'Lost': Live chat about 'The Candidate' on May 4th

MEGGINS (4/25/10): "Okay, I get here and see "108 Comments." Freak out!"

Having been AWOL for two weeks, imagine how many comments (and Ryan essays) I'm getting caught up on!

The "bye week" combined with certain news events involving "namdloG skcaS" (typed it backwards since as we all know I'm paranoid in this google age) inspired me to do a little freelance writing for a contest whose deadline is in a couple of days. (If by Jacob a miracle happens and I'm one of the winners I'll be sure to let you know.) Speaking of writing:

AN ENGLISH MAJOR: "In the sentence 'in bearing her soul to Claire','baring' should be used instead of 'bearing', as in 'to bare one's soul, to reveal one's innermost secrets and feelings to someone'. 'Bearing' means 'carry', or 'the way one behaves or conducts oneself'.

I hope you are a woman, English, because your comment made me think of Woody Allen's character's line to a woman in the movie "Play it again, Sam" (I think): "I want to bear your child."

DANH: "I don't think Jack's decision not to try to leave the island this week was even remotely as bad as the turnarounds we saw in The Incident."

No argument there, Dan!

JEFFC: "What happened to the simple, yet highly effective trick of a slow motion scene with a lush score over top?"

Agree completely. (In fact, I think I posted a similar comment right after the episode but it's been so long now I don't remember.)

SCHMOKER: "Even Horace and Radzinski got a better reunion love scene."

LOL! It's comments like these that make me so glad I always (eventually anyway) read everyone's comments!

HARRY: "@Schmoker: Eloise Hawking as the original flasher... I don't know about that, but thanks for the mental image."

LOL! I repeat what I just said above!

BOTN: "Kissing Through Sonic Fences"

I'd buy that book in a time-dilated minute! (Hey, maybe "A Time Dilated Minute" could be the title of the sequel!)

BOTN: "My dream is to see the island at the bottom of the deep blue sea... with all of our heroes making the great sacrifice in order to keep the world safe. Their love in the epiverse will be their reward."

Yeah!

BRODIE: "So when Jacob was seen what we assumed going "back" in time and touching Sawyer, Kate, Jack, Locke. could that have been in the "alternate" timeline?.."

Interesting theory!

SCHMOKER: "...fiftypence's idea about the MiB as David, Jack's son, could really lead to a cool scenario where Jack must kill his "son" in order to save the world. That would be very Abraham and Isaac (who was the father of Jacob and Esau), no? By the way, Isaac's mom was named Sarah, and Isaac built up his fortune by digging wells (in particular wells that had been dug by his father and later stopped up by the Philistines)."

Wow! That would be something. (But, like BOTN, I really doubt David is TMIB.)

BNC: "note that Charlie, Ana Lucia, Eko and Michael had all murdered people, while Libby didn't, which is why she could not appear to Hurley."

Excellent analysis!

JEFFC: "Regardless of whether or not it's a chessboard for two gods, until its proven otherwise I don't think THEY built it and I don't think they have any control over it."

I hope you're right!

MARTIN: "The fact that both characters have made very "human" mistakes seems to indicate that they are far from mearly "good" and "evil." Their ablilities are strictly limited by what the series has only called "the island."

I second JeffC's thanks!

FIFTYPENCE: "...maybe Sun's crazy sphasia was the meta way of acknowledging the fans' outcry of Sun never having any lines to say."

Good one!

MILESFAN: "So was the Isabella who appeared to Alpert on the Black Rock a Whisper or the MIB?"

According to the "enhanced" airing last week, MIB. (Of course we all know how much we can trust the enhancements, since Damon is too busy promoting himself and insulting the fans to do a quick check of the enhancements to make sure they are canon.)

I LIKE KATE: "@SCHMOKER: I am totally in agreement with you about the whole pride and John Lockeian bleeds that will be his eventual downfall."

Sounds plausable to me too.

OLDDARTH: "What are the chances that the show will give each character a textual epilogue a la Animal House?"

Now WAAAAAIIIIIT a minute!

BOTN: "For the finale p-cast, I would prefer a Pon-Far (the Vulcan fertility battle ritual)... Sometimes Bambi's mom lives and Old Yeller dies of Old age... 'Maureen: "Could they have gone deeper?"' -- That's what she said."

He shoots, he scores!

STACY: "...one of my major issues with the show is how the handle females characters. I mean every single female cast member introduced after season 1 has been killed... they should of kept Jin dead and have Sun continue to be angry and a bit evil, but no they dropped that so we can get some super compelling storylines like 'Sun doesn't know english anymore'."

Well put!

BOTN: "Having his son end up being some sort of monster would not be consistent with the narrative up to this point."

"Why is it that Smocke, having scanned, tempted, and controlled the likes of James, Kate, and Sayid, trusts them to do his bidding? Now, I'll betcha, he's going to be putting a whole lot of trust in Jack, who we all know has a very Jacob-esque influencey thingy happening."

Excellent points!

EDDIE9: "Instead of a final season that is about the story instead isn't it one grand nostalgia tour, of old sets and old supporting characters?.. a misguided attempt to cater to die-hard fans when that isn't what the die-hard fans really wanted."

