Category Archives: Season 5

Deleted scene from 5×09 Namaste

Posted on November 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

In this short out-take, Christian Shephard breaks into the barracks. For a dead guy, he’s good with an axe!

More of these deleted scenes will be available on the Season 5 DVD, and I’ll also be posting more of them here in the coming weeks.

Video Courtesy of Buena Vista Home Entertainment. ©ABC Studios

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Posted in 5x09 Namaste, Christian Shephard (John Terry), Season 5 DVD extras

LOST Season 5, Episodes 10-17 now on Hulu and ABC

Posted on October 8, 2009 | 5 comments

Season 5 Poster

UPDATE 12/19/09: Hulu will put up all the Season 5 episodes starting on January 1, 2010. Netflix has the whole season available now, for Netflix subscribers.

UPDATE 11/18/09: Early this morning, Hulu and ABC posted Season 5 Episodes 10 (He’s Our You) through Episode 17 (the finale The Incident). They took down Episodes 1 through 9.

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Original post below:

The first half of Season 5 is now on Hulu and on the ABC site.

Until recently, they had all the episodes from Seasons 1 to 4, but only the last few episodes of Season 5. Now they’ve added the first 9 episodes of Season 5, but taken the later episodes down. I guess it must be some kind of marketing ploy, a way to get people to buy the Season 5 DVD set when it becomes available, but it’s awfully confusing.

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Posted in Rewatch, Season 5

Michael Emerson talking about “The Incident”

Posted on September 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ben, to Jacob: "What about me?"

I’m still thinking about The Incident.

The last official audio podcast of Season 5, released May 16, 2009, has an entertaining interview with Michael Emerson. He made me laugh again because he appeared to be as amazed by the episode as we were. He said when he first read the script and saw he would be killing Jacob, he was shocked.

Emerson and his interviewer also talked about the first scene, the one with Jacob and the unamed man I like to call Esau. The interviewer said that Jacob wearing white and the other man wearing black was a return to the theme of black and white that has appeared in the show before, but that he thought it didn’t necessarily mean that Jacob was good and the other man bad.

Emerson emphatically agreed, and he said, “Our show delights in thwarting those equations.”

I agree also. I’ve seen a lot of theories online that posit that Jacob represents the forces of good, and Esau the forces of evil, and they will have an epic confrontation in Season 6. But I don’t think that’s where the writers are going. At least I hope not.

Emerson also talked about his plans for the summer (now over, alas!). He said he likes to be with his wife Carrie in New York during the summers. They have an enforced separation while LOST is shooting, “so I just like to follow her around during the summer. I like to hold her coat, and fetch her drinks, and be her personal assistant as much as I can.” So sweet! I hope he got a chance to do just that.

He also mentioned he had just finished shooting the character of a radical fundamentalist Puritan in a show for PBS. That should be interesting!

There’s a lot more in the podcast, which is available in the ABC archives: Official audio podcast of 5/16/09

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Posted in 5x16-17 The Incident, Ben (Michael Emerson), Interviews, Official audio podcasts, Opening Scene of Season 5 Finale, Other roles

Michael Emerson was “flummoxed” by the ending of The Incident

Posted on August 13, 2009 | Leave a comment

As always, I love to listen to Michael Emerson talk, and I love the way he has the same questions about the show that we, the viewers, do:

Q: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about The Incident, what your take-away from that was, and what questions you’ve been asking yourself during the hiatus.

ME: Since the finale …

Q: Yeah.

ME: I’m flummoxed. (Laughter from the audience.) Honestly, it wasn’t one, but it was two big old earth-shattering cliffhangers, and I’ll be damned if I know what either of them mean, or what either of them lead to. Honestly, what can be the next breathing moment of the show? I have no idea, and I won’t know until two days before the camera rolls, I’ll get a script, and I will read it with some relish, because I’m curious to see where do we go from there.

I don’t know if Jacob is a killable entity. We’re always plunging knives into things, or shooting things on LOST, but it doesn’t mean that they go away. (Laughter) It may just trigger them to transform into something else.

Emerson goes on to talk about the “psychological landscape” of the scene where Ben stabbed Jacob. Then he takes questions from the audience.

This interview was conducted by EW’s Doc Jensen and Dan Snierson at Comic-Con 2009. I found it via LOST: On the Road, a very cool blog totally focused on Michael Emerson.

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Posted in 5x16-17 The Incident, Ben (Michael Emerson), Comic-Con 2009, Interviews

How did Dr. Chang know about time travel?

Posted on August 11, 2009 | Leave a comment

"It's going to allow us to manipulate time." -- Dr. Pierre Chang (aka Dr. Marvin Candle) in 5x01

I’ve been focusing a lot recently on the last episode of Season 5, but now I want to switch gears for a bit and look back at the beginning of the season, which has its own intriguing mysteries, especially when seen now, in light of what we learned later on.

