This is not a spoiler, merely speculation. But here are two theories: 1.) the creators have stated that the future seasons will include "flash-backs, flash-forwards" and "flash sideways". Until now I haven;t had a clue what a 'flash-sideways" might mean, but I thing it means telling simulatenous parallel stories about the two groups in their seperate locations: the oceanic six off Island and the Remainders [tm] left ON the Island. Or 2.) Death by Keamy, Death by Smokey, Death by poison gas, death by uncontrolled electo-magnetic flux burst w/purple sky...

Jack stated under oath that there were only six survivors. We "know" he was lying... but what if he wasn't?

"Flash sideways" implies that there will be tales about both the Six and the group remaining on the island. Foreward and Back implies some very complex storytelling filling in the details of their backstories as well as spelling out their futures in a non-linear fashion.

The next season may be very complicated, laying out puzzle pieces to ponder, but waiting for the year after to really assemble them in a way that makes sense.

Oh, I forgot one. I mentioned the possibility of "Death by Keamy, Death by Smokey, Death by poison gas, death by uncontrolled electo-magnetic flux burst w/purple sky..." but I forgot to mention the biggie. Oceanic flight 815 crashed on September 22nd, 2002. Most of the post strike episodes have involved on-island events occuring in the days leading up to Christmas of that year.

And December 26th, 2002 was the date of the Tsunami. Looks like if the Six book a Christmas cruise off the island, they're getting out right in the nick of time. The question is, when Dr. Jack wants to go back, will there be anything or anyone left to go back to?

If the writers want to fuck with timelines and continuity, that is fine with me. However, they need to continue to tell stories about these people that we have grown to care about or a large portion of the audience will tune out.

For the record, this is NOT a theory I believe in or endorse, I'm just putting this out here as a mind-blower.

The theory is this: Benjamin and Widmore are time-travelers and the one basic rule of their game - the basic tenet of all time traveling - is that you can never change the past.

When Benjamin tried to bargain with Keamy and said "go ahead and shoot her" he never thought that he would because... here's the theory - he knew that she was SUPPOSED TO BE alive in the future, and therefore couldn't be killed. That's (supposedly) what he meant when Widmore asked if he was there to kill him and Benjamin replied "We both know I can't do that." So changing the rules and breaking the time line was Widmore's "game changer".

In the promos for the current episode - Uh, consider this a SPOILER warning for the couple of people who actually avoid watching the coming attractions and the ABC promos and ads for the hsow - Juliet toils over the suffering Jack and intones "he's going to die." Now, we KNOW that that is just hyperbole and hype. We KNOW that Jack can't die now (in the Island's now of 2004) because he is alive in the flash-forward "future" (of 2005 or later Lost time). So here's the mind-blower that would leave us all screaming "they can't DO that!!!": What if, now that the time line has been ruptured, the flash-forwards are no longer valid guarantees? What if Juliet's right, and Jack dies?

I totally disavow this theory and in no way endorse it or believe that that is what is going to happen. Still, wouldn't that be a total rule-breaking game changer?

http://tinyurl.com/6 2ykmt

But Benjamin identified Keamy as a good marine who went bad and became a mercenary. And we know that Frank drinks rather excessively, one likely clue to a guilty conscience. I like Frank Lapidus and I hold out hope that when the members of the oceanic six get from the Island to the freighter, it will be Frank in the helicoptor that takes them there. (That's assuming they leave by conventional means and don't teleport into the Tunisian desert or something.) But Frank Lapidus could very well have a dark side.

So someone up thread suggested that Lapidus could arrive on the Island even before leaving the Freighter, so that he and the helicoptor could be in two places at once.

In English "ubiquitous" is usually used by journalists to refer to something that is annoyingly inevitable, like a TV commercial that's on whenever you turn on the TV. You turn on "classic AOR FM radio" and songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Free Bird" are ubiquitous.

Sorry to have questioned your usage.

ok maybe not

btw Xiphos, I could be wrong, but I believe Sayid can fly a helo

Not that he's the only pilot. I've give you that. But we do not know exactly how the Six get off yet. Frank repeatedly talks about having just enough fuel for a flight, just enough to get to or from the island, just enough to land. And the 815 was 1000 miles off course when it crashed. So if Jack, Aaron, Hurley, Sun and Kate get off the island on that helicopter, they won't be going any further on it than to the freighter.

And that's exactly how I've assumed it would go down all along - chopper to the boat, and then out.

BUT last week established two things: One, there's a lot of speculation that Benjamin "teleported" off the island. That does move the show in a harder sci-fi direction that I was ever expecting, but it does "open a door" off the island. And, Two, Widmore doesn't know where the island is... does that possibly suggest that his freighter never made it back? Which in turn implies that The Oceanic Six got off the island some way other than on the freighter.

