Season 6 Episode 4 - Alternate Timeline - Michelle's Review

We look into John Locke's alternative life had he not crashed, we are reminded he once had a pretty wife a bit out of his league who takes it surprisingly well that he A) lied to her B) is a knife wielding psycho and C) has evidence that he's having an affair with a Dr. called Jack.

John is fired, hired by Hurley via Rose and becomes a teacher with a paedo looking Henry Gale who is a coffee pot dictator in this 'reality'. Alternative plot lines are DULL as, I think I'm meant to be impressed each time a character comes along I recognise from seasons ago. Instead it's like watching a 5 man play where the actors also play alternative characters when donning a moustache and top hat or fake boobs and lipstick.

We see a return to the 'I don't give a damn' Sawyer, which a recent poll of our lady Lostites showed that they prefer the hot-brooding-heart-broken-beer-stinkin' Sawyer to other versions. Although the Davidoff version is hot too. This week who he is so depressed after losing his 'love' Juliet (Juliet who frankly would have seduced anyone to leave the island and go play with her now not sick sister's child) he doesn't care that he's playing in the forest with a ghost/smoke monster/poltergeist/zombie. Despite Richard Maybelline's warnings.

I am a little bored now, just like how I was feeling when watching, falling down ladders, scribbles on walls, erm, only a few names are potential hosts or whatever Zombie Locke said. Erm, LOST **boooooooom**

(Fade to black.)

Season 6 - Episode 3 - Dawn of the Dead-Boring

For the benefit of retaining any readers of this blog, let's ignore the 'flash-sideways' storyline of this episode. 'What Kate Does' in alternative LOST-land was in general as boring as what anything Kate does in the show. Don't mistake being attractive and yet not entirely one dimensional for an interesting character. Kate is either a tomboy stereotype or pathetically girly, and very little in-between. This week she literally went from a gun toting, cab-hijacker (and queue-jumper too, let's not forget that social crime) to apologetic pregnant lady-aider in the space of twenty minutes.

So yes, let's brush over that unnecessary water-treading. Let's instead focus on what tiny tidbits of mystery we were allowed this week. Most notably, ZOMBIES.

Ever since 2006 the show's creators have joked about the Mythical 'Zombie season'. Then, it revolved around the mysterious appearances of Walt around the island after his kidnapping. A fake script was even put up as an Easter Egg on the official site. Now, despite being quickly acknowledged and dismissed in discussion between Sayid and Hurley, it seems the joke has become a reality. Sayid raises from the dead, adding an apt nail in the coffin to any logical final solution to the show. He's been 'claimed' apparently, and his resurrectors quickly make plans to set this straight and kill him again. Quite what being 'claimed' involves isn't explained, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with actually-dead Locke being possessed/cloned/inhabited by the spirit of Jacob's nemesis. In fact, they can probably tie a bunch of island mysteries up with this one.

Lots of characters have died on Lost. Some have come back as mysterious visions to more essential cast members. Yemi chatted with Eko, Hurley saw Charlie (albeit offf-island), Michael saw Libby, and of course Christian 'Jack's Dad' Shepherd has had a chat with pretty much every cast member, including Vincent. None have fully come 'back to life' though, they've merely appeared briefly as visions. Claire was one seemingly ex- cast member that divided opinion though. Her disappearance at the end of season four, supposedly with dad Christian, was confusing to many. She'd been acting oddly for a few episodes, with ghost-talker Miles apparently looking at her funny. Fans insist that at that point she was in fact a ghost walking amongst the Losties. They cite the explosion at the end of the gun battle in season four, where small-mouthed Keemy and his bunch of military stereotype friends stormed the DHARMA village, as the the cause of her demise. Since then she'd been acting very odd, and walking off with old Papa Booze-alot was just one of the many symptoms of her craziness.

Now it seems she's gone proper mad, as her hair is all unkempt. She's become the new Rousseau, and has even learnt how to make traps in order to purge the cast of any annoying B-characters. The very same Rousseau who spoke of a 'sickness' that took her crew back in the eighties when their boat crashed. Perhaps it 'claimed' them, and was the same disease that Desmond injected himself daily in order to fend off. Hmmmmmm...

