The Doctor has Theorized, Responses to Comments, and Teases

Greetings, Lostophiles. A bunch of stuff to combine into one post here before tonight's Jack-centered episode, "Stranger in a Strange Land."

First, the 10-word tease provided by Damon Lindeloff to Ew.com's Jeff Jensen for tonight's episode: ''Can a six-thousand-mile journey help Jack find himself?''

Warning - Don't Watch Too Closely

In other words, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. In this week's podcast, the Powers that Be answered a viewer's question which pointed out that, in last week's episode, the military poster Desmond stopped to look at en route to his breakup with Penny used the American spelling "Honor" instead of the British spelling "Honour." The viewer asked if this was a clue that Desmond's flashback did not really send him to England, but rather a British facsimile in the U.S. The response - nope, it was just a prop mistake! So, yeah, Lost has lots of hidden clues, but sometimes, a mistake is just a mistake.

Response to User Comments

My recap of last week's episode garnered two comments, that point out a key component to Lost's cult appeal. You get out of it what you bring to it. Not surprisingly, regular reader (and my cousin) Mike Turner, who was a phsyics major and soon will be a Lost Loving intellectual property Lawyer, was a huge fan of "Flashes Before Your Eyes." His background from college made that episode really work for him (similarly, years of comic book reading in my ahem youth made it resonate for me). On the other hand, a poster identified as "Bill" (Dad?) is clearly the more casual viewer who by now wants answers, not puzzles. To Bill I say only this: have patience. I can't guarantee the ultimate answers will be as great as the puzzles themselves, but since Lost promises to have a relatively finite future, you won't have to wait too long.

Doc Jensen's Flying Theory Circus

Finally, I beg and implore you to take a moment to read this week's column by "Doc" Jeff Jensen on ew.com. He spins four theories to explain Desmond's time travel-ly experience, each of which makes you scratch your head and go "hmm." One of these theories ties Desmond into the story of "Dr. Manhattan," a character from the 1985 comic book series, "Watchmen" (pictured here). Jensen has been a fan of the over-arching theory that Lost will ultimately be the story of Desmond since last season's finale, and his fourth theory this week begins to crystalize this idea in light of what we've just seen. Jensen also got the same clarification from Lindelof that the latter gave us in this week's podcast. To wit: " a clarification or two from the co-writer of the episode, executive producer Damon Lindelof:

1. The episode is essentially an ironic riff on some Big Ideas put forth by Desmond's namesake, the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Those big ideas include a skeptical posture regarding the notions of interlocking cause-and-effect and seemingly miraculous phenomenon.

2. According to Lindelof, the events that transpired in Desmond's flashback 'did NOT happen solely in Desmond's imagination.'

3. If Desmond truly did travel back in time, says Lindelof, then 'ANY changes he made during this series of 'flashbacks' indeed DID happen... and thusly, the ramifications of said changes might reverberate later.'

4. It would be a faulty leap in logic to assume that because Desmond's flashbacks were a form of time travel, then ALL flashbacks on Lost have been a form of time travel. 'I don't really see anything in the show to support that,' says Lindelof.

5. Otherwise, the episode is open to interpretation."

So with that caveat, please do click on the title of this post to be whisked away to Jensen's column. And yes, I do plan to spend some time on the anagram he asks about at the bottom of his piece...