I worry about that too.

BOTN: "they're real and they're spectacular"

He's here all series folks! Try the veal!

Seriously, though, I think Eddie9 has a point about the Seinfeld ending being full of cameos and callbacks, and the main characters starting to change and be more concerned about others instead of just themselves. (I liked it a lot, as was surprised to find out much later that so many people didn't.)

And, of course, just as Seinfeld wouldn't have been so entertainly funny if the characters hadn't been so self-centered all those years, much of the drama of LOST would be lost (no pun intended, honest!) if our beloved characters hadn't had so much tough history that made them so flawed... and thus open to redemption.

JEFFC: "I'm actually really glad "Ab Aeterno" is being rebroadcast because my PVR seemed to eat that episode for some reason. Now my precious collection will be complete. Excellent..."

I'm guessing you forgot that it would probably be "enhanced"! (Though actually I found the enhancements far less bothersome than usual with this episode... until I remembered we can't take them as canon.)

BOTN: "while he was being loaded onto the ambulance, John Locke's shoes had some wear on their bottoms. More proof that the sideways universe is not the epilogue? For some, yes."

I'm sure the bleeders will just chalk it up as a "production error"!

Oh my Jacob! I just read Schmoker's comment saying just that! (Honest, I hadn't seen it yet when I wrote the above.)

HARRY: "@Jacob'sRevenge: Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's like the new "in thing" in TV recaps nowadays. Ever since Battlestar ended, many recappers and reviewers seem to delight in that finger-wagging and chastising fans about "You don't own the show" and so on and so forth..."

As implied in some of my comments a couple of weeks ago, I agree completely with you two.

JEFFC: "Us fans live in a very interesting and incredibly unique time. The LOST experience as we know it will only ever happen once, and when it's over that experience will be forever and irrevocably changed."

Profound thought and eloquently put!

RYAN: "It's all well and fine to say that Sayid will die before the show's over, but without exploring WHY that might be the case, it's just a morbid exercise in pop-culture prognostication."

Well put, Ryan! (And I'm happy to report that I had no idea that people were betting on who is going to die until I read your essay!)

BNC: "...as of now, Charlie seemingly died for nothing, which is a tough one to swallow even several seasons later."

Agreed... but don't get me started on that subject again!

BOTN: "Ryan flat out dismisses it... [but] I would like to see ALL of our heroes make the heroic sacrifice on the island in order to restore the ones that they love in another... I don't call watching your brother end up with the love of your life necessarily a happy ending."

Thank you once again, BOTN.

BRIGUYX: "How has progress been made if one of the candidates replaces Jacob?"

How indeed.

NOT YET MEASURED: "Lindlehof's Chuck E. Cheese quote: what an insulting cop-out!"

My reaction exactly! I didn't think my opinion of him could get any lower (though I've always pretty much liked Carlton), but it just did! Reminds me why I try to avoid his appearances and podcasts like the plague.

nice to see you back o/c!

have you and bnc ever thought that the reason we never saw claire and aaron get on a helicopter was because charlie prevented it from happening and hence we didn't see it and never will?

i don't understand why it bothers you (and others) so much. is it that desmond's vision have to be true (could he have been influenced by the mib?)? whatever happened, happened we are told so nothing can really change? but if desmond was able to stop charlie from dying more than once didn't he change things? desmond is suppose to be different. might this play into the fact that we will never see this scene?

just thinking aloud. great to see you back. good luck with that contest! peace

"Our long, "Lost" national nightmare is over, people! A new episode is just around the corner, and then another, and then another, and then we go fetal until Labor Day and try to make sense of our broken, pathetic lives."

Just had to quote that because I think it's beautifully written. Here we are, having had nothing but a rerun in TWO WEEKS and we're jumping on opportunities to post, EARLY in the morning, too - because we're LOST junkies. Needing "it" and needing our codependent LOSTIES.

What will we do when it's gone???

Enjoyed the two weeks without you. You know who you are.

Jeez I didn't think a full stop could be so offensive!

@jan: you (and so many others) nailed it! is this what junkies go through (or course metaphorically); the past two weeks have gone by sooooo slooowly. i'm so glad it's lost tuesday and another new episode is here; as for the ever approaching ending and what to do afterwards...my mind will NOT go there; now, i've done it--i've used capital letters; i'm falling apart here guys and gals. ;)

@jan: you (and so many others) nailed it! is this what junkies go through (or course metaphorically); the past two weeks have gone by sooooo slooowly. i'm so glad it's lost tuesday and another new episode is here; as for the ever approaching ending and what to do afterwards...my mind will NOT go there; now, i've done it--i've used capital letters; i'm falling apart here guys and gals. ;)

I'm really enjoying the episode so far! (About 2/3rd the way through as I write this on commercial.)

I was especially touched by the scene between Jin and Sun at the beginning -- perhaps because (as someone recently hoped last week's episode would have been) this week's episode was directed by Jack Bender.

I got home just in time just before the episode started so I haven't had a chance yet to read the comments of the last 14 hours (or the chat transcript), but I will later.

Gotta go... show back one...

omg. i am SO MAD