the blast door map

written by: eddie kitsis & adam horowitz. this season they've written 'the economist,' and 'ji yeon.' so, pretty good track record.

directed by: stephen williams. back in rotation with jack bender.

this is season 4's 'hurley's van episode:' it's setup, laying the groundwork for the three-part finale in which many of our biggest questions will be answered (and then of course supplanted by entirely new ones). these are 'put the next disc in' episodes, because when we're watching this show again from the start with our high-school-aged children, we'll be saying: 'put the next disc in.' (really, i think disc switching is probably one of the main reasons to have children.) it's not an earth shattering episode, but necessary, and thankfully, executed as well as we can expect it to have been.

1. rousseau requiem
   
2. auspicious appendicitis
   
3. creepy christian
4. aaron aversion
5. kindly kate
   
6. petulant polyglot
7. course correction
8. timeline tweaks
9. disturbing details
   
10. premature preboomer
    

1. rousseau requiem. damn. she's dead. it just cleans out that storyline once and for all, which disappoints me. so much focus was placed on her thread, which played out beautifully over 3 years, that it makes me sad that -at present anyway- it feels like it's been prematurely clipped from the branch. we've still been promised a flashback. here's my guess: widmore himself sent rousseau's science expedition. and she and her crew faced the exact same insanity and weirdness that the current freighter crew is faced with. c'mon, how awesome would it have been to have rousseau realize that the freighter people were hired by her old boss? ah well, i guess we'll have that moment without her, in much the same way that libby was killed just before she could be reunited with her boat.

2. auspicious appendicitis. jack's appendicitis kicks in last week at the exact moment that daniel admits that they have no rescue intentions. why? and thank god for rose who asks all the important questions. rose as a character is really just a person sitting at home on the couch next to you who talks back to the screen. thankfully she's in the screen so we don't have to beat her up.

rose knows what's up. she knows that things like this don't just happen - rose knows we are in season 4, not season 1, and that there's an end date for the show. we don't have time for random events to pad out a season! we can't stop the show because jack got in a cave-in! every storytelling minute counts, so what is this telling us?

i think it has to do with the overall theme of course correction/destiny raised by the desmond plotline, which i'll discuss further in #7.



i enjoyed the surgery scene, mostly because it was great to see juliet get something cool to do. and extra points for gory-ness.

3. creepy christian. jack visits hurley, who's been visited by charlie.



after seeing charlie in hurley's season premiere flashforward, i imagined that a visit from christian shepard to jack would be imminent. i called it in my post for the beginning of the end:

if the monster is able to manifest to people off island, it might make a little more sense why jack, in the cracked-out finale, was shouting at the doctor to 'go upstairs' and compare his sobriety to his father's.

but what does it all mean? what the hell are these very corporeal visions? do they relate to jacob? are they jacob? are they the monster?

my theory: the visions may not be jacob, per se, but they are intrinsically tied to him. and they are physically present when they appear.

• when hurley looked into the cabin, he saw christian shepard sitting in jacob's chair.
  
• christian shepard physically interacted with vincent in the final 'missing piece.'
• charlie was seen by one of the other santa rosa patients when he came to visit hurley.
• miles saw claire leave with 'some guy.' - other people are seeing these things (though the patient is insane and miles is psychic..)

maybe they are jacob's 'messengers?' or 'production assistants?' are they the island's way of saying 'you may be done with me, but i'm not done with you?'



there were some comments about how christian is obviously actually alive because he's now wearing a different outfit. post-death, we've only ever seen him wear the suit - but why would christian appear to claire wearing what jack remembers him wearing? how cool would it be if christian is in fact wearing the same wardrobe from his one and only visit with claire, the way she remembers him?



oh. oh well, that would have been pretty cool though, right?

4. aaron aversion. so this week's flashforward skipped a couple big moments in the jack plot: why did he not want to see aaron? and, what made him suddenly change his mind? why was it such a big deal? is it because he figured out that claire is his sister? is there a scene coming up where christian appears on the island and both jack and claire go "dad!" and then they look at each other and go "hey.. that's my dad." awkward pause. "good thing we didn't hook up, cuz i think the writers kind of made this up later, like luke and leia."

there was an interesting, ambiguous tease where jack yells at kate "you're not even related to him!" but it's impossible to tell if he's yelling that as a jab at her, knowing that he is related, or if it's just ironic that he's related and doesn't know it yet.

i have a feeling that we will see the jack/claire/dad omfg moment on-island before this season is out.

5. kate has a secret favor to do for sawyer. my guess: find clementine phillips.

6. petulant ployglot. so, charlotte speaks korean.



one of the highlights in this episode was jin's all-korean verbal smackdown of big red. is charlotte going to die soon? i kinda hope so. i liked her at first, but now she is the least developed, least interesting of the freighter folk. the truncated season certainly hasn't helped. it's a big change of pace, because after 'confirmed dead,' i was most interested in what a 'cultural anthropologist' might bring to the show mythology-wise. based on her job title, i think we can be pretty confident that she is going to survive just long enough to say "egad, it is the great lost city of the four-toed time-travel people. the most important thing about these people is" whap. shot in the back with an arrow. boom. titles.

