S3Ep1 - A Tale of Two Cities (Jack's sixth flashback)

Hello my dear friends -

It is time for the first "official" post of Season 3 on LongLiveLocke.com - hip hip, hooray! I hope you all enjoyed your summers. The big news on my end is that I no longer work for The Man, although I guess technically if you work for anyone but yourself, you do still work for The Man in a way. Let's just say that I now work for A Man that is literally 1/200th (.5%!) the size of previous Employer Man, and I am really enjoying it.

In other news, if you did not check out According to e during the summer hiatus, there are about 50 posts awaiting your perusal during the time between new Lost episodes!

But now, on to more important things, like rejoicing in the fact that we have been reunited at last with our favorite band of Lostaways. Let's get right into "A Tale of Two Cities," as there is much to discuss.

My overall feelings on the episode were positive - I enjoyed it. While I know that some impatient people felt it was slow or that it "didn't provide enough answers" (and I swear to God, if someone ever says that to my face I WILL slap them! DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW IF YOU WANT IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION! Go take your ADD meds and watch "According to Jim" or something equally lame that wraps everything up for you in a nice bow at the end of each episode, GOOD GOD!), I liked how the focus on only Jack, Sawyer and Kate enhanced the feeling of isolation. The awesome shot at the beginning, showing the Others' little utopia carved out on a remote part of the island, combined with absolutely no indication of what had happened back on the beach or in the Hatch, really heightened the feeling that Jack, Kate and Sawyer were experiencing of "Where in the hell are we and what is going to happen to us?" Plus, you can tell from the previews that this week, Sun and Jin, led by Sayid, are going to attempt to BRING THE PAIN to The Others. So it's all good. If *I* can wait to see Locke again, surely everyone else can.

And once again, for all those who think the show was slow, I challenge you to say that after reading how much fellow fans and I pulled out of it with just a little patience and observation. I also challenge you to deny the fact that the writers DO have a plan when you realize how there were actually things referenced in seasons 1 and 2 that made more sense after this episode.

One last thing before we get going - shout-out to all "my peeps" for watching the show with me on premiere night... and shout-out to TV, aka Tortellini, for watching it with me a second time so I could be fully prepared to write this post.

DOWNTOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

Ha, writers of Lost! You didn't fool me THIS time! Last season I started freaking out thinking I was on the wrong channel when the bizarro "Desmond's morning routine" opening sequence started rolling. Now I knew to just trust that I was on ABC when an equally strange beginning for Season 3 commenced. Although I *did* actually think that the woman who turned out to be Juliet was Penelope, so I guess I was tricked a little bit.

NOTE TO CASTING AGENTS: Start getting some women who look a little more different on the show - pale blonds with straight shoulder-length hair - Sarah (Jack's wife), Shannon, Penelope, Libby, Cassidy (Sawyer's ex-girlfriend) and now Juliet - have grown old. The show is confusing enough, dammit.

Shout-out to JC for pointing out the two main parallels in the Season 2 and 3 opening scenes: outdated vs. modern and solitary vs. community. Desmond began Season 2 by putting on a vinyl record, "Make Your Own Kind of Music," which is a song very much about doing your own thing and not caring what anyone else thinks. We saw his lonely routine of riding the old-school exercise bike, making breakfast, shooting up with the vaccine and of course typing in the numbers. Juliet began with putting on a CD of "Downtown," a song about the joys of city life and being around other people, then proceeded to take out muffins (although they burned) for an upcoming group book club session - a very recent phenomenon. But both people seemed equally miserable, as we now know that Desmond was near-suicidal until he finally realized there was life outside the hatch, and Juliet seemed on the verge of tears while getting ready for the meeting, only to then snap at the guy who criticized her book choice. It was noted that perhaps the point of her near-crying/frazzled scenes at the beginning were to show that The Others ARE human. Some people thought that the song she put on possibly made her wistful for a previous life in modern society. Eagle-eyed music fans immediately recognized that the CD case Juliet opened had the same inside cover art as the 1983 Talking Heads' album, Speaking in Tongues. I'm not sure what, if anything, we are to take that to mean, since it clearly wasn't "Burning Down the House" that started playing...

