I Am DB

It’s actually back!!! Oh sweet relief…

DHARMA DHARMA DHARMA DHARMA DHARMA CHAMELEON, YOU COME AND GO, YOU COME AND GO
Season Five began much like Season Two did, with a man waking up and getting ready for the day – showering, eating breakfast, playing a record – his face unseen the entire time, and the location unclear to us. In Season Two, we turned out to be witnessing Desmond in the Hatch. This time, it was the inconsistently-named Asian doctor from all the Dharma orientation videos, whose real name we learn to be Pierre Chang. He emerges from his house into the cluster of homes that will later be used by Ben and The Others. He goes to work, recording the orientation video for a Dharma Initiative station known as The Arrow. (Have we seen that station yet? I’m not sure we have…) What he says in his introduction to the video is worth paying attention to.

“Given your specific area of expertise, you should find it no surprise that this station’s primary purpose is to develop defensive strategies and gather intelligence on the island’s hostile, indigenous population.”

Think about that. From what we know so far, each Dharma hatch had a purpose that involved scientific research and experimentation. But this station, The Arrow, seems to be dedicated from the beginning to preparing for battle with the island’s original inhabitants. The effort to “develop defensive strategies and gather intelligence” doesn’t appear to be reactionary. Does that mean the Dharma Initiative, from the beginning, posed a threat to those already on the island? Were the “hostiles” intended as experimental subjects for some kind of Dharma project? Who are the hostiles, and are they really the island’s original inhabitants, or one group in a long line that came to the island and tried to build a life?

Before Chang can continue, he’s interrupted and told of a problem in The Orchid station. Once there, a construction foreman informs him that while drilling on specs provided by Chang himself, his team hit an obstacle – something behind the rock wall that has melted six drillbits and mysteriously injured a worker. He shows Chang a sonar image of the wall, and buried in the rock, partially obscured, we see what appears to be the wheel that Ben turned to move the island. The foreman suggests blasting through the wall to get at it, but Chang puts the kibosh on that. “This station is being built here because of its proximity to what we believe to be an almost limitless energy. And that energy, once we can harness it correctly, is going to allow us to manipulate time.”  He instructs the foreman to stop the work, saying, “If you drill even one centimeter further, you risk releasing the energy. If that were to happen, God help us all.”

So what can we take away from this scene?

1) Chang is kind of a dick. Seriously, is there anyone this guy doesn’t snap at?

2) The Dharma Initiative has designs on time travel from early on. The island’s ability to enable this is not an accidental discovery.

His description of “an almost limitless energy” ain’t much of a description at all. What does he mean, specifically? What is it about this energy that makes time travel possible? And what would releasing the energy do? When Ben turned the wheel, did that release the energy? Is that what causes the island to do…what it’s now doing?

A WRINKLE IN TIME
When Ben turned the wheel and the island was engulfed in a blazing white light, we only saw the reaction of others to its disappearance. Now, we learn what happened to those still on it. Sawyer and Juliet notice something wrong when the smoke from the freighter, visible on the horizon moments before, is gone. Then Bernard and Rose emerge from the trees and tell them that the camp is gone – the tents, the kitchen table, the Dharma food – all gone. Luckily, their friendly neighborhood physicist – the delightfully twitchy Daniel Faraday – shows up to explain. And by “explain” I mean “make things impossibly more confusing.”

The camp isn’t gone, he says; rather, it hasn’t been built yet. He asks Juliet to lead him to something man-made on the island, so she and Sawyer make for the blown-up hatch, with Charlotte and Miles in tow. (Strange as it seems, this is actually the first time Faraday and Sawyer have met.) Sawyer insists on an explanation, so Faraday attempts to give him one by describing the island as a record spinning on a turntable; now that record is skipping (a metaphor nicely foreshadowed in the opening scene when Dr. Chang’s record exhibits that exact behavior). Faraday says that whatever Ben did in The Orchid station, it seems to have “dislodged” the island from time; either the island is moving through time, or they are, and such movements will continue. When the next wrinkle occurs, accompanied again by that blinding white light, Juliet suggests seeing if they are at a point in time when they can stop the helicopter from flying to the freighter (as they all assume that Jack, Kate and the rest were onboard when it exploded). Faraday says it doesn’t work that way. He describes time as a string (or did he say “street?” I couldn’t tell). He says you can move backwards, you can move forwards, but you can never create a new string/street. If you try to change the past, it won’t work. Whatever happened…happened.

This is similar to what Desmond was once told by the kindly but creepy woman who guided him through his initial flashes – the lady from the jewelry store, whose name I’ve since learned is Mrs. Hawking. She explained to him that fate can not be tricked or avoided. If someone is destined to die, they’re going to die, no matter what interference tries to prevent it. The circumstances of the death may vary, but if it’s meant to happen…it happens (Exhibit A: Charlie. Awww, Charlieeeee!!!!)

