REBOOT EPISODES 53-56

POSTING NOTE: Due to work changes, I may not be able to post updates on Tuesdays after Monday night marathon G4 reruns, but updates will occur later in the week.

LOST REBOOT 
Recap: Episodes 53-56 (Days 70-73)

When Colleen, who was shot by Sun, is brought back to the barracks, Jack cannot save her life. As a result, many of the Others want revenge because Colleen was not saved by the doctor. Ben cons the con man, Sawyer. Desmond sees a vision, and builds a lightning rod to protect Claire and Aaron, which leads to friction with Charlie.

Locke assumes a leadership role. He takes a group to the Pearl Station. Eko sees a vision of his brother and goes off but is killed by the Smoke Monster when Eko refuses to repent for his life’s sins.

Jack finally volunteers to operate on Ben’s back to help his friends. Kate and Sawyer go from flirtation to animal lust. Jack stops the Others, Danny whose wife Colleen died and Jason, from killing Sawyer out of revenge.

Jack and Tom complete Ben’s surgery; Juliet is not convinced that Ben will keep his word so she helps Alex, Karl, Kate and Sawyer to escape the Hydra Island.

Science:

States of Matter
There are five main states of matter. Solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, and Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are all different states of matter. Each of these states is also known as a phase. Elements and compounds can move from one phase to another when specific physical conditions are present. One example is temperature. When the temperature of a system goes up, the matter in the system becomes more excited and active. Scientists say that it moves to a higher energy state

A "phase" describes a physical state of matter. The key word to notice is physical. Things only move from one phase to another by physical means. If energy is added (like increasing the temperature) or if energy is taken away (like freezing something), you have created a physical change.

A compound or element can move from one phase to another, but still be the same substance. You can see water vapor, in the form of steam, over a boiling pot of water. That vapor (or gas) can condense and become a drop of water. If you put that drop in the freezer, it would become a solid piece of ice. No matter what phase it was in, it was always water. It always had the same chemical properties. On the other hand, a chemical change would change the way the water acted, eventually making it not water, but something completely different. If you added a carbon (C) atom to a water molecule, you would have formaldehyde (H2CO), and that is nothing like water.

All matter can move from one state to another. It may require extreme temperatures or extreme pressures, but it can be done. Sometimes a substance doesn't want to change states. You have to use all of your tricks when that happens. To create a solid, you might have to decrease the temperature by a huge amount and then add pressure. Some of you know about liquid nitrogen (N2). It is nitrogen from the atmosphere in a liquid form and it has to be super cold to stay a liquid. What if you wanted to turn it into a solid but couldn't make it cold enough? You could increase the pressure to push those molecules together. The opposite works too. If you have a liquid at room temperature and you wanted a gas you could use a combination of high temperatures and low pressures to solve your problem.

CHEMISTRY TERM       PHASE CHANGE
Fusion (melting)               Solid to Liquid
Freezing                            Liquid to Solid
Vaporization (boiling)       Liquid to Gas
Condensation                    Gas to Liquid
Sublimation                       Solid to Gas
Deposition                         Gas to Solid

Phase changes happen when certain points are reached. Sometimes a liquid wants to become a solid. Scientists use something called a freezing point to measure the temperature at which a liquid turns into a solid. There are physical effects that can change the freezing point. Pressure is one of those effects. When the pressure surrounding a substance goes up, the freezing point and other special points also go up. That means it's easier to keep things solid at higher pressures. Just remember that there are some exceptions. Water (H2O) is special on many levels. It has more space between its molecules when it is frozen. There's a whole expanding effect when the molecules organize into a solid state. Generally, when temperatures get colder, solids shrink in size. They become more dense.

Improbabilities:

The meatball spinal surgery on Ben.  A complex, delicate operation which needs sophisticated technology, machinery and staff to accomplish would be impossible to accomplish in an abandoned Hydra animal experiment station. In addition, Ben waking up in the middle of surgery would have been an alarming, if not fatal, event.

