I've been challenged and I'm definitely accepting it. This little beauty popped up in my Twitter stream just a few minutes ago from a good friend of the Motivators family and it immediately grabbed my attention:

Firstly, Karen is shouting out my two favorite shows in the world and she's challenging me to figure out how promotional products could have helped in their episodes. As much as this seems like a school project, I'm 100% down. She wins for the best suggestion of a promo travel pillow for last week's NCIS. The witness Ziva and Tony were protecting was poisoned by the flight attendent when she was given a pillow covered in peanut dust, which she was allergic to.

As far as Bones is concerned, at the very beginning a ton of spiders emerge from the clay that is surrounding the body and Cam proceeds to freak out. Karen suggested promotional bug repellant, which in essence seems like a great idea except that Hodgins, the bug expert would probably blow a gasket if someone endangered his spiders.

 My suggestion? Upon realizing that resident intern Vincent Nigel Murray is desperately seeking some sort of approval from Brennan (Bones) I'm thinking that she could have just solved the problem by handing him the promotional talking appreciation pen. Just let the pen tell him that all his efforts and dedication are greatly appreciated and the problem would be solved.

Yet another great episode title here. Most of them are, but I love the ones that can be interpreted in more ways than one. ‘Raised by Another’ refers of course to Claire’s psychic telling her in her flashback that she cannot let her unborn child be raised by anyone other than herself.

When Charlie hears of Claire’s back story and how the psychic (Malkin) changed his mind from originally insisting that she raise the child herself, to then suddenly setting her up with a foster family in L.A. under the condition that she had to be on Oceanic flight 815, he theorizes that somehow Malkin knew that Oceanic flight 815 was going to crash on the island, therefore leaving Claire no choice but to raise the child herself. This plan of Malkin’s would make it so that the baby could not be ‘raised by another’. 

That being said, we will later find out that ‘the others’ are very interested in Claire’s baby and intend on convincing Claire to live amongst them with her child. Though we wont find this out until much later in the series, we’ll learn that Ethan is ‘the other’ that will eventually pursue Claire and her baby, and the end of this episode is the first time that it is implied that Ethan is definitively one of ‘the others’. So you could interpret ‘Raised by Another’ as ‘Raised By An Other’. I love when the writers do stuff like that!

I’m kind of going in reverse of the actual order of the episode, but it’ll work since I am not trying to avoid spoiling anyone who is not current with the show. Ethan is officially revealed as an ‘other’ when he appears in front of Claire and Charlie creepy-looking and alone when Charlie and Claire had been expecting Ethan to get Jack to come to Claire’s aid. This happens near simultaneously with Hurley coming to the conclusion that Ethan’s name was not on the flight manifest that Hurley was using to cross reference his census that he was making.

Fun other little sidenote, perhaps common knowledge to many ‘Losties’ but Ethan Rom can rearrange the letters in his name to create the words ‘other man’. hmmm

Hurley created the census because of Claire’s claims that she was attacked in her sleep. The first incident seemed like a nightmare, but Claire awoke with bloody palms because she dug her own fingernails deep into her own hands out of fear of her nightmare.

However, Claire isn’t convinced that it was completely a nightmare. In her dream sequence she experiences the feeling of having lost her baby. She was not pregnant anymore and heard it screaming in the jungle. When attempting to find her child, she stumbled upon Locke who was sitting at a desk that appears to be the same as her psychic’s desk. This ‘dream-version’ of Locke has one eye that is completely white with no pupil and one that is completely black with no pupil. This is the recurring theme of black vs. white / dark vs. light / perhaps good vs. evil that we have seen many times before and will see again. Locke also says in the dream that Claire had been warned, and that this all happened because she didn’t raise the baby herself. 

**THEORY ALERT**

This dream sequence as well as Malkin’s warning to Claire actually triggered a theory for me. I just couldn’t help thinking that Aaron is going to grow up to be an evil person. It seems reasonable. After all, you would think there would be repercussions for Aaron being raised by another, otherwise why was it of such importance that the baby’s development be influenced by Claire’s kindness and goodness? Perhaps Aaron is a new dictator or evil leader for the islands future? Perhaps it is setting up a battle between Aaron and Walt over the future of the island? I definitely believe Aaron will be important to the overall plot, but that makes it even more curious that he was not on Ajira flight 316.

Back to Claire’s dream, her claim that it could have been real may have been false, but she did see the Oceanic plane mobile during her dream state, which she will see for the first time several days later when she is kidnapped. This isn’t the first or last time that premonition has come to a character via dream. 