I should also mention that the episode began yet again with a focus on an eye. The poster for Season 3 also seemed to be zooming in on eye shots of all of the major characters. I have no idea if this means anything or not, but I thought I should mention it.

META META

The short book club sequence at the beginning also provided much to think about. First and foremost, there was tension on the part of Juliet when the subject of "Ben" came up, and she also seemed bitter about the fact that apparently "free will" (a huge theme of the show in general) wasn't a given to everyone in the club. The Nancy Reagan-looking lady seemed to be enjoying the spat between Juliet and the naysayer guy. To me, this showed that all may not be as perfect as it seems in Otherland.

There were varying reports of what book it actually was that they were discussing - there is definitely a shot of Stephen King's Carrie - but other people claim to have seen other Stephen King books in addition to Carrie. The version of Carrie seen in the show was a first edition, from 1974, which conveys a bit of retro-ness despite the fact that Juliet had a CD collection...

Carrie and many other Stephen King books have elements of the supernatural, paranormal, and the ability to control things with one's mind... things also seen on Lost. IHowever, it could've just been a nod to the author since he does write a column in Entertainment Weekly and often professes to being a big fan of the show. Who knows. To me, it wasn't so much about which book it was as it was about the discussion that ensued.

Many considered the book club scene to be a tongue-in-cheek meta-discussion about the show Lost itself:
ADAM: It's not even literature. It's popcorn.
AMELIA: And why isn't it literature, Adam? I'm dying to know.
ADAM: There's no metaphor. It's by-the-numbers religious hocum-pocum.
AMELIA: No metaphor?
ADAM: It's science-fiction -- now I know why Ben isn't here.

A few moments later, after the plane crash is witnessed and all The Others are outside together, we see Fenry Gale look at the Stephen King book in Juliet's hand and dryly comment, "So I guess I'm out of the book club." It is at this point we realize that Fenry IS the Ben mentioned in the book club discussion, and apparently he would've either felt like he was above Stephen King, doesn't like fiction in general, or doesn't believe in the topics covered in Carrie (telekinesis). Shout-out to CG for giving me the new nickname - Benry - that will be used from here on out for the man previously known as Obvious Other/Henry Gale/Fenry Gale/Ben.

While I will cover Benry a little bit more later, it is worth pointing out here that this conversation he had with Locke in Season 2 when he was being held captive in the Hatch now becomes a bit more intriguing:

LOCKE [tossing a book on the cot]: I thought you might like something to read.
GALE: Dostoyevsky. You don't have any Stephen King?

SEE, people, the writers are clever. We just need to be quick enough or have enough memory of past episodes to catch these things! It should be known that I didn't catch that one either - I saw it discussed on the boards.



