Ah, so RaceFail is a blog/internet kerfuffle? (If you'll excuse the term). And apparently a rather ugly/nasty one. Potentially fun/fascinating to watch in a purely sadistic sort of way - like one does a train wreck.

I've learned there are four or five topics that are guaranteed to cause kerfuffles on the internet : 1) discussing racism (or rather accusing others however vaguely of being racist) 2) nationalism (your country sucks), 3) Spike (or any character or 'ship in a fandom that is somewhat controversial that people are insanely obsessed with and/or so emotionally invested in or emotionally enraged with to the point that you want to slap them), 4) misogyny/gender issues (see 1). 5) Bush, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton and Obama (political figures - see #3). 6) Religion. Not the safest topics in the universe to discuss online. Doesn't mean we shouldn't, but they do tend to result in nasty flame wars.

Thank you for the bits on Horace and Olivia and The Man Behind the Curtain. Haven't seen the episode since it first aired on US television, so I've forgotten a good portion of it. (Lost is one of those shows that I wish I had on DVD or the time to rewatch and the space to DVR the reruns on Sci-Fi.) Your explanation actually clarified a lot of things.

I agree, I don't really think they will do the Butterfly Effect. If they do? I seriously doubt it will be the happy reset button. I don't see Lost ending "happily", just because it doesn't track with the genre - which feels a lot like horror sci-fi to me. But I could be wrong. At any rate I completely agree with you on that score. The reason I think they'll go with option 1 - is the show from the get-go has been focused on destiney/fate vs. random chance. John Lock's view that things are predestined and not open to chance. A pov that is seconded by Daniel Faraday and Eloise Hawking - who tell Desmond Hume and others that you can't change the past, you can't change what is written. The writer already knows the end of the story, it's not going to change. The characters can't make it something else. Hume, Shepard, Sawyer, and Sayid keep trying to make it different - they are questioning destiney. Not sure about Ben - he's a bit of a wild card, and this may be sadistic on my part, but one my favorite characters. I just find him fascinating.

For a bit I thought that Horace's kid was Goodwin who Juliet was lovers with and Ana Lucia killed. But nope, different last names.
The kid could be irrelevant, which actually I rather like.

Regarding the triangle? Yes, it got old by the third season. Sigh. I've watched too many soap operas and read too many comic books, not to mention romance novels in my life time - I find love triangles and quadrangle's sort of predictable and rather annoying - unless they use them to actually develop the characters and not as a cheap means of lengthing the romantic/sexual tension. Bad as the BSG quadrangle of doom was - it did to a degree show us who the characters were and push their stories along - I wonder if Dee for example would have committed suicide if Lee hadn't cheated on her and gone to Starbuck, was that a factor in the dissolution of their marriage and her slide to despair? Maybe, maybe not. But for Lost? I don't know if the Sawyer/Jack/Kate triangle has evolved anyone except possibly, Sawyer and Juliet. Although will admit Kate and Jack have grown on me - I rather enjoyed them off island. I tend to ship friendships in genre over romance, far more interesting and less predictable.

Anyhow, thanks for the details on both Lost and RaceFail.