Father's day

Fate can mean a lot of things. If you're a Calvinist, everything is predetermined, including every action you ever were going to take even before you were born. And mythology is filled with fates - the Moirae of ancient Greece, for example, and the Parcae of Rome.
In our prosaic now, we still struggle with that same idea, though today we couch it in terms of "nature vs. nurture."
Which leads us to Lost's major daddy issues.

Last night was another solid in-park triple of an episode. We got some answers (what are the Numbers? They're coordinates for a magic mirror that spied on people who could be replacements for Jacob! Ohhhh, duh! Why didn't I see that obvious answer in Season One?!). We got Craaaaazy Claire with an animal skull baby in a bassinet. We got some intriguing new notions (With Jin's leg all messed up like that, does that indicate maybe the healing properties of the island are no more? With Jack freaking out about his scar the way he did briefly at LAX about the cut on his neck, is there more to Earth 2 than it just being 'the world where the island didn't influence the Losties' lives?' And could the two come together at some point?) We got foreshadowing of something big and ugly going down at the temple (nice ongoing manipulation of Claire into Rambo Lizzie Borden, Smoke Monster Locke Jack's Dad thing) and of someone coming to the island (my bet, Desmond).
And we got a return to the ongoing theme in Lost of how parental issues can really screw up your life. We've seen Locke, Jack, Sawyer to an extent and Kate to an extent all grapple with this. Now we got a second dose of Jack's father love/hate and Earth 2 Jack seemingly working to overcome that (shades of the way Locke last week was having more success overcoming his handicap self hate than he did in Earth 1?)
And what's with each Earth 2 flash sideways containing a Lostie run-in with an Other? I can't even begin to speculate on where this is going. My brain hurts a lot just thinking about it.
So who's David's mom? Inquiring minds want to know!
And how interesting is it that the Candidates apparently are the bosses of the Others, though they only are starting to get a sense of that.
So here's where we stand - Jack seemingly chosen for something big, Hurley as his Pancho Villa, both out in nowheresville. Jin trapped with psychos and monster badasses. Locke building a group of followers. Dynamite. A seeming convergence on the temple. This is starting to look like a build up like in Stephen King's The Stand, with forces of good and evil. Except that Jacob seems to be just as much a manipulator as Smokey Locke, so I dont think the simplistic labels of 'good' and 'evil' apply here very much. We shall see.
On a side note, check this craziness out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGdJqaa3ag&feature=player_embedded
Let the discussion begin .... now!

Earning Daneman Money, .00005 cents at a time

I clicked through to the ads on the right hand column, to help our budding e-trenprenuer earn a (very) little drinking money (like enough to buy 1 calorie of beer). And dammit all that cafe press store has Driveshaft t-shirts and car stickers. Must...not...give in...to...shameless...commerce...

By the way, you should click on those ads too. Cause someday, I want to see Google send Daneman a check for 16 cents.

Weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to

Some of us love Lost for the rich, elaborate, layered mystery. Some of us prefer the strong characterizations (is there anyone on TV as fascinating as John Locke?). But all of us have to admit that if the show wasn't entertaining, we wouldn't be here week after week.
Which brings us to Tuesday's Locke-centric ep. First and foremost, you have got to applaud the moments of dialogue like "he's getting pretty ripe" or Ben's eulogy over Locke's grave or even the brief interchange between Earth 2 Locke and Rose in the temp agency. A scene that in much of TV could have played with huge heapings of shmaltz instead became a quick wakeup call to a life.
The changeup characterizations also made this a 4.5 out of five on the "hot diggity damn that was good" episode scale. Earth 2 Locke struggles with the same feelings of inadequacy, but less so and is able to get over them. Instead of being a complete rager or sad sack as he was in Earth 1, he had some ability to transcend his handicap (for example, can you imagine 'our' Locke just getting an aww shucks grin of amiable defeat if he fell onto a lawn and then the sprinklers went off?) and ultimately that lead to his growth and redemption on Earth 2, where he found the peace that he never had before. Meanwhile, here we are so used to seeing Richard as Mr. In Control with all the right answers, and suddenly he's now running around in the jungle like a squirrel being chased by dogs.

Meanwhile, the central mystery of Lost got a little more illuminated and that much more interesting. We've been dealing with lists throughout the history of the show - Ben sending Ethan to infiltrate the 815 survivors, and references to Jacob's lists in numerous instances. Now we finally have an indication of what those lists are about - finding a replacement for Jacob.
Curiously, Kate was not on the cave wall. And equally curiously, some of the people who were are not supposed to be there. Members of the Others in the past have made passing reference to Kate, Sayid, Locke and Jack all being absent from Jacob's lists for various reasons. Yet SmokeLocke now shows us a wall listing Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, Locke and either Jin or Sun as Candidates to seemingly replace Jacob. (I'm going to make a case here that Jin is the intended one - evidence being that it was he and not Sun who got snatched up in the time jumping, thus there being some indication that he is somehow chosen or different. Or course, Kate also was a time jumper and not on the list, so curiouser and curiouser).
Random thoughts:
- So who's the kid in the jungle? Did Richard actually not see him as in incapable, or did the kid just run off when Richard's head was turned? Sawyer obviously could see him. Who knows.
- While SmokeLocke is a big old killing machine in smoke form, in human form he's just a big a putz as you and me, panting and tripping and all the rest. I think that sets the stage for Sawyer's inevitable heroic turn (he can't be the Max to SmokeLocke's Doc Hopper forever, right?
- It's still not clear to me whether in Earth 2 coincidences just abound or if there's still some kind of manipulation going on. In Earth 1, it was Matthew Abaddon who told Locke to go on the walkabout. (Which raises the interesting notion that Charles Widmore, who was the dude behind the dude in terms of Michael Abaddon, may have been working for Jacob instead of a totally evil bastard. Or notion 2, that Jacob and SmokeLocke are just two peas in a pod of otherworldly manipulators and while there's all this seeming black/white evil/good symbolism the reality is far more gray). So if Earth 2 Locke also tried to go on a walkabout, what prompted that?
- One off note - I never took Sawyer to be a Stooges fan. He seems more Merle Haggard or maybe classic rock guy.
- As the episodes tick down, I'm getting a bit sad about the inevitable end of all this. And I really need to buy some Old Spice body wash.
Your thoughts? What'd I miss?

