THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

Kate is one of those polarizing characters.  And there may be a reason for that.  She could have been born under the sign of Leo even though it is believed she was born in mid May to mid-June (a Cancer).

There is one thing that most of the Leo women never falls short of - male attention. She will most probably be the center of attention everywhere and if you are trying to woo her, be ready to get lots of competition. She will be the leader of her group and the other members will always accept her out of choice. The typical characteristics profile of a Leo woman includes qualities like liveliness, ingenuity, elegance, beauty, and sensuality. She is one of those who love, respect and care for their partners, but don't expect her to worship you.

She wouldn't be dominated; rather she has to be restrained. She is a complete woman and she expects you to be a real man. If you meet a Leo girl who comes across as very gentle, mellowed and completely harmless, don't get fooled. Inside, she is as passionate as any other Leo woman. If you are planning to give her a gift; better make sure that it is classy and as per her superior taste. Please be properly dressed while giving the gift. If you are trying to win the heart of a Leo female, give her genuine, decent and original compliments.

While courting her, never forget that she likes class and style. Don't even think of going to the roadside hamburger stall after watching the movie. She is not after money, but shabby surroundings make her pretty uncomfortable. In return, she will also shower you expensive gifts. The lioness may become a little arrogant and proud at times, but these are some of her basic personality traits. She cannot help thinking of herself above the normal masses and please don't tell her she's not.

You will break her big, warm heart. A Leo woman who is respected, loved and cherished will become one of the most agreeable as well as the kindest person on this earth. She will care for the children and help the needy. The lioness is a combination of intelligence, wit, strength and talent, mixed with generous amounts of feminine charm. This is what makes her irresistible. The best way to make her do anything is flatter her and she will even do the tiniest of chores for you. Never stop her from having a career after marriage.

The Leo profile seems to fit Kate's character.

A Cancer woman's profile is significantly different. Men will be a little confused as to what she really is - chirpy, somber or distant? She is all of these and still, she is none of these. Even more confused? A Cancerian woman has mood swings every now and then and these are only a few of her mood swings. However, her basic personality traits remain the same. She is very sensitive, emotional, kind and caring. Now's the catch! Most of her traits will be hidden behind a shell of indifference and aloofness, breaking which will require quite a lot of effort.

You will have to gently coerce a Cancerian girl to get out of her shell and come into the big bad world without it. The best time to do this is in the moonlight, when there are maximum chances of catching her in her true emotions. When in love, she will be tender, womanly, timid and modest. She dislikes criticisms, can't stand rejection and gets deeply hurt by harsh words. Too much aggressiveness on your part may make her a little hesitant. She loves her mother, so you better learn to love as well as respect her too.

A Cancer woman will never make the first moves in a relationship; she only knows how to move backwards or sideways. This is because of two reasons, her shyness and her fear of being rejected. This female has some secrets and she won't like you prying around her personal diary. She is very insecure and will need your constant reassurance. It doesn't matter if she is the current 'Miss Universe' or has men drooling over her all the time, it is your attention and appreciation she would be the most concerned about.

You will have to learn to live with a Cancerian woman’s mood swings, which is not so difficult since she is so good in every other way. She is extremely loyal and will keep you happy with her warm and rich humor. Once she is committed to you, she will remain yours forever and ever. Adultery is not one of her traits. With a Cancerian woman, you will always have to be careful with words. She is very sentimental and can get hurt very easily. Then, she can cry like a 2-year old baby and you will be expected to console her and wipe her tears.

A Cancer female is a great cook and makes better food than a 5-star hotel chef. She is quite careful with money as well. Neither will she be stingy, nor totally extravagant. She has a habit of saving everything that is usable, be it money, old buttons or empty jars. She also saves things that have a sentimental value attached to them, like the sweater grandmother knitted on her fifth birthday. A Cancer female fiercely guards what is hers and that includes you too! However, she is not too possessive or jealous. But, she does not like sharing her love too.

Kate never showed any traits of being a homebody (cooking, domestic chores). She was shown as being out in the wild, on the hunt, on missions, being in the center of the action (which also means the center of attention in the male dominated hierarchy.) Kate was really the classic spunky, cute American girl-next-door. She was part tomboy, part siren. She knew how to charm and how to hurt.
That is part of the confusion of the ending when she winds up back with Jack. Many viewers don't know why that would have happened since Jack had let her go to be free.

But perhaps male viewers of the series got the vibe and frustration of the Kate character because she has the Leo-type personality. It is difficult to figure out such a personality, especially when you are trying to get close to her.  However, it is said that if a man breaks through he will be greatly rewarded with a true, loyal soul mate.

THANKS

Today in the US is Thanksgiving.

It is time to appreciate the things in one's own life: family, friends, and bounty that surrounds oneself.

It is a time for reflection. It is also a time to soul search, look at oneself and think about change.

Change is hard to do. Change takes an amount of courage but success is never guaranteed in life.

But with change comes new opportunities for life, liberty, happiness.

For even in the stressful, worst times, there is always comfort in true friends, family and loved ones.

At times, people forget about the ones around them. The ones who can cover their back. The ones who are waiting in the wings for your answer. The ones who will make time to be with you. The ones who are soul mates.

If we reflect upon those values and norms, Thanksgiving is a pretty important holiday in our society. It transcends the different American cultures since it is a secular ideal: family is community and community is family. It is remembrance of the hospitality of the native people to the weary foreigners who came ashore to escape the horrible conditions back in their home country. Opportunity and free will is the rock which the early colonists anchored in this land. But one needs to have a vision in order to see the dream of a better future.

Our collective media culture is nearsighted in what many would call the American Dream. It used to mean getting married, having a good job, having a car, a house with a white picket fence, kids and weekends off for family time. It was probably last embodied in the TV series Happy Days.

The American Dream may have been flying so long its colors have faded to gray. But for many people, the opportunity to work in America instead of being caught in escalating war zones throughout the world is enough to risk life and limb, like the early Pilgrims. But it is a different land now, with a waning economy, stagnant wages, violent protests, and increasing tyrannical government red tape, it is hard to imagine a cornucopia of hope for the common man.

But we endure. That is the human spirit.

If one pauses to reflect through the steamy bowls of side dishes and the large golden turkey platter,  it is good to be alive and well. And all the points previously stated above, can be exported to a simple discussion on LOST.

We are still thankful for a show that both inspired and challenged us viewers.
We are still thankful for the show's plot twists and turns that we remember to this very day.

The show embodied many of the themes of Thanksgiving as a desperate band of individuals attempted to forge some relationship, some bonds, some friendships, some answers, and some hope for their own futures.

And I thank those who continue to stop by to read these posts.

SOUL REVERSAL

I was watching an old anime recently in which a young girl was forced into an arranged marriage that she did not want. As a result, she collapsed because of the internalized emotional trauma to the extent that her soul left her body.

In many mystic cultures, a person's soul is considered an independent entity that resides within a human being. Human bodies are the bio-chemical machine shells in which a soul lives.

The concept of a soul living a human body because of a highly emotional situation can be used as a theory on the LOST story line.

Specifically, the sideways world arc is the place of dead which we assume are the souls of the departed.

In the sideways story, Flight 815 arrives safely in LA. We know that this is an elaborate and complex collective illusion based upon the facts stated in the ending. So, the sideways story must begin when Flight 815 crashes on the island. It means that the characters souls left their bodies as part of the emotional trauma of the plane crash.

But in a fantasy genre, that does not mean that the characters who crashed on the island were dead. Their souls had left their bodies, but their bodies continued to live, perhaps on the raw emotions that caused their souls to leave.

A "soul" is defined as the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. It is a person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity. It is also described as theemotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic expression.

This soul escape to the sideways realm can explain why many of the island characters lacked a moral sensibility. The characters relied on basic instincts and self-reliance in order to survive. It can also explain why many people never "died" on the island because their souls were still alive and not in their bodies to sever the mortal links on Earth. There continued to be a sideways connection to keep the bodies alive . . . the "constant" that Faraday did not quite understand. It was when the souls made a full "reconnection" with their human bodies and actually died did the memories of the disembodied soul remembered the island events ("awaken').

JACK WAS NOT A DOCTOR

Jack was not a medical doctor. He was never a great spinal surgeon. He never saved Sarah. It was all a lie or illusion.

