Dharma Secret’s LOST-n-Found: A Blog Dedicated to the T.V. Show Lost

From Nov. 1st, Ausiello Report

Exclusive: Lost Execs React to Latest Death!I can’t believe the smoke monster killed Mr. Eko!

Sure, the stick-toting warlord wasn’t exactly my favorite character, but he was a fascinating creature, not to mention one of the last remaining survivors of that cursed tail section. Why did Eko have to go? That’s a question for Lost boys Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who addressed Eko’s passing — and the exit of his portrayer, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje — in an interview with yours truly earlier this week.

Ausiello: Another actor leaves Lost just months after he’s pulled over in Hawaii for a traffic violation. This is the part where you guys tell me there’s absolutely no connection.
Carlton Cuse: We actually work very closely with the Honolulu police department, and they have final script approval.
Damon Lindelof: Look, we feel very strongly about traffic violations, no matter how minor they are. All we can say is that Evangeline Lilly got a parking ticket last week, and she better not count her chickens.
Lindelof: The honest answer is, this story was sailing for months before his brush with the law — which was widely blown up by the press. What actually happened is not anything remotely illegal. (FYI: The charges were later dropped.)
Cuse: When Adewale came on the show, he didn’t want to make a long-term commitment to a series. We love him and so we agreed that he would come on the show and then we would find a time in which his arc would come to an end. And we sort of felt after a lot of conversations with him — most of which took place at the end of the spring last year — that we would finish his character somewhere in [these first] six episodes. And as we started talking about what was going to really help the drama of these six episodes, we thought, “Well, this is the perfect place to do it.” As we said, we all kind of went into this [with the idea] that it was only going to be for a limited period of time.

Ausiello: It’s no secret that Adewale wasn’t the most beloved cast member. Did that play any role in his departure? [FYI: In next week’s issue of TV Guide magazine — on sale Nov. 9 — my colleague, Shawna Malcom, reports that, per multiple sources, the 39-year-old actor had become an increasingly difficult presence on set, refusing to film scenes as scripted, insisting on rewrites and even “demanding” several times to be released from his contract.]
Lindelof: We don’t really talk about anything other than the creative decisions made on the show. If you’re hearing it from other people, you’re not hearing that from us. Not to mention, we’re in L.A. So we would never let that kind of thing determine the creative direction of the show. We’re all in the service of the story.

For more from Damon and Carlton, you may want to check out next Wednesday’s 100th Ask Ausiello. Because they may be two of the very special guests I’ve been alluding to. And in lieu of an expensive gift, they may be giving me some major-ass prattle about the rest of the season. (Tee-hee.)

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From EW.com:

THE 10-WORD TEASE!

(In which we whet your appetite for tonight’s new episode of Lost with 10 words worth of cryptic fun, courtesy of the show’s creators.)

This week’s tease from executive producer Carlton Cuse is:

‘’It’s judgment time. Yemi. Eko. What does the island want?'’

Tune in tonight for the answer — and come back to EW.com tomorrow to read our resident Lost watcher Christine Fenno’s always-terrific take on the show.

*

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT!

I know who the Others are.

That is to say, I know who they REALLY are.

Next week, I’m going to tell you.

*

FOLLOW-UP: DO LOST AND HEROES SHARE THE SAME WORLD?

A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you my theory that the exec producer of Heroes, Tim Kring, and the exec producer of Lost, Damon Lindelof, are in a secret creative alliance, and that their respective stories share a common backstory mythology. To wit: The Hanso Foundation/The Dharma Initiative is the agency responsible for the outbreak of super-powered humans in Heroes.

In response to the theory, Kring, who happens to be good friends with Lindelof, revealed that the two men have indeed discussed the idea of creating some kind of creative synergy between the two shows, although the reality of Lost and Heroes being on separate, competing networks makes that somewhat complicated if not impossible.

I recently had the chance to run all of this by Lindelof. For the record, when I asked him if it was true that he and Kring had discussed the possibility of a Heroes/Lost team-up, this was his reaction:

‘’Totally true. And if Hiro can teleport ANYWHERE, wouldn’t YOU watch him team up with Hurley to find the rest of that four-toed statue?'’

My answer: YES!

*

TELL ME ABOUT THE RABBITS, UNCLE STEVE…

In last week’s episode of Lost, there was a scene in which Ben seemed to kill a bunny by shaking its cage so violently that the rabbit had a heart attack and died. If you saw the episode, you know that it was all a ruse; Ben was trying to get into Sawyer’s head — to rattle his cage, so to speak — and to prove that the castaway con man was no match for the former Henry Gale in the art of psychological warfare.