THE PLANE CRASH

There were a few key points to take away from the plane crash scene:
1) Most people noted that the plane seemed to rip apart WAY too high in the air for anyone to have been expected to survive.
2) Some people claimed to have seen the "black smoke floaty stuff" around the airplane. You can kind of see why someone would think that when looking at the still shot to the right. Additionally, if you remember WAY back when, I mentioned how the floaty black stuff seemed to be around the wreckage site in the pilot episode. You can view that, and other Smoky incidences here. If the black smoke WERE involved somehow with the plane crash, then perhaps I could see that being a reason why people survived. Maybe it somehow cushioned the blow? All I know is that I personally DO see the black smoke in all of the scenes in question and so I think this theory is possible. That would REALLY tie together things from all three seasons thus far...
3) The plane crash did seem to be a genuine surprise to The Others...
4) ... but it also seemed like they had handled this type of situation before. With Benry ordering Goodwin and Ethan to take off, act as survivors and come back in three days with "the lists," that would lead you to believe that this had been a fairly routine practice. While some people were befuddled as to how Goodwin and Ethan could've made it WAAAAY over to the crash sites in such a short amount of time, especially now that we saw how truly far away the Others' community was, it was quickly noted that both men in question seemed to have super-strength, so perhaps they can also run extremely fast. And remember that Juliet knocked Jack out with ONE PUNCH later on in the episode... so I do think there's something to the "The Others have Superpowers" theory.
5) Since The Others were clearly not expecting the plane crash and were not even sure there would be survivors, that should lead us to the assumption that they did NOT have information on the flight passengers beforehand.
6) They also didn't say anything like, "Dammit, Desmond didn't push in the numbers!" which made many people wonder if The Others ever even knew that Kelvin and Desmond had been inhabiting the Swan Hatch. My guess is that they did NOT know, because in the preview for this week, Benry looks shocked that there is a sailboat closing in on their turf (Desmond's sailboat with Sun, Jin and Sayid on it).
7) Regardless of what actually caused the plane to crash on the island - the magnetic force and/or the black smoke and/or something else... one thing that I hope they eventually explain is why the plane was 1,000 miles off course in the first place. Surely the magnetic pull did not pull them from that far away, or else it wouldn't have just been their plane. Also, the pilot was aware that they were that far off course, but never said why. This leads me to believe there is still something bigger going on with the plane crash in the whole scheme of things. If that's true, it may not be revealed until the SERIES finale, so I'm going to stop wondering about it!
8) As you could see from the variety of people who ran out to watch the plane crash (I counted about 20 and then about 20 houses in the wide view), there are definitely a bunch of normal-looking people in The Others' community. I'm sorry, but I don't think that Nancy Reagan-looking lady in the book club was going to dress up in khakis, run around barefoot and beat someone's ass any time soon. So I think a lot more is going on with The Others than just their experiments on Kate, Jack and Sawyer, their supposed tests on kids (per Walt in "Three Minutes") and their kidnapping of babies and children. Many people noted the similarity between The Others' community and the village in the movie, uh, "The Village" (which I loved). If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you, but I totally agree with the comparisons of the two. And I think it was important that we actually saw NO children, so either they are hiding away any kids they may have, or they haven't kidnapped any from any previous island crashes.



YEAH, WE *GET IT* - JACK HAS LOTS OF ISSUES! OR, EVEN MORE JACK!BACKS

As you saw in the title of this post, this was Jack's SIXTH flashback episode. Good Lord! Give some other people a little air time, will ya? While I can see why some people were frustrated that it was another Jack-centric episode, I actually didn't mind as much as I thought I would this time around. On the surface it may seem like we didn't learn anything new, but we did - it was just subtle.

1) As one boarder put it best, "Two Cities now shows us what happens when Jack has no control over the events in his life. He's not a control freak, he's just someone in control. Things happen logically! When things happen that are completely out of his hands, especially if it counteracts his infallible belief in the scientific method, his world spins. He had absolutely no control over what was going on with Sarah, and he had no control over what was happening to him in the aquarium. None. Jack's a lot like Locke. Both pounding on the hatch, screaming "Why is this happening???" I couldn't believe all the Jack/Sarah and Locke/Dad/Hatch parallels in this episode."

2) In the fifth episode of season one, we saw Jack's mom scold him for making his father leave:
MARGO: Your father's gone, Jack. Did you hear what I said? He's gone ,Jack.
JACK: He'll be back.
MARGO: This time it's different. I want you to bring him back.
JACK: He hasn't talked to me in 2 months, Mom.
MARGO: You haven't talked to him in 2 months.
JACK: He doesn't want me to bring him back, trust me. Let one of his friends.
MARGO: He doesn't have friends anymore. Why do you think that is? He was right about you.
JACK: Right about what?
MARGO: You don't understand the pressure that he's under.
JACK: I understand pressure.
MARGO: Jack, please, you know how he gets -- he doesn't -- he won't take care of himself. You have to go after him.
JACK: I'm sorry. I can't.
MARGO: I can't? You don't get to say "I can't." Not after what you did. Bring your father home, Jack.
JACK: Where is he?
MARGO: Australia.

