I’m definitely not a fan of the way the whole thing is being handled, but if that was actually the next iPhone then count me in.

One thing I learned very early on as a parent: never (and I mean never) come between a kid and his Happy Meal toy. Bad things are bound to happen.

“Everybody Loves Hugo” has easily moved into the top spot on my list of favorite episodes of this final season (and it’s fairly high up there on the all-time list as well). It was a fantastic balance between character-driven story and subtle holycrapdidyouseethat moments. Plus, how can you go wrong with a Hurley-centric episode?

When the moon hits your eye like a fried chicken pie
Somewhere along the way Lost has turned into a giant pile of sappy chick-flick love. And for some strange reason I don’t really mind at all. The latest version of the Lost Love Connection featured the formerly star-crossed Hurley and Libby. After three seasons and a pile of bodies they finally got to have their beach picnic date. And who couldn’t see that mind-altering kiss coming a mile away? It was about as obvious and on the nose as Lost is likely to get, but it fit so perfectly. I think Hurley is the only character outside of Desmond that is universally loved. All of us were pulling for him to somehow end up with Libby and the writers gave it to us.

You’ve got some…meta…on you
I really felt like Ilana getting blown up by the dynamite was a message to us from the writers. It was as if they were telling us that not everything on this show is going to be tied up neatly when the final credits roll. Once a plot element no longer useful they have no problem simply walking away from it (or blowing it to hell). Ben echoed this later on in the jungle when he talked about the island being done with her. Maybe I’m looking way too deep into it, but I think they are trying to remind us that not every dangling question is going to get answered. They’ve said it dozens of times out in the real world and now they are reminding us in the show’s world.

He’s our you
And what do we make of sideways Desmond? His early appearances in this episode find him playing Chuck Woolery to Hurley and Libby. Then at the end of the episode things take a weird turn. He watches John from across the parking lot for a little while then decides to run him down with his car. I’ve heard some people theorize that Desmond is bad or is trying to punish Locke or whatever. I don’t really buy that at all. I think this Des is simply the sideways version of island Locke. He’s a man on a mission, and he is going to do whatever it takes to see that mission through. In some cases it’s just a little nudge to pursue a crazy woman. In the case of sideways Locke, stronger action was needed. Sideways Hurley was not at all content so pushing him towards Libby was easy. All it took was a well-placed line or two and Hugo was off to the mental hospital. In this new sideways world, John Locke was content, happy, and complacent. He needed a wakeup call much stronger than a simple beach kiss, and I think that’s why Des ran him down.

Think about it….John Locke was the same man who drugged Boone and tied him up to help him break free from his totally gross and completely wrong feelings towards Shannon. He blew up a sub that would have taken Jack and Juliet home. He spent hours and hours secretly trying to get into a hatch because it’s what he thought he was supposed to do. Destiny was his driving force and no one was going to get in his way. That’s exactly what I see in Desmond. He’s manipulating people to get them to do what he thinks they are supposed to do, mo matter the cost.

A mystery no more
One of the longest-running Lost mysteries was solved last week. Ever since season one we’ve thrown theories around as to who (or what) the whispers were. Now we know. But Michael’s face leads me to think there’s more to the story than he’s letting on. I don’t think he’s lying…I think he’s omitting a very important piece of the whisper puzzle. The two conversations he had with Hurley reminded me very much of the when he betrayed our castaways and left them on the dock with the Others. His first conversation at Libby’s grave was quite direct. It was very reminiscent of when he was convincing Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, etc. to come with him to get Walt. There were very specific moments in the second conversation that reminded me of the moment when he gets on that boat with Walt and heads away. It’s like he was being forced to tell Hurley this stuff….he didn’t want to, but he had to. Or else.

Or else what, you ask? I think all the souls that make up the whispers are not only stuck on the island but are also somehow enslaved to the man in black. He forced Michael to convince Hurley to lead everyone to FLocke’s camp. Michael had no choice but to obey even though he didn’t want to see his friend hurt. There was something in his face beyond the regret that came with being a double murderer. It had that same, “I’m so sorry…I have no choice…please understand” feel to it as when he and Jack locked eyes on that dock.

