TVGuide.com reports that Ken Leung will guest-star on an upcoming episode of CBS’ The Good Wife:

Leung, 41, will play a man who sues a social networking site for failing to protect his privacy. After he posts an anonymous blog about democracy in China, the government then jails and tortures him. Leung’s character is represented by Lockhart, Gardner and Bond.

This episode is scheduled to air Tuesday, March 1 at 10/9c on CBS.

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(Click to enlarge)

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Pre-order now: Lost: The Complete Fifth Season (DVD) | Lost: The Complete Fifth Season [Blu-ray] | Lost: The Complete Fifth Season Dharma Initiation Kit | Lost: The Complete Fifth Season Dharma Initiative Orientation Kit [Blu-ray].

[Courtesy of Buena Vista Home Entertainment. ©ABC Studios.]

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Karen and Andreas discuss Episode 5.13 – “Some Like It Hoth”:

[audio:http://blip.tv/file/get/Campetin-Episode513SomeLikeItHoth746.mp3]

We apologize for the delay!

Click here to download this Podcast.

Subscribe on iTunes.

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[Via Sky.com/Lost]

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[Via Sky.com/Lost]

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I’m wondering if Adult Miles will meet with Baby Miles and that will somehow relate to why he’s “special.”  I’m pretty sure that Miles is either going to tell Chang/Candle about the Dharma purge or something that will cause him to send Baby Miles and his momma off of the island.

Click here for my initial thoughts and comments.

Don’t forget that this week is a clip show.  The previews make it look interesting.  Guess we’ll see.

1.  Cute, the dead guy hid his key under a white rabbit.  We’ve seen a lot of rabbits in this show.

2. The Circle of Trust.  Was anyone else thinking of Meet the Parents and Robert DeNiro?

3.  I’m frustrated with what they have done with Kate.  She had redeemed herself somewhat and now she’s back to meddling in things.  I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.  When we had a campaign to get rid of Ken and Barbie it worked, hopefully the writers will hear our call to bring back the old Kate too.

4.  For as much as he’s a jerk, Roger caught right on to Kate didn’t he?  Guy may be a drinker but he’s pretty observant. “You want to help Kate?  Why don’t you just mind your own business!”

5.  There were so many good lines and dialog with Miles and Hurley this week.  I was glad that some humor was brought back in.

6.  There’s a lot of dead bodies around food.  We have Alvarez in the van by the sandwiches.  Then there is Felix in the restaurant.  Gross.

7.  Miles was chosen to return to the island not only because of his “ability” but also because he’s Pierre’s son.  Mrs Hawkins knows all about course correction and probably was instrumental in the choice of him being on the freighter.

8.  The more we see of Ben the more I’m not convinced that it’s Wimore versus Ben.  Ben wasn’t chosen by the island, Locke was.  But neither was Widmore.  I’m wondering now if it might be Widmore versus Ellie/Mrs Hawkins.  After all, when Richard agreed to take Ben they asked him if he had discussed with Widmore or Ellie which makes me think she was pretty powerful on the island.  Why isn’t she there anymore?

9. Coincidence that the kids on the island are learning about ancient Egypt?  And how many kids are there anyway?  We haven’t really seen that many.  Perhaps the education is, in Juliet’s words, Others 101.  Also interesting is the alien drawing hung above the chalkboard.

10.  Looks like Bram knows how to get back and forth to the island and is working on the same “team” as Ilana.

11.  It sure does look like Pierre cares about Miles as a baby.  And ironically, he’s reading him a book about polar bears.  Unlike Luke, maybe Miles will communicate with his dad so he doesn’t lose his hand.

Gitsiegirl.com

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Previously, on Lost: I have no idea what happened previously, because Christian Shephard’s voice didn’t come on and say those magical words to introduce the previous clips. So let’s see if I can remember everything that went down! Previously, our tempus fugitives, with the help of the Sayid 4000™, escaped the clutches of the evil Kelvin, who you may recall was resurrected from the dead by the ghost of Naomi using a formula developed at the Arrow station to form an undead army and was sent back in time to find the sub, get off the Island and kill John Locke while he was still a child. Whew. Now on Hydra Island, Jack and Kate have reconciled and asked Sawyer to wed them using his powers as a constable in the Dharma Initiative. During the ceremony, the castaways were ambushed by bionic polar bears, led by a team of robotic animal wranglers that had held up in the Hydra station after a particularly nasty rabies outbreak. Kate managed to give them all the slip, and using her master tracking skills, circled around and took the lead wrangler hostage using only a soup spoon. Jack cried, and basically didn’t say anything completely stupid for a full hour. The last episode ended with a 15-minute-long segment where Juliet first baked bread, then worked on a gunmetal grey 1965 Pontiac GTO in a pony tail and tank top.

I think that about catches us up.

This week, on Lost: There comes a time in every season of Lost when there’s sort of a filler episode. This be that episode. There are probably many of you out there who will disagree with me, and that’s fine. So you like Miles and think it’s cool he got a backstory. Yeah, sure, it’s cool. But did we really learn anything we hadn’t already figured out at the beginning of the season? Here’s my recap of the episode in three minutes or less:

Miles hears dead people. Oh, and Pierre Chang/Marvin Candle/Edgar Halliwax is his dad. His dad won the bowling championship against Gary Brooks over on CBS last week, in case you missed it.

Awwww, Dr. Chang reads to a young Miles. Did you see that the book is a story about a polar bear? That tickles me

Hurley is funny. Oh, and he’s also writing The Empire Strikes Back, with a couple improvements, to save Lucas the trouble. Hurley advises Miles about talking to his father: “In Empire, Luke found out Vader was his father, but instead of putting away his lightsaber and talking about it, he overreacted and got his hand cut off. I mean, they worked it out eventually, but at what cost? Another Death Star was destroyed, Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc and we got the Ewoks. It all could’ve been avoided if they’d just, you know, communicated. And let’s face it. The Ewoks sucked, dude.”

Hurley writes about Chewbacca shaking his “fury fist in the sky” in his Dharma-branded composition book. Those Dharma folk were geniuses at branding.

Kate makes another mistake that could cost lives.

“So, yeah Roger … I wouldn’t worry about Ben, he’s probably just out doing what boys do – you know, playing around in the basement of a Temple or something. I mean, not that I know anything and stuff.”

The Swan is under construction. And apparently, electromagnetic bursts are periodically driving metal tooth fillings up through workers’ heads, killing them instantly.

“Hey, Al, could you hurry it up with the serial numbers on that hatch plate? I’m late for my concert with AC/DC.”

Juliet continues to be awesome and stunning and stuff.

I like my coffee tall, with a touch of sugar and a lot of blonde.

Daniel Faraday returns to the Island. And he looks like he’s got a lot of stuff figured out, as evidenced by the shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

“Hey, Miles. Long time no see.” Cue the thonk!