We all thought "what Jack did" was turn his father in for performing a surgery under the influence, during which a woman died. However, now we know that what Jack actually did was to motivate his father to start drinking again in the first place. I thought that was brilliant.

3) In the first of many stalking scenes in the episode, Jack is sitting in his car, watching Sarah talk to some guy outside of the school where she teaches. On the radio is "Moonlight Serenade" by Glenn Miller. This is the SAME SONG that came across for a brief second when Sayid and Hurley tried to get the radio to work near the end of Season 2. Coincidence? We'll see. On a related note, coincidentally or not so coincidentally, Glenn Miller died in a plane crash.

4) We still never learned the name of Sarah's lov-ah. Something tells me there's a reason for that...
5) I personally was glad to see a MAN portrayed as a psychotic stalker for once. Seriously, there are way too many movies and shows out there that have women getting all foolish over some guy. So I got a huge kick out of Jack falling to pieces because he couldn't get her back. Too little, too late, sucka!

6) I hope it is totally clear to everyone that Jack's dad WAS NOT having an affair with Sarah. There was some confusion about that on the boards and I wasn't sure why. The guy they showed at the end is who she was with, not Jack's dad. Shortly thereafter Christian did run off to Australia with Ana Lucia, but that's another story...

LOVE CONNECTIONS?

Everyone seemed to agree that there is some sort of weird tenision between Benry and Juliet. It could just be that she doesn't like his style and has in the past or will in the future challenge him for authority. They could've also been romantically linked and now it's awkward and he's making the most of it. Another theory is that she was actually involved with Ethan (hence the fact that he had been the one attempting to fix the plumbing in her house over the course of time), and therefore when Ethan got killed because Benry sent him to the Lostaway camp, Juliet now blames Benry. Sort of how Jack always blamed Locke for Boone's death and never was able to get past it. There is also the possibility that it was the exact opposite, and that Ethan was sent by Benry to do something to Juliet's house to cause her to die (leak carbon monoxide? Who knows - I know this is a reach).

If I was a betting woman, however, I bet that Juliet and Jack end up romantically entangled... you know, caught in a net.

THE HYDRA

Have I ever told you all how much I love mythology? Well, I DO. So I was happy to see that the new hatch is named the Hydra, after the many-headed mythical serpent beast.

This was a fitting name, as this Hatch was supposedly the station for testing or training sharks, dolphins and the like, and apparently still houses some sort of aquarium. However, when Juliet told Jack that they were underwater... I'm not so sure I believe that one. When Sawyer is in the cage, you can see above his head a large pipe with the Hydra hatch logo on it, leading to what looked to be a large facility not too far away. And remember, Juliet was in the Hydra with Jack but then ran out to stun-gun Sawyer in the neck within a matter of minutes. I do not think the Hydra is underwater, but rather it houses large tanks of water pumped in from the ocean.

Also, it should be noted that the Shark that swam by Sawyer and Michael at the beginning of last season did NOT have the Hydra logo on it, as seen to the right.

Finally - did Benry and Juliet REALLY think they were going to die if Jack opened the sealed door, or was it all a ruse ("your cunning attempt to trick me")? When I watched it a second time, it really did seem like both Benry and Juliet were trying to get the hell out of there. And remember that Benry just totally slammed the door on Juliet, leaving her to drown in the room or worse yet, deal with CrazyPissedOffDeliriousDehydratedJack.

Perhaps it was not a fake-out and they really were afraid to open the door. Either way, I thought the "water rushing in, them closing the door and then draining the room" scene was kind of anti-climatic.


