My, my, my. The last time Lost’s favorite good ol’ boy had himself a centric episode it was called “Every Man For Himself.” How far he’s come in a mere…two seasons. That’s right. It’s actually been two full seasons plus four episodes since we got ourselves a Sawyer fix, and he’s completely finished his transmogrification from a confidence-tricking Inigo Montoya into one hell of a Dread Pirate LaFleur. Leaping before looking into wells after people he doesn’t even seem to like very much, saving damsels in distress, keeping constant vigil for the other 815ers, pep-talking Juliet into her first successful on-Island delivery, and actually being the “new sheriff in town” he snidely proclaimed himself back in “The Long Con“…James “Don’t Call Me Sawyer” Ford has settled nicely into the role of Big Damn Hero™.
Yes, on this Island you’re brave, daring, handsome, you’re someone…
And you know? Ben would know. Is there any way in Hell that Ben Linus wouldn’t have instantly recognized post-crash Sawyer in 2004 as looking and sounding the spitting image of the DHARMA Initiative’s drawlin’ lawman he must have known in his youth? Didn’t think so. We may not have seen young Ben Linus wandering around on camera, but given what we know of Ben’s chronology (born ~1962, arrived at the Island no more than 12 years old) and “LaFleur’s” (with the DI at least 1974-1977), he has to have been there by the time Sawyer drifted into town and talked his way to the top security gig.
But back to Sawyer’s heroism for a bit here. I really find myself buying this version of Sawyer. His vendetta has been carried out, his sacrifice allowed the O6 to get off the Island, his vigilance ensured that the O6 would find the other time-trapped 815ers when they returned, his quick wits and willingness to tell the truth kept the peace between the Others and DHARMA. He is now acting like more of a leader, I think, than Jack ever did. In fact, there was only one single moment in the whole episode where James acted selfishly, like the Sawyer of old, and that was when he ran out on Juliet without telling her that Jin had found their Oceanic 815 friends returned to the Island…especially Kate. Aaaaaaand we’re back in ‘shipper territory. Blast.
Am I the only one out here who actually thought that the 3-year Sawyer-Juliet pairing during DHARMA days was the single most healthy coupling on this show since Des & Pen finally found one another again, (hopefully) never to let go? Seriously, let Doctor Fix-It and Fickle Freckles have one another. They’re beyond lame and deserve one another and that would finally keep all this ‘shipper crap from getting in the way of all the amazing mythology yet to come for all the worthwhile characters. (Aside: Am I also the only one who thinks Evangeline Lilly looks kind of like a ferret? Just asking…)
OK…breathe, Sonya. I know it won’t happen, but a geeky girl can hope, right?
Well, that’s OK. We were also getting a steady stream of answers and tantalizing half-answers that more than made up for the revenge of the inane lurve quadrangle.
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…
While fellow DocArzt recapper, Fishbiscuit, beat me to the punch, I also noticed that the rope pulled back through time in Sawyer’s hand got left sticking out of the ground in some presumably ancient time after the Lostaways did the time warp again, presumably serving as the cue to its builders to build it. Much like Locke & Alpert’s compass and Faraday’s instrument settings, that rope looks like one more candidate for one common side-effect of time-loops: ontological paradox.
For those of you not wanting to go through a whole Wikipedia article on the subject, ontological paradox is one in which an item or piece of information is eternally circulating through a time loop, and therefore having neither origin nor end. Who made that compass? It gets passed from Locke to Alpert, back to Locke, who in turn hands it back to Alpert. Where did Faraday’s instrument settings come from if Faraday gave them to Desmond who gave them to Faraday’s past self? And where did the well’s rope come from if the original makers of the well used the same rope left them for them from the future, which will always be brought back from the future to be found coming mysteriously up out of the ground? You see my point?
