Lost: Season 3

[Draft Dodger]

Originally Posted by Ryan S

The scene at the swimming pool was full of unrealistic British accents. The kids had weird English upper class accents and their father had a strange Scottish accent. I don't think anything (in the flashback) sounded close to a Manchester accent.

Strange, given how realistic the accents are with the regular British cast members.

I actually was thinking that the accents were all wrong, but wasn't confident enough to say anything

[sabotai]

I actually liked this episode, and I usually hate Charlie-centered episodes.

[Richard Weed]

I was disappointed that we didn't get to see what happened to Locke, and they showed Jacob but didn't expand on it.

I liked the episode though, so it was entertaining.

[GoDukes]

Originally Posted by Richard Weed

I was disappointed that we didn't get to see what happened to Locke, and they showed Jacob but didn't expand on it.

I liked the episode though, so it was entertaining.

I think the worst part is knowing the Locke won't die - yet Ben left him there to die (why didn't he finish him off?). Jacob will probably come save him.

[Pyser]

or alex...

[Swaggs]

Originally Posted by Richard Weed

I was disappointed that we didn't get to see what happened to Locke, and they showed Jacob but didn't expand on it.

I liked the episode though, so it was entertaining.

Agreed about Locke, but although it was disappointing, it was not at all surprising that they saved that for the finale.

[kingfc22]

Originally Posted by moriarty

I actually liked the episode and was really starting to feel bad about Charlie dying ...

Yea, the whole backstory and his greatest hits list was really getting to me. Then he gets into the underwater hatch and they pull a nice twist I didn't see coming.

This season has definitatley finished strong.

[Mota]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Agreed about Locke, but although it was disappointing, it was not at all surprising that they saved that for the finale.

Almost a guarantee that you won't see Locke until the last 30 seconds of this season. He'll totally turn the tide on whatever momentum is happening and it will leave you wondering what side he's on ... end of season. That's my guess at least!

[flounder]

Well, that was odd.

[NoMyths]

Great, great end -- taking the show in a new direction sets up a brilliant opportunity for the narrative, if they can capitalize.

[cmp]

Wow. Didn't see that coming.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Loved the finale. Great stuff. I am glad I came back to the show. I missed a good 5-6 episodes there between Feb-April, maybe more.

My wife called the "future" flashback (flashforward?) right off the bat. A very interesting way to, well, make those more interesting.

Poor Charlie. Despite the fact that most Charlie-centric episodes weren't all that great, I liked him as a character. He had some great moments. A great ending for him.

Loved Hurley in the van.

I can't believe we have to wait until January...

[Swaggs]

That was an amazing episode.

The one very deceptive thing, that I did not like, was when he told the chief to go up and talk to his father about being drunk. I thought that was intentionally framing the backstory to be from the past.

Did anyone get a super closeup of the obituary? I was assuming Sawyer, but then Kate mentioned that she had to get back to someone, so not sure there.

Overall, I really enjoyed that way more than I expected. It was cool seeing Walt again, getting to Rousseau and Alex finally meet, and the drama of thinking the three gunmen were dead (which lead me to think Charlie was going to survive).

[Daimyo]

I assume that was Ben's funeral.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

The one very deceptive thing, that I did not like, was when he told the chief to go up and talk to his father about being drunk. I thought that was intentionally framing the backstory to be from the past.

I didn't like that either. The fact that the flashbacks were always flashbacks made it wonderfully deceptive enough. Throwing in that line about his dad at the hospital was cheaply hackish. (Assuming that his dad is, in fact, dead and isn't "brought back" after he leaves the island.)

Everything else was great, though.

[Grammaticus]

I was thinking Sawyer's funeral as well.

Also, I would not be too surprised if we find out Charlie ultimately swims through the porthole to safety.

[cmp]

The name on the obit I believe was Jeremy Bentham. Some other boards I was at had that as the name.

[thesloppy]

I'm thiiiinking of a number, do you know what it is? It's 8, and it's the number of minutes in between commercial breaks on tonight's Lost! I suppose that's somewhat normal and to be expected, but it sure gave my fingers a workout on the ol' remote.

Otherwise very enjoyable, but the wait for next season is going to be hard. I also assumed that the funeral was Ben's.

[Pyser]

wow. just wow. need to digest that one.

entire 2nd season has been redeemed. best show on tv again.

[Suburban Rhythm]

Originally Posted by Daimyo

I assume that was Ben's funeral.

I originally thought Sawyer too, until Kate said about "He'll be wondering where I am".

