Good vs Evil: Jacob & “Locke”

It’s been a while since I did a Good vs. Evil post, and I’ve put this one off for a long time.  I mostly want to write this now because it seems like everyone is grasping at straws trying to figure out if we’ve been misled, maybe Jacob isn’t as nice as we like to believe.  I think it’s possible that people have lost some perspective about the issues.

And one disclaimer before I continue.  I feel very strongly we can discuss whether someone is good or evil.  I know many people dislike it when I debate these things, they wants more vagueness, they don’t want their favorite characters pigeon-holed.  But I like drawing lines in the sand.  I want there to be barriers between good and evil actions.  In the end of this show there will be two side, and I don’t think they will both be good and both be evil.  I’m pretty sure there will be villains and there will be heroes.

And another thing, I have to write this post about Jacob and “Locke”/Smokey because they are undoubtedly on opposite sides, if I write about one of them then it affects the other one.

601 – LA X (part 1)

Review:

I started watching this episode thinking that I was not going to enjoy it.  I thought that either we’d have a timeline reset or not, it was one way or another.  I would have been unhappy either way.  With the Reset I would have been bored with that time period and I would have hated to see all that “progress” disappear.  Without the Reset, Juliet and Daniel died for nothing, and frankly with a title like LA X and news that every former cast member was coming back, it wasn’t possible for there not to be a Reset.  So I pretty much ignored Lost during the hiatus.  If I spent too much time thinking about it I would make myself angry.

At Comic-Con Darlton asked us to trust them.  And I’m very glad that I did.  They are geniuses.  I would never have guessed that they were doing to diverging timelines.  I’ve heard a few bloggers suggest it as a possibility, but frankly I rarely believe anything my fellow bloggers say, I wouldn’t say that to their face, but it’s true.  Seeing it in action is just glorious.  It’s literally the best of both worlds.

As for this episode specifically, it was awesome.  The inevitable scene that showed that the plane didn’t crash and then underwater Island reveal was perfectly devastating (not unlike the underwater Oceanic 815 wreckage).  At that point I was ready to resign myself to the fact that the writers had chosen the more boring route of starting over.

But that was just the first intro.  The second was another slow reveal of another timeline.  Too good.  Suddenly we were presented with a new format and an amazing new story.

Cut to the beach and we have more insanity.  It’s casually revealed that “Locke” is Smokey.  Smokey tears up some people with guns and blows our mind (what’s new).

Then Jacob shows up to visit Hurley and it turns out he’s very dead but he isn’t helpless, he seems to have a plan, or at least hope.  It’s very comforting to hear Jacob giving orders even from beyond the grave.

All of this is peppered with visits from characters we thought dead.  Charlie and Boone were exciting to someone out there, not me.  But the return of Juliet was quite wonderful.  I still wish that Juliet and Sawyer could have had a happily ever after, but I realize I’m being naive.  That’s not the kind of show I signed on for.  What we did get was a small amount of closure and at least a new final image of Juliet (If I have to see that scene with Juliet’s slow death again… well I’ll outline my plans below).

My expectations for this episode were at about a 7 maybe an 8, but this is honestly a 10.0, mostly for the introduction of this glorious new format (Smokey=”Locke” didn’t hurt).

516 (& 517) – The Incident

Review:

So that was fun(ish).

I’ll try to start on a positive note.  Jacob was awesome!  Who knew he would be so likable.  I kinda expected him to be quite distant and cold.  But he was great.  And that storyline that they started with Jacob and his nemesis was pretty epic.  It’ll make for some great conflict next year (provided history isn’t erased, hahaha).  New “Locke” is going to make for a very interesting villain.

That was a pretty epic reveal.  It was all for shock value, it didn’t serve any real purpose except to confirm our suspicions about this new “Locke”. But really, it surprised me, and really raised the bar.

Uh oh I’m running out of nice things to say.  Damnit, why did Juliet have to die?  I’m back to having no one left to like anymore.  This is going to be season 1 all over again.  The only people I like are guest stars.

The flashbacks in this episode were slightly interesting, but they didn’t really hold my attention.  The two good ones were Hurley’s and Ilana’s.  The other ones were just filler.  (Especially Juliet’s, what the hell was that?)

