Damon and Carlton may not be conjoined twins after all!
Last week, three LOST executive producers gave a talk at Bumbershoot, a large annual music and arts festival in Seattle. Jeff Jensen, of Entertainment Weekly, hosted the talk with producer/writers Carlton Cuse, Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. (Was this the first time Carlton Cuse was ever seen in public without Damon Lindelof by his side? Perhaps they are not conjoined twins after all.)
A fan shot a 3-part 2-part video. In this first part, you can’t see much, but you can hear what they are saying. The LOST folks answered questions such as: Why isn’t there more sex? Why does Jack remind us of that annoying guy we used to date, who always had to get up early the next morning to train for a triathlon? In a battle with Sawyer’s hair and Jin’s abs, who would prevail?
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!
This has been the first chance I’ve had to post anything since I got back from vacation. And what better way to get back into the swing of things than to put up one of my favorite types of posts — one with a LOST actor singing.
The clip is from The Last to Go, a 1991 made-for-TV movie about a husband (Terry O’Quinn) who abandons his wife. A reviewer in EW gave it a grade of B and wrote:
In theory, a TV-movie soap opera like The Last to Go should be miserable…. But director John Erman (Who Will Love My Children?) understands that it doesn’t matter whether the details of a script are cliched; the execution of them can redeem the banality…. Erman gets a typically intelligent, modest performance from O’Quinn.
The song is “If I Loved You” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. O’Quinn does a good job, doesn’t he?
If you like the song, here’s a masterful version from the 1956 film, sung by Gordon MacRae and Shirely Jones:
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.
"It's going to allow us to manipulate time." -- Dr. Pierre Chang (aka Dr. Marvin Candle) in 5x01
I’ve been focusing a lot recently on the last episode of Season 5, but now I want to switch gears for a bit and look back at the beginning of the season, which has its own intriguing mysteries, especially when seen now, in light of what we learned later on.
In a scene near the beginning of the season premiere, 5×01 Because You Left, Dr. Chang is underground in the Orchid Station, talking to a construction foreman. The year is 1977:
Foreman: There’s an open chamber about 20 meters in, behind the rock. (Pointing to a sonar image that shows part of the donkey wheel) There’s something in there. The only way to get to it is to lay charges here (pointing) and here. Blast through —
Dr. Chang: Under no circumstances. This station is being built here because of its proximity to what we believe to be an almost limitless energy. And that energy, once we can harness it correctly — it’s going to allow us to manipulate time.
Foreman: Hah. (Sarcastically) Okay, so, what, we’re going to go back and kill Hitler?
Dr. Chang: Don’t be absurd. There are rules. Rules that can’t be broken.
Foreman: So what do you want me to do?
Dr. Chang: You’re gonna do nothing. If you drill even one centimeter further and risk releasing that energy — if that were to happen (looks at injured worker and shakes his head) — God help us all.
This raises a lot of questions. How did Dr. Chang know about the special “energy”? Did he come to the Island because he knew that energy was there? And if so, was the whole Dharma Initiative a ruse, a cover for his real purpose of finding and harnessing the energy? Or did Chang discover the energy and its properties only after he arrived at the Island? If so, how?
When Dr. Chang talks about “rules” that can’t be broken, he sounds a lot like Faraday, when Faraday explained the “rules” of time travel to the Losties, before he changed his mind. Where did Dr. Chang get his ideas about the rules?
Dr. Chang’s line, “God help us all,” is so dramatic. Then in the next episode, 5×02 The Lie, that line echoes with an eerie resonance when it is repeated by Eloise Hawking:
Eloise: What you need is irrelevant. Seventy hours is what you’ve got.
Ben: Look, I lost Reyes tonight. (Pause) So what happens if I can’t get them all to come back?
Eloise: Then God help us all. (Crescendo. End of episode.)
What exactly is Eloise Hawking afraid of, and is it the same thing that Dr. Chang was afraid of when he uttered the same phrase?
