INITIAL DESCRIPTION

The series was originally described as follows:

The survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 were 1,000 miles off course when they crashed on a lush, mysterious island. Each person possesses a shocking secret, but they've got nothing on the island itself, which harbors a monstrous security system, a series of underground bunkers and a group of violent survivalists hidden in the shadows.

And the Pilot episode was described as follows:

The 48 survivors scavenge what they can from the wreckage of their plane; the survivors' pasts threaten their ability to survive as a group; a transceiver is discovered in the wreckage and hopes for rescue soar.

Today, we have only a handful of plane survivors left (Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, Claire). It is not the survivors pasts that threaten their ability to survive as a group, it is the island present. Any hope for "rescue" has been lost a long time ago. Even when six made it back to the main land, they decided to return with no plan on how to be rescued again.

Maybe the "shocking" secret of the island will be revealed before the End. Maybe not.

We may have to live with the prospect that the initial mysteries will never be answered by TPTB.
What is the mysterious security system? What were the underground bunkers? Who were the survivalists hiding in the shadows?

The years of speculative research into areas of science and fiction may have been for naught. Gone will be the explanations involving wormholes, event horizons, Egyptian religion, concepts of the after life, space portals into time, time machines, black magic, quantum physics, twin planets, parallel universes, inter-dimensional beings, nanotechnology, mind control, spirits hidden in plain sight.

QUOTATION COULD APPLY TO LOST

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." --- Mark Twain in "Huckleberry Finn."

SPECULATIVE ENDING

"Dude! That was awesome! What do you want to do next?"

S6E14 RECAP

L: Lo! - - - There were several attempts to create an amazing or surprising event, i.e. the death of three main characters, one secondary character, and a bunch of red shirts. Even though many viewers were moved by the Jin-Sun Looking Glass like death scene had lost much of its impact since the Jin and Sun characters were mainly background figures for a long time. The snarky return of the Jack and Sawyer banter over the disarming of the back pack bomb could have been great but it was rushed. The "heroic" Sayid taking the bomb away from his friends on a suicide mission was also muted because Sayid lost his character when he became a Flocke zombie in the Temple. The surprise fatality was Frank, whose pilot license expired when Flocke convinced the castaways to head to the submarine to escape. If anything, the Flocke multi-layered con job coupled with the pig head naivety controlled the episode.

O: Obnoxious - - - The entire submarine and bomb sequence was poorly constructed and lacked the substance needed to make a great plot twist.

S: Story line - - - The overall island story line continues to stall around the reshuffling of the deck of characters into smaller and smaller piles of background red shirt humanity. This episode only literally "trimmed the herd" of characters heading toward the finale. It really did not confirm anything, maybe to some who thought Flocke may not be the "evil incarnate."

T: Time line - - - The non-overlapping time lines from the island and sideways worlds is still bothersome, for if leakage is occurring from the island, it is not in real time. The leakage appears to happen if one gets a head injury, which creates some memory portal back to the island universe. If each world is a self-contained universe as it has been presented, then there is no need for the sideways time line. The whole sideways story arc may be the writers crutch to end the LOST saga without answering any of the island mysteries that have built up in the previous five years.

S6E14 SUB PAR

The sub dock on Hydra station is clearly in a harbor or cove. One would not expect the sub to immediately "dive" while in a shallow area. Story construction of the action within the submarine-the-bomb-the aftermath was poor, blowing up freighter poor. As one person noted a long time ago, at least the writers are consistent with their basic medical-legal-science errors.

Also, Flocke in Terminator mode cannot be killed by conventional weapons. Widmore's men should have known that, but kept firing away, being picked off like ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. Why Flocke did not change to Smokey to wipe them out is unknown, unless he wanted some target practice prior to leaving the island.

How Flocke "knows" that some candidates are still alive is also unknown. His reaction was such that he thought that the submarine would at least surface first (that's why Claire was surprised that the submarine "sunk" but in reality, subs do go underwater.) Flocke storms off the dock vowing to finish what he started; it was almost a curse that instead of moving pieces around to do his bidding, he would have to finish the game himself.

