WIDMORE

Ugh. His name fills me with shudders of loathing. But at the same time, I really actually kind of like Widmore. He's the type of charater you love to hate. Not to mention being cloaked in mystery...

So why do you think he has this driving need to find the island? Does he want to expose it? Use it for his own pleasure? Move to the island and never age, just like Richard? (maybe the island is a real-life fountain of youth...) Or does the island have some weird hold on him just like it does for Jack, Hurley, and the rest of them? Why was he living on the island in the first place? And why did he need an alias? Do you think Richard knows who he really is? My guess is yes because Richard always seems to know everything.

And why can't Ben kill Widmore? Does living on the island = common brotherhood? Does Sun want his help taking her revenge on Ben, whom she views as being the cause of Jin's death (oh, and do you think Jin is really dead?) Do you think Widmore paid for Daniel's research because he remembered meeting him on the island in 1954? I think so.

I personally think that Widmore probably wants the island for his own purposes, that he hates Ben because Ben knows more about the island than he does, and that for some reason he was banished from the island, maybe by Richard or Jacob. I think Sun wants his help killing or eliminating Ben, and he's kind of interested becaues that means he has a better change of getting back on the island.

Any ideas?

last episode

I can't believe that Whidmore was an Other! Didn't his name say "Jones" on his fatigue uniform? Finding out a little more about Whidmore's past was one of my favorite things about the last episode.

AND I really liked the scene where Locke asks Richard to come and visit him when he's born. Now it makes sense that John was supposed to recognize the compass when Richard visited him as a boy. And mems how Richard was at the hospital when Locke was born? That makes sense too.

Isn't it great that Penny and Desmond named their little boy Charlie? What a nice tribute. Now they just need to teach their son the song, "YOU ALL EVERYBODY!"

In an email chain with my in-laws and some of their friends, someone mentioned that they think Faraday is going to become one of the villains this season. I wonder how dedicated he is to Whidmore, especially now that we know Whidmore funded his research (for ten years, right?). I think Daniel seems like too sincere of a person to become a "bad guy," but I guess this show is all about the fluxuating boundaries between good and evil.

J speculated the other night that the Jughead bomb got buried and is tied into the hatch and the failsafe key that Desmond had to turn last season. Makes sense to me...

Remember this scene?

DESMOND: (Sighs) Look, honey, all I have to do is find his mother, tell her he's still on the island, and then I'm done with this for good.

PENNY: Why now? If he told you all this on the island, why didn't you remember this until two days ago?

DESMOND: (Sighs) Because, Penn, it worked so well for the writers to have Daniel start jumping around in time to kick off the season, and I'm his constant, and they needed a way to figure out how to get me involved with the island again. So, having not thought things through enough to include this incident in earlier episodes when it would have been more appropriate, they just had me randomly "remember" it, since it worked so well with all the other plot lines.

PENNY: But darling, wouldn't that mean that you would have recognized Daniel when you met him again?

DESMOND: (Sighs) I guess it doesn't work that way. I don't know. Past-me doesn't necessarily remember anything "new" that happens to me while future-me is in my past—or while anyone else visits my past, like Daniel, for example.

PENNY: So you're saying that maybe you didn't remember Daniel when you met him, and you didn't remember this event until now because Daniel hadn't gone back in time until now?

DESMOND: Yeah, I don't know. I guess.

PENNY: But that would require two timelines running at the same time—the only-moves-forward-and-never-backward time that we're all used to, and the going-back-in-time-and-changing-things time. To say "the past hasn't changed yet" is a bit of a paradox, don't you think?

DESMOND: Now I'm all confused.

PENNY: One more thing, Des. The people on the island that are doing all their flash-of-light time-hopping—from the perspective of the Others, such as Richard, do they just disappear all of a sudden? Did you disappear when you did your time-traveling?

DESMOND: No, I didn't. I just would pass out for a while. But I didn't disappear. It was just my "consciousness" that would travel, or something like that.

PENNY: I guess we'll just have to ask Daniel when we see him next.

DESMOND: Or maybe sometime in the future we will remember that we have already asked him.

