I think it’s more a question of faith, Hurley has it, Jack doesn’t. Jack won’t do something just because he’s told to, regardless of who’s telling him, unless he actually thinks it’s a good idea. Jacob has to manipulate him to influence his decision to do what he wants.
Rock8man
5542
I’m still not convinced that there’s anything wrong with Sayid or Claire. There might turn out to be, mind you. I’m just not comfortable taking the Others’ word for it. They tortured Claire just like they tortured Sayid. And she seemed fairly reasonable given the circumstances. Of course, she’s had lies fed to her by Unlocke, and possibly “her father”, whoever that is. Is Jack and Claire’s father also smokey? Or was that someone entirely new? I’m not sure. But I’m keeping an open mind on the whole “Sayid and Clair have an infection” idea that has been fed to the survivors by The Others.
It certainly seems like Jack and Claire’s father that appeared on the island was Smokey. Anything else will be even more convoluted.
Claire, we won’t know about until her episode I’m guessing. Which will be fun - they’ll have to do a flash-sideways and a flashback at the same time and still try to advance the story. Sayid, however, was quite clearly not alive for, like, half an hour at least, after which he just started up again like your stereo after a power outage. While something might not be “wrong” with him, something is most definitely up.
Interesting observation: Claire distinguished between The Friendly Lockeness Monster and Whatever the Hell Christian Shepard Is when she was talking about all the people who had told her that The Foot Clan ate her baby, but she knows that the monster is the monster, even though he’s only been wearing his Johnny Suit, we assume, since the corpse hit The Island. Does that mean that The Thing That Is Currently All Up Inside Christian Shepard is something else?
The big difference between Smokey as Locke and Smokey as Christian, however, is that Locke’s body was still there, while Christian’s body was noticeably absent. Does it seem odd to anyone else that we’re never directly presented with Christian’s death? It’s referred to over and over, but we’re never shown it.
Also, anyone else notice that Sayid’s accent is different since is resurrection? It’s more English. But it’s also more like Naveen Andrews’s real accent, so maybe it’s just bad acting.
I still think Claire is hot.
DT1
5546
I definitely think we have seen Smokey as Christian (for example, when he encourages Locke to turn the time-travel wheel) but I also wonder whether we have seen Christian as just a ghost.
In season 4, after Jack and the O6 had left the island, he sees Christian at the hospital. (After Hurley said Charlie had told him that Jack would be getting a visitor.) Shortly thereafter, he starts taking pills and drinking and begins his downward spiral.
madkevin
5547
Something my wife mentioned the other day - the smoke alarm goes off right before Jack sees his Dad there at the hospital.
DT1
5548
That’s a good point but it would suggest that Smokey can leave the Island at will. He seemed to suggest to Sawyer this season that he needed his help to leave the Island. But who knows what the rules are?
Ender
5549
I am pretty sure they’re making it up as they go along. They don’t have any ‘rules’.
madkevin
5551
Well, yeah. That’s called “writing”. Did you mistake it for a documentary?
Generally you’d want to create a consistent world, that requires rules. Making it up as they go implies they have no rules to follow and just do whatever they feel like when they feel like. I think the latter is more accurate when it comes to Lost so I’m willing to bet things prior to, say, season 4 or 5, could very well be left completely unresolved.
Lost isn’t a novel, and writing for TV is not the same as writing for other mediums. Lost is a great example of a show writing in and around the constraints put on it from outside forces.
Before season 4, ABC was treating Lost like any other show. Which means the writers had no idea how long they had to tell the story they had in mind. This lead to lots of what is retrospectively a great deal of time-waster episodes. And of course, add to that a writer’s strike that forced them to truncate some elements that may have been fleshed out.
In writing for television, there are things you cannot control. Who would have guessed that the dude playing Ben was going to be such a terrific actor? So you bend and twist the show to accommodate for it. As soon as the show runners were able to hash out a specific timeline for how long the show had left, the quality of Lost takes a huge turn upwards in my opinion. The pace literally gets picked up starting pretty much from S4 onwards.
I think the Joss Whedon model is best for this: season long arcs that culminate in one overall arc for the show. But Lost, in some ways, is an experiment in a new style of story-telling - a long-form narrative structure within network constraints.
So I do think they have a end goal in mind, and I do think they have always had a general idea of where they want the show to go. And I have faith (hah!) that there are some general rules that the show is following.
I’d say it was earlier than that–specifically Desmond’s episode in the middle of season 3–when they kicked into high gear. That was also about the time they were negotiating with ABC to put an end date on the show. Once they knew they only had 3 seasons left the quality of the show really went up.
I disagree. They could have easily planned out the later parts of the show and keep Smokey and Jacob’s behaviour and abilities along with the stories of the rest of the characters consistent without actually knowing when the end would come though knowing they’d have at least a season to wrap things up. It’s also not the first series to do this sort of thing. X-files certainly had a very drawn out several season’s long story arc with the writers not knowing when it would end.
Planning isn’t that difficult and of course there’d have to be some issues that arise, such as actors leaving or characters becoming more popular than the writers and producers might have thought but that doesn’t mean they can’t have rules governing the world they created.
Did you actually watch X-Files? You’d be hard pressed to find a worse example of arc planning. Carter admitted he never planned any of it and it’s a complete mess to this day. Lost is pretty consistent, actually.
And your dismissal that planning should be easy is completely off base. If ABC wanted them to drag this show out forever, at what point do they get off the island? Season 4? 5? 6? Are they off for a few seasons? And how long do they time travel? Anyone who isn’t able to respect the writers of Lost for the tremendous balancing act they’ve performed is idiotic. Is it perfect? Not even close. But there’s never been a single long term show or movie near as complicated, and any that have tried, completely collapse under their own weight.
There are valid criticisms to be made of the show, but they’re the same ones you could’ve made in Season 1. Many have gotten used to it, and just as many think they sound smart by parroting the broken record list year after year.
Everything BigRedCat said x 2.
I enjoyed the X-Files, mostly, but it is a complete mess in terms of any type of consistent narrative. Lost’s overall story consistency is much, MUCH better and really does seem to be taking shape as a cohesive whole as long as you’re willing to buy into the some of the mythic fantasy elements required for the story to hold together as we slide into the end game.
Isn’t there a webisode or something where Christian appears in the forest and tells the dog to go find “his son”, which happens right after the plane crash? Trying to remember all the other times we’ve seen him.
Of course it’s also possible that Christian’s appearance was Jacob, not Smokey… and yeah Claire already mentioned her father and her friend. Hmmm.
— Alan
Anyone who watched The Practice.
Was he on The Practice? I never saw it, so to me he’s Ben.