The “grandfather paradox“—aptly named since it’s also the granddaddy of all paradoxes, the one which holds that no time-traveler can take any action which will prevent their time-trip from occurring in the first place—may not be one that can exist in the Lost universe, but the smaller paradoxes of these bits of matter or information seemingly without origin is one I think that Darlton and the other writers are going to have to address now that they’ve introduced several examples of same. And I’m confident they can. Desmond’s exceptional nature, the capabilities of the Island, Walt’s special abilities, oddly-shifting home decor…we’re clearly not in a purely deterministic, Tralfamadorian model of time here. Only mostly so. I’m willing to buy the idea that one or more of these special few could allow the past to be re-written slightly or something to enter our timeline from a “nearby” parallel one.
But in the meantime, poor, poor Dan knows full well that no matter how much he doesn’t want to be time’s bitch, he’s still somehow going to try and fail to convince a young Charlotte that she needs to never, ever come back to the Island. And he’s none too happy about it. His desperate attempt to involve temporal wildcard Desmond Hume didn’t succeed in keeping Charlotte from dying and her body from being swept away from him by the last of the time-skips, and now he’s stuck in “whatever happened happened-land.” Now the question is, can he still find it within himself to perform whatever mission it is that Mama Hawking’s been grooming him for all his life…or to even want to do it?
(By the way, to all you people nattering on about Charlotte being “too young!” to be the scampering redheaded girl we saw this episode because Ben said she was born in 1979…did it ever occur to you that she might have had falsified documents? Again, just asking…)
But now that we have evidence that several of our 815ers were actually part of the DHARMA Initiative (and remember, kids, that means they were always part of the DHARMA Initiative, even if it happened to them subjectively four months after their crash). Doesn’t that also put a whole new spin on a lot of the behavior of the Others toward the 815 survivors during the first four seasons?
Other interlopers (the US Military, the French Team, who knows who else) were wiped out without mercy, but the DI and the 815ers were granted truces and delineated territories (well, until that nasty Purge business, but what’s a few cans of neurotoxin between friends?). High-ranking Others clearly had foreknowledge which guided their dealings with these two groups. In the case of the 815ers at the end of 2004, the effort was at least in part to keep them away from any potential store of information that could reveal foreknowledge to them of their impending time travel follies while still keeping alive all those who had to be kept alive. Could you imagine if they’d found a group shot of Sawyer, Jack, Kate, Hurley, and maybe Sayid, Sun, or Frank in ’70s vintage DI jumpsuits?
Can you imagine the hue and cry among the rank and file Others too young to remember the various visits by time travelers about why they weren’t disposing of any “off-list” crash survivors?
Sooner or later, they’re going to have to show us which Others got what information when, aside from what we’ve already seen of Locke’s and Sawyer’s interactions with Richard and Faraday’s with (presumably) Eloise Hawking. I’m telling you, at the very least, there was foreknowledge of Ajira 316, given that survivors from that plane ended up in the ’70s. But I’m betting foreknowledge goes at least a little further than that, althought probably not too much further. If the foreknowledge doesn’t run out before Season 6 is wrapping up, then I’ve seriously misjudged something in my analysis of the stakes of the “game.”
Turn me to stone, do anything you want with me!
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the saucy half-reveal of the four-toed statue’s full-sized glory in what I can only agree were probably ancient times going back some millennia. The Name that Egyptian Deity pool is getting awfully full, to the point where only obvious “not-its” like Bastet or Khonsu are left.
But I personally don’t even think that which God(dess) it is is nearly as important as the fact that it really does seem to be Egyptian. Those really do look like ankhs in its hands, and it does jibe with the Hieroglyphs we’ve seen scattered throughout the show in the Donkey Wheel chamber, the Smokey Summoning Room, and the Temple, among others.
That the “exit” from the Island after turning the wheel is in the middle of the African desert has also justly been connected to the ongoing Ancient Egyptian thread slowly weaving its way through the tapestry of Lost. I just don’t think we have nearly enough information at the moment to make any kind of educated guess as to whether or not the current Others are to greater or lesser degree descendent of the Ancient Egyptians (or may even be one, in Alpert’s case), or whether the Egyptians descended from the Island’s old inhabitants, or vice-versa.
All we know for sure is that some Ancient Egyptian-esque civilization at least was on the Island and built some pretty amazing things.
The telephone is ringing. Is that my mother on the phone?
