Juliet, The Dice Were Loaded From The Start…

(Dire Straits, Romeo & Juliet)

So, I was thinking about this last Wednesday afternoon (but wasn’t able to sit down in front of a computer until now), and it was killing me, and then all of a sudden it hit me like a kick to the face, and I couldn’t wait until Wednesday to get it out there.  Mainly, because I didn’t want to forget.  But also because I wanted to see what everybody else thought about it.

It’s a new theory of mine.

We should get coffee sometime...

During the season premier, before Juliet died in Sawyer’s arms, she made some cryptic comments to the effect of “We should get coffee sometime.  We can go dutch.”  Then she sort of came to, and tried to tell him “It worked,” (which we know thanks to Miles, the ghost whisperer), but died before she could get that out.  I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was talking about down there, maybe she was just in shock, but nothing on this show is really a coincidence, so I knew there had to be some deeper meaning to it. 

/kick to the face

Juliet was flashing through time at that moment. 

When Charlotte Staples Lewis died last season, she was talking to Daniel Faraday, and she was saying something that didn’t really make any sense, something clearly from a time in her youth that she was reliving in her mind.  I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something like, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding.  How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”  She then came back into the present, and said something to Faraday before she died, but he knew she was flashing back to a time in her youth.  However, at that time, the time-flashes were still happening on The Island, so they were all susceptible to it. 

When Juliet died the other night, the time flashes were no longer occurring.  BUT (and this is a big but), Juliet was at the bottom of the hole and smacked the core of Jughead with that rock.  She was at the center of the blast, right on the pocket of electromagnetic energy, which is EXACTLY where our boy Desmond was when he blew up the hatch at the end of Season Three, which is EXACTLY when he began flashing through time. 

We are now in a new timeline.  An alternate reality, if you will, though it is the new reality.  Juliet detonated the bomb, The Island was underwater (or something), and things are a bit different than they used to be.  Shannon didn’t get on the plane with Boone, Desmond was on the plane (maybe), and Flight 815 did not crash on The Island, it landed safely at LAX.  Things are different.  I know it seemed like it was an instantaneous transition for them, from 1977 to 2007, but I think they flashed to the new 2007 with a new past, albeit a very similar past.  So their experiences will not have been exactly the same, but they will be mostly the same. 

What Juliet was flashing to was a time after Flight 815 lands in LA, but before 2007 when she died in Sawyer’s arms, and I think it is something we will see this season.  We will see Sawyer walking the streets of LA, or somewhere, and bumping into Juliet.  They will not know each other, but they will hit it off.  Sawyer will turn on his con-man charm, and Juliet will ask him out for coffee.  We will see the scene that she was flashing to just before she died. 

And THAT, my friends, is how Juliet knew to tell Sawyer that “it worked.”  Otherwise, how would she know?  She flashed to an earlier time, and when she flashed back to the present, the NEW present, she realized that she had met him under different circumstances and knew that “it” had “worked.” 

That’s my theory.  Sorry if that is a bit incoherent.  Thoughts in the comments.  See you Wednesday.

 

I Watched With Glee While Your Kings and Queens Fought for Ten Decades for the Gods They Made

(Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil)

So, that was fun, huh?  Tuesday nights just got a lot more interesting (sorry, Biggest Loser). 

I am happy to once again have some semi-regular traffic to the blog (and to once again be posting semi-regularly), but it seems this show might be a lot more meta than I had previously considered (if that’s even possible), and not being a philosopher or writer, and not having access to copious amounts of weed, will probably hinder my in-depth analysis just a bit.  But I’ll give it a try.

First of all, that plane landing at LAX gave me goose bumps.  Jack and Locke being the last two passengers on the plane was a nice touch.  Desmond on the plane was a little weird, but maybe that’s because he didn’t have his Barry Gibb beard.  Kate’s still running, Claire’s still pregnant, Charlie’s still doping, Locke’s still in his wheelchair, Jack still thinks he can fix everything, and Jin’s still not winning any husband of the year awards.  Oh, and Christian Shepherd’s body is still missing (which is HUGE!!).  But the differences, scant as they were, are staggering.  Shannon didn’t get on the plane with Boone.  (I wonder if they still slept together the night before the flight, like they did in the original timeline.) 

But Hurley described himself to Sawyer as “the luckiest guy in the world,” going so far as to say “nothing bad ever happens to me.”  Um, what now?  In the original timeline, Hurley was the unluckiest guy in the world.  He won the lottery and his family members started dying, houses were burning down, and a reporter was killed outside of his chicken joint.  That was all BEFORE he went to Australia and crashed on The Island on his return flight.  Now he’s the luckiest guy in the world?  You know what?  I bet they show his winning lottery numbers at some point in this new timeline, and I will bet you dollars to donuts they do not involve the same 4-8-15-16-23-42 sequence we’ve come to know and love.  The numbers WERE cursed, not Hurley.  And by using different numbers, for whatever reason, he was able to change his course.

