Come and listen to a story about a man named Jack
A poor spinal surgeon, barely kept dural sacs intact,
Then one day he was looking for his pa…
And up through the woods came a smokey cloud of Aiighh!!

Smoke that is, black smoke, Meanie-head.

Well the first thing you know ol Jack’s lookin’ for a gun,
Kate and Charlie said “Jack you’d better run!”
Said “Californy is the place you gotta go back!”
So they loaded up the boat and sailed to LA X.

Los Angeles, Swimmin pools, Oxycodone.

Well now its time to say good by to Jack and all his friends.
And John Locke says thanks to all you folks fer droppin in.
You’re all invited back a gain to this island paradise
To have a helpin of Desmond’s  MacCutcheon’s on ice

Drinkin’ that is. turn the key, save the world.

Y’all come back now, y’hear?.

Last week’s rewatches and podcasts we’re lots of fun, lots of people joining in the chatrooms and listening to the podcast.  Thank goodness Neil should be back this week, to keep the podcast more on track!

We’re gonna pre-hash Walkabout this week, and I know for me this was the episode that hooked me.  The pilot was interesting, the story in Tabula Rasa was fascinating, but then Walkabout set the hook, and LOST had me reeling for years.

“We hunt!” – John Locke

So, what I want to do, is ask all you all everybody, what you remember about your thoughts were about the episode the first time you watched it.  What do you remember thinking the first time you saw John Locke’s toe twitch while he was lying in the sand.  What were your impressions about our characters at this point in the show?  Who were you rooting for? who made you mad?  What mysteries had you scratching your head?

When you watch Walkabout this week, I have a little assignment for you.  Look for clues of John Locke’s paralysis before the final wheelchair reveal.  Come back and leave a comment about what you now realize was a secret even though it was right there in plain site.  This exercise helps as we continue on, because the writers and producers love to leave us hints along the way.  Sure, some are red herrings, but many are good clues to the story.

Another assignment as we move along, is what extracurricular theories start sprouting in your mind. Like, Jack said in Tabula Rasa, “Three days ago we all died …”  Many people started down the road of Island as Purgatory based on that line, and what they caught with other clues.  Do you remember your early theories of the island.

I’ll catch you in the comments, and in the chatrooms for the rewatches.  Check out the Calendar for dates and times.

Week two of the rewatch is underway, and this week we’re tackling Tabula Rasa.  Our trusty host Neil is down with a bug, so he’s asked me to step in and take the podcast.  Which I’m glad to do, except I’m going to have to push it back 25 hours.  So we’re gonna kick it off on Thursday at 10PM CDT on TalkShoe.  But y’all have a homework assignment.  Ask some questions in the comments.  Make some observations in the comments. Or best yet, agree to join in the podcast as a panelist, and you get to talk to ME.  I really don’t see any downside to any of those things.

We’ll also take sometime to talk about the growing LOSTblog Community and the different things going on on the blog.  With chats, bookclubs and podcasts, this place we made together is becoming THE place to rewatch, reread and relate.

Your turn.  Comments are ON!

So last weeks rewatch of both part of the LOST Pilot was a lot of fun.  Great participation on both during the Tuesday night CoverItLive slot, and the Saturday morning chatroom timeslot.  In fact we have chatters on Saturday morning, from the UK to Sydney, Australia, so if you do the math, we had people from 8AM Saturday morning to 1AM Sunday morning local, all watching LOST together in our chatroom. That’s pretty amazing.

So let’s prehash the next episode, our rewatch, start with “re” so a not a whole lotta first timers, so I’m prehashing some highlights from the pilot, and remembering where everyone one was, so that people that might be joining in on a re-watch will be caught up.  Not much theorizing, except maybe in the margins where the story didn’t provide pat answers, but there are lots of grey areas where we can discuss different angles. 

So we had a plane break apart and crash on an island.  Forty some people survived the crash and are living on a beach, with small hope of any rescue efforts, since some passengers; Kate, Jack and Charlie visited with the pilot in the cockpit in the middle of the jungle where the nose section landed and found out they were flying off their flight path.  Before the pilot got jacked out of the cockpit by some unseen dark force, Jack got a hold of a radio transceiver, and brought it back to the camp. 

The camp has a few people in it, let’s call an unofficial role, since no one has a flight manifest… yet.

• Jack – Doctor, Hero, Alcoholic
• Kate – Federal Suspect for Murder, a bit of a screamer, fair seamstress
• Charlie – Heroin junkie and bassist for a band called Driveshaft
• Sayid – communications expert, ex-Iraqi Republican Guard
• Sawyer – red. neck. man. and He shot a BEAR! (only it was a polar bear)
• Claire – pregnant, and well… pregnant
• Jin – typical domineering Asian husband, and apparently a sushi chef.
• Sun – typlical meek Asian wife, with a malfunctioning button at the top of her sweater.
• Hurley – A rather large, cheerful fellow that shares food, and faints at the site of blood.
• Michael – has a boy…
• Walt – Michael’s boy, has a dog
• Vincent – Walt’s dog currently missing, last seen where Jack woke up from the crash.
• Shannon – travels with a bikini, screamer, sister to…
• Boone – God’s freaking gift to humanity
• Rose – traveling with her husband who wasn’t among the survivors… yet
• Locke – backgammon aficionado with an awesome eye scar, lover or oranges and creepy smiles.

Did I miss anyone?