Mysteries:

How can the Smoke Monster be seen in various states of matter? In the smoke or gaseous form it appears as a instinct-only monster. In a human or solid form, it appears to be an exact duplicate of an intelligent human being, an aware animal or moving object.

Themes:

Religion: Judgment of Sins. Eko is defiant in his refusal to confess any sins; he believes he did what he did to save his brother; the ends justified the means. But his judgment by the Smoke Monster (Yemi) was a violent death, and in his last breath, tells Locke “you’re next.”  The Island afterlife as a test of a person’s soul, heart and sorrow are recurring elements.

Cons. Ben believes he is the master of con, besting Sawyer in the pacemaker illusion to keep him in line. One could also think that Ben was behind the complex double and triple cross betrayals of his own surgery, just so Jack would actually do the surgery in order to save someone (Kate, Sawyer or Juliet).

The Magic Box. If you wish it, it will come true. Ben will tell this to Locke on the Island, that it can make anything happen. When Juliet is recruited in Miami, she wishes her ex-husband would be hit by a bus. Alpert, Jacob’s right hand man, makes it happen in the most direct manner. It may be part of a con, since Ethan is seen leaving Juliet’s sister’s room just before she claims to be pregnant. Did Ethan plant the evidence or change the test results in order for Juliet to leave her sister and research to join the Others? Probably, since we see how devious the Others can be in getting what they want (and ironically, Juliet, after 3 years of captivity, has learned those same devious skills).

Clues:

Jack asks Ben if he is having symptoms of numbness and tingling to his fingers and toes, yet the tumor on his X-ray  is assessed to be over the L4 vertebra and is clearly lumbar (would only have paraesthesis in upper extremities if it was a cervical tumor). Some believe this is a continuity error and not a clue that this is “all make believe.”

Juliet is shown scans of a woman’s womb. She looks at it and believes it to be a 70 year old woman. She is told by Alpert that it is a 26 year old female. How could that be? That is the hook Alpert has to lure Juliet to the Island. Is it true? It could be a con. Or it could be a “real” issue for the Others, whose women could not come to term with their pregnancies. In the concept of an ‘other” dimension as the setting for the Island, such as the afterlife or dementia, a 70 year old woman could have the “illusion” of being her 26 year old self - - - and thus unable to have children.

When Desmond has a vision, he builds a lightning rod in camp. Was it truly a vision, or was it something he believed would happen - - - and if he believed hard enough it would become real. A person could manipulate events to make them real, like the sudden storm and lightning hit as Demond did. Desmond realizes that the Island is not tied to Earth’s natural laws. Mental manipulation of events is possible on the Island, which is a great source of ultimate power.

“She was dead before you put her on the table,” Jack said to Juliet after Colleen died of a gunshot wound. This may be another reference to reincarnated souls trapped on the Island hell waiting for judgment.

Ben asks if Jack believes in God. Ben believes the “proof” is that two days after his spinal tumor diagnosis, a spinal surgeon falls into his lap by the plane crash. But Locke tells Desmond do not confuse coincidence with fate. Are events caused by guardian forces at work or mere coincidence? This also may be a clue to the video game premise, in which Ben is playing a different level trying to “save” himself and the new game element of the 815 crash gives him tools to solve his personal mission of survival.

Discussion:

“ Thoughts are but dreams till their effect be tried. ”
— William Shakespeare

Wonder the purpose of the black smoke monster as it begins its killing spree . . .
black, a color associated with evil; smoke, an element associated with destruction;
monster, an inhumanly cruel or wicked person.

No one can tell what was the smoke monster. Was it really smoke? Doubtful, since it is well believed that the smoke monster could change forms, into physical human form (like Flocke). Was it super-technology, like a swarm of nano-robots? If one thinks that the Dharma experiment stations dealt with polar bears in tropical climates, why not with sci-fi robotics? A machine collective that escapes in the wild amuses some fans. Is it “evil incarnate?” As in the Devil, his minion, its hellhound or metaphor for grim reaper spirit - - -  but at times with total rage but at other times total cunning and mental manipulation.

