the blast door map

written by: brian k. vaughn and paul zbyszewski. both always work as co-writers, but with different partners each time. brian co-wrote 'meet kevin johnson' (boo), 'the shape of things to come' (yay) and 'the little prince' (mostly yay). paul zbyzewski is new this season and has previously co-written 'jughead' (superyay).

directed by: jack bender, the show's main director, and whose only misstep thus far has been 'the life and death of jeremy bentham.'

cinematography by: john bartley who is alternating with edward pei this season. john has been with the show since season 1. while neither dp has quite compared with larry fong, the work in these past couple episodes seems to be a little less rushed, perhaps because the show isn't quite as frantically running the crew around hawaii for as many locations anymore.

in short: 'namaste' is a strong episode dealing with 'the arrivals,' which is necessary, though we still don't know where we're going.

notables:

1. radzinsky!
2. sun
3. sayid
4. ben
   
5. sawyer
6. questions
   
7. podcast
8. minor gripes
   
9. preboomer
10. p.s.
    

1. radzinsky!



do you remember radzinsky? he's appeared on the show before, in the season 2 finale. radzinsky made a very special cameo as a bloodstain on the ceiling of the swan station hatch:



it was radzinsky himself who drew the blast door map! i owe my entire blog to that crazy suicidal architect. he was inman's original partner, before desmond crashed on the island and took over radzinsky's button-pushing duties.


inman adds to radzinsky's original blast door map painting.

and now we see that radzinsky was a paranoid hothead (prone to shooting oneself in the face), and possibly one of the designers of the hatch itself.



radzinsky's presence in the show means that we may get answers to some of these long-standing questions:

• what was the swan station's purpose before 'the incident?'
• what was 'the incident,' and why did it necessitate the pushing of the button?
• why didn't the hostiles take over the swan station after the purge?
• did radzinsky go insane because the swan station lost contact with dharma after the purge?
  
• was the purge (whose gas was inert after a few hours) actually 'the virus' that desmond habitually took injections for?
• why did food drops continue after the purge?
  
• when ben was held captive in the swan station in season 2, a) did he know its function? b) did he know it existed? c) did he understand the consequences of goading locke into not pushing the button?
• why do 'the numbers' appear on the outside of the swan station hatch?
• why do 'the numbers' have to be entered into the computer? why those numbers? couldn't it just be any old numbers?
  

2. sun.

some theories about why sun was not sucked off the plane and sent to 1977 along with the rest of the oceanic 6.

• her hair is much longer now, and the island liked her old haircut better.
• without a proxy for jin, she wasn't recognized by the island.
  
• the island responds to the body chemistry of pregnant women, and after having had jin's child off-island, her chemisty is sufficiently changed so as not to be recognizable to the island as being the same person.
  
• it would just be way too easy for her to reunite with jin, and we need that to take another season and a half.
• the woman we're watching isn't actually sun, just some lady who looks like sun, because her character is all over the map right now (though her ben oar-smack was a great moment).

but whatever the reason for sun not jumping, it must be part of the same ruleset that thus far inexplicably had juliet jumping in time with the freighties and 815ers. when you think about it, since charlotte, miles, and daniel were jumping, it's just as puzzling that lapidus wasn't plucked off the plane as well.

christian shepard laid it out quite succinctly for sun: 'i'm afraid you have a long journey ahead of you.' so how in the world is sun going to get to the same time period as jin? who will be transported to which time period? will it involve yet more pushings of the wheel? sun and jin's mission to reunite is presently the only story arc we know the show is building towards. we don't have any idea where jack, kate, hurley, sayid, ben, locke, lapidus, desmond, miles, daniel, or juliet are heading.

3. sayid.



next week's episode is called 'he's our you,' and damon and carlton confirmed in the podcast that the phrase is spoken to sayid, as in 'dude, sayid, this guy you're about to meet, he is the resident ruthless badass torturer guy of the dharma initiative, so be prepared to feel the pain, the kind of pain you would bring on a mysterious person obviously keeping secrets.' yeowch.

stupid island couldn't yank the 4 of them off the plane and put them in close proximity?? sayid just missed his chance to be faked onto the dharma sub with the rest.



but it's really sayid's encounter with ben that is the most interesting. here is where damon and carlton must be soo happy that they cast someone as enigmatic as michael emerson in the role of ben. since he literally could be lying at any time, they've been able to retcon any of ben's actions or statements in deeply flexible ways.

jin meeting rousseau in 1988 was already pushing the limits of 'yeah we met before, but i'm not going to recognize you 15 years later, and the audience is going to buy that.' now we're being asked to go even further..

now that we've seen ben introduce himself to sayid as a boy, we can easily assume that young ben also knew saywer, kate, jack, hurley, and juliet at this time. which means that as an adult, when we presumed ben was meeting them for the first time, he already knew who they were. we're now meant to swallow the rather large, but not unswallowable pill that asks us to rewatch seasons 2 and 3 and believe that ben's enigmatic performance when he 'meets' these people is in fact masking this prior knowledge. oh, writers of lost, you are walking on thin, thin ice.

however some things potentially make sense..