I'm still sticking with island to chopper to boat to home as the logical and obvious escape route. But when has LOST ever been about the obvious... or the logical?

Well, sir, I'll admit that he plays Faraday as a convincing weird-o. But this year if anyone wants a best actor award they're going to have to get past Michael Emerson. Seriously, following his arc from his intro as Henry Gale to last week's reinvention sa Double-Oh-Benjamin, he's gone from an enigma to a quisling to a treacherous and murderous snake. This season alone he's stolen yet another gun (something you'd think Locke would be looking our for by now) to shoot Charlotte, and then conned and charmed his way from being locked in a cell to having free run on Otherton, eating cake and playing the piano with a shotgun in his stool. And last week he reinvented himself, spending forty minutes convincing the audience that he really is "one of the good guys" - and by siccing Smokey on the 'Frighter' assault crew, a totally awesome one at that - and that his thirst for vengeance is justified. And then in the final minutes of the episode, as he vowed to kill Widmore's innocent daughter, Dez's beloved Pen, he pulled a full 180 and let us see the monster that's always lurked within him. If that's not worth a solid gold fishbiscuit come "giving actors prizes for doing their jobs" time, I don't know what ever would be.

Nobody cares about the beach crew. Either show me Freighter action or show me Ben and Locke. Are they going to bother mentioning Michael again? Did they hype Harolds reappearence for one fairly-mediocre episode???

FADE IN:

EXTREME CLOSE UP ON AN EYE

WE PULL BACK TO REVEAL

Hurley's face, smiling, his eyes wide open with childlike enthusiasm.

HIS VIEW

A tangled mass of nude, female bodies writhe in ecstasy on the sandy beach. We can make out some of the faces: Claire, Kate, Sun, Alex, that Italian chick, Nikki, Juliet.

They are making sweet, sweet, island love.

Hurley STEPS FORWARD, his eyes fixed on the scene in front of him when--

the bodies begin to crumble, disintegrate. Juliet's cans begin to swirl, vortex-like, into a thick, churning black CLOUD OF SMOKE.

Hurley GASPS!

MATCH CUT TO:

Hurley gasps as he wakes up from a nightmare. He is out of breath, frightened. He wipes the sweat off his brow.

HURLEY: Relax, dude.

Suddenly--

Sayid emerges, his lower netherregion covered in vestiges of the black smoke.

SAYID: Hurley, wake up. Something's happened to the women. I think they've given me...the sickness.

POOSH...LOST....

Having said all that, filler LOST still rules. And yes not all Jack eps are filler, but that Tattoo episode still haunts us. Ugh..Bai-Ling...

2. Can I quote you on that? Also, not all of Western Europe is so PC about immigration. Berlusconi suggested shooting cannons at ANY incoming ships into Italy, which I found amusing. Berlusconi is actually very funny--check this out http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=p2TRnDBI2o4

;^)

Having literally just finished watching the 1st season today, and knowing there's ALOT of shit that is coming in the next few seasons, it seems like Liddeloff and Abrams have gon way overboard on the mystery stuff

http://lostroom23.blogspot.com

Of course not. Come on, people.

Just so I have a count...I may be locking inrecignizables out until you guys got yours, who here at the TB and 23 are out of country/region and NEED tonights LOST? Just trying to get #s. Check Room 23 agout 11:45. Should have you a link by then. Same for BSG Friday (Get me those same #s please) and it will be up 11:45 ish.

Edshrinker

Best supporting actor? Give it to Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus"). Best actor? I'm not sure that there is an "actor" -- because this entire show is the product of a truly ensemble cast!

Nothing else on TV is like it!

Everytime someone says "Jacob", take a sip of beer.

Everytime Kate cracks under pressure, drink a whole beer.

Evertime Claire is killed, drink the whole bottle of Jagger.

"Namaste, motherfuckers!".

Is that why you haunt this website's TB forums like a rabid dog in heat?

http://tinyurl.com/3xlefa< p>F, I think the photo of Evangeline Lilly that Terry Malloy was refering to was the one I posted to the Room 23 blog.

There's a lengthy article above it ow, so you'll need to scroll down a bit to get to it. Some nice pics of Yunjin in honor of her being the Lost girl chosen to represent the show in TV Guide's annual "Sexiest Stars On TV" list. "click to slightly embiggen."

Smacky, you might have a point. The island clearly has strange electro-magnetic properties that make it almost impossible to locate except by following extremely precise navigational instructions. Still, the idea that this "force field" effect would protect it from all outside influences including catastrophic planetary weather connditions... well, again, that seems pretty hardcore sci-fi and I'm still hoping that "Lost" will keep at least one foot rooted in reality based and character driven stories.