Quick — what’s the one thing you remember about that rabbit, besides its fake death? My assumption is that what you most vividly recall was the ‘’8′’ that was written on its white fur. I’m going to make that assumption, because a better mind than mine tells me that that’s the assumption most anyone would make. His name is Stephen King, and it turns out that the 8-branded bunny is a reference to his memoir, On Writing.

The passage can be found in the chapter titled ‘’What Writing Is.'’ The first sentence of the chapter answers the implicit question, and from a Lost theorizing perspective, it’s kind of a doozy. What is writing?

‘’Telepathy, of course.'’

And he’s serious, too. I think. Read the book and decide for yourself. In this short chapter, King tries to argue his point by painting a word picture. ‘’Look — here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot stub which it is constantly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.'’

It’s King’s belief that upon reading that, and reflecting upon the bunny, we would all agree that ‘’the most important thing here… [is] the number on its back…. This is what we’re looking at, and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together. We’re close. We’re having a meeting of the minds.'’

Do Bunnies + Telepathy = Doc Jensen’s Animal Magic Theory?

Station to station

But some other things about On Writing. Earlier in the brief bunny-referencing chapter, King refers to books as ‘’an escape hatch'’ out of the ‘’purgatory'’ of life. He also talks about the place where you, the reader, like to be when you read a book. He calls this place your ‘’far-seeing place, the one where you go to receive telepathic messages'’ from an author via the broadcast frequency of the printed page. King describes his own ‘’far-seeing place'’:

‘’I'm in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images. This is a place that I’ve built for myself over the years. It’s a far-seeing place. I know it’s a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction… but that’s how it is with me.'’

Does that sound familiar to you? It should. You’ve been there before. And tonight, you’re going to go there again.

You know it as The Pearl Station.

*

THE REDEMPTION OF TELEVISION THEORY
The Secret Purpose of The Dharma Initiative and The Allegory of The Pearl Station

What do we know about The Pearl Station? You know, besides it looks like the ultimate geek basement — a couple reclining chairs, a wall of televisions, and a computer?

Nothing, of course. Oh, sure, there was an orientation video in the subterranean facility, which explained that the purpose of the station was to monitor a psychological experiment taking place in another hatch — namely, The Hatch, or Station Three: The Swan. According to the Pearl video, the occupants in The Swan believe they have been given a task ‘’of utmost importance,'’ and the job of the Pearl occupants was to document everything the Swan people did in their notebooks, ‘’no matter how minute or seemingly unimportant.'’ Still, how much can we really trust these films? After all, they’re all about ‘’orientation'’ — about controlling information, manipulating our attention, and facilitating a pre-determined response. (This would be my criticism of King’s lovely ‘’writing is telepathy'’ theory; aren’t novels basically one-sided ‘’orientation'’ narratives? But that’s a conversation for another time.)

The Pearl video is filled with many distracting little details — lots of bunnies with numbers on them, if you will. But a couple jump out at me. First, the Pearl video makes a point of letting its viewers know that it is deliberately withholding information from them. In the video, the narrator, Dr. Mark Wickmund (who is also the lab coat-clad narrator of the Swan film, although he went by the name Dr. Marvin Candle) tells the Pearl occupants, ‘’What do [the Swan] subjects believe they are accomplishing as they struggle to fulfill their tasks? You, as the observer, don’t need to know.'’

Curious, huh?

It reminds me of the Swan film, with its ominous reference to ‘’the incident'’ — although that, too, was conspicuously, deliberately unexplained. Curious, huh?

Curious, indeed. In fact, I think the whole notion of curiosity explains a big chunk of The Dharma Initiative. Here’s my theory, based on information gleaned from the show, the annotations on The Map that Locke discovered in The Hatch, information supplied by The Lost Experience, and my own twisted, comic book-shaped imagination:

WHAT IS THE ISLAND?
The island was discovered by Magnus Hanso, presumably an ancestor of Alvar Hanso, founder of The Hanso Foundation, the financier of The Dharma Initiative. According to the annotations of The Map, Magnus Hanso is buried on the island, near Black Rock, the slave ship beached in the middle of the jungle. Given the island’s unique properties — the electromagnetic energies, whispering jungles, and ancient statues — it’s possible that Magnus believed he had discovered a mystical lost continent, which was a popular pseudo-scientific notion of the early 20th century.

