Home > TV > ['LOST' COLUMN] GETTING 'LOST' WITH NIKKI STAFFORD
['LOST COLUMN'] GETTING 'LOST' WITH NIKKI STAFFORD
Lost: 4.04 'Eggtown' Lies and the lying Oceanic Six liars who tell them . . .
By Nikki Stafford
Posted 2/22/2008
[EDITOR’s NOTE: Saying that guest columnist Nikki Stafford is a “Lost” fanatic is a gross
understatement. But, more importantly, she’s a “Lost” guru and has teamed with Wizard Universe to bring her expertise to a weekly recap of “Lost,” pointing out key moments and raising questions about TV’s most-talked about mystery.]
Previously on Lost...
Last week’s episode saw Daniel Faraday conducting an experiment that resulted in a 31-minute time discrepancy between what the clocks on and off the island said. Here’s a suggestion I made on my blog: Maybe there’s a bubble surrounding the island, being held there through electromagnetic energy. When Desmond reads the printout and says his electromagnetic surge was on September 22, it would indicate that time is actually moving at the same pace, since that’s also the date off the island. But what if the actual bubble is a black hole, and if you get stuck in it, time moves differently. Last season there were several references to “A Brief History of Time,” and in that book Hawking talks about black holes and how time moves differently in them (he also suggests that if a person fell into one they’d be ripped into spaghetti, but let’s not get into specifics). What if by passing through the bubble, you can age more quickly while in there, so you have to move through it as quickly as possible? Notice that Faraday tells Frank at the end that he has to go back exactly the way they’d come. Maybe he found the hole that allows them to pass through the bubble quickly, and he needs Frank to follow that exact same path or risk getting stuck in there? It could certainly help them deal with the fact that Walt is 12, but Malcolm David Kelley is almost 16 — the writers could trap him in the black hole and he’ll age three years in a matter of minutes.
Another possibility is that there are wormholes in that bubble, allowing people to pass into a different time, into the future and into the past. In that case, the flashbacks, flashforwards, and present time on the island could all be happening at the same time. On with this week’s episode.
Episode Recap:
Great episode! While Locke turns into a madman, Kate takes Miles to Ben, where Miles insists that he knows who Ben really is, and asks Ben for a ransom of $3.2 million so that he’ll tell the people on the freighter that Ben is dead. Kate and Sawyer play house for a bit, Locke trumps Sayid as the most sadistic torturer on the island, and Juliet and Jack find out that the helicopter didn’t actually make it back to the freighter. Three years later, we see Kate on trial for her pre-crash crimes, and discover one blond-headed secret she brought back with her when she was rescued. (And no, it ain’t Sawyer.)
Highlights:
• Seeing everyone hang out in Otherville as if they’re in the real world.
• Hurley: “You just totally Scooby-Doo’d me, didn’t you?”
• Hurley watching Xanadu. Ha! (I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning to Kubla Khan and Coleridge or just the stupid movie and the Greek muses, but I’ll leave that to you guys to hash out.)
• Wine in a box.
• Sawyer referring to Locke as Montezuma when he hears the toilet flush.
Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Jack’s many, many, manymanymany lies, beginning with Daniel and Charlotte being there to rescue all of them.
• Locke saying if he were a dictator he’d just shoot Kate. Gah!
• Kate’s got a SON?!
• Jack showing up at Kate’s trial… and telling more lies. That the marshal had died in the crash… that only eight people survived the crash… that Kate had assumed the role Jack really had in the crash…
• Regina not knowing about the helicopter. Uh oh…
• Locke reaching a whole new level of torture technique. Holy Gestapo, Batman! Horrific… (interesting that we now have something connecting Locke and Mikhail)
• AARON?!
Yes. Aaron.
The big bombshell at the end of the episode was that Kate’s “son” is in fact Aaron. Is Aaron one of the Oceanic Six? He wasn’t technically on the flight to begin with, and Jack mentions in court that eight people survived the plane crash, and six of those people lived. Aaron wouldn’t have been one of those people if he’d been born on the island, so I’m thinking there may still be two other people who will be revealed. Jack doesn’t want to see Aaron because he’s a reminder of their deceit, presumably. Aaron calls Kate “Mommy,” so I would assume Claire is not one of the Oceanic Six, and Kate has raised him as her own. What happened to Claire? Did Kate and Jack sacrifice her somehow? Or did she die and Kate agreed to take care of Aaron for her? Was Aaron’s existence publicized when the survivors made it back to the real world? The lawyer talks about him like some well-kept secret, which would have been difficult considering the publicity surrounding the rescue. One thing is for sure: Now we know who Kate meant when she said at the end of season three, “He’ll be wondering where I am.”
