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This episode of “The Transmission” takes a look at the sixth episode of Season 5, “316.” We recap the story in eight minutes, then spend some time discussing it in greater depth. Then, we turn it over to You All Everybody, our brilliant listeners and readers. Then, in the Forward Cabin, we review what we know about “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” and talk about the last week of filming on The Island.
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Segments:
- 0:00:41 Introduction
- 0:01:10 “LOST” in 8 Minutes
- 0:07:29 Discussion
- 0:28:36 You All Everybody
- 1:02:27 The Forward Cabin
- 1:10:35 Closing
Got a comment about something mentioned in this podcast, or about the podcast itself? Have at it below. Otherwise, we encourage you to continue the larger listener discussion about “316” on the previous post.
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i’m still listening, but it occurred to me that maybe LIBBY showed up to Hurley. I think that would spook him and move him even more than Charlie showing up.
Great podcast as always. As far as Ben being able to go back to the island, Ben is the one who said if u turn the donkey wheel u can’t go back. Ben is known for lying, ALOT!! It is quite possible he told Locke that so Locke wouldn’t put up a fight to be able to turn the wheel because Locke feels he is supposed to be on the island. Also, Locke turned the donkey wheel and he is going back, albeit dead. So I would think that disproves Bens statement of the ramifications of turning the wheel.
With all this time travel going on, I imagine that many of us are going back to the older episodes to verify a few things. I’m doing this now and find that the episodes that focused Desmond were the most telling.
I have a few issues/questions:
In the “Catch 22†episode, Ms Hawkins says to Desmond, (I’m paraphrasing) “If you don’t give back the ring, walk out of the door, and go to the island to push the button for three years, every one of us is deadâ€. How is it that Desmond can remember Ms. Hawkins when he sees her later on in Los Angeles, but Charlie didn’t remember Desmond from that same time period – obviously they met in the past when he out on the London street playing his guitar. Shouldn’t he have remembered him on the island?
Re: Richards watch being in many places/times at once: In “Catch 22â€, Desmond finds the picture with him and Penny in Naomi’s backpack/book, before she is about to be found by Desmond, Hurley, Charlie and Jin. How does this second picture exist when Desmond has the only copy of he and Penny? The photographer only took one picture.
HURLEY- Camille, I thought Libby would push Hurley over the top as well. He’s seen a lot of people but she would make him stop and listen.
WALT – was not one of the O-6 – Also, does Giant Walt need a plane to get to the island?
FINDING THE ISLAND –
the island is a place where – you can find it… if you know where it is.- So that does not change people coming and going, or supplies being brought in. I also don’t think that the island WAS constantly moving. It has to stay in a place hidden out of sequence with time… at least for a good while. That is why it had to be “moved” and they didn’t just wait 5 minutes for the island to be gone on its own and hard to find again. After the “move” maybe the jumping in time and location happens FAST, making it a scientific/magical feat to track it down again.
THE OTHER ISLAND
perhaps one of the island’s normal periodic moves or jumps is near another island. They can go to that island for a span of time then they have to be off it again before the main island jumps again.
316
No one talks to each other because
1. Many have just said ‘ I don’t want to be seen with you or near you or see you or go on that plane or do your bidding anymore ! ‘ and yet there they all are.
2. They are going back to the island that they worked so hard to leave. and they are all going there with secrets that they don’t want to tell. Not talking is a great way to keep a secret.
WHY
did Desmond expose his existence to Widmore as well as his knowledge of Faraday and his plans to find Faraday’s mother? All of those link him to the island, the freighter,and the fact that people can come and go to the place Widmore was trying to kill people to get control of. This would undo everything since Des didn’t know of Sun’s secret dealings
I would very much like to see Walt again on the island, but I know for a fact it is too soon. We will see him again on that island, but long after the losties are done with their journey.
Hi Ryan and Jen!
Just a few thoughts that I will try to keep brief:
-In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (excellent books, by the way! I would recommend reading them. My mom read them to us when we were kids and I’ve re-read them multiple times.) the witch only wants all the siblings in order to kill them and prevent the prophecy from coming true. Given that we don’t know Ben’s motives for helping the O6 return, or why the island wants them back, it’s possible that they could be in great danger.
