LT234: A Supercomputer?

ROLE BASED

A TIDBITS reader, Michael, had an observation to share. He noticed how many of the Survivors have a specific and unique skill set. Jack is one of the world’s best surgeons. Sayid has a knack for killing which as odd as it might seem is a unique and sometimes necessary skill to posses.

However, some Survivors we just couldn’t come up with any “value” to assign to them. What does a Hurley or Sun offer? In fact, what about the other 30-some Survivors we never or barely met. Did Fate have a plan for each and every person or was it so cruel to only need a handful and the rest were merely along for the ride?

We tend to think that Fate impacts its intended target, but it was interesting to see how Fate deals with the innocent bystanders. Is there a lesson in here? Can you think of other skills we just couldn’t observe?


SEE SAW

Did you notice the two saws hanging on the wall in the background when Ben came to visit Sayid at the charity build site?

The picture shows just the two saws on the wall behind Sayid. One has a black handle and the other is white. Click the picture to notice the black smudge above the white-handled saw.

WHO?

Did you notice the owl on the table?

This reminds me of the Egyptian symbol for the god Anubis. Owls sometimes stand for the omen of death in some cultures.


CORRECTION

I called Sayid’s “date” Alena in the last post…it is Ilana.


WHAT MAKES LOST GREAT

This show really has a lot of meat on the bones, one might say. We can review and re-watch and always seem to find another tasty morsel to chew on. For example, the last episode begins with young Sayid and his brother being taught some life lesson about the circle of life involving chickens.

And when we mull this over we are reminded how similar this was to Mr. Eko and his brother when Eko stepped in to perform the killing and to spare his brother.

We keep chewing and then we can appreciate the fact that young Ben serves a chicken sandwich to the older Sayid.

This reminds us to sit back and be amazed at the intricacies the writers work in each episode. It just gives so much more meaning to single lines like: “A twelve-year-old Ben Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I'm doing?" That’s what keeps me coming back for second helpings of LOST.


NEW SEASON PROMO PIC

I don’t recall ABC ever doing this before, but they released a new cast promo picture for Season 5…some seven weeks into the season!

You can’t help but notice that Ben is sitting on a bed. If that doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb, what would? What could it mean? And Daniel appears to have his feet back. Strange.


LOST REVIEW: ONE SINGLE ITEM

As you might be aware we have been dissecting LOST from the beginning to see if we can observe something we missed that might help us form a unifying theory.

I have observed one possible explanation that just might fit! Here is our list of observations to date:

Crash, Circles, Sacred Ceremonies, Dots, Record, Disk, Round, Earth, Island, Sense of being a Part of the Whole, Music, Eye, Electromagnetism, Needle, Constantly Moving, Tape, Others, Fate and Black and White.

A friend and I have been working through this list and most of the items fit my proposal.

The single item that fits these things is…a COMPUTER! In this case, a supercomputer!

Computers crash, dot-matrix printers, round disks, stores and plays music, operates on principles of electromagnetism, has a needle that reads disks, the drives are constantly moving, tape storage was popular, and black and white monitors was all that offered for years.

If you are like me, a flood of other symbolisms can quickly be thought of. The computer is a central figure in the Swan Hatch. The monitor was 1970-style which offered only monochrome. Etc, etc.

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Now let’s examine the observations that don’t fit:

Sacred Ceremonies, Fate, Sense of being a Part of the Whole, Others

In many ways these all share the religious theme of LOST. And in some circles a computer is nearly a deity. But instead of trying to squeeze my square guess of computers into a round hole, let’s try this line of thinking: what if we merely say that due to storage, anything that is information can be stored – including world religions, philosophy, music, etc.?

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CONCLUSION

We will continue the series of LOST REVIEW but from now on we use sort of judge the observations from the viewpoint of a computer and see if we can’t make some sense of all this.

You will soon see that I will need your help making some of these “square pegs” fit in my pre-defined “round hole”.

For now I’m only convinced that there IS a single explanation. Hopefully this on-going review will trigger something in your mind, so please drop a line and let me know your ideas. Together we can solve this somewhere before the final episode!





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Enjoy,

KC

LT233: Mind Tripping

SEPARATE REALITY

Literature makes another splash on LOST. This time it is a young Ben handing Sayid a book to read during his detention. The book is entitled, “A Separate Reality”, by Carlos Castaneda.

Castaneda is a controversial author of first person stories about times when he was being trained by an Indian shaman named don Juan Matus back in the 1960’s. The debate concerns itself with whether the stories are fiction or not.