And … yup, that just about covers it.

Although this episode was funny, and fairly solid, it felt a bit out of place within the context of the Lost realm. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the pacing, story and overall atmosphere was just … off. And why, after all this time, are we finally getting to know Miles? I’m assuming it’s because his “ability” is going to come into play somewhere down the road, but if not, this was a total waste of time, in my opinion. I feel for his character, I do, but this episode didn’t really make me want to care about him much more than when I first saw him step into the jungle with Charlotte and Daniel. I guess he suffers a bit from “Tailie” syndrome – since he hasn’t been around since the beginning, he just doesn’t seem to be fully stuck in the thick of things. It’s interesting to note that two of the show’s strongest characters could have suffered the same fate, but were saved by good writing and fantastic acting – I’m speaking, of course, about Juliet and Desmond.

IT ALL ADDS UP
Speaking of Desmond, did you all catch the title of the next full episode – the 100th episode, by the way? It’s called “The Variable.” Now, I’m assuming from the previews that it centers around Dan being back and all hell breaking loose when Radzinsky and some Dharma punks with big rifles go on a manhunt, but the title has my wheels turning. During one of the time jumps at the beginning of the season, Dan stops by the Swan to give Desmond a message – to go find his mum and tell her what’s going on. Dan justifies this by stating that Desmond “is uniquely and miraculously special” and that the usual temporal laws aren’t always applicable to Des. When Desmond’s mind came unstuck in “The Constant,” Dan was able to guide him back by telling him that he needed a constant source – something that was the same in every time period in which Des was jumping about. He called this, of course, the Constant.

Now, in any equation where there is a constant, there must also be a variable – something that is representative of the unknown factor, often the factor that is trying to be solved. This variable is just as it sounds – something that can change and represent many things, depending the terms of the equation. In many ways during Lost, and in many of the things Dan has said, Desmond fits the full definition of a Variable in context with the temporal happenings on the Island. Of course, I didn’t see Desmond anywhere in those previews, but they don’t always show everything. Whether “The Variable” really has anything to do with Des or not remains to be seen in a couple of weeks. Personally, I hope to hell Desmond is back. I’ve missed him.

BACK TO SCHOOL
Did you all notice that most of the easter egg fun in this week’s episode occurred in the class room? No, really, I’ll show you, come along.

Here we see Jack in between smoke breaks, cleaning the kids’ classroom. Can you all see what’s up on the board, there? Look closely, some of the symbols might look familiar. Let’s get closer.

Yup, the little Dharma kiddies are studying the evolution of written Egyptian language – hieroglyphs. Pretty cool, huh?

I’m pretty sure that poster behind Roger’s head says “DHARMA science is FAR OUT.” This, too, tickles me.

OKAY, I WAS WRONG, IT HAPPENS
So, back in 2004, before Miles hopped on the Kahana with Keamy and his band of psychos, he was rushed into a van by some mask-wielding mystery men in the company of a dude named Bram. We were introduced to Bram last week, as he was one of the other Others that followed Ilana and were protecting the big silver box du Pandora. In the van, Bram tells Miles that he should not return to the Island, because he’s not ready. He confirms this by asking Miles “what lies in the shadow of the statue?” just as Ilana did last week to Lapidus. We also learn that Bram is not in league with Widmore, as per my speculation in last week’s analysis. Okay, so I was wrong. I still have the Novikov self-consistency principle, the judgment of Ol’ Smokey, ley lines and a whole slew of other things from seasons past. I’m still batting above average.

So, if Bram, Ilana and Co. are not with Widmore, who are they with? Obviously, they’re with the Island. Are they from another group of Others who were previously on the Island? Are they the spared sons and daughters of Dharma Initiative folks that were gassed? I assumed that they might be the cult of Widmore, as he returned to the mainland, amassed a fortune and has been trying to get back to/protect the Island ever since. Could they possibly be another sect of the Others, secretly formed by Richard as a failsafe in case of possible catastrophe or war? It’s clear that there is a war brewing, and we’ll start to see the sides shake out before too long. There will be a battle for the Island, the classic showdown between dark and light. Right now, everyone except Locke seems to be looking fairly dusky, in my opinion.

Oh, and another thing – it’s interesting that Ilana and co. are using a code phrase to differentiate between the enlightened and those who aren’t in on the cosmic secret of the Island. We saw that same thing with Desmond in the Swan when we first met him. As I joked last week, he asked Locke “What did one snowman say to another snowman?” Admittedly, that little phrase isn’t quite as deep and foreboding as that which asks of the statue, but they are code phrases with a correct response. The most common groups to use such a phrase are intelligence organizations, including military intelligence and covert branches of the government, such as the CIA. Before being recruited by Dharma, Kelvin seemed to hold an intelligence role with the US miitary, and he later uses the code phrase when Desmond arrives on the Island. Was this a phrase that was put into use by some of the military personnel recruited by Dharma? Does this necessarily mean that Ilana and co. could be a military faction of some sort? Of course not, but it’s something to consider. More than likely, the code phrasing is something attributed more to the Dharma Initiative than anything else, so this might point to Ilana and her group as being remnants of the original initiative.

At any rate, the answer to the current code phrase seems to be preoccupying many a Lost fan’s brain. My friend Rebecca and I, in a recent Twitter session, seemed to think we’ve pretty much figured it out, though:

Rebecca: Do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?
Me: Probably a Starbucks, if I had to go out on a limb.

Well, that’s it for this week, friends. It was a good, low-key week, which I desperately needed. Next week’s episode is a special recap show, which I may or may not watch, and may or may not write anything about in the feature. Whereas during the past gap in episodes this season, I took the time to cover some issues with the statue, etc. in “A Little Intermezzo,” I haven’t committed to the idea of another interim feature for next week. If any of you have any revelations or questions before then and that seems like worthy topics for discussion, I’ll gladly put together a feature just for those. So, in the meantime, get those great wheels a-turning, and if you have an epiphany, tell me something good.

Namaste.

- Chris Kirkman

Visit hobotrashcan.com to see Chris’ weekly LOST drink recipe!

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[Via EW.com]

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I just came across with this interesting article from Popular Mechanics, it’s a great read:

We can always count on Hurley to bring into question exactly what we’re thinking. In last night’s episode, of Lost, “Whatever Happened, Happened,” he came through once again when he asked what should be a simple question: Does Ben (2004) remember being shot by Sayid back in 1977? Clearly, the chronology of time on the island is as perplexing to the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 as it is to us.

A few weeks ago, we addressed the issue of paradox in time travel. (A quick refresher: A time traveler goes back into the past and kills his grandfather before his mother is conceived, which negates his own birth. In that case, he would never travel back in time in the first place. So his grandfather wouldn’t be killed at his hand and the time traveler would be born—and could potentially travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Therein lies the paradox.) According to Novikov’s Self-Consistency principle, there is zero probability of a time traveler doing something that would change the future; therefore, the universe will keep time travelers from altering the past to change the future.

