Tag Archives: Charles Widmore

Ouroboros.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Mad linkage:

I am sitting in a video room.

Tina Fey wins comedy prize, thanks Betty White.

“Crossbow cannibal” remanded over prostitute murders.

Something massively important: A timeline of the hair styles of one Mr. Nicolas Cage.

You’ve seen our round up of reviews of Sex In The City 2, but there’s so many more, including one that posits that it could very well be a work of science fiction.

First human “infected with computer virus.”

The oil spill becomes an internet sensation.

Highly creative people and schizophrenics have quite a bit in common.

Neal Stephenson, computers, sword fighting, and The Mongoliad.

RIP Dennis Hopper, fascinating actor, lover of art, and all around strange bastard.

The Ouroboros, an ancient symbol, usually a depiction of a dragon or a serpent (sometimes two) swallowing it’s own tale and thus forming a circle. It usually symbolizes self-reflexivity or the concept of an eternal return. In alchemy, it’s a purifying sigil, something Carl Jung saw as representing the basic mandala of alchemy. Sometimes it’s associated with gnosticism or hermeticism. Perhaps it represents a pre-ego “dawn state,” as Jung suggested or maybe it depicts mankind’s circular nature, our self-defeating, always repeating cycles, or perhaps it’s more similar in nature to the mythological phoenix, reminding us that some things can begin anew even as they’re coming to an end…

A list of cycles.

Jörmungandr, the world snake, and enemy of Thor.

Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye.

Quetzalcoatl.

The armadillo lizard.

Sisyphus.

from here.

Poincaré reccurence theorem.

AURYN from The Neverending Story.

The mandala, “the representation of the unconscious self.”

The Möbius Strip and Klein bottle.

Orientability.

Self-reference and strange loops.

Drawing Hands by M.C. Escher.

The books of Douglas Hofstadter.

Ensō art and the Lucent logo.

“-All You Zombies-” by Robert Heinlein.

“By His Bootstraps” also by Heinlein.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.

The ouroboros was also one of the main symbols used in the Chris Carter show, Millennium, which started Lance Henriksen and Terry O’Quinn, who was amazing in it. I’ve been in a mood lately to watch this show again and I’d recommend (parts of) it to you as well. There’s some perfect moments in season 1 (though not the whole of it), and season 2 was absolutely brilliant.

The first and last sentences of both James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren.

How cool would it have been if Charles Widmore had been his own grandfather?

Paradoxes of both the predestination and ontological nature.

Don’t forget that Philip J. Fry is his own grandfather!

Destiny found.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

IN THE BEGINNING was the word, and it was the most important thing there was, from the Alpha to the Omega, but that word was also something else, something equally important to all that came after it. That word which begat all else was also the answer to a question, a choice made when a decision was presented.

And that was only a small part of last night’s penultimate word of Lost, the appropriately and devastatingly titled “What They Died For.” And much in the same vein as last week, but vastly more important, let’s tackle 23 stray observations about last night’s episode…

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Art imitating life imitating art.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

For your consideration, this clip:

That’s James Franco from his recent turn in General Hospital. I wish I had time to watch soap operas because of that clip alone (which you’ll notice also features Marsha Thomason, who was Naomi in seasons 3, 4, and 5 of Lost) . It’s just so… weird. Wonderfully, fully weird in such a lively way. Everything about it is ridiculous and perfect and I highly suggest that you watch it. For some reason I couldn’t stop laughing at this line: “The woman in the photo is connected to an artist whose work I’ve come to admire,” and the delivery of it. Talk about a perfect combination of an actor with material, yes?

And how perfect is it that his character is simply named “Franco?”

Do you remember how bad Spiderman 3 was? If you said “No” to that, then I envy the fuck out of you. I’d rather watch my family die in a fire than watch that movie again… except for the roughly 20 minutes of the movie where James Franco’s Harry Osborn tries to get a soap opera revenge on Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker through Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson. That was like a lovely little gem of silly trash hidden deep in a pile of rotting shit set to showtunes.