Jack's back story is that of an incredibly talented surgeon. In 2001, Sarah's spine was severely crushed, and Jack told her she would never walk again. This bluntness bothered Christian. Sarah's fiance responded superficially upon hearing her condition, and Jack overstepped his professional relationship with Sarah, promising "to fix" her. He initially believed he failed, but a stadium runner named Desmond  suggested he may not have. Jack tearfully informed Sarah of his failure. She then wiggled her toes, and Jack realized he'd fixed her. The problem is that medical science would not have allowed such a miracle to happen. One cannot reconnect severed nerves.

In July of 2004, a nurse observed Jack's  intoxicated father botch a surgery. She called in Jack, who failed to save the patient. Christian asked he sign a falsified death report absolving him of blame, and though Jack initially refused, he later agreed. He then saw his father console the deceased woman's husband, who was threatening legal action, and learned the woman was pregnant when she died. Jack revised his statement, blaming his father's drinking for the patients' death. This cost Christian his medical license. In reality, Jack's conduct also would have cost him his medical license due to unprofessional conduct and malpractice under strict California regulations.

So Jack's back story is highly suspect. However, he could have "believed" that this happened to him because of the inner, subconscious desire to be "better" than his father, so Christian would acknowledge him. But if Jack as a boy was driven to prove himself to his father, but failed because he lacked the talent or will, then one could assume that would lead Jack down a dark path, emotionally and psychologically.  It could have led him into depression, drugs and alcoholism.

On the island, "miracle doctor" Jack had a horrible track record. Jack could not save the Marshall, Boone, Shannon or Sayid.  He refused to help an injured Colleen, which violates his oath as a physician. Beyond basic first aid, Jack really did not perform any highly skilled medical miracles on the island.

But it was his conduct with Ben's medical problem that is a real issue. Jack's review of Ben's spinal x-ray was wrong. The tumor was diagnosed on the wrong lumbar number. He later incorrectly stated that Ben's symptoms would be in his fingers and toes. Such symptoms are generally characteristic of cervical tumors - in the neck, not lower back (which would be toes only). Then when Jack now agreed to operate on Ben,  he deliberately cut Ben's kidney sack during the surgery, which based on the state of the OR and lack of personnel and blood, would have killed Ben, especially after he woke up during the surgery!

So what about the two different "versions" of Jack? The pre-island miracle doctor vs. the ordinary man on the island.

It could be argued that the pre-island version of Jack was Jack's own ego. A dream, fantasy, a mental condition of greatness because Jack could not equal his father's accomplishments. This puts Jack as a candidate for the theories that the LOST premise was all made up in the mind of a mental patient, or at least someone trapped in their own deep fantasy world.

It would stand to reason then that the pre-island back stories could also not be true. They could be the fantasies of the characters - - - such as Kate murdering her abusive father. She never did it; but she thought about it. The same would be true for Sawyer. He never became a con man to track down his parents killer.

But that still opens the question of whether the island was "real" or part of an imaginary, collective community dream (or massive on-line game, the latter being characteristic for all the "loners" in the series). Assuming that Jack landed on the island under his own cover of being a doctor, it is odd that no one challenged him when he made medical mistakes. Was everyone else naive, scared or plain dumb? Or, again in a game setting, it really did not matter. You chose your own character.

The idea that Jack was not really a doctor is intriguing because it opens up other avenues of investigation into the unanswered mysteries. If one part of the LOST experience was not "real" in the sense of actual events (such as Jack's back story), that may help explain the massive continuity errors in island events. It could also give us a clue to the basic premise of the show.

MINIMALISM

Minimalism was a trend in sculpture and painting that arose in the 1950s and used simple, typically massive, forms. It is also an avant-garde movement in music characterized by the repetition of very short phrases that change gradually, producing a hypnotic effect.

Is it possible to strip away all the tangents, subplots, tangents and secondary characters to find a Minimalistic LOST? 

By looking to simple, large story elements, can LOST be condensed into a more focused driven drama?

I think you could condense the entire series into five characters trapped on the island. You don't have to change the characters personalities or motivations. You just have five large puzzle pieces to focus the action and interactions. If LOST was about relationships, then a concentrated, intense story between these characters living through in untenable situations would be epic.

I think you can start with the starting point of a single person living on the island (like Crazy Mother when Claudia's Roman ship wrecked off the island's shore): Ben.

Then, like in that back story, only four new characters need to wind up floating ashore (from a plane crash, ship wreck, booze cruise disaster-fight going overboard into the ocean, etc.): Sawyer, the con man; Locke, the bitter dreamer; Kate, the fugitive muse; and Jack, the miracle doctor.

The island, through Ben, is a dark and dangerous place. Ben's back story is simple. He was brought to the island by his bitter, alcoholic father (who blames him for his mother's death). Ben is extremely unhappy being a peon in the Dharma labor camp, so he seeks revenge against everyone because no one acknowledges him. He kills them all. And once he is alone on the island, he goes a little crazy.
(There is no need for guardians, magic, time travel or any other twisty tropes.) Just a young boy who turns himself into a serial madman.

 The rest of the characters could have been plane crash victims, a charter plane that goes off-course from Fiji, and ditches in a storm. The minimalistic background for each person on that plane:

Kate: still running away from the authorities for murdering her father;
Sawyer: searching for his parents' killer;
Locke: having quit his job, he is seeking adventure and purpose in his life; and
Jack: having a Thailand-like booze vacation to forget about his father's sudden passing.

Each of these passengers realize that surviving the plane crash was their second chance to live their lives the way they thought they would have if not sidetracked by the events in the back stories.

The plot lines are also fairly simple.

Kate, being the lone woman, would use her charms to get the men to protect and serve her.
Sawyer, also being a charmer, but a territorial possessive person, would push back to get what he would want.
Jack, being the lone professional, would seek compromise, balance and common sense to survive their ordeals.
Locke, being mindless and reckless, would seek to claim the island as its new demi-god.
Ben, who for all purposes, the current island god, would seek to enslave, manipulate and control the new arrivals until he tired of them or found them of no use.

Ben could start off as a sympathetic figure: a long, lost survivor of a different "tragedy." He can help the new castaways with food and shelter as a means of gaining their trust. A trust that his mental condition will twist over time into betrayal.

Kate could also have the initial upper hand. Men are drawn to her magnetic, gregarious personality. She is a little of "the girl next door" and a little tomboy. She is clever, witty and flirty. It is possible that she could see the benefit of getting close to all the men on the island. In fact, her charms would be the catalyst to learn the backgrounds of the other characters.

Sawyer is an anti-social element. He is a loner. He can find a person's weakness in order to exploit it to his own advantage. He had seduce women to steal their money. He seeks a challenge, and on the island that turns to Kate. He would find conflict in following other people's orders or directions. He could easily be labeled a saboteur by evil Ben, as he starts to divide and conquer this group.

Locke has the arrogance of self-delusion of greatness. He believes himself to be the great outback hunter trapped in a shipping clerk's body.  His lack of leadership skills (and results) will put him at the bottom rung in the new island order. The others will not take him seriously. He will become resentful, cold, and at times, lash out verbally and physically. This could parallel the madness that engulfed Ben during his long time on the island.

Jack is not only trapped on the island, but trapped in his own ethics of "saving" people. He will do anything to save his fellow islanders, to the point of being blindsided by their manipulations of him. He may be an initial figurehead leaders, but the people around him are trying to be the puppet masters behind the facade. He will be challenged first by Locke, then by Sawyer. He will be betrayed by Ben (and Kate, who uses Sawyer's physical desires to her advantage.). The love triangle turns into a Bermuda Triangle of hate, suspicion, arguments, and shuffling of alliances.

Things would get to the tightrope stage when Ben makes his move on Kate (like the beach scene when she was kidnapped with Sawyer and Jack and taken to the Barracks). When Kate is repulsed by Ben's advances (and his "deal" to make her queen of his island paradise), Ben turns into a raging smoke monster of hate and revenge. This would pit two hot blooded avengers (Ben and Sawyer) against each other. This conflict would appease both Jack and Locke, for they have positioned themselves in a faith vs. science resolve for survival, with each believing their position will lead to safety, rescue or most of all, winning Kate's heart.

