Get LOST, Matt! Pt. 1

by Elizabeth Posted on June 1, 2010

I do realize that every post I have written over the past week has been LOST related. Sorry, dudes. There’s more coming around the pike, but for now my non-LOST/annoyed readers can just not go past the cut and you’ll be saved. There you go.

Matt is a college pal. Well, Matt is my husband’s college pal. I think I met him a couple of times and would see him at church, but that’s about all. Nice thing about getting married is that you get to know more friends of your spouse. And since I married the most social guy I’ve ever met, I’ve acquired a nice assortment.

Matt recently decided to give LOST a shot and I thought it would be interesting to get the thoughts of a new Lostie right as he is starting the series. So, here is the first set of questions Matt answered about Season 1. This will be a six-part series documenting his thoughts at the end of each season. Seriously, this is going to be fun to watch.

Note: Matt is a weatherman (is that a pejorative term in your line of work?) and who knows, his expertise may somehow color his view of the Smoke Monster. Let’s see!

(Thanks for the quick response, Matt. It’s almost like you knew I didn’t have a post planned for today.)

  1. Hello, Matt Mahler. Welcome to your first round of LOST questions. Excited?
    Tremendously.  Believe it or not, I’ve actually been looking forward to answering these.  I can finally, officially, join the Lost discussions!
  2. I just realized that your last name is a homophone of ”mauler.” How has that worked out for you?
    Not as well as I’d like.  At times I wish it was spelled MaUler instead of MaHler.  For reasons I’ll never understand, people feel the need to pronounce my last name with a long-A sound rather than the proper A-H sound.  Pro-tip: you know the sound the doctor always told you to make when checking your throat?  The whole “open up and say AH” business?  That’s how it’s pronounced.
  3. You know, Kevin’s last name is Crumpler because somewhere back there somebody was a baker–a crumpet maker. In your time knowing him, has he ever made you baked goods?
    I honestly don’t think I’ve ever received any sort of baked goods from Crumpy.  Now that I know the history behind the name Crumpler, I’m slightly disappointed with the lack of baked goods. Continue reading →
Posted in Daily, Lost, TV | 6 Comments

Response to LOST Finale 6×17 – The End, Pt. 1

by Elizabeth Posted on May 28, 2010

SPOILER ALERT: Do not proceed if you haven’t seen the finale. Unless you’re my college roommate and just plain don’t care.

I loved it. It took me a night of sleep and a few clarifications and constant reassurance from my husband, but that’s where I ended up. Loving this episode as much as I loved the previous seasons. In fact, the longer I think about it, the more I like it. Sure, there are unanswered questions and I know a lot of people are really, really upset. I’ll address that later (in part two).

As for the 10 questions I thought they might answer, let’s look at how it turned out:

  1. Is John Locke (The Real John Locke™) gone for good?
    In this life, yes. I think now that we can see what became of him there is much to appreciate. Also, that John Locke and his journey represent about 50% of the LOST viewership (more on that later).
  2. What is the alt-timeline and how does it relate to the on-Island timeline? Is it the “end” that these “means” are getting us to?
    We certainly got this one. It is the end that the means helped our characters arrive at. I never imagined it was that kind of end, but it worked for me. It appears to be a limbo state/created universe/collective conciousness that our Losties built together (or perhaps Hurley did it for them, I’m hearing that theorized in a number of places) so that, according to Christian Shephard, they could “find each other.” I like this idea and looking back at some of the literary clues we were given, I should have seen this one coming.
  3. What is Charles Widmore’s importance and is he really dead? (I do NOT believe he is dead.)
    Wrong, Lizzy. Apparently, he was. His importance to the story and role on the island are two of the many mysteries we are left to ponder for the rest of our days. Or until The Lost Encyclopedia comes out (assuming they address him).
  4. How will Desmond act as a fail-safe this time?
    He got the plug out of the hole but wasn’t destined to be the one to put it back in. I would like to know how Widmore had planned to use him.
  5. Who is David’s mother? (My guess is Juliet since they seem to be building up to it and she’s the only really important female character that we haven’t seen in the alt-timeline so far.)
    Picture me, fists stretched high in the air, as Juliet talks to her son, David.
  6. Will Jack be able to kill the Man in Black? HOW?
    I don’t know if he would have been able to, considering that knife to the gut he delivered to Jack mere seconds before SuperKate blasted a once-again-mortal in the back with the bullet she saved for him.
  7. Will Jack make it off the Island? (Guess: No.)
    Score. I figured the last scene would be what it was, but had no idea how they would get us there. The execution of this scene was something far more dramatic and beautiful than anything I could have imagined.

  8. Who will Kate’s romantic choice be or will there be one at all?
    Clearly there was one. I had no idea it would break my heart like it did.
  9. Were any of these people really special or was it all just chance?
    I have some theories for real life about who you run into, why they are in your life, their importance, etc. These lives were set on the same orbit, revolving around some magnetic force (I question if it was the island or just “something,” considering how many unknown [to them] ties they all had before the crash of Oceanic 815) that pulled them closer and closer together and on the island they finally collided. They were special. To each other.
  10. What are they preventing from happening by killing the Man in Black?
    In a roundabout way, the destruction of the island and what I can only imagine would have ended up being the rest of the world and all mankind. Looked like that bathtub drain/portal to Hades was getting ready to suck everything down.

A few of my more in-depth reflections will be posted later today. I wanted to go ahead and get this out there, plus the rest is getting pretty long!

Posted in Daily, Listy, Lost, TV, Videos | 5 Comments

How I Got LOST

by Elizabeth Posted on May 25, 2010

In the spring of 2005 my parents bought a house for my brother and I to live in here in Norman. I had just finished my sophomore year at OU and Kyle would be starting as a freshman in the fall. That May, we painted, moved in some furniture, and I shut the door as my parents left and I cried. I was 20-years-old and I was living alone for the first time. In a house, in a town that I didn’t feel I knew, even after 2 years.

I had recently gone through a pretty traumatic…well, let’s call it a “relationship tussle.” I was bereft and didn’t really know what to think or say or do. My best friend was in France for the summer and I knew no one that had stayed in Norman. The point is, I was really, really alone.

The first week of June I started a summer class. Tuesday through Friday I spent in a lab below Sarkey’s Energy Center on the far northeastern point of OU’s campus. It was unbearably hot and humid, parking was hard to come by, and by the time I got out of class at 2 or 3pm I was ready to be at my house in the middle of the floor with the air conditioner on full blast. There is nothing like an Oklahoma summer.

After I was done with class on that first day I took myself to the grocery store. My first trip to buy food to put in that mustard yellow refrigerator. I loaded up. This was my house after all. No one lived there but me and I got to make all the decisions for the moment. It meant cream cheese, tofu, and vegetables that my family never consumed.

I bought an artichoke.

I had seen advertisements for LOST and knew plenty of people who watched it. To me it looked like some kind of Gilligan’s Island-X-Files-Survivor-dinosaur show. Yes, going in to LOST I thought that there was a DINOSAUR (you’ve got to remember that people had NO idea what was going on in the first season). When I lived in the dorms the previous year (2004-2005) I had considered watching, but knowing what Heather thought of most of my TV-viewing choices, I’d decided not to get into anything that could garner further ridicule. LOST isn’t exactly the most normal TV show.

I had a plan that first night after class. They were showing the entire first season again over the summer. I boiled my artichoke, sat down in the middle of my living room floor, and watched Pilot, Part 1 (& maybe 2; don’t remember if it aired that night). And every Wednesday night after that for the rest of the summer, I boiled my artichoke, melted my butter, and watched LOST.

It was one of the first things that was “mine” when I moved into this house. It was new and special and my very own. I know I’m rambling, but let me say this one last thing about it. (And pardon the sentimentality.) There’s a line in St. Elmo’s Fire (my favorite of all the Brat Pack films) where Wendy (Mare Winningham) talks about her first night in her new apartment. She’s on her own for the very first time, having broken out from under some familial expectations about where she should live and work, what she should drive, who she should be dating, etc. In the middle of the night she gets up to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In her house. In her kitchen. “It was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she says.

LOST was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ever had.

Posted in Daily, Memories, TV | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

10 Questions I Would Like to See Answered Tonight on LOST

by Elizabeth Posted on May 23, 2010

I have no expectations. In my quarter century of watching television I have learned better. How many shows have I enjoyed like this one? Thinking hard, I can say, “None.” I have had a deep, abiding love for Gilmore Girls since my mom introduced me to it at the beginning of high school (Rory and I were both class of 2003 high school graduates and basically hit the same milestones at the same time; I always felt that if you mashed her personality and her mother’s together you’d have a pretty good composite of my tendency to be long-winded, random, and filled with useless trivia) and I was terribly disappointed not only by the finale itself, but the last season or two of the show in general. But with that I had some expectations from the very beginning about where the show was going to go. When they changed a lead character’s personality and general decision making ability on a whim, I nearly checked out. There was some emotion to that ending for me, but the show had stopped being very important to me a few seasons before then anyway.

With LOST, not so much. Tomorrow I will be explaining my affinity for the show, but for now I will say that it was the first TV show that I got into on my own and really stuck with. I have been watching it longer than I have known my husband. That’s saying something.

There are some questions I would like them to address. The ten I list below are ones that I could imagine being answered tonight. The others I just can’t see them having the time for, or the willingness to touch with a 10-foot pole. There are plenty of examples out there of movies, TV shows, books, etc. that have left parts of themselves shrouded in mystery. Some of those have gone on to gain a cult following (think Star Wars, Twin Peaks, The X-Files, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) that thrives on what devotees can do with their imaginations, using the gaps that the writers left to theorize and create works of their own, building on the original work. I think that if everything gets wrapped up with a bow it will be doing a disservice to all the fans who have thrived on developing theories surrounding the mysteries of the show. Some things must be answered. Others, for the sake of the show’s legacy, can’t be touched. People will love this show for as long as they can talk about it. If you give them all the answers there is nothing left.

  1. Is John Locke (The Real John Locke™) gone for good?
  2. What is the alt-timeline and how does it relate to the on-Island timeline? Is it the “end” that these “means” are getting us to?
  3. What is Charles Widmore’s importance and is he really dead? (I do NOT believe he is dead.)
  4. How will Desmond act as a fail-safe this time?
  5. Who is David’s mother? (My guess is Juliet since they seem to be building up to it and she’s the only really important female character that we haven’t seen in the alt-timeline so far.)
  6. Will Jack be able to kill the Man in Black? HOW?
  7. Will Jack make it off the Island? (Guess: No.)
  8. Who will Kate’s romantic choice be or will there be one at all?
  9. Were any of these people really special or was it all just chance?
  10. What are they preventing from happening by killing the Man in Black?

And a few they could throw in there if they have a second to spare:

  • Who is/was Annie and did she have any importance?
  • Were ALL of the dead people we saw on-Island manifestations of the Man in Black?
  • Is Jacob truly good and the Man in Black truly evil? (You could say that was answered in Across the Sea, but it wasn’t [pardon] black and white.)
  • Does the DHARMA Initiative play any greater role than what we have seen?
Posted in Daily, Listy, TV | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Sunday Morning Coffee – LOST Series Finale Edition

by Elizabeth Posted on May 23, 2010

On this, the last day of LOST, I thought I’d share a few show-related links with you. Tune in later today for my list of the “10 Questions I Would Like to See Answered Tonight” and tomorrow for a “How I Got LOST” post about how I got into the show, why it meant so much, and how I feel the finale wrapped up the series.

This is it, folks.

And in case all of this “farewell to LOST” stuff is getting you down…

Posted in Daily, Features, Sunday Morning Coffee, TV | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment