REBOOT EPISODES 61-64

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 61-64 (Days 80-82)

After noticing some migratory birds, Claire hatches an impressive rescue plan by capturing a bird and tying a message to its leg.  Meanwhile, Sayid’s rescue party continues their trek to the Barracks to find Jack.  An uncooperative Patchy is with still them even though Locke and Rousseau want him dead. They arrive at the sonic fence. Before they hatch a plan to get around the barrier, Locke pushes Patchy through the fence and he is killed by sonic waves.

As Kate and Sayid formulate a plan to rescue a strangely placid Jack, Locke reveals his own agenda for finding the Barracks and the Others. He took C4 from the Flame in order to blow up the Other’s submarine. A wheelchair bound Ben “pleads” to Locke not to blow up the sub (as it would diminish his leadership standing), but Alex says Ben is manipulative so if the sub is destroyed, Ben wants it to be destroyed. The destruction of the submarine brings a Ben half-truth a reward: Jack’s way off the island is gone, and he does not have to release Kate or Sayid.

After Nikki seemingly drops dead in front of Hurley and Sawyer, they find Paulo in the same state and investigate their supposed deaths, realizing that they don't know much about them. Meanwhile, Charlie confesses to Sun that it wasn't the Others that attacked her. She then confronts Sawyer about the attack, but decides to keep it a secret from Jin otherwise they would have to dig another grave.

After the events at the Barracks reach a climax, Kate and Juliet must unite for their survival. They evade the smoke monster by hiding in banyan roots. Juliet is “scanned” by the smoke monster. They run to the sonic fence (which is off). Juliet takes off cuffs (she had key) and sets fence to on, which seems to “repel” the monster. They go back to the empty barracks and find Sayid and Jack.  Meanwhile, Sawyer learns from Hurley  that the other survivors may be planning to banish him from the group. But this is merely a trick by Hurley to get Sawyer ready to lead the beach camp since everyone else is gone.

Science:

Sonic weapons:

Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt and/or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort. The use of these frequencies to incapacitate persons has occurred both in counter-terrorist and crowd control settings.

Some common bio-effects of electromagnetic or other non-lethal weapons include effects to the human central nervous system resulting in physical pain, breathing difficulty, vertigo, nausea, disorientation, or other systemic discomfort. Interference with breathing poses the most significant and potentially lethal results. Light and repetitive visual signals can induce epileptic seizures and motion sickness can also occur. Cavitation, which affects gas nuclei in human tissue, and heating can result from exposure to ultrasound and can cause damage to tissue and organs.

Improbabilities:

In a flashback, Kate meeting Sawyer’s baby momma, Cassidy, in a plan for Kate to see her mother to ask her why she turned her in to the police.

That the sonic fence was created to keep the smoke monster at bay. The smoke monster in its smoke state has “ears” in order to be affected by sound waves. The monster itself is riding on wave form through the air. It is more likely the sonic fence was meant to keep humans in the Barracks compound.

Locke surviving the fall after being pushed by Cooper. The orderly said he survived an eight (8) story fall, but if you freeze frame the scene, Locke falls more than 16 window panes (or stories) and the bottom two floors are oversized so it is closer to a 20 story fall or 200 feet. Even if we use a conservative 90 foot fall,his maximum velocity at the pavement will be about 76 feet per second, or nearly 52 mph. One could survive crashing  a car crash at 52 mph? However, the impact of the crash of the individual depends not only on his change of speed, but also on his mass, and more importantly, on the the time of rapid deceleration in the last moments of the crash. The longer you can drag out your crash time, the longer you have to apply a smaller force to slow yourself down (more specifically, to change your momentum). That's the principle behind airbags--they increase the amount of time you have for your body to come to a complete stop, thereby reducing the force exerted on your body. Landing and rolling on the ground would also increase survival chances. In Locke’s case, he is falling flat on his back and took the full brunt of the fall. So the amount of time between hitting ground and complete stop is a fraction of a second. He would experience a force of about two tons exerted on their body for that tenth of a second. Such a massive force would most likely fatal.


