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As we delve into our hiatus-long rewatch of the first 5 seasons of Lost, I feel that it’s only fair that I mention, this will be the first time I’ve rewatched Lost since it first aired. Now, don’t get me wrong, I help run Lost websites, and as such, I’ve certainly gone back and rewatched single episodes here and there, as well as rewatching certain scenes over and over. For example, I’ve probably rewatched the scene’s where Oceanic 815 breaks apart, from Jack and Kate’s point of view, over 50 times. But I’ve never rewatched even two episodes of Lost, back to back. I know, I know, some of you may be screaming blasphemy, but that makes this rewatch even more spectacular for me, and my comments will be reflective of that, I’m sure. Now on to some Lost…
I was almost giddy rewatching the pilot, filled with a level of excitement I really didn’t expect. I immediately found myself thinking about the other things happening on the island as flight 815 was crashing. Ben is giving orders to Ethan and Goodwin at that very instant to infiltrate the camps. It also seems as though Jacob might have been providing lists of the people that they were supposed to be grabbing to join their little band, though I’m still a bit unclear whether the lists from Jacob were something Ben fabricated, or if Richard brought those lists to Ben, since we know that Ben never actually saw Jacob. Also, Kelvin had just been killed in his scuffle with Desmond, and of course Desmond getting back to the hatch late is what ultimately brought the fated plane down.
On the first night after the crash, the smoke monster is heard in the jungle, and a thought crossed my mind that I hadn’t considered before…was Ben controlling Smokey? We know that he can call him, but it doesn’t seem like every move Smokey makes is controlled by Ben, so my first instinct is to say no, Ben had nothing to do with Smokey’s appearance that first night. But that certainly doesn’t mean that Mr. Dark Shirt (also being referred to as Esau) wasn’t Smokey in disguise that whole time. I’ve also never been able to shake the fact that Rose said the noises Smokey makes sounded familiar. But I still don’t have any better explanation for her comment than I did 5 years ago.
There were tons of other great moments that I won’t comment on only because these four episodes, and specifically the first two, are without a doubt some of the best television I will probably ever see in my life. I could go on for days and days about how fantastic they were. However, there are a few thing that I’d like to mention, beginning with Kate. I didn’t remember how well the writers had done with the foreshadowing of her running. I found small little comments hidden all through these first four episodes that foreshadow the runner that we know Kate to be now. It starts in the first episode when Jack gives Kate his story about counting to five and then letting the fear go. She tells Jack that she would have just run, and he says, “You’re not running now.” Later he even comments “Every time there’s an expedition into the jungle you go running off,” or something along those lines. I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I also found it interesting to look at each of the characters and think about their individual journey as people. Jin surprised me the most, as I had forgotten what a giant ass he was in the beginning. It’s amazing that the writers we able to make us fans of such a character, but I love Jin now. Jack, however, hasn’t changed much until recently. For most of this series he’s been the same guy, the hero that seems to be reluctant, but yet still can’t stop being the hero. It makes the impact of the changes he’s gone through in Season 5 to be all the more impressive. And then there’s Locke, who had the most unique perspective of all of the other survivors, which I have no doubt is why Mr. Black shirt (Esau), chose him, if that’s even a fair assumption. Locke saw the miracle that the island had to offer and knew he was somewhere very special. The foreshadowing in Walkabout was fantastic, with the big reveal of Locke being in the wheelchair not coming until the very end. It was quite genius and reminded me why this show made it so big, so fast.
Finally, of these four episodes, the item that hit me the hardest and related most closely to what we’ve all just seen this past season was Locke’s interaction with Walt, and his description of the game, Backgammon. Who would have thought such a little scene would have such long standing significance to the show, but it very obviously does, and is the kind of foreshadowing that shows that the producers have had this in the works since day one. Locke tells Walt, “Backgammon’s the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. 5000 years old. That’s older than Jesus Christ.” He goes on to give this great overview of the game, and possibly the whole story behind Lost, “Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.” After seeing Jacob (in his white shirt) speak with his nemesis (in his black shirt) in the season 5 finale, it’s difficult to not be able to see the comparison between the game backgammon and the obvious feud between Jacob and his Nemesis. It’s also kinda cool to think about the fact that Jacob and his black shirted nemesis might have actually been playing backgammon together 5,000 years ago!