So the transceiver doesn’t have any “bahrs” which I guess means it can’t be used. So Sayid, the terrorist, takes Sawyer the criminal, Kate the fugitive, Charlie the heroin addict, Shannon the diva and Boone GFGTH, off on a walkabout.  This is dangerous because haunting the camp is some kind of large tree shaker than sounds a quitting time horn and rattles off a tickka-tikka-tikka sound.  Me? I just think it’s a roller coaster, like that one in the movie Cloverfield.  But off they go into the heart of darkness, or at least a cliff where they pull them selves up by roots.  The merry band is working well as a team, witnessed by the great cooperation of Sayid and Sawyer, when they hear a roar, and the survivors scatter, only to have Sawyer step up and save the day and shoot a bear, a polar bear.  This act of heroism is met with increased suspicion as to where he got a gun.  Heroism is a mixed bag these days, just ask Hancock.  Anyways… the merry band put aside their bickering in time to enter into a clearing and find out the transceiver has a “bahr” and then they get a signal, only it’s in french, and then they find out it’s a 16 year old distress signal.  Charlie asks, “Where are we?”

Clearly, they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

So that wraps what went down for the first two hours, pretty awesome stuff, unless you’re a LOST hater, then I’m sure you think it was stupid… meh, go away.  The rest of you.  Rewatch for the second episode of LOST start this week with two sessions:

• Tabula Rasa – Tuesday 6PM PDT Chat Room
• Tabula Rasa – Saturday 8AM PDT Chat Room

Don’t forget LOST Community has a Bookclub and a Podcast going too, so join LOST Community, join one of the Groups, and Stay LOST!

One of the great things about doing a re-watch, is that we can connect with people across the ponds. In this case, by planning a re-watch time for Saturday 10AM morning in Dallas of the U.S. of A., we can connect with people in Europe during their Saturday evening (4PM GMT I think). Or just after midnight in Sydney, Austraila… sorry blokes.

At any rate, We’ll kick of the weekend re-watch (during Saturday morning cartoon time for West Coasters 8AM – grab your coffee) at 10AM CDT in the LOSTblog ReWatch Chatroom.

I think I’ve got all the partitions moved, and the different cubicles arranged correctly. We now have four sites:

• LOSTblog Community – it’s like Facebook for LOSTies
• Rewatch – We’re Watching LOST Again
• Bookclub – We’re Reading LOST Books
• LOST Art – Celebrating LOST inspired art

There is still some work to do with the sidebar widgets, and I need to make another site for the We’re Talking About LOST podcast group too

The Community is where all the interaction goes, so that is where you’ll want to create your avatar. All the groups there have links to their respective blogs, but new groups can also form if you want without a blog, but with it’s own forum. We’re still working to see how we can add more features and include more people in the fun. So invite a friend, and sound off in the community if you want something special.

Namaste

I’m fiddling with things, so don’t expect the site to be totally the same when you refresh.

WWLA is going to use CoverITLive as the base chatroom, instead of our normal chatroom.  It has the ability to incorporate tweets into the chat, as well as using your twitter or facebook account to login.  We’re going to try it this first time without the requirement that you login, but that may change in the future.  Below you’ll find a chatroom widget which will go live 15 minutes prior to the re-watch.  Or you can Click Here to launch the widget in a separate window.

If you already have a CoverItLive account, you are free to use that, or you can Register here.

We’re kicking off our epic rewatch this week, with a rewatch of the two-hour pilot.  Keep an eye on this space for updates and times for group rewatches, using chatrooms, twitter, or how ever the leaders want to organize their groups.  Currently we have two times:

• Tuesday 6PM PST – follow @erinava to keep up with the times and locations.
• Saturday 8AM PST – follow @lost_boss and @cutepoison10 to keep up with times an locations

If neither of those times are good for you, take time to re-watch, and then wait for the re-caps (by @erinava and @aohora) that will post sometime on Saturday afternoon.  The main site for all the rewatches is http://lostblog.com/rewatch.  We’ll try to keep important posts up on both LOSTblog and on the Community sites.

The Pilot is one of the best television pilots to ever air, in my opinion. The show creators J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, and Damon Lindelof we’re given a very short window to produce the pilot, and they knocked it out of the park.  They took many liberties with the story, and changed much of television because of the success of the pilot and the excellent first season.  Even so, they weren’t sure that the series would be the hit that it became.  J. J. Abrams shortly left the production team to direct Mission Impossible 3, which opened the door for Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof to continue their collaboration, and become one of the the best show running production teams ever.

Despite the success and the legacy of LOST, Lloyd Braun was fired from his job as Chairman for the ABC Entertainment group, in part because of greenlighting such an expensive and risky enterprise as this first pilot.  LOST ended up reversing the lagging ratings that ABC was suffering, so while it was one of the reasons for the Braum’s departure from ABC, it (along with Desparate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy) changed ABC’s fortunes.

Some of the immediate inspirations for the show, was the success of the reality show Survivor, the Tom Hanks’ movie Cast Away, and the novel Lord of the Flies.  The first script for the show wasn’t well received.  Braum brought in J. J. Abrams, who took a first cut at the script, and didn’t have much faith in how the format would work in scripted television.  A serendipitous paring with Damon Lindelof launched a supernatural aspect to the show, and enabled the pilot to focus on its intriguing characters as well as sprinkle a layer of mystical mythology clues, that have been explored throughout the show’s 6 seasons.

Enjoy rediscovering LOST through our rewatch.  Remember to enjoy each episode, one episode a week.  And join our community and join the Rewatch group.