I Am DB

FANTASTIC FOUR
Let me get right into it, and say that I’m immediately digging the new characters. Since the episode revealed that they have come to the island in search of Ben, the tip of the iceberg question is: why? Why do they want Ben, and why does Ben fear that every living person on the island will die when they arrive? Perhaps we’ll get more clarity on those questions this week (yeah right). In the meantime, let’s take a look at our team:

Daniel – He’s introduced crying at the TV announcement that Oceanic 815 has been discovered, but he can’t explain why he’s so emotional. Or so he says. Does he have a connection to someone on the plane, which he’s hiding from the woman he’s with? There didn’t seem to be anything disingenuous about his response, and yet…

And who is the woman? It’s probably nothing, but I feel like it’s not an accident that we never see her face.

Miles – Don’t really have much to say about him yet, other than that he’s kinda awesome and he seems the most anxious to find Ben. In fact, he just seems the most anxious in general. Maybe that’s what happens to people who spend too much time exercising (or exorcising) their sixth sense.

Charlotte – Her flashback is the most puzzling, seeing as she found the remains of a Dharma Initiative polar bear…in Tunisia. More than that, she seemed to be expecting the Dharma insignia. And more than that, she seemed quite excited about it. (Side note: this film geek couldn’t help see Charlotte’s intro as a bit of a Star Wars tribute. First she’s in Tunisia, where much of the saga was filmed; and then she’s hanging from a tree upside down, in exactly the same position Luke was stuck in when the Wampa captured him in The Empire Strikes Back). Moving on…

Frank – A former Oceanic pilot, who was almost at the controls of Flight 815. Why didn’t he wind up flying the plane? We know that he’s right about the pilot, of course. The pilot didn’t drown; he was killed by the black smoke. And I couldn’t tell for the life of me if the photo shown of the pilot was in fact a photo of Greg Grunberg, the actor who played him way back in the first episode. He doesn’t usually have a mustache, and the presence of that hairy lip in the photo was enough to make me uncertain. I suppose we can believe that the photo is accurate; otherwise Frank would have been complaining about the picture being wrong, rather than just the corpse missing a wedding ring. Anyway, Frank is established as the only one of the four with a known connection to the flight, the castaways, or the island. Does the fact that he escaped death that day foreshadow his demise this time around? (Jeff Fahey, the actor playing him, is credited as a guest star, while the other three are regulars. Hmm…)

By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, my allusion to the rescue team as the Fantastic Four is borrowed. The resident Lost expert for Entertainment Weekly does a recap on the website after each episode, and believe me, they’re waaaaay more detailed and obsessive than these write-ups. He can be a little annoying sometimes, but some of the theories and ideas he puts forth are pretty interesting, so he’s worth checking out. Here’s the link to this week’s, in which he explains the Fantastic Four connection, and also throws out an intriguing thought about Charlotte, which has to do with Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis.

Also, if you’re so inclined, check out this little feature from TV Guide introducing the four new cast members and offering a tease about what might be in store for them.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
We learn that the rescue team was assembled by our creepy friend Abbadon, who also recruited Naomi to lead them. Despite her hesitations about their qualifications, Abbadon insists that every member of the team was selected for a specific purpose. He tells her, “Everything relies on you getting them in, getting them out and preventing anyone from getting killed.” Well that plan is moot now, isn’t it? RIP Naomi. So…what is this whole operation about? Why do they want Ben? Was the photo they had of him taken on or off the island? Why have these particular people been chosen? Are they connected to the Dharma Initiative? Are they looking for possible survivors of the Dharma Initiative? Why does Naomi expect that they might find survivors of 815 on the island, since supposedly there are no survivors? That last question, and the fact that a seemingly dummy plane has been planted at the bottom of the ocean, makes it clear that there’s a group of people who know exactly where this island is; who know that the plane went down there; and who know that there are survivors. And once some of the survivors have returned home, Abbadon is still after something – hence his insidious visit to Hurley. So since Naomi’s mission failed to go as Abbadon planned, how will it end?