And that huffing gets back to the weak plot line that the whole Lost experience was merely a game between supernatural beings, and the main characters merely toys, pawns or red shirts. In the game of backgammon, the whole purpose is to "remove" your own pieces (characters) from the board (island) as fast as you can after getting them into the "home" position.

S6E14 SUICIDE IS PAINLESS

Suicide is painless,

It brings on many changes,

And I can take or leave it if I please . . .

Such is the refrain from M*A*S*H, and last night's episode. It further brings into story continuity questions about island death - - - specifically suicides.

We were shown that candidates could not die. Richard and Jack sat in the Black Rock. Richard could not die by suicide but someone else could kill him. Jack agreed to do so, then sat down knowing that the volatile explosives would not go off. We saw various characters, like Mrs. Kluge, beg to be killed by a comrade. Patchy lived more lives than an alley cat. Michael could not commit suicide in NYC. The standard rule was an island person could not commit suicide.

Then we got into a possible exception: you could kill yourself if you were sacrificing yourself to help others. Charlie drowning in the Looking Glass was the prime example. What happened to him was that he turned into a ghost to haunt Hurley at Santa Rosa (including physically slapping him on the side of the head after he admitted he was dead.) Juliet banging on the bomb (which may or may not have gone off) would have been a sacrifice to save the castaways. Even Jacob being stabbed by Ben in the statue was like suicide, because Jacob made no attempt to defend himself.

Which leads us to the red shirt parade. The lack of any value to human life is becoming appalling in the plot. I once remarked that if all the candidates got together with MIB, the Numbers would act like a combination lock and seal him away forever. Now, it appears, that the candidates are merely a combination lock in death to release MIB into the wild. With the caveat that MIB cannot directly kill any candidate. Except, he put the bomb in Jack's back pack so that is murder, plain and simple.

I also caught grief a few weeks back remarking that the plot appeared to be headed towards all the characters getting killed off . . . which led to remarks like "then what's the point?" Exactly. We still do not know what The Point of the story is . . . . and the constant reshuffling of character groups into nonsensical situations continues to mask it.

The multiple demise of characters in The Candidate was anti-climatic. First, poor Frank had nothing more than four word throw-away phrases for the entire season. He was kept around because he was the pilot (of a terribly broken airplane) who could fly the castaways home. In the end, his sole purpose was to be a red shirt (a gruesome death prop). Second, poor Sayid, the zombie who had nothing to live for, tries to turn into hero by taking the bomb away from the castaways. Boom goes the Iraqi! A sacrificial suicide mission to end his character or as a candidate an nullified suicide attempt a la Michael in NYC?

The whole Jin-Sun reunion was blah cottage cheese last week. The whole set up for their Looking Glass moment really took away from any shred of common sense parental instincts. First, submarine fixtures like cabinets are anchored to the hull and not free standing projectiles. Second, Sun getting "trapped" behind some twisted pipes meant she squeezed behind them before the explosion. It was too soap opera gimmickry as they said their final goodbyes, without mentioning once, their baby daughter or the need for one parent to survive to raise her. Unless this is a lesson that modern parents are self-absorbed narcissistic shells, the scene had no power over me. It does not answer if one or both were the lighthouse candidate. It would mean Sun died at the hands of another person (MIB) while Jin's death was not a sacrifice but a suicide (which is against the rules).

It may come down to that the only rule on the show is that there were no rules. So what would be the Point then?

We then have the problem with Kate's bullet wound. It clearly appeared to be a direct hit in the area where her left subdavian artery is located. If the bullet hit or nicked that artery, medical science says she would be unconscious in 2 seconds, and be dead in 3.5 seconds. So we must conclude that this was another magic bullet, more show than go.

Then we have the problem of Hurley, Kate, Jack and Sawyer miraculously escaping a sinking submarine faster than it surfacing to get rid of the bomb. If they got out, what about the experienced sub crew? Pretty unbelievable. The whole ticking time bombs have been a real thorn in the sides of many viewers because of the unbelievability of the situations. In this dud, the castaways get below and find the bomb in less than a minute because Jack asks for his back pack to treat Kate's injury. Now, a submarine in open seas can dive at a rate of approximately 50 feet per minute. If the command was given to Frank to have the captain surface immediately, the submarine would have been no more than 50-60 feet below the surface. Plenty of time to surface in three minutes to throw away the bomb. Further, the submarine was docked inside a cove-harbor. It did not have the time to get into "open water" to submerge deep into the ocean. These simple but important facts really make the scene go sour quickly. It was another poorly crafted script that tried to lead us to an emotional parlay, four character death sequence.

