For those of you not in the know, this has been a hectic week and a bit - but thankfully the website has been ticking over, and I can now (finally) give you all the Questions and Answers for week 9 of Lost!
To make up for the crazy, this week is a bumper 4 question edition, and later in the week you will be getting a bonus question from our Lost Blogging Collective, before normal service resumes again with Week 11. So without further ado, on with the show.
1) What one aspect of Lost turned you from a 'normal' fan into a 'hardcore' Lostie?
2) What are some of your favourite Lost-related websites?
3) How will Desmond, the package, the constant, the variable, feature in the final showdown?
4) Who is the father of Alt Sun's Alt child?
2) What are some of your favourite Lost-related websites?
3) How will Desmond, the package, the constant, the variable, feature in the final showdown?
4) Who is the father of Alt Sun's Alt child?
1) I don't think there was any one thing that made me crazy for Lost. I think that I may have been hooked right from the pilot episode. It always has seemed more like a movie-watching experience than a television show. It is just leaps and bounds more entertaining than anything I have ever watched on TV. Also, the way the producers and writers love the fan's input and participation in the show is really awesome too.
2) On Wednesday mornings, I am usually spending half my morning on DarkUFO's website (my Weekly Website review). Not to mention all the rest of the days of the week. I also enjoy Jorge Garcia's blog and his podcasts (my WW review of both). Love Damon and Carlton's podcasts too. Of course, yours too Chris!!
3) I honestly do not have a clue. He was so absent from last season, that I was beginning to think he was not as "special" as I always hoped him to be. I am very excited and anxious to see how he fits back into the realm of things!! I'll be curious to read some of the other answers to this question.
4) Hmmm....maybe Michael. Him and Sun seemed to have a little chemistry when they first started communicating together.
1) I have to say it was the number of "white moments" in Season 1 - those powerhouse happy and/or cathartic moments that uplifted the viewers beyond watching LOST and into experiencing LOST. Yes, the mysteries were there, but they were linked to these glory moments where (with a little help from the actors and Michael Giacchino) your soul soared. One of the earliest and most renowned of these was the revelation of Locke's having been wheel-chair bound prior to the crash in 1.04 (Walkabout). Yes, the mystery of how he'd been healed induced goosebumps, but the sheer power of watching Terry O'Quinn smile at the wheelchair beside the fuselage pyre as the music swelled took these goosebumps and turned them into joy. The characters got moment after moment like this through Season 1 - wrought with both high tragedy and high catharsis, and still every now and again they occur. The power of Ben's recent "white moment" in Dr. Linus has made it one of the episode most popular of the Season thus far, and for me how highly Season 6 ranks in amongst the best episodes of the series, will depend on how well LOST executes these moments as it moves into it's endgame. Keep in mind, I'm not saying things need to be HAPPY - they just need to be full of REDEMPTION, PAY-OFF, and RESOLUTION. Season 1 did this again and again, and THAT's the reason I love LOST.
2) nikkistafford.blogspot.com (WW) - best insightful recaps, most intelligent discussion community - darkufo.blogspot.com (WW) - best collection of LOST news, but beware of spoilers! The strong of will can avoid them easily there! www.lostpedia.com - best source of encyclopedic LOST info. Period. Want to know anything? Go there. sagaciouspenguin.blogspot.com - yes, I love my own site. A healthy ego is a requirement of all who spend their time blogging! Plus, writing my analyses and breaking the mysteries down into as few questions as possible helps me keep LOST as simple as possible in my head!
3) Desmond IS the package from what I gather, and judging from the fact that Widmore needs both Desmond and the locations of the Island's pockets of electromagnetism to move his scheme forward, I'd say he's fixing to do some time-travel craziness to repair whatever damage was caused to the Island by Desmond's turn of the failsafe key in the Season 2 finale: Meaning the cork is leaky and needs the guy-who-can-break-all-the-rules to repair it. The Constant? Without Penny, Des wouldn't have the strength it'll take to make whatever tough choices are ahead to repair the Island and space/time. The Variable? Faraday says people's ability to induce unexpected change is the ultimate Variable that can thwart the "Whatever Happened, Happened" agenda of fate -- on the show, this has seemingly taken the form of the Altered Universe: the consequence of Jack leading his troops to change the future. In the final showdown, I'm guessing our heroes may just have to sacrifice both themselves and the Island to save space/time from imploding via the Island's stores of Electromagnetic energy. If this happens, maybe the Altered Universe is the loophole that will allow them to live despite their sacrifice. Either that, or the Original Timeline (what was Constant) will have to be destroyed to allow the Altered Timeline (the Variable) to live on -- the universe's way of "course-correcting" the results of The Incident.
4) Alt Jae Lee!
1) Two big season 1 things got me hooked on the show: the numbers and the hatch. I just had to know what the deal with these things were. It was interesting to see the numbers show up in so many random ways in each episode. The whole plot with the hatch was awesome. I had to know what that thing was and what was down there.
I also found it cool during the early seasons of the show how there was so much of a viral aspect to the show's marketing. I remember how big of a deal the Oceanic Web site was and that you could click on the character's seats and find cool Easter eggs. I also remember how each new thing mentioned on the show would soon be a Web site. Hurley works at Mr. Clucks ... check out Mr. Clucks Web site for more Easter eggs. This is a fun side note about Lost that people who came to it late or who only watched the DVDs later never got to experience.
2) As I mentioned in the previous response, I enjoyed the early viral Web sites that were created to promote the show and everything in it. Now I pretty much stick to blogs and sites that talk about Lost. My favorites are Doc Jensen/EW's Totally Lost, DarkUFO, LongLiveLocke, Lostpedia, Zap2It's Guide to Lost, Lost Media & Get Lost Podcast (for screen captures), etc. I've also enjoyed Jorge Garcia's Geronimo Jack's Beard podcasts, but I'm a few episodes behind.