In “A Separate Reality” the book was written in 1971 and continues his tales of his mentor from a previous book, “The Teachings of Don Juan” (not to be confused with the romance character). Carlos credits his learning curve to peyote and mushrooms. The ability he learns is called “Seeing”, a method of expanding one’s mental capabilities.

Related to LOST might be this description from Wikipedia: “In his book “The Art of Dreaming”, Castaneda describes an encounter during a lucid dreaming session with a supposed conscious entity that was trapped by other inorganic beings. The trapped entity was named the Blue Scout because its "energy" appeared [as a blue color] and it was an energetic scout (meaning it was outside of its original realm). The Blue Scout was apparently bait used by the inorganic beings to trap Castaneda as well. But instead they (Castaneda and the Blue Scout) escaped by supposedly merging their energies.” A man claims to have spent two days with a “reconstituted” Carlos Castaneda after his death. I’m thinking Christian and Jacob.

One small, but possible hint is that young Ben tells Sayid that he has read the book TWICE. Could this be a suggestion that young Ben knows he has looped twice already?


RUSSIAN CONNECTION

We see Sayid’s last target assigned by Ben is a Russian who attempts to bribe Sayid.

When Sayid leaves he exits out the door that in reverse shows us the number 23.

The Russian wording reads, “Oldham Pharmaceuticals”. Oldham is the Dharma torturer who gave Sayid his truth serum drug on a sugar cube. While things like this are cute on LOST, let’s be realistic as well. Are we saying that Fate led Sayid through a door that later would apply to his return to the island? Now that is more bizarre than paying $120 for a glass of scotch.


WHY SUN DIDN’T FLASH

Came up with a common trait between Sun, and Ben, and Locke and why they didn’t flash to 1997. They each met Charles Widmore. Locke with the broken leg in the desert hospital, Sun at the airport, and Ben in his bedroom. These three met Widmore and did not flash.

Those that did flash did not meet Charles Widmore personally, did they?


DRINK UP

MacCutcheon scotch makes a return to LOST as Sayid is sipping the beverage at the bar where he meets his “date”. I think the fact she knows the drink is a clue that she is working for Widmore. We also learn from this encounter that Elena (spelling?) is not a U.S. Marshall.


AUNT-J WRITES

A TIDBITS reader, Aunt-J writes with a series of questions that really goes to show her state of mind: tripping! So is mine. Specially, we are asked about the Purge and whether it is happening in the 1970’s instead of 1992 since young Ben is running to the Hostiles now thanks to Sayid’s “guidance”.

Good point because this makes everyone question Daniel’s theory that we can’t change the past. His “what happened, happens” is in serious doubt. In fact, Momma Hawking seems to be more on point when she suggests that “course corrections” can be made.

In the above section (Drink Up) we suggest the lady who has Sayid in custody might be associated with Widmore. Let’s not then forget that Widmore is paying for Daniel’s research and paying the bills for the medical care of his family members. Could even Mrs. Hawking be on Widmore’s payroll?


WOLVERINE

Not the X-Men character, but the college mascot! Radzinsky sort of pulls rank by reminding Horace that if he can’t make a decision about Sayid, they could always take it up the chain of command to Ann Arbor. This city is the home of the University of Michigan where the Dharma founders are from: Karen and Gerald DeGroot. I wondered if they would ever make a return.

Past information tells us that Alvar Hanso procured the services of the DeGroots to begin the Dharma Initiative. I find it odd that the scientist couple remain in Michigan while hippies run the stations in the South Pacific. In fact, I can’t tell of any experiments on the island that have any scientific value (although the Swan Hatch seems to be headed in that direction). Dr. Marvin Candle is around, but what evidence is there of any testing?


BURN BABY BURN

As I mentioned in the Initial Thoughts post last night, the van was set ablaze as a decoy. But did you hear the fact that it was Building 15, one of the Numbers? Sawyer’s line was a classic.



DEAD OR ALIVE

The buzz from this episode is the ending. Is young Ben dead or alive? The smart money is alive…or at least “reconstituted” by the island. There are some obvious time paradoxes going on here but only if Ben is really dead. I found it strange that Sayid didn’t put a couple of more rounds into the body. Or at least he could have checked the pulse like a good Hitman would do.

TIDBITS reader, Michael, points out an interesting side note. If older Ben knows that he will develop a tumor one day, then he could have been involved in pushing Jack on board Oceanic 815 at the right time down the road of his life. Ben tells Jack that what are the odds of the world’s best spinal surgeon falling from the sky? With Ben’s ability to recognize time loops, I’d say the odds are pretty good. And I’ll bet Ben wins a lot of games of chess too.

