UConn James

Thanks for the link. Yeah, it's like a repeating test of humanity. It's like a running feud b/w two brothers with completely opposite viewpoints of humanity. Jacob touches people to bring them to the island to see if people can redeem themselves. The black-clothed character is tired of the testing b/c no one ever passes. May not be good to attribute Jacob and black-robe man (could we call him Esau?) god-status. Jeez, this is going to be a lot to digest for the next 8 months. Yeah, that was awesome. I think that pretty much settles it for me that they are "Adam & Eve." I'd say that will be in episode 6.17. As for some other thoughts, it was strange seeing Ben being conned with the same motivations that he gave Locke to kill Anthony Seward, for Ben to kill Jacob. That he was just being used. Was also weird to see Ben actually be able to kill Jacob (and who can say for sure that Jacob is dead?), a being that seemed to have so much power to cure the sick, etc. It just gets into all of these sub-points of who caused what, who is one whose 'side', etc. I believe Jacob's "They're coming" refers to the '77 Left-Behinders, especially given Lindelof's interview stuff that the time-travel stuff is coming to a close in this ep.

With the glut of talent at the S spot (not to mention 'tweeners), keeping Wendling on almost solely for ST looks less likely. He had several nice plays, as I recall being "impressed with that Wendling kid." But it's a crowded house. Coy Wire was one of the leading ST guys and they cut him and plugged in someone else, and we hardly skipped a beat. I'm tempted to say that April's schemes are more important than the actual players. The importance of ST --- and especially tackling phase --- looks to be getting taken down a notch with the new rules disallowing return "wedges," more liberal definitions on return blocking penalties, or bunching for onsides kicks. We'll see on camp. Only the best 53 (+8 PS) survive the cutdown. The NFL seriously needs to increase the roster size by ~2-3 especially as guys are getting serious injuries from being overexerted, pressure to play hurt/concussed b/c a team is short on players, and as the league is looking to subtract preseason and add to the regular season next year.

Yuck it up, but, what's really the issue is How long are we going to continue with an outdated view of "race"? How long are we going to continue to treat select groups as different from everyone else where we all are obliged to check the little boxes of what sub-category we 'belong' to, as if we're checking off traits in a Linnaeus system classification? Not that "race" is really going to stand for too much longer. I think we're all going to be pretty shocked by what the 2010 Census says about this country and how much things have changed. Not only are the demographics changing, mixing and melanging... the attitudes about race are eroding. Scientifically, DNA analysis which shows that we are all a complete mix of "races." Younger generations are replacing the older and bringing totally different experiences and viewpoints. Why can't we really be colorblind and judge people solely "on the content of their character"? It may not be a perfect start, but fer chrissake we need to start. 'Will we burn in heaven like we do down here? ... Is there peace in the struggle to find the road to peace?' Well, people, Nov. 4 2008, we seem to have found pavement. Time for every man, woman and child to start walking for themselves. There are no excuses anymore. While we should all help each other along as we'd like to be helped, no one should be getting special privileges b/c of the color of their skin or what someone's great-grandfather did to someone else's great-great-grandfather.

Well, Desmond survived turning the key.... But then, there's the whole issue of Richard (c.2007) having said in "The Variable" that he watched Jack, Kate, Sawyer, et al die 30 years previous.

I missed most of the introductory scene with the two guys on the beach. %^&*ing antenna pointed toward Boston was cutting out (and people, I have a sweet antenna setup) and I had to manually switch to the Providence backup. Channel comes in fine every other time I have it on, worked all right during "A Journey Through Time" and it boinks out at ~9:02! Figures. I just had cut my toenails today, didn't I?! Bad things happen when I cut my toenails. The planes hit on 9/11, what was I doing at that exact moment? *Clip* The day my dog died last year. *Clip* There you go. So... A little help on what the dialogue was b/w Jacob and ?? Classic miss the beginning and you're %$^&ing screwed! What happened there? Even with all that.... HOLYSH--NOONEDOESFINALESLIKELOST! Instead of the fade to black ala Sopranos, we get a fade to white. And we can all guess 'til we're blue in the face but we have no idea what it means. Was the light reminiscent of what happened to Desmond when he turned the key? Was it a regular old nuclear explosion and everything's toast? Was what happened here "The Incident" and Dharma will build the Swan anyway, and what happened happened? Dr. Chang's hand would seem to suggest this. In the Doc Jensen link I provided above, Lindelof gave the cryptic, "This episode is going to be touching." And so, we find out that Jacob physically touches certain of the Lostaways. Let's see, there was Kate, Sawyer, Jack, Locke, Hurley ... and did he touch Juliet? I'm going to have to watch this again tomorrow. Really times like these I wish somebody made an (affordable) OTA-only DVR that's worth a damn. Anyway.... Is this like a "Tag, you're it!" kind of thing? Don't know about any of you, but I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, especially in the last hour. Kind of like watching Bills games back when we were actually good... but there's very little in the world of fiction that does that to me. I really would like an answer to that before I post much more.

