UConn James

Ehhh.... I read that awhile back and danced around it. I'm pretty sure some people consider those things spoilers, but... the cat is out of the bag. Pretty ballsy for a show as popular as this to do an ep so near the finale with almost none of its main characters. But the thirst for island mythology isn't easily sated, and I'm guessing that by the end of "Across the Sea" no one will complain too much about the hour's devotion.

Week 1 Buffalo vs. Miami - W Week 2 Buffalo @ Green Bay - L Week 3 Buffalo @ New England Patriots* - L Week 4 Buffalo vs. NY Jets - L Week 5 Buffalo vs. Jacksonville Jaguars - W Week 6 BYE Week 7 Buffalo @ Baltimore Ravens - L Week 8 Buffalo @ Kansas City Chiefs - W Week 9 Buffalo vs. Chicago Bears (in Toronto) - W Week 10 Buffalo vs. Detroit Lions - L Week 11 Buffalo @ Cincinnati Bengals - L Week 12 Buffalo vs. Pittsburgh Steelers - L Week 13 Buffalo @ Minnesota Vikings - L Week 14 Buffalo vs. Cleveland Browns - W Week 15 Buffalo @ Miami Dolphins - W Week 16 Buffalo vs. New England Patriots* - L Week 17 Buffalo @ NY Jets - L

Doc Jensen's LOST recap: Sunk And some pertinent notes on the Sayid side of things.... Doc mentions that Lapidus is a 'maybe death.'

And yet, being together is a large part of what this show's been about since the start. Adam & Eve, Bernard and Rose, etc. Even Nikki and Paulo, to a degree. Live together, die alone...? Or maybe die together, live alone?

That conversation with Desmond really brought Sayid back from his stupor. And yes, it was very subtle, which is the way Sayid was trying to get an upper hand on an unsuspecting FLocke. In the paradigm of Jacob's and MIB's power to turn over to their side whoever lets these demi-gods talk to them, does that signify anything about Desmond? Or does it owe to his role as the Constant in the equation? Earlier this season, with the Temple pool going dirty, I thought that bit where Ben drained the mudhole actually caused that. I don't know.... in the timeline, tho separated by seasons, it wasn't that far apart. So, yes, it appears that the mudhole was a sort of containment system, and we learned something about the powers of Smokey re: ability to transform. I hadn't connected that while watching, but then again, yesterday was a loooong day. But aside from that, we also learned that FLocke has a kind of innate sense re: the candidates' status... or he just knows something that is supposed to happen when all the candidates are dead, hadn't happened yet. Either way, he had one chance to play it all coyly and pretend to be the good guy. Now, everyone knows his intentions. At the opposite side of the coin, Jack seems to be the only one keyed into (some of) the candidates' powers.... well, maybe Hurley, who learned from dead Jacob that "[He's] a candidate and I can do what I want." Yet, Jack's faith and experience with the immunity to anything but another candidate causing his/their death does seem unique to him. And he wouldn't have gotten to this faith w/o the help of Locke. So, yes, maybe Jacob, in his 20-moves-ahead chess game, knew as he touched Locke on the ground that it would end in his own sacrifice, but still, he needed Locke to drive Jack into being the next protector of the island. Following from that, I also didn't realize that Lapidus died there. I guess you just develop a whole "It's just a flesh wound!" mentality.... Widmore is on the side of Widmore. Staying with him may well have been a slightly safer alternative. But it also appears that he's a little over-matched, what with timetables being pushed around willy-nilly, losing his assets, trying to provoke fear through explosions that FLocke knows can't hurt him, etc. Agreed on your Jin-Sun points. But also consider that in this timeline, iirc, Jin was declared unequivocally dead by the O6. If he showed up in Korea to reclaim his daughter, what happens? I guess we had to be satisfied that he had seen his daughter on a digital camera and knew that she was safe.... Well, I've always looked at this show as very near to reading a serialized Dickens novel. If you're a fast reader, you can catch up quick right near the end. But, as I pointed out in your thread, you've missed all the small conversation bits along the journey. It would take some dedication to the task for future viewers to even replicate the original ep-by-ep watching experience.

"LOST" finale expanding to 2 1/2 hours

Welcome to our world for the past 6 years, aj!

