Remember That Time On LOST When: Desmond Was Unstuck In Time?

January 19th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

WHERE AM I, BROTHER?

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Desmond Hume getting unstuck in time was one of those episodes of LOST that left you absolutely rocked. It was pure undiluted win. It tugged on your heart strings, it made your mind melt with time traveling insanity, and it features Daniel Faraday rocking out with the mullet to end all mullets.

I remember watching Desmond catapult through time with the idea that they were going to kill off my boy Mr. Hume. Instead, the dude seems to be an essential linchpin in the entire series. He’s a Scottish time-bandit stud, who just so happens to have surfed the slipstream of time and space before being saved by love. Awwww, how fucking cute! No seriously, I shouldn’t act hard. When he finally dials up Penny at the end of the episode, I was pretending to sneeze a lot, because I was a weepy mess.

Penny! Oh Penny!

HELP ME, BROTHA

Desmond gets rocked on his ass when Locke and the Band of Merry Assholes decide to stop punching the numbers into their sweet ass 1982 Apple II or something. The resultant EMP alters him in some way and his consciousness allows him to be hurtled back and forth through points in time in his own life. Sounds awesome, right? I mean, who hasn’t wanted to go back and remember that first awkward kiss, or your first wet dream, or the horrible acne you had, or being dumped by the girl you loved.

Wait a second, fuck traveling through time.

I'M CONFUSED, BROTHA

Desmond’s ability to travel through time makes him uniquely equipped for the bullshit that’s going on with the Island. I mean, we have a mass of land that is jumping from point to point in time, just like our boy Desmond. And there’s been more than one reference to him being special. When the Island gets unstuck in time and everyone is jumping around and partying with Mayans and shit, Faraday goes to Desmond and is like, yo bro, you have to remember this shit: if you escape the Island, go find my Mom. She’s going to help you out, even though she shoots my beautiful, algorithm-computing ass before I’m even born.

Why is it up to Desmond? Per Faraday, the rules don’t apply to Desmond.

Whatever the fuck that means.

I GOT A SEXY BEARD, BROTHA

Desmond seems to be the guy most equipped to sort shit out.   He seems to cage all of his memories in his dome-piece regardless of the where he is in time. I always try and figure this out, usually loudly and during an episode, and it goes something like this:

Wait, so if Faraday told him in the past…why wouldn’t he remember now? Or does he remember now? And wait, if Faraday visits him in 2001 on the Island, wouldn’t he recognize him in present day? Wait, I think I have a nosebleed and uh, wait, I’m so confused.

And then my friend Dave tells me that it isn’t going to make sense outside of the show, and I need to relax. This usually holds me over to the next commercial break, and then I’m back at it, raving wildly.

But I mean, if someone can alter the course of events, wouldn’t it be Desmond? Faraday says that there are Variables, and those variables are people. If we take it to be more than a throwaway existential moment on the show, it means that someone on the Island has the ability to prevent, or change, or fix something.

Yeah, I have no fucking idea.

A righteous team

But maybe Faraday The Gorgeous Physicist and Desmond the Scottish Wundersexkind can team up to fix reality, right? Let’s say the hydrogen bomb went off, and instead of fixing everything, it just wiped their dumb asses out.

This is what I think happened. As I said, they’re the source of their own misery. They wipe themselves out, and they’re condemned to dying.

Wouldn’t it be within Desmond’s power, during the past, to prevent Oceanic 815 from crashing in the first place? Or the second place? Can’t a man, unstuck in time, prevent the whole clusterfuck from happening? Or at the least altering it in some way? I’m getting that nosebleed again. Good thing I have Diet Mountain Dew as my constant. Stick a sock in my nose and let’s continue on here.

So basically, I’ve said the following: Desmond is awesome, because he has pecs of steel, a sweet accent, and he’s unstuck in time. His total unstuckness is totally important, I just don’t know why. And Daniel Faraday with a mullet makes my groin seethe with sexual inspiration.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Michael Popped A Cap In Someone’s Ass?

January 18th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

And.....I'm a Murderer

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

[I tried to do a solid to all of those who haven't seen LOST yet in my title today. As an aside: Watch LOST, you schmucks.]

When Michael shot Ana Lucia, I could literally feel my asshole unclenching and fluids beginning to leak out. When he then spun around and shot Libby, my mouth opened and I couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was one of those moments when you praise writers for having serious balls. And I also resented them for significantly bumming me out. Hugo’s date with Libby was interrupted by gunshot wounds, and as the blood spilled out and the episode ends, you’re left there trying to comprehend what the fuck just happened.

The entire episode is excellent, and it is wrapped around the push and pull of relationships between children and their parents. There are several threads running through the episode with this theme. We have Christian Shephard, running from his confrontation with Jack. We have Ana Lucia, deserting her mother, incapable of facing a parent and the shame they have for letting them down. And we have Michael, who in a desperate move to save his son sells his soul to the devil. Or at least Benjamin Linus, who seems close enough to El Diablo for me.

PEW PEW BLAST

At the forefront of this episode is Ana Lucia and Christian Shephard, and their inability to deal with their mother and son respectively. While Lucia has fled her mother from guilt, Shephard’s storyline is an inversion, and he can’t deal with the shame he feels for firing Jack, despite his son’s correct condemnation of his lifestyle. And what is most telling is that both of these characters are ultimately condemned to death for their inability to change their ways.

We got Christian Shephard straight chillin’ in Australia, trying to see his daughter, who just so happens to be Claire. Having fled both sobriety and his family out of guilt, he seems to want to make it up through a proxy, his illegitimate daughter. Who may or may not be carrying some sort of Satan-spawn to term. The dude rolls up in the middle of the night, banging on the door completely shit-faced. I’m not sure what continent this is a good tactic on, but just like in North America, the dude gets shoved out the door by Claire’s aggravated mother.

What I’m wondering is, where was the koala bear? Aren’t they standard protocol for individual protection?

Shephard takes this shit hard like woah, and eventually spirals into his drinking binge that will kill him. There’s a moment, a CROSSROADS if you will, where he could have saved himself. Lucia is all like, Christian, don’t go into that bar and get hammered again. You’re just hiding from your troubles and you smell like piss and vodka. And instead of confronting his baggage, he turns to her and comments, I SAY TO THEE NAY. Except he didn’t say that, because he isn’t Thor. Unfortunately.

Actually, who the fuck knows, this is LOST.

FAST AND FURIOUS CHICK

Then there’s Ana Lucia. She was suffering some serious shit over the fact that she totally PEW PEW‘D some guy who tried to kill her when she was a cop. Dude was rigor mortis, and instead of dealing with the guilt she had over her Mom knowing she totally ventilated a guy with her bullets, she fled. Physically and emotionally. Totally deep, man. She takes off to Australia with her buddy Christian “I’ll Be Walking As A Ghost Soon” Shephard.

You think Ana Lucia is going to do a solid, and right her ways. I mean, she sees what a clusterfuck Christian is for not dealing with his problems. She’s getting ready to return to LA with him, save for the fact that he’s encased in pine. So she calls up Moms Lucia and is like “Yo, I fucked up, let’s be friends again and watch The Fast and the Furious”, and her Mom is like “Solid, let’s do it. I’ll bring the popcorn, extra butter, I know. Love you!, ttyl.”

But then! Then the fucking plane crashes. You knew that already.

Don't give the gun to the pissed dude

Ana fucks up and is sentenced to death when she fails to move beyond her desire for vengence. You think she’s done gone and been good when she can’t bring herself to kill Benjamin. I was like, hey personal growth! Well played, girl. Did I mention I think you’re so sexy with your curly hair? And I dig how strong you are and how you can probably take me in a fight, pin me down, and then take advantage of me.

But instead, she gives the gun to Michael. And we know how it goes from there! Blam, blam! Everyone thinks you died because you got a DUI in real life Ana Lucia, but at least your death fits thematically! Blam, blam! Ana Lucia’s death stems from her own ability to move past her faults. Which is a decent message, but it means I’m totally fucked. I can’t stop swearing, passing gas in public, and overeating. I wonder what sort of death I’ll have on LOST.

It’s interesting though, since Ana Lucia does resolve her parental issues. If the plane had just landed, maybe she wouldn’t have regressed into a vengeful chick. Who knows.

Bleedout Effect

And then there’s Michael. Unlike Christian who can’t face his son, and Ana who can’t face her Mom, dude just wants his fucking kid back. Snagged by the Others, who appear to be pederasts or harvesters of uber-children like Walt, he is on a one-man machine to get Walt back. Maybe he’s trying to make up for the fact that he’s been an absentee Dad and shit. Or maybe he saw Taken – don’t give me that it wasn’t out yet, we’re time-traveling hurr on the Island – and was really inspired by Qui-Gon’s performance. Cutting a deal with the Devil, he blows away Ana Lucia, after her gluttony for vengeance gifts him the gun, and releases good ole Benjamin from captivity.

If Christian and Ana could be condemned for fleeing from their problems, Michael seems to be battering into them with a head full of steam, fuck the consequences. I’d call the killing in cold blood, but Pepsibones disagrees, and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I’m Michael, blam blam! I kill you in cold blood

Bones: It wasn’t cold blood

Me: Sure it was, he killed her

Bones: But it wasn’t in cold blood, he had a reason

Me: It was cold blood!

Bones: What’s “in cold blood”?

Me: Whatever he did! So there!

Bones: No, no, no

Me: Christ, you’re going to kill me in cold blood, and be like, “I did it for your Uncanny X-Men collection”

Cold blood or not, it was jaw-dropping, and it finished an episode which explored the relationships between children and their parents, and once again called on the LOST coda of people serving their punishment for an inability to face and conquer their own flaws.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Sawyer Got Shit-Hammered With Jack’s Dad?

January 17th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Burying Memories In Malt and Wheat

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Sometimes there are just random cool things on LOST that don’t bare any hyper-analysis. Or so you think. Take for example the case of Sawyer getting shit-faced in a bar with Jack’s Dad, Christian. At first blush, it doesn’t seem like anything more than a cool coincidence. But if you talk to people like my insane, brilliant, socially-disruptive brother Pepsibones, their chance connection is one of the focal points of the show.

Sawyer and Christian are just straight-chillin’ in a bar in Australia. Christian would later go on to be impersonated by the Smoke Monster, or at least walk around as a corpse, depending on your perspective. Sawyer ends up being a lover, a helicopter-diver, the head of Dharma security and more. But for that moment, they are none the wiser of their fates.

The two of them talk about a variety of things, from the Red Sox never winning the World Series, to Jack. And little did either of them know that they were going to be on Oceanic 815 together, one of them a corpse, the other one a sexy brooding dude bent on killing the man who wronged his family. It’s an enormous confluence of coincidences. Christian is there in Sydney, because his daughter is Claire, who will also be on the plane. Sawyer talks about Jack, and will end up being both his friend and adversary on the Island.

What are the chances?

GANKING BABIES

Pepsibones believes that one of the themes running through LOST is the concept of interconnectedness. The theory that everything is interwoven, and it is the links between all that is connected that makes it interesting. I could be wrong. I think I was halfway to the bathroom and hopped up on six Diet Mountain Dews when I had the conversation with him. I’m sure he was blasting some sort of music and trying to concentrate on grading papers.

Christian and Sawyer drinking in some bar in Sydney is perhaps chance, but it also ties into the tendrils that jump from one character’s fate to another’s throughout the entire show. Everyone is connected through some means, it seems. Sawyer talks to Jack’s dad, but he is also hunting down Locke’s father. Boone is related to Shannon, but he also walks by Sawyer in jail in Australia. Sayid fought in the Iraq war, and so did Kate’s step-father. Kate is friends with one of Sawyer’s would-be cons whose child he also fathered.

It goes on and on and on.

Remember that time on LOST when Sawyer had a drink with Christian Shephard?

I WILL PEW PEW YOU

In a show whose meaning really hasn’t made itself apparent, it is by sifting through the strands that connect the characters that you can create your own meaning from it. Christian and Sawyer share a drink, Jack and Desmond bump into one another, and Desmond just happens to be the Guy Unstuck In Time, perhaps the answer to everything, the savior of all.

What is LOST all about? It seems up to us, following the strands from one storyline to the next.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: You Saw The Statue of the Foot!

January 15th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

foot

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

It was the four-toed statue that saved my relationship with LOST. For a while, LOST and I had been fighting. It was the same fight I get into with all my significant others. “I’m bored!”, I screamed. “You’re always bored!”, it screamed back. “We don’t do anything!” I yelled. “We do tons of stuff!”, LOST responded. “Yeah, like WHAT! Tell me one thing we do.” LOST stared at me. There was a silence that filled the seconds and bloated them into minutes. “We uh”, LOST responded sheepishly. “We uh, we debate faith versus reason! And we hang out in the Hatch, and stuff…”

“You don’t open up to me, either. I don’t know anything about you! Why won’t you let me in, tell me your secrets,” I commented resentfully to LOST. But LOST just stood there, having nothing to say to me.

And we split.

I really thought I was done with LOST, halfway through the second season. To this point, I haven’t written much about Season Two, because well…I don’t remember much of it. I quit on the show. There were all sorts of ludicrous hiatuses, and the plot was just dragging, and dragging. So I said fuck this, and I stopped watching.

Months passed, and I sort of missed the show. This was before I had a DVR, so I had fallen behind and I didn’t have any means to really catch-up, even if I wanted to. And I told myself that I didn’t. But I had an unacknowledged interest in the show, it loomed in the back of my brain. Deep down inside, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on. I still wanted to know what the fucking Island was, I wanted to know what was up with Smokey, and Desmond. But the grind of watching week after week as the show went nowhere had worn me down.

I was done! No, seriously! That’s what I thought, until I found out about the foot.

Suck Some Stone Toes

It’s odd that I can remember the very day that I decided I was going to give LOST a second chance. It was July 4, 2006. I was over my friend Dave’s house for a pool party, to celebrate the lovely birth of our Empire. And by celebrating America’s Independence, it wasn’t like we were at a parade, or even like, rattling off favorite Amendments. We were being American. I was completely drunk off of some ungodly concoction called Pirate Punch, stuffed with shredded and processed former-meat, and spinning idly in a pool.

My friend Jesse was still watching the show, a much more faithful viewer than myself. And because I was curious deep down inside, I asked him what had been going on. I recall spinning round and round in a floaty tube, as he told me all about the electromagnetic pulse, and the Others kidnapping Jack and Kate and Ana Lucia getting shot in the dumb gut. And I thought it was all cool, because I really wanted to like the show. But then he told me about the giant statue or a four-toed foot, and I was all like

Whaaaa, dude, what the fuck? Huh! Four-toes! EXCLAMATION POINTS

I couldn’t help but think that it was the coolest thing in the world. Tell me more, I had to know all about it! Where was the rest of the body? Are you sure it only had four toes? Holy crap. I don’t know if I found it that amazing, or if it was the clear rum, peach schnapps and fruit punch sloshing around in my gut, partying with what was probably fourteen hot dogs, a cavalcade of tortilla chips, and a loose hamburger.

