Hand placing four-toed statue on chessboard (Detail from Cuatro Season 6 promo)
The Spanish station Cuatro, which ran the hauntingly beautiful chess-themed LOST Season 6 promo, announced a contest earlier today based on that promo.
Here’s my translation of what Cuatro posted on its site, done with my semi-remembered high school/college Spanish, with a lot of help from Google Translate. It may not be 100% accurate, but I think it’s close enough:
Carlton Cuse, the creator and writer of LOST, just sent a Twitter message saying that the promo Cuatro made for the final season of the series is the best LOST promo he has seen.
We propose a game based on the promo. The original text was not written by Cuatro. Can you tell us who the author is and what work it is from? Answer the question here, and get a photo signed by the stars of the series. The first person with the correct answer will get the prize.
To participate in the contest, you must be registered on the Cuatro site with your full name, address, phone, and email.
At the time I saw this post on the Cuatro site, there were already 11 pages of answers! It’s too late to win, but if you are playing along at home, the answer is below: Continue reading →
The last official audio podcast of Season 5, released May 16, 2009, has an entertaining interview with Michael Emerson. He made me laugh again because he appeared to be as amazed by the episode as we were. He said when he first read the script and saw he would be killing Jacob, he was shocked.
Emerson and his interviewer also talked about the first scene, the one with Jacob and the unamed man I like to call Esau. The interviewer said that Jacob wearing white and the other man wearing black was a return to the theme of black and white that has appeared in the show before, but that he thought it didn’t necessarily mean that Jacob was good and the other man bad.
Emerson emphatically agreed, and he said, “Our show delights in thwarting those equations.”
I agree also. I’ve seen a lot of theories online that posit that Jacob represents the forces of good, and Esau the forces of evil, and they will have an epic confrontation in Season 6. But I don’t think that’s where the writers are going. At least I hope not.
Emerson also talked about his plans for the summer (now over, alas!). He said he likes to be with his wife Carrie in New York during the summers. They have an enforced separation while LOST is shooting, “so I just like to follow her around during the summer. I like to hold her coat, and fetch her drinks, and be her personal assistant as much as I can.” So sweet! I hope he got a chance to do just that.
He also mentioned he had just finished shooting the character of a radical fundamentalist Puritan in a show for PBS. That should be interesting!
As always, I love to listen to Michael Emerson talk, and I love the way he has the same questions about the show that we, the viewers, do:
Q: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about The Incident, what your take-away from that was, and what questions you’ve been asking yourself during the hiatus.
ME: Since the finale …
Q: Yeah.
ME: I’m flummoxed. (Laughter from the audience.) Honestly, it wasn’t one, but it was two big old earth-shattering cliffhangers, and I’ll be damned if I know what either of them mean, or what either of them lead to. Honestly, what can be the next breathing moment of the show? I have no idea, and I won’t know until two days before the camera rolls, I’ll get a script, and I will read it with some relish, because I’m curious to see where do we go from there.
I don’t know if Jacob is a killable entity. We’re always plunging knives into things, or shooting things on LOST, but it doesn’t mean that they go away. (Laughter) It may just trigger them to transform into something else.
Emerson goes on to talk about the “psychological landscape” of the scene where Ben stabbed Jacob. Then he takes questions from the audience.
This interview was conducted by EW’s Doc Jensen and Dan Snierson at Comic-Con 2009. I found it via LOST: On the Road, a very cool blog totally focused on Michael Emerson.
I’m working on a new grand theory of almost everything (ha!), and when I think about that, I find myself drawn back again to the first scene of the Season 5 Finale. There’s so much packed into that scene which seems to provide critical clues to what LOST is really all about.
In particular, I wanted to look more closely at one bit of the scene, the part where Jacob and Esau (the Man in Black) talk about the approach of the sailing ship.
Jacob: I take it you’re here because of the ship.
Esau: I am. (Pause) How did they find the Island?
Jacob: You’ll have to ask them when they get here.
Esau: I don’t have to ask. (Looks at Jacob) You brought them here. (Pause) Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
Jacob: You are wrong.
Esau: Am I? (Pause) They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same.
Jacob: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
What conclusions can be drawn from that?
1. Jacob has the power to bring people to the Island — or at least Esau thinks that he does.
2. This is not the first group of people to come to the Island. Esau, sounding weary, says it “always ends the same,” which implies that similar scenarios have happened many times before.
3. Either Jacob and Esau are in a time loop, and the fighting, destroying, and corrupting groups that Esau refers to are groups from the future (the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the 815-ers), or else Jacob and Esau have been on the Island for a very long time, long enough to see many other groups come and go in the past. I’m betting on the second scenario.
4 There is some sort of linear progression. Jacob says “It only ends once.” Even if time loops are involved, we are still dealing with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and most importantly, an end.
5. Jacob believes that Esau is wrong about something, and though we don’t know exactly what, we know that Esau is cynical, world-weary, and resigned, and expects nothing but trouble from the many visitors to the Island. Jacob expects something more. But what is it that he expects?
I believe that LOST is a story about redemption and atonement. I think that is what Jacob is working towards, and that is why he keeps on bringing groups to the Island, over and over until some group finally gets it right. (I’ll be writing more about this later, as I work out my theory.)
Here’s a clip of the scene. Each time I’ve watched it, I’ve noticed something new:
Remember the “Previously on Lost” band that played on the Season 5 Finale LOST Untangled video?
They’re going to be in New York tonight, playing at the Mercury Lounge in lower Manhattan, where they will be performing their Season 5 Finale recap song live for the first time. Also appearing are the headline act Malajube — a French-Canadian indie rock band — and two other bands. Only $10! 21+
Here’s a clip of the band in a concert they did last year at the Knitting Factory in NY, singing a catchy recap of The Constant:
And here’s the Season 5 Finale LOST Untangled video:
You can listen to more of Previously on Lost’s songs on their MySpace page.
Great news: LOST got nominated for best drama series, Michael Emerson got nominated, for the third time, for best supporting actor, and Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got nominated for best writing for the season finale episode, The Incident
Here’s the complete list of all the nominations for LOST:
Outstanding drama series: LOST
Outstanding supporting actor in a drama series: Michael Emerson
Outstanding writing for a drama series: Cuse and Lindelof, for The Incident
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Drama Series: Stephen Semel, Mark Goldman, and Chris Nelson, for The Incident
Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (One Hour): Robert Anderson, Ken King, Scott Weber, and Frank Morrone, for The Incident
Titus Welliver played Man # 2, aka The Man in Black, aka Jacob’s Nemesis, aka “Esau,” in the Season 5 finale. In the last minute of this video from TV Guide (via latestlost), Titus talks about his character’s lack of a name. He also says that there is a greater power that he and Jacob answer to — which is something I had suspected earlier.
