Yeah except no-one other than Jack, Richard, Hurley, Desmond, and Ilana* actually considers it a serious problem, the rest of the cast either doesn’t care about anything or is just out for themselves. How can you not assume something terrible might happen if the murderous, scheming smoke monster escapes into the real world, after everything they’ve seen happen?
*We don’t really know Hawking and Widmore’s goals yet, although Hawking seems to know what’s up.
True.
(Five letters. Suck it, forum rules.)
On one hand, you’re right that a lot of the characters seem a little more indifferent to a clearly supernatural threat than you might expect.
On the other hand, I think they could work a healthy fear of “HOLY CRAP GUYS THAT’S A DUDE THAT TURNS INTO SMOKE AND KILLS PEOPLE” into their current actions and motivations anyway. They could be a bit more visibly freaked out and still pretty believably respond with “And I just want to get out of here, no matter what!”
Running from the threat seems natural. These aren’t all heroes, not everyone’s going to jump to line up and do their part to stop the Man in Black. And it’s still easy to imagine them not truly believing that the Man in Black spells game-over for the world if he escapes. With varying degrees of success, they’ve been avoiding him on their own on the island this entire time, so despite what they’re being told about him destroying everything, I wouldn’t blame them for thinking that if they all just got out of here, escape is possible and he can just be someone else’s problem.
I didn’t want you to have to see me that way.
In terms of believability I can understand where they are coming from.
If it was me and all anyone ever told me was “If he leaves the island, everything will be gone. Your wife, family, it’s over.”
Yeah and what the hell does that mean, really? Nothing. When someone tells me something vague like that, I take it to mean they don’t actually know, they are just playing it off like they know something.
What irks me is that they should know each other pretty well by now. The minute Kate raises the Claire issue Sawyer should have known Claire IS coming with them, that’s Kate’s nature. Or when Jack jumps off the boat and Kate wants to know what happened- dude just say “Jack doesn’t want to leave the island…again. He says it don’t feel right.” Might as well, Kate’s going to do what she’s going to do and Sawyer knows that from previous experience.
But with all the insane, supernatural(?), nutso shit they’ve seen since they got there? They all forgot about it? All of Locke’s candidate followers seem to know pretty well what/who he is; they’re deathly afraid of him and yet they would willingly unleash him on the world? Shit, these people have traveled through time, seen the smoke monster, heard the whispering woods, experienced the island’s other mysticisms such as healing or, from the temple, possible resurrection? And now, scientific or not, that’s it? They’re just gonna leave at that? Hell, half of them volunteered to fucking go back. Come on!
Then fuck all the characters who just think, ok, “whatever. I just wanna get the fuck off this rock.” No chance in hell I’d let that SOB leave without knowing what he might do to the rest of the world.
They didn’t actually spend all that much time together if you think about it… The first three seasons were what, 4 months? Then I think they all get seperated. Sawyer might know Juliet or Miles really well, but he wouldn’t necesarily know Kate or Jack as well as viewers of the show.
I ninja’d an edit. But that does partially apply, although IMO, not much when it comes to their motivations.
edit: when it’s all over, I’d like to see a montage of all the slomo reunion scenes the group has had since the first season, and at the end, Ben or Miles’ quote about how they only ever have two plans: go to the beach or go to the barracks. Or something. I can’t find the quote, but it was awesome. And so meta.
(ninja’d again!)
All the freaky stuff you’ve just described also seems like a great reason to do exactly what they’ve done: play it cool, go along with this weird thing in Locke’s body, and then make a run for it as soon as they have the chance. The more clearly powerful and supernatural he is, the less likely they are to think “and I should be the one to stop him!” and the more likely they are to think “I couldn’t even do anything if I wanted to!”
Plus, he’s been trying to win them over. Obviously most of them don’t really trust him, but it still makes a sort of sense to go along with Locke’s story (that he just wants to get everyone off the island) until they got their chance to run for it, because he wasn’t actively trying to kill any of them as long as they were just following him.
Well, the ones that know they’re candidates also know MiB can’t do fuck-all against them while on the island. And they know that possibly, probably, if they left, he could. That’d motivate me.
The others (who aren’t even candidates anymore such as Kate, Claire, and Sayid), fuck 'em. Sayid aside (who seems to be becoming a unique Lockeness-zombie) the other 2 are worthless. I hope Kate dies in a fire and Claire throws her into it. Then patchy comes back from the dead and stuffs a grenade in Claire’s mouth. End of their stories. Perfect.
JD
6171
Well, the ones that know they’re candidates also know MiB can’t do fuck-all against them while on the island.
Where was that established?
I mean, we do know that. But I don’t remember any of the characters being aware of the rules. AFAIK, the only thing a few of them know is that you can’t easily kill yourself if you still have a purpose. Or are you referring to the point of MiB telling them that he needs them to get off the island?
I’m not a Kate fan, but I think this is unfair. First of all, she came back to the island in the first place to fetch Claire, and there’s no evidence to suggest she’s not sincere about that. Second, she killed her father because he’d been abusing her mother. Third, she raised Aaron off the island. Fourth, when that farmer she worked for in Australia was going to turn her in, she abandoned her escape plan to save his life.
Her selfish actions were all because she was on the run from the law, but other than that she’s almost foolishly selfless.
She’s boring and stupid, but she’s not selfish.
HRose
6173
The part that doesn’t work is that no one actually questioned Locke about it.
The decision is to leave with or without Locke. They should have at least tried to ask Locke perspective on this.
The thing about Locke/Smoky is that he is kind of intimidating, in the same way the polar bears were intimidating. No one is afraid of polar bears overrunning the world are they?
The smoke monster has limits, obvious ones that they’ve all seen. For one thing, if he was so badass why is he stuck on the island to begin with? If he’s so badass why does he NEED them to help him get off the island? Why can’t he just wipe out Widmore and his crew?
When you think about it, he’s just another of the unusual things they’ve seen or experienced on the island. And precisely because they have experienced so much that is unusual, he is sort of normal in a way. People talking to dead people, dead people coming back to life, time travel, polar bears on tropical islands- Smokie needs to stand in line if he wants to be considered extraordinary on that island.
That’s why I can see why the danger of him getting off the island is lost(hehe) in the white noise of all they are going through.
The last point. By saying he needs them so he can get off the island, he’s basically telling him that he can’t kill them without jeopardizing that.
Anyone else bothered by Sawyer’s hair during the Jack/Sawyer heart-to-heart on the boat? In his face from the back vs. all swept up and girly from the front. I know them’s some difficult shooting conditions, but it was distracting as hell to me once I noticed.
I was expecting at least another major character to die by this point. I mean, Charlie died way back when. Ilana was surprising, but did anyone feel the loss? Only four episodes left, let’s trim the fat.
They BETTER NOT kill Hurley.
I’m guessing everyone dies except Jack.
red_guy
6180
I think there’s a TV law that demands that parents will be reunited with their young children, especially if the separation happened against their will. That means that at least Jin and Claire (and possibly Sawyer) will leave the island. And Desmond will be reunited with Penny (duh).
