I arrived on the Plaza Park lawn as soon as the 8 a.m. shuttle could get me there. No one noticed I was dressed to resemble Kate, and Hurley Guy was nowhere in sight to beg for a photo. The doors opened at about 10:30 for the 11:00 panel, and on the way in we were handed pencils and fliers for “Lost University” (and I also got the “9″ card being handed out as a promo for 9). We found out what that was all about at the beginning of the panel, when a clip advertising the website (lostuniversity.org) was played. I haven’t looked at the site, so I don’t know if it’s another ARG or another fan-gathering site. But with “test” questions and “schedules” involving polar bears and hunting boars, it’s bound to be at least slightly funny.

I believe this was also where there were some clips played of “things that might happen” in an altered world of Lost. I can’t remember precisely where this bit was, because I was a good fan and didn’t take pictures of any of the videos. The lineup included a commercial for Mr. Cluck’s featuring Hurley, who had apparently bought the company and had nothing but GOOD luck since winning the lottery. The restaurant was featuring “Australian” combos to commemorate his return from his walkabout trip. Then there was a segment from a “Most Wanted Fugitives” show, letting us know that Kate was still on the run. Apparently, instead of killing her stepdad in the explosion, she’d actually killed the underling he’d sent back to the house to collect his tools.

The panel itself started with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof saying that they planned to make this mostly Q&A, to give back to the fans. And although they wanted to give out gifts to everyone who asked questions, like they had last year, the network hadn’t given them the budget, so they’d just brought one gift that would go to whoever said the secret word. But everyone was to follow the standard rules and keep it to one question. This was followed by a montage of the best fan videos found on the web, including the infamous “Brokeback Island” and some Robot Chicken-style stuff with action figures. I’d have liked to have a list of those, to look up later and watch in full.

The first question was about how a fan had heard season 6 would be reminiscent of season 1, and how was that going to work? Apparently they’re bringing back the unpredictability that ran rampant at the beginning. To that end, they said that they’re often asked if they’re making it up as they go along, and insisted that they’re not. Just to prove it to us, each took from a “secret hiding place” one sheet of paper, and proclaimed them to be the last two pages of the series-finale script. They located a stapler somewhere, stapled the sheets together, and put them into a double-locked box, each taking a key. The box, they explained, would be taken by someone else to an undisclosed location after the panel, and on the night of the finale it would be brought to the Jimmy Kimmel set, where they’d open it and read the script, to prove that the pages did indeed contain what had just been shown. Gimmicky, but all is well and good.

Next, a guy comes up who’s apparently well-known for doing wacky stuff (not Bob Stencil, some other dude) and presents the producers with a wrapped gift. He opens it for them: a black velvet painting of the two of them with a polar bear. The guy also plugged his website: damoncarltonandapolarbear.com. (They repeated it back to him as “damonANDcarltonandapolarbear,” and he and the rest of us took great glee in correcting it.) Again…haven’t dared to look. They did accept the painting.

I believe that a bit after this is where the winner of the theme-song contest was announced. I hadn’t even known there was a contest…made me feel like a very bad fan. The crew had mocked up a credits sequence to the winning composition, which, sadly, wasn’t very clearly audible from where I was sitting. But the sequence was cool.

So then, Hurley Guy took the mike.

Only, it wasn’t Hurley Guy. It was Jorge Garcia.

Wanting to know, apparently, if having the bomb plan succeed meant the previous five seasons would have all been for nothing, because that would seem like a huge cheat. The producers explained that he’d just have to trust them. “Yeah,” he said, “but the last time I trusted you guys you said Nikki and Paolo were gonna be awesome.” Then he asked whether it being the final season meant everything was going to be answered. Like, when Jack and Sayid were torturing Sawyer over Shannon’s inhaler, but he didn’t have it…where exactly was the inhaler? Oh JEEZ, Jorge…”What happened to one question per person???”

At that point, the cheering from the front got waaaay too loud to just be about the witty banter…and soon, Michael Emerson appeared on the screen, needling Jorge about the question, his character, and everything in general. He was very much in character as Ben, and when Jorge brought this up, saying he himself was acting when playing Hurley, he responded with, “Acting. Is that what you do.” It went on for what seemed like quite a while, but I can’t remember much, except how a comment about how Hurley was played “broadly” got a general condemnatory “oooooooouw” from the audience. Jorge accused him of being jealous over not having won the role of Hurley, and he protested that he’d never tried out. And then, of course, an “audition tape” was played, during which both actors migrated to the stage.

