Lost: The Final Boner

[Yeti]

Yea, Thrill, this has nothing to do with God

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Yea, Thrill, this has nothing to do with God

True... God had nothing to do with EvilLocke sending Sawyer to Hydra.

[JD]

Am rewatching last week's episode and just noticed that it was directed by Mario Van Peebles.

Guns don't kill people
Mario Van Peebles

[R-V]

A couple of interesting takes on the flash-sideways (the first one from Ken Tremendous):

I think the alt-present scenes are an attempt to show what each character's true nature is, absent any situation where the island draws them more towards either Smokey or Jacob. This didn't occur to me until last night, but it felt like they were saying: Ben is an intellectual guy, searching for meaning in his life, frustrated by powerlessness, and thus capable of Machiavellian manipulations. But inherently, when push comes to shove, he is decent. Which is why in the island-reality he chose, at that crucial moment, to steer away from Smokey and back to Jacob. Sayid, on the other hand, has something inherently violent and evil in him, which is why in the alt-present he killed those guys, and on the island gave himself over to Smokey. Jack is deeply conflicted about his father and has it in him to be angry and conflicted, but in the alt-present he is inherently interested in being a good father himself and breaking the cycle of emotional abuse, so in the island-reality he's on Team Jacob, and so forth.

[...]

I think they are "influencing" what is happening on the island only inasmuch as they show us what these people truly are, in the truest existential sense -- their actual natures are at play in the alt-futures, and those "teetering-between-good-and-evil" natures, I guess you could say, are what Jacob "saw," somehow, and they are what led him to determine that they are "candidates." That moment where Smokey picked up the white rock off the scale and tossed it out the door is more fuel for this theory -- they pick people who are perfectly balanced between "bad" and "good" and bring them to the island as a sort of laboratory to determine which of those forces wins out in the end. So the events that are occurring in the island-present -- the Lost version of "The Stand," where sides are being drawn -- are the "result" (though not really, obviously, in the causal sense) of the alt-futures, wherein we are seeing that left to their own devices, each of these people tilts slightly to one side of the good/evil equation.

You know what might end up being the central episode of this whole damn series when all is said and done? "Flashes Before Your Eyes." Remember how Desmond returned to the world before he went to The Island, and how Mrs. Hawking told him he had to snap out of it and resume his responsibility? Two other relevant tidbits about "Flashes Before Your Eyes:" Desmond throws the engagement ring he bought for Penny into the Thames, just as Sawyer throws the ring he bought for Juliet into the water. And when Desmond wakes back up on The Island, his head still hurts from being whacked with the cricket bat right before he flashed—much as Jack still bears wounds and scars from his Island life in the Alterna-world. Not only am I going to predict (tentatively, of course) that the "flash-sideways" will resolve in much the same way they did for Desmond, with Hawking or someone similar shocking the Alterna-815ers back to "reality," but I also predict—as many of you already have—that this resolution has already occurred, and that the season-opening scene at the imploded hatch takes place after our gang has given up their other lives and jumped back. I could be way off here, but that's my sense of things. After all, it can't just be a coincidence that The Hatch was the site of two of these reality-splits.

[PenFoe]

A fine episode, setting things up for future episode.

But goddamn that final scene between Kate and Sawyer was ridiculous.
So Kate questions who is going to fly the plane, but when Sawyer says that they're taking the sub she's cool with that?
Did I miss the part where captaining a submarine is somehow a common skill?

And that final Sawyer look that the end the episode with...pretty sure they let Christopher Guest direct the last 5 minutes of the show.

Otherwise, interesting of course that the Sawyer alt-story was so similar to the original Sawyer story (what with Copper and all), but this time Sawyer doesn't write the letter...because he never met Jacob to give him the pen? 

[Richard Chuggar]

From Doc Jensen:

"Lewis' The Dark Tower begins with a conversation about time travel. The characters conclude that the past can't be changed. They then find a device called a ''chronoscope'' that allows them to peer into the past or future — or so they think. Looking into the chronoscope, they witness a past or future world (they can't tell which, so they just call it ''Othertime'') in which a devilish character leads people astray, clouding their minds and turning them into virtual zombies. Then a character makes a discovery: The chronoscope isn't a device that allows peeks into other times — it allows them to peek into parallel worlds. He then makes another discovery: His double in Othertime is a bad guy. To prevent him from doing bad things, he crosses over...and accidentally switches minds with his bad doppelganger. And so, while the Good Guy tries to save the day in Othertime, his evil doppelganger wreaks havoc in ''the real world'' and the Good Guy's ''real world'' friends try to stop him. "

Next week's episode will be totally awesome.  I just feel like they're really building up to something, but what that is, is hard to define for me.  Each episode is cool how they are so intertwined in the sideways reality, but it doesn't mean anything it seems like. 

