Monthly Archives: May 2010

GUEST POST: My Theory of Lost

May 28, 2010
By

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I’d like to welcome my cousin Michelle, who does such an awesome job summarizing her theories on Lost and presenting ideas on some of the unanswered questions, that I’d like to share it with you guys. Enjoy!

The earth exists as a living thing and there is a point where all the energy that allows life comes from. This is the island. It is the ‘heart’ where all the energy, life force, (electromagnetism) exists. This was the light that had to be protected. Just like in acupuncture there are certain parts of the body that when pricked can stop pain etc. There are hot spots on the earth where there is more energy than others. This is what the psychic was talking about to Rose and Bernard when they were looking for a cure for her cancer. She said that she couldn’t be cured there but there was another place that she could (the island).

The island is also where all time exists or comes from like The Dark Tower (Stephen King’s series). Time does not pass there at all or in a different way that is why babies could not be born. At certain points in our time (when the series began for instance) the island appears. Like in Star Trek 2009, Nero had to wait years for Spock to come out of the wormhole, when the time periods lined up. This is why it was necessary to build the pendulum in the church to find out what time and place the island would appear. The church itself may be a hot spot, which is why the pendulum works.

The island does exist physically, it is real and the time our characters spent on the island did happen when they were alive. People (like Widmore/Dharma) believed in its existence and were able to create the pendulum to find it. Just like people have always been searching for Shangri La, Eden, Fountain of Youth etc. Once they found the island they discovered the energy and electromagnetic effects that it had. They began doing experiments to see if they could harness this energy. When they realized the dangers involved, they created the hatch/station with the button to help contain places that they accidentally drilled/released.

They also knew about the island being the center of all time (or that it was only existing at a static point) that was where the bunny experiments came from. They also experimented on other animals (hence the cages) including polar bears. Widmore had a picture of a polar bear on his wall, so he was the one who brought them to the island.

They also began doing psychic experiments. That’s why they wanted Walt, because he had some kind of psychic ability. There were also other people who had psychic abilities like Milo being able to hear dead people and Hugo see/talk to them. I think the psychic storyline was a red herring, something Dharma hippies in the 70′s would be into or simply something intesting to add. The writers incorporated many different philosophies, mythologies, religion, science and that would include things like psychic abilities and numerology.

Desmond is special because he is able to live through exposure to large amounts of electromagnetism. I think it could be like a natural immunity or like why some people are able to live after being hit by lightning. Widmore knew about this and that’s why he wanted to bring Desmond to the island to help him harness this energy. This is also why Desmond was the only one who could open the cork of the island because it was the place of largest concentration of electromagnetism. The cork was keeping the energy from ‘exploding’ and destroying the island and the earth. When Jack went down to put it back, he knew he wouldn’t survive the exposure, that’s why he gave the duty to protect the island to Hugo. The whole point of taking the cork out was to allow Jack to kill the smoke monster. During that period, the island was no longer providing its healing powers so the monster became mortal in Locke’s body. Jack had to put the cork back to save the world and contain the energy again. This was his destiny, which he finally realized.

Like Adam and Eve, Jacob and the Man in Black (and all the protectors of the island) were human. The island has been around forever-exists at all time- that is where the statue and hieroglyphs came from, ancient people that had found the island.

When Jacob put the Man in Black into the light, it killed his mortal body (from exposure) but it released his soul (Terry O’Quinn’s theory on Jimmy Kimmel), which became the black smoke. The smoke was often referred to as the security system; this could be a reference to the fact that he was originally one of the people to potentially protect the island. Why he became smoke, I’m not sure of but would suppose it had to do with the fact that he was ‘bad’, had just killed his mother. He also was not ready to ‘move on’, he wanted to live. He didn’t go into the light voluntarily, he was murdered by Jacob. He always also wanted to leave the island and the only way that he could do that was to become mortal again (by possessing Locke’s body). He was the one who was always speaking to Ben, not Jacob and he was the one who convinced Ben to kill everyone in the Dharma Initiative and to kill Locke and bring his body back. Like the devil, he would promise things like making Ben head of the island, giving Sayid Nadia back etc. He didn’t plan to keep these promises; he just wanted to use them to get off the island. He also hated the island and wanted to destroy it. He didn’t know that destroying the island would destroy the rest of the world (that he wanted to return to), that is why when Desmond released the cork, Jack told Locke that they were both wrong about what was going to happen.