Franco really is setting new heights for a dramatic actor of promise who’s made an equally impressive career out lampooning themselves brilliantly. I mean, this is a guy who’s played James Dean and Harvey Milk’s lover and also has done some tremendously hilarious stuff in the burgeoning new world of online comedic (viral) videos, as well as that perfect guest spot as himself in 30 Rock.

Never mind his college career and his interest in the performance art of Marina Abramović, which we linked to something about a few days ago, as well as others in the art community. And for every weird and highly varied thing he’s up to that I’ve mentioned here so far, there’s an equal number that I haven’t mentioned. Like, life imitating art, his upcoming art career.

Anyway, I remember hearing about James Franco doing a turn on General Hospital a few months ago and thinking that was genius after remembering that stuff from Spiderman 3, but I finally saw those clips today over at Tomorrow Museum when I saw the Mark Zuckerberg quote that I blogged about earlier.

The post there featuring James Franco is certainly an interesting one and has a great quote about Franco’s role on the soap opera…

…General Hospital’s “Franco” character is scripted like the writers have never met an artist, never gone to a gallery. It’s this fantasy element like the city itself. They might as well have dressed him in a beret and given him a French accent.

… and also contains this nice quote by China Miéville, the British author “Weird fiction,” which you find here:

The world is split into two different kinds of people. When I moved into my flat, we were having all our kitchen goods delivered. My then girlfriend got off the phone and said to me, “we need to stay in because the fridge men are coming.” The world is divided into those who hear that and think, “I need to be in because I’m having a kitchen delivery” and those who hear the word “fridge men” and immediately conceive of a kind of cyborg creature with a big open door in his chest and stopping arms and legs and kind of freezing demeanor—a fridge-man hybrid.

Beautiful. That quote is originally from here. And before we go, just a little more of James Franco on General Hospital, where he’s just doing the work of his career…

Drops in the ocean.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Let’s start where it ends: A bunch of people on a beach at night. They’re beaten, weary, bruised, battered, and broken down. They’re all exhausted, physically and emotionally, and one of them has a bullet in their shoulder. They’re the survivors and one by one they all surrender to an uncontrollable weeping…

Elsewhere, on a deck there stands a bald man and a hot, if rather filthy looking, confused young woman. They’re staring at the water intently, trying to decipher the drama that lays deep underneath the ripples of their own reflections. The man is grim, determined fury. It’s not over and he begins to depart. The woman, who’s been left behind again, the latest of many such times, asks him where he’s going. “To finish what I started,” he says and then he disappears past us into the dark.

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“Hipper than Taebo, sexier than Pilates.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Man, those Lost withdrawals are killer, aren’t they? Thank God there’s a new episode tonight…

And, so, like yesterday, I had limited internet time today and was just browsing around, trying to get my semi-intellectual whistle just a touch wet when I ended up here and noticed this:

That’s The S Factor: Strip Workouts For Every Woman by Sheila Kelley, an actor and dancer who is currently appearing on Lost in it’s final season as Zoe, the geophysicist/black ops operative…

…and huge fucking nerd.

from here.

Gotta say: Didn’t see that one coming. But good for her. Diversity is never a bad thing, especially when it’s sexy, right?

Says Wikipedia:

Following her role as a stripper in the film Dancing at the Blue Iguana, in which she performed a seductive strip routine, she became a fan of pole dancing. Kelley has since become noted for her ‘S Factor’ national exercise studios and her book S Factor: Strip Workouts for Every Woman and DVDs.

Says Amazon:

Hipper than Taebo, sexier than Pilates, The S Factor–stripping–is the hottest new fitness trend. Created by actress Sheila Kelley (LA Law, Sisters, and a host of film and Broadway roles), S-Factor classes are wildly popular and generating an avalanche of attention from Extra, Entertainment Tonight, The Los Angeles Times, Allure, Us magazine, Fox News, and CBS’s 48 Hours, which proclaimed: “Women don’t even know they’re working out until two months later when they say, ‘I’ve never had a better body in my life. I’m strong, I’m limber, I feel great.’” Sheila even convinced Barbara Walters to try a pole dance on The View.

Kelley is also married to Richard Schiff…

…who played Toby on The West Wing. Don’t forget, people, there’s a new episode of Lost tonight!

