It's hard to predict what Widmore's up to, but it is worth remembering that, like Ben, he at least nominally worked for Jacob for a long time. Of course, he could have been corrupted long ago, or could be willing to betray Jacob in order to realize his desire to control the island, but he might not find it so easy to…

Yep, we were remarking on her Confederate flag in my viewing group. Not cool, Alex.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, Schiels, but I think maybe part of the point was that the Temple was going to be less cool because Jacob was dead. So, e.g., the pool didnt' work. The Temple was broken, and now it's fallen. It had secret passages and some anti-Smokey defenses and whatnot but ultimately…

I agree with you on the read of Jacob. There is nothing wrong with influencing people (whether you're a God or not), so long as you do it in a way that respects their freedom. Jacob always leaves people to make their own choices. He doesn't manipulate or deceive or threaten. All this raging from characters (e.g.,…

Ilana's gotta be pretty important—at least in the way Richard's important: not necessarily as a character in the drama, but as an important player in the world of the show. She is, I believe, the only person shown to have been met by Jacob who knew who Jacob was. I can't remember the details, but he asks her to do…

I agree that Juliet's "it worked" is a complication of the theory (as is generally the question of what the consequences of "the Incident" were). I posted below (under Noel's post about the alterna-verse not being an epilogue) that I think the alterna-verse we've seen so far isn't the final end. It happens after…

I posted above, under LoneAudience's big post, my crude version of the "alterna-verse is the future" theory. In short: Locke/Smokey promises Sayid the whole world; it makes sense to see the submergence of the island as the consequence not of the hydrogen bomb, but of Smokey's escape from the Pandora's Box of the…

Many are the dead men, too silent to be real.

I think that St. God and Guitarjelly are on the right track—the fact that Jacob was susceptible to physical murder by Ben (so long as some loophole was found) suggests that the same could be true for Smokey. Dogen and his knife and his instructions may have been attempts to activate the loophole (and, hey, if Zombie…

I could be way off base here, but didn't Locke say to Sayid something like "what if I could give you a [the?] whole world?" This sounded like a hint that the "alterna-verse" might actually be the world that results from Smokey winning the conflict in mainline 2007 and escaping the island. So Smokey doesn't just lead…

I, too, think Kate is definitely with us for the long haul. Notice that we have a bunch of Losties in Locke's entourage: Sayid, Claire, Kate, Sawyer. Sayid and Claire seem to have definitively "gone dark," each choosing (however confused or manipulated they were) to ally with Smokey. Sawyer *said* he was with…

In the box . . .
Is Jules's soul. Or his girlfriend's head. Or a button that promises temptation and exciting ironic twists.

Yeah, but where does the sado-masochistic lesbianism come in?

Re: McBain—agreed, once Mendoza's men got to Skowie, he was too close to the case. And what a harvest we reaped: he busted up that party pretty good—and did he have to break so many ice sculptures?

In that clip, you can see the Joker punched in the same rib two consecutive times, but different sounds are clearly produced. I hope someone got fired over that one.

Interesting suggestions. Britain may not be so "small," though, relative to the demand for immigration, after suffering eighteen years of depopulation. So, like I said, it seems like nativist tendencies would be in tension with enormous economic demand for labor. It is true that if GB is basically the only…

I'd greenlight that film, Kurt, with or without Erik's re-write.

I just saw "Children of Men" for the first time last weekend, largely because of the love of it on this site, and I was disappointed. I agree the look of the film is impressive in parts—Cuaron does a good job of making Bexhill look like mid-1990s Sarajevo—but I think it's very confused thematically. Without going…

@pachaim: obviously the firstie guy didn't give the one-star rating; Amelie's screen shot presumably pre-dated the first. So the "Blue Floyd did it" theory only works if he knew this article, and its screen shot, were coming well in advance. I guess if he did that, then he deserves a very slow clap indeed.

Yes, possibly the all-time greatest political headline. People in the mainstream media were still citing it years later. The part where Bush says something like "hey, maybe we'll invade Iraq" is almost too hard to read now.