I’m still trying to figure out why they needed a person to push a button when they had computers out the wazoo.
(Dilbert’s boss points out that a little toy pecking bird can do his job)
“And I told him, hah! It would take at least three of those to do my job!”
Except from this island we learned that Smokey in his living form wanted to get the Well of Souls full of water, and that it would be a Very Bad Thing.
-Joe
Exactly. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal but the writers keep telling us the whole storyline was planned from the beginning but DHARMA and Hanso have nothing to do with anything anymore. Would this season be substantially different if mysterious powers (i.e. Jacob) cause Oceanic 815 to crash and they’ve been caught in a gigantic tug-of-war between him and MiB without DHARMA ever being a part of it??
It was a social experiment.
Kind of like Lost itself.
We are just the button pushers.
These have been explained.
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They used the lamppost station in LA to figure it when/where it would be.
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They knew there were pockets of electromagnetic energy all over the world, but were able to pinpoint that there was one place that had the greatest concentration of said energy.
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Alvar Hanso. Mysterious financier and decendent of the Captain of the Black Rock, whose backstory is unneccessary, but if you are really interested, it was examined in the Lost Experience game.
Actually, this one doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, even though the map was admittedly cool. According to Kelvin Inman, the map was drawn primarily by Radzinsky – who clearly already knew where the other Dharma stations were, as seen in Season 5.
The first rule of Protecting-the-Island-Club is that we don’t talk about Protecting-the-Island-Club.
That’s what we were led to believe at one point, until Desmond failed to push the button and all hell broke loose.
This is the sort of thing that makes me think the haters aren’t really being serious.
Of COURSE he’s not the “same” character: the whole point was to delve into why he became the sort of person he is (or… er, was) now. The whole point of this show has been to delve into the reasons why human beings change or don’t change, why they make the same mistakes, why they make seemingly inexplicable choices… it’s because they are still grappling with the past.
Jacob was basically a frickin’ caveman who nevertheless lucked out by being chosen and had thousands of years to evolve into what he is today, to struggle and learn against his much craftier brother.
WHY?
Jacob wasn’t mentioned by name, but he’s pretty clearly whomever Ben went on and on about as being a “great man” when he was exposed in the Swan. I don’t think they had things fleshed out into two immortal characters at that point either, but clearly the Others were always meant to be quasi-fanatics that answered to some sort of oracle/leader/force/cause beyond just Ben.
Dharma is part and parcel of the people trying to understand and explore and exploit the Island, just as the people whom the MiB stayed with were. They are meant to echo each other.
I had another reply ready to go, but lost it due to battery failure on my laptop, but what you say is pretty much in sync with my view on the episode.
Yeah, so what if we don’t know where “mother” came from or what the “light” is (though we could still find out that last one), all that shows us is that important as Jacob’s been lo these many centuries, he doesn’t even have all the answers. It’s a mystery island, and no one’s ever going to have every last answer.
But the answers we did get, I found quite satisfying. The origin of Jacob and his relation to the man with no name. Who the hell Adam and Eve were (though the flashbacks were unneeded, anyone who didn’t remember Adam and Eve in the caves likely wouldn’t care who they were anyway). Why there’s a donkey wheel that transports people across the earth. Why Jacob and Smokey can’t kill each other directly (yes, mother just making it that way was enough of an answer for me). How the Smoke Monster came to be (again, yes, it was enough for me for no name to be sent into the light where “something bad” happened to him).
There were a metric shitload of answers in this episode and all people can do is complain about the answers, and complain about what still hasn’t been answered. I’m starting to think the producers might as well have just said “fuck it” and come up with some crazy shit about everything being in Vincent’s mind as he gets put to sleep in a vet’s office in Sydney. It wouldn’t piss people off any more than this ep did, and at least it would be worthy of all the hate it would get.
I honestly don’t know how people can possibly think that they won’t be going into more of what the Light is and what the Island is anyhow.