Bob Stencil made his appearance after this, with a variation on the time-loop question, and pretended to get very confused about it and get a nosebleed. “Oh…gotta find my constant!” The producers had been expecting him and had a custom T-shirt ready for him. He was thrilled.

A fan asked the eternal question: “Does Nestor Carbonell wear eyeliner?” Cuse and Lindelof said they get this all the time (and they do; I was headdesking as best I could with a program booklet), and that Nestor was in the back right now getting ready so they’d just go to the video feed so he could answer it. The video was of him at a makeup mirror talking to himself and applying eyeliner. After ample laughter time, he looked at the pencil and said, “This is Charcoal. I never use Charcoal.” And went into what I presume is a Christian-Bale-style rant at one of the (probably imaginary) staff. When the lights came up, he was at the front table with the others.

The real Hurley Guy came to the mike after this, both to ask a question and to thank Jorge and the show for giving him a character he could identify with. At that point, Cuse and Lindelof decided it was time to give us clues about the secret word, which no one had yet said. “Think…blonde. Pregnant.” The audience of course started yelling “Claire” but we were reminded that it could only get you a prize at the mike. Surprisingly, the next question asker didn’t work it in; I guess he really wanted to ask the question he wanted to ask. But the next guy did it, and cleverly. His prize was a seagull statue, to commemorate the bird that Claire had been interacting with in one episode.

There was one final guest to bring out, and we would get a clip intro for a clue. Jack? Kate? Nope, Sawyer. Audience just about melted. (And with good reason, if you fancy him; the clips were calculated for their hotness factor.) Josh Holloway came out and sat next to Lindelof, and started up what sounded like an innocuous conversation about their “making it up” bit with the box. Then he pulled out a small object and said, “You know what this is?”

“Looks like a taser,” says Lindelof.

“Yeah! Wanna see if it works?”
He shoves the thing into Lindelof’s shoulder, and the sound system plays a buzzing noise…about two seconds after the spasming act is over. So then, after grabbing the key, he threatens Cuse with the taser, saying he’ll meet the same fate as his friend JJ Abrams. “That’s not JJ Abrams. That’s Damon Lindelof.” “Lindel…Linda who?”
And he stuck Lindelof’s hand in the pitcher of ice water.

Of course, Josh gets both keys and extracts the script pages from the box, with plenty of Sawyer-style nicknames and snark, then stands there and looks at the pages in confusion. “You can’t read!” crows Cuse, and Emerson grabs the pages and puts on Ben-like glasses.
“Sylar and Parkman stand beneath the big top…” Half the audience is confused; the other half, including me, is laughing too hard to hear much.

“You have to go on, Parkman…you’re the last Petrelli.”

“What the f**k is this?”

Finally, they played an “In Memoriam” montage of a bunch of characters who’d died over the course of the show, starting with the guy who got sucked into the engine (forgot his name) and ending with a rather long bit about Charlie. Having heard what had happened at the Flash Forward panel on Thursday, I began to get suspicious and got my camera ready. Sure enough, surprise!Dominic Monaghan came out onstage. He was there for all of 30 seconds and didn’t get to say anything; and of three pictures I managed to take, one’s blurry, one doesn’t let you see who he is, and in the third he’s behind Josh. Figures. (I picked the blurry one.) But I’m not complaining. If they wanted to give a gift to the fans, this panel was a good one. Thanks, guys.

Lost – Good season, learned a lot more than I expected about DHARMA, major cliffhanger. Renewed for a final season…in 2010. (Hard to believe that’s less than a year away)

Pushing Daisies – managed to maintain the tone & quality, but canceled halfway through the year. Supposed to get the last 3 episodes starting at the end of the month. A 12-issue comic book miniseries has already been announced.

Bones – I only saw a few episodes, but liked them, and Katie’s been watching it regularly. Fun off-format season finale w/ a nasty cliffhanger. Returning, according to the voiceover during the credits.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – turned our to be a surprisingly solid, complex show. No word on renewal yet, but I’d like to see more. Update 6: canceled.

Dollhouse: Started off weak, but got really interesting as the season progressed. It’s not a comfortable show by any means. No word on renewal, but if I had to choose between this and T:SCC, I’d take SCC. Update 2: Unofficial sources say it’s renewed, but I wouldn’t count my actives until they’re all back for their treatments.

Heroes: I gave up 2 episodes into the “Fugitives” arc, but Katie kept watching. Deeply problematic show but its high points were very good. Renewed, and I hope it’ll improve next year.

Better Off Ted – fun, painful, quirky all rolled into one. Sort of like a less-nerdy Dilbert or Office Space. I’d like to see more, but it doesn’t seem likely. Update 3: Holy crap, it’s been renewed! That’s a bigger surprise than Dollhouse!

Castle – favorite of this year’s mid-season replacements. Would definitely like to see more, but would be okay if this turned out to be all. Unlike, say, Drive. Update 1: Cool! It’s been renewed!

Battlestar Galactica – finished off with a very good final season. Caprica, on the other hand, was tedious. May take another look at it when the series launches.

Update 4: Forgot to mention The Unusuals, which we checked out, but neither of us found interesting enough to stick with. The ads built it up to be…well…unusual, and it wasn’t. Castle and Bones both routinely dealt with more unusual cases. For anyone who did like it, prospects look dim. Update 7: canceled.

Update 5: EW has a running tally of all the network shows.

Update 8 (May 18): The decisions are in for all of them now. I’m sad to see Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles canceled (especially in the same week that Terminator: Salvation opens), and I’m still annoyed at losing Pushing Daisies halfway through the season, but the other shows we watch have had a remarkably good survival rate this year.

This is going to contain spoilers for the April 8, 2009 episode of LOST, “Dead is Dead.”

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SPOILERS!

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Now that we’ve got that out of the way.

I’ve been thinking about Ben’s line to Sun, about how if she ever meets Desmond again, he wants her to tell him he’s sorry, and that he’ll know what for.

Wouldn’t it also make sense for him to apologize to Penny, the person he actually tried to kill?

Obviously the storytelling reason is that if he’d said, “Desmond and Penny” instead of Desmond, we’d have known for sure that he failed before we saw the flashback to the actual event. (We still don’t know for sure; he could have gone back later to finish the job. I really hope he didn’t, because I’ve been hoping since we saw him make that phone call four or five episodes back that the reason would be exactly what we saw tonight: he shows up to kill Penny, but Desmond stops him and beats the hell out of him.)

But what about the reason in-story?

I figure there are three possibilities:

• Ben did go back later and kill her.
• Ben’s enough of a sociopath that he figures his preemptive “Sorry you got caught up in this, but I’m going to have to kill you now” already has him covered as far as Penny is concerned.
• Ben’s a complete f—ing a—hole and still doesn’t consider her as any more significant than he did before: a pawn in the game between himself and Charles Widmore, and therefore not worth an apology.

Of course, Ben is both a sociopath and complete f—ing a—hole, so at this point it’s anyone’s guess.

Bones
I’m not the one watching this, but Katie’s still hooked, so I guess it’s still good.
– Returns Thursday, Jan. 29 @ Fox 8 pm

Fringe
We both gave up after something like 4 episodes. It seemed like they were trying too hard to be The X-Files, too focused on the conspiracy and everything fitting “the pattern” and being tied to work in this one lab…and then there’s the problem with not bothering to research the regular science or think through the consequences of the totally-made-up “fringe” stuff that gave the show its title. The only thing worth watching for was John Noble’s mad scientist, Walter Bishop.

Lost
After a couple of seasons of floundering, Lost came back very strongly last year. Having an end point to work toward certainly helped, as did opening up the format from present with flashbacks to present with both flashbacks and flashforwards. At first the flashbacks were great for showing what motivated the various characters, what brought them to the island, what issues they were still working through, etc. But after a while they started answering questions no one asked (”The secret of Jack’s tattoo!”) or re-treading old ground. Adding flashforwards to post-Island events really added to story possibilities, and they made thorough use of it.
– Returns Wednesday, Jan. 21 @ ABC 9pm

Heroes
Alternately fantastic and infuriating. I’ve gone into this recently, so I won’t repeat it here. That’s what links are for. With luck, Volume 4 will fall more on the fantastic side.
– Returns Monday, Feb. 2 @ NBC 9pm

Pushing Daisies
As good as ever. They managed to somehow maintain the tone while moving forward with character development and further exploring the consequences of Chuck’s resurrection.
– Sadly, canceled. Word is that ABC may show the last three episodes next summer. SUMMER. *grrr* Just show ‘em in a 5am marathon so they can be released to iTunes, Amazon Video and DVD, willya?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
This still hasn’t totally grabbed me the way Heroes or Pushing Daisies has, but it’s been an interesting, intricate take on the Terminator mythos. And oddly enough, I’m far more interested in the second half of this season than I am in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie. Sadly, Fox has moved it to the Timeslot of Death.
– Returns Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 8pm

Dollhouse
Not much to say about this one, since it hasn’t aired yet, but I’ll at least take a look at just about anything developed by Joss Whedon. Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker won’t hurt, either. Unfortunately, Fox has placed it in the Second Timeslot of Death, right after SCC
– Starts Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 9pm

(TV Guide via Blog@Newsarama)

So, what’s happening to the shows we watch?

Battlestar Galactica

Returns April 4 with first half of 20-episode final season. Production on second half could start as early as March. Airdate for those TBD.

Seeing as how we don’t currently get the Sci-Fi Channel (we discovered BSG through DVDs), this means it’s time to figure out whether to mess with cable/satellite, watch it at someone else’s place, or hope that they’ll continue offering episodes online through iTunes or something.

Heroes

No new episodes expected until fall.

Pretty much expected that, given the way they were talking at the end of the “fall season.”

Journeyman

No new episodes expected. Ever.

And I continue my history of discovering interesting TV shows after they’ve already been canceled. (Actually, I have an even longer history of this with comic books. The first comic I ever bought, back in 1984, was issue #19 of Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, which lasted 20 issues.)

Lost

Six pre-strike episodes remain. Expected to shoot five additional episodes to air in April/May.

TV Guide interviewed Carlton Cuse on this recently (via aeryncrichton). They’d already shot 8 episodes of the 16-episode season, and plan to condense the second half of the season into 5—presumably because that’s how many they can actually finish during this production season.

This could actually work out well for them. One of the reasons season 4 of Babylon 5 was so good (aside from paying off on 4 years of setup) was that JMS shifted up his timetable so that he could wrap up the foreground plotlines by the end of the season he knew he had, instead of ending with a cliffhanger and hoping he could wrap them up in the first third of a season 5 that looked increasingly unlikely. The result was an extremely intense season that is widely regarded as the best year of the show.

And let’s be honest, Lost hasn’t exactly been known for compressed storytelling.

On the other hand, there’s the last few episodes of Angel to consider as a counter-example.

Pushing Daisies

No new episodes until fall.

On the plus side, this means it’s actually been renewed! This had “Too good to last” written all over it!

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Four pre-strike episodes remain. Future beyond that TBD.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this one. I enjoy it while I’m watching it, and it’s much, much better than Terminator 3, but I don’t find myself looking forward to it between episodes. Even if it does have Summer Glau beating people up.

If we’d known we had until 9, this would’ve been a much less stressful evening.

Edit: The rest of the evening went much better, and the actual episode was good. Most interesting bit: switching from flashbacks to flash-forwards really does change the dynamic of the show. (But I was seriously annoyed with the network for promoting the heck out of the “2-hour Lost Event!” and have it turn out that there was really only 1 hour of show.)

And we learned some very interesting things about the fate of the islanders.

Spoilers follow.

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So, this season we learned:

• How the Others are connected to the Dharma Initiative
• How Locke was paralyzed, and why he can walk again
• Some of what the Others are doing on the island, including why they kidnapped Claire
• The father of Sun’s baby
• The identity of the real Sawyer
• The fate of (most of) the Dharma Initiative
• We know at least some of the castaways will return to the outside world.

We also saw the resolution of a number of conflicts: The Kate/Jack/Sawyer triangle finally resolved into Kate/Sawyer. Rousseau and Alex finally met, uniting mother and daughter for the first time since birth. Charlie came to terms with his life (which, unfortunately, seems to be the kiss of death on this show). Penelope knows Desmond is on the island, and the islanders contacted the outside world.

Some unanswered questsions:

• Who was in the casket? I’m betting on either Sawyer or Locke, going by it being someone clearly important to Jack and Kate.
• What’s Naomi’s group really doing? Why is Ben afraid of them finding the island? And how did she end up with the picture of Desmond and Penny?
• What is Jacob? A ghost? How is he connected to Locke, Ben, and the Island? What’s his agenda?

It’s a shame to lose Charlie, but his death was at least handled well. He went out a hero, saving Desmond’s life and leaving him a message.