A BLOODY MESS

We saw that both Kate and Jack discovered bloody cotton balls bandaged to their arms... most likely a sign of blood withdrawal than a sign of being injected with something. If you remember, Michael's blood was also taken by Ms. Klugh when he first showed up at The Others' camp. Are they testing for "the sickness"? Are they doing genetic testing? I'm not sure, but when good ol' Zeke told Kate "You're not my type" - I don't think he was talkin' blonds vs. brunettes. I think he was talking either blood type, or "good person vs. "bad person" type.

They never showed Sawyer with a bandage - yet.


LAB RAT

What they did show Sawyer with was a fish biscuit - truly earned after figuring out the "gizmo" in the cage. Watching Sawyer desperately attempt to win the prize made me really sad, mostly because he seemed so genuinely happy after he triumphed. At least we are clear that those cages were not originally made for humans, they were made for bears. An answer! Now we know where the bears on the island came from. They somehow escaped or were released from the original Dharma project, or whatever project it now is that The Others are conducting.

"Chachi," Sawyer's also-caged buddy, is believed by most everyone on the boards to have been a plant. TV wondered aloud to me if perhaps that guy was a child raised by The Others who simply knew nothing else but to go along with what he was told. It is possible - he looked pretty young.



SHE'LL DO ANYTHING FOR COFFEE... BUT SHE WON'T DO THAT

How funny was it when Benry was like "Put on the handcuffs or you will not get any coffee" and Kate just cold-busted them on in milliseconds? I would be the same way had that been Earl Grey tea, though, so I can't fault her. Most people think that Kate did not end up actually eating the breakfast. Either she didn't want Sawyer to know she had just eaten, or she is good at faking being really hungry even when eating something nasty, because she seemed extremely into that fish biscuit Sawyer tossed her.

It is believed that "something" happened to Kate between her breakfast and the time she was taken to the cage near Sawyer. Obviously her wrists were cut deeply by the handcuffs, which wouldn't have resulted had she not been struggling. She also had a very dazed look about her when she returned and was certainly on the verge of tears, and I don't think that was just because she was reunited with Sawyer. Something tells me the time between those two scenes may be future flashback material...




THREE PEOPLE, THREE METHODS

One theory about what The Others are trying to do with Jack, Kate and Sawyer is that they are trying to "break" each of them via different methods. With Jack, it's psychological. While I'm not sure exactly what piece of information, if any, they were looking for, they were definitely trying to mentally wear him down and make him "behave." Did they care about what one piece of information he wanted to know just so that they could use it against him in the future? Or do they actually know enough about him to know that it was a big deal that he actually DIDN'T ask for the dude's name that is with his wife since he was totally obsessed with that before? Either way, they suceeded in whatever their goal was, as Benry commended Juliet after she got Jack to answer and then sit against the wall.

With Kate, it seems like she will be given physical challenges over the next two weeks to break her spirit and will. With Sawyer, it seems to be little games and tests. It's too early to tell.

But the question remains - why these three? Were they taken because they are the most strong-willed, and therefore if The Others break them down, then it will be easy to get everyone else? Were these three considered the leaders? Or were they just "bad people"?



EX-FILES
There is a lot of controversy over what exactly the dossier was that Juliet held at the end that supposedly contained Jack's "life." Much of that information they could've gotten had they given him some sort of truth serum that we didn't see. Some of it Ethan could've gathered from when he was a mole within the group. And let's remember that Jack's father's body was missing from the coffin, so there is a chance The Others got to it and performed the autopsy themselves.

They had two full months to collect this information. Hell, if they had access to Google they probably could've gotten all of that stuff. So they could definitely have access to the outside world somehow. That remains to be seen and will probably be a main question and focus of this season.