Maybe it will be all bullshit. But if not, then it’s perfectly reasonable that they are setting up the finale, and this was the download episode so that we have some context to fit the final reveals into and know what’s at stake. They just showed us why the two major forces care, and what they went through to get where and who they are. But the dead, including Jacob, can and will still have to talk in the remaining show left. The MiB can talk. And they had to be left with things to say, and to reveal, so that they don’t just spend the finale merely running around trying to blow each other up. Because LOST doesn’t have a big enough effects budget for that.
And of COURSE part of it is going to be mystical mumbo jumbo: life, death, rebirth, souls, quantum physics. But the payoff is whether or not the mumbo jumbo has an emotional payoff that fits things together. And don’t see how this episode makes that any more or less likely. The show is about coincidences that tie people together, how their pasts shape their futures, and how and why its all tied together. That’s where it’s going to make or break things: not how the lighthouse works or why magic water can or can’t raise the dead.
Well, virtually all of your complaints don’t seem to make any sense to me, for starters…
I have no idea what you mean by “white” smoke, but you’ve got things confused here. Rousseau claims to have overheard the others talking about taking “the boy” and thought they meant Aaron. They actually (if she did hear them) meant Walt (the obsession with Aaron was Ethan’s particular bag). And the pyre may well have been lit by Rousseau to scare the castaways and attract the Others so she could exchange Aaron for her daughter, not by the Others at all. This is left ambiguous… but it’s precisely the sort of thing that CAN be fairly left ambiguous.
But even so, Ben does all sorts of crafty things to try and trick people or manipulate them. Nothing about this or anything else suggests that Rousseau is correct in thinking that the Others always announce their attacks with plumes of smoke. Just because she associates black smoke with them doesn’t mean she has the connection right, and the fact that she is confused and unreliable is established again and again. Heck, she may be mixing up the smoke monster with the whispers with the others: which is certainly fair, given that they are all linked somehow.
This is unresolved, but there is plenty of reason to think that there’s time to have the final piece fall in. The MiB does seem to corrupt and crazify people that fall under his influence too deeply. That doesn’t mean that they are uncurable, but it’s certainly enough to legitimately make a crazy lady like Rousseau think that they are lost or taken over by some force. You’re asking “what the heck need” about a lady who’s character is DEFINED by rabid and increasingly more unstable paranoia?
And we still don’t know just what the infection really is, or why people like Dogen think it’s so severe. Sayid does seem to know something. It’s implied that the MiB promised him Nadia, and perhaps even that the alternate world is the culmination of that promise. That makes him stop caring about “this” world. That temptation (once they have some, they want more) eating away at people could be precisely what we’re dealing with. We don’t know yet. But there’s no reason to think that we’re done delving into this subject.
Again, it’s just not that simple. They’ve been clear that they hadn’t fleshed out the story of Jacob v. MiB back in season 1. But they did seem to have some idea of the larger mythological battle they were interested in. The simple identities of Adam and Eve aren’t the only part of “Adam and Eve:” there’s the connection is to the backgammon pieces, the black and white pieces, the two sides. Who Adam and Eve ARE, their backstory, ultimately fleshes out what that conflict WAS in particular, how those characters got to be like that. But it didn’t have to require that they knew specifically what or who those people were entirely when they decided that there would be some ancient conflict driving the events of the story.
??? As others have already pointed out, it was Dharma that brought them, not the Others, and they brought them to experiment on them. We may not know why polar bears in particular, but clearly they thought the Island necessitated exotic research interests. Again, that’s not explaining everything entire, but it’s a heck of a lot more plausibly in line with the story told than you what you misremember it into being. That you misremember elements like this, and that these misrememberings are part of what convinces you the show is so inconsistent, is part of the reason it feels like your perception and the actual show are two different things.
I have no idea what this means. Ben is a liar and a manipulator, all in the service of what he thinks is the ultimate good: protecting the Island.
Radskinsky was a (possibly brain damaged) survivor of the Dharma purge, trapped in the Swan, seemingly cut off, trying to plot out what he knew of Dharma to whomever remained in contact with him, if anyone (we still don’t know about the drops, or where Inman came from, and this is one of the things the producers have suggested we will learn more about). It certianly makes sense to me, even if they didn’t spell it out explicitly, and even if we DON’T find out more.