The introduction of the smoke monster at the end of the pilot episode turned a normal survivor-castaway drama into a major mystery, sci-fi dangerous thriller. The island was not safe. It would dominate the human emotion for rescue.  But it is a contradiction that is never answered properly: for those characters who allegedly leave the Island (and be saved from danger), all have an unnatural desire to “go back” to the Island. The smoke monster is like a symbolic addiction of a person’s worst personality traits. There are many people who are only happy or content if they are miserable or despondent. The smoke monster is the catalyst for those broken personalities to reinforce their negative brainwaves.

The smoke monster could be the Boogie Man of a child’s nightmare. Instead of being under the bed or hiding in the closet, the Boogie Man is anywhere and everywhere. It is the irrational thought pattern drawn out to an extreme level of fear.

If the smoke monster was the judgment mechanism for the Island to weigh the heart of a person’s soul against their sins, the great inconsistent demise of characters makes the whole concept hypocritical. Example, Eko refuses to acknowledge his sinful life - - -  he refuses to accept a redemptive change - - -  and is slaughtered by the smoke monster. Then, Ben who killed dozens of Dharma people in the Purge, including killing his own father, is never judged by the Island monster. Two evil characters who did awful deeds get two different fates for no apparent reason.

So at the molecular level, does the smoke monster actually know what is doing or is it purely a responsive wild animal? If it is a living being, then what does it “feed” on? Does it harvest only “evil” souls that cannot accept redemption?  Does it feed on the pure emotions of fear in human beings - - - and Eko refused to submit to the fear, he was killed because the smoke monster had no use of Eko if it could not suck out the evil energy of fear from him.

The great mystery is how the smoke monster could change, move about the Island, and how it actually “killed” someone. Was it a wave of electromagnetic energy generated by a swarm of evil gnats? Or was it a shape shifting spirit beast? Or was it an illusion? The monster had the stage presence of a great actor. It has some intelligence to interact in its “solid” state human form, but pure emotional anger in its “gaseous” smoke state. If we use chemistry to analyze the change in appearance, from solid to gas is “sublimation” which means (especially in psychoanalytic theory) “to divert or modify instinctual impulse into a more acceptable activity.”  Clearly, Smokey is under much more emotional control in a solid state, as in his appearances as Yemi to Eko. “Disposition” means “the inherit qualities of the human mind or character,” which infers that in a gas state, Smokey’s true character is displayed (as a violent killer). But it would appear that the character traits of Smokey’s physical traits are opposite on the Island - -  - but it makes perfect sense if one is looking into a mirror - - - a theme in the series.

It also brings the concepts of the mind again to the forefront of the story foundation. The balancing of instinct, emotion, intelligence is how one’s character is formed.  If a person is delusional or has mental problems (characters again mention “do you think I’m crazy?” in response to questions), the inner conflict could be symbolically represented by the Smoke Monster in the mind of a troubled person, such as Eko.

If it was an illusion - - - the mind of a person takes over and forces the weak person to commit mental suicide. One’s mind can create the most dangerous creature. One’s mind can harm you deeper than any mystery monster.

We see Room 23 - - - where Karl is strapped in with an IV, light glasses, blaring audio and flashing images. We have previously discussed the concepts of brain washing, and this is a vivid example of it. As Karl is being rescued, Sawyer begins to fall into a trance at the images and the words - - - change, God loves you like Jacob.  He snaps out of it to carry Karl to the boat. This is also the first subliminal reference to Jacob, who will also hear his name from angry Danny who claims “Shepard was not on Jacob’s list.” In retrospect, that is a damning statement, a real inconsistency. Jack’s name was on the lighthouse with the other castaways, including Kate. But Kate did not make the final list of candidates (which was known early in Season 3?)  That begs the question - - - why the story shift? Did Jack replace Eko (for real world contract issues) or Walt (who literally outgrew his role)? It is a bit of circumstantial evidence that the writers were winging it as the season’s went by, not careful to keep a storyline with real continuity points.

Another truly bothersome story line is how in The End Kate winds up with Jack as her soul mate.  One would have thought after the cage love session, Kate would have wound up with Sawyer in the church.  Or, if the flashback is true, Kate would have wound up with her true love, her husband, Kevin the Florida police officer. There is no rational basis for Kate to re-connect so strongly with Jack. So in the end, whose fantasy is fulfilled?


Magical/Supernatural/Elements:

The Smoke Monster returns to confront Eko, which dire consequences. Is this the Island balancing the “loss” of Colleen’s life with Mr. Eko’s?

Last lines in episodes:

EP 53:
BEN: It's from Of Mice and Men. Don't you read? Come on, let's get you back to your cage.

EP 54:

LOCKE: He said, 'We're next.'

EP 55:

JACK: Kate, dammit, RUN!

EP 56:

JULIET: I've been on this island for 3 years, Jack. 3 years, 2 months, and 28 days. He said that if I let him live and I helped you -- that he would finally let me go home.

New Ideas/Tests of Theories:

Deal with the Devil. Juliet wants to go “home,” which may be metaphor to leave purgatory and into the next level of existence - - - since in the End she winds up with Sawyer and not her flashback family (including her ex-husband who she still pined for in her own way).

When Ben is told he has a cancerous tumor on his back, he cannot believe it because no one of the island ever got cancer. The question becomes whether the electromagnetic energy (which later would be termed “Life Source” contained in every living thing) “cures” cancer or “causes” it.

The fake healer told Rose in Australia that the Earth has different energy pockets - - - the one in the outback could not cure her, but another pocket could. The question is whether the Island’s EM is one of those “pockets” and if so, is it really electromagnetic energy or spiritual energy.  The latter is a new concept here because after the crash, Rose was at peace even though her husband was missing and presumed dead. She always thought Bernard was okay. Rose also knew that her cancer was “gone.”  But gone in what way?  If this “pocket” was a spiritual place, there would be no place for diseases because they live in the human world. If this place was the afterlife, again, diseases would have no place in an “energy” not carbon based existence.

If the Life Force of the Island is a healing power, Desmond’s fail safe implosion would have stopped all healing on the Island, including Ben’s back tumor. That would mean Rose’s terminal cancer would have stricken her, caused her pain and suffering because of its advanced stage. But none of that happens. But if people on the Island “believe it to be true” then it may be true in a dream world where reality is what the individual’s mind.

Are the forces in the Island split into the light (Life Force from the cave) and dark (the smoke monster) as the balance between good and evil? And when the Hatch was taken out, did that create the Island realm imbalance - - - with more darkness and evil that needs to be contained by those characters led by Jack?

It occurs to me that when Tom says since the purple sky, the Island has lost communication with the mainland. This must mean that the Island has “moved” itself as part of the fail safe release of EM.  Is this the real reason Ben could not leave the island for medical help, or merely an excuse to get Jack to do something voluntarily but against his free will? 

Since the Hatch was the “cap” on the Island’s massive energy force, it also occurs to me that this is the Third Attempt to control it.  The first was in the Light Cave, where a large rock with Egyptian hieroglyphs, contained the energy. The second was the Frozen Donkey Wheel from the Roman era.  On those glyphs, there is mention to “side gates” to Earth which infers Island movement in time, space or dimensions. The third was the Hatch, a modern American science station.  What do all three things have in common? Each place was created by the great civilizations of Earth by its greatest engineers of their time: Egyptians (pyramid builders), Romans (military conquerors) and Americans (moon landing).

The Island is clearly “testing” the characters’ own character. The push to get people to admit their mistakes, to be truly “sorry” for their actions, is a purgatory of the soul. On the other hand, the supernatural elements and manipulative mind control show that there is a hard attempts to modify behavior by external sources (such as the unseen physicians - - -  whose form may take on Smokey - - - at a mental hospital treating our character patients).

It also seems that the entire story focus now changes to the Others against the 815ers in a life and death chess match. In reality, there was no reason for the Others and the 815ers to begin as mortal enemies. The Others and Ben’s paranoia and freakish desire for control of the Island creates an unnatural conflict. Are both the Others and the 815ers merely pawns in the Jacob and MIB game of human Senet?