OTHER RANDOM THINGS OF NOTE
- How awesome was it when Jack ran into the plexiglass shield at the beginning? (I had high hopes that it was a force field, by the way). It would have been slightly more awesome had I not done that exact thing before myself.
- People seemed to think that Juliet was called Juliet, Julie and Jules during the episode.
- How many days passed in this episode? The Kate/Sawyer scenes made it seem like it could've been just one or maximum two days... but the Jack scenes made it seem like he had been in there for weeks. If it was just one day, then he is a wimp and they broke him really easily! No, I kid. Here's a guy who found out his wife was cheating on him, drove his father back to the bottle, which resulted in him killing a patient on accident and then drinking himself to death in Australiia, where Jack headed to to collect the body right after he got divorced, but he ended up surviving a plane crash and then once on the island he basically has worked non-stop for 60 days trying to save everyone all while seeing his zombie dad run around, getting kissed and then scorned by Kate, then buring several island friends and then getting shot with a poisonous dart and kidnapped. I'll cut him some slack. I would've lasted about 5 minutes. I'll allow Jack another one of his excellent man-crying scenes.
- What was the "Let it go" whisper that came out of the supposedly broken Hydra intercom? Was it a hallucination on Jack's part, like when he saw his zombie dad? Or were both of those things real?
- Some people thought that the patient Jack was working on in one of the flashback scenes was one of The Others. I tried to compare, but couldn't tell definitively. It could be possible, the guy was older and kind of nondescript.


FIND YOURSELF
"Find yourself" is the theme of Season 3, according to the promo posters. These two lines from the episode support that theme:

Sarah to Jack: "It doesn't matter who he is. It just matters who you're not."
Juliet to Jack: "It doesn't matter who we were. It only matters who we are."

BEST LINES OF THE EPISODE

JULIET: What do you do, Jack? What's your profession?
JACK: I'm a repo man. You know, when people don't pay their bills I go into the bank and collect their possessions. I'm a people person so I really love it.

KARL: Hey. Hey, how long would it take to get to your camp?
SAWYER: What, you talking to me now, Chachi?

TOM [aka Zeke] to Kate: Stick your arms out through the bars; I'll take off your cuffs. They scratched you up pretty bad, didn't they? I'll bring you some anti-septic later.
SAWYER: How about you bring me an ottoman? While you're at it I could use a blow dry.

TOM: Hey, you got yourself a fish biscuit. How'd you do that?
SAWYER: I figured out your complicated gizmos, that's how.
TOM [exiting]: Only took the bears 2 hours.
SAWYER [calling after Tom]: How many of them were there?