[R-V]

A fine episode, setting things up for future episode.

But goddamn that final scene between Kate and Sawyer was ridiculous.
So Kate questions who is going to fly the plane, but when Sawyer says that they're taking the sub she's cool with that?
Did I miss the part where captaining a submarine is somehow a common skill?

And that final Sawyer look that the end the episode with...pretty sure they let Christopher Guest direct the last 5 minutes of the show.

Otherwise, interesting of course that the Sawyer alt-story was so similar to the original Sawyer story (what with Copper and all), but this time Sawyer doesn't write the letter...because he never met Jacob to give him the pen? 

As far as piloting the submarine goes, maybe I've watched too much TV, but can't you just put a gun to Widmore's pilot's dome and tell that guy to do it? Easy enough.

And yeah, there's no Jacob in the alt-timeline. We're seeing what would happen if all these people had actual free will instead of getting nudged along the way.

[Kermit IV]

Am rewatching last week's episode and just noticed that it was directed by Mario Van Peebles.

You butthole.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

A fine episode, setting things up for future episode.

But goddamn that final scene between Kate and Sawyer was ridiculous.
So Kate questions who is going to fly the plane, but when Sawyer says that they're taking the sub she's cool with that?
Did I miss the part where captaining a submarine is somehow a common skill?

And that final Sawyer look that the end the episode with...pretty sure they let Christopher Guest direct the last 5 minutes of the show.

Otherwise, interesting of course that the Sawyer alt-story was so similar to the original Sawyer story (what with Copper and all), but this time Sawyer doesn't write the letter...because he never met Jacob to give him the pen?  

As far as piloting the submarine goes, maybe I've watched too much TV, but can't you just put a gun to Widmore's pilot's dome and tell that guy to do it? Easy enough.

And yeah, there's no Jacob in the alt-timeline. We're seeing what would happen if all these people had actual free will instead of getting nudged along the way.

I think they have free will either way you cut it. We're just seeing some of them make different choices.

Which is why I'm not so hot on this part of Cousin Mose's gloss you quoted above:

I think the alt-present scenes are an attempt to show what each character's true nature is, absent any situation where the island draws them more towards either Smokey or Jacob.

...they show us what these people truly are, in the truest existential sense -- their actual natures are at play in the alt-futures...

Neither timeline shows us a character's "true" or "actual" nature compared against the other. They're showing the same character making different choices.

Yes, it seems that there's no Jacob in their lives in alt-time (though there was, apparently, still an island, which was apparently still special enough to draw Dharma to it—though maybe for different reasons). But, even with Jacob's "nudges" (or EvilLocke's manipulations) in the original timeline, the choices they've made have still always been their own.

The point behind the Existentialist motto "existence precedes essence" was just this: that our "nature" is defined by our actions and our choices.

This could lead us into thorny discussions of free will vs. fate (obviously one of the big themes of the show), but for now I'll only link to this, which seems somewhat relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism_and_incompatibilism#Compatibilism

Further, according to Hume, free will should not be understood as an absolute ability to have chosen differently under exactly the same inner and outer circumstances. Rather, it is a hypothetical ability to have chosen differently if one had been differently psychologically disposed by some different beliefs or desires. That is, when one says that one could either continue to read this page or to delete it, one doesn't really mean that both choices are compatible with the complete state of the world right now, but rather that if one had desired to delete it one would have, even though as a matter of fact one actually desires to continue reading it, and therefore that is what will actually happen.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

Am rewatching last week's episode and just noticed that it was directed by Mario Van Peebles.

You butthole.

Sorry, dude.

Guess I must have stopped reading once I got to "I taught biology..."

[Kermit IV]

Am rewatching last week's episode and just noticed that it was directed by Mario Van Peebles.

You butthole.

Sorry, dude.

Guess I must have stopped reading once I got to "I taught biology..."

Well, then, you totally missed me pulling a Weebs!

[ChuckD]

I can't believe Tank mentioned Mario Van Peebles without leading off with this Desipio instant classic.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I can't believe Tank mentioned Mario Van Peebles without leading off with this Desipio instant classic.

I see 2005 was the last time Fork had fresh material.

[Wheezer]

"Have you ever seen Bullitt" has got to be the best line this operation has ever produced.

[Richard Chuggar]

I haven't said it in awhile b/c I haven't really believed it, but tonight is definitely going to be awesome.