So I am thinking Locke. Based on two things--
1) When the funeral director asks Jack "Friend or Family?" and Jack responds neither. Locke doesn't want to leave the island, but is "rescued" anyway?
2) The funeral director mentions no one else had shown up. Of the characters on the island, Locke has nothing to come back to, no reason to leave. Jack may not have either, but we know it isn't him, and we are assuming Kate/Sawyer hookup, so they had each other. Everyone else has someone back home

I guess this also means that after being rescued, the 815-ers didn't keep in touch, send Christmas cards or have summer reunions.

My questions are-

1) Was Walt real? I called that earlier with my wife, I said Walt and Michael will be back.
2) Someone else mentioned this above, but I didn't understand Jack telling the chief (Mike from Las Vegas) to check and see how drunk his father is. IF this was a "flashforward" his father is already dead, no?

[NoMyths]

I'm inrigued by the idea of Jack's father being alive post-Island, and the implications for what that might mean. We did, of course, see his father alive again on the Island, and his body was never found, but until Locke's father also appeared--and was clearly not a ghost--it leaves open the possibility that his father came back as well. He also gave the pharmacist a prescription signed by his father (or apparently so).

And finally: so long, Charlie, played by one of the best actors on the show.

[spleen1015]

When Jack saw his father on the island, it was the smoke monster. Walt speaking backwards to Shannon and talking to Locke in the pit is the smoke monster. Kate seeing the horse was the smoke monster.

[Richard Weed]

The Good: Sawyer killing Tom, "That's for taking the boy."
The Bad: Locke killing Naomi, when he's been portrayed as someone who wouldn't kill anyone.
The Ugly: Charlie didn't have to die. He could've kept the door open and swam out with Desmond.

It was a good season finale...definitely the best one of the series. Jack's flashforward was definitely a flashforward. I was wondering how he got such a slim cell phone in the past. Also, he was looking at maps, mentioned a golden pass to Kate, and the funeral home he went to was called Hoffs/Drawlar (anagram for flash forward).

[Rizon]

SWERVE

[Honolulu_Blue]

I agree that Jack's reference to his father was very deceptive. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I also wonder whether there will be more "flashforwards" in future episodes. The flashbacks, for the most part, had become pretty stale, but flashforwards would add a whole new level of interest for the off'-island portions of the show.

Sawyer has gone to a very dark place.

Am I the only one who found Naomi incredibly... odd looking? She looked like an Oompa-Loompa or something. The color of her skin, her face, her voice, all of it was just very... off.

[Uncle Briggs]

Originally Posted by Richard Weed

The Ugly: Charlie didn't have to die. He could've kept the door open and swam out with Desmond.

Or he could have shut the dang door from the other side. The wife and I decided that Charlie believes he has to die for Claire to get off the island (because of Desmond's vision) so that's why he shut himself in. This didn't come across very clearly, to me at least.

[Kodos]

I was wondering about Charlie's actions as well. All he had to do was get out and close the door behind him because patch-eye didn't set off the grenade very quickly. And since he knew drowning was in his future, why not put on scuba gear before hitting the buttons? I know he wants Claire and baby to make it off the island, but if I'm him, I take the chance of messing it up and living.

I was on to the flash-forward pretty early. Not sure why, other than drugged-up Charlie didn't seem to fit the timeline in the past.

I will echo others that Lost has found itself again. The only other show that competes with it right now is Battlestar Gallactica. Survivor is great, but if I had to choose, Lost or BSG would win out.

[Daimyo]

I also caught the slim cell phone, but I never once suspected it was a flash forward. I just figured they goofed on the phone. Even up to the end when he was going to meet someone I was trying to figure out who it was going to be. I loved the episode. Its too bad the second season was relatively poor because season three ended up on par with season one IMO.

[flounder]

My favorite part:

Alex: "You locked him in a cage! You tried to brainwash him!"
Ben: "I didn't want him to get you pregnant! ... Maybe I overreacted."

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Uncle Briggs

Or he could have shut the dang door from the other side. The wife and I decided that Charlie believes he has to die for Claire to get off the island (because of Desmond's vision) so that's why he shut himself in. This didn't come across very clearly, to me at least.

That's the only way I could make sense of it. Charlie basically accepted his death in a Final Destination sort of way. And at least with this death, a purpose was served.

I really liked the flash-forward. And I took it to mean that Jack's dad is alive (which could explain why he seems to have taken it much worse than the other survivors).

If the funeral really was for Jeremy Bentham, then I have to think that is Ben. Bentham was the creator of basic utilitarian thought. If any character in the series embodies cold, calculating, heartless utilitarianism, then I think that would be Ben. The only other person that would make sense would be Locke, but he already has the name of a famous English political philosopher. That's my thinking anyway.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by flounder

My favorite part:

Alex: "You locked him in a cage! You tried to brainwash him!"
Ben: "I didn't want him to get you pregnant! ... Maybe I overreacted."