We also learned for sure that, whatever happened on the Island to stop women who conceived on-Island from being able to deliver safely on-Island, happened between that last known-good birth in 1977 and Juliet’s original arrival in 2001, and it didn’t have a damned thing to do with the statue. (Sorry, folks, but it couldn’t have. That statue was long since rubble and a remaining four-toed foot by 1977.)
The way I see it, this reinforces the popular theory that it was somehow Ben’s fault and likely had to do with a tragedy involving his childhood sweetheart, Annie. If Annie’s not the first Island-slain mother, I’ll eat my hat. In fact, I’ll go out and buy a hat, roast it, put some ketchup and salt on it, and then eat it.
But it also tells us another thing…if the Island was once safe for motherhood, then it could be again. Juliet’s original task on the Island isn’t impossible after all. So, mark my words once again. We haven’t seen the last bit of time travel. Somehow, sone way, Juliet is going to get back to 2005 or later and fix things once and for all.
DHARMA days are here again
And finally, we learned that the five Lostaways who joined DHARMA in “LaFleur,” plus at least three more (Jack, Kate, and Hurley…more if we believe the teaser for 2 weeks from now) are going to be stuck in the late ’70s for at least a little while now that the Island’s record seems to have gotten its groove back thanks to the funktastic J-Locke.
That being the case, be on the lookout for the following:
1. Faraday and Dr. Chang/Candle/Wickmund/Halliwax getting together for a little cross-temporal home videography.
2. Finding out just how Horace and Olivia are related if Horace is gettin’ it on with Amy.
3. Lots and lots of Li’l Ben’s back-story. Will Sawyer or any of the others be tempted by the old “kill Hitler as a kid” idea even if it would never work?
4. Faraday yielding to the inevitable and delivering his Message of Doom™ to the redheaded moppet.
5. Some kind of future-info-download from the Lostaways either directly to the Others or else to DHARMA staff that will find its way into Other hands after the Purge.
6. All Lostaways getting the hell out of Dodge before said Purge…they know it’s coming.
7. All our Lostaways somehow reconnecting in the post-Ajira 316 “present”…but will our DHARMA-bound Lostaways have to do that the slow way?
Tune in in two weeks, true believers!
(PS: Since there’s an off-week and DHARMA’s figuring so prominently, look out for my “How to Make Your Own DHARMA Jumpsuit” post, coming soon!)
Tags: dharma, Faraday, Juliet, Kate, Looking at the Little Things, paradox, predestination, Sawyer, time travel
45 Responses to “Looking at the Little Things: 5.08 “LaFleur””
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Section Header References:
“Yes, on this Island you’re brave, daring, handsome, you’re someone…”
—Ben Linus, Lost, “Confirmed Dead”
“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…”
—Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime”
“Turn me to stone, do anything you want with me!”
—Alan Parsons Project, “Stereotomy”
“The telephone is ringing. Is that my mother on the phone?”
—The Police, “Mother”
“DHARMA days are here again”
—Paraphrase of Led Zepplin, “Dancing Days”
[...] That’s right, Lostoholics, we finally got a Sawyer-centric episode for the first time since early Season 3, and boy is it ever a doozy. And now you can read all about it over at DocArzt & Friends. [...]
First off, nice Firefly reference.
I couldn’t agree more about James and Juliet. Let Jack and Kate continue their muddles and self-destructive fling – I like the new not-Sawer and Kate would only mess him up.
I don’t know if the rope at the well would qualify as an ontological paradox. I’d say that it most likely told the well’s diggers where to dig, but I don’t believe that the rope existed from the digging of the well up to Locke’s descent. Not unless the rope is also experiencing whatever it is that’s keeping Richard held together so well.
I wouldn’t say that the compass was one, either. My assumption was that from the point that Locke gave Richard the compass in 1955 until Richard gave it back to Locke while mending his leg, there were two compasses, overlapping each other in time. Richard owns compass A, Locke shows up and give him compass B (which is actually the same compass,) Richard owns compass A and B until he meets Locke at the downed plane and gives him compass A – which then, after the time shift, becomes compass B.