WHAT WAS ALVAR HANSO UP TO ON THE ISLAND?
But Magnus’ utopian-minded descendent had a different theory on the island. During the 1960s, according to The Lost Experience, Alvar Hanso participated in a U.N.-backed project to produce something called The Valenzetti Equation, a mathematical formula that predicted the expiration date of mankind. However, Hanso believed that if you could change the six most important variables in the equation, you could change mankind’s destiny. Those variables just happen to be The Numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Each of the numbers corresponds to an environmental factor that contributes to mankind’s destiny on earth, including overpopulation. Hanso believed the island could be used as a means to change the world, and created The Dharma Initiative to accomplish that task. He didn’t exactly explain how, and according to The Lost Experience, it doesn’t really matter, anyway, because Dharma failed.

WHY DID ALVAR THINK THE ISLAND COULD SAVE THE WORLD?
Here’s my theory: Hanso, a big fan of alternative pseudo-sciences, might have believed that the island was proof positive of something called a ‘’morphogenetic field.'’ (Let’s call this MG Field for short; check out Rupert Sheldrake at Wikipedia for more info. Trippy stuff.) An alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution, MG Field theory suggests that there could be a band of energy that connects all things, and this energy basically contains information. Our DNA molecules, per this theory, receive information from the field, and shape our bodies and minds accordingly so we can survive in our respective environments.

WHAT WAS THE DHARMA INITIATIVE?
According to Alvar, Dharma was an acronym for Department of Heuristics And Material Applications; alternatively, he referred to Dharma as ‘’the one true way.'’ A heuristic is a fancy word that basically means, ‘’a way to solve a problem.'’ Putting it all together, Alvar and The Dharma Initiative (sounds like a great name for a band) was trying to find a solution to save the world, and apply it to their chosen material — human beings.

My contention is that Alvar believed that the island is a conduit to the MG Field, and could be used to essentially reprogram human beings.

According to proponents of MG Field theory, this energy is accessed psychically. It works like this:

STEP ONE: An advantageous behavior PERFORMED by a member of the tribe;

STEP TWO: The behavior is OBSERVED by other members of the tribe, who recognize its benefit and adopt the behavior;

STEP THREE: The behavior is uploaded into the morphogenetic field and downloaded to other members of the tribe worldwide.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO PEARL AND SWAN STATIONS?
I wonder if what Alvar was trying to do was teach human beings one simple behavior that could save themselves from self-destruction. That behavior?

Becoming self-aware.

And then, after enlightenment — action.

Consider again the Pearl video, which begins with a quote from Dr. Karen DeGroot, one of his Dharma collaborators:

‘’Careful observation is the only key to true and complete awareness.'’

Alvar’s hope was this:

The Pearl occupants would grow increasingly curious about the things they hadn’t been told, and more than that, concerned about the test subjects in the Swan, especially as they ‘’struggled to complete their task.'’ In fact, I think Alvar hoped the observers in the Pearl would become appalled by what they saw happening in The Swan, and feel guilty about their own participation in the experiment. Hanso hoped that the Pearl-based watchers would revolt against the system, free the Hatch inhabitants, and reveal to them the hidden structures that govern their lives.

In other words, what Alvar Hanso was trying to do was upload into the MG Field a bold new biological imperative that would change the world, a new appetite to replace the appetite for destruction:

The drive for ENLIGHTENMENT.

A desire for CHANGE.

But it didn’t work.

WHY?
Because The Pearl observers didn’t become curious about the alarming mysteries of their endeavor. They didn’t become concerned about the struggles of The Swan occupants.

No, like good little worker bees, they just did their job, as instructed by the dubious dude in the video.

And like good little TV watchers, they just sat back and enjoyed the show.

Silly Alvar. He thought watching TV could actually save the world. But if he knew then what we know now, he would know that could never happen. Why?

Survivor. Big Brother. The Bachelor. Wife Swap. Temptation Island.

In other words: the guys in The Pearl were your average REALITY TV FANS. Watching people suffer… well, that’s just funny! And those journals they were keeping?

BLOGS.

Television without pity, indeed.

Fortunately, we have Lost. Because Lost is all about promoting introspection and redemption; about taking a journey that reveals that truth of our lives, and inspiring us to live our lives differently, and for the better.

Right?

RIGHT?!?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to watch Survivor exploit some racial stereotypes. HILARIOUS!

Doc J

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EW.com’s Christine Fenno on the second island reveal in “Every Man For Himself”.

And Con Man takes one on the chin….And another….And a kick to the gut…and he’s down again….Was that not the messiest, bloodiest Lost yet? I’m not what you’d call a fan of physical violence. But I loved-loved-loved this episode, down to the very last punch. Take that, Linus, yeah!

I’m sold on the adrenaline-rush direction the show has taken (giant needle to the sternum, anyone?), but I’d never stay this addicted if we all weren’t regularly marched up to the top of Cliffhanger Cliff where…what the…

There are TWO islands?