Another related point is that it does seem the island will heal Ben. So why does the island later allow Ben to have a tumor and then not heal him in 2004? This either indicates the island is not “aware” to the level necessary to avoid a future “error” or it needs young Ben to do something even at the cost of what old Ben will also do.

LOST REVIEW: THE TENNIS SHOE

In the first scenes of LOST we see Jack run to the beach and run past a white tennis shoe dangling in a tree.

Shoes have been a frequent topic on LOST. But I want to focus on just this one white tennis shoe. We have learned that Christian was buried while wearing white tennis shoes. We have seen Christian on and off the island wearing white tennis shoes.

The question this brings up is why are there THREE white tennis shoes? The two Christian is wearing and the one dangling in the tree? No matter how you spin and explain Christian being “present” the fact remains that one of his physical shoes is hanging from a tree. This implies there are a second shoe and a body somewhere.

This is a reasonable assumption. We are then forced to focus on the ghost of Christian Shephard.


NEXT ON TIDBITS

There is a lot more to cover about the last episode “He’s Our You”, so check back this week. Also, the LOST REVIEW will actually form its first hypothesis that might explain, well, the universe, life and…everything!

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know by clicking the ad when you finished reading.

Enjoy,
KC

LT232: He's Our You Initial Thoughts

SAYID

What a complicated fellow he is. For five seasons and for the most part, I like Sayid. Maybe I've misinterpreted his knack for survival as an honorable trait, but darn it, I like the guy...especially those nifty moves.


REWRITING HISTORY

While the cliffhanger doesn't confirm it, is Ben dead now? His other body was last seen lying on a cot in the Hydra Station circa 2007. Will that body now take its last breath and die? If the older version of Ben doesn't die instantly upon the younger version's death, then you would have a person who was born of...well, immaculate conception. Hmmm...I wonder if that is what Locke's mother meant?


KATE AND JULIET

In our sneak peek at this episode, TIDBITS provided you with a screenshot of Kate and Juliet working together at the garage. All in all, it went pretty well although it seemed a little high schoolish to me. Hey, Juliet's been with Sawyer for three years. As Horace and Sawyer would say, that's long enough to get over someone.


BURNING VAN

The wife had a thought...she thinks Ben's daddy is inside that van. I first my reaction was to cry "Foul" since it would change the past, but what with Ben lying face down on the road...well, who really knows anymore?

I just thought it was a distraction. Hey, anyone else love the Jedi Knight shout-out with the cloaked Ben?


DROP IN, DROP OUT

So Dharma has its own Timothy Leary-like character. That scene at the tent was probably my favorite fo the episdoe. Seeing Sayid stoned was great. Some great casting for Oldham, even though I miss his brother, Darrell...and his OTHER brother Darrell.


QUICK HITS

Why does Amy seem like such a dominating personality one minute and then a needy person the next?

Along the same lines as Amy, have you noticed how this group seems fairly Libertarian one minute and then strict order followers the next?

I don't know how Kelvin lasted that long with Radzinsky in a small hatch.

Why does it need to be unanimous?

Where are the ethics of the Dharma Initiative? Pretty quick to kill, aren't they?

So...Ann Arbor you say.

Is Ben really dead or will some glowing light heal him? Will has father beat the snot out of him for this if he heals?

And just where does Sayid think he is running to?

Finally...this episdoe should make all you men out there to stop and think twice before picking up anyone at a bar who orders a "ribeye bloody".


Enjoy,
KC

LT231: Dressing Up and Dressing Down

CHRISTIAN CLOTHING

Something caught my eye in the clothing Christian Shephard wears. Jack has always seen him on the island in a dark suit and white tennis shoes. Everyone else has seen him wearing a stripped dress shirt with every button buttoned.

But in the Namaste, his shirt is no longer brown, but grey.


Are the shirt colors some kind of clue as to the date? If so, Sun and Frank may not be in 2007. Keep an eye on this and see if anything pans out.


BEN LIES

Ben said that Charlotte was born in 1979, but there was that red-haired girl bouncing along in Othersville in 1974. Another lie? It seems so. But why?

I think it has to do with Ben’s pre-knowledge of events. If he was aware that Daniel would travel back to 1974 he may not want Daniel to think a younger Charlotte could be around for five more years. Maybe this information will cause Daniel to act in a way Ben desires. It seems that Daniel made the connection anyway and now his behavior might be an attempt to alter events…making Ben unhappy most likely.

I’m going to go the record and suggest that Daniel is off on his own looking for that place where the electromagnetic energy is strong enough to do his own time travel…the place where he and Dr. Candle crossed paths and metal seems to melt.


