S2Ep2: Adrift (Michael's second flashback) - 9/28/05

Hello my dear friends -
I was not as enthralled with this episode as I was with the premiere... but every time I start to even think about getting disappointed by Lost, I remember all the other high quality, brain-bending, thought-provoking TV shows that have graced screens around the country recently, such as: I Want to Be a Hilton, Taradise, Hogan Knows Best, Britney & Kevin: Chaotic, The Littlest Groom, etc., etc., and then I calm down. The very worst episode of Lost bests 95% of what is on TV right now, so let's not forget that, should we ever become frustrated.

But by no means am I saying that I thought this was a bad episode... far from it. In fact, I was surprised to find that most boarders actually liked this episode way better than the premiere?!?! I wouldn't go that far, because I did think the flashbacks this time were completely useless and repetitive, and I wasn't really even a fan of any of the raft scenes. But I loved how the HatchBacks brought us up to speed on what happened in the hatch from Kate and Locke's points of view, I thought that was brilliant. Last week I was stewing over how I didn't know what transpired between Locke and Desmond before Jack arrived. And speaking of Desmond (aka Hatch Man), he is now officially my #2 favorite character. If you can't tell, I like crazy/sane people.

Regarding the flashbacks in general, people are very split on if they like this format or not. I highly doubt they're going to all of a sudden STOP showing flashbacks, so you might as well get used to them if you don't like them. I know that they are trying very, very, very hard to NOT fall into The X-Files trap of getting fans so wrapped up in the 'mythology' of the show that they will never be able to satisfy anyone with any answers they eventually dole out. So therefore they keep saying that this show is about the characters, and that is always going to be the writers' main focus. As I was a long-suffering mega-fan of The X-Files for all nine seasons (I even went to two conventions - yes, my dear friends, THAT is the level of nerdiness you are dealing with here! (shout out to Nerdy P, who was with me at 1 of them)), I can say that they are smart to take this approach. Because if, as they've said before, they actually do have this series planned out loosely for at LEAST five years, they are going to have to keep answering questions but also raising new ones, and if none of us care about the characters, then it's probably not going to work. So, I will deal with lame flashbacks such as Michael's because I know overall it is worth it over time.
Here are new things to ponder:

ONE QUESTION ANSWERED!
Hear ye, hear ye, a question has been answered on Lost! The shoes in the hatch hallway belonged to Locke! Now if that isn't enough for you, I don't know what is.

THE HATCHBACKS
DHARMA LOGO
As I said above, I thought how they showed the happenings in the hatch again but from Locke and Kate's points of view was great. We learned A LOT from these scenes. Here we go:
- Remember the spider web looking logo I mentioned last time? Well I am going to have to complain to DirecTV soon because all of the boarders could read that the logo said Dharma on it, while I could not make that word out, even on pause. What is Dharma, besides being one half of a cheesy 90s sitcom? Well let me drop a little m-w.com on ya:
Hinduism & Buddhism a : the basic principles of cosmic or individual existence : divine law b : conformity to one's duty and nature. So there you go (there are other variations on what Dharma means, included in attachment). Some people on the boards also brought up the fact that surrounding the Dharma logo was the bagua (also spelled Ba-Gua), a feng shui tool used to help determine preferred locations. I have attached a .gif of it in the Word document below.

Finally, upon viewing the logo very closely, it looks like some sort of silhouette of a swan or something behind the word Dharma. And one more thing, the R is backwards. Hatches R Us! (keyboard can't make a backwards r, but you get what I was trying to do).

This just in: I have met my match in nerdiness. As I mentioned briefly last week, I had shirts with various sayings from Lost made for my little premiere party. But check out how quick and ingenious this guy is! (This site may have been taken down by ABC's Man by the time you get this)(it is nothing profane, just probably some copyright infringement or something):
http://www.cafepress.com/mostlymuppet

If it's still up, click on one of the shirts, and then clock on "View Larger" and then do "Zoom in on image" and you can see the Dharma logo very magnified. If you think it's something other than a swan, let me know, as I really have no idea and no one seems to be mentioning that part of it from what I've read on the boards.

