This recap is blowing my mind.  I just have to share it with you and a few choice items contained therein…

like this ceiling chart! TV Overmind somehow geeked out enough to read the entire ceiling and find each individual’s name and number.  It’s kind of staggering how much detail is here: the entire French expedition, the Freighter crew, most of the Losties, and more.  There are several Spanish names that are as yet unknown to us, but hopefully characters on the Island (Alpert?) can help answer that.

But please. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR and read this. The amount of screencaps, explanations and quotes here make this a really full-fledged recap.  They even explain Plato’s Cave - how nerdy! I love it!

I want to explain a quick concept that the sublime Long Live Locke blog has touched on in reference to the show. It’s basic, but so important to keep in mind while theorizing.  Long Live Locke mentioned the idea, but I have to put my nerdy spin on it and reference a 12th century logician.  Ready?

There are less than twenty-four hours left in this series.  There’s less than eighteen, in fact. If you take commercials out of the equation, there’s less than ten. With that in mind, I present to you Occam’s Razor.

Occam’s Razor is a genius principle that states, basically, that “plurality should not be posited without necessity”.  Or, in 21st century speak, if you have several opposing theories or ideas about a topic, the simplest and most logical idea is usually the correct one. This is a concept used often in issues of logic, religion, science, and business; try it out for LOST too!

It’s why, for example, I think the ship Jacob and the Nemesis argue over is the Black Rock. Why would we see a massive sailing ship careening towards the Island that wasn’t the Black Rock? It just doesn’t make logical sense given the time constraints involved to wrap up the script of this series.  You can apply this concept to the Smoke Monster/Nemesis debate, and so on and so forth.  Make sense?

Now, about the episode.  This was a particularly religious episode, steeped with Christian and Catholic imagery and themes.

Most importantly the Nemesis spoke to Richard and Sawyer in a tone similar to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Manipulating, pushing, suggesting that <i>he’d</i> never act like Jacob.  That Jacob was wrong, that nothing would happen if Jacob’s power was gone. It felt so much like the first few chapters of the book of Genesis.

…so much so that the episode basically ended with Sawyer agreeing to bite the apple.  Oh, and Sawyer listened to Iggy Pop in New Otherton; Doc Arzt has a little piece on how significant that choice was.

After the staggering cave reveal I’m betting we’ll see Sawyer continue to make his move over to the Dark Side, so to speak.

Speaking of the cave and biblical imagery, Sawyer had to climb Jacob’s Ladder to get inside. Huh.

Oh, and this is neat. From the apocrypha:

“And all the Israelite men, women and children who lived in Jerusalem prostrated themselves in front of the temple building, with ashes strewn on their heads, displaying their sackcloth covering before the Lord” (Judith 4:11)

Temple. Ashes. Wow. [via the sanitorium]

With all this imagery, it’s hard not to notice the significance of Ash Wednesday coinciding with the airing date of this episode and the ash collection that occurred on the show.  As you remember, Ilana scooped up the remains of Jacob, perhaps to arm herself with more protective ashes (which will certainly come in handy soon).

Back on the subject of the cave…

Let’s do a quick rundown, shall we?

4 - Locke
8 - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shephard
42 - Kwon (I’m voting for Sun)

To confirm: No Kate. I don’t think Kate’s name was up there and we just didn’t see it.  I think we didn’t see it because it wasn’t up there anymore (Occam’s Razor, slicing things up!).

I’m voting Sun because we watched Jin and Kate run after Sawyer and receive little to no pushback from the Temple folk.  Sawyer, on the other hand, had to endure a rifle-wielding standoff before escaping into the jungle.  I think it’s clear that he made the list and they didn’t — why, I have no idea.

The screenshot of the cave above clearly shows other individuals names and numbers — specifically, names we haven’t seen before.  I’m betting that Jacob kept a huge numbered list of names and has just been crossing them off as time went on.  And surprise, surprise, The Numbers are the shortlist. Of course.

