The Variables

While I love any and all things LOST and wouldn't miss an episode, I still feel like this one was a little anticlimactic. I mean when you compare it to the days of Boone dying just before they could cut off his leg with a big door, or John not pushing the button, or watching Charlie drown it just seems a little blah.

I think they tried to be all surprising and revealing but come on, we all already knew that Eloise was Daniel's mom and that Whidmore was Daniel's dad. We also knew that the hatch was built over the magic energy source. I don't think anyone thought Desmond was dead, did they?

I guess the big startling revelations for the night were:

1. Mr. "Whatever Happened Happened" is now changing his tune and thinks he can change the future.

2. Eloise is the worst parent EVER. Even by LOST standards she takes the prize.

3. Daniel is dying. Normally I would never believe that a character was dead when left bleeding at the end of an episode, but....Daniel made a big point of saying that anyone could die in "the present" and in the scenes from next week Jack is using Daniel's journal to figure out what to do, SO.....he's a goner. He'll be back at some point though, I'm sure.

4. The magic energy source is not the hydrogen bomb itself. I always thought that the Dharma people dug into the leaking ancient bomb, thus causing all of their problems. Apparently not. I'm not sure how blowing up the bomb will solve anything, but I'm not a relativistic physicist so why would I?

5. Daniel had lost his memory due to experimenting on himself too much. The island healed him. He does seem a lot more together (at least using full sentences) than he did when he first got there.

The Questions this episode raised are:

Why did Eloise send Daniel back if she was just going to shoot him? If sending him back would have meant saving the island or the people on it or whatever than it might have been worth it (more Jesus imagery there), but just to send him back to kill him? Doesn't seem to make sense.

Jack is a doctor and smart and all but do any of us really think he can #1 decipher anything Daniel has written and #2 figure out how to unearth, and detonate a 30 year old hydrogen bomb safely?

And just who is going to pilot the sub if Sawyer and the gang decide to escape from the island? It's not like riding a bike. I'm not sure that plan was very well thought out.

Why didn't they keep the same 50's Eloise actress? That was confusing.

Do the Losties really want the plane not to crash? Jack will be a drunk, depressed struggling surgeon. Charlie will be a heroine addict and struggling musician. Claire will give Aaron up for adoption. Jin and Sun will be in a childless struggling marriage. Sawyer and Juliette will never have met. John will be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Rose will have cancer. Kate will get the electric chair. Even the Others have it better than that.

The best lines of the night go to Sawyer. His nicknames cracked me up again. He called Daniel "Twitchy" and "HG Wells". Hilarious. (On a side note it seems that his calling Kate "Freckles" really ticked off Juliette. He might want to let that one go.)

BTW, how many episodes are left? (Translated how much time do I have to read The Brothers Karamazov?)

For more theories check out the LOST Books Challenge.