As for the settings that Desmond gave Faraday: if Desmond is special and the rules don’t apply (as Daniel said,) then it’s possible that Daniel came up with the settings on his own, only later than the date that Desmond showed up. On the island, Daniel gave Desmond the settings, which Desmond then gave to past-Daniel at an earlier time than he would have come up with them. If Desmond can change the past, then it’s possible that the numbers did originate with Daniel.
Perhaps this discrepancy with his past part of the cause of Daniel’s memory problems.
I believe that everything must have an origin, even if it gets lost in altered time.
darlton have expressed many a time that they want a portray time travel with NO paradoxes.
good luck
DHARMA guys wander through the jungle and find a rope protruding from the ground. “That’s weird,” they think, and decide to dig the rope up and build a well. The rope they found in the dirt gets thrown away because it is old and rotten. They go get some nice new DHARMA rope for their new well.
No Paradox.
As for the settings to Daniel’s machine, I am sure, Daniel being the clever chap that he is realised he would still have to work out those settings on his own, so after Desmond left, Daniel set about working hard until he came up with the setting on his own. He then wrote those in his journal so he would have them handy when it came time to give them to Desmond.
No Paradox.
yes, but if the rope sawyer holds in the future is the “nice new DHARMA rope”, then how is it the old rope in the past, which becomes the new rope, which becomes the old rope….
and around and around we go.
besides, how did the rope get there in the future? it’s only by virtue of there being one there already to find. hence, paradox.
Sonya, have you considered if Fish’s post about the rope prompted you to post about the rope, then your post would never have existed if it wasn’t for the post of the rope that existed before!
LOL. Best. Comment. Ever.
How do you know that the statue was rubble and just a four toed foot by 1977? You say it like its ‘fact’. I don’t recall anything happening to the statue during the last episode. The foot isn’t seen again until 2004.
When they flashed to 1974 the “well” got their attention. Sawyer jumped in. If the huge statue was still there, don’t you think they would have still been wondering about it, and going to investigate it? Since they didn’t do that, the statue was then not there.
I’m all for solutions but can you definitively make that assumption? They have “the big flash” and they all decide they feel better. All of the sudden, the well is back and Sawyer thinks John is down there. The plan was to wait for John, not to go further investigate parts of the island unknown.
I usually don’t like definitive statements made from little evidence–ESPECIALLY in this show–but in this case I have to agree with Sonya. Why would the showrunners even bother having the group transported so far back in time to see the statue if it was still around after their next flash. There was absolutely no other point to that long-distance flash than to show us the statue, and it was the ONLY piece of evidence we got that they were a long way back. If it was still there in 1977, somebody woulda been like, “Oh, maybe we weren’t so far back. Look, that statue is still there. Hey, anybody wanna go check it out? We’re done time-skipping now so we’ll have plenty of time to wander over there and investigate.”
Sorry, I may have over-stated my point…
Brilliant. This finally provides a coherent explanation of Jacob’s List.
Brilliant. This finally offers a coherent explanation of Jacob’s List.
But Kate and JAck and Sawyer weren’t on the list, were they?
Jack is not on Jacob’s list, at least according to Pickett in “I Do”
Never mind, didn’t see your post below.
Whoops sorry about the double post.
Great article,Sonya and adds to what I’ve often pondered: from the beginning, it seemed that the Others knew exactly who they wanted or needed. As if they knew them. So the List was created based on who they knew before in the ’70s. Yup, yup. YES!!
Ahhh, now my head will stop hurting until the next epi. Maybe.
Mama Lost
From Lostpedia:
“In “I Do”, Danny Pickett mentioned that “Shephard wasn’t even on Jacob’s list”. ”
“In “Par Avion”, Mikhail states that Kate is not on the list because she is “flawed”; Sayid is not on the list because he is “weak and frightened”; and Locke is not on the list because he is angry. “
Jacob’s list also included several members of the tail section, none of which were present in the days of Dharma.
I don’t think that the mystery of the list has been solved just yet.
