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Thursday, April 06, 2006
So Everybody on 'Lost' Is Hallucinating?!
Am I a man dreaming he's a butterfly? Or am I butterfly dreaming it's a man dreaming he's a butterfly? asked the ancient Taoist Chuang-tzu. Well, 'Lost' fans, if Hurley's hallucinating, isn't everything similarly called into question? He could be in a mental institution imagining he's on an island. Or he could be on an island, imagining he was in a psych ward. Or maybe the island is some kind of Dharma Initiative psych ward/prison experiment populated with convicts and nut jobs whose brains are electronically or chemically fed assorted fantasies. Kate's a fugitive who saw a horse that shouldn't have been here. Jack might be this psych ward's doctor ... or he's a patient, too, having 'Lost' it after his wife left him and his dad died. Remember he imagined seeing his physician father on the island? Charlie was a junkie. Eko a crime boss. Jin a hit man. Sayid a torturer. Locke a paralyzed loser. Boone imagined his sister being attacked by a monster. She "saw" the missing boy, Walt, before she died. (They didn't die, they got released?) Maybe the plane crash never happed. That's no hatch, it's a loony bin.
Is that why the prisoner, alias Henry Gale, said, "God can't see this island"? Because it doesn't exist, except in the inmate's minds? Or is this place a kind of afterlife limbo, where these dead souls are beyond the jurisdiction of even God? (Maybe Gale was stretched out like Jesus on the cross because he's part of some afterlife test.) I keep thinking: This explanation sounds too final to be real. There has to be another, even more surprising layer of riddles, to keep us guessing. After all, who are "The Others"? Another set of human guinea pigs? The folks in charge of the asylum? Imaginary enemies? Then again, suppose the island-asylum theory is true. That truth could steadily unfold through to the season finale. Then next season could bring a dramatic shift to an even more interesting puzzle: How do these dupes escape their psychoses and their prison? As Hurley's imaginary friend, Dave, said, "I'm the part of you who wants you to wake up." Next season could be about that waking up. Sorry ... no podcast. Apparently the magnetic fields generated by the island interfered with the recorder's operation. Either that or a cable wasn't properly socketed and this dope failed to notice.
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