And that’s exactly what trips us—and Hurley—up. Miles (channeling Faraday, who has mysteriously disappeared) explains that everything that has happened has already happened at sometime, “we [just] never experienced how it all turns out.” This jibes completely with what we’ve been told by other characters on the show (“Time is like a string. You can move forward, and you can move in reverse, but you can’t create a new string,” Faraday explained in the season five premiere ). But if everything that’s happened has already happened, then what about the concept of free will?

Last time PM spoke with Richard A. Muller, author of Physics for Presidents and a professor at UC Berkeley, we asked him about free will because, frankly, we like to believe the castaways are at least somewhat in control of their actions. “Relativity messes with your idea of time,” Muller told us. “What it means to me is that time is not a single line, but [instead] has a bunch of loops in it. And things in the future in some sense have already happened. There are limits, but not everything has already happened.”

Muller uses Michael’s inability to commit suicide following his return to the mainland as an example: If we already know that Michael is going to end up on the freighter that enables the Oceanic Six to leave the island, then Michael can’t commit suicide. He can try firing the gun, or crashing the car, but it’s not going to work. “They call it the ‘power of the island,’ but that’s just a metaphor for things that have already happened somewhere on this complicated line of space-time,” Muller says. “You can’t stop them from happening. It’s that aspect of destiny that’s beyond the reach of free will.”

So even with all that, we still don’t know the answer to Hurley’s question: Does Ben remember being shot by Sayid? In theory, he should. His life exists on a line; it’s where life and space intersect that is changing. For example, even though Jack is in the 1970s when he decides not to operate on young Ben Linus, it’s not him as a child that’s making this decision—he still has all the memories of growing up. And for Ben, getting shot by Sayid will just be another childhood memory, so he should remember it…right? But the creators may have sidestepped that problem. Whatever mysterious process young Ben must go through in the temple to be healed, according to Alpert, will leave him with no memory of the incident that nearly killed him—not to mention rob him of his innocence and turn him into an Other. —Erin Scottberg

Click here to read more LOST-related articles at PopularMechanics.com.

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Previously, on Lost: Sawyer. Cassidy. Baby. Con. Kate. Copter. Whisper. SPLASH! Kidnap. Lawyer. Carole. Island. Past. Ben. Sayid. Van. CRASH! Escape. Jungle. Run. Jin? WHACK! BLAM! Thud. Thonk!

This week on Lost: Okay, this week it’s time for me to be fast and furious (in theaters today!), so bear with me. Let’s roll!

After Kate gets off the Island, she goes to see Cassidy – Sawyer’s ex and mother of his daughter, Clementine – and spills the beans. Cassidy calls Sawyer a son of a bitch and a coward for jumping off the chopper. Kate hands Cassidy money, but she doesn’t want it since it’s dirty blood money from the Oceanic settlement.

Later, later, like 2007 later, Kate leaves the docks where Sun has Ben at gunpoint and decides, despite the shock of potential gunfire around her “son,” that it’s okay to stop off at the local supermart for some chocolate milk. Aaron doesn’t want chocolate milk, dammit, he wants a juice box. So, somewhere between aisle three and aisle five, Kate loses Aaron. That kid is damn slippery. Anyone else have a problem with this scenario? Did your mom ever lose you in the grocery store as a child? Hell no, when you were Aaron’s age, your mom got a shopping cart even if she was going in there just to pick up panty hose and you were in the cart, standing up at the front, playing King of the World like Leonardo fucking DiCaprio. You know it’s true. Anyways, she gets all frantic and sees someone who looks a lot like Claire walking toward the exit with Aaron. She grabs him and holds him close. Next time, use a cart Kate. Moms everywhere agree.

A little later, like when it’s time to go back to the Island later, Kate visits Carole Littleton and tells her the truth about little Aaron. She’s a bit shocked, understandably. Kate tells Carole that she is going back to the Island to find Claire (really? Really Kate? Like, seriously?) and that Aaron is two doors down. Kate then goes off to tell the little dude goodbye and she boo hoos quite a bit and, for a second, my heart actually melts for Kate.

Damn you for making me care!

Hey, alright, back on the Island in good old 1977 now! Baby Ben’s been shot! Sayid’s run off! Jin’s unconscious! Dogs and cats … living together … mass hysteria!

Jin wakes up and finds that baby Ben has suffered the first of many beatdowns he will receive in life. Ben is still alive – yep, we all figured as much – so Jin scoops him up and loads him into the Dharmamobile.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the price of tea in China, I just thought it was a cool shot.

Back at Dharmaville, Horace has cooked up this crazy theory that someone in Dharma must’ve helped Sayid escape. While he and Sawyer (as LeFleur) are checking out the cell and security cameras, everyone else is on clean-up duty, straightening up the place after a flaming Dharmamobile took out a bungalow. Roger Linus asks for the wench’s help with … oh, hahahah, wait, he asked for Kate’s help with the winch, my bad, and I can swear that Kate makes flirty freckle face with him. Ew, Kate. Just ew. In the middle of flirty freckle face action, Jin drives up and drags out a bloodied boyhood Ben. To the infirmary!

Kate visits Sawyer down at the Dharma jail, looking for answers to what happened to boy Ben. Horace shows up and they have to play it cool, so Kate can get out while the getting’s good. Horace finds some keys in the jail cell lock and says that only three people have keys like that, two of them being Roger Linus and new guy, Jack. Sawyer orders Miles to go watch over Jack, Kate and Hurley, and make sure they don’t leave their bungalow until he can straighten up the town.

In the infirmary, lovely Juliet tries desperately to save boy Ben’s life, but the tween has lost a lot of blood and it’s not looking good. If only there was a trained surgeon on the Island! Wait, there is? Oh yeah, Jack! Somebody get Jack! Oh good, Sawyer’s gonna get Jack. Surely he’ll help.

“hufffff … No way, man … like, that requires me getting up, and, like, caring and stuff. Besides, Horace has, like, some amazing shit growing back over near the Arrow. It’s totally premo. Oh, hey, could you, like, throw me the Dharma chips on your way out? Righteous.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the bungalow, Hurley is channeling his inner Marty McFly, and I’m having a little deja vù of my own.

Hurley, waiting to see if his hand would disappear a la Marty’s picture in Back to the Future, just like I mentioned in last week’s analysis. Oh, he’s talking about mutable timeline theory, just for the record.

Hurley and Miles then get in a heavy discussion about the implications and repercussions of mucking about in the past. If anyone would like a more detailed recap of what and all was discussed during their temporal pow wow, feel free to look back at my analyses of the entire last two seasons. It’s pretty much all right there, in black and white.

Back to Jack, Kate tells him that she can’t believe he won’t help and that she doesn’t like the new him. Jack just does a little head bob thing, does two snaps in the air and tells her that she didn’t like the old him, either. Oh no, he didn’t! You just been served, bitch. Kate decides she’s had enough and leaves to go help Juliet in the infirmary, despite the protests of Miles.

Back in the infirmary, little Ben isn’t looking so hot. Kate shows up and offers her blood to help Ben, since she’s a universal donor. That’d be type O negative for all you completists out there.

“Now, Kate, you just lie back for a couple of hours. He’s lost a lot of blood, so I figure we’ll need about 4 or 5 liters …”*

While Kate is waiting to get her “I Donated Blood” sticker and the free cookie, Roger comes in and there comes flirty freckle face, again. What does she have for Uncle Rico, anyway? Roger takes a seat and laments that he wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest father, and that Ben took his keys to let Sayid out.

Back at the Oceanic bungalow, Miles continues to try and get Hurley to understand the laws of time travel, and it makes me kind of glad that I just get to write about this complicated crap without someone going “but … but … but …” the whole time.

“Aha! But, dude, that guy on HoboTrashcan.com said that we’re, like, all connected by temperamental string and stuff and that there’s a chance one of us could leap back in time into a woman’s body to set right what went wrong … or something like that. Let’s just see if Jack has any more of that stuff around here.”

After Kate gives a little less than the four liters that Juliet needs, Juliet informs Kate that little Ben isn’t going to make it without some help. She suggest that the Others might be able to do something. The Others! What a stellar idea! So, Juliet helps Kate get little Ben into a Dharmamobile, and off Kate goes, to the sonic fence. It’s not long before Sawyer catches up to her, though. Figuring that he’s come to stop her from giving Ben over to the Others, she plants her feet and gets all Miss Tuffpants. Sawyer tells her that he’s not there to stop her, though, he’s there to help … BUT, he’s there because Juliet asked him to be there, not because Kate might need his help. Sawyer loves Juliet! Oh, there is justice on the Island, after all.

Sawyer deactivates the sonic fence, drags little Ben out of the van and he and Kate set off into the jungle of mystery, looking for the Hostile’s M.A.S.H.

Meanwhile, back in Dharmaville, Juliet is tearing into the Oceanic bungalow and she is pissed. Good god, it’s hot. She tells Hurley and Miles to take their temporal wanking elsewhere and rushes them out the door, before storming into the bathroom to catch Jack … in a towel? Oh, c’mon! Juliet closes the door and lets it all spill out. She demands to know why Jack wouldn’t help her or Ben, and why he’s come back to the Island, after all. Jack thinks for a minute and simply says that he knows he was supposed to come back to the Island, but he doesn’t know why just yet. Careful there, Jack … you’re starting to sound like Locke. FINALLY.

“What? Help? Yeah, like, sorry but I just had take a shower, man … there were, like, spiders and shit on me.”

Back in the jungle of mystery, Kate and Sawyer are carrying Ben deeper and deeper into Hostile territory. Since Kate is there, it’s not long before they find themselves at gunpoint, and Sawyer demands to see Richard Alpert. Kate and Sawyer are escorted further into the jungle until Richard appears. Richard recognizes Sawyer, but doesn’t register Kate. It’s okay, though, says Sawyer, she’s with him. Sawyer tells Richard that they have come for his help because the boy has been shot. Richard asks if the boy is Benjamin Linus and Sawyer raises an eyebrow, wondering if the two have met before. At any rate, Richard agrees to help Ben, but if he does, Ben will never be the same. He will be changed, losing his innocence and forever becoming one of Them. Oh, and he won’t remember any of this, or how R2 saved the Republic again, or even master Obi-Wan.

Richard takes Ben in his arms, and one of the Others tells him that Ellie and Charles won’t be too pleased. Well, well, Mrs. Hawking and Mr. Widmore do end up together as speculated. Anywho, Richard says that they’re not the boss of him and he takes off with Ben through the jungle. He comes out into a clearing and there’s the Temple, in all its styrofoam glory. Richard walks up to the Temple wall, flips a magic switch that opens a stone door, and carries little Benjamin Linus off to meet his pod, and his destiny.

Cue the … WAITAMINUTE.

Back on the Island in current time (well, show current time, you know what I mean), we see big Ben curled up inside the Hydra station, sleeping peacefully after having been conked on the head for the 81st time. The camera pans up to reveal a figure beside the cot, looking down on Ben. It’s Locke, who, when Ben opens his eyes, grins that wonderful mischievous grin and welcomes Ben back to the land of the living.

You just can’t keep a good man down. Hey, buddy. We’ve missed you.

And NOW … cue the thonk!

This was a nice, solid episode. Not a lot of totally mind-blowing moments, but a good time, overall. Surprisingly, despite the humorous lesson in temporal mechanics given by Miles, there’s not really a whole lot of time theory to rehash in the analysis. As any of you who have read the column for awhile now know, pretty much everything they’ve said has come up at one point or another. Anyone new to the party who needs a temporal fix should just go back and re-read my analyses for this season. Oh, hush, you’ll like it.

Well, despite no new temporal shenanigans, there are definitely a couple of things that came into sharper focus after that episode. Most importantly, more of the structure and operations of the Others were revealed, as well as how the Temple and Cerberus play a role. Let’s take a trip down the Other rabbit hole now and see what we’ve got, so far.

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING
Ah, Ol’ Smokey, old buddy. Cerberus doesn’t even appear in this episode and yet his amorphous mark is all over it. As soon as Richard took Ben into the Temple to be “fixed,” I immediately started thinking back to the cerberus vent and how Ol’ Smokey dragged Montand – a member of Rousseau’s science team – kicking and screaming into the Temple. His friends had no recourse but to follow, and a couple of months later we find that they’ve all been converted into pod people that Danielle has no choice but to gun down. Cerberus has been referred to as a “security system” for the Island, and that would be one hell of a security system – if you have a problem with a bunch of people on the Island, get Ol’ Smokey to grab a few of them, drag them through a cerberus vent and into the Temple, where they attend Orientation on how to be a full member of the Others. Once they come out of the Temple, they’re fully on the Other train, ready to do just about anything to protect the Island. They are, as Richard puts it, forever changed.

“Oh, hey, look … he’s got that damned blast door map out, again.” I do, indeed! It’s my favorite show prop of all time. Anyway, on this map there are certain locations with markings such as CVII and CVIII – as we’ve covered before, those stand for Cerberus Vents. There’s a pretty important one at the Temple, and one that we’ve all seen with our own eyes not too far from the Swan. What’s that vent? We’ll take a look at that in a second.

Now, within the context of that set of principles which might govern Cerberus, we can go back and cross-reference that with encounters that our main players have had with Ol’ Smokey to try and get a clearer picture. Let’s start with Locke, and the Cerberus Vent I mentioned above.

