Get down with the sickness!

Alright, time for me to take my first crack at the "first reaction" blog. For the first time in my LOST career, I actually sat down to take notes during the original airing of an episode. They weren't really detailed notes - I still want to enjoy the show for what it is - but I'll share them with you, along with some explanations in parentheses:

Reincarnation
Sayid=Not Monster
Sayid=Maybe Monster (I was just finishing the preceding sentence when those rascally Others admitted that they had lied about Sayid's test)
Weird Science Commercial
Flash-Sideways=Boring
No couple
"I remember..."
LAX Timeline=Island Timeline

So now I'll expand on some of those incoherent thoughts.

1. Reincarnation
This is what Sawyer was hinting at when he said that Sayid was basically sent back to the island for being an ass in real life. While I don't think Sayid's resurrection is what we traditionally think of "reincarnation," I do think that there's some strong hinting that that's what happened to ALL of the survivors throughout the course of the show. Remember one of the famous LOST anagram clues from Season 5, where Ben's van said "Canton-Rainier" on the side of it...

2. Sayid=Not Monster
I scribbled this down on the paper whenever it became apparent that they were testing him for something. I thought that the sprinkling of the ash on top of him met with whatever device was designed to determine whether or not we were seeing the Monster had taken over Sayid. Remember the water was dirty/tainted, which might have meant that the Monster had used that as a device to get inside Sayid. Of course Sayid couldn't be the monster because he passed their little test...

3. Sayid=Maybe Monster
...how stupid of me to forget that every sentence from the Others includes a noun, verb, and a lie.

4. Weird Science Commercial
Nothing LOST related, just sort of liked that Radio Shack commercial.

5. No couple
I'm going to hold onto this thought until I get a couple of points down...

6. "I remember..."
So once we established that something was terribly wrong with "Sayid" he had a statement that really struck me as a tell that it might just be the monster that is infecting him. I believe it was Miles that asked him if he saw the bright lights, old family, etc. When Sayid responds he begins with "I remember being shot..." One of the things we've seen from the Monster throughout its existence on LOST is that it seems to scan the memories of its victims and use those against them. And if you don't remember, just go back to the episode last season when Locke is "resurrected" on the island and one of his first lines is "I remember dying..."

7. LAX Timeline=Island Timeline
This was something that I started to pick up on last week when Edward Mars suffered the same head injury as he did in the crash of 815. Then Charlie was choking before being saved by Jack (remember Ethan hanging him up and leaving him for dead in Season 1?). And of course you had Christian Shephard's magical disappearing coffin. The idea is that even though the circumstances in the sense that the plane doesn't crash, fate is fate and things are going to play out in Los Angeles as they did on the island. Well is there any doubt to this after what happened to Claire? Let's see, she's not giving her baby up for adoption, she was administered drugs by Ethan, and Kate is apparently going to have some kind of role in raising this kid (probably).

So that's just some of what I got out of the episode. I'm sure that as soon as I post this I'll wish that I had included something else, or I'll think of something in the morning when I wake up. But here's some final thoughts by me:

I like the idea of the LAX Timeline mirroring the Island Timeline, but am I the only one that's already a little bored with it? It seems as though the endgame is taking place between the forces on the island, and while it's neat to see how LA is mirroring the island, it also means that we're not really seeing anything new...

I mentioned throughout this post that it is the monster that is "infecting" Sayid, but I'm still totally open to the idea of it being Jacob, or some other force that maybe we haven't seen yet.

I'm hoping that Sawyer's resignation from love is going to put an end to a lot of the love "however many people are involved in it now"-angle. Juliet's dead, and Sawyer seems suicidal, so just let Jack and Kate get it on and get to some of the legitimately interesting storylines of the show.

Arbor Mist wine has become my official drink of choice for the final season of LOST. I bought a bottle for my premiere party last week because it was "island fruit" flavored and so it seemed to fit into the idea of the party. This was an excellent choice. Tonight I went with their melon white zinfandel. Another excellent choice.

I'm anxious to read all of your takes on the infection/Sayid/Claire and what it all is. Again, just pulling something out of my backside minutes after the show, I'm going to guess Monster. But I'm about as committed to that theory as Kate is to anything she's done. Ever.

I think what we're seeing is one last desperate attempt by the forces that be on the island to try to sway our survivors in one way or another, knowing that an all-out battle is on the horizon. The survivors are obviously extremely important pieces on this chessboard, and we are now down to 15 hours until we hopefully have it all sorted out.

- The Arrow