Hurley’s Numbers:
Miles asks Ben for $3.2 million, and Ben asks why not 3.3, or 3.4. I SO wanted Miles to say, “Uh… because 3.2 could be turned around to 23, which is one of Hurley’s numbers?”
Did You Notice?:
• The episode opened on Locke’s eye; in previous seasons this always signalled the episode and flashback would be about him, but not this time.
• Locke sleeps in Ben’s hospital bed.
• The book that Locke chooses for Ben is Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel VALIS. This is a thinly veiled autobiographical work about Dick’s philosophical and religious beliefs, where Dick narrates, but creates a main character named Horselover Fat, who is also Dick, to add some objectivity to the situation. The two argue throughout the book in a Socratic way about their Gnostic belief systems. VALIS stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. From Wikipedia:
“VALIS has been described as one node of an artificial satellite network originating from the star Sirius in the Canis Major constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used “pink laser beams” to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used ‘disinhibiting stimuli’ to communicate, using symbols to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of amnesia, achieving gnosis. Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick wrote in his Exegesis: ‘We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction—a failure—of memory retrieval.’”
• When Locke gives Ben the book, Ben says he’s already read it, to which Locke responds, “You might catch something you missed the second time around.” This seems like a comment on the viewers who watch the episodes over and over again, catching new details every time.
• The scene where Ben and Locke face off mirrors the same scene in season 2 when Benry was locked up in the Armory. And just as he did then when he walked out and smashed all the dishes all over the place, Locke falls for it AGAIN and lets Ben know that he’s won this round, and has gotten to him. Locke, Locke, Locke… when will you learn?
• This is the first conversation between Jin and Sun we’ve seen all season. Interesting that last season so many fans were up in arms for the first three episodes because we didn’t get to see enough of the other characters, and this season we’re seeing even less of the others, yet no one is complaining. Looks like the writers finally found the right balance.
• Emilie de Ravin looks like she’s wearing a wig.
• The backgammon is back, but it’s so different now. In season one, when Locke was playing it with Walt, he seemed like a generally good guy. Now he’s… not.
• Everyone seems to be referring to Hurley as Hugo these days.
• Kate’s listening to Patsy again.
• Kate was never able to resolve her issues with her mother by remembering her in flashback, and finally resolves them in the flashforward, which is a first.
• I was hoping that Sawyer didn’t want Kate to be pregnant because he was scared she’d die. Now I realize it was a more selfish reason.
So Many Questions…
• Eggtown?
• Did you notice the way Miles was sitting in the boathouse when Kate came down to see him? He was all hunched over in the chair. Could he have been communicating with the ghosts of the island? I’m convinced that Miles has been talking to them since he got there… he’s possibly talked to Dharma victims from the Purge, other survivors who didn’t make it, Nikki and Paulo (no wonder he’s raving like a lunatic; wouldn’t YOU be if you had the Undynamic Duo in your head?) Could he have been talking to the dead on the flats when Jack and Co. first came upon him?
• Why has Jack maintained that Kate was the real hero in the crash? Was it out of love? Was it to deflect attention from himself? He’s clearly been doing it since the rescue (she mentions that she’s heard him say it over and over).
• Why would Sawyer immediately tell Locke about Kate’s plan? Is he trying to stop her before Locke does more damage to her?
• Miles tells Ben not to treat him like one of them, and says he knows who he is and what he can do. Who is he? What can he do? Miles talks to him with a lot of hostility. Does it have anything to do with Miles being a ghost whisperer? Are the dead telling him things that Ben has done?
• What the heck were Charlotte and Dan doing with the cards? How was Dan able to know what those cards were? Why is he so frustrated that he’s not making “progress?”
• So what happened to the helicopter? Did they not follow the same path?
• In case I forgot to mention it… AARON??!!
Next week: Looks like things don’t go so well for Sayid and Desmond.
Nikki Stafford has published companion guides to “Xena,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” “Alias,” and “Lost” through ECW Press. Her new book is Finding Lost—Season Three: The Unofficial Guide. Check her blog, “Nik At Nite,” for more on your (and her) favorite shows.
