24: 4am to 5am

Here’s my latest posting from tonight’s round of Dave Barry 24 blogging
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The following takes place between 4 am and 5 am

4:00am – Haig and Jack talk about the recording, while Creepy attempts to stun them using an evil eye. Chloe and Bill have called congress to start impeachment, and have ordered party favors all around.

4:01 – They find out the chip has been been replaced with a recording of the Creepy singing “The Hokey Pokey

LOST: The Hatch: Is it really an experiment?

But do you think it really is a psych experiment?

I don’t think it is. I think the people in the observation station
were place there for three weeks at a time, just so they weren’t there
long enough to observe any long term pattern to what might be going
on. If it were something really important and I only wanted a few
people to know about it, but needed more people to help me do it,
telling those extra people it was all part of some experiment would be
a good cover.

Why would the Egyptian Heiroglyphics be there after zero? Why encase
something in that much concrete? Just for a psych experiment?

Another thing, why was it so important for the people in the hatch to
NOT have access to the outside world (via the computer, as Dr. Candle
warned)? And why did someone (Kelvin?) think it so important to leave
that information OUT of the film strip, and hide it? Was what
happened during “the incident” big enough to blow a big hole in
Dharma/Hanso’s plans? Was the person that hid that snippit of film
hoping that it would happen again?

That’d be an interesting idea…. Set up all this Dharma stuff, doing
whatever sinister wackiness it does. Someone catches on, and doesn’t
like it, and very nearly causes the whole operation to end. But not
quite. They recover just enough to keep going, but at a lesser level
than before, and with new complications. Maybe that smoke monster got
released. Maybe it was the French woman’s expedition.

Is that contraption they’re pressing the button for in the hatch
something that’s concentrating all the energy from the magnetic
fields? I mean, say it’s taking a little bit of that energy at a
time, building it all up, so it can be used in some way? Maybe to
magnify psychic powers (like the healer that Rose met with); maybe if
it’s magnetism, to bring down the plane in a semi-controlled way?

Lost: “?” (The Question Mark Episode)

Spoilers ahead:

What a weird name for an episode. It sure was aptly named, though.

The biggest shocker of this episode to me was that we found out that the “psychic” that Claire went to see was a fraud by his own admission. If you’ve read what I’ve written in other parts of the blog, you know I have a theory that Dharma/Hanso has been doing medical experiments on folks without letting them know about it. I think this is another example of that.

Another theory I’ve had for some time now is that the people on Flight 815 were “placed” or “steered” to that flight by members of Dharma. Sun/Jin were sent onto that flight. Claire was, for sure, now that we know her “psychic” really really insisted that she get on that flight. If he were a fraud, what possible modivation would he have to get her on that flight?

I’ll give you a guess…. If Dharma was involved with bringing that girl back, and she needed some sort of recurring medical treatment to keep her healthy, perhaps Dharma/Hanso blackmailed the psychic to telling Claire what she was told. He had to
tell Claire to get on that plane, or Dharma would withold medical treatment for his daughter.

How they got her to go in the first place….that I’m not sure about. Was it a “forecast” using that Hanso number forecasting technology? Was the friend she was with “in” on the whole thing?

Of course, another theory might be that the parents that were going to adopt Claire’s child were part of Dharma/Hanso. They’d probably been following Claire around, saw that she went to a psychic and paid the guy a lot of money so they could get her on that plane.

All of this hinges on a really big problem: How the heck did they get that plane to crash? Was it a controlled crash? How could they possibly do something like that, and keep the real prize (Aaron) from gettin harmed?

Now, about that new Pearl Station.

First off, it was a bad bad idea for Locke to send that little map he drew through to that tube. Someone’s on the other end of that thing.

Did you notice the camera in the room with the televisions in it? Why have a camera on people that were supposed to be the observers? Why was it important to watch what was going on there?