There are SO MANY theories about what the Dharma logo means, ranging from Morse code to a logo of a communications company that maybe Sun's father owned, that I can not possibly recap them all here. Needless to say, the logo can be found on:
- Desmond's coat
- The medicine injection cabinet
- The mirror system and various other places in the hatch
- Almost all food containers in the food warehouse where Kate was, and... drum roll please
- The underbelly of the shark that nearly got Sawyer. Once again, nearly impossible to see in real-time, and a shout-out to CJ who emailed me at home right away after viewing - he actually saw it on his own, impressive!

DHARMA SHARK
Although I will cop to not noticing the Dharma logo upon first viewing, I did state that I did not think it was a totally real shark, because the fin just looked way too thin and almost saw-like/metallic. However, blood did spurt up after Michael shot it, so maybe it was partially real, or all real but tattooed with the logo because it is part of the overall "security system" of the island?

DESMOND
I love Desmond! One minute he's talking to Locke and seems genuinely befuddled that "the real world is still out there?", and the next he's going berserk and taking Locke's advice to tie up Kate instead of him, and the next minute he's shooting off his gun and making quite possibly the most wacky-crazy delirious smiling face in the world at Jack at the very end. He's awesome. From the markings on the wall, it appears he's been there quite a long time (couldn't find anyone who counted them all, but I'm sure that person does exist somewhere).

Desmond asked Locke "are you him?" and when Locke first said "yes,"... I cannot lie, my heart skipped a beat and my blood ran cold and I cried inside my head, "No! Please tell me Locke is not the evil mastermind!" Luckily, it was just an attempt to stall for time, and Locke is not HIM. But then who is HIM? I would say there are three major theories on this:
1) Hurley is Him, as he was the one most connected to the numbers before the crash, and obviously the numbers play a huge role in the hatch.
2) Some unknown person is Him, and there really is a mastermind of something going on on the island
3) Desmond's eventual replacement is Him, meaning that Desmond is on a "shift" down in the hatch, and his job is to ensure that the counter always get reset. He is waiting for the next person to relieve him of his duty. On this note, there was the thought (shout-out to DW) that perhaps Lenny, the guy Hurley met in the psych ward who kept repeating the numbers
constantly, was the PREVIOUS guard in the hatch? All we know about him was that 16 years ago he was stationed in the South Pacific and heard the numbers being transmitted over the radio. We do not know what happened to him after that point to land him in the psych ward (we only knew what happened to the other guy he was with, Sam), so there is a slight chance that Lenny was perhaps the previous Hatch Man and it drove him mad.

Additionally, in that season 1 flashback, when Hurley visits him and tells him he played the numbers in the Lotto, Lenny's response was: ""You've opened the box! It won't stop! You've gotta get away from those numbers!!!!!" I guess we'll see.
4) Desmond has been down there long enough to not be sure that the outside world still exists...
5) ... but he has obviously been out on the island at some point, because he asked about the sickness
6) Did HE paint the mural? If so, we've got three artists on our hands in this show: Desmond, Michael and Claire's old boyfriend/father of Aaron, who if you remember, also painted similarly haunting images:
http://guillaumedupuis.free.fr/!/Peinture.jpg
7) Does Desmond recognize Jack? There didn't actually seem to be any sort of recognition on his end, or at least definitely not any SURPRISE upon seeing Jack. Perhaps he was expecting him? Or perhaps he doesn't remember him?
8) Contrary to what I previously said, I do now think Desmond may be alone in the hatch. And I do think Make Your Own Kind of Music had special meaning because he's been down there so long and needs to keep himself entertained. Also, the ping pong table was set up so that one person could play alone.
9) Does Desmond remember something specific that happened 44 days ago? When Locke tells him about their plane crash and when it was, Desmond kind of paused and then repeated '44 days?' I am not sure if that's because he knows of something specific that went on 44 days ago that perhaps caused their crash, or if he was just reacting to the fact that a) they'd been on the island for 44 days and had not gotten sick or b) the "real world" still existed because they mentioned they were flying from Sydney to LA. He barely remembered his own name, so I'm sure the whole thing was confusing to him.