But at a certain point, Kate realizes that all her flirtations, manipulations, promises and passions have turned the other characters into cavemen. She can see their personalities change, and she become afraid at what she has done. The more she attempts to withdraw from their conflicts, the more the anger and resentment levels increase.

The close quarters of just a few strong characters could lead to excellent drama, action and plot twists without using the ruse of magic, time travel, supernatural elements or invading mercenaries.

CONVERGENCE

Convergence?

One of the worst film and TV tropes  is when a character has a very important piece of information, but refuses to explain what’s going on because “you just have to see it or figure it out for yourself.”

To the average viewer, this proposition is almost never true; it’s just a contrived way of dragging out a scene for a dramatic effect or to stretch story arcs with filler material.  In reality, there are very few events that cannot be explained in one sentence.

How many times during LOST did you yell at the screen telling a character to ask an obvious question to another character?!

In their end chats, the producers are keen to say that part of the appeal of LOST was the questions and not the answers. Well, yes and no. Yes, viewers were captivated by the mysteries and unanswered questions, but no, the vast majority of viewers wanted answers to those mysteries and questions. And the funny thing is, any answer would have been okay.

The collision of two parallel universes with the island as a focal point. Fine.
The collective delusions of a mental institution patient roster. Fine.
The surreality of phasing between realms like heaven and hell. Fine.
The overlapping world of invisible dopplegangers. Fine.
It was all a dream. Fine.

A bad answer is still an answer. It is a matter of subjective opinion.

But not to answer is a matter of objective scorn.

Mysteries and questions create the action which must converge with answers in order to resolve the story plot issues. Otherwise, it is mostly a mental roller coaster ride of nothingness, just the fleeting thrill of the plot twists and turns.

If you want to leave the viewers to figure it all out by themselves, then you must give them actual clues and not dead ends or red herrings to get to the answer. Agatha Christie does not end her books with a a blank page after the sentence, "and the murderer is . . ." LOST gets poor marks from giving clues in context and continuity to paint the final picture for viewers.

Some believe that the "filler" or the roller coast ride so to speak dragged down and altered the LOST experience. The idea of the Other 48 tail section passengers was clearly filler. In the Star Trek universe, they were Red shirts (fodder to be killed off). The back story of the Dharma folks was immaterial and irrelevant to the castaways story of survival. The back story of Jacob and his brother was also not a focal point to move the viewers toward Season 1 and 2 answers. The time travel story arc was a continuity mess and weakest part of the show.

If you strip away the layers of filler paint, what is left on the canvas?

The producers claim that the big picture was The Big Question: life and death.

But they did a poor account of communicating their position on the meaning of life and the purpose of death. There was no moral center in the stories. There was no judgment or punishment for sins. There was no redemptive moments. TPTB that the ending was more spiritual than anything else. But that is not an answer, it is a white wash because spirituality can mean thousands of different things to a thousand different people. How did Jack become "spiritual?" He never did either in life or in death. He had no religious convictions or contemplation of the universe during the series. So it is specious to say that the show was about Jack's spiritual journey.

The only thing that converged in the end was Jack's soul to his body in some after life church. But that does not answer how or why Jack got to that point of existence, or for that matter, what existence Jack had before entering the church.

Perhaps the writing of the show was parallel to early first person shooter video games, that run through various levels of game play (the action) with no real end point or goal.

WAKING UP DEAD

"He woke, and remembered dying." - Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal.

That opening line has been considered one of the great starts to science fiction novel.

I have not read it, but the premise is an excellent leaping off point to a story.

In the case of LOST, the seminal Season One scene is Jack opening his eyes in the bamboo grove.
Some would now say, he woke up and did not remember dying in the plane crash.

Because the stated mechanism to "resolve" the series story lines was to "awaken" in the sideways world and "remember" you were dead, it could be logically concluded that Jack was dead on the island but he did not realize it.

Adding the Egyptian mythology sewn into the fabric of the show, that makes sense. Jack's soul ("the ba") would have passed to another dimension (the sideways) while his body and mind ("the ka")would have to journey through the underworld (the island) in order to be judged worthy of "reuniting" with his soul.

This simple premise makes the most sense in dealing with the polarizing, negative debates on what really happened in the series.

It also validates two different theories and beliefs.

The characters were "alive" on the island. Yes, they were alive on the island because they did not know they were dead. What happened on the island did happen to Jack's "ka," but only to part of his spiritual being in physical form. For all intensive purposes, Jack was living in a physical form.

The other part of the character's mortal being, the ba, were transported to what we would consider an afterlife realm, a forehell or purgatory, in which the souls are also "unaware" that they have lost connection with their physical, mortal, human body. These souls are continuing their former "lives" on memories in a spiritual form. The characters were in an illusion of physical beings; the reality was shown when Christian opened the church doors to show the reality of their realm was only white light.

The spiritual circuit can only re-connect when the character's island ka realizes that it is dead at the same time the character's ba realizes that it is also dead. Jack's moment of enlightenment happened at Christian's coffin, and his father replied that everyone has to die sometime.

DEJA VU

Have you ever been somewhere that you have never been before, but felt like there was something about it that struck a chord in your mind and seemed familiar? If so, you've experienced the mental phenomenon known as deja vu.

Deja vu happens to most people but it's something that no one has yet to fully understand. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of people have experienced deja vu on at least one occasion in their lives. When it happens, one of our senses - be it our sight, sound, smell or taste - can convince us that we have lived through an experience before even if we know on a rational level that we have not.


Scientists have come up with physiological hypotheses of why deja vu exists but to date nothing has been proven conclusively. It is important to stop here and note that deja vu, which is being convinced that a first visit to a place seems known or familiar even when it is not, is not the same as other similar phenomena such as precognition and clairvoyance.

Precognition is when an individual has a premonition about an event that will occur in the future. Clairvoyance is when an individual is able to perceive something that is out of the natural range of any of the five senses. These two phenomena are closely linked to deja vu but are not exactly the same.

In the context of LOST, this can be a possible explanation of the split universes, the island vs. the sideways world. Even in the apparent island time line, where Desmond meets Jack at the stadium for the first time, there is a deja vu moment. And when Jack meets Desmond at the Hatch, there is a immediate flash back connection even though their past meeting was minor and short. Likewise, the characters in the sideways world are living lives with a certain deja vu that something is hidden under the surface; things are not quite right.

Deja Vu Categories

Deja vu can be broken down into two categories. These categories include associative deja vu and biological deja vu.

Associative deja vu is more common. This is the kind of deja vu that the average healthy individual experiences. In this case the person can see, hear, smell, or touch something that evokes a feeling in them that is associated with a similar sensation to something they have experienced in the past. Researchers believe this kind of deja vu is connected to the memory centers found in the brain.

Biological deja vu happens to those individuals who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. In fact, these people often have an unusual experience such as this before they have a seizure. deja vu of this kind is often described as being very intense. It's an easier way for scientists to study the phenomenon and has helped them identify the parts of the brain that play a role in the sensations that arise. However, many researchers believe that associative deja vu, sometimes called typical deja vu, and biological deja vu are very different in nature.

Theories Regarding Deja Vu

Many individuals, including those in the scientific and medical community, have tried to explain away the phenomena of deja vu. Is it a psychic phenomenon or is it not? Why do some people experience it and not others? What is at work here when a person believes they have visited a place before but in reality have never set foot in that spot? These are all questions that at present defy answers.

Parapsychologists are psychologists who study paranormal phenomena. These professionals have theorized that deja vu is a past life experience re-emerging in a person's mind. Some individuals believe that it's an emotional response to an event that taps into some incident from the past.

Still others believe that the brain is short circuiting and that it is a neurochemical action taking place that has no connection whatsoever to any life events. In other words, an individual is overcome by a strange feeling and connects it to a memory when really it is something that is all together new and unfamiliar to them.

At the present time deja vu remains yet another one of the fascinating mysteries of life that involves secrets locked away in the brain that it is not ready to reveal. It is believed that the sense of sight is most often connected with the experience but that, too, is up for debate and requires more research. The knowledge we have gleaned about deja vu is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

And here is where LOST intersections with the mysteries of science.