4. ben.



let's look back at ben's actions through the lens of him having met all these people as a boy:

• ben has a boyhood obsession with dharma van-fixer juliet, and (i'm guessing) will be crushed when juliet vanishes/apparently dies/returns to her proper time. he learns from alpert that juliet is in miami, and is, of all things, a fertility expert. this explains the root of ben's juliet obsession as having come not only from his childhood, but was in fact a boyhood fixation on juliet herself. i've mentioned before - but harper's line explaining ben's possessiveness, 'you look just like her,' will take on new meaning, because juliet is 'her.'

• when the plane crashes and ben gets the passenger manifest, ben knows exactly who he's interested in: jack, kate, saywer, and hurley. ben's extensive files on these people make more sense now because the files have been building up for years, not just in the brief time after the plane crash.
  

• it's also interesting that these are the four people that ben insisted michael bring back to him at the close of season 2. when the burlap sacks are yanked off the heads of those four, ben looks at them and sees the faces of his childhood staring back at him, looking younger than he remembered.

• what doesn't make as much sense (and perhaps it will, if the writers don't fall through the ice) is why adult ben expressed little initial interest in sayid, when he presently seems to be a person of deep interest to him as a child. we know that this interest is because young ben feels an affinity toward the hostiles, and is anxious to learn/help/become one of them. the fun irony is that when sayid first met ben, it was ben who was imprisoned, and sayid introduced himself by accusing ben of being an 'other' and saying 'my name is sayid jarrah, and i am a torturer.' meanwhile ben is thinking 'holy shit, i'm about to get tortured by the hostile that i gave a sandwich to when i was a kid!' the fact that sayid doesn't look any older wouldn't phase ben, since his good buddy alpert also seems immune to aging. will the show retcon in a bunch of adult ben flashbacks where we get to see his 'holy shit! these are the same people from my childhood' realizations?

sayid gives ben the beatdown in the swan station, in the episode 'one of them' from season 2.

it all makes me nervous. the show has already proved to me that it's not quite as adept as i had hoped about handling this extremely complex mythology. my deepest fear is that details will be overlooked, the timeline will not mesh, and we as the audience will be indirectly told 'yeah, just ignore that little part, otherwise none of this is gonna make sense.'

despite the character-based strengths of both 'lafleur' and 'namaste,' my faith in the plot-based core of the show is somewhat shaken. damon and carlton, the almighty gods of 'lost' wrote the two worst episodes of the season, which should have been the shatteringly brilliant apex of the penultimate year. perhaps they finally wrote themselves into a corner and fudged their way out of it - but the fact is, right now we have no idea where this show is going, and until the 3rd act conflicts are introduced, i can't be anything but worried about the integrity of the show.

5. sawyer.



but speaking of character-based strengths, here is the best example. i love what's happening with sawyer right now. i love his position of power, and i love the effortless control that's come with it. his scene was jack was such a beautiful reversal of everything we've come to expect from these two men - and what i loved about the scene was how surprised jack was to be schooled by sawyer, and then to see his oh-so-rare smiley face relief at not having to take responsibility for everyone anymore. in the three years that have passed, jack and sawyer went on opposite paths: jack into utter destruction, and sawyer into a life of love, respectability, and professionalism. while i love seeing the irony of it, it makes me wonder even more what jack's role is going to be.. because right now he's totally neutered.. and seems to be pretty cool with it.

6. questions.

• what happened to faraday, that he's 'no longer with us?'





• who is the mysterious lady sitting on the floor behind sun? a crew member? a claire stand-in? a mistake? an easter egg?

• when the rather conspicuous door flew open behind sun, lapidus, and christian, was it just misty, or was smokey oozing into the room.. taking the form of that woman sitting on the floor?

• why does christian show sun the 1977 recruits photo? jin isn't even in that photo! why didn't he show her the 1974 recruits photo which would have jin, sawyer, juliet, miles, and daniel in it? was it all for the sake of a clever visual transition? hmm. there is one random asian guy in there. christian shepard clearly thinks we all look the same.
  

• when will we see the other side of the outriggers-at-sea shootout scene?
• christian must be pretty lonely, and happy to have someone to talk to. what is his relationship to alpert and the rest of the hostiles?
  
