LOST: Clues in “Eggtown”

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I know what you want, Record Lost fans. And I can’t make any season-long promises or extensive speculation guarantees; after all I’m just a second-hand addict (who’s totally addicted). But I don’t want to let you down yet, so . . . .

Okay, I don’t know how Aaron ended up as Kate’s son. (Does that mean Charlie died in vain? Does Charlie want Hurley to go back to the Island because Claire somehow was left behind, even though Desmond saw her get in the chopper in the “flash” that led Charlie to his demise? Is Kate the one the psychic warned Claire about: “Do not let your baby be raised by another!” And if so, why would he book her on 815 in the first place? I always assumed he did that because he knew the plane would crash and she would be forced to raise the baby.)

I don’t know why Jack doesn’t want to see him. (Is Aaron the “him” from the final scene of the S3 finale?)

I don’t know how Miles knows Ben can get a hold of 3.2 million dollars.

And I don’t know who the two “dead” survivors are who made it into Jack’s story but not into The Oceanic Six.

But I figure an episode entitled “Eggtown” has got to be brimming with “Easter Eggs.”

Locke’s Book Choice for Ben:

VALIS by Philip K. Dick

What’s that on the front cover?

A quote from The Washington Post Book World: “It is . . . about madness, pain, deception, death, obsessive states of mind, cruelty, solitude, imprisonment, and it is a joy to read.”

Okay, you can put a big check mark on each of those for Lost.

(See the zoomed cover for yourself.)

Summaries from Amazon:

Amazon.com
The first of Dick’s three final novels (the others are Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). Known as science fiction only for lack of a better category, “Valis” takes place in our world and may even be semi-autobiographical. It is a fool’s search for God, who turns out to be a virus, a joke, and a mental hologram transmitted from an orbiting satellite. The proponent of the novel, Horselover Fat, is thrust into a theological quest when he receives communion in a burst of pink laser light. From the cancer ward of a bay area hospital to the ranch of a fraudulent charismatic religious figure who turns out to have a direct com link with God, Dick leads us down the twisted paths of Gnostic belief, mixed with his own bizarre and compelling philosophy. Truly an eye opening look at the nature of consciousness and divinity.

From Publishers Weekly
The quest for God is the binding theme of this trilogy. The “funny and painful and sometimes brilliant” VALIS (anagram) finds protagonist and Dick alter-ego Horselover Fat unable to reconcile human suffering with his belief in God. Invasion is a “fascinating and highly readable” vision of Armageddon, blending New Testament, Kabbalah and Dick’s own worldview. In Transmigration, Angel Archer reminisces about her father-in-law, Timothy, an Episcopal bishop obsessed with a set of ancient scrolls that shed faith-threatening new light on Jesus: “This finely crafted, odd but compelling book demonstrates Dick’s great erudition, keen human insight and subtle ironic sense of humor,” said PW.

Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wiki’s got something to say too:

The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick’s gnostic vision of one aspect of God.

(Read the rest of the Wiki article.)

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Sawyer’s Bedtime Reading Selection:

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Summary from Amazon:

Book Description
Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares’s fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction’s now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

From Wiki:

A fugitive hides on a deserted island somewhere in Polynesia. Tourists arrive, and his fear of being discovered becomes a mixed emotion when he falls in love with one of them. He wants to tell her his feelings, but an anomalous phenomenon keeps them apart. . . .

All of a sudden the tourists vanish. . . . He attributes the experience to food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. . . . The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky

He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. . . .

After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. . . . . The fugitive . . . learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality–one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun’s position at recording time. . . .

He imagines all the possible uses for Morel’s invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the “new kind of photographs” that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording. . . .

(Read the rest of the Wiki article.)

Screencaps:

All screencaps from Lost-Media, original property of ABC.

Dharma Shops at Wal-Mart? (Look at the bottom of Kate’s mug. That’s a Mainstay’s logo.)

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Have I just not noticed the flecks of gray in Jack’s hair before?

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Is it just me or does Aaron’s room have some weird decorations?

ROBOTS?

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PAINTINGS WITH PLAYING CARDS HIDDEN IN THEM?

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A few things I didn’t like about this episode:

* Some of Kate and Sawyer’s lines feeling “canned.”

* Locke running straight to the boathouse when Sawyer tells him that Kate is going to break out Ben, who isn’t in the boathouse, but in Locke’s basement, right beneath him.

* The forced closeness between Kate and Claire on the Island. (Yes, I know it was intentional. But it shouldn’t have felt forced.)

* Claire refusing to pull those two long chunks of hair back into the rest of her french braid. What new mom on a hot, muggy deserted island would want her hair falling in her face all day if it’s avoidable?

* Claire saying, “You should give it a try some time” in regard to motherhood and Kate. For one thing, even though I didn’t guess that the baby was Aaron, it’s far too heavy a line. For another, what a ridiculous thing to say! As if being a mother is something you just “try out.” Take this baby home for a few days. If you still don’t like it, bring it back for a full refund. Even if that’s part of the foreshadowing that hasn’t yet been revealed, jeez.

* Kate referring to Aaron as “the baby” in the parking lot with Jack, when Aaron is clearly no longer a baby. Maybe that’s a throw-back to Aaron’s first days on the Island when he had no name, but it felt more like cheap smoke and mirrors (“Everybody! Please think it’s Sawyer’s baby!”) to me.

A few things I liked about this episode:

* A break from the intense mystery, sci-fi feeling we’ve been having.

* More focus on the relationships (and, no, I haven’t been sucked into the Jack-Kate-Sawyer-Juliet quadrangle, not entirely, anyway).

* Locke going completely nuts (Much like Ben is completely nuts, although Ben prefers mind games to brut force, but I’m sure he’d cut your head off in a heartbeat if need be).

* Miles’ session with Ben, especially the part where Ben asks why not .3 or .4.

* Jack’s face when he lies about not loving Kate.

* A realistic courtroom on television! Wow!

* Sawyer finally calling it like it is with Kate, even if she did smack him for it.

Bonus Stuff:

Just in case you missed it, here’s the episode in a nutshell.

And, even though I’ve been feeling better about our excursion with the Losties since the S3 finale and I do still really love the show, a few (big) things have gotten to me. Just in case that’s true for you too and you need an outlet for your Lost frustration, this guy’s got you covered. (He’s right on about a lot of things, but not all things. And I admit that Kate’s maddeningly obnoxious, but I don’t hate her, not hardly.)

I’ll work on finding an outlet for your mega-Lost love too (for all of you Lost mega-lovers out there).

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Tags: Lost