Sorry to tear you hopeless geeks away from Lost, but it’s time for something manly!  No not the Oscars.  It’s Superbowl time!  Time to answer those age-old questions that speak to the essence of manhood:  Which team has better uniforms?  Whose tight end is better looking?  Which ETrade baby is more articulate?  What scandal will occur during the half-time show?  And of course, most importantly: Which commercial has the hottest babes?

Feel free to comment here before, during and after the big game on all things related to the cultural phenomenon that is The Superbowl.

Well, anyone who thought the final season would be less confusing than the last was in for a shock this evening.

Discussion and spoilers from the final season premier below.

Links and miscellanea

• This video is really impressive. It’s a retelling of the crash of 815, with clips from several episodes edited together so that the crash is viewed in real time.
  
• Evangeline Lily has put herself up for auction on eBay.

Winning bidders will get lunch in Honolulu, Vancouver or Los Angeles and proceeds go to the Go Campaign, a non-profit that helps fund development projects in the third-world. (Link via Jorge Garcia’s blog, Dispatches From the Island, so you know the auction’s legit.)

• Here’s a timely Lost parody song by the Fine Brothers:
  
• These very cool Lost posters make me wish that I had talent in the graphic arts.

  

• The LA Times has a feature about Lost fans who traveled to Hawaii to attend the Season 6 premier over the weekend on Waikiki beach.
• Jeff “Doc” Jensen at Entertainment Weekly says that this scene from the season 1 pilot is worth revisiting in light of the way the show has developed.
  
• Many Lost fans (including myself) managed to avoid watching the leaked first episode before it aired.
• Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly are saying that after Lost, they won’t do television again. Josh Halloway says he “plans to pursue film work.”
• Here’s yet another article discussing the religious themes in Lost.

Observations and speculations

• So what we now have is a crisis on infinite earths scenario. Or at least two worlds. Its an alternate realities situation. And while that sort of thing usually doesn’t appeal to me, I’m not all that crazy about time travel story lines either, and last season seemed to work out okay.
• In one reality (let’s call it “LA X,” just like the episode title), everything is right were it was before Oceanic flight 815 broke apart over the South Pacific: Locke is still in his wheelchair, Kate is a fugitive, Charlie a junkie, Rose and Bernard a happily married couple, and Jack a conflicted son hoping to bury his father. Except, something happened to his father’s corpse en route.
• In the other reality, the lostaways who were in DHARMA ‘77 have been catapulted forward to the time just after Jacob was killed.
• So who did we not see on the plane?: Michael and Walt (perhaps for obvious reasons–after all, we can’t have Young Walt back again); Shannon (although we do see her later in a taxi at LAX< so maybe she was on it after all UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, that was Claire, not Shannon. In the island timeline, Claire is likely dead.); and the Tailies (though, of course, they weren’t in the first season either, so they didn’t appear in any of these scenes). No Nikki and Paolo either. That might have been kind of awesome.
• Who is on the plane who really shouldn’t be there? Desmond. Huh. Remember that Jack and Desmond had met once prior to that time, at a sports stadium (was it the Rose Bowl?), so no alternate-dimension deja vu is needed for Jack to think Desmond looks familiar.
• Rose is reading a magazine named “Weekly Woodsman.” I don’t remember that.
• Sitting next to Locke on the plane is Frogurt.
• LA X Jack seems to think that there’s some sort of significance to the small bloodied spot on his neck, and I agree with him. No idea what it is, thogh.
• When Jack meets Desmond on the plane, the book Desmond is reading is Salmon Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
  