Also, speaking of nerdy shit, apparently today is “Star Wars Day.” As in, “May the Fourth be with you.” Jesus. Though, and it’s sad that I know this, but May 25 should probably be the day to celebrate since that was the day that the original film (later re-titled A New Hope) came out. Coincidentally, the finale of Lost airs on May 25 this year. Just saying…

Desmond of two worlds!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Or, “See You In Another Life, Brotha!”

Last night Desmond finally properly returned to the world of Lost and I do believe that he not only brought some of his crazy Scottish magic with him, but he also brought the endgame we’ve all been eagerly anticipating/dreading.

And with his return last night, there came not only a new spin on this season’s recurring flash sideways action, but some complicated questions and theories about whether anyone on this show will ever be allowed to live “Happy Ever After.”

Ah, poor Desmond. I’ve said it many a time before, but I truly believe that he lingers somewhere at the living, breathing, constantly raw heart of this show, that he’s immersed in the DNA of Lost like permanent alcohol poisoning. At so many points in his life he’s been not only lost himself, but a constant loser, yet still we love him. He is our sad, wayward Homeric hero and we root for him endlessly, always on the edge of our seat in his continuing quest to return to his Penelope and his Ithaca. And two years ago he found her, only to discover at the end of last season and here in the midpoint of this one that his particular odyssey is not through him.

If this season of Lost, with the continue flash sideways motif going on, has been about, it’s parallels and opposites. Whereas Island Des has always been a coward struggling to find circumstances to make him better, always been a man out of work, a man whose relationships define him more than anything, particularly his love for Penny and the struggle for approval from her father, Charles Widmore. With that family it’s always been a question of worthiness. Widmore never saw Desmond as worthy of his daughter, let alone his fucking Scotch. And though Penny was there, alive and breathing in the flesh in Desmond’s arms so many times, he still went out into the world and struggled to be worthy of her.

Of course there’s parallels to Jack’s love for Kate there. Kate was right there in front of him but Jack was willing to blow up a nuclear bomb to start over again, to be worthy of her (or to get the fuck away from her once and for all). And Desmond wasn’t necessarily as extreme enough as a nuclear weapon, but for him it was about winning a race around the world, besting her father in one of his own challenges. That fails, of course, and somehow Desmond discovers a vastly more important calling in life: Saving the world by pressing a button every 108 minutes for three years.

And then there’s Sideways Desmond! He’s a man defined by his work, both immersed in his materialistic joys and apart from the world that offers them, and he’s beloved by his employer/father figure, Charles Widmore.

You just know that 60 year old MacCutcheon tastes amazing.

And of course Charlie comes into his life again, and he ruins it all again.

from here.

Well, Charlie, and all those crazy electromagnetics.

This is a complicated episode, both in itself and what it means for the future for Lost, and the way it’s evolved from the show’s past and complicated mythology so far. Parallels and opposites: The worst three words that Desmond could ever face in his life, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” mean something powerfully different in the Sideways World, a call to something else he should be struggling to find. His odyssey is just beginning and his Penelope is just out there waiting for him. He now needs to seek out what Charlie called, “spectacular, consciousness altering love.”

But then again, Charlie’s a fucking junkie. What the hell does he know?

And so many wonderful returns: Fisher Stevens as George Minkowski, his driver who wants to find him some “companionship,” Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore/Faraday, and Finnoula Flanagan as Eloise Widmore/Hawking. Everyone seems to know something more than Desmond, to know that he’s not ready yet for… something, but in some way they’re going to aid him on his quest. Faraday is a musician (one who wants to combine classic music with modern rock) in this Sideways timeline, which was perhaps his heart’s desire even if his dreaming destiny is science, but I loved the philosophical ramblings he shared with Desmond. This is not the world that they were meant to have, he says. Something’s been changed. Like the after of a nuclear weapon going off. Do you want to blow up a nuclear bomb? Desmond asks. I think I already have, Widmore/Faraday replies.

And then Desmond meets the woman of his dreams, the love of his life in another life. Parallels and opposites: This time she’s the one running the tour de stade. She probably has a lot of frustrations to vent (she is, sadly, stuck in Flash Forward at least through this season, after all).

