Finally, I found a few minutes to discuss this weeks episode. It's been a busy week, but at least it gave me a couple of days to ponder and digest "One of Them." I really wanted to post some screen captures, but my DVR crashed and I lost the entire episode, and my other screen cap source will not be posting because they are on vacation. I'll have to search around to see if I can find other captures because it will help solidify a few things. Things like the symbols that show up on the hatch clock when the time runs out; the look/smirk on Henry Gales face after he took that beating from Sayid; the guy in the back of the military transport who was looking at a picture of a girl.
In case you didn't notice, that was Kate's dad in the military transport with Sayid. He wasn't her biological father (as we learned a few episodes back), but the man she thought to be her real dad. The girl in his picture was Kate. Assuming that Kate is around 28 presently on the island, she would have been around 15 in the picture. Let me break it down with some TV math: they established the flashback time line to be 1991, during Desert Storm; the Oceanic crash occurred in 2004 and since they have only been on the island for 50+ days, present day for the Losties still falls in 2004; 2004-1991 = 13 years - 28 = 15... 15 is one of the "numbers," but I'm not trying to draw any weird conclusions. I'm only trying to set up a time line. So now Sayid is connected to Kate through her dad.
All of the characters seem to be connected. Sawyer met Jack's dad and was the last person to see him alive. Sawyer was also served coffee by Kate's mom in the Long Con flashback last week. Jack was connected to Shannon. When he chose to save his future wife, the man who died was Mr. Rutherford, Shannon's father. Hurley has a connection to Locke in that after he won the lottery, he owned the box company where Locke worked. Those are only a few of the connections that I can draw off the top of my head. I'm sure more will be revealed as we learn from other flashbacks.
Another thing I picked up on in this episode, and I may be digging waaaaaayyyyyy to deep, but the name "Henry Gale" really sounded familiar to me. It must have been the fact that I just got the Wizard of OZ on DVD. Henry Gale was Dorothy's uncle. Hmmmmm...just something else to think about. Also, Henry "I'm one of them" Gale was pretty clean shaven for someone who allegedly crash landed on the island 4 months ago. Steve McCoy and I were just discussing this and he spoke about the fact that some special ops military training involves the use of fictional characters... meaning that the officer would assume the identity of the fictional character and know everything about them down to the smallest detail so that they would not slip up while being tortured/interrogated and reveal their true identity and /or purpose. Hence, this is why Henry Gale knew so much about balloons. Henry Gale from the movie is also the balloonist in OZ. Also, not that it has any relevance at this time, but I have often heard Australia referred to as "Oz." Flight 815 originated from Sydney. Maybe Australia is using this island to develop and army of super soldiers and planning a world take over...lol...alright, I'm digging too deep again.
Oooooo....Oooooooo... as I was doing some extra research for this post, I just ran across a great site which has some screen captures and other goodies. Check out
The Tail Section. There is a capture of the symbols that show up when the hatch timer runs out. Looks like someone has discovered that these symbols are Egyptian hieroglyphics and when used in the way that they were on the show mean "cause to die." I still think it's all smoke and mirrors. All part of a psychological experiment to train people/soldiers to do what they are told. It's almost like classic conditioning. If you thought the world would end unless you entered a sequence of numbers and hit "execute" every 108 minutes, you would do everything you could to make sure that button was pushed. It did sound like something was going to launch, I'll give you that. The noises could have all been a part of the psych experiment to keep the trainees in line with their duty. Just another one of my crazy theories.
As far as the rest of the episode, I'm not sure what the Sawyer/Hurley frog hunt meant. Hurley stealing and devouring food from the hatch could be tied back into a past discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins. Other than that, I'm not sure of the purpose of the frog hunt. Maybe I missed something.
Next week's episode (Feb. 22) is another re-run. They will be showing the very first episode from season one (Pilot Episode). Then the following week (March 1) we get the brand new Lost "Maternity Leave" in which Claire, Kate, & Rousseau try to return to where Claire was kidnapped. Based on the promo, we get to explore another Dharma hatch. Mr. Friendly is listed as returning too.