That was a great line.

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Lindeloff and Cuse said in EW that they knew the first few episodes weren't going to go over well, but they had to do them that way in order to set up the last 16 shows. The quote was something along the lines of "It's like a game of chess, and we've lost our queen, both rooks, and both bishops, and the viewer is telling us we've lost. But we're 9 moves away from check-mating you, and you can't see it. So we'll either lose big or we'll win big." FWIW, I love their confidence. In the past, they've been pretty open when something bombs or fails to live up to expectations, so their comments bode well for the rest of the season.

Check-fucking-mate indeed.

Last night's show blew me away like nothing in the series yet. They pulled stuff from every part of every season and put it together so well, so perfectly, it was genius television. It seemed that every scene was written and directed with such a sense of purpose and urgency that was entirely missing from season 2 and most of the beginning of season 3.

I used to get goose-bumps in season one every once in a while, but last night I lost count. I went from cheering as Hurley mowed through the others in that old busted up van, to laughing when Tom said in mock-resignation "I give up", to chills when Saywer shot him dead and told Hurley "I didn't believe him". Wow. Just wow.

And in the scene showing Jack's apartment in disarray, and the shots of maps and stuff, I had a flashback to Cast Away and *knew* that we'd been duped and we were watching a flash-forward.

The best 2 hours of TV I've watched in a long long time.

[Swaggs]

I believe Charlie's thinking was probably two-part, in that he may have been resigned to his destiny, but he probably also realized that eyepatch was going to be outside, waiting for them or heading back inside with the pin pulled on a grenade. If eyepatch gets close enough to them, he can blow them up. If they kill him, his finger comes off the pin and he can blow them up.

I think it was a little bit of both. He needed to deake eyepatch into setting it off, but he probably had time to get back out because there was clearly enough space for them to allow tons of water into the station and enough time for them to suit up in the scuba equipment and swim out.

I have wondered why they didn't just cut the power cord that reaches from the island to the station.

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

I believe Charlie's thinking was probably two-part, in that he may have been resigned to his destiny, but he probably also realized that eyepatch was going to be outside, waiting for them or heading back inside with the pin pulled on a grenade. If eyepatch gets close enough to them, he can blow them up. If they kill him, his finger comes off the pin and he can blow them up.

I think it was a little bit of both. He needed to deake eyepatch into setting it off, but he probably had time to get back out because there was clearly enough space for them to allow tons of water into the station and enough time for them to suit up in the scuba equipment and swim out.

I have wondered why they didn't just cut the power cord that reaches from the island to the station.

Having talked to Desmond a hundred times about his prophecies, Charlie knew that *everything* had to happen in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. In his visions, Desmond told Charlie that he drowned, so Charlie knew that in order to save Claire and Aaron, he had to drown. So, he drowned.

[Chubby]

are they still lost?

[Ajaxab]

Originally Posted by John Galt

If the funeral really was for Jeremy Bentham, then I have to think that is Ben. Bentham was the creator of basic utilitarian thought. If any character in the series embodies cold, calculating, heartless utilitarianism, then I think that would be Ben. The only other person that would make sense would be Locke, but he already has the name of a famous English political philosopher. That's my thinking anyway.

The Bentham connection also works because of Jeremy Bentham's invention of the panopticon, a jail architecture where prisoners are led to believe they are under constant surveillance. This notion would seem to fit the way the island has been set up for Ben to keep tabs on everything going on.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Ajaxab

The Bentham connection also works because of Jeremy Bentham's invention of the panopticon, a jail architecture where prisoners are led to believe they are under constant surveillance. This notion would seem to fit the way the island has been set up for Ben to keep tabs on everything going on.

That's true. It is definitely consistent with the monitoring station (of which I forgot the name).

[Toddzilla]

LOL - the name of the funeral parlor was "Hoffs/Drawlar" which is an anagram for Flash Forward.

[Toddzilla]

Dola-

Newspaper clip reads "...from New York City"
+
Funeral in a predominantly black neighborhood
+
Kate is pissed and wouldn't go the the viewing
=
Person in the casket is Michael, who bolted the island and didn't come back to rescue anyone.

[Toddzilla]

Double Dola -

The last name of the person in the obituary - via a screencap - is "Bentham". Does anyone remember from the episode a few weeks ago when Ben came to the island what his real last name was? When his dad was getting his work closes assigned to him, they said it, and I'm pretty sure it isn't Linus.

EDIT: Just watched the clip - I'm wrong, it is Linus.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

LOL - the name of the funeral parlor was "Hoffs/Drawlar" which is an anagram for Flash Forward.

