the panopticon returns

Unless you never really cared, and have been in the Lost boat just to watch insanely hot people with dashing movie-star looks run around yelling at each other, surely you heard a while back of the Panopticon theory. In short:

"The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a 'sentiment of an invisible omniscience.' In his own words, Bentham described the Panopticon as 'a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.' "

Source: here

And with this week's season four finale (and the whole Jeremy Bentham –red herring, perhaps?–) shout-outs this theory just gained a little more cred. At least in my mind. Which I feel, has been constantly fucked with, for the past four years by this show.

So here's what I've concluded: The island was a prison and research facility (although what exactly they researched, and why that led to a huge statue of a four-toed foot is beyond me) maintained by this Dharma Initiative. Then one day, the inmates (ie Ben and his droogies -- possibly following Jacob's lead) got the upper hand and took control of the island. The Initiative tried to stop them by releasing some sort of killer gas. When that didn't work, they released the dogs,.. err.. I mean, polar bears and black nano-bot smoke (read Michael Chrichton's Prey, to catch my drift). Ever since then, the island has been in control of Jacob, Ben and the Others.

I think it's clear the Initiative is either owned by or at least ran, by Mr. Whitmore. Who obviously wants his weird experiments to stay a secret. But then Desmond came and tried to take his daughter. Mr. W got pissed and tricked Desmond into shipwrecking on the island. But Penny got wise and started looking for him.

Then, the plane crashed.

And then everyone involved (especially Ben) suddenly and unexpectedly lost the ability to answer any question pertaining to why they are there, who they are, what they do and where they are...

Also, the island? Not so much an island. Picture a giant floating platform with plants on it. Back to the Panopticon theory, right?

What no one has been able to figure yet though, is how exactly all this ties in to Jack's tattoos...

Overall, good, solid episode. Unless you define good by actually understanding what the hell is going on.


ALSO:
I went crazy for a second there, and when the guy says to the new girl "I'm surprised you wanna leave (...) after all that time you spent trying to get back here". I thought maybe she was future-Jack travelling back in time in a morphing suit (like the ones in A Scanner Darkly). But now I think it's pretty clear she's Ben's childhood friend Annie:






Up next: June 15 marks the return of Weeds. Not that I can remember what the hell happened last... except for one of the Olsen twins showing up and never hearing from Zooey Deschanel again.