I Am DB

Although they were not made with the intention of airing back-to-back, The Lie formed a nice little two hour block with Because You Left, so much so that they did have the flow of one long episode.

Interesting that these two abandoned Lost‘s traditional flashback/flashforward structure. Though these episodes do take place years apart, the off-island activities are not flashforwards in the same sense that they were last season since the Oceanic Six are now off the island. As for those left behind, though they keep hurtling through time, their anchor period is three years earlier than the events unfolding for the Oceanic Six. Will the show continually use that “Three Years Earlier” flashcard to remind us of this, or will they assume that we get it and move on?

The Lie puts its own twist on the structure by focusing on one character – Hurley – but doing so without flashes back or ahead. So my guess is that this season will provide an assortment of these structural offerings. Some episodes will unfold as these two did, while others will still involve more traditional flashes – particularly for Faraday, Charlotte and Miles, whose backstories remain unexplored.

THE LIE TAKES SHAPE
Okay, so there was one flashback for the Oceanic Six. The episode begins on Penny’s boat in the days after the rescue, with Jack asking the others if they’re all in agreement about lying, knowing that it will affect every aspect of their lives going forward. Sayid is reluctant, but agrees to the plan. Only Hurley speaks up strongly against it, convinced that while one of them might be perceived as crazy for telling the true story, they would find safety in numbers by sticking together. But the big guy is an island unto himself in this argument. And while it doesn’t fully answer my question about Penny’s relationship with her father, we do get some insight into the Widmore family dynamic when Jack says that Charles Widmore is trying to kill everyone on the island and Hurley asks Penny why she can’t call him off. “There’s no calling my father off,” she says.

Jumping ahead to 2008, Hurley is driving an unconscious Sayid around, unsure what to do and suspected by the police of killing the men who are in fact Sayid’s victims. Keeping up his recent habit of encountering dead people, he gets pulled over by former L.A. cop Ana Lucia, who tells him to get his head on straight, take Sayid somewhere safe and above all, avoid the police. “Don’t get arrested,” she warns him.

YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE
Ben unscrews the vent in the hotel room he is sharing with Jack (and can we please just take a moment to enjoy the humor of Jack and Ben sharing a hotel room?) and removes a small package, wrapped in cloth, which he slips into his bag just before Jack walks in. “Where are we going?” Jack asks.

“You’re going home,” Ben replies. “And find yourself a suitcase. If there’s anything in this life you want, pack it in there. Because you’re never coming back.”

Really? Never? Jack lets this sink in for a moment, but then he seems to accept it. Does that mean he’s going to live out his remaining days – however many there may be –  on the island? Or in a different place? Or does it mean that he’ll die soon? We know the Oceanic Six have to return to the island, but can’t they just, you know, sacrifice a goat for Jacob and then go home without leaving the island angry at them?

Ben says that while Jack heads home, he’ll be finding someplace safe for Locke’s casket. “Safe? He’s dead, isn’t he?” Jack asks, in a tone suggesting that something which should be certain is, in fact, not certain at all. Ben’s answer?  “I’ll see you in six hours, Jack.”

Ohhh Ben…

SAFE HAVEN
Just as Hurley was driving around unsure of where to go, so too is Kate, having fled with Aaron from shady lawyers. But then she receives a phone call from a friend who is in town, and soon Kate is in a hotel penthouse with Sun, who says she’s in L.A. for a few days to attend to some business. I gathered that this is the first time they have seen each other since the Oceanic Six went their separate ways upon returning home. And the reunion seems happy enough.

But this is Sun 2.0, and she’s gotten in touch with her dark side. When Kate tells her about the lawyers, Sun says they were not interested in exposing the lie; if they were, they would just do it. They want Aaron, she says…and adds that Kate needs to take care of them and do whatever is necessary to keep Aaron. (Note that she says “keep Aaron.” Not “keep him safe,” but keep him, period.) When Kate recoils, and asks what kind of person Sun thinks she is, Sun stares her down and, recalling their final moments on the freighter, replies, “The kind of person who makes hard decisions when you have to. Like you did on the freighter.” The tone in which she says it, and the look on her face, is devastating, and I thought she was about to let Kate know that all was not forgotten or forgiven. But she goes on to make it clear that she knows Kate did what she had to do, and that if she had followed through with her promise to get Jin, they might all have died. “I don’t blame you,” she says, before moving on to ask, “So…how’s Jack?” And was it just me, or did her sweet, casual tone of voice in asking that question mask some unresolved ill will toward our doctor friend?