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

The last name of the person in the obituary - via a screencap - is "Bentham".

I feel like I've read these details somewhere. If I could only remember where.

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by John Galt

I feel like I've read these details somewhere. If I could only remember where.

tl;dr

[timmynausea]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Having talked to Desmond a hundred times about his prophecies, Charlie knew that *everything* had to happen in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. In his visions, Desmond told Charlie that he drowned, so Charlie knew that in order to save Claire and Aaron, he had to drown. So, he drowned.

There is some irony in that as the philosopher Desmond David Hume is named after (David Hume) essentially argued against that idea. From wikipedia:

Hume claimed that most people believe that when one event continually follows after another, a connection between the two events makes the second event follow from the first (post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this, therefore, because of this.). Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his Treatise on Human Nature and later in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event following the other, we do not perceive any necessary connection between the two.

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by timmynausea

There is some irony in that as the philosopher Desmond David Hume is named after (David Hume) essentially argued against that idea. From wikipedia:

Hume claimed that most people believe that when one event continually follows after another, a connection between the two events makes the second event follow from the first (post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this, therefore, because of this.). Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his Treatise on Human Nature and later in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event following the other, we do not perceive any necessary connection between the two.

Hume certainly might object to the phrasing "he knew", however I believe his argument was more that cause-and-effect relationships(or any inductive reasoning) cannot be proven(in the strictest sense) a priori and therefore cannot attain certainty. He did, though, say that the tendency to find cause-and-effect relationships was innate, as (I believe this is more or less verbatim) "nature would not trust it to vagaries of reason."

At any rate, Hume wouldn't find Charlie's actions either reasonable or unreasonable, assuming (as I do) that they were driven rather entirely by emotion--quoting (off the top of my head again) from A Treatise of Human Nature: "Nothing can be contrary to reason except that which makes reference to it."; "Reason is and ought only be the slave of the passions and can pretend no other role than to serve and obey them."; "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the entire world to the scratching of my finger ... it is not contrary to reason to choose my own destruction to prevent the least uneasiness to a person unknown to me."

I <3 David Hume.

[GoDukes]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Dola-

Newspaper clip reads "...from New York City"
+
Funeral in a predominantly black neighborhood
+
Kate is pissed and wouldn't go the the viewing
=
Person in the casket is Michael, who bolted the island and didn't come back to rescue anyone.

You would have to think Walt would go to his funeral though, no? There may be more to that story that we'll learn, but that's my first thought. Hell, even his ex-wife.

[GoDukes]

Jack mentioned his dad twice:

1. At the hospital when the head guy hit him up about being wasted.
2. At the pharmacy when trying to get a refill on his Oxy.

Both times, he alluded to his father in the present tense. Hm.

[ThunderingHERD]

Originally Posted by GoDukes

You would have to think Walt would go to his funeral though, no? There may be more to that story that we'll learn, but that's my first thought. Hell, even his ex-wife.

My first guess was that the funeral was for Locke--after all, he seems the most likely to have his life go in the shitter (return to paralysis, etc.), and also has no relatives or close friends of which we are awaree. It would also explain why Jack was so tore up over the death--he'd be tormented with guilt and regret after the realization that Locke was right: that he shouldn't have contacted the boat. Of course, Ben is another candidate, but I can't imagine Jack would get so emotional over his death--unless, of course, relations between them change significantly now that there is apparently a new bad guy.

Given the information from the screencaps, though, my current guess is that it's a character we haven't met yet, perhaps someone involved in the operation to take over the island.

As for the Jack's references to his father, I think those were drunk/doped up/distraught ravings. You'd have to postulate a fluxuation in time that stretched way back for his father to be "upstairs" in the hospital--in which case Jack wouldn't have been on the plane in the first place.

[Draft Dodger]

nice to know that Kate is even hotter in the future

[Pyser]

and free? guess you arent a murderer anymore if you survive a plane crash

[GoDukes]

Originally Posted by ThunderingHERD

My first guess was that the funeral was for Locke--after all, he seems the most likely to have his life go in the shitter (return to paralysis, etc.), and also has no relatives or close friends of which we are awaree. It would also explain why Jack was so tore up over the death--he'd be tormented with guilt and regret after the realization that Locke was right: that he shouldn't have contacted the boat. Of course, Ben is another candidate, but I can't imagine Jack would get so emotional over his death--unless, of course, relations between them change significantly now that there is apparently a new bad guy.

Given the information from the screencaps, though, my current guess is that it's a character we haven't met yet, perhaps someone involved in the operation to take over the island.

Hm. As much as I thought last nite was really "stunning" I don't like that they've told us that Jack & Kate (and presumably others) do get off the island.