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
While Naomi’s boat may have nothing to do with Desmond’s girl Penny, she does have a boat out looking for him…doesn’t she? I take you back to the bewildering last scene of the season 2 finale. After we see Michael and Walt sail off, after we see bags pulled over the heads of Jack, Kate and Sawyer, and after Charlie emerges from the hatch acting strangely, we see a boat in what looks like arctic waters. A couple of guys are onboard playing chess and speaking Russian. One of their instruments alerts them to an “electromagnetic anomaly,” which we know to be the result of Desmond turning the failsafe key in the hatch. They start flipping through papers, they type things on their computer, and then they call Penny and say, “Miss Widmore, I think we found it.” The camera lingers on her astonished face and then…boom: L O S T.

Seeing as we had met Penny for the first time in that episode, it was a bold choice to leave her face as the last thing we’d see for the summer hiatus. So she’s trying to find Desmond, and there is a boat that she’s in contact with. She told Desmond at one point, “With enough money and determination, anyone can be found.” But what clue was she looking for out there in the arctic? How does she know to have people looking for odd electromagnetic behavior? And reader David E. raised the excellent question, what was she doing on the monitor that Charlie saw in the Looking Glass? After he flipped the switch to allow the flow of communication, there was an immediate incoming call, almost as if it had been waiting to get through and now was finally able to. Charlie took the call, and there was Penny. But how? Where did she think she was calling? What led her there?

THE SHINING
Let’s talk about Walt for a minute. We saw him appear, taller, above Locke and say, “You’ve got work to do.” Now we learn that Walt told him to take care of Naomi, and also to go back to Jacob’s cabin. So can we just back the fuck up here for a second? Walt has the Shining; this we know. His gifts were introduced in season 1, most notably when Locke touched his arm and the boy recoiled, warning, “Don’t open that thing!” “That thing” being the hatch…which Walt had never seen and had no knowledge of whatsoever. Later, he confessed to Michael that he burned the first raft because he didn’t want to leave the island. Michael told him that they didn’t have to leave…to which Walt ominously replied, “Yes we do.”

Soon after, Walt is kidnapped by the Others. Only after they’ve taken him do they discover his talents. When they have Michael prisoner as well, Miss Klugh tries to ask him about Walt’s gift. And when Michael delivers Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley to the Others, Ben tells him that they got more than they bargained for with Walt. What did they get? What did Walt tell them, and how did they get him to do so? Did he perhaps warn them that people might soon be coming to the island, spurring Ben to investigate just who might be coming and why, and maybe even leading him to arrange for a spy on the boat? If Walt knew of the people coming, he might know their motives, and therefore might have been able to warn Locke…though how he appeared on the island looking like puberty’s newest catch is a whole other mystery.

Is this all one big chain of events that was set in motion when Locke blew open the hatch, and Walt knew all along where it would go? And what does Walt know about Jacob? Why does Walt want Locke to return to the cabin? What is Locke supposed to do there?

NOTES OF INTEREST
While we’re on the subject of the cabin, Locke and Ben both seemed taken aback that Hurley mentioned the place. Though he tried to cover his tracks, did either of them believe him? We still don’t understand what Hurley saw in there…or what Locke saw, for that matter. Jacob, you tease…

And finally, let’s not forget that the other Others are still on the island somewhere. The group that was with Ben when he and Alex left for the radio tower and Tom and Co. left for the beach. Most of the Others that we’ve become familiar with are dead now, but there’s still Cindy the flight attendant, the two kids, and of course the mysterious Richard Alpert, owner of the world’s best rejuvenating skin cream. And whatever happened to The Sheriff? Remember her? She only appeared in one episode – season three’s Stranger in a Strange Land – overseeing Juliet’s trial and quizzing Jack about the meaning of his tattoos. She seemed like an important Other, so what ever happened to her? When and how will the remaining Others come into play?

FINAL THOUGHTS
Excellent episode with a lot of compelling moments. I would like to see a little more ongoing mourning for Charlie, whose death is still just hours fresh. Claire and Hurley, especially, need to continue reacting to that. Sawyer and Locke had some great moments in this episode, and it seems the show is keeping Sawyer in a dark place, which is good. One of the nice things about these first two episodes is that nearly everybody in the cast is getting some face time. Let’s keep that up…and give a little more to Sun, Jin and Desmond.

Tonight’s episode: The Economist