Whatever her true feelings are, I love that the writers used this scene to acknowledge Kate’s actions on the boat (actions that were largely directed by Jack, who half-pulled Kate onto the helicopter). What was that I said in the last write-up? We now know the two people Sun blames for Jin’s death?

Uhhh…do we?

PRIVATE PRACTICE
With Sayid not waking up and the police staked out in front of Hurley’s parents’ house, Mr. Reyes follows Hurley’s plan to take Sayid to Jack for medical attention. Jack, in turn, takes Sayid to a hospital and manages to avoid everyone else around while trying to revive his old friend, which he does successfully. Meanwhile, Hurley is back home with his mother, who uses her maternal magic to break his resolve and tell her the truth about the plane crash and its aftermath – albeit, a fractured, confusing truth which hilariously condenses the last four seasons of the show into about a minute. But as he has shown over the years, Jorge Garcia has a gift for mixing humor and heart, and Hurley facing down the guilt over all that’s happened and the part he played in it makes for a scene as sad as it is funny.

JILL THE BUTCHER
Ben enters a butcher shop and, after its lone customer exits, converses with a…butcheress?…named Jill, who he seems to know well. He tells her that he has something he needs her to keep an eye on. Is it what she thinks it is, she asks? He says yes. (Is it what we think it is?)  “He’ll be safe with me,” she tells Ben. (Yes, it is. Ewwww, gross!! Remind me not to buy my meat there.) Ben then asks if Gabriel and Jeffrey have checked in.

Uhhh…sorry? Whobriel and Whofrey?

Jill says yes, everything is moving according to schedule, then asks how it’s going with Jack. Ben says Jack is with them, prompting her to ask if Ben bribed him with pills. “Cut the man some slack,” Ben says. “He’s been through a lot. We all have.”

“We all have” meaning the Oceanic Six and Ben? Or “we all have” meaning the Oceanic Six, Ben, Jill, Gabriel, Jeffrey and whoever the hell else is part of this operation? Has Jill been to the island too, or she is part of some kind of mainland-based cabal? Hmm. He tells her to keep “him” safe, because if she doesn’t, everything they’re about to do won’t matter at all.

TRUST THE MAN
The funniest scene of the episode – even funnier than Hurley’s abridged story of life on the island – comes when he removes a burrito or something from the microwave, gets startled by Ben, who walks right into the kitchen, and as if by reflex, throws the food at him. Not too funny when described like that, but it cracked me up in real time. Anyway, Ben explains that he’s there to pick him up and take him to Sayid and Jack, but Hurley doesn’t trust him, especially after what Sayid told him outside the safehouse. Ben insists that he can help Hurley, that Sayid and Jack are with him because they all want to return to the island (though I haven’t heard Sayid say that yet), and that he can bring the lie to an end. Hurley’s not buying it, and is so resistant that he runs out of the house and right to the cops out front, confessing to murders he didn’t commit and begging to be taken away. Ben watches from the front of the house, unseen by the police, and Hurley gives a triumphant smile as he’s handcuffed.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE
Let’s switch gears and pick up the action on the island. Faraday returns to the beach two hours after the others left him at the hatch. Another time shift has occurred since then, and when Sawyer and Juliet suggest using the zodiac raft to try and find a shipping lane, Faraday says leaving the island is unsafe until he calculates a new bearing…which he can’t do without knowing when they are. That night, Charlotte tells him that she doesn’t feel right – not only does she have a headache she can’t shake, but she had the odd experience earlier of forgetting her mother’s maiden name. He tries to tell her it’s nothing, but his expression says something else, and she asks if he knows what’s wrong with her. They are interrupted before he can answer.