Unrelated, I think this episode highlights a strong difference between Americans and Europeans…

Americans drink and they get drunk. The Eurotrash have really developed and mastered the skill to just keep drinking. Pouring yourself a glass of whiskey is just an extension of your hand, something you just do, like breathing, eating, or genital manipulation. It’s an ability we used to have, but clearly lost. It’s something magical that I think we’ve really lost since the days of the swinging 60s and the era of Mad Men.

It’s nice to have you back, Penny.

Other than that… There’s so much you could say about this episode, about all of it, all over the spectrum. Too much. I typically wouldn’t recommend Jeff Jensen’s Lost ramblings over Entertainment Weekly because they’re usually pretty asinine, but he brings up some good thoughts in his write up about last night’s “Happy Ever After.” Also, I’ll begrudgingly credit him with a good phrasing for the solenoid/toroidal coil chamber room in which Charles Widmore conducts his electromagnetic experiment on Desmond: “Quantum Sweat Lodge.”

from here.

And I tell you, all those years ago, I wish that Hurley hadn’t been reading the Flash/Green Lantern team up comic (the one that teased the audience with the notion of polar bears), but had instead been reading the classic Gardner Fox/Carmine Infantino story, “Flash Of Two Worlds.” It’s the story that pretty much created the DC Comics Multiverse and gave birth to a modern look back at the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics (and has been obsessed over by numerous prominent Scottish comic book writers since). Thought the conversation about the Flash back in “Catch 22″ is a lot funnier to me now. Desmond is a man in two worlds now, he is both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick now. That is, Desmond is the Flash, and things are going to start moving faster now…

…because now the end looms larger still. Things are set in motion, and timetables are being advanced all over the place. Sayid is running around killing people all willy nilly. Desmond’s able to cross his consciousness between two worlds, and seems to have found a mission in both. We’re going somewhere now, but where? Who can say? And who knows in what direction. Up? Down? Forwards or backwards? Or perhaps Sideways.

…In Translation.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Japan unveils humanoid robot that laughs and smiles.

Weekend At Bernies 3!

Holy fucking shit, there’s going to be a 2010 Lollapalooza.

Virtual hugs. Seriously.

Pictures of 16 year old Elian Gonzalez in a military uniform drive the Internet crazy.

Today’s mad linkage comes with a pictorial refresher for last week’s episode of Lost, with pictures courtesy of Videogum, which we discovered via Lola.

Erykah Badu charged with disorderly conduct for naked video.

The parents of bullies.

The right time and place for a conservative victory.

Ryan Gosling gives advice on how to get booty.

George Lucas to  team up with writers from Daily Show and Robot Chicken for a Star Wars sitcom.

Air Force to launch robotic winged space plane.

There are 4 women in orbit right this minute.

Female African-American Robot Designers.

What exactly is a Kraken? And why should he be released?

Hairless “Oriental Yeti” stumps experts.

10 crazy medical inventions that (thankfully) never caught on.

20 strange and mysterious medical syndromes.

“Holy Ghost” relocates his flock to Montana.

A preview for the next episode of Doctor Who, “The Beast Below.”

The Pentagon springs a WikiLeak.

Apparently there’s a certain four-letter word in tonight’s Lost that’s super important.

What happened to the water on Mars?

When the telepaths attack!

Early nearly cut off in machete attack!

Court rules against net neutrality!

Miniature Eiffel Tower attacked!

“The heart wants what it wants.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I literally spent a whole day trying to think of just a truly amazing pun for you sexy people revolving around the skeletal structure of: “And then Charles Widmore shows Jin his package.” But beyond what it is, I came up with nothing. Sigh. Such is the dilemma after last night’s interesting and solid episode of Lost, entitled “The Package.”

It was a Sun and Jin episode, and… you know what? It’s about time it was a Sun and Jin episode, right?

I mean, all of last season we were watching, eagerly anticipating the reunion between them, which we didn’t get. That’s cool, that’s cool, but here we are… still waiting, still hoping, only the hope is turning into something else now. A kind of dread as the end of the season/show looms larger on the horizon.

