Saturday, June 12, 2010

Episode 020: 2003 to 2004

A little bit of good, a little bit of not so good in this episode.  We start with Juliet and Goodwin together on the island, then we switch to everyone's favorite flashback series, Jack in Thailand.  Back in the USA, Ana Lucia gets back on the street after recovering from being shot.  Then we've got another time flash, this one is just a random flash with no distinct time period, so I decided to put it here.  Ana Lucia kills the guy that shot her, and quits the force.  Then we see Rose & Bernard meet, and Claire finds out she's pregnant, and makes her first trip to the psychic.  Jack is dealing with his separation from Sarah less than ideally, and we wrap up the episode with Hurley winning the lottery.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Episode 019: 2002 to 2003

We continue in our time flash in Episode 019.  This is actually kind of a cool moment, because we go from one time flash right into another one, only the Losties actually went into the future between the two flashes.  So we have Sawyer and Juliet looking for the hatch, but meanwhile Locke saw Yemi's plane crash, and was shot by Ethan.  Right before Ethan killed him, he went into a timeflash.  Now, in the way it was originally presented to us, Locke flashed to 2007, and was tended to by Richard, and he gave Locke the compass.  So, chronologically, we see Locke, shot in the leg, there's a flash, then we see Locke, leg bandaged up, holding the compass.  Anyways, I thought it was neat.  The flash also has Daniel talking to Desmond.  Then they flash away, and we see Kate hiding under an alias, and married to a police officer, before ultimately leaving him and running.  We cut to Jack consulting a potential patient, and some conflict with his father.  Then we go back to Kate, taking part in a bank robbery, so that she can get her dead boyfriend's toy airplane out of a safety deposit box.  Back on the island, Inman continues to work on the invisible map of the island on the blast door in the hatch, while Desmond has accommodated himself to life in the Swan station.  In LA, Jack's patient dies, he kisses the patient's daughter, then finds out his wife's been cheating on him.  So, not a real good 24 hours for him.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Episode 018: 2002

We continue in 2002, with Eko starting a new life as a priest, Yemi's replacement.  However, he kills a few of the local criminals, and ultimately leaves to go to the UK to study in the priesthood.  We get our first "Missing Pieces" mobisode, featuring Jack and Christian before Jack's wedding.  I will say that I'm not much of a fan of the mobisodes.  There are a few good episodes, so I guess overall they're worth it, but there are several that I feel like are pretty awful.  And the way it was filmed is different from the rest of the show, like they filmed it with a camcorder or something.  Anyways, we go through Jack's wedding to Sarah, then get to Kate's wedding.  Next, we see Sawyer in prison, and Juliet being confronted by Goodwin's wife about her affair.  And to close things out, we see our "first" timeflash that occurred right after Ben turned the wheel and moved the island.

Episode 017: 2001 to 2002


Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Episode 016: 2001

This episode is all about the ladies.  We get a heavy dose of Juliet, as she works on getting her sister pregnant, sees her ex-husband get hit by a bus, takes a job with Mittelos Bioscience, and ends up on the island.  Meanwhile Kate is now on the run, and visits her father.  She then runs into Cassidy, who has discovered she's pregnant with Sawyer's child, and Cassidy helps Kate talk to her mom to find out why she turned Kate in.  We close out the episode in what I think is a pretty cool ending, after Juliet arrives on the island, we see Desmond, in his race around the world, get knocked unconscious on his boat, and rescued by a man in a yellow hazmat suit.  As he takes his helmet off, we get a quick glance at Inman's face before we go to LOST.  One of my favorite endings so far, to be able to have a nice suspenseful moment to work with.

Episode 015: 2001


Flashes Before Your Eyes

My decision to omit Desmond's flash to 1996 in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" until later in the timeline has brought up a few questions and some opinions that definitely differ from mine, but I suppose that's to be expected given the circumstances.  Desmond's experiences on this show are very different from everything else we've seen, and that can definitely lead to some confusing situations.  The ambiguity surrounding what it was that we saw in "Flashes" makes it so we really don't know for sure what happened, how it relates to the rest of the show, and importantly, where it falls chronologically.

Now, there's a couple different ways to look at this, and I honestly don't know what the right answer is.  I think either way has things that lend it credibility, and things that hurt its credibility.  One way to look at it is that this whole time flash is just like any other flashback, or time flash, or whatever, meaning what we saw actually happened in 1996, and that's where it belongs in the timeline.  Commenter Henshaw compared the sequence to Locke's compass, implying that the events in "Flashes" led him to the island, and it was the island that caused his mind to flash to 1996, rinse and repeat.  And there are some compelling arguments for this idea.  For one, pretty much everything we've seen on this show regarding time travel, past events occurring, etc., has fallen under the theory "Whatever happened, happened".  So, based on that idea, this whole series of events actually happened in 1996.  There is also the fact that Desmond and Eloise recognized each other at the Lamp Post in 2007, and Desmond accused her of wasting four years of his life, so it would certainly seem like Desmond treated those events as really happening.

While I can't disagree with those points, there are other things that don't quite add up for me.  This whole idea of Desmond finding himself in a paradox, for example.  Desmond's mind flashes back to 1996, events play out, he flashes back to 2004, but those experiences in 1996 ultimately help lead him to the island.  I have a hard time with this.  In "Flashes", Desmond didn't recognize Eloise.  Her conversation with him about his destiny, the island, pushing the button, it all took him by surprise.  And yet, he has all his memories from the future.  It's not like he ended up in 1996 and didn't remember what had happened to him over the past eight years.  And yet he clearly had no memory of this conversation with Eloise happening.