Changing course, obviously, is what this show is now all about, and has been for some time.  Jack’s words to Locke toward the end of the episode, “Nothing is irreversible,” might as well be the mantra for this final season.  Flight 815 didn’t crash during that pocket of rough air, and landed safely at LAX, in September of 2004.  That’s not a “what if.”  That happened.  And now we all get to see what happens when fate is tested.  How their lives all still become connected and intertwined with one another’s.  Such as Kate hijacking Claire’s taxi.  And maybe Jack helping Locke to walk again?  (That could be a very significant, and I mean VERY significant, plot point.)  I wonder if Charlie, or maybe Jin, ends up getting arrested by Ana Lucia now that they’re all back in LA.  And what brings them back to The Island?  Because at least some of them are back on The Island in 2007.  And now we get to see how the course-correction really works.

Now for the flip side.  Back on The Island, our friends (how sad is that?) are all finally back in the same time period.  No more 1977/2007.  And things there are maybe a little more confusing than they were 8 months ago.  For one thing, who is the Asian guy in charge at the Temple?  (Hannah thought he was the guy who played Ghengis Khan in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  That would be awesome.)  So Locke/Man In Black/Esau (I’m still not giving up on Esau) tells Ben to kill Jacob, who just stands there and takes it.  Talk about faith.  He then proceeds to turn into the smoke monster like Clark Kent stepping into a phone booth, and lights up the three guys who came in with the guns, leading to the line of the night.

Ben: You’re the monster.

Locke: Let’s not resort to name calling.

That only confirmed what many of us already suspected, that not only was this guy NOT really John Locke, but he was the smoke monster, and that the smoke monster all along had been taking on different manifestations in order to accomplish its goals.  What I want to know is, how did that guy with the gun know that by pouring ash on the ground around him, it would create a barrier that the smoke monster could not cross?  We’ve seen that ash before (and would see it again later), but how did he know?  Whose team are they on?  He told Miles (in a flashback episode last season) that they were the good guys.  We still don’t know if that’s true, but he’s dead, so I suppose it doesn’t much matter now.

Locke/Man in Black/Smoke Monster/Esau (I’m just going to shorten to Locke/Esau from now on) conspicuously said a few things that could be taken in different ways.  When the three guys came in with guns, who were “Jacob’s bodyguards,” he said “There’s no one to protect.  You’re free.”  He could have just been talking smack there, but maybe they were indentured to Jacob somehow, bound to protect him as long as he was alive.  Then, when he came outside and encountered Richard, he said “Hello Richard.  It’s good to see you out of those chains.”  Again, another reference to some sort of indentured servitude.  Possibly again referring to the fact that Jacob is dead and Richard no longer serves him.  But this one might be more literal.  We still don’t know Richard’s origin, or how he came to The Island, but I’m betting it was as a slave on the Black Rock, and that we see Richard coming to The Island literally in chains. 

And finally, I need to address Sayid and his, um, resurrection?  (I don’t even know if I spelled that right.)  Jacob gave Hurley a guitar case and didn’t tell him what was in it.  Hurley managed to hold onto that guitar case from 2007, through the crash of Ajira 316, throughout his brief time working for the Dharma Initiative in 1977, and through a nuclear blast that popped him right back to 2007.  Plausible, sure.  Then he delivers Sayid to Ghengis Khan at the Temple and gives him the guitar case as proof that Jacob sent them.  Genghis opens the case and finds an enormous Ankh, which he promptly snaps in two over his leg like Bo Jackson, in order to find a slip of paper with a note on it from Jacob himself, that seemed to have his, Jack’s, Kate’s, Jin’s, and Sayid’s names on it, along with instructions to save Sayid’s life.  Which they did by “baptizing” him in the waters inside the Temple. 

The same Temple, presumably, where Richard saved Ben’s life, after he was shot by Sayid, back in 1977.  And Sayid was himself shot in 1977, by Ben’s dad, Roger Linus.  And the circle of attempted murder is complete.

The squirelly guy and Ghengis – the new leaders of the Others – said that they couldn’t save Sayid’s life.  Then Jack tried to revive him, and that didn’t seem to work either.  But then some time later, Sayid just sits up and says “wha happen?”  Did Sayid really wake up?  Or, and bear with me here, is Jacob in him the same way Esau is in Locke?  This is my CTTYCIDBMOMCTAPW (crazy theory that you can immediately discard because most of my crazy theories are proven wrong) of the week.  Sayid is now Sayid/Jacob, the same way that Locke is now Locke/Esau.

The only piece of evidence I have for that is that in this “Lost Supper” promo pic for Season 6 of LOST, Locke is in the Christ position and Sayid is in the Judas position.  Clearly, this show has forced us to suspend our conventional associations of good and evil.  That said, regardless of which is good and which is evil, there is no doubt that Locke and Sayid are going to be at odds, based on their positioning in this picture. 

The Lost Supper

 And that’s it for me, folks.  Thanks for coming.  See you next week.

 

I Love Wisconsin

Hey kids, it’s time for a feature I like to call “Great Moments in Locality.” I’m in Hortonville, Wisconsin, for a deposition, and as I passed the local bowling alley, Hortinville Lanes, on my way back from lunch, this sign caught my eye.

I’ve never been more upset that I won’t be able to be at a bowling alley on a Thursday night. That meat raffle sounds awfully promising.