If deja vu is a paranormal phenomena, then the symptomatic use of deja vu in the series could be considered a clue as the premise of the show. There is an underlying medical condition to a primary character(s) who feed upon a mental abnormality to create the action we viewed throughout the series. This goes beyond a theory that this is all in Hurley's head (living in a mental institution with imaginary friends). This could postulate that the feelings of deja vu are more interdimensional memories and thoughts that bleed through time and space (life events on island bleed through to the sideways world, or vice versa). Deja vu is the packet (like computer signals on the internet) of information that registers in a person's subconscious, which other researchers believe is the key to evaluating and making later conscious decisions.

THE QUEST

In all great historical stories and myths, there is a difficult quest that the main character must endure in order to find his answers.

A quest is a long or arduous search for something important.

In the series, various characters were looking for answers but few were truly on a quest.

Locke was an angry, lonely child - - - bounced from foster home to foster home. He had no father. He had a crazy mother. He longed to be popular, but his intelligence outcast him to the geeky group in school. Throughout his life, he turned away from applying his natural talents in order to chase the illusion of grandeur of the high school jock, or adventurous outback hunter. In the show, Locke continued on his fantasy illusion, not finding answers but running into the same societal judgments and roadblocks that angered him so.

Sayid was also an angry child - - - having to do the dirty work for his older brother. He was the one who became tormented by family honor to become a self-hating soldier. He knew he could not fit into normal society because his training had created a monster within him. He ran away from his homeland, feebly chasing a vision of his dream girl, but only to wind up in a miserable place with people weary of his background and his purpose.

Sawyer was also an angry child - - - having his parents killed by a con man's greed set him on the path of revenge. Finding the man who ruined his life became an obsession that ruined Sawyer's own life. Instead of learning from the experience, he became what he hated most: the con man. In the show, Sawyer never changed his self-preservation mode.

Most people believe the LOST mythology best suits Jack. Jack was a child who wanted the attention and admiration of his father. But he never got it. This void motivated Jack to become a miracle worker surgeon. And that got nothing from his father but criticism. So when his father died suddenly, Jack had no means to get the acknowledgement from his father. He was lost in his own psychic pit of growing despair. It was on the island that Jack chased the ghost Christian to find an answer to the hole in his heart. But in the end, the long journey led Jack not to an answer, but to a cruel, unfortunate death. There was no grand revelation. There was no grand moment of enlightenment.

It does not fit the classic pattern as used in Star Wars. Luke is also a lonely child, his parents gone. He is living on a desert planet doing mindless work. He has no prospects and has no adventure if he stays on his home world. But once his family is killed, he is set on a course to fight against the tyranny of the Empire. He joins forces with an old wizard and slowly learns the way of an ancient religion, to grasp and combine with the Force to defeat his enemies. Along his journey, Luke meets up with a cast of misfits, royalty and evil masters - - - so he has to confront danger, and defeat it in order to protect the people he cares about. Luke overcomes his sparse upbringing to become an enlightened Jedi Knight.

Jack's journey does not have all the elements of Luke's. Jack is not transformed into an enlightened individual. He would have met up with his father in the after life no matter what happened to him on the island. The people in the church were people he knew from the island, but they did little to mold him into a better person (some would say his island experience threw him into deeper darkness and despair). And what did Jack find in the end? The anti-climatic twist was that he was dead, everyone was dead, and it was time to "move on."

INTERCONNECTION

Advice columnist Ann Landers made in the 1990s this observation on the benefits of the Internet:

"It's wonderful for the lonely. There are a great many lonely people out there, and it makes them feel that they're a part of the living world. They can talk to somebody. Somebody will talk to them. And I think it's wonderful."

The characters in LOST fit that description a decade after she wrote those words.

Each of the main characters in the series were alone. A few had abandonment issues; a few had self-esteem issues; some were socially awkward; some harbored deep pain and resentment that they could not share with anyone. Loneliness is a yoke that chokes off a person's socialization in their community. Loners tend to withdraw into themselves. They tend to live in their own room, isolated from outside contact. There are few avenues of expression. They guard themselves against anything new, because they believe they will get hurt in the end.

So the characters have issues, deep issues.

The series focal point was Numbers, people as data. The candidates were numbers. The airplane was a number. The survivors were numbers. Numbers equate to a mathematical system, such as the basis of computer programs, modules and levels.

Some theorized that LOST represented the in-game, on-line community of loners who find their own community playing a survival game called LOST on the internet. Each person shown in the series is a representative avatar of a real person isolated in their dark, lonely room, waiting for interaction and missions with their "on-line" co-players. Like in any game, there are teams competing for something (power, control, territory, kills). The island is their game map. Exploration is part of the fun. Danger is part of the game play. How players interact with other is a key component to the outcome of the game itself. And that final reward for "winning" the game (through escape, sacrifice, redemption or whatever sub-code reward there is) was going to Heaven.

Simple ending to a complex on-line game which had little rules (or at least confusing rules).

MATCH GAME

The Seven Deadly Sins are supposed to be a window into one's soul, a case study in one's true fault(s) that holds back a person from becoming complete and moral.

Time to try to match the LOST characters to their Deadly Sins.

LUST:  There was plenty of carnal knowledge on the show, from hook-ups to emotional manipulation. The character that had the most loin fever was probably KATE, who was the attention getter who when she wanted something, she went out and got it.

GLUTTONY. It is easy to point to HURLEY as the main choice. He had an issue when he was put in charge of the pantry-food drop supplies. He was uncomfortable with the responsibility since food was his alternative to dealing with his pain (abandonment issues, loneliness, etc.)

GREED. There are many characters who wanted wealth, fame, power and control. Ben and Widmore are prime examples of ruthless behavior. But at the same time, but at a more reserved level, Sun was very greedy in her personal expectations and inheritance while Jin was also looking to break away from his poor fisherman caste to become wealthy. An intense, selfish desire for something defines greed. On a non-material basis, MIB may have been the most greedy, since his sole being as a smoke monster was to escape his island prison, at any cost, including centuries of human lives.

SLOTH. Who was in the camp that lived off the work of other people? SHANNON was the prime example of a rich, spoiled girl who did not have any tangible skill sets for independence, let alone survival. First, she relied solely on Boone to help her through her problems. Then, after Boone was gone, she hooked up briefly with Sayid. She never took it upon herself to take charge of her own situation.

ENVY. Jealousy is a deep dagger in the heart of man. There were many characters who were biting their lip, looking from the outside at the close bonds, friendships and adventures of the other cast members. Arzt was one guy who talked big in camp, but got himself blown up on his only real mission. Frogert was a guy in camp who was constantly complaining that he was not getting the respect he deserved (as a red shirt).

WRATH. Extreme anger at one's own situation and the fate that life imposed upon someone clearly reflects the inner demons of LOCKE. As often as he lashed out at others, including his crazy mother and his con man father, Locke was more angry at his own failed decisions and illusions of grandeur to stop and see the good things in his life, such as Helen. And once he lost her, he had lost any chance of happiness. That is why he was bitter to the end, on and off the island.

PRIDE. This sin is a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements. There are several characters whose world revolved around their own accomplishments. Sawyer believed solely in himself; he knew he could con anyone, including another con man. Arrogance may be the twin brother of pride. Likewise, JACK was self-absorbed with the title of "miracle spine surgeon" by taking impossible cases and defying all medical science to have them walk again. He could do no wrong. Which such a background of being "right," it was only at the end when he admitted that Locke was right about the island.

CREEPY

The internet is filled with lists on popular culture, including vague rankings on televisions shows.

LOST appeared in the Top 10 "creepiest endings" to a television series. Creepy, an unpleasant fear or unease about a situation, may not accurately describe LOST's conclusion, but the list remarks stated:

As if this show was not strange enough, the show's finale added an extra creep factor to it. Though the finale did piece things together, fans who had fallen in love with the various characters were heartbroken, or better yet, disappointed to learn they were all living in purgatory. It made some viewers question whether the characters were ever alive at all.

 It depends on whether you take TPTB's word that the characters were "alive" the whole time (when the purgatory theory was advanced by fans early on in Season 1). But the purgatory Ending did bluntly raise the possibility that the characters were dead all along.