Waaay back in season one, in “Walkabout,” Locke encounters Ol’ Smokey for the first time in the jungle. We don’t get to see Cerberus just then, but we see Locke from its perspective, as it looms over him. Later, he recalls that he had looked into the eye of the Island, and what he saw was beautiful. We know now that Ol’ Smokey was analyzing Locke, looking for something that it could take back and, possibly receive orders in regards to.

Locke’s first encounter with the “eye of the Island.” Yup, it’s a pissed off giraffe.

Locke encounters Cerberus a second time during season one, only this time Ol’ Smokey doesn’t seem as benign as in his first encounter. As a matter of fact, Cerberus grabs Locke and tries to drag him down a “hole.” This, we now know, is our first encounter with a Cerberus Vent.

Jack, being helpful, back when he wasn’t being quite as much of an asshole.

You always remember your first time. *sigh*

Later, after Jack was able to pull Locke up out of the Cerberus vent, Locke remarked that he didn’t think that the smoke was trying to harm him. That sounded like the ravings of a half-mad man back then, but it makes a ton of sense, now – whatever Cerberus saw in Locke during their first encounter, it knew that the Island needed him and Cerberus would have to get Locke down into one of those hidey holes and then over to the Temple for orientation. I believe that’s what Ol’ Smokey had planned to do, and I think that’s Ol’ Smokey’s true purpose – not to be the weapon of the Island, but to take the future protectors over to the processing center to be weaponized. Cerberus is but one being, seemingly, but an army of loyal and expendable soldiers is many.

Further proof for this comes from Cerberus’s encounter with Mr. Eko in season two and season three. During their first encounter, Cerberus “scans” Eko, much like it did with Locke, and we see many of Eko’s memories in flashes within the smoke. Later, during “The Cost of Living” in season three, Eko encounters Cerberus again, in the form of his brother, Yemi. Yemi asks Eko to confess and atone for his sins, and Eko tells him that he’s not sorry for anything. This vexes Ol’ Smokey greatly, and later Cerberus grabs him and slams him against the ground and up against a tree, killing him. This shows that Cerberus acts as a conduit for judging those that come to the Island – whether they are worthy of being its servants and protectors or whether they pose a threat. Locke’s love for the Island and his search for purpose made him a perfect candidate for indoctrination, and, indeed, for leadership of the Others. After the Swan was destroyed and Eko lost his way a bit, it was Eko’s unwavering belief that there was nothing wrong with his past actions that put him in dangerous opposition to the constructs of the Island. And, so, he had to die, rather than being sucked down a Cerberus Vent.

A couple of niggling questions remain. The timing and events that occurred with Locke after his attempted kidnapping by Ol’ Smokey in season one are a bit off. After that, Locke never really had another encounter with Cerberus, and his long, strange trip to becoming one of the Others had to be set in motion by Ben, posing as Henry Gale. Second, it seems as though Cerberus is not an autonomous entity, so the question remains: who, ultimately, controls the beast? We saw towards the end of season four that Ben can call upon Cerberus from a secret room in one of the bungalows, but in season three, in “Left Behind,” after Kate and Juliet are chased by Ol’ Smokey and repelled by the sonic fence, Juliet tells Kate that they (the Others) don’t know exactly what Ol’ Smokey is, but it doesn’t like the fences. Was Juliet lying? Or was she intentionally kept in the dark because Ben – and Richard – are probably two of the few to know the truth about everything?

There’s more – lots more – but we should move on.

CHARLES IN CHARGE
So, we learn for certain in this episode, that Charles and “Ellie” are in charge of the Others in 1977. I think it’s safe to assume that the Charles and Ellie referenced are Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking. Are they a couple? Back in my analysis for “The Little Prince,” I postulated that Charles had to eventually leave the Island because his wife was preggers and he wanted to save her. I also figured that Eloise might just well be Charles’ wife – or ex – since they both have history with the Island and are connected. Of course, they could just be co-leaders, no romance involved at all. The important thing to note, however, is that they both seem to share in the leadership of the Others at this point.

Which brings us to an interesting point about the hierarchy of the Others. Why is there a shift in leadership from time to time? And what role, ultimately, do Jacob and Richard Alpert play?

We know, for certain, that Jacob has been around for a long, long time. When Sawyer, Locke and the gang jump back to 1954 in “Jughead,” Locke gets Richard’s attention by telling him that Jacob sent him. That indicates that Jacob has been at the height of the Island infrastructure for at least 50+ years. We know that Richard isn’t fully in charge, as he has often deferred to the wishes and plans of the current leader of the Others, such as Ben. However, he has his own autonomy, of a sort, because in this episode, he doesn’t care about the opinions of the current leaders of the Others – Ellie and Charles. That could be because of his autonomous nature, but it could also be because he no longer agrees with the leadership of Charles and Ellie, and he takes it upon himself to save Ben, indoctrinate him and guarantee he continue to be the right-hand man on the Island. The same goes for Locke – when Ben starts to go rogue, Richard transitions into a guide, of sorts, for Locke, and tells him that he is destined to lead the Others.

As for the direct report to Jacob, it can only be speculated that Charles and Ellie, at some point, became full leaders and counseled with Jacob. In 1954, it appeared that young Charles and Ellie may not have assumed the mantle of leaders just yet. Richard seemed to be in charge of the group when Locke spoke to all of them, but it almost seemed as though he was acting as more of a mentor, or, perhaps, a baby sitter.

As to who may have acted as leader prior to Charles and Ellie is anyone’s guess. Did Magnus Hanso – captain of the Black Rock – once become a member and a possible leader after he was shipwrecked on the Island? Was Richard a member of that crew, or is he even older than that? Who is Jacob? Future Jack/Locke/Ben/ who returned to the past and became Jacob? Or is he somehow an ethereal manifestation of the Island itself? Maybe he’s Ol’ Smokey. I’m hoping that we get to learn more about Jacob and the Others by the time the finale rolls around. If you all have thoughts, send them my way.

WE DON’T EVEN HAVE TO THINK FOURTH-DIMENSIONALLY
So, after all that postulating last week, it came down to the simplest explanation: Young Ben didn’t hit the ground and die after Sayid shot him. Most everyone agreed with me that that would probably be the outcome, and would corroborate that the prevailing temporal theory on Lost, at least for the time being, is static timeline theory. As mentioned, Miles attempts to explain the basics of this theory to the consternation of Hurley, who is just not thinking fourth-dimensionally. Hurley even asks that question that was nagging us from static timeline theory – if it all happened just as it happened, why doesn’t Ben remember anything or anybody? That was a pretty big aha that Miles couldn’t rectify, and, honestly neither could I. We did find out later, however, that nobody remembers what happens to them after they are taken into the Temple and laid down next to one of them pods until their evil pod twin pops out. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, people, try to keep up.