Just goes into all the hooey of our social-construct astoundingly weak definitions of 'race' and our consideration of how important 'race' is. Then, the changing terminologies --- thanks to Jesse Jackson --- of what words describing 'race' ("Black" vice "African-American") are acceptable, then deemed patently offensive, then deemed preferable again in the span of 40 years. Technically, he's correct. Their beef with him is that he violated the spirit of the goings-on. They could have avoided that by asking a better-worded question of what they really want to know --- the big, fat matzo ball of "What color is your skin?" Everyone wanted/wants to dance around the heart of the matter.

No, he left '74 to go to Ann Arbor (Dharma HQ) to do "research." He then came back in '77 and was shot by his mother (as he himself was in her womb) in "The Variable." Daniel did not go someplace and return in 2004. Eloise leaves the island and has Daniel (not necessarily in that order, yet) in 1978 and raises him to be a brilliant physicist knowing that she's going to be sending him to be shot. Due to the time-travel, 1974-7 is the Left-Behinders' present. Daniel Faraday's timeline: 1978 - Born c.1987 - No time to play the piano anymore. You're becoming a physicist b/c it's your destiny. 1996 - Helps Desmond find (or, perhaps, become) a Constant at Oxford Sometime in-b/w - Experiments on himself and Teresa with the same machine he used on his rat 2004 - Widmore comes to temporally-displaced veggie-Daniel to get him to go on the freighter. Eloise Hawking encourages Daniel to go, knowing that her younger self will shoot him (but perhaps hoping that he can figure out something to do) Time-travel from 2004 to 1974 - Dan is going slightly batty b/c of Charlotte's death. 1974-1977 - Daniel goes to Ann Arbor to do "research." 1977 - Daniel returns to the island, tells Jack that each of them who time-traveled is like a free radical who can change history. But they can die permanent-like b/c this is their present --- it's not a matter that we know you're there c.2004 so everything will be all right. If nothing is changed in "The Incident," it's kind of like a loop, and you go back up to '1978' and it will always happen that way... Faraday will chronologically die before he's born. I don't know if I'm explaining this well enough. LOST Untangled - The Variable. This may help. Or not.

At 8 p.m., the season finale night commences with a retrospective titled "A Journey in Time" that looks back on the events of this season. LOST 5.16 & 5.17 - "The Incident Parts 1 & 2" - (ABC promo copy) In the Season 5 finale, Jack runs into stiff opposition to his plan to set things right on the island, while Ben gets a tough job assignment from Locke. Flashbacks focus on Kate, Juliet and Sawyer. EW: Doc Jensen - 'Lost' Going Out With A Bang? Really recommend Jensen's pre- and post- ep stuff. Here, he provides some speculation, a brief recap of each episode this season, a fairly lengthy video interview with Darlton on the last page, and the 'Untangled' for FTL. By the by, I've really enjoyed the 'Untangled' series... dude has a hilarious voice, and it pokes a little fun at the show/characters. Lost Season 5 Finale Will Leave You Wondering How The Show Can Continue Umm, that's not what happened to Faraday.

The last STL LB we signed who led that team in tackles and was "undersized" didn't pan out too badly for us....

Yep. Just throwing out arbitrary benchmark numbers that TE has to reach in order to X is, to put it as gently as I can... stupid.

As to #5, I think we saw real evidence of that with Charlotte's trance-like quotes. It was the conservation she had with Faraday when she was eating the chocolate. The original conversation didn't happen in this go-'round b/c Faraday expressly said he wasn't going to tell her not to come back. But he did, later. Charlotte's mind during the time-flash just before she died/disappeared was correcting for the change. Notice that Sawyer's, Juliet's and Jin's noses didn't really start bleeding until Faraday made the decision not tell Charlotte to never come back to the island. It was an example of his Free Will / Variable theory at work. Unfortunately, the choice had the side effect of slowly bricking the effected people's minds due to an overload of conflicting information / or wrt an aneurysm, literally tying their brain up in knots until it explodes. Desmond is the only character who's been able to overcome the problem b/c of what happened in "The Constant" where Faraday untangled or un-conflicted the information. Presently, the future is in doubt b/c the Variables are active in '77. Whether "the universe finds a way to course correct" is up in the air. I think it's very likely that it does. It's just that root question of what entity selectively brought the O6, among all the Ajira passengers, back to '77 --- I assume it's the island. And then, for what purpose --- to change history or fulfill it. We'll see on Wednesday. #4 is an interesting thought. What of Christian Shepard, tho? #1, Kate is acting in her own self-interest, as she has since the start, really. She wants a spot on the raft, she gets Sun to mildly poison some water. She simply doesn't want to be on 815 heading for prison if Faraday's plan and Jack's execution of the plan, can or do work. And I'm still thinking about that JJ Abrams conference speech about "the magic box" in his life/works from the last post on page 21 of the thread --- if you haven't watched it, please do. It's renewed that line of mystery for me about the "magic box" that Ben mentioned when the Others got Locke's father, and the box Ben had hidden in the motel vent right before Ajira 316. From above, we know that Lindelof has said that not everything will ultimately be answered; some mysteries will remain. Question to everyone: What are your Top Three of running questions/mysteries that you most want answered? That, you think, must be answered for this show to not end disappointingly? Right now I think mine are: 1. Richard Alpert's origins, wrt to the Black Rock or the statue. 2. The contents and/or machination of the "magic box/es" as described above. 3. Who are "Adam and Eve"?

(Kelly's sentence that you quoted pertained to JPL c. 2006, not to TE.) It's a quandry. Don't want to extend him too soon (before he's gotten over the berm) but if he lights it up in this offense, it's only going to get more expensive. This is a crucial year for TE. After the bit of a sophomore slump he had later in the year (I realize it's not all on him, as the OL mismatch against the 3-4 NTs was bruatal to watch but...) he needs to rebound. Lots of QBs have had a cool-down in their 2nd year starting, even the best of the best. It's the showing in the 3rd season that's often makes or breaks a QB. Bear in mind, however, that TE's current salary in a 3rd-round pick contract range is what, 400K? He's been a starter in the NFL for almost two seasons at the marquee position where a lot of backups are making $1-2-3M(!). There's been guys with similar or less impressive stats who were relatively making peanuts and did early renegotiating. Tony Romo comes to mind. There's got to be some antsy-ness to get a new deal on TE's part as well. If he's smart and if he thinks he's going to have a good year, he'll wait until next offseason to negotiate an extension when he has more "hand" in Seinfeld-ese. If there is no contract talk now, it's b/c he's confident, and maybe it's just me but I like to see that. If he has a lot to play for, and when you combine that with other guys who have a lot to play for (T.O.), their game is often elevated. That means good things for the team on the field. But this is the NFL, and I wouldn't blame him for signing a slightly below-market extension for some security sometime before the season if he has a good TC and preseason or toward the middle of the year if he's played well, factoring in however much the team wants to re: OL --- if Trent's personal progression apart from any young-OL mistakes improves.

Doing a bit of reading on imdb.... JJ Abrams' entry reads that one of his trademarks is a "box with mysterious contents." Then, watching the mobisodes for the first time on Youtube.... Then I stumbled on a JJ Abrams' talk at something called TED. If you haven't watched it, take the 18 minutes and do so!

LOST "Spoilers" I really don't consider any of this "spoilers." Vagaries and doesn't tell us anything we don't already know is coming (especially how the last of the O6 got on the Ajira plane), and JG poses an interesting thought about the guitar case. I'm making a decision not to yellow-font this b/c I don't think it warrants it. But If you want to stay absolutely positively 100% LOST-pure, then stop reading now.