The plot by LOST worked. I was intrigued again. I had to know what was going on with the show. The new wrinkle in the Island was yes, another mystery I wouldn’t find out the answer to anytime soon, but it was also another layer of intrigue to the already incomprehensible going-ons of the Island. It was a ploy, and it worked, and I guess I don’t really feel bad about it.

I smashed in the digital video discs for Season Two when they came out, and I worked my ass up to this part I had heard about regarding feet and ugly sandals, and epic oddity. People dog on spoilers, but it may have been spoilers that got me back into the show.

And when I saw the sandal, I thought, oh snap! A familiar refrain when you’re watching LOST:

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more weird, LOST has again blown my damn mind

All of the Season 4 and Season 5 epic nature would have been something I missed if it weren’t for that dumb foot, that new layer of mystery, and a drunken day in a pool.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Shannon Translates the Creepy Distress Call?

January 14th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Oh, stop wimpering and translate the fucking thing

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

LOST started off pretty fucking creepy. I mean, before it plummeted into mundanity for the majority of the first season, they kicked the shit off with thunder. The initial crash is still one of my favorite scenes ever. Watching people walk around, completely rocked, the perpetually firing engine in the distance? C’mon, that shit is fantastic. The running around, the screaming, stupid Shannon sitting there useless as always, Jin firing off Korean you can’t translate, but probably something like “Beautiful Slave, despite the crash I require food, I shot dudes for your Dad, now I hunger!” And then there is the most iconic moment for me, which is when the dude gets sucked into said engine. Priceless.

But that creepy vibe swept through the entire two parts of the Pilot. From the initial scene, to Smokey eating the crap out of the pilot Seth Norris, to the creepy distress call that the gang pick up from the Battered Piece of Human Bark We’ve Come to Call Rousseau, the entire Pilot gave you a case of the skincrawlies! The fucking skinscrawlies!

!?

Nothing was creepier to me than the crackling broadcast that the Cool Kids came across when they finally get the plane’s transceiver working. As Sayid turned that radio on expecting milk, cookies and a rescue party, the dude realizes that there’s another transmission being broadcast from somewhere on the Island. The intrigue! And, in case you didn’t know, it’s common knowledge that there are few things creepier than crackling recordings in foreign languages. There’s something about the foreign nature of the tongue, combined with the poor quality of the transmission that casts a foreboding feeling.

It wasn’t like I expected the receiver to actually get them help. I mean, even the daftest of douchebags had to realize they weren’t going to be saved any time soon. But I guess I just wasn’t expecting it to work at all. So when the transmission began broadcasting, I did what any asshole did. I leaned in a little closer towards the TV screen, as if that would give me the ability to hear the transmission better, and translate it.

Note: I don’t speak any French.

Dude is way better at math than I am

Thankfully for the people of the Island, and for the viewers at home, Little Ms. Hot Stuff Shannon can speak French. Of course they have to cajole her into speaking it. She’s all, no, no, I couldn’t, I can’t! And then the next thing you know she’s a fucking advertisement for the success of Rosetta Stone or some shit. Inbetween crying for no good or acceptable reason, Shannon begins to let the rest of the people around her just how fucked and doomed they are. At least it’s coming from an attractive person. If Hurley was vomit-burping up the translation stinking of Hot Pockets, I personally would have taken it a lot worse.

I’m alone now. Uhm … On the island alone. Please, someone come. The others, they’re … they’re dead. I-it killed them. I-it killed them all.

Not bad, Shannon. Not bad at all, considering it was coming through shitty reception in the middle of nowhere. I find your faux-humility to be egotistical! And preening! Fuck you!

In what could only happen in a television show, Sayid finishes doing some rough math in his head at exactly the same moment that the translated bit of gloom is beginning to register with everyone. Judging from the frequency of how often it replays and this and that and blah blah blah…FOR REASONS, he can figure this out: Hey guys! Guess the fuck what! Think all that garbled French translated into English sounds shitty? Well, it’s been running for sixteen years!

We Ain't In The Shire No Moh

In response to this, Charlie says what everyone at home is thinking:

Guys…where are we?

Dude Charlie, guess what. It’s been six years, and absolutely no one fucking knows. None of us. Maybe you’re on a crashed Battlestar Galactica. Maybe you’re on Atlantis. We have no idea.

The distress call is clutch, because it lets everyone know that they’re not just a bunch of unlucky assholes caught on a bad flight. They’re stuck on some Island with a monster, and there are other people out there. Being murdered for reasons unknown. All of a sudden the trees in the distance look just a bit more haunting. Who the fuck knows what or who is out there.

There appears to be some serious shit going on, and your biggest problem is that you’re a Whore On The Run From The Law or you can’t find your shitty acoustic guitar. There’s a mad French woman ready to ventilate your body with bullets.

As well, it also lets them know that they can expect help to come sometime between never and you’re fucked. If this sneaky french women was marooned here sixteen years ago and the message is on repeat, then you guys are going to be there for a while too. It’s time to start partitioning out your heroin, Charlie. You’re going to have to go on to some sort of Jenny Craig diet for addicts, where you only spend so many points a day.

You fucks are LOST.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Sayid Tortured Sawyer?

January 13th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Whoops!

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

It seems like a million years ago, but there was a time on LOST when Sayid spent the entire episode torturing the living shit out of Sawyer. And we’re not talking noogies, guys. We’re talking all sorts of weird shit that ultimately ended up with him stabbing Sawyer and being like, whoops, I just hit a fucking artery or something. Yeah dude, you did. And unless that greasy hair of yours can gift you magical powers of flight, you’re going to have to sit here and feel like a dick about it. Or, do what you did, and go and try and map the entire Island.

Either way, we know you’re sulking with understandable guilt. Dick.

It seemed like a weird way for the writers to go with Sayid. It was still early in the show, but they seemed to build him up initially under the irony that he was a veteran of the first Iraq war, who fought for the other side. Totally clever thing to do, right? Absolutely! I can just hear the writers pitching it to each other:

And uh, and uh! There’s a guy who bangs his own sister! Yeah! Awesome! And how about, how about there’s this guy who fought in the Iraq War except…except…it’s the first Iraq war! AND, AND, he fought FOR IRAQ.

But I won’t lie, I dug the little twist. What can I say? I’m a sucker for little twists.

Rawr

But wait, then why is he torturing Sawyer?

If the whole twist is that Sayid is unique because he brings a human face to the other side of a war, why is he ganking Sawyer? That doesn’t make any sense to me. This is before Sayid was all special and destined and shit, mind you. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be wondering all of this junk, but it seems a curious character direction. They go through the sake of introducing Sayid as this nuanced guy who is supposed to provoke the viewer into questioning their idea of the other sides of war, and then they just have that guy fly off the hinge and torture some dude? Over an inhaler?

GUYS? HOW MANY EPISODES UNTIL THE SEASON FINALE? YEAH! WHERE WE BLOW UP THE HATCH? NO…NO, OF COURSE WE’RE NOT GOING TO SHOW WHAT’S IN THERE! DUH! SEVENTEEN EPISODES? HOLY SHIT! UH…HAVE THE TORTURER GUY TORTURE SOMEONE.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m missing something. I miss a lot of things. Sayid goes from being an interesting character to being a violent caricature of an Iraqi. Brilliant.

But Ian, there was a girl’s life on the line!

Yeah, maybe…I guess.

Insert Witty Comment

And then there’s Sawyer. The dude uses the inhaler he doesn’t have as a means to get a kiss from Kate. This is after he lets Sayid torture him for a bit. Why! Why the fuck is all of this going on? I can’t really figure out why any of this is going on in the episode. Part of me wants to be like, well, they were just showing how quickly society crumbles when they’re on an Island for some assort. You know, Lord of the Flies. I mean, they’ve been hanging out eating mangoes for like five days and now they’re torturing people over inhalers. How quickly we fall apart without rules and structure. Are you yawning? Yeah, me too.

And that’s while Jack is hanging out and letting Sawyer get the crap tortured out of him. And we all know why. He wants in with That Chick With The Square Jaw. He’s all, yeah, torture the crap out of him Sayid! GO FOR HIS PENIS. THE PENIS. Or at least he should have. If anyone wants to torture me, go for the penis. I’ll spill on all sorts of embarrassing things.

IMMA STAB YOU

The entire episode is really odd. We have a dude torturing someone, demolishing his interesting character. We have a spoon-fed 24-esque plot of by any means necessary, we have Jack just going along it with because he wants some pussy, and we have some guy going through torture because he’s uh, tortured in the past or something.

And the best part? No one talks about it now! It’s like, a whoopsie-daisy or something. Water under the bridge! If someone tortured me and then stabbed me in a fucking artery, I wouldn’t be playing bridge with them a couple months later. No way, we would not be taking trips to Taco Bell late-night anytime soon. And I’d definitely be like, guys, stay away from that guy, if you take the last Dharma chocolate chip cookie, he’s going to fucking stab you.

But no one says anything!

Must be the hair.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Ben Recruited Juliet To Fix Chicks’ Vaginas?

January 12th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Hey, it's that chick from V

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Hey Juliet! I like Juliet, a lot. Why, do you ask? Well, let me tell you. For starters, she’s a brilliant doctor who can speak Latin. She can handle a gun, she’s good with cars and she is headstrong. Also, she’s not a promiscuous whore like Julius Peppers With Freckles. And yes, if you really must insist: her cleavage is one of the reasons I pray to Odin every night and gave thanks for high-definition television. She is the belle of the Island, and yet everyone can’t seem to get over their dick-lust for Ole Linebacker Shoulders.

Oh, you know, staring at important things

My fascination for Juliet really took off when you realize she’s some special uber-doctor recruited to mend the broken ovaries of lovely ladies on the Island. I mean, up until that point, she was just some beautiful doctor. Full of blond thunder and cavernous cleavage. But then she was recruited by the sexiest man ever, Richard Alpert, for a specific task. Make the shiznit in the ladies’ downlow on the Island start firing again. And also? This changed everything. For starters, it is the first time I can recall seeing the Others in a position of weakness.

For the longest time, they were just really creepy guys wearing beards and trying to kidnap Turniphead. They had an imposing presence. I always got the distinct impression that you didn’t fuck with these people: they were part of some traveling drama theater, complete with fake mustaches, and their equivalent of a guard dog was a ravenous Smoke Monster of doom. They had all the answers!

Except.

Except the the undercarriages of the ladies of the Others rotted at mind-blowingly fast rates. Like, really fast. Juliet checks out some wicked womb and ascertains that the woman is in her 70s. Wrong! Try 26! That’s some accelerated decrepitude. Like, Blade Runner quality rot.

It was interesting, because all of a sudden the Others didn’t seem so invincible. I mean, if they couldn’t reproduce, then what! Sure, they could keep bringing people from off the Island, but is that the answer? Wait, do they bring people from off the Island? Or is that Jacob? Or is Jacob really working with the Others? Or is that a trick?

Wait, fuck. God dammit, got myself into one of those LOST spirals. Did I mention that we don’t know anything about the show? Yeah, I think I did.

Anyways.

Creepy Smile

So the situation is really dire, you know? And Ben deploys the Right Hand of Awesome to the mainland for some recruiting. You know, the Mayor of Gotham. That’s right, Richard Alpert. He tantalizes Juliet with the possibility of working on the aforementioned rotting womb and uteral lining. Doctors are weird. If you asked me to stare at a rotting womb, I’d tell you to get the fuck out of my face. And then probably ask for the Youtube Link, but still.

The possibility gets Juliet’s own uteral regions quivering with excitement. Unfortunately, Juliet tells Alpy Pooh that she can’t because her ex-husband wouldn’t let her. I don’t know the deal with her ex-hubby, other than he is a complete douche, and also happens to be the head of the research facility where she works. What an asshole.

Alpert is all like, what would it take to get your beautiful eyes scanning the rotting wombs of our women? And Juliet comments she could totally do it if her husband was taken care of, like:

If he were hit by a bus, how ’bout that, that would work.

And you’re like, haha! So cheeky, Juliet. I knew you were beautiful and intelligent, but your wit! Oh, acerbic and dark! Marry me! I’ll print your picture out and keep it my boxer briefs! That’s right, I wear boxer briefs! You think that’s sexy? Yeah, me too. It hugs my bum, but it also shows off my gorgeous quadriceps. Oh Juliet!

Vrooom!

And then the next day? That unappreciative dickbag that was her ex-husband but now is a pile of mush on the pavement gets mowed down by a bus. While bitching out Juliet, no less. Karmic karate kick a-go-go, baby!

I mean, Alpert and Ben really wanted Juliet. To the point of using some sort of voodoo to smash a bus into her meddling ex-husband. That’s true ultimate power. And also, it speaks to either their desperation or their coldness. Ultimately you find out that Juliet is taken to the Island, which turns out to be a little different than a remote facility. Because instead of doing research at a facility she’s stuck on an Island with deities and pissed off balls of smoke and hobbits. Talk about getting screwed on a deal.

It’s an interesting moment, because they realize the Others, or whoever the fuck the ragtag gang being led by Ben truly are, are not omnipotent. Or even really cool. As Ben lies in the hands of Jack who has to salvage his rotting spine – ironic that such a little shit has a broken spine – we’re shown the recruiting of Juliet to save the vaginas of the fairer sex populating the Island.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: You Saw The Smoke Monster for the First Time?

January 11th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

ZOMG

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Yes, John Locke, we are with you on this one. You are peering into the eyes of the Smoke Monster, and more importantly, fudging your poor tired underwear with your bowel linings. This is truth, but it also acceptable. Because as I said, you’re staring at an amorphous cloud of black smoke, capable of replicating human form, churning with electricity, and making your 5.1 system wretch with screeches. The fact that you’re not weeping and shaking uncontrollably makes you a super bad ass.

I can’t be the only one who thought that the Smoke Monster was actually a dinosaur or some sort of beast when it was first teased, could I? I mean, they make it seem that way in the early annals of Season One. The dude mows down trees, has a bellowing roar, and I don’t know. Just generally acts all sort of dinosaur-like. But at the end of the first season, we finally get a glimpse of our boy Smokey, and it was really, really creepy.

While Jack and Locke and That Chick Who Fucked Over Malcom From Firefly walk back giggling to the Hatch with pieces of Artz still down their shirt and in the cracks of their ass, Smokey the Island Bandit runs into them. If I’m not mistaken, Smokey was just going for an afternoon walk when he saw a pack of assholes with bags of dynamite, and thought he should probably ask them what they were up to. Unfortunately, he was speaking only in caterwauls and eerily noises, and the whole conversation just went downhill fast.

Locke is ever the bad ass, and decides he wants to have a heart to heart with Smokey. And that makes sense, since he was down a pair of functional legs prior to crashing on the Island, and now he’s doing the jitterbug with the best of them. Walking towards the noise, you expect Locke to come across some sort of giant, menacing monster. The camera pans upwards, and I was expecting the dude to get eaten the fuck up.

Not so, true believers.

Not so, at all.

