Average. I don't consider it "stalling" or whatever, it's just that this season has been REALLY good and been moving at a quick pace... by comparison this one lacked punch, I thought. The whole thing was just a vehicle to get Sayid to shoot Ben and that intention was pretty clear at the end of last weeks ep. It was, though, nice to see what happened to Sayid in that bit of time we were missing and his reason for getting on the plane. I assume we'll be seeing what happened to the other characters we're lacking detail on in the next few eps. Re: Kate's reason... well it looked like her reason was Sawyer in this ep, but given that she was dead set on staying away and then all of a sudden she changed her mind and Aaron seemed to be missing... I don't see her not answering as stalling at all. We just won't see the answer until she gets her next flashback ep
Another average for me. Same issues with stalling and predictable plot. Even though I expected Sayid to shoot Ben, it was still cool to see. Love triangle stuff was boring, the Dharma people stuff was pretty boring, Sayid's bits in the past were pretty boring. Sayid's interrogation was interesting, but seemed to kind of peter out before anything REALLY interesting happened. Radzinsky is annoying. The introduction of the bounty hunter could have been cool, but turned out to be boring and pointless. I mean, we already knew she captures Sayid... so the fact that she turned on him isn't going to be a surprise. So the best they could come up with is cliche seduction followed up with a "take off my shoe" and a kick to the face? No doubt they'll do a flashback for her, which is unfortunate because they've already made me not care about her. My theory is that the island is just out of synch with time, which started when the government buried a nuke on an island already containing strange natural properties. The people are being rezzed and brought to the island as time's natural reaction to heal itself. Or if you think of time as a boat moving through the water dragging buoys, if you yank a buoy out of the water and throw it off to the side, eventually as you go the buoy will fall back in to line on it's path as it did previously. Ben killed Locke full knowing that he would be ressureccted.
So wait......do the Dharma people know about time travel or not? In the season premiere, Chang tells that guy in the Orchid that they're drilling because into the rock because there's energy there that will allow them to manipulate time. So, doesn't that mean that the higher ups at Dharma know that something about their mission there has to do with time travel? So when Sayid tells them that he's from the future, do they just totally dismiss that out of hand, or might they think that he might actually be telling the truth?
The caveat is that we don't know when that scene takes place. It depends on what happened to Daniel. There's a good chance it happened before "LaFleur" chronologically but it could just as easily have happened after. We can assume (I think) that Dr. Chang at least suspects time wackiness by the time he gives Jack his orientation in "Namaste". Also the Dharma "higher ups" aren't on the island. The one guy who could credibly know about time travel during that period wasn't at Sayid's interrogation, so it's possible that Horace (who's running the show ON the island) has no idea.
It just seems weird that all these people are working for Dharma, yet everyone seems oblivious to what Dharma is actually doing there. They always talk about maintaining the stations and keeping the peace with the Hostiles and so forth, but there's never any mention of the point of Dharma being on the Island. You'd think that would come up a bit more often. Also, Chang seemed to mention time travel to that guy at the Orchid rather casually. It doesn't actually seem like it was a secret that was being held that tightly. Folks like Horace would presumably know.
If I recall correctly the worker he mentioned it to seemed to think that time travel was a rather wacky notion. Just because some of the DHARMA higher-ups are talking about time travel does not mean every member of DHARMA is a firm believer in it, or that anyone actually knows for a fact that it is even possible during the early DHARMA days. For all we know the regular DHARMA folks might think their bosses are a bit nuts.
True. I didn't necessarily mean to imply that this was a nitpick. Just that this was a different angle at which to view things.....namely, that when Sayid says that he's from the future, the Dharma guys who're interrogating him might not view it as so completely out of left field as one might expect. Heck, maybe it further convinces them that he's a spy....that he knows something about their time travel experiments.
I knew this was going to be a Sayid episode, but I wanted the title to refer to Sawyer and be spoken to Jack by one of the characters that stayed on the island.
^ That would have been much cooler. Would have required a logical twist that the writers clearly weren't after though. It's a cool title. I'm a little bummed that "He" is someone we're not likely to see again except maybe in passing.
Oh yeah. He's got one of the coolest lines in recent TV memory. Regarding the "Tit Licker": "I do begrudge that pervert his capacity for happiness."
I don't understand why didn't Sayid pretend to be a defector? Then he'd be out of the cell and can do whatever he wants. Kill Ben, run off in the woods, whatever.
I think Jin will wake up and rush him back to the Dharmaville, Jack will then patch him up, D.I. will get suspicious of Jack the Janitor knowing how to do this. Jack finds out that its THE BEN LINUS. Hilarity ensues!
My take is that the opening scene of the season is a flash-forward to the season finale, when they will use the Swan/Orchid to travel back to the future and thus create "The Incident". So in 1977 the Swan is just being planned, and the Orchid will be made after the Swan (we see them constructing it in the scene after all). Hell, it's very likely that it's BECAUSE of our time traveling characters that Chang/Dharma will learn of the possibility of time travel and thus construct the Orchid, creating a chicken/egg scenario.
Not quite a chicken & egg scenario since the main cast never use the Orchid to time travel, rather they use the ancient donkey Wheel that is hooked up to a giant... machine that can cause time travel (Maybe an Alien starship's engine? A time machine from the future that ended up way in the past?) We don't know what type of machine causes the time travel yet, but... we do know the wheel and time travel were possible in the distant past of the island, way before Dharma ever got there or even built the Orchid.
^^ The tunnel is filled in during the 70s (Sawyer's rope going into the ground). In order to reach the Donkey Wheel, they need the construction capabilities of the Dharma Initiative to dig down through the earth to get to it.
Average. It was quite a bit slower and plodding at some points. We did get more answers however which helped. Kate and Juliette having a non-cat fight could have been cut in favor of something better. As for Master Ben, I'm sure the Island wont let him die. And if he is, then Faraday was wrong and the Losties should go full tilt trying to change the future.
No, the rope into the ground was way back in the past at the time of the statue. In the 70's there is a well there, but the top of the well has been capped with stone blocks a few feet down. Remember Locke goes down the well (sometime in the 50's we presume) then there is a flash and the well is gone in the ancient past (the rope going into the ground) then there is the last flash taking the Losties to the 70's and the well is back, but capped. So sometime between the '54 and '73 someone caps the well. Possibly to prevent people from gaining access to the wheel. (Maybe after Widmore used it to move the Island (if that's what happened to get him exiled.)) We also know that the whole well wasn't filled in because in the present when Ben went down and moved the Island the tunnel would have been filled with dirt (also if the well was the only access to the wheel, and the wheel is the only wway to move the Island to safety I can't see the Hostiles permenently sealing it away. Capping the well is the best way to prevent people from getting to the wheel, while still giving them access later on if needed. If those stone blocks were removed they would probably still be able to repel down to the tunnels where the donkey wheel is. But either way, Dharma didn't use the well or seem to even know about the wheel (until the scene in the first episode of this season where Chang sees the (thermal?) image of what is behind the rocks given to him by the construction guy). They just built the Orchid near by the donkey wheel because they must have noticed strange events going on it the area. But we have seen that they had no idea about the wheel otherwise the station would have included it, rather then Ben having to blow a hole in the wall to reach the tunnels beneath. Now, as to how Ben and the Hostiles knew about it, well that still has to be shown.