Season 4, Episode 1: "The Beginning of the End"

Alright - I feel the teensiest bit disappointed. It wasn't a bad show, I think that I maybe just hyped myself up too much that I was expecting...I don't know, something really BIG. I swear I have been on pins and needles all day, just waiting for tonight! Like I said, not bad at all, but I think I was expecting something more shocking. I guess just because the past two seasons the opening episode was such a big reveal (Desmond living in the hatch, Juliet and the Others living in their own real society on the island). Anyway, enough said, I still thought it was a great episode and I am just happy to have my LOST back! (Although I'm not a huge fan of this being on Thursday nights. What I am going to do once Grey's Anatomy starts up again!! I love my Tivo, but I'm still one who has to watch the same night, so now I will just be up til 3am on Thursday nights. Sigh.)

Okay, where to begin? Let's start with the title, I guess..."The Beginning of the End" - as we have seen in numerous previews played over and over from the last episode, this is what Ben says to Jack when warning him not to make the call. He says that if he radios the boat, that it is just the beginning of the end, and also says that "Every living person on this island will die." Does anyone else think it's weird that he said "every living person" instead of just "every person" - kind of a weird way to phrase it. I don't know. I'm just saying.

THE OCEANIC SIX
So, we know now that not only do Jack and Kate make it off the island but Hurley does too. I wonder if we are going to find who all the six are? Hopefully these next episodes will give us a different flash forward for each of the people who get to go home, so we can see what happens to them. But for now, we know Hurley is definitely one of them who gets to go home. You gotta love Hurley. Poor guy wins $150 million, has every amount of bad luck in the world happen to him, crashes onto an island, gets rescued, and now he is right back where he started...in a mental institution.

So we come to find out that he has these visions of seeing Charlie, who is dead. He seems paranoid. He won't talk to anyone about it. After being arrested he won't tell the police who he was "running" from, and he also lied about knowing Ana Lucia. Obviously there is some big "secret" that they are keeping. But it's like he just wants to forget everything about the whole experience. In fact he thanks the police officer for sending him to a mental institution - almost like it is an escape, and he welcomes it. Interesting, also, because on the island he tells Bernard that when he goes him he is going to feel "free" since he won't have the money anymore. Yet, he is not free at all. He is a prisoner of his own mind, his guilt over leaving the island obviously has gotten to him - so much so that he can't even live in the "real world" any more, he is back in the institution.

We also know, from the last season finale, that Jack, too, has gone into a downward spiral since returning from the island. We saw tonight that at the beginning, atleast, Jack was still "normal" - he is clean shaven, he is working again, and he seems to be doing just fine. In fact when Hurley tells him that they need to go back, Jack says they will never go back. However, as we have already seen from Jack's flash forwards, eventually he does want to go back, more than anything. Hurley was right when he said "never say never." And, just like Hurley, Jack ends up going "crazy" due to the consequences of everything that happened on the island. There is something that they are hiding, some big secret that they are keeping to themselves, something they are having to lie about. Did they have to kill some of the other people in order to leave? Are they lying about being the only survivors of the plane to everyone else back in the real world? Whatever this is, it is causing huge stress to those of the survivors who were "saved" - I know it seemed in the last episode that Kate was okay, but I think we still have more to see of her. I think that we will eventually see that ALL six of the Oceanic Six are going to eventually go crazy. We saw tonight that Jack started out okay, but look how he eventually ended up. Hurley obviously is not okay. I think all of them are going to hit rock bottom as a result of leaving the island. Locke was right - all of them were brought there for a reason. They were supposed to be there. And those that leave, are going to end up going crazy, and we have already seen that Jack and Hurley both end up wanting to go back to the island, and feeling guilt over doing the wrong thing.

FORGIVE ME, FATHER, FOR I HAVE SINNED
Okay, so it's nothing new that this show has a lot of religious themes. And as we have seen over the past three seasons, each of the survivors who crashed on the island holds some sort of guilt over something they have done in their past. Jack feels guilty for the death of his father, Hurley feels guilty for the deaths of many people and all the bad things that happened as a result of him winning the lottery, Kate feels guilty over the death of her childhood friend Tom. Pretty much everyone holds some sort of guilt - and they all have "father" issues. We have seen the island has come to represent them gaining redemption - forgiveness for the sins of their past. As I discussed in one of my blog posts last season, it is almost as if each of them was brought to the island for rebirth, just like the religious theme of being reborn or being given new life. They were each given the chance to start over, to be given a clean slate. And as we have seen over and over in the theme of the show, "everything happens for a reason," and the idea of Fate Vs. Coincidence is brought up many times. Locke feels that it was fate that they were all brought there. So, if that is true, and each of them was truly meant to be there, then those six who ultimately get off the island are sort of "messing with" fate. It is almost as if, they were sent to the island and were given the chance for redemption, to start over, and to free themselves of the guilt from their "past lives" - yet now...those of them who leave the island it seems are racked with the guilt of leaving the rest behind. Obviously something big happens that they feel guilty about, to the point, that Hurley and eventually Jack believe that they must go back. Perhaps some of the other people died, as a result of them being "saved" - and that is what they feel guilt over? We have seen that everyone on the island feels responsible for the death of someone else, so that surely would go along with the theme. It is almost like the island is the only place where they can be freed from their guilt. They were given the chance to start anew, and now that they left they have to go back in order to be rid of that guilt again - to get redemption. I hope I'm making sense here. I kind of feel like I'm rambling now, so I will stop with that whole idea. (It's late, and I'm tired)

Some other random thoughts I had while watching this episode...