Fate is most certainly a major theme in this episode, especially as it pertains to Claire and her pregnancy, but really this episode is just an example of how fate has had its impact on just one of the survivors on 815. It has its impact on everyone at some point, but this is a prime example because of how directly connected actions or events coincide with the idea of someone’s destiny.

If Claire doesn’t get pregnant her encounter with Malkin never happens. Not to mention, if her boyfriend didn’t leave her during the pregnancy there wouldn’t have been a question as to who is going to raise the baby. She only wants to put it up for adoption because she feels that she cannot handle being a single mother. Claire wanting to put the baby up for adoption may also be a result of her ‘daddy abandonment’ issues as her compassionate boyfriend so kindly refers to it. Which at the time we may not have thought too deeply into, but now know that the daddy that abandoned her is in fact Jack’s daddy too!

Perhaps the biggest sign of destiny and fate comes at the hands of one of our very favorite promotional products: the promotional pen. When Claire is trying to sign the contract to officially give up her baby, the first pen she tries to use does not work. Have no fear, lawyers always carry promotional pens on them. Even if they’re fancy executive pens, I’d be willing to bet that if it is coming from a lawyer, it has an elegant looking imprint on it with their firm’s name and contact information. Alas, this lawyer must have gotten his custom printed pens from a place other than Motivators because this one doesn’t work either. This was enough to deter Claire from giving up the baby and she returned to Malkin to hear him out. Next thing you know she is on a plane to the island and the rest is history.

The funny thing about fate as it specifically pertains to Claire, is that despite these very convincing examples, Claire herself says that ‘there is no such thing as fate’ when she is talking to Sun and Shannon in ‘Exodus’, the finale episode of season one. 

Part of the problem with going backwards in this post is that I feel it necessary to explain that Claire’s ‘attacks’ come in the beginning of the episode. This may seem somewhat irrelevant, but it allows there to be a big build-up to what is a really great cliffhanger ending. So to recap, throughout the duration of the episode Jack maintains that Claire is experiencing stress induced hallucinations and not actually being attacked. However, to be safe Hurley creates a census so that they can keep track of what has turned into their little island society. The end of the episode is an exciting culmination of Hurley discovering that Ethan is not on the census, Sayid stumbling back into camp disoriented and assuredly claiming that the survivors are not alone on the island, meanwhile the mysterious Ethan has positioned himself to kidnap Claire and her baby.

Questions answered but plenty of new ones have arisen. I think the real question is: Is it possible for anyone that’s been watching every episode so far, to not be completely hooked in at this time? I remember knowing that I needed to go to bed because I had to get up in a few hours, but watched the next episode anyway!

Sayid has always been one of my favorite characters and still is. Even though it may not have seemed obvious to Naveen Andrews at first, this British actor was cast as one of the best characters in a television series, maybe ever. I know it’s hard to determine these things especially when comparing one Lost character to another. There are just so many to choose from, but for my money it certainly seems like a jackpot role when you can be as intelligent, resourceful, intimidating, knowledgeable, tough, savvy, kind, understanding, heartfelt and rational as Sayid Jarrah. I am sure there are other superlatives that I am leaving out, but when I first started watching Lost, I joked a few times that the show could have easily been named ‘Everybody Loves Sayid’ – I know I do.

I was glad that they followed the last episode with a Sayid-centric episode because in case you needed it, it gave you that confirmation that Sayid was long from gone as a main character in the series, even though he had just left camp to go out on his own. I knew he wouldn’t be leaving for good, but when I saw him leave I wasn’t 100% sure when we would see him again. Luckily we didn’t have to wait long. 

His flashback scenes were interesting because it gave us a deeper look into the complexity of Sayid’s past. Sayid is an honorable man, but is faced with difficult moral dilemmas in his duties as a member of the Republican Guard. In this particular flashback we see how Sayid was assigned to torture his long time love interest, and eventually chooses his loyalty to his love, rather than to his job. As we have and will see a lot in Lost, losing a loved one tends to be a common theme among many of the main characters. 

Present day on the island, Sayid’s shame and struggle with what he had done to Sawyer not only accentuates his sentiments in his flashbacks, but his departure from the camp led us to another of the islands mysteries. In fact it led us to a few of the islands mysteries all in one, we just didn’t realize it at the time. The cable that Sayid finds partially buried on the beach leads him to get caught in a trap that was set in the jungle, little did we know at the time that if he followed this cable to the ocean instead of into the jungle, it would lead to an underwater DHARMA station called ‘The Looking Glass’.