Well, fake me out and call me flabbergasted. Of course, the clues were there all along. Last season, the Pearl Station orientation film named a mysterious Pala Ferry. And sure enough, Kate, Sawyer, and Jack were taken to the ferry’s pier in order to be whisked off the island. Then, early in this episode, Ben told Juliet, ‘’The sub is back,'’ but I was too preoccupied with my new theory — that they’re siblings! — to see the jungle for the trees. I’d always pictured the Others tooling around the castaways’ ‘’beloved island,'’ as Ben called it, docking at secret coves, but clearly, more extensive commuting has been going on. How long till we see that submarine?

Expect Locke and his rescue team to do a double take if they ever learn that Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are imprisoned on another island. Unless large-scale invisible-cloaking technology is at work (never say never), the new island, about half a square mile in size by Ben’s estimate (Alcatraz times two), is remarkably well-hidden, tucked behind the larger island in a way that the Oceanic survivors have never seen it. This may explain why, two episodes ago, Ben urgently ordered Colleen to stop Sayid’s expedition — but recall Juliet’s casual comment, ‘’So they have a boat? Sailing in circles’ll keep them busy.'’ Did she want Hydra Island discovered? It may be she wants out of Othersville altogether.

Which island is home to Othersville? My replay of season 3’s premiere leaves it open to interpretation, depending on whether you think the aerial shot depicts one big island with the Oceanic crashes in the background or two different land masses. Perhaps Hydra Island was unoccupied until Ben mobilized his crew and incorporated Hydra’s cages and surveillance into his plan. Perhaps at the construction site where Kate and Sawyer worked, the Others weren’t playacting but actually breaking ground on some kind of Chunnel. Locke’s polar-bear cave might itself be the opening of an underwater tunnel; that’s one explanation for how bears would get from Dharma Zoo to Beloved Island. (Another: Polar bears swim.)

On to Ben’s dramatics. Which I adore. After rolling up his sleeves to beat Sawyer bloody in the bear cage, Ben strapped him down and sicced two Pulp Fiction fans on him (one wielding a super-scary needle), then rattled the cage of a cute bunny (branded with an 8). Next he told Sawyer they had implanted a pacemaker that would cause his heart to explode if his pulse quickened. (Wisely, Ben aborted the preposterously awesome ruse. The giveaways included Sawyer’s surviving a glimpse of topless Kate, a beat-down from Danny, and a taxing hike uphill. Moreover, once Jack was rushed out of his cell to operate on Colleen, we learned the Others had no surgeons among their flock. Certainly, amateurs don’t do cardiac implants.) Ben knew Sawyer was pining for Kate, and threatened her if Sawyer confided in her — effectively ending their cross-cage conspiring — all before unveiling that breathtaking vista at episode’s end. Will Sawyer give up hope? As I said, the man’s in love. The look on his face when Kate claimed that she only said she loved him so that Danny would stop hitting him was unforgettable. If the Others are trying to get those two to mate, they still have their work cut out for them.

Sawyer’s been locked up and in love before. We discovered, via terrific flashbacks, that he’s also a daddy. The baby’s name is Clementine Phillips, unless her mother, Cassidy, the con victim who pressed charges and sent him to prison, is working another con. When Sawyer earned a reward from the feds for helping them recover money another inmate had stolen, he sent it anonymously to a bank account for little Clem, either as a loving gesture for his child or to pay back Cassidy. I believe Sawyer the Cynical Smart-Ass is fundamentally an optimist and believes the daughter is real.

Jack is fundamentally a fighter, and he did to Juliet what Ben did to Locke last season. Not much fun, is it, Dr. Fertility, having a newcomer detect a power imbalance and question why you take orders from someone who should be your equal? Like Locke, Juliet was visibly stung. She couldn’t back up her claim that she and Ben make decisions together because Ben entered and commanded her to follow him. Next time Juliet brings pancakes during Jack’s cartoons, you know he’ll be pushing that button. (First, though, he wants to know whose spinal tumor he saw on an X-ray before he operated on doomed Colleen. Best guess: Ben’s. Evidence against: Ben’s cage-fighting skills.)

