"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Lost ... Kate, black smoke, Juliet

Well, first let me grouse tonight that Lost wasted its customary allotment of time on an idiotic story of Hurley tricking Sawyer to be nice. I don't know why Lost does this so often. The show would be far better if it kept to the central, still gripping storyline - but, hey, I'm not the producer.

Otherwise, though, we had a pretty good show. Kate and Juliet are knocked out with some gas, and wake up handcuffed together in the jungle. This gives them - and us - a chance to learn a bit more about Jack, the Others, and one of the island's most evil inhabitants -

The puffs of black smoke. I'm pretty sure these killed the pilot at the very beginning of the series, Eko in the Fall, and maybe one or two others I'm forgetting.

Juliet tells us it doesn't like the electric fences - the ones that killed the Russian guy with the eye-patch a few weeks ago - and, sure enough, the fence saves Kate and Juliet from the black smoke's wrath.

But what is it?

Still tough to say.

Maybe an alien, or some time travel effect - it also has flashes of light, and sucks people (like the pilot) out of planes. Your guess is as good as mine, and mine isn't very good.

But I was glad to find out at least a little more about this smoke - does maybe Michael's son Walt have something to do with it? - nah, just thought I'd throw that in, because no one talks about them anymore - and we did get a good inexplicable backstory coincidence tonight, too. Now Kate's life has significantly intersected with one of the woman Sawyer scammed.

I don't know exactly what this means, but as I've been saying now for years, I'm convinced that these impossible coincidences have something to do with the deepest meanings of Lost.

Useful links:

3-minute podcast review at Levinson news clips

essay: Lost: Keys to What's Really Going On

DVD: Lost - The Complete First Season

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I chuckled at your random mention of Michael and Walt. They literally have disappeared from the island and the show - possibly the universe.

Someone sent me the link for a Michael Crichton book entitled "Prey" featuring two characters named Jack and Julia and a nanobot experiment gone awry. Even the cover of the book looks like black smoke. Do you think this could be an explanation of the black smoke?

Anonymous said...

I have read your possible explanations for the black smoke and i have to say they are all credible answers.
But u dont see the smoke for the first time at the end of series 1, u see it on the pilot episode. When the guy gets sucked into the engine you see the black smoke fly over the engine just as it explodes (best to watch that part in slow motion to get a good look) and to me it looks like a stealth plane flying overhead.
Could this be a military operation?

Paul Levinson said...

jenn and sawyer - good thoughts -

the black smoke could be the trail of something travelling faster than light, which would be consistent with time travel (Crichton has time travel in some of his novels, but I'm not sure it's in Prey...)

oh boy....

Anonymous said...

thats sounds like a good theory but what is it when the black smoke is still, something cant be moving if it is still.
did u see the smoke on the first episode?

Paul Levinson said...

Yes - there was black smoke when the pilot got sucked out of the plane, right?

The stillness of the smoke could be part of the temporal distortion - moving so fast it's suspended in time ... but this is just wild speculation on my part...

Anonymous said...

was there black smoke when u see the pilot get sucked out, the part i was referring to was when u see the guy get sucked into the engine on the beach, i do like this time travel idea sounds very good, but i have read the creators comments and he says there is no element of time travel in the show with the exception of desmonds flashes that is. So another idea is gonna have to be brought up.

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