-Kate, pregnant? Probably impossible timing for being pregnant on the flight. Though we didn’t record this for our podcast, Denise and I were discussing how long it takes sperm to travel and also how long it takes for a fertilized egg to implant itself so that a woman could actually be considered pregnant, and it takes hours and hours if not a day or two. (Maybe the egg implanted the moment Jack read the note from Locke, causing everything to come together at the same time…ha! And if she is pregnant, that would make for another “she’s pregnant and needs to get off the island ASAP” storyline.)
-This is a theory I have that I believe will prove true: Jin and the other on-island folks have been in DI times/working for Dharma for about two years and two months. The reason why I think this: Ben showed up in Tunisia ten months after turning the wheel. I think that he was stuck “inside” the wheel until Locke turned it and put it back on track. The two or three days’ worth of time that the on-island people have experienced equals the ten months that Ben was gone; then with the wheel fixed, the passage of time returned to normal. This would also seem to imply that Locke was not “in limbo” for ten months like Ben was since he fixed the wheel, but where he showed up is anybody’s guess.
Ryan/Jen/All,
Another excellent podcast – thank you!
I’d spent much time before this show thinking that the whole premise of Lost – the balance between faith and science – was a metaphor for the viewing experience for the viewer. This seems to be especially true for those of us that enjoy the Sci-Fi genre. I was interested to hear it raised in the audio for the first time.
There are many instances where the writers play with the fourth wall overtly or covertly, such as the use of the headache/nosebleed device for the time-jumpers, the repeated nods to real-world fiction and mythology, the cypher-like behaviour of Jack in this episode which felt so out of character. All of this seems to be crucial in the development of Lost as a series that blurs the boundary between the writers and the viewers – one of the crowning achievements of the show.
I am a little frustrated with the view, taken by some, that the show lacks some internal consistency at times. For example: the discussion that took place after ‘This Place is Death’ on the significance of the French Canadian accents in Rousseau’s team. Given the routine abuse that the English accent is given by Lost’s actors, I’m surprised that we haven’t visited the possibility that there is some conspiracy hidden in there!
[interesting fact: Fionnula Finnegan, who plays Eloise Hawking, was born in Dublin, Ireland. The IMDB shows her first acting role as Gerty MacDowell in James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in 1967. And what was Ben reading on the flight?]
I also think that this close viewer relationship is used by the writers and producers to deliberately tease and ‘game’ the audience. Coming back to ‘Ulysses’, being read by Ben on the flight: famous for being a literary classic, as well as a phenomenally tough book to read, let alone finish – are the challenging us?!?!
Of course there are inconsistencies, some greater than others. What can you do when the whole show is filmed in Hawaii, yet spans the globe in it’s settings? As long as the working majority of the piece makes sense week on week – I’m happy.
Finally, I think that Kate is pregnant – real world physiology being easily subverted for dramatic effect!
Lots (I had to go back and fix my typing error having mistakenly typed “Lost”) of people are complaining about Jin not being able to live from the explosion on the freighter. I went back and watched the episode where it exploded (or maybe it was a recap of the explosion – can’t quite recall), but anyway, Jin was at the stern of the ship running towards the helo. The zoomed-out view of the explosion showed it happening closer to the front of the freighter and actually showed the back part of the ship fairly clear. It’s plausible (though admittedly maybe a little cheap) that the blast didn’t consume Jin in the flames but the concussion wave from the explosion threw him off the ship ahead of any further explosions. It seems perhaps a little convenient but it is at least somewhat believable.
when you spoke of Narnia and the 4 sons and daughters of Adam and Eve i couldn’t help but think of Lost’s Adam and Eve skelletons. is the island attempting to round up an old family to reinstate an ancient rule?
Is it just me or was the use of the number “316” a little bit too over the top as a reference to what is arguably the most famous of any Christian bible verse in John 3:16, in which concept of the only path to salvation and eternal life is through faith in Jesus. I know that world religious ideas are integral to the mythology, morality and plot of LOST, but it just seemed like I was being clubbed over the head with the bible. (Hmmm…sounds like Mr. Eko’s club)
As for the episode, I felt like it was a necessary episode. Much like a skeleton. On it’s own, it didn’t have much substance, but it is clear to me that it will be the foundation that the rest of the season (and perhaps the series) will be built upon.
I loved that it started with a repetition of the first scenes from the pilot episode. Which leads to my prediction for the end of the series. I am picturing all of the 815ers dying off one-by-one and the last one remaining will be Jack and his last moment will be falling on his back, looking up at the trees and closing his eye with the camera tight on his eye closing and then…THUD. Black screen…and LOST.