Yes, it’s already been established that Ben didn’t hear anything from Jacob, but that he did believe fervently in him and the rules of the others until that faith began to waver. We still don’t know if the rules are real or not, or how they work, and that too is something the show and producers say we’ll find out more about soon. We know that the Others do have special rules, including rules against killing their own.
More: I’m not saying that all this stuff is prefect, but a lot of you seem to be sloppily going out of your way to neglect key elements and make them seem more ridiculous/unjustified than they actually were:
I’m not sure what other answer one could need, or that you’d find more rewarding here. The polar bears were a sign that the Island was not just some tropical marooning: that all sorts of other crazy stuff had been going on. An entire hippie commune of scientists experimenting on animals answers that pretty solidly.
I think a better answer might have been that the Island traveled in time and space, and at one time was near the Arctic. But that’s not the way they went. Or maybe it was: maybe Dharma found them on the Island and was experimenting to try and find out how they go there. But I don’t see WHY you’d want the show to come out and spell all this out directly. The numbers and what the hell that black smoke are… are WAYYYYY more important. And those seem to be on track to at least some sort of explanation.
My bet is that the numbers are part of what Desmond has worked out.
Again, file these under something that I agree should be explained, but that the door is clearly not yet closed on. Someone above just pointed out a pretty tidy explanation as to how this mystery could tie right into the one about what Smokey is: whether or not the power of life and death and souls was constrained might well affect babies when they would normally “quicken” (i.e. get their souls, as people used to believe). Which just so happens to come right around the time that Juliet estimates the problems with pregnancies begin…
Corruption: obviously an element that will be explored some more. But also keep in mind that Ben was not “corrupted” in the same way that Sayid and the French team are. He was changed and his innocence taken away. Not unlike, I might add, what seemed to have happened to Jacob after he drank with Mother.
Again, am I saying that they didn’t just make this stuff up, or that they will explain it in any satisfying way? No. But the door is clearly still open AND if these things all tie into the same central mystery, it’s justifiable and justified why they’ve held them back until the very end.
First of all, we ALREADY know that there are severe legalistic rules against killing a fellow Other: Juliet was only spared because Ben said so, and even then, she had supposedly killed to protect, not for revenge or leverage. So these don’t necessarily have to be mystical in nature: it’s enough that the Others believe they are deep and dangerous rules. If Widmore or Ben kill each other directly, neither might ever regain the favor of Jacob, whether or not there is something literally stopping them (like there is against candidates committing suicide).
And now, by the way, we know part of why those rules are so valued by, for instance, Jacob and Alpert. Both of them killed and deeply regretted it, and stand on the side of trying to protect the Island and its fellow protectors.
Did you forget what Penny told Charlie? “I know about the Island” She clearly knew some things from being a Widmore at least. She knew it was her father’s obsession. Again, this is not spelled out. But it’s clear that she did know more than just that Desmond had vanished at sea. She knew about the Island, specifically, knew it was special and that Desmond might have gotten tangled up in it.
For those not wanting to miss out on things, the penultimate episode is today (Tuesday) and the finale (ultimate episode) is this Sunday. There’s a Darlton bit on Jimmy Kimmel Friday night, and a general Lost thing on Kimmel Sunday night. On Saturday there’s an enhanced version of the Pilot (pop up video). On Sunday before the show there’s some kind of generic Lost thing they have before each season’s finale.
Heh–actually I had forgotten that completely. Fair point. 
Something I forgot I’d really like to have explained:
How the stewardess character became such a true-believing Other so quickly.
I was sure one episode this season would tell her story, since they bothered to have the character show up prominently a few times toward the beginning of the season.
I forget. Do we know what the deal is with the whispers?
ETA: Oh yeah, never mind. They’re ghosts, as revealed in the Ghost Whisperer episode of LOST starring Hugo.
Shows you what happens when I read SD before my morning coffee . . . I was scratching my head wondering what episode Cesar Milan was in.