That’s all I’ve got for the DocArzt crowd this week, but there’s far more to read about the Lost Rewatch, happening across the web. The links below will take you to other great articles from other Lost sites. Tomorrow (today actually, since its after midnight now) stars week 2 of the rewatch, so don’t forget to find the time this next week to watch the next 4 episodes of season 1, and I promise to have this post up next Sunday at a reasonable hour! Now here is some more Lost goodness.
Visit the Lostpedia Rewatch page for all of the most up-to-date Rewatch information, as well as their blog.
-Get Lost with Jopinionated – Rewatch Week 1
-Lostaholics Rewatch – Article 1 - Article 2
- Memories, Musings, and Mischief – Rewatch Week 1
More articles will be added, including Sledgeweb ReInvestigations, tomorrow!
66 Responses to “Lost Rewatch Week 1- S1- Episodes 1 – 4”
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“Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.”
I still cant get around the fact that the Man that introduced this line in the show became the ultimate pawn…through FAITH.
It only makes sense that he completed his “fate”… And i mean that in a way that if J.L. had to choose whether to be a “God” in an a miraculous island and go through all these adventures or remain a helpless cripple for the rest of his life, well he would choose “God”.
Not in a selfish way..but in a Locke (best for the island) style.
But maybe he didn’t really have a choice…..?
If the “touch” of Jacob is threading the Losties lifes…
Then nothing remains…no fate… no free will…no nothing..just threads..
No fate..No free will..no nothing… what remains…?
Only FAITH..
FAITH in the Thread-maker….
P.S.
(if Jacob doesn’t cover that little loophole I’m gonna kick his a s s….big time,
..Strip him off the master thread-maker rank and leave him naked underneath the temple)
Oh wait…didn’t the Nemesis already do that? …oh well.
Rose’s comment I believe refers to the fact that they used the sound of a taxi cab receipt printing as part of the smoke monster sound. After she says that, someone asks her where she’s from and she says “The Bronx”.
If you watch the commentary the Rose comment is explained. It isn’t significant in any way.
Great info Robbie, thanks. I’ll go check that out. I had a feeling it was nothing, but at the same time it just always stuck out and bothered me.
I TOTALLY disagree that it is NOT significant that Rose says the sound is familiar and that the reference is to the sound of the taxi cab!!! It is the first clue to what Smokey is: A mechanical creation. Smokey is not making those sounds because they are cool. Also, it is the biggest clue that Smokey IS NOT Man#2.
I had always thought Rose was talking about the other sound that Smokey makes. I heard something like it while watching a Minnesota Vikings game last year. They blast a viking horn over the loudspeakers and it is eerily similar to Smokey! Maybe Rose was a Vikings fan.
lucky for her she never had to watch tavaris jackson attempt to lead an nfl offense…
I thought it was very interesting that 6 Oceanic survivors sat around discussing why they needed to lie to everyone else. And then Kate told a single confidant(e).
Because she cannot be trusted. She has always been dishonest all her life.
Her character is someone who was bad as a child and a crook as an adult and she was brought to the island to redeem herself.
Since Rose had cancer, I wonder whether the sound is supposed to be like the magnetic energy used in MRI scans?
Robbie, could you tell us what the commentary on the Rose comment was?
Like meli said, the sound used was similar ‘of a taxi cab receipt printing’. Hence the question “where are you from”, and the answer “the Bronx”.
I thought it was interesting that the version of the “count to five” story Jack told Kate was told in a positive way. There was no mention of Christian “shaming” him in front of his peers. He presented it to Kate as if it were a heroic exercise that he himself originated. We also got confirmation (or were reminded) that the patient in that scene during the S5 finale wasn’t Sarah. Jack told Kate that it was a “16-year-old girl.”