The black smoke was the one that was appearing as dead relatives. He wasn’t physically taking form but he was able to hypnotize or make Jack and the others see what he wanted them to see. Once he was smoke he was able to do things like show them their lives (like Echo), ability he may have gained when he was in the light.

The people in the Dharma initiative were the ones who built Jacob’s cabin as a way of protecting themselves from the black smoke. They referred to it as Jacob’s cabin because Ben thought it was Jacob speaking to him, not MIB. Some people believe that you can protect yourselves from evil spirits by putting ash (across a doorway/in a circle like in the movie The Skeleton Key). I think that is why the ash was around the cabin. The black smoke was trapped in the cabin for a period and that is why he told Ben to kill everyone in Dharma, so he could be released. The Dharma people (who became the Others when Ben took over) obviously knew about the smoke, that’s why they had the sound poles surrounding their camp. The cabin appeared/disappeared because it was built on top of a spot with a high concentration of electromagnetism, so it flipped through time.

The island’s electromagnetic energy is what caused things to crash there (a la Bermuda Triangle). Jacob had a way of manipulating it, that’s why he kept bringing people to the island, to find a replacement/protector. The Dharma people also had found the wheel of time that the Man in Black had started and they got it to work. This wheel allowed the island to be moved to so it could be lined up with a specific point in time. This is how Jacob was able to leave the island and visit our castaways during their lives. It was also how the real Locke was able to get off the island. There was always something special about Locke, which is why he was the one who could be possessed (perhaps it was his faith in the island) by MIB. MIB couldn’t leave until he had a mortal body again.

Just like God put humans in Eden, he put humans in charge of the island. Because we are all human we can make mistakes so there were probably good guardians and bad ones. The guardians are the ones who made the ‘rules’ that is why, Hugo told Ben that they could change the way that the island was run.

The show was always about the characters and their journey/destiny as well as debate over science and faith. Jack had no faith in the beginning, so one of the main points was that he gains faith and ultimately realizes he had a destiny. All of the characters were ‘lost/broken’ in some way and they all needed to come to terms with the wrongs in their lives before they could move on. The final season’s alternate timeline was a purgatory/place that they created to help them live the lives they wanted to live, fix mistakes etc. Once they had done that they were able to move on/go to heaven/ the next world/dimension etc. I interpreted it as them going to heaven but they left it open. In The Dark Tower they were in a world that had ‘moved on’, so depending on your belief they could have moved on to another existence/world/dimension.

They all died at different points but they were all able to meet in this fictional life. They were all important to each other, their experiences on the island (and off for oceanic six) were the most important time in their lives and that is why they needed each other to move on. Jack was always afraid of dying alone (We live together or we die alone) but his father tells him that no one dies alone. This reminded me of Star Trek V when Spock tells Kirk that he shouldn’t have been afraid that he was going to die because he was ‘never alone’.

I believe that Sayid and Shannon were together because they were members of the original crash and those were the people that were all coming together. Also it was a place that they created to finish things that they hadn’t had a chance to. Sayid and Shannon never had a chance to get together because she died before him. Another reason why Shannon may have been important was that she was the one who allowed Sayid to love again. He came to the island a broken, ex-torturer, she allowed him to regain some of his humanity.

Aaron appearing at the church as a baby could also be a result of it being a place that they created (fictional) and Claire and Charlie had only seen Aaron as a baby so that’s the way that they would remember him. It could be that Aaron was able to be born on the island because he was ‘special’ like Desmond, somehow immune to the effects of time. Or there is a certain limited amount of time that the island exists in which includes the few months/weeks that it took for him to be born. Other babies could not age or come to term a full nine months.

After I had written this, I woke up and remembered that Ben and other people did age on the island (Ben grew up there). There were only certain people who were guardians (drank the “blessed” water) that were immortal, like Richard, Jacob and MIB. This means that my theory about the island being stuck in time as the reason for babies not being born is wrong. On the pre-show finale, the creators said that when Jacob touched our heroes during their lives that protected them and meant they wouldn’t die. I don’t see how that could be true because our characters could and did die. But that would be a possible explanation as to why Aaron and Claire survived his birth. As long as they were candidates, they were protected.

My other thought would be that babies couldn’t be born because of either the electromagnetism and/or the closeness to the light/source of all life. I liked my other time theory much better and was really disappointed when I remembered about Ben.

I do think that the creators had a plan and knew what they wanted the final scene to be. But I also think that in order to fill six seasons they had to come up with new mysteries all the time, so that’s why a lot of “mini-mysteries” were left unanswered.

But then I could be wrong about everything too. :)

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Lost – Unanswered Questions

May 25, 2010
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The Lost finale was certainly emotionally satisfying, but all the unanswered questions drive me crazy, and this video geniously sums them all up:

Love it! It definitely goes to show that they were making up a ton of shit as they went along, but I still think it was a great show.

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Lost – Series Finale

May 24, 2010
By

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This isn’t going to be much of a post, but I wanted someplace we could all chat about it together. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. The flash-sideways to me were the most compelling parts of the season, and I loved all the revelations and flashes everyone was having. Sawyer and Juliet! Claire and Charlie! Squee! The island stuff was all pretty meh except for the Jack vs Faucke smackdown, which was awesome. Seriously, the cork was kinda lame, and we still don’t have a single answer to anything. But again, I enjoyed it, and it’s not about the answers, but the journey. I really didn’t understand the last 5 minutes until I started reading all the blogs and forums this morning, but we’ll get to that in the comment section. Stay away if you’re avoiding spoilers!

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Iron Man 2 and Date Night – Reviews

May 17, 2010
By

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I saw Iron Man 2 over the weekend. I’ve heard some not so wonderful things about it, and Entertainment Weekly referred to it as critically panned. Um, what? It has a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. How is that critically panned? But whatever. I went in with lowered expectations even though I loved the first one, and this one looked just as good. My only concern was that there would be too many villains. Anyway, I really liked it! Robert Downey Jr. can pretty much do no wrong, and he was once again in top form. The story was pretty solid, and the villains all fit together well, and didn’t seem too shoehorned into the film, like they were in Spiderman 3. The action and humor were all there. The only complaint I’d have were a few slow parts in the middle, and the final battle at the end seemed a bit short. But all in all, it was really fun. I love how they’re working the S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers storylines together within movies. I wish they’d do that with DC heroes.

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I also saw Date Night, which I’ve been wanting to see before it left the theaters. It obviously wasn’t a masterpiece of modern cinema, but it was really fun, and we had a packed theater with people that probably would have laughed their way through The Back-Up Plan, which always helps. No, but really, it was good silly fun. Steve Carrell and Tina Fey make an awesome pair, and you can totally seem them together as a real couple. They also infused a bit of their Liz Lemon and Michael Scott personalities into it, which also made it fun. The story and resolution was a bit easy, but you can’t expect something too crazy from 90 minutes of wackiness.

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Random Stuff is My Drug

May 11, 2010
By

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1. I am so over this TV season. Don’t get me wrong, all the shows have been swell, but I’m just over the schedule of 2 or 3 shows a night, if not more. What am I looking forward to doing with all my free time? Catching up on DVDs of course!

2. Is there something off about these new episodes of Glee? I mean, I love it of course, there’s just something not quite as magical as the first half of the season. And where is Quinn living?! Continuity is certainly not one of Glee‘s strong points.

3. I’ve been enjoying the new batch of Chucks after the original 13 ended. The one thing this show seriously lacks though is a proper villain. It needs an Arvin Sloane.

4. Could I possibly be rooting for Parvati on Survivor? Seems crazy, but I just might be.

5. Only two more episodes of Legend of the Seeker left and then it’s done forever. So so so sad. It’s such an amazing show. The fight scenes, special effects, and scenery never cease to amaze me. And Cara is one of my favorite characters currently on television. If only Richard would cut his hair.

6. Job hunting is exhausting.

7. If I get a new job I’m congratulating myself with an ipad, which you probably already know because it’s all I’ve been talking about on Facebook and Twitter. Someone sat in front of me on the train the other day with an ipad and he was watching something Star Wars. It was a double whammy of awesome (and jealousy) which sealed the deal for me.

