Echoes

[chani]

I'm still following the reruns of Lost on the cable (3 episodes a week) and it's quite interesting to watch season 6 and season 3 at the same time. This week the parallels struck me even more than usually.
 

First I must say that "What Kate does" wasn't a great episode. It was extremely predictable (but maybe Kate just is predictable), and quite boring. We need more episodes with Locke and Not!Locke!!!! The pill that Japanese guy asked Jack to give Sayid made me thought of The Matrix––the blue pill/red pill thing––but it was just poison. I like that Japanese guy, he was the highlight of the episode IMO, even though teary Swayer is always pretty to see. As for Sayid being tortured, we have already been there. 

So on the cable I re-watched today three episodes: the first one ended with the death of Mr Eko. Knowing who is the Smoke Monster slightly changed the way I watched it...The flashbacks about the militians whom Eko killed in his brother's church sort of made me think of the season 6 temple. Is it a sacred place anymore, now that the water had turned red? If Sayid is infected, and has been claimed, his return thanks to the magic water must say something about the place itself...

The second episode was Kate-centric. It showed us Kate and James having a "moment" in a cage and also revealed the flashbacks about her marriage in Miami with Captain Tightpants a cop! Kate did a pregnancy test in the flashbacks in question. I think it was interesting given that in "What Kate does" Kate helps pregnant Claire in the alternate-flashes (how should I call them?)and finds out that Sawyer was about to propose Juliet a couple of days before the "incident", and she seems pretty moved by both.

By the way the only Kate-related stuff that I really liked was her stealing Claire's bag––obviously thinking that she could use her clothes–– and ending up with a stuffed whale and baby stuff. The whale is the last stuffed animal of a long list that we have seen on the show (White polar bear, Panda). It is actually an orca and I wonder if the white and black colour is meaningful. If it is I hope it isn't just a good vs evil kind of thing and rather a reminder of the chess game that is ongoing still between big players we know so little about. Playing games is a recurring theme on Lost. The chess pawns are either white or black but it doesn't mean that the players are necessarily good and evil.

No matter who pretends to be one fo the good guys or seems to be evil, it has to be more complicated. Human beings aren't either good or evil but they do have strengths and weaknesses that make them do mistakes or make bad choices or even commit crimes. It's an idea which Locke has embodied better than anyone on the show and that I much prefer rather than mere manichaeism. Having said that, in the Eko-centric episode, Locke told Eko that he had seen a beautiful white light when facing the island's terrifying power (the infamous monster)whereas Eko said that it wasn't what he saw (he saw only scary black smoke, I assume).

The third episode I saw tonight was Juliet-centric. We learned about her ex-husband, about her working in the same place as Ethan did in Miami, about Richard Alpert (in a suit) recruiting her...and in "What Kate does" we saw that Ethan was working as a OB-GYN in L.A!

Also, the Juliet-centric episode showed Kate and Sawyer's escape while Jack was performing surgery on Ben and threatening to let him die. During the escape they received Alex' help. Alex whom Sawyer nicknamed immediately Sheena. Looks like that it would be a good nickname for season 6 Claire now!
Alex convinced Sawyer and Kate to rescue Karl on the way but he was guarded, and Sawyer ends up knocking out a certain guard named Aldo...who turns out to be the angry guy we saw in "What Kate does", one of the two Temple Others, who followed Kate and Jin to look for James, and he even asked her if she recognised him.
I can't blame Kate there, I didn' remember him at all and even when he elaborated, I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. But when I saw him tonight arguing with Alex, I got it!


See lots of coincidences this week. It was almost creepy...or maybe it just shows that Lost writers keep beating the same bush. 

One last thing...I suddenly remember that Richard Alpert said (I think he told Sun)that he was there when the incident happened and that he saw Jack and the others die. Could it be a plothole? From what Jacob the ghost told Hugo, I believe that the timeline for Sun and Not!Locke is the same as the one for Jin and his friends, let's call it the Japanese's timeline or the Second Plane's timeline. Claire has gone wild and Rousseau-like over the three years that passed since Jack, Hugo, Sun, Desmond and Sayid left the island. 

There could be some sort of consistency, I mean, it would work, if the characters were just avatars of the "real ones". We would have seen three different avatars of each character (the ones from the original 2003 verse; the ones who found themselves in the 70's and died there when the bomb exploded; the ones in the alternate verse whose plane never crashed) but then it wouldn't explain Sayid's lethal wound and Juliet's dying in the 2009-2010 verse. Obviously the bodies we see on the island are the same as those who were in the 70's. It bothers me. 

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

isn't that a plot-thread that's been dangling since Rousseau first turned up?

Yes the infamous illness...and we have seen what happened to one of the "French guys". That's why I said that Claire had turned Rousseau-like. Characters taking the place of other characters is also a recurring storyline.

You're right the plane pun was great. :- )