DAMN, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?
Since I am holed up in my secret underground lair for the two days it takes to write this post, I sometimes miss something really cool on the Internets. It’s usually okay, though, because I’ll come around to that way of thinking eventually, and that’s just the way I work. However, sometimes someone sends me a tidbit or an idea that is too cool to ignore and I not only have to see it, I have to share it.

So, you remember the comic book that Richard brings as one of the items for young Locke to choose from in “Cabin Fever,” last season? That one right up there? Yeah, that one. Well, in that comic, there is a short story called “March Has 32 Days.” In that story, set in 1956, a man fails to inspect a bridge, which later collapses. This man, John, wishes that he could go back in time and change the outcome of the bridge collapse. He blacks out and comes to on that same day – March 31. John sets off to inspect the bridge, but is delayed by a friend who tells him that the bridge has been inspected and is fine. John sets off on his errand to take his wife to the airport, just as in the last time he lived through this day, but decides that he needs to check the bridge anyway to prevent the same thing from happening. He reaches the bridge, finds the flaw and prevents the bridge from collapsing, thereby changing the events of the past.

The story obviously correlates to the show and the fan’s constant debate on the mutability of time and the events in the past. I find it fascinating that the story, from a comic no less, could have such parallels with the events on the Island, and it was introduced in the middle of last season. Nice thinking ahead on the parts of the creative team.

Oh, and another fun tidbit? This episode was broadcast on April 1st. That’s March 32nd. Pretty cool, huh?

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. As usual, I had a hundred more things running through my brain, but the time has come to put this analysis to bed. I wanted to get a full transcript of Miles and Hurley’s time theory conversation on here for all of you, but I didn’t have the time, and there is no transcript yet written for this episode. Maybe I’ll pull it and post it here next week. I’d be interested in reading over it. I thought it was hilarious. Oh, and plagiaristic, of course. All I’m asking is for a creative credit, guys. Is that so wrong?

I jest. Until next time, keep thinking those good thoughts, and if you have an epiphany, tell me something good.

Namaste.

*That’s a little medical humor, there. Y’see, the body only holds about four to six liters of blood, and … well, you get it. Wow, that joke was way up there … you’d better go look at it again. I’ll bet you even forgot about the asterisk, didn’t you? For shame.

- Chris Kirkman

Visit hobotrashcan.com to see Chris’ weekly LOST drink recipe!

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3. “LaFleur” Recap & Analysis by Chris Kirkman

Karen and Andreas discuss episode 5.11 – “Whatever Happened, Happened”:

[audio:http://blip.tv/file/get/Campetin-Episode511WhateverHappenedHappened555.mp3]

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Related posts:

1. SL-LOST Podcast – “LaFleur”
2. SL-LOST Podcast – 5.05 “This Place Is Death”

[Via ABC.com]

Related posts:

1. The Official LOST Video Podcast (03/19/09)
2. The Official LOST Video Podcast – 02/19/2009
3. Episode 5×03 “Jughead” – Official ABC Video Podcast

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1. Episode 5.03 “Jughead” – Two New Sneak Peeks!
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Source: Watch with Kristin

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Thanks to Jack and Cynthia for the heads up!

In this interview with “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, we look back on some of the behind-the-scenes decisions for season four, why some fans may be troubled by season five’s emphasis on time travel, and why the worst episode in “Lost” history was also the most important episode in “Lost” history (from a production standpoint, anyway).

What material did you have to leave out because of the strike that you won’t be able to get back to?

I don’t think that there’s anything that just got basically junked. There’s stuff that got truncated, so you’re getting the Cliff’s Notes version of the story. Whereas there might have been an entire episode that was Charlotte’s flashbacks if there hadn’t been a strike, now you get the story but not the flashbacks. I think the complete jettisoning of a story plan would take the whole Jenga tower down. We have to do all that stuff to get to where we’re going. Nothing was so expendable that you could just say we couldn’t get to do this. The show would suffer for it. But the Michael story, we wanted to do something that was more redemptive for him than staying with the bomb and allowing Jin to get to the deck as he was spraying liquid nitrogen onto it. But it ended up having to be that, as opposed to something that was probably more heroic, more emotional, by virtue of the fact that we had to collapse our time frame. Originally, we were going to do an hour less than we wound up doing, and we had to beg for that. We were still rolling film, like, 11 days before it was on the air. It was all we could do to cram everything in there, and you go, “What are the major story points you can play?” and you need to connect the dots. The primary story focus was on the Oceanic Six, and everyone else had to defer. We had to explain how Jin died, and so that gave us less time for Michael’s redemptive arc, and we regret that.

One of the things you and Carlton talk about a lot, and I never quite understood until we got to “There’s No Place Like Home,” is that you’re always afraid of doing these episodes where people stand around and explain stuff and you give a lot of answers at once. Those three hours answered most of the questions of that season, and while it was good, it definitely felt like, “Okay… okay… alright…” It was not as thrilling as the hours leading up to it.

Sure. For us, we always think the reason that the show is a water cooler show, or still generates the audience it does and the Internet culture that it does is the audience wants to talk about the show. If the characters are talking about the show, you basically have a scenario where they’re so interested in catching each other up that you can’t propel the story forwards. Now if they need to share info for the purposes of story, then you have to write the scene. But the season four finale was really about bringing everything together. The drama of knowing, “How are these guys going to get off the island?,” well, you’ve known that they did get off since the end of season three, so now we’re just going back and showing you things you didn’t already know about it, like that Penny picked them up. It’s a big reveal, but everything else is, “Oh, they’re in a helicopter… the helicopter’s going into the water… is Demond going to survive because he’s not one of the Oceanic Six?” So you can kind of do these things, but things like the press conference, Kate having dreams about Claire, you need to do them, but they’re more about filling in blanks than moving forward. That’s the nature of the year. You’re telling a story out of sequence, and so the finale wound up being a lot of middle.

Let’s get back to the question that I asked at the summer tour: Watching last season and seeing the Oceanic Six in the present, I start building up scenarios in my head. “Why these six? Why do they have to be so secretive?” And in the end it just turned out that those happened to be the ones who were on the helicopter, and Jack, for whatever reason, gets into his head that they need to tell this specific lie to avoid the wrath of Widmore. Did you know that was how it was going to play out going in?