THE COUNTDOWN
Near the end of the HatchBacks, a familiar beep starts sounding and it is clearly either a warning that someone was on the premises (Jack coming down hatch or Kate in vent), or it was an alarm sounding because the counter had to be reset. After Locke entered in The Numbers, it reset to 108 00. It was cool to see Locke hesitate and look pretty scared before hitting Execute, though.

So what exactly is the countdown counting do to? Most people seem to agree that this is a "doomsday" device, and if it is not continually reset, "something bad" will happen. That is why there always must be someone in the hatch, whose responsibility it is to reset it all the time. I have not seen any other theories than this one, except that it is a counter, but that nothing bad" will happen if it counts down all the way, and the fear is just all in Desmond's head.

KATE
My Kate Hate is waning this season, and I can only worry that it's because another female character is soon coming to usurp her position of Supremely Annoying Lostaway. But even of all the haters on the boards, everyone, and I do mean everyone, agreed that she had two of the best scenes of the show:
1) her "choco-gasm" as it was called on the boards (the candy bar had the brand Apollo on it, by the way), and
2) her hilarious "WTF?" face when Make Your Own Kind of Music starting blaring as she was crawling through the vent. She nearly got shot! Close, but no cigar.

MICHAEL'S FLASHBACKS
Only two things to note here:
1) I was remiss in including this last season, so I will say it now: Remember how Michael got hit by a car? Well supposedly that car was seen elsewhere last season, here's a quote from a Lost site: "The mystery car refers to the tan Bonneville that hit Michael, Locke and Kate." As in, the
same car hit all three of them. Coincidence? I think not!
2) Michael gave Walt a polar bear stuffed animal. Coincidence? I think NOT!

THE RAFTUGEES
You either loved these scenes or you didn't. I am in the latter camp. I felt like they were obviously trying to deepen the bond between Sawyer and Michael, but a lot of the dialogue to me seemed forced, especially on Sawyer's end. Although he did seem to figure out the whole "Those were The Others and the kid they were coming for this whole time was Walt" thing pretty quickly, I must say. I also really didn't need to see him digging out the bullet from his shoulder.

At least there was an end to the floating, as they washed back to the shore, and then found poor Jin, who was now on the set of 28 Days Later, rather than Lost. Crazy zombie-looking peeps were stumbling toward them with medieval-looking weapons. Choices are:
1) The Others
2) Other 815 Survivors who are defending their turf
3) Other 815 Survivors who have The Sickness
4) Other 815 Survivors who went all Lord of the Flies on each other
5) Combo of Others and Survivors
6) Combo of Others and Nigerian Drug Smugglers (from c@caine plane)
7) Others, Survivors AND Smugglers, oh my!

BEST LINES OF THE EPISODE:
MICHAEL: They took my son. They found us -- took Walt -- because you made me fire the flare.
SAWYER: At least Walt is on a boat -- probably wrapped in a blanket with a cup of cocoa -- while we're on this piece...
MICHAEL: Get off my raft.

LOCKE: How long have you been down here?
DESMOND: Shut it.

LOCKE: It's pointless to tie me up, I'm not dangerous. But her, she's a fugitive.
DESMOND: So, what does that make you then, brother?
LOCKE: I'm a regional collections manager for a cardboard manufacturer -- boxes primarily.
DESMOND: All right then, box man, tie her up.
(Erika's favorite scene, because of Locke's hilarious delivery:)
DESMOND (after seeing Jack in mirrors): Who the hell is that?
LOCKE: That would be Jack.

SAWYER: They found us because they were looking for us, for Walt.
MICHAEL: Don't you ever say his name again, ever.
SAWYER: Oh, what are you to do, splash me?

THIS WEEK'S EPISODE:
"Orientation"
PREVIEWS. LOOK. AWESOME.

Enjoy,
- e