Here’s a couple that are certainly lost on Lost, but will they ever be “…and found” again?

You’d think so with the increasing number of white people who are promising either Sun or Jin that they’re going to help them be reunited. But, then again, white people promise all kinds of shit, don’t they?

Also: GRATUITOUS CLOSE UP OF SUN’S BOOBS.

I kind of liked the story of Sideways Sun and Jin. The rich girl, the princess of a powerful and ruthless man, “the glass ballerina,” beautiful and hard and cruel in her own right at times, and her clueless, lovelorn bodyguard. One last task to be carried out for her father and then they’re going to run off together into their own happy ending. After all, wasn’t that Jin’s father’s advice to his son once upon a time in another timeline? Only, her father has other plans: like having Jin killed by Keamy. So sad, but so good. Being from Korea, it’s only natural that Sun and Jin would not know that no one actually finds a happy ending in LA. Well, except for that kind of happy ending, of course.

The stuff with Jack and Sun and her lost voice was interesting, nicely echoing Jack’s previous attempt at a pep talk with Sun, but I have to admit that as Jack was walking up to her there on the beach, eager to talk her into going with them to stop the Man in Black, I kept thinking, “How on earth is Jack going to attempt to kill himself this time?”

And speaking of the Man In Black/The Locke-ness Monster… I liked that he inherited a little of Locke’s tragic, hopeless pathetic lot in life of sorts. Things just don’t want to be simple for him.

And back to Jack, Richard Alpert, Ilana, and the gang… I think if I have one major complaint about this final season, it’s that we’re in a kind of lull now. The first few episodes were a huge rush to get somewhere and then… sit around and wait. Then things sped up and went crazy and characters frantically hurried up to… sit around and wait some more. I suspect that things are about to change on that front, and I’m thankful.

It’s interesting how the two camps on the show are split up literally between the good and the bad. Well, mostly. Locke’s gang includes the torturer, the killers and the criminals, and the corporate goons, the insane and the spineless. Jack’s group… well, there’s an immortal man, a millionaire who talks with the dead, a Korean billionaire who lost her ability to speak English, and also Frank Lapidus and Miles. And Ilana. Ben’s the wild card there, the stand out to that logic. But he’s reformed and docile now, right?

Also, DESMOND IS BACK.

And the text message I got late last night…

Benjamin Light: “That’s right, bitches: Sayid just held his breath underwater for like five hours!”

Myself: “Fuck Yeah Sayid doesn’t need air anymore.” Chuck Norris better watch out.

Also, Richard Alpert in no way, shape, nor form supports Flash Forward and sure as hell doesn’t recommend that you watch it. He’d rather see the Man In Black escape the Island and unleash hell on Earth than see Flash Forward get a second season pick up.

And closer and closer we get…

“Son of a bitch!”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I swear, when I start running a major TV show, I’m going to use a lot of the same gimmicks that Lost uses. People talk a lot of shit about the flashbacks, but honestly, they’re genius. And lazy. But genius. You’re not just telling one story, you’re telling multiple stories, on multiple frames, lost (literally) and found (potentially) in different modes of juxtapositions and dichotomies.

And then, in the third season of such a show, I’m literally going to have a “WE HAVE TO GO BACK, KATE!” moment and before you’ve changed your underwear from watching your main character do all that hillbilly heroin, we’ll be FLASH FORWARDING!

Where I’d change it up from Lost, though, is I’d do the Sideways flashes, the glimpses into the “wouldn’t it be nice” universe earlier. The “happily ever after” alternate existence would come much earlier, and you want to know why?

Because in the last season of my show, instead of flashbacks, flashforwards, or flashsideways, every episode would would flash to a potential spin off featuring my main characters. My Jack spinoff would be just like House, only more misogynistic and feature more pills. Jack would be less British, of course, but the SHOUTING would remain. Awww, cute baby with cancer and shingles on his face. SHOUT AT HIM, JACK! And my Kate episode would be like Run Ronnie Run, only it’d star Kate, which I think works in a lot of ways. And my Locke and Ben Linus episode would be like a sitcom version of Stand And Deliver, just less Edward James Olmos, I guess.

