Yeah, it seems like a lot of work to go through to get to the self-destruct mode... especialy if "Hostil's" were beating down your door.



If Sayid knew there was another person there - and he saw the place was wired to explode, why would he not warn everyone and get out of the building ASAP!!

They took more care when they were dealing with the old dynamite on the Black Rock, than they did with when they saw tons of C4 wired to explode and the "enemy" is in the building.

When stuff like Locke blowing up the station shows up when he could have easily been warned by the other people (I know they never do) I always wonder if the writers do stuff like that just to annoy people. How can you not see how that is just such a stupid thing for a person to do. Even not knowing about the C4 you could tell from the video and the scientist's grave tone that if the hostiles take over you blow up your shit.

What I was referring to were people praising the episode as "Great!" who hadn't previously participated in Office threads, rather than posters who were enthusiastic about Joss in general. There seemed to be a lot who mysteriously popped up in that thread.

That's how I remember it...but I'm not going to go and count posts on this, though. I'll concede that you're correct on this one. But I do stand by my statement in that thread that Whedon was brought in as a sweeps stunt.

I think that blowing up the station was a plot device: nothing more... nothing less. The writers obviously didn't want the characters to get bogged down in this station like they did in the hatch. This station served its purpose for the story and now it is gone. Pure and simple.

Plus they eliminated the need for the characters to ever return to the station. So you don't get fans saying "Why don't they go back and read those manuals?" or "Why doesn't Sayid go back and fix the transmitter?"

While I agree it was handled very sloppily, I undertsand and appreciate the need for it to be destroyed. It helps propel the story forward, which is something this show has needed for several episodes now.

I think the complaint is - How does this propel the story forward, when many "answers" were in that station?

But I do agree, that this is a slopy way for the writers to tie up loose ends - lets just hope that the story is going somewhere.

my wife wondered if that horse was the one kate saw in the jungle.

I'm not sure how it moves it forwards. Hopefully the writers have something in mind. The point is, obviously, the future stories will not involve this station. These characters have something else in store for them.

Besides, how many episodes do you think fans would tolerate of Locke reading through hundreds of manuals of Dharma protocols? There probably weren't any real "answers" in those books. The Hatch episodes got dragged out way too long (IMHO).

Sure it would have been nice to dig around that station a little longer, but it ain't going to happen now. Destroying this station gave it something this show needs more of: closure. We never need visit this station again.

Hopefully this story will be moved forward by confronting the Other's home base.

I like the descoveries and mysteries from the hatches. There was nothing more memorable for me than when that hatch door fell down on Lock and the glowing map was revealed. Man that was exciting! It hinted of things to come and showed that the writers had a whole plan. It's a shame this new 'hatch" blew up.

the horse in the jungle was black (or at least dark). the saddled horse at the house was white/brown.

Jungle Horse:



House Horse:




no offense to your wife, but it amazes me how people think this stuff.

like the people claiming Tom (Mr. Friendly/Zeke) was in one of Jin's flashbacks. um, no. The guys looked nothing alike.

I hope the horse didn't die in the explosion.


From TV Guide.com


Locke Pulled a Gilligan!
Surely I’m not the only one who flashed on Gilligan's Island at the end of this week’s Lost, after Locke inadvertently caused the farmhouse/communications hub to go boom when he typed the numbers “77” into the chess-game computer. As Sayid moaned, channeling the Captain: "Now look what you’ve done, Locke." (Another fine mess?) There goes our communications link with the outside world. Now we’ll never find our way home. If the soundtrack at that moment had bleated a comical wah-wah-wah, it would have been perfect.

Not that I didn’t enjoy the episode. On the contrary. Lost continues its post-hiatus rehabilitation (in quality if not in ratings) with another strong episode, albeit not a work of art like last week’s Hurley joyride. (If you didn’t like that episode, what in the world are you doing watching Lost?) The Sayid flashback, a parable about the quality of mercy in a world tainted by torture, provided solid counterpoint to the taut suspense of Sayid, Kate and Locke’s eventful yet frustrating encounter with Mikhail Bakunin.

There I sat, foolishly taking notes like any self-respecting Lost fan/critic, figuring I might actually be getting some useful info from “the last living member of the Dharma Initiative.” Except, of course, he wasn’t. “He is one of them,” Sayid told Kate shortly before the smackdown started. While Locke played chess on the computer! (Didn’t his time in the hatch tell him how treacherous computers are on this island?)