Ready for a wild speculation? Many suspect Ben and Juliet shared a romantic past. My hunch, mentioned above, is that they’re brother and sister. Twins, in fact! Offspring of the DeGroots, let’s say. I’m not as clairvoyant as Desmond, but I detect sibling rivalry. What if Ben grew up on the island and stayed but Juliet left to get her medical degree? Maybe he was closer to Mom and Dad, she tasted ‘’real world'’ freedom, mutual jealousy developed….The key to what brought her back to her brother’s turf could lie in the mystery of what happened to the whole Dharma Initiative. Perhaps Bad Twin, the goofy novel published last year, was — in its title alone — a major clue: The island has a twin, the plane broke in two, Dharma stations were staffed by pairs, two orientation films were narrated by look-alikes with different names (twin brothers?), and we’ve encountered two polar bears. Of Mice and Men, heavily referenced this episode, follows two men who share a brotherly relationship. (Ben and Danny must be Lost’s George and Lenny.) Heck, hoss, I predict Sun will have twins!

Let’s not forget Desmond the Prophet. His new benevolence is refreshing, and I like seeing the castaways discover his gift. Still need to know how he escaped the Hatch, but I have faith the answer’s coming.

What do you think? Can Locke lead a rescue to a whole new island? Is Juliet cracking up? Why do the Others need a fertility doctor? Will Sawyer be hurt by Kate? And will we see Ben’s bunny again?

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Doc Jensen on Locke and Luke Skywalker:

THE 10-WORD TEASE!
(In which we whet your appetite for tonight’s new episode of Lost with 10 words worth of cryptic fun, courtesy of the show’s creators)

This week’s tease from executive producer Carlton Cuse is:

‘’Who are the two most important women in Sawyer’s life?'’

Tune in tonight for the answer — and come back to EW.com tomorrow to read our resident Lost watcher Chrstine Fenno’s always-terrific take on the show.

*

Someone asked me recently to summarize Lost in one sentence. This is what I came up with:

Lost is a show about people with unresolved issues colliding with an island with an unresolved history.

And to think I am paid decent money to come up with stuff like that.

DOC JENSEN’S LOST MYSTERY HOT SHEET
A weekly ranking of Lost’s watercooler mysteries

1. WHAT DO LOST AND THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK HAVE IN COMMON?

ANSWER John Locke.

ANALYSIS Wasn’t it great to see the return of the old hunter/shaman of season 1? Clearly, ABC is keenly aware that you prefer lord-of-the-jungle Locke over last year’s Hatch-trapped button-pusher. In fact, in the script for last week’s episode, there was a scene in which Locke pulled out one of his hunting knives and said, ‘’God, I’ve missed this.'’ The knowing bit was cut from the final version of the show, but ABC’s marketing department used it in promotional spots. (Alas, Lost continued its early-season ratings slide, and barely edged out CBS’ Criminal Minds in total viewers last week, which itself seems criminal.) Summing it up for me was the opening sequence, when Mr. Eko’s Jesus Stick tumbled from the heavens and nearly knocked Locke upside the noggin. Shades of The Lion King, when Rafiki, the wise old baboon, whacked Simba upside the head to teach him a lesson about moving on from the past, embracing your destiny, and playing your role in the great Circle of Life. (Sorry: My kids have made me watch The Lion King, like, 50 times. Tune in next week when I prove how Timon and Pumbaa explain the Dharma Initiative.)

But really, the movie that truly illuminates last week’s Locke episode is The Empire Strikes Back. I loved the moment when Locke entered the cave and torched the polar bear — it reminded me of Luke when he used his lightsaber to kill the wampa monster in the ice cave on Hoth. It also reminded me of the part when Luke descended into that mystical root cellar on Dagobah and chopped off the helmeted head of a hallucinatory Darth Vader, only to see that under the mask was his own face.

Could these vague allusions to Empire (often cited by Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof as one of his fave movies) have been intentional? Consider this: Like the vision of Vader in the cave, the polar bear represents the hero’s unresolved anger, much of which is rooted in his complicated non-relationship with his awful father.

Locke now seems determined to save his kidnapped friends, just as Luke did in Empire after his Dagobah digression. We all know how that turned out, don’t we? The neophyte knight walked right into a trap…

…and got his hand cut off.

Hmmm…

PREDICTION In the next Locke episode, John the Jedi will lead the rescue mission to free Jack & Co., and at long last, we’ll get the backstory that reveals how Locke lost the use of his legs.

HYPOTHESIS Remember last season, when Henry Gale (now Ben) told Locke that the reason he had infiltrated the castaways’ camp was to bring him back to Othersville? Was Ben merely messing with the easily manipulated Locke — or was he actually telling Locke the truth, as much as Ben actually tells the truth? Was Ben’s ‘’Let myself get kidnapped'’ plan more complex and far-reaching than just setting up Jack, Kate, and Sawyer for abduction? Could he have been setting up Locke for something, too?

THEORY Like Luke, Locke has a secret sibling — and it’s Ben himself.

