Episode 43 The Incident Part 1
May 19, 2009 by Donald Mikhail and Charlotte
Filed under Tv and Film
Well, guys its that time again, time to wrap up another season. In this episode I will pick apart the first half of the two hour finale. I’ll be back in a few days to go over the second half. Send all emails to lost@donaldislost.com and voicemails to 206-9841289. Thank you guys for another great season of Lost and Donald is Lost.
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Great season! I called (and Donald is my witness) what was in the box. I think the idea of two powers that discuss the outcome of man and the island (the beginning of the episode) is a great direction for the show. There is no doubt in my mind that next season is going to be much more about religion. I want to know what Bram was talking about with the “candidate.”
Wow what a cliffhanger. Where to even start?
It was nice to see Vincent again. I guess he took a sick day from Donald’s Podcast. Juliet hands down owned this episode. Did anyone else catch that she grabbed her stomach? The Jack/Sawyer brawl was brutal. But the toughguy James had to give a cheapshot to the jewels. I lost a little respect for him on that move.
Where the heck is Desmond? Since the rules don’t apply to him . I’m guessing he will have a huge role to play in the final season. The final season everybody. I still can’t believe our show is almost over. I’m sure our brains will explode when the series finally ends. Cheers LOST. Best show ever.
solid episode.
i think the overall “arc” of the show was revealed in the first scene.
Jacob and his Archetype Rival are conversing about the Black Rock coming to shore. the Archetype of Myth talks to him about how Jacob is always bringing people in to re-enact the same events over and over – which is myth – a continuous cyclical event where the past always returns to the present. but Jacob shakes his head and says “it only ends once, everything else is just Progress”. he is representing linear/historical time here to a T, or eschatology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology). a forward string that ends with a final judgement. i suppose the outcome of that is up for debate. some see it as apocalyptic, some see it as a new union with divinity. i guess we’ll see how the story plays out.
thats the way im seeing it until otherwise.
opening scene – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuEogKZ4egA
ps – im glad Jacob got killed
go team myth!
Kate’s jeans were the best part of the whole thing.
HRG, I saw Juliet grab her stomach. Did a little James-Junior go down the drill hole with her?
Donald, it looks like you were right about Locke being the smoke monster, or at least not being Locke. The smoke monster told Ben to follow Locke, so it seems like the smoke monster is on the side of the rival of Jacob.
The opening scene was mind-blowing and sent all of us in a new direction.
Great finale!!!!!!!!!!
Donald, you called it about Locke from the beginning! Kudos! I am so hoping that the white light means that maybe Juliet is not really dead…not an explosion…but a flash!!! I have only watched it once so far, and this is only my initial reaction.
I listen to different podcasts for different reasons, but your creativity and insight make yours one of my favorites. Thank You!!!
I have a theory. I think something happened to change the man on the beach with Jacob (in the beginning of the incident) into the smoke monster. Then back when Locke was pulled into the ground by the smoke monster (not sure which episode) he took over his body.
I’m going to change my story a little. The smoke monster didn’t become Locke it only made an impression of him and after Locke fulfilled his job of bringing everyone back he would die and then the smoke monster could take over.
I wonder if there was any significance to Jacob wearing white and the other dude wearing black?
Superb finale. Left me wanting so much more, as all good cliffhangers should.
Ben still stole the show with his one liners. “I’m a Pisces”.
Jacob was fasinating, why didn’t he fight back and who is coming? Did he mean the 70’s Losties or the What lies in the shadow people?
Hope Jacob will be joining you Donald.
Wow Amazing episode. We knew it would be of course though. Nice to see Jacob has a face but did they go through all that to just turn around and kill him? Guess we will find out in just a little under a Year! This is bittersweet as I really got into all the Podcasts this year but I will have to put LOST out of my mind at some point or I will go crazy with the wait! lol. Love the show Donald, talk to you soon! T.
Hey Donald. Wonderful finally
I had to admit, something about Locke didn’t sit right with me either, especially in the finally (he really looked evil at times). And it turned out you were (almost right). Locke was posessed by something, not Smokey but Ubersmokey
Donald,
I have crawled out of my negativity slump and back into “KAAPOWWWWW!!!” What a brilliant ending to this season.
Definitely think guy in black from Deadwood is Esau to guy in white from Big Lebowski’s Jacob.
Not sure about Rose and Bernard’s home being Jacob’s Cabin.
Assured that Jacob was not in the cabin – rather it was guyinblackfromDeadwood in there asking Locke for help!!
Not sure Jacob is a good guy – we need one more huge twist at the end of the show.
I have no idea how next season will start (aside from Jack’s eye opening)… but I am loving IT!!
yo
Great to hear it Jed. I knew you would come round, its all bittersweet to me. 8 months…
Ben is either lying about his birthday being in December or about being a Pisces. He just can’t resist! He would probably lie to you about what he had for breakfast this morning.
I’ve read comments on Jacob made a point to touch everyone of the Losties.
He touched Locke which I think brought him back. He saved Kate from trouble. In this case stealing which would continue her ways. He stopped Sayid from getting hit by the car. He was there at the Sun/Jin wedding. Which brings me to Jack. His didn’t seem important. I think Jacob and NotLocke are both master manipulators. Not being able to directly do there wills so they have to influence. The person that Jack was operating on . Was that Sarah he was operating on? Which would lead to Jack’s fall basically.
My two disappointments of the finale were Ben and our real Locke. What a waste. They seem to be just pawns. Locke being so special. Yeah right. How’s that looking Gandhi? Ben the master manipulator being out done by somebody better. Well at least we got the bug eyed crazy Ben back. Well those our my final thoughts. Can’t wait to hear Donald’s thoughts.
Basically the whole series has been retcon’d to be about the ultimate struggle between good and evil.
Lost is now the Matrix 2.
The saving grace of the series is the excellent casting and acting.
This episode ground my gears pretty hard. For me, it was the worst season finale of all five seasons so far, which is ironic considering I think Season 5 is one of the best, if not the best, season of Lost to date. I found the finale particularly disappointing following the true excellence of the previous episode, “Follow the Leader.”
I think a proper finale, when done right, should leave viewers satisfied, yet set up for the next chapter in the story. This finale left me nothing but frustrated. The characters’ motivations seemed generally stupid and/or juvenile, very little if any of the plot threads introduced in Season 5 were resolved, and the character arc they seem to be going in with John Locke is truly infuriating.
Unresolved issues:
1. Sun and Jin not reunited.
2. We still don’t know what’s in that guitar case.
3. 1977 Losties’ fates still unknown.
4. John Locke? WTF?
5. Who lived? Who died? Where are they? Practically all unknowns.
6. We introduce a new “bad” character, and we don’t even get a name for him.
7. What did The Incident + “Jughead” do?
8. Richard said he “saw them die,” but he wasn’t even there!
9. Wasn’t that Hurley’s voice on Danielle’s radio, reading the numbers?
Next season could forgive all, but it was a really cruel spot they left us to linger at for 9 months. Even more frustrating than ending Season 1 with blowing the hatch open, but learning absolutely nothing about it. This finale left me with no satisfaction, and frustrated confusion at wondering where this show is going, which I get to dwell on for the next 9 months.
It was infuriating to me, the way the female characters would turn on a dime like that, simply because, “boo-hoo, I don’t think he loves me, he loves her, blah blah blah.” And the very idea that these people are prepared to detonate a nuclear device (or to try and stop the detonation) not because of any higher notions of saving lives, or setting history right, but simply for stupid juvenile “high school” reasons of that stupid love triangle. It really angers me that the damn triangle is what really caused The Incident.
Miles was the only voice of reason here, pointing out that what Jack & Co. are doing is probably what actually causes The Incident. The reactions from everyone makes it clear this had not occured to them, but then they really have nothing to say about it, and simply blunder on forward with the “plan,” if you can call it that.
Are we really expected to believe that Ben Linus has been leading the Others all this time by doing whatever was written down on a scrap of paper handed to him by Richard? The dynamic between Ben and Richard has never seemed to me to be one of Ben following whatever instructions Richard hands him. To me, that is completely unbelieveable. I could have believed that Ben was faking the instructions from Jacob the whole time, that the lists were faked by him… but to believe that Ben does whatever is written on a note from Richard? No. And to believe that Richard has outright refused an order from Ben to take him to Jacob?
The idea that Juliet fell all that way, but remains conscious and mobile enough to hit the bomb with a rock like that? Ugh. And how come no stuff crushed her or the bomb? In fact, shouldn’t the bomb itself have been crushed by the magnetic forces to the point of nonfunctionability? That’s what happened to the countdown clock in The Swan, and the bomb is made of metal. Heck, what the heck happened to that chain that should still have been wrapped around Juliet’s waist? Shouldn’t that have been pulled right through her, cutting her in half? And I guess that everybody at The Swan site has perfect teeth, because otherwise shouldn’t a bunch of fillings have been ripped out of peoples’ heads and killed them? The only thing that gave me a chuckle, was the idea that Jack can’t even drop a bomb right.
And, of course, the number one thing that angered me about this episode, was where they seem to have gone with John Locke. So, at this point, it seems that either Locke really is dead and something evil is impersonating him, or Locke was in some manner resurrected, but something evil has possessed him and/or merged with him. Either of these possibilities is just a truly, truly awful way to end John Locke’s story. Or, at a minimum, a truly awful place to leave us languishing for 9 months. What they have done here, is like a bigger version of the trick they played on us with that Jin and Sun episode, where we are led to believe Jin is alive with Sun off island, until the very end of the episode where we find out that he is believed to be dead. What a cheat! In the same way, this plot with Locke 2.0 retro-actively robs earlier great episodes of their impact and meaning. Observe:
In “Life and Death,” we see Locke apparently alive on the island in flashforward before we see Ben murder him at the end of the episode. Thus, when we see Ben murder Locke, we think, “ah, but that’s not really the end of him.” But now we see that maybe it was. So, we were robbed of some of the impact of that scene. We were led to believe that Locke would continue past that, when really maybe he didn’t.
Follow this with “Dead is Dead,” and “Follow the Leader,” two really fantastic episodes featuring some great interactions between Ben and Locke… except now we learn that maybe that never was Locke. Again, that is a cheat, along the same lines of, “and then he woke up.”
What happened in the finale cheapened the events that had come before it.
Great podcast Donald!
I agree with Sgt. Draino
as it stands right now Locke does have a really tragic story arc.
Hey there Donald
Sadly I seem to have a problem with the sound quality. It could just be my computer, so this post is just to check. Does anyone else also have the same problem?
I too had a bit of an issue with the sound quality. A bit of an issue I have with this podcast is that Donald sounds like he’s eating candy while talking throughout most of it. The content of this podcast is top-notch though, kudos Donald! Can’t wait for part 2!
Sorry guys, well I dont see the problem it sounds the same as it always does. Maybe I always sound like I am eating? Whatever happened, happened. Anyway I will quit the podcast since you guys think it sounds that bad. Goodbye….forever.