The one thing about this episode that I liked was the discovery of this new part of the story with Jacob, his nemesis and that new world.  That will give me a lot of fodder for theorizing over the break.  I could live without the rest of the episode.  So where does that leave us?  How much should I give the finale that I was almost completely unimpressed with?  It can’t be less that 5, that’s not giving Jacob enough credit.  but it’s definitely not more that 8.0.  I’d say 7.0/10.0  A disappointing end to an epic season.  (Jump to the bottom for more discussion on the score, I know many of you will be surprised/pissed about the score.)

Good vs Evil: Eloise Hawking

If you’ve been reading my blog then you probably already know what I’m going to say.  But let’s get on with it.

Over the last few months I’ve wrote a few Good vs. Evil posts on some the more mysterious characters.  I’ve analyzed Christian Shepard, Ben Linus and Charles Widmore.  In the future I’m going to write one about Jacob, but I’m delaying that one until we know more about him.

On to Ellie.  We hardly knew her before this season.  But this season has been all about Eloise Hawking, so let’s start overanalyzing.

The Island is Killing its offspring

After Daniel’s death I got the inkling of a theory: The Island appears to be killing the people who were born on it.  We know that the Island stops letting women give birth on the Island after a certain point, but it now seems as though it’s doing some retroactive killing.

Think about it, we know of six people born on the Island; Ethan, Daniel, Charlotte, Miles, Alex, and Aaron.  Out of those 6 only 2 are alive right now.  And if you recall Claire made sure that Aaron wasn’t brought back to the Island.  That leaves only Miles.  So the big question is, when will Miles die?  When I was writing my revlysis for The Variable I came to that same conclusion, that Miles was going to die, for different reasons.

This also calls into question what will happen to the Third Party if this theory is true, and the members of that group were born on the Island.  It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Bram and Ilana knew that they had signed up for a suicide mission, they’re the type of people who would happily die as martyrs.  That kinda leads me to my another theory, I think that Ilana and Bram are trying to find Jughead to do what Daniel couldn’t, blow up the Island.

– izi

Foreign Theory: The Prodigal Sons (and Daughters) Return

I really like this theory from the Doc Arzt blog.  He’s theorizing that perhaps Bram, Ilana and co. are the sons and daughters of people from the Dharma Initiative.  That would mean that Miles and Charlotte would really fit in with them. 

This theory also goes along with a less foreign theory from of the readers of this blog, that the group is the reformed Dharma Initiative (see here, look for Publicola’s comment).  Remember those tests that we did in the fall, perhaps those weren’t just casual fun, maybe they were “real” (haha, that almost made sense for a second).

My theory is that this group is funded, or at least organized, by Eloise Hawking.  That could fit in with any of these theories.  Whatever happens, I’m really liking this new group, they’re sinister but smart.  And Bram is way better than Keamy (sorry MissScarlett).

– izi

513 – Some Like it Hoth

Review:

I thought this episode was going to be a fun little jaunt around the island with Miles and Hurley.  At times it was pretty light, but it was also pretty serious at times.

We got confirmation that Pierre and Lara are Miles’ parents, and Miles knew that too.  This episode established some father issues for Miles (I believe that Daniel and Juliet are the only people without daddy issues on this show).

There was some slight focus on Miles’ powers but we are still left to guess at how he got the powers.  It was very interesting to hear Miles and Hurley compare their powers though.

In the “Main” storyline, the pressure on our group is growing.  Phil tried to confront Sawyer and had to be stopped, and now Roger is on the case too.

This episode showed a lot more about the Dharma Stations, we’ve been stuck at The Barracks, so it was good to have a tour to see what’s built and what isn’t.

And last but not least we saw Bram, the large scary man with Ilana.  He attempted to prevent Miles from going to the Island with Naomi.  The clues regarding this new group are very intriguing, I can’t wait to find out more.

The episode wasn’t a comic relief episode, but it also wasn’t crucial.  Ont he bright side we finally got a Miles flashback, and it answered almost all of our questions about him.  This episode certainly wasn’t bad and the Star Wars references really helped it’s score 7.0/10.0

(I’m back to my old format!  It wasn’t worth posting twice in a night, or maybe it was, I don’t know.  I’m just trying this way again.)