Sunday, February 08, 2009

Rousseau Redux...

In my recap of The Little Prince, I posed a question that merits its own post. Why didn't the Rousseau who encountered the survivors of Oceanic 815 remember finding Jin after the wreck of her boat? Jin was in camp on at least two occasions when the older Rousseau visited (i.e., espisodes 1:23 and 4:1 ) so I'm pretty sure they met. I see three possible answers.



1. SHE'S JUST THAT CRAZY: To my mind, this is the most likely but least satisfying explanation. Sixteen years on the Island clearly took its toll on Danielle's psyche. When Sayid found her in Solitary, she was clearly a "nut job," as Charlie put it. Maybe she was just too far gone by then to remember meeting Jin so many years before.

But was Danielle really that crazy? She remembered everything else about her shipwreck and the events that followed. With the exception of her lie to kidnap Aaron, her information has proven pretty accurate thus far. I bet we'll get further confirmation of the reliability of her recollection in coming episodes that show what happened to her expedition.



So, while this scenario seems probable, I'll be rather displeased if it turns out that Danielle's madness made her forget something as memorable as finding another shipwreck survivor. Not to mention one who's probably going to vanish in a blinding flash of purple light.

2. PURPLE FLASH=MEMORY LOSS: Some of you suggested in reply to my Little Prince recap that the purple flashes cause amnesia in bystanders. This fits with indications that Faraday's time travel experiments at Oxford left him with memory loss of his own. Perhaps that's why Dan needed a caretaker, and why Charlotte tested his memory with cards.



But there are problems with this scenario. Amnesia is a little too convenient for my taste. Even more importantly, Richard remembered the date and place of Locke's birth, and Charles Widmore apparently recognized Charlotte, Dan, and Miles from the Island. Storylines like these only make sense if observers retain their memories after the flashes.

3. DESMOND CHANGED THE PAST: The general rule of time travel on Lost is that you can't alter history -- whatever happened, happened. The most you can do is influence the past, thereby effectuating the future you already know. I cited two such predestination paradoxes involving Locke and Widmore in the preceding section.

Indications are, however, that Desmond Hume is an important exception to this rule. He can indeed alter the timeline, changing the "picture on the box." I suggested in An Anti-Christmas Carol that Des did just that by delaying Charlie's death until the latter could shut off the Looking Glass jammer, leading to the rescue of the Oceanic 6.



If you think about it, Jin showing up on that freighter debris is the result of Desmond's intervention, as well. Basically, if Des hadn't enabled Charlie to deactivate the jammer, Jack would never have called the freighter, which never would have exploded with Jin onboard. I'm oversimplifying the causal chain a bit, but you get the idea.

And that raises one final whackadoo speculation. What if Jin appearing in Danielle's history is the first sign that the timeline we know is changing in small but significant ways? In fact, if you really want to follow me through the looking glass, consider the possibility that this will all pay off in Season 6 with a Rousseau resurrection...


33 comments:

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Good thoughts, Big. I've suggested the purple sky flashes as causing not so much as amnesia, more just a reality burp, I guess. Desmond is the only one we see who realizes that the purple sky is appearing out by the Sawn tree (as opposed to Ethan shooting Locke). But then we had more layers to that, as we get a special connection with Alpert and Locke with the compass being that lovable worm. I'm playing Devil's Advocate here, but I'm thinking Widmore knew of his Science Team in some certain way, though maybe not from a purple sky event in 1954. My logic is this, Ethan tells the Others he shot a guy where the plane crashed, they investigate, and there IS one Nigerian that was thrown free of the plane, so Tom, Ben, whomever would say, oh, here's the guy Ethan THOUGHT he shot, he's dead, sure enough.

That said, I do think that Jin has no reason to be in 1988, just as the O6ers should never have left the Island. Desmond screwed up by saving Charlie the very first time. It would be interesting to know what subtle changes occurred each time Des saved Charlie (three times, right?). And the concrete evidence Hawking and the others have involve the O6, they have no way of knowing Jin is alive in 1988, unless that is part of the emergency. As the viewers, we assumed it was the O6 leaving until last week, but Hawking may have somehow seen this all along.

Back to the purple skies again. You can call me out on this, but I think the entire Ourobourous (please, ANYone correct my spelling!) is contained within the compass Locke gave Alpert. Alpert is as special as Desmond, and he'll recall these events if for no other reason than the compass will be a touchstone to that memory. They are still stuck on the Island in 1954, and if Ellie is indeed Eloise Hawking, I think Alpert refines the thinking of those he finds just, maybe he starts filling in Ellie and Widmore during the years between his failed attempts to get Locke to believe he was a man of science and getting aprroaching Ben out by the sonic fence. So Widmore and Hawking (and Abaddon, if that was the black Other) might only know of the Science Team because of how Alpert described them.

Widmore might have kept tabs on ANYONE that he had dossiers (or whatever) on, going back years. Why he funded Daniel and most likely was the one behind having Faraday seemingly abandon Theresa by leaving Oxford.

Also, maybe each time Des saved Charlie over the course of maybe two weeks on the Island caused time-ripples that went in all directions. I'd like to think at one point Hawking will tell Desmond what happened each and every time he stopped Charlie from dying, and that the viewers get witness that scene.

Capcom said...

I would really like to know what changed if anything when Des saved Charlie as well. And, who Des actually saw getting on the helo. If Sun or Kate had blonde hair, I would think that he just made a mistake, but no.

Unless, in the very last episode, Claire climbs onto another helo, making Desmond's vision actually correct, but not the assumed timing of it. ???

Anonymous said...

Wayne Allen Sallee wrote...

"And the concrete evidence Hawking and the others have involve the O6, they have no way of knowing Jin is alive in 1988, unless that is part of the emergency."

Are you sure they have no way of knowing? I am assuming Jin runs into Locke, and then Locke/Bentham gets off the Island and tells Ben about Jin. And Ben tells Hawking.

Anonymous said...

So . . . was Jin blown away from the freighter far enough to be inside "the radius" or did he just happen to end up floating near where the island moved to? It seems like that would have been quite the explosion to have been in the radius, seen as how the helicopter was already headed back toward the island and it was NOT in the radius. Maybe the radius doesn't apply to airborne things, like helicopters. ??

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

@3D, you make a good point. We really don't have any idea how long Benthem/Locke was off-Island, we just know the timeframe of his contacting the O6. So, yes, Locke tells Ben tells the Time Cops.

@lockerocks this was commented on in one of the other posts, Jin was in the water and the radius likely extended far enough to the freighter. There would be no real reason for anything in the air to be part of that, because (at least in my goofy way of thinking) the water connected to the Island, not the air space.

Anonymous said...

I think the the Left Behinders left their crap and evidence of themselves like breadcrumbs throughout time. In the end-game, I think its going to come out the the people on the island throughout time have been collecting artifacts that prove how things happened during what we and the losties percieve as a relatively short period of time. Ben probably has had a picture of Jin in 1988 for 16 years.

Barry Wallace said...

I still have a lot of doubts on whether the past can be changed, regardless of whether Desmond is involved but I'll pass on that for the moment (except to say I think it's entirely likely that had Rousseau lived, at this point she'd be remembering having seen Jin in 1988. But then again, we won't know until Wednesday how long he stays in that time period).

But as for how Jin time jumps with the rest of the Losties... How about this:

I'm thinking Jin floated into the radius of time movement and eventually flashed to 1988. I bet if the helicopter had kept flying, it would have passed through that barrier and seen the island again in whatever time period it happened to be in at that time. When they saw it was gone they panicked (justifiably) and turned around.

GasbarNut said...

I wonder if it is going to go down like Q is always warning Picard and Janeway it will if they "interfere" with the space/time continuum...

My thoughts are that whether it's ONLY Desmond or Desmond in combination with the Lefties flitting about in time, that changes are going to occur that affect everyone, and permanently.

If the "course" IS corrected, is it going to go back to some sort of normal? Wouldn't it be hilarious if the way to solve that problem would be to go back to Jack making the choice to listen to John or call the frieghter???

Okay, 80s' New Theory:

Lost ends with Jack holding that CB Radio. And he doesn't call the frieghter.

Bye, other reality. Bye Penny (oh, poor Charlie Jr), bye total off world life. Sayid never gets Nadia back but then she gets to live. Kate and Jack will remember they had that three year period, but she will end up with Sawyer and he with Juliet.

Hmmmmm....

Yup.

machramm said...

@3D, in the previews for this weeks ep, Ben tells a gun-wielding Sun that Jin is alive. Either he knows (from Locke?) or he's just telling her that to control the situation.

@Lockerocks and Wayne, I envisioned the space aroudn the island as a dome shape. So, yes the helicopter could have been out of range seeing that the radius of a dome gets smaller and even approaches zero from bottom to top. This however puzzles me a bit. If we assume that there is a dome shapes field, then I think we could assume that the same field that was controlled by the donkey wheel was also held in check by the Swan station. If that is true, I would not expect the 815 to have been flying low enough to be affected by the event that made it crash.

The flashes may affect people and their memory in different ways based on their proximity to their "constant". Maybe Alpert and others are in posession of their constant (e.g. the compass) making them imune to the effects of time jumping.

Capcom said...

Great thoughts everyone!

Some other blog peeps are having difficulty accepting that Jin could have gotten caught in the radius of the FDW jump (or survived at all), but IMHO, Des did get the guy on the bridge to get as close to the island as he could, until they hit the reef area where they had to stop due to the electronic interference jaming the sonar. So the freighter actually got closer to the island than it was when they first anchored.

And if Jin was able to jump off the freighter in time and swim down into the water for cover, with a stretch of the imagination he could have survived, and then gotten captured by the jump with some debris after the explosion. It works well enough for me, I suppose. :-)

As for 815, if the disruptive energy field extends outside the time radius (say like a "hard" field edge with a "soft" edge for energy bleed-off), maybe we could also pretend that this extended field effect could have messed up 815's avionics enough to bring the plane down into the range of the Failsafe effect, and then that brought the plane down the rest of the way. Just making a guess here, feel free to take it down with facts from the show that I'm not remembering. :o)

Anonymous said...

BigHead...LantzDogg here. "Long time reader, 2nd time poster"

Great stuff as per usual. Compelling stuff.

I have a couple of theories:

I was recently stuck at Charlotte airport and passed the time by reading the hard-hitting news rag "Entertainment Weekly" that featured Kate and Jack on the cover. I was struck not by something I read, but by something I saw.

Keeping with the space/time theme of this season, the most significant question about the Oceanic Six is not if they make it back to the island, but when they make it back. By that, I don’t mean when they depart, but when in time they arrive on the island.

I say that because it is clear to me that in a photo included in the spread in EW about Lost that several members of the Oceanic Six, including Kate, Hurley, and Jack are in fact back on the island, but they are surrounded by pristine blue VW buses and are adorned with various “hippy-esque” beads. Which leads me to a couple of thoughts:

When the ocean six (or portions thereof, since there have been allusions to the fact that not everyone comes back to the island) arrive, they will in fact arrive before the conflict between the DHARMA initiative and The Others. And Ben knows before the try to return that it would be highly unlikely for them to arrive back to the island “in present time.” Also speaks to the seemingly agelessness of Richard Alpert, who we know has gone back and forth from the island.

Ben, when arriving on the island, will in fact kill “himself” (or his former self), and assume that “identity.” I am struck by the fact that during The Purge, Ben Linus, while sitting in the van with his dad before putting his gas mask on and pulling the pin, looked exactly like Ben Linus of today. That thought is awesome, Ben having to relive murdering his father and his “people” over and over again, and unable to change the future. This is what gives Ben his power. He effectively relives his life every time he leaves and returns to the island. This also leads back to the statement by Charles Widmore last season when he said, “I know what you are, boy.” Ben also knows the rules about changing the future and abides by them each time he returns to the island. Then Charles changes the rules by killing Ben’s daughter; so perhaps this time around, Ben takes a different approach to the events on the island.

Adam and Eve will in fact turn out to be Jack and Kate; who are killed during The Purge. And they later discover their own remains in season 1. Freaky.

I am still perplexed about the question Faraday asked Miles regarding if he was sure he had never been to the island before. This also gets to your point about memory loss.

Anonymous said...

My thought since re-watching season 1 is that the last scene will be the first scene of the series with Jack waking up in the jungle after the crash. I think they will be sent back to the very "beginning", so to speak, in an effort to correct all the changes in time that occurred once they were on the island. It also explains why he was in the jungle while everyone else was on the beach. That black object laying beside him looks a lot like Ben's baton.

-J

GasbarNut said...

whoa.

In that respect, our three posts would ALL mean that Ben lives part of his life over again and knows it.

THAT is interesting. Okay, but honestly, I would want to watch it all over again to SEE what he does differently. If he listened to Locke from the beginning, the show would have been completely different....

Anonymous said...

I think Roussea would of remembered Jin if she were still alive. She is dead so how can she remember him if the past hasn't caught up to the future. Just like Desmond remembered Daniel. He only remembered him AFTER Daniel altered the past. He didn't remember him any other time even though the time he was in the station when Daniel banged on the door.

Am I making sense? Probably not..that's just my take on it. Jim appeared in her second past not her first. If she were alive today she would remember him. He remembers her because ....well you get it.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

@machramm and Capcom, though the latter sorta explains it. Sure there's a dome, like you say, I was being simplistic saying the water was connected to the Island, so yes, a dome. Or an egg. But when Desmond didn't press the button in time, something shot past the top of the dome.

I'm with those who see the show as a causal loop (Big, Capcom, right phrase?), it will end with us following Vincent through the jungle as he then runs past Jack and Shannon screams. It would be great if the time cops succeed in keeping the O6 from ever leaving the Island (and, really, that's more Desmond's fault than Jack calling Minkowski on the freighter). But I do believe that, while we see 30 more episodes of trying to fix the course of fate, it just aint gonna happen.

Anonymous said...

I think Desmond is the only one who can reflect/remember changes in the timeline without causing a conflict of history, but the recovered memories (that from the auidence's perspective are "new") isn't all that weird. How many times have you randomly remembered something that you had completely forgotten about? I'm a lover of David Hume, and I think not only his theories of causation are important to the story, but his ideas of the fluid "self." A person is the sum total of his thoughts, experiences, and physical body. However, in the moment all of these things are not manifesting equally at the same time. They can't. At any given moment, pieces of all these things are forming "you." So, the "Danielle would have had a new memory" idea is reasonably solid.

Personally, I think she saw Jin at the camp and remembered him.

Capcom said...

Also about the energy dome, the Failsafe effect might have created an energy spurt blast that temporarily expanded it out beyond the normal dome radius of the island's field effect, and this hit 815 at whatever altitude it was at in the area. ???

Wayne, what if the course-correcting is sometimes a loop that happens? I dunno, my brain is mush at this point. I'm trying not to create too much of an explanation for certain things in my head, just in case the way that TPTB are going to write it is totally different. :-o

Capcom said...

Very interesting, Anon!

Anonymous said...

Loving the comments, definately giving me food for thought -- as usual.

I'm glad LantzDogg (Anonymous) brought up the EW LOST Article. I wanted to; but, didn't know what the rules were regarding things that are/could be considered spoilers.

He's right, regarding the pics. Actually, IMHO, the pics were more telling then the actual story. Trying to stay as spoiler free as possible (speculations are okay), I was kinda annoyed with myself after viewing the pics.

Have a good one ...

Barry Wallace said...

Is there a link somewhere for that EW pic? I'd love to see it, and I'm sure the magazine is probably off the newsstands by now...

Anonymous said...

I was willing to skip past the comment that mentioned EW, but the damage was done. If the scene appears in this coming eisode, well, fine, but I'd rather just hear speculations w/o spoilers. This has always been the best site for that. I'd rather not see the EW pic, also, though as Barry asks about it right above me here, DarkUFO might have it up, as I recall they pretty much leak just about everything. At least I wasn't told exactly WHO was in the photo besides Jack and Kate (I read the post at 2 this morning, if there are more names mentioned and I forgot, I'm just not looking back is all). I get the Doc Jensen EW mailings and there was no photo as referenced above, so I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that we won't see this scene for at least a few episodes. I suppose I could say, ah well, its only a TV show. But then I've had people give away key parts of books, as well, albeit unintentionally. Maybe we can speculate without describing photos that the majority of us might now be aware of?

Bigmouth said...

I wish it were possible to spoiler tag comments. But since we can't, let's try to keep references to spoilers on posts specifically identified as SPOILER in the title.

That said, I think LantzDogg's brilliant(!) speculation is fair game. Doc Jensen suggested something similar in a recent recap -- i.e., the show's ultimate resolution would involve Ben somehow negating much of his miserable life.

Along those lines, I wonder if Desmond's ripples through time will result in young Locke coming to the Island sooner than he did. Is that why Locke changed his name to Jeremy Bentham? Maybe he returns to the world and learns that John Locke never existed.

Come to think of it, is Jacob the Locke who arrived on the Island as a child?

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Good points, Big. I agree on the spoiler alert, even thought it WAS great speculation by LantzDogg. Going back a bit, though, there are a few people still saying things will diverge if Jack does not call the freighter. Really, Desmond is to blame, if Charlie was electocuted during that first "save," no one could have keyed in the homing beacon. Its not as simple as a who can pee farther, Jack or Locke. Yes, they were at odds, but without Desmond completely ignoring Hawking's warning, they would not have had the chance to be at odds, at least re: the phone call.

There's that connection between the real life Jeremy Benthem and the real life John Locke, and you bring up an interesting point, Big. Once he left the Island, why such an elaborate name? Why one grounded in past history? I'm sure that will be answered faster than, maybe, Jack and Kate in hippie-land, but since the first flashforward fake out, I've thought, why Benthem? Particularly now that we've seen no one else--I thought possible Des & Penny might take new identities--using fake names. Maybe Richard give him the Benthem name, maybe Richard knew the real Benthem, who knows for now?

GasbarNut said...

Okay Wayne....I can admit that since this show is so very mentally constructed to it's bitter core (and donkey wheel, ha ha) that I might have been simplifying a great deal to speculate that the end would come to whether Jack calls the freighter or not.

But I think that there's something in what I was getting at, even if I wasn't being as intellectual about it as (to quote friend Capcom) TPTB.

There is the internal struggle of Ben. And there is the Locke/Jack struggle, which amounts to a lot more than just "power". It's a fundamental discourse about faith. And in the end, Jack is going to find his peace - his faith. One cannot have faith in anything if they haven't got it in themselves. Each of our best Lost folk have been on a journey to discover that. And after all the fire and brimstone, they are going to...

Anonymous said...

This is not the same Rousseau that we meet later on. If you notice there is another woman in this group that hasn't talked and Crazy Rousseau never mentioned another woman. She probably went nuts, killed them all after Smokey jumped them and took her baby and her identity. After 16 years alone in the jungle, she fully believes her lies.

GasbarNut said...

No, I believe that the girl is really Rousseau. We are supposed to believe that she was once young and vibrant and but a shadow of her former self after so long in the jungle alone.

Bigmouth said...

I think it makes sense to post this exchange by Darlton from a podcast last year summarizing the "rules" of time travel on Lost. I think the one caveat they might add now is no paradoxes "except for Desmond." Regardless, I think this tends to rule out resolutions to the show that involve negating the events of the flash fowards.

Damon Lindelof: Just a quick sort of side note in terms of the way that we deal with time travel on the show - we are very paradox averse; that is to say, when our characters are time traveling, nothing that they do can change the present or the future that you have seen. Which is different than you know, the conventional Back to the Future time travel story telling.

Carlton Cuse: Or Heroes.

Damon Lindelof: Or Heroes, yeah.

Carlton Cuse: For us, what we don't want is for the audience to not be invested in the flash-forwards. When you see that, it would be pretty meaningless if they were a changeable reality-

Damon Lindelof: Well, as far as time travel goes.

Carlton Cuse: As far as time travel goes, yes.

Damon Lindelof: As far as time travel goes, definitely not changeable.

Carlton Cuse: Right. Or that you have a different Jack popping up in an alternative reality which is different than the one that we've established.

Damon Lindelof: Right. That stuff is all really cool, I mean, the Heroes - case in point for all those who watch both shows, we certainly do and are big fans of Heroes - but if Hiro moves back to the past and says "There's a catastrophe that's gonna happen unless you guys save the cheerleader," if they do save the cheerleader, then theoretically future Hiro never exists to come back and warn them. But you know, that's paradox.

Carlton Cuse: The hard thing about this episode was actually structuring the time travel elements - or consciousness traveling elements - and avoiding paradox. But that again is something that I think a lot of people have speculated about - "are there parallel futures, are there sort of multiple universes and worlds that exist in the future depending on how events in the past play out?" and that is not our intention.

Damon Lindelof: Yeah, and Ms. Hawking basically explained those rules in the first episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes" where she basically said that the universe has a way of course correcting, so even if you did something in the past that you didn't do before, somehow the sort of fabric of time like swoops in around you and fixes everything so things don't go off the rails. I assume probably after "The Constant" we're going to get a lot of questions like "Well, did Penny know when she went to go see Desmond at the stadium in 2001 that he had told her to wait by the phone back in 1994?" and all of these questions, and to that we say refer to the Ms. Hawking scene in "Flashes Before Your Eyes". She gives a fairly good explanation of how everything works.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

80sPro, I do get your point about it being Jack/Locke, that Jack has to learn to accept faith. When I mentioned Desmond being the wild card, I had actually forgotten to also mention that Ben obviously is a big part of this show's outcome, simply because he is the manipulator. That said, and adding to what Big posted above, I think the course-correction route was getting the O6 back because Des veered off by giving Jack the means to contact the freighter. Desmond is the man of science AND man of faith. But, and this goes back to Boone talking to Locke in his sweat lodge dream, Desmond is on the escalator in Sydney with the stewardesses, Boone tells Locke, no, not him, he's just in this for himself. I like Des, I do, but Locke and Ben both have faith in the Island for what it is, Jack might soon realize this (if he doesn't already), but its Desmond who really needs to get things straight in his head. I think Faraday is the one who will help him do that. Could be the nose bleeds are happening as the course correction window gets closer to being closed.

Oh, and I was surprised to see another female on the science team. But without checking, I do believe that Rousseau only used the word "members" when referring collectively to the team.

GasbarNut said...

All very valid points. Thank you.

I am very open to this show and it's outcomes. I can pose guesses till the cows come home and yet (unlike some of you) I have NO idea. Really. None.

That said, something about what you posted, Big, about the Darlton passage, is not sitting right with me. They reiterate more than once:

"Damon Lindelof: Well, as far as time travel goes.
Carlton Cuse: As far as time travel goes, yes."

These guys are master manipulators (where do you think Ben gets it from? [wink]). They have been caught saying things that have HUGE caveats in them. I think they are doing that here. WHICH means, there is something there - something that is just sort of resonating with me - something big.

But of course. This is Lost. We're not done being shocked just yet. We have almost 40 episodes yet!

Capcom said...

I'm with you 80sPro, I don't feel like I should put too much investment of brain power (what little I've got) in trying to figure out what TPTB are going to write into the story, only to find out that I got it all wrong. I'm happy to mostly go along with the flow for things that we haven't seen or been told yet. But I do like to try and understand the things that we've already seen, and to try to piece them together, that's for sure! And I do very much enjoy reading everyone else's guesses on what's going on! :-D

And I like your thoughts on the Losties concerning faith, inner peace, responsibility, etc. Every one of the Losties had inner turmoil that needed to be worked out, and for the first two seasons that's what the show was about. Now...not so much that we can see at the moment. But I hope that in the end, the purpose of saving the island together will come back around to that redemption theme again.

Anonymous said...

My Bad.

Sorry about the spoiler. Not my intention to take any of the fun out of this blog (which is by far my favorite).

I guess I was too anxious.

I will be sure to abide by the rules (which would make Ben and Widmore happy).

Lantz Dogg

Anonymous said...

BM, Thunderstom here.

http://img28.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=12356_4x01cap-0799_122_840lo.jpg&loc=loc840

That's the only screen cap I can find with both of them actually in it.

I only found one 'meeting'on my own, but I can explain it and the two you've mentioned BM, (I think) to some extent. I'd really like to find a few more meetings if possible.


1. Exodus Pt 1
Jin is building the raft.
Danielle talks to Michael etc.
Tells them the Others are coming, I don't believe Jin can even be seen in the remote area. Shortly after Danielle leaves. Jin takes off on the raft.

2. TBOTE
The screencap is from this episode, given the Ben-Desmond thing, as well, who is to say what was going on here? My guess is Danielle, after all she had been through had no reason to think that some random Asian man in a group of strangers was the same man from 16 years prior.

3. Greatest Hits
Jack calls Danielle out from the jungle, they blow the tree with dynamite. Jin is visible right there but DR is oblivious. Later Jin stays behind on the beach as the rest of the group head to the tower.

I really think (and this may be a bit of a fanboy/apologist view) that they pretty much covered their tails. It's not perfect but it's defintely feasible. This is, IMO, defintely not a similar situation to what happened with Daniel and Desmond, this is part of the self consistent history...it always happened this way.

Unless someone can find a better screencap, I'm going to surmize that 16 years of crazy island isolation, coupled with the 16 years of distance, the time Jin originally spent with her...a couple of hours at most?

It's not a big deal for me....yet.

Bigmouth said...

Thunderstorm: You're right they were only together for a short time. But those few hours were so incredibly memorable...I'm still not buying it that she forgot.

I also can't accept that Danielle would just stay mum. She accused Jin of being infected with the same sickness as her crew. This was her central preoccupation in Solitary. I have to believe she would confront Jin at first sight.