It was great to see Hurley save the day. I was also really worried about Bernard and Jin (not so much about Sayid). Think about it: You’ve got, what four couples among the group (assuming people know about Kate and Sawyer), and you stick three of the men on the dangerous missions? (I kept thinking of the “let us not waste lives” line from Les Miserables, when the students realize that no one is rising up to join the revolt, and Enjolras sends away everyone who has family.)

We both had the flashes pegged as possibly future pretty early on. I think the beard was the first clue, followed by Jack apparently being well-known already. The RAZR phone clinched it for me, and Katie ran the name of the funeral parlor against the anagram server and came up with “flash forward.” Then there was the structure: it actually felt like the island scenes, or at least the ones with Jack, were flashbacks from the city scenes.

That seems to be the “game-changing” element to the episode: We know they’ll get home (and possibly very soon). More importantly, it opens up the format. They can mix flashbacks with flash forwards. They can run a parallel narrative of the time on the island with future Jack and his companions trying to get back. They can even pick things up in the future (well, more likely it’s our present), and flash back to the island.

7-8 months until next season. *sigh*

Though I have to say, I hope they’ve checked their contract for loopholes. Farscape thought they had a two-season deal, so they took their characters and story to some really dark places in Season 4, figuring they had another year to dig them out. Instead they got canceled, and it took a fan campaign and the sale of the Jim Henson company to get even a four-hour miniseries to wrap things up.

As for the structure, this is actually probably better than two 24-episode seasons. It makes it easier to show an entire season through without interruptions. This season’s schedule, with just 6 episodes at the beginning followed by months of reruns, was terrible. Of course, once they came back from hiatus, it was much better than the sporadic episodes they showed in Season 2.

Arc vs. Scheduling

This brings up a problem with trying to run a TV series with an arc to it: Scheduling can seriously mess it up.

Babylon 5 suffered from PTEN’s decision to hold the last four episodes of each season until fall, followed immediately by the following season. It undermined the season-ending cliffhangers, and broke the narrative in the middle. Eventually they started anticipating it: JMS would write a mini-cliffhanger five episodes before the end of the season, and in one case even wrote a recap into the script for episode 19.

Veronica Mars and Heroes have done a good job this year of breaking the season into mini-arcs that match the schedule. Veronica Mars had a 9-part mystery, followed by a 6-part mystery, followed by a series of one-shots at the end of the season, and each arc was shown without interruption.

Heroes told the initial “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” storyline, followed it up with some backstory, and finished the first run with a teaser for the main arc for the rest of the season. (Heroeswiki breaks it down further, by tagline.) The second arc deepened the plot, and brought everything to a high point: the revelation of Linderman’s and Bennett’s agendas, plus cliffhangers in Hiro’s and Peter’s journeys. Now we’re in the home stretch. As the tagline says, “It’s time to save the world.”

That seems to be the way to go: If you don’t have the clout to change the schedule (like 24), find some way to work within it. Plowing straight through without regard to when the episodes are going to be shown, like Lost did with Season 2, is just going to frustrate your audience.

(Thanks to aeryncrichton for the news!)

Incidentally, on the question that so vexed Hurley and Charlie—namely, who would win in a race, the Flash or Superman… it’s the Flash. That’s not just a fan reaction, I have documented evidence.

Okay, actually, they’re a moving company, but check out this sign:

This is in a business/light industrial area on Walnut Ave.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.

I’d seen the Drive Shaft site last year (or at least a Drive Shaft site), though it seems to have exceeded its bandwidth for this month.

The official sites don’t have much detail, but they do have easter eggs…

But that’s not what this post is about.

I’m for calling Claire’s baby D’Argo until we find out what she names him. D’Argo Boone Charles Littleton, because you have to cover all your bases.

But that’s not what this post is about.

I’m all about the preview at the moment, because I think that for once, they might have been showing some real truth. If you’re a believer in the Shore Leave Theory, that is.

We see Locke get shot. This could be a flashback to the long-awaited How I Got My Wheelchair explanation, but I don’t buy that since he had present-day hair (or lack thereof) and it seems more in line with the head-hitting tendencies of the writers to have him get old after whatever-it-is takes him down. I think he gets shot–doesn’t matter by who–and should die but doesn’t. He looked supremely confident in the faceoff-with-Jack preview scene, like he’d figured something out. He really, truly believes with all he has in him that the island won’t let him die, and thus he survives. It’s also possible that Walt plays a part in this, and maybe it’s actually his doing that his backgammon partner doesn’t bite it.

