brian
Lost... and Gone Forever
Administrator
Dharma
Posts: 340
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« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2010, 02:39:47 AM » |
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“You can’t always get what you want – but if you try, sometimes you just might find – you get what you need.” – Rusted Root… covering the Rolling Stones.
This week’s episode, “Happily Ever After”, didn’t play out like I was expecting. Although some portions of the episode matched my pre-episode expectations - Faraday espousing wacky and confusing theories, Eloise Hawking being mysterious and all-knowing, Desmond and Penny potentially finding love in the Flash Sideways, – I was shocked that a good 95% of the episode took place in the Flash Sideways world. Given the distaste that so many people have for the Flash Sideways (myself somewhat included), this could have meant disaster for the episode, breaking the streak of every Desmond-centric episode being totally awesome.
Turns out, the episode was still fantastic. But more importantly, this episode was exactly what we needed.
Flash Sideways. For the first time all season, the Flash Sideways storyline gained some tangible importance. We saw that there was indeed a connection between Reality #1 (on the Island) and Reality #2 (in LA X). Heck, we even had characters being aware of the Flash Sideways world itself:
CHARLIE: “I've seen something real, I've seen the truth.”
CHARLIE: “I feel sorry for you, mate. You think you're happy. You think you've got it all--this, your life. But, you don't.”
CHARLIE: “This doesn't matter. None of this matters. All that matters is that we felt it.”
ELOISE: “Someone has clearly affected the way you see things. This is a serious problem. It is, in fact, a violation. So, whatever you’re doing, whatever it is you think you’re looking for...You need to stop looking for it.”
DANIEL: “Just listen, what if, this, all this, what if this wasn't suppose to be our life? What if we had some other life and for some reason, we changed things? I don't want to set off a nuclear bomb, Mr. Hume. I think I already did.”
This is huge.
When you put all these comments together, a few things become very clear:
The Flash Sideways world isn’t how things are “supposed to be” for these characters. I won’t go so far as to say it isn’t “real”, but that is a distinct possibility as well. Whatever the Flash Sideways world is, our characters were brought into via unnatural means – and some are becoming aware of that. They “belong” in Reality #1.
It’s curious that we only have proof of three characters coming to this realization – Desmond, who is “special” - and two characters who are dead in Reality #1 – Faraday and Charlie. Charlie had his epiphany during a near-death experience, but Faraday had his simply by seeing Charlotte. It makes one wonder about the connection between the characters in Reality #1 and #2. If a character dies in one reality, does it throw things out of balance and make that person more aware of the fact that things aren’t right? Or is this just a coincidence of this episode that will soon be irrelevant when other characters start having similar epiphanies?
Eloise continues to be all-knowing. She seems to exist outside the space-time continuum and has knowledge of both realities… yet we know that she was a normal person who grew up on the Island from 1954 to at least 1977. How did she go from a semi-leader of the Others to the keeper of the space-time continuum? The one thing I’m thinking of is that the Others are “special”. They have a connection to the Island, which might be the nexus of both realities – and therefore might have some dual-reality citizenship, so to speak.
One could also debate that Charles Widmore fits into this category as well since he knows precisely what Desmond needs to do in Reality #1 to keep the world from falling apart. So we have Widmore in Reality #1 and Eloise in Reality #2 both trying to influence Desmond’s actions. Are they on the same side? Opposing sides?
But what does it all mean?
If the Flash Sideways were simply some “dreamlike state” that our Survivors all entered after the Jughead explosion, it would explain how familiar characters keep re-appearing and interacting… and why a lot of it seems to be a version of “happily ever after” for most of our Survivors. But if this were the case, I don’t think Eloise would be so concerned about violating the “rules” of Reality #2.
Likewise, the fact that we have living, thinking characters like Charlie and Faraday – characters who were dead before the Jughead explosion – attempting to influence the other Survivors to see “the truth” seems to eliminate a lot of the theories about the Flash Sideways being the result of a “Deal with the Devil” or them being an “Epilogue” to the Lost storyline after the On-Island action concludes. There are clearly two opposing forces at play in the Flash Sideways. On one side is Eloise, on the other is Desmond / Charlie / Faraday.
Hmmm – two opposing forces at play? Perhaps one light, and one dark? A “balance” of sorts? Where have we heard this before?
I’m not sure how – or why – but could it be that what we are seeing in the Flash Sideways world is some sort of “battle” for the very souls of our Survivors between Jacob and Anti-Jacob? On the one side you have Anti-Jacob giving them everything that he thinks they need… but is demonstrating how little he understands them and their condition by never getting it quite right. This is really where the whole “Deal with the Devil” theory came from in the first place – the fact that in each Flash Sideways, there is a twinge of sadness mixed in with an otherwise, overall, very positive existence for our characters.
On the other side, you have Jacob (perhaps manifesting himself through the dead characters in Reality #2, just like Anti-Jacob does in Reality #1) trying to shake our Survivors out of it, to tell them that this isn’t what they are supposed to be doing, that these lives may be nice, but they are fake… and once they experience something that touches upon the core of their soul – a near-death experience, true love, their first taste of Skyline Chili, they see Reality #2 for the fraud it is.
I’m not really sure how this makes sense, as it seems to require that all our Survivors on the Island fall into some sort of coma to be experiencing Reality #2, but that didn’t seem to be the case with Desmond this week. The two realities seem to be happening concurrently. I also don’t know what exactly would happen if our Survivors in Reality #2 were suddenly “enlightened” – how would that help the current situation on the Island at all? But this is one of those situations where I have more of a general feeling for what’s going on than the hard facts sorted out in my head.
Earlier today, I commented to my Hot Wife Kate that one of the reasons that the Flash Sideways haven’t been very interesting to me is because of the lack of an overall conflict. Sure, there are individual character struggles and problems – but since none of the characters really know each other, these individual dramas don’t carry a lot of importance. If Sun dies from being shot in the stomach, Jin would be sad – but no one else in the Flash Sideways would care. They don’t know her… or at least they don’t know that they know her. So who cares?
By introducing this larger “battle” between two opposing sides in the Flash Sideways, you introduce some much needed conflict. You’ll have characters taking sides and making important decisions that affect everyone. It would also offer a nice parallel to exactly what is going on in Reality #1 on the Island.
I still don’t know if the end game involves one reality “surviving” while the other disappears, the two realities merging, or something in between – but it could be that Widmore’s comment two episodes ago about “ceasing to exist” may have been a hint that there are going to be two wars going on – one in each reality, but both with the same players. The winners continue on. The losers vanish forever.
Whoa. This is probably too heady, even for me. Someone take these seeds of theories and run with them!
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