'Lost': My recap for "The Variable" is live

Awesome episode, one of the best this year. Sad about Dan, see you in the recap!

Okay I'm going to start with a doozy:

- In what way do you think Faraday meant when he said Jack and Co. weren't supposed to be in the past, and how can 1977 Ms. Hawking get them back to the future?

I feel like my brain has a hangover from last night.

Wow. I'm still reeling from that. My brain is kinda 'splodey, too. I mean, wow.

How heart-breaking was Faraday's death? I know "dead is dead" on Lost, but can't we have a Princess Bride "mostly dead" here? Please??? (Don't worry, Ryan, that's not a "Letters from the Flame" kinda question. That's a Tempest rages against the "Lost" universe for killing off Faraday question.)

ooops I put my question over there instead...okay so...

Could Daniel be Richard's son and not Widemore's?

Did anyone else notice the issue of Wired magazine in Faraday's house? That's gotta be a shout out to the fact that J.J. Abrams was guest editor of the last issue of Wired... which, naturally, contained quite a few references to Lost.

Unfortunately I don't think Dan's gonna be just mostly dead like Ben ... he's gonna be all dead like Eko. :(

Obviously Eloise and Charles knew what had happened in 1977 ... if Dan had lived they wouldn't have been talking about it being such a sacrifice, after all.

It also brings up SO many questions about just how much Charles / Eloise know, and thus what their motivations really are. Are they just trying to make sure things happen the way they already happened? Do they know what the consequences might be if they didn't? Why wouldn't Eloise try to keep Faraday from going to the island? Does something happen later on that is so important, they can't risk changing it?

And most importantly... does Faraday's little brown journal contain a map to find the Holy Grail?

Ryan, before you get too in-depth into the investigation of the Comic Con 2008 video and its place in the narrative, you should check out the Darlton Lostpedia interview first.

Here's the gist of what Damon had to say about the video and the ARGs in general:

"I think some people believe that they hear Faraday's voice in the Comic-Con experience. These events are sort of partially canon but more promotional than they are canon. Giving the audience a sneak peak as to what the season is about. "

Source: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lostpedia_Interview:Carlton_Cuse_%26_Damon_Lindelof

AMY: "I am very upset with the ending. Dear sweet Daniel. How unfair for him to die at her hands and him knowing that she sent him there to be killed. It does seem senseless."

RYAN: "They sneak up on the Others FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE SHOW'S HISTORY."

RYAN: "Seemed like sloppy writing to have Phil in so obvious a place. Then again, it was semi-sloppy to have Radzinksy turn into Rambo for no apparent reason while looking for Faraday."

Craig: "I mean, his variable theory while nice sounding, still makes zero sense."

YODA: "I'm confused about why they had to push the button? Daniel said the energy was going to get out so they had to put concrete over it and then they built the hatch over that. So why couldn't they just do that and keep it contained. Why did they have to push a button every 108 min? PLEASE ANSWER THIS SOMEONE!!!"

BUBBA: "People as variables? What an awful direction by the producers..."

I'm so sick of all this criticism of the writers!!!

Seriously, my friends, I'm "concerned" for your well being and thus, as the designated whipping boy, I'll take the heat off of you by posting my feelings.

I was so hoping this episode was going to restore my faith. I was all set to say I was silly for my all of my recent concerns about the writing. I had read all hundred moments and had started a post with a few more to add.

And I was going to point out that since I've watched each of the first two season episodes at least three times each and the rest at least twice, that means I've spent (even at 40 minutes per episode) at least a couple of hundred hours watching the show, which I would think qualifies me as someone who LOVES it, even if some people cannot understand why I am extremely concerned by certain warning signs in recent episodes that the writers are getting very lazy and/or don't care any more, thus making me very concerned if the show is going to fall apart and be ruined by that carelessness.

Alas, instead of re***uring me and winning me back, last night's episode almost ***ures me (as angry and sad as I am to think it) that my concerns have been even more well-founded than I feared.

I started to lose heart from the very beginning, when I saw that such an important (Faraday-centric, etc.) episode had not been written by Darlton themselves, but farmed out to writers who (I think) may have been responsible for some of the lesser quality moments of the show.

Then when the initial drama of the show centered around whether Desmond would live or die, I became further concerned as we should already be past this since he was in good enough shape to beat the hell out of Ben.