7. course correction. when all is said and done, we will look back at the entire story of lost, and we will say, 'now there was a tale of destiny, and course correction.'

course correction is explained to us by ms. hawking in 'flashes before your eyes.' here's what she says:

MS. HAWKING: The universe, unfortunately, has a way of course correcting. That man was supposed to die. That was his path just as it's your path to go to the island. You don't do it because you choose to, Desmond. You do it because you're supposed to.

DESMOND: I'm going to meet Penny in an hour. I've got the ring; she'll say yes; I can choose whatever I want.

MS. HAWKING: You may not like your path, Desmond, but pushing that button is the only truly great thing that you will ever do.

desmond later understands ms. hawking's position when he finds himself trying to stop charlie's eventual death. desmond's experience with course correction encapsulates the entire series in miniature.


we will come to discover that hundreds of years ago, a major rift in time was opened, probably when the black rock was mysteriously transported to the island. we will also learn that all of the events since that moment have been about destiny course correcting so that this rift can be healed. the numbers, the specific passengers on the plane, nearly every strand of the plot, each character's individual story can be seen as building a cumulative cause-and-effect snowball barrelling toward the conclusion, when all is set 'right,' whatever that means exactly - probably that the island is either destroyed, or hidden forever.

course correction as an idea is interesting to me because it still allows a person to have free will (widmore can still kill alex), within the constructs of destiny. characters are still able to make choices, but they can't control the universe around them.


but here's why i think course correction is such an important theme: it echoes the process of how the show itself is created. it's how the showrunners 'play god' in the universe they've made. they know the beginning and the end, and several key points along the way in that journey, but the filled in bits, the scenes and the episodes have a lot of leeway as to where they can go. some actors may have been considered for major arcs, but then it's discovered that the fans aren't connecting with them. another actor wants to leave the show to do a movie, but can come back once it's shot. perhaps the actress playing penelope is needed, but will not be available until a month later. all of these things throw little wrenches into the master plan, but the story is still hurling towards its conclusion, so a showrunner has to improvise ways to mold the story back into it's basic original shape, so that the endgame, the 'destiny' of it all, still plays out in the proper form.

"lost" as an entity is both rigid in structure, but fluid in form - using its own dna as a metaphor for god, echoing the showrunner's limited ability to control a universe of their making.

like george bernard shaw manipulating the destinies of his characters:



so why does jack have a sudden attack of appendicitis at the very moment daniel admits that rescue wasn't in the plan? because the island, or god, or destiny, or whatever, does not want jack to leave. as long as jack believed dan and charlotte, there was no chance he would be rescued, but knowing the lie, jack suddenly has to fight, he has to act on his free will, and so the island acts to curb it. the island seems determined to not even allow him to spit out orders to the crew. course correction. jack is meant to stay on the island, to do something. and his choice to leave follows him around (literally) until he comes back to do his 'work.'

my fiend emily didn't like the idea that jack might have some 'higher purpose' to attend to. i don't think his 'work' is necessarily going to be something grandiose.. look at the lovely job the island had desmond doing for three years, pushing that button..

8. timeline tweaks. here's where recent events fit into the future timeline:

• (summer, 2005) sun gives birth to ji yeon. cries at jin's 'grave.' hurley is happy to not see anyone else.

• (october 20, 2005) nadia is picked off.
• (october 24, 2005) ben arrives in tunisia.
• (later, 2005) nadia's funeral, ben/sayid form unholy alliance.
• ben says to widmore "penny's gonna get it."

• sayid is fully ben's bitch - tries to kill 'the economist.'

• hurley goes on a bender in his dad's car, goes back to the asylum, has vision of charlie.
• jack thinks about growing a beard. has screwdriver for breakfast.
• abbaddon asks hurley if 'they are still alive.'

• kate's got aaron. he looks about 2 years old, putting this at 2006. if there was no timeshift.
• jack can't stand to see aaron for some reason. has hots for kate.

• jack changes his mind, decides to be aaron's dad, moves in with kate.
• (August 31, 2007) jack starts seeing his long-dead daddy.
  

• jack grows that beard. is cracked outta his mind. sees in the newspaper that "j" has successfully committed suicide, which leads jack to try it himself.
• jack tells kate 'we hafta go baaaaaaacccckkk!'

lostpedia states that:

By virtue of the Yankees/Red Sox and Indians/Mariners scores in the newspaper article, only one date is viable for the publication of the paper: August 31, 2007

so if last week's flashforward took place last august, then that probably means the 'we hafta go baack' scene probably took place now. now. more specifically, i'm betting it will take place on the same date that the finale airs, may 22, 2007 (same day indiana jones opens, thanks a lot damon and carlton.)

i predict that this season will end with the same scene, jack again screaming 'we hafta go baaack,' only this time it will have deeper repercussions because we'll know the exact reasons why he/they have to go back, and in that same moment, what was once the future will become the present.

9. disturbing detail. traveling to the future erases your surgery scars.



and all your body hair.



10. preboomer. eh. claire's missing again - it's also a mid-action preboomer, one of those that compels you to put the next dvd in. i recommended to friends that if they missed this weeks ep, they wait so that they can watch back to back with next week, cuz it's one of those.