the blast door map

written by: elizabeth sarnoff and gregg nations. sarnoff has co-written a good handful of episodes, some of them great (the man behind the curtain), some of them terrible (jack's tattoo episode. i'm still holding that one against you, elizabeth sarnoff and christina kim). gregg nations is the script coordinator for the show, and is in charge of the show bible and master timeline. i'd sure love to get my hands on his notebook. i'd sure like to have his job.

directed by: stephen williams. jack bender and stephen williams have been trading off directing duties since the s4 premiere. and jack is directing next week's. the streak doesn't break until episode 6.

the answers are being handed out like candy. candy to ambiguous babies.

1. edward mars
2. aaron
3. jack
4. claire
5. the "story"
   
6. locke
7. freighties
8. first shot
9. pre-boomer
10. best lines
11. minor gripe
12. major gripe
    

1. even though it was no mystery that tonight's episode would be a flashforward, the "flash" opened with a great misleading tease - i'm willing to bet that casting the actor playing kate's lawyer, shawn doyle, was based entirely on his resemblance to frederic lehne, who plays edward mars.



the opening shot of the flashforward, with kate sitting next to her slightly out-of-focus lawyer is practically a duplicate image of kate sitting next to mars on the plane. check it out:



it echoes the imageplay in the season opener with the pile of fruit. tease and reveal within the same shot.

i thought the prosecuting attorney looked really familiar - it's because she was a recurring guest star on star trek: the next generation, as dr. leah brahms, recipient of creepy stalker-love from geordi.

here's a weird bit of trivia from lostpedia: shawn doyle played a character named jack shepard in the movie frequency, also starring elizabeth mitchell.

3. aaron.



i think it's safe to assume that kate's 'he' who would 'be wondering where i am' in the season 3 finale is in fact aaron. it crossed my mind briefly when they cut to a shot of aaron right after kate said she didn't want her son involved in the trial. then they faked us out with some sawyer sex and baby talk, so i wasn't completely sure.. then they show us a fat-headed blonde baby, which sure could be sawyer's. wait, aaron is blonde too. then kate drops the bomb.

the future is a crazy crazy place. let the theories fly. i really was not expecting to get this answer this soon. the lost of seasons 1-3 would only give us kate's son, and then drop that he's aaron 23 episodes later, when aaron is in college or something.

3. jack refuses to see aaron. why? it's easy enough to understand when we thought the baby was sawyers, but what is the awful awful thing that happens that would alienate jack from aaron?

don't forget that jack and claire are half-siblings. judging from the fact that christian shepard has been appearing on the island not only to vincent, but also to hurley, it's not impossible to surmise that at some point down the line, christian will pop up in front of claire, at which point she'll say "dad? why the fuck did you follow me out to this island in the middle of nowhere?" and christian shepard will say "oh, didn't you hear? i'm actually dead. this is a manifestation caused by jacob and the smoke monster in the form of your father. also, the guy jack is also my son. so yeah, he's your brother. good thing you didn't make out with him like luke and leia, huh?"

4. is claire dead? stranded? so, if the discovery happens on-island, once jack and claire put the pieces together, claire will die. or something awful will happen that forces kate to take aaron off the island. i'm imagining a sophie's choice-type situation. ryan predicts that women who give birth on-island, die as soon as they leave, and maybe this is discovered on the boat. but what on earth would make jack never want to see his nephew? a baby he delivered himself?

maybe future jack doesn't yet know that he is related aaron and claire, and perhaps the discovery of this is actually the event that causes jack to finally need to see aaron.

OR discovering that he unwittingly left his half sister behind is the event that finally cracks jack, and becomes the reason for his desperate need to "go back."

5. jack's moment on the stand was riveting for no other reason than knowing that finally, we are going to hear the 'official' story of the crash. yes, they did apparently crash on an 'island,' and 8 of them survived - so who are the two "survivors" who "died?" before they had a chance to become part of the oceanic 6?

6. locke. what an ass. he tells ben that he's 'cheating' by using technology on the island, and then runs right to the barracks, living in ben's own house. ben had better call him out on that little bit of hypocrisy. don't think we'll really see any movement on the locke storyline until his flash back/forward episode. it's quite entertaining to see him struggle with leadership. not so easy is it?

7. the freighties. in this fantastic article from jeff jensen at EW, we have confirmation from d&c that this season is -about- the survivors relationship to the freighter-folk. ken leung is great, just great. now, what was going on with the esp testing charlotte and daniel were doing? and what happened to the helicopter? is it merely a result of the timeshifting we saw with daniel's beacon experiment?

8. our first opening eye opening shot of the season, and it's locke's, and it's deliberately shot differently than the other opening eyes. the focus here is on locke's scar. where most of the opening eye shots seem to emphasize the theme of perspective, this shot emphasizes locke's vulnerability, and uncertainty. even the way his eye opens - usually the eye shots are big, wide awake openings. but here it's more of a whimpering awake. interesting. not sure what it means yet, but it's clearly the result of very deliberate efforts to make this one different.

9. "enjoy your breakfast."
"why not 3.3? 3.4?"

10. preboomer: some would say 'i saw it coming!' well of course you saw it coming. because unlike last week's m. night shayamalan ending, this one was properly set up. the ultimate preboomer must be both surprising and inevitable. my problem with last week was that it was surprising, but not inevitable. this week i'd say we have a preboomer ranking of 80% inevitable and 60% surprising. we're presented with both possibilities of kate's baby being either sawyer's or aaron. and at the end, we're given the answer, which is a much more intriguing, story-filled choice. no endless teasing (yet another gem they could have held onto for a full season). i vote this second best preboomer of the season, after 'i have a man on their boat.'

11. minor gripes. the kate/sawyer dialogue was weak, lovey dovey crap. elizabeth sarnoff, hand over the writing of sawyer to drew goddard, thank you.

12. sideline major gripe: rob k. brought it to my attention last week, that in the 'enhanced' repeat airings of the episode - infuriating, pseudo-canon information is doled out - like when miles holds up the photo of ben, the ticker says "proof that ben has been off the island!" well, no. it's not necessarily proof of that. when desmond's hawaii photo with penny can be taken in england in front of a backdrop, on 'lost,' no photo is really proof of anything. why ruin/muddle a mystery like this?

also, in that same jeff jensen article, it's been revealed by the producers, coming out of radio silence, that the entirety of the find815 game is NOT canon. i suspected as much after reading this new york times article spelling out the producer's disinvolvement in both the game, and the "enhanced" episodes. i think the enhanced episodes are a good idea, but not if they're a: providing misleading information, b: going to actually ruin future surprises, or c: going to become -truly- canon, and required viewing for additional information on the show. at this point, lostpedia should not be including information revealed in the ticker as canon.