Saturday 22 May 2010

Finale Predictions - There is a light that never goes out



Okay, I admit it. Lost ends this weekend, and for some strange reason I'm pretty excited about it. Despite it's continual decline into the absurd I feel somehow bound to this ridiculous melodrama, and pray for a satisfying finale. After all, "everything happens for a reason", as someone once said. So let's bypass last weeks awfulness, and instead look forward to two hours of bare-faced answers and awesomeness. Here are my predictions as to what will happen in The End. Don't worry though, I'm 100% spoiler free.

Jack dies

Jack's been the one regrettably constant thing in the whole show, and even confirmed a few years ago to be the only cast member who knows the final scenes of Lost. This pretty much means that he survives right through to the end, right? You can knock off Widmore, Alpert, the Kwons and probably many other principle cast members in these final weeks, but he's the one thing that'll be there at the end. Probably sitting on a beach. Or going on about his fucking tattoos again. But we also know that the show's creators initially intended him to be killed in the Pilot episode. They wanted to fool the audience, a la Psycho, into believeing that one person was going to be the main protagonist, only to have them bumped off. Kate was going to be the main character, and the show would have been a great milestone for women's roles in huge ensemble casts, or something. Instead, we got five years of some rubbish doctor obsessed with bossing people around.

So, maybe they're now thinking of pulling a similar trick, just one hour from the shows end? We've just seen him take on the role of being the new Jacob, something I'd thought they'd hold on for until the last twenty minutes of the finale. His journey is all complete. They can't have him just weaving and cooking fish on a beach for two hours, so what's going to happen? I think he'll get killed off very early on in the finale, and that the Jack who knows the final few scenes of Lost is in fact the one from the alternative timeline.

The Alternative Timeline takes place after the Original one

That cut on Jack's neck has been getting more prominent on both Original Jack and Alternative Jack for the past few weeks. Was it caused by something we've seen, or is it from an event we're yet to see? If it's just a cut Original Jack accumulated during one of his many recent scraps, then the following theory holds true. The Alternative timeline is going to be the result of what happens at the end of The End. That's why Jack wakes up with a slowly healing cut on his neck, and why his hair is considerably longer than on the original Oceanic flight. Something happens on island in the Original Timeline, and their existence is competely erased. Or, like when Juliet said from beyond the grave "It worked!", perhaps this is just where the characters go when they die.

One thing that doesn't fit with this theory is what the whole purpose of the concert is, with Desmond going round getting the band back together. It can't be just to tell them all that not too long ago they were living on a desert island and that they're all really great friends. The timeline is defintely going somewhere in the finale, which brings me to another theory.

The timelines meet, and only one version can survive

Everyone goes to the awesome concert in Dr Chang's museum, as Desmond had planned. He makes some big announcement, taking the stage. "You all know each other, brothers" or something. Everyone finds out they lived together for a few years being terrified on a magical island, and gets a glimpse of the other person they could be. For pretty much everyone though, these other lives do not sound too enticing a prospect. The Kwons are dead, as is Charlie, Sayid, Charlotte, Farraday, Widmore, Ana Lucia, Libby, Boone, Shannon, Michael. Pretty much everyone is either dead, miserable or currently enahbited by a two thousand year old spirit in the Original timeline, so why would anyone want to move there? Well maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the on-island timeline is now an impossible future, and everyone has to leave. Sawyer gets to be a cop, Hurley gets his girl, as does Hurley. Ben is a decent man, and Locke gets to live again. The only ones who wouldn't immediately jump across are Kate and Jack, and once again the reasons for that are to do with parenting.

Yes, as I said three years ago in the New York Post, this show is all about the absent fathers. And I think it's going to be the decision Jack has to make as to whether to stay and protect the island, or move across and be a father to his child, which will be the end of the whole show. Similarly, as Jacob pointed out in this weeks episode, Kate is now mother to Mad Claire's Aaraon. She's not going to jump at the chance to be a con on the run again.

Flocke/the Man in Black rocks up in the Alternative Timeline

I really liked The Lost World, as I'm a sucker for T-Rex's marauding down the streets of Middle America. I'd be really disappointed if we didn't get to see old Smokey transfer across to the real world and go rip up some strip malls before the show finishes. He's been talking about it for half this season, and despite it sounding like signalling the end of life as we know it, I'd quite like to watch that happen. I assume he'll turn up in the Alternative Timeline, because otherwise we really have no investment in the world he's pillaging. Besides, other than Widmore turning up from there a few episodes ago, we have no evidence to suggest that since the bomb went off the Real World exists in the Original Timeline. Anyway, here are some ideas as to how he'll turn up.

Jack's Dad's coffin will turn up at the concert. Inside will be his corpse, possessed by the the Smoke Monster.

Locke will go into emergency surgery. The person who comes out is Flocke.

Other things that we are going to see which will be exciting

We'll find out that Juliet is Jack's ex-wife and the mother of his child. She's the one ex-cast member who's been conspicuously absent from the Alternative Timeline so far.

We'll finally get to see who those people that chased Sawyer, Juliet et all on the outrigger during all that time-traveling nonsense in season five were. Remember that Sawyer shot and seemed to kill one of them? My bet is that he killed either Ben, Miles or himself. How very clever.

Someone will get made into another smoke monster, to replace Flocke. My bet is on Ben, but it could be Sawyer, who'd pull off the 'Do you have any idea how much I want to kill you'? beach chats a lot better.

Lots of people will die. There will be emotional fairwells, sacrifices and general melodrama. Lost is silly, but it's very good at this part of the bullshit.

There'll be some really bad CGI. Some kind of Time Gate through which people transferring timelines have to walk. Or another horribly rendered sub.

The end scene of the whole show will be Jack as Jacob, going around trying to recruit Kwon jr, Aaron and Sawyer's daughter as new candidates.

That's it folks. Now I'm going to switch off the internet until Wednesday so as to keep 100% spoiler free.

Namaste. And good luck.

Friday 14 May 2010

Lost - s06e15 - It's all latin to me



I've neglected this blog again this season. Apart from last weeks awesome death-fest this whole season has been very poor. On island they're just been wandering across the island, getting into groups, then re-grouping, then walking across the island again, supposedly building up to some magnificent finale. But now, with just two weeks to go until the final episode the show is desperately revealing it's secrets, and it's at least interesting to see what poppycock the writers come up with. This week, the ultimate question to divide and upset fans: what is the mystical power that the island holds?

The answer, sadly, is a magical light that lives in the middle of the island. Not electromagnetism, or some other kind of vaguely scientific explanation. Magic. And you can get through it, to be reborn in smoke form, just by swimming in a little pond. That's right folks, you've been watching this show for five years, and this is your punishment. Anyway, let's ignore all that, in the same way Star Wars fans ignore Midichlorians, and instead go back to the very beginning.

Jacobs mum rocks up on mystery island, and starts chatting in Latin to the mum out of Juno. Then, inexplicably, they start talking modern American English! Jacob's mum has a slight accent, but still. Juno's mum is proper Apple Pie, Soccer-Mom American and yet we're supposed to believe this took place thousands of years ago? Pffftt. I know the show has had a not too healthy relationship with accents in the past, (Sayid and his cronies in Iraq speaking English with an accent while all Jin and Sun's flashbacks are subtitled, anyone attempting an English accent,) but in this case they didn't even seem to try. Do US networks not realise how old their own country is? The whole thing looks like a really bad TV drama recreating bible stories to children.

Fast forward a few years and Jacob and his brother are sitting about chatting and playing games, calling their mother 'mom' and maintaining their Twilight haircuts. Both of them are as believable at being un-civilized and ancient as the young Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace. This is the Disney interpretation of unkempt and olden timey. The Child in Black even looks like Mowgli. Emo-wgli.

Going back to the birth itself. Did everyone else assume that after Jacob popped out, Lady Virgin Mary was about to squirt a giant plume of thick black smoke from her miraculous tuppence? Or was that just me?

As adults, the magical pair seem slightly more believable, but still 100% U.S.A. They bicker and fight like teenagers fighting over the car stereo, but then isn't that quite likely due to their odd, secluded unbringing? It seems odd to think you'd mature much living your whole life pretty much alone. It's a good explanation as to why Jacob is so dull I suppose, but it doesn't give much credibilty to this overarching 'Jacob is God' theory. How could you get so wise being home-schooled by some mad woman? And what could she teach you, seeing as she doesn't want you to interact with anyone your whole life? Weaving?

Then follows some further awfullness about using a giant wagon wheel to stir magic with water in order to get off the island. The only tiny reassurance that this isn't being made up week after week being that when Ben finally does turn the wheel years later it does seem to leak some of that 'island magic' light. So at least they're consistent with their bullshit.

When adult Emowgli walks back through his descemated camp, it all seems very Star Wars. "Uncle Owen? Aunt Beru?" If he'd checked one of the corpses he might have figured out what going on. "these knife wounds are too accurate to have been made by my deranged old mother. It must have been some kind of smokey monster." Yes that's right, I believe the only way Juno's mum could have known so much about what happens when you fall into the islands giant glowing underwater vagina is if she'd experienced it herself. She is the smoke monster, hence why she has all those abilities to stop people harming one another. This is also the only way that camp of people, and their well, got destroyed by one single old woman.

Which begs the question: what is HER origin story? Damn you Lost, you're supposed to be telling us the answers, not dangling even more mysteries in front of us! I've watched five years of this garbage, and promise I'll watch just two more episodes. I've done everything you asked me to do, so why did you to this to me!?

The reveal that these two characters are season one's Adam and Eve was quite nicely done. I don't think showing the clip was too heavy handed either. The casual viewer hasn't seen that scene in five years, if at all, so it was nice to have a recap. Also, it reminded us of the Lost of old, back when it was good. Back when Kate still wore lipstick on a desert island.

So roll on the next couple of weeks, and further unsatisfying revelations. I look forward to finding out that the four-toed statue is actually Jack with a mask, that Walt grows up to be every black character that's ever been on the show, and that the Egyptians spoke with American accents.

Saturday 1 May 2010

The thrill of the unknown

As the end approaches, and the chances of a satisfying ending grow ever slimmer, it's worth reminding ourselves why we bothered to watch this ridiculous television show in the first place. Mystery; both in the supernatural powers of the island and in the pasts of it's inhabitants. No clip better sums up this promise than the one below. John Locke knelt over the hatch door, berating fate for all it's dealt him in his sad and lonely life.

Despair, and questioning the very meaning for your existence. All with still only the slightest understanding of the details. Remember that at this point we still didn't know the reason for Locke becoming disabled, what the hatch was, and certainly no idea what this mystery force Locke was yelling at could possibly ask him to do. By being ambiguous, it made it inclusive, and something we could all relate to.



We now know that the hatch, and it's mystery illumination was nothing more than a man living down there turning on a light. That the estranged father was actually some evil con-man, who later threw Locke out of a window. And that John Locke's conviction that he was 'meant' to be on the island, along with us viewers' belief that he was 'special' in some way turned out to be a big red herring. Even worse, we have to watch the actor who once portrayed this exciting, intriguing martyr play an entirely different character every week, reminding us of what this final season lacks.