the blast door map

1. mommies.

for just about the first time, we have a character with mommy issues! this episode really benefits from re-watching. the first scene with young daniel lays out his trajectory - mom enters fully distraught, as anyone who's given birth to a person they once shot in the back might be.. it's important to look at all her scenes with this new knowledge, and it explains her beliefs about the inevitability of time and destiny. she knows that nothing can be done to stop her son's destiny because she's already shot him.

as she told desmond in 'flashes before your eyes,' it makes no difference what she does to try and alter events - it happened - and so her only choice is to keep daniel 'on the right path,' as she tells him, by symbolically stopping his metronome. some have wondered, 'why doesn't she allow him to keep him playing piano? why does she do anything at all? why does she have to take part in his demise?'
i think the answer to that question lies in her knowledge of island properties that come with being 'an other.' she understands her 'duty' in the timeline, and because she likely knows what lies in the shadow of the statue, she will grudgingly do her part to keep the wheel of time turning correctly.



another possibility, is the importance of faraday's journal - the data in that journal likely turns out to be crucial.. and if hawking doesn't push him academically, he'll never write that journal, which may contain information that likely saves her and the others from 'death by incident.' the harder she pushes him, the more helpful the journal will end up being..

don't forget that in 'the life and death of jeremy bentham,' when cesar was rifling through papers in ben's old office on hydra island, we saw a copy of a page from faraday's journal. i think we'll find out that ultimately, the journal was more important to eloise than her actual son. she buried him before he was even born.


rewatch the eloise scenes with this in mind: though it requires the death of her son, eloise must ensure that daniel's journal ends up on the island, in the past, and it must have all of his research in it. notice the relief on her face when he says that he will go to the island - she's not relieved because now she gets to shoot him, she's relieved because it means she's finally completed her task in bringing that lifesaving journal to her younger self. (speaking of journals - remember that widmore was bidding on the captain's journal from the 'black rock'? does this journal contain similar wisdom? will one of our characters end up being the captain of the black rock?)

i guess we're not really supposed to wonder why daniel has both an american accent and different last name - when he grew up with 'mum' and went to oxford. perhaps libby was his vocal coach at some point.

2. the impending incident.

daniel, upon arriving, tells us that the incident is going to happen in 6 hours. holy crap! that means that if the season finale is called 'the incident,' then next week's episode probably only covers exactly 30 minutes of island time.. or next week's ep will focus on the snoozer present day story. or.. since it's going to be (gasp!) richard alpert's episode.. maybe we'll just be jumping around in time for the entire hour, and the episode will end at the same point in time that we left off this week.

things about the incident:

• is the result of electromagnetic activity, at first released by drilling at the orchid, but is connected to the release of energy at the swan.
• the swan station isn't complete by the time the incident occurs (which doesn't quite fit the text of the swan orientation film, but whatevs)
  
• once the swan station is complete, radzinsky is placed there permanently, until his death by suicide several years later.
• chang will lose his arm (referenced in the comic-com video - more on that later)
• it will likely mirror the other season-ending incidents - season 2's failsafe key, and season 4's donkey wheel island vanish.

what will the incident do??

• move the people who were jumping through time into their correct year?
• turn the sky some other color?

whatever happens, it has to be awful, but not so awful that there isn't time to finish the swan station and put the button in place. a lot of time went into constructing that fancy 108-minute counter with heiroglyphs and everything. daniel said that the incident was 'catastrophic' and that everyone would die - we know that doesn't happen though. ben, horace, and a bunch of others live long enough to be killed in the purge many years later. chang lives at least long enough to record the swan station video (with gray hair and one arm). perhaps jughead is detonated, but not quite as daniel would have done it - so many are saved, but the effect is still disastrous. but in the end, everything would still adhere to our known timeline.

but. what if..

3. the ultimate course correction.

damon and carlton have gone to great pains to show us a world in which free will still exists, albeit within the loose constraints of destiny. but so far it appears that everything we've seen happen in 1977 has happened exactly 'as it should have.' even sayid's attempt to change the timeline proved to be part of the determined course of events.

lost is a show built on establishing very tight rules - but once we're comfortable with them, they are broken via 'game changers,' which alter the rules of the show, and are usually the final, top secret scenes of each season.

after faraday's pitch to jack (that if he can detonate jughead, their plane will never crash) some friends have speculated about this possibility: what if jughead is detonated, the incident happens, the sky turns white, and then the final, super secret scene of season 5 of 'lost' is flight 815 landing safely at LAX? everyone gets off the plane, kate is escorted out by edward mars, locke wheels his way out in the wheelchair, jack steps off, and cindy's standing there at the door saying 'buh bye. buh bye. buh bye.'



boom.

it would mean that season 6 of the show would be, as damon and carlton have been repeating in all interviews, 'more character based,' 'more like season 1,' and 'more emotional.' because it would be about these people's lives if they had never encountered the island. as promised, claire would return. she never left. boone, shannon, ana lucia, libby, and other dead passengers would make cameos, and maybe we'd see how fate kills them eventually anyway. season 6 would focus on our surviving heroes, and how fate course corrects for them to end up where they need to be.

though incredibly exciting, it's a tall, almost impossible order. it also ignores the plotline they've been laying for locke, sun, and the impending 'war' between widmore, eloise(?), and ben. it also negates our investment in the last 5 years of storytelling. is that really what it was all about? making sure the crash never happened? that's a real tough premise to invest in beyond its superficial cleverness. so i think they probably won't do it. but i also didn't expect them to send our cast bouncing around through time...