You never know what will or won;t eventualy turn out to be important. That episode with Hurley's Dharma Van felt totally like a feel-good filler ep, but then he came roaring onto the beach, plowing into the Others and rescuing his captured friends during the attack at the tents, and it totally paid off.

On his behalf I'll remind everyone that...

1.) The first scene of the pilot episode was Jack opening his eyes in the jungle, then running to the sound of the chaos on the beach and beginning to save lives.

2.) The character was originally meant to die in the first episode as a trick on the audience but Matt Fox tested so well with test audiences that they had to spare him.

3.)In interviews some of the actors have explained that for much of the sirft season their characters had to be wooden and expressionless and they couldn't show personality because at that point the writers hadn't nailed down the charactrs and the actors couldn't do anything that would set a tone that would contradict what would be established later.

4.) A big old picture of Matthew Fox as the shows lead character is on the Season One DVD set box.

5.)During the epic first season when the show was high in the ratings and the mainstream entertainment media was constantly covering it, the Jack/Kate/Sawyer romantic triangle was treated as if it was the central core of the show, what the fans wanted to read about, and they were the group that got most of the magazine covers.

And, look, I'm not saying Jack is an interesting or noble or great chacacter. He's certainly not my favorite character on the show. *But then Benjamin got last weeks ep and Locke gets next weeks.) As I told Brighteyes, calling Jack the best character on the series is like thinking that Grey's is all about MerDer. However...

6.) One of the hugest things this series ever did, the thing the shows creators say is that magic trick that only comes along once per series, was last years season finale "gamechanger" that introduced the concept of the "flash-forward". And tonight's Jack-centric episode will be a direct sequel to that one.

Now this has been an awesome season. The Constant, Ji Yeon, Meet Kevin Johnson, Shapes of Things To Come, some of the best episodes of the series ever. Season three was not that well recieved, over all, though there were some stand-outs. Still, that finale, with beardy Jack and the flash forwards and "We have to go back!!!" - that was considered a series high-point and certainly one of the season's best episodes. Now, for the first time, we get a direct sequel with more Jack flash-forward information, and just because there are a couple other interesting plots going on at the same time and the focus has shifted away from Jack's group for a while except in terms of it's contact with the Freighter, everyone is whinging about this being a 'filler' episode. A episode about one of the shows lead characters (the man of science to Locke's man of faith) and a sequel to last seasons major series gamechanger, filler? Seriously?

Let me know when the Lost fans get here.

I don't even want to get into how it makes no sense for Lois to meet Clark and know him as the guy with powers who she thinks is really cute. This is just terrible. How can this show have fans?

And to think, I could be watching Iron Man right now. . .

Anyway, this will make LOST seem that much better when it comes on.

I'm not superstitious, so Hurley's feelings of being a jinx didn't sit well with me. And His strained relationship with his estranged father was nearly painful to watch. though what good Lost character does't have daddy issues? But while Hurley's flashback material might have been uncomforatable, that same episode gave us old warm dharma beer, the name "Workman" and Sawyer dubbing bens dad "Skeletor". Now, if I was trying to start a vehicle I might not roll it down a hill straight at some rocks so that it would HAVE to start or I'd die or be injured in the collision. But as a cathartic triumph over the jinx, the scene worked. It may have been a strange and seemingly stand alone non-sequitor of an episode with a few far fetched or unexplained elements (like where Hurley would ever find any more gas) But there were enough funny lines and good moments and triumphs that I don't think it was a badly written episode.

Now, a few seasons later, and I think Jack is a total dick and a control freak, Kate's a selfish skank who lies, cheats, steals, and kills when it serves her, and I now think Sawyer's probably one of the best people left on the island. He's also a hell of a lot more trustworthy than Kate.

Granted, he changed once he killed Locke's dad, and he was a real asshole when the show started, but now Sawyer is more trustworthy than Kate.

And I'm sorry, but Jack has a messiah complex, and it makes him very unlikeable.

Dr Bland Daddy.

So this is filler? Fuck that x25. This is kicking arse.

Oh - I forget, you never have typos

Fix er her up JAck!

OK...Time to get this baby ready for all of you. Start checking Room 23 for the link around 11:45

OR RIGHT NOW! Beer and benzodiazapan....A wondrous mixture!!!!!!!!!

Finally, a Jack episode I thought ROCKED! It's blowing my mind! Did Miles see Doc Shepard Sr. because he's real, or because he sees dead people?

And Bouncy X, regarding spoilers, he WAS on the show before, so this IS a big return. Now I saw the preview too (wish I hadn't), but there are others out here that try to be spoiler free. I wasn't trying to jump on you too hard, just a friendly reminder dude.

so is next week the huge hangover? i don't think so.

For me personally, the events that went down in Pearl station, with Paolo evesdropping on a rather important conversation between Juliet and Ben, not to mention finding a walkie and turning out not have been taking a shit after all - ok not ALL-important to the overall story arc of the show, but INTEGRAL nonetheless...

what else ya got?

Maxer placed this in the timeline after Kate's trial and before Beardy Jack's "We have to go back rant". We know they're on the island in 2004 and last week's Ben ep was set in 2005. In the Kate episode Aaron was a big headed baby and tonight Aaron was about 4, so a couple year gap between eps. Now my initial and probably eroneous impression was that this was Jack and Kate's happy ending - finally together. I thought Jack was past the drug. alcohol and depression troubles he had in the 3rd season finale and suffering a stress related relapse. But Maxer's timeline idea makes more sense: that this episode occurred before then, that this showed us the "origin" of Jack's addiction (and explained his comments about "get my father down here" from that season finale ep), and establishes that the season three season finale with "We have to go back" is still the farthest into the future that we've seen to date.

I do have a question about this to pose. I did not recognize the coffee reheating machine or that bizarrely painted retro car design Jack was driving, so I was wondering... have all the "flash forwards" been limited to the last four years, or are they actually flashing-foreward into out real time future - that is, 2009 or later? Which would still be fair - the show is scheduled to continue into 2010.

Any thoughts? Does Maxer's timeline sound correct? Will the flashforwards take us "into the future"?

Darlton and Lindelcuse always said it was NOT purgatory or limbo, they weren't all dead, it wasn't a surreal spiritual high concept explanation. But with delusional Hurley seeing Charlie at the institution, Jack seeing his father, Claire running off with her dad, Alpert's seeming immortality and Locke conversing with someone twelve years gone... if it's not an afterlife story they're sure going out of their ways to mess with us.

Oh, and for everyone who was convinced Danielle wasn't dead and no one dies on LOST unless you see the cold dead corpse being buried... Danielle's dead.

Edshrinker does this stuff for LOST and BSG with no worries of creepy cruddies. Good Quality avi file as well.

Report to Room 23 for the LInk

http://lostroom23.blogspot.com /

Anyone think I was right yet? This week we have Jack mixing prescription meds with booze, a Kate shower scene, bare-legged Kate climbing Jack's torso and him carrying her around with her ass in his hands and some graphic bloody surgery.

On that last topic - TMI coming, you can stop reading now if you're squeamish. Years ago I had a cyst pierced and drained and they used an experimental anesthetic spray that froze the skins surface. which allowed for a nice sharp clean puncture site, but hurt like Hell once they got below the frozen skin. And I had some necrosis removed some years ago and, well, you may not know what "debridement" means and if you're lucky you'll never need to. But when they check your prograss and trim off any remaining dead tissue, well, they have to cut into live tissue to get rid of the dead stuff. The point is, I would NOT want anyone performing major surgery on me with local anesthetic.

This is the game changer that they talked about for Claire. Shw is going to be teaming with Christian somehow. As per a spoiler pic - she'll be in that cabin when Ben gets there...

MAN FRREAKIN ALIVE!!!! 10 questions answered, the two times are coming together and will meet at season's end with Jack (bearded and high)at the airport - no longer engaged I am sure, Yelling...we have to go back!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So Sawyer CHOSE to stay. There are people there (including Claire - would Kate not have mixed emotions about that) and a saving MUST HAPPEN!

This show is beyond my ability to wrap my feeble grey matter around it.

In fact, one advocate or P2P file sharing is so convincing in his assertions that P2P is either legal or a virtually victimless crime that I was wondering where I might have got the impression that it was frowned upon.

Then last night Cartoon Network reran the episode of "The Boondocks", which reveals that Huey's neighbor, the lawyer, was traumatized at age ten by seeing a movie on TV that depicted a forcible anal sodomization in prison. He is shown deleting the MP3s from his wife's computer and telling her "File sharing is illegal and I don't want to get anally raped just so you can listen to Usher."

The Boondocks is a comedy, of course, and not a sound source of legal advice. Still, I'll refer to the Italian philosopher Baretta who so profoundly said "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

I will admit, very few people who engage in peer-to-peer file sharing are detected or caught, fewer still are prosecuted, only a fraction of those are convicted and a very small percentage of them do any jail time at all, and only a fraction of them are anally raped. So the odds of your being forcibly anally sodomized for downloading an episode of Lost are probably less than one in a thousand... very, very much less. Still, before you take that chance, remind yourself of the words of the American right-to-bear-arms advocate Harry Callahan, who said "You just have to ask yourself one thing; do you feel lucky, punk?" Well, do you?

Don't you just love the way people just stand around dumbfounded whenever they get some bad news. "Uh, what exactly do you mean, hide or they'll kill us?" Jeebus, what part of that isn't clear? Just HIDE already.