Oh, and in case you wondered, the Casimir Effect is real. From wikipedia:

In physics, the Casimir effect or Casimir-Polder force is a physical force exerted between separate objects due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects.

What is “the shift”? Why is there a countdown? What happens when the bunnies touch each other? Why is this frame in there:

So many new questions! I heard a theory that this is time-space shifting and that the same thing was done on a island-wide scale to shift it out of the physical plane or something. The button in the swan hatch was re-setting the shift to prevent the island from going back or something. Also, the Locke is Jacob crowd keeps calming that the event in Jacobs hut was caused by the Casimir effect of two Locke’s from different time lines coming into close contact.

Or something like that. We’ll probably never know. LOL

[tags]lost, orchid video, dharma, casimir effect[/tags]

Everything below is full of season finale related spoilers, so don’t read if you haven’t seen it yet. I have so many questions it’s not even funny!

Whose funeral was it? Could it be Ben’s – and that’s why no one showed up, and Kate didn’t even want to consider it? Some people are saying it’s Locke but I think at least few people would show up for his funeral. He might have made some enemies by trying to keep them on the island, but he also saved them several times. I think people would forgive him and show up.

Maybe it was Juliet? It would explain why Jack was so upset when he found out that she died. All the Lostie’s hated and mistrusted her – especially Kate.

I’m guessing the newspaper clip he ripped up was the obituary of whoever has died. My cousin pointed out the coffin seemed small. It did not seem to be a full sized coffin. But then again it might have been the camera angle or something.

In the hospital Jack says something among the lines of:

Get my father in here right now, and if I’m more drunk than him you can fire me

WTF? If the flashback is really in the future, then his father would be dead. But he says it just as if he was alive! Who says something like that about someone who is dead? Also, he has a prescription from his father in the pharmacy. Would he really be trying to sign a dead guy’s name on a perscription? Granted, he was a mess, but he is not that stupid – is he? Is this some sort of alternative time-line?

Who was Kate talking about when she saw Jack at the end of the episode? Was it Sawyer? Was it someone else? Why would he care about her seeing Jack?

If they really got off the island, what the hell are they going to show for the next 2 seasons? This is so weird! And why does Jack want to go back so badly? Why is he such a mess to begin with? Why does he thing they were supposed to stay there?

WTF was Ben talking about? What is this Temple he was referring to? Whose boat is it? Who did they just call onto the island? Who are these people and what are they looking for? Does Ben know who they are? Or at least what they are after?

Why was penny able to connect directly to the Looking Glass station as soon as the jamming signal was disabled? How did she know the frequency and whatnot? This just didn’t make any sense. The only way she could have called in this quickly was if she knew about the station and was monitoring it. So what is Penny’s connection to the Island?

I was half expecting the show to end with bunch of armed mercenaries descending on the island and taking the losties hostage leaving it to Locke, Sawyer, Hurley and the gang to rescue them (perhaps even cooperating with the Others). I surely haven’t expected this shit.

Why didn’t Charlie at least try to swim out the blown window once the room filled up with water? If Desmond was able to swim down there on one breath, Charlie could have surely made it to the surface if he tried. They are not that deep, so he really wouldn’t even have to worry about decompression. I’m sorry but it was a stupid death. He could have easily reach the surface, take the boat to the shore and radio Jack to stop them from using the phone.

Was this Walt or the Smoke Monster? I’m betting on Smoke Monster. Btw, that damn kid grown a lot since we have last seen him.

Oh man… This is not even a cliff-hanger. They are just plain old messing with our heads at this point!

[tags]lost, wtf, lost season finale, lost finale, tv, abc[/tags]

Careful Observations via youtube

Now most of these are probably just human error. But what if some of them are not? Could it be that the flashbacks slowly change as our heroes spend time on the island? Probably not, but the above is still a cool video.

[tags]lost, lost continuity, continuity errors, cool[/tags]

Also, this:

img © lost easter eggs

Lost Easter Eggs blog took screen shots from both the Pilot episode and Expose proving once and for all that this was all just a stupid retcon. This was not some master plan. Just the worst kind of retroactive continuity.

[tags]lost, nicky and paulo, nicky, paulo, retcon[/tags]

And then they pull the Nicky and Paulo episode on us. For those of you who don’t watch Lost, let me explain you. Nicky and Paulo are sort of like the Jar Jar of Lost. They were introduced in season 3 and the writers just decided to work them into the story using “they were here since season 1 – it’s just that they didn’t really do anything meaningful”.