Another moment... Dr. Chang: What year were you born? Who's president? Hurley: Uhhh... Something I read in a recap.... The introduction --- Richard Alpert building a ship in a bottle. A clue pointing to a connection to the Black Rock, perhaps? Also, what of Richard's assertion that he saw all of the '77 travelers get killed? Or do they disappear after Jack sets off the bomb, or if he doesn't? We'll see. It's also something to see Jack's transformation. Calls to mind Locke's assertion in the hatch along the lines of 'You believe in destiny, you just don't know it yet.' How much of that was just a comeback and how much was it maybe a subconscious knowledge on the part of Locke? Link My money's on that, too. I'm also reading speculation that Jughead being stored underneath the DI's yellow-house compound might explain some of the fertility issues. A commenter suggests that he thinks Kate is preggers from her and Jack's pre-flight nookie. It would re-create that part of the flight with someone being with child (Claire). I know it sounds a little disingenuous, but that's a thought I've had as well.

My guess would be Butler.

What to make then of the old Porcupine/Porsche joke?

I think it was a misnomer to call FTL Richard-centric, but to be fair, I think most of the big sites didn't have an entry for centricity. The "multiple story lines" are carried, I think, exclusively in the season finales. It seemed to drop centricity with this ep, rather than next week. Doing this picks up the pace of the action/drama, which is probably what makes the finales so awesome --- we get a lot of information and action in a short time-span. But then again, it sacrifices the depth that we get in the flashback/flashforward eps. But any way it comes, I'll take it. Other notes from last night.... It was apparent that Kate is anti-changing the past b/c she wants what has happened to happen. Otherwise she will never have met Jack, Sawyer et al. But more than that, I think, is her realization that if Jack succeeds, she will be carted straight off to a long prison stay. Yellow-fonted for EZC; re: next week's preview. How anti-climactic is it that we're left this week with Sawyer, Juliet and Kate being whisked away on the sub. And then 10 minutes later in the preview, it shows them back on the island holding guns. I watch the previews and usually consider them fair game for discussion, but that gave away too much. So Darlton, that was pretty sh-------. They have to spill Richard's backstory sometime. No one will be satisfied w/o it. I guess they're just waiting, maybe b/c it's going to be that awesome.

Funny, I thought that letting it return to grassland was about as fitting a memorial as there could be. Most everyone speaks highly of the Vietnam Memorial... but when Nightline airs the names of the GWOT dead on Memorial Day, the people who are most ardently in favor of the wars frown on it and iirc they threatened to take legal action against ABC. Looking at cold stone pillar fountains for WWII GOOD. Reading the names of people who actually died in war BAD. Nevermind, $58M when we're in a recession. I realize it's a drop in the ocean, but it's drops that accumulate to form that ocean, you know.

Ben is kind of like Falstaff in that way. He does things that make you not like him, but then he comes out with some great one-liners. "Whaddya think, I'm gonna stage a cooouuup?!?" But I think his funniest scene was w/o words --- where he and Hurley were waiting outside of the Orchid(or was it the Jacob's cabin?) and Hurley had the candy bar. I'm not so sure that we yet get what Locke means in that he's going to "kill Jacob" and we surely don't know why. And I also don't know how much we can associate Jacob with the smoke monster... the monster that was jonesing to pull Locke into the rabbit hole much the same way it pulled the Frenchies under the Temple. The monster can re-animate the dead (Alex in "Dead is Dead"). It remains to be seen what re-incarnated Locke (or Suit Christian or Grunge Christian)... The Island, Jacob or the Smoke Monster? We do not know the relationship b/w these entities, if they operate together (and to what extent) or if they are adversarial. We'll see how strongly Richard/Ben are followers of Jacob vice followers of Locke. ... If there's a difference.

This thread has fulfilled its purpose, no? Shall we hold an un-pinning ceremony?

Hell's yeah. Yeah, in a better world that's what would happen. Losing a team is tough....

Hartford, please?

Ehhh. It wasn't anything like I hoped it would be. I get why people might have called it Richard-centric, but by that same token, it revolved around Locke a lot. Lots of set-up. Next week is going to be pay-off time. At least, I hope it will be, and I expect it will be... b/c this is LOST. And nobody does finales like LOST. Anybody have any questions or was this as straightforward an ep as you can get?

The NFL's standing rule that I was aware of said that each team can have a Home, Away, and one Alternate uniform. However, this seems to be a special year with the AFL 50th. With it, all bets may be off re: how they're going to merchandise the anniversary. From the source upthread and the links, it looks as tho there will be home and away versions of historicals. But, just b/c the Bills' throwbacks are also historicals, one probably shouldn't assume they will be used in future years.