• Was Desmond really on the plane? If so, that could mean that Operation Jughead reset not just the Oceanic 815’s timeline, but also Desmond’s. (If not, I guess it means Jack is delusional.)
• In the LA X universe, the barracks (aka DHARMAville) are at the bottom of the ocean, like an Atlantis bungalow village. And if you looked very closely, you would have noticed a cameo reappearance of our DHARMA shark swimming near the ruins of the three-toed statue.
• The Island universe begins with the extreme eye close-up of Kate, up in a tree.
• It’s kind of comforting—nostalgic, even—to see Sawyer and Jack as enemies again.
• Another great cameo was seeing Artz again. Immediately following his appearance, Hurley tells Sawyer, “Nothing bad ever happens to me. I’m the luckiest guy alive.” From this, we might infer that the LA X time line does more than just put things the way they were before the crash, as it also seems to have removed Hurley’s curse.
• Sun and Jin appear to be back to the same dysfunction that they had before the crash.
• Locke seems to have lied to Boone about going on his walkabout.
• I liked Lapidus’ line about the Jacob squad: “They say they’re the good guys. I’m not buying it either.”
• When Jacob appears to Hurley, he’s wearing a white shirt, as he was (if I recall correctly) in every scene. The other guy (who some call Esau) is always wearing black.
• Jacob knows that Hurley can see dead people. Unlike what Miles does, he can actually have conversations and walk with them. That seems to confirm that Hurley’s visions are not merely delusions.
• Jacob’s explanation of his death was interesting: “I was killed by an old friend who grew tired of my company.”
• Classic Sayid moment: “Can I be of assistance? Excuse me.” *busts down the restroom door*
• Of course, when I saw Charlie, I assumed that he had OD’d on his heroin stash, but he appears to have attempted suicide by choking. Seems like an overdose would be more pleasant.
• Before Juliet dies, she tries to tell Sawyer, “It worked.” How does she know? Just seconds before that, she was saying “It didn’t work.” Very strange.
• Now we know the nature of the Man in Black. He is the Smoke Monster, and he can, as we surmised, take the form of those who have died on the island (or presumably, those of corpses who are present on the island—think Yemi and Christian Sheppard). What’s more, when he does so he can understand the thoughts of those whose bodies he assumes, just as he knows John Locke’s final thoughts when Ben strangled him.
• Bram was carrying around with him his own personal satchel of ash, which he uses to make a circle of protection around himself. Yet another question answered: the ash around Jacob’s shack was there to protect him from his nemesis, the Smoke Monster.
• The voice overs of the pilot’s voice in this episode appear to have been recorded by Greg Grunberg, who played the pilot in Pilot. Grunberg is a childhood friend of JJ Abrams.
• What was with the big bearded hippy on the plane with the hat pulled down over his face? That was strange.
• Sayid is wearing Horace’s jumpsuit. I either didn’t know that, or had forgotten it.
• The book that Montand, the corpse seen near the entrance to the Temple, had in his pack is Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, in French (“Crainte et Tremblement”). The book is Kierkegaard’s meditation on Abraham’s commandment from God to sacrifice Isaac, and the ultimate concept of faith.
• Just before Jack is ambushed by some Temple-dwelling Others, we hear whispers and see a dark figure in the background. Suddenly, these Others seem more like the Others from Season 1, mysterious and powerful, with ancient dress and eschewing modern technology. And they are barefoot. Very different from the Others in Season 2 and 3. I wonder if there was a conscious decision to return to a more primitive existence. Or maybe it’s a Temple thing.
• Fugitive Kate is a bad ass. It’s nice to have her back. Notice that the Marshall has with him the Haliburton case that figured centrally in a certain episode in Season 1.
• At last, we have a Japanese character, so I can show of my Japanese language skills. Unfortunately, most of what he says is basically the same as the translation in the dialogue. At one point, he says (referring to Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid) “It would have been better if they hadn’t come here. We can’t excuse them from having seen this place. Shoot them.” Later, he asks Hurley if he met Jacob, and to prove it. Then he calls Hurley a liar and again tells the Others to shoot them. When the translating Other asks Japanese Other what happened to the water at the spring, he replies, “I don’t know what happened.” Incidentally, the form of Japanese that he speaks, while not exactly rude, shows that he considers himself to be superior to those he’s speaking to—he’s speaking down to them and not being polite in his manner of addressing them.
• Cindy, the flight attendant, seems to have adapted well ot life with the Others.
• When the Japanese Other breaks the ankh? That was cool. We got an answer to the question, “What’s in the guitar case?” The ankh itself was a classic MacGuffin—it was what was in the case, but it was not itself important.
• Sun chooses not to reveal that she can speak English. At this point, in the LA X universe, she has not decided to stay with Jin.
• Jack gives up on the CPR for Sayid awfully quickly. You would think that someone who was drowned for only a few seconds could be revived through CPR.
• The Others in the Temple clearly know that the ash will protect them from the Smoke Monster. But I wonder if Ben knew that. Remember, Ben himself summoned the Smoke Monster to get away from the mercenaries. Now it seems like Ben didn’t know much about Smokie at all.
• The way that the scene between Ben and Esau at the end was very well done. Watch Esau/Locke’s speech when he is sitting down and how the mood changes when he sits forward into the light, then sits back into the shadow.
• Esau tells Ben, “I want to go home.” We have no way to interpret this statement yet. Where does he come from? What does going home even mean for him?
• Do we think that Locke’s knives and Christian’s body ended up in the same place?
• Jack tells Locke, “Nothing is irreversable,” which can’t be a purely medical statement.
• Esau tells Richard, “It’s good to see you out of those chains.” From his perspective, everyone was being held captive by Jacob, and now they are free. Others don’t seem to agree with him on this view. Maybe that’s what he means when he says he is “very disappointed in all of you.”
• At the end of the episode, Sayid returns to life. At least, we might assume that it’s Sayid and that the Smoke Monster hasn’t infiltrated the Temple already.

It’s good to have Lost back. Answers are coming, even though (naturally) more questions are still being raised.

What do y’all think? Good episode? Are we keeping up with everything? How will this dual reality play out? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Last night was the first episode past the pilot movie, and I have to say they are taking it in some interesting ways I wouldn’t have anticipate.
However, I won’t be reviewing new episodes each week (at least for now). This show is tonally very different than BSG – and not much happens arc-wise each episode, as this show is much more character driven. It could easily turn into a soap opera (it’s kinda sorta already halfway there), and the acting is mixed. However, I was fascinated anyway.