We knew that the season was going to start with Locke and Jack splitting up, Locke taking a group of people with him, Jack a group with him, Jack group’s mission was to get off the island, Locke’s group mission was to stay on, and when we got to the end of the season, Jack and Locke would have one more scene. And in that scene, Locke would basically say to Jack, “We’re supposed to be here, it’s our destiny, you’ve gotta stay.” And Jack would say, “(Bleep) you, I’m leaving.” And Locke would say to Jack, “If you’re gonna leave, you have to lie.” So the idea to lie is Locke’s. That we knew with great specificity. We also knew for over a year that Locke was in the coffin and that all the actions Jack is going through in the season three finale, reading the obituary, suicide attempt, are in the wake of Locke’s death. The Jack/Locke of it all was incredibly mapped out in detail. The intricacies of the lie were, Jack is lying because Locke told him to, and there’s a part of him that realizes maybe Locke was right. He’s not consciously ready to accept that yet, so the lie’s going to be sloppy, and he’s making that up on the fly…

I pitched to the DVD team that it might be fun to have a documentary crew poke holes in how (bleepy) the lie is, on every level. You see those things about the WTC, on that trajectory. I thought it would be fun, but these guys came back with the film and I was, like, “Wow, the lie’s even worse than I thought.” It’s one of those things where you basically say, if this really happened, if these six people showed up on some island in the South Pacific and said, “Here’s what happened,” no one would ever think to question the story. If there’s any conspiracy, you have to start with the premise, “Why did they lie?”

How did you choose the Oceanic Six?

We basically looked at it as a very simple equation first, which is, “Who would want to leave the island, and who would not want to leave the island?” and that’s what the whole season’s about. Kate kind of waffles, Sawyer doesn’t want to leave the island, and leaps off the chopper when he has a chance to do so. He’s perfectly fine where he is. And clearly someone like Juliet would want to leave the island, so we had to figure out geographically, where people would want to be, and present a lifeboat situation where Billy Zane’s running around the Titanic with a gun, and it’s whoever can get on the chopper in time. Jack and Kate we had committed to, obviously, but when we talked about who the Six would be, we realized the majority of storytelling in season four would involve those people. But we were also setting things up for the ultimate endgame of the show which will hopefully reveal some more specificity about, “Why them?”

I’ve wondered about the team from the freighter, Faraday and those people. When we initially see them being put together, Naomi’s supposed to lead them, they have some specific mission that apparently requires a mercenary, a physicist, a medium and an anthropologist and a chopper pilot. Are we still going to find out what that was? Did that get left by the wayside by the events of season four?

The intent was that their mission was to find Benjamin Linus, then call the mercs and they’ll show up and remove Ben. But Faraday and Charlotte are both there for personal reasons. He’s doing time/space experiments while he’s there, Faraday has a lot of story yet to reveal. As does Charlotte, as does Miles. But the mission they’ve been tasked with to find Ben.

And this particular combination is the best Widmore could put together?

One would assume Miles was selected for his unique abilities. As to why Faraday comes, I think that the strategic thinking in sending those guys over first is, Faraday is the one who can figure how to get from the freighter to the island safely. Charlotte’s an expert in anthropology and dead languages, and Widmore thinks that skill-set would be useful for locating Ben for some reason. Hopefully, once you have all the information from season five, that will not be as much of an unanswered question, and you’ll have a little information as to why those people.

Time travel plays a big part in this season… This gets back to what I’m always asking you about: long-term planning. Obviously, some things get changed on the fly depending on what’s working and what isn’t, but did you know from the start how important time travel would be to the show, or is that something that evolved?

We were being asked, certainly as far back in season two, “Are you guys ever going to do time travel on the show?” And we responded, “Who says we haven’t already?” The time travel elements of the show have been built into the DNA of the show all along.

Obviously, the big question going into this year is this idea of, there’s only two fundamental approaches to time travel. There’s the “Back to the Future”/”Heroes” approach where you can go back and change things, that stepping on a butterfly, suddenly, there’s a different president, people have anetnna, George McFly’s a best-selling author. And the other way is, if you went back in time and tried to kill Hitler, you would fail, because Hitler wasn’t assassinated. What would happen if you were in the past and tried to change the present as you knew it, would you A)Fail, or B)Succeed, or C)Cause the thing you were trying to prevent. And that’s really interesting to us, because there’s no (do-over’s).

You’ve been covering the show since the very beginning. There’s been this very interesting thing for me, in terms of certain audience’s members to grasp the idea that they’re not watching a genre show. To them, I’m like, “What show were you watching? When the big column of smoke is in Eko’s face in season two and he stares it down and it retracts into the jungle, that’s not a genre show?” And they say, “No, it’s not.” And it makes you go, “Okay, this is how there can be both evolutionists and creationists.” You can take the same data and apply it to your own spectrum. You can go, “Oh, it’s not a genre show, because I don’t like genre shows, but I like ‘Lost.’ Therefore, ‘Lost’ is not a genre show.” That’s the logic they apply. Well, we’ve been writing a genre show from the word go. We’re sorry that it’s getting more genre.

The biggest audience that ever watched the show was the premiere of season two, where we revealed that Desmond was down in the hatch pushing the button every 108 minutes because he’s told the world will end. The show had a critical mass at that point, we’d just won the Emmy, people were talking about it, and they tuned in to see, ‘What is this thing?” And they saw that, and went, “Alright, it is exactly what I thought it was. No thank you. Not for me.”

But there’s been a steady attrition over the years, because the show demands that you watch every episode. And Lord knows, I wish there was a way we could do the show where the casual viewer could come along, but once you start writing for those people, the long-term fans will (bleeping) kill you, as well they should. We always thought it would be a cult show, and that’s the show we’ve been writing. But the fundamental strength of the characters — and our ability to say, “Nobody’s perfect, we’ve made mistakes, we’ll continue to make them” — as long as everyone’s acting in a way that makes sense, even when the story doesn’t entirely make sense, you can understand why they’re behaving the way they are. If you introduce a time travel element on the show, maybe one character will say, “I don’t want to be on the time travel show. I don’t like time travel.” That might make it more palatable to those viewers who don’t like it, either.

And the other thing is, nothing on “Lost” lasts forever. These are books in a series of six books. If season five gets a bit too far out there in terms of its genre for you, it’s just 17 hours in the grand mosaic of the show. Our hope is that, I feel like the greatest achievement that the show could have in terms of its legacy value, is that, 10 years from now, there’ll be an active debate about what were the best and worst seasons of the show, and two people will be able to say to each other, “My favorite season was this season,” and the other would say, “That’s my least favorite season! It was terrible!” And they’d still be fans of the show as a whole.

Let me put it to you this way, then: Up until the time you cut the deal to end the show (after season six), you and Carlton had to write not knowing when you could move certain stories forward. If you’d somehow known going in that it would be six years and out, what things would you have done differently in those first three years?

It’s a question that’s impossible to answer, because that wasn’t the condition of it. I think there probably would have been less internal pressure to introduce new characters into the show, but at the same time, new characters make it fresh. What would the show be without Ben and Juliet as series regulars? I think many shows that are on the air for a long time require a certain degree of cast turnover. We were certainly going to be killing people off and you then need to bring new people in.