I thought about Jack’s version being different as well. You can really take it two ways, I guess, either Jack is the kind of guy that purposely changed his story to make himself sound better, and make his point more clear to Kate so that she could do what he needed her to do, or you can take it that maybe, after his father’s death (or possibly even before) Jack realized how crucial that moment was in his development as a doctor, and maybe he started to realize that what Christian didn’t wasn’t such a bad thing after all, especially if it taught him the famed “count to 5″ trick.
I too noticed the story being changed. I just chalked it up to him trying to impress Kate since he was attracted to her. Wouldn’t do much for his rep if he said “Daddy told me to do this”, sounds much better if it was his idea.
Either that or the the show writers conceived the flashback in less detail when writing the pilot, than they did before making an entire scene out of it in season 5…
The writers have said all along that they knew where the story was going in terms of certain major plot points (and the foreshadowing proves it), but most of the details were filled in along the way, and this seems like one of those things where in the writers room during Season 5 and they decided it worked better if Daddy was there, getting under Jack’s skin as usual.
still hate how they killed off boone and shannon so early. they were in a big chunk of these first 4 eps.
Yeah, but their flashbacks were dreadfully boring. The creators have taken a lot from Stephen King and the one thing King loves to do is kill all his characters.
And the fact that their characters are not as meaningful as the others. They were like fillings only. I felt so sorry for Boone though. I thought he was really a nice guy who happened to fall in love with his stepsister (kinda creepy) and tried all he could to protect her. With Sharon, I hated her at first because she was really a brat. Just before she died and while still mourning for Boone, her character started to mellow out and became someone who wanted to change and be a better person.
The opening of the Pilot still gets to me, even after multiple viewing. It is such a fantastic way to open the series. It immediately draws you into the story and now after we have seen the mobisodes and know Christian sent Vincent into the scene just makes it that much richer. Also, the way Jack’s eye dilates from large to small or macrocosm to microcosm and then the story starts unfolding throughout the seasons from a microcosm to a macrocosm, ie. the demi-gods controlling the mortals, is a nice visual touch. Maybe this will figure into how the story ends. I am not so much a fan of the story looping back to the start, alla The Dark Tower, but I do hope their is some relation from the end to the beginning.
I am reading The Dark Tower series for the first time this summer. I’m almost finished with the third book, “The Wastelands”. If it turns out that you just spoiled the end of the series for me, I’ll hunt you down like a gunslinger chasing a Man in Black!
lol…
spoiled indeed..
I will get my cloak on. I gave you no details and their is a ton of stuff in the last book that is a surprise not and necessarily good surprises. For me the whole last book was the ending and what happened in the last 20 pages wasn’t more important than what happened on page 400.
Thankee-sai.
There are several scenes in the Pilot where Vincent seems to be staring intently at the castaways (when they go to find the cockpit, for example, and then get attacked by Smokey). Smokey, we now know, is referred to a Cerberus, and “some kind of security system.”
So get this…I think the Island is the place where the land of the Living and the land of the Dead overlap. “This Place Is Death.” Smokey is Cerberus, the hound that guards the gates of Hades. Jacob, the Man in White, represents the Living. The Adversary represents the Dead. They’re opposed, but life isn’t all good and death isn’t all bad.
Jacob still inhabits his body until the end of Season 5. I have theorized elsewhere that the man in black was killed at some point, and became a roaming entity until he was trapped in the cabin.
I think the Adversary can take the form of humans whose corpses are present on the island, and his watchdog Cerberus takes the form of animals whose corpses are on the island. It has been the Medusa spiders, a black horse, maybe a polar bear, and….wait for it….VINCENT.
Yep, I think at some point we will get a Vincent flashback that shows the dog dying in the crash. The Vincent on the island was always smokey, keeping an eye on things.
The Whispers are the voices of the dead, unseen but still present where the two worlds overlap. “You’re dead.” “Yes, I am dead. But I’m also here.”