I recommend y’all watch the series. Last night’s episode was good enough that it gets my tenative recommendation. We’ll see if it lasts.

We are now one week away from the first episode of the last season of Lost. I’m both excited and skeptical.

NOTE: The post below is (I hope) free of Season Six spoilers. Please try to keep it that way in the comments.

Links and miscellanea:

• One of the challenges of the final season will be satisfying fans who are going to be demanding answers. Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof discuss this issue in a recent interview:
  

  It’s very dangerous to basically create a checklist of answers and then start trying to tick them off, because we want to make sure we’re telling engaging stories. For us really, while the mythology is important, for us it’s a story about these characters. And so most of our focus has been on, how are we going to resolve the character stories?

  We really feel we are very committed to this notion of not stripping the show of its essential mystery. …

  There are sort of fundamental elements of mystery and magic to the show that are unexplainable, and any attempt to explain them would actually harm the show, and in our opinion, the legacy of the show. So we’re trying to find the right blend of answering questions, but also leaving the things that should be mysterious mysterious.

  My nominees for “mysteries” that will not be answered: the meaning of the numbers; the source of the island’s powers; how Claire lost her baby fat so quickly.

• On that note, the creators of this list of “100 questions Lost better answer or we’ll be pissed” are just setting themselves up for disappointment.
• Do you remember Cindy, the Oceanic Airlines flight attendent who we last saw palling around with the Others? She’s apparently working for Bissell now.
  
  I first spotted this while my kids were watching something on Nickelodeon and it took me a minute to place the actress.
• Newsweek has a nice feature story about Lost’s final season titled “The End is Near.”
• As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the Obama Administration wisely decided that it wasn’t worth pissing off millions of Lost fans and rescheduled the State of the Union address for a night other than February 2. (I enjoyed Lindelof’s reaction: “I’m a lifelong Democrat, but when I first heard they were considering Feb. 2, I was like, ‘That motherf***er!’”)
• This piece from the Onion News Network is brilliant.
  
  Final Season Of ‘Lost’ Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever
  I especially love that they interviewed Cuse and Lindelof for the piece. That’s quality journalism.
• Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) talks about the end of Lost with TV Guide (without giving anything away).
• And, finally, how do the characters of Lost make PB&J?

I imagine there is going to be a flood of media stories in the coming week. I’ll try to highlight some of the best ones in the first part of next week’s post.

A priori Observations and Speculations

• Now where (and when?) were we?I must admit, I haven’t put a ton of thought into Lost over the break. In fact, I have to strain a little bit to remember how it all ended up. Even for someone who followed the show as closely as I did, Season 5 was just really confusing. You may recall that the season followed three basic narratives (two of which merged at halfway through the season). In one, we found out what happened to those who remained on the island after the Oceanic Six (Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sun, Hurley and Sayid) left. And what happened was, they (Sawyer, Juliet, Faraday, Miles) skipped through time for a while, discovering interesting things about the island and its history, until finally coming to a stop in 1977, a time when the Widmore/Hawking led Others occupied one part of the island, while the DHARMA crew, led by Pierre Chang and including a young Ben, occupied the other part.
• Meanwhile, John Locke, convinced that he must bring them back, visited each of the Oceanic Six in order to convince them to return to the island. Eventually, Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid and Hurley board an Ajira Airways flight bound for the island with Ben on board, with a strangled and coffined Locke in the cargo hold, wearing Jack’s father’s shoes. Oh, and Frank Lapidus is the captain. Jack, Kate, Sayid and Hurley disappear from the plane in mid-air and find themselves in the Lost island lagoon in 1977, joining Sawyer (now going by the name of LaFleur, head of security for DHARMA), Juliet, Miles and Jin. Jack becomes convinced, with some help from Faraday, that he must detonate Jughead, a hydrogen bomb buried in an underground tunnel beneath the island’s surface in order to put everything back in place. That may or may not have happened at the end of the season when Juliet fell down the hole and possibly detonated the bomb, making the screen fade to white.
• The other story line began when those Ajira passengers who did not de-materialize (including Ben, Lapidus and Sun, as well as new characters Ilana, Cesar, and Bram) crash landed on Hydra Island (probably on the airstrip that Sawyer and Kate helped build when they were captives there in Season 3). After the crash, Locke appears to be resurrected (although the last episode revealed that whoever it is, it’s not exactly Locke). Ilana and Bram are shown to be among a group of people loyal to Jacob and intent on helping him. (Not-)Locke, with the help of Ben and Richard, leads a march to Jacob’s domicile beneath the three-toed statue, where Ben is tasked with killing (the demi-god) Jacob. We find out that (Not-)Locke is an ancient rival of Jacob’s who has been working for years, centuries even, to find a loophole that will allow him to kill Jacob, and finally he succeeds, through Ben.


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