After Sayid wakes up after being trapped and captured, we find out for certain that it is in fact the woman from the distress signal and has been on the island for all 16 years since she recorded it. Sayid came to the conclusion that she was in fact the woman from the distress call with the help of one particular promotional product that he saw hanging in her shelter. The custom printed promotional jacket that had the name ‘Rousseau’ printed on the back of it helped Sayid to safely assume it was the French woman they heard in the transmission.

We learn a little more about Danielle and how she came to be on the island. She slightly elaborates on her team being ‘sick’ and how she had to kill them all because they were infected. I think it's cool whenever the writers work the word 'Lost' into the script. Especially in this case where Rousseau says that by the time she had to kill the other members of her team, (including her lover) 'they were already Lost'. She claims ‘the others’ infected her camp and that they control the distress signal. This is the first time the ‘others’ are referred to and she is convinced that Sayid is one of them. Though despite her certainty that there are ‘others’ out there, she claims never to have seen any of them, but hears their whispers. Sayid finds this part of her story hard to believe, yet he warns her of the island’s ‘monster’ when they both hear a noise outside of her shelter. She responds by saying that ‘there is no such thing as monsters’.

This exchange of course makes Danielle a very interesting character as well, especially early on when we knew nothing. On the island surviving for 16 years by herself and hasn’t seen a single human or ‘monster’ but yet hears whispers and is certain that ‘others’ are out there.

Part of her belief that there are others out there undoubtedly comes from the fact that she is actively seeking out her child named Alex. When watching for the first time, at this point we know she has lost her child but we don’t yet know how.

But since we have now seen exactly how she loses Alex, doesn’t that make a liar out of her when she claims that she has never seen any of ‘the others’? Unless I am mistaken, I thought she was present when Ben abducted baby Alex.

Some theories suggest that Rousseau went crazy after first arriving on the island and thus her entire story is not exactly accurate. Though this is not exactly a confirmed theory, it makes sense because it also lends credence to the reasoning as to why she did not recognize Jin when she eventually meets with the survivors of flight 815 in 2004. She should recognize Jin because her and her crew found him washed up on the beach in the 80’s unbeknownst to him (and them) that he was skipping through time with the rest of the island after he was flung from the exploding freighter.

I guess you can make sense out of her losing her mind if you put yourself in her situation. Your crew mysteriously ‘comes down’ with something that makes them turn on you, but only after a giant smokey monster pulls them into an underground temple, ripping one of their arms off when all of the sudden the Korean man that was standing next to you has now disappeared. Yeah I’d say she gets a free pass for being a bit confused.

I’d of course be remiss to leave out one of the great feel-good moments of the first season, especially because it involves some of our favorite and most common promotional items! I am speaking of course about promotional golf balls! Were they Oceanic promotional golf balls or perhaps just some golf balls given to one of the passengers as a corporate gift? I’ll have to get back to you on that one, but either way Hurley built a small golf course on the island to relax everyone and take their minds off of the terrible experience they were all having and it actually worked!

Not only were people able to take their minds off of things, but even Sawyer sees and takes his opportunity to open up to the rest of the passengers in the form of a wager, betting that Jack would miss his game-winning putt. Other people start getting in on the bet and the relationship building process between Sawyer and the rest of the passengers is slowly starting to blossom.

Other notes of interest include the introduction of Ethan. I love thinking about how we never really knew that Ethan was so connected to the island until just recently.

And of course the relationship between Locke and Walt grows as Locke agrees to help Walt learn how to throw hunting knives against a tree in the jungle. This relationship has been developing right from the beginning, but it continues to become more intriguing as you realize that both Locke and Walt have a special relationship with the island. Walt may not even realize what his relationship with the island is, but Locke does seem to know or understand that Walt is different in a special way and wants Walt to be able to ‘realize his full potential’.

Michael is not very happy with Locke’s relationship with Walt, but Michael isn’t always the most attentive parent, as is seen in this episode on a few different occasions.

Love the ending, though it is definitely one of those endings that almost forces you to watch the next episode as Sayid is made into a believer about the whispers that Danielle spoke of when he hears them himself after they separated, as he heads back to camp.

So since youtube has everything, we happened to come across this old New Kids on the Block commercial. And I know it seems that I'm such a Blockhead, but the full credit on this one goes to Sarah E, since she was the one who found it. Regardless, it just makes you realize how many promotional products had the NKOTB insignia. And I've since said that should I actually get to ever talk to one of the boys, I'd ask them what was the strangest piece of promotional merchandise that they'd ever seen with their name on it. So check it out...

Editted to Add: My best friend still has the "Hangin Loose" kids dolls. Although after an unfortunate incident in CT, the Donnie doll now has a broken leg. :(