 

I’m Going Out Sleepwalking, Where Mute Memories Start Talking

It’s 2:45 am, and I’m watching an X-Files rerun in a hotel room in Binghamton, NY. After a near-unprecedented 12 straight nights at home, I’m back on the road and I cannot sleep at all. This is pretty terrible.

There is absolutely not a chance in hell that I’m waking up to run at 6:30. Tomorrow’s deposition is in a hospital. That’s a first for me. I’ve been to some depositions in people’s homes, those are usually pretty bad. But a hospital? Come on. Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble falling asleep.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that tomorrow goes well and we’re able to get this done. I don’t want to have to stay up here another night.

In other news, I parked next to this guy at the airport today. He’s gonna go America on everybody’s ass.

 

Saw Avatar. Thought it sucked. It was a

Saw Avatar. Thought it sucked. It was a combination of Star Wars, Matrix, IronMan, Point Break, and Jaws 3D. Lazy effort by James Cameron.

 

4 Weeks Until LOST Returns!!

One of my new years resolutions (that I haven’t written down yet) is to try to write in this blog more. It’s been neglected, and has fallen into the shadow of Facebook and Twitter, and we certainly don’t want that. Luckily, LOST is coming back soon, which means at the very least, I’ll be writing once a week until May.

Btw, have I mentioned LOST is returning soon!?!?!?!?!

 

Does this thing really work? If it does,

Does this thing really work? If it does, it’ll just be something else I use very infrequently to update the blog.

 

Late-Game Heroics

My favorite three-word phrase this week.  Late-game heroics.  If you’re on the right side of them, they can uplift, excite, amaze, and even comfort.  If you’re on the wrong side of them, it can feel like you just shotgunned a can of gasoline. 

Two quarterbacks and two kickers were in the spotlight on two consecutive days, and all four went on to win their games and keep their teams’ streaks alive, but only three of them deserve much adulation for that. 

From what I saw Saturday night (after going to the SEC Championship – Bama looked scary good – and then my firm’s holiday party), Texas looked sorely overmatched by a hungry Nebraska defense, and golden boy Colt McCoy, the man who put on Vince Young’s enormous shoes three years ago and started setting records immediately, looked instead like a kid who was pulled out of the stands to play the fourth quarter.  He set the record for touchdown passes by a freshman despite being injured for two games, then two years later he set the NCAA record for pass completion percentage in a season at an astonishing 77.6% while also leading his team in rushing.  This season has been somewhat lackluster for him, but none of the top Heisman contenders really separated themselves (until Ingram’s monster game against Florida on Saturday afternoon). 

Saturday night, he had a chance to change that, but didn’t.  Couldn’t, I guess.  But he did manage to engineer a late game drive after Nebraska took a 12-10 lead with under two minutes remaining, leading Texas down the field and getting us into field goal range with 0:08 left on the clock.  Time for one play, maybe one shot at the end zone, or at least a shorter kick for Hunter Lawrence.  Colt took the snap on third down, and with an unused timeout in his pocket, scrambled, saw nothing, and launched the ball out of bounds to stop the clock.  The clock stopped.  At 0:00.  Luckily for the good guys, replay officials put one second back on the clock, because the ball landed out of bounds with one second still on the clock.  Fourth down.  0:01 remaining.  Down by two.  Hunter Lawrence trots onto the field to attempt a 46-yarder, which would be a tie for his career long.  His stomach must have been in about 1,000 knots.  Mine was.  As I was gripping my Shiner Bock bottle so tightly I thought it might shatter in my hands, Hunter nailed the 46-yarder, which barely missed both a block by Nebraska as well as the left upright, sending Texas to Pasadena to play Bama for the National Championship, and sending a wave of relief over me.  All I could do was sit down and rest for a minute. 

Thanks, Hunter Lawrence, for your late-game heroics.  Colt McCoy owes you a Rolex after he gets drafted.

Sunday afternoon, the 11-0 New Orleans Saints hit Washington to play the terrible Redskins.  The Skins are bad, make no mistake about it.  But somehow, they showed up against New Orleans, and led most of the game.  The Apostle Drew Brees (I just joined the “Jews for Breesus” page on Facebook) showed his everpresent and remarkable poise once again, leading the Saints to a late touchdown to tie the game with 1:19 left on a 53-yard touchdown pass to send it into overtime.  Once again, he drove the Saints down the field and put them within range of Garrett Hartley, who wasn’t even the Saints’ kicker when the season started.  Hartley drilled an 18-yarder to win it, keeping the Saints perfect at 12-0. 

Thank you, Drew Brees and Garrett Hartley, for your late-game heroics.  Colt McCoy should also buy you both a Rolex, just for the hell of it.

 

Rawr, I’m a Monster!!!

All apologies to Breesus and his 5 TDs, but Vince Young is, to my great delight, the hottest thing in the NFL right now. If they can get past the Colts next week (BIG if), then it’s not inconceivable for them to turn an 0-6 record into a 10-6 record and make the playoifs. They’re halfway there now.

 

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, everybody (if there’s anybody still reading this practically defunct website).