8. I started reading Batman: Dark Victory the other day. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale are amazing.

9. I really like the Ke$ha song Your Love is My Drug, but the last 10 seconds really bug me for some reason. I always change the station when the song is almost over. So… so… bleck… arg… gross…

10. Daria: The Complete Animated Series comes out on DVD today. I wonder if it’s as good as I remember? I think I’ll pick it up when the price goes down.

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Frank-n-Blog – Entry #3

May 7, 2010
By

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Ugh. It’s 3:52 AM and I’m wide awake. Dad is in his room going crazy. Worse than usual tonight, which is saying something. Okay, maybe “going crazy” is a bad way of putting it, but if I told you he’s been moaning loudly all night you’d probably get the wrong idea. Besides, I’m pretty sure my Dad doesn’t even know what sex is because making babies that way is a whole hell of a lot easier than piecing one together in your basement. But then again, my Dad is such a dork I’m sure he’d still have built me anyway even if he did know what sex was. See what I did there? I’m treating my Dad not knowing what sex is as fact. Try it sometime, your quality of life will increase exponentially.

So yeah, Dad moaning like some wild banshee. You see, he was in an accident before he made me and his leg bothers him a lot. He’s in his forties and has to walk around with a cane and he never ever wears shorts. I only saw his leg once when he fell in the shower and I had to help him out. It just happened the one time, but like any normal family, we never spoke about it ever again. But it was crazy. His leg was like, mangled. It’s the only word I can think to describe it. Like it was crushed by the giant cartoon gears of Big Ben (I don’t know, for some reason when I picture the inside of Big Ben, it’s a cartoon) or something. That reminds me, when I’m president, I’m making a law where anyone over the age of thirty has to wear a bathing suit when they take a shower just for situations such as these. Gross.

He doesn’t like to talk about the accident, but apparently it was with some former employer which he then sued the pants off of and got a ton of money, which is why he doesn’t have to work anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we certainly don’t live like Hiltons or anything. In fact, kinda just the opposite. Like, there aren’t gun shots outside our house or anything, but it’s not like we live in the best neighborhood either. But the way Dad explains it, he’d rather us live modestly and let the lawsuit money last longer than live in some lap of luxury or whatever and be broke in a year. But we’ve lived here my whole life and even though it isn’t the swankiest house around, it’s still home. Plus I would imagine it would be a major bitch to move Dad’s laboratory (and I’d probably be expected to help) so it’s probably best we stay here.

Just a little about my Dad. His name is Isaac, like Sir Isaac Newton. Between the ages of nine and thirteen, I got my Dad nothing but presents with apples on them. You know, like the apple that fell out of the tree and taught him about gravity? A tie with apples on it for Father’s Day, a silver apple paperweight for Christmas, so on and so forth. I thought I was being really super clever, you know, them both being scientists and all. Yeah, well, my Dad didn’t get it. Turns out he isn’t really a fan of apples (who doesn’t like apples?) and had no idea why I was so obsessed with them. For someone whose name stems from the hebrew word for laughter, he can be a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes. One time me and Jamie convinced him to play Clue with us and he spent the entire time complaining about the fact that the weapons could be ruled out a lot faster if he could examine the body. And while yes, if Mr. Boddy had a gunshot wound, you can be fairly certain that he wasn’t killed by the candlestick, that isn’t the point of the game.

He’s never been married and doesn’t leave the house much. I have to do most of the shopping for us, but Dad is definitely the cook. He’s obsessed with Martha Stewart and watches her show like everyday and copies all of her recipes. That’s right. My Dad the mad scientist is in love with Martha Stewart. He says he admires her “stern focus and scientific approach to achieving goals” whatever that means. She scares the shit out of me. But I’m sure my Dad would love nothing more than for her to be my Mom. “Welcome to my home Martha, here is your new stepson Frank. I made him in my basement. Shall we have duck bourguignonne with chestnut spaetzle tonight?” But to be honest, I have a feeling Martha would be pretty cool with the whole Frankenstein’s monster thing. She’s just that fucking crazy.

