LOST - How to fake a plane crash in 10 easy steps

This episode totally messed with my head. 

I’m not one of those people who have developed a unified field theory of LOST, so my perception of what’s really happening on that crazy island is malleable. I’d imagine that’s the way the producers of LOST would like it, because each week they feed us some new mystery or revelation that will throw a monkey wrench into the gears of any carefully constructed theories. 

“Ji Yeon” split the focus between Sun and Jin (on the island and off) and Desmond and Sayid on the freighter.  

In the flash forward Oceanic Six Timeline we find out that Sun was the last of the Oceanic Six –right? Doesn’t baby Aaron count as one of the Oceanic Six, or am I wrong? If Aaron doesn’t count, that means that the person in the coffin from last season still could be one of the Six, I suppose. I can’t believe that Ben would be one of the Six, even though he has made it off the island in the Oceanic Six Timeline. It’s confusing.  

Desmond and Sayid meet Capt. Gault on the freighter, who Doctor Ray unconvincingly describes as a straight-shooter who “tells it like it is.” He blows Desmond’s mind by telling him that Charles Widmore owns the freighter, and then further blows his mind by showing him the black box that was recovered from the undersea wreck of Flight 815, which his boss went to a great deal of trouble to obtain. If that’s the case, why is the black box on the freighter instead of someplace safe? Seems unlikely that they’d just keep it on the boat.  

Gault seemed suspiciously forthcoming with the info for LOST, where every character parses out only as much info as they need to. I just didn’t buy his explanation that Ben was somehow responsible for staging the wreck of Flight 815, complete with 324 dead bodies.  Seriously, how could any organization maintain secrecy after such a massive operation? You’d need to obtain a Boeing 777 and somehow place it at the bottom of the Sunda Trench (which is hella deep) with the kind of damage that you’d associate with a crash of that type, right? You’d also need to stock the wreckage with 324 corpses. Knowing that the plane will be discovered and the wreckage examined by remotely operated subs, you’d need to have somewhat convincing corpses to fool all the forensic types who would examine the sub footage – you couldn’t just use 324 med school cadavers. Because you’ve placed it at such an incredible depth, you know that it’s going to be impossible to recover the plane or the bodies, but the wreck and corpses still have to be able to fool the rest of the world.

So how do you fake something like that? I can only think of two ways. You create the wreck damage beforehand and then drop the chunks of plane, bodies and all, into the Sunda Trench from the deck of a huge boat using massive cranes. Or you take a real life 777, doctor the fuselage so it looks like Oceanic 815, and then crash it with a bunch of (living?) people on board. Short of bringing in magician David Copperfield, I don’t see any other way to plant a wrecked airliner on the bottom of the ocean. Now, I know I’m talking about LOST here, but both those options seem far-fetched and impossible to keep secret. You have to give the LOST writers some credit and assume that they would have thought this through as well. Everything else on the show seems so carefully constructed and planned out – this can’t be any different. 

So in other words, I think Gault is lying about Ben’s involvement in the fake crash – Widmore himself seems like a more likely mastermind. Furthermore, I think the black box is fake. I have no theories about the crash, because it doesn’t make sense yet. It’s possible that the crash really is Oceanic 815, but that’s a bowl of space-time continuum spaghetti that I don’t want to eat quite yet. 

Another thing: in the Oceanic Six Timeline, how do the Six explain their survival when the plane itself is resting on the floor of the Indian Ocean? I can’t figure that out either.

In a previous post I was all psyched about Kiwi stuntwoman/actress Zoe Bell appearing on the show. Live from L.A. reader Paul O’Regan called it: Bell played Regina, the heretofore unseen freighter crew member. I’m awarding myself a few points for kinda sorta predicting Regina’s death when I wrote, “I'm excited to see what Zoe ends up doing on LOST - hopefully she has an honest-to-God role, but you don't hire an A-list stuntwoman unless you're going to use her unique gifts - so she'll probably get blown up or something.” 

Regina didn’t explode, but she did take a long walk off a short deck wrapped in chains and promptly plunged off the side of the freighter and off the show. Man, that was quick! She was only in two scenes!

What else? Michael’s on the freighter, but using an alias? Whaa-huh? At least Desmond and Sayid stayed composed and didn’t blow the guy’s cover, but I don’t know how happy they are to see him. Is he Ben’s spy? Seems likely. 

Apparently Jin’s dead in the Oceanic Six Timeline, but the date on the tombstone is September 22, 2004 – the date of the plane crash. I’m interpreting that as evidence that the explanation the Six gave for their survival involves everyone else on the plane dying in the crash, right? Even if Jin was truly alive, they’d still have a tombstone for him. So is Jin really truly dead, or is he alive and Sun has given up hope of ever seeing him again? She was calling for her husband while in labor, but that could have been the drugs talking. 

So many questions, so few answers, and yet once again it was a satisfying episode.  Such is the weird beauty of LOST.
 

--Dave Campbell

Comments

[Mike Tattoo]

Last night’s episode was kind of a snooze fest for me. Sorry.

Did it really surprise anyone the Jin was going to die? (be it real or a cover-up) You drink and drive in Hawaii, you die on Lost. It reminds me of Mr. T’s mantra in his classic 1980’s motivational video “Be Somebody, or Be Somebody’s Fool”

“If you do drugs, I’ll kill you.”

Nuff said.

Did it really surprise anyone that Michael was the inside man on the boat?

Is it really going to surprise anyone when Kitty exits stage left in Wheadon’s X-Men? Oh snap!

If anything, my favorite moment was the Wolferman & Hart alumni reunion on the fishing boat. I hope they bring the Bernard character back in Angel Season 6. That would seem like a no-brainer, make him Wesley’s manager... or, if you wanted to flip the script, make Wesley’s be Bernard’s manager. That would throw people for a loop.

And you know what the next Year of The Dragon is gonna be? That’s right, 2012. End of the World. Mayan calendar reaches its singularity (depending on who you talk to) but it also ties into Peak Oil theory, where oil production hits a downhill slide around 2010 but in 2012 it just falls off a cliff. That’s when blackouts become permanent, that’s when the Industrial Revolution comes to a grinding halt, like Donkey Kong on a Kill Screen. But 2012 Year of The Dragon is also the next time that Charles Manson is up for parole. No joke. All the planets are coming into alignment the next Year of The Dragon. Watch out.

[Paul Jewkes]

Thought it was a cracking episode and Lost at it's vintage best. The writers are great at giving us an episode such as the Juliet centric one last week (not one of the best) and then getting straight back on track with this one. Heard that Michael would be back this series but was shocked for him to be on the freighter. His he Ben's spy though? When Ben gave Michael the boat at the end of season 2 and he told him the coordinates to go for was he leading him to the freighter. In which case he must've known about it's pressence and exact location. Also thought the Flash-forward and Flash-back mix with Sun and Jin was a great way of messing with our heads.