When the Others left the barracks, they gassed Kate, Sayid, Juliet and Jack. Kate and Juliet awake in the jungle (in daylight), are chased by the monster and hide in the tree roots until morning. Then they trek several miles handcuffed together to the sonic fence. And once they finally reach the barracks (after two catfights), Kate finds a still unconscious Jack.  It makes no sense that Jack remained unconscious from the same gas for an additional 12 plus hours. The destruction in the house inferred that there have been a fight, but being knocked out for that long of time would have meant serious brain injury (unconsciousness to coma). But Jack never says he was in a fight.

Themes:

Confession and true forgiveness. It is now an endless stream of characters tearfully confessing their sorrow to friends or family members, like Claire to her comatose mother.

Deception. Ben’s devious nature is on full display when he gives “his word” that he will release Sayid and Kate “as soon as Jack gets off the island” which Ben knows will not happen since Locke is on his way to blow up the submarine.

Death and final judgment. The idea that both Klugh and Patchy prefer death to living on the Island is one of the unanswered riddles of the show. It would seem that neither character would get a “redemptive” final judgment based upon their actions.

Daddy issues. Claire’s “daddy issues” mirror Jack’s daddy issues in the same sense that Christian was never a good father to either of his children. Locke’s daddy issues with Cooper ends with Locke being shoved through a glass window and falling at least 200 feet to the ground.

Replacement. Other Brian takes over the surly Danny role in the story line. We also see the beginning stages of Locke being a possible replacement for Ben in the Others camp. We see the immortal Alpert helping Ben open the “magic box” for Locke.

Leadership. It does not take much to become a leader. Sawyer is the camp's default leader because everyone else is gone, and when Nikki and Paulo are "dead," the campers looked to Sawyer. He does not want to be a leader, but as Hurley said, neither did Jack.

Clues:

Juliet’s upside down double cross “mark” can be associated with Satanic rituals. It could also be secular representation for “double crossing” the Others by killing one of the cult. It may also be an upside medical symbol (faint snake on staff) which could also represent “killer” instead of “healer.”

Cooper’s statements to Locke that he was in a car crash, severely injured and “suddenly” he was on the Island. He affirmatively states that he is dead; they all are dead.

Charlie has been told by Desmond that he is going to die because the universe has a means of course correcting fate. Charlie begins to cleanse his soul by confessing his attack to Sun. Charlie, knowing he has done wrong in the past, gets the mindset that he must do something noble to help Claire and Aaron.

Christian talk with Claire after her mother is in a coma. He tells her that her mother is alive “but not really living.”  This leads to a tangent theory that the characters are souls of coma patients teleported to the island to live in a dream world. But if the coma patient wakes up or dies in real life, the souls on the island dies and winds up in the sideways realm of the afterlife.

Nikki claims that Arzt told her about his insect collection, including a Medusa spider which allegedly can paralyze a human for 8 hours if it bites a human. This is a fictional spider. It is NOT real.  One could argue that the insertion of a fictional spider shows that the Island itself is not real.



In certain cultures, the roots of a banyan tree are supposed to provide protection against "evil spirits." In the case of Kate and Juliet, they were saved by hiding in the tree roots from the first smoke monster attack.


Discussion:

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life. - - -
H. G. Wells

Well, the fans hated the Nikki and Paulo characters so much so that TPTB quickly killed them off. This begins the full court press of filler episodes and story line tangents. Nikki and Paulo were filler, like red shirts on Star Trek, in order to keep some level of “danger” and death in the plot from week to week. The addition of these two disliked characters is the jump the shark moment for some viewers.

The entire Nikki-Paulo back story episode was pure filler. It could have been skipped since it gave no insight to the story line or answer any questions. The producers cut in the two actors into the various past key scenes to try to show that these characters were there from the beginning (total credibility failure).

The only saving grace from the Nikki-Paulo episode is that it reinforces the slow mental degradation of the survivors. They are quick to make assumptions (that Nikki and Paulo are actually dead), they are quick to come to conclusions on little or no facts (that the Others killed them) and revert to almost crude rationalizations for their actions. It is summed up best when they bury Nikki and Paulo alive.
Trying to find some “canon” in the inconsistencies of the island world is hard, especially when “dying” is concerned. Example, it is clear that Patchy was killed by the sonic fence, he foamed at the mouth and ears exploded in blood. A fatal cerebral hemorrhage.

The question is how does Patchy come back to life?  From within the series itself, it may be because he was never “buried.”  If a dead person on the island is not buried, they can be reborn. Other examples are the Hatch explosion survivors, Eko, Charlie and Desmond. Their bodies were never buried; they woke up in the jungle. This may be why the Others have their funeral ritual of fire and burial at sea. It may also explain how the smoke monster animates into human form - - - it needs a dead body as a template.

We are still searching for solid classifications of important elements of the LOST saga. Who are the Hostiles? Who were the Dharma folks? How does one really get to the island? How can some people with deadly diseases be healed, while others cannot? If the Island is a center of human life force, why does it allow people to die? Is the Island a living being or a symbolic representation of something supernatural?

The inversion continues as characters replace other character’s roles, like disabled Ben talking to Locke about becoming a leader. The repeated ritual that in order for Locke to become an Island leader, he must prove himself to the Others by killing his own father as Ben had done during the purge.

It is also worth noting that Patchy’s half truth to Kate when he says she is “incapable” of understanding the Island because she “was not on the list.”  Well, we will learn that Kate was on Jacob’s lighthouse list, with more than hundred other names. And Kate was on Klugh’s list given to Michael to secure his freedom. How would Patchy’s know Jacob’s final candidate’s list? It will take three more seasons to find out the the final “final” candidates were Hurley and Jack. And since Patchy has some “immortal” qualities of rising from the dead, is Patchy really Jacob in disguise? But that would be contrary to Jacob’s “non-intervention” policy with island visitors - - - as explained to Alpert, his liaison in the game with MIB.

The new arc of the high school soap opera begins in this series. Juliet tells Kate that Jack saw everything in the cages. And her actions, “broke his heart.” Kate is surprised and saddened by the revelation. She is also upset that Jack now wants Juliet to come back with them. It would appear that Jack has “moved on” from their coy relationship to a new one, with an Other no less. One would have thought that “betrayal” (a word Kate used in regard to her own mother’s actions against her) would forever end their relationship - - - but the couples switch partners in The End for no apparent reason.

The transformation of Locke occurs in this series. Instead of the faux outback hunter, Locke now fully embraces his Island destiny. He seems to think that by blowing up the Hatch, destroying the communications station and blowing up the submarine, it is gaining favor with the Island. He also is undermining the leadership command of Ben. So Locke joins the Others as they leave the barracks in his hazy quest to join with the Island, unconcerned about the fate of his friends.

Magical/Supernatural/Elements:

Ben’s explanation that Locke wish of staying on the island to avoid confronting his father may be granted by the island. But Ben manipulated Locke’s motivation with his “Magic Box” explanation which brings Locke’s father to the island.  However, Ben already had Cooper in his possession when he told Tom to get  “the man from Tallahassee.”

Locke’s miracle healing of his broken back after crashing on the island. And Locke’s inference that Ben is “not healing” quickly and the fact that he got sick in the first place. If the Island is a supernatural place of “healing,” curing cancer and paralysis, why is Ben still recovering in wheelchair?

Last lines in episodes:

EP 61:
TOM: Ha! Whoop!
[Jack throws the ball back. Tom throws it to Jack once more, and Jack spikes it to the ground.]

EP 62:

BEN: Because I'm in a wheelchair and you're not. Are you ready to see?
[Alpert opens the door to the cell. Locke cautiously looks inside the room. Inside he sees Cooper, tied to a chair, gagged, and covered with cuts and bruises. He looks terrified.]

EP 63:

LOCKE: Dad?

EP 64:

NIKKI: Para...lyzed.

