Jeff Jensen has been
writing the Lost column for Entertainment Weekly for quite some time now. After each episode, he pens a tome-like essay explaining every literary reference and allusion and offering theories and analysis. It's usually pretty good, but this week's recap has me worried that Mr., er, Dr. Jensen has a had a stroke or something. It seems that the man who knows everything there is to know about the
Lost mythology is missing some major pieces of the puzzle, and as a result, his observations are less than illuminating.
First, Jensen doesn't remember his time traveling from Season Five:
Until last night, it had been safe to assume that both the Island and Sideways worlds shared the same history until 1977, which is when the time-traveling castaways detonated Jughead. But the Linus men of the Sideways world blew up that thinking. I took the story to mean that Sideways Roger and Ben left the Island prior to its sinking. But Island Roger and Ben were still on the Island when Juliet banged the bomb. Implication: If the two worlds share a common history, the fork in the road is sometime before 1977. Rebooted Theory: The divergence begins on that fateful night when some phantom stranger struck John Locke's teenage mother, causing her to give birth three months early. That phantom stranger? I'm saying it's Charles Widmore.
Why is it safe to assume that history diverged in 1977? Previously seeing Dr. Ethan Goodspeed in the real world in Claire's episode confirmed that things had to have been changed before that: after all,
Ethan was on the island then, too. So when Jensen says "Rebooted Theory," I say, "no duh."
Now obviously, we don't know exactly what the sideways-flash world is. We
do know that the result of the Losties crashing was not limited to whether or not they landed in LA, since they later went on to time travel following their crash, thereby affecting all sorts of history before they were born. The Losties meddled in things at least as far as the 1950's, where they met Widmore, Eloise, and Richard, and where Faraday told them to bury Jughead.
My guess is that the sideways-flashes are not the result of "The Incident," but a result of a real rebooting that will occur on the Island 2007 at the end of the series (i.e., we are witnessing character epilogues). It could also be that detonating Jughead allowed Juliet to go back to the moment that defined whether or not she would come to the island, and that her absence on the island prevented certain things from happening (Similar to Desmond's experience following the turn of the failsafe key. Like Desmond's future "memories" of what would happen to Charlie, its seems Juliet may have returned to 2007 with some extra experiences. Remember, dying Juliet says "it worked."). Just guesses, of course. But I
do know that the moment where the paths diverge cannot be when Widmore supposedly causes John Locke to be born prematurely; even if that's a historical fact, the moment that would cause this to happen would be when Locke does/doesn't reveal himself to the Others in the 1950s. Perhaps this is what Jensen is getting at, but I'm not sure.
Second, Jensen doesn't seem to know the Ben-Jacob history:
Throughout his Others reign, Ben insisted he was hearing the voice of Jacob and heeding his will. He justified everything by putting it all on his Island god. But the time has come to begin wondering how attuned to Jacob that Ben has been — if he's been attuned to him at all. . . Ben's either been faking his rapport with Jacob, or (and this is my theory) the supernatural entity that's been speaking to him all along has been the Man In Black.
Not only did Ben claim never to have seen Jacob before that hullabaloo in the Cabin (which we know was Smokey now, if only because we saw Locke run his fingers through the ashen circle around the cabin, breaking the seal and letting Smokey in to put on a show), but Richard
and Ben both maintain that Ben's never met Jacob and that Ben got all his info from Richard as go-between. All this indicates that Jacob never had nor claimed to have any communication with Jacob or Fake Jacob (Smokey) before The Cabin Experience with John Locke (though he lied to the Others about it). It seems Jensen is inventing backstory that hasn't happened.
Finally, Jensen says this:
[Ilana] was asked how many [candidates] were left, she said six. Was she counting John Locke? Fake Locke? Jin and Sun twice?
Well, I might be wrong about this, but as far as we know, there
are at least six candidates left alive and/or not crossed out without fudging the math: Hurley (8), Sawyer (15), Sayid (16), Jack (23), Jin or Sun or Yi Jeon (42) and Kate (51). Now, the only questions are: Does Sayid count, now that he's "turned", and is Lapidus a candidate (Ilana suggests the possibility in last season's finale, and as far as we know, she hasn't had the opportunity to get any new info since then)? Hell, Miles could very well be a candidate. Now, I'm no
Lost doctor, so I admit I could be way off base here. But Jensen, who usually squeezes every last drop of water from every Lost moment, doesn't even entertain these possibilities. What gives?
In any case, I'm not trying to be hard on Jensen -- I actually appreciate his column a lot. But for someone like him, who eats and breathes this stuff, these should be easy catches. Doc, please work your way back into game shape!
P.S. This counts as my weekly "
Lost Takeaways" column I promised a couple weeks ago, even though I haven't recapped the last two episodes.
).
's 
, the bicycle scene in 
, Bill's birthday party in 
, the skeleton fight in 
, the wacky final scene of 
, the mirror scene in 
, the bloody prom prank in 
, and the opening scene of 
. 
than 
. Discuss. 
over 
, even without a vote by Bree (who would only be able to drop a +2 for A Serious Man, anyway). 
