Official "The Variable" Analysis Comments!

[brian]

I grade this post a C+. The effort was there, the content was lacking. Better luck next time.

[mac mactavish]

"FARADAY: I'm just making sure that your father does what he's supposed to do."

Could the thing that Chang is supposed to do (according to Faraday) be the equivalent to what Desmond did when he turned the fail safe key? 

Would that then send a "Flashback Chang" into the body of "1974 Chang", who then tracks down Faraday (soon after Charlotte dies). 

"Flashback Chang" and "1974 Faraday" would then have a heart-to-heart and make a video (I think it's Faraday's voice, not Miles).

"Flashback Chang" sends Faraday to Dharma (how else would he have credentials to work of Dharma's secret stuff)

Then "1974 Chang" regains 1974 consciousness, and "Flashback Chang" falls out of the sky in 1977 only to become "One-Armed-Naked Chang" (post fail-safe).

After that he would continue with his Dharma research and continue to make creepy videos...

Eh?

[UnfoX]

mac mactavish,
I'm not buying it I think the thing that Chang is supposed to do is to send some people, included Miles, away with the sub believing that the purge is coming.

[Alec]

I grade this post a C+. The effort was there, the content was lacking. Better luck next time.

Don't be too hard on yourself, Brian. It was a tricky episode, infused in trickiness and sauteed in tricky butter.

One nit-picky note: In your analysis you said that maybe the island doesn't bring people back from the dead, only heals them. But then we have Locke and maybe Christian to explain...

[Katie Kat]

Brian - I think the analyses are going to be harder and harder to do from here on out!  Doesn't mean they aren't good, though.  The players and the playing field are getting narrowed down, so there is more central content.  It's more concentrated and we get more answers, but it's also harder to follow in some ways!  I sort of see it like one of those (horrible) reality shows where at first you can just play the field and generalize, but as the game goes on it gets more intense and more difficult because you know so much more and your choices for the right moves to make (or correct analysis) gets limited.  The pace picks up and it's more exciting, but the stakes are higher... sounds kind of like the theme in LOST!  Anyhow - I don't know why I spent so much time explaining that! 

I almost think we HAVE to believe the past can be changed.  Now, I don't know that that means it doesn't course-correct back to the same line it was on, but it can (and has, according to LOST) be changed.  Now if a "variable" gets in there and starts changing things right and left, the course correction may take longer and longer.  So if other people (Mrs. Hawking, etc.) get on the other side and continue to put things back "as they should be," the course correcting tilts back the other way.  It's like a tug of war.  I think that's why Mrs. Hawking, etc. have been so intent on making everyone believe in their "destinies" and getting things back exactly as they were (like for the Ajira flight). 

I just can't wrap my head around the Farraday thing though.  I suppose all his knowledge could be from his own experiments, but that couldn't include his knowledge about specifics on the Island (the hatches, etc.).  I think he has been going back in time gathering the information as well as doing his experiments and writing them down.  Maybe that's why he cries when he sees the plane wreckage.  He's been back in time and knows he knows our Losties?  I don't know!  The crying thing still throws me off.  And I still think it's Farraday's voice in the Chang video, but I like the idea that it might be Miles!

At this point I feel like I'm just along for the ride!  Woo Hoo! 

[flinchn]

Looking at the previews for next week, I HAVE to believe we'll get some answers.  I won't spoil it, but the " "-centric is something I've been waiting for forever.  In fact, besides Jacob himself - I can't think of an flashback ep. I want to see more. 2 days...

[Sawyers optician]

Brian, You're doing an amazing job with the crazy mixed up episodes we are getting.  I don't know if I would understand anything on this show without my weekly suppliment of Lost and Gone Forever!  Thank You.
I just watched the Chang Comic Con video for the fourth time today.  And at first I thought that the person filming was Daniel.  Then I read that you think it's Miles and it really does sound like him. The third time I couldn't decide who it sounded most like.  After the 4th viewing, I think that it is both of them.  If that is the case, It was filmed just before Miles & Daniel knocked on Sawyer's door.  Maybe Chang had a change of heart during his ride back to the barracks, and called Daniel and Miles into his house to send the hurried message into the future. 

[Keebah]

Brian - you're doing a superb job as always.  Please don't get yourself down.  I know it's been said by others on this site, but it applies to me as well: I wouldn't be the Lost fan that I am without Lost...and Gone Forever.  Keep up the great work.

Here's my two cents on Daniel, his journal and his apparent omniscience regarding the island. After Daniel experimented on himself and began struggling with his daily mental reset (not remembered anything from the day before), I wonder if Charles and Eloise began feeding their son information about the island that he would fail to remember the next day.  If so, what better way for him to remember the information later than to write it down in a journal that his dear old mum gave to him?  This probably wouldn't go so far as to explain the day-to-day movements of the Dharma Initiative in 1977, but it would at least give Daniel a framework for the island.

I believe Katie Kat suggested that Daniel was time traveling into the past in order to learn about the island, but I'm not sure I buy that.  I seem to recall from "Variables" that when Charles visited Daniel for freighter recruitment, they chatted briefly about the experiment that got Daniel kicked out of university and damaged his girlfriend's brain.  I think Daniel said he tested it on himself, and from that I inferred that this test was what screwed up Daniel's brain.  After all, if he tested it and knew it was unsafe, he wouldn't have performed the experiment on his girlfriend.  But if he tested it but couldn't remember it was unsafe, what's to stop him from zapping his honey's brain?  So I think that Dan being a time traveler a pill too large for me to swallow, and rather we'll find out that he was fed most of his information on the island (perhaps even by his past self).  But that's just my theory for today.