Inconsistencies or clues?
I thought I'd start a thread for inconsistencies we find on the show. Some of them may be production errors or they may be clues. By keeping them in one place we may be able to glean some info on future events before they are presented.
I was rewatching "LaFleau" again when I noticed something wrong. I seemed to remember that Charlotte was said to be 25 years old. I went back through some of the old transcripts and found that I was right - Ben gives her date of birth as 7/2/79. But in "LaFleau" we see Dan in 1974 meet a young girl that we are expected to believe is Charlotte. She appears to be about 5 years old in the episode. Is this a production error or a clue that Charlotte may not be what she seems to be? Has she been time traveling before? And if her story about her Mother leaving her Father on the island is true, did Ben kill him in the Purge?
Here are Ben's comments from "Confirmed Dead";
LOCKE: The black smoke, the Monster, what is it?
BEN: I don't know.
LOCKE: Then goodbye, Benjamin.
BEN: Her name is Charlotte Lewis! Charlotte Staples Lewis. Born July second, nineteen seventy-nine, Essex, England. Parents David and Jeanette. Eldest of three, all girls. She was raised in Bromsgrove. Did her undergraduate studies at Kent. Took her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Oxford. She's here with two other team members and a pilot. Their names Daniel Faraday, Miles Straume, Frank Lapidus.
Maybe...
... all leaders of the island have to die before they can lead... including Ben.
Yeah, if the reason Ben's obsessed with Juliet later is because she saved his life when he was a kid or whatever... if the line, "You look just like her" is meant to be comparing Juliet to her actual self in the seventies... then I'll be looking for Doc Brown to be part of the Dharma Initiative.
chicken neck
Charlotte's sisters
Desmond and Widmore
I was thinking about Widmore and Locke's conversation after Locke appeared in the desert. Widmore asked John how long it had been from his perspective since they had met. I find this a bit odd. It implies that Widmore had his memory since he was 17 and first met Locke. But when Dan met Desmond at the hatch it took Desmond 3-1/2 years to remember the event and the message. Why are these instances different? Widmore's experience suggests a linear timeline while Desmond's seems to be more random.
(Side Note: I don't buy into the 'Desmond is different so it effects him differently' theories. I find that to be just too convenient and sloppy by the writers. This is why I have a hard time with Jaz's theory about the O6 interacting with people in 1974 as always having happened. It's just too easy to say "it was always that way" as an excuse for doing anything without consequences. The writers created these rules, so allowing them to arbitrarily break them whenever it suits them is too easy and IMO takes away from the story. But hey that's my own baggage!)
So any ideas on why Widmore would have an instantaneous memory but Desmond would take several years to have one?
Desmond
Are you generally not buying the Desmond is different, or special or the change agent argument Jukin?
'Cause I don't look at it as sloppy writing if they've set up a universe with rules that apply to all, and if those rules remain in place the world comes to an end, and then introduce the possibility of one person as a rule breaker who can prevent that from happening. That seems a pretty standard narrative device to me--the hero as the one for whom the rules don't apply.
Re: Desmond
Jaz I think the idea that Sawyer can travel back to 1974 and shoot some of the Others without there being any consequences in 2004 because "he always traveled back to 1974 and shot those people" is what bothers me. I understand the non-linear time idea but having spent so much time and energy telling the audience repeatedly that "you can't change the past" only to now say anything goes under the guise of "it always happened that way" -- it's just a lame effort IMO. What interests me about the show is that they set up some very cool events and followed that up with some rules they promised to follow. I was interested in seeing how they explain the events and where they go with the story. If they begin using the catch all of "it always happened" I'm going to be very disappointed. I guess it's sort of like going to a magic show and the magician promised to make an elephant disappear and then at the end of the trick the elephant's still there but the stool he was using is gone and they tell you that was the intent of the trick.
Maybe I'm asking for too much from them but I really want the show to go in a different direction than it seems to be heading.
elephant in the room
Yeah, I understand that response Jukin. I think the writers have an "out" on this one though and are going to take it--they can say that indeed they are not changing the past.
Maybe the whole thing will wind up explained in a different way though. For the most part I'm actually trying to ignore the whole time travel element and think about it at some kind of philosophical level--like the free will/fate divide and the irony that with more choice they might actually have become more determined (off island) because not yet enlightened. My own personal bugaboo at this moment is actually the romantic stuff--I am completely uninterested in the whole Jack/Sawyer/Kate dynamic at this point and even more so with Juliet thrown in. If the Sawyer/Juliet relationship had just happened on its own without the history of everything else I would have liked it much better (Juliet is becoming a favourite character). And this is the weakest link so far to me in the writing--Kate's character. I'm pretty sure there's going to turn out to be something going on with her that's been hidden from us so far. But so far I can't see any reason anyone would be taken with her--they might be going for secrecy and hidden depths, but she comes across very 2D to me.
2D Kate
Kate has probably lost something for you because she was originally supposed to step up and become the hero when Jack was originally written to die in the Pilot. When Jack lived, some of the hero stuff went to him, draining Kate of character depth.
I disagree that Kate is 2D though. My guess is that if she does end up being a traitor, she has a real good reason for being so. A reason that is on par with Michael willing to backstab his mates to get Walt off the island. It has to be so guttorally important to Kate, otherwise we wouldn't buy it.
The show really has bitten off more than it can chew by having so many characters. We are losing our connection because it is spread so thin.
2D Kate
Oh yeah, I'm sure she will have a good reason for being a traitor. In fact she'll probably become a much more interesting character to me once that reveal happens. But what I think the writers have done is that by keeping things secret about Kate, they've flattened her. I don't think that's necessary, but I think it's a danger of having a character that has to appear one way, but really be another for an extended period. Also, someone with great acting chops can convey the idea that there's much more going on than we're being shown--but don't think that's the case here.
But it could also be that she was meant to have a larger role. I thought she and Sayid had an interesting dynamic in several of the first episodes in which he treated her as a potential leader.
The art of acting
Jaz one of the things I love about this show is the quality of the acting. terry O'Quinn, Josh Holloway, Naveen Andrews, Henry Ian Cusick, and of course Michael Emerson are all IMO outstanding actors. I agree with you that Evenagaline Lilly isn't among the best of the cast but over all I have to tip my hat to the producers for having such continuously excellent acting on this show. Heroes could learn a lot from this show!!
You know they're good when you despise them
Good point Jukin. I've seen Terry O'Quinn in numerous other things and really appreciate his range as an actor in Lost. At times he's had to play an incredibly pathetic lost soul and then the relaxed put together in touch with the island <looking for the right word here> swami (?). No better example of this is the episode from this season that ends with him being strangled by Ben. "There's no hope for me." - fantastic stuff.
I haven't seen many of the others outside the show, but when you feel great attraction or disgust for an actor - you know they're good at their craft.
Or...
Or...
Or...
The producers are idiots. ; )
Charlotte's age is clarified by D&C themselves
"There were a gazillion questions about the timeline discrepancy in that young Charlotte clearly exists in 1974, but wasn't supposed to be born until 1979, per a single line of dialogue courtesy of Ben back in episode #402. When we inquired as to how this happened, the intel came back that we used Rebecca Mader's birthday, July 2, 1979 because she was actually eight years YOUNGER than the character as originally conceived/scripted. We misremembered this as having come from Rebecca herself on the set, but in fact, it came several days earlier when our continuity expert Gregg Nations pointed it out and suggested using Rebecca's actual birthday for Charlotte. And so, the mistake was OURS. Rebecca's production draft DID have the date as being 1979."
"He's Our You"
I didn't have much to say about this one except for generally not liking it. I'm filing the main dislike here as falling under the "didn't make sense" category.
Two main "didn't make sense" moments to me:
They tied Sayid up as if he were going to be physically struggling and verbally set it up that way, but there was no real struggle or physical torture shown.
Sawyer gives Sayid the chance to escape. He doesn't take it because he's resolved to be executed. And then he takes a chance to escape and shoots Ben.
So shooting Ben--I think the answer to that is that he isn't dead, Juliet's going to save him. This becomes a catalyst for Ben's obsession and his general darkness--the Losties are responsible for creating Ben. blah blah blah
They're kind of using a sledgehammer on that point. And the whole set up of it which requires Sayid to first resign himself to execution and then escape and try to kill--it made no sense at the level of character to me.
The other possibility which at least explains the first point about the torture--is that the whole episode after Sayid injests what I took to be LSD is some kind of hallucination--explaining why there was no struggle or pain (Sayid hallucinating that there was none when in fact there was). And that might explain the Carlos Castenada reference as well, and the goofy teepee.
But that the whole thing is just a dream--I'm afraid that also seems very lame to me.