LOST Season 6 Episode 4 "The Substitute"

At this point you know the drill, so lets just jump right into this....
Tremendous episode delivered by LOST this week. Let me tell everyone a quick story that many of you may not have heard before. Three years ago during the filming of Season 3, Terry O'Quinn (the actor who plays John Locke) had a meeting with prodcuers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. During that meeting he said that he was unhappy with the way his character was being handled. He felt his character had no purpose and was slowly becoming irrelevant. The producers told him, much like they tell us fans, to just be patient. Even Terry O'Quinn couldnt have imagined what the producers had in store for him. Being patient has definitely paid off for both O'Quinn and the fans. The last two years of this show have basically been revolving around Terry O'Quinn. He has played the character of John Locke on the island, John Locke off the island, John Locke in an alternate timeline, and now a Smoke Monster form of John Locke.

The performance that I watched this past Tuesday by Terry O'Quinn was probably the best performance I have seen in all 6 seasons of watching this show. I feel like I am on the edge of my seat every time he is in a scene. Quotes like "What if I could answer the most important question in the world?" ... and "You're so close, itd be a shame to turn back now" really make me feel like were getting somewhere. I have a feeling that since he is portraying the smoke monster that he is going to be the one who reveals A LOT of island secrets in the coming episodes.

Speaking of the smoke monster, how cool was it to have a 'smokey cam' going on at the beginning. Hopefully we get more scenes from the viewpoint of the smoke monster flying around the jungle.

Lets tackle the issue of the little boy right now... we witnessed a few scenes with a random kid showing up out of nowhere. In the first shot his arms were covered in blood, and the second time he was being chased by Smokey and appeared to be getting bigger and bigger the closer Smokey got to him. "You cant kill him" has been a highly debated quote over the past couple of days. I tend to agree with the theory that its little Jacob telling Smokey he cant kill any of the candidates that Jacob brought to the island because of the rules. These are the same rules we hear about between Widmore and Ben after Ben's daughter is killed. I have a feeling we will be hearing more about the rules of the game that all these characters (Widmore-Ben, Smokey-Jacob) seem to be playing.

Speaking of Ben... absolutely hilarious seeing him as a nerdy High School teacher who is teaching European History and complaining about coffee filters. Too funny. It makes sense though why he is a teacher. The island is underwater in the alternate time line, we assume because the hydrogen bomb went of in 1977 in that time line. Therefore, Ben was never brought to the island as a boy by his Dad, and he would never be shot and never taken to the temple by Richard, so he never became that bad guy. He is just a dorky looking High School history teacher who has probably never killed anyone in his entire life.

Now time to talk about the candidates... we finally have full knowledge of what the numbers stand for, people! Smokey showed Sawyer Jacob's lists with the names of all the people he has brought to the island over the years. The names that were scratched out seems to be people are now dead and no longer candidates, hence Smokey crossing out Locke's name. Notice that Kate was not shown up on the wall, and all the numbers were accounted for too. Very interesting since we saw Jacob touch Kate when she was a little girl. Another comment that caught my ear was when Smokey said, "Kwon... im not sure if thats Sun or Jin. I think that he means Jin, which may mean that a candidate can only be male, which would explain why Kate isn't on the wall. Another theory is that when Jacob shows up at Jin/Sun marriage the camera clearly shows Jacob touch Jin but doesnt show him touching Sun, we just assumed that he touched both... which could explain why Sun is the ONLY one touched by Jacob who is not at the temple, and the ONLY one touched by Jacob who didnt flash to 1977 after the Ajira flight crashed.

The final scene was one of the most intense scenes we have ever seen in LOST. It felt good to see why exactly they were brought to the island, what Jacob's plan was for them, and what the numbers meant. I now think Smokey wants to actually leave the island, and he looks to be trying to manipulate one of the candidates in order to do so. Sawyer said he was going to help him, but hopefully sawyer is planning a nice long con and will turn out to be the one who ruins Smokey's ultimate plans in the end.

I think Smokey needs all the candidates on the island to be dead in order for him to be able to leave the island, because they are the "protector's" of the island. However, as were told by the little kid, he cannot kill them... much like he couldnt kill Jacob either. I think Smokey can only kill people if the judgment calls for it. Thats why we have seen Smokey judge people in the past (Eko and Ben). He killed Eko, but let Ben live. So because of this Smokey had to find a loophole and get someone else to kill Jacob. So if he needs other people to kill the candidates that would explain why he may be building an army of "claimed, sick" people in the upcoming war that Widmore and Bram told us was coming. We shall see....

**Side Note: Ive been thinking about the whole Desmond on the plane scene from Episode 1, he was on the plane then seemed to disappear and we never saw him get off the plane. Daniel Faraday told us back in Season 5 that the rules of time travel dont apply to Desmond because he is special. We also saw how Desmond's consciousness jumped from 2004 to 1996 in Season 4 during "The Constant" episode. What if Desmond randomly flashed onto the Oceanic plane in the alternate time line for some reason. It would explain how he just disappear, because he flashed on and then flashed off the plane. What was his purpose on the plane though? He seemed to have disappeared right after Jack saved Charlie's life. Interesting...

Before I wrap it up I just wanna announce that in 2 weeks, Saturday March 6th, I will be hosting another big poker tourney at the house. I think its Spring Break for most of the college kids, and im lettin everyone know early because last time a couple of you told me that you wanted to play but couldnt get off work on that short of notice. A facebook group will be made next week sometime so be on the lookout for that. Hopefully we can get as many people as we had last time...

Thats all for this week's episode... next week's episode is called "Lighthouse" and will focus on Jack. See you all next week...

BASIC KNOWLEDGE and LOUDNESS.....