Another insanely dumb, suicidal move was Widmore moving his beach sonic fences to the station buildings/bear cages. It shows incompetence or an alliance with Flocke because it shows a lack of common sense. And the remaining Widmore red shirts went down like penned cattle at a slaughterhouse. Affirming, once again, that human life is treated like candy being dispensed from a PEZ container.

A census of the remaining red meat reveals:

Beach rats: Jack, Hurley, bleeding Kate and head trauma Sawyer. Another case of head injury, which probably will become the "portal" for Sawyer to reunite with Alt-World Juliet. At least, the conscious group had their first community "cry."

Widmore's mercenaries: Widmore, Zoe and 0-? red shirts, and a well Desmond. I don't think Widmore has any one left except Desmond and Zoe. Desmond is the only one on the main island.

Flocke's group: Flocke (MIB), Claire. Or zombie Claire as we like to call her.

The Others: Cindy, Emma and Zach. I also think that the three are the only ones left from the Temple Others who joined Flocke.

The Jungle: 3 mysterious boys who stalk and taunt Flocke. The children's relationship to the island and Flocke remain unknown, except for the comments regarding the Rules.

The Whispers and Ghosts: Ghost Jacob and Ghost Michael have appeared, but whether they are truly trapped souls who cannot move on, or manifestations of Jacob, MIB or some one else, is unclear.

Richard's Group: murderous immortal Richard, murderous former leader Ben, and death talking con man island native Miles. It almost has a duck-duck-goose ring to it. Murderer-murderer-psychic!

So we have five 815ers left: Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sawyer and zombie Claire.
We have Richard, Ben and Miles running around on their own.
We have five other people left: Widmore, Zoe, Cindy, Emma and Zach.
That is an unlucky 13 red shirts remaining on the island.

Is there any heroic suicide sacrificing people left? I suspect Cindy would continue to protect the two children to the end, as she has shown some maternal instincts totally lacking with Claire or the other women confined to the island. I suspect that if Sawyer believes he has nothing else to live for, he might dive on a grenade to save some one. Jack's idea of staying behind was a form of self-sacrifice so that really does not count. I don't think Kate would do anything because of crazy Claire's mental state and her cross-eyed mission to reunite mother and child. Richard has suicidal tendencies but knows he cannot kill himself. All the candidates are supposedly in the same situation as Richard. That leaves Ben or Miles, which deep down, are similar creatures: they view the world and their place as what is in their own best interest . . . which is living to fight another day.

One other observation which may or may not play out. There are very few "natives" left. We know Miles was born on the island in 1977. We don't know if Widmore, Cindy, or Zoe were born on the island or was brought to it by Jacob. My "guess" is that Miles is the only native islander left. As such, does he "inherit" the island from Jacob?

THE HOME STRETCH

LOST is running down the to the finish line like a muddy Kentucky Derby.

Tonight's apparent Jack-centric episode called "The Candidate" has the tag line that prior to going on a dangerous mission, Jack must determine whether or not to trust Locke.

Well, really?

We can surmise that this episode is another jungle shuffle quasi-rescue mission. This time Jack will be sent to the Hydra island to "rescue" the other castaways from Widmore and Zoe's gun toting boys choir. It has the same anticipation as loading up on warm milk to ride/spin the carnival tea cups until a kid pukes.

The concept of Jack trying to determine whether "to trust Locke" is really absurd at this point. Jack already knows the real Locke is dead. Jack knows Flocke is the smoke monster. He has to be aware from Kate that Flocke killed off most of the Others at the Temple. What's to trust?

Where are we going with so little time left? Are we merely meandering down a Seinfeldian garden maze, a show about "nothing" but harps on characters in unusual situations. Fans anxiety levels are increasing with the prospect of the show ending with no real answers to the really, really big questions.

The question of trust is big right now. Do most fans "trust" TPTB to wrap up the show in a meaningful and intelligent way?