No. I am not a zombie.

Nothing like a good beating over the head with the whole notion of rebirth and redemption. Case in point, our latest episode of 'Lost.' Sayid, the torturer, gets tortured. The island role of Danielle Rousseau, the crazy French lady, is seemingly picked up by Aussie Claire.
And speaking of Rousseau, the Infection (harkening back to/same as the 'Sickness' Rousseau said seized her fellow research team castaways?) is gettin' confusing. As we saw when Jin was bouncing through time, a member of Rousseau's team back in 1988 was dragged down into a hole by the smoke monster. Other team members went after him. They came back changed somehow and tried to murder Rousseau.
Years later, in present time, she told the Oceanic 815ers she thought the Sickness was somehow caused by the Others.
Now we have the new Others - headed by Dogen who shares the same name as a 13th century Japanese Zen master (I'd assume one of those games the writers like to play, like naming characters after notable western philosophers Locke and Rousseau) - indicating that Sayid is somehow infected with that same Sickness, as is Claire. To quote famed debater Stephen A. Douglas, 'Why the face? Huh? Asphinctersayswhat?'
I think we can assume that if Claire in fact is Infected, she got it while palling around with the smoke monster impersonating Jack's dad Christian, right? But Given that the latest Others put Sayid into that Lazarus Pit, how'd he then get infected by some outside evil? And what was up with the whole torture/diagnostics? Was the same going to happen to Jack when the Others wanted to talk with him alone?
And atop all that, poor Sawyer, having a sizable self-pity of a time dealing with Juliet's death. After all the Kate/Sawyer/Jack triangle stuff for several seasons, it's interesting to see him ultimately heartbroken over someone else altogether.

And last but not least, let's not forget Dr. Ethan there in the hospital when Claire is about to give birth. As an Other, he was after Claire's baby because of the fertility issues plaguing the Others. In the hospital, is he just there by Claire purely as fate/coincidence? Or is there still some kind of machination at work specifically after her kid?
This very much felt like an in-between episode - things happened and the story was advanced, yet it wasn't very satisfying. Yet more mysteries. When I end up using more question marks than periods, I know I'm vaguely annoyed.
Your thoughts? Your take?

Kierkegaard telling us to embrace the absurdity of faith and other thoughts you'd never thought you'd connect to a network television show

Doc Jensen at EW.com spins himself a pretty dense web, but I don't think you'll find a more interesting and more lucid recap and analysis of this crazy show on the Web. And yes, I'm including this site in that calculus.

Glad everything is all cleared up now

There. Now everything makes perfect sense. No reason to even watch the rest of the season, right? But for the slower Lost fans, let's go through everything new we learned.
- Most importantly, never check your father's corpse with the airline. Always take it as carry-on.
- We've had flashbacks and flashforwards. It looks as if, this season, we'll have flashes sideways, to an alternate timeline where the island was blown up and sank in 1974 and never had influence on today's cast (Hurley is the luckiest guy in the world, Desmond never ended up shipwrecked there). The significance of the flashsideways? Too early to say. Maybe just to illustrate the characters' ongoing evolution and redemption at the hands of the island. Or to show the Losties - who all wanted off the island except for Locke - how crummy their lives would've been if they'd never crashed. But there still obviously is some kind of greater force at work on their lives even minus the island, as evidenced by them all being on the same flight and by the presence of Waitress in the Sky Cindy the Other. But with the island out of the picture on Earth 2, that whole idea of influence in their lives is blowing my mind.
- Relating to the inevitability theme going throughout the show, winner of the best line of the night award goes to Trainspotting Charlie: "Shoulda let that happen, man. I was s'posed to die."
- The redemption imagery is getting almost overboard now, with Sayid's deathbed talk of going to hell and then literal baptism and rebirth. Is he now the new Jacob?
- So the anti-Jacob is the smoke monster. Makes a kind of sense in that we've seen smoky judge people (like Eko) and punish them and the anti-Jacob guy seemed decidedly downbeat on humanity as a group when we met him last season.
- Hey, a welcome return to the weird-toed statue! And the ankh symbol in the guitar case, that indicates to me the statue might be that of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. Significance? I imagine even Anubis sitting somewhere, watching this show and texting, like, Odin and going "WTF is up w/ this show, yo?"
- Closer to the understandable world, Juliette now has gotten two separate death scenes in the series. The hitting the nuke was more dramatic, but I am really anticipatory of the whole 'Sawyer's going after Jack' direction. We've had five seasons of 'who runs this town, anyway?' and now we're going to get direct clash of the titans.
- My Jerry Springer final thoughts: More questions raised than answers (can they still keep doing that?). Kind of slow moving episode. But at least we're back in the present, and in the hands of Others, so it's like nothing ever happened. Except something major did and the plane never crashed. Ow. My head. And yet I'm anxiously awaiting next week.
- What'd I miss? What're your thoughts?