Still, we did get a better sense of how things were meant to work, if the hatch explosion hadn’t apparently knocked all communications offline, including an underwater beacon to help guide submarines to the island. I yelped with happy surprise when Locke beat the computer at chess, triggering a manual override in which the Man from Dharma appeared on screen to give codes for mainland communication and sonar access. Tough luck it was all inoperable, and that Locke felt compelled to “enter 77” (the episode title) to signal the incursion of hostiles. Not the smartest move when the entire farmhouse was wired with C4. (And what of the horses and cows? Did they survive the explosion?)

Regardless, nice job from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse to move the story forward and to give our heroes an upper hand, at least for now, over one of them. On to the barracks, and on to find and maybe even rescue Jack.

And can I just say that I hope the next week in the life of the islanders goes by quickly, because what fun will it be if Sawyer can’t nickname anyone? I liked the playfulness of the ping-pong match, bringing a little comic relief into a show that could use it. And who didn’t laugh when Sawyer looked at Kiele Sanchez (whose name, we’re told, is Nikki, and who has already signed for ABC's Football Wives pilot) and barked, “Who the hell are you?” Good question. To say that she and Rodrigo (“Zorro”) Santoro (aka Paulo) have made less than zero impression so far this season is to be kind. I hope they’ve enjoyed their Hawaii vacation this year.

How long as it been since we saw that other horse? And how many people remembered the color? Sure, I had it written down in my clue notebook and was able to pull it up immediately...but not everybody is as diligent as myself.

while that's a decent point, the black horse in the jungle was a very striking image, IMO not easily forgotten.

I barely remember it being a black horse and I've watched Season 1 three times.

I can see how the average viewer who has only seen that episode once 2 years ago (and doesn't pay such obsessive attention to the show as those that post about it online) wouldn't recall the color of a horse that appeared once for like 15 seconds a couple years ago.

Oh, is that his name on the show?

Those two still seem out of place to me.

hell, i've only seen that horse episode once (haven't watched the DVDs again). By the way, it was a season 2 episode, so not that long ago. The horse was a central part of the episode, in both the jungle and Kate's flashback.

i don't think i was unecessarily hard on him or his wife, but i honestly think the horses could not have been more different, unless they made the house horse a shetland pony.

I think it only appeared in Season 2

I agree to an extent. Just not everyone pays super close attention to the show compared to the online fanboys, so its easy to forget details like that.

I'm a pretty big fan (though interest has waned a lot sense season 1) and I don't watch it super attentively.

My bad on the season it appeared in.

So, finally got around to watching this yesterday morning.

The whole Sayid flashback was pointless. It would have had some meaning if it had been shown in the 1st season, but the only reason for it was to show the reason that Sayid has become compassionate to others? Because he was shown mercy by his torturee? A little too little a little too late.

And Locke has become the most worthless character on this show now. He was such a strong individual, a leader in the first season. Now he has blown up the hatch and blown up their only hope for communications. Not much of winner there. And if it is his ploy to make sure they stay on the island, then he is a selfish character worrying only about himself. Who's to say that if they are rescued that he cannot stay on the island forever, just like the Others.

And the ping pong segment was lame at best. Sawyer has to call everyone by their real names for a couple of weeks? His character has also become a joke this season.

Oh well, I'm sure I'm in the minority here. Myself and the 10 million other people that are no longer watching during the Neilsen metering period.

Chris

Yep. When the show needs a ratings boost by promoting the death of a character in the promos, guess who will be joining the mission ala Arzt.

About the computer chess game. I'm wondering if it wasn't a computer opponent, but a real one sitting at a computer on the other end.

That is exactly what I was thinking to myself. Here you have a house with communications, livestock, and manuals explaining the Darma initiative, but the writers chose to take the cheap way by blowing up the place, and making Locke look even more foolish.

The only way I can say this makes sense if they continue to make Locke a complete fool which is exactly what most people did not consider him at the start of the show.

I'm on your side and I think we are both on the same page... I see the glass as 1/2 empty, you see the glass as 1/2 full ( There is a glass with water in it)

If future stores will not involve the station - WHY INTRODUCE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE??? We coud have met patch man in the woods - or snooping around a burnt out shell of a communication station.

The Flame was introduced in Lockdown, 18 episodes and almost a year ago. I think the writers knew they had to get to that story and close it off before pissy fans complained about it.

If I were to guess, I think the writers are starting to realize that they've created to many loose ends and they need to tighten the ship up. They may have introduced it earlier without a real plan on what they were going to do with it and needed to address it some way or another.

Again, I agree it was handled sloppily. But I prefer erring on the side of brevity as oppoed to spending five episodes on it and only learning about how often the food drops are.

We got back stories for all of season two for three characters that are dead now so who knows what they are thinking.