THE INCIDENT

You know we are going to have the Incident explained before too long. According to Dr. Candle’s 1980 Orientation explanation the Incident is what required having the computer number to be entered every 108 minutes.

In the Namaste episode we see Radzinsky working on a model of the Swan Hatch:

There is speculation on whether the Swan Hatch is already built, in progress or soon to be started. With two years to go until the Orientation film is made, it has little bearing at this point on when it gets built. The key is something called the “Incident Room”.

It shows up on the Blast Door Map as a separate room from the biosphere which is accessed by a tunnel. This is where Sayid and Jack crawled and it was noted the cement as thick as scene in nuclear power plants. (And let’s not forget they continue crawling and come up in the shower room where Kate does the poorest acting job on LOST yet when she drops her bra!).

Now take this information and add in a video game entitled “LOST: Via Domus”. This is not considered official, but blueprints of the Swan Hatch from the show were given to the video game creators. Now we can only guess the game was accurate in its depiction of this secret room and their intent in calling it the “Incident Room”.

Descriptions state there are two electromagnetic coils forming the reactor core as you can see from the above game screenshot.

If we are on the right track, it is in this room that something goes desperately wrong and the computer numbers must be entered to avoid it. It seems they then sealed this room off with thick concrete. Perhaps the Failsafe Key was added at this time as well.

If we try to propose meaning to this we might come up with a cold fusion reactor (which is never been proven to be feasible). This theoretical science would use hydrogen and a by-product is hydrochloric acid is gas form. This gas could be what we find at the Tempest Station.

We take the concept further and wonder what the results of the failed experiment might be and are left wondering if “windows” to other dimensions were opened. Did it cause some strange mutations? Did it shift time? How does it interact with what is at the Orchid Station? We’ll have to wait for Mr. Wizard to get some answers.


MORE ODDS THAN ENDS

Why did Dr. Candle reveal his real name to Jack when assigning him his Work Man uniform?

Why Jack’s grandfather is named Ray and so was the doctor who had his throat cut on the Freighter? Do doctors run in the family?

If Hurley has any musical talent could he use his guitar to write songs from the 80’s and then claim royalty rights one day?

The Flashbackers (Sawyer, Juliet, etc.) would now that young Ben is going to be The Ben, so do you think they tease and pick on him?


LOST REVIEW: CHARLIE’S FINGERS

It wasn’t long into LOST before the black and white theme became very evident. We have rehashed this many times so let’s just focus on a couple of examples.
First, Charlie wraps white tape around four of his fingers and with a black marker writes, “L-A-T-E”. He later changes the word to “F-A-T-E”.

It is not uncommon for LOST to use anagrams and hidden messages and other Easter eggs. So with this approach it is interesting to note that “L-A-T-E” in reverse is “E-T-A-L”. This is a Latin phrase (which we know is the language the Others have learned) that means “and Others”.

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Conclusion

We have a couple of new clues to add to our growing list which I’ll repeat now:

Crash, Circles, Sacred Ceremonies, Dots, Record, Disk, Round, Earth, Island, Sense of being a Part of the Whole, Music, Eye, Island, Electromagnetism, Needle, and Constantly Moving

We can now add Tape, Others, Fate and Black and White.

I have stared at this list for some time and finally found something that COULD fit all of these observations. Be warned, this is just a theory but for some reason ONE thing has jumped out at me. Leave a comment if you have any ideas to a single idea or theory or item that could be related to all these observations from the review of LOST.


NEXT ON TIDBITS

Tomorrow after the next episode, “He’s Our You “, you can find the Initial Thoughts post late night. Here is the one teaser picture for tomorrow’s episode:

Oh, look who gets assigned to work together! Think someone will release a “jack” and let the car fall on the “other”? HA!



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Thanks for reading!

Enjoy,
KC

LT230: More Bears Like Fozzie

MYSTERY PICTURE

Last post we gave you a mystery picture. Were those marks some kind of flying saucer? Today we give you real promo shot:

While researching the mystery picture above I stumbled on these promo’s for Season 5. The thing that caught my eye was the WHITE smoke. It reminds me of the smoke we saw with Christian in the Registration Building.


MAILBAG TIME

Ben writes with a few ideas on the Ethan last name issue.

