"LOST" IN THOUGHT: "EXPOSE"

Last week's episode of 'Lost' - "Expose" - was like "jungle noir". We learned that Paolo and Nikki, who were among the forty plus survivors of Oceanic 815 but whom we actually didn't meet until this season, were like Walter Neff and Phyllis Diedrichsen of "Double Indemnity". Nikki was the scheming seductress who got that sap Paolo to murder for her, and then they double-crossed each other which led to their deaths.

There are plenty of sites that go over all the Numbers references, plot points and Easter Eggs from this episode, so I won't rehash them all here. But these were the points most of interest for Toobworld Central:

So it turns out that the TV show snippet we heard in John Locke's episode "The Man From Tallahassee" was from the show within a show here, 'Expose' (with an accent over that last "e".)

Nikki Fernandez guest-starred in an episode of 'Expose' shot in Sydney just before she boarded the plane. Howie Zuckerman was the producer of the show who was also her lover whom Paolo poisoned.

The show, which was a lot like JJ Abrams' 'Alias', was in its fourth season. And John Locke had been in a wheelchair for four years.

Since Locke was watching the show before he was paralyzed, then that episode set in the Louvre must have been from the first season. (I've got a great title for that 'Expose' episode, which Hurley thought was better than 'Baywatch': "Farewell, My Louvre-ly". Okay, maybe not that great....)

John Locke was watching that show while eating dinner. He was interrupted by a caller at the door and we could see that it was still light outside. Since he was watching a first season episode during the first season, it was probably an 8 o'clock air-time. And it would have to be during the height of Daylight Savings Time. Thus, it could have been a repeat.

Or... it was on a cable network that didn't allow for the differences in time zones, so if it was aired at 8 or 9 pm on the East Coast, then Locke was watching it at 5 or 6 pm in Tustin, California.

Sure, it's trivial. But isn't that what 'Lost' and "Inner Toob" both traffic in?

I thought that perhaps the company which manufactured Paolo's nicotine gum might have been Widmore Labs. But a screen capture which I requested at the 'Lost' Easter Eggs site doesn't show any indication of that. Oh well, an opportunity missed; surely Widmore Labs made more than home pregnancy tests? (And it still could have been in the small print.)

I liked the popular theory that because Hurley mentioned how "the Cobra" in 'Expose' was revealed in Nikki's episode as being someone on the show that the audience knew for four seasons, then it was a clue that the mysterious leader of the Others, Jacob, would be revealed next season as a character we already know.

My money (in quatloos) is on Christian Shepherd being Jacob. You think he's dead? I think he was injected with that medusa spider venom so that he only looked dead to his son Jack and to those Aussie docs!

And speaking of the medusa spiders, now that they've been introduced into the show and the island's eco-system, I hope they won't be forgotten. They should claim another victim, one who comes out of the paralysis before getting buried. And only then do they realize the effects are similar to what happened to Paolo and Nikki.... uh oh......

Lastly, I have a question about an earlier episode, "Enter 77"....

If Sayid chose to live in Paris, shouldn't he have some understanding of French? Then how come he had to ask Shannon to translate the inscription on the map?

Maybe he understood it, but couldn't read it?

Just askin', is all.....

BCnU!
Tele-Toby