This weeks episode was essentially an attempt to retcon these two into the core Lost continuity. So we saw flashbacks of them “injected” into the original footage the plane crash site on day one. We saw them listening to Jack’s speech re: cave. They also interacted with Ethan, and Dr. Artz (or whatever his name was) – another retcon character introduced in season 2 for the sole purpose of blowing him up with the Black Rock dynamite to illustrate it’s potency.

Let me break this down for you:

“Oh, hai, we’ve been here all along” is totally lame.

“Look at me, I’m at the crash site standing next to that guy who is gonna get sucked into the engine turbine” is so lame that I actually laughed while watching it.

Retcons are absolutely the worst tools in the TV writer toolbox, because let’s face it. When you retcon something into existence, you are just fucking with us. We know Nicky and Paulo were not there in season 1 and 2. We spent hours carefully dissecting all these episodes, looking for clues, easter eggs, references, links and etc. Lost fans are meticulous bunch who finds meaningful clues in everything. Now you are asking us all to just go along and pretend Nicky and Paulo were there all along?

I’m sorry but this is just wrong. They should have known better than that. We all half-expected them to be Others anyway. Having Nicky and Paulo outed as Other spies would be more plausible than artificially injecting them into the storyline.

Not to mention that this episode was just a filler. Nothing happened. Let me summarize for you the events from this episode that may actually have some impact on the future.

Spoilers below, highlight to read:

Other than that, nothing happened. It was all retcon work, and some flashback scenes from Nicky and Paulo’s life.

I hereby nominate this episode for the Worst Lost Episode Ever award. It is a complete throwaway. If you decide to miss just one episode this season, miss this one. In fact, I think they we should convince them not to put it on S3 DVD’s at all. The sooner we forget this monstrous abomination of an episode the better.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Lost. I just hate Nicky and Paule. And Jar Jar. Fortunately, the ending of the episode suggests that we hopefully won’t be seeing much of these two in the future episodes.

Note: I wanted to put an image of Nicky and Paulo in this post for reference but they suck so badly that Google image search can’t find them, and the only google hits for them are from message board posts where people discuss how lame and irrelevant their characters are. :P

[tags]lost, retcon, nicky and paulo, nicky, paulo, lame, totally lame, super lame, horrible, worst episode ever[/tags]

Color me confused. All up to this point I was entirely convinced that the Others were either descendants of the original DHARMA initiative, or that they were people who came in later picked up where DHARMA left off. I thought that their work on the island was connected to the Valenzetti equation. But if we are to believe Mr. Patchy McRussian this is not the case.

We got some answers, but it seems like they only opened more questions. Now we know that Others predate DHARMA and that there was open hostilities between the two groups. What were they doing on the island in the first place though? Are Others and DHARMA just two independent groups working on the Valenzetti riddle on their own? Or did they have an entirely different purpose.

Why was the Flame station rigged with explosives? Why was it important to destroy it in case of an incursion of “hostiles”? My theory is that this was the main DHARMA communication array used to operate the satelite dish, and the sonar. If it was overrun the “hostiles” could feed the mainland fake data, or interrupt submarine communication my messing with the sonar. It also seemed to be the entrance to the hidden underground complex of tunnels. So perhaps blowing it up was a way to prevent “hostiles” from reaching the underground communication lines.

It seems that Others won and eliminated DHARMA planting their own operatives at the Flame. Did they also find the Swan hatch? Was Inman an Other? I vaguely remember him talking about “the hostiles” at some point. How about Radzinsky? Was he DHARMA? Did Inman kill Radzinsky and take over his place in the Swan?

We can be sure that either Radzinsky or Inman (or both) knew about the Flame because it was featured on the blast door map.

Of course if Inman was an Other then why no one showed up at the Swan when he died. If he was reporting to the base camp, someone would notice that he was MIA after some point and sent an expedition to Swan and run into Desmond. Unless of course Inman was a rouge Other and he took the job in Swan so that he could stay below the radar, and work on the sailboat that would help him escape from the island. We know that at least Juliet is on the island against her will, so it is safe to assume others are in a similar situation.

So if Inman was a known recluse, and took the Swan job to stay out of reach of Ben, Juliet and their politics, it’s possible that no one noticed him missing. As long as the button was pushed they assumed Inman was doing his job.