1 – Amy keeps her ex-husband’s (Paul) last name of Rom
2 – Ethan just takes that last name of Paul Rom
3 – Or Rom is an alias given to him by the Others

I’d find #2 hard to swallow since it means a person he isn’t even related too. Especially considering how daddy (Horace) isn’t real thrilled with living in Paul’s shadow for three years. #1 seems suspect even if mom (Amy) didn’t want to get her named changed on all her checks and bank accounts. Even so, we should get maybe a hyphenated last name out of that.

We get the last name from Ethan himself back when Hurley was taking the census. It could have been a fake name he used then, but it was even spelled out for us, R-O-M. We also get this name from the scripts and credits on the show – not that they don’t just stick with the name offered back when Ethan was spying on the Survivors.

This could be a completely different Ethan, Ethan Goodspeed.

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Also recall that Ethan Rom grows up and gains some medical training. We see him assisting in operations, treating Rachael (Juliet’s sick sister), and treating Claire. This indicates he leaves the island and gets skilled and then returns as a Hostile recruit. This could lead to a few conclusions:

Amy leaves the island with Ethan and remarries a guy named Mr. Rom. Or Ethan is kidnapped (by Richard?) and is given a replacement name. Or Ethan commits to following Richard and thinks the anagram of “Other Man” is really cool.


ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

When Jin is demanding Radzinsky check for any airplane landings, did you notice what entertainment options were being offered?

That’s the Muppet Show in the upper-left corner. The next screen appears to be a newscast.

We are definitely in the 1970’s as “Ride, Captain, Ride” was heard playing at the Registration Building.


ANOTHER REASON SUN DIDN’T FLASH US

Someone suggested Sun didn’t flash because she was holding Jin’s ring…sort of a constant thing. Not sure I buy it but one of the best out there so far.


BEN IN TRAINING

By the age we see Teen Ben he is probably in Hostile Training by Richard. With Sayid behind bars Ben is likely thinking he gets to do some “leadership training” by helping Sayid escape. However, that line about the mustard bothered me until it hit me: could “mustard” be some code word and Sayid just failed the test?


DESERT STORM

Found this link of a deleted scene that you should watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYTpN6Kb2cw

Yes, that is Ben with what appears to be his armed wrapped in a bandage as if he was bleeding from his jump. He is on a horse which I take to mean he used the horse of those two guys who came out to check him out. Then two interesting things happen: he sees a guy in a parka who looks an awful lot like himself!!!

And then he grabs some passports and cash out of a WELL!!! Talk about a loop and I can’t believe this the first time I stumbled on this.


LOST REVIEW: GARY TROUPE

This is my continuing review of early seasons of LOST looking for new clues…

In the early part of the Pilot episode a man is sucked into a still running engine and dies. His name is Gary Troup. He is the man who wrote the book, “Bad Twin”. The manuscript for the book was found by Hurley but I don’t think he got to finish it because Sawyer had it next. Jack then throws it into the fire before Sawyer can finish it.

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A red herring is a device used in storytelling to throw the observer off course. Funny that “off course” also applies to Oceanic 815. Anyway, the red herring in this case is Gary Troup. It has been observed that his name provide the anagram of “purgatory”.

As you will recall, purgatory was a very popular theory back in Season 1. The producers came out and stopped this theory in its tracks. They made it clear that these survivors were not dead, half-dead or in some state in between dead.

With this review I wonder if we already knew this. Consider how Mr. Troup died. In essence, did the show take an idea and discard it as the body of Mr. Troup was discarded in the engine?
If we keep this line of thought going then we might apply the same thing to the book and manuscript of “Bad Twin”. Jack threw it into the fire. It was destroyed and a message to us the book was just another red herring. In many ways the producers have suggested the same thing stating that it is at best “semi-canonical”. And if we over analyze we might note that some of it was read by Sawyer before it was discarded.

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Since the book is semi-canon then we should at least examine its contents. The book begins with Troup describing himself as a “private-eye”. There is that word “eye” again.
He dedicates the book to his girlfriend, a flight attendant with Oceanic Airlines, whose name is Cindy.

Assuming that Cindy is the same person dating Gary Troup, then she is also the one who gives Jack his bottles of vodka. And later she visits him at the cage “to watch”.

This analysis leads us to believe that Cindy was either in on the game being played by Oceanic (or whoever) or just happened to be a fine candidate to make the list. The implications are ominous for Gary who almost did not get his book to press.

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Conclusion

I’m inclined to take the Troup/Purgatory and throw it into the shredder of an aircraft engine. We can suggest is to be on the lookout for other signs that says “Ignore Me”.

If any value can be gained it is merely that the main players are all mentioned, but not one character is the book was a surprise to us (Hanso, Widmore, Paik, Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack, etc.)


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Thanks for reading!

Enjoy,

KC