What are you going to do? Beat me with your Jesus stick?
Hi! Did you miss me? Do you hate that I abandoned you when Lost took its sweet time on vacation? Are you thinking, Why didn't she post about all the excellent shows that are starting up, like Stars on Ice, American Idol, or the second season of Beauty and the Geek-- shows that are starting up the very week of her birthday like big, reality-based gifts produced by Fox and Ashton Kutcher? Or are you just here for screen shots of the faces in the black fog?
Church!
Brother!
That dude he killed!
Old woman!
(images via ravenscraft)
This was pretty much a "throw away" flashback episode, with only a little more about the goings on of the island. Of course, the biggest stick we were thrown is our first real, up-close-and-personal interaction with the black fog monster. We know it senses and reacts to fear, and all the things it reflected for Mr. Eko makes me think it picks up on a person's dark feelings or guilt. If it tried to feed him a plate of cookies and tell him he looked thin, I might think it was the Jewish mom leg of the island experiments.
I've sort of thought that the whole island and the experiments have something to do with people facing their dark sides. A disproportionate amount of people on the plane have killed or physically hurt people, and all of them harbor some sort of demon they're being forced to face on the island. Perhaps the experiments are about forming a perfect society by ridding people of their bad sides? Leading people out of darkness? 23rd Pslam? Maybe it's a Catholic mother experiment. Make a note that Mr. Eko left his Jesus stick behind after his confrontation with the fog.
Real Girl, my "boardies" correspondent, came back to me with these whisperings:
1. Some people are saying they heard the non-Nigerian drug dealers in the initial drug sale mention Sayid, as in "Does Sayid know?" But they're saying they were speaking in Arabic, making it difficult to make out.
2. An Arabic-speaking person says he heard "sayyidah" meaning "trap." As in "Be careful with this guy, it's a trap."
3. There are lots of hypotheses that the black smoke is actually nanotechnology, bajillions of teeny computers working together.
oh my god! a new episode of LOST totally slipped under my radar!!!!
does the black smoke machine really have to be black smoke? is it possible that it is mearly a cinematic technique to make something elusive to the eye, to sort of protray an image that is fleeting... as in, no one ever really got a good glimpse of what it is? its just hard for me to imagine a smoke thing pulling someone down the hole. when i saw that, i thought it was a mechanical arm that grabs trees to feed some furnace that helps power or heat the island. does that make any sense? like, it is just grabbing people incidently... it was designed just to grab trees, and other people aren't suppose to be there. i dunno. i know that hypothesis doesn't really make much sense... and im sure its not the case... but thats what came to mind when i saw that episode...
Oh, it's black smoke. It's some of the blackest smokiest black smoke you'll ever see.
Is anyone else waiting for the Incident of Doom that might be coming now that Michael's using the computer for non-numbery activities?
And also, was I the only one who had an extreme moment of "Ew" during Eko's moving, and yet horribly morbid, hugging of the decayed skeleton with decaying puffy black rotted cotton hair?
so.. i guess im reeeeeally holding on to the idea that their is a rational explanation for everything on th e island... and there is nothign more than surreal and profound coincidances at work here. plus bizarre circumstance of course. as for the predator on the island... i still think it has something to do with gorillas. trees falling down? male gorrillas root up trees to show dominance, and then run through the forest with them knocking things over to display dominance. sorta what i imagined was happeneing earlier in the series....
Good work, Liz, this is why I come to you - I knew there had to be something going on in that smoke but I was too lazy to slow it down to take a look.
Real Girl - no, you are not the only one. I believe I said, "Ew" and "Oh Lord" outloud when he did that.
Glad I've got company, then!
Another thing the boards are crazy about: Apparently, when Eko recited the 23rd Psalm, he said "walk through the shadow of the valley of death" instead of "walk through the valley of the shadow of death." Now everyone's trying to figure out if it was intentional or not.
I? Just kept expecting Coolio to start telling us we're living in a gangster's paradise.
Ever since Eko has been carrying around that stick, I've been referring to it as the whomping stick. Early in the show, I mentioned out loud the absurdity of carving scripture in a whomping stick. I nearly died laughing when Charlie called it the Jesus stick!
Why do they shoot a FULL jar of mayo? Why not use an empty container? It's not like you can just go to the store and get more!
I wondered the exact same thing.
it probably wasn't full of mayo (and it actually is ranch). It probably was basically empty and only had that little coating around the very edges of it, and since they blew the entire thing up that's what the splatter was. Though it still is a bit of a waste, it isn't as much of one if it had been full.