…any thoughts on the “Mysteries of the Universe” videos ABC has been putting out over the last month or so?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_K6tSOahf0

As for Jacob’s touching… I’ve thought a lot about that, and I think there’s something to it that’s more than just singling people out. I think it’s almost like a mark of protection or something. (perhaps akin to the way that “the island” doesn’t seem to let people die if they still have a purpose) I mean, several of the people he touches, he might have literally saved their lives: Sayid (if he hadn’t been asked for directions, he would’ve been in the middle of the street *with* Nadia when she was hit;) Locke (could he *really* have survived that fall? Maybe Jacob’s touch actually brought him back to life.) Others, it was more subtle: Kate (how would Kate’s crazy violent father have reacted if she’d been brought home by the cops for shoplifting?); Sawyer (if he hadn’t been able to get his feelings out on paper, his grief and anger could easily have taken him to a self-destructive place.) With Sun and Jin, it could’ve been a different sort of protection: a binding on their marriage, perhaps? (With everything stacked against them, and everything that went wrong, they really should’ve been separated long before they came to the island. It’s a miracle they lasted so long. (also, Jin survived some particularly certain-death-like scenarios, and Sun was *really* pushing things wrt “how long pregnant women survive on the island.”)) Jack… might have also been at a self-destructive cross-roads… Hurley… yeah, I got nothin’ there. Maybe we’ll see the result of that in S6?

Mysteries of the Universe, part 3: http://darkufo.blogspot.com/2009/09/mysteries-of-universe-part-3.html

@mlawski, you should analyze these videos! Would make for good articles, but then you should also watch the videos that were in The Lost Experience ARG.

1. I think the DeGroots were officially mentioned on the show, in the Swan “Orientation” filmstrip back in S2… and not just in podcasts/ARGs and such; and

2. The second-to-last paragraph above should read “…Ben’s people are tricking them INTO continuing to send supplies…” Also, by that I mean since there are still Others manning most of the stations from time to time — like Patchy in The Flame — it would be easy for Ben and friends to send messages back to the mainland D.I. as if everything is just fine.)

Speaking of corrections, and how the D.I. made its money, here’s a funny story: some eagle-eyed viewer last season wrote the creators a mail regarding the Dharma beer cans on the island. “Flip tops weren’t invented in the 70s — they were still using pull tabs back then. BUSTED!”

They replied back on a podcast: “Who’s to say Dharma didn’t INVENT flip tops on aluminum cans in the first place? Indeed, how do you think they got the money to fund the Dharma Initiative? BY LICENSING FLIP TOP TECHNOLOGY for aluminum cans!!!”

I always thought that was a great way for them to explain away a continuity error, while (humorously) helping to give some backstory to a plot point…

Actually, maybe it can be explained with the following, and let’s open this up to discussion:

In the 21st century — meaning, at the time of the plane crash, return of the Oceanic 6, our “present day” — does the Dharma Initiative still exist?

Most people will say “No, Ben killed everyone in the Purge.” But I’m not talking about on the island — I mean everyone back in Ann Arbor and elsewhere, like the DeGroots and so on. Everyone who, until now, has only been mentioned off the show.

My guess is that we’ll discover in S6 that off the island, the Dharma Initiative/Hanso Foundation is still plugging away, and that Ben’s people are tricking them until continuing to send supplies, equipment, food, etc. (Don’t forget the food drop in S2…) Or perhaps Ben’s people have infiltrated the D.I. off the island.

Of course, now that I’ve said that — Ben’s been blocking communication to and from the island for a couple of months as of S3. So they had to have known there was something wrong on the island… maybe? I don’t know!

I mean, how does Widmore become so rich that he can stage a fake plane crash, complete with bodies, etc. despite not leaving the island until he was in his 50s? Perhaps Faraday stuck a few sports scores in his journal so Widmore was able to get rich a la Biff Tannen.

And Ben’s apparent wealth or access to money is even more inexplicable given that he was a “work man” until he was 30 or so, and spent the rest of his life leading the rag-tag Others on the island.

I don’t see the Hansos funding either since they were both responsible for exterminating the Dharma Initiative. Any thoughts?

@TheMagician: Cool, I didn’t notice that tapestry stuff. I don’t notice a lot of things. Also: there’s a numerology ad on the site? Sweet!

@ArtDeco: Ah, I think the problem is the lack of clarity in my writing. Sorry! I didn’t mean to suggest Sayid wanted to go back to the Island. I only meant that the way Ben got him to go after the “economist,” the golf-playing man, and so on was to say, “You need to kill these people to help your friends.” I shouldn’t have written “on the Island,” because clearly Sayid thought killing those guys would also help Hurley, Kate, and the rest from being murdered in their beds.

@Kevin: Don’t know about Ben’s mysteriously shifting wound, but I just saw the kid who plays his 12-year-old self on a rerun of Scrubs and it startled the hell out of me. I was like, “Dr. Cox run awayyyyyyy!!!” (Then the kid got cancer.)

Keep the comments coming!

@theMagician: is there a screengrab of Jacob’s tapestry? I should search Lostpedia… someone’s bound to have it.

@mlawski: I hadn’t really thought of the characters’ (lack of) motivation in the first half of the season… but that’s a very good point, and helpfully illustrated, too.

The only other thing I’d love to hear you take a swing at is the musical score… but I’ve already prattled on about that!

Okay, HERE is a question to overthink and debate: in “He’s Our You,” Sayid seems to pretty clearly shoot Ben right through the heart. But in the following ep, “Whatever Happened…”, Ben’s wound seems to be… lower and off to the other side, where it hasn’t done as much damage. The question fans have debated is this: was this a continuity error on the crew’s part… or is this an example of the island working its magic?

He was the only one taken back to the island against his will, having been Shanghai’d by Ilana, who it turns out was working for Jacob.