Predictions
I honestly have no idea what we are about to see (t-minus ten minutes and counting). The Willy Wonka promo at the end of last week’s episode really got me going though. It set and incredible mood and felt like a great teaser trailer for an epic movie. I do think that at some point soon we’ll find out more about the relationship between Jacob and the man in black. As I have said before, I don’t think that Jacob is explicitly good. I think we’ll find that he is someone with a job to do and will use our castaways as needed to make sure it gets done. His job – keeping smokey on the island – is probably inherently good. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out that his methods cross into a gray area or two. I highly doubt this while happen tonight though. My guess is we won’t see much clarification on their story until an episode or two prior to the finale.

That’s all for now. I’ll post some initial impressions after watching tonight with a full post later in the week.

- Dogen, we hardly knew you. This show’s history tells us that we probably aren’t done with you yet.

- Kate had multiple chances to die and survived each of them. Color me disappointed.

- I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I absolutely LOVED Sayid as the heartless killer. He’s always been so polite and so proper. It’s nice to see him embrace the other side.

- On a related note, the look on Ben’s face when Sayid refused to leave was priceless. It’s not often that Ben Linus really gets scared.

- I’m a huge fan of the way the answers are being delivered this season. I hope they keep it up. I understand that some people are frustrated with the pacing of the answers, but I think it fits the story very well.

(Although I will add that I feel pretty good about the ideas I’ve put out there. So far they seem to be holding up. We’ll see what happens tonight.)

For the last five seasons we’ve had these numbers shoved in our face at every possible turn. They’ve appeared on the island, off the island, all over Hurley’s life, and even outside of the show. The numbers are probably the show’s most notorious recurring theme (or at least right up there with the smoke monster). Despite their ubiquity, Damon Lindelof has gone on record as saying:

There are some questions that are very engaging and interesting, and then there are other questions that we have no interest whatsoever in answering. We call it the midi-chlorian debate, because at a certain point, explaining something mystical demystifies it. To try and have a character come and say, ‘Here is what the numbers mean,’ actually makes every usage of the numbers up to that point less interesting.

…if you’re watching the show for a detailed explanation of what the numbers mean – and I’m not saying you won’t see more of them – then you will be disappointed by the end of season six.

I think that statement originally frustrated a lot of people because it looked like a huge question would never get answered. Many felt that a show which poses so many questions should at least answer the big ones. But I do believe Lindelof has a point and it would be a shame to cheapen the mythology of the show. Before everyone gets up in arms about the numbers just being numbers I think we need to take Fake Locke’s line and look at the overall picture. I believe there’s an answer to be found (and a satisfying one at that).

Ok, so what we have now is the inside of a cave on which numerous names and numbers are written. Among these are the following familiar pairings: 4 – Locke, 8 – Reyes, 15 – Ford, 16 – Jarrah, 23 – Shephard, 42 – Kwon. Fake Locke’s explanation for the number assignments is simple – Jacob “has a thing for numbers.” I believe he is absolutely right about this.

I think what Lindelof was getting at is that the numbers, in and of themselves, have no real meaning. Jacob really did assign them with no purpose…it’s the people to which they are attached that give the numbers meaning. So there’s no real significance in Jack Shephard being assigned the number 23, but because Jack is important, the appearance of the number 23 throughout the series becomes important. The “answer” that everyone wanted doesn’t exist because the numbers are just numbers.

The constant appearance of the numbers on the show really drives home another reoccurring theme: everyone is connected. Like the numbers, the castaways have a knack for randomly connecting to one another throughout their lives. And no one has had the numbers appear more in their life than Hurley. Consider this: Hurley also is one of the only castaways universally liked by everyone else. No matter which factions formed, everyone loved Hurley. It’s quite fitting that he would be inundated with references to his partners in destiny.

Based on what we know of the history of the numbers you could reasonably conclude that Jacob’s plan for the castaways was really put into motion long before the incident at the Swan site. Valenzetti’s research lead to the equation which showed that unless one of those six variables are changed humanity had no chance. Back in 1962, he effectively told the world of Lost, “unless one of those six castaways does something, we’re all screwed.” He just didn’t know that’s what he was saying.

Alvar Hanso funded the Dharma Initiative with the main goal of changing at least one of those six variables. They believed they could bring about the change through scientific study and experimentation. Much like Fake Locke, they were wrong and they were right. None of their work directly changed the variables, but everything they did on the island set the stage for the castaways to show up. The entire Dharma era on the island was the part of Jacob’s plan designed just to get the pieces in place.

As I have said before, I think alternate timeline is showing us the end result of the fulfillment of Jacob’s plan. Somewhere along the way, one of the variables was changed. Disaster was averted, the island was sunk, and the world is safe. But what disaster was averted? My money’s on Smokey. I think the doomsday that Valenzetti foresaw was the release of Smokey into the wild. At the end of this season we will see someone (or many people) make the change that saves everyone else. And I believe Hurley’s newfound luck is the evidence that Jacob succeeded. When the castaways came to the island, every single one of them was broken, damaged, or…wait for it…cursed. By fulfilling Jacob’s plan and finding redemption, the castaways (and the numbers) no longer carry that curse. So the numbers mean nothing and everything at the same time.

As I type these last few words it is 7:54pm CST. That means that my theory has about six minutes before tonight’s episode airs and basically shoots the whole thing to hell. Oh well.

- The smoke monster pov shot was one of my favorite things we’ve seen in six seasons of the show. Total geek out moment.

- I love the new John Locke. Both of them. I find these Lockes to be very interesting characters.

- I think Fake Locke is lying. The way he was planting seeds of doubt in Sawyer regarding Jacob remind me very much of Ben way back when he was locked in the Swan’s armory. I’m one of those that believe the man in black is the bad guy in all of this, and that Jacob is the good guy (though those are both highly subjective terms). I think he is definitely lying about the island not needing protection. My guess is he’s using Sawyer the same way he used Ben to kill Jacob.

- Alt Locke’s story was filled with really cool moments, and some of the best had very little to do with him. Having Hurley’s psychic make another appearance was a nice reminder that a lot is different this time around.

- In the new timeline both John and Hugo appear to be better people than they were when they crashed on the island. In our original timeline, both men seemed to blame circumstance instead of taking control of the situations around them. This time around that doesn’t appear to be the case. John listened to Rose (and reason) and ended up a teacher instead of a construction foreman. I think there’s a ton of symbolism in those two job options. The Locke we all know spent his time on the island convinced the big man in charge; he wanted to be the one. And where did that get him? Rotting on a beach with crabs hanging out on his head. Alt Locke finally accepted his situation and was actually happy. Likewise, Hurley seemed happy and confident when he met John in the parking lot. Hugo Reyes, in the main timeline, was a man who grew to hate his financial status. He associated it with a curse and seemed to not care where it was being invested (the accountant had to inform him that he owned the box company). It really seemed to me like this version of Hurley was actively involved in the running of his various companies. According to LA X, he filmed an Austrailian commercial for Mr. Cluck’s. He crosses paths with John while paying a visit to the box company. Later on, Rose speaks of him as if she knows him and not like he’s an absent CEO. Even his appearance (nice suit, pulled-back hair) hinted at the difference in his personality.

- I’m guessing (along with almost everyone else) that the creepy jungle kid was a young Jacob. Not an actual young Jacob, but an image carrying some sort of warning from the island itself that the man in black is seriously flirting with being on the wrong side of the rules. I could be totally wrong though. I really have no clue who the kid is supposed to be.

- Ben’s appearance wasn’t that surprising. It does seem to hint strongly that Jughead’s detonation didn’t sink the island. If the explosion was what did it, wouldn’t young Ben more than likely have been killed? I think we’re seeing small indications that the changes go back before 1977.

- Frank Lapidus is freaking awesome. Line of the night: “Weirdest damn funeral I’ve ever been to…”

- I feel even better about my theory concerning the alternate timeline. I’m sticking to it for now.

- Fun fact: the date on Claire’s sonogram was 10/22/2004. As soon as the sonogram flashed on the screen, my wife and I paused it and dissected each part. Thank God for DVR and HD. This means flight 815 in the alt timeline was one month later than the one in our primary timeline. I have some ideas on this that I’ll share later.

- Dr. Ethan was awesome. Two things I find interesting: he was using Goodspeed and not Rom as a surname, and he was an OB instead of a surgeon (as Ben claimed in season 3).

- I knew Claire would be the new Rousseau as soon as we saw the first trap. It was still pretty cool to see her take out those annoying other Others.

- Josh Holloway is killing it so far this season. His work is phenomenal.

- “What Kate does” is bore the crap out of me. She pretty much has only one face (the almost-cry). I hope this is the last of the Kate-centric episodes.

Throughout the rest of the episode I couldn’t shake the feeling that this whole flash-sideways thing was a glimpse into future as well as the past. The past portion is pretty obvious…flight 815 took off in September of 2004, but the “current” timeline on the island is 2007. So a safe and sound Oceanic landing would happen in the past relative to the island stuff we saw in this episode. I think that the on-island happenings will eventually lead our characters to the events we saw in the premiere.

Over the next fifteen episodes we will most likely see the continuation of the parallel stroyltelling using the disparate timelines. Our primary timeline Losties will keep still be hanging out with the other Others* and the newly-zombied Sayid. Meanwhile, we will follow our alternate timeline Losties (who never got lost) as they inevitably cross post-landing paths. What this will bring us is a series finale in which there is closure to both the island action and the rebooted timeline. I think.

The problem is that there’s a very good possibility that I am overthinking the whole thing. Maybe it’s as simple as an alternate timeline a la the many worlds theory. Or maybe it’s just a big “what if?” fakeout. I’m not sure. But for now, I’m sticking to the idea that one will lead into the other. In this theory I think we get an excellent chance of arriving at a satisfying conclusion while still maintaining some sort of consequence (as in, not just a clean do-over).

I find the subtle and profound differences in this flight versus our original, ill-fated flight extremely interesting. I’ve gone over a number of them since last Tuesday and I’m still not sure what to think. Part of me wonders if many of them are there simply to hit home the fact that this is a modified timeline. The “minor” ones (the number of liquor bottles Cindy gives Jack, Rose being the comforter, etc) are the ones which really make me think that we should be asking how things got that way instead of what the differences mean. Even the episode title raises questions…why the space between LA and X? Maybe it’s coincidental, but Marvel had a series in the late 90s called Earth X in which many of their established characters were the same, but different. Hmmmm….

I know there’s a ton of stuff I’m not even touching on, and that’s intentional. The first hour alone was so thick with mind-bending ideas that I could post every day for a week and still not cover it all. At some point I may try to hit a few bigger of the points, but for now my brain needs rest from trying to process the first minute.

* To me, the introduction of these new temple-dwelling Others would indicate that there are two factions of Others (or at least some on a higher level). These Others seemed far more in tune with the island than the Others we know and love, the ones who lived in the barracks while enojoying amenities like stereos and lights. I’m guessing the new (super?) Others are the reason why our Others chose to wear the dirty island native costumes as well. I never completely bought into the idea of Tom or Pickett sneaking through the jungle while never leaving a trail anyway.

For the last five seasons I have tirelessly analyzed each screencap and every nuanced line in an effort to get some sort of knowledge of what is to come. It was an exhilarating cat and mouse game where getting that one last answer meant everything would fall into place. I would spend hours carefully constructing a theory only to have it blown to bits two episodes later. And again, it was so much more fun that way.

This final season brings with it a change in mindset for me as a Lost viewer. I am not nearly as interested in “figuring it out” as I was the first time we heard the now-familiar sounds of the smoke monster. Cuse, Lindelof, et al have given us one heck of a ride that is now getting ready to pull back into the station. We have a scant 16 episodes (18 hours) left with these characters, this island, and all the remaining mysteries. At this point whatever story is left has more than likely already been put to paper, and no amount of guessing or theorizing will change it.

I am completely fine with the fact that many of my questions will probably go unanswered. A show that is this deep with mystery should go out with some of that mystery left intact. I don’t need all storylines to wrap up nicely. More importantly, I don’t want all the storylines to wrap up nicely. I think we can get satisfying conclusions for these characters without ever knowing exactly what the island is, for example. But I don’t think we’ll get completely ambiguous cuts to black or absurd simplification either. I think we’ll get exactly what these characters deserve.

Will everyone be happy with what happens over the next few months? Probably not. I’m sure there will be complaints from all over the place about this character dying or that answer not being good enough. My response to that is simple…tough crap. What begins tomorrow night is the end of the Lost story, the way it was meant to be told. I would consider us insanely fortunate that this show gets to go out on its own terms. No painful stretch into irrelevance, no cancellation-fueled rush to a partial conclusion. What more can you ask for?

Maybe just that Rose and Bernard end up being the Adam & Eve skeletons from season one? Please?