But I think there would have been a lot more confidence in the storytelling, particularly in season’s two and three. There’s a stutter-step feel to season two and the first part of season three where you’d take two steps forward and one step back and one step forward. Even though the storytelling was emotionally-based, we’d realize that we didn’t need to do 25 episodes in a year, we only needed to do 17. For us, the big win wasn’t just setting an end date; it was also that the remaining seasons would have a reduced episodic order, so you could never get to a point where you’re like, “Wow, we really want to activate the endgame of the season, but we’re seven episodes away from that, so we need to just do a rollicking boar-hunting episode.”

That being said, some of my favorite episodes of the show are ones like Hurley in the van. Which doesn’t advance the plot in any way at all, except that they find Ben’s dad, that’s cool, but did you really need any of it?

No, but it’s a really good episode.

A good episode of “Lost” is not necessarily one that gives you major plot revelations. It’s one that works emotionally and kind of justifies its own existence. And there’s some episodes that never needed to have existed.

I think that’s what would have been different. If we’d known we could be six and out, we wouldn’t have done 25-pisode seasons, the narrative would have been a lot tighter, but I wonder if those episodes like finding the Dharma bus would have existed. So I don’t know that I would go back and change it.

Not only was it a good episode, but it sets up that wonderful moment in “Through the Looking Glass” where Hurley saves the day with the magic bus.

That’s right. That was all (Edward) Kitsis and (Adam) Horowitz (who wrote “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead”), that pitch. They were saying, “Well, Hurley finds this bus and then uses it to save them in the finale.”

What’s interesting is, it’s almost a time travel conundrum, which is, if I could go back in time and be more convincing about saying, ‘I will write this pilot, but we need to be six years and out,’ and therefore those episodes don’t get written, would I do it? The answer is no. The journey is the journey. But more importantly, if “Stranger in a Strange Land” — which, universally, is (considered) the worst episode we ever produced — had not been produced, we would not have been able to convince the network that, “This is the future of the show: how Jack got his tattoos. Everything we’ve been saying for two years about what’s to come, is now all here on the screen. You argued that an hour of Matthew Fox in emotionally-based conflicts, it doesn’t matter what the flashback story is, it’ll be fine. But now that we’re doing his ninth flashback story, you just don’t care.”

We can’t go back and apologize for the creative mistakes that we made, because we had to make them. If that episode hadn’t been made, we weren’t able to get a notes call that said, “We don’t like this episode,” and where we could then say, “We don’t like it, either, but it’s the best we can do if we’re not moving the story forward. And we’re now at a point, guys, where we can’t move the story forward.” And they asked, “Well, what would you do if we allowed you an end date?” And we said, “Give us an end date, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And the conversations then reached a new pitch.

Everything has to happen the way it happened.

You brought up the introduction of Ben before, and people who are agnostic to atheistic about the idea of a master plan will say, “Well, geez, they hired (Michael) Emerson to be a day player for an episode or two, and now he’s the fulcrum of the show.” Could you clarify?

We have plans, but the big plans have trap doors. Basically, the plan on the table was Rousseau captures the leader of The Others, but doesn’t know who he is. She turns him over to Sayid, Sayid tortures him, he claims he’s a balloonist, it’s a case of mistaken identity, and it becomes a David E. Kelley story of “Will Sayid believe him or will he not?” It’ll be a three-episode arc, at the end they’ll realize he was lying all along and he’ll escape. That was the plan all along. The trap door of the plan is that, once it’s revealed that he’s an Other, he’ll admit to it and talk about the leader of The Others being a great man, in the third person. So if the actor is awesome, he’s referring to himself. But if the actor is not awesome, he’ll just be a lieutenant. He’ll go running off, or get killed, and we’ll meet the actual leader of The Others in the finale of this season when Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley are double-crossed by Michael. We already had the spinal surgery story in our back pocket, and that’s where the story was going. Emerson basically, not quite guaranteed, that the story ballooned from a three-episode arc to a six-episode arc that tied into Michael’s return and the killing of Ana-Lucia.

At the beginning of the year, we have all these ideas, but we’re writing a script every eight days. I love that people think we’re smart enough — I understand why there are atheists and agnostics out there, because they believe in a subjective reality of it. They believe that JK Rowling outlined all seven Harry Potter books because she had unlimited time, nobody to answer to and an unlimited budget. She could make her characters do whatever she wants. WE can’t make our characters do whatever we want; our characters are played by actors. if we were just writing a novel, “Lost” would be uncompromised in its vision, and probably a lot worse than it’s been for being realized by a cast and crew of 500 who helped realize it in their own separate ways. The idea that Michael Emerson, the way he played Ben, is more Napoleonic — when you had thought of the leader of The Others, you thought of a big scary dude, and the fact that it’s him is fascinating. Which was our thinking when we cast him. We cast the leader of The Others, but we didn’t commit to it until Michael said, “You guys got any milk?”

Okay, lightning round. The story keeps moving forward, and therefore there are certain things you might never get back to. You don’t have to tell me what the answer is to any of these mysteries, just whether they’ll come up again

Okay

The four-toed foot?

You will see it again.

Why Libby was in the hospital with Hurley?

Hopefully, but contingent on factors beyond our control.

What happened between Alex and Rousseau during the brief period between their reunion and their deaths? Or was that another casualty of the episodes you lost to the strike?

Nope. Casualty.

Will we ever find out why Dharma (or someone else) is still making supply drops to the island?

I sure hope so.

Will the superpowers (or lack thereof) of Others like Ethan (superstrong and/or healing factor?) and Richard (immortal?) ever be clarified or explained?

Ethan works out a lot. And everyone heals fast on the island. Hasn’t Sawyer been shot like, fourteen times by now?

Source: NJ.com

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Warning: the videos contain some minor spoilers.

Matthew Fox on Season 5

Click on “read the rest of this entry” to watch the other 30 videos

Henry Ian Cusick on His Character

Josh Holloway on the Cast

Matthew Fox on Being Back

Jeremy Davies on What’s to Come

Elizabeth Mitchell on Ben Lying

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse on Season 5

Elizabeth Mitchell on the Cast

Naveen Andrews on the Premiere

Naveen Andrews on Season 5

Ken Leung on Tuning In

Jorge Garcia on Flash-forwards

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse on the Season Start

Jorge Garcia on the Oceanic 6

Josh Holloway on Time Travel

Jeremy Davies on His Character

Michael Emerson on Returning to the Island

Matthew Fox on Lost

Evangeline Lilly on Season 5

Henry Ian Cusick on the Season Premiere

Josh Holloway on Sawyer’s Return

Ken Leung on Miles

Ken Leung on Miles #2

Ken Leung on Miles #3

Evangeline Lilly on Season 5′s Theme

Evangeline Lilly on Tuning In

Jeremy Davies on Lost

Naveen Andrews on Ben

Elizabeth Mitchell on Flash-forwards

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse on Flash-forwards

Josh Holloway on the Season Premiere

Source: MovieWeb.com

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