But that was a minor point to the insanity that followed on the island... which for some reason my take on came to me in newspaper form (see next post):

FARADAY COMMITS 'SUICIDE BY COP'

Most pointless killing since Charlie pseudo-suicide, fan says

DATELINE Craphole Island, 1977 -- In what is clearly the worst episode ever -- yes, even worse than the Nikki/Paolo and Jack's Tatoo episodes because they were isolated embar***ements, not potential series-ruiners, beloved characger Daniel Faraday -- aided by the writers giving Miles, Sawyer, Kate, and even Faraday himself, stupid pills, managed to force an Other to kill him.

"It was clearly a case of suicide by cop", officials said, referring to the suicide technique some people use of confronting a cop with a gun and leaving the cop no choice but to shoot him."

This case was particularly tragic in that the cop was the victim's own mother (though she didn't know that at the time).

"All Faraday had to do was go talk to the Hostiles," one fan sad, "as had been done so many times before" referring to the times that Sawyer and Locke and peaceful and profound discussions with Richard and the others without violence, not to mention Kate and Sawyer taking young Ben to them.

But instead of having Faraday simply go have a nice friendly chat with Richard to, the writers would have us believe that the group would:

1) Take the time and risk (a BIG risk as it turned out!) to go break into motor pool safe and get guns, even though know guy tied up in closet will be missed soon and they've had non-violent chats with the hostiles previously;

2) Faraday, instead of just playing it off (at the motor pool) with some excuse ("a bit woozy from the sub trip" or something) and saying "yes sir I'll get back to where I'm supposed to be immediately" flashes his gun, causing the shoot-out;

3) Despite this, Faraday doesn't learn from his inexperience with guns, and Sawyers and Lockes previous positive experiences of just walking into the camp unarmed to talk (which Jack and Kate certainly should have known by now and conveyed to him), walks with gun into camp, then:

4) Shoots gun (near guy who was reaching for a rifle)!

5) Says "it doesn't matter" in response to Richard's question instead of reminding him about when they met before and thus getting a conversation and trust going;

6) Counts to three to escalate matters, when obviously someone in the camp would thus feel forced to try to take him out with a rifle before he got to three.

Utter insanity. Lazy, hack writing. Anyone who loves the show should be outraged that Darlton would have accepted this script and pawned it off on the fans. I don't see any way they can recover from everything in this episode. (Though I still pray I'm wrong.)

And not just because of Faraday's death -- as Craig, Yoda, and Bubba (and others) pointed out, Faraday's modified time-travel rules make no sense, nor does using a hydrogen bomb to negate the island's energy (as was pointed out on this blog some time ago by somebody, setting off the bomb would likely wipe out the whole island!).

Nor does his explanation of why they have to "push the button" every 108 minutes make sense. As even "true believer" JeffC pointed out (without realizing it I think) a week or so ago (check the exact wording of your post if you get a chance JeffC), the computer itself could be programmed to "vent the energy" every 108 minutes!

To say that you have the technology to have the big heiroglyphic 108 minute counter, AND a separate PC, but you don't have the ability to just have the PC do it itself every 18 minutes and a person has to key it in -- for thousands of days on end -- makes absolutely no sense.

The only sensible explanation is that "pushing the button" was a kind of "dead man switch" -- but we have no idea why someone would want a catestrophic result if someone was no longer living in the hatch -- especially since it is so risky (somebody could simply not get to the button in time for some reason).

Tonight's episode, along with all of the other recent concerns I've mentioned (thank you to those who backed me up) (or coincidentally raised similar points). Granted, some of those concerns (such as nothing is in the statue's shadow always, or taking the workman's casual reference to the numbers as a literal serial number) were a bit esoteric, but the point I was trying to make is that the writers seem to be getting increasingly careless, and that does not bode well for the resolution of the series.

And I think if we don't let Darlton know we care they will ***ume this lower level of quality of writing is acceptable to us and continue with it for the following season (as they concentrate on their new projects and leave LOST in the hack hands of last night's writers).

Unless something really unexpected happens next week, I think we should all be outraged by the quality of tonight's episode, and let them know it. But there are only three episodes left, and by this time last season we already pretty much knew most of the ending (that the island would "move" in time and/or space). So I don't expect anything too surprising to happen the rest of the season (alas). I suspect the season may end with the H-bomb going off (yawn), and then we just have to tune in next year to see where everyone ended up in time and space "due to" the interaction of the island energy and the H-bomb. That is, totally arbitrary, no human drama.

But, since I love the show far more than being right, I pray that I am wrong.

Okay, I'm bending over. Let the reaming begin.

Ryan, do you think that the "two sides" of a war is the following:
1- Side trying to preserve the timeline (afraid of consequences)
2- Side trying to change the past

Seems the argument for Sun et al. being on a different future timeline, where the Losties were not originally in the 70s and Danielle's message is still playing is plausible now.