A Few Lost Notes

Okay, okay, LOST fans, here are some notes on recent episodes, since I haven’t written about it for a while. Some spoilers follow, so those of you who haven’t been watching the second season should stop reading right here.

The Hunting Party

Jack, you didn’t ask “Zeke” enough questions. That’s all. Oh, and Kate messed up, thus driving Jack to Ana Lucia and Kate to Sawyer. Smooth plot move to reshuffle island romances. See Pompatus of Lost 2.11.

Fire + Water

Mister Eko got the concept of baptism wrong, especially with regard to Jesus and John the Baptist. Eko claims, “It is said that when John the Baptist baptized Jesus the skies opened up and a dove flew down from the sky. This told John something, that he had cleansed this man of all his sins, that he had freed him.”

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, MISTAH EKO, WRONG. Jesus, being God Incarnate, was not in need of John’s baptism of repentance, as he had no sins for which to repent. Indeed, when Christ came to John for baptism, John said “I should be baptized by you,” to which Christ responded, “Let it be done that all righteousness may be fulfilled.” And when he was baptized, the heavens opened up, a dove descended on him, and a voice spoke, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” These were but some minor details which Mr. Eko seems to have missed. (I’ll write more on why a sinless Messiah would submit to baptism in some other non-Lost post.)

I guess Eko gets a pass for not actually being a real priest with an actual seminary education. Still, you’d think that someone who knows Scripture well enough that he can give you the story of King Josiah and tell you that Aaron was Moses’ brother, would know something as basic as the details of the Baptism of Jesus. Maybe his knowledge of the Bible is like Alex de Large’s in A Clockwork Orange: he preferred the Old Testament since it had more action and violence and naughty bits. Oh yes, brother.

More on Eko and Baptism from Just Another Pretty Farce, TenNapel, and Thinklings.

You’ll want to read Pompatus of Lost 2.12.

I loved the visual execution of Charlie’s visions, by the way. The scene with Claire and his mother as haloed saints was priceless.

Locke seemed totally out of line hitting Charlie like that, since Locke himself — and others — have also been subject to island-induced visions and impulses which drove them to irrational behavior in the past. Sawyer’s right; it seems to be more about man-versus-man competition for Claire’s bedside favor than it is about protecting the group. And that’s why I cheered for Charlie at the end of The Long Con, speaking of which…

The Long Con

This was great — and I normally hate Sawyer. (Which is exactly his intention according to Kate’s psychoanalysis, right?) The Jack-Locke-Control-Freak conflict was due for a wrench in the works, and we’re seeing a shift in the way Locke is portrayed — more antagonistic, losing the air of benevolent mystery which used to be his trademark, becoming more manipulatively secretive. We also distinctly see the island’s chance-and-karma effect in operation: Sun earlier attempted to poison Jin, thus downing Michael, and now the Sawyer-Charlie Con Team becomes her unwitting venue for cosmic retribution. 2.13: Sawyeriana.

One of Them

Yeah, yeah, hieroglyphics on the timer. Maybe “Crooked-Stick Flame Bird Crutch” is Island Egyptian for “-1”? But more importantly, wow, isn’t it so obvious that guy is an Other? He’s named for a fictional character (Henry Gale was Dorothy’s uncle in The Wizard of Oz, which also featured ballooning), he uses the past tense to describe his wealth, he claims to have been on the island for four months and didn’t hear the plane crash, he can’t remember how deep he buried his late wife, he doesn’t inspire guilt in Iraqi torturers, and he dresses in that loose Banana Republic Island Khaki Casual fashion which Ethan and Goodwin carried so well. He’s sooo an Other.

Next week: caduceus on a hatch! Spoilers mention that the “DHARMA” in Dharma Initiative could be an acronym. I’m willing to bet that the “H” is for Human and the “R” is for Research.

(Bigspaceship1.com makes you download a PDF on Egyptian Hieroglyphic Uniode Character Sets. Don’t do that. Don’t set a PDF as a root directory index. Setting a PDF as a root directory index is bad.)