And that doubt is valid because the writers could have done a different, non-purgatory ending, IF they so chose to do so. However, it would not have been "as happy" ending because so many main characters (Juliet,  Jin, Sun, Jack, Locke, Boone, Shannon, Christian) were already dead so you could not have a happy reunion at the island grave yard. For a few, having the characters all dead prior to Flight 815, with the unhappy departed having their souls treated to "one final adventure" in the spirit anteworld called the island, would have been a clearer justification for the sideways church reunion.

It would have been creepier if the final reveal was that all the characters NEVER lived at all; that the entire series was a "what if" these human spirits actually had lived . . . in other words, the final scene would have not shown a church but an operating room door at an abortion clinic.  All the characters were never born. But since they were innocent, the universe gave them the chance to live like humans in a cosmic playground.

PAGANS & A NEW ORDER

The oral stories have generational cultural significance as the basis of traditions, beliefs and rituals. In European Pagan cultures, they had similar myths and legends about human-gods with great powers who came to Earth to influence men. In Nordic culture, Thor was one such representation.

When Christianity spread through Europe, the southern troops came to conquer and wipe out the old Pagan ways. In some areas, religious sites were burned to the ground and new churches put in their place. It was a way of erasing the past with the present. It was a means of control.

In the latter religions, god and his messengers seem to be all-powerful beings. This is in contrast to the Pagan viewpoint that their gods had tremendous power and magic, but the one thing the gods could not do was overpower Nature.

Throughout human history, when a dominate philosophy comes to power with an army to enforce its principles, weaker cultures succumb or perish. Those who did not covert, died. But over time, even some of the old ways get incorporated into the new way of beliefs (such as Pagan holiday feasts being transformed into new Christian holidays such as All Saints Day around Halloween, the Night of the Dead festival).

There is probably an application of these long standing ways to LOST.

There is a progressive "conquest" history of people arriving on the island. Each new group attempts to impose its will upon anyone left on the island. The one exception to this is the Flight 815 survivors. They did not seek to change or control the island; they wished to leave it behind. Perhaps this is the one great change (loophole) that MIB mumbled about in his discussions with Jacob. The castaways did not want to rule, but to escape. With the prospect of controlling the ultimate power, the castways wanted to merely survive long enough to go home.

There is no religious belief canon in the island rituals. There is little worship of a god (that word is not used; Jacob is called a guardian). Religion plays no central role in the story. Religion plays only a minor role in a negative way with Eko's con of impersonating his dead brother in order to save his own life. There are Egyptian temples and deep history, but the Others practice none of the sacred rites. If the show is anything, it is a secular notion of non-belief in higher powers. But at the same time, it is not about empowering the characters in their own self-belief. It is a religious paradox: those who can't save themselves, can't ask for a higher power to save them. It would seem the only theology principle at work is "Live Together, or Die Alone" metaphor. In the primordial time, when chemical compounds began to group together to form amino acid chains (and the start of life), it is that same group connection that is the lesson of island life. And just as the ooze evolved into complex creatures, so did the island character connections grow into a critical mass to allow an eternal peace.

DEAD ENDS & VERSES

How does one get one's self out of a painted corner?

The LOST writers continually put themselves into mystery corners without an explanation to free themselves from their own dead ends.

And there were too many such instances of huge plot inconsistencies to understand let alone explain.

Here are few of the nagging writing problems:

1. If Aaron was born on the island; why was he not born already in the sideways world?
2. If Ben was shot as a boy in the chest by Sayid, why didn't Ben remember him when 815 crashed?
3. Generally, why did so many characters fail to ask basic questions to their fellow castaways?

Here is a possible deux es machina explanation for the writing inconsistencies: multiverses.

Science is still trying to grapple with the workings of the cosmos. The discovery of the minuscule mass of the Higgs boson, whose relative smallness allows big structures such as galaxies and humans to form, falls roughly 100 quadrillion times short of expectations. Trying to put math to the known quantum pieces yields a result that none of us should be in our universe. Instead, there has to be another theory to explain our place in space.

Leading cosmologists like Alan Guth and Stephen Hawking envision our universe as one of countless bubbles in an eternally frothing sea. This infinite “multiverse” would contain universes with constants tuned to any and all possible values, including some outliers, like ours, that have just the right properties to support life. In this scenario, our good luck is inevitable: A peculiar, life-friendly bubble is all we could expect to observe.

Many physicists loathe the multiverse hypothesis, deeming it a cop-out of infinite proportions. But as attempts to paint our universe as an inevitable, self-contained structure falter, the multiverse camp is growing.

The problem remains how to test the hypothesis. Proponents of the multiverse idea must show that, among the rare universes that support life, ours is statistically typical. The exact dose of vacuum energy, the precise mass of our underweight Higgs boson, and other anomalies must have high odds within the subset of habitable universes. If the properties of this universe still seem atypical even in the habitable subset, then the multiverse explanation fails.

When a science fiction show can tap a real scientific theory (however unproven), it can free itself of the dead end badness of a misplayed plot line.

 Our characters were not jumping around in time travel when the island shifted, but our characters were jumping between multiverse bubbles, different parallel dimensions.

Instead of seeing a bubble, the LOST explanation is clear with a deck of cards analogy. In each island time skip, the deck was shuffled and a new card would be the "current" universe while the characters would continue on unknowingly in the other 51 parallel story verses. For example, boarding the plane in Sydney is Universe 1. When the plane hits turbulence, we are not shown a continuation of Universe 1 but a switch to Universe 2. As such, Universe 1's time line may continue the plane to LA (as seen in the sideways flashbacks). But then, when the island goes critical when Locke trips the numbers computer for a lockdown, Universe 2 switches to a different but similar Universe 3. When Ben turns the FDW, he triggers a series of multiverse quakes shifting through several different universes. This may be why we see Locke's paralysis come back on the island, for in a different universe he did not recover. When Locke vanishes the island with his FDW turn, this may be the clearest evidence of the multiverse concept: the shift to Universe X meant that the island was not in that X location.

After enough shuffling of multi-dimensions, a few individuals who can remember the "constants" in each plane of existence have a great advantage to control other people and events (such as Eloise Hawking and Desmond). One can guess more accurately if they had experienced an event generator of possible outcomes before making a final decision.

The multiverse explanation can help cushion the frustration of so many plot dead ends in the series, but it is still a trick to skip to a happy ending.

HAPPY ENDINGS

There is a trend that seems to come from Pan-Asian entertainment stories from Japan and Korea. Long lived shows, comics, or  manga seem to need to end happily ever after. In Japan, the Trinity of global manga-anime franchises (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) is winding down with the Bleach anime ending its run after 366 episodes with a happy ending as the lead regains his powers and heads home. After 15 years of publishing and selling more than 130 million issues, Naruto manga concluded with a two part "Harry Potter" style happy ending set 10 years after the action stops.

The culture must expect a story to have a happy ending; a publisher may demand one in order to leave the fans upbeat for the next franchise. It also may be the creator's vision, since he or she must think that the characters they nurtured for so long are like family, and everyone wants their family to live on happily ever after. You can have the most violent, vile, bloody and evil action series suddenly wrap up with a tortured, stretched but positive ending.

And that is the divide in America entertainment from the Asian ending principles.

In U.S. shows, there is a greater focus on "the anti-hero," characters who are acting outside the norms of society. Their brash freedom and anti-authority beliefs still strikes a chord in the American spirit of independence, adventure and freedom.

So in U.S. shows, the hero character does not necessarily live happily ever after - - -  in most cases the character's adventurous fun runs into the long arm of the law, and is crushed without any moral redemption. Breaking Bad's ending is an example of this, where the main character had no regrets for the pain he caused to others. And most fans of the show expected and accepted this ending.

With all the red shirt killings, evil mental torture, manipulations of people's souls, LOST was barreling down the road to a chaotic and explosive ending where no one was going to be saved from the dangers of the island. So a great deal of fans expected the show to end in a flurry of death and characters unable to come to terms with their faults, their lost lives, or their wasted second chances (as capsuled in Locke's earlier demise). Despite all the adventures, choices, decisions and actions of the main characters, no one found any real redemption from their evil ways, sins or regrets.

But since many fans loved their characters like close friends for six years, they were pleasantly surprised and happy that their fantasy reunion in the after life was the last images of the series. They believed the characters suffered enough in life to have some sort of reward in the next life. And that reward should be shared with their island colleagues.