That scene in “So It Begins” (Mobisode 13) was the Lord of the Dead sending his watchdog to go among the castaways, start gathering intel. The Long Con of Locke begins.
I’ve read a lot of theories, and though yours is more general, I like it the best!
Vincent does seem to conveniently get lost alot…no pun intended
That is strange….Vincent is with Rose and Bernard and he seems to be guarding these two well. That would mean he’s a good dog, which means he’s with Jacob.
Anyway, remember the scene where Locke enters the cabin and he finds Christian sitting there instead of Jacob. Locke asked him where Jacob was and Christian said he’s kinda like a messenger for Jacob….And out in the corner of the room is….Claire..
I have a hunch that Jacob took over the identity of Christian and Nemesis took over Claire’s identity and they are playing a game of.. what? with Locke’s mind to see if he can be manipulated into doing what they tell him to do.
“That is strange….Vincent is with Rose and Bernard and he seems to be guarding these two well. That would mean he’s a good dog, which means he’s with Jacob.”
Not necessarily. All the people with guns, still up to all their craziness, finding new ways to kill each other…those were “Jacob’s people.” They come, they fight, they corrupt, they destroy.
Given that Rose and Bernard are just hanging out, not messing with anything, seems to me the Locke-alike and Smokey would like them better.
Here is the only problem with Vincent being Smokey. In Exodus, at the exact same time Smokey was chasing the Black Rock Crew through the jungle, Vincent was swimming after the raft.
I think the Man in Black chose Locke not for his unique perspective, but rather because when the Pilot happens, Locke was already present on the Island 50 years earlier claiming he was the Others’ leader.
You may be onto something there Cutter XXIII. If NotJacob overheard Locke stating that he is the leader stating that Jacob sent him (or maybe was told about it by Richard) then he would of course be the obvious choice. I mean only the leader can speak to Jacob and visit him so the leader, John, would be the one who could actually kill him.
You may be onto something there Cutter XXIII. If NotJacob overheard Locke stating that he is the leader saying that Jacob sent him (or maybe was told about it by Richard) then he would of course be the obvious choice. I mean only the leader can speak to Jacob and visit him so the leader, John, would be the one who could actually kill him.
Great reading! I can’t believe that all these time, each episode has hidden clues from the beginning. Jack saying to Kate, “Everyone deserves a second chance..”…the backgammon game with Locke and Walt…
I’m trying to follow this rewatch thru your RSS feed, but this week’s article wasn’t posted. The feed has nothing since the original announcement. Please try to keep the RSS up to date or else it won’t be useful at all.
BTW I found a different RSS feed that has all the articles.
http://www.docarzt.com/category/lost/rewatching-lost/feed/rss/
So I’ll subscribe to that instead of the FeedBurner feed.
I dont know if this ever came up the first time around but i just watched “Walkabout” today and does anyone know one way or the other if smokey killed the boar for locke? Sounds like the boar was screaming when the monster was moving above and towards locke then he walks back with it. I just found it interesting and wasn’t sure if anyone knew for sure one way or the other.
I can’t remember where I read this but it was thought that Smokey killed the boar and gave it to Locke during their face to smoke encounter, which explains the blood stains on his upper body only.
That is never talked about or suggested in the show.
That would be an interesting development.
I also noted that Locke carves a dog whistle, and uses it to call Vincent….but then he keeps it. He doesn;t give it to Michael or Walt.
Which made me wonder whether it would even work for them at all. Seems like the whole first phase of the Long Con of Locke is to make Locke believe that he’s special, and has some sort of connection with the Island. If the Locke-alike wanted him to believe that, between his maneuvering of the Others (via “Jacob” in the cabin) and interfering via Smokey, it’d be colossally easy to do so.