Someone mentioned that Jack did not ask the right questions in this episode. I have thought that many times about this show in the past but when I re-watched this episode Jack DOES ask Ben who Mrs. Hawking is and what her stake in all this is. Ben’s reply was the Doubting Thomas story. Just goes to show, ask a straight question, you will not receive a straight answer! And who would want one anyway?
In the podcast, Ryan mentions that maybe Sayid is on flight 316 for a crime he committed in Honolulu (since the flight stops in Honolulu on its way to Guam).
Since the flash occurs before they arrive in Honolulu, does this mean the island is now geographically located somewhere along the flight route from LAX to HNL?
Something just occurred to me while listening to the podcast —
Could it be that the reason that Hurley, Kate and Jack all flash onto the island into relatively the same section be that they all believed they were headed toward the island?
We haven;t seen a leap of faith from Sun or Sayid, as far as I can remember. And even though Ben seems faithful to the island and a believer, he also seems to only believe the aspects of the island that are beneficial to him.
I wonder if the others will make it back to the island when they find a reason to believe.
Re Kate’s Pregnancy: Some are of the opinion that Kate’s only opportunity to get pregnant was the night she spent with Jack in 316. To assume that she conceived from that one coupling would be pretty far fetched, but not impossible. However, Jack and Kate were engaged and living together not too long before that night. She could be several months along (if she is pregnant at all.)
It is entirely possible that Kate is unable to conceive at all. When posed with the possiblity that she may be pregnant with Sawyer’s baby (and we know he is fertile because of Clementine), Kate seemed very certain–like she knew it was impossible–that she could not be pregnant. At lease it seemed that way to me.
34 degrees outside…whoohoo, a warm spell!
if you search in google, lyrics “but you had another man”
to find out what was the song we hear at the end of “316”, you’ll see that there are recent searches for these lyrics listed at the site “findmeatune.com”… no success, but I think this is what I hear:
yeah your kisses / feel so right / but you had another man / call up last night
Aside from the lyrics, the tune can easily be mistaken for “Love the One You’re With” by Stephen Stills. I wonder, could it be a switch of tune with lyrics, where they can put different lyrics to same sounding rhythm because they couldn’t afford the cost of the original song? I thought it was the Stephen Stills song when I heard it until I researched the lyrics.
Sorry, this is probably a little bit off topic, but….
D and C have said that their view of time travel is that everything is fixed – so you cannot affect or change events by travelling in time. They haven’t said, though, that by travelling in time characters can’t be part of their own heritage.
Increasingly we’re getting the sense that the characters have shaped their own destinies in a very rigid way by travelling backwards in time. So, the sense I’m getting is that some of the perplexing episodes in the show involve the characters travelling backwards in time. For example, remember when Sun got attacked and was dragged off into the jungle? Something happened to her and my feeling is that it involved a character stepping backwards in time. Similarly the whispers are likely to be central characters popping back in time. I haven’t looked exhaustively by any means, but I’ll bet that there are several plot holes or puzzles that could be explained by all this. Similarly, there’s been quite a bit of talk about family trees. I guess there’s no reason why a character might not travel back in time to become a parent, even of a character that we might perceive to be older than them. Sorry for the confusing ramble, but I think the time stuff adds an interesting and potentially mind boggling element to the whole story.
It seems to me, especially after having met Ray last week, that it is the Shepherd blood line that will be of utmost importance, and that Aaron doesn’t really fit in that line. Now with Kate pregnant with Jack’s seed, Aaron is on the outs. The only way for Aaron to inherit the kingdom is to destroy Jack (and his future son).
ChiliDog: Aaron is Christian Shepherd’s grandson through Claire, his daughter and Jack’s half sister. I would say he is very much in the Shepherd bloodline. As much as any child of Jack’s.
Hello all.
I just wanted to comment on the strange imagery in this episode.
When Jack had Christian’s shoes on the table, that is an omen (I found this out from the play Blood Brothers) of impending death in the family.
When Jack puts the shoes on Locke’s feet, that has got to be a reference to when (I think it was) Mary washes Jesus’s feet or when Jesus washed the feet of his apostles. There is a dichotomy of image here. Both Jack and Locke are an apostles and Jesus at the same time.
Also, in the church, as Jack approaches Ben who appears to be praying, the camera looks up at Ben and he appears to have both a halo and devil’s horns at the same time.
Quite interesting.