Other items…

• the “inside joke” line was kind of lame
• Lapidus’ line about the funeral was not lame at all
• the episode title is a bit of a red herring, but in a completely amazing way
• It’s amazing because Ben Linus is a European History teacher and that rules, a lot

Next week’s episode is called “Lighthouse”, which reminds me of the Dharma station The Lamppost and will probably have nothing to do with that whatsoever.

Great recaps, as usual:

Long Live Locke
Lostpedia
EW’s Totally Lost

As usual, I have to point to other sites and outlets as the source of the knowledge below. Since 06.03 was a Kate-centric (read: just ok) episode, I don’t have a ton to ruminate on this time around. That said, there were still some surprising and fascinating things going on (the drama between Dogen and Sayid, in particular).

Basically, I don’t want to recap the entire episode as I felt most of it was exposition and not much about theory. The biggest things to talk about are:

• Claire appearing and acting like a brand new Rousseau

• The fact that fate brought Kate to Claire’s side, and Ethan to her hospital bed, in both timelines

• Dogen’s comment about Sayid being “claimed”

Claire, I give a wait-and-see. I’d almost bet that whatever is inhabiting her is taking parts (or all) of Rousseau’s spirit and melding it to Claire. Maybe Rousseau’s spirit was captured by the Nemesis and that’s what we’re seeing here.

So, who’s Sayid gonna be?

The line about fate above… frankly, it’s just fate. Like Eloise Hawking said, you can’t change it. I bet Jack will heal Locke instead of the Island, but I bet he will still be healed. This alternate timeline is just showing us that some things can’t and won’t be changed.

Lastly, and I feel most importantly, the discussion about Sayid losing to this force inside him. Wow. The word “CLAIMED” is so significant in that context, no? It’s almost as if the Nemesis is choosing pieces in a game being played out on the Island. I find it so important that Jacob’s list emphatically demanded that Sayid live, and now the Nemesis has chosen him.

Both realize he’s a valuable asset for their respective causes; unfortunately it looks like Sayid’s now batting for the other team. I could see a twisted turn of events take place wherein other Losties on Jacob’s List switch sides (like Sawyer, Jin and Kate, who are no longer in the Temple?). Crazy. Can’t wait to find out.

This of course reminds us of the larger question - War? What war? And what is it good for? Something like that.

Other random things…
The biggest mindblowing thing I read last week has to do with the tapestries in the statue’s foot. This info comes from The Sanitorium and is just, well, insane.

According to this blog, the text on the rug is from Homer’s Iliad and reads: “Now you must embrace this evil war” “the ground ran with blood” “then death’s black cloud enveloped” Wow. Then the blog references that Jacob’s white tapestry contains lines from Homer’s Odyssey, which opens up some cool ideas.

The Iliad was all about war and The Odyssey more about peace and returning home. The Sanitorium does a killer job of explaining this and the significance, so be sure you read the post in full.

Here’s a cool theory. So far all the episodes have been focusing on the same character that as in Season One. So…

S1E1&2 - everyone, Jack/Kate - yes

S1E3 - Kate - yes

S1E4 - Locke - hmm.

Thinking we’ll see a lot of stuff between Sawyer and Locke based upon the promo, and given what we’re seeing here this might be on track. That said I can’t imagine there being a CHARLIE centric episode in a few weeks, but you never know… Full list of Season One episodes and their central character can be found at the nerd-tastic Lostpedia

Moving on.

Right after this episode finished, we typed the name Dogen into Wikipedia and were pretty blown away. Dogen was “a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after travelling to China and training under the Chinese Caodong lineage there.”

Here’s Dogen’s most famous pieces of text:

“To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever.”

Shortly before his death, he had written a death poem:

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.

A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.

Hah!

Entire body looks for nothing.

Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.

Oh, and Dogen wrote a little book called The Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma. Huh. How about that. More on Dogen at Wikipedia.

Can’t wait for next week’s episode! It’s entitled “The Substitute”. See you then!

As I mentioned, I decided not to recap the entire episode in more detail because other sites just do it so well. Here’s some of my favorite recaps. Do yourself a favor and check them out:

[Long Live Locke]

[Doc Jensen’s Totally Lost]

Doc Arzt does a good job of aggregating a lot of killer info and recaps, but the site might have VERY minor spoilers every now and again.