Doc Jensen of Entertainment Weekly has a cool, McFly-ish theory about Charlotte’s symptoms. He writes, “Here’s my theory. Somehow, time is being altered, and Charlotte is being erased from existence. Yes, Faraday did say the past can’t be changed — but what we’ve seen on the show suggests that fate is both fixed and flexible, willing to renegotiate certain details of its predetermined plan. (Example: History will kill Charlie, there’s no stopping that, but it’s open to any number of scenarios to do it.) It could be that some people’s whole lives could count as a negotiable detail. Sorry, Charlotte: The cosmos just isn’t that into you. But she’s a pretty girl, and so I hope I’m wrong.”

Things just keep getting better for the islanders when out of absolutely nowhere, they fall under attack from a barrage of flaming arrows, the first of which fatally skewers poor fretful castaway Neil, aka Frogurt (whose presence in these first two episodes connects to one of the minisodes that were created during Season Four. Feel free to go digging for the link. And I guess technically, the first arrow doesn’t kill him. He takes two more before he dies. Grisly…).

Everyone runs into the woods as fiery spears rain down from the dark sky. Some people fall, but most seem to make it, including Sawyer and Juliet. As they make their way to a rendezvous point after the attack subsides, they are seized by a small group of armed, uniform-wearing men. One of them, whose outfit bears the name Jones, demands to know what Sawyer and Juliet are doing on their island. They are about to cut off Juliet’s hand when another surprise attacker arrives and kills the would-be-assailants. Juliet, now in possession of their gun, lowers it when Locke emerges from the brush.

Whew. So now who the hell were these guys? Those were not Dharma uniforms they had on, so what gives? Are we in the past or the future? Was this small band of bad guys with the arrow-shooting forces, or are these two separate groups? Hopefully we’ll get answers soon, because if I’m not mistaken, Jones is still alive – albeit getting his ass kicked by Sawyer.

COUNTDOWN
The episode concludes with a cloaked and hooded figure in a room that looks like a cross between Faraday’s Oxford lab and the computer room in the hatch where Desmond pushed the button. The figure is drawing equations on a chalkboard, making calculations, typing into a computer which displays a crude map of the world and text reading “Event Window Determined.” A pendulum-like device with chalk on the end swings all around, making marks on floor – some kind of diagram. The figure exits through a hatch-like door, ascends a spiral staircase and comes into a church where Ben is waiting. The figure removes her hood, and reveals herself: Mrs. Hawking.

Ben asks her if she had any luck, to which she says yes. She tells him he has 70 hours, but he says he needs more time. “What you need is irrelevant,” she tells him. “70 hours is what you’ve got.”

“Look, I lost Reyes tonight,” Ben says. “So what happens if I can’t get them all to come back?”

“Then God help us all.”

Yes, God help us all if Ben can’t get everyone together in 70 hours, and God help us all if the energy in The Orchid gets released. You know what? God help them all if I don’t get some damn answers soon. What to make of Mrs. Hawking’s reappearance? Well first of all, my suspicion is that her work down below involves figuring out when the island will next be visible, or at least accessible. So if that’s true, does Ben have 70 hours to get the Oceanic Six and Locke back there? Or is it 70 hours to depart L.A. for a journey that will take them close to the island, in time to be there when this “event window” takes place? And is this the only opportunity they have to get back, or will there be others? And who the hell is this woman? How does Ben know her? I’m not sure how she connects up to what’s going on, but my guess is that when Desmond goes to Oxford looking for Faraday’s mother, the search will end at her doorstep. And if I’m right, will he be able to do something that will buy Ben the time he needs to reconvene the Oceanic Six?

LINE OF THE NIGHT
“Why there’s a dead Pakistani on my couch?” – Mrs. Reyes

FINAL THOUGHTS
None, except this – can we just take a moment to acknowledge that Aaron is super-adorable? Oh my God, I want his cute little voice to be on every voicemail I ever call. Maybe then I won’t get so annoyed when I’m told to stay on the line and leave my message at the beep, like I’m a moron who has never used voicemail before….sorry, what was I talking about?

Tonight’s Episode: Jughead