New Ideas/Tests of Theories:

The concept that overlapping lives is intriguing; Eloise and Widmore’s island time is in the past while the 815ers hold the present, but Eloise knows the future (one of “us”) in the sideways world where an illusion holds back the symbolic past lives of the characters are held in a dream fantasy state. By the time Desmond meets her, Eloise is in her “second” after life (the island being her first). In Eloise’s first afterlife, she symbolically kills her son, Daniel, in an island flashback in 1977. Symbolically, because he is allegedly alive in the pre-815 crash real world, as a brilliant physics professor. But what if he was killed by his mother (abortion) in her real life and the Island tests her in the 1977 encounter (with the same result)? That island killing is symbolic afterlife test of Eloise’s soul? Then an elaborate mental memory fantasy structure is made by her to have “time” with her unborn son in her own after life. Her purgatory is giving Daniel as pseudo life, but she must keep her dark secret (he was always dead to her) from him in the sideways world; for if he “awakens” then he will leave her forever. And her elaborate fantasy would come to a crushing end.

When Eloise says “one of us,” she may be referring to a class of coma patients who have diverted their minds, memories and feelings to a fantasy place (the island) where they can live a “virtual” life until their real life ends or they “awaken” from their coma. As Christian said in the church to Jack, some of his friends died before him and after him, but everything he experienced “was real.”  Real in the sense that dreams are real to sleeping people. The awakening in the dream world means that a person must come to grips with something that keeps their mind asleep (running away from the real world troubles perhaps).

Coma is a state of profound unconsciousness in which the patient is incapable of conscious behavior.  It can be said that coma is a state wherein there is very little brain activity, and  the patient hovers between life and death.  Coma implies dysfunction of the cerebral hemorrhage, the upper brain stem, or both areas.  In other words, damage to the brain's "thinking, and life support centers" are thought to cause the coma.   Some researchers are trying to measure the brain activity in the shuttered world of a “lost” brain-damaged patient in coma, including measuring changes in brain function with CAT scans. It is understood that coma patients do have a nominal amount of brain activity and are not classified as “brain dead.”

In most of the character back stories, one could fashion an argument that they could have been injured in such a fashion to be in a coma. Hurley being injured after falling in the deck collapse. Kate in an auto accident. Jack being beaten in the school yard and hitting his head. Sawyer surviving after being shot by his father. Claire injured in the car crash with her mother. Charlie’s massive use of drugs causing an overdose.

It is possible that the Island represents that part of spiritual plane between life and death. As such, all normal laws of physics are replaced by fantasy elements such as magic. And since it is a small dimension between life and death, it would be guarded by those who “know” the truth about its existence such as Eloise. When Eloise fears Desmond changing the status quo (and awaken her son), she knows that they (souls between life and death) will cease to exist - - - either go back into nominal coma state or die and move on in the afterlife. Eloise’s son Daniel cannot be a mere figment of her comatose imagination otherwise he would not awaken and possibly leave her.

There is still a gray area of continuity issues for the Island as the place between life and death. How can a person’s mind be in two places at once? For the sideways world to be recreated and sustained, Christian said it was created by all Jack’s island friends because their island time was the most important thing in their lives (or half-lives if coma patients) in order to “wait” for everyone to “awaken” and in the side way context “physically die on earth.”  It would explain why Sayid did not re-connect with Nadia; why when Sawyer and Kate left the island together, they did not come back to the church as a couple; why strangers such as Charlie and Claire get together in the church as Aaron is reborn (which means Claire was pregnant when she had her comatose auto accident with her mother).

We also learn a few more facts from the smoke monster’s encounter with Juliet and Kate. First, there is clearly a mechanical sound when it approaches; as well as a low groan or howl. Second, you can observe that underbrush being crushed by the air, in a laboring fashion, inferring that the smoke monster is more than just black smoke, but part of the monster is stealth or cloaked. Third, the monster “flashes” Juliet’s mind because Juliet said she had never encountered it before; it shows a comprehension to gather information about humans on the island before attacking. Fourth, that the monster was repelled by the sonic fence. The smoke stopped at the activated pylons and then retreated into the jungle.This would infer that the smoke monster may be organic, as sound waves can have a deadly affect on issues (i.e. Patchy’s demise). It may not have harmed the organic part of the monster, but the smoke as a sensor told it to stop.

Because of the smoke and mechanical components, it appears the monster is hybrid organic-machine. The smoke may be like its tongue, a sensor or attack device. It would seem that the complex nature of the monster may have a duality to it: the smoke part may be released like an attack dog while controlled by an organic-cyborg type being that we never see.