Let's take a look at basic logistics, and make some small assumptions.  When we saw Charlie save Nadia from someone trying to rob her, he was standing outside, playing his guitar, singing "Wonderwall", and then it started to rain, forcing him to stop playing.  In "Flashes", we see Desmond leave Charles Widmore's office, and he sees Charlie, standing outside, playing his guitar, singing "Wonderwall".  Only it started to rain, and so Charlie had to stop playing.  Now, I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that we're meant to think that both of these scenes happen at the exact same time, only with different outcomes, because Desmond sees Charlie in one of those scenes, and recognizes him.  If what happened in "Flashes" is what really happened, then why do we have duplicate scenes with Charlie singing, only there are two different outcomes?

And why did Desmond seem so perplexed by the island, and the button when Inman rescued him in 2001?  If that conversation with Eloise really did happen to him in 1996, and she told him that pushing the button would be the only great thing he would ever do, I can't help but think that would come into play when he ended up on the island, pushing the button with Inman.  It just doesn't add up for me.

So what do I think happened to Desmond there?  Well, I thought I knew early on in Season 6, now I'm less sure, but I at least have a theory.  I was convinced at the time that "Flashes" was a flash sideways, similar to what we had seen all during Season 6.  Now that we know what the flash sideways world was, that idea doesn't work, but I still think it was something similar.  I look at Desmond's experience with the flash sideways world in "The Package".  We don't know exactly what he saw after the electromagnetic event, but he did at least see part of the flash sideways world, because we saw him tell Jack about it during the finale, although he clearly didn't understand what, exactly, it was.  But the experience seemed a lot like what happened to Desmond when he turned the key.  There was an electromagnetic event, and then Desmond woke up in a different place, a different time from where he was before.  His stay in both of these places was temporary, before he was brought back to his own place, his own time.  Now, in "The Package", we know that Desmond saw this purgatory-type place, even though he wasn't dead yet, and he was able to come back from it.  So, I like to think that it was a similar situation in "Flashes".  No, at the time the place that he saw was not the same place that we saw during all of Season 6.  But maybe that's because whatever this construct was for Desmond in 2004 was not the same as it was for him in 2007.  I like to think of what happened to Desmond as being almost a "near death" type experience.  Gets a glimpse of this place that takes place after you die, but isn't dead and is ultimately pulled back in.  Am I right?  I have absolutely no idea.  This is just one of those things that doesn't have a clear answer, so you have to theorize what it means.

But let's bring it full circle.  I've stated my case of what I think "Flashes" is, so what does that mean for the timeline?  Well, it's actually a little tough.  I likened the sequence to what we saw in "The Package", and yet, I will be placing all of the sideways world at the end of the show, but I'm putting Desmond's experience in "Flashes" directly after he turns the key.  However, I can't justify sticking "Flashes" at the end of the show, because that just doesn't work, and taking Desmond's flash sideways from "The Package" and putting it right after the elctromagnetic event, but leaving the rest of the flash sideways at the end of the show, that just doesn't seem right either.  So yeah, basically I'm saying I don't have a great answer to this conundrum, but for me, I feel like this is the best way to handle it.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me, because I don't think there's a truly right answer here.  But I at least wanted to let everyone know where I'm coming from, and why I did this the way that I did.

I am certainly always open to other possibilities that I didn't think of, because I would love nothing more than there to be a concrete "this goes here because of this" explanation, so feel free to leave any comments you might have below.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Episode 014: 2001

We stay in 2001 for Episode 014, and learn about a whole host of characters.  First up we pick up where we left off with Locke in the hospital following his fall.  Then we see more of Charlie's story, as he gets Liam's Driveshaft ring, starts following his brother's ways with illegal substances, is there when Liam isn't for the birth of Liam's daughter, tries to get he and his brother back into the business of making music, and is abandoned by Liam when he moves with his family to Australia to try and get over his addiction.  Elsewhere, Sayid is identified, and held captive by the husband of a woman he once tortured when he worked for the Republican Guard in Iraq.  And we also see Jin running an errand, trying to find a gift for a diplomat from his new employer, Mr. Paik.  Finally we have Hurley in a mental institution, and we learn all about his imaginary friend Dave, with a brief appearance by Libby, who was also in the institution.

Episode 013: 1999 to 2001

We've got Episode 013, which features a lot of Sun, Jin, Charlie, Claire and Locke.  We start out with Jin working his job as a doorman, and ultimately quitting and meeting Sun for the first time.  Then we see Claire's storyline with her mother, as well as meeting her father, Christian.  There is a time flash in there that is one of the random ones that has no time period associated with it, so I decided to put it here.  We see Jin & Sun continue their relationship, get married, meet Jacob, and Sun gets blackmailed by Jin's mother.  Speaking of Jacob, we see Jack in surgery, who ends up getting his Apollo candy bar from Jacob afterwards.  Charlie and Liam are going strong in Driveshaft, although Liam's starting to get into heroin.  Meanwhile, John Locke is living alone, when he discovers that his father is trying to con another family, and after being confronted, we finish the episode with Locke being pushed out of a window.