POSTS FROM THE BOARDS

- [Regarding Henry Gale's real name being Ben] I think that it was an inside joke with the writers to give him the most friendly, lovable name they could think of.
- Maybe it's Ben from Benito Mussolini!
- Juliet seemed repulsed by Ben, I don't think she liked doing what she was doing. Also, when Juliet saw Ben, right after he said, "Good work Juliet," on the soundtrack there is a harp strum, like this is a major plot point. That sound stood out, because I don't remember hearing the harp at any other time in the episode. I'll watch again too be sure.
- The "harp strum," the "major plot point," was becuase Juliet was actually doing what Ben had brilliantly orchestrated. All that was to get Jack to trust her. And that Juliet wasn't on Jack's side after all.
- Kate's situation is interesting. no one else was told that the next 2 wks would be hell, just her. She seemed like she went thru some roughing up as we see her wrists cut up from a struggle against the handcuffs. Maybe the experiment on her involves breaking her down thru physical means, while Jack is thru emotional and Sawyer is that skinner box.
- So I just watched it again on abc.com and it was WAY better the second time!! I think it was bc I got so much more out of it... y'all should go watch it again!
- Anyway, I'm glad we found out 100% for sure now that the original Dharma organization is not the same as what is now on the island. It's obvious that the motivation behind this group is quite different (as to what their motivations are, that is still uncertain).
- Someone mentioned earlier that maybe the Others didn't know about the hatch with Desmond in it...maybe not, but their hatches (the Hydra and others?) must have some kind of electric power because they have electricity in their village, the CD player, lights, etc. were running on electricity, so where do they get it?
- Oh my God! That was the worst premiere EVER! I mean, how can they show the entire FIRST EPISODE of a 23 episode season and not answer EVERY SINGLE QUESTION!? This is such crap! I can totally see why this show has jumped the shark. I mean... the Others aren't really savages? They're pretending!? Oh my GOD that came out of NOWHERE! And the commercials... my oh my... you would think these network pricks are in the business of making money. How DARE they put commericals on during a television show! If next week only continues to supply flashback stories that fuel character motivations, interesting new personalities, and reveal key plot points in an amazing storytelling and visual style, well I'll just have to stop watching! ((Please note, if your tongue was not firmly planted in your cheek while reading that, do so, and go read it again.))
- I too liked the premiere. As I had written in another thread, S3 will have a different feel to it just as S2 was different than S1. Everyone who wanted a crap load of answers sounds like they need to be watching ER or something. Let the season play out. We DID get answers last night, subtle snippets of information, but no it wasn't the BIG answers many were hoping for (smoke monster, hatch explosion, Eko/Locke, etc). Be patient and trust the show we are all obsessed with for 2+ yrs now.
- They didn't create a town. They were in a town.We don't know that they themselves aren't in some sort of social experiment and that's why they're so incredibly twisted, but whyever they're doing what they're doing, it's certainly not going to matter if they're blonde and plain (and not completely dissimilar to, say, a past wife). While we know there were some more-than-a-bit-coincidental interactions between the Losties before they boarded the plane, the Others have had lists and flight manifests and two months of off-island communications to compile all sorts of information to make themselves seem far-too-clever.
- I believe that the others have access to off island things; otherwise where did Benry get that kick ass modern coffee pot on the beach? Plus there's the CDs with the music. So somehow the Others have contact with the outside world. Maybe they have a Dharma Initiative mail order catalogue... Hee hee. But really, all they need is someone at the other end of a radio of some kind who has internet access or a good bank account to pay for a PI to get the kind of dossier on Jack. They've had around 2 months to get data on the people in the crash and maybe they want Jack cuz he's a doctor. There IS some kind of a medical mystery going on here so it could be important.
- It's a french press. While it looked surprisingly new, it's not exactly a modern coffee maker.
- Maybe they parachute-drop new technology and stuff every now and then. I won't believe the Others have direct contact outside the island until I see them with iPods.



UPCOMING EPISODES:

I know who the flashbacks are for but I will not tell you because I consider that a spoiler and I am mad that I found out!

10/11 - The Glass Ballerina


10/18 - Further Instructions


10/25 - Every Man for Himself


11/1 - The Cost of Living


11/8 - Episode title still TBD, it will be a mini-finale. Then Lost is on break until February when the rest of the episodes will air back to back.

FOR THE NEWBIES

For those of you new to this blog - First off, welcome! I hope you enjoy it. My format is that I write one post and one post only per each episode - I don't do any posts in between episodes even if there is some sort of show news (awards, someone got arrested, etc.) - all of that information will be wrapped into each episode-related post. It takes me a full week to write each post, and you should now understand why since you've seen how long they are and then factor in that I actually have a real job and attempt to go to the gym and have a life every once in a while. Each episode's post will go live typically by the night before a new episode airs unless I state that it will have to be later because I'm traveling or something. I do not discuss spoilers at all and will not post any if they are left in the comments. However, all theories and pure speculation and responses to my theories are welcome and encouraged in the comments (which you do not need to register for in order to post anything... they will go live after I review them each night). Basically I just try to pull together all of the various things we should've noticed in each episode and theories I read on the various forums and try to make some sort of sense out of it all. I immensely enjoy the show and do not have a lot of patience for whiners who want all the answers right away. You're not gonna get 'em, so get over it!!!

So there you have it - all in all this episode did what a premiere is supposed to do - set up the entire season. Bring on the Dynamic Duo and MajorlyPissedSayid!!!

- e