Okay, Dad seems to have settled down for now. I need to go to bed. I have a spanish test tomorrow today.

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Frank-n-Blog – Entry #2

May 4, 2010
By

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Good news! Me and my friend Jamie are friends again. I’m actually writing this from the attic of his house as a matter of fact, which is our usual hangout. And the fact that I referred to him as “my friend Jamie” even before telling you that we were friends again was a pretty good indication that we would be friends again. But I’m not gonna lie, it was looking pretty grim there for while. The last time we hung out was the first monday (fuck you spellcheck, capitalizing days of the week doesn’t make any sense) of summer vacation for the first of many video game marathons, which has kinda been our thing since we became best friends in the third grade. And for those of you counting at home, we just finished tenth, so we’ve been best friends for over seven years.

So yeah, me and him not talking. Here’s why: on that monday Jamie came out to me as gay. Although, what else would he be coming out as? Black? Have I mentioned how white he is? Anyway, he didn’t really tell me, so much as plant a big wet one on me right after I kicked his ass for the million and a halfth time at Mario Kart. He’s reading this over my shoulder and says I’m exaggerating, but that’s totally not the case. OW. He just hit me. Aren’t gays supposed to hit like girls? FUCK MAN! He did it again. This is abuse. I’m calling whatever organization protects straight people from discrimination. Oh yeah, I’m straight in case all of this self-reflection and the fact that I write a blog was making you think otherwise. I mean, haven’t you ever seen Doogie Hoswer? He was totally writing an early version of a blog. And yeah whatever, bad example now, but you get the idea. “Boobs man, gotta love em.” That’s what Jamie just said and even though him saying he likes boobs makes him sound even gayer, I have to agree with him, they are kinda awesome.

Alright, to make a long story short, I freaked out when he kissed me and I may or may not have pushed him off me a little too hard. He’s saying I ran from the room screaming like a little girl, but that’s just not how I remember it. So yeah, we didn’t talk for the entire summer, making it the worst summer in the history of all summers. Even worse than the summer Jurassic Park 3 came out. But then when school started up again and I saw him around it was hard to trick myself into thinking I didn’t miss hanging out with him. Plus being in school again reminded me o

GHOMNO EXOPLOSDION!!!11!!

Yeah, okay, so that wasn’t me. That was Jamie’s older brother Jason (a senior who is annoyingly popular and likable to anyone who isn’t his little brother or little brother’s best friend) who pushed me out of the chair in order to write that oh so amazing opus to intelligence. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to say HOMO EXPLOSION, which is what he calls us (and what he was yelling in a voice that was half George of the Jungle, half Jabber Jaw, when I was pushed out of the chair) but as you can see, the thought synapses just weren’t quite firing the way they should. He doesn’t even know Jamie is gay (only me and you, faithful reader, know that) he’s just been calling us that since homosapien was a vocabulary word in his biology class two years ago. I thought about deleting his brilliant contribution to this already brilliant post but I figured it should stay here as a testament to Jason’s ineptitude. Millions of years from now when space aliens come to the ruins of Earth on an archaeological mission, one of them will find this blog entry and simply nod knowingly as to why their mission is archaeological in nature and not diplomatic.

Anyway, now that I have thoroughly dispatched with Jason (read as: Jamie told him Mom and his Mom kicked him out while I was cowering under the desk unplugging the monitor so Jason couldn’t read what I’m writing) as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, being in school and seeing Jamie reminded me of that time I got detention for kissing my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Sperin and Jamie pulled the fire alarm to get me out of it. There are two valuable lessons to be learned from this: 1) As boys, we generally want to kiss anything that moves, so Jamie kissing me isn’t really that big of a deal, and 2) Jamie would do anything for me, and the one time he needed me to be a good friend I let him down. I won’t let that happen again. Plus he handled the whole built in the basement by my Dad thing (I told him way back in the third grade because little kids really aren’t all that good at keeping secrets, especially when those secrets include cool looking scars) a hell of a lot better than I handled the whole gay thing. He only hid in the closet for about an hour until I promised not to eat his brains, which doesn’t even make any sense because Frankenstein’s monster didn’t eat brains, but whatever. It got him out of the closet. Oh shit, that’s totally ironic and stuff.

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