Faraday also says that he knows what’s happening because he has been studying space-time for his entire adult life. He pulls out his notebook and says that it contains everything he’s learned about The Dharma Initiative. “This is why I’m here,” he says. Okay, Faraday has long been learning about Dharma’s interest in time travel. So if that’s why he’s on the island, why are Charlotte and Miles there? Knowing that Miles’ talent is communing with the dead, was he chosen for this mission to find a specific deceased individual or group of individuals and learn about the circumstances of the death? Perhaps to change those circumstances (since stopping them altogether is apparently not possible) through the miracle of DING DING DING!!! Time travel!!!

The next flash puts the islanders sometime in the past again, when the hatch is still intact. Sawyer wants to attract the attention of Desmond, who he assumes is inside, but Faraday convinces him that such a meeting can not occur. Sawyer, Juliet and Miles head back to the beach, as does Charlotte – though not before Faraday notices her nose is bleeding. She dismisses it as nothing, but Faraday knows – as did the freighter’s communications officer George Minkowski – that in this place, a bloody nose can be more than just a bloody nose.

Despite having insisted to Sawyer that he can not meet Desmond at this point in time if a similar meeting didn’t happen before, Faraday tries himself to rouse Desmond once the others are gone. Praying for his efforts to work, Faraday bangs on the hatch door until it opens and out comes Desmond, sealed up in a hazmad suit and gas mask, brandishing a gun at the unfamiliar intruder. Desperate to impart his message before the next flash unfolds, Faraday tells a bewildered, paranoid Desmond that he’s the only one who can help them all because the rules don’t apply to him; he is, Faradays says, “uniquely, miraculously special.”  (Do the rules not apply to Faraday either? Is he able to connect with Desmond because both of them have time-tripped?) Faraday gives Desmond his name and tells him that everyone he left behind after the helicopter took off to safety (if it took off to safety) is in danger. By this time, the white light is ramping up and the next flash is imminent. Faraday just barely has time to tell Desmond to go back to Oxford, where they met, and find his – Faraday’s – mother, whose name is…and flash. He’s gone.

Desmond immediately wakes up three years later, in bed with Penny on her boat, and knows that what he experienced was a memory. To Penny’s confusion, he immediately changes the boat’s course…for Oxford.

So who is Faraday’s mother, and how can she help? I have a quasi-theory as to who she might be…but that will have to wait.

Oh yeah – before everyone leaves Faraday at the hatch and returns to the beach, Sawyer asks how they can stop what’s happening. Faraday says they can’t. He doesn’t answer when Sawyer asks who can, but as if to answer the question for him, the scene cuts to Locke.

DE PLANE! DE PLANE!
While Sawyer, Juliet and the rest are experiencing the island’s time shifts together, Locke is facing them alone. When the first flash occurs – the one when Ben turns the wheel – Locke is with Richard and the other Others. Then they’re gone. We get a cool nostalgic experience when Locke sees the cargo plane carrying Mr. Eko’s former comrades crash onto the island, complete with heroin-filled Virgin Mary statues.

(Slight pause whilst I bow my head for Charlie, Eko and Boone.)

Umm, anyway….Locke also has an encounter with Ethan, who shoots him in the leg before the next flash whisks him away to the future. (Ethan…what a jerk. Somebody should really kill that guy.) Soon Richard finds Locke, rushing to tend the bullet wound and give him some important information before the next time shift. Richard tells Locke that the only way to save the island is to get the people who left to come back. Locke assumes they died on the freighter, but Richard says no, they made it to civilization. And in order to get them back, Locke will have to die. That’s all he has a chance to say before the next flash, though he does give John a compass, telling him that the next time they meet, he won’t recognize Locke and to give the instrument back to Richard, as if that will make him understand. Is this the same compass that Richard once offered to Locke many years earlier, in a mysterious visit to the boy’s house?

BACK TO THE FUTURE
And so it goes on the island. But what of the Oceanic Six, livin’ the dream back in the real world, three years after Ben turned the wheel? Sorry, did I say livin’ the dream? Perhaps I misspoke. The action picks up right at the Season Four finale, with Jack and Ben in the funeral parlor staring at Locke in his casket. With Jack having agreed to go back to the island, Ben’s plan is to take Locke’s coffin, and one by one collect the rest of Jack’s friends. Jack doubts they’ll be able to do that, and says, “They’re not my friends anymore.” I know in print that reads like the statement of a petulant child. But it worked on the show.

In a hotel room, Jack shaves the Beard of Insanity and tries to get his head clear for the task ahead. Ben says that Locke, aka Bentham, must have made an impression during their visit. He asks what Locke said that made him such a believer. Jack says he was told that those left behind would die too if he didn’t come back. That still doesn’t quite add up with what else we’ve been told – that bad things happened on the island after they left, that those things happened because they left, that going back was the only way to keep Kate and Aaron safe. But I suspect we’ll be learning more about Locke’s agenda before too long.

Kate, meanwhile, is home with Aaron when she receives a troubling visit from a pair of attorneys, one of whom introduces himself as Dan Norton. He explains that they’ve come with a court order instructing Kate to let them take blood samples from her and Aaron to determine their true relationship. Kate asks who it’s for, but Norton says he is not at liberty to divulge the identity of his client. Kate refuses and sends them away, knowing they’ll be back with a sheriff. I wondered briefly if this could be a set-up by Ben to blackmail her into joining the trip to the island, but I suspect something more sinister is at work. Not about to be forced into the blood test, Kate packs a bag (and packs some heat), takes Aaron and leaves the house. Will she ever be back?

