I rather liked this episode - it managed to make sense of itself despite all the wacky time travel stuff, moved the plot forward and gave us some decent character moments. Faraday is possibly my favorite character at this point, so I'm sure that didn't hurt either.
I had previously thought that Locke was inadvertently controlling the time skips, but that may have just been from how the last couple of episodes were framed. It may well be just like Faraday's analogy - Ben caused something with the island to stop working correctly when he moved the Frozen Donkey Wheel and there will be no rhyme or reason to it.
Although, that feels odd for an island which seems to be able to control just about anything. It seems like everything that is happening is still "fate" as Locke sees it, just displaced in time. So him running into Richard sets the events in order for him to become leader, etc.
There's a theory going around that the grey haired lady who is somehow tracking the island's movements is Faraday's mom. If so, we can see how Desmond could easily get roped back into Ben's plan and back on the island. Somehow I see Penelope as a single mom in about three episodes or so...
Can't tell if I'm more or less confused about The Others now. Did Richard used to be in Ben's shoes? Is that why he doesn't age? Dollars to donuts we find out that he was on the Black Rock when it shipwrecked. It's weird though, because DHARMA and the others seem like they're intertwined. Was Ben's mass murder just the climax of a civil war? Or was DHARMA an interloper like the US military and Ben just took over after? Trying to get my head around why these Others Mark I (Richard's) are trained the same as Juliet. Maybe the story is always about the defenders (Others) and some set of invaders (Losties, military, DHARMA, Widmore's crew).
Curious that Richard doesn't seem to have the same plan as Ben, with lists and who is good and bad, etc. Locke certainly seems like he got the short end of the documentation stick, jobwise. Leader of the Others and there's manual?
Anyway, good episode. Now I'll have to watch everything, however, thinking "there's an H-Bomb buried somewhere around there..."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
TV Watch: Lost, "Jughead"
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What I can't quite figure out is that there's this very strange island chain of command. It goes from Jacob to somebody to Richard. At one point the somebody is Ben and later it becomes Locke. Why does that person need to exist in the chain of command? Having said that, it appears that, back in the 50's, there was nobody in that role.
Also, it seems Widmore has ALWAYS been a douchebag :)
I believe Richard's role is more of a mentor or assistant to the leader of the hostiles. It's likely that during the 50's Richard was just temporarily in command of the hostiles but that's just conjecture. Somehow I doubt though that he's always been the leader.
So when locke went back in time and told Richard that he would be the leader then that caused Richard to look for a leader but why would Richard look for a leader anyway unless he needed one?
When you Ben was ran out of the Dharma camp into the forest after his mother and he told Jacob about it then that caused Jacob to realize that there was something special with Ben, it also likely that Richard consulted with Jacob about Ben which is why he helped Ben to killed the Dharm people.
I think DHARMA is funded in part by Charles Widmore and Sun's father.....they know way too much about the Island to rapidly learn all of it's secrets as soon as they do. (DHARMA set's up shop on the island in the '70's right?).
The "Others\Hostiles" with Richard are the same as Ben's "Others" and have the same training. It's just that after Ben & Hostiles killed the Dharma personell they became one and became known as the "Others" by Roussouea and then the 815'ers.
The 815'ers aren't invaders.....they were brought to the island by the Island (either by the Island directly or through actions of people on the Island) and the Island needs them (which is why the Oceanic 6 need to get back)
I think the Good\Bad lists were made up by Ben to control his people. Ben was chosed by Richard/Island to be the leader but Ben isn't the best leader for the Island which is why the leader chose Locke. Ben sensed this so he started lying to his people and also tried to kill locke out of jealousy because of this.
My best guess if I sit down and think about it is that Widmore set the island out of balance. My impression is that Widmore used his connection to the island to achieve his power in the external world through the DHARMA initiative. Ben, and later Locke become the defenders of the island against the abuse of it's power. Locke needed to come to power so that Ben could leave the island to take on Widmore in the outside world.
This would explain why Ben was so concerned with the morality of the survivors. He needed to identify those who might potentially abuse the power of the island and those who could peacefully exist with the others.
Or something... I don't know. I find that usually as I piece together some logic for all of it I find some other contradictory bit that throws the whole thing off. But I'm pretty confident that Widmore and DHARMA somehow threw the island out of balance and the rest of what's happened is a consequence of that.
Oh and one other thing: I suspect that jughead does go off at some point. Faraday's dismissal of it was just a little too simple. Yeah it doesn't destroy the island, but that doesn't mean it doesn't go off.
Yeah, that's true - Jughead is a big plot device to simply whisk away.
I just hope the lists aren't yet another thing the show likes to toy with and then toss aside, like smoke monsters, polar bears and seemingly even Jacob. It's a pretty weird aspect from early in the show, and even though we are getting a lot of visibility into the "Others", it doesn't feel like a lot of insight.
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