When Hurley gets lost in the woods, he ends up at Jacob's house and peers in the window. (He is able to see him - so is he "special" too?). It appears that was Locke who is also there, who puts his eye up to the window and scares Hurley away (he obviously didn't know that was him). And strangely enough, Locke appears in the woods soon after to Hurley. Did you notice that when Hurley fell to the ground, the angle they shot him at is the same angle that we continuously see Locke? That was how we first saw Locke after the plane crash, lying in the woods (shot from above). Then again after Ben shot him and he was laying in the grave/ditch, all sprawled out and we saw him from above. I just thought it was something to point out, because as soon as I saw Hurley lying there like that, it reminded me of Locke. Maybe that is some foreshadowing that Locke and Hurley have more in common than we are led to believe.

Another thing I noticed, is that two times in this episode, Hurley counts to five when he is "seeing" something that is not really there. First, in the woods, he sees the house in front of him, counts to five and it is gone. Then in his FF, he is talking to Charlie and he counts to five and then he is gone. Do you remember when Jack and Kate first met and she is stitching up his wound (this is in the very first episode) - he tells her a story about how whenever he has fear, he just closes his eyes and counts to five, and then the fear is gone. This is the same question that Jack asks Kate when he is operating on Ben and he walkie-talkie's her and asks her to repeat the story that he told her when the first met. I just thought it was interesting that Hurley does the same thing - closes his eyes and counts to five.

LORD OF THE FLIES...AGAIN
So, I have brought this up a lot in the past several seasons - particularly more in the beginning - but the overall "theme" is starting to emerge again. It was very clear in the beginning that eventually there were going to be two "sides" - just as in Lord of the Flies. Eventually, as Locke pointed out to Jack soon after they crashed, they would all become savages and turn on eachother. And here it is finally happening. There is now a very clear line in which Jack is the leader of one group and Locke is the leader of the other. Two men who started out on the same "side" are now basically at war with one another. I also thought it very ironic, that Locke, when faced with the opportunity to kill Jack, didn't do it. Yet, Jack actually pulled the trigger to shoot and kill Locke, unbeknownst to him that the gun wasn't loaded. Locke actually seems shocked himself, and he even says "it's not loaded" in a tone like he knew it wasn't loaded all along and he never really was going to kill Jack (more like using it just to scare him). But surprisingly, Jack is the one who has turned more "savage" now and is ready to kill one of his own. Locke, although it seems like he has turned on his own group, truly seems to be doing everything for the greater good, and as he said, everything he did was to help everyone there. He obviously has special abilities, and now that he is talking to Jacob (whoever HE is), we know something is up. There is definitely more to this, but I do believe that Locke is "good" and that he really is trying to keep everyone on the island because he believes they are all supposed to be there.

I'M NOT CRAZY, I SWEAR
Okay, hear me out here. This is another one of my "theories" that I have no idea if this could be, but just want to throw it out there. Actually I have mentioned this before in a previous post. As we have seen, Hurley ends up in a mental institution (again). He sees people that are not there (Charlie), plus his "imaginary friend" Lenny from the past. We also know that Jack ends up crazy, trying to commit suicide, flying around the country hoping to crash, and sitting in his apartment full of maps trying to figure out how to get back to the island. I mentioned this in a previous post last year(see season 2, episode 18), but what if everyone is in a mental institution, and all the crazy things that are happening...the black smoke, the visions, the whispers in the woods, Jacob, the Others, seeing people that are not there (it seems everyone has had a "vision" of someone who has died from their past)...what if all of it is just in their heads? Kind of like, this is what happens when someone is truly "LOST." The name of the show is not necessarily about being "lost" literally (as in lost on an island), but "lost" in more of a figurative sense..."lost" in their own little world. Let's assume that all of the survivors are actually all patients together in a mental institution - from each of their "pasts" we have seen that everyone has had a great deal of baggage that certainly could lead to them going "crazy." Or it could be that they really did crash on the island, but in their "future" they all do end up going crazy based on their experiences from being on the island and all that happened after they got off. I don't know. I just started thinking about it and there has been a lot of stuff that would suggest that some of them end up crazy. And also, once I started thinking about that as a possibility, I started noticing A LOT of references to being "crazy" or "insane" in tonight's episode. Not just with Hurley. But, for example, Jack tells Kate that "Locke is crazy." Also, when Locke comes back and asks if anyone wants to go with him, Jack yells, "Are you insane?" Then he says "No one's going with you, John, because they're not crazy." And Hurley yells back "He's not crazy!" Then if you think back to a lot of the past episodes in the last three years, there's a lot of stuff about people being crazy. I know it's a long shot and I hope that is not what it is - but it seems like it could be. I know the producers have always said everything is scientifically possible, so all this stuff with the black smoke and Jacob and the whispers - what is that? I don't know, you may be thinking now that I'M crazy! But, it is just a thought. Honestly, I probably come up with a different "theory" every week for what I think is actually happening. I don't necessarily have one particular thing that I think (people are always asking me, what is my "theory" for the whole show) - The answer is, I have about a million theories. I actually love that there are so many different things going on in the show because it is always making me think, and I really do not have any one particular thing that I believe, I guess I have a number of different ideas for what it "could" be.

Anyway, there's my theory for this week. Next week I will have something totally different :)


Okay, I think that's enough for tonight. I'm a little bummed that there are only seven more episodes, and then who knows how long we will have to wait again for the second half of the season. So...that's all. I am curious as to what everyone else thought about tonight's episode?? What are YOUR theories? (Because, let me just say, that I know I am probably way off on a lot of the "ideas" I write about - I have no idea on most of this. I just enjoy trying to figure out what is going on. I'm just as "lost" as everyone else!