BUT LET’S GO BACK TO THE LION KING FOR A SECOND… Like Simba, Locke’s destiny is to take his place as the leader of his people, and become the chief custodian of this enchanted island. In Lost’s final episode, after a bloody battle with stormtroopers from the Widmore Corporation, seeking to turn the island into a subliminal telepathic marketing mechanism for its array of products, Locke will sacrifice his life to save his friends and the sanctity of the island, but as we see a boat take the castaways away into the sunset, the camera will pull back and reveal a shadowy figure watching from a high cliff — and it’ll be John Locke, Lord of Lost, resurrected from the dead! He’ll beat his chest, give a Tarzan yell, and swing away on a vine to kill a boar, happier than a pig in mud…

…and the vast majority of America won’t give a crap, because by then, most of them will have been brainwashed into watching a very special ‘’Mandy Patankin Plays the Piano'’ episode of Criminal Minds.

ESTIMATED CHANCE THAT DOC JENSEN WILL EVER WATCH AN EPISODE OF CRIMINAL MINDS AS LONG AS IT AIRS OPPOSITE LOST I’d sooner face down a psycho polar bear armed only with a torch and a can of hairspray.

But speaking of miraculous resurrections…

*

2. HOW EXACTLY DID LOCKE, EKO, AND DESMOND SURVIVE THE IMPLODING HATCH?
(Maddeningly Unresolved Season 2 Cliffhanger of the Week!)

ANALYSIS I don’t know.

But being the good Christian boy that I am, when life leaves me baffled, I turn to the Bible. And so should you, my fellow Lost theorists, for the producers of Lost like to encode their show with Bible passages. If you’re not the type of obsessive fan prone to freezing frames, allow me to point out that Mr. Eko’s Jesus Stick was sporting some new citations. For example:

Genesis 13:14 Part of this verse is actually etched on Eko’s stick: ‘’Lift up your eyes and look [from the place where you are,] north…'’
Application: If the castaways look to the northern part of the island, they will find the place where the Others are holding Jack, Kate, and Sawyer. But as for how the button-pushers survived the implosion, I think another footnote on Eko’s Staff of Clues might provide insight:

John 3:5 ‘’Jesus answered, ‘’Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'’ In the full context of this passage, Christ is explaining that one must be spiritually transformed or ‘’born again'’ in order to enter Heaven.
Application: For now, let’s just assume that Locke and Eko somehow managed to scramble away from the Hatch and were thrown into the jungle by the concussive energy of the implosion, à la the flying door marked ‘’quarantine.'’ So what happened to Desmond?

Simple.

He was born again.

The stated purpose of the Hatch, according to the (possibly bogus) Station Three Orientation Film, was to study the ‘’unique'’ electromagnetic energy that fluctuated from the southern section of the island. But we also know that Dharma was conducting experiments in parapsychology, or ‘’mind over matter.'’ Now, quantum physics says that all matter is made up of electromagnetic energy. And remember, Desmond seemed to believe in a form of reincarnation, as per his catchphrase, ‘’See you in another life, brother.'’ I’m thinking that Desmond essentially willed himself into living again. Mind over matter.

In other words, Desmond literally saved himself. Which could explain Boone’s cryptic reference to Desmond in Locke’s dream when he said, ‘’He’s helping himself.'’

And, of course, it also explains Desmond showing up in his birthday suit.

ESTIMATED CHANCE THAT DESMOND USED ELECTROMAGNETIC ENERGY TO REINCARNATE HIMSELF 0%. Please. What happened was this: The Hatch never exploded or imploded or whatever on its own. When Desmond turned the key, he was doused with knock-out gas, and approximately 100 Dharma Initiative Oompa-Loompas scurried out from their underground hiding places and dragged Locke, Eko, and Desmond clear of the wreckage. Then they blew up the Hatch, catapulted the hatch door into the sky and triggered some loud and flashy special effects for the benefit of the rest of the island. Then they implanted hypnotic suggestions into Locke’s head ('’Make a big speech about going to save Jack…'’), Eko’s head ('’When you hear Locke apologize, mumble some stuff about saving his friends…'’), and Desmond’s head ('’You’re going to have visions of the future, beginning with John’s big speech…'’). Then, they put Eko in the polar bear cave, stripped Desmond naked, flung the Jesus Stick into the sky, and woke up them all up as they ran back into hiding.

See, it’s all part of a Dharma mind game designed to brainwash people into believing in the supernatural.

Oh, and Charlie’s in on it.

*

3. DOES THE POLAR BEAR LIKE TO EAT LITTLE CHILDREN?

ANALYSIS Apparently, the grumpy beast likes to feast on Dharma stooges, judging from the skeleton in the cave with the Pearl Station T-shirt (I TOTALLY WANT ONE OF THOSE.) (The T-shirt—not the skeleton.)