4. charlotte.


ok now here's what i like about this episode: something happened in ann arbor to change faraday's conception of the inevitability of time, outside of desmond's 'specialness.' otherwise he'd have no reason to approach charlotte and try to get her to never come back to the island. since he believes that things can be different, he sees hope in trying to alter her destiny, so the scene has a real drive behind it. of course the irony is that all he's done is fulfill charlotte's own memory of the event.. as she dies. (insert bummer trumpet sound here.) if faraday was smart and really wanted to change things, he, uh, probably should have walked right past that swingset.

the diehards all predicted that 'lil charlotte would be mowing down on an apollo candy bar, but instead props gave her something that is the wrong shape, and with a blank label, perhaps dharma branded on the other side. too bad, since they made such a big deal about the apollo bar being different from the rest of the dharma food back when they discovered the hatch's pantry.

5. promotional vs. canon.



this one irks me. last summer at comic-con, damon and carlton unveiled the season 5 teaser video, in which pierre chang discusses the impending incident, making subtle reference to losing his arm, and daniel faraday's voice is heard in the background of the tape. it was the first hint that somehow our people were going to end up in dharma times. what sucks though, is that with 'the variable,' it's clear that faraday never made such a tape with chang (unless they're going to retcon it in the next two episodes, which i doubt.) damon and carlton have been going on record stating that the comic-con videos (including last year's orchid station blooper reel) are 'more promotional than canon.' in other words, 'don't take it too seriously, and don't break your brains trying to fit it into the show.'

this reminds me of a quote from ron moore in this week's entertainment weekly cover story on 'star trek' (ron is the former showrunner of battlestar galactica, and former writer of 'star trek: the next generation' and 'DS9'), where he said 'we'd be sitting in the writer's room pitching ideas, and you'd have to stop and check to make sure a plot point didn't contradict something that happened in episode no. 25 of a different trek show.. at a certain point star trek just choked on its own continuity.'

i get the feeling from this recent interview with damon and carlton, that season 5 has occasionally 'choked on its own continuity.' their responses to direct questions about continuity problems in 'life and death of jeremy bentham' are telling about their attitude.. they're essentially saying to us 'hey guys, give us a break. this show is hard to write.'

i'm tempted to forgive them. i mean, this blog is hard to write! but at the same time, they shot a promotional video using main cast members, which was to set the tone for the entire season. our standard of scrutiny is so high only because they've rewarded that scrutiny. last year, in the podcasts, damon and carton proudly pointed at the orchid station blooper video as proof that yes, they did have a very specific plan for season 4. it's too bad that they can't quite point to this video as similar evidence for season 5.

6. juliet's moments.

her quote, followed by her subtext:


sawyer: something something something, freckles.
(pause)
juliet: the code for the fence is 141717. (now get outta my face, bitch after my man.)


sawyer: you still got my back?
(pause)
juliet: you still got mine? (or do you have freckles' back instead, hmm??)

i'm not liking the (albeit subtle) reintroduction of sawyer's affection for kate. girl better find claire and go home. love quadrangle is tired.

7. widmore.
my goodness a lot of things happened the day flight 316 took off from LAX!

8. minor gripe.

for an attempt to equal 'the constant,' i don't think anyone will dispute that 'the variable' was missing the cathartic emotional intensity of its predecessor. perhaps it all hinged on the performances of the two actresses playing eloise - but even if she was more conflicted throughout about pushing her son to his death, we still wouldn't know why she was acting this way until the very end. we're so used to seeing eloise as hardnosed and emotionless, maybe we needed to see her break down as she gives faraday the journal. it may even have worked better if we knew eloise was responsible for her son's death - just not how. then we'd get the satisfaction of seeing an expected event play out in an unexpected way.

another reason this episode failed to pair well with 'the constant,' was that episode's brilliant preboomer:


eddy and adam did attempt to tie the episode to 'the constant' by giving us another emotional reunion with penny and des, and while it was nicely performed by both actors, the scene itself felt tacked on rather than earned.

where are they going with desmond from here on out? the night before, eloise told him that the island wasn't done with him yet. now, a few hours later, she's saying that for the first time in a long time she has 'no idea what's going to happen.' not only that, the only person capable of sending desmond on timebending missions is dead. are they done with desmond? it would be disappointing if that's the case, after all the buildup about how only he can truly change the timeline.

9. preboomer.

'i'm your son' (croak)


(boom)

woo! another wtf-face! one day, when i'm unemployed again, i will compile all the wtf-faces and put them on youtube. or maybe i'll do next week.

notice how in 'jughead,' ellie was established as a trigger-happy hothead? nice setup, that.