Lost Episode 5.03 - Jughead. Two-Faced Liars by Luhks

Since the first season, honesty has always been a scarce commodity for Lost characters. For every instance of a character’s confession, it seemed that a few more buried secrets took its place. For every example of sincere cooperation, you could guarantee that a handful of cons, deceptions, and betrayals would soon follow. Things started on a small scale in the first two seasons, with petty crimes and infidelities scattered throughout the flashbacks and island interactions. Benjamin Linus, Juliet Burke, and the rest of the Others escalated the level of deceit as things moved into Season Three, and made the crash survivors look like amateurs by comparison. Season Four then introduced two massive global conspiracies into story: first, the staged flight 815 wreckage at the bottom of the ocean; and then the Oceanic Six cover story (a lie to conceal the other lie). Misdirection has become a way of life both for the characters and the Lost writers, who manipulate perceptions of truth with more skill than Anthony Cooper himself.


The second episode of Season Five, with its decidedly straightforward title The Lie, offers perhaps the series’ most thorough examination of this recurring motif. The episode begins by sending the story back to the formative stages of the Oceanic Six Lie. Kate, Sun, Sayid, Hurley, and Jack all respond in subtly different ways to the situation, and each one participates in the scheme for deeply personal reasons. The conversation arrives at a unanimous conclusion: they need to lie, because it’s the only way to protect those left behind from Charles Widmore. In those immortal words once spoken by Dr. Shephard (perhaps the only good thing ever to arise from Stranger in a Strange Land): “That’s what they say. That’s not what they mean.” As Hurley points out straight away, the logic behind their Lie never even made much sense; Widmore would seem to be just as likely to find the island no matter what story they told. The reasons stated on the surface serve as a mere pretext to disguise their true motivations underneath. These five co-conspirators are even incapable of being honest with each other about their collective dishonesty.

Lost Numbers Theory

This theory was sent in by our friend Hammer.

Valenzetti came up with a formula that predicts the end of the world. The numbers are the factors. What if DHARMA or anyone for that matter messed something up by changing something in the past?

Valenzetti’s equation found the resulting ‘D Day’ so to speak. DHARMA used the island to try to find a way to change one of the factors to ’save’ the world, but was stopped by the purge. Now, Ms. Hawking has found the island and now knows that they have 70 hours until the end of world. In effect, Ben’s group is trying to change a number to ’save us all’.

Is Ms. Hawking’s scribblings actually Valenzetti’s equation?

I couldn’t wrap my head around why the world (yes I am assuming that Ms. Hawking means the world and not just her people) is in trouble if the group doesn’t get back to the island. I mean to ask, “What is the REAL reason why they have to get back?” Yes to save the world, but WHY? What does it un-change or better yet change? So I started pondering recurring themes. And BANG, the numbers. They told us about them early on for a reason.

I am thinking that the Swan’s caretakers really were saving the world, then Desmond turned the key and we had the purple sky event with a huge discharge, which set off the chain of events that has us where we are today, trying to fix everything and save the world.

Things I Noticed - "Because You Left and The Lie" by Vozzek69

I'm back! Dark's back! (well, Dark never really left) And most importantly LOST is back... which means one thing of course: we can finally stop watching Tool Academy (or not!) and get on with our lives. I always dread not having LOST for months on end, but when the new season starts up I'm always amazed at how fast the time has flown by. Damn, I think I'm just getting old. In any case I've missed you guys, missed doing the recaps, and haven't had the time to keep up on a single spoiler - which I must say contributed to the incredible shock and awe of watching these first two amazing episodes. So raise a glass, and here's to two more seasons of the most ass-kicking television since 'Hole in the Wall' aired. But before I get into the Things I Noticed, a quick foreword to start the season:


Once Upon a Time Someone Said...
"I believe the island is a sticky ball rolling through time and space, picking up objects and people along the way". - Vozzek's Theory of Everything, June 2007

I first wrote that on the imdb message boards, way before 6/07 and even before I started recapping. You wouldn't believe the amount of crap I took for this theory back then. People hated on me, much the same way they would've hated on LOST's writers if they tried to spring it back then. Time travel is a hard pill for most viewers to swallow, which is why the writers and producers could only hint at it for the first few seasons. In S4 we only saw mental evidence of it, and only this season do we finally see full-blown physical time traveling of the people, places, and things on the island.

Well I think it's an awesome angle, and the way they slow-played us with it was even better still. It was truly the best way to do it. With the time travel cat finally out of the bag, the larger pieces of LOST's puzzle can start falling into place (and more importantly, staying there). As the show rolled on and the weirdness kept coming, a time anomaly became one of the only ways to explain the circulature and repetitiveness of the story arc. It certainly doesn't explain all of the show's mysteries - not by a long shot - but it definitely lays the groundwork for the final two seasons.