If Lost is going to fracture its narrative in two, I feel entitled to do the same with my crackpot TV Club entries. I have one more dispatch to share, with a few points I didn’t have time to cover yesterday.
First off—we haven’t fully explored the premiere’s major revelation: Jacob’s nemesis is the smoke monster. Somebody—maybe a loyal TV Club reader?—needs to compile a video of all the times we’ve seen Smokey. We need to watch those scenes again now that we know what we know. (Hats off to Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen for reminding me of the importance of this particular plot twist.)
Jack and Seth, I’m sure Mr. Eko’s death has been etched into your memories like scripture onto a walking stick. Eko kneels at the feet of his brother, who has inexplicably come back from the dead, and chooses not to ask for forgiveness. “I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive,” he says. Yemi/Smokey, visibly angry, responds, “You speak to me as if I were your brother.” Then Yemi/Smokey turns into a fist and smashes the life out of the best character Lost has ever given us. Which brings me to Lost TV Club Theory No. 4! Smokey offed Eko because he was too useful to Jacob—it was a political assassination.
I’m sure there are more nuggets like these waiting to be discovered. Readers, leave your best reinterpretations in the comment section. Speaking of your comments, goodness you guys are good. Not only did you flag three stupid mistakes I made in the last entry, but your discoveries and theories are great. “Matthew” confirmed that the shark swimming around the sunken island had a Dharma mark on its tail. (We saw a similar Dharma-branded shark in Season 2.) “Joe Blow” predicted a dream scenario: “I will offer one prediction: Jacob will soon inherit Locke’s dead body. Locke will then be fighting himself, which is what Locke really has been doing all along.” Jack, Seth, are either of you opposed to Locke-on-Locke action?
Elsewhere on the Internet, my favorite Lost academic, Jason Mittell, made the smart point that Faraday can’t logically exist in either timeline: “I feel like we’ll need some good Faraday science expositional scenes, but poor Daniel is dead on the island and his pregnant mum presumably perished in the nuclear blast!”
Maybe Smokey can do us a solid and show up as Faraday next week.
Also, the producers sat down with Entertainment Weekly to try to explain the new season’s narrative structure. Jack, this quote made me think of you: “We [knew] the audience was going to come out of the ‘do-over moment’ thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story.”
You should read it in full. If only to get even angrier than you already are.
And, finally, one enterprising fan has cobbled together a neat video showing the first moments on the plane in both timelines. It’s like one of those old Highlights games where you’re shown two pictures that look the same but have subtle differences. Readers, leave what you spot in the comments. If I could write all the answers upside down at the bottom of this page, I would.
It’s going to be a long week waiting around for the next episode. Meanwhile, stewardess, could you pour me a stiffer drink? Maybe with two vodkas, like last time?