• if amy and horace's baby is ethan, how is he saved from the purge, and why is his last name changed to 'rom?' (btw, juliet's reaction to finding out she's holding her future plumber: awesome)

• who is this guy? the character is named 'bram,' and had one reaction shot in 'namaste,' when lapidus was addressing the crowd of ajira socks. i instantly recognized him from dexter. he's an up-and-coming actor, with roles in choke, and jj's new star trek movie, so he's not gonna just be a silent ajira background survivor. maybe he's the guy juliet shoots from the outrigger?
  

7. podcast.

most interesting podcast tidbits:


kristin bell was supposed to play 37? yeah, i don't think so.

• the question of charlotte's birthday is settled. damon and carlton squarely blame rebecca mader for not wanting to play someone who's 37, and claim she had the line about her birthdate changed on-set. at the time, the repercussions were not anticipated, and it slipped through the cracks. they both admitted 'we screwed up.' while they did in fact screw up, i call bullshit on the rebecca mader blame game. charlotte was never conceived as being 37 years old. there is no way on earth that kristin bell, who they originally wanted to play charlotte, would ever pass as a 37 year old woman (kristin's actual birthdate is 1980, just a year off from charlotte's). my theory: after being disappointed with mader's performances, they sought to write her out as fast as possible, and came up with the dharma-child scheme as a way to keep her character important while losing a substandard actress. the detail with the birthdate would have to be overlooked/explained away. i wish i could know the original charlotte plan, had kristin bell accepted the role.

let's take another look at the swan orientation film...

• the title of this season's finale is 'the incident.' yeeeeeeeeeeeeee. perhaps it is 'the incident' which finally merges the cast into the same time period? perhaps we will see dr. marvin candle's arm ripped off by smokey? by widmore? (widmore is still around, if what he says about ben tricking him is true) or perhaps chang's arm gets transported to 2007 while the rest of him stays behind? or perhaps his arm is chopped off and used to grow both dr. mark wickmund and edgar halliwax? notice that dr. mark wickmund is considerably younger than dr. marvin candle.. wtf is going on here? are we supposed to ignore that, or will it be explained? are all the versions of pierre chang the results of reckless time experimentation resulting in multiple versions of himself occupying the same time? did they all have to agree on different names in order to avoid confusion? notice how in the orientation film, dr. marvin candle says 'using the computer in this manner (for communication) will compromise the integrity of the project, and, worse, could lead to another incident.' if a disabled computer leads to 'another incident,' then perhaps the original 1977 incident will give a peek at what might have happened in 2004 had desmond not turned the failsafe key.
  

• damon and carlton are having a contest to name the secret ending scene of the finale. this is not as exciting as getting an actual clue about the final scene. the genius of the 'frozen donkey wheel' is that it sounded random, but turned out to be literal. i suppose they feel they can't follow it up, so it's back to a truly random codename. (the first two codenames were 'the bagel' and the 'challah.' the flashforward ending of s3 was coded as 'the rattlesnake in the mailbox.')
  

8. minor gripes.

all in all, this was a tight episode, though it concerned itself mostly with moving chess pieces around the board. the show is still very gradually exposing a) the new situation, and b) the new objectives. i think we've got the situation now - next episode must tackle objectives.



but here's the minor gripe. when the new dharma initiates arrive, they are greeted by the welcome video of pierre chang/marvin candle/mark wickmund/edgar halliwax. it is the same video playing in 'the man behind the curtain,' when ben and his father arrived on the island. problem is that pierre is wearing a lab coat with the swan station logo on it, and clearly at this point, the swan station hasn't even been built yet. maybe they printed the labcoats early, and chang is a big ol' showoff? 'ooo look at me, i have a coat for a station that hasn't even been built yet, suck on that noobs!'

9. preboomer.

this episode was all about sayid and his wtf-face. no one even got a chance to tell him the date, so he's completely disoriented.



he sees jin, wtf!?



he sees sawyer, wtf!?



he sees young ben, wtf!?
(boom)

you know i love a good wtf-face preboomer.

10. p.s.



while bsg's finale was overall quite strong, if 'lost's' endgame starts explaining phenomena by simply calling them 'angels,' i will find damon and carlton's homes, and leave flaming dharma-logo poobags on their doorsteps.

lost and battlestar have always gone hand-in-hand, each trying to one-up the other. while thematically different, both shows followed very similar narrative arcs - killing major characters, exploring enemy perspective, even sharing the idea of resurrection.. i've always felt this way about the two shows' goals: lost is more ambitious, but less successful; while bsg is less ambitious, but more successful. bsg's finale raises the bar for lost: it's ron moore and company's final hand in the 4 year game they've played with damon and carlton. now it's our boys' turn. let's hope d&c can learn from both the successes and failures of bsg's grand finale.

(again, special thanks to rob k for edits/suggestions)