clue or macguffin?

The LOST writers really don’t seem very romantic do they? For the second straight Valentine’s Day, the show features a decidedly unromantic episode. Last year it was Desmond and this year it’s Sayid who breaks a girl’s heart on February 14th.

More discussion of this week’s episode, “The Economist,” after the jump.

* The LOST version of PRIZZI’S HONOR? or maybe CASINO ROYALE, given the very Bond-like opening to this week’s show?

* Hurley is awfully big to be using as bait, unless you’re trying to catch a big mouse.

* Ben just gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn’t he? A secret room, complete with passports and gobs of cash? Other sites have said the ALIAS on the passport was “Dean Moriarty,” which could be a nod to ON THE ROAD or maybe just Sherlock Holmes’ arch-foe.

* Ben the Vet? We know he likes rabbits. I didn’t see any of those caged up in that office in Berlin.

* Where did those 31 minutes go?

* For those who care about the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, it appears that Kate may have changed sides ONCE AGAIN. And if the previews are to be believed, Ben’s Bed is going to be used by someone other than Ben.

* Are Daniel and Charlotte a nerd couple? Or does he just have a crush on the CS Lewis namesake?

Your thoughts?

posted by Mark Coale

1 COMMENT

  1. The 31 minutes is a headscratcher. We now the source of the payload found its mark before it even showed up, so it was certainly a delay than a holdup. I can’t help but think that Daniel’s insistence on following the exact heading and his comment about how the light diffuses make me think that Desmond’s off hand comment about being in a snow globe may be accurate.

    I think Daniel’s married, so it might just be concern on a basic level.

    Ben is now the Dr. Doom of Lost. Or would Red Skull be more accurate?

    Sayid’s a bad ass.

  2. As with last week’s episode having Star Wars nods in it, I think this week’s had something vaguely to do with targets. Sayid misses his target (or, rather, she gets him first), and he also doesn’t get as close with his golf shot on the golf course. The payload is off the mark (time-wise) to Daniel on the island, too.

    Apropos of…I have no idea. Just and offhand observation.

  3. Here’s my take on the missing thirty one minutes.

    Near objects of great gravitational pull, time dilates and slows down. The island clearly has potent electromagnetic properties. the beacon was supposed to reach it’s destination in thirty (was it thirty?) seconds but instead it took about a half an hour or 1800 seconds. Maybe it means that time on the island is about 3 times slower than in reality. Jack says something like,” i can’t believe i’ve been on this island 100 days” when in fact in real time he’s been on the island three seasons/three years. Each season correlates with about thirty something days. A similar 3:1 ratio. Even if the math is fuzzy, i think the point of the whole exercise was to show the dilutional properties that the island has on time.

    what do you think?

  4. Thinking about the 3:1 ratio– it is possible that the island is being used as a time device, for diabolical scheming purposes, people who want to come and hide on the island for 100 days, suddenly 3 years went by. Imagine living on the island for 10 years and 30 years went by? I don’t know what purpose that would serve, other than being able to invest in something, sit on it and come back and cash out (hence all the money in Ben’s room? and the title “The Economist”)

    OR… was it that the island takes you into the past? I think that’s more like it… the polar bear in Egyptian ruins? The pirate ship? Well its definitely a gravity bending time and space thing of some sort.

    but who cares… Sayid is badass.

  5. I definitely think that time passes at a different rate on the island than off. Whether it’s a constant difference or not remains to be seen, but the fact that Jack actually said they’d been there for 100 days in the same scene makes it clear that they’re going for something with time.

    As for Daniel and Charlotte, I got a tolerated crush vibe rather than a couple vibe.

  6. How are you getting a 3:1 time dilation? 1800 seconds would be 60 times more than 30. And if it was 3:1, that would mean they had been on the island 300 days, not three years.

  7. “Last year it was Desmond and this year it’s Sayid who breaks a girl’s heart on February 14th.” That’s an interesting way to “break” a girl’s heart — with a bullet.

    BTW, in the rerun of the prior week’s episode of “Lost” — they have an occasional ticker clarifying story points. The woman seen with Daniel when he see the news item on Oceanic 815 is his “caretaker” — evidently Daniel is off his rocker.

  8. I’m feeling the obvious implication that the whole ordeal is not over, that there is still a large group on the island, and that Sayid is using his superior bad-assery to help keep them safe, forcing him to work for Dr. Doom there.

    I go with DD if only because I have never seen the Red Skull be even remotely(seemingly) altruistic, while Doom has acted not always in the most vile manner, and so has Ben.

    And I don’t the payload was supposed to arrive in 30 seconds, they were tracking its distance to target, not time to arrival.

  9. Considering the various tidbits doled out (The payload time differential, Richard Alpert appearing EXACTLY the same age to young Ben as he did to Juliet, the shot of Stephen Hawking’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, Demond’s temporal flashes, the polar bear buried years ago, etc.), I think the island is a nexus outside of time and, quite possibly, outside of space as well.

    The electromagentic field may have been used to stabilize the island in order to allow travel back and forth from normal spacetime, but since Desmond pushed the Big Shiny, Candy-Like Button, the island has become all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Oh, and Jacob? Jacob and the cabin may be unstuck in time, which could explain the various abrupt appearances/disappearances.

  10. I didn’t take it that Ben was a vet. I assumed that they broke into a vet’s office to do the surgery on Sayid. A vet would have the surgical tools needed to take a bullet out of someone’s shoulder, where a doctor’s office would not.

  11. Though we have seen Ben “medically involved” with animals on the island before, most notably the rabbit that supposedly “died” to frighten Sawyer into not running away.
    Ben apparently has a life of sorts on the outside; looks like multiple identities from what Sayid found. I think a vet could be one of many possible covers.
    According to the LOST spoiler board, another regular cast member will buy the farm by episode 8. As I recall, the candidates are Sun, Jin, Claire, Desmond, Juliet, Sawyer and Daniel Faraday. I don’t think it’ll be the new guy.