My theory is this. Jacob's Enemy can possess dead people, and this explains any instances of 'visions' we've seen so far. He appeared as Christian when Flight 815 arrived, and he's continued to turn up in different guises as more and more people keep dying. He doesn't have to inhabit just one at a time, as he's a giant magical smoke monster and so that's not really a problem. As he tries to infect people with his spirit, they go a bit mad. He's the reason Rousseau's crew all shot each other, why Radzinski eventually shoots himself in the hatch with Kelvin, and will probably end up being the cause of the eventual fate of the Black Rock arrivals once we hear their story. Back on the beach in olden times eating the fish, fans have become fixated on Jacob's enemy being his Earthly equal. Perhaps he was just the latest incarnation, someone who had recently died on the island. Remember how Jacob's Enemy says how it always ends the same? "They come, they destroy, they corrupt". He is the cause of the corruption, and with the 815ers Jacob is trying to reverse the trend.

As an aside, the character who actually would make an awesome Zombie is Sayid, so I'm rooting for him to get fully 'claimed'. He's a crazy, torturing, gun-for-hire in real life, so imagine his appetite for tasty torturous braaaaaaiins once he goes full blown!!

But we'd better put that kind of stuff to the back of our minds, as there's at least fourteen hours before we'll be getting final confirmation about our theories. There are more immediate Island things to deal with; How will the two groups meet, now they're in the same timeline? Which ones of the new Other Others will continue on as fully-fledged characters, if any, seeing as it's so late in the game? Why is one of them the world's cheapest John Lennon lookalike, who is ACTUALLY CALLED 'LENNON'? What purpose does the alternative timeline have? Is it the afterlife? Did Juliet go there when she died and told Miles "It WORKED!" last episode? Tune in NEXT week for no answers to any of this, just more plodding about in the jungle, but hopefully some actual zombies.

Season 6 - Episode 1/2 - With great paradox, comes great responsibility

And so we arrive at the end of all things, with all it's Parallel Universes, Fountains of Eternal Life and Lost Cities of Atlantis. Lost has returned from it's extended Summer holiday, and appears eager to tell all to it's returning friends. We have confirmation that Un-Locke is the smoke monster, that Richard arrived a slave aboard the Black Rock, and that there are now multiple realities where a whole separate timeline of events are being played out.

Oceanic Flight 815 didn't crash, but Jack looks very confused, like he thought it would. He's talking to Rose, and Bernard is having a poo. However, his hair is longer, and one-time hatch dweller Desmond is sitting next to him. A full comparison of the differences in this opening scene is shown here. Woah, people posting Youtube clips trying to solve Lost, this season really is going to be mimicking it's former glory. Charlie is in the bathroom taking some heroin like it's 2004, but this time he's hinting at a suicide attempt. His hair is also shorter, but I fear that's more to do with his appearance being a short cameo than anything to do with alternate realities. He can't grow a floppy fringe for Flashforward during it's hiatus, or he'll lose his new-found villainy.

Anyway, nobody dies on the plane, and yet it's still very exciting to see. Locke chats with Boone, even though he's now in Vampire Diaries and could have told ABC to fuck off like Shannon obviously did. Kate and her cartoon jailer bicker and fight a bit, Hurley is a confident lottery winner and owner of Mister Clucks, and Artz over-eggs the first acting gig he's had since season 3. It's pretty much all fun for everyone in this reality, apart from Jack. You get the feeling he knows he's in an alternate realty, and has memories of the people around him. Later in the episode he speaks to Locke about his condition, who's sadly still paralysed despite having raved about his Walkabout tour to oblivious Boone. Jack has a crazy idea he can cure Locke, which must come from suppressed island memory as off-island he seems to kill everyone he operates on.

This reality is obviously quite different to the one we remember, and not just because of the actors they could convince to come back. As the camera leaps from the plane and down into the ocean, we see a badly-CGI-ed island, with all the familiar huts, sonic fences, four-toed statues and Windows 95 Screensaver-era fish swimming about. Let's assume this is the state of the island post Hydrogen bomb, and that none of the events off-island since 1977 have occurred since the island sunk. Faraday wasn't born, as Ellie would be dead. Desmond doesn't live there, as the hatch was never built. Richard Alpert, Jacob and Ben must be dead. But if that's the case, Jacob hasn't been back for his creepy trips to all the 815ers as children. How come their lives still lead to them boarding the plane if what we were shown at the end of last season was so significant? Also, did Hurley win the lottery with the numbers? If so, how? He can't have gotten them from his friend in the mental institute. Not only did he not stay there, but his friend couldn't have lived on the island.

Meanwhile, we have another more familiar reality to deal with, where everyone's acting like surviving a Hydrogen Bomb blast and landing thirty years in the future is entirely normal and that Jack's plan hasn't worked. Juliet dies again, and we've supposed to be impressed once more about how far Sawyer has come these past five years. He's sad and angry, which means somehow conveying two emotions at the same time. He says he'll kill Jack! Sawyer Maaaaaaaaadddd!!! It's clear why they're trying to force his character to revert to his pre-redemptive season one self. They sold this whole final season to fans as being a re-boot not only in possibly re-visiting the events immediately following Flight 815, but of everyone running through the jungle, not knowing what's going on. I'm sure we'll see Kate and Jack face their original demons once more, as the show returns to it's original themes in the coming weeks.

At the temple, we meet a new group of Other Others. I guess Ben's crew have lost a lot of their mysterious spiritual credibility in the past couple of years, what with all the book groups and generally being rubbish at fighting. So now the ragtag bunch of ex-hippies with goatees and denim cut-offs (have a look! They do wear them!) is upgraded to a load of Chinese people with guns. John Lennon is there too, dressed as the chap from Apocalypse now, but we don't know if he's magical yet. We know all Chinese people are though, and that most of them have the ability to live forever so it's no surprise they have a fountain of eternal youth in what must be the Temple's living room. They've all probably been living there bathing in it every night for the past thousand years, so God/Jacob knows what's in it. Richard Alpert's used it, Sayid's used it. Maybe Sawyer will give it a go and he'll infect the whole of the island with some sexually transmitted disease he's picked up from his conman days.

Forget all that hocus pocus though. The introduction of stereotypical Chinese people in Lost can only mean one thing: karate! After years of Sayid always coming out tops in season finales it seems we'll finally have a real challenge once Head Chinese-man has taught our 815ers how to fight properly, possibly after a montage scene where he gets them to re-paint the Temple, Mister Miyagi style. Not a bad idea. As my friend Henry pointed out, it does all ook a bit 'Crystal Maze'.

With a puff of flare-smoke, we get confirmation that the 1977 DHARMA folk have indeed returned to the timeline of Un-Locke, Richard, Ben, Sun and the recently deceased Jacob. Un-Locke beats Richard up a bit, mentioning something about 'chains', and is generally quite aggressive to the group we can now assume originally arrived on the Black Rock. It was very exciting to see Terry O'Quinn (Locke-actor) relax, and play the villain that's he's so often been hinted at becoming. I'm sure we'll see a lot more of this in the following weeks, before Original-Locke's inevitable ACTUAL re-birth in the Temple around episode 16, as he leads the ex-Others/Black-Rockers on some nasty quest against the 815ers.

Joining together the two groups after a season and a half does mean there'll be some exciting conflict. (Following Lost-lore, it'll be around episode 8, in that difficult mid-season section). Jin and Sun will re-unite at last. She's assumed him dead for three years, far outweighing the Penny and Desmond ordeal in the reconciliation stakes. She's definitely had botox during their time apart, and he's learnt a whole new language, so if she's not pregnant from his English-speaking seed by the end of season six there's definitely something affecting pregnant women on the island.

Oh yeah, what ever happened to that?

Season 6 - Predictive Text

Six minutes of the show have been leaked by some lucky competition winners, and some chap recently pirated the whole episode filming from his beach hut. Despite this, I'm around 95% spoiler-free for this week's double episode 'premier' 'LA-X'. Obviously, I do know the title is 'LA-X' which does lead us down a few prescriptive narrative paths. The theory doing on the internets back before filming had begun was around some kind of 'reset'. Charlie, Ana Lucie and a few of the other cast members appeared on a poster at Comic Con, hinting strongly at some kind of new timeline where 815 doesn't crash and none of the events we've seen these past five years took place. Or, it could just have been a nifty tease done for promotional reasons. Let's hope the cast members don't return for some dream sequence, or dripping with water in the jungle talking backwards. Anyway, here is my theory as to what happened when Juliet smashed that H-bomb, and how this final stretch will play out:

815 didn't crash. Desmond didn't forget to press the button, as it doesn't exist. The Oceanic plane glides over the island without any major event, and everyone arrives in LA with some weird feeling that they all know each other. Everyone's hair is at different lengths, and some actors have gotten a bit more porky/wrinkly/puberty-ey, but all the characters we know and love land and go on about their normal lives. Jack buries his father. Kate goes to prison. Hurley buys Mister Clucks, explaining the bizarre ad that did the rounds last summer. Some of the stories are worth telling, and these are the ones we'll follow. Others, like Charlie's, will be a bit despairing, and so we'll only see him for a couple of episodes. Without the redemptive antics those years battling with The Others/Widmore/Egyptian immortals, many characters will be still horribly Lost, continuing to be drug addicts and torturers and having semi-acceptable sexual liasons with their half-sisters in Los Angeles. This will play as the reason they have to go back, again, to set the paths of destiny straight. Again.

Meanwhile, the plotline with non-Locke and Ben stabbing Jacob in the old egyptian shoe statue (FFS, you really can't make this shit up) is too good to just abandon. While 70s DHARMA was getting tired after four episodes, there's a lot of intrigue left in the gang of possible Black Rock descendants, especially their coffin with Locke's body in it. Somehow this lot aren't reset, as the law of Lost Season 'Premiers' (sorry, but I really hate using that word. It's not a film, it's the first episode of the year. But no, we have to call it a 'Premier', and talk about when it 'premiers'. FFS America, you are ruining the English language) dictates that characters must always start in two groups, which inevitably re-join around two thirds of the way through. In this case, I believe the other group will be mysteriously transported back to the time of the ancient island dwellers, around Egyptian times. Stay with me, it makes perfect sense! This way the show can tell the origins of the black smoke, the statue, the healing powers, Richard Alpert, the fact the island is invisible, the ever-changing weather, the reason none of the female islanders had to shave their legs during their island tenure, EVERYTHING. Then for some reason, once all the characters are settled into jobs as slaves, or deities, they'll need to regroup with the 815 folk, and everything will go batshit crazy.

So how will it end? I don't know, but here are some specific predictions/guesses for the end of the WHOLE SHOW:

Locke will be revealed to be some highly revered ancient God. He'll die (again) in the ancient past, and everyone will pray for him to one day return. This explains his whole reason for being on the island, and his 'destiny', and all that nonsense.

Jack will have a one-to-one with someone God-like. Probably Locke. Or his fucking dad. He'll explain everything we've seen these past five years in just a few sentences. Details will be swept over (,shame, no more backstory around Jack's tattoo's) and the whole thing will be sewn up as something to do with Scientology. Jack will have to sacrifice himself, which we'll be lead to believe is a very sad thing, despite most viewers wanting him dead since season two. He'll die saving everyone, in that way he loves so much. He'll know he has to do it too and will cry a lot, really dragging it out.

There will be multiple-dimensions, in addition to the time-travel mind-fuckery of last year. Off-island Jack will have to meet himself and convince him to go back. Again. We might even see a return of his rubbish fake beard just so that the casual viewer doesn't get the two confused.

All the old characters re-introduced will be killed off again, some comically. The show will make lots of oh-so-clever jokes about it's own story-telling mechanisms. They've used the staple 'red shirt' gag to have un-named minor characters killed previously, especially during the flaming arrows bit of season five. This time it'll be someone like Ana Lucia, who'll rock up to say "Maybe we're all back for a reason?!" Then Locke will flash into shot and chop her head off with an Egyptian scythe. They know people are watching expecting major revelations, so will set out to shock the viewer.

Adam and Eve in the caves will turn out to be Desmond and Penny. Abadon will be revealed to be a grown up Walt. Sun and Jin's daughter will marry Claire's son Aaron. There will be an English character with a terrible accent. Polar bears will play a major role in the final episode. Every episode will feature someone saying how everything HAS to HAPPEN because IF NOT, EVERYTHING we know WILL DIE. It'll all end with a plane crash, and some kind of time-loop. Then finally we can get on with the rest of our lives.