So now the question is, who’s the unbeliever? Because that’s who’s holding the gun…….

So today, while looking for translations of the Korean parts of the script, I happened upon a bunch of message boards with posts containing riffs on the “Shore Leave” theory. And they got me thinking about not just polar bears, but also a lot of other things that don’t fit on the island. As I see it, the things we need to explain are: the survival of the castaways, the existence of Ethan and Company, the locked door, the power source, what made the French expedition crazy and/or dead, and the monster (which I call the Beastie). Here we go, and comment me if I don’t make sense…..

Theory #1: a mystical force is at work on the island, manifesting people’s thoughts. The above-mentioned “Shore Leave” theory, usually applied to Walt and the polar bears to conclude that they are springing from his imagination. However, if you assume that all the poltergeist action is due to Walt, you have to assume that everything that happened on the island before his arrival really did happen, which in the case of the Otherman tribe (anagram it a bit) seems a little far-fetched even for a science fiction show. If you attribute at least some of the odd happenings to the island itself, you can also use the force (yes, Luke) to explain Locke’s miracle, Jack’s hallucinations, and even, possibly, the Beastie.

Corollary to Theory #1: the SLF (Shore Leave Force) manifests deeply held beliefs and/or desires of people on the island, when these beliefs do not reflect reality as it would otherwise be. Which means that because Locke still viewed himself as completely able-bodied, he was. Jack’s case seems to me to be one of expectation, either that he would look up and see his father (and who among us hasn’t felt that soon after losing a relative?) or that he would hear a scream at a good, TV-appropriate moment. Thus it does not explain any possible connection between Walt and polar bears. See Theory#4 for more on this.

Theory #2: Danielle never saw the baby she claims to have had, or can’t remember seeing it. It. “My child.” That is not a normal way for a mother to refer to her child, as I observed immediately while watching “Solitary.” It implies she didn’t know the sex of the baby, because to my mind she would have said “son” or “daughter” had she known. So, she never saw Alex.

Theory #3: Danielle is certifiable. Delusions of persecution, I’d say, or delusions of something at least. Psych experts might have better input for this, but I’ll leave it at the woman being nuts.

Theory #4: Walt is indeed a wunderkind with mickle mental powers. This is based on the bird-meets-window event and Brian’s testimony. It also explains how a polar bear got there early on, before Michael made him reeeeeeally mad and gave him reason to want the polar bear to come back. At this point, he doesn’t appear to have any control over when or how he makes things happen; strong emotions manifest in the form of surface thoughts. He’s angry at being ignored, and the bird he’s thinking of shows up. He’s angry at being disciplined when he sees no reason, and wants the comic back, but gets a polar bear. God only knows how the first bear got there. Maybe he was concentrating too hard on trying to insta-learn Spanish?

Okay. We have our groundwork. Time to combine and extrapolate like crazy.

Danielle is delusional, and the island can create things. Therefore, the island can create the stuff of her delusions. She believes there are others, so there are others. She believes they corrupted the rest of her expedition; they may well have, but we may never know, so I’ll let this lie. Also, keep in mind that Boone’s dead DoppelShannon didn’t actually exist, so there are limits to the SLF–possibly related to whether the mind thinking the stuff up is under the influence. I’ll have to tinker with this as I see more.

The next Danielle bit is more of a stretch. What if her delusions started around the time that Alex was lost? She might not have had a baby at all, whether due to a miscarriage or to never having been pregnant in the first place, and convinced herself that she had a viable child. Who was stolen. This not only creates the need for the Othermen, as she would be reluctant to finger her own party, but also sets her against the party members, who would be trying to tell her the truth. And here we see how a band of baby-snatching weirdos could have come into being on the island: Ethan and friends are Danielle’s polar bears. It’s even possible that she was ill, hallucinating as well as dreaming the vivid dreams of pregnancy, and came to believe the Othermen were sending the dreams–as they may later have done to Claire.

The Beastie is tame by comparison; anyone could have come up with a vague tree-rattling menace. The question is, Who did it? And who dreamed up the locked door, and the power cable–or are those what’s creating the SLF? Did people’s checked luggage really land on the island, or did they just believe it would? Is Rose’s belief in itself enough to ensure the survival of the passengers from the tail of the plane? Did the castaways survive essentially through believing they would? Can Jin learn English by believing he knows it? Is Walt the only thing that can save the bunch from destruction at the claws of the Beastie or the hands of the Othermen?

Stay tuned.