It's late, so I think I'll just address the meat of the episode, so to speak. From the start with Jack and Sawyer, it's been a debate about who was right, who was wrong. And when one f---ed the goose, the other stepped up and said, "I'm in charge now!" until he f---ed the goose, rinse, wash and repeat. Last season had Sawyer in control at Dharmaville, read books at night and drinking Dharma beer, until the O6 arrived and the plan fell to pieces. Then came Jack, acting out Daniel Faraday's Jughead detonation, where picking up in "LA X", Sawyer blamed Jack's independent actions for Juliet's apparent pointless death. Now, it's Sawyer's turn to foul up. He's not buying Jack's assertion that FLocke's actions can't kill the candidates --- the candidates can only die by each others' actions. I wonder why Jack didn't intone, "Two days ago, I was in the Black Rock with Richard Alpert..." but, maybe he didn't quite have time. But Sawyer's actions are maybe so vexing b/c he saw the Mysterious Boy say that Flocke couldn't "harm them." Sayid seems to have found some measure of redemption by sacrificing himself after telling Jack about Desmond... whom, as we all suspected, he didn't kill. He flat-out tells Jack that he's the candidate that must save them. I have to say that I was at the edge of a comfy sofa with my hands peaked together over my mouth for the last half hour of the ep. Kate was shot in the arm, and as she is no longer a candidate she is not invincible. In fact, as I wrote upthread, she seems to be a marked woman, in a Charlie kind of way. We got more of the reunion we longed for b/w Sun and Jin.... only to have them drown in the sub. After 3 years of being apart, Jin was not about to let go ever again, at least while he was alive. I don't know, there was a sense of sadness, but it's not like I came close to crying. I'm just very confident that the (still-forming/changing, or at least, you hope so for Sayid's part) Sideways world is going to provide some salvation for these characters, with their island memories intact. The sideways world is where our hope now lies. I'm very confident of this... but leave it to this show to take my confidence and beat it to a bloody pulp. Something about the crying on the beach... Jack got up and walked into the shore tide before he started bawling. As if he didn't want Hurley or Kate to see how much the losses affected him. Is this a little reflective of Jacob and the distance he maintained from the people he brought to the island? As much as he said that he wanted the people and candidates to make the choices for themselves w/o being told what to do, perhaps as much as wanting the trappings of free will (but hey, how much free will did Jacob allow these people to have in the first place? It was he who directed their course to the island! FLocke did have a point in what he said to Sawyer in the candidate cave), the reason for Jacob's detachment is guilt over something he did previous to Richard's arrival. Perhaps similar to how a great number of decisions that Jack/ Sawyer has made have been wrong on some end of the extreme. In the Sideways flashes, the story deepens b/w Jack and Locke. Jack finding a new fix-it obsession, and Locke seeming to reprise his "it's this way for a reason. I'm not going to change it" attitude. Most critical was the dialogue about letting go... a key phraseology in Jack's life (in the original timeline) from the start of the show. And, there was a hint of remembrance when Jack said, "I wish you would believe me" drawing language from Locke's suicide note. Wonder what he's going to take from his flashes....

All right.... Gird your loins, everyone! People in the know tell us to have Kleenexes handy for tonight's episode.... I wonder, in what sense? / or ? Got a new laptop yesterday, so I'm now able to watch past eps online. I think I'll wait until before the finale and re-watch all of S6 in one go. It's just awesome to be in/on the cusp of Web 3.0, upgraded from a computer yesterday that wasn't good enough to handle Web 1.0. I know they said the Dharma Initiative wouldn't really be re-visited this season, but we still haven't really mined its purpose. Along these lines, I think it just goes back to what Locke said in S2... "All roads lead here." It goes in with the Numbers, the seeming abutment of DI/Others (e.g. how I wrote upthread about the basement blocks in Ben's house being so close to the Others' tunnels). Dharma was created only as a means to get these Candidates to where they need to go. Let me explain a bit in terms of a puzzle I do almost daily in the newspaper --- Sudoku. In this game, for those who haven't ever heard of it, the object is, that given a certain amount of various already-filled-in numbers, you need to put the numbers 1-9 in horizontal and vertical lines in a 9x9 template, and you also have to make sure that 1-9 appear in sub-templates within that larger template... Oh, hell. Here's the wikipedia page if you don't know what it is. But, you get to situations where you have to guess and do trial-and-error. he '4' can only possibly go in 2 remaining spots. You pick one and draw it out to its conclusion until you either run into a conflict --- at which point you need to erase erase erase, and then you now know for certain where the '4' goes, and you must then work from there --- or you solve the puzzle. It can get more complicated than that on harder puzzles, where sometimes you need to do two or three layers of guessing and filling in based on that guess. "What's your point, Vanessa?" you're all asking right now. Well, there comes the observation that sometimes, whatever combination of guesswork you sometimes need to try --- whether you get it on the first guess or you're on your fourth --- some numbers go in certain spots no matter what. All roads lead there. And, my thought (and I could be totally out of my gourd here and if so, tell me) is that perhaps the DI experience was like a guess in sudoku, only a guess that had physical repercussions. Perhaps the time-travel was like erasing, only you've still gained a bit of knowledge to move forward from. There comes a point where all the 2s, 5s and 9s are filled in. And you've only got a few wild cards left who have yet to find their proper place. I dunno. Probably, I have too much time on my hands to think about ---- like this.

I think most people would be upset if anything happened to the dog... moreso than anything happening to the human characters on the show. Outside of whispy dog-buddy movies like "Marley & Me," a dog dying just isn't very good drama. It can have the power of stopping cold any involvement / emotional attachment the viewer has. Also, Jack Bender, who has directed a majority of eps on the show (and isn't he an assoc. producer?) explained toward the end of S1 that he is a total softie for dogs. I join him in that regard. It wasn't scripted for Vincent to follow the raft, yelping after Walt, but Mr. Bender wanted it. And... it was a great touch. Tgreg, that's interesting to hear about JJ's involvement. All word I'd seen said he'd been very hands-off basically since the pilot. Nice that he's now a part of the conclusion as well, tho DL and CC have done most of the heavy lifting.

What with it being the series finale and all.... have they done extra shooting to deflect even the actors from knowing for sure what's going to happen? E.g. They filmed Sawyer, Hurley(?), Desmond and Locke in Jeremy Bentham's casket at the end of S4.

It's back on track this week. Evidently, they needed a little catch-up time and filled it with a refresher of the big island mythology episode (well, the biggest one so far).

Sad that it's not only on fan boards one sees stuff like this.... FakeAPStylebook says, "To save money, outsource your fact-checking [and proofreading] to countries without access to encyclopedias or the Internet." Not far from the truth of the matter.

... The My Twinkie Defense.

Just a few notes: - The last day of filming, apparently, was 23 April according to DarkUFO... Yet, a leaked call sheet said that the 26th was the final day. Either way, by this writing, it's a series wrap on the raw filming side and it's in the editors' hands. - The mystery of Adam & Eve will be resolved in ep. 6.15 "Across the Sea." - Allison Janney (who, most notably, played C.J. in "The West Wing") will appear in that same episode. "We will confirm that she will be a woman," sez Damon Lindelof.

It's almost like once he signed the contract he did almost everything he could, with the Raiders playing their own inept part in the circus, to force the team to cut him. Hey, he got tens of millions in guaranteed $ as long as he just showed up. If he uses it right, and he can still live large by all definitions, he'll never have to lift a pinkie again if he doesn't want to. More reason for staying the !@#$ away from the Top Five --- and instituting a rookie pay system --- I cannot think.

NYT link Among other items, including discussing for the first time the fatal car accident when she was a teen.... Something I'd never heard before: You know, food poisoning happens quite frequently in the course of things. You'd think that with a crowd like that, tho, extra special caution would be taken vis-a-vis food procurement, storage, cooking temp., etc. You wouldn't expect an event like that to be a place featured on "Kitchen Nightmares." And, yeah, the diagnosis of an unknown "virus" is the medical default for "We've run a lot of expensive tests. Done everything we can short of getting a sample of the food, and well, like Sergent Shultz, we're **** out of ideas. Get some rest and stay near a toilet." Back in the day, kings used to have food tasters. As we now know, these little buggers often take several hours to wend their way through the system, and some can take up to six weeks before symptoms. Tasters, I guess, were there to counter for active, malevolent poisoning of the quick, deadly kind e.g. cyanide. Is monitoring the food something that the Secret Service did, or now does?

Grind. Hmm. I think the last time Vincent was seen was with Rose and bearded Bernard pre-Jughead detonation. Just a reminder to all: a repeat of the Richard backstory / Island mythology episode "Ab Aeterno" is slated for Tuesday.

Collaros was outperforming Pike on limited practice time in UCincy last year. Do we really need to be taking their second best QB? W/o Kelly there in the bowl, Pike folded.

FWIW, CBS projects him as an ILB. Also, FWIW, he's got better numbers in the 3-cone and shuttle drills than McClain, et al. Some people find themselves amazed when, every year, LBs go down with injuries and a team falls apart b/c there's crap for depth. LB is a position where depth is EVERYTHING. There will be injuries and your second-tier guys'd better be good b/c the odds are excellent that they will be playing at some point. Bear in mind that we'll have 4 starters at LB now. That puts an onus on having more LBs in the first place. And after the Jauron years, we need to get bigger at LB and these last couple of picks are a nice hedge if one or two of the DE-to-LB conversions doesn't work out.

But... they'll be the Chinese knock-offs that we see someone here asking about every so often, about what you get for a $20-30 jersey.

And that was w/ a transfer at QB, who lost time to injuries (replaced by a green sophomore). Admittedly, I don't pay much attention to my alma mater. I don't get the TV station many of their games are on. But from what I've heard locally, we got a decent receiver with size. Hey, losing TO, we did need another WR. But, brass tacks are down now. I hope we hear OL and LB picks from here on. Perhaps a flier on a project QB.

I don't see the point of marriage in this day and age. But if you do get married, get a rock solid pre-nup. I know way too many nice guys who got screwed over by materialistic bitches. Don't be fooled. They're experts at the long con.

But wait, Jacob did leave the island. Several times, from what we've been shown. To tell the truth, in the S5 finale, it really looked like Jacob hadn't been in the statue lair for very long prior to the Ajira arrival. It was just a sense I got. And, at least from our vantage, from Dec. 2004 to 2007, there was a time when there was no candidate on the island keeping MIB there --- when Jacob visited Ilana seemingly a short time before the Ajira flight. Remember that during this, Sawyer, Hurley and Jin were in 1974-77 and skipped over 2004-2007. They weren't there to act as candidates to keep MIB there, as FLocke claims. Jack, Sun & baby Kwon and Sayid were off-island at this time. They weren't on-island to keep him there, either. So, conceivably, if the rule is that Jacob and no candidates could be on the island before MIB could leave, then that condition was apparently met. As I wrote before, one could argue that MIB has appeared off-island as well, as Christian waiting for Jack in the lobby. And, like a 4x4 to the face in the clue department, the appearance set off the smoke alarm. Get it? As Doc Jensen writes this week, it's even very debatable that the ghosts Hurley sees could possibly be the work of MIB --- to wit, Doc is theorizing that only the Mysterious Boy is the real ghost of Jacob. In this light, it may not be a case of them needing to be professors-in-residence to... win whatever game they're playing.

Doc Jensen's recap is up: "Reunited and It Feels So KABOOM!" Sure, as has been written many a time, Jack does seem to be Jacob's favorite to be his successor. And that's when they pull the rug right out from under our feet. Back off. She's mine! That stinks, duey. I think it usually involves the 'Tab' key that directs the cursor to the next clickable button. What I don't quite get about Des down the well is that the stonework in there looks very climbable, with nice cement joint grooves. Des is a very athletic/spry guy. Maybe the argument is that he's injured from the fall. But yes, that would be the reason he was late to meet with FLocke --- he was trying to get Des out. 'Evil Incarnate' Sayid wouldn't give a **** about the scenery... something Des said has affected him / kicked him (at least partially) out of the stupor. Also possible that he was hearing whispers, or was anticipating a Smokey appearance. Overall, if Sayid had killed Des, they would've shown it. I was expecting Kate to buy it there as well. She's now faced imminent death a couple times, and when that starts happening, 'the universe' as Eloise Hawking explained, is done with you. It may not go out of its way to eliminate you, but it's not going to do things to save you. (E.g. Charlie stepping through the rope bridge, being hanged by Ethan, the cave-in, the bee hive, among others; and then Des's trying to do circumvent things, until Charlie accepted and sacrificed himself. Likewise, Kate seems to have lost protection.