In a scene near the beginning of the season premiere, 5×01 Because You Left, Dr. Chang is underground in the Orchid Station, talking to a construction foreman. The year is 1977:

Foreman: There’s an open chamber about 20 meters in, behind the rock. (Pointing to a sonar image that shows part of the donkey wheel) There’s something in there. The only way to get to it is to lay charges here (pointing) and here. Blast through —

Dr. Chang: Under no circumstances. This station is being built here because of its proximity to what we believe to be an almost limitless energy. And that energy, once we can harness it correctly — it’s going to allow us to manipulate time.

Foreman: Hah. (Sarcastically) Okay, so, what, we’re going to go back and kill Hitler?

Dr. Chang: Don’t be absurd. There are rules. Rules that can’t be broken.

Foreman: So what do you want me to do?

Dr. Chang: You’re gonna do nothing. If you drill even one centimeter further and risk releasing that energy — if that were to happen (looks at injured worker and shakes his head) — God help us all.

This raises a lot of questions. How did Dr. Chang know about the special “energy”? Did he come to the Island because he knew that energy was there? And if so, was the whole Dharma Initiative a ruse, a cover for his real purpose of finding and harnessing the energy? Or did Chang discover the energy and its properties only after he arrived at the Island? If so, how?

When Dr. Chang talks about “rules” that can’t be broken, he sounds a lot like Faraday, when Faraday explained the “rules” of time travel to the Losties, before he changed his mind. Where did Dr. Chang get his ideas about the rules?

Dr. Chang’s line, “God help us all,” is so dramatic. Then in the next episode, 5×02 The Lie, that line echoes with an eerie resonance when it is repeated by Eloise Hawking:

Eloise: What you need is irrelevant. Seventy hours is what you’ve got.

Ben: Look, I lost Reyes tonight. (Pause) So what happens if I can’t get them all to come back?

Eloise: Then God help us all. (Crescendo. End of episode.)

What exactly is Eloise Hawking afraid of, and is it the same thing that Dr. Chang was afraid of when he uttered the same phrase?

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Posted in 5x01 Because You Left, 5x02 The Lie, Dr. Chang (Francois Chau), Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan), Time travel

Jacob: It only ends once

Posted on July 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

Jacob and Esau watch the ship approach

I’m working on a new grand theory of almost everything (ha!), and when I think about that, I find myself drawn back again to the first scene of the Season 5 Finale. There’s so much packed into that scene which seems to provide critical clues to what LOST is really all about.

In particular, I wanted to look more closely at one bit of the scene, the part where Jacob and Esau (the Man in Black) talk about the approach of the sailing ship.

Jacob: I take it you’re here because of the ship.

Esau: I am. (Pause) How did they find the Island?

Jacob: You’ll have to ask them when they get here.

Esau: I don’t have to ask. (Looks at Jacob) You brought them here. (Pause) Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?

Jacob: You are wrong.

Esau: Am I? (Pause) They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.

Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.

What conclusions can be drawn from that?

1. Jacob has the power to bring people to the Island — or at least Esau thinks that he does.

2. This is not the first group of people to come to the Island. Esau, sounding weary, says it “always ends the same,” which implies that similar scenarios have happened many times before.

3. Either Jacob and Esau are in a time loop, and the fighting, destroying, and corrupting groups that Esau refers to are groups from the future (the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the 815-ers), or else Jacob and Esau have been on the Island for a very long time, long enough to see many other groups come and go in the past. I’m betting on the second scenario.

4 There is some sort of linear progression. Jacob says “It only ends once.” Even if time loops are involved, we are still dealing with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end.

5. Jacob believes that Esau is wrong about something, and though we don’t know exactly what, we know that Esau is cynical, world-weary, and resigned, and expects nothing but trouble from the many visitors to the Island. Jacob expects something more. But what is it that he expects?

I believe that LOST is a story about redemption and atonement. I think that is what Jacob is working towards, and that is why he keeps on bringing groups to the Island, over and over until some group finally gets it right. (I’ll be writing more about this later, as I work out my theory.)

Here’s a clip of the scene. Each time I’ve watched it, I’ve noticed something new:

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Posted in Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), Man in Black (Titus Welliver), Opening Scene of Season 5 Finale

‘Previously on Lost’ band playing tonight (Tuesday, July 21, 2009) in New York City

Posted on July 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

Dancing statue in the Lost Untangled video

Remember the “Previously on Lost” band that played on the Season 5 Finale LOST Untangled video?

They’re going to be in New York tonight, playing at the Mercury Lounge in lower Manhattan, where they will be performing their Season 5 Finale recap song live for the first time. Also appearing are the headline act Malajube — a French-Canadian indie rock band — and two other bands. Only $10! 21+

Here’s a clip of the band in a concert they did last year at the Knitting Factory in NY, singing a catchy recap of The Constant: