LOST Some Like it Hoth, first thoughts

Alternate title for this post could be "All the Good Jedi Have Daddy Issues"

As always *SPOILERS* if you aren't caught up.

Really just a few things to get into this week as the episode was for the most part self explanatory.  More answers then questions this week, although the questions we got were doozies.

It was confirmed the popular theory that Miles was the baby we saw in the opening moments of this season, no surprise there, and we saw the building of the Swan aka the Hatch.  Both nice things, but nothing to get too excited about.  LaFleur, meanwhile, is trying to cover up his actions concerning Young Ben, and I'm going to go out on a sturdy and firm limb and say that ultimately this will cause our LOSTies to lose their comfortable Dharma post.  There will probably be a lot more on that two weeks from now.

Let's get to the interesting stuff...

Let's start with the title of the episode, the second I saw it, I thought of Empire Strikes Back, and I wasn't disappointed.  There was a lot of Star Wars stuff in the episode.  Hurley is writing the script to Empire, with "a few improvements".  Of course, there is no way to improve Empire Strikes Back, as it is without question one of the best movies ever made.  Hurley's improvements, we come to learn, are that he would have Luke actually talk with Vader after it is revealed that Vader is (spoiler alert) his father.  Hurley claims that this would have saved a lot of trouble in the end.  While that may be, it sure as hell would have lessened the impact that the end of the movie had, and probably would have turned one of the greatest films of all time into utter crap.

The creators of LOST have long credited Star Wars as one of the main influences on the show.  I think in large part because of the epic tale based on mythic archetypes, but also, they seem to be telling us in this episode, because of the daddy issues.  One of the season one episodes was, of course, titled "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues", and that has long been a main theme of the show.  Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Locke, Ben, Hurley, and now Miles have all had serious issues with their fathers.  And the one time that we've seen Sayid's father it didn't seem like he was all that pleasant of a person either.  However, what is interesting about Star Wars, especially if you take all six movies and not just the original trilogy, the series isn't really about Luke and his daddy issues, it is about the father.  Everything is actually about Anakin.  (Who we found out in Episode One didn't even have a father, but that's another post).  For the most part, that doesn't seem to be the case in LOST.  The children ARE more important then the fathers.  Although, Christian does seem to be gaining in importance as the show goes on.  (And obviously his name brings to mind someone else who was born without an earthly father... hmm).

Speaking of Christian, I think that the name Bram is an interesting choice for one of our newest characters.  Proof that at least some of the other 316ers (and did you notice that the time on the microwave at Miles's new apartment was 3:16?) do know about the Island and have some ulterior motives, Bram picks up Miles off of the street and tells him not to go along on Widmore's wild boat ride.  Bram is usually short for Abraham, who was the father of the three biggest organized religions in the world, including Christianity (as well as Judaism and Islam) and it is also the first name of the author of Dracula.  Dracula of course being probably the most famous member of the Undead that there is.  Undead as in Dead, but Not Dead, as in Christian Shephard.  Pretty interesting.

Despite the interest that I had in his name, I am more interested in the fact that he tried to keep Miles from joining Widmore's crew.  And that later he boarded Ajira Flight 316 along with Ilana in order to get to the Island himself.  (We have seem him on the Island, he listened while Frank and Caesar argued about what the survivors should do in Namaste, and he is the one Ilana told to tie Frank up last week.)

I think that many of us, myself included, imagined that the coming war everyone had been talking about would be between Benry and Widmore, but we were wrong.  Sure the Others find themselves in a bit of a civil war between two leaders who are both, in my opinion, false, but there is a common enemy coming, one concerned with What Lies in the Shadow of the Statue.  You see, I don't think that they are at all connected with Widmore or Benry or the Others at all, but that they are a completely different group.  Despite their differences, which are many, both Widmore and Benry believe that they are acting in the best interest of the Island.  And the Island (or Jacob) has chosen the Others as it's chosen people.  (A very Abraham-ish idea, chosen people).  So, it is safe to think (at the moment with the limited information that we have) that this group is the actual enemy of the Island, and that probably the Others need to quit their bickering and get their stuff straight behind one leader (John Locke).

The other exciting bit of the episode happened at the very end when we discovered where Faraday had been all this time.  He was at Dharma headquarters in Ann Arbor.  Which means, he probably knows exactly what Dharma is hoping to accomplish.  He probably knows everything about the Island that Dharma knows, plus a little more thanks to his own experiences on the Island, Time Skipping and whatnot.  In other words, Daniel Faraday knows more about the Island then probably anyone else alive (or not Not Dead).  That will probably come in handy.

Finally, did you notice that Dr. Jack was erasing Egyptian Hieroglyph off of the black board in the classroom when he was attempting to cover for Roger?  Last week, in Smokey's lair we saw what certainly appeared to be Egyptian Hieroglyph, and the statue from behind certainly appears Egyptian.  Looking at names is always important in searching for LOST clues, and one that I had overlooked until hanging in the Royal Ontario Museum last week was the fact that Horus is an Egyptian god and the leader of Dharma on the Island is named Horace Goodspeed.

Horus was the son of Osiris (the god of the dead and underworld) and Isis (the goddess of fertility).  He reclaimed the Egyptian throne from Seth (the god of desert and chaos) after it was stolen from his father.  Ever after, the Pharaohs were considered the embodiment of Horus.  Other traditions say that Horus reclaimed the throne for his father and the Pharaohs were the embodiment of Osiris and the heir was the embodiment of Horus.

Until Next Time, some interesting stuff, and the Island certainly has its connections with death and fertility.