It seemed to me that Dr. Candle (or whatever his name really is….I know he gave a different name on the video, I’m just going with “Dr Candle”), seemed to downplay the urgency of what was going on in the “experiments”. Now, by that I mean, in the film version of the video, he said it was REALLY important. In the video, he said that people had to observe the experiments, but it didn’t seem to be as urgent.

Now, let’s say you were trying to pull off something really big. Something so big, that if a lot of other people knew what was going on, it would comprimise the whole project. You figure out a way to isolate different parts of the project, make sure that each group doesn’t communicate with any of the other groups (if they even realize they exist), and even convince the people that are watching the whole thing that it’s all just an experiment. The people that were doing observations were only watching three weeks at a time, so it’s unlikely they could really grasp what was happening overall. Tell the observers that they have experiments that are going on, that they have to keep track of things, but don’t let them know the real importance.

I think that’s pretty plausible.

One thing continues to bug me, and this episode made it even worse. We’ve seen four of the six “stations”. One (the first one) is running pretty well, and has been for some time. Another (the medical hatch), was working up until a short time ago. It was abandoned within the last month. The “Arrow” hatch, which the “Tailies” found, doesn’t even look like it got stocked up. The observation (The Pearl) station looks like it’s been abandoned for quite some time.

Ah well… those are my thoughts about this for now. I’m with Eko….I think it’s important to keep pressing that button.

LOST: Hanso Foundation Press Release

The Hanso Foundation has issued a press release that mentions to distruption occuring on their website.

Highlight the whole page, by right clicking and selecting “Select all”. If you do, you’ll see a blank link at the bottom of the page. Click that link. You’ll be sent to http://persephone.thehansofoundation.org/. That page has the numbers:

72 65 83 32 87 73 78 32 72 79 83 84 32 80 67 32 73 78 32 78 73 76 32 85 82 71 69 46 32 56 44 32 110 111 116 32 49 32 97 110 100 32 54 46

This decodes to ASCII format characters: HAS WIN HOST PC IN NIL URGE. 8, not 1 and 6.

24: 3am to 4am

Update, May 9, 2006: A kind quote from Dave Barry at Dave Barry over at his blog:

Thanks to the commenters who cleared this up, and to all the rest of you who made such a valiant effort to analyze the “plot,” especially the amazing Steve. I’m thinking that even after the season ends, we could have Steve continue posting summaries on Monday nights. I’m sure they’d make just as much sense as they do now.

Thanks, Dave!

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I’m one of the folks that participates over on Dave Barry’s blog in a kind of Mystery Science Theater treatment of “24”. Here’s what I posted this week:

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Summary

3 am – Jack broke the co-pilot’s nose. He’s lucky he didn’t get shot in the thigh. He calls Haig and lets her know that he has the recording of Manilow. Bill talks extra loud into the phone.

3:01 – Curtis tells Audrey he has great news… He’s going to save a ton of money on his car insurance, and he that Secretary of Defense Devane used his super defense car to actually survive that 200 foot drop into the water we saw a couple of episodes ago. Aside from being EXTREMELY waterlogged after being in the water for two weeks, he’s OK.

3:02 – Haig calls Curtis and tells him that Jack needs a ride from an airport. Since Curtis is a REALLY good friend, he’ll pick him up….but Jack owes him. Also, Jack has this evidence that can bring down Manilow. Curtis says that if that’s true, Jack won’t owe him anything.

3:03 – The Evil Genius Think Tank (EGTT) has figured out a way out of Manilow’s dilemma and the guy who looks like a hollywood writer calls him. Hollywood says that Manilow needs to shoot down the plane. Manilow protests, saying he doesn’t have a gun nearly big enough, or with enough range. Besides, he can’t shoot straight anyway. Hollywood says they’re going to use a BCI distress signal, which will make it look like the entire plane is full of American Idol fans, so no one will question Manilow’s motives. Manilow protests because he likes American Idol, and then agrees by saying “May Ryan Seacrest have mercy on my soul!