There is no right or wrong answer to this theme of ending a long running show with a happy ending. It is a creative choice the writers consciously make in order to finish their vision of their characters. And with any creative endeavor, there will be various viewpoints on how successful the ending is perceived by fans.

NEGATIVE SMARTS

Here is an odd bobble from the interwebs of social media culled by WIRED:

it seems the more negative in one's comments, the more intelligent the commentator appears to others.

The reason is"hypercriticism." When we hear negative statements, we think they're inherently more intelligent than positive ones. Teresa Amabile, director of research for Harvard Business School, began exploring this back in the 1980s. She took a group of 55 students, roughly half men, half women, and showed them excerpts from two book reviews printed in an issue of The New York Times. The same reviewer wrote both, but Amabile anonymized them and tweaked the language to produce two versions of each—one positive, one negative. Then she asked the students to evaluate the reviewer's intelligence.

The verdict was clear: The students thought the negative author was smarter than the positive one—“by a lot,” Amabile tells me. Most said the nastier critic was “more competent.” Granted, being negative wasn't all upside—they also rated the harsh reviewer as “less warm and more cruel, not as nice,” she says. “But definitely smarter.” Like my mordant tweets, presumably.

This so-called negativity bias works both ways, it seems. Other studies show that when we seek to impress someone with our massive gray matter, we spout sour and negative opinions. In a follow-up experiment, Bryan Gibson, a psychologist at Central Michigan University, took a group of 117 students (about two-thirds female) and had them watch a short movie and write a review that they would then show to a partner. Gibson's team told some of the reviewers to try to make their partner feel warmly toward them; others were told to try to appear smart. You guessed it: Those who were trying to seem brainy went significantly more negative than those trying to be endearing.

Why does this bias exist? No one really knows, though some theorists speculate it's evolutionary. In the ancestral environment, focusing on bad news helped you survive.

Some may say this site has had more negative LOST posts, but not really if you consider there still are posts long after the series has concluded, so that must be a positive.

If LOST was truly a character study, does one pointing out the negatives in a situation appear to be smarter?

The cursory results are mixed.

Jack quickly became the leader because of his positive outlook, demeanor and his known important medical skills.

Locke was more visceral against Jack's positions, pointing out flaws or different ways of doing things. Other castaways did not find Locke "smart," more like crazy in some of his viewpoints.

There is an irony here because when Flocke and Jack are helping Desmond re-set the cork, Jack admits that the real Locke was right about everything associated with the island.

Hurley was always upbeat and positive. He tried to keep his friends happy and entertained. No one called Hurley a genius. At the same time, Sawyer was constantly a negative, counterproductive presence in the camp. Most people knew he had some street smarts, but he never wanted to let anyone in past his personal firewall.

Kate's personality really lacked common sense because she continually compounded her mistakes in the real world as a fugitive. On the island, other women came to her for personal advice. Kate was neither smart or dumb; she was an independent survivor.

Ben was highly critical and negative towards his subordinates. In fact, so vicious that he would have them killed for disobeying him. As a result, people feared his evil genius.

In real life, people will gravitate toward upbeat and happy people. This may be instinctive to share positive emotional bonds with others. Negative people tend to drain the energy from a room and make people uncomfortable. It seems in the social media webs, the exact opposite happens. This touches briefly on the mirror theme: what is seen may be the opposite of reality.

THE LOST LEGACY OF LOST

A legacy series is one that is passed down from generation to generation, either in its original form or subsequent re-boots.

There are marquee television franchises that stand the test of time: Star Trek, Twilight Zone, episodic comedies like Cheers, Seinfeld or MASH which run constantly in syndication.

There are museum series which hold great admiration in the industry and general public for their trailblazing formulas, nostalgia or historic significance such as Carol Burnett Show, Laugh-In, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, or Your Show of Shows.

There are long form dramatic series which live in the outer memories of television buffs, such as Roots, The Thorn Birds and other kings of the mini-series genre (which was TV adaptions from successful current novels.)

The one thing LOST had from its very beginning was critical acclaim and an immediate core audience. And in the early internet community building aspects of web pages and fan sites, the interaction between the media writers and the fans created the "buzz" which sustained the show in its early seasons (and in some respects caused it to go off the story rails).

As we learned after the show ceased production, LOST was supposed to have been an episodic adventure series. A person unfamiliar with the show could watch an episode without needing a vast pre-existing knowledge of the character or story lines. The formula would have followed Star Trek, which can be viewed in any specific order since there is no tied plot lines from season to season.

If LOST had followed that episodic path, it would have pushed its way into the conversation of being a legacy television show. It would have been able to have a real independent syndicate run (even though hour long shows rarely do well in syndication).  It could have found a secondary or new audience in that wide syndication if new viewers could be immersed in a resolved 60 minute story. Even shows like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos had contained episodes which may be leading to an ultimate conclusion, but LOST broke the mold and allowed story lines to skip weeks, get hidden by new mysteries, and overwritten by conflicting back stories.  Part of the problem with a hour being divided into island time, back story features and then alternative universe sideways stories there was no true resolution of the multilayered plots after each episode.

LOST lost itself in its methods of story presentation. Die hard fans could sentence diagram the various plot lines and character studies during the week between episodes, creating vast theories and predictions which were as entertaining as the show itself. But a casual viewer's confusion would be an instant turnoff. There were many instances where original fans tried to rope in their friends or spouses into watching LOST after the first season, and the push back was fairly strong after only a few viewings. It was harder for someone to pick up the series midstream than an original viewer.

It probably did not help that even die hard fans could not explain what was going on with any certainty. Some viewers merely want to sit and have the screen "entertain" them without any active participation. So as breakthrough as LOST was in challenging viewers to see the mysteries and find clues to the questions, it did a poor job in holding the less attentive viewer. The ratings showed a slow decline from Season 2 to the end.

Then the deep split in how The End was viewed by critics and fans sealed LOST's fate of not being a legacy show. For those who enjoyed the finale, LOST will remain a coveted memory. For those who hated the finale, there may remain some bitterness and frustration to "move on" away from holding the series to their hearts.

Could LOST have been more episodic like other science fiction shows? Yes, but that would have taken crisper and more focused writing. Could LOST have tied contained episodes together to weave subtextual story lines for the hard core fans? Yes, but that would have taken deeper planning and clearer execution.

It seems that once LOST was green lit, and rushed into production, it took on a life of its own; an uncontrollable beast much like the smoke monster.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE

There is one inflection point between the island and sideways story arcs. People believe it is Desmond, but the real man in the middle is a background character.

This comes about in reviewing a minor detail in the series. The flight manifest contained the names of all the passengers who flew on Flight 815.  The manifest was part of the papers and materials kept by Sawyer in his stash shortly after the survivors started to build camp.

The earliest known time that the mid-section survivors were in possession of the manifest was day 5 - Sunday, September 26th, 2004, during the burning of the plane. It then went into Sawyer's possession for approximately eleven days before passing to Hurley on Day 16.

Hurley used the manifest in order to make a census of everyone on the beach and in the caves.  He asked everyone for his name, place of residence, and the reason he was in Australia to compile the census.  It was during this process, Hurley found that Ethan Rom was not a passenger on the plane, but an Other.

Lostpedia states that only a few people have actually seen the manifest:

Locke knew Hurley and Sawyer's real names (Hugo Reyes and James Ford) from the manifest.

Sawyer had access to the manifest since it was part of his stash.

Hurley used the manifest to create his census of survivors.

And co-pilot Frank Lapidus claimed he had memorialized the entire 815 manifest so he was able to identify Juliet as not being a passenger. How Frank would have received a copy of the manifest (which is created at the gate through boarding passes) is unknown, but a telling bit of information.

In the flash sideways Flight 815, pilot Seth Norris is listed instead of Frank. Which means some details of the original flight were the same. But the  manifest was slightly different, with some characters such as Desmond,  who were not on the plane originally, were on it in the flash sideways. Other passengers were seated differently or missing altogether.
 
After having some realization about this world, Desmond asked his limo driver to get him a copy of the manifest so he could show the other passengers something. Desmond was later seen seeking out various passengers of Flight 815 and manipulating their circumstances to trigger an "awakening"  though it is unclear to what extent he consulted the manifest to accomplish his goal.

What was the cosmic bridge between the island and the sideways plane manifests?

It could be the knowledge of Frank, who is the only character to leave the island more than twice, and the fact that Ajira 316 actually made it off the island with Desmond on it.

Lapidus is a Biblical name derived from the Latin word lapideus, meaning "made of stone."

So was alcoholic, depressed pilot Frank the foundation stone on which the series can be connected?

Frank, as a character, does not get a lot of credit for being independent, resourceful, dynamic, skilled and perceptive. He knew the evil intentions of the freighter crew from day one. He knew something was wrong in the whole disappearing Flight 815 scandal. In some respects, he was the one who had a clear understanding that people and events were being manipulated, so he rode the wave of the deceptions to find his answers. As a pragmatic person, he survived the various dangers on and off the island. And when he found the 815ers on his Ajira flight, he deadpanned that he was not getting to his scheduled destination.

Or was he?  In some respects, Frank represents an guardian angel for some of the 815ers. Through guilt or heavenly redemption, he literally "saves" several people, including Kate twice. He was the man in the middle of the action, but not swept away by it.

By Frank getting Desmond off the island had to have changed the alternative time line to place Desmond on sideways Flight 815. This is the most dramatic change in the sideways manifest, as it creates the path for Desmond to remember and reunite the island memories to their souls. So Desmond takes on the role of an underworld ferryman or priest, to get his charges through judgment and paradise. 

DARK MATTERS

Science knows about the element called dark matter. It can be observed by the gravitation pull of other objects. It makes up about a quarter of the universe. But science does not know what it really does.

Some researchers have tried to postulate that dark matter may attach itself to dying pulsars, in such a fashion that the density becomes so great that a black hole is created in the universe.

Scientists also believe that at the edge of any black hole, where the gravitational forces are the greatest, physics and notions of time and space are out of whack.  Even a pinpoint black hole singularity could disrupt time and space.

These are known concepts. Using known science concepts is a good basis for science fiction.

LOST posters have often looked to black holes, dark matter and strange energy as a basis of trying to explain the underlying events in the series. The show's time travel events became quite problematic. Even the island's "re-sets" have inconsistent triggers which does not lead to a clear explanation.

Humans are curious; we want answers to mysteries.

What is the universe? What is our role in the universe? What is life? Is there something after life? Why can't we take all the chemicals found in a human body and mix up a human being in the lab?

To explain sporadic time events on the island, one must assume that the cork has to be shifted in some manner to release the built up energy. However, the Swan computer station was not tied directly the heart of the island. In fact, the cork was a large stone, not a mechanical device. So was the Swan station a pressure value to release energy used to keep the light source in check? And why would anyone need to do that anyway? The light source was on the island long before humans. Did the ancient Egyptians first harness its power, i.e. ability to time travel through space portals, in the quest to actually get the after life? That makes some sense in the realm of the burial temple rituals. But in order to create such a time riff, one must have the pull of a black hole singularity.

So it is possible that the island is the bridge between a dark matter pocket creating a black hole and the unique electromagnetic light source (the Big Bang so to speak) from which all life in the universe got its component parts. So is the island the location of a possible Second Big Bang?

We think the island was returned to balance when Jack died. So the existing universe would have been saved from destruction. But then again, a second parallel universe was created from the island which we called the sideways world - - - one in which Desmond was aware of on the island prior to his awakening in the sideways plane of existence. So the fabric of normal space time had to have been altered by the island time shifts. Then, was the sideways truly an after life experience, or merely an alternative dimension populated by the memories of the island castaways? A echo, a memory, a fiction created by the disruption of the known universe carried about on the nodes of dark matter.

BETTER END

It may be hard to admit, but LOST lasted too long. A season too long to be exact.

There are two schools of thought on Season 6.  One, it provided a confusing back story of the island and Jacob. Two, it provided nothing to the original story lines. The former would have just ended the series with the cliffhanger of Season 5, with Juliet pounding a rock on Jughead. That would have had just as many outraged viewers and unsolved mysteries. The latter would have just squeezed the key Season 6 bits into the last episodes and forgot about the sideways world filler. So the series would end with Jack dying in the bamboo grove with Vincent, while the last of his friends flew overhead for the last time.

In one respect, that last sentence would have made a more powerful and true ending to the series than the happy reunion in the purgatory church.

What happened on the island in Season 6 was masked by the confusing sideways parallel universe arc. The key resolution of the survivors's stories was on the island.

Jack accepts the role of guardian from Jacob, but he does not feel any different. 

The big mission was to go into the Heart of the Island, where the unique electromagnetic energy was strongest, and to "reset" the island. This is like the Hatch fail safe operation key that Desmond used to destroy the Swan. Since Desmond survived that re-set, he was the chosen one to re-set the island for good. But despite the guardianship role and Flocke's presence, no one knows exactly what is going to happen. Flocke believes the island re-set will free him and the island will fall to the bottom of the ocean. Jack hopes that the re-set will destroy the smoke monster and free his friends.

Once at the cave of the Heart, Flocke ties a rope to a tree while Jack ties the other end around Desmond. Desmond tells Jack that this - killing Flocke and destroying the Island - doesn't matter because once he goes into the cave, he'll go to another place where they can be with the ones they love, where they never have to see the island again, and where a happier version of Jack exists. (This is the foreshadowing of the sideways church reunion, but can be just a way of saying that everyone will meet up again in heaven some day.) After saying that maybe there's a way he could bring Jack there too, Jack says he already tried that  and that he found there are no shortcuts or do-overs; that whatever happened, happened and that all of this matters. The three men enter the cave.

Jack and Locke enter the cave and begin to lower Desmond into the brilliant abyss. Flocke remembers John Locke's memories of Jack and he, looking at Desmond down in a hole in the ground, lightheartedly commented on their bickering on whether or not to push the button.   Jack cuts him short. "You're not John Locke; you disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you're nothing like him." Jack insists that John was right about almost everything, and wished he got to tell him this when he was still alive. Flocke says John wasn't right about anything and that when the Island drops into the ocean and Jack drops with it, then he will realize this. Jack suggests they just watch and see who turns out to be right, and the two look down the waterfall now that Desmond has reached the bottom. (This is the big theme of science vs. faith playing out for the last time.)

Desmond reaches a chamber below after passing skeletons. He finds the Heart, a glowing pool, filled by a small waterfall, with an elongated stone with ancient hieroglyphs engraved on it at its center. He enters the water as electromagnetic energy emanates from the Heart. Desmond is clearly in pain, and his nose bleeds. Jack and Locke hear his screams. Desmond reaches the center stone and lifts it, like removing a giant stopper in the center of the pool. The stream from the waterfall stops, the electromagnetic force recedes, the light goes out, the pool dries up and there is a red hot glow emitting from the center.  Desmond screams "No!" Flocke says to a very worried Jack: "It looks like you were wrong." Flocke says goodbye and leaves as earthquakes begin to wrack the Island.

Jack chases Flocke out of the cave in a fit of fury, punching him in the mouth and jumping on him when he falls. Flocke bleeds from the mouth. MIB is shocked to see he's bleeding. Jack sees the blood and says, "It looks like you were wrong too." Jack's hands move towards Locke's throat as they struggle. Locke finds a rock and hits Jack in the head, and gets up and runs off as Jack becomes unconscious.

On the Hydra Island beach, the outrigger reaches the shoreline.  Miles calls Ben, who is sitting with Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley. Miles informs him they're going to fly off the Island and that they should get to Hydra Island now. Claire emerges from the bushes and holds Miles' group at gunpoint and shoots into the sand. Through the radio, Kate hears that Claire is there. Claire assumes Flocke has sent them there to kill her. To convince her this isn't the case, Richard tells her they can go home and be free of Flocke. He invites Claire to join them but she refuses and leaves.

The predicted wild storm arrives and the earthquakes continue. Ben notices a large tree beginning to fall and realizes it will crush Hurley. Ben pushes him out of the way and the tree falls on Ben, pinning him. Sawyer, Hurley and Kate can't lift it. Sawyer says Flocke was right, the Island is going down. Miles radios Ben. Kate finds Ben's radio in the mud. Miles tells Kate that Frank is fixing the plane and they should get over there quick smart. He also tells Kate that Claire is around but won't come. Sawyer uses a fallen tree branch as a lever to try to free Ben. Ben says he knows how they can get to Hydra Island - that Flocke has a boat.

