Sunday, April 11, 2010

The Top Five Origins of Richard Alpert in Tonight’s LOST: "Ab Aeterno"


After getting conned again in last week’s ”Recon”, this week’s back story promises to move the curtain back on the “nature of the Island” question and reveal the man-who-never-ages behind it. And after that guest appearance by Dick Clark, the focus of the story shifts to Richard Alpert. After six years of wondering who in the hell this Goth eyeliner wearing character really is, the answer is nigh. Following are the five top possible origins of Richard Alpert.

5) The son of a make-up tycoon, Richard is restless and trying to make his own name in the 1800’s eye-liner industry. Seeking a new, dazzling kind of eye-liner to set him apart from the rest, he one day incorporates the fluorescence from watch dials into the formulation….with disastrous results. Fleeing for his life from hoards of accidentally blinded clients (fortunately zig-zagging thwarts blind pursuit), he seizes a mining ship in port and escapes.

While at sea, he notices a mysterious green glow on the horizon and instructs the crew to set sail towards it. Figuring he can redeem his shattered reputation by discovering a new, glow-in-the-dark substance to use in his eye-liner compositions, he instead discovers the Island. Unfortunately, the Smoke Monster wrecks his ride and eats his crew, leaving him the sole survivor…because Smokey is so lonely. Even though he doesn’t look like it, Richard really does age; he’s simply very, very good with make-up, albeit a little too heavy on the liner.

4) Richard, a Moor, came to the Island as a slave on a mining ship called the Black Rock. Tired of his obsessive singing of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in the hold, the crew releases him into the wild and hunts him down for sport. While fleeing his pursuers, he accidently falls through a hole in the ground into the Fountain of Youth where he discovers Ponce de Leon living the life of a hermit.

Gaining eternal youth and living in the ruins of an ancient temple, Richard outlives his former captives. But, the problem with immortality is it gets boring, plus Ponce just won’t shut the hell up. Finally convincing Ponce to set sail for the mythical “Island of Big Busted Women”, Richard finds himself alone with his thoughts….until the U.S. army shows up shortly after WW2, keeping a lot of noise, knocking stuff over. On the positive side, you can hunt boar better with M1s than spears.

3) Richard and four friends are in a hot tub drinking Red Bull and vodka in the year 2525 (Dick Clark is still alive, but Leno didn’t survive…but I digress) when the hot tub magically transports them to the year...37 AD. Captured by Romans, Richard and friends are taken to the Coliseum in Rome where they are paired off against each other in the arena for the perverse entertainment of the Senate. Richard (being the only person from 2525 that actually did ANY physical activity) easily defeats his fellow time travelers and is spared by Claudius, the physically handicapped future Emperor and uncle of Caligula. Unfortunately, Richard changes the past by encouraging Claudius and others to, “kill that crazy son-of-a-bitch Caligula now”…which causes a disruption in the time-line, hurling Richard into Limbo.

There, he is sentenced to a thousand years hard "time" for "use of an unauthorized time travel device." After being forced to watch reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” for millennia as punishment, Richard’s mind, warped beyond comprehension, mentally constructs a mysterious Island with people called The Others, a Smoke Monster, crashed planes, a nuclear bomb, polar bears and a plot. He comes to J.J. Abrams in a dream to pitch the show, magically releasing him from Limbo and into syndication.

2) Richard is the teen-aged friend of an eccentric professor he calls “Doc” in 1985, who both travel to the future in a Delorean. After observing the wonders of the far future, they accidentally collide with Biff driving a time-traveling space-ship disguised as an Island...but asleep at the Frozen Donkey Wheel. They both over-correct and overshoot the present, landing in the far past.

While the simmering animosity between Biff and Doc eventually boils over into murder most foul after a few hundred years, Richard Mc Fly finds the Island life to his liking until taller Dharma people start showing up. He then solicits Ben to handle that little problem...

1) Richard is in a van with 3 other teen-agers and a dog when they take a wrong turn into a mysterious fog and end up on a tropical Island. There, they find Ben ruling a tribe of Others by fear of a thing in the jungle they call “The Smoke Monster”. Richard’s friend Freddy is reasonably sure the Smoke Monster is just Ben in a rubber mask. But, when he attempts to remove any mask, the cohesive mass of dark smoke gets really pissed and slams the teens into trees one by one, consuming their souls (including the annoying, mutated, talking dog who final words are “Ruh, Roh”). Richard escapes by claiming his soul is not kosher, after figuring out The Monster is out of the Old Testament.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All the scenarios are actually better thought out than the series finale. But, I liked "Ab Aeterno" a whole lot better.