3) I'm not sure how or why Desmond is the key to Lost, but I just know he is. As Faraday said, he's uniquely special and the rules don't apply to him. Is he a candidate? I don't think so, but he is likely the key to ultimately stopping Man in Black.
4) It might be the simple answer, but I think Jin's the father. I don't think we're in for a big swerve here. I think the swerve already happened with then not being married and Sun getting shot. I guess in sideways world, Jin is fertile and they don't have the same issues they had in their pre-815 life.
1) I've been hooked ever since Jack opened his eye. But the aspect that made me dig deeper into LOST was the connections between characters. We first got a glimpse of it when Sawyer is dragged away in the police station as Boone is talking to the cop in Australia (Heart and Minds). It showed us that these incredible and mysterious things weren't just happening to just any random group of people. And it made me need to know the "whys" behind it...and still does.
2) Oh, there are so many fantastic Lost sites out there (and thank you to all of you who take the time to put them together for us fans). Some that I frequent often are DarkUFO, Lostpedia, The Lost Podcasting Network, Lost.about.com (Bonnie Covel's site), Karen's Lost Notebook, Capcom's Lost blog, Dispatches From the Island, Lost Tidbits, Not Confused Just Lost... and of course, Stream of Consciousness. :)
3) I wrote on my blog that Desmond being referred to as "the package" might be why he is special and can withstand the electromagnetism. There is something called a "physics package" which is essentially the core of a nuclear bomb. Daniel also reiterated that for the bad things to stop "something like a nuclear bomb" would have to be set off (Happily Ever After). I'm thinking what if that is what Desmond is like? Will he "explode"? Probably not in the traditional sense.. (although, it's LOST, you never know..lol). But whatever Desmond can do has a similar reaction. This is what makes him "uniquely and miraculously special". And his "sacrifice" will be a lot like Dogen's was: Give your life to the "work" of the Island that your loved ones will live on, though you will never be with them. I think that the constants are love and hate. Love is what helped people to "see" and "feel" what was missing. Hate is what moved MIB and Claire out of their inactive state (MIB and crazy mother, Claire going after those who took Aaron). These constants showed each group their "purpose". The variables are people, just like before in 77, and their ability to choose which will be their "constant'. Their final choice of constant determines their "side" in the war.
4) I think that Jin is the father, just like Christian Shephard is still Claire father (or we can at least, assume he is).
1) The characters, and specifically their backstory and connections. The two main touchstones of this are when it was revealed that Locke was in a wheelchair before the crash (perhaps an over-used answer, but that just shows how powerful that scene was to us all), and also as Ms Wendy says, when Sawyer is getting dragged around in the Cop shop during Boone's episode, these connections and crossovers also brought me under Lost's sway.
As a comic book fan, I find it frustrating that so few other medias utilise the backstory and crossover stuff as well as comic books do. Fair enough, comic books sometimes overplay these angles (my favourite comic book is The Walking Dead which specifically goes out of its way not to delve into backstories or crossovers) but it is very rare that a movie, TV show, book or computer game can carry out a good backstory or character crossover well. Memento did, as did Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and these three films are rightly regarded as some of the best in the world. In addition to that, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction both have character crossovers in the form of the Vega brothers, which has led to many a fan theory filling in the little bits of information not covered in the main films, and also a failed prequel attempt at telling these characters backstories.
As with these three examples, Lost is a rare breed. It has managed to telling backstories and show crossovers in a way that always genuinely excites their fans. Look at Season 6 - I'm sure few people truly cared about George Minkowski before "Happily Ever After", yet many of them probably still felt a buzz of real excitement at seeing him drive Desmond around.
2) Well, there's a ton. In addition to the Lost Blogging Collective (and my favourites there, if I had to choose, would be Sagacious Penguin's "Stuff And Nonsense", Fishbiscuitland (WW) and Not Confused Just Lost (WW)), there's also Long Live Locke, Jopinionated and Doc Jensen's Entertainment Weekly articles are always good for an informative, madcap and completely off-base read. They might not always enhance your understanding of Lost, but they certainly educate you in the way of cross-pop culture references, ideas and templates. I guess that would be loosely my top 6 of the moment, but it changes week-by-week - sometimes Vozzek will blow me away with a recap, other weeks I can seem to get away from Room 23 (WW), it just varies between about 30+ different sites. Check out my random Round-Ups for a more in-depth look at what I like to read. A final mention must go to Never Seen Lost (WW) - a blog about one man's journey through Season 6, having never seen any of Seasons 1 - 5! It makes for some pretty interesting, funny and crazy reading.
3) Desmond will be the glue of the group, or the dynamite. My initial thoughts were that he would either be forced into, or willingly undertake, a sacrifice in the manner of Charlie - his death for the life of the world. But now, having had time to think about things, I think it will be more complex than that. If Jacob and Esau/Smokey are the black and white of the Lost world, with everyone choosing sides between the two, then Desmond is the gray - the man who will blend together both black, white and everything inbetween - he will join together everyone into one big group, and together they will tackle whatever the big problem will be. Perhaps even Smokey will sacrifice himself to save the world, who knows - but my betting is, once Desmond gets to everyone (in the manner of Jacob's "touches"), they will all unite under one big, gray banner. That's my theory anyway.
4) Alt Michael? I always thought the love triangle storyline ended too quickly in the original flavour timeline, so the geek in me would love to see Alt Michael as the Alt Father. But the realist in me is bending towards Jae Lee or Jin, probably the latter for simplicity's sake.