On the main island, Flocke stands on the cliff above the cave, looking at Libby’s husband’s boat anchored a short distance offshore. Before he can make it to the boat, Jack catches up to him, mad as ever. Flocke turns around and the two face each other for the final showdown. (This goes to the theme of black vs. white; good vs. evil.) Flocke draws his knife and they run at each other across the uneven ground. Jack leaps at Locke and they fight as the storm rages and cliffs disintegrate.

Flocke drops his knife, but during the struggle he picks it up and inflicts a fatal wound under Jack's rib cage. As he tries to finish him off, Flocke tells Jack that "he died for nothing." Just then, Kate shoots him from behind; she had "saved him a bullet." (This final act of defeating MIB was Kate, not the island guardian, in such a way that Jacob was destroyed not by MIB but by Ben.)

Jack struggles to his feet, but another quake shakes the Island and Flocke says Jack is "too late" just before the rumbling stops. Jack kicks him off the cliff to the rocks below, and MIB, the Smoke Monster, is apparently dead.


Kate holds Jack, who looks at the knife wound in his side. Jack says "I'll be fine, just find me some thread and I'll count to five.” This is what he said the first time they met in the jungle after the crash. Kate sewed up Jack's wounds, which may be symbolic of threading their lives together. Sawyer, Hugo and Ben arrive and as Kate tells them that it's over, the Island rumbles again and Sawyer says "Sure don't feel like it's over."

Ben tells the group that Frank and the rest are leaving, and if they are going to catch up they had better get to the boat and sail to Hydra island quickly. Jack says that whatever Desmond turned off, he needs to turn it back on again. But he says that if people are going to leave they need to get on that plane.  Kate tells him that he doesn't need to do this, but Jack is adamant that he does. Jack wishes Sawyer good luck.


Ben passes Sawyer the radio saying that if the Island is going down then he is going down with it. Hugo refuses to climb the rickety wooden ladders and tells Jack that he is with him. Kate and Jack share a tearful goodbye - they have a final kiss and declare their love for each other. The island continues to shake uncontrollably. Sawyer calls Frank, who tells them he is going to leave while there is still ground to leave on. Sawyer and Kate jump off the cliffs and into the sea. They swim out to the Elizabeth.

Frank fires the plane up. Kate and Sawyer swim ashore to Hydra Island and find a disconsolate Claire sitting on the beach. The Island continues to disintegrate. They hear the Ajira warming up. Claire says to Kate that she won't come because the Island has made her crazy. Kate offers to help her and they all run for the plane. Frank prepares for takeoff and doesn't hear Sawyer's plea on the radio for him to wait. Just then they make it to the runway, and Kate, Sawyer and Claire climb aboard.
The plane takes off as the runway disintegrates.

Hurley helps Jack as they return with Ben to the Heart. Jack tells them he is going down alone and makes it clear that he knows he will not survive. Jack explains to an overwrought Hurley that this is what is supposed to happen. Jack tells Hugo that it is he who the Island needs, that his job was to fix the Heart but after that it should be Hugo. Jack tells Hugo that he believes in him. Hugo agrees, but only till Jack returns. Ben finds an Oceanic bottle and Jack fills it from a leftover pool of water from the previously active stream and gives it to Hurley. After Hurley drinks, Jack tells him,


Ben and Hugo lower Jack into the Heart. Jack finds Desmond and carries him back to the rope. Desmond wants to return the plug but Jack tells him he has done enough and he needs to go home to be with his wife and son. Desmond asks Jack what will happen to him. Jack says that he'll see him in another life, "Brother." (This ties up the connection between pre-island Jack and Desmond when they first met on the stadium steps. It would seem that destiny would unite their lives in the near future.)

Jack lies exhausted in the empty pool but a trickle of water starts flowing and then the light starts to return. Hugo and Ben haul on the rope and find Desmond on the end of it. Below, Jack sobs with relief as he is engulfed in the light. (Some may speculate that this should have made Jack into an immortal smoke monster.) Ben and Hugo are with Desmond. Hugo takes in the idea that Jack has gone. Ben comforts him by telling Hugo that he did his job. Ben tells a frightened Hugo that he can do his job as the island's new island protector  by doing what he does best: taking care of people.

Hugo asks how he can do things like helping Desmond to go home when people can't leave the Island.  Ben says that that is how Jacob ran things and that maybe there is a better way. Hugo asks Ben for his help, saying he needs someone with experience. Ben says he would be honored. 

But Jack is not really gone, as the final scene on the island is Jack in the original bamboo grove.

How he got to the bamboo grove is another mystery. One theory is that Jack never left the bamboo grove in the first place; that it was all his dream. Another theory is that after re-corking the island, saving it from destruction, the light cave transported him to this place as it was the end of a portal. It was so that Jack could see his friends fly away; so he could pass in peace and move on.

You could have just ended the series without the Hurley assuming command immaterial plot point.

But this sequence as the true finale would have made pretty clear that the ultimate sacrifice, one's own life, is needed at times to save others. Dying alone meant that others could live.

We would know that the island's magical powers over life and death have a valve, the rock cork, that once disturbed can cause great riffs in time and space. It has its own fail safe mechanism if released, which is to destroy the planet (extinctions are part of planetary evolution). This changed the immortals into mortals. But rebooting the island is also possible as Jack did - - - not to save the world (he was unaware of the consequences) but to save his friends.

 Eliminate the sideways story line and one gets a better picture of the island mythology, and a better end to the show.

OPPOSITES

Hurley's character was recently described as the "unlucky lucky lottery winner."  It does look and sound odd. But it fits.

Can this description fit the other main characters?

Was Jack's character a "spineless, brilliant spinal surgeon?"

Was Kate's character an "innocent, murderous runaway?"

Was Sawyer's character an "honest, con man?"

Was Locke's character a "friendly, lonely fool?"

Was Sayid's character a "heartfelt, heartless torturer?"

Was Ben's character a "personable,  psychotic madman?"

Was Charlie's character a "quiet, deranged drug addict?"

Was Claire's character a "motherly, psychotic mad woman?"

Was Rose's character a "well healed, terminally ill woman?"

Was Bernard's character an "irrational, caring dreamer?"

Was Desmond's character a "lost, driven dreamer?"

MYSTERY SOLVED

LOST, because of its labyrinth of mysteries, had led a few viewers to speculate that the island was a beacon of lost souls, from aviators to sailors. Some speculated that Crazy Mother or Eloise Hawking could have been Amelia Earhart.


Searchers have spent 26 years and made 10 expeditions to investigate the mystery surrounding Earhart’s disappearance. But the solution may have been found by a small piece of metal.  In 1991, a group of researchers investigating the disappearance of Amelia Earhart found a sheet of aluminum on the island of Nikumaroro in the Western Pacific. Earhart’s plane, a Model 10 Electra, mysteriously vanished near the island on July 2, 1937. This piece of metal, a sheet 19 inches by 23 inches and made of the same material as Earhart’s plane, looked like it could be the first piece of the aircraft ever found.

The problem was its odd shape and size, which didn’t seem to fit any part of the Electra.
The team then looked at every other kind of plane that could’ve flown over the Pacific at that time. But, again, nothing fit.

Then the team noticed that in pictures taken of the Electra as it took off from Miami on June 1, 1937, the plane had a shiny patch near its tail, covering what had been a specially made window. This patch was an improvised repair, and so was completely unique to Earhart’s plane.

The team further analyzed the old photo and turned to a restored Electra to see how such a piece of metal would have been attached. After closer examination, they realized that the sheet perfectly matched in size, shape, and patterns of rivet holes. Even tears along the edges of the sheet aligned with where rivets would’ve been. They believe it is a match.

 Like LOST itself, there are many theories about the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan. Some say Earhart was captured by the Japanese or that she found her way back to the US and lived out her life as a New Jersey housewife, Gillespie said. His team’s hypothesis is that Earhart and Noonan were trying to find Howland Island, but after failing to do so, they landed on a reef extending out from Nikumororo, also known as Gardner Island. For days, the pair sent out distress calls from the aircraft’s radio, but the rising tides soon pushed the plane over the edge of the reef and into the ocean. The search team thinks Earhart and Noonan survived for a while on the island as castaways.