[Note: Spoilers follow.]

Wasn’t that such an awesome episode? Blast doors! Balloon! Parachute food! Ow, my legs!

Locked Down Locke

Locke is big on the concept of the Island being an agent of Fate, and twice now, something big has happened which coincided with him losing the use of his legs: the death of Boone — which he once referred to as a sacrifice that the Island desired — and now the Hatch lockdown. It could be said that Fate operated to trap Locke just where he could see the Blast Door Map when the black lights came on. It could also be said that Fate made him a moody, gullible, codependency addict with father issues. That scene at the airport motel was a clear trinity of Locke Disasters, past, present, and future: his grifter “father,” the passing Oceanic planes foreshadowing the coming crash, and one of TV History’s Most Pathetic Wedding Proposals.

Oh, and in case you missed it, the lady whose home Locke was inspecting? It was Nadia, Sayid’s childhood friend who escaped from Iraq.

Henry Gale

Now, all this time I figured that Fake Henry Gale (FHG) was clearly lying, simply because his name was taken from The Wizard of Oz, and I was waiting for someone in the show to point that out. But no, there actually was a Real Henry Gale (RHG), as his driver’s license showed. What I’m wondering now is, if FHG knew that Sayid and Co. would find the balloon based on his map, and would find RHG’s body, why didn’t he bolt when he had a chance, and why was he so earnest in asking Sayid if they had found his balloon? It’s unlikely that he would think Sayid wouldn’t dig up the grave site. No, I think LOST still plans to leave the Other-ness of Fake Henry Gale in question, and it’ll be interesting to see what explanation he gives for his lies in the next episode. Maybe he’s defecting.

Update: After seeing 2.18, it looks like he’s an Other. Okay.

Skinner Box

After seeing the food drop, Amy joked that the whole island scenario is just a gigantic Skinner Box, especially given that the Orientation film mentions B.F. Skinner. It’s actually a plausible theory; one story about the Skinner Box was that in a cage where food was delivered consistently with every press of a switch, the rat would eventually learn to trigger the switch only when it was hungry, but in a cage where delivery of food would only occur on random presses, the rat would begin to push the switch repeatedly, even when not hungry — like a gambler playing at slots. Note that this episode featured a poker game between Jack and Sawyer, gambling with food.

More stuff from HoWeCogitate, Beanblog, Mostly Muppet, LOST Fan Blog, and LOST and Gone Forever.

Remember how The Simpsons eerily foreshadowed the death of Charles Bronson and the unmasking of LT Smash / Indepundit?

This week I was formulating a new hypertext art project for WWTQ which I arbitrarily named “Grimes,” for no reason other than that I was thinking of Frank Grimes at the time. I also bought plane tickets to Orlando for a Disney World trip my folks are planning in May.

Tonight, I get home from work and flop onto the couch for a rare evening of vegging out in front of the TV, and what Simpsons episodes should show on FOX5 but Frank Grimes and EFCOT Center. This really gives me the willies.

(Update, 3/30/2006: Please see my post on “Lockdown” for more commentary.)

A few LOST notes for recent and upcoming episodes. I’m big on spoilers, so stop reading right here if you don’t want to know what’s coming.

First, be sure to read DCeiver’s latest Pompatus of LOST.

Claire and Kate?

Now, about Claire and her Flashback Adventure with Kate and Rousseau to the abandoned DHARMA medical facility, I have only one question: why did she ask Kate to go with her? I don’t remember Kate and Claire having any special friendship or connection through the course of the series. And if she wanted a tracker, she’s got ever-trustworthy, not-creepy-at-all Mr. Locke bedding down by her tent. (Of course, you just know it was because the writers had to get Evangeline Lilly and Emilie de Ravin together, out and alone in the sweaty jungle of mystery and passion. And with an insane wild French chick to boot.)

Henry Gale

As for Henry Gale, he’s an Other, right? But it’s not sure: maybe he really is just a rich balloonist with a penchant for making evil faces at Sayid and spouting offhandedly manipulative phrases at Locke while living on an island for four months and not hearing a plane crash. Next episode (2.16), Locke will enlist Ana Lucia’s help in interrogating him. You know what this means: Henry Gale will have met almost all of the LOST survivors’ minority representation. So far he’s had the Iraqi Torturer, the Weird African Beard Trimmer, and now the Trigger-Happy Hispanic Vigilante Ex-Cop. After next week, all he’ll need for the full LOST racial experience will be Jin the Korean Kneecapper coming into his cell and expressing his “extreme disappointment.”

James and John

One last point, and this is a major spoiler: we’re going to find that Locke and Sawyer have some kind of a “surprising connection.” (No, no, not that kind of connection — Sawyer loves Kate, remember?) I’m putting my money on Locke’s kidney-conning “father” also being a con man of Sawyer’s association, possibly even the Original Sawyer who killed his parents. Since LOST is big on biblical allusion (though occasionally getting it wrong), it’s worth noting that Sawyer’s real name is James, and Locke’s first name is John, and in the New Testament, James and John were brothers, the sons of Zebedee who were called to be among Jesus’ first apostles.

Also, what’s Eko building? A church?