The Consequences Of Being A Hard Ass

All at once Locke gets yanked the fuck off screen by something. If there’s one thing you should know about dinosaurs, is that they don’t have mechanisms for yanking and dragging. They’re more of a brute force sort of creature, and are best at gnashing and mauling. So already, I’m wondering what the fuck is going on. Quickly and very quickly, you’re given shots on Locke being dragged through the forest. And but, for a second, you get a teeny, tiny glimpse of something. And then you turn to your friend, like I did, and you go:

Dude, what the fuck, was that smoke? Huh! Rewind that fucking shit now!

Rewinding proves to be little more than useless, and all you catch is a good couple of wisps.

Ultimately, Locke gets dragged down into some pit. And he’s all like, Jack, let me go! I want to communicate with the Island! And Jack is like, you’re not going to be communicating with anything other than your dead relatives after Smokey The Plume Of Weirdness eats you all up. The Chick Who Has Linebacker Shoulders And Probably Would Have Prevented The Run Better for the Patriots Yesterday gives Jack some dynamite, and they toss it down into the pit that Locke is being dragged into. Kablam! Kapow! Dynamite goes off and makes a rumbling noise! And mind you also this: Somehow Locke’s lower extremities aren’t blown into mush. Those are some appendages indeed.

And then we see it: The Smoke Monster. Welcome to the mythos, stalwart mystery of the show.

Smokey Bares It All

Smokey wisps and curls away, pissed off that he just wanted to prevent a forest fire, and these pack of digs tried to blow him up. And I don’t know about you, but I sat there with my jaw agape. I yelled in something approximating all capital letters:

DUDE WHAT THE FUCK THAT WASN’T A DINOSAUR WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON I KNEW THIS SHOW WAS COOL AND ABOUT MORE THAN GOLF COURSES AND A HOBBIT ADDICTED TO HEROIN! HIGH FIVE! NO SERIOUSLY, HIGH FIVE

The first time you see Smokey is dope. They took something that ultimately was going to be lame as hell – a dinosaur or some beast-type shit, and so help don’t tell me it wasn’t going to be that – and made it something all the more odd. You could be a dick and tell me they just bought themselves more time to figure out what it was, but dammit, leave your cynicism at the door. No matter what Menacing Monster looked like, it was going to be a letdown to some, and defended fruitlessly by fanboys like me. Instead, they do one better: The make the monster capable of looking like, well, anything.

I certainly wasn’t expecting a ball of smoke to blow up trees, eat people, and prevent forest fires. That’s for fucking sure.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: Jack Saw His Dead Dad?

January 10th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Peek-A-Boo!

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

I know, you think that a dead guy would be better at hiding. Fuck!

Who, or what the fuck, is Christian Shephard? It’s something I’ve been asking since I saw him walking around the Island all very undead-like. I mean, I know a few things about dead people. For starters, they’re always wearing too much make-up at the wakes. And secondly, and most important to my point: they don’t move or walk around. There is one fable about some Zombie Guy who pulled off this feat, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t more than superstition. So that makes what Christian is doing very, very impressive.

Remember that time during White Rabbit when we saw Christian walking around for the first time? Very cool. I champion anything on LOST that pushes the show into the upper-echelons of oddity and absurdity. So when it happened, you can only imagine how enthused I was. This was prior to the show really losing its mind, so I was excited as all hell. Jack’s dead dad isn’t in his casket, and instead, Jack chases the Decaying Sweaty Papa Corpse through the forest, only to be encountered by the rumbling Oh-Shit sounds of the Smoke Monster coming to rock his ass.

Gulp!

Wai, Halo

Who or what the fuck is Christian? Dude seems to be the mouthpiece for someone. Is he really working for Jacob? I’m not sure I buy that. By helping Locke leave the Island and orchestrating the return of the Oceanic Six, it would further it seems to serve the agenda of Jacob’s Grizzly Bearded Enemy. And where does Christian dwell? In the shack where Jacob was thought to party, except, PSYCHE, Jacob chills in a giant foot. So what the fuck, Christian, who are you rolling with?

What are you up to, Christian?!

Tell us!

Also, there’s the whole, Facob taking the form of dead people – just look at our buddy Locke straight chillin’ in the casket at the end of Season Five. And furthermore, the Smoke Monster comes about as Jack chases his dad through the garden. Just like how Dead Guy Locke and the Smoke Monster are never very far apart. OMFG, pants-crapifying.   Is Christian the Smoke Monster, who is also Facob? Raise your arms to the sky and repeat after me:

Who the hell knows!

Maybe he is a good guy, rolling with Jacob. Smokin’ cigars and weaving looms and shit. He does seem to have a nice suit at the beginning of the show. When you’re dead, you probably have all the time in the world to work on thread-counts or something.

Yeah, I have no idea what a thread count is, but I know whenever I go to Target to buy a comforter with my girlfriend, a high thread count is important as hell.

Buttoned the Top Collar?

I know, you think that a dead guy would have better fashion sense, fuck!

I don’t know what the economy is for dead people, but Christian seems to hit hard times on the Island after he dies and shit. He goes from a pretty svelte suit to some shitty dress shirt, and he buttons the top button? What the fuck, Christian! Are you too busy teleporting around time and space to brush up on your fashion sense in GQ? Or do you have some really weird hickey? Tell me dude, I need to know!