If you’re new to this column and still scratching your head over the whole idea of a polar bear on a tropical island, here’s your crucial info: According to the annotations on the Map that Locke found in the Hatch, polar bears were brought to the island by Dharma as part of their investigations into radical scientific means to save the human species from impending doom. Maybe.

Anyway, I was very intrigued by Charlie’s seemingly random side comment that polar bears are known for their intelligence — that they are the ‘’Einsteins of the bear community.'’ I was also intrigued by Locke’s discovery of a dirty old yellow dump truck in PB2’s bone-strewn cave. The toy seems to imply that the polar bear had once snacked on a small child. Of course, in the context of the episode, the yellow dump truck could have been just a metaphor for Locke, who, according to his backstories, used to drive a truck, got dumped on a lot, and was yellow in the cowardly sense, especially in his inability to shoot and kill defenseless undercover cops trying to bring down his hippie pot-growing commune.

Okay, maybe that was a reach. Perhaps there’s a slightly less crazy alternate explanation for the presence of a kid’s toy in the polar bear’s cave…

THEORY Got it! The polar bear didn’t eat a kid who played with a toy truck — he IS a kid who played with a toy truck. And maybe he still plays with it, too. It’s the Animal Magic theory, boys and girls. Remember, my contention was that Dharma was using animals noted for their intelligence as test subjects in consciousness-transfer experiments. I think PB2 shares a brain with a little boy. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we ultimately learned that those skeletons in the cave didn’t die as a result of becoming polar bear food. After all, why was that skeleton still wearing a Dharma shirt? Wouldn’t it have been torn to shreds? Maybe PB2 is just a thigh and leg man — or maybe the real reason he drags people into his cave is that the bear-boy just wants someone to play with.

ESTIMATED CHANCE THAT PB2 SHARES BRAIN SPACE WITH A SMALL TRUCK-PLAYING CHILD Actually, PB2 shares brain space with the part of my mind that I used to have before losing it to this show.

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4. SHOULD WE BE PARSING THE MYTHOLOGICAL SUBTEXT OF THE PEACH AND APPLYING THE LEARNING TO LOST?
(Doc Jensen’s Reach of the Week!)

ANALYSIS Remember in Locke’s flashback, when he took a big bite of peach while fruit-picking at the commune with the undercover cop? Well, according to our good friends over at Wikipedia, ‘’the peach often plays an important part in Chinese tradition and is symbolic of long life.'’

And then, there’s the Japanese myth of Momotaro, which apparently means ‘’Peach Boy.'’ According to this myth, Peach Boy was a mighty hero who went to a magical island and teamed up with a bunch of animals to liberate the island from a bad bunch of demonic Others known as the Oni.

ESTIMATED CHANCE THAT JOHN LOCKE IS NOT ONLY IMMORTAL BUT IS FOLLOWING IN THE MYTHIC FOOTSTEPS OF THIS JAPANESE ‘’PEACH BOY'’: 48%

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Next week, we’re going to deviate from our usual format so I can bring you a bold new super-string theory that I like to call THE REDEMPTION OF TELEVISION THEORY OF LOST. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while, and it’s rooted in an explanation of the true purpose of Dharma’s Pearl Station, which I understand the castaways will be visiting again in next week’s episode. I’m going to tease my theory by quoting from this rather curious passage from the Lost tie-in book Bad Twin:

‘’To get a single pearl, you basically have to perform surgery on an oyster, put this tiny pellet in just the right place in the ovary. Don’t get it exactly right, the oyster dies and you’ve got to start over. Even if it works, you’ve got to babysit the oyster for a couple years, checking its progress and health. So many things can go wrong…'’

Friends, I think all the secrets of Lost lie within that paragraph.

But that’s next week. See you then.

Doc J

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EW.com’s Christine Fenno on “Further Instructions”

They tease us a lot ’cause they got us on the spot!

Welcome back, Locke and Hurley and Eko. Also, of course, Desmond (nekkid!). And, for that matter, most of the Lost characters who didn’t end season 2 on a pier or a boat. In episode 3 of season 3, we got the barest beginnings of an explanation of what happened to Station 3, a.k.a. the Swan, after the turn of the fail-safe key. Now I’m anxious (as anxious as a mute being wheeled through an airport by a ghost!) to learn how Locke, Eko, and Desmond survived the detonation that turned the Hatch into a crater. Who can say if we’ll ever see the bottom of said crater, but I look forward to a flashback that shows the electromagnetic implosion itself. I just really need (a) closure on the question of how our boys physically got out and (b) more naked Desmond.

