’t irrelevant until very late, when they apparently rewrote the entire island mythos. So I guess it’s consistent, at least.
Yes, they could waste an entire episode like that. Or, they could just work it into the story somehow where Ben tells someone that’s what happened. You know, like Smokey just flat out telling Jack he can only take the form of dead people, or Michael telling Hurley what the whispers were. It would take like a minute of screen time and boom, we’d have a pretty good answer to a long-standing question.
Why do you consider Dharma to be irrelevant? Or, what do you consider relevant? They weren’t the first ones to come to the island non accidently. There were the Egyptians, and the military group also. That’s all part of the history of the island. The various stations play an important role in the story. And the Swan plays a vital role in the time travel and alternate universe aspects of the show.
Well, maybe we just have different storytelling preferences. I tend to hate the kind of exposition you describe, and felt the reveal of the nature of the whispers was one of the most artlessly executed things the show has ever done. Didn’t particularly need the Smoke Monster making explicit that he can take the form of dead people, either; I had intuited that from the fact that he took the form of dead people.
I think the kind of show you describe - with exposition painstakingly forced into the script - would be both boring and uninvolving. The show I’ve been watching for six years has never been that kind of show, and I’d be profoundly disappointed if it became that kind of show in its last ten episodes.
I tend to agree with you. Verbal explanations by a character just for the sake of an explanation are crappy. I remember one such episode when they were in the lamp post station (in L.A.) and Eloise Hawking started giving a verbal presentaion explaining some of the islands phenomena. I just thought “wow, instead of showing me an explanation they’re really going to lecture it to me?” It felt lazy.
Here’s a mystery I would like an explanation on:
Why the repeat for tonight? Why not just delay the beginning of the season by one week or, (gasp!), film a seventeenth episode?
:rolleyes:
I do understand what you’re saying, and it’s a good point (after all, “show, don’t tell” is probably the most common advice given to writers), but in some cases exposition is just unavoidable. Say, a convoluted mystery novel where the murder is solved in a climactic flurry of exposition (Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, etc.), or even the *Back to the Future *films, where Doc Brown maniacally explains to Marty the workings/repercussions of time travel. It can work if it’s done right, and doesn’t necessarily have to be “painstakingly forced into the script.” (I do agree that the whispers reveal could have been done with more finesse, but it was, IMO, better than nothing.)
I don’t want the show to become one long info-dump either, but the fact is the writers have written themselves into such a labyrinth that there’s no easy way out anymore. There are too many questions left to answer without some exposition, and not enough time to make it all flow smoothly into the bigger story. The only alternative is to ignore a lot of the questions by distracting the viewers with, for example, “Look! A Chuck E. Cheese!”
Another question which I think shows that they didn’t think things through: if the smoke monster is antagonistic to Jacob (no matter how few Others knew this,) where did Ben come by the belief that he had to be “judged” by the monster?