Halfway around the world, Sun attempts to check onto a flight bound for Los Angeles, but she is detained and locked in a security room. In comes Charles Widmore, displeased that their last meeting took place in public in front of his business associates. He asks Sun to elaborate on her comment that she and Widmore have common interests, so Sun makes it plain: they both want to kill Benjamin Linus. Now it looks like there’s no doubt as to the second person that Sun blames for Jin’s death (the first, we already know, is her father).

And then there’s Sayid and Hurley. When last we saw this wonderfully odd couple (seriously, after Lost ends, can we resurrect these two characters on a sitcom?), Sayid had killed a man outside Hurley’s mental hospital and come to take the patient to a safe place. Sayid informed Hurley than Bentham was dead. He was clearly uneasy about this, and so then was Hurley. We pick up the action with Hurley and Sayid arriving at the latter’s safehouse. Unfortunately, they quickly learn that it’s not so safe; a pair of bad guys are there waiting for them. Sayid manages to toss one over the balcony to a fatal smack on the pavement. The other would-be-assailant meets his end on a set of steak knives, but not before shooting a tranquilizer dart or the like into Sayid’s neck. Hurley comes in to help him, but Sayid can only tell his friend to get him into the car before he loses consciousness.

So who were the attackers? The same people responsible for Bentham’s death? What danger do Locke, Sayid, Hurley and the others pose? Who is trying to eliminate them?

Before the attack, Sayid tells Hurley that he’s been working – killing – for Ben. And interestingly, he now seems to express regret about that, saying to Hurley, “If you have the misfortune of running into him, whatever he tells you, just do the opposite.” What soured Sayid on his arrangement with Ben?

LOOSE ENDS
You probably watched the recap special that preceded the season premiere, and I always think those specials are helpful for highlighting some of the mysteries that we should be keeping in mind as the show goes forward. So do not take it for granted that the show mentioned the four-toed statue seen by Sayid, Sun and Jin in the Season Three finale, or the two corpses Jack discovered in the caves way back in Season One – the ones Locke referred to as “Adam and Eve.” Every indication is that those two decomposed figures are a key to one of the show’s central mysteries.

The recap show also cleared up two minor things that I had been questioning. One, that the island is in fact invisible to those flying over it. And two, that the freighter crew did consist of two distinct teams: Keamy’s military crew and the scientist crew of Faraday, Charlotte and Miles (and by extension, Frank…though he seemed to be at Keamy’s service too).

The one thing that happens in this episode out of context, time-wise, is the opening sequence that takes place during the Dharma days…a sequence that ends with Faraday revealed down in the Orchid as Dr. Chang leaves. How did he get here? Is he here via another flash on the island? And if so, how long after the other flashes we witnessed does this flash take place? Are Sawyer, Juliet and the others lurking about too?

Now then, as you may now, there a lot of Lost-themed websites and blogs out there. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. I don’t have the time or patience to go to most of them, but I do tend to visit the recaps on the Entertainment Weekly website. Their writer, Jeff “Doc” Jensen is insane and sometimes annoying, but also spins some pretty good theories. So from now on, I’ll be including some of his content that I find especially interesting or noteworthy. Here are a few things he had to say:

1) On Faraday’s encounter with Desmond outside the hatch: “I initially thought ‘Hey! Shouldn’t Island Desmond remember Daniel Faraday?’ After all, in The Constant, we saw Pre-Island Desmond visit Pre-Island Daniel at Oxford. But that was an example of mental projection time travel, not physical time travel, and I’m guessing Lost adheres to the controversial perspective that memory resides not in the physical structure of the brain, but in the electrical currents of consciousness.”

2) On Sun and Widmore: “And another burning question that stems from the fact that Sun told Widmore she wants Ben dead. But do you believe her? Sure, Ben is a bad man. But was he responsible for Jin’s death? No. That was Keamy the Merc whose bomb blew up the freighter. Which belonged to Widmore. Who wanted everyone on the Island dead. It should be Chuck’s blue blood that Sun should want spilled. Maybe she’s playing double agent, pretending to be a Ben Hater but really a Ben Friend tasked with spying on their mutual enemy. Maybe she’s just getting close enough to shiv him when he’s not looking.”

3) He pointed out a detail which whizzed by me, but which could prove significant. When Charlotte asks Miles if he thinks Widmore is looking for them, Miles says he’s not holding his breath considering that it took Widmore 20 years to find the island the first time. (But does the first time mean this time, with the freighter? Or some time before that?)

4) This is from the piece he published the day this episode aired, and involves his latest theory on the big picture. I don’t fully buy it, but like a lot of his theories, I do find it intriguing. If you’re interested, scroll down and start reading at “The Competing Timelines Theory of Lost.”

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“You know maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn’t have to go around shooting people.” – Hurley

FINAL THOUGHTS
I don’t think Faraday, Charlotte and Miles have had a change of clothes since they got to the island. That’s disgusting.