And my Sawyer and Miles episode would be a lot like last night’s episode of Lost, titled “Recon.” Sawyer and Miles as vice cops, going undercover together, and Sawyer would be the weird southern lead whose partner talks to dead people. Their dynamic would be entirely like Kurt Russell and his AZN sidekick in Big Trouble In Little China. And they’d say shit to each other like…

Miles: “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?”

Sawyer: “Only way to cut it.”

And then David Caruso puts on his shades. YEEEAAAHHHHH!

As for last night’s episode itself, you know, Locke/Flocke/The Man In Black/The Locke-ness monster is evil and all, sure, but deep down, he’s not so bad. If you catch him in a lie, he’ll say he’s sorry and explain himself. He slaps women around when they’re hysterical, which is just so adorably old fashioned. It’s cutesy quaint like how crazy Claire is this season. There’s a certain bit of sex in his violence, unlike Sawyer, whom I feel like has no violence or anything else in his sex.

It’s sad that a character like Sawyer, who only has too emotions, full on redneck angry and goofy, is really just going through the motions this season post-Juliet, it seems. He doesn’t want to search and destroy, he wants to sit around in his underwear and listen to “Search and Destroy.”

He’s doing a so so job of recon on Hydra Island, discovering that Widmore’s got a stealthy interesting operation set up there and an HQ on a submarine (like a Bond villain!), and then trying to play Big Chuck against The Man In Black.

The even sadder thing is I think that Widmore and the Locke-ness Monster have to see through Sawyer’s attempts to get them to go to war with each other. If anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on this mystical, magical Island has learned anything, it’s this: everyone has a past, not everyone has a future, and you may or may not have a sideways. Also, lies are currency and the economy is broken and bleeding.

I applaud Sawyer for not planning on taking the plane. Of course not. Why would you? It’s not like he knows how to fly that thing. But he does know how to pilot a submarine? Really? I somehow feel that there’s more to it than just pressing a glowing button that says SUBMERGE on it.

If I could use another partial financial metaphor here about Sawyer: The man is just not invested. He’s completely checked out and he’s leaving me checked out too. He’s the exact opposite of Jack in major ways now. Jack is nuts, and entirely invested. There’s not a situation that Jack can’t attempt to kill himself out of us, meanwhile Sawyer’s just going to to sit around and brood and maybe tell Kate things through gritted teeth after she’s had a good sit and cry. Or after she’s seen Claire’s fake baby thing:

Taking a momentary pause here because… Here’s a promotional still from new weeks’ Richard (finally!) Alpert-centric episode:

Also, a question about the Sideways universe that made my ears perk up a bit: Miles’ dad is off the Island in the Sideways universe? Last week people bitched about Roger and Ben Linus being off the Island in the Sideways world, but they could’ve easily gotten onto that submarine on time. But wasn’t Pierre Chang right there front and center when that nuclear weapon went off at the Swan site? Unless this is a stepfather? A stepfather who works at a museum with Charlotte, whom Miles is pimping out to Sawyer.

Also, let’s face it: Charlotte is easy.

But in a great way. In a way everyone should be. Ladies is pimps too. She’s an independent woman who can fuck a guy like a Sawyer if she wants. In another time and place, a guy like Sawyer might threaten to slap her one right after slapping her fragile colleague in science and holder of an unrequited crush on her, but in a Sideways kind of world, she might let a guy like Sawyer try three, maybe four positions with her. And maybe if Sawyer had been cooler, and not left his most important documents in the world in his top drawer, he would’ve seen her whip on the second date. And not being chilling at home watching reruns of Little House On The Prairie. And not being try to win her back in the cheesiest way ever with a huge novelty flower.

But, of course Miles will take him back.

And, thankfully, Charlie is still in jail.

Oh well. Here’s a SPOILER about the rest of the season: In the finale, Sawyer reveals that he’s been at least half gay since the freighter blew up.

You’ve got the touch.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Holy crap, another week, another new episode of Lost. This time it was a Ben episode, entitled “Dr. Linus.” And the often misleading promos promised us that Ben would face his own mortality, and he did, but he survived the encounter, unlike Corey Haim. Or the dude from Sparklehorse.