It interested me how Kate said she saw ‘a lot of smoke’ in the jungle (that was assumed to be from the cockpit)…
…Maybe it wasn’t regular smoke, and she was actually glimpsing the smoke monster, all the way back there in season 1?…
Just a thought. There is a lot of discussion over what smokey is. Not substance but metaphorically. A Lot of people make the argument that smokeys free will (in other words, when he isn’t controlled by Ben) is a representation of conscience or there abouts. My question is why did he kill the pilot if that is the case? Anybody have an opinion?
i thought about that alot as well and the only thing that i can think of is that smokey thought the pilot was Frank (remember he was supposed to fly that plane) and since Allana/Bram think he may be a “candidate”, perhaps smokey was trying to avoid that. however this only works if Smokey and the man in black are the same (which i don’t think they are).
Ben did and never has controlled Smokey. Ben summoned Smokey! There is a HUGE difference and even in the summoning their was no guarantee Smokey would show up.
Somewhere in s4 Lapidus says that “he was supposed to fly that plane”. Maybe Smokey noticed that it was the wrong pilot and killed him because of that.
That actually sounds like a good explanation to me, but honestly, I think that in s1 the writers just wanted to have Smokey kill someone so that people were scared of it.
Or.. Smokey the Bad Nemesis thought that Lapidus was flying the plane so he kills him.. Remember, Liana thinks that Lapidus could be a candidate and we don’t know yet what that meant but it sounds like a good thing for Lapidus. That would mean Nemesis has been trying to kill him twice already, with Oceanic and Aljira and Lapidus escaped twice. I wonder if Jacob has something to do with this?
Smokey and Man#2 are not the same entity.
We haven’t actually seen any real evidence of the smoke monster having “free will.”
It seems to have purpose(s), it can complete tasks, it attacks from time to time, but it has not shown any ability to speak, any desire to communicate, not even a shred of sentience. It does things, but we have no idea why.
More and more, Cerberus really just sounds like a watchdog to me. Intelligent, but not necessarily sentient.
Yeah. My brother rememebered the backgammon thing, and mentioned it right after the finale aired, and how it might relate to Jacob.
Jacob and Mr. Black Shirt are playing a real life game of Backgammon, and the survivers are the pieces changine back and forth from black to white throughout the game.
RA also took the time and pointed out that young Locke had a pretty good sense of the game when he visited his foster home.
The first time we see Jacob and his friend, they see the Black Rock ship, and his friend asked if he brought them. Jacob won that battle, the loophole is his friend finding a way the finally win.
Speaking of “bringing them”…
We’re all agreed, I think, that Desmond causing the system failure at The Swan was what pulled the plane down onto the Island.
But it never would have been anywhere near the Island if it hadn’t gone off-course. “PILOT: Six hours in, our radio went out. No-one could see us. We turned back to land in Fiji. By the time we hit turbulence, we … we were a thousand miles off course. They’re looking for us in the wrong place.”
I’m guessing Jacob did that.
It’s funny how many things you actually catch when we rewatch the show from beginning, but for all we know a new character can emerge anytime in S6 and change every theory…thats the power of writing and creation. Jacob has an identical brother Melvin from Albany and he was on flight 815 and hung out with Frogurt and Arzt until the show needed him to pop up….it could happen. >.>
Any thoughts about the scene with Sawyer when he decides to join Kate, Sayid & co on their excursion into the monster infested jungle to try to get the transceiver to pick up signal…he is reading his letter, looking pretty intense & morose, and then he intently looks at the crew walking away, and joins them, stating “I’m unpredictable sweetheart…” (or something like that)…he walks accompanies them (actually leading the charge up the side of a big hill) and remains quite calm when they are suddenly attacked by the polar bear (which until it falls dead at his feet, no one knew what was charging at them)…after hearing that horrifying sound the night before that no one could identify, it always struck me as strange that Sawyer kept his cool and casually fires multiple shots straight on without blinking an eye.
Also, how did a polar bear get to the main island if they kept them at the Hydra (on Hydra island)? Sure polar bears can swim, but 2 polar bear attacks of the survivors within days of crashing and then not another appearance since? It seems like walt has a knack for looking at a picture of an animal and suddenly it appears (i.e., the 2nd bear that attacks him after he reads the comic book with the polar bear, and the bird that flies into the window when he is doing homework learning about that exact bird that died on his porch)…maybe the polar bears are not actually dharma polar bears but walt’s astral projection abilities (parapsychology)?
Eko was attacked, and actually kidnapped, by a polar bear in S3. Locke rescued him from the Polar Bear’s cave with a makeshift blow torch.
Sawyer joined them, because he had the gun, maybe thinking at least he can do something, if there’s danger ahead.
At the end of Tabula Rasa (I believe), Christian Shepherd appears at the edge of the grass to Jack. He’s dressed in his suit and white shoes, just as in the coffin. That got me to thinking about how Christian’s dead body came to the island in the first place? Has he been there before? We know that MiB interacted with Locke via Richard, telling Locke to kill himself and thus providing the vessel to kill Jacob. From the first few episodes of Lost, we see Christian Shepherd (in white shoes) appearing to Jack on the beach, just at the edge of the brush. Any thoughts on who might have inhabited Christian’s body at that point? If the light/dark shoes theories apply, was that Jacob? And, if so, does that then mean that Jacob somehow intervened in Christian’s life at some point, bringing his dead body to this island as a vessel to interact with Jack??
This is going to be really important goign forward with the rewatch.
Does anyone know if Christian ever appears on the Island in black shoes? Maybe that’s how we can tell whether it’s Jacob or the Locke-alike. Or maybe it’s Jacob in the white shoes and suit, and the Locke-alike when Christian ends up in casual dress later on.
So complex…
That’s a thought I’ve had since the end of S4: that the suited, white-shoed Christian and the casually-dressed Christian were two different entities.
Nobody has mentioned anything about Ep. 4 Walkabout. Found it interesting that Kate may be foreshadowing a little bit when she tells Jack that “Locke is gone”. She was assuming that the Smoke Monster killed him. We see that the Smoke Monster and Locke have “some kind of interaction”, but we don’t really see that exchange. Later Jack and Kate stumble upon Locke dragging a bore back to camp eerily similar to Locke bringing the bore back to Richard’s camp in Season 5.
Just throwing this out there….what if we find out next season that “Locke really was gone”, and that there was some sort of “inhabitation” of Locke by the Smoke Monster all the way back in season 1. I bet we will see some sort of flashback to that first exchange between Locke and the Smoke Monster. After all we at least know that it gave him the bore.
“A Walkabout is a journey of spiritual renewal, where one derives strength from the earth and becomes inseparable from it”
We do know that John met something when he seperated from Sayid and Kate, but we never seen what he seen, but he did mention to Jack what he saw was the eye of the island and that it was beautiful…I think this was “white rabbit” episode. We’ve seen John capture boars (using charlie as bait) and slit the throats so suggesting this one in “walkabout” was given to him by smokie isn’t working for me. I think his meeting with the entity just confirms his own belief in the power of the island.
Is it just me that notices how well-intentioned Locke is early on and passionate about the island…as the show went on it got darker and more obsessive for answers. When he opened his eye in this episode it felt to me like he was reborn more so then just healed.
Yeah…but that look on his face at the end of Tabula Rasa is pure malice.
Rewatching, I thought it was clear Locke was looking at a father and son happily together (Michael & Walt with Vincent) and feeling bummed out. But it’s also possible, given what we know, that Locke already had some inkling of what he was in for…
I noticed when Jack was talking about burning the bodies in the fuselage, he commented that they wouldn’t stay buried. That’s been mentioned a lot.
What I never noticed the first time around was in Walkabout, they did close-ups on Locke’s shoes and the soles we not worn out at all. Brilliant! (Yes, this is my first time rewatching too)
I remember the backgammon scene but did we ever find out exactly what secret Locke told Walt?
Locke’s secret was that he was in a wheelchair before the crash.
Jack meant that the boars would dig up the bodies even if they buried them, I think.
Rose said smokey sounded familiar because she lives in New York City and it’s the sound of a taxi cab printing out a receipt. Not all cabs have this type of printer anymore so it’s a bit more rare to hear it. I still get freaked out when I walk down the street and hear it and immediately think of smokey!