PENNY: Right. Or maybe the writers were just lazy.

DESMOND: Most likely. 

Adam and Eve

So, I had a crazy thought. The writers have claimed, in the face of all kinds of complaints that they are flying by the seat of their pants, that the "Adam and Eve" characters—the two corpses found in the caves in the first season—will eventually confirm that they did have a master plan to it all. So, get this: 

What if Adam is Locke, and Eve is Helen, the woman he proposed to?

Here's what I'm thinking: Locke is dead, but it seems to me that he's obviously intended to come back to life. Meanwhile, Locke is jumping around in time, throwing knives at people. I think that the idea that "you can't change the past" has been cemented enough to make a fine candidate for the writers to reverse—especially with don't-tell-me-what-I-can't-do Locke doing the reversing. Locke certainly has a past that he would love to change (come to think of it, all the Oceanic peeps have pasts they would love to change... ). So what if he's able to change his past, marry Helen, and join the Dharma Initiative (after going back in time with Helen, or something)???

Also, when Jack stumbled across Adam and Eve in the caves, he found a little pouch with one white and one black stone in it. Remember Locke playing backgammon with Walt, when he tells him, holding up the game pieces, "Two players. Two sides. One side is light, one is dark"?

Anyway, it's becoming apparent to me that I think about these things way too much. Back to work...

my favorite things

My favorite things about the premiere:

Sayid's awesome fighting skills. The whole dishwasher rack thing was clever and gross at the same time.

I really liked seeing Ana Lucia again. That was nice.


I agree with GermyB about feeling distant from the characters last night. I guess there was too much plot to cover, and therefore the character development was ignored. Sawyer didn't even give many endearing nicknames to other survivors! Hmm. It'll be interesting to see how I feel about the characters as the season progresses.

One more question: The beginning of the premiere showed Dr. Chang giving a baby a bottle before going off to record The Arrow training film. Who is this baby? Does this mean during the Dharma Initiative there were no problems with mothers giving birth to babies on the island?

A new round of "what the...?"

Well, after the premiere, we thought we'd raise the obvious questions, along with (maybe) some less-obvious thoughts:

• Did Ben hire the lawyers to approach Kate in order to scare her out of her comfortable life?
• Also, is Ben behind the guys in the "safe-house" that attacked Sayid?
• Is Sun aligned with Whidmore (whatever that guy's about...)?
• Does Sun blame Jack for Jin's death, maybe because he prevented Kate from getting him, or something?
• Is the white-haired lady Daniel's mom?
• Who's this Jill lady at the butcher shop? Seriously...
• Daniel at the Dharma Initiative: before or after his research at Oxford?
• Is Hurley's mom in danger now that she knows (or does she really believe) that they lied?
• Richard and the Others: we knew they don't age, but what's their relationship with the time-traveliness of the island?
• Why isn't Daniel helping Charlotte? Is it because he can't do anything to help her? Can't they all be each other's constants? What gives?
• Keeping Locke safe: I guess he'll be coming back to life then...that is, if everything goes according to plan.
• Miles: we knew he talked to dead people, but dead boars? Whatever.

All in all, I'm excited for a new season. I have to say, I'm not as attached to all the characters as I was by the end of last season. Maybe that's just because it's been a while, but I found myself caring less about the individual characters while I watched the premiere. Probably just because they had to pack a bunch of plot into it.

Lastly, that conversation between Hurley and his mom was just a dumb scene. That's all I have to say about that.

I'm bracing myself for an almost-more-than-I-can-handle dosage of time-travel confusion this season...

very excited

So, I'm really excited for the LOST premiere tomorrow night (I mean, tonight!). Last Sunday, J pointed out that the guy sitting behind us in church looks exactly like Sun's father. It's almost freaky. To make it more awesome, this doppelganger was asleep and SNORING very loudly while the sacrament was being distributed. It was hard to not think about LOST during church, with Sun's father snoring into my ear.

Mems how Sun is totally awesome and pretty much bought-out her father's business? I wonder what's going to happen with her (and her dad!) this season.