Another possibility is that Inman and Radzinsky were indeed last DHARMA operatives on the island and Others simply missed them. But that would be a little strange. Others took over Hydra station, the Staff and the Flame so it is safe to assume they had maps that would show them location of Swan. If they were actively exploiting the DHARMA stations then it would only be logical to assume they would try to check out Swan at some point…

Or perhaps they also got fooled by the quarantine signs, and decided not to open the sealed hatch? Could the quarantine hoax was there to keep the Swan crew indoors at all times to minimize the chance of them running into “hostiles”?

I have so many questions it’s not even funny. This was a good episode though. Once again Sayid shows that he is the most clueful of the lot and asks Patchy some questions before the shit hits the fan. Jack, Kate and Sawyer should fucking be taking notes. All this time they spent in Hydra and they have zero vital intel on the Others other than “they have backyards”. Sigh…

I’m waiting for someone at lostpedia to transcribe the annotated text that Locke saw in the Flame.

The Lost Blog has a translated version of the russian dialog between Patchy and the black woman if you are interested, although you can probably figure out what they said from the context.

Hurley is teh ultimate ping pong champion! :mrgreen:

[tags]lost, dharma, others, inman, radzinsky, patchy, flame, swan, island, enter 77, 77, hurley, sayid[/tags]

So, what are your thoughts on the untimely demise of Ms. “I make my own destiny! Oh wait, maybe I don’t”?

[tags]bsg, battlestar galactica, starbuck, starbuck’s death, cylon, desmond, lost[/tags]

J. Wood notes that Juliet’s mark looks a little bit like the Rosicrucian Cross. Rosicrucians were a secret esoteric, mystical order established in 17th century. The served as a model for many later secret societies such as free masons and etc.. I’m still processing this stuff but it is very interesting.

Also, this is Rosicrucian chart:

And here is the map from the Swan blast door. Note that if you remove all the writing and markings, the lines drawn in the background create a shape very similar to the chart above:

What does this all mean? I have no clue. Possibly nothing, or perhaps something very significant. From J. Wood:

The Rosicrucians also were followers of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who also held to a very mystical cosmology. Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of souls, sacred geometry, and that concepts and matter could be represented numerically. At this point, the Valenzetti equation should come to mind, because that’s exactly what each of the 4 8 15 16 23 and 42 numerals are meant to represent.

Both DHARMA and Rosicrucian order had similar goals – to aid humanity in it’s growth and development through their secret work on the esoteric mysteries of the universe.

Of course I realize that many of these theories are just wild goose chases… Even if these references are completely unintended, I still enjoy reading them. They help me to experience the show on a completely different level than than a casual viewer.

And you have to give credit to the creators of the show for giving us all this material to meticulously analyze, and theorize about each week – intentionally or not. :)

yourube link

Has anyone else confirmed this? I just want to make sure this is not a hoax. What is the significance of this line? Why was it streamed backwards?

According to the lost blog this is a paraphrase of an old Buddhist saying:

The wise know how to use time and space perfectly; they lead free and harmonious lives. Fools are enslaved by time and space; they are busy running around all day. Wise or foolish, the difference is obvious

Any thoughts on this?

[tags]lost, brainwashing, room 23, only fools are enslaved by time and space[/tags]

”I feel like we’re playing a chess game,” analogizes Lindelof [the exec. producer], ”and in the first six moves, we’ve lost our queen and two bishops, and the audience is saying ‘They are the worst chess players in the world!’ What they don’t realize is that we’re nine moves away from checkmating you. If we lose, we lose. But that’s the play, and we’re standing by it.”

The creators of the show acknowledge the fact that the show is changing direction, but they promise that it will only get better as the story unfolds. And I believe them because they have spilled some juicy spoilage. Here are some of the things we can look forward to in the remainder of the season: (highlight the text with your mouse to read it)

— BEGIN SPOILER BLOCK —

— END SPOIER BLOCK —

Writers also promise that they will do something useful with Nikki and Paulo who annoy the shit out of me. There is a way these characters could be made interesting and legit though. That is: if Hurley would go over his Flight Manifest again, and didn’t find them on it. That would be an interesting twist, and much easier to swallow than the “no, seriously, they’ve been on the island all along” bullshit we got so far.

Lindelof claims that once we are done with their story they will become iconic characters. I don’t buy it. I fucking hate retcons and no amount of epic bullshit is going to change this. I may learn to tolerate them, but they will always be retcons to me – iconic or not.

Either way, it’s a good read.

[tags]lost, lindelof, entertainment weekly, tv[/tags]