And it was interesting episode with Ben on the Island being even more broken down, all the shards of his manipulative sad personality being stripped away. He tries to get over his anger and abandonment issues by assuming roles of power. He wants to be a leader and he wants knowledge, but he never understands why he needs to know these things.

And Sideways Ben… well, it was interesting to see a Sideways flash of someone who wasn’t on either Oceanic flight 815, but I like the reminder that this is the same little Ben that was shot by Sayid and taken to the temple. He’s been changed by Others, but what does that mean in the real world?

Apparently that means an unhappy life of teaching in the public school system and only getting motivation to do something when a guy in a wheelchair at the next table suggests it.

And probably means you’ve left less of a body count in your wake.

The thing I think you have to ponder about the Sideways world is… Well, remember last season when we suddenly went back to the Island with the Ajira flight and there was Locke alive again? And we were invigorated by this new Locke, this man in full control of himself and capabilities? For half a season there we had something of the season ending twist just hanging there in our faces but there was no one way we could tell what was happening. You have to wonder if that’s what the Sideways world is. Is this the world that the Man In Black/Smokey has promised his followers? Is this the epilogue? Because, with the exception of Sayid’s sideways flash so far (arguably), these characters are all doing fine, getting second chances and doing what they should’ve done, perhaps.

I mean, there’s Ben, taking care of his asshole dad (oh, the IRONY as he’s trying to keep his Sideways father alive and instead of poisoning him with gas he’s changing his oxygen tank), and finally getting the opportunity to “choose Alex,” the choice he didn’t make before when Keamy had the gun to her head. And it’s not like he’s not getting to do a little scheming, blackmailing his principal and all. Good times for all. Especially Jeff Goldblum:

from here and here.

But back to the Island. And back to Jack and Richard Alpert and perhaps my favorite moment of the season so far…

We always told you Jack was crazy. Who else would do a bro a favor, lighting the fuse on his stick of dynamite so he can kill himself and then deciding to sit down and have a little chat while it burns. This new Jack is still crazy after all these years, but it feels like he’s finally accepted it. Being a slave to destiny is fucking insane. Might as well do some fun, crazy shit while you’re at it.

“When Jacob touches you, it’s not a gift, it’s a curse,” Richard Alpert tells us cryptically, right after he appears from somewhere, and when asked where that somewhere is, he says, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I think you’d be amazed what these characters and us would believe/accept after all this time. Though I think I’m getting tired of Hurley as the proxy for the audience’s questions, especially when he makes the audience’s sound so fucking stupid: “Are you a cyborg?”

And Ilana? I respect the seriousness of things, the hopelessness of it all, and how you’ve personally been fucked by destiny – and in that regard, Lost is kind of like the bible: the women get the short end of the stick over and over again, sadly – but having Ben dig his own grave for a few hours? That doesn’t seem like the best use of your time, I would think. But then again, time stops for a little vengeance.

Time will always pause for you to wrap your hands around the big flabby neck of revenge.

And Miles… still annoying, but still a better version of Charlie, right? And now he’s got those Nikki and Paulo diamonds. I neglected to mention in a dorky nitpick last week that Lennon fucked up when he offered Kate two minutes with Claire when it should’ve been three (the Others always offer you three minutes)(but maybe that’s because the situation was a little stressful and two was all they had?), but I’m glad that they didn’t forget Miles and the desired 3.2 million dollars.

And I feel like Miles’ “superpower” is both underused and overused. Sadly, it kind of pales in comparison to Hurley’s being able to talk to ghosts, but I’m fascinated by the fact that Miles’ ability is tactile in nature…

He has to literally touch the dead in some way, which is amazing with the way that this show is now, with everything that these characters have been through, and death just hangs over everything like a cloud. A smoky black cloud, perhaps? As Dr. Arzt said, “You know what gets out formaldehyde? Nothing.”

And Charles Widmore is returning to the Island! Kind of like Napoleon perhaps? Will he have Mrs. Hawking/Desmond/Penny with him? And, just out of curiosity, what if Charles Widmore is his own grandfather? What happens if a future version of you touches you? Oh, the questions!