Christian seems to be serving some higher-power, whether it is Zeus, or Jacob, or Facob, or whatever. In fact, his entire family seems pretty fucking important. Or maybe it is just a coincidence that his son, daughter, and grandson are all brought to the island. That would be awfully convenient. Or terrible. Actually, awful. Yeah, an entire family marooned onto an Island and caught up in some sort of Cosmic Chess Match between two bored as fuck deities.

The first time we see him though, we ain’t concerned with that. We’re like, hey, White Rabbit! And oh, there Jack goes following him into the woods. Oh LOST, you’re so very literary.

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Remember That Time On LOST When: You Saw What Was Inside the Hatch?

January 9th, 2010 by Caffeine Powered

Das Hatch

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

If LOST started off as some drama dipped in a coat of science fiction, or uh, fantasy, or uh, science fantasy, or whatever you want to call it, the opening of the Hatch began the show’s march down the hall towards something more weird. It was the first time we were introduced fully to one of the beauties of LOST, one of the reasons we’re so addicted to it. It’s called, “The answer to your question is two more questions.” How many times has it happened on this show? Something is finally revealed, but it is merely a garden of forking paths, that leads to more questions. And more questions. It also introduces a good example of LOST writing technique called, “You don’t know that what you’re seeing is sort of a big deal, until like two seconds before it is made obvious.”

This may also be called the “Ian can’t put anything together as quickly as the rest of you”, but whatever.

Into the Abyss

So, Season One ended with Mr. Locke and Mr. Shephard peering into the exploded dome of the Hatch. You can also recall the groan we all had when we realized we were going to have to wait nine months or some shit to actually see what was down there. That’s okay though, since Lindelof and the rest of the writers had even less time to figure out what they were going to say was down there. Build all your big reveals into the back-end of a season finale/season premiere, guys. It gives you tons of time to figure out just what the fuck you’re going to say.

Swanky

And then Season Two begins much the same way Season One did. With a good lad’s eyes opening. Except this time, the guy isn’t Jack. It’s uh, some guy. And then there is a typical morning ritual going on. Guy gets up, types something into his old ass computer. Okay, that’s weird, but whatever. And then he works on his fitness a little bit, and that’s cool. Eats a shitty protein drink, also pretty standard. His breakfast is a bit different from mine, since he isn’t eating three cold slices of pizza and a Diet Pepsi, but I’m not going to fault him. He jams out to some music, on a record player.

The impression you’re given is that this is a flashback. Between the old Apple computer, and the record player, you’re like, okay, cool. Flashback, who does it belong to? Eh! And then slowly, like rolling thunder, it breaks upon you. Probably right around the time that you see him open up a cabinet with the Dharma logo, and hear an explosion. You realize, they’re inside the fucking Hatch! What?!

It is the same sort of storytelling that they used at the end of Season Three to show the scenes between Kate and Jack. It was a slow build, and by the time you realize what is going on, you come to understand that they’ve been showing you something mind-blowing, you just didn’t realize it. Again, you don’t realize you’re seeing something that is a big deal, until it’s too late.

When I was watching the episode, I had the feeling that something important was going on, on the screen. I mean it was the first glimpses of a season premiere. But even as he worked out and walked around the Hatch, I had no clue that we were getting a glimpse at the inside. And then when I finally realized it? It blew my god damn mind. One of the best things about LOST has been the fluid concept of what the show is about. I mean, it is about a lot of things; time travel, people’s dramas, an Island, a plane crash, destiny, and others. But back then? Back then it was about a bunch of people on a mysterious Island. And now? Now, I have no idea.

The opening of the Hatch was the first time I was like, “Maybe I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on, on this show.” And it has been a feeling that has carried through the subsequent five seasons. I mean, sure, I know a lot of what is occuring, but as Pepsibones asked me a couple of days ago,

Dude, so like…We don’t really know what the show is about..or like, who the true players are, do we? No, we don’t? Okay good, I wasn’t sure.

I mean, now we have people in the shadows of statues, we have possible resurrections, time travel, deities. We have vaguely referenced “good guys” and “bad guys”, of which they haven’t all been revealed. We have absolutely no idea what the Island is, who is belongs to, who or what Jacob is or was, and on and on. And all of this stems from the opening of the Hatch; this idea that there are forces at work they we can’t perceive, and all of our static notions about the show are probably wrong.

Inside the Next Quqestion

The Hatch opening was awesome, and it was the first time when they really started rocking out to the idea of answering a question with two more questions. Or three. Yeah, this is the inside of a hatch. It is a modern, if it were the 1970′s or some shit, apartment. But here, have a handful of other questions. Why is this apartment carved into the middle of the ground, who is this guy, why is he typing commands into a keyboard, how long has he been down there? And you just sit there, and you marvel. You marvel because you know they have you hooked by the squishies, and worst of all, you love it.

It’s a formula us fans have learned to loudly scorn, “Oh yeah, here we go, answering more questions with questions!”, but quietly love. Because we’re addicted, and we need to know.

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