Sonya, again a great post. I liked your connection with Jacob’s list. I have to admit I was going on the assumption that the ones “On the List” were just special in some hitherto unknown way. The fact that it was Hurley, (then nixed) Jack, Sawyer, and Ferr..er… Kate… makes me think that you’re right. That would also kind of explain why Ben was watching them on Othervision, which has always kinda creeped me out. I mean, how weird would it be seeing people you knew as a kid show back up? That could also fit very nicely in with the Henry Gale thing too.
Also, if you need someone to bring you the hat or fire it up for you on a grill, I’m your girl.
darn it! you bet me to it…guess thats what i get for not even going to this site in …omg…a week! stupid job! ANYWAY…. If Clueless doesn’t get the hat, i will. i got a red soxs hat laying around somewhere lol
Sonya, loved the post. im with you 100% great job!
Just weighing in…
Why is it that everyone considers it FACT that at the precise time of 1974 on the island there is nothing stopping mothers from delivering babies safely on the island. That goofy doctor states in plain english that its common practice for the DI to take mothers back to the mainland. Why would they bother if there wasn’t some foreknowledge of a possible threat to the mother or baby’s safety?
And another thing, why is it that everyone is back to treating the sub as a means off the island for the others and the DI? Is that a FACT. Doesn’t it seem a little too neat in an non-Lost sort of way? Every time we have seen someone arrive via the sub (Ben, Juliet…) their arrival seems a bit fishy… npi… as if they were placed in the sub as subtrafuge to mask their real means of travel…. again npi… If that is the others’ method of travel off the island, how do you explain Ben lying in bed recovering from spinal surgery instructing Richard to go get “the Man from Tallahassee” and Richard shows up in Florida, possibly instigating a car crash with Anthony Cooper on the freeway and then smiles at him while pretending to be an EMT, bringing him back to the island all before the night is out in New Otherton?
Ooooh, I don’t remember this! [racks brain] What epi is this? I need to watch this again…
Mamalost
I think the threat to the mother/baby’s safety is that their medical facilities aren’t fantastic on the island. They send expectant mothers to the mainland so they have access to better equipment. Juliet said that no one makes it to their third trimester– Amy made it just short of 9 months and survived the pregnancy. It’s pretty safe to say that the baby curse doesn’t exist yet.
As for the sub, we know that coming to and from the island is always bumpy. Alpert told Juliet that in E307. Clearly the barrier/window isn’t smooth to pass through. So yes, I think the sub actually is a means of travel to and from the island.
As for Ben sending for Cooper, he had already been captured several days beforehand and was being held by the Others. Ben was likely just telling Richard to move Cooper from one cell to another.
faraday stressed how important it was to follow a very thin and specific path bearing 315 (?)…doesn’t it seem easier to do it underwater than in the air?
Great review as always. I agree that Sawyer and Juliet seem very functional and that the dysfunctional Jack and Kate seem like they were made for each other.
by the way, I bought and read Slaughterhouse-5 in the course of about a week. Well worth it. Next up: Time Traveler’s Wife!
By the way, is anybody else worried that we haven’t seen Desmond in a few weeks?
No reason to be worried about Desmond. The island isn’t finished with him, even if he thinks he is finished with it. If you trust Ms. Hawking, that is.
Penny, now, I’m a little worried about. But just a little.
Before too long our reunited group with find themselves back in more contemporary times, and I expect Desmond to be there waiting for them (whether he knows it or now.)
Hopefully Penny will be there too.
One more thing: I enjoyed that Hitler-time travel page.
whoops…James is me.
What if the sub just takes them around the island to the “Looking Glass” station, up underneath there was plenty of room for a small sub to surface. Once they got there, they’d go “through the looking glass” possibly while drugged?
I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes a lot of sense. We’ve seen the pier where the sub docks, so then what would be the purpose of the secretive, underwater station with the moon pool? It makes sense to me that the sub travels from there to the pier only.
Here’s how I think the series ends: Lostaways stay on the Island from the mid 70s to 2005. They make sure that the button gets pressed as Oceaniac 815 passes over and the plane doesn’t crash into the island. Everything returns to normal. Oceaniac 815 lands in LA. Series ends with people getting off the plane, not recognizing each other.
Isn’t that one of them paradox thingies?
I mean, if the Losties are on the Island and see the plane pass overhead, but it doesn’t crash, then how did the Losties get on the Island in the first place?
The only reason its a paradox is that we rely too heavily on a need for cause and effect. When time becomes a fluid and multi-directional body effects can alter causes just as often as causes create effects.
In regards to LOST. I see no paradox in the losties pushing the button thus allowing the plane to pass over safely. You ask how the losties got to the island to push the button. They got there by traveling through time. Matter was reorganized in the past and imprinted with flowing electron signals. This was created by a controlled burst of energy. I say that the John Connor effect, destroying someones means of existence and thus destroying that person, cant happen because even if you destroy my reason to exist, i still exist and you need to destroy me. My electron signals have still been imprinted into my brain, my memories are still there.
I’ve never gotten this whole fascination with the existence of paradoxes. Im fairly certain they don’t exist mainly because that is the very definition of a paradox… its something that can’t happen.
Dude, I’d love to see you run into Daniel Faraday in a bar sometime.
I understood about 8 words of that…
But you said, “I see no paradox in the losties pushing the button thus allowing the plane to pass over safely. You ask how the losties got to the island to push the button. They got there by traveling through time.”
But in order to travel through time they had to first crash on the Island. If they don’t do that, then they never are able to travel back in time and push the button when the plane flies over.
By pushing the button and allowing the plane to pass safely overhead, they change everything that originally happened following the crash. If they push the button and prevent the plane crash, then it’s impossible for them to be there to push the button and prevent the plane crash. It doesn’t work.
” Im fairly certain they don’t exist mainly because that is the very definition of a paradox… its something that can’t happen.”
And I think that’s exactly right. They can’t happen. You can’t go back in time and kill your parents because then you’d never be born. And the Losties can’t prevent the plane from crashing because the means to do that require them to first crash.
Jalocke makes sense, I think, if we’re dealing with a multiverse…but I can’t see how “whatever happened, happened” could be interpreted that we’re all just independent flows of electron signals with no causal relationship to anything. This show is all about cause and effect.
Regardless, of whether your theory could or couldn’t happen due to a paradox, I find the idea of whether or not the button gets pushed as the ultimate conclusion to the series amazingly mundane and boring. I might be able to see this as one small facet of things to be done in order to course correct time, but not as the only or primary objective.
Ever seen Donnie Darko? That’s exactly what you’re talking about.
If the birth problems are, as I believe, related to the nerve gas used in the purge then yes, they are Ben’s fault (alternatively it may have been a yet untold event with the hydrogen bomb).
“We haven’t seen the last bit of time travel” – No! I do not believe the purge will kill our 815 survivors, nor do I think that Locke/Ben and the rest of the Ajira flight crew will remain separated in time.
THANK YOU! Finally someone who seems to hate Jack & Kate as much as I do! And, yes, she does look like a ferret… lol.
I love the Sawyer-Juliet hook-up and hope they have a baby or can at least survive Ms. Thing’s return…
I had previously posted this in “Old Four Toes” might be better suited here.
Regardless of said “baby curse”,…What if Sawyer somehow is the one who actually helps the women on this island successfully conceive “healthy” children? If we think about it, Sawyer has been present for both successful births on this island (that we have witnessed).
After a flash in the jungle when they are “skipping” through time Sawyer hears screaming and he stumbles upon Kate delivering Claire’s baby Aaron…
And of course Sawyer was in the vicinity when Juliet successfully delivering Amy’s baby in 1970′s Dharma time…
In response to the “paradox” issue regarding Scooter’s engaging finale theory, Jalocke gave a very valid and concise argument as to how our Losties could still exist. It’s always interesting to me that people are willing to believe string/time travel are possibilities, but assume relative laws as we know them still apply in a time/space spectrum that we are unfamiliar with. Apparently the flow of time varies from one location to another. Hence Einsteins term, “the law of relativity”.
Lastly, Juliet and Sawyer as a couple are not convincing at all! On screen they have absolutely no passion for one another. Sawyer and Kate on the other hand share a carnal lustfulness that’s undeniable!