The episode, titled ‘’Further Instructions'’ (which refers to Eko’s suggestion that Locke attempt the rescue of Kate, Sawyer, and Jack), had false starts, but I enjoyed the trippy places the writers took us. Which is not to say I didn’t pull my hair out. Even with no sign of wily Benjamin Linus (if that is indeed his name!) — but perhaps befitting an episode with a marijuana-based backstory — I am getting more paranoid: Did the Jesus Stick fall on Locke, or was it thrown? Did the rain just suddenly end while Locke was driving, or can the mysterious hitchhiker change the weather? Did we simply never notice those two hotties among the Oceanic 815 extras before, or does the island make people sexier? Good thing I like having my mind messed with.

Locke definitely set out to mess with his mind. The episode opened on him in a jungle clearing, flat on his back, in a shot reminiscent of the opening of the pilot episode, when Jack first came to, moments after the plane crash. Right away we learned that Locke had inexplicably lost his voice but, happily, not his ability to walk. When Eko’s scripture stick dropped from the sky (with an Old Testament verse stating, ‘’Lift up your eyes and look north'’), Locke marched off to build…a sweat lodge?

In one of the false starts mentioned earlier, Locke roped Charlie into guarding his sweat lodge, which he built on Eko’s church site. While Terry O’Quinn played charades with gusto, the miming nevertheless came off as pretty silly, and Charlie’s bitchy act fell flat. (A timid truce between the two took hold by episode’s end, though the motivation for Charlie’s reversion to tagalong mode was hazy.)

The episode found its groove not long after Locke ate his poi and gazed into his campfire, sweating himself into a trance. Soon…Boone! Seeing Ian Somerhalder made me downright nostalgic for the simpler days of season 1. Boone’s steering Locke’s groovy-queasy vision, while asking him to guess which castaway needed his help, was the most Twilight Zone moment I can recall in the series to date. And I mean that in a good way — I love me some Rod Serling! That said, dreamland (or in this case, sweaty-trance-land) is not frequently visited on Lost, accustomed as we are to the flashback device. Frankly, I hope we don’t find ourselves there too often. As it is, we’ve got so many cryptic incidents to clear up in the ‘’real world,'’ on and off the island.

For example, the polar-bears-in-the-tropics mystery is now officially revived, although we sure didn’t get very far with it (at least not much past Tom’s previous reference to ‘’the bears'’). But encountering the polar bear deep inside a cave full of human skeletons, one wearing a Dharma-logo T-shirt, gave me the creepy-crawlies. At some point after the Hatch meltdown, poor Eko apparently got dragged there by the bear.

Meanwhile, Locke’s outdoorsy flashbacks were tricky for me to place, chronology-wise. Was there a clear indication that this farm phase in his life occurred post-Helen? Saying grace, he did refer to his anger problem as if it were fairly recent, and to ‘’family'’ with fresh bitterness. I thought featuring Twin Peaks alum Chris Mulkey as a wacky-tobacky farmer was brilliant. He and Virginia Morris, who played Jan, pulled the rug out from under Locke, causing him to panic at the prospect of losing his precarious, hard-won sense of belonging. While I’m not convinced that what we needed most was to see another occasion where someone Locke trusted turned out to be using him, the standoff in the woods with Eddie (who targeted Locke for being ‘’amenable for coercion'’) was the episode’s strongest moment. For numbers watchers who might have missed it: Eddie’s sheriff ID was 84023.

By the way, anyone who’s worried about the attractiveness of the remaining beach-bound Losties — what with Jack, Sawyer, and Kate doing time in Others State Prison — rest easy. New cast members Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro (as Nikki and Paulo) abruptly showed up, evidently to bring sexy back. Based on the matter-of-fact way Locke addressed them, I presume they’re legit and not Ethan-like spies. Theorize away about whether they’re a couple, or a couple-to-be!

I will credit this episode with shoring up one of my most deeply held Lost theories: Hurley can do no wrong. I just don’t see it happening. He can lend me his tie-dye shirt and ask why I didn’t implode ('’You’re not going to, like, turn into the Hulk, or something…?'’) anytime. He makes me smile. Desmond skipping stones in the sunset made me smile too — I hoped he might sing a tune from Godspell, looking all Jesus-as-happy-hippie in that moment. Also, it’s fun that he might be clairvoyant now. And that he runs around naked.

What did you think? Did Eko wake up and speak to Locke, or was it a hallucination? Did Locke shoot Eddie in the back after all? Is it any clearer what a polar bear is doing on the island? And who will lend Desmond some pants?

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